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2003: Year of Linux in Asia?
Anonymous Coward writes "The Register has a story
about traveling to a magical country where seeing Linux laptops displayed in stores is perfectly normal. The author then goes on to predict that this year will see much more desktop action coming not from Red Hat or Euro-Distros, but from China and India. Makes sense to me."
I feel so sorry for the newborns this year...
"I'm was born in the year of the dragon!"
"I was born in the year of the bull!"
"... Iwas born during the year of the geeks..."
Banaaaana!
2003: the year of Asian Linux
By Robin Miller, NewsForge.com
Posted: 27/12/2002 at 10:56 GMT
As most regular NewsForge readers know, I recently traveled to Arabeyes Project, was a small, independent computer store located in a back alley in one of Amman's many modest commercial districts.
There is a sameness to this kind of store the world over. I shop at one much like it in Sarasota, Florida, and another similar one in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The reason we were in this store was to find and buy a Linux-compatible PCMCIA modem. The salespeople in this store were just as clueless as the salespeople in equivalent U.S. stores, and there were the same know-it-all geek customers hanging around who offered us advice ranging from smart to useless. But there was one difference. When we wanted to test a modem for Linux compatibility, we found -- courtesy of one of the geek hangers-on -- a laptop running Linux on display, right up front.
As it turned out, we didn't need the physical test, and the modem ran just fine in the Red Hat-loaded laptop where it was destined to live, but the note that stuck with me was the fact that there was a laptop on display in a computer store, right up front, proudly running Linux, and people treated it as something normal, not as an oddity.
It wasn't Red Hat, either, but ThizLinux, a distribution from Hong Kong, which is appropriate since the laptop was a Hong Kong brand I've never seen in the U.S. before.
To top it off, the office suite CDs on display next to the laptop weren't from Microsoft or StarOffice or WordPerfect, but Hancom Office, out of South Korea. And it was an Arabic version, too, something neither StarOffice nor OpenOffice quite have ready.
Hancom makes major promo hay out of their support for many languages in their $59.95 (boxed edition) office suite. Their Web page says, "Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese, Arabic, Korean editions and Unicode support mean that Hancom Office is the best solution for companies with offices on multiple continents."
Asia is the next Linux hotbed
Linux, as we know it today, is an essentially European phenomenon. It started in Finland. KDE is centered in Germany and has close ties to Norwegian TrollTech. Mandrake is French, SuSE is German, and European governments have moved toward and supported Linux -- and Open Source in general -- faster than most governments elsewhere. The U.S. is the center of commercial Linux activity primarily because Red Hat and several other major distributions are based here, but most surveys show a higher percentage of European than U.S. developers writing Open Source software.
But a growing number of "next generation" Linux development is taking place in Asian countries, ranging from South Korea at one end of the continent to India diagonally across the continent's map, with China rising hugely -- in the Linux sense -- right in the middle of it all.
Africa and the Middle East are discovering Linux in a big way, but don't have nearly as much computer/IT infrastructure or as much computer-oriented education available as (some parts of) China or India -- or South Korea or Vietnam or Malaysia. Or Japan, where it looks like Linux will soon be adopted as a preload operating system by computer manufacturers on all kinds of gear, not just on the server and workstation levels as we see 99% of the time in the U.S. and Europe.
I see an increasing amount of Linux development and related Open Source activity coming out of Asia, almost all of it in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other Asian languages.
I also see an increasing amount of Linux activity coming out of India, most of which is in English rather than in one of the many local Indian languages.
2003: the year of Asian Linux
I rarely make predictions. Heck, I am not all that sure I'll wake up tomorrow morning, let alone that the sun will come out from behind the clouds, assuming we have a cloudy sky tomorrow. But once in a while I let myself go and prognosticate. And this is my one and only NewsForge prognostication about Linux and Open Source in 2003: That some of the biggest advances we're going to see in the next year will come from Asia, not Europe or North America.
Whether we'll recognize how important these advances are (whatever they turn out to be) is another matter entirely. Maybe we will, maybe we won't. But that's a column I need to write at the end of 2003, not today.
It's not that bad for the average office user under Linux, there's OO which serves nice as a Office replacement.
However, when you move to standard home user then yeh, it sucks because he can't play the games all his friends are, or he can't view the latest web pages (I know Moz is standards compliant, but a lot of sites aren't.) or he can't open the attatchment sent by his brother of some pointless sort because he doesn't have the viewer. etc.
I see your point, I really do. But, then again, I don't think Linux should become mainstream.
1995^H^H^H^H
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2003 The Year that Linux takes over the desktop!
Where have I heard this??
" If all you do is browse the web or get e-mail, then yes, Linux is viable. But that is a much smaller market than most advocates want to admit. And even if someone thinks that's all they want, most are not going to go the "oddball" route "just in case"."
It's refreshing to see one other person on Slashdot that understands this concept. What's keeping my tied to Windows isn't going to be solved by a kernel update to Linux. What's keeping me using Windows has nothing to do with MS's monopoly or that I'm an idiot or any of those other stupid rationalizations I hear all the time. Linux is free so I should have no problem using it right? Wrong.
I use Outlook 2000 (no, not express, so spare me the virus bs.) because I choose to. It's the best for what I use it for. (Calendar, To do list, Spam filtering, synchronization with my PocketPC and Phone, etc...) There are probably clones of it out there, but so what? I already have my solution. I use Lightwave. I could switch to Maya or something, but I've already spent the money so where's the value? I use Photoshop. I could use Gimp, but Photoshop is what everybody uses. I like to play games, dare I even touch on that?
I have no incentive to switch to Linux. My computer works, it's quite stable (despite the FUD spread around here about Windows 2000 or XP), and it more than suits my needs. At some point Linux is going to have to stop playing catch-up to MS and start being better if they want me to jump ship.
Funny thing is, I'm not even pro-Microsoft. But I'm not interested in dropping everything just to enter the "I'm cool because I use Linux" popularity contest. A switch to Linux costs me a great deal, it doesn't buy me anything today.
With that said, more needs to be done to make Linux an attractive platform for companies like Adobe to port over to it. The opportunity is there. Movie Studios are starting to pick up Linux as a workstation. It ain't going to completely replace Microsoft or Apple until an artist such as myself is presented with an interface I can pick up and use. I have to be able to maintain my machine. I have to be able to install and run apps. I have to be able to communicate with people who don't run Linux (i.e. good Office port...). All of this completely fails if I have to memorize a bunch of text commands in order to configure my machine.
Solve the interface issues with Linux, and you'll see support from companies like Adobe. When we see support from these places, the interesting apps will appear.
disclaimer : I'm an Indian from Bombay.
:-)
I don't see Linux making any significant inroads in the mass computer culture of India.
Most savvy users in India will only pick up a tool if it can be an instrument for economic gain. This is why ofcourse, computer programming and learning it is a big thing in India. Because that's what the 20-something thinks. Learn coding and the world is open to you. The Indian mindset is not exactly open to adopting a culture where the software is free (beer) and support (LOL) is the source of revenue. Which in other words means there is no (or hardly any) revenue !
If someone in India trys out Linux, its because of the geekish 'chic' factor. To expect a group of Indian coders to sit and down and code say, an IDE, give it away for free is fantasy*
*Unless that group is currently in an academic or research institution where they have a stipend or other sources of income.
Note 2: If you're going to counteract that they can sell the product as a shrinkwrap too, then you don't know the Indian software retail market
last I checked.. 2003 is going to be the Year of the Goat
since when was linux an animal?
"The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down" -- Henry Rollins
While the article would seem like a happy fairy tale for Linux supporters, the cold, hard reality is that Linux is not even known by the large majority of computer users in most parts of Asia... AND this includes the so-called high-potential areas such as China and India.
While companies prefer to stay legit and actually buy licenses for their software (and even this is fairly recent, thanks to the BSA), a large majority of home-based consumers run pirated versions of Windows, and a bunch of pirated application which can be bought at less than US$2 per CD. This is the cold hard truth.
And many Western media report blames the Govt for not doing anything when the fact is that they can't actually properly enforce the rules. The pirates here are true gangsters in the sense of the word... not some pimply faced kid with cable connection and terrabytes of storage like the typical image of software pirate many of you think.
They are backed by armed thugs, scouts that check on police/IP-enforcers, and possibly insiders from the police or even the local BSA branch... yes, really!
And to top it off, they keep the customers happy... Yes, they really do. I find these pirates more approachable than your average MS or Adobe salesperson.
CD not working? No problem, we'll replace it for you... No questions asked.
Two weeks guarantee on any purchased CD.
Recommendation on a better substitute of the app you wanted to buy
With that kind of service it's no wonder people here flock to pirated CD shops than to the legit vendors. Price is one thing, but if you are going to be severely restricted by EULAs and other licensing terms, might as well buy a pirated copy for 1/200 of the price and be happy about it.
From a typical Asian point-of-view, there is no value-added incentive to purchase original CDs.
Back to the topic, while companies (especially SMEs) will embrace Linux because of the money they can save from software licenses. But even so, many of the established businesses will stick to propietry software because it is what they are used to. And these are decided by the bigwigs which have no desire at all to embrace new technologies eventhough it might save them a huge pile of cash. It is in the mindset... not the software itself.
Linux can move forward by becoming more Desktop-centric not just for home users but for corporate users. And it does not need to be free (as in beer)... most companies will invest a suitable amount of cash to improve productivity.
Sorry for the long rant, hope u get my point.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
A plethora of users have demonstrated here that they aren't interested in adopting Linux. They are comfy with what works for them. And since they started out with MS and Windows applications, that's what they like.
The key phrase here is "started out with MS and Windows".
There are literally BILLIONS of potential users who have never become used to Photoshop or Outlook Express or MSIE. This untapped userbase is ripe for the picking and if Linux is there early with an OS that is cheap and applications in their languages then Linux could have a large proportion of those users.
Imagine Asia and Africa populated with computer users who can't see any reason to switch to Microsoft because they are used to what they have; Linux.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Anyone who has been here for a long time has seen my posts about Thailand, but I'll summarize what's happening here, and it's big.
You see linux desktops and laptops in almost every computer store. All top five domestic brands, including Belta Liberta and Laser ( I can't find a link), use it for their lower models. It is always the same, the National Electronics and Computer Technology (NECTEC) organization of Thailand's own Linux TLE, a Red Hat based distibution that has had Thai language support and translations added to virtually every application.
Since November,the new releases come with version 4.1R2, which is touted as "Professional," and includes OfficeTLE, an OO.o variant which includes such difficult to program features as a Thai word parser, because Thai uses no spaces between words. It, in my opinion, outshines Sun's Pladao Office, which translates as "Starfish." The menus for Pladao are all in Thai, but the OfficeTLE menus are in English. Books for both litter the bookstore shelves in prominant places.
NECTEC also has a venerable serverdistribution, SIS (can't find the link), which stands for School Internet Server, and connects primary, secondary, and tertiary(?) schools to their SchoolNet, a free internet and information sharing operation.
Free Software is kicking here in Thailand.
For other perks, see my sig.
Put identity in the browser.
Let's watch all the idiotic redneck fools who glance briefly at the media provided propoganda. We'll see them noticing China, thinking 'red', then seeing Linux, and thinking 'red'... Ignorance is the biggest obstacle for free software these days. I hope the morons in office don't try to exploit this in a negative manner. As usual, it will probably go unnoticed, and end up meaning absolutely nothing, but, I can't help imagining what horrors could come of it. (I'll let you imagine the good stuff, it's easier)
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
I also have no reason to switch to Linux. However I get the feeling that Microsoft is going to screw themselves over sooner than later (DRM), and I'll feel like I have no choice but to get off Windows if I want to have privacy and control over my computer. Linux doesn't have to do anything but wait for MS to screw up.
It's refreshing to see one other person on Slashdot that understands this concept.
Microsoft understands this concept all too well; That's why their knickers are in such a twist over India.
The last thing M$ wants to see is a large population of Unix desktops available for app developers to sell products to.
with China rising hugely -- in the Linux sense -- right in the middle of it all.
:)
:)
Right on. Look at RedFlag Linux. It's backed by China Government, RedHat-based Linux distro.
In my opinion, China Government is no much an Open Source advocate, instead, MS forced them to take this path. I got some underground news when I worked for IBM around 94, when we completed each other developing a Chinese OS for Mainland China. The progress of the development our Chinese OS/2 was not as fast as Windows 95 because they outsourced their work to Taiwan and we've put comparatively too much effort on testing(I were one of the full-time tester in Asian region).
That was the biggest mistake MS has ever made.
As usual, MS pushed their first release of Simplified Chinese version of Win95 before thorough testing. To China Government dismay, they found that whenever they type the word 'Kung'(the first word of Communism in Chinese), the association helper immediate popup the word 'bandit' after it. 'Communist Bandit' is how Taiwanese called Communist party in Mainland China.
That was a really good prank the Taiwanese Developers made for China Government.
I've also been told that there's still a couple of nasty easter eggs hidden in this first release of OS(or Word/Excel?) that made fun of some lead people in communist party, that pissed them very much. Although MS had done everything to 'repair' the damage, but as a common practise of them "this shall not be forgiven."
RedFlag Linux may be the first major getback on MS.
"I also have no reason to switch to Linux. However I get the feeling that Microsoft is going to screw themselves over sooner than later (DRM), and I'll feel like I have no choice but to get off Windows if I want to have privacy and control over my computer. Linux doesn't have to do anything but wait for MS to screw up."
/. gets their panties in a bunch every time there's a story about MS. What's funny is that every time MS makes a misstep, the Linux community has an opportunity to take advantage of it. /. should be thrilled when there's a new IE exploit and Mozilla gets it fixed first. DRM? Not to worry, Linux is DRM free.
You touched on an interesting point there. Everybody on
But this only goes so far. At some point, Linux has to do something better than Windows. A checklist of "we don't have MS's problems" isn't enough. I mean seriously, who's going to go to Gateway and not buy Windows because of DRM? They won't even know how it affects them until it bites them in the ass long after they've bought it. Why not make a distro of Linux catered to small group of people?
Make an artist distro where Film Gimp, Gimp, Killustrator, and a few other things have their icons on the desktop or on the toolbar or something. Make the other stuff available, but make the important stuff come out first. Make a PVR distro where right away you have the functionality you need to get the PVR going. Maybe distro is the wrong word.. configuration? Hell I don't know. I love the idea of installing Linux and as soon as it comes up it's all ready to go with compositing tools ready to launch.
Now that I think about it, one of Linux's biggest failings is that it tries to do a little too much. The Linux Community is all about choices. Some like Mozilla, some like Netscape, some like Opera, so let's put them all in there. Right? Bad idea. The first time I fired up Linux I was met with a number of programs all beginning in K. Who was the dumbass that came up with that naming convention? I mean it's Kcute and all, but Kwhen Kall Kprograms Kbegin Kwith Kk, Kthen Kit Kis Khard Kto Kfind Kthe Kprogram Kyou're Klooking Kfor since the list is sorted Kalphabetically. If they wanted to keep me as a Linux user, they would have slimmed down the choices a bit. I mean face reality here, I'll have to use any given program a while before I understand why this other choice is of interest.
Okay, I rambled a bit. I hope somebody out there involved in developing for Linux read this and got a little bit of insight into why I'm not a Linux user now. I'm all for ditching MS for something that is.. well. democratic like Linux is. (I'd like to see somebody try to force DRM support in Linux, heh...) but I just can't do it yet. Unless Linux gives me something I don't have in Windows, then I just don't have the time to muck with it.
You know, I hear that a lot, but I never see it. I've been running Chimera (and before that, Mozilla) for quite a while and I can't remember hitting a site I couldn't view. Some banks require user-agent spoofing* to work properly, but once I've got my foot in the door, everything seems to work great.
Got any examples of sort-of-high-traffic sites that just plain don't work in Mozilla based browsers?
*See this for more on that.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Many of these Asian countries are part of the axis of evil, and will stop at nothing to destroy everything good the West stands for. I urge all geeks to be responsible and not let their efforts unwittingly aid terrorism or the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Thank you.
George W. Bush
President, United States of America
I rarely make predictions. Heck, I am not all that sure I'll wake up tomorrow morning,
Spoke like a true white guy running around the streets of Jordan.
Since years are normally named after a species of animal (normaly excluding humans) perhaps it would be more appropriatly named:
"The Year of the Penguin"
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
Unless Linux gives me something I don't have in Windows, then I just don't have the time to muck with it.
It sounds like what you're looking for is the hard sales pitch. Not sure if you're going to find that in Free software land.
You will find desktop environments that allow for seemless use of multiple desktops, server class networking, and front line applications that do a pretty fine job rivaling their rather expensive counterparts. All without having to troll the WareZ groups for hours on end.
The advantages of a Unix desktop aren't immediate though. You won't have a paper clip come flying out to show you around. It takes some time and curiosity to see for yourself why there are those of us who left Windows behind. The really rough part here is that it's not something I can describe adequately to you here. Oh, I could probably list off a stack of features that Windows simply can't do, but it wouldn't mean anything to you. It only has value or meaning when you get there yourself.
