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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"
There already is a Unix variant in the number two slot, and its called Mac OS.
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.
I have been comparing Linux to #2 for years.
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.
'XWindows' isn't a desktop interface, it's a networkable cliet-server graphical display and input technology. KDE and Gnome (amung others) build upon the X Windows System to proveide a GUI.
I just happen to prefer Windows XP on my desktop.
Me too, I happen to prefer Windows XP on your desktop.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
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!
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
Maybe this news will make Apple seriously consider releasing OS X for the x86 platform.
Yeah, as apple.com base major decisions on 'oooh look what I read on slashdot'.
Your post has little credibility since you can't even call the X Window System by its proper name. And it's not a desktop interface, it's more like a MS Windows video driver that lets applications talk to the hardware. I think Linux is already #3 on the desktop, and I think there's nothing that will stop it from blowing right past the Mac.
Alright then. I find that all of the standard elements of a linux install (refering to Debian Woody here right now) collaborate to provide an ugly, uninteresting, and unproductive working environment.
... from my experiences with RedHat and Debian and FreeBSD, I prefer FreeBSD more.
The only thing I can stand about Linux's GUI interface is Mozilla. And I can run that on Windows. Everything else - widgets and window managers combined - they just don't blow my skirt up.
For the record, my server runs FreeBSD. I considered Linux, but the variety of non-standard places to look for configuration files baffled me into choosing differently. I've got a handle on it now, but
I tend to think that with the advent of picoGUI and GTKfb (potentially), X-Windows could (stress on could; I love X-Windows) be phased out. These systems offer a new way to access video hardware and framebuffers, etc. directly and as a direct result, they could offer a much more responsive, faster and enhanced GUI.
Your mileage might vary, but I'm very interested in these projects...
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
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.
And I've used it extensively. If I can't understand it well, how are endusers expected to "get it"? Imagine trying to provide support for them if something borks tbe Linux install? The majority don't even know how to send email in Outlook Express.
If you want Linux on a desktop, why do you need a GUI? Linux is not a GUI. XWindows/X11R6/XFree86, that is the graphical shell system for Linux, and it blows goats.
My stance is that until Linux has a decent GUI, it won't be a decent contender for Number 2 or Number 1.
..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?
---
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".
KDE and Gnome (amung others) build upon the X Windows System to proveide a GUI.
You are correct, and they would be much better off if they didn't. For a networkable client-server GDI XWindow System works wonderfully. For a a desktop system it's farking horrible, relatively speaking. Many of it's "FEEL" issues, the least of which have to do with performance and usability, carry over into the "upper layers" and are noticable in KDE and GNome. That is to say, the flaws that are easily felt in XWindows alone still peek through KDE and Gnome, leaving me to believe the problem is with X, not the other way around.
The way Mac went with OS X would be a great way for a free alternative clone (of OS X) to go. X just has too much support(...well...) for people to give up on it no matter how much it sucks for a personal computer desktop environment. Linux will never have the share of users it deserves until everyone can collectively break the mindset that X is the Unix desktop. Unfortunately, for the moment X -IS- the Unix desktop and that's why Linux holds 2nd place in a one horse race.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Just an idea:
In about six months or so, give the next version of FreeBSD a try as a destop OS. By then, KDE 3.1 should be nice and stable. KDE 3.0 is passable for a desktop GUI from a Windows standard. I'd place it at the level of Windows 95. KDE 3.1 is quie a bit nicer, and I would place it at the Windows 2000 level - if not close to XP in style and well thoughout icons/placement.
If you want a peek, goto kde.org and look at the screen shots.
FreeBSD kicks ass as a server. I love it as well.
OpenBSD for firewalls though...
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
So what is it? Microsoft knows it's coming. What's missing?
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?
--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".
You are correct, and they would be much better off if they didn't.
I humbly disagree - the three things that suck about the free X Windows System, in my dumb opinion, are: sucky mouse cursors, screwy anti-aliasing, shitty fonts and buggy alpha channels.
Fortunalty, all these problems with the X Windows System are being fixed as we speek. The trauma of removing X11 and replacing it with somthing else (somthing else that probably has suckyness of it's own) is probably more than just fixing X11.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
I've taken a look at those projects, and they do look interesting - if a bit ugly, still. That can always be fixed later, though :) My gripe with X-Windows is just my own personal crusade against XWindows - it does, incredibly enough, have some uses. Particularly in the networking aspects. But those are of little benefit on a desktop, right?
:)
To me, "desktop" signifies a tightly-integrated set of design concepts, executed in mostly-stable code, creating a fully-graphical computing experience that enhances your work. I've only ever seen one OS pull that off - BeOS. Windows XP comes close, but on Slashdot that might not be a valid opinion
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 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.
Hrm..
;)
Actually, I find the window managers used in unix desktops much more productive than anything MS ever came up with. Window shading, virtual desktops, and multiple workspaces (not the same as virtual desktops) just by themselves make the OS faster to use. Most people have to start closing windows when they start running out of desktop real estate. I just switch to another workspace and keep going. It makes development MUCH more productive, I can tell you that much right now. One workspace for reading API documentation, another (sometimes two) for writing code, and another for checking my email, surfing the web when I need another reference or a quick break, and for playing music. Depending on the app, I sometimes even use ANOTHER for testing the app.
Windows is far from having the best interface IMHO. It definitely has the most popular, but popularity rarely has anything to do with functionality. (More often it has to do with pressure to conform.)
Don't get me wrong. I think XWindows itself is a fucking joke. Shared memory doesn't help it's situation. Windows update speed is STILL an issue from time to time, and the current implementation of remotely running apps is getting old. What I'd really like to see is the ability to start a gui app from over the network, and dynamically detach it from your XServer without killing it. Letting it run headless in the background for a while, and then reattaching it on a different machine (or even locally on that previously remote machine) so that you can check up on it.
Basically, I want RDP with by the application granularity. Now THAT would be an advantage system admins! In fact, without that killer feature and without even taking shell scripting and regular expressions into account, unix desktops still beat the piss out of the Windows XP (and earlier) desktop environments. IMHO of course.
That being said, it does the job of being the foundation of a basic desktop system. After installation and proper configuration (which most distros get right by now), most users won't even notice the difference. There are specialized libraries for direct rendering, and games performance is not an issue. Driver availability is OK and getting better.
The problem is that X is such a mess that the traditional open source collaboration model doesn't work too well. There are only relatively few people hacking on the project -- it doesn't even have a Bugzilla and according to Keith Packard, one of the real X gurus, doesn't want one because there aren't enough people to deal with the bug reports. Just look at their gopher-era homepage to get an impression about their professionality. Yeah, I know, HTML 2.0 should have been the end of web technology, but I am not only criticizing the looks here but also the lack of structure and meaningful information.
X would be fixable in a dedicated corporate effort (if IBM got their act together and started pushing LOTD it would not be an issue), otherwise open source will slowly evolve it into something more usable. Whether a competing GUI system will reach this state sooner remains to be seen.
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
"You are correct, and they would be much better off if they didn't."
No, They wouldnt, And neither would we(the users).
If KDE and Gnome were each standalone apps that both reinvented the wheel for everything, You wouldnt be able to run Gaim in KDE, konquer in Gnome, or any gtk/qt apps with a better(for power users like myself) wm [fvwm2, *box].
Luckily KDE/Gnome are on top of X, so everything is nice and crossplatform.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
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".
The problem is that the fixes for them are extensions, which means that the core protocol ends up essentially dead, and everybody uses something different. Personally, I think that once these issues have been dealt with, it's time for X12: ditch the stuff that's no longer useful (all the color allocation stuff...), replace the core protocol functions with XRender-based ones, drop the old font stuff, bump the version number, and support X11 clients in compatibility mode. The people who started using the extensions can simplify the code, and the people who didn't can get better results in a straightforward fashion.
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. . ." and then list off a done of archane processes no regular human would remember or expect to know unless someone told them.
