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Linux to Become #2 on the Desktop?
DiZASTiX writes "An article from Zdnet says Linux on the desktop has become a reality. It is now possible, for example, to buy a Linux-based PC (running LindowsOS) from Evesham. In the United States, Wal-Mart sells machines based on Lindows, Mandrake Linux and others. But though Linux may have its foot in the door, taking the next step to becoming a mainstream success is proving a more difficult proposition."
I'm not a huge advocate of Linux on the desktop (yet), but the server side, while HP-UX rules my world currently, a SIMILAR product without the cost is attractive. Of corporation's want 24-7 support framed like HP, EDS, or IBM.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
Look at me! Look at me! I'm #2
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
There already is a Unix variant in the number two slot, and its called Mac OS.
Man, aren't you glad you got that second post. Now I want a second post t-shirt!
What else would be number 2 on the desktop? It is hard to install OS X on "desktop" computers, and we already know what is number 1.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
As long as people consider XWindows (XFree86) to be a viable desktop interface, I think Linux will stand no chance of dethroning Windows or even OS X. I think #2 is a pipe dream, in short. Number 3 could be attainable. As an OS, Linux is fine. I'd use it on a server. I just happen to prefer Windows XP on my desktop.
Someone took a number 2 on the desktop?
I have been comparing Linux to #2 for years.
Maybe this news will make Apple seriously consider releasing OS X for the x86 platform.
linsux has got a looooong way to go before mainstream takes it even partially seriously.
What else would be number 2 on the desktop? It is hard to install OS X on "desktop" computers, and we already know what is number 1.
Riiight..because Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X are the only Operating Systems in existance.
The parent post dares to speak the truth about the lack of quality about X Windows! The Linux community cannot have anything but gushing praise for even the most second-rate applications. As such, I demand this parent post to be modded down immediately, and the poster think about his heinous crime!
No matter what happens server side, linux will not go anywhere on the desktop until you can go to bestbuy/compusa/software etc - pick up any game on the shelf, take it home and run it no questions. I dont mean through WINE either.
Games push the upgrade market along with everything else computerwise for Joe Sixpack.
Microsoft copied Mac's GUI in 1984, but it wasn't until Windows 3.1 (in 1992 ?) that it was able to move users to it and own teh desktop. Back then, Lotus essentially owned it -- although they blew their strategic lead. Microsoft captured the desktop my making GUI, desktop manager, and desktop apps MSWord, Excel, ...
Mike www.sharecube.com
The linux desktop is too litle too late. And Mr Tennenbaum can take comfort in an off -the-shelf microkernel *nix. Move over penguines, its time for BSD on the desktop.
Wal-Mart sells machines based on Lindows, Mandrake Linux and others.
I havn't much kept up with the current situation, but don't they still only sell them on their website? This make it sound like you'll walk into any walmart and see them lined up right next to the windows machines. I think it's nonetheless a big step, but not as big as if they were being sold in store.
Everything will be taken away from you.
i will reflect my own comletely honest experiences. I use linux and nothing else at home as the OS of choice for our 3 computers. It takes about as long time to learn as Windows did for someone who jumped into computers from 95 and forward. There arent one single app that i lack in linux. This is from someone who does everything on his computer. Tv, video, bills,music, drawing, developing, chatting, surfing, burning cds, and all the normal tasks to. If i can use it after having learned it so can everyone else with half a brain. I dont consider myself a genious on computers but still i havent any difficulties using linux. And i use a "hard" dist as gentoo. With Mandrake, Redhat and Lindows etc i dont even have to think, they makes most things by themselves.
Linux is most definately ready to bay the power users and people with more IQ than your average white trash this very moment. The clueless ones that holds their paper infront of the monitor and searches the [fax] button are nothing to sthrive for at this moment since they demand to much and returns nothing.
HTTP/1.1 400
Linux has big strides to take before you can think about it surpassing Macs as the #2 desktop OS. I don't want to disparage Linux because if I weren't using a Mac I would most likely run Linux, but I see no way Linux will compete as a mass desktop OS until it becomes far easier for the average user. For a geek who loves to mess with his system it is great, but for Joe Blow who wants to check his email, browse the web, an do a little word processing, it is not a very interesting offering. Why spend time in emacs messing with config files just to make stuff work. Instead, you can have all the power of unix and the ease of use of a Mac with OS X.
Linux is great for some people, but OS X has something for pretty much everyone. I'll take my Mac any day of the week.
The only people who would buy a computer at Wal-mart won't notice the difference between Windows and Linux anyway.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
..since 1998. So, I may ask - is this really any news? I personally feel that Enlightenment (be it 16.5 or E17) fits me perfectly. Something between a regular desktop and a shell. I don't need anything else. Why should I?
---
Just by shear volume, Linux could become #2 simply because it can run just about anything. A major PC vendor shipping and supporting Linux on the desktop would be cool.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
As has been said many times before, Linux is not easier to use than Windows (I don't care what you say, it isn't), it doesn't run all of the latest games, and it's not compatible with as much hardware as Windows XP. It really is that simple.
I don't mean for this to come across as trollish; it's just that so many people here seem to want to dance around the issue of Linux's usability. I love Linux and it has many advantages over Windows, but its ease of use does leave a bit to be desired.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, 3.) CowboyNeal 2.) ??? 1.) Old Kike
Linux is vastly inferior to Windows in terms of power, maturity, and stability.
Recursive acronyms are stupid.
In Soviet Russia, Linux trys you!
You can find Linux PCs if you visit their stores.. Haven't you ever visited Southern states????
So what is it? Microsoft knows it's coming. What's missing?
I can use Aqua and have the old Mac OS desktop and also use X11 (thanks Fink!) at the same time. No contest.
Not just for LINUX advocates and users, but I think for the tech community in general.
Seeing those Lindows boxes at WaLMart kinda reminds me of the computing scene in the 80's. There were all kinds of different technologies coming out, and competing with each other. You could walk into any electronics store and find some brand of computer, peripherals and software for sale.
IMO It was a period of excitement and innovation. It felt good to me personally. There were so many choices to be made.
Open source, has that feeling of goodness about it. Change, innovation, choice.
What I'm trying to say is that this is the first time since the late 80's/early 90's that I feel good about consumer options for software.
It's only 1 OS on sale at 1 store, but it is a start. Hopefully other vendors will be brave enough to put together solutions, and stores will be brave enough to put them on the shelves.
I think it's time everyone stands up to the evil empire.
Sure, standardization was good. But monopolistic practices, forced licenses, security holes, bloated OS code, and applications is starting to suck. It's time to shake up the industry a little folks.
Huh?
Won't corporate numbers be more important, due to the fact that most companies by machines in greater bulk than home users?
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
SUCK IT, BIOTCH!!!!!
It would be a real setback for the computer industry if linux were to become any more popular than it already has become more than it deserves. linux has set back the state of computer science by 10 years with its NIH re-implementation of basic OS modules such as the scheduler, vm system, filesystem, Unix(tm) api, and TCP networking stack, just to name a few of the many modules which are already freely available and done much better in FreeBSD.
Single-threaded Xfree86 is horribly slow because it was designed back in the 80's for ancient technology. Its high latency cripples any chance of GNOME or KDE becoming a viable desktop environment because people don't like waiting for a screen to refresh. Microsoft has known this for years.
Linux on the desktop is a total pipe dream because virtually all the window manager developers are building cruft upon kludge upon hack.
Ditch Xfree and I'll come running.. until then, Linux stays in my server room where it belongs.
--man, I just don't get zdnet saying this about the apps. Tell ya, first time I installed a linux distro I was blown away by all the stuff came with it. Just sitting there medium mesmerised watching the progress seeing app after app getting installed from the cds. It's WAY more than you get from a full install from borg or artsy OS. I'm still finding "new stuff" in my last kitchen sink RH install and I'm still only using ONE of the two major sets of apps, ie, gnome and kde, so I still got more than 50% of the way to go to even play with all the jazz on here. I mean, sheesh orama what d'ya want?.
Linux just needs ONE major box shipper like dell to even offer it as an option-that's it, it'll "take" just swell. Have the same exact box, one has borg, the other has a penguin, with 100$ (whatever) cheaper price tag for the penguin, see what happens. Walmart is "cute" but it's not on the shelf, it's only on their website,and people shopping for computers on the web just ain't that likely to think of "walmart", nor is 100 buck a year lindows gonna cut it for noobs seeking a deal. At 20 or 30$ a year for a version "update" folks will goto AFTER they get it first right on their new shiny box and get to take it home and play with it. The command line is there for the 10% power users and geeks, and for 90% of the people it just ain't needed anymore, the gui works perfectly allright and there's tons of computing 'stuff' to do. Can't beat it with a stick, just need for one of them big guys to try it again in the mass produced boxes. The borg lawsuit is settled, they can "do this" now with little risk. the borg got warned off, if they try it again, they can get sued right outta their 40 billion in the bank, just needs one of those big companies to give it a whack again. The linux omellette is DONE now, you can take it outta the pan. From now on it's just "spice to taste".
Steve Jobs tried to hire Linus Torvalds back in the old days but Linus said NO. So, Steve had to use crippled BSD core...
Yeah, I too am getting tired of all the wonderful and varied choices for software available on the Windows platform. I prefer the simplicity of Linux, where there is NOTHING to choose from.
Look at me! Look at me! I'm #2
...and with good reason.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
The article mentions in it's simplistic way that the 1.7% of machines sold with Linux preinstalled is not representitive of the true number of desktop computers running Linux, but there must be a reasonable method for determining the number of desktops running Linux in a non-invasive way.
Microsoft is able to at least count if not gather demographics for every desktop machine running Windows95 or above, regardless of whether it is licensed or not, through WindowsUpdate. Redhat is able to track usage of their distribution through their UpToDate software (which is becoming more invasive with every release) and other distributions include similar mechanisms, but there must be a reasonable way to gather overall usage statistics for Linux based desktops. It would be a worthwhile endevour, from a PR standpoint similar to the automobile manufacturers who take a loss on every sale of certain models in an effort to have that model garner the title of "Most popular car" of a certain class, for the simple PR benefit of being able to say that toy are the manufacturer of the most popular product in the marketplace.
Likewise, for Linuux, it is important to demonstrate increases in marketshare quarter over quarter in order to firmly demonstrate that the product (such as it is) remains a force to be reconed with.
For this reason it is important to be able to accurately measure the Linux desktop userbase. Systems like that of redhat, which require registration in order for the user to gain some other benefit (in this case convenient updates) seems somewhat draconiaf for the Linux crowd, but a system must be devised to allow for reasonable, varibiable notification of installation of a linux system (regardless of distribution) so that centralized statistics can be maintained for the simple purpose of combating the massive Microsoft PR juggernaut.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Linux won't get widespread third part software support (games, educational software, bundled device drivers, turbotax, etc) until it becomes #2. Why? Simple: There's Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and everybody else. Name the #3 cola. Anybody?
Most people look at the computer world the same way. You support the #1 platform, and maybe the #2 "to be diverse", and everybody else can go hang. It's _hard_ to make a business case to support anybody else, it's a case of diminishing returns with each new platform and the slope is STEEP.
The macintosh has been #2 since the mid 80's. Platforms like the amiga and OS/2 learned this. Pure java only got attention because it ran on Windows too. Even when the macintosh wasn't particularly significant (just before Steve Jobs came back), people were used to THINKING of it as #2, and targetting their retail software developent and hardware driver support that way. It will come as a surprise to a lot of people when it loses that spot. Confirming it will be news, and not just in the geek world but magazine covers and television evening news.
Now these days, the macintosh is a unix platform. If the mac loses its #2 position on the desktop, Jobs will just claim "we're unix, #2 is unix and that's us". Okay. Jobs does NOT want to give up the marketing advantage of being the "designated alternative", but WHEN the macintosh loses the #2 spot, he may be graceful about it since he does have a fallback marketing position. (You may have notice that on the tech side, he's trying to diversify into the server space.)
But right now, porting to linux without first porting to the macintosh is a really hard sell in a corporate environment, and after the mac port you have to sell linux AGAIN. (P.S. Try doing that sort of thing in the gaming environment, where windows as #2 to the playstation.)
Rob
(P.S. The "desktop" niche is dying, the laptop niche is what everybody should be worrying about. And apple's still doing REALLY nicely there...)
Slashdot--straight lines for scatological humor, stuff that splatters.
Why, just the other night I fired up Mozilla, X froze, and waddya know--Linux did #2 on my desktop.
Come on, join in. It's easy.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The Platypus will overtake the Penguin on the desktop. When Darwin OS really matures on x86, linux's shortcomings will become painfully obvious. Linux is for people who hate Windows. People who love *nix use BSD.
The simple fact is that X-Windows was never intended to do what we expect it to do these days. It was not designed to be an end-user desktop. While it does have neat abilities, like being able to access workstations across a network, end users don't care about those. End users care about the desktop being fast and responsive. Two things that X-Windows is not. X-Windows also knocks the claim that Linux needs less processor power and RAM than MS Windows right into the dirt.
Before Joe Sixpack will use Linux there needs to be a standardization of the UI. A standard that ALL graphical programs adhere to. No if ands or buts. One standard. While the myriad of widgets and environments give power users and geeks the freedom to tweak their systems or programs enay way they want, all of this "choice" just confuses the hell out of the end user. While MS Windows might not be completely consistant, it is enough that the average user can get used to it. Almost every Windows program (save for those nightmares with skins) look and act like Windows, in a manner that most users expect.
Yes, this means that either KDE or Gnome will have to die. End users don't want to have to chose what UI they use. They want one interface they can learn and be done with it.
No end user wants to edit text files. Nor should they EVER have to. This is 2003, not 1975. The days of rooting through a confusing mess of directories for boot scripts is (or should be) over.
No end user wants to compile anything. Ever. Sure, power users and old-hand Linux users might enjoy it, but they are not the people we are concerned with. Until a MS Windows user can effortlessly install ANY program with just a few mouse clicks they are going to stay away.
End Users do not care about running FTP servers and web serves from their desktops. Why bog down a system with all these useless processes they are not ever going to use, and that leave these system more vulnerable than a Windows 2000 system?
Nothing, but nothing turns off a potential Linux convert than having to dig through piles of posts, to Usenet or forums like
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I've always felt uncomfortable about the reports of Linux' demise on the desktop. At this moment I'm typing this on a RedHat 8.0 machine, using Mozilla. Three days ago I wrote a bunch of holiday letters in OpenOffice and read my mail in Evolution (though I normally use pine). Though I have no problems using a shell for any task, I was surprised to see that I rarely needed an Xterm.
The counter-argument is that I'm aware of the console utilities and don't represent the typical desktop user. OK, but I have my senior citizen parents, non-technical wife, and lots of kids using Linux without a second thought. For the most part, all of their computing needs for school and work are fulfilled by the RedHat system. The other thing that cannot be ignored is the price of this machine: ECS K7S5A MB + Athlon 1800XP, 40G HD, DVDROM, case, 256M memory all came to less than $400. This cost wouldn't be possible with a $190 Microsoft XP Home license.
DVDs play fine after a visit to freshrpms.net. MP3's work wonderfully and they sure seem to sound better than under Windows (largely because there are no pauses under Linux when the system does other stuff). OpenOffice's speed was an issue on my AMD K62/500. It's not noticeable on this 1.53g Athlon. The typical computer user spends the majority of their time on the web, checking email, and word processing. Secondary uses are usually games, and music (burning and listening). Hmm.. Except for the games, this system does all that perfectly well.
They want money, moolah, cash, the greenbacks, dinero, Benjamins. And they want a lot of it. The Zealots(TM) have a hard time springing for wash day money, as it is. What makes you think they'll want to make Big Blue even richer?
sucky mouse cursors
screwy anti-aliasing
shitty fonts
buggy alpha channels
Three!
" In Soviet Russia, Linux trys you!"
Oh! Kinky.
For the average American, you can't have anything with versions like 16.5 or E17. They just don't get it, and don't want to get it. They like something simple like "XP" - whether or not it means anything to them it means more than a version number.
For Linux to survive among the masses it must be simple to understand in name, as well as simple to use. Just tell Average Joe he has a choice between Redhat, Mandrake, Yellow Dog, SuSE, etc. and try to explain the differences (journaling filesystems, different compiler revisions, etc). Watch his face glaze over as he walks toward the pretty MSN butterfly.
Actually, with ZDnet announcing this, that means the trend is at least 6 months old. I think Apple is already aware of the growing position Linux has on desktop and server installations.
I also think they are in a 'damned if they do, damned if they don't' position with OS X/x86. If they don't release it, then the price differential between PCs will just get larger and if they jump onto the PC platform and compete directly with MS, then Office and IE for the mac will go probably away. I will just continue to use Linux and Windows because they do what I need. If Apple ever gets the nads to come out with an OS that runs on my hardware, I'll buy a copy. That will be about their best bet for holding onto the #2 spot for desktop systems.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
I think Windows- and particularly XP, has an advantage in installation, not really usability. You can make an argument against this now, put when XP came out, it had a far superior install and upgrading process, not to mention how it is preinstalled on so many PCs. Even with linux, I'd rather have something working out of the box and fix and customize things afterward. Besides, Linux IS easier to use than Windows (once it's installed correctly)
But could it just be that we - the tech people - are underestimating the end-users and their ability to learn a new desktop environment?
Linux: 5(?)
Lets see. My Mac is in front of me on the desktop. All my other computers are either towers that stay on the floor, or laptops. Is an emac a deskbottom computer. A kitchen counter table?
Since when are computers made by Apple that you put on your desk (as opposed to the ones you put on your lap) not considered "desktop" computers? It seems like that's how you're interpretting this, but that's obviously not what the article is referring to. The article is suggesting that Linux may soon pass OS X in popularity.
I can't believe you got modded up to 4 for that.
Not in testing. Not in unstable.
"Any OS can do that, but only one has the absolute mass to continuously carry itself through mindshare of people who spend 99.99% of their lives NOT computing."
By both his and your logic. Let's hear it for MacOSX. An OS that's easier to use than WinXP and being used by people who don't want to spend 99.99% of their lives computing. It doesn't have all the games or hardware of Windows, but lets hear it for the all powerful "ease of use" which will carry it through these tough arguments.
Does that sound fair to you? Compare the most "user-friendly" versions of Windows and Linux.
OK, I have my monitor, keyboard, mouse, sound card and speakers, printer, graphics card, scanner, modem and digital camera.
Windows is compatible with all of it.
Linux is compatible with all of it but the modem and the digital camera. The only reason I can type this now is because I got an external serial modem to replace my softmodem, at a cost of £70 - or about $110.
So, from my POV, Linux probably won't be as compatible with my existing hardware as Windows XP without cashing out.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Until you can go to best buy or walmart and buy 20 games for linux, I'll stick with windows xp. There isn't any reason for switching at this point until retail market support is there.
talking witchcraft to Pilgrims. Take the situation at my wife's real estate office for instance and her obstacles to using anything other than win!@$#@!. I got her a nice little iBook for Xmas. Problem No. 1: They use this web-based listing service that absolutely requires IE *for windows.* (IE for OS X will not work obo b.s. active X stuff.) Fine, so I get a nice x86 emulator and install win98 for that sole purpose. It costs money, its slow, its humiliating, but it basically works. Problem No. 2: The local ignorant sysadmin won't let the iBook on the lan because she can't load norton anti-virus for windows on it. I try to explain that they can use an OS X variant of the same thing but no dice. Apparently, because the admin is unfamiliar with any OS other than M$ product, it's ipso facto dangerous and must be banned. Now, if an Apple product is going to be viewed as such, what chance does linux have in a place like this?
download.kde.org has a debian pool.
add it to your sources.list.
RC. I also rather enjoy Adirondack, Polar and Stewarts is ok in a pinch. Jolt is universally known even though it sells nearly several cans of the stuff a year.
I can get "support" for these brands at any of my local stores. In fact, I have to walk farther to get a Coke than a Polar.
See, there's plenty of room for everyone.
Of course it isn't your fault you picked a bad analogy. ANY other field will be a bad analogy because the software "industry" works to its own peculiar set of rules.
Those rules are wearing thin and starting to break down though. It's Free Software that actually makes software *more* like cola, where anyone can come up with a recipe and join the game.
KFG
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Since the basic code is freely available, Linux can be distributed at rock-bottom prices or at no charge, but the license also makes it more difficult for distributors to charge premium prices for proprietary technology.
Then some people blow smoke about "usability" and "not compatible with as much hardware as Windows XP." What shit.
The only reason it's difficult to charge "premium prices for proprietary technology" is because free software does it all anyway. The only reason there are hardware problems is because some companies have yet to grasp that the day of closed source binaries is over and still think M$ will help them bilk customers with a perpetual waste of adequate equipment replaced like dead M$ binaries. You know, hide the workings of the thing so that you have to buy a new one when the driver no longer works becase M$ changed their O$. Pththth-fit!
M$ is dead, long live freedom. M$ screwed the pooch with all their stupid conquer the world dreams and obnoxious practices. Who would use a browser that alows an advertiser to pop open a window and send you piles crap you did not request? Who would use an O$ that lets third parties rummage through your files and life? No, it's really over. M$ never had anything sepcial, got in the way of much innovation and everyone knows it. Their billions of dollars will evaporate like some kind of bad dream. Equipment makers who want to sell equipment will have to be honest about it.
You say, "
I don't mean for this to come across as trollish," but that's OK. You can't hide the truth.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Is that you trade off usability for common sense. The Red Hat installer checks the other partition and asks you several times to make sure that you really are sure that you want to wipe Windows (if you do; if you don't, it comes with a disk partitioner). The Windows installer just bulldozes over whatever's already on the disk for the sake of user-friendliness.
So basically it boils down to whether or not you want something 'without the technical mumbo-jumbo' or something which 'won't wipe everything I've already got'. Unfortunately for Linux, most people choose the former.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
#3. bam.
yeesh. wanna beat the pants offa the looks of other desktops? 1.5 years without an update, and e still rocks.. =)
i don't understand how people put up with the limitations of metacity, kfm, and the like.. e certainly has its limitaitons [not that i've ever met rasterman, but...], still no body makes switching desktops or windows appearing look prettier..
my $0.02
P.S. whatever, spellin' nazis, get jobs
US$0.02++
Mp3s don't pause on any system which has even rudimentary multitasking.
MS Office 97/2000 ran fine on slower computers.
I can tell you for a fact that I personally and many of my friends etc could run winamp, office and internet explorer (oh no!) on our 3-400mhz pentium 2's and k6's with windows 95..
If anything, linux is MORE bloated and slower than windows ever was, mostly due to rampant featuritis and an over-indulgence in low-performance programming languages and too much abstraction...
Shit? Fine, maybe you'd like to come round to my house and show me how to install my winmodem on Linux. You can have fun scouring the Internet searching for a device driver, find out where to put it in my kernel source tree, compile the kernel successfully without breaking anything, and getting KPPP to recognise it. How does that sound?
I know. I'm not hiding the truth. I'm presenting it for your perusal.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
These guys are number 2; they try harder
Living better through chemicals
Do we really want Linux to be mainstream? Imagine Bonzi Buddy for Linux, the first email with attachments starting with #!/bin/sh, etcetera.. Do we really want that?
