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IBM Releases Desktop Linux Presentation
An anonymous reader writes "DesktopLinux.com, in coordination with the Desktop Linux Consortium, is making select presentations from Monday's groundbreaking Desktop Linux conference at Boston University's Corporate Education Center available. Sessions from the well-received program included talks from key companies and open source projects bringing Desktop Linux into the enterprise. The first presentation available is from IBM's Sam Docknevich, Linux and Grid Services Executive for IBM Global Services and is titled "Open Source Desktop - Directions for today... and Tomorrow". His presentation discusses IBM's push into the Linux desktop market, an initiative from inside Big Blue."
Too bad that slide is factually incorrect. It clains that in order to migrate to .NET you need significant retraining and redevelopment.
.NET technologies right now and I don't see it. Still looks like a Windows app to me. Needless to say the "old" Win32 apps still work fine in .NET too.
Well um, I am using
However, you're forgetting about the users - many businesses rely on OSS, which they would not be able to afford to run using the equivalent Microsoft or Sun solution, at least when starting it up.
More importantly, we are in a situation where an abusive monopoly runs viable commercial alternatives out of business, which is certainly not healthy for the software ecosystem. OSS is turning out to be one of the few forces keeping some of these commercial companies in line.
So, yes, some older business models will fail, but others will replace them. I won't cry anoy more for Sun that I would for the monks who lost their jobs creating illuminated manuscripts .
IBM's presentation says that Linux is ready for kiosks, single-application PCs (like in call centers), and technical (CAD) workstations. Note that none of those scenarios involve Thinkpads.
1. the number of buyers for thinkpads with linux is tiny. IBM has in fact shipped some models with linux pre-installed but as a general move, linux on laptops is still pretty chancy, why should they put all that effort into somthing that obviously will generate no return.
2. See 1, if the market for Linux on laptops is small, the market for fbsd on laptops is that much smaller. As it happens I have installed fbsd on my Thinkpad, don't use usb so don't care but I do/did care that it corrupted my linux partitions and completely fails to recognize the OpenBSD disklabel.
3. See 1. latest-hardware drivers on Linux has always lagged. with 99% of the market, sure windows drivers get written right off. Funny how revenue will cause code to get written.
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
I have to say that until recently, there was one thing MSIE had that nobody else did: WYSIWYG editing.
As a developer of web software, I'm glad I can finally support all platforms including Linux (and Mac) with the new Mozilla.
Sunny
Be my Friend
Sun have had a number of StarOffice customer wins for over 10,000 seats, and a few for the Linux desktop bundle it seems (reading around a bunch of press articles). However, most of this is outside the US - see this article:
Here's another quote from him, from this article:
TrollTech is also vulnerable to takeover by companies hostile to Free software
So what? If Troll Tech or its successor discontinues Qt Free Edition, the last published version remains QPL/GPL licensed. In fact, there is an agreement in place that makes it BSD licensed under these specific conditions.
Will I retire or break 10K?
1) X - This was a neat idea, and has had a lot of time and innovation put in to it. However, it's still ununified, clumsy, confusing and bulky. When X works, it works great. When X doesn't work, it's a nightmare.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nobody complains that the GDI lacks unification, so why do people do the same for X? X is a drawing API. You can draw whatever you want with it. Same thing with X.
2) Lack of standardization. Simple things which should work and operate the same over many applications sometimes do not. Such is the case with cut & paste, which beyond not being 100% universal, is a really lousy implimentation. If you're like me, and you highlight the text you want to replace with what is in the clipboard, you'll know what I'm talking about.
>>>>>>>>>>
There is a universal clipboard API. There are bugs in it, but it should generally work between KDE and GNOME apps (which, going forward, are the only ones that will matter for mainstream desktop Linux). The main thing you have to understand is that cut-and-paste in Linux does *not* work like in Windows. Its more like a drag-and-drop for text than cut and paste.
3) Very basic things which should be autodetected and configured by XWindows are simply not. How long have scrollwheel mice been around? How about mice with more than three buttons?
>>>>>>>>>>>>
4.3 configues my Logitech wheel mouse just fine. Any specific hardware that doesn't work for you?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I bought a Thinkpad for a relative in China, who wanted a Thinkpad because of IBM's reputation. (I had to agree with her; I've never had any problem with them hardware-wise, unlike many other laptops.) I tried to get one without Windows, not because she's a Linux user but because she would naturally prefer a Chinese-language version of Windows and the sellers in the US only sell English-language editions.
The IBM ordering website had a bewildering list of models, all of which were very specific as to CPU speed and other features. (For example, two machines with different CPU speeds but identical in every other respect.) There were about 20-30 models with minor differences between them. It was a lot like the way cars were sold before standard options packages. So much for the excuse that vendors don't want to sell preconfigured Linux systems because they only want a few models to simplify manufacturing and inventory. simple.
I called IBM's ordering department and asked if I could get one with Linux pre-installed. The saleswoman said no. I asked why they have so many models with trivial differences between them but they offer no choice of OS.
"Oh, but we do have choice. You can have Windows 2000 or Windows XP." ("We have both kinds [of music]: Country and Western" -- The Blues Brothers.) And no, I couldn't get a Chinese version either.
Next I asked if I could get one without an OS. "No." "Why not?" "Because Microsoft won't let us."
Now, to be fair, her info could've been out of date. Maybe she couldn't thing of anything else to say, Or maybe that's what they told her to say. But if she's telling the truth, wasn't the anti-trust settlement supposed to put an end to this?
The end result was that M$ gets paid for 2 copies of Windows on one computer. (Well, my relative was paying for it, so that's her choice. I would've gone to a Linux laptop vendor, though I don't know if any of them are as reliable.)
Linux not ready for the desktop, perhaps you are right, but my experience are different from yours for sure.
...
1) I don't know what you mean by talking badly about X, but I have never seen X not work. Perhaps you were talking about drivers for accelerated 3D in XFree ? I can say things about X too : it's cross-platform, efficient, extensible and scalable.
2) Standardization is pretty advanced, and go on advancing thanks to freedesktop.org. Cut and Paste is standardized since a long time ago, and all *compliant* apps can Cut & Paste with every other compliant app. And it's impressive, because there are still 3 different ways to Cut & Paste.
3) I don't know any system that can autodetect a multibutton mouse. Even under Windows XP, I had to install a driver for a mouse !!! As mice do not yet advertise their buttons, I wonder how X could know about it, and so, how it should configure them, it's no magician, you know ! Anyway, distributions do a good job for wheel mice. They should put a wizard to configure mice with more buttons, but it's supported only on XFree > 4.3.0.
4) Lack of support for popular apps ? This is nonsense !
The apps have to support the OS, that doesn't work the other way around ! Stupid argument for that matter. We all agree Adobe and Co should release their soft. They are the one which do not agree
5) I think you swapped the times to setup a Windows and a Linux box. Windows does not come configured with even Photoshop and MS Office in one hour, but a Linux distro does (with Gimp and Open Office). Most home user do NOT need more than that, and will not even buy Photoshop. Actually, I've installed a lot of Mandrake in my neighboorhood (and upgraded them all to 9.2 last Sunday), and they are pretty happy with it : no more ANY call from them.
6) Package management in Linux distro is actually pretty good and efficient, and my years of experience with Windows and install problems (even when talking to vendors) is entirely different from yours. And no, there are no library conflicts, that's on Windows only. And no, there is no need to compile anything with most Linux distro. Bad software happens though. So stop trolling.
Perhaps for you a Linux distro is not good enough, but I assure you for me, my family, and most people I know who do not know anything about computers, it is actually pretty good. For me and my family, it's even far more usable and powerful than any Windows released till today (and far less expensive).
comparing installing mozilla on linux and windows.
One could be done by a bird trained to peck at pictures, the other requires hours of reading. Then trying, failing, and trying again another way with little if any indication as tho why it crapped out the first time.
Ok, installing Mozilla on linux is one command (apt-get install mozilla, emerge mozilla, up2date mozilla, urpmi mozilla, etc). Sorry if I got any of those commands wrong, but you get the point.
Installing on Windows, you have to go the web page, find the link for downloading, click on link and download to a directory, execute the exe, click through a few windows, and then you've finally got it installed.
Ok, so in Windows its a little bit longer, but I wouldn't say that it "requires hours of reading." Installing software on Windows can be tedious, and sometimes its not entirely straightforward (nor is there a standard process, each software is different), but its really not that bad, and most people can figure it out.
#!/