Comments on: PC makers walk fine line with 'crapware'

Computer makers tweak their approaches to avoid alienating customers while still trying to milk third-party software's cash cow.
Images: Bogged down by bloatware?

[Serenduil]

@ godam_registration, 'Another Linux user dreaming':

Linux historically lacks industry support and usefulness precisely because it's free, and support and development comes from the user community; big corporations either view it as a threat and refuse to support Linux systems, or see it as unlikely to ever gain more support, and so don't bother trying to use it as a base to develop their applications on. Sad, but true. However--that's not exactly true anymore. If Linux lacks industry support and usefulness, tell me WHY are more and more systems running on servers powered by Linux systems such as Debian as opposed to M$? Apple is nowhere to be seen in the server market, as I recall. Also, Dell and netbook makers are beginning to ship machines with preinstalled Linux systems on them, and are cheaper than M$ or Apple.

As to the lack of support, which you sneer at: No one in the Linux community gets paid to solve potential driver/networking/hardware/software problems, which happen when commercial interests are so cheapskate they won't help community efforts by releasing binaries or source code under and form of GPL or equivalent, yet new drivers for wireless cards and other peripherals are being developed right at this moment for the benefit of users everywhere. No one pays software developers to write Open Source/Free Software alternatives to popular programs on M$ or Apple, no one is holding a gun to their heads saying "solve my problem/create this program/make this distribution/etc. or die"--yet they do all that and more, spend hours running bug tests, systems tests, coding, creating new programs and fixing kernel problems, etc. out of their love for the challenge and the sense of participation and contribution to a worthwhile effort. However because they don't get paid for their effort, except in whatever contributions come their way from appreciative users means all this happens in the coder's spare time, when he/she isn't busy working on a paid job to feed themselves and their families. Think about that before you speak.

And Firefox doesn't take donkey ages to load a single page, even one which is mostly text, UNLIKE Internet Exploiter. Even when I have 599 tabs open. I don't think I've seen that done on IE.

I'd rather use Linux and actually learn how to fix my system and parts on my own, than pay Geek Squad to do it for me. BTW, Firefox hardly crashes if you're using it in vanilla mode without 32+ extensions like I did at one point. On the other hand--my friend was working with IE7--and the thing wouldn't open more than 3 tabs before freezing on her. My Firefox works perfectly fine, except for a spell where it crashed randomly, but was fixed by upgrading to a newer version and a thorough add-on compatibility check as laid out in Mozilla's Knowledge Base. In the end the problem wasn't with the add-ons but with a sneaky control that Yahoo! Messenger installed without my knowledge. I disabled it and everything was golden once more. So you claim that Firefox crashes > IE crashes doesn't hold water at least in my case. Maybe you got lazy with updates? Old extensions can conflict with each other, and some extensions just don't get along well, like Tab Mix Plus and Session Manager, for which both extensions' makers already warned you. If you didn't notice it before blithely clicking "install", it's your own fault and no one else's.