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posted by mrpg on Saturday October 21 2017, @04:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the alliterative-animals dept.

Effective immediately, the new release of Ubuntu, 17.10, aka 'Artful Aardvark' has been released!

This release will be supported for 9 months (until 2018) for Long Term Support, stick with release 16.04, instead.

Official flavors (e.g. Kubuntu) are also released.

See the above release notes for a full list of changes and where you can get a copy.

[Full disclosure: the majority of SoylentNews' servers run Ubuntu 16.04 LTS though we have taken steps towards moving to Gentoo.]

Also:

The customized version of GNOME that Ubuntu 17.10 uses is very much in the mould of the (now defunct) Unity desktop, so it won't be to everyone's tastes.

OMGUbuntu


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by TheGratefulNet on Saturday October 21 2017, @06:50PM (46 children)

    by TheGratefulNet (659) on Saturday October 21 2017, @06:50PM (#585739)

    the MINT alternative is still pretty good.

    they are not systemd-free, but they also don't force a lot of ubuntuisms on you. ubuntu has lost their way in lots of areas and mint fixes them up while still being 'mostly ubuntu' (which is good for compat.)

    --
    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday October 21 2017, @07:15PM (10 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday October 21 2017, @07:15PM (#585744) Homepage

    Mint is fucking horrible. I am going to make it my mission to bash Mint everytime somebody here suggests it.

    It is buggy as fuck, GRUB doesn't work with it, the UI is boring as fuck and surprisingly unresponsive considering its simplicity, it crashes. I have no idea why people keep recommending it and especially somebody like you who is a reasonably smart guy.

    I would rather run fucking IRIX on decades-old hardware than Mint on a modern i7 machine.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @07:49PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @07:49PM (#585752)

      ...meanwhile, by at least 1 metric, [distrowatch.com] Mint is the most popular distro.
      There are millions who say "WFM".

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @08:03PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @08:03PM (#587068)

        yes, those are all the new converts who want the easiest, most polished, windows-like linux they can get. unfortunately, mint is a bit of a turd.

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Saturday October 21 2017, @08:14PM (5 children)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Saturday October 21 2017, @08:14PM (#585760)

      the UI is boring as fuck

      This point is wrong and stupid, simply because there is no "Mint UI", there's 4 of them: KDE, Cinnamon, MATE, and Xcfe. If you don't like one of them, that's fine, but I'm quite sure you haven't tried all four of them and found them to be "boring as fuck".

      As for crashing and GRUB and unresponsiveness, I have no idea what you're talking about. I've been running Mint KDE for years now without any such trouble. I can't speak to the other DE choices. And of course it uses GRUB (what doesn't? No one uses LILO any more; that's ancient).

      What did you do, try out Mint way back in the days of Gnome2 or something, have some problems, and then continue spouting these obsolete complaints forevermore? Are you going to complain about Ford because of the Pinto too?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @08:51PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @08:51PM (#585776)

        As for crashing and GRUB and unresponsiveness, I have no idea what you're talking about. I've been running Mint KDE for years now without any such trouble. I can't speak to the other DE choices.

        I mostly use Cinnamon (which is the "default" choice), and I can vouch that it still has some problems with stability and polish. It (very, very rarely) crashes immediately after login and switches to a "fallback mode". Restarting the cinnamon process sometimes works, sometimes doesn't...

        But my biggest complaint is that the tiny popup that appears when you switch to Japanese input blocks everything else, including opening the application menu. Took me weeks to figure out why the menu would seemingly randomly stop working -.- I blamed it on interface freezes, and it looked like a huge responsiveness issue. Not to mention that the popup also tends to hide the one element on the interface that I'm looking at, or floats over the text cursor itself...

        • (Score: 2) by rylyeh on Saturday October 21 2017, @10:25PM (1 child)

          by rylyeh (6726) <{kadath} {at} {gmail.com}> on Saturday October 21 2017, @10:25PM (#585800)

          Mint MATE is quite stable - if uninspiring. No issues for a decade! Before that, Knoppix was my favorite.

