I so much agree.

I didn't realize how much windows forces you to reboot until I had been running linux pretty much exclusively for over a year...and then windows tanked. I had tried out MULTIPLE distros of linux, and yeah, pretty much never had to reboot more than once to get them completely up and running with every bit of software I would ever want. Also, there is something nice about knowing that you can use your home dir/partition on ANY linux and never have to worry about "migrating" your data like you do in windows.

Also, window's installers (including win7) just aren't as nice as the leading linux ones. They usually install a working system in about 15 mins, without rebooting until you want to run the new install. With windows it has to reboot in the middle...and if something happened to go slightly wrong, you have to start all over again. And let's not forget the hell of getting a laptop running in windows if you don't have the OEM disk for the drivers. Yes...linux is hell when drivers aren't already supported by default, or not at all, but I honestly find this to happen less often then it does with windows (name the version) on my laptops. For instance, try installing win7 64 bit on an inspiron 1525, and then try installing any major 64 bit linux... EVERYTHING works great in linux (one reboot for wireless broadcom card to work...). Windows 7 though? Still don't have a webcam driver that works right...my touchpad does all kinds of odd stuff, and it took me forever to find a driver that let me scroll properly on the touchpad. There was other stuff too...but I can't remember now. I gave up and went back to 32 bit win7. This is a common experience for me though with windows and laptops vs linux. it may not work for linux, but if it does, it's amazingly simple usually. I wish I would have counted the reboots trying to get my hardware to work on 64bit win7..I bet nobody would even believe the number...I know it was pretty large. Windows works better/has more support for more hardware/more software/ etc...but getting it working and maintaining it is not worth the cost in time for me in many cases...especially on laptops which I can't use for gaming...

That, and do forget that more bodies doesn't always relate to getting a project done any faster. You have to consider training the new employee/s in and the time it takes them to become familiar enough with the project to become productive. Also, nobody that has been on the team for a while is going to want to spend time helping the new guy if he is being rushed to get important things done. It's going to be a while before the team is more productive due to the new hire/s. That, and sometimes more people just means more people will be in the way.

This guy is pulling numbers out of his butt, assuming random ratios of speed differences...
I know it's already all been said but really...the author needs to try this:

Program a small application in php, and one in c++. All the data must be stored in a database, on a remote machine (which is the way it would be done for a huge site). Now, hardcode in some data for your first benchmark of php vs c++ to get an idea for raw php vs c++ performance doing the same task, now, comment all that out, and get the data from the database, and time that. Guess what, I bet the times become pretty darn similar in the latter test. No, php isn't going to be QUITE as fast...but it's gonna be really close for REAL web-application type workloads where latency from your sql server and loading all the other page content come into play. Your clients are never going to notice the difference on the majority of applications, and I don't believe that most time is spent processing php or c++ code on a web application either. It's waiting for the DB, and uploading content to clients. If you truely are doing extremely data heavy tasks and lots of floating point math or something, then yes...C++ is probably a better tool, but even then, there's no reason not to use php for the non-data heavy stuff...

I know I'm just a youngster web programmer who only graduated from college a while ago and who deserves little respect on slashdot compared to some of you, but I do have a decent amount of experience with quite a few programming languages. I learned C++ first, and know it pretty well for someone who doesn't use it constantly any more. I think I'm very very good with PHP...and so does my boss. Given that information, I have something to say.

If someone told me to program an entire web application from top to bottom in C++, I'd probably quit on the spot, and walk out laughing all the way to the parking lot. I like C++ for lots of things, but there is no way in hell you would EVER get me to program an entire web application in c++. It would take 10x longer at LEAST to develop than it would for me to do in even Java, with which I actually have less knowledge of (but still a good working knowledge of), and I don't consider ideal for web apps. The debugging for C++ on something like that would probably drive me completely insane. I say me, because I'm assuming that I'm building this web app and only me...like I can do very quickly in php or python or nearly any other language that does web stuff well, otherwise it would be me and all my co-workers.

Languages that are traditionally used for web development are used for a reason...and it's not how fast/efficient they run. It's for the difference in expense of the developers (HUGE factor really), for how well the language suits the web in it's core libraries, and how well it integrates with web servers, database abstraction libraries...well I could go on forever really. I'm not saying that C++ couldn't get libraries built for it that made its appealing as say, ruby (on rails), php, or python, but lets face it, it would take a very long time to get to that point where everything was as seamless and easy as it is in current web languages...not to mention getting hosting companies to let you run a c++ app YOU programmed on their servers (they'd have to be stupid...really freakin stupid). C++ will just never be popular enough for web stuff to be attractive to developers...that's the bottom line. Lack of efficiency is such a tiny price to pay compared to these other factors.

You just CANNOT have geeky programmer types figure out human body language well enough to create a set of working rules to program into a robot! Why? Well let's see, most geeky programmer types (myself included) already have a certain social awkwardness and trouble recognizing/reacting to human social quirks as it is, for the main reason that they generally don't associate as often with non-geeky people. Now, I'm not saying this is always true of course, but I think it's at least generally the case, and probably more so with people who mess around with robots all day. I think before we see robots that act and seem human, will be the day that normal cheerleaders and soccermoms can work on robot's AIs without realizing what they are doing(which I'm guessing is going to be a long while, unless you count the furby...).

My sister was throwing out a 1.6ghz celeron M based laptop because she bought a new laptop, and the display was broken on the old one (she never bothered to have anyone fix it, even though it wasn't that expensive to fix...). I just completely removed the screen, since I don't care to use it as a laptop, and fixing it costs money I don't want to spend. Anyway, I've been running it as a web server/NAS/file server for about 4 months now, and it does really well. I don't know the numbers for power usage, but I know it's better than the dell thin-client machine with a p3 at 1ghz I was using before. It's also quicker, as this celeron M is basically a core2 solo... Can't do much better than free... Although I would LOVE to get my hands on a sheevaplug. I just may buy one...

I will definitely agree that release quality of ubuntu has deteriorated but I'm pretty sure some of your issues are hardware specific (I realize this doesn't make it any better...). For example, I have a crap laptop with intel965 graphics, and 9.04 and 9.10 are the only releases that actually made hack free multi-monitor support a reality for me. Before that, I always had to hack xorg. Also, Kubuntu 9.10 alpha 6 worked with both vga and svideo out for me out of the box (you have to go into system settings...), but I didn't test hdmi yet cause I dont' have a cable right now. Pulse audio was TERRIBLE in 9.10alpha 6, and not good at all in 9.04 either, and crapped out on me almost weekly, but right now (9.10beta) it's working impressively well, so much so that I'm actually not hating pulseaudio (that's saying alot). So, for me, pulse and my video are MUCH better than they have been in the past. I agree though, ubuntu needs MUCH better regression testing, and also they need to make sure that things actually work as they are supposed to before they try to put it in a distro. I think fedora tends to do better with this, but that said, I've personally had better luck getting ubuntu working in the end than I have with fedora. Generally ubuntu works a bit better with my hardware(I've tested/run every single fedora release since 4)...but I know for a fact this isn't true for everyone.

I feel about the same way...and I have no idea why!

I actually started out my linux experience with red hat, then I tried the fedora releases starting with 4 (which I ran for a while...) and I think running them dual booted with xp through I think fedora 6 or 7.

My computer fried one day (hardware issue), and I didn't have a way to run linux for about a year (I was in college, and I just used winXP in the labs that year). After that I got my first introduction to ubuntu (6.06 I think) in the Computer Science lab (and didn't notice much difference since I couldn't do any administration, no sudo rights...). About that same time I got a laptop, and by the recommendation of a friend who LOVED/S ubuntu, I installed ubuntu instead of fedora.

I have tried out every single ubuntu, fedora, (open)suse, and many other distros (including some pretty obscure and/or minimalist ones), and I always find that for me, on my hardware, ubuntu tends to "just work" the best and gives me the best user experience, and fedora releases always seem to have an issue that I can't easily work around, or something that just bothers me that I don't want to live with. Suse is usually about the same way, although I LOVE yast (ubuntu needs an equivalent!). I actually always have to have the best luck with debian based distros, and I have no clue why, since I feel I know how to use both red hat based distros and debian based distros about equally actually.

