*15-20 years, actually. Didn't start messing with Linux until around 1998, and then it still took a back seat to BeOS...

Erm, no? When I was having wireless issues on a new (to me) Thinkpad, I couldn't even get online to search for the problem. Installing a completely different distro ended up fixing those wireless issues. The Windows installation Linux replaced had no such issues. In fact, I can't think of a time when I *had* wireless issues with Windows, but I can recount many, many issues with wireless under Linux, from having to compile the kernel with things like PCMCIA support to support my old Orinoco Gold PCMCIA cards, etc etc etc. You're probably right: Had I had these same issues under Windows or MacOS, I'd be equally as lost, if not moreso. However, in 15 years of computing, that particular issue has not come up under Windows (although there have been many, many others). Hell, on some of my hardware, I can't even get Linux to install anymore (something about APIC (not APCI), etc) whereas the Windows XP install it came with is perfectly fine. And so on.

I love Linux, use it all the time, but when it's fucked it's good and fucked and my solution these days is just to keep all my data on a different mount just in case I just have to reinstall vs actually troubleshoot an issue.

> Systemd is deployed in real systems and these aren't crashing or suffering chronic problems.

Some people seem to be reporting this very thing. The cult of mindless progress just seems intent on ignoring everyone that isn't drinking the Kool-Aid.

> However, do these programs follow the do-one-thing-and-do-it-well principle: web servers like Apache, database servers like PostgreSQL,

Yes they do actually.

One serves web pages and the other enforces the relational model on data. They aren't one huge behemoth that includes both of these as well as some other application level features.

Are you kidding. Linux doesn't even need to be installed. You can just run it straight from the install media.

This is handy when you have a Windows install that can't even run it's own wired network interface and it can't tell you what driver it needs because it's too dumb to do that.

Linux liveCD to the rescue!

Boot up.
Interrogate hardware.
Proceed with beating the bushes to find Windows drivers.

Linux works out of the box in the same way that MacOS or Windows does.

If your average Windows user had to install their own OS they would be even more lost than if they tried dealing with Linux.

That list glosses over a couple of major problems.

1) You avoid the current version because it's such a usability disaster that no one wants to touch it. It's so bad that people would rather run an ancient and completely unsupported version.

2) Your current hardware is suddenly obsolete because it's last years model and it's not supported anymore.

Modular design makes "rage-forks" a lot less of a problem than some people try to make them out to be.

Wages have been stagnant for awhile now. They might be an improvement on a Wal-Mart greeter but they seem to have not improved much in some places in the last 10 or so years.

Inflation is slowly eroding the apparent advantage.

Plus SFO and NYC are crazy expensive places to live. You just need more there.

Depends on where you live, maybe. I can see wage depression here in Los Angeles. I'm loathe to go to SFO simply because of the sheer amount of douchebaggery that's up there, but then again, we have Hollywood here. Might not be much different.

> The new iMac and the Macbook pro both ship with retina.

In other words: screw all of the legacy users where legacy means last years model.

This is the problem with Apple's idea of "forward thinking". They don't just offer a new new features, they prevent you from using the old ones.

If real life hasn't caught up to the future quite yet, that puts you in a bind.

Investing in the stock market, is generally betting in a situation where there is a net win. That is, most of the time, even bad investments don't lose money in the long run, they just don't win as much as you could have one, or they have greater fluctuations than a portfolio with an equivalent return.

Day trading is however very addictivive. even people who only trade weekly will still check their stocks many times a day. As the problem goes on, penny stocks become a big lure as they have higher fluctuations giving one chances to Win big (a great feeling compared to inexorable index funds slow creep).

So does one have to be a masochist to be addicted to gambling? apparently not.

Even index funds are somewhat crazy. Right now the SP 500 trades at high price to earnings multiples even in stocks are unlikely to achieve earnings that can match that price. It's a combination of the greater fool theory along with the unusual condition that there's few "safe" places to put money right now. There's too few shares of stock in health companies (due to the slow economic growth) being chased by too many dollars. As long as the chase continues then it's "safe". But long term enormous growth is required to match those P/E multiples. Google and Amazon have essentially no earnings.

I hear the 12" is code named Metrocity,

> I'm sure some elder statesman of the Unix world would ask "Why would you ever want a GUI on a UNIX system? "

This would be the "green screen" myth that certain trolls like to fixate on so much.

The truth is that GUIs were commonplace on Unix workstations long before they were widely adopted on DOS kludge clones. However, this fact does not mean that this feature has to be force fed to everyone all the time.

The key feature of a Unix GUI is that it is HIGHLY OPTIONAL. It also does not sabotage anything else. It doesn't require abandoning the Unix design philosophy. A GUI is not fundementally incompatible with the rest of Unix.

If you want an all-singing-all-dancing-crap-of-the-world style logfile, leave the originals alone and create a new set of tools that build on top of what's already there and leave what's there alone.

There's no need to sabotage other people's stuff.

I'm glad that there is a virtual lynch mob around willing to shout down bad ideas. Some things are just bad ideas. They are very well understood as to why they are bad ideas. Yet people proceed (and kid themselves) despite of a lot of sound reasoning and appeals to first principles.

Past a certain point you have to turn the volume up to 11 just to get dissent to register to some people.

Go fuck yourself.