Things are fine the way they are. The Stallman people can sweat, providing free, open drivers and software. They also provide needed workarounds for some of the more egregious DRM issues. The “best tool” folks will actually use the system for more than a toy or development tool.
The fact is that the best of the “open” products are building on ideas and presentations that are or were proprietary. Of course, all of these open people who aren’t using dumb terminals are relying on non-open code in the hardware devices themselves, unless they are using and old Qume daisy wheel printer or some such.
One thing the author mentions only in passing but I think is very important to remember is this. Most people don’t use Linux. They use their computer to get things done. Sure, Windows is the “default” for most systems so users have to make a conscious choice and expend a little effort to become Linux users. But almost nobody is thinking “I’m going to go play with Mint, or Ubuntu, or Red Hat today.” No, they are thinking, I want to check my email, drop in on Free Republic, look for some funny fail videos, find a good recipe for... The OSes job is to facilitate the applications that make those things happen. All the debates over technical and legal issues are just noise to the users. They just want to get stuff done.
I know there are Silverlight alternatives out there, like Moonlight or Mono but nothing seems to work for me. Is there anything else I am missing?
Thought this might interest you.
The Linux community, or many in it, have such a distaste for Microsoft (and Apple to a lesser degree) that it is funny. That is a “friction” in many Linux “communities” that the author left out. Stop the hate!
There is a lot of hating on “systemd” these days.
