Linux Desktop Ready, Says Mainstream Media 387
DeathElk writes, "The Sydney Morning Herald recently featured an article espousing the virtues of desktop Linux. From the article: 'Linux is shedding its hard-core techie image in a bid to woo ordinary human beings seeking an easy-to-use operating system that can be downloaded for free.' Is this a step forward for widespread GNU/Linux desktop adoption? Too bad the article doesn't mention the large range of live CD/DVD distributions available for try-before-you-fly, or the range of Windows applications tested and working under Wine." Also, the article is slightly unclear on the concept of open source, defining it as an arrangement "where the source code can be modified upon the request of users or other developers."
Clarity/Concision = null pointer (Score:5, Funny)
The mainstream media is never confused with the meaning of open source.
Lies.
Then what for...? (Score:5, Funny)
-uso.
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The bit the FA doesn't quite get right is that even if Ubuntu is fantastic and easy and all those other good things for 'ole Joe Sixpack, the typical non-geek computer user is *never* going to independently install Linux him/herself. I'm a freelancer, and I've got clients who work in corporate environments who call me in a panic if they accidentally open a cmd.exe on Windows. That is, they interpret the mere presence of a command prompt, in a window, as a critical failure of their computer.
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Maybe, but if Dell or HP or Best Buy offer a PC system that will browse the intarweb and do email and IM and print school reports, for a *real* discount ($200+ less than a Windows system?),
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Of Course! (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, the Mainstream Media is well known for its expertise in IT and its reliability as a source of proven facts and sober analysis!
Hrm.
Actually, now that I think about it, I do believe this is proof positive that Linux is absolutely not desktop ready.
Re:Of Course! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Of Course! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Of Course! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Of Course! (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought it might be, but it really isn't. I recently installed ubuntu and kubuntu, and although they are leaps and bounds better than anything else I've used and it's getting really close to being ready, it really isn't.
some problems I encountered (which should be relatively easy to fix) are:
I'm a huge proponent of linux, but it's really a lot more painful to use on the desktop than windows or osx. although it's got some nice features, it's playing follow-the-leader to the big 2, for the most part, and hasn't fully implemented features that users expect. it'll be nice when they finally get that far.
don't get me wrong, linux is fine for the desktop for the techy crowd. but not for the mainstream. Gramma could use it if all she's gonna do is type letters, surf the web, shop on amazon, and send/receive email. but when 13 year old jessica wants to play her music and do crap with myspace, she's SOL.
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Insert a device: Haven't tried an iPod, but the USB storage devices I've plugged in have shown up on my desktop. :)
mp3: this is a real problem. I used one of those neat programs that automatically stuffs ubuntu with the stuff you want, but nothing like that comes with ubuntu, so you have a good point.
sluggish filesystem browsing? I used ubuntu, not kubuntu, but on ubuntu nautilus comes up plenty rapidly. Maybe you should call that ksluggish kfilesystem kbrowsing?
doesn't remember system volume, what are
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as for our differences...
sluggish filesystem browsing? I used ubuntu, not kubuntu.....
what kind of machine are you running? now, I can't vouch for gnome's nautilus, but konqueror is slow on up to 1ghz machines. I'll play with gnome again this week and maybe I'll change my mind.
although that does bring up another potential thing to trip u
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Thinkpad A21p, Mobile P3-850MHz, 384MB RAM. I also run ubuntu in a virtual machine on my dramatically faster Compaq nw9440 (Core Duo T2600, 2GB RAM) but I'm talking about the thinkpad here.
That's a KDE thing. The settings
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Look, it's simple to get an ipod to mount automatically, it was VERY CLEARLY EXPLAINED in this post [theaimsgroup.com] to the kernel mailing list last may. you just have to apply the patch like this and recompile:
note that the procedure is different if you are running Ubuntu "Dumpy Doper" releas on an Apple PPC with an nVidia card, as CLEARLY EXPLAIN
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Just pointing out the mindset that will guarantee that Linux will never be better than Windows. It doesn't matter that Windows programs have the same problem if it is a valid problem.
You don't see Mac users constantly comparing their software to Windows... that's because Mac users have a sense of identity more complex than "we're not Windows." Linux needs to develop this, or it will never be better than Windows. (Because, whenever somebody sugges
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MP3 is a licensing issue (Score:4, Informative)
Also, a nitpick - GNU/Linux isn't ready for the naive user, but X/Mozilla/OpenOffice/Linux might be. Compilers and command-line tools with extra-long option names and EMACS are all fine things, but they're for somebody who's willing to RTFM, not for the couch-potato consumer.
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I dunno about X... it still feels like it's designed for uber-advanced users. programmers, even.
Misleading Title (Score:3, Funny)
"World is Ending! says People in General." A lone man on a streetcorner was quoted....
I wish I could agree with this (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm more tech savvy than most and I still find Linux to be a pain in the ass when installing applications and setting up stuff. The problem is while most distros share a general code base, a lot is slightly different enough to make compiling/installing apps a royalpain, and the documentation is often less than stellar.
Having recently put a lot of effort in getting Gentoo, Ubuntu, KUbuntu, and before that spending several years with Red Had machines, I cannot see giving normal users Linux machines.
In the business world it's been ready for years (Score:2)
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only problem..... it will not play mp3's, video, flash, most java sites, etc...
so it takes 3-5 hours of a seasoned pro to fix all that crap that should be in there already but the asshats in the US government are more intersted in making "illegal" in some stupid way.
if someone would make a ubuntu package and drop it in the repository that is called "fix ubuntu multimedia" that had everything in it and all the tweaks it would absol
Re:I wish I could agree with this (Score:4, Informative)
Google Easyubuntu
Given it and forgoten it. (Score:3, Informative)
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You seem to have forgotten the rest of my sentance - "My town of 6K people supports 2 computer repair shops that are busy and looking for help" - It's not a generalization based on 6 computers, it's based on the fact that 6000 people can support 12+ people with their PC related problems - not including all the people st
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Would you rather give the average every day user the responsibility of keeping various programs patched using their respective update mechanisms, keeping virus and spyware definitions up to date, and running regular checks? That's what it's like on Windows these days: you need to put in a lot of time and be reasonably tech-savvy.
``I'm more tech savvy than most and I still find Linux to be a pain in the ass when install
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Apt-get is a great idea with an overly conservative back end. 4 out of 5 times you go to install something (TWiki, for example) you find that its dependencies are a full year or more ahead of what apt-get considers "up to date". Subsequently, you end up having to troll the web for the latest tar.gz and manually install it. It's a shame apt-get doesn't have something like a switch to select between "guaranteed stable", "probably stable", and "bleeding edge".
Re:I wish I could agree with this (Score:4, Informative)
You can do that, but it takes a more sophisticated user and some reading to figure out. (Something I've been too lazy to do.) apt-get has a -t flag that lets you choose which distribution to grab from (e.g. apt-get -t unstable install package). There's also something called pinning, where you edit your sources.list and assign different values to different distributions. I know Knoppix makes use of this to do a mix of stable, testing, and unstable packages. There's a bit of an explanation of it here [debian.org]. If you have multiple distributions in your sources.list, synaptic lets you choose which available version of a package you want as well.
That being said, I've never tried these things myself, so I don't know if mixing distributions leads to dependency hell or what. Maybe it's great, maybe a huge pain.
I think your case is special. (Score:2)
It sucks, because in fact I've been there too. I've done the epic 6-hour ndiswrapper install, and numerous other problematic things, and remember them vividly
Too vividly. In the heat of battle I forget that I've probably installed and least 50 pieces of software on each of the 10 or so flavors of Linux I've tried. Making about 500 packages, of which maybe 20 (4%) have required more than the 1 minute to run the system package manager's install command, or the configure/make/make install from source.
