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Linux Software

Yet Another Call for Linux Standardization 533

An anonymous reader writes "Newsforge has an article Commentary: United We Stand...the Division in the Linux World, in which David Meyer argues that UnitedLinux will provide standardization for the Linux community that will allow it to win the desktop market from Windows. The article has a number of supporting comments, but then this one particular negative comment that disagrees with David. This particular comment offers an alternative view on the need for standardization. This aternative view that is put forward simply argues that 'Over what is almost twelve years we have pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps. We have done this using a development model that allows us to produce software that proprietary vendors cannot compete with', and then summarizing that 'the Linux community does not need to set up businesses with the specific intention of trying to "win" users from Microsoft; all we have to do is continue to develop software in the same way, and the users will make the switch all by themselves'."
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Yet Another Call for Linux Standardization

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  • They already do. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gabrill ( 556503 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:09PM (#4888710)
    It's called Linus Torvalds. He will standardize as much as he can, and the rest of us will group behind the best distro of his stuff. Anything else would be closing the free developement model. UnitedLinux is trying to corner the market on useable linux.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:13PM (#4888733)
      LOL. Linus contributes the kernel, which is a great thing, but still is only a part of any distribution.
      • by kasperd ( 592156 )
        Linus contributes the kernel, which is a great thing, but still is only a part of any distribution.

        Sad seing such an Insightful comment only scoring 0. Unfortunately I just used my last moderation point.
      • by Mr Teddy Bear ( 540142 ) <mbradford.bahaigear@com> on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:23PM (#4888794) Homepage
        Which is true, and I think it should be the only standardized thing in Linux. Not that I think chaos should reign, but I totally agree with the poster of this story... (or the guy he quoted, whatever) The more we actually TRY and COMPETE with ms the longer it will take for any real changes to be made. We're modling much of the GUI elements of linux that MS already set up. (Yes, I know that it also takes from Macs, etc.)

        The point is that in order for us to get anywhere we've got to start innovating, not immitating. In order to do that we've got to stop looking up so much and just do what we already know is right. Nose to the grindstone. :-)
        • by deaddrunk ( 443038 )
          Rubbish. What needs to be provided is as familiar an environment as possible to make the switch as painless as possible. People may not like Windows much but they're used to it, so give them a more reliable version and then start making evolutionary changes.
          Imagine if you introduced a totally new car control system that made total sense and was really easy to use. People's first reaction would be 'Where's the steering wheel' and their second would be 'This sucks, there's no steering wheel, I'm not buying it'.
          Sad, but a fact of life.
        • You are correct that we need to keep doing things right. However, standardizing parts of Linux is not doing things the wrong way.

          As a developer, I would like to know that I can count on certain libraries being included in the distributions for which I write code. I would also like to feel confidant that the libraries will stay backward compatible so that I don't have to keep rewriting / recompiling my products for new versions.

          This doesn't mean that all distributions will be the same. It only means that there would be a 'Lowest common denominator' that programmers could count on. This is 'working smarter.'
          • by miu ( 626917 )
            As a developer, I would like to know that I can count on certain libraries being included in the distributions for which I write code. I would also like to feel confidant that the libraries will stay backward compatible so that I don't have to keep rewriting / recompiling my products for new versions.

            Preach it brother. :)

            This is a serious problems with libraries, that seems to be especially bad in the free software world. Sometimes the changes are just trivial silliness: add/remove a param from an initialization function and recompile. Obnoxious, but not the end of the world. Other times the changes are deeper and require a fair amount of work. The frustration is that there is no standard about what can change in major, minor, and patch revisions.

            A simple set of rules that govern:

            • When an API function can be removed. Major after deprecation marking for full revision.
            • When a param change requiring a cast may be made. Compile visible, but not link visible. Minor
            • When a param change requiring relinking can be made. Major
            • How internal functions are named. I prefer a trailing underscore.
            • When external structs can be changed. Major.
            • yadda, yadda, yadd
            The dev branch of a library would not be subject to these kinds of rules, and dist maintainers should never use such a branch.
        • Your point would have bin valid 10 years ago, but now people have got used to what a GUI should look like and there is not much we can do to change it.
          If new elements are introduced to the computing environment (e.g. use of database instead of files ) then we can make brave new designs for those parts, but other than that, to much novelty will only alienate the users.

          You should also know that Xerox Parc, Apple and finally MS have done a lot or usability research in this field, why throw all that out the window.

        • by tsa ( 15680 ) on Sunday December 15, 2002 @03:08AM (#4890879) Homepage
          It's not the GUI that must (or must not) be standardized. The only thing that needs to be standardized are the configuration files that are used in the distro. Location as well as makeup. In that way everyone can use their favorite GUI, distro, whatever, while companies can be sure that software developed for one distro had a great chance of working on all distro's.
  • Standards (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:10PM (#4888716)
    It's not lack of certain standards that makes Linux aggravating for non-Linux users. It's that those standards are so cryptic, obscure, contradictory and arbitrary. I'm not talking about TCP/IP or what have you, but simple things:

    - Why is there still no standard model for adding and removing apps? The number of competing models for package management alone is sickening.

    - Why do we still have to choose between a bunch of different desktops, ALL of which are mutually incompatible?

    The lack of standards in Linux is even worse than the closed-ended standards on other OSes (coughWindowscough) because it makes almost any attempt to converge standards nearly impossible. We've had this for 12 years, and nothing short of wiping the slate clean is going to make it any better.

    This is fine for people who don't care about such things -- who are just going to dump RedHat on a server somewhere and deal with it as little as possible. But for people who are going to be managing many different systems, not all of which are going to be homogenous, this is insanely annoying. It means that people have to learn four times as much to do the same things.

    We need ONE standard desktop -- KDE, Gnome, I don't care. Pick one and use it. The others can be gravy, but we need a sanctioned interface. Not just to make things easier for end users -- and believe me, it does -- but to insure that more de facto standards do not muddy the waters any further.

    And yet any discussion of such a thing in "serious" Linux circles is treated with jeering and derision. "GUIs are for wimps!" Face it -- GUIs make your life easier and anyone who tries to argue this down is blowing smoke up the wrong sphincter.

    Linux users and advocates need to lose the elitism that used to preserve them, and is now working against them.

    Posted as Anonymous Coward because karma can go fuck itself.
    • Re:Standards (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:28PM (#4888820) Homepage
      We need ONE sWe need ONE standard desktop -- KDE, Gnome, I don't care. Pick one and use it.

      So... Who, exactly should get this authority to decide? And how, exactly, do you propose stopping people from happily continue development on all the other desktops? /Janne
    • Re:Standards (Score:4, Informative)

      by kubla2000 ( 218039 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:36PM (#4888861) Homepage

      - Why do we still have to choose between a bunch of different desktops, ALL of which are mutually incompatible?

      Out of all the duff crap in your post, this is worst. There's nothing stopping a KDE user from loading Gnome apps or vice versa, you just have to have the appropriate libraries loaded.

    • - Why is there still no standard model for adding and removing apps? The number of competing models for package management alone is sickening.

      - Why do we still have to choose between a bunch of different desktops, ALL of which are mutually incompatible?


      If you add that every installation is different and decide that this should also be more uniform, then you've essentally made every distro identical. This is great for the poeple that like RPM, KDE and a GUI installer (assuming those are chosen as the "sanctioned" standards), but this is horrible for the large groups of people that dislike all of those. The various Linux distros all offer their unique solutions to each of these issues to cater to specific sectors, and if you smooth out the differences, then all the reasons that certain people use Linux go away, forcing them look for a system that gives them the flexibility they once had in Linux. This is exactly the opposite effect that I think you had in mind.

      If you want a completely sanctioned system, always use the same distro and use only their packages. After you find out how inflexible that is, come back here and post about how good it is that we have umpteen different distros to serve different purposes.
    • Re:Standards (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kasperd ( 592156 )
      Why is there still no standard model for adding and removing apps?

      There are a few different of which two or three are very widely used. Of course having more than one is a litle unfortunate, but there are actually multiple of those which are quite good. Even with multiple different aproaches, it is still better than what you see on other systems. On other systems you basically have one installer program for each application which is a lot more than an installer program for each distribution.

      different desktops, ALL of which are mutually incompatible?

      They are all built on top of X11. And they are not all incompatible, I frequently mix applications from different environments. Only a few applications are dependend on a particular environment.

