Taking Free Software To the Streets 184
An anonymous reader writes "It's that time of year again; the nights are drawing in, the leaves are beginning to turn, and literally hundreds of teams of dedicated F/OSS enthusiasts from around the world are preparing to hit the streets in celebration of Software Freedom Day 2009. In an effort to increase awareness of free and open source software among the general public, SFD teams will be standing around town centers and shopping malls, holding talks at schools and universities, giving demonstrations and handing out Linux and FOSS collections for Windows on CD. With money being tight and paranoia about malware and viruses at an all-time high, the time is right to help consumers switch to the myriad of quality open source applications available. If you would like to check for an SFD team in your area and consider attending, be it to help out or simply learn more about free software for yourself, there's an interactive map to help you find your way."
Re:"Go away" (Score:2, Informative)
You can now officially say Vista. Only the most vicious M$ astroturfers would blame you.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/351652/microsoft-admits-vista-was-a-less-good-product [pcpro.co.uk]
Re:"Go away" (Score:1, Informative)
Assuming you were alluding to King of the Hill, the quote is:
"I don't know you! That's my purse!" *kick to the groin*
Go, Bobby Hill!
Re:Keep it wacky, say goodbye to Joe public (Score:5, Informative)
Standing around town centres like homeless winos. That's the problem with FOSS advocates, they keep coming up with these wacky ideas...
It doesn't get any better than this:
The scene is the Boston Common in late August.
The event the launch of FSF's "Windows 7 Sins" campaign.
Special Guest Appearance by Ron Stoppable as Team Mascot. Free Software Foundation - Windows 7 Sins [youtube.com]
You can expect much of the time - and much of the screen - to given over to a lecture by a paunchy - balding - middle-aged geek.
540 views.
It is quite possible for a Win 7 promotional video to net two million viewers. Windows 7 [youtube.com]
Re:ease if installation of FOSS (Score:0, Informative)
Hey, bitch. It's 2009, time to update your bullshit rhetoric.
Ok, now I just need to open my wedding invitation Word file from last year and-- ALL MY DOCUMENTS ARE GONE!!!!
That's funny, when I click on last year's file created in Word, it just works. You know, seeing as both Microsoft Office seamlessly installs in Linux with Wine and works just as good (if not better with faster loading times due to superior and quicker file systems) as it does on Windows. Of course, who needs to pay for Office when OpenOffice is free and also opens up those Word documents for me.
What the fuck is a "3 mobile broadband USB dongle?" I certainly don't have one of those. Will Ubuntu work with my laptop's built-in Wifi? Possibly. My desktop's USB wifi? Doubtful. My desktop's built-in network card? Probably. But all of those answers have built-in vagueness.
Hey, I don't know what a 3 dongle is either, but I can damn sure tell you this: My Novatel USB720 I got from Verizon works like a dream. I just plug it in to a fresh install of Linux and click connect. Within 5 seconds, I'm online. No bullshit drivers or crapware to install. Contrast this with Windows where I have to install said drivers and crapware, start up the craplication to connect with, wait the requisite 30 seconds to a minute for it to connect and then be consistently dropped every hour or so necessitating going through the whole 30 second process again. And since we are trading anecdotes here, I'll indulge you further. My zd1211 USB wifi network adapter just worked. Windows, ha ha, install the driver, use the shitty software and again, get a connection drop every hour or so. Yes, I tried it, yes that is what happened. Ethernet adapter, in Linux, of course it worked. Windows, of course install more crapware.
You proprietards are pathetic with your bullshit.
Re:Time Bandits (Score:3, Informative)
That's just talk. I've tried to leave home users with Ubuntu before in the past. There's always something that goes wrong and is absolutely impossible for a home user to solve. It's just too *big* and has too many points of failure without the organized support backend of something like the Windows Platform. Open source offerings will get much better when they simplify and reintegrate.
You have obviously never run into the quality of people I have. I quite regularly get calls from family, friends of family (and their friends, who I've done work for) to fix their windows machines. So while this isn't FUD, it isn't unique to Open-Source at all.
And the integration thing? It is happening all over the place. It used to be that Gnome used CORBA and KDE used DCOP to do things like provide application interfaces that could be hooked from other applications (to, say, be able to control your music-player from your IRC program) and also provide a sane place to find some system data. Now they both use DBUS. Which actually provides a lot more flexibility for the interfaces than DCOP or CORBA ever did... And it also ties into the 'hardware access layer' so that you can find information about all the hardware in the machine in one place.
But really... It sounds like you are calling for projects to merge so that there is less choice and more talent focused on individual projects. I hate to say it, but that will never occur
Actually, it's not a conspiracy. At this point, Windows is simply more user friendly and usable. I suspect Haiku will overtake Windows in usability before the Linux desktop does, it just has a broad natural advantage in terms of architecture. You certainly can't take away Linux's server utility, though. It will always be firm in that market.
I see you took out the whole section where I covered the well documented cases of MS abusing its position in an attempt to force existing competitors out of a specific market (or out of business entirely) and to keep new competitors from entering that same market.
The moment Linux came even close to being usable, Dell and HP picked it up as options. Those don't do that well on the market. I would say they put exuberant faith in it to offer something like Ubuntu on a consumer machine. It certainly doesn't belong there.
Oh, I see... You are trying to make the claim that because Dell and certain other OEM's now offer Linux that they didn't because it wasn't ready. Sorry, but you fail your history check - part of the US DoJ's case against MS was that they did things like threatened to revoke bulk-licensing deals if anything other than an MS OS was offered as an option for a new machine or required that every machine - regardless of whether or not it shipped with an MS OS installed - be counted when it came to calculating the price of the bulk-license. That is what kept Linux off of machines from major manufacturers.
I've never owned a machine that worked with Linux without incident. Never. My current laptop, for instance, the Gateway LT3103u, does not work well with Linux at all. Its battery life and power management under Linux are especially dismal- and this is pretty ordinary hardware. It's actually losing quite heavily to Vista on this machine. I find that hilarious.
I've run Linux on three different laptops now. All three of them were "new" when I purchased them. All three of them have had better battery life in Linux. One of them reported having 4+ hours available at full-charge in Windows, but would last maybe 2 hours - where in Linux it reports just shy of 3 hours and actually lasts just shy of 3 hours. So YMMV - this is why I suggest people not trust my anecdotal evidence without doing research and/or testing.
It sounds like you haven't used a Windows system since Windows 98. I can tell because you mention the system rebooting to install a USB device driver.
Last versio
Re:Time Bandits (Score:3, Informative)