Hate me!
We're three days into the new year, and the editors had to play the "Linux on the Desktop?" card already?
If I see a "Death of the Internet" article tomorrow, I'll start planning for the apocalypse.
Belloc
I got more rhymes than Jamaica got Mangoes.
*grrrrr*
Using Apt (remember that?) to get XFree86-4.2 binary I get a very nice looking and dynamic cursor which BTW can be changed in Gnome2
KDE control center--->Fonts-->Anti-aliasing.
If your going to bash Linux? Could you at least have the decency to have current information before doing so. If not for our sake, how about yours?
Due to:
Rampant featuritis
Over-indulgence in "flashy" but low-performance programming languages and programs consisting entirely of interpreted code
Too much OO and complex "structured" code in places where simple C would suffice
(A subset of this is Why do programs have to consist of hundreds or even thousands of little files (phoenix is around 300 files vs IE's couple of dozen (including the core dlls which also contain other windows functionality)).
Many other things (Xwindows)
When you can run Gnome and KDE and even Wine, what does it mean to call Linux a desktop operating system? As long as the average user is using and aware of open source programs, why even call it "linux"? Gnome on Solaris was a more important development. "Linux on desktop" is filler for today on ZDnet. It was more meaningful to describe the Java environment a "replacement" and direct competition for Windows, as Sun often did.
All the linux desktops i've ever used were number two.
Linux is not going to get the consumer market right away, first will be the corporate desktop. You hear alot of people bitching about X windows be let me be the first to tell you that because it is a networkable solution it was easy to sell in the company. The corporate lan is the perfect place to roll out the desktop first. It allows for single point administration and tremendously reduces costs. The fall out of this is that people are going to migrate those home systems because linux is what they will know.
Got Code?
I'm willing to bet that your driver is here: http://www.linmodems.org/
No quit being a homo, and download it.
IMHO, the most important characteristic about Linux is that it is a durable technology. The basic concepts behind Linux have been extremely successful for over 30 years. Linux runs on virtually every architecture and will, most likely, be the first OS running on future architectures. It's adaptable, evolves well and functions extremely well.
And let's face it: The "desktop computer" is a fad. Does anyone seriously think that we'll be chained to our desktop (or laptop) in 30 years? Of course not. Computers may become ubiquitous in the future, but not the clunky boob-tubes that Dell & MS have been pushing onto the compliant masses. The future of computing is "invisible" (ie. hidden) computers and a retarding desktop interface won't play a role in that future.
I love the work that has been done on X11, KDE and other UI technologies. Very useful work, indeed. But I hope most designers in the Linux realm will not be misguided into striving for the unimportant goal of desktop dominance.
I pray to God that stack-based computers fade from existance, but as long as they are here Linux (and the whole Unix tradition) will play an increasingly significant role. I'm not sure the same can be said for the MS-DOS/Windows tradition which has undergone four massive re-designs in 15 years...
Exactly. OS X doesn't have all of the games and hardware of Windows. And I'd also argue that OS X doesn't necessarily have all of the ease of use of Windows; I find its GUI confusing and unintuitive compared to GNOME.
Let's take an example - package management. Linux has RPM, apt, and (hopefully in a little while) autopackage. OS X has 'appfolders' instead of packages, does it not? And to install the application you just click and drag? For ease of use? Right. Well, by simplifying the user interface too much, OS X has decided to ignore the problem of dependencies. Boom. Mac OS X starts having a fit just because of some old program you got rid of three months ago and forgot about - AND IT DIDN'T WARN YOU. By contrast, if I do 'rpm -e mozilla', then RPM will start screaming about the packages that rely on it (e.g. Galeon).
This is just one example.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
The author just said his prediction which (s)he's done short and logically.
Mod-downs of brain-washed mac zealots becomes really annoying on ./ and I afraid ./ may begin to loose professional readers and become as a sold-off Mac-singing marketing channel.
Less is more !
Sun adopting Gnome is real news. In fact, for the desktop, the question is wether its Gnome, KDE, Aqua, or Wine compared to Pure Windows. If you want to talk operating systems, is it *nix, Windows NT, Solaris, Mac 9 and earlier, or WinME and earlier. The user doesn't care if its linux, and IT should just worry about it being a *nix or not.
OK. I've turned off my computer, lifted the case, taken out the internal modem to see what kind it is. Ah - a Lucent PCI modem. Fine. Go to www.linmodems.org, search for half an hour, download the RPM.
$ rpm -i ltmodem-kv_2.4.18_18.8.0-8.26a9-1.i686.rpm
What now?
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
For the third time, I'm not saying that it's necessarily Linux's fault that the latest and greatest don't run on it. I'm just saying that this is a problem with Linux today. The blame lies at the feat of Microsoft et al.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Linux is easy enough to use as a desktop OS in the southern states! surely this is proof that any idiot can use it!
Don't you mean Max OS X,
Is Mac OS X ahead of Linux on the desktop or just Mac as a whole?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I thought it was "In Soviet Russia, Linux sucks you."
Those posts are getting tired. There should be a faq somewhere.
X is not a memory hog. The protocol is lean, think of when it was designed. It couldn't afford to be a memory hog. X can be 'fast'. X is very modular. X runs on embedded systems that have very little resources, and I mean *very* little.
Comparing the X network transparency to RDP is like comparing apples to oranges. Frambuffer based transparency eg. RDP work well on low bandwidth situations but push all the load on the server since the entire application and all the rendering is done on the server. This is a terrible design in thin client networks, and why citrix et. all take so much resources to deploy. I've seen Solaris boxes push a ridiculus amount of concurrent sessions while MS terminal services halt at a fraction of that load. It's not that MS did a bad job, it's just that the two approaches have their strong suits.
The bottom line is learn X before you diss it ( someone else said that ).
...cause X rocks!!!
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Post aborted! Reason: Please use less whitespace.
Thanks, slashdot. Since I can't post it here, check http://steve-parker.org/zd.txt instead.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
Binary Distributions For Everything.
Indeed, no end-user can be expected to compile things - might be too complex, or beyond the capability of a constrained hardware environment.
But Linux apps need to be cross (hardware) platform, the i386-only world disappeared a long time ago. Binary distributions can't cater for this, since the producers don't have access to all the platforms.
This is why Java and Dotnet have appeared. Yet this rather obvious problem never seems to be addressed by those who make strategic decisions regarding Linux. Why?
For example, we have good Java support on Linux, yet all our resources seem to be devoted to churning out obsolescent C and C++ apps.
Isn't it about time we picked a VM and stuck with it?
I hear you. And you are correct.
What can I say?
Change has gotta' start somewhere. People have to be exposed to new ideas somehow.
Huh?
Like my sister?
Ok I setup the PC, but she uses to
Check email, browse the web, and do a little word processing.
So, ok, I had to hack the ADSL driver, stop kduz because it kept reconfiguring or removing the printer, but that shouldn't be a problem for an off the shelf box.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
It's already no. 1 on my desktops.
Just who sells Linux preinstalled on desktop machines? This list is small. To really gain ground, this has to change.
Walmart still sells the PC right? The distribution method is different, but in the end, you are still buying that PC from Walmart and not Dell dude, right? Idiot. Go lick gooch and stop pretending like you can contribute to this discussion.
I run linux on a laptop at work (a Toshiba Tecra 7200 - man that install was interesting), and I love it. I cannot however, run my Windows ADS tools on it (not that I'd want to), so I also run a windows desktop, just for that.
At home? Sorry, no can do on Linux. My games wont run, and that is the primary purpose of my home machine. AFAIK, no planned MMORPG (what I am into), plans on a linux port. Neverwinter nights? Yeah, right around the time that Duke Nukem Forever comes out....
Like I said, if I could run linux at home, I would. Developers wont develop, until the desktop numbers increase, and the desktop numbers wont increase, until the developers develop. Kind of a chicken or the egg kind of thing...
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson
Ok A lot of it is windows 2000 ish,
but hold you mouse over a music file and it plays.
Hold if over a movie and it plays.
You can edit MP3, JPEG etc... meta-data.
try camera:/ (if you have kamera installed) and you can access images off of most digital cameras.
etc.........
Stock KDE is a lot better than stock windows 2000, a bit klunky (like a JCB!) but still better.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
...better more standarized font controls. Each app has to be setup to get decent looking fonts. KDE, GNOME, Open Office, Mozilla. Enough allready. TO much sh_t to configure for joe six pack. Good looking fonts out of the box or don't bother.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Also note that the article says that from 2000 to 2001 Windows increased its market share (92 to 94%) by more than Linux's total share (1.5 to 1.7%). Linux is a niche on the desktop, and that won't change any time soon.
As for how easy the operating system is to use for the standard home user, that can be debated rather easily, and again, if you worked IT and actually dealt with this stuff, then you would already know everything that I was about to say. It isn't easier, it is more famailar. You're stupid, congrats.
Oh man, does Windows fail *this* test. Have you *seen* the list of Windows books at O'Reilly?
The very first thing anyone should do after installing ( or purchasing preinstalled) Windows is the get the O'Reilly Windows Annoyances book for their particular flavor.
After that a trip to fuckmicrosoft.com is in order.
Between these two resources you'll have a good start at getting your system cleaned up, configured and able to do something, but not much before.
KFG
Before there was C# there was J++, done by the same esteemed language architect from Denmark. After using C#, you should take a step back and install J++ and take a look at it, and you will get a powerful sense of deja vu.
I was so close to completely to switch to Linux on the desktop. The only thing left in my home network non-Linux is my XP Pro workstation. I installed Red Hat 8.0 and everything worked great accept for one major hang up for me. Evolution kept crashing on me when I tried to print. I absolutely love Evolution. It is a great Outlook replacement to which I have become addicted. I looked for bug fixes but I just didn't have the time to keep troubleshooting. I am mostly doing web, email, networking, some dev, so Linux is a perfect desktop for me. As soon as this bug with Evolution is fixed I am sure I will be on a Linux desktop. It is a self-imposed requirement that my contacts, email etc. are in one place to be synced with my PDA etc.Linux almost does everything I need it to do. For some time I was considering a Mac, but their hardware prices are too high for me.
Fine, maybe you'd like to come round to my house and show me how to install my winmodem on Linux.
Why would you want to buy such a Microsoft encouraged piece of junk like that? You could have a much nicer real modem instead. It's sad that you got screwed over like that, but that's how M$ wants to make money. Then you say:
You can have fun scouring the Internet searching for a device driver, find out where to put it in my kernel source tree, compile the kernel successfully without breaking anything, and getting KPPP to recognise it. How does that sound?
Sounds like hell. Throw that sad little winmodem in the trash, it's worth $10 or less if you try to sell it and it's absolutely worthless in five years or so. Then buy a $40 modem with a controler in it, plug it in and run your favorite dialer. I use wvdial, and then ipchain mask it to all my other computers. All my computers stay up all the time and I never have to fool with them. Can you say that about M$ junk?
Of course it would be nice to compile a few custom kernels, and I just might for some wireless network cards I bought. Uggg, it's like the early days of ethernet.
Sooner or later, hardware makers are going to wake up to the fact that people are not willing to pay for junk they have to throw away when the software changes. Equipment vendors will quit buying such junk and that's it, M$ goes poof. Why buy their decidedly inferior O$ and window managers, when there are better free alternatives? It's only a matter of time. There's a reason for the tech slump, it's called distrust and M$ made it for themselves. They will cook in their own juices.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Linux (and Unix) have killer native applications for the server side like Apache and Oracle, and that's why it's been so successful there. When a killer application arrives for the Linux desktop that has no equal anywhere else, the users will follow. That's all there is to it.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
go to your kppp and tell it to use /dev/modem for the device.
