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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?
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.
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.
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Welcome to the land of the easily amused...
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.
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..
Trolling using another account since 2005.
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
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:
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.
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.
sulli
RTFJ.
"...eventually bring them over to a completely free system on their own time."
...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.
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
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.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
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.
May we never see th
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.
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.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?