Ubuntu
Is there somewhere where the Ubuntu discussion can go on? I think it's quite interesting. I am a huge fan of Ubuntu and Mr. Mark, but had also wondered for quite some time why Ubuntu was not, in actual fact, a product of South Africa.
But say we wanted a person who doesn't care HOW* their computer works to run Linux so that under the covers everything can remain free and fair and not owned by corporates who can make us their slaves by them having all the knowledge. We would need someone who can kill all the marketing fluff that comes out of the richest company in the world. And we know that if they said OJ didn't do it, most of the world would believe them.
So is there another way besides what Ubuntu is doing? Isn't the only thing that can kill marketing and propaganda, marketing and propaganda? In an imperfect world we have to accept these marketing people because other people believe them, and those people have money. This is why I can't run my games on Linux.
Ubuntu has to make money on the side somehow - not because Mr. Mark doesn't have enough but because he wants it to be self-sustaining and not die out when he does. Ubuntu also has to establish such evils as brand and credibility with corporate clowns who don't know anything but hype.
Man, I can't even get my wife to run Linux. Some of my clients refuse to use Firefox even though it's more convenient, safer and would cost them no effort or money. I can't explain it but they actually trust IE more than Firefox, because they see Microsoft as this giant and wonderous organisation that makes good quality software for the world.
Anyway, Mark can throw his weight because he has it, and no-one can kill Debian or any other distro, hiring programmers or not**. Ubuntu itself will always be free and open source, and Linux will be everywhere, and that is what matters to me. Debian is being used, as all Linuxes always have been***, but this time it's for the good of us all.
L
*Most people don't care HOW their computer, TV or anything else works, which basically what is wrong with the world
**What? Slackware is still going? Is 50000 distro's not just an incredible duplication of effort on atomic bomb scale? Sometimes I think 'choice' is just an excuse to write what you want to write OVER AGAIN because you couldn't be bothered to learn someone else's system. If some Linux developers just united we'd lose some choice, but man, would there be any software left to write?
***In fact, Hans Reiser caught someone who stole his code and now gets royalties from them. I'm pretty sure OS is creeping into proprietry code at an incredible rate as developers steal it. That sucks.