Is Linux a desktop operating system?

Tom Adelstein adelste at yahoo.com
Sat May 28 16:33:24 UTC 2005


On Sat, 2005-05-28 at 12:15 +0200, albi at scii.nl wrote:
> On Sat, 28 May 2005 10:59:07 +0100
> Norman Silverstone <norman at littletank.org> wrote:
> 
> > Thank you very much for your kind offer it is very much appreciated.
> > However, I speak not only for myself but for other members of my
> > family who I would like to convert to Ubuntu from Windows. This is not
> > because I hate Windows but because I am fed up with having to deal
> > with the effects of viruses etc. on their machines. Much of what is
> > needed is educational such as access to encyclopedia and reference
> > works, 'games' which help in language, maths and science and, of
> > course, the ability to listen to and download 'popular' music from the
> > net. Also, there is the very large library of games available to run
> > in Windows but not in Ubuntu. Perhaps I am missing something but all
> > of those pieces of software which my family possess and that I have
> > tried do not work in Ubuntu.
> > 
> > One bright spot is that a piece of Astronomy software called SkyMap
> > Lite runs with the help of Wine but, however, the display and the way
> > data is presented, is not as readable as when run in Windows for which
> > it was developed.
> > 
> > I could go on but I will stop and leave the rest to others who have
> > rehearsed the answers to the question many times in the past and will.
> > doubtless, do so in the future.
> 
> i don't understand all this complaining about linux and the so-called
> lack of software
> 
> do you want a completely commercialised linux-world in the future like
> the windows-world already is ?
> 
> i think the solution is easy, buy Apple computers and a game-console
> and all the commercial apps and games you want and dump windows if
> dealing with viruses is a problem for you
> 
> and if you really want to make a move with linux, then start
> contributing, e.g. writing howto's, doing translations, writing to
> companies asking for certain software you think you need, and above all
> protest against the enormous power-position grip that Microsoft still
> has world-wide (think e.g. of the blackmail cases vs. all kind of
> hardware-vendors, and getting refunds from the Microsoft-tax)
> 

Norman, albi makes very good points. I'm glad he said it instead of me. 

At some point, people have to take a stand for goodness. Microsoft
persists because good men refuse to act. Linus calls it inertia. Others
have used more biting commentary.

Popular music isn't popular for long and I can't sympathize with
"games". People have provided an abundance of educational software for
Linux. I'm even studying languages on Linux. You can use a Mac for
educational software. 

Of course, you can wait until the products get ported or write and ask
software companies if they will port their products to Linux.







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