Bob Young says Linux won't rule the desktop

Wee writes "I just came across this interesting Yahoo interview with Bob Young in which he says that Linux won't rule the desktop but will instead focus on replacing legacy Unix systems and enhancing Linux's embedded presence. He makes some pretty good points. The oddest quote: "So our opportunity is not to replace Microsoft on the PC. If you've got a perfectly good working PC, why you would go through the angst of replacing it?". Not sure where to start answering that one. My wife (a dedicated Win32 user) liked his car analogy. I need to get her to read 'In the Beginning was the Command Line'..."

Comments

but

[Gehenna_Gehenna]

my car never, ever had a BSOD.

yet...

Alternative

[Evanrude]

I don't think one of the primary goals of Linux should be to replace Windows on the Desktop, but rather to offer an alternative Operating System to individuals and corporations who can't (or don't want to) afford the licensing fees and the cost of upgrades.

Re:Alternative

[SpookComix]

I agree. As long as Linux continues to be a viable alternative OS, I believe that it's popularity will continue to rise.

I use Windows when I have to, such as syncing my Sony Clie (pilot-xfer is working on supporting it), playing DirectX 8 games (Transgaming is working on supporting that), and running MS Office when absolutely necessary (otherwise, I'm loving StarOffice 6 and KOffice.)

Linux has become an alternative for me, so I use it. Many others are discovering the same thing. It did replace Windows as my primary desktop, but only because I was willing to take the time to learn it, and willing to tolerate some of the lingering annoyances. It's getting better all the time, too.

--SC

Re:Alternative

[humphrm]

I agree with you, but I have to point out that, at least in the enterprise, software licensing fees aren't usually the first thing companies think about. Sure, it's a great consumer benefit (for Linux) but in the enterprise, the more important expense is hardware investment and ongoing maintenance.

This is where Linux is a big win in the server market, and why companies like Dell and (apparently) RH are targetting those markets. It's hard for Sun or HP to compete, when their low-end servers (up to 4 procs) are sometimes 4 times as costly to buy as a commodity x86 server.

But on the other hand, the desktop market is already deeply steeped in cheap, commodity x86 boxes. What OS an enterprise chooses to put on it really boils down to support, since the few hundred bucks for a license doesn't really show up on the balance sheet after the first year. Maintenance, however, keeps going (and it's cost rising) as the box gets older.

It's going to take a strong, stable company that can attract enterprise buyers and managers to sell the Linux desktop into the environment. So from what I see of this, RH is saying "Don't look at us just yet."

Hmmm. Maybe IBM?

Re:Alternative

[Grape Shasta]

Want to shut down your entire company? You only have to break one machine! :)

Why replace it? simple...

[Marx_Mrvelous]

Complacency leads to regression. If we aren't always striving to make things better, everything will deteriorate. With a strong Linux desktop push, the price of competing software (Windows and MacOS) will drop, features will increase, and everyone will be better off.

not sure the movie...

[Pengo]

Maybe it's the Life of Brian... Yeah, where the mobs of people where following him around, claiming that silly and sensible things he would say where completely something else, in the end not listening to reason? Well.. sounds like the linux community. :) Not that Bob Young is the un-reachable god-like leader, but I see some simularaties.

hehe, RMS could play the guy who sits in the pit for silence. Well, at least with looks. :)

Re:not sure the movie...

[zangdesign]

RMS could play the guy who sits in the pit for silence

I, for one, wish he would.

Makes sense

[.sig]

Contrary to popular belief (at least here), Linux is just not ready for the everyday person's desktop. While it's true that it is getting there, why not focus on it's strengths, and let Linux grow as an OS where it fits in and is accepted?

Windows works. It may not be perfect, but it gets the job done, especially when the job is pure entertainment. That's why I have a computer at home, and I bet that's why a large majority of home computers are bought. I also have a linux partition on there, but I haven't booted into linux in over a year. I simply have no need for it, and everything I use my computer for can be done without problems under windows.

Re:Makes sense

[jamesoutlaw]

You are right.

Linux and Apple are in a similar situation. Both are "niche" players in the tech industry. Neither has to "conquor" MS in order to be successful. Many so-called "pundits" claim that Apple will never survive unless they start courting the enterprise market. Many among the legions of Apple fans believe the same thing, however, they overlook the fact that Apple is an extreamly successful company within their selected niche of the tech market.

Linux does not have to conquor the desktop in order to be successful, as has been demonstrated over the past few years by the number of companies that are using it as a Server operating system. It (an I am using the word it to describe the body of developers that contribute to and maintain all of the Linux code) simply has to focus on what it's doing right- providing a good alternative to Windows & Unix servers, and to continue to improve in that market.

Re:Makes sense

[Hostile17]

Contrary to popular belief (at least here), Linux is just not ready for the everyday person's desktop.

I disagree, Windows has only one advantage over Linux and that is games. This may be a problem on the home desktop, but on the business desktop, it is not relevant. In every other area Linux has an free or nearly free alternative. Email, web browsing and content creation all have usable and in some cases outstanding programs. Even Exchange Server can be replaced, to include shared calenders (easy to implement with Apache/PHP) and address books (LDAP). I have helped a few small businesses convert to a Linux Based desktop for all employees, some do complain for a little while, but then they get back to doing whatever it is they get paid to do, especially when the CEO pointed out, it was either convert to Linux or face other budget cuts and possibly layoffs. I have yet to see anyone not be able to figure out how to use StarOffice. Frankly, someone who can't figure out StarOffice is probably not someone you want working for you anyway. With the sole exception of games, Linux is ready for the desktop. As a side note, I am just the opposite of you, I have a Windows partition on my system, but I haven't booted into it since I did the install, about 8 month ago. I am thinking about killing it and using the space for something useful.

Re:Makes sense

[Captn Pepe]

Not to contribute to the me-too-ism on this thread, but I haven't felt the need to boot into the windows partition on my computer in a couple of years. Admittedly, I'm mostly using tools that have never been the traditional domain of MS -- data analysis, math stuff, writing papers in LaTeX. I've never had to embed a spreadsheet in a slideshow presentation in a word-processor document, and can't imagine why I would.

That said, I've built a few web/email/writing letters to grannie machines for various people, and not only was the result pretty much indistinguishable from what said people were expecting (NOT exactly like Win, mind you -- far more usable; have someone who's used to using Macs show you how to configure the Gnome UI sometime), but the whole experience was less of a headache for me than MS would have been. 15 minutes to install a base system, pop in a CD and let apt figure out how to install the 10 or so packages the user will really need, get a sandwhich and spend another 10 minutes tweaking configs and its done.

Re:Makes sense

[Jason Earl]

Tell that to Oracle. They are replacing their big Sparc boxes with commodity Intel-based servers running Linux.

If Oracle can do it, you can bet that you can too. In fact, you can bet that if you don't use a combination of commodity Intel-based servers and commodity Free Software to lower your costs your competitor will, and his overhead will be that much lower than yours.

The days where big-iron Unix users could afford to laugh at Linux are over.

Re:Makes sense

[Nailer]

I disagree, Windows has only one advantage over Linux and that is games. This may be a problem on the home desktop, but on the business desktop, it is not relevant.

Okay, here's a couple:
* I launch an app. For whatever reason, it fails to start. Smart apps like Galeon and Evolution provide this functionality (Xine, for example), but most other will simply not start with absolutely no explanation why. Lack of feedback is incredibly frustrating for users.

* I'd like to install a program. Witch a clever app like urpmi or APT, I can easily type the name of the app I want and downlaod / install it. its a great way to find Linux software. But to do that, I had to learn that `update' meant refesh the list of avaliable software, as opposed to `upgrade' which meant to upgrade my system. And that `rpm' handles queries of what's installed, but I should use a seperate program called `apt' to fetch and install stuff. New users shouldn't have to learn things like that. Where's our equivalent, of, say, the QNX installer? Something that has a bug button called `refresh list of available software', integrated help, that has clear labels and handles everything you need toi install apps, whether local or from repositories, in one app, as well as allowing end users to simply *browse* what's available. Synaptic can sort of do that, but it does a very poor job. I haven't looked at the other APT frontends but Synaptic supposed to be the best.

