Time to fork the FSF • Hacker News Board

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#311

Post by drieddust » Sun, Oct 09, 2011, 1:43 PM UTC

0x12 wrote: post #215

stonemetal wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I bought a new box last year I couldn't get wireless to work. Until I went in to some random config file and forced it to load an older version of the driver because the new fancy version that is shipped doesn't actually work. But thanks for proving his point by calling him a liar.

Yes, because we all know that the occasional configuration problem is unique to Linux. Really. Counterpoint to your story: I bought a notebook with a 3G card in it, couldn't for the life of me get the thing to work under windows vista (which it came installed with). It got so bad that I suspected that the hardware must be broken. For kicks I booted the machine using ubuntu NBR, not only did it detect and configure al…

You must be a very lucky. Reason I am not running Linux is because I was not able to find a decent driver for my latop's Synaptic touchpad.

Now please do not say you can write a driver yourself.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#312

Post by JeremyBanks » Sun, Oct 09, 2011, 2:15 PM UTC

dbbo wrote: post #216

EiZei wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictly from an utilitarian perspective RMS should keep his big fat mouth shut when someone -especially somebody as popular as Jobs - dies.

I don't really think popularity is a reason to suppress rms' constitutional rights (he is a US citizen as far as I know), no matter how crazy or alienating his opinions are.

Posts like this, jumping the the defence of "rights" that nobody's challenging, sound more pathetic each time I read them.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#313

Post by andrewflnr » Sun, Oct 09, 2011, 2:49 PM UTC

rufugee wrote: post #174

0x12 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it doesn't make me want to spend an entire Saturday trying to get Linux to recognize my sound card. Stuff like that is FUD though, linux sound support is pretty good these days and the amount and variety of devices supported dwarfs the best the commercial world has to offer. In general, Linux support of legacy devices is amazing. Newly minted hardware without a factory supported driver is a different kettle of…

This. I haven't had to troubleshoot a hardware problem in years, and I use Linux daily and install it quite often (I touch a lot of hardware). Don't subtly degrade something with FUD unless you speak from recent experience.

Every once in a while, when I open up my (recent) laptop to take it off standby, it freezes, completely unresponsive. I have to hard-reboot it. I'm using nouveau on an Nvidia Optimus card; when I activated the proprietary driver X completely failed to start. The last incident was yesterday. This has never happened to me on Windows.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#314

Post by delinka » Sun, Oct 09, 2011, 3:39 PM UTC

anatoly wrote: post #238

delinka wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty telling that tablet computers have existed for ... what, 15 years? And that tablet computing didn't take off with consumers until iPad. I think that's a fine example of how Steve influenced a change in the world. The Average Person has no concept of How Things Could Be Better. They just take what's available, get the job done, take their paycheck and live their lives. iPad seems to be the first ti…

>I think it's pretty telling that tablet computers have existed for ... what, 15 years? And that tablet computing didn't take off with consumers until iPad. I think that's a fine example of how Steve influenced a change in the world. Consider that for most of these 15 years, the hardware wasn't good enough for mass appeal. The combination of a CPU powerful enough to render video and to support custom apps written in…

And why wasn't the hardware "good enough"? Could it have been too much apathy and lack of innovation on behalf of the I.T. industry? And who actually made one where the hardware was good enough to sell millions of devices? Why didn't someone with the expertise come along and beat Apple to the punch?

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#315

Post by DanBC » Sun, Oct 09, 2011, 4:17 PM UTC

nknight wrote: post #264

DanBC wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you think Steve's products hamper your freedom Try and explain how to boot a MacBookPro from USB stick to someone, and compare that to booting almost any other computer. Or explain how to dual boot a Mac with OSX and Linux, vs anything else with Windows and Linux.

> Try and explain how to boot a MacBookPro from USB stick to someone You hold down the Option key while booting. > Or explain how to dual boot a Mac with OSX and Linux Install rEFIt (comes in a nice, standard OS X installer package), use the nice GUI Bootcamp or Disk Utility apps to make a partition, insert the Linux CD, reboot while holding down C. If you're incapable of following these instructions, I seriously dou…

Holding down option while booting does not work for USB media on MacBook Pro. (But sure, this will work for optical media.)

You've just managed to give the wrong information to someone, and call them stupid at the same time.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#316

Post by DanBC » Sun, Oct 09, 2011, 4:22 PM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #288

DanBC wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you think Steve's products hamper your freedom Try and explain how to boot a MacBookPro from USB stick to someone, and compare that to booting almost any other computer. Or explain how to dual boot a Mac with OSX and Linux, vs anything else with Windows and Linux.

