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The State of GNU/Linux in 2002: It was Good.
An anonymous reader writes "This year has proven most interesting for GNU/Linux. While there was not any amazing surprises, there were numerous events that are noteworthy for review. The upshot to all of this is that most of what happened was good overall for the Free Software community. Read the full story."
Well if not for Linux, then for the users....
Key projects are starting to mature and become more 'user friendly' which is important for the desktop usage Linux is missing.
a few examples are:
Desktop+ performance features have made it into the 2.6 kernel, things like pre-emption, lower larency, higher frequency clock, async-io, better threading, alsa.. All great news for desktop users.
Support is under development for older video cards (often build into modern chipsets) in the DRI project, giving decient X performance to most users.
KDE and GNOME had a lot of new features in the latest releases, the next couple of revisions should see the features maturing, with performance gains, more universality/intergration &co...
CDRecord has added support for IDE drives (without having to run ide scsi) application like arson are making cd burning easy... all good news for the home user.
Wine is comming along in leaps and bounds....
Xine and Mplayer now work for more-or-less every format out there, hopefully next year will see Moz plugins.
This year was good, next year will be better...
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
But afterwards too. I've recently installed Mandrake 9.0 and it installs *seven* terminal programs. Seven? What on earth does the geekiest geek on God's green earth need *seven* terminal programs for?
Here's the deal, either you don't give a damn and will use whatever default shows up in your prefered enviroment, or you have a fave that you just can't live without for some reason and you'll manually install it from the CD anyway. If you're that picky you're sophisticated enough already to handle this.
If you're *not* that sophisticated the plethora of choices of terminal programs is at best confusing, and getting rid of the unwanted ones ( if you can even figure out which ones are unwanted, and why) may well be a somewhat daunting task.
Because free software is free as in beer to the distro makers they can throw in everything including seven "kitchen sinks," so they do. This doesn't mean it's a Good Idea.
I've got something of a rep as an Ubergeek in meatspace, but even I don't want a distro that just dumps the entire universe of software (including some pretty alpha stuff) on my HD just to prove it can.
Here's what I want to see in a default desktop install. A choice of KDE or Gnome ( I use a couple of others as well, but I'm perfectly content to install those seperately after I'm up and running for a bit), ONE terminal, preferably the default for the enviroment. ONE office package, preferably the default for the enviroment. A basic collection of utilities and, well, that's about it.
Clean, simple, and covering about 99.9% of all typical desktop funtions in one go, with no cruft.
For a newb throw in a special section in the manual explaining that one of the things free software is about is choice, how the CD's offer them many extras to play around with if they want, and clear, simple directions on how to install, and *UN*install, them.
Kinda like installing Windows, only better.
Installing a system should be an additive process, not like hacking away at a mighty oak with a chainsaw to release the inner OS.
Small is Beautiful.
KFG
There is a huge line several miles wide between what is useful for servers and what is/could possibly be useful for desktops. Unfortunately, this line is so wide most people would fail to notice it even if they hit said line head first. I often see that so called "desktop distros" include stuff such as PERL, Apache, MySQL, PHP, ProFTPd... What the hell would one random computer user do with these programs? And with "random computer user" I mean those kind of people who do nothing about security at all, double click everything that contains the word "naked" "nude" or the name "anna kournikova" and their parents/ofspring/aunts/cousins/grandparents/lovers /mistresses/pets, you name it. I'm not even going to mention out-dated FTP/HTTP/SSH servers that might be exploited because random users don't ever update or turn off programs... ("But I like having so many programs running...")
On the other hand, we have so called "professional" distros that are far better. If you want to use them as a desktop, sure, click anything you want. Server? Just select everything you want for that one. However, these distros will never be destined for the normal user ("Where is my mouse? Yes, I know it's on my mouse mat, just where is it on my screen!? GPM? Wha? Not in X yet?") unless installed and secured by one random friendly non-introverted Linux hacker from around town...
So, get rid of all the stuff people never use on desktop distros such as Apache and the like. The people who DO use it prolly aren't happy with the default included package and will most likely build their own anyways. The professional distros are fine with me atm, no-nonsense and no marketeer buzzwords. (Yes, I just visited redhat.com)
Although the one thing that could improve all of linux is the removal of X. God, it is SLOW, Windows 98 booted faster on my p300 with 64mb and this is an AMD at 1667mhz with 1024mb! While I haven't seen the source code myself (yet), I heard it is about as bloated and obscure as it is. Lose it, replace it with smaller, non-server client orientated graphic systems. Random users want SPEED, not the ability to link up 100+ terminals to the computer.
Hate me!
