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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.
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"
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.
We need ONE sWe need ONE standard desktop -- KDE, Gnome, I don't care. Pick one and use it.
/Janne
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?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
2. Copying the Windows registry paradigm for system and program information.
/home partition, so I could reformat my root partition during the install, and my programs would still retain their configurations. I love it!
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
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.
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.
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.)
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"
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.
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.