OSDL To Start Pushing on Desktop Linux

Psyke writes "The Australian Financial Review is reporting that 'IBM, Red Hat and a consortium of computer makers backed by the likes of Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Intel will push to move the Linux operating system out of the back office from next year.' and 'Meanwhile, the OSDL, which has largely worked on improving Linux's ability to run large servers, said it would work on improving Linux's performance on ordinary desktop computers.'" The article itself is a little off- those companies are working *through* the OSDL of which they are members - along with a number of additional companies as well.

Comments

No, really, its not

[SkArcher]

in the 'will push' article

Linux, a free operating system based upon Unix

Someone hasn't done their research

Re:OEMs a must for linux

[iaredam]

PC Club already sells computers with linux installed, I am not sure what distro's for sure but i know they ship computers and laptops with "Lindows" :(. I ended up talking to the manager of a local pc club store and he said he could install debian, gentoo, rh, or mdk on a new system for me. If they start advertising better other manufacturers might get the idea

Re:Way Off...

[WetCat]

I recently bought a disk with "Good Linux games"
It was almost completely unusable - it contained .rpms and source code.
I have Mandrake and .rpms won't run for me.
I would prefer _statically compiled_ versions of all games which are in that CD with the sources and other stuff needed by GPL.

In related news ...

[value_added]

The Register has a cheery article Asian first-timers prefer Linux to Windows worth reading.

From the article:

"First-time computer users are flocking to a government-subsidised programme to bring cheap PCs to the public. Although pirate copies of Windows and Office have a street price as low as $4, the information ministry's scheme of selling PCs loaded with Linux and OpenOffice for $250 is a runaway success. A million new PC owners will be using Linux within the next few months. ... Linux Insider reports that most of the new Linux users are expected to stick with their PCs thanks to the fanatical level of support provided by the Thai Linux user groups. Gartner predicts a 70 per cent stick rate: which is quite extraordinary, given the power that is so often attributed to factors such as branding and incumbent advantages."

So there. So what's all this about it being too hard?

Re:A little market segmentation might help

[ajs318]

How many software products can I get from my local computer store that are products that can run on Linux?

You don't buy software for Linux in your local computer store. You download software for Linux from your distributor's, or the developer's, website. That's the fundamental difference between free software and slaveware. It's also why the distro that makes it into the home bigtime will be the one that makes it next to impossible not to contribute.

Updates needed, but a pain

[phorm]

This is actually a real problem with many linux apps, both on desktops and servers. I just experienced it while trying to get perl-suid installed on a server, with deb (which is generally easier on install than RPM in my experience)...

So... base/stable version of perl-suid wasn't compatible with my newer Perl, so dipping into unstable I go, but then I also need to update Perl since unstable/testing perl-suid are newer than my Perl. So perl gets updated, which requires a new libc6...

This breaks the ogg/vorbis packages I have installed, so they have to get updated too... in total about 32 packages to install, 21MB.

Now, realistically this would be a HUGE pain in the butt for somebody with little experience to install for a single progam, on a regular basis. However, at 21MB you can probably fit most common updates on an install disc, and have your system automatically update on install as needed (windows does it with DLL's). The big thing is you'll probably need both .deb and .rpm to handle most common distros, as well as maybe source available.

So really, a common package format would be really nice. It would also be great if I could update my "unstable" packages, without moving entirely to unstable (I'm hybrid, and my servers stay as far in "stable" as possible).

For deb, maybe an updater that gives the option of "upgrade to "stable" if current "unstable" package installed is = available stable, or keep "unstable" packages at current "unstable" version. Most games, etc, nowadays have online updaters, so it shouldn't be a huge problem to have something similar to keep the required packages up-to-date, without mucking the rest of the system

Re:Way Off...

[cayenne8]

Give Gentoo Linux a try.

To upgrade Opera do:

emerge -u opera Voila...it is upgraded, and dependencies taken care of for you.

The initial build is a time consuming thing, if you go from source instead of the pre-built options that come with the LiveCD...but, once built...is a breeze to keep up todate or bleeding edge even.