How Not To Sell Linux Products

An anonymous reader writes "Roblimo looks at why so many Linux products fail in the marketplace, and decides it's not because Linux users want everything free, but because most products they're asked to buy are either poorly marketed or don't work well. He has some good advice for anyone trying to sell stuff to Linux users, except it really applies to *all* computer products, not just Linux." (NewsForge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.)

Comments

Why They Sell Poorly?

[dirkdidit]

Well it's the obligatory SCO Linux license of course!

Re:Why They Sell Poorly?

[CptChipJew]

"Here comes the lions, only in Kenya. Only in Kenya, we've got lions."

Actually, I think its "Where can you see lions, only in Kenya"

Kenya Believe It?

Re:Why They Sell Poorly?

[dirkdidit]

Ahh indeed it is. LOL, I can't even get the damned Kenya tourism advert right today.

We demand you delete this article

[Anonymous Coward]

Suggesting flaws in Linux is ungood
Linux failures are because of doubleplus ungood MS FUD and the hated Billgates
Violating groupthink is a thoughtcrime

Signed, the /. Collective Hivemind

Re:We demand you delete this article

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Actually it would be a doubleminus good, not a doubleplus ungood.

Where did you learn newspeak? And yes, I AM the thought police.

Re:We demand you delete this article

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it? One of the points of newspeak is to eliminate redundancy-if you have plus, it can be applied to accentuate the negative or positive following word-minus is redundant

Re:We demand you delete this article

[theTerribleRobbo]

Yup, I'm with the parent. It _is_ 'double-plus ungood'.

Now you can mod me down for not having a sense of humour. :D

Re:We demand you delete this article

[Anonymous Coward]

It is definately 'doubleplus ungood'

Its about dropping words.

You have good, and ungood, not minus good.

Hence plus ungood is better than minus good as you already have the plus and the un.

If you are going to correct someones newspeak, at least get it right.

Re:We demand you delete this article

[Anonymous Coward]

Mabee you should reread 1984, quoting from page 40 of the 1981 signet classic edition:
"times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doupleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling."
There ya go.

Re:We demand you delete this article

[LostCluster]

Actually it would be a doubleminus good, not a doubleplus ungood.
Where did you learn newspeak? And yes, I AM the thought police.

What is this "doubleminus" you newspeak of? There is no "minus" in newspeak to double. For someone in the thought police, we all think your boss is going to be very nonplussed to see you talking that way.

Re:We demand you delete this article

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it's doubleplusungood.

Re:We demand you delete this article

[Fatllama]

For someone in the thought police, we all think your boss is going to be very nonplussed to see you talking that way.

... which is only slightly better than making your boss doubleplusunnonplussed?

Re:We demand you delete this article

[ArseneLuppin]

[I know this comment was supposed to be a joke, but...]

The main point of the article was not that Linux sucks, but that many companies "do not get it". I.e.

1. they take any old trash,
2. port it to Linux,
3. hope that it sells just by virtue of it running on Linux,
4. and if it doesn't they go back and wine in their corner about the cheapness of the Linux users (rather than looking at their own mistakes).
5. ===> it's almost as if they wanted to have their Linux product fail, so that they can go back to Windows, and tell management "see, Linux is not yet ready for prime-time"

Yes, the article stated several times that often free Linux products are better than some of these commercial "Linux" "products". This is hardly a "Linux suxors" message, on the contrary.

Re:We demand you delete this article

[cdemon6]

You may be right, but point 5 seems *very* risky to me. If they fail their customers might see that there are better free alternatives out there and just no longer buy the failed product.

Why should they actually buy a product which has failed in competition against freen software before? (At least if they are able to get support for the free products from somebody or have their own technicans).

Re:We demand you delete this article

[ArseneLuppin]

This assumes the customer is rational. And also, that they are deriving a significant portion of their revenue from Linux.

However, both are rarely the case. An irrational customer might blame Linux, rather than the shoddy product. And if the company derives 95% of their revenue from their Windows products anyways, they might not care about losing the other 5%. Or they might "rationalize" that "The Customer" is simply not interested in linux (rather than question themselves about their own product).

Re:We demand you delete this article

[flappinbooger]

There is crapware written for any OS, and since Linux is trying so hard to get mainstream desktop acceptance, Linux crapware is particularly frustrating on many levels.

Re:We demand you delete this article

[ArseneLuppin]

There is crapware written for any OS, and since Linux is trying so hard to get mainstream desktop acceptance, Linux crapware is particularly frustrating on many levels.

It's particularly frustrating, if at the same time the company does a halfway decent job with their Windows offering. Take Realtek for example: the bundled Windows drivers with their Wifi card at least load into Windows, and allow to get on the net.

However, on Linux, it's fumble, dead-air, crash, burn, unless you have the single one kernel that their binary crapware drivers have been written for. And you can't even hope that they'll go Chapter 11 over this incompetence, as, like I said, their Windows drivers are halfway decent :-(

Catering for a marginal market makes it so much easyer to get away with gross incompetence: just blame the customer or the OS platform!

Re:We demand you delete this article

[Anonymous Coward]

I 120 percent agree. What's keeping from ditching Windows all together..

1)Diablo II
2)Video editing software.

I'll gladly pay for video editing software on linux if they ever make one good enough. I haven't checked into this in awhile, but last I saw someone somewhere was working on one for $100 but the question is is it any good?

Linux needs game support plain and simple. Someone told me I could possibly play diablo II through wine but that method just sounds like more trouble than what its worth.

Bottom line, until major companies start making RESPECTABLE working products for linux, linux will never make it to a home market. You only need one to set the whole chain off. Look what super mario brothers did for nintendo and final fantasy vii for play station. Now who will have the brass to step up to the plate?

Re:We demand you delete this article

[Mr2cents]

Indeed, like WP: if there would be a decent WP version for Linux, I know some offices that could do fine without Microsoft at all! They went for it, but somehow they were stopped by someone.. let me think, who was it again..

Anyway, the release they made was ok if you look at it as a prototype, but if they could have improved the UI.. could have been a success!

Re:We demand you delete this article

[Grishnakh]

Also, some of the people in the company might not want to bother with a Linux port in the first place, and therefore do a shoddy job of it when upper management tells them to do it.

I know this from my own work: I really don't like some of the projects I work on, so I'm actively hoping they'll be cancelled. I'm not knowingly doing shoddy work, but then again I'm probably not doing my best work either. I can certainly see how an uninterested employee could do a purposefully shoddy job.

Re:We demand you delete this article

[God! Awful 2]

But you might consider *why* companies release such trash for Linux. Maybe it's because they can't claim to have any intellectual property so they can't get VC financing, thus they don't have enough money to pay developers to create something state-of-the-art.

These companies are probably running Linux to *save money*, not to market themselves to geeks.

-a

It's true

[cmburns69]

It's so true! All the linux products I know of (and I don't know of many.. hence the marketing problems) are all targeted at the geek community.

This is not a very large market, and we're the pickiest of users, mostly because each of us thinks we can do it better.

Re:It's true

[benjamindees]

we're the pickiest of users, mostly because each of us thinks we can do it better.

Yes, but, apparently, according to the article, we can.

Re:It's true

[smittyoneeach]

I would say that geeks are so focused on the tactical level of code and hardware that they are oblivious to strategic concerns such as customers, markets, economics, and business.
Badly as I wish I personally could do both, I'm forced to confess mastery of neither.
[picks up broom]
Oh, well, back to sweeping...

Re:It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

...each of us thinks we can do it better.

Even a man can be god in his own mind.

Re:It's true

[AKAImBatman]

It's so true! All the linux products I know of (and I don't know of many.. hence the marketing problems) are all targeted at the geek community.

Oh, poppycock. I know a perfect example of a Linux app targeted at end users. After all, what end user doesn't run a database, hmmm? ;-)

(Yes, it's a joke. Don't get your panties in a bunch.)

Re:It's true

[kfg]

And primarily because we tend to focus on the function of the software, not on market value.

Most of the makers of these poor products could just as well be selling patent medicine.

In fact, in software terms, they are.

KFG

Re:It's true

[Frymaster]

I would say that geeks are so focused on the tactical level of code

this hints at the whole reason why opensource has the potential to totally change the computer/it business model. and why so many companies are failing at it.

it's all about product vs. service. since computers have been around the vast majority of companies have been product based. they sell wordprocessors or mainframes or videogames. this makes sense, of course, because the traditional economies have been product-based too. build a widget and sell it. simple.

opensource has the potential to move this to a service based economy. if the product itself is opensource then it is... free. you can't sell it successfully if people can just pluck it off a tree! the response should be to move the money-making into the service area.

okay, maybe "service" is a bad word (since it conjures up the image of low-pay, low-challenge tech support jobs). a better word is "solution". sure there are a lot of companies that claim to be "solution providers" but few really are. the successful companies are the ones that take free software, tailor it, combine it with other free wares, integrate it, document it, deliver it and support it as a unified "solution".

of course a lot of us can roll our own solutions - but a purchased solution can offer a lot of advantages that home-builts can't:

1. time savings: you can buy and install it in a day or build it in a month
2. accountability: if the solution fails it's on the providers head, not yours
3. transferability: if the guy who built your solution quits you may be in trouble. it may be better to buy.
4. pre-purchase audit: you can see the capabilities, merits and limitations of a purchased solution before you buy. you may not fully discover these aspects of yr home-rolled job until it's built. and then it's too late!

there are some companies that operate on this model. the old red hat did it with rhn and stronghold as just one example.

so. to the opensource companies out there: i have a dozen problems a day and a credit card. sell me a solution! please!

Re:It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

All the linux products I know of (and I don't know of many.. hence the marketing problems)

I think you don't know what hence means. If it applies at all here, it would be "there are marketing problems, hence I don't know of many Linux products."

Re:It's true

[SillyNickName4me]

which incidentely explains IBM's interest in using Linux and supporting open source. They have been interested in selling services and solutions for decades now (and did so)

They are no more or less evil then MS in intention, both want to generate a money stream that doesn't depend on products but on contracts. IBM's business model and philosophy however are served by OS and basic applications being comodities and OSS has proven to provide that.

MS on the other side tries to achieve this by trying to provide all comodities exclusively and getting people to basicly rent it.

Re:It's true

[gandalphthegreen]

All the linux products I know of (and I don't know of many.. hence the marketing problems) are all targeted at the geek community.

As is linux in general. Think about it, what average Joe can use an OS that doesn't do anything for him? Oh, and solitaire doesn't come preinstalled...

Re:It's true

[kfg]

okay, maybe "service" is a bad word. . .

No, I think it's a perfect word. Like customer. Serve your customers. That's what it's all about. It may not have an aristocratic air about it, but capitalism isn't about aristocracy. It's anti-aristocracy. It's about service, not rule.

We are, almost all of us, in some way "in service," just like a "house girl." Our task is to perform tasks for others. For pay.

"Providing solutions" for "consumers" or "Enterprise" is marketing doublespeak.

Got a problem? Perhaps I can be of service.

KFG

Re:It's true

[Ohreally_factor]

A huge difference is that IBM is now forced to compete on the merits of their services and solutions (maybe they always have, though I think some would argue that they haven't), while MS bases their business plan on predatory practices and monopoly power. IBM is willing to make money from selling us tractors and keeping those tractors running. MS wants us all to be sharecroppers.

Re:It's true

[Frymaster]

capitalism isn't about aristocracy

only inasmuch as the people who own the country didn't get it automatically at birth and their position isn't mandated by some religious edict.

the bottom line is this: there are those who control the means of production and there are those that don't[1]. those that do either live by a different set of rules or at least think they do.

1. and then there are the very few who are owner-operators, mom-n-pop operations and collectivized workers. but really, they have minimal economic and political clout.

Re:It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys are way too little rosy eyed -- The main reason IBM likes LInux is that it allows them to sell DB2 and WebSphere licenses to people who don't run IBM hardware.

The "services" angle sounds nice, but I think if you looked into it, 90% of their services revenue is directly derived from proprietary IBM hardware and software, all of which requires fat maintenance contracts.

Re:It's true

[Ironica]

okay, maybe "service" is a bad word (since it conjures up the image of low-pay, low-challenge tech support jobs). a better word is "solution". sure there are a lot of companies that claim to be "solution providers" but few really are. the successful companies are the ones that take free software, tailor it, combine it with other free wares, integrate it, document it, deliver it and support it as a unified "solution".

This model, however, depends on software not becoming commoditized. If we get to a point where there is sufficient well-supported, well-documented software out there, which is interoperable and essentially modular, then you no longer need an expert to put together your solution. Once upon a time we needed people to pump gas and operate elevators because it was sorta difficult. Once it got down to punching buttons, those jobs went bye-bye.

Not that I personally think what you propose is a bad idea, but playing devil's advocate for a moment...

Re:It's true

[jadavis]

On the other hand, there are those that think that things produce and those that think people produce.

Obviously, it takes some combination of the two to produce. Socialists tend to emphasize the former, and capitalists the latter, because in general it strengthens their political stance.

In general in the U.S., people who work more have more. Perhaps this trend is not followed as closely as some people would like, but it does work to some degree. Also, in general in the U.S., people who work do not find themselves very poor, and by "very poor" I mean they aren't poor by the standards of most other places in the world.

But nope, it's not perfect.

Re:It's true

[Micro$will]

This model, however, depends on software not becoming commoditized. If we get to a point where there is sufficient well-supported, well-documented software out there, which is interoperable and essentially modular, then you no longer need an expert to put together your solution. Once upon a time we needed people to pump gas and operate elevators because it was sorta difficult. Once it got down to punching buttons, those jobs went bye-bye.

That day is decades away, even in the M$ world. With all the millions of different companies all with different needs there's no way you can create a turn-key solution for everyone. There needs to be someone to set it up, maybe someone else to maintain it, and most likely someone else to troubleshoot.

Re:It's true

[DunbarTheInept]

Engineers still work at the companies that design the machines that make gas pumping easy. That machine that lets you lift-the-handle-pick-payment-method-squeeze-the-ha ndle-wait-for-auto-shutoff-pay-at-the-pump
didn't materialize out of thin air.

That is where computer software is a very different sort of market than anything we have experienced in the past, and these analogies don't work. In the gas-pumping world, the job of an attendant to pump the gas and the job of an engineer to design the pump and the job of a tool and die worker to run the machine that made the parts for the pump were three totally different jobs requiring different skillsets entirely. This is not the case with the many layers of computer software. The person who makes the custom app for the end-user company and the person who makes the compiler tools used to make that custom app are both programmers. Sure, they have different styles of work, and different high-level skills, but their low-level skillsets are a heck of a lot closer to each other than the skillsets of the gas station attendant versus the gas pump designer.

So if programming dissapears from the place where end-users see it happening that doesn't mean it disappears as a job. It's just that then the programmers make the tools that the end-users use to make programs.

Re:It's true

[drsmithy]

opensource has the potential to move this to a service based economy. if the product itself is opensource then it is... free. you can't sell it successfully if people can just pluck it off a tree! the response should be to move the money-making into the service area.

Trouble is, not all forms of software are able to leverage a "service". Games are something that springs immediately to mind. Indeed, pretty much anything where the software is the end, not the means, is going to be incompatible with turning into a service.

Re:It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but, apparently, some, of, us, still, can't, punctuate, properly, and, use, too, many, commas.

Re:It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider though the revenue formula's

a) product based
revenue = number of sales * price

b) service based
revenue = amount of time * rate

The only way to increase the revenue stream in (b) is to increase the rate. Whereas in (a) revenue can go up simply by increasing volume (marketing) _or_ by increasing price.

I'm not saying you can't make a decent business based on (b) - but the potential reward, (and also the risk) is much higher with (a).

Re:It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

"Blah, blah...totally change the computer/it business model...itself is opensource then it is... free. ...blah,blah...traditional economies...service based economy..."

GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK. Can't we move on AWAY from those dot-bomb bullshit businessmodels. The unemployment rates in this business are absolutely huge now, it's not funny anymore.

What kind of retards mod those posts up?

"sell me a solution! please! "

You wont buy it, you know it and I know it too.

People are NOT INTERRESTED in buying support for most software.

Re:It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM is just interrested in the free labour Linux and open source provides for them. They do some minor open source development but mostly it's just about free labour.

Re:It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Most software doesn't have a services business oportunety. Thats why most open source developers don't have any income of significance, support consulting or otherwise.

Re:It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are an open source developers people and companies will buy support from companies like IBM who don't do development, you are just free labour.

Re:It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you actually LOOKED at commercial linux software? I have several packages and the only ONE that is worth a damn is vmware.

I bought main-actor the commercial video-editing program... holy crap this thing is garbage, although it makes cinerella look unfinished it's still useless for anything but playing around with unimportant files that you dont care if it crashes and loses all your work. I also bought a copy of Maya for linux... and Blender makes the linux version of Maya look downright silly. Maya crashed a lot and had "quirks" that are not there in the windows version.

commercial companies thing that simply getting the thimg to compile means it's ready to ship for linux. Until they realize that selling to a linux user means your product has to be better than your main windows version in regards to stability and properly coded, because we can find free/open versions that make their product look shameful.

(well, except for video editing and video effects, NOTHING useable is available for linux yet.)

Re:It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you can, *if* you spend the time on it.

I had this argument with a colleague last week. He was saying he could write a better free, low-featured word processor than any that was currently available. I challenged him - if it's so easy, let's see a spec.

If you can do better, then bloody well get on with it. If you're not prepared to do that, then STFU.

Re:It's true

[SillyNickName4me]

> You guys are way too little rosy eyed -- The main reason IBM likes LInux is that it allows them to sell DB2 and WebSphere licenses to people who don't run IBM hardware.

That logic would see them sell Windows versions of both..

I have worked for IBM for 11 years, so I have a bit of a clue what I am talkign about here.

1 1/2 decades ago, IBM was inyterested in OS and application software as a commodity because it allowed them to sell hardware, server software and services. Now it allows them to sell (as you mention correctly) server software, hardware and services.

Anyway, all I was trying to point out is that this all has nothign to do with being good or evil, but with it fitting in well with their business model, and that not beign anythign new, so as logn as OSS provides the 'good stuff' for them, theres little chance to see them drop out.

Re:It's true

[SillyNickName4me]

Well, by virtue of usign and supporting it, they give Linux legitimacy in the eyes of many PHBs and other 'big business' orriented people.

I'd say that is helping Linux more then a little bit.

Re:It's true

[SillyNickName4me]

> In general in the U.S., people who work more have more. Perhaps this trend is not followed as closely as some people would like, but it does work to some degree.

Not exactly. It works on the lower end of the spectrum, but definitely not on the upper end of it.

The one thing that helps most for making money is having money. Work is for those who lack the money.

Re:It's true

[SillyNickName4me]

When you have a dozen products that can in theory forfill your need, you might need an expert to select the one that fits your needs best.

Choice is good, but it is not like choice makes it easier, and as a result having choice is only going to have more companies end up needign expert advice for makign their choices.

Re:It's true

[SillyNickName4me]

To keep to comparisons like the ones you make, I'd say that an end-user application programmer and compiler programmer share aa bit of their skillset, but would be comparable to a street worker vs someone building houses. Yeah, both use a subset of eachothers tools, they even share a basic part of knowledge.. yet the jobs are not the same, and the knowledge that is most relevant for the jobs is not the same either.

Bottomline, at this moment a typist and application programer both need a similar skill, beign able to type on a keyboard and read a display.. (among other skills).. and for someone not having a clue whatsoever with regards to computers etc, it may even look like they are doign the same (frantically typing away at the computer)

Re:It's true

[SillyNickName4me]

a) product based revenue = number of sales * price

b) service based revenue = amount of time * rate

The only way to increase the revenue stream in (b) is to increase the rate. Whereas in (a) revenue can go up simply by increasing volume (marketing) _or_ by increasing price.

The one thing you forget is that number of products sold/used affects b as well since the amount of time will be different depending on how much the products you support/service are being used.

Re:It's true

[jwsd]

The truly huge difference is that IBM's "evil" money making plan happens to converge with your religious belief while Microsoft's doesn't.

Re:It's true

[Mikkeles]

'it's all about product vs. service. since computers have been around the vast majority of companies have been product based. [emphasis mine] they sell wordprocessors or mainframes or videogames. this makes sense, of course, because the traditional economies have been product-based too.'

This is not quite true. The first computer companies (IBM, Univac, etc.) provided only leased machines with service contracts that included training, the OS, hardware upgrades, and so on. Additional services, such as bespoke financial software, were provided by the computer company or some third party providers such as BBN. These were not 'works for hire'; the client did not own any of this. This situation lasted throughout the '50s and '60s (and '70s for the most part) in the commercial sphere. DEC was the first major player (I know there were others) in providing computing hardware that was purchased outright by the end users. (Even their first fully fledged computers retained the name 'PDP' because the board didn't think getting into computers was a good idea!)

Productization (is that a word?) really ocurred as a result of the IBM anti-trust suit, the inroads of minicomputers, and the Apple II and really got going in the mid '80s. (Again, there are exceptions to all of this; e.g.: RDBs in the seventies and work at academic institutions.)

Re:It's true

[hesiod]

> If you are an open source developers people and companies will buy support from companies like IBM who don't do development, you are just free labour.

If you are an open source developer you are just free labour regardless what "good" or "evil" company (or none) uses it. It is a choice.

Re:It's true

[God! Awful 2]

A huge difference is that IBM is now forced to compete on the merits of their services and solutions.

And here I thought IBM was forced to compete on the merits of their TV commercials. They certainly remind me of that fact almost every day.

30 years later and they're still basically selling FUD.

-a

Re:It's true

[cmburns69]

You learn something new everyday...

Thank you, anonymous stranger!

Re:It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, that sounds like Apple.

Re:It's true

[Ironica]

When you have a dozen products that can in theory forfill your need, you might need an expert to select the one that fits your needs best.

You miss the meaning of the term "commoditized." An item that is a commodity has no significant differentiation between different brands. The technology gets "topped out" as it were, and products are more or less interchangeable. Commodities markets tell you the price of a good, not the price of a good from this or that supplier. It doesn't matter where it comes from.

In that world, the one that fits your needs best is the one that has the best price for your type of business. The things that will matter -- licensing structure, update pricing, etc., will be financial decisions that can be made by people with only a basic knowledge of the purpose of the software.

I'm not saying this is around the corner, but that *if* it happens, the software consulting niche goes out the window.

Re:It's true

[SillyNickName4me]

Hmm.. on one hand audio equipment is mostly a commodity, on the other hand, its not like it doesn't matter at all what equipment you use, as you correctly point out it depends on the situation or type of business, and price is a factor, relations with the producer of that specific brand might be another. Overall the biggest one however is how to make a match between the products that exist and the actual business needs of a company or organisation.

Re:It's true

[cptgrudge]

Once upon a time we needed people to pump gas and operate elevators because it was sorta difficult. Once it got down to punching buttons, those jobs went bye-bye.

I agree, but when these technologies became automated, we still needed people to fix them when they broke. We still do to this day.

It's impossible to build an unbreakable system, since human error is a trait we all share. We can make it really difficult to break by implementing decent QA (which is kinda rare, but that's another discussion), but there are always things that can go wrong.

Re:It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, anonymous stranger!

No need to be so damn civil about it. But, uh, you're welcome. (Is this really Slashdot, or some sort of hoax?)

Re:It's true

[Ironica]

Hmm.. on one hand audio equipment is mostly a commodity, on the other hand, its not like it doesn't matter at all what equipment you use,

But it's not like companies hire full-time employees to administer their PA system.

There's a few highly specialized uses where audio equipment requires a full-time person to support it. Most of them are in the entertainment industry. If software became commoditized in the way I was describing, it would probably be a lot like audio equipment is today... a few people working in highly specialized industries, maintaining very high-end software, tweaking things constantly to maintain peak operation. But that's a lot fewer people needed than the current-day situation.

Re:It's true

[SillyNickName4me]

> But it's not like companies hire full-time employees to administer their PA system.

Nah, just theatres and such places indeed.. not to mention the number of people and smaller shops that have hired me and similar people to help them select appropriate audio equipment for their home and such.

Fact is that the software industry will change substantially, but what that means for consultancy is not that easy to predict really, and I think you are ignoring many things for which companies (more then private users) are getting expert advice at this moment. Not from their own fulltime engineers all the time, actually more and more often from other companies that specialize in consultancy.

Then, even when there is no difference at all between products in a comodity market, so there is no reason to pick one over the other, there is still a need for consultancy with regards to actually using those comodities for somethign usefull/profitable etc.

Well, I know of one!

[vasqzr]

Do not use the Mozilla logo on your products!

Re:Well, I know of one!

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless of course, you happen to be the mozilla foundation, then you can use it all you want... sir...

Re:Well, I know of one!

[BiggerIsBetter]

Well, fair enough, I reckon. It's like any other trademark, and they're defending it as they ought to. You know that if they don't, some nutjobs will be selling "Mozilla" this and that on Ebay or to unsuspecting companies, ripping some poor shmucks off, and giving the Mozilla brand (I hate that word :-( ) a bad name.

perhaps unsolicited email is the marketing answer

[victorvodka]

Just today I ordered some herbal viagra and a salve that will increase my memory, products I would have never known about were it not for helpful emails sent by well-meaning strangers. Perhaps people like me could be told about open source operating systems by similar methods. Perhaps the .iso installation files could be sent as attachments.

I think the conclusion is very obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

If everyone stopped selling Windows products, and sold Linux products instead, Linux Product Sales would increase.

Re:I think the conclusion is very obvious

[CreatureComfort]

Better yet! If everyone stopped selling Windows products, and gave away Linux (which should be free) products instead, Linux Product Sales would... oh... never mind.

Re:I think the conclusion is very obvious

[mingot]

Nope, the open source movement would just move to make other companies who still have the nerve to SELL software obsolete. Honestly, I'd rather develop and market something on windows, having a year or so to make a few rupees before they (MS) integrate it into the OS as opposed to developing for linux and never having the chance to net a single dime. I enjoy food and shelter and do not have a 'straight' job, with programming something I do nights, for fun. I actually code during the daylight hours and need to get paid for it.

Re:I think the conclusion is very obvious

[sumdumass]

Honestly, I'd rather develop and market something on windows, having a year or so to make a few rupees before they (MS) integrate it into the OS as opposed to developing for linux and never having the chance to net a single dime

well i don't understand why you would not have " the chance to net a single dime " there are several linux projects that a: are open source and charge for the easy to instal binaries, b: are closed source and operate in a linux enviroment- they can and do charge fees for it. c: use opensource programs to aid in thier operations but are still a propriatary app. there is plenty of opertunity to make money when programming for linux. this opertunity manifest itself into several ways. support services, actually selling the product, installing the product,... you get my point. just because it is free software doesn't mean you always get it free. some distrobutions even charge for the linux in istelf err the way they package it and customize it for the customers. SusE, Redhat, Mandrake, umm there a couple more.

Re:I think the conclusion is very obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not stop selling/distributing Linux at all. It's not worth the effort anyway.

Re:I think the conclusion is very obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

which should be free,
as in speech,
not beer.

well DUH

[Anonymous Coward]

"because most products they're asked to buy are either poorly marketed or don't work well"

Christ, that's usually why ANY product fails.

Re:well DUH

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah! pitty its an or statement and not an and.

Re:well DUH

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't follow.
could be the beer.

Re:well DUH

[LordK3nn3th]

In the case of windows, it's clever marketing.

Re:well DUH

[moranar]

Which is exactly the point he's trying to make in the article:

And a last big one: Sell a product people actually might need or want!

This, like the advice that came before it, is not really Linux-specific.

That's the point.

Linux users are like anyone else: If you have products they want and need; that work as promised; that have clear instructions provided; that are sold at a reasonable price and are marketed properly, they will buy from you.

But too many Linux products -- and computer products in general -- don't meet these basic expectations. It's no wonder most of the general public views all computer and computer-based product marketing with suspicion.

So you're saying..

[Idealius]

free Linux apps are better than commercial Linux apps showing that the Linux architecture is flawed by it's very nature.

It's hard to say: Are the free programmers gifted coders, or are the commercial coders just REALLY bad ..?

Re:So you're saying..

[Idealius]

Curious, do you do code Linux, or Windows?

Re:So you're saying..

[bored1]

Perhaps the best linux distro that i've used is a commercial one. While they also have a free version, buying it saves bandwith, and the frustration of navagating their reliativly crapy ftp

Re:So you're saying..

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Does it matter?

2. To pre-empt responses either way, remember he works for a small, shitty company.

3. He sometimes releases unfinished code, hence the company is small and shitty.

And the cringeworthy. . .

4. Profit?

Re:So you're saying..

[bwy]

In our organization salespeople drive the development process. Whatever we build is directly dependent on what they think they can sell on a given day. This is the way a lot of shops work and I'm not sure it is the best philosophy for delivering a useful, quality product that people are willing to pay for.

Re:So you're saying..

[benjamindees]

So, on the one hand, you have OSS stuff that works *great* but takes *forever* to make and isn't exactly what people (think they) want at any given moment.

On the other hand, you have salespeople feeding people crapware produced over the course of a few months to satisfy the latest buzzword-driven market-craze.

And, suprise suprise, the buzzword-laden focus-group-created crapware wins in the marketplace? This doesn't sound like anything new to capitalism, or anything unique to the computer industry for that matter. It sounds like a *much* larger problem.

Re:Re:So you're saying..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just trolling, don't take it so seriously..

Re:So you're saying..

[SmackCrackandPot]

Commerical stuff is just too rushed maybe?

The implementation of nearly all commercial software is based around project timetables and milestones. For low profit margin projects, some managers would insist that the engineers abandon whatever task they were working on and move to the next item in their list, rather than allow the timetable to slip. In other projects, bonuses were paid according to whether various milestones had been reached. In one project I worked on, bonuses were actually based on the number of bugs reported (not found or fixed). So we were instructed not to report bugs until the bonuses were paid out. Once that happened, and the project moved into the maintenance phase, everyone left.

Re:So you're saying..

[bwy]

On the third hand, I'm also a shareware author and own my own business on the side. The software I develop on my own is far superior to the stuff I do at the day job- with my own business, I run the show and can utilize my time doing what I think is best. The biggest philosophical difference is that with my own business, I make the decision to build really good software *first* and then market it heavily.

Re:So you're saying..

[jedidiah]

Don't forget where OpenOffice came from. It was a completely proprietary application that Sun just gifted to the community. There are other Commercial Linux success stories: Applix, (OLD) WordPerfect, Oracle and Loki.

It can be done. Most companies don't bother.

BTW, Loki still failed miserably in the area of marketing.

Re:So you're saying..

[Glonoinha]

How's the shareware business paying off? Going to be able to quit the day job anytime in the near future? Edit : I just reread it and the caffeine is just now hitting my system. Perhaps compare / contrast the shareware market vs. your regular business instead.

Just curious. The reason I ask is because from my viewpoint the shareware business is very similar (in an abstract, conceptual way) to the OSS model - except the OSS guys give away their source and don't get upset when nobody sends them money. Take the shareware model, subtract any revenue that the users that register send in, post the source code up for download and Voila! F/OSS.

That's what the F/OSS movement is all about? How the fsck does that pay the rent, grocery bills, car lease and buy new computer toys? Particularly when the software is the end product (games, user apps, etc.)

From each person what he can contribute.
For each person what he needs.

That sounds great, in concept, but those of us that have been to the Kremlin in Moscow, that great Mecca of Communism, have seen that it doesn't work.

I don't have all the answers, but anybody that honestly believes that software / information wants to be free (as in beer) needs to spend a month living with the natives in Russia to get a strong lesson in Communism from those that lived it. Anybody there over the age of 30 can give you a first person account, they lived exactly the business environment the F/OSS fantasy dreams of - and they will be happy to explain the rise and fall of the Russian empire that was built on those exact beliefs.

Oh yea bwy this wasn't directed at you directly, but it seemed as good a place as any to interject.

Re:So you're saying..

[Glonoinha]

As a newbie to Linux may I inquire as to which distro that was? If I am going to run it, I want to run a good one.

Re:So you're saying..

[bwy]

The shareware industry is good and can be profitable- shareware is nothing more than commercial software that is designed by people who are a lot closer to the pulse of the users, without all the corporate overhead.

If anybody tried to tell me I should open source my stuff and give it away for free, I'd tell them they are crazy. Why on earth would I spend every free moment I have building a robust software package just to give it away? If I make a trade off of time with my family, for example, it will be for my own benefit. Otherwise, what do I have to say for myself someday? I missed my kids baseball game but I developed a great app that a bunch of people were able to leech for free? I'd rather say I missed the ball game but at least made enough cash to move us out of the slums where my kid could pay in the yard safely, or I made enough to help him with college, etc. Now, I contribute to OSS projects that I use in my software- libraries and so forth. I think that is fair.

I've heard that OSS developers who ask for voluntary donations (for things like servers/tools/etc that they need to exist) collect almost nothing. By the same token I've never gotten a thank you letter from someone collecting welfare, unemployment, etc.

Human nature mandates that we participate in voluntary, mutually beneficial exchange of goods and services. This is the basis of a civilized society and is what set the United States apart from all other countries in history. If you think this system sucks, explain to me why people aren't sneaking into Cuba on home made boats. They have a system very similar to what a lot of folks here seem to say they want. Right here in this hemisphere just around 100 miles from Key West! Aye, comrade.

It's easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Just make something that looks like code linux users are already using, then chrage them for it.

You don't need to have any ground to stand on, and you may get nothing from the linux users, but the corporate competition will invest in you for being a s#!t.

I personally plan to release GUMP someday soon, it's only 3 lines different to GIMP. Amazing how great minds think alike.

What is a Linux product?

[ObviousGuy]

Is a lame product like Walmart's Linux PC it?

Or is TiVo it?

Linux products are all over the place, usually concealing the fact that they are based on Linux. Just because Linux and its standard UI are not popular in consumer devices doesn't mean that Linux itself is not used and the products based on it aren't successful.

Re:What is a Linux product?

[sakusha]

There you go. People don't want Linux products. They want products. Linux isn't a consumer product. A PDA, a TiVo, a file server are products. Nobody gives a damn that their TiVo runs on linux. Quit trying to sell linux and get busy selling products.

Re:What is a Linux product?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell yeah. I know of several 'computer professionals' who were not familiar with Linux, and wondered where people used it. OMG they were surprised when 'GOOGLE? Google uses Linux?' (Quick typing to look) OMG? Why do they use Linux? Security? Reliability? Insanely high value/cost ratio (essentially infinite). "I didn't know Google used ...."

Re:What is a Linux product?

[networkz]

except people do care if windows runs on it.

it's a selling point.

Why can't linux?

Re:What is a Linux product?

[Biffer4810]

I think the point is this however:

I think the idea is to get the word "Linux" in peoples minds, so they think of it as an added feature, or something like that.

"Oh, I have my Linux TiVo, I bet this Linux PDA works really well too."

It's sort of a "brand awareness" issue or something. That aspect of the marketing doesn't really bother me much.

I do agree with you in a general sense though, people don't want Linux, they want the products.

For the most part.....

[GerryGilmore]

....his experiences are common to *most* products sold, regardless of underlying OS. The thing that is specific to Linux/geek is that we see no docs and poor installation setups as a fun challenge and brag about it when we conquer it.

Re:For the most part.....

[Anonymous Coward]

You are the "jocks" of the computer world.

Careful who you alienate...

Re:For the most part.....

[Steve G Swine]

Marketers would call people who like undocumented setup challenges a market segment, and Linuxy things like available modifiable source code as a product attribute valued by that segment.

(Yes, they would also use phrases like "Linuxy things", but that's OK, they do what they do, and the planet's big enough for that.)

They would, however, also call this market segment comparatively miniscule... which is why that whole world domination thing has a problem. The hivemind here may want to get comfortable with that.

Re:For the most part.....

[EnglishTim]

....his experiences are common to *most* products sold, regardless of underlying OS

I'd say that much of the time installing software for Linux is about an order of magnitude harder than it is on Windows...

Re:For the most part.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn right ! I won't even consider looking at a package unless it'll take at least 3 hours to install :-) I like the perl ones best - this module depends on that modules depends on that ... and as for those RPMs.. ha ! just way too easy :-)

Re:For the most part.....

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Marketers would call people who like undocumented setup challenges a market segment, and Linuxy things like available modifiable source code as a product attribute valued by that segment.

...and they'd be wrong. The segment doesn't exist.

Being able to do a thing is good. Being needlessly bothered with extra crap along the way makes absolutely nobody except for the dumb or crazy people -- and I mean not in a good way -- happy.

That said, everyone values the ability of people who can do difficult tasks (ex: good musicians, sucessful business owners, but not lottery winners). Anything that is hard to do and shows some kind of power can impress other people.

If many people think that installing some kind of software is hard...if you can do it, you have power. The software may not be hard to install, though. Even if it is, only someone who is nuts would want it to remain difficult.

That said, if there is a reason for the difficulty -- for example, it allows greater control -- then the task will remain fairly difficult for those who can handle it out of necessity.

Re:For the most part.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Not for maintenance. Windows = easy to install application software, hard to maintain. Linux = harder to install application software, easier to maintain.

The issues get a bit muddled, though, when you look a little closer.

The base installation of the OS -- and that includes quite a few applications -- is starting to lean in Linux's favor; Install a good Linux distribution and you get a word processor or two (or 5 or 10). Install Windows (a rarity, true) and you get a text editor along with the joy of installing yet another word processor as a seperate step. Repeat for every application not bundled with the OS; many times for Windows, only a few times for Linux.

Re:For the most part.....

[Anonymous Coward]

as hard as rpm -i app.rpm, or even worse, locate mouse, doubleclick on rpm file.

Now, which app on Windows was it again that's easier to install? MyDoom.A?

Re:For the most part.....

[DerekLyons]

....his experiences are common to *most* products sold, regardless of underlying OS. The thing that is specific to Linux/geek is that we see no docs and poor installation setups as a fun challenge and brag about it when we conquer it.

Which is exactly why I'm *not* a Linux geek, by conscious choice. My computer isn't a toy, nor is it a political statement. It's a tool, and as such I simply want it to *work*. And frankly, this Windows 95 box works just fine. Software installs go painlessly as do hardware upgrades. (Other than needing to reboot it about once a day, no biggie.)

OTOH, I'm helped by the fact that I'm an intelligent user. My browser is locked down, I don't install every program in the universe, and I routinely run my system maintenance. (Spyware eliminator, cookie cleaner, cache cleaner, registry optimizer, disk optimizer. No different than routine maintenance on my car.)

Until Linux can be driven by the semi-geek, (like myself), then it won't be a desktop threat to Windows.

Re:I wont pay for software

[DAldredge]

What about the software that runs your mouse, keyboad, bios, harddrive, modem???

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Or is it the other way around?

[Anonymous Coward]

....because no apps have ever sold well for linux, as it holds a tiny share of the desktop, there is no incentive to make the apps of the highest quality.

One thing that may change this...I wonder how different OS-X applications are from gnome/KDE apps. Certainly if the vendor uses Qt there is not much difference, but what about using the native toolkits?

The reason I ask is...so many multimedia apps are being ported to OS-X, and Mac users (especially multimedia types) demand stability and dependability.

As more windows apps are ported to OS-X, many by vendors who swore they would never port to unix or linux, is there any chance of these high end apps migrating the extra step to Linux?

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[Anonymous Coward]

>is there any chance of these high end apps migrating the extra step to Linux?

no

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[Dan Guisinger]

OS-X won' have anything to do with porting to Linux. The architecture is way different, the APIs are different, the multi-media capabilitis are better integrated and more fluent because Apple designs everything, you dont have one component from one organization, another from this one, etc. Its all designed to work together, you can't get that as effectively on Linux...and probably NEVER will.

OS-X applications using Carbon or Cocoa will probably never find a direct port to Linux. Infact, OS-X applications really do not make use of POSIX under pinnings at all, and rely on OS-X APIs.

POSIX falls short on usability, reuse, and completeness. This is why OS-X's Cocoa and MS's .NET are storming the market right now....you can develop applications in a fraction of the time of other platforms. Look at Linux. Pick a Window Manager. Pick a Tool Kit. Now, the person running on the end machine must have the exact same items installed, or it won't work. Even worse, each toolkit/window manager has a different look and feel, and a different API, making it impossible to let EVERY ONE running Linux run your application without serious changes to either your program, or their system configuration.

You want to know why Linux applications suck, or why no body uses them? THAT is your reason.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, porting most Cocoa apps to run on GNUStep/Linux would be fairly easy. (GNUStep is not quite identical to modern Cocoa, but it's close enough to make for an easy port.)
The problem is most linux users don't have/run GNUStep, and thus we get back into having to change the end user's configuration a bit.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[Anonymous Coward]

The other problem with your "fairly easy" port is that nobody does it, so nobody really know how easy/possible it is.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Hmmm. Storming the market you say.

The road to ruin is wide and well paved. Say what you will about the Linux toolkits, they build on a tradition that is pushing 30 years old. Other system of this lineage control power generation, track enemy subs underwater, and operate the avionics for aircraft. Linux uses the same toolkits and methodologies as Unix and QNX.

Suck is relative. I go by what has been done with it. I can't think of any killer apps that are written in .NET. And believe me, I do this stuff for a living.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I think that if a core handful of apps ported to Linux, it would make all the difference, and really propel Linux into a MUCH more interesting place.

1. Photoshop. It is God-like. It is Big. It is (too often) Complex. It is the 900 kilo gorilla. If Photoshop abandoned MacOSx, Apple would be in serious straits... get Photoshop going on Linux and you've got something. And no: Gimp doesn't do it. It's a nice try, but it's just not there yet. I've used it and found it seriously wanting in OH so many ways.

2. InDesign / Quark Xpress. this will require ULTRA reliable drop-dead no-excuses perfect printing capabilities in Linux. Which aren't there yet. It's getting there, but again: not ready for prime time at your local service bureau or the random Epson widget you got for free with your $80 rebate. THEN they'll have to migrate the apps over, and doing that to Quark will be something close to HELL freezing over given the patched and scrambled nature of Quarks underlying engines and code.

3. Dreamweaver. Sure, "real coders" do all their html by hand, but the rest of us do some multiple more work in some GUI like Dreamweaver. Supposedly, Macromedia actually is porting this stuff over to Linux, and if that happens, you can expect Adobe et al to follow suit in the next few years, to prevent MM from owning that market segment.

Now, StarOffice is very good and does a VERY large percentage of what MS Office does. I think that you will see StarOffice grow as other major vendors port stuff to Linux.

Then there's video editing, music creation, audio editing and processing, and that's a whole 'nother smoke.

I do think that as Linux grows, more and more vendors will port to it. It's fairly simply math, and why OSx apps exist. Let's say you have 3% of a market. And the market is of 100 machines. And let's say it takes $3 million to make the app. Do the math. Now, say that you have 3% of a market that is 100 million machines, and your app costs $3 million- the math suddenly get s a lot more attractive. It's just a dollar a machine and you break even.

The same is going on with Linux. As more an more desktop machines are running linux all over the world, the numbers will continue to look more attractive, and major vendors will start sniffing around looking to port to that opportunity.

I think continued effort and some patience are in order.

And if you want to make free (as in beer) apps, fine - go for it. As a user, if they do what I need and do it well and competently, I'm there. But if they don't, (and they too often don't) regardless of platform, I'll cheerfully fork over the green stuff to get my work done. But, I'm not a programmer - I use software and when I need something special, I hire (and pay real money to) a programmer to make it for me. Free is nice, but when you need someone to put their neck on the line for a mission critical work, having the kind of responsibility engendered by reified contracted economic relations ($) is extremely efficient.

RS

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[Dan Guisinger]

I would doubt it.. Much has changed in OSX since NextStep. The graphics APIs have advanced, it no longer does PostScript but PDF rendering. I doubt GNUStep would be able to run many of your modern OSX apps.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[Joe Tie.]

making it impossible to let EVERY ONE running Linux run your application without serious changes to either your program, or their system configuration.

Wouldn't having to install the .net runtime on windows qualify for that as well? I certainly don't consider having to install, say, the latest version of sdl to be any more significant.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[FLEB]

Still, though, in regards to the article, and the popularity (movin' units!) of Linux apps, this is irrelevant.

Personally, though, I agree with you. Leave Linux to the servers and submarines, where high-power high-stability is needed, and let OSX and XP Home help Mom get her email. Makefiles and source distributions suck if you're a home user that just wants to "use". Precompiled black boxes suck if you need razor-sharp precision and utility.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[Ohreally_factor]

2. InDesign / Quark Xpress

InDesign I could see in a few years, but Quark? Muahahahaha. Sure, right after duke nukem ships.

PS: I like the way you used "reified".

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[ciroknight]

But that's just it. .Net is already shipping with XP SP1 in a lot of cases. The .Net framework is solid and invariant by nature, this is the Microsoft way of doing things most of the time.

The serious thing to look at is where .Net is taking microsoft. The reason for developing .Net was so that they could become platform independent. Their underlying operating system is flawed by design in a lot of places, and they, much like Apple today, are evaluating running new technologies. But in order to make up for compatibilty, it's easier to run everything in a little invariant shell, the .Net framework.

If Linux was smart, we'd do this too. Since we all know that problems like library and package dependicies are probably the most common Linux problem today, why not design a system that allows any program access to what it needs? If joe-program needs liba version 2.3, but is incompatible with the new liba 2.4, but bob program needs liba 2.4 and is incompatible with liba 2.3, why not have both, with "Framework Selector" written to automatically load the correct binary for the correct situation.

Apple has security that their software will only ever run on their equipment. They've experimented thousands of times otherwise, but they always failed to make it out of Apple simply because they are a Hardware company. They sell hardware. Microsoft on the other hand, is exactly opposite. They sell software that will work on practically all hardware. They've done so by sacrificing a lot of speed, cutting corners, and so on and so forth. Linux on the other hand, is like neither. Sure we design software to work on all hardware, but we don't cut corners, and we don't give a damn if it doesn't work somewhere else, that's somewhere else's job to make it work. And then we expect people to give back what they've written, and claim it under our given name.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[Shados]

Very true... To be fair to Linux...most desktops have QT, GTK...-definately- have glibc!! to be fair for Windows... dotNet is in Windows update, so anyone who updates blindly (I realise its not anywhere close to the majority of people) will have it...and newer versions of Windows have it built in...I do think many OEMs package it too...not sure about that, if they dont, they should... "but but...its similar to how distro packagers put the librairies and stuff already in the linux install!!" Very true. Never said I agreed with the parent(s) =)

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, it's "Mac OS X" not MacOSx

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, it's not "OS-X" it's Mac OS X

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[sumdumass]

Well outside the size and potential problem if the lib package is actually controling somethign like hardware, you could include the corect lib version and call specifically to that. There would be a few exceptions but for the most part it should work.

On the other hand, why would i want 2 copies of liba2.3 on my system? Or how would you upgrade the lib pack in the future? I mean if the project started developing again and took advantage of newer libs. would you leave the old there or just replace it with a new one? and when 5 diferent places do this and you end up with 4 copies of the same liba2.3 when your now running liba2.6.

i guess it would be easier to just ensure newer libs are backwards compatible and if they arent installed have something obvious in the instal doc stating where to get it.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[miu]

Even worse, each toolkit/window manager has a different look and feel, and a different API, making it impossible to let EVERY ONE running Linux run your application without serious changes to either your program, or their system configuration.

Even better are the problems with solutions like: "Oh you have widget.so.1 linked to widget.so.1.2, this will only work if it is linked to widget.so.1.1", you wind up with private lib versions and wrapper scripts that set linker variables.

Shared lib versioning problems can be avoided with care, but it is a problem that should be handled without the user having to care. A good example of a project that should know better is 'guile', it's a nice extension language - but poorly planned versioning changes kept me from using it after a couple bad experiences.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[DunbarTheInept]

Pick a Window Manager. Pick a Tool Kit. Now, the person running on the end machine must have the exact same items installed, or it won't work.

Since when? I'm typing this using Mozilla. Which works just as well under many window managers.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[arivanov]

because no apps have ever sold well for linux, as it holds a tiny share of the desktop...

That is not the reason why most apps do not sell well on linux. The reason is that 95% of the companies out there try to rebadge their existing stuff and do not bother to comply with Linux filesystem hierarchy and system administration standards. As a result their packages end up fubaring the system or seriously irritating the user so that there are no repeat sales ever. For example I would have happily payed for ymessenger and used it, if it did comply with the FSH. As a result I tolerate it only when I have no other choice (when gaim has gone south again). And I am definitely not installing any more software by Yahoo.

One of the major points of the current economical model for software (and anything else) is the repeat purchase model. Very few things have profit margin out of the first sale. It takes the customer to come back for the next product for the vendor to turn profit. If the first product from a vendor completely fubars a system (and this is much more obvious under linux then under windows) there will be no repeat sales.

One of the reasons why IBM is succeeding in the Linux market is the fact that they have sat down and wrote proper .spec files and done proper RPMs.

Some of them have horrible dependency lists and end up requiring ksh, but they are still native OS packages, not installanywhere or selfinstall executable abominations from the 9th circle of software hell.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[drsmithy]

Wouldn't having to install the .net runtime on windows qualify for that as well? I certainly don't consider having to install, say, the latest version of sdl to be any more significant.

Installing .Net entails going to www.windowsupdate.com, ticking a checkbox and clicking "download" - and *that's* assuming whatever piece of software you have that requires it doesn't install it for you.

Meanwhile, tracking down all the little libraries, GUI toolkits, perl modules, et al (often specific versions of, no less !) can easily turn into day long affair and lead you through numerous amateurish and quastionable looking websites rife with bad spelling and juvenile commentaries on various Microsoft employees' relatives. If you're lucky, the OSS application developer will have listed those dependencies and have links to all those obscure, non-standard components on the application's download page. If you're _exceptionally_ lucky, the links won't be broken and the components will actually be installable under the package management system your OS happens to use.

*That's* why it is "more significant".

Here's a hint, folks, if your application won't install and run on a freshly installed copy of the last two or three versions of Redhat or SuSe, you've probably already lost _at_least_ 50% of your potential users.

Speaking as someone who plays a fairly large part in choosing the software used at our company, I'm vastly more likely to spend several hours looking for a piece of software that runs on our OSes with nothing more than an "rpm -Uvh" (or equivalent) than I am spending several hours downloading, compiling, testing and installing additional packages. If the reasons for this are not obvious to you, you probably shouldn't be trying to sell software or solutions.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[advocate_one]

"get Photoshop going on Linux and you've got something."

take a littel look here... :)

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[Anonymous Coward]

And just how exactly would Photoshop on Linux make other companies linux products actually work?

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Installing .Net entails going to
> www.windowsupdate.com, ticking a checkbox and
> clicking "download" - and *that's* assuming
> whatever piece of software you have that
> requires it doesn't install it for you.

Not to nitpik, but ... both Debian's apt-get and Mandrake's urpmi do something similiar to this already...

> Meanwhile, tracking down all the little
> libraries, GUI toolkits, perl modules, et al
> (often specific versions of, no less !) can
> easily turn into day long affair and lead you
> through numerous amateurish and quastionable
> looking websites rife with bad spelling and
> juvenile commentaries on various Microsoft
> employees' relatives.

Again, apt-get and urpmi both handle the task of installing all prereq's for you automagically.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[Lumpy]

Pick a Window Manager. Pick a Tool Kit. Now, the person running on the end machine must have the exact same items installed, or it won't work.

well it USED to be easy before redhat bailed on all of us..

you used to be able to pick a distro (RH9.0) and use that install ONLY as your base for development and know that it will work. or better yet statically compile it (OMG the HORRORS!) and make it work on almost EVERY distro/flavor/whatever without trouble... Kinda like how blender, OpenOffice.org, and Mozilla do it as well as every game released by Loki.

maybe if the develpers got off their high horses and released STATICALLY BUILT binaries with a real installer this would not be a problem for most everything else.

we CAN get windows-esque installers and cross-flavor compatability... but it's like a fricking religious war out there... hell I'll get modded -1 EVIL for simply mentioning statically linked binaries.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[anomalous cohort]

Why should Linux go after the Macintosh market? That doesn't make sense. Mac users don't mind paying top dollar for software so why would OSS be appealing to them? Linux should tarket those markets that are very focused on TCO such as business, non-profits, and schools.

P.S. I take umbrage at your derogatory reference to GIMP which I find to be much superior to PS if what you are doing is web graphics.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[Joe Tie.]

Installing .Net entails going to www.windowsupdate.com, ticking a checkbox and clicking "download" - and *that's* assuming whatever piece of software you have that requires it doesn't install it for you.

And installing SDL or wxpython entails firing up rpmdrake or synaptic, clicking a box, and hitting enter. Assuming that the package manager isn't automatically installing it for the person along with the program- which it should be anyway.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[mookie-blaylock]

Any one of those is possible, except for QuarkXPress. Quark is a notorious heel-dragger and were so late to the OS X game it wasn't even funny. Plus they have a nasty habit of charging absurd money for upgrades that, lately, have been a complete joke.

The world would be a better place if Quark just threw in the towel on XPress. It used to be great but InDesign has shown how little actual progress Quark has made in the last several years.

(disclaimer: I switched to InDesign when I switched to Mac, and in both cases I've never looked back.)

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[swv3752]

Typically any more, check the contrib section of your favorite distron and most likely the package you are looking for will be there.

I have also found that rpm --rebuild *.src.rpm to wrok really well on most things. Come back in a bit and it just works. If it needs some obscure Libraries, then try apt-rpm or urpmi and then build the src rpm.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[blorf]

Even better are the problems with solutions like: "Oh you have widget.so.1 linked to widget.so.1.2, this will only work if it is linked to widget.so.1.1", you wind up with private lib versions and wrapper scripts that set linker variables.

As a developer that's the main thing that sucks about linux, frequently spec docs written by "product managers" who don't know any better don't even specify which distro should be supported, thinking all linuxes are created equal. They are not. Some of the issues can be worse than the windows "dll hell".

Linux vendors who tend to do specious things to the kernel and libraries (***hat) only make things worse. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was total balkanization, but at the very least it drives companies to only support X version of linux because they don't have time or money to do any more.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[Bombcar]

Hmmmm....

tdickson log # emerge -pv mozilla

These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!
[ebuild R ] net-www/mozilla-1.6-r1 +crypt -debug +gnome +gtk2 -ipv6 +java +ldap -mozaccess -mozcalendar -moznocompose -moznoirc -moznomail -moznoxft -mozxmlterm +ssl -xinerama

The "+gtk2" means that Mozilla is using gtk2, so it might look different if you only had Qt and KDE installed.

But it runs, but mainly because it is willing to do a LOT of things for itself, that it should be willing to let a standard Toolkit do. But there is no standard toolkit. That's why things like file dialogs are different between OpenOffice.org and Mozilla and Konquerer and Nautilus, etc.

Ah, well..... We'll still win because there is no way to make windows 1337. :)

The "We're doing you a favor" syndrome

[$calar]

Yeah, I'm definitely with the author in saying that companies think they are doing you a favor by porting their software to Linux. I think that people could easily fall into this in the past, but not so today. I guess the free programs are just too good. The payware programs have to not only meet the challenge, but will have to receive rave reviews (like here on slashdot) before people will buy it. I guess that's how I am. Maybe that's why Codeweavers is successful.

Re:The "We're doing you a favor" syndrome

[jdray]

It doesn't always work that way. I just bought SuSE Personal Edition for my new laptop, mostly based on rave reviews I read around the net. I'm not so happy with it so far. It would be fine if I was content to stick with just what they gave me, but God forbid I should want to do something radical like upgrade to KDE 3.2 or use KOffice instead of OO.org. Things start breaking, and Support says, "Sorry, not within the scope of the free installation support." WTF? I installed the packages from their website.

Okay, I'll turn off "bitter mode" now...

Re:The "We're doing you a favor" syndrome

[HrothgarReborn]

Maybe that's why Codeweavers is successful.

Let's not forget Apple in our list of sucessful product makers using open source.

Re:The "We're doing you a favor" syndrome

[cozziewozzie]

On the other hand, you don't get support from Microsoft when using WordPerfect on their system either. It's difficult to support every single piece of software there is for Linux.

Personally, I've never had a problem with the packages on SuSE's webpage, but things sometimes break. I recently bought a laptop (of course, it came with a shiny new WinXP installed on it whether I wanted it or not) and the operating system crashed on me several times already for no apparent reason. SuSE never did that.

aside from Linux...

[bsDaemon]

In "Open Sources," Bob the Red Hat guy responds to the question "how do you make money with free/open source software" with "that makes the assumption that it is easy (or easier) to make money selling proprietary software." (not an exact quote, but it's close enough). I suspect that most software products actually fail in the market place, or atleast will fall into a small niche market. Linux itself is a niche market, and targeting to niche users in an already niche base futher decreases the amount of potential customers. Even if someone has 100% of the Linux market, that's only like, 10% of the total market, with a liberal (not something i am known for) estimation. So i would say taht the real problem with selling to linux users is the selling to linux users. A company is not going to stay afloat vending end-user software only to Linux customers. Even the most sucessful Mac software producers find it necessary to port their stuff to Windows. StarOffice has the ease of instillation and support on Windows, Linux, and Solaris. Adding Mac to taht is no issue. I've made it work on FreeBSD without too much hassle either.
A successful linux ISV is going to have to have Windows and/or Mac versions of their product to keep the company with enough revenue in order to offer the product to Linux users because the base simply is not there to keep the company opperational otherwise unless the product is truely groundbreaking, breathtaking, or has 0 competition and no free alternatives (not bloody likely). Just my $0.02. Take it for what it's worth.

Re:aside from Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

In "Open Sources," Bob the Red Hat guy responds to the question "how do you make money with free/open source software" with "that makes the assumption that it is easy (or easier) to make money selling proprietary software."

Yeah, but did he ever asking the fucking question?

Business vs Technology

[fembots]

One thing I learnt from working (as opposed to freelancing) is that you need to take into account business value of a product, otherwise it is next to useless.

Most self-inspired products are too heavily biased towards technology, but not enough in the business sense.

I'm curently researching this spam filter, it may sound like a good idea, maybe it even works, but I have yet to see a business sense in it, i.e. how to market it, brand it and add value to the users. Please note that by business sense, it doesn't necessarily mean profit, but a sense for users to actually use it.

I guess what I am trying to say is, most geek-based products are developed based on the developers' vision of the world, but they hardly have a chance to meet up with potential project sponsors, and consumers (focus groups) who are really the persons to tell what should be developed.

Re:Business vs Technology

[fferreres]

I know a relatively large company that is finding subtle ways in which they add value to the users. It's calledd...what was it? ... IMB ... IBM, that's it!

Your point is valid nonetheless. For example, I found a great piece of science work to filter my spam, but I lost like 4 ours installing it and trying to figure out where things should go (crm114.sf.net).

What's lacking is the "easy to install" thing, and "easy to use". Someone has to do that, but it's the boring part for a true hacker, and a difficult business to pursue for a company (after the do a good installer, they have to share it for free with ... end users!).

Somehow you need to be able to turn your work into a service, or you will not profit from OSS as a man in the middle. You can always profit as an end user anyway. There are thouthand ways.

Re:Business vs Technology

[sumdumass]

i see your point but have to argue that they don't need to give it away free. i was looking for a fax server software that would include support for windows machines. i found some free/opensource and inst alled it.

i had some issues getting it to work then i noticed they had a "installer wizzard" they sold for a reletively decent price. i decided to give it a shot. bingo it all worked. i paid for the 12 user license and now i have half an office faxing any document you can print from thier windows desktop.

it isn't uncommon to see somethignlike this. i was glad to use it. it was just one more thing to validate having the linux box around. and the windows version of the software would have cost us about 5 times as much. (windows server license and software combined)

by the way it was www.fax2send.com i finally settled on. i am really happy with it.

Re:Business vs Technology

[fferreres]

Good news, I think there's space for paid and free software. Paid software will be mainly for the boring stuff like fax installers, and boring stuff like, and for a moderate period of time. After a while, paid software will have to move on to other areas as OSS gets to cover what they sell.

It's like a way to fund development, not the way to milk the economy. Sounds great.

Re:No, your fist guess was right

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Linux and don't believe everything should be free, I believe the best way to make money off of Linux is to blend both closed source and open source products kind of like Apple does with OS X(the GUI is proprietary but the core of the OS is open sourced). If someone made a really killer X implementation and a good GUI even if it was closed sourced I think it would sell. Linux operating systems are not real moneymakers, the applications that run on top of it and the Linux support services is where the real money can be made.

How about some good examples?

[soren42]

There are some examples of good marketing in the Linux arena, but the only one I saw mentioned in the article was StarOffice. StarOffice is an excellent example, but I've come across a few others as we've implemented Linux desktops in our organization.

• CrossOver Office - CodeWeavers has done a great job providing extra features, good support, and overall added value to the wine product that make it worth price. In fact, I liked it so much at work, I shelled out $$$ at home to buy a copy.
• Ximian Desktop 2 - This one is true for two reasons (IMHO) - first, it provides a seamless desktop interface for my corporate users, and second, I'm a Gnome bigot. ^_^ Ximian/Novell has done an excellent job of adding features and value to the out-of-the-box Gnome system, at least for those of us who need the uniformity and features offered by XD2. Also, the promise of future Ximian/SuSE integration with the Novell product line is very enticing.
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux - For a corporate Linux distro, Red Hat has done a great job of sales and marketing. I know a lot of people are upset about Red Hat Linux (last incarnated as Red Hat Linux 9) being end-of-lifed, but for a business computing platform, RHEL is a great start.
• WineX - Transgaming offers another great enhancement to wine - good transition of gaming from the Windows platform. Transgaming isn't doing a great job of marketing, but the product features make it worth the purchase.

Those are just the few I've interacted with recently. IBM, Sun, JBoss, and Novell are doing a very good job of supporting, marketing, and selling their Linux-based server products. So there are more and more success stories out there.

But, like the article communicates, we need a lot more to get the momentum going on Linux for the masses. Hopefully, large organizations will follow IBM's lead, and small, open-source based project will look to CodeWeavers as excellent examples. We need more of those guys!

Re:How about some good examples?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, all the companies you mention except red-hat hardly do ANY marketing. Marketing has nothing to do with product development, granted the products are great, and service is great, but marketing has to relay those things to the customer or they just don't matter.

IBM has been doing some advertising, but mainly for their servers because that's what they sell. They are marketing their products, and linux but only to a small extent.

Novell and WineX I have never seen ANY marketing from.

Re:How about some good examples?

[xenocyst]

bluesocket is one of the top vendors for business class wireless access points with real security solutions... all based on linux (and according to them, gpl compliant)

btw: i do not work for them, i did talk to the cto ;)

Re:How about some good examples?

[windside]

Case in point: Although these companies may not use conventional marketing techniques, they certainly reap the same results as good marketing. A persuasive argument can be made that the *best* marketing in the world cannot save a terrible product; accordingly, shouldn't it be true that the best products are able to market themselves? After all, any marketing professional worth their salt will list "word of mouth" high on their list of desirables and generates that better than the product itself.

Food for thought.

Re:How about some good examples?

[Anonymous Coward]

NO. The best products DO NOT market themselves. It's a simple fact, and too many people don't believe it, but it's true.

For a product to market itself, it has to practically create it's own market by being so far ahead of the competition or by filling a need nothing else does, which is definatly not the case with linux. Linux products are typically clones of other software, so they will NEVER market themselves.

Re:How about some good examples?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very true. I just looked at Ximian Desktop 2 screenshots. As I looked, I said to myself "stole from Mac, Windows, Windows, Mac, Mac, Windows." What's unique?

They even kept the exact same menus in the word processor as MS Word (which, despite the fact that most business men are familiar with them, are royally confusing to the new user.)

Re:How about some good examples?

[Ohreally_factor]

"A persuasive argument can be made that the *best* marketing in the world cannot save a terrible product. . . "

At which point, one need only point in the direction of Redmond without saying a word. Persuasive and concise.

Re:How about some good examples?

[ignavus]

VMWare is a good example of a product that geeks will pay money to buy.

It is a power user's tool, and it is cool programming.

Re:How about some good examples?

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at ThinLinc . It is a server product for thin clients that rivals Citrix in functionality, and it is based entirely on Linux. You can download an extensive White Paper that describes the product and the technology behind it.

I work at Cendio, the company that does the product, so I might be slightly biased, I think that it is one good example of a successful Linux product. On thursday all you europeans will be able to see it at Cebit.

Crossover Office

[ParadoxDruid]

One Linux product that I hope is successful is CodeWeavers CrossOver Office.

It's a non-free product that I bought for my debian system, and I've never looked back.

I may get slammed for this, but I really like Microsoft Word 2000 and Excel 2000 (the later products seemed over-featured-- all i need is well made products: like a good grammar checker to correct inevitable typoes)*. Crossover Office allows me to use them seamlessly on my Linux box. I appreciate that quite a lot.

What's more, their version of Wine works really well for a LOT of "unsupported" software-- from character generators for RPGs to "Teach Yourself Chinese" programs.

Getting their product was a snap- paid online, instant download link to the source and to binaries for a variety of distributions.

Good stuff, and, IMHO, a good example of a quality Linux product that I paid for.

*I'm trying to ween myself off Excel to a more robust alternative, but I find the grammar checker of Word very useful for catching critical, but easily overlooked, typoes in technical writing-- I'd miss it a lot. Is there an OSS grammar checker I am un-aware of?

Re:Crossover Office

[Roger Keith Barrett]

Really a great, great product, and it's a group of people that are dedicated to making Linux work as desktop product for everyone.

I have office on my desktop Linux boxes, not to use full time (as I truely like OpenOffice an ALL platforms) but as a way to get around the office drones who have brain collapses when getting RTF or even PDF files. Also, I happen to like Dreamweaver as a platform to do quick web development. Mix that with the fact you can have Photoshop working without a VM and being able to use great stuff like Quanta to do code development... it really is the best of both worlds.

Also it's a good example of why pay software (when priced reasonably) really does have it's place on the Linux platform.

Re:Crossover Office

[Anonymous Coward]

all i need is well made products: like a good grammar checker to correct inevitable typoes
[...]
critical, but easily overlooked, typoes

typo
n. Informal pl. typos

Is there an OSS grammar checker I am un-aware of?

Experience (and that's "unaware"). Seriously -- I just look at your post and errors jump out at me. How can you not see them?

I'm not even a humanities major or anything. I've just been corrected when I have made errors, and have taken those corrections to heart so as not to make them again. For the cases in which I am in doubt, there are reference books.

The next time your application corrects you, make a note of it, look up the rule, and promise yourself not to repeat the error. Soon you will not need the application, and will start finding the many errors in its programming. In my experience, Word fails miserably when it encounters advanced or complicated language.

Re:Crossover Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there an OSS grammar checker I am un-aware of?

ITYM, "... of which I am unaware?"

And the answer is: Slashdot.

Re:Crossover Office

[HalliS]

I have my OOo save all files to .doc and .xls by default, just for that reason, nobody wants to receive a document in pdf - what if they want to change it? And rtf? Gimme a break. I've helped a few of my friends to install OOo and I always tell them to change the default fileformat.

Does anybody use the default OpenOffice fileformats? I honestly don't see how that could work.

Yes, I am still a windows user.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:man, what a yawner!

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you've never fallen off a ladder!

Re:I wont pay for software

[110010001000]

What about them? I won't pay for that software either. Mod me down, but I WILL NOT PAY FOR SOFTWARE, and you shouldn't either. Software should be available for free for all people.

a BSD example

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't use a crack whore as your mascot.

Ceren killed BSD.

Re:a BSD example

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... I never heard of BSD products failing. Maybe this comment was made in spite because you know you'll *never* get a girl like that?

But it's ok. Worship the lame fat penguin. You are cool. Really.

Roblimo's wrong

[Rick Zeman]

Hell, you can't even get a lot of linux users to buy a commercial distro, much less any software that runs on it. This isn't flamebait, this is the sad, cold truth. Note I didn't say all, but wayyyyy too many.

Re:Roblimo's wrong

[CAIMLAS]

There are several (legit) reasons for that.

1) There's better support for distros such as Debian or Gentoo, as more of the users are more knowledgeable users.
2) Why would anyone want to use a shitty RPM based distro or one with proprietary modifications that make it incompatible (Lindows comes to mind)?

I tell ya, if Stormix (or a company like them) were to enter the market again, they'd have my money.

Besides, who's to say we can't make donations to our distros of choice? I've made donations to the Debian project, as have many others as is evident by the fact that it still exists - you can't support the bandwidth habit that debian mirrors have without financial backing (yes, I know there are corporate backers, but users help a lot too). Linuxiso.org is also a good example - all they do is provide downloads, but they always seem to have their bandwidth bill paid well before the end of the month.

Re:Roblimo's wrong

[DA-MAN]

1) There's better support for distros such as Debian or Gentoo, as more of the users are more knowledgeable users.
2) Why would anyone want to use a shitty RPM based distro or one with proprietary modifications that make it incompatible (Lindows comes to mind)?

Uhm, excuse me.... You are aware that Lindows is Debian based right? Funny that you praise Debian on #1 and on #2 call Lindows an RPM based distro.

You sir are wrong on both departments. RPM is nothing more than a packaging format. RPM is damn good too. Technically .deb's aren't too differnet at all.

Re:Roblimo's wrong

[Ohreally_factor]

I don't think you parsed his sentence correctly. I *think* he meant that Lindows is a distro with proprietary modifications.

Re:Roblimo's wrong

[CAIMLAS]

Are you fucking daft?

I said:
2) Why would anyone want to use a shitty RPM based distro or one with proprietary modifications that make it incompatible (Lindows comes to mind)?

I was refering to Lindows as one with proprietary modifications, not as an RPM based distro; if you'd learned how to read thoroughly, you'd have realized that.

And yes, .debs are significantly different than RPMs (as are the database cache files). The whole approach is entirely different, which leads to a cohesive packaging environment for debian and not for .rpm based distros.

Furthermore, while lindows is 'debian based' it is not debian. That's where the "proprietary modifications" come into play, see?

Re:Roblimo's wrong

[DA-MAN]

And yes, .debs are significantly different than RPMs (as are the database cache files). The whole approach is entirely different, which leads to a cohesive packaging environment for debian and not for .rpm based distros.


Back that statement up. How are they different? What makes .deb so much better.

Re:an example from the BSD world.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Don't use a crack whore as your mascot."

Why not! I would cheer for that team.

What about a 3rd aspect: how the business is run?

[macklin01]

I remember being really gung ho about Linux and Open Source after trying my first distro: Mandrake 8.0. At that time, Win98SE and WinME were the dominant flavors (WinXP was just starting to come out), and I found that the Mandrake install did a better job of detecting most of my hardware than the MS install.

Eager to support the cause, I plucked down $100 to preorder the Pro version of the upcoming Mandrake distro. "Cool, I'm supporting open source. I'm doing my part," I thought, and I'd even get some of the CD's early for my pre-order. So I ordered, my credit card was charged, and day after day, week after week, no product arrived. And day after day, my emails to the company weren't answered. There were no real announcements anywhere to be seen about what was causing the delay. Finally, after a bit more than a month of this, I finally called the company at my own expense and had my order cancelled. (And even that required quite a run around, as the number listed on Mandrake's site didn't seem to be a direct number, so I had to call a few times to connect with anybody.)

And this is how they treated an eager customer. Hardly the way to treat a paying customer! I sure wouldn't want to run my business this way.

Granted, things are better now, but when your business isn't run like a business, don't expect customers to stick around. -- Paul

Redhat seems to be doing a decent job...

[weatherguy48]

Redhat is a decent product at a good price, IMO.

Example

[Apreche]

At work I'm doing an embedded linux system. I've got a nice little board which has an XScale processor and some other goodies. It's my job to program it to do various things. The embedded linux system that came pre-installed is taking up too much room. I need a cross-compiler so I can build a new kernel and new system for it.

So I take the dev kit cd that came with it and try to install it by following the directions included. No go. It wants an LSB distro and I use gentoo. I hack the perl install scripts, still no dice. Apparently the install disc has rpms debs and tars. And it installs by converting them all to one of the 3. So if you use debian the install scripts converts the tgz and the rpm to deb then isntalls them. Too bad the conversion program doesn't work. Their tech support didn't help much either.

What did I do? I went online and searched for arm linux. Got arm-linux-gcc from an ftp and patched up the 2.4.25 kernel. When its easier for me to do things myself for free than to use your product what am I paying for besides the hardware? Technically I paid for that support and that software and I got jack. Just too many free and non-free linux things do not work. Sure, there is plenty of commercial software that doesn't work. The odd game here and there and such. But if the company behind it isn't fake you can bet that it is going to work sooner or later. With linux stuff sometimes you just don't know.

This is the opinion of a gentoo user, so I'm not bashing linux as a whole. I'm just saying that if you're going to make something, make it work. Just because a geek is going to use it doesn't mean they want to have to go through more effort to make it go. They just want to go through a little effort to make it go better.

Re:Example

[Mycroft_VIII]

"So I take the dev kit cd that came with it and try to install it by following the directions included. No go. It wants an LSB distro and I use gentoo."

What I would like to know is did they falsly advertise it as working on your O.S. (or even by implication)?
Because if not I don't understand your complaint. you tried to install it on a different o.s. than it was designed for. Yes your o.s. uses the same kernel and many of the same utilities, but gentoo is not the same O.S. as the others.
To give an anology, would you expect a new winxp program to run just fine under NT3.0? there is a chance it might, but would you be suprised if it didn't? Would you say it "it doesen't work" and blame the maker of the software?
Now mind you I'm aware a lot of software out there just advertises "works with Linux" or "works with Windows" without being sufficiently specefic and shure enough it doesn't fit your specific O.S. this is another BAD THING, but not entirely specific to linux based o.s.'s (Much more likely to be a problem).

Mycroft

Re:Example

[jasno]

This is precisely the problem. I think linux users tend to like to switch 'operating systems' frequently. If not between different distros, between different versions. Sure, I'd love to spend $300 for a copy of Visual SlickEdit for linux, but I know I'll end up with problems when I upgrade, or change distros, so I'll stick with gvim and always have an editor that works. Its not that I'm cheap(well, ok, I'm cheap), but why pay for software that will only work for 3-4 months.

At work we have several guys using very expensive FPGA and ASIC design tools, and they're stuck using Redhat 7.3. Which means dealing with an unsupported OS and all of the bugs and quirks that were fixed years ago.

If a vendor wants to sell me software, first he'll have to convince me there isn't an Open Sourced equivalent that does the job nearly as well. Then he'll have to convince me that they'll stand behind the product and provide some limited email/forum support.

Re:Example

[Anonymous Coward]

It wants an LSB distro and I use gentoo.

Maybe you should complain to the people behind the LSB for doing something so patently stupid as requiring RPM for all LSB-compliant distributions.

Re:Example

[sean23007]

I think comparing NT3 to XP as an analogue to the relationship between Gentoo and Linux is unwise. Gentoo IS Linux, but with things added that are specific to its distribution. NT, on the other hand, is not XP ... XP is NT with things added. And you typically do expect that something written for NT will work in XP, though that isn't ALWAYS the case.

Re:Example

[Mycroft_VIII]

Of course any analogy is imperfect. But it shure sounds kinda like your making my point.
I wasn't comparing Gentoo to Linux distros in genereal though, I was comparing gentoo to an LSB compliant distro (which his software required). While the specifics of the differences are not the same, I feel they are of a simular magnitude. But the basic point was that Gentoo and a LSB compliant linux distro are two closely related, by still different, operating systems, and thus it's not entirely unreasonable for a program design to operate on one to fail on the other.
Though with the resources out there it is likely possible, though probably not easy, to change his install of Gentoo enough to get the pakage to work, where as the same is much less likely with windows.

