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Red Hat's CEO Suggests Windows For Home Users
Selecter was one of many readers to point out a ZDNet story in which "the CEO of Red Hat now says that Linux is not ready for the desktop, but may be ready in a few more years. Curious - I'm wondering if this is the start of a corporate only retrenchment of Linux, or just a bump in the road to Linux having a wider desktop share?" Apropos that, Gwobl writes "Jim Lynch, over at ExtremeTech, weighs in on the fate of the Linux desktop, now that Red Hat has apparently turned its attention to the enterprise and Novell is buying SUSE (to go with Outlook clone Ximian, which it also owns). Lynch's take: Cheer them on! The Linux world needs these strong champions. And don't overlook Novell's networking roots. Time was, Big Red defined networking."
...which company was it that has decided to focus on the enterprise market? They can't make it pay so they're going to muddy the water for all their former competitors, I thought more of RedHat this is more like Redmond FUDish behaviour. With it's new found direction, RedHat seems to have lost its honour.
Nothing these companiess have done really drives linux.. linux drives itself. Even Redhat, despite their contributions, is just along for the ride.
Linux will succeed regardless of what happens with these companies.
It was a very useful tool before they arrived, and will be equally useful after they are gone.
Windows owns the desktop. Linux's home is on the server -for now(after fbsd
Comment: Yes I realise the username 'fuckfuck101' makes me sound intelligent, no you cannot buy it from me.
Consumers want USB drivers and digital camera support
Funny, I've been using my USB digital camera with Linux since I bought it over a year ago.
I happen to think that Linux is more than ready for the desktop (I, and many others switched long ago), but unfortunately most users aren't yet ready for Linux...it's still in the hands of the "elite" and will continue to be that way for a while.
This guy is not a Redhat founder, he's just some MBA dork they picked up to make the VCs happy. You can see how quickly he's sold out the dream of linux on everything and turned it into the VC dream of 'linux on everything profitable'.
Business has accepted linux--to rape for as much cash as they can milk out of it and Redhat is among the worst of the bunch.
Maybe its time to evaluate Novell/SuSe... a lot of hardware vendors are offering SuSe now. Look at SGI for one....
The key is proper desktop takoever is implementation of IPX and getting away from this internet technology. After all, IP has been around forever and desktop penetration will require newer technology.
This move is surprising to me, but I wouldn't put much faith in what Matthew Szulik has to say about Windows or Linux for home use, considering he's changed the direction of Red Hat's policy regarding sales and distrobution. To me all this means is that Matthew Szulik has changed his company politics (done an about-face). It's in his interest to tell everyone to use Windows at home, because he doesn't want to have to listen to Linux users complain about him selling out, and he doesn't want another vendor to compete directly against him with the corporate guys. A Microsoft partnership at this time is very wise with Red Hat, but I'd bet dollars to donuts, Billygoat Gates slipped him a mickey or something to that effect.
Szulik likely realized that you can make twenty times more money working with big business than you can fielding techsup for home users. To me, this goes against the overall spirit of running Linux, and even the Open Source community, in general.
Thank god Linus doesn't think this way, eh guys?
linux is fine on my desktop.
it's windows that causes me to puke every time i look at it.
the CEO of Red Hat now says that Linux is not ready for the desktop, but may be ready in a few more years.
CEOs are known for their business acumen, but not necessarily for their techincal knowledge or skills. I've even read in one really great Apple history book that Apple engineers lambasted Steve Jobs as "non-technical" and considered him unfit to make "technical" decisions. I don't know that much about the RedHat CEO, but this may be a similar case.
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
Long live FreeBSD!
Dear Redhat,
Thank you so very much for the lovely knife which you planted in my back this morning. The handle is immaculate and the steel of very good quality.
We realize this is a turbulent time for redhat and i had feared that you would not have time from your friends while you transition to an enterprise-targetted company. It was as such very nice to recieve your little gift and know you still cared. I was talking to Linux, Alan Cox and Mandrake, and they feel the same about the similar gifts you sent them.
Love,
SUSE
Is this comment really something that's going to help Red Hat? What if they move to Windows and never come back (even when it IS ready, according to him)?
"the CEO of Red Hat now says that Linux is not ready for the desktop, but may be ready in a few more years."
This sounds like him attempting a justification for RedHat's actions of dropping desktop support and focusing on the Enterprise Edition.
Time was, Big Red defined networking.
Yeah, we're still cleaning up the remainders of this "definition"
Linux is not ready for most home users. I work tech support for an ISP, I know for a fact that most home users have no idea how a computer works. Most of my calls can be fixed by restarting the computer, and if its not that then its checking/unchecking a box somewhere.
I'm fairly new to linux myself, but I wouldnt let any of the people I talk to touch it.
wud
Linux on the desktop is ready now. And it will soon be a better choice than Windows for most users.
Makes me wonder why Red Hat is saying this now, right after they are withdrawing their home user distribution?
"Unlike the folks at RedHat, we believe that Linux is ready for the desktop .. and in fact, we've got the perfect distribution for you rigth here!"
Finding God in a Dog
Burn my karma, but I mean it. I was luke-warm on the whole Fedora distro idea, but now I don't even care. I'll install Suse or something else next time.
I've been a RedHat user since 5.1. No more.
There are other Linuxes in the sea.
my desktop gets forty rods to the hogshead and thats how i like it.
Maybe not ready for the mainstream, but it has been ready for me since 6.2.
The home desktop crowd is support intensive and aren't willing to pay for support, period. What RedHat is saying is "Please, these customers we can never make money on, go buy Windows, bitch to BillG and friends, and by that you do us a favor".
'Big Red defined networking' -this has to be the quote of the century. Anyway, funny quotes like that just make your day. There was another funny one from Linus himself, then one about the potentially IP-infringing code. As Linus recently said, ironically it [the said code] has been removed from 2.6 because it was ugly -go figure.
Was reported to say that 'Longhorn wasn't ready for the desktop either'
Oh well, perhaps in another couple years.
Boredom's not a burden anyone should bear.
His statement is that "consumers" ought to be using Windows rather than Linux. Fortunately, as somebody who uses rather than consumes my computer, I'm just fine with my Linux desktop.
The point is that he's right, in the sense that he's using: from a standpoint of people doing the marketing, they would rather have people using Windows than Linux. Of course, that's really pretty much irrelevant to us who actually use the computers.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
hmmn brilliant, The problem is not that windows "owns" the desktop its a matter of userbase. a lot of people who use computers aren't as knowledgable as most /. readers. Your ignorance to the fact that Linux is a superior operating system in all spectrums of performance, security and above all else stability. Leaves me puzzling why you even commented. I would much rather use a Linux desktop then XP anyday. Now I think XP and 2k are the better of the Windows line of operating systems but like anything from Microsoft its usually half done when you get it SP1 and soon to be SP2 did not and I suspect won't fix half the problems and security issues still to be found. So in one sense by marketshare yes Windows has a higher stake then *nix (including os X in that statement) but in the category of what its worth any *nix distro that has a name for itself is worth 3x the price you paid for your current operating system.
You have been sig'd
I'm upset with RH... Here I am
trying to sell, sell, sell
Linux to my company.
I have some sort of success but I
suck it up and we standardize on
what is NOT my first choice, namely
RedHat. Now they pull the rug out from
under me.
and until there is a Linux distro that "just works" it won't be.
Consider:
The lack of good font support in X. But it's not just X. It's applications too. There's no unified way to use fonts, or to use the "right" fonts.
Lack of good clipboard support in X: Perhaps it isn't X that's the problem. But most applications cannot agree on what clipboard format they are using. Forget about copying an image in Konqueror or Mozilla and pasting it into OpenOffice. Or even formatted text for that matter. Sheesh!
Number of Linux distributions: There's no way to
make a good installer that will install a commercial app on Linux and have everything work. There are too many dependencies for specific versions of libraries and things that would make this sort of thing worse than any kind of Windows DLL hell.
Drivers: Linux intentionally makes it difficult for people to release binary-only drivers. Of course, Binary only drivers are a bad idea anyway, some vendors will insist on it such as NVidia.
Games: Linux would make an ideal game platform IF games were released for it. Now I realize this is a chicken/egg problem of course, but you have to factor it in when thinking about if Linux is really ready for the Desktop...
All of this being said, I do use Linux as a desktop. I feel comfortable with its limitations. I'm not an average user though, and I wouldn't expect any average user to figure out how to make Linux do what it can do.
Now, where I disagree with Red Hat is that you should _not_ use Windows. Use Mac OS X. It's way better than windows in design, and just works.
First Caldera succumbs to the lure of the darkside.
Now this.
If you don't have a desktop product then you can't have a server product. Just ask Novell. They don't appear to be making this mistake twice and have indicated that they will contine to push the Ximian desktop.
Microsoft used its desktop product to gain access to the server market. They sure as hell didn't do it by having a good server OS. Anyone remember back when you walk into any computer room and you would see a couple of Win3.1/95/98 boxes sitting next to the Novell servers?
By focusing on the server, Redhat has changed their strategy from sneaking in through the back door via admins who run Red Hat at home to a strategy of comming in through the front door. Whatever money they save on killing the desktop product will be spent twice by increased marketing costs.
I bet you fall for lots of things on April 1st too.
Szulik gave an example of his 90-year-old father going to a local retailer in order to purchase a computer with Linux: "We know painfully well what happens. He will try to get it installed and either doesn't have a positive experience or puts a lot of pressure on your support systems," he said.
Thing is, lots of consumers have exactly the same sort of experience with Windows. But with Window's they're the market leader, not some minority emergin alternative. People are far more likely to think there's something wrong with them when they can't make Windows work as they expect, and the reverse is true for Linux.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
I think that Linux is too mormon owned for me now. First the IP was up in the air with Mormon-owned SCO, now SuSE with Mormon-owned Novell. So, in addition to stockpiling guns and souls, the Mormons need to add IT to their list of things to "own" as they advance their cult even further. I'm looking forward to the LDS naked girl screensavers and the free temple recommend with every boxed purchase.
Does any one really think that the average person can even begin to install it? (let alone configure it to do anything)
... i dont see purple in the list what should i do..
I can hear it now: "Please select the type of mouse:"
It's just one person's opinion. I'd be much more interested in the context in which it was said.
..for everytime someone said "Linux isn't ready for the desktop", I'd be paying these people to STFU. I was a big supporter of Red Hat in the past (been using it since 6.0), but with the recent changes to their support, and boneheaded comments from their execs, I've pretty much had it with them. Look, if Linux isn't ready for your desktop, fine, I won't beat you over the head. But it's been ready for my desktop for the past 3 years, and lots of other "non-techie" types as well.
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
While I'm a bit appalled at the RH CEO's statements, I can at least understand them - he can't really point to a Linux competitor at this time for the desktop, since anyone with a good chance (like Novell/Ximian/SuSe) is likely a server competitor as well.
And he did *not* say Linux was not ready for the desktop. He suggested Windows for *home users*, not the business desktop. There's quite a difference!
OTOH, regardless of what he says, Linux is growing and will continue to grow for some time. Where will it stop? Nobody knows. I know where I *hope* it stops (the end of the universe). But in the meantime, RedHat hasn't been the favorite of a lot of users, anyway. Yet Linux questions are constantly asked wverywhere I go.
And in the meantime, yes, for at least a year or so, Windows probably is the best choice for the vast majority of home users. But I think it starts having to really compete around that time frame.
Meanwhile, we will continue to run Linux (RedHat for now) on every system possible in my domain. That's currently around 250 desktops and servers. I won't be paying RH per seat license costs, but that's another story!
if linux goes back to the popularity it had in 1999ish, all the "1337 5cr1pt k1d5" will be happy again because their personal identity, defined through their computer's operating system, will be closer to unique once again! (speaking as someone who was one of these people back in 1999, and had a wise unix guru tell me why i was being a dumb kid, and helped me grow up by losing that attitude and demonstrating linux advocacy where appropriate, and avoiding it where not)
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Maybe he's just being realistic? Don't get me wrong, I've used RH daily since 5.2. I've also supported Win9.x and XP for friends, family, and co-workers. When a linux distro has that slick of an install ("Just click "next""...), along with *all* the device drivers, it'll really take off on the desktop.
And that's the catch-22, IMHO. I believe that the truly successful desktop linux company/distro will pay most all of their attention to simplifying and integrating things in the GUI, and 3/4 of their devel's will be device driver people. Why do I say this? because, people buy computers for its devices. Device manufacturers won't be arsed to write linux drivers until it has a much larger market. It won't have that larger market until you can plug XYZ into a USB port without thinking, cuz it had a penguin sticker on the box.
C|N>K
Serious Microsoft investment in RedHat by the third quarter of next year. I hate to be a conspiracy theorist (ok, that's a lie), but really this whole rush job smells like the visible front to a backroom deal.
I agree that linux as a whole isn't ready for the desktop, unless you have a nearby linux geek who doesn't mind do the occasional difficult administrative things that a normal user can't.
On the other hand this announcement seems a little tactless. "We have decided to get out of the home desktop market, so no one should use linux on the desktop any more. Use windows, not those other linux distro's. I mean if we don't think this is a good market for linux than no one should market linux there." Now he was probably just explaining why they got out of the market but this is how it came acrossed to me.
-nate
http://www.remix.net/
Yeah, but Mandrake et al have been cleaning RH's clock on the desktop now for a while.
I sure am glad I switched to Gentoo....
Well, this isn't really that surprising. Unfortunate, but unsurprising.
It's the basic political pattern of the formation of an oligarchy. A new force enters the scene, propelled by fortunate environmental circumstances, such as Microsoft's extremely high margins and overbearing market control coupled with the idealism of Open Source development. Typically, they are strident in their "freedom" and/or "anti-monopoly" stance. Once the force finds itself established, though, the things that got it there in the first place start to look a lot less desirable. "May the best man win" becomes "may I and my friends win".
Red Hat is discontinuing all but their "Enterprise" versions of Linux (as was previously mentioned here), because of a lack of profitability. So, from this perspective, the desktop is irrelevant. Supporting Linux for the desktop doesn't translate into more money, while supporting Microsoft for this role potentially does, either via overlapping stock portfolios or joint business ventures.
Naturally, I have no way of knowing if Suzlik's intent is along these lines in this particular instance. It is, however, the direction that the econonomic considerations will drive companies in Red Hat's position toward, and if Red Hat isn't advocating Microsoft wherever it can't turn a profit now, I expect it will be soon.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Glad somebody had guts to say it. Even Linux T. admits that Linux as a server is an easy thing to do because server can do only number of N thing, while desktop's are more complex.
Its not just a question of Linux no being ready for desktop. Linux desktop will get fukked up completely if you do 3-4 months worth of apt-get updates (aka up2date in RH).
Because any teen can write a code and with some luck get it included in a distro Linux will have no future as desktop OS. Patches break things and when you get Joe Blow writing code... without any quality control... well, what do you expect. Look at the copy/paste fiasco we have in Linux. There is no reliable copy/paste simply because server don't need it.
Well first of all, I think he's right. They're probably losing money providing support to a lot of newbies who can't get their working.
But it might also be a smart move to keep investors encouraged. If he says "Linux is definitely ready for the desktop" while their company cuts off their desktop market, I'd be very suspicious as to why they would do such a thing (if it is indeed profitable).
This sounds like he's covering his ass saying "yes, we're out of the desktop market - but only because there's no market yet". He also hints that they may return there when he thinks Linux is mature enough for the desktop market.
Go SuSE anyways ... Simple
Translation:
Unless your market is share is hefty, you can either manufacture the hardware, and keep tight control of the software (Apple), or support a great deal of hardware, such that network effects carry the day (Mr. Softy).
It's a question of audience. Most of the market really doesn't care if their system treats them like they are intelligent; it prefers to be locked in a Registry prison. Sad but true.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Sounds like reverse psychology to me.
'Buy Windows for your desktop. You don't need the power of Linux.'
Some it feels like they're just saying that to quantify RH's Enterprise product, and/or justify dropping RH 9.0.
Redhat was one of the biggest Linux companies actually allowing the average consumer to switch from Windows to Redhat with their easy windowish install of linux and an install that actually would find and setup all my hardware for thos eof us not inclined to use a command line. Red Hat had an even better desktop chance now that the big Macromedia apps were running on linux. The time is now, and yet they are shrinking back into a corner where they should be coming out strong....
Ave Molech Setting
Szulik gave an example of his 90-year-old father going to a local retailer in order to purchase a computer with Linux: "We know painfully well what happens. He will try to get it installed and either doesn't have a positive experience or puts a lot of pressure on your support systems," he said.
Yes, and I bet 10000000 rubles that your 90 year old father would put extreme pressure on Microsoft's support system if he installed Windows instead of RedHat Linux.
In short : Szulik's father is like mine : he still prefers typewriters (or, in his case, pen and paper probably).
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
This isn't about all of "us" who already have linux on our desktops. This is about all of "them" who do not know if they have Windows XP or Windows 95.
There is a digital divide, but it isn't about race, religion, or economic status. It is all about knowledge, skill, and the desire to actually understand what you are doing. Many of "them" will never understand anything about computers. And probably most of "us" will never understand why they don't feel the same as we do.
Use what works for you. If I want to use a hammer for any mechanical work, so be it. If you don't agree with me, you might just start to look like a nail. *wink*
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/outs ourcing/story/0,10801,86826,00.html
IBM announced a new offering today, extending the outsourcing to include the desktop.. I thought this was a great step in the right direction since basically no one really follows all the way through with desktop management. If IBM owns the hardware and bills flat rate per desktop, it behooves them to minimize TCO.
Paired up with ebusiness initiatives (i.e. "webifying" apps and streamlining business processes), this could lead to some IBM-sponsored Linux desktops.
Intelligent Life on Earth
Secretaries, for instance, can probably live quite well with OpenOffice, one of the nicer scheduling tool (Ximian maybe, never used it). And if all the users in my organization who just needed that setup actually had that setup, my job as administrator would be so much simpler. </whine>
Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor
...that the reason the RedHat CEO is saying this is because he doesn't make any money on the Home versions of RHL. RH is way to commercialized now, that's why you should go with other distros.
Szulik gave an example of his 90-year-old father going to a local retailer in order to purchase a computer with Linux: "We know painfully well what happens. He will try to get it installed and either doesn't have a positive experience or puts a lot of pressure on your support systems," he said.
;-). I really care is when the average 30 year old business person can use it without out any more complaints then they have with Windows.
I'm sorry, but I tried to get my 75 year old father-in-law to use the internet. I got him a Windows box with a simple dial up connection and set everything up for him. But he has yet to use it by himself. It would have been easier for me if I set him up a Linux box, because I know it better and could write scripts to help him log on automatically. I know it is also possible to do that with Windows but I didn't have the time to learn it for him.
My point is that computers in general are not easy for an old fashioned 75 year old who rather write snail mail letters than to use email. So that excuse is not a good one.
Linux is partially ready for those willing to learn. It is not Linux's fault for not being ready, but it wont be ready until all software vendors port there products to linux. I won't be Windows free until I have a reliable tax program for linux. I still use quicken since I don't believe that gnucash is there yet. Also it helps since it works with my tax programs.
Also the GNU/Linux system needs a standard that all non-free software vendors can write code for. This includes games. Once it gets that far, and Linux gets the software vendors to treat Linux equal to Windows, then Linux will be a fine alternative to the average user. I don't care about 70 year olds learning about computers just because their children want them to (well I do care about my father-in-law
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
Redhat failed to profit off the desktop market, decided to quit supporting their desktop version, and now, purely by coincidence, decide to announce that linux "isn't ready" for the home desktop market. We have a company that has been unsuccessful in a certain area, and who is now blaming its lack of success on the product. I just find it disappointing that they had to tear down linux (and all the other companies who market linux to the home desktop) with them.
CEO's don't care about if linux is ready for the desktop, or if it is all ready there. THEY CARE if it is profitable.
What is not profitable for them is not worth thier the effort. So this is just spin put on their own business failure in marketing linux for the desktop.
From the article, it seems that he's making a fairly common misconception: he's saying it's difficult to install Linux.
...) then say "Go". After a while, you'll be prompted to put in the next CD (unless you're installing off DVD), then the next one. Once that's done, you reboot and you're done - there's very little need for a home user to install patches to things like Mozilla, KDE because they simply don't need them.
How many "normal" people out there have ever installed Windows? You buy a PC; it has Windows pre-installed on it; the end. I'm not sure, but I suspect MS sales figures would support this; the vast majority of Windows sales are bundled with new hardware.
If he thinks installing Linux for home use is hard, try installing Windows for home use. First you install from the XP CD, then you'd better call MS to get it activated. Then you start installing all those patches from Windows Update. Then you start installing your apps - one at a time, and you'd better have all those code numbers and activation keys at your fingertips. Don't forget to call Symantec to register their products, and Quicken too. Don't forget to track down the driver CDs for those obscure bits of hardware - in this sense, "obscure" can mean things like digital cameras, scanners, etc. that are actually pretty common in home PCs.
In my experience, the typical home user installing a Windows PC from scratch takes 1-2 *days* to get it done, and that's 1-2 days of dedicated time spent largely sitting in front of the computer. Remember we're talking typical home users here, not corporate desktops or home machines owned by techos.
Now look at the Linux way of doing things. You get a Linux distribution from somewhere, and this may be a challenge if you don't know where to start looking. You power up the PC, put in the first distribution CD, and off you go. The installers for all the major Linux distributions are now pretty well comparable with Windows in terms of ease-of-use, although driver support is a bit more challenging.
You pick what sorts of apps you want (e.g. word processor, spreadsheet,
Unlike Windows Update patches, most patches to "Linux software" is to add functionality or protect against obscure buffer overflows - again I'm talking about "typical home user" stuff. Most of it just isn't needed.
I just can't see how installing Linux is even remotely as difficult as installing Windows these days. Typical time to install Linux, from scratch, for a new home user is a few hours - admittedly most of that time is head-scratching time, but it's still a whole lot less than 1-2 days of typing in codewords and swapping CDs on the Windows platform.
Hell, if you want to really reduce the time just get the home user to boot up Knoppix. Plug in a USB memory card and they can back up everything to it. There's your install done, in a couple of minutes (and that includes the trip to the shop to buy the memory stick).
Seriously, RH got me all excited about Linux on the desktop, but now that I've used it for a while I'm just going to go to Debian testing when Sarge comes out (this december I hope).
Sorry your too retarded to to use it anyway it is people like you that make it un usable on the desktop. You use your virus infected windoze and I will snort your wireless network while you are sleeping. ;-)
I've just this minute installed KDE 3.2 and I can tell you this guy couldn't be any more WRONG.
Let me see if I get this straight. The company from which I paid $40 to buy a box set of Red Hat Linux 9 is now saying their product is "not ready for the desktop"?
This is the same Linux with the swell GUI, Bluecurve; which, to quote the press release offers a "[c]onveniently organized, user-friendly desktop with numerous graphical enhancements and icons."
How about refunding me my $40 for no other reason that shame on you! -- hmmm?
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Since that's not going to happen, we should keep doing what we have been. Linux or any other free software project didn't get to where it is because of some damn MBA suits. Why do we care about some suit's judgment?
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
I have been sitting back and watching the various posts over the last couple of days and I see (1) The "free as in beer" people bitching about "no more free Linux" and the (2) "free as in speech" people applauding the efforts of RedHat and SuSe.
For the "free as in beer" crowd, where do you thing SuSe got $500,000.00 to pay for Common Criteria evalaution? I'm sure that IBM wants some of that money back. The same goes for Oracle with RedHat. And actual "consultants" singing the virtues of free software now complaining that the free ride is over. If I hired a consultant who sold me this "bill of goods" they would not be a consultant for long (can you say "litigation"). This is part of the reason why I hear such nonsense from PHB's as "unfunded requirements", nothing is free, not even lunch. And anyone who says that it is is either a liar or a fool (pick one)!
For the "free as in speech" crowd I think RedHat's decision is sound, if you want to expand your offerings you will have to charge at some point. And to improve the quality of the product you will have to pay for quality staff. I only see RedHat getting better for this.
For SuSe, I hope that Novell adds functionality like eDirectory, which could have the potential to compete with Solaris (and it's built in LDAP server) and similar products.
I see all of this as a good thing, but I am sure many will not, oh well!
Can anybody tell me why?
-- forgive me my poor Engl...
What you really have to realize is that, for your average desktop user, tweaking an OS to their liking isn't really something they care for. All they need is something that you pop in and run. The Operating System acts mostly like a black box to them and just does whatever it is they've learned how to do.
Linux, in it's current state (and in my very limited experience) is still not ready for the average desktop user who is baffled by tech jargon. While I have no problem downloading and compiling ALSA to get my sound card to work properly, most people probably wouldn't know how to do that. Actually, as a general statement, one simply can't expect an "average user" to compile anything. And it seems that much of the wonderful free/open source software that exists for windows does require SOME tinkering, the average user probably doesn't know or is afraid of tinkering with systems most likely beyond their understanding. Maybe some linux desktops zealots fail to realize that what may be mere child's play to them, is out of the question for normal people. The desktop is, after all, the realm of normal people. Linux has to be able to interface with all the readily available hardware devices right away, and without hitch before the masses of people start using it, and part of that problem is getting manufacturers to supply linux drivers or make their devices linux compatible. While there are ongoing improvements in this area, it's still not quite ready for the normal people....
I am not an ubergeek and I use it on my Desktop. Hey, even my mom uses it on her desktop - and she is no geek whatsoever.
Well, if you're going by solid statistics like that, who can argue with you? If you've already done an exhaustive study where you show that it works on two systems for two users, well, that's flawless research.
Makes me wonder why Red Hat is saying this now, right after they are withdrawing their home user distribution?
Maybe you should, instead, ask why they are withdrawing their home user distribution. This may come as a shock to you, but an executive at RedHat probably knows a lot more about whether Linux is ready for the desktop than you and your mom do. In the article, he says that "We know painfully well what happens. He will try to get it installed and either doesn't have a positive experience or puts a lot of pressure on your support systems", then that's what will happen. I know people who have attempted to support commercial end-user desktop apps under Linux. The user support was a nightmare.
This is a business decision for RedHat. They don't have some emotional tie to it. They don't care about Linux Torvald's "vision" or Richard Stallman's philosophy. If they were making money putting Linux on desktops, they would keep selling a desktop OS. If they aren't making money, then they stop. The Linux community can either learn from RedHat's decisions and statements and make the appropriate changes to Linux or they bury their heads in the sand. It's up to them.
sure gets around a lot these days!
Seems everyone is taking a few extra tokes on it lately...
The truth of the matter is that with distro's like SuSE and Red Hat, it is possible to get a system up and running with almost no time or effort, IF people are willing to learn some pretty basic skills. It is a truly sad world when people can't even manage to edit three lines in a text control file, or type "sh /root/videocarddriver", which on these distros, is usually the most you'll ever have to do.
Well, it is official -- Linux on the desktop has failed. That means it will soon be dead everywhere else. No OS that was not successful on the desktop has ever succeeded as a server or anything else.
Am I gonna buy that stupid RH WS? Is the corporate user that used to install RH9 going to install it? Keep dreamin.
Good bye Linux. So long.
A lot of ISP's claim they "do not support" linux and you have to pretend you aren't running it. (Along with your NAT router, etc.)
This story is taken completely out of context, based on what he said in a friendly interview with theregister.
m l
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/33766.ht
"Some people, however, are not so particular. Plus they steal other people's questions - watch it, kid." (see article)
What the hell is this idiot thinking?
On the one hand, he just pissed off a lot of the loyal Red Hat users. On the other hand, he just turned a bunch of consumers off of Linux. And on the third hand, for you three-handed folks out there, he's going to turn off his enterprise consumers as well by saying, "There's something we don't do well."
Now it may very well be true that Linux doesn't do the desktop well, it may not be. I've got my own opinion, as do you.
The point is that when you are trying to sell something, as Red Hat is, you don't say, "We don't do this, and don't think people should try it with our product." You say, "We may not do this well, but we think people can do it, and we're working hard to make the experience even better." This is Public Relations 101 for cryin' out loud.
How the hell did Red Hat get this loon? And what's the over/under on Red Hat's PR department releasing an "Explanation" within the next 24 hours???
Things are not going well down Red Hat way.
WTF!?!?
...err Redmond.
RedHat advocating Windows?
You'd think they would have advocated an OS whose underpinnings are some what related to their own and offer a bonafide "OS alternative" that provides ease of use, popular applications and has name brand recognition.
Sure, fine... turn away from the home-enthusiast and ma/pop sector. But at least support those who contribute to the OS community rather than the dark lord in Mordor^H^H^H^H
Red Hat isn't ready for the desktop. Their tools are unnecessarily confusing and many things are broken out the box.
I bid them farewell from the Desktop market. Since they botched it in the first place, good ridance!
I think Redhat will have a market. That market is Vmware. It will go with other OS'es that only deserve a VMware window on my Slack desktop; Windows and now Redhat.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
I used to be a satisfied Red Hat user up until 7.3... it didn't "just work", the way that SuSE and Knoppix (with hard drive installation) do now, but I hacked around and got everything working, and I was very pleased with myself and Red Hat.
However, with the Red Hat 8 and 9 releases, I was shocked to discover that the distribution had suddenly begun to suck. It had become slow, unresponsive and honestly ugly. No matter what I did everything looked pixelated, and the new GUI looked dumb. There were innumerable minor problems, like XMMS not working out of the box, that made the entire distro just vaguely and unquantifiable annoying. All of my friends who tried the new versions reached similar conclusions.
Now, it is all becoming clear to me why I switched to using SuSE on my desktop and a Knoppix install on my laptop. Red Hat is not ready for the desktop! However, the fact that Red Hat isn't competent enough to build a working distro for consumers says nothing about the other distros of Linux. I have been handing out Knoppix CDs for free on my college campus with my club, the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons, and the response that has been coming back from my fellow students has been, "Yes! Linux is finally ready for the desktop! Normal consumers can use it right out of the box to actually accomplish work!" Red Hat should speak for itself.
Free Speech, Free Software, Free Culture
However, Szulik expects Linux to be ready in a couple of years after it has had time to mature.
What is it, a fruit? It takes time to ripen? I think not. That's just stupid. RedHat Linux is not suitable for the home user desktop because RedHat has not made it so. Waiting will accomplish nothing.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Windows requires expert system administration to keep a secure firewall, to keep the system free of viruses, and to keep the system operational. Who knows how to fix broken registries or deal with a system that has been virused? How many home users know how to choose and install the patches that they need when security alerts are released? Not very many.
Windows is definitely not ready for home use. Linux, on the other hand, doesn't have these virus and patching problems. It provides all the functionality home users need. It is far more ready for home use than Windows.
Now this is the sort of thing you would expect to see from the likes of Bill Gates, but not from someone in the Linux community. And even while It might be true, you don't really need to go out and say it.
People will use what they are comfortable with, plain and simple. The whole Grandfather story is just stupid, my Grandma can't use Windows, but I'm not telling her to use Mac0SX or Linux. Such examples are kind of pointless.
I do agree Linux has a ways to go to be a complete desktop replacement, but having been one to use it off and on for a few years now, I can say things have come a long way and continue to get better.
Saying it needs to mature though, to me, seems to take away from what Linux is, as if it isn't really ready for use. Yet, Linux already is more stable and robust then Windows is (or probably ever will be). I don't see Linux needing to mature so much as it needs expand, filling in gaps here and there. The basics have been covered, the system is great, now just improve upon what we have to make it even better.
I don't ever see Linux being as frilly as Windows, and I hope it never is. But I do see it becoming a larger threat to Microsoft.
Sig? No thanks, I don't smoke.
In the late 70s, when I was around 9 years old, I would sometimes go downtown with a family friend and play games on the minicomputer of her law firm. Two of the games on there were 'Adventure' and 'Zork'. I have never been the same as this inspired my computer career. Anyway, I vividly remember comparing notes with the secretaries there who had copious maps and clues on how to make the snake go away, where to find batteries for the flashlight, etc. It's amazing what people can do.
.conf files). Frustration, not ease, is really the show stopper.
Similarly in the 90s, I saw non-technical secretaries work miracles with DOS Wordperfect 5.1. People can learn. It was years before they could do the same quality with Windows-based Word Processors.
No, these secretaries aren't going to understand programming concepts. But we have been so intrenched in the Windows world that we have forgotten that people actually have far greater capacity to deal with things than we give them credit. The world *can* survive without InstallShield and the 'Windows Experience'.
Want proof? Look at Linux! I personally thought no one (even sysadmins) would seriously consider going back to command lines, manual builds and (gasp) vi.
So, the key isn't so much to make Linux desktop emulate the 'finger paint' simplistic Windows, but to instead make sure the holes are patched up (e.g., no hiding options of UI apps in
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
Red Hat: I come to bury the Penguin, not to praise him.
...
Penguin: Et tu Red Hat?
Although I imagine the ending will be somewhat different...
It seems to me that the problem he's talking about isn't with Linux at all, but that local retailers don't have a clue about Linux, and tend to mess up the installation. So you get the machine home and find that you're nearly out of space on some partition, the IP is fixed to one that doesn't work, and everything is in Chinese. Of course, if you bring it in to get it fixed, the retailer will stare at it for a while and then change the locale to Korea or change root's name in /etc/shadow.
It's not that retailers are stupid, but they tend to be trained on Windows and not be interested in learning other systems. And they're who the home user knows to turn to for tech support.
Linux is perfectly good for home use, but the support infrastructure for home users is stuck on Windows, and unlike the corporate IT department, doesn't have a cost motive to switch their expertise to Linux, because they're not the ones who have to pay for Windows.
This is a good question. I am very curious as to why he _specifically_ recommended Microsoft.
Does anyone have any ideas as to why he would single them out?
Did you hear anything fly over your head a minute ago?
RedHat's stock goes down 25% just minutes after a comment from RedHat's CEO
And for joe average, Windows doesn'ty come close to MacOS. Not nearly as polished or finished. yet it's everywhere.
That the people who determine the future of Linux, generally don't listen to people like this....
By that I mean that, for the most part, Linux users are more liable to decide to run Linux because it suit them and their needs, than they are to listen to some MBA dolt who tells them they shouldnt. And since, lets face it, the Linux community is more concerned with making a good OS than it is with taking the #1 spot, I dont see how this even registers on the scales.
And to be honest, I do rather agree with him. I CANNOT set up my less knowledgeable family with Linux without answer 20x more "I have a problem" phone calls than with Windows. This is a problem for me running it on my desktop, but for my mother, it is a VERY real problem. And that is who he's talking about. Your mother, my mother, your grandmother....and even the simplest distro is still a bit much for them.
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
Linux sucks ass as a user experience for most people. It works great for many geeks, but not for 90% of the computer-using public, especially home users. I keep trying Mandrake, SuSE, and Red Hat (or at least used to), and while they do improve over time, there are always annoying stupid problems that require a moderate amount of manual config file editing. That's not too terrible to me, but it isn't reasonable to expect most users to be able to do that. Samba's always got quirks. My sound card (Soundblaster Live) won't work in even Mandrake 9.2. It detects it, it just ignores it. I even tried a modprobe, which is what I think I used last time to get it to work.
Simple stuff like this is broken all the time on Linux, has been for years. Until this sort of thing gets straightened out, it will be a geek/hobbyist OS at home, or one that requires a LARGE support staff for maintenance, installation, and other quirks that are typically much easier (yes!) to fix on Windows for most users.
You post on slashdot. Most real users don't know what slashdot is. By definition you are a geek because you know what slashdot is, you have an account and you know what linux is (and even use it). The typical user that doesn't know about all this is not ready for linux on the desktop.
Linux on the desktop is not ready because of poor hardware support, horrible out of the box behavior and a general lack of neighbours or nephews who do have a clue. The reason your mom tolerates linux is that she doesn't care and doesn't have a clue. As soon as she picks up a digital camera at some shop and expects it to actually play nice with her desktop there will be trouble because it is bloody unlikely the thing will work as advertised on the box (just an example, no doubt there are particular brands that work well with particular distributions if the planets are aligned properly).
Jilles
How does anything else become popular at home?
If Enterprise uses Linux, folks will start writing more software for Linux, more drivers for Linux, etc.
Then Linux is desktop ready.
The rest of Linux is pretty much already there. A little more integration and smoothing has to be done, and administration needs to be made easier for the non-geek, but past that, Linux itself is ready.
The CEO is right. His way (pushing 100% enterprise) might not be the best choice for everyone, but it's probably the best choice for Red Hat and a workable solution overall.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
What is it that makes Linux more difficult to use for Joe Dummy? Having recently installed Mandrake, I actually found it as easy as, if not easier to install than Windows 2000 or XP (which I've recently installed as well). When I say "Linux" I am referring to Mandrake, SuSE and other such distributions, and not Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, etc. They are clearly more advanced.
But Joe Dummy wouldn't install Windows would he? He would get it preinstalled. And then he would need someone to tell him what icons to click to do whatever he wants to do. But how is this more difficult when using Linux?
The only thing I can think of is that there are more Windows users out there, so it might be easier to find one if you need help. But that doesn't make Windows itself easier to use than Linux, does it?
Clever signature text goes here.
...that he doesn't want anyone to consider the Java Desktop initiative (regardless of its merits or lack thereof).
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Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.
Redhat bloat (and SLOW gnome bloat) is BIGGER and WORSE than windows bloat!
I wont tire of saying that a P400 with 64MB and Redhat 9 + Gnome thrashed disk like mad while the P100 32MB Win95 machine it replaced was much much better.
When I put 200MB in the P400 it stopped thrashing and was only 4 TIMES SLOWER than the P100 with 32MB and win95
Thats GNOME for you, who persue idealistic usability instead of pragmatic usability.
Then don't get me started on Debian, that DOESN'T install the packages containing the kernel modules needed to run the installer until AFTER the next boot when its too late, cos the network card (and PCMCIA) were some of those drivers.
Debian - where the "about" docs are merged with the "join us" docs which are merged with the "instructional" docs so it becomes IMPOSSIBLE to get any information out in any decent ammount of time.
Debian - whose users think apt-get is better than the ("I never heard of it") rpm/up2date of redhat and with much less features.
As you can tell I'm ticked off at Linux on the desktop.
For 2 years I've dual booted, preparing to make the switch, I still haven't been able to do it!
I guess I'm sticking with win2k another couple of years despite my FAT32 my documents to I can use open office from win or linux, thats the ONLY thing that works, with MOZILLA on a NEARLY 2nd best.
Desktop Linux is nowhere soon.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Linux on the desktop is already beginning to happen. But it has been clear for at least a year that RedHat has made a strategic decision to leave that segment to others.
.0 releases with all sort of bleeding edge software. Contrast to Debian. Being more concerned with stability, they would never have unleashed GCC 3.0 (aka RedHat's 2.96) anytime close to as early as RH did, but they NEEDED it for their commercial customers. Same for Glibc and their most recent stunt of backporting native pthreads from 2.6 into a 2.4 mutant kernel for RH9 and RHEL3.
Guess they have now decided to sow salt over that ground as they leave to hurt their competitors. No matter, they will be a footnote in a few years.
I tend to doubt Fedora will ever build much of a community because Redhat will find they can't really cut it loose. Because were they to actually turn it over to the developer community we already know what they would do, and it isn't what Redhat has traditionally done.
RedHat drove innovation by producing horribly broken
The value of RedHat used to be that they were where the Geeks and Suits collided and out of that friction came innovation. Run the Geeks off and they are doomed to solidify into the next SCO, a tired outdated product from a company without the resources to continue the required level of development needed to keep up. Anyone want to bet that several of their superstars bail before their next major release?
Democrat delenda est
Fuck you.
The only reason Linux isn't "ready" for the desktop is because certain big software and hardware names won't facilitate support. And people like you.
Linux itself is ready. You are not.
Love,
bersl2
P.S.: I have never considered Red Hat any good anyway.
It's flamebait, but I have karma to burn.
Didn't you hear the latest rumor? Slashdot is going public, and the pre-IPO valuation is 2.2 billion, and they've got Kleiner Perkins to invest.
I had 2 licenses for RHN, paying $120 per year. I've used RH since 6.2, something like three years now... and here they are, purposely dumping the very people that put them where they are now. I mean, are they totally stupid or what? Don't they realize that the geeks who use RH at home are the ones who then go to work at the corporations and "enterprise" level shops and recommend systems for new projects... don't they realize who it is that brings things like Linux in through the "back door" to the workplace? Red Hat didn't "just happen", it was championed by geeks. Just because geeks often want to run their own servers at their own expense from home or colocated servers, doesn't mean these *same* geeks aren't in a position to determine what gets used at work. Dumping customers like me who are willing to *PAY* (hello? anyone home???) for stuff - ok so it's not $350 per seat, but on the other hand I don't WANT support, ALL I WANT ARE THE ERRATA. Just the security updates. The expensive part, if I'm not mistaken, is not backporting patches to 7.x, 8.x and 9.x and whatever, they have people who can do that sort of thing in their sleep. No, the expensive part is support. I was quite willing to pay RH for RHN and access to updates.
Oh, yes, and another thing - they actually had the nerve last week to AUTOMATICALLY renew my RHN subscription ($120, cha-ching, thanksverymuch) without my permission. I never said they could do that, but they went ahead anyway. I called immediately, and they have now refunded my money, and I am now in the process of preparing for the (one way) migration to Debian.
This is exactly what Netscape did when they turned their backs on the very people who put them where they were back in the late '90's - Netscape thought they could just forget all about the browser and focus on their Enterprise Server product line. Bad decision - buh bye Netscape!
And now this - the nerve of the guy! Saying that Linux is not ready for the desktop. Jeez. These people never cease to amaze me... I've been using Linux as my desktop for the last three years, and it has literally NEVER crashed on me the way that Windows does ALL THE TIME. There is nothing fundamental about Linux that would prevent it from being used by any user - with the added benefit that in Linux, you can't totally fry your machine settings (as long as you're not running the desktop as root, that is)... and isn't Red Hat the company that is in prime position to MAKE Linux usable on the Desktop? If anyone had the chance to do something here, it was them. But no, they blew it - and they even have thrown a fantastic branding opportunity totally out the window... I mean, Fedora doesn't even have "Red Hat" in the title. So just as they get almost universal recognition, they change the name. Duh. Not the sharpest tools in the shed, methinks.
Ok, end of rant. Sorry, but this whole thing has been annoying me for quite a while... Red Hat has officially lost it, in my opinion. Buh bye now, you'll never get my business again... or any revenue from businesses that I start in the future, either. Chew on that.
Buh bye, Red Hat.
Now that they are out of the desktop business, they come out with a statement 'Linux isn't for the desktop yet, but look at our nice shiny server model'. ( and a kick in the teeth to the remaining players that do belive there is a market for desktop linux )
I never was fond of RH, but i did understand the large amount of good PR they gave to the OSS cause.
until now... now they are proving to be a liability to us, not an asset. We should act appropriately.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
. . . Lindows seems to be doing just fine, Mandrake Linux and SUSE too...
Why can't RedHat keep up?
I am a heavy linux user, and i have been using it since a really long time. And i agree, linux really creates problems for someone who is not used to computers, or who does not have some geek genes.
however, it dosent mean that we dump linux at all. you should have a look at lindows, which is quite good and provides a very easy interface. it typically dosent have any clipboard or other issues.
openoffice has also been gaining a lot of popularity recently against the complex and expensive microsoft office. device drivers are still creating problems, but if you use the standard hardware then you would typically have them inbuilt with your distribution. also, linux dosent work well with some **cheap** hardware, like some of the "free after rebate" webcams. however its again a fault of those manufacturers who make hardware that does not follow standards.
once everything gets standardized and have well written specs, linux would be more than happy to be used by my grandmother. you just need a distribution that focuses on getting the maximum out of current features and stabilizing and standardizing them instead of working on new features, and im sure companies are doing that.
- Mozilla hangs a lot on Linux (on my box anyway)
- I tried switching to Firebird + Evolution. But there's no obvious way to tell Evolution to use Firebird as the default web browser. Supposedly I can do this in the Gnome control panel (even though I'm running KDE!) but that doesn't work.
- To generalize, there's no global place where applications can get system setting information. Everything seems to be a "KDE app" or a "Gnome app", and they use different preferences, different printing systems, different font settings, and so on. What a disaster!
- Clicking on PowerPoint files in Mozilla doesn't open them in OpenOffice. I have to save the file to a folder, then browse to it with KDE's file manager and double-click it. There's probably a way to make this work, but in my default install of OpenOffice and Mozilla it doesn't.
- Linux applications are just plain uglier than most Windows apps, though the new antialiased XFT font stuff helps a lot. And to be fair there are plenty of amateurish, ugly apps for Windows too.
- Half the !@#% apps on the system have fonts that start with K. Again, I don't care which window system or toolkit or whatever it was written for. I just want an app that works, looks decent, and has a name I can pronounce.
:-)
I'm a software engineer with tons of experience (and I was a Unix admin back in the 4.3BSD days, which dates me). I could figure this stuff out. But I shouldn't have to, because I'm using the machine to try to (gasp!) get work done. Linux is a great server environment, but it's just not ready for the desktop yet. Like the man said, maybe in a few years.If you look at the MS ads that have been running for the past few months, it seems that the only reason why /. is alive is because of their cash.
Okay. Now that I have this great easily installed Mandrake distro on this computer... tell me how to watch this DVD I have in my hand. This is an example of where Linux falls down. I spent 8 frustrating hours one night trying to do this.
I would rather spend the $30 and buy a commercial DVD player for Windows... from going online (buy, download, install) to playing the video is less than 30 mins. Simple, and easy.
I tried several solutions for Mandrake. All of them required a lot browsing via Google, and a lot hacking around. Some had broken dependencies. Some had awful UI's. Some just crashed randomly. Not a very compelling experience, and I've been using Linux since 1994.
I read a comment on Slashdot before that summed up the Linux vs. Windows on the desktop debate almost perfectly, and I really wish I could remember who said it so I could give him credit, but it was along the lines of:
---
I can take a PC running Windows XP, plug in any of thousands of pieces of hardware, and they'll just work. Or, I could spend hours putzing around with obscure config files and recompiling the kernel to get the damned scroll wheel on my generic mouse functioning.
---
But configuration and the nearly-endless number of package dependancy issues aren't the only reasons Linux won't catch on for the desktop. One of the largest reasons, which I rarely see pointed out, is that despite all the KDE vs. Gnome flamewars, it doesn't matter which you choose, because they both suck! Say what you want about XP's playschool UI (which can be skinned very easily, by the way); it's still years ahead of anything I've ever seen running on *nix.
I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that OSX is far and away the superior OS - I recommend it to anyone that wants a computer for home but isn't a gamer, but for your average home user, Linux is just out of the question. And for your average advanced user? Linux is way too much of a headache to be worthwhile.
In the end, Linux is practically designed to be a business OS. Security, stability and cost efficiency are selling points for PHBs and admins, not home users. I think Mandrake and Redhat ought to be commended for making such an effort to make Linux more user-friendly, but ultimately, it's futile. It's like trying to make an M1A1 tank practical for day-to-day commuting. You can modify the hell out of it, but in the end, you're still using a tank to do what a plain old car's much better-suited for.
Just the average Mr. "please-copy-internet-in-this-diskette" is not ready for Linux (or Windows, or...).
Thanks,
BigJ
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
In our medical centre, we use Linux to exclusion. On the desktop, on the server. And we are happy that way.
What's more, we couldn't care less what RedHat does or doesn't, recommends or thinks. We don't need them, never did. We use Debian.
If there is one thing we believe that has slowed Linux' uptake on the desktop, it is RPM - RedHat's package management. Would they have settled for the vastly superior Debian package management system - where could we be today?
But then, freeing customers from these artificial update cycles would mean losing revenue, losing stronghold on customers, and what corporate entity likes that idea?
I agree that Red Hat is not ready for the desktop. I gave up on them around 7.0. OTOH, SUSE 9 IS!. I installed it on my laptop this weekend. It detected and set up all my hardware -even winmodem and P4 SpeedStep support out of the box! Impressive! For some time now, I've enjoyed watching SUSE get better and better. I've paid for 5 versions of the OS so far (putting my money where my mouth is, so to speak). I just hope Novell doesn't go and cock it up!
I wonder how this is going to affect applications like Maya. Hollywood was converting a lot of workstations to RedHat and running Maya on them. Does the RedHat Enterprise support cover workstations at major post-production and effects shops? If not either Windows or MacOS X just got a big bump of users.
Maybe he should just get his head out of his butt.
Perhaps his stockholders would like to let him know how they feel.
What a freekin' moron.
What he is saying he can't make money supporting the crappy desktop that is RedHat.
I am more than sure most people are smart enough to figure out how to use Mandrake, SuSE or one of a dozen other distros.
I can't get over someone so clueless to think the RedHat lock on Linux Servers in the US gives him the right to speak for squat in any other sector of the Linux world.
It's to damm bad so many clueless people think RdHat when they hear Linux
You dumb bunny I'll never buy a Red Hat product again.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
I was there in the early nineties as all the UNIX vendors had desktops and decided to give them up to get the more lucrative "server" stuff. Back then, business apps ran on UNIX desktops. Microsoft Windows, OS/2, GEM and Macs were dismissed as niche players and certainly not doing software where you could make money.
So they let other companies fight over the desktop since they knew their superior UNIX offerings would be picked for servers. Except the people who picked Windows for their desktops became comfortable picking Windows for their servers. And Microsoft courted developers really hard. (While the UNIX vendors were charging increasingly ludicrous amounts for compilers).
Out of all that, Microsoft ended up with a very respectable share of the server side stuff, and Linux and free compilers ate into the UNIX vendors.
Operating system deployments follow the network effect. The more you have of them the more useful they are. (Another example was fax machines. If you are the only person on the planet with one, then it is useless. The more who have them, the more useful each one is).
You can see this in software support. Look at which operating systems you get drivers, games, business software, productivity software, media players, certifications etc for. They closely follow the deployments of each. Redhat was/is popular because it was widespread, which therefore made it even more widespread.
Redhat's mistake is assuming that they can give up quantity of customers instead to get just the quality ones. They will lose that one, just like all those UNIX companies. Less and less people will be familiar with the Redhat offerings - and it doesn't look like Fedora will have much in common with Real Redhat. Software built on Fedora will be using way more recent versions of libraries etc and so won't even install on Real Redhat.
You can also see from all the comments that people HATE changing Linux distributions (and even dislike upgrading). Redhat is betting on that hatred being more than $300-$2500 per machine. I suspect it isn't. And once they realise their mistake, they are going to find it just as hard to get people to move back.
If you do any open source projects that release RPMs for the convenience of your users, figure out which platforms/versions you will be releasing them for in the future. Those are the ones that will take over from Redhat desktop distros.
I bought RH in a box set a long time before they went public.
> I agree that linux as a whole isn't ready for the desktop, unless you have a nearby linux geek who doesn't mind do the occasional difficult administrative things that a normal user can't.
By that standard, what OS is ready for the desktop?
osx
While self-apointed pundits argue whether Linux is "ready for the desktop" or not, the people who are actually developing desktop Linux are ignoring the pundits and steadily improving it - the gnome people, the kde people. I just build a box using gentoo Linux w. gnome 2.4 and gtk2 and I'm absolutely amazed at the progress that's been made, compared to where gnome and kde were 2 or 3 years ago. Things are getting steadily tighter, simpler and better integrated. We even have a "killer app" or two. Just check out galeon!
The open source community has a way of slowly, steadily and quietly turning sow's ears into silk purses. Look at mozilla, which was an absolute dog for years after Netscape turned it lose, and is now an A1 browser on any platform. The Linux desktop environment is making remarkably steady progress - it's the tortise that won't stop until the race is won.
I do most of my work on a Linux desktop, and my biggest problem is not the desktop, gnome, or any such, it's that M$ still has the industry in a lock-down as far as 3rd party support is concerned. A few companies such as Creative have figured it out, but when is the last time you went to CompUSA and saw a boxed hardware item with a penguin on it? They all have the little MS flag on them, but no penguins. If they put a penguin on the box, do you think that M$ would still certify ther products and allow them to put the M$ flag on them? NOT!
Same goes for software. I'd like to see Homesite for Linux. Homesite is written in Delphi. Delphi is available for Linux, I'm told, but Macromedia has no plans to port Homesite to Delphi for Linux. Intuit is another one. They'll _never_ get it! I need QuickBooks for Linux, but from everything we've seen, Intuit is totally clueless.
We've got a rock-solid OS. We have an excellent desktop environment. Now all we need is for others to figure out that the world is moving in our direction and to get with the program. You can't make chickens without eggs, nor eggs without chickens, but if the software and hardware industry would get a clue, we'd be able to work together to make it happen.
"Everything works if you let it" - The Flying Mouse
Why care what RH CEO or other "important people" will say? Linux may be not ready for desktop, but I am using it. I use it for everything I need - without OpenOffice or Evolution.
How much longer we will need to listens what companies say about Linux? It doesn't matter! Important is what we can do with Linux on our desktops.
You need to play movie? Get mplayer. Or xine. Or few other players. Aren't they ready? Is Windows so much better in playing movies? What about music ? Watching tv? Isn't multimedia a desktop stuff?
You need to browse WWW. Is really Mozilla so bad as browser? Or maybe there are no mail/news clients which work in Linux? Or it isn't possible to chat on irc or with communicators? Where is the problem?
You can say that Linux is not ready for desktop. You can repeat it million times. But people are using it.
Over at The Register..
The natural, cheap-shot 'have you stopped beating your wife yet' question for Szulik was: 'You're saying all these people who go down to the store looking for an alternative should buy Windows?' So we asked it, largely for the personal entertainment value of watching him desperately swimming for the shore. We certainly didn't intend to use it to construct an entirely unfair hit-magnet Linux-screamer story. Some people, however, are not so particular. Plus they steal other people's questions - watch it, kid.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Specifically because it lacks certian glaring security holes makes it ideal for the desktop.
Users who don't know how to disable active X in their IE browsers or secure their Outlook clients won't have to worry so much about what third party software firewall of the month they are going to choose.
Compatibility. Gamers (mainstream) don't use Linux because they don't want to figure out how to compile Wine.
Average users don't use linux because it is a very high wall to leap over, and they are comfortable with IE and Word, and are not the least bit concerned with security, unless they regularly make purchases online.
Businesses don't use Linux (in desktops) because the cost in time and money of training all the users to switch from dos-based to unix-based systems.
I agree that Linux is not ready for the desktop yet, because the hurdles are currently too high. I think by saying this the Red Hat CEO is implying that they are working on a way to make the transition much much easier.
Just remember he said Linux isn't ready for desktops yet
But why did I not get the nvidia drivers to work on Windows 2000 (and I tried hard!), whereas they just worked on Mandrake 9.2? Even the hardware support issue is not as clear-cut as you say.
The question was actualy asked by someone writing for el reg and it was ment to corner Mr. Szulik.
To quote the Register article, "The natural, cheap-shot 'have you stopped beating your wife yet' question for Szulik was: 'You're saying all these people who go down to the store looking for an alternative should buy Windows?' So we asked it, largely for the personal entertainment value of watching him desperately swimming for the shore."
I think the main stream press is taking this the wrong way. Red Hat is more saying that they do not have the resouces to make there product as dumb as windows and maybe in a few years they will have the capitol to go toe to toe with this company in Redmond who dosent play fair and like to chew up and spit out companies smaller than it.
I love the Register even if they are bastards.
Did Glenn Beck rape and kill a girl in 1990? gb1990.com
Imagine if you were a sysad trying to explain an average secretary how to deal with troubles in linux. The problem is, that there might be a lot of troubles that the average guy isn't ready to deal with. In windows you reboot and things go fine 99% of the times. In linux you can keep rebooting and it won't improve your situation.
It's true that in Linux you have less chances of "strange errors", but - if you have an untrained person on the other side of the phone, every error is a strange error (that in windows you solve by telling them "reboot").
conclusion: if you think that linux is ready for the average desktop guy, try installing into a mid-sized company and deal with end users.
The Desktop is not a conquer - in fact, GNU/Linux is what it is for the sake of it. It's not a race! C'mon, who cares who wins the desktop in 2003? What's more important is that linux will become more and more stable and superior because its code quality and standards.
On the long run linux will prevale. Right now that's not the top priority.
now mod me down.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
The slashdot posting should be modded -1, flamebait. The actual quote from Szulik is, "I would say that for the consumer market place, Windows probably continues to be the right product line," he said. "I would argue that from the device-driver standpoint and perhaps some of the other traditional functionality, for that classic consumer purchaser, it is my view that (Linux) technology needs to mature a little bit more." You will note that the posting says nothing about "home users" while the headline of the ZDNet article clearly says "home users."
Another quote from later in the article: "We think that the enterprise desktop market place is much more strategic and has buyers whose needs we can exceed." The consumer market wants their computers to work with their digital cameras, GPSs, MP3 players, favorite games, etc. and, like it or not, Linux isn't there. Some of the lack of support is due to a "chicken and egg problem" of no one asks for such support so its not there and because its not there, no one asks for it. When some large companies tell their suppliers that they're out of the bidding because they don't support Linux, you'll see support for high-end stuff that rapidly filters down to support for "consumer" level stuff.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I just want to point out that Evolution is Ximians's Outlook clone. Ximian itself is / was a company and possibly could be reffered to as a desk top. Thanks, Danny
Maybe if Redhat had been sensible and used KDE like every other distro they wouldn't think the desktop was so imposible for linux!
/flamebait.
Seriously though, Redhat obviously makes a lot more money off the corporate stuff then they do with their desktop versions, but the haven't really been working on their desktop either. Obviously the Lindows people feel differently.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Am I the only to say it?
Linux isn't ready for the desktop.
It won't be until the day that Aunt Mabel doesn't have to call up a person with a degree in computer engineering to fix her computer.
For now, she'll stick with Microsoft. Sure, it has its downsides. And, while people might scoff, the fact that Windows fixes itself (most of the time) simply by rebooting it is a simplistically beautiful solution. Doing so allows someone like Aunt Mabel -- who really knows so little, that she can hardly tell the difference between a "folder" and a "file" -- to fix her problems.
Linux doesn't do that. If a Linux system is broken before a reboot, it usually stays broken after. If the filesystem had a bad super block, Aunt Mabel better hope that she can unmount the drive and run fsck. If the X server just crashed, she better hope that she can use SysRq to flush and unmount the filesystems so that they don't send her into a panic the next time that she reboots the computer. And when her friends send her a "ppt" file via e-mail, and she calls you up asking you how to open it, you better be prepared to explain that PowerPoint isn't installed and that she'll have to save it to her home directory and import it into OpenOffice.
Nope, not there yet. Close, mind you. But not quite.
There is lots of competition on the desktop right now, with:
Mandrake
Lindows
Xandros
Lycoris
Gentoo Games
Debian
And of course Slackware and Suse
Maybe they decided the market was already full. Turning it over the the community makes pretty good sense. Enterprise has always been their primary market.
Quack, quack.
Love to argue with you, but I can't: configuring Mandrake so that you can watch DVDs is a huge pain.
Even if you're savvy enough to track down the PLF site, it's still ugly getting all the bits working together.
Best way I've found is to just forget Mandrake and use Movix or Movix2 for watching DVDs, but that's hardly valid for my "typical home user". Hopefully the necessary bits of software will be integrated into the Mandrake distribution sooner rather than later.
RedHat is dying..
Sorry, couldn't resist.
I think its great that there's no replies to that
/.!
OMG! You silenced
You bastard!
This may seem like religious rhetoric (I'm a Debian user), but frankly, it is RedHat that isn't ready for the desktop, not Linux. The biggest problem with any Linux system is being able to easily install software. RPM is not easy and RedCarpet is neither complete nor does it handle dependencies elegantly. What makes RedHat great is their nice shiny corporate facade and excellent (albeit spendy) enterprise support. That's good for enterprise use, but it's not much good for end users (unless you've got money to burn).
The beautifully maintained Apt archives make life easy for the person maintaining the platform if they are comfortable with the command line, but it's no fun for the typical end user. Debian's install process is pretty intimidating (not hard mind you, but it will scare people away), and the lack of easy Windows network integration is a bit of a drawback for most people.
XandrOS solves those problems with a nice GUI interface for Apt, the installer, and wizards for connecting to your EvilOS machines. It's not safe outside the firewall (or at least the version I purchased was not), but if you've got Windows machines and non-expert users, you shouldn't have the machine outside a firewall anyway.
RedHat is the biggest, and perhaps the best for enterprise server closets, but not the best for the typical end user's desktop. So RedHat is focusing on the market to which it is best suited. It doesn't strike me as a bad thing. It's a lot better than hearing friends of mine, upon their first time using Linux, complaining that Linux is too hard because installing RPMs is a hassle, and further assuming that since RedHat is the one they've heard of, everything else must be worse.
RedHat leaving the desktop space is a good thing - it leaves more market share for the truly desktop oriented distros like Lindows, XandrOS, Mandrake, and friends. It could even lead to commercial vendors focusing a bit less attention on RPM and a bit more on platform independent tarballs.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I have actually been saying this for quite a while. If some random person comes up to me and asks me a computer question (a person I know isn't good with computers), I would definetely say that linux is not for them.
But yes, as it stands now, I don't think linux is ready for your Joe Blow average home user, no way, no how. While linux has been shifting towards a better, easier, and more clean user interface (GUIs) that would help the average user do better, I still don't think it is there yet.
The one bad thing I see to these comments from Red Hat are: Red Hat has been pushing for a simplier, easier to use linux system for the home user (well, until recently that is). It's always nice (occasionally, when I'm in a good mood) to have some either super optimistic people out there saying once in a while, "Hey, everybody should use linux!", or some linux or FSF fanatic like ESR or RMS.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
Windows isn't ready for the desktop either. It's unstable, virus prone, the UI is inconsistent and difficult to use, and trying to fix hardware problems is often a nightmare. Windows isn't any better for the home desktop than RedHat Linux is.
I would say we should recommend Apple's products to the home user for the converse of all the reasons Windows should not be used given above. It's very disappointing RedHat would ever make an endorsement of such a lousy product.
Join Tor today!
(sigh)
- parallel-port interface designed by Hajii and Apu.
Digital Cameras/Scanners... you know it's going to work if you don't buy something that's a cheap piece of shit, which, believe it or not, will suck A WHOLE LOT compared to something 25% more expensive.
I see that pattern _all_ _the_ _time_.
That more expensive thing will not only be more than marginally useful, but will actually work well with linux since it uses a real interoperability standard and not some hacked-together-protocol-that-really-belongs-on-a
Cameras - If you get one with a REAL optical zoom, almost guaranteed it speaks PTP or is a USB mass storage device in disguise, so there's no issue.
Scanners - If it's not made of plastic, it will be supported by SANE.
Printer combos - Same thing. The box should be pretty heavy, and say Hewlett Packard on it.
Need I go on?
It's almost like Linux picks the quality/value hardware for you! (MacOSX is "guilty" of this too). That's a feature. Joe Sixpack could appreciate that.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Is this just some kind of Jedi mind trick?
Red Hat 2002: "Linux is ready for home users!"
Home users: "We'll stick with Windows, thanks."
Red Hat 2003: "Linux isn't ready for home users, you should stick with Windows."
Home users: "What? Fuck you, don't tell us what to use! Give me those install CDs!"
Am I the only RedHat fan who not only thinks this is a good idea, but is relieved that they're finally doing it?
The business model for Aunt Tillie desktop Linux just isn't there for 3 reasons:
I envision the first two points becoming invalid within a couple of years, but the last one isn't likely to change. Since the vast majority of desktop Linux users are also free riding (nothing wrong with that, it's what I do), making money off of the Linux desktop is just a dangerous game to be playing.
RedHat didn't sell us out. The Fedora Project is The Right Thing. If you don't know what that is, follow that link and don't return until you grok in fullness.
The average consumer doesn't like Windows, but they like it more than anything else because of what it can do. Linux is technically superior, of this I am sure, but until we can get the average consumer to like it more than Windows, we're not gonna sell it to them. RedHat's move to maintain profitability by pushing Enterprise Linux, coupled with the open development of the Fedora Project, is only going to accelerate this process by combining the best aspects of a profitable corporation and a loosely knit coalition of hackers.
Remember, we are striving for world domination here...
It makes business sense for Redhat to stop actively peddling a distribution geared towards home users, because it costs money to do that, and they're letting people download it for free. They do seem to still want to have something to do with the home market, however, and so they've got Fedora, although I personally don't think it will last or become much of a force within the community. I see other distros (community-assembled, perhaps) filling the whole that Redhat is making. So I guess it's sort of a noteable event, but probably in the end nothing more than a footnote.
I saw a new project on SourceForge that is trying to create a somewhat universal Linux installer. It seems a little ambitious, but who knows? The link is here: http://lin-install.sourceforget.net [sourceforge.net]
This is no suprise. If you have ever had the opportunity to see how this company is run from the inside, you would be totally amazed they can even make rent!
I've seen a whole discussion last for days over a goddamn pinball machine ROM.
Don't get me wrong, shit, look at what they have to do. They have to basically be the "glue" between the community and Pfizer...couldn't get me to do. They are gonna piss people off, and it aint gonna be the ones looking to spend money.
My sense is that Linux/BSD are well on their way to winning the race to dominate the server market. The next major battleground is going to be the hand held market. Microsoft is weak there and the technology of the dominant player, palm is starting to show its age. Margins are thin for hand-held devices and players like Sharp don't want to pay the Microsoft tax. Gradually, the functionality of hand-held devices will increase in a market where linux is the dominant player. Also, the market for hand-held devices is potentially much larger than for desktop
machines.
I'm not sure if this kills Microsoft, but at some point, I suspect developers will just quit taking much of their stuff seriously.
Wow. An absolutely beautiful fabrication!
what's really funny, in the tragic way, is that I've been trying out Fedora for the past month, and it's even closer to being a good no-hassle-for-admins-to-set-up business desktop than anything RedHat's put out before (wow, even my wheel button mouse is working with no configuration tweaks!) But now they've totally stabbed us people in the back, or front, who've championed Red Hat's Linux distribution at work (since version 5.x for me). If I can't put together one of their enterprise packages at home to get the kinks out, do you think I'll reccomend it at work? Or do you think I'll give one of the other "enterprise" Linux a shot? Well, Fedora is coming off this machine very soon, and one of the other "Oracle approved" flavors is going on.
Hell, at least lindows has been making an effort to bring Linux to the home user.
You don't suddenly become an automaton suit just because you're making technical choices for an enterprise. And anyway, look at the enterprise features that we want, and SuSE are suddenly starting to look like the better choice anyway. Maybe the story with all of this is that when you're chasing market share, often you end up with the better product and the better attitude...
Day after RH announces that they are discontinuing the support for the casual Linux user, this comment should not be a surprise at all.
All Red Hat is sayin, we are not able to provide support if Linux desktop becomes a reality real soon, hence can not profit from it. So, it might as well wait until we are ready (to fill our pockets) it had better be Micro$oft spearheading the desktop effort. Otherwise, if, god forbid SuSE becomes the dominant desktop linux provider, we (RH) may not have the advantage of Linux leader, ever again.
Cheap shot if you ask me. Hang ordinary people to dry while we entertain the corporate America. Nice, really nice... RH is losing credibility for me real fast.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
...RedHat is losing in the desktop market so they have to discredit it. They see the handwriting on the wall with Novell owning Ximian and buying SuSE. Not to say that Linux will conqure MS on the desktop this year, but any headway is going to be gained by RedHat's competition. Just my two cents, but having used SuSE professionala and RedHat's "desktop" offering, there's no comparison.
ER
RedHat is doing well in the server market but in the desktop market they aren't the clear leader. Here in Europe at least SuSe is the main distro for the government and municiopal rollouts and pilot projects which have been announced.
It's a sensible move by RedHat but a stupid bitchy remark from a suit who ought to have known better.
fsck - filesystem consistency check and interactive repair
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
This is an old tactic, known as salting the earth, the intent is that nothing can grow there for anyone else.
It's not enough for Red Hat to abandon it's base which it won at the expense of other distros. Now that it is 'withdrawing' from that market it feels the need to undermine the whole desktop Linux business in a segment that it thinks won't affect it's own business.
Red Hat is gravely mistaken. It claims that it was unable to run a competitive business where the actual product was more or less free and the manufacturing overheads were miniscule. All that was left was support costs which are (or could be) passed directly along and a networked patch distribution model with little overhead.
So what is really going on here? The reason it withdrew was not lack of profitability, but insufficient profitability. It basically wanted the higher margins of it's enterprise product and saw it's premium business being undermined by it's consumer business. In other words it betrayed it's base because there was almost no differentiation between enterprise and desktop versions of it's products and most could get support less expensively for the desktop. This is the real reason for it's withdrawal, not some imagined nonsense about desktop readiness. Remember enterprise support costs more not less than desktop support, in other words it's a nice little earner. An appropriate response (if Red Hat's excuses were anything other than a sham)would have been to charge appropriately for support on the desktop instead of abandoning it's users to an experimental distro that will be a nightmare for it's allegedly naive user base. The fig leaf Red Had is holding isn't big enough to cover it's shame. A cynical betrayal of it's base to protect enterprise margins and now an attack on the desktop when it knows damned well that approriate pricing for support is all that is required. It's difficult to imaging a more paradoxical porition that Red Hat's over this, they are using their concern over their poor abused users as the excuse for abandoning them, when things were ticking along nicely. This betrayal has everything to do with preserving margins on undifferentiated products.
It will be a cold day in hell before I ever use Red Hat again, for enterprise or anything else. They have betrayed their base and mendaciously and cynically undermined Linux to justify this shame faced betrayal.
Never thought I'd see it from Red Hat. What a sad day for Linux. Just what the heck has happened inside Red Hat.
- windows is supported by all consumer hardware and games
- windows comes pre-installed
- users are familiar with windows
- making the switch requires you to back up data and install an OS
thats it. linux is technically superior. even if users rebooted linux every time they couldn't figure out something that didn't require rebooting (oh no, i hit some weird keys and my gui turned into text-only login prompt!) they would still reboot less than on a windows machine. the only reason people are hesistant to switch is because people are afraid of change. there is always the unknown factor... "but what if it doesn't work? but what if...?" windows is easy because users are familiar with it and it's already on your pc. if, for example, mandrake 9.x came pre-installed and ran you through the gui setup into kde with OOo, mozilla and gaim on the desktop, 50% of users wouldn't even notice they were using a different OS. being the incumbent is worth that much. changing is just too much work and too much uncertainty for people who only know how to point and click. sadly, these are the very people who could use linux on the desktop and get better speed and more reliability for less $ if only they took the chance....but maybe they just don't know enough. I mean, at their young ages (11 and under), they don't "know" what a "desktop-ready" OS is "supposed" to do. They have Win98 on their own machine, but they keep coming back to use GNU/Linux on mine on a regular basis. And asking to have it on theirs. And no, this isn't a make-believe story (and I'm going to have a chance to give them what they've been asking for this weekend).
Now, admittedly, they're not doing business work on it, but that wasn't the point anyway, we're talking about home users. I'm pretty sure my kids qualify as such, whether they're playing games or doing homework. (Oh, FWIW, they/I use GNOME on Slackware, not RH.) Could the environment stand a lot of improvement? Absolutely.
But GNU/Linux isn't alone in needing improvement to be "ready" for home users. Windows needs it too -- it needs less of a push toward DRM, less corporate/publisher control, etc. And the fixes that GNU/Linux needs (usability) are within scope, whereas many of the "fixes" in Windows (freedom for the user) run counter to the goals of its publisher, and will never be addressed. (Forget an uprising of customers, the apathy of the public is obvious.)
RH wants to focus on servers for enterprise customers -- great, go for it. No problem with that. But to push home users toward Windows is self-serving and short-sighted, no matter what "justifications" are brought up for it.
No Laughing Allowed!
because you have to buy a new computer to use it
No one has been working on RedHat PPC since 5.x. So, CLEARLY, if you were at one point considering RedHat in the last 3 years, your only option for a desktop OS that isn't Linux is Windows.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
What is this guy thinking? The whole point of Windows on the desktop is to lock you into the Windows Domain environment as well.
Granted, SAMBA 3 is supporting Domain security now, but back end application support couple with front end development tools like VB is the real deal. Getting Linux accepted for more than Firewalls and DNS servers is going to require better integration with the client - something MS isn't going to be helpful about.
What about those RH customers that are currently using RH back and front end? I can think of a few (Boscov's here in PA, Ernie Ball, etc.) Should they now switch back to Windows for the client also?
This is simply a slam against other distros, plain and simple. C'mon 'slik', be competitive, but recommend Windows??! Give me a break!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Seriously devote a minute to think about all the
security/operation woes inflicted on end-users because
of Windows. I'd wager that Windows isn't quite ready for
the desktop either.
Keith, an Apple User
(I 3 my P-Bizzy)
k.h.
Suse is going to die: http://www.msnbc.com/news/988967.asp?0dm=C14MT&cp1 =1
/. in a few minutes though.
Yup Novell is buying SuSE.. watch SuSE crash and burn.. I'm sure this`ll be on
Comment: Yes I realise the username 'fuckfuck101' makes me sound intelligent, no you cannot buy it from me.
I havent used Windows on the desktop for any great length of time since
...
win98...
But the more Im using the latest KDE Im finding that it surpasses anything
I've ever used before, i dont know what all this crap about Linux not being
ready for the desktop is all about... Personally I find it quite wonderfull.
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
When Novell was finding a way to kludge DOS onto a network, Unix was already there and much better. Like so many companies that develop crappy tools for the DOS world, all they did was hold back everyone else by giving them a false sense that they had something useful on their two-bit computer. Meanwhile, Unix had real tools, real network, a real OS, but it went unoticed by the masses.
That's right. Together with Emily Elizabeth, Clifford made friends with EVERYONE.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The irony is that SuSE sold out, not RedHat.
Yeah, I'll keep that in mind as I fight with GRUB to get Redhat 9 to do anything. Hell, I can't even find a log where it tells me why it's crapping out. Yeah, it's the first time I've tried to install linux, but it's not as if I'm completely unfamiliar with it (I could get around my old shell account, manage my resources, and compile my crap in college). Win2k and boot.ini, seem to do their part in pointing to the right place judging by the split second flash of the splash screen.
