Linux Advocacy From the Trenches

An anonymous reader writes "Tom Adelstein, longtime Linux advocate and consultant has spent the last year working closely with state, local, and federal government open source software initiatives. Tom launched Government Forge,spearheaded the Open Source bill in Texas and other programs. Tom shares the grass roots efforts that have offered him an insider's view of what is propelling Linux toward critical mass and the desktop. He shares his view of Linux "from the trenches" in this interview."

Comments

Big Bully

[tarquin_fim_bim]

"The main PC makers have held back on releasing Linux desktops only because they're afraid of offending Microsoft"

It saddens the heart to on ponder on the technological advancements that have been missed because of this disgusting behaviour. And what is worse, is that many blindly idolise this company and it's unethical practises. Man the lifeboats or go down with the ship.

Re:Big Bully

[grub]

technological advancements that have been missed because of this disgusting behaviour.

Microsoft has done more to lower the standards and expectations of computing than any other company in history. If you argue that they have lots of money therefore must be good then you just don't get it.

Re:Big Bully

[bigjocker]

When the anthropologists look back on the 1980s and 1990s and do the archaeological digs, and get their callipers and brooms and microscopes out, they will blame the massive reduction in productivity during the 1980s and 1990s entirely on Microsoft Office.

Scott McNealy, Press Club, Australia, 1996

Re:Big Bully

[el-spectre]

And since 1996, the internet (mostly the web) has filled that role nicely...

Re:Big Bully

[caluml]

Lowering the standards - I agree 100%.

When most peoples computers lockup, or need rebooting, they just shrug it off. Me, if my computer ever did something unusual, I'd be suspicious, and want to know what the hell happened.
Show people ifconfig eth0 192.168.31.12, and they'll usually comment on how fast it is.
How many Windows users don't know what all the processes in their Task Manager list are? Me - if I saw an unknown process when I ran ps auxw, I'd be investigating in a shot. Strace, netstat, tcpdump, the works.

Re:Big Bully

[koali]

So McNealy has succeeded?

Re:Big Bully

[stratjakt]

You do realize the quote is from a self-admitted linux zealot, take it as such.

I could think of a million technical reasons not to release Linux desktops.

They all boil down to linux sucking as a desktop machine. Very few of their customers want it. How many linux dudes here are gettin' a Dell?

It's just not worth the cost to tweak a distro for their needs, then support it down the road. And how do you support it once people start recompiling their own kernels and userspace apps - not talking about corporate world here, but the average linux user?

The PC makers are driven by profits, not by Microsoft. Make preloading a linux desktop profitable, and watch the landscape change.

MS's tactics haven't stopped them from shipping linux on servers instead of 2003.

Re:Big Bully

[Anonymous Coward]

Most users aren't geeks and don't want, nor need, to know about every intricate detail about the OS.

Linux zealots fail to grasp this. How can anyone not be interested in packet mangling firewalls? How could you not care which method of kerning a specific fontset uses?

Windows works for them. Linux doesnt.

Step one in changing that, is expelling all of the elitist douchebags from the "community".

Re:Big Bully

[Anonymous Coward]

hehehe, reminds me of an old joke:

What is the difference between Tom Adelstein and CmdrTaco?

Tom Adelstein advocates linux, CmdrTaco advocates faggotry!

Re:Big Bully

[be-fan]

Good luck. The "elitist douchebags" you so kindly refer to are the ones you actually built the fucking platform...

Re:Big Bully

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, he has succeeded in sucking my cock.

Did you hear about the blind skunk who fell in love with a fart?

hahahh ahhaha that joke is SO FUCKING FUNNY!!

Re:Big Bully

[Anonymous Coward]

oh horseshit. The elitist douchbags are the thousands of faggots who leech of the small handful of people who built the fucking platform.

Of course, they're ALL busy sucking each other's dicks, but don't pretend that this is some big happy social OS. It's mostly gay hippies who "support" it by using it and bitching about MS. Very few people contribute shit, unless they're contributing a load of cum into some guy's mouth.

Re:Big Bully

[Kenja]

I bet these people live in houses without knowing how to build one. I bet they also drive cars without being able to rebuild and engine. In otherwords people who claim that all computer users should be forced to know everything about the OS and do things the hard way, even if it is faster, are nothing but hypocrites.

Re:Big Bully

[Penguinshit]

That's all well and fine if you want to discount the fact that Microsoft forbid PC distributors from releasing an alternative OS on their systems. Microsoft isn't supposed to do that anymore, but still plays games with "Preferred Partnership" programs and the like.

So, the PC distributors who had customers requesting a Linux desktop system were not allowed to even investigate opening up that market because Microsoft would have jacked up their costs of bundling Windoze on the rest of their systems. Truly take Microsoft out of monopoly status and watch the landscape change.

Microsoft has been having lots of trouble breaking into the server market (a relatively recent market for them) because Enterprise-class people know (from supporting the mess that is the MS desktop) that Microsoft is a back-end infrastructure nightmare. It is universally regarded as better to go with a robust adult OS (UNIX) and/or its young upstart cousin (Linux) for your server needs and keep the MS nonsense contained in Desktop Userland.

Re:Big Bully

[UtucXul]

You aren't actually suggesting that Dell supports the computers that it sells with windows, are you? Back in the dark days when the old Dell I have still occasionally got booted into windows, my modem died. When I called Dell (it was still under warrenty then), they refused to replace it because they couldn't do "online trouble shooting" since I had WIn2K on it. How did they expect to do online trouble shooting on a computer with a broken modem regardless of the OS? With that kind of support, I don't think Dell would have any trouble providing the same level of support with for linux that they do for windows.

Re:Big Bully

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could argue the enterprise people's judgements are clouded by the desktop experience so they never give windows a chance in the server room

Re:Big Bully

[Penguinshit]

Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.

"Won't get fooled again..." (R. Daltry)

Re:Big Bully

[Anonymous Coward]

I bit on the homophobic side are we?

Re:Big Bully

[westlake]

Turn the clock back five years, ten years.
Consider the true state of the Linux distributions (or any other O/S for that matter) that were arguably positioned to compete successfully for the mass consumer market that came to be dominated by Windows.
Assume that Microsoft had played fair with PC distributors. Would the outcome have been any different?

Re:Big Bully

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet they also drive cars without being able to rebuild and engine.

Well, no. But don't you think it is reasonable for people who drive cars to know how to, say, change a tire? Or check the oil, adding more when necessary? How about knowing when something is wrong so that the car can be taken to a mechanic if they can't fix it themselves?

No, a driver of a car doesn't need to know how to build a car, but it is not unreasonable for them to be expected to know the basics of how a car works. Likewise, a person who uses a computer doesn't need to know the details of low-level computer programming and operating system design, but they should know something about how a computer works. In other words, they should not be point-and-click Microsoft drones.

It is not about just wanting to get work done. It is about not being a complete ignormus. If you want to be an efficient and self-sufficient computer user, you need to have some basic computer knowledge. And you don't need to be a full-time professional, or even interested hobbyist, to obtain such basic knowledge.

Re:Big Bully

[Alien Being]

That's so true. When the micros first appeared they immediately proved that there was a demand for personal computers. Compared to the minicomputers of the day, they were just toy machines with toy OSes. That was understandable.

But when IBM "legitimized" the personal computer, they should have put a real OS on it. OS9 (~1980) would have been a good choice. NT(~1994) was the first MS OS (aside from Xenix) that was anywhere near as good as OS9. My estimate is that MS set the PC world back about 14 years.

Re:Big Bully

[pyrrho]

too bad the elitist douchebags are where all the good ideas come from. no, the trick is keeping the elitist douchebags around but tricking all the power away from the... of course, corporate America already solved that problem, and now they have OSS on their hands. You just can't keep an elitist douchebag down.

Re:Big Bully

[rsheridan6]

The post you replied to didn't say "most users" would want to know low-level details, just that he did. And I don't know what planet you're from, where linux users think this, but here on Earth linux advocates are always talking about whether something is good for Joe User or grandma.

Google turns up 26,200 links for linux grandma, 8950 for linux "joe user", and only 1940 for linux packet mangling firewalls.

How did this get modded up +4 Insightful?

Re:Big Bully

[Overly Critical Guy]

Nope, Microsoft just didn't want other operating systems installed alongside their own. Companies can sell whatever they want on their machines.

Nice FUD, though.

Re:Big Bully

[Anonymous Coward]

I am. Queers are just another facet of Cultural Marxism underminding Western civilization.

Re:Big Bully

[Penguinshit]

Companies could sell whatever they wanted, but at risk of severe penalties from Microsoft. This was actually spelled out in the anti-trust hearings, and was found to be illegal anti-competitive behavior. Nice obfuscation, though.

Re:Big Bully

[jhylkema]

Quoth the poster:

Most users aren't geeks and don't want, nor need, to know about every intricate detail about the OS.

Friend, most users not only are not geeks not only do not know/care about every intricate detail of the OS. A very high percentage of users don't have two brain cells to rub together. AOL for Dummies is a real book purchased by real people. There are many, many people out there who buy things from spammers, open unknown .exe attachments, and fall for Nigerian money scams. They download BonziBuddy or insert-spyware-program-du-jour.

As for me, I'm not a hardcore geek, but I can hold my own. I use Linux because of its technical merits. It is far from perfect. It still requires a seemingly endless amount of futzing with config files and kernel recompiles to get it working. It's a workable, but not ideal, desktop OS. The install tools don't work nearly as well as they're supposed to (rpm is a damnable mess and precious little is being done to fix it) requiring much of the work to be done by hand with a text editor. I've never had a Linux box be even remotely functional out of the box and I've tried all of the distributions. Do you think people who need an "AOL for Dummies" book are going to be capable of installing and configuring Linux? I don't. And these are the vast majority of computer users.

Re:Big Bully

[ncr53c8xx]

You do realize the quote is from a self-admitted linux zealot, take it as such.

However, we have the option of just at just the facts.

The PC makers are driven by profits, not by Microsoft. Make preloading a linux desktop profitable, and watch the landscape change.

Have you read the documents that came out at the Be trial? Microsoft told the PC vendors that they wouldn't be allowed to bundle Windows if they used any other OS. And besides, who said anything about one OS per machine? Since Linux is free as in beer, they could bundle it without any additional cost (what's 2-3 GB on a disk nowadays?). All these options are out because of Microsoft--think about it--you could've gotten the entire GNU suite with your brand new PC.

MS's tactics haven't stopped them from shipping linux on servers instead of 2003.

Microsoft is not dominant in server space (they have less than 35% market share).

Re:Big Bully

[Anonymous Coward]

What if the world were the way you described?

I probably wouldn't have a steering wheel in my car. It would have a dozen levers and switches (with penguin icons all around).

My house would have walls that come off like panels in the decks of the enterprise and my kids would be electrocuting themselves.

The point is we live in the 21st century. PCs are supposed to be bending backwards for US now. Up until now it was the other way because PCs didn't have the brawn to do anything more for us. Linux is in some ways a throwback to the 70s. It has come a long way but it has further to go that it has come. Windows has its problems and even I hate it. I use XP and BeOS at home and would leave M$ the second I could but alternative OSes still lack some of what Windows has. Instead of criticizing people's homes and vehicles put some braincells to work and make us an OS/application that in some small way makes our lives easier. Kind of like grep > finder.

Re:Big Bully

[esh]

I bet these people live in houses without knowing how to build one.

Actually, people sort of know how to build houses when they live in one. If they see that the roof starts leaking they know to ask a professional to fix it. Same goes for cars. Responsible people know to get their cars repaired by trained technicians and to schedule regular tune ups (depending on the local legislation it is often usually required to get the driving permit).

If every computer had a competent system administrator, then we could compare computers to houses or cars. Unfortunately, Microsoft implies in their advertisment, that none such professional help is needed. And Linux security is better precisely because it was developed with the idea that a professional administrator needs to be able to control her/his systems.

So indeed, computers and houses/cars are still different. With computers most users do not have the slightest idea what goes on behind the scene. With houses/cars they are more familiar, even when they couldn't fix anything themselves.

Re:Big Bully

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, they're ALL busy sucking each other's dicks, but don't pretend that this is some big happy social OS. It's mostly gay hippies who "support" it by using it and bitching about MS. Very few people contribute shit, unless they're contributing a load of cum into some guy's mouth.

Dude, that is so damn sexy. Nothing wrong with being a gay and taking a nice tasty load in the mouth. Delicious!

Re:Big Bully

[Nakarti]

Knowing I'll get flamed for it, I suggest this: since expelling the elitist douchebag community, start a new Regular User community.
Lindows.com seems to have a good start at that. Even the elitists are nice about it.

Re:Big Bully

[Anonymous Coward]

stratjakt wrote: It's just not worth the cost to tweak a distro for their needs, then support it down the road. And how do you support it once people start recompiling their own kernels and userspace apps - not talking about corporate world here, but the average linux user?

With *exactly* the same level of support that they give to customers who overwrite the version of Windows that came with the computer: they don't!!!

As for the "userspace apps part of your question", I have to ask your opinion. Which system is more likely to support incompatable C runtime libraries: Linux (e.g. libc5 vs glibc) or Microsoft (msvcrt.dll)? For all you who haven't tried and/or have no opinion, the answer is "Microsoft".

Re:Big Bully

[Anonymous Coward]

you are either unfamiliar with linux, or are a total retard.

if you ever download a modern distribution of linux (try the severn beta of redhat 10), you'll SEE that linux is more than a network server/router... my mother has used linux since redhat 8 and tries to convince others that it's the way to go... her computer has never been more stable.

and she loves all the card and puzzle games... openoffice works for her, windows didn't.

step one in changing people's view of linux is to have them try it for a week, not call people names... you douchebag.

Re:Big Bully

[BSD Yoda]

This reminds me of the current MS TV commercial, I'm sure you've seen it. The geeky looking guy comes out of the "datacenter" which is an unmanned, unsecured, closet that opens into the main hall of the office - but the servers are in there, where anyone could walk in, and there is a tour going by, you don't know who, but its implied that they're all managers of some sort. The guy giving the tour says "tell us whats going on in IT" then whispers "be brief". The geek starts to go on about how "we've implemented DFS and shadow folders, and now users can recover their own lost documents", the camera pans and the crowd is starting to get a glazed look, geek continues "...it will save us hundreds of thousands of dollars...", camera pans again, they're all smiling, cut to a shot of geek reading to managers sitting indian-style on the floor in the hallway, he's holding up a page in a book for them to see, like a kindergarten teacher would, and saying "Automated system recovery..." and they all go "oooooh".

Now, I'm not sure how many documents they lose, that giving the users the capability to get them back themselves is going to save "hundreds of thousands of dollars", and I don't know what's so impressive about a system that crashes so often that it needs "automated system recovery", but the truly scary thing is that they're spending millinons of dollars to put this ad on during prime time TV on major networks, they must think they're getting a return on this investment. Honestly, is the world so fucked now that people are making NOS purchasing decisions based on this tripe?

Open Source Procurement

[Henry V .009]

I am a sometimes Linux user, but I am not personally convinced that Open Source is a better deal for my tax dollars. If Microsoft can offer a better TCO, then the government should buy Microsoft products. And I fail to see how their current procurement procedures are inadequate for making that sort of decision. The government's job is not to interfere with the market by promoting one product over another. If you really want to advocate Linux, make it a better product so that the private sector adopts it. The government sector will follow.

Re:Open Source Procurement

[gte910h]

The government's job is not to interfere with the market by promoting one product over another. If you really want to advocate Linux, make it a better product so that the private sector adopts it. The government sector will follow.

If they wanted to do this, they would make ps,star office files, or something else open and speced the document format you have to use to communicate with the federal government. As it is now, the military standard is MS-Word docs, as are most administrative branches.

Re:Open Source Procurement

[00_NOP]

This argument is just nonsense. Should the government not have bothered to build the internet then?

Sure, there is a balance to be struck but if I, as a voter, decide I want a society where goods like software are held in common I am certainly allowed to vote to make it happen.

Re:Open Source Procurement

[Aadain2001]

The problem is that OSS isn't even concidered during the bidding phase of procurement. It is not even given a chance to provide a TCO or ROI against companies, most notibly MS. If OSS was not being selected because there were specific requirements that it could not meet, then yes your post would be correct and we wouldn't have to do all this campaigning. We would just make a better product. But what is happening is all the middle management people, the ones who OK or sink a project/proposal, just flat out refuse to look at OSS. Their thinking is "No one was ever fired for buying MS", much like the old IBM saying back in the day. The only way to fight this is to hit them over the head with a clue-by-four, OR legally require them to look at ALL bidders, not just the proprietary ones like MS.

Re:Open Source Procurement

[RealAlaskan]

If Microsoft can offer a better TCO, then the government should buy Microsoft products.

If pigs can fly, then the government should buy them instead of bombers. But pigs can't fly, and MS generally can't offer a lower TCO. Just think about the cost of the viruses. Then think about the cost of keeping MS's high profit margins and high growth rates going, year after year. MS simply can't compete on cost, except in pathological cases.

... I fail to see how their current procurement procedures are inadequate for making that sort of decision.

Their current procurement procedures require that, in order for a product to be considered, SOMEONE must submit a bid. If we are talking about implementing a system with hardware, software and services, then bidders can put together a package which includes Libre software. If we are talking about buying 300 copies of MS Office for the helpdesk guys to install, who's going to submit a bid proposing to supply Openoffice free, instead?

The process assumes that money will be spent, and that vendors will be willing to jump through many expensive hoops to get fat contracts.

Finally, we have the fact that for many RFP's, the primary objective is to SPEND THE MONEY! Getting something in return is secondary to using up the budget, so that next year's budget is bigger rather than smaller. Free or Libre solutions aren't an obvious solution to this problem, especially if they have lower TCO! Managers know this, and are careful to write their specs so that they can spend what they have their hearts set on spending, and get what they want, rather than the best tool for the job.

Managers who purchase large systems from companies like MS or Oracle can count on being visited, flattered, lunched on expense accounts, given offers of political kickbacks[1], and whatever else it takes to make a sale. Managers who implement a low-cost, Libre solution can count on a smaller budget for software purchases next year, and nobody will make them feel important, or even buy them a sandwich at Subway.

The government's job is not to interfere with the market by promoting one product over another.

Then why is it appropriate to have our current procurement procedure, which effectively locks out most free and Libre offerings? The current system certainly promotes proprietary solutions at the expense of all other possibilities.

[1]Remember the big scandal of Oracle's big sale to California?

Re:Open Source Procurement

[Anonymous Coward]

The goverment is adopting it though, so the private sector must be too.

Re:Open Source Procurement

[Mikkeles]

"Their current procurement procedures require that, in order for a product to be considered, SOMEONE must submit a bid.... If we are talking about buying 300 copies of MS Office for the helpdesk guys to install, who's going to submit a bid proposing to supply Openoffice free, instead?
...

Finally, we have the fact that for many RFP's, the primary objective is to SPEND THE MONEY!"

1. Download OO (with source);
2. copy to 300 CDs;
3. look up (discounted) price of M$Office;
4. submit proposal (tender) for x% less;
5. supply discs if you win!

(1. and 2. are the value added part :^)

And most importantly: don't forget to reward the hard working developers, the FSF, etc. with (tax deductable?) donations.

Then it's Guinness time! (WATMHL)

Re:Open Source Procurement

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really want to advocate Linux, make it a better product so that the private sector adopts it.

and just why do you think that Microsoft is so worried about Linux? It has proven to be a better product in the server market where M$ has desperately tried to take over.

I am convinced that open source is a better deal for my tax dollars for one reason: they are tax dollars! Those tax dollars should not go to influence the market or to make any company more successful than another. Let the free market do that. Tax dollars should be spent on Open Source software simply because it influences the profitably of NO company at all.

Re:Open Source Procurement

[dmaxwell]

Thats easy to handle. Take the money you save on the software and use it to buy bigger iron, gigabit switches, and so forth. If you saved a lot of money then hire some people. Managers in public service love to grow their departments.

Ah, Linux / BSD / Unix in general...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody miss the days when Unix was respected? Back in those days, if you ran Unix or a variant, men would tip their hats at you, people would call you "Sir", women would approach you instead of waiting to be approached, and no one would question the decisions you made.

Nowadays most any chump will try and recommend Windows, even if it's not the right solution to a problem, just because it's all they know and all they ever learnt. They don't have the uncertainty and fear of Ghod in their hearts like most people used to.

A crying shame.

Re:Ah, Linux / BSD / Unix in general...

[soft_guy]

And remember the days when you could get a free ice cream cone if you told the clerk at Baskin Robbins that you used an Amiga?

Ah, the good old days...

Re:Ah, Linux / BSD / Unix in general...

[Creepy Crawler]

Bull shit. All the VMS idiots were picking on me.

But I fixed them, did I . I 0x'ed em. They came back as Windows NT.

No wonder somebody said that Unix and C were the ultimate viruses....

Re:Ah, Linux / BSD / Unix in general...

[Kenja]

As oposed to recomending Linux even when it's not the right solution to a problem?

Re:Ah, Linux / BSD / Unix in general...

[Anonymous Coward]

As "oposed" to nothing. They're just as bad. I would agree ten-thousand percent with you: neither Linux nor Windows belong on my toaster/microwave/refrigerator.

Re:Ah, Linux / BSD / Unix in general...

[Kenja]

Indeed, only BSD should be installed on a kitchen apliance.

In the real world there is no One True OS. This is why my apartment looks like a major computer lab. Seems I need to the right tool for the right job so I have to keep Sun, SGI, Linux, Windows and other systems around just in case.

Re:Ah, Linux / BSD / Unix in general...

[Alien Being]

"Back in those days, if you ran Unix or a variant, men would tip their hats at you"

They were probably tipping their hats at the mainframers who were making faces behind your back.

Re:Ah, Linux / BSD / Unix in general...

[JaredOfEuropa]

Does anybody miss the days when Unix was respected?

Modded as funny, but there's some sad truth here. Certain developments, mostly by Microsoft, have lowered the entry barrier into computing. This is a good thing in the case of end-users, but things like VB and point-and-click NT server installations and database management tools have brought in droves of drongoes doing development work and system administration.

To use the inaccurate but wildly popular Construction/Architecture analogy: it is like someone has come up with really big Lego blocks with which you can build your own home. These blocks come with plumbing, wiring, and are ready to use. So, now everyone can build their own home, right? Sure... but people will soon find out that properly designing a home is an art, and that you still need to know how to lay a solid foundation before you start building. But if everyone is able to build a home that will stand, more or less, people will lose their respect for architects and construction workers.

And that, my friends, is what I have seen happening in our own IT industry: when company managers saw that pretty much anyone could be taught to program and administer systems, sort of, they started hiring anyone with approcimately the right body temperature. The result is that management, and society in general, has lost its respect for IT professionals. Even when the demand for IT people peaked, interest in IT studies was lukewarm at best, and wages weren't all that good for academics working in IT, compared to their colleagues in other disciplines (at least, this seemed the case in mainland Europe).

I for one do remember when I started in this industry, and when I was indeed respected as a professional. Those days are long gone.

Re:Ah, Linux / BSD / Unix in general...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I included every single popular OS in my toaster bit, would you have come up with yet another one that should be installed on a kitchen appliance? :-) I wasn't implying anything.

I agree with you, though. There is nothing quite like the feeling of having the right tools at your disposal when faced with certain tasks.

Re:Ah, Linux / BSD / Unix in general...

[ncr53c8xx]

And that, my friends, is what I have seen happening in our own IT industry: when company managers saw that pretty much anyone could be taught to program and administer systems, sort of, they started hiring anyone with approcimately the right body temperature. The result is that management, and society in general, has lost its respect for IT professionals. Even when the demand for IT people peaked, interest in IT studies was lukewarm at best, and wages weren't all that good for academics working in IT, compared to their colleagues in other disciplines (at least, this seemed the case in mainland Europe).

Well, IT wasn't all that respected in the early days. Back then it was women's job (like typing was). And round and round we go ...

TCO is dead; long live ROI

[yerricde]

If Microsoft can offer a better TCO

"Total cost of ownership" isn't the buzzword anymore. The new buzzword is "return on investment". Even if free software costs more to run, it can often do more.

Re:TCO is dead; long live ROI

[Anonymous Coward]

but if you don't need the more then it is a waste

Re:TCO is dead; long live ROI

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't need more, you're going nowhere.

Re:TCO is dead; long live ROI

[Anonymous Coward]

"other banks will not be happy if we start mailing them open office documents"

I for one welcome any opportunity to annoy our finacial overlords.

Re:TCO is dead; long live ROI

[Anonymous Coward]

"other banks will not be happy if we start mailing them office documents with nasty honking macro viruses in them "

Re:TCO is dead; long live ROI

[tcopeland]

> I work at a financial instiution

I work at a government institution.

> Our data processor will not support Linux

Ours will.

> Tech support of the industry specific
> software we run will not support Linux

Time are changin'; people are porting apps to Linux left and right. Witness the PeopleSoft Linux ports.

> It's time to get serious here.

I am.

> We're big boys

So are we.

> Microsoft is the way it has to be

No it doesn't.

Re:TCO is dead; long live ROI

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for the government. Ohhh. Look at me. We have soo much money from dumb taxpayers, we can do whatever we want. Ohhhhh. I'm so great. We've got all the money in the world. Let's spend some more money we don't have so that we can port our apps to linux. I love George Bush, 'cause he makes sure we can waste money any way we want to. Ohhhhhh. We're so great.

Bah.

Re:TCO is dead; long live ROI

[jimlintott]

If you mail a document who cares which software or even what printer created it. Or did you mean e-mail?

If there is one thing I hate, it is receiveing an attached document when the text could be in the body of the e-mail. If it is so fancy that it has to be attached then send a PDF or a postscript.

Re:TCO is dead; long live ROI

[ichimunki]

What industry-specific software are you running on Microsoft? Most of the serious software in the world (financial and otherwise) is no way, no how, going to run on any shoddy little MS box. You almost have a point about inter-office files, but it's easy enough to send them as HTML or .txt or .rtf or .jpg or whatever. In fact, every time I get a .doc file or other MS file, I cringe. Usually it's a huge byte-moat around a very small amount of data that now clogs the heck out of my email box.

Re:TCO is dead; long live ROI

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't because I'm going to shoot them. I fucking hate dogs. And you, but I won't shoot you just Tico and Roy. Assuming I can find either one of them without your dick stuck in them for more than 30 seconds.

heh, that will never happen. The dogs like, and Malda gets to lick the dog crap off your cock. Business as usual.

Re:TCO is dead; long live ROI

[Stargoat]

Every one of those goofy little loan products is Windows based. Every one of the bank sharing information is Windows based. Everyone one of major data-processors for small (>20 billion in assets) supports only Windows.

Look at FISERV, Metavante, Jack Henry, or Bisys. They all use an AS/400, but the banks must use Windows, or they will not support or sell their products to that bank.

Re:TCO is dead; long live ROI

[Penguinshit]

I hate that whenever I drink my tea, I get a stabbing pain in my eye. But, the spoon is there; that's the way it has to be.

btw: I also work at a financial institution. There is migration to web-based services rather than locally-run applications. Soon it won't matter which platform (except the farking morons who write web-apps only for IE).

Re:TCO is dead; long live ROI

[Anonymous Coward]

"If there is one thing I hate, it is receiveing an attached document when the text could be in the body of the e-mail."

On the upside, you get to take control of their machine when you mail them a malformed Word document back. If they're really smart, you can type-and-delete stuff you want them to believe, but don't want them to know that you know that they know. "look what we found in the change history"

And who can forget the "change default filetype to RTF" trick if you want to stop them sending any more word documents?

Re:TCO is dead; long live ROI

[Stargoat]

Yeah. I've noticed that. But that's mainly for teller apps. The more complicated backroom stuff is still going to be DBs only accessable through non-standard software for some time to come.

Re:TCO is dead; long live ROI

[jawtheshark]

Strange... I also work in a financial institution, and most "backroom stuff" is done directly with a terminal application connected to the big mainframe in the basement.
Yes, that application (the terminal program) is run under Windows, but I see no reason why this couldn't be done under Linux. After all the mainframes are usually IBM, and IBM could easily provide a client application for Linux.

This stuff is text-only... No additional fluff... Should be rather easy, even if the protocol is non-standard.

Re:TCO is dead; long live ROI

[110010001000]

"I work at a government institution."

What? Aren't you Tom Copeland who works for InfoEther???

Re:TCO is dead; long live ROI

[tcopeland]

Yup, but I'm working on a govt contract doing govt work.

Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Lumpy]

The kernel, basic system and desktop (ala kde/gnome) is there and ready to go right now.

Open office is really darn close, Mozilla is dead on...

but... some things are lacking horribly...

Examples? Video editing.. nothing available for linux can touch adobe Premiere.. not even the old version 5.0 of it.

