Tried a bunch of Linux distributions: Caldera, Slackware, Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE, Debian, ....

Then came Corel and I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Clean, smooth, effortless install; everything working right out of the box; all the necessary applications; professional look and feel.

Microsoft must have had its eyes on the situation as they immediately bought into Corel. The next thing you knew, Corel was history.

Ubuntu is not nearly as pleasant an experience as Corel was back then, but it just does a lot of the basic stuff right, even though it does leave a lot to be desired in terms of polish, privacy concerns, look-and-feel, usability, openness, etc.

Hopefully, Canonical attends to these issues or someone else takes the helm in improving things.

You must be a real joy at parties.

I hope the folks at Apple are paying attention.

Why? I thought Icahn threw in the towel on that crusade.

Embrace, extend, extinguish.

Why don't we have both: a WYSIWYG Designer, and a Source code editor?

That way you get productive immediately with the designer, yet still have the power to fine-tune every detail using the text editor.

You mean like Oxygen, just to mention one of them?

http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_editor/WYSIWYG_Editors.html

There are quite a few products already, for those willing to pay for the software they use.

Seems nice, but it is not freedom software. But I would move to use this docbook, ie xml and xsl as external file formatd for an emacs word processor.

Freedom software?!

I use a lot of FOSS software, but I never put religion over convenience.

Plus, as someone that earns money selling software developer skills, I tend to look down to companies using FOSS software as free beer.

*crickets

"Beyond that no one has any right to say how other people should run their projects."

You have a right to say whatever you want.

Issues with Firefox OS:

1. Browser only loads one tab at a time.

2. Inability to lock the screen orientation to either Portrait or Landscape.

Issues with ZTE Open:

1. Mediocre touchscreen sensitivity.

2. Short USB cable.

You do realize that Android uses the GNU/Linux kernel, right?

While I'm sure you're getting downvoted because people think that Linux the kernel has nothing to do with GNU, this isn't quite true: Linux uses the GNU General Public License and at the time of its initial announcement had to compare itself with GNU (and how it wasn't going to be as "professional" as GNU).

While Linus himself nowadays actively speaks out against GNU, he still use GNU's license and GNU's software (gcc and glibc), so even in Linux alone, without the GNU userland, we see some influence of GNU on Android.

Parent is getting downvoted because Linux is not from the FSF.

The kernel is just Linux. GNU/Linux refers to the combination of the Linux kernel and GNU userland (core libraries and binaries).

The work of the FSF and GNU is one of the most important in the history of computing. We benefit daily from the values of freedom, respect, and choice it presents. We also benefit from the abundance of knowledge and technologies that is openly available to all.

However, these rights and privileges must not be taken for granted and must continue to be protected. It is also in our interest to choose solutions and businesses that respect their users and their liberties.