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rolfus on "openSUSE at OSCON": Yeah, pictures or it didn't happen!
Joe Harmon on "Novell Client for Linux beta available": The client itself is proprietary, but the file system component (novfs) that ships with the OS is open source.
Beineri on "openSUSE at OSCON": No pictures?
Mike on "Tough love for Linux?": You're right on the maturation of the community; the number of "RTFM, n00b!" responses in the various discussion groups is way down, making for a far more pleasant environment to attempt to get real work done in. ....And LHB is also right: Samba configuration does suck dead weasels. ];)
Jules on "Supporting FOSS on non-free platforms?": I completely agree! Although cross-platform applications may stop or slow some people from switching, they also make it much easier to switch if you want to. Now there is choice! As an IT professional, I doubt I'll ever be free of Windows so having cross-platform tools like Firefox, Thunderbird, Keepass, Truecrypt, Google Earth, OpenOffice, Komodo Edit, etc. is a real god-send. Regards, Julian http://linux.knightnet.org.uk
Zonker on "Tough love for Linux?": Ha!
Thanks for the laugh.Pavel on "Tough love for Linux?": Recently it is really hard not to spot the Linux Hater’s Blog. Now it appeared even here :).
Beineri on "DNS cache poisoning fix": 10.1 exceeded its lifetime.
Patoruzu on "DNS cache poisoning fix": And Suse 10.1 ??
Beineri on "Supporting FOSS on non-free platforms?": Funny that you use KOffice as example and not the obvious case of Novell offering its edition of OpenOffice.org for Windows :-)...
Markus on "Supporting FOSS on non-free platforms?": With productivity apps it's really important to give people the choice and not force them into vendor lock-in. I used Windows in the past. Then I moved to an Apple laptop with Mac OS X. Later I got a PC and installed Linux on it and since my Mac broke, I use Linux exclusively. All that time I used OpenOffice and moving my documents from one platform to the other was absolutely painless. If you want people to move to Linux, fine.
Stephen on "Supporting FOSS on non-free platforms?": I think the future of the OS is quite blurred. Aside from the cost perspective (which I'm sure will change), I see no real value in the OS and the application stack (down to the OS boundary) will be the important thing. If that's FOSS, great. If the FOSS community is to live up to its own marketing, then let people choose, this includes the OS. It's a religious thing I guess, you're either very Catholic
Nathan on "Supporting FOSS on non-free platforms?": By switch, do you mean "switch very soon after trying open source apps on my OS" or "switch at some point in the future, maybe sooner, maybe later"? If we are looking for people to switch to Linux very soon after they use open source apps, I think we will be disappointed and think it was a bad strategy to port those apps. If we are willing to wait (possibly years) for people to switch to Linux after trying open source software,
Cristian on "Supporting FOSS on non-free platforms?": Why be so rigid of them switching to Linux? In the worst case, you can see their Windows OS as just the *kernel*, and an ugly desktop, Explorer. But the rest of the stuff could be open source. If you'd really want, there could even be a nice open source desktop environment on it, that replaces explorer completely. ... and maybe some decent services which implement posixs (sorry cygwin... you just don't do it.) In this way, to the user would interface
Athrun on "Supporting FOSS on non-free platforms?": I would agree, but some folks write software in order to promote FOSS — and it’s a concern if the software runs on proprietary platforms that users will stop there. Yet they don't seem to be aware that restricting the target user base is potentially _damaging_ the whole FOSS ecosystem. We (FOSS people) say that we want to promote freedom but it seems we are always trying hard to devise ways to force users to switch to what we consider the best
Macosxp on "KDE 4.1 RC1 out for openSUSE": Cool, but can someone post a screenshot of how it looks default? And I'm bothered by the square discolorations around the status icons in the toolbar I see in Andreas's screenshot.
Zonker on "Supporting FOSS on non-free platforms?": Well, having as many people as possible switch to Linux is *my* goal...
And I do believe that there's a lot of overlap between KDE developers and Linux enthusiasts, but you're right to point out that many software developers aren't interested in Linux as an end goal.
But, for those who do want to get Linux to switch - what's the right answer?
Obviously, if the goal is just "get more users," then it makes *perfect* sense to portAthrun on "Supporting FOSS on non-free platforms?": You seem to consider that making people switch to Linux is the ultimate goal. Yes, Linux a nice OS but it won't bring peace and happiness to the world, you know... Should people have to switch OS just to use some software? What really matters is bringing more great software to people. The OS really _doesn't_ matter. And, of course, for software developers, reaching platforms besides Linux means getting a _whole_ lot more users. And a bigger community means more bugs reports
Zonker on "Supporting FOSS on non-free platforms?": True. That's a +1 for FOSS on Windows and Mac OS X...
Nik on "Supporting FOSS on non-free platforms?": Actually, this is one of the factors I moved over to linux full time. I was already using Gaim, Firefox, hadn't been using/needing MS Office (also familiar with OpenOffice) much and had just picked up a cheap used laptop after moving to Japan and leaving everything else I had behind. Being familiar with quite a few opensource apps really helped. Instead of grabbing pirated stuff as I had done in the past I went ahead and wiped out