          --
          "a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @01:39PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @01:39PM (#585948)

            +1 for Knoppix back in the day :)

      • (Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday October 21 2017, @08:53PM (1 child)

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday October 21 2017, @08:53PM (#585777) Homepage

        3 of them are, in fact, boring as fuck; and the one which isn't (KDE) is ugly as fuck with a workflow that seems cluttered and counterintuitive. Nobody should have to spend hours trying to tweek-and-eke basic functionality out of their user interface.

        • (Score: 4, Informative) by Grishnakh on Saturday October 21 2017, @08:57PM

          by Grishnakh (2831) on Saturday October 21 2017, @08:57PM (#585778)

          Nobody should have to spend hours trying to tweek-and-eke basic functionality out of their user interface.

          Then don't. It's fine in its default configuration. There's nothing "cluttered and counterintuitive" about KDE. Maybe a Mac would be more to your liking.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday October 22 2017, @09:11AM (1 child)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday October 22 2017, @09:11AM (#585907) Journal

      the UI is boring as fuck

      The UI should be boring. I want to be excited about the programs I run, not get distracted by UI gimmicks. The point of an UI is to support you in doing what you want to do, without taking attention away. The best UI is one that you don't really notice.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday October 22 2017, @10:02PM

        by Gaaark (41) on Sunday October 22 2017, @10:02PM (#586072) Journal

        That's one reason I like i3.

        Reason I don't like i3: my memory sucks for remembering some program names.

        --
        --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
  • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday October 21 2017, @08:26PM (34 children)

    by mhajicek (51) on Saturday October 21 2017, @08:26PM (#585768)

    Let me know when there's a 'nix that I can install on whatever PC hardware I already happen to have, that has all the drivers available and reasonably bug free, that won't break when I try to do things without being a guru, and that will run all of the Windows CADCAM software that I'm already locked into (OpenGL).

    --
    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @09:02PM (33 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @09:02PM (#585779)

      Let me know when there's a 'nix that I can install on whatever PC hardware I already happen to have

      To echo the response to Ethanol-fueled by Grishnakh, you should try a distro from this decade.
      (I've never had the slightest problem getting hardware recognized by Linux, going back to my 1st try with KNOPPIX in 2002; everything has always worked out of the box.)

      that won't break when I try to do things without being a guru

      You're reminding me of my first weeks with Windoze after using DOS for years.
      (Everything has a learning curve.)
      ...and if you can't move from 1 point-and-click interface to another without a lot of hand-holding, just how pathetic are you?
      (My move from Windoze to Linux was pretty easy. I even found stuff that was easier in Linux.)

      and that will run all of the Windows CADCAM software

      I can just imagine you going car shopping.
      "Nope. Can't buy that make/model. It doesn't use the same oil filter my current car does."

      If you can't get your software vendor to support more that 1 OS, I'd say that your problem is with choosing lousy suppliers with lousy support.
      (Same with hardware, if that is actually a problem for you.)

      Since leaving Windoze, I'm constantly reminded what an inflexible bunch Redmond's fanboys are.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Saturday October 21 2017, @10:28PM (32 children)

        by mhajicek (51) on Saturday October 21 2017, @10:28PM (#585801)

        When I have $60,000 invested in software, I choose a computer and OS based on what will run that software best. Then there are all the part files which cannot convert losslessly (with history and toolpaths intact). On top of that there is no professional grade five axis CAM software for Linux. Therefore unless I change fields, I will be running Windows based software, and my OS must run that software. It's just a bit more involved than using a different oil filter. It's more like buying a car that can't drive on the roads that I need to travel.

        --
        The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @11:28PM (17 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21 2017, @11:28PM (#585817)

          Sounds completely backwards to me.
          Linux will run whatever software has been ported to it.
          Again: Your single-platform software vendors suck.

          To give an example, there are thousands of games (a traditional Windoze-only stronghold) that run just fine under Linux.
          (It's a fair bet that those vendors (intelligently) started with cross-platform toolkits.)

          ...and have you even asked your vendors when they will be offering a Linux port of their stuff?

          Again: Sounds like you're blaming Linux for lousy support from software vendors.

