Yet Another Call for Linux Standardization

An anonymous reader writes "Newsforge has an article Commentary: United We Stand...the Division in the Linux World, in which David Meyer argues that UnitedLinux will provide standardization for the Linux community that will allow it to win the desktop market from Windows. The article has a number of supporting comments, but then this one particular negative comment that disagrees with David. This particular comment offers an alternative view on the need for standardization. This aternative view that is put forward simply argues that 'Over what is almost twelve years we have pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps. We have done this using a development model that allows us to produce software that proprietary vendors cannot compete with', and then summarizing that 'the Linux community does not need to set up businesses with the specific intention of trying to "win" users from Microsoft; all we have to do is continue to develop software in the same way, and the users will make the switch all by themselves'."

Comments

They already do.

[Gabrill]

It's called Linus Torvalds. He will standardize as much as he can, and the rest of us will group behind the best distro of his stuff. Anything else would be closing the free developement model. UnitedLinux is trying to corner the market on useable linux.

Re:They already do.

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Linus contributes the kernel, which is a great thing, but still is only a part of any distribution.

Re:They already do.

[kasperd]

Linus contributes the kernel, which is a great thing, but still is only a part of any distribution.

Sad seing such an Insightful comment only scoring 0. Unfortunately I just used my last moderation point.

Re:They already do.

[Mr Teddy Bear]

Which is true, and I think it should be the only standardized thing in Linux. Not that I think chaos should reign, but I totally agree with the poster of this story... (or the guy he quoted, whatever) The more we actually TRY and COMPETE with ms the longer it will take for any real changes to be made. We're modling much of the GUI elements of linux that MS already set up. (Yes, I know that it also takes from Macs, etc.)

The point is that in order for us to get anywhere we've got to start innovating, not immitating. In order to do that we've got to stop looking up so much and just do what we already know is right. Nose to the grindstone. :-)

Re:They already do.

[deaddrunk]

Rubbish. What needs to be provided is as familiar an environment as possible to make the switch as painless as possible. People may not like Windows much but they're used to it, so give them a more reliable version and then start making evolutionary changes.
Imagine if you introduced a totally new car control system that made total sense and was really easy to use. People's first reaction would be 'Where's the steering wheel' and their second would be 'This sucks, there's no steering wheel, I'm not buying it'.
Sad, but a fact of life.

Re:They already do.

[GeoDex]

UnitedLinux would be a easy target for
the sea lion. Penguins have done well because
Linux is a much better kernal and Distro's
are many. A collective Distro would be easy
to hit.
Example: A security flaw is found in a linux
distro, but not the in other distro's. It is
harder to capitalize in knocking Linux.

Lets not put all of our Penguins on the same
iceburg. There is only really one Sea lion
in the water after many Penguins.

Re:They already do.

[Tony-A]

Well put.
The calls for standardization sound too much like "Please, please, please bunch up (so you can be more effectively targeted)". You also have the problem of *whose* idea of standardization do you use. I'd be more than a bit suspicious of anyone who wants control of what other people do.
Divide and conquor. There's at least two ways to view that one.

Re:They already do.

[Eric Damron]

You are correct that we need to keep doing things right. However, standardizing parts of Linux is not doing things the wrong way.

As a developer, I would like to know that I can count on certain libraries being included in the distributions for which I write code. I would also like to feel confidant that the libraries will stay backward compatible so that I don't have to keep rewriting / recompiling my products for new versions.

This doesn't mean that all distributions will be the same. It only means that there would be a 'Lowest common denominator' that programmers could count on. This is 'working smarter.'

Re:They already do.

[xerid]

OSX is the perfect unix desktop. Until Linux (with X) reaches the stabilty/intergration like OSX, it will never take over on the desktop. In fact, if OSX for x86 was ever released, just say "bye-bye Linux." There needs to be more of an effort to bring the shell and X into one. I truely feel that graphical interfacing of shell command needs to be worked on extensively (if not altogether eliminated - from a user point over view, your average use doesnt want to have to learn the shell, which has a very STEEP learning curve for joe and jane). Althought United Linux trying to address many issues, is falls short from what it is going to take to make this happen. And yes, if you truely want Linux to win the desktop war, you have to make the AOL user feel comfortable (and NO, this will not affect the power user, since the shell will still be there). When you design something that the users want/like, then the applications and support will follow.

Re:They already do.

[miu]

As a developer, I would like to know that I can count on certain libraries being included in the distributions for which I write code. I would also like to feel confidant that the libraries will stay backward compatible so that I don't have to keep rewriting / recompiling my products for new versions.

Preach it brother. :)

This is a serious problems with libraries, that seems to be especially bad in the free software world. Sometimes the changes are just trivial silliness: add/remove a param from an initialization function and recompile. Obnoxious, but not the end of the world. Other times the changes are deeper and require a fair amount of work. The frustration is that there is no standard about what can change in major, minor, and patch revisions.

A simple set of rules that govern:

• When an API function can be removed. Major after deprecation marking for full revision.
• When a param change requiring a cast may be made. Compile visible, but not link visible. Minor
• When a param change requiring relinking can be made. Major
• How internal functions are named. I prefer a trailing underscore.
• When external structs can be changed. Major.
• yadda, yadda, yadd

The dev branch of a library would not be subject to these kinds of rules, and dist maintainers should never use such a branch.

Re:They already do.

[unoengborg]

Your point would have bin valid 10 years ago, but now people have got used to what a GUI should look like and there is not much we can do to change it.
If new elements are introduced to the computing environment (e.g. use of database instead of files ) then we can make brave new designs for those parts, but other than that, to much novelty will only alienate the users.

You should also know that Xerox Parc, Apple and finally MS have done a lot or usability research in this field, why throw all that out the window.

Re:They already do.

[tsa]

It's not the GUI that must (or must not) be standardized. The only thing that needs to be standardized are the configuration files that are used in the distro. Location as well as makeup. In that way everyone can use their favorite GUI, distro, whatever, while companies can be sure that software developed for one distro had a great chance of working on all distro's.

Re:They already do.

[teg]

Linus doesn't standardize Linux - he rules the kernel, but Linux is much more than a kernel.

Libraries (ABIs and availability), some configuration files and tools are much more important - a kernel should basically "just work" from an application's point of view. This sort of standardization is what LSB tries to achieve.

As far as UnitedLinux trying to bring standards to Linux - give me a break. This is just SuSE trying to give an impression of it. 2 of the 4 distributions are dead (TurboLinux, Caldera) with little/no development. Connectiva also slimmed down quite a bit. UnitedLinux is another name for SuSE, and is no more a standard than SuSE is. The standard is LSB, the de facto implementation of a standard Linux distribution for the market they're targetting is Red Hat Linux.

Re:They already do.

[Znork]

And if OSX for x86 is ever released, MS will 'cut off their air supply' (entirely apart from the fact that OSX for x86 will never be OSX for x86, but rather OSX for MacIntoshes which happen to have an x86 CPU). No single commercial competitor will ever stand a chance against MS.

Linux isnt successfully competing against MS due to quality or features. It's competing on freedom, price and by levelling the playing field, something which can harness the interest of every vendor in the buisness. They all gain (well, except MS). How would Apple gain the interest and cooperation of IBM, Dell, HP, Oracle, Sun etc?

They cant, of course.

Re:They already do.

[FooBarWidget]

That is what Autopackage is for.

Re:They already do.

[shaitand]

I am a linux desktop user. I also am "In charge" of finding new places to use linux at work. On the buisness side we mostly use linux in the back, so far I've only convinced them to use linux where it doesn't matter (web, ftp, email) and where it can invisibly pretend to be windows (insight server in place of expensive exchange servers, samba as domain controller, etc) but the true challenge before we can do anything significant here is using linux as the desktop system as well. It does amazingly well pretending to be a windows system in some respects, but linux shines when talking to linux (or another nix).

To break that barrier I have to beat my bosses most unusual feelings yet. he wants to see linux shine on home user desktops before he'll put it on buisness desktops (this is backwards since every aspect of how the system is supposed to run can be predefined on buisness systems and we can pick and choose were it will perform best and save our customers money.).

I can grab an optical mouse with a wheel off the shelf, this mouse will work with every M$ system out there, but won't work properly with linux. The biggest argument I have to justify linux on desktop systems is that we won't have to provide as much support (we support ANYthing we sell for 1yr, nobody calls microsoft either so that theirs no support is hardly an issue). $95 off the cost of the system (this is what it costs for an oem 98se) is great an all but hardly matters when WE lose that on two non billable warranty calls.

First big issue, pick a random distro, have it boot to a gui. Login prompt, not a very big deal. Now they are looking at that desktop, they click the k menu, the organization of the menu is horrid, it makes no sense, you'll have development apps in a menu of its own and applications as a seperate menu, some types of applications will be scattered around as sub categories of others (I've often wondered what sort of crack birthed this organization scheme).

ok this is overcomable, I just reorganize the menu and rename the shortcuts to apps so that instead of seeing "gimp" you see "gimp image editor". Of course now this needs to be installed from an imaged copy of the system I setup and already we've lost the ability to use a default install (for instance if I for some reason needed to reinstall the system).

Next, customer goes out and purchases a new MS Intellimouse, optical, usb, 5 buttons including wheel/middle button. Now of course this basic mouse they picked up at walmart or even our shop does not work correctly. Sure they can use the mouse and have two buttons... but the mouse has 5, hell even having access to the middle button/wheel would be nice.

Even if it was a supported mouse, maybe their new mouse isn't the same type... now they need root access to adjust the configuration files to umm adjust for their mouse, assuming they know how to set it up (which they won't, I still haven't seen a decent add/remove hardware for all the various types of desktop hardware yet, most distro configure all these things for a home user on the install but after that, your on your own.

Ok, to an extent this is ok, that's what we are far and adding something or changing something on the system is entirely billable (though not much for a mouse). At worst we are going to break even on this issue. To be honest, a mouse is a big obsticle, hell a scanner or a digital camera, ok they need us to help set it up, ok but a mouse or keyboard???

Another big issue is monitor... a desktop user should be able to feel like a hotshot because they know how to change the res and colors on their monitor, they should never have to know refresh rates exist! They should be able to walk into the shop bringing only their pc, and I should be able to plug it into pretty much any monitor in the shop assuming their using a reasonable res (1024x768 is reasonable) and it should display without a single manual configuration change... otherwise the time to change it, and change back cuts us on every single call. We can no longer plug it into pre-setup test stations.

The next thing is software installs, that their are restrictions on installs is one thing, for security and stability reasons we wouldn't want them to be able to write to certain parts of the OS without root access. But there should be a simple (standardized) scriptable install shield for them to click next a few times through to install packages. Dependencies? wth, a desktop user should never hear such a word, those are things only developers should have to worry about, a packaged release for the public should include them, detect if their there, install whatever is needed on it's own, and be done with it. Then the user clicks finish and it's done.

The fact that I can't use an imaging util to copy one drive to another (with the ease and flexibility of something like ghost) is another roadblock. For instance, so we can build and sell them with efficient time involved in setting up new systems.

Another nice thing would be a burn-in program (i haven't looked for one yet so I'm sure there is one out there).

These are the things linux needs to work on, make the simple hardware work first, I don't expect some obscure raid device to work, but I'm outraged if a mouse doesn't work for gods sake it's a mouse! Monitors are like tv's, plug in a signal, and it should work, period. (I understand the reasons for these things, but customer's don't). The menu's, bad bad bad. Fix that crap, all applications go under applications, all games under games, all system administration, under system administration. Users who aren't bright enough is one thing... but intentionally making me or joe desktop waste brainpower remembering menu's that aren't logical to begin with is ridiculous. Their's nothing elite about remembering a bunch of obscure locations and names of simple things. Gimp's first place of competition shouldn't be photoshop, it's free, we can place it as competition for MS PAINT!!! Home users want a dumbed down desktop, they don't want 5 options where they can have one simple and good one simply for the sake of giving them options. So dumb it down! Those who want control, and have any buisness having it, are those who will still edit the configs themselves, or build from source themselves.

Standards

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not lack of certain standards that makes Linux aggravating for non-Linux users. It's that those standards are so cryptic, obscure, contradictory and arbitrary. I'm not talking about TCP/IP or what have you, but simple things:

- Why is there still no standard model for adding and removing apps? The number of competing models for package management alone is sickening.

- Why do we still have to choose between a bunch of different desktops, ALL of which are mutually incompatible?

The lack of standards in Linux is even worse than the closed-ended standards on other OSes (coughWindowscough) because it makes almost any attempt to converge standards nearly impossible. We've had this for 12 years, and nothing short of wiping the slate clean is going to make it any better.

This is fine for people who don't care about such things -- who are just going to dump RedHat on a server somewhere and deal with it as little as possible. But for people who are going to be managing many different systems, not all of which are going to be homogenous, this is insanely annoying. It means that people have to learn four times as much to do the same things.

We need ONE standard desktop -- KDE, Gnome, I don't care. Pick one and use it. The others can be gravy, but we need a sanctioned interface. Not just to make things easier for end users -- and believe me, it does -- but to insure that more de facto standards do not muddy the waters any further.

And yet any discussion of such a thing in "serious" Linux circles is treated with jeering and derision. "GUIs are for wimps!" Face it -- GUIs make your life easier and anyone who tries to argue this down is blowing smoke up the wrong sphincter.

Linux users and advocates need to lose the elitism that used to preserve them, and is now working against them.

Posted as Anonymous Coward because karma can go fuck itself.

Re:Standards

[JanneM]

We need ONE sWe need ONE standard desktop -- KDE, Gnome, I don't care. Pick one and use it.

So... Who, exactly should get this authority to decide? And how, exactly, do you propose stopping people from happily continue development on all the other desktops? /Janne

Re:Standards

[kubla2000]

- Why do we still have to choose between a bunch of different desktops, ALL of which are mutually incompatible?

Out of all the duff crap in your post, this is worst. There's nothing stopping a KDE user from loading Gnome apps or vice versa, you just have to have the appropriate libraries loaded.

Re:Standards

[Alethes]

- Why is there still no standard model for adding and removing apps? The number of competing models for package management alone is sickening.

- Why do we still have to choose between a bunch of different desktops, ALL of which are mutually incompatible?

If you add that every installation is different and decide that this should also be more uniform, then you've essentally made every distro identical. This is great for the poeple that like RPM, KDE and a GUI installer (assuming those are chosen as the "sanctioned" standards), but this is horrible for the large groups of people that dislike all of those. The various Linux distros all offer their unique solutions to each of these issues to cater to specific sectors, and if you smooth out the differences, then all the reasons that certain people use Linux go away, forcing them look for a system that gives them the flexibility they once had in Linux. This is exactly the opposite effect that I think you had in mind.

If you want a completely sanctioned system, always use the same distro and use only their packages. After you find out how inflexible that is, come back here and post about how good it is that we have umpteen different distros to serve different purposes.

Re:Standards

[kasperd]

Why is there still no standard model for adding and removing apps?

There are a few different of which two or three are very widely used. Of course having more than one is a litle unfortunate, but there are actually multiple of those which are quite good. Even with multiple different aproaches, it is still better than what you see on other systems. On other systems you basically have one installer program for each application which is a lot more than an installer program for each distribution.

different desktops, ALL of which are mutually incompatible?

They are all built on top of X11. And they are not all incompatible, I frequently mix applications from different environments. Only a few applications are dependend on a particular environment.

The lack of standards in Linux is even worse than the closed-ended standards on other OSes (coughWindowscough) because it makes almost any attempt to converge standards nearly impossible.

I completely disagree with that. With Windows you don't get any kind of standard. The MS way of compatibility is not achieved through standards, but rather by having only one implementation. And they can move it wherever they want. Yesterdays version of Windows is not necesarilly compatible with tomorrows. And if MS dislikes you, your applications will be the ones to suffer the most. And finally tomorrows version of Windows will be incompatible with todays competitors.

KDE, Gnome, I don't care. Pick one and use it.

Sure, a lot of people do that. They just don't pick the same. And who do you think is in a position to deside which of the two people are allowed to use? We are talking about freedom here, people cannot come and tell me I must use gnome or I must use KDE. I often alternate between gnome and KDE, whenever I upgrade I use the one giving the best performance and stability in that particular distribution. Or I even use twm if I get too tired with the whole thing, in fact KDE and Gnome are becoming too much bloatware for my taste. I liked them better in the old days, if they would just have worked on the stability rather than the bloatness it would have been so much better today.

Face it -- GUIs make your life easier

Sure, I sometimes want to use a GUI. But I don't need the entire desktop environment concept known from Gnome and KDE. Give me a Window Manager and nothing more. All I need is a nice way to manage the Windows on my screen, and of course a way to open new xterms.

Re:Standards

[aardvarkjoe]

If, and only If, one method was so wonderfully better than all the others, everyone would be using it.

Well, being honest -- if one package manager was so much better than the others, all of the competing package managers would try to clone that one. Natural selection doesn't seem to be working particularly well among open source programs. (How many things pop up in one version of Gnome/KDE that is copied by the next version of the competing desktop?)

However, any modern distribution is pretty consistent by itself; the whole inconsistency argument has been weak for quite some time. If you install everything from source, then you'll have to deal with it, but those who pop in the CD, install everything they want, and then go have a nicely working system.

Re:Standards

[wass]

We need ONE standard desktop -- KDE, Gnome, I don't care. Pick one and use it. The others can be gravy, but we need a sanctioned interface.

There IS a standard, it's called bash, and is the default shell on every linux distro (at least the one's I've used). All your favorite window managers and desktop environments are your aforementioned gravy.

On the other note regarding KDE/Gnome, these seem to be slowly approaching some intermediate common asymptote, so what you're asking for might not be too much of a problem in the future.

FWIW, I actually like what many distros have done lately by standardizing the menus across KDE/Gnome/others. Some might not like seeing a KOffice item in a Gnome menu, but it's nice to have the software that you installed be standardized across the available desktop environments.

FInally, I agree with you that GUI's help out. But my original comment was about commands working on the command line uniformly across all linuces (neglecting some distro-specific shell scripts which depend on certain files existing in certain places with a certain layout, but that's a whole other story, or maybe that's your original point to begin with). But regarding uniformity, any linux you get setup will have a standard CLI-based interface to let you DO things.

Re:Standards

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose this is also exactly the reason that corporate america isn't jumping for joy at replacing all their Windows licenses with Linux... They wan't a choice. Throw a thousand choices at them and it may be overwhelming.

This is why Corporate Management that determines purchases (or even what is installed if it costs nothing) would rather pay up the wazoo for Windows and closed source software. They see the future dollar signs and prefer standards because they see infrastructure. They put their butt majorly on the line betting on Open Source software. While they very well may hit the jackpot, they may choose unwisely and end up losing their livelihood for the choice.

On the Windows platform they see less choice (in other words, less chance to screw up the decision) of what to install on their company's computers. Go with a big enough name (MS, IBM, etc.) and even if it isn't the best choice out there, they will know exactly what they're getting.

Standardization in Linux goes against, I'm sure, much of what innovation is fundamentally about (that is why standards can be updated, after all, of course, backward compatibility is always a good side effect). Of course, standards can always also be replaced if they are no longer relvant. The point is that corporate america moves slowly and cautiously to make decisions. They do not move or think at even remotely the speed technology moves forward. Create standards and move technology forward within them and you have the possibility of widespread corporate adoption.

Of course, on the other side of the coin, Linux is not a business. It is publicly perceived as "competition" to commercial software. While some distributors of Linux would prefer to see Linux become big business, it's clear that developers and the majority of the Linux community don't care (though most likely dislike the concept of the commercial pollution of it).

If this is the case, it doesn't explain the elitist attitude of many Linux people. At the same time as many berate commercial OS's and the companies that make them for "forcing" everyone to use their OS, they don't actively see that Linux becomes actual competition to them. While commercial software is making all the dirty deals to ensure their money keeps flowing in, it seems as though Linux folks are content to sit on the sidelines and just bitch about it.

The "choice" is not available to the regular consumers out there (and this is complete BS, many have no idea how to replace their OS, that doesn't mean they don't have the choice to... you can buy Linux in a nice fancy box distro with a manual and CD in any bookstore and even Wallie world) because the same Linux zealots that sit on "high ground" and laugh at every security hole found in Windows don't actually bother to go and make sure that Linux gets pre-installed on these name brand PC's that are selling in actual stores (let's face it, it's probably like 99% of people that buy their computers online, excluding Dell and Gateway, (probably in parts) are geeks, not Joe Sixpack, putting pre-installed with Linux computers online is no risk for any of the computer manufacturers... if they sell five total, oh well, now ship 10,000 to a retail chain and you really have a vested interest in moving them).

This is, of course, purely in the realm of desktop OS's. I think Linux can only continue to spread in the x86 server market and will eventually be the overwhelming majority of OS's powering machines there.

Re:Standards

[Anne Thwacks]

How many things pop up in one version of Gnome/KDE that is copied by the next version of the competing desktop?

I cant answer that, because I have never actually managed to get gnome to install on anything, and I have only ever got one version of KDE to install. I have had more success with fvwm95, but I think that is more intent on copying something else.

I think bug-free is more important than standard, and I'd rather be able to chose between two lame ducks than be forced to use one.

If there was a window manager called "Donald" I'd use it if it worked.

Re:Standards

[RomikQ]

I think you're missing the point. Variaty does not automatically exclude standarts.

Right now there is basically only three app add/remove standarts - deb, rpm, tar.gz, deb being the best, but the most unsupported. Pretty much every distro has RPM, even if its not the primary packaging format(slackware, for example, has rpm installed by default, and, although it's labeled "unsupported" and dependancies don't work, I use it all the time, never had any problems). So rpm is pretty much the standard, with deb and tar.gz being the alternative. If your distro doesn't have rpm, install it and no problemo.

About desktops... how are they mutually incompatible? you can't run QT programs from Window Maker, or GTK programs from kde? So you have to install a few more libraries. I for example can't stand qt, and love gtk and other people have opposite preferences. If one is accepted as the standard and everyone stops supporting everything else, then someone is always gonna be pissed. X Windows protocol is the standard and thats good enough. And just because some people like GUI doesn't GUI has to be adpated as the standard. I use CLI for many things(nothing beats MC at file management) and like it.

Variaty is always good. Windows has alternative desktops that are very very good(Talisman for example) but nobody uses them and know about them, simply because the regular windows gui is the standard. Users have to be given alternatives always.

Re:Standards

[Etyenne]

And how, exactly, do you propose stopping people from happily continue development on all the other desktops?

why should they stop ?

Re:Standards

[messiertom]

Right now there is basically only three app add/remove standarts - deb, rpm, tar.gz, deb being the best ...

What makes deb the greatest of the three? There's no real difference between debs and RPMS, imho.

What you're probably thinking of is how (most) debs are distributed. Right now, apt far outpaces RedHat's distribution method (though Mandrake's urpm is nearly up to par with apt).

Re:Standards

[greenrd]

Because that guy made the idiotic suggestion that people should be forced to use only KDE, or only Gnome, or something. Open source means you can't prevent people replacing parts of their system - as opposed to say Microsoft which can pretty much prevent people (legally and technologically) from replacing the window manager or kernel code in Windows, for example.

In practical terms, the idea of bringing about a situtation where nearly everyone uses the exact same Linux desktop environment, is frankly ludicrous. It will only happen if either KDE or Gnome becomes a "dying project" many years in the future due to lack of interest - no one person or organisation can just issue a divine edict to make that happen.

Re:Standards

[Z4rd0Z]

I'm pretty sure he didn't mean that people should be forced to use KDE or Gnome, etc. What he meant was that the standards body should choose one and the distros that are standards compliant would use that one. being open source, you can be sure that there would still be options available. But dammit, there really does need to be one interface that people can rely on, and one that doesn't radically change every year or two.

It seems clear that Redhat doesn't want to be involved with United Linux, and they're married to Gnome, so Gnome is probably going to be the de facto standard in Linux desktops. Even though I think Gnome is years behind KDE in terms of usability, it's fine to standardize on Gnome as long as its interface doesn't change too drastically. Work on it should be behind the scenes, porting more applications to it, making apps integrate with each other better.

I was at a bookstore this evening and saw a book on "Getting to Know RedHat Linux" or something similar. It was a really nicely illustrated book and explained everything beautifully for a novice. But it was an old book, using Redhat 6.1, and I don't think anything in there applies to Redhat 8.0! They need to make sure that this doesn't happen again in the near future. Windows has changed greatly behind the scenes in the last seven years, but you can still rely on pretty much the same interface to get things done (if you're using the classic mode in XP at least). This is really important for making Linux a viable solution.

I think United Linux is a good idea, but I don't think it's going to go anywhere, and that's because Redhat isn't involved. Suse may be big in Europe, but Redhat has all the big contracts. And with Sun soon to be using Gnome on Solaris, I think it's clear that a Redhat/Gnome interface is the Linux GUI of the future. Even though I don't like it now, it will certainly improve, and it's what I probably will settle on using.

Re:Standards

[greenrd]

Actually I thought KDE is the default environment in Red Hat 7.3 (not sure about 8.0). Many users will run it not knowing any different. But the manual (which as we know many users don't read cover-to-cover) does cover both. Which is as it should be!

So my predictions are that KDE will stay the most popular, but Gnome will stay a force to be reckoned with, because it will still be bundled by Sun and Red Hat and Debian and others.

The way to go is interoperability, which KDE and Gnome have already worked on - NOT the idiotic idea of "picking one and sticking with it".

Re:Standards

[shaitand]

But different distro's don't all come with the SAME default choice. There's no need to get rid of the other window managers, just pick one as the default across the board. If the distro's just agreed on the defaults life would be much simpler.

Re:Standards

[caluml]

What makes deb the greatest of the three? There's no real difference between debs and RPMS, imho.
Yeah, I don't see what's so great about DEBs either.
Have they got GPG signing on their packages yet? (And this isn't a troll - mod me down if you think I am, but not just cos you disagree.)

Linux DOES have to target Windows users

[A Guy From Ottawa]

Why would I (as a happy windows 2000 user) make the switch to linux?

There is only one answer: SOMEONE needs to convince me that I can be just as happy and productive in a Linux environment. To switch though, I also need some incentive (in this case that would be that Linux is free).

The idea that "users will make the switch all by themselves" is absurd and unfounded. Does the comment author believe that the BILLIONS of dollars Microsoft puts into marketing is wasted?? I don't think so.

Re:Linux DOES have to target Windows users

[A Guy From Ottawa]

Actually, I do have a win2000/RH 7.2 dual boot system.

Although I sometimes play around in Linux with my website, and whatever else I feel like wasting time with, the fact that I need help to do almost anything in Linux prevents me from using it full time.

Example: To get my ADSL connection up and running it took me well over 2 hours to find roaring penguin, install it, and configure my two network cards. In windows, I needed to click twice on the setup.exe, fill in a few forms, and that was that. In winXP I don't even need the setup.exe.

Keep in mind this is only one example. I haven't written about my printer, scanner, ugly fonts, java, and a whole lotta stuff that's taken a lot of time to find, install, and configure.

Although there are advantages to using Linux, the disadvantages have kept me a windows user, and I expect that will continue for another few years.

Re:Linux DOES have to target Windows users

[Shelled]

There is only one answer: SOMEONE needs to convince me that I can be just as happy and productive in a Linux environment.

Would you be as productive on a Mac? It's safe to assume that you're not the most productive person alive so logically many Mac users are more productive than you. Completely different desktop, higher productivity, maybe the limitaion is yours.

Does the comment author believe that the BILLIONS of dollars Microsoft puts into marketing is wasted??

Apparently not on you, they were on me. What possible relation could there be between the efficiency of a GUI and how much money a company spends trumpeting it? Many, many insolvent companies spent huge sums in marketing. Your point?

Re:Linux DOES have to target Windows users

[benjamindees]

Like Windows 2000? You can't use it forever, Redmond won't let you. At some point you have to move on to Bill's latest offering, and you'll just *love* XP. As I see it, you have three options:

1) Use 2000 forever and M$ goes out of business.

2) Upgrade (downgrade) to XP.

3) Learn to use Linux.

I know #3 will take some effort, but at this point it is almost equal to option #2. I'd put money on the prediction that, as Linux grows, M$ product quality will either get worse or the price will go up. Their shareholders aren't particularly excited about the prospects of MSN and XBox in a post-MS-monopoly marketplace.

No matter what you choose now, #3 will eventually become the best choice. Personally, I'm going to try to use Win98 forever, or at least until I can play recent games in Linux.

My own standards!

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't looked into it, but are the standardization documents open source? It would be great if I could branch and roll my own!

standardization is a problem

[Billly Gates]

I never really knew how serious is it was untill I wanted to become a unix expert. I began with gentoo due to the great amount of documentation. I had great luck with it untill 1.4 when devfs just became to unbearable and buggy to deal with. For some dumb reason I could not get /boot to mount properly. No its not a devfs thing and I know how to disable it on startup but this problem only exists in 1.4 and the mount -t ext2 /dev/hda1 /boot does not work.

Anyway I decided to try out suse and debian. Boy, what a difference. Every single file was in the wrong place on both systems. Suse was truly awefull in yast overiding any changes to my system files. I am aware of the .config files yast uses can be edited manually but I want to be a unix expert and not a suse expert.

Redhat tries to have psuedo files /etc that are symlinked elsewhere.

I understand *Bsd users perfectly in regards to defragmentation and quality problems in linux. In regards to quality and I refering to cutting edgeness and bugginess compared to other unix's including bsd. I am not saying its unstable.

I like how *bsd simplier and everything system related is configured from /etc like it should. The FreeBSD manually is a great resource and probably one of the greatest unix books around. Gentoo is the only distro that I know of that comes close to this. I love manually editing the /etc/make.conf file to optimize my whole system. Slackware from what I heard uses bsd style init and maybe more simplistic but I have not tried it so I am not qualified to make an opinion.

I got tired of hacking my systems for weeks on end trying to customize it so I switched back to Windows2k. (shudder) I am waiting for freebsd 5.0 to come out and will likely use it when its ready. The early 5.0 dp-2 release does not like my usb hardware for some reason and still needs some work in regards to threading, java and nvidia opengl driver support.

Re:standardization is a problem

[Rushuru]

It's not the first time that I see comments on how on some linux distributions config files are not where they should be (in /etc) and how *BSD is so much better in that respect.

I've been using Linux for 5 years, and over they years I tried several distributions (Mandrake, RedHat, Debian, Gentoo) and I don't remember having to edit a config file that was not in /etc (besides user config in my home). So can you please give examples of config files that are not in /etc?

Now, regarding *BSD. A couple of months ago, I went in a cybercafe and wanted to chat with friends on irc. However as soon as I tried to connect to an IRC server, it would disconnect me for 'having an open proxy'. I asked the manager. He said he was aware of the problem but didn't know how to get rid of it. I told him they probably had an open proxy. He asked me if I was familiar with unix. The next minute he had me logged as root on their FreeBSD NAT trying to find the problem ;)

I ran 'netstat' and found out that they had Squid running, and that me getting kicked from IRC was probably to due to the fact that it was poorly configured. I immediatly looked for a the config file in /etc or /etc/squid but didn't find anything. It took me a couple of minutes to figure that the config file was in /usr/local/squid/etc or some very weird path like that. Not really the 'everything system related is in /etc like it should' you describe. The story had an happy end since a few minutes later I managed to log on IRC.

Disclaimer: it was my first and only time doing 'administrative tasks' on a *BSD system so it could be a bad example. I do not mean to troll, just giving one example that is opposite to the parent poster's experience. Are Linux distributions so bad at having all config files in the same place, and are the BSDs better are it?

Re:standardization is a problem

[vadim_t]

Linux programs can have config files in /usr/local/etc too. And for a very simple reason. On pretty much any distribution programs go into /sbin, /bin, or /usr/bin. Those are the ones that come packaged. When you compile something most programs default to installing into /usr/local: /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/sbin, etc to avoid messing up your system.

It's actually a very good thing. If you ever say, compile Perl and install it in /usr/local then it won't interfer with anything vital (root doesn't have /usr/local/bin in $PATH), and if it doesn't work well you can quite safely nuke /usr/local because the distribution never installs anything there.

Logically, /usr/local/etc will have the config files for those programs. If squid was installed as a package but the config file was in /usr/local/etc then the package wasn't made correctly.

Re:standardization is a problem

[NineNine]

Even better. Try Unix. The Unix of, uh, Unix.

Re:standardization is a problem

[Billly Gates]

I no longer have a unix machine in front of me so I can not give alot of examples but I do recall (example)that both FreeBSD and Gentoo have the master make options in /etc. /etc/make.conf would be the file to edit if you want to enable global settings whenever you build something. Gentoo had everything including systemlogers like metalog to gcc settings, to even network settings in /etc. Perhaps someone on a linux box or bsd one can site more.

On SuSE alot of these settings are not there. Redhat has alot of the settings in /etc but they are symlinked elsewhere so changing files /etc can be a royal pain. But for the make.conf I do not recall seeing it there in either distro. I am in the process of learning c++ and switching between gcc 2.9.5x and 3.2x is important. I can not go to a 3.2x distro because they come with apache2.0 which wont work with mod_perl 5.6x and the java 1.4x is not compatible with my older 1.3 code, etc. We need a special daemon to keep track of installations and provide package removal and keep some of the standard libraries and .so's. Version tracking is needed as well. A package compilied with a previous library should work with the newer one.

My situation mentioned above is what makes unix and especially linux extremely ugly.

A modern OS should keep track of all its files and be able to take applications on and off like Windows2k and MacOSX. I admit windows95 and windows98 had terrible dll managment but it has been fixed. Unix and Linux need this REAL BADLY! This is especially true since a standard linux distro comes with thousands of apps! Windows hardly comes with anything yet needs this. I believe this is critical and UnitedLinux should not accept rpm as the standard package handler.

A ports based system like FreeBSD or Gentoo where all of the files are in /etc make configuring a system with the proper versions of the tools I use possible for mere mortals.

This is what I mean by standardization. Things need to be consistant and I believe the disro makers are making money off people who can not figure out or want to customize their own distro. So they buy one already setup instead because its too hard.

Re:standardization is a problem

[rhavyn]

I'm sorry Sir, but you seem to have no idea how a distro like Red Hat or SuSE or Debian works.

1. There is no make.conf. make.conf is used for the ports system in BSD and Gentoo. Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, etc. are binary package based distros. You download a binary package, and install that, no compiling involved. Thus, no need for a master ports makefile. Heck, by default, none of those distros even install a compiler.

2. You don't need a special deamon to keep track of installed file in Red Hat or SuSE, every file installed by a package is kept in a package database. In Red Hat if you wanted to remove apache and all its files you type rpm -e apache. Boom, no more apache. As for library dependencies, if you minor library upgrade breaks an app, thats the app writers fault, not the distros. The RPM (Red Hat and SuSE) and DEB (Debian) package systems are better then the installers for Windows, you'll never get a "Couldn't complete uninstall, please remove files manually" message in a RPM or DEB based system, if you tell it to remove a package, every file installed by the package is removed.

So, if that is what you mean by standardization, it was completed years ago when rpm and deb were created.

(Btw, in case a configuration file isn't under etc in Red Hat, all you have to do is rpm -ql and it will happily tell you where every file in the package is).

Barriers of inconsistancey

[Anonymous Coward]

1. One desktop enviroment PLEASE! Im sick of gnome getting in the way, from a developers and a users point of view, kde is much better! Scrap gnome and then we will have a unified desktop
2. Libs, scrap re-invented wheels and and standardise on one, get rid of toolkits like motif, xaw, gtk, fox, tk, xul, openofficetk, fltk , curses (and many other obscoure ones) and standardise on qt/kde, the standard toolkit
3. One kernel, scrap the fucking hurd already, its braindead, linux is much better
4. Fix the broken keymaps! On a UK qwerty keyboard, you can input a euro by pressing altgr+4, but in linux, you get ¼ instead! Dont forget that the windows key should work in linux too (pop up the k menu, it does in some distros, but not all)
5. better dialogs. As a user, the kde interface is very intutitve, but in gtk the dialogs suck, for serious work, the gtk file dialog sucks!

This is not a troll, but as a devloper for linux these are REAL peeves

Re:Barriers of inconsistancey

[bruthasj]

1. One CAD drawing PLEASE! I'm sick of Ford getting in the way, from a manufacturer and driver point of view, BMW is much better! Scrap Ford and then we will have a unified vehicle.

2. Cars, scrap re-invented wheels and standardize on one, get rid of Firestone, Les Schwab, Pirelli,
Avon, Kumho (and many other obscure ones) and standardise on Goodyear, the standard Tire... I mean they even have a Blimp dammit!

3. One engine, scrap the one-stroke internal combustion engine, its braindead, four-stroke is much better.

4. Fix the broken Radio buttons! Some radios, you turn the knob to turn it on. Others you press the stupid button to turn it on. Don't forget that the eject button should spit out the CD, okay?!

5. Better manuals. As a driver, the BMW speedometer is very intuitive, but in Fords it sucks, for serious work, the Ford speedometer sucks!

This is not a troll, but as a manufacturer of Cars these are REAL peeves.

Re:Barriers of inconsistancey

[matticus]

1. I hate KDE. I don't use Desktop Environments. I use WindowMaker exclusively.
2. I hate Qt. I don't use Qt. I use tk, WINGs, xul, and curses.
3. I only use Linux kernel, but I wouldn't tell anyone to stop using HURD if they like it.
4. that's your keymap. .
5. write one yourself.

Users Want Better Stuff, Not a Development Model

[reallocate]

Not to be a naysayer, but in 12 years Linux has managed to gain only a few percentage points worth of the desktop market. Users really don't care, don't know, and have no reason to be aware of the development model used to create their software.

In all probability, Linux will never replace Windows, or even the Mac, on the desktop. It can, however, carve out a viable slice of the market if the Linux community delivers attractive, innovative, easy-to-use software with capabilities that users want but cannot find elsewhere. By and large, this hasn't happened yet.

And, it will not happen if too many Linux developers continue to imagine that their development model is what they're selling. It isn't.

Here's what it'll take to fight Windows:

[StandardCell]

1. Unified and universal standardized library structure similar to Windows DLLs and APIs(yeah I know it's there, but it's neither standard in location or type, nor is it universal). This could also help accelerate audio and gaming library acceleration development.

2. Copying the Windows registry paradigm for system and program information. One should not only be able to install programs and have their components registered, but also cleanly uninstall and/or install over existing versions in the same way. You can also standardize automatic upgrades for existing programs and kernel patches over the 'net using a similar tool.

3. GUI the hell out of every system tool there is and make sure that GUI is strictly standardized with integrated help and unified. It's getting there but it's not there yet.

4. Include copies of software with each distribution compatible to at least some extent with their Windows equivalents (e.g. XMMS, OpenOffice) though this is pretty frequent these days.

5. (Most important, and likely most difficult) Get all current developers to start working under this framework to the greatest extent possible. Whether it's open source, closed source, free software, or whatever else, a common framework is critical no matter who is developing.

That, to me, is what's essentially different between Windows and Linux on the desktop. It's a chicken-and-egg to get more developers of Windows-only software, but the only way to get them on the bandwagon is to cut a standard here and today. This is a lot more ambitious than, say, POSIX compliance. But this is what it's going to take, not just copying the binary into /usr/local/bin. These changes are also necessary for future progression in server-side OS distros as well IMHO, but server penetration of *NIXES is (fortunately) much further along.

Re:Here's what it'll take to fight Windows:

[Feztaa]

2. Copying the Windows registry paradigm for system and program information.

This is by far the worst idea I've ever heard. The Windows Registry is one of the worst parts of windows. Registry got corrupted? Reinstall!

One thing I hate the most -- reinstall the OS, it clobbers your registry, and then you have to reinstall all of your apps, too. I like that each program has it's own plain ASCII config file in Linux. That way if I reinstall my OS, my apps don't lose their configuration. Hell, I even have a seperate /home partition, so I could reformat my root partition during the install, and my programs would still retain their configurations. I love it!

Linux has nothing to gain from a 'Windows Registry', except for a Single Point of Failure that would be a huge pain in the ass, all around.

Re:Here's what it'll take to fight Windows:

[Billly Gates]

Agreed.

I prefer the "everything is a file" unix approach to this.

What we need is something similiar to dlls in which an application linked to an earlier version of a dll can use the newer one and still function.

We also need a special daemon or a super init which can keep track of versions of different applications and so's. With this installed it can be possible to remove an application and still have another application that requires one of the libraries or so's to still function. The daemon would only remove certian parts of the package but not all of the files from a package.

If the developer wants too, they can leave all of the settings for the program in a text file so if a user wants to re-install the program later on they can do so and still have their settings.

The registry is whats keeping many admins from Windows2k. A problem could arise due something they did months or years ago that a backup may not resolve! With Unix an admin could just edit the text files.

Re:Here's what it'll take to fight Windows:

[Elladan]

Heh.

You do realize, every single thing you've stated is already done by linux, automatically, only about a million times better than the way you propose doing it, right?

What we need is something similiar to dlls in which an application linked to an earlier version of a dll can use the newer one and still function.

Oh, you mean, like, say, maybe, er, um, say, a shared library? Oh, wait, what's that? You mean, Linux has those? And in fact, it even supports versioning of them, so if you have two applications which require incompatible versions of the same library, they can still work too, unlike Windows? I'm shocked! Shocked I say!

We also need a special daemon or a super init which can keep track of versions of different applications and so's. With this installed it can be possible to remove an application and still have another application that requires one of the libraries or so's to still function. The daemon would only remove certian parts of the package but not all of the files from a package.

This is a ridiculous idea. Wouldn't it be better to just have a program which keeps track of which libraries a program needs, and not remove them if they're needed by something? A program which manages all the application files on your system, and handles interdependencies and conflicts automatically? Maybe we could bundle the files together into, oh, I dunno, packages, and call this a Package Manager. Wait, that's an amazing idea! I should patent it!

Wait, I have an even more shocking idea. What if, say, I wanted to upgrade a library that's in use by a program that's running right now. Wouldn't it be great if I could atomically drop the new library over the old one, and let any programs that are still using the old one keep using it until the last program using it exits, at which point the library is automatically deleted by the OS? Wouldn't that be a shockingly cool idea? New programs would get the new library, old ones would still have the original to use until they shut down! That way, I could upgrade live, running software and have it actually work! I should patent that too!

Oh wait, what's that, what's that you say? Linux does all this, already, automatically, and in fact, has done it for years and years? I'm shocked! Shocked I say!

Re:Here's what it'll take to fight Windows:

[moncyb]

When I'm sitting there trying to figure out where to put everything I need to run the application and store its data, there is not one single standard in the *NIX world.

There is: the etc/ directory is for global configuration data. /etc/skel/ is for the default user config. The user's home directory (aka ~ aka $HOME--often /home/username) contains his/her data and config files. lib/ is for shared libraries. shared/ is for the program's data. bin/ is for the programs executables. I believe the "shared" directory is a new concept (at least to Linux), everyone used to put their data into lib.

The users config files are usually named as a dot, the program's name then "rc" tacked on the end. If the program's name was bar, then it'd be ".barrc" in the home directory. Realise that anything starting with a period in Linux/Unix works like a hidden file in DOS/Windows--ls/dir won't display it unless you use the "-a" option. So looking at a listing of your home directory, you'll only see the data files instead of the clutter of all your config ones too.

If you wish to backup your general settings in Linux, storing /etc, /usr/etc, and /usr/local/etc should do it. The problem is not all programs written for Unix/Linux will conform to this standard. For example, Jed and lynx put their configuration files into the lib directory. Just like some Windows programs store their settings in ini files under the C:\Program Files directory...

Having three different places (/, /usr, and /usr/local) for everything may seem strange, but there is a reason behind it. Everything in /etc, /bin, /sbin, /lib are supposed to be the basic critical programs and system settings. /usr is for the programs used by most everyone in your organization and is often mounted read only from the network. /usr/local would be mounted on the computer's hard drive and programs added for the user(s) of that specific computer.

You may think the registry is a good idea, but it is just a poorly designed clone of the Unix way. Same goes for the "My Documents" folder vs the /home directory. Just proves the old saying "anyone who doesn't understand Unix is doomed to reimplement it poorly."

Re:Here's what it'll take to fight Windows:

[5KVGhost]

This is by far the worst idea I've ever heard. The Windows Registry is one of the worst parts of windows. Registry got corrupted? Reinstall!

Weird. I've never had a corrupted registry on my systems or any of the Windows systems I used to maintain. I don't doubt that it happens, but it's hardly a common occurance.

One thing I hate the most -- reinstall the OS, it clobbers your registry, and then you have to reinstall all of your apps, too.

Not really. In fact, I generally prefer to do clean installs to get rid of accumulated stuff that reinstallations don't touch. If an app works prior to the reinstall, and if it's compatible with whatever version of Windows you're installing, then it'll stay working.

"the same" != "united"

[sczimme]

From the article:

Microsoft users are an interesting lot. They have systems that they have NO control over. They have systems they have to reboot every sixteen minutes. They freely pay Bill Gates obscene amounts of money for buggy programs that they can't use when they upgrade to the next operating system. It's almost laughable. But they are united, "

Using the same OS does not make these people united any more than driving a car makes all automobile owners united.

Re:"the same" != "united"

[MisterFancypants]

Nor do Windows users have to reboot their systems every sixteen minutes. If Linux developers really want to compete they have to stop pretending it is still 1998. Windows 2000 and XP don't suffer from the constant BSOD. You're going to have to find a new straw man to beat.

Re:"the same" != "united"

[ShieldW0lf]

Yes it does. It means they're united in buying aftermarket parts, add-ons and services that meet the same specifications. That's why popular cars that are seen everywhere have tons of products available at reasonable prices, while cars that are less popular cost a fortune to fix and have few sources for after-market parts. And people make their purchasing decisions based on this. If spare parts for a car cost a fortune, people will avoid that car. Just like they avoid linux. This isn't a democracy: Just because you don't like the answer, doesn't mean its wrong.

not mutually exclusive

[newsdee]

A standard does not mean that everybody is forced to do it that way. It's merely a common "language" that people agree upon.
Defining a standard will therefore enable distros to concentrate their efforts while being able to keep their own way of doing things.
Of course, if the standard lifts offs and everybody accepts it, then the distros will start dropping old features over time.
But even with a standard, it remains open source. So theoretically anybody could try to propose a new standard (as long as it is backwards compatible). ;-)

Well first off.

[Martigan80]

Linux is making serious waves with the big boys of IT. IBM, SUN, Hewlett Packard, Oracle and DELL

We all know that Dell has backed off a couple of time, well they never_truly_supported the Linux they did sell for a short time.

Linux division shows its ugly head at perhaps the worst time.

I disagree. This division is not an ugly side to Linux, rather I believe that is what keeps the choices available. Hell look at how many freaking car models we have, granted you have five similar with different names, the choice is still there.

But they are united, and most don't know the first thing about Linux. Why is that?

Well I will say because there are about ten different "Hacker" magz out there that teach them a new trick every month on who to make their system that much faster, and it would be detrimental to dump all that knowledge to learn a new OS.

Red Hat, Lycoris and even Debian need to get on this group.

Now I use RH 7.3, and I know there is now way in hell you'll get a Debian group to admit that RH is an equal-it's not.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

wait

[djupedal]

What...you never talked to a Corvette owner? Porsche? BMW? Saturn? Check the web right now for Mustang fans...you need to do a reality check on this particular analogy.

Don't get me wrong...windows users are not united as a fan base, that's for sure (compared to Apple users, as an example). But using cars as an example of your point is way off, sorry. :)

Try something like "...any more than coughing up blood makes drunks united."

Re:wait

[sconeu]

He was referring to generic cars. He's right.

Mac users are like Mustang owners. So are Linux users, though Linux users are more like "muscle car" owners, each with their favorite version (distro).

Windows users, on the other hand, drive a Chevy Lumina, or a Ford Escort. They don't band up.

Re:wait

[sczimme]

I was not as clear as I might have been - apologies for that.

Actually using cars as a broad category is a rather good analogy. There are many more Windows users (as in Joe and Jane Desktop who just want to send email) than there are people actively involved with and enthusiastic about Windows. In both cars and operating systems, the overwhelming majority just want to get point A to point B and aren't terribly concerned about the particulars of how they do it. The subcategories - administrators, developers, etc. - can be the analogs to the Porsche/BMW/Saturn car club members.

Nutshell version: the enthusiasts in both worlds are the minority, and there is no relationship connecting/binding the point-A-to-point-B crowd; describing them as 'united' is inaccurate.

How is that for a reality check? :-)

Re:wait

[djupedal]

:)

I claim the original comparison is too broad, and only works when defined. A majority can't exist as a class without allegiance/resistance to something. Just being able to go from A to B doesn't define someone as a generic car owner. It only defines them as a commuter...they can be using trains, taxis or bicycles...furthering a breakdown of definition...cars, then, become less of a point to your argument.

So how comparative are enthusiast OS's vs. Windows?

Can we see J & J Desktop Windows users rising up in rancourous vervor if Redmond said that support for all things Windows would end as the new year begins? Doubtful...they would simply wait for a substitute to fill the (perceived) gap. Would Apple users howl if Cupertino said support would end for...oh wait... OS 9.x support will continue, won't it...

The car thing only works for me if it is bland vs. enthusiast....not cars in general.

Re:Standards ; we need them - Linux though?

[saskboy]

The problem as I see it, is that Linux is seen as the Windows killer. It is not yet that way. We are willing to praise lackluster device support, and non functioning desktop environments because they don't give us a BSOD or tell us our applications are doing something "illegal".

We need a Lindows type OS, that has a nearly flawles, Windows-like interface, and easy to use device support. We also need massive support for everything that is cool on the Web for home users to tackle learning Linux.

I'm not a computer dummy, but I had trouble getting my scroll button on my mouse to work in Mandrake 9.0. I set it to where it SHOULD have worked and it didn't. Then I rebooted, and all the sudden it worked. Nothing told me I had to reboot, and I assumed I didn't because I was switching between mouse selections and other features were changing so how was I to know that the scroll button needed a reboot?

If I were in Windows, they would have told me to reboot as soon as I picked another mouse. This is just one example of less than thrilling support for my hardware. My soundcard and NIC didn't work either without tinkering.

Thanks for letting me rant. I want Linux to kill Windows [to the point where it is affordable and stable], but Linux cannot do that yet. Standardization will help that, but Linux is not meant to be standard for everything! Contradiction, eek!

You need non standard versions of Linux for people who don't want it for Desktops. Period. Trouble is, those people are the ones driving its development, so we won't see a standard Linux anytime in the next decade.

And your point is...?

[silvaran]

The author makes little to no suggestions as to what we can do to solve this problem. Even more useless is that he does not even describe the problem he's trying to present. Like another poster mentioned, just because a group of people use Windows does not make them united.

I believe the Linux wave is going great. Linux software is farther ahead than it's ever been (since it's been given time and hard work), and we're gradually coming to accept a certain number of features as "standard" for any given distribution. Making his comparison to Microsoft, he seems to suggest that all the distributions should "unite together" and make one big distribution. But then... where's the choice? Where's the variety that shows us alternatives and suggests ways to improve our systems even more? There is no one solution, and I'm happy that all these distributions exist, as it allows me to find my own solution based upon the work of a dedicated group of people. Without Mandrake and Suse, who's to say Red Hat Linux is the right solution? Likewise, without RH and Mandrake, who's to say Suse is the right solution?

The only thing I can think of, and something he didn't touched on, is the rippling of changes back to the original maintainers. There's nothing more frustrating than adding a component to your own custom system and thinking, "How did Red Hat put this all together?" Of course, you can always grab their source and figure out how they did it. I find a lot of these changes that the individual distributions make are bug fixes or feature improvements (patches so the software installs properly, or extra data to allow better integration into GNOME/KDE menus). It frustrates me that these changes don't make it back to the original package maintainers as often as they could. I would love to see the pam_stack module make it back into the Linux pam distribution so it can provide base level authentication services without the need for lengthy post-package patches and other tweaks.

Granted, there are some modifications that come with the territory. I see no reason for maintainers to have to adopt the Blue Curve theme that Red Hat uses to dress KDE and GNOME like each other. But at the same time, it would be nice to be able to pick and choose software packages and not have to worry about re-doing common work that all the distributions have already done.

Anyways, back to the article. I think this guy spouts a whole lot of nothing. There is nothing wrong with the way things are going with Linux and if there is, we'll get there soon. But keep in mind that Linux users are not Microsoft any more than Windows users are Microsoft. I use Linux because I feel comfortable and secure using the environment. I built my own server system from scratch because I wasn't happy with the choices offered by the different distributions. And that's the luxury of using an open system, to pick and choose exactly what you want.

Factions within Linux that won't go away

[Plug]

1. Debian (who are a very very big player in the Linux world and currently my distribution of choice) have a very very good package manager and even better distribution system for it (apt). LSB, on the other hand, have decided on Red Hat's RPM as their package of choice. This means either Debian somehow has to be extended (some would read crippled) to work properly with RPM, and then on top of that they have to realign their directory structures to go in line with LSB standards, which will confuse a lot of Debian stalwarts.

Windows installers can copy quite fine with the fact that the system directory on Windows 2000 is \WINNT and the system directory on Windows XP is \WINDOWS. It shouldn't be hard to write Linux installers that can do the same thing - even just looking at environment variables should leave you right 9 times out of 10?

Debian can produce a LSB-compliant distro, but they may choose not to. Or not for a while anyway.

2. Has anyone suggested to Richard Stallman that Free software is renamed Freedom software, so people instantly have a better idea of what it's about?

Re:Factions within Linux that won't go away

[PigleT]

What's the problem?

a) RPM already has at least two ways of being upgraded dynamically - urpmi and apt-get. It just needs a consistent well-maintained high-quality upstream pool-set

b) Debian supports RPM packages just fine.

c) The standards (specifically, the LSB) say nothing about requiring RPM to be the system's native package-managing system.

d) Debian already strive for LSB-compliancy, at least where it makes sense. This is why we've had /etc/init.d/ since the get-go while RH have been messing around with this "/etc/rc.d" abomination which then needs legacy support on the assumption that there are idiots out there who can't cope with RH correcting their previous mistakes.

"the system directory on Windows 2000 is \WINNT"

Well, only *if* you install it that way.

And one for thought: which is more important, adhering to a standard for the sake of it, or knowing what you're doing? (A specific example of the latter: given an IP#, I expect you to be able to trace through DNAT, netstat -p or similar and through /proc, to tell me where in the filesystem the httpd is located that's responsible for a given webserver. If you can't debug that, you ain't gettin' root on my boxes.)

Re:Factions within Linux that won't go away

[fava]

LSB requires that RPM be available, it doesnt insist that all other package managers be removed.

*sigh*

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

Microsoft users are an interesting lot. They have systems that they have NO control over. They have systems they have to reboot every sixteen minutes. They freely pay Bill Gates obscene amounts of money for buggy programs that they can't use when they upgrade to the next operating system. It's almost laughable. But they are united, and most don't know the first thing about Linux.

Not one of these statements is true (except perhaps the control over the OS statement, depending on how you define control).

I never have to reboot W2k or XP, except during the occasional (hehe) patch.

I know people that still use Office 97 on new operating systems. In fact, MS catches a lot of flack for maintaining backwards compatibility. And now we're claiming that they don't?

Microsoft users are not united. We are just customers that use the (arguably) best (or only) tool for the job (exchange, 2000 for desktop PCs, office, etc). There is basically no sense of community for MS users that I have ever stumbled across. Microsoft developers have a few hangouts, but most of us just hit MSDN when we need info.

Most (if not all) of the Microsoft users I know of (developers, admins) not only know of Linux, but have used it when appropriate. Given that UNIX is still quite pervasive, finding the robust, free version isn't that hard. Could it be, perhaps, that they only use Linux where they feel it is strong (webserver, etc) and that is the reason it isn't as popular as zealots think it should be?

As for standards... people seem to forget that Windows is top of the heap, and the Windows environment is the least standardized environment I have ever seen. Every app has to be skinnable. Every save dialog and open dialog customized beyond recognition. Just go to the Interface Hall of Shame to see what I mean.

Silly UL

[wytcld]

It would be just plain perverse if Gentoo or Debian(/Knoppix) embraced the United Linux plan; and I can't imagine Red Hat going that road is bloody likely either.

Okay, so anyone releasing software will have an rpm version for Red Hat that will with any luck also work on Mandrake. And if the software is free and good it will quickly be ported to Gentoo and slowly to Debian. You can see how UL would wish everything would fit their own scheme, but it ain't gonna happen. So what's the noise about?

All we're lacking for widespread desktop acceptance is KDE 3.1 and strong programs in a few areas like household/small business accounting and desktop publishing - and having a few different Linuxes to port those to when they appear isn't gonna be the stumbling block.

Pathetic

[Kaypro]

I'm as big a Linux fan as the next guy, but:

"Microsoft users are an interesting lot. They have systems that they have NO control over. They have systems they have to reboot every sixteen minutes. They freely pay Bill Gates obscene amounts of money for buggy programs that they can't use when they upgrade to the next operating system. It's almost laughable."

Nothing in these statements is true. Please stop using the argument that Windows is unstable (beginning with Win2K). If you are using supported hardware it's as stable as Linux and dare I say MORE stable than Linux/XWindows. (Random X crashes do occur on occasion)

Please define "NO control over". If you're talking about being able to swap VM in the kernel then yes. If you're talking about being able to choose what apps to use or themes or such than no.

My father still uses a Windows 3.0 app on his XP machine with absolutely no problems whatsoever including printing! That's one thing Microsoft has done right, being able to use most legacy apps.

I totally agree that Unification is necessary to an extent but get your facts straight before you start bashing Windows.

Re:Pathetic

[Gavitron_zero]

I have to agree with you there, My XP box goes up when I get home from a LAN party, and doesn't get rebooted until I take it to the next LAN party. Even then, in a dry spell of LANnage, my XP box stays up for months without reboot. It's rock solid.

Re:Pathetic

[bmetzler]

Pease stop using the argument that Windows is unstable (beginning with Win2K). If you are using supported hardware it's as stable as Linux and dare I say MORE stable than Linux/XWindows.

I must beat on XP or something. On a Dell Inspiron 8000, XP crashes about weekly. Too much for me. I noticed that you specifically left out Window 9x. I'd run XP on my desktop also, instead of Windows 98, for those apps that don't have Linux replacements, but the licensing costs are too much.

-Brent

Re:Pathetic

[Kaypro]

Interesting. When you say it crashes do you mean it literally blue screens or just apps crash and the taskbar gets restarted? I purposely left out Windows 9X, because it was for the most part a terrible OS (basically a GUI shell on top of DOS). As far as I'm concerned Windows 2K is Microsofts first true consumer OS with NT4.0 being their first true OS in general. Everything besides those just weren't usable.

Re:Pathetic

[bmetzler]

When you say it crashes do you mean it literally blue screens

Yes, it literally bluescreens. Or reboots automatically. Or just ceases to function properly requiring a reboot.

I'm talking about more then just one application going on the blink, requiring the application to be restarted. That happens more frequently.

I've also had issues with ActiveX controls that I've used for development under 2K. They didn't register probably or something. Worked fine under 98. I finally got it to work properly, but it was more work then it should have been.

-Brent

Re:Pathetic

[bmetzler]

If I were you, I would be running memtest86 or otherwise debugging hardware. General rule of thumb when one OS works great and another doesn't.

If one OS works fine, and the other doesn't, don't you think that it might be a more likely chance that perhaps one of the OS's has problems? After all, if the hardware is bad, both OS's probably would have issues. at least that's my experience.

-Brent

standardization and usability go hand in hand

[SideshowBob]

A big, big part (perhaps the most important part) of usability is consistency. Lack of consistency between apps, and between an app and the desktop environment, contributes to poor usability.

How important you consider usability to be for Linux I guess is up to you the individual. But accept that without a 'standard' GUI you can't have a good user experience.

Re:Users Want Better Stuff, Not a Development Mode

[JordanH]

• And, it will not happen if too many Linux developers continue to imagine that their development model is what they're selling. It isn't.

The point you are missing is that MOST Linux developers are not selling anything. They are just developing software for their own needs.

This tends to create a system that is more developer friendly because it meets the needs of developers well. The theory is that a very developer friendly system will ultimately be a very good platform for developing any software.

I'm not sure how successful this has been, but that's what we have. Don't ask Linux developers to be salesmen, they won't like you very much. Now, there are those who are trying to sell the wares these developers have created, and it may be that they will speak for users and be able to leverage this good development platform, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see how this plays out.

So far, there's some indication that it's worked well in some areas, for example server software and appliances, and less well in others, such as desktop software.

Diversity Helps

[cranos]

You know Im all for businesses trying to make money from Linux, it helps the development of the OS and provides much needed support for businesses wishing to make the change.

That said the only way that there is going to be a truly United Linux is if Linus takes the kernel closed source and tries to go down that path.

The United Linux organisation is just a business group, trying to drum up business for their product. Nothing more and nothing less. As a sys admin and software developer I can tell you now that I would much rather have a range of specialised tools in my pocket than a all-in-one that attempts to do everything but does nothing well.

Standardisation is important......

[Diabolical]

Why? Simple. As a software vendor i would like to port my application to Linux. But what distribution should i support where it comes to libs and directory layouts? Red Hat? SuSE? Gentoo? Debian? Mandrake? Slackware? etc. etc. etc.

I have only a limited amount of time to make my product compatible with the os. If i have to support all of them i would have to make more money of my customers just to cover the costs. This would make my product not very attractive to users, and i will probably not sell enough of it to support my efforts. So i decide not to port it yet and wait for better times. The other option is to choose just one distro like so many other vendors (Red Hat anyone?). Making that distro the de-facto standard, not because of the fact that it is the best but because that is the one on which most commercial software runs.

So standardisation is good. It attracts commercial software for all distro's which will attract new users who will make Linux to be able to reach new heights.

Now, i know that OSS could compete on alot of levels with commercial software so it would not be necesary to have commercial ones but not all of them are as good as the commercial product. For alot of software there simply is no OSS alternative which could be viable. Not yet anyway. (e.g. Visio (Kivio comes close but that's it), Dreamweaver, Video-editing software (professional versions) etc. etc.)

Re:Standardisation is important......

[cranos]

Making that distro the de-facto standard, not because of the fact that it is the best but because that is the one on which most commercial software runs.

Isn't this what people do when they decide to build for Windows?

Seriously though, when building software you don't go into it trying to build for all the OS platforms out there, you go in and build for the one you feel most comfortable with and once that is finished you then port to the others. Or you join forces with some one else who can do the coding for another platform.

Competition is healthy, it gives you a choice rather than being stuck with the one vendor.

Re:Standardisation is important......

[praedor]

The Answer to Everything: Also if you make open source software the users will provide you with patches and feedback to make your software work on all the platforms required.

This simply ignores the fact that not all software is best done OS - sometimes the only way to make a living off software is to SELL it and NOT rely on support. OSS is great for a lot of things but not all things (games, voice rec, handwriting rec, tax prep software, any law/legal system based software). There are some things that OSS will NEVER manage as well as closed source vendors (see above paranthetical list for a few).

If you want certain types of software then you MUST make the system as easy as possible for the ONLY source of that software (commercial/closed source) to write it for your OS.

OSS/FSF will NEVER produce voice rec software, handwriting rec software, tax prep software, and games that can in any way compete or compare with the fast-paced development of state-of-the-art games. Hasn't happened in over a dozen years, ain't EVER going to happen. You/we NEED commercial vendors for some things.

Re:Yeah, and America needs more weapons *sigh*

[aardvarkjoe]

- Documentation on how to get cable/DSL modems working. Perhaps a desktop utility (program) too.

Don't you just type the relevant information provided by the cable company into your distribution's networking options? Though it would have been nice if there was an easy way to enable NAT -- I seem to remember that being a pain.

- Swap files. They work. People don't have a lot of RAM (well, geeks do, but most home owners have 64 or 128 MB). But they like pictures and video, so let's swap out some of their 20GB hard drives.

I can't remember the last time that an installer didn't at least recommend making a swap partition.

- Some blue screen type of application to let them know when their video drivers are corrupted or something bad happens.

I agree here. Most people are using X, and so if you have a kernel panic or something else bad happen, you don't see anything. Also, if X locks up (usually due to buggy graphics drivers), I often have to telnet in to kill off X and restart it ... why can't I do that from my own console?

(Someone suggested that I set up my reset button to kill X ... not a bad idea, although it's still a hack. I really ought to figure out how to do that.)

- 24 hour free tech support via phone or on-site service for $0.99/minute. People need to learn Linux. Most aren't born with command line powers gifted from God.

- Record hardware configurations and errors that occur (ala "TalkBack" in Mozilla). Users can then call in to 1-800-LNX- HELP or whatever and get some assistance based on their computer's unique ID number.

Tech support costs money -- lots of it. "Linux" isn't a corporation that can pay for it. The distributions, however, can. (And I'm fairly sure that they do.)

NO, NO, NO...

[SerpentMage]

Just like we need one type of car, one type of TV and one type of VCR.

I find it amazing that people clamor around the concept of one type of LINUX, but yet will buy a specific VCR, Refrigerator, TV, car clothes.

Why is this? Because a specific vendor has said that there should only be one user experience and not multiple. Why did this specific vendor do this? Because otherwise there MIGHT even be competition. And as a result a whole slew of minions argue along and fight into the hands of that specific company.

What we need to do is convince people that there is choice and that people can choose. Just like you can choose a VCR and TV. Interesting, is it not. You will spend hours deciding which TV you should get with the feature set, but spend one minute on the OS....

Tells you something yes?

Re:NO, NO, NO...

[FlorentinePogen]

I find it amazing that people clamor around the concept of one type of LINUX, but yet will buy a specific VCR, Refrigerator, TV, car clothes. Yes, but if you compare a $50 Panophonic TV with a $5000 Sorny TV, you'll notice something: they work the same way. The "interface" for all TVs is extremely consistent. Channel Up, Channel Down. Power. Some buttons with numbers on them. A few coax and A/V inputs on the back. A nice standard 2-prong AC plug. Now compare, say, configuring the network on Slackware vs SuSE. Completely different. I get so frustrated when friends of mine ask me how to install a new network driver on some mysterious Linux distribution I've never used -- I have no idea how it should (properly) be done. Maybe I need to recompile the kernel or modules and edit some modules.conf somewhere, maybe I need to run "config" or "setup" or "yast" or "netconfig." The best I can suggest over the phone or IM is to RTFM (which I loathe doing). I just don't have the time or energy to learn how 20 different distributions work so I can help people out. The argument, in my mind, is not that we need all distributions to be the exact same thing -- we need the distributions and the various UIs to conform to a few standards with regards to software installation/removal, configuration, and locations of files.

Re:NO, NO, NO...

[Oliver Defacszio]

For pity's sake,

The same thing happens every time some jackass brings this point up.

Linux advocates: What, oh what, does the common user want in order to switch from big, bad Microsoft?
Common users worldwide: We want one, simple means of installing software and a standardized GUI.
Linux advocates: No, that's not it. What, oh what, does the common user want in order to switch from big, bad Microsoft?

Keeerist, if you don't want to hear the answer, then stop asking the damned question. The responses are pigfuckingly obvious to everyone but you. The common user wants one easy means of installing software and a common GUI. Now, please, tell me I'm wrong.

Re:NO, NO, NO...

[TeknoHog]

> Common users worldwide: We want one, simple means of installing software and a standardized GUI.

Then why switch?

Of course you can build a "standard" UI on top of Linux. But that would miss the point of using it over Windows or Mac. There's a reason why an airplane has a different UI from a bicycle.

Re:NO, NO, NO...

[ErikZ]

The point of using Linux is so you don't have an easy way to install software and a standardize interface?

Re:NO, NO, NO...

[unoengborg]

Standardization doesn't need to mean taking away configurability. It just means that we have a common starting point to begin with.

Re:NO, NO, NO...

[unoengborg]

I certainly wouldn't mind a simpler standardized way to install apps. But in most distros it is just a double click to do it. I really can't imagine how we can simplify it any more. Unlike windows you don't even have to answer questions like where you want to install it. It just adds the functioality clean and simple. There is a problem with library dependences, but you have that problem in windows too, and people do manage to install programs in that environment. In fact some Linux install systems even address this by automagiclly downloading the missing libs.

I think that the install problem has more to do with all those compressed tar files floating around on the net. Users simply don't realize that they are supposed to be used by developers and not end users. And after trying some of those they tell all their friends how difficult it was.

So I would say that most of the problem is in user perception, even though a standardized GUI to pop up when a user doubleclicks on that install package would not hurt. But the main problem is education.

Re:NO, NO, NO...

[ClosedSource]

So I guess you claim that Slashdot is Unix turf. Perhaps unoffically it is. I would suggest that if you want to be left alone, you should simply talk about Unix and it's various clones and leave Amiga, Be, Windows etc out of the conversation.

Linux has become the latest anti-Windows thing (after Java failed in the previous jihad). You'd think that there was nothing to say about Linux without comparing it to Windows.

I couldn't care less if Linux is standardized as long as I don't get stuck having to use it.

Re:NO, NO, NO...

[SerpentMage]

Ah, interesting. Does your TV have a skart plug? Because mine does. Skart is popular in Europe, but not North America. Does your TV have 16:9 and HDTV capabilities? Because mine does.... Even in North America my TV does. Does your TV have satellite capabilities? Or is it cable only? In Canada where I have a house, satellite is the only possibility. But in Switzerland I only need cable.

The difference is that you will by default check to see if your TV has all the features you want. And those TV's that do not, they will not be bought by you. In other words you are choosing what the features you want because you inform yourself what the features are.

And common features? Come on, the electronic companies are always adding things specific to their systems. Can you say SONY?

The same can occur in a LINUX distro. The user can inform themselves and then make the decisions on their own. But we have to train them to do that.

Re:NO, NO, NO...

[hacker]

The common user wants one easy means of installing software and a common GUI. Now, please, tell me I'm wrong.

Then let THEM write it. My software works, installs fine on literally hundreds of thousands of Linux, Unix, and POSIX-compatible machines that it is available on, and is in every single Linux distribution, and the BSD ports tree. I have yet to hear one complaint that it didn't install like they expected it to.

If someone wants to make it install LIKE WINDOWS, then they'll have to write it and contribute it back to the project.

If the user wants one common GUI, let them choose one at install time. Forcing all Linux distributions to use that single GUI or recommend it standard (GNOME, KDE, blecch) is death to Linux. We are not trying to mimic or emulate Microsoft, so stop it!

The users have to educate themselves, mature their behavior, and learn a little bit. This is not Windows, so stop trying to make it like Windows.

A standard exists

[EzInKy]

./configure [options]
make
make install

This allows users to update their systems without waiting for packages to become available and gives them the power to choose how the software will interact with the rest of the system. There also exist nice wrappers that automate the process such as Gentoo's emerge that automate and hopefully soon Debian's apt-build.

Superior product always wins in marketplace

[Cadrys]

Yep, it's so true. The best OS will clearly win, with no effort on the part of the community or developers to make that happen, simply because the buying public will recognize the 'best product' and force its acceptance by writers of drivers, apps (particularly games) and useful third-party software.

After all, that's why we're all running OS/2 these days, right?

Re:Yeah, and America needs more weapons *sigh*

[fava]

RedHat cannot impose a new licence on top of the existing GPL licence. Only the software that they create from scratch can they impose any kind of restrictive licence terms on.

Re:one thing at a time

[Kevinv]

Linux isn't a business. Linux is used by businesses, some are in the business of re-selling it, a lot aren't, and linux is used by individuals. You focus businesses to either open new markets (a la microsoft's refocusing on the internet not too many years ago) or to shed un-profitable areas that aren't part of the "core" business. But linux doesn't require profit centers or new markets to make money, it doesn't even need to make money. It has more developers (not necessarily a good thing) when it's making money but that isn't an absolute requirement for development to continue.

Many people think that "refocusing" on the server would have the result of increased developers working in that area. But each developer has his or her reason for being there and working on what they are working on. some are paid by a company to do what they are doing, others are scratching an itch, still others are sticking it to microsoft, and some are probably wanting to stick it to apple.

to assume those developers would switch to a "server" focus simply because everyone else says they should denies the reason they are doing what they are doing already (after all everyone already says if you're interested in desktop development you should only focus on Windows, it's got the bigger market share.) If you take away those developers projects, some will probably move to server focused projects, but many more will probably just find another desktop development project.

The end result would be a loss to linux.

POSIX?

[SkewlD00d]

What the hell is POSIX for if no OSes actually implement their APIs? What is POSIX doing with all these grandeose APIs and standards if no one actually implements them? Why doesn't POSIX evolve with new technology and keep up with new standards? ISO seems to be even more over-bearing, but they don't seem to want to have free and open APIs/protocols. Who the hell would pay money for the specs for supposedly open apis/protocols? The RFC process could easily be extended to *nux APIs. KISS == Keep It Standard, Stupid!

sounds familiar

[shokk]

"all we have to do is continue to develop software in the same way, and the users will make the switch all by themselves'."

That sounds familiar. I'm betting that's Apple's thinking. I'm afraid it's not getting them any further. I think that if Linux users believe that Office clones are all they need to overcome Microsoft, they are vastly deluded. A world of home-grown dll-dependent apps and simple VB programming is out there that locks these companies into using Microsoft the same way that dynamic libraries are needed by some RPM packages. These are the "character" of how business is done at these companies.

Stop cloning and come up with your own real innovation. Somewhere someone needs to put something truly innovative into OpenOffice or one of the desktop environments that is a generation ahead of Microsoft or Apple. *That* is when the real threat from Linux begins.

Re:Opportunity Cost

[VoidEngineer]

I hear what you are saying, but instead of looking at the glass as half empty, look at it half full. In 12 years, linux has managed to gain a couple of percentage points of the desktop market. Holy cow! That's major! That's amazing! Think about BeOs, NextStep, OS2, and Amiga. Hell, even Irix, Solaris, and AIX have been loosing ground in the desktop market.

I understand what you are driving at, as things currently stand. My thinking is that a half dozen advertising gurus could take linux, repackage it, and make a marketable desktop operating system that could replace Windows, if they could find a better user interface metaphore than 'Windows'. But, let's face it, 'Windows' is a pretty damn good metaphore for operating a computer. If that marketing and advertising team could think up of a better metaphore than 'java' or 'windows', they would stand a chance of reinventing the market. By and large, this kind of thinking is very rare, and the notable exceptions have been Windows, Apple, Sun, Macromedia, and so forth... (notice the metaphorical marketing that is inherent in these companies' logos?).

Hmmm... will need to think about this some more.

Linux standardization is indeed necessary

[Arethan]

It all comes down to usabily. It has nothing to do with development models, and everything to do with making it easy to use. That means that software installation has to be simple. Pop in a disk, and run ./install.bin, or double click it from a GUI. Same applies for downloaded applications. One single self extracting image that installs the application on any distro. However, to do this we need standardization. And I don't mean LSB, I mean what libraries are available on a vanilla system. In order to make software run on any distro, you need to know what libraries you can expect the OS to provide, and which ones you'll need to package with your application. LSB doesn't cover that, I believe that United Linux does.

A little over a year ago I made a journal entry about all of this. Most of the problems it brings up are still accurate. Check it out.

Standardizing Linux is wrong

[Skapare]

Standardizing Linux is the wrong way to go about bringing Linux to the corporate desktop and the end user. But that's not saying standards are bad. Instead, the approach should be that we offer the different alternatives to what will be a standard, and then let the decision of which will be that standard for those end user be made by those end users. In other words, let the strong survive. Let there be a system that does get chosen for the new age of desktop computing, and let it be based on Linux. The semantics there is important. It should be based on Linux, not assimilate it.

Distribution choice is a good thing. But if a group of people making a few different distributions want to make changes to theirs to make sure they are the same as each other, let them. That's their choice. But corporate IT decision makes are going to be asking questions like "what is the difference between this distribution and that distribution?" So what will the answer be? Are we going to be able to say what the difference is, or will be end up confusing them more by saying "Oh, they're just alike; flip a coin to decide."

Of course, making sure that programs can be installed on, and run on, a wide range of different distributions is a good thing. But part of the responsibility to achieve that lies with the developers of that program, such as being flexible as to where files are found, what library versions can be used, etc. Consistent interfaces help, but we also need to be able to change and adapt to make things constantly improve, and when there are new things to adopt, new decisions have to be made, and choices have to be available to decide from.

Just don't move towards the notion that a single standard shall define Linux, and no other can be Linux. Linux is a class of systems that have diversity and can adapt. That is as much a part of the power of Linux as is its strength in security and reliability.

Business decisions are all too rarely made on the basis of long term planning. Regardless of the intent, those decisions will be constantly made over and over as the years go by, and as many projects fail. The needs will change, even if they are clouded by uncertainty. Linux, too, will fail, if it loses its ability to adapt.

the real focus of Linux...

[inode_buddha]

does not exist for most of us. I must disagree with the commenter's post on Newsforge about standards not being needed; Linux is already quite standardized *from a technical standpoint* eg ANSI c/c++, FHS, POSIX, sh behvior.

Of course all that depends on the individual vendor's implementation.

Linus himself did not create his kernel to compete with anything; everyone else re-created it to do that. Linus has gone on record as saying he does not really care what happens in user space; he's not interested in anything there.

Let us not forget that distro != Linux.

My next argument is that Linux distros *do* need to standardize on the UI if they want to get $LARGE-BUSINESS-ACCOUNTS. Excuse me, but have you ever tried to tell your management that they don't need to standardize? Bear in mind that in the US business place, MS *is* the standard, mainly on the desktop and 3/4ths on the back-end.... any change will probably freak them.

Leading right back into my previous paragraphs.... business management doesn't really give a crap about obscure (for them) technical standards as long as they can do their jobs effectively (again, the UI thing) which in turn puts paychecks on the table. I feel that this sucks, myself, but that's how it is, and I *do* need to pay my rent.

At the end of the day, the *real* focus of linux is a 32 and 64-bit multitasking, multiuser capable kernel licensed under the GNU GPL, with supporting libraries and tools from GNU. That's all.

Anything else is up to the rest of us.

no, it doesn't

[g4dget]

There is only one answer: SOMEONE needs to convince me that I can be just as happy and productive in a Linux environment

Why does anybody "need" to do anything for you for free? If you like to switch, good for you. If you don't, well, that's your decision.

I also need some incentive (in this case that would be that Linux is free).

Linux is not "free" in the sense of "having no cost". You pay for Linux by contributing. If you don't contribute, please stay off the platform. And if you can't even make the minimal effort to determine for yourself whether Linux is good for you or not, it looks like you aren't planning on contributing anything down the road.

Re:no, it doesn't

[NineNine]

Linux is not "free" in the sense of "having no cost". You pay for Linux by contributing. If you don't contribute, please stay off the platform. And if you can't even make the minimal effort to determine for yourself whether Linux is good for you or not, it looks like you aren't planning on contributing anything down the road.

Contribution has nothing to do with using ANY OSS. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. That's the gamble that developers of OSS take... they can work and work and work for free, and never get any help, any remuneration, etc. If you don't like it, then don't program for free and then hand it out to the public.
Screw contributing. There's not much in life for free, so if someone's dumb enough to actually give me something for free, I won't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Personally, I get a kick out of watching IBM and Oracle and others make many millions on the backs of a bunch of naive college students coding away furiously during the best years of their lives. Those companies are laughing all the way to the bank.

Re:no, it doesn't

[g4dget]

Contribution has nothing to do with using ANY OSS. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

Sure it does: OSS exists only because of contributions.

There's not much in life for free, so if someone's dumb enough to actually give me something for free, I won't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Anybody is free to use free software. But if they want free software to work differently from the way it does, nobody has an obligation to fulfill their wishes; if nobody else volunteers, they either contribute the changes or pay for them.

Re:no, it doesn't

[FooBarWidget]

"so if someone's dumb enough to actually give me something for free, I won't look a gift horse in the mouth."

Ah, so you will throw away all your free Christmas/birthday presents? What about all that food/toys/stuff your parents gave you for free when you were a little kid?

We might want to look into a different model

[kliment]

For example, create several distributions based on one of the major ones, with modifications made for compliance with the other major distros' packages. Add a smart installer that can adapt the directory structure of different distros, plus an easy way to search for a certain package among all different package types.

Next, have several distros aimed at different kinds of users. Everything should be graphical from the very start. The installer should never bother the user with manual partition creation and the like. Just a simple question: You have an 80 gig drive, how much of it do you want to leave to your old os, and how much for linux. No more should be asked, ideally. A basic package set is installed for all of those distros, and a set of packages that is target-specific, as in productivity apps. All hardware should be auto-detected, and the smart installer should download the drivers automagically. Most Windows executables should run directly as if they were linux binaries (transparent Wine). There should be a simple, complete configuration utility, which should also include package management. Network access should be transparent. The installer should also install software according to hardware installed. For example cd-burning software will be installed if the system has a burner. Video-editing if firewire ports are present. Hardware detection at boot and periodical software updates according to software package completeness (if the package development has just started, and the package is still buggy, it will be checked for updates more often). Direct importing of emails and address books from existing Windows partitions without user intervention. In short, the user would be ready to start working immediately after installation(which consists ONLY of popping in the cd and selecting partition size then waiting for setup to complete). The smart installer should also handle windows installer programs.

This is a short summary of the features that would lead to rapid adoption of linux on the desktop. It must be made transparent, as non-intrusive as possible, yet easy to customize and all possible options easily available to power users (interface complexity as a setting in the control panel). It must handle everything automagically, so the user never needs to do anything related to the os, only related to the work they are doing.

I realise that this is far off, but one step at a time we could develop a system that would work for average users as well as power users.
Generally, we need to take the following steps:

- The setup program
- The smart installer
- Transparent Wine and windows app integration
- A central driver repository
- Central package database
- Minimal user interaction when not absolutely necessary(of course available as a setting)
- Interdistribution compatibility
- A method of retrieving settings and data from old os

If we handle those issues, we might actually have a better os usability than windows. If we have something easier to install, free(both ways) or at least free as in speech and very cheap, with better usability and better responsiveness, fast automatic bugfixes, better stability and better application base, we have a winner.

Re:We might want to look into a different model

[IamTheRealMike]

Add a smart installer that can adapt the directory structure of different distros, plus an easy way to search for a certain package among all different package types.

Unfortunately, directory structure isn't actually the main problem with current packaging systems, there are a whole host of issues, several related to the actual oconstruction of the binaries themselves. Believe me, I should know about this, I've been building such a "smart installer" for the last 6 months, and we're still likely to be a year or two away from getting to version 1. Here's a rundown of the problems we face (the last one is the biggest so far):

• Directory structures. Yes, this is an issue, for instance KDE apps expect to be installed into the same prefix as KDE itself, but on Redhat that's /usr, and on SuSE it's /opt/kde3 or /opt/kde2. It's easy to work around that however by having remapper modules that figure out where files should be placed.

• Compiled in prefixes. This is related to point 1 - 99% of Linux software is built using autotools (which is where the name for my system comes from in fact :). Automake allows you to define macros that correspond to paths relative to the prefix, and a lot of apps use this facility to let them locate data files at runtime. Images, Glade user interface files and so on. Often programs, especially programs built with frameworks like GNOME or KDE, contain code like this:

  result = open_file( DATA_DIR "/myfile" );

  The C preprocessor expands and merges DATA_DIR with the next string, meaning that if you run configure with --prefix=/opt/kde3, DATA_DIR becomes "/opt/kde3/share/myapp" for instance. The app is then compiled, and the prefix is effectively burnt into the binary. This sort of thing happens a lot, and it means that resultant binary can then not be installed to a different prefix. There are two ways to solve that issue. The first is that on Linux it's possible to find out where the binary is located by reading /proc. You could then work from that path relative to the binary to locate the data files. Unfortunately proc is not particularly portable, and many "Linux" apps are in fact also UNIX apps. Libraries also can't use this trick. In autopackage we have a simple way around that problem - a small patch to a program allows it to use libprefixdb which lets the program discover various paths from a database (the installation database currently) at runtime.

• C++ ABI breakage. This is currently causing pain, especially for games as they tend to be closed source and so you can't recompile them and they are often written in C++. GCC3.2 changed the c++ application binary interface significantly. If your distro was compiled with 3.2, so must the C++ apps you run. Because this change is recent however, most binaries are compiled for gcc2.95. By the time autopackage comes out, it's likely 3.2 systems will be in the majority and the network is planned to be able to cope with differences like this.

• Link tree conflicts. This is one I was learning about last night, and is the real kicker. The problem is relatively simple: I have a game (any app really) that links against, say, libpng and libSDL. libpng comes in two flavours, 2 and 3, reflecting an ABI break. Normally we'd say, so what, and throw both onto a system, libtool versioning allows it to work. The game is linked against libpng3.

  BUT! libSDL also links against libPNG for its own use, and the distro compiled it against libpng2. Now when the app loads, there will be 2 versions of libpng in the same address space and you will get symbol conflicts. Best case scenario - the app segfaults on startup. Worst case, it segfaults mysteriously during execution.

  There is no good way to solve that problem except by recompiling the apps and hoping 2 and 3 are source compatible. Alternatively of course, recompile the whole distro against version 3.

  I'm not making this up, it happened with Mandrake :(

  Unfortunately it appears the only way to really solve this problem is to rewrite the linker logic (in ld.so) so it doesn't merge all the symbols into one large hash chain, instead it progressively maps, performs fixup and then drops the symbol tables. We're still figuring out how this impacts stuff like lazy binding, dlopen() and so on.

• Finally, there are a whole host of other issues, like the different naming schemes used by distros, the different installation mechanisms, incompatible install-info scripts and the difficulty of resolving dependancies in a way that still integrates well with the system. Throw in the needs of corporate/enterprise deployment scenarios, and you see what a challenge it has become

As you can see, binary distribution of packages alone is nightmarishly complicated.

The rest of your points are kind of out of date, transparent Wine is a reality, as is seamless driver installation, as is partition management (actually some distros don't even ask that, they have "smart" allocators that guess how much space you'll want for linux and leave the rest to windows). Lindows can do direct Windows email/address book/bookmarks imports. Windows installer apps are dealt with by Wine and run just like they would in Windows.

Re:We might want to look into a different model

[IamTheRealMike]

simple, compile everything from source or then have several versions of the binary for different systems. But source for everything seems the best way. that way you don't even have to think of the binary format of the system.

Do you really think users are willing to compile all their software? Hell, I'm a developer and I'm not happy about it. Waiting a couple of hours for the latest and greatest Mozilla, or manually hunting down all the depended -devel packages etc, really, really sucks and gives a terrible impression to people who are new to Linux.

And of course for closed source software (ie games) it's not an option at all.

Binary packages are badly needed, for all those reasons and more.

Re:Standards ; we need them - Linux though?

[visualight]

Then I rebooted, and all the sudden it worked. Maybe you just need to restart your x server?

Article hereby modded -1, Troll

[W2k]

Microsoft users are an interesting lot. They have systems that they have NO control over. They have systems they have to reboot every sixteen minutes. They freely pay Bill Gates obscene amounts of money for buggy programs that they can't use when they upgrade to the next operating system. It's almost laughable.

That bit of the article alone reduces it to mere flamebait.

Firstly, I have every bit as much control over my Windows-powered computers (two XP Pro, one 2k Server) as I need, with more control waiting to be seized should I ever need it. No, I can't modify every little detail about the OS the way I could if I had the full source, AND intimate knowledge about each bit, AND the time and patience to hack it (the way the Linux elitists seem to think everyone should have). I don't need to. Windows just works, on every computer I've tried it on so far, with the exception of one 2k Pro install which took a few retries due to buggy third-party RAID drivers. In contrast, the only Linux distro that "just worked" on any of my machines was Mandrake (8.1) and I removed it almost right away, for various reasons which I can't be bothered to elaborate upon here.

Second, I very rarely have to reboot my XP boxes, and when I do (for installing new drivers etc), it's maybe 30-45 secs of downtime, which I don't really mind. The server, I haven't had to reboot in weeks. I know "weeks" doesn't compare to the years that some people have had *nix (and NT) servers up, but for an amateur like me who's almost 100% self-taught, it's just fine.

Third, I'd hardly call the sum I shelled out for XP "obscene", especially not if you split it out on all the hours I've had it running for (on all the computers I've run it on). And hey, if it's still too expensive for you, borrow a CD from work/school or simply warez it. Something tells me that's the way about half of all XP users got their hands on it in the first place.

Oh and hang on, did I read that right? Freely pay Bill Gates money for buggy programs that they can't use when they upgrade their OS? That must refer to Microsoft's applications (Office, Visual Studio, games, and such) rather than the OS's themselves. Strange how I haven't percieved either Office XP or Visual Studio (the two Microsoft app suites that I use - can't speak for any others) as buggy or incompatible with older OS's ... sure, you can't run VS.NET on Windows 95/98, but if you still run either OS, well, you probably have bigger concerns than not being able to run VS.NET. And Microsoft games from the mid- and late nineties still run fine on Windows XP.

Oh, and before someone points out MSIE as a typical case of "buggy Microsoft app", I agree. It is a piece of crap, at least security-wise. I switched to Mozilla long ago, though more for the features (tabbed browsing, mmm) than for the hightened sense of safety that it brought.

Having just re-read the above, I get the feeling this is going to be a "-1, Flamebait" posting pretty soon. Okay, no problem, I've got karma to burn. But I know that there are lots of people out there who share my experiences when it comes to Windows and Microsoft products in general. Okay, there are some less desirable aspects to using them, but overall, they do get the job done. The article from which the paragraph at the beginning of this posting does little but expose the author as the pitiful troll which he obviously is.

I rest my case.

Re:Article hereby modded -1, Troll

[peeping_Thomist]

the only Linux distro that "just worked" on any of my machines was Mandrake (8.1) and I removed it almost right away, for various reasons which I can't be bothered to elaborate upon here. [...] I get the feeling this is going to be a "-1, Flamebait" posting pretty soon.

ROTFLMAO! Certainly NOT flamebait! Just funny as hell, for various reasons which I can't be bothered to elaborate upon here!

Re:Users Want Better Stuff, Not a Development Mode

[reallocate]

I was aware, but chose to ignore, the implications of using the word "selling". In the broader sense, however, anyone interested in finding an audience for the software they've developed is engaged in "selling" that software, even if the give it away.

The wider desktop audience, I think, perceives the acquisition of software as a "buying" and "selling" experience, that is, a market transaction. I doubt that an inward-looking development model geared to the needs of ideologically motivated developers will foster products desktop users really want.

Please get a clue

[Etyenne]

- Why is there still no standard model for adding and removing apps? The number of competing models for package management alone is sickening.

- Why do we still have to choose between a bunch of different desktops, ALL of which are mutually incompatible?

1. There are many standards actually (RPM, debs, etc.). RPM, used by RedHat, Mandrake, Caldera and pretty every distributor that count beside Slack and Debian, is currently the dominant one.

2. Wrong. Desktop are actually COMPATIBLE ! You can run a Gnome application in KDE and vice-versa. Some aspect of the DE are not compatible, like themes for example, but could you use a Winamp skin in WMP ?

Another "too many choices is bad" armchair advocate trolling. Please go get a fscking clue.

Missed the point, missed the point, missed ....

[EmbeddedJanitor]

You miss the point. Nobody is saying that there should be one type of Linux, but that they should work with the same software.

To use your analogies:

Different TVs, but they all can view the same channels and use the same antenna connectors.

Different VCRs but they all use the same tapes and work with any TV.

Different cars, but they all use the same gas and standardised oil grades.

Differnt refridgerators, but they all use the same electricity.

That's the kind of similarity you need to standardise in user space.

Re:Missed the point, missed the point, missed ....

[smittyoneeach]

To abuse your analogies:

=>Different TVs, but they all can view the same
=>channels and use the same antenna connectors.
PAL vs. NTSC?

=>Different VCRs but they all use the same tapes
=>and work with any TV.
Beta vs. VHS, region coding?

=>Different cars, but they all use the same gas
=>and standardised oil grades.
Regular, unleaded, diesel?

=>Differnt refridgerators, but they all use the
=>same electricity.
115V, 60 Hz vs. 220V, 50 Hz?


We're really delving into economics and economic network externalities (which have nothing to do with packets).
I recommend this as a non-technical, yet excellent analysis of WTF is going on.
The do-it-yourself spirit that has me pondering ordering 4 Lindows boxen off of www.wallmart.com and IABCOT in my basement to support some research for school simply Does Not Translate into a general prophecy that Linux will rule.
The sheep remain sheep, and will not forget that BeelzeBill is their shepherd, and they shall not want (too frequently).
Linux standards development will continue along its present, Darwinian lines. For example, we gripe about Gnome/KDE, but I haven't heard much about alternatives to X. You can say all you like about Bluecurve, but that's the general direction that things, over time, are likely to go.

Re:Missed the point, missed the point, missed ....

[Tony-A]

You standardize the things that are not worth being different.
Different TVs, but they all can view the same channels and use the same antenna connectors.
Nice try, but have you every tried to use a US TV in Germany?
Some cars use diesel.

Re:Missed the point, missed the point, missed ....

[g4dget]

Linux applications do work on different kinds of Linux distributions. But just like a Sony VCR works better with a Sony TV, a RedHat application works better with RedHat Linux.

And beyond electricity, gas, and audio, there are very few parts among consumer electronics and appliances that are interchangeable: the shelves from one refrigerator don't work in another, the remote from one VCR doesn't work with another, every manufacturer has different parts for their cars, etc.

Re:Missed the point, missed the point, missed ....

[hacker]

Different TVs, but they all can view the same channels and use the same antenna connectors.

How is this any different than Windows vs. Linux? They both run on your computer, and give you access to the same features; video, hardware detection, internet, documents, games. Not all TVs have the "On" button on the right, or the left. They might not even have the same knobs, but once you LEARN HOW TO USE IT, you figure out where all the knobs are. I have yet to hear one single person complain that their television knobs need to get moved to the other side, because $OTHER_BRAND of TV has them there. Don't be silly.

Different VCRs but they all use the same tapes and work with any TV.

Then I'm afraid I still miss your point, we already have this, and have for years..

- Different document editors, same common document format. Linux is 100% compatible with Microsoft document formats, so that point is no longer valid.

- Different hardware types. Linux now supports more hardware than Microsoft ever did, and in many different ways.

- Different user preferences. Linux supports an infinite level of customization, including making it look and feel EXACTLY LIKE WINDOWS if you wanted to.

...I must have missed it, what was your point again?

Re:Missed the point, missed the point, missed ....

[starseeker]

"For example, we gripe about Gnome/KDE, but I haven't heard much about alternatives to X."

You want to check out www.fresco.org. That's our best chance for a true next generation GUI.

Re:Yeah, and America needs more weapons *sigh*

[aardvarkjoe]

At least the first two don't work if your keyboard is nonfunctional. (If X is broken, the keyboard and video are usually both out to lunch.) The magic key isn't usually compiled into the kernel. (Quoth the kernel help, "Don't say Y unless you really know what this hack does.")

Some ways forward

[Richard_Davies]

No matter what you may think of Java, it is incredibly sucessful at providing the sort of standardisation the Linux is after. While there are occasional gliches, given the scope of the APIs and the fact that the apps run on completely different OSes, Java has been incredibly sucessful in the standardisation that has been necessary to make it cross-platform. Maybe the Linux crowd could learn a few things:

1. If it already works, wrap it
For example, Java often wraps existing functionality with a common API and then has SPI (Service Provider Interfaces) that funciton as "drivers" to a specific implementation. For example, the Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) API allows communication with DNS, File System, LDAP, NDS, etc. Each of these naming or directory services were around before JNDI but it enables them to be used in the same way.

2. If it doesn't exist yet, standardise the interface, not the implementation
Some specifications don't wrap existing functionality but create something that is completely new. However, Java trys to have its cake (standardise the solution) and eat it too (allow competition). How does it achieve this seemingly impossible miracle? The interface is typically standardised (to a degree) and the competetion occurs in the implementation. Of course, the interface typically ends up only describing a subset of the functionality that is needed so:

3. If it's too hard, leave it out of the standard interface (but revisit it later!)
It's important to realise that people will have trouble agreeing on the nitty-gritty aspects of a standard. So what? There will always be implementations that push the limit and go beyond the standard. This is good and necessary. What is important is that the standardisation process is a cycle where features can be wrapped into the standard (following the first 2 principals mentioned) after they have had a run competing in the wild with each other.

4. Spec, RI, Test Kit
When giving a talk, it is said that you should tell people what you are going to say, you should then say it and you should then tell them what you said. Only then will they really understand. Likewise, there are 3 components to a sucessful standard - the specification (unfortunately many standards stop here), a Reference Implementation and a Test Kit. Only with the last two can competing implementations be sure that they will be compatible. Of course, like everything in the standards process, these 3 components need to be revisited as the standard is improved.

5. Don't impose the Lowest Common Denominator
For those not from the Java world, the graphics libraries in Java are a useful case study in standards evolution. AWT was originally know as the Abstract Windowing Toolkit but quickly became known as the Awful Windowing Toolkit for a few reasons, the primary one being that it only implemented those widgets that were available on all platforms. Obviously, this sucked - for example, because X/Motif had no tree control, you couldn't use AWT in Windows to do tree controls. There are currently two ways around this: Sun created Swing which takes the AWT library and emulates every platform's widgets. This has both the advantage and disadvantage of consistency: It takes a lot of work to emulate an underlying feature exactly and when the underlying feature changes, people using Swing have to wait for the Swing libraries to be updated. The alternative, SWT/JFace from IBM's Eclipse project uses a cross between the AWT and Swing approach. It works like AWT in that it renders widgets natively but it doesn't restrict itself to the Lowest Common Denominator. Instead, it only uses the Swing "emulation" approach if the given widget does not exist on the underlying platform. While these APIs only refer to GUIs, the general architectural problem is the same when creating standards that wrap other standards (point 1) and need to be considered carefully.

6. Motivation
The following is my personal opinion but I am sure many people will agree: Creating specifications, reference implementations and test kits is boring. Maintaining them is a pain. Trying to get people to agree even on minimum standards, especailly when people have firmly entenched beliefs is difficult to say the least. In other words, making standards is boring, painful and hard. It is also very useful because a good standard makes everyone's life easier. Think about some things that are pretty well standardised - the way you make a phone call for example. Imagine if not all phones had the same symbols. Imagine if the nozzels at certain service stations only fitted certain models of cars.

Why are these things standardised if they are boring, painful and hard to do? Personally, I think economics/money has a lot to do with it. However, I've already ranted enough here so I'll leave that for another post. :)

A+

Re:Some ways forward

[alext]

Maybe the Linux crowd could learn a few things

Based on 3 years of advocacy in /. on this theme I think it's safe to say that there is no danger of this happening.

Dotnet and Java are irrelevant side-issues to the majority of Linux-based developers. In these people's minds, KDE and Gnome look-and-feel minutiae are are genuinely considered more important than the ability to package an application for deployment on an ARM PDA and an x86 desktop.

Indeed, the reality-distortion field is so pervasive that, when faced with real requirements for a VM, these people can happily contemplate discarding all collective experience of open source implementations of Perl, Python, Scheme, TCL, Java etc. in favour of the risky and pathetically derivative 'clone all Dotnet' strategy.

If somebody had predicted in, say, 1997 that we'd get ourselves into such a hopeless mess I don't think I'd have believed them.

The truth about learning Linux

[willpost]

When I was in grade school, I got good at computers because I had a lot of free time and it was more fun than anything else around the house. I would spend hours upon hours of trying out every command or menu option and seeing what new tricks I could get the computer to do. That's how I got good at the Apple, the Mac and later the PC. It payed off well when I got a job in computers.

With Linux out, many of us are already adults and find it hard to spend this time "exploring". We've got 12 hour workdays with commutes and family. On top of that we can escape the house and pursue an infinite number of hobbies. There's also more of a desire to make life meaningful before you die: the middle age crisis.

So we reach a dilemma: How to find time to learn Linux to find out if it's worth learning. I'm sure if you devoted some time to learning it for fun you would see it's advantages. However i'm sure if you were in an empty cell with nothing to do you would find a way to be happy and productive with something.

The point i'm trying to make is that if you're happy then no one has to convince you or give you any incentive that Linux is better. It might even take more time than you planned to get things configured properly. You might even affect your career options if you reject Windows. Linux is not better or worse than Windows for the general public. If you're daring people to make you switch then maybe you should stick with Windows.

I like Linux more than any other OS i've seen. It lets me see and adjust levels of the computer that most companies wouldn't entrust me to see because they think i'll just screw it up and sue them for support. Sometimes i'll break something, and then i'll learn how to fix it. I think that's great, and that's how I am.

Desktop schmesktop

[yack0]

> David Meyer argues that UnitedLinux will provide
> standardization for the Linux community that will
> allow it to win the desktop market from Windows.

I am of the crowd that doesn't really care if linux takes over the desktop. I'm happy enough to have it take over lots of segments of the Internet and server market. Just running in the background as a server for so many things.

IMHO, OS X is the best desktop for non-geek users that's out there now anyway. Enough customization is available for Aunt Jane's needs and even Grandpa can handle most of it. Plus, if there's a problem, the family geek can log into it from the college dorm and perhaps debug some info for the computer-clueless relative.

You won't find every linux supporter in the world clamoring for desktop supremacy. For us it's just not important. I'd rather see people putting their efforts to programs that work in the command line that might have a GUI counterpart rather than the other way around.

As the t-shirt says:
Macintosh for productivity
Linux for development
Palm for portability
Windows for solitaire.

But I'll still try and build a portable CARPC on Linux ;)

j

Huh?

[bogie]

"In fact, MS catches a lot of flack for maintaining backwards compatibility"

No, actually MS catches flack for breaking compabtibility.

"Could it be, perhaps, that they only use Linux where they feel it is strong (webserver, etc) and that is the reason it isn't as popular as zealots think it should be?"

No, while Linux has its problems that's not the reason its not so popular. Let me explain something to you about Windows and why its popular. You see MS since the 90's has used its monopoly power to force OEM's ship ONLY windows with their PC's. Only in the past few years have OEM's dared to even offer another OS. MS also has power over the ISV's who produce the software for their platform. They have rewarded those that tow the MS line and threatened ones that don't.

So combine OEM's being forced to ship nothing but windows year after year and also ISV's who year after year are afraid of MS and you get what we have now. MS through its tactics has not only gained 95% of the market, but also has made developing for Linux or any other OS unattractive. Developing for the Linux desktop when it only makes up 1% of the market doesn't make much sense now does it?

So you see while Linux may be rough around the edges and not as polished as windows, MS through many years of heavy handed tactics has created an environment where there isn't a huge payoff for developing for Linux. Think of it this way. Look at the Segway. It like cars, bikes, and buses is a transportation vehicle. But its too late to the party. Its trying to gain entry to a mature industry and there just isn't room for it to become "hugely popular". The infrastructure just isn't there. Sure it may gain some small share, but there literally isn't room for it to really grow. Linux is in the same situation. It may be a better product, but the incentives for supporting it over the entrenched product just aren't there. In fact the same goes for BeOS or ANY other OS which wants to play in the desktop market. Yet another example, try to start your own phone company from scratch. Just like Linux does, go it your own way. I bet you'd be stuck at 0.0%. Notice how the only way into the telecommunications market was to develop a new market, aka cellur etc. The same will be true for linux. It will never become really popular in the desktop market, but may become popular in handhelds, embedded etc.

BTW if anyone wants to point to Apple feel free. Apple only survived because they truly were competitive when the infrastructure was being built. Sure they didn't prosper like MS, but their early foothold in the education market kept them alive. Also while there is some wiggle room for Apple to gain ground on MS, they will never gain the majority of the desktop maket. The same rules which keep linux from gaining any market share will keep Apple a niche player as well.

Re:Huh?

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

"In fact, MS catches a lot of flack for maintaining backwards compatibility"

No, actually MS catches flack for breaking compabtibility.

I meant (for example) they way they try to maintain support for legacy apps (ie/ DOS, Win 3.1) when Windows would be much more stable if they just made a clean break. In other words, they're damned if they do and damned if they don't.

"Could it be, perhaps, that they only use Linux where they feel it is strong (webserver, etc) and that is the reason it isn't as popular as zealots think it should be?"

No, while Linux has its problems that's not the reason its not so popular. Let me explain something to you about Windows and why its popular. [snip convincing argument as to why MS dominates the desktop environment]

You are absolutely right, but only in reference to the desktop environment (and you don't need to be so snide - everyone with half a brain knows that MS is a monopoly and just how they abuse that power - well, except the US justice system :).

In that particular section I was referring to the server environment (though I admit I had blurred the line in my arguments between server and desktop), where switching operating systems and hardware platforms is much easier and more common. Linux is a big player there - ORACLE runs on Linux and Apache runs on Linux. Many of the enterprise apps out there are not MS exclusive (well, not on the server, I mean). But I'm tired and I don't feel like arguing this point (its been rehashed on Slashdot far too many times) so I will leave it at that.

The fact is, MS is scared right now. They could have lost out during the "Internet revolution" (forgive the buzzwords) and only won by leveraging their desktop monopoly. That's why they have their fingers into EVERYTHING right now - game consoles, pdas, cell phones, tablet pcs - they don't want to be caught with their pants down so they will happily lose money to make sure they survive the next computing transition. It would be cool if Linux could jump in, but Linux has no direction or guiding focus (at least, no central one) - hey, maybe there is something to the whole "united Linux" argument, in that Linux would certainly benefit from more focus (don't mistake this for a million code-monkeys on a million computers argument, I mean focus in the "man with a vision" sense).

I hate it when I go in a big circle and end up on the other side. I think I will just shut up now.

Re:Standards ; we need them - Linux though?

[colinramsay]

Maybe he doesn't know what the hell that means?
Come on. People who are trying to migrate don't expect things like that. If you install one of the common Linux distros you're not going to be introduced to that.

Tell me how the opportunity to "restart your x server" is better than having an app shut down with a single "illegal operation" error after which your OS functions perfectly..

The Open Source model **DOES** produce standards

[Zork the Almighty]

Contrary to what some people seem to think, the open source model DOES produce standards. It produces de-facto standards ! When the popularity of a particular program reaches critical mass, it practically has to be included in all distributions. Don't believe me ? How many distros have bash as the default shell ? How about almost all of them ? That's not to say that the other shells are not as good, and they're still available incase you need them too. That is the beauty of the open source model. What is or isn't "standard" is determined by the users - it just takes a while.

The fact is, if you truly believe in the open source model you will trust people and companies to make their own standards. If your company wants Gnome as the default interface on every desktop, so be it. That is their choice. Much of what people dislike about Microsoft boils down to the fact that they don't trust the user to make a choice. Microsoft thinks they can make some sort of utopia, where all interfaces are the same, and anyone can use a computer without having to know anything. It's a well meaning, but ass-backwards goal. Computer use is now very much part of society in general, and the central planning model simply can not scale up to something this complex. We have to trust individuals to make their own choices. There should be some handholding available to people, but ultimately we have to trust the masses. Does this philosophy sound familiar ?

Re:Standards ; we need them - Linux though?

[saskboy]

It's OK, I didn't take the restart X server as critisim.

It does highlight a point though. If restarting the server is something that a user should know how to do, then why isn't there a standard option to do that when "logging off" or "shutting down", like "log off as current user" is in Windows?

Re:The Open Source model **DOES** produce standard

[Zork the Almighty]

Simple, in an environment without choice, someone will have the power to set a standard. Take Apple for example. The interface of OSX is a "standard" because Apple made it that way. Although I'm sure you could change it, the idea that you could or should is not readily evident to most people. So in that way, a standard has been determined by a small fraction of users, particularily those that work at Apple.

It's already been done.

[zerofoo]

SEE!

-ted

Re:Users Want Better Stuff, Not a Development Mode

[reallocate]

Yep, me. It's an assertion of a defensible opinion. There's simply no reason to expect Windows or the Mac to disappear, no matter what happens in the Linux camp.

Bless him!

[Arandir]

'the Linux community does not need to set up businesses with the specific intention of trying to "win" users from Microsoft; all we have to do is continue to develop software in the same way, and the users will make the switch all by themselves'.

Bless that guy that wrote this! Too many people are obsessed with making Linux (and Unix in general) the "Anti-Microsoft" operating system. I would much rather use a real OS than an alternative OS. What is this strange desire to make Linux an alternate operating system?

Re:Bless him!

[Simon Kongshoj]

Actually I prefer an "alternative" OS to a "competitor" OS.

The cool thing about Linux (for me, anyway) is that GNU/Linux as a whole is not entangled in the marketplace like MS is. We're not a competitor in the traditional way, because Linux as a whole is not a company, it's a community. MS, as it has obviously shown many times over, is a lot better at combating competing companies than they are at dealing with a community-driven alternative. We don't have to win MS mindshare, or devise product strategies for toppling the MS king. We're an alternative, people can freely choose Linux or whatever else suits their fancy, we're not trying to force anything on anybody, and we sure never should go down that road.

We don't have to be Anti-Microsoft. We can go our own way. I'm a little sad with the whole "de-geekify Linux so we can grab MS users!" crowd; I don't want a de-geekified Linux that acts as if I'm clueless. I'm a geek. Geeks built Linux. It's only fair that geeks get to keep a system they like to use; geeks were the ones who got this whole show rolling in the first place. I think we need a different paradigm of user-friendliness than MS; what worked for them might not be what works for us.

The paradigm of user-friendliness that powers Microsoft is that computer programs should be made so that even people completely without understanding can use them; the flip side is that these programs are hard to attain a deeper understanding of, and that you only have as much control as the "user-friendly" GUI will let you. I'm afraid Linux' nature will keep us from ever successfully implementing such a model, though. I think a model with very simple interfaces, where the system helps the user educate herself and get a deeper understanding of what is going on. "User-friendliness by helping the user get smarter" rather than "user-friendliness by assuming stupid users", so to speak.

My friends don't treat me as if I'm clueless, why should I call a computer friendly for doing so?

Re:one thing at a time

[Kevinv]

the question then becomes -- does IBM (or HP or Red Hat) need additional help in commericalizing the server market? Commericialization of the server market is already occuring because the kernel is capable in that area. Sure more work needs to be done, but it's already being done by those companies.

The desktop development area needs help, but because there isn't the incentive for immediate money by those companies they don't put as many people or money into it.

KDE and GNOME are seperate products from the linux kernel and GNU software (well KDE, GNOME is the official GNU desktop I belive -- but it isn't a GNU product). Eventually they'll get to the point where commercialization is possible and it'll take off like the server area. but to shutdown development in that area now would simply slow down the possiblity of that ever occurring.

Win? Don't we mean lin?

[TeknoHog]

Why do we need to win anything over Windows? If people are happy with windows, let them use it. If not, they should be able to gather the willpower to switch, one way or other (not necessarily to Linux).

Linux is totally different from Windows. It's hard to see it as an "improved version" because it's so fundamentally different. To portray it as an improvement it would have to be similar in many ways, except a little better in a few ways. In other words, dumb it down to make the comparison easier.

Personally, I don't see that much importance in the development of Windows-replacing desktop environments. One great thing about Linux is that we can ditch the whole desktop schmesktop paradigm, and use something different that better suits the job and personal preferences.

It's nice to have a migration path when you're moving from Mac/Windows to Linux. I used Gnome for this very purpose, but only for some time. The choice you have in your first Linux UI will give some insight into the whole freedom and choice thing. A standard desktop would just propagate the old, limited ways.

If you're not ready to make some choices and change your habits, why would you leave Windows anyway?

Re:Standards ; we need them - Linux though?

[Tony-A]

Hmmmm, I think you're on to something.
One of my favorites of Dijkstra's sayings. (From memory, so probably a bit mangled.) "A baby crawling and a jet liner from New York to Los Angeles are both means of transportation. The same thing at different scales winds up completely different."
What seems to be missing from most documentation is the scope of the configuration, when it takes effect, how long does it last, and what does it depend on. Curiously, OpenBSD seems to be better at this than anyone else.

Is This Really So Hard?

[krmt]

I don't really understand why it's so hard to support multiple distros. What sort of stuff are you using in your app? Well, standard library routines, so you're going to be using libstdc or libstdc++, both of which will be on any linux system. If you're creating a command line app, then you can use libreadline or libcurses, both of which will be on any linux system. If you're writing a GUI based app, you can use Gtk or Qt (or even Motif/Lesstif or Xt) and have it run on any Linux desktop. And of course you can install any custom libs you want. There's also the distinct possibility of static linking, which is frowned upon generally but doable (you could create two versions of your app, one dynamically linked for a popular distro and another static for everyone else). You can use an installer like Loki's in order to handle the placement of things and making sure that it's all there for you.

I really don't understand why everyone says it's hard to get software to run on alternate distributions. The basics are all standardized. There's standard libraries and standard routines. There's standard packaging formats that one can use, or a powerful installer. Whether you decide to use Gtk or Qt and whether you decide to put your custom apps in /usr/share/lib or /usr/local/lib is irrelevant really. Include the libs you need and the whole of it should work fine. And really, if your only concern is directory layouts, why not simply have a default install location (/usr/local/whatever is a good choice, as it's the default in auto* tarballs) and let people override them as they will. After writing a big and complex app, supporting configurable directory heirarchies (hint: one line in a .rc file and an extra string variable in your code will do it) should be the least of your worries.

Standards From Need, Not Direction

[Peahippo]

If only those who make such arguments would admit or disclose that their opinions are rather limited in scope and suffer from a certain set of biases.

Bias: Windows users are united.

This is like saying that white folks in America are united, since there are so many of them. A majority market share != a united movement, or in fact any kind of movement at all. Windows users may move together in certain instances, but that doesn't mean that the motion is in a desirable or even sensible direction. Case in point: IIS was a poor excuse for a web server, and we all knew it ... yet it was a default install anyway for thousands and thousands of NT machines.

Bias: Linux users must be united.

Linux has a very good grassroots background, and that has brought it very far. However, insistence upon unions and -- particularly -- enforcement of involvement, will only achieve alienation of those who were freely involved in the first place. So what, who cares that there are many Linux distros to choose from; the whole idea was to have more choices than just Wintel or Mac.

I find myself confused about the "lack of standards" that the article author is talking about. Does that mean he laments the number of, say, browsers that can be run on a number Linux distros? If having "One distro to rule them all, One browser to find them" is the goal, then we have that now with Mircrosoft Windows+IE, and yeah, isn't that working really well? Obviously, no ... it is only "working", from the standpoint of quantity and not quality. Having "One standard to bring them all" will lead to an obvious tyranny, and in the darkness compile them.

Linux users and programmers already feel united in their desire to escape the limited options presented by Saur-- er, Microsoft. These people are also finding more converts and sympathy from the MSWindows-using crowd ... because this crowd has factions of people interested in a better computing experience.

One reply to the article on the site forum said " it doesn't help if I swear Linux is better: I only get labeled "zealot" ". This is not a problem, but even if it were, the real solution is to support Linux and run it on your machine and the machines under your control. Living well is the best revenge. As your so-called opponents or critics come to realize that your machine is not only cheaper (no MS tax), but is more stable and lets you play audio and video that MicroHollySoftWood has denied them ... then they'll come around to your point of view. And you'll be able to charge them $40/hr to set them up similarly.

In somewhat of a conclusion, I'm not worried at all about Linux's being hampered by a lack of certain standards. Some universal installer will appear when enough Linux users shout loud (!cloud) enough for it. Isn't it the point of a grassroots movement to be driven by need and not by direction?

Re:Standards From Need, Not Direction

[el_chicano]

This is like saying that white folks in America are united, since there are so many of them.

They are, it's called the Republican Party! :->

Re:It's the apps, stupid.

[PugMajere]

Regarding RPMs - Two thoughts - find aptrpm and get it to work, or try Debian.

Seriously, Apt is Debian's #1 selling point for most users. The #2 is stability. Rock solid, if you're running the "stable" distribution, you can update software daily, and nothing should break. Ever. (The only exception being the incredibly rare case of the feature you depend on being inherently insecure, but even then, I think they just fix it as much as possible, and provide a warning on install.)

Dependencies are most RPM distributions single biggest problem, imo. Apt or its cousins, aptrpm (maybe apt4rpm?) and up2date serve primarily to solve those problems - try that, and see if that makes your life better.

I may be a Debian bigot, but I know it's a hard distribution to get used to, heh.

Test for wind direction, unzip fly, get wet

[bgfay]

All of this is beside the point. Whether anyone wants it or not, the likelihood of imposing standards on Linux is next to nil and probably a mistake. Every few months, the subject comes up for bid on /. and people get all upset about it. "Linux should give up all windows and get back to the command line" vies with "Linux needs one and only one window/desktop system and it needs it now." Hogwash.

I'm new to Linux, struggling with certain aspects but having absolutely no trouble getting onto the web, writing documents, and working with mail. Could I have done this three years ago? Well, I tried and the effort and time were more than I could afford then. Now, I'm running it without too much trouble and actually getting the hang of some of the innards. Back when I couldn't run things, there were gnome and kde. Now, there are still gnome and kde. The difference is that both of them are better and everything around them is getting better.

The improvement didn't come from standardization, did it? Was there someone or some group who came along and said, this is how it will be? Did I miss that?

Screw it. Linux isn't going to take over the desktop this year. Who gives a crap? Linux won't take over the desktop next year either. So what? The only things that matter are these: next year, Linux will be even more powerful and, at the same time, easier to use. Guess what? More people will come along for those two reasons.

Re:Standards ; we need them - Linux though?

[saskboy]

I just remembered too that when playing with Red Hat 6.0 2 years ago, I managed to make the menu bar on the main window disapear. Then I couldn't choose to reboot the machine through software without opening a terminal screen and typing the command to shut down the computer.
I tried:
stop
shutdown
reboot
quit
down
bakeco okies
shutthehelldown
man exit
and I think I finally stumbled upon:
halt

If interfaces in Linux were less breakable, and had more helpful documentation, then I could recommend it to more than just Computer Science undergrads.

Standardisation is against core values.

[Mark (ph'x)]

* Free as in Freedom.

Yes i can say that without ranting like a hippie. The wonder of Linux and the benefit of Linux is that there is so much more to choose from. The less standardised, the more freedom. Sure this makes applications difficult, but now we have a natural evolution... a survival of the fittest and most versatile librarys and APIs.

* Standardised Linux would attract more windows user and bill gates is satan and must die...

Ranting lunatics. Linux has a purpose, and as Free software (as in beer this time)... its performance is NOT MEASURED IN MARKETSHARE. Do not forget this. Linux should allways be for the power user, the tweaker, the guy/girl that cannot stop fiddling with their computer.

New users should be encouraged to fiddle, they should be given VMWare or VirtualPC and a nice easy distro, or they should have a dual boot system set up. Standardisation is only going to piss off the 75% of people that prefer a different standard.

Who really cares what percentage of boxen runs linux? Sure it might attract a better quality of drivers or closed source apps, but to do this by sacrificing the core Freedom values by standardising bits is ridiculous.

And all those that take marketshare as an ego thing, you are a bunch of morons. If popular equated useful we would all be running Windows.

God, reading thru my post im starting to rant like stallman :(

Re:Standards ; we need them - Linux though?

[chabotc]

Hey if he had to reboot to make the mouse work, then thats a valid complaint.. Nothing made clear to him that he could also have restarted this thing called an 'X Server' (whadeverdatbe). He has been told sometimes rebooting helps (windows using friends or previous experiance), so thats the only thing he can try to make it work 'magicly'.

Please try to keep that perspective in mind before you 'bitch' at 'users'. We want people to use linux? then we will get users! If something is not obvious, then we 'developers' made a mistake.

Otherwise we'll forever have linux stuck in the 'By technicians, for technicians' era.

Let's put this whole thing into focus...

[Eric Damron]

Okay, after reading through the posts I think that there are a few things that need to be made clear.

1. Standardizing Linux distros does not mean that EVERYTHING would be the same. There is still room to customize. What standardizing would mean is that programmers would be reasonably sure that each distro would have a standard base from which to work. For example, as a developer I would know that I could count on certain libraries being available and that those libraries would be backward compatible so that I wouldn't have to recompile my products for each new version of a distro.

2. I would also like a standard way to handle copy/paste so that I know that other applications would have access to the data that gets copied from my product and that my product would have access to data copied from other developer's applications.

3. Standardizing Linux does not mean that we would only have one desktop. The most popular desktops are KDE and Gnome and clearly we already have programs that run on both desktops quite nicely. However, it would be a really good idea for these two rivals to get together and agree to standardize certain things, if possible, in an effort to make both desktops easier to support. This would be good for everyone.

A base standard for Linux distros would help developers develop their products and be assured that they would run hassle free on most flavors of Linux. This is good for the developers and good for the users.

Remember that no one is forced to comply with any standards but those who do will be making it easier for developers to support their distribution. I'm not sure that United Linux is the way to go but it wouldn't hurt to look at the standards that they intend to adopt.

Lord of the Distros

[NeoSkandranon]

While reading this, am I the only one who kept thinking "One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to bind them. One Ring to bring them all, and in the shadows bind them." ??

Re:Lord of the Distros

[glenstar]

Quoting "Lord of the Rings" is not healthy. Thinking about it often is definitely not healthy.

Please leave your house more often.

i'm dead for this one

[tempny]

Believe it or not, there exists a breed of technically proficient users out there who fully know of linux but are windows users regardless. Like myself, I know many such people on my college campus. I have mandrake installed, and use it every once in a while. I have been using it much less since my semi-successful attempt at upgrading kde. Primarily however, I am in win2k. Contrary to popular slashdotter opinion, with some careful set up, win2k can be quite stable and secure. I am a cs major with an emphasis on AI, and I just want to be able to code. I don't have the time to learn the ins and outs of an operating system when a much more hands free one is available. As long as my OS lets me code with minimum headaches, that's what I'll use. I realize the value of linux and actively hope that it will eventually become hassle free enough to support my video card and let me install or uprgrade a program without competing standards that will work on any desktop, but that is not where it currently is. Meanwhile, win2k is out of my hair, my compiler works, and any hardware I add will also work. I can upgrade or downgrade any of my programs in a few minutes. If linux standardization fulfills its promise, the addition of my kind of user to the linux family will be invaluable.

