“Just Switch to Linux” Is the Loser's Game (2019)
boilingsteam.com
boilingsteam.com
I no longer care, and I have no reason to.
So what if they don't switch? Does that impact me? No. Linux Desktop is awesome, is only getting better, and this will remain true wheter or not the masses switch over. The question which OS "won" has been decided long ago...the world runs on Linux, everything from our internet backbones to our phones and everything in between.
If companies want to waste money on licences, who am I to say no? And if a company doesn't allow Linux to be used in the workplace, well, I'm an engineer, I have options, thanks for your time & offer, please don't call me.
If people want Linux, it's right there, ready and waiting, available for everyone.
And if they don't, I don't care.
Yes! Thank you. There should be a need to justify any deviation from this, too. There can be good reasons to use a private tool here and there. But the reasons should be evaluated clearly and alternative approaches should be considered.
Hello, reality calling.
The world is not neutral and non-partisan --- and you can't make it so without introducing your own non-neutral bias, priorities and partisanship.
Nothing reflects this better than the universe of Linux distros. Which one should a neutral and non-partisan school choose? Be sure to justify your answer.
The basic idea of making Open Source a requirement for selecting software solutions would just be a criterium added to the existing processes of selecting software/services.
Please explain how this decree is neutral and non-biased.
The Document Foundation and contributing developers are not better off or worse off if a public school district uses LibreOffice or not. It simply does not matter. They rely on donations for revenue instead of using monopoly powers to extract revenue by permitting the use of their software. Same goes for OnlyOffice and other FLOSS office suites.
On the other hand, if a public school district chooses for example Microsoft Office, this is to the direct detriment of Apple iWork and StarOffice and Lotus(does it still exist?), etc.. This of course becomes a subject of public acquisitions which should be handled through transparent auctions. How often should the choice be made? Once a year, once 2 years? Should there be a round-robin strategy to switch from one provider to another in order to not favour one through network effects? All large software corps rely on the network effects of schools and piracy to further solidify their grip on an industry.
Even if you claim that choosing the FLOSS option is non-neutral due to the network effect, in this case the network effect does not have the same ramifications it does for proprietary offerings.
So even if the FLOSS choice may not be absolutely neutral, it is MORE neutral than any proprietary option.
Racism is at least neutral in terms of not favoring one white European instead of another.
Government should decree the need to justify any deviation from white and non-profit --- because they are clearly better in most cases.
In effect, you expect government to mandate your viewpoint because it hasn't been successful on it's own merits. This is not "neutral" and "unbiased", it is precisely the opposite.
Sorry ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Not everyone has the same set of priorities. For example, it seems you decided to place more value on your time.
That's a far-fetched and overly broad statement. Just as the universally quantified "all users will have increased productivity" would be an invalid and overly broad statement, as you would be right to complain about.
But for my use cases, for example software development and engineering, specifically in the field of embedded, server, system, and other software that is not related to web, android, mac, windows, etc., the productivity increase is absolutely enormous - 20:1 probably. For me windows is just trash - it's impossible to properly configuration control, it changes all the time for no reason, it's horribly insecure, and needlessly difficult and inefficient to use. Command line and text rules for what I do. For me to use windows would be severely masochistic. When I'm inevitably forced to logon to windows in a corporate network, it's pure torture. To me.
To abuse your analogy, sometimes it is the brush you choose, or better yet how you choose your brush. I would not want to paint my house with a 1mm fine-tip, nor a tiny detail with a industrial paint spray rig.
So I won't tell other people what will work for them, but it is absolutely worth supporting and introducing people, who perhaps have similar use cases as you and for whom it might also be beneficial, to things like UNIX and Linux.
In the same time, I develop server-side software for Linux for the last 15 years, and feel like it's just on the right place - on the server.
We Linux people just couldn't bear another case of "Eternal September" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September - with millions of new lusers wanting a dumbed-down Linux.
If you want to move away from Windows, go somewhere else! Linux doesn't want you! Go Away!!
Go and buy a Mac instead!
Then I remembered Heinlein's proverb: "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It only wastes your time, and annoys the pig."
So I stopped 'wasting my time'. If others are using MacOS or Windows, it's their choice and NMP. I also no longer help out people with computer problems. "Sorry, I don't know anything about Windows. I use something else."
You can call it "actively encouraging people to go elsewhere" I suppose, but it's more a philosophy of actively discouraging the "Linux Isn't For Me" articles, also saying to them 'Don't come complaining to me that you're not willing to learn something that's not what you're used to. Just go back to working with whatever it is that you are used to working with."