Alan Cox: The Battle for the Desktop

richjones writes: "There's a new interview with Alan Cox up. I think he's right on the money with how Linux is going to spread into businesses, but he seems to think Internet applications are going to be big with consumers... I can't really see it... but he's Alan Cox, so he must know :)"

Comments

bad editing of interview?

[Graspee_Leemoor]

Check out this weirdness in the interview:

"How militant are you about which licences people use for their software, and how they use them?
People who are not following the (free software) licence are pirates, it's as simple as that. It's no different if you take GPL (GNU Public Licence) code and don't give people the source code, or if you make copies of movies and sell them to people, it's the same thing. In terms of other software, it really depends on the people who write it. I don't think you have a right to dictate how somebody controls their own work, apart from the very, very basic standard you'd expect."

Was this a bad cut and paste job or other bad editing or what?

For the first part of the question it's almost like they asked him about that recent askslashdot
where the guy was asking about his company's dodgy "interpretation" of the gpl, abusing it
for pleasure and profit.

In the last half of his answer, he appears to be on topic, but just take the question and the first
sentence of the reply and it makes Alan Cox look like some kind of idiot...

graspee

Internet Applications

[Wells2k]

...he seems to think Internet applications are going to be big with consumers... I can't really see it...

I can see it, and here is why: As technology spreads throughout the world, the devices are going to become easier and easier to come by. Soon they will just be a part of life for everyone. Look at how televisions are in every household now, and a radio in every car. This is just standard progress, and the devices that are based on the technology will just get simpler and simpler to use.

I was particularly enamoured by Alan's example of the Black and Decker equipment, "So I could see in a few years' time owning a home PC becomes kind of like the Black & Decker DIY kit -- it's something people have because they enjoy that kind of thing, not something people have because they want to get on with certain specific tasks."

It's still about the apps...

[MissMyNewton]

Here's two: Office and the Bloomberg service...

Just a couple of the critical apps we need. If I can't even coax an OS X version of Bloomberg out of them, how can I persuade them to do a Linux port (even though it'd be easy, since they do/did a Solaris version).

And we still *need* Office. OpenOffice (which I burn CDs of for employees' home use, after they get sticker shock at the cost of Office) isn't a sufficient replacement. (hopefully this is just a -yet-)

We need apps. Big ones. How do we get there?

Re:It's still about the apps...

[Jeffrey Baker]

Bloomberg exists for Solaris, and it doesn't use most Microsoft interfaces. The user interface for Bloomberg is a weird text and graphics terminal that reminds one of a 1980s Textronics terminal. Free software cannot be foreign to Bloomberg, as the Bloomberg application embeds Gecko from the Mozilla project. Little effort would be needed to run Bloomberg on a Linux machines, and because Bloomberg distributes controlled hardware to some customers, they have a good channel to slip in Linux without anyone taking notice.

I observe growing Linux use in finance. My firm uses Linux for everything but accounting and desktops, and many large firms use Linux in their servers. A Bloomberg terminal running Linux should be well accepted.

Re:It's still about the apps...

[JabberWokky]

The spec is reverse engineered and not only quite incorrect in places, it's also utterly contradictory - different versions of MS Office programs cannot read files saved by other versions. In some cases there are off by one errors, and the bug eats away at buffered space - when the buffered space is gone, the file will crash the app, or, post bugfix, gets rewritten (fastsave gets disabled). Amazing, contradictory stuff. Try using MS Office for the Mac, which has serious problems - and they had the WinOffice team to ask questions directly.

--
Evan

Linux Infiltration

[D.A. Zollinger]

I think we are going to see a shift in thought about what computers are, and what they can do for us. As Alan stated, users want services, if their computer messes up, they want to hit the power button, and have it all come back like it was. Users don't want to have to deal with hardware issues, they want their computer to work like their phone. Plug it in, and it works - it just works.

Perhaps what Alan was unconsciously advocating was the promotion of terminal services like those being developed by LTSP and perhaps companies offering terminal/computer services to employees, and perhaps in a broader sense, 'computer utilities' who would offer computer service to residential and small business customers.

Compared to Microsoft, which requires 3 (count them, 3) licences for one user on one thin client to connect to one terminal server (one for the terminal server OS, one for the client OS, and one for the Client Access Licence), Linux can provide better functionality at a fraction of the cost. Linux opens this market, where Microsoft has sufficiently stifled its growth by making it more difficult than it should be to enter that market.

Computer for you mom

[ricardo2c]

I don't know about you guys, but I've seen users get completely lost when installing software, or looking for that .doc file he saved somewhere, or even trying to add a music to a winamp playlist.
Well, I'm an experienced user and would say "you dumb***, drag that outta the floppy's window to the playlist and it's done" but hey... they have no clue about how the GUI works!
Say what you want, but for users who only touch the comp. once a week or less, and can't even program that video they have for years already... ALL the options we have as OS (Yeah, I know MacOSX) suck. Bad.
When are we doing to put a level of abstraction between that lousy filesystem design (in the user's point of view) so we can really add INFORMATION where we want? Can I add a note to my DivX;-) file? Nope. File design doesn't allow it. What if I wanted an email attached to an MP3? Nope. Can't.
If we learned something with Apple's iTunes, iPhoto, iWhatever, we'd see they KEEP THE USER FAR AWAY FROM THE FS, while not completely locking the user away from it. Beautiful, huh? So why are we still insisting in making a WINDOWS CLONE out of our GUIs???
I know this reply floats around a bunch of topics, but they all end up in the same question: DOES THE SOFTWARE SERVES US WELL, EASILY? CAN IT DO WHAT I WANT/NEED???
"Hack that directory tree!!!"

Re:Internet apps are already massive

[Relic of the Future]

Something I'd like to see, and something that may actually be possible if broadband gets more mainstream, is to have these sorts of services running on your home computer. Just like what yahoo and msn do now, only w/o the ads. (I keep my schedule and to-do list in my space on the universities computers, and can get to it anywhere that has a telnet or ssh client, for example.)

My favorite big app...GNUe

[Spoing]

This is one consultants and CTOs worldwide should be watching;

GNU Enteprise

Here's an overview; "GNU Enterprise (GNUe) is a suite of tools and applications for solving the needs of the enterprise. From human resources, accounting, customer relationship management and project management to supply chain or e-commerce, GNUe can handle the needs of any business, large or small. If you are looking for a full-function ERP, GNUe is the package for you.

Details: Written in Python (for easy application creation) and C (for speed), GNUe is under constant and heavy development. If you want to write custom applications for it, it's ready. Pre-packaged applications are on the back burner as the development team works on making the core modules more complete and compliant with varying standards. My personal estimate from following the project is that the first complete applications will show up in about 6 months, and then rapidly accelerate as more app developers learn about GNUe and get interested.