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Linux on the Desktop: More Balls Through Windows
doom writes "There's a story up in the free area of The Economist site about 'Linux on Desktop PCs' called:
More balls through Windows. Pretty much the same old stuff, but if you wanted something new you wouldn't be reading slashdot, eh?" Cynic.
Oooh! Oooh! It's the year that Linux is finally going to take over the desktop... again. Just like 1997 was. And 1998. Oh, and 1999. 2000? 2001? 2002? 2003? Sensing a trend?
/. (or even Linux-friendly journalists) assume.
:)
As Bill Gates himself says, we often over-estimate the impact of a given technology will have in 5 years time, but we tend to UNDER-estimate its impact over 10 years. I think that the Linux on the desktop is similar: it will gain marketshare, but MUCH more slowly than people on
Let's stop measuring progress in years, and start measuring it in decades-- only then will we see the impact that Free software is having. Revolutions take time.
Oh... and balls through windows? Could you have come up with a weaker punn?
--- JRJ
jrjBlog
If you manage to get balls through windows, you should seek medical attention. The bleedint that results can be life threatening.
balls through windows?
Careful, you could get arrested for that.
If you want an OS with more balls, try Amiga!
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
At the risk of sounding overly optimistic, I'm hoping that once Microsoft starts losing some of its dominance, it will strike back with its patent portfolio, which will draw increasing public attention to the problems with patents. When a two-bit, one-man operation like PanIP slings lawsuits around at mom-and-pop operations nationwide, that scarcely draws a whisper, but a behemoth like Microsoft using the patent system to unfairly crush competitors and keep alternatives away from the computing public? That, I'm hoping, will draw enough complaints from everyday people that Congress might actually do something at some point. If Linux on the desktop can start to carry the cachet that the Mac does, an attempt by Microsoft to stem the tide by using ill-gotten patent will, I hope, mobilize the general public to fight back and call for broader patent office reform.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Is it just me, or does it seem that there is increasingly more talk about Linux being widely adopted on the desktop? The more sources that report that Linux is comming, the more likely businesses will choose to use it, so even if all of what we've seen lately is hype, it still serves to advance Linux.
--Mike Boos
Is not so much the article itself (Linux: good, Microsoft: bad, yadda yadda yadda) rather than the fact that it is published in The Economist, probably one of the most influential news magazines for PHBs.
Some of the most important managers, CEOs, CFOs, etc all read The Economist. Therefore, this article may be an important introduction to Linux for many of these people.
On the other hand, this is not the first Linux-positive article in The Economist, so everyone should know by know that Linux = good, Microsoft = bad, etc.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Cynic
Best. Editorialization. Ever.
"There is no real market for a consumer-grade Linux desktop," says Martin Fink, HP's Linux boss.
I'm surprised people in charge of any reasonably sized company can still say this classic idiocy:
Yes, there's not real market for consumer-grade Linux desktop, for the good reason that the market doesn't exist yet, and someone needs to create it, and whoever will take the plunge stands a fair chance to reap huge benefits from it.
Remember, investors said the same thing to Jobs when he tried to get backing to produce the Apple.
Mr. Fink, if I was your boss and I really wanted to push Linux, you'd be fired...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
"Software to manage personal finances or organise digital photos is also missing."
Gnucash pretty much has Finace wrapped up, whilst for organising digital photos, you can't go wrong with gkam and gphoto2 to get the images from your digital camera, gimp to touch them up, and the rather excellent Nautilus to view thumbnails and organise.
Or am I missing the point here?
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
penguins migrate... A few have been popping up on shore lately to breed. I expect that more may be lurking off shore evading the SCO and M$ sea lions. I have a feeling the whole beach may be covered in the little critters in a matter of days.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
am I the only one who thought they meant Linux has more balls when used through Windows? ...?")
Until I saw the picture of the penguin baseball player at the top of the article
Duh!
I was thinking of putting CoLinux on a "have to use" W2K machine and thought maybe they were saying that Linux runs better within Windows. (Definitely a "What the
The article mentions you can download Linux freely of the internet, but I thought this was already widely available with the whole Microsoft software family also?
Is Microsoft finally about to face real competition in desktop-computer software?
No.
Next article, please.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Who made these announcements? The 1998 article on a Linux "e-zine" is not quite the same thing as an article in The Economist. One audience consists of geeky hobbyists; the other includes the intelligent, wealthy, and powerful. The message might not have changed in all these years, but it is reaching increasingly important people every day.
===--===
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I want call it a revolution until at least 10% of the desktops are running gnu/linux.
the article introduces a distinction between "information worker" and "transaction worker", and says the latter is more likely to find a linux box on their desk since it can be locked down more easily.
i find this distinction artificial. in any environment where maintenance of the box is done by dedicated staff (bofh or ilk), what is more easily locked down will be more easily deployed, whether the end user is "information", "transaction", "creative", or whatever oriented. (training costs for unimaginative curmudgeons ceases to be an issue as those people die, retire, or get sacked.)
sure, there will be many hold-outs (and subsequent banter and frivolity on sites like slashdot), but that's fine too. w/o dinosaurs there would be no comfortably large rib cages for the smaller creatures to eviscerate and inhabit. nature is a mother, like they say...
...and I can see a use for maybe 2 or three computers in the world in the future
From the artical:
"Linux, after all, can be very cheap: $100 per user if bought as part of Sun's package, for instance. It can even be downloaded for nothing from the internet."
You might also consider looking in your local newsagent. I seen one PC magazine with a free a DVD including Suse. Well worth the 5 euros if it saves you 3 days of downloading effort.
okay, I'll bite. 'Organise' is the British spelling. 'Organize' is the US spelling. The Economist is a British magazine (they call themselves a newspaper).
So, you really just made yourself look like an idiot.
hmmm... flaming really *is* good for hangovers...
Wow, what a grasp of the English language!
What irony!
Organise is the British English spelling.
I am sure I have said this before in previous stories of similar nature, but in the even I didnt, or no one was paying attention...
/usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, etc... try explaining that to a "computer retard"®). This is just one example of the types of things "geeks" ignore that really really really are stumbling blocks for a desktop.
Linux is a nice kernel. It can be used to make a nice Operating System, but the fact of the matter is, even as a computer programmer, I DO NOT WANT a Unix as my desktop system. The people that do, I question their sanity. Rather then worrying about X, and GNOME/KDE to pull users in, I think for Linux to be part of a friendly, usable operating system, things like the ambiguities in the file system (/bin,
This is all, of course, opinion. I now feel compelled to prove what kind of OS that Linux can be used to make... other then "yet another unix ".
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
There is no language known as "American" or "'Merkun" as you would like to believe, as evidenced by your lack of study in the English language.
haven't you heard of emacs?
I ran Linux as my primary desktop OS from 1994 until early 2003.
Switched to OSX, now I've got two OSX systems, and a single lone Linux box running my e-mail. That may go the way of the dodo if I can actually move the 300+ meg of e-mail I've got on there into a gmail account and actually find things.
