good bye linux

[Martin Bähr]

friends,

it is with sad eyes that i must say this, but this is it, i am leaving
the linux world. good bye!

this decision is not done lightly. it was a long time in the making.
it started when i met my wife. confronted with her windows laptop i had
to think long and hard whether i could tolerate windows in my home or if
i should stay single. in the end my wife won.

then i discovered 3d online games. nice, but unplayable under linux.
even with wine, it just leads to whining.

now my wife is pregnant, and more and more she pushes me to actually
earn some money. the days where i could work for free on a free
operating system are gone. i need to bring money in to feed the baby,
and as you know, noone gets fired for using windows, so that's that.

the last straw was actually this announcement:
http://www.rpath.com/corp/2010-press-releases/806-11152010

conary is available on windows!

what more do i need?

think about it. most windows software is not that bad. it's the
packaging that's horrible. the lack of assurance that installing some
software will not overwrite some dlls of another program, the inability
to really cleanly uninstall software and undo changes that an
inastallation did. all these issues are now a thing of the past.

pike and roxen, two other mainstays in my life also run on windows, even
chrome, my favourite browser, and for ssh there is the ever excellent
putty. so there is really nothing for me to miss.

and hence, as i gain more and more experience with windows thanks to the
games i am playing there, i'll quickly pick a top windows admin job and
be able to make my wife happy.

i wish my friends in the foresight linux development team good luck!

good bye, and thanks for all the fish!

greetings, martin.

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[Bruce Clement]

Congratulations Martin,

Timestamped 2nd April here, but I assume still the first where you are.

And it's not just a selfish action adopting Windows as every time you buy a
Microsoft product you help Bill & Melissa mutilate the genitals of a little
African boy.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/press-releases/Pages/male-circumcision-partnership-launches-scale-up-in-africa-090611.aspx

Bruce

On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 4:40 AM, Martin Bähr <

Post by Martin Bähr
friends,
it is with sad eyes that i must say this, but this is it, i am leaving
the linux world. good bye!
this decision is not done lightly. it was a long time in the making.
it started when i met my wife. confronted with her windows laptop i had
to think long and hard whether i could tolerate windows in my home or if
i should stay single. in the end my wife won.
then i discovered 3d online games. nice, but unplayable under linux.
even with wine, it just leads to whining.
now my wife is pregnant, and more and more she pushes me to actually
earn some money. the days where i could work for free on a free
operating system are gone. i need to bring money in to feed the baby,
and as you know, noone gets fired for using windows, so that's that.
http://www.rpath.com/corp/2010-press-releases/806-11152010
conary is available on windows!
what more do i need?
think about it. most windows software is not that bad. it's the
packaging that's horrible. the lack of assurance that installing some
software will not overwrite some dlls of another program, the inability
to really cleanly uninstall software and undo changes that an
inastallation did. all these issues are now a thing of the past.
pike and roxen, two other mainstays in my life also run on windows, even
chrome, my favourite browser, and for ssh there is the ever excellent
putty. so there is really nothing for me to miss.
and hence, as i gain more and more experience with windows thanks to the
games i am playing there, i'll quickly pick a top windows admin job and
be able to make my wife happy.
i wish my friends in the foresight linux development team good luck!
good bye, and thanks for all the fish!
greetings, martin.
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--
Bruce Clement

Home: http://www.clement.co.nz/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Bruce_Clement
Directory: http://www.searchme.co.nz/

"Before attempting to create something new, it is vital to have a good
appreciation of everything that already exists in this field." Mikhail
Kalashnikov
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[Ben M.]

Hahahaha, that is one of the coolest comebacks I have ever seen, with a URI as
well.

Good one Bruce 8-0

Sent from my over worked brain in Christchurch.




________________________________
From: Bruce Clement <***@gnuzealand.com>
To: NZLUG Mailing List <***@linux.net.nz>
Sent: Sat, 2 April, 2011 8:54:07 AM
Subject: Re: [nzlug] good bye linux

Congratulations Martin,

Timestamped 2nd April here, but I assume still the first where you are.

And it's not just a selfish action adopting Windows as every time you buy a
Microsoft product you help Bill & Melissa mutilate the genitals of a little
African boy.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/press-releases/Pages/male-circumcision-partnership-launches-scale-up-in-africa-090611.aspx


Bruce

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[Martin Baehr]

Post by Bruce Clement
And it's not just a selfish action adopting Windows as every time you buy a
Microsoft product you help Bill & Melissa mutilate the genitals of a little
African boy.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/press-releases/Pages/male-circumcision-partnership-launches-scale-up-in-africa-090611.aspx

it's not little boys but adults from what i can tell.

i don't want to argue about whether circumcision is good or bad, but
what disturbs me about this project is the cost/benefit ratio. even
asuming that it might be a good thing, they spend $50,000,000 to help
650,000 people. that is $77 per person.

even here you can get it done cheaper than that. (you can also pay more
than 5 times that too)

looks like the typical 'send the experts in' operation, instead of
focusing on education. in relation i also found
http://www.asiaone.com/Health/News/Story/A1Story20100721-228019.html
supposedly circumcision prevents aids. no clue on how that is supposed
to work.

i am sure that for $50,000,000 you can educate a lot more people than
650,000...

anyways, i disgress...
--
cooperative communication with sTeam - caudium, pike, roxen and unix
services: debugging, programming, training, linux sysadmin, web development
--
pike programmer working in china community.gotpike.org
foresight developer (open-steam|caudium).org foresightlinux.org
unix sysadmin iaeste.at realss.com
Martin Bähr http://www.iaeste.at/~mbaehr/ is.schon.org

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[Peter Harrison]

It is of course possible for you to buy an android phone, in which
case you will once more be a full fledged Linux user.

For the record, my home is also not a Windows Free Environment. I did
try, not because of some ideological reason, but because I hate trying
to keep Windows Secure. In the end the "need" for my son to use modern
games was not overcome. I did try; I had him running Linux for a
while. But in the end games are in fact one area that right or wrong -
tie young users to the Windows platform.

Back to Android; Google has been able to pull together the first
widely distributed and successful consumer Linux distribution. Are
they following our ideology of openness perfectly? No. However, we
have a point of comparison; the OpenMoko - which proved to me the
danger of allowing developers drive a consumer UI team.

My observation is that open source is strongest in the back end
technical arena, and weakest in the front end GUI. I'm not saying it's
impossible for open source to be polished, but I think that this is
simply a natural result of the evolutionary pressures involved in open
source. Commercial applications live or die based on their appeal to
users. Open source applications live or die based largely on their
ability to attract developers. Where this rule is violated - Firefox,
OpenOffice for example, there is generally some organisational
mechanism to overcome this issue; and frankly, to fund development
more along commercial lines.

And - getting back to Android - this is another example of a Open
Source project that is not driven by developers, but rather a
dictatorship at the top looking after the interests of users.

So should we be blaming games companies for not delivering games onto
the Linux platform? Is the problem really that they are somehow
secretly in some conspiracy to keep Linux down, or is it really that
there is no common games platform using Linux? Is Android or one of
it's brethren finally going to break through in that market? An open
source gaming platform?

On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 4:40 AM, Martin Bähr

Post by Martin Bähr
friends,
it is with sad eyes that i must say this, but this is it, i am leaving
the linux world. good bye!

...

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[Martin Bähr]

Post by Peter Harrison
It is of course possible for you to buy an android phone, in which
case you will once more be a full fledged Linux user.

why would i want to do that? we all know that nokia makes the best
phones, and surely that will remain when they run windows. the choice is
obvious.

Post by Peter Harrison
For the record, my home is also not a Windows Free Environment. I did
try, not because of some ideological reason, but because I hate trying
to keep Windows Secure. In the end the "need" for my son to use modern
games was not overcome. I did try; I had him running Linux for a
while. But in the end games are in fact one area that right or wrong -
tie young users to the Windows platform.

the thing with games for me is, that i don't really care how stable they
are. as long as they are stable enough to be playable i don't really
loose any work (or work time) when the system crashes, nor do i risk my
email contacts getting spammed if i have a virus. of course i'd prefer
to run them on linux, but it's not worth the effort, it is just a game.
(the same goes for the lack of source for games. while it is nice to
have source, i am not going to loose sleep over a bug in a game, whereas a
bug in software at work really does cost me sleep if i can't fix it.
lack of source then makes me feel helpless and vulnerable. a feeling that
for me is so bad that it just drives me to avoid non-free software
whereever i can.

Post by Peter Harrison
Back to Android; Google has been able to pull together the first
widely distributed and successful consumer Linux distribution. Are
they following our ideology of openness perfectly? No. However, we
have a point of comparison; the OpenMoko - which proved to me the
danger of allowing developers drive a consumer UI team.

i disagree to a part. openmoko GUI is only bad because not enough
financial resources were available to build a better GUI and openmoko
backers i think were hoping that the community would take care of that.

the openmoko GUI is not that bad, it is just not complete, and not
enough resources/helpers are available to improve on it fast enough.
there are alternatives too. qtmoko, which is a quite usable GUI developed
by trolltech (before they were bought by nokia) and then abandoned. i
have used that one successfully for half a year (until the sd-card died)
(i had used android on it before, until that crashed and i failed to
reinstall it somehow. (it was the same sd-card however, maybe already
faulty)

Post by Peter Harrison
My observation is that open source is strongest in the back end
technical arena, and weakest in the front end GUI. I'm not saying it's
impossible for open source to be polished, but I think that this is
simply a natural result of the evolutionary pressures involved in open
source. Commercial applications live or die based on their appeal to
users.

you are mixing things up here: open source can be commercial.

let me reword (and i think this is what you mean) open community
development is strongest in the back end technical arena, and weakest
in the front end GUI. ubuntus top down support for improving the GUI
demonstrates that.

i agree that commercial applications have a different drive to create an
appealing GUI.

Post by Peter Harrison
Open source applications live or die based largely on their
ability to attract developers. Where this rule is violated - Firefox,
OpenOffice for example, there is generally some organisational
mechanism to overcome this issue; and frankly, to fund development
more along commercial lines.

firefox and openoffice overcome what? the bad UI design? hardly, they
are just copying existing UI anyways. browser UI has hardly developed
since its invention in 1993. tabs is really the only thing that is new.
and even here firefox now just copies chrome (which is another top down
commercial development), and does so badly. (tabs on top is nice, but it
is not really what makes chrome tabs so great)

another ff4 peeve: they did away with global alert popups only to instead
introduce global popups to complain about insecure ssl certs. polished
GUI? hardly!

Post by Peter Harrison
And - getting back to Android - this is another example of a Open
Source project that is not driven by developers, but rather a
dictatorship at the top looking after the interests of users.

yup. and not at all looking at the interests of developers (you can have
the source when we let you, not earlier)

Post by Peter Harrison
So should we be blaming games companies for not delivering games onto
the Linux platform? Is the problem really that they are somehow
secretly in some conspiracy to keep Linux down, or is it really that
there is no common games platform using Linux?

i don't believe the problem is at all technical. but it is a perceived
lack of market. "linux users don't buy software"

check the humble indie bundle for an indication to the contrary btw.

as for the common games platform, it's called openGL.
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX

Post by Peter Harrison
Is Android or one of it's brethren finally going to break through in
that market? An open source gaming platform?

i doubt it, the reason being that android market is not yet developed
enough to sell much. (i can't find it now, but there is an article
detailing the history of angry birds where they found that they make
money on sales on the iphone/ipad platform but earn on advertizing on
android (because the paid version is not selling very well))

greetings, martin.
--
cooperative communication with sTeam - caudium, pike, roxen and unix
services: debugging, programming, training, linux sysadmin, web development
--
pike programmer working in china community.gotpike.org
foresight developer (open-steam|caudium).org foresightlinux.org
unix sysadmin iaeste.at realss.com
Martin Bähr http://www.iaeste.at/~mbaehr/ is.schon.org

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[Martin Bähr]

Post by Martin Bähr

Post by Peter Harrison
Is Android or one of it's brethren finally going to break through in
that market? An open source gaming platform?

i doubt it, the reason being that android market is not yet developed
enough to sell much. (i can't find it now, but there is an article
detailing the history of angry birds where they found that they make
money on sales on the iphone/ipad platform but earn on advertizing on
android (because the paid version is not selling very well))

found it:
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/04/features/how-rovio-made-angry-birds-a-winner?page=all
quote:
"We saw on the iPhone that paid content works," Vesterbacka says.
Consumers pay for the initial download and Rovio keeps the game fresh
with updates. On Android, they saw that paid content wasn't working,
so went with an ad-supported model. It now earns them more than
£600,000 monthly.

greetings, martin.
--
cooperative communication with sTeam - caudium, pike, roxen and unix
services: debugging, programming, training, linux sysadmin, web development
--
pike programmer working in china community.gotpike.org
foresight developer (open-steam|caudium).org foresightlinux.org
unix sysadmin iaeste.at realss.com
Martin Bähr http://www.iaeste.at/~mbaehr/ is.schon.org

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[Craig Box]

Post by Martin Bähr

Post by Martin Bähr
i doubt it, the reason being that android market is not yet developed
enough to sell much. (i can't find it now, but there is an article
detailing the history of angry birds where they found that they make
money on sales on the iphone/ipad platform but earn on advertizing on
android (because the paid version is not selling very well))

http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/04/features/how-rovio-made-angry-birds-a-winner?page=all
"We saw on the iPhone that paid content works," Vesterbacka says.
Consumers pay for the initial download and Rovio keeps the game fresh
with updates. On Android, they saw that paid content wasn't working,
so went with an ad-supported model. It now earns them more than
Ł600,000 monthly.

Another reason Rovio went free on Android (I am sure this is discussed
online, but my source is a talk from them at the SEE '10 conference) is that
there are so many different shapes and sizes of Android device, with
different processors and graphics capabilities. Charge a customer something
- even $0.01 - and they feel they have an obligation to support, a burden
which it wouldn't be sensible to bear across the range of Android devices.
Make it free, and people think "cool!" if it works, and "Oh well, it was
free" if it doesn't.

Not to mention Android versions. See also,
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20023199-264.html.

(Meanwhile, iPod + iPhone, iPad, all the same screen size, etc)

Craig
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[Volker Kuhlmann]

i don't believe the problem is at all technical. but it is a percei=

ved

lack of market. "linux users don't buy software"
=20
check the humble indie bundle for an indication to the contrary btw=

.

Exceptions confirm the rule :-)

Sorry you have to come up with more solid statistics to say that Linu=
x
users "do spend money on their software". Make a list of commercial
applications for Linux, then ask on this list who bought a license fo=
r
what. My prediction is stuff all, I know of very few Linux users who
have bought a license for anything. And I am talking about applicatio=
n
software here, not some exceptional sales idea for charity gone viral=
.
The perceived lack of market is real. And a real problem.

Volker

--=20
Volker Kuhlmann=09=09=09is list0570 with the domain in header.
http://volker.dnsalias.net/=09Please do not CC list postings to me.


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[Bryan Baldwin]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Post by Peter Harrison
For the record, my home is also not a Windows Free Environment. I did
try, not because of some ideological reason, but because I hate trying
to keep Windows Secure. In the end the "need" for my son to use modern
games was not overcome. I did try; I had him running Linux for a
while. But in the end games are in fact one area that right or wrong -
tie young users to the Windows platform.

I will make a deal with my son. When he has conquered all the games that
it is possible to play on GNU+Linux, native, emulated, or with WINE,
then I will consider allowing Windows. :D
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[Bruce Kingsbury]

the standing deal at our piace is that anyone can install any os they like.
just dont expect me to do it. so far the "need" for windows games has not
overcome the inertia of using the os already installed on the machine.

--
Sent from my Ideos!

Post by Bryan Baldwin
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Post by Peter Harrison
For the record, my home is also not a Windows Free Environment. I did
try, not because of some ideological reason, but because I hate trying
to keep Windows Secure. In the end the "need" for my son to use modern
games was not overcome. I did try; I had him running Linux for a
while. But in the end games are in fact one area that right or wrong -
tie young users to the Windows platform.

I will make a deal with my son. When he has conquered all the games that
it is possible to play on GNU+Linux, native, emulated, or with WINE,
then I will consider allowing Windows. :D
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
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