The Failures Of Desktop Linux

PDAJames writes "Maybe Linux isn't quite ready for the desktop after all. After an earlier, very positive evaluation of SuSE Linux Desktop, ZDNet UK has carried out a more in-depth review, running the system in a production environment for two weeks, and found it wanting. A key problem area was interacting with the corporate Windows network. When will this stuff finally be ironed out?"

Comments

Other boxen

[inertia187]

So, does it work well with OS X better than Windows on the network? I should hope so. It's kinda funny. If there's zero Windows boxen on the network, the OS X and Linux users would probably still have to use Samba. Bummer.

Re:Other boxen

[curtlewis]

Apple doesnt' even really use AppleTalk anymore. It uses AFP over TPC, which is the AppleTalk Filing Protocol over TCP.

There is minimal support for this on *nix, but good luck getting it configured and working well.

*nix really needs some kind of GUI client for AFP/TCP much like the Go To Server window in OS X. That is, something that scans the LAN for servers as well as allows direct IP entry of the server if you know it.

NFS sure is convenient but it's a security nightmare and no sysadmin worth his pay will let you set up and use NFS on a network.

I'm no Windows fan, but let's face it, getting rid of the Windows boxes/network is not an acceptable solution to the majority of the world. Windows is there, running, and working well enough for them to not seriously consider migration at this point or they WOULD be migrating.

So any OS needs to work WITH Windows. Of course, to play fair, Windows should work will WITH others, too. The general demeanor is that SMB networking isn't proprietary. It is, very much so. The only OS that uses it natively is Windows and the only reason someone would want to use it is to work WITH Windows boxes. SMB as a general networking technology sucks. With absolutely no physical changes what is shown in Network Neighborhood varies at the whim of the OS and ... Bill Gates? The box is there, the box is gone? It's online and can be reached by \\servername, but not in the neighborhood? What's up with that?

What we REALLY need is a platform agnostic networking solution that works well, is fast, is reliable and works the same everywhere.

Silly question, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

How does it work the other way round? Is it really a case of Linux not interoperating with Windows networks because of the way Windows is designed, or would it be just as hard to get a single Windows box onto a Linux network?

What I'm saying is: surely the single, lesser box on a network is always at a disadvantage, Macs on Windows, Windows on Macs, Linux on Macs, etc. etc...

Opinions?

Should have used Lindows

[Anonymous Coward]

(Christ, I'm going to get flamed for this)
I just got my hands on a copy of LindowsOS 4.0 (Thanks eMule) and installed it on my laptop.
Wow.
Coupled with apt (I ain't paying for Click-n-run), it is one hell of an OS.
I mean, a Debian install that just *works*.

Still not quite there...

[JayBlalock]

I've been watching Linux for ages, and about once a year or two, I'll get a copy of a distro and give it a shot. This year I actually tried two, which are supposed to be the more user-friendly ones: RedHat and SuSE. While for the first time I managed to quickly set up a Linux desktop environment which did everything I needed, I still found it a bear to work with. RedHat didn't like my soundcard, the forums weren't much help. It took me two weeks to get SuSE to accept nVidia's drivers (because ONE character in ONE source code was off), and then after a week, it decided to stop using the drivers again. Never got Quicktime and most other video formats working. Opera for Linux isn't as good, and I've never cared for Moz. After a couple months of fighting with it, I finally gave up and went back to Windows. It's CLOSE to being desktop-ready, but barely a day went by that I didn't discover something I couldn't automatically do in Linux, and would require a day's tinkering to get working. And this was, as I said, after trying to different distros. Maybe next year... (braces for flames telling him he's stupid and evil)

Re:Still not quite there...

[alpharoid]

Never got Quicktime and most other video formats working.

That's strange, especially if you tried Linux this year. Xine and mplayer are very good media players and do support every codec you will ever need. Once they're installed (there's the Win32 codec DLL pack) you never have to worry about codecs again.

Surprisingly, Windows usually gives you some headaches when dealing with obscure codecs. You have to find codec packs with flaky installers where if you flag every option, one codec inevitably breaks another. It takes practice to get everything right if you need lots of codecs in Windows. It could have been a lot easier with Media Player's automatic codec download, but MS won't facilitate downloading of standard codecs (divx 4 or 5? Nope. Vorbis? Nope!) in the hopes that everyone will ditch good codecs to adopt their DRM-dirty WMx formats.

I can understand your other troubles with Linux as they're being slowly ironed out, but codec problems in Linux nowadays seem strange to me. It's one of the areas where Linux is a lot easier to work with.

Re:Doesn't play well with Windows boxes?

[General Fault]

I love Linux! That said, I have always found the mentioned problem to be a major stumbling block. I admit that I am not a huge Linux guru, but I am a software engineer, and can figure out what I need most of the time. Still, it is never "seamless" to connect my Linux boxes to a windows network. Your solution of "getting rid of all of the Windows machines" is not very practical (and I suspect that you know it, but were being humorous). I have 1 Linux box at work on a huge (500+) machine network dominated by Windows. This is normal. Many companies that develop for Windows have employees that like Linux and try to get it shoved in the company structure once in a while. This is a big problem when I need to devote significant resources to getting the Linux box all set up. I can plug a Windows machine into a windows network and without hardly any effort, that machine is happily communicating with the rest of the network. To get a Linux box on that same network, I need to install SAMBA, configure the .conf file, run some command line utils to join the domain, configure PAM, get the init files working.... it goes on! I know that the real solution (and the beauty of Open Source) is for me to "use the force, read write some source". And for me and the rest of the community, the problem is fixed! The trouble is as always finding time to commit to such a large project.

Linux Desktop Complaints

[QuasiEvil]

First - I'm as much of a Linux fan as the next guy. However, after spending the better part of the day today in frustration with my new Linux desktop at work, I feel the need to vent.

My main bitches about Linux (not the kernel, the whole system - RMS's part, Linus's part, all the commonly-installed stuff...) as a desktop OS (and 99% of them are about X):

- X sucks hard in terms of responsiveness. Click a OS-level button (such as, say, the close button on a window) in Windows, that sucker responds. It may still be doing stuff in the background, but from the user's point of view, it's snappy and responsive. I'm running on a 2.4GHz P4 with a 10k RPM SCSI disk and 512Mbytes of memory for god's sake, there shouldn't be signficant UI lag! Win2k was about as snappy and responsive as you could get. I realize this is because MS built the GDI into the kernel, but come on, we're supposed to be better. As a modern business desktop user, I (typically) don't give a rat's ass about running applications on that server in the closet and having them display on my desktop. I want responsiveness...

- Bizarre-ass fonts. I realize this is mostly a configuration issue, but I've never found a distro that provided a decent font setup. Again, gotta hand it to MS, but Windows has a good, no-frills set of fonts that universally look good without taking up too much space. Those who configure X seem to have an unholy fascination with huge widgets and huge text.

- At least semi-standardized look and feel. Windows apps these days all sort of look and feel alike, but X apps are all over the road. This is the result of freedom, and that's not bad in and of itself. However, if we could agree on common places to put certain things, it would really help the user experience.

- And as a side bitch, why does GIMP not have an image browsing plugin? I know, I know, because nobody's contributed one yet. I'd help, but I'm an embedded guy - you really don't want me writing desktop software.

Okay, flame retardant suit on... Sorry, but those are my core complaints about trying to be a simple Linux desktop user today.

Re:Doesn't play well with Windows boxes?

[b!arg]

My question has always been, "Who's desktop?"

My desktop? Sure.
Worker Bees desktop? Eh...maybe, but probably not.
My Mom's desktop? God no.

Re:Sounds like.....

[kisielk]

Why should they read the documentation? So they know what the hell they are doing, obviously. I'd be impressed if you could show me anyone who with little or no prior experience, and without reading the documentation, was able to set up a decent reliable Windows network.

Re:Doesn't play well with Windows boxes?

[sniggly]

Kind of says it all - the older, open standard (NFS) is replaced by the closed source less capable alternative (NFS had to support a multi user environment from the start) and yet the latter dominates the market so becomes de facto standard.

But thats the market at work.. The only alternative would be to legislate open standards which would then become practically unalterable...

When it will work.

[ratfynk]

'When will this stuff finally be ironed out?'
When interoperabily with MS tools is no longer a concern. And MS format standards are no longer a moving target. With the lock they have on lobby groups on capitol hill- never.