Slackware counts as a fringe distro, let's face it. They are more like BSD then Linux. Gentoo is a meta distro, so that hardly counts. And Debian...let's see...did Debian adopt Systemd? Network Manager? PulseAudio? Should I continue down the list of Red Hat projects that are mainstream? Oh, and the Linux Standard base calls RPM the standard package.

If you think Linux is a free market you are mistaken. Red Hat IS Linux. They set the standards that everyone else follows.

Ah yes, the developers of GNOME 3, that explicitly said "Having users is not our goal" and still Red Hat (Fedora) shoved it down the users throats? The people who criticize the situation are in this not because of doing nothing, because we were working on actual problems for others. We are here because someone who needed to justify their relevance to the world decided to attack 1 - a problem that wasn't being complained about and 2 - to write his own solution (a developer that does not have a good track record either) and thus reinvent the wheel when there are plenty of open source init alternatives out there (SMF, launchd, and upstart all come to mind).

Plenty of us are, actually. And are running SAP, or any number of other enterprise applications that require stable servers to run on.

It isn't that simple. Using old versions isn't a viable option once security updates stop, and Slackware is not a option for a lot of scenarios (say running Oracle DB in the enterprise). Linux is not the novelty it once was

Well, last time I checked SVGAlib was completely broken on modern Linux...

The big issues with systemd are as follows: A large hatred of the developer, and a large group of people who were perfectly happy with the old system and don't like things being shoved down there throats (which applies to me, and I complain equally as much about stupid UI changes in GNOME and Windows (F*ing metro interface...)

We might not be most users, but we are the ones that made Linux popular in the server and embedded world.

Other catches with the FX vs the Phenom II - floating point. Since the modules share FPU, the Phenom II x6 has more FPUs then the FX-8xxx does. And since most people are running Windows 7, not 8 or Linux, the processor scheduling never happens.

Other things I noticed - since most games rely on single threaded performance, the Phenom II has the edge there (and Intel a much larger edge). For heavy math, the AVX on the FX-81xx series performs poorly compared to Intel.

The funny part is the Phenom II is a much better CPU then the FX.

They aren't disappearing, which is why the sales numbers look the way they do. Most people are satisfied with their home computer and won't replace it if they don't have to.

I thought Microsoft removed desktop Windows from Dreamspark? It's not quite what MSDNAA used to be.

Except we know exactly to expect from Sun/Oracle, the OpenIndiana folks, the FreeBSD, and the OpenBSD folks. Linux devs randomly decide they're going to replace something and call everyone who might who questions them an idiot. And guess what? Red Hat, Debian, and Canonical only support what they ship with their OS as well. You know what we don't have in the other groups? Random splintering and decisions designed to fracture the community.

You mean like RH prior to RHEL 7? Or how about Slackware? Gentoo? Ubuntu LTS? Plenty of distros exist[ed] without systemd and didn't suck. What Red Hat and the systemd crowd doesn't want to here is that most users that care do not want systemd. Most users have no opinion one way or another. Most that do care were perfectly content with the old system and saw much bigger problems in the Linux world that fighting over replacing init takes time away from. If we really needed a new init system, then why not adopt launchd, SMF (which systemd wishes it was), or upstart, and focus on issues that actually matter? Instead, Linux is losing long time supporters and is fracturing itself.

But not anymore. Even Slackware has helpers, with Patrick getting the final say.