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IBM Releases Desktop Linux Presentation
Posted by
simoniker
on Sat Nov 15, 2003 06:14 PM
from the slide-8-particularly-choice dept.
from the slide-8-particularly-choice dept.
An anonymous reader writes "DesktopLinux.com, in coordination with the Desktop Linux Consortium, is making select presentations from Monday's groundbreaking Desktop Linux conference at Boston University's Corporate Education Center available. Sessions from the well-received program included talks from key companies and open source projects bringing Desktop Linux into the enterprise. The first presentation available is from IBM's Sam Docknevich, Linux and Grid Services Executive for IBM Global Services and is titled "Open Source Desktop - Directions for today... and Tomorrow". His presentation discusses IBM's push into the Linux desktop market, an initiative from inside Big Blue."
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IMHO, Open source is bad for the economy (Score:5, Funny)
1) I will freely license my code for use in commercial products (ie, use BSD license not GPL.)
2) If a commercial equivalent exists for what I'm developing, I will not try to market it as a replacement for the commercial product.
3) My software will not be targeted at the average consumer (read: no easy to use UI, no easy installation process).
So basically, you can develop research software, specialized software, etc. But please, if no-one buys MS Office and d/ls openoffice instead, innovation in word processors and spreadsheets will stop. We do not want this.
Re:IMHO, Open source is bad for the economy (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:IMHO, Open source is bad for the economy (Score:2)
Re:IMHO, Open source is bad for the economy (Score:4, Insightful)
Being able to build a business that's doing something truly innovative while using zero-cost, open source software as building blocks means those engaged in true innovation are spending less for the privilege of being able to do business -- which means there's more money left to fund real innovation rather than throwing money away on licenses for software which reached the plateau of its usefulness years ago.
Yes, I know, IHBT; I'll be sure to HAND.
Parent
Re:IMHO, Open source is bad for the economy (Score:3, Funny)
#1 is stupid: why should I automatically let somebody commercialize code that I've been working on for free with the intent that my code shall be freely distributed? Corporations should not be able to feed off the open source community for commercial purposes.
#2 is even dumber: if there is a commercial product out there, anybody should be able to work
Re:IMHO, Open source is bad for the economy (Score:5, Informative)
However, you're forgetting about the users - many businesses rely on OSS, which they would not be able to afford to run using the equivalent Microsoft or Sun solution, at least when starting it up.
More importantly, we are in a situation where an abusive monopoly runs viable commercial alternatives out of business, which is certainly not healthy for the software ecosystem. OSS is turning out to be one of the few forces keeping some of these commercial companies in line.
So, yes, some older business models will fail, but others will replace them. I won't cry anoy more for Sun that I would for the monks who lost their jobs creating illuminated manuscripts .
Parent
Re:IMHO, Open source is bad for the economy (Score:2, Insightful)
Most programs are customized for a specific set of users, not off the shelf. Open Source fits right in with that and helps *MY* business.
If you don't want competition, then don't ignore those markets in the first place! The vast majority of projects I see are started because there *isn't* a commercial company in that segment or t
Re:What's free remains free (Score:3, Insightful)
If QT goes propietary (as I believe has been intended all along, they are backed by Canopy, and they were reluctant to change to a dual licensing system) then it will be forked, and this new fork will take most of the current development and worthwhile apps with it. No need to remain compliant with new versions of (a propietary) QT that nobody (except maybe SCO and Microsoft) is using.
Face it, "fuc
Amusing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Amusing (Score:2, Informative)
Well um, I am using
Re:Amusing (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Where's Sun? (Score:2, Insightful)
Fortress of Insanity [homeunix.org]
Blogzine [blogzine.net]
I sadly feel abused (Score:2, Funny)
Question? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why woudn't IBM want to do this. Could mass adoption of these chips drive their prices down and make them competetive with INtel and AMD chips?
Would that make sense? If not, why so?
-
Re:Question? (Score:4, Interesting)
IBM can make far more money selling services. PowerPC really offers no tangible advantage for the average desktop system over x86's descendants.
Parent
Re:Question? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's called Apple Macintosh with OS X.
Parent
Slide 12 - Instant messaging (Score:2)
Re:Slide 12 - Instant messaging (Score:3, Insightful)
So not having IM would be a selling point.
And yet: (Score:5, Interesting)
2) IBM can't be bothered to support FreeBSD on their laptops. Public case in point - the use of Type 165 for the partition that held the backup info. Private case - IBM staffer claimed they'd help with a USB implementation issue on one type of Thinkpad. (The USB doesn't work at all with FreeBSD and the only way Linux works is if you force the probe order in some wonky way.)
3) Many of the new style Thinkpads come with the Intel wireless - the one only supported under Windows.
I'll believe IBM cares about Open Source when they address the 3 above. Otherwise its the swapping of one corporate master for another.
Re:And yet: (Score:5, Informative)
1. the number of buyers for thinkpads with linux is tiny. IBM has in fact shipped some models with linux pre-installed but as a general move, linux on laptops is still pretty chancy, why should they put all that effort into somthing that obviously will generate no return.
2. See 1, if the market for Linux on laptops is small, the market for fbsd on laptops is that much smaller. As it happens I have installed fbsd on my Thinkpad, don't use usb so don't care but I do/did care that it corrupted my linux partitions and completely fails to recognize the OpenBSD disklabel.
3. See 1. latest-hardware drivers on Linux has always lagged. with 99% of the market, sure windows drivers get written right off. Funny how revenue will cause code to get written.
Parent
IBM's own data lie to them (Score:3, Insightful)
That number however is quite deceptive. I work in a Linux shop, and we run GNU/Linux on virtually every machine we own, including our IBM laptops.
However, Linux only shipped on a few low to medium end models, and of course we wanted the
Re:And yet: (Score:5, Insightful)
Sad, but true.
2) IBM can't be bothered to support FreeBSD on their laptops. Public case in point - the use of Type 165 for the partition that held the backup info. Private case - IBM staffer claimed they'd help with a USB implementation issue on one type of Thinkpad. (The USB doesn't work at all with FreeBSD and the only way Linux works is if you force the probe order in some wonky way.)
That's not the case with current ThinkPads. And though it was an inexcusable blunder when they initially committed it, IBM fixed the problem with a BIOS update 3-4 months after they were pummeled by the FreeBSD community (Link to my 2 cents worth of pummeling [slashdot.org].)
3) Many of the new style Thinkpads come with the Intel wireless - the one only supported under Windows.
Of course, that's the case with any Centrino based laptop out there. It's Intel's worry, not IBM's.
I'll believe IBM cares about Open Source when they address the 3 above. Otherwise its the swapping of one corporate master for another.
Corporations are fictional legal persons. They don't "care" about anything. People within corporations do. A lot of people within IBM care about open source. Andrew Tridgell works for IBM, for example. IBM has embraced Open Source for a variety of reasons, but in my opinion they all boil down to this: Free and Open Source Software gives IBM an advantage over its rivals in the competition to sell Information Technology to global business. IBM will attempt to assist its customers in saving money through the use of
IBM has lots of other irons in the fire with regard to Linux, but those are the ones I see most clearly. The fact that they are focussing on Linux and not FreeBSD is a function of the marketplace. Linux is the OS that the largest percentage of the FOSS community has gotten behind. IBM wishes to leverage this energy for its own purposes.
This may be cynical, but consider that the effort has resulted in substantial (many 100's of millions of dollars worth of) contributions of code by IBM to Linux, Java and many other projects, the hiring of many FOSS authors, to work on their own projects, substantial direct cash support for OSDL and others and the hiring of lots of folks who really do care about FOSS, though they may not be codejockies.
Finally, IBM is fighting a lawsuit aimed at stopping the forward momentum of Linux, and by extension, the rest of FOSS. One result of this suit could be the legal validation of the GPL, which would be a huge step forward for the entire community, even those that prefer the BSD or some other license.
So, IBM may be pursuing its own interests, but they are making a lot of moves that hugely benifit FOSS. The committment is long-term, but even if it weren't, what IBM has done up to now deserves recognition.
Disclaimer: I now work for IBM. But I made my decision to join them by considering the points I just made.
Parent
You're right - I tried (Score:3, Informative)
I bought a Thinkpad for a relative in China, who wanted a Thinkpad because of IBM's reputation. (I had to agree with her; I've never had any problem with them hardware-wise, unlike many other laptops.) I tried to get one without Windows, not because she's a Linux user but because she would naturally prefer a Chinese-language version of Windows and the sellers in the US only sell English-language editions.
The IBM orderin
TODO List For Linux Desktop (Score:4, Funny)
2. Fix KDE to be fast, non-bloated.
3. Fix Gnome to be fast, non-bloated.
4. Fix Mozilla to be fast, non-bloated.
5. Fix OpenOffice^W^W Write a new Office Suite.
Not trolling: Go install Fedora and see how it runs on a three year old machine. There's quite a lot of work to do.
Also:
6. Standardize on one version of Solitaire.
Re:TODO List For Linux Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a few notes here:
1. Mozilla is actually quite fast, especially compared to the competition (in essence, Internet Explorer). The monolithic Internet suite approach definitely does introduce some unnecessary overhead, but as Mozilla moves towards a modular model based on Firebird and Thunderbird, you can expect this to be remedied. The only major desktop browser that's left to consider, really, is Safari. Well, as it happens, Safari is based on KHTML, and the advantages of the very lightweight and speedy Safari are all present on Linux with Konqueror (which, incidentally, doesn't have the additional CPU/GPU overhead associated with Apple's Quartz framework).
2. X is not a bad framework. Features like network-transparency and the like are, in fact, VERY important in environments where thin-clients/servers are common. XFree86, in particular, is being forked every which way at the moment which, while at first glance seems like trouble, will probably wind up introducing some very interesting innovations, both in terms of processing and memory-efficiency and eye-candy. In the meantime, XFree86 provides a compatible, stable base that is more than fast enough on modern desktop hardware.
3. KDE and GNOME are not one-size-fits-all desktop environments. They are designed to be flexible and extensible and, as such, they tend to be more complex than, say, XP's Luna or the Mac's Aqua (incidentally, Luna absolutely sucks eggs as far as speed and bloat go, and while Aqua is admirably efficient given all that it does, one still must consider all that it does in terms of rendering iCandy). This flexibility is not necessarily a weekness, as it allows a desktop to be tuned for a particular user's needs, ranging from thin-client type apps to my dual-display K desktop littered with SuperKaramba themes. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that feature-set vs. performance is not a huge issue on modern desktops, and in places where it is (like embedded systems) Linux has very sleek, slim alternatives that still manage to be pretty and functional (like, for example, Opie [handhelds.org]). There are also desktop alternatives available for the KDE and GNOME-hating, thanks again to the modularity of X keeping the window manager and the display server seperate, ranging from GNUStep to Ratpoison.
4. You've got a point about OpenOffice, I must admit. It's not necessarily a bad system, but then again, it's not really anything more than an Office clone. A free and very portable Office clone, but an Office clone nonetheless. One of the good things about Linux desktop software that I mentioned above is that it doesn't try to recreate Windows or Mac with precision, but rather provide a very flexible framework that can be adapted to the user's needs. OpenOffice definitely doesn't fit in with this philosophy, but I'm sure that there are other projects going on out there working to redefine how we think of Office suites. And if not, somebody ought to get to work on that. ;)
5. Just a side note, Fedora isn't exactly the examplar of Linux's efficiency and performance. Go Gentoo [gentoo.org]!
What all the above boils down to is this: Does Linux have a way to go before becoming the perfect desktop OS? Certainly, and work is ongoing towards this goal. However, we must also ask another question: Is Linux, at this moment in time, a better choice than Windows or Mac for many users and businesses? Absolutely, and it's looking better every day.
Parent
Re:TODO List For Linux Desktop (Score:3, Interesting)
CFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -m3dnow -msse -mfpmath=sse -mmmx -O3 -pipe -fforce-addr -fomit-frame-pointer -funroll-loops -frerun-cse-after-loop -frerun-loop-opt -falign-functions=4 -maccumulate-outgoing-args -ffast-math -fprefetch-loop-arrays"
I haven't benchmarked this personally, but I can tell you that, qualitatively, Gentoo "feels" significantly faster than Mandrake or Debian on the same mach
Re:TODO List For Linux Desktop (Score:4, Insightful)
Tried running OSX or WinXP on a three year old machine lately? My three year old Mac (brand new 2001) won't even let me install OSX let alone *run* it..
Parent
Nice reading. (Score:5, Insightful)
The next time some hardware company excuses the missing printer driver with linux small userbase point at this new info.
I assume most businesses arent aware of this and many of them probably only needs a pointer to some stats.
Re:Nice reading. (Score:3, Insightful)
I have not seen many sites that doesnt render in Moz but i have seen plenty of sites that wont hand any code over unless you run IE (or spoof your UA).
Re:Nice reading. (Score:3, Interesting)
The only thing missing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Simon.
(Who's been using Linux on the desktop for the last 3 years...)
Re:The only thing missing... (Score:2)
Or: (ignoring the 'show me the solution but don't use X' - Sheesh! Software works or not!)
Lotus notes, Excel, Visio [winecentric.com]
If you ship a Linux distribution as a major supplier, you ship it ready to run the applications people want to run. That means you qualify the distribution. Big companies are pretty good about QA...
Personally I don't give a crap about Notes, Openoffice is fine for me. Your mileage may vary, as it does with Windows.
Simon.
The Battle has just begun (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think things are bad with SCO, wait till we start to hurt Microsoft's revenue stream, then all hell will break loose. With that much at stake, things are bound to get violent.
Re:The Battle has just begun (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Credible (Score:5, Insightful)
1. IBM has over 15,000 existing internal Linux clients and this is rapidly expanding.
2. There is no attempt to gloss over potential issues, such as browser incompatibility with IE and weaknesses so far in supporting knowledge workers. These are accepted, but demonstrated to be applicable only to certain categories of users.
The general message, which is convincing, is to look at each user segment separately and objectively and use Linux where it makes sense at the time.
Powerpoint.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Powerpoint.... (Score:2)
Re:Powerpoint.... (Score:2, Insightful)
path to the desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:path to the desktop (Score:3, Interesting)
Not necessarily true. I know it's an old retort, but trust me - once Linux gains appreciable market share on the desktop, the virus and trojan writers and script kiddies will descend, and the exploits - and they're sure to exist - will be found.
Sure, it'll be harder for them than it is with Windows, but not impossible.
far easier maintanance
Rubbish. Far easier for you to maintain, perhaps, and I'd even be willing to agree that proportionally, there are more clueless Windows "preten
Problems with Gnome. (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, now that the LG fiasco was solved, I downloaded the Mandrake 9.2 ISOs. Such a relief from Debian with Gnome 2.4. All my hardware 'just works', no typing commandlines and Lots of sources that are easier to set up.
I never want to touch Gnome again until they dump gconf-editor for a real configuration editor, similar to KDE control centre or TweakUI, fix the file dialog, and replace that FOOT with something tasteful. According to Section 9 of the HIG, the Gnome logo is a violation of the HIG, since no body parts are allowed in ICONS.
So, if you want to see what a Linux desktop SHOULD be like, try Mandrake 9.2, and don't forget that KDE 3.2 is around the corner, I tried the Alpha and its FAST!
Linux desktop profitable for Sun already (Score:5, Informative)
Sun have had a number of StarOffice customer wins for over 10,000 seats, and a few for the Linux desktop bundle it seems (reading around a bunch of press articles). However, most of this is outside the US - see this article [infoworld.com]:
Here's another quote from him, from this article [internet.com]:
Why are they reccomending Gnome? (Score:3, Insightful)
Gnome translate-o-matic
Ever since Gnome 2.4 was released, I have found more and more gnome zealots who MUST absolutely advocate GNOME at every possible moment. Here is a guide to some of their claims, and what they really mean.
Unlike KDE, Gnome is free
Translation : GPL is freerer than LGPL. LGPL allows corporations like Novell and Sun to have propeitry forks and lock away their changes from the user. Now that Novell has taken over Ximian you can expect Gnome to get put under corpirate lock. With KDE you have the choice, you either PAY UP or pay with your source code.
Nautilus is much better than konqueror.
Wrong, if your using nautilus for anything more than a simple finder clone you can forget it. No split screen, no ioslaves and forget about being able to have a decent file dialog, not to forget that it is as unstable as hell and is STILL slow on >3 Ghz machines.
Gnome is easier to use
Yep, nothing like using gconf-editor to edit all except the most trivial of settings. Want tear off menus? Want a useable file dialog? You won't find it here.
Gnome has eye candy
Yes, my pirated Win32 fonts with the patent infringing font renderer. Bit stream vera sans looks like Tahoma put through a shreadder! Of course I still reboot into windows to print using "Comic Sans MS.
Gnome has a new web browser
Yawb! Along with Galeon, mozilla, thunderbird, konqueror, atlantis, lynx, netscape and w3m. Yes I need another browser! Not to mention that its got a religiously offensive name and it dosen't allow bookmark folders. It also crashes like a crazy! Apple chose khtml for a REASON! its stable and light!
For newbies, Gnome is the ideal choice
Despite the fact that the only mainstream Gnome based distro has been EOL'd, and all the newbie distros such as Mangadrake, Lindoze, $u$E, Lycoris, Xandroze, Gentoo use kde default, the Local unix geek showed me Debian, which installed Gnome 1.4 by default, so it must be good if he uses it.
You KDE guys must be sick of the K
Our G's and monkeys are SO MUCH better, gedit, glib, gconf, bobono, ghex, gless, same-gnome.
Gnome is themeable
Yep, choose from High, low and medium contrast, default, and clean ice. Wan't to change the colour scheme? USE GCONF NOOB, plus if you complain about it we will tell you to fuck [gnomedesktop.org] off [gnomesupport.org] and go back to Windows [apple.com] or KDE [kde.org].
Gnome has multimedia framework
Its a kludge of esd combined with broken xine libraries. No wonder it crashes all the time and dosen't work on 95% of video files
My Gnome work station
My 1.1Ghz Packard Bell box my mum bought for me from PC world, that is made of made to break components, but it has a GEFORCE RADEON 9000 card, so it must be good.On the other hand, no-one (well, nearly no-one) is suggesting that GTK+ is a replacement for Qt...
Gnome allows mac like operation.
x86 compatible 1 button mice are almost impossible to find, and it dosen't copy the whole macbar concept. Not to even mention their auto apply implementation is broken and dangerous! Plus if they did actually come anywhere close to copying the Mac the C&D letters would come flying up their asses.
Gnome is GNU software.
gnu/Yay, gnu/gnome gnu/for gnu/my gnu/debian gnu/linux gnu/500mhz
Inspired by the gentoo translate-o-matic.
Some day, but not today (Score:4, Insightful)
1) X - This was a neat idea, and has had a lot of time and innovation put in to it. However, it's still ununified, clumsy, confusing and bulky. When X works, it works great. When X doesn't work, it's a nightmare.
2) Lack of standardization. Simple things which should work and operate the same over many applications sometimes do not. Such is the case with cut & paste, which beyond not being 100% universal, is a really lousy implimentation. If you're like me, and you highlight the text you want to replace with what is in the clipboard, you'll know what I'm talking about.
3) Very basic things which should be autodetected and configured by XWindows are simply not. How long have scrollwheel mice been around? How about mice with more than three buttons?
4) Lack of proper native support for popular applications. Ok, so perhaps this is not linux's fault, or Xs for that matter. However, wine and crossover office are poor substitutes to running windows applications under windows. While it is good that linux software has sprung up to try to fill the void, much of this software is nowhere near as good as their windows counterparts. See: MS Office vs Openoffice or Gimp vs Photoshop. Before Linux is viable, big names need to port applications over to run nativly. Otherwise, you may as well just run windows.
5) Regardless of the advances made with the Linux desktop, it is still not user friendly. More to the point, it's confusing. Having a lot of choices can be a good thing, and a bad thing. For us gearheads, it's great. But for the average user, it's a tedious hassle that takes too long. I can set a windows box up from start to finish in about an hour. Linux almost always takes the entire day.
6) Package management in linux sucks. Installing something in windows is almost always hassle free, and fast. Installing something in Linux is sometimes hassle free. Library conflicts, bad software and things that just don't compile for whatever reason really hurt linux as it increases the complexity of the whole process.
In short, Linux is not really a good desktop operating system. It lacks standardization and most popular modern applications are not available for it.
Lastly, how is a conference on Desktop Linux solutions groundbreaking? I'm sure many have been held before.
Re:Some day, but not today (Score:3, Informative)
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nobody complains that the GDI lacks unification, so why do people do the same for X? X is a drawing API. You can draw whatever you want with it. Same thing with X.
2) Lack of standardization. Simple things which should work and operate the same over ma
But RedHat says.. (Score:4, Interesting)
( as i sit here submitting from Konq running on FBSD 4.9 )
We live in interesting times (Score:3, Insightful)
IBM and Ximian (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Retraining? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:MSIE Compatbility (Score:3, Informative)
You never even looked at anything but IE back then, did you?