For what is worth, I used to be a Linux user. I admire and respect Linux developers for their hard work, but Linux can never achieve mainstream and can never be competitive at desktop level. There’s no one with the ability to unify the mess that Linux is (fans call it diversity, I don’t. Even when I used Linux, that always looked like unorganized chaos to me). No one to turn a vision into a reality, and there’s no money to be made with desktop Linux (let alone the consumer market). I think Mr. Shuttleworth knows that too.

You were right about Dell and Ubuntu, of course. One year later, and today, you can read something like this:

http://digg.com/linux_unix/Dell_sells_Ubuntu_But_it_s_NOT_recommended_says_this_CSR

The emperor has no clothes, but don’t expect hardcore fans to ever admit it.

You ask “WHY has OLPC opened discussions with MSFT and properly put Linux in it’s place[?]“. I would have thought that it was because Microsoft, ever mindful of the need to maintain “mind share” and preserve their monopoly, stuck their grubby fingers into the pie.

I feel very sorry for all those poor kids who will now grow up thinking that an OS needs to be a bloated, intrusive, unstable, bug-ridden virus magnet.

I hate ubuntu

And I hate MacOS too

And here we have the author back again!

Very cool!

I couldn’t agree more with the authors 2008 position redux, particularly on the deranged Linux/Ubuntu NON-OPEN fundamentalist mentality, it’s worse if anything a year on.

I run Ubuntu 8.04, Sabayon 3.4 E x64, Win Svr 2008 x64, Vista Ultimate x32 and x64. And of course at work, Windows XP Pro is the only workable option at this time (can’t wait to hear what the fanatics say to this – but then again, the vast majority of them don’t actually work a W2 job for a living yet).

At work we run Oracle 10g on Win Svr 2003 and on Red Hat 5 EE.

So, while it may make no difference, I do have the experience of actually USING ALL THESE OSs to help inform my opinion.

My opinion has not changed either. It is still not possible for many people, and no I am not posting the list of Laptop models in question, read your own documentation and that should be enough, with a 1.5 year old or less laptop to install Ubuntu 8.04 and have wireless work out of the box. And g-d forbid you uninstall the wrong package and the dependency chain renders the OS permanently unusable.

I like Linux. I like working in a non-Microsoft tooling and server stack environment. I like using MSFT development technology and tools – they are unbeaten on that score, period (yes, Eclipse is wonderful, but not as wonderful a total package).

MSFT applications and tools are NOT MSFT “the business” or “the marketing organization”, both of which I have to be honest disgust me so much I have to rename everything on my Start and fly out menus to remove the word “Microsoft” from every shortcut! lol.

With that said, the Ubuntu/Linux experience is not yet ready for, closer than a year ago certainly, the average or even power user who: uses their computer to do work and for entertainment and not as some kind of souped up amateur heath kit to while away the hours they prefer NOT spending in the physical company of other human beings.

An OS is a tool, a means to an end, and somewhat more for many, albeit an often underutilized one, and not a creed, religion, or political self-identification fetish object FOR MOST USERS – and isn’t it them we are talking about and trying to build a better solution and option for?

Last thing: WHY has OLPC opened discussions with MSFT and properly put Linux in it’s place, TANGENTIAL to the mission. Because it’s about the computer for the kid! NOT about Linux, and Linux may no longer be a necessary means to that end – and I think much of that truth is due to the fundamentalist absurdity of an unfortunately large part of the Linux community.

#1. You are bashing MS products without providing any facts or reasons, you do not even identify the products and issues involved. Unstable, unreliable, overpriced products? Right. Windows has worked for me flawlessly since Win2k. Let Linux and Linux applications get 1 billion users and see what kind of a mess it will all be.

#2. Google is a business. A “for profit” business. They have stockholders. Do you understand? They are no different from Microsoft. Know what they do? How they make money? They sell AD space. Is this supposed to be noble?

#3. I provide you with an example with facts and you say ‘must be a fanboy.’ Goes right to the fanaticism point.

‘The constant insults thrown towards Microsoft and their products by people that have never even used the products they are bashing’
That’s what a Linux fanboy is supposed to say… coz there’s waaaaaaaay more chance that someone has used a Windows software compared to a Linux product. They used the Microsoft product and did not like it, and now they have seen that there are better options out there.
‘This notion of good vs evil. Google good. Microsoft evil. Why? Just because!’
No, not just because! Because of Microsoft’s monopolistic nature, overpriced products and unstable and unreliable products that we are forced to buy. I don’t have to fill you up on the whole Vista vs. XP thing. Even the Windows user don’t want Vista, but Microsoft keeps trying to throw it at them…!
‘The number #3 point is a good one. The example is Firefox. It has become a bloated, unusable, unsecured POS of a browser. IE 7 is an improvement over IE6 and Firefox in every way imaginable. ‘
Are you effin kidding me.. I mean, I agree IE7 is an improvement over IE6, but seriously? Firefox? I haven’t heard that from even a person who used to work with Microsoft (Student Partner), Firefox must have been bloated than before, but IE7 better than Firefox???? You really are a fanboy…
I could type a lot more things, but I know there’s no convincing you… Until you realize this on your own… there’s no point in trying to convince you… all i gotta say is get your facts straight…

I’ve been working on a few ventures of mine that have unfortunately prevented myself from having the time to dedicate to this blog and my everlasting pursuit for the truth.

On that note, my views have not changed radically since I made this blog post a year ago.

I believe that Linux and Windows cater to two different types of people and businesses. There is some overlap, and there are plenty of examples of this, but overall they are different beasts. In architecture, function, and usability.

The aspect I dislike most about Linux is the blind fanaticism involved [and what it creates]…

1. The constant insults thrown towards Microsoft and their products by people that have never even used the products they are bashing. People that have no clue about the verbal and cerebral diarrhea they are regurgitating.

2. This notion of good vs evil. Google good. Microsoft evil. Why? Just because!

3. The lies, dam lies, and more lies that are now standard procedure for marketing your product in comparison to an MS product.

The number #3 point is a good one. The example is Firefox. It has become a bloated, unusable, unsecured POS of a browser.

IE 7 is an improvement over IE6 and Firefox in every way imaginable. So what does the Firefox team do [or who ever it was on the dev team]? They come out with pure BS benchmarks not just once, but twice in a row, to show how much worse IE is. The problem was these benchmark were not just done bad. They were soo far off, and so much information was not provided, that there is no way they were not rigged. Rigged from the start and covered up with open-source fanaticism and saran wrap. It was sick to see this. What was it? Something like ‘lets open up 30 tabs in Firefox under one instance, and compare that to 30 IE instances/windows, and lets only compare the 1st half second on RAM usage, and lets open the 30 IE Windows as fast as we can so we can say the system crashed.’… or something along those lines.

Linux is it’s worst enemy in this regard. It will tarnish itself in the process.

My outlook on Linux is gloom at best. I don’t want much to do with it except on the server-side where you actually deal with businesses, and not inexperienced fanboys and Ubuntu.

In the mean time I’ll use the OS I’m most productive in, Windows.

I would call Vista a failure and M$ fucking SUCKS.

Linux forever and ever!