The Linux Rant

It was just a matter of time before Linux got ported to the most famous mobile phone. Linux now boots on the iPhone and iPod Touch. There’s only a prompt available but this is a work in progress so I estimate that in 5-6 months we’ll see some visual improvement.

The Ooze Guy #5 - The Ooze Guy loves Fedora.

The Ooze Guy #4 - The Ooze Guy tries Gentoo.

The Ooze Guy #3 - The Ooze Guy meets Chrome.

The Ooze Guy #2 is out. Hope people will like it. Is it funny, is it not?

The Ooze Guy is a new webcomic that’s launching here on Monday. This adorable, sarcastic, orange blob takes a look at the week’s most interesting Linux/OSS story and speaks his mind. Enjoy.

Many years ago I was browsing the Internet at a whopping 12kbps and reading about how Microsoft told us Linux is like cancer and open-source is bad. I found myself today stumbling upon Codeplex  - Microsoft’s own SourceForge. I just love the text in the header: “CodePlex is Microsoft’s open source project hosting web site.”
And there would also be the Novell deal a few years back. Now Ballmer agrees that WebKit might be a sollution to IE’s island in the ocean of the Internet. Things are moving up and the direction is surprising. Could it be that in five or six years we’ll assist to a totally new Microsoft software policy and tolerance toward Linux and Open Source in general?
Vista was a failure, OS X is breathing hard in the corporation’s neck and Linux took the mobile market by storm while the Mobile division of Microsoft was caught by surprise. If Windows 7 doesn’t top XP sales, the future is gloomy for Redmond.
So where does all this leave Linux?

When I first read about this it seemed so unreal that I thought it was a soon-to-be-revealed joke. Sadly, the bug is real.
How can this be? How come something so serious slipped from under developer’s noses and went into the wild? You take an Android-powered mobile phone and you boot it up. You start writing an SMS to someone, detailing how your home PC suddenly rebooted last night and in a jiffy, your phone does the same, leaving you wondering if all hardware you touch becomes possessed. How can a shell with root privileges be active in the background, interpreting every word you type as a command? This is the absolute worst and stupid security flaw I’ve ever had the pleasure to read about and makes Microsoft’s error messages look like malformed kittens.
Of course it will be fixed. Of course patches were issued right away. These bandages didn’t help Google from taking a nose dive in a huge pile of… androids.

There’s something in all of us that constantly wishpers in the back of our head to protect the things we believe in. Some people go on defending the things they take for granted to such a degree that it becomes synonymous with religious dellirium. And no, I’m not talking about Linux fanboys right now. Just the opposite.
I happened to stumble on LXer on the following article. I have never - and I do mean never - read such a long pile of misinformed and made-up things about Linux. This crosses the realm of reality and lands somewhere between stubbornness and failure to accept truth. You thought Bush was full of crap? Check out this Windows fanboy.
I quote:
Another issue I’d like to talk about is all this chrome and eyecandy the (linux user is so proud of) internet is infested by…. compiz and wobbly windows and drawing fire and rotatin’ ur desktops on boxes and hippies and whatnot….
[…]
I just want you to run it [software] with a click of a mouse like I do in windows!! HIPERGIGAFAIL!!
He then goes on mumbling about how Linux is in fact not free, how a user has to pay Red Hat money to get the distro. The inevitable occurred and some people tried to explain where he was wrong. And this is where the true fun begins… The comments users left are priceless.

I couldn’t keep myself from smiling when I first heard about that LinuxHater blog-thingie. How easily people get infuriated. All you need is to find an area of interrest that has many adepts and turn those adepts into sheep that constantly refresh your website in looking to prove you wrong.
Well, it seems the guy had enough, but as it was expected, somebody took over the business and made-up the Linux Hater Revamped. Or something like that.
How original…
“Revamped…”
The sory is the same: irritate people as much as you can and pray for clicks on adsense units. Nothing generates more traffic than a good fight. Well, maybe porn, but that’s another story.
So what do we got?
We got a 15-year-old that does his best to stir up those events and ideas that you love so much, then he sits back and lets you do the rest for him. The more you argue, the better he feels, the more pages you generate for him. It’s an old and obvious scheme. This guy doesn’t have anything against Linux. He’s just using it to piss you off. :)
The guy that recently opened up that new and revamped and same-old-i-can-copy-someone-else’s-idea blog, figured this out and he’s waiting for your strong oppinions. Make him proud. Go on: rant on his site. After all, he’s so false in his affirmations that you just can’t help yourself from posting a “doode, you’re a moron” or at least a simple “FALSE!” in the comment field.

PS: Let’s see who’s smart enough. :)