Is Linux Dead?

TunkeyMicket writes "It appears MSNBC is reporting that Linux has failed as an operating system. By citing the large Linux hype as reason for Linux to be dominating the market, they draw the conclusion that the "open source" alternative has flopped as an operating system. They briefly mention the success of Linux in the server community, but really the article gives Linux as little credit as possible."

Advertising would help

[Black Aardvark House]

Aside from the IBM infrastructure commercials, Linux has received no advertising whatsoever. Word-of-mouth is good, but to reach millions, more work is needed in getting the word out in print, radio and TV.

Appealing to to pricing aspect would be a good first advertising angle.

Re:I'm pretty happy

[drewbradford]

"Still, Linux evangelists like Fedor say that, as long as new PCs come pre-loaded with Windows, the open source community faces an uphill battle spreading Linux beyond corporate IT departments into the home."

Maybe the Microsoft partnerships and service agreements that prohibited retailers from selling computers preinstalled with non-MS operating systems had something to do with it.

Two Glaring Un-Truths

[rizzo]

Created by Finish college student Linus Torvalds, and continually updated and improved by a loose confederation of programmers who aren't paid for their work, Linux is available without the steep licensing fees that come with commercially produced software.

Hmmmm ... it seems IBM pays people to work on the Linux kernel, as we all know already [slashdot.org].

High on the list of headaches is incompatibilities with files created with Microsoft products like Word.

Eh? [openoffice.org] OpenOffice.org reads/writes Word/Excel docs perfectly. Aside from some bullet-point font issues, Powerpoint handles perfectly as well.

I know people have said MSNBC was good at cracking back at Microsoft, but the author doesn't seem to be going anything other than spraying the same ol' FUD we've all grown obvlivious to.

Rate the story a 1

[Ando[evilmedic]]

There's a "Rate this story" thing at the bottom, be sure to rate this one accordingly.

linux and the slow advance

[MattW]

Part of the reason linux is moving slowly is that almost everyone has used windows. While those of us experienced with more reliable and open OS's may find this a reason to avoid windows in the future, it nonetheless makes managers comfortable. There are also umpteen trillion "certified" MCSE types out there, who are ostensibly capable of managing the microsoft systems. Linux certs are fairly rare -- which is unsurprising, because demand for them remains relatively low. It's a classic case of Microsoft having a 'Mindshare'.

That said, things are improving. The support of IBM and others and their initiatives is coating linux with the candy coating of acceptability. If large groups begin to adopt linux on the desktop with open office, we are then on the verge of a true potential transition. Desktop use will translate into server comfort.

Finally, it hasn't helped that the last milestone release, 2.4, was a colossal mess. My 2.0.x and 2.2.x boxes were totally, utterly rock solid as servers. I upgraded one to 2.4 -- and it is now an unreliable piece of crap. It fails with kernel panics at any time (albeit infrequently), and almost always dies ~45 days into uptime. Every box I ever tried to use ext3 on died a horrible death, and that didn't make me particularly happy. FreeBSD and I are now getting well acquainted.

Despite all this, Linux has continued to make inroads. And of course it has hype -- it has become, and remains, the primary alternative in the minds of IT people everywhere to the monopolists from Redmond. Since they are a multi-hundred-billion-dollar company, and are tied into every aspect of the industry, saying something might challenge them is a bit like suggesting something might shift the Earth off its orbit -- it will cause ubiquitous change. And Linux is hardly down and out. The sad thing is that venture capital is so dead. NOW is the time of opportunity for fresh linux companies to step up and replace microsoft in places that really want to keep their budgets down. A return to the boom days just means that hundreds of dollars of windows upgrades and office software and such is no longer a big deal...again. Get in there while the gettin's good, I say.

Re:Read the article...

[Nygard]

It gives the appearance of balance, but still contains a tremendous amount of spin. Consider:

• Open source is always written in quotes: "open source", giving a subtle message that this label isn't completely honest.
• It describes Linux developers as a loose confederation of programmers who aren't paid for their work. (My emphasis.) Notice the reversal of power implied here, as if some external entity is withholding pay, rather than the programmer's themselves giving freely.

It is these type of subtle messages that constitute "spin control" of the part of the article's author.

Re:I'm pretty happy

[tomhudson]

Sort of reminds me of the chant:

The king is dead ... long live the king!

Seriously (mind you, it's hard to be serious about something as absurd as linux being dead) we will at some future date replace linux with something even better ... but we'll still owe a debt of gratitude for what linux (and Linus) has let us achieve.

Maybe linux won't kill off Windows, but its replacement will.

Thanks for telling us!

[SkyLeach]

I run two server farms and have been asked to provide High Availability for them. I was also asked to do public nameserver and virtal hosting for nearly twenty corporate domains, not to mention another hundred-or-so portals. I was asked to provide failover and redundancy, Content Management, Source Code Control, Document Management, Workflows, LDAP, scheduling and reporting.

All on a budget less that the cost of a Sun 4500.

There was only one solution on the market: linux. I used the IPVS [linuxvirtualserver.org] heartbeat + mon + fake + coda layout with Apache for virtual hosting and front-end, Weblogic for the java backend, Zope for my CMS / Document Management, daemontools for process monitoring, Checkpoint firewalls (not my choice mind you) and last but not least linux on every single machine in the farm(s). I have multiple NICs with bonded channels between the servers providing me with near-Gb Ethernet speeds between my data servers and hosts.

Linux took our server from from 100% M$ and literally constant system crashes and reboots to 100% (so-far) uptime except for scheduled outages AT&T is our telco and they only give us 99.96% uptime.

At least here, M$ is dead. We are evaluating linux on the desktop to see if we can use Wine with Lotus Notes and Office. If so then we might start switching desktops for some groups.

Shoud we care about desktop linux?

[jtedley]

Does it really matter to you if Linux on the desktop never takes off? I prefer being in the 1% users for a couple of reasons:

1) Linux doesn't get viruses BECAUSE no one is writing viruses for linux. I know it's a tautology, but were Linux to take off, I think we'd see an interest from the script-kiddie development centers of the world. Linux doesn't have the critical mass to support a worldwide virus. No Outlook - no virus.

2) The worst element of the Web is interested in reaching the largest group possible. A lot of the rules simply don't apply to Linux users as long as they stay in the 1%. It's the same reason I secretly hope Mozilla never gets into popular use. As long as it stays a 1% browser, I can block images from ad servers and most of the web is ad-free for me. If everyone had Mozilla, more site would host ads locally or use Flash instead of images, and I'd be out of luck.

As long as there's a community of development and support, I'll be happy using Linux as a 1%-er.

Re:Nothing untrue in the article at all. /. howeve

[roman_mir]

Right, and when I submit articles with the following head lines:

2001-10-05 16:20:38 Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov (features,enlightenment) (rejected)

2002-01-21 15:09:06 Slashdot censorship (yro,slashdot) (rejected)

2002-02-03 16:02:31 Is fetus a child? (articles,news) (rejected)

2002-06-18 22:31:59 Just paid for a 2 months Kuro5hin subscription (askslashdot,news) (rejected)

But articles with headlines like: "Is Linux Dead?", "Bill Gates Is The Devil", "All Hail To Red Hat" will be posted no problem.

So who rejects and accepts the articles?
That's it.

Evolution desktop? StarOffice and OOo do e-mail?

[cj_cliffe]

"A Linux-based open-source program called Evolution looks pretty much like a standard Windows desktop."

Hrmm, odd.. This morning when I opened Evolution it looked like a robust e-mail client :)

"StarOffice and OpenOffice provide most key features offered by Microsoft Office, including a word processor, spreadsheet, and mail program."

I'll bet that's news to Sun and OOo, last time I checked neither had any e-mail support :)

I get the impression John Schoen hasn't given the linux desktop any more than a one minute tour with a Microsoft bias in his pocket..

Yes but No

[TheLoneCabbage]

Truly the SlashDot summary is worse than the MSNBC article.