Desktop publishing? It's finally starting to get there with the one app we have.

but the biggest hold back is that unless you are a medium level linux user you CANNOT install software without a fight.

a newbie want to click on an install icon... like UT, quake3, or all the loki games has.. and Open Office and Mozilla .. they have them too...

linux needs a unified installer system. it needs to be a click-and-drool GUI (command line capability though)

this is desperately needed and actually USED by the developers.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Anonymous Coward]

oh god, who let the zealots out..
oh, wait ... nm

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Rinikusu]

/* a newbie want to click on an install icon... like UT, quake3, or all the loki games has.. and Open Office and Mozilla .. they have them too... */

Newbie fucking hell. I'm not exactly a newbie and all I want is a fucking icon to click to install.

Yes, apt-get install foo is nice and all, but compared to clicking an icon labeled "Install", it's rocket science for 99% of the people out there.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[rmohr02]

I think OOo is already there, but I don't use my office suite all that much.

but the biggest hold back is that unless you are a medium level linux user you CANNOT install software without a fight.

Install under '~/'. Non-administrators on Windows (NT) systems have the same disability, but on Windows systems everyone is an administrator anyway.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear ya brotha.

Hell...I just don't want to be typing shit all the time. Somehow all the Linux zealots got it inot their heads that using a console equates to skill. You fucking memorized commands...big fucking deal. That doesn't make you any smarter than the guy who saved a couple seconds by clicking on an icon.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[be-fan]

Well, you could always use something like synaptic, which is actually easier than using an installer program, because you don't have to do all the shit the Windows installer makes you do, you just have to choose your app.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Anonymous Coward]

"a newbie want to click on an install icon... like UT, quake3, or all the loki games has.. and Open Office and Mozilla .. they have them too...

linux needs a unified installer system. it needs to be a click-and-drool GUI (command line capability though)"

Wow. You're the first ever person to think of this. Now about about doing it? Would that require you to get of your big fat American ass?

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[JaredOfEuropa]

You're part right. One reason that I see people choose Windows over Linux is availability of applications, and mainly games. Yes, I know there are games for Linux... but the very fact that Linux fans whoop and cheer over every game company that decides to release something to Linux, should give you pause: apparently it is a rare occurance. The selection of games on Linux is tiny compared to what's available on PCs. And lets face it: many people want to play games on their home computers.

I think first real advance of Linux on the desktop is in the office. People are happy enough to endure Windows on their home machines, but more and more often you read stories about companies switching over for various reasons: draconic Windows license terms, reliability, control, cost of ownership, openness, etc. For this environment, ease of installing software by end users is not as important, and the available applications are sufficient for most office tasks. Luckily many corporate ERP or HR tools such as Siebel and Baan have a web interface these days, so they can be accessed from Linux desktops as well.

But the real test of Linux on the desktop is how friendly that desktop and the applications actually are. One powerful (and often-used) feature of Windows is cutting and pasting. Cutting and pasting of pretty much anything. You can select part of an image in any drawing application (even non-Mirosoft ones), and paste it into Word. You can cut part of a spreadsheet and paste it into Powerpoint. Cut formatted Word text and paste it as RTF into something else? Sure you can.

I haven't kept up with the various Linux desktops lately but last time I looked, copying plain ASCII was about all one could do, and clumsily at that. If we get this one thing right on the Linux desktop, we're one giant stride forward towards a desktop that people will actually like using.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Anonymous Coward]

a newbie want to click on an install icon... like UT, quake3, or all the loki games has.. and Open Office and Mozilla .. they have them too...

Linux Game Publishing also uses the Loki installer for their ports.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, suck my fucking cock. Have you ever actually used Open Office? It does one thing really well - corrupting the fuck out of MS Word documents. If my boss every came to me and said "Your task is to find an application to fuck up all our Word documents" I'd say "I know just the thing - Open Office.org! Its the Word-Fucker-Upper!" That's what I'd say. As soon as you're done sucking my cock, that is.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Kenja]

Your missing the point. Here are the condensed install instrustions of an app I tried to use a while ago.

1. Decompress files.
2. Compile.
3. Fix compiler errors.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU'RE missing the point.

YOU'RE = YOU ARE

Your = possive

argh fuck FUCKa ldsakjfdsalkj lksda I can't take it fuck

compile my cock! asdljds

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU'RE missing the point.

possive = possessive

You = my butt buddy

argh fuck FUCKa ldsakjfdsalkj lksda I can't take it fuck!! FAAWWWKK!

possess my cock! asdljds

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Lord Kholdan]

I couldn't agree more!

Current Linux tactic of trying to reach both ends and only the ends of the bell curve is foolish because it means a lot of work to gain really small audiences. The day when (kernel) compiling is a doubleclick issue and when all the server programs ship with pretty and clean GUI is the level when the most prospective future Linux users will join. Why? Because there's a huge amount of people out there who'd basically want advanced linux but easier! To them commandline is the ultimate obstacle to Linux migration. I Know my household will lose one Windows installation the day I can get a distro that's geared towards GUI based server management.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Anonymous Coward]

hey dipshit...

Loki has an installer..

the stupid non-american idiots are so damned snobbish they wont use it.

screw off you dipstick.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[pavon]

Here's the situation with installing stuff on linux. Developers are hellbent against statically compiling things (in many cases for good reason). In addition, due to the asyncronous nature of the open source development, there are all sorts of version of libraries in use by people at any one time. Therefore it isn't really possible for me as a developer to give you a package that installs on your system and just works, because I don't know what all your system entails. Dependency checking *has* to be done.

So the "download a package and click on the icon" scenario will only work if clicking on that icon starts a program that does dependency checking, downloads dependencies off the internet, and then installs. This would be better, but not optimal, because you have to start downloading the package, wait for package to download, then start the install, then wait for the libraries to down load and install. The problem is the act,wait,act,wait. It would be better to have act,act,wait,wait - same amount of time overall, but free's up the user to do something else (ie, workflow is controled by the user, not the computer).

Here's an idea. It is simular to how streaming integrates with the browser. Say we create a redirection file type whose contents is just the name (or url) of a debian package. Within the filemanager and browser, this file type (MIME type) is associated to a GUI version of apt. Then as a developer I (or my debian maintainer) would put the debian package on the debian server, and I would put a link to a redirect file on my site. When the user clicked on the link it would start the apt gui which would look up the package specified by the redirect, determine dependencies, and then (after prompting the user for root password) would proceed to install all the necisarry packages for that app. One click installing. (hmm, I should patent this :)

This is actually easier than the windows method, and meshes better with the technical issues that OSS has to deal with.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[molarmass192]

You can cut-and-paste objects between the OpenOffice apps, no problem. There's no way to do that outside of OO since there's no unified object model like OLE in X. OO implements it's own cut-and-paste internally. Although this falls outside the realm of Linux, I wonder if the topic of adding an extension to X cut-and-paste for objects has ever been looked into. This should be pretty straightforward for images but without a object embedding subsystem, I don't see how it cold work for non-static objects in X. The easiest target is probably to look to implementing it at the desktop level using the existing object models in the KDE and GNOME subsystems. This would leave a freakin tricky gap of getting the same functionality to work between applications using different toolkits though. Yeah well, long way of saying don't look for this in Linux or in X, look towards the KDE and/or GNOME devs.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[cayenne8]

"but the biggest hold back is that unless you are a medium level linux user you CANNOT install software without a fight. a newbie want to click on an install icon... like UT, quake3, or all the loki games has.. and Open Office and Mozilla .. they have them too... linux needs a unified installer system. it needs to be a click-and-drool GUI (command line capability though)"

Well, with Gentoo Linux..simple as emerge and voila! It downloads the source....compiles it for you...takes care of the the lib and other dependencies....and app is installed and works quite well.

Give it a look...portage works very well..I've been quite impressed with it so far...

cayenne8

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Graymalkin]

Good suggestion. A new Linux user has to open a terminal, know what the hell to even type, then wait for it to download and compile. That will endear Linux into the hearts of the uninitiated.

However easy portage is to use it is not as friendly as an icon on the screen you can click.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[swordgeek]

You left out one crucial point that ties all of this together.

Versionitis.

I'm trying to build a full-blown desktop environment, so that I can get away from Windows entirely, except for games. The OS install took an evening. The apps are taking roughly a week EACH on average.

OSS has a deep suspicion of precompiled binaries, and as a result they only exist for a few platforms (Mozilla being a relatively glorious exception). As a result I need to download the source, unpack, configure, compile, fix, fix, fix, fix, install, and pray. One app requires gcc 3.3.2, and fails with anything earlier than that. Another one won't compile at all with anything beyond 2.95.x. A third compiles fine with anything EXEPT 3.3. Oh yeah, and of course nothing compiles with 2.96. Everything needs a different version of their libraries in a different place, and half of the time you can't have two versions coexisting on your system happily.

The fact that apt-get even tries to solve this problem is a great step forward. Unfortunately, it's one step forward when Linux is currently thirteen miles behind the commercial marketplace for ease-of-maintenance (which is what this boils down to).

It's crap. Worst of all, it's crap that's infecting other systems.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[AJWM]

Examples? Video editing.. nothing available for linux can touch adobe Premiere.. not even the old version 5.0 of it.

Taken a look at Cinelerra lately? Or MainActor?

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Joe Tie.]

The selection of games on Linux is tiny compared to what's available on PCs.

My computer stopped being a PC when I installed Linux on it?

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Graymalkin]

The way MacOS X solves this problems is a good idea and Linux might do well to learn from it. Applications come in the form of Bundles which are just fancy directories. To the user they are just singular icons in a folder. What makes Bundles special are the special files stored in them that mean something to the OS.

A typical bundle only has one directory at the first level, Contents. In this directory is is the MacOS, Frameworks, Shared Frameworks, Resources, and Shared Support directories. The MacOS directory has the actual application binary. The Resources directory stores stuff like icons, NIB files, and localization strings. The important ones in this case are the Frameworks and Shared Frameworks directories. You get to ship your applications with all the frameworks it needs to run.

The Frameworks directory is where you can stuff all the Frameworks you always want an application to use. If you're using say libSDL and you're pretty sure someone doesn't have it on their systems you might put it in there. If you put it in the Shared Frameworks directory the application will use whatever version of libSDL you packed unless the system has a newer version and in that case will use the newer version. Using Shared Frameworks also lets you package libraries with an application and share them with other applications using the same framework.

The benefits of this should be obvious. No privilege is needed to install applications and their frameworks. A program will just as easily run from ~/Applications as it will from /Applications. Shared Frameworks let you take advantage of newer frameworks existing on the system. It also makes it very easy to install an application. If you really wanted you could just distribute MyApplication.app.tgz foregoing the disk image. Dragging an icon to /Applications and having a new program to do whatever with is a very nice system, even for people who know what they're doing.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Underpant Gnome]

There is a standard answer to this ``problem'':

Users should not touch the sources.

Each distribution has a simple way of updating itself, be it rpm/up2date/MandrakeUpdate/apt-get/whatever. Even the gentoo portage system is good enough (although it might run into the problems you've mentioned -- I haven't used it enough to talk from experience).

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[JaredOfEuropa]

Bah, I misspoke; I meant Windows of course. That shows how much of an MS lackey I am... these days 'a PC' is common parlance for 'a PC running Windows', and I've kind of accepted that meaning, inaccurate as it is.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[CableModemSniper]

Speaking of which I think the solution should probably be ROX / OS X style App Dir type installions.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Jason Earl]

Exactly. Comparing build-it-yourself-from-scratch-from-CVS Linux installs to running the Windows installer is ridiculous. Linux has plenty of tools that allow you to easily add applications. The one I am most familiar with is Debian's apt system. Apt will happily sort out dependencies for you, and will even help you choose intelligent default settings. It will then faithfully keep the software up to date for you. Unlike Windows update apt will also happily do this for the OS itself and all of the software on the entire system (assuming you don't install anything manually :). What's more every other major distribution on the planet has something similar.

In short, this is one area where Linux quite literally blows the doors off of Windows. Yet every time the subject comes up a million wackydoos jump out of the woodwork and start talking about how compiling applications is harder than double-clicking on setup.exe.

Like this is some sort of a revelation.

Basically if you are new to Linux and you are reading some web page that talks mentions 'configure' or 'make' just surf away. Chances are good that either A) your distribution has a pre-compiled, pre-configured version of the software available at the click of a button (or two) or B) there is a more popular application that does the same thing that is available as a pre-compiled package for your distribution.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[pavon]

yeah, I think that bundles are a nice way of distributing applications.

In the past, UNIX was not so much application based, but rather you had files, and commands that worked on files. In this situation, the UNIX way of organizing file makes more sense. In addition, by having file system organized by how the files are used (ie /boot and /bin are hardware dependant, read-often, write-rarely, /usr/share is hardware independant, /var is write-often, etc) was (and still is to a lesser extent) really usefull because you could use differnent media for different parts of the file system.

With bundles, you loose these capabilites but gain a filesystem that makes more sense for application-centric systems. While there is nothing keeping people from making a distro like this, there are a lot of people that would not like changing the standard UNIX filesystem we have come to know and love. And most of the people would be in favor of it would likely prefer OS X anyway :) So, for good or bad, I don't see this happening anytime soon.

I do have some question about the OS X implementation, not having used it extensively. When talking about bundles, most people talk about how installing an application can be as simple as copying the bundle. Is this how most OS X Apps do it? If so, disk space would be wasted storing multiple copies of shared libraries. Is it much space, or insignificant compared to all the beautiful hi-res icons?

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[gyratedotorg]

unless you are a medium level linux user you CANNOT install software without a fight.

i work in an environment of mostly window 98 machines filled with all kinds of non-it-department-approved shareware/spyware. since 9x cant be locked down to stop this (as far as i know), this makes linux seem like the solution to a lot of our desktop support troubles!

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Graymalkin]

You don't have to include any Frameworks with your application if you don't feel you need to. If you're using only system Frameworks or ones you can reasonably expect to exist on the system you only need to ship the binary and its resources in the bundle. Safari is a good example.

In the beta versions of Safari the WebCore and JavaScriptCore frameworks were shipped in the app bundle. As they didn't exist on the system then it needed to ship with them. As soon as Safari went 1.0 Apple moved the frameworks WebKit.framework and stuck that in /System/Library/Frameworks. Now any application can use WebKit. The only time you really need to include libraries with your application is when you use stuff the system isn't likely to have. If you're going to write a bunch of applications using a custom framework it'd probably be best to just install the framework onto the system.

UT2003 pulls sort of the opposite trick than Safari 1.0. UT2003 packs everything the game needs into a single bundle. Everything from the game models to its version of libSDL are stuffed into the application bundle. While the bundle is over 200MB for the demo it is easy to move to some other media. Since the configuration file is stored in ~/Library/Application Support/Unreal Tournament 2003/ you can put the game itself on an external FW drive, an iPod, or even a CD-ROM.

The Unix style of VFS entries pointing to different media isn't as practical on a desktop system as it was on bigass mainframes. On an iMac it wouldn't be terribly practical to stick a second hard drive in in order to mount /usr/local and /Users on it. Practical for a mainframe, impractical for an iMac or most desktops for that matter. Again the OSX method of dealing with this is pretty good. All the Unix stuff is hidden when you view stuff in FInder. You could nuke everything you wanted via Finder and still have a bootable system. It wouldn't be terribly useful but it would at least boot to an extent.

I think the one thing keeping Linux from having real mainstream appeal is the Unix underpinnings it clings to. OSX uses its Unix system as a tool rather than as a paradigm. Application centric systems are much friendlier to users lacking the drive to learn to string together several disparate programs to get a final result. I think most people would rather click a "Search" or hit a V button instead of typing ls ~/Pictures | grep ^Vaca to find their vacation picturesi n a directory. Those same people wouldn't be too keen on typing mailx -s "My vacation pictures" someone@anemailaddress.com to send those pictures to their friend.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[rmohr02]

I haven't used a modern Macintosh (just haven't had the opportunity)--could you clarify what you mean?

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Anonymous Coward]

Portage is a good system, and much easier then any other alternative I have seen so far. It also cuts down on the version conflicts since it will either upgrade old dependancies or run multiple versions so they co-exist peacefully.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[pavon]

Okay, that makes sense. From your examples it looks like Apple gains some additional sanity over the library issue by having central control over all the system libraries. So providing your own copy of a shared library is rarely necisarry but always an option. Nice.

The Unix style of VFS entries pointing to different media isn't as practical on a desktop system as it was on bigass mainframes. ...
I think the one thing keeping Linux from having real mainstream appeal is the Unix underpinnings it clings to.

Yes I definately agree with this. That's one thing that grates me when using the linux destops. I am quite happy with the unix way of doing things, and I am equally content with the mac way. But with these destops you have a mac face thrown on a *nix body with no give and take between the two paradigms. The two paradigms do not harmonize well in the sense that nothing you learn about the mac half will help you in the unix half, and you ineviable have to use both halves, at some point.

At one point, (before GNOME or OS X) I though that Linux as we know it would be restricted to the server and the future of free software on the desktop would not be a "linux os" distro, but another operating system (or operating environment if you prefer) that just happened to use linux as it's kernal, and happend to borrow some useful daemons, but was nothing like unix at all. (Acorn RiscOS is more along the lines I was thinking). From everything I've seen, Mac OS X put itself about halfway between that and unix. It changed the overall organization of the system to match that of the desktop, but kept most of the nuances of unix, just hidden.

On a side note, while the unix traditions and mechanics are not suitable to the desktop, I haven't given up on the unix philosophy. The main problem with the unix implementations is that the interface that unix provided to it's tools was purely "in one side out the other". So it was good for filtering things (like configuration file and logs), but useless at iteractive tasks. The Humane Interface stuff that Jeff Raskin talks about is pretty much the same thing as the unix philosophy. Applications are modal, and thus cause errors and limit the usefullness of tools. Therefore get rid of applications and just have documents and tools to operate on documents. I am really interested to see if his approach really can create something more powerful and pleasent than the applications we have today.

Anway, I am counting weeks till I can get a new mac, try out OS X, and contibute to his project:)

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[CableModemSniper]

Basically apps don't have an installer, they are distributed in a directory, with all the binaries, files, etc. in a directory that you copy to install. The Finder treats the App Directory as one file (Dbl click on the app dir, it launches the program). You drag it to the trash to delete it, drag it to the desktop or applications directory, or home dir, or what have you to "install" it.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Anonymous Coward]

My computer stopped being a PC when I installed Linux on it?

A GNU hippy zealot would make you smash your 'doze CD and throw it away if he could.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[IamTheRealMike]

Here's the situation with installing stuff on linux. Developers are hellbent against statically compiling things (in many cases for good reason).

Right. Let's just get this out of the way first - static linking is not the solution (not least because not all dependencies can be statically linked anyway).

So the "download a package and click on the icon" scenario will only work if clicking on that icon starts a program that does dependency checking, downloads dependencies off the internet, and then installs

That's exactly whay autopackage does. Well, almost. At the moment we don't do network retrieval, so if you're missing a dependency you have to drop it into the same directory as the thing you're trying to install. We're getting there though, slowly. It works for any reasonably sane distro (if it doesn't, it's a bug, so let us know).

This would be better, but not optimal, because you have to start downloading the package, wait for package to download, then start the install, then wait for the libraries to down load and install.

Correct. However, walk before you can run and all that.

It would be better to have act,act,wait,wait - same amount of time overall, but free's up the user to do something else (ie, workflow is controled by the user, not the computer).

autopackage has only one button for most of the install, "Hide", which [shudder] minimizes it to the tray. A suboptimal solution, but one we hope will encourage users to do something useful, like play games, while waiting for their program to install. In future, hidden mode will be the default.

Here's an idea. It is simular to how streaming integrates with the browser. Say we create a redirection file type whose contents is just the name (or url) of a debian package.

That works OK, but I think I have a better idea. Let's create a browser plugin that understands the Linux .desktop file format, can render PNG and SVG icons (not all that hard, the shlibs to do this are already installed for most users running kde or gnome) and so on. It displays an application launcher icon, just like the file manager would do, or the panel, or the menu....

Now the icon is drawn in grayscale. The user won't know what that means at first, but it shouldn't take too many encounters with this system for it to click - if it's grayscale, you're going to have to wait when you click it (because it's not locally installed). Users can click the launcher, and a pretty animation appears over it to let the user know something is happening. In a few seconds the installer UI appears, and asks (for instance), whether they have the root password, which subcomponents they want etc.

It only takes a few seconds for this screen to appear even on dialup because autopackage has a split design - the metadata that controls the install can be separated from the package payload and downloaded separately (well nearly, still a few bugs there). So, you just need to hang around for a few seconds, click "OK" and the window disappears - the icon gradually fades to colour as the package is installed.

All dependencies are calculated and retrieved behind the users back, while they get on with something else.

The install finishes. The program runs. They can of course drag the icon to their panel, menu, desktop, file manager, whatever. They can drop it onto a friends Gaim chat window, it appears the other end (as grayscale), the friend clicks it and the right package for them is downloaded.

It's like appfolders, except it doesn't suck.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[rmohr02]

Ahh. That's an interesting concept.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[swordgeek]

Let me repeat myself:

"OSS has a deep suspicion of precompiled binaries, and as a result they only exist for a few platforms"

I can't GET the binaries for many of the programs I want to use. OK, I can get a desktop with mozilla, openoffice, and acrobat reader. Nothing else. No media player (Can't get binaries of mplayer for my hardware), no decent mail client, no gnutella/whatever P2P client, just those three apps. Wonderful.

Besides which, that sidesteps my point, and another one as well. First of all, Linux versionitis is making things worse than they used to be, not better! There was a time that if you had a compiler and a standard set of libraries, you could download and compile any Unix source on any Unix platform with minimal tweaking. autoconf pushed this ahead by miles, and then these stupid version dependencies (usually introduced by poor programming) broke it all.

Secondly, apt-get is wonderful, although deeply complex compared to Windows upgrades (not to mention Solaris--dead simple, albeit cryptic.) rpm less so--MUCH less so, in fact! RPM is still poor at automatically figuring out (and installing) dependencies, and the problem remains--there shouldn't BE so many obnoxious and often incompatable dependencies on specific versions of packages. A well set-up system should have everything it needs to install any random bit of software. If it doesn't, then there's something broken with the software, or the model.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Underpant Gnome]

Besides which, that sidesteps my point, and another one as well. First of all, Linux versionitis is making things worse than they used to be, not better! There was a time that if you had a compiler and a standard set of libraries, you could download and compile any Unix source on any Unix platform with minimal tweaking. autoconf pushed this ahead by miles, and then these stupid version dependencies (usually introduced by poor programming) broke it all.

This is a good point: There are many projects under development, all dependant on each other, and with each one introducing new features and breaking others on each version it is hard for other projects to keep up. This is unfortunate, but there simply cannot be much control over the whole OSS community. I wouldn't say that these dependancies are introduced by poor programming, it is just that the developers avoid reinventing the wheel by counting on other people's work. This is a Good Thing, however at the speed the new versions are coming...

That being said, if you stick with one distribution, I seriously doubt you won't be able to find the software you're looking for. That is what distributions are for anyway, checking the dependancies of packages, choosing what versions are needed for each piece of software, and providing binaries. For example, both Mandrake and RedHat provide windowed versions of their package manager where you can browse all the packages they provide, and check the dependencies of each package. Unless you have specialized hardware you will find anything.

And another thing: Yeah Windows upgrades are great and all, but all you get is security and bug fixes, very little new software. Not quite the same right?

And on the less serious side:

no decent mail client

There aren't any :)

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Anonymous Coward]

only silly developers are against staticly linked releases.

reasons? most pretty damned silly, or ego. very VERY few have a good reason.

there is no real reason to not release a version that installs and runs on any intel based linux distro. Open office does it, mozilla does it, every commercial game for linux does it.

it's a silly stance that only further makes developers and linux look like self ritious zealots...

Me? I'll release STATICALLY compiled versions of every project I do... and only support the latest release. simple to do. and makes everyone damned happy.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[Lumpy]

both of those are utter crap compated to Adobe Premiere 4.0

they are nice start's, but they will never EVER get there as they are both busy with features instead of making the damn core of edit and file format handling (silly formats like DV2 or other standard video formats used in editing) work....

Cinderella sucks horribly... Main actor is ok, but crashes way too much, and will NOT edit any video format that is useable for anything but internet... IE:small/heavy-compressed formats (DV1 is nasty compared to DV2 or uncompressed Quicktime ... etc...)

Yes I tried both within the past 2 weeks, Every 2 months I give linux video editing a try again... and every time it fails to be useable for anything serious.

nope, the only chance linux has is getting premiere to run in wineX or get adobe to do a linux port.... or better yet... AVID to release a linux native editing suite....

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[swordgeek]

Well my "distro," is actually Solaris on Sparc :-).

I think the real reason behind my rant is that I happen to be on a platform that isn't widely supported by binary packages, and so I have to deal with building from source--which is a screaming pain in the ass! However, the problem is bound to come up for anyone--there is bound to be some cool bit of software that the developer has decided to release as source ONLY. As soon as that happens, you're back to the compiler hell.

You could easily remove Solaris from the equation and have the same problem: Linux/Sparc has the same problem, as does Linux/Alpha, etc., etc.

But even so, I have some x86 boxes at home, and some of them are running Linux. Red Hat has made it very difficult to say the least, to upgrade packages on a truly old OS (where "truly old" isn't nearly as old as anyone else seems to think).

Oh, and there are at least two good mail clients in the world: elm, and Pegasus Mail (windows only). Everything else is crap. :-)

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps.

[krusadr]

So the "download a package and click on the icon" scenario will only work if clicking on that icon starts a program that does dependency checking, downloads dependencies off the internet, and then installs.

Just three words for you .... Gentoo Linux - Portage

Portage is the package management system included with Gentoo. It searches for, checks all dependancies, fetches and installs packages. The package list is very exhaustive and always bang up to date.
Although it is command line it is very very simple to use.

emerge -s
// this searches through the portage tree for any ebuild (software package) containing in the name or description and shows installation status and latest available version (-s = search)

emerge -p
// this checks dependancies and lists packages that would be automatically installed (-p = pretend)

emerge
// gets the package sourcecode from the net - compiles and installs along with all necessary dependancies

This thing rocks. It has until recently been a source only based thing but more and more binary packages are now being included. (The complile times on slow/old hardware can get lengthy).

After using Gentoo you'll never go back to the rpm mess. It's possibly the best Linux installer there is.

But.

[Anonymous Coward]

How can he explain This monstrosity? Nobody, not even geeks are going to use this for serious work!

Gnome 2.4 was a total disaster too! Crippled bookmark system in epiphany? Still no split pane support in nautilus? No extract here in file roller? Still has the smelly foot logo (which violates their own hig no less) Still looks like Chicago?

better run this
ln -s "-1, flamebait" "5, insightful"

Linux "Advocates"

[Pave Low]

Slashdot Double Standard #50: Linux Advocates, Evangalists and Fans are pure noble warriors fighting the holy fight for good. The can do no wrong.

Microsoft's defenders and supporters are almost always shills, corrupted, evil, immoral devils out to dominate the world.

Re:Linux "Advocates"

[mamer-retrogamer]

The corollary to this is:

Mac fans and supporters are clueless zealots who are easily influenced by Jobs' Reality Distortion Field.

(Though this is starting to change).

Re:Linux "Advocates"

[utlemming]

And although a BSD fan...

Slashdot Double Standard #50-b(sd): BSD defenders and supporters are almost always zeolots fighting for an "dead" operating system, and hate GUI's...and they can only program in C (or C++ if your lucky)...oh yeah, and there are only 36,000 of them.

Re:Linux "Advocates"

[mattgreen]

You forgot about programming languages.

Every other programming that language that is not C is bloated, useless and slow and hinders productivity. Even web applications should be written in pure C!

Re:Linux "Advocates"

[utlemming]

But only when Fortran won't do....

Re:Linux "Advocates"

[BigRedFish]

Slashdot Double Standard #50: Linux Advocates, Evangalists and Fans are pure noble warriors fighting the holy fight for good. The [sic] can do no wrong.

Nope. Never can they do wrong. Except when a vulnerability is found in a little-used service three versions obsolete, by which a local user with access to the physical machine can execute arbitrary code as himself, but only if it happens to be exactly midnight during a harvest moon in a non-leap year evenly divisible by four. Then it's front page news and the Astroturfers get a thread to post 'see, that's just as bad as when MS lets an email from $DIETY-knows-who automatically reconfigure Word's default templates and turn our machines into SPAM/DDoS zombies without so much as a confirmation dialog!' What part of /. don't you understand?

Microsoft's defenders and supporters are almost always shills, corrupted, evil, immoral devils out to dominate the world.

