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So you thought you bought some software
At the heart of the computer industry are some very big lies, and some of them are especially iniquitous. One is about commercial software.
[...] Anyone who chooses to use free and open source software on their desktop regularly gets asked why. Why bother? Isn't it more work? Isn't the pro-grade gear commercial? Isn't it worth buying the good stuff? Windows is the industry standard, isn't it simply less work to go with the flow?
[...] The practical upshot of which is that most of the time, the commercial stuff isn't significantly better. No, it isn't less hassle. Mostly, it's more hassle, but if you're used to the nuisances you don't notice them. If the free software experience was really worse, most of us wouldn't do it.
[...] Anyone who chooses to use free and open source software on their desktop regularly gets asked why. Why bother? Isn't it more work? Isn't the pro-grade gear commercial? Isn't it worth buying the good stuff? Windows is the industry standard, isn't it simply less work to go with the flow?
[...] The reason that it's not better to buy software is simple, but it's a lie. A lie at the heart of the entire computer industry, but nonetheless a lie that's very hard to see – "for the same reason that people in Trafalgar Square can't see England," to quote a good book.
It isn't better to buy commercial software because you can't buy software.
It is not possible for you to own paid-for, commercial software. You can't buy it. You probably think that you have bought lots, but you haven't. All you really bought is a lie.
[...] All you can buy is licenses. Serial numbers or activation keys or maybe even hardware dongles. Strange abstract entities that only really exist in lawyers' minds, which claim to permit you to use someone else's software.
As someone who started installing gcc in the 80's, I use more open source packages than closed source. The only "bugs" they have tend to be compatibility issues. As in, $GiantCorp releases a new version of $PopularProgram and suddenly the Open Source version can't open the new save files.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Saturday October 08 2022, @02:17AM
BTW I also greatly prefer KDE, and... it depends.
PCLinuxOS/KDE runs perfectly stable for months even in heavy use, and about the only way to clog it up is when Chrome dies of tab overload, and takes memory management with it. Even that happens very rarely (probably because 24GB RAM).
Fedora/KDE needs to be restarted about once a week even if it was just sleeping. (It also tends to get sluggish toward the end of the stable period, which PCLOS never does.) If I forget, I will soon be reminded because first sign is Chrome's bookmarks are misaligned and don't work. (This'un has 64GB RAM, so it's not starving.)
When they fail, they both do it the same way. GUI becomes unresponsive, but terminal still works. It looks very much like Windows being run out of resource heaps.
I've had Mageia lock up, but might have been a Wayland problem. And I had Neon forget its password on the 2nd boot after a clean install. Conversely Manjaro/KDE on my Pinephone has never misbehaved.
But outside of distro-specific quirks... KDE itself misbehaves so rarely that the bugfix list is funny, because I never saw any of them.
Chrome will sometimes whine that it needs to be reinstalled. This is just boilerplate for "I want an update!!" and has nothing to do with the OS. I imagine Firefox is doing the same thing.
Disclaimer: I am typing this on an everyday WinXP system that was last restarted 09 October 2021. Yeah, I like stability.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.