I was a Linux desktop user for nine years not because it was free but because there was nothing better out there. Now there is. It'll be a long time before Linux can regain that spot for what I use computers for.
Its about two things -- apps and polish. OSX's interface disappears when you really know it. Its totally consistent, and becomes nothing but an interface to the tools you're using. Linux's UI's are too inconsistent, and the best apps in each category use too many different UI toolkits. Its a distraction to have to switch from one UI to another when switching between applications.
Until *all* the applications I need on a day-to-day basis use the same toolkits, have identical hotkeys, consistent menu organization then those applications waste my time.
Free software is good in concept and ideals, but its really got a LONG way to go to get people to use it for its quality not its price. Companies think of switching because of their bottom line, not because its going to make their employees jobs easier.
In many respects, Linux is already much, much, much better than Windows. The polish, look and feel, stability, functionality all far surpass Windows. You could say that applications will follow, and I hope they do, but most great applications still come out for Windows even if they started out as Linux only apps.
Right now what is needed is a number of great applications that have no equivalents on Windows. This does not refer to Word, Powerpoint, Excel, etc. Most of those can come. Imagine if a Napster and Netscape both came out at the same time, and the ONLY place you could get it was on Linux. I don't know how long that could last before MS created a copy on Windows, but even then it would be in the reverse position that Linux is in now.
In my estimation Linux may need several rounds of applications like that. Then, Windows application developers will start writing to WINE as a compatibility layer and will actually improve WINE themselves to be able to have their Windows legacy apps supported, and MS is absolutely sunk at that point. Still, it's not just parity with Windows applications. It's the perception that the best and greatest new applications are only available on Linux, even if they eventually show up on Windows.
I'm sorry but Gnucash cannot hold a candle to Quicken or MS Money. You cannot use Gnucash to download transactions from the bank or do bill-pay right from the register. The main reason I use quicken is because I hate writing checks and licking stamps to pay my bills. Granted, the last time I tried gnucash was about two years ago so it might have improved somewhat since then.
...at least according to some posters here. Let's face it, whatever Linux does, it will never be good enough for some people. They'll always find the stupidest things to complain about (look! the windows are a different shade of grey on Linux, the users are confuuuused!) The rest of us will simply enjoy all the things we have and realise that Linux might never be everything to all people, but it is a damn fine desktop for some people right now.
I got into Linux late (1999), because I was scared by the voodoo magic and demon sacrifices I was assured were necessary for such a step. What I found out after a (somewhat tedious) installation, is a KDE 1.1.2 desktop which looked much like Windows, much software that did the basic things, and a completely usable system which replaced windows on my computer from that point on. I had a browser (NS 4.7), a word processor (WP 8), and MP3 player, I was go. Much of the criticism aimed at it was correct, but it was a usable system nonetheless.
Fast forward a few years. We have two killer browser engines, each one kicking the crap out of MS's offering. We have an amazing (let's face it) office suit in Open Office 1.1, which is an excellent solution even for business use. In 1999 you could forget multimedia, now we have the two BEST video players out there, period (MPlayer and XineLib). Burning DVDs? Graphical frontends. Watching DVDs? Check. It's amazing how far we've come, but the same people keep repeating the same silly arguments (the button has the wrong shape! The users will be confused!) based on 4-year old Linux experience.
Linux might never be the ultimate desktop for all users. Hell, I don't think it should be. But it's ready for many users right now. I don't buy the 'average joe' arguments, here's a real example. I have a guest user set up for people who use my computer when I'm gone. I showed my girlfriend where the important programs were and left for work. While I was gone, she browsed the web, wrote emails, played some games, watched DVDs, listented to some of my MP3s. Then she (wait for this!) downloaded the images from her digital camera and transferred them to her portable hard disk and organised them in separate directories, based on the date they were taken. She had never used Linux before. Too difficult my ass.
Linux is ready for many users right now. It might never be ready for the 'typical' users some self-proclaimed experts always bring up in their condescending tone, but maybe it shouldn't be. It's ready for me, thank you very much.
Just curious....
How do they spell "organise" in Canada, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Australia etc?
> the best apps in each category use too many different UI toolkits. Its a distraction to have to switch from one UI to another when switching between applications.
.NET apps, and they have *yet* another widget set.
How is the situation different from Windows? Windows is *clearly* ready for the "desktop", with 95% market share, however, it has a large amount of different behaving toolkits.
Take a typical company like Microsoft for example, on a modern version of Windows: XP. Old Microsoft Windows apps have one toolkit: open up MS Paint and stare at the windows2000 widgets with XP colors, new Windows apps have another toolkit: stare at IE 6's luna widgets, which behave differently, then open up OfficeXP, and stare at the flat widgets, which behave differently. Then open up Office2003 and new
You could just standardise on GNOME or KDE and you would pretty much be there. You have a point saying that best-of-breed applications often use different toolkits, but there are usually decent offerings for most things in KDE and GNOME worlds.
Just install Windows - not only will you have a bigger penis, but you'll have more balls, too; and it even cures warts. We'll extend your embrace.
Ah.. the Linux desktop again. Isn't it weird that these discussions always seem to focus on the question wether Linux has a good desktop, whilst this is not really the issue? Linux _has_ a good desktop. In fact, it has two excellent desktops. The thing is lacks is top quality applications.
I'd go as far as to say that Linux is about 95% there in terms of 'ordinary' desktop things like browsing, e-mailing and chatting, typing a letter, clipping a photo, playing an mp3, etc. The problems start when you are a professional that needs the last 5%:
- Open Office is great for plain text and layout, but it messes up horribly if you have a document with fields or tables. This is not something you use everyday, but people that use it for their work need to be able to fill out a form without having to deal with an address field that runs off the window for some reason.
- The Gimp is phenomenal, but how about those fonts? Sure, you can do lots and lots of cool things with just images, but graphics pros _need_ those slick fonts.
- Pro audio: sure, Ardour looks like a nice digital audio workstation on paper, but in practice you have to deal with a segfault every ten minutes and quite a few usability issues. Same thing for Muse (great sequencer, sloppy timing), Glame (nice, impractical GUI), Jack (fantastic idea, too bad it still locks up systems), etc.
- Your profession here.
Point being: I think and hope that Linux will be all that on our desktops someday, but 'good' is not good enough when it comes to application software. For Linux to take off on the desktop, it needs to have 'excellent' apps. Apps that, at the very least, should be as good as their commercial counterparts, preferably better. For some reason, we see a lot of this quality in server type apps, we see this quality in the actual desktops (KDE and Gnome are prettier than windows XP if you ask me), but the applications are still lacking.
Everytime we see a new article about Linux desktops, they always tout how it has all of these features that Windows or Mac OS X has now. This is fine, but for someone who has Windows already, what is the incentive to move, I am using a system that has all of the features of Windows already.
Everytime I have made an excursion into the Linux desktop, I have found it to be missing one or two things I really need, then boot back into Windows and find it. If Linux is always following Windows in features, they there is no incentive to swtich.
