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Rise of the 'Consumer' Linux Distribution
Hodge writes "Newsforge has an article discussing the potential for 'Consumer' Linux distro's, i.e. ones aimed at regular users rather than the Geek Elite. It's quite an insightful article, recognising that the vast majority of computer users just want a system that works and don't care about issues of open- or closed-source and don't even want to know about dependencies."
Or have we in geek culture spent too little time away from the average user to recognize this ourselves?
I've only been saying this since I started using Linux in 97/8... Think, but can your DAD use it?
-- If at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment. -- Harry F. Banks
What these companies must focus on the most is the ease of installation if the user would like to dual boot.
100% Insightful
They don't want to know about dependencies!? What's next, a linux user who doesn't even know what make is?
Mass hysteria! Cats and Dogs living together!
Most users don't give a damn about the philosophy behind the software. When my managers hear "Linux" and "Open Source" they really hear "free". They like it because it doesn't cost them anything.
I've only been saying this since I started using Linux in 97/8... Think, but can your DAD use it?
You think this is funny, until you have children.
So how long before Redmond comes to the realization that they too can package a distro. Just include some proprietary code in some of the packages, and just barely undercut other Linuxes with compatibility features.
Just another paranoid thought, brought to you by
-theGreater.
There was a similar article in the Buffalo News yesterday.
Odd to see this stuff getting so much mainstream attention. I especially liked how the author of the Buffalo News article went out of his way to point out how much cheaper a computer is without MS Windows.
Free software won't be taking over the world any time soon, but its definitely getting more and more mindshare every year.
--saint
Most of the consumer distros get this right. In fact, my experience is that SuSE, Red Hat and Mandrake are all easier to install and more logical than Windows. Plus they all come with great install documentation. The big problem has been and probably always will be compatability with the 1000s of software and games that ma and pa can buy at the local CompUSA (not to mention Wal-Mart).
Microsoft use the "repeat until people start to beieve it" marketing method which make people think that windows is some revolutionary concept that make computers easy to use. Then when they get people on the windows they lock them in with proprietary file formats like Word doc.
If microsoft started to market Linux today they could make the peoples think it's easier than anything else aftera a matter of time too, it's all in the marketing. Linux will never ever have a consumer success on desktop until they understand this. But you watch the FreeBSD learn this since they are really OSX. they will be the ones to make consumer success, not Linux.
All the best,
--Achmed
Swaribabu Consulting Inc. -- We code so you don't have to
I don't see these distros succeeding until they either sell them for VERY little money[1] or for free. Because let's face it: most "consumers" are cheapskates[2]. How many people do you know copy illegl versions of Windows XP? Or download illegal MP3s? Copying CDs anyone? The pirate market is HUGE.
Sure, you can argue that not everybody does that. But the point is, the *majority* are cheapskates.
[1] Selling for little money or for free introduces other problems. Like "It's cheap/free, so it must suck"-prejudgements.
[2] About the "Linux users are cheapskates"-stereotype: that's not true. *Consumers* are cheapskates.
It's already gone. Install Mandrake or SuSE, you won't see the command line unless you click the shell icon.
Personally I don't even install a GUI on my Linux boxes, so I'm not one to talk about making things more friendly.
There are still fundamental configuration problems that need to be solved.
I've evangelized a few friends to run SuSE 8.1. It's easy and slick to install. Nice KDE desktop. <list of good things omitted>
Still, I get questions that point out obvious deep problems not solved yet. "How do I change the resolution of my monitor?"
Obviously, you don't just go to the Display control panel, change it, see the change take effect on the screen with your windows and icons automatically adjusting. Not to mention useful help such as if the display doesn't appear just press ESC or wait 15 seconds.
What I'm getting at here is that different high quality software projects such as KDE and X windows are not deeply integrated. While I commend these and other projects, it is still not Mac or Windows easy to use. KDE has done a wonderful job of putting some system configuration features into their control center. But I suspect some additional technical features/api's in X would be necessary in order to achieve the seemless resolution changing ala. Mac or Windows.
This is but one example, although perhaps one of the worst ones. High level gui control panels seem to already do many things well, such as configuring your PPP or other low level things.
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
The goal of Linux should be to provide a useable, friendly operating system that is very cheap or free.
People don't have to know how to build an enginer to drive a car. They know that being able to open the hood and fiddle with the engine is dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, and to lock the car when you are away from it, that's common sense.
This common sense should come to computers as well. Locking them when you are away and not fiddling under the hood. However the option SHOULD be there for people who know what they're doing.
If Linux can bring that option and reduce the cost of new operating systems to a reasonable amount, THEN it will have achieved a respectable goal.
If more people use it because it is clearly the best choice, depending on distro, then Linux will be where we want it to be. Those of you who only use it as an OS because it's different, you will have an excuse to move on to bigger, better things.
The issue is more about a couple of things really: We use windows at work, so thats what most people know. In fact, few people I know have even heard of Linux. Secondly, Linux's philosophy of open source is also its worst enemy. No one wants to learn how to compile something to simply run a binary, yet most software out there has to be compiled to run. And sofwtare is the biggest issue - when ordinary folks think of software, they think CompUSA etc. Until CompUSA or the other computer superstores sell Linux versions of software, this issue is dead. And in many cases they simply cant. Linux will remain in the realm of techno-geeks, as an oddity of the computer world.
SuSE Linux 8.1 looks great, has the ability to run a majority of Microsoft products (it installs Internet Explorer on the Gnome Desktop), and even has a nice GUI for installation of Windows apps. What more could you want?
No! Keep the command line as powerful as it is, but make the GUI tools more powerful. I love being able to edit /etc/X11/XF86 config by hand. Currently none of the configuration tools are powerful enough for me to configure my Dual-Headed setup with two different sized monitors at two resolutions, nVidia reference driver, etc.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Of course that takes more effort.
How about making all applications based upon a system where all functionality is handled in the application's libraries, and merely called by the executable.
That way, the GUI apps can be built right on top of that, without sacrificing functionality either way.
The power users still have their interface, and grandma has her point and click.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
From the article
How much would you pay for a Linux distribution that took essentially no work or skill to install and administer? What commercial software or other features (like compatibility with popular online tax prep applications) might make you decide to lay out $100 or more for a Linux distribution or annual Linux software subscription?
If a company puts in a lot of usability features and then puts it on top of linux and then makes that part of code non-GPL (even if open source) it would be a different question altogether.
But a "generic" user is not going to pay for it if he can get it for free , and what stops me from redistributing it as long as it is GPL? In other words
If some company still releases a linux distro with some non-GPL code, the can make money for
1) The part of code which is non-GPL (The user is really paying for only that intrinsically)
2) Support
3)Work put in by the company for hw/sw testing (i want to be sure it works on my box), package selection,CD burning etc.
Certainly not going to get you 90% margins like M$ gets
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
I am sure this is debatable, but it would be nice if the linux desktop developers were a more artistic in desigining the desktop while they are at it, rather than creating a clone of the Windows desktop. There is no question that the average user doesn't care of open or closed source. But while you are giving them a choice of the OS, give them a different desktop as well.
Hmm, I can go pick up a box copy of Redhat 8.0 for $29 at a local store and get a real distro instead of these flash in a pan wannabe's that think that CrossOver Office + Wine = "Runs Office great."
Bite the bullet - It's easier to use Openoffice than support a MS Office-on-linux solution. Joe Blow has a hard enough time with Office on Windows, let alone some hack (as neat as it may be).
And you can find 2000/XP at thhis price point as well. Win2kSP3 with OpenOffice is a better value than these distros. At $30, Redhat with OpenOffice is unbeatable, even for newbies, 8.0 is _easy_. For the rest of us, Debian isn't going anywhere.
It's quite an insightful article, recognising that the vast majority of computer users just want a system that works and don't care about issues of open- or closed-source and don't even want to know about dependencies
I'm an experienced software engineer, and I don't care either! I want to work on developing my products, I don't want to be a full-time system administrator, constantly having to fiddle with things. And I don't care about open vs. closed in most cases either; I'll go with the better product.
There is a pervasive movement in American culture (I am an American, no flames from elsewhere) to avoid responsibility, to have other's do the worrying, to dismiss technical know-how as geeky or somehow dirty. As an engineer, I've noticed an increase in a willfull cluelessness about technology. I think that its the same drive that's pushing some people to want government health care, government schooling, etc. People don't want to "have to worry about it". Well, I have news for you. A computer is a complicated piece of machinery, not unlike your VCR (which may or may not be blinking 12:00 at the moment). You cannot drive a car without taking a class, and learning something about how it works. Witness the Windows catastrophe. Dependencies matter. A cell phone requires a manual to learn how to navigate (some of it may be fairly intuitive, but still). Technology is the physical implementation of science. This is not Star Trek, you can't just assume that the Computer "knows" what you want it to do. Is there a place for appliance-type systems for word processing, email, games? Yes. There are dedicated machines for this. To try and make "a computer" friendly for Joe Longneck may be an intractible problem.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Linux is free? Well, the code is - the implementation, on the other hand...
I think it's akin to checking a book out of the libary when you need something done - sure, the information is free, but you still have to pay someone to implement it, that is, to actually solve your problem. Of course, the idea is that once you've solved the problem, you add your solution back to the library, so it takes the next person less time to do it.
Since Linux and the entire GNU project in not made to please business, I do not think it is right to make some all end-user-operating-system. The values that the Free Software Foundation has tried to build up with GNU would be lost by putting money into it.
These people who are using the system will not understand what it is, and as someone said "they will not even know what make is", or not even GCC.
I think GNU/Linux should remain the "free" Operating System which these Geeks can hack around with. There is more to it than money you know.
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
Banished to the bottom of Boston Harbor by a shaman, the 'Consumer' had been awoken. Reckless scientists meddle in sediment matters better left alone. Making his way toward Tokyo, the 'Consumer' flatten student homes and workshops as he leaves a path of destruction accross the United States, consuming every consumable. Governments are left powerless to stop him. The 'Consumer' even receive help from a despicable group called the 'Consumer Advocates', and the EFF. But in the land of Redmond, Washington, a group codenamed 'the 1337 MSCE Microsoft Certified' go out to stop the 'Consumer'. Time is running short, but 'the 1337' will have to try to use their immense resources to save Billkind. In the American mid-west, the 1337 make their first attempt to stop the 'Consumer'. After laying waste to Idianapolis, and also destroying student homes and workshops, the 'Consumer' must face his noble enemies for the first time.
As much as I hate to say this, but we need a fs that has a windows look to it. To most users /mnt/floppy means it is time to get some viagra, they know that their floppy drive is A:, hard drive is C:, and their network drives are L:, M:, N:, etc. I personally think that A: B: C: D: are horrible names for drives, I like the idea of file systems being mounted off of a root fs, but most people don't understand that concept. I personally wouldn't use a fs like this, but for it to be commonly accepted among users, they are going to need something like this.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
I don't think MS can package a Linux distro. I'm sure somebody knows the details, but I believe that when MS sold Xenix to SCO, they agreed to stay out of Unix-land in the future. Anybody know the real story?
... at least not from Dell in the UK.
What I'm getting at is that however "easy" it is to install a Linux distro, it's far easier to get going with Windows because your PC's already got it.
The non-geeks won't even think of using a real easy distro. Whilst making the distros easy is part of the war, the first battle is to get Linux pre-installed on consumer-spec machines as a matter of course. Until then Linux disto-makers will be swimming in a tiny puddle of geeks whilst Microsoft has the ocean of normals to itself.
Rob.
There's a big, BIG but here. With out argument, it's pretty safe to say that linux is an excellent operating system, its safe, secure, reliable and stable (most of the time, which is alot more than can be said about it's competion). I've run it on several systems of my own, but always end up back on windows for on reason or another, those reasons mainly stem around one big thing...with windows, changing settings, upgrading, and configuring new hardware/software doesn't make me want to run screaming into the night pulling my hair out.
It's simply not nessicary to have stuff be this difficult. Sure, it can very easily be learned, and there's documentation out the wazoo for the majority of the topics I, and I'm sure many others have had problems with, but installing a new video card should not, under any circumstances, turn into an 8 hour battle with a configuration file, and unless your a hard core geek, that could happen very easily. This is the core problem with linux, and why the consumer wont use it until fixed. My parents and friends have problems running windows XP...do you think they could handle some of the even semi complex tasks of running a linux box? Highly doubtful at best.
Until linux can match the ease of use of windows (gawd, I can't believe I'm saying this), it's going to remain a niche OS for the geeky, mostly the geeky w/ lots of free time on their hands to bicker and fight w/ their computer when things go wrong.
Flame on!
"Give someone a program, frustrate them for a day... Teach someone to program, frustrate them for a lifetime."
Port solitare and freecell to Linux. "Regular" users will flock to it.
Give the masses what they want, crap.
(in the consumer's mind): PRICE!
Gotta love those. Can't wait to hear more about people's grandmas and this guy called "Joe Average".
<:
and what they've done with OS-X on BSD.
That level of quality, reliability and integration is a tremendous achievement for Apple. However, it's a fairly large organisation that cross-subsidises its software costs with sales of hardware, unlike most of the linux disto companies - so far.
If RedHat, MandrakeSoft, Lindows or whoever could produce a product with this level of finish I'd buy it in a heartbeat and bear the susbscrition costs with joy.
Apple have at least shown what can be done and raised the bar quite significantly.
I'm optimistic that, bit by bit, the better linux distros will at least catch up.
But in the meantime here I am, wallet out and still waiting...
which raises the obvious question on if this is the direction commercial consumer oriented linux should go in.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
...Slashdot's own Roblimo! And linked to from Slashdot. Wow. A Slashdot editor posts a link to an article by another Slashdot editor from Slashdot. It'd be funnier if Roblimo submitted it :)
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Is this really such a good idea? I mean there is linux as we have it now, and what it could become
What things become depend a lot in popularity. Depend on what is seen to be the best option.
If consumer linux distrobutions are what abounds, then that is where the effort will lie.
Where's the real use in concentrating so much effort on what the lowest commen denomenator will need? Wouldn't we be better off keeping what we have now?
Make the changes we need for our own systems. We know best what we want, and we're the ones who know how to change it. We then get the best possible result
Teach the rest of the world this, and it's like teaching a man to fish. You'll feed him forever. Teach them you'll do it for them, and all they will want to do is pay you. Thus, commercialism becomes rampant in linux.
I don't want to worry about dependencies either...
I'm currently using SuSE but I'm starting to hate it. I used to love it. I've tried yast, apt4rpm and fou4s and I still run into dependency hell.
(Still can't get the latest version of gnucash on my 8.1 laptop!)
I tried switching to gentoo but I couldn't get the sucker to compile.
I guess I'm going to try debian next.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
From the article... "If we all liked the same thing, there would only be one program , that did everything we all needed, and we'd all own it."
And it would be called Emacs...
I would like to stop worrying about dependencies. I own a 60 gig drive. You can statically link your program with a 30k lib. Really, I don't mind. I don't like hunting down source tarballs for some obscure program I'll only need once. At least give the option to download a statically compiled program. The dependency hell is one major aspect that makes Linux difficult for many new users. And I won't even mention circular dependencies.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
How much we're willing to spend in return for what level of service is still open to question. The idea of software subscriptions is still new. Is $99 per year too much to pay? $119? $69? $59? What about "tiered" subscription prices...
So after two or three years, you've paid nearly as much for a copy of Linux as you would for a copy of Windows? That seems kind of silly. Of course, you're getting access to a software library (if well-implemented, a very good one), but most people don't buy that many pieces of extra software anyway.
I think the writer's crazy to think that people are going to pay $99 or more a year to get access to a software library. Picture this:
"Yeah, Mom. A copy of Windows is $200, plus any software you need to buy. A copy of a friendly Linux distribution is $100, plus you can pay for a software subscription for $100 a year if you want to be able to update your system and download software easily."
"I think I'll just go with Windows. I'm familiar with it, and it sounds cheaper in the long run, because I probably won't need much extra software." Yeah, that's what I see.
Don't they have a contract with the owners of SCO that mentions that they'll never make a unix like OS?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Perhaps they already tried this and failed, but do you think Dell could possibly tap a new market by selling low-cost PCs with RedHat (or some other user-friendly distribution) preinstalled? They'd have the marketing muscle behind such a machine, but I'm concerned that they wouldn't cost significantly less than a comparable Windows system, given the low cost of the OS to Dell...
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
None of this means anything until there is a CD that my MOTHER can load so easily (like XP) that she doesnt have to pester me for help.
-Thats what makes an OS powerful, the MOMMA test...
I think Microsoft had a huge success with Windows Activation. Once they integrate that into pro, I think their piracy level will drop a ton.
Sure, some people will find a crack for it, but Joe Blow can't hand it off to his co-workers without additional work.
I'm only talking about the US. In China where illegal software is usually sold, I'm sure it will be a cracked version that's sold.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Just the fact this guy had to write a multi-page article to figure out which version of Linux, web browser, and office suite just shows how far Microsoft is ahead. There is a power in unified development and vision; it's a power that will keep Windows on top and Linux fragmented. Last time I checked Microsoft offered free easy updates to the Windows operating systems, but it seems to get easy updates you have to pay monthly in the Linux world. There seems to be this duality in Linux which is 'it's free if you're a geek, but you have to pay if your not'. Free Linux vs XP is one thing, but pay Linux + monthly fees vs. XP is another, and for the average user it's going to be pay Linux.
1)Linux will never be easy to use until someone "makes" the programmers make it easy to use. ... right, like she'll ever figure that one out.
2)No one will will ever make the programmers do anything until there is a seriuos financial opportunity.
3)There will never be a serious fianancial opportunity, because the programmers refuse to make Linux distros easy to use. (Example: have your mom do a " file> save as" in Windows. Not perfect but simple enough. Not have her do it in yer fave Linux distro.)
yeah
To this day, even simple things make no sense in Linux.
This is because the people working on the applications are only interested in technical bragging rights.
Its a sad combination of Big Ego and Low self-esteem of its applications programmers that will relegate Linux to the server room for years to come.
(Unless Redhat starts hiring Apple people and ditches Gnome and KDE both !!!!)
"Corporate rock still sucks. What are you gonna do about it?"
I have to admit, while I know my way around linux using distros such as Red Hat, Mandrake, and Debian, for my main desktop, I chose a simple, "it-just-works" distro, Xandros Linux. While its front-end isn't what most linux geeks would like to call complex, its design, and construction makes it that much more worthwhile. Along with the powerful underside of Debian, Xandros has made my life easier by just working.
When I ran Mandrake 8.2 for a while, I spent nearly a week trying to get my D-Link WiFi card to work. I managed to snag a copy of Xandros 1.0 after hearing such great things, and lo and behold, my card was detected and installed within 5 seconds of putting it in the PCMCIA slot. All I had to do was specify the SSID, and a few other things. No editing text files at all.
So, while I use Red Hat on my servers, and I am a complete command-line junkie, all I wanted out of my distro was that it just works. I know a lot of people and friends who are thinking of giving LInux a chance, but like myself, they don't want to sift through text files, or spend an hour trying to install an rpm or compile source,They just want to turn their computer on and it works - and especially doesn't crash.
Distros like Xandros, Lycoris, and Lindows should be applauded for their services to the Linux community by promoting ease-of-use alongside power and stability.
From the amazing marketing mind of "hookedup" I love how you invented that number clean out of thin air. Could we stick to posts that ummm...have some form of truth behind them. I don't like to read fiction on a webpage for news.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
As a half-geek, I admit the "ease of use" issue is why I don't use Linux. If I switch, the Microsoft area of my brain will atrophy and I'll won't be able to answer the tech questions and assistance asked of me by my friends and family.
If there was a Simple Linux, I'd switch and bring my friends and family with me, and could very well bring my employer too (because I provide the tech support there). The current distros of Linux simply are not worth that effort.
Or have we in geek culture spent too little time away from the average user to recognize this ourselves?
If you look at the desktop experiences of one advanced user who isn't a developer, I think it's safe to say that this is an ongoing problem.
A viable desktop operating system is more than a kernel and associated utilities; it's dependent on applications which *do what the competition does* and which look good and work well.
After all, to Joe Sixpack, the computer is a tool, not a toy.
The threshold which developers have to cross before we, as a community, can say that Linux is ready for the desktop, is one where the developers stop thinking about stuff as being "cool", but start to think of useful features, common interface guidelines for everything, and color schemes which don't make ordinary users wince every time they start a given application.
(Don't argue to me that you can easily adjust the color schemes in the preferences, you *know* most idiot users can't figure out how to do this.)
Features? Examples:
Note that I'm comparing a *CURRENT* version of OpenOffice unfavorably with a *6-year-old* Microsoft product. That's not something we want to brag about - "The leading office suite for Linux has most of the features of a 6-year-old version of Microsoft Office!"
I've only been saying this since I started using Linux in 97/8... Think, but can your DAD use it?Thank you. It's good to hear an increasing chorus of voices who're worried about this, especially as we reach a point where, on the surface, it looks like Linux is a viable alternative to Windows on the desktop. Those ordinary users who make the switch now will be dissatisfied very quickly, and will become staunch Microsoft proponents and purchasers for years to come, even when all the current problems with a Linux desktop have been addressed - public perception changes more slowly than the feature lists of open-source software.
As for Dad, no. He's 63 years old. If I were to install a really locked-down version of Linux on his machine, I'd have to place "Internet Explorer" and "Outlook" icons on his desktop. If I were to change the location of the Send button in Outlook, he'd never figure out how to send an e-mail, let alone swapping him into a whole different program on a whole different operating system.
He called me up and asked me why he couldn't get to a website that someone told him to check out. The URL was all-revealing: blahblah@domain.com. The difference between an e-mail address and a website address is apparently too much for him.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Perhaps the average consumer does not need more than a web browser and a word processor, but much of business requires specific applications. My industry, architecture, can not use the computer without CAD software. Thus our choice of operating systems is restricted by the offerings of CAD. (And since AutoCAD currently reigns supreme in this industry, we're stuck on Windows for a long time.)
All this talk about Linux distributions is child's play, what we really need are apps, then we can discuss suitability of distributions. I can not understand why no one seems to realize this. Enterprise level CAD and accounting software would swing huge numbers of users (personal or business) to any flavor of Linux. (Like the construction industry, maybe 5 percent the total US GDP.)
(BTW, if anybody is interested in starting a GPL, GTK+ CAD project, please drop me a line... I'm not an experienced programmer but I can do graphics, documentation, HTML, whatever, to help a serious effort. You can check CAD on Linux for more on me and my (admittedly old) research into CAD on Linux.)
