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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'.
Do we like or hate IBM then?
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.
There's an opportunity for desktop Linux in "running a fixed-function machine like a kiosk or ATM, a transactional workstation like a bank teller's station, or a basic office workstation that runs applications that drive business processes," the IBM agenda information said.
Bravo! Use it in places that you want to be able to lock down. I'm so tired of people trying to lock down windows boxes! Sure anybody can install anything on a win box... that's why it's bad for public access.
Our hospital records program runs on the web. Linux and any ole browser would save our computer guys tons of time.
Oh, well... Good luck.
I've been waiting for something like this... Now all I need is an opensource Car. [quote from RedHat install] Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?? [/quote] I hate using my can opener just to the check the oil.
Karma whoring
It's amazing what a $50 million investment in Novell will do for ones attitude.
Who wants free software when people are ready to pay such a fortune for Microsoft products!
As much as I love the "go Linux rah rah rah!" mantra, why not just go to asking "What's the best tool for the job?" For the computer-illiterate home user, Windows is fine (I'd advocate a Mac, but maybe the user LIKES having a zillion games and utilities and viruses available for download). For the corporate desktop where things should be locked down, Linux with OpenOffice may be a good bet at a good price.
If you're a power user, Windows is definitely out, Linux is a good bet, OS X is a good alternative. It seems to me whatever your personality is, one of the options will be your natural best fit.
And isn't it kinda nice that things work out that way?
Murray Todd Williams
So what, IBM said linux wasn't ready for the desktop - last year. That was a year ago! Linux has made quite a few strides on the desktop since then - and MS has dug themselves even deeper into their grave since then, as well. The time is now for linux on the desktop, if there is to be a time. There needs to be positive motion or someone else (Apple) will step in to try and take that market.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
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
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.
As for the home user, it's definitely not ready. Mom and pop can't go to walmart and buy games for their kids, greeting card software or proven money management software and run it on Linux.
It's frustrating to see this story posted tonight -- there's no reason why this story couldn't have waited until the speech was delivered.
So, does this mean we will start seeing IBM workstations with linux on them? I personaly cant wait to get a thinpad without having to pay micro$oft 20% of the cost :P
That's the main question, I think. I'm pretty computer literature, work as a web developer/designer/programmer and all that, but I've always been a Windows user. Recently, when it came time to reformat my notebook, I decided to just try out Linux because I was curious. I went with Suse. It installed fine, but it was a pain in the ass to get it to recognize my screen size (1600 x 1050), it refused to see my wifi card, and the touchpad wouldn't work. Fair, enough, I can deal with all that because it's a notebook after all, the drivers aren't at all standard. But the actual user experince... well, honestly, yuck. The main thing that made me get rid of it was just how crappy everything looked. Widgets were clunky, interface fonts were either too large or too small, everything was jagged, and the web looked simply terrible. I installed Firebird to see if that'd make browsing a little nicer but no luck. Fonts were huge, tiny, and looked like placeholders instead of something any sort of attention to detail had been put towards. Then I tried upgrading the software. It came with Open Office 1.0; I wanted 1.1. But it didn't look like it was going to happen until I felt up to compiling my own binaries. If someone as tech savvy as me isn't willing to do that, I can guarantee my parents sure as hell won't be up to it. End result: I got rid of Linux after a day. It wasn't worth the huge amount of effort required to do anythign with and it was ugly and clunky enough that it got in the way of everyday use. I realize all of these can be improved and I'm sure in the future they will be. When that happens, maybe I'll give Linux another try. But for now, it isn't anywhere near ready for the average user's desktop.
This seems like a pretty sound analysis - Linux is ready for the desktop in many areas. However it's still not ready as an integrated multi-task appliance in the same way that windows is.
I like to use my PC for lots of stuff, it's still tricky for me to do some things on Linux, lots of programs still don't interact well (cutting and pasting being the first thing that springs to mind, cue flames.....) but for certain tasks it's excellent (web services) and for many it's perfectly adequate (office / multimedia).
More people using linux to do some jobs will start to want to do other little jobs on it too. Whether we like IBM this week or not, this can only be good for user- and developer- share and linux profile.
Stemmo
> it will only aid me in damning the lot of you as ignorant philistines.
that insult is sooo 900 B.C.
The unofficial
The GNU licence does allow a supplier to charge for
services. All they gotta do is provide source.
siggy played guitar
Imagine if someone like IBM marketed their own Linux desktop distribution. I'd say they have the power to standardize some of the things that make Linux so confusing for new adopters (multiple desktop managers, shells, KDE vs Gnome, etc). Think Lindows, except not a toy, and with a huge company backing it. Home users are not going to adopt Linux in its current very chaotic state. These options are nice for nerds, but your mom doesn't really want to search through fifty open source apps while installing to see which one she likes the best to write a one page document for work.
A reputable company like IBM could give Linux some serious pull on the desktop (they already have in the server world).
If quantum mechanics applied to IBM:
|IBM>= 1/sqrt(2) |good> + 1/sqrt(2) |evil>
Observing a Slashdot article seems to collapse this wave function. Thus, for any slashdot article, IBM is either good or bad.
My constants might be a bit off depending on what SCO is doing.
Long live Schrodinger's cat...
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.In this interview (posted on Slashdot a few weeks ago) Linus says he is most interesting in desktop Linux. He says servers are not very interesting. He says Linux on the desktop is the only part he cares about. Just look at the article I linked to and read the question about Linux and the Desktop.
My point is that Linus, for me, kind of debunks the idea that Linux is intended for the server. Linus clearly says it's not. And now we have IBM giving a thumbs up for Linux on the desktop too. This is cool.
Wow, lately this is what the linux community sounds like:
linux advocates: we're ready for the desktop!
big corporations: no, not quite yet...
linux advocates: we're ready for the desktop!
big corporations: no, not quite yet...
linux advocates: we're ready for the desktop!
big corporations: no, not quite yet...
linux advocates: we're ready for the desktop!
big corporations: no damnit! Your only good for servers and maybe now kiosks.
What exactly is the holdback anyways? Pretty gui's, drivers, advertising, what?!?
Our hospital is also an all-MS shop (this is dictated by the national company that owns our hospital)... I know most of the IT guys and they would LOVE to be able to use some linux, particularly in the server room. Alas, policy is policy.
I don't think linux is bad on the desktop... heck, I use it for my desktop about 50% of the time. For what you're talking about (simple web-based apps), linux is just as good a client platform as MS, and probably better, if only for the security concerns you already mentioned.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I think there have been two things keeping Linux from taking the desktop by storm.
The first, and possibly most important, has been the lack of anything like MS Outlook for the Linux platform. Security flaws aside, it's a great way to keep everything organized - from e-mail, to scheduling, to notes, to tasks, etc. I looked at Ximian Evolution, but it doesn't allow public folders. A lot of our customers love those public folders - particularly for scheduling things. That's one of the grievances some of our customers have with Groupwise, too.
Now, though, I see Kontact/Kolab ramping up as an integrated groupware solution that will be distributed with KDE, already one of the two most popular desktops for X. Once this starts being adopted as a groupware solution by companies, IMO, corporate desktops are going to see a lot more Linux. I also think it will propel KDE ahead of Gnome (because Evolution, again, IMO, doesn't stack up to Kontact).
The other thing, and I haven't looked closely for it, so it may already exist, but that's an easy development tool for X. Visual Basic-style. Make something easy for your run-of-the-mill Joe to code halfway useful applications in, make it integrate well with an Office suite (preferably KOffice, since Kontact will work well with it), and make it free and open-source. Better yet, provide easy ways of migrating legacy VB/VBA code to it. Wham bam thank you ma'am, Linux on the desktop.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
This is pretty much and open declaration of War: MS have declared an interest in the Big Iron market (IBMs home turf) and IBM are declaring support for Linux on desktop.
The gloves are off, SCO are irrelevant (OK, even more irrelevant) and even Novell and Red Hat will be only minor players in what is about to come forward.
Anyone noticed the strong ad campaigns for Windows server on TV recently?
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
IBM backing Linux on the desktop, at the same time providing processors for Apple's OS. Playing it safe by supporting both sides. They are doing the same thing right now, producing PPC chips and selling Intel based hardware at the same time.
"Desktop GNU/Linux", that is, Home User not Kiosk mono-function uber-toaster (like a kiosk), will not be viable until all of the following conditions have been met:
- The user can add a new PCI card and install a driver for it
- The user can insert a hotplug device (USB or Firewire or even Bluetooh) and get a fixed, known location in the file system for it, the same one every time
- The user can click on any audio file and it will "just play"
- The user can click on any video file and it will "just play"
- The user can drop a CD into the CDROM drive and play it or rip it
- The user can drop a DVD into the DVD drive and it plays, including the horrible and ungodly menu
- The user can drop a CDR into the CDROM drive and burn a random selection of files to it, with long file names on by default
- The user can hook up a TV Tuner card and be able to play video from a cable box / antenna or a VCR.
And all of the above must be possible WITHOUT the user EVER seeing a command line, and without ever hearing or reading the word "compile."
Some of those are already available with the right distributions, and nearly all are possible in some way or another, but they require violating the two cardinal rules of the Home User: "I can't type" and "compiling is something only developers do". Fixing some of the above issues requires alterations to the kernel itself. Others just require improvements in user-side software, others are an issue of driver distribution and open vs. closed source driver availability.
Whatever, the origin of the problem doesn't matter. The why is not at question. But all of the above MUST be taken care of before GNU/Linux can be considered "ready" for Joe Home Desktop User. Until then, we're just spinning our wheels.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
The list goes on from there. A base model 17" eMac, which is perfectly suited to the average productivity worker, is only $799. Bump the RAM up to 256MB for a few dollars more and you're done, it will all work right out of the box.
Compared to the pain of getting a Linux system up and running and then supporting it, going Apple seems like a no-brainer in enterprise IT environments.
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
..IBMs stance on the desktop highlights one of the problems with their "support" of OSS (the other is their IP stance). The last presenation I attended they trotted out the "not ready for the desktop" line. I think they see that Linux helps *them* sell servers but helps *other* people sell PCs. Just look at the little sticker on their portables. Funnily enough, Sun's presentation took exactly the opposite line!
It would not be before time if they change their tune...
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
My god! They've OK'ed linux on the desktop? I'm so relieved. I can finally start using it!
And why did you staple the trout to the RAM?
What is this Bullshit? Why is IBM, Redhat, and every other company going out of their way to make the statement "Linux is not ready for the desktop" Tell us something we all dont already know stupid, of course we know Linux is not ready for the desktop IBM, what is your plan IBM to make Linux ready? This sounds like some bullshit Microsoft would say but why is Linux going out of their way to say this? I'll explain. Its not that Linux is not ready for the desktop, its that IBM is not ready for Linux on the desktop, Redhat is not ready for Linux on the desktop, Suse/Novell is not ready for Linux on the desktop. However we have alot of companies who are, we have Lindows, Mandrake, Xandros, Lycoris all ready for Linux on the desktop, all working to further the cause. IBM does not want these companies to do that because IBM's companies arent ready, if Redhat or Novell suddenly had a desktop product suddenly all these 3 companies would be saying "Linux is ready for the Desktop.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Redhat is targeting the corporate customer that wishes to have some fixed costs and an assurance of professional support. Although the costs of Redhat is higher than some other distributions of GNU/Linux, it is not competing against those. If all you want is an OS with little support and unknown future updates, there are many distributions out there.
Redhat is trying to create a product that can compete with MS, and that pricing is very comparable. In Redhat you get a sophisticated operating system with 1 year of professional support. Depending on the processor, it seems this costs from $300 to $2000 for the desktop. With MS Windows, you might not have any support at all from MS, you might have free installation support, or you might have to pay more than $200 per incidence from help from MS. Cost can be fixed with $1000 prepaid service packs, on top of any licenses fees.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
"For the computer-illiterate home user, Windows is fine"
No, they're the worst ones to have it. They are the ones whose box gets taken over and use to spread worms, and DoS attacks.
There is no reason for the average home user to not use Linux, except that they need to do their work at home. Which is how Microsoft became so wide spread in the first place.
OSX is too expensive. you can put linux on existing Windows box, for OSX you have to upgrade the entire system.
I wonder, how many programs can run on a mac that are over ten years old?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
At that time, they contended that you were better off paying for a term server with 8-12 thin clients connected to it; instead of paying ~$1200-2000 per desktop, you would pay ~$5-10k for the server, and ~$200 per thin client.
However, since there really wasnt a significant savings in hardware (most of your savings were due to lower admin costs), hardly anyone jumped on board. Also, around this time the first sub-$1000 computers started coming out.
Linux on the desktop? Hardly. IBM is just recycling the Network PC.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
"How can we use it to make a lot of money, and stick a shiv in microsoft's back?"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I can believe ...
...
IBM and others can make a general purpose desktop linux aimed at corporations (Sun has done a pretty good attempt already). I hope it will shake things up a little. I'd rather upgrade straight to OS X, but that's just me...
I can't believe
anybody can make a general purpose linux aimed at the home user. It sort of defeats the purpose of linux at the moment and however much you would WANT a linux for the average home user, it would imply a lot of work, dedication and adherance to rules that a lot of programmers aren't interested in - and why should you be, it's your time, your party, your OS.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
It is, if you expect him/her to stay that way. Of course that couldn't be good for the advance of civilization :)
Something that I learned when I was selling computers, PCs and Macs is that most people don't care to learn about what is going on inside of their machines.
They're more concerned with the football game, or with Jr's parent teacher conference. No matter how much you and I wish it was different, you just can't make Joe Sixpack care about technology issues.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Home users use Windows because everyone else uses Windows. There are other reasons, but we all know this is the main one.
What, throwing away compatibility with thousands of programs that had been developed for years? QuarkXPress users might disagree.
how to invest, a novice's guide
What do all you people have against X? X rocks: it has network transparency, widget-independence, and has proven incredibly efficient and flexible. I will never give up X, until something with a strict superset of features appears. You can go with a crippled OS X or Windows-like GUI, but I will stay with X.
[ home ]
-
For the corporate desktop where things should be locked down, Linux with OpenOffice may be a good bet at a good price.
More than just a good bet, a great one. One of the major problems with windows machines as corporate desktops (and computer labs in education) is that it's damn near impossible to lock them down enough to prevent users from modifying them (as least knowledgable users), while keeping them useable! When you just want your desktop users to be able to do E-mail, documents, etc. that are business related, it's much much easier to do with Linux and Open Office. It's also easier to administer, since you don't have to physically go to the machine to work on it. I think businesses are starting to see this, and that it'll save money by lowering IT support costs, raising user productivity (since the machines will be up and functional more often), and costing less on the front end to setup (the software's cheaper). Not to mention a desktop can probably last more than three years since Linux makes much better use of resouces than any Windows OS does."The average home user cannot use linux."
That's funny because I have had the most computer illiterate people sit down at my RH9 box with no windows open and figure out how to browse the web quite effectively with no instruction from me at all.
"Mozilla is not up to the task, sorry. It doesn't even render most webpages properly (including such common ones as YAHOO FINANCE)."
I don't think you can categorically say that without some level of proof. And "render . . . properly seems to be an either/or kind of statment. I argue that there are some things that are irrelevant such as font size so long as it does not effect the browsing experience. The only website I have found to date that doesn't work right at all with Mozilla is www.sprintpcs.com after you log in to manage your account.
I feel quite confident that the web pages that don't work right are those that seemed to ignore web standards completely.
"Openoffice is slow and bloated, as well as difficult to use."
Lets start out with the "slow and bloated" comment first. Define slow. Slow to start? Slow to print? That is completely ambiguous at best and not completely bound in truth as far as my experience goes. I give you that it is slow as Christmas to start. After startup completes I find it to be faster than Word.
Difficult to use? I don't find that to be true. Neither did a friend of mine that wouldn't know the difference between a word processor and a spreadsheet application. He used OpenOffice to write a research paper with no complaints. I even asked him if it worked ok.
"Linux is not ready for the home user."
I do not agree for 100% of home users. I think it is ready for a good portion of them already. With each passing release of kernels and distros that gap closes more.
"At least on Windows, when I uninstall a program, it uninstalls its libraries (for the most part)."
I do not see that uninstalling programs is any more thorough on Windows than Linux. They are both scripted and thus the uninstalls are only as good as the uninstall scripts. I have seen some that did nothing more than delete icons on Windows. About the only thing I can say about Windows uninstalling is that most (not all) software makers make the uninstall program easy to find.
And don't even get me started about dll's that refuse to allow themselves to be removed without doing some registry editing and/or booting to a command prompt only in Windows.
Bottom line is that I have had my RH9 box running since RH9 was release and it has not crashed once. At all. The only time it has been rebooted was due to power outages.
Besides, your conclusion is that home users are prepeared to deal with all of the nasty viruses/worms and all the problems they cause yet they cannot deal with Linux?
And now, two days later, this! LMAO.
> "For the computer-illiterate home user, Windows is
...)
> fine"
> No, they're the worst ones to have it. They are
> the ones whose box gets taken over and use to
> spread worms, and DoS attacks.
Yes, yes, yes! Despite rumors to the contrary, there are plenty of people who use PCs at home, don't know a lot about them, and who don't have a requirement to play the latest and greatest games.
Their apps typically consist of:
- a Web browser
- email client, which may be a Web browser that they use for Web mail
- something to write documents with (could be MS Word, could be MS Works, could be Wordpad, could be Notepad,
- maybe a spreadsheet, if they're really advanced
If they're really high-tech, they might also have:
- something to download pictures from a digital camera
- a scanner to scan old pictures
- graphic software to manipulate pictures
A Linux distribution that had *just* these features would be ideal for this class of user. They don't download virus updates, or configure firewall software - a well-built Linux distribution would eliminate the need to do these things.
If this was on the market now, I'd get it and put it on my parents' two PCs as quickly as I could.
As someone whose recently moved over to Linux totally I can say 100% for certain that Linux will never be ready for the masses. Don't get me wrong, I love Linux. The more I learn the more I have fun geeking around in it. But sweet jesus, I've been trying to get GAIM to compile for the past two weeks off and on. It keeps switching from GTK hating me to GAIM hating me. Been bitching with ZSNES like crazy trying to get it to work at greater than 10fps (1ghz system, mind you). Given up on upgrading to KDE3, using KDE2. Tried other window managers and wasn't happy with them. In the past month I've spent roughly 80 hours mucking with my distro to get everything working well enough to where I can just leave it alone and not mess with it for awhile. Now while I love being able to modify my OS to where it feels just right in virtually every way imaginable (and bash rocks), that is the one and only thing I miss about Windows. Everything worked. You didn't have to worry about dependancy after dependancy after dependancy just to get one stupid program installed and working. Drivers were easy as all hell to install. You didn't have to muck with your freakin' kernel trying to get a half-working driver kinda working. Windows took care of all that crap for you. Not well, but it did. In Linux I'm taking care of the OS. This isn't something that can be fixed with a bigger better RPM thingy or pretty GUI. This is both a great strength and weakness of Li/Unix and OSS in general. Everyone has their opinions on how things should work, and thus you have a billion different ways to do things (and a trillion different dependencies... ugh.) I love the penguin to death but I've been hacking away in bash for the past month trying to get my system working just as well as it once did in Windows. And I'm a very computer literate geek who loves reading source code and actually _reads the fucking manual_. Linux is ready for the average user? Bullshit. To say that is arrogance. No way in hell would I install it for my mom. Poor woman's already had one stroke.
RE Mozilla: font sizes are not an "irrelevant" detail. I've found webpages on which the fonts are so bad the page is unreadable. While some of this problem surely comes from the fact that many pages are optimized for IE - the average Home user doesn't care about that - if they can't read the page, its broken, and if their friend running IE can read it, then mozilla sux. Thats just how non-techies treat these things.
OpenOffice is slow to start and often slows up inexplicably while in use. Don't even get me started on printing. Good god, setting up a printer can be hell at the best of times in Linux. Certainly for basic WP OpenOffice works, but so does notepad (or vim, emacs, whatever). For advanced features, Word (sorry to say) is usually better.
Unfortunately I come across as a MS zealot when I'm not trying to. I use Linux and WinXP depending on the task at hand. The fact is that Linux is very difficult to change. If I set up a box perfectly for a home user, then they can probably use it, as long as they don't want to change anything. On the other hand, if I hand someone a CD holder with XP, Office and a few other CDs in it, they'll figure out how to install, use and probably print. Good luck handing someone a RH9 CD and telling them to do all that. Of course Linux crashes less - no doubt. That is due to the kernel and better separation between OS and GUI/Programs, everyone agrees with that.
