Linux Poll

[Human Lefts]

Do you use Linux?

If not why not? What information would help you to try it out?

If so, what distro and why? Also, what apps do you use that you think others would find interesting?

Why Linux? It's free, open source software! And if you need an application for something, chances are that someone will already have developed one that can help you out.

Personally, I dual-boot Linux Mint with Windows Vista (came with computer). I use Mint for almost everything. Linux Mint worked right off the installation except for a tweak I had to do to get the touch pad on my laptop working. My roommate used to run Windows Stater on her HP Mini, but finally changed after it started having problems and hearing me talk about how much I like Linux over Windows every once in a while. That installation also needed a tweak with the touch pad, but was easy to solve in 20 minutes using the Ubuntu forums. Now, the mini runs like a beast compared to before.

I have Windows because sometimes I need to use MS Office, SPSS, or AMOS and that's just much easier on Windows. Also, games tend to run better on windows, but I don't have much time for those.

What app I like the most?

Ubuntu One. It's is a backup program that syncs designated folders to a cloud and with other computers. They give up to 5 GB of storage FOR FREE. It runs in the background and doesn't take up much resources. The backups are done in real time. So, as soon as you save something, it is uploaded to the cloud. Then, whenever you turn on any other computer that you have setup with Ubuntu One, it will update immediately. My favorite part though is that you can gain access to your files from anywhere with HTTP access to the Internet by logging in to the site. I use it to backup my school files, so I'm never worried that if my computer dies or gets stolen, I will lose my work. Moreover, I can leave my laptop at home and now that I will still have access to my files. Last, I don't have to worry about carrying around a jump drive. Losing it or forgetting it at home has caused me a lot of stress in the past, but not anymore!

Note: I am in no way a Linux expert. Plus, if my poll doesn't have the response you would like, I apologize. I'm not good at these things sometimes.

[Q]

If so, what distro and why? Also, what apps do you use that you think others would find interesting?

I've been on GNU/Linux for almost a decade now. Started out in early 2003 with RedHat 9 (nowadays Fedora (http://fedoraproject.org/)) and after using Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org/), between 2004 and 2009, I'm on Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/)/Kubuntu (http://www.kubuntu.org/) now. Currently on KDE (http://kde.org/) 4.8 and it's a really sweet desktop.

Which app is good? Too many to mention! Many quality stuff, like Chrome, Firefox and Clementine (http://www.clementine-player.org/) is of course also available on other OS'es, but for stuff that is unique to Linux (or BSD of course), I'd say the following: K3b (a burning tool) and Konversation (an irc chat client) come into mind.

Also, what is the difference between "Apple OS" and Mac OS in the poll?

[Landsharks eat metal]

I've wanted to use Linux for about seven years now, but have never actually gotten the chance to because I'm using my parents' computer, and they always get mad at me when I change anything around.

[The Dark Side of the Moon]

i have five things installed on my acer aspire:
Slackware
windows 7
windows 8
Ubuntu
And Mac

[pax et aequalitas]

I use Win 7 atm and always have used windows, I used to always let my bro set up my computer and never considered using another operating system. Now I do consider trying Linux, but never actually got around to doing it and I predict I would get back to Windows quickly anyway because I'm so used to it.

[NewLeft]

It's annoying having to use console like half the time just to get things done.

[Ocean Seal]

I only have linux installed because I accidently deleted windows lol. So I put only linux.

[thriller]

I am currently using Kubuntu 11.10. I started out with RedHat9 and switched to Gentoo when I had a Mac (PowerPC). Now that I am on x86-64 I dual boot between Windows 7 and Kubuntu (dual boot is for gaming purposes). Never liked KDE before, but I thought I'd give it a try, and I'm really digging it compared to Gnome. Gentoo is the best, IMHO, as far as complete control goes. But the last time I was installing Linux (when I got my new comp) I just wanted to get it up and running. As far as apps go, I think most people know of my favorite ones (GIMP, XWine, MPlayer).

[thriller]

It's annoying having to use console like half the time just to get things done.

It's faster using the console, no GUI loading screens speeds it up.

[thriller]

Also, what is the difference between "Apple OS" and Mac OS in the poll?

I was wondering that too! K3b is great, but I can't get it to work for DVD's :(

[Q]

It's annoying having to use console like half the time just to get things done.

Such as when?

Truth is that I do often use the terminal, but not "to get things done", just to get them done much faster.

Like, for example, installing software. Doing it graphically I have to:
1. Open the Software Center (which takes some time).
2. Look for the app.
3. Press install.
4. Enter password.
5. Wait some more.

In the terminal:
1. I type sudo apt-get install appname
2. I enter my password
3. I don't have to wait for any GUI to load and it downloads and installs noticeably faster.

The idea though that you have to use the terminal for most things is a myth from the past. It is just another way of doing things, which are in some cases faster or more clear than using a GUI.

[Q]

I was wondering that too! K3b is great, but I can't get it to work for DVD's :(

Maybe this helps (http://www.kubuntu.org/doc/7.10/musicvideophotos/C/burning-cds.html).

What is your problem though?

[kitsune]

Linux only on this machine. Sooner or later I'll have some time to set up a dual boot Linux/Windows machine for gaming.

Using Ubuntu right now, but I'm thinking of going with Mint Debian. I like the rolling release model. Maybe set up Arch.

[Aloysius]

The first non-WinXP OS I ever used (aside from an early Apple OS which was installed in all the school computers) was Linux Mint (Isadora, I think) but I later moved on to Ubuntu. This PC has WinXP (I use it for gaming and such) but one of the others has Ubuntu 11.10.

I always liked using the terminal on Ubuntu. sudo app-get install was my favorite thing ever.

[Leonid Brozhnev]

I use Windows as it's what I'm used to, plus, all the games and programs I use work on it, it's easier to transfer files to work on other windows computers which are the majority... it's just convenience really. Do I pay for it? Fuck no.

[ckaihatsu]

Still a fan of Linux Mint (11, GNOME), and have been able to shift *all* graphics workflows over to it from the Mac.

[Quail]

I use ubuntu on my old laptop and am dual booting windows 7 and ubuntu on my new one. The only reason I have windows is for games so I don't have to mess about with WINE. I like ubuntu. It's so user-friendly and you can browse loads of free, useful software and install whatever you like. It is also less likely to fuck up in my experience. I've never used apple though, so i'm only comparing it to windows. The online community is also excellent if ypu have problems.

[9]

I still dont know what any of this shit means :(

[Human Lefts]

Also, what is the difference between "Apple OS" and Mac OS in the poll?

I don't know. I googled "Apple OS" and got both, so I included them. I never have used them since I can't afford nor understand why I should pay their relatively high prices.



For those that don't know enough about Linux, what would you like to know?

FYI: There are Linux distros "styles/types" that you can sample off of a CD or jump drive. Ubuntu even has a WUBI which let's you run it on Windows like an emulator to try it out.

[Искра]

I use Windows and eat in McDonalds.

[Arilou Lalee'lay]

I'm using Xubuntu. I was a purist and used Debian for about three years, but random things eventually got too broken from me trying to hack it and I just let it RIP. I have about five random broken OSs on my hard drive. Ubuntu studio's sound started getting worse and worse as time went on, XP no longer boots because of a corrupted user profile or something like that, the rest just have a kernel that doesn't support the wireless card I'm using.

Overall Xubuntu is the least breakable, with my hardware at least, and has a lot of cool shit. projectM looks FUCKING incredible with my phenom whatever and large amounts of DDR whatever. I frequently don't have to reboot for a month. Unity is cool though, I miss it.

For any linux system firefox + flash aid:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flash-aid/
is a must.

LMMS is an incredible program for making dubstep and such. youtube-dl and ffmpeg let you get any song off youtube in an mp3 format. There are graphical ways to do it too but they tend to break, for me at least. And I actually enjoy writing bash scripts to automate that sort of thing.

Anyone who needs to type quickly for their job or whatever should use vi or emacs, the terminal versions, which are in synaptic. Oh and clementine is my favorite music player after much experimentation. Do NOT use it for ipods though. It will break them horribly, the only thing that can fix them is something like gtkpod, which is what I now use for all ipod/mp3 player stuff, even though it fucks up the album art. There's a way to fix it if you care enough.

[ColonelCossack]

I want to use Linux but I don't.

[thriller]

Maybe this helps (http://www.kubuntu.org/doc/7.10/musicvideophotos/C/burning-cds.html).

What is your problem though?

My lib files are often outdated or some other issue with them. One of the reasons I hate auto update.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

I was wondering that too! K3b is great, but I can't get it to work for DVD's :(
Did you install dvd+rw-tools?

To answer the OP

I use Arch Linux (http://archlinux.org). I got started on Red Hat 7.3 wayy back. Then experimented with Slackware. Used Gentoo for a bit. Found Arch Linux when it was 0.7 and have been using it since. I prefer it because I'm a masochist, but not enough of one to use Gentoo.

Actually, it's because it combines simplicity with customization ... and a rolling release cycle. So I get the shiny new kernel the next day after it's released without having to compile from source.

But if you're into the Gentoo-style compile everything mentality, Arch allows that too with the ABS (Arch Build System) ...

Netcfg is a badass wireless network manager. And lightweight.
Clementine is a badass media player.
Deluge is a badass torrent client
FileZilla is a badass FTP client
irssi is a badass IRC client
Firefox is a badass browser
Claws-Mail is a badass mail client
OpenBox is a badass GUI (with Tint2 on my laptop for the battery indicator and on my desktop for the nifty clock)
RXVT-unicode is a badass terminal emulator
Aircrack-ng is pretty badass if there's a WEP network around and I want to use it
GIMP is a badass image editor
K3B is a badass CD/DVD burner
UFRaw is a badass raw image processor (for the photographers)
LibreOffice is a badass office suite

uh .... I think that's it? I might have forgotten some shit.

[Decommissioner]

I use ubuntu on my main machine, dual booted with win 7. I keep it around for games.

I have another machine with arch and debian installed. I use that one to tinker with the OS.

[9]

I have a question. Why do people on revleft know such an insane amount about compyuters etc>? Where/how did you all learn such things?

[Q]

I have a question. Why do people on revleft know such an insane amount about compyuters etc>? Where/how did you all learn such things?

As for me, I learn by trying things out. I like to play and don't panic when I break stuff. I also know how to use Google and can find a solution as most often I'm not the first one with such a problem and a solution is probably already documented somewhere.

Also, using Gentoo has learned me a ton about how Linux functions internally.

[ckaihatsu]

I have a question. Why do people on revleft know such an insane amount about compyuters etc>? Where/how did you all learn such things?


Since one needs to use a computer to participate on RevLeft, the demographic here, of revolutionaries, probably tends to skew more towards those who are more comfortable -- and obviously more hands-on -- with computers.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that they're the most complex technological creations to-date, and with the recent popularization of the digital realm (since about 1997), digital networked communications have yielded *increasing returns* for efforts expended. To a newbie it may all look like alphabet soup at first -- and the terms are definitely *not* aesthetically pleasing -- but it all comes to makes sense, especially after one gets their feet a little wet.

I'll throw out a few recommendations here:

Distrowatch.com -- for an index of the scores of Linux variations out there

Puppy Linux / BrowserLinux, or xPUD -- for a more bare-bones approach, all residing in RAM

TurnKey Linux -- for a professional Linux server, customizable remotely through a web interface

TinyCore Linux -- for lower-level control of the machine, but with a familiar GUI interface and regularly available software packages

[thriller]

I have a question. Why do people on revleft know such an insane amount about compyuters etc>? Where/how did you all learn such things?

As far as Linux goes, prolly cause is communistic :D
As far as computers go, I know a bit because I went to school for it in California and learned A LOT from awesome teachers (didn't get a degree though). Also my buddy's dad taught me a lot. And as others have said, since you need a computer to access RevLeft, more people will prolly know a thing or two than if we all met in a park or something.

[Decommissioner]

I have a question. Why do people on revleft know such an insane amount about compyuters etc>? Where/how did you all learn such things?

Practically second nature for me. I've been messing with computers at least since I was nine years old. Back in those days before my family got dial up internet, there wasn't much else to do on the computer but mess with the registry and just get to know how it works. I remember breaking it many times haha.

It evolved from there. If I stumble upon something that is hard to understand or I am just curious about, I look it up (the internet is an unbelievably valuable resource). Right now I am trying to learn java so I can make android apps.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

As far as Linux goes, prolly cause is communistic :D
As far as computers go, I know a bit because I went to school for it in California and learned A LOT from awesome teachers (didn't get a degree though). Also my buddy's dad taught me a lot. And as others have said, since you need a computer to access RevLeft, more people will prolly know a thing or two than if we all met in a park or something.
That. The open-source movement (Linux in particular) is essentially a kind of socialism in practice. Everything is open to the community for free to use and share and improve (even the compilers - means of production). As long as it's GPL'ed (software license)

Then you have the 'libertarian' BSD-license folks who want to have the "freedom" to incorporate open-source software into closed source software and sell it without releasing any code or anything. They're like the assholes of the open source movement. That's not to say BSD-users or advocates are assholes, because BSD itself is tight. Just not the software license ...

