7 ms·

Freedom also carries a cost. At the end of the day, the best OS for any given individual is the one that gives them the largest net increase in utility, for the

by jsolson 15y ago

Freedom also carries a cost. At the end of the day, the best OS for any given individual is the one that gives them the largest net increase in utility, for their personal utility function. My experience suggests that a Free OS isn't worth it to me, but it's been about six years since I gave it a go full-time. The last time I gave Linux a good go round (as in using it as my primary OS for everything I did), I still had to invest time in getting my touchpad to work correctly with X or getting decent sub-pixel anti-aliasing. All of the freedom to tinker in the world is worthless to me if I can't get the basics sorted without a significant investment of my time.

davidw 15y ago
You would hope that on a site like Hacker News, there would be a good percentage of users who would get a lot of utility out of being able to tinker with their operating system in ways not sanctioned by the creator of said OS.
- arthur_debert 15y ago
  The issue is not that one would like to tinker, but that without a significant time investment tinkering, you can't get the basics working. Nothing precludes the OS from being tinkerable but mostly working out of the box.
  - thatjoshguy 15y ago
    Why I love OS X. I remember using Terminal to change every single .string string to "LOL" on one of the school macs. Good times indeed...
  - icarus127 15y ago
    In my experience this hasn't been true of (some distributions of) Linux in several years. I've talked to a lot of people who hold this opinion and they generally haven't tried Linux in 5+ years.
    - arthur_debert 15y ago
      I think for the general case yes, but there are still some rough spots on certain hardware (e.g. power management on macbook pros and so on). Some other smaller things, like attaching an apple keyboard to ubuntu creates up with pretty weird mappings for a couple of keys. Configuring the keyboard under those conditions is pretty confusing.
- kenrikm 15y ago
  Yes, if it's your hobby. If you need to get something done (time = money) but have to stop to fix something in your free operating system then it is no longer "free" (as in money) I'm not talking about the openness of the system in relation to code etc..
  - davidw 15y ago
    If you have to change something in a closed system, it will either be impossible, or cost zillions of dollars (whatever it takes to convince Microsoft or Apple to do it for you). A number of years ago, working on a semi-embedded system, I hacked the way Linux boots from USB devices to speed it up, which made the people I was working for quite happy. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about - I would expect to find a lot of people with similar stories on a site like this. Also, configuring Linux machines is not really that onerous in this day and age. I suspect more time is wasted complaining about it than in actually doing it. There are certainly still some exceptions, and if you want the ultimate in "mom friendly", Mac OS is probably the way to go. But for a 'hacker', the ability to explore and modify might trump that need for ease of use.
slowpoke 15y ago
>Freedom also carries a cost. What cost? You're stating this as a fact, when it certainly isn't. As I've pointed out in another comment, the claim that usability is an orthogonal concept to Freedom is a false dichotomy. Yes, there are quite some issues at the moment, I'm not going to deny that. The thing is, a lot of those, like missing hardware support, are not the fault of the Free Software community, it's the fault of the very things we're trying to stop: closed/locked hardware, proprietary drivers, non-open file-formats or Freedom-denying practices like DRM or tivoization, and finally plain and simple FUD (named as the single most critical problem GNU/Linux faces in an infographic released by the Linux Foundation last year[1]). Before someone points out that shifting the blame doesn't make the problems go away, let me add that I'm perfectly aware of this. I just want to make it clear that it's unfair to blame Free Software for a lot of the problems it faces, when in fact we fought and tried to prevent a lot of them for more than two decades. [1]: http://content.linuxfoundation.org/20th/images/linuxthennowinfographic.jpg http://content.linuxfoundation.org/20th/images/linuxthennowi...
- DrStalker 15y ago
  I don't need to blame the free software community when I say "GNU/Linux and open source software do not meet my requirements" I'm not willing to sacrifice productivity to make a philosophical point, so I only use Linux when Linux is the best tool for the job.
- janardanyri 15y ago
  This IS clear to everyone; it's simply irrelevant. Life's not fair. We all have to deal with unfair problems. Emphasizing the unfairness of your problems only makes the FSF look less "idealistic as in principled" and more "idealistic as in naive." Relatedly, your most critical problem is not external, it's that the FSF is now associated more closely with non-issues like "GNU/Linux" nomenclature than solving serious problems. Suck it up, grit your teeth, and press on. That's what it takes to be successful in just about any field of life. Anything else ends with you sitting on the sidelines, impotently complaining about how unfair it all is and how bad all the successful organizations are.
  - 15y ago

by jsolson 15y ago

davidw 15y ago

You would hope that on a site like Hacker News, there would be a good percentage of users who would get a lot of utility out of being able to tinker with their operating system in ways not sanctioned by the creator of said OS.

arthur_debert 15y ago
The issue is not that one would like to tinker, but that without a significant time investment tinkering, you can't get the basics working. Nothing precludes the OS from being tinkerable but mostly working out of the box.
- thatjoshguy 15y ago
  Why I love OS X. I remember using Terminal to change every single .string string to "LOL" on one of the school macs. Good times indeed...
- icarus127 15y ago
  In my experience this hasn't been true of (some distributions of) Linux in several years. I've talked to a lot of people who hold this opinion and they generally haven't tried Linux in 5+ years.
  - arthur_debert 15y ago
    I think for the general case yes, but there are still some rough spots on certain hardware (e.g. power management on macbook pros and so on). Some other smaller things, like attaching an apple keyboard to ubuntu creates up with pretty weird mappings for a couple of keys. Configuring the keyboard under those conditions is pretty confusing.
kenrikm 15y ago
Yes, if it's your hobby. If you need to get something done (time = money) but have to stop to fix something in your free operating system then it is no longer "free" (as in money) I'm not talking about the openness of the system in relation to code etc..
- davidw 15y ago
  If you have to change something in a closed system, it will either be impossible, or cost zillions of dollars (whatever it takes to convince Microsoft or Apple to do it for you). A number of years ago, working on a semi-embedded system, I hacked the way Linux boots from USB devices to speed it up, which made the people I was working for quite happy. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about - I would expect to find a lot of people with similar stories on a site like this. Also, configuring Linux machines is not really that onerous in this day and age. I suspect more time is wasted complaining about it than in actually doing it. There are certainly still some exceptions, and if you want the ultimate in "mom friendly", Mac OS is probably the way to go. But for a 'hacker', the ability to explore and modify might trump that need for ease of use.

slowpoke 15y ago

>Freedom also carries a cost. What cost? You're stating this as a fact, when it certainly isn't. As I've pointed out in another comment, the claim that usability is an orthogonal concept to Freedom is a false dichotomy. Yes, there are quite some issues at the moment, I'm not going to deny that. The thing is, a lot of those, like missing hardware support, are not the fault of the Free Software community, it's the fault of the very things we're trying to stop: closed/locked hardware, proprietary drivers, non-open file-formats or Freedom-denying practices like DRM or tivoization, and finally plain and simple FUD (named as the single most critical problem GNU/Linux faces in an infographic released by the Linux Foundation last year[1]). Before someone points out that shifting the blame doesn't make the problems go away, let me add that I'm perfectly aware of this. I just want to make it clear that it's unfair to blame Free Software for a lot of the problems it faces, when in fact we fought and tried to prevent a lot of them for more than two decades. [1]: http://content.linuxfoundation.org/20th/images/linuxthennowinfographic.jpg http://content.linuxfoundation.org/20th/images/linuxthennowi...

DrStalker 15y ago
I don't need to blame the free software community when I say "GNU/Linux and open source software do not meet my requirements" I'm not willing to sacrifice productivity to make a philosophical point, so I only use Linux when Linux is the best tool for the job.
janardanyri 15y ago
This IS clear to everyone; it's simply irrelevant. Life's not fair. We all have to deal with unfair problems. Emphasizing the unfairness of your problems only makes the FSF look less "idealistic as in principled" and more "idealistic as in naive." Relatedly, your most critical problem is not external, it's that the FSF is now associated more closely with non-issues like "GNU/Linux" nomenclature than solving serious problems. Suck it up, grit your teeth, and press on. That's what it takes to be successful in just about any field of life. Anything else ends with you sitting on the sidelines, impotently complaining about how unfair it all is and how bad all the successful organizations are.
- 15y ago