A lot of what he mentioned can be done without writing a line of code. He is basically talking about a large scale home automation system with a voice interface to it
I can't speak for OSX, but Ubuntu beats Windows these days in terms of usability, mainly because the software ecosystem is not polluted with crapware like it is with windows. If I want to find a tool to do x, it is an 'apt-get install' away where as with windows I have trawl through pages of google search results, trudging through trial versions before I find something that does what I want. If you are a developer, even just the basic unix tools are a god send in saving hours every week, on windows you have to deal with cygwin just to get something approximating those great tools.
This is not entirely true. As someone that recently switched to Ubuntu from being a long time windows user.
Your apt-get scenario only works if what you're looking for is in the official repositories. If not, you have to add those repositories first. That's a lucky menu find in the Ubuntu installer or some random add repo command with some possibly untrusted domain in it.
Then... You get random install errors. Missing so files or package dependencies etc.
Trust me, I've done more googling trying to install stuff on Ubuntu than I ever did on Windows. At least with windows if you had the exe or msi file you were dons 99% of the time. And you almost always found that file on the site for that program.
Even if you can find your package in the repos, you can always build from source if you like. In that case it a ./configure && make && make install away
That's what got me to make the switch. I just wanted a command line without all the crud that comes with Windows. I don't see going back to Windows as long as I'm writing code.
Fascinating. This article (esp the part about young people not even thinking about their future knowing its already decided for them) reminds me of the novel 'Never Let Me Go' by Kazuo Ishiguro. Great novel but one of the criticism directed at the novel is "why are certain characters so passive towards their condition", "why don't they do something about it"? An instilled sense of duty is indeed a very powerful motivator.
Every time I read about life in North Korea I'm reminded of "Meeks," a spooky little novel by Julia Holmes. Nothing in the book says it's about North Korea, but I think she must have been inspired by it.
Makes perfect sense to me. Webber and RedBull are not on good terms therefore RedBull doesn't give him Traction Control esp since there's a good possibility that he might blow the whistle on the whole operation if he finds out. In a lot of F1 circles there are conspiracy theories that RedBull is actively sabotaging Webber and there might be some truth to that as Webber is constantly at the receiving end of reliability problems, mechanical failures and botched pitstops whereas Vettel's car runs smooth without a glitch. I very much doubt that those two guys have the same machinery underneath them.
I'm sure if a starving child in Africa read your post they would be angry that someone went out of their way to get angry over another person making very personal decision. There are greater things in life to angry over than another person making a decision which they believe will make them happier.
Just because you can't seem to fathom how someone might leave behind a cushy job does not give you the right to be judgemental. World is a suckier place when people can't seem to see the world without their tunnel vision.
You are right. When I first joined HN reading comments was my favourite part. I would be in awe of all these intelligent and insightful people, I would often skip entire articles and read the comments first. Things have really taken a major turn for worse in the last 6-8 months. Almost every single thing posted gets picked apart to bits and not in a good way. It has gotten so bad that I have actively started avoiding the comment section. My rule of thumb these days is only read comments in threads below 20 posts as these low comment threads are the ones with the highest chance of reading something interesting rather than just typical tired criticism of the of the article. I don't even consider threads with over 50 comments as these are almost always a complete cesspool of negatively.
This post is nothing but a nice heaping of FUD. Looking at it from a distance the decisions made the Ubuntu brass have largely paid off. I like many others had my doubts when I initially played with Unity in 11.04 when it was slow and lumbering, however in 12.04 I doubt there are many people who would categorize Unity as a substandard experience. I haven't played with the latest GNOME so I can't comment there but Unity definitely blows KDE out of the water. I doubt lens-shopping makes it into the next LTS released, if it does it will be turned off by default.
I know we live in the age of hyperbole but statements like this "There are other major open source projects that have started to actively defecate upon their existing user base." are not constructive in any way. Ubuntu adoption is growing not shrinking, Firefox market share while not growing is holding steady. Claiming that these projects are going down is nothing but FUD. (I know many people would love to see Ubuntu and Firefox go down just so they can have a chance to see their pet distro on top and Chrome on top but alas it ain't happening any-time soon)
The level of anger and displeasure within the Ubuntu community is at an astounding level. It's not a healthy community these days.
Clearly, the growth isn't there. Android has become the most popular Linux distribution around. DistroWatch shows more interest in Linux Mint, and a declining interest in Ubuntu. The general sentiment when following discussion online is that people are unhappy with Ubuntu, and trying alternatives, including Windows and OS X.
The same goes for Firefox and GNOME. The sentiment within the existing user communities is not pleasant. The only "positive" (more like non-negative) articles are coming from the leadership of these projects, and they often read much more like advertising or propaganda than informative articles. Much of the user-generated discussion is some expression of displeasure.
Contrast this to some of the other major projects. We see people openly happy to use Chrome or Opera. We see people happy to use Xfce and KDE. We see people happy to use Linux Mint or Debian. The difference is like light and day.
Ignoring, or even denying the existence of, the simmering tension within the Ubuntu, GNOME and Firefox communities just isn't helpful. It's going to boil over at some point, unfortunately.
I see nothing in what you said other than subjective anecdotes.
>> How exactly have their decisions "paid off"?
The main complaint over the last year and a half against ubuntu esp in 11.* days was Unity. At this stage in its life can anyone with a straight face claim that Unity on 12.04 is a substandard experience? I highly doubt it, and if there is that person is most likely still holding on to the bitterness of their initial experience with it rather than any substantial criticism against how it is currently.
>> Clearly, the growth isn't there. Android has become the most popular Linux distribution around. DistroWatch shows more interest in Linux Mint, and a declining interest in Ubuntu. The general sentiment when following discussion online is that people are unhappy with Ubuntu, and trying alternatives, including Windows and OS X.
Saying that Android is the most popular Linux distro out there is grasping for straws, our discussion here is obviously in context of desktop OSs, bringing up Android is a non-sequitur and like comparing apples and oranges.
>> The same goes for Firefox and GNOME. The sentiment within the existing user communities is not pleasant. The only "positive" (more like non-negative) articles are coming from the leadership of these projects, and they often read much more like advertising or propaganda than informative articles. Much of the user-generated discussion is some expression of displeasure.
Once again this is all anecdotes. It's funny you mention Firefox, I use both Chrome and Firefox but the strongest criticism I see against Firefox is something as trivial as version numbers. In pretty much every Firefox related thread there is atleast one person complaining about the rate at which new versions are being churned out all the while not appreciating the irony of being a Chrome user and making that complaint. I read an article today with some guy ranting and leaving Ubuntu for Windows after his web-cam stopped working in a newer release, I consider this kind of trivial criticism to be irrelevant and sadly that's the kind of criticism that is directed at these projects these days.
> The level of anger and displeasure within the Ubuntu community is at an astounding level.
I have called you on this above, and I will call you on it again. You make this statement as if it is fact, yet you have provided no justification.
The only noises of displeasure come from those who don't use Ubuntu anyway. You might argue that they left when Unity was created, except that real community members (edit: who don't like Unity) still use Ubuntu through Xubuntu, Lubuntu or simply a stock Ubuntu installation with GNOME added. Every argument made against Ubuntu does not apply to these users. Thus the arguments cannot be being made by members of the Ubuntu community.
This goes without saying but no one is forcing you to upgrade from 12.04 to 12.10. 12.10 is not an LTS release so naturally you should stick to 12.04 if you don't want any of the kinks that are a side-effect of being on the bleeding edge. For me personally, I upgraded from 12.04 -> 12.10 last week and after a 'apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping' I can barely even tell I'm running 12.10!
