Jason, I absolutely LOVE your enthusiasm and, dare I say it, youthful 
exuberance. Please don't take this as a personal slight, and before anyone 
even CONSIDERS this to be flame I should say that people with Jason's 
drive are exactly the kind of people that embody the best about 
Linux/FOSS/etc.

Having said that...

First of all, Linux always had a GUI. As soon as X Windows was ported to 
it, anyway. I think that when you say "GUI" you mean a fully integrated 
desktop environment, like Gnome, KDE and Unity. We had X for many, many 
MANY years before those guys, and X was always a GUI. X also always 
includes XWM, waaay back in the 1980s, which predates, among other things, 
linux!

As for distros including desktop environments - I've mentioned before that 
no matter what distro I use (my desktop is currently Mint but might be 
going back to 'regular' ubuntu), Gnome, KDE and/or Unity are absolutely 
banned. I'm still using the same window manager I've used since 1997 with 
barely any configuration changes. My system is now a multi-core machine 
with two video cards and three monitors, and I've not had to change Window 
Maker's configuration at all. How cool is that?



You say that some people complain about having too many distros, and you 
disagree with that. I do agree with you, but you might want to read "The 
Paradox of Choice". Sometimes having too many choices can be a BAD thing.

You and I may be able to quite easily filter through all the Linux distro 
choices and get a coherent "This Is What I Want" choice going. Try to put 
yourself in the position of a person who's never used anything but OS X or 
Windows and for some reason wants to try Linux, and has to choose between 
100+ distros. Hell, this person might not even know there is such a thing 
as distros!

Luckily for that person, when they type "Linux" into Google, the first hit 
is Ubuntu's website. They click on that, they get themselves a Linux. If 
they had to muddle through all the distros to figure out which one is the 
right one for them, they're more than likely to just give up.



Now for the whole "Linux is Capitalism/Microsoft is Communism" thing.

First of all, I think you mean totalitarianism rather than communism.

Second. Microsoft and it's success are the epitome of capitalism. 
Microsoft leveraged it's limited early successes and later it's incredible 
market power to crush competition and control the market. They became a 
monopoly, but they did not become one by government decree. They became 
one because they were VERY GOOD at manipulating the capitalist 
marketplace.

I will remind you that there /was/ indeed a government anti-trust suit 
against Microsoft, which ended (after many years) with a slight slap on 
the wrist.

Microsoft is no longer the dominant tech company. And it wasn't the 
government that took them off the top spot - it was, again, the capitalist 
market. Microsoft got so big and slow that they totally missed the boat on 
taking over The Internet. Yes, Windows is still big, and yes Office is 
still the #1 productivity suite, but the battle ground is no longer on the 
desktop.


Now Linux, which you say embodies capitalism... mmm. No. I can take your 
Swift Linux, change it's name to Sloth Linux and go from there. Without 
asking you, without telling you, without anything. That's not capitalism. 
Your software, your hard work, is now a communal resource. And for 10 
points, kids, what word sounds a lot like "Communal"?

There are companies competing in the Free Market that are in the business 
of Linux. But they don't really make their money off Linux. Take Red Hat, 
for example. Or literally, take Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Does it have 
anything substantial that can't be incorporated into any of the free major 
distributions? In fact, do they not contribute a lot of code to Linux as a 
whole? No, they make their money off services centered around Linux.

But you can go ahead and take their code and use it in your own projects. 
That is not "capitalism".


Naturally it's not all black and white. Linux isn't actually communism. Or 
capitalism. Or libertarianism, etc, etc. Neither is Microsoft. That's my 
real point in all this, really. If you actually read this caffeine-fueled 
essay and you actually take ONE THING from it, please make it this:


Nothing is Black and White.


Linux is not always the best solution. Microsoft is not always evil. OS X 
isn't always... uh... used by hipster snobs (I'm using it and I'm not a 
hipster).

All these shades of grey are what makes this whole tech thing fun.




-Y

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