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FWIW: I disagree somewhat with his take on (#1) in a couple of aspects. Firstly is that there are plenty of closed source applications which work across different distro's (oracle comes to mind, as does WebSphere). Any properly configured package *will* include all the tools needed to load it on any *Nix. Secondly its not the vondors job to support every platform and its mother, if you hit RedHat / Suse / and Ubuntu your app will work on dozens of other distros like Fedora, Cent, and Mandriva. In addition if you hit the big three above your hitting probabally 80+% of the (linux) server market and well over half of the (linux) desktop market.

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I think that's what he was trying to say with his "These problems are real, but the claim exaggerates the difficulties they create." comment.

Yes, the vendors can't release only one version and expect it to work across all the distros--but the difficulty is exaggerated. It's not that hard to make it work.

What’s GNU?

Nothing much, what’s gnu with you?

Biggest reason why people dont use it more?

The people that push, it treat it like a political/religious movement. Think too many times of the people that dont want to use it as idiots, and the companies whose products they do use as evil. (See Slashdot for all of the above)

Also many of these articles just assume people should use Linux...just because. They start from the premise that what you use now is bad with the same generalizations that they try to dispel about Linux being too complicated.

I recently bought a computer for a friend that had Ubuntu loaded on it. It was very inexpensive. The desktop looked great and everything worked fine, except for her peripherals. No driver for the bluetooth device, print server, wireless card, printer or Zune. I ended up re-formatting and loading XP on it, and now all is well. I’ve found that many people do not want to buy new devices and/or spend the amount of time necessary to learn a new OS, they just want to sit down and do stuff like they are used to doing. TV ads make it seem like all they have to do, is press a button, and they have a DVD all with a pretty design or just plug in a digital picture frame, and all their pictures are on it. That just ain’t so.

As a software developer for 25 years I’m tired of hearing all the Commie Free stuff.

Software can add Great Value to a business. Therefore the business decision is to pay a less than Great Price to get an ROI or Open new markets.

People use the software and polish takes a great deal of time. I probably spend as much time on polish as I do anything else. There is just no incentive in our system to produce Free anything. Nothing is free ever.

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Firstly is that there are plenty of closed source applications which work across different distro's (oracle comes to mind, as does WebSphere). Any properly configured package *will* include all the tools needed to load it on any *Nix.

Well, sort of. There are a lot of closed source programs that have installers for certain versions of certain distros and sometimes they can be shoehorned onto a technically unsupported distro.

The fact that that kind of thing actually works points out the cluelessness of the application developers.

Linux is pretty much Linux. Building your app so that it runs only on a certain version of a certain distro is dumb since if it runs at all, it will likely run just fine on most distros. Rather than distributing your app as a RedHat or SuSE RPM that does a dependency check on the distro version it would be much better to write the app to the Linux Standard Base and distribute either a scripted installer or a source RPM. Then it could be installed with little difficulty on most any distro.

An example of an app that does this properly is the Sun JRE and JDK. It's a .bin file and just installs. No silly distro version checking. It just works.

Compare this to, say, Oracle 10g. The installer checks the contents of /etc/redhat-release and looks for a certain version. As such, it will happily install on RedHat ES4, but not on CentOS4, which is exactly the same thing with just RedHat's images removed. To make Oracle install you have to edit the /etc/redhat-release file by hand and make it look like RHES. After Oracle is installed, you have to change it back. But it installs and runs just fine. Dumb.

To make it run on a Debian-based machine requires a host of other hoops to be jumped through, but since Debian stable and RHES4 use similar kernel versions and exactly the same GCC version, Oracle run just fine on Debian once you fool Oracle into installing on it.

The LSB was written just for this purpose. An app written to the LSB will install and run just fine provided that the underlying versions of software are adequate and the LSB is the way to tell that.

Sadly, too many closed-source software companies think it's still the bad old days of Unix when you had to code a different app for each Unix version. With Linux, that's just not true but it seems that the developers at those companies can't seem to figure it out.

The author calls them “myths” and then proceeds to state that most of them are true to some extent.

Unzipping and compiling software IS beyond the abilities of most people.

Using the exact same software as family members and friends who can help IS of critical importance to most users.

Since hard sectored floppy disks, Dell Rainbows, Zenith Z100’s and CP/M, the most important thing in desktop computing has been standardization. Microsoft and IBM figured that out with the first IBM-PC and Bill Gates rode that horse to incredible success. Users do not want to learn new operating systems or software. They will do it slowly, over time, but they won’t tolerate having to relearn everything at once.

People resist change. They like what they know. Windows is what they know. It’s standard. So is its software.

I'm a developer (MCPD:EAD) and I almost exclusively use MS products with some Oracle and Java thrown in once in a while. I've heard the buzzing back and forth for years about Linux but never paid it much mind or investigated it (no need).
Not counting myself on one side or the other because I know almost nothing about Linux....what is the benefit of using it?

My take as a retired computer professional. I like Linux, it is a good system and it gets better all the time. I also like Windows, I use my XP constantly and absolutely hate Vista. It crashes too often and also will not run many older devices and requires a huge hardware upgrade on older machines that run XP just fine. I liked 98SE also, but is didn't find drivers with the ease XP does so I finally switched totally to XP. I always have a machine with one form of linux or another on it, and I need to download the Ubuntu just to check it out.

I acknowledge that MS has problems with some of their stuff, ME and Vista spring to mind. I do rant about them now and them however, I believe that the home PC market would not be what it is today without MS, sure they make mistakes, sure they want the whole computer market to be theirs and they try now and then to do so. Linux keeps this from happening totally, and if MS ever goes through with their plan to license and rent out hardware and software on a yearly basis instead of granting ownership, Linux will fill the gap, along with Apple.

I applaud MS for Bill Gates pioneering efforts working off of Software ideas he took from another company and am glad he built the company up and made PCs popular throughout the world. Where would we be without MS? I also applaud Linux and open source, the savior of software and the OS that helps keep the other two(Apple and MS)at least partly honest.

Often, too, complaints about GNU/Linux are actually complaints that it is not exactly like Windows.

I used to mutter that under my breath when I would take time to try and setup/use/learn the Linux desktops like Gnome or KDE.

No longer. Yes...it is not exactly like Windows. That does not mean it is hard, klugey or tough to learn.
I use Linux Mint 6.0 on a dual boot with my WinXP. More often than not, I boot to Linux. The desktop is beautiful and the Software Manager is sublime. It allows you to browse for new software with descriptions, user reviews and screenshots.
Installation is easier than Windows....you just click on ...wait for it...."Install".

And if you don't like it, uninstallation is easier than Windows. Just click on...you guessed it..."Uninstall".

I'm currently getting ready to set up either Crossover Linux to run Windows Apps or setup a virtual Windows XP machine within Linux Mint using VMWare...or maybe even "VirtualBox" from Sun. Haven't decided yet. But once I do and get it all running smooth and backed up...I'm done with Microsoft for good. Should be done about the time XP finally gets left twisting in the wind by MS.

Agreed