Sneaking Open Source Software Through the Front Door

the_1000th_Monkey writes "LWN daily pointed out this new project today. It aims to be 'a compilation of high quality open source software (OSS) [that] will be made available as a CD distribution in order to help promote OSS to users of Windows and MacOS.' There are hopes that this would make it easier to encourage universities, OEMS, and your parents/friends to take advantage of this software and eventually bring them over to a completely free system on their own time. Help for suggestions/discussion is being sought." Newsforge is carrying a slightly more in-depth look at this project. Anyone care to design some attractive, downloadable CD-graphic images?

Comments

Didn't this fail before?

[Quasar1999]

Wasn't there something called cdrom.com that tried this idea sometime last decade? Did it succeed then?

Re:Didn't this fail before?

[Anonymous Coward]

A decade ago Open Source Software wasn't as slick as it is now. Not that I'm saying OSS applications are slick now. I mean, compared to MS or Apple apps, they're still way behind. The point is, a lot of OSS apps are complete (meaning reached at least version 1.0). So they are all viable alternatives to MS apps. Imagine, a typical person getting a CD that has OpenOffice.org or The Gimp on it? Then they'd probably decide they don't need to bother buying MS Office XP or Photoshop. Re-read please, i said "typical person" not the professionals that need Photoshop or MS Office. I read the Newsforge site, and throwing Abiword and Mozilla in as an example is a little lousy. Typical users won't really bother with any other browser. And I find Abiword a little lacking.

Comparing software now to what it was a decade ago is a little unfair (yes, by saying that this idea has already been tried is pretty much saying "the software sucked then and nobody used it so why use it now"). It's like comparing a 1960's car to a 2002 car, the old is a classic, but you really wouldn't wanna use it everyday.

Re:Didn't this fail before?

[Steven Q. Woston]

cdrom.com failed to succeed because they FAILED to sell my best-selling games

Re:Didn't this fail before?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you are a FAILURE for FAILING to realize that they were FAILURES.

Re:Didn't this fail before?

[Yohahn]

Actually Mozilla is fair. I would want it on.

There are plenty of things that Mozilla does that IE dosen't now.

One example I ran into recently is PNG alpha transparency.

IE dosen't do it, Mozilla does.

The other feature that has made all of my friends that run windows look into looking at/running mozilla is the lovely "Scripts and Windows" preferences, that can stop pop-unders and pop-up ads.

I can't speak as well for abiword. Tables are quite a necessary thing.

Re:Didn't this fail before?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like comparing a 1960's car to a 2002 car, the old is a classic, but you really wouldn't wanna use it everyday.

I use my '67 Chevelle every day. It is a helluva lot more fun to drive than any 2002 car (except a Viper).

Re:Didn't this fail before?

[levik]

I think that they have a chance here to be different than cdrom.com... As long as they avoid becoming the dumping ground for all sorts of projects, pick the cream of the crop, and, most importantly, work on packaging.

An initiative that focuses on slicker installation procedures for OSS (which they would have to do if they want to be taken seriously by less than geeky types) will benefit the entire field of OSS development.

For a big number of OSS projects, various GUI config and setup tools are already available, but have never been packaged together with the software itself. Bringing all these components on a coherent easy to use CD, would further the movement greatly.

(I may be wrong of course :)

Re:Didn't this fail before?

[0x0d0a]

I believe cdrom.com wasn't all open-source...didn't they do freeware/shareware as well?

Re:Didn't this fail before?

[istartedi]

Orville: Didn't some guy in Switzerland crash into a lake a few months ago trying this?

Wilbur: You're right. What were we thinking? Let's just go back to the bicycle shop and forget about all this nonsense.

Re:Didn't this fail before?

[Arandir]

An initiative that focuses on slicker installation procedures for OSS (which they would have to do if they want to be taken seriously by less than geeky types) will benefit the entire field of OSS development.

Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has them and they all stink. So here's mine.

I think the package management tools for several Linux distros (and other free unices) are far superior to the InstallShit crap that Windows users are used to. t's far easier to click "install" than to click "install" and have to answer a thousand questions afterwards, reboot twice, and deal with corrupted registries.

Package managers will need good front ends, good package descriptions, and possibly a way to force commercial EULA's on the hapless. But other than that I don't see what else is needed. The only reason Windows has these silly installers in the first place is to deal with the registry and locked files.

Go look at how the typical Mac user installs software. InstallShield programs are far from ubiquitious in Mac land, yet the Mac is still considered easier than Windows. Go figure.

Re:Didn't this fail before?

[Anonymous Coward]

interestingly enough, just a few months before their first flight, the US Army (no air force at the time :) had done a test flight, with reporters in attendance. Or rather, didn't do a test flight. When Orville & Wilbur announced they had flown, no one believed them. It was a year or so before anyone bothered checking them out.

Umm, anyhow, I think we can all agree that selling 200 pound bags of dog food over the internet to consumers doesn't work, no matter how cute your sock puppet is.

Re:Didn't this fail before?

[istartedi]

True. If the business model is inherently bad, it can't succeed. OTOH, I don't believe that packaging OSS for Windows is inherently a bad idea--it just needs to be executed properly. Bear in mind that you aren't necessarily paying for software here. You're paying for all the hours that were spent reviewing and testing the software to decide whether or not it was worth including on the CD. If such a company could build a good reputation, people would eagerly snap up the latest "Foo Company Collection" at the local CompUSA, or *maybe* even subscribe for monthly deliveries of updated Foo Company CDs. However, the window of opportunity for marketing a CD is closing. When we have sufficient broadband penetration, it will be much harder to sell OSS CDs without some value added such as printed manuals, or as stuff included with new hardware. Contracts with hardware OEMs to provide the latest Foo Company Collection along with "includes the latest Foo Company Collection" on the box could still be profitable. Of course, they need quite a marketing push to make that happen, and they don't look like they are that professional. I think I saw a request for volunteer help... always a bad sign. Maybe free Windows software will just have to remain "our little secret" among the "power users" who know how to find the deals.

I think something like this would probably be best executed by somebody like C|net--somebody who already has a reputation.

Well, I've gotten way off on a tangent here. My point was that the guy who crashed into the lake didn't crash because flying was an inherently bad idea. He crashed because the engine manufacturer sent him the wrong model--one with a power to weight ratio that made it unsuitable for flying. Many experts have concluded that with the right engine (no pun intended) he would have flown, and the Swiss would have gotten credit for pioneering controlled, powered, heavier-than-air flight.

success?

[tps12]

My first reaction to this was, "great!" But then I started thinking, maybe this won't work so well. After all, open source software has been available for years on Linux ISOs...a lot of distros will install on a normal FAT32 filesystem.

So why aren't people taking the plunge?

Whatever the reason, it isn't the lack of an easy to install CD. If you think about it objectively, well, what are the differences between most, say, Windows software (commercial or shareware), and most open source software? Well, cost is right at the top, no question. And flexibility, for the small number of people who care. And next? Well, hate to say it, but polish, ease of use, help systems: anything that could make OSS usable by any but the most freakish, repressed, zealous, skinny Linux geek. And sticking it on a CD will never change that, ever, despite what the "community" would have you believe.

Re:success?

[Anonymous Coward]

> the most freakish, repressed, zealous, skinny Linux geek

Hey, we're not ALL freakish, repressed, zealous, skinny Linux geeks.

Some of us are fat.

Re:success?

[vena]

above all, i believe it is the familiarity of software that keeps people from switching, not ease of use. let's face facts - windows continues to be a usability nightmare. there is a gradation in UI's: MacOS is built for your grandmother, Windows is built for patient teenagers, and Linux is built for people with *godly* patience. :)

Re:success?

[billstr78]

After all, open source software has been available for years on Linux ISOs...a lot of distros will install on a normal FAT32 filesystem.


The idea proposed is far different from a Free OS that will install on a FAT32 filesystem. It is modestly an introduction to the great big world of free software. Bringing a collection of Free Software that runs on thier existing windows system will allow for a smooth transition and eventual disconnect from the Borg that so many people could benifit from.

It is true that M$ has made a near science of useability and has made software that a well trained monkey could use. However, the Free Software distrubuted on this CD also has many of the "help systems" and useability features that the M$ bloatware has levreged to gain so much of the market share. There is no reason why any open-minded person would not swithch, or at least try out the software on this CD. They may even find that they can get just as much done for about $600 less than they could with thier M$ alternatives.

Re:success?

[lamz]

Well, hate to say it, but polish, ease of use, help systems: anything that could make OSS usable by any but the most freakish, repressed, zealous, skinny Linux geek.

I think you have just revealed the beauty of Mac OS X. Apple deserves tons of credit for selling consumer products that boot into Unix on default.

Re:success?

[Anonymous Coward]

well it would...if macs could be considered real computers..

Re:success?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! Go Apple! I get a wonderful BSD base with a wonderful GUI with top class apps (Photoshop!). Problem is, they're still viewed by a lot of people to be expensive machines. Which is sad really because these people don't actually try to compare spec-by-spec a Mac with a comparable PC. Mac's are, most of the time, cheaper!

Maybe the reason that the PC is number 1 is because it's easier to pirate apps? They probably hate the fact that they don't know where to get pirated Mac apps or that they can't pirate any OSS apps. Oh well.

Rambling yes. Late night here. bye.

Re:success?

[phlako66]

Most of the apps they talk about including on the CD have the "polish, ease of use" that their windows counterparts have ... i don't think that this is the major problem. What most of them fail miserably at is having any good documentation. How often do you look at the docs for Open Source softwares and find that sections are just left unfinished, or not even started. Most proprietary products don't ship without some kind of help system in place either shipped with the product or online. I think that this project could do well, especially if as a side effect it tried to encourage more "repressed, zealous, skinny Linux geeks" to try to write good docs.

Re:success?

[SlamMan]

I've got to agree. Its about the polish. Even being the computer nut I am, I've still had urges to not use a program simply because its interface looked poor. Even though we all seem to think its fluff, look is really important.

Re:success?

[Da Schmiz]

Okay, I'll bite.

I would say the killer app for getting OSS into Windows boxen would have to be either rpm or apt-get.

If we could make installing software easy, painless, and reliable, we would have an open-source competitor to the Windows Installer. Just think: how many small apps use a full-blown InstallShield or Wise wizard when all they really need is to copy a couple of .EXEs and set up some shortcuts? But how many technophobic users would never install software by reading the README, unzipping the files, and putting them in the proper places?

Once you have a back-end like rpm or apt, all you need is a one-click graphical front-end that launches it. If installing the program all happens automagically, the users will think it is a Good Thing(TM). They will notice how they don't have to click through a gazilion stupid steps like ""C:\Program Files\Company-Name\Product-Name" does not exist. Do you want to create it?"

And then they ate Sir Billy's minstrels. And there was much rejoicing.

Re:success?

[Andrewkov]

It's been done .. Cygwin is a port of all the GNU tools, including bash, the c compiler, even XFree86. The setup program is easier to use than dselect, it handles dependencies and everything. It's truly an amazing piece of software that I can't live without on Windows, it's the first thing I install on my Windows machines.

However, I think the article is about native Windows software which happens to be free rather than porting free unix software to windows.

Re:success?

[First_In_Hell]

My point all along, people hide behind the nobility of the Open Source cause, when in reality they are only interested in getting free shit.

Re:success?

[Otter]

Bringing a collection of Free Software that runs on thier existing windows system will allow for a smooth transition and eventual disconnect from the Borg that so many people could benifit from.

Warfare against the Borg aside, it's also simply a way to put better, freer software into the hands of users who will benefit from it.

For myself and for most of the free software developers I've worked with, the goal is to make something people will use and value, not to win a crusade against Microsoft.

Re:success?

[WetCat]

Ha! Do you think MSoft's docs any better?
Good luck to try to figure out _why_ Network Neighbourhood say "Unable to browse the network"
from MS Help or documentation...

Re:success?

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally a troll with class.

We need more of these.

Re:success?

[Arandir]

But how many technophobic users would never install software by reading the README, unzipping the files, and putting them in the proper places?

Interesting. That's what I thought two weeks ago. Then I entered the real world.

I ported a homebrewing program from Unix to Windows. It's in a zip file, and the README says to unzip to the desired location, and link the .exe to the desktop for an icon. I was worried for a while that even that would be too complicated for a Windows user. But then I realized that if someone couldn't do even that, then they have no business being around boiling wort in the first place :-)

Re:success?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure there is, byteface we've tried the Linux_system in multiple incarnations ... and it S-U-X ... next ?

Re:success?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people actually read the help files on their home pcs?

Not quite clear on this.....

[Kenja]

So, are they asking people to contribute to the project or to help spread it around. From what I can tell there's nothing there yet.

To answer the headline question. Sneaking a non-existant CD "Through the Front Door" is rather easy. I do it all the time.

Re:Not quite clear on this.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, the Linux zealots should become like Jehovah Witnesses and peddle door to door to the unenlightened masses.

Of course the dialog would be a little different:
LZ: H1, 1'M 4N 3l33t H4x0r 4ND 1'D L1K3 70 73LL U B0U7 S0M3... ** SLAM **

Re:Not quite clear on this.....

[0x0d0a]

BetterTelnet for the Mac. PuTTY for Windows. CygWin. All the MUD ports. Abuse for Windows.

There's already good open source software out there for non-UNIX systems.

Anyone have any other favorites? Finding out about new goodies from fellow slashdotters is always good...

Re:Not quite clear on this.....

[peddrenth]

Why should there be "anything there"? It's surely not beyond your abilities to burn OpenOffice onto a CD and give it to someone?

Cost to you: £1. Saving to them: £300, or whatever MsOffice is nowadays.

Put PGP on it too, so that finally people will stop emailing me plaintext.

Re:Not quite clear on this.....

[styrotech]

All good software, but this CD isn't aimed at folks that want telnet, ssh, MUDs etc. People that want that sort of 'geeky' software already know how to find it and install it.

This CD seems aimed at the people that aren't even aware there are free (beer and speech) alternatives available for the everyday programs they use.

It is a way for law abiding users to save money, and for users that don't want to be 'pirates' to not worry about being busted anymore. It could even be marketed as being 'spyware free!' etc.

This is the correct way to fight the MS monopoly

[jocknerd]

To get people to move to Linux, we must first get them to use alternatives to MS Office and other packaged software. Get them using the cross-platform software and then switching the underlying OS won't be as tough down the road.

The only thing that can stop Linux from eventually succeeding Windows on the desktop is either laws to prevent it from happening or not enforcing laws that will allow it to happen.

Free Beer too?

[Xopl]

OSS and free like beer too?

Mascot?

[Archangel Michael]

What we need is a mascot. Something furry and cute. Penguins are cute, Gnu's are not.

How about .... A OSS Otter? Cute furry, adorable frolicking otter. Okay artists, get to work.

Re:Mascot?

[abe ferlman]

Anything, just not a giant purple gorilla!

Readers of userfriendly will most likely wince...

Re:Mascot?

[Arsewiper]

ITV digital in the UK has a great monkey going cheap.

Re:Mascot?

[Anonymous Coward]

While you artists are at at, could someone redraw Tux to not look retardo?

Tee Hee now everyone wants to kill me!

Re:Mascot?

[Matarick]

He was talking about Bonzi Buddy, that spyware program that says what you type. Now that was funny, please mod him up.

Re:Mascot?

[Archangel Michael]

Mascot? (Score:1, Offtopic)

Offtopic? You have got to be kidding. I better things to do with my time than post offtopic.

"Anyone care to design some attractive, downloadable CD-graphic images? "

Sounds like they wanted suggestions to me. I was making a suggestion for the mascot. Now if you don't like otters, then maybe you have a point.

Re:Mascot?

[__past__]

As long as it brings those barrels of beer, I'd love it..

That's an evil plot by M$!

[ilyag]

They're going to send out the CD's to all homes in America, with bold caption Open Source 6.0. Then, everybody will think Open Source == AOL and will start to hate everything connected to open source!

Imagine, Open Source CD in a microwave...

;)

Latex

[doublem]

If this CD has an easy to install copy of LyX for Win32 I'll be more than happy to buy a copy!

Mmmmm. What you See is What you Mean editing. Mmmmmm. Yummy. Easy export of PDF, HTML or any other format from one document...

More on LyX, the BEST text processor in the world or just download it.

Linux users probably have it already.

matthewmiller.net

Re:Latex

[Anonymous Coward]

LyX is *the* application to show Win32 users an example of the power and quality of OSS.

For writing technical documents, it eats MS-Word for breakfast. And best of all, it is easier to use than Word! I wrote a thesis using Word, struggling to get the document look right, inserting figure-lists etc. Short time after, I tried LyX. The intuitiveness and simplicity of LyX compared to MS Word was astounding. In a matter of minutes I had created a document with TOC, figure list etc. with a superb layout. And this with no help reading (even if LyX offers very nice help functionality). I sincerely regretted I hadn't tried it earlier.

Only problem is that to run LyX on Windows you need Cygwin and a Win32 X Server. This will give LyX the same XForms look it has on Linux, which most likely will make users shy away from it.

Luckily, the LyX team seems to be working towards total GUI independence. I have been thinking about starting a wxWindows port, as soon as I get some spare time, so that LyX will look and feel just like any other windows app. With a easy installer, installing all the needed tools with a few clicks, LyX would be a killer app on Windows, no doubt.

Shaped CDs

[jsonic]

Anyone care to design some attractive, downloadable CD-graphic images?

Take it one step further and put it on shaped cds.

Cygwin Too

[doublem]

And we can't forget a copy of the Cygwin utilities. (Many core GNU utilities ported to Win32)

grep, awk, wget and others all easy to install.

fortune will be VERY popular! :)

Re:Cygwin Too

[iabervon]

Those utilities are all do things which are not intuitive to people who aren't used to them.

But I think Cygwin is a good idea, because it allows the CD to include a bunch of stuff that's written for a Unix-like system, just because a lot of really useful things are written that way, and Cygwin is a good way to package them up and install them together.

Cygwin lets you provide scp, which is always missing from windows ssh clients (and there are a lot of cool things you can do with ssh that windows clients don't support). There are also a number of other utilities that are really helpful in a mixed Unix and Windows environment, like cvs.

Re:Cygwin Too

[mbourgon]

Agreed on this. Someone mentioned that if you know enough to need it, you already have it. Not true, there are still people who want the tools and don't know of Cygwin's existence. Heck, a couple of years ago, I asked on one of the NewsGroups, and the best suggestion I got was for the 300$ suite.

Needless to say, I like Cygwin a whole lot better. Especially with X and WindowMaker. :)

Re:Cygwin Too

[markbthomas]

Er, I think you are neglecting pscp, which comes as part of the PuTTY package.

Re:Cygwin Too

[iabervon]

Thanks; that package either didn't exist or was less complete last time I looked for windows ssh clients.

you dont need sexy cd graphics

[super-flex-o-matic]

some holy water and garlic will do the trick.

"Vade retro, $atana$"

Linux

[forgeeks]

Linux simply needs more support for games. Call me an idiot, but you know I'm right. The installation can't be any easier. In fact, I think it is easier than Windows. The only differences are the choices and layout. In Linux you have more choices and this can turn people away from using it. It makes them think and most people don't like that. Linux is an awesome OS with beautiful desktops and awesome services, but not very many games.

dave

That is how I was converted.

[sinserve]

A beautiful, perky redhead approached me while I was sitting at a bar.

"Come" she said, I will show you the way of the mozilla. A walk in the dark
roads of venice (venice NY that is) I ended up in her small college dorm.

A poorly decorated place, with hux dumps and goatse's hanging on the wall.

I assumed my right place as an slave, and wore my ball gag. In a split of a second,
I was tied up on the coach, given an slashdot user name, and made into to a BAD, BAD
boy.

Free software needs to ship with free blow jobs, if it wants to get market share.

--

I have an idea...

[af_robot]

about attractive CD-graphic image..
Just put naked Britney on it and all teenagers whould be yours..
:)

Re:I have an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

what a clever idea

Erm, not likely to win many converts to Abiword...

[neverbeeninariot]

....with this;

"Free Software on proprietary opperating systems"

Can you spell "spell checker"....

oops.

nbiar.

Open Source for Windows

[Apreche]

What would be even better would be a cd that was full of open source software for windows. Like WinCVS, emacs, etc. If there isn't enough of it for a whole CD, write more!
Most open source software is for our open source operating systems. If we put more open source software out for windows, that is quality, people will use them, because they are free legally. If there are enough quality open source windows programs we can get to the point where people are using like 2 or 3 major open source programs a lot. Like how just about everybody uses WinAmp and AIM/ICQ.
What I'm trying to say, and very poorly at that, is we can make some open source programs for windows that will be very frequently used my numerous users. Then we can switch them to linux more easily, because it has all the programs they use every day and more. The biggest fright about switching to linux is that you have to use all new software for everything. All of your beloved programs are gone or different. People tend to find one piece of software for each task and stick with it.

Re:Open Source for Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

ummm...
did you follow the link?
this is the whole point!
the cd has 2/3 major apps and is aimed at windows users...

Re:Open Source for Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

What would be even better would be you reading the fucking article. That's exactly the plan.

Fuck you people are retarded some days.

Re:Open Source for Windows

[Surak]

Dude, that's what the CD is.

It will come with the 1.0 versions of OpenOffice, Mozilla, AbiWord and other programs as well...

The Windows port of GIMP might be cool, but its a bit buggy and is based on a buggier port of Gtk.

For programmers, the Free Pascal compiler (which has been 1.0 for a while now) and tools might be cool as well, along with WinCVS and Emacs or XEmacs. Vim, too.

The Cygwin ports of XFree86 and KDE might be cool, too. :)

The Windows port of PINE? (Or is that not Open Source) Ok, never mind, PINE sucks. :)

Look at GNU Software For Windows Site for more ideas.

Re:Open Source for Windows

[vondo]

That is exactly what this project is proposing.

CYGWIN

[marco_craveiro]

i'm not sure if this is the sort of software they're looking for, but i found | cygwin to be vital for my sanity in a windows world. definetly a must for UNIX users having to use windows. and NT emacs, of course!

unless... do they want software that windows users can use? :-D

soup

Translators

[skeller]

On the site's list of things the project needs: Translators - both for the site and the CD. Free software is clearly very important in many poorer contras, so we should make it easy for them. [emphasis mine]

Yeah, uhm, maybe we should start with an English translator? Unless we're saying that those freedom fighters are in need of some Free software...

Excellent idea, but it's not quite enough...

[cnladd]

I've tried a number of times in the past to get my parents to switch over to Linux and OSS, and I used to recommend it to just about everybody. I always told people how easy it was to et up and use. This was a few years ago. Needless to say, I've learned a lot since then - the few people I've convinced to try it were never terribly happy, and after a week or so desperately wanted to switch back. I've learned my lesson, and now would never really recommend Linux or OSS to anybody unless they express an interest in learning more.

People who learned to use Windows and MacOS expect things from their software that OSS programmers have yet to really give them. What it boils down to is a polished product. I'll admit - I think the KOffice suite, StarOffice 6, The Gimp, and many other OSS projects are incredible. They're complete, relatively bug free, and give me all of the features that I want. But when compared with similar software on Windows and MacOS, most people find the OSS stuff just feels klunky. Most OSS software (let me stress the most - certainly not all OSS software is like this) just isn't as polished-looking to the degree that a lot of common Windows and MacOS programs are.

It's not so much about stability for the typical user. Sure, they want stability. They also want something that's intuitive, compatible with what their friends and coworkers use, and looks clean. They want software with a very adequate and easy to use help system, for when they get stuck.

Also, they don't want something with the exact same features as what they're currently using. After all, why switch unless you'll also be going to something better? The better the software can meld into how they currently do things, the more likely they'll switch.

In other words: yes the software needs to look pretty. Yes, it needs to be functional. Yes, it should be relatively bug free. But it also needs to integrate just as well or even better than what they're using now. It can't just be a functional replacement - it really needs to be something different and offer something remarkably better than current solutions. Finally, price isn't as much of a concern as most people think. That's not enough to make people switch from something the way they do things now, otherwise we'd have already seen the mass migration away from Windows and other closed-source, proprietary products.

Re:Excellent idea, but it's not quite enough...

[anonymous cowpie]

• the OSS stuff just feels klunky
• Most OSS software just isn't as polished-looking
• They also want something that's intuitive, ... and looks clean
• the software needs to look pretty

I respectfully submit that most software (including OSS) on Linux/Unix suffers from these symptoms largely because of the X Window system. How does one design a polished, friendly GUI that integrates with the system and with other apps when X is standing in the way, with its plethora of toolkits and window managers, plus several major "desktop environments", each with its own look-and-feel? (Not to mention the brain-damaged font model!) Beats me.

The bottom line is: UI consistency is important, and X makes it near impossible.

Re:Excellent idea, but it's not quite enough...

[RazzleFrog]

Well stated. I've had the same experiences both myself and with my friends. I use Slackware as my email server and nothing could be more stable. If I didn't have UPS problems it would have months uptime. When it comes to day to day work though I am hooked on Windows. I put SuSE on an old 400mhz laptop and brought it with me on a business trip. Everything worked great but it still was missing that something that made we want to continue using it. It is very hard to define, though.

Re:Excellent idea, but it's not quite enough...

[peddrenth]

More to the point, they want to be able to install something without getting a list of 200 broken dependancies which they must install and compile themselves.

(yes this happened during my Evolution installation, even with gnome installed, and even when using a package manager. Linux installs are just plain obstinate)

Re:Excellent idea, but it's not quite enough...

[0x0d0a]

old 400mhz laptop

What crazy times with crazy CPU power we live in.

Re:Excellent idea, but it's not quite enough...

[TarpaKungs]

While we're on the subject of parents... some time ago mine wanted a PC. I duly built one and installed Windows ME as I thought I should be nice to them (!). I am a linux diehard - but I was worried they'd find it hard to use.

To cut a long story short, months 1-3 were OK. After that I was getting phone calls every week or two about things going wrong. My mum asked if there was any alternative to Windows - preferably something that Bill hadn't been near. (Me gets heart failure)

One Mandrake 8.0 install later and much tuning of fonts and installing opera I gave them a system which looked after their phone calls for the internet (diald), selection of browsers (opera + konq + moz - choose as required) and a nice email system (kmail + local mail hub (exim) routing through the ISP or my server as seemed good.

After 1 week, I asked how they were getting on. Mum said - and I quote - "this is nice and easy to use - much easier than that Windows thing". I kid you not.

There were web problems from time to time - mostly caused by crap websites. So recently, I went down and installed Mandrake 8.2. Spent a while tuning the anti-aliased fonts in KDE, made sure moz was stuffed with every plugin I could find and improved a few system things.

Now, and truely now, they are really happy. Moz does everything right with pretty much all the websites they're interested in. Kword is a passable - but simple - wordprocessor they find meets their requirements. Kmail is pretty, clear and intuitive.

The moral of the story was too choose the few apps they actually needed as being the "best of breed", polish them and stick the icons on the taskbar. They don't want to do much - they just want those few things to work properly.

And of course, the system is rock solid and I get decent remote admin (ssh).

A true story...

Re:Excellent idea, but it's not quite enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why didn't you just have your Mom install the Mandrake update?

It might "work properly" once you've spent your hours getting everything ready. It might work properly for everyone with a guru on call who can be trusted with ssh access.

It doesn't work properly if you can't install it in the first place.

Re:Excellent idea, but it's not quite enough...

[clearcache]

You say tomAYto, I say tomAHto
You say obstinate, I say configurable
You say bug, I say feature

(And yes, to be totally serious, I do see your point...but to me, the fault is in the package management software and not the OS itself.)

Re:Excellent idea, but it's not quite enough...

[tshak]

You are absolutely right regarding the quality of some OSS. The reason is that good software needs a lot more then programmers. You need good test engineers, technical writers, graphics/UI designers, product designers, product managers (scope creep anyone?), usability and human factors sepecialists, and even some market research to determine what the people want. How many OSS projects study controlled "joe-blow" usability sessions with their latest UI? I think the reason that projects like Linux are so successful is because it's made for geeks, by geeks. Writing an Office Suite or a Consumer Desktop is a totally different ballgame.

Re:Excellent idea, but it's not quite enough...

[TarpaKungs]

Valid points - so here's my reasoning:

1st point:
My Ma & Pa are 75 and 80 - so I don't expect them to install anything. They wouldn't manage a Windows *anyversion* install either. I also like clean installs - just backup /etc, /usr/local and whack back the bits I need - tweaking as I go. I usually find bits of the config which can be done better along the way. It's a personal thing really...

2nd point:
The Windows ME install took nearly as long as linux by the time I had installed Office, downloaded extra drivers over a modem and tweaked all the default settings so they were nice. Being a sysadmin at one of the better Uni Comp Sci departments in the UK probably classes me as "trusted with ssh"

3rd point:
Sentiment accepted. However in my view, the Mandrake 8.2 installer is close to perfection. The Sony Viao I just installed last week was fully functioning with no messing about bar the winmodem. That's an imperfection I can accept for software that cost nothing save for 3 blank CDs. 8.2 is quite a dream compared to 7.1 which took considerable messing around to get ISDN to work.

And to boot - it all stays working - so my weekend of installing and showing them around means I don't expect to have to fix it for 1-2 years when I may do the next major upgrade.

Oh - and my previous life as an NT 4 admin (before I escaped to Linux/Solaris) has developed in me the mindset that MS OS's are the work of the devil (notice I said OS - not apps - many of which are actually very nice (at least until they die mysteriously). So it's more of a religious thing now - MS - I don't really like to touch that stuff - urrghh.

Re:Excellent idea, but it's not quite enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, pad're ya nailed it ! Coupla' different ways ... successful 'retail' proggies have a direct hardwire ta the reptile brain ... so the actual VALUE ADDED of the Lusr ( the intellectual tasks they process internally and export thru the proggie ) come out totally transparent. These VA tasks are creative, non-algorithmic tasks --- otherwise a computer would be DOING them !!!
Weenie/admin/programming types just can't conceive this basic fact in 99.925% of all computer use.

Re:Excellent idea, but it's not quite enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

I dislike MS stuff as well - and do not use it. My point was hardly that you did a Bad Thing hooking your folks up, it was that not everyone has a trusted, experienced sysadmin guru like you to help them.

My point was not that Microsoft has good installers and make computing easy. My point is not even that Apple (whose OS I use) does that. My point (sorry if it was too briefly or improperly stated) is that this stuff Should Be Easier.

If "OSS" (as though it were a unified entity) wants to ingratiate itself with your parents, or more specifically My parents, it should take usability Much more seriously. and Usability starts with Installablity.

I think what you did was great. I also think that our parents should be able to do it on their own.

You shouldn't have to help your parents install an OS and I shouldn't have to help my dad troubleshoot an internet connection. The fact that we do presents an opportunity for every developer. If an OS 'just works' without issue or complication or hard to find knowledge, it will be adopted. Especially if it is free.

Danger, Will Robinson!

[ZiZ]

I particularly like this part.

Omma asks for help with graphics for an installer, Web design, erase-of-use testers and free legal advice, among other things.

That sounds like they're asking for help with some insidious trojan, not helpful open-source!

Why not Cygwin?

[jspayne]

Cygwin is a great way for those bound to the evil empire to have access to some powerful developer tools. For those not familiar with Cygwin, it is the inverse of Wine: a complete Unix environment that runs in Windows. Just about any Linux app can be ported to it, and many already have. - gcc - gdb/Insight - Python - Perl - PostgreSQL - Apache - XFree86 - KDE - Gnome ...plus all the shell lovin' you could ever want. Jeff

New Linux Adoption Plan

[GGardner]

Wouldn't it be funny to form some BSA-like group, which would goose-step into corporate offices, auditing software. When the group found unlicensed software (or, more likely), software which probably is licensed, but for which no license can be found, it would either mandate that their victims pony up zillions of dollars -- OR, switch to OSS software.

I wonder how fast the BSA would shut down such a group?

Re:New Linux Adoption Plan

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't just walk door to door vigilante-style and check people's software licenses.

The *BSA* can do so, becuase they are contractually employed by the software companies whose licenses they are checking for in such a way that the BSA's agents have what is legally called "Power of Attourney" for the software companies in question.

Unless you can get power of attourney from the companies owning the software licenses, you can't legally demand anything based on contracts (software licenses) with those companies.

Now, in germany things might be different (remember the issues raised in the Killustrator debacle?).. but i don't really understand the situation there.

this is my understanding of things, at least.

Re:New Linux Adoption Plan

[Anonymous Coward]

How about - if they are found using any open source software they must immediately rescind any employment contract clauses that prevent employees from contributing to open source projects ?

:)

Perhaps something like this should be part of an open source license ... you are forbidden from taking if you don't allow any giving.

Pretty pictures for the CD labels?

[foo fighter]

http://www.5inch.com/ has incredibly sweet CD-R's for sale.

Maybe something like Hello or Punchcard is appropriate?

I've learnt a lot

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried a number of times in the past to get my parents to switch over to Linux and OSS, and I used to recommend it to just about everybody. I always told people how easy it was to et up and use. This was a few years ago. Needless to say, I've learned a lot since then - the few people I've convinced to try it were never terribly happy, and after a week or so desperately wanted to switch back. I've learned my lesson, and now would never really recommend Linux or OSS to anybody unless they express an interest in learning more. People who learned to use Windows and MacOS expect things from their software that OSS programmers have yet to really give them. What it boils down to is a polished product. I'll admit - I think the KOffice suite, StarOffice 6, The Gimp, and many other OSS projects are incredible. They're complete, relatively bug free, and give me all of the features that I want. But when compared with similar software on Windows and MacOS, most people find the OSS stuff just feels klunky. Most OSS software (let me stress the most - certainly not all OSS software is like this) just isn't as polished-looking to the degree that a lot of common Windows and MacOS programs are. It's not so much about stability for the typical user. Sure, they want stability. They also want something that's intuitive, compatible with what their friends and coworkers use, and looks clean. Faggots should be burnt alive. They want software with a very adequate and easy to use help system, for when they get stuck. Also, they don't want something with the exact same features as what they're currently using. After all, why switch unless you'll also be going to something better? The better the software can meld into how they currently do things, the more likely they'll switch. In other words: yes the software needs to look pretty. Destroy Israel. Yes, it needs to be functional. Yes, it should be relatively bug free. But it also needs to integrate just as well or even better than what they're using now.

bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

the reason people don't use oss more is simple, they can't sell it very well, any open source stuff could allow an end user to just take the code and compile it themselves, as well as exposing and otherwise safe security flaws, it would allow people to bypass the anticopy parts of the program(in the game i am currently the lead developer of we decided not to go with open source for the reason that there is no real benifit, we are capable of writing our own code and do not need to take other people's work)

fp!

[Anonymous Coward]

first post!

a centralized FTP site

[debuser]

Why not set up some online repository of open source, aimed at win and mac users? Even have a small debian-like apt type program written for win and mac that will allow them to connect to, log on, and grab updates? If you dont want to go that route, then at least a centralized FTP site for win and mac platforms. I know if they have to "look" for various programs, it aint gonna happen. If we can whet their appitites by making it somewhat easy to find the stuff in one main locations, it should work well.

My suggestion is Qcad

[Mr.roboto]

I could say Mozilla but that's waay to obvious, Qcad is good for newbies to cad and it's OSS, go grab a copy at qcad.org, it's cool. I just wish they'd hurry it up with the CLI in qcad 2.

No! Charge them out the wazoo.

[cachorro]

Everyone tosses AOL cd's. No-one dig through the bargain bin. There is a common perception that give-aways are worthless. This needs to be on the shelf at Target with an $895.00 price tag. Then five people will buy and the rest of the world will pirate it. Just don't let on that one can download any of it for free.

Re:No! Charge them out the wazoo.

[jdkincad]

Gee, I thought people pitched AOL cds because the software sucks and the service is overpriced.

Re:No! Charge them out the wazoo.

[BigZaphod]

As silly as this sounds, this is actually a pretty good idea. Don't know about a price that high, but maybe like $50-$80 or so.

The main reason is image. OSS stuff often looks cheap (simply because the interfaces are usually not as refined and smooth as software windows/macos users are used to). Things that look cheap don't sell.

There's another reason to put a high price tag on it. This may sound almost elitist, but do you really want the kinds of users that dig through (and then buy) the cheap crap in bargin bins at department stores? These are the people that will flood mailing lists, newsgroups, and weblogs with stupid comments and demands for their money back or insisting that they have the God-given right to feature X because they paid a hard-earned $5.00 on the CD 2 years ago!

It would be much better to attract a slightly more respectful crowd. Making a product expensive is a way of buying that sort of customer. Heck, it worked for Apple... (/me ducks!)

Re:No! Charge them out the wazoo.

[AnotherBlackHat]

There is a common perception that give-aways are worthless. This needs to be on the shelf at Target with an $895.00 price tag.

Right idea, but wrong price points. Relase 3 versions;
a "Gold" version at $395.00, a "Silver" version for $195.00, and a "Basic" version for $79.95.

Affordable and expensive at the same time.

-- this is not a .sig

Re:No! Charge them out the wazoo.

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Isn't Red Hat already doing this?

Re:No! Charge them out the wazoo.

[dpete4552]

That's going on the redicules assumption that people with less money are not as good or "respectful" as people with more money, and visa versa; people with more money are somehow more "respectful" then people with less money.

Re:No! Charge them out the wazoo.

[sparkz]

I guess it's more that people who've not spent money tend to be less respectful than those who have spent money.

That's nothing to do with how much money they have - not even vaguely related.

OT - it's getting there

[Ender Ryan]

Linux is making great strides in the gaming arena. ID and Epic are still doing Linux versions, Neverwinter Knights is going to ship with Linux/Mac/Windows binaries on the same CD.

Then there's also Transgaming. Native Linux ports are always the best way to go, but for that much needed gaming fix you can use Transgaming's version of wine. You should see Max Payne run in all it's D3D(Direct ms 3D lockin) glory. Winex is pretty sweet, for games that work they actually seem to be more stable than in windows. I've played a number of games all the way through without any problems whatsoever in wine.

There's also GarageGames. There's a ton of independent developers developing games using an engine that supports Linux, so hopefully lots of them will release Linux binaries of their games.

I'd say it's a good time to be a Linux gamer.

Demolinux

[mirko]

Demolinux is a project that consists of booting Linux from a Live CD.
This is IMHO the best Linux distro for newcomers and it looks quite like what is intended for this project : See Free Software in use without touching one's HD..

Re:Demolinux

[HiThere]

But it doesn't seem to read ext3 file systems. It recognizes them, and labels them (with short-cuts on the desktop.) But the fstab calls their file system type unknown, and mount doesn't appear to know what to do with a -t ext2 argument.

Of course, the basic idea is to demonstrate things on non-linux systems, but I was hoping that I could use it as an emergency disk.

Re:Demolinux

[Darnit]

We don't want to run a different OS on the system. We just want to introduce the people to the available OSS software that will run on Windows while they still run their everyday programs (MSWord).

Cygmac?

[Thenomain]

And for us Mac OS/X users, a stripped-down, more *nix-standardized version of the developer's CD would be nice. It was a little frustrating to have to bounce around web sites to see how to make plain ol' "gcc" work.

This might actually work

[RiotNrrd]

I think that this might work as a good "gateway drug" into the world of Linux for most users. I don't think that people are opposed to the idea of OSS, I think that they are just uncomfortable with switching their OS. If they kinda get a taste of OSS in an enviornment with which they are familiar, it might make them a bit more comfortable moving to Linux. I've always thought that there was a need for more Win32-based open-source projects.

Kinda OT..

[jonnythan]

But the article blurb made me think of it.

Windows doesn't come with any horribly buggy, barely working applications. None.

In addition, it installs one version of each "accessory" app.. calculator, notepad, browser, file manager, etc. It even puts shortcuts to them in the same place.

I'd like to see a linux distro that includes just one stable, simple version of each type of app in a basic install. One browser, one file manager, one word processor. Having a slightly more task-oriented set of menus and shortcuts in a distro would be a cool thing to see, IMO. I remember first installing red hat 4.something.. the choices of apps confused the living daylights out of me. The way I see it, this hasn't changed all that much...

Oh yeah, having a way to just "download and select run" to install new apps would be good for linux too ;)

Re:Kinda OT..

[HiThere]

Well, you could look at Lindows. They seem to be planning on that. They are even talking about a license that "allows you to use the same version on every computer in your family". (I found that a bit of a poser. Isn't it under the GPL? That sounded awfully limited.) But they do limit the choices, and they do always put everything in the same place (or at least so I judge from their ads).

Re:Kinda OT..

[jd142]

Take a look at what was Redmond Linux, now Lycoris. Pretty decent install, except for 1 or 2 things. Nice, simplified setup when you are done. Not for Gnome lovers though.

Re:Kinda OT..

[Unruly]

Lycoris Linux is already doing something like this. Though, if know enough about linux to really see the merits in switching, then it tends to be more restrictive than helpful.

Re:Kinda OT..

[BenjyD]

Oh yeah, having a way to just "download and select run" to install new apps would be good for linux too ;)

I suppose typing apt-get install $APP_NAME is too much work?

Re:Kinda OT..

[lux55]

I'm running Red Hat 7.1 (much newer than 4.x) and I agree that the original menus are quite confusing, still. It's partly because you have programs with names like exmh and xlrn, and even though they display more descriptive text when you scroll over them, it's not enough.

For ease of use, including logical menus, I would recommend Ximian Gnome. Ximian makes really nice apps, and really turns a RH7 machine around. The menus are definitely more task-oriented (top level menus like Finance and Calendar). Plus, Ximian Red Carpet lets you just "download and select run" with apps, almost. It does solve much of the difficulty in installing and maintaining apps on a Linux machine though.

Of course, there are also other distros whose big selling point is ease of use, right out of the box, and RH is definitely not the leader in this area.

Re:Kinda OT..

[Cy Guy]

I'd like to see a linux distro that includes just one stable, simple version of each type of app in a basic install. One browser, one file manager, one word processor.

COREL tried this with their distro, and had good distribution channels, a widely recognized brand name, and marketing bucks. They even had the 'download and select run feature' you talk about thanks to an enhanced Debian .deb installer.

In the end they sold off their Linux division for $3M.

I think the lesson learned from this was that they weren't accepted by the Linux community, and that the Linux community is often too caught up in wars between distros or between Linux and BSD or GNU to focus on what really matters which is getting Linux accepted by the masses and crushing the MS monopoly.

Re:Kinda OT..

[InsaneGeek]

Hmmm... that's an interesting thought.

And I thought the reason I sat in front of a computer was to be productive, but I guess what really matters is "crushing the MS monopoly"... learn something new everyday.

I don't care what platform I run on as long as it is stable and has the apps that I need. That's what really matters, getting the stuff done that you need to get done. That is the reason why I've got a unix desktop and a windows desktop, I'm most proficient on my unix system, but there are no unix apps that hold a match to the productivity of using Visio, MS Office, etc on a windows system (and before you say it, I've got a Sun workstation so no wine for me, and besides that why would I want to use wine that has more stability issues than windows).

Re:Kinda OT..

[aaronvegh]

Try Gentoo Linux, which allows you to build all your apps from scratch. Runs fast, too.

P.S. I don't work for Gentoo. But they got something cool going on over there.

Re:Kinda OT..

[xiaix]

or emerge $APP_NAME (even less typing)

Re:Kinda OT..

[jdavidb]

I never accepted Corel because they were a hybrid free/proprietary system. I love Linux, BSD, and GNU. I love RedHat and Debian, and would probably be happy with most of the other distros. I know there are flamewars, but I don't usually see them from the people I know in the community. (I usually browse slashdot at 4 or 5, though.)

The only war I'm really interested in is making sure they we are opposed to all proprietary software, not just MS. I could get along without MS but still be trapped in proprietary software from Apple or Sun. Plenty of people seem to think that attitude is petty, obstructive, or anti-business, but that's the one thing I'm passionate about.

My goal is not to get Linux accepted or to crush Microsoft. It is to get freedom and copyleft accepted. So, we're pointed in the same general direction, but at times you'll find me and people like me aren't focused in directly on the same things you are.

Re:Kinda OT..

[bilbobuggins]

I suppose typing apt-get install $APP_NAME is too much work?

Yes.

Yes it is. That's the whole point here, for the average end user typing anything at all is too much work, less enjoyable and actually influences their purchase decisions.
Not everybody is a) Good at remembering command line commands b) Knows the name of every app they want/what it does

Remember mac os? And how a certain other company ripped it off? (yeah I know Apple stole it first, etc.)
Regardless, it's because they knew how to interact w/ clueless users scared to turn on the machine for the first time i.e. one mouse button and double click on everything.
First rule of converting other people to linux: learn to recognize reality and don't be elitest.

Re:Kinda OT..

[Arandir]

for the average end user typing anything at all is too much work

That probably explains why I don't like Windows. But it doesn't explain why a significant number of Mac users think that finally having a command line is a Good Thing(tm).

I will agree that arcane command options are difficult. I can't even remember them for the apps I use every day. But at some point you have to draw the line and say "you have to be at least this intelligent to use Unix." That's not elitism, that reality. Until hardware and software reaches some mythical perfection, there will always come a time when the user will encounter a problem not addressed in the five page glossy cardstock entitled "how to use your computer".

Re:Kinda OT..

[Anonymous Coward]

Or even simpler: make install

As an added bonus, you get a description of the package with BSD ports, while with Gentoo you're left guessing what it is. And don't even think about trying to find where the Gentoo package is. "whereis myapp" just doesn't work.

I see a lot of potential in emerge, but it's not even close to 1.0 status.

Re:Kinda OT..

[jonnythan]

Then all the people behind that line (most users, and all people new to computers) will use something else.

That's why Windows exists. You can't sit down someone who has never touched a computer and expect them to be able to remember and type strange commands to get the computer to do something when it's possible to have a nice logical graphical menu do it for them.

Re:Kinda OT..

[Arandir]

You can't sit down someone who has never touched a computer and expect them to be able to use Windows.

To someone absolutely new to computing, a funny menu organized in an illogical manner that pops up strange windows on your screen when you try to manipulate the blasted mouse that is the epitome of bad ergonomics, can be just as difficult as the command line.

No, nobody is going to remember all those strange Unix commands, let alone all their options. I sure don't. But do you know where every option is in every dialog of every program in Windows? Hah! It's quicker for me to use a man page in Unix and find my answer than trying to find that stupid checkbox in MSSnafuPlus that I need.

Re:Kinda OT..

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Windows doesn't come with any horribly buggy, barely working applications. None.

Used MSPaint any time recently? It's got a bunch of annoying glitches. (Edit a B&W drawing for more than a minute or two and you'll see...)

Re:Kinda OT..

[Anonymous Coward]

One word:

Telnet

Another word:

Terminal

Some more words:

Calculator, 2+1*8=24

Microsoft works on the software used by the masses and write the rest in lunch breaks.

Free is good... but more is needed

[zoombat]

I work for a non-profit, so low cost or free is essential. However it's not everything.

Replacing MS Office is, in my opinion, the Holy Grail of open source target product replacements. What a product needs to do to compete with Office is:

1. Be very polished so that below-average users can get their work done without hitting snags.
   
2. Integrate with other applications as well as Office does. Such as Exchange Server with Outlook.
   
3. Be stable and easily patchable, but not require frequent reinstallations. This is probably where Office is weakest, even though they've improved the stability and crash recovery features with XP, and implemented the semi-reliable Windows Update.
   
4. New Features. Microsoft takes some rough shots from the open source community, but the open source folks are more or less playing catch-up with the feature-set in office. Not only do they need to catch up and match the features, they need to offer some significant improvements to make MS chase them for a change. That way, the software would not just be "Nearly as good as office and free", but "In competition with Office and free".
   

If the above were true, I believe the product might succeed in becoming more widely used and supported.

In the mean time, a free version of an Office replacement might make it in the door and onto my desktop if it was good, but it would take the above criteria for me to roll it out to all my end users.

I do, however, commend this effort. The open source community needs some help putting it's best foot forward to be seen. There are some pretty darn good open source projects, but there is also a lot of noise that makes open source stuff look like free junk.

Re:Free is good... but more is needed

[Anonymous Coward]

* New Features. Microsoft takes some rough shots from the open source community, but the open source folks are more or less playing catch-up with the feature-set in office. Not only do they need to catch up and match the features, they need to offer some significant improvements to make MS chase them for a change. That way, the software would not just be "Nearly as good as office and free", but "In competition with Office and free".


I have to disagree with this point. How many people use *all* of the features of ms office? I cant think of anything they added since office 98 that I would want to use. All they really need to do is implement all of the features people care about. Once it is 'good enough', people will use that. It is like VHS vs Beta. Beta was a better format, but VHS was good enough and it was cheaper, so VHS won.

Is something like OLE available in any of the linux office suites? If so I haven't figured it out yet. OLE is heavily used by the suits in my place of work and it would be a big hole if it was not available.

Re:Free is good... but more is needed

[br0ken by design]

I have to disagree with this point. How many people use *all* of the features of ms office?

Yes, the probability that one user will use all the functionality is pretty low, but in a group
of say, 20 users, all doing different sorts of work, the probability of obscure feature XYZ getting used increases greatly.

Re:Free is good... but more is needed

[0x0d0a]

Actually, the parent poster that asked for OLE is a pretty good example of what you're saying. The few times I've used Office, I've had no interest in OLE, and wouldn't care if it were left out. OTOH, I *do* like style sheets (using a word processor w/o style sheets sucks), and would be unhappy if they were left out.

Neither OLE nor style sheets, however, is used by the typical user.

Re:Free is good... but more is needed

[weinerdog]

New Features. Microsoft takes some rough shots from the open source community, but the open source folks are more or less playing catch-up with the feature-set in office. Not only do they need to catch up and match the features, they need to offer some significant improvements to make MS chase them for a change. That way, the software would not just be "Nearly as good as office and free", but "In competition with Office and free".

I will recommend the opposite: fewer features. I've observed a lot of friends, colleagues, and coworkers use office, and two things stand out as being very common. First, people use software very inefficiently. They stay in newbie mode for years. Very rarely do they use advanced features, or employ advanced, more efficient techniques that they didn't learn initially. Second, most features cause more problems than they solve. I've seen more people get trapped by all the extra features and end up with, for example, documents with strange formatting they don't know how to get rid of, than I have seen people make use of even relatively basic features. People might like the idea of having 40 choices of font and 8 different border styles with 20 variations each, but it doesn't really result in a better memo or more informative annual report, and it adds complexity and opportunity for error. Presentation features are generally a problem anyway because most people don't know enough about typesetting to pick the right border style in the first place. Giving them fewer choices reduces the chance that they'll pick something completely inappropriate. Publishers and typesetters do need those tools, but they're a specialty market and they probably wouldn't be caught trying to typeset on Word anyway.

If you took Word Pad and added a handful of features, perhaps tables, automatic pagination, page numbering, and maybe a half dozen other simple features, you would end up with a program that, to most people, would probably be more useful than Word. What would really help people out is to create a set of simple tools that are easy to learn, efficient to use right from the start, and which don't have too many options; the thing should Just Work.

If you tell someone that you have a free word processor that has even more features than Word, they'll probably respond that they already have Word, know how to use it, and don't need any new features. If you told them you had a small, fast word processor that you could teach them to use in an hour, didn't have lots of confusing options and menus, and which made preparing letters, reports, and other common office documents extremely easy,a and by the way it's free, you'd probably get more takers.

Re:Free is good... but more is needed

[zoombat]

If you took Word Pad and added a handful of features, perhaps tables, automatic pagination, page numbering, and maybe a half dozen other simple features, you would end up with a program that, to most people, would probably be more useful than Word. What would really help people out is to create a set of simple tools that are easy to learn, efficient to use right from the start, and which don't have too many options; the thing should Just Work.

While I agree that simple is generally good, I think you can have a whole lot of features that don't make usage complex (not to say that MS has done that, exactly). I disagree with your suggestion that fewer functions are better.. it might be true for most users, but the options have to be there for the power users and for occasional use for other users. Mail merge is a good example:

At least 90% of my users don't use mail merge... but when a secretary who's never used it before decides she needs to send a mailing to 5,000 local businesses and asks how she can do it, mail merge is the way. If she had been using a stripped down no-frills application, she'd be out of luck. Fortunately most robust office suites have mail merge, and with a few instructions, off she goes.

Ideally you could segment users into power user/basic user roles and deploy a stripped down version for basic users, but in reality most basic users cross over the line and periodically need advanced options for a specific purpose. So instead it seems better to include all the features a user could legitamately use and hide the rarely used ones (or install on first use).

Re:Free is good... but more is needed

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a big corporation. I have tried to get my company to use some Open Source software but it is a struggle and we do most of our work in Unix!!! The argument I usually get is that with shareware/open source software we can't get maintenance contracts and that it's just not stable. They want to call someone who will fix and modify the software for their needs whose obligated to bend to there will since they are paying them. We do manage to get some stuff in but it is always a long horrible process. Maybe we need to set up companies/groups that just handle trouble shooting/customizing popular open source software.

Re:Free is good... but more is needed

[Surak]

Actually, OpenOffice has one very small feature that Excel doesn't have. Upon the bringing in of a comma-delimited ASCII file, it automagically does the equivalent of Excel's "AutoFit Selection" for column width. This sounds small, but I have to import a LOT of comma-delimited files into Excel and this little timesaver is a major reason for me to use OpenOffice instead of Excel.

(Yes, you could always do this in an Excel macro, but most users aren't that bright. :)

Re:Free is good... but more is needed

[weinerdog]

Well, mail merge isn't really the kind of function that causes problems, since it's not the sort of thing one runs into when one isn't looking for it, but it still doesn't really belong in a word processor. Remember the adage about using the right tool for the right job. Most people use Word as a word processor for preparing lightweight documents. Occasionally, they need a midweight system for preparing more complex documents with sections, chapters, tables of contents, different headers and footers, complex tables, borders, embedded documents, and other featues. Active content is another animal altogether.

There's no doubt that these fetures are occasionally useful for many users and frequently used by some, but they are also the exact same features that get misused or accidentally activated and make a mess out of documents. I suspect they also encourage poor writing and sloppy document creation in simple documents, as users are often enticed to use unecessary features in the preparation of their simple documents. I've received more very large and very garish memos containing one or two sentences of useful information than I can count. It probably never occurs to the authors that they were over-engineering and making a mess out of what should have been a simple interoffice memo that could have just as easily been written in notepad.

A lightweight word processor is what most people need most of the time. I don't just mean something with limited features, but also something that is designed to maximize the efficiency of preparing simple documents, even if that means it can't do anything more elaborate. If they need extra functionality, a second, more elaborate application can be used. They can work with the same file formats, making it possible to write the text in a simple friendly editor and then format it using the second application. And naturally, the heavier document preparation system would hopefully have a similar and familiar interface and not be arbitrarily different from the basic editor.

If a user spends most of his or her time creating and editing simple documents, then he or she ought to have an application optimized for doing just that. Keeping the number of different tools that a user has to use down to a reasonable number is a laudable goal, but it doesn't take precedence over all other considerations. Sometimes, having two or three separate tools for different jobs is easier to manage and more efficient than having to figure out how to make an all-in-wonder tool work in every possible situation.

Re:Free is good... but more is needed

[Mignon]

Don't forget that no matter how good it is, an Office replacement has to acknowledge the 800-pound gorilla of Office. In addition to your suggestions, I would propose making file converters for Office apps to handle whatever file format your app produces.

Being able to read and write Office format is (at least) half the battle. However, users of the Office replacement will be stymied when their documents are returned to them by Office users who can't open them.

Word, for example, has a file converter SDK. One of these days, I'd like to have a go at implementing a converter for KWord, say.

Re:Free is good... but more is needed

[spitzak]

A big problem with making the interface or "features" any good is that 95% of the time, the first question asked about any non-MS office produce is "how well does it import/export MS Office documents". Basically anybody (OSS or not, free or not) competing with MS is at a huge disadvantage as an enormous amount of resources need to be spent reading/writing MS formats, so there is no time left for anything else.

Also it seems that import/export office is the ONLY "feature" people want, take a look at some of the slashdot stories about any OSS word processors, I don't remember seeing any questions about how it works other than "does it import/export office good?"

Even if MS Office formats were fully documented and easily imported and exported, there would be serious problems with implementing features because of the need to store those features in an MS Office file, and limits due to the need to work with MS Office data structures.

Re:Free is good... but more is needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I can. And it is not even a "really hidden feature that nobody would use":

Try setting a custom background color for a paragraph. I don't know if you have it available in 2000 or XP, but on Office 97 is impossible.

Open/Star Office does it, but I can't export back to .doc with it :(

If that is something that nobody uses...

Re:Free is good... but more is needed

[Malcontent]

"Not only do they need to catch up and match the features, they need to offer some significant improvements to make MS chase them for a change"

I think you are wrong on this one. If it's 80% as good and costs less people will switch. The switch will start with the small businesses and then spread from there. What we really need is for MS to aggressively pursue piracy so that the small business person can not steal office. Same with the third world. The minute we can end piracy open source wins.

Hey! I resemble that remark!

[tsornin]

the most freakish, repressed, zealous, skinny Linux geek

I'll have you know that I love my freakish, skinny Linux geek. So there. ;-)

Re:Hey! I resemble that remark!

[dmarien]

faggot!

Fantastic

[Cally]

This is EXCELLENT news, especially if some kind soul (or company) would care to finance an AOL-like blizzard of CD mailouts and mage coverdisks. I've often thought (and occasionally said) that getting the message through to ignorant PHBs is the only way to guarantee Free software a future: witness the horrors of the DMCA, et. al., and now the EUCD (which is even WORSE than the DMCA...). Once PHBs realise that such laws will actually COST THEM MONEY - or that they can save money by using *cough* open source *cough* apps, servers and OSes, we'll be safe from the proprietary industry's last attempt to save itself, by legislating us out of existence.

Re:Fantastic

[jgerman]

IF such a cd was created, and IF it was really well done, I personally would have no qualms about spending my time and money to help get these out in the same manner aol does theirs. We could do it like every other OSS project, 100's of people contributing $5-10 or whatever they wanted.

Imagine it. A CD comes in the mail with a label like:

WE ARE NOT TRYING TO SELL YOU ANYTHING.
WE ARE SENDING YOU THIS EASY TO USE CD FULL OF QUALITY OSS APPLICATIONS TO USE FOR FREE ect..

A little insert with a description of the project and where to go to learn more would go a long way.

I wonder what the costs would be for a project like this, it's a really good idea. If it's practical it would really be cool.

What it takes

[saphena]

For the vast bulk of "ordinary" users the computer is just a thing they switch on and it "just works".

They use M$ Windows cos that's what it came with, that's what everyone else uses and, in business at least, that's the platform targeted by the mainstream application developers.

They use M$ Office and M$ Outlook and M$ Internet Explorer cos that's what it came with, that's what everyone else uses and they get email attachments and website downloads that presume the existence of this platform.

These people usually have little, if any, computer literacy, They have little, if any, awareness of the "politics" of the open source argument. The overwhelming majority will have no understanding of or use for the source at all.

If you want to change their habits, you won't succeed by selling the operating system. "What's an operating system and why would I care about it?"

If you want to change their habits, you won't succeed by trying to change everything all at once or by selling the virtues of "open source".

If you want to change their habits, you won't succeed by giving them a CD full of strangely named things that they have to "compile" or "make" or learn howto use a plain text editor to configure.

Pick one thing, say OpenOffice, make sure that it is idiot proof with an idiot proof install routine. List ALL its virtues and, particularly, why anyone would want to use it in preference to M$ Office that they're all used to.

That might do it.

Re:What it takes

[Anonymous Coward]

Or not. That list would be very very small. And a compeating list of why MS office is better than Open Office would be astronimical. Hold the two up and you will have only proven the point that most windows users already know. You get what you pay for...

Re:What it takes

[natbudin]

I've been doing this with Mozilla at my school for awhile now. Whenever someone comes to me with an issue about malicious ActiveX controls, or browser-trapping popups, or whatever, I help them get rid of it, and then say, "By the way... you should check out Mozilla. It lets you turn off popups."

Most people end up trying Mozilla and never going back to MSIE.

Re:What it takes

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

Many, many windows computers don't come with MS Office or Outlook. Consumers actually have to go and pay money for them, a lot of money actually (likely about as much as for the computer itself.) The price of software is actually an important factor to many (not all, but still many) consumers. Just as not everyone is a Linux nerd, not everyone a PHB with money to burn. If they just want to switch it on and have it just work, they very much want to buy a cheaper one that also just works. People who don't care about computers DON'T WANT TO PAY FOR SOFTWARE MORE THAN THEY HAVE TO.

Presumably any CD distributed for consumers would contain easily installed binaries.

Getting closer

[scott1853]

The next step to making OSS ready for the masses is getting the developers to put the vowels back in their product names.

Re:Getting closer

[Seanasy]

Amen, brother.

If i had one OSS wish it would be to ban the letters 'K' and 'G' from all OSS applications names.

Does anyone like these kinds of names? It's not cute, it's not clever. Is it a lack of imagination? Are the developers too lazy or uninterested to come up with a meaningful and simple name?

When will the hurting end?

for Linux or for Windows?

[MrResistor]

What will this CD have on it? Linux ports or Windows ports?

Personally, I would use the Windows ports. They're available for all the current shining stars of open source; OpenOffice, Mozilla, GIMP. Those are the big ones, they cover 90% of what people actually use computers for, and they're all available for windows. Get people to switch to those and you're more than halfway to getting them on Linux.

Someone else asked 'this stuff is already freely/easily available with easy install, etc, so why aren't people switching already?' Habit is why. They're used to using MS Office and they're afraid that it'll take too long or be to hard to learn a new package. I just went through that with my Dad when I built him a new computer. He was used to MS Office and wanted it installed. Of course, he didn't actually own a copy, and I tossed my pirated copy when I discovered OpenOffice. It took me a little while to convince him to just try OpenOffice, and if he didn't like it he could always go back. It's been 2 weeks now, and he's sold. He finds OpenOffice much easier to use, and he's comforted by the fact that he can open up his old MS Office documents without a hitch.

This is the way to get people to switch to OSS, one app at a time. Then, once they've switched for all their major apps, simply point out that they will all run on Linux.

For home users, it usually isn't that hard. In a business environment it's a different story, since even the thought of a productivity hit, no matter how small, sends chills down people's spines. I think the key there is to get them to switch at home, where they're more comfortable and can take some time.

Re:for Linux or for Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

And how about those of us that have tried switching and found the OSS alternatives, uh... severely, almost criminally, lacking in either stability or features?

You can put a brave face on it if you want, but it ain't there yet and every day it gets further behind.

Re:for Linux or for Windows?

[Captn Pepe]

What's your evidence? You could at least give examples of software that you find "criminally, lacking in either stability or features". My guess, you were either using early alpha software, or you were using software that wasn't meant to do what you thought it was.

Hint: don't download Abiword expecting a drop-in replacement for MS Office. For that, you want OpenOffice, and a recent build too.

Re:for Linux or for Windows?

[MrResistor]

It's like all those people whining about how hard Linux is to install, but the last time they tried was Red Hat 5.1. For some reason they think that just because they had a bad experience 3 years ago that it's the same now.

Oh well, some people just like to complain, I guess.

Have you ever thought about the fact that....

[madenosine]

most users are happy with the software they have?

Why do slashdot editors seem to belive all users of windows software are dissatisfied with it? That deep down they really want open source software?

Also, I doubt many people will really install it (assuming they can install it.) End users are often more paranoid of getting viruses than savvy users are.

Re:Have you ever thought about the fact that....

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do slashdot editors seem to belive all users of windows software are dissatisfied with it? That deep down they really want open source software?

Well, actually, they aren't satisfied; they are unaware. They don't think about their computers except when they are dissatisfied. Some of the ``power users'' install software which didn't come with their computer. This sub-group of computer illiterates is the bunch which would be targeted by a CD full of libre software binaries for Windows.

If the software was of good quality, well-ported to windows, and had html manuals on the CD, such a CD would probably do some good if it were distributed by people whom the ``power users'' trusted. If it were part of an AOL-style ``CD blizzard'', it would probably have little credibility.

Re:Have you ever thought about the fact that....

[WetCat]

I am NOT satisfied with windows software I got.
I got Ms Works and that's it.
I have no MS Word or something and way too lazy to steal it.

I would like to download or even buy that CD with
good GNU/Free/BSD-like/X11-like software for windows (provided they're not stuck with vi and emacs as editors).

BTW, my great problem with vi is when I am exiting
insert mode (by pressing ESC) cursor shifts one position back. Is there any option/dialect of vi
where when you exit insert mode it allow to leave cursor alone if it's not a end of file?
It's really annoying.

Re:Have you ever thought about the fact that....

[FooBarWidget]

Who said anything about *all* Windows users being dissatisfied?
Frankly, I don't care wether you are satisfied or not. There are still lots and lots of people who *are* dissatisfied, or are simply looking for a better alternative.

Re:Have you ever thought about the fact that....

[madenosine]

You mean you are not satisfied with the amount of windows software you got.

Also, why don't you download the software? Whey you buy it, it isnt free.

Re:Have you ever thought about the fact that....

[WetCat]

What software do you want me to download? Warez? No thanks.

Re:Have you ever thought about the fact that....

[DoctorFrog]

Start with OpenOffice:

http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/build_64 1d/index.html#binaries

Re:This is the correct way to fight the MS monopol

[YAN3D]

Most of my friends are computer illiterate. Me thinks the reason linux is not taking off the way it should is because the general population simply doesn't care. If the OS that came with their computer works, they wouldn't spend a saturday aternoon installing linux. If RH or other linux distros were pre-installed on retail boxes, people would use linux. Simple huh?

Not the answer...

[sheldon]

The success of software has little to do with marketing plans. It really has nothing to do with conspiracies, sneaking it in the door, subversion, etc. The success relies solely upon what the software does and how well it does it. If it's cool enough, it will spread by word of mouth alone.

People don't care if the source is available... People don't care if it is licensed under the GPL.

People don't care if the software is free, but it is a really nice perk. They'll pay you for software which is cool, but they'll also more than happily download it if it's free. Especially when we go back to my first point, and the software does something unique and does it well. Look at the success of Napster, Kazaa, ZoneAlarms, etc. all available as free downloads.

If the software is already good, and cool, you won't need to be subversive.

So the answer is... Write better software. Software that does things that people want to do. Or maybe that can be simplified to "Build it, and they shall come." or some other cliche.

Re:This is the correct way to fight the MS monopol

[caspper69]

The only thing that can stop Linux from eventually succeeding Windows on the desktop is either laws to prevent it from happening or not enforcing laws that will allow it to happen.

This is a closed minded view from an OSS person. You imply that the only reason Linux WILL succeed is if laws are written to make it succeed, or if laws are broken preventing it from succeeding. That is wrong. Linux will succeed or fail on its own merits and the inertia of the market. Despite what you may think, a law changing MS business practices is not going to make Linux magically appear on everyone's desktop. Linux not only has to be a superior product with (REAL) superior usability (not just by a techie), but it will have to fight against market inertia (read: the masses), which is a fickle and uneducated group (as a whole, NOT individually). That's the one thing OSS has yet to do: write software with Joe User in mind, and with the documentation to back it up. As sad as it is to say, until that happens, Joe User will continue to ignore Linux and the much larger OSS community in general. This has NOTHING to do with what happens to MS in court, nor should it.

From the Mac side...

[Otter]

There's (going to be, at least) a big market for this kind of thing on MacOS, where the arrival of a new operating system has created a lot of holes in the lineup of available software. Projects like Fink, XDarwin and the others have been really useful in making it easy to find and install existing free software.

I've also found a number of Java apps on Freshmeat that run fine on OS X, and were certainly less painful than the only native alternatives. Those would also be worth collecting and distributing.

Besides, this is a great opportunity to grab the kind of mindshare apps like Newswatcher and Fetch had on Classic.

Re:From the Mac side...

[feldsteins]

Interesting. Time will tell if you're right. I guess maybe it depends on how you look at it. I mean, since Gimp (for example) can now run on OS X it's user base might jump dramatically. OTOH, this probably translates into a negligeable perecentage of Mac users as a whole. Believe me, I don't think Adobe is afraid of Gimp. No professional Photoshop-using shops are even considering switching, I can assure you.

I actually think that within a couple of years it will be the UNIX community that benefits most from the association with the Macintosh, rather than the other way around. Think about it. Tons of commercial applications running on OS X mean that porting some of them to other *NIX platforms might be on the black side of the cost/benefit analysis sheet for the first time ever. Bingo, you suddenly have Photoshop for Linux. You get the idea.

I guess my main point is that it's would mean a lot more to the *NIX community to get Photoshop than getting Gimp means to the Macintosh community. Whether it'll actually happen that way, who knows.

Re:From the Mac side...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehe, Apple to convert average users to OSS ? I'll drink to that !

Re:From the Mac side...

[Otter]

I'm not talking about Gimp displacing Photoshop, but about niches where there's no good native OS X app available at all. There's a lot of frustration among OS X adopters and not-yet-adopters and there's a real opportunity for even unpolished free apps to make an impact.

Even with Gimp, I realize that it's not displacing Photoshop among professionals, but I'm not buying Photoshop for my personal laptop. Thanks to the Fink guys, it was trivial to install Gimp.

Incidentally, Adobe used to have fairly strong support for Photoshop on Unix, until the Unix graphics workstation market got crushed by NT.

Easy to use Help?

[Telastyn]

Eh? maybe it's just me, but in 7 or so years using windows, I've never once had the MS help actually solve my problem.

Re:Easy to use Help?

[madenosine]

Yeah....everytime I called up, they would just say RTFM

Re:Easy to use Help?

[Kintanon]

I think the Help reference was for Applications. I know I've had a lot of Windows apps that had REALLY useful helpfiles. Microsoft help is always a steaming pile, but other apps have great help interfaces. And he's right, that's lacking in a lot of Linux apps. I think Linux as an OS has gone plenty far enough that all it really needs now is to be prettified some. It's the applications that now need work in order to garner mainstream usage and acceptance.

Kintanon

Lots of Free Windows Software

[aking137]

The site: www.gnusoftware.com, which is nothing officially to do with GNU, is a collection of links to open source Windows projects. I've already used it to compile some pretty useful CDs to give away to people.

App Bloat

[barnaclebarnes]

This sounds like a good idea as long as they keep it to best-of-breed products. One of the things I find annoying (as well as great) about Linux distros is the sheer number of applications avaialable. I would rather the distro only gave me 1 top quality CD palyer installed to start with and 1 browser, one office suite, etc. Then later if I wanted to allow me to try others.

Hopefully for this Windows CD they can stick with just a few top qualtiy products.

/b

Re:This is the correct way to fight the MS monopol

[delta407]

we must first get them to use alternatives to MS Office

I strongly agree. But, the problem is, there's no good reason to switch. Everyone and their mother (well, most people's mothers) has Word on the desktop. Open-source equivalents must not simply "cooperate with" Microsoft products (by reading their file formats correctly) but, to give people an incentive to switch, must have things that Microsoft Office doesn't.

People like the look and feel of Office. (Really. Microsoft hires UI people.) Office has a good help system (once you disable Clippy, it is actually useful). The Office suite is tightly-integrated and actually pulls it off well. Office does VBA. Office puts little squigglies underneath mis-spelled words. People can figure out how to do a "mail merge" pretty easily -- make a list under Access, point the Mail Merge Wizard to it, and point and click your way to a set of letters and matching envelopes.

So, to be successful, an open-source office suite must do all of these things, as well as offer something that Microsoft Office doesn't. For some, that may be easy licensing. For others, that may be speed. For others still, that may be size. Or compatibility. Open-source Office alternatives face a tough road.

The only thing that can stop Linux from eventually succeeding Windows on the desktop is either laws to prevent it from happening or not enforcing laws that will allow it to happen.

No, quite simply, the only thing that can stop Linux from taking over the desktop is the end-user. Laws are a pesky matter, yes, but if the end-user doesn't like it, it doesn't matter. If they can't open up their e-mail attachments it doesn't matter. If they can't copy-and-paste between programs it doesn't matter. Besides, some -- lots of people don't want to know about the insides of their computers; they don't care about file permissions, latency-reducing kernel patches, or IP multicast. They want their computer to "work". When they click on that spreadsheet, it had better open.

The main probelm seems to be...