I think Linux could have a chance at the desktop market, it just needs to innovate instead of imitate.
I got that spam yesterday. It was right next to "BIGGER.B00BS.ALL.NATURAL!"
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Hm
I think it is a revolution, when Linux is "ready for the desktop", since it was not in the past and probably isn't yet.
But definitly Linux was never closer to that, than it is now.
Since the dawn of time, ctrl+C has been copy in each and every app. ctrl+x has been cut. ctrl+v has been paste. Windows have three icons in the upper right hand corner for minimizing, restoring/maximizing, and closing. There's a "File", "Edit", "Tools", and "Help" menu in almost every app. I don't know how you get more consistent than that.
>>On the other hand, despite improvements Linux faces real obstacles. It can still be a nightmare for home users to install and, unless bought as part of a commercial package such as Sun's, it does not come with a help-desk. Worse, there are still too few applications. Fewer than 1% of all computer games, for instance, work on Linux. Software to manage personal finances or organise digital photos is also missing. In theory these programs could all be written but, without a huge increase in users, code-writers will not bother.
First of all, linux is EASIER to install than windows. Newbie friendly distributions boast things like installs in 3 steps. That whole "difficult to install" argument is bullshit. If most Windows users had to install windows themselves and partion their hard drives, we'd hear arguments of windows being hard to install. This will become a non-issue when More OEM's offer sub 500 dollar pc's with linux on them.
>unless bought as part of a commercial package such as Sun's, it does not come with a help-desk.
Ok, and how is that any different than windows? If you buy an OEM copy of windows or a bootleg copy, you're not going to get any official support. So how is downloading an iso off of linuxiso and not getting official/phone support any different? If you want support, you buy the official product from someone like SuSe or redhat.
>Worse, there are still too few applications. Fewer than 1% of all computer games, for instance, work on Linux.
That is a moot point. The only reason is because linux doesn't have enough market share. As the market share increases so do the number of applications. The two will slowly rise together. People don't complain Solaris has a limited number of applications, so why do they complain about Linux?
>Software to manage personal finances or organise digital photos is also missing.
BS. Check freshmeat.
Many of the arguments made against linux on the desktop are 5 year old stereotypes. It's like some of these stories aren't even researched. There was a recent study done that took a group of people whom had never used computers before. One group was assigned to learn how to use Windows and another group Linux. The findings were they both had a very similiar experience. Most of these articles make the argument "Linux isn't good because I'm not used to it and I don't know it". They complain about the things windows has and it doesn't have. But as a linux user, I look at all the things Linux has that Windows doesn't.
That's the first time I've seen the words "balls" and "Windows" in the same sentence.
SSDD, folks. Every major news source and all the minor ones from InternetWeek to Kumquat Digest are speculating on what Linux will do. You know what? I have a new revelation. Linux will come to the desktop when and if it feels like it, when and if it wants to, and you WILL NOT NOTICE IT. You know how I know this? Linux appeared on the scene in the first damn place in a manner so quiet that very few read the newsgroup posting. It grew and distributions started so subtly that most people didn't hear about them until several versions later.
The Angel of the Lord(tm) did NOT appear to me with RedHat install CDs one evening. I got a small email from my roommate saying, "Hey, you ever heard of this Linux thing?"
Linux has never been and, I suspect, will never be the sort of software and/or community to burst into a room, prancing on a stage like a monkey on crack, and shouting to the audience because he "loves this company". We'll be the dude in the back, sippin' a cup of java and poring over the light board while talking to the theatre technician. 'Cause you see, we're not all about fanfare, but we're still running the show. Someday you'll look down and you'll have been running Linux for a year and go, "Now, where in the hell did THAT come from?"
Blog,Twitter
b?lls
Penguins through plate-glass?
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
I don't see this anywhere on Google News or any of the wire services. Please tell me your source, as I am a big fan of Stephen King. This news would devastate me.
There's a story up in the free area of The Economist site about 'Linux on Desktop PCs' called: More balls through Windows.
I don't think this is a smart name for such PCs. They should prepare for Lindows-style trademark lawsuits from MSFT lawyers.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Linux's true competition is Apple, who is fighting for second place and languishes in the 3% market share as well.
Microsoft's desktop dominance is not even remotely threatened until these two combined equals 10% of the market, which it doesn't yet. Will it ever? Who knows, but's it's not yet.
I'm just saying.
Where in the fuck do these people get their numbers?
On the other hand, M$ believes those numbers so, sshh, don't tell them that more people are using LOTDT than they can count, or are "comfortable" with. Linux users by and by aren't the kind to go advertising their actions, and actually talking to actual people. I will use my linux boxen and continue to go about my buxiness, nothing to see here people keep moving.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
...but you can get rid of those pop-ups by using a gecko-based browser!
Emacs: for people who just never know when to
Cool. I didn't know about these hidden shortcuts. Thx.
From what I understand, those files, .DS_Store and ._filename, hold metadata. Why OSX insists on creating these files on network shares is mind boggling. That's like walking in mud and not wiping your feet before entering someone else's house.
Anyway, for some reason, OSX creates these files, obtains a lock, and for some reason over samba NEVER RELEASES those locks. So often when one user edits a file, then closes it, other OSX clients can't access the file because they can't obtain a lock on the goddam metadata files. Yay!
$ smbstatus -L | wc -l
1679
All ._ and .DS_Store files.
I have googled up no solution so far, just thousands of other people who have the same problem.
That is just the most irksome of the numerous riduculous problems OSX has at the moment.
If anyone has a solution, please let me know. Is it something obvious? Am I just stupid? I don't fucking care, I just want this shit to work goddammit! I have spent hours googling, and if somehow I have just missed the blindingly obvious solution, then I'm sorry, but please let me know :)
Note, I don't _really_ hate OSX, it's more of a love/hate thing.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I'm surprised that the article makes no mention of Longhorn and the "trusted computing" initative as a barrier to Linux migration. One of the primary goals of Longhorn, with its Palladium technology, is MS lock-in. With Longhorn, vendor lock-in will be easier to enforce. It will be much more difficult and expensive to move away from MS products. If today you want to move away from MS Office suite to OpenOffice, it's really not too difficult, the primary costs are training, installation, conversion etc. With Longhorn, this may require getting digital certs for converting all your client docs to the new format. Or maybe it won't be possible to read Word docs at all with non-MS software. (E.g. Word docs could be encrypted with keys that only MS software can access.) The cost and the unknowns of moving off of MS will be too much to bear for many.
Nat Friedman gave a keynote address on Desktop LInux the other day at the Real World LInux show. internetnews.com wrote a decent piece on it.
A very disturbing title for the perverted and undercaffinated among us this fine morning.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
More Balls Through Windows
Shouldn't that be More B*lls Through Windows ?
I had no idea penguins had balls!
Non-technical people tend to think software is simple, like a doghouse, you can walk around it and look at it.
Taken as a whole, it's more like the body of medical knowledge, or the legal corpus. I find it impossible to believe that 50 or 100 years from now we'll still be paying license fees for a basic OS and basic applications like word processing and database.
