back to article Torvalds: Linux devs may 'cry into our lonely beers' at Christmas

Linus Torvalds has let release candidate five for version 3.13 of the Linux kernel into the wild for some festive footling. The Linux Lord let the new release candidate loose in this post that declares “Nothing really exciting stands out” which is “just how I want it.” “It's the 'how did that ever even pass cursory testing' …

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  1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    “Nothing really exciting stands out” which is “just how I want it”

    Excellent!

    Stable as she goes.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Erm that is not what stable refers to...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        stable is where the jockeys go

        1. Oninoshiko

          I thought it was where the horses went.

          Jockeys go home after a day's work, just like the rest of us, I assume.

  2. Khaptain Silver badge
    Alien

    Adjectives

    It's not easy to find the correct adjectives to describe Linus without sounding rude.

    1. Rukario

      Re: Adjectives

      As long as you don't speak Finnish, "perkeleen vittupää" doesn't sound terribly rude.

      "The devil's c**t hole" on the other hand...

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

        Re: Adjectives

        Why so negative?

        Enjoy life a beer lonely while pondering over the content of /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/em1 with nary a documentation in sight and google bringing up Oracle docs of all things!!

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  3. Alister
    Pint

    Cry into our lonely beers...

    My beer is never lonely, I always make sure it has company

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Eh?

    "The post also outlines his plan for at least three more release candidates in the 3.13 development process,"

    You can't have 4 release candidates, that makes no sense, You either believe it's ready to be released, or it's not, if you think it still needs to be tweaked 3 more times, then it's not ready for release, surely?

    Maybe I'm just lost in the world of reality?

    1. Steven Raith

      Re: Eh?

      You do know what an RC is in terms of testing?

      It's effectively a stage past beta, where no new major code will be added (IE all the features you want are there), but existing code may be modified if further bugs are found.

      If you fix a bug and that creates a regression elsewhere, then you fix that, and that's RC2. So on for RC3 etc.

      You have as many RCs as you want till you're happy it's stable.

      HTH.

      1. MrMur

        Re: Eh?

        I agree with the first commentator (upvoted). You shouldn't plan to have more than one RC, although you can have as many as you like.

        According to wikipedia... "A release candidate (RC) is a beta version with potential to be a final product". If you are planning to have three of them, then numbers 1 & 2 can't be a potentially final product". I am not saying Wikipedia is gospel, but it's my understanding of the term and I would suggest the understanding of the first commentator. If nothing else, the name - "Release Candidate" - should give the game away.

        1. ElReg!comments!Pierre
          Facepalm

          Re: You shouldn't plan to have more than one RC, although you can have as many as you like.

          Yes, that's snake oil merchants' strategy: "we'll have only one RC and we'll be perfect, honest". Meanwhile, responsible people in charge of a very complex project like the Linux kernel have a reasonnable roadmap based on history of bug finding and bugfix time. Remember that every bugfix has to be tested in the whole RC before it can be deemed safe; inevitably some bugfixes will create issues with other parts, and all this needs to be ironed out a couple times before it's stable enough to power ~80% of the world's computers. Planning a single RC would be an obvious lie, a bit like saying that your new car will cost you $30 in maintenance over it's entire life because that's the cost of the first oil change, and why would you plan for anything else, ever?

        2. James Hughes 1

          Re: Eh?

          It's really just terminology though - the actually process is the important bit. Who cares what it's called!

        3. Tom 13

          Re: You shouldn't plan to have more than one

          Yes you should. Back when HP was a real tech company I worked for a firm that had the good fortune to work with them on a product release. They had formulas for testing before release that predicted how many more bugs you would find based in a given testing period based on the number and severity of the bugs you found in the current iteration. So the first RC could go to release at some probability level, but you probably were going to go through more testing at the end of the cycle. If you didn't plan for those cycles you were a damn fool.

    2. Havin_it
      Trollface

      Re: Eh?

      >You can't have 4 release candidates

      Sum1 no reed gud. That was rc5 they just released, so he's forecasting up to rc8.

      Will that make your head explode? I'll keep an eye on the news.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And cry you might

    Still sub-1% penetration.

    Graphics are poorly supported.

    Sound barely works.

    Batteries don't last due to poor energy efficiency.

    Forget Optimus (graphics AND energy efficiency; double clusterfuck)

    Touch-screen support is a joke.

    Touchpads almost work.

    All this failure from the largest open source project. No wonder Windows has no competition.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: And cry you might

      I think it time you moved on to a 2013 GNU/Linux distro - don't keep using the 1993 kernel...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: And cry you might

        Optimus isn't 1993 era. SecureBoot isn't 1993 era.

        These are all problems on Linux TODAY.

        Yet they are all things that work on Windows TODAY.

        1. Paul Crawford Silver badge
          Linux

          Re: And cry you might

          Welcome AC, now just you go and enjoy your lovely working copy of Windows with its _NSAKEY built in, nice to be pre-lubed, eh?

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

        2. Callum

          Re: And cry you might

          I wish. i just bought a Dell Inspiron for the mother-in-law's christmas (it's OK, she doesn't read ElReg). Apparently, just pressing "Do updates" after installing it managed to complete fuck up Windows 8 and it would not allow me to upgrade to 8.1 because the Windows Update and the Dell update had a bit of a fisticuffs resulting in me losing.

          So, I scrubbed Windows 8 entirely, put on Fedora 20, it went on like a breeze. Out of the poster above's list the only problem was her cheap shitty lexmark printer that has no Linux driver (but there is also no Windows 8 driver either). Everything *just works*. Fedora recognises the Secureboot stuff and the KDE interface is usable and looks close enough to her old Windows XP system that the difference can be explained as an improvement. Windows 8 would have taken a LOT of support for her.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: And cry you might

            "I wish. i just bought a Dell Inspiron for the mother-in-law's christmas (it's OK, she doesn't read ElReg). Apparently, just pressing "Do updates" after installing it managed to complete fuck up Windows 8 and it would not allow me to upgrade to 8.1 because the Windows Update and the Dell update had a bit of a fisticuffs resulting in me losing."

            Here, I will give you support like a Linux fanboi:

            Did you remember to plug-in the CPU?

            Have you confused it with a dead badger?

            Clearly everything you have said is an edge case.

            You are obviously lying. The OS is perfect.

            HTH - Linux Fanboi Collective

            "Denying reality one install at a time"

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: And cry you might

      I forgot some:

      SecureBoot - totally screwed on Linux. In fact, Linux might brick your PC if you try SecureBoot.

      Hibernate/Sleep - like playing Russian roulette with your data

      Multi-screen support? Just about, but still a decade or so behind Windows.

      Wi-Fi? Complete crapshoot on whether or not your card works.

      Printing? Garbage.

      The fanboys will crow about freedom, but what good is that when you just shackle yourself with a system that doesn't work with your hardware and doesn't run your software? May as well pick up your free concrete overshoes and go for a swim. Same feeling.

      1. Vociferous

        Re: And cry you might

        > SecureBoot - totally screwed on Linux

        Yeah, let's blame Linux for Microsofts attempt at locking in users by making it impossible to install alternative OS's.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: And cry you might

          Oh, you mean the big, nasty MS who state that you MUST be able to install keys etc on any Win 8 device?

          Yeah, how totally evil of them.

          Having Win RT locked-down is no different to your phone or tablet being locked; and yet the sun shines out Google's arse, doesn't it?

          So not only are you factually incorrect, you're a hypocrite too.

          1. Vociferous

            Re: And cry you might

            > aving Win RT locked-down is no different to your phone or tablet being locked; and yet the sun shines out Google's arse, doesn't it? So not only are you factually incorrect, you're a hypocrite too.

            The F are you on, fanboi?

            Firstly, it's not just RT that's locked down. Secondly, where the hell did you get the impression that I applaud any attempts by Google to keep users from rooting or installing alternative OS's? Thirdly, where the hell did you get the idea that Google has made it impossible to root or install alternative OS's?

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: And cry you might

              "Firstly, it's not just RT that's locked down."

              Yes it is, MS *REQUIRE* the ability to unlock the bootloader as part of their Ts&Cs to OEMs for Win 8.

              1. James Hughes 1

                Re: And cry you might

                Well Mr AC, your lack of knowledge of the subject is quite astounding. I really think you should stop digging that big hole for yourself.

                Can I ask when you last had any personal experience? Or why you think that Windows is overtaking Linux in the server room (it isn't btw, and I won't give references, because you didn't)

                The one think I will say, is that this 'joke' of an OS powers more devices than all the other OS's put together. Android devices rely on Linux, as do vast numbers of embedded devices (TV's, routers, DVD players to name a miniscule subset). The Raspberry Pi runs Linux, as do a host of other small devices. So, can you please explain your nonsensical 'joke' comment, which by it's very nature does seem to give some indication of what a uninformed individual you actually seem to be.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: And cry you might

        A paid Microsoft shill perhaps?

        Microsoft recognizes that GNU/Linux is making headway into the PC/Laptop segment and that home users are keeping older hardware running by using GNU/Linux, as am I.

        My desktop, at work, runs Windows 7 while my laptop at home runs Debian XFCE. There is little or nothing that Windows does that GNU/Linux can't and at some point Corporations will understand that there really is no need to continue paying the Windows tax.

        Breaking the lock in is a one-time expense and pain and the sooner broken the better and potentially safer the data.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: And cry you might

          "A paid Microsoft shill perhaps?"

          Are you a paid Linux shill?

          "Microsoft recognizes that GNU/Linux is making headway into the PC/Laptop"

          Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! That is one of the funniest things I have read. Unless by "headway" to mean a "statistically insignificant" blip. Just wait for regression to the mean (and your mean is sub-1%; always has been).

          "There is little or nothing that Windows does that GNU/Linux can't"

          Run Photoshop, AutoCAD, Outlook, Word, Excel or many other vital industry applications.

          "paying the Windows tax."

          Oh, you mean support? I did not realise RedHat came with free support. Oh wait, it doesn't.

          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: And cry you might

            "Are you a paid Linux shill?"

            How - exactly - can one be a paid Linux shill? Who would pay someone to be a Linux shill?

            You, OTOH, have a very definable history of attacking Linux and defending Microsoft with zero variation. I've not been irked enough quite as yet to start poking around and seeing if you are, in fact, on the Microsoft (or Waggner Edstrom?) payroll, but I might consider making it a project for 2014. Your constant belligerence and unfounded attacks are backed by hyperbole even I find out-to-lunch, and I consider hyperbole to be a perfectly valid form of argumentation.

            It's a fucking computer, dude. Not a religion. Every bit of hardware, software and operating system has it's good points and it's bad points., Why the fuck do you feel the need to "convert" people?

            You're like a door to door religious douche waking me up at 7am to ask me if I've felt the tender touch of Jesus. People like you are the reason I answer the door in the nude. You aren't okay. Not if you're pushing Jesus and not if you're pushing your personal bit of technological brand tribalism.

            Get off my goddamned lawn.

            "Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! That is one of the funniest things I have read. Unless by "headway" to mean a "statistically insignificant" blip. Just wait for regression to the mean (and your mean is sub-1%; always has been)."

            Linux has almost 5% of the desktop market, and - via android - has so much of the mobile market that the combined PC and mobile markets give Linux over 65% share. Rocks, glass houses.

            "Run Photoshop, AutoCAD, Outlook, Word, Excel or many other vital industry applications."

            Photoshop and AutoCAD I'll buy, but Word and Excel are only "vital" for some, and decreasingly so. Sorry buddy, but "feature parity" means fuck all in that space now. Office 2003 is just fine for oh, so many people, and LibreOffice finally matches it. It took a long time, but it's there. And there is really all it has to be.

            "Oh, you mean support? I did not realise RedHat came with free support. Oh wait, it doesn't."

            Red Hat has the option of not having support, and for that matter, not paying. It's called CentOS. I can do everything in CentOS that I can in RedHat. I have run entire businesses on CentOS for a decade. I still do.

            Where's the equivalent for Windows? I can't even use Technet because you fucking bastards killed it. If I want to stand up a hyper-v environment in my testlab, with SCVMM and several hundred VMs, do you have any idea how much money that is?

            Microsoft says that I should pay them full fare for all of that. For what, so I can write articles about their software? I don't make enough in a single year writing articles to pay even a tenth of that back. In fact, even an MSDN account with all the blue crystals is roughly double what I make in a given year from writing about Microsoft. Yet apparently it's cool beans to just say "fuck you, we're Microsoft" and fly off into the future with all three middle fingers raised tall.

            Oh, you want me to stand up a test environment that self-immolates every 30 days? Exactly how many man-hours do you expect me to put into Microsoft's shit anyways?

            With CentOS I can stand up an entire testlab, production infrastructure or run a fucking country for free. I only need pay support - by using RHEL instead of CentOS - for those individual systems where I feel the need.

            And what about my small businesses? Pay and pay and pay and pay. And pay some more. And pay and then pay. And service providers? We'll have SPLA jacked up and jacked up again, while all Microsoft partners get our margins cut. And we still have to pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay. IN so many cases for nothing of value.

            Why do I need "support" for my home server or my home instances of Windows? Or Office? Why can't I set up an Exchange server at home to learn on? Or get a copy of visual studio to help me get interested in coding for Windows 8?

            Whey do I need to pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay...

            Look, I've no problem paying someone a fair price for their labour. I donate time, money and resources (in the form of manpower of individuals whose salary I pay for) towards the open source projects I use. I don't bat an eye at paying a one-time sticker price for an OS or an application. Iinvest in software because I expect to see a greater return from that software (in terms of increased productivity) than I put in.

            That's before we get into the clusterfuck of VDI licensing. Or the bullshit that is client access licensing.

            You have this knack of picking one element about Linux or the Linux ecosystem and then waving it around as though it is representative of the entire thing. Linux is not monolithic. Even less so than Microsoft is, and Microsoft is still a rough assemblage of warring fiefdoms united only by share price.

            There are plenty of reasons to piss on Linux. I could go on for days. But you pick the stupidest things and then wave them around as though they are proof that Microsoft is excellence incarnate. If someone happens to raise a perfectly valid issue about Microsoft you fly off the handle and start attacking them, the software they use and anything else you can sink into.

            So get down off your high horse and for the love of His Noodly Self try to have some objectivity, will you? All you do is piss people off. You add nothing to the conversation.

            Maybe if you learned to be less douchy you could raise actual issues in a stable, not-batshit-crazy manner and discuss the pros and cons of a technology as it applies on a case-by-case basis like a real professional.

            One size does not fit all, no matter how much you try to make edge cases into poison arrows.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: And cry you might

            "Are you a paid Linux shill?"

            Oh dear, that's embarrassing. The lack of symmetry in the nature of Windows and Linux has led you into a hole.

            Who do you think would pay someone to shill for Linux? Linus, maybe? Out of his multi-billion-dollar marketing budget?

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: And cry you might

        SecureBoot - totally screwed on Linux. In fact, Linux might brick your PC if you try SecureBoot.

        WOW, is that really the price of allowing Microsoft to design the boot process of a PC? That booting anything which isn't designed/written by Microsoft will actually "brick" the hardware?

        Maybe they should get IBM involved in the next iteration, they managed a design which allowed Intel systems to boot any number of different operating systems.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: And cry you might

          "Maybe they should get IBM involved in the next iteration, they managed a design which allowed Intel systems to boot any number of different operating systems".

          What's more, they did that over 30 years ago - and it still works now.

      4. phuzz Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: And cry you might

        Have you ever meat Eadon? You two would get along like a house on fire (in the literal sense that there would be great destruction).

        Anyway, I'm not sure what obscure hardware you've been trying to install linux on, but if you try a bog standard Dell or Hp machine, and an up to date distro like Ubuntu you won't have any of those problems.

        Even I know this, and I'm a Windows user, I run Windows at home, and support it at work.

        1. Graham Dawson Silver badge

          @phuzz Re: And cry you might

          Perhaps he's been trying to install it on a dead badger?

      5. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: SecureBoot

        SecureBoot? Really?

        OK give it up. Who do you really work for? Steve Ballmer or the NSA?

    3. Ian Bush

      Re: And cry you might

      Please, factual posts like this look much better if you give at least some references so support your assertions. At the very least please quote your primary source, which I believe is www.pluckedoutmyass.com

      1. James Hughes 1

        Re: And cry you might

        I still find it amazing there are people who think Linux doesn't work, give a long list of problems, provide no facts, and have obviously not used it in some time.

        Of course, and as with Windows, there are some problems. But I, in all my Linux installations, have rarely had any problems, and the number of problems I have had with Windows outweigh those I have had with Linux. I now use Linux of all homes machines (old and new), with no problems with graphics, sound, printers, networking etc. Compare that with Vista where I had persistent problems with wireless and eventually horrendous slow downs until the device expired.

        Please please please, can all those people who continually bash Linux (and ALWAYS get the market penetration figures completely wrong), try it on a modern desktop or laptop, and just see how well it all works. Please. Then at least when you have a complaint (and you might) about it you will have some reason.

        1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

          Re: James Hughes 1

          "all those people who continually bash Linux"

          I think you will find this is the same sad AC that always comes up with this sort of thing. Why AC you might ask? Presumably so it is not easy to see their posting history as that would reveal it. At least the knob-end that was EADON was up front about his anti-MS rants.

          Next thing they will be telling you, again without actual facts, that Windows is much more secure, etc.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: And cry you might

          Are you for real? Just try using Linux; everything I have said is true. You can find reports all over the web as well.

          Optimus? Does not work. Simply. Does. Not. Work. End of.

          Sound? Barely functional. Will it use OSS, ALSA or PulseAudio? No one knows. Will all the connectors jacks to the soundcard work? No. Will surround sound work? Not fully (impossible to adjust individual speak delay). This, of course, assumes your soundcard even work. Linux struggles to with the de facto standard for consumer audio (Creative).

          Printing? Garbage. To have a hope of getting the printer to work you have to download and compile the driver yourself, and even then you only get partial functionality. And that functionality is itself flakey.

          Power efficiency? Utter joke. Windows can run on this laptop for up to 11 hours (extended battery). Linux will kill it in 6. Oh wait, I should open a terminal and run "powertop". Why the fuck should I? The OS should *KNOW* it's on battery and optimise, Windows does. So I will go back to 1970 and use the terminal. Oh look, PulseAudio is pulling down 5W *WHEN THERE IS NO SOUND PLAYING*. And so on and so on. It's a total farce. The fanboys all scream about how "light" and "efficient" Linux is. Yeah? Why is it about twice as power hungry as Windows then?

          None of these things should be an issue. None. But they are.

          1. Graham Dawson Silver badge

            Re: And cry you might

            Oh cram it up your arse, AC. Everything you've just stated is edge-case at best, or a complete and utter lie at worst.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: And cry you might

              Optimus? Edge case?

              Sound? Edge case?

              Printing? Edge case?

              Battery life? Edge case?

              I don't think you know what "edge case" means.

              1. James Hughes 1

                Re: And cry you might

                @AC.

                Yes, edges cases for those things that are actually problematical.

                As I said I have no problems with my desktops running Linux - printing works fine, sound works fine. The other items don't bother me and are therefore edge cases to me.

                As for your comment which boils down to 'the internet said it so it must be true'. Do you really believe that? Do you really truly believe that you can make a accurate assessment of Linux and its capabilities from analysing bug reports on the web? Did you do the same for Windows? I bet you get more problems reported for Windows than Linux (even when you take in to account the different market penetrations)

                Now, I'm not denying there are problems with Linux, but the majority of users have no problems at all with it. Just like the majority of users of Windows have no problems with their choice of OS.

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: And cry you might

                  "As for your comment which boils down to 'the internet said it so it must be true'. Do you really believe that?"

                  Sigh. I said "You can find reports all over the web as well." *AS WELL*

                  What I recounted is personal experience. Linux just has too many problems to be considered anything other than a total joke. Which probably explains why (almost) no one uses it on the desktop and it now lags behind Windows in the server room.

                  About the only place Linux has any traction is in super-computing, but there you have a team of PhDs to fix the brokeness of it all. Not something the typical user has access to.

                  1. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: And cry you might

                    > and it now lags behind Windows in the server room

                    You'll find that there are hundreds of Windows servers doing not-a-lot in server rooms but I'm seeing a large scale adoption of Linux for business critical systems. My experience has mostly been banking, investment banking, market data and the F and the T LA's - but Linux is everywhere. Even big banks are running Linux on mainframe LPAR running core banking systems. I've seen Linux eat up all the AIX and Solaris platforms at a large financial and whilst there are quite a few Windows Servers in the data centre, they're not in active/active clusters and don't have particularly high recovery time objectives.

                    Even CIFS file servers are becoming Linux based devices because they are cheaper and have better resilience. Folks are also beginning to see the problems of running multi-vendor HIPS/Malware detection/patch management on corporate Windows servers - it requires a hell of a lot more power whilst the world of data centres is trying to make services more granular and virtualised.

                    Obviously, my experience is with larger data centres but I would say that the trend is an increasing Linux adoption and I would not say that Windows Server products (outside of Exchange and Sharepoint) are making headway.

                  2. Chemist

                    Re: And cry you might

                    "About the only place Linux has any traction is in super-computing, but there you have a team of PhDs to fix the brokeness of it all. Not something the typical user has access to."

                    Like the Altix UV which runs standard SUSE Enterprise Linux.

                    Ref :http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/15/sgi_altix_sales_hadoop_prefabs/

                    "and expand from its own variant of SUSE Linux to a machine that can run standard SUSE Linux Enterprise Server or Red Hat Enterprise Linux as well as Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 R2.

                    SGI has been making a lot of noise lately about how Windows Server 2008 can run on its Altix UV 100 and 1000 machines, and in fact, the UltraViolet hardware scales far beyond the limits of that Windows OS at this point. The Windows kernel sees the"

                    1. Kebabbert

                      Linux bad scalability

                      "Like the Altix UV which runs standard SUSE Enterprise Linux.

                      Ref :http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/15/sgi_altix_sales_hadoop_prefabs/

                      "and expand from its own variant of SUSE Linux to a machine that can run standard SUSE Linux Enterprise Server or Red Hat Enterprise Linux as well as Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 R2....SGI has been making a lot of noise lately about how Windows Server 2008 can run on its Altix UV 100 and 1000 machines, and in fact, the UltraViolet hardware scales far beyond the limits of that Windows OS at this point. The Windows kernel sees the"

                      Please, dont talk about Linux scalability. It might even scale worse than Windows. First of all, there are at least, two different kind of scalabilty:

                      1) Horizontal scalability, scale-out. It is basically a cluster. Just add another node and the number crunching gets faster. These clusters typically have 10.000 of cores or even more. Supercomputers have many more. These clusters are used for HPC number crunching work loads, and can not handle SMP workloads.

                      2) Vertical scalabilty, scale-up. It is basically a single fat huge server. These huge servers, SMP-alike, typically have 16 or 32 sockets. Some even has 64 sockets. IBM Mainframes have up to 64 sockets. These costs much more than clusters. For instance, the IBM P595 with 32 sockets used for the old TPC-C record, costed $35 million list price. Can you imagine what a cluster with 32 sockets costs? Not $35 million. Probably it will cost 32 x 1 node. And if one node costs $5,000, it will be not be $35 million. These SMP-alike servers, are used for SMP workloads, typically running large databases in large configurations. HPC clusters can not do this (they can run a clustered database though, but not run a normal database).

                      Enterprise companies are only interested in SMP workloads (large enterprise databases etc). The reason Unix rules in Enterprise companies, is because Unix has huge SMP-alike servers capable of handling SMP workloads. Linux can not, Linux SMP servers dont exist. Linux is only used on HPC clusters, and Enterprise companies are not interested in HPC clusters.

                      Now regarding Linux scalability: Linux runs excellent on clusters (such as supercomputers), but scales quite bad on SMP alike servers. Linux has severe problems utilizing beyond 8-sockets. First of all, there have never existed any Linux server with 32 sockets, for sale. Recently, a couple of months ago, the Bullion released the first 16 socket Linux server. The first ever in history. And it is dog slow.

                      There has never ever been a 32-socket Linux server for sale. Never ever. If you know of one, please show us a link. You wont find any such a large SMP-alike server. Sure, people have compiled Linux onto IBM P795 AIX Unix server with 32 sockets - but that is not a Linux server. It is a Unix server. I could compile a C64-dos to it, and it would not make the IBM Unix server a C64. And people have compiled SuSE to HP's Unix Itanium/Integrity 64 socket server - but it is still a Unix server. They tried this before, and never sold Linux on the HP Unix server, google on "Big Tux Linux" for more information and see how bad Linux scalability it had, with ~40% cpu utilization running on 64 sockets. This means every other cpu was idling, under full load. How bad is not that?

                      Regarding the SGI UV1000 servers, they are clusters with 10.000 of cores. ScaleMP also has a huge Linux cluster with 10.000 of cores. It is a cluster running a software hypervisor, tricking the Linux kernel into believing it is running a SMP server - with bad scalability. Latency to nodes far away makes the cluster uncapable of handling SMP workloads. Latency on a SMP-alike server is very good in comparison, making them possible to run a large database on all cpus, without grinding to a halt.

                      Thus, Linux servers with 10.000 cores (that is, clusters) are not suitable of handling Enterprise SMP workloads. See yourself. The ScaleMP Linux cluster is only used for HPC number crunching:

                      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/20/scalemp_supports_amd_opterons/

                      "...Since its founding in 2003, ScaleMP has tried a different approach. Instead of using special ASICs and interconnection protocols to lash together multiple server modes together into a SMP shared memory system, ScaleMP cooked up a special software hypervisor layer, called vSMP, that rides atop the x64 processors, memory controllers, and I/O controllers in multiple server nodes....vSMP takes multiple physical servers and – using InfiniBand as a backplane interconnect – makes them look like a giant virtual SMP server with a shared memory space. vSMP has its limits.

                      ...

                      The vSMP hypervisor that glues systems together is not for every workload, but on workloads where there is a lot of message passing between server nodes – financial modeling, supercomputing, data analytics, and similar parallel workloads. Shai Fultheim, the company's founder and chief executive officer, says ScaleMP has over 300 customers now. "We focused on HPC as the low-hanging fruit..."

                      SGI talks about their large Linux clusters with 1000s of cores:

                      http://www.realworldtech.com/sgi-interview/6/

                      "...The success of Altix systems in the high performance computing market are a very positive sign for both Linux and Itanium. Clearly, the popularity of large processor count Altix systems dispels any notions of whether Linux is a scalable OS for scientific applications. Linux is quite popular for HPC and will continue to remain so in the future,

                      ...

                      However, scientific applications (HPC) have very different operating characteristics from commercial applications (SMP). Typically, much of the work in scientific code is done inside loops, whereas commercial applications, such as database or ERP software are far more branch intensive. This makes the memory hierarchy more important, particularly the latency to main memory. Whether Linux can scale well with a SMP workload is an open question. However, there is no doubt that with each passing month, the scalability in such environments will improve. Unfortunately, SGI has no plans to move into this SMP market, at this point in time..."

                      Ergo, you see that Linux servers with 1000s of cores, are only used for HPC number crunching, and can not handle SMP alike workloads. SGI and ScaleMP says so, themselves.

                      And also, there has never been a 32 socket SMP-alike Linux server for sale. Until a couple of months ago, there was no 16-socket Linux server either for sale, but Bullion released the first generation Linux SMP-alike 16-socket server. Ever. And it performs very bad, just read the benchmarks.

