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>The desktop never really needed Linux That depends on how far Microsoft and Apple go with the tabletization of Windows and OS X in the next few years. I've b

by learc83 14y ago

>The desktop never really needed Linux That depends on how far Microsoft and Apple go with the tabletization of Windows and OS X in the next few years. I've been a mac user for years, but after playing with mountain lion, I could see the writing on the wall. It was time for a new laptop, so I went with a thinkpad with Arch Linux. I don't think that Microsoft will ever manage to completely force the app store on everyone--solely because of enterprise customers--unless maybe they force you to use it on home/basic and make it optional on business/enterprise. However, I do think that's what they and Apple eventually want. I also think that's probably what the average consumer wants. We need Linux as a third (and 4th, 5th...) option for all of us edge cases that don't fit the standard consumer mold.

cooldeal 14y ago
>That depends on how far Microsoft and Apple go with the tabletization of Windows and OS X in the next few years. >We need Linux as a third (and 4th, 5th...) option for all of us edge cases that don't fit the standard consumer mold. Err, what about Android? >I don't think that Microsoft will ever manage to completely force the app store on everyone--solely because of enterprise customers--unless maybe they force you to use it on home/basic and make it optional on business/enterprise That is already the case. To sideload apps home/pro versions you need a valid developer license. To sideload on Windows Enterprise the domain IT admins can do it. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/04/25/deploying-metro-style-apps-to-businesses.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/04/25/depl...
- learc83 14y ago
  >That is already the case. To sideload apps home/pro versions you need a valid developer license. To sideload on Windows Enterprise the domain IT admins can do it. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/04/25/depl.. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/04/25/depl.... Not really a windows guy, so I didn't know it had gotten that bad. Wow. >Err, what about Android? Android is far too rigid in it's current iteration to use as a general purpose OS. There's just too much you can't do with it. Google has it's vision of what it should be and you have to fight to fight the OS to break away from that (try removing the navigation bar on 4.1). Android could work as a general purpose OS, but it would require a major fork.
momo-reina 14y ago
As an aside, which thinkpad did you go with? I bought a macbook air thinking I could easily replace OS X with linux but almost bricked the thing due to EFI issues (rEFIT wasn't any help and actually caused the problem). I'm thinking of going with a thinkpad next time around but not sure which one as I've never had one before. X1 Carbon looked promising but battery life is a bit disappointing.
- learc83 14y ago
  I went with a T430, mainly because it's built like tank, and it's cheap enough that I'm not afraid to haul it around everywhere. At first glance it looks like an older computer, so I'm not too worried about someone stealing it either. I love the trackpoint (don't have to take my hands off the home keys to use the touchpad). I also love the docking bay, with my mac I had to unplug the power, speakers and usb, now I just push a button and it pops off the dock.
- strictfp 14y ago
  Have the same experience with reFIT. Just unnecessary. What you can do instead is to just install Linux normally with GRUB, and then access it through the Windows boot function built into the mac. Hold command during boot and choose windows, takes you to GRUB.
klodolph 14y ago
It's funny you switch to Arch Linux, because Arch Linux is exactly the worst example of broken userland that Linus is talking about in the post. Arch Linux values "bleeding edge" over all things including basic usability, and they willfully break compatibility with all other distros even when there is no conceivable benefit. The best example of this is the Arch mishandling of Python 3. Remember when they decided that "python" was now Python 3? If you are a Python dev, then alarm bells should already be ringing in your head. This is a BAD decision with no excuses. Python is wonderful because it is very portable. I can write Python scripts on my Mac and run them on Linux or even Windows without significant changes. Python 2 and Python 3 are incompatible, and I usually target Python 2 for anything I want to be portable, since Python 2 ships default on OS X and on lots of Linux distros. This is reality. My Python 2 scripts begin with a shebang, "#!/usr/bin/env python" which launches the Python 2 executable, wherever it is installed, on OS X or Linux. Unless you are running Arch Linux, in which case you need to go in and manually change the script to point to "python2" instead of "python". Except "python2" is essentially unique to Arch, it doesn't exist on Debian or Fedora or OS X or whatever. So no portable script is EVER going to point to "python2". But there's no real benefit to making "python" into Python 3. Anyone targeting Python 3 will write "python3", which works wherever Python 3 is installed, including Arch Linux. This is the decision the upstream made, and it's a good decision. Anyone targeting Python 2 writes "python", which works everywhere except Arch, and on Arch you have to edit your scripts. Who wants to keep a separate copy of your scripts for Arch? What if they're not your scripts? Do you write a shell script that runs "sed" to fix them? What if you keep your Python scripts in Git or SVN, and don't want to change them every damn time you check out a fresh copy on Arch? Worse yet, lots of Python devs want to install and test with specific versions of Python -- say, the Python version that their servers run. Arch sabotages this, because as soon as you put "python" in your $PATH, a ton of Arch programs break if they target Python 3. And they wouldn't have broken if they just said "python3" in the shebang to begin with. The result is that Arch has to maintain a fork of EVERY Python script in their repository. For what? No real reason. The only conceivable benefit of this terrible change is that a user can type "python" in the terminal and get Python 3 instead of Python 2. I've been doing this for years with an alias in my .bashrc, and it doesn't break every Python package in the repository. So in short, the Arch Linux developers promise a new world in which not only is binary compatibility impossible, but source compatibility for SCRIPTING LANGUAGES is impossible as well. They have taken a bad idea and stuck to it, dismissing anyone who disagrees with them by suggesting that they use "sed" to fix the user's "broken" scripts, in such a way that it would break compatibility with every distribution besides Arch. And I have further rants about Arch with respect to (1) their dismissal of bug reports of serious security vulnerabilities in default configurations (2) the dismal performance and general usability of their package manager (3) the inability of their maintainers to create a correct package for something as simple as a font (4) the terrible average quality of advice on their wiki, which is often gives advice that simply doesn't work for well-documented and easy-to-discover reasons. Gawd, use anything else. Gentoo, even. Okay, I want to rant more. (1) Security vulnerabilities are dismissed with the kind of reasoning like "users who run this package know what they are doing, and don't run the application on untrusted networks." Considering any (non-virtual) network secure is almost certainly a sign of incompetence in your sysop. (3) Install "terminus-font", it won't work. You have to manually "xset fp" the path to it. (4) See #3, and then look up the Wiki advice for it. It just doesn't work if you run e.g. GDM, which doesn't run ~/.xinit.