      The lack of standards in Linux is even worse than the closed-ended standards on other OSes (coughWindowscough) because it makes almost any attempt to converge standards nearly impossible.

      I completely disagree with that. With Windows you don't get any kind of standard. The MS way of compatibility is not achieved through standards, but rather by having only one implementation. And they can move it wherever they want. Yesterdays version of Windows is not necesarilly compatible with tomorrows. And if MS dislikes you, your applications will be the ones to suffer the most. And finally tomorrows version of Windows will be incompatible with todays competitors.

      KDE, Gnome, I don't care. Pick one and use it.

      Sure, a lot of people do that. They just don't pick the same. And who do you think is in a position to deside which of the two people are allowed to use? We are talking about freedom here, people cannot come and tell me I must use gnome or I must use KDE. I often alternate between gnome and KDE, whenever I upgrade I use the one giving the best performance and stability in that particular distribution. Or I even use twm if I get too tired with the whole thing, in fact KDE and Gnome are becoming too much bloatware for my taste. I liked them better in the old days, if they would just have worked on the stability rather than the bloatness it would have been so much better today.

      Face it -- GUIs make your life easier

      Sure, I sometimes want to use a GUI. But I don't need the entire desktop environment concept known from Gnome and KDE. Give me a Window Manager and nothing more. All I need is a nice way to manage the Windows on my screen, and of course a way to open new xterms.
    • by saskboy ( 600063 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:41PM (#4888885) Homepage Journal
      The problem as I see it, is that Linux is seen as the Windows killer. It is not yet that way. We are willing to praise lackluster device support, and non functioning desktop environments because they don't give us a BSOD or tell us our applications are doing something "illegal".

      We need a Lindows type OS, that has a nearly flawles, Windows-like interface, and easy to use device support. We also need massive support for everything that is cool on the Web for home users to tackle learning Linux.

      I'm not a computer dummy, but I had trouble getting my scroll button on my mouse to work in Mandrake 9.0. I set it to where it SHOULD have worked and it didn't. Then I rebooted, and all the sudden it worked. Nothing told me I had to reboot, and I assumed I didn't because I was switching between mouse selections and other features were changing so how was I to know that the scroll button needed a reboot?

      If I were in Windows, they would have told me to reboot as soon as I picked another mouse. This is just one example of less than thrilling support for my hardware. My soundcard and NIC didn't work either without tinkering.

      Thanks for letting me rant. I want Linux to kill Windows [to the point where it is affordable and stable], but Linux cannot do that yet. Standardization will help that, but Linux is not meant to be standard for everything! Contradiction, eek!

      You need non standard versions of Linux for people who don't want it for Desktops. Period. Trouble is, those people are the ones driving its development, so we won't see a standard Linux anytime in the next decade.
    • We need ONE standard desktop -- KDE, Gnome, I don't care. Pick one and use it. The others can be gravy, but we need a sanctioned interface.

      There IS a standard, it's called bash, and is the default shell on every linux distro (at least the one's I've used). All your favorite window managers and desktop environments are your aforementioned gravy.

      On the other note regarding KDE/Gnome, these seem to be slowly approaching some intermediate common asymptote, so what you're asking for might not be too much of a problem in the future.

      FWIW, I actually like what many distros have done lately by standardizing the menus across KDE/Gnome/others. Some might not like seeing a KOffice item in a Gnome menu, but it's nice to have the software that you installed be standardized across the available desktop environments.

      FInally, I agree with you that GUI's help out. But my original comment was about commands working on the command line uniformly across all linuces (neglecting some distro-specific shell scripts which depend on certain files existing in certain places with a certain layout, but that's a whole other story, or maybe that's your original point to begin with). But regarding uniformity, any linux you get setup will have a standard CLI-based interface to let you DO things.

    • NO, NO, NO... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SerpentMage ( 13390 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @06:00PM (#4888973)
      Just like we need one type of car, one type of TV and one type of VCR.

      I find it amazing that people clamor around the concept of one type of LINUX, but yet will buy a specific VCR, Refrigerator, TV, car clothes.

      Why is this? Because a specific vendor has said that there should only be one user experience and not multiple. Why did this specific vendor do this? Because otherwise there MIGHT even be competition. And as a result a whole slew of minions argue along and fight into the hands of that specific company.

      What we need to do is convince people that there is choice and that people can choose. Just like you can choose a VCR and TV. Interesting, is it not. You will spend hours deciding which TV you should get with the feature set, but spend one minute on the OS....

      Tells you something yes?
      • by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @07:00PM (#4889273)
        You miss the point. Nobody is saying that there should be one type of Linux, but that they should work with the same software.

        To use your analogies:

        Different TVs, but they all can view the same channels and use the same antenna connectors.

        Different VCRs but they all use the same tapes and work with any TV.

        Different cars, but they all use the same gas and standardised oil grades.

        Differnt refridgerators, but they all use the same electricity.

        That's the kind of similarity you need to standardise in user space.

        • by smittyoneeach ( 243267 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @09:34PM (#4889860) Homepage Journal
          To abuse your analogies:

          =>Different TVs, but they all can view the same
          =>channels and use the same antenna connectors.
          PAL vs. NTSC?

          =>Different VCRs but they all use the same tapes
          =>and work with any TV.
          Beta vs. VHS, region coding?

          =>Different cars, but they all use the same gas
          =>and standardised oil grades.
          Regular, unleaded, diesel?

          =>Differnt refridgerators, but they all use the
          =>same electricity.
          115V, 60 Hz vs. 220V, 50 Hz?


          We're really delving into economics and economic network externalities (which have nothing to do with packets).
          I recommend this [barnesandnoble.com] as a non-technical, yet excellent analysis of WTF is going on.
          The do-it-yourself spirit that has me pondering ordering 4 Lindows boxen off of www.wallmart.com and IABCOT in my basement to support some research for school simply Does Not Translate into a general prophecy that Linux will rule.
          The sheep remain sheep, and will not forget that BeelzeBill is their shepherd, and they shall not want (too frequently).
          Linux standards development will continue along its present, Darwinian lines. For example, we gripe about Gnome/KDE, but I haven't heard much about alternatives to X. You can say all you like about Bluecurve, but that's the general direction that things, over time, are likely to go.
      • I find it amazing that people clamor around the concept of one type of LINUX, but yet will buy a specific VCR, Refrigerator, TV, car clothes. Yes, but if you compare a $50 Panophonic TV with a $5000 Sorny TV, you'll notice something: they work the same way. The "interface" for all TVs is extremely consistent. Channel Up, Channel Down. Power. Some buttons with numbers on them. A few coax and A/V inputs on the back. A nice standard 2-prong AC plug. Now compare, say, configuring the network on Slackware vs SuSE. Completely different. I get so frustrated when friends of mine ask me how to install a new network driver on some mysterious Linux distribution I've never used -- I have no idea how it should (properly) be done. Maybe I need to recompile the kernel or modules and edit some modules.conf somewhere, maybe I need to run "config" or "setup" or "yast" or "netconfig." The best I can suggest over the phone or IM is to RTFM (which I loathe doing). I just don't have the time or energy to learn how 20 different distributions work so I can help people out. The argument, in my mind, is not that we need all distributions to be the exact same thing -- we need the distributions and the various UIs to conform to a few standards with regards to software installation/removal, configuration, and locations of files.
      • Re:NO, NO, NO... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Oliver Defacszio ( 550941 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @07:50PM (#4889435)
        For pity's sake,

        The same thing happens every time some jackass brings this point up.

        Linux advocates: What, oh what, does the common user want in order to switch from big, bad Microsoft?
        Common users worldwide: We want one, simple means of installing software and a standardized GUI.
        Linux advocates: No, that's not it. What, oh what, does the common user want in order to switch from big, bad Microsoft?

        Keeerist, if you don't want to hear the answer, then stop asking the damned question. The responses are pigfuckingly obvious to everyone but you. The common user wants one easy means of installing software and a common GUI. Now, please, tell me I'm wrong.

        • > Common users worldwide: We want one, simple means of installing software and a standardized GUI.

          Then why switch?

          Of course you can build a "standard" UI on top of Linux. But that would miss the point of using it over Windows or Mac. There's a reason why an airplane has a different UI from a bicycle.

        • What they really want is the ability to ask: "How do I do xxxx in Linux?" and not get the answer: "Please tell me the following 85 things about your configuration:"

          And that is what standardization is about. Not about forcing a single choice but about having a single default that can reliably be trusted by users who haven't learned enough to change the defaults.
        • Re:NO, NO, NO... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by unoengborg ( 209251 )
          I certainly wouldn't mind a simpler standardized way to install apps. But in most distros it is just a double click to do it. I really can't imagine how we can simplify it any more. Unlike windows you don't even have to answer questions like where you want to install it. It just adds the functioality clean and simple. There is a problem with library dependences, but you have that problem in windows too, and people do manage to install programs in that environment. In fact some Linux install systems even address this by automagiclly downloading the missing libs.

          I think that the install problem has more to do with all those compressed tar files floating around on the net. Users simply don't realize that they are supposed to be used by developers and not end users. And after trying some of those they tell all their friends how difficult it was.

          So I would say that most of the problem is in user perception, even though a standardized GUI to pop up when a user doubleclicks on that install package would not hurt. But the main problem is education.
        • Re:NO, NO, NO... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by hacker ( 14635 )
          The common user wants one easy means of installing software and a common GUI. Now, please, tell me I'm wrong.

          Then let THEM write it. My software works, installs fine on literally hundreds of thousands of Linux, Unix, and POSIX-compatible machines that it is available on, and is in every single Linux distribution, and the BSD ports tree. I have yet to hear one complaint that it didn't install like they expected it to.

          If someone wants to make it install LIKE WINDOWS, then they'll have to write it and contribute it back to the project.

          If the user wants one common GUI, let them choose one at install time. Forcing all Linux distributions to use that single GUI or recommend it standard (GNOME, KDE, blecch) is death to Linux. We are not trying to mimic or emulate Microsoft, so stop it!

          The users have to educate themselves, mature their behavior, and learn a little bit. This is not Windows, so stop trying to make it like Windows.

        • The users need to pick one. I picked one. They can, too. What? Are they afraid the might be the wrong one? But they aren't afraid of having us pick "the one" for them? Then they should hire one of us to pick it for them. Sheesh. Why is this so hard?

          What most users want is for it to work exactly the way they are used to computers working, only better. Well, some don't care about the better part. Actually most don't give a rat's arse if it's better. They just want it to be easy and simple and do what they are doing now, which has been pretty much molded by their past with Microsoft Windows.

          The real issue being raise regarding standardizing Linux isn't about what users want, anyway. It's about what developers want. It's about what lazy developers want, which is to not have to figure out anything about a different distribution. If two distributions are identical, or if there is only one, they probably don't care.

    • I think you're missing the point. Variaty does not automatically exclude standarts.

      Right now there is basically only three app add/remove standarts - deb, rpm, tar.gz, deb being the best, but the most unsupported. Pretty much every distro has RPM, even if its not the primary packaging format(slackware, for example, has rpm installed by default, and, although it's labeled "unsupported" and dependancies don't work, I use it all the time, never had any problems). So rpm is pretty much the standard, with deb and tar.gz being the alternative. If your distro doesn't have rpm, install it and no problemo.

      About desktops... how are they mutually incompatible? you can't run QT programs from Window Maker, or GTK programs from kde? So you have to install a few more libraries. I for example can't stand qt, and love gtk and other people have opposite preferences. If one is accepted as the standard and everyone stops supporting everything else, then someone is always gonna be pissed. X Windows protocol is the standard and thats good enough. And just because some people like GUI doesn't GUI has to be adpated as the standard. I use CLI for many things(nothing beats MC at file management) and like it.

      Variaty is always good. Windows has alternative desktops that are very very good(Talisman for example) but nobody uses them and know about them, simply because the regular windows gui is the standard. Users have to be given alternatives always.
    • .....so cryptic, obscure, contradictory and arbitrary.... competing models for package management alone is sickening....still have to choose between a bunch of different desktops, ALL of which are mutually incompatible....fine for people who don't care about such things .... just going to dump RedHat on a server somewhere.....

      Oh, I give up. AC, that is one finely crafted troll. You managed to cartoon and press every Slashdot hotbutton. It's not often you see that level of study and dedication anymore. Congrats.

    • Re:Standards (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mickwd ( 196449 )
      ".....we need a sanctioned interface"

      To paraphrase Clinton, "That depends on what your definition of "we" is".

      We (experienced Linux users, those who love to tweak, try different things, find the desktop which suits them best) do not need, and in many cases don't want, a "sanctioned" interface.

      Who is going to "sanction" it for us, anyway ? Using what we are "sanctioned" doesn't sound much like Free Software to me.

      Your point makes more sense if you consider new Linux users, or perhaps a corporate desktop use of Linux.

      They might appreciate a standard desktop, in which everything works the same way, and learning/training is simpler. But is this so difficult to achieve ? Pick one of KDE or Gnome and stick with it.

      Let everyone else use what they are most comfortable with, and stop whinging.

      One things that always gets me about the "corporate desktop" is how much functionality is actually required to use the desktop. People talk as if using the desktop itself was the aim of the exercise. It isn't. The aim of the exercise is (just) to use the desktop to get at the applications to manipulate the information/data in question (documents, spreadsheets, code, video, sound, whatever). The way some people talk, you'd think they spent several hours a day moving and resizing windows, changing fonts and colours, and stuff like that, instead of working.

      Yes, some more standardisation would be useful re. file management, drag and drop, standard keystrokes, etc. But stick to either KDE or Gnome (2.0) and a surprising amount of this is already achieved.

      Perhaps the problem is that some of Linux's best applications are KDE/Qt applications, and some are Gnome/GTK applications, and if you restrict yourself to just one subset, you're missing out on some of the best programs.

      But then, if we concentrated just on developing the one great spreadsheet, the one great word processor, the one great cd-burner, I'm sure we'd be missing out, too. Where would the innovation and the new ideas come from ?

      Competition - it's what a large part of the Western economy is based upon.
    • by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @06:33PM (#4889143)
      We need ONE standard desktop -- KDE, Gnome, I don't care. Pick one and use it. The others can be gravy, but we need a sanctioned interface.

      Sanctioned by who? You? God? Bill Gates? And how is that going to be enforced? Do you go out and shoot developers that develop software you don't like?

      The different interfaces are there because different people like and use them. Under Linux, if nobody wants to use a desktop anymore, nobody will be using it. That's what real choice is all about, and Linux is structured so that people really do have a real choice, unlike Windows or Mac OS X.

      Why is there still no standard model for adding and removing apps? The number of competing models for package management alone is sickening.

      I see four major "models": Debian, RedHat, Slackware, and Gentoo. They are different, they are managed differently, and they serve different purposes. Even if, say, RedHat and Debian used the same binary format, the packages still wouldn't be interchangeable because they are maintained and kept consistent in very different ways. I'm glad that both Debian and RedHat (and other distributions using RPM) are out there: it gives me meaningful choices. If ever one system or the other turns out to be inferior, it will go away.

      Welcome to the free market of ideas. This kind of competition has created package management that is lightyears ahead of anything on Windows or Mac OS X.

      Why do we still have to choose between a bunch of different desktops, ALL of which are mutually incompatible?

      Gnome and KDE are fairly similar, and even untrained users have no trouble switching between them (even if they have a preference for one or the other). And applications from one desktop usually run fine under the other and major functionality (window management, clipboard, selections, etc.) continues to work.

      Why do you "have" to choose? For the same reason you "have" to choose between a hundred different models of automobiles. It's a free market. Windows and Mac OS X, with their centrally planned architectures and take-it-or-leave-it attitude, are the exception, not the rule; let's hope that the industry will get rid of those exceptions since they have stifled innovation. You sound like one of those Russians whining on about the good old days when Stalin kept things running.

      Linux users and advocates need to lose the elitism that used to preserve them, and is now working against them.

      Linux is modular. That's good. And because it's modular, people put together a wide variety of different systems out of it. That's good, too. And those different kinds of systems survive depending on whether people use or don't use them. And that's as it should be. People who use Linux want to get away from the Windows one-size-fits-all model.

      Another way you can think about it is that you can't compare Windows, MacOSX, and Linux. Windows and MacOSX are both kernels and GUIs. Linux is just a kernel. If you want to compare them properly, there are many different operating systems in the "Windows" sense: Linux-KDE, Linux-Gnome, Linux-GNUStep, Linux-XFCE, etc. And being different systems, you should have no more expectation that Linux-KDE and Linux-Gnome are compatible than that Windows and MacOSX are compatible.