A co-worker showed me this earlier today. My take on this is how can they track all Linux installs. I mean most Linux installs are done after the computer is purchased from the store. And most Linux installs are done from the same set of CD's. So my question is how do they get an accurate count? You can't count downloads because that will come in low. You can't count machines that were sent out with Linux installed because that will also come out lower then the actual number.
I think that linux is already the number 2 desktop and just may be closer to Windows then anyone thinks.
If Linux wins by becoming a no choice commercial lock down system removing all the nice features of Unix than what exactly is the point? What you are describing is windows running with Linus' kernel? The NT kernel isn't a bad kernel. The point of the Linux revolution is:
1) Freesoftware: ending an artifical economy where things that are expensive to create but free to reproduce are charged for on a per copy basis.
2) The power of Unix: that means small tools designed to work together to be easily scriptable into very powerful and customized solutions; not monolithic applications each designed to be a universe unto itself. This allows users to create customized solutions for themselves in hours; rather than buying expensive solutions that takes weeks or months to implement.
3) Network transparency designed from the ground up. So that eventually all data everywhere in the world is accessable to everyone always in whatever medium they need it in.
4) A desire for individual freedom over ease of management.
Those are goals worth fighting for. Who cares what kernel people use?
Too late - BSD is dead!
1996 is six, seven years ago. It doesn't surprise me that Windows XP doesn't support that. It wouldn't surprise me if no recent operating system supported it.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
I am not an IT worker, so you are probably making a more accurate point than I am. However, even if familiarity is more important than ease of use, then Linux is still behind. Since only a very small fraction of computer run Linux and the vast majority run Windows or Mac OS whatever, they will be unfamiliar with the Linux desktop.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
I am not an OSX user, so I can't debate in more detail the finer points of what's wrong with it. However, just because you haven't had dependency problems doesn't mean that other people won't. The reason why OSX worries less about dependencies is because so much is hidden from the user that the system doesn't change enough for dependencies to be a problem.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Some people find Macs really hard to use and the Windows interface much easier. It's totally subjective.
I believe that the hard way IS necessary. You can't just sweep the problem of dependencies under the carpet; unless you include everything you need with your application (which increases its size and could violate the licence) then you need to keep track of what needs what else and give the user warning before they delete a vital component.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
"Without support for mainstream media (WiMP, QT, Flash 6, Real)"
a lter nates/#linux
never heard of mplayer? works wonders. quicktime, windows media, real, and the list goes on. once plugins are written that use mplayer, windows will be at a media disadvantage.
flash 6?
http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/
It still won't recognise the modem. What now?
The point I'm trying to make is, Linux isn't compatible with the modem to start with (though that isn't its fault - Linux drivers should be available for it as well) and that getting it to work isn't easy to do - the ease of use issue.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
What other contenders are there? OS/2? Solaris? Got a shitload of AIX CDE desktops out there? How's that Atari 2600 office suite working for you?
*yawns*
Dude, the X Window System gets better frame rates than MS Windows on Quake. Do you even know what latency is?
I have been running a Dual Celeron with Linux for 3 years now and the whole desktop screams. I run the screen at 1280x1024, 24 bit color on a Voodoo 4500 video card and it screams. Applications pop up onto the screen as soon as I click the mouse button to call them up. I can grab a window playing video and wave it around and around the screen without leaving any artifacts, while on windows, picking up a notepad and moving it around leaves tracks that take a second to disappear. Even if nothing else is accessing the hard drive or processor.
The X Window System framework was designed back in the late 80's as a powerful, extensible system of presenting colored dots to the end user in a network transparent way. The X Window System we have today has grown and adopted all the modern features of any window system. It is still the only game in town for network transparent desktops.
The best way to manage more than 1 computer is to use thin clients running X window and use a single machine as the application server. Buy pentium 200 machines from a surplus store for $25 and have them connect to the main server running XDM. You can easily connect 20 X terminals up to a 100MB switch and run a copy of Mozilla, Gimp, and Open Office and a dozen other apps on each desktop without a problem. If the server was a dual Athlon with 2 GB of RAM it could easily support a hundred users. And all this while the one server box also ran a web server, a database and automated scripts did the end of month calculations in the background.
So, lets see, I spend $12,000 for all the hardware and software to support 100 users and only have to ever replace the hardware when it breaks, and when a desktop machine does break it takes 5 minutes to replace and while a persons machine was down they could have just logged into another terminal.
Compared to... I have to pay $100 a year for each desktop just for the software and it takes a $600 computer to do the work. Plus I need a seperate server for the web server and the database and the domain server and the backup domain server and each of those needs 1 user license per person that is going to access them. Call that another $10 per person per year. And all the Hardware has to be replaced every 5 years so we can keep running MS's latest and greatest. Call that $12,000 per year forever... and I was being nice. Not to mention the backups, software installation on each machine, the viruses, the down time when a persons machine goes down, and license hassles that being a microsoft shop entails.
I figure that it is at least 5 times more expensive being an MS shop than a Linux shop for hardware and software and it is twice as expensive to hire people to support Windows boxes.
Microsoft earned its monopoly in the BUSINESS world, not the CONSUMER world. I just started working for a chemical company that relies entirely on Micro$oft for EVERYTHING. THAT is all anyone knows! People are paid to process forms, move information around, order supplies, write memos, calculate financials, and doing minor calculations using Micro$oft Excel. These people don't have a choice in using what they want, they are TOLD "You use this to get the job done, and you'll like it!" At the end of the day, they go home to the family and little johnny and sally want help with a report for school. Well, you think, all I know is M$ Office so I'll go steal M$ Office from work and install it on my computer and use THAT to get the report done. The average person don't give a flying duck WHAT they use to get the job done, as long as it just works, which has been the current state of affairs in the PC world every since Bill Gates of Borg introduced Windows 9X/Me/2000/XP. People get used to what they SEE AT WORK and they don't want to change. Certain nuances of a program get "standardized". There is no telling these people Linux is better, or Mac OS X is better. The only thing they KNOW is Micro$oft, however evil it is, people don't have time (they have lives, families, multiple jobs) to learn something new. To them it's like using a complicated appliance and M$ has them bullshitted into thinking that their entire WORLD will come crumbling down around them if they go with some other OS or Office program. Better not use that, you won't be able to read [insert favorite document type here]. Another example, my mother went and bought a Hewlett Packard PC with Windows XP on it; SHE HATES IT ALREADY, but it's the ONLY THING SHE KNOWS HOW TO USE.
Linux is a great OS, stable as hell, ditto for Mac OS X. What Linux needs to offer that is not available in other operating systems is a user interface that is completely comfingurable from an idiots perspective. Average Joe Smith and Jane Doe are not going to mess around in emacs and writing config files. The operating system should have user interfaces that take advantage of the profession in which it's being used. For business people, use more icons for drag and drop, for science nerds and geeks, use the command line. Mac OS X goes in this direction but one can't really modify the UI that much, you're still locked into Apple's Aqua. There have to be psychological studies of how people in certain professions process information. Building a user interface on top of or rebuilding the desktop is a good start. What I'm getting at is that the user should be able to create a UI that works best for them, just like we all saw in Star Trek TNG on the bridge at the LCARS stations; they were specific to who was working at them. Build a Linux operating system that comes with KDE, Gnome, Business GUI Standard 1, Business GUI Standard 2, Engineering Standard 1, Chemistry Standard 2, you get the idea. It all comes down to making a GUI to run on top of the operating system. The work still gets done, it's just that the UI is optimized for the person using the computer at that time. When THIS ALONE will improve worker efficiency and increase profits for companies by decreasing dependence on M$ and better worker performance, then M$ will be dethroned.
I'm not some kind of Wintroll. I've installed Linux on all 3 of my home systems (one is dual boot w/ Win2K). I've been using various flavors of Unix since the 1970s.
But, Linux has a long way to go to make it bigtime on the desktop. For starters, I find many things that Linux *claims* to support, but which doesn't actually *quite* work right. I can think of many examples, but here's a few. I installed Mandrake 9.0 on my laptop. I'm "mostly" satisfied, but there are many irksome things. It won't seem to turn off the backlight to save power. My wireless network card works, but only if I don't use an encryption key, so my #@#!# wireless network is now open to any yahoo in the vicinity. There are many, many things like that, where Win* just works flawlessly. Even on my desktop system this holds true. My spiffy HP deskjet? Works fine for text under Linux, but I have yet to find any drivers that support the 2400x1200 or PhotoRET modes, so any photos you print from Linux look like crap compared to those you print under Doze. Ok, maybe on some dark corner of the web there's some black magic to support these things under Linux, but the point is, on 'Doze I don't have to waste my time to go research it - these things just work. Linux support for so many things is just half-assed.
Second point: there are many apps for Linux, but often they are either (1) hopelessly primitive compared to the Win* apps, or (2) much harder to use. Many times Linux people say, "oh, there are 375 apps to do that!", but the reality is that none of them come close to their Windows equivs.
Third point: *getting* the Linux software can be a huge PITA. I tried to get Lilypond, because I wanted to do some music typesetting. I didn't find a binary for my distribution, so I got the source and went to compiled it (which already is beyond what 99% of the population can do). Ok, got part way through the compile, and then get errors because Flex is outputting files that GCC can't compile. Read read read... the distribution comes with 2 patches, but both are for older version of gcc than mine, and neither work. So now I'm off to go edit the damned generated C file myself. I have a compilers background, I grok yacc and lex, but what *possible* hope does Joe Sixpack have? None whatsoever. But Joe can walk down to any of a hundred stores in his hometown and buy trivially installable software for *doze - he never has to interact with a command line or RPM files or anything of ths sort.
I'm not a huge advocate of Linux on the desktop (yet)
I want to be, but I can't (yet). [grin]
Here's the problem:
To put Linux on the desktop, we're asking them to give up the comfort, familiarity and applications of Windows. For what benefits?
Poor applications. Quoting an e-mail I received: "But a lot of it - and mainly the GUI stuff - is still lagging behind, being a slower and buggier version of a half-decent program on Windows. And priorities are wonderful - when we build a GUI application, the most important thing is that it's skinnable. Bugs? Features? Competition? Who cares?! It's skinnable!"
The same writer continues... "And for the biggest question: Mr. Rupert wants a financial software for Linux (his son installed it for him). So he calls his son over to install a simple financial software - just something which can calculate his loan repayments. His son opens google (or freshmeat), and finds 31 financial programs. Each has a different set of features, of course. He downloads and compiles each of them (ah, yes, the rpm was compiled using an ancient glibc version, and no, Mr. Rupert doesn't know what glibc is). The only two candidates which could actually be compiled (and didn't require libobscure.so.2) and actually have this option in their ugly programmer-designed-GUI menus die as soon as you choose the option. That's right - the operating system is stable as a rock, but the programs die immediately. What's Mr. Rupert going to use? hmm.... Maybe a respectable program from a respectable company (on Windows, of course).
But wait! John Rupert (the little 15 year old) can program - he's got some C tutorials, and he's written a few small programs. Why can't he write the program for his father? And the 32nd version is on its way."
We need to work on this stuff. Linux still isn't ready for the desktop.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
It's true, Xerox GUI was invented way before MS and Mac. Read it here
Less is more !
If you want to see the success of alternative OSes, don't push for linux on the desktop - push for open standards and cross platform programs. Right now, I can sit down at a linux machine or a windows machine, and use Open Office, Mozilla, the Gimp, Blender, and a ton of other programs. That is good.