I like Linux and OpenBSD a lot. Use them a fair bit. But lets be honest. Typically installing software, doing updates, and so forth are *difficult*. Further getting things the way you want is as well. The problem is that Geeks who are used to doing that stuff have made fairly difficult things second nature. They are sufficiently used to it that they have a blind spot when it comes to the difficulties involved.
Making a good desktop computer involves much more than a nice windowing system. It means never having to play with a dozen text files listing archane commands. It means not having to buy an O'Reilly book when you want to do something. It means things work in an intuitive, expect fashion. Both Apple and Microsoft realize this.
Linux is powerful. But easy? Ha.
I've not used Lindows, but I halfway wonder what will happen when Grandma wants to run something that requires an upgrade.
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
hahah, you're going to kick me
No, that's a great choice if it fits your needs!
Seting up X11 has really gotten better on almost all Linux distibutions and Unix like OSes. Mandrake is actually easier than Windows XP! No hunting down drivers for odd chipsets! FreeBSD has a GUI based setup that is rather odd, but gets the job done.
The GUI front has really progressed quickly in the last 18 months. It's literally gone form complete suckyness to darn-right OK. In the next 6 months, if the curent pace is kept, XP will look lame.
BeOS was darn fun - It's still impressive. It really sucks that Be isent around to kick around.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
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".
Why is the name of the X Window System ANY different from the name of Winamp (which many call "WinAMP" or "WinAmp"), the name of the Mac (which many call the "MAC"), the name of Microsoft (i can't even begin to list the number of "alternate" spellings for this), the name of Windows (which many call "Windoze" or "Winblows"), the ellipsis ("...", which most fucktards write as ".."), any mispunctuated or misspelt word or sentence, the abbreviation "etc." (which many write as "etc" or "ect")... why don't you take time out of your zealot lives to correct all THOSE typos every single time they come up? Really, what the Hell is the big deal with "X Window System" that it needs to have a dozen persons pointing out its proper name in every discussion?
For the record, i'm not trolling. I truly don't understand why that has to be brought up so often. How does choosing not to write out "the X Window System" == "little credibility"?
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++
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".
wouldn't a ~$200 game console make a far better gaming system than your PC? Maybe some kind of display switch would allow you to use your computer monitor for the game console?
;o
Think about it, you'll pay $200 more for a beefy system just to run the games on your PC and most of that would probably be for the video card. When short-range wireless controllers are standard the console box can stay hidden away.
Now if you are talking about playing games on the company time then adding a console becomes an issue.
It seems like the console is where the gaming action is these days anyway or am I way off base? Most of my friends have consoles these days.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
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!
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?
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".
Your absolutely right. But you see this will happen on a curve. Linux is gaining market share for whatever reason. In reality if the market numbers show it is approaching #2 in reality it is already well past since those number represent a small fraction of actual linux installations. As it gains visible marketshare however, linux will be better supported by software companies and hardware manufacturers. This and the ever improving world of open source will boost linux's share. People will move away from microsoft once it becomes viable and makes sense (unless they are some freak who loves microsoft and for some very odd reason decides slashdot is a snuggly home for them? and they will move when they have little choice) This will in turn mean even more support from software and hardware developers and vendors. Which leads to more marketshare as "all my apps" become available... which leads to more support.. more marketshare... until at last BeOS takes the desktop.
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!
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?
You may have a point, but as the tech who does just that with a number of things every day. It's a rare user who walks to the MSN butterfly, most glaze and ask what I think they should use. I think they should use linux.
Typically installing software, doing updates, and so forth are *difficult*. Further getting things the way you want is as well. The problem is that Geeks who are used to doing that stuff have made fairly difficult things second nature.
This is why Linux will take the corporate desktop long before the home desktop.
> Because it's better than making Micro$oft richer.
Ah, the young who don't know of the days when IBM was Microsoft, with all the DOJ attention that implies. The phrase 'IBM and the seven dwarves' was coined for a reason.
Their web page is fine. Imagine you have a computer with no window manager and you want to install one... It's pretty convenient to access xfree86.org with lynx and find what you want.