  • by ryochiji ( 453715 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:11PM (#4888718) Homepage
    I keep hearing about "development models" and "standardization" to help make inroads into the desktop market with Linux, but I wonder if they might be missing something crucial: users.

    Apple didn't come up with a great UI through "development models" and "standardization". They came up with the interface based on interface design theories and tons of usability tests. That is, they got ordinary people to use new interface designs, did analysis, and figured out what works and what doesn.t Yes, until Aqua, they did have standardized UI guidlines, but that was only the end result.

    The way I see it, you're not going to get a good easy to use system until ordinary users start using Linux and provide feedback to the development communities. Programmers have a different sense of what "ease of use" is, and unless they start tayloring to end users, there aren't going to be any changes.
    • Not to be contrary, but I think Apple is pushing tighter standards [apple.com] for UI development in os X now that developers are given (almost) full run of the APIs. I have seen some poorly made Aqua application interfaces, and seen the developers get slammed in forums for not adhering to these.
  • by SteweyGriffin ( 634046 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:11PM (#4888719)
    And you won't hear this from people much because most of you aren't really well-versed on the topic. Running, installing, customizing applications on a GNUH/Linux-based computer is one thing, but discussing the ramifications of standardization of the kernel across various platforms is an entirely different bowl of wax.

    GNUH/Linux's lack of centralization is an amazing strength as well as a weakness.

    You can run GNUH/Linux as it allows Linux to be used for almost anything. Super-computers run it. 386s run it. Palm Pilots runs it.

    There's no official distribution because it's part of the principle, people.

    But, there is a problem with lack of standards. When someone develops a new Web browser under one distribution, there's often no guarantee it will run on other distributions (the fucking devil might not even run on a different version of the same distribution!).

    This is why we need standards. Bottom line. End of story.

    But if Linux continues to exclusively dominate the backend servers, we may see only server-side protocols, software, and development environments (as well as languages) become standardized, while the desktop side continues to lose out to Windows because Microsoft is proprietary and doesn't support open standards.
    • But, there is a problem with lack of standards. When someone develops a new Web browser under one distribution, there's often no guarantee it will run on other distributions

      That is not due to lack of standards. You might have to compile it statically because the right version of the needed libraries are not available. But that is about it. The ways to perform communication across the network is well standardized, the only problem there is the servers (not Linux) not respecting the standards. And developers could take the time to test their application against a raw X11 system without bloatware.
  • Diversity offers security, choice, and encourages competition and creativity.

    However, it also causes confusion and makes systems hard to understand and makes software vendors' job more difficult. I think it is a tough call between diversity and unification, what call would you make?
  • it will never work (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ironfroggy ( 262096 )
    There will never be a usuable standard for Linux. Why? Because there shouldn't be. I won't stand for it, and a lot of other's won't stand for it. Should this "Standard" be used in those watches running linux? No. The great thing about Linux is its varied uses. Well, thats one of the great things. It just doesn't make sense to keep a standard in the way that people try to do.

    What should be done is compatability between the variations, not standardization.
  • We have standards (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:14PM (#4888735) Homepage
    There are standards already, such as the LSB (which most distros follow today) and the desktop interoperability standards.

    Linux isn't a product, it is a process. Locking things down where it isn't absolutely necessary will stifle that process, and, in the end, Linux itself.

  • Microsoft's great advantage is that it offers software developers a single standard to write their code to, and provides users with a guarantee of software compatibility.

    Linux, on the other hand, has at least five major distributions -- in addition to Red Hat and Caldera, there is also S.u.S.E. (from Germany), Slackware and Debian (a completely noncommercial version). Each distribution differs from all the others, has different setup procedures and requires a different approach when installing new software. Linux outsiders may watch this whole spectacle with some perplexity.

    Corporate America, not to mention the individual consumer, shies away from such variety, with its potential for confusion. Yet at the same time, the diversity is a major source of Linux's strength. It's the beauty of anarchy. It's the beauty of freedom. The distributions that do not do a good job keeping up ... will not survive in the long run.

    It's an advantage because you have more choices and competition. The distribution vendors are fighting to make distributions better, and that competition helps a lot, it really drives them. There is very little proprietary work in a distribution. It's very easy for someone to come out with a free version of Red Hat, so the distribution vendors have to be constantly making themselves better. If they don't, people will migrate to whoever is best technically.

    The success of OSS comes from - in some amount - diversity. So lets try and keep a balance between unison and competition.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Our community evolves. It is part of our dynamic to look for, and try, alternative ways of doing things. If it works, fine. If it doesn't work, it will fall by the wayside.

    Too much corporatism may indeed have a negative impact on the community, since it may disenfranchise the programmers that now give so much time to the community. It is something we (and the companies involved) must be careful of.

    Then again, properly set up it will be a powerful tool that allows the community to do what it does best: create good software.

    For example, Linux needs its own 'usability lab'. How that is set up is another question; maybe the traditional method does not work. United Linux could provide a forum for doing such work. That would be good.

    Bottom line, I'm not afraid of United Linux. If it works, it works. If it does not work, we will try something else.

    As for 'winning' the desktop: do we need that? I guess the answer is 'no, but it will happen anyway'. We will create more new software, and that software will increase desktop use. As long as people are working on it the quality of the Linux desktop will improve, and eventually it will become compelling for the wider public.

  • Any decently written software application should be able to cope with standard filesystem paths changing slightly.

    Believe it or not, there are living, breathing applications out there on the Linux side of things that work fine when you play around with their configurations excessively.

    Run the app on your cellphone, Palm Pilot, Sony VAIO, or whatever, and it works the same way time after time.

    I don't know the answer to this question, but I will pose it regardless:

    Should we spend all this time developing standarized rules and laws that we all must learn and follow, or should we simply just start writing correct code that adheres to standard filepaths and .h files?
    • Should we spend all this time developing standarized rules and laws that we all must learn and follow, or should we simply just start writing correct code that adheres to standard filepaths and .h files?
      Yes.
  • by A Guy From Ottawa ( 599281 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:18PM (#4888756)
    Why would I (as a happy windows 2000 user) make the switch to linux?

    There is only one answer: SOMEONE needs to convince me that I can be just as happy and productive in a Linux environment. To switch though, I also need some incentive (in this case that would be that Linux is free).

    The idea that "users will make the switch all by themselves" is absurd and unfounded. Does the comment author believe that the BILLIONS of dollars Microsoft puts into marketing is wasted?? I don't think so.

    • Like Windows 2000? You can't use it forever, Redmond won't let you. At some point you have to move on to Bill's latest offering, and you'll just *love* XP. As I see it, you have three options:

      1) Use 2000 forever and M$ goes out of business.

      2) Upgrade (downgrade) to XP.

      3) Learn to use Linux.

      I know #3 will take some effort, but at this point it is almost equal to option #2. I'd put money on the prediction that, as Linux grows, M$ product quality will either get worse or the price will go up. Their shareholders aren't particularly excited about the prospects of MSN and XBox in a post-MS-monopoly marketplace.

      No matter what you choose now, #3 will eventually become the best choice. Personally, I'm going to try to use Win98 forever, or at least until I can play recent games in Linux.

  • by Anonymous Coward
    I haven't looked into it, but are the standardization documents open source? It would be great if I could branch and roll my own!
  • by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:18PM (#4888760) Journal
    I never really knew how serious is it was untill I wanted to become a unix expert. I began with gentoo due to the great amount of documentation. I had great luck with it untill 1.4 when devfs just became to unbearable and buggy to deal with. For some dumb reason I could not get /boot to mount properly. No its not a devfs thing and I know how to disable it on startup but this problem only exists in 1.4 and the mount -t ext2 /dev/hda1 /boot does not work.

    Anyway I decided to try out suse and debian. Boy, what a difference. Every single file was in the wrong place on both systems. Suse was truly awefull in yast overiding any changes to my system files. I am aware of the .config files yast uses can be edited manually but I want to be a unix expert and not a suse expert.

    Redhat tries to have psuedo files /etc that are symlinked elsewhere.

    I understand *Bsd users perfectly in regards to defragmentation and quality problems in linux. In regards to quality and I refering to cutting edgeness and bugginess compared to other unix's including bsd. I am not saying its unstable.