                      In comparison, Unix on 16 or 32 or 64 sockets have performed very well for decades. Linux scales well on clusters, but extremely bad on SMP-alike huge Unix servers with up to 64 sockets. The thing is, Linux developers never had access to large SMP servers, so they can not tailor Linux to such work loads. Unix devs had been able to do this for decades. In some decades from now, maybe Linux will be able to handle 32 sockets well, too. But not today. Just read SGI and ScaleMP - all them are used for HPC and avoid SMP workloads - why?

                      1. Anonymous Coward
                        Anonymous Coward

                        Re: Linux bad scalability

                        "About the only place Linux has any traction is in super-computing, but there you have a team of PhDs to fix the brokeness of it all. Not something the typical user has access to."

                        I don't know why you had to get on your pet topic but the point of the post was to refute the assertion made above. The Altix runs standard Linux and doesn't need a team of PhDs to 'fix' it

                        The poster didn't mention scalability ! - you did

                      2. Anonymous Coward
                        Anonymous Coward

                        Re: Linux bad scalability

                        Suggest you read :

                        http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/SMP

                        http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/MPP

                        http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/NUMA

                2. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: And cry you might

                  Don't know quite where to interject anymore! I'd have replied to my original post but it hasn't been moderated yet.

                  Really, are these pro-Linux/anti-MS responses supposed to be sound, unbiased opinions? Jeez.

                  I'm just posting back - because I am unbiased - to say how pleasantly surprised I am to find that, having switched from IDE to AHCI, Mint boots without requiring installing another driver in IDE mode.

                  And the wifi works in Mint if one keeps reconnecting. A pita obviously but I have for the first time been able to upgrade everything in one attempt! I'll probably find that I'm offline again when I hit 'submit', mind.

                  But, really. Once upon a time I thought of Linux users - in forums such as this - as having integrity. Like Psychologists - aware of the pitfalls of emotional thinking so able to avoid them. These days it seems more like it's the 'operating system' of choice of the flamer, who doesn't use it in preference to MS/Apple because of belief in the product but because they want to crow from a position they can present as one of superiority seen from the perspective of the mainstream always being 'uncool'.

                  @James Hughes 1.

                  You seem a reasonable chap. Was it Ubuntu that got all the know nothings using Linux? A certain sub-section of the little kiddies who used to use Windows to browbeat posters who didn't believe what they believed, and along came an easy opportunity to be different and so rack up the vitriol?

                  Anyway, just one question: wouldn't the majority of users necessarily be the ones with no problems, because unlike me and AC and others, who come here, most who do have problems with Linux just ditch it? Whereas with Windows - well, I guess there have always been the likes of us to sort the problems out for them; problems which are in the vast majority of cases much easier to rectify - however, since 9x died a death, problems in Windows have been increasingly rare - the main one being taking Microsoft's word for it and installing drivers from Windows Update.

                  Well, let's see if I'm still online!

                  1. Chemist

                    Re: And cry you might

                    "Really, are these pro-Linux/anti-MS responses supposed to be sound, unbiased opinions? Jeez."

                    I think given his history we are more entitled to question AC's bias. I don't know what you're problems are but I ran through the 'problem' stage of Linux in the mid-90s, since then, mainly sticking with one distro (on bare metal) at home and RH professionally I've had very few. Some hardware is best avoided as the manufacturers don't release sufficient info to write good drivers but generally almost everything works (for me) and without the need to hunt for drivers.

              2. Graham Dawson Silver badge

                Re: And cry you might

                Optimus I haven't used, but a quick investigation reveals that it has issues with particular fairly uncommon hardware configurations.

                The rest, I have. Printers work fine, sound works fine, battery life is the edge case due to a pile of "undocumented features" and "optimisations" laptop manufacturers build into their power management systems - without providing references or drivers for linux.

                So edge case, lie, lie, edge case.

                Merry christmas.

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: And cry you might

                  "Optimus I haven't used"

                  So don't comment on it then. Oh wait, you are going to.

                  "a quick investigation reveals that it has issues with particular fairly uncommon hardware configurations."

                  Wrong. It manifestly doesn't work. At best you can engage the discrete GPU but it will yeild less performance than under Windows because Linux doesn't let commercial vendors make certain calls. As it seems you know nothing about this subject, here is a like to help you: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/nvidia-gpl-linux-driver,news-40687.html

                  But don't let facts get in the way of your fanboi-ism.

                  "Printers work fine"

                  Linux doesn't offer feature parity with Windows (e.g. no "walk-up scan" support). This is another fail.

                  "sound works fine"

                  Again, Linux doesn't offer feature parity (e.g. not all jacks work, sound control is abysmal). And that's BEFORE we get into the total mess that is OSS/ALSA/PulsAudio. Another fail.

                  "battery life is the edge case"

                  Not when PulseAudio is the biggest power draw according to "powertop" when no sound is playing. So either PulseAudio sucks, or "powertop" is broken. Either way, another Linux fail there.

                  "So edge case, lie, lie, edge case."

                  Nothing I have mentioned is an "edge case". It's all on modern consumer hardware using modern Linux. Also, nothing I have mentioned is a lie. It is a matter of fact. Maybe you have six PhDs and can make Linux work, but use normal people need a PC that *just works*.

                  And there is only once choice, the choice every major OEM has taken.

                  1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                    Re: And cry you might

                    "Wrong. [Optimus] manifestly doesn't work. At best you can engage the discrete GPU but it will yeild less performance than under Windows because Linux doesn't let commercial vendors make certain calls."

                    I call bullshit. It's working just fine for me and there is no noticeable difference whatsoever between my games under Linux or under Windows. Do not make me put the effort into unmasking you and then calling you out on this, because Optimus fucking works under Linux and I can fucking prove it. If you want to keep spewing shit on this one then I swear to $deity I will spend Q1 2014 dedicated to naming and shaming.

                    "Linux doesn't offer feature parity with Windows (e.g. no "walk-up scan" support). This is another fail."

                    That depends on the printer. Funny, I "walk up and scan" to many of my printers and am able to open the PDFs in Linux just fine. Oh, some manufacturers don't offer the ability to scan to their ridiculous software, but I'm actually quite fine with that. Most software from printer manufacturers is utter shit and make up the #1 helpdesk support category I have with my Windows end users. I have not had a printer helpdesk call logged in five years.

                    "Again, Linux doesn't offer feature parity (e.g. not all jacks work, sound control is abysmal). And that's BEFORE we get into the total mess that is OSS/ALSA/PulsAudio. Another fail."

                    What the fuck are you on about? Sounds works better under Linux for most of my real-world scenarios than it does under Windows. All the fucking jacks work./ I have a better diversity of hardware support under Linux than Windows and I don't get the weird crossfeed issues that I get with the atrocious SB or ASUS Windows drivers.

                    The layers upon layers of sound subsystems are a mess, absolutely, but they somehow stil manage to fuck up less than Windows 7 or Windows 8 with most chipsets, from an AC97 through to semi-pro and full-pro cards. If you are really angling to have someone tear sound support under Windows a new asshole, I'll be glad to get Josh Folland to set aside a week to make a bunch of videos and articles that demonstrate quite plainly the issues that make his life fucking hell.

                    "Not when PulseAudio is the biggest power draw according to "powertop" when no sound is playing. So either PulseAudio sucks, or "powertop" is broken. Either way, another Linux fail there."

                    You finally got one right! Holy shit! Part of the thing that's broken with Linux is indeed the audio hyperstack, and you're absolutely right that it sit there sucking the battery. Oddly enough I'm okay with that because in all my years of working with LInux I haven't had shit like Microsoft comprehensively breaking Windows Update, causing it to eat 100% of CPU. This sort of thing happens on a regular enough basis that battery life under Linux still averages better than on Windows.

                    "Nothing I have mentioned is an "edge case". It's all on modern consumer hardware using modern Linux. Also, nothing I have mentioned is a lie. It is a matter of fact. Maybe you have six PhDs and can make Linux work, but use normal people need a PC that *just works*."

                    Actually, you do keep banging on about edge cases. You take a huge category - such as "sound" - and then claim that because some edge cases don't work under Linux the entire category is useless for everyone. Meanwhile, you comprehensively shrug off the fact that Windows is guilty of fucking up in many of the same areas, often worse.

                    I do agree with you that normal people need a PC that just works. That's why Macs are gaining in popularity.

                    "And there is only once choice, the choice every major OEM has taken."

                    I agree, Android is the future. It's an excellent Linux distribution offering spectacular ease of use, broad OEM support and end user satisfaction.

                    When will Windows reach that level?

                    1. Anonymous Coward
                      Linux

                      Has AC ever heard of a hardware compatibility list?

                      He's got a few common nuisances he's complained about - some printers don't play nice, some sound cards don't play nice, some wifi and graphics cards don't play nice.

                      But - getting a great Linux system is a similar project to getting any other OS to work really well - you start with compatible hardware with known working drivers, and work your way out from there. Most of his problems are based on poor hardware choices. If he had built a Windows desktop with incompatible hardware, he would be having the same problems or worse - more likely he would have a completely non-working machine.

                      Anyone like the AC poster who has such difficulty getting his hardware and driver issues sorted out should do what the Windows and Apple users do and purchase a pre-built machine. Like this sleek Ubuntu Ultrabook from System 76:

                      https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/galu1

              3. Tom 7

                Re: I don't think you know what "edge case" means.

