Slashdot Mirror
Why Free Software is a Hard Sell
jeffro writes "Dont know if this has been submitted yet, but the Independent news UK has a rather newbiesh article on the ups and down of Linux software as a free alternative to Windows.
"Perhaps Linux shouldn't be regarded as an operating system at all, but more as a sophisticated multi-player game with a large number of enthusiastic players. You can lose yourself in Linux for hours, tweaking here, updating there. It's great fun if you like that sort of thing. But if you need to produce a document, spreadsheet or presentation, you're still likely to be able to do it faster and better by sticking with the Microsoft devil you know.""
A prime ingredient of "selling" software is the price. How can you sell something that's free?
> Perhaps Linux shouldn't be regarded as an operating system at all
.. well, that certainly puts it on equal terms with Windows.
"Old man yells at systemd"
And if you've never touched a computer before, you can probably write that document faster on a piece of paper. Same old story about people not wanting a new learning curve, just written with different words...
Excel is very efficient compared to Gnumeric. I've looked up the keyboard shortcuts in gnumeric, but Gnumeric and many of the Linux Office/Productivity offerings have more sharp edges than the MS Office/Corel Office alternatives.
As I said, I still try use them if at all possible, but they have a ways to go before they offer the same amount of productivity as the finely honed Windows alternatives.
The products, however, have come a long ways and after a few more versions, I could see them becoming just as efficient for the power-user as the MS offerings. If they go the way that the Web Browsers have, they shall become *more* efficient than the MS offerings.
Bringing irony to the Slash-masses
At the end of the day, it comes down to what you're used to, really. If you've never used any OS before, you could probably learn Mandrake 8.1 just as fast as Windows XP. If you're used to Windows, Linux is obviously going to seem more difficult. And vice versa.
I hate to say this, but installing Linux isn't nearly as easy, fast, or reliable as Windows XP. I saw a perfectly normal SuSE installation completely fail after taking over 12 hours to install. Windows XP took just over two hours to install, including obtaining all the relevant installation media. And thanks to Microsoft's licensing policies, you can't get Linux preinstalled on home machines, either. What can be done? Make Linux easier to install, and make Microsoft change their licenses.
I think a lot of people still believe in the old saying You get what you pay for. While the /. crowd knows this doesn't always apply, the average user is what any *nix desktop OS has yet to convince is worth the trouble of upgrading.
Linux will appeal to anyone that is well versed in computer OSes for many different reasons.. but then again, they aren't the ones that need Linux -sold- to them.
visit my free wallpaper collection, wp.erasei.com
I WIN THE LINUX GAME! I GOT A SCORE OF 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000. Seriously though, I totally want to have a linux lan party so I can show all you gamErrz out there who is boss and who is the best at the linux game. "root was destroyed by _aa_'s rocket launcher". GAME OVER FOO!
Now THAT'S funny!
Bullshit. Anybody who creates documents/reports for a living wants the computer to do all of the work of formatting/typesetting for them. Unix has ALWAYS shined at this (troff, nroff, LaTeX, etc.) In a windows word processor not only do you have to do the formatting yourself, but also you have to fight with what the word processor thinks is best, along with the crappy interface that cannot be tailored to the way you work, and the instability (which is getting better, but far from where it needs to be).
And for your resume or quick note/letter, or quick spreadsheet star office works beautifully. And (although they do) no business should EVER be using spreadsheets for day-to-day information gathering, storage, and retrieval, especially if they share that data! That's what a database server is for, and again, a Unix solution shines here.
And for printing, we now have cups. Very powerful and flexible.
So what was this guy's point again?
While Linux is gradually making in-roads on the desktop, that is not were the present strength lies. It is best suited in the server arena, where spiffy user interfaces and good spreadsheet programs mean much less than stability, speed and ease of remote administration.
The article looks to be oriented from the desktop user's perspective, where it's the applications that matter, not the OS.
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
As a once-was computer reseller I'll tell you. It is really easy to blame things on microsoft, you can get 900 different windows for dummies, morons, complete idiots, treestumps type books out there and Linux has to fight an uphill battle against FUD.
Couple with this that best-buy employees cant tell you the difference between linux and windows let alone answer a hard question like how to change the background wallpaper on linux. The salespeople are not there to support it (they arent there to support windows, but linux is a magnitude more powerful and therefore scary.)
Gateway wants to be able to tell the user "pop-in the restore cd and reboot, yes all your data is gone now, windows does that."
All the questions asked by users back in 1980-1990 will be asked again with linux and computer sellers dont want to answer them.
Linux looks like it needs more support than windows, in reality it does not, but it's "different" and that scares companies that are used to their current cash cow.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
is name recognition. Yes, Linux is generally recognized by the public, but that's about as far as it goes. And when people hear Linux, they think "Server operating system that is constantly being worked on." I don't know of one person in my company that would even think to use Linux as a desktop OS. That's not to say there aren't any good applications for Linux for desktop work (StarOffice is great), but none of those applications have the name recognition that competing Microsoft products have.
When it comes to free software, the name recognition it gets is "You get what you pay for." Most people don't understand that "free" refers to the licensing restrictions, not to the monetary cost of acquiring the software.
Free software will eventually become more of an option to business. Microsoft will see to it by shooting itself in the foot with its XP licensing structures. Time is on our side. As more companies suffer under Office and Windows renewal fees, they will begin to explore other options. And as more employees begin to see the advantages of free software, they will begin to use it at home. In this case, Microsoft ends up being our ally. (Strange, huh?)
When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
What is missing for people start massivelly using a free Office Pack is a huge pub campaign.
But you can't pay that with the revenues from free software.
So maybe selling the only thing people are ready to pay: Good and professioanl advice of how to use that software.
So a enterprise able to put a huge call center and charge that will be the best one to really "sell " a free Office Pack.
------I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either.------
Linux is more complicated for newbies than XP, but linux is just more powerful than XP. I don't see people transforming an XP box into an firewall/web server/etc. instandly. A chainsaw is more powerful than a fork, but also more dangerous.
And they noted that there are some standard apps not aviable for linux, well anyone doesn't know this ?
So no need for bitching about them.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
a sophisticated multi-player game with a large number of enthusiastic players
That explain why I'm still stuck at (run)level 2 after years of playing...
[Linux] uses an "open-source" model, so its users can suggest - or even write their own - enhancements to the operating system, which can then be incorporated in future releases
[SNIP]
Of course, the development of new versions of Linux follows exactly the same process used by Microsoft
hmm... does this mean Microsoft is opensource? Where can I get the RPM of XP?
That's the whole idea really.
It's up to you.
It's called Freedom.
Not to mention that Free Software is still in it's infancy. There will be many detractors but I really think that the proof will be evident years from now.
If you want to produce a text document, you can often produce it faster and better by staying away from the Microsoft devil you know and using TeX, with the LyX GUI front end. It produces beautiful output, is incredibly full-featured, and can do just about everything you could want. You don't have to waste time on typesetting details because LaTeX takes care of all that. All in all, it's better than Micros~1 Word for most things. And OpenOffice is coming along very well too. Linux is a very nice system.
Lets face it: Linux is not a clear choice for joe idiot consumer looking to buy a PC to put under the xmas tree.
At the same time, it's come a _long_ way in just a few years. I'd bet my job (well, actually I just about have) that Linux is a better business desktop than Windows. For a business, Linux makes a lot of sense. It gets you off the Microsoft-upgrade-churn cycle, most everything you'd want is freely available, and the simplicity of administration and the excellent security make it a great choice.
Yes, KDE/Koffice, Gnome/'Gnome office', and StarOffice are not MS-Office. So what? As more businesses adopt Linux as their desktop, manufacturers will take note and start offering it, ISVs will take note and start selling more software, and consumers will take note and start buying linux for home since they want to be compatible with what's at the office. Same sort of cycle that made the IBM PC more popular than the Mac back in the late 80's/early 90's.
This might not be the year of linux for the consumer, but it's getting close for linux on corporate desktops.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
"...if you need to produce a document, spreadsheet or presentation, you're still likely to be able to do it faster and better by sticking with the Microsoft devil you know."
In the same spirit as touch typing vs. two fingering it, do the windows solutions really produce better output than TeX and your favorite external utils to make figures (gnuplot).
People go on and on about how great Word or it's Linux clones are. They are admitidly as easy to get started on as two fingering it, but I don't think they can touch LaTeX for quality and speed, once you get the hang of it.
I just passed in my independent study paper (saved in winword/2000) using Staroffice and I didn't have a single problem.
I don't need microsoft to get my job done... and never will.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I liked this part:
"For while Linux has a large presence in the server marketplace, it doesn't cut it as a desktop operating system. That's not through any technical shortcomings of the product itself, but rather the technical shortcomings of users"
It's funny because it's true.
Does this:
Chip giant Intel has reaffirmed its support for Linux on numerous occasions, but that support is far from obvious in the company's product line. While Windows users have a huge range of Intel software and utilities offering support for notebook PC battery management, enhanced disk caches, systems monitoring and management, there are no Linux versions of any piece of Intel software apart from one compiler for the Fortran language, mostly used for dealing with maths problems.
mean something other than what I think it means? I coulda sworn I had battery management and system monitoring on my ThinkPad already. Maybe these words mean something different in England than in the states?
I'm sure everyone here is more productive with Linux than Windows, but I use my parents as a benchmark. The day will come when my mother can take a clean slate PC and a Redhat CD (version 49.0, I presume) and have an accounting package running on the same day.
Until then, Windows has it's place. (grumble grumble.. )
As for profit from a "free alternative to windows", follow Microsoft's example. Sell the service (support for Linux, entertainment for M$).
Article is already slashdotted, but coming for experience, it is hard to sell OSS to PHBs that are used to paying serious cash for something as simple as email.
Recently I convinced a client to use Linux/Apache over Win/IIS. He couldn't believe that you can setup a webserver without paying for the software. He would have spent alot more money on the close source solution.
The only way he would agree to my solution was if I set up both a Lin and Win box, show that the Linux box could do all of the same things as the Windows server. Once I did that then he sprung for the total Linux solution.
Of course, the kicker would be,
"You know, we saved you about $100,000 in software costs, why don't you donate 10% of that cost to Debian and/or Apache."
"Um, no."
Because my Debian installs take roughly 15 to 20 minutes from start to finish, and any Windows installs I've done take at least a couple hours.
If SUSE took 12 hours to install, you are doing something very seriously wrong.
Linux isn't an operating system. Linux is a kernel. RedHat, Mandrake, SUSE, etc. are operating systems.
Kernel + Userland = Operating system.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
In any case, I think its been fairly well concluded and beaten to death that Linux is unlikely to ever give Microsoft any real competition in desktop business apps, and everyone seems to be at peace with this, so it really is a dead issue.
"But if you need to produce a document, spreadsheet or presentation, you're still likely to be able to do it faster and better by sticking with the Microsoft devil you know."
Bullshit. Microsoft Office is a hideous, convoluted, unintuitive mess. I grew up on WordPerfect, Lotus, Wordstar, AmiPro/Wordpro, and a host of other GOOD productivity software. It never crashed, I never had any problems with "Microsoft Installer" files becoming corrupted and forcing regular reinstalls, etc.. I have and always will be better off working with good software (Lately StarOffice and Appleworks.) and avoiding Microsoft Office like the plague it is. Microsoft Office only got where it is because Microsoft got the US Government hooked on it, and from there it spread to government contractors and finance companies throughout the business world, and by strongarming OEMs into including it with their systems.
Eventually the world will wake up and realize that MS Office is CRAP, and that people really only use it because Microsoft wants you to!
One flaw in that article that jumped right out at me is the claim that Intel has shown no software support for Linux.
Intel has put software support behind Linux where it counts: device drivers.
For most Linux device drivers, I scour the web or my distribution media for third-party written drivers. When I need Intel networking or graphics drivers for Linux, I go to support.intel.com.
The Microsoft devil you know
Key word - "know". I'm sure it would be possible to produce open source versions of stuff like Office which had the same UI etc. so users could pick them up and use them quickly. Possible, yes but you'd be drowned in lawsuits before you could say frost pist.
This is interesting. Imagine if, in the early days of motoring, someone had copyrighted having the gas pedal on the right, the brake in the middle, the clutch on the left, the steering wheel etc. Basically, the user-interface for a car. All the UIs for all the different makes would have to be different. How would that work? Eventually, the car with the most popular UI would become a default monopoly. Either that, or they'd be a lot of wrecks when people changed brands.
People are comfortable with what they know. It's not legally possible to produce something which they can operate in the same way to get the same result - even if, under the hood, it's completely different.
This sig made only from recycled ASCII
This article is pretty much a glorified troll, complete with reasonably-stated FUD. You can tell the difference though because you get that weird gut feeling that something is wrong. Let's analyze just the quote:
Wow, this is a good one. Linux isn't really an OS---just a game. Read: it may be good for entertainment value, but is not something a business would use. This sounds like something out of a Microsoft spin factory.
Read: it takes forever to configure the thing, it's not just point and click.
Read: I'm too dumb to figure out StarOffice, because it doesn't say "Microsoft" on the side of the box. (Or one of the countless alternatives. I'm preaching to the choir here, of course, and you know what's out there already.)
Just a product of your typical FUD factory. Some of these might have been valid concerns 5-10 years ago, but come on. Quit trolling. Even the "popular" news rags don't spout this stuff anymore.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Of course, the development of new versions of Linux follows exactly the same process used by Microsoft; the key difference being that the network of developers that came up with Windows XP is internal - solely comprised of employees of Microsoft and its key partners - while Linux isn't the property of a single company.
That is ridiculous. The development processes couldn't be more different. Please.
Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
So why does nobody offer it on PCs?
Because Microsoft will crush any OEM that offers it? I find it hard to believe that Andrew Thomas is really that clueless. I know that reviewers get perks from MS for writing favorable Microsoft articles. (free software etc.) I'll bet they really like it if at the same time you also bash there competitors.
If you want linux on a PC buy it from penguin computing!
...isnt selling as well as expected either. Average users, unlike corporations arent as willing or likely to change ANYTHING, be it over to Linux, or "up" to XP.
The article was on MSNBC, but has mysteriously vanished...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I run Linux (Mandrake) and have run RedHat, Slackware and other variants in the past. I also run Windows, Solaris, etc.
This article has a point - my parents can't use Linux. And I don't have the time to support them, even if I wanted to.
It's just like cars- people used to look and be afraid of those "new-fangled" beasts. And at first they were a pain. You had to hand start them with a crank. They didn't have windshields, so you had to wear goggles and get dirty. Then, the innovation started- windshields, steering wheels (instead of yokes), electric starters, automatic transmissions, a/c, power everything. Today, you can buy a car and if it's not a Yugo, it will probably run for a few hundred thousand miles. And it comes loaded with all kinds of neat toys.
Until the system [linux] can run without having to use a shell, manual tweeks, etc. it won't fly in the consumer world. Each release gets better, but it's still not there.
The other problem, as many have mentioned, is the amount of software available for Linux (and the means of installing it) is still a bit clumsy. Most [l]users want a GUI installation that does everything for them. And there isn't anything wrong with that. Does everyone who drives a car know exactly how that internal combustion (or electric) engine works? No...
-My $.02You are fucking old now man ! Keep on rollin' 'n' trollin' !!!
-- p.
Although I read through the whole article, the headline was enough to comment on:
Linux has comparable programs and it's free. So why does nobody offer it on PCs?
What the article fails to address is that fact that OEMs CAN'T bundle Linux with Windows, or else it violates their Agreement with Microsoft.
Most OEMs are afraid to even offer anything but Windows, for fear that MS will cut them off, which would immediately cripple their business. It's not that Linux is a hard sell, its that it just isn't sold by OEMs for standard desktops, period.
I cant believe the FUD that transparent Micro$oft shills like to spread. Try telling any one of the Fortune 500 companies that have deployed Linux as an enterprise-wide solution that their OS of choise is a so-called "multi-player game"
Don't believe the hype. Linux is for real.
Why does slashdot always post these pro-MS articles and never stuff about how using pure free software is quicker and easier? There are books and docs out there about this, but every time I submit a good story on something "that matters," it gets rejected ... yet crap like this I see on here more and more every day ... could slashdot's heyday be over?
...as the saying goes. I use Linux in several areas of my consulting, but I would not attempt to make my users work in it as a desktop operating system. In the future more advances may be made in the ease of use area, but the fact is most users are not willing to learn Unix-like quirks. That isn't an argument against the Unix model, just the fact that most desktop users are more focused on the presentation that is due in 2 hours than learning a new language for interaction with the computer. Yes there are productivity applications, but they are not as smooth as Office (for those not versed in Unixisms), especially to the novice user who can't get the informal support of coworkers on "how do I center mail merge this spreadsheet of names with this word processing document".
That said, there is a lot of productivity found for me to use it in server roles where the users could care less how the interactions are performed. I can save the user money and set up a low end box as a file server (compatible with Windows) and never have to worry about needing to reset again until upgrade time. Cost savings in hardware/software and my time.
The realization needs to be that technical people see the merits of Linux (cheap, malliable and crashproof) but those merits mean little to a non technical user, who can barely remember how to cut and paste.
Sig under construction since 1998.
As the article states: . It's a real achievement, in fact XP could be the first Microsoft operating system that people don't talk about, simply because the user doesn't have to worry about it - it's like a TV, you turn it on and it works. All the time.
To most users, this is how an os should be. A necessary thing which does what is does when it should do it wihtout the user having to wonder how or why.
If you are the type who screws open the vacuum cleaner to find out how it works, then you are likely to install linux and have fun fiddling with it. The hours spend are hobby and learning time. The fact that all the software to play with is free is a nice add-on.
If you are the type who couldn't care less how stuff works, but just wants it to work to play games, to make a presentation or whatever turns you on, then every minute spend learning stuff and fiddling with an os to get things to work feels like eternity. The fact that all the software is free only confirms your feeling that there *has* to be a reason why it is free.
So it isn't that free software is a hard sell, it is hard to sell because a lot of people do not see their time as being free too.
I intend to live forever, so far so good.
- Some of the default settings make it all too easy to destroy the existing contents of your hard disk. [?!]
But, I also happened to come across this article at The Register that actually provides for a more balanced look at the install process:- As for other hardware detection, Mandrake was infallible. The drives; the wheel-mouse, the keyboard, the monitor, the video card (nVidia Ge-Force AGP 64 MB), the sound card (SoundBlaster Live), all of it. All I had to do was confirm its choices every now and then.
So, Mandrake 8.1 looks like a good choice for a beginner, and I definitely look forward to Mandrake 9.xAlex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Find me three business executives who use nroff to format documents on a regular basis.
And (although they do) no business should EVER be using spreadsheets for day-to-day information gathering, storage, and retrieval
The point of the spreadsheet is data analysis and presentation.
I've sold both Windows and Linux based tools for awhile, after after a lot of soul-searching (and checkbook-balancing), I've decided I prefer selling Windows solutions. Four reasons --
I still prefer Linux for *my* stuff -- I just like Windows for *other people's* stuff.
Despite all the linux hype, it is still harder to install, maintain, and use than windows is. It is supposedly more reliable, but I've had applications fail in linux time after time because of faulty support, while windows BSOD's occasionally. In my experience, very occasionally. I can't remember the last time windows crashed independant of my tinkering. (i.e., not windows' fault. Even macs crash more frequently when I do think I know I shouldn't)
All that aside, I'd still use linux if it were more supported. For the most part though, nearly ever driver and application has a windows version. Although more and more are supported under linux everyday, or can be emultaed under programs such as wine, its still a long way from being supported even as much as mac's are.
My point, though, is that although it may be just as easy to learn a particular linux bundle as it is to learn windows, until I can do all the things I do under windows, I won't get rid of it, neither will I advise anyone else to.
-Space for rent
I find Star Office apps to look the same as MS apps. How can MS Word be more easier?
Linux has failed to make significant inroads in the home-user market for all the reasons listed in the article and one more: Windows is still affordably priced (especially if you skip every other upgrade). True, Linux is free, but Microsoft is still cheap.
Wait until M$ switches to some kind of expensive, burdensome subscription pricing scheme, and then we will see Linux take off.
Without significant price pressure however, there is no reason for joe schmoe home user to switch from M$.
Looking at that title is likely to get alot of people stirred up, but here me out. Linux doesn't appeal to Harry Homeowner (and indirectly to large computer manufactorers) because it isn't stable. I'm not saying the OS isn't rock-solid, I'm saying it's transient. There is no single body overseeing development and that tends to make linux look like a hodgepodge of hacks and two-bit programs (no matter how good they really are). A linux development company (read: Eazel) might go out of business and yet development continue on (read: Nautilous) through independent programmers who love hacking on source code. This isn't appealing to the average user because they don't understand the simple fact that thousands of professionals who cut their teeth years ago learning the old-fashioned way (trial and error) can out-program M$'s staff.
Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
LOL I'm a luser
I see this is a two-pronged issue. On one side we have the familiar /. argument that M$' dominance is simply a self-fulfilling prophecy based on its existing monopoly. Of course people are more familiar with it because it's ubiquitous.
The other issue is whether hackers WANT to make Linux as easy and straightforward as Windows. I think the reality has to be faced that _choice_ means a certain level of complexity, and complexity is a burden to ease-of-use. I would argue that the very advantage Windows has for the common user is diametrically opposed to the goal of Linux hackers everywhere which is to make the system as robust as possible.
That said, I don't think it's impossible for Linux to break into the desktop market. All that is needed is for GUI developers to start emphasizing Windows-like functionality that makes it easy for newbies to pick up the OS. I think that the current problem is that these goals have only come to be emphasized recently.
I think the reason M$ is so scared of Linux recently has to do with the fact that Linux isn't dependent on winning this battle anytime soon. It doesn't have earnings report deadlines or any other interest in profitability. It can simply keep chugging along until one day it is suddenly winning...
BZZZT. Dell offered it. Very few people bought it.
Do these people even read the GNU? Do they even know what Open Source means? Its not about selling the software. Its not about selling the information. Its about selling the services. Someone has to write the code, charge for the code to be written instead of for the packaged product and you have a business. Redhat sells services for free software and is making alot of money. They continue to profit without selling software. RedHat Profits surpass expectations again Now enough about redhat, lets talk about the ways to sell services and the purpose of the GNU. The GNU is here so that people will be able to freely share source code / information with each other. The GNU and GPL states information should be shared not sold. So why are some corperations complaining if they cant sell GNU software to people who support the GNU which specifically is against the sale of the software itself? Selling GNU software is basically asking people to donate to your company. Instead of wasting your time pressing a CD, charge for access to the actual ftp site or dont let them download at all forcing them to buy the CD from you. This can work but only in the corperate world. How do you sell to the user? Its simple. You dont. You charge the user for the service of actually writing the code. You have surveys asking the users what software they need. you make a demo version which is VERY VERY stripped down, and tell the user if they want this software to be completed they have to subscribe for $1-5 a month until development is complete. Development is completed. User gets software, Developers got paid. Company then earns profit by selling updates via CD. Its easy to get a person to buy an update to software they already use, but its impossible to get a person to buy software they've never used. So yes its possible to make money on open source software, but you arent going to do it using the closed source business model.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I use star office, why bring the OS into it at all?
ender-iii
News at 11!
But really, windows might be Automatic, but just try and squeeze the same power from it as you can the "Manual" Linux box.
I can't belive they even bothered writing the story.
For while Linux has a large presence in the server marketplace, it doesn't cut it as a desktop operating system. That's not through any technical shortcomings of the product itself, but rather the technical shortcomings of users.
I take issue with that statement. It is not the users' fault that Linux GUIs use X windows and as a result the GUIs are more slugish in Linux that in Windows. No amount of reasonable configuring by a user can change that.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Perhaps Linux shouldn't be regarded as an operating system at all, but more as a sophisticated multi-player game with a large number of enthusiastic players
...That's when he suddenly realized he wasn't running Linux at all, but playing Unreal Tournament after a long night of binge drinking and hallucination inducing drugs.
I Heart Sorting Networks
As I see it, for Linux use to grow significantly several requirements need to be met. First, office software for Linux has come a long way but it's still not as polished as MS Office, complete compatability with Office is also a must, this is IMHO the biggest factor holding Linux on the desktop back. Second, a simple, reliable, quick, and intuitive method of installing Linux on a computer that will work with any distro (tall order I know, but I think it's possible) has to get put together. Third, a database of _all_ the drivers for Linux has to get put together in a way that offers ease of use and simplicity for any user needs to get put together online. A driver search option in Linux needs to be able to id your hardware, search said database, and then install the drivers you need automatically (of course it could be turned off for advanced users). Fourth, documentation efforts need to be tripled (not down on the people who are doing it but they need more manpower, and no I don't have time) and error messages need to be instructive for the novice user. Fifth, an environment like KDE needs to become as full of features (all can be refused and gotten rid of of course) as XP is, close to that many anyway (bloat can be avoided by getting rid of whatever you don't want). If/when these things get done Linux will be ready for general acceptance, but it's a tall order for the community. *disclaimer* I am not a programmer or a hacker or even a CS student, I'm a biologist who likes computers.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
I don't read the independant, certainly not after this diatribe.
Also has this guy been living under a rock:
" you'll struggle to find a Linux office package with anything like the quality of Office XP."
nuts! XP AND quality in the same sentence?!
Come on Sun lets see some serious marketing for Staroffice, that's the kick that Linux needs.. PUBLICITY!!
Your parents CAN use linux, put them in front of KDE and its point and click, even rpm installs are point and click.
For most people, who surf the web and check email, thats good enough.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
...getting harder to fund.
I looked at Slashdot today and after taking >20seconds to render the page, Konqueror opened a new window, prompting me to install Shockwave Flash. I don't want to use another browser and I don't want to install Flash. If Slashdot is going to stay like this then I think I'll be going somewhere else. I refuse to wait *that* long just because of an advertisment.
And what's worse... it's a doubleclick.net advert.
Anyone else noticed this or found it to be problem?
Follow me
Because I'm the 'end user hardware support' person at work I've had several people ask me lately what software I use at home. When I tell them I use 'SuSe Linux' they act supprised. They don't know that Windows is not the only OS out there. I then give them the lecture about how GNU/Linux is better than any Windows OS. I rant and rave about how bad Windows is and how wounderful this Linux stuff is. You kow - all the Linux zelotry I can muster at the time.
BW - Management here did not approve the use of Linux for some network things (like DNS) because they 'don't want different OS's on the network'. We have several Mita 3010 copy machines that also serve as networked printers. Running their IP-P2P software on our NT 4 servers did not print graphic files correctly. I set up a Linux print server for the Mita 3010 printers and it works with any problems at all. It was several month later during an EOY audit that Management found out I slipped in Linux.
zenray
The author of the article is Andrew Thomas, formerly of The Register and now (occasionally) of The Inquirer . He knows what he's on about wrt computers, but he's pretty new to Linux.
I don't know where to begin other than stating that this article was pathetic, uninformative, and just plain lacking in any real facts other than Yahoo jibberish, and lame buzz-facts.....
Linux... a multi-player game huh???
more like Linux... the OS running the damn webserver your rediculous article is sitting on...
[edit]
oh wait.... jsp huh?? nevermind...... heheh
[/edit]
I am getting kind of tired of these 'Techies' talking about Linux... it's like Christians trying to talk about the ups and downs of Buddhism.... rediculous...
Not that I have much more information to add, other than I hope we can all chuckle a bit at this article, since we are on SlashDot (which I hope is still the alternative to uninformative, half-wit tech info)... Linux, yea... maybe we cannot run M$ Word... but we can code C like madmen, run entire web-servers, and crank out languages like PERL... to which I find no M$ equal..... so when was the last time M$ ported one of its lame-ass damn-near useless Programming Languages to a *nix box.??? I can't recall... but I'm sure we can all put the value of Perl and Apache on a pedestal unreachable by the likes of COM and ASP.... heheh... and even MySql makes M$-Access look like a joke, and that's pretty bad in and of itself...
Sorry for the incoherent ranting... I guess I'm trying to state that those of us who run the merry land of computing know where to look for a "multi-player game"... and it sure as hell isn't M$.... Business and intelligence are two seperate things...
-da5id
You can lose yourself in Linux for hours, tweaking here, updating there. It's great fun if you like that sort of thing. But if you need to produce a document, spreadsheet or presentation
Don't get me started.
No one force you to tweak it if you don't want to. There's always stable version of Linux for production use. The fact that people don't like doing document, spreadsheet or presentation in Linux is the reluctance to learn different ways of doing same things. A Mac user wouldn't like do that in Windows, for example. Your arguement is very misleading.
I must admit MS offers best of the line office suite, but it doesn't mean other office suite is too inferior in comparison.
If you say it's a massive multi-players game, many people are doing serious game playing here.
Sometime I really feel like there's a need to mod some posters as troll or flamebait.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Hey tell me :
I want to install Nvidia drivers on a Dual PIII.
Mandrake 8.1
X 4.1 something.
Ok now you go and install just with the Widgets.
Try.
Hard.
Then write me tomorrow and tell me about the exhilirating experience.
I lost a nice 2 hours before getting back to Make.
Yes Mandrake is Way easy to install.
But not yet as polished as windows.
Sometimes it can be complicated to install something on Windows.
Sometimes it's just impossible under X on Linux.
And Johnny Lawnmover WON'T have the same patience as me and will install a Bootleg Windows within 30 minutes.
It's not only a learning curve problem. It's just you cannot yet compete with Windows on "Dummy Mode PC User".
Or have EVERYTHING available through Widgets. Including the Make command, with Make Dep, Make World, every option, but on a nice GUI. Not just "special graphical widgets" that often propose the same configuration options as the one you just tried with different names and colors.
I'm used to Windows (since V2.0 8| at the time I was looking for apps on REM, the concurrent, but didn't find any...)
I'm installing Linux since Redhat 4.x
And it's still not my day to day OS.
I come, install (better and better), play for 3-4 hours, then want to duplicate my favorite app from Windows (Quake 8) and ends up 5 hours with Nvidia drivers / Open GL and others just to hear that "Quake won't install, Open GL not recognized" and other swearwords.
Windows is "Dummy Mode Friendly"
I want Linux to be the same.
Just like MacOSX. 2 modes. 2 worlds. Together. And let the hacker take hane and let the luser use shiny GUI
Now flame me. I want to use Linux. It has come a lloooonnngggg way. But not yet versatile enough ? possibly.
I want an OS where I don't have to engage my brain to work. caus I don't have 5 hours to solve a problem.
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
"But if you need to produce a document, spreadsheet or presentation, you're still likely to be able to do it faster and better by sticking with the Microsoft devil you know." That just makes me sad. Did they even try it? Maybe it was them who were so caught up in "updating" and "tweaking" the OS.
-Valiss
Charge the man $15,000 for your Linux support (still saving him at least $85,000) and donate $10,000 of that.
~ now you know
Linux is missing an important element compared to other OSes: Design. It hasn't got a coherent set of features that are based on a sober evulation of the average user's needs. It has various packages that do this very well for specific solutions, but if you're going to write a user OS, you need careful design. And this is a big task, mainly becuase it requires standardisation of (programming, user) interfaces and behaviour across all aspects of the OS. Users need consistancy and predictability and Linux just dosn't have it. It does have an enormous, possibly endless, feature set, but many of those features are inaccessible to anyone who isn't interested in fiddling endlessly.
And what underlies this is the programmer mentalilty. Most free software is designed by programmers who, on the whole, have little empathy for the average user. They are technology focused. This may be good for the technology, but not good for the user.
The Linux development community should focus on developing and sticking to some technical design standards and working (and innovating) within those contraints. This may provide a platform for someone to fairly easily come up with a really easy to use system.
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
Why does everyone say that OSS office suites are not up to par with MS Office? Just because the user interfaces aren't layed out in the same way?
It's the mentality that "I'm lazy... I don't want to learn a different way..." that keeps linux off of business desktops and makes silly software reviewers say that MS has the one and only usable office suite.
If bad puns were like deli meat, this would be the wurst
my point? It wasn't really "offered". It was more of a sleazeball maneuver to gain support from the linux community without really endangering or changing anything with regards to Microsoft's OEM domination.
------------rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Linux I own and use about 15 Linux machines everyday. It is perfect for me in nearly every way. I love the applications, the feel, the price, the stability, the configurability, and the ability to alter the software that runs under it.
However, does that necessary mean that my mom has to like it and use it as well? She doesn't program, in fact she can barely type up an email, much less work some "|grep" magic from the command line. She, and most other people I know could care less about daemons and altering cron jobs. They just want to type up an email, surf the web, and create a document here and there.
The more software the better I guess when it comes to Linux, but if the price of getting more software for our OS is changing and dumbing down it down, then I vote to keep Linux just the way it is: For geeks, by geeks.
--It's Pimptastic!--
I see this time and time again. You give away software or development time (via low rate, etc), and it is perceived as not being worth as much. We tried to sell some software a few years back that took a couple weeks to pound out and we tried to sell it for $500, no takers - priced at the "enterprise" level of $15,000 (per CPU), it sold. Baffling....
That is not to say free software is worth nothing. The reverse it true - for my own personal use, I would not ever consider putting a Windows box on the other side of the firewall, even with the software in hand. Linux was an easy choise for my CS server - though I might run Solaris if that were an option.... Double that for even more important things like my development box!
Folks can be dumb, however.... expecially managment. When you shoot for the lowest common denominator, some times you prey on the divide by zero errors...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
I don't know how my PC feels, but I feel more secure running Linux
What does this refer to? Where is root access a default setting? Or does he just mean that there's no recycle bin?
You get out of it what you put in.
Linux advocates are in a no Win situation
Yes, it's a newbie-ish article concerning Linux, but do you remember the first time you ever ran linux?
./"file" everytime to get it running. yes I know this does work, but very few default this way without having to change them. Again, we want to make it easy for newbies.....
I definately do... I took me three days to figure out that I needed to type "startx" to get the desktop up.....
Hey, it was all new to me, I definately had no clue where to start or what commands to use. Nevermind write and print a text file or spread sheet. And this is what the article refers to.
You initally need to spend time playing with it, and learning the system before you can do what most people naturally do with Windows.
IMHO, I believe that Linux needs high consumer use-ability for it to really get into mainstream.
First off, Linux needs a few windowish things to happen.
One
First boot always goes to the desktop... (allow logging in and command line access to be optional for users concerned about security or command line freaks like me). This will give Windows users a nice warm fuzzy feeling at first.
Second
Allow double clicking to execute files in desktop mode. Therefore the user does not have to open up the command line and type
I feel that by making Linux extrmemly easy for new people, many will flock. By allowing users to take to "newbie" usability features away, people like us will still be happy.
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
When I went from MAC to PC about 100 years ago the one thing I miss most was the close all windows keystroke. IIRC crtl-shift-w ? Anyway MS bugging me when I delete a file is about as annoying as...well its all offtopic anyway. This story wsa just another blood boiler for linux preachers/users/wanna-be-users-stuck-in-a-MS-only- shop
"Get them before they get....
Perhaps my top b*tch about Microsoft's products, the decision has been made for you, as arrived at by whatever autonomatons they have drawing these conclusions for you. Like "Share and Enjoy" from a well known book, about the ubiquitous manufacturer of well meaning, but exasperating products. If the option is there, it's buried, often in least obvious locations and hard to find (often because they ignore established terminology and invent their own.) Products often ship with all features enabled, which has caused a world wide security nightmare and wasted countless hours of people fishing around trying to turn things off or figure out how to.
I expect a considerable amount of ill feeling towards Microsoft would go away if they'd drop the mindset of "We know what's best for you", it's already been IBM's albatross and at least they've learned.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
as a java professional i chuckle when I read that kind of story...
it is obvious that linux + java is the "tip of the sword" against XP dominance on the server.
You kids still wonder why you are fighting the wrong war ? it's like netscape vs microsoft and all the press was focusing on the *browser*, while apache was taking over the server side. GAME OVER, who gives a flying FUCK that IE owns the desktop, the server side is where the game is at and that is what real-men are fighting on these days.
Focus on the strenght, drop the kiddy idealism, make the vision work on the server and Open Source software will become the defacto monopoly.
marcf
The real mnf999 always posts as anonymous coward
I had to laugh when I read the remark:
I see so-o-o many Windows users doing exactly the same thing. Tweaking fonts, adjusting colors, downloading more screensavers than you can shake a stick at. It's not just a Linux phenomena and I see more UNIX users grow out of this more than I see Windows users getting tired of this tweaking. (I wonder why...)
Remember the Apple ad with the two guys futzing with the PC for hours/days on end when the secretary asks when is that thing going to be ready to use. Their response ``We're tweaking it.'' followed by ``To make it easier to use.'' still cracks me up and is as applicable today as it was then.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
What shit, If these people knew anything they would know that Sun Star Office runs on windows as well as every flavor of Unix, and it is much better than Office XP and even works on Windows based machines. He has a point where computer illiterate people wont be able to configure their linux systems as well as the gurus, but then again don't those same computer illiterate people have bad configurations compared to all the MS gurus?
I don't know, but the bottled water industry seems to be doing pretty well...
It's all Hood
I'm sick and tired of listening to shit spouted as fact from all the popular PC periodicals, such as PC Weekly and Wired. The world is listening, and they write these bogus bullshit articles with the slightest hint of fact. Why can't you see that this isn't about what's popular or not? Its not your fucking duty to make ideas popular; its your duty to make sound ideas popular. Is the Microsoft giant a good thing? Is a company that runs a monopoly and has no competition(which equates to no progress) something that we as consumers of computer software want? Then what's the alternative and how can we better it. Don't worry about shit like tech support(or lack thereof) or IT undergrad's opinions. When fire was discovered man didn't know much about it. But they kept using it and it became more refined.
When journalists like you take a shit on a piece of paper that shows up in a magazine, or web forum, or newspaper, people take notice and gobble it up. Take some responsibility for your actions and at least attempt to tell these people the truth.
-The key to successful journalism isn't telling readers the facts. It's about FINDING the RIGHT facts to tell the readers.-
I have no desire to reach nirvana.
So the marketing manager for Dell says that they have to spend some money to verify that their new system works with Linux. In response, the author of this article decides that the reason Linux hasn't taken off on the desktop is because Dell isn't installing linux anymore. And Dell isn't doing that because Linux is too hard to install?
I think the author forgot that this testing has to take place for Windows, too. The testing has to take place for anything new that gets added to the Dell's systems. They have to test new CDRW drives, DVDRW drives, anything... and the only justification for that testing is if the demand for that thing will increase sales and pay for the cost of the testing. Ease of end user installation is just plain not relavant.
It's awful expensive and difficult for Ford Motor Company to install engines into their cars. But they do it because the demand for their cars would fall to the floor if they didn't. In other words, pre-installing engines increases the demand for Ford vehicles. If the demand for pre-installed linux was there, Dell would pre-install it no matter how hard it was the first time they tried to figure it out.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
I use Linux Mandrake as my main development environment, but after an hour or so of reading documentation I still can't get my Visor to synch through the USB port.
I can't remember how many times I've been frustrated by cutting and pasting not quite working, or the inconsistent user interfaces between KDE, Gnome and other X apps, application crashes (KWord was unusable until recently), and the difficulty of configuring some apps. I still can't get the latest Konqueror to remember the default window size; the instructions in the docs don't work.
In short, I love Linux as a server, but find myself actually missing the more consistent and stable MS applications. Guess I'll have to wait for Lindows.
see subject. please someone mod this up dramatically!
[quote]
Perhaps Windows shouldn't be regarded as an OS at all, but more of a multiplayer game with a number of naiive players.
[/quote]
meneer de koekepeer
When RMS preached free software. He was looking at a rosey colored picture. Now that the curtians have be drawn Reality is that MONEY is the important and what the economy does is even stronger incentive. If a company is to be successful it needs to make money especially in a downturn situation.
XIMIAN and Redhat realized this. There is nothing wrong with free software that a good subscription base can fix for this company's margin
Ctrl+Alt+ keypad [+] or keypad [-]. If that doesn't work, you need to edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.
I'd rather just right click, myself.
As soon as we package it and send it over there, you mean.
And on, and on...
Don't forget, America invented Rock and Roll, Soul, Funk, Garage, House, Hip Hop and R&B. The British only refine it while we've gone on to something else.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
Selling Linux as a tool is a totally good idea.
Mystery boxes that do mystery thing to packets and nobody looks inside, Linux is perfect..
I view linux like a really cool tool, not a competive product. I don't worry about MS taking over the world, I got my copy of the linux source, I'll be good.. Worse comes to worse I'll add what I need myself..
The is one of the big holes in OSS or community based development. Apple, IBM, MS have spent billions on human Interface research to make computers easier to use. The don't let engineers alone design products because they don't understand was users really want and need. They require input and review by Marketing and users testing. Apple and MS both have lab testing users on interfaces, documentation, and anything else the typical user has to react with. This research is not cheap or even easy to do. You can't just look at Mac or Window interface similate it and say you're as easy to use. Plus IBM, Apple, and MS all have published Human Interface standards developers follow. Why because consistency makes using the platform and all the app's easy to learn and use. This doesn't fly in the OSS world everyone has a different idea of how things should be done, in this case that is a bad thing. This is why you need a central body setting requiements. this is why even if Linix is technically better, users continue to use Mac and Windows, because its easier to use in the long run. This is why Mac OS X is the best thing to happen in years. They taken as great OSS OS and put a well know interface on it. They have made Unix useable to the typical user.
It's great fun if you like that sort of thing. But if you need to produce a document, spreadsheet or presentation, you're still likely to be able to do it faster and better by sticking with the Microsoft devil you know.""
So why is Microsoft the only alternative here? What about Mac OS X? Yes I know you have to get a completely different machine to run it, but the upside is that with Mac OS X you can have your cake and eat it too. You can do on Mac OS X just about anything you can on Windows yet you have the power and stability of Linux. It may still not be as fast as it outta be (but it *is* getting better by leaps and bounds) but you can certainly have the fun of Linux with the wide range of software like you would find under windows. And, unlike Linux, you can find *tones* of commercial games for the Mac, many of which either run under classic just fine, or have OS X native updates. Some even ship that way now.
Yes, with Mac OS X you have to bow to some corporate entity, but hey if you have to rule in hell rather than serve in heaven, its better to have Apple as your satan than Microsoft.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
The general public for the most part has not even heard of Linux or any other open or free software. They literally think there are no altertnatives to Windows on the PC platform.
Those that have heard of Linux but don't know much about it think it's different, weird, and not at all interesting because it won't run their Windows programs.
Those with a real knowledge of Linux have concluded it's a good server OS and not ready for the desktop. People and companies in this group include IBM, Redhat, and virtually every Linux-aware business person I've worked with over the last several years. (Think I'm kidding about RH? Ask them on the record about pursuing the desktop market, as I have several times, and they'll tell you flat-out that they're completely focused on the server market.)
Linux has too many hurdles to overcome to make it on the desktop, barring some major shock to the market (like MS losing their mind and raising the price of WinXP to $2,000 a copy). It won't run the apps people need and want to run, its harder to install and use, it has poorer device support, and its model of distribution and support is different enough from what people are used to that it makes them uncomfortable.
The fact that Linux is free (speech) means precisely nothing to the mainstream users. And the fact that it's free (beer), runs for years without crashing, etc., all mean very little, since it won't do what they want. Until that situation changes, Linux on the desktop will be a nano-niche.
"Perhaps Linux shouldn't be regarded as an operating system at all, but more as a sophisticated multi-player game with a large number of enthusiastic players:
Linux is just a toy that some madman developed.
are you trying to initiate a flamewar?
;-/
Trying to compare apples with oranges?
Do you really need an office application before you can call something an OS...
Give yourself a hand lad
During the last year or so there's been alot of focus on Linux making it as a desktop OS. I use Linux, and nothing but Linux, on all my desktop machines, both at home and at work, and have had no larger problems doing so.
;)) knows just what a beautiful ballet of smaller programs Linux actully is. And each of these small programs has a vast range of configuration options, enabling a skilled user to tweak the system into working excactly as he/she wants. This is why I love Linux, and this is also why i hate Windows.
The only big problem with using Linux on the desktop is the inability to handle Microsoft Office files 100% correctly. But what people seem to forget is that this is not a shortcoming of any of the Linux office suites, the problem lies with Microsoft's closed file formats. If Microsoft had released the specs to their file formats we would have Linux support for them in no time.
This, however, is not the issue I'm concerned with. See, I like Linux - in fact, I absolutely love it. And the reason for this is that it's not dumbed-down so that even the most ignorant user can use it. This is because Linux is an OS for computers, not people. Most software is created so that programs can easily exchange data and communicate effortlessly - and to do this the software has to play by computer rules. This is also what makes Linux so powerful and beautiful. Anyone who has set up a linux system from scratch (for example by checking out www.linuxfromscratch.org
The problem with turning Linux is a desktop OS is that for it to be successful the system has to be dumbed down so even my grandma can use it without any problems. And when doing this I fear that Linux will no longer be Linux - when normal users start migrating to Linux, they will increasingly request features which will make data formats and communication protocols much more complex, and thereby also more messy (see my comment on html for examples of this). This will, in turn, mean that when writing desktop-software for Linux one will need to support these bloated standards, and your software will in turn get bloated. And when the standards get bloated enough, they will mean that only large development teams have the resources to develop new applications - which means that corporations will take over the desktop, further enhancing it's "user-friendliness" with even more complex standards. In the end, the Linux desktop OS will become one huge, monolithic system just as Windows is today, and not leave any room for newcomers.
Long before this has happened I'll probably have left Linux behind, focusing on some other operating system which has the flexibility I seek. Then this will probably happen again, and again, and again.
Why do Linux have to become more user-friendly? Why do we have to have a Linux-box in every office, and even have our moms running it? I like Linux just the way it is; a powerful and flexible OS for users who actually knows what they're doing, and desire more from a computer than a spreadsheet editor and word-processor. I agree fully that we should get more people running Linux, because it is a truly great OS, but I don't think we should transform it into what Windows is today. Instead of bringing Linux to the normal lusers, we should focus our efforts on having fairly computer literate people give Linux a try.
Linux looks like it needs more support than windows, in reality it does not, but it's "different" and that scares companies that are used to their current cash cow.
You make some good points about the retail end of things, but I have to disagree here. Linux does require more support than Windows. Why? Because Linux has more options and choices, and for every option and choice, you have a support requirement. That's why Windows has minimal support available--because as an operating system, you can't do squat with it that they didn't intend for you to do.
Most companies spend more every year supporting their software products to consumers than anything else. Microsoft went the route of minimizing this and charging through the ass for trouble calls. Most other large software vendors have followed suit.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
Okay, I admit, I love using LaTeX now. It's not easy to learn, but once you do, you find that M$ Word is just nasty to work with... BUT recently, my roommate and I had to both redo our resumes. Mine had originally been in Word and I wanted to redo it in LaTeX. My roommate just needed to put a few changes and stuff on his resume. Doing a complete rewrite, I produced a resume that looks better (IMO) than his, and did it in less time. I remember laughing when he kept cursing word for putting things where he didn't want them etc etc etc... I know, I'm just biased. Wah.
Humorless sig goes here.
the poster makes a good point: doing any sort of desktop publishing (is that what its called...?) is much better done in Windows. before i was in college, and i didn't need to prepare nice looking presentations, spreadsheets, and even somewhat sophisticated word documents (dataflow diagrams, flow charts, etc.), etc. on a regular basis, i could do my basic word processing stuff in Linux, but now i'm much better off using windows for that sort of thing.
i _really_ hope KOffice catches up (although i realize its unlikely for various reasons).
The problem with the Linux-MS debate is the same with any debate in the Western world--the media controls it. News flash--the media is large corporations. Turns out the large corporation side of the debate (MS) gets the favorable play. Funny how that works...
Linux won't win the debate until RHAT has $100 Billon market cap and builds the disgusting PR machine that can take on MS's disgusting PR machine.
I'm much funnier now that I'm a subscriber.
Try double-clicking on the titlebar of a window under Gnome and see what happens. Rather than maximizing as it should, it "shades" like windows do on the Macintoy. This would be fine if there was no way to minimize the window, but since there is what possible reason would I have to "shade" it? At the very least this behavior should be configurable. As it stands you're stuck with it. I've even gone as far as to poke around in the source code to sawfish, no luck...
The trick to configuring CLI progs is reading the manual (really, it only takes 2 minutes) and linux has plenty of GUI tools where u dont even need to read the manuals.
I have recently converted several of my friends to linux. None of them new to computers but also none had previous *nix experience. They're all doing fine on it, typing on staroffice 6, browsing on mozilla or konqueror.
Liberty.
Those who remember the early days of DOS will recall Lotus 123.
Now when MS-DOS came out with the IBM PC, IBM did not sell MS-DOS nor did MS sell MS-DOS -- instead all that you saw on TV adds was the APPLICATIONS that came with the PC.
So if we want to get Linux on desktop, into corporations and homes, we need to find a "killer-app" and promote THAT and I belive Linus is working on such a project.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
This is a real catch-22 for Linux as well. If you install Red Hat or SuSE, most decisions are made for you as well. It has to be that way. You can't make an intelligent decision on how to set things up until you've used the system, and if you can't use the system until you've set things up...
Better to have someone who knows what he's doing and who's thought about it (I'm not saying that that's what always happens) decide on the defaults than having a newbie make random choices just to get the d**n thing running.
My point is this: Linux is just a different way of doing things; like changing from one company to another introduces you to new practices even if the end result is the same, so Linux requires the user to learn a new way of performing tasks that are, in principal, no different to those done on a windows machine. Its just a matter of applying yourself to the new method. Sure the learning curve is steeper, but only if you want to really immerse yourself in Linux - all the basic applications are there, like in Win**, happily presented on the desktop so that the user can amble along doing there spreadsheets, writing nice letters to cousin Bob, whatever, without even needing to know what a pipe is or the format for an
Its only the lack of fully developed, J. User-orientated applications that holds it back. Give it a few years and there is no reason why Linux cannot compete.
-- Dan
Example: I just bought a new printer and I want to install it. I can just plug it in and install the driver, right?
Not quite... How about with printers that support duplexing, stapling, and things like that? Perhaps using CUPS would make things easier, but definately not perfect. Setting up printers in Windows is as simple as it could get. Linux (as well as Unix and other Unix workalikes) tends to fall on it's face when it comes to printing. And MIDI. Don't get me started on MIDI... No, not the soundcard to make little piano sounds, but real, professional-grade MIDI.
.... is that they are talking to Computer Resellers.
Frankly, when I buy a computer, I get the parts and I put it together myself. I don't want Dell, Gateway or Computer Manufacturer of the week on my box.
I've spent the time learning a bit about my computer (well, more than most of course), I've done the research and know what to expect out of it. I also know that I spent a good $1500 at least on it and want to get my money's worth.
I put together the machine, configure it, and it works. It keeps working and never has to be majorly upgraded because I use a linux distribution that I have researched and found to be suitable when it comes to small, automatic upgrades with minimal hassle (debian). I never have to buy a new piece of software to make my machine run smoother, faster, or more reliable.
When I rent a house/apartment, I research the location, size in square feet, and cost per month + utilities. I check if it uses gas or electric heating. I make sure that I have a place to park that's close to the building. I *ensure* that this place fits my needs.
When I buy a car... Well you get the point. If people are unable to research, learn, and evaulate the caveats of working with any piece of software, well, sorry to be brash, but fuck them.
Microsoft is trying to build a psychic computer. One that takes care of all of your needs, wants, and desires as a user.
The simple fact is that this does NOT exist, and will *never* be possible with out user intervention. The user that is not able to learn and make decisions regarding software/hardware choice is going to get left in the land of shoddy and expensive tech support, constant upgrades (to make the machine faster of course, instead of working to configure it to be), and a lot of cash missing from their wallet.
Linux, FreeBSD, and other mature 'free' operating systems are not going anywhere. We (those of us who use these systems) should not be worried. Nothing threatens our 'market' but users who do not opt to use the systems, which isn't really threatening at all, as long as users still exist.
Of course, some people who have researched will choose Microsoft because it suits their needs. That's fine IMHO, but the realization that you're in a cycle of relatively constant upgrades and/or possible support issues (Win95 anyone?) should be at least something to consider when you make that decision.
Basically, the point is that with any large purchase, if you're not going to spend the effort to learn about the product your purchasing, you deserve any hassle you'll get over it.
Word might be ok for tapping out a memo to the board, but if you want a truly professional looking document, LaTeX is hard to beat.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
For me cut/paste is the most annoying thing. It doesn't seem to work the same across all Linux apps. I can cut/paste in netscape or a terminal, but I can't cut from a terminal window and paste that into netscape.
If anybody can explain to me how to do that it would be very appreciated.
http://www.windmeadow.com/
I sig, therefore I was.
Well, I havent' installed linux in almost a year, so I don't know how easy it's gotten recently. Hopefully it is getting up there.
I've never had any problems with widnows needing reinstallation though. I've been running off the same install for about 3 years now and have yet to notice any performance degradations.
What I wanted to mention was that I've heard of a pretty good tax program for linux, 'kapitol' I believe it was called. Supposed to be as good as quicken without the bloat. From what I've heard you ought to check it out.
-Space for rent
But selling can be done for free because you are trying to sell people on the idea of Linux.
;)
But here is why it does not sell in the corporate desktop environment. I know somebody is going to label this is flamebait but it is the truth-- although Linux works VERY WELL for small desktop installations it is missing one very important thing for the corporate workplace: an enterprise-ready office suite.
The reason why MS Office has been so successful in the corporate world is that it is extremely powerful. Word is not just a word processor but an actual development platform. So is Excel and Outlook, and while Microsoft has not historically done a good job at making this a secure development platform, it has done an outstanding job of making it powerful. Last I checked, KOffice did not support the kinds of macros that MS Office does, and the only office app for Linux that does is Gnumeric (which kicks Excel's butt IMO). The office application is the primary enterprise application for businesses and it is also an important development platform for enterprise applications.
I am not saying that one has to have fully-functional programming languages associated with office applications. That is a way to get all sorts of viruses, etc. but the office applications have to support full automation from outside programs and also powerful internal scripting (though preferably sandboxed).
Do am I a Windows fan? Not at all. In fact, I have seen rapid application development on Linux go from a pipe dream to a reasonable reality in a year and a half, and I think that the office suites will do the same.
Wold domination takes time
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Who the hell is "us"?
Slashdot is and has always been a community of people who use, in general, enjoy technology and computers in particular.
So please take your zealotry and calls for communal purity somewhere else.
or at least the article it refers to? sheesh.
Realistically, anyone can make a document faster using DR-DOS and Professional Write than using MSOffice and MSwindows on the same hardware. That's simply the cold hard truth, go do the experiment and see for yourself. The DOS box would be more stable, faster, and cheaper too!
But people are marketed into believing that they need additional features, and buy into bloat. I've always suspected it'd be faster and more efficient, in the long run, for people to learn how to spell than to learn how to use spell checkers.
--Charlie
The ongoing discussion if Linux is ready for prime time.
I hear lots of comments about choice. I say there is too much. As a business person I LOVE the fact that I can employ somebody and they know Outlook, Word, Excel etc etc. Yes these are NOT THE BEST products but they do the majority of what I need, but if I have to re-train evreybody plus every person I recruit from now on then Linux is a very expensive solution.
Give me a common Linux desktop and Office set, I don't care which one, but just give me one that the whole world will use and know - then I'll buy it (but it's free right!)
But if you need to produce a document, spreadsheet or presentation, you're still likely to be able to do it faster and better by sticking with the Microsoft devil you know
... mmm sweet networking.
First, this is a myth. Faster? How? Programs will run at the same rates[just about]. Oh, I guess he means because Microsoft Windows software is ALWAYS better than anything else?
Let me say that the fastest spreadsheet software I've used was Lotus 1-2-3 with it's menu-worksheet-insert-row style usage. That is the type of app you use when you do data entry for a living. The sucess of 1-2-3 wasn't because of M$, the demise of it's sucess may be though. Sorry guys, some software will rock on WindowsXP - but it's usually the same. And if it's better on XP or 9x or 2000 or NT or CE it is because the developer of THAT software took the time to do it right. You can't blame bad apps [or games!] on Linus or Bill Gates. [safe bet#4945: You can blame bill gates for good apps disappering from the scene]
If the author is speaking of MS Excel, he must remember that Office is middleware! It's not Windows.
As far as selling free software, it's guys like this that make it hard to sell free software. Not just the product, but the idea. Obviously this fella never used apt-get [easier than ls!] or any other type of linux software.
The software generally isn't that hard to use! Middleware products like Koffice or AbiSuite or StarOffice or etc are just as easy/fast as MS Office. They may not import files from one another nicely, but why are you using M$Office anyways?
Linux not an OS? Fine... it's not a game though. I'll just say it's the best network app ever. I've got it running on the machine that holds my keyboard up [right now] with no mouse,kb, or monitor. I can log in, stream mp3s, chat, IM, whatever... it's so nice networking
Get your Unix fortune now!
The thing that all of you want to try, or keep trying, is to not allow this to fall into an increasingly cultural niche (afterstep, amiga, anyone?) but to press forward. The desktop, of course. I like Linux a great deal, at home, I dev. at work with Linux, but maybe I'll just do Mac OSX for my multi-stuff needs. Why? I can't keep risking my entire environment for an XFree86 update, or another process sharing foul up. Its a wonderful environment, but not a wonderfully (or easily) dynamic one.
For example, a Yes/No dialog appeared on the screen so I naturally hit "Y" on the keyboard instead of clicking the button. It didn't work. I also found myself trying to hit ALT-F4 to close the current window...it didn't work either.
And this is why I do all my lightweight (non-server, non-net analysis) stuff under Windoze or Mac.
Inconsistency bugs the hell outta me, and X is inconsistent by design.
Only on X do you have hundreds of toolkits, all with different look, feel, and keyboard shortcuts.
(Strangely enough, X devotees see this as a benefit. I'll never grasp that concept.)
Gnome and KDE are pointless, because they don't fix the inherent lack of UI standards,
instead they just add one more possible UI variant, and just end up creating even more inconsistency.
Near as I can tell, the only really nice feature X has is the network capability, everything else X does is just a poor copy of windows or mac.
So, until something better comes along (Berlin?), I'll continue using win/mac on my desktop.
It does what I need it to do (I even have the excellent CLI UNIX tools, thanks to CygWin), and doesn't irritate me like X does - in fact, the only drawback is I can't be all elitist about using the same thing everyone else does.
C-X C-S
Has anyone ever stopped and looked and looked at where Linux started? I doubt anyone ever said man this will make a great desktop OS someday. There is no money in the desktop for Linux. They should concentrate on the server market. Unix is cryptic as well as Linux but then it is not meant for you average CompuSA , Best buy shopper or whatever. You must obtain a certain level of knowledge before trying to work with it. I think its great that all the Linux companies want you to think it is a peice of pie but its not. Neiter is Linux, you want easy go buy Windows. Any idiot can operate a NT workstation it takes knowledge about the inner workings of software and network protocols to operate a Unix server. It was designed by engineers for engineers. There is a reason why Sun and HP's Unix training catalog is over 50 pages!!! ITS NOT EASY! Nor is it supposed to be. If it were easy none of us would be special and any joe bob could get our jobs.
Linux is great. Love it. Use it all the time... as a server.
Since OSX has dropped into my life I haven't turned the monitor on on my Linux (RH 7.2) box since about... April.
OSX wins. And best part if I _need_ a wickedly bloated "office" application I can get one. And the one I can get is the one everyone tries to be.
OSX is all the good things about *nix and all the cool things about Apple. And it is "tweaky" enough to feel like I'm still in control (see also installing Perl.)
This
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"But unless you buy a new machine from a Linux specialist like GND Systems or Penguin Computing, you'll be hard pressed to find a company that offers Linux as a pre-installed alternative to Windows on its new systems."
IBM, you may have heard of them.
However, if I want to knock off a quick letter, I think I'd want to use Windows - the thing is I don't: rephrase that last sentence as it as "You can lose yourself in Windows for hours, fiddling with fonts here, adding clip art there, it's great fun if you like that sort of thing. But if you need to do ad-hoc manipulation of large text files, you're still likely to be able to do it faster and better with cut, sort, uniq, sed and awk; and Linux is as good a place to use those tools as any."
What people need to understand is that different people use their desktop for different things. I could never be productive with the tools Windows gives you (Cygwin might help). Only yesterday sort, sed and uniq let me do in a couple of seconds what could have taken me at least an hour in Excel (and I'd have had to pay for Excel). My needs are *not* the same as those of (say) a journalist; but my needs are clearly not unique.
Some of us like this behaviour so much, we even use it on our Windows boxes
Why? Aside from we like it (just like you like minimizing and we don't), I guess a more rational argument would be that you can just flick a window out the way and back again with less movement. So it boils down to preference and laziness.
As for Sawfish: try messing with the key-bindings config. IIRC that's where you should look for reconfigging this behaviour. (Hang on a mo and I'll fire up the box with Sawfish on it and have a look
Fire up the Sawfish config utility (via Gnome Control Center or type sawfish-ui at a shell if you can't find it in a menu somewhere) and go to the "Bindings" set. Select the "Title" context and edit the "Button1-Off2" item so it is one of the many Maximize Window options.
Oh, and get a life. Why should maximize be the default?
__
Arse
How, exactly, is it faster than
a) open Word
b) type document, using straightforward GUI tools
c) hit print
What do you mean by 'waste time on typesetting details'?
I'm not saying LyX/LaTeX are not just fine.. but saying that it's better than Word for most things is rediculous.
Has it occured to you that there are fewer problems? The software I have mostly does what I want it to, it's less confusing, easier to maintain and easier to learn.
My wife is leaning how to use Red Hat. It took her a while to unprogram years of M$ use, and that was the most difficult part. Other things like "man" for manpage, "mail" or "pine" for mail, "ls" for list, ssh user@computer -X, GNOME desktop manipulation and KDE stuff seemed to take much less effort than all the undocumented "left-click, sixth tab to the right, expert button, set refresh rate" M$ nonsense. She likes being able to use programs off different computers. She likes not getting Outlook attacks. She understands the rudiments of the file structure and has come to appreciate user accounts. All of this training took less than six months, but she was able to do most of what she wanted almost immediatly.
Can you say that about Windows? It took me much longer to get things done under M$, and the "learning" has never stoped due to needless "upgrading".
It's easier to offload Windows work to others because there are more people capable of doing basic tasks on Windows than can do it in Linux.
Windows offers better profit margins...It's easier for me to mark up $1000 software by 10% than it is for me to charge a $100 "price" for free software
If you are interested in helping your client do something, you might think differently. Why not set up a "class" of your own with free software as the coursware. $25/hr adds up quickly for you, but might be nicer on your client than the $1,100 snatch and run.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
One thats been put together PROFESSIONALLY and SOLD on EASY TO INSTALL CDS. Suse, Redhat, Mandrake etc. they are EASY TO USE! and not FUCKED UP CRAP like the stuff you talk about!
I find it hard to believe that anyone could write such garbage.
Is the person that wrote this article ("Linux shouldn't be regarded...") anything more than an M$ footman ? He obviously knows nothing about computing and computers - otherwise he wouldn't be an office jock.
I notice all the postings (practically) were in regards to the word processing stuff - I couldn't care what this guy had to say about that, but to call an operating system that could do more on a 386 with 4 megs of ram than the latest m$ product could do on an athlon with 512megs of ram nothing more than a "game" merely shows ignorance.
Enough said - to go on about the utter tripe would be stressful.
And lastly to add - I've installed Linux/GNU systems in less than 30 minutes - with KDE and GNOME any moron could use the system.
Perhaps it's been said before, but it's worth repeating: The enduring ruse of writing an article disparaging or complementing GNU/Linux will get almost as many hits as fresh pr0n! All one has to do is write gibberish and notify /. and *POOF* a gaggle of programmers/scriptkiddies/wannabees/shudabeens/cou ldhavebeens/techgods will hold forth and most importantly: VISIT YOUR WEBSITE. What continually amazes me is the extreme lack of effort going into the instigating web article. It seems most of the time /. posts critiques written by morons who couldn't in any way possible get a legitimate job writing computer analysis or who have a limited knowledge of anything outside of their own myopic viewpoint. It's not that their articles even hint at any new insight as to why Mom and Pop and Sister Sally could give a crap about GNU/Linux - "it's too difficult to learn" - it's that there really is no solution at the present time and there may very well never be a "simple" Linux distro. The structure of any GNU/Linux system is more complex than your average VCR. And if the general public cannot program/use that little device, why do so many hold hopes for massive Windows defection when GNU/Linux is quite a bit more difficult?
At least the Independent got credit for the hits: perhaps the advertisers will take notice. Meanwhile, we seem to have become like lambs following every little link to.....
Essential install:
http://hem.fyristorg.com/jspage/jspage r.html
__
Arse
They should make a distribution that's set up to mimic some default Windows behavior - eg: you can change the screen resolution by right clicking on the desktop, you can close windows by hitting Alt-F4.
Would go a long way I think.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Most workers are not programmers, techs, or geeks. They don't NEED to know how their OfficePackage(tm) works, or how to make it work with AnotherOfficePackage(tm). And they don't WANT to know, they just want to be able to do their job. In 5 years of desktop support, I've never had a user ask for permission to change their software to a freeware option, even my friend the office LinuxLovingPowerUser. They want tools that let them finish their work faster, so they can go home to their families, not software that makes their life more complicated.
Linux and OSS may be free (as in speech), but they're free (as in beer) ONLY when the user's time is worth nothing.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Our firm sells "solutions" to small businesses and smaller government agencies and rural school districts. We are agressively pushing Linux in roles of file servers, routers, web servers and mail servers and, where we can, as desktop workstations.
The servers work well... in fact they work so well we are wondering whether our push in that direction has been a good idea from an economic standpoint. Clients who called us weekly with MS servers now call us maybe 4 times a year; usually for problems unassociated with the servers but the workstations. I actually called on a client to ask them if they still liked us since we hadn't heard from them for months. "There wasn't anything wrong", was the response.
Workstations are more problematic. We find, over and over, that clients are using some critical application that only runs on MS. This is seldom MS Office, but more often specialized software aimed at, for instance, attorneys, mortgage companies, real estate assessors, agricultural businesses, etc. We can almost always put common files on a Linux box, but it's much more difficult to run these critical applications on Linux desktops.
We are now looking at Citrix for a solution to this problem but it doesn't come cheap and can, in fact, negate much of the advantages of using Linux on the desktop in the first place.
So, from our point of view, it's not MS Office or any lack of support (our clients rely on us for support for all their platforms anyway) but it's the individual job-specific applications that present the biggest hurdle to putting Linux on the business desk.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
ACME bolt makers have no consideration for the average user! They worry about holding things together instead of making it easier to do things with a penny.
ACME needs to be constrained to these standarsd. Boycot hex heads, torx, phillips, and anything else that can not be opperated with a peenny. I just don't see whay anyone would use them. Everything should be a user friendly as a Simple Dolt.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I try Linux a couple year ago, but it was way too much trouble. On the other hand, FreeBSD was as easy to install and pretty maintenance free... For someone who wants to learn all the facets of Unix, Linux is a good choice. To get the job done, FreeBSD is in my oppinion a better choice.
PGP public key at: http://keskydee.com/gil.asc
This guy is just shooting off his mouth...
Take this paragraph for example:
"The core problem with Linux is that you've got to work hard to connect USB drivers; really hard to find converters and filters to allow you to read and produce files in Microsoft Office format; and you'll struggle to find a Linux office package with anything like the quality of Office XP."
That paragraph -- the whole thing -- is total trash. First of all, you do NOT have to struggle to find a Linux office package -- EVERYONE either has Star Office or knows of Star Office. For example, SuSE 7.1 bundled it with my distro CDs, and I'm sure 20 other distros do the same. To be honest, I'm surprised this headline was accepted. Haven't we heard 2^n other articles just like this, from 2^n other idiot writers?
Linux IS a viable desktop alternative, if it wasn't I would run windows.
We dance to all the wrong songs.
--Refused.
When the only thing most linux programs share in common is stdlib, you can pretty much expect very little in the way of design. Hell, the linux community can't even decide on a base GUI toolkit to use, something MS and Apple solved over a decade ago.
It does. Its difficult to install. Has lame support. Nobody uses it (Compared to Windows).
It seems great for server stuff... But...
But I got to say, once you put up a GUI, you lose all the stability that all the "Linux Elitists" claim it has.
Oh and if my users had to use Linux, I would never have time to play Half-Life at my tech support job cause I would be answering questions for them.
I know what the killer app for Linux as a server is (Apache, with high reliability and scalability at low cost) but what's the killer app for Linux on the desktop? GIMP and StarOffice, clones of leading products, don't qualify. What desktop application can I run best on Linux? Someone needs to come up with an answer here that everyone agrees to.
If it weren't for iTunes/iPod, I might say MP3. (Or Ogg, for the cantankerous.) But Mac supports that with no DRM bullshit. What else?
sulli
RTFJ.
Try Lyx. It is awesome. I wish that I had known about it when I prepared my thesis. It would have saved me a world of trouble (mostly from beating word into conforming to my thesis standards).
The middle mind speaks!
they did that.... MS-ordered spin-doctering on the msnbc.com website, eh?
"it is hard to sell OSS to PHBs that are used to paying serious cash for something as simple as email."
Funny, isn't it? I've always wondered, though, if the PHB would still be so willing to spend that cash if it were coming out of his salary, instead of his company's accounts.
That's ok if you want to knock Linux on a Linux site and promote Windows as well, but you're not going to get very far with that. In fact, you might as well be making a point that Linux is hard to use. Well, it is, for people who have only half a brain and don't realize the power of Linux. It's like giving a performance sound system to a monkey. He turns it on and listens only to casette tapes of Sesame Street songs from the early '80s because it's simple enough to understand and the tape deck is doing what it's supposed to. Play tapes. Linux boasts a weapons arsenal of plethoratic proportions compared to Windows. Windows is made for wussies who don't want to get dirty doing their work. Work is dirty. Suck it up. That's life. If you want an office app for Linux, see www.staroffice.com and download StarOffice 5.2. If you don't like that, wait for K-Office. Don't knock products 'til you know the low down and git all da facts, yo. Buyah.
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
One guy with an Internet connection and a free telephone line would be more support than comes with Windows.
Locally, gasoline is about $1.04/gal, national average is a few cents higher...
In the US, if you DON'T drive a humungous off-road vehicle as far as the next time zone at insane speeds every day, you're obviously some kind of tree-hugging-commie-liberal-pussy.
This isn't quite right. Though the tree-hugging-commie-liberal-pussies do tend to drive more sensible cars, it has much more to do with socio-economic status. Just try getting laid if you drive an economy car. I dare you.
Is he talking about RedHat 5.2 here? I have installed RedHat 7.x on several machines and it has not required any driver manipulation to function. Any asshole can install RedHat, and its supposed to be "difficult" compared to Suse and Mandrake.
Granted, if I want top performance from my graphics card I am going to have to get some rpms from NVidia or something, but that's no different than Windows. Hell, windows drivers don't even come with OpenGL, how useful is that? At least the drivers I get in my distro aren't lamed out so that the distro company can push me into their inferior propritory technologies.
I have a friend that's a flightsim nut. He replaces his video drivers once a month, occasionally he has to reinstall the entire OS because of some registry screw up. This is no better than Linux.
I wish people who write articles like this would simply buy a distro and see if they can install it themselves before taking the word of some other guy who has never installed Linux, or maybe did five years ago.
A reminder: /. readers. The free software purists out don't use free software because it's more user friendly or technically superior, they use it because it is free (as in liberty).
It's apparent that the original goals of the free software movement are lost on the vast majority of
Free software is first and foremost a political movement. It's a backlash against proprietary software and the restrictions it places on users. By arguing whether or not the Linux is technically superior to Windows, you are arguing a point that free software was not originally designed to address. A "true" free software advocate would shrug their shoulders at this article and wouldn't care if was is right.
I'm a neutral party to the "free" vs. "open" software debate but I just thought I'd bring this point to light because it is highly relevant.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
Chip giant Intel has reaffirmed its support for Linux on numerous occasions, but that support is far from obvious in the company's product line.
The Jan '02 Linux Journal (sorry, no link, their server must be TU) has an article by a couple of Intel types (Chen Chen and David Griego) who've a NIC (called iNIC) running a TCP/IPv4 stack on embedded Linux.
Nothing on the Intel site, but you hope it's more than vaporware. Your Beo--------------(stabbed)
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
GUI applications don't differ all that much, and their learning curve is far less than you infer. StarOffice handles much like MS office, even uses similar formulas in Excel, and it even loads *.DOC files. If set up correctly, there really isn't much re-learning for end-users on a linux desktop as opposed to a windows desktop.
Go Lakers!
Here's a scenario: You are a system integrator. You sell support contracts and are responsible to make sure that your clients' networks are running reliably, day-in and day-out. If something goes seriously wrong, you are there, and much of your labor is delivered at 100% loss.
You want to set something up that just WORKS, day in and day out - 'cause then you get the support checks and no hassles, and pure profit.
You don't sell computers, you don't sell networking, you don't sell software. You sell the whole banana, essentially an out-sourced tech department.
In that environment, are you going to tell me that Windows is your best bet?
Every morning, I get up, and read a few emails that give me a summary of the health and status of my clients' (Linux based) networks.
They work for long periods of time with NO ATTENTION AT ALL from me other than reading these summary emails. Backups are done automatically, off-site. (thank scp!) Their web sites and applications work smoothly (thanks Apache!), they get their email (thanks sendmail!) and they can access their files and applications from any of their Windows-based clients, (thanks samba!) and have clean, secure, reliable access to the Internet. (thanks ipchains!)
By moving all the applications to the server, I don't care if the customer chooses Windows, Mac, Linux, BeOS, whatever clients, nor is it a big thing if it crashes. (Pull out the restore CD, put it in the drive, re-boot the computer..)
The important thing is: They all know that their business runs on Linux, depends on Linux, and they know that they are free to confidently run their business because of me and my good friend, Linux.
And they are happy to cut me that check every month because of it.
Would I want it any other way?
NO WAY!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Command-line autocompletion under 2k:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\CompletionChar = 9
This sig is xenon coated, and will glow red when in the presence of aliens
This is what linux needs before I will use it more than a toy:
Easy install for everything(the system and apps). That means that I don't want to see the command line.
Configuration point and click. I don't want to look around for config files to get things how I want. Not at anypoint. I don't even want to know what a Window Manager is.
I expect certain things with a base install. I want to double click an application and type something and print it from the get go.
Developed for the average user. If you ask me the whole things makes sense for the developer and the developers like it. It needs to be developed for the stupid average user.
When my mom can install Linux without me there is the day that Linux can give any operating system a run for their money. Is it there. Not at all. Does Linux have great potential? Definitely.
The whole thing need to be evaluated from the vantige point of "could my mom do this?" Until the bread and butter appilcations can all answer yes to this then I don't think Linux will be any serious threat to any operating system.
I haven't touched anything on any of my Linux boxes for months now. The other installs I did, I just installed, made a couple of changes and haven't touched them since. And the only time I changed the configuration on my laptop is when I changed pcmcia network cards and had to modify the name of the driver in a configuration file.
Maybe you are getting the trill of learning how a computer works for the first confused with using that computer.
I certainly have no problem writing html or pdf documents to share with all my friends or spread sheets to share. I do have to admit that I have never put together a presentation on a computer using anything other than html.
Or maybe this is just another FUD, Linux is not ready for the desktop argument.
True enough! Neither is a CD with a distribution on it. Neither is a broadband connection to download a distro without giving the developers a little something for their trouble.
It's all Hood
Show me the person willing to teach you to use a manual transmission on their car. Not a pleasent learning curve. Plus I'd rather drive an automatic in the city, why do I want to be burdened with endless shifting when I don't have to?
Difficulty level != Superior product
They reflect fundamental user interaction design principles. It tooks Micorsoft ten years to get it right. Apparently, a lot of the *nix people are too busy to code than to design.
But what if that piece of paper requires a special pen, eraser, etc while the other can be written on with any old pen and can be bought anywhere.
The person using Linux produces the same document as the Windows person but had to have more training and specialized knowledge to do so.
>We tend to equate previous success with smarts, for some silly reason.
Copernicus' work was ignored (and even widely scorned) for over a hundered years before the world came around and accepted it.
You have to admit though, the person with the previous success at least has some indicator of future performance as opposed to the untested person.
Trollaxor; finally, a peice of good work from you. I was beginning to think you where a crapflood bot like WIPO.
Keep up the good work.
"Document, spreadsheet or presentation..." isn't about what OS you're running, it's about what office suite you're running. This, of course, is the classic example of Microsoft trying to cross-leverage their Windows and Office monopolies (the latter which was developed by leveraging the former.)
This is ground zero of the M$ empire strength, but there are a lot more productive computer uses than producing office documents. Unfortunately it's what managers (and journalists) understand.
It's funny, because here in Europe smart cars are considered sexy...
This is a perfect example of how the mindsets between the users of the platforms differ.
Technology isn't just technical; it's cultural. Ask any real perl monger.
Now let's ask ourselves which set of technologies better matches the societies in which they typically resides?
What can you do to change that? By porting open source tools to Windows. Bring them around to your way of thinking in a more subtle way, and you won't have to convince them anymore. They'll be in the choir beside you.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Looks like the ./ crash of a few hours ago also killed all of the IP bans. Coolo! - I now have my 5 different subnets to abuse people from back!
I have worked for a few companies that are very Microsoft centric. Some simply don't know all the options Linux can provide today (firewall, workgroup server, even dare I say productive desktop). Those manager who are at least half-way technical and know about Linux don't seem to want to try it. They either don't want to put their ass on the line for their decision or still think that support is sketchy for it. I guess IBM endorsing it isn't enough of a support sledgehammer for them... Well, maybe not for my shop since we only use Sun for the backend servers. Also, others think that they don't want to spend the extra money in buying yet another support contract for yet another OS when they already have burned a pile of cash on their existing ones. I think they are a little short-sighted on that argument. They are missing the total cost of support for X Linux servers versus the same X servers from your favorite software company. You might also be able to argue that you would need less hardware to run your existing services. Ones like NIS, DNS and intranet web servers don't often need the horsepower that's typically thrown at them. My only personal beef with Linux is the hardware. The PC is the most common (and supported) platform but it's really showing its age. The BIOS still uses real 640K mode to run. The Linux BIOS project should address that hopefully. You need something like a Compaq Insight Manager board to see and modify the BIOS setup over a serial port. Sun, Compaq Alpha, IBM and HP Unix boxes have had serial console for years. It's time for a new PC hardware standard with real firmware, IMHO.
...if you want to be any good at it. In fact, it's harder, because it tries to do so much for you. How many times have you heard of insecure, instable, piece of sh** web sites tipping over because of Windows? A lot, right? Want to guess at the skill levels of the administrators in question? That's what I thought too.
The bottom line is that good system engineering (in the admin sense of course) is hard no matter which platform you use. Administration of Windows *is* easy, if you're only talking about a LAN with say, 10 machines. Get beyond a single segment and go into complex services though, and you had better know what the hell you're doing.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Only gamers and the occasional hobbyist coder or graphics person or whatever really wants a fast computer in their house. For most people, Word, Excel, IE and Outhouse Exposed run just fine on a slow computer, despite all the bloat in them.
You might have a point with security, though. I do always feel like I'm in a glass outhouse when I use M$ Windows. If everyone felt that way the switch could probably be motivated pretty easily.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
water is as wasy to deliver as software, you have never toured Hetch Hetchy.
sulli
RTFJ.
easy
I agree. If Mac thinks a nix based desktop is feasable for the average user. Then we shouldn't have any trouble putting together a feasable linux system for the average user.
Dozings.com -- Its kinda funny... If you're as crazy as me.
Your attitude is why Linux's advocates so often come across as being out of touch with the rest of the world and the marketplace.
Grab a brick and hit yourself on the head until you get this into it, "I'm far more knowledgable than the average person with regards to computers. If I want an OS to be popular it has to be simple for THEM to use."
Nroff and troff are not easy to use, maybe if you have been working in Unix on a daily basis. No company would ever think of having all different skill levels try to use such a technology. It would simply be DOA.
Though the tree-hugging-commie-liberal-pussies do tend to drive more sensible cars
i don't know, anytime my girlfriend drags me to the "natural foods" store there's always a large amount of suv's and other gas guzzlers in the parking lot. *shrug* maybe it's just the yuppiefied version of a real store.
Free Webmail
"Once you get the hang of it"
And why bother if I have the hang of MS Word now and it produces an equivalent result with the same or less effort?
This is true, but writing said document with a computer offers substantial benefits over writing it on a piece of paper. You get a permanent copy, you can print it multiple times, you can change it if you don't like it as many times as you want, etc. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here.
The difference in this situation is that Linux does not offer the end user substantially more in the way of functionality, and in many times, offers less to the average user, those who don't like the command line interface.
I read someone here who wrote "Linux is only free if you don't value your time." Linux's benefit is that there is no cost. You can download it for free, and get a stable, reliable system. However, its very difficult to get it to do what you want, especially if you haven't done it before.
Microsoft costs money, and now with XP, is fairly stable. For the most part, when you want to do something, you can find it easily and straight forward.
What reasons would a secretary who uses her computer for email and internet at home have for using linux instead of Windows? Personal growth isn't going to cut it for the average user who doesn't like his / her computer. For these users, paying for the MS license is worth it. With the extra time, they can go outside and go for a walk.
Captain_Frisk
The point of Linux is to be incredibly adaptable and configurable. This means that your ideally designed user interface world is at odds with what Linux is.
That said, you have a valid comment, but in different terms. There probably should be A Linux which has a designed, consistent user interface. One distribution or a set of them should have this goal in mind, and some do. An OS is not just a user interface, and as such one should not design an OS for a single consistent user interface. An OS should efficiently execute system calls and manage computer resources. The user interface is a separate issue.
A LOT of the confusion on this subject is due to lack of the distiction between "a Linux" and "Linux".
On a side note, I think the biggest difference between linux and windows (now that we have KDE and GNOME for UIs) is device support. The device support culture is totally different, in MS drivers are written by the manufacturer, in Linux, they're written by the community. There has been, and will continue to be, a major culture clash here. When I get the newest wiz-bang device from shmo inc., in windows they can give me some driver that will probably hose my system in the end (a lot of Win instability comes from this) but it will work, and I'll blame MS for the instability. In Linux, new wiz-bang devices are generally not supported in the main distributions because it takes time and public review of code to get it there. What is a company to do. This problem has not been solved yet, and that is THE difference between windows and linux for the general user.
(this all comes down to the issue of how do you create a computer system that doesn't need an administrator to maintain it. Win PCs "freed" us from the admins, and MS pushed this hard, but now all those freed people are realising that tha admin might actually be needed (witness current MS security))
Big Business is like a Rube Goldberg "Money-Making Machine" where Windows is an essential interdependent part deeply embedded in the system. As long as there are known inputs, and money (profit) comes out the far side of the contraption, nobody wants to touch the internals (ie Windows installs) since that would risk breaking the machine and stopping the flow of money.
