Puppy is mentioned here - what b*ll*cks!

[tronkel]

Read this article which I found on the Groklaw site:

http://legaltech.law.com/commentary-the-penguin-do.html

He mentions that he tried to email Puppy Linux (Barry presumably), because he couldn't get the distro to load - but got no reply. The next time he has a problem with Windows starting, he should try to email Steve Ballmer and see how far he gets. If you have a Linux problem you go to the friendly forum or paid-for support.

He says also that Open Office has no envelope maker. What is menu item:

insert -> envelope ... then???

This guy is a lawyer?. He should get his facts straight before he trots out this nonsense.

[puppyluvr]

Hello,

@ If Linux was a business, he`d be sued for outright slander. A Lawyer giving technical reviews, thats like a blind man reviewing video games.

@ Sounds like he really works for M$ to me.....very biased....intentionally...

@ He never lists a Linux he got working, but lists complaints about Linux just the same.
His comments about older hardware prove he has no clue of what he says. I run Linux on Win98 hardware all the time.
Also, his $219 refurbished computers better not still have Doze on them.( EULA ). As a Lawyer, he should know that. After a LEGAL Doze install, and LEGAL software install, his $219 computer is more like $1219!!!
Sounds more like propaganda than an honest review to me...

[Dingo]

layers, are notoriously anti-tecnological people, a people able to write, writes, another able to solve maths problems, delivery you life to maths, and so on for informatics, music, drawing and other

but a people don't having any natural ability, only can may be a layer

I also think that Puppy Linux is for Micro$oft a concrete danger for its business, they have a real fear of Puppy

[otropogo]

Read this article which I found on the Groklaw site:

http://legaltech.law.com/commentary-the-penguin-do.html

He mentions that he tried to email Puppy Linux (Barry presumably), because he couldn't get the distro to load - but got no reply. The next time he has a problem with Windows starting, he should try to email Steve Ballmer and see how far he gets. If you have a Linux problem you go to the friendly forum or paid-for support.

I've read it, and found it to be succinct and fair, much more carefully considered than one has a right to expect from a busy lawyer.

As for accessing freeware authors by e-mail - I have had e-mail correspondence without benefit of personal introductions, some of it lengthy, with the authors of KeePass, Irfanview, Knoppix, Linux from Scratch, DSL, Vector, and many others. Many of these responded promptly, and some were even able to help solve my problems.

I must say that my only experience with Puppy in this respect was an abusive e-mail from the author of Fat-Free Linux, six months after my query about a major problem with his variant.

He says also that Open Office has no envelope maker. What is menu item:

insert -> envelope ... then???

This guy is a lawyer?. He should get his facts straight before he trots out this nonsense.

Can you spell "nitpick"? Maybe you missed your calling as a lawyer.


Most of his criticisms are spot-on, and he doesn't know the half of it...

We Linux protagonists should be applauding and paying careful attention to such thoughtful arguments, and responding in a balanced and respectful manner to any flaws or oversights in them.

Note that the writer gives the link to his website, where his e-mail address is given in plain sight. If only all Linux developers were so accessible.

My chief complaint about this article is that it fails to address the security benefits of an open source operating system, which would have been particularly worthwhile coming from a clearly thoughtful and intelligent lawyer.

[puppyluvr]

I've read it, and found it to be succinct and fair

I must have read the wrong article.......

Can you spell "nitpick"? Maybe you missed your calling as a laywer.

Can you spell "Lawyer"???
So its OK to nitpick if you are a "LAYWER"??

There is nothing "fair and unbiased" about his "nitpicking" Linux.
To me it reads as a BIASED ATTACK (easily countered) , not a REVIEW.


Edit: Sorry, guess it got my "hackles up", to see someone defend that article.

[linuxcbon]

Calm down : he is a lawyer so he is not supposed to know about the technical stuff about linux.

The best you can do is show him how good puppy is .

[otropogo]

...
Can you spell "Lawyer"???
So its OK to nitpick if you are a "LAYWER"??
.....
Edit: Sorry, guess it got my "hackles up", to see someone defend that article.

You're apologizing for the wrong offence. Getting hackles up is fine, especially if it results in an insightful comment.

But you have committed the most inexcusable netiquette contravention:

The TYPO ATTACK!

[puppyluvr]

Yes, I know... I would never normally do that, but..
It was just too easy.....A misspelling in a line that starts with "Can you spell" is hard to resist....I give no apology for the rest.....

[tronkel]

Here is a better insight into that guy at Groklaw:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?stor ... 9033233244

[otropogo]

Here is a better insight into that guy at Groklaw:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?stor ... 9033233244

Have looked at that too. It merely impresses me further with the diligence this lawyer applied in his attempts to make good use of Linux.

Could easily be that he got his online forums confused. I can certainly relate to that!

This is CLEARLY a user who could have and should have become a poster boy for Puppy, but didn't have the hundreds or hours of effort and the years of toiling without any proportional benefit that only a very few other Linux acolytes (comme moi, par example) have been daft or stubborn enough to expend.

This must be a bumper year for the Nit harvest.

[otropogo]

Yes, I know... I would never normally do that, but..
It was just too easy.....A misspelling in a line that starts with "Can you spell" is hard to resist....I give no apology for the rest.....

I would never normally say this either, but I can't resist pointing out that you appear terminally ironically challenged.

Some people can't see the forest for the trees. You, I would say, can't even see the tree for the leaves.

What could possibly be more laughable than responding to an accusation of nitpicking by picking an even more miniscule nit in it?

Humour and wit is always laudable in public discussions, but NOT at the expense of content.

[prehistoric]

He has done a careful job of removing incriminating evidence. I can find no date for his emails to the "developers" of Puppy or even on the article. Ever since I can remember, Barry's Puppy site has had explicit warnings about getting responses to email. This guy considers his time so valuable 15 minutes pays for Windows, while Barry's time appears to be free, naturally. He must have obtained the email address without reading this page. Without more information, it is impossible to pin him down.

In building his case for the economics of Windows, he accidentally reveals that buying a computer without it is no cheaper. Sounds like the consent decree back at the start of DoJ antitrust proceedings, (the one about not forcing companies to bundle Windows,) has become a dead letter.

He delivers a stern indictment of the economics of open source as a failing of the FOSS community. Does the advocate recall the phrase, "We'll cut off their air supply"? Whose employee said that? Has he heard from the target of the remark recently? Is this the result of natural causes?

He has carefully built a case against Linux by choosing between problems with a wide variety of distributions, leaving his readers with the impression all these are components of a single commercial entity. If we are talking about Windows, this is true.

Perhaps, the employment, by an unnamed supplier of computer software, of enough attorneys to carry out human wave attacks is relevant.

[Flash]

Instead of picking at each other over nits, why don't one or more of you invite the lawyer in question to join our forum and air his complaints here? He might even find that he CAN get Puppy to work, with a little help from us. My guess is he e-mailed Barry directly, because he didn't become a laywer just to mix it up with riffraff in a public forum.

[Sit Heel Speak]

By and large, Mr. Kovel's article rings true, if considered simply as advice from one busy lawyer to other busy lawyers. For example, my own attorney operates an $18,000 scanner-printer, half the size of a Volkswagen, which automatically converts to and from, among others, all the Adobe formats. There is no way that any existing, non-custom Linux could run that beast. And Mr. Kovel's assessment of the problems inherent in the GPL is spot-on, except for the implicit assertion that Microsoft (or any other software company) is necessarily more reputable than any Linux developer.

All this is not to say that a Linux couldn't be custom-created to do all that Mr. Kovel's law office requires, but it would require a highly-skilled full-time on-site programmer just for maintenance alone.

Of course, having advised everyone else in his profession that Linux isn't worth their time, if Mr. Kovel were to thence go ahead and implement a full Linux system in his own office...the competitive advantages thereby gained would...

[puppyluvr]

Hello

much more carefully considered than one has a right to expect from a busy lawyer.

Perhaps he should be a little more busy being a lawyer, instead of a Linux reviewer. Many of the assertions in his article are easily refuted, by most Linux users. However, the intended readers have no way to validate his claims, except by USING Linux, which he urges them to.avoid..

terminally ironically challenged.

Strange, I found a great deal of irony in a misspelling in a line that starts with "Can you spell." But then, I have a sense of humor so....
It was not intended as an attack...and I did apologize...
Please feel free to "nit-pick" me at will, it will be easy I assure you, as I am "grammar impaired" to say the least.. (as has been pointed out to me repeatedly ) TGFG (Thank goodness for Google)..
# Also, my AOLesque overuse of Smileys!!
I have never used AOL, or even IE.. But I do love them Smileys #

As I live in rural Oklahoma, the people I "turn on" to Linux generally have limited computer skills at best. Yet, without any assistance from me, they have all been able to boot Puppy to a desktop, on their old beat up Win98 machines, and use the system to meet their needs. If he lacks the technical ability to do what the average "Okie" can, perhaps writing technical OS reviews is not his "Cup of Tea"..
I am not attacking the man,( Or You) I am refuting his statements concerning Linux, and their obvious inaccuracies.
I find his statements about hardware insane. Linux is way less hardware intensive than Windows. Would you argue??
I have found most Linux forums, if nothing else, OVERLY helpfull.
I find Linux easy to use, modify, and find most Linux programs equal to or better than their M$ counterparts, with a few exceptions.
I have found most developers very friendly, even if they just sent me a link to help me.
I find these things to be true, not just about Puppy, but the Linux community in general, as well as the rest of the Open Source world.
These are personal observations. I am offended when I see people write these types of articles. The general public has no way of knowing that it is a load of manure, and it may convince some to "stay away", from something they would otherwise enjoy, use, and share. Was that his intent??
I once again refer to it as PROPAGANDA.

[hillside]

But that is their entertainment, not their livelihood. If you’re in it for the money, keep your distance from Linux and freeware.

This pretty well sums up where he's coming from and I certainly can't
disagree with him. How many people do you know who earn their
living making Linux work? Pretty darn few and this guy very
obviously doesn't have the technical skills to be one of them.

[alcy]

If you have a Linux problem you go to the friendly forum or paid-for support.

Friendly, but cluttered forums. Many of them. Cluttered enough with redundant questions, topics, arguments, authoritative yet confusing and misleading postings of code snippets...cluttered just enough to scare off , and probably capable enough to be a cause for misjudgment of the linux community as a whole.

And when the whole world is going *wow* about linux being "free" , you don't expect normal, and non-technical users to be thinking about paid-support.

His comments about older hardware prove he has no clue of what he says.

I am not attacking the man,( Or You) I am refuting his statements concerning Linux, and their obvious inaccuracies.
I find his statements about hardware insane. Linux is way less hardware intensive than Windows. Would you argue??

I find Linux easy to use, modify, and find most Linux programs equal to or better than their M$ counterparts, with a few exceptions.

These are personal observations.

Linux forums, irrespective of what distribution is in question, are filled with queries and solutions to get the hardware working, which does include seemingly obscure and confusing terminology related to partitions, BIOS, drivers, modules et al.

Linux kernel isn't resource-intensive as windows, true. But linux distributions (major ones) are quite resource-intensive, not as much as windows though, but not too less either to be running on all old systems.

There are no *obvious inaccuracies* and there's no reason why his comments about hardware should make you go *insane*.

*Your (and the folks in in your area)* personal observations and good, learning and productive experiences with working on linux don't necessitate or imply the same for all the users (especially the complete newcomers) worldwide. People entering into the free and open source domains have certain perception and expectations , when they read about oh-so-great-and-wonderful FOSS, but when they try to implement and see the consequences, their perception doesn't remain the same, and it can go either way.

Calm down : he is a lawyer so he is not supposed to know about the technical stuff about linux.

The best you can do is show him how good puppy is .

Quoted for emphasis.


P.S : As much as I love FOSS, Puppy et al, it does seem n00bish when good and knowledgeable users get infuriated at something like the article in question.

[otropogo]

Instead of picking at each other over nits, why don't one or more of you invite the lawyer in question to join our forum and air his complaints here? He might even find that he CAN get Puppy to work, with a little help from us. My guess is he e-mailed Barry directly, because he didn't become a laywer just to mix it up with riffraff in a public forum.

a) I feel taking advantage of a typo to ridicule a serious post is worthy of note and communal condemnation, especially when the culprit proceeds to compound the offense with further provocative drivel.

b) I have already taken the liberty of e-mailing the reviewer a URL and an html attachment of this thread at his office address.

c) Speaking as someone who waited for more than a year after beginning to wrestle seriously with Puppy before joining this forum, I feel your dismissive comments about lawyers not wanting to mix it up with riffraff uncalled for and highly counterproductive.

Surely you don't expect such comments to encourage lawyers to post here?

Having invested hundreds of hours here just in the last three months, reading, responding, and attempting to co-operate in repairing numerous Puppy flaws, mostly with indifferent success, I certainly would never advise any busy professional to venture here as a means to increased efficiency.

In fact, this was exactly what I was afraid of when I held off joining. And it is only the encouragement of a few helpful individuals, such as tempestuous, muggins, MU, GeoW, and crash (apologies to any I have momentarily forgotten), combined with a natural stubborness, congenital optimism, a profound fear of the "back door" potential of proprietary software, and a great deal of free time, that has kept me here.

My rational self has long concluded that I should bite the bullet, buy an IMAC, and run Windows, Leopard, and Linux as my needs require. Frankly, I can't do without Windows, because neither Apple nor Linux provide the hardware or application support I need to pursue my interests.


If the "regulars" REALLY want the input of serious potential adopters (as opposed to hard core "enthusiasts" like me) from the mainstream of computer users, they should be pushing for a usenet newsgroup, where anyone can participate with hugely greater ease.

I've been a frequent and often outspoken participant in alt.comp.freeware for many years now. But my involvement in this forum has appropriated so much of my spare time in the last three months, that I've totally neglected the newsgroups.

Yesterday, looking for a freeware program to burn a data CD (since Puppy has none that work on my system), I went back there, and discovered, to my horror, that I had been absent for eight months, and had to be content with the postings of only the last three.

Neverthless, these three months produced over 20,000 posts, the headers of which I downloaded and pared down to about 1,300 that I considered worth looking at. It took a little over 2 hours, and I expect that reviewing the text bodies and eliminating those of little interest will take another two or three hours.

I can't even imagine how one would catch up on three months of Puppy forum discussions.

IMO. if Puppy discussions were that accessible, you would see a lot more intelligent and technically informed criticism, and Puppy and Linux would both be the better for it.

[puppyluvr]

Hello,

I stand by my

provocative drivel.

...

Linux will do more, CPU for CPU, Ram for Ram, than Windoze.
I do however understand the commercial aspect of his statements.
Linux can be comercially productive. Yes, a little effort would be required. A lot of effort was originally required to make Windows comercially productive. ( Some of it underhanded). And Windows had no "M$" spending millions trying to retain their "market share", as Linux is up against now.
But Linux isnt about making money., now is it. If it was, Linus would probably be living in Bills house on Lake Washington. If Linux Developers were paid ala M$, ( I remember the "F you, Im Vested" shirts) and Linux were profit driven, Im certain the commercial end of it would be much more developed.
Yes, maybe I let some of his more "provocative" statements cause my own bias to flare up. (Aviod Linux and Open Source comes to mind) However, I grew up in Washington State, and was fully indoctrinated in M$ lore. Bill was my hero. Until I really understood M$ for what it is. A bully. M$ has done some deplorable things to get where it is.
Linux is developed by (for the most part) unpaid, unappreciated people who do it ( Insert appropriate reason here)..
(Goodness of their heart, desire to help mankind, cause they just LOVE to spend hours pouring over code, pride of achievement, IDK, cause they`re nuts!!! )

You have e-mailed the author, and linked this thread. Great Perhaps we can clear up some of his misconceptions about Linux, Im sure at least some of them.
Perhaps, if he told his peers postitve things about Linux, we could gain valuable allies, as users. For the most part, the Linux community isnt full of influencial people, We could use a few Lawyers ect..in our midst.. ( Did I just say that ??? )
If the Commercial market was interested in Linux, its development would reflect it.

Perhaps I didnt express the "Friendly" side of Linux, (which I am defending), very well.
We all react defensively about things we care about, being attacked.
Linux needs allies, And a positive public opinion,
Its not like you learned to "really" use Windoze overnight, and you Paid for it..
And Im sure you could find an " Enterprise Linux" to suit your needs, but be ready to
pony up big $$$.
But, a few friendly requests in the Linux community may serve you well, for nothing
but your time.
But enough of my "Drivel"

[Artie]

I also read this article. After the first reading I was very angry at his frontal attack on Linux, but after several readings I noticed how many inaccuracies and plainly ludicrous statements there are and frankly felt terribly sorry for this man. I sent him an email saying among other things:

I have just finished reading your "Commentary: The Penguin Doesn't Fly, Avoid Linux" and I must say that I'm very sad to see a distinguished member of the legal community embarass and discredit himself to such a degree in public.

If you read the article at http://www.linux.com/feature/140930 containing an interview with Mr Nathan Zale Dowlen you will see how easy and profitable it is to set up a law office with Linux. People will compare that article to yours and wonder about your motives for writing such an article.

With this tirade against Linux you have alienated everyone in the Linux community and lost a host of potential clients, displayed your ignorance of Linux to everyone in the world and made a mockery of your own legal system in which you practice since many US courts are now migrating to Linux.

This is just a sad illiterate man who due to his inability to read a letter throws a tantrum and tears it up. (Figuratively speaking of course.)

Artie