                Have you put together your own PC or something cos I fink you is doing something wrong.

                Have you put a cpu in it?

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: I don't think you know what "edge case" means.

                  "Have you put a cpu in it?"

                  And this, folks, is how the Linux community reacts. It's like a religious cult. If you point out that the sainted idol is less than perfect, they reduce to personal attacks because their distorted worldview is under threat.

                  1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                    Re: I don't think you know what "edge case" means.

                    "And this, folks, is how the Linux community reacts. It's like a religious cult. If you point out that the sainted idol is less than perfect, they reduce to personal attacks because their distorted worldview is under threat."

                    Nobody here - not a one - said Linux is perfect. I do, however, believe that the fellow in question was pointing out that A) you're a jackass B) you are technically incompetent and C) you are exaggerating edge cases to make them seem like they affect far more people than they actually do so much so that you do qualify as spinning falsehoods.

                    He managed to point that all out in a humorous fashion. Cheers to him.

                  2. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: I don't think you know what "edge case" means.

                    "distorted worldview"

                    I think you've not heard of MS's tech evangelists then. Hmmm? People who write code for metal have a much clearer "worldview" than those who code upon abstractions - forget even comparing them to (l)users.

          2. Gerhard den Hollander

            Re: And cry you might

            Weird

            Optimus just works for me (using the nvidia drivers, which are a 1 -click install, and a lot quicker and easier to install than doing the same on windows 7

            I currently run my main linux box with 3 screens connected to it. Took about all of 15 minutes to get it to work, at least 10 of which was spend trying to find a HDMI cable to connect screen #3

            Whereas windows 7 for some reason insists on removing my second screen as soon as I switch off the monitor, happily moving all my apps to screen #1, then when I switch off screen #1 as well, poor old windows doesnt know what to do anymore, so when I poweron my monitors the next morning, my whole desktop is screwed.

            So, in order to maintain my desktop overnight, I have to leave both my monitors on (and let them switch to powersave mode).

            Sound has been nice, stable and rocking since oh I dont know, mid 1995 I think (which is when I bought the first soundcard for my PC).

            Printers, are actually a lot easier under Linux then under windows, as all the models I've tried work out of the box on Linux , whereas on windows I needed to hunt down the right drivers (yes, Dell, Im talking about you)

            As for laptop battery life. Im sure you have a point there. Thankfully Im noever to far away from a wallsocket, and I prefer to enjoy my plane trips reading a good book, in stead of trying to work on a heavy laptop

          3. Matt Collins

            Re: And cry you might

            If you feel so strongly, why not start helping out then? Get out of your stupid 'I want everyone else to fix my problems' mindset and cut some code. You seem to know your way around at a quite deep level, so I suspect you can code... scratch your own itches and help others at the same time - it's what nice, polite, NORMAL people do. Don't be a hater it makes you look like a cretin.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: And cry you might

          Give it to a noob and see how they get on.

          If you're experienced in Linux then you'll be fine, otherwise you're always going to hit hardware and driver issues. You get them on Windows and that has full support of manufacturers.

          If you run commodity hardware then you tend to have a better experience then higher end stuff.

          1. James Hughes 1

            Re: And cry you might

            QUOTE "Give it to a noob and see how they get on.

            If you're experienced in Linux then you'll be fine, otherwise you're always going to hit hardware and driver issues. You get them on Windows and that has full support of manufacturers.

            If you run commodity hardware then you tend to have a better experience then higher end stuff."

            Yup, gave it to my noob father. He's been using Linux for three years now. I occasionally have to field a tech call for him, but they have all been about 'how to I format a paragraph' type of thing rather than any issues with the OS.

            As for the original install, which I did, I ran the Ubuntu install disk, and after about 1/2hr he had a working system - I did nothing 'technical'. That was on a brand new (at the time) Acer Revo.

            Oh, are you sure Window has the full support from manufacturers? Have all these manufacturers drivers etc been updated to work on Win8? No? Bit crappy, this full support of which you speak.

            High end stuff? I refer you to a post from someone abovewho works in the the high end banking sector. Where they are migrating to Linux.

          2. Tom 13

            Re: Give it to a noob

            I've never met a Windows noob who got on any better than Linux noob. Some of them are even surprised the foot petal belongs on the desktop and that the PC doesn't come with a built in cup holder like their car does.

    4. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Re: And cry you might

        @Mary Jane Bogart

        hey, welcome to The Register's forums. El Reg doesn't use BBCode (much to my lament) and instead uses a narrow subset of HTML. Angle brackets not square ones.

        Cheers!

  6. spegru

    Oi Mr AC!

    What the heck have you been drinking this early in the morning?

    PS

    Festive wishes to you all

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oi Mr AC!

      Truth serum.

      1. James Hughes 1

        Re: Oi Mr AC!

        Hmm. I think its more likely to be head up arse serum.

        You realise with your bigoted anti Linux rants, you are just making yourself look stupid?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Oi Mr AC!

          I really wouldn't worry about AC. Every tried telling an alcoholic to give up using alcohol?

          Being forced to use Windows is a punishment I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Or Larry Ellison.

          Actually, on second thoughts, I do wish that on Ellison.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Oi Mr AC!

            "Being forced to use Windows is a punishment I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy."

            Clearly your worst enemy has no job then. OEMs choose Windows because it works. If Linux worked, they'd choose that. I know Dell sells one Linux laptop, but given how the advertise it; it's almost like they are embarrassed to have it in their line-up.

            Can't say I blame them.

            1. James Hughes 1

              Re: Oi Mr AC!

              It's anecdotal, but as an employee of a medium/large sized company...

              I have three Dell PC's on my desk - two desktops and a laptop. One desktop runs XP, the laptop runs Win7 and the other desktop runs Ubuntu.

              The laptop is quite new and has an SSD. It works quite well, but doesn't seem particularly snappy. The two desktops are the same machines, and comparing the two, the Ubuntu device is considerably faster in almost every aspect.

              In my time in the company, I have had the Windows laptop trashed by a suspected virus, had upgrades to faster devices simply to keep up with the amount of extra software we have to run for security and malware prevention. The Ubuntu machines just sits there and works, as, actually, does the XP box, albeit more slowly.

              The Ubuntu machine is a godsend when working with our build servers (also Ubuntu devices) and other backroom heavy duty hardware - so much easier to work with that Cygwin on Windows.

              So, that's really just an example to show that Linux can and does work in a commercial development environment. In my experience here, the Linux devices work JUST AS WELL as the Windows devices, and indeed in many cases better. There is an upswelling amongst many here that we really should move to Linux completely, but IT seem keen on retaining Windows, even though we are more productive with Linux, certainly from an engineering point of view.

              I'm pretty sure we are not unique.

              Not bad for a joke OS.

              1. Chemist

                Re: Oi Mr AC!

                "Not bad for a joke OS."

                I worked for a large pharmaceutical company - in our dept. we had ~250 Dell dual Xeon workstations with 3D graphics hardware/ LC specs. for visualizing proteins etc. Linux was necessary as the software suppliers for most of our protein modeling programs ONLY used Unix/Linux, but also the workstations were hammered by some of the software, running 100% cpu overnight or weekends or on one memorable occasion 5 weeks ! and Windows just wasn't reliable enough (this was ~W2000 era). we also had several Linux farms for the big jobs 1024/2048 nodes.

                Indeed not bad for a joke OS

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Oi Mr AC!

                  If the software was available for Unix then Linux was not a necesity.

                  1. Chemist

                    Re: Oi Mr AC!

                    "If the software was available for Unix then Linux was not a necesity."

                    No, but the change from SGI Unix to x86 Linux saved a fortune

              2. Tom 13

                Re: even though we are more productive with Linux

                Engineering and IT admin folks handling Linux systems will be. They're in the group of people who do still benefit from more power in their IT systems.

                Your bog standard office worker..., well, not so much. So they are OS agnostic except for training. So long as MS doesn't frell with the interface it's cheaper to keep them on what they already know than move them to something new that requires training. But when the interface changes the penny is in the air. And given the bean counting advantages of Linux, I am surprised at the low uptake the last time MS crapped on us. Yes, I know there are studies indicating the savings are marginal compared to the TCO of the computer system. But the fact remains that those are exactly the margins that make bean counters happy.

            2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

              Re: Oi Mr AC!

              "OEMs choose Windows because it works."

              And yet Lenovo is the #1 OEM, rising up amongst the rest like a fucking rock star, mostly ont he back of it's continued support for Windows 7 as a first-class OS.

              Shocker.

        2. Chemist

          Re: Oi Mr AC!

          "You realise with your bigoted anti Linux rants, you are just making yourself look stupid?"

          He does it all the time- he's probably the most down-voted individual on the Register. (this in spite of being leader of a large IT group ! )

          I agree with you about the FUD. All my machines run Linux, netbook, laptop, server and 3 workstations, all install without problems, the two printers, one a laser the other a scanner/inkjet all work fine using the standard drivers under CUPS, the wireless cards/3G dongles all work, the touchpads work really well, sleep ditto, the accelerated graphics work. Multiscreen is a breeze.

          This week we bought a HD Freeview recorder with WiFi which can use DLNA. - I installed minidlna server on this old laptop in a couple of mins., changed a few lines of config. and all the photos/videos on the laptop appeared on the TV and by including a few links to directories all the server's videos/photos where there too.

