On Thu, 24 Apr 2014 09:16:51 -0400 Tom H <tomh0...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 4:11 AM, Slavko <li...@slavino.sk> wrote: > > Dňa Mon, 21 Apr 2014 23:51:33 -0500 "c. marlow" <ch...@marlows.org> > > napísal: > >> > >> Im so exhausted I just about give up on Linux, just about ready to > >> scrape up the money, go to walmart and buy me a Windows Machine.. > >> In the last week I have tried LMDE both made and cinnamon > > > > The money reason to switch to Linux? Understand i properly? Only for > > money? IMHO bad choice, free software is about freedom, not about > > money... > > We Linux users have to get away from this type of religious extremism. > > Especially when we profess to be about freedom, but then deny someone > the freedom to choose Linux for non-RMS reasons! > > In 100% of companies where I've worked, the /ONLY/ reason that Linux > is being used is because it's cheaper than Mac OS 8/9/X, Solaris, > Windows and for no other reason. > > In my personal case, I'm running Ubuntu on a Lenovo laptop because > it's half the price of a similarly specced MacBook, and no other > reason (except possibly some low-level OS tinkering like compiling and > using the latest upstream rc kernel).
I'm slightly different than either of you... One could characterize my reason for running Linux as a monetary reason, but only if it's made clear that we're not talking about the dollars and cents cost of software licenses. Back in the 1990's I used Windows and commercial software, and spent about $2K/year on software licenses, and I liked it that way. I still might like it that way if $2K/year were the only cost. But... What's the cost of license tracking? How do you enter, on your balance sheet, the contingent liability of a visit by the SPA or whatever the software police call themselves these days? What's the cost of the extra security measures Windows people must go through to compensate for Windows' anemic security model? What's the cost, in time and excess thought, of over-contemplating software because, for practical purposes, there's no uncrippled "try before you buy?" What does it cost your business to go without a particular way of doing something because you can't try a lot of proprietary "solutions"? What would be the cost to you if, during your big presentation, your Windows decided to phone home to find out whether it's counterfeit, somehow decide that it is, and shut down in your presentation? And, perhaps most telling, what would be the cost of sticking with a vendor you hate because your priceless content is in a form proprietary to that vendor, and can't easily be converted, because that vendor's business model is, and always has been, lock-in? I wrote the following essay about the point made in the preceding paragraph: http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200104/200104.htm#_editors_desk SteveT Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/ Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140424111234.1fab94c6@mydesk
