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Ed Haletky: Desktop Linux Nearly There 84

Posted by timothy from the where-there-is-here-and-now-is-then dept.
Mark Brunelli writes "When Edward Haletky's friend asked him for help setting up a Linux desktop in the year 2000, they found only half of the Web applications needed. Since then, while researching his new book, Deploying Linux on the Desktop, Haletky has seen desktop Linux application availability and usability increase to the point where it's nearly ready for widespread corporate use. Yet Haletky does not think that Linux desktops will be widespread by 2007. In this interview, he explains why." Read on for a snippet from the interview. I know my Linux desktop (several, actually) has served well enough for "corporate use" for the past several years.


"Edward Haletky: 'The current enterprise demand for desktop Linux is growing daily and is very hard to quantify at this time. However, there are two desktop efforts going at the moment. The first is for the home user, and the second is for the enterprise. While these may seem dissimilar, they are in essence the same in most respects. The difference boils down to either the custom enterprise applications or specialized tools to access mail and enterprise databases. But in many aspects: for information sharing and training, a good Web and connection client is all that is necessary. For information generation, a good office suite is needed. Both of these are available on Linux today. There are many things to overcome before Linux will be a primary desktop for most users.'"
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Ed Haletky: Desktop Linux Nearly There More

Ed Haletky: Desktop Linux Nearly There

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  • "corporate use" (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gbrandt ( 113294 )
    "I know my Linux desktop (several, actually) has served well enough for "corporate use" for the past several years."

    I don't think that you classify as a 'regular' corporate user though. Most users don't want to learn all the stuff you did so that they can use Linux, most users want it simple, very very very simple.

    Gregor

    • Saying a corporate user shouldn't have to learn to use a computer is like saying a carpenter shouldn't have to learn how to use a hammer. Sorry if you can't learn the tools of the trade then perhaps you should try a diffrent trade.

    • A 'regular' corporate user would be someone who uses a corporation regularly, clearly.
  • ..Tux is on the third base?

  • Bwahaha! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BigZaphod ( 12942 ) on Thursday August 11, 2005 @02:33PM (#13297450) Homepage
    So a guy trying to sell a book about Linux on the desktop says that it's nearly there? I'm so shocked!

    What's even more crazy is that he discovered all this while doing the research for his book. So I guess he decided to write the book first and then find out if Desktop Linux could actually work later. Curious.
    • What's even more crazy is that he discovered all this while doing the research for his book. So I guess he decided to write the book first and then find out if Desktop Linux could actually work later. Curious.

      Or maybe he said to himself, "I wonder if Linux is ready for the desktop yet. If it is, I could write a book about it!" and then did some research to test his hypothesis, and wrote a book based on his results?

      I think they have a name for this sort of process... it rhymes with the Shmientific Shmethod.

      I

  • Obstacle: DVD has to work after basic installation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by e**(i pi)-1 ( 462311 ) on Thursday August 11, 2005 @02:36PM (#13297495) Homepage Journal
    While for me, the linux desktop has 'been there' for many years now,
    there is a big obstacle: DVDs still need a DeCSS library which
    linux distributions can not provide yet.

    DVD on linux is actually one of my main reasons to use
    linux on the desktop. You have more control about how to play DVDs.

    However, I feel that it is absolutely essential that a user can just pop
    in a DVD and that it will play. And that this works just after a default
    installation of the operating system.
    • Mind that Windows cannot play DVDs out of the box -you need a codec that is not supplied with Windows.

      Granted, you can purchase third-party software easily enough for Windows... I dont think there is any legal way to watch you DVDs in Linux (though I still do so without remorse).
    • It's not just DVDs. It's all sorts of things like Flash, the NVidia driver, SUN Java (Blackdown doesn't cut it) mplayer will full codecs and more. I actually recently wrote a bit in my blog [apreche.net] about how the free zealots are keeping this stuff out. Sure, some of it is legally questionable. But in Ubuntu you have to read a wiki and jump through some hoops to get multimedia to not suck. The capability is there to make it easier for the user who doesn't care about freeness to get this stuff to work in a few clicks
      • From your blog:

        "What would be extra cool is if there was a way to make a deal with software companies to allow us to distribute their software. If it isn't possible, then perhaps we could create an illegal distribution and host it in some country that doesn't care. I always wonder, if it is legal for mplayer to host all the codecs on their site for free download why would it be illegal to host a distribution including all those codecs on the same site? A lot of what people do with their computers now is mul
    • Lindows created a legal DVD player application or library for Linux, I believe... so it does exist. Distributing it along with free installs might be an issue, though, as the DVD licensing is per-user... (I may be wrong, though.)
    • I've found the average desktop user never puts a video DVD in their drive. I see it used for video watching often on laptops, but never desktops. I don't think the average home or "enterprise" user cares.
      • This would be interesting to find out. My guess is that a typical desktop machine is used for
        • surfing the web
        • email and chat
        • music, movies, photos
        • office applications
        • games

        While priority could vary, I think that these are things which need to work well in order that an operating system can be used by the entire family. OSX does that. Most people will hardly want to bother with different operating systems. DVD's on linux laptops has to work in order that people switch. If they

        • That 'all-in-one' versatility that you speak of matters more for a college youth in a cramped dorm room, or a schoolboy with a PC in his 'room' than it does for grownups.

          An adequate DVD player is $35 at WalMart. You put it in the living room, away from the computer in the den.

        • A lot of my friends do listen to music and watch movies on their computers, just as I do, but the simple fact is that I've never seen any of them watch a DVD or listen to a CD on their PC. It's all MP3 and DivX. While it would be nice to have better (read: legal) DVD support for Linux/BSD, it likely falls under "nice-to-have" rather than "necessary" for most users.
  • Linux is obviously ready for the desktop, at least for some people like myself, because we use it on the desktop. It's tautological. However, some people do not find it ready for their desktop needs, and as such, it's not ready for the desktop.

    Linux will never become Windows. It will never become Mac OSX. It will always be different than those two operating systems. As long as this is the case, I imagine we will continually hear the debate about whether or not Linux is desktop ready.
    • I agree on both points. The debate as to whether or not Linux is "ready" for the desktop will continue to be heard for many years to come. Also, Linux will always be different but isn't that part of the culture? Personally, I feel Linux is a viable choice for the desktop in some situations. I have been using it as a desktop OS for six years now and it certainly has made a lot of progress since I began using it as a destop OS. Then again, I am not what many would consider an average computer user. My m
    • I have to agree with the parent post. Linux is ready for the desktop. The problem is that people like Ed Haletky want it to be just like Windows, when surprise, surprise! it's not Windows. It will/should never behave like Windows. The reason more people won't use Linux on the desktop has less to do with support for Program X than with the fact that people are unwilling to learn something new. I, honestly, could care less if "Linux is ready for the desktop" according to people like Haletky. If you can use it
    • I've never see a better, un-biased post concerning the state of the desktop. It is amazing to see all of the post concerning the m$ monopoly, and then they just want to replace that monopoly with another.

      Its good to have choices. Use the best tool for the job. If I had mod points, I would mod your post up.
  • Does this mean we'll get a replacement for X anytime soon?
    It hurts so bad. It's like being stuck somewhere between Win 3.1 and 95.
    • It hurts so bad. It's like being stuck somewhere between Win 3.1 and 95.

      Explain.

      • He's probably running FVWM-95 [sourceforge.net].
      • It handles like crap. It's slow and unresponsive on a top notch box. Dragging windows around leaves tracers. There are eyes that watch me from the toolbar, and they NEVER BLINK.

        At least I no longer have to roll my own monitor profiles, but this might be because I finally got rid of the 20 year old Radiation King.
        • It handles like crap. It's slow and unresponsive on a top notch box.

          I don't believe this at all. I used to run XFree86 on my laptop, which sports a 120mhz pentium, 40mb of RAM, and an old neomagic display adapter. On top of X, I ran windowmaker. The interface was very fast and responsive, consumed little memory, and ran hardware-appropriate games at full speed (ie Doom).

          Dragging windows around leaves tracers.

          One can only guess what your problem there is. I do not think it's intrinsic to X, though.

          • Yah, I'm starting to think that I've got a bad setup somehow. Trust me though, X runs like ass on my fairly new box. Since the monitor is connected to a mac and a windows box as well, I can pretty much rule out a bad one.

            So I can take it as read, guys, that any X issues I have relative to speed and refresh rate etc etc are my own personal problems. Even though my experience on modern hardware is identical to my experience on an old mac clone. Time to do some research I guess.

