There, fixed it for you (the first software was not written for the abacus but for the analytical engine. That said engine was never in fact built (until the 20th century) is entirely beside the point. The abacus is not and was never Turing complete.)

Something which was never built yet was conceived is valid as Turing complete ?!?
By that line of thought Udo von Aachen is more Turing complete than the analytical engine.

FTA: "Disabling/freezing" the CPU's cache severely degrades the performance. However, this seems acceptable if one considers that this special mode only needs to be set whenever the screen is locked (all efforts are pretty much worthless if an unlocked laptop is stolen).
br/>Sounds like a tiny back door fix with a hell of a cat flap in it.

I hope you like to read ...

You may not believe this, but few things piss me off more than mindless fanboyism, and I say this as a Linux diehard. It leads to terrible disappointment for users who find out that, yes, it's still got a ton of problems.

Excellent. Unfortunately they have strength in numbers.

...but the developers can't fix the problem if they're unaware of it. Developers get into habits of using a program a particular way, and without users providing feedback in the form of bug reports with explicit instructions on reproducing the bug, they won't become aware of it.

That's not the root of the problem. There's a real problem in hardware support - computer hardware in Desktop Linux' qualification model is the Ultima Thulle for devs. Each dev has a (very) limited amount of platforms to test on. A product which relies on bug discovery after product release can not survive on this consumer base. The vast majority of computer users find it troublesome to program a granny-proof car stereo - we sell them (I'm in micro-electronics) a technology which can only be described in superlatives. All these people, from the first to the last, will cease and desist if they encounter a bug which is either repetitive or blocking. Yes, reporting has advanced - it has even become an advance in software management on its own - but all these people expect them to be resolved before release. It's what they're used to, it's the standard, it's what they expect, they know it exists under a different name.

Did you talk to someone who has a workflow on Vista recently? I haven't had a bug since I installed it - ever. I reboot about every 2 or 3 weeks, hibernate 2 or 3 times a day. I'm now watching Digital terrestrial TV via a TerraTec dongle which installed in 8 minutes (9 clicks) and all my software is freeware. Currently typing on Chrome (trust me: Mozilla has no reason to exist when these guys will release extensions). It's free and comes bundled with google.com (or the other way around). Desktop Linux isn't the platform that enables choice, Windows is: currently have 5 browsers (webdev for fun), tried 3 ftp clients, have 3 media players (kept VLC, killed iTunes & Winamp), a number of programming & debugging environments for embedded (IDA, MicroAsm and even my Borland debugger runs).

We don't have a working browser in Ubuntu because everyone warped the system enough to get Internet Explorer working via IEs4Linux; we have a working browser because of Firefox.

True. Can't help but make a correction: you have a working browser because it was pushed/provided by the corporate world (a point in my previous post). Firefox will not survive. The biggest & most popular website ever, which is the homepage of the best marketing/advertising company ever, has released a browser which is simply too sweet for words. They'll continue to fund FF, to no avail. It's not difficult to see Mozilla as one of Google's little outsourcing trials, btw. I would probably be pushing your buttons by calling Mozilla Foundation a sweatshop where the majority isn't paid. Open Office is also stalling, and both Goog and MS are in the opposition. MS is always portrayed (on the mainstream Linux front, not just fanboys) in the light of IE and their OS, accompanied by predictions of failure. Don't forget that they 'just decided' to jump in the gaming console market, and won. In response to Java they 'just decided' to deliver an alternative and java is going down, in favor of .NET, C# and JS (which is google's domain). MS also decided to jump on the embedded video wagon recently, thanks to the Olympics they were able to boost their shares. Forget ogg and the video tag. MS recently delivered a very peculiar progress on the static photography front (photosynth) to invade yahoo's dominance. The recent Google/MS/yahoo buyout failures are thought to have been the main reason why this product was delayed. Picasa is google's alternative with static content, but they had image matching & recognition in the back of their mind all the way. Desktop linux will never happen as long as MS doesn't want it & Google doesn't need it. I think google's move to push Chrome to Linux is a sweetener to keep the troops quiet for what they're doing with Mozilla.

"Give it time" is a legitimate response. Free Flash-decoding libraries have gone from being developers' toys to being able to run YouTube. That's not trivial. Evince has the ability to fill out and save most PDF forms, which it didn't last year. Bugs are addressed, compatibility is improved and usability gets better over time.

Patience isn't a virtue when you want to gain market share in the fastest & a resource intensive field like consumer software. A small question I'd like to ask you: in 2010 (that's next year) Intel will be producing 80-core processors. MS & Apple are already tuning theoretical models and have a framework running. How's the FOSS community doing ? I'll give you a plausible answer: Ubuntu is now running smoothly on 4 year old hardware. With your "give it time" there will indeed be a completely working distro in 20xx for today's hardware, but nobody'll care because the market has moved on. Are we on the same frequency ?

Dell seems to have done so accidentally. If you were wondering, I think that the rep who sold the user on a desktop she didn't know how to use was an idiot, and the freetards (thank you, The Linux Hater) claiming that the customer was in any way at fault are an embarrassment.

I feel a very strong urge to ask whether it's your argument that it's the fault of "that corporation". I don't want to reply that I touched this point in my earlier post. Honesty compels me to type that you can't stick a failure of a large-scale community effort on one person or corporation. I see that move by Dell as a test-case which didn't really harm the community. I wasn't referring to the Dell debacle in my post, but to one that will follow. My guess is that it'll happen during a period of journalistic silence where there's nothing else to report on. They'll jump on it and you can't explain the history and nuances of FOSS in a soundbite.

I think I'd be comfortable shouting that it's way better than it was a few years ago, though I'd still recommend strongly against giving it to regular end users unless they have an in-house tech support person and plenty of patience.

The accomplishments by Desktop Linux will always lag behind, that's my view on it.

Today's goals are tomorrow's standards... how is speech recognition going on Ubuntu, btw? It's not flawless on Vista - no tags - but it looks promising.

My father warned me about this. Hate it when he's right.

There's a large misconception that patents are solely created to shield things off (protect) without discussion. Having worked for one of these corporations gave me an insight in what they're actually used for (although I can't generalise).
Patents in my field (micro-electronics) were used to negotiate access to other patents. Corp. A holds a patent which Corp. B needs: the two sit around the table (a number of times) and B has to offer something in return - access to B's patents in most cases.
All these things are negotiated behind closed doors, only a small fraction of the cases result in court cases, but in my experience the patent is then used in it's true sense: to protect R&D or potential thereof.
Yes: there are patents which just put a lock on an idea. But these grant the patent holder access to the patent portfolio of other companies. Such patents -in almost al cases- focus on a small amount of very well-chosen corporations, to get access to their portfolio. If they don't give in it normally ends in court, there are a lot of cases like this - notably the David vs Goliath cases. You could compare it to some extent with registering a domain and sitting back and waiting to see if they'll pay up.

I refuse

Hey,

Currently running Vista to work on. Next to that I still use BeOS for multimedia, but that's mainly because it runs a homemade mediaplayer. I also have a laptop with Minix due to my 16-something years of experience in assembly.
The other box with RedHat and Fedora was thrown from the 2nd floor straight in a container.

You didn't miss a thing. Most of us are tech fiddlers, or have grown to become one. We have fun with this stuff. But Ubuntu is aimed at the mainstream and is not what it's portrayed to be.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I'm sorry to say that this is not a satisfactory answer. Look around the net - hey, just stay on this site and click on a random link - and you'll see that various Desktop versions of Linux are portrayed as nothing less than perfection. Me and the people around me who have tried the same software (I'm talking 13 years in my case) must be subjected to some strange phenomenon where the most simple tasks seem to require RSI-inducing terminal typing. Fix one thing, something else breaks. Update and things go bonkers. Disable update and ... it updates. Reboot to get sound. Recompile to get wifi. Repeat.

It's 2009, people. Multimedia is ubiquitous, no matter how complex these peripherals are, each and every common-sensed consumer expects them to work without a problem and does not wish to lose time on it. Truth is that the best Ubuntu experience is the one where you have a Windows box running a foot further on the desk, so you can scroll through an avalanche of third-rate forums and half-arsed wikis to find some obscure sequence of terminal commands. In most cases you're trying to find out how to run a windows look-a-like tool or package in your newly found time consumer. Consumers want this and that. Don't discuss with them whether or not they need it. I'm hinting at a very wide range of issues here, going from drawing squares in Gimp to having flash whilst browsing.

One of the things I find most troublesome, however, is that not Linux but Windows is the best platform for running FOSS. For some reason (shall we call it "API" ?) these programs run with a minimum of problems on my MS. And don't dare to tell me "We're working on it". I used to "work" on writing Linux software, you spend most of the time peeling back layer after layer of shitty abstraction to find the true reason: bug obfuscation. Ubuntu is probably the worst hack on a hack in existence.

Most of the energy isn't put into bug resolving, btw. The average Ubuntu dev works on polish and gloss, like this incredible progress in boot time. If there's one thing that's possible to learn in the history of operating systems: apps kill competition, not OSs. No applications ? No carrot! The recent Open Orifice debacle is a very nice illustration that when the going gets tough the hard-working volunteers have better things to do.

Excuses are the trademark of FOSS, not freedom, not liberty, not whatever third-world slogan they can come up with. Excuses are what you normally get for complaining about FOSS. They vary from "your fault", "worksforme", "their fault" to "give it time". Ubuntu is what you get for following this open-minded anti-corporate philosophy: a very shiny car where everything is held together with sticky tape. After a decade and a half I think it's time to reflect on a few facts:
- Things which work in Desktop linux a la Ubuntu work for one of two reasons: 1) the linux support is provided/pushed by the corporate world or 2) there is a very strong user base on the windows version.
- The Desktop Linux devs apparently lack know-how when it comes to hardware
- People will pay for something if it saves them time

Last August I simply formatted my Linux installation for the last time. I still have a partition with BeOS and one with Minix when I want to fiddle around. I went to the store and bought Vista. 4 hours later I had installed everything which was on my linux system and more ... for free. The amount of time I saved since then is beyond comprehension. I have time for three extra hobbies now. The standard rhetoric to this from ye olde linux base is "stop bitching". Sorry mate, wherever I roam on the net to read up on H/W or S/W specs there's some bleeding ass punk rambling on about Ubuntu as if it's God's gift to humanity, and I feel like I need to correct that. The Desktop Linux promotion chitchat is nothing more than a bunch of lies. You're lying when you tell people that "it works" and you're lying when you advise people to "give it time".

I truly - from the fuzzy insides of my heart - hope that some major-league vendor will start a huge campaign to promote Ubuntu on their netbooks/laptops/dekstop to see the truth exposed in prime time. It'll just be a matter of days after that. The problems will be answered with excuses. It'll be the fault of the evil corporations.

Ubuntu is something to be ashamed of, not something to proudly shout through a megaphone.

Read the article before posting. You're really scraping the bottom of the barrel on this one.

In Windows, there are cases of things going wrong.
In Linux, there are cases of things going right.

The problems I encounter in Windows are a few orders of magnitude smaller than those in Linux. I think it's been since the early 90's that I had problems with sound, video or internet on MS products.
The reason is fairly simple: no matter how complex these peripherals have become, they are ubiquitous: we're 2009 ... an OS failing to provide basic multimedia ? Big Failure.

I see the humour in your reply, but to be honest: Ubuntu makes me feel ashamed of being in the S/W business.

Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention/troll about: MS doesn't kill my hard drives as Ubuntu did. About a year ago there was this small peculiar bug which made HDs sleep and wake up constantly. It's not something you notice until you read through the bug reports, but it killed one of my drives and I had to throw away the other one. The store paid it back, after I changed my story from "Linux" to "MS", btw.

http://www.archive.org/

Same here, boot about every 3 weeks on Vista but that's because I'm out for a few days without the laptop. My last linux experience was Ubuntu 8.10 where I had to reboot pretty much every day. Reasons: not waking up from a screensaver (!), windows decorations messing up, losing wifi, losing sound, ...
Spare me the command-line fixes, I've given up on that just before getting RSI from that.

This is exactly why I left the Linux scene and consider it a failure.
Filing bug reports isn't answered with a solution or bug fix, but with one of these:
- bug report already exists
- You're doing something wrong, it's not Ubuntu/Linux
- It's your hardware, not Ubuntu/Linux
- It's because of these evil hardware companies, not Ubuntu/Linux
- You have the source code, fix it yourself

it's holes drilled in the body of the compressor chamber

Hey dude, you're welcome :)