wfraser

You mean Harvard architecture?

> plugins

Finder doesn't have plugins, hence the accessibility API shenanigans necessary to get the same effect.

Re: 1, 2, 3: Those are Linux problems, not Surface ones. There are types of hardware that Linux is just poor at supporting. It's up to Linux devs and the component manufacturers to fix that problem, not Microsoft.

I found it pretty easy to put Linux on my Surface Pro 2. The problem is that once it's on there, it kind of sucks. Poor hardware support, extremely poor touchscreen UI.

Correct. It also needs a wall wart.

I'm guessing that's what the Wikipedia article means by "modern": able to work on most any surface, not just a special mat.

I think they're too distracted with the WinRT and its accompanying C++/CX silliness to properly focus on C++11. It feels like the 1st party platform got the priority in manpower.

Interesting. What are PostgreSQL's "fingerprints"? What makes it possible to tell a PostgreSQL derivitive from one based on another engine?

"GNU's Not Unix."

"How dare they tell people about the insecure API we wrote and how it works!"

The part of this metaphor that I really like is how a garden is always changing. Unlike a bridge or a building, software doesn't stand in isolation; it's always relying on other software for something. These other pieces of the system are in constant churn, and your software must change with it. This is even disregarding other factors like changing customer demands. You have to continuously prune and maintain your garden, or the weeds (continuously changing software/hardware/services/etc. environments) will choke out your plants. Software is never "done".

Wow, thanks! I didn't know about that. I'll try it!

Yeah, from a technical standpoint, it runs pretty well. There's still at least one hardware compat issue to be resolved (when I last tried Ubuntu Saucy beta, the wifi didn't work), but it was very performant, and looked nice.

The only problem with using Linux is that there isn't (as far as I can tell) a good Linux UI that's very touch-friendly. The closest one is Unity, and well, that's all I need to say there. (I realize some people like it, but I'm just not one of them, sorry...)

I'm excited to see what comes of the Ubuntu tablet distro, but at the same time, they were the ones who made Unity, which isn't really good at anything. So I'm not super optimistic either.

Windows's "metro" UI is obviously touch friendly, but even the desktop can be made touch friendly-ish via its DPI scaling, which I think works pretty well. I haven't been able to get that same usability out of any Linux desktop environment yet. (If someone has, I'd love to know about it!)

What's wrong with the developer onramp? I thought it was pretty painless to sign up, grab the SDK, and figure out how everything worked. Just curious what beef(s) you have with it.