anyone seen or heard this before?

[Joel Hammer]

It seems to me that linux advocates should stop worrying about what MS
might be doing and spend their time making linux so easy and powerful for
the average desktop user that when MS tries this sort of thing migration
to linux would be a viable option for the average person. Right now,
linux is nowhere near good enuf.

For example, I already have about 12 hours of work into getting my palm
Zire to work with linux, and I still have a ways to go with no sure
success in sight. This for a product that the jpilot documentation said
was supported.

<rant>For another example of the failure of open source, the only office
suite that has consistently worked for me is the much maligned (by the
open source advocates) staroffice. I have never gotten koffice to do any
serious work, and would never trust it with anything important. Why is
it that abiword won't even work anymore (well known unix font problem)
but acrobat reader 5 works fine? Could this be that people who write for
money worry  about keeping customers happy while opensource developers
are more concerned with writing beautiful software and impressing their
peers but which may or may not be usable by average folks?  This should
send a message, but, it will likely fall on deaf ears. Linux advocates
tend to blame stupid users, not stupid software.  </rant>

For example, don't you think by now that there would be program which
would walk users through building their kernel by asking them just a
few simple questions and then compiling it for them? Instead, modern
kernels compile everything as modules. This is fine unless you need to
update your kernel. Compiling every module that exists is very slow,
and what happens if something fails? Very time consuming. Then, you
need to figure out initrd. Imagine just telling a program what devices
you want to use, what your monitor and video card are, and so on, and
voila, it does it for you. I just spent over an hour going over all the
options with make xconfig. Then, the thang won't compile. I likely left
something out I should have left in, but, that should be impossible with
well written software. Writing such a program would be a very big job,
and would require continual and timely updating, but, you would do if
your livelihood depended on it. It reminds me of what Samuel Johnson said,
"No man but a fool ever wrote but for money."

Joel

On Fri, Apr 18, 2003 at 11:28:32AM +1000, Keith Antoine wrote:
> 
> LINUX MAGAZINE: MICROSOFT'S POWER PLAY
> "Will Trusted Computing mean the end the PC as we know it?"
> COMPLETE STORY:
> http://www.linux-mag.com/2003-01/palladium_01.html
> More Infrastructure stories: http://linuxtoday.com/infrastructure