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This is a normal post being open source that would be difficult,
some of the bigger distros could in theory become profit-making (and some already did via the "support service" business model, for instance Red Hat) but anyone with the knowhow can put their own distro together.

A bit of commercial-quality software wouldn't go amiss, in any case, to be honest.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 20:34, Reply)
This is a normal post
What Linux really lacks is vision and imagination. Surprising, since "anyone" can contribute to it.
 (I helped save b3ta! JamTallons, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 22:07, Reply)
This is a normal post problem is too many different visions,
design by committee taken to its ultimate silly conclusion. A sprawl of features and functionality without any overarching structure or sense to it, implemented by people who use keyboard shortcuts to do everything and haven't got the first clue about usability or learning curves.

Add to that the silly habit of giving all the applications bizarre and often rude-sounding names. It will come up with notifications saying "Splungefart failed to launch" and I'll have to google it. My file manager is called "Dolphin", wtf what does a dolphin have to do with the price of fish?
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 22:17, Reply)
This is a normal post It sounds like it could do with a dose of capitalism,
with some maturity for restraint.
 (I helped save b3ta! JamTallons, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 22:30, Reply)
This is a normal post I don't have too much faith in capitalism to be honest,
they'd just try to turn it into a clone of windows/mac, and it would lose everything that makes it good, which is plenty of stuff despite the complaints. There's nothing wrong with the kernel.

What it needs is a dose of despotism, I think.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 22:35, Reply)
This is a normal post Genuinely good and innovative things can come from Capitalism. We're having this conversation after all.
But like all human endeavors, it's the human beings that can screw things up.
 (I helped save b3ta! JamTallons, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 22:46, Reply)
This is a normal post we're having this conversation because the internet is an open system,
if it had been invented and pushed by the capitalists we'd have to have this conversation through something like Facebook with adverts all over it. There'd be no B3ta.

Big companies have come up with good things, I don't believe for a minute it's the best way of coming up with good things though.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 22:51, Reply)
This is a normal post Telephones are an open system.
Capitalism built telephones. ?
 (I helped save b3ta! JamTallons, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 23:00, Reply)
This is a normal post not really,
there are telephone companies that own the lines, switchboards etc. there is no "internet company". There are service providers who allow you to connect from your house but it's not the same thing. It's a completely decentralised system.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 23:08, Reply)
This is a normal post I mean the infrastructure.
People can say what they want on the telephone, but they need the wire connecting them to do it. The Internet "arises" from the benefits of Capitalism in other words.
 (I helped save b3ta! JamTallons, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 23:14, Reply)
This is a normal post yeah you can,
not sure the analogy is very useful though. The whole point of the telephone is so that individuals can talk to each other. A profit-driven service model of the internet would more likely be a bit more one sided, more like television. Think FOX/Sky News. You can't go on there and read your own news story can you.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 23:18, Reply)
This is a normal post The only point I'm making is that you need the wire.
For our conversation to happen that means copper cables, fiber-optics, satellites, deep sea cables, routers and so on.
 (I helped save b3ta! JamTallons, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 23:23, Reply)
This is a normal post you need more than just the wire for the internet,
you need the protocols as well. Thankfully these are not proprietary. Anyone can set up a server in their house and host a web page on it.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 23:25, Reply)
This is a normal post Yep.
For telephones to work you need language too.
 (I helped save b3ta! JamTallons, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 23:26, Reply)
This is a normal post and thank goodness language is not proprietary

(I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 23:28, Reply)
This is a normal post Yep.
I think we're agreed then: you should have more faith in Capitalism ;-).
 (I helped save b3ta! JamTallons, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 23:31, Reply)
This is a normal post what
non sequitur alert
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 23:31, Reply)
This is a normal post
since... they built the infrastructure. Ok - never mind :-).
 (I helped save b3ta! JamTallons, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 23:38, Reply)
This is a normal post the infrastructure was largely developed and built
by governments and academia. The World Wide Web, which is what most people think of when you say "Internet", was invented by researcher Tim Berners-Lee while he was working for CERN, which he made freely available and refused to patent it or profit from it.

That various private interests have since capitalised on it is by the by. The internet as we know it exists despite capitalism, not because of it. They'd love to make it patriarchal but it's too late now.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 23:43, Reply)
This is a normal post capitalists built my bed though
and now I'm going to lie in it.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Sat 7 Jul 2012, 0:01, Reply)
This is a normal post a good idea :-).

(I helped save b3ta! JamTallons, Sat 7 Jul 2012, 0:04, Reply)
This is a normal post
Oh for goodness sake :-) The CABLES! The satellites. All that good stuff. It seems you mean "infrastructure" to be the communication itself.
 (I helped save b3ta! JamTallons, Sat 7 Jul 2012, 0:03, Reply)
This is a normal post yes,
not sure what point you're making there. They were laid by private companies, so what. I just ate a pizza from Pappa John's, it doesn't mean the world has capitalism to thank for pizza.