About uninstalling: Imagine a clean install of some Linux distro, say RH9. Then imagine installing a package requiring some 10-20 other packages thru dependencies. If you try to uninstall said package, why don't the dependencies uninstall (as long as nothing else depends on them)? This, at least, works on Windows and would be great on Linux. If I'm wrong about that, please tell me - I'd love to know how to do that properly.
Cemil.
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.
Desktop Linux fits two kinds of users very well. The first kind are like your parents. Once it is set up, they don't mess with it. There's maybe seven icons that get clicked all the time and thats it. You did luck out with the garden design software.
The second type mess with the system constantly but are comfortable doing things like editing text files and resolving dependencies. Whatever comes up technically gets handled.
There is a third type of user thats still a problem. These users want to continually add and remove software and hardware from the machine. The thing is, they don't know a thing about computers and don't want to know. Such users can usually get about two years out of a Windows install before they have someone straighten out the mess the machine is in. Sure the machine is likely hosed by then but they got some varied service out of it before bunging up the registry or the dlls. A MacOS (Classic) install will sometimes last longer under such use although OS X hasn't been out long enough for me to see the full range of brain damage it's users can inflict. I've even seen them buy whole new systems because it is easier than backing up data and reinstalling. These people aren't necessarily gamers.
Those users tend to HATE Linux. Linux will either totally rebuff such users or they'll do everything as root one time too many and completely hose the system. Lindows and Mandrake attempt to cater to them but screw it up by either having them run as root all time (yes, the option is there to create a regular user account. These users WON'T do it.) or being overly flaky. When I used it, Mandrake was crashy enough to make think I was running Windows 98 again.
Others have pointed out that work needs to be done on hardware detection/configuration and software installs. I think it will get there but those are the two things that really screw Linux as a consumer OS.
The average user looks at all this great free software out there and think "this is GREAT!!" but then are faced with the reality of having to compile most of their own software. This isn't a big deal for the technically literate but for the newbie it can be quite a problem. Linux software developers need to come together and define a common standard for binary software distribution and then start offering both source and precompiled binaries of their software. If this simple step happens, I think we'll see a much quicker and widespread adoption of desktop Linux.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
IBM sell a product called WebSphere Portal Server. It's reasonably inexpensive for the Enterprise Portal space, they have been getting fairly competitive on software pricing recently.
p t1.htm
But here's the hidden little feature. As a sample portlet included with the server are server-side portlets that read and write Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents.
They don't do it perfectly, not yet, and IBM is not doing a lot to publicize them. And they certainly won't be competing with a full-featured word processor or spreadsheet application.
But take a large corporate customer, who's users need to be able to read, change and create Office documents, but the vast majority only needing the base functionality, why would you be buying each of them an Office license when you can get it for free with your $20,000 Intranet Portal.
As Tim Thatcher, program director for IBM WebSphere Portal emphasises, these productivity components are not a stand-in for Microsoft Office. "We're targeting the users who don't need all the features of Word or WordPro," says Thatcher. "Businesses realise it's not cost-effective to deliver a full-functioned desktop to every user. On a manufacturing floor, for example, a factory worker in the breakroom can jot a letter off the kiosk using the built-in portal applications."
http://www.eos-solutions.com.au/news_sept/news_se
WORKSFORME -- and I spend a fair bit of time in front of Mozilla at home, and a fair bit more at work supporting users on RH9-based corporate workstations.
Don't even get me started on printing. Good god, setting up a printer can be hell at the best of times in Linux.
I just set up Fedora Core 1 on a roommate's box. I logged in as root, and there was an icon that launched a graphical print setup program. I told it about her printer (using a few drop-down boxes), it asked if I wanted to print a test page and it Just Worked.
Granted, 6 months ago it was much, much more of a hassle.
Debian's aptitude does that perfectly; "deborphan" likewise performs that function.
Simple question:
Are they saying "home desktop" or "business desktop"?
The business desktop doesn't requires easy administration of new hardware or software -- the configuration is standardized and the software is imaged. Adding new software involves approval from the gods of IT, or it's unsupported or (worse) a major policy violation; software installs aren't something end users do.
The business desktop doesn't require support for little USB puppets that dance to music the user plays.
The business desktop doesn't need the latest 3D games to run out-of-the-box.
The business desktop needs to have a low cost-per-unit and be secure and easy to remotely administer.
Linux is very, very ready for the business desktop -- because the typical "it's not ready for the desktop" arguments just don't apply there. Not only that, but it's actively in use as a business desktop environment in a great many places, from Ernie Ball to the software development startup where I work to municipal governments and all the places where IBM and SuSE have been doing massive rollouts.
Do you think IBM sells to (or is talking to) home users? Of course not. When they say Linux is ready for the desktop, they mean the business desktop, and that's exactly where it is ready, now.
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."
Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut??
If they built it as low maitnance and as reliable as my fridge (The compressor is welded shut) I would love it. Too bad they can't make one that will last for 15-20 years and needs no service except dusting off the radiator once in a while.
The truth shall set you free!
I like IBM. I think they make great servers and great laptops. I just bought one of their T-series laptops. Their laptops work a lot better with Linux than most other major manufacturers that I've seen, but that's not enough. Pretty much all of the hardware on their laptops work under Linux, but marginally. The Winmodems they include are a real bitch to set up and may not even work fully, and the wireless MiniPCI cards they include either do not have drivers out for Linux or require a lot of work and/or binary-only modules to be useful. I also haven't seen anything released regarding their hard drive protection system, which is based mostly in software. ACPI support, of course, is not totally there in the 2.6 kernel, but it's making a lot of progress.
IBM, put your money where your mouth is. Intel might not give much of a shit about Linux on the desktop, but you say you do. Use your power to get Intel to develop Linux/BSD drivers or even release specs to all of the hardware they release as soon as they release it (e.g. Centrino). Release all of the specs to the hardware you include, fund drivers, do whatever it takes to get everything you release fully supported in open-source operating systems.
It's come a long way in terms of having a decent office suite, playing video and Flash, etc. But the hardware support still needs help, and that's not going to come entirely from community efforts. It needs better OEM support in the form of drivers, and better support in the OS for separating the drivers and the kernel, so the drivers are commodity software that are as easy to install as in Windows.
My hardware isn't exotic, but to even start my SuSE install, I had to buy and install an IDE hard drive because SuSE wouldn't even regognize the drives in my on-board RAID existed. It's not that it couldn't access them. It couldn't even see them.
Once I set up a somewhat complicated dual OS, dual drive boot, it recognized my sound card and printer okay, but it wouldn't recognize the on-board LAN and I could not find an easily installable driver for that anywhere.
Between hardware mods and hunting down info on the www and usenet only to find out that drivers for my balky hardware didn't exist, it took me the better part of a day to install SuSE.
And without networking, it's a pretty useless installation.
Now, the reason Windows XP works flawlessly with my hardware is because Windows is fully supported by the OEM's, who have provided drivers for their hardware. Granted, those are 32-bit drivers and the AMD64 version of Windows is lacking in driver support too.
The difference is that Microsoft is taking time to debug and let drivers trickle in and isn't rushing an incomplete release of their AMD64 version to market for $119.95. SuSE did. Can you imagine the day when someone would point out Microsoft as being more responsible and less buggy than SuSE? It's come.
The Linux community is making a yeoman's effort to support all the hardware Windows does, but without OEM support (i.e. drivers), it's not easy, and without the hardware support, it's hard to have broad-based market penetration.
It doesn't help that SuSE, with a reputation for being easy to install, puts out a crappy, high-priced distro. I feel WAY more ripped-off and abused by SuSE than I ever have by Microsoft. Did you ever expect to hear someone say that either?
Maybe in a corporate environment with standardized hardware that has been pre-screened for Linux compatibility, desktop Linux has an immediate future. But that's not going to get Linux widely adopted in the SOHO market. People look at Linux and think horror stories like mine are the norm, not the exception to the norm, and that's because these stories are still way too common.
IMO, the Linux community and the OEMs have some serious improvements to their cooperation to execute before desktop Linux is ready for prime-time.
-- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic