To be honest, I never got what all the rage is about. As with the foaming at the mouth because of Gnome 3.

I do 'get' init and runlevels and I like them. I can change them with a texteditor and they're all fairly neatly sorted in someplace below /etc or something (can't remember exactly, to lazy to check now). I haven't used runlevels in 9 years or so, I'm not an admin, but I know when they're useful and I probably could start editing and switching them within 5 minutes.

I don't know what all the systemd hate is about, but the shrill voices of nerds who don't have enough sex to remain cool irritate me. I can asure you that I'll chime in if I find out somewhere down the line, when I need runlevels or systemd's equivalent and there's no replacement to be found - some neat newfangled click-tool or equaly easy or better neat textfiles and directories to fiddle about with.

I know very well that systemd will die a very quick death if it turns out to be a shitty system in practice. It's FOSS folks - if it's shit and there's a better, working FOSS alternative people will move (back) to it faster than you can say "Mambo out, Joomla in". No reason to get all that worked up as if the world has ended.

AFAICT that won't happen. systemd is with all the new distros - apparently for the simple reasons that it boots faster. Well, it that appears to be a good enough reason for many people, so be it. New issues probably will be patched and the simple fact that systemd has most distros on its side probably is momentum enough to make init a thing of the past.

That aside, there are, IMHO, way more pressing issues plagueing Linux and it annoys me that no one seems to care about those.

Like for instance: Why is monodevelop the only dev-environment that does not crash on me after a regular installation?

Why do Anjuta, KDevelop, Codeblocks etc. crash on me on mint pure native Debian or Ubuntu linux installs when I attempt to compile something? Isn't the C family of languages our native turf?

Why do 49 out of 50 attempts to compile something downloaded in source from Github or SourceForge fail with obscure error messages? Does something like this still happen on software systems in 2015?? Color me suprised.

Why am I tempted to register with Apple, download XCode and be done with it? This doesn't feel right.

How about fixing or getting all worked up about that shit? It's a shame I can't compile native Linux software on Linux simply due to the fact that all the rest of the bunch aren't as disciplined as Linus Torwalds and get their fucking C/C++ pipeline in order.

The truth is, Linux will be going nowhere if we don't fix some basics, simple down a little and perhaps move towards open or at least fixed-standard hardware concepts. Wether some dude or distro thinks systemd is awesome or not shouldn't matter that much.

It's a bit long to follow.

Said it roughly 15 years ago already here on slashdot:
We're smack in the middle of a transition to a post-scarcity cyberpunk society. A throw-away end-user PC for 9$ is basically exactly that.
Computers aren't the deal anymore. Who can operate them, how do I connect x to y to z and how do I migrate data from a to b - that's what this is all about. I can hardly be bothered to replace my 4.5 year old HTC Desire HD Smartphone because it's already basically a supercomputer in my pocket. With a replacable battery - which most of todays smartphones don't have.

The fact that I would like a bigger screen and that the browser with Android 2.3 Gingerbread is starting to have problems with todays website might actually just get me to do it. I would love to have a convergence device though - one that can act as my desktop as soon as I plug it into its cradle. ... Maybe I should really wait for that new Ubuntu phone to come out ...

One should jump to conclusions too fast. NYC and other first world cities have such a bad eco-balance because all their consumerables and devices are built with a huge resource payoff and complex processes, not recycled, replaced often for no reason and so forth. All out unregulated meat 'production' (one of the largest single causes of modern first world eco-imbalance) and modern mono-agriculture also is a big problem. In that regard the 2nd worlds garbage dumps in the slums in far-east asia or south-america are just about as eco-efficient as a society can get. After all, they're living of our garbage(!!).

If we would tax consumption accordingling, people would be way more cautious about getting that new car or repairing the washing machine by simply tossing it out and getting a new one. Direct recycling would be more of a thing (don't get the impression those bags and pouches are cheap) and we'd shake our heads at the insanity of todays throw-away culture. Our consumption society is the problem. It's only that no one in china or india - or most of any other places for that matter - gives a shit about the environment that we can throw away a t-shirt after one season or get a brand-new smartphone every odd year.

Fix that and the entire planet can live in an utopia and we can add another 10 - 20 billion people without even breaking a sweat or nature noticing.

It's like Gandi said: The world easyly has enough for everyones needs - it does not have enough for everyones greed.

Seriously, I wouldn't bother. It makes no sense.

The Chromebooks available are dirt cheap, good-looking, light-weight, run for 8 hours and longer and have their OS tailored to light-weight power-saving CPUs and built around the computers it runs on - sorta like Apple. Chromebooks basically are the poor mans mac-book air. And if ChromeOS fits your bill and you have no problem with your OS basically being a remote extension of the todays online service known as Google you should go right ahead and one of those available. That current one from HP looks pretty neat, for instance.