          -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

          • (Score: 4, Insightful) by crafoo on Sunday October 22 2017, @12:07AM (16 children)

            by crafoo (6639) on Sunday October 22 2017, @12:07AM (#585824)

            Linux doesn't run the vast majority of useful software for industry and engineering. We are talking about massively complex systems. And no, it's not the fault of the people writing these pieces of software, for the most part. Linux is a massive pile of shit to support a binary distribution on. Part of this is by design - breaking ABIs and a dumb-as-fuck dynamic linking system. So Linux gets garage-tier CAD/CAM/Simulation/Analysis software. I'm not against the free software movement, in fact I agree in principal. But there are very real reasons why Linux won't be taken seriously for anything but coding IDEs anytime soon.

            • (Score: 2) by rylyeh on Sunday October 22 2017, @02:01AM (1 child)

              by rylyeh (6726) <{kadath} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday October 22 2017, @02:01AM (#585842)

              Bullshit. Those developers want the proprietary lock-in black box they get from windows.
              They see 'other' OS's as a risky waste of time and money.

              --
              "a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
              • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday October 22 2017, @05:58AM

                by mhajicek (51) on Sunday October 22 2017, @05:58AM (#585881)

                They don't want to spend millions of dollars on cross platform development and support for a tiny niche market. There's a bit more to it than clicking "compile for Linux."

                --
                The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @02:40AM (10 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @02:40AM (#585851)

              The moment before the vendor clicked "Compile", it wasn't a binary.
              What's keeping them from selecting "Compile as a Linux binary"?

              As rylyeh notes, this isn't a choice made to expand the company's user base--which your typical company would like to do.
              This choice is about lock-in.

              ...and the idea of giving money to lazy people doesn't excite me.
              Apparently, there are some who feel that subsidizing sloth is something other than a negative incentive.

              -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

              • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday October 22 2017, @05:54AM (9 children)

                by mhajicek (51) on Sunday October 22 2017, @05:54AM (#585879)

                If cross platform graphics support is so easy, why wouldn't everyone do it? The fact is that you can't just recompile Windows software to run on Linux. Do you know anything about how professional grade software is developed? Especially software that's been continually added onto since 1980, and still contains code that was written for DOS? They would have to start over from scratch writing with cross platform in mind, which is not something they'll spend tens of millions of dollars doing just to appease a tiny niche market.

                --
                The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @08:23PM (6 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @08:23PM (#586042)

                  Now, see.
                  You started from "Windoze software" and I started from "software".

                  cross platform graphics support

                  Games have already been mentioned.
                  Your apps are more graphics-intensive than games??
                  I'm not buying that for 1 second.

                  Again: This is about sloth and lock-in.
                  Your excusing your lazy, greedy vendors shows how easily you allow yourself to be led around by the nose.

                  Again: I doubt that you have even broached the subject with your vendors.

                  -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

                  • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday October 22 2017, @08:39PM

                    by mhajicek (51) on Sunday October 22 2017, @08:39PM (#586046)

                    I have asked, and there is no vendor of professional grade five axis CAM who is willing to consider developing for Linux. Not one. Why is this my fault again?

                    --
                    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
                  • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday October 22 2017, @08:58PM (4 children)

                    by mhajicek (51) on Sunday October 22 2017, @08:58PM (#586053)

                    I forgot to address your other points. Yes it is more graphics intensive, just in a different way. It's not worried about fancy visual effects, but representing a model which may be several feet across with a facet every .002" or less is pretty intensive. And all the software that currently exists in the field was written to use the Windows API, with the exception of the older DOS code that they're still using. Unless someone is willing to pony up a few tens of millions to start over from scratch this is what there is.

                    --
                    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
                    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @10:09PM (3 children)

                      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @10:09PM (#586073)

                      If you're trying to impress me, you're failing.

                      Going in a different direction, but on a related theme, I remember DJ Delorie (a developer of the gEDA suite) mentioning how for laughs he had demonstrated that, by tweaking a parameter in the setup file, the software would (assuming that you have enough RAM/virtual memory) lay out a printed circuit board that was 64 feet by 64 feet.

                      There's nothing special about software for which you have to pay a license fee again every year.

                      I remember Terry Porter regularly posting a link to photos of his latest FOSS-created PWBs at sci.electronics.design back around the turn of the century.
                      FOSS has been making money for pros for a long long time while preserving their freedom.

                      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

                      • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday October 23 2017, @08:50AM (2 children)

                        by mhajicek (51) on Monday October 23 2017, @08:50AM (#586238)

                        There's absolutely nothing special about it, except that there are zero viable alternatives in the real world. If it's so easy, why is the best free CAM only passible for 3 axis hobby use? Why can't it be on par with the software that's had hundreds of millions of dollars poured into it over almost fourty years of continuous development and improvement?

                        --
                        The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
                        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @09:39PM (1 child)

                          by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @09:39PM (#586598)

                          I've pointed to other folks with needs that they filled from within their own ranks.
                          Someone saw a lack of Free(dom) Software for a particular set of tasks and set about filling the void.
                          (In the FOSS world, we call it "scratching an itch".)

                          At $60k per individual, how many of you in that field would it take to commission a cross-platform FOSS app?

                          The narrowness of your vision is disappointing.
                          Techies are supposed to be problem solvers and you guys instead just bend over and take it.

                          ...and in my field, as alluded to, several proprietary products have had changes to their licenses.
                          Others have been bought by a competitor and abandoned, crippled, made spyware, and/or increased in price.

                          Keep your fingers crossed that none of that happens to your single-platform proprietary apps and you then have to start spending buckets of money all over again and learn an entirely new UI.

                          -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

                          • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday October 23 2017, @10:41PM

                            by mhajicek (51) on Monday October 23 2017, @10:41PM (#586623)

                            My business is machining parts, not writing software. You're proposing that instead of buying software that I can use right away, I set aside all of that capital for a decade while someone tries to remake something equivalent? That's horrible business sense. How about this: your car breaks and you need an immediate replacement. Take the money that you could use to buy said replacement, and instead give it to a group of people who may or may not develop a usable replacement in a decade. In the mean time you walk.

                            No. If Linux wants to replace Windows it will need to run software that was written for Windows. It's this "No, you come to me" attitude that's keeping Linux from succeeding.

                            --
                            The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
                • (Score: 2) by Whoever on Monday October 23 2017, @03:48AM (1 child)

                  by Whoever (4524) on Monday October 23 2017, @03:48AM (#586159) Journal

                  If you start with a Windows-only codebase, yes.

                  If you start and use something like Qt, then porting to Linux becomes easy.

                  • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday October 23 2017, @08:40AM

                    by mhajicek (51) on Monday October 23 2017, @08:40AM (#586234)

                    That's the thing. ALL PROFESSIONAL GRADE 5 AXIS CAM IS WINDOWS CODE BASE!!! All of it. All. Of. It.

                    --
                    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @12:21PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @12:21PM (#585940)

              Bullshit. If you are making a binary-only distribution, you just have to ship all your libraries with your binary and set your library load path accordingly. That's already the standard Windows way of doing things for the most part.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @08:48PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @08:48PM (#586049)

                There's fat binaries as well: Compile in all the dependencies.
                This makes it possible to e.g. run very old apps under newer versions of Linux.
                It also gets rid of the .deb|.rpm|many distros "problem".
                (...and newer packaging paradigms have already made mention of this an anachronism.)

                You can also put the fat-binary app on a thumbdrive and take it with you from Linux box to Linux box.
                This sort of thing is done for Windoze-compatible (FOSS) apps over at PortableApps.
                Those apps don't require installing DLLs or modifying the Windoze Registry.

                Again: Having the source code available makes this possible for those devs.
                Again: Closed-source proprietary apps always come in last when it comes to freedom for the user.

                People who hold up their closed-source single-platform apps as some kind of shining example are the kind of people who would point to the chains their slave masters put on them and call that jewelry.

                -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @01:26PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @01:26PM (#586314)

              I think you're grossly overstating the difficulty of writing cross-platform software that runs on Linux. Considering the fact that a loosely affiliated group of volunteers has tens of thousands of working software packages that build from source on Linux, and most of the fucking internet runs off it, I would say supporting it isn't especially difficult.

              The real problem is simply legacy code. If some company made the completely reasonable decision to use Visual Studio 6 or similar to start writing their colossal piece of software on Windows, and fifteen years later it's a colossal Frankenstein of unbelievably complicated code, then there is simply no business case to port it. Most companies still use Microsoft Windows on the desktop. No sane Chief Financial Officer is going to greenlight a project to do a clean rewrite in cross-platform tools when the Return On Investment (in the form of new customers who will run the new application from Linux) is negative. And to be clear, I'm not criticizing companies, Microsoft, or Visual Studio for having huge and complicated legacy apps. If they had started out writing the software for OS/2, OS 9, OS X, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 1 the codebase would be every bit as enormous and complex today and a clean cross-platform rewrite would be every bit as impractical and financially unsound.

              Your industry is stuck on Windows for legacy reasons. It's not good or bad, it just is. The best I can do as an FSF member is support the development of fully free software alternatives to the software you're using. But it's awfully difficult for the free software community to put together something that is probably quite literally almost an order of magnitude more complicated than the Chromium project.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @02:19AM (11 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @02:19AM (#585845)

          It's more like buying a car that can't drive on the roads that I need to travel

          No. It's more like a company saying "We'll make oil filters for Fords but not for Chevys."

          -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

          • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday October 22 2017, @05:44AM (10 children)

            by mhajicek (51) on Sunday October 22 2017, @05:44AM (#585876)

            Since the software is several orders of magnitude more expensive than the OS, that's more like "No, we won't change our Ford to use a Chevy oil filter."

            --
            The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @08:13PM (9 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @08:13PM (#586037)

              If you approach your vendor with "I already have a license and would like to switch that to Linux; I'm willing to pay a small processing fee." and they say "No", then, again, your software vendor sucks.

              -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

              • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday October 22 2017, @08:37PM (8 children)

                by mhajicek (51) on Sunday October 22 2017, @08:37PM (#586045)

                Then all vendors of professional grade CADCAM suck by your definition, as well as most software vendors in general.

                --
                The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @09:42PM (7 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @09:42PM (#586065)

                  The US Army developed their own CAD software (BRL-CAD) and made that GPL.
                  ...so, no.

                  There's a bunch of pros who value their freedom and don't chain themselves to closed-source proprietary apps.
                  FreeCAD, LibreCAD, OpenSCAD, or QCAD are more examples of FOSS software that does all that they need (blue in the License column). [wikipedia.org]

                  At the Linux Mint forum, I used to regularly see posts by (now-retired) architect vrkalak, noting that he was a FOSS-only guy. [google.com]

                  I used to read sci.eleectronics.design regularly and there was a contingent of my compatriots who used (FOSS) gEDA or KiCAD.
                  Those did all that they needed, making them lots of money while being gratis and libre.

                  N.B. At one time, I used (proprietary) Cadsoft EAGLE, but the bastards have since put DRM in that (and they don't mention their evil in the license).
                  I've had my fill of proprietary software and the assholes who produce/market/concoct licenses for it.

                  -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

                  • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday October 22 2017, @09:48PM (6 children)

                    by mhajicek (51) on Sunday October 22 2017, @09:48PM (#586069)

                    Not one word in that whole message had anything to do with professional grade five axis CAM.

                    --
                    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
                    • (Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @08:43PM (5 children)

                      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @08:43PM (#586562)

                      Yeah, that's right, 5-axis CAD/CAM is THE killer app that is keeping 90% people tied to windows. Sort of related, I tried to get Grandma off of her Win10 box but she had sunk too many resources into her nonlinear hydrodynamic simulations of her tea kettle that she wouldn't dare consider it.

                      Fifteen or so years ago, there were a bunch of tech-scared pussies on Slashdot and other places that tried to be all Linux hip, but didn't have the balls to actually try it out. It was always something to the effect of "Man, I'm dying to ditch Windows and run GNU/Linux, but I'm really stuck against my will because I absolutely NEED it to run Quicken, but FOSS all the way!" (Half of the idiots who insisted on "GNU/Linux" were clueless rebels without causes, and the other half were posers who thought adding the "GNU" gave them instant FOSS cred)

                      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @10:31PM

                        by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @10:31PM (#586618)

                        Fifteen or so years ago, there were a bunch of tech-scared pussies on Slashdot and other places that tried to be all Linux

                        So, around 2002.
                        Quicken of that vintage runs via WINE according to my research. [google.com]
                        One wonders what WINE support was like for that at the time.

