[OT] Blowing my mind about Linux

Richmond richmondmathewson at gmail.com
Fri May 11 13:22:11 EDT 2012


I have finally worked out why I think thinking people (!)
prefer Mac OS or Windows:

For the very same reason why buckets of people want to
go back to the Communist state here in Bulgaria.

Linux involves a vast number of choices:

1. Choices about Desktop environment; WIMP, HUD, 
Nix-but-contextual-menus, Freaky, and so on.

2. Choices about how to access programs: Panels, AWN, Cairo Dock, etc., 
etc.,

3. Phil Lewer, Jan Brewer, Harry Hawkins, Hugh Davy   Philly Whitpot, 
George Pausley, Dick Wilson, Tom Cobbley and all.

And, for why do I find Linux delectable; mayhap because many years syne 
(well 36 to be exact), I ate a delicious plate
of rice-pudding in Widdecombe after 24 hours out on the tors of 
Dartmoor. And, possibly the saddest thing of all, is that I suspect
very few in the computer programming fraternity/sorority will even 
understand the connexion between those remarks and point 3.

-----------------------------------------------

3 weeks ago I was standing in a shed with 2 lambs under my arms feeding 
them from bottles (at Horton-in-Ribblesdale), and some
wag (isn't there always one?) said to me "Why are you doing that?", to 
which I replied "I care!" (frankly, the farmer had had about
105 Spring lambs; and he had dug them out of the snowdrifts; of which 50 
of them had been saved by sheltering under their dead mothers' 
carcases), to which, said wag had remarked "I thought you said you were 
a teacher and a computer programmer." at which point I turned to the 
lambs and saw that they were comfortable and full of milk. The fellow 
was an idiot.

------------------------------------------------

The vast majority of people do NOT want choices; they want comfortable 
predictableness.......

However, awkward s*ds like me, believe that that is exactly what meant 
that the Jews and so on, walked obediently into the
gas ovens of Nazi Germany.

Of course comparing the Virus-Hell of the most popular family of 
computer operating systems on the planet
with the Nazi holocaust elevates the former to a place it should not 
enjoy, and degrades the latter to a position
which diminishes it significance in a way which is hugely dangerous.

-----------------------------

While Linux may NOT turn everybody on Ding-an-Sich.....

It is worth recalling what happened in Britain when, quite suddenly, the 
Archimedes computer (running RISC OS)
cut its own throat by getting into bed with Apple (remember the Xemplar 
episode?), and everything changed, and
those teachers who could not transition very quickly from RISC OS to 
Windows 95 were in the sh*t.

--------------------------

What has this got to do with Runtime Revolution Livecode?

Quite a lot.

1. The world does not change smoothly, nor predictably.

2. Richard Gaskin's recent posting anent Linux could not be more apposite.

3. RunRev made a big mistake when it stopped releasing engines to allow 
standalone builds for any systems apart from
Mac, Windows and Linux.

--------------------------

Friday night rant as usual is for free. Love, Richmond.




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