    I like how *bsd simplier and everything system related is configured from /etc like it should. The FreeBSD manually is a great resource and probably one of the greatest unix books around. Gentoo is the only distro that I know of that comes close to this. I love manually editing the /etc/make.conf file to optimize my whole system. Slackware from what I heard uses bsd style init and maybe more simplistic but I have not tried it so I am not qualified to make an opinion.

    I got tired of hacking my systems for weeks on end trying to customize it so I switched back to Windows2k. (shudder) I am waiting for freebsd 5.0 to come out and will likely use it when its ready. The early 5.0 dp-2 release does not like my usb hardware for some reason and still needs some work in regards to threading, java and nvidia opengl driver support.

    • It's not the first time that I see comments on how on some linux distributions config files are not where they should be (in /etc) and how *BSD is so much better in that respect.

      I've been using Linux for 5 years, and over they years I tried several distributions (Mandrake, RedHat, Debian, Gentoo) and I don't remember having to edit a config file that was not in /etc (besides user config in my home). So can you please give examples of config files that are not in /etc?

      Now, regarding *BSD. A couple of months ago, I went in a cybercafe and wanted to chat with friends on irc. However as soon as I tried to connect to an IRC server, it would disconnect me for 'having an open proxy'. I asked the manager. He said he was aware of the problem but didn't know how to get rid of it. I told him they probably had an open proxy. He asked me if I was familiar with unix. The next minute he had me logged as root on their FreeBSD NAT trying to find the problem ;)

      I ran 'netstat' and found out that they had Squid running, and that me getting kicked from IRC was probably to due to the fact that it was poorly configured. I immediatly looked for a the config file in /etc or /etc/squid but didn't find anything. It took me a couple of minutes to figure that the config file was in /usr/local/squid/etc or some very weird path like that. Not really the 'everything system related is in /etc like it should' you describe. The story had an happy end since a few minutes later I managed to log on IRC.

      Disclaimer: it was my first and only time doing 'administrative tasks' on a *BSD system so it could be a bad example. I do not mean to troll, just giving one example that is opposite to the parent poster's experience. Are Linux distributions so bad at having all config files in the same place, and are the BSDs better are it?
  • by Anonymous Coward
    1. One desktop enviroment PLEASE! Im sick of gnome getting in the way, from a developers and a users point of view, kde is much better! Scrap gnome and then we will have a unified desktop
    2. Libs, scrap re-invented wheels and and standardise on one, get rid of toolkits like motif, xaw, gtk, fox, tk, xul, openofficetk, fltk , curses (and many other obscoure ones) and standardise on qt/kde, the standard toolkit
    3. One kernel, scrap the fucking hurd already, its braindead, linux is much better
    4. Fix the broken keymaps! On a UK qwerty keyboard, you can input a euro by pressing altgr+4, but in linux, you get ¼ instead! Dont forget that the windows key should work in linux too (pop up the k menu, it does in some distros, but not all)
    5. better dialogs. As a user, the kde interface is very intutitve, but in gtk the dialogs suck, for serious work, the gtk file dialog sucks!


    This is not a troll, but as a devloper for linux these are REAL peeves
  • by reallocate ( 142797 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:21PM (#4888778)
    Not to be a naysayer, but in 12 years Linux has managed to gain only a few percentage points worth of the desktop market. Users really don't care, don't know, and have no reason to be aware of the development model used to create their software.

    In all probability, Linux will never replace Windows, or even the Mac, on the desktop. It can, however, carve out a viable slice of the market if the Linux community delivers attractive, innovative, easy-to-use software with capabilities that users want but cannot find elsewhere. By and large, this hasn't happened yet.

    And, it will not happen if too many Linux developers continue to imagine that their development model is what they're selling. It isn't.
      • And, it will not happen if too many Linux developers continue to imagine that their development model is what they're selling. It isn't.

      The point you are missing is that MOST Linux developers are not selling anything. They are just developing software for their own needs.

      This tends to create a system that is more developer friendly because it meets the needs of developers well. The theory is that a very developer friendly system will ultimately be a very good platform for developing any software.

      I'm not sure how successful this has been, but that's what we have. Don't ask Linux developers to be salesmen, they won't like you very much. Now, there are those who are trying to sell the wares these developers have created, and it may be that they will speak for users and be able to leverage this good development platform, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see how this plays out.

      So far, there's some indication that it's worked well in some areas, for example server software and appliances, and less well in others, such as desktop software.

    • Not to be a naysayer, but in 12 years Linux has managed to gain only a few percentage points worth of the desktop market. Users really don't care, don't know, and have no reason to be aware of the development model used to create their software.

      And they won't be. I think you're missing a fairly crucial point which is that the desktop Linux effort only really started in '96 with the launch of KDE. In '98 KDE1 was released, and that's when the ball started rolling. That means the linux desktop has in effect been in existance for 4 years now.

      In that time, KDE and GNOME have gone from ugly, unstable and primitive desktops into powerful, beautiful and yes, in the case of GNOME2 even usable desktops. Not only that, but a truckload of applications have been developed, installation of the OS has become childs play and an open standards effort has been started to unify the interfaces between desktop components.

      That's a lot of progress.

      And, it will not happen if too many Linux developers continue to imagine that their development model is what they're selling. It isn't.

      Given that Linux has never been marketed as such, it's only ever grown through word of mouse, I think there is sufficient interest in not just the technology but also the development model.

      Business in particular is keen on the idea of ridding themselves of vendor lockin, being in control and being able to easily maintain old software if the original vendor/maintainer no longer carries on.

    • Not to be a naysayer, but in 12 years Linux has managed to gain only a few percentage points worth of the desktop market. Users really don't care, don't know, and have no reason to be aware of the development model used to create their software.

      Whew, that's a relief, because you know what... Linux wasn't created to replace Windows! .

      Let the users complain all they want, Linux doesn't exist to compete with Windows, nor is the goal of Linux to supplant Windows on the desktop.It may be the goal of some Linux companies to engineer a Linux version to compete with Windows, but this is not the goal of Linux.

      As a Linux developer (and not a Linux Distribution employee), I really don't care what the Windows users whine about. If they don't like it, they can go back to Windows. Linux wasn't created by whiners, and I don't work for them.

      If the users can't use it, or it's not too easy for them, there are plenty of other operating systems they can play with that might be easier. I'm sick of hearing this topic come up over and over and over. "But for Linux to be successful, it has to make it to the desktop...". Linux is already successful, even if I am the only person in the world using it.

      It's MY job to make the software, and make it work.

      It's someone ELSE's job to make it work like Windows.

  • by StandardCell ( 589682 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:21PM (#4888780)
    1. Unified and universal standardized library structure similar to Windows DLLs and APIs(yeah I know it's there, but it's neither standard in location or type, nor is it universal). This could also help accelerate audio and gaming library acceleration development.

    2. Copying the Windows registry paradigm for system and program information. One should not only be able to install programs and have their components registered, but also cleanly uninstall and/or install over existing versions in the same way. You can also standardize automatic upgrades for existing programs and kernel patches over the 'net using a similar tool.

    3. GUI the hell out of every system tool there is and make sure that GUI is strictly standardized with integrated help and unified. It's getting there but it's not there yet.

    4. Include copies of software with each distribution compatible to at least some extent with their Windows equivalents (e.g. XMMS, OpenOffice) though this is pretty frequent these days.

    5. (Most important, and likely most difficult) Get all current developers to start working under this framework to the greatest extent possible. Whether it's open source, closed source, free software, or whatever else, a common framework is critical no matter who is developing.

    That, to me, is what's essentially different between Windows and Linux on the desktop. It's a chicken-and-egg to get more developers of Windows-only software, but the only way to get them on the bandwagon is to cut a standard here and today. This is a lot more ambitious than, say, POSIX compliance. But this is what it's going to take, not just copying the binary into /usr/local/bin. These changes are also necessary for future progression in server-side OS distros as well IMHO, but server penetration of *NIXES is (fortunately) much further along.
    • by Feztaa ( 633745 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:39PM (#4888873) Homepage
      2. Copying the Windows registry paradigm for system and program information.

      This is by far the worst idea I've ever heard. The Windows Registry is one of the worst parts of windows. Registry got corrupted? Reinstall!