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
In windows that Dual-Headed setup would be extremely easy. Another linux failure. Windows figured out how to make that easy in 98, what taking linux so long to make things more user friendly. Like still having to mount drives, that's the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
The most typical question I get when I've shown Linux to a new user is "So where's my C-Drive?". Basic usage of Linux on the desktop is now 'there', I think, but as soon as you have to look under the hood or have to think in terms of admin and root priveleges to install something it can get scary. Paradoxically, WinXP may be opening people up to these concepts. I believe that for Linux really to take off and have a hope of supplanting Windows mainstream acceptance it needs to be used in schools when kids are taking their first accepting, open-minded, faltering steps and we'll eventually be hearing the question "What's this C-Drive thing?"
perhaps i'm not familiar enough with the RPM system, but i have to give it to MS - their 'Add/Remove Programs' feature is indispensable. surely it may crap sometimes (but not too often), but in general the ease and convenience of the 'Add/Remove Programs' feature (e.g. the registry) needs to be implemented on Linux. software installation on linux is just too annoying and 'hacky' for the average joe....
smd4985
I think the most important thing about linux is that the underlying system is free and open. The real problem with MS (for example ;-) is that they can use there platform to effectively blackmail people into not using alternatives, hence stifling creativity etc, etc. But commercial apps on the whole should be a good thing, because they should have to be worth paying for, and more importantly, they give people jobs.
I would really like to see a symbiosis between free and commercial apps, which keeps the commercial guys playing fair, while still providing quality software. Once this fashion for selling upgrades by locking users into your product is done away with, the commercial industry will be much more beneficial. I hope OSS software is starting to make this happen, and I think MS is a big help here.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Actually, IceWM does that quite nicely. If you go into IcePrefs, the configuration utilty, then click on Taskbar, you can tell it you want either a double sized taskbar or that you don't want to show the open windows on the taskbar. If you do that, you can click on a blank area of the taskbar and quickly type in commands. Need to make a directory quickly? It's simple to type mkdir ~/new on the task bar and have a new directory created. It really integrates the cli very nicely into the gui world. You don't get feedback, but for simple things it works just fine. For example, ls won't scroll through all the files and display them in the command are of the taskbar, but ls >> myfiles will pipe the output to a file nicely.
I've been looking for something similar for windows for a while but haven't found anything this powerful.
Just last night, I needed to ressurect my RedHat 6.1 installation, so I could work on some C programming at home.
/dev/hda, but now they were on /dev/hdb. After all that time, I couldn't even remember it was on /dev/hdb8 ... I had to DL a windows program to scan the partitions to find it. Once I included the ROOT=/dev/hdb8, the kernel panic'ed, and put me into a root shell. Except now, it had mounted the / partition as read only. I had to swap back to Dos, figure out the command line params to put it into RW, boot back, let it panic again, then trace through /etc for the configuration files. The culprit was /etc/fstab
:w :q. Reboot again.
Over the course of 2 years, I had swapped hard drives, video cards, and internet providers. I had gone from Win98(1stEd) to Windows XP now... and boy, was I in for a treat.
First off, the COMMAND.COM eqiuvalents in Windows ME & later do not support the processor mode flags that allow programs like LOADLIN to swap in the kernel. I had to go on the web for a Dos6.0 floppy disk image (even though I had Dos6 on my hard drive, you can't SYS it because of version problems) and make myself a boot disk. Once I was in Dos6 again, I could boot...
Except now I had swapped hard drives. The bootup scripts were expecting all of the partitions to be on
But now, how does one edit a file on a computer without emacs, since up to this point everything went to X11 (and run xedit like a normal person)? VI. Yay. So, imagine trying to learn syntax after 8 years of non-use. *Obviously* the Edit mode command is (ESC)-A, from there I could remember
So now everything starts up ok, and I get to the terminal. Log in, and it's time for X11. Of course the settings for my old Voodoo3 don't apply any more, I need to get it to work with an NVidia GForce3, and when you try to run X11, it craps out to a garbled video buffer, definitely not mode $80. Had to reboot just to get the text termal back.
So now I browse the web, and I find an XFree86 binary just for NVidias, so I'm happy. I copy it over, reboot to Linux, mount the drive, and try to run it... no go, it has GLIBC 2.1.3 & 2.2 dependancies. Back to Windows to scan the net for files, and finally found them in RPMs in the redhat 7 & 8 distributions... and that's where I left it, after 4 hours of tooling around. And I still have to look forward to eth0 working with DHCP before I can even get on the net..
Now explain to me how an "modern average" user is supposed to figure this all out? Linux needs SOMETHING to configure itself!
I've used TurboTax for the web last year with Netscape 4.x and this year with Galeon, with no problems whatsoever. If it will work with Galeon, I suspect it'll work with Mozilla.
GET YOUR WEAPONS READY! --DR.LIGHT
Packaging: RPM simply sucks. Debian's apt-get handles dependencies, but there needs to be a hard and fast rule that any generic package will install on any Linux distro -- we can't expect users to hunt down packages specific to their distro (nor can we expect developers to create several package types). Until this is overcome Linux will never be ready for prime time.
Hardware: Huge strides have been made towards supporting various devices, but there's still more to be done. Having one sane, standard package format would actually encourage hardware manufacturers to do support.
More standardization: How come all Linux word processors don't use a standard XML file format?! This could be fixed with the next compile/release of AbiWord, KWord, etc. but it is not done. How come there isn't a common CUA standard (yes, progress is being made, but it's being made slowly)?
We've got our strong points too. I've been playing with KDE 3.1 and it simply rocks. KDE 3.1 is ready for a Windows end user -- it's that slick, that easy, and it still has the bells, whistles and config power to keep me happy. I'd say the desktop is ready -- it may need a big of polish and a good selection of nifty themes, but it's ready.
It's those other items that are creating drag...
All this talk about making Linux more usable creating BLOAT is just garbage. Frankly, I think all the work on KDE and GNOME in the file managers and desktop etc. is a worthless waste of time. Why waste system resources looking through files using an internet browser? Why render all the pictures as thumbnails? THE BLOAT IS ALREADY THERE FOLKS! (and Windows XP makes me barf!)
Currently, I run a Windows ME system with 98lite applied to it which converts the file explorer to the one used by Windows 95 (ie NO WEB INTEGRATION) and also removes the underlying HTML engine and Internet Explorer from Windows. My system boots and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds. It runs Moz, OpenOffice AND all the Windows games like Ghost Recon (and Splinter Cell when it comes out in 2 weeks). My system is a lot more stable and useful than any of the Linux distros I've tried over the last eight years.
Yes, I've used different window managers in Linux including rat poison. But in the end, I had to ask myself WHY BOTHER? I can use OpenOffice and Moz on my windows system with perfect reliability and play games and use my USB card readers and ATI Radeon without a hiccup. I already own Windows.
Usability != bloat. My mother was a wiz with MSDOS and Wordperfect 4.2. Why? It was simple and predictable. Boot then type wp at the prompt. All the key commands were on a card around her F keys. Suddenly everyone needs Windows XP bloat to make computers easy? HA!
Usasbility = (a) O/S is preinstalled on system when it comes; (b) office suite is either pre-installed or installs easily with one click [OpenOffice in Windows is this easy]; (c) installing new software using InstallShield type clone; (d) system is simple, predictable, and consistent.
I don't have a subscription for Windows software and I'd never pay for one for Linux software. What a nutty idea if it's meant to spread Linux to consumers. Microsoft got it right with the bundling of Windows and Office at the start.
Here's what we do. Choose the 2.4.18 kernel from LILO, boot to runlevel 5, start XFree86 4.2.99.3, start a KDE 3.1rc6 session, pull up a command prompt and start phoenix& (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021207 Phoenix/0.5).
Here's what the rest of the world does. Start Windows. Click on the Internet thingy.
A "consumer" package has no choices, and no real options. You get support for all your hardware, one app for each job, and no apps that you don't need for email, browsing, word processing and playing solitaire. You get a one button, idiot proof method of updating your system. You don't have to know what kernel you're running, or what a package is.
That's what a consumer OS is, and that's what KDE and GNOME are moving towards. Whether we want Linux, GNU apps or XFree86 to be used as the basis of such a system is another question entirely.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The Linux community will be much better off when geeks realize that there is no difference between a geek and a consumer. All of the things that make "consumer" Linux easy should be placed into the Geek distros. If they shouldn't, then there is something wrong with the feature. Let me provide a scenario:
I went to a Linux Users Group meeting, and one of the Windows geeks posted the question "What do you guys do with your computers?" The answers were amazing - none of them did word processing, or craeted graphics, or music. None of them were math geeks, or biology geeks, or programmers. None of them were homemakers, or fire fighters, or teachers... they were all sysadmins. To them, an "applied" use of a computer was adding users and scanning for viruses. These types of geeks aren't qualified to determine what should be in an OS since they don't even know for themselves what they are using their computers for. It's like those guys who have 3 cars in the backyard, tuned and customized, but they would never think to run them on the road. So they don't know that the new super-duper engine they just installed dies after 3000 miles. :-)
Let me tie this into a quote from the article:
Most distros I have seen come with multiple web browsers, multiple MP3 and video players, several window managers, and more text editors than I ever knew existed. The result is the exact same crime we claim against Microsoft: bloat! Installs in the multiple gigabyte range. It becomes difficult just to browse the web or play an MP3. We need geeks who have a real use for their PCs to be deciding what goes in a distro. This is good for geeks, and it is good for consumers.
There's nothing that stops someone from whipping open extra CD #7 and installing the obscure browser and mp3 player they like. But it is better of to start out clean and nice and pretty, and let someone customize it, than to start out bloated and force users to trim things out.
People don't realize that MS Windows has been "free" for years. I am sure that MS did this intentionally, but how many people have actually gone to the store and paid for a copy of any flavor of Windows since Windows 98 came out? People got the OS because It is either packed into the PC they bought or they got it from a buddy whose PC came packed in with it (copy protection was non-existant before Windows XP).
When you buy a new Dell, WinXP Home is a default option that adds little to the final price to the PC. This is why Linux is facing an uphill battle. It has nothing to do with Interfaces, command lines , or GUIs.
When the thousands of products out there say "PC/Mac/Linux compatible" rather than "PC/Mac", then things may change. (And if we trust "Linux compatible" - at least one network card claimed this but came with an out-of-date kernel module for the wrong chipset, and the multi-channel digital audio card pointed to a German enthusiast's web site for the drivers which was only 404-enabled.)
In the meantime, I'll keep my three Linux servers doing the good server-type stuff and dual-boot a laptop into Win98SE for actual desktop computing.
The author's mention of TurboTax is interesting. My wife is an accountant in the States, so she needs TurboTax. Until she can run this on Linux, she must have Windows available. And, unfortunately (like the author mentioned) it's not likely we're going to see `gnutax' or anything like it in the near future, because of the ridiculous amount of legal crap which must go into tax prep software.
I refuse to have proprietary software on my machines (not only for ideological reasons, either--proprietary stuff just mucks up the system), but I cannot totally eliminate Redmond from my household until there is a way for an accountant to do TurboTax on Linux.
I am certain that other professions face similar dilemmas. I am optimistic, however, that once businesses without such special requirements (i.e., they just need an office suite, e-mail, and browser) use Linux widely, the vendors of these packages will feel pressure to port them to Linux--much like vendors of Mac-only software often bowed to pressure to port to Windows.
Or so I hope.
In principio creauit Linus Linucem.
I assume the people you know are at least semi-tech savvy people.
I know in the past, corporate america was notorious for making copies of Windows and handing it out to co-workers. Throwing in a crack is enough work and adds enough uncertainty that I think it's slowing these sort of copiers down.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
From the article: $99, give or take $20, seems to be the new price point for full-featured, consumer-level Linux distributions.
Incidentally, Windows XP Home's undiscounted price is $99 as well. And it comes with Windows Update for *free*. Add on OpenOffice for Windows and one's all set: very usable OS, lots of apps.
Given that an Office suite is the only chink in it's armor, I'd wouldn't wonder if an office-suite-lite was bundled into the OS soon. Three cheers for competition!
personally, if I can't perform polynomial regressions in my spreadsheet program, I'm just so at a loss I start to drift on an iceberg of uncertainty and fear.
5 -- You'd rather trust a large company to run your servers than some flannel dude with a 1987 ThinkPad
4 -- You'd like to spend time debating politics and religion on #debian rather than actually learning about your computer
3 -- You prefer reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues... well, let's just say you're a Mac guy at heart
2 -- It's best to shy away from any operating system that can still be installed using a couple floppies
... and the number 1 reason to avoid Slackware
1 -- You can barely write a Slashdot post without errors, yet alone a 200 line video card configuration file
Check *nix.org out -- free blogging 24/7/365
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Linux on desktop is like windows on server. It just won't work. As long as one can not run microsoft, adobe AND macromedia products on it, it is doomed to stay a server os, with the exception of a few slashdotters who believe anything is possible. And I even think it's not a decent server, as a matter of fact freeBSD performs much better in network load and uptime, it just ain't got the buzz linux has.
>> It's quite an insightful article, recognising that the vast majority of computer users just want a system that works and don't care about issues of open- or closed-source and don't even want to know about dependencies
This is true, but the average user also wants what everyone else is using.
If Joe User can't figure out how to do something, he wants to be able to call up one of his buddies who knows and ask him how to do it. He doesn't want to deal with "I dunno, Joe. I never used Linux. Sorry"
If his buddies have Macs, he'll be inclined to get a Mac. More often than not, his buddies have Windows, so thats what he wants too. His buddies dont have to be computer geeks, just someone whos used $APPLICATION before and can give him a hand.
Chances are good if he knows someone who runs linux, they are of the 'technical elitest' movement, and wont help. They'll stick their noses in the air and say "you should run Windows or get a Mac, Linux is too complicated for you".
There's an air among many of the 'in-the-know' computer geeks that they wont share information. Even Free with a capital F information, when it comes to linux. Whether its a feeling of power they get by knowing more about something than someone else, or whether they cant be bothered, or it's just a lack of social skills, it doesnt matter. They like to call themselves Gurus as if they have some mystical power and you should beg them to use it for your benefit.
It's not every linux user who behaves like this, but a large enough portion of them that it will continue to slow it's growth on the desktop.
If you want to help linux get accepted, help the users who need it.
Eg, a friend of mine has an old Compaq that he only uses to print invoices and work orders for his small business.
After about 12 times reinstalling his printer for him after Win95 kept mysteriously 'losing' the drivers, he asked if maybe he should upgrade to WinXP. I convinced him that he could do the same thing for free with Linux, and helped him get it all set up. He was wary of all the free software, because there'd be no tech support line to call. I asked him "did 1-900-tech support get your printer running for you?"
He hasn't had any problems yet, but if he did, he'd call me up, I'd come over and we'd have a couple of beers and straighten it out.
(and it's quid-pro-quo, when my furnace died on me, he came over and helped me get it firing again)
Anyhow. If you want linux on peoples desktops, put it there. And don't be an elitist shithead if they need help.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
. . . the same drive that's pushing some people to want government health care, government schooling, etc.
Ok, maybe I'm missing something, but don't we have government schooling already? Doesn't it go by the name "public school"?
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
LOTD (linux on the desktop) starts in schools and enterprises. right now, functionality is far in excess of what 90% of people need. plus all the added things like security, no viruses, etc., etc. and no, when linux gets market share there won't be linux virii, think apache vs. IIS and think market share. duh. LOTD begins when suzy senventh grader says to me (i actually do teach seventh grade):
"hey, i need to finish to project at home, can i borrow your linux cd."
"well certainly, how 'bout i just burn you your own cd".
or when joe employes needs to finish up work at home and then just brings the cd home.
windows is not easy. windows is not user friendly. neither is a bicycle. windows is what most people sort of know. but that can change.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
You sound like a frustrated geek who is absolutely outraged that the unwashed masses do not take the time to properly learn how to use the tools that go along with your personal hobby, computers.
As has been said many times before, for most people a computer is a tool not a toy. It is a failing on the part of the software developer not the consumer if the technology is not used to its fullest potential.
Yes you have to take classes to drive. Thats because a car can kill people. When was the last time you heard of not knowing how to print your MS Word document leading to a 41 car pileup on the highway?
When the day arrives that Artificial Intelligence is good enough to allow anyone to get what they want and need out of their computer without taking one class or reading one tiny word in their manual will you still be angry at these people? When AI lowers the status of the average geek to that of a cockroach what will your snobbery have gained you?
Will you still look down on everyone as if you are better then them just because you are a computer obsessed geek?
The fact that you believe this phenomenon is limited to Americans further reinforces how close-minded and unaware of your global surroundings you are. Its kind of funny that a tool you spend so much time with, the Internet, has failed to properly broaden your horizons and help you mature into the mature person we all have the potential to be.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
ones aimed at regular users rather than the Geek Elite... "Oh Mandrake" if it's available on a Wal-Mart pc, do you think they are going for "Geek Elite"????
I love linux, but honestly I like it best for computers with no moniter, the big differance between windows and linux is that you can turn on linux and leave and never look at it again and it will still be running. windows breaks down every 2 hours, which is okay if your sitting right there
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
But I do have a social life, so I'm not willing to lose a whole day just to configure my desktop, or two days to install a new package. This is waste of time, and I won't waste my time with things that aren't related to my hobby: programming.
Of course, I use computers for other things: surf the net, get the latest news, read and answer email. When I am doing that, I want the smoothest user experience possible. I want smooth graphics. Want integrated applications. Want them all available within a click. I want most things the avarage user wants. You don't need to be an average user to want a good desktop.
Currently only Xandros (using PowerQuest's PartitionMagic) in the Delux Edition, ASPLinux-using a propriatary system, and now Mandrake-using ntfsresize.
See: http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/status.html#ntfs tools
Linux doesn't have a chance to gain market share until it comes preinstalled on the majority of computers and most applications are EASY to install.
Joe Blow user that buys a computer at Best Buy does not know how to install an OS be it Windows, Linux, or OS X. And guess what, most don't want to know. And they don't have to.
They just want it to work. Linux must be preinstalled and then the apps they buy must be Linux apps and they must install as easy as dropping in the CD.
That is what the M$ Windows world is now. 99% of computers sold have Windows allready installed and most programs install by dropping in a CD and autolanching the install program.
Linux isn't there yet. Yes it more stable, yes it is mostly more secure(but you got to work at it) but Joe Blow don't know, don't care.
Linux on the desktop as mainstream will NEVER happen as long as M$ exists and they preload XP on every box made.
OS/2 in its day was the better OS but it didn't have a chance as most PC shipped with only MS-DOS/Win 3.1 preinstalled.
When Quicken, Quickbooks, and most games come out in Linux versions that install automagicly and RedHat is offered on every desktop as an option then you've got a chance. Otherwise Linux will allways be the other GEEK OS.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
A couple weeks back my curiosity finally got the better of me, and I burned an iso of the latest knoppix release. It was hard to believe that this was the same operating system that I'd had to strugle so hard to install not so many years back. Time consuming note taking in preperation for the first experience with Linux had been replaced with simply opening the cd door!
One simple step and a fuller desktop than the default windows quickly loaded up. Open office documents, play mp3s, divx or even some games, all within minutes of putting the CD in. I think someone nervous about computers would actually have an easier time with this stystem than any of the windows flavors. Configuration tools were about the only thing really lacking, and KDE seems to be moving to including beefed up tools anyway. When KDE 3.1 comes with knoppix, and with a few font changes, I really think it will have surpassed windows for user friendliness to those with little computer experience. With a a little tool for automated hard drive installs, I'd almost start handing this thing out to people at christmas.
Everything will be taken away from you.
I've been preaching that myself for a couple years, but nobody wants to listen. The elitists are an infestation that has to be removed before any free OS will gain world domination. 99% of desktops are used by people who couldn't care what is running their programs as long as their programs run. Uber-geeks trying to keep everything mystical aren't helping the cause at all. The first OS to oust the elitists will win. Oops, looks like MS did that.
And the first desktop that includes a simple, reasonably powerful programming language will win the desktop wars. Think back to the old Basic days - it allowed non-geeks to make their computers do useful things for them. Those days are gone, there are no useful desktop languages for non-geeks today. That's elitism at its worst - the geeks are telling end-users "you can't do *anything* with your computer without us."
It was a problem with your outdated distro. I wouldn't expect a copy of Windows 3.1 to know about newer video cards. For the most part, most newer distros configure themselves quite fine with most major hardware.
-Cnik
Ignore Mac because there's zero software for a sec.
- kernal. It doesn't throw 9000 slightly different web browsers each reading a different subset of pages at them. And it doesn't make you do anything more complex than insert a CD to install most stuff.
Windows is 1000x easier to use than your average Linux. It doesn't ask insanly complex questions during install, it doesn't blind you with 90million avaliable file formats. It doesn't worry you about user accounts if you don't want them.
It doesn't require EVER that you know your monitors horizontal refresh rate or plunge through a list of 1000 packages to try and find if it installs a notepad.
It has ONE desktop which people know and which, by and large allows them to do what they want better than either KDE or Gnome. It avoids jargon usually. It doesn't in general stop people doing what they want to their computer just to make them type a root password.
It supports 99.9% of hardware immediately. You don't need hardware addresses, or to compile weird modules. You just know "Windows XP" not Linux-but-its-this-distribution-with-this-obscure
99% of the time it "just works".
(Of course that 1% is pure hell)
This isn't why Windows is better. Lord knows a lot of the time it REALLY isn't. It IS however why it's still easier to use (even sometimes at the expense of security and power) than Linux and probably always will be.
Lindows is a start but it's install still hung on one of my machines for no visible reason. Knoppix is probably a better one as far as ease of getting it up and running goes (once they perfect an easier HD inst). But certainly for the moment Linux isn't within 100 billion miles of being easy enough for my mother to use.
Linux is heading in the right direction
Linux is non-graphical, people. X is separate from Linux - it runs on many Unices.
I keep seeing, "Linux on the desktop" articles. This is moronic. The day when Linus puts a graphical desktop environment into the tree is the day that this becomes valid. Until then, we should be seeing articles about "*nix on the desktop" or "X on the desktop". These aren't specific to Unix.
Sheesh... I'd rather run and support X on BSD since it allows for some relief of the GPL headaches. Go ahead and try to get that binary video driver onto newbie's PC over the phone.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Yes, is was fast at the command line level, but when I started KDE it crawled. Five to ten seconds to paint a pull-down menu!
Win95 ran just fine on that P/75. Why won't Linux with GUI?
What is needed is to set a reasonable goal for functionality and performance and ease of use. Win95 (with real USB support added) would be fine for Ma and Pa Kettle. New hardware is cheap. Used hardware is even cheaper (IBM 300PL/P3-600/128mB/10gB for $189 at CompGeeks, P-IIs for $85. Sheese!).
As mentioned elsewhere, consumers are cheapskates, but they expect value for almost nothing. Give them a Linux that runs well on older hardware and you'll have a winner. I can imagine my neighbors' enthusiasm if I told them they could have a decent PC with decent software that would get on the Internet for around $150. (Yeah, they could put illegal copies of Win98 and MS Office on that P-II, but most won't because it's not right.)
You want to create a system for the masses? First you have to draw a line in the dirt, define a realistic goal, and not move on to more interesting things until you accomplish it.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
okay, that's a simplistic argument. but for me, at least, it's what's kept me for the longest time from switching fully. And I think that for average everyday user, it'll be a big issue too. I make a living as a programmer (granted, not an *excellent* living, but I pay my bills on time), and I appreciate Linux for its power, flexibility, and openness. I've been isntrumental in my company in getting them to switch to Linux servers, to trying out Linux desktops, to replacing MS Office with OpenOffice wherever it's feasible, and generally spreading the Good Word (tm) of OSS. But when I get home after a day of code slinging, the last thing I want to see for at least a couple of hours is another config line. I want to double-click on something and get straight to fragging, not spend half an hour fighting with WineX and wondering what I configured wrong *this* time. Granted, WineX is making great strides in compatibiltiy, but frankly, it's not there yet. Performance wise, it's horrible in my experience. It's sad when my Athlon XP 2200+ with a GF4 Ti 4200 can barely handle a game under WineX that I know runs fine under Windows on a P3 600Mhz and an old Voodoo card.
Now, I've read the arguments about people saying that windows can be just as hard and user-unfriednly as Linux for configuration things, and, as an MCSE, I can agree.. *however*, the average Windows user never, ever has to deal with those aspects of Windows. Your average windows user clicks on a thing, and a program loads up. That's it. I know people who've used computers for years, consider themselves computer-savvy, and yet they were surprised when I showed them Windows had a Control Panel. The thing is, windows makes it *possible* for someone to use his computer for years without ever having to touch a config file or panel. Linux doesn't. You have to recompile stuff, type in arcane command lines, and edit text config files, just to get a minesweeper clone up and loaded. Give the people true point-and-click, don't force them to configure *anything*. Make it so stuff comes pre-configured.. leave the settings there for those of us who know our sh1t can still tweak the settings, but just leave it tuned to 'well-enough' and it'll be good enough for 90% of the populace. Users want things to Just Work (tm), they want to click 'Next...' through a couple of dialogs and have their apps installed and ready to run. And when something does go wrong, they want to be able to call someone and have them know how to fix it. People don't *want* to learn how computers work! I've seen it myself, day in and day out, in my business, end users don't know, and don't care, and don't *want* to know or care, about how their computer or their programs or their OS works. They just want it to work. Until Linux can give the average user the ability to just boot up and have things working, without forcing them to *understand*, it'll stay behind Windows in adoption. Period. And yes, I know I'm advocating pandering to the lowest common IQ (which seems ot be in the single digits), but that's what sells, and that's what gets people using your OS. If you're not willing to make Linux idiot-proof, or at least idiot-hardened, then don't even bother bitching about how people aren't picking it up fast enough. The vast majority of people are idiots. Linus isn't simple enough for idiots. Windows is. Ergo: the vast majority of people will use windows instead of linux. end of argument.
Please post all flames in an orderly fashion below.
"Two things are infinite: the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the first one." - Albert Einstein
Saying a problem is intractable, especially one that isn't a computational complexity problem, is usually a mistake.
I'll keep the intro brief. I started using Linux in May of '97 and it was some ancient Slackware distro. Anyways, it was mainly used as a server but I thought it was cool anyways. The server (upgraded several times of course) is still running today. I've always read people talk about Linux on the desktop etc. etc. but I was like, yeah whatever maybe someday I'll put time into it and make a neat desktop out of it (remember, I'm still thinking in terms of the ancient Slack distro).
/etc/lilo.conf", so I did it, then went back to dselect and finished the install. I rebooted. It was magically in 2.4.x. Anyways, I like the packaging system hopefully you will too.
About a month ago I found Knoppix and I was really blown away. It runs Debian actually. Anyways, even my dad loved it so much he got an old pc and threw Debian on it. I learned how to get around dselect/apt-get and I was really impressed. Admittedly, I had never used a packaging system before. (Knowing where everything installed on my old Slack server is a *skill*) Anyways, I still play with Debian adding/removing packages and I haven't come across a problem yet.
I think my favorite part was upgrading the kernel from 2.2.x to 2.4.x and Debian was told me "hey modify your
I'll be impressed if anyone actually finished through this boring tale of mine.
Is if there was a distro that I could just slip into my laptop's CD, boot up, install, and recognize my wireless NIC, allow me to connect, and be surfing and using stuff within an hour. No kernel rebuilds. Just a simple install...
I stick to walls...
I remember years ago, I sat down and decided to come up with what I thought was the Best OS design. I am no developer, so I didn't understand all the details. I was simply looking for a workstation - server design that would work.
My design on the server was simple. A unix server with a very thin UI. The UI was basically to allow for config tools to be brought up- only worked via being on the console, and had an http interface for remote administration - besides the CLI tools. A system geared to 'serve' with few resources on the front end.
The workstation was more complex. It had a GUI embedded in the kernel, so the workstation would not boot up without the interface. The system had a bash prompt for CLI commands, and the interface was very intuitive. What my goal of it all, was to have the same base OS (kernel) and the ability to remotely admin all systems, but the workstation would be fronted to have an easy to use interface for end users.
I even had pics of the interface drawn up. I showed them to a developer friend of mine, and he liked the idea. Damn it if I can't locate them now, as I can't remember the details on the workstations. But I do remember cut and paste, OLE and other niceties on windows were apart of this 'OS'.
sigh....I can dream, right?
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
Whoa, nicest post all morning.
Is that like a cool version of a geek? Wouldn't that be an oxymoron?
Summation 2
How do these proprietary add-ons benefit GNU developers?
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
1) MFC, Win32API, OLE
Almost every application you see today for Windows uses MFC. Its a common library for Open and Save Dialogs, printing, etc. The Win32API is an all in one bundle of programming calls that make it easy for developers to talk to the OS and other applications. OLE 2.0 was one of the most coveted featuers of Win95, now its known as Active-X, COM+, DCOM, and a whole slew of other names. It took simple cut and paste of text to a new level allowing you to embed data from Excel in a Word document. This framework is also used for application development and the UI.
2) the registry
I'm not saying the registry is the end all be all, but why must I search through 400 config files burried throughout the OS to change a configuration option? A common database for configuring EVERYTHING (OS, Applications, Services, User Prefs) would be nice. That way I dont have to symlink the plugin config file for java to the mozilla plugins directory (which is different on every distro and install base).
3) InstallSheild/WiseInstaller/InstallVise/MSI
A point and click install engine would be nice. So far RPM has been treating me nicely, but I want the installer to create links to the applications within Gnome or KDE and then remind me to have a nice day. But one of the reasons that these products can do what they do on windows is common libraries and library/object registration (regsvr32 is your friend).
4) Boardwalk, parkplace, the railroads, utilities, yellows, reds, blues, and everything other then the purples. Sure, "Everything" works on Windows. Everything is developed for it, all the hardware vendors supply drivers for it (ever try getting a canon USB scanner to work in sane?) I guess that's one of the perks of the game when you own everything including the pot and free parking.
No I realize this is a bit weighted towards Windows than many of you are going to like (let the flaming begin). And alot of it may be because of my lack of experience with linux, but for some reason I get the feeling its alot harder then it should be.
Funny, when my manager hears "Linux" and "Open Source" (mainly from me), he gets immediately defensive. To him it means "unfamiliar", "different", and "not approved by Corporate". Makes my stomach turn.
It makes me sick when we have to sit in meetings and work around delays and problems caused by licensing issues imposed on us by software vendors. "Oh, we can't install that environment, we don't have enough licenses. We'll have to wait for the PO to go through on it before we can proceed." We have to budget in licensing that we may never use, but we will sit on licenses that we have paid for because we don't want to give them up. It's too hard to get them back, and we have the money in our budget already. Argggh. It is stupid and wasteful.
Most users don't give a damn about the philosophy behind the software.
They probably do more than they know. People get copies of Windows and Office and games from their friends all the time. They do it because they can't pay $$$$ for it, yet they need it. Managers and IT people want software that is reasonably priced without licensing hassles. (except in my case I guess) I'll bet that a lot of people would like the Open Source or Free Software philosophy if it was explained to them. They probably won't fight for it, or pursue it, but they would choose it. But even if they don't, or are never given the opportunity to, I am damn glad that *I* can choose it. It just needs more support from the people who make software so that the end user can get the programs they want.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Yes you have to take classes to drive. Thats because a car can kill people. When was the last time you heard of not knowing how to print your MS Word document leading to a 41 car pileup on the highway?
I was trying to print a "Warning : ICE" sign for the highway...
I have to agree with a lot of the other posters. Linux is at a crossroads if it wants to make an impact on the desktop. There are a few areas that need addressed in my mind:
1) Being useful on the desktop means that packaging methods, configuration files etc need to be standardized. The way to get Linux in the door for desktop use is in simple needs corporate desktops or kiosks, and for those to be supported at a lower cost than Windows, standards are needed to minimize the time spent.
2) Consistent, thorough and up to date documentation for programs. Everyone likes to say RTFM, check the newsgroups or what have you. To that I say useless. Half the time you do that the manual is for three revisions previous and in the newsgroups you have no idea of the person actually knows what they are talking about.
3) Number 1 and 2 will help in the other major stumbling block. Support for hardware. Getting some hardware to work under Linux is a painful procedure.
And for all those of you who are saying that you don't want it to get to this point, fine. You like your choices and spending hours upon hours in text config files that is great.
One word of caution though is that while Linux is trying to make improvements to make it onto the desktop, Windows is improving on servers.
I constantly see people here putting down Windows uptime and reliability. That is not an issue since 2000. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't know that they are doing. On good hardware and with good drivers Windows 2000 can run just fine for months at a time. I dislike Microsoft and their licensing as much as anyone, but Linux's biggest strength - reliability - isn't as much a factor now.
To be fair, as someone has said earlier on, both Linux and Windows are complicated general purpose systems and to expect to be able to make any changes you want to it with no knowledge or understanding of what you are doing is not really possible.
Changing a video card could be compared to changing the radio in your car, sure it's easy enough if you know what you're doing but most people would just get someone else to fit it for them.
Also changing video cards in Windows can turn into just such a long drawn out process, at least in 98 when I last tried but the difference is you can at least see what Linux is trying to do whereas with Windows you're left pretty much guessing.
There is a pervasive movement in American culture (I also am a proud American) to avoid responsibility, to Not Give a Rats Ass, to cast the old, the weak, the unlucky and the disenfranchised in the sea to sink or swim. Similarly, as a sys admin I have noticed a willful increase in tech elitism. Techies don't want to "have to worry about" users apparently. Well I have news for you...
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Consistent hardware.
They only had to worry about their own machines. Sure it's a lot of hardware but it probably doesn't cover 1% of the stuff that's in the insane range of PCs.
They didn't have to be aware of tiny differences between AMD and Intel, a million in use video card chipsets, 9 trillion weird PC cards etc.
I think my favorite part was upgrading the kernel from 2.2.x to 2.4.x and Debian was told me "hey modify your /etc/lilo.conf", so I did it, then went back to dselect and finished the install. I rebooted. It was magically in 2.4.x. ... It modifys the config FOR you.
They have a UNIX based desktop that doesn't have to worry about dependencies and even runs your most popular applications. It's called OS X.
finally some people that although we know Windows isn't the fastest OS we can start to accept that it isn't the evil put here by the devil. For instance ever try and install an RPM and have it say you haven't selected the right library. Damn that's annoying. lol
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
It's called OS X.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
I have tried using linux as a desktop, however i find many flaws. I know i'll get flamed, but yes, i use Windows XP for my desktop, although i use debian 3.0 for my server.
.NET which means i could program for linux as well, without having to port my program. I write one program and it runs on all.
A desktop OS needs to be easy to use. Most users don't want to see the system V init when starting up, it will just confuse them. Mandrake did a good job of covering that with a project i believe was called Aurora (or however you spell that). I'm sure that Windows and Mac are both doing a ton of things when starting up, just like linux, however they don't show you. Like Windows 98 would show you what was happening behind the splash screen if you hit escape. Most users don't really care.
Installation of programs is another big issue. Debian, along with other distros such as Redhat, Gentoo, and even the BSDs have some sort of installer. However many users wouldn't be able to figure it out. Most of the installers don't let you just double-click on them to install the program. You have to do some command, or sometimes you have a gui for it, and then you have to configure the program. If you can't find a binary package then you have to compile from source. This would be extremely hard for most users.
I think linux is on it's way to becoming a desktop OS. I've tried it here and there, and i can definately see progress. I remember back at redhat 5.2 days, and seeing gnome and kde. Fast forward to today and it looks amazing. I envy all the programmers of the open source community for their hard work they've put in. It is really starting to show.
And with projects like Mono bridging the gap between windows and linux, it's helping even more. i personally prefer to program in
I see linux as eventually making it to the desktop market, however right now, i see only the advanced users using it. Hopefully this will change.
This would apply equally had you made all these changes whilst running Linux and then swapped back to Windows. Windows wouldn't have been able to cope with those changes either.
You don't know anyone with pirated XP. Three people outside my office have it on their home computers, you don't need an activation to install, just to update, and that is a simple matter to get around.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
From the sig:
The Slashdot default score should be the median score of your last eleven moderated messages.
Why eleven? Is it just an arbitrary number, or is there some thought behind it?
It seems that OSS people just don't get this very basic point:
Price doesn't matter. Value does. You can give me this great whiz-bang piece of software for free, but if I can't use it, it has exactly zero value for me. On the other hand, if I can spend $100 and get a tool that I can use to get work done, that tool has value. MS understands this. OSS types never will. They're focused on price, which is irrelevant.
For example: no Linux support for my printer. I don't have my scanner working yet.
Printers
Scanners
CD burning: well, OK, when I've worked out how to do it in 2.2.18.
Kernel 2.2.18 is positively ancient and you need to upgrade it if you want any "new" devices to work. USB support in particular is much better in kernel 2.4 than it was in 2.2. If you want to get your CD-RW working, Search comp.os.linux.hardware for keywords "CD-RW howto" since questions involving CD-RWs get asked and answered there all the time.
Wireless hub setup via USB? Nope. USB ADSL modem? Nope.
See above comment about better USB support with new kernels. USB networking is a Goddess-awful kludge, but some devices do work... you know how to use Google, right?
Winmodems? Nope.
The linmodems page has a lot of information on which ones work (many Lucent models, some Conexant, some others) and links/HOWTOs for getting them working.
Digital camera? Who knows...
The people on comp.os.linux.hardware? Most USB digital cameras appear as USB Mass Storage devices, plug in, "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/camera", copy all the pictures to your hard disk. USB Mass Storage support is much better in kernel 2.4 than is was in 2.2, so upgrade!
Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.
maybe you are right in terms of the total number of theoretical applications but if you constrain yourself to those few apps that people would actually want to run, then you never ever have to compile. I am talking about Moz, OO.org, Apache, games etc. All of these /could/ be sold over the counter but they are all products of the internet and get 'sold' down the wire.
NTFS is still an issue, however. I keep all my documents on an NTFS partition, and I want to be able to edit them whatever OS I'm using. Sure, I could copy them to my FAT32 partition before rebooting, but this has synchronisation issues. Especially, I want to be able to use the same Mozilla settings and mail history in *nix as I do in Windows. You still can't write to NTFS from Linux. If you could, then migrating would be easier. I realise that NTFS is not properly (read: at all) documented, but maybe this should be something RedHat of Ximian should be funding the developement of.
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Linux is non-graphical, people. X is separate from Linux - it runs on many Unices.
Sorry, my mistake.
it should be C.D.s
truncations require the apostrophe
think o'clock [which is a truncation of "on the clock"]
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Y: connected to \\PHATTIE\FTP.
C:\WINDOWS>net use * \\phattie\ftp
Z: connected to \\PHATTIE\FTP.
C:\WINDOWS>net use * \\phattie\ftp
Error 4872: There are no more drives available.
:^)
Okay, you're criticizing open source software because it isn't simple enough for someone who can't recognize the difference between a website address and an email address--AND because it can't do "polynomial regressions?"
no shit people don't want to know about open or closed source, dependencies, distros, gnome/kde/E/whatever. They want to turna computer on and have do what they want it to: Read email, surf for porn (which means it must handle all sorts of graphics, movies and sounds from the web) play their music collection (in any format just as long as the format is popular enenough that it can be got from the internet without too much hassle) make x-mas cards for grandma, store recipies, do some word processing, maybe a spreadsheet with a groovy chart that can be tacked to and from work. That's it, joe and jane users do not care about multi-threading, apache servers, c, c++, glib, make, make install, make clean, databases, servers, xservers, sound servers, yo momma servers. To them servers are giant machines in the IT depatment of their job, and if you tell them they need to runa server the get scared and think that they'll need a giant piece of equipment.
For linux to be accepted by the masses (aka herd animals) it needs to be as easy as windows to install: linux needs to scan the ALL (includeing Xfree86! seriously how hard can that be? i mean if windows can do it, why the hell can't X?) hardware and setup drives for itself, and the show examples of differetn desktops and ask which one the user finds the prettiest (but still allows for the easy switching later on) and boom that's it all done, it should take no more than 2 clicks to install. and wehn the computer is turned on it should go automatically straight to the desktop of choice, no loging in, no authorization, just the desktop, which needs to be designed with so that a 2 year old can use it. all that fancy stuff is for the hobbiest, and hopefull will one day become something the herd will use but not until after several years of scrutiny from the ubergeek crowd. So make a linux that is simple so a child of 2 could understand it and you will then see mass acceptance of linux
I understand what you're saying, SuSE is really easy to use as long as you don't step over it's boundaries.
I use it on all my production servers but I have problems when SuSEConfig takes over my configs and I have no way to tell it not to touch them.
And dependency problems all over the place.
As long as you use SuSE in it's out of the box form only using yast to update it's packages (SLOWER THAN MOLASSES!) you'll probably be okay.
I've got a lot of situations where I needed non-standard configurations which is where problems came up.
For the desktop user, SuSE is almost there in my opinion.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
i can't count the number of times i've watched the linux community bad mouth designers. aside from a few rare occassions, visual design is quite vocally pushed aside as frivelous and unnecessary. and yes, it goes deeper than simply hating flash.
the only answer to come from the linux community was skinning. skinning is NOT the answer. skinning as it exists today is a push towards 'cool' while completely ignoring 'useful.' skinning can be a good thing, but very VERY few skinnable applications provide skinning while paying respect to standardizing UI design. very much the opposite - skinning has turned towards giving people the ability to change more than colours and tiled backgrounds, it's giving them the ability to change the entire look and feel, as well as the way users interact with the product. this is cool, but it's not useful.
i would really like to see the linux community take the chip off their shoulders and invite visual designers into their projects. stop belittling their importance and give a little respect for their knowledge. that knowledge, especially with UI design, can be quantified, tested, and proven, just as programming concepts can. if you need some way to relate before you can drop that chip, maybe take a look at MIT's Media Lab. take a swing at programming DBN. you might just enjoy it and broaden your horizons a little.
I'm not kidding. I love helping out (especially when I hear samba)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I can't believe I just read this on slashdot:
"...recognising that the vast majority of computer users just want a system that works and don't care about issues of open- or closed-source and don't even want to know about dependencies."
Typical answer, now explain to me how the newbie is suppose to use this if it isn't in the distro or in the documentation for the distro? Do you expect users to scour the web for software, compile, and install? I understand your point of showing that there are programs out there that are working on this problem, but it doesn't help the newbie who buys a distro today.
The point being, that this shouldn't be what's needed for a consumer device like a desktop computer.
Oh, and the printer is one of the Canon BJ-10's that's not supported - I've checked.
Kernel 2.2.x - sorry, typo, I meant 2.4.19, as in Mandrake 9.0.
...what we in the documentation business called the "COIK," for Comprehensible Only If Known problem. When I first started to get into Linux, I decided to do the logical(?) thing and RTFM. Well, guess what? At that stage (slightly more advanced than someone's 63-year-old dad), I didn't understand TFM. (So much for that snarky comeback.) I had to go out and buy myself a series of introductory books on Linux (starting with "Linux For Dummies," which I recommend to the mid-level Windows user who wants to switch), and go to a bunch of introductory Linux websites before I could make any sense whatsoever of most of the documentation.
Yes, it's great that there is lots of documentation. Yes, the documentation is wonderful for refreshing your memory about a certain feature, command, or other piece of Linux; and it's also an excellent resource once you more-or-less know what you're doing. But it's next to useless to the absolute Linux beginner, mostly because it's not written for them. (Please note: That's a statement of fact, not a value judgement.)
On top of which, most "click-and-go" users don't like using the documentation, or the help files (even when those users are programmers -- see Nykaza et al, Proceedings of the 20th Annual Conference on Documentation, ACM-SIGDOC, pp. 133-141) -- they want the interface to be as obvious as possible (and if not obvious, then at least familiar), and will more likely pick up the phone and do the other RTFM: "ring the family maven," than get into the manual.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Early last month, I burned a copy of Knoppix, a Debian based Linux distro that can run without installation from the CD. It doesn't modify your computer whatsoever. Perfect for seeing what Linux has to offer.
Not only that, but Knoppix can be installed to your harddrive like a traditional distro.
Back to my story. I burned a copy of Knoppix because my Windows 2000/NTFS laptop crapped itself. Of course, the laptop didn't come with any tools capable of extracting the data from my harddisks. I remembered a Slashdot article about using Knoppix as a rescue disk, so I gave it a shot.
I put the CD in the CD drive, and powerup up my laptop. Within about 30 seconds I was looking at a complete KDE desktop. I had desktop icons for my harddrive, dvd drive, etc... I had access to office software, web browsers, multimedia players, everything! There was even an icon on my taskbar telling me my battery was at 100% charge.
Then I asked myself: "Wait, it didn't ask me any setup questions, but it works"?
Internet access, audio, video, usb, etc... were all automatically detected and setup correctly!
So I played around with the various apps, and then I began to rescue the data on the NTFS formatted harddrives, which was the original purpose for burning this Knoppix CD, after all.
After that successful use of Knoppix, I went to my parent's house and tried it on their computer. Everything worked except for their USB printer. Again, Knoppix booted straight to a KDE desktop in under 1 minute!
Then I tried it on my wife's computer, friends' computers, etc... Knoppix works! Knoppix even works on the computers in the school computer lab, which is 100% Windows 2000.
The beauty of Knoppix is that you can give copies to your friends, so that they can experiment with Linux, and if they really like it and want to switch, they can tell Knoppix to install to their harddisk. Otherwise, if they don't install to their harddrive, Knoppix doesn't change anything, as it runs from a ramdisk by default!
EVERYONE SHOULD TRY Knoppix!
Win2000 runs fine on a P100. "Fine" means I can start it up and not wait forever. Run a browser and surf, and run a document editor for basic documents.
While KDE1 could run ok on such a machine, KDE2, KDE3 and GNOME are going to take a long time on that screen with the waiting/blinking icons.
I'd like to point out that it's not just Linux that has this problem though. If a new computer user is first introduced to Linux, they'd have just as many problems learning Windows.
Case in point:
I'm sitting in a University computer lab right now. There is a long line of individuals waiting at the door for a chance to use a computer. The thing is, the lab isn't full. All the Windows computers are full, but there are two Apple G4's running OS X beside me here waiting to be used. I regularly here people complain that they don't know how to use a Mac so they wait in line. Reality of the situation is, for all they're using it, the differences between a Mac and PC are nominal. They all have Word and Excel and everything else. Just the interface is different.
