perduta wrote:@ dee
Like I said earlier... while this thread is not intended to be a criticism or discussion of the Linux internals, treating it as a religion is doing nobody any favors at all.
There's nothing religious here.
Unix is not quite the panacea you make it out to be. It is designed for centralized processing, serving dumb display terminals. Today the reality of computing is distributed processing with autonomous work stations. Dependence on an insecure internet as THE network that ties them all together is IMO a liability for privacy and security. Speaking of which, did you google 'Unity amazon lens' yet as I recommended elsewhere?
I have no need to google unity's amazon lens, I know all about it, and I don't see how it has any relevance in this discussion. We're not talking about ubuntu here.
Unix is not designed for central processing and dumb terminals. It's maybe where its roots are but it's actually far more versatile. Unix provides a structure and framework to create networks of many different kinds that is reliable, stable and functional. There's nothing in the structure of Unix limiting its usage to central servers serving thin clients. And as for the reality of computing, thin clients are making a comeback. They're actually rising in usage, in fact it's the autonomous workstations which are decreasing in usage.
Who's depending on an insecure internet as THE network? There are plenty of local networks in business and education use. They're not going anywhere. Besides, there are plenty of ways for making communication via the internet secure. SSH connections are very secure when set up properly and you can tunnel anything through them.
Apart from that, there is no denying the phenomenal amount of dead wood when you deploy said Unix paradigm on single user personal devices. For instance just take a look at how many system folders named 'bin' that you can find... and why is it assumed that each user will only work on their own personal files? I don't even want a user account on my personal computer that sits in my personal living room in my home... I don't have one on my TV set or dish washer do I?
What dead wood are you talking about? Linux is a modular system. You don't need to use the parts you don't need. Just leave out the packages and kernel modules that you don't need. As for dead wood and bloat, let's compare a bit - the latest Windows RT operating system takes 16 GB of space. That's just the operating system. Now that's what I'd call dead wood and bloat. Why does a tablet OS need to take half the storage space of the tablet? 16 GB? That's ridiculous. Android, a Linux based tablet/smartphone OS, needs only a tiny fraction of that.
If you don't want user accounts on your computer, that's your problem. No one forces you to use them though. You can just use the root account for everything and disable the password prompt. That's kind of stupid from a security perspective, but you can do that. There's even distros for that, try Puppy linux, it runs in root all the time. It's not really meant for normal desktop use, but you can use it if you want. That's the beautiful thing about Linux, if you want to do something, you can, there's nothing stopping you. No one's forcing or shoehorning you into any particular way of doing things. There's always options.
However in most cases it's assumed that each user will only work on their personal files, because that's how it's supposed to work. It's called privilege separation and it's a security measure - you don't have to do it, like I said, you can just use one account and have everyone in the house use that same account, if you trust everyone to not mess with things. But Linux still gives you the option to separate privileges, because a lot of people find it useful; and also, because it's good from a security perspective. You can also chmod files to be accessible to others, or create shared folders, or even create extra storage partitions that everyone has access to, so I really don't see what the problem is.
Also, a desktop computer is not a TV or a dish washer, no matter what Apple would like you to believe. If you want a computer that you can treat as an appliance, don't get a desktop computer. Get a tablet, it'll do what you need just fine. If you want a powerful, secure, versatile, general purpose computer, then get a desktop with Linux.