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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'."
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.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
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.
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.
using System.Awesome;
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.
.config files yast uses can be edited manually but I want to be a unix expert and not a suse expert.
/etc that are symlinked elsewhere.
/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.
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
Redhat tries to have psuedo files
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
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.
http://saveie6.com/
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.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
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.
/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.
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
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.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
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).
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
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.
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?
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.
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
"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.
Eddy.WriteLinux.Com
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.
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.
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.)
- Documentation on how to get cable/DSL modems working. Perhaps a desktop utility (program) too.
... why can't I do that from my own console?
... not a bad idea, although it's still a hack. I really ought to figure out how to do that.)
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
(Someone suggested that I set up my reset button to kill X
- 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.)
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
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?
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
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.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
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.
C|N>K
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.
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.
- 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.
:wq
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.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
'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?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
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.
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.
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.
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").
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
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.