In group behavior: 'because they're evil/morons/sheep/crazy' is not 'insightful' it's 'oversimplified'
Will Linux* destroy Microsoft's business model?
No! It already did.
Microsoft is finally facing real competition and what happens? Windows gets cheaper and they finally start paying attention to security and stability. $40 Windows XP lite, a huge new focus on stamping out viruses worms and gigantic security holes in their products. If there were no competition, Microsoft wouldn't care about these things. Microsoft is already being pushed around by Linux*.
Free software is already forcing Microsoft to work harder for it's money. Everyone who uses computers, whether they use free software or not, benefits from the competition it introduces into the market.
(* note: by Linux I mean the kernel and all the free software that runs on it most often including some GNU software and lots of non-GNU software)
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
Time must have dawned pretty recently for you.
At the dawn of time ctrl+c was cancel.
Still is for a lot of command line programs even in Win 2000
-- I may be paranoid, but I'm still alive
...do you want free apps, or do you want ports of commercial apps? My guess is the latter (though I'm sure you wish could get those for free, heh).
Well, commercial products go where the money is. The money is where the market is. Linux isn't a big enough chunk of it just yet.
I don't expect every application under the sun to be produced as OSS during my lifetime. Software development, even ports take time. Compared to the length of time Linux has been a viable desktop platform, I'd be most surprised if all the commercial apps were there.
They are coming though. Why? Because "Commercial application X *on Linux*" is a niche. You can, within reasonable limits price your product relatively uncontested, compared to the cut-throat Windows market.
Businesses are in business to make money, and they make it by profit margins, not volume. That's why compnies like Apple is still there, you can live well *within your niche*. So can a company cornering the Linux market.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The article complains that there's nothing for playing with digital photos on Linux. (1) I'm not sure I agree; I think they just haven't found it yet. Contrary to what many business types would tell you, some of the best things in life are not advertised. (2) All it takes is one person who wants some program badly enough to code it up and give it away, and the "missing" software becomes available, worldwide. That's how we got Linux, and all the userspace that runs on top of it, in the first place.
Anyone know where these numbers came from? I really, really doubt that Linux on the desktop is that low, especially if you count dual boot systems. I could be wrong, but I am curious about how he came up with these numbers.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
The site is trying to run a VB script, and your system is not equipped to handle it, or you've deliberately (and sensibly) blocked the running of VB scripts in your browser.
Microsoft faces two big problems;
- It has, essentially, only two successful products: Windows and Office. More or less everything else is either loss making or barely profitable
- The markets for these products are saturated with older versions of their own software. New versions of Office are proving hard to "push", as they offer no real gain to the end user and users are proving hard to move from older versions of Windows (e.g. 98), the only real incentive to move being security
Meanwhile (so the story goes), Microsoft pays it's developers less than the market rate and compensates with share options.
The moment Microsoft's profits stop growing (or shrink) that share price will take a dive. And with a falling share price it's time for the developers to to cash in their chips and move on.
From there it could be a nose dive.
A lot of the trouble I have with MS Windows falls into two categories.
Many programs were designed and built by people who took "personal computer" to heart and never bothered to learn to think in terms of a computer that might be used by several different people, perhaps even concurrently. These ignore security, don't handle separation of user and system storage or configuration gracefully, etc. Let's do better this time.
Other products suffer from the fallacy that computer==desktop. They assume that they're always run by someone who can just barely find the power button, and that they're always guided manually by someone sitting right there ready to respond to trouble. It ain't so; some of us actually care enough to spend time thinking about how best to use computers, and some of us want to script regular processes and get away from all that manual drudgery (which is what we made computers for in the first place).
If "the rise of Linux on the desktop" means I don't have to fight so hard for a non-MS solution in the server room or the laboratory, hooray. If it means I'm stuck with a choice between MS Windows and something that's just like MS Windows only not from MS, then in my view there's been no improvement -- in fact, an improvement we had for a while will have been taken from us.
We have a chance to do it right this time. Let's seize that chance and run with it. All computers should not be alike, because all computerists are not alike.
> Since the dawn of time, ctrl+C has been copy in
> each and every app. ctrl+x has been cut. ctrl+v
> has been paste. Windows have three icons in the
> upper right hand corner for minimizing,
> restoring/maximizing, and closing. There's a
> "File", "Edit", "Tools", and "Help" menu in almost
> every app. I don't know how you get more
> consistent than that.
I'm in KDE and I have about 7 applications open: Acroread, Kdevelop, Netscape 7.1, Limewire, Konqueror, K3b, and OpenOffice - all their interfaces are pretty much consistent. I can drag and drop, click the file menu, hit the min/max/close buttons, drag the menubar as well as windowshade it, resize my windows, etc...
I'd say that's pretty consistent.
As for windows, the three buttons in the upper right were not there until Win95. Not every app in DOS/Win uses or understands the ctrl+c/x/v hotkeys either.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
I've read the article, but I still don't understand how using Windows will give me more balls.
Hi,
In the lab for ECE241 we used GNU Plot to plot the frequency response and dB gain of our various circuits (I can't remember the circuits in detail, but I do recall spending hours going through transfer function derivation and developing gain and frequency response expressions).
It was a rather cool product, though we only used it to plot data. The scripting was quite neat too.
I have to admit, the most impressive program used was LVBode. As I recall, it was inhouse designed. LVBode has several paramters (points, input voltage, frequency ranges, logging to file abilitis) and it takes control of the Agilent Technologies Oscilloscope and Function Generator. The program performs the frequency sweep and plots the gain and frequency response curves.
That would be a neat programming project, and quite a useful one (for circuit designers anyhow).
I have just recently installed Linux and had a good experience but it is not ready to be used except by the hardcore user that enjoys fixing problems. I want to be able to download a program, click it and it be on my menu and ready to use. This is not the case with Linux, I spend all night trying to find all the dependancies and then the program still doesn't work right. With Windows I just go to download.com and find a program I need, install and I'm done. I don't have to search for drivers with Windows, I can run Windows update to find newer ones. I have setup Wine and am able to install some games but they don't perform well. I still want to use Linux and learn about it but not for a primary OS. Linux might work for the business enviorment but it is far from ready for home use, FAR.
The word "innovation" is so overused that it has lost it's meaning.
Just look at the comments in all the other articles. Slashdotters massively complain that Linux's GUI is too different from Windows's, and thus will fail on the desktop!
Uhm yeah Linux is playing catch up. So what? I'm very happy with Linux as my desktop OS, and I much prefer it over XP. I don't need the latest cool inventions, I want something that works, and works well.
I use Windows *only* for games. For everything else, I always find myself rebooting back to Linux.
Linux and open source do exactly what they're good at: making others' innovations available in a cheap way.
Seriously, almost nobody in computer land innovates. Microsoft? Not innovative. MacOS X? Combination of old ideas + some neat graphics effect. Everybody copies all sorts of stuff from each other. Nobody cares but the few geeks who use innovation as a buzzword agaist Linux.
My dad couldn't care less whether Linux is "innovative" or not. He uses Linux for browsing the Internet, and is happy with it.
To each his own. The last time I noticed a toolkit was the last time I ran an OpenLook app. Buttons, fields, canvases -- what's the difference -- I look right through 'em. There must be different ways of thinking about applications, or something. I couldn't describe the difference between a GTK app. and a Motif app. unless I had them both open in front of me, and contrasting either one with an Athena Widgets app. would be difficult because the differences are so trivial (to me).
When I'm on task I process information visually but I don't really *see*. I couldn't tell you what the app. looks like without going off-task. Thinking is what happens when I'm not distracted by my senses. I guess some people don't work that way.
For me it's all about [Tim Taylor voice] MORE POWER! I've had enough of app.s and OSes with training wheels, and having found something without them I feel no further needs. Again, I guess some people don't work that way.
Consumer desktop oriented distros already standardised on KDE. Suse, Mandrake, Xandros, Linspire, Lycoris, and Libranet all default to KDE, and not all of them even have GNOME packaged. There's also Arklinux and Knoppix, but those aren't packaged as consumer retail-box editions.
Red Hat is the only retail packaged distro I know of which defaults to GNOME. But Red Hat has never packaged a distro they intended for consumer desktop use, they've always been targeting corporate desktop and server. They default to GNOME and package KDE to very closely resemble their default GNOME desktop. Well, I suppose there is Sun's Java Desktop system, which is basically Suse with GNOME in the same way that Mandrake was Red Hat with KDE. But other than Walmart carrying computers with JDS preinstalled, I hadn't considered JDS to be targeting the consumer desktop market either.
Novell owning both Suse and Ximian certainly promises to bring interesting side effects regarding desktop standardisation, especially with them announcing the selection of Qt (but not specifically Kparts/KDevelop) for their Linux development.
Anyway, I think that when it comes to distributions designed and retail packaged for consumer desktops, KDE is the only default desktop you'll find.
>I was a Linux desktop user for nine years
Nine years?
What's it like driving that Camaro and listening to AC/DC?
is exactly why Linux isn't winning...
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Deeper magic from *before* the dawn of time: on TOPS10/20, RSX, and a bunch of others, CTRL/C kills your current task dead. I still hesitate slightly every time I use it to copy, fighting with that inner voice that's saying, "no! you'll lose your work!"
I actually thought this distinction was the shining point in the article, in that it actually contributed something new to the discussions about desktop linux that have been going on for ages. It's not about locking down the box so much as needs of users. When you hear the debates, you hear the two sides saying "Linux now has a good office suite, email client, etc" while the other side says "yeah, but advanced Office users need their Excel macros and their Outlook calendars".
To me, this difference was basically given terminology by this article. The people who need their Excel Macros and aren't ready to switch over are the Information Workers while the ones who just need to type a few emails and memos are the Transaction Workers. It basically clarifies the fact that some people will do just fine with a Linux desktop while others aren't ready. We all know this, but no one's given names to define this distinction before.
To me, it's incredible to see this distinction finally being raised because 5 years ago you couldn't really say that Linux was ready for either. Progress is happening.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
please consider this fact:
there are more linux desktops now than last year, than last year, than last year, than last year, than last year, than last year.
am i incorrect of my facts?
You're right, but what I meant by 'standardise' is use, for example, KDE apps exclusively. You'll lose the power of GIMP and Mozilla, for example, but your user experience will be amazingly consistent. It's a tradeoff one can make. It also means dropping OpenOffice for KOffice, which can still be a painful experience.
Why can't these people just explain what it does and maybe show a few screenshots of KDE or Gnome in action?
Linux is not, repeat NOT, competing with Windows. Microsoft consider Linux as a threat to their penetration and revenue but that is a purely Microsoft facet, not a Linux one.
Linux is an alternative way of doing things, a free way of doing things, and does some things better and other things worse that Windows does. It does what it does despite Microsoft and will continue to do it whether or not MS exists in the future.
The media should take a responsibility to make the general populace aware of the Linux alternative rather than using Linux as a weapon to make MS do what they want them to do.
I'd love to reach the day when I can ditch all my MS products because I personally do not like to support companies that have bad business practices - in the same way I don't eat Macdonalds (or Burger King) burgers or wear Nike sports shoes - and I guess today I'm about 75% there with Linux.
But I'm certainly not going to "cut my nose off to spite my face" and do without certain apps and games purely because I consider myself in a (non-existent) Windows v Linux war.
Just give people the facts and let them use their own intelligence to decide what they like.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I think the family five pack that they offer is a great idea, and I would like try it out. But, I can't run it on anything but mac hardware. Correct? I'm just not interested in doing that, I have solid machines around here and would still like to have a choice...osx, linux, or xp on the same hardware. right now my choices are xp and a linux distro.
fucking fagots
Something to ponder over here-
So you are celebrating that Linux/Dell/Wintel has -
1. hosed SUN's *expensive* boxen and business model ($100000+)
2. hosed SGI's expensive graphics workstations ($100000+)
3. hosed SCO's expensive UNIX distro ($10000+)
3. will probably hose MS's *expensive* products ($100+)
However you fail to understand that it is THESE very companies that used to give you paychecks!! They used to employ you (SUN laid off 6000+, ditto for SGI, and others).
So, in your free time you contributed to a software that is now responsible for your LOTS of "free-time".
When software goes free (as in $$), there will be no "software" "jobs"... (would you like to do software support??) And only jobs you'll get is the old day brick and mortar job!! No more free pepsi, airconditioned rooms, tele-commuting etc!!
So keep software free as in "freedom" but not free as in "$$$". Former is good (you purchased a software, you get rights to modify it to your heart's content), but latter's goodness is debatable...
PS: How about a license that is along the lines of GPL but says that only the folks you purchased legal copies from the vendor have rights to "use" it (i.e. the binaries). Source is free... binaries are not!
- mritunjai
This is the worst article I've read in like, forever.
The writing itself is a joke, and the content, when it is coherent, is incorrect or incomplete at best.
I'd bother to offer examples but anyone with a room-temperature IQ could find them without assistance.
I suppose this shouldn't surprise me that business media still doesn't get it (technology in general) but it shocked me the level of ignorance displayed so blatently, and to what purpose? How does an article like this help anyone? Is it just water-cooler-fodder for middle-managers and Rockford-shoed ladder-climbers?
The reason you'll never see Linux on the desktop? Because idiots like this will never deserve it.
second society
It's ok. For those who only speak American, the University of Michigan has a really good English As A Second Language program. People wanting to learn to correctly speak, read and write in English can go there and recieve top notch instruction. Have a good un yall !
I have about 7 applications open: Acroread, Kdevelop, Netscape 7.1, Limewire, Konqueror, K3b
Uhhh... What version of acroread are you smoking? My acroread just uses the X-windows toolkit and doesnt look at all like KDevelop or Netscape or Konqueror
First thing I found was http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=6013 So far, so good: Linux has 3.2% of desktop share and passed Apple according to that. Another good read is http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/32706.htm l. No definite answer there. A quote: 'According to The Linux Counter, there are probably somewhere between 2,747,850 and 68,689,500 Linux users worldwide.' Great.
So maybe I can figure Linux %% out from some browser stats... http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm gives some info but its stat sources may produce rather biased results (imo). Since Google is Google is Google I trust it. So here's what I see: http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html Can't be Linux is only 1%... lets look for something else.
Next thing I found thecounter.com - a web util which lets you add counter to your pages, they also publish stats from their hits. If you want to take 2 minutes and compare 2004 march results (http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2004/March/browse r.php) and eg 2003 january results (http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2003/January/brow ser.php) then you may see strange things there: linux users went down from some 0.42% to 0.29%.
I give up here. Now before you mark me as flamebait - I know there are some possible explanations like faking UA to prettend windoze. However I wonder what is reality: 3.2%(OSnews estimate) or 1%-0.28%(Google+some webcounter log data). That would be some 3/4 linux users faking UA.
It's just plain silly to have a carefully set up box, have a user do some carefully controlled things (whether with or without you) and conclude "Yep, we're there".
...) are minor compared to the ones I mentioned (my post, my opinion ;-)
What's needed for UserLinux...
As far as the desktop and general experience goes...
I think you're about halfway there, or three quarters.
- Now find a way to "hide" some stuff like directories,
- have a nice user/not root routine like the OS X way of asking your password to install stuff,
- a good point and click install mechanism that does away with dependency hell and
- a stupid simple updater/security patcher.
This to ensure that the desktop is a moderately secure place where people on the one hand can't do too many things wrong and on the other hand experiment and expand - why shouldn't a user install programs? Why shouldn't he/she install the latest virus definitions or security patches? After all, who else is going to do it...
All of that could be borrowed from OS X. Most of it is as far as I know already in discussion or development. Thing is, it should start to appear in the most popular distributions and be adopted as standard.
I'm not saying "go the mac way", not at all. These are basic things. There are an incredible amount of opportunities to go above and beyond. But Linux and OS X share the same set of challenges, since they share common ancestry and philosophy if you will. And OS X does solve these problems very elegantly. You would overcomplicate by going the windows way on these issues.
That takes care of the desktop (or the general user experience if you will). All other issues (consistency, naming of apps,
Another thing: killer apps. You need just a few. You may already have them, but they still need a fair amount of polish - not only nice looks, but good, consistent results.
OTOH, there's a shitheap of proprietary apps looking into Linux. Be nice, invite them over. These are the apps 95% of the people use today.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
How come the /. story attracted not a single comment?
"It can still be a nightmare for home users to install"
Err.. Mandrake/Lindows/Xandros are hard to install ?????
"Worse, there are still too few applications."
Several thousand apps in Debians apt-get repository. Mandrake comes on 7 CDs last time I checked, packed full with apps. SuSe is the same. Then there's Lindows "click-n-run" software warehouse.
"Fewer than 1% of all computer games, for instance, work on Linux."
Game software is a chicken-and-egg scenario. You could say the same about Macs. If I want to play games, I use my Xbox.
"Software to manage personal finances or organise digital photos is also missing."
Mandrake : plug USB camera in, gPhoto launches.
Mandrake (and numerous others) come with GnuCash.
"In theory these programs could all be written but, without a huge increase in users, code-writers will not bother."
Misses the point completely about open source development.
Like it really matters. I don't really care what happens to my computer at work. I didn't buy it. My company did. I'm smart enough to figure out how to use what they give me to use. I know this thought process will disturb a lot of folks, but that is just the way I feel. At home I will never use M$ junk. And let's face it- at the very least it is overpriced. It doesn't always work like it should for what they charge. It is just a treadmill/moneypit/sick joke. As long as Linux has little support for games that run natively(I'm not talking Wine support) then very few people will try to run it at home. No killer app=Small home user base. This article was only good in that it re-emphasized to IT staff everywhere that Linux desktops are getting better. It could be on the desktop now but I don't think it will. And do you really care?
[CTRL]+C sends a signal 2, you insensitive clod!
...these aren't my real teeth.
The ONLY thing that really matters is applications.
If the apps are there, KDE/Linux is perfectly viable and usable right now.
If they aren't, it isn't.
People ran DOS for years when Amiga and Apple offered much better UIs - only because of the applications (and because of cheap hardware).
I personally expect Linux to take one desktop niche after another. The 3d-modelling niche is already taken, it seems the government desktops are next.
The home desktop, especially if games are needed, will be the last niche conquered by Linux and it will take a very long time.
Microsoft faced further embarrassment this week when it warned about more security flaws in its software. Meanwhile Linux, which hackers tend not to target, looks safe in comparison.
Does he have evidence that hackers tend not to target Linux? Cause the OpenSSL problems have been a real inconvenience to me lately. That was a vulnerability that was pointed out rather than a exploit, but there have been worms for Linux and other UNIXes. I remind people of the 1998 Sun/Solaris RPC vulnerability that people wrote worms for.
It pisses me off when writers say things like that. They have no hard statistics to back it up, and it just lets the Microsoft cover story of "there are more problems found, because everybody targets us" run unchallenged. No objective look at the O/S architectures can be done outside of Redmond, because the source isn't open.
Apps and polish and $$$'s. Apple hardware is too expensive compared to generic X86 boxes, so they'll continue to fill the niche of being the BMW of computers. Microsoft is like Ford, circa 1970 when their cars were falling apart. And Linux/x86 is like Toyota, also around 1970, when most people had barely heard of them, but the few who had knew that they were a high-quality product.
Linux does too have personal finance and digital photo-management s/w! Sourceforge and the Lindows (now Linspire) warehouse are bristling with them. Don't know about games
The first application almost anyone goes to on a Linux desktop is Mozilla... after all, web standards mean I can use my Linux box as my primary browser, and only pull up IE in the unlikely case I *wanted* to see that stupid shockwave content. Mozilla runs pretty well on my system, but I think it kills the impression of Linux...
*WHY*THE*HECK* do they overwrite the primary clipboard *EVERY*TIME* I accidently drag a bit of text. It makes it impossible to copy a link somewhere and simply overwrite the URL line. Combine that with no clear option on the URL line, I find myself relexively selecting the current URL and then pasting. Oh, but Mozilla thinks I must have wanted to take that URL I just nuked *TO*THE*FREAKING*MAIN*CLIPBOARD*. Bah and double bah! Anyone used to windows conventions is going to think this is a useless clipboard, and anyone used to any *other* gnome/kde application will realize it is broken, and be forced to use a clipboard manager.
This is absurd, and contributes is one of the few major annoyances left on my Linux desktop. Hey Mozilla guys: you are *NOT* the only application on my desktop, so stop nuking my primary clip, mkay?
Gah... venting complete.
Sig under construction since 1998.
..combined with XP, what is a sort of thumbnail average cost if you went to just go buy them at the software store? I honestly don't know, haven't been in any store for quite awhile that sells that stuff to look at it. Wouldn't it be hundreds of dollars? You can get a *new* (small, but new and works) computer with open office and a good OS for the same price methinks. MS wants around the same loot for two pieces of software. No brainer to me and for most people if they could SEE that on the shelf in the store. Like, joe paycheck is perusing the aisles, he sees he can get a new box, plus the goodies for the same or maybe even less than what two boxed disks cost from MS to stick on his (probably much older) machine at home. Hmm...
I think the "linux desktop" is ready, just needs to come with more OEM installs from the box vendors. People need to see side by side identical boxes on the retail shelf (not just online at walmart.com), one has windows and no MS office, the other has a linux distro and has open (star whatever) office, and it SHOULD be at least 100$ cheaper there, the vendors shouldn't offer it at the same price obviously. People need to really see what it costs to keep running windows everything.
It's called MacOS X.
(I do use linux on all my older computers though (since they're x86))
Yesterday, my brother called me because its newly installed Windows XP operating system was behaving mysteriously. After upgrading from Windows 2000 (which I installed for him), he connected to the Internet via a modem.
At this point, everything was OK but a worm exploiting a vulnerability in Windows XP infected him at his first use of the Internet. Wow! This is a slam in the face for an average user!
He brought his computer to my home. Since there was no easy solution for his problem, I had to format its hard drive and restart the installation. This morning, I started the update process which is time consuming - you need to be in front of the computer to update it.
My opinion is that Linux is ready for the desktop due to the lack of security of Microsoft products.
CTRL+C was always cancel. In Windows, CTRL+INS was copy, SHIFT+INS was paste. Then new standards came along and CTRL+C was changed to mean copy, and CTRL+V became paste.
Just a quick history lesson. Your implied assertion that CTRL+C/CTRL+X/CTRL+V are the de-facto clipboard commands are correct, but not regarding time.
I've had Linux boxes install easily with all hardware working with a minimum of work; I've also had some machines be a real PITA to get everything working. Oddly enough, various versions of Windows behaved the same way. Let's call this one a wash.
Obviously, producing compelling products and informing its customers would have cost Dell more, maybe more than it would have brought in. However, mediocre products poorly marketed tend not to sell regardless of the target market.
Yeah its all the same until you try to cut and paste.
Do you suppose these people who advocate linux as a desktop will ever realize that *nixes are multi-user, and desktop needs are primarily single-user?
One major reason why linux will never be the OS of choice for gaming is the relatively inefficient GUI, with a definite divide between the OS and the window manager. Since the electronic entertainment industry is bigger than Hollywood, it follows that desktop choice will be influenced by gaming performance, just as people bought VCRs and DVD and CD players because they maximized entertainment options. Consumers see more benefit in VCRs, DVDs, and CDs than in alternative formats, despite the benefits of the alternatives.
Windows, or some other single-user OS will probably continue to dominate the market, as long as the platform facilitates gaming. Linux and other Unixs will never capture the entertainment software market as long as the GUI is divorced from the hardware in favor of a client-server arrangement, IMHO. Despite rhetoric and wishful thinking, no OpenGL implementation under linux can hold a candle to the perfomance delivered under Windows. This is not an issue with drivers or card makers, but with the underlying structure of the respective OSs.
There is no pressing need for my grandmother to maintain a multi-user environment if all she plans on doing is writing email and surfing the web. Likewise, there is little incentive to administer a multi-user domain at home when little Suzie and Bobby are just surfing porn, sharing MP3s, playing shooters, and IMing each other. As long as PCs are cheap enough for everyone to afford their own CPU, multi-user systems will remain in the business and hobbyist realms.
Enough with the perennial "Linux is ready" BS, it is not "ready," never will be, and is not supposed to be, a desktop. It is akin to arguing that busses are finally "ready" to replace cars.
Flame on.
Oh really?
I'll preface by saying I am a professional programmer and fairly computer savy. Throughout the years I have tried to use linux, really tried. Everytime I install it and try to get into it, I inevitably end up digging through old usenet posts, spending hours on IRC, and tediously pouring through man pages and editing obscure scripts/config files in an attempt to get it working correctly...be it installing glx support, getting my sound card to work, or simply installing mozilla with readable fonts.
I install Windows and have NONE of these problems. Very very rarely do I need to even go to usenet to solve a problem. I spend enough time problem solving at work, I don't have hours upon hours at home to learn the complete inner workings of an operating system...and being a programmer I know the basics of how operating systems work which is 1000x what most other computer users know. I honestly could not give linux to ANY of my friends, who are university educated but aren't extremely technically competant, and expect them to do anything useful with it.
Becaue I am the only person I know that was saying this back in 99. People were calling me both stupid and crazy. Here we are today, the same major problems holding Linux back in 99 are still the same things holding it back today. Want to tell me I'm wrong? Fine, I'll be back with an I told you so 5 years from now.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
and I don't mean one that was 'just pretty' or just efficiently spartan was Adobe Album. I was quite impressed with the date slider at the top, the speed it was able to filter and process the images, and, of course, the incredible spit and polish that went into it. Funnily enough, it's Qt...
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Wrong. In official Microsoft documentation before Windows 98, it was Ctrl+Insert for copy, Shift+Insert for Paste, and Shift+Delete for cut. Around Windows 3.1 many programs ignored this and copied the Macintosh and used Alt+C,X,V. In Windows 95 Microsoft finally gave up and made it Ctrl+C,X,V (they wanted Ctrl for menu shortcuts to avoid conflicts with foreign keyboards that used Alt as an extra shift key).
The three icons were added in Windows 95. In earlier versions closing the window was done by double-clicking the top-left button.
Now go hang your head in shame for such blatant mis-information.
*WHY*THE*HECK* do they overwrite the primary clipboard *EVERY*TIME* I accidently drag a bit of text.
.8, and it works exactly as my other applications do. I select text, it goes into the PRIMARY clipboard and doesn't clobber the CLIPBOARD clipboard. If I select text and choose copy, it goes into the CLIPBOARD. This is the same thing every other application on Linux does and should do.
I'm not sure what you mean.
The PRIMARY clipboard holds the contents of the currently selected text. It is pasted by middle-clicking.
The CLIPBOARD holds the contents of the Ctrl-C'ed text (this clipboard corresponds to what Windows users think of as the clipboard). It is pasted with Ctrl-V. Windows users may continue to use Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V with their apps if they like to use just the familiar clipboard.
If you're selecting text, then your application is *supposed* to overwrite PRIMARY with the currently selected text. It's what gedit does; it's what Mozilla Firesomething does.
I just tested Mozilla Firesomething
Can you describe exactly what you're doing, what behavior you're seeing, and what behavior you'd expect to see? Or maybe point me to a Bugzilla bug report?
May we never see th
Oh really?
:)
OK, it means dropping OpenOffice for KOffice for now.
It was really annoying. I believe the files were called .DS_Store, they stored where the user dragged the icons to. Not only that, they setuid the file browser program so it could write these anywhere (an obvious bad idea today, but perhaps they were not aware of it). It probably would screw up remote mounts though I never used that. Personally I would not mind if when you visited a directory it just reset to your preferred view style, so imho these files are worse than useless.
The modern freedesktop.org design seems to be to store all this junk in a single directory under the home directory of the user. This makes it much faster to access, and it is clear that it is not vital information, and it is easy to dispose of it all.
In an update to his MonkeyBoy dance craze, Ballmer jumps around and sings :
"I've got big balls
Oh I've got big balls
And they're such big balls
Dirty big balls
And he's got big balls
And she's got big balls
(But we've got the biggest balls of them all)"
>> Uhhh... What version of acroread are you smoking?
>> My acroread just uses the X-windows toolkit and
>> doesnt look at all like KDevelop or Netscape or
>> Konqueror
Well, can't check that atm... as I'm in WindowsXP looking for inconsistencies. The interfaces are pretty much consistent as long as you are using a WindowsXP/Microsoft program instead of a third party program.
I believe that acroread uses a motif style toolkit - pretty standard in UNIXEN (I don't really care as long as it works). Netscape uses it's own XUL? Limewire uses Java Swing or something. While KDevelop and Konq use Qt. The point is, though, that they all pretty much have File, Edit, Window, Help in their file menu and most of them support drag and drop as well as hot keys (many are customizable).
The bottom line is, interface inconsistency is pretty much a non-issue these days as long as you are using a windowmanager you like. KDE works for me right now.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
While perhaps understandable, not strictly true... Most of that share of the server market was taken away from Genetic Unix deployments, not Windows NT deployments. My employer is probably an excellent example of how this process occurs....
The first Linux box to get his foot in the door was a mail server. In our case, it was an addition to the server closet, but in the absence of Linux, would have gone to *shudder* another SCO box. Later that grew into a proxy, shortly thereafter a nameserver, then the timeserver.
In most cases, Linux was used as a cheap alternative to Genetic Unix to provide useful but not mission-critical services. Eventually that changed. The single largest mission critical application in the company now runs on Linux. That seems likely to continue into the future as well.
However, a Genetic Unix (HP/UX) still is the platform of choice for the DBMS folk. The majority of data still resides on proprietary iron and code.
The majority of the user base, still M$ dependent, a consequence of which our Intranet folk (You know, the guys who ride to work on the short bus...) are the only reason *any* Microsoft product resides in the data centre.
If anything, we are behind the times, it is hard to make the case for proprietary iron in our environment... It is hard to make a case for Microsoft's extortionary licensing practices in our environment.
Having said all that, this is a promising opportunity to at least partially displace Microsoft... But the challenge is very different this pass, getting into the data center in many cases was the ability to provide, at a lower cost, some desirable service, in many cases only one. To break into the average home data center means the ability to provide, at a lower cost, a number of services, in a tightly integrated package.
It's a very different challenge, one which Linux's current development has left it ill-suited to meet.
By and large, as a community we are better equipped to fight each other in the desktop wars than we are to provide a unified front against Windows. Or, is it that Microsoft isn't a worthy enough opponent, so fight the worthy opponents first?
Ultimately, is it a worthwhile goal? To beat Windows on the desktop is liable to require beating them at their own game. Hell folks, how many of us take Lindows seriously? And they aren't even close to beating Microsoft at their own game.
For the Linux distro that does manage to beat Microsoft at their own game, I suggest a name change to Judas/UX, or maybe Judix? You'll get your 30 pieces of silver for sure, but you'll also get to be a pariah...
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
70% is a revolution. 30% is a trend. 10% is a niche. 3% is an underground.
The rate of 'Linux gaining desktop users' articles that say absolutely nothing seems to be growing exponentially. How do these tech 'journalists' get paid for writing these things? You could condense about a terabyte of these to 'great browser, good office suite, no viruses, no cost'.
I work in a small scientific lab that has recently got rid of a largish number of Silicon Graphics workstations. Over the past 2-3 years they have been replaced with PCs running Linux. The complaints about the inconsistency of Linux desktop apps and toolkits seems a bit funny from my perspective: count yourselves lucky that you did not need to use SGI workstations for molecular modeling, running a lot of half-baked, proof-of-concept quality software from various research groups. Some things used Motif, some Tk, some FLTK, some GTK+, some Athena or one of its derivatives, some did their own widgets. Any kind of consistency in menus and dialogs or even command line interfaces was unheard of. I'm not talking about having menu items with strange names, I mean things like pointing the mouse to a window showing 3d molecular graphics and typing commands and having the command line appear right in the middle of the graphics. No backspace or such editing allowed, nevermind a command history. And the documentation of the commands never mentioned where they should be entered.
People were mostly using MS Word for writing documents and PowerPoint for presentations, so most people were using two platforms, at the least.
Enter Linux: all of the academic software for which source is available could be quickly built on Linux. A number of new projects in our field have been inspired by Linux and are distributed as open source. The toolkit cacophonia is still there, except maybe the oldest and most esoteric ones have disappeared. After dragging their feet for years, even the large software vendors that used to support only SGI have ported their stuff to Linux (still using Motif, unfortunately). Most of the new stuff that is done on Linux uses either GTK or Qt. Our people have taken to using OpenOffice, primarily because dualbooting is a major pain in the fundament. Many of the new users aren't particularly used to or impressed by Windows either, and seem to have no trouble picking up the Linux desktop on their own (FC1 Gnome / Bluecurve in our case). Oldtime SGI users use the command line shell for most things, so they barely notice the change, except that Iris (the SGI desktop) is gone (good riddance).
There are still a couple of critical applications that are only available on Windows (EndNote for bibliographies is one), but all of the old SGI apps are available on Linux. So in practice, the move to Linux has made the user environment much more consistent. At the very least people are on the same operating system almost all of the time, so the desktop itself is a constant (even if the scientific apps are bound to be oddballs).
I agree interface inconsistency is not a big deal. As long as you dont start putting menus at the bottom and status bars on the side
Realist.
No, it's not.
Time makes more converts than reason
The original Windows used Shift+Delete and Shift-Insert (I think) for cut/paste. It wasn't until Windows 95 that they "standardised" on the Ctrl-C/V/X combos that Mac had been using for years[1]. I wrote "standardised" in quotes because I was finding Windows applications in 2001 that still didn't use those standard keys.
[1] Whether Apple invented those combos or got them from somewhere else, I don't know.
At the dawn of time ctrl+c was cancel.
"Let there be light. And let ctrl+c cancel it."
Ctrl-C == 003 = ETX ("End of Text")
Ctrl-V == 026 = SYN (something about sync...)
Ctrl-X == 030 = CAN ("Cancel previous data")
(if this doesn't make sense, 'man ascii' or whatever the equivalent windows command may be)
Just because Windows decided to embrace&extend doesn't make it a standard any more than emacs's (stupid) decision to make backspace (ASCII 'BS' otherwise known as ctrl-h) not work as a backspace.