On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 1:24 AM, Tony Smith <ajsmith@beagle.com.au> wrote:
> Eventually 'does it work' takes precedence over 'but it's free / yay
> Stallman / but it's Linux / M$ sucks & Winblows / fix it yourself / works
> for me' etc. =A0Fine if you're 14 and excited, as you say, by the latest =
shiny
> thing. =A0These days I'll just pay a couple of hundred dollars rather than
> spend a week fixing (and failing) something that was 'free'. =A0MythTV is=
 a
> perfect example.

I kind of agree with you. But maybe that was not true when I was
younger. And from time to time I still like to fix things by myself.
Just yesterday, I found out that there is an open source Samsung
SCX-4200 driver and I tried it and it works.

> The gamers & overclockers are no different chasing FPS, and I'll lump the
> 're-install XP every 6 months' crowd in there too. =A0If you like that so=
rt of
> thing, well, have fun.

I do not play games and I am not overclockers, I do not reinstall XP/Vista
every 6 months (used to do that in the Win95/98SE days). But I do
install new Ubuntu version every 6 months just to keep up (I also keep
the latest LTS version along with the latest version, like 8.04/8.10 now).

> Often they seem to be solving a problem that doesn't exist, like the bloke
> fixing the horrible M$ .DOCX files. =A0Why? =A0They're just zipped XML, t=
he
> latest OO reads them, old Word versions have a converter, and even
> WordPerfect (or Corel whatever) reads them too.
>

But there are different ways to solve the problem. Maybe that is
the beauty or ugliness of the Open Source movement -- everyone
wants to scratch his own itch and creates something new. So there
are many distributions, many programs solving the same problems.
In the end, it comes down to choices and I think it is a good thing
overall.

Xiaofan

-- =

http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist