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2004: Year of the Penguin?
houseofmore writes "The Toronto star suggests that things are looking good for the Linux desktop this year as more heavy weight commercial vendors get behind it, including HP, Novell, IBM, Sun and... Walmart. It also mentions Red Hat's plan to offer a new corporate desktop edition of their enterprise desktop sometime this year. The article states that more and more companies are considering (and) switching to Linux for their desktop due to expensive Windows licensing fees and high-profile security vulnerabilities."
- one of the big vendors decide to publicly ship a consumer desktop machine with a GNU/Linux install (or even a dual install), will I start to think that the challenge is on.
Don't we hear this every year?
Previous headlines in the Toronto Star:
4/2003: "2003: The Year of the Penguin?"
4/2002: "2002: The Year of the Penguin?"
4/2001: "2001: The Year of the Penguin?"
4/2000: "2000: The Year of the Penguin?"
4/1999: "1999: The Year of the Penguin?"
I have discovered a truly marvelous
Okay, we were wrong in 2001, 2002, and 2003, but we really mean it this time.
I hope it does happen this year though.
"The power of innovation in the open-source community is unparalleled," says Chris Pratt, manager of IBM Canada's Internet server business. "You've got thousands of people working on this thing for no other reason than to produce the best quality product. If you look at what they've been able to produce up until now, imagine how it's going to go forward."
This guy couldn't have put it any better. It's the reason Linux will continue to grow and have deeper market pennetration over the next few years.
It's good to see that more and more people are recognizing the power of Linux, especially when it comes to a server OS. It's very powerful, modular, and best of all... it's free.
Wireless News www.DailyWireless
There's been a lot of interest in Linux at my place of employ over the past 12 months. Not just wishful thinking kind of interest - - - but the kind of interest that leads to full testing environments to see if it's feasible to support linux in our environment, over multiple hardware platforms. What's most interesting is that my organization is both large, and also very very conservative.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that '05 will be a penguin year as well
Other small companies can do this and do it now.
: )
One of the things few Linux desktop advocates consider is the cost of retraining users to use the new software and any loss of productivity that would result from incompatibilities between OSS Office packages (OpenOffice,StarOffice,etc.) and Microsoft's offering. If 90% of business users create their documents in word then even subtle incompatibilities or limitations of the import functionality could make it very difficult to share information across and between organizations.
It is the chicken and the egg problem. The value in MS Software is certainly not any features of the packages, themselves; it is the network effect of being able to easily share data with all other users of the software.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
...please no more of these, Slashdot! It seems you post two a month now. They're always the same, everyone makes fun of them, and they don't offer anything new or insightful other than "things are looking good."
Stop!
I kid you not, I've installed 3 different flavors of linux on 6 different computers at home with 6 different soundcards for the past 7 years. Linux has NEVER worked with any of my sound cards. The latest attempt was knoppix, with a sound blaster audigy. Anyone ever have any luck with it?
Until the linux desktop has the ease of use windows, or OSX when things go wrong I don't think it will be ready for primetime on the desktop. I wish it was, because neither of the other two OS's are that appealing to me. And while more games are coming out for linux, there still isn't any counterstrike on linux. I've never read about anyone getting it to work correctly with WINE either.
Doubtless developed using Macromedia Studio MX for linux?
What's so duck-like about a penguin? That it's a bird.. that messes around in the water? Maybe ducks are actually penguin like..
And then all those ex-windows users, some how magically learn how to use linux (not that it is hard, but it still has to be learnt, just as they did learn (?) to use windows)., I don't see this happening. Same holds for all the corporate desktops
I am tired of people claiming "This is the year of linux", year after year after year. There is never going to be one single year of linux, It will have to slowly and steadly erode in to M$ territory. But it will take a much longer time than a mear year, or even a decade, unless ofcourse M$ decides to do something very stupid, like I don't know, Make the wallpaper with setve ballmer and make it unchangable.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Drop a few hints to your local MS vendor that you're thinking about switching to Linux to make them drop their costs on licensing fees.
Trust me, it's so wonderful to take an MS vendor to lunch, sing the praises of Linux the whole time, then take them to a room near your computer room and point out the two shiny new mailservers that are blank and say you're debating about the TCO of Linux versus Exchange.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Another month, another prediction. And yet, most people on Slashdot run IE (and hence Windows).
Linux womble 2.6.4 #1 Tue Mar 16 10:52:42 GMT 2004 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.80GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
Get your own free personal location tracker
Just loaded up a walmart box with fedora for my sister last night. Got to work this morning and ordered up a bunch of HP linux workstations. So yes the time has long since come.
Got Code?
"Maybe we'll get 'em next year." - Chicago Cubs, Boston Red Sox, Sacramento Kings, and Linux.
Seriously. Every year major stuff happens that no one thought we'd ever see.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
I_dont_want_to_change_them_all_to_them.
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
If IBM is doing so much for Linux (inc. their ad campagin with the little dude a while back) why can't you buy one of their laptops with Linux preinstalled?
Anyone else concerned by IBM's decision to make 'Linux' look like a 4 year old Eminem?
This is a dupe of the following articles:
2003: Year of the Penguin?
2002: Year of the Penguin?
2001: Year of the Penguin?
2000: Year of the Penguin?
1999: Year of the Penguin?
1998: Year of the Penguin?
Actually what star sign is Linux?
Well, as can been seen here, Torvalds himself is not sure. Anyway, the problem also lies in selecting a specific birthday for Linux. Perhaps the most logical choice is the release of the first version, 0.10. Torvalds has this to say about that:
Judging from the post, 0.01 wasn't actually out yet, but it's close. I'd guess the first version went out in the middle of September -91. I got some responses to this (most by mail, which I haven't saved), and I even got a few mails asking to be beta-testers for linux.
Middle of September would indicate that Linux is probably a Virgo (August 24 to September 23), but it could also possibly be a Libra (September 23 to October 23). To decide between the two, I will need to do extensive analysis of Linux's character and disposition. Or I could just flip a coin ...
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
What, you'd prefer Vanilla Ice? ;-)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Well, shouldn't we be happy because of the possible come back of variety ?
I personally look forward a stituation that'd be like 15-20 years ago, when there were many environments and languages, when there was CHOICE.
So, if IBM want to use their advertising service's Macs to create a Macromedia ad to promote Linux, I say "OK".
Trolling using another account since 2005.
For me because evry year I look back and say ...wow look how much progress was made this year...i mean it just grows and there is no stopping it no matter what anyone says.
I'm waiting for a huge backing for a laptop that Linux supports fully, including things like wifi support, full driver support, etc. When I can get a fairly affordable laptop with Linux installed, or a base driver system maybe built for IBM or HP parts, then I'll begin to think Linux starting to make heavy inrows.
The walmart advertisement are a bit like the PC advertisements some time ago (before the linux era), which stated something like: "With PC-DOS7, the alternative OS..."... which was more or less only an invitation to replace it with a MS windows installation, i.e. "here's something to play with, you can always replace it with Win XP if you want to start your real work" alternative.
IMHO, if the end user feels that Linux is only a toy OS to replaced by "something more professional", this may also hurt the image of Linux.
Personally, having tried Xandros/1.0 and now using Xandros/2.0 it's clear that Windows has real competition.
No doubt this comment will be targetted by the increasing number of moderators who appear to be Windows admirers, but I have enough karma for a whole barbeque, so here goes with a list of the ten reasons why Linux is destined to overtake Windows in 2004 (or 2005, or 2006, etc.)
- Windows is expensive, Linux is free
- Distros like Xandros "just work"
- Linux is secure from worms, trojans, viruses
- Linux runs on modest hardware
- Linux is less complex and thus more stable
- Linux has a "cool" factor missing from Windows
- The IT world's view of Microsoft as "evil" is percolating down to the general public
- Linux now comes with a sufficient set of applications for most common purposes
- Linux applications are more stable and simpler than Windows' ones
And lastly: more and more institutions will choose Linux as they discover the advantages of it, leading to consumer uptake as people "stay compatible" with their work PCs.
From a 3% marketshare this seems unbelievable. And yet this is how markets work: the "tipping" often happens way before the 20% mark, but once it starts, it's unstoppable.
At the very least, 2004 was the year in which people seriously started to wonder "when" and not "whether" Linux would become the de-facto OS standard for all computing, including the desktop.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
###
From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds) :-)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Free minix-like kernel sources for 386-AT
Message-ID:
Date: 5 Oct 91 05:41:06 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki
Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote their own device drivers? Are you without a nice project and just dying to cut your teeth on a OS you can try to modify for your needs? Are you finding it frustrating when everything works on minix? No more all- nighters to get a nifty program working? Then this post might be just for you
###
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,720 for "year of the penguin". (0.07 seconds)
The Toronto Star's @Biz section stories were all-but-one about Linux yesterday. (The Tux with sling was big across the front.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I just saw and add for Windows Server on top of slashdot. It said
Windows server offers a savings of 11%-22% over Linux in 4 out of 5 workload scenarios.
How can this happen?
Vote for new mod!!! Score:-2,Imbecile
GNU/Linux is in it for the long haul. MS Windows flashes on the media's screen with a new release and fades away. GNU/Linux is growing bigger and stronger everyday. As that happens more and more companies will port their wares, more hardware venders will supply GNU/Linux instead of MS Windows, more users will leave MS Windows (most likely because they're tired of the upgrade costs for both hard and software related to the upgrade), and someday MS Windows will be a "niche" OS.
Think about it like Apple. They make an excellent OS which includes some great apps, overall better than average desktop and small server hardware, is clearly better than MS Windows but still isn't "number one". Is this a bad thing: no. Apple will be around for a long time building their stuff reguardless of their marketshare. IMO this is the fate for MS Windows (except for the quality part of course).
Forget about this "Year of the Penguin" stuff because no one year will be it's "year". GNU/Linux is here to stay, grow and get better.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
The article states "Fortune 1000 companies are already dabbling." While this may be true, Linux becoming dominant on the home desktop is still unlikely, IMHO. There are still too many usability issues for the average computer user to perform configuration in Linux (e.g. installation of programs). Once KDE is up and running, I suppose everyone will be okay until the purchase of a new printer, etc., but until system changes are as simple to handle in Linux as they are in Windows, there is not much chance of Aunt Tillie feeling comforatable with Linux.
In a corporate environment, where configuration is taken care of by IT, this is a completely different issue, and I can see that Linux is liable to make some important inroads here in the next few years. Perhaps once Linux becomes more widespread in corporate America (and has polished up some of the persistant usability issues), it will begin to make more of an impact on the home desktop market.
... at least for a number of years to come. Why? Easy: While MS OSes have reached a state of saturation of the market, Linux is only just entering the exponential part of the growth function -- with many factors playing in favour of Linux.
I like my spaghetti with source.
Linux on the desktop won't succeed until the applications can be installed and run by Joe User. I'm a Linux newbie with RH 9 on a home server. If I didn't remember a little UNIX from mumbledy-mumble years ago I'd be completely lost.
It's running great as a server, but as a desktop it's not there. I've downloaded plenty of software and getting any of it running has been a struggle. Documentation is terrible, if it's there at all it says high level things like "run the makefile", which doesn't work half the time anyhow. How is Joe User supposed to know how to do that? Frequently applications don't even say how to RUN the freaking thing after it's installed. With no desktop icon and no uninstall program how is a user supposed to use Linux?
Linux has the "obscurity factor" amongst the psyche.
Mac OS has the "obscurity factor" BUT (and it's a big but) - it is commercially available and known for a very high quality/zero virus/low maintenance - hardware and software - Linux doesn't yet have a SINGLE company that has a commercially successful hardware line AND software line.
+ Macs can run Linux too - even better in some cases - which means one could potentially have a QUASI QUAD BOOT system
Virtual PC = Windows Variants
Linux = Linux PPC or YellowDog
Mac OS X
Mac OS 9
Heck older Macs even boot BEOS well.
**TROLLS - please don't put Intego's FUD trojan alert
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
if the penguin weighs the same as a duck, it's made out of wood, and therefore...?
Yeah, over here, we're called "Red Sox fans". This is the year, didn't they tell you? :P
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
With XP calling home to register itself, word about the holes that come with the XP firewall, etc. I can see where Linux looks much more attractive ( hell, some home users might have to BUY it ;) ).
Similarly, the increasing cost of XP/Office XP with little or no percieved increase in value *cough*software assurance*cough* has got to be grating the nerves of even a few PHB's.
Either way, it's good to see Linux making some inroads into corporate desktops.
A Human Right
I use Linux full time as my desktop, except for the two/three times a week I decide to play a game with some friends. Then I have no choice (winex doesn't work) to boot into Windows.
As a work desktop, it more than satisfies my requirements. Honestly though, as much as I'd rather not have to, I have to keep the Windows partition to play those occasional games.
I think that the 'year of the penguin' will come around whenever game companies really start shipping titles for Linux. I think it's ironic though that if a couple of the larger PC manufacturers actually started shipping Linux, that games would be available in short order, I'm sure. Of course, neither industry wants to make the first leap.
Mr. Pratt actually completely missed the boat with that comment. Those thousands of people aren't "working on this thing" to "produce the best quality product" (half of them would probably revolt at it being called "product"), they're working on it because:
a) They're allowed to
b) They wanted something to exist that didn't before, or they wanted the same function to be performed with a different interface, options, etc...
Quality is not an overriding goal, as witnessed by the fact that Linux has generally horrible documentation (man pages, heh!). There are misspellings, factually false statements, incorrect or misleading statements, and worst a general incompleteness.
As has already been discussed to death, useability is not a goal either and as a result the software is often confusing for anyone other than the authors to use (because, after all, the authors didn't write it for YOU, they wrote it for themselves).
People fundamentally misunderstand the actual process of OSS (and especially GPL) software. It's not created because thousands of volunteers are trying to create a high-quality, competing set of products, it's created by and for the authors, and other people are allowed to download it (but God help them if the instructions aren't sufficient).
Perhaps to IBM it's about creating a better quality product, because their business has a huge interest in that, but that's not really community volunteerism, that's people who are getting paid by IBM, HP, Novell, Red Hat, etc to work on Linux. That would be like saying there are thousands of people in Redmond trying to make Windows a quality product... well, no kidding!
I'll make a prediction, and it is that there will be no penetration into the corporate market by "free" Linux, it will all be the commercial sort, that you pay for, just like any other software. The key features of this software will not have been designed by volunteers, but by paid coders for major corporations.
Don't believe me? Well have you been in a corporate data center recently? My job involves travelling to new customer sites every week and I've seen all of two Linux distros being used corporately: Red Hat in 99.9999% of the cases, and one small shop where the network admin was a Linux zealot and had a Debian box performing some utility functions, but again their blade server ran Red Hat...
Someone is WRONG on the Internet!
He reminds me of the kids fromVillage of the Damned.
Penguin Trivia #46: Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were. -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
Is it a libra as in beer or a libra as in speech ?
Nobody believes the official spokesman, but everybody trusts an unidentified source. -- Ron Nesen
In India, where I live, 2003 was the year of linux on the desktop. Yup. Last year. Already happened.
Starting around last August, the avalanche started. Linux desktops crossed a threshold minimum level of usability, and the price of Windows became an unacceptable fraction of the price of the PC in this cost conscious market. I think it was IBM that ran the first ad for Linux PCs. Soon the taboo was broken. OEMs switched in droves. Today there is hardly anyone that only sells windows boxen. This year two companies have entered the market specializing in linux PCs.
I can feel the pulse at the grassroots level as well. While the percentage of linux users is surely nowhere near two figures, it has probably doubled since a year or two ago. Banks and other enterprises switching all employees to linux happens every day.
Billy Gates shot himself in the foot. Major anti-piracy ad campaigns and policing action by NASCOMM (BSA equivalent in India) contributed to awareness about alternatives and fueled linux growth. Today the ads directing the reader to microsoft.com/piracy/howtotell/ are conspicuous by their absence, but the damage has been done. What linux has won is mindshare. PC geek mags regularly carry linux distros and other linux software these days, and have as many articles about linux as windows. It looks like an exponential growth curve is assured.
If you're thinking of moving to Bangalore, there's at least one thing you can look forward to :-)
but do you really want to go over to your mother's house to fix her computer because she doesn't understand a commandline.
no needs to move. just ssh her box.
It isn't just the Toronto Star. Fun with google
It looks like CNN picked 2002, Linux.com(OSDN) picked 1999...2002 was particularly popular...
Please help metamoderate.
In a recent agreement between SCO and the Chinese govt. In pursuit to keep their zodiac pristine, the chinese govt. is suing those who choose to raise the popularity of the penguin to super-impose a non-honarable animal onto their zodiac folowers, sources say the chinese govt. claims the addition of the penguin will cause identity crisis worldwide. People are encouraged to still believe that this year is without a doubt the year of the monkey, and not the year of the pengiun. Go Ximian !
</joke>
It's later on in that section in the Classified ads: "#666 Astrologers, Psychics & Suckholes"
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
A recent study published by the highly regarded Laura Kidio and her Yankee finding the TCO of desktop is much higher than of Windows XP Pro.
In a very serious study with no sillyness whatsoever, once factoring in the high cost of download and installing Debian Linux, the TCO is actually 327$, compared to Microsoft's low low $199 price tag.
www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
It say some good points about Linux which is nice but it also vehiculate all FUDS about it too...
So much of them that I'm not sure that in the balance it is so nice. Think of any FUD you heard about Linux, the article mention it without really giving real figures.
I can just see the rollouts now. Linux on every local desktop, local passwd, group, apps, complexity rising exponentially, security, performance and reliability decreasing in response.
While Windows can be an insecure mess, it's nothing compared to just how messy Unix systems can become.
With Unix, the least efficient use of the hardware is to put a single instance of many different applications on to lots of different machines.
Say a Unix app consumes 20Mb of RAM, 80% -> 90% of that memory is shareable; shared libraries, program text and the like. So *conservatively* 2 people can run the application on a machine and it only takes 24Mb of RAM, not 40Mb of RAM, 3 people it uses 28Mb, not 60Mb and so on. On top of this, the application is already loaded, it doesn't have to be read from disk again each time it's started. The filesystem buffers are already pre-loaded, the CPU caches have a significantly better hit rate than if there are a dozen different apps running.
Unix(and Linux) is *not* Windows, there's an entirely different system architecture which should really be considered before just wiping Windows on each desktop and replacing it with Linux.
Of course there's a great opportunity for people who know.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
This only needs two responses:
1) OpenOffice.org
2) Crossover Office
In order of preference
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
No, sorry. I have a Linux Journal hat that says in big letters '1999: The year of the Penguin'. As usual, the media is late about reporting technological advances...
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
... to make the "conservative" bosses more easily accept the "liberal socialist" linux, I would be happy to sell them a nice paper recommending linux, that way, because they paid for it, it will soothe the capitalist breast a bit... I will charge many-MANY thousands of dollars for this advice, a truly CEO impressive sum. ..just.. give me a few days to accumulate a heap of those "lost your diploma" replacement certificates I see in the helpful advertisements that well meaning people send to my email inbox.
The power of innovation in the open-source community is unparalleled,"
This guy couldn't have put it any better. It's the reason Linux will continue to grow and have deeper market pennetration over the next few years.
I don't see much innovation in the Linux world. BeOS was innovative - as a system written from the ground up for multimedia.
OSX is based on a version of Unix, but Apple have been innovative in the UI - rather than defaulting to using X.
Even the next version of Winblows is supposed to have many innovative new features - although what these turn out to be in practice remains to be seen.
Linux developers seem to be rather a conservative lot, and maybe I'm not being fair here, but there seem to be far too many sacred cows in the Linux world for there ever to be true innovation.
I work for a large public school district. We use Win 2000 server quite a bit(that may be changing with the movement of Novell to Linux). The place where the district lags behind quite a bit is on the desktop-we still have _thousands_ of Windows 98 machines out there because there simply isn't funding to upgrade the hardware/OS's. What would be really compelling in our case is a really nice desktop version that had Wine that worked seemlessly _and would use existing Win98 DLL's and libraries if available. Basically, I'd see that as an alternative to a Win 2K or Win XP upgrade that would breath some new life into these old machines. We'd get a lot more functionality with Linux _but_ short of doing a dual boot, I haven't seen a way to keep the functionality that Win98 has--and the district has what is for it quite a substantial investment in Windows software--and training in Windows applications for its staff.
What I'm saying here is that part of the logical niche for a free OS is as an alternative upgrade path for folks that are finding that Windows simply doesn't give them an economically viable upgrade path. Microsoft is ceasing support of Win98. Now, to put this in perspective, even among folks outside of the district that hit our web page, over 20% are using older versions of Windows(ME,98,95) compared to less than 1% for Linux-and 4-5% for Macintosh.
Its always seemed to me that folks pushing desktop Linux generally assume that folks will ditch many of their windows applications(I know Wine works, but last I checked it was still a bit limited in what applications it would support) or at least substantially retrain themselves to use Linux.
I tend to think that just being the viable upgrade path for older hardware is the type of thing that will take Linux clearly past Macintosh in terms of numbers.
It's all about software. People are NOT, NOT, NOT going to abandon all their software. They like their software, and--yes, Slashdotters, despite what you hear from the editors here all the time--many people like Windows. It is safe and easy for them.
If you mention to them "apt-get" they will run screaming in terror.
I liked the way the paper described Tux: " a duck-like penguin". I immediately thought of a great name for the next desktop oriented distro: Lindux! Maybe I should suggest this name to the Lindows guys?
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
PS. Could someone please try to finger me from overseas, as I've
> installed...
(Excerpt from Torvald's discussions in early linux)
Microsoft must have misunderstood this, figured they couldn't be outdone, and now thousands of Chinese are giving them the finger every day!!!
...people outside of Slashdot do not know or care about "phoning home" or "firewall holes." The real world just doesn't get all worked up over it like Slashdot does.
Similarly, the increasing cost of XP/Office XP with little or no percieved increase in value *cough*software assurance*cough* has got to be grating the nerves of even a few PHB's.
So don't buy the new version.
No...wait...it was 2002. I'm sorry--I mean 2001. One of these years Linix will dominate...
This is certainly a step in the right direction....
O'Reilly writes: Linux for Non-Geeks introduces you to Linux, without the technical jargon and advanced topics that you'd find in other books. You'll learn how to use Linux to do the normal, day-to-day computer stuff that you know how to do with another operating system, like connecting to and surfing the Internet, listening to CDs, playing with audio files, customizing your desktop, playing games, downloading software and fonts, printing, and more. Includes a complete installation of Fedora Linux on two CDs. [Full Description]
Starts off slow, accelerates due to the feedback loop, become an exponential change. Then it'll reach a mid point and tail off to a plateau. It isn't clear exactly how long it'll take, the rate of change or the carrying capacity but barring legislation making Linux illegal, it's going to happen.
O L301/Wet hey/Outline09.html
e.g.
http://marine.geol.sc.edu/BIOL/Courses/BI
It's fairly clear there will be several years of "Linux on the desktop".
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
It wont be the year of linux before the comon home user and gamer can play their games without obscure winex hacking, install the apps they will without having to worry weather it will run on their desktop and worry about a zillion billion depentensies. Oh a nice clean easy uninstall system would help also.
One of the issues with "new" technology is that there is a learning AND testing curve for the faint of heart. Just about every CIO fits in the faint of heart category, as they typically pick what others run, so that they can hide in "nobody go fired for using X".
Back in the 80's,early 90's X was IBM. But even in early 90's, Windows was good enough to replace much of the character screens. The issue was CIO's were afraid so they would allow bean counters and others to slowly bring them in before they stuck their neck out.
We have been in the learning phase for the last year. Now, it is moving to testing for these folks. In early 2005 (one year before Windows big one), we will see mass replacements as part of the 2005 budget.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
For laptops almost any major manufacturer has announced the availability of Linux on their machines during the last years. Almost all off them have dropped these plans silently. For details see the Laptop Manufacturers - Linux Status Survey.
The entire Linux desktop movement blindly follows the Windows paradigm for desktops like a happy little dog. Why not DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT?! Get that taskbar the hell out of there--they don't facilate spacial navigation and are horrible. Get that Start menu-ripoff out of there--Start menus are extremely poor program launchers. That integrated browser doesn't belong--it has absolutely no reason for existing and adds seconds to my loading of the Home folder (and you guys call Windows XP slow).
The only "innovation" KDE and GNOME can profess is having tons more pointless applets running on their panels, and running a lot slower than Windows on the same hardware. That's absolutely it and nothing more. Other than that, they offer nothing more than what Windows offers, and they don't even have a chance of eating OS X's dust.
You asked, I answered. Linux needs something completely new with its OWN IDENTITY--something that sits alongside Windows and OS X in having its own identity. KDE and GNOME are awful, horrible, and very, very bad. Personally, I'm looking forward to Y-Windows, which plans to replace the failed experiment that is X with something modern and better, while retaining the advantages that X had like network-transparency. No more endless "extensions" that conflict with each other! No more non-integrated desktops, where you're having to install TWO desktop environments just to be able to run each other's apps.
The Linux desktop is the perfect example of fragmentation run amok, holding back progress and adoption. Hell, very basic things still don't exist. The day you finally implement a binary installation/uninstallation routine so that someone can stick in a CD and run an autoplay installer that properly creates its shortcut icons and so on will be the day more apps will start coming out for Linux. Not to mention using just ONE library instead of multiple "toolkits" doing the widget work that should be done by the desktop anyway. Man, like I said, I could go on and on for pages...
from Emperor Computers. I expect IBM will get round to it, they got a nudge from the UK (mother of) Parliament recently...
Well, normally you have to use an installer even though the method you describe (copy .app folder to Applications) was the way Apple intended it to work.
However, this is beside the point. To install a typical Free/Open Source program on Mac OS X, you normally have to recompile it! And sometimes even that doesn't work, because the coders used linux-only features that are not available on the BSD-based Mac OS X.
If you install software made (packaged) for Mac OS X, it's easy. But if you use Fedora and install software made (packaged) for Fedora, that's easy too. Or if you use Debian and install software made (packaged) for Debian.
It's when you want to install something not "natively" available for your distro/OS you run into problems. (Yes, those problems should be solved, but they are hard...)
It's more secure in some ways. We know. But let's put that aside.
As I see it, there's no clear reason why anyone should bother switching to Linux. Seriously. It's open, yes, but that doesn't matter except to very small minority of people (remember, Windows software can also be Open Source, even though the kernel is closed). Other than that...not much. Both Linux and Windows are equally complex and confusing. People who argue that Linux is a beautiful gem either (a) don't really know what they're talking about, or (b) are talking about the raw kernel and not the 10x more stuff that needs to stack on top of it to make a Windows-equivalent system.
If an alternative operating system had some huge and obvious benefits to the user, then I'd be all over it. Linux and Windows are more similar than different.
and for weeks after the game the only thing anyone talked about were Janet Jackson's tits. a win for the Geek's true ambitions, perhaps, but not much of a showing for Linux.
switching to Linux for their desktop due to expensive Windows licensing fees and high-profile security vulnerabilities.
It's a good question how much Linux desktop deployment will occur before the first pre-installed Microsoft OS's on PCs with built-in hardware-level DRM (TCPA, etc.) begin to appear.
That OS will be trumpeted as being "more secure" and "lets you watch videos, listen to music", which will help to sell it to the virus-weary public and to the content paranoid **AA members.
And it's questionable whether people will even care if their PC is not "free" as in freedom as long as they're getting enough perceived benefit for not too much perceived cost.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
if current_year =\= year_of_penguin then year_of_penguin = year_of_penguin +1;
if current_year = year_of_penguin then repost_same_article();
The year of the Penguin will be when our parents have Linux installed on their boxes and don't call us every hour to ask us how to use it.
--I'm not talking about dance lessons. I'm talking about putting a brick through the other guy's windshield.-
I didn't buy (and have never bought) a computer with linux in mind. I guess I should resort to that at some point. I'll definatly try the cheat code you gave me. (knoppix alsa). I know what you mean about the free tech support stuff. It's enough of a pain in the ass just cleaning out the spyware, malware on my own machine never mind my friends/family who are constantly leaching my help.
I just might sack up and delete my windows partition and switch to fully to linux.
HP, Sun, and Novell have all announced that they're selling computers with Linux-based desktops. Has this ever happened before 2004?
IBM's main server distro is linux-based. This doesn't affect desktop users as much, but it does mean that there are legions of PAID linux developers out there.
So... Don't believe, don't believe, don't believe the FUD!
"The article states that more and more companies are considering (and) switching to Linux for their desktop due to expensive Windows licensing fees and high-profile security vulnerabilities." ...and in other news, the sky is blue and the earth revolves around the sun
tourettes
Wow. Your friends who know you ask you about Linux and "geek types" because they "heard about it somewhere." That proves everything.
I repeat: people outside of Slashdot--that is, the REAL WORLD in which people are more concerned with their car payments than their preferred "desktop environment"--do NOT, NOT NOT know or care about "M$," "RIAA", or "Linux." Deal with it. I do tech support and interact with people and their computers for a living, and 80% of the people don't even know what version of Windows they're using, despite the huge boot splash screen saying "XP" on it.
And this time people, this is a joke and not a troll!!!
This is a friendly note from the law office of Bezos & McBride (no relation, really) in representation of the SCO Corporation. SCO would like to inform you that it holds the trademark to the term "Year of Linux." Please cease and desist the use of the term without acknowledgement of the trademark. If you wish to continue using this term, please contact SCO to discuss licensing terms.
Thanks you,
Law Office of Bezos & McBride
D. McBride
J. Bezos
Ron Paul
With all the confusion about whether or not a particular year is "The Year of the Penguin," I thought I'd volunteer a simple method you can apply to decide for yourself.
If it is January through May: this year
If it is June through December: next year
Try it for yourself and you too may become an industry expert and visionary.
[warning: this post contains high degrees of sarcasm and may not be suitable for all readers]
char *mySig;
...you must be new here.
If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law;
You missed the original point.
Sure it's doable. Did you bother to look at the Subject to which you replied? Rewriting macros (they don't call them scripts in Office) is time-consuming, not to mention just plain different than what users are used to. That clearly has a cost associated with it in a real work environment.
The big thing that I would like to see:
Improve Wine so that if you have a win98 license, they'll make more use of the Microsoft DLL's--and improve the installation and documentation to that installing into a situation in which Win98 already exists is _seemless_.
What I'd ideally want here:
Take _nothing_ away from folks that already have a Windows license on their machine(particularly if
this is an older license)
Add Linux functionality.
Here at the district, we have some fokls that know that Windows networking and security is rather lacking--but they are a bit intimidated by the Linux learning curve. The fact that Novell is moving towards Linux is a big draw here. The next biggest draw IMHO would be to make the win98 machines work better so that the life of these machines can be extended--and the software can be update at lower cost than the microsoft route.
When you are talking a cash-strapped customer with thousands of machines, those sort of things really do add up. I don't think it is just school districts-cost savings is going to be more of an issue for a lot of organizations over time--if the Linux community can simply make it clear that Linux is the logical, low cost upgrade path then in time Microsoft will feel the heat.
My company has rolled out desktops to two organizations. One with about 15 Linux workstations and other with about 60, 20 of which run off of a Linux terminal server which has performed flawlessly. We are iDREUS Corporation at http://www.idreus.com
But money *does* grown on trees, in so much as the foundation of all wealth and survival on earth comes from the food/energy we harvest from our environment. Which disproves the idea that it would change anything if money grew on trees, because even if it literally did grow, well, the trees would not be unlimited. Crops would do badly, someone would own the land they grow on, etc... ultimately the wealth would still be concentrated in the hands of the few who enforced access to the trees.
Forgive my off-topic rambling...
I was just wondering what would happen this year if it really was the year of Linux.
:) Who is going to fill the role of distribution with this increase in use? Many of these people are switching over, after all, because they think it's going to lower their TCO. Why start up a mirror to eat up your small businesses T1 bandwidth?
Will we start to see major security flaws in application we once thought secure? 20% of the small business owners switch to Linux, that would be enough in my mind, as a hacker, to look for exploits to Linux and its Open Source programs.
Am I to assume now that my favorite gentoo mirrors are going to be filled with new users? I love getting packages at 450 Kbps
I'm totally for Linux's growth, but I'm worried that we might tarnish it's appeal by growing so fast. I'd prefer that 10 years from now, everyone just be, "huh, now that I think about it, Linux has 60% of the OS market...How did that happen?"
people love to bash Windows or the Mac by pointing out things that were true of them five years ago and are completely untrue now
Many people still haven't upgraded their OS, possibly because they still haven't upgraded their hardware, and unlike free operating systems, one cannot readily slim down either of the major proprietary desktop operating systems to run on 1999-era hardware. This is part of why people must still consider Windows 98/ME's 64 KB "System Resources" heaps.
Memory is cheap (I've got 640 MB)
It's pretty hard to fill 640 MB at 16 MB per hour, the nominal speed of dial-up. It's pretty hard to upgrade from dial-up in many geographic areas. It's pretty hard to finance moving to another geographic area in this period of jobless growth. If each of a dozen apps has 100 KB of app and 9 MB of libraries, would you want to download 9 MB of libraries a dozen times over?
People think HP, Novell, IBM, Sun and Walmart are the right partners.
It's actually the applications and storage companies that will make Linux the true competitor. EMC, HDS, Veritas, Oracle.
How much do these analysts get paid?
Do you think rebranding linux via IBM and Sun will really help? It just dilute the OS. Linux doesn't need 8000 colors, it needs 8000 different things to add-on. A honda civic won't sell any better if there are 8000 colors to choose from. It will sell better if you have choice of upgraded engines, turbos, exhaust, sun roofs etc etc.
what does that make bill gates? a human-like devil?
You need people like me so you can point your fuckin fingers and say, "That's the bad guy." So what that make you? Good?
int main
{
while ( $date->year slashdot.post_story( $date->year + " is the year of the Penguin.");
}
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
The thing you don't realize though, is that these desktops already exist.
Winmodems, Winvideocards, Winsoundcards, Winprinters, Winscanners, Winwifi, and the like, all acquired before anybody made any indication of wanting to switch to GNU/Linux, act as evidence against the myth that one can always replace Microsoft Windows with GNU/Linux on a given piece of hardware.
I had all kinds of hardware problems; Red Hat 9 never did recognize my sound card either (Audigy 2), or my TV capture card (Winfast TV2000-something-or-other). I installed SuSE 9.0 a few months ago and it Just Worked out of the box; no hunting for vendor RPMs, no compiling, nothing. I never even saw any reference to "emu10k1" or whatever it was that Red Hat didn't like. It even installed the right driver for my "it's-software-RAID-but-we'll-sell-you-a-card-and- hope-you-think-it's-hardware-RAID" Adaptec 1200A IDE raid card, which Red Hat thought was two independent IDE controllers. (!) And my DVD+/-RW works perfectly as well.
SuSE has been amazing in this regard... if you haven't given it a try I strongly recommend it. 9.1 should be out in a few months; you can install it over the net (a while after store release) or buy the personal edition for cheap. It's literally the first version of linux that I've been able to use as my full-time desktop.
So apart from the plug I guess my point is that it depends on the distro. And consider what happens in the Windows world when you have unsupported hardware, or even vendor drivers that just suck. You're stuck. At least under Linux there might be enough people with the skills/environment to produce an open-source driver.
Never played Counter-Strike, but I did manage to get the original Half-Life working with WINE (in OpenGL mode, obviously). So there's hope.
...as millions of Windows users migrate to this "new" OS, a "My Boxen", "My Qbphzragf", and "My pr0n" icons will appear on the desktop, people will change their homepages from www.msn.com to slashdot/newsforge/rootprompt.org, and one will not be considered cool unless they borked their hard disk at least once in the first 10 days of using it. Ah, pop culture.
You mean, "with linux you have at least one way of getting sound working if your sound card doesn't work". This is opposed to "with windows if your source card doesn't work you can only cry a lot and try to reboot or just buy a new sound card".
Perhaps GNU/Linux has had drivers for each sound card you've tried, but it has no driver for my scanner (a Microtek Scanmaker 4850 received as a gift; the 4800 series is marked as UNSUPPORTED in the SANE HCL).
especially installing software, which Linux reduced to a simple, single step from the more popular many-step process.
What if I want to install an application or a hardware driver that your OS distributor doesn't know about? Then I'd still have to compile it from source, and Aunt Tillie doesn't want to have to learn how to do that.
I remember people hawking "Year of the Network" from 1986 to when the InterNet finally took off in 1994.
Likewise Bill Gates was yapping about Windows between 1984 as a thinly disguised MacOS rip-off until it finally become usable on PCs in 1993 (v 3.1).
It won't be the Year of the Penguin until MS replaces their kernel with Linux. And that's as likely as Larry Ellison coming out of the closet.
I'm sitting in front of a Mandrake 9.2 desktop running KDE. I am not a Linux expert, nor and I a complete Linux newbie, and I am BY FAR *NOT* a computer novice. Here's my question...
How do I switch my screen resolution? No, serioously.
When I installed this distro, it picked up my video card nicely, set my setting as I asked it to, that part went well.
But I've now spent the better part of 10 minutes trying various things, including:
* Right-click on the desktop, select Configure Desktop. Nope, not there.
* Desktop Setting Wizard? Nope, not there.
* LinuxConf on the K menu? Well, doesn't say Video Settings or anything familiar, but maybe it's under Miscellaneous... Nope. Peripherals? Nope.
* Configuration Menu... Hardware (probably, but I might be wrong)... HardDrake (only because that sounds familiar from the install process)... Nope... Oh wait, what's this Run Config Tool button that appeared out of the blue?? Hey, there we go!
Ok, is my point sufficiently clear? Sure, you can dismiss the first thing I tried as something a Windows user might try. Ok, fair enough, learning curve issue. Why didn't Desktop Settings Wizard do what I wanted? Oh yes, because a desktop isn't really the same thing as a the Windows desktop. Ok, maybe another learning curve thing, but now your pushing it. LinuxConf? Obviously some sort of configuration tool, and featured so prominently on the K menu, that made sense.
No, I had to be fortunate enough to remember what it said during the install, and if I hadn't would I have tried HardDrake as fast as I had? Almost certainly not because HardDrak doesn't even remotely sound like something that might configure my video card (and saying the HARD portion of the word should indicate something to do with hardware is an EXTREME stretch, albeit a correct one in this case).
And how many clicks did it take in all? Let's see...
1. K menu
2. Configuration
3. Hardware
4. HardDrak
5. Click on video card (oh yeah, forgot to mention that before... I didn't even get the Run Config Tool until I selected the video card... Why wasn't it there greyed out and then activated when I selected the video card??)
6. Click Run Config tool
7. Click Resolution button
8. Make my change and click Ok
9. Then click Yes on the verification prompt that appears
For God's sake, I count around 9 clicks until my resolution was changed. ARGH!
How many in Windows XP you ask?
1. Right-click desktop
2. Properties
3. Settings tab
4. make changes, click OK
5. Click OK again to verification prompt
5 clicks, 4 if you don't particularly care about the second OK.
Is my point sinking in yet? EVEN IF I WAS A LINUX GURU, WHY WOULD THIS BE ACCEPTABLE?!?
I will grant you it's better than the last time I tried Linux when I in fact HAD to modify some config files to change resolution. Yes, progress is being made. But as indicated by this minor experience, WAY TO DAMNED SLOW TO BE ANY KIND OF THREAT TO WINDOWS.
My mother, who has come quite a long way in her computer usage, would NEVER deal with this. Heck, I have a hard enough time convinving her that changing her refresh rate from 50 is a good thing and that it's not complicated to do in XP. She manages. She would NEVER deal with Linux, be it KDE, Gnome or whatever else, and she sure as hell wouldn't go anywhere near a command line. She is not atypical, in fact she's gone beyond basic computer user at this point... She's on the thing close to as many hours a day as I am, surfs the web, eMails, chats, does some basic photo editing, some word processing, some spreadsheets, some desktop publishing, scanning, etc. She's actually in a position that SHE'S the guru to many of her friends!
My point is, she's not going anywhere NEAR Linux in ANY form that it currently exists in. You can tell me how great this distro or that distro is, you can tell me how far Linux has come, but your missing the point:
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
Longhorn won't come out until 2006. This gives GNU/Linux at least two more years to establish a foothold on the desktop.
Unless and until Sony makes an SACD Discman or SACD car stereo, I don't see Red Book CDs going away any time soon, and Linux can play those with cdparanoia | oggenc. If you want to download music, GNU/Linux lets you listen to music customized to your tastes.
If you want to watch videos, then install (wink wink nudge nudge) libdvdcss into your distribution's Xine player, or just connect a $50 DVD player to the TV that's much bigger than your 17" monitor anyway. Given the installed base of DVD players in region 1 alone, I don't see MPAA abandoning DVD Video any time soon, even if it does introduce HD DVD in parallel. And even then, there's still Newgrounds and the Macromedia Flash player for Linux.
Bart Lagerweij of Bart's Boot diskfame has created a Windows Live CD very similar to Microsoft's Windows Pre-installation environment. The BartPE disk is "a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and so on." It has specific packages which enable you to perform work on a Windows NTFS system without booting from the hard drive. I find it still very cool and useful.
It compares favorably, to me, the functionality of the PCLinuxOS Mandrake live CD. Both enable me to boot, plug in my USB hard drive and copy files from my Windows XP/2000 NTFS partition with no security checks!
Have you Meta Moderated t
We are just finishing off switching over our computer network to Linux - but we didn't need to wipe windows off anyone's hard drive. Here's how we did it:
Here are the specs on the server. I have a better one being delivered soon, but this is the 'proof of concept' version:
The network currently supports 10 users, with usually 6-7 people signed on at any given time. We use Evolution as an outlook replacement, Open Office instead of MS office, and Mozilla for web browsing.
We have a pretty login screen with our company logo, and the face browser so you can click your picture to log in. Redhat's bluecurve desktop is great, and is a snap for any windows user to learn. The terminals start up WAY faster than windows ever did, and all the apps pop right up even on a pokey Pentium II machine. IN fact, my thin clients only have 64mb of memory and they work great too.
There were a few minor glitches or complaints about the UI, but in almost every case I was able to show the sales reps and employees how to get what they needed to do done.
So switching to linux CAN be done. The only drawback is when you've got windows apps that you have to use when there's no linux alternative. In our case, the accounting department makes extensive use of Quickbooks to handle our finances. We tried to emulate, use wine, crossover office, etc. but none of these solutions were either stable or robust enough to meet our needs. So I had to leave three boxes running windows so accounting can continue to use Quickbooks.
We also use our linux box as a Quake 2 server for lan parties after our weekly sales meetings! My boss is an older guy but he loves FPS shooters. The employees enjoy getting a chance to frag the pointy-haired guy every week :P
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
Linux = 1%
Windows = 91%
Mac = 4%
'Nuff said
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Oh mercy - 4 more clicks!
Assuming someone actually NEEDS to resize their screen more than once or twice in the machine's lifetime (in Linux anyway, I know Windows has gotten people into the habit of it) there are several distros that make it - and much, much more complicated tasks - easy to find and easy to use.
Libranet comes to mind. Hell, I can change the resolution, recompile my kernel, update my all my software, and install truetype fonts from the SAME MENU. And none of the above tasks require a genius IQ or the ability to do anything but read and click a button.
Network usage per 150 desktops is max 200k peak at the nic (practically nothing). Each user has a home directory that is for individual customization. Each user can have totally different software and no nothing needs to be on the client or is it desirable.
Got Code?
Many 5 years from now. Gnome and the distros themselves have to make things a lot easier for Windows users who don't know BASH shell.
I install Windows clicking "Next" in one hour. I install Gentoo with bash language + Gentoo specific language in 3 days.