by learc83 14y ago

cooldeal 14y ago

>That depends on how far Microsoft and Apple go with the tabletization of Windows and OS X in the next few years. >We need Linux as a third (and 4th, 5th...) option for all of us edge cases that don't fit the standard consumer mold. Err, what about Android? >I don't think that Microsoft will ever manage to completely force the app store on everyone--solely because of enterprise customers--unless maybe they force you to use it on home/basic and make it optional on business/enterprise That is already the case. To sideload apps home/pro versions you need a valid developer license. To sideload on Windows Enterprise the domain IT admins can do it. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/04/25/deploying-metro-style-apps-to-businesses.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/04/25/depl...

learc83 14y ago
>That is already the case. To sideload apps home/pro versions you need a valid developer license. To sideload on Windows Enterprise the domain IT admins can do it. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/04/25/depl.. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/04/25/depl.... Not really a windows guy, so I didn't know it had gotten that bad. Wow. >Err, what about Android? Android is far too rigid in it's current iteration to use as a general purpose OS. There's just too much you can't do with it. Google has it's vision of what it should be and you have to fight to fight the OS to break away from that (try removing the navigation bar on 4.1). Android could work as a general purpose OS, but it would require a major fork.

momo-reina 14y ago

As an aside, which thinkpad did you go with? I bought a macbook air thinking I could easily replace OS X with linux but almost bricked the thing due to EFI issues (rEFIT wasn't any help and actually caused the problem). I'm thinking of going with a thinkpad next time around but not sure which one as I've never had one before. X1 Carbon looked promising but battery life is a bit disappointing.

learc83 14y ago
I went with a T430, mainly because it's built like tank, and it's cheap enough that I'm not afraid to haul it around everywhere. At first glance it looks like an older computer, so I'm not too worried about someone stealing it either. I love the trackpoint (don't have to take my hands off the home keys to use the touchpad). I also love the docking bay, with my mac I had to unplug the power, speakers and usb, now I just push a button and it pops off the dock.
strictfp 14y ago
Have the same experience with reFIT. Just unnecessary. What you can do instead is to just install Linux normally with GRUB, and then access it through the Windows boot function built into the mac. Hold command during boot and choose windows, takes you to GRUB.

klodolph 14y ago

It's funny you switch to Arch Linux, because Arch Linux is exactly the worst example of broken userland that Linus is talking about in the post. Arch Linux values "bleeding edge" over all things including basic usability, and they willfully break compatibility with all other distros even when there is no conceivable benefit. The best example of this is the Arch mishandling of Python 3. Remember when they decided that "python" was now Python 3? If you are a Python dev, then alarm bells should already be ringing in your head. This is a BAD decision with no excuses. Python is wonderful because it is very portable. I can write Python scripts on my Mac and run them on Linux or even Windows without significant changes. Python 2 and Python 3 are incompatible, and I usually target Python 2 for anything I want to be portable, since Python 2 ships default on OS X and on lots of Linux distros. This is reality. My Python 2 scripts begin with a shebang, "#!/usr/bin/env python" which launches the Python 2 executable, wherever it is installed, on OS X or Linux. Unless you are running Arch Linux, in which case you need to go in and manually change the script to point to "python2" instead of "python". Except "python2" is essentially unique to Arch, it doesn't exist on Debian or Fedora or OS X or whatever. So no portable script is EVER going to point to "python2". But there's no real benefit to making "python" into Python 3. Anyone targeting Python 3 will write "python3", which works wherever Python 3 is installed, including Arch Linux. This is the decision the upstream made, and it's a good decision. Anyone targeting Python 2 writes "python", which works everywhere except Arch, and on Arch you have to edit your scripts. Who wants to keep a separate copy of your scripts for Arch? What if they're not your scripts? Do you write a shell script that runs "sed" to fix them? What if you keep your Python scripts in Git or SVN, and don't want to change them every damn time you check out a fresh copy on Arch? Worse yet, lots of Python devs want to install and test with specific versions of Python -- say, the Python version that their servers run. Arch sabotages this, because as soon as you put "python" in your $PATH, a ton of Arch programs break if they target Python 3. And they wouldn't have broken if they just said "python3" in the shebang to begin with. The result is that Arch has to maintain a fork of EVERY Python script in their repository. For what? No real reason. The only conceivable benefit of this terrible change is that a user can type "python" in the terminal and get Python 3 instead of Python 2. I've been doing this for years with an alias in my .bashrc, and it doesn't break every Python package in the repository. So in short, the Arch Linux developers promise a new world in which not only is binary compatibility impossible, but source compatibility for SCRIPTING LANGUAGES is impossible as well. They have taken a bad idea and stuck to it, dismissing anyone who disagrees with them by suggesting that they use "sed" to fix the user's "broken" scripts, in such a way that it would break compatibility with every distribution besides Arch. And I have further rants about Arch with respect to (1) their dismissal of bug reports of serious security vulnerabilities in default configurations (2) the dismal performance and general usability of their package manager (3) the inability of their maintainers to create a correct package for something as simple as a font (4) the terrible average quality of advice on their wiki, which is often gives advice that simply doesn't work for well-documented and easy-to-discover reasons. Gawd, use anything else. Gentoo, even. Okay, I want to rant more. (1) Security vulnerabilities are dismissed with the kind of reasoning like "users who run this package know what they are doing, and don't run the application on untrusted networks." Considering any (non-virtual) network secure is almost certainly a sign of incompetence in your sysop. (3) Install "terminus-font", it won't work. You have to manually "xset fp" the path to it. (4) See #3, and then look up the Wiki advice for it. It just doesn't work if you run e.g. GDM, which doesn't run ~/.xinit.