[thriller]

That. The open-source movement (Linux in particular) is essentially a kind of socialism in practice. Everything is open to the community for free to use and share and improve (even the compilers - means of production). As long as it's GPL'ed (software license)

Then you have the 'libertarian' BSD-license folks who want to have the "freedom" to incorporate open-source software into closed source software and sell it without releasing any code or anything. They're like the assholes of the open source movement. That's not to say BSD-users or advocates are assholes, because BSD itself is tight. Just not the software license ...

Haha I know. Apple always brags that their coding is "open source" and free to modify. Yeah because Darwin is the shit :D The only bragging point they have is that their GUI, Aqua, "looks nice" which is closed source, so who even gives a fuck? What's the point of having a shitty open source kernel if the only GUI that works, on a stable level with it, is closed source?

[marl]

Ubuntu on a desktop
XFCE Debian (stable) on 2 of my laptops



FileZilla is a badass FTP client


FileZilla? lern2ssh

[Prometeo liberado]

Are y'all talking about the kid with the security blanket on Charlie Brown?:confused:

[Human Lefts]

I want to use Linux but I don't.

Why not?

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Ubuntu on a desktop
XFCE Debian (stable) on 2 of my laptops



FileZilla? lern2ssh
Yeah except my web host (shared) doesn't allow SSH connections

Kinda like if I said Ubuntu? lern2linux

And I can't afford a VPS at the moment

[Q]

Haha I know. Apple always brags that their coding is "open source" and free to modify. Yeah because Darwin is the shit :D The only bragging point they have is that their GUI, Aqua, "looks nice" which is closed source, so who even gives a fuck? What's the point of having a shitty open source kernel if the only GUI that works, on a stable level with it, is closed source?

OS X is an OK system, but yeah, Apple's business model is kinda annoying. I'm still wondering if I should buy an iPad 3 when it comes out next month, or go for something like the Asus Transformer Prime (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN9MSTvZffM), with Android (Linux!) on it.

[CommunityBeliever]

Capitalism will never produce a decent computer operating system. All of the UNIX based operating systems, including Linux, Windows, and Mac OSX, are based upon the immanently deficient C programming language and they all lack fundamental features such as single address space orthogonal persistence. Nonetheless, since I have to pick from what is available, I usually choose Linux for my own uses because it is based upon the communist practice of open colloborative design (http://www.adciv.org/Open_collaborative_design).

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Capitalism will never produce a decent computer operating system. All of the UNIX based operating systems, including Linux, Windows, and Mac OSX, are based upon the immanently deficient C programming language and they all lack fundamental features such as single address space orthogonal persistence. Nonetheless, since I have to pick from what is available, I usually choose Linux for my own uses because it is based upon the communist practice of open colloborative design (http://www.adciv.org/Open_collaborative_design).
Forgive my ignorance, but didn't Multics cover orthogonal persistence? And I seem to remember something about a university in Australia attempting to develop a persistent OS ... Grasshopper I think. Did anything ever come out of that?

[Arilou Lalee'lay]

C and C++ are amazing and I will have nothing bad said about them.

If whatever it is you're talking about was advantageous, it would have been done:


The Grasshopper operating system project ran in the Universities of Sydney and Adelaide, Australia in the early nineties. The original Grasshopper pages are archived here.
Despite the fact that the basic idea behind orthogonal persistence is very simple, research groups are finding it extremely hard to develop scalable and efficient persistent stores.

It's like the people that go on and on about how amazing RISC architectures are. Even though Intel/AMD is a big mess of CISC crap piled up over the years, a mix of RISC and CISC will always be faster.

[thriller]

C and C++ are amazing and I will have nothing bad said about them.

If whatever it is you're talking about was advantageous, it would have been done:



It's like the people that go on and on about how amazing RISC architectures are. Even though Intel/AMD is a big mess of CISC crap piled up over the years, a mix of RISC and CISC will always be faster.

I will not tolerate hating on RISC! No RISC machine has ever died on me. But they suck for mobile devices.
As for Q: Fuck an iPad. Its just an overseized iPhone that you can't make call with.

[marl]

Yeah except my web host (shared) doesn't allow SSH connections

Kinda like if I said Ubuntu? lern2linux

And I can't afford a VPS at the moment

Fair enough. Speaking of Ubuntu being Ubuntu, I often condemn others for using it, despite the fact I use it on my desktop (way too lazy to upgrade to Debian or anything else).

