Linux to Become #2 on the Desktop? 778
DiZASTiX writes "An article from Zdnet says Linux on the desktop has become a reality. It is now possible, for example, to buy a Linux-based PC (running LindowsOS) from Evesham. In the United States, Wal-Mart sells machines based on Lindows, Mandrake Linux and others. But though Linux may have its foot in the door, taking the next step to becoming a mainstream success is proving a more difficult proposition."
Re:It's a good start though ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:X-Windows ... eww, smelly (Score:2, Informative)
You're wrong.. (Score:1, Informative)
Mac OS X (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Right. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:too late (Score:5, Informative)
People who want a UNIX desktop but still want to run Photoshop, Quicken, Office, etc.? MacOS X can.
Did you try download.kde.org? (Score:1, Informative)
add it to your sources.list.
Re:Why it will never be Number One. (Score:2, Informative)
X is fine. See a bunch of other posts.
The Adoption Of A Single, Standardized Interface Design
NO. choice is good. I'm not sure how to have the user chose b/t KDE/GNOME, but as long as programs are logically designed we should be ok.
Make Graphical Setup "Wizards" For Everything.
Fine, but don't write ones that create illegable config files. Once you're used to it editing config files is the easiest way to config apps.
Binary Distributions For Everything.
Once again, choice is good. Just don't use RPM. It will confuse and piss off the users. Plus, local compiling allows more configuration. As computers get faster, local compiling is better.
Workstation Configurations With Dangerous Deamons (ftpd, httpd, etc...) Turned Off By Default.
amen. this should include sendmail.
Linux Evangelists Stop Insulting MS And Its Users
No we should be able to keep insulting M$. However we should be nice to te users. Would you insult a kid for not knowing calculus?
Re:Yeah, but not for free. (Score:2, Informative)
Ah, the young who don't know of the days when IBM was Microsoft, with all the DOJ attention that implies. The phrase 'IBM and the seven dwarves' was coined for a reason.
KDE 3.1 windows 2000? (Score:2, Informative)
but hold you mouse over a music file and it plays.
Hold if over a movie and it plays.
You can edit MP3, JPEG etc... meta-data.
try camera:/ (if you have kamera installed) and you can access images off of most digital cameras.
etc.........
Stock KDE is a lot better than stock windows 2000, a bit klunky (like a JCB!) but still better.
Re:too late (Score:1, Informative)
Have you actually tried running these yourself? I bet you've just been retelling what you've heard from others as while yes, WINE can run those, it runs them very badly. They crash quite often, and that's if you can get it to work in the first place...
Re:Linux is NOT ready for the desktop (Score:5, Informative)
- Linux GUIs are faster and faster at each version. Gnome2 for example was totally re-coded with performance in mind and behaves much better now, KDE 3.1 (still a release candidate but still) on this box is working SO much faster than XP did on the SAME box !
- Since I've been running linux on my desktop, I have not yet had one problem reading any PPT, DOC, etc... documents... not once... sorry. And I get a lot of ppt and doc files sent to me daily
- I have had problems with some applications, contacted the mailing list, and the solution was sent to me a few minutes later... no RTFM.
- I use Evolution for my email/calendar/tasklist/contact management stuff, it has everything I could ever use and more... I have used kmail in the past, I've never had any real problem with it.
- Recent linux distributions based on more recent and less backward-compatible glibc usually have some kind of package management system that will not only save you from searching on freshmeat, but also install directly the application for you.
emerge gnucash
apt-get install gnucash
synaptic->gnucash
and so on... You have now installed the latest version of an excellent financial software, which, may I add, will read files from other windows software like Quickbook or Quicken without a glitch
- I use daily applications for all my needs, none of them are poorly written at all. licq is stable as a rock, xmms plays music just perfectly, evolution still handles my emails (without a virus or worm or anything like that infesting my computer), mozilla works like a charm and KDE 3.1 is just a dream. Although all those applications work in a much superior fashion than equivalent applications on windows, they ARE skinnable indeed
- Companies such as the Kompany, RedHat, Suse, etc... actually DO have some marketing people that make your desktop look just like you want it to look like as a user and to behave.
My desktop right now looks simply amazing, yet is really fast and everything is at hand. My girlfriend uses it every time she comes, all my friends really love the way it's set up and even my mom used it and didn't have a problem doing everything she needed to do.
- and for the support thing, companies like Suse, RedHat, Mandrake, etc... DO offer commercial (cheap) support for pretty much all the applications shipped with their distributions, in fact, and I speak from experience, these companies go way beyond that by helping out users with applications not "officially" supported, and also collect bug-reports and offer patches to the original developer of the software to fix the problem for them (http://www.redhat.com/bugzilla) for example.
- Whoever wrote that has NO idea of how much a business license for Microsoft Windows costs... it's not even close to $200. Tell this person to add many zeros to that number.
I think linux is still very young on the desktop OS market but it's doing a great job and I'm very impressed by how fast it's moving forward... KDE, Gnome, Evolution, OpenOffice, etc... all these software are working on a new development version right now that's purely amazing... I can't wait to see what it will be like by the end of the year 2003 !
Re:the sound of the Empire collapsing (Score:3, Informative)
Holy FUD.
I can't comment on everything you said (I don't run mandrake). However:
Your arguments were relevant 5 or 6 years ago. And OO.o boots in about 5-6 seconds for me.
So seriously. At least try a distribution that tries to meet your standards before you condemn all things linux.
Re:Not according to Google... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:DVDs? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:too late (Score:3, Informative)
MPlayer is awesome. I guarantee it can play every single video file you have on your computer right now, and every one you're likely to come across surfing the web. When did you last try it? Yes, it supports Sorenson now. And WMV. And Real. And DivX. All out-of-the-box, all in one player, with no DRM, auto-updaters, horrible licenses, or advertisements.
Star/OpenOffice opens Microsoft Office documents perfectly. Other open-source office efforts are leveraging this code to produce their own document filters.
Cutting-edge games are still a problem. But there are lots of people who don't play games on their computers other than Solitaire and Space Cadet Pinball. And computer games are becoming less relevant as consoles become more and more powerful.
I'd say the Linux desktop's time is near. The pieces are falling into place.
Re:Linux is NOT ready for the desktop (Score:2, Informative)
I've been using it for quite a while, it's extremely fast here.. and this box is a Celeron 500Mhz (Coppermine) so it's even slower than your box...
I suggest you try the latest RedHat beta also, it seems they have already read your post before and responded to most of your concerns with a proper solution.
The binaries for KDE, etc... are really fast, that includes evolution.
As for the Office stuff, really, I swear, I get tons of
That include inline images, wordart, freaky bullets, tables and autoformated tables, etc...
Also it's much faster than the stable version.
This is why I can really see a future for linux on the desktop.
I think the guys at OpenOffice.org are doing a good job at preventing features from excel that people take from granted to lack on linux as far as I'm concerned... (I'm still refering to the latest release)
And last thing for tonight:
No one ever talked about features from Windows 3.11 in a windows xp world.. I think evolution is much more feature-rich than outlook express, mozilla has more features than IE (and it's more stable, it's prettier (with Orbit theme) is has really cool plugins, etc...), Klipper blows the Windows Clipboard out of the water, KDE is more configurable and faster (3.1)
Re:Not according to Google... (Score:1, Informative)