If you haven't been paying attention, the anti-MS attitude ultimately originates within Redmond. Think about it: MS has openly built its corporate strategy on not only making sure that they are the default position, but ensuring that switching from that default is as difficult and painful as possible. The former is just business, but the latter carries an assumption - from within the company itself - that its products are inferior, do not compete on merit, and consumers will switch away from them in favor of ANYTHING else if they are ever allowed access to an alternitive.

Microsoft says this loud and clear when they do things like kill IE/Mac - it was one of the few MS programs that DID compete on merit, but MacOS was no real threat to NT or even Win98 in any real sense. OSX is way too elegant and rock-solid for Mac support to live. If MS thought Windows was really more stable, more secure, and easier to use than Linux, they'd be tripping over themselves to get me a copy of Office for Linux so that they could bring me 'into the fold' as they say, and move me over to Windows in time. The fact that they don't tells me loud and clear which direction THEY think the migrations would go. Every program you can't uninstall or is surreptitiously placed in a Service Pack says a similar thing with equal clarity: We know damn well you wouldn't use our software if you had a choice; we're so sure of that we went out of our way to avoid giving you the opportunity to choose.

Having used Microsoft products for twenty years (CPM-86/DOS 1.0 until Win2K chased me off), I can't imagine why anyone would cheer Microsoft unless they're either intentionally Astroturfing, or else are young and came in to this movie late. But whatever. I only know for sure what Microsoft, through its actions in the marketplace (such as it is anymore), tells me. For the last two decades, but with increasing intensity and frequency since the mid-1990s, they've been telling me that they think they are inferior and are scared to death that I might switch to something else (Linux in particular as they themselves say publicly) if they don't keep changing file and disk formats and building in expirations to hold my data hostage to sell me a license under duress that will hopefully prevent me from switching for another year or two. They're telling us they suck and they know it. All /. does is listen well, really.

for those that read the article...

[zoloto]

I also see history repeating itself. Remember when IBM had 96% of the PC Hardware market. Don't be surprised if you see Sun and some new market entries taking over from the current market leaders

Sun hardware? It's one thing to have great hardware, but at such prices...

What good is advocating Linux's strengths...

[JessLeah]

...when at this very moment, the most important (IMHO) issue Linux faces is the very real threat of being rendered illegal via SCO?

Articles which trumpet how nice Linux is (and it IS nice for many things) are much like articles talking about how best to play DVDs under Linux-- they tend to ignore the frightening and (IMHO) immoral legalities surrounding such things. It is still illegal to play a (store-bought, DVD-encrypted... which means 99% of mainstream movies) DVD under Linux, as there is no licensed CSS decryptor for desktop Linux systems. And pretty soon, it may very well be illegal to use Linux without paying some outrageous "tax" to SCO. The fact that there are so many Linux advocates out there but the SCO fiasco is still going on (and no one pays attention to other Linux legalities, like the lack of a legal DVD player) is frightening. You or I might not care about the moronic decisions judges and congresspeople make, but I guarantee that businesses do. The greatest obstacle to the mainstream acceptance of Linux is not technical-- it's legal. (The second greatest obstacle is social... the gap between Linux development culture and "desktop user" culture. But that's another story for another day...)

Re:What good is advocating Linux's strengths...

[Second Vampyre]

You made me a foe. That's silly. Oh no! I've been foe'd. I hope this does not revoke my posting a abilities.

Re:What good is advocating Linux's strengths...

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn... I must have missed the US invasion, guess i need to watch more TV.

Rakshasa

Re:What good is advocating Linux's strengths...

[Doomdark]

when at this very moment, the most important (IMHO) issue Linux faces is the very real threat of being rendered illegal via SCO?

Perhaps because most other people around here do not consider that threat as being all that real? Dirt-throwing by SCO is very real, but there threats sound pretty hollow, especially due to low content/noise ratio of their actual claims, much less their proof (what proof?)

Also, I would venture a guess that the Linux advocate in question has been working for a while, much longer than SCO has been trying to install their troll toll booth for Unix users.

Re:What good is advocating Linux's strengths...

[broeman]

If SCO should succeed, which is clearly not looking like the case, governments around the world would overrule it, because of the good of society. There already many OSS-zealots in governments (I see linux-jobs all the time around European governments). The DVD-issue will surely fade out, when harddisks takes over (already happening, I know a lot of people that rips their own DVDs to DivX or such, just to have it easy available on their computer). I believe that DVDs don't exist in 5 years or so anymore, everyone buys/lent them through the Internet.

(I will take the discussion :)
There is huge gap between the "desktop culture" and the OSS-culture, because that was the idea about it. It is up to the distributors to make it "desktop-friendly" (and taking care of businesses), the developers have no obligation legally (like the Linux-kernel is a project for fun, not to make money. But who knew that their high competences actually would pay off for them in the end). Socially we should keep the division between the developers and the business-people, it is not a company, where developers are dictated by suits. OSS-projects are developed by the requests, bugfixing and suggestions of users (probably not joe-sixpack-users, but w00t-users or l33t-users). The Gentoo-Linux project keeps a close contact to their users by having a simple forum, where users not only cry, complain and suggest new additions, but also learns to behave as a OSS-user (if you find an error, search (and post) a bug-report!).

Re:What good is advocating Linux's strengths...

[Joe Tie.]

I admit I wasn't paying that much attention to their announcement, but I think Lindows is, or will be shipping with a licenced decoder.

advocate vs. zealot

[sczimme]

I recommended that instead of going forward with the migration, that we educate users and build support internally first.

In response to perceived resistance, he decided to back off a bit and get "buy-in" from the people that actually would be using OpenOffice.org; IMO this was a smart move.

I cringe whenever I see rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth zealots - regardless of topic (OS, programming language, political party, etc. - spouting off and alienating the people they are trying to convert. Such zealots hurt the cause they are trying to help.

As an aside, I picture a modified logo and an advertisement for "A55 Hat Linux", a distro developed 'specially for the zealots...

Re:advocate vs. zealot

[Tokerat]

As an aside, I picture a modified logo and an advertisement for "A55 Hat Linux", a distro developed 'specially for the zealots...

Pure genius.
/me frantically tries to catch his breath after laughing uncontrollably!

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps. (somewhat)

[zoloto]

very true. the linux installer for quake3 can go cli or gui which is very good especially when doing a remote install for a friend who's having problems or even dear old mom.

a unified installer will probably be that god forsaken RPM format, which should be done away with. But my personal opinions aside, I agree with the comment about Premier. Even just working with audio alone there's a windows app called SoundForge that's pretty awesome and I use it frequently. Is there one for linux yet? Sadly there isn't.

Perhaps we should call apon the developers and see if they would consider writing their apps for linux as well as windows, where they still have a good market?

Just my 2 pence.

OOo to MS Office data interop no longer a concern

[yerricde]

Our customers and support at other banks will not be happy if we start mailing them open office documents.

Then mail them RTF, which is a textual encoding of a Word document. OpenOffice.org Writer for Windows does a good job of exporting RTF. If they demand to receive .doc, send them RTF renamed as .doc; Microsoft Word will know how to handle it. Likewise, OOo Calc can export spreadsheets that Microsoft Excel can read just fine. The OOo filters are often even more reliable than Microsoft's own filters at reading Microsoft Office documents, especially damaged ones.

My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Emrys]

Shortly after he started Bynari, she got a job working for them with their then business model of acting as a US support center for Mandrake. It looked like a good opportunity at the time, but it went sour pretty fast.

I spent some time talking to Tom and was shocked to find out he didn't apparently care all that much about OSS. He mostly cared about finding ways to make money off it. He was positively giddy when describing to me various turnkey vendors he was talking to who were building net appliances (consumer firewalls, etc.) which ran GNU/Linux but were themselves closed systems. They were pretty upfront when talking to investors that they were able to do this legally by making sure all of their mods were routed through kernel modules which were written in such a way they could stay proprietary. A lot of big vendors do this without trouble, it was more these guys' attitude that they were so clever for getting a free ride on Linux this way. It disgusted me.

Anyway, Adelstein continually was trying to change Bynari's business model to find something that would make the big money. He reminds me of nothing so much as the Loki top brass fiasco stories or the Caldera/SCO stuff. He loves to talk himself up and position himself as a big name Linux consultant, but in my experience cares very little about software freedom for it's own sake or has any kind of deep technical understanding of what's even going on.

But then maybe I'm just bitter because he fired my wife less than a week after finding out she was pregnant (draw your own conclusions), based on (foundless and unsupported) claims that she had been actively working to impair and destroy their systems. Then he refused to pay us the moving expenses he owed us until we got lawyers involved and reached a settlement. A few months after that was over we got contacted by the former Bynari CIO who had been fired after Tom reportedly claimed he was selling company secrets to the Japanese. I really tried to lose track of him after that.

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not tag the parent as a troll or offtopic! I can tell you that much, just not everything (because I don't know all of it first hand), of the parent story, is true. While I could certainly add much more detail and insights to the above story, I will not. I'm not actively looking to gun for Tom. Just the same, people should get a complete picture when they work with him.

If you see a story about Tom or Bynari, chances are it was not only written by Tom, but submitted by Tom as well. He is well known for using pen names and keeping many email accounts to forward his own agenda. The Consulting Times (if it's still running) is one such place where it's purely a commercial for Tom's agendas. In fact, my first reaction to seeing the interview, is that it was written by Tom. I have no idea if that's the case or not.

Tom is a brillant guy, however, you can never take him 100% at face value, as there is always a hidden angle.

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Emrys]

Thanks. My first thought also was that he wrote and submitted this himself, but I didn't bother saying it, partly because it's been long enough I couldn't remember names like Consulting Times (one of my wife's tasks while at Bynari was some web work on an early rendition of that site).

I'm not looking to gun for him either. We put this behind us a long time ago. But I really would like for people to know what he's like, lest he ever manage to suceed in digging himself deep enough that he can cause real damage ala Caldera/SCO.

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Anonymous Coward]

For what it's worth, consider your self lucky. Tom had the FBI crawl all over the "former CIO". To say that was a nasty scene, is an understatement. ...ahh...all water under the bridge I guess...

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[zenpiglet]

I spent some time talking to Tom and was shocked to find out he didn't apparently care all that much about OSS. He mostly cared about finding ways to make money off it.

I think this is a point that gets overlooked in in the OSS debate. Every company, despite any outward face to the contrary, is into Linux/OSS to make money. Do you really think IBM, Red Hat, etc are doing what they do as a labour of love? No, they want your money - they are a businesses after all, not charities. Needless to say, the Chinese governemnt aren't looking at OSS for the good of humanity either.

Whatever the final outcome of the OSS/Proprietry battle, you can be sure we're all going to be paying in some way and someone will be getting rich off it.

meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Emrys]

Yes, but there's a serious difference between normal people making money and the kind of stuff SCO/etc. are into. The groklaw story from earlier today summed it up pretty well when it noted the absolute lack of morals it takes for a firm to suggest that they don't care if all of OSS goes down the tubes if it makes them a little more money, nevermind the demonstrable loss to the world economy/etc. that would be.

Believe me, I'm not remotely opposed to people making money for providing services. I'm not a pie-in-the-sky FSF type. Tom's aspirations were a lot more ... I won't use the word "malicious", but the above reference to writing his own interviews to generate press for himself, without disclosure, should get the point across.

What Redhat and IBM are doing to get my money are (mostly) fine by me. What SCO is trying to do to get my money is categorically not fine by me. There's a big difference, and it's at the root a difference of morals. IBM could certainly get away with some of the SCO tactics if they tried, but they don't try. Yes, it's probably self-serving morality which recognizes better the long term effects of making enemies vs. making friends, but it's still a difference, and society still benefits from one and is harmed by the other.

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just bitter because he fired my wife less than a week after finding out she was pregnant

Tom reportedly claimed he was selling company secrets to the Japanese

business model of acting as a US support center for Mandrake.

Something about your story reminds me of science fiction. I don't know the guy, but reading his interview and then your character assasination seems too incongruent. Why would someone who knows his way around a data center want to start a business supporting Mandrake? Sorry pal, I ain't buying your version.

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Anonymous Coward]

What's your personal beef got to do with Linux acceptance in state and local government? You do sound bitter. One could almost sympathize but you wrote a dissertatiion about this guy and didn't once mention Linux momentum. Yellow flag, my man.

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Emrys]

Primarily I got lucky and happened to reload /. just as this story was posted and before it had comments. I took the opportunity to blow the whistle a bit.

It's still on topic, though, since this story purports to be an interview of an individual's experiences in that arena. The individual in question can't be trusted to give accurate information, in my experience and the experience of others. Therefore it's questionable that the interview iteslf is about the actual current state of Linux acceptance or momentum in state and local government. If that issue is of interest to you, please fact-check anything in that interview before you accept it as true.

And of course I'm bitter. That doesn't it isn't behind us. I hadn't given it a thought for a good year until this story popped up.

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Emrys]

Whether or not Tom Adelstein started a company supporting Mandrake is the part you're going to specifically question? That's certainly the most independantly verifiable part of what I said. Feel free to check out the Wayback Machine:

Bynari.com, circa 1999: http://web.archive.org/web/19991103003416/http://b ynari.com/

Bynari.net (the .ca version of the company site), circa 1999: http://web.archive.org/web/19991128185323/http://w ww.bynari.net/

archive.org has plenty more.

Whether or not my wife was fired and whether or not she was pregnant and how close those events occured to each other is as verifiable as anything else that happened that many years ago. I'm sure I still have the lawyer letters and such from the moving expenses settlement around here somewhere, but that won't help me on slashdot.

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Anonymous Coward]

After re-reading my previous AC posting, I did want to come back and add to it. I realized that I left much hanging, yet, at the same time, I didn't want to go into details on the matter. As a result, I think it may of been too harsh.

So, I do want to add that there were some other issues about your wife, which were not raised, which would probably change how most people perceived your take on things. Like most stories, there are always two sides and in fairness, your story is only one.

Now then, without having to make a big stink, hopefully that places things back into proper perspective.

And yes, this is the same AC.

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Anonymous Coward]

The individual in question can't be trusted to give accurate information, in my experience and the experience of others.

Someone with as much emotion pent up about something that you say happened in 1999 may be the lesser of the trustworthy.

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Anonymous Coward]

Tom Adelstein was fired from Bynari Inc. At least that what a public filing indicates. He also has an agreed mutual consent with the company related to disparagement. The company was incorporated in 1999 by several individuals. He's registered as having a sole proprietorship formed on April 17, 1999 and the company was incorprated May 31st. So, he didn't own it very long.

No records indicate that he had any employees. So, your wife must have worked for someone else. Did she work for Bynari? If so, she worked for an officer of the company. He's not listed in the articles of incorporation or the bylaws as an officer.

He's got an extensive list of publications, is listed as a Certified Public Accountant in Texas, has a list of copyrights and letters of recommendation. In 1983, he's listed as an Outstanding Young Man in America. In 1999, he was nominated as the FSF Man of the year. He's listed in Books in Print, and has a list of articles about him speaking around the country. Also a note about being an adjunct professor. Nothing bad shows up on this guy.

Maybe your post will set the record straight. Think?

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, how the f**k does someone get the FBI to crawl over anybody? That doesn't make any sense.

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously don't know Tom! If you read the thread, it's not exactly hard to figure out. Either you're trolling or simply didn't read. Either way, it's safe to ignore your comment.

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Emrys]

You obviously don't know Tom!

There's another possibility, you know... ;)

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Emrys]

And yes, this is the same AC.

I really doubt that. I've traded enough emails with both of you to recognize your writing styles and have a good idea who both of you are. Still up to the same "PR techniques", Tom?

As far as "his" side? He accused her of destroying Bynari resources, which I already mentioned, and taking off unauthorized time at Christmas, for which he wanted us to reimburse Bynari for three weeks' salary. Note that all of those accusations disappeared once lawyers were involved. He also claimed that she was fired for "chronic absentism" (the Christmas charge was made up to support this, most likely). The week before the pregnancy was announced to them, he was singing her praises. Then she told them on like a Monday or Tuesday, took the next Thursday of Friday off because she was sick (and ended up doing a lot of work from home both days), and was fired when she walked in the door Monday and suddenly accused of being the World's Worst Employee.

I have no problem airing what he told of us "his side". It's complete BS.

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Emrys]

Tom Adelstein was fired from Bynari Inc. At least that what a public filing indicates. He also has an agreed mutual consent with the company related to disparagement.

...

Nothing bad shows up on this guy.

Now that is an interesting conclusion.

No records indicate that he had any employees. So, your wife must have worked for someone else. Did she work for Bynari? If so, she worked for an officer of the company. He's not listed in the articles of incorporation or the bylaws as an officer.

I don't have any problem believing that whatever public records exist will show a corporate structure that was different from the day to day operations of the "company". Bynari's Dallas office was basically a storefront, with Tom's office out front, and a bullpen where all the techs worked. At the time it was like two developers, the "CIO", my wife, and maybe a few others. There were a CFO and a CEO off site somewhere IIRC, as well as contacts of Tom's in various countries around the world working on some kind of consultancy basis so Bynari could claim worldwide operations in their press releases. But everyone in the Dallas office certainly reported to Tom, and the outside people worked through him to the extent any of us could tell what was going on. Emails we got after we left indicated at some point he turned on the "CFO" and "CEO" as well.

In 1999, he was nominated as the FSF Man of the year.

The nominees list is here: http://www.gnu.org/award/award-1999.html

Their nomination criteria makes it sound like anyone can nominate anyone, and I'd put money he's on that list because he either nominated himself or got a friend to do it. He can't hold a candle to the real luminaries on that list, either in dedication to FOSS or pure code/technology contributions. At the time I knew him, his workstation was running some Windows variant with Linux in VMWare (probably so he could try to establish some kind of cred with his techs), and he used FrontPage to make his web pages. He got in a long argument with my wife over whether he wanted to let her use server side includes on their web stuff, because he claimed that SSI stuff ran on a separate web server port, and it might break the ability of other news sites to view/syndicate their content.

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you heterosexuals? I've been sitting here on a sofa getting my cock sucked by a beautiful woman (a red headed, busty swedish girl) for about 20 minutes now while she attempting to make me cum. 20 minutes. At home with my moderately plain boyfriend, which by all standards should be a lot uglier than this chick, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

In addition during this blowjob attempt I can't watch television. I can't even reach the chips on the coffee table, my life has ground to a halt. I'm straining to keep it up.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while dealing with females in general, but suffice it to say there have been many - not the least of which is, I've never seen a female ejaculate as much as it's male counterpart, despite the females obviously larger reservoir . My 50 year old plumber who is clinically sterile cums more than this girl at times, which isn't surprising as the girl is often menstruating, or complains of a headache. From a purely pleasure standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that heterosexuality a superior orientation.

Sex addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose twat over other bigger, more readily available glands.

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Anonymous Coward]

No records indicate that he had any employees. So, your wife must have worked for someone else. Did she work for Bynari? If so, she worked for an officer of the company. He's not listed in the articles of incorporation or the bylaws as an officer.

I had an opportunity to meet the team at Bynari back when Tom was still working there. I can confirm that he was in fact an officer of the company. Perhaps not in legal documents, but in reality. I met the techs there (the primary reason I was there in the first place. I was interested in the exchange client replacement they were trying to develop.) and had the chance to meet Tom and saw the interaction there.
He was most definately considered an officer by those who actually worked at the company. And at the time, there was a female employee there.

I can also confirm the general assessment of Tom's dedication to linux and his level of technical competence. Both of which were sorely lacking, at least at the time. It's certainly possible that's not the case today, but I would think it unlikely.

Re:My wife once worked for Tom Adelstein....

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. I'm sorry, but it really is the original AC poster. I offered that last bit because I was afraid you'd think it was Tom. Seems you did in spite of my best effort.

I didn't want to air the dirty laundry as I didn't think it was a professional thing to do.

I thought I did make it clear that I agree with with facts as you offered them, however, also wanted to offer that there are two sides to the story. Which simply means that there are additional tidbits of information which are complimentary (adds more detail) to your portion of the story. I'm certainly not trolling and didn't mean to get you upset.

I've traded enough emails with both of you to recognize your writing styles and have a good idea who both of you are.

I doubt that. I barely knew your wife and I don't recall ever emailing you. For some reason, I do recall that your wife told me who you were and/or what you did, and I thought it would be nice to meet you. Aside from that, I don't believe we ever exchanged emails, phone conversations, or met in person. If we have, seems I've long since forgotten about it. No offense.

So, it's probably safe to say that you don't know who I am as I doubt that your wife would even remember me.

Too bad there isn't an email address or some other means I can directly contact you.

Poster Blowin Taco

[Anonymous Coward]

WHY has this NOT been MODDED TROLL / FLAMEBAIT? Is the poster BLOWING TACO? BLOWING Timothy?

Re:Poster Blowin Taco

[Anonymous Coward]

depends if the poster is a going gay black negroid. And if taco remembered to put watermelon juice on his nutz this morning.

Do something about it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, discussing it here is of no use. All of us agress on these points. What would be better is to go the Yahoo Microsoft message boards and discuss why we think MSFT is inferior. The investors there ned the same FUD that Microsoft poured into Macintosh and Linux/Unix camps. This will be sweet revenge, putting FUD into the Microsoft investors, causing them to pull out their money invest in any other company.

Re:OOo to MS Office data interop no longer a conce

[Anonymous Coward]

Then mail them RTF, which is a textual encoding of a Word document. OpenOffice.org Writer for Windows does a good job of exporting RTF. If they demand to receive .doc, send them RTF renamed as .doc; Microsoft Word will know how to handle it. Likewise, OOo Calc can export spreadsheets that Microsoft Excel can read just fine. The OOo filters are often even more reliable than Microsoft's own filters at reading Microsoft Office documents, especially damaged ones.

Evidently, you've never dealt with bankers. That would be a little beyond them.

Loose the arrogance and elitism

[JonKatzIsAnIdiot]

See: flies; sugar, salt

Re:Loose the arrogance and elitism

[sfjoe]

I like my arrogance and elitism and I think I'll hold on to it. It keeps me warm.

P.S. lose , not loose.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps. (somewhat)

[Lendrick]

There's always Cinelerra.

It's not quite Premiere, but it's reasonably close for most run-of-the-mill video editing. Too bad the interface is hideous.

OSS needs to be represented

[BigGerman]

I am sitting in the middle of large information-centric US agency right now and I concur: OSS is adopted here very slowly.
I have been plugging in OSS solutions for long time but most of the time they look at me like I am an idiot. It appears that problem is there is not a single recognizable vendor behind OSS products. Apache, Tomcat even JBoss have no chance at the moment. There are big bucks involved and large "traditional" vendors are like sharks circling around government contracts.
I think OSS and government are a natural fit but I am not sure how glass ceiling can be broken. If anyone has experience pushing OSS to US government, please share.

Re:OSS needs to be represented

[Anonymous Coward]

most of the time they look at me like I am an idiot

That's probably because you are one. Seriously, have you thought about that? There's a guy here that's always toting open source crap as a solution to all our problems and he's a certified idiot. Maybe you are, too.

Re:OSS needs to be represented

[headkase]

but I am not sure how glass ceiling can be broken...
Lobby the technical college's. I'm currently an IT student and all we are taught is Microsoft products. We did one course in one semester on Linux, and it basically amounted to installing Red Hat 7.1 and playing with some basic scripting. That's it. We didn't learn anything about how to configure a Linux machine as a router, how to use BIND, how to install and configure SAMBA, or really anything besides a shallow impression of Linux. Linux needs to be taught in detail in the colleges, then when we get out into the workforce we'll be familiar enough with it to actually design solutions based on Linux instead of Windows.
The point I'm making is that if you've only been taught Windows then you don't know how to approach a problem using Linux. Every student who only learns Windows in school is a fractional loss for Linux reaching critical mass.

Re:OSS needs to be represented

[BigGerman]

I am still working on the certification ;-0

No I am not like that, I know the type. I push OSS only when it makes sense business wise.

For example, peformance was an issue. I demonstrated that the app runs 12 times faster on Tomcat than on currently used vendor O app server. And scales better. And deploys and runs without errors. Does not matter - no way.

"Spearheaded"...

[Fnkmaster]

In fact, the government produces and finances the production of (via academic grants) lots of Free Software. I doubt the US government has any idea how much FOSS they are themselves responsible for producing (I realize that code produced directly by the government is generally public domain, and not released under any license per se).

The government is no different from any large bureaucratic organization, like a Fortune 500 company. Tons of developers and IT people using Linux everywhere because they don't have to get umpteen budgetary approvals to take an old Pentium machine, throw it into the corner and make it a departmental or development server. Lots of Free Software behind the scenes everywhere that's supported internally.

Sure, more advocacy is needed by large shops like IBM of their Linux work so that large bureaucratic organizations (governments included) don't have to shamefully keep their Linux servers hidden away and can freely admit when a project uses Free Software. But this still isn't going to go anywhere toward getting Linux on the desktop.

I think the initial adoption of Windows on the desktop largely happened in corporations first and then overflowed into home use. But these days, I don't think it's that simple. I'm not convinced you can sell organizations on making a change to something that users aren't familiar with due to massive retraining costs (or at least the fear thereof) in the modern office, where Word, Powerpoint and so on are kind. I think you have to pursue the home audience first, where you can sell people on cost, features, reliability. Of course, you have to have a winning case before you can do that, and Linux doesn't really have that yet for the desktop.

Learning Linux by Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

When I started out, I'd ask for help and people would say read the man pages. I didn't know what man pages were. Was Linux really that gay? I laugh when I think about that now. I discovered that you'd never get an answer to a problem from Linux Gurus by asking. You have to troll in order for someone to help you with a Linux problem.

For example, I didn't know how to find files by contents and the man pages were way too confusing. What did I do? I knew from experience that if I just asked, I'd be told to read the man pages even though it was too hard for me. Instead, I did what works. Trolling. By stating that Linux sucked because it was so hard to find a file compared to Windows, I got every self-described Linux Guru around the world coming to my aid. They gave me examples after examples of different ways to do it. All this in order to prove to everyone that Linux was better.

So if you're starting out Linux, I advise you to use the same method as I did to get help. Start the sentence with "Linux is gay because it can't do XXX like Windows can". You will have PhDs running to tell you how to solve your problems.

Re:Learning Linux by Trolling

[daveaitel]

That is totally hilarious - and so true!

-dave

Re:Learning Linux by Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

What idiot moderated this guy up? This is a boilerplate troll that has been appearing on Linux Usenet groups for the last two days. Jesus, open your eyes, he uses the word "gay" as a deragatory description.

Re:Learning Linux by Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of gay homo are you to tell people not to mod this perfectly sensible post up?

Re:Learning Linux by Trolling

[swordgeek]

Sadly, you're right. Even worse, man pages are not even considered a central part of Linux. (or rather, man pages aren't considered the first point of contact for documentation. Documentation in any form isn't considered central to Linux)

Linux seems to be going through the same sophmoric elitism that Unix suffered in about 1980, and suffering much worse than Unix ever did.

Re:Learning Linux by Trolling

[IM6100]

Man pages are considered to be deprecated, even considered a bad thing, by that faction of the GNU movement that promotes the info system of documentation.

Part of the reason that I strongly favour NetBSD over Linux any more is that besides the fact that it's a unified whole, and the base userland is buildable from a coherent source tree, the Man Pages are coherent, consistent, and fairly complete. Plus the whole config and system is compliant to documentation that's been established and solid for over a decade. The old BSD 4.3 Manual Set (seven printed volumes) that I got ahold of several years ago is actually relevant.

This is different from the sort of crapshoot conglomeration of assorted parts that almost any Linux distro represents.

Re:Learning Linux by Trolling

[Hatta]

It's also debian policy that every program have a man page. Hypertext is nice, but navigating info is beyond my comprehension.

Re:Learning Linux by Trolling

[tonyt]

man man

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps. (somewhat)

[Anonymous Coward]

"reasonably close", heh.

Alot of things are "reasonably close". Too bad, so sad.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps. (somewhat)

[fucksl4shd0t]

Even just working with audio alone there's a windows app called SoundForge that's pretty awesome and I use it frequently. Is there one for linux yet? Sadly there isn't.

Audacity runs in Windows, Linux, Mac, and I think someone managed to get it running on FreeBSD. It uses a bunch of cross-platform toolkits to make it happen. :) Furthermore, in the upcoming 1.2 release you're gonna be able to run LADSPA plugins on Windows and Mac. There's plenty of Free LADSPA plugins available, compared to only a few Free VST plugins. And some of the guys using it that also use SoundForge are starting to say that it's getting to a point where it can actually compete with Soundforge.

Wesley Clark makes good sense!

[Anonymous Coward]

General Clark is the man screw all you liberal loser--he speaks the truth and is the Democrat stealth candidate
LOL

During extended remarks delivered at the Pulaski County GOP Lincoln Day Dinner in Little Rock, Arkansas on May 11, 2001, General Clark declared: "And I'm very glad we've got the great team in office, men like Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Paul O'Neill - people I know very well - our president George W. Bush. We need them there."

Clark praised Reagan for improving the military:

"We were really helped when President Ronald Reagan came in. I remember non-commissioned officers who were going to retire and they re-enlisted because they believed in President Reagan."

Clark continued: "That's the kind of President Ronald Reagan was. He helped our country win the Cold War. He put it behind us in a way no one ever believed would be possible. He was truly a great American leader. And those of us in the Armed Forces loved him, respected him, and tremendously admired him for his great leadership."

Advocacy...sigh.

[Junks Jerzey]

If there's one thing that really hurts Linux, it's advocacy, especially when that advocacy is unfounded, uninformed, or overzealous. I really wish these so called "advocates" would just get on with their lives.

Realistically, a lot of people--even knowledgeable, technical people--either prefer Windows or MacOS to Linux, or they see advantages and drawbacks to each of them. To such people, trying to force "Photoshop is better than The GIMP," or "Yes, there is a version of that application for Linux, it's [fill in name of a half-baked Linux application written by a high school student here]," down their throats is downright annoying.

Re:Advocacy...sigh.

[Gwala]

Couldnt agree with you more. I have 8 computers, 7 of which run Slackware, but this computer I keep windows simply for Graphic Design purposes, under *nix, there is not a comparable application to:

Dreamweaver MX
Flash / SwiftMAX
Photoshop (the gimp is a poor substitute, and lacks a lot of polish)
Quark
Illustrator ... the list goes on.

-Gwala

Re:Wow, look at all the upmoderated flaimbait

[be-fan]

Guess where they go?
>>>>>>>>>>>
Where do they go? I've been thinking about this for a minute, but can't figure it out. I understand the rest of your post, but I don't see where you're going with this statement :)

Fix the gtk file dialog

[Anonymous Coward]

Then ill listen to you whining little zealots.

Sounds cool. Ill try it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome sucks because it dosen't let you change color scheme without editing text files. Windows has came with a color scheme editor since 1.0! Explain that zeaalots!

Re:Sounds cool. Ill try it.

[Anonymous Coward]

read the manpage, you fuckwit.

Re:Sounds cool. Ill try it.

[Anonymous Coward]

When you install Linux, deselect "Gnome" and select "KDE".

That'll fix it no problem.

(Gnome lovers relax - just teasing)

Re:Sounds cool. Ill try it.

[Hatta]

Whats wrong with editing text files? I'd rather be able to / through a man page than hunt around a load of menus.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps. (somewhat)

[Anonymous Coward]

Even just working with audio alone there's a windows app called SoundForge that's pretty awesome and I use it frequently. Is there one for linux yet? Sadly there isn't.

Give Audacity a go. Not sure its there yet, but there is no reason why it won't be soon. There are versions for Linux and Windows.

True, but hardly surprising

[pong]

Release engineering is hard and very boring work - a very unfortunate combination of qualities when nobody is getting paid.

Re:OOo to MS Office data interop no longer a conce

[MsGeek]

Old news, OpenOffice.Org v. 1.0.2 can write perfectly acceptible MS Word .DOC files. It can also write perfectly acceptible MS Excel .XLS spreadsheets too. I suspect the compatibility will only improve, at least with the Office97 to OfficeXP iterations of the file formats. All bets are off about the new Office2K3 formats, of course.

Re:Thats not what your wife told me

[Emrys]

Wow, it took over an hour for someone to make an unoriginal derogatory remark about my wife. What is slashdot coming to?

Why synaptic still isn't good enough

[lordcorusa]

apt-get and Synaptic are absolutely fabulous apps for those of us who are experienced using Linux and installing software for it. However, they fail to help newbies because the process they use to get and install software does not map to the way the newbie thinks about installing software. And anyone who says "The way the newbie thinks is wrong" is simply failing to understand newbies at all.

Now that I've made a generalization, let's have a specific run-through of the problem. I have first-hand experience with switching (some successfully, some not) a number of Windows users to Linux, and here is the problem that they all run into. (NOTE: I ran into this very same problem when I first switched, but I knew no one who could hold my hand through it all. The only reasons I am still using Linux are that I am far more intelligent than most people, so I am better at figuring things out on my own, and I am also incredibly stubborn when it comes to learning something new.)

You are Joe Newbie. You've got your nice shiny Linux system running. You hear about a great app called "FooBar". You like what you hear about it and you decide you want to try it. You search google for it, and go to www.foobar-software.org. You try to download it. But you can only get source or an RPM or DEB package. (Let's assume your friend set you up with Libranet and for some reason you actually know that it's a Debian based distro -- a stretch in its own right) You download the DEB, but you run into dependency conflicts. It wouldn't be so bad if this happened once or twice, but it happens for bloody near every app you try to install.

Now all seasoned Debian users, as well as most users of other distros, will be screaming at you to use apt-get or synaptic, or whatever other package management system. But that's the problem. People accustomed to Windows or Mac are accustomed to going to a store or a vendor's web site and getting the software they want. They have no idea that their computer might somehow "magically" know how to get it for them. Heck, if you didn't know better, why would you think your system would know how to do that? Even when you show them how apt-get works, they still often forget and revert back to the old way. It's a very deeply ingrained habit that only the most persistent learn to break.

To make things worse, even Debian, with a repository probably more exhaustive than any other distro's, still doesn't have all of the packages (and new versions of packages) that a user wants. If that user is a newbie, having to remember multiple methods for acquiring software and knowing when to use each is a further strain.

Granted, if a person sticks with Linux and becomes more accustomed to it, he or she will probably learn how to use apt-get (or insert package management system here) to streamline the package-acquisition process. However, it would be in open source's best interests to try to minimize culture shock so as to further help bring more people in.

So the grandparent poster was dead-on. For example, Mozilla really does get it. Their installer is distro-agnostic and installs everything that the package needs. Even though this may introduce more bloat (redundant packages) for any given distro, it also results in an easy installation for a newbie. Advanced users will know how to get better versions of Mozilla specifically for their distros, but newbies will still be able to participate by getting Mozilla the way they know best.

All end-user focused software packages should follow Mozilla's example of providing a simple executable installer which contains all libraries and files needed to run the software independently of most, if not all, other packages on the system. This certainly isn't the ideal setup from a sysadmin or advanced user standpoint, but it is needed to match the way newbies think about installing software.

Re:Why synaptic still isn't good enough

[be-fan]

Ok, so we can't be better than Windows and Mac because people are too used to their faults? The Win/Mac way of installing software makes no sense. I want my software installed. I don't care if it has to sacrifice some virgins to do it. apt-get does that. Windows installer and its Next->Next->Next->Finish braindeadness doesn't.

Fuck it. You guys keep the newbies :)

PS> A nice solution to this might be to make something like a "application install shortcut." Instead of being an actual installer, it would invoke apt-get to go and install the software. This way, there would be a unified interface to the automagic package repository, and to commercial apps not in the package repository.

PS2> I've introduced a couple of Windows users (including my little brother) to apt-get and Portage, and they think its great. I think the real problem domain here is not the absolute newbies, and not the technically advanced users, but the middle group. Those who know enough about computers to be ingrained in certain Windows habits, but not enough to truely understand what's underneath.

OSS is not a religion

[mattgreen]

Many advocates seem to confuse OSS with organized religion. Ironically, they disparage religion for its belief system and how it limits your life, but then they turn around make statements like "Keep yourself pure -- don't install Windows XP for Half Life 2!!" I'm sure I'm not the only one that laughed when I saw "keep yourself pure."

It's an operating system, people. Not a way of life, or a higher moral standard, or any of that. Some of us just see it as a component of life, not the reason to tell others about it.

When I see people evangelizing Linux, I can't help but feel like they are REALLY missing the point. Linux in and of itself is a wonderful accomplishment, but its not for everyone. This is completely intentional. The Linux community and advocates thrive on not being mainstream. The feeling that you are 'oppressed' (or whatever term you want to mistakenly apply) is that which keeps the fervor high in the zealots.

Re:OSS is not a religion

[Anonymous Coward]

But it is a way of life, for some of us. Me included. Actually, its not just Linux, of course, its the whole OSS scene... But it is a way of life.
I'm sure not all users really tap into it (I mean, look at NVidia's drivers -- they just don't get the idea at all).

script for a TV ad? "Linux, times are changing..."

[lordcorusa]

Is it just me, or does that sound like a good script for a new TV commercial? I am thinking something like the IBM commercials, but IBM doesn't want to antagonize Microsoft. Perhaps a Novell or Sun commercial to go with their new desktop offerings?

The MS proponent can be a stereotypical stressed-out, disheveled, annoying person, and the Linux proponent can be calm, cool, and collected. Just substitute reference to "Peoplesoft" with the sponsor company's name. Rather than "So are we" substitute "We're bigger". Bigger is always better. ;-) And rather than the last line being "No, it doesn't" substitute "Not anymore!"

*An* alternative? Try *which* alternative.

[duck_prime]

From the article:

Of the lesser known, if you asked me which distribution to install for my aunt, I'd look toward Lycoris. If she was the youngest of my aunts, I might recommend Red Hat since I have had too many installation problems with SuSE.

This displays two of the problems of widespread desktop linux acceptance:
-- There are so many alternatives that it is hard and frightening for managers to pick one. Sounds silly, but Microsoft offers, for better or for worse, a de-facto standard on many fronts. Picking a linux, an open office-like suite, etc. introduces a huge set of choices which are perceived to have been already made.
-- Dippy analogies like the above. Youngest aunt, indeed.

Mod parent troll

[Drakon]

Anyone who takes SCO seriously is a troll or an idiot.
Have a nice day.

Supervillains use linux, too!

[revividus]

Like Steve the super-villain.

BTW, I use Linux; IANAT.

Please mod poster as TROLL..

[msimm]

I can appreciate the parent posters frustration (I started in 1996), but his technique lacks a lot of integrity. Just because members of a community act abusively doesn't mean that your best approach should be to act abusively as well.

But, more importantly, this RTFM! (Read The Fucking Manual!) trend is dying out. More and more I hear people taking an interest in helping other people, and that's probably a direct result of new users who (unlike our poster) instead of reacting aggressively to the old RTFM'er reacted by doing their best to support the next generation of new users so they didn't have the same experience.

Today's Linux user is a different animal.

Re:Please mod poster as TROLL..

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

OK. Maybe you're right about Linux users. But have you ever tried to get help from the FreeBSD community? Sheesh. I have to wear my asbestos suit before I risk asking them for help with anything.

Re:Please mod poster as TROLL..

[kregh99]

Everybody has their breaking point, and if somebody loses patience with a bunch of yahoos whose familiarity with an operating system has made them too big for their britches, I think it's a riot that he uses a little reverse psychology on them. They may know an OS, but he knows human nature. I think that's a far more valuable skill.

However, I do agree that it certainly does not represent the huge part of the Linux community that is enormously helpful (I have been the grateful recipient of this help from those in the user group that I belong to - PhillyLUG - and the hypersmart people I work with). I believe that is becoming far more pervasive than the ivory-tower philosophy.

Re:Please mod poster as TROLL..

[leviramsey]

That's because the old school Linux geeks/hippies switched to FreeBSD when too many newbies made it look less 1337.

Re:Please mod poster as TROLL..

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Hey! Hi leviramsay! Oops...mustn't do anything to connect this account to my K5 one...

Not a lack of apps, too many of the wrong people

[Ilan Volow]

What's holding linux back? The linux community has a long heritage (starting with it's predecessor, unix) of devaluing graphical user interfaces in specific and usability in general.

Isn't it odd we keep asking ourselves what stands in desktop linux's path when we all know where the unix people stood in 1984.

A community that places no worth in non-technical people being able to get stuff done with a minimum of fuss has lost the battle for the desktop before it ever started fighting it. Every time I hear someone in the linux technical community refer to GUI's as 'click-and-drool', it is painfully clear to me as why linux is getting its asked kicked by an incompetant bunch of fools from Redmond Washington.

I think desktops using a linux kernel will be so much better and more successful once the unix folks are shut out of the GUI design process. We let the programmers design algorithms, and we let'em design precious little else.

Ergonomica Auctorita

Re:Thats not what your wife told me

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, some of us wives and mothers do occasionally sink low enough to read Slashdot comments.

And we have a miniature guillotine.

Re:Linux is only lacking in the apps. (somewhat)

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad the interface is hideous.

How many times have we heard that one before?

Cinelerra

Oh, how cute! You just gotta love how open source programmers come up with such clever and sticky-sweet names for their projects.

Re:script for a TV ad? "Linux, times are changing.

[LittleBigLui]

You sound like a marketing guy.

*shouting over my shoulder*
Heat up the tar, oil the thumbscrews, we caught another one!

Legal DVD for linux

[rsilvergun]

>> It is still illegal to play a (store-bought, DVD-encrypted... which means 99% of mainstream movies) DVD under Linux, as there is no licensed CSS decryptor for desktop Linux systems.

Not true, believe it or not. Lindows apparently licensed the technology. You can purchase a license from them ($40 if you don't have a click'n'run account, $5 if you do). Check it out here. According to the sales rep I talked to, the license is good for both mplayer and xine.

Still, you're right that our fair use rights have gone to hell. Lots of people care, but the forces we're up against are too powerful and they have too much at stake (i.e. their continued dominance of the distribution chain). Hopefully as linux and OSS get more popular/entrenched things will improve. For the time being, this workaround is better than nothing.

Welcome to the Battlefield...

[pyrrho]

... witness on the one side, thin clients, on the other, vendor lock in. Go forth and destroy!

Shameless Self-Marketing

[xeo_at_thermopylae]

Sadly, the guy's trying to sell his only product, himself. Anyone believe that someone other than Adelstein is responsible for this /. submission?

The governmentforge site was created two months ago has no FAQ of its own, no downloads, and is virtually devoid of content. The Leopard site was created last month and is likewise empty of any useful content. One interesting facet: it states "Project Requirements posted 17August 2004 at Sourceforge" so I guess he can travel into the future too. Maybe he's already visited the future, seen that he will develop no software and has given up; that would explain the lack of content.

Anyway, none of his sites has anything that wouldn't be revealed by a Google search and they all are missing a lot. They're just trivial pages of links to OSS.

Computers are different . . .

[Idou]

We expect people to be able to read because written language is an integral part of our economy. If you are not able to read, you can easily be legally tricked into signing a contract that turns over all of your assets.

