As I watch what Novell, Linspire and projects like Accelerated Knopix (Japanese Government research Grant project) are doing, I see huge leaps in the Linux desktop in recent days. Running e-live (Debian with an enlightenment desktop) made me remember just how snappy and clean a linux desktop can be. While this might inflame some puritans who feel the only open source projects should be in a linux Distro, I find myself more and more willing to open my wallet and pay for many of these features. If only some work was done on Video and DVD creation, then I would be free of MS bugs for ever. But Cinerella needs too much power and Kino is just not ready yet. (at least I have my Macs) Other than that Linux now does just about everything I need and better than windows. Even Wine ( payment to codeweavers) is leaping ahead. so many of the tools we need that were written for a windows world can be run under linux, and of course I can pay for Win4Lin to give me a Virtual Machine just for the few I am stuck with. While I agree that open source is the best way to go, paying for the final product and including not so open things too (like radeon/nvidia/wifi drivers) can make a better product for now, and as these companies are investing back into open source the whole community benefits. Novels supporting XGL and open suse Linspire with SIP standards and NVU Sun with open office Codeweavers with Wine and Reactos Redhat with Fedora (maybe not quite the same) but close Is it time to start supporting the purchase your linux model ? Especially if this means more open source developers can get paid and thus spend more time coding the projects we need. .. Just random musings .... Food for thought, not flames. Unless you think I am totally off the rails. Better DASH, OFF TO GET A NEW MAC. YEAH !!!!!! On 10/03/2006, at 9:36 AM, Ian McDonald wrote:
By Ingrid Marson http://news.com.com/ Novell+hopes+its+next+desktop+will+leapfrog+Windows/2100-1016_3 -6048016.html
Novell on Thursday unveiled the features that will be available in the next version of its Linux desktop product--SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop--which the company claims will be more usable than any other desktop product on the market.
"We have made a big investment taking the Linux desktop past everybody. The usability work we've done is not to reinvent Windows, but to reinvent a better desktop," Greg Mancusi-Ungaro, Novell's director of marketing for Linux and open source, told ZDNet UK on Wednesday.