+1

I have been working full time with linux desktops for the past 6-7 years. Everything just works, and upgrades too. Installs are a breeze, and *much* faster than w/ windows.

It is very easy to try also : just burn a Knoppix CD and boot a machine with it : very likely you'll have a complete desktop, office suite included, and a working internet connection if your LAN allows it, all in a matter of minutes.

I sometimes have to do work on customers' machines, I can't believe how everything seems so cumbersome now in the Windows world.

>Been around since ~1997 too. Perhaps technical discussions went on here some time before that?

I have read comments to the same effect in other discussions (can't find one at the moment).

I'll admit I noticed a sort of dilution of the technical level of late, but it may be the price to pay for popularity. I followed some very interesting discussions here, and recently.

Besides, who could follow high level technical discussions about so many subjects? For instance, the posts below yours, that quickly explain why GPUs are good at password cracking, are _good_ information for me.

Hi,

You write :

>I am surprised at the cynicism about Bitcoins

and then

>Well and no central company making a fortune with the digital currency

Well, I'd say you answered yourself : the few people currently making a fortune are hellbent on keeping it that way. They don't want things to be shaken up at all.

Hu? I have examples to the contrary.

I have been installing an Access application on clients' desktops for the past ten years; an option to switch between single/multiple instances in the taskbar as you open forms was added in the 2000 and 2003 versions, and -thankfully- dropped thereafter, still causing me grief both ways (because of the changes in user's interaction with the software).

All that time, I've been working happily all day long on a linux only system, and sending compatible LibreOffice(*) documents to clients that have all possible versions of windows.

And I am absolutely miserable whenever I have to work on that dreadful windows 7.

(* : Since the fork from OpenOffice, obviously)

Seconded. I heard as much from real life hippies: those near industrial hemp fields(*) pull their hair out.

As far as the Dupont story goes, I read they got hemp banned so it would not be able to compete with coton. The latter needs a lot of various chemicals to grow, whereas hemp is naturally robust.

(* : writing from France)

Seconded.

LibreOffice instead makes me think of the French revolution, which was a grand idea in very obscure times, just as open source software is.

I have no problem doing it, even on a linux machine with files generated on windows.

>> You have no reason to plead fealty to power, but you choose to do it out of sheer cowardice and apathy. Apparently your civil liberties will have to be entirely destroyed before you value them again.

>Today, I feel that you're exactly correct. The biggest problem we have here in the US is that the majority of people don't give a damn about >anything, so long as they get a pay check, can put food on the table, and can drive to work in the morning

Well, it is a major concern when you have a family. But I would add another reason for this apathy : it's the staggering amount of propaganda by all possible means, in favour of the so-called superiority of liberalism.

See for instance the financial sector, that pushed so hard for deregulation for decades, then arranged the 2008 bailout. That took a lot of favourable opinions dispersed in every possible way to influence the legislative process; for relatively little money I might add, considering what they took home.

In computing, I witnessed as a developer the accomplishments of free software, which are absolutely astounding, with *no* management. Over the past few years, I have noticed a marked increase in what is commonly referred to as 'FUD' (for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt), messages posted in forums that are meant to present free software in a negative light. I thought until recently that these attempts were futile, and would be easily dismissed; now I am not so sure, because it seems these efforts have been stepped up. I guess it's easier to pay a for a few writers of FUD than to actually do good products.

So, I would say skull gouging, as we call it were I write from, is a major factor. No wonder the reaction is so violent whenever someone speaks the unedulcorated truth.

>Direct action movements have been building on and fine-tuning these ideas since the '70s...

Indeed. As a software developer, I can vouch for the incredible success that is open source software, where performance meets pleasure of use, all for free.

When you see those results, you really start wondering just what is the need for all those corporate hierarchical layers that exist in the proprietary world.

It doesn't take that many dollars to use some kind of virtualization tool, and run your windows application inside a virtual machine.

I work daily with PostgreSQL with great pleasure.

I would add to your list the excellent SQLite : serverless, zero configuration. It's used as storage engine by Thunderbird, among others.

http://www.sqlite.org/index.html

Strangely, Oracle is one of the consortium members.

Is that so? I never heard of it before, even though I have been doing my daily work with various linux systems (including Ubuntu) since 2005. And I'm a software developper, so I pay attention to these things.

That's not proof of anything, but I'm not sure *why* you are so adamant about raising this issue... I call FUD.

>A quarter of a million hits to Ubutntu blank screen

I'm curious to know where that figure comes from?

Anyhow, according to google's group search (which still sports the page count), it seems that the windows blank screen is a much more common occurrence :

http://groups.google.fr/groups/search?hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=windows+blank+screen&sitesearch=&scoring=d

>Considering that the latest workstation distributions are still plagued by basic install issues

Hu? I have done half a dozen installations of Debian this year alone on different kind of hardware (standard desktop box, dedibox, eeepc, fit-pc2, you name it), and *all* of them where quicker than any install of windows I've ever done.

In fact, it's amazingly easy and fast to have a completely operational Desktop with Linux, Office suite included. Sure you have to know a few things, but you also do for Windows, and the only reason it's considered easy is because it comes pre-installed.

> It is going on other things.

A rapidly growing portion is used to pay the interest on existing debt. And these interests accumulate in accounts that are very well shielded from taxes, which of course will in turn increase the deficits.