Windows Tech Writer Looks at Linux 664
An anonymous reader writes "Three days ago I accepted Linux into my life and while I'm not yet a convert, the experience has shaken my faith in Windows. It's hard to reconcile because for nearly 20 years I've mostly stayed on the one true Windows path."
20 years of windows (Score:5, Funny)
If you were using Windows in 1984 and kept using it... you have more problems than just trying to reconcile an OS.
wow
Re:20 years of windows (Score:5, Funny)
Re:20 years of windows (Score:5, Funny)
Re:20 years of windows (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:20 years of windows (Score:3, Interesting)
But that is exactly one of the problems another contender (Linux, OS/2, ...) in the market faces. Users are so used to buying PC's with windows, they don't even consider a change.
In this context, only OSS has a real chance of becoming relevant to 'house-garden-kitchen' users. Because it doesn't cost to test it out.
What's interesting about the article is that it shows 'missionaries' spreading the news, might be an approach to enlarge the userbase
I want to believe. (Score:5, Interesting)
I loaded RedHat around version 5.1 or 5.2 long, long ago - dedicated a machine to it, got it working, don't remember any of the particulars such as which shell I was using, hell it was 5 years ago (plus or minus.)
I got it running one afternoon, configured the modem (external modems by Hayes / USR - accept no substitutes) and got it talking to my ISP, used some version of Netscape that easily adequate for surfing at the time, I totally dug the 8-way virtual display under the GUI, I almost understood where everything on my drive was and why, had fun with the screen backgrounds (XEarth, etc..) and then
What did I do next? Not much else to do. None of my apps (read : games) were available at the time for Linux. I was unable to find replacements for any of my tools (read : an XTree clone such as ZTree, Office, Visual Studio, Drive Image, etc.) - I know now that there is a viable replacement for Office, but my professional experience doing development is on the MS platform. I have an entire support system for coming up with software on the MS platforms that I just haven't found (either where to find, or even that they exist) for Linux.
And of course there is the real reason we own home computers (and yes, I already mentioned it) : games. Flight simulators. Everquest (et.al MMORPGs) MechWarrior 2/3/4. Battles of Destiny. Yes, I know that Q3 is available on Linux, as is Unreal (well I believe it is) and the UT series. Anything else?
And as for cost
I would love to run a Linux box at home if for no other reason than the cool 8-way virtual desktop in the GUI
Linux is good enough. Quit making it better and spend some time coming up with apps - now THAT will get people to convert.
Re:I want to believe. (Score:5, Informative)
Fast Forward to today.
Most people wouldn't touch DOS anymore (Most Slashdot users exempted from that), and the application base is there now for windows.
On the linux side most modern distros (Redhat 8/9) (Mandrake 9.1) (Suse 8.2) All include more applications than you could ever need. Need a word Processor, You've got 3, same with spreadsheets. File Managers, Got a few of them, Games, Lots of small ones, and If you want the better ones, You can use most of them through wine. and even a few Games have a native linux version Unreal Tournament, UT 2K3, Quake. I Run Warcraft 3 though winex, and it works great.
As for Development, it comes with all the development tools you could need, 2 different SQL Based Databases (mysql, Postgresql), a Very nice IDE (Kdevelop), Photo Editors (The GIMP).
And the list is only getting longer.
You probably remember having trouble getting most hardware to work, That's a thing of the past as well, It's a rare case for me to install Linux, and have to manually configure hardware. Much better than my luck was ever with windows.
All in all, linux has improved a lot over the years, and Is worth a try again.
For something you can try out without committing yourself, Try Knoppix [knoppix.org](mentioned a few times before) It includes an Amazing amount of applications.
Re:I want to believe. (Score:3, Insightful)
How many Slashdot users do you think use DOS. Since most think Windows is an inferior OS, I would think that they would consider DOS beneath them as well.
Re:I want to believe. (Score:3, Funny)
dir %1 %2 %3 %4
^z
1 file(s) copied.
c:\>ls
Volume in drive C is C_DRIVE
Volume Serial Number is 200C-19D9
Directory of C:\Temp
06/16/2003 12:44p 241,664 GL4JavaJauGljJNI11_4725.dll
03/31/2003 01:59p 142,848 Grinder.SLDASM
02/12/2003 09:03p 150,016 Grinder Base.SLDPRT
02/12/2003 09:03p 97,280 Grinder Handle.SLDPRT
02/12/2003 09:03p 114,176 Grinder Slider.SLDPRT
7 File(s) 771,584 bytes
batch 101 (Score:3, Informative)
dir %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
Re:batch 101 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I want to believe. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I want to believe. (Score:3, Insightful)
It is a pathetic, primitive program loader at best.
Re:I want to believe. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is almost true. I just had a seven-day nightmare, trying to get an unrecognized wireless card to work with SuSE. The great advantage Microsoft has is that every piece of hardware you buy comes with Windows drivers.
(Actually, come to think of it, my card had a Linux driver. But I had to compile it myself (kernel versioning hell prevents precompiled drivers) and when the card wasn't autorecognized, there was no way their tech support would help. They just pointed me at the HOWTO.)
From which I conclude... well, don't buy Trendware wireless cards. But also, that Linux is going to impact the corporate desktop long before it really makes a difference in the home desktop.
Corporations can have hardware buying policies and make sure they get Linux-compatible hardware. Corporations have sysadmins who can use the wonderful command line. And Linux is naturally built for multi-user environments.
The home desktop is a much harder - and less lucrative - market to crack. I don't really see it, to be honest, until the corporate market has cracked.
Re:I want to believe. (Score:4, Insightful)
But you are certainly looking at more work in those rare cases where things don't autodetect.
Re:I want to believe. (Score:3, Insightful)
In any case, I agree that there is a lot of FUD about Linux. It
Re:I want to believe. (Score:5, Insightful)
So by your logic, Windows XP really isn't all that different than Windows NT 3. I mean Windows NT 3.0 was 32 bit pre-emptively multi-tasked operating system. In fact if you look at the help about for Windows XP you will see that it is in fact only Windows 5.1 (Windows 2000 was 5.0). Windows XP, just has better hardware support and a better interface (packages aren't any better though).
You are of course falling into the unfortunately common mistake of equating the kernel to the OS. They are not the same thing, yes Red Hat 9 runs a kernel that descended from the same kernel it ran with 5.2 (albeit significantly improved). However a kernel does not an Operating System make, just as a heart doesn't make a human being.
There are significant differences between Red Hat 5.2 and Red Hat 9.0. All the Linux distributuins have underdone *tremendous* amounts of growth during the past 5 years. In fact they have changed far more dramatically than Windows has in that same time frame.
Re:I want to believe. (Score:5, Informative)
What did I do next? Not much else to do. None of my apps (read : games) were available at the time for Linux.
All you do with your computer is play games?? Hmmm. True, maybe Linux isn't for you. Although I'm a hardcore Quake3 player so that's my favorite game and it just happens to run great in Linux. I play some Tribes2 and UT2003 in Linux also.
I was unable to find replacements for any of my tools (read : an XTree clone such as ZTree, Office, Visual Studio, Drive Image, etc.)
Xtree? Try "ytree" in Linux. Personally I'd rather use a GUI file explorer or the console though (Konqueror, Nautilus, ROX, etc.).
Office? OpenOffice, Koffice, the GNOME office stuff... What applications do you use? There are many, many word processors besides the "office" suite versions. Same holds for the other applications.
Visual Studio? I do a lot of VS development and agree there is nothing as good for Linux, but there are tools if you're into that kind of thing. Kdevelop, wxPython (VB-like), Eclipse, NetBeans, and many others. There are craploads of development tools on Linux.
Drive Image??? How much time per day do you spend in that app?? There are a ton of backup applications for Linux. I can't comment on any of them because I don't back up as much as I should. Kbackup and others are easy to use.
I mean what really do you spend your time doing on the computer?
Need to web surf? MozillaFirebird, Mozilla, Opera, Netscape, Konqueror, Lynx, Nautilus, etc.
E-Mail? Mozilla, Balsa, Kmail, mutt, pine, and all the others I'm forgetting about.
Other popular and useful apps:
The Gimp
VMware
I could just go on and on. It really doesn't sound like you gave Linux a fair shot. Plus that was 5 years ago, that's an eternity in computer terms.
Burn the Knoppix [knopper.net] ISO and you won't even need to do anything to your computer to run a newer Linux. It boots fully off the CD and contains a ton of applications. It will kinda chug because it has to read from the CD so much, but it works good enough and doesn't touch your current system.
I believe. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been Linux-only for two years, and I've been running a Linux server for 4 years. As a result, I have a much different view on things.
While you ask for Visual Studio, I ask for a decent replacement for my developer tools. I don't even see "grep" for winshit, much less the pipes required to make it useful. I don't see a decent commandline, or any semblence thereof. COMMAND.COM is crap, and so is CMD.EXE(essentially COMMAND.COM+DOSKEY).
GUI utilities are $599.40+tax a dozen in Windows, and a dime of bandwidth a dozen in Linux. A good command line base is essential for me. I can search through all of HTTP access logs and only display the results of my dad checking his email to find his current IP address with a single, simple, line of shell code. Then I can securely connect to his computer and change whatever needs to be changed without wasting bandwidth with (Tight)VNC.
If you just want virtual desktops (which can be of any amount) check out LiteStep [litestep.net].
Pointing and clicking is like a baby pointing and screaming. Stuff gets done, but it's a lot faster to ask in an intelligible language. I'll never give up a great shell(zsh being my favorite) for a prettier interface.
Technical Writers Can't Believe - No FrameMaker (Score:5, Insightful)
Show me a Linux replacement for Adobe FrameMaker (or better yet, a port), and I'm there. Even at $599.40 or whatever Adobe's charging this week.
The original article was written from the point of view of a technical writer. IMO, any technical writer using MSTurd for documents over 100 pages in length needs to have his head examined. (Fuckin' Windows print drivers that won't print the same Word document the same way on two computers, meantime the FrameMaker d00dz are happily writing stuff in Frame on their Windoze laptops, then checking the files in to the source code control system at work, where they resume working on them from their Solaris and Windoze and Mac desktop boxen.)
I think FrameMaker's market share at the midrange of tech writers is pretty high, and for good reason. If you want to go beyond FrameMaker, you're talking even more money - Documentum-class document management systems, single sourcing from a big pile of XML into PDF, hardcopy, or HTML - but Linux ain't even in contention here.
It's sorta like Photoshop vs. The Gimp. The Gimp's great for Joe Tuxpack's vacation photos, but if you're doing color separations for inks that are requires to print on a billboard, and you wanna be damn sure it's the shade of puce that your Marketing department wast^H^H^H^Hpaid half a million bucks in researching, sorry kids, break out the Photoshop.
Re:Technical Writers Can't Believe - No FrameMaker (Score:4, Informative)
Several years ago, Adobe actually released a beta version of a port, but then decided not to release a final product based on it. Check out this page [adobe.com] for more info. There's even a specific e-mail address for comments.
Re:Technical Writers Can't Believe - No FrameMaker (Score:4, Insightful)
Without applications a platform is dead. It doesn't matter how good it is, how easy it is to use, how intuitive or how much it costs. What matters is having professional grade applications available for your platform. Linux is thriving in the server arena just because the best server-side applications (like Apache) are available.
People don't buy Windows because they like the "look and feel" of it. They buy Windows because it has the applications they need.
No matter how good the Mandrake installer is, no matter how nice and easy KDE is to use, no matter how much support is available, Linux won't win on the desktop until it has the application portfolio that people need.
Re:I want to believe. (Score:4, Interesting)
And that's the problem! As long as gaming is concerned, Linux has exactly nothing to offer that wouldn't be available on other platforms - but some platforms do have lots of stuff that is not and will never be available on Linux. I think portability is both the biggest strength and weakness of the Free Software. For all its virtues, you end up in a situation when everyone else can do what you can do - but unlike you, the users of proprietary systems have their "exclusives" (like games or commercial apps).
Oh yes, you can peek into the source code and they can't. But how many computer users actually care about the source code?
Re:I want to believe. (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh yes, you can peek into the source code and they can't. But how many computer users actually care about the source code?
Oh yes, you can peek under the hood of your car. But how many drivers actually care that they can open the hood?
Answer: almost all of them. This is because you can buy your car and get it serviced by the dealer (if you want) or any local garage. Right now, when you buy commercial software you can only get repairs (bug fixes and new features) from the dealer. As the software ind
Re:20 years of windows (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:20 years of windows (Score:5, Insightful)
But that doesn't take away from his point that he's been working in this environment for a very long time.
Re:20 years of windows (Score:5, Insightful)
I know a few guys like the author. People working with PCs in a business setting had DOS/Novell/OS2/Windows/NT and tons of apps and languages to deal with. Non-PC systems were usually VMS or IBM. Unix was easy to avoid because that's not where the applications were. (That's all changed, but only in the last 5 years or so as UNIX took over the high-end and Linux made the low-end accesible.)
If you're advocating, it's important to grok that "PC Culture" is as old and entrenced as Unix culture. People just don't like to throw out 20 years of What They Know for something different. In a lot of ways, Linux is the bridge between the PC world and the Unix world, but it's still a big jump to make.
Have we not seen this before? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Have we not seen this before? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Have we not seen this before? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Have we not seen this before? (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't. Deal with it.
Either that, or you and the other guys that are always complaining about it can go set up an "antislash" site that promotes news items you think are more appropriate. My guess is that if you got any kind of following, you'd find trolls on your board saying "I hate that they never publish Microsoft sucks and Linux is the best kind of articles".
Can't please everyone. I think you just have to take it how it is.
I think this was the newsworthy portion.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It wouldn't hurt to have more of their type.
Re:And now service is free, too (Score:3, Interesting)
Secondly, what about service beyond that? How about getting complex configurations down for 3rd party apps? Oracle RAC is a good example, DB2 EEE is another.
The trick is that these companies need to be able to provide (cover your ears, over-priced co
Re:Have we not seen this before? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Have we not seen this before? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I can assure you that Chris Barton is a real person -- a journalist for the New Zealand Herald technical and business pages, (not a "technical writer" as written here) i.e. He is a real person who needs to get real work done irrespective of what operating system he's running. He's a journo, not a techo by trade. That's what's news. More and more, musicians, artists, novelists and soccer moms are flocking to Linux in NZ because of what Chris Barton writes in the newspaper. Particularly his promoting our INSTALLFEST [linux.net.nz] which is what the original article was about.
Now Chris has also written numerous good articles about WETA DIGITAL [wetadigital.com], the people who brought the Lord of the Rings trilogy to the big screen, running linux clusters (at least two generations of them), as well as numerous other commerical linux deployments throughout New Zealand and the rest of Australasia. I was actually quite surprised that he wasn't running Linux on his desktop already, but, then, a lot of us are literally forced to use Windows at work by brain-dead MSCE-infected ITdiots who advise Upper Management. The more of a groundswell towards Linux adoption they see, the better.
It's okay Bill (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's okay Bill (Score:5, Funny)
OK we must start investigating... (Score:5, Funny)
Not Worth Our Time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not Worth Our Time (Score:5, Interesting)
I think I'm becoming a believer.
I've heard that so many times from so many people, but it always goes away after the "oooo new" factor wears off. They say it to sound "hip" and tech savvy.
How long do you think it'll be before he deletes the partition and returns to windows full time?
Re:Not Worth Our Time (Score:3, Interesting)
Using myself as an example:
I was introduced to Linux far to early on in my life. I was young and running a turbocharged 166MHz when a friend brought over this Red Hat thingy. Installation went ok, but we could not get the modem to work. I never considered actually using Linux at that time, and my modem not working made me delete the partition and stick to Windows.
Later on I tried using Mandrake on an off, it was perhaps version 7 or 8? I don't remember really.
Anyway, about a year and a
Re:Not Worth Our Time (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not Worth Our Time (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it's quite fitting for the average slashdot reader. Most people here are armchair Linux users. Some may even have a dual boot system set up. But the majority: "I only use Windows for games." (and email, slashdot, work, coding, chatting, and browsing my internet.)
It's no surprise that 95% of slashdot traffic comes from IE.
Re:Not Worth Our Time (Score:4, Insightful)
According to a recent interview with some of the
http://www.slashnet.org/forums/Slashdot-200
it is about 50%.
Favorite quote (Score:5, Funny)
Sheer hell, it sounds like!
Re:Favorite quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in the day, attempting to decipher the poorly written, unorganized, and very cryptic ppp, slip, and chat documentation could take hours if not weekends.
An hour is clearly a milestone of progress, here.
Re:Favorite quote (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Favorite quote (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Favorite quote (Score:5, Insightful)
He's right, though (Score:3)
I don't see a problem with having two gurus install Linux for you. Most Joe Sixpack types get Windows preinstalled, and wouldn't be tremendously happy installing it and setting it up.
However, if you want to buy and use a new piece of hardware, you can generally just buy it and follow the directions on an included card. Yes, maybe in six years they won't work any more, and you may not be taking advantage of the product's fe
Pre-installed Linux Hardware at DSE (Score:3, Interesting)
Australasia's largest consumer electronics shop, Dick Smith's [dicksmith.co.nz] provides pre-built systems off the shelf, with LINUX and OO already installed [resultspage.com] .
Again, if North American and European retailers aren't up with the programme, their loss
Australia and New Zealand are regarded as test markets for the introduction of new computing and electronics gizmos for the rest of the world because it's a culturally similar market, yet smaller and more receptive to new technology, particularly when it can be used to
"Good" Column (Score:5, Funny)
Hm... (Score:5, Funny)
Think about his audience (Score:5, Insightful)
People, the guy writes for the New Zealand News, not Nework Computing. His audience is people who want to be informed about technology without being made to feel stupid about it.
The use of quotes is one technique to introduce terms in a way that acknowledges that the terms might be new to Windows users. The author wrote, "If you don't know how to defrag, you're probably not ready for the Linux experience." Note that he didn't say, "I don't know what defrag means." He wrote it in a way that made readers realize that there is some technical stuff going on with a Linux installation that might be new to them.
While it's funny to think that there are people out there who don't know how to defrag a disc or set up dual booting, or select the right distribution for their needs, the truth is that if Linux is going to penetrate the skulls of Joe and Joan Public, they'll need gentle introductions like the one provided by Mr. Barton.
I love to ride bicycles. But I hate going into a bike shop where the people who work their look down their nose at me simply because I don't shave my legs and ride a Lightspeed. If you've ever been in a bike shop like that, you know what it's like to be a Windows user confronted by sneering Linux know-it-alls. The "you're an idiot" mentality of so many Linux users is the opposite of true evangelism.
Chris Barton has the right approach to introducing Windows users to Linux in a non-threatening way. Kudos to the man.
The Windows only path (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, it's 2003, for God's sakes.
Brand Loyalty Considered Harmful (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah. Just today I saw a post [hardforum.com] by a web-designer, explaining how he/she had never used Mozilla.
Sad, sad, sad.
(as if the original topic wasn't sad enough)
Re:The Windows only path (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Windows only path (Score:3, Informative)
Or unless he uses the Windows version of OpenOffice.
nothing to see here (Score:3, Insightful)
One true windows path? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:One true windows path? (Score:5, Funny)
Redmond, WA, dude! ;-)
zRe:One true windows path? (Score:3, Funny)
To subscription services and rented multimedia, I expect.
uh huh (Score:5, Insightful)
If they have been using Windows for 20 years they are foremost a technical person, early adopter, and to some extent a knowledgable computer person.
The fact that Linux is always an "alternative" to Windows is in my opinion, just furthering the saying that "Linux is for people that hate Windows, BSD is for people that love UNIX". Why do Linux users always have to profess their fate to Linus & Stallman and in the same breath say something, ANYTHING, about Windows?
I run FreeBSD & NetBSD because I love UNIX and its capabilities and its features and EVERYTHING. It has nothing to do with Windows. Ever. I still run Windows XP and 2K. With Linux users it seems to be a conversion of holy nature like they are becoming a shaolin priest and can't look back....why?
Re:uh huh (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do BSD users have to brag about how l33t they are? I'm sure the BSDs rock, but they are still much harder to leap into. It's all about momentum and developer mindshare. I'm not using Linux because of the philosophy, but because it suits my needs and I know how to use it.
I run FreeBSD & NetBSD because I love UNIX and its capabilities and its features and EVERYTHING. It has nothing to do with Windows.
Good for you. This may come as a shock, but many of us use Linux for the same reason.
As for the Windows-bashing, I grew up on Macintoshes, and never touched a PC, with the result that Windows has always seemed like a model of how not to design an OS. At some point in college I switched to Linux (then Solaris, then Irix) because I was tired of my iMac crashing all the time (this was long before OS X). Now that I'm a full-time programmer, many of the people I work with use Windows and love it. Unfortunately, they expect me to love it too, and help them with it, and read their
So, it's all a matter of circumstances - I bash Windows because it is the bane of my existence and because I can't avoid it no matter how hard I try. I don't give a shit what platform others prefer, but where Microsoft is concerned people usually force their preferences on me.
Short Summary (Score:3, Insightful)
Kind of a dry article. All it really says is "I tried Linux. It took a while to set up. It wasn't too hard to use after setup. There were a lot of different software choices." To me, that's the big note of the story: that a rube took a look at Linux and couldn't believe that this platform had more than one viable word processor, browser, etc. "Look, Mom -- No monopoly!"
Paging Dr. Evil... (Score:5, Funny)
I know it sounds mad, but it's a fundamental tenet of this new religion. Here, software is not made by armies of "Microserfs" employed by a giant corporation, but by armies of volunteer programmers who "donate" their code to the public domain. By making underlying source code available to all, many hands and minds work on the software to improve it - hence "open source".
and later on:
My own installation was a breeze - at the beginning. Mandrake "partitioned" the PC's disk so it could "dual boot" to either Windows or Linux.
"People" who gratuitously overuse words in "quotes" too much these days give me Austin Powers "flashbacks" which make me "laugh."
~Philly
Good for some... (Score:3)
FOSS is not public domain! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice article probably, but Free and Open Source software is not "public domain". It _is_ copyrighted and comes with a license, which grants you the right to modify/redistribute, etc. Well, I guess I'll give the guy a break - he is new on the block. :-)
zThe Windows philosophy (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole MS goal is to encourage the user of its operating systems to buy "applications" which can be launched by a few clicks. A corollary to the Microsoft philosophy is that all human actions can be anticipated and distilled into a a few fixed menus.
There really isn't any problem with Microsoft products as long as the menus match the user's needs. However the frustration sets in when the user grows beyond Microsoft's predigested canned offerings. There is little one can do except possibly buy another "application" in the never ending quest for the final one. The game is rigged and your goal will always be just out of reach -- tomorrow, next month, next year.
You see, actually, it isn't really about buying new applications per se. It's about buying new menus, the eternal search for the perfect menu which will do it all.
Re:The Windows philosophy (Score:3, Insightful)
Each OS develops its own niche based on what people want to do with them.
A few stereotypical examples:
Windows - gaming, using Office programs, file/doamin servers
MacOS - graphic artistry, press pagination, digital media creation
Unix - c++ coding and using pine for shell account email access.
Linux - web servers and homebrew software/drivers
While some of these roles are capable of being done on other OSes, it's the righ
Linux Prayer (Score:5, Funny)
The author should close with the Linux Prayer:
Our PC GOD Torvalds, which art in Transmeta^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H OSDN
Hallowed be thy skillz
Thy kernel comes, in the US and all the earth
Give us this day our daily updates.
And forgive us our holes, as we apply thine patch.
And lead us not into closed source, but deliver us from Microsoft.
For thine is the kernel, the skillz, and the leetness for ever and ever. Amen.
Only THEN, he can say: "Praise the PC god and Linux open-source apostles, I'm a believer."
Forward, Worker's Paradise! (Score:3, Funny)
The thought criminal, Chris Barton, shall be shunned and pu
Defrag? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Defrag? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Defrag? (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, nobody deletes things any more, so you no longer need to defrag drives when you install Linux on a formerly Windows-only machine. But the people h
this is a good review? (Score:4, Insightful)
Setting it all up can, however, be a little daunting...
Etc. This and other negative comments about usability in the article make an unintentional but important point.
Linux is not for ordinary people. It's for computer enthusiasts. Most people want to use the computer as a tool, not for its own sake. They have no interest in memorizing reams of arcane computer trivia in order to get email, surf the web, write, and work on spreadsheets.
Desktop Linux can't and won't satisfy the requirements of the ordinary user, even though it may be a great playground for hobbyists, as well as a perfectly reasonable solution on the server side for many applications. The conversion of a longtime computer hobbyist says nothing about the dream many Linux users have of their pet OS becoming a significant force in the desktop market. Neither they nor Chris Barton reflect the consumers in that market.
Which is why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Kjella
Last Post (Score:4, Informative)
Good luck, Tim, wherever you are.
Did anyone notice? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://installfest.linux.net.nz/
As you can tell, it's only going on in New Zealand. Good for the Kiwis, but is there anything of the sort being done in the United States? I think we need Installfests here, too.
As for the article, I think everyone should quit carping. This is good press for Linux. I had the same experience in March when I made the "switch" on my main PC. Only difference is that my machine does not dual boot, and I'd had Aurora Linux on a Sparc since December '02. At any rate, though, the message needs to get out that Linux *IS* a genuine alternative, and this article does just that.
Re:Did anyone notice? (Score:4, Informative)
For example, there is the Colorado Linux Users & Enthusiasts [denver.co.us] group here that did an installfest [denver.co.us] a few months ago.
Do a bit of searching and see if you can find one in your area.
Whats wrong with the article folks? (Score:5, Interesting)
Having RTFA and most of the comments, I'm a bit baffeled by the slasdot community today. Even I see this not as a article in how to use Linux or anything, but more as the sort of commentary that you can read on page three of most computermagazines these days. Saying things like "we knew that" and "is this news" actually misses the point, as he isn't speaking to those who already uses Linux but rather to those who still sees Windows as the only operating system out there. He isn't preaching to the choir my friends, he is preaching to the heatens, like myself.
The article / editorial / comment is more of a key than a crowbar... it may wet peoples appetite for the 'free*' OS they can get from their nerdy friends - even if the setup can be more of a hazzle than Windows is (well, than Windows can be; I used several hours patching up my spare PC yesterday after upgrading to XP). As such, I would say this is a good little article. He mentiones several of the pros of Linux, a few of the drawbacks, points out that it isn't a scary thing to try and that it is realivelty easy to do. He even adds a numer of links to distros, info on opensourse and the Linux Newbie Administration Guide... The only thing he don't add is the URL to knoppix [knoppix.org] so people could try Linux without having to change anything on their 'puter.
*) However you want to define 'free' as far as Linux go...
Nice article (Score:3, Interesting)
I suggest Knoppix to anyone trying Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the time it requires zero work to get them running Linux. After that they can decide if they want to really install Linux.
Even though I don't use it, KDE 3.1 usually produces a very favorable impression of Linux because it looks slick.
Pathetic (Score:3, Funny)
Call me a misantroph, but there's only one thing sadder than "tech writers" and that's "sport writers".
Now go back to watching "Everybody Loves Raymond".
Really crappy article (Score:3, Insightful)
And that whole psuedo-religion thing turned me off treating the article seriously, and I bet it will turn away many Windows-but-thinking-of-trying-Linux users too.
Bleah... I've seen way better advocacy than this.
Linux still needs apps... (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, the Office situation I consider adequately covered. Ditto Internet: email, browsing, etc. I even converted my years of Quicken data over to CBB. And I couldn't care less about games. But I still found myself needing to dual-boot, and I hate needing to dual-boot.
It's the less mainstream stuff that's still missing. On Windows, I have some excellent topographic map software, nicely integrated with my GPS unit. I have some excellent birding software, with videos and birdsongs. Great genealogical software. Great sound editing software. Etc., etc. I looked pretty hard, but was not able to find Linux equivalents.
When Windows 2000 came out, that was a turning point. So much more stable than Windows 98. I generally run Windows 2000 now, and hardly ever boot into Linux. I don't have the time or inclination to maintain 2 systems, so I'll stick with Windows 2000, because it's good enough.
Re:Linux still needs apps... (Score:3, Interesting)
Too bad some people persist in believing that fairly vague things like ease of use and immaturity are the biggest problems that desktop linux has today. They are problems yes, but the biggest is, and always will be most likely, compatability.
Re:Linux still needs apps... (Score:4, Informative)
It's the less mainstream stuff that's still missing. On Windows, I have some excellent topographic map software, nicely integrated with my GPS unit. I have some excellent birding software, with videos and birdsongs. Great genealogical software. Great sound editing software. Etc., etc. I looked pretty hard, but was not able to find Linux equivalents.
This may seem silly, but have you considered asking the software publisher if they would consider releasing a Linux version? Only by hearing from their users will a software publisher consider a new platform.
I've done this several times with software that I like. I've been using Linux at home 100% since 1998 but I still have a dual-boot laptop for work. So I sometimes see software for Windows that I might like to use under Linux. For me, that's mostly games. But this applies to all software, I think. I've written to the software publishers and asked if they have a Linux version. In all cases, the answer was at least "we're thinking about it, but haven't heard from enough Linux users yet". But in a few cases, the answer was "yes, one of our developers is working on that .. want to beta test it?"
I guess my point is that you need to talk to the software publishers if you want to use that software on Linux. They need to know that people want to use their software on Linux, then they'll release for Linux.
-jh
Good progaganda balances out the bad (Score:3, Interesting)
This story reminds me of my own conversion. It wasn't that long ago (This January) that I switched over to Linux completely. I was quite impressed with all the applications and how well they worked. I have always been a fan of GNU tools. It's nice to have both without dual booting.
Some tech writer... (Score:3, Insightful)
For the First Time? (Score:4, Insightful)
One of my favourite analogies when it comes to M$ and Linux comes from something I saw a couple of summers ago. Some soccer club was doing a fund raiser and selling food at a soccer tournament. They had bar-b-ques fired up, real beef burgers going, a salad bar where you could get the fixings you wanted for it and although it was mostly people improvising stuff they were serving up a damn good burger.
Half a block away there was a McDonalds, and me and some of the other watched people leave the stands, walk to the McDonalds and come back with a McDonalds hamburger (or whatever, Big Mac or what have you). The burgers the soccer club was selling were cheaper, clearly better by any definition of a burger and right there for the taking. The only explanation me and my friends could come up with for why people would walk to the McDonalds is brand.
Weird weird stuff.
What about Mrs Blow? (Score:3, Insightful)
What she wants:
- Email
- Web browsing
- Letter writing
- Printing
- Solitaire
- That's it.
What she doesn't want to do:
- Change the mouse speed
- Change the colour scheme
- Change the monitor settings
- Change the time zone
- Muck about with screen savers
- Add or remove programs
- Select new hardware eg printers
- Play games other than Solitaire
- Use Internet chat
- Use fancy web sites with streaming audio etc
Hackers, you know how to use a system like Debian to build a setup that does these simple tasks. Just be local and be around. Use SSH or TightVNC to help sort out problems if you want.
By contrast, Windows presents a bewildering world full of control panels and other scary things. Betty's never going to touch them, so why clutter up the interface by presenting them? I don't know how many people fall into the Betty category but I'm willing to bet it's a lot more than we might think...
By way of comparison ... (Score:4, Insightful)
(If someone can point to one, I'll take this back, but I don't *think* Amiga -- or BeOS, or a lot of others -- ever got past the Beautiful Swandive phase, no matter how nice they are, or how many people persist in not burying them
Bob Young's book about Red Hat's (so-far) success is titled "Under the Radar" -- seems like an apt phrase not just for Red Hat but more generally for the way Linux (or, to be fair, BSD) desktops have semi-suddenly become hip to heap praise on, much of it deserved.
OpenOffice, AbiWord, KOffice, Mozilla, the various free programming languages, the various free desktop environments, (etc etc) have been evolving for years, and the Free software matrix is both complete and flexible enough that a Grand Unified Final Answer hasn't been necessary. Rough edges are still there, probably always will be, but they demonstrate how dynamic the whole process is. Every minor release of GCC shows this, in fact
timothy
Re:I installed Linux (SuSE) before on my mom's PC (Score:5, Insightful)
This is true about UNIX, in general. While Windows would behave as if it were born in a universe with no cause and effect, Linux, OpenBSD, Solaris, etc. just behave. With UNIX, most problems are either up-front configuration issues or external issues, such as an ISP going down for an evening.
UNIX is sort of like a hard mountain climb, which ends in a flat plateau of endless easy hiking with oasises along the way. Windows is just an endless climb where fatique makes hallucinations of plateaus appear and disapperar tauntingly.
Linux is a victim of it's own success (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe nothing. Maybe his buddies didn't know what they were doing. He is just the messenger here, so don't shoot. That said, it used to be that you needed a defrag to be able to do a OS multi-boot on the same physical drive. Isn't that still the case?
Now for the meat...
No, not all distributions are free. Some companies may choose not to GPL their proprietary bells-and-whistles, such as installers and configuration utilities. I also dislike this article's erroneous insinuation that all Linux software is free.
You're absolutely correct. And it doesn't really matter one bit that you are correct. You see, the average person is quite content to use Windows until something better comes along. By something better, I mean it had better be (a) significantly faster/stable and/or (b) significantly cheaper and/or (c) significantly more feature rich (and easy to use) and/or (d) significantly more entertaining. Linux may or may not be faster/stable (it's debatable these days), it is more feature rich (but it's not easier to use), and it definitely is not more entertaining to the average person. So what does that leave? Cheaper. And how does every rabid Linux advocate start Linux evangelism? "Hey it's free! Here, take one."
The fact is that Joe Blow will choose Linux over Windows when doing so allows him to dodge the extra $200+ of cost of Windows + Office on a new computer. Joe had also better not care that most of the new games out there won't be usable under Linux. THEN he will choose Linux.
Don't get me wrong, I like Linux on the desktop. But please be realistic about why most people will choose it.
Re:Linux is a victim of it's own success (Score:3, Insightful)
If Microsoft is ever foolish enough to make Windows pop up a "type in your credit card number so we can charge you $20" window, then people will switch to Linux in droves. However Microsoft can get away with charging $200 or more (yes I know that right now it is only about $50 but I believe that is a possible limit) per machine manuf
The article is not what you seem to expect. (Score:3, Interesting)
[] maybe [] the article wasn't meant to convince but [] to share a story of how easy it was to install linux. [] it did a poor job [of that] as well.
At [] least [he should have mentioned] some of the obvious advantages of linux over windows. [But] he doesn't even [define] 'dual boot'[, mention the] virus free [] environment[, or] define 'free' as
Re:Wow, this guy is a tech writer?! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wow, this guy is a tech writer?! (Score:3, Interesting)
They are all in the same part in Mandrake's menu, so he probably assumed they were all the same thing. My guess is that after dealing with a few things like this he writes a fallow up. "Linux, too much confusion in the menu with all the 1000 apps I was excited about".
This article was about the feeling he had right after and install, not about actually using the beast. I say "beast" affectionatly, I use Linux at home almost e
Re:Having actually READ the article (Score:3, Insightful)
Ummm, the editor of a consumer level magazine for Windows users (mostly). And the article was printed in NZ's largest newspaper. This wasn't aimed at computer/IT industry readers.
As for the newsworthiness of posting it to Slashdot, the only reason I can think of is the intended audience is people that would normally be scared of leaving Windows. It is newsworthy for it's intended audience though.