I challenge you to access microsoft.com from a base install of NT4.0. It's not even possible to find the page to update the browser
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.
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.
I don't understand. If Virtual desktops are such a big deal to you, why don't you just use them on Windows too?
s /p owertoys.asp
r l= /nhp/Default.asp?contentid=28001169
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/download
Actually I don't understand your scripting comment either.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?u
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.
Then some people [slashdot.org] blow smoke about "usability" and "not compatible with as much hardware as Windows XP." What shit.
You discredited your entire post with one sentence. Congratulations.
Free Software does not do it all anyway. Where's my free software GLX driver for nVidia? Well, it's free, yes, but it's not "Free as in Freedom" 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.
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 really do need to grow up a little bit. This is slashdot, but when you apply for a job I wouldn't suggest putting "M$ sucks" on it. The whole dollar-sign-for-an-S thing is really rather silly. Microsoft isn't dead, their billions that you claim will evaporate are enough to keep them alive for years without ever selling a product. Many, many years in fact. They could go from the time it takes you to finish high school, get a PhD without selling a dime or laying off people, and they wouldn't have a problem.
Maybe you should do BSD is dying trolls..
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
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?
"Basically, I want RDP with by the application granularity."
Give 'xmove' a try.
Care to provide examples of what you mean? Linux is older than windows so maturity goes out the window.
Stability? This is a hot topic of debate, all I know is I've setup alot of windows systems, and alot of linux systems, and quite a few hybrid setups that combine the two. To date I've had one incident where I had to "fix" something on a linux server, in this case a dsl provider changed their dns and had all dns requests to it resolve to a page they put up saying they changed it. Naturally this screwed up the nameserver cache and it had to be cleared. Took 5mins to change dns and fix cache. That is the only linux fix I've had to do across dozens of linux network setups I've done, and the dozens my co-workers have setup.
Now windows servers on the other hand, I've had to setup many, they almost always have various little issues. They require attention, the networks are weak and get broken simply by lack of windows network stability or users changing things or installing apps on their desktops. Setting them up correctly is not a guarantee they'll work correctly. I've faced script kiddie issues, OS instability, blue screens, ram issues (linux seg faults almost instantly with a bad ram module, windows will run for a while, since most bad ram is doa but not completely dead, I consider this a windows issue) lack of performance, and constant required upgrades on the system to have the latest version of MS software.
Power? a windows system isn't scalable, that could be argued to be the heart of true computing power. It can't handle large databases, can't run a decent quake 3 session, can't survive playing multiple divx movies simultaneously, it can barely handle multiple processors and not many. Where is your windows power? Would you can to try benchmarks and load tests of identical hardware running linux and windows?
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".
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?
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 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.
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.
Heh. Mission failed.
#2 = shit. A freudian slip by the submitter, perhaps?
The Zealots(TM) have a hard time springing for wash day money, as it is.
The "Zealots" don't care one way or another about whether they have "24/7" support, because they've happily fixed their own problems for years, and anyone brought out on a support call would be someone very much like them.
CIOs care very much, because they may not *have* a Zealot handy, and are interested in covering their ass (not to ensure that the *system* keeps working...to have someone *else* to blame if something hypothetically goes wrong).
May we never see th
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
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.
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.
sucky mouse cursors
Aside from the fact that no one has made a good enlarged bitmap set (I'm using some seriously pixellated ones that I scaled up), I'm not sure what you're looking for.
They're black rather than white, which I've always found a lot better looking, rather like the Mac OS. I suppose someone could prefer the Windows coloration.
They don't have a 2k-style drop shadow. I *hate* the drop shadow. It looks *ugly*, IMHO. Sorta like dirt on the screen. Gives a bulbous appearance to the angular cursor.
XFree86 doesn't support pixmap (colored) cursors. I read about this once, and apparently it would be very trivial to add support for this, but no one's bothered to do it. I've always considered this more of a novelty item than anything else -- few people that I know of use colored cursors on Windows because it's distracting and not as easy to see as a pure black or white cursor.
screwy anti-aliasing
Huh? I've had no problems with antialiasing.
You might be referring to the *hack* that gdkxft was. At the time, gtk wasn't designed to do antialiasing, and you could get some cosmetic issues, but you'd have to go out and install gdkxft yourself to get it anyway.
Antialiasing looks fine to me in gtk 2.
shitty fonts
I also never understood this one. It's true that Verdana is a really beautiful font (I'd say that the sorely underused Espy Sans from Apple and Verdana from Microsoft and "fixed" from XFree86 are the best screen fonts around). So I do use Verdana, but I don't really see anything that atrocious about the other fonts. You can use Windows TrueType fonts, so you have all the non-MS fonts available, and aside from Verdana and maybe Comic Sans, MS's fonts aren't that great. Impact is an atrocity against mankind in readability, Trebucht is annoying as hell to select letters with, since they're often only one pixel thick), Courier New and Times New Roman are just variants of already done fonts...
buggy alpha channels
Huh? What are you talking about?
May we never see th
The windowing system consists of many different modules, the function of which is incomprehensible to all but the most advanced users
Umm...and this is different from Explorer *how* again?
Five years ago, that mattered. Today, things are autoconfigured and detected. The internals don't matter.
Configuration files are differently structured and found in different locations.
What have you had to mess with other than XF86Config? XftConfig is gone, and stuff belonging to xfs is for a separate program -- most people on a single user system do not use xfs. And more importantly, *why* are you? There are (granted, at long last) excellent graphical config utilities now. If you don't like the config files, you don't have to interact with them.
Trivial stuff like font installation has long been a horrible mess and is only slowly getting fixed (fontconfig etc.) - the defaults are still atrocious to anyone with a basic understanding of font usability
True.
Just look at their gopher-era homepage [xfree86.org] to get an impression about their professionality.
Looks damn professional to me, i.e. looks like someone who actually understands the design behind HTML made it.
Yeah, I know, HTML 2.0 should have been the end of web technology, but I am not only criticizing the looks here but also the lack of structure and meaningful information.
I've always had good success finding what I wanted on there.
May we never see th
Microsoft.com is a really good example. It looks "professional" to designers, and it's absolutely impossible to find what you want on there. mfc42.dll? Nope. How about information on a security problem? You come up with five other similar issues, but not that one. Whenever I find a page that I'm looking for on there, I bookmark it, because it'll take at least half an hour to find it again.
MSDN is even worse. They have a format that is *unbelivably* painfully slow to render, and have things indexed so that if you're looking for an Win32 function reference page, the Windows CE version comes up first (which all of, oh, 1% of developers remotely care about).
May we never see th
Yeah, as apple.com base major decisions on 'oooh look what I read on slashdot'.
It's gotta be more useful information than whatever Jobs's current whim is.
May we never see th
--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.
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.
Just tried it out.
:)
It is close, but not quite. The author himself recognizes some fundemental problems with color depth variation between Xservers. The interface could use some work as well, but that is to be expected from a thesis project. (At least I _believe_ it was a thesis project. I didn't look very hard to verify that.)
Only two things really need to be done to make xmove better.
#1- Integrate the functionality into X and the Xlibs so that every X application ran has this functionality already built in. This will allow you to easily fix the color depth problem, and will also remove the need for a separate xmove and xmovectrl. All you'd really need then is xmovectrl (probably renamed to just xmove). Fussing with getting xmove set up in advance is just simply too much trouble.
#2-
Fix the ssh tunneling problem. It probably has to do with the funky redirection that ssh does to X sessions. So I don't blame xmove directly. In fact, I don't even care if ssh is used at all, I just want some form of encryption. I don't fancy having my raw X11 sessions flying across public and/or insecure networks. Again, tying this into the Xserver and the Xlibs would make this easier.
#3- Add the ability to configure the default behaviour for broken X sessions. It would make more sense to have broken sessions auto kick all client apps into suspend mode, rather than letting them die just because your Xserver croaked. (Thourhg I would squeeze that in there.
That's pretty much it. I'm going to start using xmove for a few X apps that I always wanted to be able to push off onto my rackmount vs always running on my desktop.
I appreciate the tip, by the way. xmove and dtach are going to be quite useful combined. (I don't like screens. It tried to do too much. dtach is really simple)
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
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.
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.
Cut him some slack, he was using Windows calculator.exe.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
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!
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.
"They want money, moolah, cash, the greenbacks, dinero, Benjamins. And they want a lot of it."
As opposed to Microsoft that only charges $250.00 + per incident?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
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.
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."
Because it makes ignorant people think X is a ripoff of Microsoft(r) Windows(tm). Seriously, look around you! Many, [b]many[/b] people think X is some kind of shameless clone of MS Windows just because everybody is calling it, improperly, "X-Windows"! This ignorance must stop, X has nothing to do with MS Windows and it's about time people realize that!
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.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
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
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
From the XFree86 webpage:
But anyway I do agree, the webpage design is horrible, but it's the program that matters, not the webpage.
The one thing I can't get is the 'XFree is the most supported, so we use it' vibe. I mean, this is OSS so we should just be able to create a new system from the ground up and 'port' all the drivers Xfree has, right?
Or am I missing something?
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
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.
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 has ever been the bane of Linux and is partially why it is such a poor choice for the desktop
Please try not to make generalisations. Metatheming is well under way development wise, and XCursor themes are trivial to install. A gui for it in KDE/GNOME will be along shortly. By the way, for those who don't know, XCursor lets you use hardware accelerated 24bit alpha-blended animated icons. They are made out of PNG images, so expect to see lots of them on theming sites soon. Installing them is simply a matter of putting the .cur file into the right place on the disk and altering a config file - both things that are trivial for a GUI control panel applet to do. There isn't one yet, because XFree 4.3 hasn't been released yet. Give it a few months.
Typically installing software, doing updates, and so forth are *difficult*.
Yes, we know this, it's pointed out in every single discussion of Linux on the desktop ever. See my the link in my sig for possible solutions to it. People tend to generalise though "Oooh, it's hard to install software, therefore everything in Linux is hard". That just ain't so - one thing is hard. If there are other things that are hard, point them out, and they'll be made easy. There are only a few things left to polish up really, Linux is much closer than most people realise I think.
There are two separate issues here. The first is that a problem in the internal scheduler means that when performing opaque moves or resizes, some of the clients are starved of event processing time inside the X server, which is what makes it look like the contents of a window lag so far behind the border. That isn't X being "slow" as such, it's X being dumb about timeslice allocation. It's definately fixable, it just hasn't been fixed yet.
The second one is that window resizes are async, so the border updates separately to the contents. This has the advantage that if an app stops responding, you can still move/resize/minimize it, unlike in Windows where if an app freezes it gets nailed to the screen. The disadvantage is that the contents sometimes lag behind the borders in an opaque resize. In fact, with the dumb scheduler running, the lag is small - noticeable but small. XSync will probably go some way towards fixing this, given window managers and toolkits that support it, by letting the two clients lock themselves together.
Despite appearances, the X team are aware of the problems with the technology and the project and are addressing them slowly but surely.
Oh, and their website is XHTML by the way. It's simple so it can be navigated in text only browsers, and because time spent prettifying the site is better spent on the code. The GNU site is the same.
> 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?
Flamebait, indeed. The Mac bigots can't handle the truth, it seems.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
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.
Actually GTK2.2 has xmove style functionality built in, so any GTK2 apps should be able to do this. I've been unable to figure out how to activate it though. The XFree team are aware of and are working on the colour depth issues, but I don't think there's a solution in the current builds though.
That's how X currently supports anti-aliasing, transparency, etc. But Xext doesn't let you modify the core protocol functions; it won't let you put 8 bits of transparency in an XColor and then set it as a window background, or add fields to GCs. Instead, the extension has to use its own versions of things, which ends up being pretty awkward.
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
And Microsoft's tech support is free? Oh, no, wait, that's right they charge too. EDS and IBM both charge for their Windows support as well. Support ain't free on *any* platform. Duh.
My journal has hot