One exception might be an efficiency expert who wants the machine to pump out more money using fewer or less-expensive parts, and he's going to do a Risk/Reward analysis for any proposed changes to the contraption. Swapping out Windows with Linux is going to come up VERY risky if Windows connects with too many other parts (including end users). The strength of this "lock in" for any one part is proportional to the number and value of the other parts it connects with. This value usually FAR outweighs the cost of a "software maintenance" contract, and thus Microsoft becomes entrenched or "locked in".
For Linux to effectively overcome Windows lock-in for the most important parts of the machine, it has to be seen as a low risk alternative. This means it has to become MUCH closer substitute for Windows than it is today. Right now the gap is too wide, which leads to a high risk assessment for the Linux option. This is the single largest hidden cost of "free" software. It's not "free" if it risks breaking an operational Money-Making machine.
Also since humans are inevitably parts of these contraptions, they also have "RTC" (Resistance To Change) factors. In a case where there's high RTC factor, *any* new part is going to risk being rejected like a bad liver, just because it's a change. This further reduces "free" software's applicability.
When Linux can be seen as closer and less-risky substitute, it will enjoy much more success in ousting Microsoft from their trenches.
The pain and cost of dealing with the incessant
flow of viruses and spam when using microsoft's
office products is intolerable.
StarOffice 6.0 is at least as usable as MSOffice 2000, comes free of charge, and is immune to the
plethora of vulnerabilities found in MSOffice.
Really, the simple truth is that it is easier and
cheaper to use non-Microsoft products at every
turn.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Damn! I used all of my mod points yesterday, and this statement deserves to be modded up. I have used some very intuitive CLI interfaces, and I've battled my way through far too many very stylish but utterly befuddling GUI interfaces. Widgets are nice if they add to the usability of the interface, but they're certainly not a requirement. I had a wonderful dream once where make config for a kernel would display something like "ipchains? (Y,N,M,H)" and choosing "H" would display the kernel help that can be had on a number of different web sites.
So, I'm very much with the original poster that ease of use does not rely on a pretty face, and that a pretty face does not guarantee ease of use.
Virg
No, it shouldn't. Linux is a kernel, the operating system is more accurately referred to as GNU/Linux.
-Brought to you by a GNU/Spy.
Sometimes you don't have a choice. Let me know if you find a new manual Land Rover anywhere in the world. As far as I know, they only come automatic.
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
In Linux, new wiz-bang devices are generally not supported in the main distributions because it takes time and public review of code to get it there. What is a company to do. Why in hell should supplying device drivers be the responsibility of the OS? Ten years ago, any add-on device you bought would come with it's own driver disk from the manufacturer -- and usually there'd be a manufacturer's BBS or FTP site where you could check for newer versions. And usually those were pretty good drivers, because they were written by someone that really understood that piece of hardware.
As far as I can tell, this notion that the drivers should come with the OS came about merely because Windows (through 98 & NT 4.0) didn't actually fill up the CD-ROM, so MS tossed in whatever other free stuff it could find. Never mind that some of those drivers are bound to be obsolete before the CD gets stamped.
That manufacturers don't feel any pressure to write Linux versions of their drivers _is_ a serious problem...
I work at a bank. We have mean excel workbooks, with 20+ worksheets, dozens of vba scripts, links to other workbooks, and OpenOffice6 just *refuses* to open them (illegal operation errors).
They work in Excel 97, Excel 2000 and Excel XP. They don't work in StarOffice6 (granted, Beta). There's no compatibility.
And I guarantee you something, everyone in accounting will have my head on a shiny platter if I cause last year's management reports to be in an incompatible format...
So, I'm not even going to mention it.
On the other hand, I'm working on a neato little program to xml-rpc excel spreadsheet data to databases... more on that later.
"Piter, too, is dead."
If graphics hous wants to use GIMP they have to retrain their employees. I'm not a graphics person, but I tried using gimp about a year ago to do some stuff. It wasn't very easy to learn to use. I ended up downloading Photoshop and figured out with a little effort how to do what I wanted with it. I then discoverd that you couldn't save or print your work in the free version, and had to download a third program which I got to work.
Profesional graphics people will ikely learn this stuff faster than me, but their time is money. It doesn't take much wasted time learning Gimp before Photoshop becomes a better bargain for them. If GIMP wants to take market share from Photoshop, they need to make their product easy for Photoshop users to learn and use. Otherwise, they're just making a product for hobbiests who have the time to learn it.
Perhaps Windows users shouldn't be regarded as users at all, but more as as Disneyesque automatons fiddling with powerpoint clipart. You can lose yourself in Windows for hours, patching here, crashing there. It's great fun if you like that sort of thing. But if you need to serve a million web pages or operate an email infrastructure you're still likely to be able to do it faster and better by sticking with the UNIX devil you know.
What the authors are observing is the change of computers from tools to appliances. The ignorance of the multi-player game comment was clearly written on a WebTV device.
99% of people buying new computers may as well be buying a new coffee maker. Plug in, turn on, coffees ready. In that respect, a $200 copy of Windows is way better than any flavor of Linux.
The 1% represented by people reading Slashdot are usually:
A. Literate
B. Adept at problem solving
which qualifies them to save their $200 in exchange for a bare-bones, but highly customizable & powerful tool. People that do not have A or B will try Linux, give up, and whine about how useless Linux is. Every time.
Linux will not be adopted for the same reason the metric system was not adopted in the United States. People are much too busy to learn a new system. In addition, the switch from Windows to Linux is very expensive for companies. When making such a decision, a company considers the "Total Cost of Ownership." This does not simply include the cost of the software (since Linux is free). It also includes how much time will be wasted to train employees, cost of instructors, cost of tech support, etc. Also, if anyone here has ever worked as a network administrator, you know how dumb people are with computers. Most computer illiterate people can barely deal with Windows, let alone such a complex OS as Linux.
As to your nick, shouldn't it be spelled, "bonzoesque"? As to your point, I have seen both wonderful and awful installations for both Linux and Windows. We all must be careful not to consider only personal experience when deciding if a particular OS is easy or difficult to install and configure. There are many who say that Joe Sixpack can't handle configuring Linux, and that's true, but that same Joe would have a great deal of difficulty configuring the nuts and bolts of Windows. The difference lies only in that Microsoft has a default setup that Joe can use right out of the box. Linux needs that same setup, and once it happens (and it will; Red Hat has been working on it for a while and someday they'll have to get it right) then that difference will disappear. Also, as more computer OEMs start offering Linux preinstalled, the knowledge necessary to use Linux will drop precipitously, since it'll no longer be necessary for Joe to install his own OS.
Ease of install is important, but there's much that can be done to level that particular playing field.
Virg
If all they're doing is data entry, then they don't even need to learn a new OS! You stick a link to a data entry application on their desktop and let them get back to work! It's not that tough!
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
That's because she's dragging you to a store for people who want to look like (maybe "feel like" would be more appropriate) they are concerned about the environment, health concious, etc. (Or, if you prefer: "tree-hugging-commie-liberal-pussies")
Look in the phone book under "Food Co-Op's" and you'll find a "natural foods" store where the food is real, where the slick suited marketers fear to venture, where the prices are half, and where the closeest thing to an SUV in the parking lot is the '79 International Harvester Scout which looks like it's been to Peru and back primarily because it has.
What was that? You want I should get back on topic? Well, alright...
So much of the "business world" which Linux is accused of being unable to conquor is focused on selling. But, like in the Co-Op story above, there is much of this world where the act of "selling" is an unwanted intrusion. I'd list things like email (as opposed to SPAM), Christmas (as opposed to Christmas Shopping) as among that set. Linux was released to the free software movement because, acording it Linus, he didn't care about "selling" anyone on Linux.
To anyone trying in the business of selling, the whole concept of trying to sell free software is as much an enigma as trying to conceptualize the "weight" of the color blue.
So much of the world makes it's choice of what to buy based on what it is sold. I'm guilty. Business know this, and focus a great deal of effort on convincing people to buy what they otherwise wouldn't. That's what marketers do.
The fact that Linux isn't marketed, (at least not very well) is one of the reasons I use it. When I'm using my computer, I want to select the tool based on what's going to work best for me, not on what's going to be most profitable for some software development company. In some cases, I'd go so far as to say that the act of marketing a product should be read as an admission that the product is inferior. In any case, it's a sign of a company spending less money on development than they could have (or charging more for the product than they have to) to cover the marketing costs.
<obligatory anti-M$ rant>
It's also why I get concerned about the Microsoft Monopoly. Here we have a case where not only is the company marketing their wares to me, (through all the traditional, and in some cases illegal, marketing techniques) they're using their operating system to market their wares to me (through network effects, proprietary file formats, and bundling).
</obligatory anti-M$ rant>
To anyone who is using Linux because it's "cool", your presence is welcome; feel free to stick around for as long as you remain interested. And when you choose to move on to some other "cool" thing, you'll be missed, but your departure won't be unexpected. There are others of us who use Linux because we can, or maybe because we can't help ourselves. We will still be here using and developing Linux, in spite of what the glossy magazines say. And it's this core which Microsoft (rightly, IMHO) brands as a cancer which will (long term eventually) destroy the software (sales) industry.
Both Steve Balmer and Richard Stallman understand this; they see eye-to-eye from different sides of the window.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Something that Linux developers, like most developers, are very bad at is understanding a customer base.
Linux is very good in the server and network world because most of the developers of Linux and Linux software are themselves "customers" of that market segment. By simply developing a system to do what they want and need, they have succeeded in meeting the demands of that market.
Linux is very poor in the desktop environment because the vast majority of linux developers have no clue what a "typical user" wants or needs. They cover up this ignorance by belittling the "typical user" as being too "stupid" to really understand that Linux is so much better for them than Windows.
Until Linux developers start taking significant steps to understanding what the desktop users needs really are, Linux will be little more than an "also ran" in that category.
Moreover, until Linux meets the desktop users needs better than MS does, MS will continue to rule the roost in the business world. Cost of doing business is more than simply the cost of supporting the install base of systems. Sure, it costs more to support MS - but guess what? I, as a manager, can use anyone of a thousand local companies to outsource my desktop support to. I can leverage computer sales for breaks on training costs. And I don't have to worry about a new administrative support person not being familiar with the software environment.
I can go to any of a thousand local temp agencies to find people proficient in MS Office. Where can I find the temp staff proficient in KDE Office?
I can't.
But of course, I'm just a typical user, so I'm really just too stupid to understand how much better Linux is than Windows.
I work at a bank. We have mean excel workbooks, with 20+ worksheets, dozens of vba scripts, links to other workbooks
So, what is the name of that bank? I don't want to ever trust my money to people who are going to use Excel with vba scripts to handle them.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
As I've read through all of this, I've come across a number of posts talking about the learning curve and how Linux is too difficult to learn. Here's some of my thoughts on this:
Quite a few people learn to drive automatics (Mac, Windows) and are perfectly happy with that. This is in spite of the fact that there is untapped potential with driving the same car as a standard.
Others are either brought up driving standards or at some point make the transition from automatics. These people realize that they have a greater amount of control over their vehicle or are simply comfortable driving this type of car. I'd point out that the level of complexity has gone up, but standard drivers are comfortable with this because they have dealt with the learning curve.
Then there are those people to whom driving is a passion. These folks have no problems fine tuning their car be it standard or automatic. For them, learning curves don't really matter - they will overcome them.
The point is this: Its true that learning curves vary by the person, however, I'm certain that these same people would comfortably perform the same tasks on Linux as they do on Windows if the alternatives were taken away from them. Similarly, if they took the plunge and learned and practiced using the OS they would have no problems using it. I have no doubt in my mind that if we took away all the automatic cars out there and left standards, that people would gain a comfortable level use because they had no other alternative, in spite of the increased level of complexity.
The biggest problem the user community has is inertia. There is too much inertia going right now in favor of MS based products to easily sway the general public to alternatives. We need to find a way to bridge the gap!
Hmmm...
Whoops! Did I just call your girlfriend a "tree-hugging-commie-liberal-pussy"? ;-) Sorry about that.
:> (and yes, i realize i said girlfriend earlier, and my wife will probably ask me tonight which one she is.)
as long as you don't call my wife that, it's ok
actually, now that i think about it, last time i was there, the majority of people who looked like they actually cared what they were eating and weren't in it just to be fashionable looked like they walked there i think or took the bus...that would explain the majority of cars being gas-guzzlers..
Free Webmail
The money uses SDI. the fin analysis uses excel.
And please, i'm not trolling. this is real-world application.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Not on /. it isn't! That's +5 Insightful around here ;)
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
to install and use? I had not used liux befor but thought it seemed like a great idea, but i was scared but everyone saying it was hard. Then i descided to give it a shot. I got redhat from the internet for free-mabey a little complex to find the iso image-, burned it to a disk, and booted the computer up. I even did a custom install, and dual booted with windows 98. I was a piece of cake. and its very cool. everyon i showed it to was amazed. they all say well this isint so hard, its just like windows. Hell it even automatically hooked up my highspeed internet connection. Now many people are getting me to install it for them. This may be contentious but I think the technically savay underestimate the masses to applify there own greatness. if you could get a computer preinstalled with linux really why the hell would you need windows.
