Pale Moon forum

The Linux base might be perfectly stable but its packages are not. They're fiddly and breakage is common after updating. And since you use a desktop environment, an init system, xorg, drivers, package management and all that good stuff, you can't really slap the label 'stable' on this as a whole. Drivers in particular are usually not as good as the Windows counterparts.

Just recently I updated xf86-video-intel for my old Thinkpad, which is almost the perfect combination for Linux. The best drivers and arguably the most-supported line of laptops. Well-matured hardware. And it still f***ed up video decoding completely. I get why some users may prefer an 'eternal project' to tinker with to a system that 'just works', but that kind of thing gets old after a while.

Thrawn wrote:... (We've come a long way from the old days of Linux, which was like double-clutching without synchromesh)

Nice comparison .

jumba wrote:With Linux it is in the hands of the user to choose between the automatic and manual transmission.

To some extent, yes, but Linux always has been built by programmers for programmers. Organisations like Canonical and Red Hat have done a lot to mainstream it, but ultimately it still serves the purposes of people who like building operating systems.

Systems like Ubuntu and Mint offer semi-automatic. You get an easy, graphical interface for operating what is ultimately a manual transmission underneath.

The only way to make it completely automatic would be to block access to the flexibility of the underlying system, which would be anathema to many of the developers.

I think the main issue with making it "automatic transmission" is that you have to reduce the number of ways the same thing can be done. Yes, it means reducing flexibility, and it above all means that the people working on the OS need to be able to agree on one main way above all other options of doing something (that is not completely alien to existing GUI users). I think the biggest hurdle is there: to make highly independent developers agree on cooperation and unifying a way of working. One that Linuxes still haven't overcome. I'm all for choice, but Linux-based operating systems have too much choice (yes, there absolutely is such a thing).
Another hurdle is that the core utilities in them are, inherently, terminal-driven. The UI/WM is optional. That will also cause an issue for pure graphical adoption because terminal-driven tools are manual transmission all the way.

For all the different flavors, there hasn't been a single GNU operating system yet that has a uniform, overarching method and structure to it that is presented to the user, similar to the uniformity that Windows 7 has. Deviating from that has resulted in a dichotomy as seen in Windows 8 that didn't know what it wanted to be, and the resulting lack of adoption followed. So it's really no surprise that Windows 7 is going strong and sees no real decline so far. What are the alternatives that give you something that is as balanced and complete and is still a real standalone OS?

Moonchild wrote:What are the alternatives that give you something that is as balanced and complete and is still a real standalone OS?

Well, you can get a balanced, complete, standalone operating system from Apple - but it will not be flexible. It will be exactly what Apple wants it to be, and you will pay dearly for it, but it will certainly be a complete package. That's exactly the opposite of open source.

Thrawn wrote: Well, you can get a balanced, complete, standalone operating system from Apple - but it will not be flexible.

...which (to fill in the gaps) is a flavor of UNIX, of which Linux is a clone...

Falna wrote:

Thrawn wrote: Well, you can get a balanced, complete, standalone operating system from Apple - but it will not be flexible.

...which (to fill in the gaps) is a flavor of UNIX, of which Linux is a clone...

Yes, but this many years down the track, that doesn't amount to much more than saying, "Sports cars and semi-trailers are different flavors of automobiles." It's true, they're driven by the same principles of internal combustion, but they have pretty different characteristics and use cases.

Night Wing wrote:Basically at this point, for all of Microsoft grandiose plans for Windows 10, it has to get Windows 7 users to give up Windows 7 which makes Windows 7 users..........the "wild card" in this grand scheme of things.

Ahh and here is the fly in ointment. If indeed you lose your Windows 7 key after 30 days and looking at the way M$ is using every tactic in the book to make everyone upgrade. That may be the point in the first place.

So they offer you a "free" windows 10, (everybody loves free right) and for most folks it takes a bit more than 30 days to figure out if they really like it or not and then they find out that they can't go back. Or they wait to long to get someone over to work on it and it's too late.

Instant change in the numbers of Windows 7 users vs. Windows 10 users.

Then M$ can say, hey just look at the numbers. Everyone is staying with Windows 10 so it must be better.

I mean seriously! How many average folks are going to know how to stop the upgrade or all the under the hood stuff from getting loaded on their computer. As a computer tech I can give you a hint. In the end, unless they have a friend that knows better they will either get tired of the harassment and just upgrade or they will believe all the paid garbage about how great it is and upgrade. M$ knows this and is playing the numbers. That's why the push is soooooo hard to get them on now before all the negative news hits the fan and people have a moment to really think about it.

Well, if someone doesn't have the technical knowledge to stay on earlier Windows - or jump ship to an alternative operating system - then perhaps it's for the best that they're more or less compelled to move to a system that will, at least, continue to receive security patches.

My wife likes Windows 10 better than 8, on her laptop. It's the only Windows computer in our house, though.

Thrawn wrote:Well, if someone doesn't have the technical knowledge to stay on earlier Windows - or jump ship to an alternative operating system - then perhaps it's for the best that they're more or less compelled to move to a system that will, at least, continue to receive security patches.

My wife likes Windows 10 better than 8, on her laptop. It's the only Windows computer in our house, though.

Yea, I guess it comes down to what you like and what bothers you or not. I live in the AZ desert and it's mostly older folks here but man, even they are really upset about Windows 10. It's also a real pain for me as I am usually the one called to fix them. I honestly have no idea how fix Windows 10 when every time you do something a day later it returns because of another update. I have had to turn them down because it makes me look bad like I never really fixed it in the first place and they simply see that it's doing the same thing again.

For me it's all about control. If I can't control how my computer works then it's really not mine at all. I finally got another machine to work Linux on and I'm downloading PCLinuxOS KDE Full Monty 2014.12 I really think this is going to be a winner for me and now I finally have a machine to play it with without messing with my main machine.