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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."
Sun has the Java Desktop System, which will be both Linux and Solaris. How come they aren't there?
Fortress of Insanity
Blogzine
It's a whole different widget look! Aaaargh! If Linux can't make any headway on the desktop because GTK+ widgets don't look like Qt widgets, then why are we letting Microsoft get away with .NET widgets that don't look like MFC widgets?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
What's to prevent IBM from releasing an all in one Linux desktop solution? Linux + IBM Power PC + a IBM reference desktop motherboard? Something with AGP, built in sound, USB 2.0 and firewire.
Why woudn't IBM want to do this. Could mass adoption of these chips drive their prices down and make them competetive with INtel and AMD chips?
Would that make sense? If not, why so?
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Please -- nobody's innovated in word processors or spreadsheets for years. What "innovative" new versions are, to 99% of users, is cost centers. Open source software shares development costs, and so reduces the costs of the businesses using it.
Being able to build a business that's doing something truly innovative while using zero-cost, open source software as building blocks means those engaged in true innovation are spending less for the privilege of being able to do business -- which means there's more money left to fund real innovation rather than throwing money away on licenses for software which reached the plateau of its usefulness years ago.
Yes, I know, IHBT; I'll be sure to HAND.
Looks like linux has more heads on the desktop than Apple. Time for hardware companies to take linux seriously, seriously,
The next time some hardware company excuses the missing printer driver with linux small userbase point at this new info.
I assume most businesses arent aware of this and many of them probably only needs a pointer to some stats.
HTTP/1.1 400
... from a Linux desktop is bundling by a major distributor. People use apps. Apps are available for Linux. Worst case (possibly apart from games) you can use crossover or wine...
Simon.
(Who's been using Linux on the desktop for the last 3 years...)
Physicists get Hadrons!
So not having IM would be a selling point.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If you think things are bad with SCO, wait till we start to hurt Microsoft's revenue stream, then all hell will break loose. With that much at stake, things are bound to get violent.
1. IBM has over 15,000 existing internal Linux clients and this is rapidly expanding.
2. There is no attempt to gloss over potential issues, such as browser incompatibility with IE and weaknesses so far in supporting knowledge workers. These are accepted, but demonstrated to be applicable only to certain categories of users.
The general message, which is convincing, is to look at each user segment separately and objectively and use Linux where it makes sense at the time.
I'm thinking the point is more. "If your going to have to do all that retraining anyway, why not do it with us.
Jesus saves, everyone else takes full damage from the fireball.
Most programs are customized for a specific set of users, not off the shelf. Open Source fits right in with that and helps *MY* business.
If you don't want competition, then don't ignore those markets in the first place! The vast majority of projects I see are started because there *isn't* a commercial company in that segment or the existing one is unresponsive or even abusive.
1) I will freely license my code for use in commercial products (ie, use BSD license not GPL.)
Is it your code?
See earlier comment on commercial companies.
Excuse me? This is the biggest complaint people have about OSS, and when it delivers...you don't like it?
You had me going there...good troll.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Screw, powerpoint. Openoffice/Staroffice is fine with impress. Better, because it exports to PDF. My big point is with IBM, they still can't even port Lotus Notes to linux. Yes, they have the server ported, but Notes client should have been a priorty. The point is also still valid that they won't even sell you a laptop or a PC with any version of linux pre-loaded. With HP, they have it (for the desktop), but it's difficult to find on the website, and they're not any cheaper.
the path to the desktop is through the enterprise. sure, there are HUGE differences in needs, but, this is where windows started. wince it was used at the office, you needed it at home. now, with open source desktops, it is even better. sure, for many users, linux can do most things, but where it fails, i.e. video editing, plugging in a usb camera, etc. is crucial for the home users. but it does suffice for many though. now, go back to the office. linux is perfect. far better security, far easier maintanance, lower costs, etc. so, joe user needs to work on something at home, the boss says, here's a cd, install this on your computer. then linux makes headway into the home. and as that happens, drivers will be written, and maybe the bundled software will be written in cross-platform toolkits (QT, gtk, etc.) rather than win32/.NET. the tipping point my guess is somewhere around 5%.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I think the major failiure with OpenSource (I'm saying open source because theres more than just gnu/Linux) on the Desktop is Gnome. In fact, Gnome 2.4 was awful. Gnome 2.2 was better though, and I'm glad that Sun and Ximian are sticking with that tree for now.