All that's assuming you can get past the app naming conventions. You can, can't you?
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Linuxers understand that it is all about the applications. In fact, applications are precisely the reason that Linux is eventually going to win out. Hardware is getting ridiculously inexpensive, but commercial software remains very expensive. You might be happy to pay thousands of dollars for Lightwave, MS Office, Photoshop, and whatever else you run on your machine, but lots of people would rather use Blender, OpenOffice, The Gimp, and the wealth of free tools that come with Linux. Interestingly enough, the hardware companies would especially like to see software become less expensive because that would leave consumers with more money for hardware.
Sure, the Linux tools might not be quite as powerful, and they might lack the polish of the commercial applications, but they are a heck of a lot cheaper, and they are actually pretty darn good. This is especially true in countries where the average computer user gets paid less than those of us in the first world. If it weren't for the fact that most commercial software is easy to pirate Free Software would already be the rule in the poorer areas of the world. The harder the commercial software companies try to stamp out piracy, the more prevalent Free Software is likely to become.
Even in the United States the only people that actually pay for applications like Photoshop are those folks that use it professionally. Most people use whatever photo editor came with their digital camera or scanner. The Gimp almost certainly kicks that software right in the head. Which is why, in the long run it is almost certain to gain wider use and acceptance, especially now that the Gimp runs on Windows.
Adobe isn't going to port to Linux, because they know that if their customers start experimenting with Linux they are very likely to start experimenting with other Free Software that comes included in most Linux distributions. Direct competition with Free Software would make it that much harder for Adobe to sell their commercial applications.
In the end Linux will continue its inexorable march towards ubiquity not because it is especially good, but because it is "good enough" at the right price. There are plenty of folks that would like to use their computers to do the things that you do with your computer, but that can't afford to purchase thousands of dollars worth of software. These people have no (legal) choice but to dig in and invest some of their time learning Linux.
I say that not just because of pricing themselves out of the labor market, with Asian and other labor forces offering cheaper labor. The truth also includes cheaper *methods* which Linux is a part of, long term. Higher costs imposed my closed source and proprietary (read: Microsoft) operating systems and application software will cause higher prices for those who choose them. This making Asian markets that choose Linux even *more* competitive down the road.
You will find desktop environments that allow for seemless use of multiple desktops...
What is WITH that? Why does EVERY Linux distro Ive seen always have the multiple desktop shit turned on. That is so totally a geek thing. Half the people I know using Windows are barely managing minimize/restore/maximize, I just dont see my mom keeping track of 4 different desktops. That shit has always bothered me. Make it available, fine. But a pre-installed, pre-turned on, huge portion of the taskbar, in an OS that wants to garner normal PC users? Anyway...
server class networking...
Um. Im not sure what that means exactly. If youre referring to hardware, I think they make gigabit cards for pretty much every OS. If youre referring to the TCP/IP stack, isnt windows's the same as BSD since Win2k?
and front line applications that do a pretty fine job rivaling their rather expensive counterparts.
Here's the challenge part. Show me front line Linux applications that rival (or even come close to matching)...
- Quickbooks
- Macromedia Director
- Quark Xpress
- Painter
- Dragon Dictate
- Chief Architect
- Hallmark Greeting Card Maker
- Streets and Trips
- Encarta
- AfterFX
- Learn to Speak Spanish
And the list goes on. Maybe someone could offer a couple "possible" matches on the Linux side for one or two of these. But even that's doubtful. Im not trying to be fecetious (too lazy to look up the proper spelling), I'm trying to make a point. Linux is void of the vast majority of apps people really buy. Go look at the store shelves at Best Buy, and point me to Linux equivalents of most of them. Sure, Open Office is awsome, I use it. MySQL is arguably decent. So you have an office app and a database. Well hooorayyyy!!! What about the shit people REALLY buy all the time?I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Most people switch to Linux because they're fed up with dealing with Windows. Some people switch because they want to see what all of the noise is about.
*I* switched because I found Windows to be an awful development environment and was welcomed with open arms by Linux. Today I find it extremely difficult to use Windows in any context other than to play an occasional game (and even that is pretty frustrating).
But you sound pretty happy with your setup. IMO, you have no reason to switch. Are people really demanding that you stop using Windows?
You did however make a good point in that you already know Windows and can use it to get your work done, and thusly don't need to learn Linux. What I find interesting about it is that people will try Linux, remark about how hard it is to use, and then go back to Windows. In my experience, they are not really complaining that Linux is hard to use, rather they are complaining that Linux is nothing like Windows which they have taken the time to learn (and logged the requisite thousands of hours fucking with it to become familiar with it and get it to work right)
Four cases in point, one of which may interest you professionally:
A good colleague of mine used nothing but Linux for like 10 years. Never touched anything else. One day we sat him in front of a Windows box and he was completely helpless. He's been exposed to it regularly now but he still finds it alien and unworkable.
My wife didn't use computers much at all before she met/married me. Of course my household predominantly runs Linux, but has the occasional Windows machine which she sometimes finds herself in front of. She always whines when she has to use the Windows machine because, well, she's not at all computer literate, so it's hard for her to explain, but here's what she said: "It sucks -- it just, it's hard to explain it. Let me find the words. OK, it's like, if Windows were a circle, Linux would be a sphere. If Windows and Linux were chefs, Windows would be an average chef at an average restaurant. Not good, not bad, just go to any diner and order a burger. Ho hum. A Linux chef could be anybody, any top restaurant, any dive, it's whatever the user makes of it. Which for me isn't much, but I can use it under any circumstance that my husband puts it through". A very unscientific explanation, but I thought it was interesting, as it really shocked me one day to hear her say that she preferred Linux when I had made it a point to install Windows on a machine just for her.
This same wife and I tried an unscientific experiment. I'd wipe a computer, hand her Red Hat Linux 7.1 and Windows ME. It was her job to install one as far as possible, I'd wipe the machine, and then she'd try again with the other. No help from me. The results were again shocking. She finished the Red Hat installation with no sweat, but got stuck with Windows ME (it took her about 5 times as long and she eventually pleaded with me if she could stop now since she was getting frustrated). I will repeat again that my wife is as computer illiterate as they come. The most advanced topic she understands I think is that computers store things in files and folders, and that she can navigate this as a tree.
At a Linux user group meet I recently met a user who was in the market you claim Linux is totally unable to address, an artist. I spoke with him for awhile about why he used Linux (he actually gave a presentation on the topic). Originally he had been using Macs for years to create his work, and as such, over time (about 8 years or so), he built up a large library of material. One day he decided to go through it all and found that the software which he used to create all of this work didn't exist anymore, and that they were in file formats that nothing on Macs today could understand. The vendors were dead, the software didn't run on current hardware/OS, and there were no business interests in providing compatibility today. This terrified him, as he was in danger of losing some of his greatest pieces. It was then that he understood what all of those open source zealots were screaming about. He decided to switch to Linux, and is comfortable knowing that open source software never dies, and that all of his work now will last indefinitely (or at least much longer). Once he got past the initial culture shock, he said it's been a better platform for him overall and regrets not switching sooner.
It'll be interesting to see how much the Asian community gives back. I'm betting on a "Use someone elses work and make money" policy.
What's my Karma Mr. Burns? "Excellent"
Yes, some applications aren't available on linux, and a very large number of apps aren't available on windows either. Granted the numbers probably aren't in proportion since open source is well... open source and the code is there for people to port to windows. Some things are gimped in windows though, such as apache, the windows version is not the current version. Windows is always trying to play catch up with *nix *sighs* they finally adopted the BSD tcp/ip stack and admitted that they couldn't figure out how to do tcp/ip. But how about other protocols? How about a reasonably compatible sql program? a decent LDAP implementation? nfs? complex routing tables? scalability to supercomputer architectures? diskless booting? completely scriptable command line? decent spam filtering for gods sake! An complete OS that is actually compiled to match my modern architecture and to take advantage of my chip? Reliable clustering? Or even the relatively minor stuff like the ability to utilize my half gig of ram before fiddling with HDD swapping and gimping my system to the speed of one of the slowest and least reliable components in the system? Last I checked I can't compile naitive appletalk support into the windows kernel... Just a few annoyances, now if you'd like a few examples of things windows does wrong... Lack of the powerful command line, no source to compile customized and optimized versions of software for my architecture and processor. Wizards that do not offer very little or no customization. A big damn repetative database they call the registry. Lack of a decent backup procedure causing most people to not back up the system settings or the system but rather just their data. No respectable network boot procedures. Extremely intrusive and restrictive licensing. Defaults users to administrative privlages on install. No true seperate memory space for applications so it can make people think "programs start faster" but does so at the expense of apps being able to crash the system. Weak user login scripting. ActiveX. Visual Basic being advertised as anything but a modeling language. .net. Proprietary "embrace and extend" interfaces, protocols, language supports, etc. Oh hell this list goes on and on and on...
That is so totally a geek thing.
:) The sad fact is, the professional print market is too much of a niche for a lot of interest in the Free software community to get hopping on. I'm not saying it won't happen, it's just not as high a priority as a functional office suite was. Adobe is the one company that could turn the tide here.
My personal experience with non-geek types has been just the opposite. In fact, I believe it's actually easier for folks to grasp multiple desktops than the whole minimize thing. Well, from what I've seen of users anyway. YMMV.
Um. Im not sure what that means exactly.
What I mean by server class networking is that it doesn't come brain damaged by default. Every workstation class OS from MS (9x, NTWS, XP, 2kPro) will refuse any more than 10 connections. Many network services are not possible to install at all without a server version. Linux and the BSD's come with no such restrictions to their capabilities.
Here's the challenge part. Show me front line Linux applications that rival...
Let's see what I can do with your list here.
QuarkXpress: As I recall there was a project that was attempting to address this. Heck, I bet OSX users would love to have Quark going too!
Macromedia Director: Proprietary editor for a proprietary file format that utilizes a proprietary plug-in. I wouldn't hold my breath on this one.
Painter: Gimp is more than a match for this one. Maybe if you were talking Photoshop 7.0 a better argument could be made.
Quickbooks: There are a number of accounting packages up on Freshmeat, as well as professional packages built for Unix. I would agree that none of these really address the core market that Quickbooks is hitting. I highly suspect that financial software is going to be a very high focus in the next year or so.
Chief Architect: There's a stack of CAD apps for Unix. So far as any that do the bulk of the work for you, not too many out there. Probably the most notable of the free CAD apps is QCad.
Dragon Dictate: Never seen this work right in Windows. It sortta works, so long as you don't start into a conversational tone of voice. Voice recognition has a long way to go on every platform.
Hallmark Greeting Card Maker: You won't see fun little grandma made a XMas card kinda things for a while yet I suspect. Like with Windows, the corporate desktop needs to be won over first.
Streets and Trips & Encarta: Of course you won't see this hitting the Free software arena. The information gathering and subsequent publishing involves bucks. Both of these kinds of apps can be got on the web, either for free or via a subscription. Encarta is available to you now if you wish to subscribe.
AfterFX: Film Gimp. Used at the professional level today. Heck, developed by studio folks!
Learn to Speak Spanish: KDE has been working on a KDE Education package now for a little while. Today it includes a fair stack of items, such as a typing tutor, star chart, a French spelling helper, as well as other stuff. It doesn't yet include any foriegn language tutorials, but there is work moving in that direction.
Personally, I haven't really ever had a need for any of the applications mentioned on your list. At the office, only Quark is used, and it's run on Macs.
The one app that really needs to get addressed this year is Quickbooks though. This is a critical one for small businesses, which should be a target desktop market for Linux at this point. There's a LOT of folks who put this to use to keep track of their business.
If we see an effort put forth like what was generated for Mozilla or OpenOffice on this, I believe a lot of the rest of your list starts to fall in place. We have to have market share before vendors will start porting!
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
What I mean by server class networking is that it doesn't come brain damaged by default. Every workstation class OS from MS (9x, NTWS, XP, 2kPro) will refuse any more than 10 connections. Many network services are not possible to install at all without a server version.
Microsoft distinguishes between the server and the workstation versions of Windows in order to sell the workstation version at a lower price. If you're not happy with the limitations of the workstation version, you're free to buy the server version instead. So saying that Linux has better networking than Windows is really just a price argument, which (1) Linux already wins, and (2) is obviously irrelevant.
The one app that really needs to get addressed this year is Quickbooks though.
I can't see how this could be done. I ran my last (failed, dammit) business venture on QuickBooks. The level of support you get from Intuit is amazing. No free solution could ever hope to match that level of service.
I write in my journal
Um,
Java doesn't work out of the box in IE either, you have to download the pluggin...
Same with Flash,
the installations in linux are a little more involved, but there are simple instructions laid out, the flash installation is particularly easy, for the last 6 months + whenever I try to go to a site that uses flash on a box that doesn't have it, I click the link, it takes me to the right page, I download the file, and copy it to the directory it says to copy it to on the macromedia site.