Besides, I can make my computer immune to viruses. Just watch. Pop! Did you see that? I unplugged my network cable.
The luser wretches, "Oh but that makes your computer useless!" Yeah, well so does putting Linux on it. What's your point?
this is the bit that made me laugh. it turns out that the only way a windoid can protect his computer against malicious software is to TURN IT OFF!!! haw!
that's what 33 years of microsoft innovation will get you. In the meantime i'm doing all the things i want for free on an operating system put together by talented amateurs.
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PS:
You see, a virus needs to make certain assumptions about your platform. Certain libraries existing, with particular ABI's.
unlike a commercial program, a virus will only have one or two simple tasks. I am fairly certain that any normal virus will be compiled as one static lump purely to avoid the issue of dependencies. Since the virus hasn't got many tasks, it's still going to be pretty small if it just carries the functions it needs, yes?
Having said that, there is a very valid point amongst all this directionless ranting...
Why is there no proprietary software for Linux? because for all practical purposes DEPLOYMENT IS IMPOSSIBLE.
actually the reasons are more social, and to a certain extent legal, than that, but yes, this is a big issue, and it's not been addressed for years. The many different types of packaging software for linux based systems is simply unacceptable. This is the kind of thing that has stopped linux systems from being the desktop leader. Think of all the many different packaging formats, and even when you do get proprietary software for linux (which is often not as good as community software, and contrary to this ranter, there's quite a lot of closed software for linux if you look), they add still more issues to the concept of packaging. Have you ever tried to install sun Java? Simply downloading it and unpacking it requires a degree in computing! (perhaps i exaggerate slightly...)
The Linux market is so small that there's no point going after it unless you try to support all Linux deployments.
again, pretty untrue, many distros have concentrated userbases in particular areas or fields, so a software vendor should aim for their target group first. Still, even if a company only releases, say, rpms, it still has to really test those on multiple platforms if it wants to ensure the package works for as many users as possible. A lot of the time this testing gets dumped on the users, resulting in a worse user experience and lower coverage for the software vendor. This needs to be addressed.
Hmm, well what does that mean? At least 3-4 major distros, which all have multiple versions of the past few years with different kernels and different libraries and different versions of GTK and different ways to integrate into the start menu, and different broken versions of evolution.
this guy knows he's making this up. He's overstating his point, but that point is valid. Ironically, the fact that he's overstating the case so much is what will make it easy for pro-linux fanatics to throw the baby out with the bathwater and ignore the one valid point that this guy makes.