* And...
- My hard drive can be melting but Linux won't tell me.
- My system could be slowing to a crawl because of a scheduled task and Linux won't tell me. -
- My system administrator could be telling me to get the hell of the network as he's about to bring our server down for maintenance but Linux won't tell me

This is because KDE, Gnome, Blackbox, FVWM and every other user environment won't tell you the things you NEED to know unless you're running xconsole all the time. No messages, no `hdc is melting', no talk, nothing. The end result is that horrible things can happen behind users backs with generally no explanation from the interface. This is *really, *really* poor.

* Lack of understanding of basic user needs, especially for command line apps. `Hi, there's no man page for this, you need the info page'. Well then show me the fucking info page, you're a computer, its not that hard. People still write apps which say `you need to be root to run this'. How about talking to some generic library that can work out if I'm allowed to su to another account with the permissions (typically root, hopefully not), and *ask me* to enter in the damned password. You know I want to run the tool, you know I can run the tool, so let me run the fucking tool.

Anyway, that's my morning rant over and done with. Hopefully someone with the requisite skills is listening (I'm more of a sysadmin and I make a pretty poor programmer). If anybody ever changes anything based on this I'd be uber grateful, and if you're wondering, I'm slowly workign to changing it myself.

Re:Makes sense

[Nailer]

All the issues you mentioned are easily solved.

That's true. My complaint is that they shouldn't exist in the first place.

The reason the GUI doesn't report anything, is because its not its job.

So its the console's job to print these messages, but not Xs? Why is that so? What is it about desktop users (who almost invariably use X) that makes them not need to know that hdc hasn't been reponding for the last five minutes?

As for system updates, RedHats up2date and Ximian redcarpet are as easy to use as it gets, point, click and drool, while it downloads.

up2date doesn't handle installing packages off one's hard disk, cdrom or any local source. Its only repository is Red Hat updates. So I'll discount that as an option. Up2date is a maintenance tool, not a general multi-purpose software installer, which is sorely needed.

Red Carpet OTOH is great, but unforunately I can't find a way of creating my own Red Carpet repositories like I can with APT. If you can provide me with a link to such information, I'd be very grateful.

chmod +s /path/to/program will solve most of your "have to be root" problems, though for security reasons I don't recomend it.

Exactly. I don't want everyone to be able to run the program I just want people who can run the program be asked for the relevant passwords rather than having a nasty `Kpackage needs to run as ROOT!' message thrown at them. Its not necessary and confusing for end users. Again. smart tools like the aforementioned Red Carpet and all RHs setup tools do this, but many don't.

As for the man pages, I am sure a short shell script to check for a man page, info page or something in /usr/doc, would solve this problem straight away.

Exactly. Lets call it `help', and ship it with every Linux distro. Unfortunately that's not currently the case, which is my point.

Doing small things like this makes a big difference to end user experience. But thanks for your post - you've been a lot more polite than the other fellow who responded.

Mike

The problem is inertia

[The_Pey]

The problem that any number of underdog OS's have these days is overcoming consumer inertia. What I mean by that statement is this: once a set of products has hit a certain point and gains consumer acceptance, it is very hard to change the direction that that market is going. Microsoft has done this again and again with both its operating systems and its application suites, both of which are very closely tied together and tend to pull each other along.

What Young is doing is trying to get Red Hat into those markets where there either isn't consumer inertia toward a product or where the market is unsettled. If he can gain acceptance, then his end goal (making money through pushing Linux) is achieved. All in all it is a pretty smart move.

What Linux needs in general is a robust set of applications that consumers can use transparently with Microsoft products. If attractively priced, this could conceivably pull users to the OS, especially in light of Microsofts new licensing trends.

2 more cents down the drain...

where's the real vision?

[markj02]

Young will have to do better than "Linux will replace UNIX" as a long-term strategy for a $300M business. Linux is already replacing UNIX, widely. The question is: what is next?

Linux is a fine desktop replacement, no worse than Windows or MacOSX. If someone wanted to take on those systems, they needed figure out how to bundle Linux with hardware, attract more developers, and market it. But that isn't even the question.

The real question is: after companies like RedHat have extracted much of the value of Linux and other open source software, where are they going to go? What is their vision for the future? "Replacing X with open source software that magically appears" isn't the answer.

In fact, I doubt that in another 10-20 years, we will even have desktops in the traditional sense, and embedded devices will look very different as well. What kind of vision does Young have for that? Not much, it seems.

Desktop.

[saintlupus]

Linux won't rule the desktop

Gee, I don't know how anyone can say that. Between the consistent user interface, the ease of setting up printing, and the huge game library, Linux is a cinch to take over the desktop computers of the world.

*crickets*

--saint
(I'm just bitter -- still trying to set up CUPS.)

Why does it have to be 'answered'?

[SlashChick]

No, Bob is absolutely right. I will say this again and again and again, but no one seems to be listening:

The desktop wars are over. Move on to the next thing.

So Microsoft has won the "desktop" wars. So what? Do you really think that in 5-10 years, people are still going to be using bulky beige boxes to connect to the Internet? No, they are going to be using everything from home entertainment consoles to cell phones to PDAs.

Some of you may remember the days when a "personal" computer was a joke. "Computers" were those giant hulking things that took up an entire room and required their own cooling system. As Bob says, "Microsoft did not convince people to unplug VMS from their Digital VAX systems in 1979. They took advantage of a major shift in technology toward the PC, and they became the de facto standard on the new technology model, being the PC."

The shift in technology now is smaller, faster, wireless, and pervasive. The idea of 'turning on' a computer to 'use the Internet' will become old-fashioned more quickly than you can imagine. By the time a majority of people think that Linux will be ready to rule the PC world, PCs will be the passe way to connect to the Internet. Microsoft is already expanding in this field with the XBox and the tablet PC (which, IMHO, is a natural evolution of the computer.) Anything that is wireless is huge right now.

This whole desktop war is silly. Linux is its best when people don't even know or care what OS their products are running. Look at TiVo. Do I care that it runs Linux? Nope, because it works flawlessly and doesn't require me to know arcane command line tools. TiVo rocks not because it's Linux, but because it does its job and does it well. That's the problem I have with Linux zealots -- they want Linux regardless of whether Linux fits the job or not.

Why is it necessary to force people to relearn something? Instead of parroting Microsoft, let's be innovative. Let's put Linux into the greatest, coolest new devices (TiVo, PDAs, cellphones.) Let's look at where the market will be in 5 years instead of being hyper-focused on beating Microsoft today. Otherwise, Microsoft and the rest of the world will move on, and Linux will be left behind.

(More about this in my journal.)

Re:Why does it have to be 'answered'?

[ftobin]

I think you're forgetting one fundamental feature of the desktop that sets it apart from all other computer implementations out there. The fact is, the desktop computer is our best general purpose computer.

All of the next-generation devices you mention are all specific-purpose machines. The desktop, on the other hand, has proven to be extremely extensible and flexible, capable of doing so much more than any of the piddly devices you talk about. The general purpose computer is what lets things like Gnutella and other exotic technologies develop, flourish, and become of our accepted culture.

Without the general purpose computer we become locked into the device, along with its limitations and controls. We can hack the general purpose computer to get around artificial limitations. We can't do that with appliance-computers.

For this reason, we cannot forget the desktop. Until another solution comes along and gives us at least the same power the general purpose computer does, we will keep on using them, because they can do so much, uninhibited by the machinery underlying them.

It is because of the general-purpose desktop computer that we have the information freedom we do today. General purpose computing, I strongly believe, is the driving force that we need to concentrate on.

Re:Why does it have to be 'answered'?

[BlueGecko]

You know what's funny? I've been saying that the desktop was doomed, that it was going to be replaced by specialty devices, for a long time now--far longer than I'm willing to admit. I've now become convinced that we're just not going to see it--entirely. What I think you'll see instead is something not at all far from Apple's digital hub strategy. In 10-20 years, we'll probably use PDAs for many of our documents and our scheduling, we'll use digital cameras for photos, specialized players for audio and possibly movies, consoles for video games, and so on. But you have to make those all talk together some way. This is the whole point of Apple's newer computers, the reason why they're spending so much time on i* software. That's where Linux ought to be headed. And for that, the desktop is still very important.

As for embedded devices, I'd actually really rather not see Linux there. I'd rather see a kernel better geared to embedded devices. Something extremely small, modular and effect, similar to 3DO's now defunct M2: extremely compact, fully reentrant kernel, a unique memory design where applications could read memory everywhere but write only in their own space, a file system similar to the Newton's, etc. Then let Linux be the digital hub. Hell, Linux already makes a good server, and is that not what we're looking at it becoming in the future? Imagine a world where your house is wirelessly networked, and the job of the desktop is essentially to keep everything syncrhonized. That's a server job. It's also one where you still need good desktop software. Sounds like an ideal place for Linux to me.

So the desktop wars may be in some sense over, but we'll still be using desktops for a long time to come, and I think that if Linux wants to compete, it needs to ensure it can go there.

Should Linux even try to dominate the destkop?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Think about that for a minute before you answer. Think about where desktop computing is and where it's going before you answer.

Today's desktops are stressing ease of use and wide application arrays more than anything else. Stability is in there somewhere, but MS has gotten pretty darn good with Win2K and XP, especially if you stick to their office suites.

Linux is NOT easy to use. Sure, it may be easy for US to use, but imagine a secretary, an HR guy, or (God forbid) the boss trying to use it on a daily basis. Give them XWindows and they'll be somewhat happy, but even the best XWindows setup pales in comparison the features and eye candy you'll find on Win2k and XP. And before you belittle that, remember who the end user is. You and I may not care for it, but the vast unwashed masses out there DO. They will demand it, and they don't give two damns about how configurable your window manager is. They want a box that's pretty and functional. Linux does not currently fit that mold very well.

What does Linux do well? It's an awesome server. It stays up longer than Ron Jeremy and Peter North combined, and a competent admin can tweak and tune it all over the place for practically anything. Trying to force that into the desktop market is the classical definition of fitting a nice, sleek roung peg into a very square hole.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Linux may one day dominate the desktop, but it will not much resemble the Linux we know today. Do we really want that? I'd love to see Linux succeed and trounce MS, but I don't want it to compromise the core principals that make it so good today.

Re:Should Linux even try to dominate the destkop?

[weinerdog]

Linux is NOT easy to use. Sure, it may be easy for US to use, but imagine a secretary, an HR guy, or (God forbid) the boss trying to use it on a daily basis. Give them XWindows and they'll be somewhat happy, but even the best XWindows setup pales in comparison the features and eye candy you'll find on Win2k and XP.

This is a harmful myth that we tend to perpetuate. In the first place, remember that Linux is an operating system. Most users will not interact directly with the operating system; their use will be mediated, typically by a shell for expert users and a GUI for expert and novice alike. Moreover, the novice especially will tend to limit his or her shell/GUI interaction to launching applications. The application interface is the primary interface that most users interact with. Bash presents a very difficult interface to novices. X presents a difficult interface to novices. But so does Windows.

Basic Win32 functions like copying files, launching programs, and locating files are more difficult to many novices than it might at first seem -- just watch a novice or even a moderately experienced person use windows and see how they typically use rote memory to start up their applications, with which they are typically far more comfortable. Watch what features they never use, even when it would improve speed or help keep their computer running longer. How often do they run scandisk? Back up the registry? Customize the start menu to put commonly used programs on the main menu, rather than having to cascade down two or three levels? See what happens when you change the default load/save directory in Word -- many users are not able to find their files if you start them off in a different directory.

Given this, it is far more critical that the application present a good interface than the underling OS or shell/GUI. In point of fact, most applications written for Linux have interfaces that are not well-suited to novices. Applications like MS Office are better, but they still suffer from menuitis and featuritis. I believe that, if you could overcome the natural resistance most people have to trying something new once they have managed to learn how to coax some marginal productivity out of their current applications, there would be a tremendous market for a simpler, more straightforward version of Office that implemented all of the important features in a transparent and intuitive way, while eliminating or at least hiding many of the more marginal or downright dangerous features (like the ability to easily, often accidentally, add footers, borders, and other formatting that can't be equally easily removed, without knowing what they are and how they got added in the first place).

Whether this suite ran under X or XP would probably make little difference to the average user. As long as you set it up for them, show them how to turn it on, turn it off, and start the apps they need, the underlying OS or GUI really doesn't matter all that much.

Most people don't use Windows either; they use applications that happen to run on Windows. While Linux may be a hard sell on the desktop, it could succeed simply by being invisible and letting the user concentrate on the applicaiton. If Linux had a killer desktop app, it might stand a chance on the desktop.

Lies...

[bflong]

I hate it when journalists do this crap.

Bob Young says:
So our opportunity is not to replace Microsoft on the PC.

ZDNet reporter Matthew Broersma says:
Red Hat chairman Bob Young says Windows will continue to rule the desktop!

What a crock! That is NOT what Bob Young said. He said that they have an opportunity to expand their business in new directions. Directions that will be of more benifit to RedHat and their customers then "the desktop".

Re:frustrating

[Enahs]

I'd just like to point out that Windows isn't intuitive to a hardcore MacOS user. And vice-versa.

Of course, learning is hard, and choice is bad. My mistake. The current party line is "Free Software will never rule the desktop." I stand corrected, Ye Mighty Slashdot Gods.

And besides, Bob's affiliated with a company that decided to abandon the desktop as soon as the stock market went bust. Thanks for developing GNOME, guys; however, we just don't think you'll ever amount to anything. Thanks for playing anyway.

Bah. RH used to be good for the world of Linux. I'm not so sure anymore.

Bob Young continues to impress

[Ars-Fartsica]

Bob Young continues to demonstrate a good grasp of the market, and the position linux can best dominate in it. Red Hat has been distinguished by better management (from what we can see) than the other linux companies so far, and Young's ability to move to the market instead of the hype is setting Red Hat apart.

Linux != Red Hat Linux

[4im]

Yeah, sure, I don't see Red Hat Linux ruling the desktop. I installed one not so long ago as a development platform, simply because that's the standard in that company. But truth is, for the desktop, it's crap wehen you compare directly to SuSE. Mandrake is supposedly also excellent on the desktop, just as some of the other distros. My SuSE 7.3 rocks for the desktop, and it's way easier to install than, say, W2K.

Don't go saying Linux is not ready for the desktop when you just know Red Hat or Debian or LFS or so. There are distros out there that _are_ ready. Just go and test them.

N.b. I'm not debunking Debian etc - I love those, but not for the desktop. (Running SuSE, Debian, Red Hat, have tried Mandrake and others.)

Focus? You must be kidding.

[mindstrm]

Linux does not, and probably will never, focus on anything.. that's what makes it interesting.

Re:Makes sense in a lazy thinking way...

[jchristopher]

Actually it is ready now.

No.

Example: install Ximian Gnome, which supposedly represents the 'friendliest' Linux GUI.

Now try right-clicking on a compressed .tar or .tgz file. You'll notice there is no option to decompress such files.

These are very common in Linux land, you'll need to decompress them all the time.

If you use Ximian Gnome and need to decompress that file, you'll need to hop out to the command line and issue a command. If you're new, you'll also have to read the help to learn the appropriate arguments.

That is not user friendly.

Why is this so complicated?

[MythoBeast]

Time to throw a little karma to the wind.

I don't understand why everyone complicates this so much. If you want to capture the desktop market, then you have to cater to what the desktop market wants. That can be summed up in three words: Easy To Use. Here are a few examples of things that aren't easy to use:

- So many configuration options that you don't know where to start, and need a year's education to finish
- A selection of desktop environments, each with a corp of zealots telling you that theirs is better
- A broad base of information that you have to (a) go out and find on the internet, and (b)search through to find your answers.
- Installations with prerequisites that you have to figure out how to find and install yourself
- User account management
- Video, sound, and network card installations that require you to know the model of your card.

If you're attempting to create an operating system with a broad selection of options, you should remember to include the option to not have to mess with these little details.

Unfortunately, this requires the programmers to figure a few things out for the user, and most of us just don't want to do that. Somehow we're always surprised to find out that the user doesn't want to do our work for us.

Mythological Beast

Good value

[javilon]

Remember the old quotation from Ghandy...

First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.

On the server side of things they are on the "they fight at you" stage.

On the client, they are at the "They laugh at you", but that is _second_ stage. Considering that focus on the desktop came after focus on the server that is good enough for me. Actually, the relevance of this arguments about the linux desktop is that MS is starting to see scenarios where they stop laughing and start fighting coming closer. Otherwise it wouldn't be news.

I was running Windows as my primary desktop and Linux as my secondary until three months ago. Now it is the opposite. I have got vcl (www.videolan.org) for dvd viewing and xine (xine.sourceforge.net) for all the other video formats. Mozilla for the web. Kmail for mail. Open Office for those nasty MS office files you get sent. And I play wolfenstein (my preferred game) and all of Id games and a lot of free ones on Linux. I use kinkatta and jabber fot instant messaging.

The packaging systems are improving, so I only have to use urpmi against a ftp server everytime I need something.

And kde is getting better and better.

So basically, Linux can do almost all that Windows will do and I get control, and source code, and no crappy restrictions on things like givving applications to my friends, activation, content rights management, etc.

In fact, it is much better value. And I think a lot of people thinks the same way.

That from a home user point of view. If you look at goverment needs, where they can save so many $$$ by not having to pay and audit licences, and use open data formats, Linux has a lot of scope there as well (see korean, chinese, german, french and UK goverments at different stages of linux use on the desktop).

You are fooling yourself guy.

[hackus]

The battle is won, but not the war by any means.

You are obviously not aware of the poor bastards in our faultering economy that have to deal with the license or upgrade taxes from Microsoft.

IT managers had a taste this year of a slow economy, and when things are bad, the Microsoft tax treadmill on say, 200-300 desktops is a significant piece of money employers would like to use to pay raises, bonuses, health insurance and business opportunities to expand upon. Which, I would like to note, their competitors can't if they have to ship that money to Microsoft.

My entire company in fact, BETS that my competitors will buy into .Net and Microsoft. As long as I know my competitors are sending money to Redmond, I know when times get bad, thier customers...

WILL BE MY CUSTOMERS.

The desktop battle, was won by Microsoft, true, but anyone who says the war is over has never worked in a all IT Microsoft shop in a bad business climate.

The server room battle is now going on, and Linux is winning this battle. Once Linux is firmly entrenched in the enterprise server room...

THEN we will turn our expertise and knowledge and better value all around, towards the desktop.

Uncle Bill and Stevey boy are going to wake up one day and find themselves in a world dominated by Java virtual machines that run everywhere and typically more than not, servers, pda's, cell phones, etc are also running some form of Linux underneath them.

It is already happening.

Those companies that refuse to follow suit will not be able to stay in business against those companies who adopt open source technologies and processes.

Ultimately the new business model for IT is based around people and not hardware or software like it has been for the past 10 years. That is what open source is about.

People/technology not a gadget or a widget.

It is comming, be ready for it.

-hack

The real place for Unix on the desktop

[ACK!!]

The real place Linux needs to be on the desktop is in organizations that revolve around Unix.

I am not talking about the secretaries and the suits. Too many times I have seen programmers and even sysadmins fire up Windoze and then spend the rest of the day inside of a telnet window.

Linux distro folks are missing out on selling Linux to the world of Unix hacks whose organizations simply cannot afford a fleet of Unix workstations. Yes, I know the Sunblades are only $999 but Sun seems uninterested in advertising this fact and most IT orgs already have plenty of PCs so the cost of conversion is nothing.

The last place I worked the corporate IT side told engineering after much bitchin' and moaning that they could use Linux but they would get no support. All the folks programming for the web stuff and the complete systems engineering group went to RedHat.

Right now, I work for an organization about to move both software and systems engineering to SuSE linux the hold up being corporate buy-in.

You might not think this market is that large but think really hard about it. There are many IT groups that use Unix as their primary Server OS. Within those organizations they have many developers and admins who work primarily in those *Nix environments. If there was no market for these groups then companies like Exceed would have died years ago.

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Do what works

[ChaoticCoyote]

One aspect of freedom is choice -- in this case, a choice of applications, a choice of tools, a choice of where your money goes. And just because Linux works well for many applications -- even on the desktop -- does not mean that Windows is *never* a good choice.

I'll lay out some cases in point from my own collection of computers.

My home has more computers than people now -- and in terms of installations, Linux is running about even with Windows. Of my three machines, two are Linux boxes (including my dual-processor IBM workstation and the Toshiba laptop), while the third is a high-end Windows 2000 box. I use the Linux workstations for software development, research, newsgroups, and simulation work, with my e-mail, word processing, and gaming on the Win2K system. It works beautifully; I don't have any hassles when clients and family send me Word files or PowerPoint presentations; why go through the effort of making such things work under Linux when I can have a Windows box at hand? On the flipside, the Linux workstation has vastly improved my coding environment, giving me scientific and exploratory applications Windows can't match. As for the laptop -- well, it ended up running Linux for strange reasons, and I now find it useful to have a portable penguin system.

My wife runs Windows 2K on her rather basic system. She spends her life in e-mail with organizations and companies that are Windows-only; if the Red Cross sends her a disaster plan as a Powerpoint presentation, she can just run it using... uh, Powerpoint. She also games like the rest of the family. I never was fond of emulators (including Wine) -- if you need Windows, why not just use Windows? Good lord, that's like doing all your "Linux" development under Cygwin... (no insult to Cygwin, of course; great product, but not a "real" Unix).

As for my daughters -- the 6 and 11 year-olds share a Windows 98 Pentium 133 that does nothing but play their education titles. No point to Linux there.

The eldest daughter runs a dual-boot system, playing games and learning Photoshop and 3DStudio under Windows while experimenting with Python, Gimp, and 3D rendering with Linux.

Okay, I understand and sympathize with the desire to rid the world of Windows; some days, the Microsoft monopoly makes me want to wipe Windows from all of my systems. I've howled invectives in the direction of Redmond... but then again, I taught my kids some new language this week while trying to get a damned onboard SCSI card working with the latest Linux kernels. Damned aic7xxx driver...

Nothing is perfect; nothing is absolute. Religious zealotry -- of the RMS variety -- turns me off, because I know that brains turn off when beliefs take precedence over rationality. It's not that I disagree with RMS so much as I find his attitude grating and disturbing. Free and open software is taking over my home without excessive conflict; we're doing it when and where it works, and not to win some ideological war.

Freedom is about choice -- if the Linux advocates truly believe in choice, they'll stop attacking those who choose Windows. Make Linux the best it can be, and stop worrying about what Microsoft is doing.

A few reasons to switch from MS to Linux:

[Futurepower(tm)]

You would switch away from Windows for these reasons:

1) You don't want to be on the upgrade treadmill, in which you pay money to Microsoft every year, and continue to get software that needs more upgrades. One upgrade at $180 may be acceptable, but $180 per year amounts to $1,800 in ten years.

2) You don't want an operating system with a single point of failure: the registry. The registry is a primitive database that is, in practice, not maintainable. If something goes wrong, the suggested fix (from Microsoft) has been to re-load the operating system and all your programs and configurations and driver upgrades.

3) You are worried that some of the security risks of Windows were deliberately put there for surveillance, by order of the U.S. government. It puzzles you that the United States Department of Justice case is being settled with little or no penalty to Microsoft. Would the U.S. government do something this sneaky? Here are links to 600 pages of articles that say yes: What should be the Response to Violence?

4) You want the flexibility that comes from owning the source code. You may never use the source code, but if you have a big company, and you find some kind of problem, having the source code may be the answer. For example, if there is a bug in a driver for 1,000 pieces of equipment you own, and the manufacturer won't fix it soon enough for you, you can fix it yourself.

5) You want to avoid invasions of business privacy forced on you by Microsoft. Microsoft is requiring that the location and owner of each copy of its XP operating system be disclosed to Microsoft.