This sounds like a VHS vs Beta argument. Yah Beta was better but VHS was more heavily promoted and had tons of vendors depending on it. Beta turned to the professional video market where it is still being used to day in many place. Well not at my station...we use DVC Pro :)
I have a document that I wanted to be able to convert from word format into various formats, and to be able to quickly update them all, or to publish it on the web, etc. I figured that the best way to do this would be in Microsoft Office, so I borrowed a copy (i'm poor too). I ran into numerous problems including but not limited to finding all the support for document conversions, and finding a way to do it all without taking up a loan, which were the main objectives in what I was trying to do. I finally went back to my Debian box and downloaded Abiword, because I admit , I heard about it in the slash story a few days ago. I was able to open the word document I had already begun to create and to my surprise it looked the same, but in my opinion the fonts looked a lot cooler. I have like all these output format options I wanted, and when the formats I had werent enough (I wanted PDF too), I saved the document to a postcript file and converted it using ps2pdf. I think they are still planning direct PDF output, but hey.. Everything looks great (as least as great as I could ever manage), and it took me all of a minute to slap together an expect script to automate the uploading. After 2 days of trying to get it in gear with the Windows crap I was sure I would have to use... I have picked gum out of hair faster than the time I spent wrestling with MSword. Linux may not replace every Windows/Office installation, but it sure the hell just replaced mine. Right now I'm turning that old FAT partition into pr0n storage! Screw winders and all their talking teletubbies and all them other things they got.
The power of Linux, in my opinion is in the command line and taking advantage of old hardware. My 486 w/ 16 megs of ram sux running windows. I put Slackware 7 on it and it screams, that is if you don't use X. If you are looking for a smooth GUI stick to a Mac. But the power and control that the GNU set of programs and utilties offer is just intense. For programming, mail, webservers the command line is where its at, especially when it comes to resurrecting old hardware.
I watched triumph of the nerds again, and it smacked me right across the face- what does an OS or computer need in order for people to get/use it? A killer Application!
Let me elaborate- When the Apple II came out, nobody got the damn thing until it got a spreadsheet. Then came the IBM. Nobody bought that damn thing until Lotus 123 came out. Later nobody bought a Macintosh until it got some graphics software. Then came MSDOS sometime between IBM (yes, DOS ran on IBM), and it's killer app was IBM's, sorta... Then Came windows, and people only bought that crap after they released Office.
Now, Linux has it's killer apps, but they are in the server market, and therefore normal people don't want to use it. What it will take is software developers to make something new and pitched at the normal consumer for Linux to hit the mainstream
And you would trust something with a miniscule userbase like StarOffice?
Well, from what I can tell from the "natural foods" stores around here (minneapolis) The story is still wrong.. the local co-op on lyndale ave is just as expensive, if more, than the big chains (rainbow, cub) but not quite as expensive as the "Whole Foods" and other "high end" chains. and the food doesn't seem to have any signifigant difference.. except there are brands that cost twice as much, and the only thing they claim is "organic"... but do you really trust the organic brands to be any better? I really don't. just because every other word on the label is "organic" doesn't reall mean anything. it's all marketing.
the co-op is really amusing, I think they're making a killing.. they have all brand-new LCD screens on their cash registers, _besides_ the digital 15" CRT's.
as far as the "high end" yuppie stores, they have people bagging groceries.. now that's a waste of resources.. It's bad enough that my food has to go over another set of hands.. I can't belive people here are so lazy that they can't bag their own damn groceries.
I think everybody does the most efficient thing, as they see it.
:-)
The variance is in which variables are being optimized, and possibly in overlooked variables or missed optimization opportunities.
Manual transmissions and lightweight cars optimize fuel economy and purchase cost. Vans/trucks optimize carrying capacity. SUVs optimize...OK, I don't know what they optimize (I drive a Toyota Corolla...) - there's a perception they increase safety, they can increase convenience via 4WD/carrying capacity, they can optimize status accumulation...
Most users want to optimize (minimize) their time commitment to the computer (including both learning programs and using the computer).
Note that this means learning IS a problem, if your increased efficiency doesn't pay off quickly -- how many years of use does it take to make up for the time you spent learning the program?
Almost nobody (read: only we geeks) really cares about computational efficiency, until it starts impacting user time. Thus, everyone should write almost everything in Python.
Try reading "The Design of Everyday Things". With everything from doorknobs upwards, if a product is difficult for someone to use then 99% of the time it's a design fault.
No, Windows isn't better - just more familiar. But Linux doesn't look like showing Windows how it should be done any time soon either...
Just try getting laid if you drive an economy car. I dare you.
I do all the time. If a girl likes you only for your car...well..all I can say is that I feel sorry for you.
In the days of Windows 3.1, Microsoft released a series of packs of small games, called Windows Entertainment Packs. These typically had seven or eight games about the size of solitaire, and some screen saver modules. Four of these WEP packs were released.
By the time that OS/2 v 3.0 came out, some wag had dubbed it "WEP 5", basically on the assumption that you could spend hours configuring it.
The funny thing was, I never had any problems installing or configuring OS/2 v 3, but the wep packs and Windows itself at times caused endless grief.
On another note, the latest thing about Wireless Encryption Protocol brought back memories of the older WEP. Over use of TLAs.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
There's no real reason that every function that the OS performs should not be assignable to a hotkey OF THE USER'S CHOICE. That way, backward compatibility is yours if you want it - and backward compatibility with anything you want, not just Windows.
Though a bit more work, there's no real reason that GUIs shouldn't be similarly tweakable (eg. if I want to store my settings under "Tools-Options" rather than "Settings-Kmail Preferences" (or whatever) then I SHOULD BE ABLE TO.
A truly configurable interface could do everything Windows does and more. And Linux is a lot further down that road than Microsoft...
The non socialist reality is that:
1 Companies want guaranteed support, not email lists and usenet.
2 Only a company can provide the above.
3 For a company to do that, it must pay for it somehow, via revenue from sales of the software or service contracts for it.
Where do you want to be, What are you doing to get there.
While I have not had the pleasure of selling my Linux skills as such, I've worked in pleanty of Windows shops. I do networking, mostly wide area. Total reliability is what is asked of me, and it's what I expect out of a mission critical system.
.DOC and Outlook. Fine, they pay someone else for that.
When someone asks, I tell them to run anything that they want reliability from on Linux, because Linux systems are simply dead solid reliable.
For single user machines, I don't care what they want to run. I'll suggest Linux if they ask, but so far they want
My systems run ipchains, FreeSwan. Boa, not Apachie, for the same reason I don't use Sendmail: too much power. I want something direct and simple, easy to lock down and dead solid reliable.
The "Desktop Battle" is won or lost on choice and familiarity. My first Linux box in 1996 had XF86 and OpenLook window manager. From day 1 I had a "Desktop". It just wasn't pretty, or familiar to anyone else.
The greatest gift anyone could give Microsoft would be to "punish Bill" by putting yet more Microsoft systems into schools. Oh No! Don't Throw Me Into That There Briar Patch!
How many of you Linux fanatics have given away computers this year to friends with kids, with Linux+KDE already installed? How many of you have offered to donate time to your local highschools to teach CS classes, Linux based (of course)?
Just some thoughts of how to win a "familiarity" war...
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
jeffro writes "Dont know if this has been submitted yet, but the Independent news UK has a rather newbiesh article on the ups and down of Linux software as a free alternative to Windows."
I don't think I would describe article "Newbiesh" at all. I have been using computers since I was 12 years old (currently 22), and I've been online since 1994. Through eight installs of various Linux Distributions I've had three complete installs without networking, graphics or disk support. Two installs where Lilo crashed my MBR and three other installs which never completed.
The reality is that there are alot of computer literate people out there that don't have the time or money to spend on learning everything about thier OS or spending on upgrading to supported hardware. Windows 9x provides everything I need to get my job done, even through its ineptness.
Thanks for letting me voice my opinion.
scott_ryan_smith@yahoo.com
The "standards" are waiting for you. Didn't you notice them?
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Yes, Apple's OSX may very well be all you say it is. And, having worked at Apple and knowing something about Apple developers, I fully expect you're right.
I look forward to the free ports and clones of OSX apps on Linux.
Hey, anyone whos real focus is graphics has always used Mac's. MS has been playing catchup in that market since the first Mac shipped. No one can argue with that.
"Linux", Windows, MacOS: Three converging technologies. Very interesting watching, but one has to have ones eyes open to notice.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Give someone a box with Netscape on it and they won't care what OS it has if they want to browse the web. Give someone a box with StarOffice or Wordperfect on it and they can write their docs.
Sweed, If I may make a suggestion.
You have the clout of being a "professional" with a track record. Clients have learned to trust you, and support you. This is a fantastic position to be in!
When you find such a MSWin-Only application, have you considered contacting the authors about porting it to a more reliable system than MSWin?
Why would a software company saddle themselves into having to support the "undocumented MSWin API of the week" if they believe they have a profitable choice in the matter?
We're in a closed loop. Specialized software is only offered on MSWin because the developers believe their clients want MSWin. Specialist clients are stuck using MSWin because it's the platform that the software they want to use is written for.
Killer Ap's drive OS adoption. People chose Mac's because they did graphics better. People chose MSWin because.... because.... oh heck, I'm sure there was something more than just the obvious upgrade path from DOS (right?).
The people who are now choosing Linux are doing exactly the same thing. "We" happen to be technically astute, or rebellious, or whatever, and accept the limitations of our choice as we revel in its accomplishments.
In closing, familiarity is what drives the mass market. No one is familiar at first. The first time I used a Mac, I couldn't make it work well regardless if its massively advertized "ease of use". It was totally un-intuitive just because I'd never used one before. Same with Solaris, Dos, TRS-80, Win3-2000, IBM MVS VM, HP 15C, etc, etc, etc, etc.... No one finds their two-wheeled bicycle is "intuitive" the very first time, either.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
linex is hard to use dammit i cant figfure uot howto instal it even . pls help me i tried and it brokened my computar and theirs a mess al l over nwo it assks for me to inpert a boot disk wehn i staet the puter but it used to have windows on it weard windows goooo???? i brokened it all i think i lost all mu emales and my porno and mp4s
I NEEED MY AOL BACK HELP PLEASE WHARE S THE START MENU ALL I GET IS A BOOT DISK QUESTOIN!!!!!@@??!
joe453212@aol.com
If you had a clue, you'd know that Excel is what all investment banks use for trading in financial markets with their own add-ins. It's simply indispensible.
And, no, Gnumeric is nowhere near up to it. On my machine, Gnumeric takes longer to load a 3-sheet workbook than XL does to load a 50-sheet workbook where each sheet is at least twice as large. It also feels slow; XL tends to feel punchy and responsive.
Command-line autocompletion under 2k
If this requires a registry hack, then how is Joe CLI User supposed to know it's even possible? And where's the equivalent for Windows 9x, which many of us are forced to use because we run legacy DOS apps or we don't have fast hardware?
Will I retire or break 10K?
If you - gasp - buy the SuSE package you can just pop in the DVD
But then you must include the opportunity cost of buying the DVD drive. For a student, that's a lot.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Phish phans everywhere! Look out, we're in the server room in government and large corporations everywhere!!
It's all Hood
Add KDE and KDM (or even Gnome and GDM) to this mix and tell me again why Windows & Office are easier (Barring installation, of course, but the average office user can't install Windows either, anyway).
To anyone trying in the business of selling, the whole concept of trying to sell free software is as much an enigma as trying to conceptualize the "weight" of the color blue.
The color blue has a wavelength of approximately 460nm. This gives us a value of 2pi/460nm, or 1.366e7 inverse meters, in k-space. The momentum of the electromagnetic waves is Planck's constant
(6.626e-34Js) over 2pi multiplied by k, which turns out to be 1.422e-26mkg/s. The waves are travelling around the speed of light (3e8m/s), so the mass is the momentum divided by the velocity, or 4.739e-35kg.
Weight is actually mass times gravity. So, the weight would be 9.8m/seconds^2 times 4.739e-35kg, or 4.644e-34newtons.
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine
(Although it does explain why my wife always looks heavier in her blue bathing suit when we come down out of the mountains to go to the beach...I think.)
Damn! Now I've got to find a new example. Probably something from Finance. Yeah. Nobody understands that stuff.
The above post probably deserve moderation as either Funny, or Off Topic, but I can't figure out which.
Yo! Taco! How about a LaTeX posting mode for Slashdot?
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Opinions, opinions....what to say? I say one thing. GPL. What is that? WHO owns Linuxkernel ver x.y.z?? You say Thorvalds? --- WRONG!! He owns nothing! So does ANY GPL:d code. That is the harmony/beauty in making and improving code and knowledge. Something Microsoft like to hide from ppl, like a feudal lord. So, tell me. Is it Karl Marx or Saddam we are fighting?
Theoretically yes, but this article deals with the real world. Who exactly is going to set up the Linux box(es) to boot directly to X, with all the drivers installed and the software configured? Nobody free. And like it or not, most people who can use Windows (post 95/NT) can install it.
Bite the hand.
What Gnumeric? the whole idea of using a spreadsheet application for anything banking-related, other than for displaying tables prepared by other programs, is a problem. Spreadsheets are unreliable and not protected against inconsistency in their scripts, and a choice of the most common spreadsheet only confirms that people who use them have no clue.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Userbase has nothing to do with it -- StarOffice is not a financial application and must not be used for this purpose, along with MS Office and its likes. Custom-written banking software, with likely userbase of one, however, is.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
And, no, Gnumeric is nowhere near up to it. On my machine, Gnumeric takes longer to load a 3-sheet workbook than XL does to load a 50-sheet workbook where each sheet is at least twice as large. It also feels slow; XL tends to feel punchy and responsive.
Don't run it on 486, with pixmap theme, IDE hard drive with UDMA disabled, and Trident 8900 VGA. Because this is the only way to get the results you have described.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
> Manual transmissions and lightweight cars
> optimize fuel economy and purchase cost.
And fun of driving and speed (automatic transmission eats power, also I think that I am better than your average automatic).
> Vette weighs significantly more than the auto,
Wrong
> gets worse gas mileage
Wrong
> and offers little or no performance benefits.
Wrong
> Modern automatic transmissions are *very* good.
Wrong.
Ever taken a look at the spec sheets, comparing the same car with manual and automatic transmission?
"Found the 1241 drivers, grabbed, compiled, insmod'd and modified XF86Config to use the new driver"
Ok.
Now do the same with the widgets...8)
So, no fun 8)
I don't WANT to grab, compile, insmod or anything.
I want to Click. And wait some. Possibly answer a few question (How do you like my colors ? You think 65000 Colours will be enough ?...) and then go(Yes I think my computer is a she... She acts like one anyway 8)
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker