On 2/4/14 8:50 PM, Silver Slimer wrote:
On 04/02/2014 9:41 PM, Ken Springer wrote:

Open-source in general is buggy or doesn't work.

After 3 or 4 years of using it, I'm afraid I have to agree with you for
the programs I've tried to use "in depth". Have some others I'm trying,
jury is out on them.

Technically, all people should be using open-source simply because the
code is transparent. However, people should only be accepting to use
operating systems which are entirely free (as in freedom) as well as
free third-party software, free formats and free codecs. For privacy as
well as security, there are nothing but benefits. However, there are
only a handful of GNU/Linux distributions which are fully free and
they're not that good. A lot of people would have trouble doing what
they're used to doing in Windows and they'd be disgusted at how their
computers have trouble going to and waking from sleep as well as how web
sites dependent on Flash wouldn't work at all.

While your thoughts on free software and operating systems is noble,
it's also a utopia that will never exist.

Think about it, the people doing the coding have to eat. If they spent
8 hrs/day doing coding, got paid $0, how do they pay bills? If they
have a job somewhere, then they don't/won't have another 8 hrs. to do
this. If nothing else, the spouse and family won't be there. The coder
has no life.

And since they do not get their income from coding, there's 0 incentive
to fix bugs other than pride. This is what I ran into with Libre
Office. And you'll find them with Firefox and Thunderbird if you check
Bugzilla. Bugs go back for years. You'll note in my sig I use FF and
TB, and at the moment, considering getting Office for Mac so I can use
Outlook, and thus avoid a lot of bugs in TB.

I will agree, that at the moment, it is the most secure. But that's
because open source operating systems are just not popular enough. At
one time, there were no malware for the Mac. That's no longer true.
And I know of one piece of malware that exists for Linux. I can't
remember the name, but it actually attacked Windows, OS X, and Linux, if
the report was accurate.

But... Even more importantly, it has to work. And as you noted, things
don't. The average user simply will not accept a system that, while
more secure, doesn't work.

I still want to give Linux a try, I even created a partition on my boot
drive for that. Haven't had time and energy to do it. I've read some
nice things about Netrunner (I think) and it's attempt to make switching
from Windows less painful. It's supposed to include Flash, Java, and
who knows what else.


--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 24.0
Thunderbird 24.0