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Some people don’t like any changes made to Linux user space which makes the operating system easier to use or configure for casual users. They would rather the user be befuddled and helpless, because according to them, people who don’t know how to open a terminal and edit a configuration file in Emacs have no business sitting at a computer keyboard for any purpose.

Ruth Suehle and a speaker to be named later (more than likely in the next 24 hours) will keynote at SCALE 13x. There are about 130 sessions in the four days, and just over 100 exhibitors.

But folks, if it doesn’t work out of the box, to a new user it just doesn’t work and Linux sucks. No one should have to tinker to get a default application to work. That’s the job of a developer, not the end user.

Ah, there’s the rub. For this to work, the new Windows must work “as expected.” What if it doesn’t? What if Redmond lays an egg and the new operating system is reminiscent of Windows ME or Vista? Will users be given the ability to roll back to their old OS as they could during the Vista brouhaha? And imagine the public relations nightmare if 10 turns out to be an utter fail. It could happen. This is Microsoft, after all.

Until now, we thought the days of the Top Ten on FOSS Force were long gone. However, the systemd brouhaha has awakened the inner Top Ten List that has been sleeping within us for all these years. Today, for one day only, the Top Ten List returns for one last encore — or the last one until the next time something tickles us funny.

Ladies and gentlemen, from the home office in Omaha, Nebraska, here is this week’s Top Ten List — the top ten things Linux users say about systemd.

For starters, I thought the proposal — not Red Hat or the Fedora Project — was the product of “first-world thinkers.” Neither Red Hat nor the Fedora Project needs me to explain the length and breadth of their worldwide community and how they fit within the structure of positively promoting FOSS worldwide. Also, to be clear: My commentary appeared after Stephen’s “let-me-explain” blog post, by a matter of minutes incidentally, so there was no cause-and-effect involved on my part.

This past weekend was one of my first full weekends at home in the last four months. I sat down to finish cleaning up the Bodhi build scripts and before I knew it I was spinning up some fresh ISO images.

You know, I get it. I understand the symbiotic relationship between the Fedora Project and Red Hat, and how the former serves as a de facto test bed for development that, sooner or later, ends up in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Scientific Linux and CentOS (and even Oracle Linux). I even get that Red Hat may no longer have a need for 32-bit development. I also get that while 32-bit hardware use in developed countries is on the decline, I’d like to see statistics on 32-bit hardware use in developing countries before I’m ready to say that 32-bit is irrelevant.

Here’s some news that should make Bodhi Linux users happy. Jeff Hoogland has returned to Bodhi in his former position as project manager/lead developer.

“I’m sorry there kiddo. You can’t watch a lot of videos or use your school’s website because they depend on Flash. I’m also sorry that you can’t play on miniclip.com or use some of your apps. Java doesn’t work on your computer. But hey…ain’t using Linux great anyway? Make sure to tell all your friends how great Linux is.”

Indeed, all of the OEMs showed up for the Christmas shopping rush will bells on, with Asus and HP offering Windows laptops for $199, about the same as a Chromebook. Which begs the question: If Microsoft can’t give Windows away for free on the laptop, how long will it be able to continue selling it on the desktop?

Ken Starks went under the surgical knife this week, as fellow FOSS Forcer Christine Hall reported yesterday. The short version of this story is that Ken’s surgery was successful — as successful as having your larynx and lymph nodes removed can be — and he is resting well in the intensive care unit.

As many of you know, my friend and irrepressible FOSS Force writer Ken Starks has been waiting for a date with his surgeon for the last month or so. He had his surgery today and so far the news is good. I just received the good news from Ken’s friend Ed Matthews, who also posted the contents of the email he sent me in the comments section of Ken’s latest article on FOSS Force.

PayPal was supposed to have made the change on December 3, the date it announced as the target for no longer accepting secure connections from sites using SSL v3 instead of TLS. As I manage a Zen Cart site which uses PayPal’s express checkout as it’s only payment option, I checked with the server’s technical support staff to make sure we were covered. Yup. We got you set up with that, they said. I was good to go.

William Shatner Linux has a propensity for staccato performance across the board on all hardware, and on older hardware it tries to kiss female aliens. If you’re not in that select demographic of users, though, you should be OK.

The computer was a three-year-old Dell running Windows 7 Home Premium. Jack told me it had gotten so slow that he had to do something to fix it. A couple of days later came a late-night commercial touting “WinCleaner” as the key to opening the door of renewed computer speed. It was offered as a thumb drive, preloaded with the very same tools that can be found in CCleaner and other Windows malady cure-alls that have been around for years, but without the flashy GUI inside an even more flashy flash drive.

Open source projects are best as a team effort. Never be afraid to ask for help. Even though I did the bulk of the development work for a long time with Bodhi, I had other people helping with art work, documentation, website and providing support. Even small projects should not be a one man team.

The website Linux Advocates is no more. The site, which focused on a variety of Linux issues, went offline on January 7th with little fanfare and no advance notice. The site had been being published for two years, having gone live in early 2013.

The team organizing the Southern California Linux Expo’s 13th edition, more commonly known as SCALE 13x, has begun to ramp up preparations for the show. This year, SCALE 13x adds a day to become a four-day event running from Thursday, February 19 through Sunday, February 22 at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport hotel. The speakers have been chosen and the SCALE Team is in the process of sending out acceptances and rejections — so if you’ve heard you’re in, congratulations. If you haven’t heard either way, you will soon.

A more problematic issue has to do the the openness, or lack thereof, of the music codec being used. Although Pono utilizes the Free Lossless Audio Codec or FLAC, which is licensed under the GPL and BSD licenses, evolver.fm reported last August that the files won’t play with full fidelity on anything but a Pono device.