I just
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One of the reasons I switched to Ubuntu over Windows is because installing pr
Mainstream? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mainstream? (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot has spoken.
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Because the newspaper office lies on the banks of the main stream flowing through town.
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Depending on how you measure, the Sydney Morning Herald is actually more widely circulated than USA Today.
How?
Well, if we consider that USA Today is a USA newspaper and SMH is an Australian newspaper, then we can say that the wideness of the circulation can determined as a ratio to the population of its respective markets. USA has a population of 299,360,879 (2006 est.) according to Wikipedia, a
Re:Mainstream? (Score:4, Insightful)
ofcourse (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
A few weeks ago, I started playing with Ubuntu, and I gotta say, there is no reason why it can't replace windows on the desktop. If Dell will start installing it on systems (thus knocking $100 buck off the price of a machine), then it can make some serious in-roads, and knock Windows back.
I don't know if it's ready for a corporate enviroment, though. Although I don't like MS, their combo of Exchange, AD, and DC is pretty powerful.
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Dell (or any other PC vendor) has no interest in "knocking Windows back" and they probably only pay in the $20-$30 range for Windows with their volumes.
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All your complaints hold true to Windows. I'd argue that Windows isn't ready for the desktop...
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But your right about issues like DVD playback. Also, you don't have xvid or mkv playback. So the average Joe still needs a savvy user to explain this codec stuff, or point him to videolan.
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If it came to it, Microsoft would give them Windows for free rather than have Linux being offered as the default OS by the world's biggest computer manufacturer.
(When I say default, I mean that when you spec up your PC, Windows would be an extra-cost option, and Linux would be free)
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Remember Walmart's big push to mainstream OEM Linux?
The revolving-door of Linux systems and distros that passed through walmart.com?
Dead and buried.
There are enormous economies of scale when you build for the Windows market. Dell's Back-To-School special was a $279 Celeron system. 17" CRT. Word Perfect. One-Year Warranty. Home Delivery.
Linux do
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If Dell will start installing it on systems (thus knocking $100 buck off the price of a machine), then it can make some serious in-roads, and knock Windows back.
First, Dell probably pays in the range of $70 for each copy of Windows pre-installed. They make a significant portion of that back by being paid to include random software that is arguably spyware or adware, or is a limited version of some software. Most of that software runs only on Windows, so they'd take a hit unless they could get those softw
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Now, how long before AOL, Real, Earthlink et al start making Linux versions of their stuff? (ok, it will be awhile, but I think it will happen.)
I think Vista might be a factor in this. If it stinks, and continues to stick for awhile, people (I hope) will start looking for an alturnative.
It is Desktop ready... (Score:2, Informative)
The lengths I had to go to get my laptop working with Ubuntu were staggering.
Personally I don't think it's ready for mainstream as there are still loads of things that should be automatically installed by default (OpenOffice, FireFox, Email client).
Oh, I might as well plug my FAQ for installing Ubuntu on a Toshiba M70 [ubuntuforums.org]. It might work elsewhere too...
Re:It is Desktop ready... (Score:4, Informative)
But didn't you just say you used Ubuntu? Last I checked OpenOffice, FireFox and Evolution were installed by default....
Re:It is Desktop ready... (Score:5, Funny)
Fake mustache falls off...
Oh my God, it's Ballmer! Get him!!!!
Toy-ready (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the annoying little things, like the built-in cardreaders (the usb ones for desktops work fine, but I've rarely seen a laptop one work), some wireless chipsets (getting better... but despite having supposed kernel support I still haven't gotten my broadcomm chipset to work without ndiswrapper), hotkeys, and various other little things that don't quite work in linux.
On the other hand, there are lot
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IT's the fact that laptops are perfect examples of "cobbled together crap" there is on the planet. at least on a desktop PC you have decent chipsets and choices for video and sound. on a laptop you get the absolutely lowest quality crap the manufacturer specified. I have fought with laptop sound trying to find the right XP drivers many times and dont get me started on the other prephrials that ar
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Consider: Linux has been regarded as technically superior to Windows for ages, it's being used and pushed by many of the largest corporations in the world, and it's surpassed the competition in usability (really, it has). It's being used extensively on servers, and it's share of the desktop and laptop market is growing. It's getting attention not only in the technical world, but also in the (non-technical) press. Most people who know anything ab
species classifcation change (Score:2, Funny)
I feel like pluto, according to Ubuntu, I'm no longer human...
My Take- (Score:3, Insightful)
I've tried virtually every distro out there (and some that don't exist any more) and what I've found is the only one that matches the ease of use of Windows and BeOS is.....
Linspire (also working as freespire)
Funny, from the man everyone loves to hate (and I admit, his bragging has been pretty outlandish) comes the only linux distro to get it right.
I used BeOS as my prime OS for several years, so I'm no stranger to command lines, bash shells and working with obscure items, but Linux, as a concept, has a long way to go.
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su -
yum update
y
They look at you like your no better than Howard Scott Warshaw. tut.
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I have a slackware CD I bought in 1995 with a book (Linux Configuration and Installation by Patrick Volkerding, Kevin Reichard, and Eric F. Johnson. ISBN 1-55828-426-5) that has Slackware 2.3.0. The book is the first edition, so it may very well be the first one on CD, but there may have even been earlier CDs.
what changed? (Score:4, Interesting)
when exactly was this quote taken? what is he talking about, am i missing something?
granted, i havent used Ubutuntu, but i used Red Hat, SuSE, and Fedora as a desktop for a few years, and all were very easy to install and use.
IMHO, linux has been ready for the desktop for years, but the world just isnt ready for linux.
Good enough. (Score:2)
Oh, and I do believe that the story is a dupe. I'm quite sure I
My Moms on Ubuntu (Score:3)
Honestly, for everyone but gamers, Linux meets their needs. For graphics developers, Macs meet their needs
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There is also a new wireless tool for Ubuntu just released. And tweaking for the printer can be a challenege but Ubuntu is perhaps the easiest printer management system I have seen. In my office here at work
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Too Bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
I would say, TOO GOOD that they didn't do it. I am sure that any user having the slightest curiosity of ditching windows will be overwhelmed after looking at more than 500 (or lets say 40 "main") linux distributions.
Or sure tell them how "tested and working" are those Windows applications under "Wine", so that when after they install their preffered linux distro and say, "okay now how do I install my 'tested and working' Winamp on Linux" their head will explode searching at zillions of forums/faqs/howtos/irc/etc.
The *only * way a WinApp-in-Wine would work is as google did it with picasa (i.e. the company will have to make something) or that a Linux company like Linsipre added such applications to their Click'n'Run service (of course they would have to buy licenses to each of the software they will sell). I like this idea a lot.
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My wife installs windows apps all the time on her ubuntu box. Braindead easy and also give her more options. well behaved Windows apps work fine under crossover.
Yeah - I'll add it to the list. (Score:5, Funny)
2. I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you.
3. I won't cum in your mouth.
4. Linux is ready for the desktop.
An understandable mixup... (Score:3, Funny)
what's a good LIVE cd for old laptops? (Score:2)
ooh (Score:2)
The GIMP is a default (Score:2)
Last time I checked (which was Edgy Knot 2), The GIMP was still installed by default in Ubuntu.
Shame the artcle doesn't mention... (Score:3, Insightful)
No DRM
No Viruses
No Spyware
No Malware
It's cheaper
It's Free
I've been using Linux now for over 5 years and I honestly don't think I could go back to using Windows at home. The need for virus checkers, etc. just leaves me feeling paranoid. So what that I can't play many games on it, I have a PS2 for that...
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Skeptical (Score:2)
I no longer care if Linux is "ready" (Score:5, Insightful)
On the first set of articles: Linux is already "ready" for the desktop. I use it on my desktop already, and it does everything I need it to do. It is for me a superior choice.
On the second set of articles, what they usually mean is that upon some event, there will be massive adoption of Linux on the desktop in rich, developed countries. "some event" varies and is typically purported to be 1) the coming of a new Windows version, such as Vista, which will be expensive and have high hardware requirements; 2) some big vendor preinstalling Linux, or 3) some big Windows security flaw, or 4) some other pain in the ass thing that MS is newly implementing, such as more DRM or copy restriction.
Well I've got news: it's highly unlikely we will ever see "widespread adoption" of Linux on desktops in rich developed countries. People in these countries can afford Windows, and switching is a big pain. Windows is crappy, but not crappy enough to switch away. It would be amazing if we even saw adoption rates that paralleled the adoption rates of Firefox in parts of Europe, but I think even that is unlikely. Note that I'm not saying anything about developing countries, where the dynamics--economic and political--may be quite different.
I'm tired of these articles because I don't understand why they're relevant. It's much more likely that we would see massive adoption of the Mac than of Linux. But we don't see articles crowing about that. Macheads are secure in their superiority complex; they don't see a need to sit around and predict when Mac world domination will happen. They don't worry that the Mac is irrelevant, no matter how small its market share is. Macheads are happy because their machines do what they want them to do. As a Linux user, I feel the same way. My machine does what I want it to do. My platform is not irrelevant--huge companies like Adobe, IBM, and Intel realize its importance even on the desktop. I do not care that roughly ninety percent of people use Windows, and I do not care about world domination.
Unfortunately it's often pro-Linux people (rather than just random press idiots) who promote this world domination crap. We need to realize that we've got a great platform, it works for us, and it's continuing to improve and work for even more people. The world domination and "ready for desktop" talk is tiresome and it just makes us look stupid.
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That they aren't writing that anymore signifys a shift in the mainstream medias perception of Linux. Their understanding is still poor but that will come.
Think of this as free advertising for Linux to a market who it is interested in
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Unfortunately, that's where you run into the great schism in Linux - those who use and promote it as a political agenda (GNU), and those who use it as good technol
I'm Glad.. (Score:4, Funny)
Oh... again? (Score:2)
Each year, I will admit, it gets closer and closer due to the hard work and efforts of the Gnome and KDE teams, but it still has a way to go.
Actually, no OS is "ready for the desktop" ... (Score:3, Informative)
It's just that some OSes have landed there anyhow, because the telepathic, user-conforming, natural-language, all-seeing, all-knowing, vibrating-massage OS is not here yet.
OSes churn, because conventional wisdom shifts re: the "best" way to do certain tasks, because meme spreading makes some approaches to controlling bits on a screen seem more intuitive than others (people who first saw the GUI-based Apples in the early 80s can relate), because the advance of hardware makes it imperative to accomodate new devices or relative strengths of the various pieces that make up a personal computer, etc. OSes would probably look different if RAM cost one tenth (or ten times!) what it does now, or if optical drives were 10 times faster. A Live CD (or booting from flash) could be the "normal" / "obvious" way for computers to hold their OS.
There are flaws in Windows (crashes, user-interface failures and inconsistencies), and I don't much like the aesthetics of most Windows systems I've seen. I'm not expert enough (nor interested in spending the time to become expert enough) to get rid of some of the annoyances that even facially non-malicious Windows software likes to impose.
For instance: At the moment, I have an old laptop running Windows XP; I installed a newish, tiny Konika-Minolta laser printer's driver on it, but rather than simply now being able to print, I get two large pop-up messages about the printer's status every time I boot that laptop. I've gone through every menu option I can find to try to disable this annoyance (yeah, I know whether the printer's connected right now or 1000 miles away; thanks), no luck so far. Similarly, I know that my father's Windows machine starts up quite a few programs that he's not specifically asked for every time he boots it up; much Windows software is this way -- arrogant, presumptuous, intrusive -- and people just seem to put up with it, for the most part. By the way, your Virus Protection from McAfee is out of date, can we sell you more?
Linux-based systems aren't perfect, but
1) competition -- some people like to complain about the proliferation of distros, but
2) Tons of great free software. Debian users have had the longest sustained crowing in software history, perhaps, because of the thought that went into Debian package management. Nowadays, there's a surplus of good package managers and control systems, though, and the users of just about any Linux system can grab new free software (with a net connection) with greater ease than the conventional Windows approach of driver
Re:mainstream media? (Score:5, Funny)
It is the most powerful operating-system for Pee Cees. It looks not as metrosexually-oriented as Mac OS X by Steve "Rim" Jobs and has 1,0000,0000 times more softwares that the Linus-operating-system (I mean real software, not shareware like GUN).
Plus, it comes with every Pee Cee for free. People who have grown acusstomt to paying RatHat 699 $$$ or more can hardly beleive this when I consult them with my proffesional Internet- and Network-Service-Center-Bureau.
When I have a new customer, I take him to the back-room to show him the "alternative" to XP Home, which is Suse Linus 7.0.
I have set-up an old Pentium 133Hz and a small monochrome monitor to show the customer what Linux looks and feels like.
I have it set-up so it runs a fullscreen-Flash-splash-screen on the KDE-4-beta-desktop. It takes 13 min until the mouse cursor responds.
The customer will then make a sound like: "BAH!"
Then I tell them: "See, this is how it is if we let the communists make software."
Then we have a good laugh, wich is psycologically valuable for the customer-relationship.
I always tell them:
"Windows XP Home Edition is all you can do to embiggen the producationality of your human resourcers and empower to leverage the outcome-bottomlime of your stickholders
My customers usually are like: "OMG!"
You should really try it one day; it has a very nice light-reddish color theme to hit your tastes.
Thank you!
What I want to know is... (Score:5, Funny)
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Each citizine and their Pee-Cees should welcome
DRM as their right to become digital and be managed
by the Artists wich are now digital too.
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It's funny, I don't remember hearing the word 'embiggen' until I started reading slashdot...
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It's originally from an episode of the Simpsons. Wikipedia to the rescue! [wikipedia.org]
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I'll have you know that embiggen is a perfectly cromulent word!
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The year of Linux on my desktop was 2000.
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Re:When I can play games (Score:4, Insightful)
I want to discuss most of your points... (but not in order):
1 - "Linux doesn't ghost very well". No, but it tars and dds well. Why are you trying to use a Windows tool which isn't needed?
2 - Windows XP does take 30 minutes to install. "a couple of drivers installs" -- I run XP SP2 in VMware. The last time I tried to install it on real hardware: I needed drivers for the IDE driver, the audio, the network and the video. None of which were included. Of course, the drivers were too big to put on a floppy, and XP refused to see the CDROM drive it just loaded from. Of course the network required a driver as well. Way to go! Fedora Core "just works" on this machine -- needing a driver for the video only.
3 - Play games... If you want to run Windows games, use Windows. End of story. No other explanation is needed.
4 - "funky graphics and sound card options and controllers working right out the box". This is bullshit. THEY DON'T WORK RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX WITH WINDOWS. You need to install drivers. Which are very dodgy at times. If anything, Linux has FAR more quality drivers than Windows "in the box". I still use QIC tapes: is there a Windows XP driver that is supported for those?
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Quake 4 and UT2004 worked "out of the box" on this 64-bit system.
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XOver (Score:2)
CrossOver Office also runs games. I got Half Life 2 running on CrossOver 6.0 Beta 1 for OS.X. After not bothering with Wine and related products in general for over 3 years and it is safe to say they Wine team and their semi-proprietary spinoffs have made progress. Apart from some graphical glitches CrossOver is a lot more stable than I expected a beta product to be and quite fast. Since it
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...which is entirely the fault of ATi, not Linux. Blame them for putting only one or two guys on the linux development team.