Slashdot Mirror
Friedman on Linux Desktop Expectations
An anonymous reader writes "SearchEnterpriseLinux.com is featuring an interview with Novell/Ximian's Nat Friedman on the increasing interest about the Linux desktop. Quote from the interview - "A day doesn't go by when I don't talk to a Fortune 1000 customer from the financial services market, automotives or others that are not looking at dipping their feet into the Linux desktop."
And by the way, both Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza's April 12th blog entry have a picture of Miguel and Nat dancing with David Vaskevitch, CTO of Microsoft. Now that's something you don't get to see everyday!"
"A day doesn't go by when I don't talk to a Fortune 1000 customer from the financial services market, automotives or others that are not looking at dipping their feet into the Linux desktop"
No no, not more triple negatives!
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
If you're going to do a next generation toolkit system, then do it right: start by creating a network protocol for it.
You heard me right. The right way to do a toolkit is to make it networkable in a client/server fashion. There are a few reasons for doing so:
Speed over the network. Instead of having to transmit low-level graphics primitives, you now only have to transmit higher-level widget information. This should represent an order of magnitude reduction in the amount of network traffic required. It also means the bandwidth between the code that draws the widget and the code that renders it will likely be as high as possible (a local socket or some such).
Consistency. With a client/server widget architecture, all applications running anywhere will have the same look and feel when they're displaying through your widget server. Additionally, changing the theme in use will change the look and feel of all the applications using the widget server (which, ideally, should be all of them).
Abstraction. Because the widgets are implemented on top of a protocol, widget libraries simply have to all talk the same protocol. This means that it doesn't matter what the widget library itself looks like, what language it's implemented in, what object paradigm it uses, or anything else: the look and feel will still be the same. This is markedly different from the current situation with GTK, QT, and all other Unix widget sets, each of which implements its own look and feel. A client/server architecture can, and should, abstract out the look and feel of the widget set.
Do it that way and I think it's likely that you'll finally eliminate the one big problem on the Unix desktop: the disparity in look and feel between applications written for different widget toolkits.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
people will expect things to 'just work'. email, spreadsheet, document editing, and other office functions are all well covered on the desktop.
it's the little things that will get people turned off fast: like browser plugin integration, javascript issues, etc. even though MozillaFirebird(rip), and the like, are great for allowing instant plugin installation, there is yet a large hole for media plugin usage considering all of the formats that microsoft and mac have floating around. this is a current limitation, imo. not necessarily a negative on the linux part, but an obstacle created by microsoft and other companies that continues get in the way of total success. that's potentially a major issue and a lot to overcome. i think it's possible to break the stigma regarding linux on teh desktop. it's come miles in the last few years. on the path it follows now, it will over come the general fear that it just doesn't do what windows can. because it can. time has brough a lot of things closer to completion. hardware compatibilty is no longer an issue if you are running current distributions and licensing is an age old argument but if you're in to function for a small fee then why not?
personally, i'm waiting for the linux desktop that comes loaded with enlightenment (absolutely manadatory!), and all things audio editing, and every funky/odd thing that was available in the rh7.3 stage of development. then i will be satisfied.
So, to rephrase with the first part in the positive: "Every day, I talk to a Fortune 1000 customer who has no interest at all in Linux."
Is that really what he meant to say? It may be true, but y'know, I talk to people who have no interest in various things all the time....
Yes! This is so true. A lot of users I've had to support over the years have trouble doing the very basic tasks Mr. Friedman describes. Why would it make any difference which desktop OS they get minimal training on to do these tasks with?
If serious inroads are ever made in the US the argument for staying with Windows for compatibilty with clients or customers would fade pretty quick, weather this happens with Linux- or OS X- or whatever-on-the-desktop.
Even more likely to take off if more people start using Apple's at home. They're less afraid of this when things they make with their computer are as useful at work as they are in their livingrooms.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
"A day doesn't go by when I don't talk to a Fortune 1000 customer..."
Not *exactly* true.
We had Nat scheduled to show up and he blew us off. I was left standing in a conference room for nearly 1/2 hour telling participants that I was sorry that Ximian bailed on us.
I had to apologize for their no-show. Not a great feeling.
Guess a national laboratory isn't the market segment Ximian was interested in.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
"A day doesn't go by when I don't talk to a Fortune 1000 customer from the financial services market, automotives or others that are not looking at dipping their feet into the Linux desktop." With all the tools, utilities and applications currently available, why isn't Linux on the desktop happening already, or why aren't they jumping in rather than just "dipping their feet"? Is there something missing? Do we need THE killer app to be created which would run solely on Linux (which would basically require it to be closed source to stay on top, and difficult/involved enough to duplicate it on Windows to wait around for a port/clone)? Is it perhaps that larger companies are contractually obligated to fulfill order quotas for equipment or application licenses (MS Licensing v6 anyone?) that breaching the contract would be too financially devastating to make a conversion worthwhile or financially sound?
I have 1 million monkeys on a million year contract to make me a better sig.
One of the key problems that "desktop Linux" seems to be facing is that it's hard to make money as a distro maker. Unless you build your distro to be tied to your mothership for patches, what other models are there?
- Pay-per-seat? No way, the GPL lets you get undercut by "Free" if you do that.
- Pay-for-support? Double edged sword. Means your user interface has to suck, otherwise they'll keep using it without the needing to pay for the contract.
- Selling-add-ons? That's a risky play, not likely to cash-in.
And without the money... just where is the business-friendly distro going to come from? GPL projects have a bad habit of going programmer-friendly instead of user-friendly when left unpaid...
You best not don't complan about sthe spalling, grammer and what not here at ./ It always never helps and you usualy don't not get modded in the non negative way which isn't never bad so to speak.
They have some Linux around. Little utility type functions.
At a company > 10,000 people, there is a difference between "interested" & "using" and in "we are using it for critical systems and rely on it and recommend it and tell our partners to use it."
But then, lots of large fortune 100 wall st companies have had "the future" of desktop unix years ago. They just forget the part where I could fix problems around the world without moving my chair. When admins cost more, but you needed half as many.
based on his picture, i'd guess your meeting was scheduled past his beddy-bye sleepy-time.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Adobe's probably a lost cause, but Macromedia would do well to port its projects over. Dreamweaver, Flash, Freehand, Fireworks...
If anyone can make this happen it is Novell. They understand the corporate market better than anyone and can deliver corporate desktop solutions that work and have a name that people trust.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I dont seem to be having much in the way of bandwidth problems running 150 desktops off of a single server. It takes about 150 k sustained bandwidth to suppor that. Now come back when you know what you are talking about.
Got Code?
...about Miguel and Nat dancing with a MS CTO? Aren't they MS employees?
In a vacum, this is not impressive. Is the interest in Desktop Linux due to quality of the platform, available technologies, developer friendly environment, ease of integration, or is it simply based on cost.
If its simply cost then, well, where is the pride in that? As a true propeller-head, I find winning on price, well, cheap.
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
Nat is always very interested in National labs.
Then I guess he's going to have a hard sell to make. After pulling a no-show with nearly 100 participants planned (most of whom are in a position to make purchasing decisions), we are certainly going to be taking any claims regarding customer service with a sizable grain of salt.
Had we given Microsoft's representative a similar opportunity, they would have crawled over broken glass with a killer fever to make the meeting.
Determination to meet the client on their terms and on their time is what makes a sale. Having a superior technology with crappy customer service will not make it.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
If anything this just goes to show how much the average consumer cares about usability. Most consumers don't really care how usable their software is. Usability and $0.50 will get you a Snickers bar. Don't get me wrong. I think that Apple really does have the edge when it comes to making usable systems. Especially if you don't have to share documents and files with Windows users. However, when push comes to shove, consumers want "usable enough" at the lowest price, and that's not Apple.
With ever increasing Windows problems, it may be more of a hope for Linux Desktops to finally be useable enough for enterprise users, rather than genuine interest. How many non-geeks even know what the various linux desktop systems are, besides not Windows. Linux geeks know that Linux is the kernel, and nothing more, so what desktop is the Linux Desktop?
Today's Linux desktops fall over themselves trying to act similar to Windows, while having the unfortunate problem of not being even as consistent as Windows. This problem is rooted in the whole X11+Gnome+GTK+KDE+Qt+Ximian+Lestif+kitchen sink quagmire that is required to supply the pieces of this quite disjointed user experience.
In my not so humble opinion, the interest for the Linux desktop is the hope of Microsoft liberation, without scrapping existing hardware. This is quite silly, as the cost of the disruption in retraining all of the users, will far outweigh the cost of either switching to a useable, coherent UNIX desktop like Mac OS X, or staying on the MS Treadmill. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix here, as the bazaar is not willing to collaborate on a unified, coherent Linux Desktop.
-- Len
Neither my wife nor my SIL know how to mount stuff, wife would be aghast at the thought of having to type unrepresentative mumbo-jumbo into an unresponsive black window (or, heaven help us, a text screen - which she calls "dos"). It Just Works(tm). The coloured bar graph in K3B is a lifesaver when SWMBO is building CDs to go, the raw numbers would only be confusing. As an artist or musician, she excels, but sit her in front of a command prompt and terror reigns supreme.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I had a workmate come up today and start explaining what his issues were with Linux. This guy is a network engineer, who recognises the usefulness of having a free unix system to use on his spare pc's.
His beef was that he had installed Mandrake 9.2 on his system, and went to setup NTP. NTP was not installed. So he started looking for an RPM (he knew what they were!) for NTP for Mandrake. He said that he found one (probably from rpmsearch), but that when he downloaded it - it had additional dependencies that he couldn't find.
Now if it was me, I would've first tried rpmdrake (the distribution's own package management tool), and failing that, built it from source. But this guy was looking at Linux like a tool to be used. He wanted to do something simple (setup NTP), and the software wasn't installed. He found the software package for NTP online. This however required additional packages that were not immediately available. In the end he threw up his hands in disgust and stopped working on his new Linux box.
I ended up showing him a freebsd box I had here, and the ports mechanism for software installation. I then also discussed apt and the problem of too many ways of managing software installations, and none (that he could find) that accomplished the job for him.
So I'm going to bring in a copy of Mandrake 10 community edition for him to try out. In the meantime, I'm waiting for him to wander over one day and say "gosh Linux is great, I installed it and setup NTP in a few button clicks..."
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
Hmmm, 2 open source guys dancing with the microsoft cto, am i the only one afraid? IIRC, they are the ones working on the mono project, i won't be surprised if microsoft crushes them if they finally catch up.
Please, prove me pessemistic
> Windows users pull their hair out. Many of them
> ay "damn it, this is just too hard" and go buy a
> Mac. Many Windows users say "good riddance".
Windows users try Linux and pull their hair out. Many of them say, "Damn it, this is just too hard" and go back to Windows. Many Linux users say "good riddance."
Many first-time Windows (in Asia, Latin America, etc.) try Windows and pull their hair our. Many of them say, "Damn it, this is just too expensive" and switch to Linux. Bill Gates does NOT say "good riddance."
There are people who should not be allowed to touch a computer (or a firearm, or much of anything else as well). You cannot judge an operating system's usability by these people.
The other issue is training and habit. People trained in and used to running one OS will ALWAYS have trouble using one that is not what they are used to. I am used to Windows 98 and to a lesser degree Windows 2000 Explorer - I find Windows XP Explorer to be confusing with its moving screens and whatnot. In fact, I'm used to using PowerDesk on Windows 98 and 2000 - not Explorer at all, so I find Explorer confusing to use on any version of Windows.
But I CAN learn to use any OS given a certain amount of time playing with it. So can any reasonably intelligent user. And that does not necessarily translate into training expense, either - especially since most corporate "training" is a fucking joke. You don't want to spend money training people to use Linux? Don't bother training them. Just give them the product and tell them to learn to use it. Maybe give them just enough training to point out the differences. Then sit back and stop worrying about a couple months of 15% less productivity - you'll get it back later when you don't need to pay the Microsoft licenses and retrain everyone every X years for a new version of Windows that screws with the eye candy just to be an "upgrade".
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Funny but true!
Miguel and Nat both met at Microsoft for the first time. Nat was an intern working on IIS and Miguel was interviewing for a job.
See here on Miguels own site: http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/ and check the Ximian history page