I want Linux on a laptop. The bulk of my work involves connecting at the command-line to other systems, sometimes through SSH, sometimes through serial. I like that the same command-line interface for initiating these connections is also the command line interface through which I can manipulate files in the filesystem, edit files through text editors, and manipulate files through command-line utilities.

While usually I can do my work from the office, sometimes I have to work in the field too. It's much easier to have one computer doing that work than it is to have one at the office, one out in the field, and one at home. Unfortunately the newest batch of portable computers, the convertible tablets, don't work well with X-Windows. This means having to have a separate computer at the office to connect into in order to work out of if I want access to everything that is helpful.

I've played with OSX-based laptops, I find the GUI clunky when it comes to working with multiple terminal windows, as Apple has taken the approach of using Apple-Tab to switch between applications, rather than switch between windows. It's more awkward than it should be to switch between multiple terminal sessions quickly. It also doesn't help that Apple has removed important keys from the keyboard, like pgup/pgdn, home/end, back-tab as shift of tab, and the distinction between backspace and delete, so a lot of the keys and combinations that I use effectively aren't available to me on the Mac.

I've ever heard of Guido-something or Allan Day, and Linux's mascot as a penguin, as an amimal that Linus Torvalds happens to like, has gotten fanbois salivating at the zoo near their enclosure.

Mr. Torvalds has a bit of a cult of personality around him, even if he doesn't participate with it much or contribute to it.

Mr. Torvalds,

For many uses of Linux such as on the desktop, other software beyond the kernel and the base GNU tools are required. What other projects would you like to see given priority, and what would you like to see implemented or improved?

Admittedly I thought most about X-Windows when asking this question; but I don't doubt that other daemons or systems can be just as important to the user experience.

Thank you for your efforts all these years.

It wasn't common knowledge to me, and I do care.

It is considered proper--even courteous--to supply citations when making a claim, and not to get in a snit when someone asks you for them in a nice way.

Thanks for the links, they make interesting reading.

Not fault alone, of course. In many ways, I blame liberals of both stripes- fiscal conservatism these days is strongly libertarian, and thus, liberal.

One said says I want to fuck who I want to and damned the consequences tomorrow, we'll just kill any inconvenient product of sexual abuse. The other side says I want to profit from who I want to and damn the regulations, I am not my brother's financial keeper.

Both are putting radical self interest- liberty ahead of the common good- and liberty is liberalism.

If pre-algebra, aka, 6th grade through 8th grade study counts as math for high school graduation, the basic use of logic structures for loops and control in programming may as well count too.

That doesn't work so well for Reddit.

The average person is stupid. What one needs is an intelligent editorial committee. Slashdot's quality in that regard is slipping.

I don't think that your conclusions are entirely correct.

Boys accept being ostracized from the mainstream more readily than girls, and ostracized boys form their own culture. One of those cultures revolves around technology past the point of being a simple user of it. To a degree it's involuntary. There are girls in that culture too, but in my anecdotal experiences many of the girls are there more by choice than out of necessity.

The nature of manipulating technology lends itself to those that are accustomed to isolation and to spending very long periods of time working on something to the exclusion of other things. Those that find themselves alone already start out with a perverse advantage in that regard.

Guess I'm not a "usual" Swedish worker, then, because I don't get any O/T. But I do get 30 days paid vacation instead of 25, which suits me fine.

True. My '95 Impala is a bastard, it's got the GM OBD-I connector, but it doesn't work with conventional OBD-I code readers. I own an OBD-I/II reader, but it doesn't work with that either. Unfortunately I'll have to find an old Tech1 if I want to read my car's computer codes, an those are very, very pricey.

And that's what went wrong with slavery in the United States. Too much whip, not enough bread. And then 70 years later with capitalism, too much whip, not enough bread.

Today we have too much bread and perhaps not enough whip, but what is there left to do?

Yep. I imagine the only sort of thing that would work would be an encrypted archiving format, but there will not be a seamless method to open the contents. One will probably have to manually decrypt all files in order to have access to them.

This is par for the course with cloud, aka, someone else's computer. If you want secure, you need to buy your own server, set it up with an encrypted file system, pay for colocation in a datacenter, and host everything yourself.

Have you actually studied the cost to grade-out a site, pour the necessary footings and build the shack, assemble the tower, cable the tower and the building, and supply electricity to it, compared to the cost to build a satellite and launch the satellite?

I bet that for a given number of rural subscribers over a the same area, the cell towers will always be cheaper, especially when long-term maintenance of the tower sites versus the continued construction and launch of not-physically-maintainable sateliites is factored in.

Consider another analogy... 802.11 wireless technology is constantly being revised. Wired technology is mature. One 48-port switch can cover an area of about 200,000 square feet, about 18,500 square meters, assuming that the area is cabled, and can give 1Gb connectivity to all devices, and if the devices follow the usual utilization patterns, a 10Gb trunk would be more than adequate. That switch with fiber transceiver probably costs $10,000, and if there's a high-end router needed, add another $10,000. Drops and infrastructure costs about $150 per drop assuming that one uses higher-cost plenum-rated cable and quality jacks and faceplates. Let's be pessimistic and add some supplies cost and we end up at $7500. So, a generously-high-end setup, probably far more than needed, is $27500 for equipment and installation, and it will run for more than a decade.

To do wireless in that same area you'll probably need more than twelve access points, and at two drops per AP to use 802.11ac you still need the 48-port switch. Now you need to buy APs. You might not need 24 (ie, use every copper port) but you'll spend $300 per AP to cable them, plus $250 per AP itself. You'll spend $2500 for the controller too. The router doesn't change. So, take the original $27,500 and add the $2500, then add the money for the APs.

Now scale-up to most size organizations, which have many more than 48 users in 200,000 square feet. Your switch needs probably will decrease on a wireless solution, but your AP and controller demands will go up if you want to keep the average user count per AP low enough to make the experience good, and as wireless technology keeps changing you're going to regularly re-buy those APs and somewhat regularly re-buy the controller(s).

Yep. And I could just see Franklin D, old Curmudgeon that he was, shouting to the Bonus Army "Get off my lawn!"