There has already been a vastly simpler system that predates OS X: Linux or BSD combined with X11 and an arbitrary window manager. Just stay away from anything that calls itself a "desktop environment" and you should be fine.
Your time and stress are not unlimited resources (and therefore not "free"). Being able to buy a Linux system that's guaranteed to work (and continue to) out of the box on certain hardware (or better yet, come pre-installed on that certain hardware) would be worth a fair amount of money to many people.
Yes they can. They can focus on a specific model, even work directly with the OEM (or be the OEM), put a $60 price tag on the box, and have a warranty that says "We guarantee that this Linux distro will work out of the box on model X; we'll keep all the software updated for a year; you can call us if it breaks; and we'll refund you if we can't help." If no one can make that sort of guarantee for money; why should I even bother trying to do it myself?
I mean sure, I can take your money. I can promise you things. So what?
What do you mean so what? People can always go back on their contracts, does that mean nobody should do anything ever?
If you're promising to support, say, Ubuntu 11.10 on a Blah Blah GX23921r3i laptop, then the 'so what' means that if I can't get wireless working, I'll contact your support and you will, because you've promised that hardware and that OS can work and that you know how to make it do so. It means I can trust X hardware and software to make a usable combination without having to gamble that I hit a compatible X driver or Y setting on my own, or put up with a laptop which can't wake from sleep, or whatever.
And why the hell was I downmodded for asking a legit question? Is this place falling into reddit land?
No whinging about downvotes - it could be someone on a mobile device misclicking for all we know.
Some light at the end of the tunnel: Russia decided to scrap the whole system this year! I hope they will stick with that absolutely brilliant decision.
That's just a technicality over which time zone they decided to stick with. DST all year round is fundamentally equivalent to standard time all year round when it comes to this.
I like playing new & recently released computer games on my computer. Which is why I have never bought a Mac.
Btw, what other operating systems are available on the Macbook? Other than now MS because people want to play new computer games on their Macbooks and they can't with Apple's OS.
The problem with linux is that nobody owns responsibility for making the whole man system good.
Linux kernel stuff is covered by the linux man project. This is run by Kerrisk, who is a good communicator - _The Linux Programming Interface_ reads like Stevens but is richer in practical advice.
But if you go to the man page for something like awk or bash or grep (the common use-case - where you need a quick reference), they're maintained by the team who write the tool, or - often enough - not maintained by the team. There are undocumented flags, often the doc only tends to make sense if you already understand the internals of the tool. GNU tool man pages are generally obtuse.
BSD and plan 9 have much better man systems. Unless a linux distribution comes along and makes a conscious effort to solve GNU/linux doc, the man system available to linux users will always suck - it's structural.
"But if you go to the man page for something like awk or bash or grep [...]"
And this is where you are doing it wrong. For GNU tools, the man page is just a stub. The official documentation is maintained in the form of "info" pages.
Now, you may consider this obtuse (I sure do), but it doesn't mean there is no documentation.
Exactly. Just think how many people got started programming because BASIC was right there, and easy to get started with. JavaScript is a strictly better language, and I would bet that the Khan Academy guys are planning to make JS as instantly rewarding as BASIC was back in ancient times.
Is anyone doing high quality non-smart phones anymore? I'm looking for something that's small, sturdy with long battery life. Preferably with good music playing.
I suppose Sony Ericssons's non-android phones are pretty good in that space, are there any others?
Let me rephrase what I really feel: After my three previous Nokia phones, I don't feel Nokia is a viable producer of high quality phones. In fact, part of me wants to punish them for selling me such junk and enveloping me in some sort of cognitive dissonance field that made me think they were doing good work.
Then again, Elop got there to change exactly that, so perhaps I should give them a benefit of doubt now.
Personal recommendation: http://www.archlinux.org & http://awesome.naquadah.org/ -- a nice compromise between easy configurability and the "suckless" simplicity mentality.