What users want

[TheAncientHacker]

What they really want is the ability to ask: "How do I do xxxx in Linux?" and not get the answer: "Please tell me the following 85 things about your configuration:"

And that is what standardization is about. Not about forcing a single choice but about having a single default that can reliably be trusted by users who haven't learned enough to change the defaults.

Re:Standards ; we need them - Linux though?

[Tyler Eaves]

And those who wish to just get work done will continute to use FreeBSD.

Apps are the answer.

[SocietyoftheFist]

You're right it is the apps. There is a certain amount of conceit that goes into thinking that because something is better that people will flock to it. Witness OS/2 vs Windows. OS/2 was vastly superior to Windows but who has the market share and the apps? Your average consumer doesn't care what the operating system is, they just want to run the software that they find useful. It's a small group of people that care about the operating system. How many people cared that Betamax was superior to VHS? A lot of money needs to be pumped in to Linux to bring about one common interface that is well documented and easy to code for. I think that if somebody were to really provide a real cross platform development system that they could actually target multiple platforms and if Linux gets as polished as the MacOS and Windows you might see something. If you had a 2 PC's at CompUSA, identical except for the operating system, and with all the same applications looking and working like consumers expect them too Linux might have a shot. The vast majority of consumers see a computer as an appliance and treat it as such. An example of the kind of functionality that is needed is being able to throw a blank cd-r into my drive and just drag files to the cd icon on the linux desktop to burn them. I can do this on my girlfriends iBook, I'd love to be able to do it under Linux.

What the...

[drsmithy]

From the article:

Microsoft users are an interesting lot. They have systems that they have NO control over. They have systems they have to reboot every sixteen minutes. They freely pay Bill Gates obscene amounts of money for buggy programs that they can't use when they upgrade to the next operating system.

Not a single assertion in that quoted text is true. I stopped reading after that point, as someone so obviously out of touch with reality couldn't possibly have anything _useful_ to say.

As to the issue at hand... I always find it most entertaining that so many of the people who extol the benefits of standardisation for things like network protocols think standardising the OS is a bad idea. The same arguments that make standardising on something like TCP/IP a good idea also make standardising the functional basics of an OS a good idea (and if you don't consider the interface to be a piece of base OS functionality, then I think you're well and truly our of touch with the "common user").

Competition is good...

[Vaughn Anderson]

"...I believe that if Linux is to be all that it can be the Linux world needs to UNITE behind standards."

Standards are great, but I am just concerned about any "centralized" body with any sort of motives to gain control over how linux is to be made.Who the hell funds "The United Linux campaign" I don't know, it's smelling of politics...

I unfortunately can't use Linux yet cause I can't be guaranteed all my Macromedia software will run on it... will Linux standards fix this?

Is there really that severe of a division in Linux versions that if I get my box running Red Hat one week I can't make my next upgrade to SuSE?

If it's soooo bad between Linux distros then it's __got__ to be bad going from Windows to Linux... maybe that can be cleared up for me. Is it really that hard to upgrade to Linux from windows? And if __that's__ an easy switch, how hard can it be going between distros?

I really think eventually the OS distro won't mean squat when I can run all my apps in Mozilla. :)

Here's the crux, what would it be like if there were 10 different distros of Windows out there? And there was a standards body governing it?

-v

Good luck

[essdodson]

As the subject says.

Linus has nothing to do with the whole system.

[autopr0n]

It would be interesting to see where Linux would be today if Linus actually cared what went into the rest of the system. He really only worries about the kernel. If you read his comments you can see he really doesn't care what goes into the rest. And seeing how he even encourages people to use other people's version of the kernel if his doesn't include the features they want (like kernel debugging, riser-FS, etc) it's not exactly like he's a standards nazi.

If Linus were actually interested in how the rest of the system took shape, we would be in either of two possible worlds: A highly standardized version of Linux with some tiny offshoots, or a world where no one wants to use the OS of that hypothetical anal bastard Linus : P

Re:Linus has nothing to do with the whole system.

[swb]

If Linux cared about what went into the rest of the system, he'd be a committer to FreeBSD. :)

Alternative to RPM needed for Linux to advance

[jhylkema]

Using RPM (retch) to install Windows (retch retch) would go something like this (blatantly ripped from a sig I saw):

rpm -i Windows
Package Windows already installed

rpm -e Windows
Package Windows is not installed

Gentoo's portage tree, on the other hand, goes something like this:

emerge [pkgname]

and it installs. Sure beats dealing with RPM's endless dependency bullshit.

If I wanted to deal with crap like this, I'd just continue signing checks to Lord Bill hoping he won't remotely disable my precious Windows. As long as we have garbage like this, we're opening ourselves up to FUD that will neatly appeal to the PHBs M$ markets to.

Re:FreeBSD is a standard

[rhavyn]

Install Red Hat: up2date evolution
Upgrade Red Hat: up2date -u evolution
Install Debian: apt-get install evolution
Upgrade Debian: apt-get upgrade evolution

Either of those commands will get the most recent version of evolution packaged for the distro as well as all of its dependencies, and I don't need to wait for them to compile.

Its great that FreeBSD is a complete operating system, but so is Debian, Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, etc. And searching for RPMS might have been a problem years ago, but I don't think any package based distro doesn't have a utility that will download and install packages and their dependencies these days.

Re:It's the apps, stupid.

[Discoflamingo13]

When Gentoo gets a graphical front-end for the portage system, compilation will be a long-lost memory for most users. Gentoo standardizes the compilation/compiler option configuration process - for any program, just emerge (name of program to build). It has some bugs now, but fewer than you'd expect. I think this would be great for end-users - power users and sysadmins will want to muck with every individual compilation.

It also does dependency checking better than any packaging system I've seen so far - except maybe Debian.

The fact that it's source-based will probably keep it from mainstream use, but the spin-off distros could be incredibly promising.

Re:Standards ; we need them - Linux though?

[autopr0n]

We are willing to praise lackluster device support, and non functioning desktop environments because they don't give us a BSOD or tell us our applications are doing something "illegal".

No, it tells you that there was a segmentation fault. Moron.

Re:BUT THERE ARE NO FUCKING APPS!!!!!

[Discoflamingo13]

Which ATI card did you have in mind? Most of the ones I've looked at are supported under Linux, and some are even more supported.

I will agree with you about the lack of necessary apps, (I like the gimp, but I don't see it anywhere near the level of Photoshop for professional work) but I think the issue of necessary drivers is mostly an issue for super-legacy devices or NDA'd device designs. The rest seem to fall into place fairly well, from what I've seen.

No one needs to convince me, they need to help me

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a helluva lot of comments of the vein, "if you don't want to learn Linux, stay away." It is obvious to some but not many of us here that the problem is not that people don't want to use Linux, it is that they want to be able to USE Linux. As a relatively new Linux user (although I've used a lot of Nix tools in Mac OS X) I find it incredibly frustrating that oftentimes I want to do something in the CLI, I have no idea how, and I don't even know where to start looking. Friends tell me commands to run like they should be obvious, but how would I know them except by being told? And I absolutely hate it when I want to, say, change my resolution and I have no idea how and a friend refuses to help me because he knows how to do it in Red Hat and Mandrake but he's never used Debian and he doesn't know nor care to know the "Debian way."

The posts about "lowest common denominator" are right now, and here is an example. When you want to change the host name of your machine, you run the command "hostname" as root followed by the new name. Ta dah, its set. This works, as far as I know, on all Linux distros. On Mac OS X, you use the hostname command, and it doesn't stick on reboots. Why? Because the Mac uses a differnt configuration file and its not documented under man hostname.

What do I want as standards? I want you to be able to add new ways of doing things, with new features and better usability and nicer functionality, but I still want my old commands to work, even if their deprecated. Or at least point me in the right direction.

That is what "standardization" means to me...a unified method of handling user interaction. I don't care if you use Gnome or KDE, I just want to be able to access all my apps from each. I don't care what you write your programs in, I just want to be able to use keyboard shortcuts for "cut" and "paste" and "save" that are the same. I just want my window themes to apply. I just want the widgets to look the way I set them. I just want the "Okay" button to always be on the right. Or the left. Whatever.

Please, standardize. Look at the Apple Human Interface Guilelines, and make something better, something that projects and apps can put a sticker on their website proudly saying, "I'm usable!"

That's all I, a Linux newbie, ask.

Re:Users Want Better Stuff, Not a Development Mode

[IamTheRealMike]

Not to be a naysayer, but in 12 years Linux has managed to gain only a few percentage points worth of the desktop market. Users really don't care, don't know, and have no reason to be aware of the development model used to create their software.

And they won't be. I think you're missing a fairly crucial point which is that the desktop Linux effort only really started in '96 with the launch of KDE. In '98 KDE1 was released, and that's when the ball started rolling. That means the linux desktop has in effect been in existance for 4 years now.

In that time, KDE and GNOME have gone from ugly, unstable and primitive desktops into powerful, beautiful and yes, in the case of GNOME2 even usable desktops. Not only that, but a truckload of applications have been developed, installation of the OS has become childs play and an open standards effort has been started to unify the interfaces between desktop components.

That's a lot of progress.

And, it will not happen if too many Linux developers continue to imagine that their development model is what they're selling. It isn't.

Given that Linux has never been marketed as such, it's only ever grown through word of mouse, I think there is sufficient interest in not just the technology but also the development model.

Business in particular is keen on the idea of ridding themselves of vendor lockin, being in control and being able to easily maintain old software if the original vendor/maintainer no longer carries on.

Re:Users Want Better Stuff, Not a Development Mode

[hacker]

Not to be a naysayer, but in 12 years Linux has managed to gain only a few percentage points worth of the desktop market. Users really don't care, don't know, and have no reason to be aware of the development model used to create their software.

Whew, that's a relief, because you know what... Linux wasn't created to replace Windows! .

Let the users complain all they want, Linux doesn't exist to compete with Windows, nor is the goal of Linux to supplant Windows on the desktop.It may be the goal of some Linux companies to engineer a Linux version to compete with Windows, but this is not the goal of Linux.

As a Linux developer (and not a Linux Distribution employee), I really don't care what the Windows users whine about. If they don't like it, they can go back to Windows. Linux wasn't created by whiners, and I don't work for them.

If the users can't use it, or it's not too easy for them, there are plenty of other operating systems they can play with that might be easier. I'm sick of hearing this topic come up over and over and over. "But for Linux to be successful, it has to make it to the desktop...". Linux is already successful, even if I am the only person in the world using it.

It's MY job to make the software, and make it work.

It's someone ELSE's job to make it work like Windows.

Re:Standards ; we need them - Linux though?

[hacker]

You need non standard versions of Linux for people who don't want it for Desktops. Period. Trouble is, those people are the ones driving its development, so we won't see a standard Linux anytime in the next decade.

Please let me know the location you donated several hundred thousand dollars to help change this, and I'll begin to be sympathetic.

Linux is not free, and people need to realize this. It takes time, effort, hardware, resources, documentation, etc. to make things work well together. Many Linux developers have day jobs also. If you want to change their priorities, you need to supplant their income, because they're going to have to take time away from their "normal day" to fix your problems. I'm sure you didn't pay for your Linux distribution, so that gives you ZERO right to complain.

We develop what we want, when we want, because we need it, or because we think it'd be cool, or for any number of other reasons. We don't all develop with the same goals, because we all have different goals. If YOU want to change those goals, help motivate us in that direction, but remember, a "thank you" and a pat on the back doesn't pay the rent.

Are you people missing the point?

[Kynde]

I for one don't want the linux distributions to become any more Windows clones than they already have.

People are praising new KDE and Gnome developement with phrases like "It's just like Windows". We should be out there to make the software _WE_WANT_, not to mimic microsoft stuff, just like Linus doesn't give a fsck wether more or less poeple start using the kernel. He's just on his mission to build the OS kernel he wants.

This is becoming an issue. More and more fscked up features are creeping in while good found-to-be-powerfull features are being neglected. I guess soon the developers will, once again, have to swap their OSs to something not so bloated, built with love, not to impress others in first glance, but to be be found powerful when really used.

No stamdardisation necessary...

[aallan]

...the Linux community does not need to set up businesses with the specific intention of trying to "win" users from Microsoft; all we have to do is continue to develop software in the same way, and the users will make the switch all by themselves'.

So we don't have to standardise then, good. The only standardisation I want is for RedHat to stop using their own configuration files with their GUI configuration tools and use then ones in /etc like everyone else.

Al.

claim unfair moderation

[djupedal]

The user that I contested agreed with me - my 2 points should stand - please consider throttling this (8%) moderator back for being unfair, thanks.

The users need to pick one.

[Skapare]

The users need to pick one. I picked one. They can, too. What? Are they afraid the might be the wrong one? But they aren't afraid of having us pick "the one" for them? Then they should hire one of us to pick it for them. Sheesh. Why is this so hard?

What most users want is for it to work exactly the way they are used to computers working, only better. Well, some don't care about the better part. Actually most don't give a rat's arse if it's better. They just want it to be easy and simple and do what they are doing now, which has been pretty much molded by their past with Microsoft Windows.

The real issue being raise regarding standardizing Linux isn't about what users want, anyway. It's about what developers want. It's about what lazy developers want, which is to not have to figure out anything about a different distribution. If two distributions are identical, or if there is only one, they probably don't care.

Re:The registry and system configuration nightmare

[jilles]

The reason GUI tools never work in linux is that they are an afterthought. Configuration always boils down to editing text file XYZ in some location which typically varies from distribution to distribution (something that often is worked areound using symbolic links!). There's a few problems with this approach: 1) each configuration file has its own syntax therefore automated editing (e.g. through a gui) needs to be custom designed (and consequently lacking/severely limited). 2) sysadmins typically have to learn how to configure a tool in addition to learning to understand what it does (consequently sysadmins tend to be expensive). 3) sysadmins have to be aware of distribution specifics in order to succesfully configure a system.

Most attempts at making linux user friendly work around these issues rather than fixing them. As a result, you can't go to the shop and buy software for linux. You can only buy software bundled with linux because that is the only way to get it working in a somewhat reliable fashion. It is also the reason many software developers currently do not have a linux version of their software. Getting software running on the zillion variations of linux is a support nightmare.

Your favourite parts of the elephant

[alext]

Interesting takes on what's really important in a platform, but with a distinctly 1980s flavour.

Hopefully I'm not the only one that regards Java and Dotnet as having changed the ground rules forever.

Bottom line is that a standard Linux can't compete without a standard VM.

I think it [the kernel] should be the only standardized thing in Linux

Rubbish. What needs to be provided is as familiar an environment as possible

As a developer, I would like to know that I can count on certain libraries being included

The only thing that needs to be standardized are the configuration files

Huzzah for the song of freedom!

[Discoflamingo13]

Damn right poeople are warezing Photoshop. For most people, the gimp is probably enough - and they just don't know it yet.

When gimp can do true CMYK what-you-see-is-what-you-print color-matching as well as Photoshop can (which is pretty damn good, but needs work), it will be a professional product. But I'm not exactly holding my breath, because, as Eegon says, "print is dead." Long live the Internet.

People who think Linux will never be able to compete with Windows until every damn niche market has been filled have forgotten what ordinary people do with computers. Average Joe Enduser (no offense) will probably never touch Maya in his entire life. I don't see why Linux needs a Maya clone. It's a niche - and free software may fill it one day. It may never be filled. Until it is, most people won't give a jot if some freedom-loving hacker making Lego movies has to suffer with POVray. In fact, most hackers probably don't care already . . .

After letting my non-technical friends test-drive some Linux software, they wanted Linux. They love ee (electriceyes), gimp, logjam, and Mozilla - because they see these programs as better at doing what ordinary people need to do. In two weeks, I'll be putting Linux on their machines just so they can use these four programs. And that's all I have to say about that.

Re:Standards ; we need them - Linux though?

[saskboy]

That is exactly what I said, except you took it to be me complaining. I was mearly stating the obvious, and you just backed up what I said:

The people driving the development aren't working toward a standard distro.

Install from Source...it's actually pretty easy!

[MsGeek]

What part of...
$ ./configure
$ su
# make
# make install
don't you understand?

Installing from source is dead easy on Mandrake 9. Everything you need is right there out of the box. Yeah, it means popping open a console, but once you get past the initial fear factor it's not a problem. Occasionally when you are dealing with Windows you have to open up a command.com or cmd.exe window...it's not the end of the world.

Use the Source, Luke! Or Tubabeat, whatever...

Re:Install from Source...it's actually pretty easy

[shaitand]

You should never HAVE to install anything from source, or even open a console to install an app. Being ABLE to do is great, it's one of the great poweruser functions. The source is open for you to tweak or compile in customized ways. That you often have to do so just to make it work, is one of the greatest problems with a linux system.

Re:No.

[shaitand]

Who is talking about sys admins? We are talking about the basic techshops that deal with more diverse pc's in a week than a sysadmin sees in 5yrs.

Re:Install from Source...it's actually pretty easy

[Eric Damron]

Ah, if it were only that easy.

I use to get so frustrated with Mandrake because things that would compile fine on Redhat using just the commands that you gave would bomb on Mandrake.

But at any rate the average user shouldn't have to compile anything. Most computer users just want there computer to work without jumping through any hoops.

I know my way around a computer pretty well but even I reach a point where I want to stop configuring my system and just use it. A non-geek starts off just wanting everything to work.