>The fact that someone would say, on a forum called Hacker News, that the free software movement is a hopeless ideology is astonishing.

Patent free is what I'm calling hopeless. Nice try though, I guess.

>Hardly. Ubuntu is about as popular now as Macs were a few years ago, or at least in the same league.

Uh, no. Unless by "years" you mean "decades".

>Ubuntu has many productivity advantages over both OSX and Windows.

I've used Windows for years. I've used OS X for a few years now. I've used Unix for years and I've used Ubuntu off and on since it was started. Ubuntu had some advantages over windows for me but day-to-day OS X is simpler in every possible way. Except the "do tons of tweaking of every pixel on my desktop" way.