            Just joking about the eyes..
            • Well, thanks for your very polite response. :-)

              Sorry about the jokes, though...it was hard to tell that you weren't serious. ;)

              I believe that X is a good piece of software, but the devil lies in the configuration. It's one of the hardest things to get a hold on, and even though many distros do a good job of sorting it out for you, sometimes they don't get it quite right (or not at all, in the case of when I used to use FreeBSD. Rather than use their tool, I told X to --configure and modified the file by

              • I've heard lots of people have problems with ATI cards

                Since I'm not going to be doing any gaming w/ this box, I'm thinking about just pulling that ATI card and using the onboard graphics chip. Gotta be more standard than the card, and I really can't remember if today's cards even assist w/ 2d acceleration anymore.
              • I've heard lots of people have problems with ATI cards, which might affect you. For this reason, I only use nvidia cards because the compatibility is so remarkable. If only ATI worked as well in linux/FreeBSD as nvidia did...are you listening, ATI?

                Yeah, nVidia == kickass. They even have a native driver for FreeBSD. I don't think ATI does, or if they do it's definitely not a good one.

                And xorgconfig worked great in getting X set up for me on my FreeBSD machine. The graphical tool, xorgcfg, sucks balls, tho

  • Linux is actually much better than it used to be (Score:5, Insightful)

    by It doesn't come easy ( 695416 ) * on Thursday August 11, 2005 @02:48PM (#13297622) Journal
    Recently I have been bitching about all of the problems with Linux in general (stuff like inconsistencies in the Windows Manager (primarily Gnome), arbitrary differences between distros for some of the most basic of things like configuring the bootloader, etc). However, to be fair Linux as a system has gotten light years better in the last year. In the last few weeks I have been trying all of the updates that have been coming out. I have tried:
    Ubuntu 5.0.4
    Fedora Core 4
    Mandriva Download Edition 10.1
    Gentoo 2005.1
    OpenSUSE Linux 10 beta

    My opinion is:
    Linux is ready now for the enterprise desktop, as long as you can run your mission critical apps. This is because most businesses have their own support people.

    Linux is ready for the home desktop IF it supports your hardware AND you don't mind having to go to the command line to install apps that are not supplied by your distro.

    On the other hand, if your computer has hardware that is NOT supported by your distro then (if you are a noobie like me) you have just entered Linux Hell (tm).

    One thing I wonder about, I have noticed that the same open source tools available through multiple distros all seem to work slightly differently. This may just be a version difference (I don't know cause I didn't compare version IDs) but it seems to be very widespread.

    What Linux Needs (tm) to really get established at home (in my humble opinion) is a complete end to end installer for apps and drivers. End to end means that you choose an app to install and the installer also installs any dependent libraries WITHOUT asking you where they are on the internet, and compiles the dependencies from source if it isn't available from your distro already compiled, and it handles the architectural switches (x86 vs. amd64 for example), and it ties the new app into the Windows Manager you are using (such as creating the icon to run the app from the WM menu).

    Another Thing That Wouldn't Hurt (tm) is a central repository for links to non-OSS packages, especially drivers. Since most distros don't include proprietary drivers, sometimes it is tough to find them. My ATI graphics card is one such example, my Broadcom wireless networking card is another.

    As for myself, I like Ubuntu for the community support, Fedora for the consistency of their distro, and Suse for their YAST2 program, although I haven't as yet decided which distro I will be going with.

    To sum up though, Linux is very very close to being on par with Windows. Now if we can just get those pesky hardware drivers nailed down...

    • If mod points could go higher than the "5, Insightful" that you already have, I'd throw some of my mod points at you. Instead, I'll blow them in a reply.

      I second pretty much all that you have written here: Linux is ready for the corporate desktop (we have had several Linux desktops in my corporate area for a few years now); Linux is ready for the home user. The downside is that you need to check hardware compatibility (scanners, etc) and you can't be afraid to jump to the command line and do 'yum -y ins

      • I second pretty much all that you have written here: Linux is ready for the corporate desktop (we have had several Linux desktops in my corporate area for a few years now); Linux is ready for the home user.

