Re: [tlug] IMEs in Mint?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Simon Cozens writes:

 > I'm sure that "to change this setting, learn the codebase, fork the
 > project and recompile" demonstrates perfectly the Platonic ideal of
 > open source software,

Have not most of us on this list done that, to some extent, at one
time or another?

 > but the fact that you consider that an appropriate attitude to
 > real-world user experience may explain why Linux desktops didn't
 > really catch on.

Nah.  Mac OS X runs on hardware owned by Apple, and you can't really
use that hardware (which is pretty nice, no?) without using Mac OS X
(certainly not without *buying* Mac OS X).  Ditto, Windows until 1994
(or thereabouts, Microsoft literally owned the hardware in the same
way -- the so-called "Microsoft tax", and by then DOS and Windows were
inextricably-ensconced in the Intel world that the consent degree that
eliminated the Microsoft tax didn't really enable much additional
competition).  Linux was not going to catch up without a similar
advantage on some hardware platform -- come to think of it, look who
owns the supercomputer world now?