Mycroft

Linux marketing is still beta-ish

[superpulpsicle]

I don't know. After all these years there are too many distributions of linux wearing the OS too thin.

The penguin has been a good symbol, but how the hell are you supposed to use one symbol to market for 40 distributions? You can't. The only thing that came close IMHO was the redhat symbol. Suse and debian are great distros, but it's marketed like a good singer than a superstar. Christ, SCO has done more marketing for linux in general than any distro.

Re:Linux marketing is still beta-ish

[XorNand]

Welcome to America(R). Linux's strengths are paradoxically the same reason it hasn't taken off. In this culture, *everything* is about branding. The shoes you were, the presidential canidate that support, the music you listen to. I personally believe that this is due the information orgy that we live in today. Most people have too much data thrown at them to make rational, cacluated decisions. It is much easier to grab ahold of a product/concept that has a vague sense of familarity and move onto the next order of life.

Linux proclaims to move away from away from the monolith of Microsoft. Coders, please hear me on this: retail customers don't care and don't want to care. You sum it up succinctly by stating that there are too many obscure choices in open-source. Geez... the last thing most people want in this overly wired world is to have to make another decision. How many times have you been apart of this conversation: "Where do you want to eat tonight? I dunno... where do you want to eat?" Do you think that the typical person with this mindset is going to devote even a single neuron to consider the stuff that runs inside their computer?

How do we overcome this apathy? I dunno, man. But when I figure that out I'm either going to run for prez or be able hire Larry Elison to wash one of my cars.

New Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a relatively new user. I bought it because I was tired of Win98 crashing and couldn't justify XP on my 1.1 MHz Celeron. The thing that had me was that Linux just runs.

OO is great. Mozilla is great. KDE is great. Gnome is OK, but KDE is better (IMHO).

What really stimies me is the difficulty in getting USB devices to work (uncommonly used things like Palm Pilots...) and the general difficulty in either updating or adding new programs to the system once installed.

Want to make Linux sell better? Stop developing the latest/greatest KDE, and start working on fixing these areas. Once fixed (and idiot proofed), you will have a distro that costs $50 instead of $39, but the added cost will be worth it. Market the bullet proof operations, and the fact that linux will run on anything this side of a PC-AT, and probably could run on an AT if you wanted it bad enough. In other words, market it to the soccer moms and busy single parents who can't afford to not have a computer for their kids and yet can't afford to pay $1000 for the P4 and $200 for MS Win XP, and the $450 for the Office suite. (I can see the ad now, two harried moms with computers. One has a Tux sitting next to it and one has a blue screen on it. And the caption is "And I could have spent HOW MUCH less?")

Re:New Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

STOP MENTIONING BLUE SCREENS! DUDES! That's so old! It doesn't exist anymore! Anyone who mentions it is showing themselves to be out of touch! I run XP and I've never seen it crash! Do you hear me? It's never crashed! I've been running it for 2 and half years now.

And why does a soccer mom want Office when she gets Works for free? What soccer mom needs Excel? Or Powerpoint? And even if she did, OO has a Windows version. lol. Come on, let's put our thinking caps on people!

Re:New Linux user

[Trelane]

Stop developing the latest/greatest KDE, and start working on fixing these areas. Once fixed (and idiot proofed), you will have a distro that costs $50 instead of $39, but the added cost will be worth it.

Rest assured they're both being worked on concurrently. They actually play off each other. While it currently works (imho), it can be much better and is being developed to be much better.

Re:New Linux user

[Dhalka226]

STOP MENTIONING BLUE SCREENS! DUDES! That's so old! It doesn't exist anymore! Anyone who mentions it is showing themselves to be out of touch!

Bull. My XP box has crashed--and I mean BSOD, BOOM! type crash--3-4 times in the six months or so I've had it. My laptop, which continues to run XP for the moment, has BSOD'd 3-4 times as well in about a year and a half. It is certainly an improvement over previous versions, but it is not immune.

Of course if you had actually read what the person said, he was talking about his Windows 98 box crashing and that he switched to linux because he couldn't justify buying XP, so your erroneous comments are also irrelevant. Oops.

Re:New Linux user

[hattig]

and the general difficulty in either updating or adding new programs to the system once installed.

I agree, I now don't even bother upgrading software, especially system components like KDE, in an install now. I just wait for the next version of the OS and either upgrade, or use it as an excuse to make proper backups, wipe and reinstall. It's worse than Windowsm, at least that has a method of managing software that works, however badly designed. RPM is crap. apt-get is fine, but my mum isn't running debian for a reason.

I don't want to have to learn how to install software by hand using cryptic commands, and get a chance of getting a dead KDE upgrade as a result (oh, KDE is a real bitch to upgrade, or it used to be).

What I'd ideally like to see is a method of installing software like the following:

1) You have /software (or /usr/software, /applications, /usr/local/applications, whatever)

2) Software is packaged up in a tarball, e.g., mozilla_1.6.tar.gz

3) $ install mozilla_1.6.tar.gz

(this basically comprises of: cp mozilla.tar.gz /software ; tar xzf mozilla.tar.gz, and creates a chroot (optional, useful for some software though) environment in /software/mozilla containing /bin, /etc, etc. Oh, and it can update an installed software database, although this won't be necessary for the application to run, unlike the Windows Registry)

4) $ mozilla &
(because path contains /software/*/bin this works)

Then when you tire of mozilla, ...

5a) $ uninstall mozilla
5b) $ upgrade mozilla_1.7.tar.gz

My theoretical "install", "uninstall", "upgrade" commands (omg a user friendly name for a command!) can also have the option of running a script in the software tarball to perform configuration, etc.

Then a GUI software installer can be made that wraps a KDE or Gnome interface around those commands.

And for user-level (not root-level) application install? install will install into ~/software instead of /software!

I'm sure that there are holes-a-plenty with the above, but I prefer self-contained application install as described above, as opposed to "spray-the-files-around-the-filesystem" as per normal unix software - this is not user friendly at the consumer level.

Oh, and whilst you are at it, stick the OS files into /system (i.e., /system/boot /system/bin /system/dev etc) ... I like compartmentisation!

Yay! I've solved it all. Now Linux (or FreeBSD or whoever implements this idea (my version is under the GPL) can now pwn the desktop. Woo! Yay!

Re:New Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

TOTALLY! LAWLZ! Actually I got a blue screen in XP because of some crappy drivers. It does still exist.

Re:New Linux user

[SomeOtherGuy]

"What really stimies me is the difficulty in getting USB devices to work (uncommonly used things like Palm Pilots...) and the general difficulty in either updating or adding new programs to the system once installed.

Want to make Linux sell better? Stop developing the latest/greatest KDE, and start working on fixing these areas. Once fixed (and idiot proofed), you will have a distro that costs $50 instead of $39, but the added cost will be worth it."

Amen man. I would much rather go to my Linux desktop of 3 years ago, without all the bling bling eye candy and CPU guzzling...If only I could get todays (or hell even yesterdays) hardware working. I know that the hardware makers don't always help out very much...But it sucks not to be able to Sync my USB Palm (very well) or use my Hauppage USB PVR (at all) in Linux, don't even get me started on my 802.11G cards that may be working sometime when my kids go to college in 15 years and 802.11G is irrelevent.

Heck -- I would even go back to TWM if the hardware would just work.

Re:New Linux user

[jefe7777]

>>And why does a soccer mom want Office when she gets Works for free?

perhaps soccer mom is real estate agent or involved in some other business, and her clients or business associates are trading word and excel docs. Open Office would cut it, Microsoft Works would not.

>> STOP MENTIONING BLUE SCREENS! DUDES! That's so old!

why? they still happen. maybe not to you, but to others yes. and sure while your infamous bsod is rarer in xp, there's another phenomenon I've seen...that didn't used to happen with NT or 2k, and that's a "spontaneous abrupt reboot", that forces a file check.

>>And even if she did, OO has a Windows version. lol.

we're talking potential here. no one said linux is ready to be the perfect desktop TODAY.

what were talking about is what linux _can_be_.

Open Office on XP only solves a small fraction of the problems for your soccer mom. I know, I constantly fix systems for them.

After you install OO you think you are done? What are you gonna do about the spyware, adware, viruses, trojans, keyloggers, drive by installs, and software updates?

It's to the point that your average person has been so inundated with wizards, pop-ups, configuration prompts, etc...many are on the brink of defeat. They have no clue what the constant barrage means or whether it's a legit system prompt or not.

hence the user choking their pc to death with crapware. and poor configuration.

with all the variations in distros, i wouldn't be surprised to see a soccer mom distro. perhaps it's a live based one, you just boot it and work. maybe an online subscription will use any internet connection available to save documents to a central place. also to save preferences (almost like mounting your home directory remotely, or perhaps mirroring at the end of a session).

you'll never see that in windows. longhorn is destined to be the biggest windows yet.

Re:New Linux user

[macjohn]

And why does a soccer mom want Office when she gets Works for free? What soccer mom needs Excel? Or Powerpoint?

Because every file she gets from someone else is in Word or Excel or Powerpoint. Office is even more of a monopoly than windoze is, since they have the Mac market as well. The fact is that Word, excel and powerpoint are the lingua france of information. If there is one thing that needs to happen in our industry, it's making these file formats open standards. Let 100 applications open and save these formats, so they are just as much a standard as HTML is,

Re:New Linux user

[harikiri]

This is a good idea, and both Windows and to a lesser extent OS X have it already.

However, the issue in implementing it on Linux distributions is the diverse nature of package management:
1) RPM (RedHat, Mandrake)
2) Deb (Debian, erm... not sure who else uses this)
3) Portage (Gentoo)
4) tar.gz (Slackware?)
5) ports (FreeBSD and OpenBSD's differs)
6) pkgsrc (NetBSD's offering)

Linux vendors need to come together and define a future-proof, reliable, standardised method of package management that at MINIMUM can support the same features that Windows XP/2000 has today.

Similarly the lower-level developers of application libraries (glibc, openssl, gtk, qt, etc) need to ensure that they provide backwards compatibility in new versions of their software. This will of course lead to bloat (the downside) as newer libraries have to retain support for older applications.

Finally, kernel developers need to provide standardised, backwards compatible interfaces for device drivers and so forth, so that the commercial, closed binary for video driver 'x' will still run on kernel 2.8.9 in two years time.

This all requires a radical rethink in how software is designed in Linux (and other open source) distributions. Think back to commercial applications released a year or more back (Soldier of Fortune demo for Linux for example). Would they run on a newly released distribution or not?

Re:New Linux user

[westlake]

and on recovery XP directs you to MS Crash Analysis which gives you a plain English description of the problem. mine was a USB cable modem driver. but that was over a year ago.

Re:New Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

"Because every file she (the soccer mom) gets from someone else is in Word or Excel or Powerpoint."

No, she's a "soccer mom." Maybe she has some job or is in some business, or maybe she takes classes at the local community college or something, but that makes her a businessperson or an office worker or a student, and not simply a "soccer mom."

More likely she doesn't touch the thing, and it's mainly used by her kids for a game platform. They don't care whether it runs Word and Powerpoint, and if they needed that stuff, they know where to get it.

Re:New Linux user

[hattig]

Thanks. I was basing it more on an AmigaOS style of thinking, where you'd have the SYS: (System, or OS files) area, and extending it to be a bit multiuser and Linuxy.

Hell, want multiple kernels? /system can symlink on bootup to the version you want to run! /system_2.4.25 /system_2.6.5 etc!

As regards shared libraries, AmigaOS did that correctly as well. The libraries would have a fixed API, which could be extended. So software would request "Please give me intuition.library of Version 40.5 or above" because version 50.2 will still implement version 40.5 API. Need a new API? Create intuition2.library, don't break the old one.

As far as I am aware, most of the package types are merely compressed tar files with files inside with standard names for dependencies, information, where files should go, etc. This is fine by me, of course, and a sensible way to do things. My concept of making everything simpler and compartmentalised would result in a non-compatible distribution, yes. However most distributions these days have their own package repositories anyway, so this is no biggie.

And yes, drivers need to be easier to install across any Linux variant. No more trying to install drivers for RedHat6 in Mandrake9 by hand ...

I think all the low-level stuff like this needs a radical overhaul in Linux. The kernel is good. The software is good. The installer is good. The end result is average and confusing unless you are a linux geek.

Re:New Linux user

[W2k]

One has a Tux sitting next to it and one has a blue screen on it. And the caption is "And I could have spent HOW MUCH less?")

You would indeed have to be a soccer mom or busy single parent (meaning: little or no knowledge of computers due to lack of time/interest/intellect) to fall for such a ridicilous ad. Windows no longer bluescreens anywhere near as often or as easily as it used to, as anyone in the know will tell you if you asked. Yes, it's still possible to bring the system down with a dodgy driver. But please name one desktop operating system where this can't happen... At least on Windows, I can use my perfectly common graphics card with full 3D and not have to worry about crashes.

Re:New Linux user

[Minna Kirai]

This is a good idea, and both Windows and to a lesser extent OS X have it already.

Please explain how Microsoft Windows has it to even the slightest extent.

As far as I can tell, each Windows application comes with its own custom installer/uninstaller (except when they don't). You can't say "Windows has it" when the feature isn't supplied by the OS but by each individual app.

The only minor amount of support Windows gives is a list where "installed uninstallers" can register themselves to show up in Add/Remove programs.

standardised method of package management that at MINIMUM can support the same features that Windows XP/2000 has today.

Again, I'm completely at a loss to find any package management features in Windows. Is this something new for XP? To me it looks like installers just copy whatever files they need to C:\Progra~1 and C:\Windows\System32 and be done with it. (It's really a little more sophisticated, as there's a level of indirection to allow for i18n and drives other than C:, but thats barely notable).

The reason Microsoft Windows often doesn't exhibit the symptoms of poor/nonexistent package management is there's only one provider for the OS, so the layout differences between two Windows installs are trivial compared to how a SUSE and Gentoo box might differ (while both being viable Linux desktop systems)

Re:New Linux user

[DunbarTheInept]

The problem is that you are operating under the assumption that the same programmer who is willing to spend time fiddling with the UI in KDE would also be good at (and willing to spend time at) fiddling with the hardware drivers in the kernel. It's not that simple. People do what they like to do, and what they are best at doing. Pull people off the KDE project and that won't cause them to start working on more USB driver support. Those things are being worked on in parallel by people who aren't just interchangable parts.

Re:New Linux user

[MobyTurbo]

4) tar.gz (Slackware?)

Slackware's packages are named .tgz, though to confuse things further most .tgzs are not slackware packages but rather generic .tar.gz source tarballs. (Which are the only distro-neutral format, source.)

5) ports (FreeBSD and OpenBSD's differs)
6) pkgsrc (NetBSD's offering)

Strictly speaking ports and pkgsrc are delivery and dependency fulfilling mechanisms for source code with special makefiles rather than a package format, and NetBSD's pkgsrc is platform-independant. It can run on Linux, Solaris, other *nix platforms, and there's even a Microsoft Unix Services for Windows version in the works.

The *BSD's also have binary package formats for use with pkg_add, named .tgz, but those are not as popularly used as ports or pkgsrc, which have advantages such as being able to track the latest versions of packages in the pkgsrc/ports tree using cvs.

Re:New Linux user

[bheer]

Again, I'm completely at a loss to find any package management features in Windows.

Have you checked out MS' own SMS Server and Marimba's Castanet (which is written using Java btw); both of these use Windows 2000's application publishing mechanisms to deploy apps just-in-time or all-at-once from a centralized console. Of course, it will not necessarily support all apps; but apps which have standards-based installers will work fine -- this is the vast majority of business software used.

On another unrelated note, folk who crib about Windows after using Win9x _and never trying Win2000 and later_ get zero sympathy from me. Win2000 and XP are (along with OSX) excellent, productive workstations for a large variety of users, compared with the Frankenstein-stitched-together feel one gets with several Linux distros.

Re:New Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree with the person your replying to;

1. I'm completely at a loss to find any package management features in Windows.

Windows does not have a unified package management system. The installers you mention have too much control and -- WORSE -- Windows installers do not handle dependencies (they can't since they only know what they have installed and that they should increment a counter for shared libs!).

I have worked months on attempting to rebundle dozens of custom applications to do exactly what you say and to force Windows clients to deal with dependencies consistantly. (Part of the issue is also bad habbits by the admins so it is a social issue mainly...though Windows does not prevent or even discourage those bad habbits.)

Re:New Linux user

[Sweetshark]

All these:

Deb

Portage (Gentoo)

ports

probably pkgsrc
are *much* more advanced than any Windows installing procedure. They can keep a system up-to-date all the time. There is no bit-rot like in windows, where you still do a reinstall every year, because the system is cluttered with strange files from unknown origins that even all the cleaner software cant clean up. rpms will have to die though (and they are).
Similarly the lower-level developers of application libraries (glibc, openssl, gtk, qt, etc) need to ensure that they provide backwards compatibility in new versions of their software. This will of course lead to bloat (the downside) as newer libraries have to retain support for older applications.
This is mostly a binary-only problem. A recompile and evenrything is fine.
No, seriously. No need to bloat libs for one binary heritage app (if it wasnt a heritage apps I would using the new lib interface). If all else fails with this one app, there Usermode Linux will be more than ready to provide a sandbox for this app by the time this is really a problem.
Finally, kernel developers need to provide standardised, backwards compatible interfaces for device drivers and so forth, so that the commercial, closed binary for video driver 'x' will still run on kernel 2.8.9 in two years time.
A two years old video driver? On a gaming system (yes, gaming on linux), two year old hardware is irrelevant. On a office workstation the opensource driver for the same hardware would be more than enough.
(Ok, by now everyone knows we are talking about nvidia ...)

Re:New Linux user

[Mold]

Yeah, the worst are when you get a BSOD before boot up, with that small white terminal text, and then a couple of seconds later it reboots the machine. Over and over and over again. Uhg. Can't even tell what the problem is half the time.

Re:New Linux user

[Minna Kirai]

Have you checked out MS' own SMS Server and Marimba's Castanet (which is written using Java btw)

But you're not even talking about Microsoft Windows. Those are two separate applications. You've really just proved my point that Windows provides no package management, by illustrating that Microsoft sells package management as an optional product.

Today, Microsoft offers some guidelines for writing installers, which it didn't back in the 90s, but there doesn't seem to have been much effect. Windows apps that I've personally watched being installed continue to use a mishmash of Installshield, Winzip, or homegrown routines. And the fact that Microsoft still talks about "installers" and not "packages" remains a clue to what they're really offering. (To abuse CS terminolgy, the MS way is imperative rather than declarative)

(Hey, the great part about Windows installation is there's no confusion about what "package" you want to install; because every one of them is named Setup.exe!)

Re:New Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

you can however use ports to build packages (with the options and optimizations you specify). You can then use portupgrade with the packages. The system works really well by having a source/test server that builds the packages, then rsync the ports tree with other servers and have them install the packages using portupgrade -PP

Re:New Linux user

[spruce]

Almost all MS Dev tools come with installation creating programs. And if you're not using MS, there's InstallShield, among many others. So while it's not a part of the OS itself, it's something handled well by the windows community.

Re:New Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

This gets very close http://www.bitrock.com to what you want. Free license for open source projects

Re:New Linux user

[silicon not in the v]

Yeah, I have a system I've tried to install Linux on. The headaches are my OPTi ISA sound card, and my S3 Trio64/32 video card. I've tried Mandrake, Debian, Knoppix, and Mepis, and none have been able to deal with them.

The weird thing I've found is that programmers know of these problems and have found sort-of workaround solutions, but they don't work very well. For my video card, I found on the web that there is an apt package I could install to make it work, but of course no distro will actually detect that and put it in for you. Instead, X won't load, and I had to go find that out about that apt package and do it myself. For the sound card, there are some really ugly hacks people have made to get this card to work, but noone has been able to make a script or anything that will take care of it. It's a do it yourself process of writing your own config file and compiling modules for the kernel.

Re:New Linux user

[swv3752]

The spontaneous abrupt reboot is a BSOD. MS just got smart and setup XP to restart automatically instead of sit there with a Blues screen filled with arcane garbage.

Re:New Linux user

[Perky_Goth]

yeah, now it just reboots.
google it. crash analysis reports a device problem, but people on the net say it could be a faulty motherboard, faulty memory, faulty power supply...

the family pc here crashed a lot, and i was wondering what the hell i did. i installed no devices, no firewall, no antivirus (i have now, skip the flames ;) ), so how could it be a device fault? the only thing now was that the machine was plugged in and uppgraded.
it just crashed, randomly. sometimes when consuming full pipe, sometimes full processor, sometimes just randomly. then i noticed it was just in my profile! and now it actually stopped crashing without doing nothing...

oh yeah, no blue screens... sure...

Re:New Linux user

[bheer]

You've really just proved my point that Windows provides no package management

You are right, Windows doesn't provide any _bundled product_ to manage apps. But it does provide a mechanism through several Win2000-era APIs, and both SMS server and Castanet take advantage of it. (Funny how they never thought it fit to bundle SMS Server with Windows :-))

I've personally watched being installed continue to use a mishmash of Installshield, Winzip, or homegrown routines

The recommended technology for the last 3 years has been MSI. One can use Installshield and many other tools to create MSI-based installations (these, thankfully, follow modern UI guidelines and don't have the moronic teal/blue-gradient full screen look-n-feel) or use a hand-written MSI script.

I do wish MSIs used Mac-style bundles, but I guess back compat would be the issue there. Then again, as a programmer, I don't mind installers because of the greater flexibility they provide. And since my mom can figure out how to install MSN Messenger, I don't think dumbing it down any further will really help.

Re:New Linux user

[Dhalka226]

I've never been directed anywhere, although I wouldn't be surprised if I simply turned off the service a long time ago or something and don't remember.

For me, it's because of the price

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll readily admit that I really don't even consider buying software. I don't like spending money when I don't have to (and I don't really like spending money when I do have to!)

I have great operating environments (Linux + GNU and FreeBSD), a great user interface (KDE), great servers (Apache, Postfix, PostgreSQL, etc), and so on. I have no desire to look at non-free options when the free options work so well.

In fact, the only non-free (as in beer) software I have is a bunch of old games. All the Infocom games, lots of Sierra games, Lucas Arts games, old DOS stuff like Duke Nukum 1, etc etc. These can be run through free emulators/virtual machines such as frotz, scummvm, freesci, sarien, dosbox, and so forth. Free games tend to suck (and I'm not talking about piddly arcade games, I'm talking about real games), so I'm willing to pay for good games.

"Free" as in not answerable to anyone else.

[AHumbleOpinion]

t's hard to say: Are the free programmers gifted coders, or are the commercial coders just REALLY bad ..?

First, lets ignore the fact that there is not a clear disctinction between free and commercial programmers. Much of the free work is done as charity by commercial developers donating their time or organizations donating their commercial developers.

Free programmers gifted? No more, no less than any others. What they are is free. Not "free" as in speech, not "free" as in beer, but "free" as in not answerable to anyone else. No boss screaming about deadlines, no my company is screwed if we don't ship by this date, etc. They are free to take whatever time they need, their customers have no financial control over them. Ironically this control often leads to rushed jobs and lower quality.

Re:"Free" as in not answerable to anyone else.

[SpaceLifeForm]

Well said. Your points are exactly the reasons that I have no desire to work on non-free software.

Re:"Free" as in not answerable to anyone else.

[HrothgarReborn]

A very good comment. But I think it also true that those coders who wish to be "free," who wish to code when no one is pressuring them to code are the ones who love coding and are naturally the best.

Re:"Free" as in not answerable to anyone else.

[black mariah]

The word you're looking for is 'unencumbered'. I'm not a grammar troll, I just mention it to make your future points easier to make. It's a good point too, BTW. :-)

Re:"Free" as in not answerable to anyone else.

[AHumbleOpinion]

Your points are exactly the reasons that I have no desire to work on non-free software

Well assuming you are not independently wealthy one of the easier ways to achieve that is to stay in an academic environment. What you sacrifice in salary is offset by the freedom to work in an area that interests you.

Re:"Free" as in not answerable to anyone else.

[AHumbleOpinion]

I agree that naturally loving to code and naturally the best are strongly correlated but commercial environments have many who naturally love to code. I'm one, so is my boss, so is his - yes I am lucky. I've interviewed a bunch of recent college grads for commercial environments and you can easily spot the ones who got into programming because of an inherent interest and those who got into it because a high school guidance councelor said it was a good career choice. The later also contribute to open source projects. It's a simple way to get something onto a resume to be more competitive. For the less talented it can be safer than a coop job through the university, no company to offer a mediocre reference, no mediocre grade on transcript. Yes, some contribute to open source for pure commercial self interest, leverage it to get into a better commercial environment.

Re:"Free" as in not answerable to anyone else.

[Moraelin]

IMHO that's false. Projects where noone is in control and noone answers to anyone, end up just growing in all the wrong directions like a cancer, spending years on all the wrong things, and ultimately not doing what they were supposed to do.

You may notice that even the big OSS projects invariably aren't just a big open CVS server, where everyone can edit or delete whatever they damn please. There are people in control. People who have the power decide what goes into the next release and what doesn't. The kernel, XFree86, KDE, whatever. You name it. If it grew past the useless-waste-of-space-on-sourceforge stage, chances are that there was someone managing that project.

Ironically, you seem to ignore that the most commercial projects that fail, typically fail for the very reason that you praise in OSS: lack of control. The ones supposed to manage it weren't doing a proper job of managing it. Often they didn't even understand that which they were managing. They just bend over to the customer and marketroids, but have no clue if what they promised there is even possible. Or when something went wrong, how to get it all back on track.

Re:"Free" as in not answerable to anyone else.

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry, but currently a burger flipper at the lical wendys makes more than your average american coder, that's if his job isn't being given to Apu's softwear clearinghouse in India for pennies a day.

how about the fact that companies are interested in simply shipping instad of giving a crap about quality.

I also ONLY code OSS, any the stuff I do at work (I'm an IT guy) I tell them that it must be GPL licensed and placed on sourceforge so that the competition can get it. then they calm down when I tell them that cince the competition is so Microsoft entrenced that the MCSE's they hire are not smart enough to fid the app let alone understand how to use/install it...

you may think that this is a bash on MCSE's.... but it is reality right now, even in the company I work in.. tell the "senior sysadmin" across the state how to install that webapp you sent to him in a .bz2 file and he reply's 2 weeks later... " can you install it for me? this is too difficult."

it's too difficult to set up a RH9.0 box, untar it, and cd to the directory and type sh ./install.sh....

come to find out, the guy was FRIGHTENED by using the command line.. nice.

Re:"Free" as in not answerable to anyone else.

[westlake]

I tell them that it must be GPL licensed and placed on sourceforge so that the competition can get it. then they calm down when I tell them that cince the competition is so Microsoft entrenced that the MCSE's they hire are not smart enough to fid the app let alone understand how to use/install it...

buried so deep it can't be found...no documentation...no installer... yep, that's gotta be a sourceforge project. bonus points if it is in pre-alpha state and hasn't shown a pulse in the last three years.

Re:"Free" as in not answerable to anyone else.

[AHumbleOpinion]

Who said no one is in control at all? The fact that a programmer or group of programmers who start a project retain control of it is irrelevant. The control I refer are outsiders not insiders, corporate management, customers, etc. The controlling group of programmers is still free to take whatever time they want.

Re:"Free" as in not answerable to anyone else.

[Anonymous Coward]

What you sacrifice in salary is offset by the freedom to work in an area that interests you

Unless, of course, there don't happen to be any grants in the area that interests you. Academia is full of proposals and bids to get grant money, and the grantors generally have particular interests in mind. The universities tend to frown upon professors and groups that never bring in funding. It's a lot like contract work in the commercial world.

Re:"Free" as in not answerable to anyone else.

[AHumbleOpinion]

You don't necessarily need grants. You may only need to publish papers based on your work in your area of interest. If its an OSS software projects you probably don't need equipment beyond what is already available in your office and/or department/student labs. Unless of course your are trying to research a Beowulf cluster of ...

Only the Consumer Can Stop Windows

[handy_vandal]

If everyone stopped selling Windows products, and sold Linux products instead, Linux Product Sales would increase.

That's not going to happen -- merchants make too much money selling Windows products.

Only the consumer can stop windows products ... by stealing them, instead of buying them.

-kgj

Re:Only the Consumer Can Stop Windows

[gnuman99]

That would so not work. Just look at Vietnam. 95% of all computers run pirated Windows (most of the rest, the bought software, runs on gov't computers). But MS said they will lower prices in Vietnam to compete with Linux! 95% piracy and total revenue of only a few millions...

So obviously, Only the consumer can stop windows products ... by stealing them, instead of buying them. is not true. Consumers would need to do,
dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/hda

a number of times and then perform some acult rituals to put down that Beast :) lol.

Anyway, MS has enough money (~$40 billion cash) to stay afloat for another century even with no sales.... :) [slash] :( [pick one]

Re:Only the Consumer Can Stop Windows

[handy_vandal]

That would so not work. Just look at Vietnam. 95% of all computers run pirated Windows (most of the rest, the bought software, runs on gov't computers). But MS said they will lower prices in Vietnam to compete with Linux! 95% piracy and total revenue of only a few millions...

Damn, you're probably right.

Still, I get a warm and fuzzy feeling when I imagine all Windows users -- American, European, everyone -- stealing Windows.

-kgj

Freelancer 'ey?

[nmoog]

But our freelancer, a skilled sysadmin and coder who runs a small Web hosting service, had so many problems trying to get the software installed that after a day's work he stopped trying

So let me see. He wrote "I am a skilled sysadmin and coder who runs a small Web hosting service." did he? When will you learn to check references...

Two Letter: Q A

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Something sorely lacking in WAY too much software is decent blackbox QA testing, with QA engineers who can do the tweaky evil stuff (boundary conditions, stress testing) AND

I'll emphasize

A N D

the dopey stuff of Basics:

Installation Testing
Feature Testing
Usage Testing

If you can't install it striaght off, and start working (either straight away or doing the tutorials... and YOU DO HAVE TUTORIALS... DON'T YOU?) right then and there, you've just blown thousands of man hours as thousands of users bblow their time trying to puzzle out your spaghetti code - and it doesn't matter if it's running in Linux, Windoze, or OSx or whatever. Either it works straight up or it doesn't.

The problem is, WAY too many shops see QA as a an after thought if it is thought of at all, and given the geek-centered history of Linux, it is (sadly) far too common in Linus ware.

One of the main differences between really stunning software and crapware is that the stunning software has a crack QA team running a tight shop with the engineers, and the engineers accept and respect the opinions and findings of QA, just as QA knows the exigencies and limitations of the coders. The crapware has zero QA or the QA consists of the programmers doing basic unit testing, which is too often close too useless due to external dependencies and doesn't address anytihng about UI design...

I did blackbox QA for a very long time, (and still occassionaly do with a good offer) and I have Zero Patience for software that isn't properly tested. Unfortunately, it seems that blackbox is striaght up ignored or sent to India for "chimp testing" (blackbox done to testcases and matrices only) or automated versions thereof, is never brought into the specification process, and in the meantime, it's all gone to whitebox or greybox - which rarely addresses more obvious and critical issues that question basic assumptions in a program, as the lead programmers are too often thin skinned, under served in the social skills dept, and overly identified with the project.

And it has nothing to do with Linux: but the workers in Linux too often have a variable sense of what is an appropriate amount of effort a user should put forth in using a given application or system.

RS

Re:Two Letter: Q A

[fermion]

We have to remember that OSS products are immature. All the problems we see were at least as bad in MS products. Reboots when hardware changed. Seperate device drivers needed at the application level. Custom programming needed to do anything special. And when windows came out, POS GUI with POS applications and POS support.

It was ok because it was cheap. This is the common model. Build something cheaper and people will buy it even if quality sucks. Over time, improve the quality and raise prices as the market will bear. MS is still trying and failing to meet what many of us would consider acceptable quality standards, and yet it is the market leader.

Which would indicate that MS provides something else that bussiness want. This most likely is predicatability and 'security.' It is the 'no got fired for buying IBM' syndrome. It is my accounting is ok because I pay the accounts and lawyer millions of dollars to say it is ok and they will take the fall. The testing is not such a big deal. The quality is not such a big deal. Knowing that one organization is ultimately responsible and that organization has known standards is. Knowing that an organization has done suffieceint testing to fell confortable enough to take that responsibility is the big deal.

Which is why IBM doing OSS is a big deal. It is why Red Hat and the others need to make clear that if a firm spends money on thier services, they will be responsible for everything. It is just like any other manufacturer. Parts may come from all over, but the firm that puts everything together is the one place where the buck stops. Of course, this is only ture to an extent, but the idea is that firms need to know where to go when something goes wrong. An account manage at IBM or whereever makes it easier to sleep at night, even if you do use the POS software from MS.

One more thing. I have seen time and time again that people have a tolerance for certain computer products because these products are percieved as the standard, and therefore must be the best. I have seen people demand Wintel machines and then assume they have an especially defective machine when something goes wrong. I have seen people use perfectly good non-wintel and then focus on a single issue as proof that the entire line of machines are poorly built. The battle is totally uphill, and competators must be 10X as good to suceed. I don't think it is any particular flaw in the OSS community. I think the current sucees indicates that many of the player are much better than the market leaders.

Re:Two Letter: Q A

[silicon not in the v]

Here's a concrete example of this lack of testing. I recently looked on Sourceforge for an application for Windows that would extract CD audio and encode it to mp3. (Freakin' $10 for a WMP codec to do it???) I downloaded CD-DA X Tractor; description seemed good, and it was rated 5-Production/Stable. I found that it could never find any of my CDs in the CDDB. I could go to the CDDB website, and find them manually--no problem. WTF? This seems like a pretty major feature to not even work. How did this get to be considered "Production/Stable"? I only just now went looking through their bug reports, and many people are complaining about this because they apparently broke it in v0.24, their current release.

Retail marketing of Linux sucks

[Brandybuck]

The retail marketing of Linux and Linux applications sucks. Of course, all the naysayers are going to declare the retail marketplace dead, but for the general public it's still an important venue.

Walk into any store that carries Linux products. You see some out of date distros. Then you see some new RedDrakE boxes. But what's the difference between the purple Enterprise, magenta Professional and red Desktop editions? There's also FreeOffice in two different packagings, one seemingly generic for a variety of operating systems, and one specifically for RedDrakE which is more expensive. Then you see a copy of FubarOffice 2004, packaged in a tiny DVD box. What the fsck is that? Obviously it's not big enough to have included a manual. Along side it you see FubarPaint and FubarPro. To add to the confusion, there will be the obligatory "UltraLinux Toolkit" containing nine CDs of nine obsolete distros.

And not to pick on Linux, but if you look closely enough, there will be a FreeBSD and NetBSD, each with two different packagings from two different distributors, but containing the same software version.

Re:Retail marketing of Linux sucks

[MobyTurbo]

And not to pick on Linux, but if you look closely enough, there will be a FreeBSD and NetBSD, each with two different packagings from two different distributors, but containing the same software version.

No, NetBSD and FreeBSD are two different operating systems forked from the 386BSD source over a decade ago. They have a lot in common, and occasionally borrow code from each other, but unlike Linux they aren't different distros of the same OS (with the same kernel and lots of stuff thrown in) but rather are different kernels combined with a base system of Unix software as a unit with a large amount of software in pkgsrc or "ports" available only a "make install" away.

Re:Retail marketing of Linux sucks

[Brandybuck]

Note the operate word "each", in my post. EACH of them has two different packagings. FreeBSD has FreeBSDMall and DaemonNews. NetBSD has Wasabe and DaemonNews. And those are only the major distributors.

Installation and configuration are key factors

[dcavanaugh]

Forget marketing, it is the install/config process that makes Linux products hard to sell. Let's face it, Linux assumes that a reasonably skilled sysadmin is sitting at the controls. Windows assumes that the sysadmin can be relied upon to click "Yes", "Next", "OK", and "Finish".

Package installers go only so far. Progress has been made regarding dependencies and cascading installations, but I see room for improvement. I find many products still require the "./configure ; make ; make install" method.

The people who write the code are hard-pressed to consider every possible Linux distro or hardware/software environment. Poor documentation doesn't help. We get away with it on the server side, but this will not work with embedded systems or desktops, where you don't have a sysadmin ready to hack the install. If I am buying a product, I expect the install to be smooth and trouble-free. If I have to sit and hack, I might as well stick with free stuff or write it myself.

Don't get me wrong, Linux products are great, once they are installed. Proprietary products are easy to install, but it's all downhill from there.

Re:Installation and configuration are key factors

[YetAnotherDave]

Can someone please explain to me what's so damned bad about ./configure && make && sudo make install?

I like tools like apt that automate downloading and checking MD5 hashes etc, but some things just require custom building.

My only issue with tools like that is that there's no automated uninstall, but really, since the end result is usually a single file, who cares? If its existance is a problem, rm -i `which progname`

I have way more problems with the 'run setup.exe and click OK 43 times' win32 installers than custom building *nix stuff.

Re:Installation and configuration are key factors

[jrcamp]

Why is ./configure, make and make install so bad? Well, here are a few good reasons.

1) User must have compiler and all related development headers installed. When's the last time a non-development workstation or a home machine gcc and all header files installed for everything? Like, never.

2) Dependency resolution.

3) Version tracking. Pretty simple... I'd like to be sure of what version I have installed.

4) File tracking--knowing what every file on the system belongs to which package.

5) Guranteed removal. I don't care to leave a directory of source compiled code around, and hope that it has make uninstall that works.

6) Easy upgrades. apt-get, apt-get upgrade (apt4rpm or for deb's). I don't really want to keep a watch on freshmeat and see what new is out, download it, compile it, and install it. 2 commands really makes it all seem like a waste of time.

And I'm sure I could go on. :)

Re:Installation and configuration are key factors

[Mycroft_VIII]

Unfortunately this places you in the minority. Most people are willing to click five or 8 times on 'OK' than type in 3 or full commands, that they have to spell right, and be in the right directory to use, and hope all the paths are configured right, and hope the make scripts are all work right with thier distro and, hmmm maybee it is easier to to click four or even fourty times on "ok" or "next", especially since it's obvious what to do to most people. compare

$localbox.here> (or somesuch)

verses a clearly labbled icon that once they double click it TELLS them in simple english what to do next.

no contest.

Mycroft.

Re:Installation and configuration are key factors

[10101001 10101001]

1) So, include one (obvious protected by leaving it under a specific user account (like portage))

2) portage

3) portage + SLOTs

4) qpkg for everything but config files, and then you're rather screwed with config files on tracking without altering all programs to use a registry of some sort

5) portage, except for config files (see 4)

6) emerge -u world

No reason why ./configure && make && make install can't be just as scripted as configure, make, and make install are already.

Re:Installation and configuration are key factors

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok. For number 5 I can give you a fast pat answer. If you did ./configure;make;make install, whereever you did it, if it installed where you are, then type cd ..;rm -rf ./application. Gone! Every major linux distro has all of those header files and config files and gcc compiler. For version tracking, click on 'about'. As for easy upgrades, Fedora core 1 has a little checkmark on the front that shows as an X if something isn't up to date. Start yum and then do whatever you do (ignore yum running). After a while the X becomes a check mark. Your system updated itself. Could that be easier? Sure, but you wouldn't have control or know. I could go on. :)

Sell?

[Raven42rac]

There are far more people installing Linux and Open Source applications of their own accord than are buying the solution from any vendor. With the exception of MySQL in the occasional circumstance. Linux+Salesmen=Weird. The major "selling" is of the technology to Upper Management rather than from vendors.

Re:Sell?

[macjohn]

The major "selling" is of the technology to Upper Management rather than from vendors.

The first time this became critical was when the Intel 8086 came out, and Intel started selling based on management commitment to Intel, not on technical grounds. A competing processor - the Z8000 - won just about every technical analysis, but Intel sold to management and that's what made them kings. It's a critical concept. Engineers think the best solution wins, but the best business decision isn't always the best technical solution.

Now if we could just come up with...

[wardomon]

"How not to sell Windows products" we'd be getting somewhere.

It's not the money

[max born]

I'm a sys admin for about 20 Gnu/Linux servers. The reason I don't use proprietory software is, not because the company can't afford it(we certainly don't mind paying programmers to write for us). The the open stuff is so much better because.

There's nothing like
./configure
make
make install

It's so much easier to troubleshoot a missing library or edit some code to fix a problem.

The documentation that comes with proprietary software is usually lacking. But then the most important documentation, the source, is often never available at all.

I'm sorry this guy had such a hard time. But I'd stay away from those all-in-one commercial products. There's a reason why sendmail, samba, apache, etc. have been around so long. They may be diffuclt to install and configure but have infinite flexibility

Re:It's not the money

[merdark]

There's a reason why sendmail, samba, apache, etc. have been around so long.

They have been around because they work. Not because they are open source. Windows has been around just as long, as have tons of other commercial softwares. Ironically, many commerical products are much much easier to install and configure. And missing libraries? That's a non-issue for commercial software. All needed libraries are distributed with the software.

Unless, of course you are talking about "Linux" based commercial software. In which case you can blame Linux and the OSS world for your library troubles.

Re:It's not the money

[Anonymous Coward]

"They may be diffuclt to install and configure but have infinite flexibility"

Exactly his point. They may be able to wash your car and paint your house, but if 99% of the general public can't install them, then for 99% of the people they are useless.

Apache is wonderful, I use it for my own webserver, but I am also a seasoned (18+yr) sysadmin. I've seen people who are "sysadmins" (2 yrs maybe) that have all kinds of trouble getting it to work right. If thats the case, how is grandma going to get it to work?

The reality is that if Linux (or OS in general) hopes to overtake the userbase of Windoze, then you need to be able to click "install" and have it "just work". Having to read a 20 page manual just to install the software, and manually tweak config files and such... granny is gonna be totally lost and just not use it. And if she tells her friends 'don't bother with this P.O.S. because it doesn't work', you've just lost 'sales'.

Re:It's not the money

[CaptainTux]

Apache is wonderful, I use it for my own webserver, but I am also a seasoned (18+yr) sysadmin. I've seen people who are "sysadmins" (2 yrs maybe) that have all kinds of trouble getting it to work right. If thats the case, how is grandma going to get it to work?

On the flipside of this, I know someone with ZERO IT experience who had apache with ColdFusion, PHP, and Perl working in less than 30 minutes by using the documentation alone.

You have two sides to the zealotry: 1) Linux will never be ready for prime time until grandma can install every package and use it effectively and 2) If you can't install it from the docs and user community then you don't need to use it. Both of these sides are flawed. Consider this:

Point 1 is what I like to call the "grandma whine" and it's nearly totally invalid in both the Windows and Unix worlds. There's a LOT of software that "grandma" can't install and, guess what? It's not marketed or targeted to her because she really wouldn't have much use for it. Web servers and databases are excellent examples of this. How many "grandmas" do you believe are going to even have a NEED to install one of these? And you can bet those that do are going to either already have the requisite tech skills to do so or are able to acquire them. This isn't just a Linux problem -- or a problem at all. It's a marketing reality. You don't focus your marketing or target those who are the lease likely to use your software.

Point 2 is just as flawed as the first point. Sometimes users, even experienced users, do need a little handholding. Nothing wrong with that and it is no reflection of their technical skills or their intelligence. It's YOUR software. What might be painfully obvious to you is a complete mystery to others. And saying "well they can always look at the source code" is a cop out. Being a programmer should not be a prerequisite to using open source solutions. Not everyone who needs the software needs to understand the code. This, IMHO, is the worst marketing nightmare facing the community.

The solution? I don't know. I know part of it will involve the dissolution or lessening of egos. It's also going to involve moving beyond the common vision that "open source MUST be free or it's corrupt!" This is hurting the movement. Open source is NOT great because it's free. It's great because it's open. Plain and simple.

A lot will have to change before Joe User adopts open source across the board in their daily lives. Can it happen? Yes! But it's going to take a revolution in the rank and file of software developers and an all-out intellectual redesign of the way developers look and think about their users and their own software.

Re:It's not the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, apache was probably a poor choice for the 'grandma' statement, yeah.. she probably isn't going to need apache. :-) However if you make that the 'grandmas favorite cookie recipies' software, and its overly complex/convoluted to install, you'll have a lot of upset kids ;-)

I think more of it boils down to your point#2. "look at the source" is useless to most people. Being a sysadmin and a programmer, personally I *hate* writing documentation, but I also know the value of it when it comes to the average user. I tend to write step-by-step documentation, complete with warnings of what *not* to do if there might be a question or option that could cause problems.

I was trying to get the point across that some graphic-artist/photo-editor is not going to want to spend hours tring to install gimp (mindless that they'd probably go with photoshop just because its far more functional from a professional perspective), they want it as a tool to do a job. Plain and simple. And they aren't programmers, so "look at the source, tweak the install scripts" isn't going to work for them. It'll go in the trash and they'll install photoshop instead. Until the installer works 99% of the time, or at least adequate documentation exists (we'll ignore the functionality of the app for now), you've alienated a large portion of a prospective 'user base' just by the nature of it being flawed from the get-go (installer). Nobody is going to care about the functionality if they can't figure out how to even install it.

Re:It's not the money

[sakusha]

Excuse me, but Apache is not Linux, you're way off in left field here. Apache runs on Linux, Windows, MacOS X, and probably a few others. But the "ease of use" of Apache is closely related to the OS. On Linux, I wouldn't be surprised if your 2+ yr newbie Linux admins had trouble installing and setting up Apache. On MacOS X it's in the default install, to start it up you just go to System Preferences, click one little box marked "Personal Web Sharing" and it's running. Your grandma could get Apache running on MacOS X.
And there is the crux of the problem right there. As I have commented elsewhere in this topic, Linux (and Apache) aren't products, they're programs. A box that I can run my business website is a commercial product. A box that someone can use to publish their grandkids' photos is a consumer product. Stop making programs and start making products.

Re:It's not the money

[Anonymous Coward]

I totaly agree, on everything then one thing.. to install all servers from source, isnt a option unless you are dedicated to performing SysAdmin tasks only. I work at a company developing software, and we use Linux on all developers workstations and on all servers.. the management uses Windows tho. Anyhow, installing from source becomes a real pain when bugs needs to be fixed on multiple machines at ones. Besides I stripped down the outside servers so much so its hard to even transfer stuff to them.. or from them. And NO theres NO compiler on them. They all protected by iptables and then an external firewall.. and the only way to access them is using SSH with real keys (no freaking passwords). Maybe Im paranoid, but installing from source would require me to install ALOT of tools on these machines, and they should only run whats realy needed and _nothing_ more. And I beleave it should be as simple to update 1 machine as it is to upgrade 20. Sadly they all running RedHat linux (cause of the RPM system) and RedHat turned bad, so.. Im, thinking of installing Debian but hasnt decided on that yet.

Updating Linux is a hell.. Sorry I Love Linux, but realy.. updating Linux is a hell.. Maybe not as much a hell like updating a crashed WindowsXP.. but.. nearly as bad.. sorry

Re:It's not the money

[0x0d0a]

It's also going to involve moving beyond the common vision that "open source MUST be free or it's corrupt!" This is hurting the movement. Open source is NOT great because it's free. It's great because it's open. Plain and simple.

While I know that you meant free as in gratis, this statement sounds enough like "libre" (especially with the juxtaposition of "open source") to make me want to put both you and Stallman in a locked room together. :-)

I think that a big part of the value of open source software *is* that it's freely redistributable. There is a huge difference in the usability of software that is has even a *slight* charge associated with it and stuff that can simply be copied around at will. Maybe micropayment systems will change that, but at the moment, I can recommend PuTTY to anyone on Windows that needs a terminal emulator. I don't have to consider their financial status or budget or whether they need it for a thousand systems. There used to be a number of expensive terminal emulator programs out there, but they have cost associated with them, so they're immediately a second choice to something that you can drop in for free.

Someone who wants to try Linux can do so for free. Someone that wants to try out BeOS (and a *lot* of people have said good things about BeOS) have to put $50 or so on the table (actually, I believe the thing was made gratis a while back, but too late for it to really become a major player).

I believe that gratis horizontal-market software is here to say, and that it was only serious finagling that allowed vendors to keep such a lock on the horizontal market software market. Closing a product's source is one way, as it lets you force a user to see ads or have other undesireable features tied in to a desireable product. Keeping secret protocols or file formats let you sell a product (Hotline, Microsoft Word) as well. Open source severely damages the ability of companies to sell non-gratis software based on barriers to competition that they have erected. That's okay -- software is a market that scales extremely efficiently, so if it's feasible to use an image-editing program that's free, there's no huge costs involved that are tough to resolve from an economic standpoint.

Re:It's not the money

[DunbarTheInept]

First you said -> Linux (and Apache) aren't products, they're programs.
Then you said right after that -> A box that I can run my business website is a commercial product.

These are incompatable statements.

Linux can run a business website, and often DOES. If you don't believe that, I can provide examples with netcraft.

Re:It's not the money

[sakusha]

You're not paying attention. Apache and Linux are programs. They don't come with a CPU, hard drive storage, RAM, and other essential features that make it a product. An iMac running Apache (it's part of the default install) is a product. Provide the hardware, support, documentation, extensively user-tested ease of use and quality control, easy configuration and setup, etc, and you're on your way to creating a product.
Let me make this even simpler for you. TiVo is a product. Do it yourself Linux PVR software is a program.

Re:It's not the money

[Anonymous Coward]

By using ./configure ; make ; make install you're giving up dependency tracking and it is a bit more awkward to deploy to multiple machines.

If you do build your own, but deploy to multiple machines, it's a good thing to also build your own package that handles dependencies. That way you can know instead of hope or guess that you've got the right software on the machine(s). For starters, you can use the spec files for a similar package and tweak it to your version. A pain? Yep. Needed if you don't want to end up with an unmanaged mess like what exists on most Windows machines.

Re:It's not the money

[DunbarTheInept]

Let me make this even simpler for you. TiVo is a product. Do it yourself Linux PVR software is a program.

I apologise for falsely assuming you were attempting to communicate in English.

By the way, Redhat linux comes with Apache. It also comes with gui configure tools for setting it up without ever pulling the http.conf file into an editor. And it is about on par with what you get from apple in that regard (easy to use unless you want to do something interesting with it.)

Re:It's not the money

[sakusha]

"about on par"...?? You're stoned. Yes, RH comes with Apache. It's as easy to set up as.. installing RH. Which I've done but your grandma couldn't. In contrast, here is how you set up an iMac to run Apache:
1. Turn machine on
2. Click "personal web sharing"
3. There is no step 3.

You apparently are incapable of comprehending this simple point: there is a huge difference between a program and a packaged product. A program is a package full of problems to solve to get it to work; a product is a solution to your problems.

Re:It's not the money

[DunbarTheInept]

You apparently are incapable of comprehending this simple point: there is a huge difference between a program and a packaged product.

Yes, I have great difficulty understanding made-up bullshit.

Re:It's not the money

[sakusha]

Yes, you have great difficulty understanding a +5 Insightful post, which says more about you than about me.

Better cut back on the drugs, it's messing with your cognitive functions. Sober up, troll.

Re:It's not the money

[DunbarTheInept]

Your post which I cannot understand was not +5 insightful. Do you enjoy lying?

Huh?

[modder]

"The hardware version of the "we're doing you Linux users a favor" factor involves selling a "Linux PC" that's more expensive than most of the company's Windows computers "

I don't get it....

That is so funny!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because today I ordered some gerbils, a vagina and a salve that will increase my mammaries.

Sometimes it really is a small world....

L00ser syndrome & RTFM

[rbotoms]

Will Linux ever get past the 'figure it out yourself you l00ser syndrome'. I use Windows products precisely because I don't have to 'read the fucking manual'. (RTFM) Micro$oft based products generally work intuitively, most Linux products don't. It was only because Red Hat 5.1 installed in an understandable manner that I took up Linux at all after buying serveral distros over a period of a few years. Now I make a living on the Red Hat Linux platform, but I still use Photoshop and Illustrator on my other PC's. Not much has changed in 7 years.

Re:L00ser syndrome & RTFM

[Joe Tie.]

Eh, it might just be what one's used to. I use Linux at home and don't usually have to look up how to do anything in linux applications, but the design of most of the stuff from Microsoft confounds me. My opinion is the exact opposite of yours, I find most of what I use in windows to be very counter intuitive.

Re:L00ser syndrome & RTFM

[burcarpat]

> "Will Linux ever get past the 'figure it out yourself you l00ser syndrome'."

Yup and what's worse is, it's typically not even the fault of the developer who writes end-user software.

I am one such developer, developing cross-platform apps. Linux is very important to us as we are doing scientific coding. On Windows, I can simply use Inno Setup or something similar and create an easy to use installation package. On Linux, I am yet to find a free alternative as intuitive as Inno Setup or alike. So, in that sense, I am a loser too because I am totally incapable of using the available installation creation tools.

But, here's a question: I hold a Ph.D. from a top USA university and two masters, one on artificial intelligence. I consider myself a good C++ programmer ( I can figure out what Andrei is talking about the first time I read any of his articles or his book ). I taught Java to freshman at a respected college. Have a quite good command of Perl, too. More than 10+ years of coding experience and that's not only scientific coding. I worked on multimedia apps, databases apps, internet apps, etc. Given all this, if I can't figure how a Linux installation system works within 30 minutes, is that really my fault?

I'll change the boot order of my machine when I can code on Linux as easy as I can code on Windows. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening anytime soon; may be, in 3+ years.

-- ba

Re:L00ser syndrome & RTFM

[foobsr]

Given all this, if I can't figure how a Linux installation system works within 30 minutes, is that really my fault?

This then is when artificial intelligence meets natural stupidity :)

A good new variety of a meet-up is to try to get a 64-bit LINUX up and running (AMD64 3200+, 755).

CC.

P.S.: Drew McDermott. Artificial intelligence meets natural stupidity. In: Haugeland, Mind Design, 1981. Originally in SIGART Newsletter No 57, 1976.

Re:L00ser syndrome & RTFM

[TiggsPanther]

Micro$oft based products generally work intuitively, most Linux products don't.

I guess this is true, but it's Microsoft's/Windows' strength, and it's weakness.

All of the basic functionality is intuitive. You can usually get it to do all the basic gubbins out of the box.
This is not always true with Linux software. Sometimes it can take a good few hours/days of doc-searching to get the basic functionality to work the way it should.

It's after this point that it turns around, though.
MS make their software so intuitive that it hides away all of the obscure stuff. Sadly they manage to hide it away rather too well at times. So once you've grapsed the basics, it can be hard to work out how to do anything more complex.

Linux software might have a steeper initial learning curve, but quite often I find that once you've mastered the basics, going into the more advanced functionality is quite easy.
Plus although more and more linux software is becoming GUI-based, it's still often able to be invoked at the command-line level, and will tend to spew rather useful error messages out that can be useful at times.

The real key to successful Linux software is, as stated in the article, making it work out of the box - or at least supplying sufficient documentation so that you can figure out more fo the problems before having to go anywhere enar the tech-support phone number.

Tiggs

Re:L00ser syndrome & RTFM

[Anonymous Coward]

Micro$oft based products generally work intuitively, most Linux products don't.

Where can I get those Microsoft products that work intuitively? Mostly, I'm looking for a desktop environment (instead of Explorer.exe), a control panel and maybe even a replacement for Visual Studio. None of these work intuitively.

Re:L00ser syndrome & RTFM

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi Bill. Try looking around you once in a while. Not everybody are exactly like you, and just because windows was developed to do exacly what you find intuitive (it even uses your favorite colors, blue and white, for everything), it doesn't mean that everyone else finds it intuitive. Just look at the dancing monkey. Even he would probably behave like a normal person, if he wasn't forced to use a system that was designed TO MATCH YOUR TWISTED BRAIN ONLY.

Windows is not intuitive.

Re:L00ser syndrome & RTFM

[Ed Avis]

On Linux, I am yet to find a free alternative as intuitive as Inno Setup or alike.

% apt-get install my-weird-package

Make an RPM of your program, upload it to an apt repository (or create a local repository), and then people can easily install it with synaptic or other GUI tools, including all dependencies. Yes, you may need two slightly different RPMs for two distributions, but this is not a big deal.

The Windows setup.exe model is somewhat broken, trying to imitate it on Linux is the wrong way to go.

Re:L00ser syndrome & RTFM

[burcarpat]

> "% apt-get install my-weird-package"
> "Make an RPM of your program, upload it to an apt repository (or create a local repository), and then people can easily install it with synaptic or other GUI tools, including all dependencies. Yes, you may need two slightly different RPMs for two distributions, but this is not a big deal."

you would think. there are companies out there who wouldn't let apt to be installed on their local machines. the installer *has* to be a standalone program unless the os itself has a single installation methodology ( such as the msi of windows ). after the install, i should be able to delete all the installation files and everything should be ok

furthermore, some companies use home-brewed linux versions. i don't intend to compile apt for every single distribution out there. the whole idea of having an installation program is to *avoid* compiling code to start with. if i have to compile stuff to install my installer... well, that is just ridiculous

i know this is not apt's fault. linux requires you to do some compiling this way or another because there is no standardization. and, that's pretty much the real issue here

> "The Windows setup.exe model is somewhat broken, trying to imitate it on Linux is the wrong way to go."

why is it broken again? i never had a single problem with it. it works. it works without any problems. it is easy for me to develop and for the users to install. that's pretty much what i expect from an installation system

-- ba

Re:L00ser syndrome & RTFM

[Ed Avis]

the installer *has* to be a standalone program unless the os itself has a single installation methodology ( such as the msi of windows ).

It does have a single installation method: RPM. For peculiar systems that don't allow to install using RPM (although it is required by the Linux Standard Base) you could make some disgusting shell script to unpack the package using rpm2cpio, or to install first rpm and then the package.

Setup.exe is broken because there's no way to inspect what files a package will install on your system short of running it; no mechanism for code signing and verification (like rpm --checksig); no uniform way to query what packages are installed or to handle dependencies between packages (which can lead either to DLL hell or to kitchen-sinkness and multiple copies of every library); no way to look at a file on the system and say 'what is this, what package did it come from?'; often no way to cleanly and completely uninstall a package. The new MSI packages are much better.

I am thinking more about managing installation on a network of 100 or 1000 machines, rather than grandma wanting to install a single app on her own PC. In many large-scale Windows setups packages can be added and removed only at boot time, and in all cases it is rather a pain to manage them. RPM has its problems but it is bliss by comparison.

Re:L00ser syndrome & RTFM

[burcarpat]

> "It does have a single installation method: RPM."

sure because i *love* writing spec files

you are missing the point. i didn't say, it is impossible to create installation packages. i said it is not as easy as on windows. i am not writing a spec file; period. i already have too many things on my plate. i don't intend to learn yet another text file format

which goes back to the subject of this thread: "L00ser syndrome & RTFM". because there is no easy, standard way of building binary rpm packages with a pretty gui ( yes, needs to be pretty ), i become a loser because i have no intention of reading tfm. got my point?

> "I am thinking more about managing installation on a network of 100 or 1000 machines, rather than grandma wanting to install a single app on her own PC."

which is not the case at all

i have to deliver my software to an engineer who does not understand from linux ( but, obviously is a smart fellow ). this guy probably has many responsibilities and "checking out this interesting software" is the least of his worries. on many occasions, i can't go to the site, either. so, i should be able to tell this guy:

- insert the cd you got via mail in your cdrom
- using your file browser, go to /mnt/cdrom and run install
- follow the instructions shown on the install wizard dialog
- done? good; there is a freshly generated symlink on your desktop; click on it and from the file menu, open "sample.prj" to give it a try

the day you give me all of the above without requiring him to be root or needing to use the command line, i'll be good. with that said, to generate the above procedure, i should not be required to use the command line either ( but, being root is ok )

oh, and, if such a software exists, i'd really prefer its version to be > 1.0 as those big companies tend to get pissed big time if some pre-1.0 software screws their system up

-- ba

Re:L00ser syndrome & RTFM

[Ed Avis]

You don't want to write a spec file; I could equally argue that I don't have time to write a setup.exe program. Neither argument really applies; there are tools to make a setup.exe so you don't have to write your own, and there are tools to create spec files. Perhaps it would be better to have a pretty GUI to make the spec file rather than writing it in an editor.

I find it hard to believe that the effort involved to learn how to write an rpm spec file (quite simple) is less than that in learning how to use a new GUI package builder such as Installshield. Especially when you factor in the extra effort to install the package automatically on Windows machines and keep it updated. (And yes, I have done these three things.)

On many Linux distributions you can double-click on an RPM package to bring up a GUI package manager; once the program is installed it automatically appears in the main 'start menu' if the package has the necessary menu item incantations.

Requiring root is a good point: in my opinion it is not nearly easy enough to install an RPM in your home directory rather than centrally.

Re:L00ser syndrome & RTFM

[burcarpat]

> "You don't want to write a spec file; I could equally argue that I don't have time to write a setup.exe program."

you don't have to. but, i do

> "Perhaps it would be better to have a pretty GUI to make the spec file rather than writing it in an editor."

no, not "perhaps". definitely. that's the whole point to start with

> "I find it hard to believe that the effort involved to learn how to write an rpm spec file (quite simple) is less than that in learning how to use a new GUI package builder such as Installshield. Especially when you factor in the extra effort to install the package automatically on Windows machines and keep it updated. (And yes, I have done these three things.)"

i also did write spec files. simple ones; ya'know, the ones that show up in how-tos, etc. yet, doing anything slightly complex with a spec file is not easily apparent ( for example, putting links on the desktop ). and, as i said, i really really don't want to rtfm

furthermore, several distributions make life harder. rpm is a generic tool so a single manual rarely covers peculiarities of all distributions. that means, yes, you guessed it, reading more manuals!

with a decent gui, it's different. you get context sensitive help. you might still need to read stuff but it is much easier ( and more pleasant ) reading. plus, with windows, gui-based installers let you tweak things between different windows versions. ya'know, the same thing ( directories, registry settings, etc. ) sometimes appears under different locations on different windows versions. all handled automatically

> "Requiring root is a good point: in my opinion it is not nearly easy enough to install an RPM in your home directory rather than centrally."

apparently so. and, i can't emphasize the importance of this. there is no way for me to get that imaginary engineer call some it admin to make him install my software. instead, he will simply browse through the html help files and then forget about it

seems harsh? no. i worked for some big companies where people were not allowed to install anything on their machines. once, for a project, i needed a c++ compiler, anything other than msvc6, and i let the company know about this requirement 3 months ahead of time. when i arrived, it still took them a month to install the compiler. that's 30 days! why? because someone from the it group had to show up and install it. funny enough, he couldn't install the thing properly so i ended up installing msvc7.1 myself and his sole purpose was decreased to be there to type his admin password

sure, in such a company, my imaginary engineer wouldn't be allowed to install my software anyways. but, then there are some other companies where he can do that yet the it groups of such companies are no different. if i required him to be root, he would still need to get hold of an it admin

note: actually, the kind of software i desire do exist to a degree. funny enough, from the good old windows company installshield. it's called installshield multiplatform. it's not as good as their windows installer ( i don't know about version 5, though ) but still... yet, of course, it's ridiculously expensive ( around $2500, i believe )

-- ba

Re:Where does it stop?

[mdfst13]

"LIVE GNU OR DIE."

Ok, die then. You obviously have no intention of living GNU. GNU is about free like speech should be, not free like people wish beer was. Yes, there are free beer versions of most open source software. However, these mostly come from pay software: Linux (Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, et. al. are all pay software primarily); ReiserFS (Hans collects enough from support and alternate licensing to live reasonably); MySQL; etc.

Promoting a refusal to pay for software has nothing to do with GNU or open source. Read http://www.tlug.jp/docs/rms.html to see Stallman take to task someone talking like you. The issue is not to get software without paying for it. The issue is to be free to modify the software afterwards. You can get binaries without paying for them, both legally (freeware) and illegally (warez). However, they will never be free software in the GNU sense of the word, as they are unmodifiable.

Living GNU means refusing to use software that you can't modify and redistribute. Refusing to pay for it? You are just leeching off the system. Money is the contribution of those who can't code. Money is also the way that those who can't code can influence development. Thus, paying for software makes it more inclusive by including non-coders in the process.

My empeg ROCKS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though there's no official support, ogg support came around and its still a great toy to hack on. having linux on your stereo is nice. i can hook my tablet up to the ethernet and http:// at it and manage playlists. waiting for laptop hds to go down in price, imagine 2x 80 gigs in single DIN head unit!

i lusted over it for years, so i'm proud to say that years after buying it im still impressed.

Re:I wont pay for software

[DAldredge]

If you paid for you computer system then, yes, you did pay for that software. It will not work without it.

Can I duduct this then...?

[modder]

Just curious, not trying to be an ass:

So can I deduct from my taxes time I could bill for as a contractor or some such, which I spend contributing to open source? (Does everyone do this and I'm the last to know???)

Re:Can I duduct this then...?

[AHumbleOpinion]

No, but your employer may be able to deduct your salary when they are donating you. Regarding you donating your personal time the IRS would probably declare your time to be a hobby. :-) Disclaimer: IANACPA.

But seriously, I donated time to the local county search and rescue team. Only physical equipment was deductible. Maybe you could get a deduction for the computer if and only if it was used only for free software. Again, IANACPA. Something interesting to look into.

Re:Can I duduct this then...?

[FLEB]

In the U.S., I don't believe you can deduct time or services as a charitable donation. It must be objects or cash. This is what I've heard, at least regarding graphic-art/advertising, that pro-bono work is undeductable, except out-of-pocket expenses. I imagine it's true in all other industries as well.

Re:Documentation

[filmotheklown]

Poor Documentation is a continual frustration. While I don't consider myself a newbie nor a sysadmin god, I must say that if the documentation was even "decent" most products would fair a lot better.

For example, it seems like 8 out of 10 programs on sourceforge have 'no documentation' and rely the user bringing what to the lay public would seem like "expert knowledge" to grok not only installation, but even how the features work.

Commercial products seem just as poorly documented. Having had to deal with end users for our relatively simple business, I've come to the conclusion the you have to treat every program and option that they interface with as if it where a "Name_of_Program for Dummies" book. We have to build on-line tutorials just for using FTP clients because the documentation that comes with them is so horrible as to be useless. --

What about sharp's zauras

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a decent product, yet I've not been able to find it at best buys, circuit city, or anywhere else for that matter. What is wrong with it?

Re:What about sharp's zauras

[Felinoid]

One of the rules was "Make it available" if you can't find it in they broke that rule now didn't they?

On that note look around a bit more. The Zaurus is a high end item and many stores (Best Buy and Circuit City) won't carry ANY high end PDA.

I've found the Zaurus in an office products store selling high end office products (the more expensive printers etc). Next to it is the most expensive Palm Os machine on the market and the most expensive HP Pocket PC. The Zaurus was the cheaper and that's saying something considering one of the devices was a Palm.

I got mine from the home shopping network of all places.

That said. It works great but I've found a flaw. The sereal IO cable sold sepretly dose not work.
We have it for using on a dial up ISP.
Basicly it's just a cable for the built in sereal port. It's a no brainner. But the dial up manager on the Zaurus won't allow you to use it.
So we went to the website and they have specal software... GREAT...
"The Dial Manager needs to run as root"
My first thought was "That is stupid" my second thought was "where are the directions on how to do that?" There are none.

I'm still working on this but I may break down and buy a CF modem.

Re:What about sharp's zauras

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there are directions for that. It'll be in the manual you got with it if you got your Zaurus after the 3.x switch, or in the PDF of the manual you got when you downloaded the 3.x ROM update.

Re:What about sharp's zauras

[IANAAC]

My first thought was "That is stupid" my second thought was "where are the directions on how to do that?" There are none.

Hold the stylus down on the icon you want to run as root. You l get a dialog box with a check saying to "Execute with root privilege".

I disagree

[Billly Gates]

How many Debian, Gentoo, or FreeBSDUSers were former Mandrake or Redhat users?

Yes I realize Mandrake and Redhat or easier to use, but I think largely is its waaayyy to expensive to upgrade distro after distro release to gain the latest versions of KDE, GCC, apache, etc.

I blew probably over $600 since 97 for that reason.

Anyway I only run free as in beer distros.

They are all eternally updating! RPM distro's are not and commerical distro's will always be RPM hell based for depancies. Otherwise no customers would upgrade.

Why should I pay when I can upgrade for free?

That is why Linux products do not sell well. I am tired of paying money and want my stuff for free. Yes I support commercial software as well. But buy_my_latest_distro_Linux is certainly not on my list.

Re:I disagree

[srn_test]

Err, you do know that RedHat has been free up until RH9.0, and Fedora is now free... I've been using RH for years, never paid a cent.

Re:I disagree

[Billly Gates]

I had no high speed internet access untill recently. I used cheapbytes after I discovered them.

Re:I disagree

[srn_test]

Ah. Neither did I - but pleny of places sell the CDs for $AUD10 a set...

Perhaps it's due to big ego.

[Bull999999]

Perhaps there are many outfits out there run by geeks with big egos? They believe that they are center of the world and think that anyone who can't install/use their functionally perfect software don't deserve to use computers in the first place.

The cold hard fact is that many average comsumers have problems installing even simple Windows programs and they are the majority, not us geeks.

Re:Perhaps it's due to big ego.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's the proverbial 'hitting the nail on the head'. The "if you can't figure it out, you are a Luser." attitude.

I agree, most average consumers have problems even with the windows "ok, next, ok, next, next, finish" installers. How many times I've gotten phone calls from friends with "do I want the basic install, or do I want a custom install?". People don't know.. and truthfully, don't *want* to know the inner details of how it works. They just want to click "install" and *have it work*. period.

A graphic artist, or photo editor, doesn't want to be dicking around with how to install photoshop, they want to click "install", have it *just work*, and spend their time figuring out how to use the tool, not figuring out how to install it. Especially if its their means of income, time is money, and spending a week trying to just *install* the software is a waste of their time, and a loss of income.

A lot of Linux people seem to think everyone should have the sysadmin skills that they have. Thats the biggest stumbling block to general acceptance on the desktop there is. Maybe *you* have the time to drink beer while working on software you are going to give away for free, while working at Wendy's for your beer money and living with mom & dad... most of the rest of the world has a mortgage or rent to pay, a family to feed, car payments, etc. They don't want to learn how to be sysadmins, they just want a tool that will help them do their jobs easier and help them provide income for their lives.

Until the Linux (OS in general) community gets the concept that the guy running your "superSheet" spreadsheet doesn't want to spend hours figuring out how to install it, he just wants to calculate his finances and pay the bills, open source will never take over the desktop market. He'll gladly pay $500 for MicroSloth Excel, rather than spend a week figuring out how to install "superSheet", because time is money, and he probably earns more than that $500 for that weeks worth of time at his job. Put an easy to use installer on it, *test* it under various systems (QA!) to make sure it works, offer a message board to answer questions, and *answer* them, and you could charge $50 for it and people might flock to it (low cost, easy to install, does what they need). Until then, free is no bargain.

This reminds me,

[pheared]

Can I deduct for the charity programming I did last year?

How much would I take off? Does SLOCcount count?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Where does it stop?

[Bull999999]

Wow, if I had mod points, I'd mod you up. Indeed, even FSF states that you can charge for GPLed software if you wish.

Re:No, your fist guess was right

[Bull999999]

Why not take the MySQL way and make money off of open source product instead of the Apple's hybrid way?

Appliances!

[3D0G]

More like TiVo. Appliances are where (embedded) linux really shines. Look at the Linksys WPC11/WAP11, CyberGuard, and some appliances that do things on a scale not even attempted in the Windoze world, such as InterIM from Deviant Technologies, and you'll see prime examples of why Linux and other open source technologies are kicking the shiny metal ass of proprietary products.

Walmart can sell Lindows PC's, and sure, they're interesting, but let's hope that's not what people think of then they think "Linux products". The thing is, despite the candy interface, when you do run into a problem the learning curve is too long.

I've used a Linux desktop exclusively for over a year now, and I'm happy with it, but when I tried to get my wife (a former IT guru) to adopt it it was a total flop. Admittedly, Debian is not your best intro to desktop Linux ;-) but there are so many variables involved in making a PC a Linux "product" (OS, office productivity suite, printing, sound, network browsing, etc) that it's probably the worst test imaginable.

Appliances, competing in well-defined niches, are a natural for Linux and they tend to beat their closed-source competitors. THAT'S what I call a "Linux product".

-hp3

NOT NOT NOT !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the thousands of linux based routers sold by Linksys?

TVIO anyone?

Because we have choice!

[Jasa]

We can chose if we want to buy a power pack, professional, server, etc of (Your Favorite Distro here) or we can just spend time downloading it and hunting arround the net for the ad ons we want

I've used a number of Distros Slackware, Redhat, Debian, Mandrake, for Redhat and Mandrake sometimes I've bought the boxed sets and other times I installed the downloadable editions (purchased for $5-15AUD from a local CD seller (I dont have broadband 8( )) and I must say I haven't really gained anything out the boxed sets and I don't read the Manuals (Maybe it is because sometimes they are not very readable).

In the past, before I saw the light I used to buy lots of M$ software, but still thought it was porly written, but I didn't think I had any choice. In my work place we buy a lot of poor software, but there are no open source competitors to those packages, so we buy it because we have no choice (except write our own)

So with open source software unless you really think you are getting something more out of the "pay for" than the "free"(as in beer) why are you going to buy. I remember that my powerpack of Mandrake 8.2, was more buggy that my download edition of 8.1! That put me off box sets forever, but the download editions of Mandrake got progressively worse with 9.0, 9.1, 9.2 (haven't tried 10.0 yet).

Re:I wont pay for software

[Bull999999]

I hate mowing my yard so you should mow for me for free. I WILL NOT PAY FOR YARD MOWING. Yard mowing should be available for free for all people. And I'm driving a 10 year old car. It's not fair that there are people with newer and nicer cars out there. Mod me down, but I WILL NOT PAY FOR A NEW CAR, and you shouldn't either. New cars should be available for free for all people.

Bluefish?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:

Indeed, Bluefish -- which I am using to write this article -- was no great shakes when I first tried an early version, but it has steadily improved to the point where it is now the best HTML/text editor there is

You misspelled Emacs

Linux Small Business Server?

[ZeeTeeKiwi]

The article described a "a $1,500 box that is supposed to handle all the server needs for a small business (except, for some reason, printing) ... if we were paying customers we would have returned it, instead of sweating to make it work, and demanded our money back. Meanwhile, we've found a free software package that is supposed to do the same thing as this unit -- plus act as a print server -- and requires only a minimal computer and a wireless card. We're going to try this method of achieving the same results. It will be scary if free software on a sub-$300 PC is easier to set up than the $1,500 box, won't it?"

Does anyone know what the free software package is?

Re:Linux Small Business Server?

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds like clark connect--there is free version but the $125 US version is well worth the money.
it sure beats the hell out of the cable company's
business services package for a 1/10 of the price
ispec and ms$ vpn dynamic dns samba cups logging
mail monitoring auto update on the firewall and packages tight out the box firewall and etc. works real good on a $200 walmart which is overkill - so you spend $325 and yes you could do it yourself but if you value your time why bother it would take you 3 hrs plus to find patch compile and config and you still would not have the dns or montioring which costs a whole lot more than $125/12 i.e the software is free and the service is good

why is marketing such a mystery?

[macjohn]

I often look for software solutions in the open source community, or "semi" open source, like stuff buiilt on PHP/MySQL. Most of the time, I'm lucky if I can even figure out what the damn product does, much less match it to my needs. Basic marketing is so simple I can't understand why bright people can't seem to get the hang of it.

I've got news for all you anti-suit types: Marketing isn't trying to BS someone; it's explaining what your product does, who you've designed it for, and what unique qualities make it better than other choices. GQ's and OB's: Good qualities and owner benefits. If you develop programs and can't do that, you should get a job parking cars or something.
This is not rocket science and it's not hype. It's educating your customer, which is good for the customer and good for you.

Re:why is marketing such a mystery?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's explaining what your product does, who you've designed it for, and what unique qualities make it better than other choices... If you develop programs and can't do that, you should get a job parking cars or something.

No, that's what Business graduates are for. That's the reason why corporations are split up into Research & Development, Human Resources, Marketing, and so on. The only hard selling a programmer should do is to management for funding. Programmers work hard at what they do and they don't need to kiss some customer's ass to sell products.

M$ must be thrilled with this article...

[Enoch Root]

"Mr. Gates, check out this article... A founder of Slashdot says that Linux products don't sell, and not because Linux users are cheap bastards, which they are, but because the products usually suck."

Is This Test Multiple Choice?

[Mulletproof]

How Not To Sell Linux Products

Um, let's see... With obscure interfaces and structuring that the average user can't easily understand and use? ...Wait for it. You'll get it eventially.

"Free" as in not answerable to anyone else-plans

[Anonymous Coward]

Or both. Very few people got into a particular career being told. This career pays nothing, and you'll starve (artists excepted). Money AND love are important, and anyone who says otherwise is either independently wealthy, or trying to look better than they are (look at me. I'm Mr Charity.)

VMWare and the like

[stateofmind]

The first product I ever bought for Linux was VMWare, so I could test my Java applications on a Windows platform with relative ease. I think a lot of "cross-platform" type products for Linux would sell quite well. Like a emulator specificly for games, with a guarentee it'll play 99.9% of the Window games on the market. That would be a huge sell.

And today I installed SuSE on my machine I'm building for my four year old. I bought the professional version of it for $80 at Best Buy, and was blown away. It was the easiet install of any OS period.

The two manuals are beautiful. It comes with six cd's and a DVD with everything the six dics have. Talk about going out of your way for the customer.

Why Linux for my son? I first had Gentoo Linux on my machine, but had to go back to XP for work related reasons. He hated Windows. :) He's very happy to have his KDE interface and Gnome Stones back.

Josh

The cost is the factor

[ZeekWatson]

Before I ran linux, I used Windows at home. All software on the machine was copied from friends.

Before Windows, I used MSDOS. I never bought MSDOS.

Before PCs, I had a Commodore 64. Guess what, I never bought any software for that one either.

Nobody is interested in paying for software, least of all on a platform that is all about free-dom.

I'm not breaking the law anymore. :)

Re:The cost is the factor

[TiggsPanther]

Actually, that is a pretty good factor that is possibly overlooked.

Of course there are people around who want free software. I'd have to raise my hand and admit to being one of them. However, I like Linux and various FOSS software packages because not only are they free (or at least cheap to obtain), but they are legitimately so. No warez, no tracking down serialz or cracks. No wading through scores of pr0n popups to find a decent download.

Just free software that I can also recommend to others.

OK, I'll also buy software if I need to. But even then it tends to be either the commercial arm of something OS, or something with a decent (non-crippled) trial version. Oh, and these do often tend to be cheaper than the alternatives anyway.

tiggs

WTF are you talking about?

[msimm]

Mandrake is free as in beer? In fact its the only polished commercial distro that is and I give them huge props for doing that (and dollars because I believe good free software is worth money). I'm not knocking any of the distro's your mentioning, but you need to get your facts striaght before bad mouthing a (rare) honest distro.

Anyone have an idea what the free software was....

[SiliconJesus101]

that he refered to in this statement?

"Meanwhile, we've found a free software package that is supposed to do the same thing as this unit -- plus act as a print server -- and requires only a minimal computer and a wireless card. We're going to try this method of achieving the same results. It will be scary if free software on a sub-$300 PC is easier to set up than the $1,500 box, won't it?"

Just kinda' curious as something like this may solve a lot of my issues with my small business.

Re:proof indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose that if the 'free alternative' is slashdot comments, then perhaps his grammar is indeed 'enough better'. Yeesh.

oh give me a break. he clearly meant it was better enough even if he transposed a couple words. friggin grammar nazis.

I would recommend...

[nametaken]

Admittedly, I don't have much experience with purchasing linux products... but if I have to say activestate seems to have their ducks in a row. The product demo of theirs I did try both installed easily, and behaved as advertised. I would be confident purchasing a product from them. Oh, and for the record, I have no affiliation what-so-ever.

Almost, Re:For the most part.....

[mynameis (mother ...]

The thing that is specific to Linux/geek is that we see no docs and poor installation setups as a fun challenge and brag about it when we conquer it.

Maybe I'm not a real linux geek, but...

I *hate* when something is difficult for no good reason. A 'monumental effort to get where others have gone before, and anyone with enough time can get' is a monumental waste of time.

RANT

This isn't like the NYT crossword puzzle. The point of the install is not to just have done it. What's so fun and challenging about wasting orders of magnitude more geekhours installing than the documentation/packaging would have taken?
It often seems that developers are masochists. It is not reasonable making people play Where's Waldo with the source just install stuff.

While it's not cool to complain that your free widget wasn't a good enough free widget[ unless you're gunna do something about it]- That only works for those already invested in it.

On the other hand:

1. There are negative consequences to crap doc/packaging. Make it clear that it's less probable to get this thing running than your '64 Fiat "thats been sitting a while." 2. If nothing exists that installs reasonably easily, on most new base-distro installs, then 'Linux' doesn't really "have it" yet. If most people that want "those features" can't get them, you're gunna turn off more potential friends that simply didn't have the time 'you' wasted, than fans who will pick up the reigns. 3. Developers should put a little more effort into doc, maybe cut that 2 day install down to 4hrs. It's far more likely that fans would contribute to building the doc that brings it down to 45 minutes.
/RANT

Finally, a heartfelt THANK YOU for all the great and not so great FREE software. And, oh yeah, I still brag about it...

Re:Almost, Re:For the most part.....

[Anonymous Coward]

1. 1. The thing that is specific to Linux/geek is that we see no docs and poor installation setups as a fun challenge and brag about it when we conquer it.

   Maybe I'm not a real linux geek, but...

   I *hate* when something is difficult for no good reason. A 'monumental effort to get where others have gone before, and anyone with enough time can get' is a monumental waste of time.

No, you're entirely normal.

I've worked on very technical products before, and everyone wants them to be as easy as possible to use.

The only difference is that the technically inclined tend to want to have the option to bend the tools to do exactly what they want. They also want to know how things work. Non-techs don't care or might not even know what the tools do...they think they have to use them for some vauge reason.

Re:Almost, Re:For the most part.....

[Moraelin]

I'm with you.

And to be honest, I don't think that anyone really does the idealized linux geek thing of looking into all sources, bending all software to do their own will, and learning how everything works.

Take for example the popularity of Gentoo's Portage, among the die-hard compile-everything-yourself crowd. What does it do? Allows you to get everything automatically compiled and installed _without_ having to personally track down all the library versions needed, optimization switches that make the compiled program crash, etc.

It's basically at heart nothing short than a Windows-style installer, except it's based on a compiler. Launch it and at the end you automagically have some programs installed and running.

New Linux user-Market "Demands".

[Anonymous Coward]

Um...excuse me? Who should stop? I think that you should talk to your "consumer friendly" distributor. They'll be more than happy to halt whatever needs halting to get you what you desire. Meanwhile the people doing the actual work will do what they do best. Scratch itches, then let that trickle down to whomever is interested (KDE only comes in source code tarballs) and leaves the "packaging" to others.

Example: Win4Lin

[blixel]

I agree with this article. Sort of. The part where he says good products are worth paying for. I reluctantly paid $69 so I could make a last ditch effort at running a couple of Windows only programs without dual booting. (And my experience with WINE has been nothing short of a nightmare.) I made sure my system met the requirements for Win4Lin and then paid for it, downloaded it, and installed.

Very uneventful, it just worked. My "test" system (Mandrake 9.2) had a kernel premade so the installation was a breeze. Once I was happy with it - and in compliance with the license - I deleted Win4Lin off the test system and brought it over to main system. I knew it would be a bit more work on this system because I'm running my own kernel. But the kernel patches were as easy as any other kernel patch. Recompile, reboot, install Win4Lin - done.

(Of course someone is going to reply and say Win4Lin didn't work for them, destroyed their machine, set their house on fire, broke up their marriage, caused the death of their only child, inflated Microsoft's market share even more, etc...)

It's not Open Source, but it works. And unfortunately I'm not 15 years old any more so I can't sit around in my parents basement for days at a time screwing with a program just to make it work. My sense of idealism was hit with a hard slap of realism when I turned about 19 or 20. My time away from my computer is quite valuable these days. I'll happily pay a reasonable price for a program that works like it's supposed to. I would prefer to donate money to Open Source projects who give away their software free of charge, but ... again ... realism.

Re:Example: Win4Lin

[jechonias]

How very true. This is why money is so widely miss-understood. Money (price/cost etc) has a "time" component as well as a "trust" component.

For a product to be used, the very first thing that must occur, from the sellers point of view, is that there must be a demand. Your loss of time has increased a demand for a product, that demand doesn't exist in other segments of the market. (i.e. geeks with heaps of time on their hands)

From the buyers point of view, the first step in the buying process is an awareness of a problem, that may be solveable via a solution.

If there is no problem for the buyer, or at least no awareness that there is a problem, no purchase descsion will be entered into, as there is nothing to fix.

Most PC users see windows (and related software) as the solution to a number of problems, none of which are in the majority unsolved, in their opinions.

Hence there is no need for linux in the mass consumer market as there is no problem that it can solve.

so all this talk about making linux for the masses isn't going to work as the masses don't even have a problem that linux can solve yet!!!!

jech

Re:I wont pay for software

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate mowing my yard so you should mow for me for free. I WILL NOT PAY FOR YARD MOWING. Yard mowing should be available for free for all people. And I'm driving a 10 year old car. It's not fair that there are people with newer and nicer cars out there. Mod me down, but I WILL NOT PAY FOR A NEW CAR, and you shouldn't either. New cars should be available for free for all people.

I won't give you a new car, however, I will give you or anyone else the information on how you can build your own brand new car, for free. All you have to do is get all the parts and do all the labour yourself.
As for the lawn mowing, I think you already know how to do that.

Skins...

[antic]

And primarily because we tend to focus on the function of the software, not on market value.

No, it's because so many developers (and this applies to small/amateur developers on the whole) focus on skins, supporting skins, creating ghastly skins, skin ranking systems, user-submitted skins (often even more ghastly), and anything related to skins, all of which are entirely irrelevant for almost all software.

Case in point: SpyBot -- brilliant piece of software that I downloaded recently. However, why should there even be "new cool Skins" for a little application that removes spyware from your computer?

Re:Skins...

[kfg]

It is also true that many people who work on free software, and an increasing number every day, are just plain silly.

KFG

Re:Skins...

[Imperator]

Seriously, I don't see why any application should have a skin at all. The only skin I should have to select is for my desktop environment. The applications can use that skin. (The exception is if an application uses skins to redefine the layout of the interface--still a very bad idea but some browsers love to do it. The browser should still be able to use my native-skinned widgets. *cough*mozilla*cough*)

Re:Skins...

[gordguide]

Skins are an expression of "Geek Love" for a product. If no-one loves your product, nobody skins it.

Do you need them? Nope. Should there be a default behavior that looks like most of your other apps? You bet.

But, if there is any merit to your product at all, sooner or later someone is going to want to skin it (or complain about not being able to). This, as a software developer/vendor, is a measure of your success.

If anyone gets that, then they will probably "get" that offering skins from the get-go is a way to fake that love. Companies love to fake the love. It's another tool to move the product, and to generate more consumer acceptance (however misplaced it may be).

It's the oldest trick in the book; fake the "cool" factor to cover up the weakness. Shallow, a waste of resources, a marketing sham, all of that. But the damn strategy works, especially if you have a competing target you can infer is now "uncool".

Does the product stand on it's own merits? Chances are it doesn't, or at least doesn't stand out as being vastly superior.

But, you can skin it!! Coooool.

Re:Skins...

[jpop32]

However, why should there even be "new cool Skins" for a little application that removes spyware from your computer?

Why? How else can you post screenshots of your kewl desktop for all the world to admire and respect your 133t sk1llz?

Application skins for SW go to the same category as translucent cases, LEDs and neon tubes for HW.

Kids love them.

/me hopes noone notices his rgb-light-emitting power supply ;-)

Re:Skins...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the case of XMMS, all I can say is thank god for skins. The default "Could this be anymore black" is terrible and really takes away from a program that is otherwise really good. IMHO.

Re:Skins...

[incom]

Thankfully in the linux world this is rare. We get our UI variety by changing the system wide gtk or qt theme.

Re:Skins...

[Kalak]

Seriously, I don't see why any application should have a skin at all. The only skin I should have to select is for my desktop environment. The applications can use that skin.

I believe you just described the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines (being re-written by OSX). Now if they would just make the !@#$@# thing customizeable like it used to be in OS 9.....

Re:Skins...

[Anonymous Coward]

So you like to sit and stare blankly at the little black box while it plays your mp3s and video files?

"Ease of"...outsourcing.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Would you like your job outsourced?"
"Yes"___"No"___"I'll have to think about it."

Yeah! Somethings easy, but it's not what you think.

Y-Windows

[bonch]

Y-Windows is the future. Read the PDF paper on the site, which explains perfectly all the reasons for completely discarding X aside from a mere compatibility layer for those who are stubborn.

Y plans to have a 1.0 release within a year. Let's help out...they're the first real project I've seen actually attempting a seamless replacement of the failed experiment (IMO) that is X.

Re:Y-Windows

[Minna Kirai]

they're the first real project I've seen actually attempting a seamless replacement of the failed experiment (IMO) that is X.

You're joking, right? I can probably name more attempted X replacements than I have fingers. Berlin is the most infamous, but the others are numerous.

All of them are good ideas (especially since they mostly aimed for the same idea), but in real life, better network transparency just isn't compelling enough to halt the attraction towards Microsoft/Apple style graphics code.

Re:Y-Windows

[DunbarTheInept]

Looks promising. One thing that annoys me about most attempts at something 'better than X' is that they either (1) assume you don't need to bother with remote usability, or (2) assume it's not possible to make a better system be compatble with old X programs. Those things make me automatically stop paying attention to those projects. The ability to run programs written 15 years ago just as well as ones written 15 minutes ago is a major win of Linux. Don't take that away.

This Y-Windows guy looks like he understands this and wants there to be compatability with X applications. (Which really shouldn't be hard - after all even something totally foreign like MS Windows can run an X server as an application.)

The premise of Y windows seems to be "Keep it compatable with X, but put more high-level API calls in there too." That way, instead of opening a window being rendered into 20 or so low level X graphics calls, it is done with just one call and the server deals with the rest. That should make things a lot faster, and open the way for more use of hardware accellerations that are currently impossible because they occur at a more high level than the layer of the X server.

I'd also like to see if he plans to add sound to the remote API. It would be good to finally have that (so just like you remotely transmit keyboard and mouse and screen activity, you also remotely transmit audio activity.)

Re:OMFG THAT"S SO FUNNY!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

i just noticed this was marked redundant. i didn't see anyone else mention that they may have shat themself, so I assume this moderation means that it was just obvious that every shat themselves. i simply didn't realize that everyone found the original post as clever and hilarious as i did.

Where are the PHB's when we need 'em?

[LostCluster]

I think the main flaw in most OSS projects is that they don't have a financially motivated boss directing the development resources. Therefore, the developers persue the path that produces the best technology, but not always in a user-friendly or marketplace-friendly way like all commerical software has to be in order to sell copies.

Just consider Bill Gates as the PHB-in-chief. An OSS project needs to focus on what the users want to see, rather than what the programmers want to develop, in order to gain widespread distribution. A totally buggy and insecure program can still be sold to a user if it does the things the user wants it to do. Sure, the user should know better, but they don't, and that's why PHBs can be so stupid but connect with the marketplace so well...

No news isn't good news

[isomeme]

From the article:

We often get review units of products, then don't review them because we can't get them to work.

Wouldn't this make the product more worthy of a brief review? As in "An entire office crammed with ubergeeks couldn't make this work. Don't touch it with a ten foot pole." Are you doing readers a service by not warning them?

Re:No news isn't good news

[0x0d0a]

The problem is that they you get nastiness from the company and lawyers down your back.

Remember the story of HardOCP. People can do some criticism, but outright panning tends to get people crabby. How often do you see minimal scores given for any product in a magazine or on a website? The "no stars" products?

crack whores are okay

[Anonymous Coward]

until they start to scab. then stop. yeah

Storming the Market? Get Real

[asv108]

This is why OS-X's Cocoa and MS's .NET are storming the market right now....

How is Cocoa and .NET "Storming the market" when both are essentially tied to specific architectures and is the case of Cocoa, tied to aspecific hardware vendor?

Cocoa is a great tool for building applications for OS X but unless your a software development house targeting a niche market, OS X is out of of the question.

.NET is not nearly as popular as I thought it would be by now. There are just not that many apps out there that are making use of .NET and for good reason, although .NET offers some signifigant benefits over Java, its platform specific. Yes, Mono is out there but it will always be playing catch up.

I guess thats why Java has been "Storming the market" for quite some time.

i've never paid a cent for Linux!

[Anonymous Coward]

then again i've never paid a cent for windows either.

Re:Linux seems like a scam to me

[fferreres]

You've taken the SCO Linux tour haven't you? Now really, we are very happy that you stay with Windows. It's a nice product, and at least you support India and countries like that where people really have a need for the money (really).

I agree with the sentiment

[symbolic]

Linux is cool and all, but seriously- developers, if their intent is to sell something, need to accept the fact that in many cases, the wheel has already been invented - to circumvent this either due to sloppiness, or even arrogance, is a surefire way to raise the ire of prospective consumers.

Let me use a couple of examples. First, there's Evolution, purported to be an Outlook killer. Generally, I like it, but there's one thing that just torques my chain every time I use it: email retrieval. For whatever contorted reason, the developers have decided that if you have eight different email accounts that you manage, you, but default, want to retrieve mail from all of them at the same time (every time), or none of them. Mozilla had it right.

Then, there's Konqueror. A nice browser - very robust. But what the HELL where they thinking when they decided that the bookmarks menu should operate like the Start menu in Windows, where instead of scrolling, it expands horizontally? I guess I can see how they might think it saves time, but it really hijacks the usefulness of the menus in general.

Both of these have been frustrating enough for me to consider alternatives. I'm not shunning the notion of innovation - but I would encourage developers to CAREFULLY consider any alteration to what have become accepted and standard methods.

I buy Linux software

[CherniyVolk]

Well, today Unreal Tournament 2004 was released on store shelves.

Unlike Unreal Tournament 2003, Linux is clearly identified in the System Requirements!!

I also buy WineX, and CodeWeavers cross-over plugin.

Re:I buy Linux software

[too_bad]

Crossover office was one of the best product that I payed for
even thought I did manage to setup wine without it, but it was
soooo much easier with crossover !

Re:I wont pay for software

[Bull999999]

He didn't say he will not pay for learning how to program, he won't pay for the software product no matter what. Beside, free information for building a car is not the same as a free new car, nor does information on programming same as a software product. If someone wants to charge for their software, so be it (even GPL allows for charing for software). If they want to give it away for free, more power to them.

duh

[Anonymous Coward]

If your product needs instructions, provide them Yes MR nix explain how to use what you offer. A typical Unix/Linux world oversight. MS and its developoer base excel far beyond you at this one simple obvious thing.

ARE YOU AN ELEGANT DEVELOPER OR A DOGMATIC GEEK

[Anonymous Coward]

I say dogmatic geek. If slashdot where a Bible on how to build a good message board we'd all be so very confused. Same type of folks behind linux.

Re:Where does it stop?

[handslikesnakes]

What, are living GNU and not wanting to pay for things mutually exclusive? It's entirely possible for him to do both.

Re:It's not the money (I disagree w/ Cpt.Tux)

[Ralph Spoilsport]

AC put it fairly well, in another reply, but I'd like to also chime in:

Capn Tux wrote:
You have two sides to the zealotry: 1) Linux will never be ready for prime time until grandma can install every package and use it effectively and 2) If you can't install it from the docs and user community then you don't need to use it. Both of these sides are flawed. Consider this:

Point 1 is what I like to call the "grandma whine" and it's nearly totally invalid in both the Windows and Unix worlds. There's a LOT of software that "grandma" can't install and, guess what? It's not marketed or targeted to her because she really wouldn't have much use for it.

You are a bit incorrect here. Almost all Windows Software is wizard install, and completely dead easy. Last time I looked, Apple is a UNIX GUI, and Jebus knows stuff installs on that thing easy enough.

And while a lot of software isn't for the average user, a lot of it is, and it's important that programmers understand that you don't develop dumbass slide presentation software installer the same way you install a security extension to some hyper sophisticated middleware running in cahoots with a select firewall.

And replace Grandma with "Average User" who's IQ hovers around 100 and is working some piddly ass job just to make ends meet. These people are not motivated. They're working a job. And for a classic scenario that happens way too often, imagine some over-worked boss says: "We just laid off the designer. You're an admin - you make documents. You're doing some design work until we can afford to hire someone. Work off the old files. Now: here's Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Premiere. Install them. Learn them."

Now, little Mr 40watt is excited about the challenge of learning these big deep applications, and he REALLY doesn't have the bandwidth to suss out some weird command line nonsense just to install one app in Linux (also pretend that those apps were in Linux)... And his boss CERTAINLY doesn't have the time to either hold his hand or pull some geek out of IT to hold his hand.

I can assure you: It Just won't Happen. It's cheaper to ditch Linux and run Windows, than it is to pay people to learn the casuistry of Linux. It's sad, but way too true. Worse: I Have Seen It Happen.

I knew of a small company here in SF that wanted to go all Linux. So they bought a bunch of bottomfeeder computers, and put some distro on it with free or ultra cheap software. Alls fine until things started to break, which was nearly instantly due to arcane installation issues, and when they broke, the staff (who were all trained on Mac or Windows MAchines) had no idea what to do. Mr Linux IT dude spent WAY too much time helping the staff install and configure software and not enough time doing his job running the server.

So they pulled Linux and installed Win2k on the desktop machines along with expensive but easy to install shrinkwrapped software. The servers were left in Linux. It was easier and cheaper for Linux IT dude to keep the mess confined to the server room, and let others get their work done, even if it was in Windoze.

I tried to tell them that Macs are cheaper than Windows in terms of upkeep, but they had spent some $ on a few dozen bottomfeeders, a Windows License, and licences for the software - they didn't have money for any shiny Mac machines.

I could see Cpn Tux as the IT geek in the back room, cussing the elderly idiots in the front office. But the "Idiots" in the front office were all highly trained and skilled people- just not in the arcanery of command line interfaces, which they equate with computers the size of refrigerators, not their Pentium powered plastic box. When it comes to CLI? Sorry- "We Hire People to Do That Kind Of Work. Our Attention Is Elsewhere."

Which is just as it should be.

Both windows and Mac OS are running ever faster to ever greater ease of operation. Linux is too, but not as fast. Linux programmers need to realise that most

Re: Of course, why didn't we think of that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, that's so...simple. We could extend that model to society as a whole. If everyone stopped hating, exploiting, and vying for profitable dominance, love and brotherhood would ensue. How silly of us to act as if (chuckle) the drive to profitably dominate and exploit were prime motivators of human existence!

Down with racism!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't have spent 40 minutes on hold waiting for your support tech, Kishore, to answer the phone in Mumbai, and I wouldn't be angry now.

Please do not racism. My family work very hard coding and building web site. We earn every rupee we take home.

Absolutely

[sillypixie]

Personally, I would add one more app - Visio. It isn't in the ballpark of the 3 apps that you have listed as far as units sold/installed, but the community of users that do have it on their desktop represent (imo) a key demographic.

Of course, I'm in that demographic, so perhaps I am biased (-: And if I thought for a single nanosecond that microsoft would port Viso to linux, I would have to also be delusional.

But should someone create a quality replacement for visio, I would migrate my company laptop to a free unix of some sort and never look back...

Pixie

Re:Absolutely

[anomalous cohort]

Take a look at dia as your Linux visio replacement.

Writting a comerical App is hard.

[jellomizer]

When ever you make a product for the general product it is actually fairly hard. And the hard part is not programming the application to do what it needs to do. But to program it in a way that it can be easily upgraded from one version to the next. You have to be sure that you follow good standards for the install, like ./configure; make; make install or package it as a good RPM or for any other package you need. Prevent users from going to threw the Shared Libraries Hell and if you are using some Shared Library that doesn't come with most distributions, then you need to distribute it with your product or at least provide an easy link to the product. As well providing proper documentation and being available to answer problems. The Hard part is getting good BETA Testers, Not just punks who want to be L337 and have the software before anyone else or who are looking for a freebee stable version. But people and a lot of them who will run the software threw its paces and actually try to brake the program. And do this for a long time at least for 2 or 3 months.
Many times starter companies are unaware of all the extra issues, that are needed to make applications used for the general use. A lot of time they were making custom apps for customers and installing it themselves on their system. Or they are just out or still in college trying to make it big without much experience. So they focus on the program and forget about the need for the general person to install the product. And use it as well.

Mod parent up, for the love of God

[0x0d0a]

I've got news for all you anti-suit types: Marketing isn't trying to BS someone; it's explaining what your product does, who you've designed it for, and what unique qualities make it better than other choices.

*Amen*. I have never been able to figure out why, the more companies deal with large clients, the more they feel that an obscure description is necessary. I've started to form a theory, however. I've noticed that vendors that work with large clients *always* want to get the large clients on the phone, talking to a salesman, so that they can figure out how to maximize the amount of money they're sticking them for. My suspicion is that vendors feel that if their website's product description is unclear enough (if it has "solution" or "enterprise class" in it, I'd be uncomfortable already) potential clients will call their sales department. I have been in the position of doing purchasing recommendations for two companies I've been at. Perhaps I'm just younger or like using the Internet more than the other people there, but I don't take the approach of "get a salesman's phone number and sit through his schtick" that a lot of other people do. If I can't figure out what a product is or what someone's pricing scheme is in ten minutes from their website, it goes right to the bottom of my list. I'll call someone as a last resort. It's just not worth hassling with the huge quantities of bullshit that salesmen throw at you, having to worry about jotting down anything important they say instead of having a nice textual record to look at, etc.

It's really funny to look at product descriptions on Freshmeat -- the descriptions for commercial products are almost universally worse than open-source projects, probably because commercial types are worried about accidentally limiting their product's capabilities too much. Compare two Freshmeat-listed backup systems -- the commercial Arkeia and the gratis/libre Unison. While each system is related to backups, after reading the Arkeia description, I have a large quantity of bullshit couched in nice adjectives in my head. Despite the fact that Arkeia does a much simpler set of things than Unison does, I have less of an idea of what its capabilities are than of Unison's, partly because Unison's developer didn't waste time with flag-waving.

Re:Anyone have an idea what the free software was.

[renjipanicker]

Hey, the man's a profesional reviewer. Every mention counts :)

Corel Wordperfect

[nevets]

Does anyone remember the fiasco with Corel's Wordperfect. I started using wordperfect before MS word was around, in the good old DOS days (sarcasm). I liked Wordperfect a lot, and stayed with it as much as I could, even through all the changes in ownership and the destructive "enhancements".

I was very excited to hear that Corel would port it to Linux. I was a little weary of the Wine hooks they said, but I would give it a try. I paid over $80 for it and what a piece of crap that was. It would constantly crash and I would always be losing data. It would sometimes crash when I tried to save, and the save would lose data or just corrupt the entire file. I finally gave up with it and bought Star Office.

Then, later when Corel gave up on Linux, I read that Corel is an example that you can't make money porting to Linux. I was so angry at reading that, since the real answer was that you can't make money porting shit to Linux. I think Corel expected the "we are doing you a favor" reaction and everyone would buy it. It actually worked with me since I did go ahead and buy it, but I wouldn't buy something else after that unless I knew it worked. I've seen Star Office previously in action, and that was why I later bought it.

Bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

and decides it's not because Linux users want everything free

One of the reasons I run Linux is because almost everything is free -- as in speech, beer, and lunch.

Re:Anyone have an idea what the free software was.

[0x0d0a]

My guess is that it's one of the Linux distros, something with a big more weight than the floppy or CD standalone "firewall" distributions.

How to sell linux software

[dasunt]

• Attach it to a specific distro: We all love having to run RH 7.3. Unpatched, of course, since the updates will break the software.
• Attach it to a specific kernel: We all love having to run 2.4.17-whatever-patch-level-2.43-and-a-half.
• Don't use the package manager to install: SysAdmins wouldn't be entertained if they didn't have to figure out what software, at what versions, needed to be present to run your system. RPM? Deb? Those are for the lazy.
• Refuse to integrate with other software: Everyone should have a custom machine for your software.
• Update the MS Window version first: Us linux folks want to be lagging behind those windows users. Change scares us.

Its commercial software like this that makes me try to stick to free, mainstream alternatives.

One Reason That Seems To Have Been Missed

[pandrijeczko]

Nobody seems to have mentioned the fact that Linux is built around the UNIX philosophy of having a large number of small, simple tools, each of which is capable of doing a single job but doing it very well.

When you look at commercial software that is made for Windows, for example, most of it is packed with a large number of features that are invariably never used by most users - MS Office, Norton Utilities & Paintshop Pro, for example, are all feature-rich applications but I guarantee that probably only around 5% to 10% of the user base of each one uses the majority of the features that are provided in the software.

The mentality of many UNIX & Linux users is to streamline & optimise their systems as much as possible - therefore, there is perhaps a tendency to veer towards shell-scripting to combine simple tools into powerful programs, rather than using complex packages with features that will never be used.

Add to this that many of us in the UNIX & Linux community (myself included) get very "anal" about optimised code compilation and don't like installing tools that don't give us the source code to play around with.

In summary, it all boils down to the "chicken and egg" situation. Until you get to a stage where you have a large Linux userbase that is reliant on (invariably) GUI-driven commercial applications, no software company will port those applications across - likewise, why port applications to Linux if there is no great demand?

A problem?

[BiggerIsBetter]

It's only a problem if you're not the one selling crap. Plenty of ethically bankrupt folks do quite nicely selling garbage to keep punters.

The classic example of this, the cobalt raq2

[GuyFawkes]

I still miss my old raq2's more than any other techno object I have owned, provided you didn't buy them when new (ouch) then immediately unpack them and open the case to see where your thousand pounds just went (where the fuck is the REST of it??) and suffer heart failure...

OK there was custom PCB work in there and custom BIOS work, but basically it was red hat + apache + few small utils wrapped up in a cute browser based GIU that JUST PLAIN WORKED, and worked flawlessly.

I'm sure it should not be beyond the wit of some of the better coders out there to take via eden boards and off the shelf small profile cases and debian and do something similar and more to the point do it better than plesk, which I found an absolute bloody nightmare to install *properly*.

anybody?

Re:Anyone have an idea what the free software was.

[Anonymous Coward]

see clarkconnect

Divide and conquer.

[Moderation abuser]

You're right, and this is really the trick that Microsoft is missing, frankly they're not really that smart if they haven't seen it so far.

They have billions, put up a few tens of millions of dollars as seed money for a bunch of small operations to produce several cool but incompatible Linux distributions.

Ease of use

[idril]

What would it take to build a basic Linux set-up that would be as easy for a typical user to use as, say, a Mac? Assuming these users (think of /.ers' parents, for example) get the OS and some core apps pre-loaded by their favorite retailer, what else needs to be tweaked in how they use the system once they actually bring it home? GUI? Ease of installing other programs? Ease of hooking up stuff like printers and digital cameras? There's bound to be a number of things we could improve...

They also worry over support

[Anonymous Coward]

Vendors who are able to sell both Windows and Linux versions of their products (perhaps Mac too) probably don't want to have to train their support staff up for these additional platforms. Hence the lack of promotion.

Take Unreal Tournament 2003 - although the Linux copy was only released just in time for the CD, there was no mention on the box or within it about a Linux version eventually being available.

The situation for Unreal Tournament 2004 is the same, the official website lists its requirements purely as Windows. The box photographs in EU website stores does not show the penguin logo I'm told should be on it in the stores themselves. Amazon, play.com, and others only list Windows as the platform is requires.

And of course, the customer feedback form within the CD case will only ever list Windows versions to tick against.

There's hardly any wonder the vendors claim an extremely low percentage of Linux users, we're never given a chance. And when they point to these figures and announce they will no longer support us even unofficially, they get stung by the community feedback on websites.

It requires more than a company's technical department to support and market Linux versions.

Says he who just purchased Unreal Tournament 2004 on DVD based on a few mentions on community boards that there exists a Linux version on the CD. I await shipment.

Not just retail marketing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sourceforge, or other open source linux software often doesn't provide the capabilities.

One example of this is provided by Call Center. I think I can setup individual voicemail boxes with it, but reading the site has left me thinking perhaps not. [I want about 10 000 voice mail boxes, each of which describes a specific product, or set of products. I can do it with some incredibly hceap winodws software. i just don't want to use windows.]

A second example of this is provided by Open Office Org.

The website states that it does not have a database program with it. With a little bit of tweaking, one can create flat-files that read/write the Db3 format. I have seen much better interfaces, but it does work. [ In an ideal world, somebody would write a patch so that MySQL, or another OpenSource database would _appear_ to blend perfectly into OOo. (I know, buy StarOffice. Which I intend to do.)

now to find a *Nix equivelent of Peachtree Accounting 2004, or Quickbooks Pro.

Products using linux sell

[The Impossible]

It's not that the Linux products don't sell. People don't want to by a Linux product that does something for them. They want a product that solves their problem, they couldn't care less if it's linux based or not.

At my home I have 2 great examples of this, the dreambox sat receiver and a hitecker dvd player. The dreambox is generally known as a linux based sat receiver, but almost no users of the device know anything about linux. It just works (ok, apart from 1 feature that still doesn't) The same goes for the dvd player. Even I didn't know it was linux based, till I started playing something other then dvd's on it.
Both are nice products wich solve a problem for people. Ok, it's linux based, but you won't know if you don't care to do anything besides simply use it.

To sell linux based solutions, first make the solution work. People don;t want the hassle to compile the programs, they just want to do their work.

installation, installation, installation

[Anonymous Coward]

almost trumps location in this instance.

most of us aren't interesed in learning how to compile 'packages' with missing parts. the 'joke' in the 'community' is: 'they'll have to learn something, sometime'. chuckling into obscurity in this case.

there have been improvements, a ways to go yet. see you there?

Is there an OSS grammar checker I am un-aware of?

[chris_sawtell]

Yes, wonderful system called Peer Review(TM)
Free of Charge, guaranteed to work.
What more do you want?

Zaurus

[Anonymous Coward]

Some Zaurus 5600's (popular Linux PDAs) come with a buggy CPU that only runs at half speed, and none of the vendors who sell it will tell you whether it has the crippled chip or the new, non-crippled chip. This is NOT the way to please Linux customers!

Re:Where does it stop?

[mdfst13]

I don't care if you do not pay for software. Your choice. There is quite a bit of software which I might get for free but would not pay to get: game demos come to mind.

What I protest is preaching to others not to pay for software and calling that the GNU philosophy. That is two *separate* things. I *especially* protest preaching to others not to pay for GNU software, as it weakens the system (other people paying Hans Reiser to work on ReiserFS helps me as it gives him more time/resources to use to develop ReiserFS).

It's just habit

[lp-habu]

Most Windows products are junk. Vendors get the idea that it's okay for software to be junk; people will buy it anyway.

The idea that a vendor will do a crude port of a product to Linux, then abandon the market because it doesn't sell also applies to Mac software. There have been pretty good ports of Windows software to Macintosh that bombed because the Windows products that were ported were junk to begin with -- it just didn't make any difference in the Windows market because people bought them anyway.

Oh, yes. There are lots or products for Windows, but how many of them are better than very poor? Perhaps ten percent?

Re:It's just habit

[Hassman]

Wow. You couldn't be further from the truth. WIndows may suck but I would say that 80% of the apps for it rock.

Excel (probably the only kick ass software MS makes) blows away any other spreadsheet program.

Easy CD Creater / Nero - much better than any linux counterparts. My friend is a die hard gentoo fan, who keeps windows around to burn CD's.

Mozilla - Hey! It is a Windows app!

Quicktime, any number of DVD playback apps, 80% of the games out there, MS Money, AIM, Photoshop, CAD, 3D Studio Max, Visual Studio... etc...

Dude, you are on crack. Knock MS, don't knock the software that runs on it.

Re:It's just habit

[fozzmeister]

Most apps ARE NOT the apps you mention, most apps are bespoke for companies and cost a lot of money, its def where most people are employed, and in my professional opinion most of the UI's are rubbish, I remember one conversation with one of my managers,

Me: "This UI is badly broken, there is X and Y problems"
Manager: "Who says they are wrong"
Me: "Its not normal its not the way things are expected to work"
Manager: "Says Who"
Me: "Apple, Microsoft, Sun everyone"
Manger: "Bah they have no clue, at NOTSAYING we are the major innovators, those companies have no idea"

This was about some really wierd thing like filling in a form and the order of elements to fill in went up or right to left something like that (if it wasn't we did that sometimes too!)

Re:It's just habit

[Anonymous Coward]

Excel? Offers nothing useful that I've seen that Open Office's spreadsheet doesn't. Or Gnumeric, for that matter.

Nero? Fine if you want to burn coasters. I much prefer XCDRoast. Works great, I've been using it for years.

You mention a tiny fraction of Windows programs, and say 80% rock? There are tens of thousands of Windows apps, and a lot of those do suck, so I'm highly suspicious of that figure.

Re:It's just habit

[Hassman]

Excel? Offers nothing useful that I've seen that Open Office's spreadsheet doesn't. Or Gnumeric, for that matter.

If you think this, then you're not really using Excel.

Nero, how worked great for me. Never had any problems with it...and when I say any, I mean that. Not one coaster. I've used several other programs out there on recommendations from friends... bad bad bad.

IF you want to generalize to the tens of thousands of Windows apps...then you can do the same for linux...and most of those will suck too.

limited email/forum support.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have seen too many non-Free for pay software houses who want to turn things that should be in the manual or a faq into a for pay support incident.

My take is that all previously answered questions, etc. should be easily searchable online by all. Fees should only be incurred for new work or hand holding.

No fee should be incurred however when answering new questions that relate to bugs. Hand holding fees relating to bugs when the answers are online and easily found is different.

I leaves a bad taste when you have paid a thousand dollars for a package that does not function as the manual says becuase of a bug and they want a hundred and fifty dollar support incident paid for in order to tell you about the workaround.

A Nony Mouse

That one won't likely happen anytime soon...

[Svartalf]

Considering that Visio's a Microsoft property right now, it'd be a cold day in Hell before we see that one come over to Linux in a usable fasion.

Easy to install spyware and viruses in Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

"You are a bit incorrect here. Almost all Windows Software is wizard install, and completely dead easy."

Yes, the wizards make it really easy to install lots of things you don't want, or would not want if only they actaully made you aware of them.

In windows, things don't "just work" and I am tired of hearing people spout it.

If things just worked, I would not have so much work fixing broken windows systems. How many fully informed people would really want new.net?

Here is another line:

"In windows the installs are easy, but the uninstalls are a nightmare."

Just made that up and kind of like it.

Spent too much time last night at my sister-in-law's getting rid of crud on the windows systems in the house.

A Nony Mouse

Their problem is that they're just plain dumb

[stry_cat]

From the article:

But our freelancer, a skilled sysadmin and coder who runs a small Web hosting service, had so many problems trying to get the software installed that after a day's work he stopped trying. Maybe he could have gotten it going with help from the company's tech support people, but I told him not to bother. He'd already spent more time on this install than I believe any "normal" customer would -- and more than either of us have spent installing most free software for Linux!

There are two problem with this paragraph.

First if you're not the kind of customer who calls tech support then you're probably the kind who will spend days upon days tyring to install it.

Second most customers will probably spend about an hour maybe two and then call tech suppport. How much longer they stay trying to fix the product depends on how good tech support is (either tech support will fix it quickly or they'll give them enough hope to keep trying for days).

kivio

[bluGill]

Part of the koffice project. Like the other apps mentioned, it isn't quite there yet, but it works, perhaps good enough for you. If nothing else it is a project to watch.

Grandma is wrong target

[bluGill]

Grandmas are limited problems, you can expect them to die in just a few years. Harsh I know, but I can't think of a better way to phrase it.

Lets take the important cases, first: programs like apache. These are sysadmin programs, there is good reason for all the configuration options, but some combonations (and there are a large amount) are invalid not because they don't work, but because of subtile security concerns. A good sysadmin is always required to set these up to avoid those issues, even when the setup is made easy. The hard part of even the hardest configuration mythod is still understanding what problems you need to prevent. Don't suggest checking for these issues, one there are too many; and two not all issues are under apache's control. (think of a firewall in the way some problem that would otherwise exist)

Next there are end user applications. More reason for our user to deal with them. We need to make it easy for the user. Many people place learning the interface higher than supporting the all day user, but once you teach the all day user how to do things saving half a second every minute adds up to a lot after a year. This class of users is at least as important as the new guy who is just playing and won't be back after things are done. Linux typically focuses on this user.

so..

[Anonymous Coward]

if this guy knows so much, why isnt he making a gazillion dollars selling linux like he wants it?

One More: Sell What People Would Love Use

[$criptah]

I have worked for two software development companies that sold big-scale web software. In both of the cases the software was pretty expensive and piss poor. Let's face it, if you want a customer to spend $50,000, you better make software that is easy to use and learn. Stick to some HCI guidelines too.

How does that related to free software and Linux? Simple, so far a great majority of GPLed products that I have seen lacked good GUIs. I do not want to have a lot of cute pictures, I do not want to have a lot of cool buttons. However, things like good tooltips and consistency across the application would be nice. If you are selling a web-based product, make sure that all of your 'OK' buttons are in the same corner and that you're using either the standard buttons or customized image buttons, not both. 'Help' and 'Undo' options must be provided as well. You do not have to spend a ton of time to figure out the exact guidelines, just use Apple's.

Also, for a user there is nothing more frustrating that an "Unknown Error." If you have error messages, make sure that they explain the error and give an approprite error code. People like simple things like that. Fortunately, there is a lot of room for improvement. Rock on!

documentation

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was doing my PhD research the lab had a mantra:

If you don't document it, you didn't do it.

The problem I find with many Linux based things is that the documentation is exceedingly poor. There are two options for selling linux-based solutions and I've been involved in both ways:

1) don't document much BUT have lots of hand holding support -- this works pretty well for very low volume systems where the price tag is spendy for other components and linux is used as a solid under-pinning for UI's, Data ACQ etc

or

2) provide less support and *good* to excellent documentation.

What really ticks me off is when somebody ships some gui-on-top-of-utilities product and feels that exhonerates them from documenting the utilities. Of course the idiots that take that approach out source the GUI part to some non-debugging non-spelling grammar-agnostic non-native speaker. When a dialog pops up saying "Starting initializationing" your expectations plummet.

Argggh.

SME Server?

[aquarian]

Does anyone know what the free software package is?

Betcha it's SME Server: http://www.e-smith.org

The obvious problem.

[C10H14N2]

The fundamental business case.

Ok, so you just bought a $50k server to run a $50k installation of, say, Oracle. You have 2500 employees and the lifespan of the beast is five years. That's $1,600 per month (not including interest). You could save $800 per month by using MySQL or PostgreSQL, which is about thirty two cents per month, per employee. Your SysAdmin/DBA, on the other hand, will cost $6-8k per month or about $2.80 per user, regardless. Say you have an application suite developed for six months (hah, six months, right) with a team of four people at the cost of your SysAdmin. That's $168,000, or $2,800 per month, or just over a buck per user per month. If that development was to equal, say, the Oracle Collaboration Suite, which would cost about $37,000 per year, that's $187,500 over the five-year term in question, or about $1.25 per user per month. Now, let's say you could get that that using OSS that would take four people a week to integrate (YEAH, RIGHT), or about $7k. You'd only save about $1/employee/month.

Now, do you as a business manager, or "solution provider" who has to deal with business managers, still care much about "free software?" The little bit of security that comes with a software maintenance agreement with a trusted vendor (deservingly or not) is often worth that extra buck as the old FUD goes: "no one was ever fired for buying IBM."

Re:Where does it stop?

[110010001000]

Stallman has stated that he thinks that software should be free (as in beer) as well as "free". If you don't believe, go find an interview where the ask him that question.

Peer Review

[thepeete]

It's crazy the amount of stupid mistakes just get by if you don't ask anybody (who has not worked on your project preferably) to review your stuff. The stuff that works perfectly for you will segfault right away when a colleague does something slightly differently. End-users can also be fairly creative at crashing a piece of software.

While it's all right for a business to make good and fast money on their ideas, most lack the discipline to get things reviewed before release.

Mod Parent UP

[CrayzyJ]

Damn, too bad I blew my mod points already.

Software Installation is my #1 major complaint with Linux. Wiping the entire installation to upgrade KDE is not cool. I see people complain about reboot Winders (which, btw, I rarely have to), but I reboot my Linux boxes MORE because of upgrades or user space bugs. Hunting RPMs for an afternoon stinks (I realize there are apps for other distros, but I have to run RH.)

Re:Mod Parent UP

[Perky_Goth]

yum?
apt?
just helping. yes, it's not ideial. that's why i love debian

Point of Minor Consideration

[virg_mattes]

> On the other hand, you don't get support from Microsoft when using WordPerfect on their system either. It's difficult to support every single piece of software there is for Linux.

True, but last time I checked I couldn't download Wordperfect off of Microsoft's web site. Even if they put packages in an "unsupported" section it would be better than what they do now, which is tell you that it's outside the scope only after you download and (try to) install it. It's not that I expect them to support everything, but a warning about what they will and won't support is very difficult to find.

Virg

A Difference in Perception

[virg_mattes]

> So i would say taht the real problem with selling to linux users is the selling to linux users. A company is not going to stay afloat vending end-user software only to Linux customers.

This doesn't address his issue at all, though. His issue is not companies that port to Linux, it's companies thinking that porting to Linux excuses them from the same level of documentation and quality they put into their Windows products (or not), and then griping about Linux not being profitable when they fail to make any money.

His simple point is that making something "for Linux" isn't enough, if that's its only value. Making it useful, functional and well documented is key to selling it, whether to Linux users or to anyone else.

Virg

You guys still don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why on earth should someone HAVE to be a sysadmin to use Linux as their desktop machine? Above all else THIS is what has stopped Linux from being embraced: You have to be a friggin' propellor head to install and use it as well as put up with the rantings of the other propellor heads who scream "Don't run it as root!" and various other insipid battle cries.

The average user gives a rat's ass about root privileges or running server daemons on their damn desktop. They want the fucking thing to work and not have to spend countless hours trying to understand why they need to become a rocket scientist to make that happen.

I honestly don't see Linux becoming mainstream over the next 10 years, mostly due to the fucked up attitudes that permeate the CULTure.

Make it Easy. Lose the 'tude.

If both those things can't be accomplished you might as well hang it up.

Gentoo!

[metamatic]

And of course, Gentoo solves all those problems, while keeping the undeniable advantages of compiling from source:

1. Fine-grained automatic dependency resolution. I don't run X on my MP3 server, so when I install vi and CD rippers and so on, they're installed without the optional GUI components. Yet this doesn't require multiple packages for each different combination of features, and it doesn't require me to pick the right package from a list.

2. Optimization for your specific hardware, even if (like me) you have weird hardware (in my case a VIA C3).

3. Faster delivery of updates. If there's a minor point release I need (e.g. to fix a security hole) and nobody's made an ebuild for it yet, chances are I can copy the existing ebuild text file, change the one line containing the version number, and have a working ebuild for the new version. No special knowledge is required. I don't have to wait around for someone to make a binary package. Even better, making my own ebuild doesn't break future auto-upgrades--when version X+2 arrives officially, the one I put together myself will be replaced by it.

4. I always know I'm getting a definitive copy of the source as written by the developer(s), not something patched or built by the distro maintainers in some way I can't easily reproduce. I know exactly what versions of which tools it was build with. (If Gentoo needs to patch the official sources, the patches are supplied with, and applied by, the ebuild--in standard patch format.)

5. Putting the previous point slightly differently, I always know I can reproduce exactly the installed software, with any modification I care to make. Which means I can fix things myself. OK, this isn't a big benefit for end users, but for sysadmins it's a huge plus.

Of course, compilation takes a while. That's why we have a multi-tasking OS. And as people always point out in the Java vs C threads, computers are getting faster all the time.

The other minus is download times; source is often (but not always) significantly bigger than binaries.

1.1MHz?

[dstillz]

1.1MHz Celeron? :-)

cocoa tied to one hardware vendor?

[drewness]

Are you familiar at all with GNUstep? It's another implementation of the NeXTStep (I'm sure I got the caps all wrong there.) framework. They're keeping up with Apple's Cocoa pretty well. I think they've even made some headway on the ObjectiveC++ part. .NET is far more vendor locked in so far. Mono has to do parts of the .NET framework with Wine.

Skins are a sign of failure

[gidds]

Ideally, every app should have a simple, elegant, intuitive, and flexible interface. If it has, then skins shouldn't be needed or wanted. If it hasn't, then surely much of the effort that goes into creating skins, or hooks for them, would be better spent improving the app in the first place! That way everybody would benefit.

What if cars came without a body shell, and you either got hot/cold/wet/windy driving, or had to hunt around for one of umpteen different body shells, most of which clashed with the car interior, many of which didn't fit properly and got in the way of the instruments or doors, and all of which let in draughts?

Re:Anyone have an idea what the free software was.

[SiliconJesus101]

Hmm, thanks; I'm impressed. After looking at their package, it looks like I'm off to download the free home version and try it out. Hell, at $125.00 for the version I would most likely need, I would consider it a steal.

Only through a registered non-profit

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't. There is no forseeable circumstances under which I would pay money for a piece of software. All of the software I use - and I have all that I need - is available freely and Freely.

I've donated money in the context of non-profit software organizations backing development, but I wouldn't donate money to a private developer directly in the context of him or her as a person looking for reimbursement for his or her product. And in that case it is nothing but a product.

All commodity software should be funded through and otherwise backed by a registered non-profit, or be entirely publically funded.

Centralized bodies are far better decision makers than individuals or the "free" market. Giving money directly to the individual provides no accountability, and is nothing but backdoor commercialism.

Anything worth funding, is worth being funded publically.

Re:perhaps unsolicited email is the marketing answ

[Tin Foil Hat]

I think there's a special place in hell for anybody that would send an .iso image through email.