I could afford to replace every computer I own with a brand new Apple product, but they don't appeal to me in the least.

I thought this was "carpet matches the drapes".

All those folks going on about their wife's curtains and drapes has me confused. And possibly disturbed.

In the 1980s, the boys that were into math and science and (especially) computers were also getting their asses kicked on a regular basis by the popular kids Perhaps the girls were smart enough to not want any part of that.

Or at least they'd rather follow other interests than be associated with something or a group of people who were at the bottom of the social scale.

I had wondered this too. I felt that the rapid adoption of systemd was very un-Debianlike. Not only because I would have never expected Debian to accept systemd based on technical merits, but also the incredible speed at which it happened. We all know how lonnnng it takes for Debian to even make decisions about changing things in the stable branch. Hell, there's a series of long-running jokes about it. But for the Debian team to just suddenly jump up and say "Yep, we're going with SystemD. End of discussion." seemed incredibly fishy to me.

Getting bullied by Canonical makes loads of sense, but I don't like it one bit.

I haven't included the "desktop system" or whatever dselect offers you in a Debian install since probably the turn of the century. I usually just install the minimum base system and apt-get the stuff I want, which resulted in wmaker up till about 2002, and XFCE since. I'm not saying this to sound l33t or anything, but I remember doing it this way all along to avoid installing Gnome.

What was Debian's default desktop before now?

When it comes to the Big Three (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD) the complete system is precisely what this Venezia guy is describing. It is a working system with everything you'd need to run a legitimate server. Things like X, dev tools (excluding C compilers) etc are considered "3rd party add-ons". IME BSD systems are logical, intuitive, robust, light and fast. The other nice benefit is that everything is developed by the same team, and the documentation is superb.

Don't get me wrong, I love linux too. But the BSDs are sorely under-appreciated for what they are and can do.

That said, the base install of most of the original Linux distributions (or the base install plus a handful of packages) is also what sysadmins have been using for decades as a "server-oriented linux system".

All the contenders that didn't 'make the cut*' for the likes of Debian and recent converts to SystemD, namely Upstart and OpenRC... Why reinvent the wheel when the work is already half done?

Either way, I wish the project well. Though the name "Use Less D" or "Useless D" could have been better.

*I still don't see how SystemD is more ready for primetime than anything else (or sheesh, even sysvinit) but we've discussed that here already.

It does. Lots.

Ye gods I'm so tired of this 'joke' cropping up every so often. It wasn't really that funny 12 years ago, either.

But one of the silliest things I've ever experienced when gaming online was a (probably teenaged) female telling me that she was sodomizing my mom with a strap-on. Over and over again. Or another telling me that if I was her kid she'd have aborted me with a crowbar.

The Internet brings out the best in everyone!

I love that. Thanks for sharing!

Seriously. Instead of dicking with marketing firms and network-based rebuttal, how about jacking the rent up another $30 for each resident? $30 * 35K is over $1M dollars of guaranteed, no-bullshit, no-middleman profit. EVERY MONTH.

Whoohoo!

I'd love to sit down and have a beer with my adopted dogs. I'd like to hear their story, where they came from, what they've done in their lives and what they are thinking about now.

Even if their speech was on the level of a toddler or smaller child, I'd still love to hear it.

Google Groups has all but destroyed Usenet unfortunately.

That said, I still tolerate it when reading a few groups.

As for the grandparent poster- A bunch of musician friends and I got fed up with Harmony Central and created our own private, invite-only forum where we discuss music and gear and perpetuate our own memes.