Down the street is another lab that has Red Hat 8.0. It's for the Mathematics and Engineering departments. Most of the undergrads that use that lab probably have no clue about what Red Hat is, but they can log in and find an icon for MatLab or whatever it is they're looking for and they're off and running.
My point is, it's not that hard! The problems are usually with the user's own preconceptions. No matter how well you design a system, people are still going to gravitate to whatever they are familiar with and if it so happens they first learned on VMS, then that will feel more user friendly that Windows or OS X. So recognize that it's not always the problem of us geeks writing bad UI's. And in the end, I would hate it if everything looked like Windows simply because that's what everyone is used to. I love the choice and differences that Linux distros and window managers offer.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
The issue people have is not that they have to spend time learning something - it's that they have to spend time learning something that they shouldn't need to know.
Configuring Linux is *so* much harder than Windows - it's irritating that you have to expend all this effort getting Linux to work when Windows proves that it can be done much easier.
Learning is good. Learning unneccesary crap you're not interested in isn't.
besides how many companies out there are more then capable of downloading some free software creating an installer for it and boxing it up and putting it on a shelf? The profit margins for such a project would be awsome, that is with the user-base to suport it
The problem with something like TurboTax is that, while the application itself would be relatively easy to code, certain pieces of the software require highly specialized knowledge to implement (namely, knowledge of the current US and state tax codes).
What should be done? Programmers shouldn't be expected to keep up to date on the entire tax code, and accountants shouldn't be expected to write software.
My solution would be to propose some sort of XML DTD, which could be used to encode a wide variety of tax schemes. The user would probably end up paying a yearly fee to get the DTD from some knowledgeable company (like H&R Block or the producers of TurboTax), but any software that correctly implemented the rules would be able to do your taxes.
In an ideal world, the government itself would be the ones publishing the files, and would also certify the more popular tax software to protect users from legal liability. But I'm probably dreaming.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Slashdot discussions on this topic always have a really muddled concept of what a "non-technical Linux user" will look like. Apparently they will be dumb as a brick, have no interest in the open source philosophy, want to use the computer as a tool and not know too much about it. And they will for some reason buy Linux as a better Windows. Or something.
We always get these reviews of Linux for non-technical end users, but within a paragraph or two the reviewer starts talking about all the other distros he's installed and uninstalled. What we need is the perspective of someone with a REASON for a good, easy-to-use desktop Linux.
Linux will never be a better Windows than Windows. Microsoft won't ever let its programs run better on Linux. The EULA for Explorer for Windows requires the user to have a Windows license, and similar requirements may show up in other software-- at the very least in terms of "supported platforms." Corporate users won't pay $500 to run a program on an unsupported platform.
I have no doubt that Linux on the desktop will be a big thing in the future. Mainly this is because the companies that target desktop Linux have a clear idea of who their users are.
Red Hat 8.0 (and similar distributions) is targeted at the semi-locked-down corporate desktop. The primary user has a support infrastructure in place. Software updates are handled by pointy-clicky Helpdesk people with root passwords, or by trusted "power users." 99% of work is done in a small number of applications (Office, web). This is not a "better Windows than Windows" so much as an office suite platform that's higer security and cheaper and easier to administer.
Lindows is targeted at home users. The company's president envisions computers too cheap to repair, which requires an equally cheap OS.
I would argue that there's another brand of potential non-techinical Linux user: the socially responsible computer user. These are people who hate global multinationals. They don't eat at McDonald's. They only use Microsoft software because they are bewildered by Linux, don't have any friends who can help them with it, and all their friends use Windows. They email me with Word files. And despite that they are incredibly adept at using email, the web, and IM-- among their Windows-using friends.
These are people who wouldn't use Red Hat for fear it would become the next Microsoft. They'd really dig Debian, if it were easy to use. Many of them would even contribute where possible-- perhaps writing documentation, supplying graphics, or managing those packages that don't involve compiling.
So if you really want grass-roots Linux to take off among the non-technical, don't go to a Linux user's group-- go to an anti-war rally. (Or better yet, an anti-globalization rally.) Grab one person and offer free technical support for as long as it takes to become a Linux convert.
The beauty of "unix like" os's is the modularity provided by either open standards or open software.
Ever used COM? I can write a component for windows, compile it, then bolt it into almost any other COM enabled application. If I write a DirectShow filter (COM object) that decodes MPEG-4 video then suddenly every DirectShow media player on my system (i.e. every media player written for windows) can play MPEG-4 video. Sure, Linux has gstreamer (<opinion class="personal_flamebait">which is quite the most horrible API it has ever been my misfortune to have to use, and I've used MFC<opinion>) and kparts (which looks as though it comes close), but there is no standard. The lack of standards is what I see as Linux's largest problem. The advantage of a closed source model is that Microsoft or Apple can impose standards, and if you don't like them, then you write your own but nobody will use them. This provides consistency. OSS suffers far too much from the Not Invented Here mentality to achieve this kind of cohesiveness. What was the point of Gnome? Wouldn't the effort that went into Gnome have been better spent implementing an open source version of qt, and improving KDE? (Disclaimer: I use Gnome).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
They are lightweight, fast and configurable. If you have a competent admin, these WMs can be set up to do the job nicely in situations were resources are an issue.
Then yes, it would be. usb-storage comes installed with everything lately; at most you might need gphoto if you want a pretty application to coddle your images.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I have tried all the linux distros. They suck worse than windows, in almost every way, but mainly in hardware compatibility.
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
There are apparently a lot of people who think that goal of Linux based distributions should be to provide an ubiquitous turn-key OS that every Grandma can use. Fine and dandy. But then many of these same people feel the need to continue on and say that they don't give a damn whether the software is free or not. Why is it so important to them to say that?
Here's my question: If the philosophy behind the free software and open source movements doesn't interest all the Jonny-come-lately's, then why the f*** don't they go use Microsoft or some other proprietary OS? The argument here seems to be that the free software movement should just go away, so that Linux can become more like Windows. This is so beyond clueless that I don't even know if it's possible to straighten this kind of thinking out. Help out Grandma, that's great. Erase the fundamental premise of free software to satisfy the clueless and apathetic, give me a frickin' break.
It also says a lot about our society that so many people think the only measure of success is world domination.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
I completely disagree with the posters who call installing multiple applications bloat. I just started experimenting with Linux for my home desktop computer, installing Mandrake 8.2, then RedHat 7.3. (Had some problems with Mandrake, but Redhat detected *everything*, and it installed and runs beautifully). Anyway, what a pleasure it is for a Linux newbie like myself to have six Linux browsers and five Linux e-mail programs and the like to play around with -- I can see what is available and can try them all out and experiment and see which I like best. I can also start out as a newbie with everything I probably need already installed with all dependencies already all worked out. That way, up front I can start USING Linux, and worry about learning how to install new apps as something new to be added to my knowledge base later on.
Please, Linux developers
P.S.: FWIW, both Mandrake and RedHat installed 10 times easier on my home computer than any Windows OS I have ever installed.
Oops, that's quite the opposite here with dual-head setup.
In windows it runs like shit and Linux works perfect. I do agree configuring is easier in windows, but using it is not easy at all and configuring is not as extensive as in Linux (fixed frequencies etc...). The drivers for dual head card in windows do not act the same way for each vendor and it seems there's no such standard like the xinerama one in X11. I've seen dual head card drivers for windows that present two screens in the configuration and also some that present one large screen, what's the standard here ? Perhaps I didn't read well enough, but as you mention, that shouldn't be necessary on windows or....
You just haven't given mounting a good thought. You probably also never eject your CD when you are using it and never gave it thought that you may be using this drive over a network where someone else might have access to that nasty 'eject' button.
Things most probably take long because it's given a good thought before implementing changes.
I have 2 or 3 friends that do that with Xandros: including the wireless NIC part. I'm even considering switching to that disro. There are 2 prices: Basic = 40, Deluxe = 99. Deluxe allows you to run windows apps WITHOUT needing to configure WINE, and allows for EASY Windows Network browsing and Domain handling. Basic is just the Linux part (no Windows advantages).
a click-and-run instalation base on the web similar to Lindows. This is where linux can really beat the crap out of Windows: free one-step instalation! there is no way MS can beat that and maintain a profit margin. This could be done by any and every company but obviosly security is a big issue here. eventualy there would be trusted sites for consumers. (forgive me for using those words)
Global variables for things like Resolution, Color sceme, etc. and acceptance of these into open programing architechre, or maybe just for this thread of linux
perhaps a single GUI renderer that any program could use, and the os could use. This might already exsist, i don't know, like i said before, i don't use linux!
Drag and drop types, this would be linked to the above thing.
international support in one single distro. This would require both the GUI renderer and the global user pref vars.
global ruotines, kind of like a direct-x or dare i say it VB where you can use other programs objects in your programs. This would help alot with the linux-video problem. the main point is to add a layer between multimedia and programs so you don't have to configure each program seperatly, again this may already exsist, i don't know. a global spell/grammer check that could be linked by any program would be good too.
this is just a begining list, im sure you can think of more things to add. other buzzword features would be: auto-update for all installed programs, secure-by-default, and other tasty goodies to make it so easy you don't have to do a thing or think about it at all. This is completely possible!! althogh some things are easier then others..
please mod this post up
I am a HEAVY GUI user, I use it as much as any Windows granny ever would, but I also have five terminal windows open at all times, and I use them, oh do I ever use them.
The feedback I get from using the terminal is absolutely priceless for me.
I would also add to my wishlist, as a corollary, that all gui apps have the OPTION to log all internal stuff (potential output, which could serve as debugging data) to a file.
This way, granny still doesn't have to see what is going on, but a power user, or a troubleshooter, can.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
speaks truth. if you want better design and usability - bring the people who are already doing it underwing instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.
... don't we discuss who was the best Starship Captain?
Linux could use some UI work. (though it's pretty decent today.) It could use some hardware support (everything supports Windows) yadda yadda yadda, go fix it so we can move on!
"Derp de derp."
In my opinion it comes down to cost. If an "Average" user that buys Dell, HP, IBM or Gateway had to pay say $100 more for a computer with Microsoft XP on it AND pay $500 more for Office, then they would probably try something else. Now if the computer cost say $3,000.00 then the additional cost of Microsoft isn't too noticable, but a computer that cost under $1,000.00 it becomes more of an issue. Computers that are under $700, it would become a HUGE issue.
A lot of people here have complained that Linux doesn't have this or that app or feature, and I agree it would be nice to have those (My list is at the bottom), but it generally comes down to cost. If an average user has to jump through a few hoops to save >40% of a computer cost then they will.
Yes I understand that the OEM cost of WindowsXP isn't $100.00. But my point still remains, as computers get cheaper the cost difference will come in to play more.
Software I would like to see for Linux
1. DreamWeaver
2. All in Wonder Video capture.
3. Wine support for ATI Radeon drivers
4. HP Scanjet USB driver support
5. Good looking fonts for Mozilla
6. Microsoft Access equivilant GUI + DB
7. Viso Equivilant
8. Red Hat to ship Linux with Directory Service installed and a good tool to admin it with
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
I don't think I was actually trying to respond to your main point, or perhaps even your comment. I don't think the actual install is a problem at all. I managed a fairly complicated Linux install when I had far less Linux knowledge than I do now, although I did have some help. If I had done a simple install (and if my monitor weren't a weird brand), I would have been totally fine.
Even the desktop itself isn't so bad, but the apps do need work. If Linux is after a user base with minimal computer skills (I hear most users), it's going to have to figure out a way of making itself totally attractive to those users and -- gasp! -- marketing to them, which doesn't just mean advertising. It also means adapting the product to what the users want and need, and not necessarily what the developers think the users want and need.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Sheesh people, Linux is what it is. There are people working at making it better in many, many ways, and they all have different motivations and goals. And *THAT* is what makes free software so great!
It is now much better for *all* of its possible uses (not just desktop) than it was last year, the year before, etc., and it will only continue to get better. There are more people using it now than ever before, and more people working on it than ever before. I see no reason that shouldn't increase as well.
"Linux" is not an entity comparable to any corporation, and "it" is not competing with any corporation. It just is what it is, and I choose to use it.
Okay, mr. uber-luddite, keep watching The Matrix, AI, etc. and wait... and wait... and be prepared to wait your entire life. Because AI as you imagine it aint happening anytime soon.
Yes, I know. I've programmed backprop neural nets, genetic algorithms, you name it. The reality is that until there are *several* quantum leaps in computing, we will not see the cusp of artifical awareness, let alone consciousness.
My point? Technology is becoming more and more prevalent in modern life, and there's no way the toaster, HDTV, wifi chip, etc. of tomorrow, or even year after tomorrow will have the abilty to fix itself or understand the users needs. There need to be go-betweens to both create and understand both the machine and the human.
And we geeks will be there, so long as society needs the technology.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
It is really non-obvious or are computer inclined people just retarded socially?
When you buy a toaster you only care about how good it makes toast for you. You don't give a rats asss about much anything else involved in the toaster (what kind of heating elements are used, how the micro-controller logic works, etc.
You just fucking make toast and be done with it.
That is how 99.99% of the population views a computer, it is a glorified toaster oven.
Until the other 0.1%, the guys who make the toasters ovens realize this, Linux will continue to be relegated to the server room and on "geek's" (I hate that fucking word BTW) computers.
peace.
From your description it sounds more redundant than insightful. This has been said over and over for quite a long time.
Now that the IRS's e-file program is officially available, Intuit will have to radically change their business model for TurboTax. I completed my federal and MA state taxes online last night through TaxAct. It was quick, easy and without hassle.
There are several other IRS e-file Partners, many of which will allow you to file online for free. And if you don't qualify for free filing, you can file for as little as $4.95 for federal and $7.95 for state taxes, which is much less than the cost of TurboTax Basic Plus State, never mind the additional $9.95 cost of filing each return.
Web filing will beat out packaged tax software because it can be delivered more cheaply and is platform independent.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
Ummm...why would I share out my CDrom drive on a network. And why would I allow them rights to it's eject capabilities
I've said this numerous times here in the past, but the responsibility for dependency hell rests squarely on the shoulders of the developers.
Most OSS developers have a "purist" attitude when they distribute a binary (assuming they even do), that every last library must be dynamically linked.
Before you flame me, of course I realize that dynamic linking is an important concept, and it was even more important in the days when computers had very limited memory and disk space. But it is also the cause of a lot of dependency hell.
Now, no sane person would suggest statically linking everything. Large, stable libraries like the C library, X, and such should clearly be dynamically linked in most applications. But when an application uses a dozen small bleeding-edge libraries that are no where near current in recent distributions, then statically linking those libraries in binaries can result in much less dependency hell and a lot more users happily trying out your software.
As those libraries eventually become stable, then go back to dynamically linking them. A good rule of thumb would be that if your application won't run on the current release of popular distros (such as RedHat, Mandrake, Suse) because of bleeding-edge library dependencies, then those particular libraries should be statically linked in your binaries until they are stable in current distros.
If the stubborn "purism" of complete dynamic linking could give way to a combined type of linking strategy, dependency hell would largely disappear overnight.
> Do we have a standard interface for OLE between applications?
Agreed. It's really frustrating to not be able to copy a simple URL and paste it into another program. That's why I have Windows XP as my daily OS again. It sucks -- but at least I'm productive.
I assumed even managers by now know that Linux is not shareware or its bad because its free. Several years ago it was a different story but it seems alot of managers do not care about the latest news.
People who write shareware are guys in a basement who hope to make a few bucks and %99 of them suck. An oss is a project with several people with a common goal for a solution or an application that solves x. Because its open and contributed by lots of people, the end product is better and more advanced. What impressed me most about opensource back in 98 when I first installed Linux was just the documentation for ra-write which I needed to create the boot disks. I noticed the documentation for version 1.2 mentioned that the data no longer be written in 64kb chunks in order to increase performance. I thought to myself, would Microsoft or Apple or any proprietary vendor take this extra step? No. If it works then its done. OSS is finely engineered and its not rushed out the door like commercial products.
Most good managers know this and many of the bad ones were hired during the
http://saveie6.com/
For everyone crying about how this article is wrong, consider this:
I am Windows user (because of necessary apps that are far from having an equivalent on Linux) and I have been poking w/ Linux for a few years now in my geeky free time.
A few years ago I purchased the big red book for learning Linux, getting it installed, etc.
The first instruction of the book was to
"Get a Linus Guru".
I'm sorry, but you don't need a Windows Guru around to really learn Windows (anything more than point 'n click)....its easy to learn how to configure, how to fiddle with, etc. My friends don't call me anymore for windows support, because when I've fixed things for them, I've shown them how easy it is, and now they've learned and can do more than I taught them, just by figuring it out themselves. I didn't have someone like that for Windows. Back when I first started messing w/ computers as a kid w/ my C64 I did, but I quickly outpaced everyone I knew and was soon helping the people that intially were helping me.
That doesn't happen w/ Linux. Even though I've been poking and trying to use Linux as my desktop OS for 3 years now, I have only finally understood how to get OpenGL support in X, how to fix that ethernet configuration, mounting drives, and getting WineX working. I'm still quite a ways from understanding compiling more than just following the 'type this, then this' instructions. And apt-get dependency hell frequently leaves me with forgoing the app. i wanted.
Hell, I'm even almost considering finding a nearby LUG - which scares the hell out of me.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
http://www.linuxandmain.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=145
for a detailed explanation of how to conquer the desktop.
He called me up and asked me why he couldn't get to a website that someone told him to check out. The URL was all-revealing: blahblah@domain.com. The difference between an e-mail address and a website address is apparently too much for him.
And did you bother to try to explain it to him, or did you just write your dad off as hopelessly computer-illiterate?
My dad is in his sixties and never used a computer until about a year ago, and he understands the difference between URLs and email addresses just fine, once it was explained to him.
Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!
I'm a user. I don't give a rat's festering gonads about compiling a program. Just install the damned binaries and let me get back to work.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
No, the problem is that there are too many pieces of technology to know how to use. And more and more keeps coming. Users don't give a crap how something works, they just want it to work. That's why the pay engineers to make thinsg work, so they don't have to.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I completely love gentoo's portage system. I type emerge *name of program* and i have it....yeah it takes time to compile but runs faster in the end. and it is FREE. With a gui install and a gui front end to portage even gentoo could be there someday...
What you say is true, but it is MS fault .
Just another in a long line of " doesn't want to
or can't play well with others" moves from MS.
Linux will nail it soon enuf.
Businesses with altruistic tendecies. I mean, let's face it, it's been stated that MS didn't exactly have superior product, it just used business savvy (and other alleged tactics) to plop itself in front of the majority of users. If any distro out there within the sound of my voice would make a simple setup that works on most machines, handles most tasks and formats, turns on and off simply and has a shiny candy-like button labeled "help" right on the desktop (assuming the button actually helps), they could make this a go. They could even charge $50 for it and sell it as "the computer for people who don't need a computer". Whatever you do, don't call it an OS or software, call the software the computer. Dell makes no distinctions, Linux shouldn't either. Then be altruistic. Actuall make the red help button a source of real help, be it online or off. Make upgrades fall-off-a-log easy and do nothing with people's demographic information. Skip dual booting and let the consumer know that they (probably) have a restore CD of XP lying around if things go really sour. But make sure it doesn't go sour, and keep pressing home the fact that the next time they buy a new computer, they can get one that's uninstalled and put your distro on it, FREE OF CHARGE. The geeks (or whomever) will always have fritterware. Give the public something simple, complete, and cheap, and you'll see something.
Windows XP SP2 told me to install third-party software that prevents viruses and protects stability... I chose Ubuntu
My dad is 65, and his favorite sentence regarding computers is "those things are artifacts of the Devil". No, he is not smiling.
;-)
After some years using MS and not wanting to spend money he does not have (and that he is too proud to take from me) buying new hardware (that he realized he does not need) he asked me "OK, if you are so good with these damned things, set me up a system that costs me less and does the same".
I kept biting my lips for several years, until a few months ago I installed Mandrake. Problem solved.
I think most people have this patronizing attitude of "users just don't get it". What I did is that I found documentation, formatted it, printed it and sat down and explained it to him.
I did exactly the same with the Windows stuff, which is as complex and difficult to grasp for a non technical person as a Linux environment can be.
I am very impressed that you dad may need polynomial regression in a spreadsheet and full video in presentations. Really impressive for an old fart
My dad needs to write a few letters, a good spreadsheet to keep track of his expenses, presentations? Nah. Web browsing and email of course are a must and he enjoys playing the odd game, his all time favourite being tetris.
My dad is not looking for IE explorer or Outlook, he is just looking for the damned thing for the web and the fucking email program. Those, I readily provided in very accessible places.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I agree that it is the apps that matter to the overwhelming majority of users and not the OS.
So, to spread popularity of Free Software, why not make sure to release versions that run on Linux AND the dreaded WINDOWS OS that 95% of people run? Get people to TRY the Free APP first; it is easier to get them to learn the app if they can try it out on Windows. Then, it may be an easier task to get them to move TOTALLY over to Linux later, since they will have all their apps available in Linux as well.
Or maybe you are afraid that they will NEVER move over to Linux if they have the CHOICE of running it on Windows, in which case I have to say that you are conceding that the Windows OS is truly superior from a user (not necessarily developer) point of view, in which case you should just hang forever all pretext of mass adoption of "desktop Linux."
Really, the power lies in the data formats and the familiarity/training of the users. If *everybody* could run $(YOUR_FAVORITE_FREE_WORD_PROCESSOR), you wouldn't have to bitch about those damned MS Word file formats!
Sincerely,
A Unix, DHTML, Java, and non-Windows programmer
So you will know when they are done with your cdrom drive of course :)
j/k
The informed proponents of OS don't care about price, that comes as a nice side thing.
The important thing is freedom (to innovate, to change your software when you need to not when you are foced by your provider, to fix things when it suits you).
Many of us understand what value means, your brush is too wide, some generalizations are too innacurate.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What's more, you can try it out for only 39 bucks. I actually recommend going for the full version. Though a bit more money, it has more features such as NTFS partitioning and the ability to run Microsoft Office.
If you really "buy it in a heartbeat", don't wait, it's here...
Hunger is the best sauce.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A324 11-2003Feb5.html
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
For the record, I make my Mom, Dad, and sister use Mandrake Linux 9 on a 233 that had Win98 on it. KDE3 is a lot slower than 98, but at least it's not owned by Microsoft and they won't infect the network with another worm. A lot of things aren't working too; the sound card, scanner, a DOS program (DOSEMU).
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: #1
A guinea pig is not from Guinea but a rodent from South America.
A firefly is not a fly, but a beetle.
A giant panda bear is really a member of the racoon family.
A black panther is really a leopard that has a solid black coat
rather then a spotted one.
Peanuts are not really nuts. The majority of nuts grow on trees
while peauts grow underground. They are classified as a
legume -- part of the pea family.
A cucumber is not a vegetable but a fruit.
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