It's not really about being elitist. It's about excluding those people who can't be bothered to try, but expect you to put in as much effort as it takes so they don't have to. Most people in general are willing to help someone who is trying, but very few people like freeloaders. This is no different. If you could somehow exclude the types of people who aren't prepared to put in any effort, and only have a community of people who are willing to help each other, that community would be a great place. Because it takes some amount of effort to use Linux (albeit not very much) it automatically excludes a lot of those type of undesirable, demanding people.

So why do people still cook their own food when you can just buy ready made meals? Lots of people enjoy the process as much as the end product, and Linux users are no different.

Besides, Linux has never been about "free" in cost or time. It has been "free" as in the freedom to use it how you see fit. If you don't like the time it takes, you're free not to use it. Nobody said it was easy. But just because it doesn't work for you, it doesn't mean it's useless for everybody.

Case in point - those who get tired of the config files and other differences move on. Those who are left behind, continue to enjoy the config files. I would put the case forward though that anyone who finds it time consuming or doesn't enjoy it, was never really suited to Linux in the first place. Those of us who can't live without the control that an open source OS like Linux provides could never settle for anything else, and for us, we're so familiar with it that we can do things faster than with other OSes (so I too "have more important things to spend my time on" which for me means I use Linux rather than Mac or Windows, both of which I find infuriatingly limited.)

But really, it's no different to anything else - some people like to design their own circuits and solder the components on themselves, others prefer to buy ready-made devices. Some people like to cook, others like to buy ready-made meals. Each to their own.

I would also say (in reference to the computer license) that even though you use a Mac now, your years on Linux would still make you an excellent problem solver, even under MacOS.

I'm using Linux with four monitors at four different resolutions, and they all line up seamlessly, even at different vertical elevations. Linux is able to do this just as well as Windows (in fact I would say better than Windows, if you have to download a third party program like Ultramon to get it to work properly), the only difference is that Windows/Ultramon gives you a GUI, while most Linux users are satisfied with editing configuration files, because that's what they're used to and comfortable with.

It always makes me laugh when people say Linux will never make it on the desktop because it's too hard, yet being hard is one of Linux's strong points. Windows is supposed to be easy, but have you seen the quality of the average post in a Windows support forum? Giving Linux a high barrier to entry automatically excludes so many of those people, avoiding the forums getting clogged up with so many simple requests people could easily solve themselves.

It's like requiring a degree when you apply for a job. You might never need to use the degree itself in your work, but having one generally implies you have a certain set of basic skills.

I have often heard it said that there should be some kind of license you need before you're allowed to use a computer. Well there's your license - the ability to use Linux.

I agree that it's bad having the hardware locked down, but remember that the code you write runs under Linux, so unless you're doing something very specific for the hardware (which you shouldn't be because there's no documentation for it) then there's no problems transferring your code to any other Linux device/PC and running it there.

Basically the only thing that's locked down is access to the specific hardware used in the Pi, which if you used it, would mean your code would be locked down to that device anyway...

So what happens if you do the opposite? Store energy by pumping the air out and creating a vacuum. Then when you want to use the energy, let the air back in via the turbines. Would that be more efficient?

Also one could argue that in the right climate, getting cold air out would be more efficient as the plant wouldn't need to run air conditioning for its employees...

The problem is that a huge amount of people are Windows users and won't boycott, so the tiny drop in business probably wouldn't be noticeable.

But it would be nice if lots of people bought from companies like Dell who offer a good return policy, then return them based on the inability to boot a custom Linux kernel. That might actually affect their bottom line enough that they put in a DIP switch on the motherboard that disables secure boot - assuming they aren't going to do that already, Dell aren't exactly opposed to Linux.

I can just imagine the tech support calls from "Microsoft" that home users get, explaining how the evil computer company disabled the turbo function on their PC, and to speed up their computer they have to flick this little switch inside the box...

"Ah, but they don't, do they? You say 'keep an eye on that lamb,' and they do - they sit there for three hours and watch it burn." -- Rimmer (Red Dwarf)

Computers are now so advanced that all we can do as humans is try to keep up.

Actually I don't think they've done automated docking yet. The first was manually done from the ground, now it's been manually done from space. Maybe the next step is automating it.

Yes, like that old connector which transferred one byte at a time...what was it called? Oh yes, the parallel port :-)

If it's 802.11b/g you can also run it on channel 14, which many devices will see but can't connect to unless they've been told they're in Japan.

I think e-mail would be defined as having two features, similar to the postal service. In a properly configured system, a message would never be lost. It would either be delivered or returned to the sender. It would also allow routing through multiple systems (and not necessarily TCP/IP ones) in order to arrive at its destination.

Instant messaging doesn't count as e-mail because most IM systems don't guarantee delivery, so you're lucky if your failed message doesn't get lost forever. They are also centralised, and even Jabber servers connect directly to one another so the concept of routing messages through many mailhubs doesn't generally apply (of course it's possible to do all this, but most IM services don't.)

That's true, but I just find it irritating when the people pointing out the flaws are the same people who are perfectly capable of fixing them. Why not just fix them to benefit yourself and others?

I am sure any shortcomings in Orca are primarily due to a lack of resources, since like much open source, most people would be working on it in their spare time. So any help your friend could give would help improve the software, and since he is blind, I am sure his contribution would be more beneficial than a sighted person (since he already knows exactly what the shortcomings are.)

The reason GIMP doesn't come close to Photoshop is because there are few Linux programmers with the mathematical skill and motivation to research and design the complex algorithms required to manipulate the images. The reason OCR sucks is similar - there aren't enough programmers with the skill set needed to do complex image manipulation. But the main requirement to write a screen reader is to know what its users want, and a blind person already knows that intimately. So your friend is in the perfect situation to help write the world's best screen reader, except he doesn't want to.

Which is suprising given you refer to him as a Linux geek, because one thing about Linux geeks is that they are passionate about making Linux the best OS there is. So if your friend doesn't really care about improving Linux for other blind users, despite being in the perfect position to do so, I don't think he's really a true Linux geek. Maybe just the lesser title of 'enthusiast' :-)

Notwithstanding the other comments, if your co-worker really was a Linux geek, and a programmer, one of the first things you would think he'd do is write some decent screen-reading software for Linux. Given the tiny number of blind programmers compared to sighted ones, who else is going to write the software? The other comments here have already pointed out that most sighted people don't know how to design something for the blind. Maybe that's why every time he tries the software it hasn't improved...it sounds a bit mean, but you kind of only have yourself to blame if you have all the skills and ability required to solve a problem, but then choose not to.

Don't worry, I'm sure Mozilla are working on getting these features into Firefox as we speak!