Interesting gentleman. My interests are very selfish. My daughter has been an engineer with Apple, in China. They have some serious environmental issues that are a health concern, among many other things. I noticed Apple has opened a campus in Texas. Why did the Twin Cities stop being interested in industry? I remember Honeywell, Univac, 3M, and a very long list of others. The level of automation required in manufacturing now could yet again return industry to Minnesota. I live in the boondocs now, and guys my age shoveled the dairy barn before school, while today even milking is automated. Who is changing the world for the better now? If you can't do industrial automation with Linux you might need to put down your cell phone and grab a shovel again, or go hungry. Warren Jacobson wrote: > Interesting comments. > > There seemed to be a great deal of interest in desktop Linux 10 to 15 years ago. Local Linux events were well attendend. Apple was languishing and a lot of smart people were trying to do what they could to avoid Microsoft's apparent monopoly of everything. > > But these days? Look around. It would appear desktop Linux is increasingly becoming more and more obscure as people move on to their Macs, iPads, iPhones and Android devices. > > Who runs Linux on the desktop these days? A few Unix graybeards (myself included) and some stubborn idealists. All the cool kids have MacBook Pros. > > Ironically, in many ways, given the rise of the web and the corresponding reduction in importance of the Windows based application ecosystem, it's never been a better time to run Linux on the desktop. We've got a few high quality web browers and email clients at our disposal. PC hardware to run Linux on has never been more affordable. And Linux installs in a breeze. > > whj > > On Nov 25, 2013, at 10:55 AM, Rick Engebretson<eng at pinenet.com> wrote: > >> 1980 was a scary time. Nobody knew how to get our economy going. We had some (Altair) microcomputer stuff in Otto Schmitt's lab, but I never got access because the VietNam vets hogged it. My chem lab had a PDP11, pre-Unix, hooked to a teletype, and computer automation was a big push. >> I don't think I was important starting the internet, but I never knew anybody else pushing it earlier, and I still don't believe it. I believe it was like crowd-funding, everybody just pushed their weight and we all made something move. >> >> So here we are again, a country in debt, uncertain future. And now everything runs on computers. Iran is still in the news. The environment, too. >> >> And now we have a truly amazing open source Linux, on all kinds of hardware. I sincerely believe we will need better computer skills if we hope to compete. Cars, power plants, factories, all industries will need computer (Linux) skills. >> >> TCLUG should be where leaders grow. >> _______________________________________________ >> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota >> tclug-list at mn-linux.org >> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >