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Linux on the Desktop
webmaven writes "Mitch Kapor's Open Source Application Foundation just released a 34 page report on the Desktop Linux market, written by Bart Decrem, who has discussed desktop Linux previously. The OSAF is working on Chandler, which the press have generally described as an 'Outlook Killer', but it's really intended to be in a completely new application category, more similar to Lotus Agenda in some ways than what currently consider a PIM (email + contacts + appointments). The report goes into some detail about the current state of desktop Linux, trends, and various limiting factors, and concludes that while a revolution is not immediately in the wings, a trend can definitely already be discerned, and they expect adoption of desktop Linux to increase over the next few years, and identifies leverage points to accelerate the process."
Look at workalike apps that run on Windows. They can't even make it. You expect users to adopt a new OS *AND* utilities? Get real.
Unfortunately you're right.
We need a revolution in usability.
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
I'd love to fully embrace linux, but when the only way to do that is by accepting yet another proprietary OS along with it just to get a desktop that doesn't feel like I'm driving a fucking Edsel, I might as well stay with windows.
...a question which sounds like "flamebait", but it seriously isnt.
Are there any real objective 3rd parties who investigate and report on the different aspects of linux ( ie TOC, benchmarks, etc ) who truly are impartial to either OS. It seems that anybody writing 'reports' are either slanted towards windows, or linux. I dont think i've ever read a report that says "well, linux sucks at x, and windows sucks at y as well. in summary, they both suck ( or they both rock, or whatever, etc. ) . "
Where does one find unbiased reviews and benchmarks of OS's ?
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
Predicting that Linux trend will continue to grow doesn't exactly take a genious , does it ?
I mean even windows is continuing to grow ? So what's the point here ?
If linux is replacing the desktop *nix market, albeit very small (solaris, irix etc.) whats the big deal in that ?
How much M$ boxes are being replaced by linux ?
Currently linux and windows on desktop are growing at their own pace, as they don't share a common user base. And what ever common userbase they have , use dual-boot option.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
The biggest converts will be businesses who can save mucho bucks on a few hundred workstations. Joe homeuser won't switch for the helluvit.
True, homeusers will probably switch to Linux for the same reason they use Windows now: it's what they use at work.
Centralization breaks the internet.
"they expect adoption of desktop Linux to increase over the next few years"
That's what they said a few years ago. And that's probably what they'll be saying a few years from now. Don't get me wrong, I like Linux. But it's just not for mom and pop and I doubt it ever will be given who is working on it and what they've been doing.
Linux innovates very little except in technological areas. It's GUIs even today fall short of Windows and Mac GUIs, and several years from now I don't expect Linux will catch up. I don't see MS or Apple kicking back sipping pina coladas at the poolside.
I think alot of great work has been done in Linux and I'm a Linux user myself, but not as my primary desktop. Linux is an OS made for geeks by geeks that love to push the geek envelope. That's great stuff in and of itself, but it's not going to put Linux in the mainstream.
And does it want to be mainstream? Do Linux users want it to be mainstream? For the most part, I think not. When asking a technical question in Linux circles, the responses you get range from apathetic to offensive. RTFM! NEWB! It's pretty rare you actually get someone with a little compassion that has felt your pain and is willing to help you out.
Everything about Linux (and Unix in general) seems to be as if it is some kind of rite of passage. You must fight the bear without weapons, then you must walk the fire barefooted and then you must master Unix! It is that final task at which the brave warrior often stumbles...
Really my main beef with linux is how hard it is to set the thing up when you haven't gone through the process in the last six months. I generally forget what the config file is named that I'm interested in, or where it happens to be located. Frankly, any setting that most users will have to change at some point in their life should be easily accessible through the GUI menu system.
I will admit that it is a heck of a lot better than it used to be, but I still have to do a bit of googling to get my linux system usable. Windows on the other hand, you can go to the control panel and what you want to change will likely be in there somewhere, unless it's application specific, and you don't have to read any manuals or docs to figure out how to configure your system - it's intuitive.
You can still choose to install the Office Assistants, but you've always been able to choose not to install them. I've never had to deal with Clippy, from Office 97 through Office XP. Of course, most people prefer to just bitch and moan rather than do something about the problem, so it's not surprising that people are still complaining about Office Assistants.
If people are already using Linux on the desktop, they don't need to read a report about Linux on the desktop, do they?
...)
(not to mention that every "desktop" distro in the past two or three years has come with a pdf viewer by default
The requested URL
I am forced to agree with you. As much as the clip annoys me, the cat makes working easier.
I think it's his personality. Instead of just doing a stoopid "trick" animation every now and then, he just goes to sleep. Or something else less invasive than "I'M A CLIP!!!1 IT'S SO COOL!!!1"
OMG! Wau!
It would be nice, however, if someone would put out a goddamn program that isn't called 'kApp', 'kBrowser' or 'kCoolgame'.
Cuteness has its place, but it's a real pain finding the right app most of the time.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Mac OS X certainly refutes your claim that "*nix is for servers and hackers, not Joe Sixpack...."
I do agree with your analysis of the state of the Linux UI, but Apple has demostrated that you can put an effective and attractive GUI on a unix machine.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him to eat and he will fish forever.
What's wrong with xpdf? or GGV?
You actually detail some of Linux's problems quite well. Let's see:
/dev/null. Until then continuing to use the same old crap will be cheaper in man hours and dollars. And as always management can almost always be convinced to keep using the same old thing if it worked well enough that they didn't get blamed.
"I don't run Windows anymore unless I want to play Carmageddon II at home". I don't recall ever walking into Wal-Mart and buying a Linux game. Consumers want to be told what to buy. Such as: Get Armagetron here! 3D! Multiplayer! New, new, new! (No, really check it out). Windows has better games because Windows games have better advertising because Windows has a bigger market share. It'll be a long time until you hear some ten-year-old say, "I had to install Linux so I could play Doom 6.66. It just isn't the same on Windows."
"at work I only get into Windows if I need to use the custom workorder system that ties into Novell and MS Access." Legacy software, hardware, and geeks will eventually fade into
"We need to start new-to-computers people with non-MS operating systems." Great idea. But have you ever looked at the books or web sites these people try to learn from? You know the ones where there is a chapter on the mouse complete with blow-by-blow steps for double clicking? Try finding something like that for any distro. Your standard Linux distro has hundreds of powerful, Ghz using, bandwidth blasting apps that new-to-computers" people can live their entire lives without using. The community is great as long as you know that hard drive storage is different than system memory. If your knowledge isn't that advanced (like 90% of users) you'll be lucky to get any help at all.
With all the incredible advances the community has contributed to Linux sometimes Windows is still necessary.
Counter point away...
Yes, they do if they want to know: (a) what to do to improve Linux so others to use it on the desktop; and/or (b) how to promote Linux on the desktop.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Actually, in my Cisco networking class that I took back in 11th grade, the thing took so long to load (first start Windows, then start Novell client, then log into the network, then start IE, then load up Cisco's crappy all-flash web site) that I actually did 'doze' off a few times :-/
Good grief. We often spent half the class time starting the computers.
And while I'm on the topic of slow, I tried out Knoppix 3.2 the other day. It was slow and bloated and couldn't keep up when it was playing some MP3s (I got skips and crap). Win2k on the same machine works beautifully.
One of the great things about Linux is that it's FAST. I run it on my old 586 here as a server and I can download files off of it faster than my 1.6 GHz Win2k machine can download files from itself (but then maybe that's just somethng to do with Ruby's IO being optimised better on Linux..).
Anyway, when you come out with these big, bloated GUIs that are less responsive and suck up more memory and CPU time than Windows, Linux loses some of its appeal...
And then there's the issues with dependency problems, blah, blah, blah. So, yeah. I think it'd have a better chance as a desktop OS if it got *cleaned up* at a low level (not just write GUIs to do the dirty work for you, but eliminate the mess completely).
Duct tape, XML, democracy: Not doing the job? Use more.
There seem to be an almost critical mass of ideas, tools, code, etc. surrounding "the Linux desktop thing" right now. It feels like something is about to happen.
What if someone comes up with new OS where encryption and strong auth are built-in, X is thrown out or reworked to some kind of networked XUL thing, file system is more like Reisers namespaces, DRM is builtin as well (to satisfy future Palladium sharks), all configuration files are XML, etc?
Seems like with consolidation of Intel hardware and availability of huge number of Linux device drivers to look at, this is not a remote possibility.
Would not that be nice?
I mean, he can get a bit annoying with the whole GNU/lunix thing, but even the most resolutely ignorant commentator should be able to distinguish between KDE/GNOME, and the linux kernel running under it. Normally it wouldn't bother me, but they are primarily talking about the desktops here.
If you think this is splitting hairs, how many reviewers do you think would know how to tell the difference between KDE 3.1.0 running on top of linux and the same desktop running on top of BSD?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
You know what I hate about Linux?
- The lack of any common GUI among apps. Hell sometimes you can't even cut and paste between apps. At least with Windows and MacOSX there is enough similarity between apps that once you figure out how to use one you are well off to figure out the rest. Linux there is no comparison.
- Application names...yeah, XMMS really screams to me that it is an audio player when I see it on KDE's equivelant of a start menu. Might as well call it asdkasdf@#3rafsdfa, there isn't a difference.
- Software on store shelves...oh wait, what software on store shelves other then maybe one Linux distribution.
- Forget support, doesn't do much good if my mom can't get a phone number for that replacement of her beloved Quicken.
- Sure there is games, but call me when Battlefield 1942, High Heat Baseball, etc. are available instead of just FreeCiv. Get games like those and just about every young male in the world will switch.
- Oh yeah, can I mention dependicies?
I've been using Wintel for over 15 years and have just recently installed Red Hat 9 on an older K6-2 550. Here are a couple of points I think are worth mentioning (ubergeeks can exclude themselves from the classifications below):
1. Linux is ready for *some* desktops only, namely ones where users won't be constantly tweaking and installing new software and hardware. You want a computer for grandma to browse the web, send email and view a few grandkid photos? Linux is great! You want to roll out corporate desktops where employees don't really need to be able to download and install the latest version of KaZaA? Linux is a godsend (provided the business software you need is supported).
2. Linux is *not* ready for the average user desktop. The average user wants to do everything grandma wants to do, but they also want to be able to install or upgrade software and hardware *easily*. In addition, they want a fully functional GUI, with no *necessity* of dropping to a CLI for everyday tasks. They want to be able to go to a third party software/driver website, follow the 'click here for Linux version' hyperlink, download the file, then double-click to install it.
Needless to say, as long as Linux distributions and desktop managers continue to proliferate, the average user's requirements will never be met. I say this as a *fact* not a *prescription*, so spare me the Linux-strength-in-diversity comments. I just think you can't have your cake (freedom/diversity) and eat it too (Linux on average desktop).
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
I tend to agree with him. Starting everything with a k or a g is annoying as hell. Everytime I used to boot up the 'konqueror', I started thinking about how much I hate the Mortal 'Kombat' where you use 'Koins' to unlock 'Koffins' in the 'Krypt'. IT'S FUCKING ANNOYING TO HAVE EVERY PROGRAM START WITH THE SAME LETTER. The g's in gnome are still annoying, but as much to me because i dont get reminded of the whole 'kombat' thing. I mean, say what you will about microsoft, at least it isn't Microsoft mOffice that comes with mExcel and mOutlook and mWord. That's why I use enlightenment, no omnipresent prefixes there, no-siree. Now let me go fire up ETerm..... Oh dear god no, what have they done???? And in the new version, E17, they have about ten more built in apps on the way that all begin with E. Jesus christ it felt good to get that rant out though....
You can still choose to install the Office Assistants, but you've always been able to
choose not to install them. I've never had to deal with Clippy, from Office 97 through
Office XP. Of course, most people prefer to just bitch and moan rather than do something about
the problem, so it's not surprising that people are still complaining about Office Assistants.
Most people working in an office environment DO NOT install their own software.
Nor, initially, do they understand how to change configurations.
So your argument is moot.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
If any company has even a thought of entering the desktop market, they have to focus on their commitment to sales. Sounds easy, right? But that commitment means showing up for sales meetings and making sure the customer is happy not only with your product, but with your company as well.
Microsoft didn't get to market dominance by ignoring their customers. The problem they have had in the past has been a pit bull aggression toward their competitors. This often left the customer with half finished products, but their early focus was to move the product closer to what the customer wanted at all times. Their focus has changed now that they dominate the market, but their competitive drive still remains on steroids.
Compare that to a Linux vendor who was supposed to speak at our company today. They set up two consecutive meetings with our company and a LUG to show how their software would not only provide a good user experience, but would also convince skeptical IT personnel that their product was a ready replacement or alternative to Windows.
They decided to 'no-show'. And they did it without providing adequate notice. Through their actions, they have told both organizations they scheduled meetings with that the customer is not important.
I know that things go afoul and that sometimes a scheduled event must be cancelled. But if Microsoft had scheduled the meeting where they thought they could have an opportunity to get to a competitors customer, they would have shipped a sales representative with a 102 degree Fahrenheit fever rather than 'no-show'.
That is why they dominate the desktop market, and probably will for years to come.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Why are we using this arbitrary word 'ready' anyway? This clearly depends on who's using it and what they're using it for. People say that their mom can't run it, but forget that their mom can't run Windows either. It's a pointless argument anyway.. people wondering whether or not linux will 'succeed'. This isn't a commercial product, it's a bunch of open source projects. Look at how much developement was done before anyone knew about it or was interested in using it. It can't really fail. The real question is will Linux ever occupy the majority position on desktops the way that Windows does now. I think the answer is obvious. If Microsoft doesn't come up with some serious innovations then EVENTUALLY they will lose the desktop, where eventually could be a matter of a few decades.
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Another VERY good reason why home users will use Linux rather than Windows is that DRM realted technologies will be abhorent to Linux so when they buy their CD and it won't play on their PC they'll just bring it back and tell the store to go to hell and download the tracks from XXX. Likewise when they pick up a few DVDs over in the US (or Europe) and come back home they will be able to just play them and not discover that they have locked themselves out from playing the rest of their collection. Now I know that Windows does not preclude them doing these things, but you have to venture into a seedier underworld of crackers where on Linux the hacking will be done out of the box (or else they will just have to get any DVD to play and then be able to play any other DVD without fear).
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
No it's not. It just means that the IT department who is doing the installation should better understand what they're installing. The people you're referring to are the same people that wouldn't use the help functionality anyway, so it doesn't matter whether they have the hand-holding Office Assistant or the standard HTML help to work with. In either case, they're going to call IT.
That's not really about Linux at all (or X even). It more about whether the installer for a particular software package will place icons and shortcuts in the correct places - if at all. That is up to whoever packaged the software, and to a large entention the distribution being used (and their policies). There are default directorys to place shortcuts and menu items, whether you use KDE, Gnome or whatever.
.rpm or .deb, you can also do this. With many Windows applications, some installers don't install or uninstall properly. Bits get left behind, or shortcuts point to nowhere. Some stick shortcuts everywhere and create annoying start-up daemons for your taskbar (RealPlayer anyone?). In the same way, that is a fault of the software also.
Installers in Linux can easily set up shortcuts, menu items, or display a message during the install process. If you install via
- OpenOffice.org
- The GIMP
As another poster points out, OpenOffice and GIMP.
Unless you're a professional artist, face it, you don't need photoshop.
But, OK, let's say that you absolutely HAVE to have those two apps (and I'm sure you're oh-so-willing to pay retail price for those apps, no?).
Get Crossover Office and run both those apps through that. They both run quite well under Crossover Office.