As for the dabbling, I'd go exactly the other way around: Get a ready-made buy-unpack-works Chromebook and install Crouton on it for Linux freedom pleasure. Don't be silly and try to build your own. It will be shitty, lots of work, short on battery life, weigh a ton, look like crap and be expensive in comparsion.

Mind you, I did just get two refurbished ThinkPads for Linux progging and fiddling, but those are definitely not meant for lugging around. They each weigh well over 2kg and run 4 hours on a full-charge at most and are power-hogs in compasion. Good for proggin C/C++, running LAMP at full throttle (ones got 18GB, a Quad-Core Intel iSomething in it with a 256GB SSD) or playing Fallout 3 on Wine with the GFX all maxed out.
I do *not* use them for everyday utility computing though. One actually serves as ... a server (duh) at work.

My everyday computing, mail and leisure surfing I do on a 10" Yoga 2 Android tablet. Even lighter than a Chromebook and runs 18 hours under full load. ... Have you thought about something like that? That might actually be an alternative. Although ChromeOS does seem to be a better fit for your useage.

I call BS. I can't even get a device - of any power - to recognise my voice beyond the very slow, pronounced basics and I have to train myself to it (not the other way around).

Sorry to break it to you, but you're wrong.

For one, want you can't do, and what today computers and networks certainly can - after being configured and programmed accordingly - is sample bazillions of phonecalls from millions and millions of people at insane speeds and aggregate speech patterns and their written equivalent by searching for the fitting existing transscripts and do a weighted correlation of those. All with the support of speech and language optimized signal processing, sampling of regional habits and the target groups favorite set of vocabulary.

Guess why Apples Siri and Google Now / Voice Search need an uplink to work ... exactly, that's why. ... And those devices pre-process the signals on a freaking cheapo smartphone before sending them in for analytics to get the results back.

Turning speech into easyly searchable transscripts probably is a piece of cake by now for those who have the storage, processing power, access to unlimited phone-taps and north of 20 000 Mathematicians to programm it all.

Like a certain U.S. three letter agency that has been getting so much unwanted attention lately.

I know a better headline I'd like to see: "New fair taxes enable feasible education budget. Donations not neccesary anymore." How about that, hu? ... Just saying sometimes I'm glad I live in Germany (allthough taxation could use a redo here aswell).

To me there's no question of why smart people like LOTR: It's mythology completely void of superstition and inflated superimposed real-world meaning. Which makes it every more and a million times more beautyful than anything abrahamic or other book-religions have to offer.

You can read LOTR, dive into the very first, very detailed completely fantasy world, with own languages and glyphs, poetry a huge history and lot's more with out it being degraded and shoehorned into real-world implications. Everyone know's it's made up - you don't have to debate knuckleheads who insist the fiery caverns of Mordor are below our feet and we have to pray to the allmighty Elrond so he and his army of Elves protect us when the end is nigh or any other sort of bullshit. ... At least not today. Who knows what's waiting 2000 years down the line. Imagine civilisation degenerating and only LOTR surviving. Some clergy smart-ass would hijack that two or three centuries down the line - "do as I tell and pay your taxes our you won't get into Minas-Tirit when you die" ... any power-monger would be stupid not to. ... Gives me the creeps just thinking about it.

My Grandpa would count. He's been dead since 2002 and he was in his 90ies. Given, he worked with Grumman Aircraft on the Lunar Lander back in the 60ies as an electronics engineer (hearing the proud grandson? ;-) ). Basically high-end avantgrade technology back then, but he was a digital native none-the-less.

So is just about any computer kid of the eighties approaching 50 years of age today. We grew along in lock-step with the hardware, its capabilites and our capabilites to understand it. I'd argue that nobody will be more digitally native than our generation of nerds.

I'd also argue that I am way more a digital native than my daughter, since I not only can operate a computer or smartphone, but actually know how it works.

In short, I can't see how this is supposed to be an age-filter. Perhaps a fiter for non-tech-savy, ok. The age-filters I've come across are more like "willing to travel" (go forth and act as a fall-guy for that remote project heading towards a solid brick wall), "resilient" (german: "belastbar") ... meaning "young and stupid enough to work extra hours under shitty gouvernance for no extra pay and a fake career outlook" ... and similar telling lines in the confidentials.

On top of that, how hilarious is an HR person asking for "digital natives"? We all know the bizar truth behind this.
Most of those people couldn't distinguish Google from the Web in general if their life depended on it. It's idiots like these who know less than nothing and actually think they can judge tech and its requirements. Admitted, quite a few if not most of those actually *are* above 40, but they shouldn't get to call out for digital natives. They'd mistake a resus monkey for one.