[BE_]

I used to dual but windows 7 and linux, but i got a new hard drive and was to lazy to install linux.

[Dark Matter]

I'm booting OpensSUSE,BackTrack,Ubuntu, im using GNU/Linux for 3 years now. Im also learning C++,to code some programs.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Fair enough. Speaking of Ubuntu being Ubuntu, I often condemn others for using it, despite the fact I use it on my desktop (way too lazy to upgrade to Debian or anything else).
Ubuntu's good if you just want everything to work pretty much out of the box.

I used it to make a media center for my dad to hook up to his TV, including a deluge server on the media center and a client on his main desktop for him to torrent shit easily.

But like I said in my post, I like fuckin with shit, so Arch Linux it is for me. I recommend it if you have a spare PC or something. The rolling release system is pretty awesome. Although, they're working the kinks out of their package signing system. I think it just got disabled. Hopefully they fix that soon.

[MarxSchmarx]

C and C++ are amazing and I will have nothing bad said about them..

The namesake of linux begs to differ:


C++ is a horrible language. It's made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it's much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it. Quite frankly, even if the choice of C were to do *nothing* but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/57643/focus=57918

I'm vaguely sympathetic to this criticism and don't really care for a lot of C++'s arcania. I disagree that a bad language is made worse by bad programmers; rather, a bad language encourages bad habits and this has led to mediocre programming.

Having said that, it embodies a lot of features that pogrammers are trained to like (i.e., object-oriented design), making a pure C based development insanely impractical when more than one person is working on a project.

[thriller]

The namesake of linux begs to differ:



http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/57643/focus=57918

I'm vaguely sympathetic to this criticism and don't really care for a lot of C++'s arcania. I disagree that a bad language is made worse by bad programmers; rather, a bad language encourages bad habits and this has led to mediocre programming.

Having said that, it embodies a lot of features that pogrammers are trained to like (i.e., object-oriented design), making a pure C based development insanely impractical when more than one person is working on a project.

Many Linux shells are based off of C right?

[Homo Songun]

KDE 4 fucking sucks. Its like the worst of the Windows 7 and Aqua UIs rolled into one, but with the typical UI slovenliness of the FOSS world.

I use BSD or Linux pretty much all of the time, but I'm hardly a platform zealot; I actually think the pre-Vista windows UI did a pretty good job. I actually enjoy what some might call the desperate nostalgia of IceWM/FVWM95/QVWM and the like. I can't be arsed to to twiddle my machines "just so" that traditional WMs require... my time is already all taken up with pressing grown up stuff anymore. So I stick to Aqua and XFCE as the lesser evils and stubbornly curse idiotic modal windows, "common" options, and atavistic auto-completion. It's a brave new world of "design experts" who think they know whats best...

[Arilou Lalee'lay]

I'm vaguely sympathetic to this criticism and don't really care for a lot of C++'s arcania. I disagree that a bad language is made worse by bad programmers; rather, a bad language encourages bad habits and this has led to mediocre programming.

Having said that, it embodies a lot of features that pogrammers are trained to like (i.e., object-oriented design), making a pure C based development insanely impractical when more than one person is working on a project.

I pretty much agree there. "Substandard", to Torvalds, might be "guru" to your average programmer. I'm able to get what I want done with python and C++ (though the only C++ feature I really use is objects) consistently and quickly. Profs going on and on about the virtues of polymorphism and operator overloading always bored me. Also people who call computer science an "art" have absolutely no idea what art is.

I said all that on /b/ and people recommended learning Haskell. Any opinions on that?

[MarxSchmarx]

Many Linux shells are based off of C right?

C, yes, which is different in many substantive respects from C++. As to practicality in hugely collaborative contexts, I suspect linux shells are the exception that proves the rule.


I pretty much agree there. "Substandard", to Torvalds, might be "guru" to your average programmer. I'm able to get what I want done with python and C++ (though the only C++ feature I really use is objects) consistently and quickly. Profs going on and on about the virtues of polymorphism and operator overloading always bored me. Also people who call computer science an "art" have absolutely no idea what art is.


C++ is useful if there are performance issues and optimization often is less subjective so the art interpretation doesn't justify anything about C++ IMO. And for scientific programming C++ does, right now, have better support than python although that too is (very) slowly changing.



I said all that on /b/ and people recommended learning Haskell. Any opinions on that?

Sorry mate, I don't know anything about Haskell so can't help you there.

But my opinion is that for 99.99% of most tasks python is more than adequate. You could even build wrappers for C/C++ operations if performance becomes an issue.

[Q]

KDE 4 fucking sucks. Its like the worst of the Windows 7 and Aqua UIs rolled into one, but with the typical UI slovenliness of the FOSS world.

A matter of taste I guess. I for one love my KDE 4.8 desktop. And it is certainly far more tweakable than Aqua and Windows 7 - you can for example switch off any window effect - so it could fit pretty much anyone's need. Although, I guess if you want it bare and low on resources, then KDE is not your thing (note for non-Linux/BSD users: KDE desktop is far lower on resources than Windows is though, even Aqua is slightly more sluggish in comparison).

But Aqua is a very good second. I love the Dock, the Launchpad and the Mission Control features. Also, Spotlight is pretty cool and while KDE's Krunner (alt-f2) is close, it still has some way to go I think.

[CommunityBeliever]

If whatever it is you're talking about was advantageous, it would have been done

The extant mode of production, capitalism, measures advantages in terms of profits and not in terms of technical efficiency. The capitalists pursue profit even if it produces technical disadvantages. For example, digital restrictions management (DRM) makes it technically harder for you to use your computer, but the capitalists implement it regardless because it helps them to accumulate profits.


C and C++ are amazing and I will have nothing bad said about them.There are plenty of bad things which I could say about C. However, for now I will just recommend that you check out the D programming language which is arguably a legitimate successor to C:

The C Preprocessor vs D (http://dlang.org/pretod.html)
Programming in D for C Programmers (http://dlang.org/ctod.html)
Garbage Collection - D programming language (http://dlang.org/garbage.html)


I said all that on /b/ and people recommended learning Haskell. Any opinions on that?

One of the nice things the D programming language has is the pure modifier (http://drdobbs.com/blogs/architecture-and-design/228700129) which supports functional programming constructs. On the other hand, Haskell is purely functional, so all functions are pure by default. Functional programming is generally a good idea, so its definitely worth checking out Haskell.


Forgive my ignorance, but didn't Multics cover orthogonal persistence? And I seem to remember something about a university in Australia attempting to develop a persistent OS ... Grasshopper I think. Did anything ever come out of that? The Grasshoper OS group was researching the single address space approach but as far as I know they didn't create anything more then a few papers (http://www-systems.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/gh/Papers/Papers.html) about it. On the other hand, Multics did pioneer the single level store but the form it took is quite outdated today.

[arilando]

Linux sucks because you cant play all computer games on it.

[Q]

Linux sucks because you cant play all computer games on it.

No, most game producers suck because they only develop for a closed system developed by Microsoft (directx et al).

[Q]

Just to indicate how up to date the software tree is Ubuntu (and, I'm sure, many other distro's) for those not familiar with Linux or *BSD: I only heard about Firefox's update to 11.0 a few hours ago and I can already update to it.

That is the beauty of a centralised software management system: You upgrade the whole system with one command or press on button. This in contrast of course with Windows, where you have to keep your whole system updated pretty much manually and on a per-app basis, which in turn leads to a system with outdated and, thus, insecure components with less features.

[ckaihatsu]

That is the beauty of a centralised software management system: You upgrade the whole system with one command or press on button.


If only upgrading society was so easy...(!)

[PC LOAD LETTER]

If only upgrading society was so easy...(!)
It's an interesting metaphor for regional worker's councils

The innovator releases a product (kernel.org) ... the local workers council obtains it (linux distro managers) and distributes it to the people in the area (adds to repositories, users download)

[ckaihatsu]

It's an interesting metaphor for regional worker's councils

The innovator releases a product (kernel.org) ... the local workers council obtains it (linux distro managers) and distributes it to the people in the area (adds to repositories, users download)


Yes, the open-source software movement *is* essentially communism in the here-and-now. The hyper-miniaturization of certain goods and services -- digitized ones, that is -- has shown us, to our faces, exactly what communism could look like for the rest of societal production.

Note that the release of the kernel itself is *centralized*, total distribution is effortless and non-discriminatory, and customizations are only limited by one's own ability, with perfectly identical distribution capabilities available to anyone else, as well. Ditto for documentation and user guides, thus giving anyone access to controlling the "means of production" for themselves. (And, today, due to technological advances, the hardware is both commonplace, affordable, and gives *increasing returns* for the money spent.)(I'd say the "tipping point" happened around 2005-2007.)