OT: Mac vs Win partisanship is unnecessary

[Richmond]

On 07/22/2010 11:00 AM, Peter Alcibiades wrote:<,snip>
> <snip>
>    

> You may not have been around during the wars of religion between Gnome and
> KDE?  Gnome were the purists on OSS, and issued fatwas on KDE because KDE
> were using Trolltech development environment, QT, which Gnome considered to
> be not authentically open.
>    

And here's another load of 'old poo' where people get all hairy-chested 
because something isn't
"truly open source" as determined by "Sri Sri Sri 108 Richard Stallman 
may his socks be forever scented with roses".

The fact of the matter is that 'perfect' operating systems DON'T and 
WON'T exist, and people who think
they DO or WILL are stuck in a delayed adolescent idealistic haze.

I went to a talk by Richard Stallman in Sofia about 5 years ago; he 
spoke about things that anybody who bothers
to think already knows; he delivered his whole speech in an incredibly 
irritating harsh, high-pitched whine
just like all other fanatics and dictatorial types; and 95% of the 
audience clapped ecstatically at each half-truth
he mouthed.

what he did say that stuck in my mind was that the origianl idea of a 
'hacker' had got lost.

A hacker is somebody who tailors available resources to his or her own 
ends . . . surely that (and not
a slavish adherence to some fairly vacuous 'Open Source' vision, or 
uncritical adoration of one type of
OS or software) is what we all should be?

What each of us has to do is find a computer(s) we feel comfortable 
using, for our individual
needs, with an OS, a GIU (if we want one) and ancillary software 
packages that we like.

We have ALL been brainwashed by the vertical route to upgrade-heaven, 
and the idea that
we are either 'Mac people' or 'Windows people'.

For your information:

My family runs:

G4 MDD dual proc. on Mac Leopard with 95% Open Source software. Use 
ancient Virtual PC running WinXP for
          occasional testing.

G4 MacMini on Debian Lenny PPC

HP x686 on Ubuntu 10.04 mucked around to suit my needs; use WINE for the 
odd Windowsy thing I might need to test.

G4 iBook on Mac Tiger with 95% Open Source software.

4 'Combination' PCs running anything from FreeDOS to Linux Mint.

BBC Master running MOS, has BBC BASIC on a chip.

and in my school:

G3 iMac on Mac Tiger with 95% Open Source software.

4 scrubby old Pentium IIIs running Ubuntu 5.10 (or something like that)

As you can see it is a 'wierd menagerie of strange beasts'; and why 
should it not be; it suits our
needs; some of these machines are only used rarely for something that is 
rather more difficult
on other machines; many of these machines are not permanently connected 
up to keyboards,
pointing devices and VDUs because they would take up far too much space 
which is not justified
if they are used 5-6 times a year.

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Last night I sat in a restaurant with a man who runs a small electronics 
factory here in Plovdiv;
at present all of his computers run on Windows. He wants to change over 
to Linux because
various people have told him it will be cheaper.

He uses extremely specialist software written for Windows to program his 
electronic "thingies"
(that was where both my electronics and my Bulgarian failed me). He has 
heard about WINE.

I told him that the answer was multi-facetted and depended on all sorts 
of variables which I was
completely unable to answer until I had tried runnung all these special 
programs with WINE; seeing if
running under WINE they would connect with the thingies, and so on, and 
so on . .  . .

And I told him that, ultimately the 'aggro' of such a change over might 
just be more trouble than it is worth.

He was shocked and surprised at what I told him as somebody told him 
that I was a real Luddite
as far as Windows was concerned.

What I told him, however anti-Windows I may be (quite a lot), was my 
honest, informed opinion;
wihtout more that a modicum of my personal prejudices.