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Alan Cox Interview
cuvavu sent in a lengthy interview with Alan Cox. He talks about his responsibilities at Red Hat, Microsoft, the Linux Standard Base, etc.
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He was great to talk to. This interview is exactly how our conversation went. Alan is very forward thinking and understands the role that larger companies take when partnering with Linux. Interesting to note that he said in the article that Linux has had a tough time entering the desktop market. When I met him, he was claiming that the desktop market had already been penetrated. I wonder why the switch in ideology.. Go figure.
Not that similar things don't happen in the U.S., but i don't think Dubya has ever attended one of these.
In their Assembly they'll be told "Now then boys,
A little explanation for the benefit of our American friends. The Welsh call their parliament the Assembly. An assembly is also the morning meeting at schools where the head teacher makes announcements and often reads a moral or religious story.
itwales.com: Do you think Linux markets itself effectively to businesses?
Alan: That is really a job for the vendors, and I think they are doing a good job. There is a difference between effective marketing and claiming to be the one true solution to all problems. Linux is not the one true solution (if such a thing truthfully ever can exist), but we are working on it.
For as much grassroots effort there is in marketing, there's still a long way to go, and I don't really see linux vendors attacking this at all. I'm talking about general mass media. MS has ads in every magazine (even linux ones!) but I don't think I've ever seen a RedHat ad in anything but linux magazines (preaching to the choir).
Some distros are in BestBuy and CompUSA these days, which is a good first step. The next step, imo, is some general print ads to get the visibility up. Perhaps RH could trade some consulting/installations with some regional business magazines in exchange for adspace? I'm thinking about something like Crain's in our area (detroit, and I know it's in some other areas too).
People reading magazines are often decision makers, but they don't want to get too technically savvy. Move the mountain to Mohammed, take the message to the streets, etc.
Thoughts?
creation science book
Alan, write a book!
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
The costs of platform migration, service, and especially user training might eat up those savings,
.doc file. Could you reformat it to take out this feature which StarOffice can't handle?" "It's a freaking Word document! How hard does it have to be for you to read it
.doc with star office.
First off, there are costs involved with training for MS products.
Everbady says "Everybody knows how to use office" yet corporations spend million off dollars traing people on these tool every year.
So its not totla trainng costs, its the training cost difference.
The initail incorporation of a GUI running on Linux might have an incresed cost, but that would lessen to todays training costs in a year.
So it would be cheaper to go with an OS desktop.
Thats just training and liscencing. A much bigger piece of the IT budget goes to hardware upgrades and maintainance. properly intergrated, all those cost go down dramatically.
I'm sorry, I can't read your
this would be a need, which would get filled. probably by Microsoft.
Plus I have yet to have a problem opening a
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
According to this interview Redhat is having a Q&A-session with Alan. Send your questions to (scroll to bottom of interview for this) asktheexpert@redhat.com and they'll send the most interesting questions to Redhat.
Alan: "When the prime minister is appearing at product launches by a company twice found by courts to be abusing a monopoly, and facing billions of dollars in lawsuits you have to ask questions."
Oh really ? And what about Linux gurus being on the payroll of the hyperlink "inventors" ? Or is this ok because he exploits them ?
"Alan Cox will be conducting the BT sponsored Public Lecture at the Taliesen Theatre in Swansea, Wales, U.K. on the 5th March."
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
> Alan is a smart guy but his comments about how he thinks Linux isn't on the desktop because of Microsoft's monopolistic practices clearly demonstrate the myopia that a lot of Linux boosters have.
The same could be (and has been) said about BeOS and NeXT on the desktop. Without Microsoft's OEM contracts, who's to say what else might have been available at retail stores? Linux boosters aren't the only ones who can gripe about possible opportunities denied - sure, the opportunity might have flopped, but Microsoft decided that we'll never know, will we?
That was pretty much how the quake3 install went under linux.
Most software I want under linux doesn't come on cds anyway... it's freely available on the net, and generally I just run apt-get to grab the program I want... which is pretty easy. There are even some GUIs for it. The end user can kind of look at it like they look at Napster or Morpheus... a list of all the files and programs they can install if they click the button, except in this case it is all legitimate.
Ease of installation isn't really what's holding Linux back... Linux won't really do much on the desktop until it's preinstalled by OEMs and the user just buys their computer. The majority of desktop users out there aren't going to install any new kind of OS on their system, much less an upgrade to Windows. They get the latest version when they get a new computer. Until Linux is an option in that arena (and given MS's tactics with OEMs, it will be slow going), it won't make too many grand strides. But again, the reason isn't that it's too hard to install a program, it's just that people don't get it by default.
Most people keep the defaults.
1) Kill off KDE or Gnome. We only need one. Going with Gnome is my vote. Screw the technical debate, we just need one GUI that works.
/documents and /system and that's it. Regular users shouldn't be allowed to enter the system area.
2) Clean up the file system. There should be:
3) Make a list of all the applets included with Windows and Apple. Make perfect copies. Kill off all the rest of the crap - choice is complexity and complexity is bad.
4) Make it insanely easy to install. One click. Make applications standard to install (like install shield except without suckage).
5) Do the little things: Auto detect mountable drives like floppies and CDs. Printers. Digital Cameras. Make a list of things that DON'T have a driver and put in the back of the box.
6) Include OpenOffice, Mozilla and Evolution.
7) Put it all on one CD. Get Coca-cola to distribute the CDs free with every 2 liter.
8) See what Apple is doing with OSX? Do that. (And remember that Apple is a desktop enemy especially since they're using *nix. Every desktop that uses OSX isn't using Linux...
If I had a clue, I'd make a new distrib called "SuperSimpleLinux" and take over the desktop.
-Russ
Me