In my post about switching over to VirtualBox from VMWare, I talked about the importance of paring down one's dependence on proprietary software. That's especially true of software that is antagonistic to what should be its purpose: to serve your needs and make your life better. This is why I keep pushing the envelope such that an increasing amount of my time is spent working in Linux-based virtual machines.
But I also mentioned that I am guilty, guilty, guilty. I still use the OS/X or Windows included with computers I buy as the "host" operating system. That's because running Linux will make the people at the Apple store throw up their hands--if a line of pixels in your display goes bad, they'll probably try and tell you it's your fault. Booting from Linux instantly turns you into a second-class citizen in the eyes of almost any other vendor for driver and software support, which is a bummer if you use your machine for anything interesting (like Graphics/Audio/Video production).
So I usually will only wipe a machine and make it boot directly into Linux when a computer is at the age a vendor won't be supporting it anymore anyway. Yet terribly enough for our pocketbooks, our sanity, and our environment: now the market has allowed that horizon to get down to under two years. It doesn't take long for support to languish to the landfill category. Case in point: regardless of Final Cut 6 being a Universal Binary that could run on PowerPC or Intel Macs, the install program for the Final Cut Studio 2 suite was PowerPC-only. A $1K software box would no longer install two years after it came out because Rosetta was removed from Lion.
Apple chooses on a whim to just stop supporting their old hardware/software in a new OS release to make you buy a new machine, I'm glad to see when they are successfully sued for doing this. But the real fault lays upon a market that has not voted with its dollar to for open and accountable practices in the computing infrastructure we use. So I will say it again: I am guilty, guilty, guilty!
While success stories like the suit against Apple are rare, I applaud people like the Linux users who have successfully petitioned to get a refund for Windows. Because if they don't then you'll have problems like what happened to me trying to reinstall Lion. Now you can't even buy a DVD of it.
I don't have time today to write my own rant. But here are some links where you can read other angry rants people have already put forth:
