Friedman on Linux Desktop Expectations 347
An anonymous reader writes "SearchEnterpriseLinux.com is featuring an interview with Novell/Ximian's Nat Friedman on the increasing interest about the Linux desktop. Quote from the interview - "A day doesn't go by when I don't talk to a Fortune 1000 customer from the financial services market, automotives or others that are not looking at dipping their feet into the Linux desktop."
And by the way, both Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza's April 12th blog entry have a picture of Miguel and Nat dancing with David Vaskevitch, CTO of Microsoft. Now that's something you don't get to see everyday!"
Re:We need a new toolkit... (Score:4, Insightful)
EASE OF PROGRAMMING.
All the existing toolkits have APIs that are daunting to say the least.
Fortune 500 TRIES anything, uses a few (Score:4, Insightful)
They have some Linux around. Little utility type functions.
At a company > 10,000 people, there is a difference between "interested" & "using" and in "we are using it for critical systems and rely on it and recommend it and tell our partners to use it."
But then, lots of large fortune 100 wall st companies have had "the future" of desktop unix years ago. They just forget the part where I could fix problems around the world without moving my chair. When admins cost more, but you needed half as many.
Re:You know what this means, right? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the interest? (Score:4, Insightful)
In a vacum, this is not impressive. Is the interest in Desktop Linux due to quality of the platform, available technologies, developer friendly environment, ease of integration, or is it simply based on cost.
If its simply cost then, well, where is the pride in that? As a true propeller-head, I find winning on price, well, cheap.
Re:National lab? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then I guess he's going to have a hard sell to make. After pulling a no-show with nearly 100 participants planned (most of whom are in a position to make purchasing decisions), we are certainly going to be taking any claims regarding customer service with a sizable grain of salt.
Had we given Microsoft's representative a similar opportunity, they would have crawled over broken glass with a killer fever to make the meeting.
Determination to meet the client on their terms and on their time is what makes a sale. Having a superior technology with crappy customer service will not make it.
Re:Basics tasks & understanding of the UI (on (Score:5, Insightful)
If anything this just goes to show how much the average consumer cares about usability. Most consumers don't really care how usable their software is. Usability and $0.50 will get you a Snickers bar. Don't get me wrong. I think that Apple really does have the edge when it comes to making usable systems. Especially if you don't have to share documents and files with Windows users. However, when push comes to shove, consumers want "usable enough" at the lowest price, and that's not Apple.
Re:X works just fine thank you (Score:3, Insightful)
If there are other ways to do the same job better, shouldn't they be explored? Assuming that X is some perfect protocol is just stupid.
Re:We need a new toolkit... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I think you will just pile another GUI toolkit on to an already large pile, and create a new set of applications with a whole new look and feel. In particular you seem to be understating the major effort you are proposing either intentionally or unintentionally.
First off it takes a lot of work to develop a complete GUI toolkit from scratch. Once you do it then you have to migrate a large body of applications to it which is probably a larger effort than developing the toolkit in the first place. Are you planning to rewrite all the applications in GNOME and/or KDE, OpenOffice, Mozilla etc. How long do you figure that will take. It would take a long time and it would be time spent not developing the capabilities of the applications. In many respects it would be hitting a master reset on the Linux desktop and starting over, which isn't likely to lead to world domination for at least a few years.
Chances are you wont even get a majority of the developers on some of these major projects to buy in to your new toolkit, though some probably will so you will probably end up with a bunch of new splinters.
I'm just not sure what it is about GUI toolkits and window managers that exert this constant allure on geeks, compelling them to constantly develop new ones, the vast majority of which never develop critical mass.
But hey, maybe through superior uber geekness you will develop a new superior uber geek toolkit and you will be able to migrate a complete set of applications to it, and all others will be abandoned in the face of its superiority. Its just seems like something of a long shot. One thing positive I can say about this plan is it might be the only way to end the death match between GNOME and KDE.
Exactly how much time were you estimating to achieve this grand unified GUI?
Re:Basics tasks & understanding of the UI (on (Score:2, Insightful)
That doesn't make any sense at all! Sending email and surfing a web page are tasks one does through an application. You don't send an email using Windows or Linux, you send it using Outlook, Mozilla, Eudora, etc. Whoever tries to judge the usability of an entire OS by throwing around test results for unnamed applications is a total moron.
Re:Basics tasks & understanding of the UI (on (Score:1, Insightful)
"Usability" in the corporate world is defined more on the application level -- how easy is it to access/create/share corporate information. (These are people who got along using Windows 3.1, because it allowed them to run MS Office/Lotus Notes/Netscape/etc.)
There's all too much Start Menu debate on slashdot -- for business desktops, it doesn't really matter. Having StarOffice come up short against MS Office is a far bigger issue.
Interest or hope? (Score:4, Insightful)
Today's Linux desktops fall over themselves trying to act similar to Windows, while having the unfortunate problem of not being even as consistent as Windows. This problem is rooted in the whole X11+Gnome+GTK+KDE+Qt+Ximian+Lestif+kitchen sink quagmire that is required to supply the pieces of this quite disjointed user experience.
In my not so humble opinion, the interest for the Linux desktop is the hope of Microsoft liberation, without scrapping existing hardware. This is quite silly, as the cost of the disruption in retraining all of the users, will far outweigh the cost of either switching to a useable, coherent UNIX desktop like Mac OS X, or staying on the MS Treadmill. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix here, as the bazaar is not willing to collaborate on a unified, coherent Linux Desktop.
-- Len
Re:We need a new toolkit... (Score:4, Insightful)
Can someone remind me (Score:2, Insightful)
conspiracy theorist, start your engines! (Score:3, Insightful)
Please, prove me pessemistic
Re:Can someone remind me (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be really nice if I could just get rid of the copy of Windows I have on my hard drive, but the fact is that I cannot because there are many programs and some pieces of hardware I have that will only work in Windows. The only way to escape this is for software and hardware makers to have motivation to make sure that Linux is supported, and the only way this will happen is if they will lose significant sales if they do not support Linux.
Thus, the reason we want big companies to support Linux is because it encourages others to make sure that their hardware/software supports Linux, which in turn makes Linux attractive to more people, which in turn gets us better hardware/software support, etc. In other words, maybe we could finally get the network effect working in our favor.
Re:X works just fine thank you (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course not. The 150K/s is probably an mean over time of all clients' usage, not a sustained transfer - if it were, Ethernet would been designed to be circuit switched like the PSTN and not packet switched
Re:I guess you've never used Mandrake Linux, then? (Score:3, Insightful)
K3B is a CD burner program.
The other has me stumped, too.
It would be nice - but boring, too - if OSS used some sort of rational, boring, corporate software names instead of hacker handles to name software.
Although not everyone gets "Nero Burning ROM" either, you know.
Re:Can desktop linux ever be sold? (Score:2, Insightful)
They can sell you a desktop system with full groupware capability and centralized management. I don't think anybody else (not even IBM) can do that.
Re:We need a new toolkit... (Score:3, Insightful)
But the beauty of separating out the look and feel of the toolkit from the implementation of the toolkit via a network protocol is that porting the widget set to a new platform is now much more straightforward: you simply have to write a widget server on the target platform, which will take widget requests and display them through the native widget set.
Where you'll have to write some code is when the native widget set is missing a widget type defined by the protocol. In that event you have a couple of options: reject the protocol request, or implement the look and feel of the widget in software (using as much of the native widget set as possible, of course). You can always do the latter -- how else do you think new widget types are created on a platform such as Windows?
No, this isn't the problem. The problem is that right now the existing widget sets under Linux all implement their own look and feel. They've duplicated a lot of effort as a result.
With a widget protocol, you implement GTK or QT the same way as before, except that whenever possible you make widget protocol calls instead of doing direct drawing, mouse handling, etc. For cases when the widget protocol doesn't supply the kind of widget you want, you'll have to implement the look/feel in terms of more primitive graphics calls (and thus the widget protocol will have to support the ability to do direct graphics, including 3D graphics) -- but even that should be done on top of existing widgets whenever possible.
There might be other ways to approach the problem of extensibility, e.g. by making it possible to dynamically define to the widget server the properties of a widget: the inputs it expects, the areas that have to be drawn on, etc. But I haven't thought any of that through.
Re:Basics tasks & understanding of the UI (on (Score:3, Insightful)
Nobody "uses a total OS" - you use applications that are built on top of an OS.
Only when you have to CONFIGURE the OS - for hardware or software installation or user maintenance or some other ADMINISTRATIVE task - or when the OS PERFORMANCE is an issue - do you need to worry about an OS's "usability".
Since UNIX still runs most of the world's servers, I'd say it's still an open issue as to which OS is more usable FOR ADMINISTRATORS.
Re:Can desktop linux ever be sold? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oddly enough, you seem to be describing the exact same methods and challenges facing proprietary software. Let's compare....
Some elements of proprietary software certainly uses "per-seat" licensing. Niche software producers will certainly see per-seat licensing as its main income. However, those who sell OS' tend to play fast and loose with the value of a seat. Microsoft sells boxes - but the big deals are Enterprise and OEM licenses. Apple sells upgrades but OSX is really more about pushing their hardware. And, of course, companies like IBM and Sun use their OS as a hook to sell hardware.
The per-seat license is certainly common enough in proprietary software. But when it comes to a desktop OS, it isn't the money-maker it might appear to be.
I'm amazed that you discount this so quickly. Every piece of hardware and software I've ever deployed in an enterprise involves support. In some cases, we accept a greater level of support ourselves. However, even as we pick out the most promising technology, anything with a commercial backer has some kind of support attached to the purchase order. Even when it's easy to use.
Microsoft does a fairly brisk business in support contracts. And, of course, the basis of IBM's Linux interest is that they make their money pushing hardware and, to a major extent, selling service.
Another point that you discounted early was the "tied to your mothership for patches" model. That is another support model. Enter RedHat. They aren't selling software, they're selling support. You can get all their software without a fee. However, you will either have to find your own sources for RPM updates or build your own.
Yes, this is a risky model. But it is also very common with proprietary software. There are plenty of products that offer a base at a very reasonable rate, or even without a fee, and additional functionality that can be purchased through modules, other products, etc.
Sure - your overall message is spot on. But it can be applied to any business in the IT industry. It is not all that unique to Linux vendors.
Re:Can someone remind me (Score:3, Insightful)
Today I came home from work and relaxed with a bit of Neverwinter Nights and Enemy Territory. Sometimes I'll play Unreal Tournament 2004 but I cut my goofing-off short. I connected to my work's employee VPN server, downloaded some documents I've been working on, and began hashing out some work that's been sneaking up on me this week. Did some system configuration at work. Uploaded my modifications. Called it a night.
This all from my Linux-only home workstation.
I would not have been able to do all this if there wasn't corporate interest in Linux.
Re:On package management (Score:3, Insightful)
> stopped working on his new Linux box.
I've done that too several times on my Red Hat 7.3 system. Tried installing K3b because the version of KonCD on 7.3 was crap. Couldn't install K3b due to various issues.
Well, I can easily upgrade to a more recent distro - I HAVE Mandrake 9.2, Fedora Core I, etc. But I want to upgrade my 7.3 slowly to current so I get the experience doing it.
So while I was booting one of my various live CD's the other day, I used the fully installed K3b on the CD to backup my system - neat as a pin.
Old Linux is crap. Windows is crap. New Linux is crap - just less crap.
More important, Linux is FREE crap - so I'm not getting reamed financially as well as spiritually dealing with this crap.
There is NO software that "just works" - no matter what Mac people claim. We just have to deal with it until there is.
I spent the day trying to compile an Oracle Forms app - the stupid product would compile it, tell me it was compiled, THEN NOT SAVE IT ANYWHERE THAT I COULD FIND IT! And not only that, NOWHERE in the product can you set a path for the destination of the compiled app! Fucking unbelievable!
Oracle Forms has a couple 500-page books to explain it - and NOWHERE does it tell you where the compiled app goes. It SHOULD logically go in the same directory where the source form is - well, it didn't.
Tell me Windows software is easier to use. Go on, tell me.
Hardware is crap. Software is crap. In the immortal words of the Twentieth Century's greatest philosopher, Woody Allen, who summed up the human condition in five words: "Nothing works and nobody cares."
Complaining about Linux usability is truly laughable.
NONE OF IT IS USABLE. Ted Nelson said at a West Coast Computer Faire many years ago that there was NO acceptable software on the market. He meant it dead seriously and he was totally right. And he is still right today.
But again, at least Linux is cheap or free.
How a corporation can suggest that it would be more expensive to use Linux crap than Windows crap is just laughable.
If that corporation is worried about training costs outweighing license savings, I submit they should be worrying about stupid corporate practices outweighing both of them.
But then, I suppose stupid corporate practices has to be taken as an environmental given, not subject to change or improvement.
In which case, why bother whether Linux is ever taken up by them? It simply won't be no matter what the OSS community does. Even if we develop Hal 9000 in OSS, the corps still won't get it.
Let them eat Windows - and choke on it.
Re:We need a new toolkit... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:We need a new toolkit... (Score:3, Insightful)
> managers that exert this constant allure on geeks, compelling them to constantly develop
> new ones, the vast majority of which never develop critical mass.
Personally I'm glad they do.
Otherwise we'd be stuck with the visual appeal of Athena and the efficiency of Motif.
Today's QT is yesterdays Tk.
Yes the cost of rapid improvement seems to be UI inconsistency. To me that's worth the price.
- MugginsM
Re:We need a new toolkit... (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm suspicious when people say that GTK and Qt will become obsolete - this may be related to some political bollocks going on at Novell. Whatever, it is no excuse to tell everyone that you are inventing something new for the sake of it.
You heard me right. The right way to do a toolkit is to make it networkable in a client/server fashion. There are a few reasons for doing so:
I've seen Qt apps go over a network, and they look great.
This is markedly different from the current situation with GTK, QT, and all other Unix widget sets, each of which implements its own look and feel. A client/server architecture can, and should, abstract out the look and feel of the widget set.
What is required is some low-level commonality, not an entire over-arching new toolkit, otherwise you will simply get the forking situation we have today. We need to bring GTK, Qt, Java and others together in a decent common way that does not impact on the diversity of those toolkits and environments.
Do it that way and I think it's likely that you'll finally eliminate the one big problem on the Unix desktop: the disparity in look and feel between applications written for different widget toolkits.
This is Microsoft talking. You are not going to get one, Mono anything
Re:Basics tasks & understanding of the UI (on (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the easy part. The difficult part is to scale down.