Still d@mns with faint praise

Story: Opinion: Desktop Linux is ready for the mainstreamTotal Replies: 11
Author Content
tracyanne

Mar 08, 2009
7:54 PM EDT
incorrect information, and incorrect assumptions.
techiem2

Mar 08, 2009
10:38 PM EDT
Quoting:So when my colleague Neil McAllister, author of InfoWorld's Fatal Exception blog, made the case for desktop Linux, I snorted, "Give me a break! Desktop Linux is nowhere." He challenged me to try it myself. He had a point: It had been a decade since I fired up any desktop Linux distro. So I accepted his challenge.


This seems to be the standard with these "journalists". "I used it 10 years ago and it's wasn't super user friendly then, therefore it can't be now."

Quoting:Let's face it: The app selection for desktop Linux -- especially those designed for regular folks -- is very thin. You won't find BI tools, database apps, media creation apps, and so on, as you would for Windows or the Mac. If you think the Mac has too few apps to be used in business, you'll downright dismiss desktop Linux.


uh....because Adobe (non Free I believe) and IBM Symphony (also non Free as I recall) aren't in the default Ubuntu repos? Yeah, she/he? obviously didn't spend a whole lot of time looking through the repos. Last I checked there were LOTS of apps for regular users (though I'm not sure how BI tools count as apps for "regular folks").

Quoting:Of course, you won't have the same kind of central system management options that you do for Windows PCs. So you'll need to rely on your Linux distro's update manager, as well as your apps. This automated, client-level approach is also standard on Windows and Mac OS, even though many IT organizations don't like it and instead want to validate and apply such patches centrally. The more control you want, the less you'll like desktop Linux (just as you probably don't like the Mac).


ROFL
tracyanne

Mar 09, 2009
2:10 AM EDT
Quoting:Still d@mns with faint praise


How twee are we? that's not how I wrote the word, there wasn't an '@' in sight when I posted it.
jacog

Mar 09, 2009
4:09 AM EDT
And when he says 'desktop Linux', what exactly does he mean? He generalises as if all distros do things the same.
r_a_trip

Mar 09, 2009
4:24 AM EDT
Seems to be standard practice. Mention a few good points and then turn around and start yakking about specialist, professional requirements and foisting these niche constraints onto the fictional average user.

Yeah, a standard GNU/Linux distribution doesn't come with development tools for Thermo-Nuclear Devices, so it isn't ready for the average computer user.
theboomboomcars

Mar 09, 2009
9:10 AM EDT
I think it's funny that she calls the Ubuntu she installed 8.1, yet she calls her Mac OS 10.5, why didn't she truncate the 0 off the 10 for Mac but she did for Ubuntu?

What is a BI tool? I didn't read past the first page, the story was barely interesting enough to read the first page so when I saw there were 5 I stopped reading, so if it is in the story I didn't read it.
jacog

Mar 09, 2009
9:20 AM EDT
Business Intelligence? If so, then some more specific description would be handy since web statistics software can also fall under that category.
tracyanne

Mar 09, 2009
9:45 AM EDT
Quoting:I think it's funny that she calls the Ubuntu she installed 8.1, yet she calls her Mac OS 10.5, why didn't she truncate the 0 off the 10 for Mac but she did for Ubuntu?


Ubuntu 8.10 isn't a decimal number, it's actually 2008 10. OSX 10.5 is actually version 10.5. Her mistake was in assuming that 8.10 is an incorrectly written decimal number. Your mistake is in assuming that removing a redundant trailing zero from a decimal number of 8.1(0) is equivalent to removing a significant zero from 10.5. In the first instance removing the trailing zero corrects a mistake, in the second instance removing the zero creates a mistake.
tuxchick

Mar 09, 2009
10:22 AM EDT
Quoting: Seems to be standard practice. Mention a few good points and then turn around and start yakking about specialist, professional requirements and foisting these niche constraints onto the fictional average user.


I noticed that too. Funny how similar they all are, like they follow a script. Though I give this one bonus points for nattering on about "BI" as though it were meaningful.
techiem2

Mar 09, 2009
10:35 AM EDT
I also found it amusing how the author decided to use mainly Symphony instead of OpenOffice apparently simply because an evaluation from the middle of last year (July 2008) said it's more refined. Haven't there been a couple major revisions since then?

Quoting:OpenOffice is a sound alternative to Microsoft Office, but I spent most of my time with the free IBM Lotus Symphony, which is a slightly better productivity suite than OpenOffice, in the InfoWorld Test Center's evaluation. It's simply more refined and will be easier for Office users to adapt to, even though it lacks the database and drawing applications that OpenOffice has.
Sander_Marechal

Mar 09, 2009
11:01 AM EDT
I tried Symphony about a week ago. I thought it was horrible. Just the UI itself is as inconsistent as can be and is a pain on the eyes.
theboomboomcars

Mar 09, 2009
11:28 AM EDT
tracyanne you made my point Ubuntu's naming isn't a decimal number so dropping the trailing zero changes it's meaning, just like with Mac OS dropping the 0 changes the meaning.

EDIT: If you are going to write an article about something you should probably verify that your information is correct before posting. It's one thing to post an incorrect thing in the comments section, but when your Job is posting information, make sure your info is correct before posting. (You should do the same for posting in forums/comments, but if you make it only reflects on you, if you make a mistake on a paid article it makes you and your publisher look foolish.)

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