A fucking monkey can install windows, and be up writing MacBeth, playing Ski Free or peeing on it in no time. But I still can't find where linux is even writing a log, assuming it is, let alone start anything, least of all a GUI and a tutorial.
Linux is nowhere near ready outside of the odd special case. Pretending otherwise will just insure it never is.
Sounds kinda like "Unix bootleg Linux". I am not trolling here - just setting the record straight. Ximian's website lists Ximian Desktop, Ximian Evolution, Ximian Connector, Ximian Red Carpet Enterprise as the products offered by the company. Ximian offers a polished custimization of the Gnome desktop, with its own version of openoffice, (probably one of the better efforts for Linux-on-desktop), An automated software delivery / update (redcarpet), an exchange client (connector) *and* an outlook like PIM software - Evolution. Based on the planned enhancements to Evolution, some would argue that Evolution not "just another outlook clone". Calling Ximian an "outlook clone" is a bit of a stretch.
Time Was IBM defined enemy of choice, freedom and hackerdom. My how things change.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I choose to reply to "An open letter" because I really feel that this fellow AC (as well as many readers) have missed the point of Linux. /. readers, and if it is not they will modify it to make it ready (and hopefully share the change with everybody else). .
So here I go, who cares what the Redhat CEO thinks ? And more, who cares if Linux is not ready for the desktop ?
I would not care even if Linux was not ready for the enterprise.
Linux is ready for me. It is ready for many
The pourpose of Linux is not to go on gandma desktop, it is to get the job done, and once done to share the "how"
Or did I miss something ?
I think it was somewhere around 1999 that I dropped Caldera for RedHat. Back then Caldera made it clear that money was much more important than the satisafaction of lowly desktop users. I was looking for a new distro when I came here. Time to move on.
How long does it take to copy a 17MB file between folders on that RedHat system of yours ?
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
That's the correct answer. Linux isn't ready for most home users, and most home users aren't ready for Linux, either. For better or worse, the average home user should either stick with the herd and use Windows, or they should run a stable, Unix-based OS for "The rest of us" - MacOS X. When the off-the shelf software support, ease of administration, and device support in Linux is on a par with either Mac or Windows, then it's time for Linux to hit the home desktop.
Meanwhile, Linux is a viable OS for many corporate environments, and it's there today. The server marketplace is only getting bigger that Linux can target, and a lot of corporate desktops are the kind of focused tasking, centrally managed boxes that are ideal opportunities for Linux to show a lower TCO. So it's natural for Linux vendors to target the corporate market - retail boxed copies of SuSE, RedHat, and Mandrake are not where these companies are going to make their money.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Belaboring the obvious, but there is ONLY one thing that would be needed to make Linux ready for the home and corporate desktop NOW. However, I bet you won't like it:
If Microsoft provided Linux-compatible versions of their application programs, almost all corporate and most home users would be able to switch to Linux immediately, and most of them would be completely satisfied.
That fundamentally means versions that would be strongly guaranteed by Microsoft to provide compatible functionality and compatible files. The customers would still have to pay for the applications, but even splitting the difference with the non-Microsoft OS and charging slightly more, the customers would still come out ahead, though Microsoft would lose the direct Windows revenue. For example, half the cost of the OS could be added to the bundle cost of the applications, with no extra cost for Linux. Microsoft would actually make more for that non-Windows copy of Office, but would get no OS revenue. And the customer would still pay less than for the Windows/Office bundle.
Of course, Microsoft would never do it voluntarily, and no one could force them to. File it under nice dreams?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
...I watched DVD's on Mandrake 9.1 on a year-old laptop/dvd drive. However, the DVD was in .VOB format. Yes, it was these folks.
I would not every expect Redhat to make a statemnet like that. I love linux. I use it as my primary desktop enviroment. I even converted my wife to linux. I' ve built two clusters which run linux. M$ is okay execpt for the worms, viruses and the reboots. I guess it's gentoo time ;>
This is ridiculous flamebait and should probably be modded as such and not "4, Insightful".
Um, sez who?
Who is it, pray that is going to "retrench" Linux to be corporate-only?
You DO understand the concept of open-source initiatives and the reason that Linux has surged to such popularity in ten years, don't you?
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Linux on the Desktop means going head to head with the great beast. Novell has a miserable track record in this regard.
Let's hope Novell can do more with Ximian and SuSE than they did with Wordperfect and eventually Unixware.
Talk is cheap, Novell has always been able to afford it. Walking is a bit more involved, hopefully the folks from Ximian and SuSE (and aparenly now IBM) can help them do this, maybe even chew some gum at the same time.
yes, I am sarcastic and highly cynical of Novell and it's sordid history (my opinion). I am aware of how "bitchin" Netware was. I have been on teams that delivered Netware across an Enterprise, including the bastard of an upgrade that was 5, yes it "rocked",...yadda yadda yadda...
But please remember that these are the geniuses (or descendants of geniuses) that killed Wordperfect (ok, blame Corel) and created the wonderful experience the linux world is now enjoying as the SCO group. Oh wait, this isn't the same Novell....well the jury is still out on that rosey assumption.
I am banking this will be flagged as a "troll"...so be it. But let's just check in on this subject in two years...prove my cynicism is not well founded. Maybe had you spent hours with people quite literally convinced MS was about to run away scared you'd be cynical too.
In other news, Redhat share price is down 11.7% today.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=rhat
an unusually large number of Microsoftie Astroturfers.
They only wish Linux was not ready for the desktop.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
He doesn't seem to know his own product well, as evidenced by the quote in the article: "Consumers want USB drivers and digital camera support; but for the enterprise desktop, that is a little bit different--that area is ripe". Last I tried RedHat, it worked wonderfully with my USB digital camera.
If his goals are smaller (take market share from Open Unix 8 consultants?) perhaps he's not a great fit for that company.
Well, that's one opinion by a major distro maker.
The truth is probably that Linux is ready for any
use you care to put it to - keeping in mind that
Linux is an O/S, not 3000 plus applications.
If Linux is not "ready for the home user" it is
because no distro that I am aware of offers the
following:
One O/S
One Desktop with VERY limited config options.
One web browser
One email client
One set of four or so games - you know which four.
Two or three cool extras, like, gasp, Internet
Connection Sharing.
Two text editors.
Oh, and what the heck, let's throw in some buggy
features like RPC/DCOM.
Find a distro that's willing to amputate "Linux"
to the above, and really focus on making just those
things work, and we'll have something "ready for
home use" - but then, Windows has already done
that for us.
Oh, and don't forget to sell our imaginary distro
for a few hundred bucks so we can afford cool
licensed fonts.
Sorry, given the number of Windows problems my
friends and family contact me with, I'm not so
sure "Linux" is what's not ready for the home
user. Frankly, if you tried to install (let alone
purchase) all of the windows shrink-wrap packages
that make up an average Linux distro, I guarantee
you will have significant problems. But that's
not what a typical "home user" does, is it?
So, Mr. Szulik, you're the CEO - put some effort
into making a Linux distro that is shaved down to
the pathetic shadow of itself that the average
Windows home user actually uses, and I think you'll
find "Linux" is magically more than ready for
the average home user. All we need is Flash player
that actually works.
Linux has the power to be a wonderful desktop system, even for the casual user... but the Linux distro producers and developers simply do not care to make it so.
... and so on and so forth.
Unumerous times we hear the mantra "I refuse to dumb it down. If they are too stupid to use it, then screw them."
We see "Linux PCs" being sold, but Linux is not Windows. Linux gives you the power to do anything you want with your desktop, but that also gives casual users the opportunity to break something.
Linux desktops could easily be a success, if only a big named VAR would offer a solution that TAKES AWAY some of this freedom. Most casual users dont care HOW it works. They just want it to work. Dont make them type things at the command line... it scares them. Dont make them THINK about it. Just set it up, sell it to them, and provide them with service.. all in one neat package.
-K.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Fact is that Linux-on-the-desktop works quite well on my home PC and that of around 8 others I've set up for friends & collegues. Red Hat should look at their company structure for reasons as to why their products are too hard to support.
In all, it sounds like sour grapes. But I suppose Red Hat couldn't very well say:
Keeping your foot out of your mouth!
Windows is for consumers who want their PC and money to be consumed by windows where as Linux is for people who want value and security for their money.
Oh wait it's just the sound of Redhat's goodwill evaporating.
We run RH AS 2.1, and in two words: it's crap. Every now & then one node in the cluster goes beserk and continualy reboots the other (should hvas disabled the "High Unavailabity: option on instal.
RH 9 was however a very nice and relatively easy to run OS - even on my brand new, somewhat obscure toshiba P20 laptop.
I guess it was only a matter of time until RH shifted to "uniformed monkey" (ie MBA) decision making.
Look at the timing on this and it all falls together -- the very same day that it's announced Novell is acquiring SuSe. RedHat can see which way the wind is blowing.
SuSe is number two behind RedHat for the server market. Ximian Desktop is already under Novell. Taking into account that Ximian Desktop provides a better desktop experience than what a stock RedHat install provides (with either KDE or Gnome) it becomes obvious that this is a defensive move by RedHat.
Consider...
Do you think the product a company deploys on the desktop may be a foot in the door for that vendor when it comes to server sales? Of course it is.
Do you think that might then be trouble for the Linux server market leader (RedHat) if their competition is poised to succeed in the desktop market? Of course it is.
It happened to Novell when NT came along. Now RedHat correctly perceives their Linux server marketshare as vulnerable because they've been caught with their pants down on the desktop market.
Novell learned their lesson by being knocked out of first place and they're now ready to do it to RedHat before the enterprise Linux market is fully mature.
I think this is possibly a play against Lindows. Lindows has de-everythinged Linux (eg. run everything as su by default so that the technically unwashed do not have to bother). This can erode the Linux security message which is important in RedHats biz areas (== servers). For now, RH would love to own server land and don't want Lindows pissing in the pond.
What I think is most cool about this is that it is very likely going to breath new life into the other distros.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
why do you think that RedHat is synonmous with Linux for corporations. Just luck?
Assuming this guy never bought redhat, he still wore their teeshirt and helped them be the default linux.
Now it'll be something else. Microsoft has proved where the money is and RedHat doesn't want to go there.
Disclaimer: yes, I know less about RedHat's business than they do and they can do what they like. Still sounds like MBAthink to me.
-pyrrho
That said, there are one or 2 methods of playing DVD on linux--legally. I belive one of the DVD player MFGs has one out...but you gotta pay. Also, there is one company that includes media players in the bios, again, another plausable solution...but cost money. I wonder what the possibility of running DVD on Wine is? Many retail DVDs come with a player automatically...it would be entirely legal to use that...and you paid for it. [but you'd probably have to pay for Crossover or WineX] Solutions?
This all sounds pretty much to me as "we know M$ has the market share for desktop and its gonna be a lot of work to pull it from them", so "buy our enterprise and please don't think the other GNU/Linux distros can do the job". "If you want desktop, go to the enemy we know, don't create competition in our turf".
I hardly see any future for Red Hat exclusively in the enterprise market, without falling in some sort of "lock-in" strategy, breaking compatibility and having to deal with the GPL. I see them heading down the road of traditional UNIX, and re-enacting its pitfalls.
There is a significative mass of GNU/Linux admins who are perfectly OK to live without support and with more "clean cut" and modular distros like Debian. There is no killer "enterprise only" app and I'm not seeing them being able to convince the small/medium enterprise large market to shift from Windows with that stategy, when you can have a "cheap" admin providing the support and tayloring his fav distro to run what they want, be it the web server, DB, file servers or desktops...
I see as a much more viable future for enterprise for IBM to one of these days come up with their own distro and "eat up" all the market. You see, they have the "big" name, they have a lot of the market and also do enterprise hardware! They have a priviledged position hard to come by.
I see a bleak future for Red Hat.
Red Hat CEO says that users should use Windows!
Microsoft to use Apple CPU in next-gen gaming console, forgetting that Macs suck for gaming!
Apple computers comprise world's 3rd fastest machine!
Honest to God, what's next? Has the sign of the apocalypse befallen us! Run, run while you still can, before the legendary Apple OEM 2-button mouse is nigh!
--
$tar -xvf
Wow. This hurts.
:/
I've used Red Hat since 5.2, still maintain several Red Hat servers at work. You can be sure I won't be using or recommending Red Hat any more be it for personal or corporate use.
Looks like my Mandrake 9.1 discs are going to get much more use. Of course there's an issue with those as well what with Mandrake moving to ads in 9.2
I saw a poster in another thread earlier that said the only reason he sticks with a mainstream distro like Red Hat or Mandrake is for their software update and packaging services. I think that's right on the money. If it weren't for the need to constantly be up to date I could ditch mainstream distros completely. These companies are starting to cause more trouble than their worth.
When I see news like this it just makes me wish we could put the Linux geenie back in the bottle, get these corporate types out of our hobby, and for once have something for ourselves that doesn't get corrupted and then suffocated by the greed and ignorance that permeates business culture today. As an example the Internet could've been great. Heck, computers could've been great.
Now when I code I spend more time wondering if someone has a patent and will sue me, if I still have the CD I ripped the MP3 I'm listening to from in case the RIAA police come knocking, if tomorrow I'll be able to use my non-broadcast flag television set, etc. etc.
Now I'm just bummed. Damn.
Anyone that knows Redhat knows that they PEAKED (yes PEAKED) at Redhat 4.2. 4.2 was a stable, well put together masterpiece. I installed it on many a server back in the day, and it was clockwork.
5.0 came along and was shaky. 5.1 was a DISASTER due to a badly-put-together dual-compiler system (GCC and EGCS). In addition, 5.1 was rushed out in order to put a WAY not-ready-for-primetime GNOME out for general consumption, which contributed a LOT to the buggy and crash-prone reputation GNOME had.
It's all been downhill since then. That's why Mandrake exists at all.
The mac has the best, open, free develoment stuff out there... not sure where you get extremely proprietary from.
Do you mean, perhaps, all the open source software I"m running?
Or do you mean the supplied applications that actually work.. I'm unclear
This is the most posts i'v seen in a while, that aside I wanna throw in my $0.02
So long as I can still Download Red Hat, use the bluecurve gui, and all of the other things that I have gotten used to, I will be A-Okay.
I'm not worried about linux on the desktop any time soon, it will get there. Red Hat will adopt any ideas that lead in that direction if there is profit to be had.
Look at the computer market of old, computers were sold to big companies only, because only the techies could handle the beasts. They were tamed, but at the expence of power. Now Linux is a more powerfull and wild in form, too much for the average user. There needs to be developed a large set of bouncy, stylish, user friendly interfaces for the desktop to happen. These things prob won't be written all at once, but developed one at a time, just like everything else in linux.
Eventually it will happen, in the mean time so long as I can use Red Hat the same way that I allways have, Red Hat can keep makin' money and developing linux farther, and the dream will live on in the rest of the community. I won't give up. Neither should you.
PS:
WTF RH, uR n07 3l33t, fu&&1n n00bs, h4t3 U!
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
Argue his point, and stop trying to manipulate the moderation system.
I'm glad someone finally dared to speak the truth -- that the modern Linux desktop is filled with horrendous bloatware that even makes Windows look fast. No, being able to run twm or buy a $50 Athlon is not an excuse.
Well at least FreeBSD is ready for the desktop :)
A few months ago the CEO of Redhat said Linux on the Desktop was the future, suddenly SCO goes crazy! I think Bill Gates paid the CEO of SCO, and now hes paid the CEO of Redhat. Its simple, millions of dollars in exchange for abandoning the Linux community.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
...snif...I hate you, but I can't refute you... Then again they have ads everywhere, not just here, so I think that /. would be OK w/o M$.
They prob pay a premium for the ad space, s'ok w/ my I just:
echo "127.0.0.1 ads.osdn.com ads.osdn.com" >> /etc/hosts
soI don't gotta see the M$ BS
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
Sure, compare a 2002 distribution to a 1995 distribution -- real fair. How do your systems handle Windows XP?
Maybe instead of whining, perhaps you could actually contribute. this site would probably be a good place to start.
People seem to feel compelled to take one of two opposing sides in response to the article. Either they feel the CEO's comments reinforce the idea that Linux for the desktop is a failure, or they feel Linux needs to be defended against all criticism. There is another way to look at things, which is to admit that Linux is a work in progress; and that it should be evaluated based on how it is progressing towards meeting the goals of its users and not just on where it is at today.
Viewed in this way, I think it is reasonable to admit that Linux does not currently meet the expectations of a majority of consumers as a desktop operating system. This is not an inherent deficiency in Linux itself, but reflects an immaturity in software that is currently available for it. This does not mean it has failed! Just as Windows required years of development (anyone remember Windows 1.0?) to convince users and developers that it was a worthy environment, Linux will likely require a similar period before gaining widespread acceptance.
Part of the growing process, however, requires that people listen to complaints and criticisms so that real problems can be addressed and corrected. In the end, admitting that there are problems and that improvements can and should be made will only make the final result a better product for everyone.
Microsoft paid him to say that shit, thats ridiculous bullshit, how can he say just a month or two ago that Linux is ready to take the Desktop and then do a complete 180
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Redhat has announced they will have no more versions of RedHat Linux.
He's severing his relationship because they are taking their ball and going into the glass room (of death).
-pyrrho
no text
---
at first, I thought you were the "what is with this, I'm at my freelance gig, trying to copy this file" troll. I'm always amazed by a) the number of people who somehow fail to install Redhat, even though you pretty much can't make a decision in the installer that will screw it up and b) the number of people who compare linux to windows 95. You could probably run PC-DOS on your machine, and it would be even faster than windows 95. So why not do it?
====
Crudely Drawn Games
I have been saying this over and over: until Linux supports games and other multimedia applications, it won't fly on the home desktop. Not everyone plays games, but it is a killer application. Home users care about multimedia, games, and stuff like that. Linux is weak in those things...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Szulik said that Linux is not ready for the consumer desktop. Which means your mum, Joe Sixpack and other similarly clued home users.
And the man is right. If you install Linux for your reasonably smart but not overly computer-knowledgeable friend, you'll either have to support it or he will get pissed off with it. When that happens, he'll either
In contrast, Szulik also said that Linux would be fscking great (using different words) for corporate desktops, where users merely use the system and not mess with settings, and there is tech support to back them up when / if a problem comes up.
Could we not overreact please? Linux is *not* dying.
Matthew Szulik had a very difficult decision to make. Does Red Hat continue to lose money in the home market or leave that market.
I think in the back of his mind he is not sure he made the right decision! He put his company in a position where it is now not in position to ride the desktop Linux wave if it happens. So he is over compensating here. He has convinced himself that he believes the Linux Desktop will not be ready for years.
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
Holy cow! Take a moment to relax. Your WAY too upset over your inability to run a LINUX system on the desktop.
"For 2 years I've dual booted, preparing to make the switch, I still haven't been able to do it!"
What are you running that's so magically complicated that you cannot do it under Linux? Grab a distro and run it.
Running a computer is not rocket science, all the hard parts have been done by the code gurus. If you can't handle linux then run windows! No big deal. Just stop complaining because your OS doesn't _think_ for you because you are really getting what you paid for.
All right, that was the last straw on this kind of comment! I have had it clear up to my neck on this kind of straw man, where desktop OS is concerned.
Let's all clue in to something, shall we? The average home user, Mom or not, will not install their own OS on their home PC. They will use the OS that machine is sold with. Period. Get it??
The ridiculous idea that a desktop OS isn't ready for mainstream use if it cannot be installed and configured by the mythical Mom has been used for far too long to pooh-pooh the idea that Linux is a viable choice. How about MacOS? Think your Mom could truly handle the installation? WinXP?
"Sure!" I hear some of you saying. "Installing WinXP is rather easy, just drop the CD in the drive and accept the defaults." Yeah, right! Right up until something doesn't work. Mind you, she'll never get even that far, because most home users are too frightened of the "brain box" to even attempt something as "high-level" as an OS install. Even under WinME, when the Recovery CDs returned everything to their factory-install state, was too much for most of the non-geeks I know. And I'm sure my experience wasn't unique.
I will maintain that the mythical Mom, placed in front of a machine that is:
- running Red Hat, SUSE or Mandrake,
- is using Mozilla (standard or Firebird) for a browser,
- is using the included email client, or Thunderbird,
- has all the peripherals already configured,
and she is given instructions on the logon/logoff process, and minimal training on the apps, then she will be just as capable as she would be if the machine were running WinXP.Asking the OS be simple to install from scratch is asking more of Linux than is asked of any other desktop OS.
Believe nothing, not even if I say it, if it violates your sense of reason -- Buddha
While I understand the decision for dropping free linux, and maybe even the desktop, it's stupid marketing on their part to abandon the Red Hat name...I've never had time to use it, looks like I'll be sticking with Suse. SuSe and Mandrake are a least starting to bundle what home users NEED with linux..the pay-for stuff we all dread buying [crossover, WineX] That's the model for the distros...include what adds value and people will pay! Red Hat linux included no "extra" value. They went to alomst all GPL software...to the pains of removing many "free-to-run" programs [acrobat, realplayer, ect] home users needed on some vendetta...no wonder sales tanked.
But, If they don't have geeks using RedHat, we'll just learn to make Knoppix or Gentoo do what we need! Then they'll make Less money!
The guy is a sellout, I dont care if he is a business genius, hes sold out like Bill Gates. Lets get behind Michael Robertson, you may not like the man but the man is not a sellout, he wasnt when he got rich at Mp3.com and hes not a sellout now.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
today i sold all my stock in redhat. i could be dead wrong and redhat's execs are making the absolute best decision for their company. however, as it stands, i don't feel much about owning a part of anymore. best of luck redhat. watch out for disruptive technologies...
It's also possible that perhaps Linux isn't really ready for the mainstream desktop. I personally have a hard time picturing my mom installing and maintaining Linux on her home computer.
:)
That statement is all well and good, but how often does your mom maintain windows? Has she ever had to install windows or anything like that? Most of the people in this category find someone else to do that kind of thing when something goes wrong. They don't even care what OS they are running just as long as they know what buttons to click to get to internet, email, word, and solitaire, and as long as there is someone around to fix things when there is a problem, or to set up a new ISP connection. Most Windows boxes have everything preinstalled, and they never get updated, ever. We could do the same thing with Linux, BSD or whatever platform we choose. Find a stable version where everything works nicely, and install it on our parents computers. Put the buttons in plain view, and they will be happy to keep on computing like they always have. It never needs to be updated (of course it would be nice...) and will probably still be running fine 5 years down the track without so much as even crashing once
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
Red Hat will soon lose its grassroot respect and might just become one of those VC-run and profit-driven corporations; those who have expected Red Hat to become the Microsoft of the Linux world probably were talking about microsoft's marketshare but now it appears the outcome will quite possibly also include microsoft's practices.
This isn't the first alarming sign; there's been a few trickling down for a little while, with all the consolidations, takeovers, acquisitions... et cetera et cetera it won't be long before we'll have to wonder whether the GPL will be able to prevent linux from becoming yet another private affair.
This investors' darling is sure to do as investors want. I have always been and still am more respectful - and i know some of you might be tempted to flame me for this, please don't, it's not my point - of Sun Microsystems than ever been of Red Had; Sun is a company that was started by techies and still run by techies, often acted contrary to investors expectations and still does, and contributed far more to open source, with java and openoffice, than red hat ever would've had it not been for the GPL. The creeping clan of MBAs and capital interests Red Hat is awashed with will only mean it won't be long before it'll be the despise of the people it is now alienating; it's just inevitable. You guys sorta got what you wanted, albeit with a twist; you wanted men in suits to endorse linux and now that they are you seem surprised with their actions. If you invite wolves and sharks to dinner just don't be surprised if they'll shave all the meat off the bones and not care for your share, heck, you may even become the meal too.
I think what linux, and OSS in general needs, is an altogether economic model; you just can't have a conventional financing for an alternative development system and expect all to be good. I think such a system that might have promise would be something like those Mutuals or cooperatives that are proven in the housing market and neighbourhood or workplace groceries; some of such "societies", especially in Europe, are big enough to provide an economically viable business that is also ethically and socially responsible.
Mistrust of corporations is growing because they put shareholders first. That creates opportunities for cooperatives and mutuals, which don't
and am therefore a home user. I find it installs easilly and works fine. OK, in the past I have had some issues but Windows 3.11 was not easy either. I now have SuSE 9 and it went straight on to this machine and works out of the box. Just like Windows is meant to...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
rm -fr /redhat
Given the fact that Linux is certainly not easy for consumer users, what's the worst that can happen right at this moment?
Bunches of average people decide to wait for a bit longer to try Linux at home, or
Bunches of people try Linux at home now, find it absolutely perplexing, and vow never to try it again.
Personally, I'd rather they waited a bit longer, and I think Red Hat would prefer that too. They're looking at long-term acceptance and success, and that's very admirable, if you ask me. If focusing on the enterprise is what they need to do to keep paying people to work on free software, well, good for them.
Politas
So first Redhat drops the Redhat Linux line, right when it really started to become a great desktop distro (i.e. with Redhat 8, and the bluecurve changes)... now they are telling people to use Windows instead? WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY THINKING?
How come we never see /.'ers say THAT, huh?
RH doesn't think Linux is going to be ready for the desktop in the foreseable future.
A lot of people want windows on their home pc because it's what they learnt at school and what they use at work. If redhat becomes a major player in the business world then school will start teaching students how to use it and office workers will learn how to use it. Once your kids know redhat from school and you are familiar with it from work, the chances are you will want it on your home pc.
I'm glad redhat are concentrating all their efforts on the office, it may be our best hope of introducing linux to the masses.
Considering where Redhat Mike works, he may not have known.
.... on Debian, Kpackage, or in OS X, Fink/Fink Commander.
I have 2 words for him about installers:
Well 2 words hyphenated:
apt-get
Or
I dont seem to have the RPM related issues with these.
Some one should email him apt-get for Redhat........
You somtimes CEO's are kept in the dark on purpose
Cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
You should be doing lots of great stuff with the P100 32MB Win95 machine... And 2k on a 64Mb P400 must just, like, fly!
You are comparing uncomparable things. Did you "great" old machine support USB (insert random modern hardware...)? What patches/updates is M$ still releasing for it? Your local kiddies must like you really much!
As for Debian docs, I guess you haven't been looking in the right places.
Apt is regarded, I believe correctly, as probably the best packaging format (no holy war intended!), not only for apt itself, but for the quality of the distributed packages. And don't come whining about old. If you haven't checked, all those kool bootable CDs, like knoppix rely on, imagine... your getting there...Debian!
Also, I'm running "old" Gnome 2.4 and "old" OpenOffice.org 1.1 etc., on my testing machine.
Also, Debian is a distro that doesn't try to install every single distro package and run as default every freakn' service!
I'm also very interested on the great features of rpm/up2date you must know.
Get real.
Consider purchasing a Mac and enjoy the best of both worlds; Unix with a responsive and functional desktop.
Sean
Every "modern" app, ie. KDE 3 and GNOME 2, supports the new font system.
Number of Linux distributions: There's no way to make a good installer that will install a commercial app on Linux and have everything work. There are too many dependencies for specific versions of libraries and things that would make this sort of thing worse than any kind of Windows DLL hell.
Complete horsedung. Proprietary apps can ship with all the lib versions they require, just like many do with Windows. This is often an excuse given by vendors, but vendors that support Linux properly don't have many such problems. Eg. Loki always shipped the versions of SDL, OpenAl, etc. their games depended on, and none of their games had library problems.
OTOH, glibc sometimes breaks some apps, usually when said apps are doing something wrong.
The only problem with Linux these days is hardware installation, due to lack of support.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Are you trolling or just deliberately ignorant? That is a completely inaccurate and misleading characterisation of what Szulik said.
Anyone who reads the article would see "We think that the enterprise desktop market place is much more strategic and has buyers whose needs we can exceed." So no, RedHat is not abandoning the desktop market, or recommending that people don't use other distributions, just realisticly stating that if consumers expect home Linux to be as easy as XP, then they will be disappointed.
...but only as part of a complete hardware/software package that is marketed to the home user.
I personally think this is an opportunity that screams for a PC manufacturer to pursue.
Make a top quality PC, one that anyone would be proud to own. Make a Linux distribution that is self-branded and custom tailored to this PC. It should come pre-installed, but if it needed to be re-installed, it should consist of nothing more than sticking the CD in and maybe pressing Enter a couple times.
Said distro should contain nearly every piece of useful or fun Open Source software, and maybe some non-Free stuff like Loki games (I bet they could get a cheap bulk license). It certainly should include Flash, Realplayer,and Java if at all possible. (No flames needed; that's just the reality of what end users expect.)
A set of manuals should come with it -- a manual for getting started, using the office suite software, connecting to the Internet, etc. I think it should also include documentation for graphics apps like Gimp, sodipodi, and even Blender -- all in paper book form with pretty pictures. Another book to introduce "power user" concepts like simple programming (probably in Python) and databases would be a nice touch. Show them how to set up a database and connect it to OpenOffice (which of course should be made easier than it normally would be).
Sell it at a price where they could make a couple hundred bucks per unit, market the crap out of it to home users, and I think they'd do well.
Fucking dicks like this are yet another reason why Linux will never be ready for the desktop.
SYNOPSIS OF EVERY REPLY TO A POST SAYING LINUX IS HARD:
1) Oh you just have to type PDSQWJDASH then enter then SCROLL LOCK not once not twice but thrice. Stupid.
2) Oh the docs are hard to read USE GOOGLE that will make them easier to read especially when you're trying to figure out how to get your network up. Stupid.
3) Linux is better because we have 10,000 inferior choices for every single piece of software you can imagine! Your choice is invariable wrong and mine is right! Stupid!
4) Windows sucks because three years ago Outlook Express had big holes in it! It sucked compared to thunderbird now! Stupid!
I can only imagine what my VW Bug forums would be like if these kinds of elitist pricks were trolling them. I'd have never gotten the fool thing working if every post was "Oh you should be using the 009 Bosch distributor, it's far more reliable than the stock vaccum model! Hahahaha this guy doesn't know if he has a dual or single port 1600! What a loser! The curved windshield wasn't introduced until 1973 Super! There's not way you have one in your '68 Vert! All you have to do to adjust the carburetor is adjust the bypass screw until your idle is at 850 rpm *900 for the autostick* and then turn the volume control screw counterclockwise until the engine drops about 30 rpm! It's that easy! Now get back to your water cooled engines!"
Dickheads. Linux doesn't need you and it doesn't want your half assed help.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I've been using Linux as my ONLY desktop OS since 1996 (FVWM for gods sake). My work computers run Linux. My home computers run Linux. Hell, my four year old uses Linux (he really likes Doom II). Would I recommend Linux to my mother? HELL NO! Do I care if you use Linux? As if. Do I give a rat's ass about 'World Domination'? Let me clue you in here. I use Linux because it suits my needs. Period. If it suits your needs great, I'll be happy to exchange knowledge with you. If you choose MS, I have no sympathy. One day probably someone will make a wad of cash by making a version of Linux as point-and-click as Windows. Fine. Hasn't been done yet and I don't care.
My SIG is a P226
the future is truely going to be interesting, watching heads roll and new ones placed on the top of the totem pole...
Linux is nowhere near the desktop.
- no GUI rules, total application jungle and no power apps for the end user. Don't get me wrong, I think OO and the Gimp are good programs. They're not however serious Office or Photoshop replacements.
- no hardware support - the average person wants their gadgets and stuff to work without having to write a driver or spend hours on end trying to install one.
- administrating your machine and keeping it sound and safe is not feasible for about 90% of people that are currently using computers
Windows is on all desktops, but does a half-ass job
- sure, you have tremendous power-apps, but you'll lose data ever so often for no apparent reason
- there's a sort of plug and play that sometimes works immediately and even works longer than a month. More often than not, however you're frustrated into looking for drivers.
- administrating your machine and keeping it sound and safe is not feasible for about 90% of people that are currently using computers
There's only one desktop that really takes the hassle out of computing, and that's OS X.
Disclaimer: I think Windows is friendlier and more foolproof than Linux, but I think Linux is way cooler and an incredible feat in itself. But we're talking about the desktop here.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Windows 95 is great and fast the only thing wrong with it is that it's a piece of shite and crashes like a mofo I still can't get my CDRW working with it.
I have Redhat 7.0 on my notebook and it has never crashed--perfect for doing research in the archives when I can't chance a crash.
That said I couldn't get debian to install on my old 486 notebook which I now have running as a NAS device on Win95 using a Xircom parallel port ethernet adapter and it's just the thing. I copy my files over and it just sits there no problem. I don't know jack about networking but there you have it. Sure it's unreliable but that and my desktop also OSR2 are unlikely to go out simultaneously. Then I just backup critical to Yahoo Briefcase I have a Netgear $30 router so that makes 4 computers, two OSR2 two Linux yippee!
Windows 95 came out in what year ?
RedHat 9 came out in what year ?
Make your own conclusions.
RedHat was in this market until recently (they even maintained an embedded OS separate from Linux).
Linux is only difficult to use on a vastly diverse platform such as the x86 pc market. Standardize the platform, and Linux support and usability become magnitudes easier (no reason for kernel modules, for example).
Szulik's dad may be too dumb to use Linux on a pc, but he could probably manage to figure out how to use a Motorola Linux cellphone.
I can see why RedHat is focused on the pc, but they are more than a little presumptuous to assert that everyone else is, too.
The only reason RedHat would say that Linux is not ready for the desktop is because they haven't been able to accomplish it yet. Their infrastracture can hardly bear the load of their enterprise clients. If they actually sold a desktop product with good support, it would crash their support network like a stone. Besides who wants to run a desktop that is more than a year behind the times as soon as its released. Fedora hasn't changed any of that, they're just setting it up so that someone else does the work for them. RedHat will never be able to compete with Novell and Suse desktop, server or otherwise. Why would anyone pay $350 per server each year. You might as well run Windows. Sadly, Redhat no longer brings anything to the table that's not offered by any other linux packager. Why pay when you can get the same, for free. B-
The hell with both of 'em! Having dealt with way to much Windows BS and way too much Linux BS, I just went out and bought a 6 month old G4 running OSX, a DVI to VGA adapter and a three button mouse.
Problem solved.
Comparing Linux and OSX on the desktop is like comparing the manuverability of a C130 to an F15: no comparison. I wouldn't use one for the job of the other; it is essentially impossible (currently.) Comparing Win 2000 or XP to OSX on the desktop is very similar, save that instead of a C130, Windows would be an Osprey VSTOL, the ones that crash and burn so frequently, but work pretty well when they are in the air.......
Don't Panic!
I have a different perspective, I think the opening up of the development of the Red Hat disto via the Fedora Project is a good thing.
The exchange value of a Fedora CD set (or any other Linux distro) is basically the cost of producing and shipping them, there is some money to be made there but not much.
I think this is why Red Hat are concentrating on selling services to businesses.
Fedora is called Fedora in part because of the merger with the Fedora Linux Project, a group who were producing 3rd party RPMs for machines running Red Hat and also to enable the free as in free beer distribution to be reproduced en mass by anyone without having the hassle of removing the Red Hat logo before burning the ISOs.
However Red Hat could do what Mozilla does, sell cheap Mozilla CDs or what OpenOffice.org does, link to people selling OpenOffice.org CDs. After all Red Hat still sells hats, stickers, t-shirts and posters!
I have been lurking and sometimes reading mail on the new Fedora lists and lots of cool stuff has been happening, PPC ports, offers to help on internationalisation, the inclusion of more packages, support for other updaters like apt and yum and even a legacy project to support old Red Hat versions is being started.
What is essentially happening here is that the free software mode of production is asserting its nature and getting more into the driving seat -- free software works best when it is developed in an open and free manner.
Check out MKDoc a mod_perl CMS
There are many components required to support the desktop. These include:
*Remote Software distribution.
*Asset/Inventory Management
*Remote lockdown/configuration management policy support.
*Remote Control.
*Anti Virus.
Redhat really don't have too much access to these technologies. Novell/SUSE do (With the exception of Anti Virus). Novell has provided great tools for this in the guise of E-Directory, ZenWorks and Managewise.
I am disappointed though with Redhat. It's a shame that their shareholders became more important than the community that supported it.
What happens to the certification programmes I wonder? I'm a little pissed that I spent all that money on books for RH9!
My main issue with the SUSE aquisition is that (and this is not meant to bash the American ./ readers) is that it was a European distribution. The European countries are not subject to the same laws as the US. This means that even if the SCOs of the world threaten Linux distribution, that they have to attack it in multiple countries and multiple courts.
Damn you !!!!! I just spilled beer on my keyboard.... Nice call out, hehehehe =)
Doesn't it seem a little late to make a statement like that considering how many desktops are running linux compared to even 5 years ago? Sure it doesn't have modern day conveniences of other mainstream OS's, but then again why dumb it down for a user?
Congratulations on having done so well in Microsoft brainwashing school.
Idiot.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Granted, elitism sucks. However:
1) Some people just object to typing. I don't understand this. Typing is an efficient way to interface.
2) e.g. Debian docs are usually provided on CD. No network involved (Slakware too).
3) Linux is better because we have superior choices for many pieces of software. FYI, both Xine or MPlayer support more formats of video than any Windows-only player I can think of (of course, MPlayer works on Windows, too).
4) Outlook Express has big holes in it _today_. Still. My BulkBox has the worms to prove it.
Don't misrepresent facts just 'cuz you're in a shitty mood. And if you present your problems to mailing lists, etc. so tactfully it's no wonder they tell you to pound sand.
Its ok becasue C programming believes in you..
Honestly you dont seem to know what you are talking about, I will say that redhat is not ready for desktop use but I wll take an Apache server on linux off IIS any day of the week and twice on sunday. Thats where redhat is pushing Linux for applications like Oracle, weblogic, etc...
Well my P133 80MB RAM Toshiba Tecra laptop handles win2k WAAAYYY better than the P400 desktop handled redhat 9.
And I dont run redhat 9 on my tecra, it could cope with 7.2 just about.
Lets just say that a 4x faster machine with 8x RAM was 4x slower than win95. I don't call that benefits of an up to date OS.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
ow come we never see /.'ers say THAT, huh?
Holy shit, he's right! er . . . don't mod me down if you don't mind.
that he can't see a way for RedHat to make any real money supporting Linux as a desktop operating system. This is much different than what he actually said, which I believe is for the most part untrue.
Vote for Pedro
I think the larger picture is when will the service industry support an alternative to Windows. If you go ask Joe user to recompile something, sure they go - "huh?!" But you'll never get that far until the service providers support something beyond Windows.
Example: If someone calls tech support at the ISP were I work and asks "Why won't my bank software work?" and phone support asks "What version of Windows are you using?" you get an idea where the bottleneck might be. As soon as a customer answers "Redhat, or Debian, or Suse or Slackware" they'd get apolite little cough/snicker and a reply that goes something like "You'll have to call your OS manufacturer or consult your HOWTOs". If nobody supports them, nobody will flock to your OS no matter how configurable it is. Its the reason very few new users want Macintosh. Sure G5s are powerfull and look great, but since only about 5% of the market is using mac, where's the support? And more importantly, where will it be in 5 years? For that matter how much will it cost when the last two people who are supporting it are charging by the hour for all the service calls in North America? OK, that was flamebait. Regardless, Joe/Jill user want a security blanket that Linux can't offer right now. They can't call their cousin who runs the same OS and ask "How the hell did you do this?" and lets face it we've all been in the position of fielding support calls from friends and family.
Admittedly the Linux community has lots of howtos and documents, but most have a list of abreviations and jargon-speak that the average user would balk at. So, the correct answer is, until the OS can support itself or everybody else is using it, the desktop of Joe/Jill average user will remain the pipedream of the linux community. Could be a little while in my humble opinion.
"Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati" -- Red Green
Hey my 80MB P133 tecra laptop handles win2k better than it handles redhat 9 and waay better than that desktop box handled redhat 9.
Desktop/Graphical Linux these days generally means bloat (unless you use XFCE).
Just because you can draw fancy comparisions doesn't mean my tests were deluded.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Hooray for Linux being dropped by the corporations and returning to the people. Now the individual programmer won't get sued when their software crashes. Now bug ridden features won't get pushed into the distributions to boost investor relations. Now X11 won't have to look like Win.
It is called Mac OSX....
Matthew Szulik's head on a platter!!!
For the person who is content to walk around Best Buy and pick something off the shelf by comparing packaging, I suppose Windows is the best OS for them in the first place.
:-)
I've tended to find good value for money and linux compatibility go hand and hand. I suspect this is because linux driver developers are end users, but probably with better taste than most.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
No, rude folk like you are why it'll never be ready for the desktop. And your deluded rant is why you'll never see that it doesn't fit the bill yet.
I know what I'm doing with Linux. It works for most things I do, but not my family and friends.
My enlightenment came when I set up linux box for someone else to use as a desktop machine and it was crap.
The performance was crap, mozilla has some stupid crap bugs (like when a frame reloads, other frames with text input boxes that have focus select all the text for some stupid reason so as you keep typing you lose what you already typed).
Yeah, its a small bug but it made it unusable for a major use for this person, cos they like to chat with web-based chat clients. Thats crap I know, but IE can do it.
Dialup-networking control is unweildy.
Open Office is good.
Linux is cool, I love it, I use it, I patch it, I work with it and play with it.
But joe in the street can't.
And by the time he spends money on a box powerful enough to run it he may as well get windows nearly free and be done with the hassle. Thats a fact.
blog.sam.liddicott.com
He's complaining that the drivers just aren't there and that this makes the technology immature. WTF? If he were talking about how writing quality drivers for Linux was so much harder than writing them for Windows because of some flaw in the driver model for Linux, then he'd at least be making sense, because he'd actually be talking about the OS. He'd be wrong, of course, but at least he wouldn't be speaking gibberish.
It's true that there aren't Linux drivers for every device that comes out when it comes out, as there is for Windows. But how is this reflective of immature Linux technology? It's just that the manufacturers don't want to spend the money to write multiple drivers and so they pick the one that has 90% market share! That's it!
Let's see how mature Windows technology would look if hardware manufacturers told Microsoft to write their own damn drivers. Better yet, if they told Microsoft to hack them together through reverse engineering! How friggin' easy would it be burn your damn CD or use your wireless card on Windows then?
The real driver problem for Linux is market share. This is why drivers for enterprise types of hardware are getting better manufacturer driver support - Linux is actually gaining some market share there.
If Linux were to ever crack 40% market share on the home desktop, there'd be drivers come out our ears.
Thank you for making my RedHat stocks take a nose dive. I should have probably sold them the other day.
1) Yes, I rarely use a mouse, except for a lot of linux X stuff which has no keyboard shortcuts (windows apps generally manage this well)
2) Yes the debian docs are on CD
I was trying to do a network install and had no end of trouble trying to find the instructions of WHICH files I needed to burn my bootable floppies and such for the "sarge" install, on account of the ammount of links to general debian commentary, strategy and "join us" type documentation.
3) Yes I like freedom thats why I prefer linux.
4) I use mozilla for email, but on windows.
I've now got some newer peripherals which will need to be working before I make the switch, I hope to make it one day.
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Yeah, I've wanted to give up windows for awhile. I installed Redhat 9 on my laptop, dual booting it with windows, but of course one crucial component- the display- wouldn't configure. I looked all over the web, and the solutions I found were ridiculously complicated. I figured I could install Linux and learn it step by step- not get bombarded with suggestions to recompile a kernel or write code. Maybe Linux is ready for home users- but only preinstalled. After two weeks of research and trial and error, I had to say screw it- just like I did three years ago when I tried to switch to SuSe. Oh well.
My good looks paid for that pool, and my talent filled it with water.
Yep, this MSCE is looking mighty smart sticking with Windows.
I can handle linux. I've been running redhat since series 4, since 5.0 in regular use.
I can patch my own kernels and add the patches to the hundreds of patches in the redhat kernel src rpm.
It just stinks as a desktop os, and I'm finally able to come out and say it now my hope has ran out. It's not worth my saying its good as a desktop OS because I set it up for someone as a desktop OS and it failed. I'll not pretend just to join your club, although I still use it at home.
It's not magically complicated, its just slow and clunky. Redhat is the best IMHO and they are nearly there. But they are not there, and now we hear this.
No doubt the fedora project will pull through, but it wont be any time soon.
blog.sam.liddicott.com
I had to re-install Windows XP Pro on a system at the office today. Norton Anti-Virus was complaining about whatever the hell that RPC port virus is within two minutes of my plugging in the network cable so I could get to Windows Update for the myriad of patches I had to download.
That's the positive experience that all users are looking for.
I agree, I don't think *RedHat* is ready for the home desktop. However, SuSE and Mandrake are a different matter all together.
What point was that again?
Oh yeah, it had something to do with comparing Redhat 9, which includes lots of software, to Windows 95, which includes Notepad+Paintbrush (presumably other unspecified apps with unspecified version/functionality installed), and their respective ability to run on a machine with 64 megs of ram.
Can't argue with that! Guess we'll all just have to accept his conclusion... what was that again? Oh yeah, it had something to do with sticking with Win2k for another couple of years. I wonder if that's win2k running on 64 megs of ram?
There were numerous other gems in there too...
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
...they have problems. Every comment I read about someone not being able to do something with Linux or getting frustrated by some aspect of it is immediatly followed by cries of "bullshit!" There's part of the problem, in my opinion. When someone says "my camera didn't work in linux", saying- "well, your camera sucks" or "MY camera works fine and I have Linux" doesn't help matters any.
My good looks paid for that pool, and my talent filled it with water.
As a Computer Science student (who isn't a CS major these days?) I consider Windows my gaming OS and Linux my working OS. Many other individuals in my age demographic are certainly the same. If we can get significantly better game performance on Linux (i.e. games developed specifically to take advantage of Linux's features), then current windows gamers would switch to Linux. After all we spend ridiculous amounts of money on the newest, coolest hardware and go to other extremes all for our performance fix. Why not switch OS's for that fix as well?
However, getting publishers to release non-crippled Linux versions of their games is an entirely different subject.
You can install IceWM on RH9, complete with desktop icons and Bluecurve and everything. It should run fine with 64MB of RAM. This solution would be comparable to the features of Windows 95. If you want a list of RPMS and some basic instructions, drop me a line and I'll write them up.
With RH9, Gnome takes at least 128MB to run properly without swapping. KDE takes more, about 192MB. Even then, as you said, both are slower than Windows 95, which (iirc) can be made to run on 16MB of RAM.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I'll argue my point, right now I'm running win2k on an 80MB P133 and its not bad. Last week I tried slotting in the old spare win95 disk and it really flew. I wont try redhat 9 on this because when I did it was too deadly slow.
/target and apt-get a few more packages.
So win2k beats redhat 9 on the same old out of date hardware that linux users claim linux is good on. (and that includes me till about 2 weeks ago).
Thats the conclusion. And you're right, you can't argue with that. I had to accept it.
I was trying debian as a replacement to redhat and installing it on my win95 disk (hence my brief recent foray with win95 on the laptop) and I expect to finish getting debian working.
Nothing like booting off the installation floppy again to get network working and then use the provided shell to chroot the
So I'll see if Debians distro can beat redhat, and then if it can beat win2k.
blog.sam.liddicott.com
I converted from Windows ME to Linux a couple years ago, but there were some serious growing pains. It is my opinion that Linux is far superior to Windows for a number of reasons, but it's not ready for Desktop primetime yet. I think is for several reasons:
/usr and the like for their files. /home/username is about as good as it's going to get.
1. There is no universal installation system for Linux to aid end users. My father doesn't know if he's running Windows XP or Windows 95, and he sure as hell doesn't know what architecture their system has. Most end users will probably have no clue if they are running Red Hat 5.2 or 9.0. They will have no idea if they are on an i386 or a SPARC. This alone will scare many people away, or piss people off.
2. Good lord open source programs can be tough to use sometimes! The best thing is an RPM, but even those can be scary. Most people have no clue as to what a command prompt is, how to use it. Going through a readme is impossible or not an option for most users.
3. Detecting new hardware is not a very pleasant experience for many. I have had several friends who decided to try out Linux who had most of their hardware become completely non-functional in Linux, not good. Albeit this can be remedied by purchasing Linux made hardware, it is unlikely for a convert.
4. The file organizational system in Linux is absurdly complex and difficult for most users. No one is going to ever poke around in
5. Many media applications in Linux suck. We need professionally created, open source programs to give Linux a robust and powerful media system.
That's just my two cents... flame on...
I agree. Also I think I'd like a pony. But seriously, haven't you ever used Knoppix? Oh, I'm sorry, you *don't* have to click "next." (Yes, it is easier to install and run than Windows.)
"Oh, yes, and another thing - they actually had the nerve last week to AUTOMATICALLY renew my RHN subscription ... without my permission."
They tried to do the same to me, just before the EOL the products they were trying to steal my money for. FORTUNATELY, the credit card I used to pay for RHN last year was stolen and canceled. I need to find a pickpocket in London and thank him for preventing this theft. When RH couldn't charge my card, they sent me a very legalistic letter telling me I had to uninstall RHN and up2date. I've used RH since 5.2. No more, and I'm moving ever server and workstation at work to Debian.
---
Watching DVDs in Mandrake.
- codecs-1.2-1plfe cs-1.4-2plf
1.- Configure urpmi so it has PLF as one of it sources (see http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/). You can use the command line or the GUI (MDK Control Center -> Software Management -> Software Sources Manager)
2.- using the command line or the GUI "RpmDrake", install:
mplayer-skins
mplayer1.0-gui
mplayer1.0
real
xanim-codecs-1.0-3plf
win32-cod
3.- configure gmplayer so it points to your proper DVD device
4.- Watch the DVD.
It's simple, yet not obvious.
Why not have DVD-player working out-of-the-box? Well, there are some legal problems that block having DVD-players to work out-of-the-box in Linux distributions.
Yes, blame the MPAA, the DMCA and the movie studios instead of blaming Linux distributors that must abide by the law (stupid law, but the law nonetheless).
Also, folowing this message's instructions is against existing law in several countries, including USA, UK and France.
Peace!
While this will probably end up so far down as this article has been commented on to death, here's my rant...
This is an excellent opportunity for the Linux community to let Red Hat grow where it needs. Red Hat needs its space to grow for the enterprise market. That's what this announcement seems to boil down to in my eyes. They are not going to over-emphasize those things that desktop users need.
However, there are distributions that will. Mandrake and SuSE come to mind. No one is to say that Red Hat won't reenter the desktop market, but there has to be some need to do so. If SuSE or Mandrake are gaining great marketshare on the desktop, Red Hat will reevaluate it's position on the desktop market.
Furthermore, using desktop-centric distributions for desktop needs means that desktop needs will become a development focus of, say, SuSE or Mandrake.
Of course, that's all assuming that we actually pay for software!
Its for this sort of freedom that I appreciate Linux.
I also thankyou for your comments, IceWM may well be worth trying.
If there were some gnome-compatable widget libs that didn't use CORBA I'll be happy and laughing.
I'll mail you, thanks for the offer.
blog.sam.liddicott.com
I wont tire of saying that a P400 with 64MB and Redhat 9 + Gnome thrashed disk like mad while the P100 32MB Win95 machine it replaced was much much better.
Windows 95 on a P100 is fair. Windows 95 was made to run on P100 level machines. Comparing that to Redhat 9 with GNOME on a P400 isn't fair. Redhat 5.x would be more like it for that machine. I'm not saying you don't have reason to be frustrated at its poor performance on an old machine, just realize that you're asking more from Redhat 9 and GNOME than you are from Windows 95.
Debian - whose users think apt-get is better than the ("I never heard of it") rpm/up2date of redhat and with much less features.
I don't know up2date well, but aren't you comparing apples to oranges again here? Shouldn't you be comparing up2date to the entire apt toolset: apt-get, apt-cache, apt-listchanges, etc, and maybe even something like aptitude?
Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology; Ain't got time to make no apology
I'll not go so far as to say that Red Hat doesn't have some valid points. However, advocating windows does seem like a bit of a punch-in-the-gut doesn it? This is the problem of the chicken-and-the-egg. If no one uses/develops Linux for the Linux desktop & ease-of-use, then the Linux desktop will never improve. How would alienating the linux desktop crowd, or even the potential linux desktop crowd, improve the linux community? Shame on you Red Hat, you could at least more seriously acknowledge the people other than yourselves who are attempting to make the Linux desktop a viable alternative.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Gnome is damn nice in parts ... much more polished than KDE which tends towards excessive extentions. That said, both Gnome and KDE are missing little things that the other tends to do well. I tend to use KDE, though most of my applications are based on the Gnome toolkit and for now that is a good ballence ... though I'm '' close to switching to Gnome entirely.
To me, Windows is too limiting. I tend to encounter intense hassles each time I use it. For example, it comes with so few programs that there isn't a good core set you can rely on. Instead, you have to dig up extras, and drag them along to get anything done. Another nit: Windows and Windows programs tend to rely too heavily on file extentions, leading to quite a few oddities and inconsistancies in both the interface and in how programs behave.
I could go on, though most Windows users aren't aware of the limitations or the possibilities ... even of Windows itself. The registry is underused, and installation programs are seen as the begining and end of setting up any new program. Neither are true for Windows or any of the X-based desktops.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
blasphemy! - probably being muscled by SCO, can we get some counseling for this guy?
Time was, Big Red defined networking.
Time was, you twisted the dial and adjusted the set.
Except for a qube and PS2 running Linux and a couple Windows PCs for development
and testing, everything else here is OS X.
I don't worry about viruses or worms, blue screens, kernel patches, bugs in
toy applications, bugs in Microsoft applications, or indecision by company
officers if they'll continue to support me or not. There's every class of high-end
application available that I'll ever need (most of them best-of-breed) and a real
shell that pops up any time I want if I need to apply my unix skills against a problem.
I can't understand why people insist on beating the dead horse of the Linux
desktop or getting beaten like a dead horse by Windows. It's not like this is
some difficult decision to choose a computing environment that just works.
Linux's biggest problem is its lack of standardization and collaboration and the numerous distributions that exist. There is, on a relative scale, excessive duplication of effort while at the same time Linux continues to lack basic things like truly standardized automated installs that work on every distribution and the equivalent of the Windows system registry.
/etc files and hierarchy to act somewhat like the Windows system registry? Can KDE and Gnome quit competing and pool resources? Can cut and paste truly work across every application as it does in Windows? Can people agree on an intuitive easy-to-use Window manager for the average person as a default? Can people be isolated from the installer so that they don't have to assess the relative merits of ReiserFS versus ext3 versus FAT32? They can and will get to that point when the efforts finally unify. You may say that this idea goes against the spirit of open source development or even the pride of project contributors. I will guarantee you that Windows would never have been the juggernaut it is now if it wasn't a focused and unified effort. Ultimately, a standard becomes a standard because disparate parties agree to work together on the same issue. If Linux does this, then it will finally be able to challenge the dominance of Windows and draw hardware and application developers to think of Linux as a revenue opportunity instead of an also ran.
Can someone finally standardize the
This rant isn't meant as flamebait. I really do want Linux to succeed because it is so close to doing so.
Sure, gnome has some good plans.
/tmp and pops up on my original desktop still logged in.
But why CORBA? Fat and slow!
And with stupid side effects like this:
If I'm logged on to an Xconsole and run evolution, then get a Xvnc session and run another ximian, guess where it pops up?
Not on my Xvnc, no, ignores $DISPLAY and all that, instead uses my CORBA sockets in
Its the waste, and this kind of behavour that makes me wonder.
You are right about the deficiencies of windows, coupled with the fact that many things in linux can be fixed with another shell script.
Linux is good, just not ready for the average desktop. (Well, home desktop at any rate, corporate lock-downs is another matter)
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Please tell me how Windows is a balance between proprietary and non-propreitary. The Mac OS X core at least is open source. Nothing Microsoft is open source, half the time they dont even follow recognised standards.The hardware is a different matter.
So it comes down to Apple: balance in software, closed hardware or Win: closed software, balance in hardware. As for price, really there is not too much difference for a new box. Compare a new Dell / IBM / whatever to a similarly speced Mac and youll find the price differences are minimal.
I am Monkey, the Great Sage, equal of heaven!
Lets just say that a 4x faster machine with 8x RAM was 4x slower than win95. I don't call that benefits of an up to date OS.
You can't simplify it so much. Not to flame, but maybe it would help if you try a little harder to understand the specifics of your performance issues, rather than this handwaving.
Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology; Ain't got time to make no apology
I have been working with a Large organization that is very Windowized on the Desktop and E-mail (Exchange). They have no problems and understand the necessity of running big iron hardware with Unix for major databases and web applications.
Like many mixed shops, we started to use Red Hat linux on commodity x86 hardware for Apache, Snort, Ethereal, and other functions about two or three years ago (right when the Red Hat 7.x series emerged). We were able to leverage our Unix admins as well as old and new cheap hardware to fill in gaps when our budget couldn't buy a new Sun or HPUX box dedicated to a single function.
For those of us who needed a dedicated Unix box on our Desktop that would work with the Windows-centric computing environment for users - Mac OS X and G4 Macs were made to order, but we also used a lot of Linux desktops as x terminals for administration as well an even cheaper form of Unix Workstation.
During this time we also were one of the first groups to purchase from the Ala Carte support offerings including Engineering Development Support from Red Hat...for an initial product it wasn't half bad. But then Red Hat started screwing with their support offerings every two to three months. They would change what is available or what was supported and many times this would be while we were negotiating with them for additional support. Eventually the Red Hat Sales Rep said that we had to purchase Red Hat Advanced Server at $2k a pop to get Engineering Support and other Niceties that we had with a similar support agreement from Micro$oft. When I told the Red Hat Sales Rep where is my ROI compared to MS products - because w2k server was only costing me $2k a pop - he said that I didn't have to pay the MS client licenses tax on the workstations. When I told him that I already owned the licenses, he got mad and hung up the phone on me (needless to say he doesn't work at Red Hat any more). Ironically it is cheaper to buy a Sun Fire 100/120 or Sun Fire LX 5X/6X series server with the Solaris license rather than buy a Red Hat AS License. I even get a free year of support from Sun.
What has happened is that if you want to use Red Hat Linux is that you have to pay $$$ for it as opposed to just having to pay for support. I understand that Red Hat is having financial woes and that they are trying to focus on a market that they have some market share in...but what they are forgetting is that the guys who brought linux to that market used the free versions to demo an application and then they added support when they got the OK from management to do a production implementation. It also eliminates the use of the product for quick fixes with a limited budget (Snort Sensors, Ethereal).
Lastly Red Hat has forgotten that People who use Windows at home are going to encourage it at work. Especially if Linux is not available in a form that they can use at home. The main issues with Linux today are: 1. Driver support - this is being fixed every day by hundreds of developers; 2. A reasonable software installation system - Red Hat started a great system with the Red Hat Package Manager, but really have not developed it from the initial product. Many other RPM based distributions of Linux have much better implementations of Red Hat Package Manager than Red Hat (Mandrake comes to mind). Both of these are areas that Red Hat has to devote development dollars and time to help correct for their server/workstation market. They could still make it free to users who don't need support without making that user use an unstable Fedora product. This is the value that they can bring to market...not another Micro$oft type of pricing scheme that is going to turn IT managers and Corporate Managers away from wanting to use their platform. No one is going to build an application on Fedora because of its BETA nature and most corporations aren't going to buy a copy of Red Hat AS for a test implementation. In reality I see Novell/SUSE, Mandrake, and even Debian taking the platform farther than Red Hat.
It was good while it lasted, but it seems that Red Hat did not have the leadership, creativity or imagination to have created a business without reverting to the tried and true schemes of its biggest competitor.
RedHat is being short-sighted and alienating its developers and users. Many developers have put a lot of work and sweat and time away from family to make Linux user-friendly. I don't think they will want to work with a company that has scrambled their efforts with every release (i.e., Bluecurve) and then call Linux work unfinished and not as good as Windows.
In today's GUI world, without a solid desktop, you have no server. And there are many companies out there who are starting to consider or request Linux for clients and servers. Does it make sense to have Suse on the desktop and RedHat on servers? I don't think so. Administrators would be doing twice the work and managers twice the training.
Suse's Yast2 and KDE configuration is a perfect example of a successful desktop. A 90-year old grandpa would not buy a computer with Windows any more than he would program the VCR. But most people in the work place who go to the control panel in Windows before calling the help desk would not have a problem with Yast2.
The bottom line is that the GPL allows software to outlive the companies that created, compiled, or sold the software released under this license.
And once governments and businesses begin to receive and understand the benefits of the GPL, they will be more perceptive of those entities that threaten it.
I usually don't write to companies, but I'm going to send them a nice email letting them know why I have no intention of using their future products at home or the workplace. This is not the statement of a company that is committed to linux, and as such I will not support them. I wish them luck.
-Willy
Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem,
The ext3 filesystem uses journaling, and it is supported by the kernel. (what redhat 8/9 uses, and probably most of the newer distros) Its one of the main things that sets it apart from ext2. Did you install linux on an ext2 filesystem?
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
Watch out! This is either "sour grapes" over being unable to take control of Linux or it is some sort of marketing strategem. No good can come of this. Mark my words.
I also think that money is easier to make in corporate settings. I mean, my God, man, do you have any idea how many tech support people you have to have manning the phones? And they aren't the $5 an hour flunkies that every Windows peripheral maker has on the phones, reading from a list of standard canned questions/responses to help a customer find the problem himself, nooooo, these poeple have to know what they are talking about, how to use a text editor, yada, yada. And we have to pay them fsckers $10 an hour. Who can afford that?
Truth of the matter is, the techies have lost. The bean counters have taken over. Expect to see routine product support moved to India; the only companies to get competent tech support will be paying 6 figures a year!
Look, I understand the point you were trying to make about uninformed and clueless users not being able to admin a linux box, but I have to tell you, always using the example of the "secretary" as the lowest form of user you can think of really pisses me off. Yours is not the only post to use this common device, so I'm sorry if I'm picking on you, but you caught me on an off night.
I've taken a job as a secretary after getting laid off from a job in tech because a) this particular job paid decently b) it's easy and I feel energized enough for school after work and c) I go home on time every single night of the week, unlike the rest of the wage slaves I work with.
I'm probably not a typical secretary - I've been a linux user for over 6 years because I enjoy discovering things and curiosity really drives me. I started off using slackware, so I'm more comfortable editing textfiles than using some fancy pants gui. HOWEVER, all of the secretaries I know and work with are ABOVE average computer users compared to the rest of the folks in the department. If something stops working, like a printer or a network connection, we're the ones who are supposed to stay on top of it. I install all of the updates on my bosses' computer and fix his mistakes because he's an utter computer moron. I have monthly meetings with the IT dept. to stay on top of what is being rolled out, because I'm the one the users are going to come to first when something doesn't work as expected.
This wouldn't bother me so much, but I don't like the implication, because most secretaries are women. And I think this attitude contributes to a boys club mentality in IT. I've been told I wasn't "qualified" to work on a particular piece of software, and the only qualification I seemed to be lacking was a particular piece of hardware, namely a dick, as those with similar qualifications who were male were given that access. There was a quote I saw by a female biologist I believe, that the attitude boils down to this: as a woman, you have to prove you can do something before you'll be allowed to try, whereas as a man, it will be assumed you can do it until you prove you're not qualified. Not always, and not in all organizations, but I've found that to be unfortunately but commonly true.
Since RedHat is apparently doing an OpenOffice/StarOffice thing (without the StarOffice) by working with Fedora, this all doesn't shake me up much. They said they weren't interested in the desktop some time ago. Guess they had a focus group and did a team chant of "Servers! Servers! Servers!". Microsoft has been getting hammered by worms the last year, linux has been getting good PR, so it is time to crank up the price to be "competitive" with W2K and go for the money. Since people value what they pay for, it will probably only enhance linux in the eyes of business.
Like a lot of people, when I think linux, I think RedHat first and Penguin second, but I'll adjust. After a couple months with a Knoppix disk and a Jumpdrive, I know RedHat isn't the only desktop in town. Presumably Novell will have the business desktop covered. The home newbies can run Lindows root. And there is Debian or Slackware if Fedora sours for the experienced. Whatever.
But the irony is that I've never been happier with a linux desktop (2+ years from August '01) than with RH 9 and the standard current programs. Mplayer plays just about "everything" in one player. Installation? Basically, just download all the
Mozilla, Evolution, CUPS, OpenOffice 1.1, Scribus at 1.0, GNUCash, MySQL linked up with OpenOffice for an Office/Access team. Really? The apps aren't there to do real work?
is what Szulik is saying. He does want the corporate desktop, BUT, M$ can have the low profit home users... Home users are really price sensitive,
and are expensive to market to. Not much profit there. But (big) business users,
often have millions to spend on IT, and marketing
dollars go much further with that crowd.
Ever try to help home users with computer problems?
They take up huge amounts time and don't want to pay much. M$ deserves most of them.
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
It's not funny. I had a similar experience. GRUB just did not work when I installed RedHat 9, I had to boot off CD in restore mode, copy sample lilo config to a normal lilo file, run lilo manually... and it worked fine.
I built Mozilla from source on RedHat (because I wanted to add some features to the browser) and fonts were just horrible (wrong size, illegible, etc.) I gave up on tweaking them since nothing worked right (huge font size changes while making small font size changes in various font-setting places). I deleted the Linux partition and repartitioned the drive to give it all back to Windows. It's not a great OS, but at least fonts work well.
I used Linux for many years and RedHat, Mandrake and Debian all had font problems that I spent countless hours working around. I don't remember whether SuSE had these problems because I didn't use it much. Maybe I should check.
ISP's should provide internet service for any OS.
You are right, but try this, on a different machine, a 80MB P133 laptop:
Win95 runs like a jackrabbit
win2k chugs a bit
redhat9 with gnome standard install gives me time to get bored and forget what I was clicking on.
(I have 3 slottable hard disks so I used to run either depending what I needed)
I think I do understand the specifics of the performance issues, and hopefully this example involves a little less handwaving.
blog.sam.liddicott.com
to me is like mud wrestling a pig. Somehow.
Anyway, I totally agree except that I like the meaning of fsck because things are fscked up at that point... it pops up on you (on Solaris at least) when you reboot and the disk has a problem.
And also, it's expressive, if you are really mad you can say, "why you file-system-integrity-checking moroon!!!" It's like Fuck 2.0.
-pyrrho
honesty in the corporate world. congratulations rehat. this will definitely impact revenue for redhat in the short term, but in the long run? integrity counts. and they're right... linux isn't ready for the average computer user yet. i expect that when redhat finally declares that linux is dumbed down to the point of accomodating the average user, it'll be a credible claim.
I am distraught that such a good product line is being discontinued. I have RH 8 on two boxes and I love it. Unfortunately the service ends January. Suddenly SuSE is looking pretty good. RedHat shouldn't have done this because now they have one main source of income-- the corporate sector. And if that fails, they've got nothing left to lean on.
./ name
I fear I soon may have to change my
Isn't it obvious? They're trying to shoot themselves in the foot so that Microsoft doesn't shoot them in the heart.
or do what most people do, and just turn on your computer when you buy it. nobody I know that fits the 'consumer' category has ever installed their own OS.
If he thinks installing Linux for home use is hard, try installing Windows for home use. First you install from the XP CD, then you'd better call MS to get it activated. Then you start installing all those patches from Windows Update. Then you start installing your apps ... Don't forget to track down the driver CDs for those obscure bits of hardware - in this sense, "obscure" can mean things like digital cameras, scanners, etc. that are actually pretty common in home PCs.
Uhm, can we say FUD? Seriously, I've never had a Windows machine that was anything but a self-built box, and I've never had the problems you're describing with XP. XP will activate itself over the internet with basically no work on the user's part (you click a button and it's done). I do agree with you about the part on Windows Update, but the better solution (automagically installing everything from Windows Update) has everyone on Slashdot up in arms every time it's mentioned. Don't forget, you still have to run the Update utility on Mac OS X, or one on Linux (assuming you've got one) whenever you do a fresh install. Meanwhile, XP has never even asked me to put its install disc back in for drivers. I've plugged in everything from 4 year old ATI video cards, random USB scanners, my digital camera, a webcam, a firewire PCI card, and a ton of other stuff without any problems ever. You would have had problems like this with Windows 9x, but the implication here that linux doesn't suffer from uninstalled driver problems like those being described above makes zero sense.
iRooster, the Mac OS X a
If you could buy RHN for Fedora, it would be the same, just a name change. Oh, except for the back-porting. Hmmm.
Anyway, it's not the same.
I have been a professional software engineer (programmer) for omg ~15 years now and I do not mind asking my client/employer/self to pay for an OS. Not at all. But it is nice to be able to install the OS anywhere. The freedom to experiment, to not do a PO and budget a research project is quite nice. And the way it's working around here is that soon, although we would no doubt install RH from just a few purchased CDs, every machine would end up buying RHN. We cannot do that now.
I think that's crazy. I mean, again RH is free to do as they like, I'm not harmed by this because of the nature of the GPL, but I think letting the OS get copied is a way to let the OS go everywhere. Once it's there people scratch their head and say, you know what, it's worth a hundred a year per machine to be able to run up2date (in a cron job?).
Now what do we do.... before we could try it and then decide if it's worth it. Now we have to decide if it's worth and then try it. This is a pain.
I actually benefit from the flexibility of free software much more than the low cost. I'm fine with high cost free software!
But someone else will likely step up and support us. I guess it's not going to be RH though because while our IT dept argued for RHN, they never argued to have RedHat in house in the first place!
The only linux I've ever used is RedHat. That is not likely to continue to be true. Mindshare is important, and this move is going to lose them some mind share.
Some cry, "oh, but you are a dirty hippy and they don't care about you, you never pay them anyway!" That's only 1/3 true. I'm sure I have sent enough money RH's way that they have not lost money on me as an individual. That there are not more individuals such that there is critical mass to profit from up2date is another matter, a timing thing, maybe one that RH is playing as well they can.
-pyrrho
Free software is more than ready for the desktop. I use it everyday for all of my computing needs. It if far less trouble than any windoze system I 've ever fooled with. Red Hat, Knoppix even Debian do a much better job of configuring systems than Microsoft does, despite the hardware lock-in advantages they have.
I really care is when the average 30 year old business person can use it without out any more complaints then they have with Windows.
Well, I've got fewer complaints about free software than I do about Windoze. Just about any window manager kicks Windows ass, and that translates into real work perfomance. Multiple desktops and stability give free softwre users place keeping that M$'s pathetic GUI does not. Multiple projects can be opened on multiple desktops and kept that way till completion. On the Windoze interface, one screen must serve all. It's difficult to keep things segregated when you have to work on more than one project at a time and it all goes poof when you have to reboot in two days or so. That was in a fortune 500 company, with the best support available. Silly little problems, like sound cards that don't work or difficulty with clipboards pale in compairison to Windoze problems. I hate remembering how bad it was.
I won't be Windows free until I have a reliable tax program for linux. I still use quicken since I don't believe that gnucash is there yet.
I'm not familiar with GNU Cash's tax modules, but I do know that the IRS makes all the forms and manuals available as PDF's. I quit using Quicken when they pulled the boot sector DRM gaff right after an "upgrade" to another product reduced it's feature set. It was no more difficult for me to read the fine manuals and add the numbers for myself in a spreadsheet than it was to run Quicken. I imagine the government will adopt web forms in the future that require no specific software to present you with all they know so that you can punch an "I agree" button to be taxed.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Okay. I'm responding to both the parent and grandparent poster. ...which company was it that has decided to focus on the enterprise market?
If you're talking about the Fedora-RH thing, that was an *expansion* of RH's packages for the typical user. A very good thing for RH users who were tired of having to get packages from RH+Fedora+dag+freshrpms+blahblahblah. The person who submitted the Slashdot article painted a very, very negative picture.
With it's new found direction, RedHat seems to have lost its honour.
What, officially bundling community-packaged software along with RH-packaged software? You must *hate* Debian -- they package *everything* in the community.
It is odd, bearing in mind that they purposefully crippled KDE on their distro.
First, RH was trying to provide visual integration KDE and GNOME. They ended up using KDE art and software, but a larger set of GNOME. This is not surprising, as RH has funded plenty of GNOME development (starting in the Bad Old Days when KDE wasn't fully free due to it being tied to Qt). The main person complaining was the extremely vocal Mosfet, as well as a couple of other very vocal KDE folks. They made a phenomenal stink about KDE and GNOME being blended. The fact that Konqueror wasn't included was a big chunk of it. There was a stir on the GNOME boards as well, but it died down after a bit.
Keep in mind that a year ago, one of the biggest complaints on Slashdot was that "KDE and GNOME needed to be merged" and that the "inconsistent UI was one of Linux's biggest problems". Red Hat runs out and does what folks have been asking it to do...and gets hammered for it.
Finally, Red Hat has been one of the largest people helping Linux get to the desktop. They've put a huge amount of money and effort into GNOME, and had a whole project (Red Hat Advanced Desktop) aimed at trying to produce a better desktop. The guy saying that Linux isn't ready for the desktop, but hopes it will be in a couple of years, is saying that because he doesn't want companies to run out, put Linux on their desktop, get burned because it isn't up to par with a Windows desktop environment for Joe User yet, and then refuse to look at Linux again for a decade.
Aside from Debian, Red Hat is one of the most influential pushers trying to keep Linux quite free and open. SuSE hangs about on handing out free ISOs of new distros, other folks backed Qt when it wasn't as Free as the GNU folks felt it should be, and still other folks wanted to hang on to Netscape Navigator -- RH dropped it like a hot potato for Mozilla (to be honest, before Mozilla was really ready). It's really disappointing to see so many people on Slashdot bashing them after one pretty distorted story earlier today after the years of work and current work they're putting in.
May we never see th
This was quite funny the first time I read it on Slashdot, but it's getting old.
May we never see th
The only side-side usability study I've heard of found that it took only a couple of minutes longer (something like 45 - 48 minutes)to complete a set of tasks with a non-technical bunch. This was XP and RH 9, if I recall.
I can sympathize with the minimalist approach, but when all this cool stuff is available, there's a real temptation to include it. And if you don't, you get trolled for not including minesweeper. I use OpenBSD for minimalist stuff, and until this week, RH 9 for desktop. I'm not sure where I'm going next, but I'll look at Fedora and Gentoo.
RH 9 does a better job with sound and USB camera support than windows did. In both cases, Windows allowed something to install and nuke them. No clues, no backtracking, the path to repair was to format and reinstall.
Windows hides stuff so users can't break it. And when something else breaks it, the users (and techs) can't fix it. Some of it is hidden because of simply lousy architecture and programming.
XP-home drives me up a tree. Setting permissions on files - where the fuck is that? It's not where it's been since nt 3.5. And why can't I delete c:\program files\MSN Gaming Zone ? It has OPERATING SYSTEM PROTECTION. Some asshole went out of his way to alter the OS to make it hard for me to get rid of that. Fuck him/her! Getting outlook express off of your SERVER is extremely difficult. On and on.
How would this guy know? He never uses his own product!
...
But yew it is a retrenchment. If the company that sells the product doesn't actively support the product, does not invest in getting hardware manaufactures to produce drivers, and publically disses it's own product it is a sign that they are umm retrenching to services only and hoping for a buy out (Novell bought SuSE why won't IBM buy us!!!??).
Be grateful for debian
Yeah, .. this craving for acceptance ... this need of approval. Screw Red Hat they aren't putting bread on my table heck they have arbitrarily changed the rules (with little or no explanation) with every piddly little release of their, oh so wonderful distribution. I won't bore you with the details of which was the first version of their software I started with. RH 8.0 was dummed down crap and that is when I stopped using it. I have actually migrated away from windows based computing and have found Linux to be the bomb! Red Hat does not equal Linux.... They think they can get away with hand holding l33t MSCE convert sys admins and bleeding em dry swell for them. They think they can just ride IBM's coat tails, good for them. I don't care what Linux is and isn't ready for I just know, I use it, I like it, and its ready for me. I am not the least bit affected nor does my self esteem suffer if you or them or they or whoever or whatever isn't ready for it. This thread is so tired......
I am sure no one will read this but I am gonna bother to post it anyway. I am sick and tired of all this neediness crap,
You must not get out of the country very much.
Windows DVD playing is fine for those like you who only play DVDs from one region, but if you need to play DVDs from multiple regions then the Linux programs (with built-in, possibly illegal, CSS decryption) are much more suited to the task than the Windows programs.
Yes you can go on about how easy it is to download and apply a firmware flash or install Joe's random shareware region-killing app but a regular user isn't going to figure out those extra steps any more than they are going to figure out how to run apt-get on linux.
Linux is better because we have superior choices for many pieces of software. FYI, both Xine or MPlayer support more formats of video than any Windows-only player I can think of (of course, MPlayer works on Windows, too).
Of course, to do that, they have to provide a bundle of ripped-off Windows DLLs that they hook into. And they provide that bundle without the permission of the copyright owners, too.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
I find it intriguing why the word of any person,
even the Red Hat CEO, should influence anyone.
You are a thinking individual. Evaluate your choices, ad use what works for you.
Personally, Linux works for me, and I don't envision shifting away anytime soon.
Yes, there are things that need work--in part at least thanks to manufacturers who refuse to provide the info needed to write drivers and the like, and partly thanks to network effects that keep many app writers targeting Windows--but I'm not going back to Windows.
Speaking of which, let's not forget to thank the manufacturers that *do* extend a hand to the Linux world. Matrox gave out enough information to let two 3d drivers, an xv driver and two drivers used in mplayer (for direct video access in X and in console) to be written for my G450.
Smackies to SmartHome, which hasn't provided the Wish project with enough information to write a driver for their USB X10 controller that I own.
Neutral to Creative, which spent an awfully long time not supporting Linux but eventually put some money into development (*after* Linux folks reverse-engineered enough to produce free drivers).
May we never see th
I've had a bunch of Redhat stock since the day they IPO'd. Sold a chunk of it near the 300 (150, post-split) level, held a few hundred shares.
Yeah, what I have is trivial compared to the total number of shares out there, but dammit, this kind of thing pisses me off. I mean, yay enterprise version and all that, but first spinning desktop off to fedora, then shooting it down as "not ready", is complete and utter crap. WTF are they thinking? Is it time to dump the rest of my rhat stock, or no?
When redhat cuts back on Gnome (I expect Gnome to be abandonware very soon) and Gtk it will create the opportunity for KDE to pull far out in front of Gnome (solving one problem re: "the standard desktop")
Linux graphics and desktop usability will only improve when gamers and developers come to the platform en masse (i.e. never)
I built Mozilla from source on RedHat (because I wanted to add some features to the browser) and fonts were just horrible (wrong size, illegible, etc.)
Repeat after me: Going outside of the package manager is a bad idea.
Grab the src rpm's, compile those, install. Everything works okay? Good, now tweak the src rpm's code before compiling it again.
There are some that are talented enough to be able to grab any source, and compile it perfectly on any platform 100% of the time. For those of us who are not godlike, there is making small changes to the source.
Just my $.02
So I read through the comments people have already given you, and found that for once, there actually might be something I can add.
I've actually had a problem similar to yours. I have one a laptop with a crusoe chip. When I installed mandrake on it, I could not believe how slow it was. I mean, it was horrible, especially in gnome. Eventually, I found an RPM I couldn't upgrade because the old version was dependent on itself, so I installed slackware.
It's been like night and day. My computer is faster in throttled mode 333Mhz in slack than it was in fullspeed, 933Mhz on mandrake. I really can't explain it, but some friends have had similar experiences.
So maybe you just need a less bloated version of linux. Drop-line for slack dropline is really good too. I didn't drop my dual boots till I started using slack. Beware thought, X setup may prove to be a little tricky.
Also, I find it helps on slower computers to just run a windowmanager, without the desktop environments. Enlightenment is my personal choice, but there is no reason why others shouldn't work. This tends to save some resources. Also, this prevents gtk bugs from bringing your whole X session down.
Hope this helps make your linux experience more pleasant!
"To save the planet, I had to go to the worst spot on Earth, and that was Philadelphia." -- Sun Ra
Mandrake absolutely refuses to recognize my SoundBlaster Live card. Has for years, still does it in 9.2. 98, XP, and 2K all found it easily.
Red Hat spent $700,000,000 on a compiler company and some questionable dot coms, and then their programmers tell me the reason why their software has such crappy usability is because they can't afford to hire HCI people.
A real desktop software company would have devoted at least a fraction of this fantastic sum towards making their interfaces less confusing.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
I wish Matthew Szulik had mentioned OS X, giving Apple a little publicity
Started with Linux on servers with Slackware 3. The good ole days of GUI's were for wimps and if you wanted that SCSI card to work, write your own damned drivers...okay maybe not that bad, but close.
Eventually I attempted to install RH 5.2 on my desktop to replace Windows 98 in the middle of 99. I could do it, went out and bought SuSE. Everything worked, except for my Winmodem and sound card. Easy enough, I recycled a jumper based 33.6 from my old 486 and was on the net. I thought Star Office was cool, used it for a summer. THen I came back to college and it came time to replace my laptop.
I was doing a lot of work in PHP and MySQL at the time and liked being able to develop in a native *iux enviroment, but I needed M$ office, powerpoint really, for classes and the ablity to use my scanner, digital camera, and other devices. I was not going to buy another shitty windows laptop, so I chose an iBook with OS 10.1 and then upgraded to 10.2.
I have been impressed. I had my native *iux, on a FreeBSD core (I quit using Linux for webservers over their BSD cousins in 2001), plus I had many products that provided drivers for the macs. Also, I had access to a number of applications like Photoshop, DW, Flash, Pagemaker, and many other standard applications. iPhoto, iTunes, and the Combo drive coupled with battery life was great.
Since then I have been sold on the macintosh over Linux for most desktop uses and there are even a few games available...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
... but it is always the truth.
[ Insert statements about me being a hard-core long time Linux user here ]
Sorry, I won't push it on my parents yet. Or even my sister. They will have problems, they will harass me for help.
Sure, they do some of the same using Windows, but be realistic. Windows still offers a more cohesive if not stable operating environment for non-power home users.
It may be a tad shocking to hear Red Hat's CEO saying it, but it's the truth.
The use of source packages would suggest that they contain fixes and workarounds for bugs present in the pure tarballs code or documented build processes. If that is the case, why aren't these things contributed back to the build instructions and tarballs? Configure goes through a long phase of tuning options to my particular system. If it can't do it right, it's worthless. There is no excuse for bugs.
Umm, mplayer plays dvds just fine out of the box, and noone I know has had a problem with it if they just read the docs first.
Well, you just ruled out 95% of the population right there.
Blaming such users for being ignorant or stupid is missing the point - if you don't provide for these users they will go elsewhere.
theres a troll book?
This P.I.G. will walk on the water, This P.I.G. will walk on the sea, This P.I.G. will walk whereever he wants.
for what it's worth, both redhat and mozilla.org ship mozilla RPM's that display nicely anti-aliased fonts using xft.
Wow, I cannot believe I am hearing this from this guy. I am totally dismayed. I definately feel sorry for the people that have to put time into their product and are getting the shaft.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
My friends running Windows do complain that I hog their PC to try out their games when I visit them, though. They tolerate me because I generally end up cleaning up their machine from the 150+ pieces of adware and spyware they accumulate by running IE (I avoid convert them to Mozilla because then I'd have to find another excuse for trying out their Windows games).
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
I hope that that focus of linux is not towards the "desktop" of average users. I hope that linux is never targeted towards grandmothers and diesel mechanics' home systems.
People like this care about ease of use. Not much more than that.
Corporate servers and Grandmother's desktops being the only foci of linux development would be a bad thing for people like me. I'm just a geek. I don't care about support for 16 processor boxes. (at least not yet) I don't care if I can go to Best Buy and pick up Uberspades for linux.
Once linux becomes just about making money, it will have a negative effect on people like me. The recently announced end of Red Hat Linux, is just the most recent example.
Keep linux alive, keep it for geeks.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The only side-side usability study I've heard of found that it took only a couple of minutes longer (something like 45 - 48 minutes)to complete a set of tasks with a non-technical bunch. This was XP and RH 9, if I recall.
The issue isn't just using a few pre-installed office apps. It's the hair-pulling, cursing, painful, multi-hour process of discovering that your Archos MP3 player will only be recognized after you "rmmod ide-scsi" -- which you have to do before plugging the player into the USB port, because, if you don't, you'll have to reboot. That's why Linux isn't ready for the desktop.
And why can't I delete c:\program files\MSN Gaming Zone
Because if you're joe-average-user, you'll delete it and then call tech support because your shortcut to it doesn't work anymore and you don't know why the shortcut is even there because you deleted the directory. That's why there are are Control Panel apps to remove programs and Windows components.
Getting outlook express off of your SERVER is extremely difficult.
So why should I install Linux for my desktop OS only to discover that it installed SERVER software like Apache, sendmail, etc.? You think that the average user has any better luck purging his Linux desktop install of all of the unwanted server apps? How about getting rid of all of the idiotic install-by-default apps that the average Linux distro installs? Yeah, I really need Learn-Kanji flash cards installed by default.
> I personally thing RedHat made the right choice
> in ditching a line of business that was
> dragging it down.
I can understand someone saying (as in speech) "thing" instead of "think". But mistyping it?
The letters g and k aren't even on the same side of the keyboard!
Maybe it's because of too much to drink (as in beer)?
Apple has been shipping its OS X releases with compilers from the very beginning; no "special orders" required. See here or here for some useful information.
Now it's clear why recent Red Hat distributions more and more reminded me of Windows. Blocking MP3 was also a clear sign, that something wrong is going inside RH. Remeber how in the late 80-ies Microsoft very skillfully compromised Unix 'making' their ugly Xenix? So that everybody 'could see for oneself' that Unix is not 'mature' comparing to DOS and Windows 1.0 (!!!). It's a real pleasure to see how really ingenious these Redmond guys are in such tricks to conceal there inability to create something really good and new! I only wonder when Red Hat started playing decoy-duck for Microsoft. Perhaps when its management decided not to pay much to smart developers capable of making a really user-friendly Linux distribution. But I believe it will appear soon, cause Linux is really mature, if Microsoft resorted to such devices.
As I read further - lacking support for journalled filesystems, SMP and memory protection? B'duh?!
The rest of the post is too insane for my brain to contemplate.... especially the bit about no access to source code.
I want whatever he was smoking when he made this post.
The future is bright, though the road will be twist.
-- forgive me my poor Engl...
My latest adventure in Linux has been atrocious. No doubt I'll eventually get it to work. But christ it makes MS-DOS and windows 3.11 with trumpet winsock look sleek and elegant by comparison. It is unbelievable that in more than ten years so little progress has been made in just installing and organizing linux. From all the evangilizing here on slashdot I might have expected it to not only magically transform my computers into beautiful, cheap paragons of utilitarian ideals at last given form, but cure male pattern baldness and make my penis bigger. This is hardly the case, nor did I expect it to be. But aside from a GUI that does some configuration sometimes correctly, it's barely any different from slackware 2.0. There's more crap to stick on top of it, in an equally hodge-podge way.
Once the people putting together the distributions, and developing the platform decide to think about how people outside of their little clan would intuitively do things, and discard some of their less useful conventions they might find their audiance grow. But my God, it's like abandoning a steel k-bar for a flint hand ax.
I know you say you hate everyone.
But I was noticing that you seem to reply to my posts occaisionally, and I just wanted to give you a hug. This indicated by the Blue Bubble next to my name.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Outlook Express has big holes in it _today_. Still. My BulkBox has the worms to prove it.
Spoofed x-mailer lines from spam SMTP trojans prove nothing.
I just haven't had time to fuck around getting it to work...
My sentiments exactly. That's why I gave Windows the heave. I've been using Linux and Solaris at work for 6 and 9 years respectively and RedHat Linux at home for 2 years. With all the trouble I had getting modems and other devices to work under Windows, I wish I had switched years earlier. Too bad RedHat is throwing away the brand.The truth of the matter is a well designed OS shouldn't even be noticable, it should just work behind the scenes and let you do what you need to do.
Ah! So your an OS X fan, too!Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Sorry for the lifted star wars quote. Anyway, Red Hat and others worked hard on the desktop side of Linux during which time the M$ marketing machine worked hard to convince people that Linux was a server only OS. Now by ditching the desktop Red Hat has turned the past few years worth of anti-linux on the desktop FUD into pro-linux in the datacenter advertisement. I think it is a smooth move. They now look committed to what MS (whom people oddly trust) says is their strength.
Rock on!
By any chance, are you a Red Hat user?
That's not what I got out of it at all. Christensen's point was that established companies in a given market are good at making incremental improvements their existing product lines, because that's what gets rewarded by their existing customers. They are also good at (and rewarded for) moving up-market, as their products improve, to take bussiness away from "the big guys" who have (from their perspective) grown fat & lazy on the high profit margins they have been able to take in the absense of scrapy competition.
But they are vulnerable to competition from smaller companies willing to sell inferior products for lower margins since it is never in their immediate interests to challenge them. Thus the small fry comming up from the bottom can grow to the point where they are unstopable. Think mainframes --> minicomputers --> microcomputers --> ...
The significance here is that by moving up market, RH is leaving a niche which some other OSOS distro can fill, but that market will not go to MS for the simple reason that there is nothing they can afford to offer it.
-- MarkusQ
For the mayority of users, ie those who just need wordprocessing, spreadsheets, webbrowsing and mayby some cd burning, mp3 playing and movie playing, linux is a perfectly fine solution.
I dunno what the guy was smoking, but to my mind, the above is what the average desktop market is, and linux is ready for it. All it lacks to go really mainstream is games.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Maybe not Red Hat but Knoppix/Aurox/Mandrake is.
:)
I can give an example of my girlfriend (English major) who prefers galeon and Ximian over Windows 98 + IE.
And example of my Mom who prefers Linux because it was too hard for her to deal with viruses/worms etc. Installing MS patches was way too much for her. Linux just works.
Both of them know almost nothing about computers. And both of them switch to Windows to watch a movie or use Word but apart from that they use mostly Linux.
My Mom even learnt to disconnect network cable before switching to Windows.
another nugget of wisdom from twit[er].
Sounds like you are frustrated by your own incapability.
Why not spend 30 minutes to get it running and then you don't have to touch it for the rest of your life. By the time it took you to whine that post of yours, you'd fixed the problem half way.
I had trouble with my own digital camera, a Minolta F100. I configured the kernel with USB support (as I hadn't needed those before). Then I googled, found what to add to a file, added the stuff, compiled the kernel, installed the USB software and never had to worry about it anymore.
Wireless networking is a bit of a problem...because the manufactures got cheap and created WinWirless cards [software work just like winmodems] and can't legally give out code because of how they wrote it won't comply with the law to be OSS!
I thought somebody had a legal dvd player for sale...and there were some Lindows PCs with bios players.
As far a linux recipe programs...they're only for code...sorry.
Specifically, lack of vendor support.
It continues to amaze me how few hardware manufacturers are interested in taking advantage of the Open Source / Free Software Community (TM) to provide new drivers and improve their existing ones.
Allolex
Avoid using it at all costs.
This RH guy is just totally clueless. There's not really much more to say. It might all be taken out of context a bit, but even so - this is foot in the mouth as bad as it gets.
This guy ignores these realities:
1. The parts of linux which are "not ready for the desktop" are the things needed on the enterprise desktop too. Things like cut and paste, and printing to name a couple. If RedHat does not approach these issues its enterprise desktops will not be polished in the near future.
2. RedHat is not big enough to take on Microsoft on its own, as plenty of companies have found. Its latest announcements have given weapons to Microsoft which can be used on decision makers and what's more, has alienated the community of individuals and companies which have created nearly all of RedHat's products.
3. There currently are in fact a lot of people using linux on the desktop, and RedHat seems to forget that ALL current RedHat customers started by using the RedHat desktop!! Does RedHat imagine they can throw ALL of their current customers into the trash and start from scratch?
4. Mac OS X is unix-based, unlike Microsoft Windows. It would make far more sense for RedHat to recommend that home users use Macs, which are easier to use, more advanced, and could also run unix applications, than to recommend Windows, which you can only trust to further muddy the waters of incompatibility. The less people use Windows in any sense, the better for RedHat.
5. RedHat has now officially alienated its customers, the producers of most of its products, the competitors which up to now had been in league with RH against Microsoft, and everybody smart enough or interested enough to recommend RedHat desktop software and use it. If they thought it would be ready in a couple years, they would not be dropping it now. After all the recent announcements about product life cycles and not selling desktop software, and now this total backstabbing, I am losing interest in RedHat and see no reason to recommend their enterprise line anymore though I would have done so in an instant a couple months ago. RedHat has forgotten how it got started and why they have gotten this far. Even in large companies and governments, the decision makers need to be on their side and this guy is RedHat's own worst enemy.
6. The linux desktop has made many strides recently and will continue to get better, no thanks to RedHat. Possibly this and the Novell news will help other distros become more unified and give some more impetus to fixing the desktop. But this is mainly going to happen because people want to invest their time/money in making it happen and RedHat's lack of interest in such development indicates it is not interested in supporting linux's future. Possibly Fedora will take off, but something tells me it is not going to be because of this suit. U.S. corporate culture has breeded a whole generation of smiling, heartless executives who imagine that getting the numbers right will spell success. I feel ashamed.
7. Slashdot, arguably one of RedHat's best free PR outlets, has turned from RedHat lovers to FSCK RedHat (that's FUCK REDHAT! for nontechies). RedHat can kiss their allies goodbye. FUCK EM!
Ratners shares bombed, customers stayed away in their drives, Ratner stepped down and the company was rebranded.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I removed RedHat yesterday and installed SuSE (I just wanted to test something). I'm a systems integrator doing Linux HA systems, used to be RedHat-based.
In PHB speak: 'In the light of recent developments...', SuSE will stay and I'll port my solution to it (porting is kind of boasting anyway).
I kind of understand the ratio behind this quote, if they (RedHat) can't deliver it, bad-mouthing is the way to go.
SuSE delivers both, at the moment at least.
my 2 cents
But last distros are not meant to be run that hardware. You should run either specific distros that are meant to run on that, or take an older version.
BTW I ran Red Hat 5.something on my P133 32MB back in the day with the enlightenment version of the time and still is most responsive for most tasks than Red Bloat 9's GNOME on my Athlon XP2400+. Give up on bluecurve. Check blackbox, enlightenment, XFCE or the like.
I agree most of the "important" distros have headed for windows-like (or worse) bloat.
Free as in buy one, get one free
The parent poster writes:
The use of source packages would suggest that they contain fixes and workarounds for bugs present in the pure tarballs code or documented build processes.
If you are referring to the grandparent post, he was trying to configure Mozilla in some non-vanilla way.
I suggested that he should have grabbed the source RPMs and used that as a base to build a non-vanilla Mozilla RPM on.
Mozilla (like many popular projects) have a large variety of configurations and architectures it can work on - everything from OpenBSD to Microsoft Windows. Odds are that the default configuration will not be correct for the OS, libraries, and setup you want. Distributations exist (in part) to solve this problem, highly intelligent people with an in-depth knowledge of the target platform configure the raw source (occasionally adding patches as well) and build binaries for that distributation from the changed source. By grabbing the targetted source packages for your distribution (via src rpms or your distribution's equiv.), you are thus in command of a source that should cleanly compile on your platform.
Auto-config isn't perfect. It cannot replace a learned human being for making decisions.
As for patches, there are plenty of patches that exist that are either too specialized for the main tree, too experimental, or have been implimented into a later or developmental branch but not the main branch.
As for bugs, I do not know how Redhat's bug reporting system works. Debian's bug reporting system tries to submit fixes to the upstream (read: original) maintainer in order for the fixes to be merged with the mainstream source.
As for documentation, consider this example: The amount of documentation concerning the X windows system is huge. Compiling an app such as Mozilla for a certain X setup is not a trivial task. Should the Mozilla project's documentation include hundreds of pages of information on different X Windows, Microsoft Windows, etc? Documentation which is a chore to maintain and forever at risk of being outdated? Or should it explain the options in such a way that an expert can understand them, and allow that expert to configure it for the rest of us?
Just my $.02
The question "is Linux ready for the desktop" isn't the rigth one. Since the vision of a desktop computer in open source community (and generaly for nerds and geek, even if they don't use an open source OS) isn't what I can call a desktop computer for a real "end user".
Most of user that I meet are only using their computer for one or two monolitic applications or for game. They don't need a complete multi-user OS like a Unix system. Even if linux (or *BSD) now comes with smart and usable GUIs, the main usability problem is the complex users/administrator separation.
I think a good step to a real open source desktop OS is to integrate an open source kernel into a simplified userland base where the main administrative taskes are hidden (in fact we need an "open MacOS X").
Whithout this simplification, no "end-users" will ever be interested in an OS. In fact, this needs seems interessant to me, since it reflect the fact that general OS, as general purpose languages, may not be a realistic goal.
Marwan Burelle co-Head of EPITA's System Laboratory
All Linux distros despite version and any tweaking refused to let me connect to my ISP, that uses a very easy script and log in sequence and also simple user and pass authentication. Now I have had broadband for 3 years and I can finally reach the net. All distros refused to recognise my laptop's sound card. On my desktop computer Mandrake 9.2 finally managed to work, with mediocre sound quality and totally screwed up volume settings and after some heavy tweaking. Now my laptop is stolen and I gave up my tries to use Linux on my desktop, after 5 years of trying. I use Windows 2000, get good sound quality, apps that work, stability etc etc. But I will never use Win2k as a server, that is where Linux and BSDs excel. With the way big business is now destroying Linux' possibilities (RH and KDE as well as the latest statement from RH for example) to expand to the desktops I predict Linux will not gain any mentionable share in the desktop market in the enxt 10 years. I think that MS balancing between acceptable and unacceptable user tracking and SW bloating will give enough momentum for a desktop alternative to emerge in around 10 years. This may, or may not, be a Linux or BSD (including Mac) derivative. But X has to be dumped and replaced before this can happen. [i originally posted this reply in the wrong thread, doh]
Although I haven't used it yet, you might want to check out Vector Linux. It's built on top of Slackware and I'm planning on installing it soon. They aim at being small, fast and light weight.
http://www.vectorlinux.com/
Also, lemme add the XFce works wonders on older machines without sacrificing a lot of modern niceness (anti-aliased fonts). The file manager blows... but hey.
I use Gentoo most of the time and while I love it, compiling KDE on an old PII is... yeah. It pretty much sucks. I still use Slack on my older machines... it's not the nicest but when you get everything working it's sweet.
The article does not say that he claimed Linux wasn't ready for "the desktop", he claimed that Linux wasn't ready for "home use". ... which I'd agree with, for the reasons he states. I'd love to recommend Linux to my Dad, but I can't right now -- to do so would be to create an arduous support role for myself (field constant "I've broken it" calls, or to be a BSOD to his luser on his own hardware (keep the root password for myself, insist that all software installation be done by me).
The average home user *likes* to be using the mainstream platform; s/he would *not* be happy with the idea that you can't pick up a made-with-macromedia edutainment title off the shelf at a supermarket, pop it in the CD drive and run it.
OTOH "the desktop" is a completely different niche. I believe Linux is 100% ready for a vast swathe of office desktops -- there are millions of people out there earning a crust doing nothing but word processing and working with email. Don't give them root, make them a locked-down desktop, and you can give them a Linux desktop they can be productive on, and that's cheap. Knoppix proves what can be done.
I remember as if it was just yesterday how people, non geeks, had to mess up with autoexec.bat or config.sys files and later on with *.ini files to make things work on their Windows machines.
For some strange reason some people see it as normal that back then Joe User was mightly prepared to do those tasks, but now somehow normal people should be assumed to be stupid and incapable to handle a CLI like the one provided by MSDOS back then.
The average user always had and most probably always will have to do some tweaking on his system to make it work the way he wants. One size fits all is obviously not the right solution and the people willing to live with that will always have a mediocre computing experience.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
To each one his own, I can't accept as good balance a forced cycle of upgrades and obsolescence impossed by a company convicted of using illegal tacticts to prop-up its market share.
Perhaps my moral and social standards are too high and I should join the fray of whatever works without mattering the consequences.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Umm i think its important to note -
Microsoft is STILL SUPPORT Windows NT 4.
Redhat cuts off support yearly.
Who is getting the patches now?
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Dern. Now where am i supposed to get a good Unix OS suitable for both desktop and server use?
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
My dad has run Debian with KDE and OpenOffice.org on his desktop machine and his laptop machine for a year now. He had no prior experience with *nix before starting to use this, but the only question he has asked was "How do I add the sender of an e-mail to my address book?", to which I replied "Have you tried right-clicking the e-mail?", to which he replied "A-ha!". I did spend an entire afternoon installing his printer, digital camera, writing a Windows-like dial-up system tray applet, setting up file synchronization to his laptop, importing all his settings from Windows (most importantly bookmarks and e-mails), installing Flash and Java for Konqueror, and make everything super-smooth, but that only means the installation is hard. For day-to-day use, he thinks it's way better than Windows.
Redhat is simply : ;
1 - getting away from the Linux/desktop market
2 - attempting to destroy it with FUD, saying that there is actually no such market.
Even an intern at microsoft could have done better.
I run debian on a pentium pro with 32 megs of ram (granted: no X, just apache/ssh). I also run it on a pII/233 with 128 megs of ram. It performs well on both. Up until a year ago, I ran it on a 486/100 with 24 megs of ram. It was usable on that system (faster than windows 95 anyway). The price you pay for performance is installation woes. Debian is a worse bitch than your last girlfriend, but only for installation. Once it's up and running, it's great.
/etc/inetd.conf (or is that xinetd.conf? I forget, I don't use it anyway) and see if you need something that's in there. If not, just turn inetd off. Then I'd open /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 and disable any modules I don't need. Every little bit helps right?
Redhat competes against w2k, and as a result installs a lot of stuff you don't want on a low-end system. They should have a "this system is a slow mofo, install less crap" option in their installer.
If you want to speed up an existing install, I'd start by running pstree and finding out what everything you see does, and whether you really need it, then I'd take a look in
Also, not running KDE helps a lot. KDE is a slow piece of bloated ass. But it just happens to be a very smoothly designed slow piece of bloated ass, so you need to have good reasons not to use it (my pIII+ machines run it). I've found that the best thing you can do to speed up a linux install is to use windowmaker. It does all the things you really need (once you install the tray dockapp so gaim can tray itself in your windowmaker). Plus, it has that whole NeXT thing going on, which is such a cool look. And you can still run KDE and GNOME apps if you use an alternative window manager.
And if you're really desperate for speed (like I was on that 486), try pwm. It supports dockapps, it supports themeing, and it's less than 200k runtime. Nobody should ever need to run twm. Twm just sucks.
Oh, final thing, if you're still begging for speed, use opera. It's a lot smaller than firebird, galeon, or any of the other so-called slimmed down browsers. And for mail use sylpheed. It's fast, really fast (in fact, you might even want to use that on a fast system).
Note that the entire above post is why I agree that linux isn't ready for the home user. Linux needs more tweaking than windows to get running. It needs less tweaking to keep it running, but that's a whole other matter.
Apt is not a packaging system, it's a distribution system (and admittedly, a very good one). Dpkg on debian is widely regarded as the best packaging system, but not because dpkg is better than rpm (they're roughly equivalent), but because debian has the strongest policy of all distro's dictating exactly what standards packages need to comply with (it dictates where to put your files, how to do dependancies, how to integrate with the windowing system, how to run after-install scripts, and everything else involved with installation and configuration). Because a package that fails to comply with policy (even though it runs just fine) is regarded as buggy (and so does not get into debian stable), debian is the most well-polished distro out there package-wise. With polished I mean debian is very predictable, everything always works exactly the way you expect it to, there are no surprises. Now if the debian desktop and debian installer projects could bring that same level of polish to the desktop and installer I'd be really happy.
I believe the end-goal of the fedora project is to get this same level of polish to the easier to use redhat linux.
The family all used to complain that the Winboxen keep crashing, but mine don't - they thought I was hogging the good hardware!
Easy fix - exchangable HDs - the M/Cs with FreeBSD dont crash, and OpenOffice doesn't go berserk when you try to reformat tables, like MSWord.
Of course, none of our computers has a DVD player or sound card - they are COMPUTERS - we have a hifi to play music, and a TV to watch films.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Great news for Linux, we definitely need big champions behind us, and it definitely is a boost to our credibility that established companies like Novell and IBM are getting behind us. Let us all hope this will impress the major software company Microsoft, to invest aswell in Linux. Ahh... I'm so glad the dream of Linux is going the way we all want it to go....
Hip Hip Fucking Hurray
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Open" hardware and closed software. That's kind of balancing, even if MS wish they owned the hardware too.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'll agree that RedHat isn't ready for the desktop...
or server...
stock markup FraUDs.
@leased until the big flash occurs.
you know where to look/who to trust, with yOUR desktop, etc,,,?
And don't overlook Novell's networking roots.
I don't and that's what scares me. These are the people who brought us netware and kept real networking (TCP/IP) from hitting PC's until the mid 1990's, years later than it otherwise might have. The Novell aquisition of SuSE could be disastrous from the free software world.
an ill wind that blows no good
But Mandrake, Lindows, Xandros & Lycrois could really do a number if the worked together to package stuff like this across all their brands! Obviously, RedHat and SuSe are out now. ...and Michal Robertson does have the moxie to try something like that!
Come on, now.
Where's that spark, that flair, that verve--
that slashdot kneejerk response of naysaying of
anything anti-linux? (Yes, I'm on that bandwagon)
As a proud, card-carrying member of ABM (anything but microsoft) I say unto thee--
Repent! The doom of the ages is upon us! A major
distro distributor has sucked up to Microsoft!
Simply educating the godless is no longer enough.
The time of the Jihad has come.
Remember, folks. Pillage, then burn.
So, Windows XP won the war this time...
It's very stable and well designed, technicaly speaking.
Red Hat said "no more" to all us, Mandrake is on chapter 11, SuSE is going to join the SCO mess if they partners with Novell (aka Caldera, aka SCO), Debian is a mess and too restrictive when adding software (it sucks), Slackware doesn't want to come out from the infancy... so, in the Linux world: What else? Not too much to choose from.
I'm sorry, but I think that Linux time as we knew it, has ended.
The CEO is a bastard and Bill Gates's personal catamite.
Who cares about Redhat? There contribution to the community has been strong, but who would want to use there product, when Lindows is so much better??? ;-)
Easy guys, I put my pants on one leg at a time. The difference is after I put on my pants I make gold records!
Ok, they ditch their middle-ground product to focus on "enterprise" (business) and "fedora" (hobbiest) markets and then go and reccomend a specific competitor for the desktop?
He's entitled to his opinion, but he could have been more diplomatic by saying "RH doesn't match up well in the desktop market" instead of saying "you should use product X"
All signs indicate that RH is giving up on the desktop market.
I AM Joe Dummy. I run Lindows 4.0 on my Dell (Intel) laptop and I love it. The biggest install problem I had was getting the Click-N-Run feature to work and one email to Lindows customer service solved the problem. It seemed I didn't know what 'apt get' was. The laptop interfaces with my digital camera, my scanner, my USB mouse, my printers, and even though my DSL provider says I cannot use Linux, I do. No tweaking was required, unlike my Win2K machine which requires constant tweaking (right now my Win2K machine won't access the internet because of a registry error I can't find). My bank says I can't use Linux with online banking, but I do. I use graphics programs on Linux to do work similar to Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand. Sun Star Office is BETTER than Microsoft Office. I can burn CD's and access an external USB hard drive. What's the problem again?
RED HAT may not be ready for the desktop, but RED HAT isn't the only Linux out there. RED HAT must be smoking crack with Daryl again. Negative thinkers are the biggest obstacle Linux has to the desktop.
Joe Dummy
My enlightenment came when I set up windows box for myself to use as a work machine and it was crap.
The performance was crap, Internet Explorer has some stupid crap bugs (like turning off the status bar each time I press ctrl-N).
Yeah, its a small bug but it made it unusable for a major use for me, cos I like to surf without needing to turn the status bar on every two minutes. Thats crap I know, but Mozilla can do it.
Windows is cool, Bill loves it, Bill uses it, Bill can patch it, Bill work with it and play with it.
But I can't.
I always wonder why everybody trashes Linux for hw incompatibility. Missing drivers are are a reality in the Linux world, but Linux and other open source developers are not to blame for that situation. How many drivers had been reverse-engineered just to get those damn devices working? Lots of them. We should be thankful for those people who did the job. Not many companies provide specifications for their devices because it's considered as very confidential. Companies are just being ignorant.
I tried to get Yamaha to release some specs for my burner so that i can write a firmware uploader. Guess what? 7 emails 7 responses, no luck. "Please take your burner to a windows machine" to quote their reply.
Linux on desktop? Just works. It's been working for me for 3 years. There's a solution for everything(even multimedia, games). Some things however might need to be installed and configured before handing the computer to user joe.
I wonder how many mediaplayers windows users need for playing all those proprietary formats out there. Don't tell me you get one out of the box.
...after making statements like that.
Red Hat deserves to have users thumb their noses at them when, according to them, Linux IS ready for the desktop, which is when they'll introduce "New Coke". fsck that!
Tha's pure urban legend.
In the same way I am under the impression Windows always was some sort of joke (and I still feel that).
The linux desktop may look difficult to get to since you actually have to install it and to learn it while you were used with another paradigm.
The truth is that installing Linux is easier than installing Windows (on supported standard hardware), and learning how to use GNOME or KDE is in no way more difficult than learning the Windows GUI.
The fact that makes Windows easier is that it is already pre-installed by the vendor and most of the people were forced already into it. The fact that makes Linux better is that in the long run you spend much less (money AND time) for the same or better results. Of course, unless you are purely after games. So probably the Redhat suit thought about game playing when he talked about "desktop".
If I were RedHat, I would recommend Windows before Mac OS X, for two reasons:
1. Linux has a better chance of outdoing the Windows UI than it does the Mac UI.
2. Windows users are using x86 hardware, so they can more easily convert to Linux. (Yes, I know Mac users can use Linux too, but it's not RedHat)
Governements and institutions question wether is wise to use same OS software for the workplace and at home tied to a company that tries to be everything to everybody. By descouraging RH as a home/desktop solution it encourage institutions to adopt it as a office/workstation solution.
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
"The desktop" is uninteresting anyway. 99% of it is stuff I don't like and would rather not have to use. (Unfortunately people keep sending me these WP and spreadsheet attachments etc.) I'd be content to let MS Windows have the desktop if they'd stay out of my server room.
Killing Cancer With a reovirus
Come on guys. Ximian is a company, not an Outlook clone. They make Evolution which is an Outlook clone. Sheesh.
It's not really all that surprising to me, that someone at a Linux-related company would give such disconnected-from-reality advice. If Linux is the only OS you ever use, you probably start to get a distorted view of the outside world, and when something about it pisses you off, the first instinct is, "surely the rest of the world solved this problem years ago." Well, maybe the rest of the world really did solve whatever problem you're looking at, but it never got into the mainstream, and the solution died with OS/2 or MacOS 9 or AmigaOS or BeOS. Take a look at Windows and actually use it, before you leap to conclusions about it. It can be pretty shocking.
I bet Linux will be "ready for the desktop" many years before Windows ever gets there. (And when I look at the UI changes between Win2000 and WinXP, I think Microsoft is running away from that goal, not toward it. But I haven't looked at Longhorn yet.)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Maybe RedHat isn't ready for the desktop. But my mother thoroughly approves of her Debian/Gnome/Linux desktop. Yep, it's obscure and buggy at times, but oh-so-much-less than Macintosh or Windows. And at least Debian comes with lots of games preinstalled, while with Mac and Windows they are $10-$50 each, with obscure download and installation procedures.
and I'm sure this has been said somewhere in this discussion too, but oh well.
Anyone *here* can put linux on their desktop and get it to work great, so to us, sure, it's ready for the desktop.
But not to the average joe. Let's take wireless, for example. One of the most common cards is the Linksys WPC11. You can't just pop it in, configure your LAN settings, and be on your way. You really need to fiddle with a lot of crap to get it to work.. and that's just to get your machine online.
Granted, other things work like a charm, like Open Office, MSGing tools like Gaim, etc... but overall for the average user, it's such a pain to get hardware working properly.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Windows is usable, Standard GNU/Linux distros aren't.
That's nuts. I'm writting this on a perfectly usable RH9 laptop that I haven't tweaked in the slightest. It came with everything installed and it worked right out of the box.
It will never become popular if it isn't usable.
Nuts again. Cell phones became popular long before they were really usable, because people wanted to believe that they would work.
My mom can open and save a file in Windows... my mom does not care to do a chmod first... (And believe me, I've done the experiemnt...)
What in the heck does she need to chmod for? And could she copy a hidden file into a write protected folder on Windows?
-- MarkusQ
P400 with 64MB and Redhat 9 + Gnome thrashed disk like mad while the P100 32MB Win95 machine it replaced was much much better
So, you're comparing an OS from 2003 with one from 1995 - EIGHT YEARS previously.
Gee, that's a realisitic comparison.
Try putting XP on your P400/64MB and see how *it* likes it!
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
Enough said. Linux doesn't have deals, therefore lots of hardware doesn't work immediatly, therefore my mom can't get it to work, therefore she uses windows. Period.
User phoned up, "I can't minimise anything and can't switch windows, can you fix it?", after the 15 minute wait while he raised the trouble ticket, I ssh'd into the login server he was logged into, killed gnome-panel, nautilus and metacity. The session manager restarted them and he was working again...
He couldn't log out because he had something he'd been working on all day and hadn't saved it. I saved the business $500 right there and for a business which is only 10% profitable, that's $5,000 less sales they have to make to remain as profitable.
The sysadmin doesn't explain how to deal with troubles. They just fix them. Course Sun could do with putting a more up to date version of Gnome into Solaris.
Linux is so ready for the corporate desktop.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This sounds like a story that should be on www.bbspot.com !! wtf mate?
RedHat has been coopted by the marketeers and the VC's. This is yet another example of the kind of Business Plan of the month approach that has killed many innovative companies. All of the old management team of RH are gone, and they've been replaced with a team that is clearly willing to lose both marketshare and potential profits.
Having jumped from an IT ship on the way down, I was depressed to here of RH's new enterprise only business plan and spent hours talking to clueless marketeers about it last Spring. Bottom line, they don't listen. They think that their market is as clueless as they are.
Luckily, Debian is on the way up even as RH begins it's crash.
As far as the media player thing, WMP and Quicktime are often pre-installed on machines and will play 90% of the media out there.
The other 10% being Real, and from what I can tell a lot of people are starting to phase out the use of Real on websites.
But, I digress. Xine is a very nice media player for Linux, and has played everything I threw at it. Hopefully the DV playback gets a little better though.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
You horrible, unspeakable bastard! I'm going to see that in 3 hours. You better be messing with me.
"When I am king, you will be first against the wall..."
Sounds like linux is going to focus on the server market, while windows will get to keep the home/desktop markets... divide and conquer? i wonder if there were any "negotiations" between Microsoft and Red Hat before this "decision" came out? in all actuality, Red Hat's Desktop was (is) pretty damn complete (i've seen it work flawlessly on old hardware as well as on brand new dell laptops...) IMHO they were Microsoft's biggest threat...
Dude, either you're trolling, you work for RedHat, or you need to put down the crack pipe for a few minutes.
(No, I don't run Debian. I don't even particularly like Debian or apt-get.)
Maybe if you make a straight numerical count of features, RPM has more than APT... but if you look at the features you actually need to run an OS, and how easy it is to use them, RPM is a terrible piece of software design.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I guess this kind of comparison is what makes the MACs seem much more expensive :). Yes, I know I can build a 'white box' for much less, even more so if I only put in there what I care for.
:), however, If i ever buy a laptop it will probably be an iBook)
However, I canNOT get a brand name (Dell, Gateway, HP, IBM,...) machine for much less than an Apple. There might be a small price differential (Apple 10-20% more expensive than PC), but it is NOt huge.
Most people buy brand name. Apple is not a bad deal for most people. (Of course, I build my own, so they are terribly expensive for me, which sucks cause I like them
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've not paid much attention to "name brand" PC systems, ever. My first system was homemade. It makes no sense to me, when the price differential is a matter of magnitude of 2, and the quality is significantly less (due to cutting corners). Component manufacturers have to compete on value, because their desired market takes into account things such as quality, generally.
I've been wanting a laptop for quite a while. The iBook and powerbook appeal to me, to a degree; however, there's just something about the trendyness of apple products I hate - mainly personified by the attitudes of the users. "Apples are so much better than PCs", "PCs are slower than macs" (even when they're not), and just assinine comments like, "I bet that laptop doesn't have bluetooth".
I recently ran into such a situation. I was in class, and I started asking an (obviosuly) proud ibook owner about his new toy, asking him if I could possibly look at it and touch it, since I'd not yet really seen them before. I mentioned that I think I might be getting a Fujitsu lifebook P2xxx (which is currently no longer sold, in favor of the P5000) instead, and he got all defensive, like I'd offended him personally. I guess that's the kind of response one gives when they've made a large (to them) technology purpose: you know the world I speak of, where computers are something for work, and disposable income is for luxury vehicles, new furniture, and fancy status symbols. At any rate, he started to grill me about the statistics of the laptop. No, it didn't have bluetooth. No, it only has 10.5" diagnal display (or something like that). But it was about an inch smaller on one demension, and half an inch smaller on another (he had an iBook 15" iirc). The fact that the laptop I mentioned was a "PC" (transmeta processor), and could get 10 hours of use from a single battery really pissed him off, though.
So basically, I won't buy a new mac simply on philosophy. Apple users don't know what they're talking about, mostly, and largely base their arguements on conjecture and hearsay. They're like illiterate religious types trying to convert scientists, to a degree. Sure, there might be some truth in what they have to say, but their unintelligent approach drives the "scientists" away. I have yet to meet a diehard mac user that wasn't either severely deficient of a likeable personality, or simply didn't have a single logical thought in their head. Worse than even your average PC geek.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Try Lindows 4.0. I am Joe-user and got sick of crappy MS operating systems. I have tried 98se-xp professional and am unwilling to support them anymore than my tax dollars already support them.
Mr. Szulik we clearly disagree. I personally have been using Linux at home for about as long as your company has existed. I vaguely recall reading that someone calling themself Red Hat had just come out with something called a "Mother's Day Release", which I tried. Per http://fedora.redhat.com/about/history/ this would have been in May '95. Back then my home desktop was multiboot with my third iteration of Slackware as primary (never did get SLS to work). I switched to Red Hat as primary with your version 2.1. Iirc around then I was also checking out Linux Universe, Yggdrasil, and Debian. Oh, and I did still have a dos partition, mainly for playing Harpoon.
Red Hat Linux is now in use at several companies because I would become frustrated with Windows, bring in my Linux cd's from home. My productivity would increase because for me Linux is much easier to use than Windows. This "infection" would spread to co-workers desktops, their home systems, the company servers, management desktops, secretaries, laptops, etc. I have also introduced it to several friends and family members, including my 87 year old grandmother (who also finds it much easier to use than Windows).
Red Hat's profit in these cases has been via off-the-shelf boxed sets and RHN subscriptions. Ditto your costs; I doubt any of them ever called or emailed you. Your enterprise offerings are too expensive for this group. They won't and/or don't want to downgrade to Windows XP. Judging from the web page Fedora will release often; security and stability are very much in question. We'll see.
I understand the business reasons for your company's decision. I hope y'all understand that by cutting the expense of the clueless consumer low end you are also effectively abandoning the SMB market. In future I expect my efforts and word of mouth advertising will go toward promoting your competitors, eg Debian and SuSE (Novell).
Red Hat has been good for FOSS since well before the acronym existed. I wish you well.
Spoofed x-mailer lines from spam SMTP trojans prove nothing.
I was referring to worms which vector by insecure embedable scripting and binary autoexecution - both appear to still be problems in Outlook.
Sorry if I wasn't more clear on that.
I love the counterpoint and as they say, no pain...no gain >;-) And what I enjoy the most about using nix is that it comes with all the things you will need music support some enertainment yadda yadda.
You have been sig'd
Fact, you say? I saw not a smidgeon of fact, but merely misinformation. As I said earlier, most mac users I've known are clueless and base all their arguements on hearsay. You're a good example.
Hard drives don't seem to last like they used to, but that's not specific to PCs really, since Macs use the same drives (not IDE, btw, but ATA100, SATA and other modern ATA based busess).
Sure, drives don't last as long as they used to. However, until recently, all drives - yes, "ATA based busess" - have been IDE (or SCSI, but we're not talking about that). ATA100 is indeed an IDE drive, believe it or not.
Your blatant ignorance of the things you've just read is astounding. Did you not see me state that the 2k$ dollar system I menioned would be something I could build for myself? I don't give a rat's ass about alienware or any other rubbish. I can, and have, built a fairly top of the line PC for 500$. Not "the fastest components possible for everything" but damned near enough for me. THe 1k$ system I spec'd out a couple days ago for you to read about - well, having just read on apple's store the specs for their dual G5 tower, and having seen benchmarks for that very system, I can reasonably say that the system I spec'd out can perform quite well in standing against that dual G5 - for a 3rd of the price.
BTW, if your hardware is going bad that quickly, you need to figure out what you're doing wrong. Never have I even heard of hardware going bad that quickly - unless you're mishandling it or buying shit and not knowing it. I'd suspect both of those things, after having had this one-sided discussion with you.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
You keep saying I don't know what I'm talking about, but then you spew out a bunch of cluelessness...
ATA100 and SATA and other similar technologies are RELATED to IDE, but they are not IDE as they incorporate features that the original IDE did not.
You've built a top of the line PC for $500? Prove it. I call bullshit. You're a terrible liar. And then you say it's not the fastest around, blah, blah, blah, insert lame ass excuse for your 'top of the line box' not being top of the line...
So, you can build a machine that will hold it's own with the dual G5 for 1 grand, eh? Prove it. Run the exact same benchmarks and when the Mac blows it's doors off, STFU, tard.
My hardware doesn't go bad that often. But sometimes it does. I've been building boxes for over 10 years. Unlike YOU, I actually know wtf I'm doing and talking about.
Thank you for your troll. Did it really take you six days to think it up and/or type it, or were you just hoping that if you waited long enough you could get in some unsubstantiated linux bashing without getting called on it?
To wit:
- Your first "sentence" is a non sequitur; apart from that, I beg to differ with your claim that "windows beats the pants of linux." In my experience, the beating goes the other way.
- I am sorry if my use of the phrase "a few years ago" threw you. I know our perception of time changes as we age; to me, two decades seems like a few years ago while to you it may well seem a lifetime.
- Your third, forth and fifth "sentences" are gibberish, laced with ad hominem attacks. What little meaning there seems to be ("linux should not come with source; rather, the source should be available from some repository") I disagree with.
- Your sixth sentence is clear enough, but I disagree with it, both in point and implication. No one is "asking" users to compile anything, but I see no harm in doing so. What seems frightening and alien to this generation may well seem commonplace to the next, provided that there is some advantage to it. One might as well say that the common man will never accept the horseless carriage if they are expected to learn how to put that smelly fuel into it themselves.
- Your seventh string of words abruptly terminated by a period is meaningless.
- The eighth sentence is mostly harmless.
- The ninth and final sentence shows your lack of understanding of the software industry. Very few people are trying to "port" applications from other operating systems to run under linux. Instead, they are writing applications that run under linux to do things that they need done. If these seem similar to the applications written for other operating systems it is because the needs of the users are similar. This is the same thing that happens under any operating system.
Thanks again for the troll, & tell Bill we said "Hi".-- MarkusQ