OMG

I cannot even begin to answer such ignorent drivel.
I should not be surprised that you really believe that this is all there is to system maintenance. Your ignorance of real IT policies and procedures knows no bounds Robert Pogson.

Running Crapt-get does not and never has constituted support, no matter what you think.

The question that should be asked is “Why should I support M$?” I don’t think anyone has a good reason to do that with the current state of FLOSS. That many large and diverse organizations have switched is proof.

You may as well as “why should I pay for groceries?”
such a question is for most people just as relevant to choosing software. What you want is irrelevant as you have established time and time again that you will and have ignored completely any issues beyond those directly relevant to your own agenda.

Irrelevant. None of M$’s bloat is a major feature. They even messed up text-justification by making “left” the default long after the typewriter had faded.

oldman wrote, again, “THen there are the support costs for same.

But even if a desktop FOSS package passes muster, almost all of the desktop FOSS that arent dreck are available for windows and/or OS X. One does not even need to change ones environment to run FOSS”

cd mylist_of_PCs;for f in *;do ssh $f “apt-get update;apt-get upgrade”;done

That takes care of 99% of support for most individuals and organizations, far less than letting M$ update their OS and a few apps, then Adobe, then Oracle, then… let alone worrying about zero-day exploits on Patch Tuesday From Hell and the usual malware.

Of course one can run some FLOSS on that other OS but it’s better on GNU/Linux: lower cost, less malware, easier maintenance, FREEdom to make copies or interconnect PCs on a network, no EULA, etc.

The question that should be asked is “Why should I support M$?” I don’t think anyone has a good reason to do that with the current state of FLOSS. That many large and diverse organizations have switched is proof.

Yes but cost is not the sole determinant of choice Pog. The software must also be fit for purpose – it only takes one missing major feature to knock an application out of the running be it open or closed.

THen there are the support costs for same.

But even if a desktop FOSS package passes muster, almost all of the desktop FOSS that arent dreck are available for windows and/or OS X. One does not even need to change ones environment to run FOSS

And I believe that if you actually cared to look you would find that the majority of desktop OSS isnt even run on linux, as the developers of gimpo recently acknowledged in embarassment.

Yes, people like “free as in beer” but above all they like that they can install or run the code. Everyone I know loves that. Everyone can appreciate that the licence comes with the code and that’s usually a free download or comes on the PC.

First question are you sure they don’t? Not being able to share applications with friends and team mates can be a issue and interfere with productivity..

FOSS does not just cover programs. Remember creative commons starts from the FOSS world.

FOSS licensing around FOSS programs don’t just cover the source code. So you want to customise the manual for some reason you legally can with FOSS programs in most cases.

Chris Weig focusing just on the source code misses the bigger picture of what a FOSS program gives under licenses that allow modification.

Hoho. Kozmcrae has woken up from his sleep and spouts garbage. Here’s an easy explanation for you, so you may understand what I wrote:

People who work — people who have to work to earn their living — are unfree. Do they feel that way? That depends on the circumstances, both individual and collective, but for most of them the answer will be: “No”. Society has seen to that. It has seen to that on an individual level, as you can always make changes to your situation of your own free will, and it has seen to that on a collective level, as with the advent of exchanging one’s labour for money concepts like free time came into existence, and free time — as opposed to work — is precisely a time in which one can do what he or she wants, as opposed to what work dictates.

Hell, even the constitutional rights in Germany (or any other democracy) do not posit absolute freedom. And yet people do not feel unfree.

So, once again, if you want to claim that FLOSS makes people more free then you first have to get these people to admit that their non-FLOSS software makes them unfree. In any case, the most important freedom FLOSS grants people is the “free as in beer” freedom. And you can doubt if this freedom is actually seen as a freedom, or rather as a special freedom, because free as in beer software existed already before FLOSS, and it certainly existed and exists in the closed source ecosystem, so it’s no novelty.

All the other freedoms — freedom to look at the source code, to modify it etc. — aren’t of great importance to the average user.

Therefore I ask again: how can FLOSS make people more free if they don’t feel unfree without FLOSS?

The typical grave error in the Cult of FLOSS thinking.

lpbbear interesting right.

Not any FOSS Windows Manager. ratpoison windows manager for sure cannot. Ratpoison is fully keyboard controlled. No windows boarders.

Not all FOSS windows managers can be themed.

http://xwinman.org/ So you get an idea of how many Windows managers there are.

XFCE is not just Windows manager is a desktop environment.

Gnome, KDE and XFCE can be themed to look like windows or OS X. Lxde looks at lot like windows out box order generations.

lpbbear
–Guess they’re not all that amazing in the design department at M$ft if the freebie folks can do it too.–

Yep very correct Microsoft design department is fairly conservative except for metro. Most new things you see in Windows have been in a FOSS windows manager somewhere for many years before it appears in windows.

If you want an extream windows manager lpbbear try Metisse. I hope someone ports this to wayland.

Metisse is unique because you can theme you applications interfaces. Basically slice the applications interface up and reassemble it how it suites you. Even glue multi applications into 1 single window.

So Windows Aero is so easy to copy the look of that any FOSS Window Manager can achieve it ehh?

Guess they’re not all that amazing in the design department at M$ft if the freebie folks can do it too.

Just following your “logic”.