What Linux Must Do To Survive... 323
mgoodrum writes "Emily Dresner-Thornber has posted an editorial/rant about Linux's viability as an end-user OS over at Netslaves. An interesting mix of criticism and her history as a Linux user." I think she's on the right track, but most of the places she says "Linux" I would substitute "one distribution". GNU/Linux need not be a monolithic entity to be adopted, there just has to be one user-proof distro available.
Re:Microsoft system utilisation (Score:2)
Yes, people in poorer countries get seriously hurt by MS, but by their software prices more than RAM prices. For me, each of the several flavors of Linux I've tried has horribly misbehaved on my "supported" system, each in a different way, and these were modern distros, installed by people who knew how to do it. Yet whenever I install a Windows, even the allegedly bitchy 2k, it works perfectly from the start. I'm also not a stranger to the command line, I've been around computers literally since I was born, and using them longer than I can remember, right back to DOS 3.x. However, I do prefer a GUI and mouse to CLI and keyboard for running my computer, it just feels better to me, and I have the money for a computer that can run them acceptaby. If you prefer to use Linux, do please, by all means, MS must lose its stranglehold; I'd use Be if it had more software, and bought a copy anyway to support them.
Again, I apologize for the agressive tones of my previous posts, if you don't have a problem with me preferring MS software, despite its higher system requirements, I have no problem with you preferring Linux. Your earlier posts had given me the impression you were a zealot bashing Windows, this was wrong. Peace.
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Re:Should Free Software dumb down? (Score:2)
First, you never address your subject in your post. I'll go out on a limb and guess that by making a computer system "easy to use", you equate that with "dumbing it down". This is patently untrue -- a TV is easy to use, but what it does is incredibly complicated. It's taking a stream of data from a cable, mashing it into an electron beam, exciting phosphors on the back of a vaccumed glass tube, and suddenly you can see Pamela Anderson Lee take off her bikini top.
The TV works (as a consumer device) because it makes a bunch of decisions for the user. It decides that 720x480 resolution is fine. It decides that the user will travel linearly in a forward or reverse direction. It decides that the volume level you had set it at when you turned it off last is likely the same level you want when you turn it on again.
Now, a TV has a lot of other nifty options (PIP, self-timers, etc) but very few people use them. Why not? Well, sometimes because it's just not useful -- PIP is a good example of a great idea, but one that nobody really wants. And sometimes, nobody uses them because it's a huge pain to get working.
To address your other points, what Emily is complaining about is the fact that EVERY distribution (except possibly for Mandrake -- I haven't used it in a long time) is basically the same, in that EVERY distro tries to include EVERYTHING. ksh, bash, csh -- who cares? Pick one, stay with it. If some nerd wants to use your distro, make him compile his favorite shell himself. GNOME, KDE? Who cares? The differences between GNOME and KDE are miniscule. The differences lie in how each one moves bits around in ways that are only interesting to other nerds.
Honestly, I don't care if you use CORBA, massive flat-file databases, or do everything in base-12. As long as I can type, compute, look at porn and play xboing, I'm happy. The details don't matter.
Now, the fight between GNOME and KDE is good, in that it should determine which is the "better" way of doing things. But, instead, we end up with two different toolkits -- and our nerd-power is immediately halved. We've got hugely talented programmers duplicating effort. Is that the wonder of Free Software/Open Source? 16 different wheels, each one painted a different color?
That's the problem -- the open ideas market isn't judging -- it's allowing both to prosper, and thus divide our forces. Am I complaining? No -- I don't use either. My needs are met with Netscape, emacs and xterm. GNOME, KDE -- I don't care! But if I wanted to set up a machine for my mother to use, which would I pick? I dunno. I think I'll just keep Windows 95 on it, since she's used to that.
Reality -- if Linus truly wants "world domination", the way to do that is for somebody to make up a distribution that doesn't suck. I had high hopes for RedHat, but they've fallen down. (Honestly, the best installer I've uses is the one for OpenBSD. As long as your hardware isn't weird, and you know how to follow directions, a reasonably intelligent person can install OpenBSD) The way things stand, Linux is still a nerd's toy.
Re:Seems to me... (Score:2)
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A FUD Primer! (Score:2)
Wow, this is a textbook example of how to write FUD!
First, make some claim to credibility by making a vague description of something you've done with the product quite some time ago, making it sound as if you've been on top of the subject for aeons. Now you're an "expert."
Next, establish your "talking points." These aren't what you're going to say directly, just the general things you want the reader to be thinking as s/he makes his/her way through the piece. For example, get the reader to wonder about the viability of the product: will it survive, is it just a fad, what will happen to my computing environment if it goes away? Divert attention away from such basic things as the GNU GPL by making it seem that only rocket scientists can type "make install" for all that perpetually free source code.
Talking points shouldn't include cutting-edge information in FUD pieces; they should work on historical points, reputations, and perceptions only. For example, early Linux distros may have been tricky to install, so talk about that.
Change. Most people hate change. They hate bugs, and betas are full of bugs. Talk about being in "endless beta," yeah, that's the ticket.
Documentation. Let's continue on the path we started down with Installation, and ignore such things as the past few SuSE offerings that come with voluminous documentation. And ignore HOWTOs and such while we're at it.
Then, after going after perceived historical flaws, a good FUD piece slips in a fatal misdesign of the competition and makes it into a feature. For example, the "Unified User Experience." Just try to get multiple desktops on Windows right out of the box, or to configure it to work the way you want it to work. Only an MIS Nazi could love having exactly one choice. Dear Emily, may all your dresses be short, red, tight, and low-cut; this, too, will provide a Unified User Experience. (Probably horrific, but hey, what do I know?)
Conclude your FUD by saying that all the perceived flaws cannot be fixed; there are and can never be standards (oooh, go see FreeStandards.org [freestandards.org] and contribute). Nothing like piling a lie on top of it all.
And finally, loop back to the difficulties you had ages ago, and make it sound as if the same problems will always be there for you to come back to.
What a horrible trap of logic for those without the brains to see through it!
Now, anyone want to do the same thing to a certain monopolist crashware company? :-)
Re:What Linux needs is already in progress. (Score:2)
A couple suggestions on how to get into the consumer market:
What needs to happen is that somebody (probably RedHat) needs to include an "simple desktop" option on install. Put Netscape, an email client, and StarOffice in a little box in the bottom of the screen, where you can't miss them. Give the user a one-time list of consumer software that comes with the distro to put in that box too -an MP3 player, whatever.
Next, pull one of Microsoft's great tricks - make migration easy. Imitate all the Windows keyboard shortcuts. Alt-F4 should close the current window, not take me to the fourth desktop. And so on.
From there, the only difference they'll see between Windows and Linux is that when something crashes in Linux the OS never goes down with it...
Re:Microsoft system utilisation (Score:2)
Really? Linux runs great for me with only 32MB RAM... but then I don't use bloatware like desktop environments, office suites, or (forgive me for saying so, but I don't think it will get much smaller) Mozilla.
The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion.
Re:Seems to me... (Score:2)
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Re:Microsoft system utilisation (Score:2)
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Re:It's about McDonalds and screen resollutions (Score:2)
However, I (and I'm sure others) would like to see a stable, reliable, reasonably secure (none of this email virus crap) OS that we could slap on our non-geek friend's computers. I am an activist and a computer geek, my world is about making human society and technology work. My mother is a nurse, her world is about helping people get better, or die with dignity, a more important job, if you ask me. If she wants something that she can write email to my little sister on and write the occasional letter on, then fine. I'm not going to deny her that just to keep the 'purity' of one distro of linux.
In terms of market share -- we live in a capitalist society, whether or not we would like to, and the greater the market share of linux, the less the market share of MS (and a few others, but MS really is the big nasty) and therefore the less money, and the less power (as money actually is power in a capitalist society) MS has.
Anyway, I'm not too worried about it. At some point *someone* will get it together, put out a luser proof distro and make quite a bit of money off it. And yay for them, I have much bigger fish to fry.
Re:220MHz laptop (Score:2)
I have a machine with the same specs and I agree, Windows and Office run better on it than Gnome and StarOffice.
But not better than vi and fvwm2 :) And, for me, that's where the fun stuff is. Real men publish in gorgeous, perfectly typeset pdf generated by LaTeX from documents marked up with vi or emacs :)
The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion.
Re:Solaris install (Score:2)
There are *tons* of word processor programs for Li (Score:4)
Yes there are. As a journalist, I need to write articles that conform to page limits (400 per page) and submit then is
* StarOffice won't let me do a word count on a selecton
* OpenOffice isn't stable, and didn't do sectional word counts anyway
* Abiword isn't finished
* Applix doesn't even HAVE a word count.
* KWord can't output stably to Office 97
* WordPerfect Office 2000 works great on Windows and is a pleasure to use. However, the WINE absed Linux version is inconsistently unbreably slow in its GUI and crashes rather often. I (meaning Cybersource) purchased a copy and we got burnt because we can't use it - it's that bad. A QT of GTK version would be wonderful and well worth the cash. A WINE version is not, at least at this current stage (perhaps a service pack might change my mind).
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:2)
Why do people continually say X takes a lot of RAM. It doesn't. The only reason you'd see top report that X has 30-40 MB of RAM in the size column is because that's all the memory it has maped, including video RAM (possibly several times depending on video card), shared memory, etc. If you've got a 64MB video card, you can expect the size of the X server to be at least 64MB. All the parts of Gnome or KDE that make up the desktop probably account for more used RAM than anything else.
There's complexity in installing Windows apps, but the above comments are completely out of touch. NT and 2K Administrators touch the registry quite often. Regular users don't. Very few apps require driver upgrades.
One word: Games. Nothing requires tweaking, driver upgrades and system upgrades like games do. And what a coincidence that this just happens to be one of the major things people do with their computers.
ESR has the same beliefs as this guy, and the B&B emphasises making stable, useable released as frequently as possible (and treating those who give feedback with respect as well, by the way).
What free software authors seem to have a real problem with is deciding on when their program is good enough to call a 1.0 release. Some people just don't know when it's time to just compile out the features that don't yet work, and deliver a useful program out of the parts that do work.
But anyway, I see no problem with her feedback and these are all valid criticisms in my opinion.
Her criticisms are valid, but I'm far more worried about the more technical ones. The Linux Standard Base specification is moving at an alarmingly slow pace, and not even because the people developing the standards don't agree, it's that the important questions that will affect everyone's lives haven't even been discussed yet. Package format, for example, was a mushy decision to use RPM v3, with intent to replace it later. If I were a developer looking at the LSB for guidance, this is pretty worthless. Do I target the sub-1.0 spec and risk incompatibility later, or hold off on packaging and use the old standy-by binary .tar.gz files that later need fixing up to suit the resident distribution, or what? Personally I prefer Debian's three state packaging (installed, removed [retain existing configuration], and purged [no configuration]) to RPM's two state (installed, not installed), and the fact that .debs can be decomposed with compeltely standard tools. I would hope that companies like RedHat and Mandrake would want to position the LSB as a critical element and try to devote some resources in getting it finished. Microsoft and the computer media have been saying for the longest time that Linux will fragment, and the finalization LSB would prove that it won't happen. And then, just maybe, they can take on more ambitious (and dangerous) projects like standardizing the GUI and object sharing frameworks.
Re:Things to do for linux: (Score:4)
1. Provides one window manager.
I see no reason a standards body can't decide on a standard default for the window manager. We aren't saying don't make the rest available. Just pick one for the default, regardless of distro, aside from specializied distro's that need to be different. Most non-tech users will stick with the default which would provide a commonality accross various people's installs.
2. Provide one shell.
See above answer. Hopefully the user wont' need the shell, but if they do, it can't hurt to have a standard default.
3. Provide a unified Linux "look and feel"
This one really WOULD be nice. Lack of consistancy in user interfaces drives me nuts in linux.
4. Remove options.
Fine. Make two different sets of config screen. Advanced and simple. Make simple the default. Make it so you can change the default to Advanaced if you so chose. There, done. Newbies and non-techies don't have to worry about it, but with a magical check box we can forever unlock the "Advanced" options. That doesn't sound unreasonable.
5. Stability stuffs...
Yeah, duh. Of course we want stability. But, duh, the command line needs to be a last resort if all else fails. Seems like she was stating the obvious there...
Justin Dubs
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:5)
Bullshit. There is something close to 5,000 drivers that come with a default installation. When I installed Windows 2000 on my main box, absolutely everything was recognized. Correctly. And the sound works. And the printer works. Etc.
I don't know what she's on, but the default Mandrake install, which boots into KDE, looks remarkably similar to other *cough*Windows*cough* GUIs.
Wrong again. You argue that the woman doesn't understand the entire point of "Free Software", then you should you no absolutely nothing about Pay Software. KDE is in no way like Windows. The closest thing it has is the K menu, which is a Start Menu rip off. You can't position things on the K menu by clicking and dragging them like you can in Windows. A majority of the control panels aren't functioning fully yet with most cards (hello Sound) And you have to go to a command prompt to get more critical things done.
Contrast that with Windows, which gets everything right on the first try AND is easier to boot. I tried that bullshit with "teaching kids Unix at an earlier age so they would understand it" for a high school project. You know what? They couldn't understand a damn thing. But when they saw a Mac GUI they understood it immediately.
And I would suggest not calling a female journalist "babe", unless you want a wrath of feminists breathing down your neck.
Same old? (Score:3)
I have a proposal. What if professional writers wrote a few pages of documentation everytime they felt like writing an article that mentions the need for documentation. They are pros, so it should take them no time at all.
Re:Seems to me... (Score:2)
Re:Why does linux have to please everybody? (Score:2)
I use rpmfind quite frequently. It doesn't have all the RPMS available for my distribution, and often if they do they're built for a newer version, and require long chains of dependencies I have to resolve myself.
Re:Why does linux have to please everybody? (Score:3)
It's a useless, cluless rant and nothing more. It does not deserve to be called journalism or even criticism.
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:5)
Of course, the system bombed the next day when he tried to update Java 1.2 to the 1.3 J2SE, so I got to repeat the whole thing again. And then it bombed again a week later when he tried to shut it down, and the whole damned filesystem corrupted (as far as I'm concerned, ext2 is just plain evil).
So, being a good friend, what did I do next? I grabbed my Solaris 8 Media Pack($70, unlimited license), drove back over to his home, and went to work. Solaris was installed, configured, and fully functional with his hardware and network in less than 30 minutes...and I NEVER ONCE had to edit a g*ddamned configuration file in vi to do it. iPlanet FasTrak Edition was installed and running all three of his sites 20 minutes after that, and his development tools were installed without a hitch or a patch. He figured out CDE in no time and is now happy as a clam.
The problem was not one of familiarity, I regularly use my Mandrake 6 box for development and built my own distro for my DNS server. I've used Linux since 1995 and am just about as familiar with it as one can get. But I'll be one of the fisrt to tell you that Linux has flaws. It's not that Linux isn't easy enough to use, it's that it often seems like some of the developers went out of their way to make it difficult. I like Linux, and I doubt that I'll be repartitioning my Mandrake box anytime soon, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a serious chiphead. Although we've come a long way, the major distros still need to do some more work on the ease of use issues.
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:2)
I administrate my box, and I only touched the registry once to play with some Domain Master values.
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:2)
You're right of course. I mean a modern Window/Icons/Menus/pounter type GUI desktop environment based on X, now just X by itself, providing equivalent `friendliness' to a Macintosh or Windows machine.
Re:For five years (Score:2)
Which is ok, I suppose, since going from 1% to 2% is technically 'doubling'....
~dlb
Re:Emily: you're looking in the wrong places. (Score:2)
Re:Why does linux have to please everybody? (Score:2)
People down the hall are amazed how I flip through minimizing and switching between windows in '95 or '98, because they're all addicted to the mouse. And I owe it all to bash...
-grendel drago
Re:Sounds like more guff. (Score:2)
If you want to review a product you should review a distribution. It's perfectly OK to review RedHat, caldera, mandrake etc and point out their flaws or praise their strengths.
Re:Why does linux have to please everybody? (Score:2)
She's not being literal. She means there no single place to download patches from (unless you cunt APT based distros, but most aren't) and there's no uniform format to get them in (though this is changing). URLs break often - I can't even find the homepage of vacation or the current maintainer (help appreciated).
Re:What Linux needs is already in progress. (Score:2)
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:2)
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:2)
Install half-a-dozen 'service packs', 'hotfixes' etc. etc. and then go and find fixes for all the other packages broken by the fist fixes, update Internet Explorer (because everything from Notepad up to Exchange Server seems to depend on it) blah blah blah.
Re:Palm m505 (Score:2)
My $0.02 says this is the JPEG compression which occurs around all more detailed surfaces in the images. I think its real.
Uh uh, honey, she's right sometimes! (Score:2)
One: For the average end-user, Linux is way too difficult. Hell, it was really tough for me to get going, and I'm about as far above most people as most of you are above me, in terms of computer know-how. And never mind the dumb users, who can't figure out how to use the "Reply" button, or, when asked questions like "Does it run on Windows or Mac?" say, "I don't know, I don't get into that technical stuff." (Don't laugh. It happened to me. I couldn't make up something that weird.) No one should have to know how many cylinders are in their drive before they can install an(other) OS, but I did. While, I admit, learning more than I cared to know about my hardware was certainly edifying, it was also a fsck of a lot of work.
Two: AFAI'm concerned, the documentation and HOWTOs are all written in Moon Language or some designated alternate. They're certainly not written in terribly comprehensible English (although the ones by Rob Malda are at least funny in places). Most of them suffer from the "COIK" problem (for "Comprehensible Only If Known") -- that is, if you can understand the doc or HOWTO, you don't need to read it. Many of them tell you everything you need to know about the given item -- except the one vital piece of information you need (such as how to open a file or something). I know about technical documentation for end-users! I at least attempt to do it for a living! And some of those docs or HOWTOs should be textbook examples of what not to do.
Plus, of course, judging by the tone of this article, at least some of her griping is hyperbole anyway, so don't get your UNIX bloomers in a knot.
?!
Re:Sounds like more guff. (Score:2)
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:2)
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:2)
Actually you would be wrong on both accounts because Microsoft applications can replace any DLL in the system. Usually the biggest culprit in breaking existing apps is Microsoft itself. Every iteration of office, IE, or service pack will inevitably break somebodies application sometimes other MS applications. Just recently somebody I know installed VB6 SP4 on his machine and his code stopped working. He had the spend a freaking week at the MS web site and on the telephone with tech support till they found the hotfix which was buried someplace in the KB.
Apparently VB6 SP4 had some problem with IE5 and his code hung up every time it attempted to make a HTTPS connection. See q174836 and q238934.
I will reiterate. Sooner or later you will install something on your machine will will break something. If you are lucky it will break instantly and predictably if you are unlucky you machine will start flaking out and you will tear your hair out trying to figure out exactly what the problem is. MS will be of no help unless you pay even then they will spend two weeks blaming god an satan first. Only after you have escalated your ticket up three or more levels will you speak to a person who is actually listening to you and then you may be able solve your problem. Hopefully the solutions will not involve a complete reinstall or a $300.00 upgrade.
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:2)
Re:Why does linux have to please everybody? (Score:2)
Lusers don't care about productivity and programmers do. Programmers writing an operating system for themselves will place emphasis on productivity (ease of use) not ease of learning.
Re:Emily: you're looking in the wrong places. (Score:3)
And another problem I have with this article is the complete lack of logic. For example:
And I'm not even going to get into the rant about how all Linux programmers hate standards. And the "moon language" thing ... yeah ... she should know, sounds like she's living on the moon. She does have some good points but most of it unreasoned rubbish.
Re:Palm m505 (Score:2)
But how do you call this news? A picture, sent in anonymously, claiming to be the successor to the Palm V? I didn't even have to open up an image editor to start thinking that this thing was a fake. Take a look closely around the "m505" marker. Sort of looks odd, doesn't it? Like the edges of another image were blended into the image of the palm. Look at the left bottom edge of the screen, and the right bottom edge. The right edge is further away from the silkscreen than the left edge; *way* more than can be explained by perspective.
Anyways, this photo may or may not be doctored, it may or may not be real. But you can't call this news; an unsubstantiated image on the web, with nothing to back it up, sent in ANONYMOUSLY is not, I repeat, not news.
Okay, I've opened up the image in the Gimp. Yeah, it's probably a fake. I could be wrong, though. Anyways, the "m505" is definetly plastered on top of it, and it looks like the text was originally straight, then had a transform applied to it in order to make it looks slanted. There were also some more technical things that indicate falseness. Now, this could be an image generated by the 3com engineers; so it could be very real. BUT COME ON!
Before you start bitching at Malda about what news is, go and watch a real news program on television. One that reports on wars, and politics. Then look up the definition in a dictionary. Then, for Christ's sake, apply some common sense. Chances are, this picture is a fraud. Arse. Have a nice day.
Dave
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:2)
Bullshit. A collegue of mine tried to upgrade (?) to Win2k just this week on his not-so-new toshiba laptop. All went well until it hit the network. Big bang, crashes all over the place. It took him and computer support at the company two days to get the damn thing working. Needed a special Win2K CD-rom for Toshiba's, needed tweaks in the registry, toshiba only drivers, needed to override something called a BiosServer and about thirty reboots.
Guess what, I have the same brand/version laptop, installed RedHat in 30 minutes with everything working: network, sound, printers, samba, apm, etc.
So your mileage may vary, but windows installations are not always painless. Go to any support/installation department and ask around.
Re:Why does linux have to please everybody? (Score:2)
No what I am saying is that ease of use and ease of learning are different things. Ease of use means getting your task done accurately and quickly as possible. Ease of learning means that you can sit anybody down in front of the system and teach them in a short time. Let's take windows example.
Let's say you had some faxing program that never deleted it's files and spewed the fax files all over your drive and you periodically needed to clean these files up.
An ease of use situation is to type "del *.fax
An ease of learning situation involves clicking on start, dragging you mouse over to find and then over to files and folders, clicking, waiting for the dialog box to come up, clicking in the text box, typing *.fax, clicking on the start button, waiting for the search to complete, clicking on edit, clicking on select all, clicking on file, clicking on delete, clicking on the ok button when the "are you sure" dialog box comes up.
This is just one simple example I could come up with a more comples one like finding all files which have not been touched in last 6 months and moving them into an archive directory.
I hope you see what I mean here. Maybe it's possible to make a tool that is easy to learn and easy to use and powerful but I have not seen one yet. The ones that came closest were lotus magellan and info select before version 4.
Re:Why does linux have to please everybody? (Score:2)
EMACS will do a word count (Score:3)
EMACS is easily extensible using its very own version of lisp
EMACS lets you work with regexps. Will Word do that?
EMACS is GPL. You dont have to pay anything. It is stable and runs on a 486 with 16 MB of RAM.
It's about power, flexibility, and responsibility (Score:2)
Quite simply, (linux || unix)'s main virtues are power and flexibility. Taking advantage of either of these virtues requires that you as the user take the responsibility to understand what you are doing. In other words, as someone whose name I can't recall said: "Unix is hard to learn but easy to use, windows is easy to learn and hard to use." Another way to put it is that Unix is extremely user-friendly, but to a different set of users than windows or MacOS.
If you want simplicity of use (by that I mean pointy-clicky-screw-the-details) and you don't want all the microsoftian crud, take a look into BeOS (it retains much of the power and flexibility of linux but in a more "refined" user environment, IMHO). You can get pretty much the full OS for free (free.be.com IIRC). There are ways to install the free BeOS without a host operating system but Be, Inc. deserves your monetary support, because, again IMHO, their product is actually worth the price they're asking (something like $80 bundled with a tome and productivity suite, I think).
It is a common fallacy for a new user of linux/unix to compare it to some previous OS they used and say "linux needs X, Y, and Z to take over the world / survive". Linux/unix is perfectly well suited for the set of uses it is currently doing. These uses are generally not on the desktop or oriented at desktop users. If you want linux to fulfill some new role: easy, write code. Want linux in your wristwatch or on your mainframe or playing every new game that comes down the pike? Easy, just start or join a project to add features to the linux experience, and write code.
Semi-ranting aside, welcome to a new world. I hope you have fun (yes, the first 3-6 months are fustrating, but a whole world of potential is there if you stick with it).
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org [geekaustin.org]
what version of RedHat is she using (Score:2)
Re:What Linux must do to survive: Nothing (Score:3)
Absolutely right.
Perhaps it doesn't fulfill all of Emily's requirements for a desktop OS. It doesn't fulfill mine either (at work at least.) This is due in large part, as we all know, to Microsofts obvious monopoly of the desktop market. They have it sewn up. Period.
So many advocates of Linux (of which I am definitely one) want so badly for Linux to squash the Microsoft monopoly. I used to want this as well. Now, I could care less. I use Linux along with a lot of other people and thank goodness there are so many brilliant people out there developing for it on a daily basis. As long as people continue to use it and people continue to develop for it, Linux will be there.
What is Linux? Why was it created?
Certainly I don't have to educate most of you in regard to questions like these. Maybe just a little reminder however. Linus began working on the Linux kernel as a way to have a UNIX-like OS on his PC (also, of course because he loves to hack and wanted to learn more about OS's/kernels) Windows, quite simply, did not fulfill his needs. UNIX was and is a server OS. It was never really intended for "casual" desktop use by average, everyday users. It was created with multiple threads, multiple users, stability, and power in mind. Not how pretty the GUI looks (although I like a nice one myself) or how "intuitive" the interface is for new users. UNIX was designed around hardcore work. Crunching lots and lots of numbers, over and over without crashing. Many people and companies are trying to "bend" Linux to do a lot of things. From embedded and palmtop devices up to large (very large in some cases) servers and huge clusters. This scalability is fantastic and a nice by-product of incredible forethought that went into the design of Linux. However, it was not initially intended for all of these purposes.
Linux is (and will most certainly continue) making huge inroads into a very tough market. It is marshaling a lot of the efforts and monies of some very big players like IBM and HP (who are putting more emphasis on Linux than their own, already well-established, very dependable server OS's.) It is in a sense unifying the once forked UNIX community. This is the most important part! Microsoft has been trying to break into the very staunch server OS market for some time now, but they just don't have what it takes. This is what scares them the most. This is why we get all of the differing and varied comments out of Redmond. Microsoft doesn't know what to do about Linux. They don't know how to fight it. The FUD that they have used so many times before to destroy other OS's (OS/2) and companies (Netscape) isn't working against Linux.
This is what gives Linux it's strength.
I'm not worried in the least.
220MHz laptop (Score:2)
Oh, pay her no nevermind (Score:2)
And if she thinks "rogue" PROGRAMERS are many and vocal. . .
Well, you know. What do cowboy hats and hemoroids have in common?
Sooner or later every asshole gets one, and sooner or later every "rogue" (whatever the hell THAT means) journalist seems to have to write a "What Linux needs to Survive" article, totally clueless that all linux needs to survive is. . .
Someone programing for it.
KFG
Why does linux have to please everybody? (Score:2)
These guys all feel they are owed something for an OS they payed nothing for... He makes some good points, but at the end of the day if you don't like something, get off your article writin butt and write some code.
And lastly, I disagree with the thesis-statement of the article. Linux will be used by lots of people in the near and distant future, you can't kill a free OS.
Re:Sounds like more guff. (Score:2)
Linux is also many experiments. For example it's an experiment to see if people from differing races, colors, creeds, languages, and religions can get together and do one thing without killing each other. It's also a bunch of other experiments but I won't go into them here.
What linux is NOT is a product. Some people have tried to make it a product and some have even been somewhat succesfull but if all these companies died tommorow the experiment and the gift would continue.
The mistake the author made was to review linux as a product. Linux may be a failure as a product (not something I believe) but it's a success as a gift and an experiment. Remember Linus never intended to make a product and neither did RMS. The product-ness of linux is an happy accident.
I have two different critisims.
One is that the review is godawful wrong (when was the last time you downloaded a patch via gopher?), the author is confused about what linux is and lumps a bunch of things into her article that have nothing to do with linux. For example she does not seem to understand that Open Office is not Linux. Linux is actually a kernel with some stuff on top as a kernel it's also very very good.
Two I am critising the author for even attempting to make a review.
Products are reviwed, gifts OTOH are politely accepted and cherished, politely accepted and given to other people, or politely accepted and stored in the attic. It's rude to publicly critize the giver of the gift or the gift itself.
What must Linux do to survive? (Score:3)
I too have noticed that attitude. Applixware is a good suite.
What must Linux do to survive? The answer is continue to grow and support more hardware. The problem is not with the average corporate Linux user (and such a thing does exist, as it is used for web servers more commonly than any other OS according to Netcraft's survey a few months back). These users know that you may have to spend money in today's market for quality apps.
Rather the problem is with a small vocal minority who think that on Linux all software must be free (as in beer). The author of this column falls into this trap.
As time goes on, I think that this problem will disappear. With the advent of Ximian GNOME and KDE 2, Linux now has the capability of being everything that Microsoft Windows can be (including such features as COM+, which corresponds to the Bonobo technology in GNOME).
These are exciting times for the Linux community. I personally have sold three Linux servers to various clients and continue to do my best to promote what I feel to be an excellent product where it will function well.
Never underestimate the power of a penguin....
Re:This is part of the problem (Score:2)
This is a fundamental shift in thinking from commercial software. Linux does not exist to take over the world, it does not exist to please grandma, and it does not exist to sell machines.
It exists because the people who work on it enjoy it, use it, and make it better. That being said, it will never be the case that linux developers from top to bottom will roll over and make their software ready for grandma. However, with the entry of corporate sponsorship of software, you can expect that things like desktop projects (GNOME, KDE), office projects (KDEOffice, OpenOffice, Abiword, Gnumeric, StarOffice) will begin to be able to cater very directly to being easy to use for someone with few computer skills.
Also remember that the OEM reseller has a tremendous advantage in making the OS easy to use. The end user doesn't have to install it.
Really, I think the reason linux has not been configured for newbies is that the free developers are utterly unresponsive to market demand and could care less what articles are written about it. The corporate sponsorship cares, and they will make it happen. But now the demand is just starting to exist, so it will take a little time. Linux can change its faces so fast. Five years ago enlightenment didn't exist, KDE didn't exist, StarOffice didn't exist, GNOME didn't exist, and people were psyched because fvwm2 was out and was fairly customizable. In another five years you can only imagine where it will go wrt end user ease of use.
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:3)
Bullshit. There is something close to 5,000 drivers that come with a default installation. When I installed Windows 2000 on my main box, absolutely everything was recognized. Correctly. And the sound works. And the printer works. Etc.
"
I'm suspect about this, the windows installer is not as good as Microsoft says. On my work machine - P3 500, 2x GeForce, 2x19inch monitor, 2xSCSI disks, Zip drive, tape drive, cdrom, floppy, 512MB, 100Mbit network,
win2k installed perfectly [in three hours!], Redhat 7.1beta also installed perfectly but it took about 10 minutes to get the multiple monitors working using a helpful clear HOWTO - however the inital install was 15 minutes over the network rather than CD.
On my home machine it's a different question, Celeron 500, 320Mb ram, TNT2 and ATI Rage 128, Soundblaster Live and Soundblaster 16, 100Mbit network, TV card, cdrom , cdwriter, 2xide hd, floppy, scanner, digital camera - admittedly a non-standard machine, however RedHat 6.2 / 7.0 installs with hardware not working and requires fiddling to make it go. Win 98 does not install, no matter what I do, Win 2k insists on me removing all the hardware and putting it in in order [2nd video card -> 2nd sound card -> cdwriter -> TV card -> USB devices] or it randomly bluescreens and dies - sometimes taking the disk with it. I still have the problem that win2K randomly alters the default soundcard, and, if the machine is hibernated the TV card loses all sound output. Oh, the scanner still doesn't work because the digitally signed driver claims it's a not supported OS. Works under linux though.
All in all, I suspect that for a first time installer it's toss up between why doesn't X work, and, why do I have to remove various bits of hardware and install them in a specific order.
However, if I'm installing someone elses machine - or being telephoned from a long way away to install someone elses machine I prefer them to install linux - remote administration is wonderful.
Maybe this is the tech support business model - people who will pay extra for ease of use get remote admin by the company - it's much better than giving point and click instructions over the phone.
Sounds more like FUD... (Score:3)
Ryan T. Sammartino
Re:All you do. (Score:2)
Her rant (Score:2)
When you get a distro like Progeny Linux out of the box, it looks a certain way. It looks like sawfish with certain theme and GNOME configured a certain way. So what's the big deal? I refuse to believe that just becuase someone is a secretary, that means they must be brain dead and easily overwhelmed (they'll start to cry indeed).
As to her use of Microsoft word... Did anyone else notice the ?s instead of ". That's Micrsoft's embrace on ANSI standard text.
And lastly, if you're not Jewish, don't use the term "Oy Vey". Just don't.
Thank you and goodnight.
- Serge Wroclawski
Things to do for linux: (Score:2)
This is an easy problem to fix. It requires folks sit down and make some real, hard choices. Let's try the following, just as a vague thought experiment, nothing serious:
1. Provide one windows manager. One. Not two. Not four. One. It doesn't really matter if it is GNOME or KDE or some new jumble of letters. Ensure that it is the same one for all flavors of the operating system, period. Time for someone to win.
2. Provide one shell. One. Not two. Not four. One. It doesn't really matter if it is Korn or Bash or something some kid whipped up in a dream. No one cares what is whose favorite when it comes to the marketplace - keep your shell politics out of the decision. Pick the one that seems to work the best and stick with it. That way, there is a direction in which to proceed to making it easier.
3. Provide a unified Linux "look and feel." A company or consortium of companies needs to sit down and figure out what would be the absolute best standardized look across every one of their workstations.
4. Remove options. Preferably, remove all options short of "able to move around icons and change desktop images." The Linux desktop should have about as many options as the Macintosh, and no one except the common Linux hobbyist should realize it can be super-configured with a random application of VI.
5. Create a windows manager that couldn't crash if it was hit by a Navy submarine piloted by rich civilians. The desktop should never crash, and God help us, it should never crash and dump a user into a shell.
So, she pretty much wants us to turn Linux into Windows, eh?
What's that you say? Number 5? Oh, I didn't see that part; it appears her vision for Linux differs completely from that of Windows.
47.5% Slashdot Pure(52.5% Corrupt)
users do not read manuals (Score:3)
Tim
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:2)
For the time being windows enjoys great support from hardware manufacturers (although my video card manufacturer did not provide w2k drivers for six months after I had installed w2k) but sooner or later linux will catch up. It's not the fault of linux if hardware manufacturers are not providing drivers. I also suspect that some of them would be on the receiving end of some serious ass kicking from MS if they dared to write linux drivers but that's another thread.
BTW: Try KDE again it improves at a breakneck pace. Gnome sucked a year ago it rocks now. Amazing what both KDE and GNOME have achieved in one year. Imagine what it's going be like next year this time.
She doesn't get it. (Score:3)
Linux company stock is underwhelming. Yet linux grows.
Robert Young, Redhat CEO, once stated that he was not in the operating system to make more money than Bill Gates. He knows that is absurd.
Robert Young thinks he will win when the market for operating systems is 1% of its current value. Linux is such a good product for free that Microsoft will lose 99% of their corporate value.
And that is what is scaring the crap out of Bill Gates and Jim Allchin. It doesn't matter how well you market, and how well you use your monopoly.
Once people grasp that something free can do the job they need done, commercial sales for that market are next to worthless.
I wouldn't sweat it though - Microsoft, even at 1% of today's value, is still worth an insane amount of money.
For five years (Score:3)
Yet it's still the fastest-growing OS [linuxtoday.com] in the world. I don't get it. Have the installs gotten simpler? Well, okay, maybe. Has the documentation gotten better [linuxdoc.org] or easier [amazon.com]?
Okay, maybe.
But Linux is still going to die! Trust me.
What Linux must do to survive: Nothing (Score:5)
Easy. Nothing.
Hold on, Captain Mods-Me-Down, I have a good point here.
Linux will survive no matter what. First, ask yourself: "What is Linux, anyway?" There are many ways you could answer that, but this time, I'll answer it this way: It's an operating system that's written by a dedicated cadre of highly skilled, super-intelligent, uber-geeks. They create it for themselves, because they need it for themselves.
Now ask yourself: How can you stop them? I don't think you actually can. Outmarket them? They don't care, the kernel-hackers keep on creating. Make strategic alliances, meta-conglomerate mega deals that lock linux out? The kernel-hackers keep on creating, still ceasing to care. In fact, short of taking away their computers, the uberhackers will continue to hack no matter what the rest of the world does.
The funny part is that in spite of their lack of caring about market success, Linux has become a huge market success. Now that I think about it, that might even be the REASON it's become successful. Ironic, isn't it.
In any case, I think that Linux-based companies have to be worried about survival, Linux will survive simply because there is a group of people who will never stop working on it.
Emily: you're looking in the wrong places. (Score:3)
Ok, I tried to stick to a reasoned response, here, but she got increasingly weird.
---pb attempts to understand the Journalist---
Almost every time I see a journalist writing about Linux, it's because they think it's too hard to use. That's also because they think it consists entirely of software that would frighten almost any journalist, like Emacs and Vi. Now, to her credit, she also talks about StarOffice, which in my mind is basically a Linux port of Microsoft Office, and certainly enough to frighten any hacker. But her problem is the same.
If she doesn't want her word processor dumping core, then she shouldn't use Word 2000. There are *tons* of word processor programs for Linux [209.208.150.46], including Word Perfect. It isn't Linux's fault that she can't seem to find them all. For that matter, Windows '98 doesn't come with a decent word processor either.
Speaking of annoyances, it's painfully obvious that she *did* write this in Word, or something from Microsoft-land. That's because when she writes this sentence, "That's" looks like "That?s" on this Solaris box. Microsoft is evil, Emily; don't give in. They will make you look like a fool to your audience.
Many Linux distributions do install rather quickly, and with a simple interface. They do indeed have big buttons that say "Workstation" and "Server", but thank god they have one that says "Custom" as well. And most users shouldn't have to install it anyhow; after all, Windows comes pre-installed, and if Linux distros didn't have to worry about *that* taking up space on the computer, there wouldn't be a problem (Windows doesn't; it just silently overwrites your MBR for you; how nice!).
---pb cracks and starts to want some of her drugs---
Download patches from an obscure server in Madagascar using GOPHER?
The HOW-TO files are written in some strange moon language?
Should my mother attempt to change her shell to CSH when she probably doesn't know how to get to one from the default Desktop environment?
My god, woman; who taught you how to troll?
Ok, EMILY. Listen. Find a copy of COREL's Linux Distro. Or MANDRAKE 7.1. Or REDHAT 7.0. NOT Redhat 3.0.3; not Slackware on disks. Then, get an empty hard-drive just for linux, and push the big red "Workstation" button. Then be amazed, and PLEASE shut the fuck up in the future. Did someone actually *pay* you to write this, because I wouldn't!
Here's some friendly advice. Try sending this same article to a linux newsgroup and see what advice they give you. In fact, please DO THAT FIRST before you even THINK about "publishing" anything else. PLEASE.
Also, yes, Linux has a set of technical standards. It does not dictate GUI policies, though, and that's a good thing. Individual environments like GNOME do, and you can find those, pre-installed, as your desktop, from big mainstream Linux distros like those you claim to have tried. Now please try them.
However out of all this, I think we did find what Linux desperately does need: a JOURNALIST-NEWBIE FAQ. We'll make that a big button on startup, and burn them a special CD. Maybe then they'll click the WORKSTATION button and get the special JOURNALIST packages that magically detects which ONE software program they wanted. Even the standard RedHat GNOME stuff would probably do, and definitely XMMS instead of mpg123 for them.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft system utilisation (Score:2)
And there you have it. Usually it isn't the CPU speed that makes your PC fast, but the disk speed, and how much you use it. With that much RAM, I don't think you'll be swapping very much.
Now try the same with "only" 64MB, but increase the CPU speed a bit (say 1.3GHz) and see how it crawls.
--
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:2)
Hardly a surprise. Laptops tend to incorporate a lot more vendor-specific hardware than desktops, and as a result tend to be much more of a pain for *any* OS. Comparing laptop installations to desktop installations is simply invalid.
Fun with statistics (Score:2)
The other statistics are suspect, too. As are all statistics, I might add.
I do agree that the best operating system for job x may not be the best for x'. But I have yet to find a situation (not dictated by application availability) where MS-Windows is a better fit.
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:2)
Re:What Linux must do to survive: Nothing (Score:2)
> be nothing we could do about it.
Which is, of course, why there is no other free operating system produced under older and freer licenses . . .
Sometimes I ponder what would have happened if good web search engines were around 10 years earlier, and Linux had stumbled across BSD/386 . . .
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:2)
Re:For five years (Score:2)
It's not that Linux will die, it's just that it is going to remain insignificant on the desktop as long as it it fails to address its usability problems -- many of which have nothing to do with the perennial command line vs. GUI debate! Instead they have to do with things like device capability databases and backward compatibility testing.
(I'm not disagreeing with you here, just expanding a bit on your comments.)
Tim
Re:What Linux must do to survive: Nothing (Score:2)
I honestly don't think much of the hacker crowd gives a hoot about stock prices, marketroids or IT penetration. That stuff is for REdHat or MS.
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:2)
Red Hat 7 with Afterstep is not a comparable UI experience as MacOS, Windows 9x / NT. And yes, that you have the choice is a huge advantage for Linux. But most users, IMHO, would prefer the existing WIMP experience over a fast and unclutter Window Manager. Right or wrong, to get Linux on the desktop, you'll have to provide this.
Seth Finkelstein on Michael's abuses of power (Score:2)
http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=comments&sid=2001/3/5
Re:There are *tons* of word processor programs for (Score:2)
Agreed -Office 2000 could be way better, especially for structured documents, PDF, etc. However unfortunately MS Office has the majority of desktops right now, and we have (for a little while anyway) to be compatible with them more than they have to be compatible with us.
When we win the desktop, this will change. But we won't win the desktop if new Linux users can't read and send documents to their (still Windows based) counterparts.
Re:Why does linux have to please everybody? (Score:5)
You seem to be confusing ease of use with ease of learning. Programmers care about productivity and are willing to put up with steep learning curves. Lusers care nothing about productivity and just want to learn the thing enough to do a couple things.
As an example consider VI or Emacs or ZOPE. All of these products are notoriously hard to learn but once you know them you fly!. You become so productive you feel like superman. Would any serious programmer be using word to write a program? I don't think so.
Sometimes ease of learning and ease of use conflict with other. Productivity often means not using the mouse and memorizing complex keyboard commands. Your average luser would never put up with that.
DingDong-*REALITY* Check. (Score:2)
I just did that:
tel-e-vi-sion news (noun):
A system and method to distribute propaganda to mis-educate an uninformed public. Will increase apathy and lethargy. Device to display lies, damn lies and marketing campaigns. Usually employed by Multi-National Corporations to shape reality to match product offerings - replace individual experience with collective conscience. Also employed by Corrupt Western Governments in order to maintain their entrenchment, and satisfy the desires of their Corporate Task Masters(TM). *Health Note*: To be avoided at all costs; will cause a serious detachment from reality and cause the viewer to participate in group-think rendering them incapable of using their cognitive function.
Phew! Thank god you recommended we go get the *real* story from television newscasts.
Solaris 8 is now free download... (Score:2)
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:2)
One could argue systems should be designed so that random "stupid" actions can't totally munge a system. Perhaps capabilities will mitigate the power of root...
"But you had backups made that you could restore from, right?"
Normal Windows users I know hardly ever make a full backup of their machine, yet I haven't ever seen any "total filesystem corruption" caused by shutting down. The point is that perhaps it *shouldn't* be demanded of users that they treat their systems like a volatile mixture of chemicals in a fragile container.
Re:The "Desktop" market isn't a zero-sum game... (Score:2)
Exactly. My mum bootstraped digico's by entering octal on the front panel.
Attitude (Score:3)
This is an attitude I see alot. In alot of people. They are in it up to here, and they do not have the time, or do not want to deal with the technical details.
Ultimately, when the BS hits the fan, they do not want to deal with it. As in "y'know, after a while, I get tired of it." I get tired of doing my own car repairs, for example. So I can understand this, but there is a problem with the attitude as well.
If you deal with stuff all of the time, it pays to know how it works on more that a casual bandaid basis.
Looking through the article, I got to say that she has nailed a number of points. For Example:
Stand back away from the myriad of geeky letter slinging and imagine, just for a moment, the secretary at your place of business. She sits at the front desk, and wears a prim, black suit. She wears a mile of makeup. On her monitor are three beanie babies and a cute grouping of Snoopy stickers. She has a picture of her kids next to her keyboard, and a mug with "1 Mom!" on it in bright red. She is sure she knows how to write up memos in Word, how to use the E-Mail client of the month, write up a spreadsheet, and maybe put together a presentation. If her computer crashes, she has to get up and bug you to come fix it, because she is terrified to reboot.
Tell this woman that her desktop is infinitely configurable. Tell her that she just has to edit this one configuration file, and it will look however she wants it to look. Tell her she can even download templates off the web. Look, it's easy! A mere two or three hours and it will look exactly the way you want it to look! Furthermore, you can change it whenever you want!
She'll probably start crying.
This is a truth that many geeks do not want to deal with, because broad acceptance of Linux means dealing with folks just like that. Broad success means dealing with these folks, the folks that get satirized as tech support lusers.
SysV scripts (Re:Recombine) (Score:2)
Wroot
Re:Attitude (Score:2)
And Your plan for bringing Linux to the masses is?
later on in the article, which is long and content laden, 5 points are made as far as getting Linux ready for the Mass market. Let's face it, the mass market is not just merely in the office. It is in the home. The reaction I cited is typical of someone who is not expert in technology, and who can get overwhelmed by it. The typical user of the mass market. Remember that a very large portion of the population is below average.
For that matter, with sufficient skill you can build your own car, and customised it to be just the way you like it. This doesn't cost that much more than getting your own from the factory. How many geeks here do that? A show of hands? I thought so.
What Linux needs is already in progress. (Score:2)
RedHat have done an excellent job with Rh7.0 (except for the kernel upgrades.. those are hell). I've seen people who've never used Linux before install Rh7 like a breeze. And, they get right up to using it immediately - like they were mavens.
Granted, there's a lot of polishing to be done, but have you ever used, say, Windows95 without any enhancement? MS had a LOT of clean-up to do to make the interface perfect. Well, I think we have a faster running start.
So, editors who have nothing better to write about than to criticize Linux: you can just go ahead and writing about what you don't understand. We know what needs done and we're quickly getting there.
And of course, with the plethora of Linux distros, everyone is happy! My Debian distro gives me something of a challenge (not as easy to use as Rh), but mom can easily use Rh or Corel (which isn't dead yet :). You get the idea. I think pretty much everyone who isn't a Windows zealot is happy. We're on the right track.
The article fails to accept the possibilities (Score:2)
1. Standards: She complains that there are no standards in Linux. However, there are of course MS standards which aren't necessarily good either. Linux only has to work with current standards and make its own playing field. There is no reason why a standard has to be permanent when it is inferior to another product. IBM already said in its ads that it wants to use the Linux standards. They'll change soon enough.
2. Much of the complaints revolve around the installations- off floppies etc. Michael is right though; Linux need not be arcane, only one distribution has to be superior.
3. Documentation: The average joe (AOL perhaps) user probably wouldn't frequent newsgroups and the such nearly as often as regular engineers. There exist support groups that can speak English if you want them to, and the current system just lets users have a little more than plain Microsoft tech support style help.
4. Beta- it's as if this word has some severe connotation. The artcle once again treats Linux as an object under development and then inferior- but that doesn't mean that Microsoft products are fixed and ready to go from Day 1 and "beta" versions aren't superior to Microsoft products as is. The Linux kernel can change for all it wants but the if one distribution remains the same that's all that's needed.
5. Money: Mentioned is the fact that Linux must be sold as a product in order to be successful. On the contrary, we all know what "free" has done for Linux.
6. Linux is just a fad- once again a common argument answered prolifically on linux.org. Just because something is made by a disorganized group doesn't mean its inferior. It's only the end result that matters.
7. Linux should remove options, Linux should have only one standard interface- Heck its microsoft monopolies all over again. The distribution argument comes in here again, and god forbid that users should need less options. You don't have to always look for everything at once.
8. Linux should have an interface that doesn't crash. This looks an interesting argument, but its the choice between the console and the BSOD. If a user feels like they can't do anything more, they reboot. Simple as that.
There are various other points, but to sum it up these are just the standard anti-Linux arguments. To bend to them would force Linux into a situation where it is nothing more than a Windows look-alike and act-alike. Doing so would surely force Linux out of business. As the article admits that Linux is seeing success right now (and assumes that it will hit the brick wall running later), there is no reason why things should be changed. Linux is to be a tool to revolutionize the industry and offer something new, not a cheaper, more stable alternative to Windows. Linux will not die off because it can always change when change is necessitated...and that is not right now.
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:3)
1.Software is meant to be used by other people.
2.She represents one of these people trying to use free software.
3.She finds it lacking when compared to what is available on commercial system and voices her opinion accordingly.
4. You claim she "doesn't understand the idea"
WTF ?
Okay, then DO IT. (Score:3)
No, that is NOT while they'll win. They'll win because they're the ones doing the work. The programmers will win, because when they want a feature, they write it. There's a reason rants are a dime a dozen (case in point), but good software is hard to find. It takes work to write good software, but when you're done with it, you have something a lot more valuable than a rant. As the saying goes, if you want something done right, do it yourself.
If Emily Dresner-Thornber is truly passionate about her rant, she'll break out her favorite development environment and start hacking. Maybe she'll start a project on sourceforge. Or maybe she'll find an existing one, and contribute to it, gain the respect of the other people in the project, and push it in the direction she wants it to go.
I think she does. (Score:4)
To get to that point, you have to match *client* expectations. Er, that's Joe Sixpack again. Plug it in, it asks annoying questions once, you're done. Pay more money, answer a few more questions, and you get a spreadsheet.
Linux is not there yet.
I want more, you want more, but most of the world doesn't. They want porn and instant messages and letters to mom.
I agree with dear Emily. Removing options, at least in one distro, will do wonders for client adoption, and that's where you start attacking the cost of an operating system. Young's vision won't work until end users see Linux as a viable option. -j, a rabid FreeBSD user
Should Free Software dumb down? (Score:4)
I guess the point I'm really trying to make is, why are we (as a community) trying so hard to compete with Microsoft's Evil Empire? It doesn't really matter if Linux or BSD or Apache or KDE or GNOME becomes mainstream. What is important is that the option is there, and people seem to be flocking towards what is being developed.
Another way of looking at it is this: Free Software does not have to mimic Microsoft and other commercial software in order for it to be worth the effort. As it stands, the Linux desktops that I use are plenty easy enough for average users, and if there's any sort of a demand for it to become easier, some company or group is going to suppy it.
The free software movement isn't about replacing commercial software, it's about providing alternatives. Merely by the organic way that the movement has been growing (more people get involved, more people are contributing, the products are getting better and easier and more refined etc.) An analogy for free software could be the markets: the best projects are going to attract more users, develop reputations and therefore attract more developers.
Trying to use a heavy handed coalition to guide the development of the free software movement won't work, and definetely won't be accepted. The "vi or emacs?" question is quickly being replaced by "gnome or kde?" with a handful of sideline contenders. No consortium could ever successfully select between GNOME and KDE... it sounds like too much like central planning, which is shortsighted and can never keep up with the diversity of an open market.
If GNOME and KDE continue to develop seperately from each other, and both refuse to adopt any sort of consistency between the two (ie. do we need another aRts to be developed for GNOME?) the end result will be that one of the two will join the sidelines, or perhaps the market will produce bindings or wrap arounds to compensate for the inconsistencies.
Where is free software heading? Only time will tell, and the "open ideas market" will be the judge.
But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter of Linux never replaces the Evil Empire. It'd be nice, but the option is already there for people, and the free software alternative keeps getting better everyday. Stuff that doesn't keep up will be left behind naturally, not by some clear decision. Standards will develop de facto from user acceptance.
Finally, it is perhaps exactly the diversity that the author points to as a flaw, that actually gives the free software movement it's vibrancy. It's great because it can meet so many needs, from regular computer users to geeks who post on slashdot.
Re:It's about power, flexibility, and responsibili (Score:3)
With the possible result of Linux programs duplicating Windows misfeatures and shortcommings
Linux - the Peter Pan of Operating Systems (Score:4)
The thing is, this non-unity is inherent to the design and sould of Linux. Linux can never be user friendly precisely because it is a hacker's machine. Who else but a hacker would be happy that almost all programs are distributed as source so that they can be compiled for any platform that Linux supports?
One of the things that this article touched on but didn't go into detail about is the installation procedure for most software. With Linux, if you're lucky, there's an RPM or a DEB somewhere out there (but those are frequently distribution specific, are usually written by someone other than the author of the software, and are frequently poorly done), but really it's practically impossible to properly maintain a Linux box without gcc or some other compiler. And what about Windows? Simple installer. Sometimes these installers aren't very good - but almost always the software will be installed and will run. With MacOS it's the same thing. There's never a library that you need to get. Even Linux applications that have been ported - jed, for example, has a Windows version. Do you need to install slang on Windows before jed? No, of course not. This is at once Linux's strength and it's fatal flaw.
I absolutely agree that Linux needs standard hardware specs. So far, Linux's general attitude has been "we'll run on anything!". But only sort of. And there's not always full support for a specific piece of hardware. And there are always bugs. I have yet to find an ethernet card whose MacOS drivers had "issues" where it couldn't do certain things, or crashed the machine under certain circumstances. Why? Because Linux is almost like an art form here - it's NEVER done.
So anyway, I absolutely agree with Emily's assessment of Linux. And though I love Linux to death (I'm a computer geek - and computers are my hobby), Linux is the Peter Pan of operating systems. It refuses to grow up - because with a little fairy dust and a happy thought, it can really fly.
Re:For five years (Score:4)
Except that "the fastest growing" at a particular time is pretty meaningless when you're starting off with a small number. For example, Microsoft had an 89% desktop marketshare for the year before last. Even if they went to 99%, the rate of growth wouldn't sound that impressive because they started out with such a large chunk. Soon after MacOS X comes out, it will become the fastest growing OS because it's going from practically 0 to however many people get it — a big rate of change.
Maybe that "fastest growing" title gets you all tingly, but I'm much more impressed that Microsoft went from 89% to 92% desktop marketshare (where the real volume is at) while Linux is way down there at 1%.
Cheers,
Re:It's about McDonalds and screen resollutions (Score:3)
I think that right there explains the number one problem with Linux right now. Not only is Linux not user friendly, but the Linux user community is positively hostile towards new users. What keeps Microsoft in power is that they know how to play nice with the computer illiterate. If you can get the computer illiterate on your side, then everyone else can just go fuck themselves.
ObJectBridge [sourceforge.net] (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Good points, bad points (Score:3)
However, a few of her points definitely make sense:
- Installation - Damn straight. I need a distro that installs with a few dialog boxes, and doesn't destroy things at whim. Windows 2000 can be vaulted for the latter (it wipes out the MBR) but I find it unacceptable that a distro like Mandrake 7.2 would do the same thing. Asking for all the available installation options, it then proceeded to kill off my MBR, and I couldn't boot to dual-boot to Windows 2000. Not cool.
Linux distro installs should recognize that a vast majority of new users will want to dual-boot. Even experienced ones, like myself, will still dual-boot.
Adopt the already-made standards - I love KDE. I love Konqueror. Imagine my surprise when, filling out a user name and password form, pressing tab to go to the next field, the password field, instead went to the URL location bar, where I started typing my password for all the world to see. Not cool.
And printing: let's get the printing up the first time, every time after install. Don't make me install Ghostscript drivers, and KDE, don't ask me whether I want to use "BSD" mode for printing. I'm using Linux. Don't confuse me.
Finally, let's get some standards down pat that make sense. If I choose to copy in Netscape 4.72, I should be allow to paste it into the KDE text editor. Simple. Brainless. If I click and drag a program from within the K menu, I should be allowed to reposition, like every OS from Windows 98 on. Sound cards: get them to work from the outset.
This is simple stuff, but it's amazing how few linux developers, and distros, even bother with it.
The "Desktop" market isn't a zero-sum game... (Score:3)
The thing that I think is a fatal flaw in everyone's arguments about whether Linux will "thrive" (or even "survive") is that they assume two completely false things:
Both are completely false, and this is something we as Linux advocates need to remember. Is Solaris any kind of OS for your Mom? I don't think so. Neither are any of the *BSDs. Does that make either of them failures or likely to die soon? Definitely not. Do you run Windows in the datacenter? Not seriously. But Windows is still a success.
The future is interoperability. You will have PCs, personal workstations, internet appliances, and even set-top boxes that all can run the same basic "productivity" apps (though not necessarily the same binary), and you will be able to transfer a document from one to another transparently (hopefully, the docs will be in XML or SGML). Windows will run on some PCs and internet appliances (and maybe consoles like XBox), BeOS will do settop boxes and internet appliances, *BSDs will do appliances and a few PCs, and Linux will do workstations and PCs (and some appliances). If none have more than 40% market share, I would consider this a rousing success, as no one is powerful enough to dominate and thus hurt the impetus for interoperability.
The message is this: OSes are custom - they all have their niche (though it can be a broad one). In my opinion, trying to make a single OS do everything is a Bad Thing. This is the one thing I see Linux trying to do, and we really need to stop and think if this is appropriate (in my opinion, it isn't). Pick a couple of things to specialize your OS in, and don't try to be a Jack-of-All-Trades (and a master of none).
-Erik
Re:Why does linux have to please everybody? (Score:3)
Many technical users like myself also enjoy ease of use despite the fact they have the knowledge to understand more convoluted ways of doing things. For one, this allows me to install Linux on my computer and allow my girlfriend to use it. It also means my mother can write letters without worrying about her machine stopping working for no reason before she's had a chance to save. Many Linux users like this and want the rest of the world to experience it too.
For technical users, you'll have better documentation, better hardware support, and stronger integratuion with clients (who needs Samba or Appletalk when the clients are Linux too). You'll appreciate client OSs where user s can surf the web, type documents, read their email, view Acrobat files, and zip documents without being able to destroy the underlying OS accidentally.
Linux has a great solid foundation and some really brilliant ideas. I want that foundation to be accessible by other people. And judging by the actions of many others, it seems they too are definitely aiming for the desktop.
None of these authors feel they are owed something. They're contributing. They don't want Linux to be better for their own ghain, but for Linux's sake, as there are many advantages to ubiquity.
In case you haven't worked out, not everyone in the world can write code. In fact, not everyone can be a journalist who writes a neatly summarized rally cry for Linux ease of use and inspires people to help is the act of fixing it. Not everyone can provide clear and concise feedback. Not everyone can manage a company that pays the grocery bills of the programmers either.
Time to ride the reality train... (Score:3)
Think back to first year Calculus. Derivatives and integrals didn't make that much sense at first, did they? The more you use it, the more completely you understand it. In fact, after quite some time of repeated exposure to the same ideas, you understand them very well and the seem extraordinarily simple in your head. It becomes hard for you to remember how it felt like to *not* understand those ideas, or how someone else could possibly not understand.
Take yourself out of your shoes for a moment and open your mind to how someone with a completely different background and experience in an area you have particular expertise in might be intimidated by the complexities. Then, when you can do that, reread the article with a pinch of salt.
Knee-jerk flaming of the messenger and total disregard for their opinion are the marks of zealotry, which aren't always perceived as the fruits of a "rational" following. Keep that in mind.
Re:Emily: you're looking in the wrong places. (Score:3)
In a previous job, a co-worker was having problems installing Corel Linux on her machine. It was failing to correctly recognize the video card and network card. It used the wrong drivers and the machine would get all hosed. She came to me for help and after I was unable to convince it to do the right thing, I tried Mandrake (because it was handy at the moment). It died in the install because it didn't know what the hardware was. So I went and got my personal Slackware disk and installed that. It worked like a charm (but of course I had to manually tweak it).
Corel and Mandrake and others might be nice when everything is just perfect. But reality just isn't that way. That's not to say these aren't good distributions (I do recommend Corel Linux to a lot of people). I'm just saying a LOT more work STILL needs to be done without anyone making excuses for not doing what needs to be done.
Re:Sounds more like FUD... (Score:5)
It is. X takes a lot of RAM, and while KDE and GNOME are growing slimmer by the second, they do too. Office 97 and Windows 95 will run on a P133 w/ 32 Mb of RAM. Not great, but okay. KDE (itself) will take 4 minutes between logon and desktop.
Huh? It's been around since '91 and has been "hot" for the last two years at least... hardly "flavour of the week".
Flavour of the week in an expression. Yes, Linux has only been popular for a relatively short time compared to Windows or netware or MacOS.
Upgrade this driver", "fiddle with this registry setting", etc
There's complexity in installing Windows apps, but the above comments are completely out of touch. NT and 2K Administrators touch the registry quite often. Regular users don't. Very few apps require driver upgrades.
However, I do agree in that a solid packaging system (which needs much more work on standardized package names, capabilities, granularity, naming conventions, etc) combined with a decent utility like apt-get (prolly on a RPM distribution - its the LSB and a more popular system) would provide an incredibly easy to use installation system.
But in the meantime its Gimp needs LibGimp needs GTK upgrade needs Bonobo upgrade needs GlibC upgrade. And that sucks. Still. there's only a couple on months before an easyto use apt based distribution (Mandrake 8) is released.
Duh. Welcome to Free Software, babe. That's the whole *point*.
I thought the point of free software was that it was more ethical to use Free Software than closed source software? In terms of Open Source, that's the exact opposite of Open Source - remember release early, release often? ESR has the same beliefs as this guy, and the B&B emphasises making stable, useable released as frequently as possible (and treating those who give feedback with respect as well, by the way). Besides, some people use Linux for the same reason they use MS Word - because for their task, its the best tool for the job.
I don't know what she's on, but the default Mandrake install, which boots into KDE, looks remarkably similar to other *cough*Windows*cough* GUIs.
Agreed. Mandrake would easily have to be the closest thing to getting Linux going on the desktop. But (for now) things like software installation are still headaches (lacking apt-get till version 8).
I'm salivating at the thought.
It's about McDonalds and screen resollutions (Score:5)
It's about changing screen resolution. Mandrake has a control panel that lets you change every little detail of the window in look n'feel, but the panel has no mention of how to change the screen resolution. (I know about Xconfigurator now, but they were laughing at me in the slashdot irc forum)
It's about clicking a box to turn on the sound without having to install additional software / or visiting the command line as "super user". It's about not having to "compile" applications for your particular distro.
I know that in time I will become proficient at linux, but that's because I have the technical inclination to do so. Forget those people who just want to "get something done" (like my mom).
I agree that linux is terrific for it's endless configurability, but that is it's death knell.
McDonalds is not a success for it's "endless selection," but it's consistency of product. You can go to any McDonalds in the world and get the same exact thing. That is one of the primary driving factors to it's success.
The success of Linux is not due to its configurability and quality of the kernel, but instead a testament to the microsoft hegemony, and that a few people will take _any_ half baked (escuse me, beta) alternative.