I think the sentence "Your brain surgeon does not suck that bad anymore." is not applicable in this instance. If your brain surgeon sucks, then your brain is is irretrievably damaged. If your Gnu/Linux distribution sucks, then your computer is not irretrievably damaged - you could back up your data, wipe your disk clean, and install another distribution (or wait until the original distribution no longer sucks).

A better sentence would be "Your hair stylist does not suck that bad anymore".

Sorry to hear about your brain surgeon, by the way.

You know, it occurs to me that if Mark Shuttleworth hadn't been "too ambitious and stubborn", he wouldn't have acquired his fortune in the first place - a fortune that he's subsequently used to bankroll Ubuntu and Canonical, and generally drive the Gnu/Linux ecosystem forwards.

Now he might fail (as you state, he is up against Apple, Microsoft and Google), but I think it is very good that someone is making the attempt - even if this does occasionally annoy his existing user base. For those there is always Xubuntu!

I'm currently with Linux Mint Debian Edition on my desktop (I migrated from Ubuntu as Unity and Gnome 3 were somewhat new at the time!). If only rolling upgrades were approximately every three months, I'd be happier. Unfortunately, they're not. (UP4 was on 2012.04.05, UP5 was on 2012.09.17, UP6 was on 2012.12.19, UP7 was on 2013.09.23, and UP8 was on 2014.02.04. Only one of these was a three-monther). When I installed LMDE it was a "rolling" release. Now it's described as "semi-rolling".

To be honest, I think the issue is lack of resources within Mint. When I installed LMDE, there was an XFCE edition (which I installed). This has been dropped. Fair enough, if the 'market wasn't there, no point in using resources unnecessarily.

Which leads us back to Ubuntu. This has been successful because Mark Shuttleworth has been using his personal fortune to keep things going. I sense a need for Canonical to get (at least) to a break-even point so it can continue even after Shuttleworth's fortune is no longer available (I doubt his pocket is bottomless!).

That either means relying on donations (like Mint) or getting some commercial success. Canonical have decided on the latter, and are have adopted their behaviour accordingly. I do not begrudge them this, and wish them well.

I will try the Unity (and Gnome) editions in VirtualBox (XFCE 12.04 LTE is on the laptop). I will then make an independent judgement as to what I think of them. For my next desktop build, I might revert to one of the Ubuntus (or if I'm feeling masochistic, I might even try Arch!)

And to compare - I recently bought a retail version of Windows 8.1 and installed it in VirtualBox. To be honest I don't think it's as bad an Operating System as has been made out - but the privacy issues are horrendous (I paraphrase, but one default install option seems to be to "send all browsing history to Microsoft to help Microsoft 'improve' the user experience etc."), and the default location for documents is Sky Drive. Microsoft also dream of "monetization and profits"! Now Ubuntu might be as bad (although I doubt it), but at least I don't have to pay to install it!

Canonical is an Organisation. It needs to keep going and thrive, and I (for one) hope they do. There is worse out there!

The Union of the Crowns happened in 1603, even before the Act of Union of 1707. Even if they gain independence, I believe the plan is for Scotland to keep the current monarchy.

Yes, I don't get a say (as in voting in the referendum) on this, and I accept that as right and proper. The decision whether to become independent or not is being rightly left to the voters of Scotland. I don't need to be referred to an article by Roger Scruton to "educate" myself on this! Actually, What I was trying to point out is that the voters of Scotland haven't as yet has a say on this themselves - they will do in September - so to indicate that they have already come to a decision (and that the decision was for 'moral' reasons) is incorrect.

Yes, I'm sure the rUK could vote in a Labour government on it's own. That was not the point I was trying to make. What I was pointing out was that the phrase "Successive Tory governments" seems to ignore the existence of the last Labour government (1997 to 2010), a government where much of the 'top brass' was Scottish.

(Talking of governments and parties, the McCrone report, although commissioned by a Conservative Government, was suppressed by the Labour Government under Harold Wilson!)

Finally, if Scotland does vote to become an independent country, then I shall wish it well, and hope for ongoing friendship between Scotland and the rUK. If Scotland votes to remain in the UK, then I hope we all continue to strive to make the UK work well for all its citizens.

http://www.scottish-hockey.org.uk/international-teams.aspx

Maybe, but it really pisses off the Scots!

Oh, has the referendum happened? I thought it was due in September.

Or are we talking only about those (in Scotland) who so far have expressed a preference for independence. Although substantial, I don't believe this is (yet) a majority of those eligible to vote. And we won't know for certain until September.

As to "Successive Tory governments", from 1997 to 2010 we (the UK - I'm rUK) had a Labour government, with two Scottish Chancellors (Brown and Darling), a Scottish Prime Minister (Brown) and a Prime Minister, who if not Scottish, was educated at one of Scotland's top Public Schools (Blair, went to Fettes, in Edinburgh).

Actually you fought to get away from Great Britain, not (just) England. The Union was in place when America declared it's independence (I assume you're US-American).

Other people aren't voting in the referendum, only Scots. So what other people think doesn't matter.

"England" (or more correctly the rest of the UK, or "rUK" as it's become known - there's Wales and Northern Ireland as well) don't have a say in the decision. The decision either to become an independent country (or not) will be made by the voters of Scotland, and the voters of Scotland alone.

As someone in the rUK all I can do is sit back and accept whatever they decide. That said, I cannot help feeling that if the decision for independence will somehow be influenced on how Scotland looks in the BBC weather map, somewhere the plot has been lost!

As to beer, try Theakston's Old Peculier. Ace!

Thanks. Yes, there is the possibility of bypassing the clipboard (assuming some integration). Where there isn't, KeePass (for instance) clears the clipboard after a specified period (default12 seconds).

Thanks. I don't think #a is particularly problematic these days - the modern versions of LibreOffice (and OpenOffice?) use AES-256. Good points with #b.

OK, why not?

(Truly curious as to why a password manager is considered better than an encrypted spreadsheet, using the same password or pass phrase).

I don't think this is unique to Java; the same thing has happened here with Ubuntu/Canonical. Love can easily turn to hate whereas indifference rarely does.

Concerning Java, I don't think it is Java per se that is the cause of the 'hatred', it is more (1) the insecurity of the browser plug-in, (2) the attempt to install the ask.com toolbar when installing the JRE and (3) a general distrust of Oracle.

I don't have a problem with any of these. For #1 this can be disabled, for #2 I just download the JDK .tar.gz for Linux and just unpack it to install, and for #3 there is always OpenJDK in the background to keep Oracle on the straight an narrow.

The only real alternative to Java is .NET, which for me (using Linux) would mean using Mono. Interestingly, open-source Mono seems to generate more hatred here on Slashdot than the closed-source and proprietary .NET does.