        That's not what he said, though. He said "Linux is ready now for the enterprise desktop, as long as you can run your mission critical apps." That's a big "if", and it negates my company, which needs a ledger system which is available only for Windows, and Quickbooks Accountant Edition. Quickbooks mi

    • What Linux Needs (tm) to really get established at home (in my humble opinion) is a complete end to end installer for apps and drivers. End to end means that you choose an app to install and the installer also installs any dependent libraries WITHOUT asking you where they are on the internet, and compiles the dependencies from source if it isn't available from your distro already compiled, and it handles the architectural switches (x86 vs. amd64 for example), and it ties the new app into the Windows Manager

    • I'd just like the mention that Ubuntu theoretically has all of this, mostly thanks to Debian. They've got a centralized repository, so if you pick an app in your favorite APT frontend, you should be able to install it and that's it (of course, sometimes reality intrudes and you have to resolve a conflict). apt-get source --build is also quite easy, though I don't know of any frontends to handle it for you. The 'menu' system has been around for ages and has always worked for me; any window manager or whateve
  • I think ist a great idea for a book. In my years of linux I have been frustrated by having to use "how-tos" written by linux gurus.The articles always seem to be so biased towards linux and seem to try and make it hard for a windows type person to understand.

    I hope the book is complete with instructions on how to load a driver IN PLAIN ENGLISH!

    • Re:Its about time... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Blakey Rat ( 99501 ) on Thursday August 11, 2005 @03:11PM (#13297853)
      I'm with you, and I especially love it when the "how-tos" don't cover basics:

      1) Where to type stuff in. Sure it's obvious to the Linux guru that "ndiswrapper -i" goes into the terminal and that "192.168.1.1" goes into the IP address field, but if I'm not an expert, I have no clue.

      2) They tell you to use a path that's wrong. I've had this one more than once... on the ndiswrapper one, for instance, it tells me to place the Windows driver on my desktop, then use a root terminal to type in "ndiswrapper -i ~/desktop/windows_driver"... that's great, but that uses the desktop belonging to *ROOT* not to me, because it's a root terminal! Again, that's probably obvious to the Linux guru, but it stumped me for a half hour. (And, BTW, if you have to type in a path at all, WRITE A GUI PEOPLE! Why does Knoppix have a GUI (albeit a terrible one) for ndiswrapper but Ubuntu doesn't? Criminy, how irritating.)

      3) What to do for common errors. When I tried the above, I got some error like "cp: Failed, file does not exist." Well, I know now in retrospect that it's because I was telling it to look in the wrong desktop folder, but the How-To didn't have any explaination of that error. (And no, I don't know that "cp" means "file copy." And again, if you're looking for reasons why people hate Linux, how about the obvious: If "cp" runs into an error, why doesn't it tell you WHICH FILE has the error? I mean, duh!)

      4) Also covering the basics would be nice. I know now that "ndiswrapper" is a program that can "translate" (somehow) Windows networking drivers into Linux drivers, but the how-to didn't tell me that, I had to glean it after the fact.
      • All good points and I can relate to your troubles with the ndiswrapper because I've just had to deal with that pain in the ass. I got a linksys card and after days of trying and trying, I had to end up using a netgear driver. This was only after I had to hunt down what chipset this damn thing used. However, these problems aren't so much with linux, but the other software that's required to make an operating system run. The more and more you look into it, linux isn't some big OS or program, but a collecti

      • 3) What to do for common errors. When I tried the above, I got some error like "cp: Failed, file does not exist." Well, I know now in retrospect that it's because I was telling it to look in the wrong desktop folder, but the How-To didn't have any explaination of that error. (And no, I don't know that "cp" means "file copy." And again, if you're looking for reasons why people hate Linux,

        how about the obvious: If "cp" runs into an error, why doesn't it tell you WHICH FILE has the error? I mean, duh!)

        May

        • Well, two issues here:

          1) What does "cannot stat" mean?

          2) Is that the path of the source, or the destination it can't find?

          In any case, in my problem that message was utterly useless, because the "path" was "~\windows_drivers\something.ini" and the path I was expecting to see was (gasp!) "~\windows_drivers\something.ini". The problem is that "~" means something different in a root terminal than it does in every other terminal... interestingly, Apple's fixed that problem, but Ubuntu hasn't yet.

          • 1) What does "cannot stat" mean?

            Essentially, that the file does not exist, or cannot be read, as is explained immediately after in the error message.

            2) Is that the path of the source, or the destination it can't find?

            It can't find the source file, this should be obvious as that is the file it references in the error message. Also, since not being able to find the source is quite clearly a fatal error, so it doesn't bother checking the destination.

            In any case, in my problem that message was utterly use

      • I am a die hard linux user myself, but like everything you do, there is always a starting point and at some time or another, everyone is a noob. One major thing I noticed from myself and just about everyone else out there is patience. If you want to know how to do the small things and how to use basic functions on the cli you must begin at that level. You cannot just expect to jump in and complete tasks that are on a level 5 complication [for example] when you don't have the basic level 2 skills. Attempting

  • Same tired arguments (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hubie ( 108345 ) on Thursday August 11, 2005 @03:05PM (#13297791)
    Whenever these "Linux isn't ready for the desktop" articles come out, they all boil down to saying that Linux isn't exactly like Windows. This fella is basically saying that Linux isn't there yet because it can't handle specialized Windows-only software, or IE-only web development. Well guess what, by that definition the only OS that will ever be "ready for the desktop" is Windows, and that it just plain nonsense. The only acceptance criteria seems to be that the OS in question has to be a drop-in replacement for Windows. That leads me to wonder whether the older versions of Windows are now no longer "ready for the desktop" when they were deemed such only a few years ago.

    This particular article talks about enterprise applications, but you even hear it in articles when talking about the general user. Linux isn't ready for the general user because it can't run Quicken or some other such specific application. That might be a reason that someone wants to stick with Windows, but it sure isn't a reason that Linux isn't good for grandma. What cannot Linux do that the general populace needs?

  • I remember my first linux desktop installation. ughhh. Of course machine speeds have gone up, hard drive sizes have gone up and RAM prices have gone down, making a linux desktop more likely.

    "Older" hardware (1 Ghz CPU or less) with enough RAM, say 128-256MB. will run a linux desktop fine. Today, in under an hour, I added a 4 GB hard drive to an "older"(see above) XP system and installed Debian from a knoppix 3.9 CD in under an hour, dual-boot. Knoppix includes most things you need in a basic install an

  • ...as my email/contact/calendar/task thingy (OK, PIM) on various Fedora Core releases for the past few years; it's steadily improved and now is quite solid.

    Of course, I'm probably biased since I'm working on a Ruby wrapper library [rubyforge.org] for it, but, anyhow.
  • The guy talks about a desktop-ready linux, but just one line after : "can't find half of the web apps"... to you need any desktop OS to use a web app ??? just a browser !
  • I've avoided linux on the desktop for one reason...the complexity of the setup. Installing it is a pain in the ass if you run into any problems. The installs that go smoothly are easy. Those are no concern. It's the ones where you have to choose the right option for video or something that are a major pain.

    I just made a Knoppix cd and tried it out. Here is my question now. Why would anyone need to actually install linux if they aren't doing specialized tasks like designing the next skyscraper? A knoppix cd
    • umm... because reading everything from a cd and uncompressing it is a shitload slower than reading everything from a harddrive.
    • Installing it is a pain in the ass if you run into any problems.

      You should try again. The Linux install process for various distros has really improved-- I used to have all sorts of problems with common hardware (Scroll wheel on the mouse doesn't work, ATI video card not recognized, no USB support, etc).

      Recently, I've installed Debian 3.1, Ubuntu 5.0.4 & Windows XP on several different computers.

      The Unbuntu install was incredibly simple. Install the CD, boot, hit the enter key a couple times and it just
  • I have been using linux exclusively 8 years now. (I sort of miss the excitement of it in 1997... oh well.)

    I have used debian almost that entire time. The packaging system is just so beautiful. I now use Ubuntu.

    I think one of the major challenges, though, is that people are used to buying software off the shelf. I think the OSS world would benefit from adopting a mac OS kind of program-in-a-folder system. It doesn't have to take over everything -- can just be on top of the distro's own packaging system.

    And I
  • I've heard this for 10 years. When will people realize that Linux is great for alot of things--but not everything. For instance, it isn't good for the mainstream desktop, and it's odd that geeks are still saying that it will be "soon." It won't. Oh, you'll hear it is. But don't believe it.

    In the meantime, I'll be using my Mac. They've been ready for the mainstream desktop a long time.
  • Let M$ stay under the crosshairs of the script kiddies and virus/trojan scumbags.
    And if it did become "big", the commercialized scumbag profiteers would try to squeeze out the "free" folks. And of course M$ would be behind this push, funding it like they funded SCO. The sheer greed of M$ knows no bounds or limits..

    I like it as is, an obscure and out of the limelight system. I like when I talk about Linux and people act as if I'm from another galaxy and have three heads.