I totally agree that RH8 was a great step forward for GNU/Linux on the desktop of Joe_Average this year. I still prefer *BSD, but I'm a Joe_Geek. :)
For me, the biggest sign of Linux success in 2002 was that non-geeks recognized the word "Linux" when I mentioned it. They still don't quite understand what it means (and some of them think I have a stutter because I always say "GNU/Linux" which comes out sounding like "Guh-New-Linux") but the simple name-recognition was a huge sign of progress to me. I give Wal-Mart a huge ton of credit for this.
Another poster (quite rightly) mentioned that a weak economy is not necessarily good for F/OSS because of the risk-factor involved for companies to implement new software. I work for a very large telecommunications company, and it sure does help sell GNU/Linux to management when you can mention in a business case that Wal-Mart sells PCs that run the operating system. (Big-wigs like business precedents.)
I can't wait to see what will happen in 2003!
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
I think you're missing a big part of the picture.
Financial advances are extremely important but aren't the only advances to take into consideration. All your arguments dealt with the "financial" state of linux and open source in general. Slashdot is a geek site, and so it's understandable that most people are discussing the technical changes for the year.
In terms of technology, 2002 was an outstanding year for linux.
Still, you brought up an important aspect few open source advocates are willing to discuss. That is, how does open source sustain its current growth?
It is said that statiscally, by tomorrow or day after, Microsoft would have made more money than linux vendors make all year, given the market stays the same as it was last few years. That is, MS makes in 2 days what most linux companies make in a year. I hate to throw unchecked stats around, but even if this is remotely the case, then opensource companies have a long fight ahead of them.
I believe open source users have to find ways to spend more on open source in the year 2003. Money is the life line of business, not good will. Yeah, it's free so why spend?
Well if you "support" open source but you buy a dell desktop, a compaq ipaq, or you influence any buying decisions that acquire these things, then you all the open source advocacy is for nothing. Because your vote that really counts, your dollars, is going to Microsoft.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
A commercially backed OS like MacOS or OS/2 or NextStep will die without corporate success, but Linux already has more developers working for it for free than MacOS or OS/2 or NextStep ever did for pay.
The only way Linux and its free software friends will ever die is if laws like the SSSCA are passed to make it illegal.
Well, yes. Linux, like all open source software, is a cultural phenomenon, not a corporation, and so its success should be measured by how ubiquitously it is used, not by how much money any particular company is making or losing while trying to sell it.
Your post makes no more sense than trying to judge the success of Microsoft based on how many people are working on the Windows source code.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Just as a bit of info, here is why I use GNU/Linux in my articles covering Open Source/Free Software (including the one these comments are about). It's simply because I see GNU and Linux as two parts to our "success." If you take away GNU from Linux, you no longer have a working operating system. Likewise, if you take Linux away from GNU, you don't have a way to use all of your tools.
Thus, we don't just have GNU or Linux, to have a real competition for other operating systems, we depend on GNU and Linux (GNU/Linux). Why not celebrate both major core components to our wonderful operating software?
-Tim
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"You would not get a high grade for such a design" -- Andy Tanenbaum on Linus' Linux design.
Okay, I'm not going to say things are perfect, but I'm sitting here with a RH 8.0-based box with apt-get. (Granted, I could use a GUI and make it *really* friendly, but whatever.) apt-get is *painless*. Compare this to the Windows world, where you have lots of different installers, each of which is a little program that may or may not run and takes up your entire screen and has to be located somewhere on the manufacturer's website (or, as is most common in the Windows world, purchased from a store).
So, let's compare.
Me:
1) apt-get install galeon.
2) Do something else for a while
Them:
1) Drive to store
2) Purchase box
3) Take box home, stick CD in drive
4) Wade through non-standard *interactive* installation process.
As an example, my brother got his hands on an old Windows 98 box today. He asked me to add Divx and CD burning support to the thing. First thing I do is install EZ CD Creator. Installs fine, takes up whole screen, requires a reboot. Upon reboot, starts spewing warnings about applications not being able to launch because of a lack of mfc42.dll exports, as well as another install screen (completing the installation). Okay, turns out he needs mfc42.dll. I go, download that (impossible to find on MS's site even with Google, so I have to get it in a zip file from a third party. No pretty automated installer...drag and drop a dll).
Then, download Divx installer. System gives error about installer being truncated (it's not). Download zip file containing divx codec for manual installation...we'll see how that goes.
I'm sorry, but ease of software installation on Windows does not *compare* to ease of software installation on Linux. I'm not even going to discuss how hard it is to keep software up to date on Windows.
May we never see th
The second big problem Linux faces is that its written by the OS-infatuated for the OS-infatuated. It very clearly lacks the "common touch". All I want is an OS that does what it's supposed to, then stays the hell out of my way. With Linux, I'm constantly tripping over piss-ant details and indiosyncratic quirks. The control is nice, and so is the ultimate reliability. But at what price? There's a line in one of the many HOW-TOs I've waded through that goes something like this:
God help us all!