I'm going to bed.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Sat 7 Jul 2012, 0:07, Reply)
This is a normal post You have capitalism to thank for giving you THAT pizza to eat.
Goodnight :-).
 (I helped save b3ta! JamTallons, Sat 7 Jul 2012, 0:16, Reply)
This is a normal post There are some distros
which have a vision, and which are converging towards the point where they're usable as a home user OS for plebs.

But what's lacking is a lot of the toys you get with a modern OS which turn out to be frighteningly handy in the modern web world.

Where are the garage band equivalents? The Windows Movie Maker or iMovie equivalents?

Photo editing is getting there slowly (Gimp has *finally* moved away from being 8bit only with their latest major release, darktable is becoming usable)

Linux on the desktop frustrates the hell out of me, and I wrangle linux for a living.
 (I helped save b3ta! LP, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 22:26, Reply)
This is a normal post Linux motto is:
"we want the stuff those 'greedy corporations' innovated, but we don't want to pay for it".
 (I helped save b3ta! JamTallons, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 22:38, Reply)
This is a normal post greedy corporations never innovated any of it,
they wait until a start-up innovated it, developed it, marketed it and started to turn a profit, and then bought the companies. It saves them a lot of bother.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 22:41, Reply)
This is a normal post and makes start-ups a whole bunch of cash
because lets be honest, most start-ups are there to make a shit load of cash, aren't they?

Ps I say most as I'm sure there are exceptions
 (I helped save b3ta! Fadgebadger Sweaty sumo wanks for everyone!, Sat 7 Jul 2012, 10:16, Reply)
This is a normal post not really
I'm just saying that as a desktop OS it doesn't have the tools consumers expect - largely because they're not what the type of people who write software for linux want.

It's not about "wanting it for free" - if Adobe creative suite was available (and stable, and supported) natively on linux (wine doesn't count) I'd totally buy a copy.

However, that's *all* about desktops. In the server world linux (and open source in general) has a *huge* takeup and has consistently out inovated microsoft in a lot of ways.
 (I helped save b3ta! LP, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 22:45, Reply)
This is a normal post it's got everything I need
e-mail client, browser, music/video player. Gimp could be better but it suffices.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 22:53, Reply)
This is a normal post Then why not just pay for Linux?
If it means it could be revolutionary and stable?
 (I helped save b3ta! JamTallons, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 22:55, Reply)
This is a normal post stability isn't a problem,
it's stable, that's why it's so popular in servers.

You can't pay for "Linux" because Linux isn't a single thing. You mean why not a commercial distribution? The Kernal is GPL so I don't know what the legality of that would be.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 22:57, Reply)
This is a normal post The GPL on the kernel
doesn't stop Redhat selling RHEL.

There is nothing to stop you selling a distro or selling commercial software to run on top of linux. A number of companies do.
 (I helped save b3ta! LP, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 23:01, Reply)
This is a normal post they sell the support package,
that's how that works as far as I know
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 23:04, Reply)
This is a normal post nope
they sell RHEL - you can't download it for free.

Edit: not unless you count CentOS, which is RHEL with all the redhat stuff stripped out and doesn't have the infrastructure around it that RHEL does
 (I helped save b3ta! LP, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 23:14, Reply)
This is a normal post RHEL
is the free Linux kernel with a few Red Hat proprietary tools on top and a fucking expensive support package.
 (I helped save b3ta! evil_andy Stick stick stick stick sticky sticky stick stick, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 23:30, Reply)
This is a normal post Linux makes a great calculator, don't get me wrong.
It's just lousy for everything else. It's like you said before about too many cooks.
 (I helped save b3ta! JamTallons, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 23:05, Reply)
This is a normal post a lot of people do pay for linux
canonical make money out of ubuntu, redhat make money out of RHEL, Oracle make money out of Suse.

Hell, I make money out of linux!

There are many many companies out there who pay people to develop open source software and the open source software you use every day wouldn't be as good as it is without that.

Just because you as an end user can get something for free, it doesn't mean that *no one* is paying for it.
 (I helped save b3ta! LP, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 22:59, Reply)
This is a normal post the linux strategy for usability however
seems to be to try to layer Windows-style controls on top of things.

Also X windows is well past its use by date.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 6 Jul 2012, 22:39, Reply)
This is a normal post I set up a linux box once
I basically wanted it as a simple media hub for my house. I just could not get on with it, toyed with it for days and eventually just installed XP instead. As a server application it's great but it failed for me as a desktop. I have plenty of shells left and will try again one day. Maybe I'll persevere a bit more next time around...
 (I helped save b3ta! Fadgebadger Sweaty sumo wanks for everyone!, Sat 7 Jul 2012, 10:57, Reply)