          Have good Xmas everyone

          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: Oi Mr AC!

            @Chemist Happy Holidays to you too, sir.

            1. Chemist

              Re: Oi Mr AC!

              "@Chemist Happy Holidays to you too, sir."

              Really enjoyed the rants, Trevor, magic.

              Don't give yourself RSI over the AC though - it's not worth it

              1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                Re: Oi Mr AC!

                @Chemist: I write for a living. Things have been discovered to make it simple and quick. Notably, the switch to Writer as my spellchecker was a big quickener. Less of Word going insane trying to "help" with formatting...

    2. Tom 13

      Re: Oi Mr AC!

      Not sure if it was a Red Kryptonite Fizzie or just Red Rum. Buy both of those have unpredictable effects on their imbibers.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Linux is a joke, a total nanny OS.

    After POST linux gives me a pop up, when I visit porn sites I get pop ups. When I want to install programs linux wants me to gender change into sue. I get pop ups all the time for updates because it is so insecure (and the NSA cripple it).

    barge pole linux

    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

    nope cant't touch it.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      The mystery of the mystery posts.

      What is their meaning? Did anon not take his meds?

    2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      So you didn't install a proper browser? Firefox, say, which (with it's numerous extensions) is the most secure OS on earth with the best chance of protecting your privacy.

      You didn't at least use Chrome? With 51% market share it is the most popular browser on earth, and is a damned sight more secure than IE, even if it shares IE's utter inability to allow plugins at a low enough level to really protect your privacy. (Not to mention IE's utter unwillingness to design the OS from the ground up to protect privacy, but then again both Microsoft and Google are financially motivated to track you everywhere in everything and sell your information to advertisers. The difference is that we get Free Stuff from Google for it, whereas Microsoft demands we pay them for the privilege

      So yeah, what browser were you using? What version of Linux? Was it from the beforetime?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        LOL @ most secure OS on earth. Do you fap to all your made up stats?

        You sir, have a brown nose.

  8. ElNumbre
    Pint

    A Christmas Tale

    And lo, it did come to pass, that Linus came upon an inn, alone and in need of a power socket. And Linus did imbibe some refreshing beverages and reviewed some code, until it came to pass that he was able to perform a stable release, not entirely unlike that which was foretold 2013 years ago (depending on when your epoch is defined). And it was great and good and at least three wise men did install it upon their system.

    Falala la la, la la la laaa.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Windows is so great

    Don't ya just hate it when you know things but can't say how or why you know them, or even who you know these things about...

    Anyhow, I happen to know, that a largish organization, that prefers all its toys painted green or tan, and with a nice Kevlar coating, is dumping all windows installations, both server and desktop, where ever possible, and replacing it with an unnamed Linux distro. Mainly due to security and useability concerns with windows. The monetary savings are just a bonus. When you rely on windows people die.

    But you didn't hear it from me, I was never here.....

    NOW you may drink. Raise a glass for those who won't be home for the holidays.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Headmaster

      Re: Windows is so great

      Don't open the wounds about why in heaven and hearth Yurop is arsing around deep in the eurasian continent.

      It's like it is 1840 again.

      The reasons for the British invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in the late 1830s are many and varied. They mainly revolve around what one of the 'victims' of the event referred to as 'the Great Game'. This was the name given by Arthur Conolly to denote the shadow boxing between Russia and Britain for influence in Central Asia for much of the 19th Century.

      Ok, install on!

  10. Gene Cash Silver badge

    Please don't feed the troll

    If it's AC, it's not worth responding to. El Reg needs a "don't show AC" cookie for Christmas.

  11. NomNomNom

    So

    it begs the question how long is Linux going to take? I remember hearing about this in highschool and how it was meant to eventually be better than Windows. Of course back then I was young and naive so I bought into all the hype. Fast forward five years and its STILL not finished. Instead we get a hurried note before christmas containing a joke (?) about drinking beer and an off the cuff remark that Linux doesn't yet contain anything exciting. This is beginning to look like Duke Nukem Forever all over again.

    1. Chemist

      Re: So

      "Fast forward five years and its STILL not finished."

      Of course it's bl**dy finished, as much as any OS ever is, new hardware, bug fixes, new security threats, new paradigms

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So

      >it begs the question how long is Linux going to take?

      Might help if you mentioned something that you are waiting on.. I guess you're talking about the age of "Linux on the desktop" that some simple minded folk were always going on about back in the Mandrake CDs in the post days. Try out KDE on any modern Linux distro. It works.. it might not be perfect but there again Windows or OSX aren't either. You might even like having your computer treat you like you might actually know what you're doing.

      >I remember hearing about this in highschool and how it was meant to eventually be better than Windows.

      Who ever said that point of Linux was to be "better than Windows". Lets forget that it already is better than Windows in many many areas.. comparing Linux to Windows is basically impossible. Windows is actually a family of kernels that have varying levels of compatibility and a similar looking UI. Windows doesn't even attempt to target all of the areas that the single Linux kernel does.

      >Of course back then I was young and naive so I bought into all the hype.

      What hype from where?

      >Fast forward five years and its STILL not finished.

      What still isn't finished? I can think of things that aren't finished.. Device Tree still has a way to go, there is a NAND interface driver for some Marvell SoCs that still isn't in mainline.. but they don't affect generic PC users. "its STILL not finished" might make some sense if the hardware world stopped progressing after the release of the Pentium but it hasn't so it will never "be finished" as long as there is new hardware, new things to do... The important thing is that key areas of the kernel A: work, B: are relatively bug-free, C: have stable interfaces so your applications don't stop working between upgrades. Can you tell us a key area of the kernel that doesn't meet A,B and C?

      >Instead we get a hurried note before christmas containing a joke (?)

      > about drinking beer and an off the cuff remark that Linux doesn't yet contain anything exciting.

      Yes, we should demand that Linus doesn't send any more emails until Linux is 100% "finished" whatever the hell that would mean.

      >This is beginning to look like Duke Nukem Forever all over again.

      Do you have a serious mental dysfunction?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: So

        Echoing Daniel's remark above, the vast majority of what is happening in the kernel these days is to do with hardware support. Since new hardware is coming out all the time and will continue to do so indefinitely, I don't know that you could *ever* say that the kernel would be finished.

        You might also consider that the role of the Linux kernel and environment is constantly changing. We now have a ubiquity of low-power portable devices which run Android and in order to be properly suited to that (what is largely a telephony) environment, Google added some aspects to the core kernel code which are currently being added back in to the mainline. Any kernel of this type is a mixture of performance and design compromises which will necessarily change over time as the requirements differ.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: So

        >it begs the question how long is Linux going to take?

        Might help if you mentioned something that you are waiting on.. I guess you're talking about the age of "Linux on the desktop" that some simple minded folk were always going on about back in the Mandrake CDs in the post days. Try out KDE on any modern Linux distro. It works.. it might not be perfect but there again Windows or OSX aren't either. You might even like having your computer treat you like you might actually know what you're doing.

        YES, HOW LONG IS LINUX GOING TO TAKE.

        Please. Your answers are pedantic, the typical reply of a blind Linux supporter.

        5 years? HAH!! Try FIFTEEN YEARS - I, also, bought into the "Linux on the Desktop is the Future!" mantra and still have my (boxed) RedHat 5.2 release to prove it.

        I'm still waiting.

        This is going to be downvoted because the fans of Linux simply never want to deal with the truth. Since before RedHat 5.2, Linux was promised to be the future of the desktop. 15 years later Linux STILL has 1.6% desktop market penetration - and, therefore, a lack of support from the necessary desktop-style applications that are the mainstay of the average user.

        Don't you get it? Look at the replies here: 'Linux is great on my engineering box!', 'Linux is perfect for my developer system!' and "[Linux] is a godsend when working with our build servers (also Ubuntu devices) and other backroom heavy duty hardware" (direct quote, that). For the narrow hard-core computational market, it does indeed pretty much own the market.

        But Linux is "not finished" in many areas, one major point of which is covered in this very news story. Linux's frequent kernel updates are doing it NO favors in terms of market penetration - Linux is a constantly moving target to those who wish to transfer to it as well as those who wish to support it. You want Linux, what flavor do you want? What kernel level is your chosen release at? What GUI will you use if your release offers multiple choice? How about your drivers, are your devices supported? How does your flavor handle patches and updates, what package manager does it use or are you using the terminal? Did your kernel require recompiling, as you require some functionality for your hardware compatibility that is not the default build selections?

        Some of these questions are most irrelevant for most people as, for example, updates are now automatic. Except when they aren't (isn't working properly or manual patching required). What happens when a kernel release breaks something that was previously working, for example when Ubuntu updates break nVidia drivers?

        Having frequent kernel updates is NOT doing Linux any favors in terms of market penetration, contrary to the belief of Linux supporters. They believe that the constant development is honing the kernel to a fine edge - the market sees it as an unmitigated hassle and a moving target of non-compliance. Writing drivers that only work for a year, due to the fact that the following kernel update broke your code, is a vast drain on human resources. The development companies are, therefore, in a quandary: Why should we develop for Linux if the market is small; the market is small because businesses and individuals are afraid to move to Linux because confusion of choice; the lack of application and driver support is fueled by the distribution fragmentation and constant development that does not allow a broad base of users who are unified to a single, and therefore, marketable base.

        And that is why Windows [was] winning on the desktop: a company can buy 1,000 desktops and know that their hardware investment is matched to their software AND HR investment, that in-house software developments and support can be rolled out to a platform that will stay stable for years. Linux? Not so much: 'Where will [my/our] Linux distro be in 2 years?' is not a welcome question for many businesses and users alike - they just need it to work, not to wonder how many times their kernel will be updated during the lifespan of their computer and what challenges will that bring to their productivity.

        >I remember hearing about this in highschool and how it was meant to eventually be better than Windows.

        Who ever said that point of Linux was to be "better than Windows". Lets forget that it already is better than Windows in many many areas.. comparing Linux to Windows is basically impossible. Windows is actually a family of kernels that have varying levels of compatibility and a similar looking UI. Windows doesn't even attempt to target all of the areas that the single Linux kernel does.

        >Of course back then I was young and naive so I bought into all the hype.

        What hype from where?

        I am sorry, you must be living under a fallen tree trunk. Linux 'on the Desktop!' hype is EVERYWHERE. All you have to do is log on to any computer/IT-centric website and you'll see it - hey, this very conversation is proof of it!

        Linux users want Linux to be adopted more throughout the world. That's fine :) But Linux supporter's enthusiasm is turning to be their own greatest enemy, but please, note what that MEANS. Linux supporters are so enthusiastic that they go and create new and exciting ideas for the OS, from GUI's to distros to constant kernel updates to community-based drivers. All that is GREAT...but all that leads to a confusing "marketplace" of an OS, where no one knows where to go just to get something working, or something fixed. "I need my [device] working, but I can't get this driver working!" "What distro level are you, package [x.yy.qd] has a known problem but you can try [hhh.oxoo3d.etc]"

        On Linux, sometimes not everything just WORKS. If yours does, count yourself lucky - you have compatible hardware! Go, you! But if you don't, then buy new hardware, switch distro, patch packages, etc.

        As much as people hate Windows, for the large majority it just WORKS. "No, it doesn't!", you say, "It got a virus and now it DOESN'T work". Not the fault of the OS if it was working and the user decided to do something with it that broke it (I know you are saying, "Yes, it is!", but then the same clause also applies to Linux when it breaks, as well).

        >Fast forward five years and its STILL not finished.

        What still isn't finished?

        User experience. User support. Universal hardware driver support. Desktop application selection. De-fragmentation of the distro universe so that focus can be trained on fixing the aforementioned to the largest majority of users, granting them a broad, stable and supported OS platform where the OS takes a back stage to getting things done. The OS is NOT the focus of using a computer. I know that is a shock to OS fans, the ones on internet forums who constantly argue about the advantages of their OS choice over others and why can't the rest of the world see the superiority of that choice? The OS is the platform to launch the tools that get the true existence of the computer - the completion of your chosen task - done. A non-OS fan does NOT turn on their computer to play with the OS for 2 hours, to see if they can tweak said OS to get 4% better performance out of it. Most people turn on their computer...to get a task completed. Check email. Surf the web. Create a wireform and 3D render a skin. Pull up that spreadsheet and crunch the 300 columns to derive this month's sales. Send out billing statements. Edit those photographs from the vacation.

        Linux can do almost all those things...but, most often, NOT with the chosen software of the user. "Just use [package xxx] is NOT the same as "Why won't Photoshop run native in Linux?" I'm sorry, it's not. Users want the software they are familiar with and have called their own for years, not a second choice that may be equivalent (or, maybe not).

        Linux needs fixing in downplaying the OS and actually giving the users what they want: a background to get their tasks accomplished. The OS is NOT the task, it is the 'tabletop' to put your work down on (how fitting, "desktop" is a good metaphor). Stop concentrating on the OS as the solution and start working on making Linux the TOOL to GET the solution, and that "solution" is "WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO TODAY?", to pardon borrowing a catch phrase from a company you don't like.

        1. NomNomNom

          Re: So

          "Most people turn on their computer...to get a task completed. Check email. Surf the web. Create a wireform and 3D render a skin. Pull up that spreadsheet and crunch the 300 columns to derive this month's sales. Send out billing statements. Edit those photographs from the vacation."

          The question is should an OS design be degraded, watered down, just to facilitate such mundane and unfulfilling tasks? It surely should be the responsibility of the users to improve themselves as people, to get the drive and ethos necessary to compute in the 21st century in a 21st century way that doesn't involve crunching "300 columns to derive sales" (so 20th century). If users are ready, they can use Linux. If not, well I guess we'll have to wait for them to catch up. I don't think we should slow down for them though.

          "Stop concentrating on the OS as the solution and start working on making Linux the TOOL to GET the solution, and that "solution" is "WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO TODAY?", to pardon borrowing a catch phrase from a company you don't like."

          I don't feel that's a particularly right attitude when it comes to OS development. AndI don't think any of us have any particular problem with Apple as a company. It's not even that we "don't like" companies, it's the users that are the main problem.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: So

            "The question is should an OS design be degraded, watered down, just to facilitate such mundane and unfulfilling tasks? It surely should be the responsibility of the users to improve themselves as people, to get the drive and ethos necessary to compute in the 21st century in a 21st century way that doesn't involve crunching "300 columns to derive sales" (so 20th century). If users are ready, they can use Linux. If not, well I guess we'll have to wait for them to catch up. I don't think we should slow down for them though."

            "The question is should an OS design be degraded, watered down, just to facilitate such mundane and unfulfilling tasks?"

            Why, in a word: YES. Because the, well, arrogance of the rest of your answer - that anyone using anything else just hasn't "caught up", is outrageous. The world uses computers to do EXACT what you call "mundane and unfulfilling tasks". Those "mundane and unfulfilling tasks" are NOT fooling around with your so-called "21-century" OS just to get it functional; those users ARE working in a "21-century" way, including now touchscreen, but you and your like believe that only YOUR "21-century" way it proper (should we be surprised? Isn't that what everyone thinks, that their preferred way is best?)

            News flash: "21-century" computing does NOT mean opening up the source code yourself to correct bugs in the system. "21-century" computing means that a device just WORKS when you plug it into your 21-century external bus and not hoping that you will actually be compatible because no one bothered to write and then test a fully functional driver...if you can even locate it for download and then install the package with all the dependencies. "21-century" computing means that a user should be able to walk up to a machine, completely unknown, and then push a button to make something happen, not wonder what version of the X GUI is currently in use and how that changes the user experience, never you mind editing the text .configs to make all this bung work.

            I'm sorry, but the market keeps speaking to you people but you keep yelling out that "We know better" - a Torvalds signature statement. You know squat. You know what you know, but you don't understand that the general population does not care. They want a computer that works seamlessly and somewhat invisibly...and Linux has been promising that for FIFTEEN YEARS and still hasn't delivered on that promise. If Linux was a commercial product it would either be dead or bankrupt - no commercial product would survive for 15 years with a complete failure to gain market share due to the inability to deliver what the customer wants. Really. If you WERE delivering what the customer wants, would Linux have a paltry 1.6% desktop adoption rate after 15 YEARS of trying?

            Time to ask yourself that honest question and then figure out what is going wrong in that business plan. The problem: no one who is in a position of power in regards to Linux every asks themselves that question, as they are too self-assured to doubt their own motives. Usually in the business world that leads to an eventual collapse - failure to change, especially when confronted with a poor performance, will usually end in disaster. The ONLY reason that has not happened to Linux on the Desktop is the millions of unpaid volunteer manhours behind the push to get Linux adopted there - all for naught, a 15 year failure.

            And yet the powers that be STILL refuse to reexamine their desktop plans and regroup.

          2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: So

            "The question is should an OS design be degraded, watered down, just to facilitate such mundane and unfulfilling tasks? It surely should be the responsibility of the users to improve themselves as people"

            Changing myself to be more conducive to making a multinational company more profit is not "improving myself as a person." Quite the opposite: if a company wants me to pay me money it is the job of htat company to provide me something I actually want to buy.

            Your entire perspective on life is warped. Totally, completely and utterly.

        2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Re: So

          "HOW LONG IS LINUX GOING TO TAKE"

          ...to reach 95% of the endpoint market instead of the 65% it has now?

          No idea. But my new game finished downloading and I'm off to enjoy the benefits of Steam for Linux.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: So

          >But Linux is "not finished" in many areas, one major point of which is covered in

          > this very news story. Linux's frequent kernel updates are doing it NO favors in

          >terms of market penetration

          What's the point of replying to all of your other gibberish if you apparently don't have any idea what you're talking about.. Linux has a series of maintained stable kernels -> https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html

          By the way, I've used Linux "on the desktop" just fine for the best part of a decade now. If you stopped mashing your hands onto your keyboard to try to convince everyone that Linux isn't ready yet (for what exactly I'm not sure) and actually tried to use a modern distro you might even like it.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: So

            "What's the point of replying to all of your other gibberish if you apparently don't have any idea what you're talking about.. Linux has a series of maintained stable kernels -> https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html

            By the way, I've used Linux "on the desktop" just fine for the best part of a decade now. If you stopped mashing your hands onto your keyboard to try to convince everyone that Linux isn't ready yet (for what exactly I'm not sure) and actually tried to use a modern distro you might even like it."

            So you have used Linux on the desktop for the past decade. Good for you. You can now count yourself in the statistically proven, entire ONE POINT SIX percent of the worldwide desktop users who do so as well.

            Congratulations.

            You've proven your "point" of Linux on the desktop by quoting your own personal experience as proof of concept. And then you even quote the status of five different kernel levels as "maintained", with each one having their own idiosyncrasies, as the final bonus "proof".

            Well done!

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: So

              >So you have used Linux on the desktop for the past decade. Good for you.

              >You can now count yourself in the statistically proven, entire ONE POINT SIX percent of the

              > worldwide desktop users who do so as well.

              I'm not sure why desktop users is some killer metric that Linux must achieve to gain status above toy OS in your mind... every Windows user in the world interacts with multiple Linux machines on a daily basis. Even the most loyal Windows fanboy probably has at least one device that is running Linux in their house (or parent's house).

              Smart phones and tablets are quickly replacing the desktop and it's not Windows that is powering those devices.. Linux is probably the biggest and most important software project opensource or otherwise in the world.

              If anything Windows has lost everything but the desktop. Linux runs everywhere that isn't a very low level embedded platform (AVR, Cortex M? etc). If you want a metric to back up the greatness of your OS I'm not sure that "well, lots of chain smoking grannies use it to play bingo online!" stands up against "It runs super computers, it runs major banks, it runs most of the internet, it runs most mobile devices... it scales from 1 core to many hundred cores, it scales from megabytes of memory to hundreds of gigabytes of memory etc etc".

              >You've proven your "point" of Linux on the desktop by quoting your own personal experience as proof

              Where did I say that was "proof" of Linux on the desktop. I don't give two flying fucks about the unwashed masses using Linux or not. Many people use Linux for serious work at the desktop level on a daily basis and it works. No one is trying to prove anything to anyone. I don't actually care if you want to use Windows.. knock yourself out.. but going around claiming that nothing works in Linux, it's not ready blah blah is just complete and utter bullshit.

              >And then you even quote the status of five different kernel levels as "maintained",

              >with each one having their own idiosyncrasies, as the final bonus "proof".

              You were suggesting that the fast pace of kernel development makes adoption of Linux hard. Which it doesn't. There are long-term maintained kernels and there are backport projects for some key drivers. You actually have to try really hard to find a released version of a distro that is running even a few point versions behind the latest release.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    I know AC is being a bit of an arse this morning. However, he does have some valid points.

    I've been an enthusiastic Linux user for a *lot* of years: been through Gentoo, Mandrake (as it was then), original Slackware (way back when) and Mint these days. I love it, but let's inject a bit of realism here.

    First off, let's not put too much blame on Linux (the kernel) for the failings of hardware manufacturers to properly support their hardware on this platform:

    - Optimus: yeah I have one of these IBM Thinkpads at work and Optimus is a friggin' pain in the arse. And an unnecessary one. And Nvidia are the ones to blame.

    - Printing: only last night trying to print on photo paper from the small photo paper tray on my Epson Artisan 710. Try as I might, neither Epson's driver or the Guntenprint driver would cause the printer to pull paper from it even though the option is included. I do generally find anything even slightly unusual in the printing realm to be anything other than hit and miss. And yes I could spend some time looking at the source and fixing it, although I would need to bone up on the ESC/P protocol and get the driver source etc, etc, not something I would wish to do at 10:30 at night when I'm trying to print off some pictures.

    Again, Epson get your act together please?

    - Hibernate I used to find very hit and miss, and sometimes it just would inexplicable fail to power back up again, although these days I find it pretty good. No problems.

    - WiFi for the most part is great out of the box. It wasn't very long ago that it was a right friggin' pain in the arse on many hardware platforms. These days (perhaps in the last 2 or 3 years) I've not had a problem. Again, hardware manufacturers could make this a lot easier with freely available firmware and a bit more openness with their hardware specs.

    However, on the bright side, despite the obvious complexity of the product, I find Linux immensely stable.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Holmes

      Attention deficit disorder and the Xbox generation

      "Fast forward five years"

      ITT: Young whippersnappers who think technologies are grown in seven days.

      "Fast backward five years" and it's even only post-financial-crisis. Try fast forwarding from the mid-90s.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @skelband 16:47

      Oh, no one is doubting the stability of Linux, its major selling point. It is certainly quite solid in that regard. But, as your tales note, one can doubt the useability of the product. "And yes I could spend some time looking at the source and fixing it"...actually, no, not many people can/should need to go into the source code themselves to fix something that should just work.

      If Linux wishes to be taken "seriously" as a desktop OS the reply "Go into the source code, correct / change [x, y, unknown at this point] and then recompile" should NEVER, EVER be heard as an "answer" to a technical issue. The majority of users are not computer power users, tech-heads or even aficionados - they use computers to get their jobs done but can barely administer them. To ask them to edit source code and recompile is the most ridiculous request of an average computer user ever put forward. And then, for Linux fans to say "They must learn (if they wish to really know their computer)" is the utmost in, well, arrogance.

      It is not necessarily Epson's responsibility to create drivers to work on a system that is both (a) only 1.6% of the desktop user market and, as noted prior, (b) a constantly moving target. If this were the case, that Epson must support a 1.6% market share OS, then Epson would still be developing for the Amiga never you mind Win95. As noted, it is a HUGE drain on HR to develop and debug drivers on a commercial level and Linux has, quite regretfully, never given the manufacturers enough market share to warrant such an expenditure. Add in the unstable (constantly changing) Linux code base, and you've got an unmitigated commercial disaster on your hands - no manufacturer will donate time and money under these sordid conditions.

      Linux fans want Linux to finally be a solid contender on the desktop? Reduce the number of distros, get a hand on fixing average user useability and stop worrying about making the system techie friendly, and then fix the driver and software issue.

      The mass market will not stand for a "DIY OS" and has shown this, year after year, with Linux desktop's adoption rate failure. In regards to "Linux Desktop", how many more years of wishful thinking does it take before someone realizes that the 15 year direction that [they] are on IS NOT WORKING? Linux already HAS the server and tech market but year after year stalls dead on their desktop plan of attack. They stick to the same basis of operation on their hopes for desktop dominance as they do for back end computing - "Give them the most stable, best under-the-bonnet design and they will come!" but for desktop, that does not work. Making the product user friendly is the only way to win the war but the Linux-heads in charge simply can't get that, they are stuck in their mantra of tech is as tech does.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: @skelband 16:47

        > It is not necessarily Epson's responsibility to create drivers to work on a system that is both (a) only 1.6% of the desktop user market and, as noted prior, (b) a constantly moving target. If this were the case, that Epson must support a 1.6% market share OS, then Epson would still be developing for the Amiga never you mind Win95.

        To be honest, Epson did create a printer driver for my printer. The problem was they obviously put almost zero effort into it. It is buggy and doesn't support some of the basic printer functionality. The fact is the print infrastructure has nothing whatsoever to do with the printer drivers problems. It's just a shit driver.

        > "Give them the most stable, best under-the-bonnet design and they will come!" but for desktop, that does not work. Making the product user friendly is the only way to win the war but the Linux-heads in charge simply can't get that, they are stuck in their mantra of tech is as tech does.

        Desktop linux is already much easier to use and user-friendly than any Windows out there. The reality is that in the case of the Epson driver, there are probably not enough users having problems with it for the issue to be even on the radar for Epson.

  13. keithpeter Silver badge
    Pint

    Wittgenstein springs to mind

    Tractatus

    Proposition 7

    (If I describe my lived experience I will be trolled (possibly by both sides))

    Proposition 6.43

    (I try to stay in the world of the happy man, hence mince pies and port and company)

    Happy Christmas to all the staff and commentards.

  14. pete 22

    My 75 yr old Dad uses it just fine

    I gave a copy of SuSE linux to my (then) 75 yr old Dad to install, all by himself, on his new, no-name generic PC. It went just fine, printing, sound, video, etc. No problems whatsoever. He taught himself the commandline in addition to using KDE, and now he has a Mac.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: My 75 yr old Dad uses it just fine

      If Linux is so fabulous why did he migrate to a Mac?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: My 75 yr old Dad uses it just fine

        "If Linux is so fabulous why did he migrate to a Mac?"

        Knowledge transfer, as Pete said, his father also learnt the CLI, which works the same on Linux & Mac (being Unix based). The question is: why didn't he migrate to Windows?

  15. Tank boy

    Re: Perhaps he's been trying to install it on a dead badger?

    We don't need no stinking badgers.

  16. Snowy Silver badge

    If you think is has bugs in it, it is a beta not a release candidate.

  17. Matheus

    I know better his father, Nils Torvalds, Finnish MEP. Most of people haven't realized so far how Linus and Richard Stallman has changed the world. Linux is now the mainstream platform ecosystem of IT world. Windows ecosystem is waning and Apple has never been good enough with supercomputers, servers etc... it's just a Cult. An American Dream.

    Think about the whole chain of Linux from Raspberry to US Navy and Air Force, biggest stock market IT systems, Patriot missiles, NASA, aviation using Linux, supercomputers (95%), servers (85%). And now Linux is dominating smartphones (80%) and tablets (65%). Clearly this is just another story of evolution where Neanderthal (Microsoft) is wiped out by Modern Humans (Linux/Open Source).

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