Perspective of a Thinking Human Being.

I read an interview with Bill Hilf, yet another Microsoft puppet. He states "When people buy commercial software, really what they’re buying is a guarantee. You’re buying a guarantee that what you have will perform, and has been tested and there’s someone you can call up, and if things go really bad someone’s liable if something doesn’t work. You’re buying this ecosystem of accountability. One of the challenges of open source and really the challenge with the open source business model is: it’s hard to replicate that ecosystem of accountability and that guarantee."

Please, don’t make me laugh, the people who bought Windows Vista, bought a product guaranteed to work and they were assured the product was tested right? Then how come so many people are having problems with Vista?

Well, I know Microsoft don’t care, they sold a lot of copies of their faulty almost non-Operating System. But, then Bill Hilf jumps and say, "One of the challenges of open source and really the challenge with the open source business model is: it’s hard to replicate that ecosystem of accountability and that guarantee." If this is the case then, that we don’t have this "guarantee" in the Linux world, I want to stay without it, so far my Operating System, which I paid $0 for, Arch Linux, is working perfectly, I couldn’t ask for better quality, and what irony, this all comes "with no guarantee".  Using this Operating System I have a normal life, I study a bachelors degree in the area of Networks and Telecommunications, and although challenging I have all my work done on Arch Linux, and live this normal life without, Microsoft Office, Windows or its so-called "guarantee".

I have come to the end of my "rant" against Microsoft’s false advertisements. Thanks for reading.

PS: At least I got a good laugh this morning because of this interview.

Note: I edited this post, so read again, if you care.

I wrote some weeks ago, in this blog, that I was going to install Gentoo and Arch Linux side by side, because I the Gentoo installation for gaming and Arch Linux on another hard drive for all my other works. This idea came to me when Enemy Territory: Quake Wars released its Linux demo. Because of Gentoo’s reputation, a well earned one, for the fact of customization and performance.

Before this, I was a Gentoo user since 2004, and has always enjoyed using it, until now. This time, although being my first Gentoo Linux install in months, almost a year, it didn’t even lasted a week on my system, I  came to realize that, my once beloved Gentoo had dumped all its quality at once, and there is not much that remains of what a good distribution it once were.

Gentoo is divided in two branches, stable and testing. But, between this branches there are some problems worth noticing. The recent problem with the stable branch is the outdated applications, and even though they are outdated they are not stable enough, as one would expect. And the problem with the testing branch is that though it is a bleeding edge branch, some applications I use are outdated, packages fail to compile often, and most are unstable once they do compile. I think that above all the biggest problem in Gentoo is the lack of direction, and I feel this is hurting the community in a big way.

Because of this and some other issues, I have decided since  October 21, 2007, that this only Operating System I have installed, Arch Linux, is going to be definitively my main Operating System for everything I need. I know this is a challenge , even more when you are studying at University and most of the work they ask of you have to be done in a Windows machine, but is possible, I just do that work on the University machines to make sure mine doesn’t get contaminated.

I posted this on the Mandriva CEO, blog: [edited, so read it again]

To the people saying:
“Once you sold something, and [y][o]u got your money, I am not sure how can [y][o]u blame anyone. I mean the PC is their’s now, they are free to install whatever crap they want to… [d]on[’]t you think…?” [edited for bad grammar] [still, way to many uses of the dot]

You surely are an immature unthinking person like Steve Ballmer and Microsoft in general, the believe of, "just care about the sales not the people nor quality", is a common Microsoft saying. Just think about how they celebrated selling 88 millions copies of an Operating System that is on beta quality status and lots of people are disliking. In the other hand, François obviously doesn’t care about the money that much, he cares for the people, this is actually a good ethic behavior. Steve Ballmer, is, and has always been but a joke, just a puppet which Microsoft uses to show they are immature, unthinking people. Steve is actually the face of dumb in Microsoft, do you believe he actually controls anything?, I mean he is the greatest joke ever in the IT world, just as the word inept can be  easily associated with Steve Ballmer from Microsoft.

But, is good to know Microsoft fear Linux that much, and is scared to death about the progress it is making. The coming generation, is what Microsoft fears the most. Just think about it, the children’s of all this thousands of open source enthusiasts, that will use Linux since their early years, that sure is frightening to you, isn’t it Microsoft?

I read the letter, from François,  and thought, man, this really comes from the heart of a person that do love what he is doing and care about his business in a passionate and professional way, not in a "let’s forget about everything and everyone opinions" way, like that, which is common on Microsoft. Even though I’m not a Mandriva user, I do recommend it to friends above Ubuntu openSuse and Fedora. And will keep doing it, since I know this is a quality distribution, I tested the 2008.0 release and is the best so far. If you haven’t give it a spin, but if you are an Arch Linux user, just have both installed.

Why should I, use a system without slocate, grep, highlighting text with cursor copy, and paste with middle mouse button. Why should I use an OS that you need to rely on third party applications to customize its theme, this way making it slower and bloated. Why use a system without a decent package manager like pacman, apt-get, portage, and more importantly without a repository with more than 18,000 free applications available for one click download and install without bugging wizards. Why should I be binded to only one vendor, who only brings me a high price alpha quality OS, with which I have to wait until several service packs to feel is in final product quality. An OS with such a bad file system like NTFS which gets fragmented with every simple file movement/erase. An OS that is plagued with virus yet unknown that you have on your system, waiting to deploy.

I mean, thinking about this things make me realize I don’t like Windows, and I don’t need it, I don’t even dual boot, I just have one Arch Linux installation, and thats all I ever need. Is sad how sometimes people want to be binded themselves.

It was so bad yesterday, I had like 3 power outages and my Internet connection was highly unstable. What was even worse is that the power went off when I were committing the Arch Linux weekly newsletters to the subversion server. I don’t know why, but now subversion does not let me access the server in which the newsletters are, I still have to fix this. I hope that I can bring you guys the latest newsletter as soon as possible. Even as I write this the Internet connection is going down, I hate my cable ISP, I wish them the worst so they file bankruptcy, I think that was too far, but I had to let it out, now I feel better.

 In other news, I think we have to do something about the Tremulous game, so we can play online and know each other, I’m playing by the name of K3nsai or Kensai sometimes and tag myself with {Archer} at the end of the nickname. And I am found often playing on the PuerTremulous, PureTremulous2 servers. See you all in there, please tag yourselfs with {Archer} at the end so I know who you are.

 First I will make some changes to my system Hard Drives Schemes, will do some reinstallation of the OS and will customize my kernel. This all, because, now I’m into gaming again, so I need to customize everything for better performance, stock Arch Linux is not sufficient, I will have a Gentoo Linux installation now and Arch Linux as well. Gentoo will boost my gaming experience and Arch Linux will give me the stability, without  all the hassles of maintaining Gentoo on this system, when I just need things to work.

 In others news, I got a job at Radio Shack and will be working for them till this next week, so my time will be more limited now, still I’ll make everything more organized in my life, so I can keep on with the community and keep making the Arch Linux weekly newsletters a reality. Hope you guys are enjoying them so far. Well, I’ll try and keep you all up to date to the current happenings.

So here am I, still in Arch Linux, just a reinstall, why? Well, sometimes we make mistakes:

1) Partition hard drive with just 1 / partition.
2) Mix Unstable, Testing and Stable.
3) Feel, discomfort with your Desktop Environment and decide to change.

So what went well and what went wrong?

I have a clean system based on only stable software, have a great Desktop Environment (KDE) and everything seems to perform better so Tremulous is playing smoother . Then, what went wrong? I did a backup of my previous system on a DVD, and now, because I did not tested the backup before install, it is corrupted . Lets hope I catch on fast on the things I have to do. I’ll just keep trying a way to recover my data from that DVD.

 Yeah!, as the title implies, we are on plans of doing something which might/should be called, distrowars. What is so special about it? Well, we get to interact with another Linux distribution group of users who want to play an Online Multiplayer First Person Shooter. The thought behind this? Well, just pure entertainment, we get to know more Linux users and make Linux more of a /home for us since most of the people tend to see Linux as a non-gamers platform, well, thats about to change. There are many free games like Tremulous and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, then the ones that cost money like Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, which hopefully will be released soon for Linux.

There you go everyone, suite yourself and enjoy one of those games, we’ll see you at the distrowars tournament, and make sure you represent your distro well since this will make a mark on its reputation. Nah, we are just going to have some random fun, just be sure to take your white flag with you.

 Red Hat is a company I admire, they have the courage to stand against MS no matter what, and are not intimidated by the FUD (Fear, uncertainty and doubt) from Steve Ballmer. And now they say: "Customers Can Deploy Linux with Confidence". Red Hat is well protected by the Open Source Assurance Program, and if there is ever a patent infringement, they promise to replace or modify the software, is as easy as that.

In this matter I believe we should be very grateful to Red Hat, who has always stood in front and against MS in this matters, and they have a solid business, they are not just an underdog Linux distribution anymore, they have evolved into a solid well known Linux vendor. I know people tend to criticize Linux distributions when they get mainstream, but think about it, if no Linux distribution ever becomes mainstream, when is Linux going to really progress? In my honest opinion, this is happening all now, 2007-2008 will be very interesting years for Linux in general.

 So the new thing, I am working on, for Arch Linux is, the Arch Linux Weekly Newsletters starting with this week issue. I plan on doing this weekly and to have it released every monday morning. I have to thank Jason Chu who helped me a lot to get the job done, thanks man. I will try and keep the newsletter innovative, the first one isn’t the best of me, because of time constrains, and being a n00b doing it.

Well, in other themes, I hope I’m about to get a job now, I went to an interview today. So I hope this can help me do open source hobbies and still get paid from the real employer. Well, everyone thanks for keeping on reading everyday, I appreciate.