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

[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".

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.

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.