I would like to use fedora more, as I feel it's technically superior usually on any given release (and blue is nicer to look at than brown), but it just never feels quite right, and things tend to not go as smoothly as the ubuntu distro at the current time...so I continue to run ubuntu, and experiment with everything else.

I am an OS fanatic though I think. My laptop is nearly always running some new beta of some distro or some experimental OS (plan9 anyone?) alongside my normal defaults (which is ubuntu9.10 with win7 right now, but I rarely boot win7...I never have a reason to except the occasional game that doesn't work in wine, and I actually prefer both gnome and kde over window's UI by a HUGE margin).

Actually, broke it at a concert...someone ran into me really hard. Not fun.

I see a far greater problem than this especially with the password app. Suppose they start putting these keyboards on laptops and other devices, or different models of the keyboard are made. Say you need to type your password and you have a different keyboard then the one you usually use...or even the keyboard starts to wear out... What then? Certainly this technology isn't ready for anything but desktop apps, as there would be no way to tap into how the person typed the password into a web app. I don't know, it doesn't seem like a good idea for passwords, since the devices performance in sure to change over time, whereas your typing may not, OR it may, which is a problem too, especially if you are injured, like when I broke my right hand middle finger a couple months ago...

On other stuff, that doesnt' have to do with passwords, there still is the problem of the keyboard wearing out or your typing changing, which suddenly renders any computer learning techniques broken...

Actually, I'm not so sure that making a good IDE for something that supports nearly the same as flash does for html5 and js WOULD be that big a problem. I used to develop in flash a great deal 3 years ago, but I have been doing web programming since then. (mostly php, mysql, but I am really good with javascript as well)

I don't see why, with all the capability we ALREADY have with javascript and html5, couldn't make an IDE for making similar content in a application that is browser/web based and is nearly 100% html5 and javascript (python/php/ruby would be needed some I'm thinking). If one were to develop a good api for frame-based animation using javascript and html5, why then couldn't html5 and javascript form a good ide interface and "compiling"(scripting language needed here) the necessary javascript/html5 to make your content run?

Would a javascript API be as nice as flashes? no, probably not...as actionscript is actually a decent OOP language in many respects (yes javascript can be OOP, but it's just not the same/equivalent). Do I think the results could be as nice? With some good backing and committed development, possibly. Do I see any reason an IDE as rich as flash's couldn't be developed using html5, js, and maybe some other scripting language like python/php/ruby? No, not really. So, really, if I'm right (most likely I'm not), the only thing holding JS and html5 back is lack of will/means to compete head to head with adobe.

Call me out if I'm wrong...but I think it could be done. (and if anyone wants to hire my help, contact me...heh)

I read on their website on the "Gallery" tab that it's atx & mini atx form factor. (somehow the specifications are in the gallery...no clue why...)

I thought that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExfatexFat was basically a 64 bit extension to fat32...but I could be wrong.

My experience is not quite as bad, but I will admit that windowsXP tends to best my battery life in ubuntu 9.04 by about 15 to 20 minutes. I'm pretty sure it's about equal to ubuntu in win7, but I know it wasn't as good as ubuntu in vista. This is on an inspiron 1525. Battery life for laptops I have found is usually a bit worse in linux, but I've never heard that it performs as badly as this post. I'm saying it isn't that bad for you...I'm sure it is. Lets face it, stuff breaks in linux all the time. My intel graphics drivers are the PERFECT example of poor/unpredictable performance in linux.

Yeah, I read an interesting article that seemed quite knowledgeable about alsa&pulse vs oss4. It had benchmarks, features of both stacks, and the history of alsa and oss. The article lead me to believe that OSS4 is definitely the better audio stack right now for EVERYONE. So, just wondering, does anyone know why distros keep using alsa&pulse? Any insight? I personally don't have any audio issues on my inspiron 1525, but I would like linux distros to have the best audio stack possible.

So what? I'll just put it through my own script that modifies it in my own trivial and non-significant way, and then it can be copyrighted by ME... This is just pathetic.