Many years of intensive work still to come before the average user who bought his computer and his windows license switches to a new OS without the M$ toys he has on Windows, the sweet smileys of Messenger vs the dull GAIM smileys, and so forth. People love Micro$oft, Office and Messenger. Only us geeks don't like Microsoft.
That's life.
Who cares about Walmart's foray into selling machines with no OS (with a free Linux CD)?
They're just one more online shop where you can get the same thing. It won't be important to anybody until they have computers running something (other than Windows) in their actual stores.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Yeah I know pretty much any binary distro is probably easier than Gentoo... I just like the ability to build an entire system from source really fast without having to spend days finding all the right patches, etc. Especially handy for my AlphaServer since there essentially aren't any binary distros for it anymore that are up to date.
Damnit, it's the year of the monkey! No stinking dirty penguin is stealing MY year.
Man, you Linux nutcases just don't get it.
I clicked your link, I read what it said. What the FUCK is it talking about?!?
Get this through your thick, stupid skulls: if it takes an average person more than 30 seconds to figure something out, YOU LOST THE GAME!
Why do I have to ADD something so God Damned trivial to my OS? Why isn't it right there at my fingertips? Why do I have to do a Google seach for something so trivial?
You just don't get it. You illustrate my point far better than I ever could... Windows is in no way shape or form threatened by Windows on the desktop, and at this rate, IT NEVER WILL BE.
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
Four more clicks matters to average users, and that's who Linux is trying to win over (because, as the propoganda goes, it's already CLEARLY superior in the data center, right?!?).
It's not a matter of how often I need to change my resolution (and you seem to imply it should be a rare thing, which is a bogus assumption... ever get a newer, bigger monitor? Ever get a newer video card that now allows you to do a slightly higher resolution while keeping your refresh rate the same?). The problem is that IT'S NINE CLICKS AWAY. You seem to think that's not a problem. Mom and Pop will absolutely disagree with you.
For YOU and for ME, the experts of the world, it's not a terribly big deal (except that as an expert for many years I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO DO FOUR MORE CLICKS, even though it's not a big deal for me to do so).
Libranet... Mandrake... Redhat... Gentoo... BSD... all the others... Don't you think the first problem with Linux for the average users that your trying to lure away from Windows is simply the question they will have to ask up-front: "Which distro?". They can't just go buy Linux, they have to buy a specific distro. And each distro is different, some are easier for them as you point out with Libranet, others are not. They make the wrong choice and they hate Linux for life.
I've said it over and over... it's posts like yours that just proves my point, which is that the Linux community has entirely the wrong mindset when it comes to the desktop to EVER be a serious threat to Windows there. Keep plugging away in the data center, your making headway there, but you people, as a whole I'm saying, just don't get what it takes to get that 90% of the desktop market away from Microsoft, and love 'em or hate 'em, Microsoft does get it.
It's not security. It's not even stability, although that matters. Hell, it's not even freedom and it's not even choices, IT'S SIMPLICITY AND EASE OF USE. Linux as a generality is just SO far beyond in that area, catching up is a virtual impossibility at this point.
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
Apparently you don't run Gnome. Click 1. Bearpaw (like the Windows Start button) Click 2. System > Configuration > Gnome > Screen Resolution. Select new resolution from menu and Click 3. accept new resolution. Pretty sure you can do something real similar in KDE. Don't blame the OS because you didn't bother to RTFM (read the f@#$%^g manual) BTW, how is going to the hardware manager (harddrake) to adjust hardware counterintuitive? The problem isn't Linux, you're just stuck in a MS frame of mind.
Open Source for Open Minds
Or perhaps the Flash export in Open Office Impress?
Open Source for Open Minds
This reminds me of the late 80's and early 90's when one magazine after another loudly proclaimed THIS was finally "The Year of the LAN"... year after year after year.
It had ceased to be interesting by the time it finally actually happened.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
I just don't buy that at all. Look, since Linux pre-installed is currently pretty rare, and the distros that are pre-installed are the easiest ones to use (Mandrake, Lindows, etc.), then your "which distro?" dilemma is a false one. Anyone who decides to install Linux on their own is going to do some research first. That, or they're already confident enough in their computer skills to feel like they can handle whatever problems may arise.
And like I said: For those that do look, there are a few distros that are extremely easy to use and maintain.
As for grandma not being able to find where to change the resolution - If grams can even comprehend that it's the resolution she wants to change, then she's not so helpless and lost as you make her out to be.
I have a tenant downstairs. She asked me to come down and show her how to save her word file to a floppy. You think she's gonna be changing her resolution any time soon? She was using windows, why couldn't she figure out how to do it herself? Why isn't Windows simple enough for her to understand? The reason why the "windows way" is the "easy way" has a lot to do with prior knowledge and instruction and not as much to do with some kind of inherent design to the OS as you seem to be claiming.
Counting clicks is a silly way to determine ease of use anyway: It takes at least a highlight and 2 clicks to copy a piece of text with just the mouse, but you can just highlight it and hit ctrl+c to do it too. But ctrl+c only works if you know about it. ten dialogue boxes that clearly explain what's going on is easier than 2 that make no sense, even if it is more steps.
If you were talking about the CLI, they are vastly different. This is the area where, I believe GNU/Linux really shines. Of course, you could say that about any Unix-like system. I still use DOS for some things like md5sum checks and such, but Bash is so much more powerful and easy to use. I like being able to [tab] to autocomplete long file names and I like being able to use long file names without bothering with quotation marks.
Other than that, Linux is technically easier to set up than Windows due to the text file settings. One can change boot, internet, GUI, and any other settings one can think of just by editing the appropriate text file. It is much easier than trying to decipher and modify the registry in Windows. It is also much easier to back your settings up before changing them. Just cp the text file to text_file.old, then do the changes.
I also believe that software install is easier in Linux. Depending on distro there are different ways of easy installation such as rpm, swaret, and apt-get. But my favorite way of installing is to just get the source, configure and install. Dependencies can be a problem, but they haven't given me too much trouble in the past year.
Linux will only get better as more hardware manufacturers support it. Hardware support is it's biggest weakness, but that will go away as Linux continues to become more popular.
The only problem I see with GNU/Linux becoming more popular is that the mirrors will no longer be able to support the demand, so at some point we may be force to buy a CD for a couple of dollars instead of downloading for free. That is where they are really different. One cannot legally download Windows for free.
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.