What things need to happen to make you switch to Linux 100%

[lxskllr]

But we do accept these boundaries with physical goods, all the time. I can't drive my car anywhere but on the roads or on offroad land that I own, but I still bought one because I need to get to work and it makes my life easier even with those preconceived boundaries. I can't put my TV wherever I want, it has to be close enough to a power outlet to plug it in. I cant plug an Iphone into a speaker system designed for docking with a Galaxy S4, it doesnt physically fit without an adapter of some kind. All things have limitations, thats just part of the world we live in. Whether or not you value the benefit of something more than the limitations is strictly a personal decision for each individual. All the people out there buying Windows and proprietary software place the value they get from those products above whatever libre alternatives may give, and there's nothing wrong with that. The most popular example is probably MS Office. It's not perfect, but absolutely by comparison it is the most polished, stable, and widely used office productivity software in the entire world supported by probably the largest software corporation in the entire world. There's value in that right there, especially in the business world.

None of those restrictions are artificial. Your rights end when they infringe on the rights of others. From physical limitations like power outlets and other things, nobody says you can't own a TV if you can't put it near power. You may not have power at all, but you can still own a TV.

There's no law that says modifications have to be useful. One only needs the desire to make it happen, and it's nobody's concern but the person involved.

Other thoughts on MS Word...

I was working on a eBook conversion workflow for a small publishing house last week, as a favour to the owners. I thought I could get away with a couple hours of work: maybe write a few scripts, chain a couple of existing libraries together, and then email them my code. I was dead wrong. I gave up after two days of work.

The problem was with Word. Word’s doc and docx formats are proprietary, clunky to work with, and incredibly hard to convert to ePub and mobi without weird artifacts and edge cases. It doesn’t help that the standard publishing workflow is in Word — many writers, editors, and publishers use Word source files in their daily lives.

The challenges of working with Word are not new. Smashword’s MeatGrinder engine requires authors to tediously format their doc files; other guides warn authors against using Word to ebook conversions. The Outsell-Gilbane report on Publishing Transformation advises publishers to switch to XML-first workflows ‘as soon as possible.’

http://www.novelr.com/2012/03/26/word-needs-to-die

Now more than ever we need to control our computers, and the software that runs on them. Governments and corporations, both alone and together are doing everything they can to subvert privacy and security. Backdoors are placed in both software and hardware. There isn't much that can be done about the hardware, but software security is definitely achievable, and the only way it can be done is by review of the code, and people taking control of their computing.

 

[HeXen]

better driver support

whilst the main components such as VGA are there, but for laptops, some functions will never work on Linux like the FN Keys and what not

no one makes any kind of mapping software for linux to map keys to functions? Seems like there could be some kind of simple solution.

its actually amazing those who say win8 is dumbed down..lolol

Why is it amazing? All you have to do nowadays is search or click the freakn monkey tiles. One would have to be retarded not to figure that out. like the morons who couldn't type "shutdown" But could sure type a very lengthy complaint on the shortcuts location after asking where it's at despite the long lived help documents built in.....that's what always amazed me.

But in Linux, at some point I always had to type in a command or do a procedure to achieve a simple goal even if its just some app not in the included software manager. So yes I love a dumbed down OS, it's finally dead simple to do most anything one can think of

 

[Crusty]

Games and DRM required services like Netflix.

There is a workaround for Netflix that sorta works OK...

But if I had the exact same choice of video games as I do on Windows I would probably never use Windows again. It's certainly getting better, especially with the recent AMD, Nvidia, and Valve announcements.