191–200 of 214 posts
What distro would you recommend take the place of Ubuntu, as a recommended for newbs distro? I mean a distro that you would feel comfortable recommending to a stranger that you will not be able to help install or support the distro, as well as the more traditional "lemme help you with that." As a subset of that, what apt based distro would you recommend for that niche? Is plain Debian really something that people fee…
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So you dismiss RMS's arguments just because he doesn't talk and write the way you think he should? Talk about derailment, by this logic you don't have to agree with anyone or anything just as long as you feel they aren't nice or polite or well spoken enough.
just because he doesn't talk and write the way you think he should If he can't communicate his ideas in a calm and balanced way, perhaps those ideas don't have as much value as he thinks they do. Sorry, but method of delivery counts for a lot.
Whether or not I agree with it I found it quite calm and balanced (just like the phrase quoted above). Note there are no insults or exclamation points.
Perhaps his writing isn't the issue here, but your perception.
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I'm not going to go line by line, but you could start with this: Proprietary software is associated with malicious treatment of the user I don't believe 99% of people out there associate proprietary software with malicious treatment.
He didn't assert anything about peoples associations. He asserted that that there is an association between proprietary software and malicious treatment of the user. Now knowing a little about what RMS regards as malicious that is undoubtedly true in terms of the lack of freedoms. Even on a narrower definition of malicious if it includes user tracking/monitoring then large amounts of proprietary software can be regar…
"Where is my child?" => "I'm sorry ma'am, we had a day trip, but in the interests of your child's freedoms, I was forbidden from tracking her."
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One of the solutions suggested by rms strikes me as reasonable: Ubuntu should make make search only local by default, but show a "search online too" toggle button right next to all search results. If Ubuntu does that, the problem goes away, because users who want only local search don't have to do anything, and users who want global search can turn online search on/off at will by clicking a toggle button right there…
>f Ubuntu does that, the problem goes away No it doesn't. Ubuntu's "problem" is that it's not making any money, at least not enough to support the 500 employees it has. Making it non-default will kill 99% of the revenue from Amazon since hardly anyone(not enough people to make money on) will go out of the way to click the toggle button.
They could put a special plea on the install screen for permission to enable all the search functions. That might get a large number of folks clicking OK to enable these while still giving informed consent.
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>>> I'm getting something for free that is actually superior to the paid stuff, and sometimes those giving it to me need to feed a kid or two, or buy their Mrs that new outfit on the high street. Classy. You get my vote for that and subsequently pointing out that "They don't even force me to do it because I can turn it off" . This. I also liked the way you ended it. We definitely need RMS, but he definitely needs to…
But why not present it as an option to the user on first launch, or first search? Considering how relatively few people actually want shopping suggestions on their desktop, I expect the majority of users who don't turn it off to be people who simply can't be bothered to find the setting and change it. Exploiting user apathy is not my idea of software that respects its users, which is what the FSF is all about.
Maybe a compromise is a notice while installing that the default is to search with Amazon and instructions on how to disable it. Those who really mind it can find their way there after the OS is installed.
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He didn't assert anything about peoples associations. He asserted that that there is an association between proprietary software and malicious treatment of the user. Now knowing a little about what RMS regards as malicious that is undoubtedly true in terms of the lack of freedoms. Even on a narrower definition of malicious if it includes user tracking/monitoring then large amounts of proprietary software can be regar…
'tracking people' is not inherently malicious. Countless parents expect teachers to track their kids. "Where is my child?" => "I'm sorry ma'am, we had a day trip, but in the interests of your child's freedoms, I was forbidden from tracking her."
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I mean something not derived from Ubuntu. Yes, Xubuntu (which I currently run underneath XMonad) does not (yet) have this and future related features, and that's good. But by using an Ubuntu derived distro, you lend credibility to Ubuntu and Canonical. I would prefer to recommend something higher up the derivation line between Debian and Ubuntu.
Linux Mint as a Debian based version of their distro, which comes with all the desktop polish of Mint, but in their own words: "it's not as stable. Things are likely to break more often but fixes can also come quicker. For this reason, LMDE requires a deeper knowledge and experience with Linux, dpkg and APT" Personally I'd take a look at OpenSuSE. It was a pretty good as a Just Works desktop last I looked, but that w…
Didn't realize that, I'd always seen it as Ubuntu-derived. Thanks.
What distro would you recommend take the place of Ubuntu, as a recommended for newbs distro? I mean a distro that you would feel comfortable recommending to a stranger that you will not be able to help install or support the distro, as well as the more traditional "lemme help you with that." As a subset of that, what apt based distro would you recommend for that niche? Is plain Debian really something that people fee…
I hope that my reading of your question as a rhetorical one than a literal one is correct? Because your entire comment is one big reason I have been rooting for Canonical from day one. I have been on Linux on and off since slackware 1.0, Redhat 5 (5.0 (Hurricane)/5.1 (Manhattan)) all the way to SuSE 7.0 and not one time was I able to get someone ( anyone ) to adopt it completely -- despite all my handholding and regu…
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This. Although I agree with his view for free software, the way he convey his messages smells too much of fanaticism for me to swallow.
So you dismiss RMS's arguments just because he doesn't talk and write the way you think he should? Talk about derailment, by this logic you don't have to agree with anyone or anything just as long as you feel they aren't nice or polite or well spoken enough.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the solutions suggested by rms strikes me as reasonable: Ubuntu should make make search only local by default, but show a "search online too" toggle button right next to all search results. If Ubuntu does that, the problem goes away, because users who want only local search don't have to do anything, and users who want global search can turn online search on/off at will by clicking a toggle button right there…
>f Ubuntu does that, the problem goes away No it doesn't. Ubuntu's "problem" is that it's not making any money, at least not enough to support the 500 employees it has. Making it non-default will kill 99% of the revenue from Amazon since hardly anyone(not enough people to make money on) will go out of the way to click the toggle button.
I think it's time to research other ways of keeping the lights on.