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AOL To Finally Switch To Mozilla?
pitabutter writes "Sounds like AOL is joining the list of companies making the internal switch to Linux, taking their default browser choice along with them. Oddly, second article in a short time linking AOL and Red Hat. " As with all things with AOL/Mozilla, I'll actually believe it when the darn thing ships - but the internal switch to Linux is something that I've also heard from people.
that I'll be using the same browser that AOLers use. I'll be too ashamed and switch to Konqueror :)
True warriors use the Klingon Google
I don't suppose AOL will make a big deal of it when they do actually change over, eh?
I have to admit that i'm pretty keyed up on the IBM/Linux publicity. It would be pretty cool if AOL with throw a Linux shout-out in a couple of their infernal TV ads.
lysergically yours
As far as an AOL client for Linux, one Linux-using AOL employee says, "How many Linux people do you know personally who would sign up for AOL if we had a Linux client? I don't know a single one, myself. I have an account with another ISP I use at home with my Linux box, and probably wouldn't use AOL from home even if I could."
'Linux people'? It's no surprise that Linux won't make it onto the average desktop with that sort of attitude.
Their reckoning is that.. all Linux users are nerds so they don't need to use such a crappy ISP. That might be true now but if AOL doesn't offer a Linux client then they're implying that they think Linux will continue to remain a nerd interest.
With support like that from the biggest companies in the world, who needs enemies?
mogorific carpentry experiments
Well AOL could actually contribute to the Red Hat community that is still using 56k dial-up.
AOL could ship their CDs with the Red Hat distro on them so people will actually put them in their computers before toasting them.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
It's definately a step in the right direction. Remember all those suckers that use AOL may not mean anything to us, but that number of people not using MSIE is sure to change the way the web looks to those of us who also hate MSIE. Web pages that work in the browser that we use by default.. Won't be long before other ISP's that ship their 'own' browser switch over to a Gecko based browser - And without any real stats, i'd guess that 80% of internet users think that they have to use the browser that comes on their ISP's CD or else it won't work. So how long till MSIE uses Gecko, and claims it as their own? MSIE 8.0?
Don't Tread on Me
"Woohoo, one more big company using the penguin !!"
:). For the average home-user this might go by unnoticed ot they will fear the change.
I like Linux and I am not to keen on Micros~1 and I like to see more Linux-use like this, but as with most large companies which switch to Linux AOL already was using UNIX and is replacing that with Linux. It's another step in the right direction, to bad BillG isn't loosing any money/customers here.
The AOL-client is switch to Mozilla, with which they are replacing MSIE
In the article there's constant bleating about how a Linux client wouldn't be 'economical' blah blah etc.. well, aren't they going to save a stack of money by using Linux on the back-end?
It seems to me like they're taking all of the benefits of Linux and open-source and giving NOTHING back whatsoever.
What a wonderful community spirit.
(I know it's bad form to reply more than once to a topic, but hey..)
mogorific carpentry experiments
We have GNOME and KDE.
Now we will have AOL!
That right AOL.
At one point Netscape was quoted to say, "They were the next desktop". Other than office tools (StarOffice?), AOL has most of the needs in place. They have user base. Now with AOL Anywhere, a little java... They are a virual desktop on all platforms.
The OS today, is nothing more than the MACRO KERNEL of tomorrow.
I don't care if they're just doing this to save money, the end result could benefit all web users so its "a good thing" tm and the only people this will hurt are those companies making IE only sites
This could mean that web developers might finally be allowed to write html conforming sites, rather than the current notion of supporting the current two generations of IE and thats it.
Perhaps the bean counters will start to think of making websites more accessible when a large minority of users suddenly don't use IE.
Like it or not AOL users make up a significant number of internet users (30% in the US for ex), and if AOL uses Mozilla for the client it can only increase web standards compliance... hopefully we'll start to see more sites that don't purely rely on Microsoft's interpretation of the html standards and actually try to reach the widest possible audience by making standards compliant web sites.
From the article:-
The only thing that might delay -- not stop, just delay -- AOL's change from Explorer to a Mozilla-based browser is allowing time for some of AOL's largest and most important "partner sites" to do away with any Explorer-specific features they have been using in place of W3C standards.
A browser shift by AOL is going to leave an awful lot of companies that assume their Web sites only need to work with Explorer scrambling to rewrite their code so that they don't lose AOL's 30 million-plus subscribers, or about 30% of all U.S. Internet users.
The main reason to care is this - if AOL does go to Gecko instead of IE (which would be a very smart decision for a number of technical and business reasons you'd know about if you read the article) then 30% of web users will no longer be using MSIE - and those bastards that write their webpages in MSHTML are going to be scrambling to fix their pages.
Now that would be freakin cool!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Maybe not. By the sound of the article, the people at AOL don't want to have to do tech support for a Linux client. Without a Linux client, anyone using the Internet is someone who is using another ISP.
Also, the boxed Red Hat 7.2 distro contains no fewer than 7 CDs (2 install disks, 2 source disks, Star Office, some Loki demos, and a documentation CD). Even if they limited it to just the first two, it still means tripling the already vast amount of plastic being distributed, and I don't think they'll go for that.
Finally, given the expertise differential between "installing the AOL Client" and "reformatting or repartitioning the HDD and installing Red Hat Linux," it's a bad idea. I think there are too many people out there who would wreak havoc on their current system if some Red Hat CDs dropped into their laps. It wouldn't be good for thousands of people to think of Linux as "that software that ate my computer."
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
We all seem to know that AOL on Wintel utilizes the Microsoft rendering engine. What does AOL for MacOS use?
Has AOL ever used a rendering engine for either platform other than the one(s) used now?
If AOL has switched in the past, what was the motivation then?
(Finally, a reason to use my +1 bonus.)
It seems to me like they're taking all of the benefits of Linux and open-source and giving NOTHING back whatsoever.
The real reason why AOL(tw) won't release an America Online for PC Linux: there'd be no way to stop a kid with a debugger (easier to obtain on Linux than on Windows XP) from breaking into the Time Warner content because the machine owner is root and the publishers can't do jack about it. (SSSCA aims to change that.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
it truly would be nice to have an AOL client for Linux. But they really only have two options:
1. support ONLY UNMODIFIED RPM-ONLY REDHAT BOXES (or xxx other distribution)
2. build an all-in-wonder static library that has the dialer, gecko, vpn client, and everything all built-in.
no linux user really wants either option, but it does sound off a big reason why companies are reluctant to bring desktop-software to linux: there are too many variables.
There is a good reason that "Reinstall Windows" is in the 90th percentile of all support responses. It's a simple answer, and by having nobody who can actually repair a broken windows machine, it's the best answer.
But linux systems can be repaired so long as they still kick (and sometimes: even past that point). So there's two options for us:
1. we can adopt some kind of sane configuration system. [i think freshmeat had an article about the unix configuration nightmare, so don't expect the answer to this to begin with the word "just"]
2. we can all adopt a single limiting platform for desktop use, and do all our hacking in every other system.
If people really believed point #2 was a possibility, I think we would have a lot more desktop presense already. But #1 has the most promise. If people weren't so angry as to say "configuration like XXX is too YYY" instead of saying "configuration like YYY is unreliable because ZZZ" we might actually key someplace.
And everyone would have to adopt it. Gnome moves somewhat forward with gconf, but don't think it's the end-all. we'd have to have dialup and network configuration, and X configuration and everything in a similar engine. In this case, we can ditch gconf completely, or we can build wrappers to do just this.
it would have to be a really old, or special compressed distro as redhat takes 2 full cd's now.
unless thay start sending DVD's.. but then everyone would have to have DVD drives and they are less common in pc's than burners. (burners outsell dvd read only drives 10 to 1 while regular CD drives outsell DVD drives 20 to 1.. stats collected by a friend of mine at a computer superstore)
If someone could get me a RH7.2 cd that default installed KDE that was on one CD I would kiss them! as I desperately need a distor that is super easy and fit's on one CD to give away.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This is definitely good news, but not just because a decreased IE browser share will give incentive for both MS and the Mozilla development crews to improve their browsers. Perhaps, with more people using Mozilla, Netscape 4.x users will finally upgrade.
I develop three different websites and I can't tell you all the headaches NS 4.x has given me. If you think IE is bad, try coding for NS 4.x. And it's not as if I can say "Very few people use that browser so I can ignore it." I get about 5-6% NS 4.x traffic, that makes it small enough to be annoying but big enough to make me have to address it. (By comparison NS 6.x comprises less than 2% of my traffic.)
I have no problems with someone using a non-IE browser so long as it conforms to standards. And yes, as non-conforming as some think IE is, it is more compliant than NS 4.x.... Maybe not more than NS 6.x, but it seems like a lot of people aren't upgrading. Anything that gets people to ditch that awful browser (be it for IE, Mozilla, NS 6.x, or some other up-to-date browser), is a good thing for web developers everywhere.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Americans On Linux
substitute Assholes for americans where you see fit..
Something I've been pondering (a little) is that since Linux boxes are fixable (regardless of distro), why couldn't this fixing be automated? Have a program that diagnoses the problem by trying to dial out, run traceroute, start X, and / or whatever, then when an error is encountered "check" (for some definition of checking) relevant config files or whatnot for errors, maybe asking the user some questions in the process.
Granted, this would be a task in full parity with making something like Linuxconf or XST, but if somebody did, imagine what it would do to the support costs!
Installed the Bubblemon yet?
The best way to acommplish this would be to have their own branded verion of Linux.
AOLinux.
Then they won't have to worry about all of the other distros. And it can have a stripped down feature set so that they do not have to support every widget on planet earth.
Extra bonus brownie points for tweaking the Nose of Microsoft.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
That's a pretty interesting point. I'm not business expert, but this sounds plausible. It would be a shame if talks fell through because of fallout from the rumor-mill.
On the other hand, I'd say that this is no news to Redmond. The bad blood between them is probably deep enough that the AOL->Gecko outcome is inevitable. Not to mention the money sunk into Netscape over the last few years...
Everybody here is talking about the boon to web compatibility if this happens. I sure hope it does!
Christopher
Mozilla
Who wants AOL for Linux? What is going on? A proprietary dial-up, authentication and content delivery system? Pulllease.
If AOL offered a dial up account using PAP or CHAP and just TCP/IP access with a browser that went to their homepage and allowed you to see their premium content, this may be a good thing for any AOL content junkies
But I can already use AOL Instant Messenger, and MSN, and Yahoo! through Linux, why would I need anything else?
AOL are right not to create AOL for Linux. Linux users should be following Internet standards and not some proprietary bullshit.
Windows users can have AOL for all I care. Give me a proper ISP any day of the week.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Think about it. Microsoft is a mortal enemy of AOL. If AOL discovers a crash bug in IE, how much effort do you think MS would put into fixing it? At best I bet the bug would end up in a big pile of other bugs from other big customers and no particular effort would be made to fix. Hell, I bet MS could turn around and say they won't fix it.
Now think what the situation would be with Gecko. AOL can modify their own copy of the source if they need but they also have a direct line to the Netscape developers. It means the action time on bugs is going to be dramatically less than with IE and more bugs will be fixed.
The issue is not with the big guys. It's with the home user / enthusiast dorks who've decided for whatever reason to code their sites in VBScript, ActiveX and proprietary DHTML. These people will kick up a stink, but frankly they've made their bed and now they'll have to lie in it. Boo hoo for them.
As an AOL/Time-Warner employee (not directly AOL, however), I have available FREE AOL, if I want it, but choose to pay for a standard ISP.
Am I an elitist? I'm not alone. I'd guestimate 90% of the people here do NOT use AOL, and I'm not just talking about computer nerds, and I'm the only one here that I know of that even uses Linux at home.
I've also not heard any mention in these parts about switching to anything else - we run Windows almost exclusively, even though I've often thought (outloud) that being such MS haters, AOL could do a lot of financial damage to MS by internally switching to something else - without even asking our customers to switch, AOL/TW employs tens of thousands of people - switch them over to Linux, save the company millions of dollars, and take that profit away from MS.
But Nooooooo....... We're not even allowed to order a "bare-bones" machine, we have to order one that comes with Windows preinstalled.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
While lots of people talk about AOL shipping a Linux install on their ubiquitous CDs I don't really see that happening (because of the support nightmare of grandma calling up because she can't view the powerpoint presentations she had from her grandkids).
But what I do think that makes sense is AOL buying a hardware vendor and bundling Linux, Mozilla, an AOL client, and staroffice into a microsoft free solution.
Gateway would make a good choice becuase they're not doing so well (primarily because they're not Dell), but they've got good brand recognition. Then we'd start to see the "AOL Computer by Gateway" (with Linux probably not mentioned at all).
AOL would make it clear that this wasn't a Windows computer and that Windows software wouldn't run on it, but AOL has enough money to keep at it until they've sold enough units for software vendors to start supporting it. The target audience would be new computer users and heavy AOL users who are buying a new computer.
In my view the only way that Linux can succeed on the desktop is if the computer comes pre-installed with Linux. Installing a second OS is something that the average user is just never going to do. And AOL/TW has deep enough pockets to make a go of it.
"A browser shift by AOL is going to leave an awful lot of companies that assume their Web sites only need to work with Explorer scrambling to rewrite their code so that they don't lose AOL's 30 million-plus subscribers, or about 30% of all U.S. Internet users." I think this is the first real effect we'll notice from all this. Standards compliance means fewer times that I have to say, hmm, doesn't work in Konq...lets try Mozilla...no, hmm...let's try Opera...no, hmm... darn now I have to go get my Windows computer.
Following standards is not 'retarding your code'. When this switch occurs, a large portion of web pages will have to switch from sloppy MS-only HTML to W3C compliant HTML. Are you honestly saying that this is a bad thing? Is it just because you are lazy and don't want to have to fix your old code?
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
probably asking for it by saying this but, why doesn't AOL just release an AOL dist. of linux? If they had their out dist. they could support AOL on linux and would not have to worry about supporting umpteen thousand linux distros. They would support their own (it could just be a customized version of RH etc..) with the AOL access built in. No reason to sell stripped down "internet appliances" there are probably millions of old pc's that would work great with a stripped down version of linux installed. So when your parents/grandmother is looking to get on the net so they can use email just toss in an AOL-linux cd and install an old box that was replaced by a newer system and poof! grandma is on the net for short $$ and AOL gets another customer. Or they could partner with these companies you see selling $399 boxes at bestbuy etc. to preinstall their AOL client OS instead of Windows and cut back the cost of a new pc even further by not cutting MS a check for each box they sell. (they could almost give these boxes away if they got a 3 years of AOL usage contract signed) Sounds like a win-win to me.
AOL already mails out millions of cd's to everyone and their brother so getting the dist. out would not be a problem. And if a user calls in with a problem on their pc you could have a very simple fix/restore procedure that would fix corrupted files etc right off the cd (or off a main AOL server since they would have the source). I dare say it just might be a support person's dream. Possibility of getting files destroyed could be minimized because the user would never use the box as root.(root would only be used during upgrading or support fixes, not normal use)
This of course would not be a distro for most that read slashdot. but for someone that really does not care what is inside the "funny beige box" I think it would work out pretty good. And they could release the source to the client that gets embedded so if somebody really wanted to use AOL on their own Linux box they could hack away but get no support of course.
probably never happen...
Until Gekko can play as fast and loose with HTML as the IE rendering engine...
HTML is a standard, playing fast and loose with a standard is a bad thing, not a good thing, ask anyone who builds bridges for a living. So the fact that Gecko fails to render non-standards compliant HTML is a good thing. The only problem I have with Gecko is how slow it is compared to the old Navigator 4.x engine...
Al.The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
Personally, I think it'll be some time before AOL delivers a client program for their service that uses a web browser derived from Mozilla 1.0 code--at least for Windows users. The reason is that given that Internet Explorer has been tightly integrated into Windows since Windows 98, putting on another browser may end up causing customer confusion, to say the least.
However, that could be different if the final settlement in the US v. Microsoft case requires a Plain Jane version of Windows XP. In that case an AOL client that uses Mozilla 1.0 code makes way more sense.
In my personal opinion, the most likely place that AOL may try to use Mozilla 1.0 code as part of the AOL client program is on the Macintosh, where Apple at least since the late 1990's has offered the choice of Netscape and Internet Explorer as your default web browser. I wouldn't be surprised that AOL cuts a deal with Apple that on new Macs if you install the AOL client the web browser based on Mozilla 1.0.x code becomes the default web browser for the whole system.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Not necessarily...
They could simply pare down the standard RH distro to one CD, with just enough to get the base system installed, get X up and running, and get the user on the network (dialup or ethernet) - then download the rest. Kindof like a Debian net-install.
For all I know, RH may have this ability already, and all AOL would have to do would be the paring down to one CD.
If they make sure there's an installer on the CD for people who already have a RH/rpm-based install, that would cover most of the bases. Of course, this would leave deb and tgz-based distros out of the mix - but those could be optional downloads if they decided to provide them.
What I'd like to see is more information on converting from Windows to Unix-style systems. Except for Apple joining the Unix camp, the percentage of Windows and Unix systems seems to be fairly static.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
now i may actually want to do something with those cd's that keep coming in my mailbox instead of using them as coasters.
AOL has had the opportunity to watch Microsoft screw anybody and everybody who got in their way.
.NET.
Microsoft is pushing MSN.
Microsoft is pushing
Microsoft is pushing Passport.
Microsoft is pushing Windows Media Player.
etc.
If you are AOL, and Microsoft makes your browser engine, you have got to be concernede that you will be on the wrong side of some little "oops" like the one that recently made Quicktime plugins go poof, or made DR DOS go poof, or what have you.
AOL needs to break free of IE as a matter of self preservation.
The world will then be a better place for all of us.
See, I have this network at home which I administer like a tyrant: only programs that I approve will be installed. Nothing else is allowed unless I think it's usefull and I checked it's integrity (spyware and the like).
Now, why do I tell you this. Simple: my sister is a real music fan and wants to access file sharing software like Morpheus, Kaazaa and the like. So I did my homework and downloaded Gnucleus (which works insanely well). I told her: look, here is a client without ads that does everything you need. Spread the word to your friends about it. Her reply was simple: my friends do not care about the ads, they are not interested in alternatives. Same thing when she subscribed for an hotmail account: I told her, you'll be spammed to hell and I subscribed her to a better account. She did drop her hotmail account but under protest, because that was what she knew. Another instance is ICQ, 2000 and 2001 clients come with ads. I kept the 99b version until it stopped working correctly. I didn't want the 2000 and 2001 versions because of the ads...she again did not care.
Most people don't care about ads, not about spyware....even if they underestimate spyware.
So *if* AOL would bring out AOLinux with a default windowmanager that looks like Windows 98/W2K/XP and that has an ad in the corner: I'm all for it because the normal user will take it, use it and accept the damned litte ad.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Basically, many webmasters are ignorant, or even arrogant enough to ignore standards compliance. Those who fail to see that standards compliance is the way forward, will have painted themselves into a corner. The cost of completely re-doing a site which has been carefully written specifically for IE and all its non-standard extensions and quirks, could potentially lead to more dot.com deaths. This is a good thing! People who don't care enough to inform themselves don't deserve to do business. Am I being harsh? Perhaps, but being an avid user of alternative browsers, I am tired of fighting with arrogant web designers who don't understand what they are doing.
Finally, we will see who has the foresight or the insight to survive this.
Grim predictions aside (I may have been a bit negative above), this naturally benefits users of alternative browsers. Mozilla and Opera will both be able to display more pages than before, and their user base will probably grow rapidly because of this. After all, the feature sets of these browsers are far superior to IE from a user's point of view (disclaimer: This is a personal opinion based on my personal preference. Ok? Please, no browser wars).
Note that I am not even bashing IE here. The good news is that this can be cheaper for online companies in the long run, since it will pay off to write standards compliant code, rather than writing specifically for only certain browsers. MSIE 6 has decent standards compliance. The problem is the proprietary extensions used so extensively instead of the W3C counterparts.
This becomes even more important now that handheld devices are becoming more and more popular. We will see a significant increase in the number of devices used by consumers, and these devices will be using alternative browsers as well.
It basically boils down to this: The browser market is diversifying, and if AOL decides to go with Gecko, this will speed up this process. It will not be a nice transition. Many may find that they have major problems due to "IE-centric" code on their sites.
AOL may not be doing this because they desperately want to get rid of IE or because they want to support alternative browsers (who knows, there may be many reasons, perhaps these play in as well). Nevertheless, for once, it would seem that the consumer - the user - benefits from such a drastic move.
If AOL are indeed planning to move from MSIE to Gecko, that is...
Clever signature text goes here.
Say I have a table that's 100% high, and inside of that, an image that's 80 pixels high and another table that's 100% high.
Now, in theory- and under IE and other browsers, in PRACTICE, this second table would consume the remainder of the height inside of the first table, less the 80 pixels of the image. This is really simple math. This doesn't break ANY standards. This is, in fact, something that's reasonably important to certain design implementations,
And mozilla pukes on it.
How's that being standards compliant, if you implement "the standard" for the first table and ignore it for the second? You're using your happy little argument as an excuse to code poorly.
Even after reading the article, I'm not sure whether or not this is real.
Remember: AOL has done well with Windos, which is the OS of choice for most morons out there (and a couple non-morons) mostly because "it came with the 'puter".
There are a variety of reasons why they should/could switch, but also many why they should not. Maybe, just maybe, this was an intentional leak to put some pressure on M$ and get another "put us on the desktop" deal?
I would absolutely love to see the web move back to a "best viewed with any browser" attitude, and AOL switching to Mozilla/Gecko would ensure at least a parity.
Just lets not break open the champagne just yet, hm?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I would imagine that this is a lot closer than anyone would care to think:
I imagine a 15" flat panel display with a keyboard and a mouse. The display base houses 56K and G.lite modems, 10/100 ethernet and mainboard. The whole thing runs on a low-end x86 platform off of a ATA flash disk. It runs a customized Linux kernel with the AOL software as the only environment. As a bonus a printer can be connected and they include some truly basic AOL apps, a word processor and a checkbook program.
The likely hurdle is the cost of 15" LCDs and the tanked out economy, although the latter should be helping the former. I imagine an Asian manufacturer could build them for about $350 each and AOL could probably sell them at cost w/3 mos. free AOL.
It's basically WebTV with a good display, and I know tons of people that would buy it because all they want is web+email, they don't care about all the other crap. It fits on that little "desk" by the phone in the kitchen, requires no configuration and cuts AOLs tech support costs significantly.
It hasn't worked before because the people doing it were trying to provide a generic solution. Coupled with AOL it *has* to work, and AOL will need to do it anyway since MS will be bundling XBoxen in the future as web terminals connecting to MSN.
Why Red Hat? Corel would probably be a lot cheaper, and would get them an office suite for the new platform besides. It may need a bit of patching right now, and updating for new libraries, but it's pretty close.
OTOH, they might, e.g., buy Lindows, and help everyone feel at home.
Or buy Stormix (if they can find who owns the rights). That one would be real cheap, and is known to work well.
I don't see them forking out the cash to purchase Red Hat. All they'd be buying is the name, and in the market that they would be targeting, Red Hat is a completely unknown name.
Or they could just do what Mandrake did. Fork off of a Red Hat distribution, and start developing it.
Or they could stay out of the systems market entirely, and just decide that it would be nice to work closely with some particular systems distributor.
But even with AOL/TW support MS won't loose it's monopoly until there is decent competition in the office suite business. That's why Sun has been pushing Open Office. Build 641 seems to work pretty well on Win95, but on Linux it crashes without useful diagnostics on even a one page document (with, be it admitted, a bit of fancy formatting).
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
AOL is *not* going to release a nicely packaged Linux client.
No. Period. It doesn't make business sense for them to encourage people to switch operating systems and deal with the flak that'll result.
So, what I'm predicting is AOL looking into building its own custom distro - definitely the AOL client, which, I am told, already exists on a Gateway 'internet appliance' machine, probably a stripped-down-to-the-bones base system and KDE, and a hacked-up version of StarOffice or KOffice with perfect MSOffice compatibility.
They'll offer this as a standalone OS solution to OEMs. *Not* retail; the people who go out and buy their own OSes aren't AOL's market. AOL's market are the people who buy a computer for light web surfing, IMing, and word processing - sure, they wouldn't mind if every geek in the world used their product on Linux, but we're not their primary market.
They can tout their OS as being 'Linux-powered' in the same sense that Mac OS X is touted as 'UNIX-powered', hype the stability, etc, etc. They have the advantage that this is an almost entirely closed software platform, so they'll be able to achieve stability greater than that of AOL on Windows. They'll advertise innate security, and so on.
And it will work, unless MS strongarms the hell out of all the OEMs; in light of the continuing antitrust trial, that would not be in their own interest.
It's not a victory for Linux - though that's a practically meaningless phrase - it's not a victory for 'Open Source' or 'Free Software' - ditto. It *is* a *small* victory for open standards, which Gecko complies to quite well.
Don't get any hopes up about AOL replacing its proprietary protocol suite, though, or about them releasing source. They know exactly what they want - a closed software platform that they're not dependent on archenemy MS for, and if they do what it seems they will, they'll get it.
It occurred to me that such a closed platform would be an excellent way for AOL/TW to enforce DRM on their platforms. Without a way to install new apps besides 'AOL-certified' ones (you bet there won't be any other way - why the hell would they include a terminal app? Their market doesn't care about a CLI), it'll be easy for them to enforce copyright. Not spinning conspiracy theories, just found that interesting...
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
On my system (Win 98 SE), IE 5 crashes several times a week. The Mozilla nightly I use crashes maybe once a week, and Moz 0.9.8 is almost perfectly stable.
Maybe I have a corrupt file somewhere, I dunno. Also, there might be a bug fixed in IE6, which I don't want to download because I don't want it taking over my computer like every previous version of IE has done.
A machine that was Linux-based, AOL-optimized, and could run a subset of Windows apps would about do it. Considering the cost-of-acquisition of a new customer for AOL, it could sell these machines at a loss and still come out ahead as compared with spamming the world with coasters. If it can also run AOLindows-compliant games and apps (particularly some of the Adobe and Macromedia stuff, as well as Quicken and tax software) - without requiring those companies to do much more than be sure their stuff installs cleanly under Wine - then it's like: Do you want to pay $1000 for a new Windows machine; or would you rather pay $600 for the same hardware (that's -$200 AOL loss leader, -$200 Microsoft licenses) and still be able to run everything you, average home user, could need?
And the next time Microsoft is selling a Windows upgrade, offer an AOLindows conversion kit for free, and offer some cool new AOL features that don't work under Win. ("We're sorry, but feature X can't be separated from the OS.")
With the AOL user base, companies would pay to have their stuff certified AOLindows compliant. It's a sure win if it gets out of the starting gate.
____
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
This isn't just a good from the "let's get away from everything microsoft" viewpoint.
Think of what this means for cross-platform AOL clients:
Mac support: OS9, OSX.x
Linux support (no client yet, but the switch to gecko should reduce the amount of work to be done in porting)
Think about what it means for advancing the real W3C standards:
A standards compliant rendering engine used by the largest single percentage of Internet users out there...?
This is all good stuff.
Well aside from AOL taking over my RoadRunner connection in the near future, and controlling everything on cable.
Now, if we can all just agree to stop using any version of Netscape 4.x, I'll be a happy programmer.
It will render what you want just fine as long as you put in the right DTD. (I just tried it). If you don't know what you are doing, then just don't use the strict DTD. Anyway, the standard isn't really that hard to understand, and documentation is freely available -- you should try reading it sometime.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
And AOL also funded Mozilla development coordination. Many of the top Mozilla developers and coordinators were paid to do this by Mozilla. When everyone was jumping up and down on Mozilla for taking too long for the re-write, AOL continued to support them.
AOL isn't a dedicated member of the community, but they sure are a supporting member! They may be (are!) doing this for their own reasons, which we should attempt to understand, but for the last several years some reasonable fraction of their purposes have been in synchrony with our needs.
It is, of course, also true that AOL is not a separate company. That's why some people write it AOL/TW, and the TW half is dominant at unpredictable times (of its choice). Even were AOL to be composed of comitted GPL supporters, the TW management could issue a directive, and that would determine the direction. So don't hang you hat or heart on them. But they supported Mozilla as open source before Konqueror was working at all, and before Gnome was usably stable. So don't sell them short, either.
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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This line in the article is probably going to benefit the 'ordinary' Linux user most:
We hear that every hardware vendor who approaches AOL is now being asked, "How is your support for Linux?" before they are even allowed to make a sales presentation
This could force hardware vendors to provide good Linux support. If so, then we should thank AOL for this, regardless of what we otherwise think of them.
HH
You're on the right track, but I think it's even simpler than that.
'Roblimo' hung this weekend with some friends who are engineers at AOL. Some beer got drunk (this beer was not free as in beer). They got to talking about how much that haaaaate that bad ole Micros~1. The evening got later, some more beer got drunk, and someone mentioned having seen a Mozilla poster in the office of that VP he'd never talked to.
"Yeah!" said Roblimo, "AOL's going Mozilla! I'll take your dazed and drunken smiles as a yes." he continued. So the well-intentioned Roblimo wrote diligently through the night to brings this news to the world:
"I'm just positive AOL's switching to Gecko, and right away"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So much to discuss!
Everyone seems to be looking at this as if it is a major corporate war. I'd like to point out that AOL has had Netscape for a while now, has owned ICQ for a while now, and is owned by Time Warner, who supplies cable modems to their customers. They were talking about buying Red Hat a while ago.
Well...it sounds to me like there must be some locked doors that say "Confidential" on them somewhere in the AOL/Time Warner hierarchy.
Answer a few questions here, and intentions become clear.
1)Is AOL switching over their desktops to Linux? Or is it only their servers? Or...was there any mention of switching to linux at all? I propose that if they switch to Linux internally, and in specific ways it is to develop a "pilot project" for AOL on Linux.
2)Combine these three elements in a mixing bowl and hand it to a bunch of developers. a)high bandwidth b)AOL-idiot friendly philosophy c)The ability to distro Linux on a single cd. This, folks, would imply the ability to create a pseudo-network computer out of almost any old 80x86 machine out there. (NEW AOLinux! Install it on your old PC! Just install, run and be online!) If the developers at AOL can automate the Linux install they might try to make it transparent. ie: Install Linux and AOL in one fell swoop. Automate the patching process utilizing high bandwidth. They would not even need to specifically ally with hardware vendors, just say that new components should be Linux compatible.
3) As for the switch to Mozilla...IF IF IF it does happen then yes, it is a shot fired at MS. AOL knows that they need to slowly make MS look more and more buggy and inconvenient, and this is one way to do it. Already it will be hard for people to obtain cheap/free copies of MS with XP's new licensing. Many people brought MS home from the office (making it FREE, not pirated *wink wink*). By taking AOL's enormous user base away from IE compliant browsers they will force a shift in browsing habits and web design methods.
Will AOL/Time Warner start a full fledged war against MS? No. The consumers wont stand for it. It'll be too confusing for them. There's not enough alignment among the Linux players and not enough consumer products (read: Games, home office, video editing) for a full scale war for consumer hearts. Time-Warner is doing something else though, the are setting up MS for a fall. They are moving quietly, slowly. Like ninja. They are obtaining the properties, developing the technology, and shifting the terrain while microsoft is fighting anti-trust. If TW/AOL is interested they will need to release and idiot-proof, AOL ready Linux that is Linux-in-the-wild compliant.
That product, distro'd cheaply, and as a replacement for XP could mean something.
Heh, of course, then imagine AOL hackers at work. hey folks? If AOL does support linux in the above mentioned manner, please, dont hack 'em. Linux on the desktop could use the support they could give.
Licorys linux is super easy, has KDE 2.something, and fits on one CD. you should try it.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Decent competition in the office suite community? Name ONE reason anyone would switch from MS Office. ONE. And don't say cost, because as we all know Office comes free on PCs. :-P
My journal has hot
AOL/TW will buy Red Hat. They're looking to break free of Microsoft...
Why Red Hat? Corel would probably be a lot cheaper...
make me wonder if AOL perhaps missed an opportunity by not buying Be. Seems to me BeOS would have fit the bill for all this talk of an AOL web/email only consumer box, and could have been purchased for a song. Am I overlooking something here?
Cheers.
Bush is a cylon.
I'm sure they eventually will. It would make sense to use technology for which they have the source code. My guess is that the single biggest thing stopping them (besides the work required to switch over) is the fear that the Mozilla flavor of their product will have trouble with web sites that contain either broken or IE-only coding and don't work properly in Mozilla. To much trouble in this area could send some of their customers to MSN. I think switching will be a tad risky.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
I hope the reputation of the phrases like "This site is AOL-friendly" and "AOL users click here" doesn't slow web developers from making their sites compatible with Mozilla. I still see sites complain about the "AOL browser's" weak support for png, so I hope AOL can find a way to prevent web developers from confusing the ancient AOL browser with a Gecko-based AOL browser (embedded Mozilla).
The shareholder is always right.
The general rule of thumb was that you tried to fix it for about 20-30 minutes.. If it was going to take longer, you'd be better off reinstalling.
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
By maintaining an ivory tower postion, where only so-called standards-compliant HTML gets rendered, and ignoring the web-wide reality of broken HTML generators, common HTML errors, and commonly used HTML extensions, we embark on a losing strategy.
Perhaps its because I am looking out from the ivory tower, see my web page if the email address doesn't make it immediately obvious, but there isn't anything on the web that I actually want to use that doesn't render perfectly happily in Navigator 4.x. So why am I loosing anyuthing at that point?
But at the end of the day, the browser which just "works" for Joe Business is the one which wins. Simple as that. No arguments about standards. No lectures about speach and beer. It either works, or it doesn't.
Why has the web got anything to do with what business wants? The commerical end of the web may be driving cutting edge development, for somewhat dubious values of cutting edge and development, but its certainly not the interesting bit. Amazon is nice, I like ordering by books online, but I don't particularly want to order my groceries online, or clothes or much else. In most cases I want to be able to pick the thing up and look at it before I buy it so I'd never buy it online. The bulk of the rest of the commerically orientated web is advertising. I don't volunteer to read advertising, so I don't look at it.
Time to get away from theory and have a look at real-world practice.
Your priorities aren't my priorities, your real world doesn't necessarily correspond to mine. I'll use the web for what I want, you use it for what you want, but don't expect me to care if browser specific junk makes vast sections that I don't care about un-navigatable.
A case in point is the receent Slasdot story concerning the development of sites only in Flash (no HTML content at all). This breaks lots of things you probably take for granted, like search engines. You're saying this is a good thing because its obviously what bussiness wants? I'm not convinced.
Al.The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
Performance is based almost completely on hardware and only in minor ways on the operating system.
Absolutely! After all, operating systems like MS-DOS certainly do everything that one needs on modern PCs.
Dumbass.
Actually, you make my point. Netscape 4.x does render pages that are not in strict conformance with . This is a good thing for users.
Considering how long Netscape 4.x has been around I guess I could argue along the lines of decfacto standards, but I conceed the point, but only partially. There aren't very many other browsers around that won't render something that 4.x will render, but there are a whole bunch around that won't render stuff that is IE specific (by definition).
Personally, I think Flash is trash, but that is beyond the scope of the argument.
Actually I think Flash is the arguement, or at least its a prime example of what the arguement is all about. I can't think of anyone that has come up with a good use for Flash yet, but its everywhere because business seems to value appearance over content.
The bulk of the extensions to HTML which aren't rendered well, or at all, by the Gecko engine (lets get back to the point here) are just that, they deal with the appearance rather than the actual content. The web, or at least HTML as designed, is nothing to do with the appearance. Its the entire point its supposed to be information which can be rendered in different ways. I agree the vast bulk of the web is broken, but I think its broken in a different way than you seem to think.
If people really want to render something that looks like a printed page into a browser (of some kind) they should go off and invent something to do it and stop trying to bend and pevert HTML to do it.
Al.The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
Ummm no. That would be nice, but it's just not true. At the moment the Windows and Mac clients both use MSIE.
This is definately an issue with the big guys, it's precisely big corporations which think they can get away with telling their customers what browser to use. Just go down the list of AOL partner sites with Netscape and try to use their login functions and the like if you don't believe me.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I think the big difference between Linux and Windows in this respect is that with Linux nothing is hidden from the knowledgeable user. By looking at the available documentation and code on my Linux box I can figure out how to fix absolutely any problem.
With Windows, sources of information on the details are rarer (yeah, there's a lot of stuff on the MS web site, but there's a lot of stuff not covered, as well) and you have no recourse to the source code. From what I've seen the way you learn how to fix a Windows box is to either (1) take a bunch of classes from MS or (2) hang out with a bunch of guys who took bunch of classes and/or know people at MS.
Is there another way? I ask primarily out of curiosity, since I don't foresee myself going back to a Windows platform anytime soon, and I'm quite enjoying the reprieve from tech support for my neighbors, relatives, etc., since I started saying "Oh, your Windows mahchine doesn't work? Sorry, I use Linux, don't know anything about Windows." ;-)
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
There are a lot of comments here to the effect of: "Yeah, cool, if AOL switches to Mozilla, 30% of the population of the web will suddenly require Mozilla compatibility and all those stinking IE-only pages will get fixed!"
There's something to that, but don't forget AOL's point of view: "If we switch all of our users over to Mozilla, we're going to have millions of customers who are annoyed that since they installed AOL 8.0 their favorite web sites don't work." This will create a huge number of support calls and may incent some people to switch service providers. AOL support has the option of telling customers to minimize "AOL" and click on "that funny-looking blue 'e'" so they can use their web sites, but AOL prefers that most of their users not know they have the option of surfing without all the AOL goodies and ads.
Not that AOL doesn't have the power to get all of the sites fixed (they clearly do), but they've had their share of black eyes in the past and aren't eager to get another one.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Sure: MS Office doesn't have a Linux version :)
Zodiac Survey
Besides, AOL also produce various set top boxes, PC appliances including one based around Linux & Gecko which no doubt their partners are also required to support.
Both the Mac and Windows version are "reasonably standards compliant" in the sense that they will render standard compliant HTML reasonably well. That's not the problem at all. The problem is that they also support lots of non-standard code, which MS encourages people to use instead.
Umm produced, past tense, and there was only one the best I remember. It was never made in large quantities, and never sold very well, and was discontinued long ago.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Cost.
Office comes free on OEM PCs, the kind marketted to people who don't know hardware from software and to whom an OS is a "start button".
Office PCs come bare and the IT department installs everything the employee is going to need.
Usually when installing a PC the software costs are more than the hardware.
Most companies do IT in an ad-hoc way, buying a new computer (whatever is cheapest) to replace a dead one, or for a new employee. These companies are hopeless, but they'll likely die because they do this half-assed stuff in other areas too.
Companies that are on the ball upgrade all PCs every few years, buy some spares, and do it from a dealer who will guarantee being able to sell them identical hardware until their next upgrade point. They decide on a software package, do one perfect install, and ghost all the rest in machine that support hot-swap IDE drive bays. I've been there, working on that kind of thing.
The company was willing to spend a few dollars for quality parts, and was willing to trim in other areas because every dollar saved on a PC was $100k+ when spread across every PC worldwide.
If they could save $200 on Office XP ($600 new, assume 1/3 of list, for a large site-license) times 100k PCs it's going to be worth some training and getting used to a slightly different interface.
Actually, the funny thing is that MS's anti-piracy measures have caused more demand for non-MS products than anything else recently. I've had clients ask for non-MS (free specifically) internet terminals, for free office suites, etc. All because they either fear the BSA, or actually purchased a computer themselves and noticed the huge cost of the software.
Had MS kept their mouth shut they wouldn't have lost these people. It might not be much, but when people realise you can live without MS software it'll just get easier.
Counter-point: if AOL announces the change-over, no web site out there can afford to not work with Mozilla when the change occurs. You simply can't afford to tell 30% of your user-base "Sorry, we don't want your business.". If they're under the gun, I suspect the web designers will scramble to accomodate this large chunk of their user-base. It's not like they don't have the tools available, after all.
"that web site isn't Internet compliant"
is pretty much all they'll have to say. Most people can find another site that gives them what they want, and bigger site will comply, and fast.
Imagine you own a large Web Business.
Suddenly 30 million people can't buy your stuff because your not compliant, what do you do?
hmmmm.
That proplbably here more about this in more public areas of the media as time goes buy. sort of a heads up.
I hope every "web-master" whose site is non compliant gets fired when people can't utilize the site they where hired to create.
and by fired I mean 'hit by a truck'.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
AOL is justified in being wary of offering a Linux client that sucks them into providing support for a myriad variety of Linux distributions. But... you can fit a lot of stuff on a CD. How about giving folks an option by rolling out an AOL version of Linux with the AOL client? If you want a Linux AOL client plus AOL support, you get to run AOL Linux. Sounds reasonable to me.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Also, I don't know where these IE specific webpages exist...don't think I've ever seen one.
Thats a joke right? Just about anything produced by MS Frontpage with the default output preferences will be IE specific HTML, which while it might get rendered by Netscape, it won't be rendered "correctly".
Al.The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Bah, just be lucky you can actually GET broadband in your area. Where I am, deepest parts of Lincolnshire, no ADSL till at least 2008 (according to BT), and it's too remote for cable to make it within the next few years.
;-)
Good thing that I'm planning to move within the next couple of years to someone with broadband
mogorific carpentry experiments
A case in point is the recent Slasdot story [slashdot.org] concerning the development of sites only in Flash (no HTML content at all). This breaks lots of things you probably take for granted, like search engines. You're saying this is a good thing because its obviously what bussiness wants? I'm not convinced.
Right, and it breaks cut n paste, and I can't turn off the animations. For starters, there's a lot more wrong than that.
I appeciate the graphics and the efficiency, but I resent the loss of control and flexibility. I guess the problem mainly lies in the the players. I don't see why search engines can't dive inside the flash files and index the text, as with pdf's.
Oh, and having Shockwave continue to control the format is a bad idea for the public. I suppose if that doesn't get resolved we'll see a truly open knockoff pretty soon. SVG is a step in the right direction, if the patent issues get worked out.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
I really would like to have mod points, so I can mod up the parent (the comment #3145234, by hkmwbz)