Should Being Competitive With Windows Matter For Linux? 645
An anonymous reader writes "Is Linux being held back by distributions bent on competing with Microsoft Windows? This article argues that it's a real possibility. Quoting: '... what was apparent early on during my Linux adoption was my motivation for making the switch in the first place — no longer wanting to use Windows. This is where I think the confusion begins for most new Linux adopters. As we make the switch, we must fight the inherent urge to automatically begin comparing the new desktop experience to our previous experiences with Windows. It's a completely different set of circumstances, folks. ... The fact that one platform can support a specific device while the other platform cannot (and so on) doesn't really solve the problem of getting said device working. You can see where this dysfunction of thought can become a big problem, fast."
Re:Windows is the only place left for Linux to exp (Score:2, Interesting)
If Linux wants to have broader adoption... (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux must compete with Windows if there is ever going to be a "year of Linux on the desktop."
That would force manufacturers to release more compatible products, perhaps even contributing drivers to the kernel. It would spur the release of more commercial software, and gather more interest in the open source software that already exists as well as fostering new growth there.
Computers would be cheaper, as there wouldn't be a Windows tax, and additionally there would be more form factors available. How about ARM laptops with 30-40 hour battery life? Oh, sorry, that's not really happening now because manufacturers are afraid their customers will be confused, and they are afraid of losing their partnering bribes - I mean "incentives" with Microsoft.
Linux on the desktop, from the store, for average people, with first-party support, is extremely desirable for the future of computing. One thing that would be nice is to see some Linux games. Oh sure, you can run Wine or one of the commercial variants of Wine, but most people are just going to stick with Windows.
windows does not WORK for me, linux does... (Score:1, Interesting)
i recently had to resurrect a computer that had been running winXP and then the hdd died... i went out and got win7 (32bit) figuring id just upgrade to the latest/greatest... when the first post-install boot did not recognize anything useful on my mobo (ethernet, sound, video) and i was running in 1024x768 (i think) mode, i went online to see if i could find updated drivers (particularly for the ethernet)...
guess what ? my mobo (asus p5rd1-vm) was one of the ones that did NOT make the cut to be supported in win7... uhm, hello ? there were drivers for vista, but they didnt really load up or work for me (unsupported windows version msgs)...
finally, i gave up - grabbed a local copy of ubuntu-10.10 and sure enough - everything just-worked !!! ethernet, sound, video - it was all good...
this is the first time in my many years of reinstalling os systems that id EVER had this reverse-issue.... usually i was trying some latest/greatest linux version and struggling to get my sound-card-drivers working, whereas windows was always ok...
windows-7 is the final straw (i remember the horrible forced-transition from dos to 16-bit windows, then 32-bit, and now basically 64-bit)... linux is the way to go - and ive been installing it on several friends machines - and theyve all been doing fine...
Re:If Linux wants to have broader adoption... (Score:2, Interesting)
you do realize that switching to ARM laptops would fuck up a lot more software than the OS right? also the laptop would be fucking expensive because the ARM architecture doesn't have a shitload of manufacturers developing pc peripherals for it (there's a reason apple switch away from ppc).
also a good majority of manufacturers are contributing to linux drivers, whether it's actual drivers or just specs so someone else can write the drivers.
Linux vs Windows (Score:2, Interesting)
/me ducks (Score:4, Interesting)
Making Linux competitive with Windows? I thought that's what FVWM-95 [sourceforge.net] was for! :^)
Re:Windows is the only place left for Linux to exp (Score:5, Interesting)
Want to find your current sales trends in a way that you haven't been able to before? Okay, well, we have the data in this thing called Datawarehouse. Our reporting team will be able to provide you a set of reports, but they take a long time to develop and check. If you want to do some quick nasty analysis to fend off a crisis, there is a program called TOAD that will let you directly query your data. Look difficult? Lets go through how it works and how you write a SQL query.
Result: In the last Two years, I have introduced around 100 users who are NOT tech savvy at all to the wonders of SQL queries. They are now in various stages of competence, but they are using new things.
My (belated) point here is that while something like Toad (or now replace with Linux) isn't something that they can just pick up and run with, if people see a benefit to it, they WILL make the effort to learn how to use it.
In my mind, Linux really needs to advertise the benefits it has to the ordinary person so that they are enticed to make the effort to learn how to use it. Having said that, the easier it makes this learning process, the less advertising it has to do.
Re:Why not? (Score:1, Interesting)
Canonical offers desktop support, as do a few OEMs. I don't think end-user support is a huge issue though. Most computers sold nowadays come with a 90 day warranty. After that, people are for the most part on their own. So they go to "that kid across the street" for help. If said kid knows how to use Linux, the end user gets just as help as they would with Windows.
Only Phones Matter (Score:4, Interesting)
Desktops are stuck in a "desktop" paradigm, and so are going to be whatever they are now until they totally disappear sometime decades from now: Windows for most everyone, Macs for some specialties particularly in audiovisual production, and Linux for the very few in either the narrowest range of specialties or the narrowest band of all: those who use the best tool for the job at hand, regardless of what everyone else is using.
But the desktop is disappearing. "Mobile" computing is computing you don't have to notice computing. Especially as input leaves behind keyboards, as all displays are networked and shareable, the GUI will detach from the hardware, to be put anywhere the users want it to be, including merged together. More and more people will do what they do helped by "computers", but they won't be Windows. They'll be Android, or some other Linux variant. Because Windows is like a desktop, and most work is better done without a desktop.
It won't be Linux, either. Linux will have a place in the majority of servers, and there'll be a lot of them. But the "Internet of Things" needs something smaller than Windows, smaller than Linux. It's why even the Mac ditched the old MacOS and is now closely related to Linux, in that it's mostly a (mostly) open Unix variant.
Android is closing in on a majority of smartphones. Around the time it's the majority, all phones that do more than just talk will be smartphones. It's the software and uses of smartphones, and their closely related tablets, that will be what most humans use "computers" for most of the time. Everyone in a developed economy will have their mobile device that's their key to accessing all the people, things and info in their world. Windows will be stuck on desktops, where the first small segment of humans started using them. The rest of the world, most of it, will be using the descendants of Android in ways that Windows can never approximate.
Needs of the target user (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been using computers since the C64 as a kid. I'm geeky enough to use Slashdot. I've used Linux on and off since Slackware 7"ish" (w/ all the version # skipping). Dabbled with some CS classes. I've used MS Dos . through all versions of Windows and used OS X for 4 years. .... So I think I at least have some geek credentials to post this.
I mostly stopped playing games so I don't have much use for Windows. I've preferred to use OS X but didn't want to keep my Mac. OS X is genius it really "just" works. And I've spent far less time troubleshooting and resolving issues than I ever have with Windows or Linux. I've been trying REALLY hard to move over to a PC-based 'Nix based OS for a few years now but I'm finding it a bit hard.
I think I'm of the age, have the computer knowledge necessary and have the desire enough to switch that I'm a likely target user. You need some (somewhat)geeky people (like me :) ) for now to more readily adopt 'Nixes. Depending on what you do, Granny is probably ok to check e-mail with some KDE or Gnome based distro. I'm also finding it easier to automate and simplify some daily tasks with the command line (I use a lot of the reg-ex tools Sed, AWK and dabbling with Perl and Python - nothing fancy though. The Windows scripting and command line tools is an utterly and confusing mess, I won't touch it with a 10-foot pole. This *alone* has me as an easy convert.
Here's my beefs over the years which has prevented me from switching. I note over the years as I've not tried recently to install Slackware, Ubuntu, SUSE or FreeBSD (yes, I've tried a few) or such that it might be fixed now. Some of this might not be technically accurate. So at least, try to understand that this is a general overview. I'm not asking how to fix it, but rather these are probably some of the problems people have.
1) Drivers. Some things just don't work right out of the box. I haven't tried X.org in last year-or-so, but my ATI card has been a major PITA to get working. I've seen (too) many postings on "How do I get my trackpad working" or get this working. Recompiling the kernel is somewhat challenging if you have to get to that level. Choosing the wrong option or ommitting something can FOOBAR the kernel and you have to Google till you get it right. Every kernel is a walking target.
At times, never the same result or problem from 2.4.15 to 2.4.16. That what was working on .15 for example might not work on .16 with the same options selected.
2) Too many choices of distros. I fully agree choice tends to be a good thing. But the init scripts, directory structure, system management tools (SUSE, RH, Ubuntu) all different. On top of that, each app tends to work out of the box for only a few specific distros. If you want it to work with yours, you have to wait till someone puts it in the package manager. This is where Windows and OS X have a definite advantage.
3) When X crashes or there's some problem with the xinitrc or adding an extra mouse button or adding pretty font support, its meant spending some time reading about how to install it. OS X kinda self repairs itself, and with Windows all else fails reinstall it. If there's a problem with X to begin with, reinstalling just means the same thing will be there after you reinstall. There's been more then a few times when I've just said "Screw that" and went back to using Windows.
4) There's a bit too much Windows-like emulation with the apps in KDE, GNOME and such. Apple tends to think well .... this is ok but we should do this, this and this different. If some of the apps are 'cool' and do things just Neat enough it might entice people to think, Linux is cool, i should check this out.
5) Partitioning / File management / permissions difficult. This has gotten better I think over the years with the file managers with KDE, GNOME, Xfce and such. I just find when you do ls -la on / that you get a confusing directory structure.
Re:End users hate the registry? (Score:3, Interesting)
Your defense of the registry shows how you don't understand application and user behavior. The registry is a foul design decision, and up to XP SP2, was accessible by anything for the worst of reasons. Because of its relationship to the kernel, user space, and hardware, it was ridiculously simple to screw it up, or make it the crux of bad behavior in strange, unusual, and bizarre ways. After XP SP2 when user-space was 'redefined', it continued to be the garbage pail for every bad programming mistake ever made in Windows. It's been bad for fifteen years. It's bad now. Its predecessor config files were evil. It turned into a monster that Microsoft couldn't control-- but every bad hack in the book could.
I honestly don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
I keep seeing people saying that they're 'seasoned users' who need a 500 page manual to figure out how Linux works, but I installed Ubuntu on my netbook a couple of weeks back and.. it.. just... worked. Even on my laptop, which is a far more complex system than the netbook, the only things that didn't work out of the box are a few of the special keys (e.g. play/pause).
Has anyone who's complaining about how hard Linux is to use actually tried a distro released after 1993?
Re:Uhhh... Well... Ya (Score:4, Interesting)
Right on brother! I've just spent about 18 months using Linux almost exclusively, (there are a few things that I can't run even under Wine or VirtualBox), and I'm now preparing to return to Windows. I hate Micro$oft, I love the idea of Linux and FOSS, and yet I'm going back to the evil empire. Why?
First I should explain that I'm quite capable of using the CLI to issue commands, configure stuff, etc. And I've successfully edited more config files than I really wanted to, (often piecing together bits of info from the web because I couldn't find all the relevant info in one place). The point being that I'm not a technophobe or a dufus. I'm primarily a hardware designer, but I've written some software, I've used computers heavily since DOS 3.0, and I'm a fairly sophisticated user. But, I really DON'T WANT TO SPEND MY LIFE figuring out why Wine doesn't work any more, or figuring out a workaround for the fact that the structure of CUPS doesn't allow cups-pdf to give me the opportunity to specify my own filename and destination directory on-the-fly. I don't want to waste my time launching a separate app to search for files because Nautilus doesn't have an integrated search function, only to find that the search program doesn't allow me to change file properties. I don't want to waste time installing Dolphin with all its aesthetic ugliness and K-bloat in order to have a decent file manager, only to discover that Dolphin doesn't do partial filename searches and doesn't TELL me that it can't do them. I don't want to have to chase around my system trying to find icons to reassociate with binaries because an update broke the associations somehow.
And I could go on and on in this vein, but I think I've made my point. I use my computer largely for work, and the more time I spend trying to make it functional, the less time I have for either work or recreation. A little bit of dicking around with my computer is fun and educational, (and in fact I did a lot more than 'a little bit' when I first adopted Linux), but beyond that it just gets tiresome and frustrating. I'm much more interested in doing things WITH my computer than I am in doing things TO my computer. When I first started using computers, they were fascinating in and of themselves. Now I want them to be like my car; know a little bit about how they work and how to fix them, expect to do some maintenance and repairs occasionally, but mostly just hop in and drive without a second thought. And as frustrating and far-from-perfect as I've found Windows to be, in my experience it's a lot closer to that ideal than Linux is.
Re:End users hate the registry? (Score:5, Interesting)
> Gconf doing that is very rude, and it should definitely stop. Have you filed a bug?
Don't think it is GConf, but somehow tied into Nautilus's virtual file system feature. It is a FUSE filesystem mounted there. But no, there isn't a point in filing a bug report. It isn't a bug, it's a FEATURE! They are using some capability stuff beyond the normal UNIX API as a security measure. Forbidding root from even stating a file is just evil in my book though. Problem is the GNOMES know it breaks UNIX semantics and don't care because they are mostly Windows refugees who were never properly assimilated into UNIX culture enough for them to see the value in it. Filthy Philistines! :)
Same for this Wayland heresy getting started over at Ubuntu. The Computer is the Network, the Network is the Computer. Just words to em, merrily breaking X and the idea of network transparency, not because it will perform better but because the ignorant fools don't realize X's network transparancy isn't the cause of the performance issues they are trying to solve. But mostly because they probably don't personally use apps remotely and don't even realize that they are tossing one of the greatest ideas in computing history down the shitter.
Again, when you get a large influx of immigrants/refugees it is vitally important to ensure they assimilate BEFORE turning over important design work. That didn't happen because of this insane rush to bring about "The Year of the Linux Desktop." In the end we risk letting these hosers screw things up so badly the plumbing gets so screwed up we lose the server and embedded space as well. Those who refuse to learn UNIX will end up reinventing it... poorly.
As others have mentioned... (Score:3, Interesting)
As others have mentioned, Linux is such a configurable system it can be like windows if you so choose it to be. That's the point.
Linux/GNU is one (many as a whole, I guess) of those things that it really is a "jack-of-all-trades" if it is understood how to do so. It is used in virtually every form of technology these days.
I personally feel that today Linux is right where it needs to be.
I use Linux on the desktop. I have for years (pushing 8 years now). I currently run Gentoo Linux with XFCE4 as my GUI. It just works for everything that I need to use it for. I have it installed this way on two desktops (my wife's, mine) and my MSI Wind netbook. I also have it installed on my Media Center PC running some custom software I've written myself (pending open source release).
I gave up on Windows completely when Vista was released (by that I mean I've stopped supporting family's PC's with anything that isn't XP -- virtually all of them now).
I run an install of XP under VirtualBox from time to time when I need to do some testing under IE 6 through 8. Although I think it's been a few months since I've done that.
To me Apple is in the same boat as Windows, I just don't want it. I've found what I want on my desktop and it exists here today with very little effort.
Linux is right where it needs to be.
Re:End users hate the registry? (Score:3, Interesting)
Obviously there were design features which appealed to Microsoft since they adopted the registry.
I would also like to point out that the standing Microsoft guidelines are: use config files in appropriate places (%APPDATA% for user-specific stuff, application directory for shared things which control how the entire app operates), leave the registry to the OS - as it should be. If you write an application in .NET, and use the stock configuration management classes (or "Settings Designer" in VS, which wraps them and generates strongly typed classes), that's precisely what you'll get, with configs being in XML (love it or hate it, but at least it's human-editable).
Ostensibly, the reason why so many Windows settings are in registry is also because the security is granular on key level - so you can tweak permissions such that your users restricted from changing some very specific settings, but are free to play with the rest. With flat files you can still do it if you use one file per key, kinda like GConf, but few filesystems can handle that many small files efficiently.
Re:Linux vs Windows... (Score:3, Interesting)
The way I see it, if Linux were to win in the consumer market, what it needs to do is not more, but less - and do those "less" things 100X better than Apple, Google or Microsoft.
The mess with X is actually being addressed, with project Wayland [freedesktop.org]. The philosophy behind Wayland is exactly simplification - most people don't need that network transparency logic, so re-factor it out and keep the core simple and fast. It's a different architecture than X and so it's gonna take time to get the whole UI software stack to work on that, but Ubuntu is behind it.
Configurations and integration between services in a Linux machine is still a pain in the ass, and sadly, I'm not seeing any project addressing that yet. I used to be an open source dev but now I have a tech company to manage. But that's where I'd really like to see progress on the FOSS front.
Finally.. I think the FOSS community may be setting their target too low with Windows, and the "I don't care about consumer market/we already own the server space" crowd are simply ignoring reality. Apple and Google are beating the shit out of Microsoft's products lately - Windows and Office are pretty much still there because of inertia. Having to compare Linux to Windows, is already implying Linux is in a very bad shape in the consumer market. On a higher level, none of the current high profile players (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon - who's on the server side!!, even Facebook) or products (e.g. iOS, Android, Chrome,
Re:End users hate the registry? (Score:5, Interesting)
Same for this Wayland heresy getting started over at Ubuntu. The Computer is the Network, the Network is the Computer. Just words to em, merrily breaking X and the idea of network transparency, not because it will perform better but because the ignorant fools don't realize X's network transparancy isn't the cause of the performance issues they are trying to solve. But mostly because they probably don't personally use apps remotely and don't even realize that they are tossing one of the greatest ideas in computing history down the shitter.
If you're going to throw such statements around, you better get your facts straight. The Wayland developers never blamed the networking protocol for the problems of X, but rather the fundamental architecture of X. In fact, Wayland has been built with networking in mind since nearly the beginning.
Wayland architecture [freedesktop.org]
Re:windows does not WORK for me, linux does... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, of course. Windows hardly works at all, and is a pain in the ass to use. Please allow me to share my own anecdote:
By fate, my wife and I were both reinstalling operating systems at the same time. She was installing Windows (Vista or 7; I can't remember) on her laptop, and I was installing Ubuntu on my netbook. Both installations took a while, and both succeeded. Then, that nite we wanted to watch a movie. Again by fate, we each had the movie on separate USB thumb drives, so we both popped them in. Yet again by fate, the codec for the movie wasn't supported by her software (Windows Media Player or whatever) nor mine (VLC or whatever). Both her media software and my media software popped up a box saying, sorry, that file is in an unknown format. I swear this all happened in parallel as we sat next to one another on the couch.
Here's where the stories diverge.
On Ubuntu, after the message saying the codec was unknown, there was an option for Go To The Internet And Find The Needed Software And Install It. I clicked Yes, and the movie was playing about 45 seconds later. For her, the message said Good Luck Finding The Codec And Installing It, You Can Start By Looking On The Internet. We watched the movie on my netbook (output to the TV) and all during the hours of movie time she was trying to find and install the right codec. She failed. It took her a few more days to find it and get it right.
Linux is user-friendly and easy to use. Windows is crap and difficult to use, if it can be used at all. My anecdote proves this beyond any doubt, and we all know that anecdotes are the standard by which these things are judged.
Re:Nobody needs to compete with Windows for custom (Score:3, Interesting)
You think? I think about 30% of people would never install their own OS. I think if it's easy (and it is), then about two thirds or so of people would be willing to install an OS.
I heard arguments like yours about browsers, too, but here we are looking at usage for non-preloaded browsers of around 50%.
Besides, I don't think your point retorts the OP's point. If Linux had lots of developers (and, actually, it does) then its software would become "good enough" (and, actually, it pretty much is) and then there would start to be some preloads (and, actually, there is a small amount of that).