SuSe CEO: 'Linux Still Not Ready for the Desktop' 347
A lot of people have been submitting the interview with SuSe CEO Roland Dyroff, in which he states the Linux is not ready for the desktop. Sounds bad, right? Well, if you read the interview, it makes much more sense - he talks about company adoptions of Linux, but also addreses issues of hardware drivers and such. But with the upcoming release of the GUI Managers and the rising number of pre-installed Linux boxen, I think we're getting closer.
BeOS (Score:1)
Re:Well said (Score:1)
Oh yeah, Wal-Martware. Who can do without Wal-Mart's awesome software selection:
- "My (Professional!) Funeral Invitation Designer,"
- "Point n' Click Law Degree in 24 Hours!"
- "Beavis Bacon Teaches Typing!"
Oh! You just have to have that 3D flower arrangement designer program, what computer would be complete without it!Re:Hey now! (Score:1)
Re:Hey now! (Score:1)
Sometimes I wonder if some of you actually USE Linux. I would like to hear from 1 person who provides technical support to people that thinks Linux is, as of right now, ready for the desktop. The ONLY users I see Linux fit for right now are students doing research and scientists.
I use Linux at my desktop, laptop and server boxes, and I am neither student, nor scientist.
Yes, Linux is great and powerful, but it is lacking alot of interoperability and intuitiveness. I would like to see you explain to the users I used to support why copying and pasting between different programs is different..
It is? You can copy/paste text between everything (except things that can't select it n the first place).
Or how about why since they use Linux they can't click on a PDF and have it open in their browser
They can't? Any desktop environment that has file manager allows it.
, or why they can no longer install printer drivers
If Ghostscript drivers exist for their printer, they can, and if they don't, they can stick their printer up manufacturer's ass because they shouldn't buy unsupported hardware in the first place.
, or how to switch paper trays on LPD printer queues... *breathe*
They can't becauase this is what queues are for -- to separate print jobs that have different filters or output devices. Learn to use lpr or, better, lprng, and stop blaming your own incompetence on software.
Re:Well said (Score:1)
You're right. Why walk into Wal-Mart and buy commercial apps, when you can download wobbly alpha-grade sharewareish apps off random FTP sites all over the place?
Spoken like a true troll, who never actually seen them.
Freshmeat alone provides more fine, robust perl scripts for parsing web logs than the average Wall-Mart customer would ever need!
Average Walmart customer is a moron, who shouldn't have computer in the first place (and most of Walmart customers actually don't). The person who actually needs a desktop computer is another story -- there are a lot of useful for him things listed on freshmeat.
And that isn't even beginning to enumerate the huge choices available in graphical CD-ROM players and clock-skins.
Are you by any chance the famous inventor of Ethernet?
Yes and No (Score:1)
Linux exclusively on my personal machine
for 3 years and everytime I have to go
near a windows or mac box I want to barf, _however_...
I'd have to agree that linux isn't ready for the
desktop. Or rather the average desktop
user isn't ready for Linux. It's a blade that cuts
both ways.
I've given computer newbies preconfigured setups
with spectacular results _only_because_ they
don't/can't change any setting. This is actually
ideal in a business setting, but heres two things
to consider for "world domination" that IMHO aren't changing any time soon.
Firstly, linux just isn't appropriate for every
task (but what is). Second, not only are
people dumb, but they're proud too
As an example of the first case, consider using linux
for making music. Pre-emptive multitasking
just isn't good in that context.
"But theres realtime patches" you say
Bzzt, you have to a)know about them b)know where/how to get/apply them.
Then theres a matter of no good sequencer for midi.
Rosegarden? Editor is _weak_, its also not pattern oriented.
Jazz/Jazz++?, a little better but you need
specialized hardware, close but no cigar.
Forget about hard disk recording. SLab? Try to
shift a sample by a few or repeat paste.
Ecasound? Surely you can't be serious
And as far as the second case goes, people being dumb/proud,
go browse the questions at Question Exchange [questionexchange.com]
Re:Welcome to 2000... (Score:1)
Oh the irony. The very next article below this one in my display (threaded, highest scores first, threshold of 2) was:
Nothing against Randy, though, cause I use the "Mom" comparison as well.
Geoff
Re:So true (Score:1)
When X differentiates between a 'local' user (i.e. on console) and a 'remote' one better, I'm sure performance will go up. And the GGI(/KGI) people have been working on getting a fast, generic graphics interface with as little kernel code as possible, too. Hopefully that'll get folded into the framebuffer code, to the point where it supports my cheap graphic cards.
I also haven't used BeOS much, but from the little I know, it sounds like their advantage was redesigning from the ground up, which is something any new OS can usually afford to do. Hopefully it won't go the way of the Amiga too soon, and I'll definitely install it once it's 'free', and I have some extra space. (although I'd rather do it with a multi-processor system, to really test things out...)
What you're describing sounds kind of like a micro-kernel approach to graphics. It shouldn't be too hard to implement something like that, maybe with MkLinux. Interesting...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Re:Umm (Score:1)
But seriously, it sounds like The GIMP isn't there yet in terms of CMYK production / printing, and that's a shame. But I don't think scripting is its weakness...
You're right, though, I haven't looked at Photoshop 5.5. Photoshop 5.0, to my untrained eye, looked like Photoshop 3.0 with a lot of extra useless filters. (read: filters that I could have simulated in Photoshop 3.0 with just a little bit more work, or could have created in Photoshop 3.0 IF it had had a decent scripting language then...)
I'm also very happy with how well The GIMP and ImageMagick save files. PhotoShop, in my experience, creates bloated images that don't look as good, while both The GIMP and ImageMagick create slender, optimized PNGs and JPEGs.
Also, I like being able to save a big image as ".xcf.bz2", and have The GIMP do it automatically for me, whereas PhotoShop usually capitalizes my extensions, and *still* doesn't know which format to use unless I tell it explicitly...
But, different strokes for different folks...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Re:Umm (Score:1)
My mom is a screenprinter, and she uses Pantone colors in Photoshop and CorelDraw. I could never be as picky as she is about shades of color, so I guess that level of detail is needed in the business.
However, she also likes The GIMP 'cause it can make nifty rotating planets. I guess it just brings out the inner web designer in all of us.
Give us a nice printer, and we computer geeks can't tell the difference.
And isn't it CMYK?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Re:Umm (Score:1)
How do effect layers work? Is that just like an extra layer that specifies an effect?
Yes, The GIMP always allows however many undos/redos, I love that feature.
And image "slicing" annoys the hell out of me, if you mean what I think you do...
Hackers often add in features that only hackers could love. Maybe that's why people are programming with GTK...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Don't believe it! (Score:1)
Preinstalled boxes don't have funky hardware issues, because the vendors pick the right hardware. I've tried to install NT on machines that could be sold preinstalled with NT, and I still couldn't configure it! Why? Because they probably got it to install *once* through black magic, and saved that image forever after for the rest of their installs. There's no shame in having a "supported hardware" list when the vendors don't do all of your work for you. And even so, Linux *still* supports more hardware than NT does...
All that having been said, it sounds like SuSE is doing a great job, and I'm very happy with SGI's commitment to Linux. Even if they're doing it out of self-interest, I don't care as long as it benefits the community as well. And that's a lesson that Microsoft should have learned 20 years ago, before they alienated their power users... If they had, and admitted their shortcomings up front, maybe the community at large would be more sympathetic towards them.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Re:Files all over (Score:1)
I guess the initial goal would be to design the network such that the other machines get updated from a central one, (or they all mirror each other in some way) or put all the important stuff on the networked drives.
I'm sure there are software packages that could help you out here. I'd probably do something funky with locate and cron, but maybe something like AutoRPM [kaybee.org] would work better.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Re:Umm (Score:1)
Staroffice and Applix use MS documents well enough. My biggest complaint about StarOffice is that it's just too #*&% much like Office!
MagicPoint is also supposed to be a good PowerPoint replacement. (and PowerPoint is a *horrible* application! It can't even store images decently; I find myself using HTML and JPEGs instead...)
NeXS is a pretty cool spreadsheet, too. But there are tons of spreadsheets out there, and Excel never really impressed me that much. (Just another spreadsheet, except that it has a DOOM-style easter egg built-in. WTF?!??! That's like if Lotus 1-2-3 had a scrolly in mode 13!)
It saddens me that so many people use Office. Fortunately, 90% of the world doesn't use a computer. There's still hope.
