A custom BO manager? You mean, like, heavy-duty underarm deodorant?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Thought I remembered something odd about giraffes and pee. You might have been witnessing this:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/07/before-mating-the-female-giraffe-will-first-urinate-in-the-males-mouth/

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: c600411Steam OS is not finished, Steam OS is not Linux, Valve is not doing anything for Linux lately because they are developing VR and Linux is shit for VR.

GoL should stop hyping "ports" and criticize more, ass licking and circlejerking will not get us anywhere.

Android is arguably not Linux--it's certainly not Gnu/Linux. Chrome OS is a bit off the track of what many would consider a normal Linux. But Steam OS? Steam OS is a bog-typical Linux distro. The only thing remotely odd about it is that it boots into a particular program by default (Steam big picture mode). Aside from that, it's like any other somewhat-specialized Ubuntu derivative.

. . . Why exactly would Linux be shit for VR? The claim doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

As to that last line . . . grow up.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Hmmm . . . Looking at the previous couple years on that site, on one hand the numbers wobble around a lot--rather more IMO than could possibly represent real shifts in Linux use. So this could just be a big blip.
On the other hand, the wobbling up to now was always within a certain range. Never before Feb 2016 do I see it going over 1.74%. I see a low of 1.25% with a typical range between 1.4something and 1.6something.
So a sudden ramp-up (accelerating, from the look of it) all the way up to 2.33% looks like something different. Maybe Windows 10 effect. Maybe Chrome OS. Maybe the Chinese government just got serious about security and did a big roll-out; they've been talking about going Linux for a while. Maybe all of the above.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: burnallIn general, other platforms have grown much faster.

It's a percentage figure. How can other platforms grow faster, "in general"? The total would have to end up like 120% of users, or something.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Slightly off topic, but on the main page it says "We have a Starbound server". Don't you think you'd better catch it before it gets too far? Why is that server bound for the stars anyway?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: lucifertdarkUEFI was the first step to making Windows the only operating system that works on a PC, killing steam & replacing it with Windows store would be a further step down that route, it may take a few years but it is going to happen.

I'm sure MS would love to make that happen, but the problem for them is that hardware is commoditized and economies of scale very much operative for computers, and MS only "owns" the desktop segment of that hardware (which is shrinking as a percentage of the whole enchilada). The more of the same widgets Intel or whoever can make, the better for their bottom line, and everywhere except the desktop, those widgets gotta run Linux. Doing the desktop different enough from everything else as to make it not run Linux even though the servers and TV-managing boxes and embedded thingies and supercomputer clusters and yadda and yadda and yadda all have to run Linux, would hurt profits. So they ain't gonna do it, and MS does not have enough muscle in this age to make them.

Also, UEFI is a different category of thing from locking down what runs on Windows. The former was in part a, mostly unsuccessful, move to stop things other than Windows from running on PC hardware. The latter would be an attempt to get more control of, and extract more money from, Windows itself--but if anything it would tend to push more people into running things other than Windows on PC hardware.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: CreakAnyone against Linux would have said the same kind of "in five years, they'll control the whole universe!" would have been accused of FUD'ing.

We've got to be fairplay and not accept this kind of arguments because it pleases us.

Normally, you would expect different arguments to be plausible about a loose group with 2% of the market than about a monopolist that has been convicted of using illegal practices to maintain said monopoly. See, if you say "This person may be about to leverage their monopoly power to gain still more control and revenues!" that is basically a plausible thing to say about the monopolist, but probably not about the group with 2%.

If you wanted to say Linux was going to plot to use their near-monopoly of the supercomputer market to do something, that might be plausible--if it weren't for the fact that open source platforms make Microsoft-like shenanigans very difficult in the first place, and that "Linux" isn't a unified entity.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Well, on the plus side, if Mr. Sweeney is right, I expect the Valve people will at some point notice it. And if Gabe and the Valve people conclude MS is back to trying to screw with them, we can anticipate SteamOS and the Steam Machine to be on the front burner again.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: neowiz73I blame the Mac vs PC commercials for starting the paradigm of calling all windows based systems "PCs".

Probably intentional. Apple want to take market share from Microsoft, but they'd certainly prefer to do that while not giving any to Linux. Characterizing things in that very binary way where PC hardware appears to == MS in the same way that Mac hardware really does == Mac OS (almost) helps them freeze Linux out.

View this comment - View article - View full comments