Try and explain how to restore a MacBook from back-ups over the phone to a frantic parent who's just lost their hard drive. I did that. It took two minutes. It worked flawlessly. Sometimes to gain more command over your technology you have to give up some theoretical freedom, but that's freedom you'd never have been able to exercise. An F-16 pilot would find the controls in a typical car so disappointing. Where's the…

Sure, there are a lot of important benefits to having firm design choices made by someone, rather than just not ever making the decision and cramming a million options into a multi-tab options dialog (or a config file). I own (and use every day) a mac. I've recommend mac to everyone I know, fo rthe reasons you mention.

But you can't have it both ways - not having those options available means you're not as free to use your machine as you are with other OSs. Trivial eg: OS X windowing behaves a certain way. You want to maximise a window? You can't, unless you know some secret trick. You want to tile windows? You can't, unless you install some 3rd party software. These aren't power-user functions.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#317

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Oct 09, 2011, 4:38 PM UTC

wnight wrote: post #293

tychobrahe wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever heard of "blame the game, not the player"? Trying to put all the blame on Steve Jobs' shoulder, right after his death, is horrendous. Steve Jobs wasn't the enemy of freedom RMS paints him as. That he personally wrote letters against DRM on media-stores and against the closed-platform called Flash asking everyone to favor HTML5 made much much difference in those two specific areas than most things Stallman did la…

> Ever heard of "blame the game, not the player"? Yeah, it's ridiculous. The "player" makes the choices, they get the blame. Every time I see someone talking about how they just do what they have to do to feed their kids someone else steps up to say that they feed their kids without hurting others. > Steve Jobs wasn't the enemy of freedom RMS paints him as. That he personally wrote letters against DRM on media-stores…

[deleted]

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#318

Post by tychobrahe » Sun, Oct 09, 2011, 4:47 PM UTC

wnight wrote: post #293

tychobrahe wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever heard of "blame the game, not the player"? Trying to put all the blame on Steve Jobs' shoulder, right after his death, is horrendous. Steve Jobs wasn't the enemy of freedom RMS paints him as. That he personally wrote letters against DRM on media-stores and against the closed-platform called Flash asking everyone to favor HTML5 made much much difference in those two specific areas than most things Stallman did la…

> Ever heard of "blame the game, not the player"? Yeah, it's ridiculous. The "player" makes the choices, they get the blame. Every time I see someone talking about how they just do what they have to do to feed their kids someone else steps up to say that they feed their kids without hurting others. > Steve Jobs wasn't the enemy of freedom RMS paints him as. That he personally wrote letters against DRM on media-stores…

> I believe you're pretty offended though.

And so are you, it seems... ;)

EDIT: Since you cherry-picked my points and completely ignored what I tried to say in order to attack me, I'll just repeat what I wrote, since it's what I would reply anyway.

    Trying to put all the blame on Steve Jobs' shoulder, right after his death, is horrendous.

    ...made much much difference in those two specific areas than most things Stallman did lately.

(notice the "specific areas")

    Granted, he never open sourced the whole operating system, but why would he? To see Apple collapse again while Dell/HP and others strive? What's the point? Then we start all over again? We'll have open-source chips manufactured by 2 or 3 companies? What's the fucking point?

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#319

Post by dbbo » Sun, Oct 09, 2011, 5:12 PM UTC

cyrus_ wrote: post #302

dbbo wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really think popularity is a reason to suppress rms' constitutional rights (he is a US citizen as far as I know), no matter how crazy or alienating his opinions are.

Come on, no one is saying he shouldn't have the right to express his opinion, just that he could have worded them in a way that didn't make people cringe.

Could you give an example of what he could have said to express the same idea at this time _without_ offending people?

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#320

Post by dbbo » Sun, Oct 09, 2011, 5:16 PM UTC

JeremyBanks wrote: post #312

dbbo wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really think popularity is a reason to suppress rms' constitutional rights (he is a US citizen as far as I know), no matter how crazy or alienating his opinions are.

Posts like this, jumping the the defence of "rights" that nobody's challenging, sound more pathetic each time I read them.

When he's censured like that outside the legal system, his rights are being challenged-- e.g. "He shouldn't have said that" is an expression of disapproval that to me suggests "People shouldn't be allowed to say that". It's pathetic to me that some people seem to think that free speech should only apply to people with whom they agree.