I don't want to be tied to Microsoft. That doesn't mean I want to be tied to Linux either. (Although Linux would be a gentler master then windows). I prefer to have applications divorced from the data files which are divorced from the underlying OS. I don't want YetAnotherAudioApp that has its own enhanced file format that isn't cross platform. I want mp3s, I want oggs. I don't want to save my work in the unknown Microsoft Office whatever .doc format. Hell, I don't really like saving it in Open Office's .sxw really, but I know if its in .sxw, I could figure out the file format without too much difficulty, and at least Open Office is cross platform.
If you don't keep data in proprietary formats, its harder to get screwed in the long run.
Lindows has helped or hindered us?
I heard it's difficult to use and a piece of shit generally. Now, with experienced users, I see them only wanting the computer because it's cheap and w/o M$ license.
But for newbies to Linux, I see them being turned off by software that doesn't work well, Wine that crashes the X sessions, etc. And that they'll never turn to Linux again.
I see it also hurting Wal-mart, with all the returns from dissatisfied customers. They would have been better off getting a truly free linux distro with a KDE or gnome desktop, and some type of national modem ISP for internet hookups.
All they would have need to do was to load up the disks with easy to load up software, some automatic links to the cd drive on the desktop, and a few web links to Linux sites.
Lindows didn't seem like the right solution for an M$ world, and still doesn't. It rather looks like the fastest way to turn people off from using Linux ever again.
I don't know, it's been a long time since I ran an M$ O$. Here is a good run down of Number Two:
There you have it, number two on your desktop. Cross platform and all, so long as your PC does not blue screen, even M$ users can enjoy this post.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Last time I check I couldn't find any Linux DVD players which could do menus.
Am I wrong?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
OS-X is only the primary OS of around 10% of macs, as of fairly recent counts. Apple as a whole barely holds an edge on Linux on the desktop.
Does x86 Linux get to count all the Windows boxes, since they run on the same hardware, and COULD run if installed? Same thing. I guess Linux really is ahead of MacOS in market share.
Slashdot
News for Zealots. Linux that matters.
#2 = shit. A freudian slip by the submitter, perhaps?
The only people that believe that Linux is an easier solution and one that you can get by without any proprietary systems are people who don't work in corporate environments. When you grow up you'll realize that you need to depend on vendors, because when things break if you are the dumbass that installed some new l33t freedom fighter application instead of a tried and true, supported, proprietary app you lose your job. End of story.
Huh? Why bother with a vendor when you could just apt-get? I used to work in one of those clueless cubicle farms. They had all sorts of M$ problems, from insecure email to equipment they could not use because the software had changed. The worst part was how they could not share information efficiently. Propriatory formats, hopless networking and all that M$ incompetentce. The stupid big dogs that made decisions kept trying to chase data security, but simply made life hell and security remained non existant.
Hardware incompatibility under M$ is real, it's just a time issue. When the time is up, you buy a new one. Suck. In the free world, your device lasts as long as you or someone else feels like it's worth the effort to keep up the driver.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I installed Mandrake 9.0 on my sister's machine because Windows Me was just too resource hungry and spending $150 for win2k or winxp pro was a last resort... It seemed to support and have almost everything she needed: AIM, MSN, Yahoo! messenger, TV viewing and capturing capabilities of her ATI AIW 128 Pro card via xine, DVD playback, Samba, oggs, Mozilla, x-sane, and it was painless for me to install (well almost except for the initial lockup)... but then the fatal flaw... no support for her D-Link DWL-520+ 802.11b PCI card, and that's what killed the idea and had me reinstalling Windows Me again.
So what does it all boil down to? Linux needs to just plain support everything as quickly as MS can. Frankly if the Linux community can't get the major hardware vendors to take them seriously and give them the product documentation to develop drivers and such, then I see no reason to give it to my family. I'd sooner buy them all Macs with OS X, if I really cared to enrich their unix experience.
Just my $0.02
The distribution method is different, but in the end, you are still buying that PC from Walmart and not Dell dude, right?
The telephone has much greater penetration in households in the United States of America than the Web does. Dell sells computers over the telephone to people who do not have a computer to access Dell.com. Walmart.com does not to my knowledge sell computers over the telephone.
Will I retire or break 10K?
That's what every Zealot/Slashbot here says. Why would a Zealot need to "fix" anything if this were true? After all, according to the Zealots, all the source code for each new kernel gets ejaculated on by Linus himself, before compiling.
If you look at the successful OS's (even though some of them eventually died) their appeal was a specific advantage a particular platform (hardware/OS combination) that could be EASILY demonstrated to the average person
The Amiga had graphics and great multitasking. The Mac had/has desktop publishing and a windowing system that was/is easy for the average user. The PC was/is cheap and software was/is plentiful.
In order for LINUX to to become a true desktop contendor, there has to be some application that makes people WANT to buy a LINUX system. This application's appeal must in some way do something that Windows cannot do or do well but that LINUX can do well.
Example, I bought an Amiga way back because the PC (hardware and OS) COULD'NT do what it could do. Even my mother was amazed at the time. Another example was with the MAC, the PC COULD'NT do desktop publishing (well...not nearly as well) as due to the way the OS was designed (interface and all).
Bottom line. Somebody needs to think of GNU/LINUX's REAL advantages and make a killer app that uses those SPECFIC advantages. Then when and if it's a success, people will WANT to use GNU/LINUX just for the use of the app. Then it snowballs from there.
i see linux taking over windows very soon people are sick of windows
Linux is taking over guys
( lol )
Err9r-
It multitasks better than any version of Windows and Linux I have ever seen. You can run Virtual PC in one window, capture from a TV tuner in the background and still run iTunes without skipping a beat. Probably dual processor helps, but still...
And one look at the UI will make you move your KDE and XP into its Trash can and then wonder why the container looks better than it's components.
You know, I just did #2 in my pants. Boy, am I ever glad I'm wearing diapers!
In other news, pocket protectors and thick glasses have become the new "must have" items among the "in" crowd here at Riverside High... :-)
May we never see th
UT 2003 came out with Windows and Linux installers on the same disk set. It's not Doom 3 or anything...oh wait, that's not out yet, and Carmack said that the Linux version will be out at the same time as the Windows one.
Pretty cool for an OS without corporate backing, neh?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
There's Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and everybody else. Name the #3 cola. Anybody?
(yerricde raises his mouse hand while his other hand holds a can of Diet Number 3)
We Drink RC. Ritalin Cola. Heck even the "Diet Rite" logo would be easy to GIMP into "Diet Ritalin".
Will I retire or break 10K?
I happen to like Linux more than other OSes right now, but you've named the key point. I like documents I can open anywhere, and OpenOffice / Mozilla / a few others (like AbiWord, which I like but have had little use for lately) are making this feasable.
File formats rule the (computer) world. It doesn't -- or wouldn't -- matter much if everyone used MS Word, if it was being used to edit completely open file formats, and ditto excel, etc etc.
Doing a google search for "plain text" + "Microsoft word" yields some fun rantiness on this topic.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
--I agree somewhat, there's a lot of redundancy, but then again, CDs are cheap, it's really not much if any more costly to include a lot of apps, it only takes a bit more time to install, or you have a choice up front to only install a limited set or even a very limited set by choosing custom, and having all those choices will give people an opportunity to see what they like. Perhaps the distro guys will offer a "ten dollar home surfer personal edition" ONE cd full install option. One browser, one office, some media, games, email, etc. Some sort of intro deal, similar to knoppix perhaps. I can see that selling especially well off the shelf at the software retail outlets. That one can have the "one of each" offerings, see no reason that couldn't work. Heck, I'd probably buy those instead of what I have now. I like getting the dead trees manuals though, don't know how much that is in your typical boxed distro price. On screen is OK but I am old school on manuals, I want that paper in my hands.
That interest on all the various apps you get on a full install now will get back to the developers and distro releasers in various ways, from increased downloads of updates by app to participation on forums or newsgroups, etc. It's info that gets used in the evolution of the OS and it's related applications. Certainly better than being offered a very small set. All this info will eventually result in a more "unified" desktop. Apps that suck won't get used much, they will get fixed or abandoned. Apps that work that people can actually *find* in their menus will get used and worked with and developed further. I just found it really neat coming from a different background to see all that stuff, I was impressed before first boot. Ya I got a thousand apps maybe 100 are any good-that's still dozens way more than ya get with the alternatives on their default install. It's just slap cool. And as I get better at linux and want to "do more" half the time I already got the "do more" installed! It ain't perfect, but dang, it's still cool. And after awhile, stuff I really am not probably ever going to use, no probs, out it goes, make more space. I think most folks like more "stuff", especially families, something for everyone on a default install. You got games for kids all the way to apps you can actually do work and make a living at, automagically. And for business, again, what's not to like? Office apps, advanced server and security apps, all right there for free to not much money. cool beans. Right now I can take a hundred dollar bill and go shopping and get a used box AND a boxed distro that is more than enough for my needs, that 100$ and seriously up is what the "other guys" want for a coupla disks. For some folks that ain't enough, for a lot of people it's plenty, and it just keeps getting better. I just can't see it as any sort of major problem so far. The little quirks I've run into aren't much different from quirks in my other computing experiences.
PLEASE TAKE THE GEEK OUT!
Window managers with all the options, and X with all the 3D accelerated features, do use a good chunk of memory, even compared to WinXP or OSX.
But much of the memory reported in 'top' allocated to X actually is video card RAM (framebuffer, z-buffer, textures), not mainboard RAM. The Windows 2000 task manager, on the other hand, doesn't include video card RAM in its measure of a process's memory allocation.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I figure Google is a good filter to judge OS popularity. The last stats for OSes used to search Google are here. At least MacOS beats Windows 95. Linux was 1%. I am sure most Linux users are like me, its a Server Operating System not our choice for a Desktop. MacOS X and even Windows XP have a better User Experience than GNOME or KDE -- RedHat 8.0 w/ Bluecurve almost has the idea -- close but no cigar.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Microsoft is able to at least count if not gather demographics for every desktop machine running Windows95 or above, regardless of whether it is licensed or not, through WindowsUpdate.
Sounds impartial to me. M$ would never tell a lie would they? Right, even if they knew the truth, they would never tell it.
Counting is futile. Have you ever worked for a US Census? You know, that thing where people are paid to determine every habitable dwelling in the United States and then inspect on foot each and every one that did not return a census form? If you do, you will understand that the outome of that most rigorus of all counts is +-10% or so. In Linux terms that could mean they miss Linux all together. Incridible, no?
There's no need when you have the power of clue. Clue comes from experience and knowledge. We have all used free software, know it is superior and why. M$'s little Holoween release shows they have some small clue. Yet, like all the troll posts here it shows they don't know what to do with that clue. Instead of making real changes, they are continuing to simply lie and harras. Mostly clue is a thing for you and me. Once you get it, your computers work and all the little M$ dreams of passports, untrusted user control, digital rights denial, and total information rape just vanish.
I know that free software is winning acceptance. I see my friends trying it, and they don't go back. It will be reflected in informal counts. It's just that simple.
This will all be over before M$ knows what hit it. They lost the developers, they are losing their users and with that, they are losing their grip on equipment makers. Look at what little good their $1 billion advert attack did for XP - zip. You can call a dog a lot of things, but it's still a dog. You can't convince people they are happy with something that does not do what they want but does many things they don't want. The trickle is becoming a washout, despite free CDs rollerskating butterflies and all that.
I'm expecting great hardware advances and for more and more device makers to open their specs, if not simply set their programers to more useful work than costly M$ device nighmares and SDK costs. Bogus laws asside, this year will be cool like that.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What, you forgot about Royal Crown Cola?
Help us build a better map!
When Microsoft and Apple pursued the computer as a device not just for the backrooms of IT departments but for the average joe, unix and mainframe weenies scoffed. Years later they find they are a bit behind, the applications are crude, character is eventually going to fall wayside to GUI, and understanding "good" UI will be a skill, not just "eye candy" as so many in the Unix community have viewed GUI for years. Oh how you have missed the point.
.NET: say what you will, but .NET platform with C# is proving to be a better implementation than java. look I'm sorry, but when it comes to GOOD applications or app development platforms I rank unix folks on the bottom of the list. WHAT! you say.. what do you mean?
Windows is now a standard on the desktop. Apple second to that. Now comes the suddenly awake Nix folks with there catchup answer Linux. Linux does not have the applications, and everything Linux does to improve itself is try and become more like windows or Mac OS. Oh boy, Linux has auto update, oh boy the fonts are better, oh boy oh boy. So many of these oh boys are old hat standard features that have existed in windows and MAC OS for years.
Hey Mr Unix why didnt you take GUI, apps and UI seriously in the early 80's?.
Now all of a sudden your the champion in that arena as well? Look learn that windows isnt just due to marketing. Its due to the fact that Microsoft payed attention to the computer as a laymans device as well as a box in the darkrooms of IT depts. Why couldn't it be both a powerful and INTUITIVE tool to use. Oh but thats right you scoffed at that as well. command line is simple. Windows is a resource hog blah blah blah. Your lowest common denominator mentality has left you blind sided..
Stability, its not an issue with win NT. I find our linux server (caldera mail server) is no more prone to occasional reboots as our win 2000 server. MS is meeting the stability challenge, I dont see Linux meeting the usability, applications and recognition technology challenge..
What I mean is that Unix programmers are an odd sort. Brilliant and intelligent folks who understand evrything there is to know about networking and DB administration and development, but in the areas of rich application development, good UI, good IDE apps or devlopment platforms two words comes to mind:.
fragmented and cryptic..
No offense SLASHDOT, but your website is a good example of nix oriented programmer app and UI in a website...and no i'm not reffering to the fact that it doesnt have enough eye candy. If you dont get it, I completely understand...Its sort of that Einstein lost at the train station type of thing
There has never been a reason why programming on a development platform needs to be extra complicated, but for mr nix it always been a sin to create a powerful and yet somewhat easy to implement development platform with outstanding IDE packages to back it on top of a GUI OS. If its easy to implement, intuitive, GUI or TRULY integrated it was a sin.
I will say, however, that Microsoft must sucumb to providing standards and apps that are open. PHP is a good example of an open esy to implement devlopment platform. The syntax could be improved a bit. Take a lesson from 4GL languages folks ever program with Progress DB? Its an outstanding easy and yet powerful language to code in without having to be cryptic. both MS and the rest could take lessons here.
I know the spams gonna fly, but I am not going to simply say Linux is better on the desktop just because I want to hate a big corporate conglomerate that has built a good OS that is standard and does everything I need. I hope Linux improves and I'm sure it will, but there is nothing innovative in Linux, there is nothing Unique, and I would hope that linux does not kill itself by becoming a fragmented mess of a gajillion distro's and become just as fragmented as its forefather Unix. At least the Unix community has Apple with OSX, because good lord, they both sorely need each other, and they both need more applications or stick to their niche conrners of the computing universe.
No.
Actually, if you really took the time to study things you'd find that Java borrowed from all sorts of languages - Objective C, ADA (I think the packaging system came from there), C, C++, Smalltalk (a closer relative than C++), etc.
.Net and the CLR. I'd say when converting Java code to .Net often requires only a capitalization change (the CLR libraries often look very familiar...) that it is not a giant leap to think C# borrows a lot from Java!
Then of course once Java had paved the way, along came C#... Not only was the language fairly similar to Java, but it was based on a very similar VM/library system with
Of course C# does have some nice additions, as you would expect given they started later and had a good base to work from. But why anyone would switch to a platform that offers minor incremental improvement beyond a system with years of VM optimization and stabilizing is beyond me... I don't see C# offering even the same level of improvement over Java that C++ had over C, and look how long that change took (is still taking).
Java and C# both will be around for a long time, until the next real advancement in languages occurs...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Danather I completely agree =) You hit the nail on the head.
Linux companies need to get adobe support, symantec support, etc etc for 95%+ applications on the market. There should be a linux version available. Until that happens Linux can never achieve desktop dominance. Heck BEOS was cool, but I never really used it.
i really dont know why everyone is so obsessed with making linux mainstream. sure it would be nice, but isn't it more important to produce quality software? besides, as long as the open source community stays focused on quality, the software will improve, and the users will come anyway. i know i didnt start using freebsd because it was the most popular thing around.
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
If I was to predict, I'd say that eventually, open source OS's will kill propriety crap, but that assumes that a large proportion of the world grows a brain, or fashion does something intelligent, by some fluke.
The one thing I'll predict is that: the future will surprise us all!!!, (safe bet it always does).
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
These never were the goals, and they will never be the goals. Posting articles like this makes it look like this is some kind of war, which it is not. Who the hell cares if M$ owns the desktop? The point is not to be #1, it is to make good, free (as in speech) software, for the sake of making it. It is an artistic endeavor, not a business endeavor, or haven't you all even looked at gnu.org? As long as there are artists, there will be an audience that wants to see what is being created. And, beyond that, there is the joy of creating. All of this talk of an OS battle completely misses the point.
B
"We must still have chaos within in order to be able to give birth to a dancing star." --Friedrich Nietzsche
Windows "comfort"? What Windows "comfort"?
Every time I have installed a Microsoft operating system, I have had to start a mad search through my whole room, look under my bed, behind books, in the bread box for those stupid device driver CDs that the hardware makers ship for Windows, because Windows won't support the hardware out of the box. All I get is "new hardware found" and have to screw around with installing it by hand. And if I happen to have thrown out that CD by some stroke of bad luck, then I have to spend hours on the Internet to find a site that will let me download the driver without having to a) register or b) pay or c) both. Is this what you call comfort?
With SuSE at least (can't speak for the other distributions), I put the DVD in the machine, boot it, and -- presto! -- it just installs stuff (big and annoying exception: nVidia drivers, because the company is too elite to let SuSE include them. Guess why I switched to ATI). No extra CDs, no getting out the Windows CD again, and no reboots. Now, you could say that reinstalling the OS is a rare thing, except that Microsoft's new plan is to force me to keep upgrading and upgrading and upgrading every few years -- again, is this what you call "comfort"?
The idea that Linux is harder to install than Windows has reached the status of an urban legend (or Microsoft FUD) -- this is 2003, not 1997.
Wanna bet?
Because of X, I get away with having one (1) good, fast computer that I keep reasonably updated -- the "mainframe". I have two other computers, and I don't do squat on them: They just function as X terminals, so that my wife and I can sit upstairs, downstairs, or in the garden with the laptop, and do email, surf, or whatever on the big machine (well, there is the rare LAN game on Win98 that is fun, too). Your "solution" would force me to fully maintain three computers. If that is progress, please count me out.
Also, if even half of the people here who keep bitching about X would spend even half of their time doing something about even half of the problems they keep talking about, X would either be far more advanced or Fresco would already be up and running. Obviously, X does enough of what most people want: If the X complainers were in real pain, you would have put your keyboard where your postings are a long time ago.
This is quite true. The thing that got me to switch over from Windows to Linux was "cool factor". The two coolest programs I had ever seen were G.I.M.P. and Enlightenment. It was just those two apps that made me want to move from Windows to Linux completely in 1997. Since then, I've only used Windows at work because I have to.
Un-news
Your users are computer illiterate and need basic functionality and you want to make administration of these machines as easy as possible (both technically and politically).
Automatically boot to a window manager that has a "web" and "log out" feature. And maybe an xmms which runs against the company music fileshare. And maybe GAIM to keep in touch with other employees.
Fits the bill better than Windows, especially if your "killer app" is entirely web based, such as phpGroupware or heck, SQL-Ledger.
Also good for grandma who wants to get on the world wide intarweb but doesn't want the hassle of managing an actual computer.
Linux is good for the uber-technical and the totally illiterate. The in-betweens are more troublesome. They want more functionality but have already taken the time to learn Windows and don't want to relearn anything.
...desktop is not ready for linux!
I know I'm going to get crap for this, but Linux needs a simpler install, and I'm not talking about hand-holding crap. I always choose the custom or expert install, and I find that unless I specifically go through EVERY LITTLE THING, something important will be missed. The various available packages need to be grouped by task, and then by program. For example, at the top level, I should be able to say "I want to compile programs", and have it install all the headers and libraries for each program. Likewise, an option which says "I like to tweak and monitor my system" would install every utility under the sun for tweaking and monitoring. Better yet, each group could have three choices : None, Reccomended, All. People who are new to Linux and are unfamiliar with the programs and packages available are always overwhelmed by the sheer volume of available choices. I think a system like this could go a long way to helping them, and I think it would make life a bit easier for established linux users as well.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
If Qualcomm were to offer a Linux port of Eudora, I'd be hard pressed to think of a reason not to switch to a Linux desktop. I've tried Evolution; it's too much like Outlook. Eudora isn't perfect (in particular, I need more sophisticated filtering abilities), but I've been using it for ten years, so only something spectacularly more powerful would make me switch. (I've only used two email programs in my life, the first was unix Berkeley mail, the second was Eudora.)
The only other application I use constantly is bbedit, but I suppose I could learn to love vim or emacs. Web browsing is already handled quite well by Mozilla and its derivatives.
I'm ready, even eager, to switch, as soon as the software is ready. Until then, MacOS X.
What I do today with no complaints.
/. helped get it there. Why not do the same with Linux? I am because I like it. Thrashing on Linux is fun. Doing the same under win32 is annoying.
Rip and encode CD's with Grip. Burn CD's with Gcombust! Default file format is ogg.
Edit web graphics and pictures I am sent with Gimp.
Open Office handles any basic data processing tasks I need. Documents, spreadsheets and other related things are handled just fine. Once in a while a document comes in a little mangled, but I can always read them. I make sure and let others know how they can send documents without worrying about translation issues. When they realize not everyone uses Microsoft Word, they wonder why. When they understand the cost of Open Office, they will begin to ask how. I am not ashamed to say I want to cut down on my basic computing costs in these down times.
Evolution for mail. I actually prefer this to almost any other GUI mail client. Evolution competes easily with the best of the win32 mail clients.
Ogle is a great DVD player. Simple keystroke commands let you forget you are using a computer to watch the movie once you are in full screen mode. Bonus feature is that you can basically play anything and skip the annoyances. Win32 players need to play catch-up here actually. I have shown this to people who ask if they can run it under windows!
Gaming is a little weak, but reasonable right now. The kind of games I like to play on computers are avaliable for the most part. Not all titles, but enough that I can find something to play. For the rest, there is always PS2!
I do remote support for both win32 and UNIX systems. SSH and VNC perform very nicely here.
For all of those complaining about X --get over it. X rules if you get hardware that is well supported. This is not much different from the win32 world actually. Consider I have a Matrox G400 in the machine right now. Under win32 this card is a dog. Guess what? Linux and X bring out all the performance this card can offer. Nice deal! The best part is this will only continue to get better.
Mozilla and crossover to handle internet content.
Xmms for music.
My family makes use of this machine and does not always treat it well. So, XFS journaling filesystem handles this. There are others, but I know SGI and XFS, so that was my choice. 4 kids and a wife that will all switch it off once in a while without me looking and I have had zero problems.
Acrobat reader for pdf.
Programming works just fine using gcc and OpenGL. If you consider all that one can do right now for nothing, this is really hard to beat. Anyone getting into programming as a hobby or perhaps career change is a fool not to explore this.
Learning how to compile software is one of the smartest things I have ever done. It is not hard generally and the benefits are huge.
I have two areas that are not very well addressed in terms of how I work. Authoring HTML content can be done easily enough, but I want to use Dreamweaver. So that happens under Wine. I also work with MCAD products. Some of those run on another UNIX, so that can happen on my desktop because of X. Others are win32 only so there are times I need to use another machine. (I hate dual booting. --Easier to just use another box and run VNC, or use VMware.)
I do run Maya for some parts of my MCAD work and it works just fine under Linux. This is another interesting case with regard to X window support. Under win32, that older Matrox will not run Maya well at all. Under Linux that card works very well considering its limitations. Hmmm...
Sure I am a technical guy, so I took the time to learn how things get done. If you are willing to work the way Linux does, there is a lot there for the taking. Before you all say that it's too hard for the masses, consider this:
You know about 10 years ago, I distinctly remember dealing with win95 and DOS program installation and configuration issues. I was paid many times to 'just fix it'. Hardware problems, driver problems, and other problems made things very hard for the new user. Things are a little different today, but not too different. Installing windows on a new machine can be quite the chore. Updating it and hardening it for the connected home user of today takes time as well. Is this really any different than what we expect people to do with Linux?
Linux can compete today. It competes on cost, flexibility and stability and capability. It does not do everything well, but it does many things well enough that a growing number of users can make use of it with a little help. Guess what? That is exactly how Win95 got started too. Took quite a few years of thrashing by everyone to get it all done.
The sad part? Most of us here bitching on
Lots of people want a computer that just works. They want to write stuff, read e-mail and use the Internet. Some of them want to enjoy DVD and CD media as well.
For many of these people, a well configured Linux install will do the task with little or no hassle. All they need is someone to set one up for them. Same as they do using a win32 varient now.
All this really means is we are a hell of a lot closer than we were just two years ago.
Going forward is simple. The community will continue to provide creative options which the distributions will eventually figure out how to best package. The big commercial applications are starting to show. (PTC, Alias WaveFront, MSC Analysis and others) Cost will remain low for good systems.
What do we need to do?
Simple, just know what Linux can do today and make sure you can make it perform. Show others what you are doing and let them know why.
Every day, another class of user will be able to realistically make use of Linux if they are willing to make some choices. New operating systems are hard, but that does not mean they are not worth learning --even for fairly average users. After all many of them went through this with win95.
We need to eat our own dog food with regard to Linux. Two years ago, I saw strong potential, but was not ready to use it full-time myself. Today that has changed. Now I can actually begin doing the real learning and from that teaching --same as it was with win95...
It is only a matter of time at this point --or lawyers.
Blogging because I can...
In any case, whatever the #2 refers to today, the article, in effect, claims that installed Linux desktops will surpass the #2 next year, not that it has already surpassed it.
It's wrong to say that "Microsoft copied the Mac GUI". There were lots of other GUIs around at the time, and both Microsoft and Macintosh copied liberally from their predecessors.
There are too many Linux distributions for that, and many people don't see any need to update between major releases. Furthermore, the archives from which people update are mirrored across many sites.
Likewise, for Linuux, it is important to demonstrate increases in marketshare quarter over quarter in order to firmly demonstrate that the product (such as it is) remains a force to be reconed with.
Why? None of the people who pay attention to that sort of thing add anything to Linux that is of any value to me. I would prefer if desktop Linux remained under the radar screen of Microsoft and other software vendors.
That's good as far as I'm concerned. Right now, most hardware that doesn't have Linux drivers is some weird hack anyway. I often look whether Linux drivers are available to recommend hardware for Windows. In terms of games, educational software, etc., Linux is doing fine. And tax and financial transactions are more and more handled through the web.
Now these days, the macintosh is a unix platform.
That's debatable. In many ways, OS X is more like Windows running a nice version of Cygwin than like a UNIX machines: they use HFS+, you can't access most devices through /dev, the default GUI is completely incompatible, and system management is completely different. I am happy that OS X has gone as far as it has in terms of UNIX compatibility, but an OS X machine really is no substitute for a UNIX or Linux workstation.
But right now, porting to linux without first porting to the macintosh is a really hard sell in a corporate environment,
For consumer apps, that's true. For corporate or business apps, the Macintosh is largely irrelevant, and Linux is already the next important platform after Windows.
Have you ever actually measured the amounts of resources the MS Windows or Macintosh window systems gobble up? X11 is lean and efficient compared to everything else out there. Microsoft keeps trying to clone X11 features, and they keep failing miserably. X11 is one of the strongest assets of Linux.
The Adoption Of A Single, Standardized Interface Design.
That's not the case on Windows, it's not the case on Macintosh, why should it be the case on Linux? Apple and Apple users are almost hysterical about "consistency", yet OS X ships with four visually and functionally highly inconsistent interfaces: Classic, Cocoa, i-something metal look, and Java. Windows is worse: you get 3.1, 95, XP, Delphi, and a host of other third party toolkits and ad-hoc hacks, all on the same desktop. The interaction style changes with every release. And have you looked at the myriad of options in which even the most basic features can be reconfigured (single click/double click, classic Explorer, etc.)? It would be hard to beat Windows for inconsistency.
Nothing, but nothing turns off a potential Linux convert than having to dig through piles of posts, to Usenet or forums like /., calling them M$ Luzors!
If that's your reason for sticking with Windows, please be my guest: stick with Windows.
I am tired of people saying linux makes a great server. Try deploying an EMC or some heavy duty STK tape library to linux.... any distro. It's a nightmare in comparison to windows/solaris for example. Just because it is running an nfs share doesn't make it a server. Nowadays the word server is so dragged out to the point of describing any machine with a greater mission than word processing and checking email.
What the subject line says.
Crossover is specificly a set of proprietary libraries to fill in those gaps where WINE doesn't quite work.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
its called Fresco.
;-)
Who cares about an OS which version is still at 2.4?
Well, I find Linux much _better_ than windows for supporting ancient hardware (probably because the manufacturers never supported it on Linux, so there was no manufacturer support to withdraw).
I have printers from 1993, a 1994-era gfx card (yuck!) and a few other odd bits and pieces that the latest linux distros still support well, but are no longer supported on windows (since MS doesn't write most drivers, the HW manufacturers do...)
I've spent plenty of time in IT. I've also run a tech support group, and anybody on my staff who talked like you was thrown out (after repeated warnings).
Our users are smart people, not nitwits. Most of them are experts in their fields, including the administrative assistants. Many of them know a lot about their computers, too, which helps. Many of the documents they receive from outside the company are in some Windows format, so having a Windows machine with MS-Office and some major apps installed is a great convenience. Which apps depends on the user, but these are usually professional-grade commercial apps. and are frequently Windows-only or Windows and Mac only.
With a Windows machine, they can get the hardware and software they need to do their jobs and install it themselves without a lot of kludging and emulating and scrounging for freebie knockoffs, simply following the instructions in the box, with occasional help from us. That's what they need to get their work done, and that's what IT should make happen.
Some of us use Linux as well as Win and Mac, but only those who need what Linux does best: allowing for an extraordinary level of customization. But being a platform for running common commercial apps is not what Linux is better at than Windows, and it's not simply an issue of familiarity.
I will say, though, that the proliferation of new platforms (Palm and Linux especially) is creating more demand for non-proprietary file formats for information interchange. This is a great trend that we encourage internally, to the extent we can without disrupting the business. Over time, this will make Linux more practical, which I'd be happy to see. I just can't afford to conclude that it already is merely based on political chest thumping and wishful thinking. Our people have more important issues to attend to.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Forget it, I'm using Linux like most people over here but there is no way, not on the private desktop. Do you want reasons. I'll give them to you, lets categorize things:
a) ecently efforts have started to concentrate on a common look and feel. This is ok, but not the main problem. The main problem is quite different. It is interoperability. You can't expect a user not to be able to copy a table from kspread into AbiWord and vice versa. What the problem is here is the pickering of the two desktop teams. For years people have demanded that both systems should become interoperable. There will be no real user acceptance until this is achieved.
b) Application installation: Face it rpm is a joke, apt-get is getting there but still has to many small problems.
There needs to be a way for a decent installation.
c) The base for commercial apps. Apps like Photohop are unlikely to be ported unless there is a stable binary base for commercial apps. The LSB is supposed to do this job to some degree, but as long as GCC itself shifts is ABI every second release, you can forget about that. There needs to be a stable commercial layer.
d) Drivers compiling the kernel for installing new drivers is a joke if you want to face the end user.
Linux for the Desktop? I suggest that the desktop as a metaphor for how we use computers is hugely overrated, and has largely been the result of Windows' marketing rather than real users' needs.
The desktop originally meant running fairly simple applications in separate windows. It was then extended to managing multiple documents at once. Then the documents became complex and 'active'. Then the Internet got involved and every document became a resource, and the desktop became a browser.
At least, this is how Microsoft saw their world, and how they presented it to their users. Of course Linux will never be ready for this desktop - it's a moving target and one that most Linux developers do not sincerely believe in, for the good reason that it is fundamentally flawed.
So, what's the flaw?
I think it's related to the way people organize their work. People do two kinds of paperwork: clerical work, and creative work. For clerical work, your UI should consist mainly of a personal inbox and shared filing cabinets. For creative work, your UI should consist of a clutter of tasks, going from the 'hot' important ones to the old, dry ones. No filing, no organization, just a circle of gradually aging tasks.
The Windows computer desktop is like the clean desk policy of some companies: it does not match the way our heads work. I believe this is the main reason why computers are still so painful for most people to use.
Linux addresses half of the real problem of building information systems: namely, the problem of getting information from place to place safely and reliably. It largely ignores the desktop (except for playing with cosmetics). Windows does the opposite.
So, my suggestion is to continue to ignore the Windows desktop metaphor and to build a new one instead. Make it so close to what people like using that it becomes a unique selling point.
I'll present ideas for the two user interfaces I've described. Firstly, the clerical interface. It should look a lot like email, basically channeling all work through a single 'todo' list. Clerical work is about following through documents, workflow, approval, etc. Imagine that you can do such actions directly from your UI, from your messaging client. You can file documents in a shared group filing system, or a personal filing system. You can chuck documents away for later handling.
Now for the creative work UI. Much simpler. Create tasks and give them a priority. Throw them onto your desktop, in concentric heaps. The tasks closest to you are the most important. When you work on something, it remains 'hot', and when you leave a task alone, it regresses to the bottom of the heap. The back of your desk is just a huge mess of old documents and tasks that you can search through, and occasionally clean-up.
Both these interfaces match closely the way people work. For instance, it's been shown that prematurely filing 'work in progress' actually makes it harder for people to find it back again. Our brains - when we're doing creative work - seem to organize tasks in such concentric rings of hot, medium, and cold work, and the computer should present our work in the same way.
Conclusions: First, simply adding complexity to an already fat and useless desktop metaphor is not the way to go. Secondly, competing with Windows on this basis is both impossible and misguided. Thirdly, look at the way people really work, and design a new desktop metaphor for this. I've shown two possibilities. There are certainly more, depending on the type of work people do: art, music, writing, teaching, playing, negotiation, management,... each of these roles may deserve a carefully-designed UI metaphor. Lastly, creating the UIs that I've described should be a modest effort, and I'll probably do it myself one of these days.
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I agree with most of this but I don't understand why OpenOffice has changed so little; 1.0.1 came out in July 2002 and had no new features over 1.0 released over a year earlier.
I think Sun released open office to Screw with MS but they have no economic incentive to add new features.
I find it funny that Sun is using MS marketing 101- release a product to kill the competition (free if necessary) and then stop all innovation.
At least with this product we could pick up the peaces and continue to innovate. Does anyone know of a word processor/spreadsheet project that builds on openoffice?
Windows that kept crashing
Windows that had no Apps (I had to go out and buy them - a slow and painful business, especially as you find that after paying for them, they are still prone to crashing, and don't do what you want.
Windows has NO support - try phoning MS support - they just put you on hold till you cant face the phone bill, or tell you to reformat the HD and reinstall!
Windows comes with an EULA that needs a lawyer to understand it, and when you ask one what it means he/she explains "It means selling your soul to the devil"
think I will stick with FreeBSD thank you
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I was needing an OS for my second PC but didn't want to spend extra $$ or use my old win98 etc CDs lying around the place. Since I have broadband I thougt I would try Redhat so I grabbed the ISOs off the net. Man am I impressed its fast its stable, it has all the software I need and it even updated all its software over the net automaticaly. My wife uses that PC for school work (she's a teacher) and she loves it. No more windo$e licences for me.
be vigilant, be pure, behave
Most people don't really know what Mac OS X is... It's an OS unix like BSD Systems but it has a great UI. Thoose Aqua Guides are simply the greatest guides I've ever seen. Linux is great for servers but you can forget the Desktop it will kill the linux as we know it (simple and fast)
The Stone Dance of the Chameleon
Lindows is not a general purpose Linux distribution. It's a cut-down version of Linux where everything runs as root (as not to confuse the poor user) with a (half-working) Windows emulator on top of it. In other words, partial compatibility with Windows with a little of the security and stability of Linux. Sounds dodgy whichever way you cut it.
This is something that is not widely publicized, but Compaq aggressively advertises Linux desktop computers in the most popular Indian newspaper (Thats the only one I read, but they may be advertising elsewhere too).
Here is the system in question. (Look at the bottom line of the specs) In the ad they also mention that the linux machine comes with an office suite and sells for Rs. 33,990 (~US$680) while the equivalent hardware running windows and without an office suite sells for Rs.37,990 (~US$760).. Also, Compaq provides full support for their Linux PC.
I think that Linux has the largest potential to explode as a desktop OS in developing markets like India. This is for 2 reasons..
So while Linux may not be the best desktop system available, as we have seen before the best solution does not necessarily win.
More than possible, if you take figures from Apple (generous) and IDC (neutral) then Linux on the desktop has somewhere between double and 4x the number of users. The idea that OS X has more desktop users than Linux is a fallacy born of people making assumptions rather than looking at real world statistics.
... that us geeks are still providing all these
free services to people wanting to use
Microsoft "products".
My youngest brother keeps repairing our fathers'
machine because, obviously, he wants to do some-
thing in return for the fact that my parents
often help with his children.
As soon as we stop this, the whole pyramid scheme
collapses.
Toon Moene.
And how is this guy a Linux advocate? If I'd hear him, I'd be on my way out buy a Windows OS.
Flash 6 is available for Linux, for starters. Real has been with Linux from the start!
Second, Wine is cool etc. , etc. but we're going native, ultimately. Faster Openoffice.org, less Wordperfect 9. Wine is a good "bridge" thing, as there have been some to help you cross from DOS-land to Windows-land...
>> Can we be realistic?
We'd better not. For reality already surpassed our imagination by far. When would you imagine that MS would be so inept at dealing with Linux? Yes, ESR believed this, but he doesn't get it right always -- it seems this time he scored one, though.
When would you imagine people would stop laughing so quick about Linux? "Not serious", "a toy"... we used to hear that only 3 years ago! Who's laughing now? Not MS stockholders, for sure.
Microsoft will stay? Right now, I don't know. It's strong in the US -- and it is a foreign Enterprise all over the world. They'll need more than luck to compete with a free alternative outside the US. No corrupt politician is stupid at that level... they want to survive -- at least to steal again in the next mandate...
I'd moderate the parent post "Unconvincing".
> Over indulgence in low-performance programming languages
Do you mean C? Fortran?
No. This refers to apps written in languages not typically compiled directly to machine code. Such languages include Perl, Python, Java, and Scheme.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Being #2 in the desktop market only means you are ahead of the OS in the #3 spot. It doesn't mean Linux will be anywhere near Windows, the #1 spot holder.
-Slashdot Junky
.
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In Brazil, the center of the world (*grin*), you can buy Linux pre-installed PCs directly from 2 or 3 different companies right off the shelf.
Vendors were playing KDE games right before of me.
In another store, they locked the machine via screensaver, just as they do with Windows machines (boy, are these guys stupid or what?).
They even put that c't wallpaper of a penguin inside a folded desktop ("Linux inside"). Pretty cool and funny stuff.
Newspapers talk about Linux now and then. Teens use Linux in public internet access points (even MacDonald's offers internet access when you "order by number").
One of these days, you'll by a sound system and it will display a Penguin with its bright LEDs.
The Windows Island is sinking. Get in the Linux boat -- and be quick or they'll think you're a retard.
Sorry for the mistake. BTW, http://www.heise.de/ct has beautiful wallpaper art, by several authors.
Great way to make Linux look cool (and other Unices, too).
Macs aren't being sold in many places over here (Brazil), probably because it's too expensive and the general public is afraid to go with less "popular" machines.
In fact, other than *one* store -- devoted to sell Apple -- I wouldn't know where to buy a Mac now. The situation was different 2 years ago... you could buy an iMac at supermarkets. I guess it didn't sell, so they stopped offering it.
They're trying Linux, now. Guess what? Linux computers are cheaper than Windows ones.
I remember the old days.
Apple II rocked *because* it was totally different from Macintosh -- it was totally open.
We're back to better times. Many clever people will make money without needing to kneel before the king at Redmond.
Woohoo!
What, precisely, is a "patched together mess" in XFree86? Do you seriously think you'd find anything better if you got a look at the source code for DXn? Just because WinXX hides the grunge and cruft doesn't mean it isn't there.
Go wade through the stacks of DLLs installed by your display card drivers, the DLLs installed by Microsoft, and the registry entries that "configure" it. When you can explain what each of those DLLs and entries actually does, then you can gripe about how "patched" XFree86 is.
As to the website, you are absolutely correct. They should put up a 2-3MB Flash animation for me to have to suffer through before I can do a 10MB source code download, maybe some annoying midi music in the background, and some gaudy graphics. It's much more important that some wannabe artiste get to do flash graphics than it is to provide useful information and downloads like they do now.
By adding the flash animations, graphics, and sound, they should be able to boost their traffic volume by at least 20-30%. The system and network resources required are free, so why not make use of them? And everyone has broadband, so it's not like users will have to wait 10-15 minutes for the flash animations to download.
Idiot.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
the helpdesk people in my company are tearing there hair out.
>> fixed if you know what you're doing. [/i]
> That has ever been the bane of Linux and is
>partially why it is such a poor choice for the
>desktop. Geeks say, "yes, but you can do that
> by doing. .
> processes no regular human would remember or expect
> to know unless someone told them.
What has always just absolutely flabbergasted me regarding this problem, personally, is yes, it CAN be fixed, but WHY THE HELL WASN'T IT FIXED when they put the DISTRO together? Pardon me if this is being corrected in some distros, but a year ago, and for at least two years before that, I swear most distros came by default configured with the single shittiest font on the entire box, some non-scaling thing that was so bad it looked almost like random scatterings if pixels instead of text.
Yes, 30 seconds or so of clicking here and there fixed it, but it sets up a very bad impression.
RPM sucks too. In fact, this is what has chased me off from Mandrake and Redhat for the indefinite future. As long as I have to mess with all that stuff anyway when it craps out, Slackware works much better, and if I make my own mess, I have a good idea how to fix it. When RPM's mess up it can be hell.
Gentoo looks nice, but it's somewhat impractical on a modem connection.
In the near future, it may not be about servers and desktops in the way we know them. Making the next Office app may be worthwhile, but it isn't where software is going.
Software and computers are becoming ubiquitous. Web services, exchanging data, and having your data follow you is where it's all going. That means storage, networks, and security models.
Where Linux fits in is in making projects that helps to get there.
Mike www.sharecube.com
A bit off topic, if linux is poised to be number 2 how popular do you think mac would if they offered a stand alone O/S.
Personally I use linux as a desktop, I did this to force my self to learn linux, and it does have short falls. When I seen my graphic designers new G4 I was in love. Except that I had to spend a few grand to buy a slow and outdated piece of hardware (looks nice though).
Would you but a Mac O/S if it could run on a PC?
And did'nt have to buy Mac's shitty hardware.
and was priced around what XP is?
I think the percentage of people running solely Linux is much lower, while the % for people running both Windows/Linux is much higher!
I use both Windows and Linux, Linux mostly for experimental stuff and playing simple games in KDE.
Most of my friends have installed Linux in some additional partition, using it not that much too.
Same in work, both Linux and Win2000 get used.
Actually, when I was still on a dial up connection, and running a Lucent WinModem, I downloaded the driver for Linux, which when I unzipped the file, all I had to do was run a script. No recomiling the kernel. No arcane configurations. It even created a symlink to /dev/modem for me, so KPPP didn't have to do anything different.
Part of the reason for the 'push' for the desktop is to help create that 'critical mass' of desktop users. Theoretically, relatively shortly after that point all the vendors will magically decide that 'the Linux version' of their stuff needs to be the same as far as quality/features and released at the same time as the Windows version. Or, they will start making a Linux version if they weren't already. Of course, the Zealots out there, and I am usually one of them, hopes that once that point is reached it will seriously bite into MS's percentage of the market.
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm
Hardware support is much better for older products than Win2K or XP. I scavange from auctions an out of dumpsters perfectly fine functional hardware that just is not supported by the latest MS release. If your happy running 98 or linux there is lots of cheap old hardware.
I'm actually waiting for the day when computers get like major appliances where you buy one and you keep it for 15 years because there is no significant difference between old and new except over such a time scale. The current lifecycle is far too wasteful.
like those "certified for Windows XP".
I'm rather sure that the main problem for Linux now isn't the lack software (despite games perhaps) but the problem finding hardware in a shop that works with Linux. You'll always have to check the web before buying anything and find out if it works, how it works, etc. Sometimes you even have to monitor/ask the developer mailing lists to get reliable information.
Even real commodity hardware like printers or ADSL adapters still have problems under Linux.
I don't have a clue how to change this. Main problem: so many hardware verndors and so many distribution makers. Perhaps OpenLinux sets up some kind of certification program.
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
Linux is damn near there already, but I think the myriad of choices out there is confusing people.
/. geeks can rely on.
I think the Linux movement at large should be concerned with having a filesystem hierarchy standard [linuxbase.org] and be working for more common implementations (ie: the Linux kernel and other utilities provided by the GNU Project are but a few). There is such a thing as too much choice. Even the two primary package manager formats (rpm and deb) could be unified with Alien [sourceforge.net], which could be intergrated in a Linux distribution. Linux has the installation [caldera.com] and GUI downpat IMO, but good multimedia/P2P programs are scarce, and even the ones that should work dependably don't (I just sent a bug report in to Real.com because RealPlayer 8 farted out on me). Collaboration on a few key projects might be the solution here.
Finally, when you install games - I have Quake III for Linux - I don't think I should have to spend hours finding the right drivers and libs just to run the damn thing in 640x480. I was looking for old Voodoo2 drivers (I'm broke so I need to work with what I got) and 95% percent of the sites which supposedly had it were no longer up-and-running. I guess when the tech bubble burst, alot of people gave up on the Linux movement (or so it would seem). So maybe the last point is there needs to be reliable and comprehensive resources on the net that newbies and seasoned
Linux deserves to be the defacto os, but it's going to take a coordinate effort to ever see this happen.
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Real software engineers work from 9 to 5, because that is the way the job is
described in the formal spec. Working late would feel like using an
undocumented external procedure.
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Your last post method is a little off (considering this reply to your last post).