AMD loosing money, uncertain free software development funding?

[movieman]

Tell them that when support for their distro is dropped and they need to upgrade it.

Unlike Windows, where the Windows Gnomes creep into your house and install Windows 7 on your Vista machine while you're asleep?

Yeah, major version upgrades often suck, but they suck at least as bad in Windows. In fact, I don't know anyone who's admitted to ever upgrading a Windows PC to a new version of Windows except when they had to do so to ensure the software they wrote would work correctly after an upgrade.

[RealNC]

Windows XP, released in 2001, is still supported. You can't claim the same for Ubuntu 4.10, released 2004, 3 years later than XP.

[energyman]

well, you also pay a shitload of money for that support.

[RealNC]

Not really. This is about the "normal" user. Those always get some OEM with Windows pre-installed.

[yotambien]

It's funny how everytime it's claimed from the zealot camp that linux is ready for the masses, the 'typical', 'average', 'normal' user is a retarded who seems to have problems clicking an icon to launch Firefox, who just uses his computer to listen to some music and watch a video from time to time, a bit of IM and perhaps some office application on February the 29th...That, and relatives. Lots of them. Pretty dumb normally. Or extremely old. Or both.

Well, even funnier is that even if THIS was the 'normal use' scenario, linux STILL would fail miserably for the great public. I can hear them already. "Uh-oh, why isn't youtube working properly?", "I can't see this movie I downloaded off the web", "where are my DVD menus?", "why I can't do a video call to my aunt via Messenger?", "why is this fake Office making a horrible mess of my (precious) documents?", "why I have no audio in Skype?", "I bought this webcam yesterday and it doesn't work", "I can't use the SD card reader on my laptop" and so on. If I don't have any of those problems it's only because I learned how to find my way (*). I spent a good deal of my time fixing extremely annoying little things like these for the past 3 years. This is only acceptable if you somehow have masochistic inclinations and actually like these sort of stuff. For the rest of the world it's just a joke, and quite an absurd and scary one the very moment somebody says it's all for your Freedom.

But it gets much worse. The 'typical user' is a lie. There are as many usage scenarios as users out there. Saying that the 'typical user' doesn't do this or doesn't do that is short sighted and deceiving. Simply put, the enourmous amount of software available for Windows would not exist if there wasn't a demand for it. The 20000+ packages in Debian DO NOT represent an alternative for the vast majority. And of course then you have the professional use. I have my eyes open enough to realise that everybody around me uses Windows. Guess what, it works. I have no visible advantages over my colleagues by using linux. That _I_ feel more eficient using it does not mean that _they_ would too. Actually, the majority of them would run into many problems far more serious than those the average user would encounter. Moreover, some of them could not possibly continue their work if they were to make the switch.

So enough with the fanboism, please. There's a reason why linux has a ridiculous market share even though it's free (not as in beer, I don't get free beers anywhere). Don't deceive yourselves, the masses are NOT stupid, they have a very clear idea of what their needs are and what they want. Be sure that the very moment linux offers them what THEY need the flood will be unstoppable. Until them, we'll keep ourselves entertained talking about Gallium3D, KMS, ext4, KDE 4.2.3-alpha-squared, CONFIG_WORK_DAMMIT=Y, and the rest of the things nobody out there really cares about.


(*) Actually, the SD card reader doesn't work (in linux) and will never do, I don't use any office application, and I don't use MSN, so these don't count.

[highlandsun]

Ha! Iconoclasm and heresy! The Penguin will rule with an iron fist and evil Microsoft will be banished to the ninth circle of hell. All hail the Penguin!

Seriously, the "Linux is great for everyone" fans are neglecting one little detail. They are providing the technical support. Grandma is not installing her own software or configuring her system. There's the rub.

Not forgetting that at all. I was providing the technical support before I switched her to Linux too. Only now the support workload has gone down, because everything works.

For all those people talking about "my SD card doesn't work" blah blah blah - did you submit a bug report to your distro provider? Software only improves when users give useful feedback to the right people, to shine attention on the problem spots.

re: "free" software - nothing comes for free, everything has a price. The price of using Free Software is that, at a minimum, you owe the software developers prompt bug reports when you encounter a problem. If you want things to get better, that's the least you can do to help.

[RealNC]

You don't owe the developers anything if you're told "here, use Linux, it's better than Windows."

No, really, you owe them shit in that case. They beg you to use Linux, now you owe them? That's a thing those "Linux advocates" don't get. If you advocate something to people, don't you dare blame them afterwards. You told them to use it, and if they tell you "it sucks", you were just asking for it.

[yotambien]

For all those people talking about "my SD card doesn't work" blah blah blah - did you submit a bug report to your distro provider? Software only improves when users give useful feedback to the right people, to shine attention on the problem spots.

Out of the whole repertoire of idiotic things one can say to a linux newcomer, this must be pretty high up on the list. "Did you submit a bug report?" Useless, self-defeating and quite irritant, if you ask me. What does it really mean when somebody suggests to submit a bug report or--worse--asks whether one has already been submitted? Well, for starters--and this is positive--it means the acceptance of failure. If you resort to the bug report strategy you clearly recognise that something is not working as expected, and the problem should be dealt with by somebody more knowledgeable in the community hierarchy. Not all is positive, though. The obvious negative bit is that you still have the two pieces and somehow you have to put them together. So it's good that you are not treated like a lunatic, but your problem is still there. An important distinction here. Suggesting somebody to file a bug report, when done politely, it's a pretty neutral thing to do, and it even may turn out to be helpful at the end of the day. On the other hand, asking whether you submitted a bug report--and then lecturing the guy in trouble about it--has entirely different connotations; it is a clear attempt to shift the blame from where it obviously is (the software) to the person affected by it. This is, to the very least, not fair.

But this is not my case. I haven't arrived yesterday. I have wasted my time more than I should to find out how to make the sd/mmc card reader to work. I have looked up information in as many places as I could about this particular piece of hardware, including forums from all the major distributions, the linux kernel mailing list, linux laptop compatibility reports, what have you. I grep'ed the linux sources looking for the device ID and compiled several kernels enabling everything related to this kind of hardware just in case something could work. The problem is one and only one: there are no drivers for it. Full stop. Your suggestion of filing a 'me too' bug report to my distribution is ridiculous. At this stage I wouldn't waste 30 seconds more of my life on this issue. I have to use an arcane sed script in combination with obexftp to retrieve files from my phone, AND _I_ am OK with it. Don't tell me what I should or shouldn't do, and less than that, don't fucking lecture me.

I owe nothing to anybody. If I had to file a bug for every little problem I encountered using linux I would do nothing else all day round. Instead, I judge whether I can live with it or not and take a decision accordingly. If something _really_ annoys me, there is no easy workaround, and my work and/or sanity depends on it, I'll pop in the relevant mailing list and ask for help/file the goddamned bug report. Doing this is neither my job nor my hobby, so I avoid doing it as much as I can.

[rbmorse]

and less than that, don't fucking lecture me

How about returning the favor? Your rants are getting tiresome and given the audience of this site, misdirected. Attitude has been a problem for Linux since day one, but I don't see anything constructive coming from you, either.

[Ant P.]

But it gets much worse. The 'typical user' is a lie.

Quite correct. My parents are both totally computer-illiterate, yet I have never seen them make any of those hypothetical user complaints you go on about after giving them Ubuntu to use. On the other hand, they had their bank details stolen back when they used Windows.