AFAICT it was illegal.

Berlin is in the eastern hemisphere.

USA geography at work? ... If Berlin is the eastern hemisphere, then Japan is the far west. ... But I guess it does depend on perspective.

Personally, I'd bet on Detroit for future economic ascendance- at least for the U.S. Rent ist dirt cheap and there's a distinct artsy/berlinish vibe to the people rebuilding Detroit right now - lot's of creativity and pragmatism ... For the western hemisphere in total Berlin is a good bet. Abundance of talent and creativity and a digital culture that is one abstraction level away from hardware (which will be built entirely by robots in just a few years from now anyway) plus a culture that emphasises a post-scarcity economy.

On a global perspective we westerners shouldn't delude ourselves. Far-east asia and india and perhaps the arab nations (after the terror has calmed down and the people are clamoring for an age of reason again) is probably where the parties at in 2-3 decades from now. India is the youngest country in the world. We'll all be pensioners when they'll just be warming up. 1.3 billion fairly well educated people in their best years ought to pack some economic and innovation punch.

I expect the valley and bay area to turn into something of a modern day Paris meets Amsterdam - which it basically is already. A tourist attraction and real-estate investment haven for the super-rich.

My 2 cents.

With all this hassle for updating the web recently, including the permanent surveilance by Facebook/WhatCrap/Whatever, the Snowden leaks and the NSA/BND disasters and the broaded discussion about encrypting services it's becoming more and more evident that we need a complete bottom-up redo of all popular services on the internet.

The most pressing and obvious is E-Mail, which, by any standard imanginable is about the worst protocol and service still in widespread use. But before that can happen properly, there's another thing that should be redone befor everything else: DNS.
DNS needs to be abstracted away from the carriers and core services into something based on cryptographic signature. It should be possible for me to buy a domain for life simply by purchasing a slip or paper or a piece of code containing a register key to which I can tie a domain that is still free for choosing. Moving to a different provider with my domain or hosting it on my own small VM should be a matter of minutes.

Next up would be E-Mail. Zero-fuss end-to-end encryption and cpu-expensive hashing to make mass-mail expensive and spamming virtually impossible. Setting up a mailserver should be as easy as setting up a mail client today. In fact, it should be much of a difference wetther I'm setting up a client or a server - one of the big problems with E-Mail today.

Next up would be the Web. Let's face the facts: The Web today is a pile of junk. It's only thanks to Netscape freeing its browser (Mozilla) and Goolgle buying V8 and fighting for a free (beer) web that benefits their business that we have a half-way feasible free web. Flash - and I'm sorry to break this to the /. crowd - was lightyears ahead of everything else on the client-based web. CSS3 / HTML5 and JS are a joke in comparsion. Clients are strange hacks with arcane technologies strapped together with glue and duct-tape, doing insane stunts and feats to build rich clients. The entire service could use a complete redo for design/UX, documents and programming. Javascript is neat and fun, but I can think of a few PLs that would do a better job, be easyer to use and perhaps even easyer to compile into binary.

Moving the Web into https is all fine and dandy - it's using FOSS technology and open standards - which is always the main big plus - but yet again it's only a dirty hack compared to what would be possible if we would base a rebuilt web-like service on what is technologically possible today.

My 2 cents.

There are too many imature idiots and spoiled brats in college. That's a plain and simple fact.
So many times I've wished to be rich enough to start my own ivory-leage style university for that exact reason.

Best teachers in the world. Best equipment in the world. Best building in the world. Best campus in the world.

But:
Babble in class: You're out.
Babble repeatedly: Get a warning.
Cheat: Fail and you get a warning.

Drink and misbehave: You're out.
Drink and misbehave repeatedly: Get a warning.

Dress and/or behave like a bum: Get a notice, then a warning.

Three warnings and you get booted from campus for all eternity, you're last semester tuition forfeight. End of story.

I am effing sick and tired of these countless spoiled f*ckwits clogging up the first two or three semesters until they're weeded out by the math curiculum in CS.

I further propose that every student should do 15 months of German-style civil service (Zivildienst) taking care of elderly or handycapped or do some other solid useful work like fixing damns or cleaning out environmental disasters before he/she is allowed to enter any higher education of any kind whatsoever. Grow the f*ck up before you waste my, the teacher/professors and everybody elses time!

If you want to drink yourself into a coma or slack off for a year or two: By all means, go ahead. Every yound person should take a year or two to travel the world, slack off and surf in indonesia or hawaii. But they should also be sternly corrected if they can't act like grown-ups when they finally come to college.

It's also for this very reason that I'm probalby going to roll in a remote tutoring college. (I'm planing on heading a CS degree or someting real soon now in part-time)