Where Does Linux Go From Here? 360
With the success that Linux is currently enjoying Linux.com (also owned by SourceForge, Inc) asks the question, where do we go from here? With such a high level of success and greater corporate participation (on both the consumer and provider fronts) will the spirit of freedom and idealism remain true or will the ever-present corporate bottom line eventually take over? "Linux is surrounded by proprietary IT firms. Some of them view Linux as a profit maker, others as a threat to their profits. Both sides represent a challenge for Linux in holding to its ideals of freedom and openess. The first large IT firm to really grok Linux was IBM. It has a long and mutually beneficial association with Linux, Apache, and other FOSS projects. The company has learned the language and the mores of the FOSS world, and has made significant code contributions as part of those projects along the way."
not an enterprise operating system (Score:2, Informative)
Re:not an enterprise operating system (Score:2, Informative)
SNMP is pretty standardized
Re:One day, but not today (Score:5, Informative)
Proprietary driver manager pops up, asks you if you want to install the driver and d/l the firmware, auto installs it and network manager pops up to connect. Easier than in windoze.
ALSA/OSS:
These days the only time you'd ever need to mess with these settings is to
a) record something using either USB or built in mic's. Record something in windows without messing with a control panel.
b) use it with an app installed through wine, and even then not so often.
Re:Linux isn't done yet (Score:3, Informative)
I could only find a thread for this from google with one response, which the guy never replied to so I'm not sure what makes you think the given solution didn't work? Is there another thread? Feel free to let him know about the above repository.
Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook (Score:5, Informative)
The Linux clipboard is a perfectly conventional clipboard although it has some minor differences at the nuts and bolts level. (Unlike Windows and Mac, it doesn't move any data until a Paste is requested). Clipboards are an application level entity not an OS thing. All the OS does is allow the destination to talk to the source and vice versa. Unix in general and Linux in particular allow non-text objects to be moved via the clipboard just as easily as they do text objects. But the applications need to support that. Some do. Some Don't. Same is true for Windows.
You, can, for example, use the clipboard to copy images from a web site viewed in Konqueror to Kword. You can't copy the same image from the same web site viewed in Firefox, but that's because Firefox doesn't support it, not because Linux doesn't.
The only clipboard thing that is actually different in Linux is that the text mode clipboard for tty consoles is a different clipboard than the GUI clipboard (so that it can work if the GUI is dead or not started). But if you run a console application in a terminal program under the GUI, it uses the GUI clipboard so you can move text to and from console applications if you need to.
Re:More patting ourselves on the back!! (Score:4, Informative)
Lunix is a unix-like OS for the C-64. There's probably about 15 or 20 people worldwide who use it.
Re:I know where you can go... (Score:2, Informative)
- User-friendliness. Instructions on how to accomplish something should never involve command line anything. Some users just don't get it.
- Software support. Start pushing major vendors to make Linux versions. Start with major tools like graphics suites and IDEs. Then games. For example, I need Dreamweaver for it's code editor and Photoshop. And no, I don't want to use Gimp or buy the bloody expensive PHP IDE when I already own Dreamweaver licenses.
- Hardware support. Drivers for all my stuff.
- Make sure that the whole OS has integrated Help for anything you want to do. Again... no "Open a command window and...".
-Work on the attitude of the Linux fans on various support forms so they don't laugh at basic user questions. I need a supportive and friendly environment where I can go to for help.
It's been a while since I was looking into these, can anyone let me know if any (or all) of my points are already solved?
Well, I've been using Linux since 1995, so I've seen it go through many changes. I just installed Ubuntu 7.10 and was amazed at how far they have gotten and how well it worked (I wasn't too impressed with the last two released). Using this distro, I'll address your points:
User friendless: I still do things from the command-line out of habit, but then find that I could've done the same thing from a GUI settings manager. Barring something unusual, I think the typical user could get by without ever having to use the command-line.
Software support: I don't see how to push commercial software vendors other than a mass-migration to Linux. Commercial entities can only be manipulated by money and potential for gaining/losing profits. The only real choices the community has is to develop alternatives or work on improving things like WINE to support popular software such as Photoshop/Dreamweaver. I believe at least older versions of Photoshop work in WINE.
Hardware support: Similar problem to software support. This problem lies with the vendors for not supporting Linux. But its difficult to get them to release Linux drivers, especially open-source drivers or closed-source drivers that are kept up-to-date. People can reverse-engineer drivers, but this is especially difficult in things as complex as Wifi drivers. Wifi support is quite good these days, if you buy the right hardware and don't need any bleeding-edge features. My wifi card was supported out-of-box with 7.10. So was power-management (Suspend, Hibernate) and other features (CPU scaling, battery monitoring, etc) necessary for laptop use. It's important to buy the right hardware if you want a pain-free Linux experience, however. You wouldn't buy a copy of OS X and then expect it to work on any hardware.
Integrated help: Haven't checked this out yet.
Attitude of Linux fans: I understand that you have to deal with these people if you go to user-driven support forums. Supposedly, Ubuntu forums are quite friendly from what I hear. I don't spend too much time in support forums myself, so I don't know. Personally, I'd like to see Apple fans quit being such douchebags, but that doesn't stop me from using it. Expecting some kind of mass change in human behavior is just unrealistic. However, the more normal people that start using Linux, the more there will be a change in overall attitude, because more regular people will be using it to outnumber the rabid fanatics. I've actually noticed that trend with Apple, and a general decrease in douchebaggery, but the core douchebags are still there if you look in the right places. This is because Macs have appealed to a wider audience by switching to Intel and allowing Windows easily in VM's or natively. Linux is experiencing something similar, but the people with the attitudes will still be around.
Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook (Score:1, Informative)
1. Copy something to clipboard.
2. Close the application.
3. Start another application
4. Paste. On Windows and Mac, it works. On Linux, nothing happens.
Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook (Score:3, Informative)
For all of the fancy explanation in the parent post what you've stated is the truth. The clipboard does not function as expected for many, probabably a majority, of users.
It simply doesn't have the capability of other Operating Systems. This is a problem.
Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook (Score:4, Informative)