GIMP rules. Of course, it's free, so the same people who already have PhotoShop can still use The GIMP as needed. (for its cool scripting language) The GIMP might not be as cool as the Fractal Image Painter was, but it's way cooler than PhotoShop. PhotoShop hasn't had a decent new feature since PhotoShop 3.0. (which runs great under Wine, by the way...) However, PhotoShop is also a >$500.00 application. Good thing all the Windows d00ds have already pirated it...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Re:So true (Score:1)
The rest of this sounds like application issues. First, if you have to use GNOME, try using sawmill for a window manager. Heck, I'm still waiting for GTK to mature. If you want to compare to Windows '95/'98, use something like qvwm for a window manager, it's probably closer in functionality and appearance to Windows.
Netscape under Linux (and UNIX in general) is pretty bad. To mimic the Windows experience, try using Mozilla. It'll crash more, but not as hard, and it's faster. Also, compiling stuff with "-O9 -s -fomit-frame-pointer"...etc. is always fun.
(or you can use Wine and try running the same applications, that might actually be more fair. That should bump the RAM requirements for Linux up to something equal for Windows, and you can compare apples to apples (almost). Linux should still be more stable, but Wine will run less stuff.)
What's your graphics card? When I buy my next system, I'm making sure all my hardware is blazing fast under Linux...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Re:Umm (Score:1)
I admit, I've used The GIMP to mangle a lot of images, but I don't try printing things that much.
Doesn't it just send PostScript to the printer, or whatnot? It looks like it's sending at least 24 bits per pixel... (8 each for R, G, and B)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Re:Ugly Linux (Score:1)
I don't have a problem with most fonts I see, but some pages look pretty bad in Netscape (I have it set to only use my fonts now) and the fonts in The GIMP look *way* better than the rest of X (they're well-rendered, and anti-aliased). The word processors in X look pretty painful, but usually I just use them to add formatting, so it's no big deal.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Re:Umm (Score:1)
Bwa ha ha ha ha
Okay, now that that's out of my system, please allow me to explain about the GIMPs #1 and 2 shortcomings
We're working on it. What are you doing besides laughing?
http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=1537 [sourceforge.net]
Re:My mom can *almost* use it... (Score:1)
Re:Moderate this up (Score:1)
Of course, that screws up some page formatting.
It's Done: Debian Web Browser / .deb Integration (Score:1)
When I open a .deb package with my web browser, I'm prompted for my root password. Then the package is installed and a menu item is added to my WindowMaker destop menu automagically.
Re:Umm (Score:1)
so i just poked around their site
annoying ass things:
1)72ppi is the only resolution. jobs for print output tend to be 300dpi+ (film is 1200dpi+ and that can be _way_ +). there's a workaround but what a pain in the ass for a common procedure.
2)still doesn't look like you can make cymk seperations from an image (unless you're a genius and can do it by hand in channels or are printing ultra-simplistic stuff)
seeing as how most of the important stuff for doing that reliably is patented (and the protections on pantone are pretty severe too) i really don't see any changes coming along in the near future.
Re:Umm (Score:1)
I still haven't gotten around to using it, but Adobe claims to have gotten a 99.44% accurate Quark -> Indesign file converter. That would be essential. I can't give up my files, and I sure can't remake all of the damn things. But I hate Quark (the company). They're just bastards.
Re:Umm (Score:1)
Image slicing is useful for creating an image for a web page that's broken up into different parts of a table (handy if parts have rollover effects, are animated, etc) by drawing boxes over the regular image. It speeds things up, b/c you don't have to measure, crop, save as, undo crop, repeat
Adobe doesn't always add in great new features, but they are really good about improving things (I mean hey - Illustrator has the rulers on the correct sides of the window finally
Now hurry up and write a 'Do all my work for me, and do it in the background so I can play Quake' filter
Re:Umm (Score:1)
About the only thing that could make GIMP, as it stands, useful to me and most of the people I know that seriously use Photoshop, would be if you could invent a way of printing on paper with RGB inks. Good luck.
OT: The IDG Linux logo (Score:1)
New pitch- Linux is for Learning (Score:1)
Go ahead and say Linux is not ready for the desktop. If I was running a company I sure wouldn't run mission critical desktop applications on Linux. You pay for each minute someone spends learning or dealing with bugs. This may change in the near future though. Corel Office will be closely watched. Corel will be releasing both a Desktop and Developer Version of the OS.
If someone were to ask me what the best use for Linux is besides as a server I'd say for teaching people how to use a computer. Especially for kids. Rather than having your kid brainlessly clicking on that Explorer logo to surf the web or spend endless hours mindlessly playing games, hand them a empty computer and a Linux CD. If they really want to play with a computer they will learm a heck of a lot more in Linux than Windows. Sure they may be spending time on the web or playing games, but at least they will be encouraged to learn more about the computer.
Re:linux not ready (Score:2)
Linux for the Desktop...missing apps. (Score:2)
*BSD) operating systems from conquering the desktop. IMO the main reasons are:
1) No real 3D support other than 3dfx chipsets (hey, the kids need/want GAMES. That is, after
what made many ex-Amigans choose the PC platform in '94)
2) no fast full-screen mpeg video playback
3) no stable internet browser (on many systems Netscape just doesn't cut it and Opera isn't an
alternative yet). Soon we'll have Konquerer and Mozilla filling this gap.
4) no easy-to-use GUI email-address management utility i.e. Outlook or Lotus Notes (apparently,
Lotus is considering a Linux port, according to an employee at the Lotus stand at the Cebit)
As far as the installation is concerned, Corel's installation routine is making inroads. I
have seen quite a few open-mouthed (now ex-)Windows users.
From what I'm hearing, a lot of Linux users dual boot into Windows for these reasons. I
like to play counter-strike and am forced to boot/leave Windows (on my HD). If we can get a
lot of these kids to fully switch to Linux we'll have more resources to create more
applications; creating a larger market. Games is a large key to Linux' success.
------------------------------
ask *politely* for ports to Linux, remind companies to check if it works on the BSD
Linux compatibility layer.
Re:Hey now! (Score:2)
Sometimes I wonder if some of you actually USE Linux. I would like to hear from 1 person who provides technical support to people that thinks Linux is, as of right now, ready for the desktop. The ONLY users I see Linux fit for right now are students doing research and scientists. Yes, Linux is great and powerful, but it is lacking alot of interoperability and intuitiveness. I would like to see you explain to the users I used to support why copying and pasting between different programs is different.. Or how about why since they use Linux they can't click on a PDF and have it open in their browser, or why they can no longer install printer drivers, or how to switch paper trays on LPD printer queues... *breathe*
I can actually go on and on. The things I listed above are important, Linux will eventually have them, but it doesn't yet. I'm really looking forward to Eazel, XFree4.0, etc.. but they're not here yet, and I sure as hell don't want to support 50 'I just want to word process, surf the web, listen to my real audio, have a Microsoft Outlook E-mail client, and have SMOOTH FONTS' users using Linux.
The ONLY reason I have windows loaded is for games, for I love the power of unix and the open-ness of Linux. That being said, I am starting to be annoyed by the Linux zealouts out there who have no real experience with the things they are commenting on speaking for true Linux advocates..
BTW, just because the kernel doesn't crash doesn't mean Netscape doesn't, or other apps don't.. DOH!
Re:Files all over (Score:2)
Hrmmm.... I'm currently trying to keep four clients on a home network in sync. Every freaking package scatters its files in a combination of network shared and local filesystems, so instead of just loading the wretched thing into /opt/newgizmo and adding a link to the (shared) global desktop, I have to do the ... /opt/gizmo
rpm -qlp | egrep -v
dance and then copy the droppings to each system. Then when it comes time to remove the fool thing, I can't just
rm -r
No, I have to track down all of the little buggers and do the whole stupid thing in reverse. Updates are the worst of both. That's a lot of work for four systems in the same area; just imagine the fun that Corporate IT will have with it. This isn't really a Linux problem; it's a hacker (or hacker culture) problem. Too many of the packages are being set up according to rules that make perfect sense to programmer esthetics and depend on users having their own system administration skills.
RPMs are specifically designed to allow installation without copying files -- just copy rpm itself and install (or give the URL to rpm). And if boxes are just exact copies of each other, you can use rsync and just update everything that chaned.
In Windows copying of installed software is absolutely impossible because of registry and conflicts, and installers are too interactive to be useful, so it's definitely the area where Windows isn't ready.
Re:Hey now! (Score:2)
Well, I just copied the above text, and pasted it into the message box just fine, but then I started up kedit and hit paste and nothing happened. So then I typed something in kedit, copied it, went back to netscape, hit paste, and it pasted the above text a second time, not what I had copied in kedit.
Use the middlle button (of course, Motif is evil, but this is a separate issue).
Even if it did work correctly it's still fucked up in that you can't use control-insert to copy and shift-insert to paste in many programs. It will work in Netscape, but only if you remember to use the left control, pressing right-control-insert will lock it up.
Actually use of anything but single mouse button (works everywhere in X) for copy/paste is IMHO screwed up -- the origin of this is single-button Apple mouse, and if there was a way to do mouse-only copy/paste on Apple, key combinations for mouse-based operations wouldn't appear in the first place (and wouldn't find their way into Windows). Your complaint about it only shows, how much idiosyncrasy of Windows interface is the base of "Linux (/Unix) desktops are bad" ideas.
Re:Allies vs Axis? (Score:2)
Are you merely a racist bigot so inbred that you can't spell?
Or have you any useful comment as to why you would prefer one of GNOME/KDE?
Maddog observes that Linux is the only operating system that has ever had world-wide success that was not created in the United States. I'll take what he says a whopping lot over what some Anonymous Coward too cowardly to put name to his words.
Did I forget to mention that you can't spell? No? Oh, well, it probably ought to be underlined...
Allies vs Axis? (Score:2)
The fact that KDE tends to be popular near Germany, and GNOME tends to be popular around North America, provides for all sorts of entertaining "Godwin's Law"-related possibilities. But is largely irrelevant to the people that are actually working on making these into useful systems.
My personal reaction is to sit with the French in the "danger zone," and say Vive la difference!
BOTH desktops can coexist, (particularly in these modern days of 36GB hard drives), and both have valid things to offer.
I'm afraid I must agree... (Score:2)
Let me first say that I have been a Linux user for over 3 years. I have a Debian server, a ThinkPad running Debian and 2 desktops: one exclusively Mandrake 7.0 and the one I'm typing from which is dual-boot Mandrake 7.0/Win98SE (I've been playing Diablo).
Here's why I can expect abuse from the Slashdot community: I'm seriously thinking of purchasing Win2000 and making that my main desktop.
Why, you ask? First, let's consider the things I need in my main desktop: stability and security. We can all agree that Linux provides these. Some may disagree, but Win2000 does provide these things also. Yes, one needs to be concerned about viruses. I would probably use Netscape for my browser, and something else for my email client (Pegasus?) so that things like Melissa wouldn't affect me. I would also purchase a good anti-virus app and update it regularly. Incidentally, I've downloaded tons of stuff from the internet (nudge, wink :), and I've never gotten a virus at home. I got a couple at work in my last job, both Excel macro viruses that did little damage.
BUT!(and here's the rub) ...the problem is that there are so many things that I like to use (notice I said 'like', not 'need') regularly that just plain aren't available on Linux:
1.) A good .mpg/.avi/.rm player. Sorry, xanim doesn't cut it. It won't play anything using the latest codecs, and AFAIK doesn't support full-screen mode. As much as it pains me to say it, Windows Media Player 6.4 is actually quite a good app.
2.) Reliable apps for my Palm III. Yes, I've used KPilot. I've also lost data using it. I've never lost data using the Palm software for Windows. I also can't use AvantGo, which is a really cool app.
3.) Myriad of browser tools, including (but not limited to): Java (I have to turn it off, or Netscape locks up under Linux), Flash (yes, there is a flash player for Linux, but it's not fully featured. Try looking at whatever.nike.com under Linux) and plug-ins. Mozilla should cure most or all of these issues, but it's not due out for 6 months, and we've all seen how software projects get delayed (like the Linux kernel and Debian). I'm not complaining about how long those things takes, that's just the way it goes.
4.) Games: yes, I know, more are coming out all the time for Linux, and I truly thinks that's fantastic. However, I play basically 2 games right now: Diablo and Descent 3. I have to reboot into Windows for both of these.
The crux of the whole matter, at least for me, is that my computer is a tool/toy that needs to do the things I want it to. I would love nothing (well, almost nothing :) more than to completely eliminate Windows from my life. But the (unfortunate) bottom line is that, based on all of the the things I like to do, Win2000 is probably my best option.
Comments, criticisms and moderation are all quite welcome (as if I could do anything about it anyway), but please think before you post or moderate. :)
Cheers.......
Re:Umm (Score:2)
But I would rather get work done with the best tool available to me than bang my head against a wall with one that's only half there. GIMP isn't even yet to the level where it's worth my time to play around with. There are lots of RGB bitmap editors - but I use the (currently) best one. Make GIMP better and I'm pretty likely to switch.
However, that likliness depends on a couple of other factors, too.
I do not need the headache of rebooting to switch from GIMP to Quark. I need a layout program that can read my existing PageMaker and Quark files. I understand that some work is being done on KIllustrator, but it too needs to be a total replacement for Illustrator. I need to move over my large collection of fonts without screwing them up. And I need the system to intelligently handle the fonts so that I don't have to reset every Mac/IBM generated file that comes my way.
And I don't have the ability to do that stuff for myself. While I've taken some programming classes in the past (Pascal a long time ago, C a few years ago) I am really not good at it. My strengths lie in the graphic arts.
You wouldn't consider moving to a setup where you have an IDE under Linux except for the linker, which required a reboot into Windows. A total solution is required _before_ the migration can seriously take place.
Then don't forget to factor in that most of my bretheren in my field are NOT as tech-friendly as I am. I know people who used a MicroPDP-11 for decades (until it exploded and the only people who could fix it were retired or dead) because they did not want the headache of learning stuff when they're already busy with their real job: getting stuff on paper. Computers are a means to an end for most of us. And if it only gets us partway there, it's just not going to get used.
Believe me, I'd love to see some competition for Adobe, and I'd love to see Quark (the company) crash and burn. I think that it's unhealthy for there to not be competition (back when there was no layer support in Photoshop, there was a competing product called Collage, which did stack stuff into layers - PShop quickly got layers, improving things for everyone but only because there was competition that forced them to do it). Sadly, the GIMP is not serious competition for most of us yet. When it is, I'll seriously look at it again.
Re:Umm (Score:2)
That's what I was complaining about. To draw a comparison, imagine my telling you that pico is easily as good (if not better) than emacs. While both are text editors (arguably) and both do that okay, emacs has a lot more stuff going for it which is so compelling to the twisted souls that use it that they would feel crippled if they gave it up. While a pico user might make this claim, any serious emacs user would recognize immediately that this is a silly argument which ignores the finer details of how the supposedly obselete program is used.
I wasn't laughing *at* the GIMP, though.
In some areas, the GIMP is definately Photoshop's equal (RGB 72ppi editing is its forte) and I'm more than willing to agree to that, but many graphics professionals frequently require more functions than are provided by the GIMP. Do you honestly believe that it's a practical solution to constantly reboot between GIMP on Linux and Photoshop on the Mac? (or Windows for the rare Windows-using graphic artist
Printing, however, as one other poster noted, _is_ rocket science. There's a lot of fairly esoteric stuff you need to know to get started, much of which operates in an entirely different mindset than what you'd be used to with computers. There's a fair bit of voodoo, some math, chemistry and good old fashioned experience.
One interesting side note here - some of the posters who just muck around with color printing and who haven't done professional work in that field probably consider a generic HP color inkjet to be a valid output device. They've gotten a lot better, but at least at many of the places I've worked at we wanted higher quality stuff for our comps. (and it's a major strike against them that they're not postscript printers. who wants to bother with a RIP for comps? pita) My favorite two were the toy company that used a tektronix wax printer and the prepress division of a print house that had a very weird dupont dye-sublimation printer. color laser printers were also not uncommon, but I never liked them much. But I don't really know of anyplace that used an ink jet printer that didn't cost at least as much as a decent used car.
Black and white printouts were on a wide variety of laser printers though - as long as they had postscript and enough ram to not choke on a big file no one cared much. Just goes to show that color is tough
Anyway, I'm not saying that Linux or the GIMP are pointless, I'm just saying that they don't sufficiently provide the tools I need for my work right now. Therefore, while I'm the last person that's going to defend the Mac on a reliability basis (I *hate* the MacOS, I just like the UI and the software that runs on top of it - I *like* Unix, but I don't like the UI and it's missing a lot of the software that I need) I am still going to argue that for desktop uses like photo manipulation and dtp Linux is an unviable choice.
So to recap:
*GIMP - not equal to Photoshop (yet)
*Linux - not useful for many dtp needs; generalist approach of many graphic artists, designers, compositors, etc. requires virtually zero reboots just to switch programs
*OSS - good idea, but not too many people involved in above fields can do anything other than complain about missing features due to lack of programming skills and lack of interest in switching professions
Re:Bollocks the desktop (Score:2)
Name: | John Doe | Jane Doe
------+----------+---------
Age:| 23| 17
You know what I'm trying to accomplish. But a computer probably wouldn't.
I would guess that you'd need to tie into the handwriting recognition software some system whereby it can be told to attempt to format a certain set of data (which could be selected by drawing a box around it, or something *EXPLICIT* so it doesn't go off all the time) by some criteria that the user selects.
So I might scrawl that down, and then tell the computer to make a spreadsheet out of that by analyzing the location of the data, the lines that seperate it, etc.
The Newton had a lot of useful features that you'd want in this though - defered handwriting recognition (so that it didn't slow you down... you could store it as bitmaps or vectors and recognize it later), the ability sorely lacking in the palm to mix graphics and text, etc.
Using PostScript might not be the best idea in the world though - it can be pretty processor intensive. It takes a G3/G4 to have a fully prettified Aqua in MacOS X right now and it uses PDF, which is better in a lot of ways for display purposes than PS. Defaulting to vectors is probably the way to go, however.
You'd want to thoroughly explore alternative UI's though. A regular desktop GUI wouldn't cut it, and a CLI would be painful to use with a pen in a short amount of time. The Newt was good, better than the Palm or WinCE, but it could be a lot better, given how free-form your data might be.
Re:So true (Score:2)
I think that the very first thing that a Linux desktop needs to be able to do and able to do absolutely flawlessly is, download a RPM or similar package, install it with a few simple clicks, create a "shortcut" to run it on the desktop or in some program menu somewhere, and then run the program. ... right now the graphical shells just plain SUCK at this.
Regarding easily installing packages... there is a Netscape plugin that will download and install an RPM (you need the root password) - it's called "Autoinst" and it's here [usf.edu]. Then, if it's a Gnome app with a .desktop entry, it automatically gets entered into your application menu. (I'm sure there's something similar for KDE).
I think that's a long way from "just sucks!"
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Re:I'm afraid I must agree... (Score:2)
I need things RIGHT NOW. I need things that aren't "this feature is 80% implemented" or tedious workarounds to get the same thing.
Looks like we're in the same boat. I'm going Mac, as I can't stomach buying a 100% MS machine (seems like giving in too much).
Re:Allies vs Axis? (Score:2)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Dumb (Score:2)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:What makes a desktop OS? (Score:2)
You are correct that the "ease of use" factor is a canard. So is the pretty window trimmings factor. So is the GUI installer factor.
The real problem with Unix-like systems is that they demand too much in terms of administration skills. Fine for people who read "News For Nerd", but not fine for someone who wants to plug-n-play their digital camera or their WinNT/Novell network. As bad as DOS/Win3.1 was, anyone could install a driver or a program by running INSTALL.EXE, and you could count the important configuration files on one hand.
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Re:Maybe Linux *Shouldn't Be* for the Desktop. (Score:2)
No, I sound like someone who cares more about the QUALITY AND STABILITY of linux more than I care about it's proliferation. I want linux to be better, not just preinstalled on more boxes.
Why rush to get something to market? Let linux mature naturally. Don't let the rush for commercial viability (money) in the clueless newbie market drive it.
Linux isn't a silver bullet to slay the M$ werewolf. One of two things will happen if we let linux mature. Either 1, it'll become the most stable OS for the market AND the tools will become available to make it suitable for grandmothers and uncles and it'll be the natural heir apparant to that market, or 2, M$ will feel the heat and improve their OS so well that people won't be waiting for an excuse to jump ship and go to linux.
Do you want to improve the computing market or just hurt M$?
LK
Do we want it to be ready for the desktop? (Score:2)
But even if a new Linux UI could innovate freely, unrestrained by user expectations, designing for the "average desktop" still means designing for a different user community from the current Linux users.
So, I still don't get the motivation: why do people volunteer for projects that largely seem to try to replicate an existing user experience for the non-programming masses? Even if someone really wants to develop software for average users, why try to replicate a paradigm (the Windows/Mac desktop) that seems intrinsically complex, when very easy to use interfaces (appliance like, embedded, etc.) seem actually much more promising.
So, maybe being "ready for the desktop" in the sense of what runs on most desktops today is just the wrong thing to aim for: most people seem to need something simpler (think WebTV, Playstation, and word processor), and expert Linux users probably want something more flexible than a Windows/MacOS desktop workalike.
The problem isn't X11/XFree86 either. (Score:2)
X11 has a widely-used extension mechanism that makes it easy to add those. That extension mechanism is already used for, for example, direct graphics, low bandwidth transmissions, video mode extensions, double buffering, power management, shaped windows, video, graphics tablets, and a lot of other features you probably consider "standard" (check "xdpyinfo" to see all the extensions your server has). Some extensions that have been created by not included in XFree86 are server-side image compression/decompression, server-side image processing, and server-side video.
Adding antialiased fonts and graphics via such a mechanism isn't hard (the hard part is implementing the low level graphics routines in the server).
It may be good to start from scratch in the long run (as Berlin does), but for practical purposes, I think you can get a lot more mileage out of X11 with much less effort. And there is a lot of infrastructure and functionality in and around X11 that will take a long time to replicate in another system.
Besides Berlin, don't overlook Java. In the long run, it may well be the best replacement for X11. While it is currently only loosely coupled to in client/server applications, you can use it in a way that's similar to Display PostScript. And it improves over DPS in security, stability, and (with a good implementation) performance. Your next C++ toolkit may well be automatically generated bindings to remote Java UI objects.
Re:So true (Score:2)
my $0.02
Abolish Quicken with GnuCash (Score:2)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/02/28/094
It can import Quicken files and more. Never used it but plan to convert from Quicken2000 soon.
Re:The 4 needed applications (Score:2)
Re:So true (Score:2)
No. The nature of the GPL is such that not only cannot you not enforce such a thing, the Free Software and/or the Open Source philosophies are fundamentally against this sort of restriction. While I agree it would be nice for something like the LSB to be widely adopted (and a given distribution could provide support for a configuration meeting LSB version such and such), the majority of current Linux users (particularly the ones who develop Linux, which is the important group when we discuss how Linux "should be") don't want to be constrained on their systems by some standard way that a configuration has to be. Enforce a mainstream configuration standard and developers will move to a non-mainstream distribution. Ironic maybe, but that's why many people use Linux in the first place.
While the goal of "Linux world domination" might be the rallying cry of some enamoured of Linux, I believe most people capable of making that goal a reality would rephrase it as "Linux world domination, so long as I can configure EVERYTHING the way I want it".
Latin America (Score:2)
Re:Abolish Quicken with GnuCash (Score:2)
Re:My mom can *almost* use it... (Score:2)
Re:Hey now! (Score:2)
I recently installed linux (corel and redhat) on my machine and I must say I'm impressed by the smooth intstallation. Otherwise I'm not much impressed. Corel just hides the complexity of the OS behind a thin layer of nice looking widgets and redhat doesn't even bother to do so.
There's this guy on slashdot who uses the following signature:
"people who don't understand UNIX are doomed to reinvent it poorly"
Replace UNIX by windows and you have the reason why linux is not ready for the desktop.
Re:So true (Score:2)
I don't know about this plugin specifically -- but the problem I've found with most automated RPM tools is that they make no provision for Proxies. I have to use one and so dealing with RPMs is a big problem for me.
Re:My mom can *almost* use it... (Score:2)
Re:close, but not quite. (Score:2)
Some people might find fault with this, but I think it is very accurate. Linux will gain favor as it progresses from both sides. Most people who are scared of the CLI are also scared of computers in general. Most of us that have really taken to Linux have been using computers extensively for 10+ years. As this attribute becomes more common of the general populace you will see more poeple who want to take the training wheels off their machines. More and more people will want to take back control of their boxes, after they realize what pawns they have been. At the same time Linux is getting WAAY easier to use and enjoy, with more companies and projects being started every day the overall codebase and capabilites are expanding expontentially. Fun stuff.
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Re:Reasons Linux is not ready for the desktop (Score:2)
Your solution is a good idea. I've thought of something along the same lines. Ok now consider this:
Solution #2
What if the VFS was partially user space?
ie. everyone starts out with the default file structure and you can build ontop of that per user.
Im not a kernel developer, but think of the flexibility of this. You don't haveta be root to mount smb shares wherever. You put a program in your ~/apps and when you log in it shows up in
Only your user can see this.
Re:Just a few things more... (Score:2)
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Re:Just a few things more... (Score:2)
2.4 Kernel: Sure to be a great improvement in the Linux system, but hardware compatibility is no longer Linux's problem. And where it is a problem, it's with components like video cards and sound cards, where 2.4 is not going to have much added value for home users over 2.2.
XFree86 4.0: This will make hardware accelerated 3D under Linux much faster. Unfortunately, there are still only like 3 chipsets that support hardware 3D under Linux, so I hardly think this is going to springboard Linux into the gaming market that it is still so crucially lagging in.
Easel: I agree here, the Easel people may be on to something, and of course the KDE team has already made huge inroads for UI. *This*, above all else, is where Linux (and Unix in general) needs enormous amounts of work.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Re:USB, Firewire, and some smaller things... (Score:2)
I know probably a dozen people who stick with windows for games too. Unfortunately XFree 4.0 isn't going to miraculously make all their games work under Linux, and WINE isn't even close to being at that point. This is another issue entirely, which has more to do with Linux's *apparent* feasibility, rather than the actual thing. Otherwise, companies will never port their games.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Re:Umm (Score:2)
This has been a standard Gimp feature since, as far as I know, the beginning. Certainly since pre-1.0.
Would that it were so. But, no. These features are not in The Gimp because they're patented. The only way to include them would be for someone to write them under license and then sell them as plug-ins. I could see a vendor like Red Hat doing this, or maybe a new third-party could start doing things like this.
Files all over (Score:2)
RPM's exist to keep track of where all the files go. Programs are installed in the path (generally
Hrmmm.... I'm currently trying to keep four clients on a home network in sync. Every freaking package scatters its files in a combination of network shared and local filesystems, so instead of just loading the wretched thing into
rpm -qlp | egrep -v ...
dance and then copy the droppings to each system. Then when it comes time to remove the fool thing, I can't just
rm -r /opt/gizmo
No, I have to track down all of the little buggers and do the whole stupid thing in reverse. Updates are the worst of both. That's a lot of work for four systems in the same area; just imagine the fun that Corporate IT will have with it.
This isn't really a Linux problem; it's a hacker (or hacker culture) problem. Too many of the packages are being set up according to rules that make perfect sense to programmer esthetics and depend on users having their own system administration skills.
Re:Hey now! It's been ready for my desk since '95 (Score:2)
I tend to agree with your gripes... but let me add my own:
Gripe #1: When they say "Linux isn't ready for the desktop" what they really mean is "Linux isn't ready for 85% [editor note: this number is for example purposes only and is intended to illustrate only that some number is valid there
Gripe #2: Linux, preinstalled with a GUI and a bunch of applications like many desktop WinPC's, just might be more user friendly than at least the MS variety. [Unfortunately, the fact that they don't come that way makes my point somewhat irrelevant, but it isn't really Linux's fault -- and that is the implication in the claim that Windows is more user friendly.]
Re:boxen?? (Score:2)
you're welcome.
The problem vis-a-vis appearance isn't Linux... (Score:2)
It's XFree86. Granted, it's a stunning update of ancient windowing technology, but it's time to let some things go. We need a window system with real true-type support from the get-go, that doesn't require special libraries (Motif/Lesstif, Qt, and GTK) just to do decent widgets, and so on.
I'm not saying that we should not keep compatibility for X programs, but that it should be a user-layer thing, like eXceed for Windows. There was a story about just such a new-from-the-ground up system a few months ago, but /.'s search is useless. Anyone remember the name/URL of the project?
Gnome for sysadmins, Kde for masses...Why? (Score:2)
Re:Linux's place (Score:2)
Re:My mom can *almost* use it... (Score:2)
Re:So true (Score:2)
Re:Maybe Linux *Shouldn't Be* for the Desktop. (Score:2)
1. Word Processing, spreadsheets, etc. (Office)
2. Internet
3. Gaming
4. Authoring, document development, photoshop, etc.
These are probably the top 4 uses of computers in the home. In all these apps, the GUI is infinetly more flexible than a CLI. People are naturaly visual creatures, and as long as they are GUIs will rule. Even for things that don't need a GUI (a lot of sysadmin stuff) a GUI is inherently less intimidating. Thats just the way people are. Once you've got experiance with something, then you can say that the CLI is so much more efficient at doing some things, but if you don't it will scare you away. GUIs are also friendlier. Its not so much an ease of use thing as a visually pleasing thing. Why do people build nice looking houses and nice looking cars? There are a bunch more efficient designs than the ones we have now, but people wouldn't want to use them. I am fairly good with the CLI, (bash) and find it usefull for doing many things. Still, I prefer to work in the GUI because it is just more astheticly pleasing.
PS. If you want to script a GUI app take a look the BeOS. BeOS apps can use the messaging system to set up a scripting API. You have to use some lower level language though, like C, C++ or Python.
Re:So true (Score:2)
A) DIrectPlay is a great idea. You write to a standard API, and the system uses whatever transport protocols are availabe. Maybe I don't like TCP/IP! Shouldn't I be able to use IPX if I want? I though you Linux people were all about flexibility and choice
B) Alsa doesn't hold a candle to DirectSound and DirectMusic in terms of hardware acceleration and features.
C) X is nowhere in the same league as DirectDraw.
With DirectDraw I can shove the entire OS out of my way, get direct access to the frame-buffer, have direcaccess to hardware blitters, overlays, and other services, set up page flipping, etc. X pales in comparison, mainly because it isn't meant of the same jobs. Direct frambuffer access is nice, but thats just a small piece of DirectDraw.
D) Direct3D ought to be replaced by OpenGL, true. (Actually, only after certain features have been put into OpenGL, as I remember Direct3D 7 has some features that aren't in GL)
E)X gives you input, but so does the Win32 API! Thats not what DirectInput is about. It is about utter flexibility and speed. DirectInput bypasses the entire rest of the OS and talks directly to the driver. It can handle devices that haven't even been invented yet through the API.
So, yes linux has some stuff, but it is a ghost of DirectX.
Re:The one thing that's hurting linux.... (Score:2)
A) Has to hide behind an AC
B) Hasn't been moderated up. This guy isn't a troll, he has quite a few good points, so why is it score zero? Slashdot seriously needs an overhaul of the moderation system. If I browse at 1, I miss these ACs which have insightful messages, and if I browse at 0, I get all the goat thingy links. You should be able to catagorize messages so you should be able to moderate obscene messages to flam-bait or off-topic, while keeping the other ACs to unmoderated or something.
Re:Maybe Linux *Shouldn't Be* for the Desktop. (Score:2)
Bollocks the desktop (Score:2)
Nearly paper-sized (US Letter, A4, whatever) stylus sensitive screens.
A PostScript viewer you can draw on like you'd make notes on paper.
Fast handwriting recognition.
Throw in a Crusoe*, wireless peripherals**, and ubiquitous internet connectivty***.
Blammo! Perfect business appliance.
* - or any other cold, efficient chip
** - like keyboards, A/V I/O, contact lens displays
*** - don't forget to use the 'net for "telephone" traffic too
Re:Do we want it to be ready for the desktop? (Score:2)
M$ isn't that crazy (famous last words, right?). I mean, OK, say Windows 20XX Desktop will only communicate with Windows 20XX Server. First off, people will reverse engineer and/or clone the interfaces (Samba, anyone?). And unless the place is already a M$ shop to start with, no one will go along with it. Windows 2000 may be OK, but it's limited to Intel hardware (I'll pick Sun or DEC stuff over Intel for a server anyday), and still doesn't scale anywhere near as good as, say, Solaris (maybe as good as Linux, I really don't know). But anyway, it's really not feasible to replace those big servers with Windows.
Note that I come from a very biased background - I'm a sysadmin at a mediumish sized college, and we have Solaris on the servers and public workstations, and people using everything on their desktops - MacOS 7/8, MacOS X, Linux, Solaris, Win95/98, WinNT, NeXT, and I'll bet at least a few BeOS and *BSD boxen as well. Standardizing on all Microsoft stuff is basically impossible (even if we wouldn't have to throw out millions of $$$ of Sun hardware b/c Windows can't run on it).
The reverse is true... (Score:2)
Times have changed since the 80s. Now, everybody knows how to use a Windows 95 computer, and they have one at home.
If a company uses Linux, they must:
A. Train users
B. Provide tools for them to work at home
C. Convince users that it is a good change
Why C? Because with unemployment at record lows and the ease of getting a job, management doesn't want to alienate users. Also, the training costs might compesenate for the TCO savings. Also, with Windows, employees can work at home on home computers on their own time. That's free labor. what company wants to give that up?
NO my friends, moving to Linux would risk a palace revolt, the users like getting joke e-mails with virus-ridden attachments from friends elsewhere... and getting away from that would be devastating.
Alex
close, but not quite. (Score:2)
Re:How to win the desktop (Score:2)
I think the main reason for the success of Windows was brand recogniton
The thing that give Microsoft their start was IBM's selection of Microsoft's purchased CP/M clone as OS for the original IBM PC.
True, the ability of the clone makers to compete thanks to the Phoenix BIOS, etc. are significant reasons for the success of MS, but all of these flow from that original selection by IBM.
Look at the specs for the original PC. It was a real piece of crap. But the business men, who had seen that PCs would be useful when they saw Visicalc on Apple IIs, knew absolutely nothing about PCs.
What they knew was the name IBM and that was the golden key.
If you want to see office Linux boxen, you will have to create the killer office apps. Given the poor functionality of most MS Office components, this really isn't that great a challenge. And the businessmen already know the name Linux. They just have to be given the tools and they will make the change. But only real, working apps will do the job. Not just equivalent funtionality to MS Office, but better. Then they will come.
Now, I don't particularly care. but I think it's inevitable, people will write the apps because they think it's fun, or profitable, the community will keep improving them. It's just a matter of time.
Re:So true (Score:2)
This isn't that hard to implement, if you have the right underlying architecture in place. I use Debian, with menu and WindowMaker. If I decide there's some great new program I want, I just zip over to the Debian site. 9 times out of 10 (at least for free software, and fairly often otherwise) there's a .deb for the thing. Now that I know the name of the thing, I zip over to my xterm, su, and then apt-get package_name. If the package has a menufile (many do) it'll install it. Once the install completes, clicking on my desktop brings up a menu with my new program filed pretty much wherever I'd expect it to be. Oh, and the dependencies basically always work.
Of course, sometimes a program isn't available as a .deb for whatever reason, but then again, they're often only available at .tar.gz files. I wouldn't really advise trying to automagically install every .tar the user comes upon. How's the app going to know where to install it, much less how to configure it or what it depends on?
But anyway, my point was that the process of package installation/configuration/registration can be and (in Debian) is very well automated. Dselect is a step in the right direction, as GUIs go, though it's still got a long way to go. I definitely think there should be a better way of browsing over the available packages, for one thing.
Desktop Linux (Score:2)
Many people I know were taught Linux stuff before W95, and they find it easier. But, unfortunatly, it is the generally accepted viewpoint that Linux is "supposed" to be harder than Windows or Macintosh.
Reading office documents... (Score:2)
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Xiphoid Process Records - http://xiphoidprocess.com
San Francisco based electronic music.
Re:Reasons Linux is not ready for the desktop (Score:3)
RPM's exist to keep track of where all the files go. Programs are installed in the path (generally
There are packaging methods that do what you describe, though. They stick the application files in a separate directory, and symlink the needed places in the file tree to there. So it has one place for the application, Unix is happy, and it has your "shortcuts" too. You can do things that way, but you certainly don't have to.
Applications install *libraries* into \WINDOWS\SYSTEM. (it's actually more complicated than that, "\WINDOWS" is really whatever the Windows root directory is set to, but...) These libraries can have multiple versions with the same name, and an *application* can overwrite a needed library that might not be binary-compatible with the new one!
This is one of the biggest flaws in Windows, which Windows 2000 will hopefully help to fix. However, the Unix method of using symbolic links to keep track of library versions, and only allowing an Administrator to install new libraries (that might conflict with the system-wide ones) is *definitely* a good thing.
If you lock users into one model and way of doing things, and only teach them that, sure they'll get used to it. And if you give Linux a default, consistent look-and-feel, people will get used to that too.
Heck, Linux is configurable enough that you could create and distribute a version of it that implements your own braindead file hierarchy, make it look Windows-ish, disable logins and only start X, etc., etc. And some people might even love it. It wouldn't be as powerful as standard Unix, but at least it wouldn't crash.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Re:Gnome for sysadmins, Kde for masses...Why? (Score:3)
At this moment, I am running KDE with Enlightenment as my window manager. I run Gnome applications, and the whole thing looks stunningly
like a mac os-X desktop thanks to the Aqua-eMac and Aqua-GTK themes (and the Aqua theme for kde).
It's not an either/or choice, unless you had a reason for limiting your choices of applications to one arbitrary list (KDE apps only? Not a good idea 'till 2.0 is ready).
An artist friend came over and ran Gimp for the first time, and with minimal guidance was fully
productive with it.
Thus, Linux is ready for *MY* desktop, which may or may not represent *THE* desktop to some extent.
He forgot VMWare. (Score:3)
What you want to do is install Windows 9x under VMWare on every user's desktop in a corporate setting. At the cost of only $100ish extra per seat (if I recall), what this gives you is:
1. A sandbox where you can more quickly recover from Win9x crashes,
2. The ability to "roll back" work before you corrupted your Win9x image,
3. Remote sysadmin of Win9x images (yum!),
4. Linux functionality in case MIS wants to give users access to home-grown tools, and
5. The inability to play 3D hardware-accelerated games at work.
So you get the nice Win9x interface, you get the applications you want, you get Linux applications, and you get better administration and less game-playing. I think Linux is plenty ready for prime time in
administration (Score:3)
For instance, try out cfengine [hioslo.no] for a way to handle some of your distributed administration pains. As networks grow ad hoc administration becomes more and more difficult. If all you need is to keep your software in sync maybe you should try out Debian with dselect, apt-get, etc. If you need more rdist/rsync or even cfengine will give you more power. Perhaps you will end up at the point where you need to use Kerberos, NIS+, LDAP, etc. There is a long continuum between using a standalone machine and administering a large heterogenous network of systems. Sometimes it's hard to know when to apply new administration techniques -- and often even harder to know which techniques and tools to use (each time you go through the process you get more "experience" and become more qualified to actually administer systems). It sounds like you are at the point where you need to reevaluate your needs and decide on a more powerful scheme to administer your systems.
Just be glad you've got a Unix workalike at your disposal for administration purposes.
My mom can *almost* use it... (Score:3)
For example, right now on this har laptop I am using, I have a problem when I boot and forget to take the network card out or forget to put it in during the boot sequence - the machine ends up without networking, so I have to remember to do a ifup eth0 and then everything is fine.... it is an annoyance to me, but if this was in the hands of my mom, she would have a fit. Can't say as I would blame her either.
I don't quite know that I can go along with the statement that there just are not a lot of apps out there. The only two programs I use in Windows are Quicken and Turbo Tax. Everything else I ever ran over on the Microsoft platform I have been able to find most excellent replacements for under Linux. And trust me, I am a hardware junkie from hell. I have so many stupid things that my computer is doing it is not even funny, so don't even start to think to yourself "what, this guy only runs minesweeper?"
I gotta say though, things have come a hell of a long way since I first installed (er, tried) slackware in 1995. I gave up on Linux until the first part of 1999 and I have seen a hell of a lot of improvement since I started mucking with Red Hat 5.1. Now I am a 100% convert.
As for my mom, well, I am tempted to hand her a CD and see what happens... At least now I know enough to fix whatever she screws up.
Desire for mainstream Linux acceptance (Score:3)
I also, however, hope that the system gains more mainstream desktop acceptance too (say, at least as much as the Mac). We need enough "critical mass" to make it worthwhile for commercial desktop software companies to do ports to Linux, and right now that mass isn't quite there.
That said, I also agree that the combo of KDE/GNOME 2.0 and new applications like WP Office 2000 (the betas are beautiful, much nicer than WP 8) will have a lot of impact on Linux desktop acceptance.
--JRZ
What makes a desktop OS? (Score:3)
Well, the above definition is right. A desktop OS is what people use on their desktop computer. It doesn't have to be easier to use, it doesn't need more applications even. Looking at the history of the computer industry can prove my point. It needs the ever important killer app. A killer app has to be either new and very useful or much better than the competition. I don't see the former happening since VisiCalc and the first word processor (AppleWorks?).
Now think. Do you consider the Gimp better than Photoshop? I like the Gimp's interface better but technically Photoshop offers more functionality. The Gimp would need to be much better to be a killer app. I can see it happening.
The Gimp was just an example. I guess some group could make GNU/Linux MUCH easier to use. That pretty much means hiding UNIX. Not only will the slashdotters here be upset but it would not sell well. Users would need a very good reason to switch. The fact that it crashes less (well the kernal anyways, not sure about the rest of the OS) won't cut it. In fact, if you install only the software you need and avoid changing things too much, Windows is stable enough for productivity.
The point of this post is that GNU/Linux can't just be viable. It is viable now for most tasks. Spreadsheets, Word Processors, Printing, Internet, its all their (kinda). But still there is no reason to switch other than promises of improved stability and the Free Software ideology.
Now carefully consider what I am saying about ease of use. It really isn't that important. What did people do when they were using DOS or, even worse, Windows 3.1? They ignored it. And that's exactly what will happen if GNU/Linux becomes a Desktop OS. In fact, companies will strip GNU/Linux of all but the most important command line utilities (save hard drive).
The SuSe CEO says we need applications. Unfortunately it isn't that easy. People need a reason to switch. Why switch to GNU/Linux when Windows 95 works just as well (or better for desktop uses)? Microsoft will have the same problem when the desktop version of Windows 2000 ships. GNU/Linux doesn't just need viable applications, it needs better applications.
That is, if we really want GNU/Linux to be a desktop operating system. This should be a poll. If you think that GNU/Linux should remain in the hands of the above-average computer literates, then GNU/Linux will not become a desktop operating system. GNU/Linux is based on community developmet and if the consensus within the community is opposed to it, Desktop GNU/Linux will not happen. But if you really want GNU/Linux to be an operating system that users can operate BY THEMSELVES without reading a text-book sized introduction, then great! I think Apples original 30 minutes until uptime is a splendid goal.
You decide.
How to win the desktop (Score:3)
The real question is, "How can Linux win the business world?"
Here we go again... (Score:3)
Unfortunately what the crusaders don't understand is that the average person needs a gradient of learning that Linux just doesn't give them yet.
If you look at several examples from society (pick your own as almost anything learnt fits this criterial) people will most easily pick up something that starts out very light. Eventually they'll move to a higher/heavier configuration/situation but in the beginning they don't want that.
Listen very closely so you understand the situation: The current crop of Linux users almost certainly (by their own admission) consists of exceptions to the normal rules of people.
Before you start heating up my asbestos underware think about it. How many of you are users that can grep a file properly or edit one using vi? How many of you are users that understand networking at a base level? How many of you are users that work in the technology fields?
Add all these things up and you'll find that the average Linux user is smarter or faster or more knowledgable than Joe Public. Remember - Joe Public is who we're shooting at as a target user for Linux. Despite what you may want to convince yourself - until Linux accepts and is accepted by the average guy on the street it will have a very hard time expanding beyond the geek circle.
I know some of you don't want to believe that it will die if it doesn't grow but look at the way this world works - if something doesn't grow then it shrinks. No matter what you do you can never make anything totally stable. The minute it stops growing it shrinks. Period. So if Linux is to survive it must grow. To grow beyond its current limits it will have to accept Joe User and give him something that he can use without being too "high-level". A good GUI (which we've got several candidates for) is a step in the right direction but modes of user operation with scaled complexity would be better.
The Tick - "Spoon!"
Welcome to 2000... (Score:4)
Highlighted events include:
-- presentations by two more vendors with GPLed hardware drivers.
-- discussion of why StarOffice is, in fact, a perfect and complete replacement for Microsoft Office.
-- announcements from the Gnome and KDE teams about further slavish aping of existing WIMP interfaces.
-- side seminar from old-school devotees: "Why Dumbing Down Linux for the Desktop User is a Bad Thing."
-- hundreds of anecdotes about Linux-using grandmothers and girlfriends.
...and, to close out the year, we have the standard recap planned: "What Linux still needs in order to be a desktop OS."
Be there early to make your reservations for our next event, "2001: The Fourth Annual Year Linux Will Really Be Ready For The Desktop."
--
Re:Umm (Score:4)
Bwa ha ha ha ha
Okay, now that that's out of my system, please allow me to explain about the GIMPs #1 and 2 shortcomings.
1. Color
There are two common ways in which we can create color. The first is Additive. This basically means that you are adding different types of light (that's what color is, after all) and you can eventually arrive at white by combining all colors. The three primary additive colors are Red, Green and Blue. Sunlight is additive, and so are computer monitors - they actually emit light.
The other method is subtractive. This means that instead of emitting, say, red light, you have an object which absorbs all light _except_ red. No light is created in this process. Instead, light is absorbed. If you combine the subtractive colors, you get black (ideally). Because of imperfections in the substances used to absorb color, it tends to get all muddy, and so the primary subtractive colors are Cyan, Yellow, Magenta and Black (which is denoted as K). (Cyan ~= Blue; Magenta ~= Red)
You'll surely have noticed that your color printer has either 4 ink cartridges/toners (CYMK) or 2 (CYM and K). NOT RGB. Besides, RGB can't create Black, so you'd need black paper and a whole lot more ink.
Clearly we haven't got paper yet that emits its own light. This means that while displayed pictures are additive, printed pictures are subtractive. A conversion has to be made between the two colorspaces (there are others, the most well-known being L*a*b). Furthermore, it is very important that the conversion process be highly accurate, and that the colors that are on screen closely match the color when it's printed (which ranges from impossible to really hard) so that you don't screw something up and only discover it when it's printed out.
Worse yet, the gamut of colors that we can see is bigger than the gamut of colors that can be generated by either one of these processes (try duplicating Day-Glo orange on your screen - it just won't ever look right, because that particular shade is out of your monitor's gamut)
At any rate, GIMP has absolutely no CYMK support at all. And since virtually all color printed material relies on CYMK, and accurate color matching and conversion, the GIMP is simply not going to make inroads. Why bother using the GIMP _and_ Photoshop, when you can just use Photoshop, and probably have better results to boot?
Plus, professionals in the printing world use a lot of esoteric hardware (you'd get a kick out of an imagesetter, i can tell) which all screw up ideal color in their own way, and need to communicate with your software to compensate for this. Scanners, monitors, printers - they all have to be calibrated carefully just depending local lighting conditions if nothing else. And there's always something else.
2. Pantones
The other common method is to use spot colors. You see, for each color you use, the price of printing it will go up - more ink will be needed, each color requires a seperate lithographic plate, more drying time may be needed, material may have to go through a press twice in order to get all of the colors (presses typically have 1-6 plates, so too many plates requires a 2nd pass all the way through again), more work has to be done to make the plates align properly so that colors don't look weird, etc.
One solution to this problem is to use spot colors. Say you want green and black. You could create green with C & Y, making it a 3 plate job (CYK), or you could just use a special green ink instead. Additionally, if there's a color that you can't reproduce with CYMK, or you want colors to be solid instead of halftoned (combining CYMK requires halftoning - the colors are not really overlapping solid regions, but lots of little dots side by side - you can see them with a magnifying glass), you might specify certain spot colors.
The Pantone system basically consists of *many* specific, standard inks. These inks have very specific colors, and behaviors, and you will want to know precisely which one you have. Most people in printing have a swatch book that can be used to compare colors, and Photoshop has a big Pantone color palette in it. But when someone wants you to print with Pantone 072 (a very commonplace blue) you have to be able to model it properly in the computer.
There's no Pantone support in GIMP either.
Besides all this, don't get me started on the finer, but essential details of printing (trapping, overprinting, having to manually adjust line screen angles - a giant pain in the ass if there ever was one) where there is a lot of support for Photoshop and the Mac, but not for GIMP or Linux.
Putting stuff on paper is hard. The GIMP might be good for web graphics, but it will not do the job if you need to deal with anyone else.
Maybe Linux *Shouldn't Be* for the Desktop. (Score:4)
It irks me that on mandrake's homepage all of their reviews center around how easy Mandrake is for the linux newcomer. I don't CARE about that. I want to know about stability, speed and new features.
I didn't mind a text menu based installer, I didn't need X to install. I'm sure that many of you feel the same way.
Linux developers should be more worred about SERVERS! When you get server quality stability and speed, then you can trickle down to the desktop market.
Look at M$, WinNT was for servers only. Now Win2K is using that base (with several thousand bugs added) to bring many of the features of NT to the desktop. THAT's what Debian, Redhat, Caldera, SuSE and Mandrake should be doing.
LK
Re:So true (Score:4)
So true (Score:5)
I am the only full-on Linux user where I work. We have had several new employees start who were enthusiastic about trying Linux; each time they tried it for a while and gave up on it, and I can't blame them. I gave them all the help I could but the Linux graphical "shells" (KDE, Gnome) are sooooo buggy it is ridiculous.
Seems to me that the people who make these graphical shells should focus on reducing the bugs rather than coming up with even more bells and whistles and eye candy. Also someone really needs to sit down and organize the released desktop; the default RedHat desktop install is so disorganized and impossible to find anything in, it's ridiculous. And did I mention that it's incredibly buggy?
I think that the very first thing that a Linux desktop needs to be able to do and able to do absolutely flawlessly is, download a RPM or similar package, install it with a few simple clicks, create a "shortcut" to run it on the desktop or in some program menu somewhere, and then run the program. This is what 90% of computer users do 90% of the time (with the running of software happening much more often than the installing, of course), and right now the graphical shells just plain SUCK at this.
I place the blame pretty much squarely with RedHat these days. They've got the money to make it right, but instead they are just going further and further off on a Linux fragmentation path. RedHat seems to think nothing of introducing more and more non-standard system configurations with each release. Surely they must realize that this will fragment Linux just as badly as Unix has traditionally have been fragmented, if not worse.
I love Linux but to be honest I don't see a very bright future for it unless those with the money and power to pull it all together start doing so.
Either way, I will stick with Linux, because even if its popularity faded and we ended up with just as many users as we had back in '94 when I started using Linux, I will still enjoy working on Linux and developing on Linux.
Of course, I'll probably still be using my ancient twm with my 8-year-old
Voice of a Heretic (Score:5)
I don't think Linux is ready for the desktop. In fact, I am going to buy a Mac to supplement my desktop needs.
Why? Well, first, I can't stomach buying a supplemental Windows machine. Second, the state of the Linux desktop art is lagging behind in areas that I need it, right now and today. Not things where I can donate my time (which I do), not things that I can contribute code to (which I want to), but things I need, right now, this minute, in order to get my work done and get paid.
The sad thing about this is my machine - this here Linux box - is the best computer I have had, both in terms of hardware and software, I think. I play Quake3, I do network administration, web design, programming, and I have a killer MP3 collection. I talk to my friends on ICQ - at least, when they aren't busy rebooting their Windows machines.
In other words, I get 98% of my work tasks done, and no one cares, no one complains, and they're quite happy with my performance and could care less about what my machine is running.
That other 2%, is when they send me a proposal in Word to review: and not a grocery list, but a huge document with lots of Word cruft. When I can't read it properly, I get yelled at. I have filed bug reports and Abiword, stressed Star Office to its wits end, and run Applix ragged. If I can't get 100% accuracy, I have to work that much harder (fiddling with VMWare, for instance). I have to be able to do EVERYHING that my co-workers do (except reboot/reinstall!) and if that means "straying from the flock" for a while, then I will have to do that.
Don't get my wrong: I love fiddling with VMWare as much as I love Quake3. I love hacking away happily on my machine, optimizing it as much as I can, I love Linux and support it every chance I get. Its the best thing to come along and I consider my self a good supporter of free software, open source, and Linux. Its a time of serious cognitive dissonance in my life.
So anyway, I need something for the simple things: Word/Excel (Lord how I hate it), scheduling, calendar, PIM, etc. I don't want it to require a single minute of fiddling, I don't want it to work at it. I want it to work for me. So I seriously see a little tranlucent blue potty in my future.
I still intend to support Linux, and strive to improve the things that are lacking. I would never have NT, not for all the tea in China. But I think there are certain facts of life that we ignore.
Note: No, no dual booting. I can't close down the 900 things on my desktop to look up a phone number. Why ruin good uptime, anyway?
Reasons Linux is not ready for the desktop (Score:5)
A) Linux does not have enough fit and finish, its not very polished. Say what you will about Windows, but it is very polished. The stuff underneath may suck, but the outside is nice and shiny. People like shiny things. Point about me: I'll generally use Redhat for examples because I feel that it strikes the best balance between ease of use and included features. Plus, most non techs think Redhat==Linux. (they don't even do the == thing to express equality, they say =) Redhat is generally pretty polished but there are quite a few problems. X still needs to be configured from Xconfigurator because the one in the installer is inept. Second, sound is left entirely to the user, one has to start up sndconfig and enter settings from there. Resolution changes all have to be done from the X config file, blah blah blah. These are all little things and don't have that much to do with the OS, but when a person first uses Linux, it makes a bad impression.
B) Linux has a weird sense of configuration in that it doesn't really have a good driver model. Most users I know are comfortable with the concept of a driver. They don't understand what it does but they know that to install a device, they have to put in the driver disc. DevFS is great, except in UNIX it doesn't define a driver model, just a communications model. In BeOS, a user can just copy a driver into the directory and the device magically starts working. Linux should be that simple. (ie. no requiring kernel patches to install ANY device.) All config files are stored in
C) Software installation has to get a clue. People don't think of their installation as a set of files. They think of it as a directory. Thus there should be something analogous to a program files directory. RPM would ask you for the destination directory, and the app would install there. Tell me what you want about the flexibility of having
D) Linux lacks hardware support. Not only in the case of OpenGL, which is getting better, but in sound and video and input, etc. Even when a driver works, it doesn't take full advantage of the hardware on the system. A sound blaster live! is awesome under windows, but not anything special under Linux because it doesn't support EAX. There is a reason for that. Manufacturers don't like hacks. Sure Aureal is porting A3D to linux, but in what form? Some sort of obscure dll wrapped hack. Linux and other UNIXes desperatly need multimedia APIs and driver models. Just as important this driver model has to be similar to directX. Not for any love of directX, mind you, but because thats what most hardware today accelerates and we want writing drivers to a UNIX media API to be easy as possible.
WIndows users have gotten increadibly used to pampering. Windows is a much friendlier environment to use, even if the UI sucks. People understand it, and it has a lot of features to make life easier. Pervasive right click menus being one thing, context sensitive help, etc. No matter how good GNOME gets, thats not the whole of the system. The linux directory structure needs to be reworked and the concepts of administration need to be rethought. Now don't think you'll sacrifice flexibility in doing this. All this nice GUI config stuff can be done through text files, so if you like CLI, you can edit it directly. And somehow I doubt that you'll miss
Ugly Linux (Score:5)
I've already copied and installed the true type fonts from Windows (following the font deuglification faq), and now it's merely ugly - a step up from hideous I guess. But text still turns out uglier and more unreadable than in Windows, and it makes long term use a strain on the eyes. The system fonts used in KDE and Gnome also tend to be extremely ugly - they should note that good, readable text != fonts made out of thin straight lines.
Dumb (Score:5)
Let's turn this around: frankly, the average linux-programmer lacks the skill to make joe use linux.
It takes skill to be able to create an interface that people can use whose lives revolve around other things besides computers. Not everyone has that skill. There's a lot of talented linux programmers out there who are very good at creating a stable, flexible core-operating system. There's not a whole lot of skilled interface designers. [themes.org] My guess is that this is due to the fact that being a good interface-designer requires having to be exceptionally good at programming, graphic design and psychology, all at the same time. It's hardly surprising there's not a whole lot of these uebergeniuses around. The alternative is to get a group of people whose combined skills approach the ideal. For its time, I think the Apple Lisa/Mac team was such a group. And if you'll recall, large numbers of people recognized their skills and went out to buy Macs, even though they were then, as now, ridiculously expensive.
We can only hope that such a team will form in the linux community and come up with a new and usable interface paradigm suitable for today's computing power. Most likely, however, as soon as someone does manage to assemble a team like that, it will be bought up by some large corporation. The company that manages to achieve a truly new, workable interface will dominate the market for the next ten years, at least. Betcha Bill Gates would gladly offer half his assets to such a team.
The reason why this is so important is not because the average joe is "dumb", but because the average joe thinks it's a waste of time to fumble with config files and xservers. Only a very small group people actually enjoy this. Most mortals just want to get their work done, go home and look at porn on the Internet.