Anyway, now that the LG fiasco was solved, I downloaded the Mandrake 9.2 ISOs. Such a relief from Debian with Gnome 2.4. All my hardware 'just works', no typing commandlines and Lots of sources that are easier to set up.
I never want to touch Gnome again until they dump gconf-editor for a real configuration editor, similar to KDE control centre or TweakUI, fix the file dialog, and replace that FOOT with something tasteful. According to Section 9 of the HIG, the Gnome logo is a violation of the HIG, since no body parts are allowed in ICONS.
So, if you want to see what a Linux desktop SHOULD be like, try Mandrake 9.2, and don't forget that KDE 3.2 is around the corner, I tried the Alpha and its FAST!
The architecture is 10 years old. Why would I want to develop on an old technology when I can get it done 10x as fast on the latest technology
Karma to burn so,
PUT DOWN SCO's CRACK PIPE
Ok, Steve, Linux has some of the most advanced features in the world like Kernel level exectuion checking, and True 100% fully functional streemlined , low latency memory management. Linux, and for that matter GNU, have grown at least ten times more than windows has over the same period of time. Microsoft has been using the win32 api for almost 7 years and the individual systems are so similar that a security hole in WinNT 4.0 will allow a virus to be created that destroys windows server 2003, while the kernel (22 stable kernels in 2 years) GNOME and GTK+ and Qt/KDE have not gone a year without major improvement, and is there anything in windows that can compete with the speed of GLADE's GUI development?
Linux is constantly being improved upon and features added, like a Kernel Level cypto API and the futex system, which makes 2.6 incredibly fast, and they took out khttpd because apache was fast enough on a Linux system to kick IIS ass. Microsoft cannot win the argument on technical superiority, because Linux is constantly scrutinized and improved, 2.4.0 was released in Jan of 2001 while 2.6.0 is going to be relaced almost two years later, when is the next major installment of windows comming? How long between XP and Longhorn again?
Dont forget major Kernel improvements in Windows only happen with the upgrade cycle.
Did Glenn Beck rape and kill a girl in 1990? gb1990.com
Why not kde?
/gnu/celeron gnu/packard gnu/bell gnu/box.
Gnome translate-o-matic
Ever since Gnome 2.4 was released, I have found more and more gnome zealots who MUST absolutely advocate GNOME at every possible moment. Here is a guide to some of their claims, and what they really mean.
Unlike KDE, Gnome is free
Translation : GPL is freerer than LGPL. LGPL allows corporations like Novell and Sun to have propeitry forks and lock away their changes from the user. Now that Novell has taken over Ximian you can expect Gnome to get put under corpirate lock. With KDE you have the choice, you either PAY UP or pay with your source code.
Nautilus is much better than konqueror.
Wrong, if your using nautilus for anything more than a simple finder clone you can forget it. No split screen, no ioslaves and forget about being able to have a decent file dialog, not to forget that it is as unstable as hell and is STILL slow on >3 Ghz machines.
Gnome is easier to use
Yep, nothing like using gconf-editor to edit all except the most trivial of settings. Want tear off menus? Want a useable file dialog? You won't find it here.
Gnome has eye candy
Yes, my pirated Win32 fonts with the patent infringing font renderer. Bit stream vera sans looks like Tahoma put through a shreadder! Of course I still reboot into windows to print using "Comic Sans MS.
Gnome has a new web browser
Yawb! Along with Galeon, mozilla, thunderbird, konqueror, atlantis, lynx, netscape and w3m. Yes I need another browser! Not to mention that its got a religiously offensive name and it dosen't allow bookmark folders. It also crashes like a crazy! Apple chose khtml for a REASON! its stable and light!
For newbies, Gnome is the ideal choice
Despite the fact that the only mainstream Gnome based distro has been EOL'd, and all the newbie distros such as Mangadrake, Lindoze, $u$E, Lycoris, Xandroze, Gentoo use kde default, the Local unix geek showed me Debian, which installed Gnome 1.4 by default, so it must be good if he uses it.
You KDE guys must be sick of the K
Our G's and monkeys are SO MUCH better, gedit, glib, gconf, bobono, ghex, gless, same-gnome.
Gnome is themeable
Yep, choose from High, low and medium contrast, default, and clean ice. Wan't to change the colour scheme? USE GCONF NOOB, plus if you complain about it we will tell you to fuck off and go back to Windows or KDE.
Gnome has multimedia framework
Its a kludge of esd combined with broken xine libraries. No wonder it crashes all the time and dosen't work on 95% of video files
My Gnome work station
My 1.1Ghz Packard Bell box my mum bought for me from PC world, that is made of made to break components, but it has a GEFORCE RADEON 9000 card, so it must be good.On the other hand, no-one (well, nearly no-one) is suggesting that GTK+ is a replacement for Qt...
Gnome allows mac like operation.
x86 compatible 1 button mice are almost impossible to find, and it dosen't copy the whole macbar concept. Not to even mention their auto apply implementation is broken and dangerous! Plus if they did actually come anywhere close to copying the Mac the C&D letters would come flying up their asses.
Gnome is GNU software.
gnu/Yay, gnu/gnome gnu/for gnu/my gnu/debian gnu/linux gnu/500mhz
Inspired by the gentoo translate-o-matic.
Sad, but true.
2) IBM can't be bothered to support FreeBSD on their laptops. Public case in point - the use of Type 165 for the partition that held the backup info. Private case - IBM staffer claimed they'd help with a USB implementation issue on one type of Thinkpad. (The USB doesn't work at all with FreeBSD and the only way Linux works is if you force the probe order in some wonky way.)
That's not the case with current ThinkPads. And though it was an inexcusable blunder when they initially committed it, IBM fixed the problem with a BIOS update 3-4 months after they were pummeled by the FreeBSD community (Link to my 2 cents worth of pummeling.)
3) Many of the new style Thinkpads come with the Intel wireless - the one only supported under Windows.
Of course, that's the case with any Centrino based laptop out there. It's Intel's worry, not IBM's.
I'll believe IBM cares about Open Source when they address the 3 above. Otherwise its the swapping of one corporate master for another.
Corporations are fictional legal persons. They don't "care" about anything. People within corporations do. A lot of people within IBM care about open source. Andrew Tridgell works for IBM, for example. IBM has embraced Open Source for a variety of reasons, but in my opinion they all boil down to this: Free and Open Source Software gives IBM an advantage over its rivals in the competition to sell Information Technology to global business. IBM will attempt to assist its customers in saving money through the use of
IBM has lots of other irons in the fire with regard to Linux, but those are the ones I see most clearly. The fact that they are focussing on Linux and not FreeBSD is a function of the marketplace. Linux is the OS that the largest percentage of the FOSS community has gotten behind. IBM wishes to leverage this energy for its own purposes.
This may be cynical, but consider that the effort has resulted in substantial (many 100's of millions of dollars worth of) contributions of code by IBM to Linux, Java and many other projects, the hiring of many FOSS authors, to work on their own projects, substantial direct cash support for OSDL and others and the hiring of lots of folks who really do care about FOSS, though they may not be codejockies.
Finally, IBM is fighting a lawsuit aimed at stopping the forward momentum of Linux, and by extension, the rest of FOSS. One result of this suit could be the legal validation of the GPL, which would be a huge step forward for the entire community, even those that prefer the BSD or some other license.
So, IBM may be pursuing its own interests, but they are making a lot of moves that hugely benifit FOSS. The committment is long-term, but even if it weren't, what IBM has done up to now deserves recognition.
Disclaimer: I now work for IBM. But I made my decision to join them by considering the points I just made.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
Linux is still not ready for the desktop. Before people pull out their torches, flamethrowers and other impliments of death seeking my head, lets have a look at why.
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.
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.
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) Lack of proper native support for popular applications. Ok, so perhaps this is not linux's fault, or Xs for that matter. However, wine and crossover office are poor substitutes to running windows applications under windows. While it is good that linux software has sprung up to try to fill the void, much of this software is nowhere near as good as their windows counterparts. See: MS Office vs Openoffice or Gimp vs Photoshop. Before Linux is viable, big names need to port applications over to run nativly. Otherwise, you may as well just run windows.
5) Regardless of the advances made with the Linux desktop, it is still not user friendly. More to the point, it's confusing. Having a lot of choices can be a good thing, and a bad thing. For us gearheads, it's great. But for the average user, it's a tedious hassle that takes too long. I can set a windows box up from start to finish in about an hour. Linux almost always takes the entire day.
6) Package management in linux sucks. Installing something in windows is almost always hassle free, and fast. Installing something in Linux is sometimes hassle free. Library conflicts, bad software and things that just don't compile for whatever reason really hurt linux as it increases the complexity of the whole process.
In short, Linux is not really a good desktop operating system. It lacks standardization and most popular modern applications are not available for it.
Lastly, how is a conference on Desktop Linux solutions groundbreaking? I'm sure many have been held before.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Just a few notes here:
1. Mozilla is actually quite fast, especially compared to the competition (in essence, Internet Explorer). The monolithic Internet suite approach definitely does introduce some unnecessary overhead, but as Mozilla moves towards a modular model based on Firebird and Thunderbird, you can expect this to be remedied. The only major desktop browser that's left to consider, really, is Safari. Well, as it happens, Safari is based on KHTML, and the advantages of the very lightweight and speedy Safari are all present on Linux with Konqueror (which, incidentally, doesn't have the additional CPU/GPU overhead associated with Apple's Quartz framework).
2. X is not a bad framework. Features like network-transparency and the like are, in fact, VERY important in environments where thin-clients/servers are common. XFree86, in particular, is being forked every which way at the moment which, while at first glance seems like trouble, will probably wind up introducing some very interesting innovations, both in terms of processing and memory-efficiency and eye-candy. In the meantime, XFree86 provides a compatible, stable base that is more than fast enough on modern desktop hardware.
3. KDE and GNOME are not one-size-fits-all desktop environments. They are designed to be flexible and extensible and, as such, they tend to be more complex than, say, XP's Luna or the Mac's Aqua (incidentally, Luna absolutely sucks eggs as far as speed and bloat go, and while Aqua is admirably efficient given all that it does, one still must consider all that it does in terms of rendering iCandy). This flexibility is not necessarily a weekness, as it allows a desktop to be tuned for a particular user's needs, ranging from thin-client type apps to my dual-display K desktop littered with SuperKaramba themes. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that feature-set vs. performance is not a huge issue on modern desktops, and in places where it is (like embedded systems) Linux has very sleek, slim alternatives that still manage to be pretty and functional (like, for example, Opie). There are also desktop alternatives available for the KDE and GNOME-hating, thanks again to the modularity of X keeping the window manager and the display server seperate, ranging from GNUStep to Ratpoison.
4. You've got a point about OpenOffice, I must admit. It's not necessarily a bad system, but then again, it's not really anything more than an Office clone. A free and very portable Office clone, but an Office clone nonetheless. One of the good things about Linux desktop software that I mentioned above is that it doesn't try to recreate Windows or Mac with precision, but rather provide a very flexible framework that can be adapted to the user's needs. OpenOffice definitely doesn't fit in with this philosophy, but I'm sure that there are other projects going on out there working to redefine how we think of Office suites. And if not, somebody ought to get to work on that. ;)
5. Just a side note, Fedora isn't exactly the examplar of Linux's efficiency and performance. Go Gentoo!
What all the above boils down to is this: Does Linux have a way to go before becoming the perfect desktop OS? Certainly, and work is ongoing towards this goal. However, we must also ask another question: Is Linux, at this moment in time, a better choice than Windows or Mac for many users and businesses? Absolutely, and it's looking better every day.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
As for the "last GPL version"... nice... a Linux desktop for which you cannot write closed-source software.
If QT goes propietary (as I believe has been intended all along, they are backed by Canopy, and they were reluctant to change to a dual licensing system) then it will be forked, and this new fork will take most of the current development and worthwhile apps with it. No need to remain compliant with new versions of (a propietary) QT that nobody (except maybe SCO and Microsoft) is using.
Face it, "fucknugget", you weren't gonna get rich off of programming either. Microsoft already saw to it that they own the propietary software feild, and the only people who get to play there better ask Mr Bill if it's OK.
The only people that're getting burnt by the GPL are those who thought they could use thier current market position and/or IP ownership to fuck anybody new that came along.
Most people who wriote Free Software are not doing so in order to get hired by a large, dominant software company. Most authors of free software are writting thier software because it interests them, they need something that works in a certain way that the companies are not providing, or because they enjoy facing technical challenges without the interference of a project manager/marketing expert telling them what tools to use or what "features" are needed. Let them do thier thing, and perhaps you should consider another line of work if the only excuse you can find for your not being rich is that the violunteers happen to make a better product than you were capable of imagining.
Read, L
Why so?
You made a great job, Gnome is improving on a daily basis. Now tell me, please, how do you figure your work will land in the hands of the users? By magic?
No, you need a distributor. Someone is willing to do this job, and it is paid by the users, by advertisers, or by companies like IBM or Novell.
You also need other marketing services, and some corporate advice and Q&A and some treats like filesystems (JFS, XFS, etc.)
In fact, I find beautiful that some corporations really understand the role of innovative individuals. And guess what? It has always been this way.
You're lucky. Someone understood Gnome is cool and wanted to sell it. That does not happen always (e.g., the Xerox process was offered to some dumb company which discarded it, thinking it would not be worth selling).
Corporations are fictional legal persons. They don't "care" about anything. People within corporations do. A lot of people within IBM care about open source.
This is a very important point which is frequently missed by many. They assume every single move by a company is carefully calulated. It's very hard to do this in a company as large and diverse as IBM. Just because a bunch of people in some obscure hardware division release a piece of hardware which doesn't have Linux drivers, it does not mean that 'IBM' as an entity doesn't really care about supporting Linux.
The only way to enforce the 'single mind' within a company is to issue edicts telling every single employee (that's like 300,000 in IBM or something) to focus on something. Problem is if you try to do this for EVERYTHING you deem important, then the company grinds to a halt. For those who bitch and whine when IBM isn't being 'true to its published Linux ideals', I ask them to go try running a company with as many employees in as many diverse fields and still manage to keep everyone happy (while turning enough of a profit to keep the company afloat).
for now, I dont see linux converting the common power user, who wants photoshop, macromedia flash, flashy lights, easy game creation utilities, games and more games, and various other frills. microsoft will have those people for a while longer.
another BIG need is the push for scanner compatibility, SANE doesnt cut it, at all. sane is more of a hassle than it's worth. someone needs to come up with a better, more kernel integrated scanner system, so all you need to do is install a kernel module when you want to add a new scanner driver and voila! it works.
with sane.. you sometimes need a kernel module, and the sane module... which can be troublesome.. and not to mention the whole interface is buggy at times, very few people I know actually have working scanners on linux, this needs to be changed.
"Not trolling: Go install Fedora and see how it runs on a three year old machine. There's quite a lot of work to do."
Tried running OSX or WinXP on a three year old machine lately? My three year old Mac (brand new 2001) won't even let me install OSX let alone *run* it..
We live in interesting times as far as the Linux desktop is concerned. We saw two great desktops emerge for Linux: GNOME and KDE. We are also witness to a paradigm shift in the approach to development under Linux, brought about by the different needs and demands of the desktop environment. The server space has its own, well rooted developers. Most of them cannot switch to developing under a desktop environment successfully unless they too notice the paradigm shift.
If you outlaw the law, only criminals will have laws
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.
... we almost certainly are ... but it is important to realize that, despite offering a particular model with Linux preinstalled, IBM's own marketing statistics significantly understate the number of hardware purchases made with the intention of running Linux and not Windows.
That number however is quite deceptive. I work in a Linux shop, and we run GNU/Linux on virtually every machine we own, including our IBM laptops.
However, Linux only shipped on a few low to medium end models, and of course we wanted the best model available at the time. Furthermore, those models which came with Linux preinstalled did not have my company's distribution of choice installed (Gentoo isn't exactly a likely choice for commercial vendors just yet), so there really wasn't an advantage to buying Linux preinstalled.
Net result: we've bought half a dozen or more IBM laptops solely for GNU/Linux use, each and every one of them with Windows preinstalled. Despite the fact that Windows was removed forthwith and Gentoo GNU/Linux installed in its place (and in use ever since), the purchase shows up in IBM's sales statistic as a Windows laptop.
Linux users tend to be power users. It is very unlikely that a significant proportion of them bought low-to-medium end machines with Red Hat preinstalled when they could buy nicer machines and install their own distro anyway.
This isn't to say Linux users aren't a minority group of purchasers of IBM laptops
BSD, while an even smaller market segment, is almost certainly similiarly understated in their data.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy