Rasterman Says Desktop Linux is Dead 776
anguished writes "The future of Linux, its best hopes for blowing past everything else on an x86 machine, once was located in a little Austrailai website, with a window manager called Enlightenment, which we all hoped to be good enough to build and configure. In an interview with Linux and Main, the recently silent Rasterman talks about GNOME, KDE, E, and his view that the future of Linux requires new playing fields."
Linux is dead... (Score:5, Insightful)
How many times has Linux died this year? I've lost count
Linux isn't about the desktop (Score:3, Insightful)
Nobody is using Linux as a desktop system--it just doesn't have the intuitive point-n-click of a Mac or the games offerings of Windows. People are using Linux for the server-side. That's where the real power is. The one who controls the server controls the desktop, Microsoft has been saying that for years.
I've been saying for years that E was eye-candy and that development efforts were better focused on the shortcomings Linux has on high-end server machines such as quality NFS support, a standardized email package and high uptimes. Too bad it took Rasterman, boy genius, 5 years to figure it out as well.
Well.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If we want a desktop that works,that will compete, there are two things that have to happen.
We need a single distribution. That's right. We need totally focused efforts.
We need a single desktop. No more of this "I can choose 10 window managers." I'm not saying take away the choice, but we need to pick one system and say "THIS IS IT" and the community can code for THAT.
Until we have focused, unified efforts towards bringing out a rock solid desktop, it won't happen. There is too much choice for the consumer.
Too complicated (Score:1, Insightful)
Rasterman's got a point. With the configurability of Linux, we should be able to outclass Apple in uber-simplicity. Semi-dedicated specialized boxes are what I'm talking about.
The kind of thing that I set up shop in Valley West Mall in Des Moines, where people can come in and buy an email/web surfing machine, that can also play a couple games and do word processing. But with little to no learning curve. For true technophobes, even the Mac OS is too complicated. We should target that crowd.
Sell dedicated DVR boxes that are a really just a Linux box with a custom gui and an easy interface to the 2 or 3 programs you need.
KDE, Gnome, et al are great, but too complicated for this market. And this market is huge and largely untapped.
What a coincidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Erm. (Score:2, Insightful)
He says that Linux's only future as anything other than a server is embedded apps, and he just happens to be working for an embedded company right now.
He also openly admits that he will break E so that it will not run with Gnome 2.
I'd say this guy is just bitter that the Linux world left him behind.
Frankly... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I find his defeatist attitude annoying. I think the reason for it is simple: he seems to be a pure technologist, and therefore upon observing that the technically superior OS loses on the desktop, he gives up hope, embracing the idea that making the coolest, whiz-bangest WM for the ultra-31337 geeks is the best course of action (and while at it, take pot shots at the KDE and GNOME dudes).
What we need is more people who know how to market Linux to software companies so that the damned applications will get developed. This is not a technical problem, it's a business problem: there are too few desktop Linux users, thus a relatively small business imperative for software companies to incur the overhead of porting applications. Furthermore, the fear of free clones of your application and the culture of imitation in the Free Software world scare companies aware from producing commercial products for Linux (note that I think this fear is unfounded: a sufficiently complex, powerful application takes an awful lot of effort to clone. Your work should stand on its own quality).
The reality is that we need to find more ways to entice companies to develop commercial, closed source software for Linux if we want it to succeed on the desktop, for the masses. Don't say it's already there, we all know it's not. And we need to remember that the solutions to business problems are usually not found by technical means.
Desktop Linux depends on APPS (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux just doesn't have any good, free software, and that's what's needed to run a desktop.
At my last company, when I complained about Office attachments on the email and intraweb (against agreed-upon policy), the IT guy just gives me an Office CD and winks. When I state I run Linux at home, I get the "it's not my fault is it" (with the look of "you know, if it hurts when you slam the door on your head don't do it" look).
Linux will not even BEGIN to be appealing until people can "take their work home" (Office warez CD). As cool as CodeWeavers Crossover is - I've used it - it isn't "free" with the OS.
That's not a slam - I encourage commercial software on Linux, but the office-worker-at-home and the AOL user -- the majority of Windows users -- just want everything for free. They don't believe in Free Software or the GPL, and they don't believe installing MS Project on every computer is really stealing.
Eleet coder wanna-bees is another group -- slightly more technical than Mom -- that Linux won't win over. These people download the ISO's as soon as their released, burn em, but only try every 3rd release and then on a spare computer. Since Linux won't run his pirated games (or at least not full speed), Linux sucks. Besides, you can't run MS Visual Basic on Linux, which is an industry standard. Everyone knows you gotta program Linux in Assembly, or sometimes C.
For Linux to become more appealing to the masses, it doesn't need a lot of polish -- it's "good enough" right now. What's needed is for Microsoft needs to get tougher on licensing, which they won't do UNTIL they are SURE they have locked out the threats (by extending the Internet, apparently)
Re:Linux is not dead, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
ActiveX (shudder) is another stumbling block. I hate to say it, but even though my belief is that ActiveX is the typhoid Mary of the Internet, I still believe that it is important to have. I can skin Mozilla to look like IE, but I can't get it to work like it. Although in many cases this is a good thing, people will only react to when this is a bad thing.
Lastly is an office package that will integrate easily with Office 2000/XP etc. Office has become the de facto for the majority of businesses, and we need to be able to open Office files without having to do any re-formatting of data. This is especially true for connection with Exchange Servers. Ximian has done a good job on this, but a completely freeware/GNU solution is needed, especially for KDE.
AWG
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Adboce, for instance, will keep shipping their ugly Motif-baed Reader, in the absence of a standard. With Windows, there's a standard. With Apple, there's a standard. There can be deviation, and even themability, but they know that if they code in certain way, it will fit in with the rest of the system in a harmonious manner. Preferences are all stored the same way, etc.
With Unix, it's "whatever you want to do," and not much matches. If Adobe could code for Gnome/Gtk/GConf, for instance, it would fit in well with the rest of the gnome desktop, which Sun and HP will be shipping soon. As it is, do they choose Motif? Gtk? Qt? FLTK? Eh? And if they choose an alternate toolkit, how do they query the perferences for the "native" desktop? At least on Window and Mac, they can make their MDI widgets look Windowsy and Macy because they know what's expected, and can look up preferences in an standard way.
Re:Well.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Everyone should drive the same car with the same features. Everyone should wear the same clothes. Everyone should have the same house so plumbers and electricians know where to find everything, and kitchen solutions can be optimised for that house. Everyone can have the same pet so vets only need knowledge for that particular breed. Everyone can listen to the same music so that bands know what will be popular and what won't. And so on. You know all this to be rubbish because people love choice. I love choice. Don't you dare take away from me the choice that Linux has given me.
Desktop Linux is NOT dead, just wrongly directed. (Score:4, Insightful)
Desktop Linux is far from dead. It's NOT dead.
Just that it's not heading in the right direction.
Lots of things have been said about the ease of use thingy, but that's just scratching the surface.
What's important, looking at the larger picture, is that Linux is filled with programmers wearing beany caps.
Translation : Linux programs are wonderful, but it's just NOT the world needs.
Look at Windows. Lots of clumpsy and over bloated programs, but at least, they do what the world wants, and buys !
We have put too much emphasis on SOURCE CODE, because we wear beany caps - that is, we are the people who almost always CHANGE THE PROGRAM BEHAVIOR OURSELVES, that's why we demand the source code to the program.
But the world outside of us is that people do NOT want or need or know how to change the program's behavior, all they want is that the program does what they want - whatever they want.
That's why we have NORTON UTILITIES for Windows, and there's none of Linux.
That's why we have so much MUSIC, MP3, STREAMING, VIDEO, MULTIMEDIA utilities for Windows
On the other hand, what do we have here ?
KDE, GNOME, ENLIGHTENMENT, yeah, big deal !
The users need MORE THAN WINDOWING ENVIRONMENTS, they need UTILITIES that do stuffs for them !
That's what we fall short on.
That's what we need to double and tripple our efforts on.
Not that we do not have the knowhow to do it, nor that we don't have the programmer-aid to do it.
We have Kylix from Borland (FREE !) and how many of us are using Kylix to develop USEFUL UTILITIES for the users ?
Do something about this problem and we will see the Desktop Linux comes alive.
Re:Well.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Competition is essential to pressure evolution. Even MS knows this, and promotes internal competition, to compensate for its monopoly status. Trying to mimic MS, however is not feasible. Linux doesn't have the slack MS's bank account provides. External competition is then the only viable option - and let the market filter out inefficient companies.
We need *standards* - for stuff that can be standardized. Filesystem hierarchies, file formats, etc.
Having dozens of interoperable distributions is really our best scenario, and linux is headed that way.
Nope. We need a desktop standard API, for the basic stuff. Adding menu options et al. Forcing people to one desktop (directly or indirectly) is not an option. I though this was obvious...Re:raster's real contribution (Score:2, Insightful)
not dead at all (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the biggest obstacle for more widespread adoption of Linux right now is the kernel. Unlike userland, where you have thousands of independently developed programs available on the same machine, the kernel is one big, monolithic chunk. While drivers could in principle be developed and distributed separately, in practice, few are. Most Linux installs that I do involve recompiling the kernel. Whether it's merely packaging or architecture, something isn't working there.
Linux is alive (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly what I thought. People are so busy planning grand futures for Linux, and so disappointed when the software evolution fails to take us there, that they forget to enjoy the present.
Linux will have a future. Just take my word for it. The journey, however, is more important than the destination.
Where desktop Linux shines (Score:4, Insightful)
To proclaim that desktop linux is dead is foolish though. I've seen some very large scale desktop Linux deployments Boston area genomics companies, universities, and software houses. These are often commercial Unix to Linux migrations, so I'm not arguing that it's hitting the Windows desktop market hard. But if you know your stuff there's definitely work to be had in this market. As long as I'm paid well for this stuff, I'd hardly call it dead! --M
Re:Linux is dead... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think KDE3 is great and the inclusion of Xine in RH 7.3 install was very impressive even if I was a bit disappointed with the perfomance. I was floored by what I saw. I assume 8.0 will be a real bitch for Redmond. And as far as bloat, it was still quite nimble on my ol' Cyrix233, albeit with a fat stack of RAM, but these days even cheap bastards can have lots of RAM.
And as far as apps, well people who say things like that obviously haven't installed Wine correctly. It's not that hard. There's thousands of Win9X apps that run fine under Wine already and that includes lots of the high end stuff.
This dude may be the rad hacker, but his opinions on the progress of linux seem tainted by some personal distaste for certain people in the open source community.
Re:Linux for Grandma and Uncle Jim-Bob (Score:5, Insightful)
The basic problem is that a computer is wrong for technophobes. It is a do-it-all machine, not an appliance. Trying to limit the thing to those common functions have been tried repeatedly without success; people still know they got a computer and expects it to be as versatile as one. Look at the expensive failures of Audrey and other such machines.
On the other hand, devices like mobile phones, Palms and so on have been successes. At heart, they too are specialized computers, but they do not look like or act like computers, and the buyers do not expect them to. There is where Linux for non-technical users has a future.
And, if you click on the Advanced mode button in the corner, you get switched to KDE or GNOME.
"My thingy is broken! I did something and now it's all wrong!"
Sour Grapes (Score:1, Insightful)
Linux is dead on the desktop.
Translation: Englightenment is dead as a Linux window manager so I hope it will be a bittersweet victory for the successful coders.
BSD is a better license than GPL because it let's people steal your code.
Translation: Would somebody please steal my code? Please? Half my life was wasted on E and now nobody wants to use it.
I offered to mould e to be the GNOME wm, but at the time Miguel was convinced you could do a desktop without a wm.
Translation: Miguel knew what a spoiled, freaky, pain in the ass I am so he pretended not to need what I had to offer.
E is there to poke and prod and do something new. KDE and GNOME are there to appeal to the masses.
Translation: KDE and GNOME appeal to the masses. The ingrateful bastards!
3d (Score:2, Insightful)
They seem nice, but there more of a gimic than anything else, I talk to my computer all the time and I'm glad it can't understand!
2D Desktops generally provide the best interface to the information normally displayed on a computer and there the easyest for most people to understand., humans are geered up to think in 2d space there are a hell of a lot of people who cant think in 3d, 4d or 1d space, or do mental folding etc...
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Insightful)
We dont need one desktop. We dont need one distro. We dont need one operating system. You use BSD? I dont care. Use windows? Fine. use a mac? Great.
What we do need is open API's and file formats. Then when you install acrobat, it calls WindowManager.AddProgram("Acrobat", INSTALL_DIR, "acrobrat");. Then your window manager can choose what to do with that.
We need standard api's, so if you like GTK, acrobat calls a function - drawToolbar() - you get a GTK toolbar.
If you switch to QT, then acrobat calls drawToolbar(), QT draws a toolbar.
standards API's with many implementations. Hell you could set up different programs to run in different toolkits using different apis. As a user.
I'd also have it that commercial companies can implement the standard API's in a closed api. As long as the interface is available, who cares, you arent forced to use it.
Forcing everyone run OfficialLinux v1.0 is no better then forcing everyone to run windows.
It's not competition... (Score:2, Insightful)
People use whatever they want to use and they need to use. As long as something is doing what it is supposed to do and user can make use of it, it wins.
I actually know some people who use Windows and they think *computers* are just like that. From time to time, it will not work, blue screen, has to reboot. Big deal.
Same theory. Some people live in the Matrix and they enjoy it even they know it. Others however might prefer to free their minds.
Windows blinds you from the truth, the truth that your computer should do more than just giving you blue screen.
You're missing one key idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Space between Death and Triumph (Score:4, Insightful)
However, much as we might like it, the world is not populated by dragons and operating systems are not the tools of St. George.
Linux is not dead. Not now, nor is that a likely event any time in the near future. It's equally unlikely that Linux will soon drive Windows into the sea.
Windows will continue to be dominant on the consumer desktop for the immediate future. Windows has the applications, the games, and the thousands of developers grinding out the product. Could they do better work on Linux? Possibly, but it's not going to happen. Not with a relatively tiny marketplace further divided by flavors of installation and interface.
Linux will continue to drive servers and as the desktop of enthusiasts. It's a niche operating system, now, and likely forever.
For those that gnash their teeth over the evil empire, fear not! All empires crumble with time. But when something comes to push back the dark forces of Mordor, it will almost certainly NOT be Linux. It will be something clean and new, something that has a Vision (upper case "V") of computer interaction that goes past the creaky, cranky interfaces we have now and gives us a new way to relate to our machines. When it happens, Windows will go into the C/PM bin before Bill Gates can debug his digital living room.
And Linux will still be there, clanking along, doing it's job.
There is some space between death and triumph. Kind of like Switzerland.
The desktop is as dead ... as the written page (Score:3, Insightful)
Visually, despite all the new visual media from photography forward, we're still a pretty stupid culture. Most of our smarts are still in texts, from books to the ASCII files that make up most all the code and configuration of *NIX systems. And the main use of computers in business is in preparing, exchanging, storing and searching texts. It's going to be this way for a long time, because text is a place where human beings have established a foundation of collective brilliance that goes far beyond the world's best video collection. It's not going to be replaced by a Matrix-like collective video game anytime soon. And the moves in that direction will likely be rendered by text-based *NIX systems.
Linux is just about there for handling text. AbiWord and OpenOffice will, within the year, have parity with anything else, and price advantage. XFree is anti-aliased. The major thing missing is the equivalent of Quark or PageMaker, and maybe a font front-end that's as simple as Adobe, so that Linux becomes backward compatible with print production.
Computer games aren't anything most offices want to see their employees playing anyhow. What they care about is systems that allow workers to transparently produce and interact with texts. And that's what most independent knowledge workers care about too - even most programmers. Code is text, "higher level" tools that let you draw connections between objects in visual space will continue to suck for all but the most brain-dead programming.
And the only part of the workforce that doesn't need to be literate any more is the unemployed.
___
Re:absolutely it is alive and well (Score:2, Insightful)
The *ONLY* thing that keeps Windows and Office on OEM's machines is dirty tactics (either sell 100% preinstalled or pay a premium)
However, Microsoft does not control the whole OEM market. There are companies which do not have contracts with Microsoft or do not love Microsoft.
Walmart is the first big one. Others will follow, maybe even Sony.
Dead?! It's not even born yet! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's easier to enter that market and to build a reputation. That part of Linux is working very well for the community. With all the news about various companies using Linux for processing vastly significant amounts of data for vastly significant purposes, in some aspects, Linux is leaving all others in the dust.
It's Linux's reputation that will eventually bring it to the desktop, however. It's not the eye-candy of elightenment. It's not all the cool object-oriented inner-workings of GNOME. The reputation of Linux's reliability, availability and affordability that will eventually pull it onto desktops of home and corporate users.
First and foremost, if a more agressive push to the desktop is to happen any time soon, is to more completely and accurately emulate the Windows look and feel. It doesn't matter that it's "inferior." The "inferior" argument hasn't held since day-1. It needs to be familiar to the people who want to use it. If they expect "Network Neighborhood" then give'm Network Neighborhood.
It is not yet time to strengthen the weaknesses at the expense of existing stengths. Linux has a lot of strong points that are not being put to full use.
The demand for the desktop will come in time but there should be no major push for it. If there were to be a huge push for it, it would mean a radical series of changes such as a more well-defined "LSB" and strict adherance to it. We would need to come up with a "Linux Standard Desktop" definition that GNOME and KDE and any other players should target themselves to. Graphics and multimedia standards will have to be rigidly defined and adhered to.
These changes would have to happen very quickly and abruptly. It would cause a great deal of stress and confusion across the board. I say let it happen gradually and take the pressure off the desktop developers. There is no rush... not yet anyway. (Maybe after Win2k is pulled from the shelves.)
In the mean time, keep "Linux" in the public's eye and make them want it more and more by focusing on it's existing and growing strengths. Showing the public a weak, buggy and kludgey desktop will only sour public opinion regardless of how much work and pride it represents the developers. The "first impression" will stick regardless of what changes happen after the fact.
Linux on the desktop is not ready for prime-time. Let's not put it out there until it's ready. For now, let it remain the domain of the "L337" and let the public have Windows + Samba.
Re:absolutely it is alive and well (Score:4, Insightful)
I'dl ike to suggest that the "white box boys" know their own business better than anyone. If it were really true that they could make more money by pre-installing RH 7.3 and OpenOffice then you can rest assured that some enterprising company would be doing it and eating everyone elses lunch. The fact that this is not happening leads me to believe that your assessment of the "readiness" of Linux isn't quite where you think it is. You subscribe to the "peole don't yet realize we're ready" theory while I subscribe to the "you're in denial about the fact that you're not ready" theory.
Perhaps it's the edge of consumer-friendliness that Windows has over Linux at present that kills it. I mean how much money are these "white box boys" - or anyone else for that matter! - really making on one unit? $50? $30? Less?? You get two support calls and suddenly you have made $0.
I think there is no reason to claim that Linux will save these guys money until you have an example to point to that's convincing enough to make others follow. When/if that happens you won't have to claim it - we'll all be watching the OEMs trip over themselves to sell Linux-based computers.
In the immediate future... (Score:1, Insightful)
I have to temper it a bit, though, because I think for certain areas--scientific computing, development, maybe data processing, maybe administrative work--desktops will reign for a long time to come, simply because certain features are required (e.g., power, flexibility, etc.).
Where I see your vision coming true is for everything else. And I don't think it's that far away. Where this will come into place first is with entertainment consoles. Someone soon will develop a console computing platform that combines a number of functions at once, and presents it as a media console rather than a "computer". This sort of thing will combine your DVD, CD player, MP3 player, Tivo, gaming console, and maybe some other things as well. My prediction is that this thing will be a big deal in the next 10 years or so, as long as it's pitched as a media console, and not a computer per se.
That's why MS Xbox and their media computer concept scares the hell out of me. Their monopoly allows them so much leverage that they can pull just about anything they want and then dominate another area for years to come. I hope serious preemptive competition is introduced before that happens--either that, or MS is sued into submission or scares enough people with its DRM and "personal information management".
On a more optimistic note, I would hope that the media console concept might open up more standardization in the gaming world. Maybe with people putting their PS2 discs into the same machine as their DVDs, they might ask themselves why it is that they can play all DVDs (pretty much in the US anyway) on a number of different machines, but are stuck with buying hardware dependent on game availability or vice versa.
I really really really really don't want to see the proprietary standards mess that's fucked up desktop computing enter my home. I really don't.
Re:Frankly... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:absolutely it is alive and well (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not just a matter of money, it's a huge matter of convenience- that's what drives a large part of the consumer market. Make it easy, transparent, no thought required, and you'll have a chance.
On one hand, it really sucks to see people throw up their hands and say "We've LOST, let's go home." I don't see this as a "war" between M$$ and Linux, I see it as a process that involves building alternatives, and educating consumers about their availability. Some processes take time...
Also, consider this- there's not too much more that M$ can pack into upgrades of Excel and Word. For all practical purposes, each successive upgrade (from a consumer perspective) will offer diminishing returns. This is the reason that a company like M$ would want to turn the whole notion of a software "purchase" into a software "rental." Change it from a tangible commodity into a service, and you've got yourself a nice fat, predictable revenue stream. And you don't have to resort to extortion to get people to upgrade.
There are two things I think the Linux camp can do to continue with this process: focus on the little things that make it suck, and do what it takes to provide seamless interchange between apps on Linux, and apps on Doze. Consumers are generally lazy, so CONVENIENCE is the key.
Filesystem layout comparison and info (Score:5, Insightful)
Having C:\Windows and C:\Program Files is okay on a windows box; they're just points of no-entry, aka advanced stuff you never need to look at. Instead you have "My Documents" to put documents into, and "My Pictures" for pictures. As you get more advanced you could even install a new program. It goes, logically into Program Files, and you get a link automaticly in the start menu.
Now lets look at the linux version. There's /home/joeuser, which has nothing. You could add, say, documents, pictures to it. So now we have those two nice folders. Now Joe is feeling brave and starts learning about his computer. He finds in his home dir: .bash_history, .kde3, .mcop, .mozilla, .qt, .bashrc, .DCOPserver_localname_localname_0, .ICEauthority, .kderc, .mcoprc and .xftcache.
Okay, well, so be it - just ignore all of that. Now Joe wants to install NewCoolApp. He starts the installer that was written up for TechnophobeLinux, which kindly asks him to provide the administrator password for the installation. Said and done, and the installer spews files all over his disk. They go into /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/whatever, /usr/share/whatever, a bunch of man directories, some in /etc, and maybe some in /opt/whatever as well.
Honestly, how many people here have actually read the guidelines for filesystem layout? I know which stuff goes in /bin as opposed to /usr/bin (which is also mostly different on different distributions btw...), but Mr. User is most likely to have one partition for everything on his simple desktop system, and none of it matters. Say what you want about the stupidity of putting apps in C:\Program Files\Vendor\ProgramName but at least it's fairly obvious that the "program files" end up under "Program Files" (duh) and possibly C:\Win(NT|dows)\System, which kinda makes sense since they're system files.
Joe is going to have a lot of questions rather quickly. For instance, why isn't there user stuff in /usr? Who is /usr/share shared with? What's optional with /opt and why isn't the rest optional? And why is my home directory full of config files if config files go into /etc? And why are there at least two */bin dirs (containing not only binaries but other runnable files btw)?
Say what you want about the Windows registry, but at least it's not laying around in plain view in Joe's home directory. And separating /bin and /usr/bin makes perfect sense on a server handled by a skilled person who could actually do something if /usr would be unavailable anyway - Joe certainly wouldn't be able to poke around the system using /bin and /sbin tools to set things right.
If you're truly going for an easy-to-use idiot-friendly linux, you're going to have to take some tough decitions. Toss the old layout out the window, pick something like /apps, /config, /system, /documentation, or whatever - and spend a long time compiling stuff from scratch to make it work. I once had plans to do this but never reached anything usable (see LFS [linuxfromscratch.org] for a good beginning). You will probably be flamed until you glow red from people saying you're fragmenting the standard and what-not, but sorry guys, the current layout is for server-techs, not for Joe.
(Sorry about the rant)
If you feel like actually doing something like that, feel free to contact me.
As someone who's worked with him in the past.. (Score:-1, Insightful)
Carsten's view of the world is a fairly simple one....That if you're not doing what he's doing, you're wasting your time, and you're lame for not putting your weight behind his efforts. In essence, he's at the center of his own world, and you're not really invited.
The whole point of the Linux community in the beginning was that we would all throw our efforts into a common goal, and put whatever talents we had to use for the greater good. We didn't really care what came of it, we just wanted to do something cool and see what happened.
The reason why the Linux community has experienced its share of growing pains in recent months is due to exactly this kind of attitude....Everyone their way is the best, and in doing so, alienates everyone else. Unfortunately, Carsten's personality doesn't allow him to understand why other people dont like him, or E, or whatever he happens to be dabbling with. People dont want a desktop that can wiggle, make distracting noises and hundreds of largely useless features. They want something they can sit down and use.. today. Not in a week, not in a few days. Within minutes. And Linux doesn't offer that right now. The waters are still muddy with competition, divergent "standards", and clouded visions of what should happen next.
The time has come to standardize how Linux looks.
There needs to be some sort of formal referendum within the community, a vote, that decides "Here's what Linux will look like."...We need to abandon the weak for the sake of allowing the strong to grow. This lack of focus is hurting us... The lack of focus is what got us going in the beginning, but its time to stop that. We have to grow up as an OS. Desktop maturity is something we're sorely lacking, and its the thing that will always hold us back until we do it. Linux has no face---Windows has a face to it, the Mac has a face to it..even Be had a face to it. But Linux is over 10 years old, and has no face. And you know what? It wont capture the desktop until it does. Thats the hard and disappointing truth.
We need one desktop, not 2 or 3. We need one windowmanager, not 8. We need one GUI toolkit, not 50. We need to step up to the blackboard and be unafraid to say "Here's what we will be from now on", and let the best man win.
Despite what Carsten may think, Linux doesn't lack the apps it needs to take the desktop. Anyone who's seen OpenOffice and Mozilla can tell you that. Those two application suites alone account for 99% of what most PC users want to do with their computers day to day. Companies are TRYING to move applications to Linux..but since we lack a standardized approach to the desktop, they don't know where to aim.
We need to decide what we're going to be. We need to stop pushing and pouring our energies into the smaller, weak projects and spend that same energy on finishing larger projects. We need to define the face of Linux, and the only way we can do that is if we conceed and abandon Carsten's brand of attitude, and throw our support behind what is in the best interests of the future, not what strokes our egos today.
My $0.02,
You'd be correct if we knew where we were going... (Score:3, Insightful)
The future is not known, though, so it must be evolved. Evolution requires variation, and multiple, competing projects are a good way to get that variation.
(Lack of variation is one of the reasons Microsoft is so stagnant. It's also a prime reason why they buy technology from others. It's not so much that they can't write code--their problem is that they can't generate variation, so they import it.)
--Mike
Re:Frankly... (Score:2, Insightful)
I say screw the commercial software developers. Does the future of Linux depend on commercial interests? I don't believe so. I'm going to switch to an almost totally linux-based system (small Windoze partition for games) so i'm ready to put my money where my mouth is (I believe I can replicate any non-gaming function that I need on Linux)
In my opinion, people should keep working together on projects so that we don't HAVE to depend on commercial software development. This included games (the main thing that Linux is lacking) and anything that you currently need Windows for.
Re:Filesystem layout comparison and info (Score:4, Insightful)
Now about the /usr/bin etc issue, what happens when Joe starts learning about the computer. He wants to know more, and switched the "advancedness" lever one flip upwards. Suddenly it exposes a system that is none at all like what he currently knows. I would like a newbie-friendly system that "scales" its friendlyness all the way up to the advanced mode.
Now here's the second problem with the FHS; where a program ends up depends on who installs it and when - if I install it it probably goes in /usr/local/bin or /usr/local/whatnot/bin, but if installed by the distribution it could go in any of /bin /usr/bin /opt/whatever/bin or /usr/something/bin.
The solution to all of this is in my opinion to 1. Create an alternative FHS for desktops only and make install programs compatable with this layout or 2. hide everything and have a wizard/popup box for every little feature a-la the Microsoftish way. I don't really like that second answer, and the first one is hard on a linux-lover to even consider. But hard things must sometimes be done, if you want that "easy" system - not just an "easy" startup page that proves to be bogus once you reach level 2 in linux the platform game [tm].
To cut it short -- one could make Linux (*BSD) look completely innocent. It would only take lots of time and quite a bit of creativity.
Of course it would be possible to do - but it would be just that: "a look". Like a mask to cover the true nature of the beast, instead of a true change in the system. It's really just a push in where the user experience turns bad and where the learning curve derivate goes sky-high.
Re:Quick fix (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux will always have this duality. If you know Unix, you will learn to chain the tools and do productive things, as well as learn the applications you need. Joe Average doesn't need this and will NOT learn them. He only cares about the applications: separate programs that are standalone where you only need to learn to use the app.
Joe uses the PC for certain fixed problems solved with apps and sacrifices some flexibility in favour of user-friendlyness.
Power users will learn the difficult way of doing things. They will be able to do complex stuff the standalone application can't (chaining tools, scripting, batchs).
The inherent complexity of the file system could only be solved by mappings. If you are Joe Average, you could be presented a different file structure. But all the tools will still have to be somewhere regardless you seen them or not.
A needed step would be database of where when what and beign able to present a list of every file an application installed. Something like an explicit package management: say a
Example:
I'd love (and probably many others will) to use rm -rf
Using a registry could be a problem, unless filesystem maped.
Re:Bitterness (Score:3, Insightful)
Xclock, Xeyes ?
Probably didn't see many that weren't rectangular because it turned out to be mostly useless.
Maybe Linux has "lost" the desktop war (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a long-standing want. However, not only is Technophobe Linux not there, it isn't even accessable to most IT people.
I spent a few hours last week explaining to a corporate IT guy that does Windows how to set up networking on a RH 7.2 box (some option had gotten misconfigured somehow so that the routing tables were routing everything back through loopback.) Now I have to tell him how to set up CD burning on another Linux workstation he's putting in (and explain to him why he's using SCSI drivers on his ATA burner). And you know what? I can guarantee that he doesn't think that Linux is a better desktop OS than Windows. He has to go through hell to get basic stuff working, since he hasn't spent few years eating and breathing Linux.
Now, you can say that that's because the distro manufacturers haven't decided on a common front end with a standard way of setting up networking (or heck, CD burning). You can claim that this "isn't a Linux kernel issue", or that "Mandrake 9.0 *will* fix things" or that "you could write up a couple of perl scripts in a few hours that would do all this for you". But it comes down to the fact that this guy can sit down and reasonably quickly set up things on a Windows box, and can't even come close to doing that on Linux. He's willing to learn, from a professional standpoint, Linux as a second OS -- spend some hours reading documentation or so. But he isn't going to eat, breathe, and sleep with Linux. He's willing to read a HOWTO, but when I tell him that the HOWTO is out of date and doesn't cover his specific distro and is way more complicated than necessary, he's got pretty good reason to be upset. He's a professional that "wants to get the job done". He isn't a Linux hobbyist or a revolutionary, and he wants to support Linux users at the company better...but he won't sacrifice ridiculous amounts of time to do it.
When it comes right down to it, Linux, besides being a nice server platform, makes a *lot* of sense as a computer hobbyist's desktop, or a programmer's desktop. If you're willing to put in some time, you can make Linux do great things. There's a lot of functionality present that a programmer can unlock. I'm typing this from my only computer -- a Linux desktop. I wouldn't trade it for a Windows box, ever. But I also put in huge amounts of time to understand what's going on, why something doesn't work, and whatnot. And most people are simply not willing to put in that much time.
Furthermore, most people writing software for Linux fall in the same boat -- techies writing software for techies. It's okay to ship software without a graphical config util or documentation that someone can use without *really* understanding what's going on. Out of date documentation is okay (say...how to set something up in a non-devfs environment, because surely the end user will know how to do the translation to his devfs stuff).
When I say "Linux is better than Windows", there's an understood appended "for me". I'd hate to be deprived of my stability and performance, my flexibility and customization of my environment, my freedom to eke performance out of my computer and easily get at its guts. But for most users, computing comes down to light use. Even most IT people just want to get a machine working -- they don't love dicking around with the thing to see how it works. And for them, there is a very high price to pay for Linux -- huge quantities of learning time. Once you're through that...well, you can fix *anything* that goes wrong. But in the meantime, you may not have mail or sound or something else working properly. Maybe you don't have fonts, or don't understand how to secure your system, or how to set up modules to auto-load.
The distro manufacturers have attempted, with some degree of success, to slap front ends on all this, to hide the stuff designed for techies to work with. But, you know...it hasn't worked that well. Front ends have a constraint that they have to work well with hand-editing. They should expose all they're doing, not change every distro version, and very preferably not change from distro to distro. I know how to set up a mail server at a "low level" on the system, through the config files. I've also done so through RH's front end on RH 5.2 or 6.0 or sometime around there. But I have no idea what the "accepted graphical way of doing things" is for Debian, or Caldera, or even SuSE. Because there's no standard simple way of doing things, documentation is restricted to going least-common-denominator for everything, and explaining how to set up things through config files. No fun for new users.
Let's look at printing. I started using RH at 5.2. Back then, IIRC, you used lpr and had a utility called "control panel" from which you could launch a Tk front end called "printtool" which could edit a few config files to set up printing. Over a few years, in that time alone, we've moved to LPRng/CUPS, gone through a linuxconf front end, changed print filter systems, and haven't remained "user compatible" (i.e. user skills do not transfer) across distros.
The same thing happens with sound -- I've personally tried and set up four different sound driver systems on my computer (native Linux kernel, OSS/Free modules, ALSA
Now, this sort of thing makes Linux not particularly approachable to the non-hobbyist. They can plonk down $90 and avoid at least *weeks* of learning material that they aren't particularly interested in. For your average sysadmin, MS products require learning a *lot* less to get up and running than Linux does. It's only to the hobbyist that *wants* to play around with the system that Linux makes much sense.
Maybe that's a good thing. I like Linux quite a bit. If it changed a lot to serve the newbies and non-hobbyists out there, I'm not sure I'd like it as much. And to be honest, there's not a lot of incentive for me to "fight for Linux world domination". I like coding for Linux much more than for the Win32 API, so I'd like there to be a healthy Linux coding job market. I'd also prefer that my box have reasonable hardware support, which requires vendor support, which requires a threshhold number of users. I worry that MS will always try (and manage) to make life miserable for me as long as they have market domination. They'll make me interact with
Finally, I'd like to point out that the only person I know that works at Microsoft is an avid Linux fan and does all dev work possible on Linux. I asked a few other people that I was doing some coding work with, and found that the three other people that they knew that work at Microsoft all run and code on Linux at home. The fifth person was the only exception -- he didn't know anything about Linux, but on the other hand he was the "scrub" of the group, knowing little about systems, and instead of working in the DirectX or Office teams, was relegated to writing some QA code in VB. Most hard core techies appear to really like messing around with Linux.
I've come to start to wish that there was a way for MS and Linux to coexist. I'm willing to let MS have the regular users as long as they don't keep harassing the Linux hobbyists. If Linux had decent hardware support, no constant attacks from Microsoft in the form of "compatibility issues", and didn't have to put up with so much FUD...well, that'd be fine with me. RH and MS can go beat their heads over who gets the regular users. I'm not all that interested in fighting a war for them, just for my ability to do what I want on Linux.
I think there are a few people that disagree. Stallman, obviously, is a revolutionary, and will probably fight against any form of non-free software...but people like him, talented and extremist activist coders, are few and far between. The KDE folks seem to be willing to do an enormous amount of work to pander to Windows folks, and seem to want to really attack MS (frankly, I personally prefer the more unique flavor of GNOME, but as a pull for Windows users, KDE does a better job). But that's about it. The rest of us seem to mostly enjoy coding, playing with Linux, writing bug reports to and talking with other computer enthusiasts, and if a non-techie user can benefit...well, that's icing on the cake, but there's no reason to waste tons of effort to try to support them.
Maybe some people here can identify. I volunteer to do Linux tech support sometimes on #linpeople. It feels really rewarding when you help someone out who's really interested in learning the system, and who loves messing around with computers. You've taught them something that they can build on. But users that "just want their problem fixed" and don't really care much about what's wrong or learning how to be able to handle problems in the future...well, helping them just doesn't have nearly as much draw to me.
Well, this comment ended up a lot longer than I intended...:-)