I do like’s Fewt’s post.

It is good, isn’t it? Particularly since Fewt is one of the few normal Linux advocates I’ve ever come across.

Have you checked out Petrus4 (another reasonably normal human being) on point 4?

“Point 4 is true, but Microsoft has consistently told lies to the contrary, and people (including many of you) believe them. I do not care what Jamie Zewinski said on this point, either; it is FUD.”

The great thing about TMRepository is that we are maniacal about links. We rule! OK, let’s guess the reference for Petrus4 here:

Jamie Zawinski: “Linux is only free if your time has no value, and I find my time is better spent doing things other than the endless moving-target-upgrade dance.” Retrieved from the slightly obscure http://www.slideshare.net/activestate/open-source-what-is-the-total-cost-of-ownership.

Of all the bars, in all the world, to Linux ownership, why did Petrus4 have to walk into this one?

(BTW I’d comment on Linsux, but even though I’m registered, I can’t. Must be something they heard.)

As FUD-y as it is, I do at least give it credit for not trying to portray Linux as a desktop OS.

It’s freaky how these lists are always in multiples of 5.

@DrLoser

You need to introduce yourself in the “introduce yourself” section first or else you won’t be able to post anywhere else.

@Delano

“5” is quite possibly the freetards’ magic number, at least according to Linux_Victim, for breaking out of the Pengiun Day time loop. Or maybe the ultimate key to YearOftheLinuxDesktop™. Who knows?

@JoeMonco

Yeah, I kind of guessed that. The whole site’s a mess, though, and I can’t find it within me to sign up for another set of discussions with another crowd infected by 20% idiots (many of whom appear to be “administrators”). I’ll just do what IBM does with Linux — stand on the sidelines and steal whatever’s appropriate.

linsux is cool, but linux_victim was the main reason I went there. His posts and insights are even better than Linux Hater. Now that he has his own blog, I’m gonna look forward to checking for (probably infrequent) updates. Frequent or not, they’re essential reads. Administrator must definitely, definitely add him to the “community” tab.

@DrLoser

This is Zawinski’s famous words in their original context:

http://www.jwz.org/doc/linux.html

“See, unlike most hackers, I get little joy out of figuring out how to install the latest toy. I don’t get much sense of reward from having discovered how to get the Foo card to coexist with the Bar card. As far as I’m concerned, that crap is a solved problem, and not worth revisiting. That’s like banging rocks together and being proud that you’ve re-derived fire from first principles. It’s boring.

So finally I talked my boss into getting me an SGI Indy (which I’ve since replaced with an SGI O2) and life became joyous again. Because SGI actually knows something about building user interfaces, and about making it possible to administer a machine without being a member of the technological priesthood. For but one example, I was able to install and format a new disk on this machine through GUIs, without once having to run ``man’' and try to remember some random arcane command that I last used in 1986.

This is the part where I start getting hate mail from people, and cheerleading messages telling me to take a look at it again, because it’s so much better now. I understand. I’ll take your word for it. And when the time comes to replace the O2 I have today, maybe my next machine will run Linux. But as we all know, Linux is only free if your time has no value, and I find that my time is better spent doing things other than the endless moving-target-upgrade dance.”

@JoeMonco

What’s so wonderful and so typical about that quote is that it provokes Loons to say “I disagree!” (Without quoting or linking, of course.)

I mean, it’s practically impossible to disagree with that sentiment. Apparently I feel more strongly about my choice of baked beans than JWZ does about an operating system. (I wish to point out to the congressional committee on baked beans that I do, in fact, now consume Heinz’ fine product, and have done ever since it added the very useful pull-tab to the can.)

It is, of course, always possible that Petrus4 was referring to this: http://jwz.livejournal.com/123070.html.

Or, possibly, fat client kiosks at the DNA Lounge: http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/src/kiosk/fatclient/

Or, possibly, thin client kiosks at the DNA Lounge: http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/src/kiosk/

There’s actually an earlier harangue about how broken all this stuff is, which I can’t track down right now. (A pity — it was hysterical.) But it’s not as if the lad isn’t trying. Much harder than I would, to be honest.

I think sometimes some people are better off sticking to running nightclubs:

http://jwz.livejournal.com/846523.html

We are talking about the same guy who has once famously said that using the widget toolkits for X “is like trying to make a bookshelf out of mashed potatoes”, and the same guy who has penned the those paragraphs above. Although I do believe that sane individuals should all hold a healthy extent of disrespect to this person, I still have got to admit that his complaints about Linux are all based on his own honest-to-god experience – and he just doesn’t know how to stop living it.

Yup, that was the link I was thinking of. In retrospect it doesn’t seem quite as ranting.

What I like about all these posts is that they are almost unique in the Loon world: the commenters all try, genuinely, to help. It’s quite instructive to see how much pain you go through even when people are trying to help.

I think you’re being a little unfair on JWZ — if nothing else, he gives good quote. The Linux kiosk thing seems to be one of those traps we’d all fall into in the early 2000s: “How hard can this be? I actually know how to do this stuff…” Followed by years of agony.

Obviously the correct choice, initially, would have been Windows kiosks, at a cost of (I dunno) maybe a $1000. JWZ does seem to be a little penny-wise and pound-foolish, though, judging by some of his other blogs on actually running a nightclub. There’s a wonderful post where a woman trips up, hurts her ankle, and sues for $400,000 … whereupon the DNA Lounge turns it over to the insurers, whose lawyer settles for $11,000 (the DNA Lounge has a $10,000 deductible, what a surprise) and the insurance company retrospectively adds $40,000 to the policy, just because they can.

Funny how the author refers to the big 16% of revenue share Linux held, but concealing Windows held 46% at that time. ( the proportions remained about the same, anyway )

“Even the six-year-old kernel bug that was recently fixed, for instance—an extremely rare instance in the Linux world—had never been exploited.”
Yes, certainly.