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."
too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this title silly? (Score:3, Insightful)
X-Windows ... eww, smelly (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:It's a good start though ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Careless aggression of marketing put Microsoft where there are today.
#2 don't mean nothing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Number 1 is everything, there IS NO SECOND PLACE. Just ask Mac Users. It has to be MS Word, Excel spread sheets, etc.
The fact is #2 is a far distant second, and any user of a PC doesn't want "second rate" suite" on his desktop.
You have to give FULL COMPATABLE options, and until people want something other than .doc or .xls like .a general format that is open, there is no second.
The ONLY chance you have is to make pdf (yet another commercial format, not acceptable) or .rtf, or something... Until that gets to be number 1, there is no second place.
You have to win the generic formats before you can win freedom from Microsoft.
BSD on the Desktop (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:BSD on the Desktop (Score:3, Insightful)
Caveat: Apple brought a BSD-core, with a pretty Aqua GUI on top to the desktop. Not to be pedantic (although I am going to be), but OS X's desktop has little to do with BSD.
Re:X-Windows ... eww, smelly (Score:4, Insightful)
You are correct, and they would be much better off if they didn't. For a networkable client-server GDI XWindow System works wonderfully. For a a desktop system it's farking horrible, relatively speaking. Many of it's "FEEL" issues, the least of which have to do with performance and usability, carry over into the "upper layers" and are noticable in KDE and GNome. That is to say, the flaws that are easily felt in XWindows alone still peek through KDE and Gnome, leaving me to believe the problem is with X, not the other way around.
The way Mac went with OS X would be a great way for a free alternative clone (of OS X) to go. X just has too much support(...well...) for people to give up on it no matter how much it sucks for a personal computer desktop environment. Linux will never have the share of users it deserves until everyone can collectively break the mindset that X is the Unix desktop. Unfortunately, for the moment X -IS- the Unix desktop and that's why Linux holds 2nd place in a one horse race.
Re:#2 don't mean nothing... (Score:5, Insightful)
But seriously, we are pretty well off, fast machines, better OS, Mac versions of Office and the like are better than on the PC.
As for office formats, I have two open source office progs downloaded here which read
So yeah, my machine could be Microsoft free right this instant. Office Mac is that only thing I have right now from M$ (ditched IE for Chimera months ago).
Plenty of Games on the Mac, I think more big titles have come out in the last two years than in the history of the Mac itself. So no trouble there either.
For everything else, there is some software that can handle it on the Mac and most of it is better than equivalent PC software and with OS X, a lot of great open source projects have come into the Mac world as well.
So yeah, you can be M$ free and more than happy with it. You can also be #2 or even #3 and happy as well. The bottom line is, it matters what you do with your machine, not how popular it is.
Re:X-Windows ... eww, smelly (Score:5, Insightful)
You are correct, and they would be much better off if they didn't.
I humbly disagree - the three things that suck about the free X Windows System, in my dumb opinion, are: sucky mouse cursors, screwy anti-aliasing, shitty fonts and buggy alpha channels.
Fortunalty, all these problems with the X Windows System are being fixed as we speek. The trauma of removing X11 and replacing it with somthing else (somthing else that probably has suckyness of it's own) is probably more than just fixing X11.
Re:X-Windows ... eww, smelly (Score:2, Insightful)
To me, "desktop" signifies a tightly-integrated set of design concepts, executed in mostly-stable code, creating a fully-graphical computing experience that enhances your work. I've only ever seen one OS pull that off - BeOS. Windows XP comes close, but on Slashdot that might not be a valid opinion
#1, #2, and "everybody else". (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people look at the computer world the same way. You support the #1 platform, and maybe the #2 "to be diverse", and everybody else can go hang. It's _hard_ to make a business case to support anybody else, it's a case of diminishing returns with each new platform and the slope is STEEP.
The macintosh has been #2 since the mid 80's. Platforms like the amiga and OS/2 learned this. Pure java only got attention because it ran on Windows too. Even when the macintosh wasn't particularly significant (just before Steve Jobs came back), people were used to THINKING of it as #2, and targetting their retail software developent and hardware driver support that way. It will come as a surprise to a lot of people when it loses that spot. Confirming it will be news, and not just in the geek world but magazine covers and television evening news.
Now these days, the macintosh is a unix platform. If the mac loses its #2 position on the desktop, Jobs will just claim "we're unix, #2 is unix and that's us". Okay. Jobs does NOT want to give up the marketing advantage of being the "designated alternative", but WHEN the macintosh loses the #2 spot, he may be graceful about it since he does have a fallback marketing position. (You may have notice that on the tech side, he's trying to diversify into the server space.)
But right now, porting to linux without first porting to the macintosh is a really hard sell in a corporate environment, and after the mac port you have to sell linux AGAIN. (P.S. Try doing that sort of thing in the gaming environment, where windows as #2 to the playstation.)
Rob
(P.S. The "desktop" niche is dying, the laptop niche is what everybody should be worrying about. And apple's still doing REALLY nicely there...)
Why it will never be Number One. (Score:5, Insightful)
The simple fact is that X-Windows was never intended to do what we expect it to do these days. It was not designed to be an end-user desktop. While it does have neat abilities, like being able to access workstations across a network, end users don't care about those. End users care about the desktop being fast and responsive. Two things that X-Windows is not. X-Windows also knocks the claim that Linux needs less processor power and RAM than MS Windows right into the dirt.
Before Joe Sixpack will use Linux there needs to be a standardization of the UI. A standard that ALL graphical programs adhere to. No if ands or buts. One standard. While the myriad of widgets and environments give power users and geeks the freedom to tweak their systems or programs enay way they want, all of this "choice" just confuses the hell out of the end user. While MS Windows might not be completely consistant, it is enough that the average user can get used to it. Almost every Windows program (save for those nightmares with skins) look and act like Windows, in a manner that most users expect.
Yes, this means that either KDE or Gnome will have to die. End users don't want to have to chose what UI they use. They want one interface they can learn and be done with it.
No end user wants to edit text files. Nor should they EVER have to. This is 2003, not 1975. The days of rooting through a confusing mess of directories for boot scripts is (or should be) over.
No end user wants to compile anything. Ever. Sure, power users and old-hand Linux users might enjoy it, but they are not the people we are concerned with. Until a MS Windows user can effortlessly install ANY program with just a few mouse clicks they are going to stay away.
End Users do not care about running FTP servers and web serves from their desktops. Why bog down a system with all these useless processes they are not ever going to use, and that leave these system more vulnerable than a Windows 2000 system?
Nothing, but nothing turns off a potential Linux convert than having to dig through piles of posts, to Usenet or forums like
wild guesses (Score:5, Insightful)
I also don't see any good way to determine Linux's market share.
But paid shipments tell us absolutely nothing. It's possible that Linux's share of the desktop is much higher, because it's still pretty hard to find intel boxes without Windows on them, so people buy Windows boxes, erase Windows, and install Linux. It's possible that Linux's share is much lower, as well; some people probably buy a low-end intel machine with Linux preinstalled from Walmart or Fry's, then erase Linux and put a bootleg copy of Windows on it (or install a copy of Windows they bought before for a different machine).
And finally, we don't know what's the percentage of dual-boot users. That means Windows' market share plus Linux's market share could easily add up to more than 100%
Yeah, but not for free. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:X-Windows ... eww, smelly (Score:3, Insightful)
That being said, it does the job of being the foundation of a basic desktop system. After installation and proper configuration (which most distros get right by now), most users won't even notice the difference. There are specialized libraries for direct rendering, and games performance is not an issue. Driver availability is OK and getting better.
The problem is that X is such a mess that the traditional open source collaboration model doesn't work too well. There are only relatively few people hacking on the project -- it doesn't even have a Bugzilla and according to Keith Packard, one of the real X gurus, doesn't want one because there aren't enough people to deal with the bug reports. Just look at their gopher-era homepage [xfree86.org] to get an impression about their professionality. Yeah, I know, HTML 2.0 should have been the end of web technology, but I am not only criticizing the looks here but also the lack of structure and meaningful information.
X would be fixable in a dedicated corporate effort (if IBM got their act together and started pushing LOTD it would not be an issue), otherwise open source will slowly evolve it into something more usable. Whether a competing GUI system will reach this state sooner remains to be seen.
the sound of the Empire collapsing (Score:4, Insightful)
One small observation, in fact, has led me to reconsider the whole Open Sores development model. Why do the developers always assume that I've got nothing better to do than compiling a kernel just so my sound will work, or tweaking directory names just so my libraries won't clobber each other, or other stupid things that are a complete waste of time for anybody besides a developer??? Don't they know ANYthing about releasing "gold code" by now? I wonder if anybody in the crowd (besides the sound driver authors) even have working speakers attached to their machines. If it weren't for Mandrake, nobody would have working sound without a non-trivial amount of tweaks. Speaking of tweaks.....
Most of all, though, I just want automount to work right. Windows has had that feature for - oh, about 8 years now. Is this so much to ask?????
I suspect that if people really wanted Linux on the desktop then we'd have USB support that rivals Win95 OSR2 by now.
Case in point: Linux is a pain. Linux is a server OS. Forget about dethroning MS, it ain't gonna happen.
Re:#2 don't mean nothing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Lets compare computers to cars for a second. Do you think Porsches are the most sold cars in the world? Probably not. And yet, I haven't seen Porsche complain that their sales are disgraceful.
Being the most used product in the world doesn't make it the best product in the world.
Until recently, Apple has thrived on innovating great technology (Luxury), and not making affordable quick'n'dirty computers that sell.
I use Linux on my desktop at home and it works fine for all my needs. Maybe Linux doesn't need to be #1 on the desktop.
Linux shouldn't be about being #1 on the Desktop, Linux should be about being the first to introduce a UI even better than the Desktop that both Apple and M$ have to copy just to keep up.
Re:X-Windows ... eww, smelly (Score:5, Insightful)
That has ever been the bane of Linux and is partially why it is such a poor choice for the desktop. Geeks say, "yes, but you can do that by doing. . ." and then list off a done of archane processes no regular human would remember or expect to know unless someone told them.
I like Linux and OpenBSD a lot. Use them a fair bit. But lets be honest. Typically installing software, doing updates, and so forth are *difficult*. Further getting things the way you want is as well. The problem is that Geeks who are used to doing that stuff have made fairly difficult things second nature. They are sufficiently used to it that they have a blind spot when it comes to the difficulties involved.
Making a good desktop computer involves much more than a nice windowing system. It means never having to play with a dozen text files listing archane commands. It means not having to buy an O'Reilly book when you want to do something. It means things work in an intuitive, expect fashion. Both Apple and Microsoft realize this.
Linux is powerful. But easy? Ha.
I've not used Lindows, but I halfway wonder what will happen when Grandma wants to run something that requires an upgrade.
Re:too late (Score:2, Insightful)
Indeed. OS X looks good, has a consistant UI and works well.
Re:X-Windows ... eww, smelly (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is the name of the X Window System ANY different from the name of Winamp (which many call "WinAMP" or "WinAmp"), the name of the Mac (which many call the "MAC"), the name of Microsoft (i can't even begin to list the number of "alternate" spellings for this), the name of Windows (which many call "Windoze" or "Winblows"), the ellipsis ("...", which most fucktards write as ".."), any mispunctuated or misspelt word or sentence, the abbreviation "etc." (which many write as "etc" or "ect")... why don't you take time out of your zealot lives to correct all THOSE typos every single time they come up? Really, what the Hell is the big deal with "X Window System" that it needs to have a dozen persons pointing out its proper name in every discussion?
For the record, i'm not trolling. I truly don't understand why that has to be brought up so often. How does choosing not to write out "the X Window System" == "little credibility"?
Re:Ofcourse, it works like a charm on the desktop. (Score:5, Insightful)
IE a killer app, of what, security? There are plenty of browsers now that has gotten way ahead in features, adherance to standards and functioning. IE is actually lagging behind right now.
Office is something that most people use to write letters and occasionally some spreadsheets. Its overkill in 90% of the userbase. Most people could cope with notepad if they could just read what other sent them in doc format. Being able to read other peoples Office documents is the number one reason people use Office.
Open Office and a bunch of other replacements exists already and more is coming this way fast. The browser is perfect now in linux, next stop Office Applications!
Re:the sound of the Empire collapsing (Score:2, Insightful)
So, in conclusion, either you like it or you don't, but stop whining about how its not polished enough for you, or how it will never be #1. I like it and have used it for many years and can't stand using Windows when I have to. Personally, I believe Linux is superior now.
Re:X-Windows ... eww, smelly (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why Linux will take the corporate desktop long before the home desktop.
Re:Why it will never be Number One. (Score:3, Insightful)
XFree86 evolved together with Linux. Today it's fast and stable. Choose FVWM2 or other simple environment to see. KDE and GNOME are still young, but litterally tomorrow (GNOME 2.2 and KDE 3.1) they promise to become adult. So, the problem is almost solved. OpenGL is probabaly the rest to solve.
The Adoption Of A Single, Standardized Interface Design.
Typically you choose you desktop at the installation time (each commercial leading distro have one by default for you ) and you have it consistent untill you change your opinion. So, the choice is not a bad thing, once you have a choice to do not choose :)
Make Graphical Setup "Wizards" For Everything.
Working on it. Compare most of commercial leading distros with what they had two years ago. Today we've got Webmin and several ncurses-based, gnome-based and kde-based configuration wizards/dialogs. Not bad.
Binary Distributions For Everything.
I didn't recompile kernel after installation RH and YDL in their last releases. All modules has been pre-installed and ready for being configured to start. Seems the problem is solved at least in leading commercial distros.
Workstation Configurations With Dangerous Deamons (ftpd, httpd, etc...) Turned Off By Default.
Check latest RH. Solved.
Linux Evangelists Stop Insulting MS And Its Users.
Solved. Linux evangelists now mod-up good criticism about Linux and good feedbacks about Windowz, when it's construcive, logical, proved.
Now ./ has another problem:
MacOSX Evangelists Should Stop Insulting Linux And Its Users.
Seriously, try just to ask "why OSX?" and you will be immediately mod-down without even any attempt to answer for your question. In best case you'll get several similar to each other comments like "OSX is cool!" without any explanation of it.
Easier to who? (Score:3, Insightful)
As for how easy the operating system is to use for the standard home user, that can be debated rather easily, and again, if you worked IT and actually dealt with this stuff, then you would already know everything that I was about to say. It isn't easier, it is more famailar. You're stupid, congrats.
Re:too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, (actually that first paragraph was half-serious), has everyone forgotten that every six months (since 1986!) Ziff-Davis predicts that Apple will be brankrupt by the end of the year? Clearly, they know what they are talking about.
Only just recently they have started claiming that Linux will take over the desktop; which, as a Linux advocate, I think is just silly. Then again I'm just a programmer, not a journalist. At least they have finally realized that it won't *ever* have a larger desktop user base than Windows. I don't ever expect them to realize that open source simply cannot tackle proprietery software until we have some sort of major economic and social revolution.
Without support for mainstream media (WiMP, QT, Flash 6, Real), Microsoft Office, and DirectX (negotiable, but witness how many games use the "industry standard" OpenGL), Linux can't even get a seat to watch the game, let alone actually play. Sure WINE is an incredible and useful hack, but it'll be another 2 years at least until setup and compatibility are useful to semi-computer-literate folk, forget about grandma. By the time WINE is ready for the mainstream, Microsoft will make sure it is illegal, at least in the US. Cleanroom reverse-engineering is only semi-legal now, thanks to the DMCA. Even if WINE is legal at that point, it would in and of itself remain a reason to develop only for Windows.
Every OS has its place... and its zealots. Linux and OS X are fantastic in their dedicated niches. Windows XP, as much as I hate to admit it, is a fairly versatile and well-rounded OS. It blows my mind to see free-software supporters drooling over some huge publishing corporation *speculating* that a free software product *might* gain market share. What market? It's free, so there's no market, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. What are the bean counters counting? Some people sound like they are just itching to sell out. Hint: the moment you sell out, you eliminate your most sought-after advantages.
I know this is Slashdot, but can we please try to be realistic? The computer indutry is and always will be extremely volatile, but Microsoft, Apple, and Linux have endured the test of time. They are here to stay, all for different reasons. They all take repeated beatings that would demoralize and sink many other companies/organisations/communities. Just use what you like/need, or any combination thereof.
(No, I'm not new here. Yes, I have a Linux box in my closet. Yes, my cable modem router is a Linux box too. Yes, they both run Debian. Yes, I will miss boot-floppies. Yes, the box on my desktop runs OS X. Yes, I use Windows Evil License Edition too, but only at work. No, I never clicked 'Agree', although yes, I clicked 'Submit'.)
Re:Why it will never be Number One. (Score:2, Insightful)
The main issue here is that MS is so god damn easy to use if you aren't planning on doing anything with it. Forget power users, elite gamers and hax0rs - when mom and pop get a computer out of the box, set it up, and it works, they are happy. Every now and then they click an "update" button and like magic it gets better. If it doesn't, they call someone who helps them out. Until we have this (abet shitty) ability in other OSs, ms wins. Yeah, I know that 90% of slashdotters will want to compile and command-line install everything themselves, but last I checked we weren't a majority in the computer market.
If it's not stupid-easy and compatible with the rest of the world, it's not going to be #1, nor #2. I'd love to see a distro that came as binaries and had auto-updating and app changing features, but also had the source available. That would be the best of both worlds - it would allow for stability and compatibility for mom and pop, yet allow the rest of us to pick and choose what we wanted, and compile when we felt like it.
Humm....I guess what I just described is sort of like the BSD ports tree, with a stupid-easy gui for everyone else....
Re:Right. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:X-Windows ... eww, smelly!!! (Score:1, Insightful)
Dude, the X Window System gets better frame rates than MS Windows on Quake. Do you even know what latency is?
I have been running a Dual Celeron with Linux for 3 years now and the whole desktop screams. I run the screen at 1280x1024, 24 bit color on a Voodoo 4500 video card and it screams. Applications pop up onto the screen as soon as I click the mouse button to call them up. I can grab a window playing video and wave it around and around the screen without leaving any artifacts, while on windows, picking up a notepad and moving it around leaves tracks that take a second to disappear. Even if nothing else is accessing the hard drive or processor.
The X Window System framework was designed back in the late 80's as a powerful, extensible system of presenting colored dots to the end user in a network transparent way. The X Window System we have today has grown and adopted all the modern features of any window system. It is still the only game in town for network transparent desktops.
The best way to manage more than 1 computer is to use thin clients running X window and use a single machine as the application server. Buy pentium 200 machines from a surplus store for $25 and have them connect to the main server running XDM. You can easily connect 20 X terminals up to a 100MB switch and run a copy of Mozilla, Gimp, and Open Office and a dozen other apps on each desktop without a problem. If the server was a dual Athlon with 2 GB of RAM it could easily support a hundred users. And all this while the one server box also ran a web server, a database and automated scripts did the end of month calculations in the background.
So, lets see, I spend $12,000 for all the hardware and software to support 100 users and only have to ever replace the hardware when it breaks, and when a desktop machine does break it takes 5 minutes to replace and while a persons machine was down they could have just logged into another terminal.
Compared to... I have to pay $100 a year for each desktop just for the software and it takes a $600 computer to do the work. Plus I need a seperate server for the web server and the database and the domain server and the backup domain server and each of those needs 1 user license per person that is going to access them. Call that another $10 per person per year. And all the Hardware has to be replaced every 5 years so we can keep running MS's latest and greatest. Call that $12,000 per year forever... and I was being nice. Not to mention the backups, software installation on each machine, the viruses, the down time when a persons machine goes down, and license hassles that being a microsoft shop entails.
I figure that it is at least 5 times more expensive being an MS shop than a Linux shop for hardware and software and it is twice as expensive to hire people to support Windows boxes.
THIS is why Linux is not #2 on the desktop. (Score:2, Insightful)
Linux is a great OS, stable as hell, ditto for Mac OS X. What Linux needs to offer that is not available in other operating systems is a user interface that is completely comfingurable from an idiots perspective. Average Joe Smith and Jane Doe are not going to mess around in emacs and writing config files. The operating system should have user interfaces that take advantage of the profession in which it's being used. For business people, use more icons for drag and drop, for science nerds and geeks, use the command line. Mac OS X goes in this direction but one can't really modify the UI that much, you're still locked into Apple's Aqua. There have to be psychological studies of how people in certain professions process information. Building a user interface on top of or rebuilding the desktop is a good start. What I'm getting at is that the user should be able to create a UI that works best for them, just like we all saw in Star Trek TNG on the bridge at the LCARS stations; they were specific to who was working at them. Build a Linux operating system that comes with KDE, Gnome, Business GUI Standard 1, Business GUI Standard 2, Engineering Standard 1, Chemistry Standard 2, you get the idea. It all comes down to making a GUI to run on top of the operating system. The work still gets done, it's just that the UI is optimized for the person using the computer at that time. When THIS ALONE will improve worker efficiency and increase profits for companies by decreasing dependence on M$ and better worker performance, then M$ will be dethroned.
Linux is NOT ready for the desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a huge advocate of Linux on the desktop (yet)
I want to be, but I can't (yet). [grin]
Here's the problem:
To put Linux on the desktop, we're asking them to give up the comfort, familiarity and applications of Windows. For what benefits?
Poor applications. Quoting an e-mail I received: "But a lot of it - and mainly the GUI stuff - is still lagging behind, being a slower and buggier version of a half-decent program on Windows. And priorities are wonderful - when we build a GUI application, the most important thing is that it's skinnable. Bugs? Features? Competition? Who cares?! It's skinnable!"
The same writer continues... "And for the biggest question: Mr. Rupert wants a financial software for Linux (his son installed it for him). So he calls his son over to install a simple financial software - just something which can calculate his loan repayments. His son opens google (or freshmeat), and finds 31 financial programs. Each has a different set of features, of course. He downloads and compiles each of them (ah, yes, the rpm was compiled using an ancient glibc version, and no, Mr. Rupert doesn't know what glibc is). The only two candidates which could actually be compiled (and didn't require libobscure.so.2) and actually have this option in their ugly programmer-designed-GUI menus die as soon as you choose the option. That's right - the operating system is stable as a rock, but the programs die immediately. What's Mr. Rupert going to use? hmm.... Maybe a respectable program from a respectable company (on Windows, of course).
But wait! John Rupert (the little 15 year old) can program - he's got some C tutorials, and he's written a few small programs. Why can't he write the program for his father? And the 32nd version is on its way."
We need to work on this stuff. Linux still isn't ready for the desktop [glowingplate.com].
Don't push for linux on the desktop (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to see the success of alternative OSes, don't push for linux on the desktop - push for open standards and cross platform programs. Right now, I can sit down at a linux machine or a windows machine, and use Open Office, Mozilla, the Gimp, Blender, and a ton of other programs. That is good.
I don't want to be tied to Microsoft. That doesn't mean I want to be tied to Linux either. (Although Linux would be a gentler master then windows). I prefer to have applications divorced from the data files which are divorced from the underlying OS. I don't want YetAnotherAudioApp that has its own enhanced file format that isn't cross platform. I want mp3s, I want oggs. I don't want to save my work in the unknown Microsoft Office whatever .doc format. Hell, I don't really like saving it in Open Office's .sxw really, but I know if its in .sxw, I could figure out the file format without too much difficulty, and at least Open Office is cross platform.
If you don't keep data in proprietary formats, its harder to get screwed in the long run.
Re:Yeah, but not for free. (Score:3, Insightful)
The "Zealots" don't care one way or another about whether they have "24/7" support, because they've happily fixed their own problems for years, and anyone brought out on a support call would be someone very much like them.
CIOs care very much, because they may not *have* a Zealot handy, and are interested in covering their ass (not to ensure that the *system* keeps working...to have someone *else* to blame if something hypothetically goes wrong).
Applications sell the OS not the other way around (Score:2, Insightful)
The Amiga had graphics and great multitasking. The Mac had/has desktop publishing and a windowing system that was/is easy for the average user. The PC was/is cheap and software was/is plentiful.
In order for LINUX to to become a true desktop contendor, there has to be some application that makes people WANT to buy a LINUX system. This application's appeal must in some way do something that Windows cannot do or do well but that LINUX can do well.
Example, I bought an Amiga way back because the PC (hardware and OS) COULD'NT do what it could do. Even my mother was amazed at the time. Another example was with the MAC, the PC COULD'NT do desktop publishing (well...not nearly as well) as due to the way the OS was designed (interface and all).
Bottom line. Somebody needs to think of GNU/LINUX's REAL advantages and make a killer app that uses those SPECFIC advantages. Then when and if it's a success, people will WANT to use GNU/LINUX just for the use of the app. Then it snowballs from there.
Re:the sound of the Empire collapsing (Score:3, Insightful)
You're completely right that Joe Average wants nothing to do with recompiling kernels. But since you seem willing to tweak directory names when necessary, why not try Gentoo [gentoo.org]? The Portage system they have developed is pure genius, as far as I can tell. It does all the directory tweaking for you!
IanRe:the sound of the Empire collapsing (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, Windows Update is great! MS has really got that one nailed down. Applying hotfixes to your os is as easy as pie now.
I'm also really glad that MS has a tool that keeps the thousands of software packages I could have installed on my system up to date with just a couple of simple click!. I can update all my office software, my compilers, editors, media players, etc. Why the hell would I want to try and track down updates to the 40 different apps I use every day when Windows Update does them all in one?
Oh wait, Windows Update updates my OS and my browser, which is apparently part of the OS. Nothing more. Face it, urmpi, or whatever, might not have been perfect but there is NOTHING like it in the Windows world. Debian has now got over 3,000 packages which all seem to play quite well with each other via apt-get from my experience, and I can update every single app in two single commands. I could make it one and put a shiny icon on my desktop if I felt like it, but I don't.
You're comparing apples and oranges. Yes, they seem similar, but even Windows Update doesn't update all of your MS software in one fell swooop. Shit, on an outdated box it'll take 3-10 reboots to get Win2k up to speed. That's nutty -- I just upgrade an old Debian 2.2 box to Debian 3.0 without a reboot, and nothing broke. Not a single app out of the 300 or so installed on it.
As soon as Windows Update can do my OS, my browser, my development environment (Visual Studio), my DB management software (SQL Server Enterprise Manager) and my office software, we'll have something to quibble about. I can understand that it doesn't update my standard text editor (vim), as that's not an MS product, but even their own stuff doesn't have a one-stop shop for all their software updates.
That's just sad, considering many Windows advocates proclaim that they simplified the desktop by making everything just like every other application. Please -- give me a break.
Find any app that'll do that on Windows and just watch it crumble. You might say it's impossible because Windows has too many apps, which I would agree with, but it can't even update the MS software on it's own. Sad -- just sad.
Justin Buist
Lame, lame, lame. (Score:3, Insightful)
These never were the goals, and they will never be the goals. Posting articles like this makes it look like this is some kind of war, which it is not. Who the hell cares if M$ owns the desktop? The point is not to be #1, it is to make good, free (as in speech) software, for the sake of making it. It is an artistic endeavor, not a business endeavor, or haven't you all even looked at gnu.org [gnu.org]? As long as there are artists, there will be an audience that wants to see what is being created. And, beyond that, there is the joy of creating. All of this talk of an OS battle completely misses the point.
B
Windows comfort? What Windows comfort? (Score:2, Insightful)
Windows "comfort"? What Windows "comfort"?
Every time I have installed a Microsoft operating system, I have had to start a mad search through my whole room, look under my bed, behind books, in the bread box for those stupid device driver CDs that the hardware makers ship for Windows, because Windows won't support the hardware out of the box. All I get is "new hardware found" and have to screw around with installing it by hand. And if I happen to have thrown out that CD by some stroke of bad luck, then I have to spend hours on the Internet to find a site that will let me download the driver without having to a) register or b) pay or c) both. Is this what you call comfort?
With SuSE at least (can't speak for the other distributions), I put the DVD in the machine, boot it, and -- presto! -- it just installs stuff (big and annoying exception: nVidia drivers, because the company is too elite to let SuSE include them. Guess why I switched to ATI). No extra CDs, no getting out the Windows CD again, and no reboots. Now, you could say that reinstalling the OS is a rare thing, except that Microsoft's new plan is to force me to keep upgrading and upgrading and upgrading every few years -- again, is this what you call "comfort"?
The idea that Linux is harder to install than Windows has reached the status of an urban legend (or Microsoft FUD) -- this is 2003, not 1997.
Re:Linux is NOT ready for the desktop (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm actually an advocate of linux on the desktop (yes I am) and it seems those points you mentionned don't make much sense, here's why.
I'm an advocate of Linux on the desktop, too. I can't wait to see it. But from the perspective of an *average user*, I'm still convinced that it isn't ready. We *need* the average user to feel *more* comfortable working at a Linux desktop than a Windows machine, especially since he's gonna have to deal with a Windows world trying to suck him back into its comfortable embrace... at least until we've finished the takeover of the desktop.
- 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!This is good. I cannot corroborate it using a pre-compiled distro. Why am I using a pre-compiled distro? Because that's what Joe Sixpack is gonna be using. More optimization is needed, and more carefully made binaries are required from the major distros; especially Red Hat in the current #1 off-the-shelf position.
I think part of the problem is that we need developers to try actually using the pre-compiled binaries of their works which end up being shipped with the Red Hats and the Mandrakes of the world.
- 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 dailyMost of them have formatting problems, cannot handle inline images (properly or at all). Table support from Word 2000 is lacking. I know this is a serious pain in the ass to reverse engineer, but it merely frustrates end-users who are already gonna be pissed off about having to learn something new when their company moves to Linux.
- I have had problems with some applications, contacted the mailing list, and the solution was sent to me a few minutes later... no RTFM.You're not Joe Sixpack. "How come it says I cannot save my file in /bin? Huh? I didn't log in as root, whoever that is." Screams of RTFM or "Get a life" would abound on mailing lists or IRC, whereas a 1-900-DRONE would calmly answer, explain, and the user would be supported. Sure, the example I cited is an operating system issue instead of an application issue, but it's a problem every bit as simple, stupid and pervasive.
- 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.KMail is great, the only programming complaint I've had with it is that it silently dies if it runs out of disk space. But the spellchecker is right out of 1995. We have to match feature-for-feature to be adopted. You're not going to sell Linux/KDE (or Linux/Gnome or OpenBSD/AfterStep or whatever) by screaming from the hilltops, "ALL THE FEATURES OF WINDOWS 3.1!" in a Windows XP world.
Evolution was too slow to be usable on my PIII-500. That's insane. It's just an e-mail client, not a genome sequencer, for Gawd's sake!
- 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 glitchIt's a good start, yes.
But the biggest problem is that if a feature which an Excel user would take for granted is lacking, it's a negative perception. Most users will already resist the change to something new and "strange".
We've grown up with the idea of piping the output from one program to another; it's the Unix way. But it's *not* acceptable on a desktop system. You don't do your spreadsheet in OpenOffice Calc, then save it in some format that Gnumeric handles so that you can use the point-and-click data analysis tools, then open int up in OpenOffice again. If you're paying a secretary $20/hr to do this, it doesn't take more that a few months to make back what you would have spent to install Windows on the machine.
- 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 indeedI don't know how well Evolution handles e-mail. My main machine is over the hill, but easily captures video from my TV card in real-time. I find it hard to believe that responding to e-mail in Evolution should require such a fast computer as to be unusable on a machine which will capture NTSC video at 29.97FPS with 16 bit stereo sound with 0 dropped frames... (unless I open Evolution while I'm capturing video).
Mozilla is great. It's fast, attractive, and it works well. The only problems I have with it are fault tolerance (delete your JRE without telling Mozilla, then try to use a website infected with applets; it crashes with no warning), lack of ability to send a mailto: link to anything other than Mozilla's mail client, and the inability to tailor the browser string to be whatever I want without recompiling (at least one website I *have* to use will ban you if your browser doesn't say "MSIE" in its string).
- 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.For sure. This is a good step. But part of the problem is with the overall look of it. Red Hat 7.3, for example, with probably the biggest marketing department in the Linux world, comes with a highly saturated eye-straining blue background [kde.org].
Contrast this to the relatively neutral backgrounds of Windows and Mac environments, and it looks more like we're trying to sell a product than design something useful out of the box.
Even XP's default meadow is less eye-straining.
If some Joe Sixpacks can't figure out how to move the Windows taskbar to someplace they like better, do you really think they'll change the backgrounds and skins to something less displeasing? The desktop's defaults must be *neutral*, *inoffensive* and *non-eyestrain-inducing* out of the box with *every* distribution.
- 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.Who do you call when you need support with OpenOffice or xine? I haven't tried either; I've got the luxury of being able to pursue the source code.
I do know that at one of my former employers - a huge defense contractor staffed by engineers and computer scientists - we spent a lot of our IT budget on calls to Microsoft looking for support on how to create PowerPoint slides with embedded video and other dead-easy things like that.
Sucky as that may be, it's reality for lots of organizations. We have to address that.
- 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.Sorry. $299, according to the Microsoft website, for Windows XP Professional, in single units, as a standalone operating system instead of an upgrade.
It remains that the purchase price is a very, very small part of the total cost of ownership.
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...This is true, but let's stop kidding ourselves about it being ready. It's not ready for the desktop yet [glowingplate.com].
Linux has made amazing strides since its inception a mere 10 years ago. It's already a secure and stable server operating system, with mature tools for sysadmins.
But it's still at workstation space. We can take heart; it's more usable on the desktop than a $30,000 Sun workstation, but it's still not ready to supplant Windows yet.
The biggest obstacles are not the Linux kernel, or even Linux itself, of course. The obstacles are a fast, feature-filled and stable desktop metaphore (be it KDE or Gnome or whatever) with good *USER* applications readily available. (Don't even bother sending me flames telling me that vi is the greatest word processor ever made because Joe Sixpack isn't gonna even gonna figure out how to bring up the help screen.)
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!I can't wait to see what it's like 20 years from now.
I've been waiting 15 years to see the end of Windows.
Re:Linux is NOT ready for the desktop (Score:4, Insightful)
However, when we say it's not ready for the desktop let's be clear about who are our target users. Are we talking about business or home use? Both have very different needs.
There are office packages for Linux that will do everything that a business needs and there are mail clients and web browsers and various financial packages both open source and proprietary that will do nicely.
No, I think that we are VERY close to being business desktop ready. It's the home user that I think will be harder to please. Mostly in the area of games. Linux has proven to be a vary capable gaming platform. Quake 3 is still very popular and has a native Linux port that has better frame rates than does the Windows version (See Tom's Hardware for benchmarks.) My point being that the lack of gaming support is not a technical issue but rather a financial issue. We are kind of in a catch 22. We need users (who are willing to pay for programs) to draw large software shops to write popular applications but we need large software shops to write popular applications to draw users who are willing to pay for applications.
I know that Linux has a ton of applications and a lot of them are very high quality. However without these application getting any publicity no one but us geeks know about them.
Microsoft is doing it's best to stop the spread of Linux and open source software but they will lose the battle eventually. With their enormous resources they may be dead and still twitching for a long, long time. If they were smart they would see the writing on the wall and adapt. But there are too many egos at stake and they are too entrench in the old style of control to do so. It would be better for them to bend like the reed instead to trying to stand like the oak. Oh well, it is for them to sort out.
Anyway, look for Linux to start taking the desktop within three to five years. Maybe not in the United States first but security issues will start to move other governments away from Redmond's OS and to open source. There is no other way that they can be sure that the software does not include backdoors mandated by the US for spying purposes. Any foreign leader who knows about the presidential jet that we sold to China knows that the US government will order companies to install spying devices. It would be foolish to believe that we would order these devices put on a jet but not order Microsoft to put spying abilities into the versions of their OS that gets sold out of country. (Or maybe even within the US also.)
Re:Yeah, but not for free. (Score:3, Insightful)
As opposed to Microsoft that only charges $250.00 + per incident?
Re:DVDs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a good start though ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I really fail to see why so many people seem to care so much about whether or not "mainstream users" are using Linux on their PCs. As long as it works for you, and you can get done what you need to get done, why worry?
I use Linux (curently Mandrake 9) exclusively at work. I do have XP installed under VMWare, but hardly ever use it. I'm a Java programmer, writing server-side code for websites, and so have no need for Windows; Linux does everything I need. For those few doc files that OpenOffice can't handle, I have VMWare & XP.
At home, I recently bought (yes, bought) a copy of XP Pro. That's because I play a lot of games, and until I can walk into a shop and buy any game I want knowing that it'll work under Linux, I "need" Windows.
I used to care deeply about getting people to use Linux, especially my fellow programmers (I was the first non-sysadmin at my company to install Linux on their PC, having finally gotten the go-ahead from management). Over time, though, I came to realise that it really doesn't matter.
There are enough people passionate enough about Linux that I need not worry about it dying out any time soon. All the hardware I need to use is supported, and I can get development tools for most languages for it (even C# is being worked on!). Why should I care how many people I've never met and never will have any contact with are using it?
The right tool for the right job, but also, the right tool for the right person.
Re:Not according to Google... (Score:1, Insightful)
technology searches:
3. linux
but only:
9. microsoft
perhaps we are gaining.
Re:It's a good start though ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Over the past 2 years the desktop has become a lot better and in some area even a lot better than the windows desktop to my opinion.
Perhaps for some people there's a lack on major application like Adobe Photoshop(etc...), but certainly when judging the OS by itself it works magnificent I believe.
Many windows users I know are still on win98 and don't like to upgrade to later versions because their old hardware isn't supported in XP or it's simply too expensive they feel. So for those users I'd have to compare the current Linux desktop with win98 and I would certainly say that Linux would be a clear winner.
Re:Right. (Score:2, Insightful)
My idea of a desktop computer would include a Macintosh too. What is this other definition some people are supposedly using?