Is Linux For Losers?

Forbes.com ^ | 06.16.05 | Dan Lyons

[Willie Green]

NEW YORK - Theo de Raadt is a pioneer of the open source software movement and a huge proponent of free software. But he is no fan of the open source Linux operating system.

"It's terrible," De Raadt says. "Everyone is using it, and they don't realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, 'This is garbage and we should fix it.'"

[N3WBI3]

None of which said I did not pay for them, care to link some more sparky..

[Golden Eagle]

None of which said I did not pay for them

Didn't have to, CentOS and Fedora are only distributed for free. Play games with yourself if you want, but they obviously don't work with me.

[N3WBI3]

Thanks for exposing your motives. So long as *you* can continue to get your free software, you could care less if the chicom government is a greater beneficiary.

Sound familiar, lets read it again

So long as *you* can continue to get your free software

Lets pair it down a bit more

your free software

I pay for my software, period...

Sorry troll boy, try to rephrase things all you want. YOu said I use Linux because I dont pay for it... I do pay for it..

[Golden Eagle]

I pay for my software, period...

Not according to your previous comments you don't. CentOS and Fedora aren't available for sale, so you didn't pay for them. Either that or you have been lying all along, which obviously shouldn't be ruled out.

[N3WBI3]

Donating to the project development = paying for the software..

[N3WBI3]

Its obvious by this point youre just trolling on this thread, Ill step away until something other than your standard dribbling comes forth..

[Golden Eagle]

LOL, here you are insisting you don't have to pay for Red Hat Enterprise even if you don't want to.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1130173/posts

Twisted in knots, like always.

[Paladin2]

I see this flame fest flared up after 4 days of smoldering.

I like your graphic though.

That seems to be the situation when the IT guys show up to "fix" my computer. It's happened a couple of times (once sort'a my fault by clicking on some random registry file by accident that totally snarfed the real registry files). In those cases (I now know better than to call IT), recovery was possible just that in one case it took ~1 day (much less than the cost of lost files) and in the other was done much quicker with the help of Knoppix and a (direct, hex) disk editor.

[N3WBI3]

Its my fault for responding to GE, the Baghdad bob of tech threads...

[Paladin2]

How would you test to see if GE is really an AI bot?

[N3WBI3]

naa AI bots have come farther than that, I would expect more reason from them..

[monkfan]

Microsoft used the same open license strategy, while rival operating systems like OS2 and Apple stayed proprietary.

You mix Apple with .. umm... oranges. It was not Microsoft but IBM that licensed out it's architecture. Other companies were then able to manufacture "IBM clones" at a cheaper cost. That was bad news for Apple but for IBM as well, because even though IBM's propriatory MicroChannel Architecture was superior to PCI, it cost more at the counter, much like the MacIntosh. Consumers, in all their wisdom, went with the cheaper machines. Software market followed the consumers and their PCs, making it slim pickins for Apple enthusiasts.

Microsoft's role was something else entirely. Initially, IBM had a machine but no operating system to run on it. Microsoft delivered one "cleverly" named DOS. Even better, MS somehow managed to retain the copyrights. That enabled them to sell the same OS to other PC manufacturers. Which they did in a most unprecidented way. MS offered it's OS to manufacturers at bargain prices with the following catch: MS got paid based not on the number of it's OSs that shipped, but on the number of computers that shipped. In other words, a person buying a PC clone could [seemingly] get Windows for a song but would have to pay "extra" for a copy of IBM's OS/2. So, despite OS/2's superior multitasking and scripting abilities, it failed due in large to a stacking of the deck.

Upstarts like Linux have little chance of supplanting Windows despite Windows' flaws, because the switching cost for businesses currently using Windows would be too high for the benefit gained by using some other operating system.

Nevertheless, Linux is finding its way into corporate America and this is a trend that appears to be growing. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few years.

[NJ_gent]

"The "does this belong here" source comment is fine."

I've seen much worse in source code. The more amusing ones go something like "/* oh God this routine sucks, but it's 3am and I'm tired so screw it */".