Linus Torvalds on new Chromebook Aura UI

Not in most of America. Maybe the Valley or NYC. But in places like Florida, where Comcast (the biggest carrier) drops when thunderstorm roll by good luck.

And business... pushing all your data to the cloud is a mistake. For many reasons such as; security. Look there is no way I'm putting sensitive data, like accounting, patient information, (etc) in the cloud. It's just not worth the risk or the lawsuit.

Also, I know a guy who owns a gym. Was talked into a "hosted cash register". BIG MISTAKE. After the install, a week later early morning storm rolls in from the ocean. His power flips (a common thing in South Florida). But his Comcast never came back online. He was down (and out of business) for 4 hours. Personally though, I enjoyed hearing his plight. He's a cheap sob.

Some of you might say, that is what he deserves for relying on Comcast. Fine. But what small business you know it gonna go through the expense of a T1/3 or fiber? That $29.99 a month cash register just became $300+ a month. Lovely.

My point: out in the real world (in America) the infrastructure is barely stable. Until the carries seriouslly invest (and I doubt they ever will since they only provide exactly what they have too - I don't even want to get started on our TERRIBLE cell service in this country) in their networks, the "cloud" will be a site you share pictures of your dog.

>The fact of the matter is that Linux is confusing to users ('distributions'? 'desktop environments'? and that's just the start)

I was doing this for a very non-technical user. All I said was that Ubuntu was like Windows but free. Nothing confusing about that (from their reaction).

>there is very little software for it (relative to what is available for Windows)

Yes and no. Games are a big problem. For most tasks that most users perform, there's a web browser, email client and an office suite. Applications moving to the web only helps with this. Bespoke software which manages a warehouse's stock we don't really care about in this context.

>a moving target (both for users and developers - radical changes in UI from one year to the next, libraries that aren't ABI stable for a year let alone 2 decades)

I agree. Distributions should take more care with this or desktop environment developers should call their new DE something completely different and not make the look like a replacement but rather a competitor. Then again, installing an LTS release should keep a person happy for a couple of years. After that, if they're not a power user, there may be little to no benefit in upgrading to the newest release.

>it's too hard (approaching impossible) to make real money from Linux software.

Tell that to: Sun (hah, great example), RedHat, Google, Apple, the countless software agencies developing on an OSS stack, all the businesses in the world running on a network backbone mostly composed of open software and all the research projects using fancy supercomputers running on Linux. Almost everyone uses Linux in one way or another and almost everyone makes money. Redhat is proof that you can directly use Linux to build a billion dollar business. It's a young business model, but it works well.

Nobody else thinks it's an odd coincidence that this post by Linus and a post by Douglas Crockford both on Google Plus were submitted two hours apart?

To clarify, I don't think it's a coincidence and I think Google employees probably submitted these.

I think you are wrong. I don't think people listen to Torvalds because he created and leads the development of the Linux kernel. I think people listen to him because he is very active in the free software community, voicing his opinions, writing in a somewhat balanced way and clearly expressing what he believes. People don't always agree with him (obviously the Gnome guys don't).

You can do exactly the same thing: make your voice heard, state clearly and preferrably factually what you think is best for the free software stack. People will listen!

>local hard drives will be history within 3 years

Want to make a bet? Name your stakes.