                        I would have linked to CodeWeavers' page but, since the last time I visited them, their pages have taken to requiring JavaScript.
                        Even after taking it to archive.li, they're using emojis or a font that I have no interest in installing--rather than plain text, as intelligent people would have used.
                        ...and that was after archive.li downloaded a shitload of webfonts.
                        Just pathetic.

                        idiots [...] posers

                        Back then, they also didn't have AlternativeTo. [alternativeto.net]
                        {Rodney Dangerfield voice} I tell ya, things were tough back then.

                        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

                      • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday October 23 2017, @10:50PM (3 children)

                        by mhajicek (51) on Monday October 23 2017, @10:50PM (#586627)

                        Am I talking about 90% of users? No. I'm talking about my needs. I need professional grade five axis CAM, or I'm not in business. Said software ONLY exists as Windows software, and no matter how much I might like to I cannot afford to pay a team of developers to redo fourty years of development from scratch and wait for the possibility that they might succeed.

                        --
                        The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
                        • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Tuesday October 24 2017, @02:41AM (2 children)

                          by DECbot (832) on Tuesday October 24 2017, @02:41AM (#586694) Journal

                          Just so you don't think we're a deaf echo chamber, I have the same issue working with multi-axis robots and welding equipment. The utilities and even some of the robots themselves run windows. At least some of the newer welding equipment has migrated away from the Windows binary configuration utilities to providing a HTTP interface. I think the whole 32/64 bit Windows XP/7/8/8.1/10 thing got to them and R&D decided it was easier to build a cross platform website than support all the permutations of Windows. The problem is these companies building industrial tools are very much Windows shops with no interest/experience in embedded Linux or open source. Then only headway I've made is discussing the permissive licensing models like BSD rather than reselling Windows licenses such it is such a PITA.

                          As a customer, the other thing you can try is require your vendor to agree to an impossible SLA that only allows for a 2-hour down time while waiting for parts, like what IT often requires. They will tell you it is impossible, because it really is unless you're Dell. The key is the next step, you'll provide the hardware and OS and you will maintain that, but the vendor must supply a version of their application for the platform you choose. You'll have to compromise, and so will they, but that might get you closer to the OS of your choice. If anything, that could at least get you off of Windows and onto something better, like OS2/Warp (I'm looking at you, CX3010 [ebay.com]).

                          --
                          cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
                          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @04:33AM (1 child)

                            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @04:33AM (#586717)

                            Yup. I've said similar things WRT OS support and RFQs for hardware.

                            ...and if you never let your suppliers know that you are not contented with the available choices (an OS that is spyware; an OS that is a malware magnet; an OS that requires you to wait until the 2nd Tuesday of next month for security patches--if then), you can bet that nothing will EVER change for the better.

                            -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

                            • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday October 24 2017, @05:32AM

                              by mhajicek (51) on Tuesday October 24 2017, @05:32AM (#586729)

                              I and others have let them know. They don't care. None of them has motivation to do it unless a competitor does it first, and nothing you or I can say will change that. As I said, they're still using DOS code from 1980, with thousands of layers of duct tape on top. They will not rewrite from scratch to appeal to a tiny niche market. If Linux wants to be viable in my field it must run Windows programs period.

                              --
                              The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
        • (Score: 2) by Whoever on Monday October 23 2017, @03:45AM (1 child)

          by Whoever (4524) on Monday October 23 2017, @03:45AM (#586158) Journal

          $60k: so you mean cheap software?

          I work in an industry where a single seat can cost $500k to $1M and more.

          None of that high end software runs on Windows. It never has. There was a transition from Unix (mostly Sun) to Linux as Sun dropped into irrelevance and Linux on x86_64 became available. Before that, it ran on VAXes or IBM mainframes.

          • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday October 23 2017, @08:44AM

            by mhajicek (51) on Monday October 23 2017, @08:44AM (#586235)

            If you pay a million, there's a good chance your vendor cares what you think. No CAM vendor cares about what any individual customer wants, they only care about the big picture and the bottom line. Reprogramming from scratch to add Linux support doesn't support that.

            --
            The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek