The Linux Desktop and ISVs/OEMs 195
olau writes "Michael Meeks, who's worked on GNOME and LibreOffice integration for many years, now for SuSE, has some really interesting thoughts on the recent Linux desktop debate and suggestions for possible strategies. He points out that regarding independent software vendors (ISVs), the real issue isn't actually the quality of the tools but the size and attractiveness of the market, and perhaps that a solution could be lower barriers for paying or donating. Regarding OEMs selling hardware with software preinstalled, he points out that while a free OS + software sounds good for consumers, it's actually a problem for OEMs on razor-thin margins, since they lose the cut they get from the preinstallations. A possible countermove could be nailing robustness and hardware diagnostics for good, lowering OEM support costs."
Fall in line (Score:5, Insightful)
No matter how much I like my Linux Desktop, I don't want to be responsible for bringing non-tech-savvy people along. The rest of the family is fully capable of troubleshooting basic windows problems, more or less.
Re:Fall in line (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fall in line (Score:5, Insightful)
I view that the other way round - One way or another I will be tech support for my mother. It would be easier for me, as someone that doesn't use windows any more, to support her using linux.
But frankly at this point I don't want the hassle of moving her from one OS that she knows how to use badly to another she doesn't know at all.
But why write applications for desktop Linux ... (Score:4, Insightful)
... when you have children to feed and a mortgage to pay ... ... and the users expect all their software to be free?
Better off spending one's time addressing a market where people expect to have to pay for stuff, no?
Re:You sell for the market. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is 2012 everyone is using some kind of virtualization. Linux servers are as such free. They are just another vm your fire up, and the biggest savings are not having to hassle with licensing.
Re:But why write applications for desktop Linux .. (Score:4, Insightful)
What linux users expect all software to be free?
I guess I did not pay for all these steam games.
Where did you get that idea?
Re:But why write applications for desktop Linux .. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, Slashdot. You've entered a new age when anti-FOSS/anti-Linux trolling is marked as "Insightful."
ABI, QA and API (Score:0, Insightful)
Those are the 3 biggest issues for Linux desktop. So many distributions, some a little different, some very, very different. LSB is dead. The QA nightmare is significant. As a side note, games that find their way onto Linux from Windows, often enough have a number of .so's in their install directories.
The Linux GUI desktop libs suck. GTK sucks to use and rely upon. Qt is a mess. KDE(which relies on Qt) is the stuff of flame wars... too many choices and too many of them just plain suck. Even something that should be reliable as font query is a total mess under Linux. Fontconfig is JUNK. The config file is nasty-insanity and the API just plain sucks. Nothing for merging of fonts, etc.. it sucks so bad that Qt bypasses FontConfig, it only uses it to get a list of all fonts installed. Makes you wonder you know.
Linux desktop sound is painful. Atleast we are mostly past the growing pains of PulseAudio, but I cannot name any applications for money that write for PA, 99% time it's SDL dude.. which has a suck ass audio API. OpenAL is better, but lets not forget that OpenAL can be configured to pipe to SDL, PA, whatever. This happens often enough: OpenAL --> SDL --> PA.
Reliability of GL is another issue. Not so long ago, it basically was NVIDIA or bust, that is no longer true.. but with so many distros making Nouveau the default, what a failure. Comparing the closed source GL implementations from NVIDIA and AMD to the open source ones is shooting fish in a barrel, with a canon. In contrast, even the crapiest GPUs, i.e. Intel GPUs, have okay-ish DirectX drivers.... Mesa's infrastructure has a long ways to go before it can support all the features of OpenGL _3_ which is like a million years old. So yeh, open source GL implementations have so many cards stacked against them. The Linux DRM for the graphics stack is a bad joke.
Ironically, making games is more insulated from most of this crap except for the GL pain (and to a lesser extent the sound pain)... but when Steam comes to Linux, I'd bet they will simply say "Dude we only supporting Ubuntu"... not too sure what they will say on the GL drivers though.. but their Source engine is DX9 really which is OpenGL 2. Though I shudder to think what will happen when there are distros with X11 and distros with Wayland out at the same time... that will be ugly. If anyone says Wayland can exist with X11 (or even essentially rely upon it) you have no idea the nightmare waiting about GL in that situation is.
It is not that Linux is bad commercially (Android demonstrates it can be great), it is that Linux desktop for consumer is a fail-train.
Re:Fall in line (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand...
My mother has a Linux netbook. Other than getting her email set up with Thunderbird when she got it (she couldn't do that herself in Outlook Express either,) I haven't ever touched the thing. It's just never had an issue.
Her Windows desktop, on the other hand, seems to need some kind of repair every time I visit.....
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Re:But why write applications for desktop Linux .. (Score:3, Insightful)
and the users expect all their software to be free?
Interesting contradictory fact. [humblebundle.com] Scroll down and look at the payment statistics. Linux users evidently pay about twice as much as Windows users when given the choice. I have bought two bundles before, and both times the pattern was the same as with the latest bundle.
The Future: Pay a premium for free software (Score:4, Insightful)
I just figured I would share the future in advance with everyone so that the reality would set in sooner: Start supporting vendors which sell pre-built computers that aren't locked down as well as standardized DIY hardware. Also, start supporting home fabrication projects which will soon be able to create primitive computers, because ultimately unregulated capitalism will always find some way to fuck you otherwise. DIY hardware is already horribly unstandardized and consumer-raping. If you live in a country which is regulated so you feel you don't have to worry - just wait, you will. There is meaning behind the saying with the roots and the evil. No, not the recipe for making evil root beer.
I'm surprised no one is mentioning Chrome OS (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux desktop, with browser, backed by web applications.
Five OEM systems and counting.
Re:Fall in line (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, is it hate because people disagree with you or is it hate because you're wrong and being deliberately inflammatory?
Lucky you! I've seen one or more driver packs and updates in sequence for Windows XP cause it to be left in a shitty state that works (maybe) but is broken in some manner.
Really? How so? Oh wait, you won't give an example. Just a "Linux leaves systems fucked after updates! Linux sucks!" and we're supposed to believe you blindly. Got it.
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Re:Fall in line (Score:3, Insightful)
Disagree. Linux works great for those who are computer illiterate, at least as long as you don't tell them it's Linux until they are already using it (otherwise they'll probably balk at it being too hard to use before even turning the system on). And it works great for those of us who know our way around a computer.
But in between, you have the hardcore Windows geeks. The ones who know exactly which malware removal tool that works for which malware, and have reinstalled Windows so many times they couldn't count it with a calculator (they tend to also be the ones fixing Windows for their friends, which does increase the count). Give them a Linux machine, and they will find it completely useless, everything is text files, which is way too complicated compared to finding the correct GUID in a nice GUI tool like REGEDIT, none of their malware scanners work, and every time they reinstall, they end up with exactly the same results.
For them, Linux will not be an option.
Which planet again? (Score:4, Insightful)
I get paid major bank to work on software for Linux. That some of it goes out to be free is no skin off my teeth.
See free software isn't "I'm gonna write some POS and hope someone buys it" development model. Those days are dead mostly anyway. Its "Some guy wants these features put on that 'free' bit because he actually has a use case, and he's gonna pay me to meet his needs then give it away so neither of us get stuck paying upkeep and he can have me do something newer and better".
Who want's to spend 40 years doing maintenance on a some accounting or word processing software anyway. There are people who are writing better gear because they need to process words and account for money. And since they really make their money counting money and processing words, giving the bycatch code out as the "whole cost" of getting the whole pre-mod app is a huge win.
It just won't lead to "another microsoft"
That closed source model was a fluke anyway, the preceding 40 years were open source. The next twenty five or so was a grand experiment that largely failed except for a few really unexpected cutthroat operators, and now its back to the more natural state of only paying for what you need.
In a current version of word I don't use 90% of it, and I'm a technical writer and novelist, but I paid for it all back when I was that foolish. Same can be said for any person or company that has ever bought that slag. So now there is this free stuff that was made by someone who actually needed it, so it's not so much slag, and given away to others who _might_ need it, and then gotten back greatly improved by the supporters and the adders on.
That's lots of money feeding lots of people, and nobody is wasting their time or money playing the "trade secret" and "big P.R." games.
What's not to love?
Re:Fall in line (Score:3, Insightful)
When I ask them if their TV is slower, they look at me if _I_ am stoopid.
Because they know a TV is a dumb appliance that just sits there without getting software installed on a regular basis, so your analogy is stupid. Give them a little credit. Operating systems with all the assorted application software are complex, and any number of things can go wrong.