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OSDL Announces Desktop Initiative
rhetoric writes "Earlier today at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in New York, nonprofit Open Source Development Labs announced the creation of a "Desktop Linux Working Group initiative focused on greater use of Linux on desktops throughout the enterprise." A press release is available on OSDL's website, in addition to this Register article." It's all part of their non-secret plan.
The Register article says that the OSDL is setting out to crate a specification for what an enterprise Linux distribution should be made up of. Yet the Register article also implies that the OSDL is not going to receive much direct user input on the spec itself. Is this going to turn out to be another UnitedLinux?
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
No, the spirit of free software is that we don't have to use it if it sucks, because we can just build something similar, but better. (Or something completely different, of course)
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
The big problem isn't that Linux is particularly bad or anything, it's that many, many people already have Windows. As bad as Windows might be, it's really annoying and fear-inducing for bosses to imagine taking down all their machines and installing a different O/S on them. The meeting should be on how to get people to switch o/s's, not how to implement linux. Once people aren't scared to switch an o/s, then all will be well.
stuff |
(Mods: this is on topic - bear with me)
So off I went to France. It was beautiful, perfect snow, lovely mountains, perfect pistes. I put on my snowboard and started to learn.
The problem I came across was that I couldn't do anything I wanted to. I could see where I wanted to go (I wanted to hit the slopes dammit!) but I completely lacked the skill required to get there.
After half a day, I'm ashamed to say I gave up. I was only there for 3 days and i'd wasted some of that precious time getting absolutely nowhere. So I put on my ski's, hit the reds and blacks and had a fantastic 2.5 days.
Linux is like that for me. I like it, I want to use it, the problem is that I think of it as a tool to do something else and I just end up getting frustrated because i can't do the boring things really quickly because i'm too ingraned in the Windows way of doing it.
I can change the display resolution quickly in Windows. I have to faff about in Linux. I can install items in Windows with a few point and clicks. Everything i've tried to install under Linux has botched up through my own general incompetance. The very basic of things takes 5 times as long and I get frustrated and eventually switch back to Windows (I still can't dial up under Linux, it refuses to recognise my external Hayes modem and KPPP dies horribly with some error message - the Gnome one hangs on startup).
Whilst Linux on the desktop might not be totally there, it's biggest problem is not that, but of people like me who don't have the patience to learn how to do the things (that they can do really quickly under Windows) differently.
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Linux is ready for *some* desktops only, namely ones where users won't be constantly tweaking and installing new software and hardware.
in other words, linux is ready for the healthier installations, and not ready for sick computer use.
constant tweaking and installation of new hardware and software is not using a computer productively. using a computer productively means that the computer is operational, in the sense that it doesn't actually -need- anything further to be done to it in order to function as intended. it just works.
this 'just works' state is fairly easy to get to with linux, and other open operating systems, and stay there. but i can count on one hand the # of windows users i have personally known who can point at their aging computers and say 'that system just works, so i leave it alone and just use it'.
15 years of Windows use may have given you a neurosis, a false standard, with which you are comparing other platforms where such inflictions aren't really a priority. of -course- you can tweak and install software in linux; indefinitely in fact.
but the point of computing, and of computer use in general is to -USE- the computer to do something, not be continuously servicing it. this is a fact that seems so simple, yet for most window-dwellers, it often appears to be inseparable from 'actual use' as a concept.
i blame microsoft of course. tweaking and upgrading and re-installing and installing and 'software choice' is just a way of getting you locked into a constant crackhouse fit.
The average user wants to do everything grandma wants to do, but they also want to be able to install or upgrade software and hardware *easily*.
why should they? ubiquitous, cheap computing (s/cheap/inexpensive) means that once you've set it up and got it working, you can leave it alone and just use it.
people are starting to see that the windows treadmill is a trap. once you get sucked into a windows way of life, upgrades and re-installs and tweaks and fixes all seem to be 'normal' ways to use the computer, but in fact this is really a detraction from the core issue of computer science, which is 'how can i use this computer to do the job in front of me?'.
microsoft, and others in the industry who have been around long enough to have weathered countless waves of API and hardware technological changes know that computers are a constantly-changing product. its like a lump of magic matter which never maintains its state long enough for it to become a fixture.
but this is not the linux philosophy. the linux philosophy is: get it working, and once its working, use it.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
We all know how good committees are at deciding things. Compromise usually leads to the lowest common denominator. Do we really want a Linux desktop that's designed by a committee? Isn't that against the whole spirit of free software?
We are talking about industry standards. Outside of the software industry, they work very well. The software industry is still in it's immature stages - like the engineering industry was before there were standard sizes for nuts and bolts - manufacturers actually deliberately made their nuts and bolts incompatible because it gave them lock-in, just as the software industry does now. Incompatible nuts and bolts seems crazy now, closed/incompatible file formats will seem crazy in the future.
Yes, the engineering world has discovered that it's far more profitable to standardize bolts but proliferate drive types.
The consumer never feels they're locked in, but has to buy mulitple sets of tools, if only to remove the patented head bolt and replace it with a standard one. Very profitable for the patent holder.
The software industry seems to be learning this trick.
Witness XML, a standard for creating standards. You can claim XML compliance and yet extend it in propriatary ways. It is plain text, but the file sizes are truly gargantuan, so you need to compress them, for which you can use your own propriatary compression method. Certain outfits are now even starting to create propriatary XML parsers.
The bolts are all standard, but you still have to buy the tool.
There's one essential difference between file formats and bolt design though. Bolts aren't given extraordinary protection by the DMCA.
KFG
That's just a random subset of things that we need in order to provide a quality desktop that most non-trivial/non-grandma users do. There are a million and one other things we need as well.
In short while a huge amount has been accomplished, there's still a huge pile left to do. Still, it's not as hopeless as it looks - the distance Linux has come since I started using it only 2 years ago is incredible. Beautiful fonts, cleaned up desktops, hugely improved artwork, maturing applications and powerful media players are just a few of the achievements I can think of.
We have to get more home users and more small businesses on, and that means improving the desktop, getting the applications they need built and 'marketing' it to people.
I would argue that focusing on larger business desktops would be a quicker route to the home users. People will buy a home computer to match what they have at work, not the other way around. In an enterprise, computers are chosen carefully for consistency and hardware compliance, so the desktop will run well. With a home user, you have to support every little webcam widget sold at BestBuy or Walmart, or else you lose.
If we get millions of corporate desktops established, hardware manufacturers will start supporting it, and people will start buying Linux for their homes.
And while I don't think we need to standardize on a particular window manager or desktop environment, at a minimum the Gnome/KDE environments should share lots of standards, such as clipboards, stanadard dialogs, themes, etc. I think this is what OSDL is trying to do, which is similar to freedesktop.org. Having multiple GUI toolkits is not necessarily a weakness; the same condition exists on Windows and that hasn't seemed to affect it negatively.
constant tweaking and installation of new hardware and software is not using a computer productively. using a computer productively means that the computer is operational, in the sense that it doesn't actually -need- anything further to be done to it in order to function as intended. it just works.
It is classic Linux-advocate style to redefine the user's problem to fit Linux's needs rather than the other way around. Some people like to get a new digital camera once a year. Some people like to install a new game once a month. Some people like to buy the latest and greatest MP3 players, video cards, wi-fi devices, photo printers, hand-held devices and all of it comes with software.
People want the capabilities of their computer to expand as the industry expands and new things are invented. It's a very closed mindset that says the "computer has a use and once it is set up it is static." My uses for the computer change every day (especially as a I am a progrmmer). Why should my less technical sister be restricted from a similarly expansive view of computing? If I call her up and tell her BitTorrent or iPod is the shit, it should be easy for her to install BitTorrent or an Ipod.
I'm not saying that Linux is intrinsically worse that windows at supporting dynamically changing systems: but for the average user today it is worse because of the driver and software support. That isn't Linux's "fault" but it is Linux's "problem". Not the user's problem. If you make it the user's problem they will stick with Windows and (frighteningly!) think of it as a more free and open system than the vision of Linux you are pushing.