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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?"
Well, the obvious solution is to get rid of all the Windows machines on the network. Presto, problem solved!
If all the world's a stage, anyone who says they want better lighting spends far too much time in a dark theatre.
The review is pretty positive, really. They admitted they were testing the most difficult situation -- non-technical people using Linux in a Windows environment -- and were impressed on many counts.
The fact is it's probably never going to be possible to switch operating systems without some minor glitches... switching will always cost money and time, so there's got to be a good reason to do so...
Novell is certainly not dead and has greatly fallen to the fud of NT. NDS and Novell provide the best NOS administration environment period! No lpdad is not an answer because its just a protocal and not a solution.
I use to be a fan of Caldera now SCO because of the promissed Novell integration.
Now lets wait for the next release of netware which is rumoured to have a linux kernel.
Relying on active directory is writing MFC programs and expect to port them to Unix.
http://saveie6.com/
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?
It sounds like someone was trying to set up SAMBA without reading the documentation or they were lazy in matching the networks. Having used SAMBA in a mixed SUN and Microsoft environment, it was considered a godsend from both the Windows admins and the UN*X/SUN admins.
"All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power." - Ashleigh Brilliant
Actualy, Linux supports Appletalk, and OS X supports NFS. There really isn't a need for samba in a non windows environment. I also believe there will be support for Rendevous in *nix soon too.
I am full of goo... black evil goo
(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*.
Episode 1 : Microsoft is a failure /.)
Episode 2 : Linux is a failure <-- YOU ARE HERE
Episode 3 : SCO is THE failure (soon on
When the target stops moving.
Which will be roughly about the same time Bovines achieve lunar orbit.
and found it wanting. A key problem area was interacting with the corporate Windows network.
Well, actually the real problem is that Windows server software is wanting: it fails to conform to standard protocols and formats. If Windows server software was built from the ground up around IMAP, XML, HTML, HTTP, WebDAV, and other such protocols, then Linux desktops and Mac desktops would work well with it. While Windows currently nominally supports many of those protocols and formats, they are second class compared to Microsoft's proprietary protocols.
What's the solution? Get rid of the Windows servers. That also lowers licensing, administrative, and maintenance costs. And Windows clients can talk fairly well to Linux servers running open source software.
Try sticking a Windows box in a totally Linux environment, and see how that goes.
No NFS support, broken kerberos support, no NIS support that I know of, no ssh client or server, no X server so no remote apps. Sure, some of these things can be purchased and installed, but most of the windows versions subpar when compared with the real thing.
This study is like putting Michael Jordan on a special olympics basketball team, and then wondering why it didn't make the NBA finals.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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)
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Apple doesnt' even really use AppleTalk anymore. It uses AFP over TPC, which is the AppleTalk Filing Protocol over TCP.
... 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?
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
What we REALLY need is a platform agnostic networking solution that works well, is fast, is reliable and works the same everywhere.
companies that is.
You have this wonderful multi user OS and you use it on a single PC, arghhh.
Centralised computing is where most companies should be at, cheap disposable terminals on the desktop and a beast of a server under lock and key.
Linux will rule the enterprise desktop when companies grasp the mainfram had the right network architecture. Until then they're just wasting money.
Yes, I can see that meeting now:
CUSTOMER: Well, we're having trouble making our new Linux boxes talk to our large installed base of Windows boxes.
MICROSOFT: You don't say.
C: No, really. We'd really like it if you were to make Windows boxes easier to talk to by publishing your heretofore closed standard.
M: So let me get this straight. You want us to make it easier for our competitors to replace us? If we do this, then our market share goes down because the barrier to switching lowers. But if we don't, you'll keep buying Windows because it's cheaper than doing a complete rollover. Let me consider that.
C: Thanks, we'd really appreciate it!
Matt
I kinda wish that existed.
Microsoft, as much as I hate them, is everywhere. The agressive approach to converting people to Linux - forcing them onto Linux computers - isn't going to work all that well. People need to get over their fears of the alien OS, and, to do that, we need to co-exist, side-by-side, until that fateful moment when the M$ system crashes and we're the only one left running.
Seriously, Linux needs to be there in front of the common end-users' eyes for a while for them to start wanting to use it. That means Linux has to be able to work in Windows environments, and it will be graded based on how well it works with other Windows machines and server setups.
Nicholas Eckert
vidstudent
Doesn't play well with Linux boxes.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Ok, there's plenty of posts that say "just get rid of Windows" as a solution to the interoperability problem. However, if I'm generous and give Apple and Linux each 10% of the desktop market, that still leaves 80% to MS. You don't throw out a product with 80% of the market just because you can't get your minority system to work correctly with it.
When will Linux take over? When it interoperates with everything, so that people can get used to using it. Then, you can slowly migrate systems as needed, instead of going all out with one system, then having to re-train all your workers, and iron out all the bugs at once.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
What the poster wants is a pipe dream. Linux is not Windows, and it has it's own set of rules and design guidelines. A Unix network is a totally different beast from a NTLM/Active Directory network. THe protocols used are standard, and do not come in a package.
What teams such have Samba have done is pretty amazing by all accounts. They have gone from NOTHING, to a product which can enable a Linux server to server a Windows network without loosing many abilities.
The otherway is different. Yes a Linux computer can access Windows networks, and of course, no it won't behave just like Windows. But it does a damned mean job of accessing NFS shares.
You have to keep in perspective what we fight against. Creating interoperbility with Windows is chasing a moving target. MS will keep adding new things, like differnet encryption in XP, different encryption in Server 2003, and we will keep playing catch up.
This is a never ending cycle. For Linux to "win" the desktop, we need a clear goal of our own set that has advangates over Windows.
Yes, we need interoperbility, and we have that. It's not hard to set up a Linux SMB server, move Windows shares to it, and map it out over Samba and NFS, but it isn't plug and play, and probably never will be.
What it gives us though is a stepping block in order to migrate other boxes. Once Windows is out of the picture (as it is at my company), 100% interoperbility ceases to matter, and it becomes WIndows that needs to interoperate with us.
My two cents.
Until you try to hook things up to an MS domain. That's where it always falls apart.
People forget, but there was a time when there were other word processors besides Word. In fact, many of them had bizarre and confusing interfaces (Wordperfect for DOS, anyone?) When people had to do the inevitable switch to something new, they may have been befuddled for a while, but eventually, they got the hang of it.
I really don't think the issue is user acceptance near as much as ADMINISTRATOR acceptance. To get that, you're going to have to play nice with the existing infrastructure (after all, it was there first).
People can adjust to OpenOffice - we've done it here. But to replace our domain system with Linux would be near impossible. Forget the investments we'd be throwing out the door - think about all the other things like mapped shares, home directories, etc. It would be a massive undertaking to recreate all of that for very little reward.
I know MS plays their little games of half-assed interoperablility ("Windows 2000 is now based on LDAP and Kerberos! Well... Except for these little changes...") But if Linux is going to want to compete it's going to have to try harder.
Xandros has done this, but it's closed source. Kinda defeats the purpose, no?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
The problems you encountered (sound card, nVidia) are 100% installation issues.
They have nothing to do with Linux being ready for the desktop. I can install brand new hardware in an XP box and Windows will not know how to handle it. That is, until I install the drivers from the manufacturer. But that doesn't mean XP isn't ready for the desktop, does it?
If you had purchased a computer with Linux pre-installed, you would not have had those problems. If you had only purchased components with good Linux support, you would not have had those problems.
Those driver issues will only be solved when Linux has 50%+ of the desktop market. That's plain economics. The vidoe card manufacturers don't all support Linux to the same degree.
And claiming something should work with Linux because it is "from the most popular manufacturer out there" shows your lack of understanding. It doesn't matter how popular a manufacturer is. It matters how well that manufacturer works with the Linux community.
The basics of Active Directory have been around now for almost 4 years. I contend that it's not that it can't be done, but that it hasn't been the focus of the Samba group.
Want proof? Xandros HAS done it. They have Domain support out of the box. Of course, it's closed source...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Though I've known this for a long time, it keeps hitting home every weekend as I travel to a small town flea market and sell used systems + offer cheap system repair and troubleshooting.
Most people out there simply want to buy a computer that runs "all the stuff I run across on the store shelves". I've tried selling perfectly good used PowerMac systems and run into this, just like I run into this if I have Linux pre-loaded on a PC that I put up for sale.
You find roughly 1 in 100 people who praise the fact that you're using Linux (or a Mac for that matter), and they typically spend the next 5 or 10 minutes chatting with you about the superiority of your choice, etc. Then they walk off without buying. (They've already got plenty of computer stuff at home.)
To the general public, Linux being "ready for the desktop" simply means it'll easily let them install and run all the "bargain bin" software on CD-ROM they picked up at Costco or WalMart, their copy of Microsoft Office they paid hundreds of dollars for a few years ago, and they really want to buy after they get their new computer.
This is, ultimately, why Linux won't ultimately be ready for "the desktop" for years and years, if ever. Apple still can't seem to pull off even a consistent 5% market share, and they have hundreds of commercially available software titles!
Oh, for crying out loud. It's not THAT bad. Yes, the open source and Gnu/Linux communities have better intentions than a giant corporation, but that doesn't mean Windows is really all that bad.
I will admit, during the Windows9X days, using Microsoft products was a joke. But I can honestly say Windows XP is a good operating system. What more do you want it to do? It does everything I want it to. The only times it crashed were when I didn't have the right drivers installed for my hardware (old versions). I can get the same thing to happen in Linux (or any OS) if I screw up the drivers. The OS detects USB devices immediately after they're plugged in. It doesn't hog all my resources (maybe if you have a 300mhz CPU, 64mb of RAM and a 2gb hard drive, it doesn't work too well... but if you have a 300mhz CPU, 64mb of RAM and a 2gb hard drive, you shouldn't be complaining that you can't run the latest software on your 6+ year old machine) and I have no problems installing anything.
Microsoft supplies users with an after-distribution set of utilities called XP PowerToys, including a special calculator, web cam stuff, more system configuration (TweakUI), alt-tab replacement, "Open command window here" (like Ctrl-T in KDE). They make the OS easily more usable.
Bootvis.exe makes Windows boot faster. A lot faster, in my case. The only thing that sucks is that you have to reboot when you install some things. That was one of the nice things about Linux, being able to restart the X server instead of having to reboot. Sometimes in Linux you didn't have to reboot at all. Kernel patching amazes me.
I think the only thing that would make you zealots like Microsoft Windows was if you replace Microsoft with "Not Microsoft" and Windows with "Linux".
Windows XP
Pros:
You can actually play games(when they come out).
Cons:
Costs money, you have to activate it, which is a pain in the ass
Linux
Pros:
Free
Whatever that other guy said, secure, versatile, yeah, yeah
Cons:
Can't play games (right away).
All in all, I rest my case on the following: I can go to the store on the release date of any game and pick it up, bring it home, and find myself playing it within 10 minutes.
That is one thing I cannot say for Linux. (And I'd like to say that I love Linux, I use it for a server for all my game images, installers for both OSs, and I'm trying to master using Debian at the moment.)