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IBM and Its Thoughts on Desktop Linux
Knuckles writes: "According to c|net, IBM will give desktop Linux a thumbs up at the Desktop Linux Conference in Boston on Monday. Sam Docknevich of IBM's Global Services group will give a speech titled, "The Time is Now for Linux on the Desktop." It seems that IBM will not go for the multi-purpose desktop, though, but for machines performing narrowly defined functions (kiosks etc.). However, basic office workstation seem to be included in this definition, according to C|Net" And in a classic case of the right-hand not knowing what the left-hand is doing, Realistic_Dragon adds: "IBM was leading the words of Red Hat's CEO in comments to the UK government last year saying that '...open source was not ready for the desktop'.
IBM is for the corporation. It can be remotely managed, its stable, all they need is office and email that does not get boggged down with MS Virii.
This is a little OT, but since they are so upbeat, I have to report that kernel used in Suse 9.0 has problems with IBM's own ThinkPads. Pressing the Fn button causes keventd() to go crazy eating up 100% CPU and the computer has to be painfully and slowly rebooted.
Boo on the original posting!
This has nothing to do with open source on the home user's desktop.
The article "Red Hat: Stick with Windows at home" describes why home users should stick with windows (or macs or whatever open source.)
This article is dealing with linux on the desktop when a system needs to give its users a closed, locked-down interface!
Apples meet oranges.
Davak
The GNU licence does allow a supplier to charge for
services. All they gotta do is provide source.
siggy played guitar
I don't want to look like I'm defending IBM but if you read the quoted article from The Register carefully, you'll notice that IBM said that OSS was not ready for the desktop in 2002. It was because of the delay of the British Parliamentary Commitee in charge of revealing the study that we came to hear about it till now. Yet, I must agree that this news, and the their recent investment in Novell makes IBM look bad.
R.It's not that hard. Don't make the user an administrator takes care of 90% of it, and some judiciously applied NTFS permissions take care of the rest. It's getting to be a pretty tired argument, for those of use who've been using NT since 3.51 securing workstations isn't a big deal.
Now, if you're talking about Win 9x/ME, I absolutely agree. They have no place being anywhere that requires even a modicum of security.
You got the first part right - add a new PCI card, but I haven't had to install anything after that - it's automatically recognized and available. And, yes, before I buy hardware, I make sure it is supported in Linux.
Been doing that all the time - I have bluetooth, USB camera, portable USB storage, and a USB camera. They all work as I expect them, supported by vareity of apps, and no, I don't have to edit
As opposed to - click - oops,
As opposed to what? I insert a CD, start a CD player program of my choice and hit play. OR, start a ripper of my choice and click rip.
Yes, download and install Ogle if it doesn't come with your distro. Windows doesn't come with a DVD player (that decrypts) either - you have to shell out money to get WinDVD, or some other software unless such software came with your video card or drive.
I'm sure I don't understand but this happens to me all the time - I drop in a CD-R into my CD-RW drive, start Konqueror, select directories/files I want to burn - right-click - create CD with K3b. And no, I didn't have to recompile the kernel, mess with boot options, install scsi driver, or anything else. That's how it worked out of the box. I'm sure I am missing something from what you are saying.
I have to admit - I was thinking about getting a TV tuner card, but I haven't purchased one yet. So I cannot give you specifics on how this works.
As I already said, I haven't had to compile, recompile or type in anything in the console to do any of the above tasks.
Well, I guess, it is ready then. It surely has been ready for me - I've been using Linux on my desktop exclusively.
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If Linux is to crash on that things, I'll gladly give it a try and would like to give it a try. Maybe Linux is not ready for that stuff - we don't know. But what we know: Windows is not ready for them, for sure!
Linux is useful in some of the circumstances you mention, and it's been proven. Ever gone to a Regal cinema? All their cash registers run linux. They're nice little systems, come from the manufacturer compactly configured with a LCD touch screen, and the hard drive and motherboard componenets are all in the base of the thing. They've modified linux for their needs, and the boxes will only boot up into the cash register application. You have to have a keyboard to bybass it, but they don't come with one at the theaters (a standard PS/2 keyboard connector is on them for maintenance, as well as a special port for an external floppy drive, but these are kept at central support, not in the theater.)I know about them because I did some scripting under a contractor for them that modified the bootup to do a totally automated fsck, repairing any errors by default without user intervention. That solved one of their problems they had been having. (Namely that when fsck found errors, the register would have to be taken out of service until it could be fixed by central support.) From what I understand, Regal has been expanding on their linux use since then in fact, so there's no telling what all you see in their theaters that run it.