Computer technology is reaching that same level of integration within our economy. Your typical users doesn't know what a firewall is, yet at the same time they are unknowlingly exposing themselves to financial risk.

Yes, there is a certain level of specialization within our society, however understanding computer technology is much closer to literacy at a highschool level than knowing how to build a house or even how to drive (depending on where you live).

However, the most important reason that everyone should be expected to understand a great deal about computer technology is that is an extremely powerful tool of both democracy and of oppression. The thin line that divides the two correlates directly to how knowledgable the public is about the technology.

No, you need to do some research . . .

[Idou]

"linux needs a unified installer system. it needs to be a click-and-drool GUI (command line capability though)"

Okay, uh, go to www.mandrakeclub.com.

If that seems too "complex," go to www.lindows.com

But don't feel bad . . . the moderators need to do some research, as well.

Re:No, you need to do some research . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Great! but I didnt see a icon to install gnucash. or an icon to install the other 50,000 linux apps.

oh wait, you dont have a fricking clue as to what is being talked about....

I get it ...

Please READ the parent post and figure out what he was talking about....

Are you bigger than Merrill Lynch?

[Idou]

Do you consider yourself a good employee by being oblivious to such a significant move by such a significant player in your industry?

Time to spend some time out of the server room . . . there is a whole world out there.

IBM 3270 terminal emulators for GNU/Linux OS

[yerricde]

Yes, that application (the terminal program) is run under Windows, but I see no reason why this couldn't be done under Linux.

It already has been.

Must be a retro-buzzword...

[Kjella]

ROI is well known since the ... 70s or so? At least that old. Though where it was most used, NPV (Net Present Value) models have taken over. NPV if you're talking profits, TCO if you're talking expenses. Pretty much the same though, all very buzzword-compliant.

Kjella

Installation headaches

[driptray]

...but the biggest hold back is that unless you are a medium level linux user you CANNOT install software without a fight.

Amen.

I'm a new Linux user, and installing software is pissing me off. Here's how I spent a few hours last night:

Decided I wanted to install giFT. The sourceforge page has only tar files, no rpms (I run Red Hat). So I download and do the ./configure, make, make install dance. That doesn't bother me too much.

Then I need to get a frontend for giFT. I decide on Apollon. Hey, it's got an rpm, so I download that. Oh, but when I install it it doesn't seem to know about giFT, probably because the giFT install wasn't also rpm. So I download and install the tar file for Apollon, and install it. But damn, it won't run because it's missing some library or other.

OK, I'm impatient, so I forget about Apollon, and decide to install another giFT frontend. Again, library problems. So I try another frontend. This time it's problems due to some environment variable not being right. I try a third frontend, and again it fails for some reason or other.

Of course I try and figure out whether I've actually got the suppoosedly missing library, and if not where to download it from, but neither of those questions have obvious answers to me, and it all gets too hard quite quickly.

Damn damn damn! I'm just trying to install some software here! On Windows I could be 99% sure that after downloading something I could have it up and running within 2 minutes.

Admittedly I'm much better at solving problems in Windows than problems in Linux due to a decade of using Windows, but you just don't get that many installation problems in Windows.

So people here rave about apt-get. Will it really solve my problems? Will it have all the software that I want to install?

LINUX - Making The Change

[Micahwave]

Yes, I'll admit it... I've been a Microsoft freak for about 10 years! But, with the increasing problems and viruses that continually beat the snot out of my windows servers I am honestly looking at making a change, but really do need help. Suggestions for good books, etc. appreciated.

Scenario: I need to set up a Linux based Firewall/Router with VPN capability. HELP?! (now to be fair, i can do this on a win2k server in about 30 mins, i wanted to see if a guy like myself with minimal knowledge about linux could do this, i got a copy of SuSE linux 7.2 from a friend and got it installed and running but didn't know how to config ipchains, etc. Can I do this, is it a bear?!)

Re:LINUX - Making The Change

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't actually remember 7.2, but most more recent distros include some type of graphical firewall configuration tool. SuSE 8.x, later versions of RedHat and Mandrake come to mind.

One thing you can always try to gain more command line configuration knowledge with this is to pick up one of the bootable router distros (like Coyote Linux). I used one of these for a time with an old Pentium box and it was a good learning experience. Pick some old box out of your closet, toss in two NICs and start experimenting with the rulesets before comitting to the switch on more serious iron.

Good luck!

Re:LINUX - Making The Change

[painehope]

Running Linux - it's an O'Reilly, can't remember the author, but it helped me a while back.
as far as firewalling, use a distribution like Redhat, Mandrake, Debian, or SUSE, keep ALL of the patches updated - ALL THE TIME. Then read tldp.org ( The Linux Documentation Project ), it has a HOWTO on setting up iptables, masquerading + ip-forwarding, also check out the OpenVPN project ( Google for them, I'm late to work and don't have time to post direct links ) for your VPN needs. Also, VTUN over SSH works as well.
That should be enough to get you started.
Oh yeah : subscribe to mailing lists specific to whatever distribution you choose, preferrably newbie ones, and participate. You'll learn a lot.

Re:I've been trying to use linux for years.

[frkiii]

You are a troll, you posted this same think in C.O.L.A.

The reason is probably because you are too lazy to actually learn something about how a compter works and how different operating systems and software work.

It might benefit you to actually sit down and learn how a computer works, how different operating systems run, basic commands, finding items, etc.

And, if you did your research, you would know that you can set up a perfectly acceptable click 'n drool (i.e. Windows like) desktop for Linux, freeing you from the task of learning too much about Linux.

But, that research might be more than you could handle as well. Might have to do ONE google search to locate such an item.

If you want Linux on the Desktop, its easy

[Waklingshark]

Lets be honest. Word and Excel have not driven Moore's law. Word and Excel didn't convince people to adopt Wintel as the defacto standard. The computer industry is centered around video games. If you can get directx9 for linux and port about 80% of the big games over, you'll see people switch. Most people don't upgrade because of a new browser release, or to speed up minutely the launch time of Excel. They upgrade to play Doom, Quake, UT, Half Life mods, Max Payne, and Half Life 2. Then they convince their friends to upgrade so they can play multiplayer. Gamers drive the buisness, get games on Linux like Neverwinter Nights and Half Life 2 and you'll see Linux on desktops all across the US.

Re:Not a lack of apps, too many of the wrong peopl

[ncr53c8xx]

A community that places no worth in non-technical people being able to get stuff done with a minimum of fuss has lost the battle for the desktop before it ever started fighting it. Every time I hear someone in the linux technical community refer to GUI's as 'click-and-drool', it is painfully clear to me as why linux is getting its asked kicked by an incompetant bunch of fools from Redmond Washington.

And I remember the days when Apple wouldn't be used for serious stuff because it was not a serious OS (all that graphics you know). You had to use DOS for serious "Office Apps". I don't think the current desktop situation has anything to do with the command line fetish.

Re:OOo to MS Office data interop no longer a conce

[cerberusss]

The OOo filters are often even more reliable than Microsoft's own filters

It must look like I'm trolling, because I've said this many times before: OOo filters are not 100%. This means you can't use them when you're doing roundtrip editing i.e. you edit, your client/colleague does some more, goto 10.

It's improving, but slowly. I logged a couple of OOo filter bugs in IssueZilla in april this year. One is delayed at least 1 to 2 years because of architectural limits. An other is being started on as I write this, more than half a year after logging. Priorities, I guess.

And yes, the Microsoft filters screw up sometimes, but funny enough people just accept that. But when OOo screws up, they get irritated...

Re:OOo to MS Office data interop no longer a conce

[yerricde]

Granted. But I don't think even MS Office 97 was designed for collaborative editing, being released before Microsoft "integrated the Internet into the OS." And how much roundtrip editing do you expect to do where something other than text absolutely has to survive? And if it bothers you and them that much, why can't you just mail your client a CD-R copy of OOo?

Far less a part of the economy than cars...

[edremy]

Computer technology is reaching that same level of integration within our economy. Your typical users doesn't know what a firewall is, yet at the same time they are unknowlingly exposing themselves to financial risk.

We assume enourmous physical risks every time we get in or near a car, yet huge numbers of people can't even change the oil on one. Cars are utterly essential to our economy, far more so than computers, yet I dare say half the folks proclaiming that everyone should be able to set up a firewall can't tell (and don't check) if their brake pads are dangerously worn. (And I include myself in that category: I can set up a firewall but I needed a mandated state inspection for the mechanic to tell me I needed new front pads and rotors.)

Consider recalls (aka, OS patches) How many cars aren't taken back for recalls, despite the fact that some car flaws can kill you? You expect folks to deal with arcane computer flaws that might crash their computer when they won't bother fixing something that could cause their airbag to fail?

It's simply not possible to know everything in the modern world. We have a huge service industry built up around maintaining cars complete with mechanic certification, mandated inpections, etc: we have a couple of college drop-out monkeys at BestBuy for (home) computers. I get people at work ask me all the time where a good computer mechanic is to fix their (crashed/crawling with bugs/loaded with adware) machines: I never know what to tell them.

Shameless plug: freshmeat.net

[autechre]

Disclaimer: yes, I work for freshmeat. But I don't think you could argue too hard that we're not a great place to find *nix software, and if you think you can, please tell us why.

There are several projects which provide a firewall based on some free *nix (Linux and otherwise) which are complete packages, ready to run from floppy or CD-ROM. There are numerous GUI firewall configuration scripts, so many that we have placed a moratorium on new ones unless they're really special in some way.

If you use Linux, you want to be using iptables with the 2.4.x series kernel (this will also be in the 2.6.x series). It has stateful filtering, which means that you can have sensible rules like "deny all external traffic unless it is a response to something initiated by me", and open up certain ports (e.g. 80, 22, etc.) as exceptions to that. ipchains (for 2.2.x kernels) can't do this.

I learned how to configure everything by hand just by reading the HOWTO, which is very good and written by the guy who wrote the iptables code (Rusty Russel). But I've been using Linux since 1998, and I have always liked doing things by hand, so this approach is not for everyone.

Personally, I prefer ipf (now pf) on OpenBSD, but iptables also makes a good firewall/gateway. As for a VPN, you might want to look into FreeSWAN, an IPSEC implementation for Linux. I have heard that there may be issues with this, and that another IPSEC implementation has been accepted for inclusion into 2.6.x, but I haven't been keeping up on this since it doesn't currently apply to me.

Whatever you do, don't use PPTP for a VPN, as there are serious flaws in that protocol.

Re:OOo to MS Office data interop no longer a conce

[cerberusss]

And how much roundtrip editing do you expect to do where something other than text absolutely has to survive?

You mean markup, etc? Well, it's just that we're currently in a project where we're cooperating quite snugly with the analysts of the client. They create huge word documents with huge tables in them. So those really have to survive. OOo sometimes barfs on them.

And if it bothers you and them that much, why can't you just mail your client a CD-R copy of OOo?

You can't be serious. Do you think when schedules are tight, you can bother clients and colleagues with a commodity thing like a word processor? Of course not. But because I want to run Linux, I bought Crossover Office. And the Office license is already paid for. Quite practical, all in all.

There are better ways to get respect.

[r_j_howell]

Several years ago I had a friend go to a development conference where we attended a session put on by Microsoft about (I think, it's bee a long time) COM and DCOM. Someone in the audience mentioned that the interface seemed kind of kludgy, and was harder to use than it ought to be. The M$ rep told him that was a good thing, because making it complicated gave the developer "job security" My friend was infuriated. He claimed (and I agree) that Job security comes from being able to solve problems in the most eficient way possible. and he didn't need cruft like that to give him job security.

Now this guy was the one who introduced me to linux. And he loudly claimed to be the biggest Linux Bigot (his words) out there. But that attitude is pretty prevalent in the Unix community as well. I've often heard "It was hard to write, it should be hard to use" That B.S. is just as stupid coming from the open source community as it is coming from Microsoft. If your claim to fame is being able to use something that could be made simpler, you are doomed to failure.

I also remember when people went to school to learn how to use Word Perfect. With the assumption that knowing how to use Word Perfect was the skill that would keep them employed.

Are you likely to be impressed because someone knows how to use a word processor? I'm not. But I am impressed by someone who knows how to write well. The good thing about being able to write is that you can write something good with a word processor, or a typewriter, or a pencil.

I agree that IT used to be more respected than it is. Just knowing how to administer a system, or progam, or put together a database is a pretty mediocre distinction. But being able to do it WELL is. It sucks that it takes such a long time for the cream to rise to the top. But the real gurus eventualy find themselves in a situation where the people they work for will do anything to keep them, because they remember how much worse it was before they set things straight.

As far as this goes for linux advocacy: Novell used to be the OS of choice for networking. NT kicked their butt because you could set up a passable network with NT without having to read ten manuals to do it. Of course, it takes a lot longer to get it to run well. But once your network is started with NT it's a lot easier to keep going with it than to switch.

Every power user was a newbie once. I applaud the efforts that make Linux Newbie friendly, because that's the only way to draw enough people in to take advantage of the famed Open Source Network Effect. If we can't do that we deserve to get our butts kicked by Microsoft.

Re:OOo to MS Office data interop no longer a conce

[yerricde]

They create huge word documents with huge tables in them.

Can't Mozilla Composer edit huge tables? And wouldn't huge collections of information in tabular form be more the domain of MS Excel/OOo Calc than a word processor?

But because I want to run Linux, I bought Crossover Office. And the Office license is already paid for.

I wonder, how do most people get the money to pay for their Microsoft Office licenses? Disclaimer: I am in no way accusing you of copyright infringement; I am just curious as to who funds the Microsoft machine.

Re:OOo to MS Office data interop no longer a conce

[cerberusss]

Can't Mozilla Composer edit huge tables? And wouldn't huge collections of information in tabular form be more the domain of MS Excel/OOo Calc than a word processor?

You're right, huge tables with cells that span more than one page, having subtables in them, etc. don't belong in Word if you ask me. But that's how the customer's analysts did it. At one time, we had them agree that we put the whole lot in a database with a web frontend, so that you can check things off, hang issues on parts of the design etc. And still they kept trying to crawl back to their beloved MS Word, for which they had review templates, track changes, etc.

And yeah, the Office license will be a company-wide thing for most employees. Even worse (or better, depending on your view), the license we have includes home use! And I suspect that will be the case in a lot of other places.

Re:OOo to MS Office data interop no longer a conce

[Hognoxious]

All bets are off about the new Office2K3 formats, of course.

Which are irrelevant, as nobody will buy it.