Show me one professional graphic designer who actually makes quality work and can use Gimp and .. I don't even know what the illustrator alternative is on Linux. Inkscape? It's awful.

They use macOS and Windows for a reason. The real tools are Adobe's (at this time), and no professional takes Gimp seriously. The fact that you suggest it just re-iterates what the problem with Linux zealots are.

This.

I'm pretty sick and tired of hearing this counter-argument to my "problems." The majority of hardware I've ever bought has worked "out of the box" with Windows and Mac, I'm talking older scanners, brand new graphics cards, keyboards, mice, etc. The few that didn't immediately, were either solved in Windows by "automatic driver download", or by going to the vendor's website or using the provided disc (last ditch resort). I've never actually come across hardware that:

a. didn't work, or
b. required me to screw around with source code, and re-compile a kernel

And, you appear to be speaking to me as if I don't know how to use Linux. I do, I've been programming for the last 20 years and working with all 3 platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux). I respect Linux, but at some point the community, including Slashdot, has to admit that my experience is fairly common (even if you anecdotally haven't had it) and you can't expect 'regular' people to want to deal with this. I'm in the tech field and even I don't want to deal with this! Why? I have a family, my time is valuable, and while I can screw around for ours with my OS, I don't want to. Make it "work" without having to screw around, or at least admit there's a problem, and then we can start to get somewhere.

I had a hell of a time installing Linux Mint on an HP Envy M6 and I posted about it in their forums (which was 100% ignored): https://forums.linuxmint.com/v...

The tl;dr of it is this, to get it installed I had to:

• - Find custom network drivers because the ones that came with it (RT3290) did not work at all. This involved getting source code and re-compiling because the deb package failed on line 1 with an error... why, why would should that ever be necessary for a professional desktop OS (not a hobbiest machine)?
• - The EFI installation for the bootloader would continually go in the wrong directory, so it never worked. It took me several hours to realize this was the issue and manually fix it
• - Suspending has never worked when the lid closed. When it comes 'back' it would just have an error and X would be dead
• - Battery life was awful until I followed a well known "guide" to fix it... again, why?
• - After a few weeks a new Linux Mint version came out and there was no upgrade path. The only option is to format and re-install. At this point I just gave up because that's unacceptable. Every new version of Windows (7-10 even), and Mac OSX (10.4-10.8 as an example) do not require a format and will just upgrade. Why can't Linux?

I love "playing" with Linux, but until it works on a desktop like MacOS and Windows without requiring screwing around, re-compiling, and format / re-install for major version upgrades, nobody who doesn't have time for a Linux-hobby can use it.

Seriously? Allo has failed, it doesn't even have 200k installs after over a month of being out. Compare this hangouts at 2.7m, which they ABANDONED for no good god damn reason and removed threaded SMS view (which was essential graceful SMS fallback). And do you know why? Because Google can't get their shit together. If you buy a Pixel on Google Project Fi, it comes with Allo, Duo, Hangouts, and Messenger. Do you understand how frustrating it is to a consumer when every product created gets dropped? Even /r/Android no longer has any love for Google's bullshit in regards to their messaging apps. The WORST part about all of this is they already had the product: Google Talk. Remember that? Could use it on desktop, had video calling built-in, chat logs. everything except SMS fallback.

As for Facebook messenger, again no SMS fallback and nobody really uses fb anymore for a variety of reasons including security concerns.

There is currently no good Android SMS+messenger app which is why WhatsApp is still so popular, especially in Europe (which I doubt anyone can ever overcome), or Kakao products in Korea. iMessage would be met with happiness by most Android users because despite all the BS Apple does, iMessage is a good product, and is only missing a web interface (or Windows desktop app).

Well at least Slashdot is sti

They just introduced their own Uber-style ride sharing program that will undoubtedly use this: http://ca.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idCAKCN12K2IA

They probably do not want competition.

I modded something incorrectly -- commenting to delete it.

I thought it was:

To get away from their wife.

Have.. I mean, have you used any Samsung products lately? I own a Nexus 5, Nexus 6P, Samsung Galaxy S6, S7 and Note 7 (I do a lot of hardware testing). They are all rock solid, but the most rock solid is the S7 and Note 7. Without question, they are very well made devices, and stand up to a lot more than the Huawei 6P. The LG Nexus 5 is pretty solid, but there are problems especially with the power button (a problem that plagued older Samsung phones).

So when I see comments like this, I can only picture some luddite tightly gripping his Nexus 4 screaming about quality without ever having tried a new phone and just hating on it in principal.

Yea, because attempting to change all of society is going to work /s. People are going to keep doing what they're doing, if companies want to capitalize on it, they need to make their product more attractive to potential customers.