Re: Turn the other cheek et al.
"if you want Linux to succeed on the desktop"
Is that an assumption I see before me? My own OS of choice, which is not Linux, will never gain significant share on the desktop and you know what? I'm completely unconcerned about that. In fact, I'm quite contented, as evidenced by the icon. I use it (you'll note: No evangelism) on the desktop, but then I'm one of these stark-staring bat-shit crazy maniacs that actually matches the software to the tasks I wish to accomplish while leaving out all of the nasties I can really do without. Besides, Netcraft confirms *everyone* is doing quite nicely thank-you-very-much where it counts:
http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/performance/Hosters?tn=september_2009
"someone has to go and talk the talk to the Dells and HPs of this world"
For those of you obsessed with "beating Windows on the desktop" and "getting the OEMs to pre-install," worrying about "market share" and "desktop penetration, " I just have one simple question, as concise as it can be, asked from a position of seeing bugger all actual real advantage to the users of or the programmers that created this seething, chaotic mass of software that is GNU/Linux:
Why?
It's a genuine question that I haven't seen answered to my satisfaction yet (arrogant bastard, aren't I?). It usually comes down to fanboyism, an unhealthy obsession with and hatred of The Beast of Redmond and nothing of any real substance. Personally, I think the current development model works rather well. Security holes are getting patched as they filter down to the various repos, users aren't left searching for updates and the only people inconvenienced by it are those who want to treat it *like* Windows with a single dominant project directing all the others. Because no one GNU/Linux distribution "owns" all of its parts, this is never going to be feasible, even with all the "synergy," "leveraging" and "meta-cadence" in the world.
(PS: Sorry to pick on your post, goggyturk, but you were the one with the cojones to come straight out with it in plain English, so please take it as a mark of respect, just as "seething, chaotic mass" is intended as respect for the Linux development model for those that understand the strengths it brings.)