    And I most of all don't want to see

  • Almost, but not quite. (Score:3, Informative)

    by tachyonflow ( 539926 ) on Thursday August 11, 2005 @06:02PM (#13299110) Homepage
    Open-source desktop environments have made enormous progress over the years. I'm greatly impressed with what GNOME and KDE have been able to accomplish. However, there are still plenty of rough edges that are a problem. (Disclaimer: I haven't checked out KDE for several years now, so they may very well have a lot of these issues covered.)

    As mentioned by others in this thread, there are plenty of problems that are impossible or difficult for open-source coders to solve. These include playing DVDs (patents, CSS issues), device drivers (many hardware manufacturers do the dirty work of writing drivers for Windows, and specifications can be hard to get), support for lots of printers, etc.

    There are also plenty of problems that can (and probably will) be resolved by the open-source community. I've been struggling lately with the clunkiness of running a dual-monitor desktop in GNOME (as compared to Windows). Many GUI components are far less responsive than their Windows counterparts. (When composing an email in Thunderbird in Windows, I'm accustomed to highlighting a URL then pressing CTRL-L and ENTER rapidly to create a hyperlink. In Linux, that doesn't work because the CTRL-L dialog box doesn't come up fast enough.) And don't even get me started on out-of-the-box support for notebooks, such as power management, hibernate, and whatnot. (My latest install of FC4 had my notebook's speedstep running at ~600Mhz even when plugged into AC, until I manually tweaked some files.)

    So, I wouldn't recommend Linux for standard desktop deployments just yet. If the next 3-4 years show as much progress as the previous years, then a solid Linux desktop may be just around the corner. In fact, I think that Linux has the potential to offer a much more solid desktop platform than Windows -- at the very least, it doesn't suffer from the brain-dead Windows memory manager that thrashes my notebooks's slow hard drive around every time I click something.

    I keep meaning to dive into some of the code and contribute to GNOME reaching this "last mile" of desktop usability, but I have so many projects on my to-do list ahead of that. :/

    • I agree... I really think that Linux will remain a server/geek class of OS. Until all applications play together nicely (Im NOT saying that Windows does!) the Linux desktop will not be a big contender for the end user rollouts. The biggest thing (IMHO) that hinders the forward movement of the Linux desktop is not the X server or KDE vs GNOME vs Flux, etc., but the availability of 'niche' applications that you can only find on Windows: such as many educational software packages, mobile device interoperab

    • Re:Almost, but not quite. (Score:2, Informative)

      by Rysc ( 136391 ) *
      When composing an email in Thunderbird in Windows, I'm accustomed to highlighting a URL then pressing CTRL-L and ENTER rapidly to create a hyperlink. In Linux, that doesn't work because the CTRL-L dialog box doesn't come up fast enough.

      This is entirely because of GTK2 and pango. GTK2 is slow, pango is *realy* slow. If those can be optimized or replaced most GUI-speed issues would clear up (at least in GTK apps).

    • (My latest install of FC4 had my notebook's speedstep running at ~600Mhz even when plugged into AC, until I manually tweaked some files.)

      I'm not using FC4, however I am using cyudynd to manage Speedstep on my laptop, and it does exactly this (because I want it to). What you probably didn't notice is that if you actually need the extra processor power, it'll immediately clock back up until you don't need it anymore. I've played with (and benchmarked) it a fair bit and there is essentially no difference in

      • Oh yeah, I'm a huge fan of using speedstep when I'm running on battery. I'm not familiar with cpudynd, but I'm using the "cpuspeed" program that comes with FC4.

        I think my theory was that the GUI might be more responsive at the higher speed, and the speedstep might not step up for such a brief/bursty utilization of the CPU. GNOME was feeling a little sluggish, but I think there may be something about FC4 that feels a bit more sluggish than FC3. :/

  • after 10-15 years (Score:2, Interesting)

    by XO ( 250276 )
    After 10-15 years of farking around with Linux and various things, I have completely given up.

    I'm sick of spending hours getting things working after updates. Of spending hours getting new hardware working. (then finding out any support software is void of any useful function, ie cameras, sound hardware, etc)
  • And don't think that dev's aren't there, but that they aren't necessarily ready. Remember, it took them a long time to learn how to program for Windows. I'd imagine it would take them a while to learn how to program for Linux.

    Linux is ready for corporate use. Except for IT, nobody needs to get under the hood for 99.9% of corporations. All that needs to be done is have speciality software ported over to Linux, and have IT lockdown the system so that the average user can't mess things up. At the bank I

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