      One thing I hate the most -- reinstall the OS, it clobbers your registry, and then you have to reinstall all of your apps, too. I like that each program has it's own plain ASCII config file in Linux. That way if I reinstall my OS, my apps don't lose their configuration. Hell, I even have a seperate /home partition, so I could reformat my root partition during the install, and my programs would still retain their configurations. I love it!

      Linux has nothing to gain from a 'Windows Registry', except for a Single Point of Failure that would be a huge pain in the ass, all around.
  • by sczimme ( 603413 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:21PM (#4888783)
    From the article:

    Microsoft users are an interesting lot. They have systems that they have NO control over. They have systems they have to reboot every sixteen minutes. They freely pay Bill Gates obscene amounts of money for buggy programs that they can't use when they upgrade to the next operating system. It's almost laughable. But they are united, "

    Using the same OS does not make these people united any more than driving a car makes all automobile owners united.
    • What...you never talked to a Corvette owner? Porsche? BMW? Saturn? Check the web right now for Mustang fans...you need to do a reality check on this particular analogy.

      Don't get me wrong...windows users are not united as a fan base, that's for sure (compared to Apple users, as an example). But using cars as an example of your point is way off, sorry. :)

      Try something like "...any more than coughing up blood makes drunks united."
      • Re:wait (Score:3, Insightful)

        by sconeu ( 64226 )
        He was referring to generic cars. He's right.

        Mac users are like Mustang owners. So are Linux users, though Linux users are more like "muscle car" owners, each with their favorite version (distro).

        Windows users, on the other hand, drive a Chevy Lumina, or a Ford Escort. They don't band up.

      • I was not as clear as I might have been - apologies for that.

        Actually using cars as a broad category is a rather good analogy. There are many more Windows users (as in Joe and Jane Desktop who just want to send email) than there are people actively involved with and enthusiastic about Windows. In both cars and operating systems, the overwhelming majority just want to get point A to point B and aren't terribly concerned about the particulars of how they do it. The subcategories - administrators, developers, etc. - can be the analogs to the Porsche/BMW/Saturn car club members.

        Nutshell version: the enthusiasts in both worlds are the minority, and there is no relationship connecting/binding the point-A-to-point-B crowd; describing them as 'united' is inaccurate.

        How is that for a reality check? :-)
  • by newsdee ( 629448 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:26PM (#4888805) Homepage Journal
    A standard does not mean that everybody is forced to do it that way. It's merely a common "language" that people agree upon.
    Defining a standard will therefore enable distros to concentrate their efforts while being able to keep their own way of doing things.
    Of course, if the standard lifts offs and everybody accepts it, then the distros will start dropping old features over time.
    But even with a standard, it remains open source. So theoretically anybody could try to propose a new standard (as long as it is backwards compatible). ;-)
  • Linux is making serious waves with the big boys of IT. IBM, SUN, Hewlett Packard, Oracle and DELL

    We all know that Dell has backed off a couple of time, well they never_truly_supported the Linux they did sell for a short time.

    Linux division shows its ugly head at perhaps the worst time.

    I disagree. This division is not an ugly side to Linux, rather I believe that is what keeps the choices available. Hell look at how many freaking car models we have, granted you have five similar with different names, the choice is still there.

    But they are united, and most don't know the first thing about Linux. Why is that?

    Well I will say because there are about ten different "Hacker" magz out there that teach them a new trick every month on who to make their system that much faster, and it would be detrimental to dump all that knowledge to learn a new OS.

    Red Hat, Lycoris and even Debian need to get on this group.

    Now I use RH 7.3, and I know there is now way in hell you'll get a Debian group to admit that RH is an equal-it's not.
  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:35PM (#4888855)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by silvaran ( 214334 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:46PM (#4888913)
    The author makes little to no suggestions as to what we can do to solve this problem. Even more useless is that he does not even describe the problem he's trying to present. Like another poster mentioned, just because a group of people use Windows does not make them united.

    I believe the Linux wave is going great. Linux software is farther ahead than it's ever been (since it's been given time and hard work), and we're gradually coming to accept a certain number of features as "standard" for any given distribution. Making his comparison to Microsoft, he seems to suggest that all the distributions should "unite together" and make one big distribution. But then... where's the choice? Where's the variety that shows us alternatives and suggests ways to improve our systems even more? There is no one solution, and I'm happy that all these distributions exist, as it allows me to find my own solution based upon the work of a dedicated group of people. Without Mandrake and Suse, who's to say Red Hat Linux is the right solution? Likewise, without RH and Mandrake, who's to say Suse is the right solution?

    The only thing I can think of, and something he didn't touched on, is the rippling of changes back to the original maintainers. There's nothing more frustrating than adding a component to your own custom system and thinking, "How did Red Hat put this all together?" Of course, you can always grab their source and figure out how they did it. I find a lot of these changes that the individual distributions make are bug fixes or feature improvements (patches so the software installs properly, or extra data to allow better integration into GNOME/KDE menus). It frustrates me that these changes don't make it back to the original package maintainers as often as they could. I would love to see the pam_stack module make it back into the Linux pam distribution so it can provide base level authentication services without the need for lengthy post-package patches and other tweaks.

    Granted, there are some modifications that come with the territory. I see no reason for maintainers to have to adopt the Blue Curve theme that Red Hat uses to dress KDE and GNOME like each other. But at the same time, it would be nice to be able to pick and choose software packages and not have to worry about re-doing common work that all the distributions have already done.

    Anyways, back to the article. I think this guy spouts a whole lot of nothing. There is nothing wrong with the way things are going with Linux and if there is, we'll get there soon. But keep in mind that Linux users are not Microsoft any more than Windows users are Microsoft. I use Linux because I feel comfortable and secure using the environment. I built my own server system from scratch because I wasn't happy with the choices offered by the different distributions. And that's the luxury of using an open system, to pick and choose exactly what you want.
  • by Plug ( 14127 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:48PM (#4888922) Homepage
    1. Debian (who are a very very big player in the Linux world and currently my distribution of choice) have a very very good package manager and even better distribution system for it (apt). LSB, on the other hand, have decided on Red Hat's RPM as their package of choice. This means either Debian somehow has to be extended (some would read crippled) to work properly with RPM, and then on top of that they have to realign their directory structures to go in line with LSB standards, which will confuse a lot of Debian stalwarts.

    Windows installers can copy quite fine with the fact that the system directory on Windows 2000 is \WINNT and the system directory on Windows XP is \WINDOWS. It shouldn't be hard to write Linux installers that can do the same thing - even just looking at environment variables should leave you right 9 times out of 10?

    Debian can produce a LSB-compliant distro, but they may choose not to. Or not for a while anyway.

    2. Has anyone suggested to Richard Stallman that Free software is renamed Freedom software, so people instantly have a better idea of what it's about?
    • by PigleT ( 28894 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:57PM (#4888960) Homepage
      What's the problem?

      a) RPM already has at least two ways of being upgraded dynamically - urpmi and apt-get. It just needs a consistent well-maintained high-quality upstream pool-set

      b) Debian supports RPM packages just fine.

      c) The standards (specifically, the LSB) say nothing about requiring RPM to be the system's native package-managing system.

      d) Debian already strive for LSB-compliancy, at least where it makes sense. This is why we've had /etc/init.d/ since the get-go while RH have been messing around with this "/etc/rc.d" abomination which then needs legacy support on the assumption that there are idiots out there who can't cope with RH correcting their previous mistakes.

      "the system directory on Windows 2000 is \WINNT"

      Well, only *if* you install it that way.

      And one for thought: which is more important, adhering to a standard for the sake of it, or knowing what you're doing? (A specific example of the latter: given an IP#, I expect you to be able to trace through DNAT, netstat -p or similar and through /proc, to tell me where in the filesystem the httpd is located that's responsible for a given webserver. If you can't debug that, you ain't gettin' root on my boxes.)
    • LSB requires that RPM be available, it doesnt insist that all other package managers be removed.
  • *sigh* (Score:4, Insightful)

    by IIRCAFAIKIANAL ( 572786 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:49PM (#4888927) Journal
    Microsoft users are an interesting lot. They have systems that they have NO control over. They have systems they have to reboot every sixteen minutes. They freely pay Bill Gates obscene amounts of money for buggy programs that they can't use when they upgrade to the next operating system. It's almost laughable. But they are united, and most don't know the first thing about Linux.


