5 ms·

Does it have to be better, or even preferable? Is "it's sufficiently good for my needs but it's free" not enough? Whole industries have died because a free pro

by jleahy 6y ago

Does it have to be better, or even preferable? Is "it's sufficiently good for my needs but it's free" not enough? Whole industries have died because a free product has emerged that's "good enough" for 90+% of people. When was the last time anybody bought the electronic Encyclopedia Brittanica now we have Wikipedia?

irrational 6y ago
Strangely I stumbled across an article today on the online Encyclopedia Brittanica which didn’t have an equivalent on Wikipedia. I wonder if anyone has ever done a comparison to find all the article on one but not the other.
- nsriv 6y ago
  This sounds like a cool project, git diff for encyclopedic knowledge
- young_unixer 6y ago
  Just out of curiosity, what was the article?
mixmastamyk 6y ago
Perhaps, but there are lock-in effects preventing the encyclopedia situation from occurring. When tax dollars are still being shuttled to the deep pockets of MS and Oracle, a more proactive stance is needed.
snazz 6y ago
Linux would have to be extremely good for most people to take the effort to switch. Switching to Wikipedia doesn't require reformatting your hard drive and installing a new operating system—a completely foreign concept for 98% of the computer-using population.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
  Reformatting your hard drive and installing a new operating system is just the beginning of it. Such a drastic change of OS basically disrupts your whole workflow while you get used to the new one. Everything from where to find things to keyboard shortcuts to UX paradigms.
  - lionkor 6y ago
    I would argue that the change from Win10 to a KDE linux or a similar windows-like UX is similar to a change from Win7 to Win10. Its fair to say that even the Win7 to Win10 switch is something people only do if you force them, but I could see the Win10->Linux change happen for a lot of people if they saw anything it had that they needed. Not having to worry about AV and automatic updates, automatic download and in-OS-ads would be pretty huge already. Yes, most powerusers on windows know where to turn all that off, but a lot of people, like my parents, are scared to fuck something up, so they dont touch any settings, especially not if windows tells them "this improves your experience, you sure you wanna turn it off? nudge". A lot of people would not notice or care if you switched their machine to Linux - as long as it means they have to worry about less.
- sergeykish 6y ago
  You can run Linux from USB stick. That still requires BIOS/UEFI setup, though I do not expect non-technical population switching. It would be great if Steam had non game applications.
  - gsich 6y ago
    Steam has that.
  - lionkor 6y ago
    You should be able to install most distros alongside windows without any extra work, just in the installer. UEFI+GPT boot is an option, and that never required me to fuck with the uefi setup, it just installed itself into the EFI partition together with windows's stuff, and you could pick in GRUB "windows" or "linux" :)

by jleahy 6y ago

irrational 6y ago

Strangely I stumbled across an article today on the online Encyclopedia Brittanica which didn’t have an equivalent on Wikipedia. I wonder if anyone has ever done a comparison to find all the article on one but not the other.

nsriv 6y ago
This sounds like a cool project, git diff for encyclopedic knowledge
young_unixer 6y ago
Just out of curiosity, what was the article?

mixmastamyk 6y ago

Perhaps, but there are lock-in effects preventing the encyclopedia situation from occurring. When tax dollars are still being shuttled to the deep pockets of MS and Oracle, a more proactive stance is needed.

snazz 6y ago

Linux would have to be extremely good for most people to take the effort to switch. Switching to Wikipedia doesn't require reformatting your hard drive and installing a new operating system—a completely foreign concept for 98% of the computer-using population.

kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
Reformatting your hard drive and installing a new operating system is just the beginning of it. Such a drastic change of OS basically disrupts your whole workflow while you get used to the new one. Everything from where to find things to keyboard shortcuts to UX paradigms.
- lionkor 6y ago
  I would argue that the change from Win10 to a KDE linux or a similar windows-like UX is similar to a change from Win7 to Win10. Its fair to say that even the Win7 to Win10 switch is something people only do if you force them, but I could see the Win10->Linux change happen for a lot of people if they saw anything it had that they needed. Not having to worry about AV and automatic updates, automatic download and in-OS-ads would be pretty huge already. Yes, most powerusers on windows know where to turn all that off, but a lot of people, like my parents, are scared to fuck something up, so they dont touch any settings, especially not if windows tells them "this improves your experience, you sure you wanna turn it off? nudge". A lot of people would not notice or care if you switched their machine to Linux - as long as it means they have to worry about less.
sergeykish 6y ago
You can run Linux from USB stick. That still requires BIOS/UEFI setup, though I do not expect non-technical population switching. It would be great if Steam had non game applications.
- gsich 6y ago
  Steam has that.
- lionkor 6y ago
  You should be able to install most distros alongside windows without any extra work, just in the installer. UEFI+GPT boot is an option, and that never required me to fuck with the uefi setup, it just installed itself into the EFI partition together with windows's stuff, and you could pick in GRUB "windows" or "linux" :)