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Unless you're a total Linux zealot, you'd see that it's not ready for the business desktop. If it can't inter-op with other Windows desktops with ease (and don't go on about open office, evolution, etc...they're buggy and not proven at all), then it's not ready.
Depends on the circumstances, if you're a business deciding to migrate away from Windows you'll be fine. I had entire labs of nothing but Linux running at a large university engineering dept and we had no problems with them and the classes that stuck to just linux. If a business goes to all linux and Open Office/Evolution/Etc., they'll likely be just fine and dandy, and IT/IS can make sure that the most stable versions of each app is used on the machines, only upgrading when a more stable version is released.Of course under Windows, there's not much you can say about stability, as BSODs can occur for no discernable reason at random, the OS tends to chew up resources, requiring periodic reboots to keep the system useable, applications that refuse to work properly in a multi-user envioronment (without everyone having administrator privledges), and of course the ever present threat of viruses galore.
You don't have to be a linux zealot to see that Linux can do fine as a business desktop in many circumstances. Would I recommend it for a small Mom & Pop business? Hell no. For a big Fortune 500 company with a knowledgeable IT/IS dept? Sure thing!
I definitely agree it's not ready for home use though.
Actually, they're both paying homage to a much older bit of propaganda: One God, One Church, One Bishop. Meaning that in light of the unity of both of those bodies, the Church should be ruled by the Bishop of Rome as the Western Church wanted it and not by a council of equal bishops as the Eastern church would have it.
What in the world are you using? LFS? Gentoo? Why are you compiling gaim? I've never compiled gaim myself and I've been a Linux and gaim user for five years now.
.exe you got from download.com than selecting a program from a list in synaptic and telling it to install doesn't mean that you can't be retrained in all of 5 minutes. I sure did that with a friend of mine and he had no troubles installing the software that came with his distro. Learn to use the tools that are there for newbies and you'll be fine. It's not really so hard, and I can personally attest to this because the learning curve has dropped significantly since I started using Linux. It's ready for those who are willing to use it.
If you sit a user down at a windows box, you'll never see them say "I want to customize the UI of this thing, give me a different window manager now!" They'll just use what's there. In the case of linux, if it's KDE2 then they'll use that. If it's KDE3 then they'll use that. If it's fvwm then they'll likely have some trouble until you show them how to work it. My largely computer illiterate friends had no troubles at all with windowmaker or icewm.
And as for dependencies, use your distro properly! Debian, Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE, ad infitum will have programs to properly manage depenancies so you don't have to. This problem was solved ages ago. apt and RPM were written well before I started using Linux, so it's not like they haven't been around out in the open for you to find.
Sure, maybe this or that distro might not have everything perfectly set up the way you want it, but then again neither does windows initially. Things still have to be installed, and just because you might be more used to double clicking on some random
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Now, I agree with you. I honestly do. It's these things, in part, that are holding off "Joe Sixpack" mass-adpotion of Linux as their Desktop OS.
But Windows can't do half of these, either.
Oh Gods. The amount of times in Windows that this has brought me up short. Though, admitedly, more so with older versions and newere hardware. or certain hardware-makers making their products all so different that a member of the same hardware "family" needs a whole other driver.
True, with Windows you can usually use Windows update or a websearch to find the driver. But this causes problems if it's your LAN or Modem that you don't have the right driver for.
(Or for a work/school environment where all your desktop PCs have a non-standard NIC,so it's pointless having the drivers on the network and they're always the ones where the drivers won't fit on a floppy)
Windows might run USB devices easier than Linux, but still not easy enough. *fume*
Damn! Needs a new codec. Damn! Needs another new codec. Double-damn, sodding proprietary-format that is the only way the company-X releases the files. Arse! Codec #5 corrupted the way stuff in Codec #4 plays.
Windows still doesn't quite win on this, either. There are still one or two things (usually networking-related) where I have to use the Windows command-line.
Though, it does have to be said that if Windows was a new upcoming OS rather than "what everyone uses", this would work against MS's favour.
But, yeah, whilst the prevalence of Windows means that these thigns don't really harm Windows' use (at the moment, anyway...), they're certainly going to slow down the takeup of Linux by non-geeks.
TiggsTiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
Um... compile most of your own software?
I'm a gentoo user, so I do that, albeit not manually; if you use any other major distribution, you will -very rarely- have to compile any software, if ever. Packages? Please tell me you were joking.
Binary packages that are statically linked work perfectly well; only kernel modules need recompiles between kernel versions. Dynamically linked binary packages work as long as you have all of the libraries they need; you likely will, and otherwise things like 'libcompat' fill in the blanks. I occasionally run binary packages; on gentoo, sun's jdk, openoffice, and mozilla firebird come to mind immediately as things often or always installed -as a binary package-.