But the MSNBC article is riddled with factual inacuracies, slanted language, and selective omissions.

"Small software makers like Lindows are trying to help desktop users bridge that divide."
Small? Relative to what? MS? GM and CocaCola are small compared to MS!

"A Linux-based open-source program called Evolution looks pretty much like a standard Windows desktop."

What on earth does Evolution have to do with the desktop? Other than being made by the folks at GNOME?

"WalMart recently began selling a house brand PC at rock bottom prices -- available with Linux for the thriftiest PC buyers."

Read Cheap. It's an old FUD, that linux users are cheap, and wont spend money. If that's true go talk to the folks at Ximian who get monthly subscriptions, just for better connection speeds (and of corse StarOffice!). Or about SlashDot subscribers. Truth is that Linux users (curently) arent' cheap, they are just very educated, and know what not to waste their money on. Give them a product worth paying for and they WILL pay for it.

(of course that meens producing quality product and such, most of the corporate world seems to be of the notion that if you advertise something enough the sheeple will buy it)

"Home users are cheap," he said. "At $49.95, you're going to have to sell a whole lot of (copies) to make it in the market."

Totaly out of context. This has as much to do with Windows as it does with Linux. Home users don't have 3 grand to blow on an acounting package, but last I checked Intuit was doing OK.

"The Linux operating system, and other "open source" alternatives written by devoted bands of volunteer programmers, would be available to anyone for the cost of a download. But today, Windows is still running on the vast majority of PCs. So what happened?"

So what is OS X?

Nah, no one uses Mac...

Re:Actually...

[colmore]

Really, I wonder about the guy that submitted this story. This is a GOOD thing for Linux. In that it honestly reports the current state of affiars:

It's great in the server market, it has a way to go in the desktop market, the hype has died down, the stocks fell, but a good product continues to be developed.

If I were running a business and I read that article it would spark interest, not turn me away.

Frankly I thought it was sincere and balanced coverage. But I guess since it didn't get on its knees and pray to the mighty gods of Opensource, it will be read as FUD here. (Though, judging from the other posts, I don't think it was read at all)

Re:A comment on news submission and summary accura

[pcs305]

In order to submit a letter to an editor, you need an editor. Reading this headline and comment on /. then reading the article is proof positive there is none (editors) to be found around here. The original article was actually Linux positive. And the poor sod that wrote it are now unindated with hate mail from L-User's across the globe. A shame, and very bad for linux advocacy.

Future generations...

[emil]

...will point to this time and say "2002 was the year Microsoft lost the war."

Why will they say this?

• A free office suite has become available.
• Microsoft is raising prices for Office and the OS while the market slumps.
• Mozilla turns 1.0.
• Lindows goes mainstream.
• The sentencing phase of the trial is complete.
• The avalanche of private civil suits begins.

But then again, I still don't understand why SQL Server is selling so well when the same codebase can be obtained for free from linux.sybase.com.

Still, free software is a flood that is rising around Microsoft, and Microsoft is busy trying to build something that floats. It is unlikely that they will succeed, given the importance of their legacy support.

Re:Not quite

[zosima]

Well, with quotes from the article like "Until recently, interacting with Linux was almost entirely text-driven -- much like Windows' precursor, DOS." and "A Linux-based open-source program called Evolution looks pretty much like a standard Windows desktop" I would say the article is pretty wrong (unless 10 years ago was recently). They seem to get the market impact about right but as far as the technology... well, it seems like less than thorough job of research/reporting.

One area that the article did not touch on

[multiplexo]

is Linux in embedded devices. I have a Tivo at home which runs, if I have read correctly, a modified version of Linux. The PS/2 also runs a modified version of Linux (please correct me if
I'm wrong on this). Linux provides those considering building devices such as consoles and PVRs a reliable and scalable operating system that can be adapted to many environments. This allows developers to come up with interesting new devices (such as the Tivo) without paying the Microsoft tax, both financially for licensing and also in terms of the performance and reliability issues that arise when you try to shoehorn a desktop OS into an embedded device.