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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.
Well, yeah, and this is certainly a Good Thing. OTOH, the article is light on details and contains at least one tooth-gritting mistake -- "Linux, which hackers tend not to target, looks safe in comparison [emphasis mine]." I'm always glad to see coverage of Linux in the business press, but I do wish they'd make sure they have their facts straight, even if the overall tone of the article is penguin-positive.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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...
Stop whining about shit not being fair. If I were you, I'd rather look into why people would rather use Windows than A FREE ALTERNATIVE! lol. If you can't get people to switch for NOTHING you ain't going to get them to switch ever. Think of it: people should be d/l Linux like there's no tomorrow but they aren't. Why aren't they?
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
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.
Heck, this year I get to go to the Linux Users & Developers conference in London next week as a 'work' day rather than having to use a days holiday to attend.
the future's bright, the future's ginger
I'm sorry, I'm a bit behind the curve here, but what exactly does an app for organising digital photos do? Allow you to put them in different directories, sort them, search them? Does it do anything Konqueror doesn't do by default? Serious question.
>>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?"
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1) Most people don't have the stomach to a) look among those weirdly named apps to see if one of them is actually what they need and b) try to install them to see if they are good enough for them (dependency hell, cli, build from source, ...)
2) Most people don't have the time to wait around for an app. It either exists or it doesn't. If it doesn't, they won't switch.
That part of FOSS most people grok pretty well.
Respectfully (am not a coder)
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Seriously, installing apps in Linux is actually easier than Windows. It just doesn't behave like Windows, so people get frustrated because they foolishly try and do all the work themselves.
The model you use in linux is different in that your distro provides a whole library of programs for you to download and you go through them. If you do, it should work flawlessly the way you describe. It's just a shift in mindset from the download.com way of doing things.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
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.
In Thailand, Linux is now preinstalled on 60% of computers. The market was created by the government (Yeah, I know, those evil communist bastards) building a cheap computing platform.
Of course a Linux market can be created, but just with any other product you will need to invest something first.
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.
Foreign use of Linux is going to kill windows. Even in the near term, unavailability of Linux should be a reason for a person's dismissal. But in the long run it's inevitable that American firms will have to switch to Linux to retain a parity with both foreign customers and competition.