    Not one of these statements is true (except perhaps the control over the OS statement, depending on how you define control).

    I never have to reboot W2k or XP, except during the occasional (hehe) patch.

    I know people that still use Office 97 on new operating systems. In fact, MS catches a lot of flack for maintaining backwards compatibility. And now we're claiming that they don't?

    Microsoft users are not united. We are just customers that use the (arguably) best (or only) tool for the job (exchange, 2000 for desktop PCs, office, etc). There is basically no sense of community for MS users that I have ever stumbled across. Microsoft developers have a few hangouts, but most of us just hit MSDN when we need info.

    Most (if not all) of the Microsoft users I know of (developers, admins) not only know of Linux, but have used it when appropriate. Given that UNIX is still quite pervasive, finding the robust, free version isn't that hard. Could it be, perhaps, that they only use Linux where they feel it is strong (webserver, etc) and that is the reason it isn't as popular as zealots think it should be?

    As for standards... people seem to forget that Windows is top of the heap, and the Windows environment is the least standardized environment I have ever seen. Every app has to be skinnable. Every save dialog and open dialog customized beyond recognition. Just go to the Interface Hall of Shame [iarchitect.com] to see what I mean.
  • It would be just plain perverse if Gentoo or Debian(/Knoppix) embraced the United Linux plan; and I can't imagine Red Hat going that road is bloody likely either.

    Okay, so anyone releasing software will have an rpm version for Red Hat that will with any luck also work on Mandrake. And if the software is free and good it will quickly be ported to Gentoo and slowly to Debian. You can see how UL would wish everything would fit their own scheme, but it ain't gonna happen. So what's the noise about?

    All we're lacking for widespread desktop acceptance is KDE 3.1 and strong programs in a few areas like household/small business accounting and desktop publishing - and having a few different Linuxes to port those to when they appear isn't gonna be the stumbling block.
  • Pathetic (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kaypro ( 35263 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:52PM (#4888939)
    I'm as big a Linux fan as the next guy, but:


    "Microsoft users are an interesting lot. They have systems that they have NO control over. They have systems they have to reboot every sixteen minutes. They freely pay Bill Gates obscene amounts of money for buggy programs that they can't use when they upgrade to the next operating system. It's almost laughable."



    Nothing in these statements is true. Please stop using the argument that Windows is unstable (beginning with Win2K). If you are using supported hardware it's as stable as Linux and dare I say MORE stable than Linux/XWindows. (Random X crashes do occur on occasion)

    Please define "NO control over". If you're talking about being able to swap VM in the kernel then yes. If you're talking about being able to choose what apps to use or themes or such than no.


    My father still uses a Windows 3.0 app on his XP machine with absolutely no problems whatsoever including printing! That's one thing Microsoft has done right, being able to use most legacy apps.

    I totally agree that Unification is necessary to an extent but get your facts straight before you start bashing Windows.

    • I have to agree with you there, My XP box goes up when I get home from a LAN party, and doesn't get rebooted until I take it to the next LAN party. Even then, in a dry spell of LANnage, my XP box stays up for months without reboot. It's rock solid.
    • Pease stop using the argument that Windows is unstable (beginning with Win2K). If you are using supported hardware it's as stable as Linux and dare I say MORE stable than Linux/XWindows.

      I must beat on XP or something. On a Dell Inspiron 8000, XP crashes about weekly. Too much for me. I noticed that you specifically left out Window 9x. I'd run XP on my desktop also, instead of Windows 98, for those apps that don't have Linux replacements, but the licensing costs are too much.

      -Brent
      • Interesting. When you say it crashes do you mean it literally blue screens or just apps crash and the taskbar gets restarted? I purposely left out Windows 9X, because it was for the most part a terrible OS (basically a GUI shell on top of DOS). As far as I'm concerned Windows 2K is Microsofts first true consumer OS with NT4.0 being their first true OS in general. Everything besides those just weren't usable.
  • by SideshowBob ( 82333 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:55PM (#4888954)
    A big, big part (perhaps the most important part) of usability is consistency. Lack of consistency between apps, and between an app and the desktop environment, contributes to poor usability.

    How important you consider usability to be for Linux I guess is up to you the individual. But accept that without a 'standard' GUI you can't have a good user experience.

  • You know Im all for businesses trying to make money from Linux, it helps the development of the OS and provides much needed support for businesses wishing to make the change.

    That said the only way that there is going to be a truly United Linux is if Linus takes the kernel closed source and tries to go down that path.

    The United Linux organisation is just a business group, trying to drum up business for their product. Nothing more and nothing less. As a sys admin and software developer I can tell you now that I would much rather have a range of specialised tools in my pocket than a all-in-one that attempts to do everything but does nothing well.
  • by Diabolical ( 2110 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @05:58PM (#4888968) Homepage
    Why? Simple. As a software vendor i would like to port my application to Linux. But what distribution should i support where it comes to libs and directory layouts? Red Hat? SuSE? Gentoo? Debian? Mandrake? Slackware? etc. etc. etc.

    I have only a limited amount of time to make my product compatible with the os. If i have to support all of them i would have to make more money of my customers just to cover the costs. This would make my product not very attractive to users, and i will probably not sell enough of it to support my efforts. So i decide not to port it yet and wait for better times. The other option is to choose just one distro like so many other vendors (Red Hat anyone?). Making that distro the de-facto standard, not because of the fact that it is the best but because that is the one on which most commercial software runs.

    So standardisation is good. It attracts commercial software for all distro's which will attract new users who will make Linux to be able to reach new heights.

    Now, i know that OSS could compete on alot of levels with commercial software so it would not be necesary to have commercial ones but not all of them are as good as the commercial product. For alot of software there simply is no OSS alternative which could be viable. Not yet anyway. (e.g. Visio (Kivio comes close but that's it), Dreamweaver, Video-editing software (professional versions) etc. etc.)
  • ./configure [options]
    make
    make install

    This allows users to update their systems without waiting for packages to become available and gives them the power to choose how the software will interact with the rest of the system. There also exist nice wrappers that automate the process such as Gentoo's emerge that automate and hopefully soon Debian's apt-build.
  • Yep, it's so true. The best OS will clearly win, with no effort on the part of the community or developers to make that happen, simply because the buying public will recognize the 'best product' and force its acceptance by writers of drivers, apps (particularly games) and useful third-party software.

    After all, that's why we're all running OS/2 these days, right?
  • What the hell is POSIX for if no OSes actually implement their APIs? What is POSIX doing with all these grandeose APIs and standards if no one actually implements them? Why doesn't POSIX evolve with new technology and keep up with new standards? ISO seems to be even more over-bearing, but they don't seem to want to have free and open APIs/protocols. Who the hell would pay money for the specs for supposedly open apis/protocols? The RFC process could easily be extended to *nux APIs. KISS == Keep It Standard, Stupid!
  • "all we have to do is continue to develop software in the same way, and the users will make the switch all by themselves'."



    That sounds familiar. I'm betting that's Apple's thinking. I'm afraid it's not getting them any further. I think that if Linux users believe that Office clones are all they need to overcome Microsoft, they are vastly deluded. A world of home-grown dll-dependent apps and simple VB programming is out there that locks these companies into using Microsoft the same way that dynamic libraries are needed by some RPM packages. These are the "character" of how business is done at these companies.

    Stop cloning and come up with your own real innovation. Somewhere someone needs to put something truly innovative into OpenOffice or one of the desktop environments that is a generation ahead of Microsoft or Apple. *That* is when the real threat from Linux begins.


  • by Skapare ( 16644 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @06:21PM (#4889072) Homepage

    Standardizing Linux is the wrong way to go about bringing Linux to the corporate desktop and the end user. But that's not saying standards are bad. Instead, the approach should be that we offer the different alternatives to what will be a standard, and then let the decision of which will be that standard for those end user be made by those end users. In other words, let the strong survive. Let there be a system that does get chosen for the new age of desktop computing, and let it be based on Linux. The semantics there is important. It should be based on Linux, not assimilate it.

    Distribution choice is a good thing. But if a group of people making a few different distributions want to make changes to theirs to make sure they are the same as each other, let them. That's their choice. But corporate IT decision makes are going to be asking questions like "what is the difference between this distribution and that distribution?" So what will the answer be? Are we going to be able to say what the difference is, or will be end up confusing them more by saying "Oh, they're just alike; flip a coin to decide."

