@kb Re: "One solution is to boot a Linux USB stick ..."
I'm very tempted to respond to your comment, almost line by line since I think that you are wrong/misguided in so many ways. It's early on Sunday morning though, so I'll only try a little stab:
"... either a programmer, or someone who ONLY uses the Internet,.."
You're wrong, so wrong. I'll leave it to other people to explain why, if they want to. The fact that other people could easily explain why, even though they don't know me, says a good deal about your limited outlook. (I've just noticed: "limited outlook" is not a sly joke, it just happened.)
" .. that do not run on your OS ...", "... the software required to get our work done ...", ".. Your OS is useless to us ...", "... your OS doesn't run ..."
I believe this is a rhetorical technique called 'othering' and in your case it seems to indicate some kind of bunker/siege mentality. There is no 'my OS' involved here, it's all in your head.
"... software that are mission critical to people's daily work that do not run on your OS ..."
That's because they haven't been written/developed to run on Linux.
"...thanks to the hostility of FOSS to proprietary software ..."
I'm running proprietary software, written and supplied for Linux, on my Linux box. It works. One item of said software needed me to buy a licence afer the free trial period, but I didn't bother because it wasn't 'mission critical'; I was only playing with it out of mild interest. Another item cost me about £10 for a lifetime license, which I paid for because it's so useful.
As I understand it, the APIs and inner workings of FOSS are fully documented and freely available to anyone who has any interest in them, for the purpose of developing proprietary software to use with them. How can this be hostility? You may have misunderstood what 'FOSS' means.
I'm too tired to deal with the rest of it so please forgive me if I don't bother.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