[EnglishTim]

Looking at their forums, a lot of the people who contribute (to the forums, at least...) seem to be primarily Linux people who may use Windows a bit. As a result there's a load of people advocating crazy things like putting vim or emacs on the CD... Even programs like the GIMP are going to feel odd to most Windows users with their appalling X-style load/save dialogs...

Re:The main probelm seems to be...

[peddrenth]

Try telling windows users to switch to a Gimp which doesn't support GIF files. How does anyone plan to open their files with it?

Re:The main probelm seems to be...

[/dev/trash]

Try telling windows users to switch to a Gimp which doesn't support GIF files. How does anyone plan to open their files with it?

Strange I just opened some gif's yesterday with GIMP 1.2

Re:The main probelm seems to be...

[peddrenth]

Strange I just opened some gif's yesterday with GIMP 1.2


In the Windows version? Without having to declare that Unisys' patent doesn't apply in your country and download a special patch?

Re:The main probelm seems to be...

[/dev/trash]

yep

Re:The main probelm seems to be...

[spitzak]

The patent covers the writing algorithim. GIMP reads .gif files just fine. I'm not sure what it does when writing, it either refuses (which would be bad) or it writes a non-compressed version (there is an algorithim to write something which the LZW can read but it does not use any patented code). Another possibility when writing is to write a .png file and just claim it is a .gif.

Re:The main probelm seems to be...

[fireklar]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that GIFs bite.

It's the other way around

[FooBarWidget]

Linux shouldn't support more games, more games should support Linux! :-)

Open Source Quality

[GdoL]

A Open Source Project Quality depends only on yours skills as a programmer. If you feel thar the program isn't as good as it should you are free to improve it to feel your needs. That the strenght of it and should be more publicided.

To do a compilation of this sort will give the wrong impression. The idea that a open source application is a static thing that people should accept.

Aqua

[bogusbrainbonus]

I believe, and this is only intuition and foresight (be it bad or good) speaking, that GUI is called or will be called... Aqua. *DISCLAIMER* Comment made on a lazy sunny afternoon day without much thinking put into it. Don't flame me too bad, it's already warm enough here.*END DISCLAIMER*

I like the idea - a few suggestions

[bushboy]

The first thing that comes to mind is :-

Cost =
User interest/Company interest
Distribution
Marketing
Licencing

I think that there could be enough user interest at present, so :-

You need to find a distribution model that doesn't involve people having to pay anything for the distribution itself, yet still has large volume - the solution is to approach a magazine like PC Format with a 'close-to-finished' product. Of course, you have the "traditional" web ISO download.

Marketing is the tricky part - you can try the free route 'open source marketing', which amounts to email spam or link swapping, or, you can use a more traditional money-sucking route and do a full marketing campaign.

Trying to team up with a magazine partner would solve that.

The licencing is the issue - however, again, a magazine can help you there.

So - it's simple - all you have to do is to impress the heck out of someone like PC Format.

OSS = CD == bad idea

[tomstdenis]

Simple reason

#1
Reading specs from C:/mingw32/bin/../lib/gcc-lib/mingw32/2.95.3-6/spe cs
gcc version 2.95.3-6 (mingw special)

#2
Reading specs from /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-cygwin/2.95.3-5/spec s
gcc version 2.95.3-5 (cygwin special)

#3
Reading specs from /cygdrive/c/devkitadv/bin/../lib/gcc-lib/arm- agb-elf/3.0.2/specs
Configured with: ../gcc-3.0.2/configure --prefix=/devkitadv --build=i686-pc-cygwin --host=i686-pc-cygwin --target=arm-agb-elf --
-cpu=arm7tdmi --without-local-prefix --with-newlib --with-headers=../newlib-1.9.0/newlib/libc/include / --enable-multilib --enabl
terwork --enable-languages=c++ --enable-targets=arm-elf,arm-coff,arm-aout --disable-win32-registry --disable-threads -v
Thread model: single
gcc version 3.0.2 (DevKit-Advance)

etc...

In case they didn't notice OSS is not really stagnant software. Putting it on a CD will be kinda useless because the software will be outdated in a month or two at most. Sure I guess putting only full whole [e.g. v1, v2, etc...] releases on it would be nice but just grabbing any old piece of OSS is a bad idea.

Tom

Re:OSS = CD == bad idea

[spitzak]

Nonsense. By this argument commercial software is useless because it is outdated, too. You don't think the programmers at commercial companies are sitting around doing nothing, do you? They are writing the next version, and thus because this new version exists, the one people are buying is just as outdated as the OSS cd!

Re:OSS = CD == bad idea

[tomstdenis]

Commercial software tends to actually hit milestones before going widespread.

I mean how many OSS partially working projects can you find on the net? A billion or two.

Thats good though, the net can accomodate stuff changing. A fixed CD cannot.

What I meant in my previous post is that not all OSS would be appropriate. In fact very few projects would be ideal. I mean a half-assed partially completed work in progress is of no use to me and just putting it on a CD as "filler" is cheap.

Tom

Debian GNU/w32

[Abnormal Coward]

theres currently a debian project to do just that. have a look at:

http://debian-cygwin.sourceforge.net/

First of all....

[Anonymous Coward]

...You are all insane. How many users or windows really want to use awk grep or emacs? If they wanted those things, they would have already have *nix.

It should contain substitutes for expensive software on windows, period. Things like openoffice, mirandaICQ, Mozilla etc, the things they mentioned. Don't confuse people by giving them a bunch of stuff they have never seen or care about. If someone is predisposed to want unixy tools, they know where to get them. Everyone else doesn't want them.

I think this is a great idea, and I would happily burn several of these CD's packaged along with an informational packet to distribute free at places like the library or community colleges. These people are interested in free useful stuff, and would latch onto this.

"free" software (all variants) needs to be promoted on ALL platforms that frankly, are not going away anytime soon.

If someone wants a linux or the like, this is a good first step. If you want them to use Linux right away, you could do the same thing with about any linux distro available already.

This just in!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fsla shdot.org%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&do ctype=%28detect+automatically%29

I'd be happy to help...

[DaedalusLogic]

ALL my Windows development tools are either OSS or designed to interact with OSS in the case that the client app is closed source... and even then its still a free closed source app. I heard it expressed in an earlier discussion on OpenOffice that making a Swiss Army Knife of a suite isn't always the best way to fight Commercial Apps. Smaller, faster tools that get the job done are very compelling. Compare MS Access to using MySQLFront (not OSS but free and the server is OSS...) Access has got a lot of wizards and tools to make tasks easier for a novice. However, when you outgrow that those features don't mean much.

Also would like to say donating time and spare cashflow to the development of these tools is critical to making these apps "polished". So practice what you preach and really support the coders creating these cool tools.

Good idea

[sulli]

I switched to Mozilla a couple of weeks ago (which sucked ass when I tried it before) and love it. Better than IE or old netscape, mainly because of one killer feature: popup killer. Now I would love to try other stuff that is as reliable and easy to install - GIMP and OpenOffice would be great if they work as advertised, as would a reliable, working, non-shitty, ad-free Gnutella client - so for me this cd would be quite useful, if shipped for win and mac os 9.

But let me reiterate what others have said: it must be EASY to use. No editing text to config. No compiling. No weird choices between tools nobody outside the free software world has ever heard of. Just a small, coherent set of useful applications that just happen to be free. Do that and you'll be amazed at how many people use and distribute this.

Re:Good idea

[Arandir]

Make it easy, yes. Make it simplistic, no. Dumb it down, no.

Unfortunately, too many of the people in charge of specing out software don't understand the difference. Mozilla isn't too bad, and it certainly kicks IE's butt, but I really would like a command line option to specify mail or browser, so I can have two different icons on my desktop, one for mail and one for browser. It doesn't have to be complicated. Maybe that option is there, but I haven't found it yet through trial and error, reading the documentation, or consulting with Miss Cleo.

What's harder? Having the distribution/installer set up these icons once, or having the use always start a browser to send an email?

I'm not picking on Mozilla. It's really great, and that problem is extremely minor. But it's typical of a lot of software. Because someone decided that the command line is evil, all the intermediate and advanced users are penalized because the newbie might, just might, discover that there's a command line option to start the mail client and run away screaming in terror.

Re:Good idea

[sean23007]

gnucleus is a reliable, working, non-shitty, ad-free Gnutella client. I think you would be quite pleased with it.

Re:Good idea

[baba]

Mozilla is the only OSS software I currently use. I tried Linux for a couple of years. As much as I would love to use other OSS stuff, it's just not practical.

I think what makes Mozilla unique is that the folks writing and supporting the project by and large have no dogmatic attachments to typical OSS flame subjects. It must be the only OSS project that is truly platform agnostic, and if anything, works better under Windows.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

How about: -
mozilla -mail
?

Re:Good idea

[Arandir]

Oh that's it! Just go embarrass me in front of the whole world why don't you!

Did I confuse this with Netscape6 or an earlier Mozilla release? I don't know. But I do recall one where that didn't work under Windows, and it was extremely annoying.

Oh well, if CmdrTaco can get away with not being able to spell, I can get away with sticking my foot in my mouth.

Re:Good idea

[Arandir]

Ah, I see my problem now. It works just fine under Linux and FreeBSD, but those command line options are horribly broken on this Solaris build I got. If there was some documentation somewhere, I could have figured it out. But docs aren't for newbies, so I should have known.

Re:Good idea

[evilviper]

popup killer

Popup killer you say? Do you mean that you have half a brain and figured out how to disable javascript? Hmm, I didn't think so.

Re:Good idea

[mrroach]

> Maybe that option is there, but I haven't found
> it yet through trial and error, reading the
> documentation, or consulting with Miss Cleo.

hmmm, let's see...

~$ mozilla --help

...
-addressbook Start with the adressbook.
-news Start with news.
-jsconsole Start with Javascript Console
-edit Start with editor.
-chrome Load the specified chrome.
-mail Start with mail.

so to start with mail, you run "mozilla -mail"

wow, go figure

X doesn't have anything to do with it

[FooBarWidget]

X is just a graphics system, similar to the Windows GDI. It does not, and cannot stand in the way of making apps look good.

There are only 2 major toolkits: GTK+ and QT.
Even though they both look different (default theme), they look similar enough to not confuse people. I have yet to meet a person who can't see that a GTK+ button is a button, or that a QT button is a button.

I also can't see how the window manager can make things look unpolished. If you like it, stick with it, and *ALL* apps will have the same window borders. If you don't like the current wm, then switch to one you do like.

As for the "brain-damaged font model": it has been "fixed" (Xft), and both GTK+ 2.0 and QT 2.2 supports Xft. GTK+ 1.2 also supports it, using GdkXft.

The reason why we still don't use 1 unified toolkit yet is because many people have different opinions. Person 1 loves the QT look but hates the GTK+ look, while person 2 loves the GTK+ look but hates the QT look. One person likes C++, the other sends his C++ compilers to /dev/null. You can't just tell people to go for 1 toolkit until you have something that satisfy all of them.
In the Windows world, there are different opinions too, except that people are more or less forced to use the standard Windows toolkit (though I have seen quite a lot of apps that don't exactly look like other Windows apps).

Re:X doesn't have anything to do with it

[anonymous cowpie]

There are only 2 major toolkits: GTK+ and QT.

Last time I checked, Motif was a major toolkit. And there are dozens of "minor" toolkits that are still in use. But even two is too many if your goal is system-wide UI consistency.

As for the "brain-damaged font model": it has been "fixed" (Xft), and both GTK+ 2.0 and QT 2.2 supports Xft. GTK+ 1.2 also supports it, using GdkXft.

That's great for applications that support it, and if you can get it working. Most apps don't support it.

In the Windows world, there are different opinions too, except that people are more or less forced to use the standard Windows toolkit.

It's quite possible to implement Win32 controls that render themselves differently from the standard ones. But most apps don't do this. Why? UI consistency is one reason. (Laziness is another.) The same goes for the common dialogs.

The basic problem with the X way of doing things is that it pushes the most basic decisions about look-and-feel down to the individual application, and the result is a mish-mash of conflicting GUI widgets and key bindings. That's fine if you prefer choice and flexibility over consistency, but that's not what Joe and Jane User prefer -- to them it's a jumbled, messy eyesore.

Re:X doesn't have anything to do with it

[FooBarWidget]

Last time I checked, Motif was a major toolkit.

Does "last time" mean "3 years ago"?

And there are dozens of "minor" toolkits that are still in use. But even two is too many if your goal is system-wide UI consistency.

Why? I've never seen anybody who gets confused by the different looks. They just think "hey, they look different, cool!"
I mean, anybody who can recognize a GTK button can recognize a QT button.

That's great for applications that support it, and if you can get it working. Most apps don't support it.

If the toolkits support then, then all apps who use those toolkits also support Xft *out-of-the-box*.
In GTK+ 2.0 it's as simple as setting the env variable GDK_USE_XFT to 1. Yes, that's all, no editing in configfiles.

That's fine if you prefer choice and flexibility over consistency, but that's not what Joe and Jane User prefer -- to them it's a jumbled, messy eyesore.

Well I don't see Joe or Jane use Linux. And as long as computer manufactures aren't allowed to install any OS besides Windows, I don't see that happen any time soon.

Quality is Relative

[Lucas Membrane]

Abiword is mentioned as one piece of quality software. I use it, but now only to read new word docs that my MS-Office 95 can't read. Why? Last time I tried to print a 2-page letter with Abiword, it came out on 3 pages. First page and last page were just about normal, except that the middle page contained just 1 line that should have come out on the first page but didn't quite fit. I was using a popular HP printer, so it wasn't oddball equipment. The Abiword site admits that they are small and of limited capabilities vs the bigger vendors of WP software. What they have done is very good for a small team, but why make a poster child out of something that is only a usually adequate second choice? The hassles of one document screwed up like mine just about cancel all the savings of going to a free package for one desktop in a large business.

Re:Quality is Relative

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I'm concerned, that error you mentioned is a show stopper. Totally unacceptable. If it is broken, don't ship the product. Abiword should know better than to foist this shit off onto a largely clueless public. I love most open source software, but I've yet to find any open source project that really got it when it came to software quality. Even screwy Theo's pet project is rife with tangled webs of spaghetti code (take a look at the source to their ftp server for example).

What passes for the "quality" you find in open source is mostly due to a Monte Carlo methodology of ten zillion iterations. True quality assurance is probably unobtainable in open source software because there is no enforcement mechanism. Folks are reluctant to step on someone else's toes. A good QA guy could pick any file from just about any open source project, and within in a couple of minutes list dozens of QA software defects without breaking a sweat.

By defects I mean all sorts of things from uninitialized variables, unused variables, missing prototypes, implicit type conversions, and on and on. And when you get into issues like complexity metrics -- well that is a whole new can of worms, and probably the most common and most grave error common to all open source projects. One does not have to look far to find procedures in OSS source code which will peg the meter of any complexity analysis. Open Source Software has not even begun to address these issues.

Re:This is the correct way to fight the MS monopol

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if the court decision allows hardware distributors to sell systems with linux ready-installed, without getting penalised, then it will make a difference.

are you happy with your software?

[timothy]

a) What makes you say it's a fact that most people are happy with the software they have? I see just the opposite. Most people tolerate the software they have to different degrees, but wish it was better. (Nothing to do with licensing; this seems true across the board.)

b) I don't belive that most users, deep down, "really want open source software." I think most people don't care overmuch about that issue. I like open source software though. YMMV. If I thought that everyone already wanted this, I might devote more time to gardening or something.

c) Slashdot runs interesting (to us) reader-submitted items, and a smattering of other things. This is one. That a large number of them have to do with software freedom reflects the tastes of the posters.

timothy

Microsoft is proof that what you write is nonsense

[FreeUser]

The success of software has little to do with marketing plans. It really has nothing to do with conspiracies, sneaking it in the door, subversion, etc. The success relies solely upon what the software does and how well it does it.

I know this is a troll and I probably shouldn't respond, but someone needs to point out that what you say is, of course, is demonstrably false. If it were true, Microsoft would not have the monopoly it currently enjoys. Its products have consistently been inferior to its competitors in nearly every measurable degree since the late 1980s, yet they have a virtual lock on the desktop and have had for years. Why? Not because their products do anything well, but because of marketing muscle and a criminal willingness to violate the law again and again, even while in court defending against earlier such violations.

In short, it is all about marketing, conspiracy, and subversion ... most end users aren't even qualified to recognize quality (and Microsoft has trained them to not expect it), much less choose on the basis of it. They choose based on what is marketed to them, nothing more, and currently Microsoft has 99% of all the marketing dollars, earned through ongoing illegal leveraging of their monopoly that goes back a good ten years.

Pile O OOSoftware Won't

[4of12]

Yes, there's a lot of great open source software out there that many average people could find useful.

But there's a lot out there, too, that are just the 240th way to catalog MP3 titles.

What's needed is for the collection to be a subset of the OSS universe, applications which have been tested for being relevant, useful and reliable.

A well integrated CD like this could do wonders.

One of the hindrances that we contend with is fragmentation of a finite user community, in the sense that given 10 users of a specific kind application such as a Word-like WYSIWYG document preparation system, 2 will be doing Abiword, 2 will be doing KWord, 1 doing LyX, 4 doing StarOffice, etc.

The CD integrator has to be brave enough to choose one good application of each kind to build a complete, but minimal system. End users appreciate that orthogonality. [Not limiting them in any way - advanced users will find out about the alternatives and their benefits and limitations all by themselves.]

But most importantly, there's likely to be a larger community of people that can help new users with any particular application and also more developers furthering the particular application because of big marquee glory for something that's used by tens of thousands of users.

It's not the OSS . . .

[Devlin-du-GEnie]

it's the partitioning (umm . . . mostly). Other comments about usability and feature sets are valid, too.

Joe User is terrified about messing around with the overall layout of his harddrive. J.U. also probably hasn't done a full backup in months.

If OEMs could provide alternative operating systems pre-installed, a lot of this barrier would vanish.

Re:It's not the OSS . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

How does installing a word processor require repartitioning your hard drive?

Jeez... do you guys not even *read*?

Parents & Friends - Not

[feldsteins]

"...eventually bring them over to a completely free system on their own time."

That implies running a "free" operating system, probably Linux.

"...your parents/friends..."

In my world this group would include people who aren't computer professionals and who's machines aren't otherwise professionally managed.

Having established all that... You're kidding me, right?

The last time I had run linux was ...gosh, had to be at least 3 years ago. I installed it...went "hmm" for a few weeks.. and then wiped it. A couple of weeks ago I thought it was high time to give it another look. Why not? I had listened to Linux users in these forums proclaiming how good this-or-that distribution has gotten that I kind of assumed that the operating system really was ready for prime time.

Uh...no.

I managed to get Yellow Dog 2.2 installed on my Titanium PowerBook, sure. But after having done it I was stunned at how...well, rudimentary the installer was. In spite of endless "the installer really has gotten good now" comments. Well, if by "good" you mean "nowhere near the usability of commercial desktop operating systems" then yeah I'll agree with that.

I managed to get my wireless networking going. I found out how to do a few other things. But the main thing I discovered is that Linux hasn't really gotten usable enough for novices. Somehow I expected more.

Frankly I don't care if some Linux zealot mods me down or lables my comment "troll" or "flamebait." While you're doing it, bear this in mind - I'm doing this for you. The Linux community really needs to take seriously the idea that a novice needs to be able to install, configure, troubleshoot, and maintain the thing without endless arcane documentation or professional help. If your fellow Linux users/developers won't tell you, I will.

Linux will never be more than a server OS and a geek toy until / unless the usability radically changes.

Re:Parents & Friends - Not

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you however, I take issue with your blanket asessment that may be based on incomplete experience.

Perhaps you're judging the whole gem by looking at one facet (Yellow Dog's.)

Re:Parents & Friends - Not

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen, brother. On my #2 box I trashed my copy of SusE-the-bitch_7.3 weeks ago and have never regreted installing WinME. Now my fossil Ls-10e & aha1542cf are happy.

Success is possible

[OSSturi]

I'm giving away CDs with the latest stable Mozilla and OpenOffice versions away for quite some time now. I'm always including the Linux and the Windows version and the appropriate spellchecker. This works quite well. My girlfriends parents have a new PC with XP and Word preinstalled. They're using OpenOffice now for spreadsheets and drawings. They still use Netscape 6.2 though. Be careful to choose the right moment to convince them and take the time helping them installing things. Give a short introduction and they'll find out the rest themselves. In a few years they'll be doing the same with others... OSS takes it's time, the source is ours, it won't run away.

Preaching to the choir.... Re:Cygwin Too

[supabeast!]

Anyone who needs those utilities already knows how to get them.People who use Windows or MacOS over Linux do it because the GUI handles all the details for them, not because they want to manage it all from the command line.

Re:Preaching to the choir.... Re:Cygwin Too

[Surak]

I can tell you at least one thing that would be considered useful in Cygwin to GUI Windows users: the Cygwin Xfree86 port, configured to remotely control UNIX boxes ala Hummingbird Exceed.

It wouldn't have the mass popularity that, say Mozilla or OpenOffice offer, but it would get the CD in the door of shops like GM that have Unix boxes setup to run stuff like Unigraphics. These places have users that need a major Unix app like Unigraphics, but don't necessarily need it all the time. For instance, I supported Unigraphics at GM and didn't really need a UG seat all the time, so I ran Hummingbird Exceed.

But at GM, like all the Big Three automakers, its difficult to Hummingbird Exceed on your seat because it costs money. So some users that would otherwise be using Exceed end up walking up to a shared walkup Unix box.

If these people could access Unix boxes remotely from their Windows seat for FREE they'd do it en masse.

Just a thought.

Re:Preaching to the choir.... Re:Cygwin Too

[cscx]

Actually to be completely honest, the XFree86 port is shit. I've tried it, and it had some issues in screen refreshing, even the startup "Welcome to Solaris" screen was often garbled. I switched to Exceed and all my problems were solved. Exceed comes with some other goodies too, and a _real nice_ window manager (I don't have to put up with TWM; it's from the stone age practically.)

Re:Preaching to the choir.... Re:Cygwin Too

[zangdesign]

For those times when you have to go to the command line in Windows, some of the command names are completely different. If you absolutely must include the command line utils, then I would suggest aliasing or wrapping in a shell script to get the command name and syntax to something more familiar.

The commandline tools in Windows (all versions) are pretty brain-dead, since they are leftovers from DOS.

Re:Preaching to the choir.... Re:Cygwin Too

[supabeast!]

Running the Cygwin XFree is a bit much for trying to convert Microsoft zealots to open source. They need something easier and simpler, like VNC with a VNC server on the other end (This is why Exceed sells so well: point-and-click.).

Re:Preaching to the choir.... Re:Cygwin Too

[Ster]

Ehhhh, I wouldn't go quite that far.

I use Mac OS X regularly, and I keep the Terminal open all the time. There are just cases when it's easier to `locate` or `find` than wait for Sherlock to launch. Or, if I need to check a spelling, its a lot faster to `grep theWord /usr/share/dict/web2` than to launch Word.

OS X does a good job of hiding the *most common* details behind the GUI, but if you want to do interesting stuff, you still have to pop open a term and play with conf files. And actually, that's probably the way it should be: make the 10% that's used 90% of the time really easy to access, and leave the 90% that's used 10% of the time for the people who have looked into it and know what they're doing.
-Ster

Re:Preaching to the choir.... Re:Cygwin Too

[maxume]

From what I understand, UG 17 is finally usable on windows, as it is a native app now. Is GM waiting to upgrade because of the versioning issues it introduces, or are they just stupid?

Re:Preaching to the choir.... Re:Cygwin Too

[Surak]

Actually, UG has been very usable as a native Windows app since version 16. Most of the suppliers that do UG work are on Windows 2000, while GM has been moving there, but only very slowly....

With 30,000 seats, changing the infrastructure is more of a PITA then you might realize. You've gotta retrain users (a lot of UG designers don't know Windows ... really. :), get the networking infrastructure in place with servers, replacing NIS with ActiveDirectory, create platform standards, test everything out...for applications that you take for granted on Unix, you've gotta find Windows equivalents... you've gotta get things like the PDL (a set of UG plugins written mostly in C/UFUNC) running right on Windows...

They've got a few seats running the last year or so, but its still not considered production ready. :)

Re:Preaching to the choir.... Re:Cygwin Too

[supabeast!]

I think you are missing my point. For people who already know about that stuff, the command line is great, and cygwin is a wonderful option. But when it comes to converting people over to Open Source, trying to hook people on *NIX command line utilities really isn't too likely to get you anywhere.

Re:This is the correct way to fight the MS monopol

[ReelOddeeo]

That is wrong. Linux will succeed or fail on its own merits and the inertia of the market.

While I agree with almost everything you said in your post, this sentence was the one that got me.

Other factors can cause a product to suceed or fail other than its merits. This is especially true with (1) a monopoly, and (2) an entrenched monopoly, and (3) a monopololistic player who plays dirty, even willing to commit illegal acts.

I agree completely that a law is not going to make Linux magically appear on everyone's desktop. And I especially agree with what you say about making Linux usable by Joe User. But supposing that these conditions were to be met, I disagree that the merits alone will cause a product to succeed when an entrenched monopoly is willing to play dirty.

It is also good that you seem to observe that the inertia of the market can cause a superior product to fail.

Free isn't enough

[gone.fishing]

This is a great idea! But, free in and of itself is not enough. The software has to be good (and great would be better) but, there also needs to be a support mechanisim and, believe it or not some "marketing" done to make this software acceptable to major players (like businesses, schools, and government).

When you bring the disk to a decision maker in an IS department one of the first questions bound to be asked is "Who else is using it?" and that will be followed closely with other questions like "If I use it, how will I get support?" The person providing the software will need to have answers to these questions before it will be taken seriously by many managers. These answers can be provided on the CD-ROM and support can be provided via web pages or email.

Believe it or not, in some of the cases, the fact that it is free will cause concern. There are some managers out there who have the mindset that nothing that is free is worth anything. They just don't understand.

Missing the point...

[Lendrick]

One all-too-common mistake is the assumption that OSS means Linux/Unix. There are, at the very least, windows ports of many open-source programs that originated on Linux. Trouble is, the vast majority of these use their own (klunky) widget sets instead of Windows' native widgets.

Mind you, GTK works great under Linux, but its windows implementation is slow, weak, and buggy. It would be nice to see applications like X-Chat, The Gimp, and OpenOffice ported over to Windows using the standard Windows widgets. Yes, it would take more work, but it would also make them a heck of a lot more useable in the eyes of the average user. Nobody wants to use software that klunks.

The real bottom line is: On Windows, X has nothing to do with it. It's the fact that Windows ports are secondary to original Linux code, and don't get the attention they need to make them solid.

Problem is ease of use

[0x0d0a]

Take the GIMP. Quite powerful plugins. But nothing like the easy-to-use with presets plugins you get on Photoshop. Every time I see a GIMP plugin, I think "this is neat, but a non-techie won't go for it".

Take edge-detection. AFAIK, not a big deal in Photoshop. There are *three* different plugins implemented for gimp, each named after the algorithm they implement. This is cool if you're into image processing, not image editing.

If you run out and download plugins you can get cool stuff, too. The problem is that downloading, compiling, and installing plugins is not going to work for new users. And most of those plugins aren't oriented toward design sorts either -- more towards image processing engineers.

Let me give an example. A tasty-sounding plugin for the GIMP is Artistic->Oilify. Oil painting, cool! In Photoshop, if you run something like this, you'll get a little window with a preview, a bunch of bundled presets named "big gloppy brush", "Van Gogh", etc. In the GIMP, you get a frame called "Parameter Settings" containing a checkbox called "Use Intensity Algorithm" and a slider entitled "Mask Size". Now, maybe it's just me, but I doubt anyone but the original coder k(or someone that's looked at the code, or is familiar with this family of image processing algorithms) knows what the "use Intensity Algorithm" does. There's no preview, so no easy way to check. Mask Size doesn't mean anything to a non-coder.

The GIMP (1.2.3 ximian) still doesn't bundle even have a good, preset-capable, previewing drop-shadow plugin. This is something that people want, and usually they don't want to still run out and create another layer, fill the selection, gaussian blur and then offset the new layer. It's work, and the 1% of the time they want some weird effects in their drop shadow, they can do things the hard way.

That means you shouldn't have a "alpha squared" value slider, you should have a "hairyness slider".

And this is the GIMP, which is billed as just about the most consumer-oriented app on Linux.

AbiWord is probably one of the closest apps here to what I'm talking about. Any word processor user will be familiar with most of the options.

Every feature has to be documented, tooltips be included, etc. if people really want to try to take over the commercial app market.

Something like Apple Guide or Windows Help needs to be implemented. Tooltips should be implemented more than once in a blue moon.

Now, I'm not asking for anything -- I'm happily using and hacking on the software out there, and it works nicely for me. But if the intent is to go after the commercial apps market, then a few areas need to be addressed.

Re:Problem is ease of use

[Christianfreak]

Completely agree about GIMP. But trying to tell this to the Gimp-developer crowd is a different story. My mom wanted to try GIMP because she couldn't afford Photoshop.

She hated it, just because it didn't *look* like Windows and nothing made sense to her (the algorithms and things you mentioned). I sent a message to Gimp-devel with some suggestions on how this could be helped (even asking for direction on how it could be implemented since I'm not a hardcore C coder), of course met only with flames. "Potato Shop Sucks!" etc.

I think half the problem with OSS is that developers implement what they think is cool and what is useful to them. Which is great! But if we want our software to take over the world we have to cater to the rest of people out there.

Re:Problem is ease of use

[Paul Komarek]

Interesting. I was going to offer "The Gimp" as a counterexample. In my case, though, the "victim" was a technical person (a developer) who couldn't afford Photoshop. He loved it, and I think he even went out and bought books for it.

So maybe this ISO should be targetted at technical folks using Windows.

-Paul Komarek

Re:Problem is ease of use

[Qbertino]

Bingo! You're right on. That's one of the reasons I bought CorelDraw/PhotoPaint for Linux.

PS has Kay's Power Tools built in solid. And Kay Krause once said something like this:
No fuckin' body stores his stuff in Folders that are stored in Folders that are strored in Folders.
In essence he said even the standard synonyms that 'doze uses are NOT easy to use.

Kay Krause turned the technical plugin thing into that what the term plugin actually implies. Snap it on and be done with it. A plugin that I have to compile before I can plug it in is not .. well.. a plugin.
PS has a solid bunch of plugins that explain themselves. They are easy to use and very powerfull, have previews and their default settings don't make the result look like someone shat on your pic.

Bottom Line:
Gimp is cool, but it's something like 5 years behind.

Integration == bad

[0x0d0a]

2. Integrate with other applications as well as office does

"Integration" is a bad thing. "Modularity" is good.

You can have modular software with a consistent interface that exchanges data via standard channels, regardless of what Microsoft says.

The best way to get people to use OSS...

[madmonkey]

... is not to hand out CD's full of it to your friends and neighbors who aren't really interested in the first place. The most effective way would be to convince the businesses that employ these people to use it. People want to use the same OS and software at home as they do at work. Remember that most people were more or less forced to learn Windows and MS Office for their job, and have no interest in learning new software when they are already familiar with Windows (and MS Office, IE, etc...). If they were required to use Linux at work, they would be much more likely to try it at home. Familiarity is the key. So try sending your OSS CD to local businesses, and be sure to stress that all the software contained therein is completely FREE... even for business use.

Re:Erm, not likely to win many converts to Abiword

[jgerman]

He didn't mispell it, it was a nod to pirating windows. You know, you down with opp. ;)

Re:This is the correct way to fight the MS monopol

[56ker]

" we must first get them to use alternatives to MS Office" - but don't the alternatives just work under Linux or are there Windows ports of Open Office, Star Office etc?

what about the free source

[guest12]

--most fo the free progs for windows are not given with source. would this make a difference ?

Re:what about the free source

[Anonymous Coward]

--most fo the free progs for windows are not given with source. would this make a difference ?

Not a good difference.

The crowd this is aimed at would find that very confusing and aggressive. Installing a Windows binary by double-clicking is high-tech adventure for this crowd. Thousands of huge files of gibberish which Windows doesn't know how to open[1] are goind to look really bad to this crowd. It would seem aggressive because if they noticed it, they would assume they would have to do something about it. Why else would all that stuff be presented, if not because they must do something?

The folks who are susceptible to this don;t know what source code means, and they treasure their ignorance. Anything which threatens them with learning will cause them to run screaming. They don't want to learn.

[1] Do you really think that some one with no compiler is going to have file associations set for .h and .c files in windows? Would you like to buy the Brooklyn bridge?

Start with Gaming

[Meech]

Start with games. One of my favorite games is bzflag. Check it out here.

KOffice Readers

[Linegod]

Excellent idea, now onto one of my backburner ideas. Someone needs to create a KOffice (KWord, KSpread, etc) reader that runs in Windows, so I can slowly wean everyone off MS Office formats. I know, I know, sending an editable file to people instead of a PDF is dense, but you have to start somewhere.

Re:This is the correct way to fight the MS monopol

[Shadarr]

It doesn't really matter what individual users want. The home computer is irrelevant, or if you prefer, gravy. The meat and potatos is and always has been the large institutions where the users work, who buy licenses by the thousands and dictate what the users will have access to. Software companies understand that, and they also know that if Joe User has MS Office at work, he'll probably buy it for home too because it's familiar.

Bullshit! Re:success?

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you think about it objectively, well, what are the differences between most, say, Windows software (commercial or shareware), and most open source software? [...] Well, hate to say it, but polish, ease of use, help systems: [...].

Sorry, but this is bullshit. If you are not accustomed to using Windos it's as difficult to use as a GNU/Linux box. The Windos help system isn't any more intuitve than man or info is. It's just that you have to learn some things if you change over.

Re:This is the correct way to fight the MS monopol

[Thing 1]

To get people to move to Linux, we must first get them to use alternatives to MS Office and other packaged software. Get them using the cross-platform software and then switching the underlying OS won't be as tough down the road.

This is, in fact, exactly the tactic Microsoft has already used.

When Microsoft started developing Windows 95, they already had Windows NT 3.something. They knew they wanted everyone to move to NT, as it was more stable and performed better. So when they made the "Designed for Windows 95" logo program, they made one of the qualifications for receiving that logo to be that the program ran on both Windows 95 and Windows NT.

6 years later they were able to produce Windows XP, on which almost all software written for Windows 9x will run.

I'm no big fan of MS, but I appreciate their solution. And you're right, in order to move people off Windows and onto Linux, a similar migration would have to occur.

Perhaps someone (Red Hat?) can start a "Designed for WINE" logo program, and require software that receives that logo to run on both Linux (under WINE) and Windows.

They're missing at least one major need

[5KVGhost]

I'm discouraged that their list of "contributions from the community" doesn't include anything at all about decent documentation. The fact that the first item is "cool graphics" isn't very promising, either.

Accurate, well-written, and current documentation is absolutely vital. They apparently plan to link to "full online documentation", which are probably the cobbled-together FAQs and HOWTOs that are already available, and that's not likely to be adequate.

What's really needed...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's really needed to convert people from MS Office to OpenOffice, is an OSS Clippy to ship with it.

Amusing typo

[Thing 1]

I got a kick out of the typo in this sentence (emphasis mine):

On TheOpenCD site, Omma asks for help with graphics for an installer, Web design, erase-of-use testers and free legal advice, among other things.

Now, just what type of tester performs that? ;-)

Correction Re:success?

[Anonymous Coward]

Firstly it's apt not apt-get, apt-get is just a binary that is part of apt. Secondly you can't compare rpm to apt because apt is a layer above packaging tools like rpm or dpkg.

Re:Correction Re:success?

[Da Schmiz]

Quoth the AC:

Firstly it's apt not apt-get, apt-get is just a binary that is part of apt. Secondly you can't compare rpm to apt because apt is a layer above packaging tools like rpm or dpkg.

Point taken. (Shows I'm a RedHat man, doesn't it?) But what I meant by mentioning apt was that the Windows world needs an installer that can fetch the appropriate files and automatically begin the installation process. If there was a cute-looking Windows front-end to apt, even if the back-end only unpacked zipfiles and ran setup.exe, a lot of clueless users would love it. Imagine if Joe Sixpack could just click "Get New Program" and type "Mozilla" in the box, and voila! Mozilla. If it were that easy, more people would do it.

I know, I know, all it takes is a quick Google search, download the file, double-click, follow the wizard -- what could be easier? -- but do you know how many Windows users don't even know about Google? For a lot of people, AOL search is the only thing they know how to use.

Never assume that ordinary people of average intelligence will manifest anything short of utter stupidity when confronted with a computer. For most of the /. community, computers and technology in general are intuitive; they can generalize knowledge of one application, interface, or platform and quickly begin using another. For the average non-technical person, computer "logic" is 100% counter-intuitive.

I believe this confusion stems somewhat from the fact that what the average person calls "logic" is nothing of the sort: rather, it's "common sense." Most people conclude that something is logical if it "makes sense." But computer logic is a cold, unforgiving mathematical concept, which is totally foreign to people who haven't been exposed to it. I think this is the major link between proficiency with computers and mathematics -- it's not that, on an everyday level, the details have much in common, but the underlying logical model is well-nigh identical.

Hmmm... seems I've gotten carried away. Sorry 'bout rambling on like that...

Re:Correction Re:success?

[G-funk]

Imagine if Joe Sixpack could just click "Get New Program" and type "Mozilla" in the box, and voila! Mozilla. If it were that easy, more people would do it.

They can. It's called a browser. And tucows.

Re:Correction Re:success?

[Da Schmiz]

They can. It's called a browser. And tucows.

Apparently you failed to read my comment.

1. Do not assume Joe Sixpack knows what Tucows is, or even, having heard some "works with computers" person mention it, know how to get there.
   
   
2. Do not assume that, having heard about this thing called Mozilla that's supposed to be like Netscape, (which is the other thing that does what Internet Explorer does, that they may have heard about), only it's free, and somehow better, that Joe Sixpack will be willing to risk getting a virus by downloading scary program files off the Internet, especially if it's from crazy site with a stupid logo that's probably run by gasp -- hackers!
   
   
3. To quote myself, from the parent post: "Never assume that ordinary people of average intelligence will manifest anything short of utter stupidity when confronted with a computer."

Go back and read the rest of my argument.

People saying "it's easy, all you need is [Website X] or [Utility Y] or [Technology Z]" may be all that's needed for your average slashdotter, but Joe Sixpack needs a little more help.

It's amazing how some people can be very intelligent about some things and yet totally stupid about others. Hmmm... maybe that should be my new sig.

Re:Correction Re:success?

[Anonymous Coward]

but do you know how many Windows users don't even know about Google? For a lot of people, AOL search is the only thing they know how to use.

In other news Google announced that it was to power AOL search....


(I kid ye not, look at the link)

Well...

[jawtheshark]

Actually I created one recently. We needed to roll out a CD for doctors who were going to use our project. Since it is for the government they are hard to shell the money out. I evaluated a lot of installers and there seemed to be no GNU of free installed. And all I tried sucked majorly or costed money.

So I did the only sane thing to do: I created one myself. It's the first time I actually came accross those infamous undocumented Windows API function calls. Now before you say: "it was probably more expensive for your company to pay you to create one than actually buy one". That would be true if they could have sold me on another project, but with the economic slowdown I was sitting "idle" anyway. It occupied me, and it was useful in the same time.

Unfortunately I made it on company time, so I don't legally own it. However I could re-create it in my spare time. Could be a fun little project.

work on Windows? Yup.

[timothy]

StarOffice / OpenOffice run under Windows as well as *nix, Yes. In the brief time between the purchase of the laptop from which I write and the release of Mandrake 8.2, I lived with Microsoft Windows XP, and I put StarOffice on it as a test drive. Installed neatly, worked nicely, overall good.Now that I have OpenOffice as part of the distro, though, I have not had any great urge to install StarOffice under Linux, though I have it here on CD if I do ...

timothy

*BSD got SHOT in the HEAD!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shocking news reached us today - *BSD found DEAD with a BULLET in it's BRAINS!! City pathologist James Mulder will do the autopsy later today.

A nice design ideal for GIMP

[timothy]

... would be for every plug-in accepted as part of the base package to feature a preview (as a condition of being there). Many (if not most) of the filters *do* have a preview, but those that don't are a) frustrating for its lack and b) slightly confusing just on that basis. ("Hey, the other filter had a preview -- where's my preview for this one?")

Other people would doubtless come up with new filters, but for each actual release, that would be a nice and helpful standard to meet, IMO.

timothy

Re:A nice design ideal for GIMP

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this off-topic? Is it simply not mod'ed down as such because timothy is an editor?

Re:This is the correct way to fight the MS monopol

[bobv-pillars-net]

The only thing that can stop Linux
... is ... laws

True. In the entirety of American history,
no harmful monopoly ever existed unless it
was created and/or perpetuated by government
regulation.

Parents & Friends - yes

[Anonymous Coward]

... I thought it was high time to give it another look. Why not? I had listened to Linux users in these forums proclaiming how good this-or-that distribution has gotten that I kind of assumed that the operating system really was ready for prime time.

I managed to get Yellow Dog 2.2 [yellowdoglinux.com] installed on my Titanium PowerBook, sure. But after having done it I was stunned at how...well, rudimentary the installer was.

What do these two things have to do with each other? ``Ready for prime time'' and ``quality of installer''? Nothing. Granny can't install Linux, Granny can't install Solaris, and Granny can't install Windows. Despite the big advantage Apple has from their iron-clad control of everything which runs OSX, I suspect that Granny hasn't a prayer of installing OSX, either. There exists no OS which meets your criterion: `` ... that a novice needs to be able to install, configure, troubleshoot, and maintain the thing without endless arcane documentation or professional help.''

Toasters and refridgerators work that way, but complicated things like cars and computers don't. Do you think that cars aren't ready for the mass market? Once a knowledgable person sets up a Unix OS, it will run and run and run, for years. The user can't easily screw it up. That's ready for prime-time. Windows isn't, and may never be. Thanks to things like USB and Kudzu, Linux is pretty near there, once installed.

Have you tried a Windows installer lately? Some of them have pretty graphics, but their hardware detection and included drivers are way behind linux on Ix86. Installing Windows is HARD. Solaris is HARD too. Linux is a good deal easier to get running on intel hardware than those others. By the way, graphics doesn't make for an easy install. Good hardware detection and automated selection of the right drivers does.

Re:Parents & Friends - yes

[feldsteins]

I'm not equating "ready for consumers" with "easy installer" although the former does imply the latter. Remember, I also said "But the main thing I discovered is that Linux hasn't really gotten usable enough for novices." By this I meant to imply that I discovered a great number of common activities beyond installation that required beyond-novice-level skills to do.

You ask, "Have you tried a Windows installer lately?" To which I reply, yes - I have tried them all. Repeatedly. I didn't explicity say so earlier but I do work in IT. And I must take exception to your inclusion of Solaris in this mix. Solaris isn't a consumer desktop operating system.

Anyway, we could nit-pick forever about specifics. I'd like to propose the following hypothetical experiment. We buy 100 PCs. Store-bought, brand name PCs. We wipe the drives bare. Then we give 50 of them to novices and include a Windows XP CD. We give the other 50 to novices equipped with, say, Red Hat 7.2. No outside help allowed. No calls to "uncle Ed the computer nerd." Just for kicks let's buy 50 Macintoshes, wipe those drives and give them to 50 more novices, including an OS X install CD.

At the end of three days which group with have more fully functional machines? By fully functional I mean OS installed correctly, internet connection working, email set up, web browsing, installed a couple of 3rd party applications, maybe.

Obviously the Macintosh group will come in first, but this is almost cheating since Apple controls the hardware and the OS. Enough said. But what of the other two groups? Who will take that second place? If you think even for a moment that it will be the Red Hat group then I think you are seriously deluded about the state of Linux's usability.

Re:Parents & Friends - yes

[Anonymous Coward]

At the end of three days which group with have more fully functional machines? By fully functional I mean OS installed correctly, internet connection working, email set up, web browsing, installed a couple of 3rd party applications, maybe.

Obviously the Macintosh group will come in first, but this is almost cheating since Apple controls the hardware and the OS. Enough said. But what of the other two groups? Who will take that second place?

Well, I agree about the Mac group. There would be significantly more of them with fully operational machines, but many would still not be all there, unless you can simply put a disk in, turn it on, and walk away. The Linux and Windows groups will have a few people who got lucky, but I don't think that there would be any significant difference between them. The linux group would be much more likely to have the optimal drivers if they were brave enough to just keep clicking OK. I'll go back to what I said before: NO OS is ready for installation by novices. Period. And I don't believe any ever will be.

This is an interesting thought experiment, but beside the point entirely. My point was that this has nothing to do with ready-for-prime-time or ready-for-the-desktop. The clueless masses buy a box with some OS installed, and they run that. If they feel up to a high-tech adventure, they might install some software like Quicken. Even if they have the mental capacity to understand what an OS is (and of course most do), they WON'T. Almost any OS with a GUI can function for this crowd, once installed. One which doesn't succumb to registry rot will function longer.

Remember, I also said "But the main thing I discovered is that Linux hasn't really gotten usable enough for novices." By this I meant to imply that I discovered a great number of common activities beyond installation that required beyond-novice-level skills to do.

Really? What? Word processing and file management require a guru if we're talking about a real novice. Most stuff is easy enough to get through for the knowledgeable, on any OS. For example, I haven't any idea how to set up a modem connection on Linux by hand. On Red hat I go to the start menu, open the set up internet connection item and follow the instructions in the window that pops up. On Debian, there was a script I ran from the command line which did the work for me. I think that these were no harder for novices than the Windows approach. Remember, a novice doesn't know what questions to ask in the first place, nor where to ask. Getting a novice to follow instructions like type su, put in the password I gave you, then type this line, then that ... (over the phone) is easier than trying to lead a novice through the intricacies of a GUI.

I've supported family computers, and I do it on linux because it's easier for me, and no harder for them. If they want to do something new, I can just tell them to press the button with the picture of a monitor in it, and then type su, then type in the password (taped onto the monitor, it's a home computer), then apt-get package name. That's WAY easier than what I used to go through to help under windows. MAybe this is because these are mostly older folks, who are familiar with the idea of a typewriter. Maybe it will be different when my kids start wanting to do things. Of course, they will find Windows confusing and unintuitive, since it is so unlike WM and KDE.

Re:Parents & Friends - yes

[BadTuna]

...once installed. that's the bitch about Linux. Joe Blow will NEVER use Linux because he's not a geek and doesnt know, or want to know how to do all that. They just want their shit to work.

Re:Parents & Friends - yes

[Anonymous Coward]

They just want their shit to work.

Once it's set up, that's what Linux does; it just works. If you set it up for Grandma, all will be well until you r next visit. Doesn't work that way with Windows.

Re:Parents & Friends - yes

[Anonymous Coward]

You are so fscked, byteboyz WinX hardware detection is damned near perfect while Linux support is obscurely patchy. So SCRATcH the Linux install. And just let a non-pro try ta change ONE ITEM of a Linux installed system and bzlappoz ... a non-working system. Linux is still an OS for 6-finger webtoe dweezles.

Re:Parents & Friends - yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullcrap, byteboy everybody need ta add/remove hardware & software ... WinX makes that easy --- Linux makes that impossible for a nonpro. EOS.

Re:Parents & Friends - yes

[overunderunderdone]

I suspect that Granny hasn't a prayer of installing OSX, either

Umm... Unless Granny has Alzheimers she should be OK. 1) Insert CD. 2) Double click "instal MacOS X" 3) wait (a while) for progress bar. Congratulations OS X is installed - though you may still need to answer some questions to get your internet connection working.

Re:Parents & Friends - yes

[feldsteins]

A well thought out response. I'm unconvinced but you nevertheless make me think. Thanks.

Re:Parents & Friends - yes

[cygnusx]

Granny can't install Linux, Granny can't install Solaris, and Granny can't install Windows.

Yeah, right. Keep telling yourself that and the fanboys who'll believe you. Grandma can't install Linux, Grandma can't install Solaris, but she probably could install Windows, and almost certainly OS X. Or (even better) installing an app in OS X or Windows? 99% of Windows installers work the same way, so clueless users can actually use them: mostly a sequence of hitting Enter at each dialog, and bingo! the program is there on the Programs menu.

Installing Windows is HARD

Prove it. Give me two specific examples, involving two different vendors. And also how using Linux resolved that issue. Please include model and part numbers so that we know you aren't talking out of your arse.

The objective is not to destroy M$...

[rmstar]

...but to make sure that there are alternatives, and to ensure that people have the right to choose. If you love to surf without security, and have no problem with microsoft 0wning your computer, or give a shit about you computer being hijacked by spyware (see if you can find one spyware program for linux) then go ahead, use Microsoft.

I, honestly, deeply, do not give half a rats ass.

The sad thing about Joe User is that he does not want to understand anything, and starts bitching immediatly if things dont work the way he wants them to work. He doesnt want to remember passwords, and much less to turn on the brain for a minute while installing something he just downloaded from the internet. His disgrace is thus of his own making, and I can only hope he gets a tenth of a clue someday (Mind you, I'm not saying he is supposed to be a guru. He just should have basic knowledge about what is going on)

But I don't want me nor anybody to be forced to this way of doing things, and I insist on Joe User having a chance of changing his ways. Viewed this way, linux and OSS have been very successfull.

If the formats used by microsoft were really open, if they didn't insist on being on every computer sold (and thus forcing me to buy what I consider a disaster of a software), and did not seem to have this facist urge of dominating the world and imposing their philosophy on everybody, then nobody would be making a fuzz about this.

rmstar

Re:This is the correct way to fight the MS monopol

[jocknerd]

No, I'm not close-minded. Linux WILL succeed if the gov't allows them to. What I mean is, if Microsoft can no longer 'force' OEM's to put only Windows on their computers, Linux has a good chance. Primarily because its free so the OEM's would love to push it. This can only happen if the Justice Dept. dishes out a meaningful punishment to Microsoft. Otherwise, Microsoft will become even stronger and probably push for laws to prevent alternative operating systems. If the OEM's are too afraid to offer Linux to the mainstream, it will never have a chance of becoming mainstream.

Re:Microsoft is proof that what you write is nonse

[sheldon]

HA! If anything your post is a troll.

Microsoft's products have consistently offered more for less to the consumer. The company clearly proves my point that it is the value and quality of the software that dominates in the market... not the marketing.

If this were not true, Microsoft would never have failures because it could throw it's marketing budget down and dominate. But we have seen numerous failures over the years... IE2, Bob, Win CE 1.0, Money and so forth. In many cases those failures turned into canceled product lines. In other cases they came back as a new version which learned from the mistakes and complaints of the critics.

The best product ALWAYS wins in the marketplace, and I'd like to see you argue otherwise. So far you troll, er I mean argument, is unconvincing and doesn't lot address the large number of exceptions.

A few basic things

[YrWrstNtmr]

For OSS to be really acccepted it needs a few different things for different user bases.

Business users:
Ease of use. it MUST display a consistent set of rules to perform various tasks, across applications. Cut/paste, save, open, close, change font, etc. Doubleclick here, singleclick there. All MUST be pretty much the same across your spreadsheet, graphics app, word processor.
Installation might not need be quite as easy, because the IT staff (or the office geek) will be doing the actual installations.
Help files. MUST be clear, complete, consistent, and above all useful. No geekisms.

Home users:
All of the above, PLUS a one click installation. No source code compilation, etc. Your 8 year old as well as your 80 year old grandmother need to be able to install, and then find and run it on the first try. If they can "find" it on the first try after installing, it is of no use.

GIMP. I love it. Not quite as powerful as Photoshop, but still quite good. Maddening, though in actual use. GIMP could take a page from PaintShopPro. 90% of the functionality, for 10% of the price. If GIMP were as easy to use as PSP, I'd buy it for $100. If free, even better. But if that $100 buys the dependable, concise PSP interface, well and good.

Same with an Office implementation. "free" is not so much of a draw as useful.

Re:A few basic things

[BadTuna]

Bravo!

OSS on Windows.

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant idea. The problem is, no one using MS Windows, knows, for example, that the GiMP is availible.

The GiMP is a very high quality piece of software, and still more than 99% of users will ever need. I have met very few people who use Photoshop to its full potential.. And I've yet to meet anyone who has *paid* for Photoshop.

Now, I haven't used the MS Windows version of the GiMP for quite some time. AFAIK, at least I hope, it's still around and has only gotten better. ;)

How do we get free alternatives into the hands of MS Windows users, to whom, free means either crap (Low quality freeware), or illegal (cracking shareware codes to full blown piracy of anything from graphic applications to operating systems)?

Simple. We use the same FUD Microsoft uses. We decry the evils of software piracy. We play their fiddle for them..

Only we then smile and say, "But you can't afford a $600 piece of software? Worry not. We have the way out."

Gateway will love this

[BlueboyX]

You say that a big problem is getting the stuff installed...

I wonder if Gateway would want to promote this as a branch-off from their free music initiative. They already ship computers bogged down with other stuff, might as well put something useful on there too.

That could be a big deal for them. This software would add 'value' (as in functional or sales value, even though the software itself is 'free') to their products without costing them much(I say 'not much' because installing that on each computer will cost them).

Re:This is the correct way to fight the MS monopol

[YAN3D]

It doesn't really matter what individual users want. The home computer is irrelevant, or if you prefer, gravy Microsoft getting a piece the millions of home computers sold every year is a little more than just "gravy".

Re:This is the correct way to fight the MS monopol

[Anonymous Coward]

....and probably push for laws to prevent alternative operating systems

If government and people would allow that to happend. Wouldn't that be stupid?

I don't really know, but this sounds just as like selling a brick. YOou buy, ok, you don't buy, you get beaten. In every case it'll cost you (money or hospital).

Simple Installations

[rossz]

It doesn't matter how simple the interface becomes, it's not enough. So what if KDE? is just as easy to use as windows. How hard is it to install new software? The standard steps of "configure, make, make install" may be intuitive for us, but it isn't for the average Windows users. Microsoft does it the right way, double click on "setup.exe" or, even better, the installer launches when you stick the CD in the drive.

The installer should be smart enough to install any components necessary for the program to run. If that means included libWhatever.so in the package, so be it. It's not good enough that most systems will have that library. Unless all systems have that library, it must be part of the installer. If the program fails because obscure shared object is missing, 99% of the users will remove the package (if they can figure out how). It won't take too many of these failures for someone to get fed up and go back to Windows.

Don't stop at getting the dependencies handled properly. Make the configuration just as easy. Either the installer must ask for necessary default information and create the default dependency, or the program itself must recognize the need and fire up a configuration wizard the first time it is run. For the typical end-user, wizards are great. They simplify what can otherwise be a tedious and error prone process.

Another area needing major improvements is manuals and help systems. All too often the developers do a damn fine job of producing a top notch program. Too bad only geeks can figure the software out, since the manuals suck, the online help is non-existent or minimal, and the web page says, "I don't have time to write anything" (I've actually seen this!).

The program isn't ready for public consumption until the manual is finished.

Put OSS CDs on cereal boxes like CheeriOS or ...

[YeOldeCurmudgeon]

We could work with a cereal company and distribute OSS CDs on cereal boxes! Junior takes the CD, drops it in, installs, OSS replaces/removes spyware, etc., replacing it with good OSS products! Make sure your computer gets its daily dose of vitamins GPL and OSS! Perhaps working with IBM for funding. Hey kids! Be the first on your block to run DB2 and Websphere! It makes your MP3's fly off your website! We could advertise doing loops with Fruit Loops, shred your license costs with Shredded Wheat, crunch your software costs with Captain Crunch...ok, that might pique curiosity. ...but I am somewhat hesitant to associate OSS software with cereals that snap, crackle and pop. The CD should hold two or three solid good choices for each major software category: Office Suites, Web Browser, Games as well as include easy to use Media software to handle MP3s and VCD, CD libraries, net phone/video, secure IRC, email, personal finance and tax software, dictionary, encyclopedias. It should have a greeting card making program, music editing MIDI, MP3, etc. As well as core internet tools allowing one to host websites, run firewalls, XTerm, VNC, FTP, SAMBA, security and system utilities, etc. Perhaps using Peanut Linux or other smaller GUI-based Linux distribution that easily loads in along side MSFT Windows and plays games, DOS games and WINE. Of course, for real fun, we could put hacking and cracking mini-CD's in Cracker Jacks... What about Happy Meals with OSS Golden Archives mini-CDs? OSS Collections of the week? Collect cute little penguins with the mini-CDs? Ask AOL, AT&T, or Earthlink to include a bundle of OSS software along with Mozilla? Imagine AT&T promoting OSS unix with it's broadband malings!! AT&T promoting unix again...such an odd come around that would be! Remember when...sigh. Well, we could have Red Hat 7 at the 7/11 store? CD design might be important. A boot CD that only has OSS OS and software on it that can run live, using a C: or A: drive for temporary files and data, could provide proof of concept for many folks. Maybe we could get OSS software CDs included with cheap little hand scanners that look like pets or with CD/DVD burners. Yep, it's time for my meds again. I'll check in again after demagnetizing the storage drums and flipping the core rings to zero. I know I left that Hollerith code book somewhere. Anybody else out there know the feel of the speed to hand spin reels of 9 track tape for data recovery? Milk carton 'have you seen this missing OSS CD' ads? Hostess cupcakes with web hosting CDs? Bubble gum trading OSS mini-CDs? Amazon books offering OSS mini-CDs with free shipping, mini-CDs which can be used as bookmarks or pocket mirrors too! Phone cards printed on mini-CDs filled with OSS software. Hallmark Christmas Star Trek ornaments made of OSS mini-CDs, collect all 64! Merry Christmas and hey, what's this ELF format OS stuff?

What would REALLY be a boost

[whoisjoe]

Is to convince OEMs to bundle this software with each machine.

They could start with local screwdriver shops. Think of the competitive edge they would have if they can add value without incurring licensing fees!

It's been quite some time since I bought a machine with any bundled software, but the Toshiba laptop I bought 3.5 years ago came with relatively little software. Are there still vendors who do this?

This is harder than you would think

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Systems...
If you want to run something like Open Office, (I'm assuming that there is_NOT_a windows port at the moment, I could be wrong...) you would have to port Linux itself to run on linux. Think of a Java virtual machine, but only for linux.

The other way is just to port the App to Windows. I cant see many other people doing that. Windows programming is just dirty.

On MacOSX, it is really easy. OSX is BSD Unix underneath. Just install what you need and you are on your way. No need for a Cygwin-type emulator because the system is native!

There are places and instructions where you can get free software on OSX.

If only StarOffice was still free! Sun, just give it up.

People want what works best

[AIXadmin]

The free software movement claims that the GPL preserves freedom.
Most people don't see there freedom being infringed on by software. Most don't read the license.
People Microsoft Office because it works well. If Star Office comes out with the polish of MS Office for 3/4 the price then that will be a different story.
Linux has succeded because it is free, and it works as well as Solaris or AIX in most situations.
Real Users (READ: NOT GEEKS) don't care about licensing. Grandma just wants something easy to use.

the problem with cygwin is...

[frostman]

...that it's a tremendous pain in the ass to install if you only have modem connectivity.

ok, it's "easy" - if you accept all the defaults. but it's also ugly, which always makes me a bit skeptical: if they can't bother to make such a simple UI look "normal" (by win standards) then how smooth will the install really be?

of course, i LOVE cygwin and life is much better now i have it. some things don't work right, but my main goal - having a good shell and grep etc on win2K - was achieved.

however, the install process bites, at least until you've downloaded everything locally. then it's only ugly. (yeah i realize that probably doesn't matter for the CD)

so what? it should be on a CD like the one under discussion, but well hidden from novice users.

just my random thoughts...

Cost for Win_software ??? It's FREE !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, pad're but when I fire up my ROCKSOLID WinME system I run OPERA/NIERSOFT/ZONAL/PROXO/AVG and ABIWORD on the side for creative hardboil ... doesn't cost a dime to use the best ----- with WinX.

Re:This is the correct way to fight the MS monopol

[sheldon]

"What I mean is, if Microsoft can no longer 'force' OEM's to put only Windows on their computers, Linux has a good chance. "

That won't make a difference if there is no compelling reason to the user to have Linux installed.

"Primarily because its free so the OEM's would love to push it. "

OEM's aren't that stupid... the Consumers have to want it.

"This can only happen if the Justice Dept. dishes out a meaningful punishment to Microsoft."

What you want is already part of the settlement the DOJ has offered.

But regardless, I hate to break this to you, but watching the past 20 years the desktop race is over. Microsoft has won, and there is no way of changing that.

But at some point the desktop and server paradigm that we currently know will go away. If someone had a vision, they would start working towards that... and be there before Microsoft realizes it. That, my friend, is how you become dominant. That is what Microsoft essentially did with the PC over the larger systems.

Re:This is the correct way to fight the MS monopol

[BadTuna]

Ease of use,not laws, is the only thing that will allow Linux to succeed Windows. Nothing else! The die hards will continue to live with two penguins as blinders.

Open source is used to the degree that it's useful

[leereyno]

When it comes to software with an inelastic demand, no one cares if it is open source or not. What businesses care about is whether it works and works well. If something was free but didn't work, or was a sub-standard product, no one would use it who could afford to do otherwise. A product that has a free price tag but hurts your productivity isn't exactly a good deal compared to a product with even a hefty price tag when that product helps you get your job done more efficiently. This is why companies like Oracle and SAS can charge as much as they do, the companies that buy their products SAVE or even MAKE money in the long run.

As for the political/religious free as in speech aspects of open source, you might as well be speaking swahili because most business brains won't understand what you're talking about and those few that do won't care.

If the idea behind this project is what I think it is, to make converts out of people so that they will shun commercial products in favor of free software irregardless of the quality of the latter, then the people behind this project are in for a nasty suprise: Non-hackers are indifferent to the open source movement. Some are going to be downright hostile in fact due to the way that some open source "advocates" behave.

What this project needs to do is promote the compilation based upon the quality of the software it provides, not on the basis that it is free. This will serve to educate the public that open source software can be just as good or better than commercial offerings. When this is accomplished open source will be able to compete with commercial offerings on an equal footing. It won't have a stigma attached to it and whether it is chosen or not will be entirely based upon quality and its suitability for a particular purpose.

I've been using Linux since 1995. I like the fact that it is free as in speech and in beer, but that isn't the reason I choose it over Windows. I use it because it is more powerful, more stable, and more flexible. If it were kludgey, flaky, or unstable then I'd do little more than play with it. I certainly wouldn't use it in a commercial setting where downtime equals dollars down the drain. This is the burden that all software must carry regardless of how much it costs or how accessible the source code for it is.

Lee

Well...

[Chris Johnson]

Well... have fun guys ;D

While you're talking about doing that and figuring out graphics for installers, I have got...

ten thousand copies of the GPL onto Macintoshes with my CD mastering program, Mastering Tools

Three hundred and seventy copies of the GPL onto an entirely different set of Macintoshes with Filmpaper, a new program I just put out a couple days ago, for screenwriting.

Both of these are seriously hardcore programs aimed at markets that are jammed with software so proprietary that in some cases it uses dongles and key disks. Both pro audio and professional screenwriting are full of relentlessly un-free, user-hostile software- some of the best apps in terms of performance have some of the worst copy-protection. Every copy of one of my programs that goes into such a market goes with source, 'COPYING' and a glimpse of another world- a world where you aren't jerked around by 'godlike software developers' but are allowed to take matters into your own hands if you need to, a world where you could take an active instead of a passive role with the software you use- not to mention a world where your software won't expire, annoy or selfdestruct.

It's pretty funny, actually, when you think about it- lots of Linux open source coders, deities at kernel hacking and C++ multiple inheritance, capable of coding back-end that REALLY WORKS, sitting around trying to figure out why GFX tweaks aren't loving The GIMP or why Windows consumers aren't rushing to grab ISO images of Linux for free. It's simple- DO WHAT YOU LOVE. And if all you love is heavy-duty code-monkeying, do back-end coding. But if you want free software to really build up steam, get passionate about something other than coding and apply your coding skills to it.

The important thing is to have the ONE BEST PROGRAM in any given situation be a Free Software program. I have done this in part with my CD mastering software- the area where it beats anything else out there is output sound quality, so far I can't get other aspects up to professional quality (like workflow, realtime audio and response to control adjusting). Someday I'll have that stuff together too.

You will never, never get to be the 'new Photoshop' by targetting the 'masses'. Ever. Not happening. Forget it. Guy Kawasaki had it figured out back when he was getting the Mac started- you target the TWEAKS. Do everything to target the uber-tweak heavy hitters, the early adopters, the influencers. If you are writing an OSS 'Pro Tools', talk to people in LA and Nashville- better still, BE one of the people in LA and Nashville, and code what YOU need, only then will you get it right. You have to be coding what you personally will need to put hours of use on.

We gotta find more reinassance-geeks. Biotech, robotics- I have sound engineering pretty well covered, but don't use a DAW- if you're writing a spreadsheet it had better be because YOU need to make heavy, heavy use of a spreadsheet, not because 'people in offices use these!'

This pep talk has been brought to you by Chris Johnson, who's placed over 10,000 copies of the GPL on computers where it had never been seen. He's going to continue doing this whatever you do- but if you want to show some freaking support, don't be paying for the SOFTWARE, instead go look into some of the stuff Chris cares about a lot, like his music... be totally unlike most people and buy a CD while you're at it, or just download + rate tunes left and right. Or please yourself- but that would be a BIG help

Read some windows 'help' files lately?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll take man over their 'help' any day.

I'd prefer being told that -r is the argument I'm looking for, rather than what wonders a program will hold and how it can bring global peace.

Re:Read some windows 'help' files lately?

[rossz]

And how is that different from an open source program that is hailed as the next killer app, but only uber-geeks can figure it out because they took the time to dig through the source code to see what command line switches and config file options are available?

Vapor

[Sharkeys-Day]

They have a web site, a mission statement, and ..... nothing!

Can you say "recipe for failure"?

Remember Killustrator?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly.

When I first heard of Killustrator, my first thoughts weren't, "KDE Illustrator". My first thoughts involved a mediocre vision of bloodsoaked goodness.

Kill. Ustrator!

No, really, work with me. When you glance at the word Killustrator quickly, what stands out? The word Kill. It sounds much more likely a name for an FPS, rather than a drawing program.

And that's what the 'average' user thinks. They see a stupid name, they think it's a stupid program. They see a play on MS Windows, they think it's an inferior copy.

On the other hand, K-something-or-other and G-whizbang-program *seem* like a good way to differentiate, say, a program that requires KDE libraries from one that requires Gnome support.

However, in the end, it'd help greatly if they wouldn't just attach the letter to the names of well known MS Windows programs.

Introducing Mozilla

[shobadobs]

I have experienced the same thing. I have a friend with a Presario Laptop, and I suggested that he try Mozilla, at least for testing his web site. He looked at it and thought that it was okay. Then I showed him the sidebar and how he could add quick 'n easy HTML 4.0 and CSS 2 References to it and he said that that was cool. I showed him some of the preferences and he liked them. When I suggested to him to use tabbed browsing instead of opening new windows, he decided to switch. I had not even finished; I still needed to show him how to stop popups or change themes.

Mentioning the IRC client and the Composer software expanded his interest, so I continued to mention. I mentioned how he could block images from certain servers, too. He liked the Image, Form, Password, Download, and Cookie managers (under the tools menu), and he put the Web Development tools to good use. I still did not mention the ability to switch to alternate style sheets, text zooming that affected font sizes set using pixels, and searching with Google in the address bar.

Re:This is the correct way to fight the MS monopol

[Bios_Hakr]

WTF...30 fucking seconds of googling could have shown you that StarOffice runs just fine on Win32. Sometimes, it seems like you are just posting to hear yourself speak. Jesus man, better to remain silent and be thought an idiot than to post and remove any doubt.

Re:Microsoft is proof that what you write is nonse

[kz45]

Its products have consistently been inferior to its competitors in nearly every measurable degree since the late 1980s

If Microsoft was always inferior to its competitors, it wouldn't be the monopoly it is today.

Compare Win9X to anything else that is or was on the market: OS2? X-Windows?

It (Win9X) is far more superior, and that is why people used it in the first place.

Re:success? -laff at you

[Anonymous Coward]

free as in choice. not as in beer

The problem with making idiot-proof linux software

[Ilan Volow]

(Good parent post, BTW)

The problem with designing "idiot-proof" software is that usually the first idiot brought into the process is usually the idiot who knows nothing about designing clear, concise and usable user interfaces and who proceeds to do so anyway(this is usually the programmer). When this happens, any idiot-proofing is compromised. If an idiot designs an "idiot-proof" car with the lighter by the gas tank, even someone with a PhD in engineering could blow it up.

All platforms have these types of idiots, but in varying quantities. Linux (and really much of the unix world barring OS X) has then in unthinkable, vast quantities. Not only are most of these developers ignorant in how to design usable interfaces, but they go so far as to consider the entire field of UI design B.S. (the go past the point of ignorance into total stupidity). Much of the linux community refuses to acknowledge this problem or deal with it in any way. They try to cure bad interface with increased zealotry and massive exaggeration about just how good the programs really are. Bill Gates has never had to worry about trying to kill desktop linux because so many people in the linux camp do his job for him.

Re:This is the correct way to fight the MS monopol

[56ker]

Well yes - sometimes I do post when I'm half asleep. However in this case I knew about StarOffice running on Win32 - I was referring to other Office packages for Linux.

Re:Put OSS CDs on cereal boxes like CheeriOS or ..

[fireklar]

Hahahaha.

not as good as on Linux?

[bcrowell]

You're saying a lot of open-source apps aren't as good as closed-source ones I think they're overlapping bell curves, but that doesn't even matter. What matters is that we need to compare three different user experiences:

1. The user experience with closed-source apps on a closed-source OS.
2. The user experience with open-source apps on an open-source OS.
3. The user experienec with open-source apps on a closed-source OS.

The problem is that #3 is likely to be a lot worse than either #1 or #2. This is the impression I get from using Fink, for example. Hey, Fink is a very cool project. I love what they're doing. But having used Fink apps on a Mac and the same apps on Linux, I can tell you there's just no comparison. For instance, I just tried to install xemacs using Fink today. It downloads binaries, it resolves dependencies, and everything looks good. Then -- oops -- it doesn't run! Similarly, it's been true for many months now that when you first install fink, you get a nonfunctional system, because twm doesn't work with the latest X, and twm is set to be the default window manager. You have to figure this out because twm malfunctions, and then download some other window manager.

I'm not saying all this to pick on the poor overworked Fink people. I'm saying it to point out the painful truth. The community of open-source developers interested in supporting open-source apps on Linux is a huge community. The community of open-source developers interested in supporting their apps on closed-source operating systems is miniscule. For this reason, the user experience is always going to suck if you use open-source apps on a closed-source OS, and therefore I fear that this type of project is destined simply going to convince lots of people that OSS sucks.

compilation of high quality open source software

[chtank]

Since I am one of the "regular users" (I am a very simple end user) mentioned in this article, and although I have redhat 7.1 on it's own box, I have not found much use for it and still have to "operate" linux thru my VNCviewer to access gnome desktop, which work oinly partially for me. (love sentance, I know). My question is (because I was not able to get to opensource.org right off), shouldn't this disk also work with any OS, INCLUDING LINUX? I tried to download and install NS 6.2.2 on my linux box and failed baddly.

A *good* example IMO is qcad

[timothy]

Probably several people have mentioned this somewhere in these comments, but I don't see it right now ...

Qcad (see qcad.org) is great. It's cross-platform (Windows, Linux), fairly polished, includes a well-done online manual chock full of screenshots etc, not just an incomprehensible HOWTO written in Obscure. Installation -- at least with the statically linked version) was wizardly :) [That is, slick, and with one of those things which I hate to call "wizards."]

[Now, the part it's tough to explain to mom and dad:

1) gunzip (long filename).
2) tar (long filename)
3) cd to a subdirectory
4) type ./install.sh

I don't see an obvious way to avoid these steps except through hopefully-intelligent interfaces, standalone or built into browsers, which will say "aha! a file in tar.gz format! I will make it easy for my troubled master!" Now that might be nice.

Re: QCad, note that I am an expert with CAD -- in fact, just the opposite, I am trying to figure out how it works, and somewhat frustrating, but I am finding the nice manual quite helpful in this regard. I just want to move my furniture around on screen darn it!

Anyhow, I think QCad's install and manual are ones that other programs might want to emulate.

timothy

Offtopic? Howso?

[timothy]

It's about making software accessable, in the interest of increasing the use of free software. That's what the story's about.

timothy