    Of course, making sure that programs can be installed on, and run on, a wide range of different distributions is a good thing. But part of the responsibility to achieve that lies with the developers of that program, such as being flexible as to where files are found, what library versions can be used, etc. Consistent interfaces help, but we also need to be able to change and adapt to make things constantly improve, and when there are new things to adopt, new decisions have to be made, and choices have to be available to decide from.

    Just don't move towards the notion that a single standard shall define Linux, and no other can be Linux. Linux is a class of systems that have diversity and can adapt. That is as much a part of the power of Linux as is its strength in security and reliability.

    Business decisions are all too rarely made on the basis of long term planning. Regardless of the intent, those decisions will be constantly made over and over as the years go by, and as many projects fail. The needs will change, even if they are clouded by uncertainty. Linux, too, will fail, if it loses its ability to adapt.

  • by inode_buddha ( 576844 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @06:21PM (#4889073) Journal
    does not exist for most of us. I must disagree with the commenter's post on Newsforge about standards not being needed; Linux is already quite standardized *from a technical standpoint* eg ANSI c/c++, FHS, POSIX, sh behvior.

    Of course all that depends on the individual vendor's implementation.

    Linus himself did not create his kernel to compete with anything; everyone else re-created it to do that. Linus has gone on record as saying he does not really care what happens in user space; he's not interested in anything there.

    Let us not forget that distro != Linux.

    My next argument is that Linux distros *do* need to standardize on the UI if they want to get $LARGE-BUSINESS-ACCOUNTS. Excuse me, but have you ever tried to tell your management that they don't need to standardize? Bear in mind that in the US business place, MS *is* the standard, mainly on the desktop and 3/4ths on the back-end.... any change will probably freak them.

    Leading right back into my previous paragraphs.... business management doesn't really give a crap about obscure (for them) technical standards as long as they can do their jobs effectively (again, the UI thing) which in turn puts paychecks on the table. I feel that this sucks, myself, but that's how it is, and I *do* need to pay my rent.

    At the end of the day, the *real* focus of linux is a 32 and 64-bit multitasking, multiuser capable kernel licensed under the GNU GPL, with supporting libraries and tools from GNU. That's all.

    Anything else is up to the rest of us.
  • by kliment ( 627259 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @06:26PM (#4889098)
    For example, create several distributions based on one of the major ones, with modifications made for compliance with the other major distros' packages. Add a smart installer that can adapt the directory structure of different distros, plus an easy way to search for a certain package among all different package types.

    Next, have several distros aimed at different kinds of users. Everything should be graphical from the very start. The installer should never bother the user with manual partition creation and the like. Just a simple question: You have an 80 gig drive, how much of it do you want to leave to your old os, and how much for linux. No more should be asked, ideally. A basic package set is installed for all of those distros, and a set of packages that is target-specific, as in productivity apps. All hardware should be auto-detected, and the smart installer should download the drivers automagically. Most Windows executables should run directly as if they were linux binaries (transparent Wine). There should be a simple, complete configuration utility, which should also include package management. Network access should be transparent. The installer should also install software according to hardware installed. For example cd-burning software will be installed if the system has a burner. Video-editing if firewire ports are present. Hardware detection at boot and periodical software updates according to software package completeness (if the package development has just started, and the package is still buggy, it will be checked for updates more often). Direct importing of emails and address books from existing Windows partitions without user intervention. In short, the user would be ready to start working immediately after installation(which consists ONLY of popping in the cd and selecting partition size then waiting for setup to complete). The smart installer should also handle windows installer programs.

    This is a short summary of the features that would lead to rapid adoption of linux on the desktop. It must be made transparent, as non-intrusive as possible, yet easy to customize and all possible options easily available to power users (interface complexity as a setting in the control panel). It must handle everything automagically, so the user never needs to do anything related to the os, only related to the work they are doing.

    I realise that this is far off, but one step at a time we could develop a system that would work for average users as well as power users.
    Generally, we need to take the following steps:

    - The setup program
    - The smart installer
    - Transparent Wine and windows app integration
    - A central driver repository
    - Central package database
    - Minimal user interaction when not absolutely necessary(of course available as a setting)
    - Interdistribution compatibility
    - A method of retrieving settings and data from old os

    If we handle those issues, we might actually have a better os usability than windows. If we have something easier to install, free(both ways) or at least free as in speech and very cheap, with better usability and better responsiveness, fast automatic bugfixes, better stability and better application base, we have a winner.

  • Please get a clue (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Etyenne ( 4915 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @06:54PM (#4889250)


    - Why is there still no standard model for adding and removing apps? The number of competing models for package management alone is sickening.

    - Why do we still have to choose between a bunch of different desktops, ALL of which are mutually incompatible?


    1. There are many standards actually (RPM, debs, etc.). RPM, used by RedHat, Mandrake, Caldera and pretty every distributor that count beside Slack and Debian, is currently the dominant one.

    2. Wrong. Desktop are actually COMPATIBLE ! You can run a Gnome application in KDE and vice-versa. Some aspect of the DE are not compatible, like themes for example, but could you use a Winamp skin in WMP ?

    Another "too many choices is bad" armchair advocate trolling. Please go get a fscking clue.

  • Bless him! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @09:10PM (#4889781) Homepage Journal
    'the Linux community does not need to set up businesses with the specific intention of trying to "win" users from Microsoft; all we have to do is continue to develop software in the same way, and the users will make the switch all by themselves'.

    Bless that guy that wrote this! Too many people are obsessed with making Linux (and Unix in general) the "Anti-Microsoft" operating system. I would much rather use a real OS than an alternative OS. What is this strange desire to make Linux an alternate operating system?
  • What the... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by drsmithy ( 35869 ) <drsmithy@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Sunday December 15, 2002 @12:08AM (#4890394)
    From the article:

    Microsoft users are an interesting lot. They have systems that they have NO control over. They have systems they have to reboot every sixteen minutes. They freely pay Bill Gates obscene amounts of money for buggy programs that they can't use when they upgrade to the next operating system.

    Not a single assertion in that quoted text is true. I stopped reading after that point, as someone so obviously out of touch with reality couldn't possibly have anything _useful_ to say.

    As to the issue at hand... I always find it most entertaining that so many of the people who extol the benefits of standardisation for things like network protocols think standardising the OS is a bad idea. The same arguments that make standardising on something like TCP/IP a good idea also make standardising the functional basics of an OS a good idea (and if you don't consider the interface to be a piece of base OS functionality, then I think you're well and truly our of touch with the "common user").

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15, 2002 @04:24AM (#4891015)
    There are a helluva lot of comments of the vein, "if you don't want to learn Linux, stay away." It is obvious to some but not many of us here that the problem is not that people don't want to use Linux, it is that they want to be able to USE Linux. As a relatively new Linux user (although I've used a lot of Nix tools in Mac OS X) I find it incredibly frustrating that oftentimes I want to do something in the CLI, I have no idea how, and I don't even know where to start looking. Friends tell me commands to run like they should be obvious, but how would I know them except by being told? And I absolutely hate it when I want to, say, change my resolution and I have no idea how and a friend refuses to help me because he knows how to do it in Red Hat and Mandrake but he's never used Debian and he doesn't know nor care to know the "Debian way."

    The posts about "lowest common denominator" are right now, and here is an example. When you want to change the host name of your machine, you run the command "hostname" as root followed by the new name. Ta dah, its set. This works, as far as I know, on all Linux distros. On Mac OS X, you use the hostname command, and it doesn't stick on reboots. Why? Because the Mac uses a differnt configuration file and its not documented under man hostname.

    What do I want as standards? I want you to be able to add new ways of doing things, with new features and better usability and nicer functionality, but I still want my old commands to work, even if their deprecated. Or at least point me in the right direction.

    That is what "standardization" means to me...a unified method of handling user interaction. I don't care if you use Gnome or KDE, I just want to be able to access all my apps from each. I don't care what you write your programs in, I just want to be able to use keyboard shortcuts for "cut" and "paste" and "save" that are the same. I just want my window themes to apply. I just want the widgets to look the way I set them. I just want the "Okay" button to always be on the right. Or the left. Whatever.

    Please, standardize. Look at the Apple Human Interface Guilelines, and make something better, something that projects and apps can put a sticker on their website proudly saying, "I'm usable!"

    That's all I, a Linux newbie, ask.

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