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Follow Up to "Linux's Achilles Heel"
donheff writes "Fred Langa has posted an Informationweek online followup to his "Linux's Achilles Heel" column that drew a lot of attention on slashdot recently. He responds to several of the most common criticisms and 'posits that high-priced commercial Linux vendors are on a suicidal course, unless they lower prices to accentuate their advantages over Windows.'"
This is Linux FUD week it seems
...that future Linux distros will move away from being "Linux" and toward being independent OSes. They'd still retain the Linux kernel, and perhaps some of the CLI userland, but the GUI and standard programs will be proprietary.
Apple has already accomplished this with BSD and OS X. Looking at the Java Desktop System, I think that this is Sun's endgame as well. For now they'll leverage everything Linux, then slowly replace all programs with Java ones, and the Desktop with Java Looking Glass. It's hard to say how it will work out, but I wish them the best.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
... Legitimate TCO analysis studies out there? Obviously it's different from company to company, but it would be nice if there were something we could point to when we tell our various employers that they should be using Free Software.
~dijjnn
To me, the answer is obvious: The commercial Linuxes should reduce their prices. That will instantly reduce the expectations of the end-user community and avoid the direct comparison to Windows' level of support. Linux will again be a bargain, and issues like incomplete hardware support and other rough edges will matter much less.
Commerical linux companies that have a bunch of support and execs willing to lower prices to make linux itself a bargain while lowering their profit margin and revenue?
I think I'll see a gramatically correct slashdot article before that happens.
-Cyc
/.'s 10 Millionth
Achilles Heel?
...Don't hurt me! I'm not the one making the Troy references!...
That Linux is a terrible actor with a great body?
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
"lower prices to accentuate their advantages over Windows"
So, Microsoft raises it's prices to accentuate it's disadvantages over Linux?
Commercial distros, last time I checked, are still a hell of alot cheaper than Windows. Employees of Commercial Linux Distros still need to be paid.
The price from suse for five copies of linux is $598. Isn't this still almost half the price of Microsoft Operating Systems?
It makes me kinda sad that we're heading for this plug-n-play
easy-to-use point-and-click world with Linux (and BSD, et al).
One of the (lesser) reasons I use BSD on on my desktop is because
I feel like a geek/hacker using it. It's enjoyable to use.
I often get more productivity out of the command line than I would
with a fancy point-and-click GUI. If I'm in X, I have not much more
than a dozen xterms open.
I'm glad that Linux is moving forward and providing an alternative
for users, but I can't help but feel disheartened at the fact that in a few
years Linux will probably be as commericialised and consumer-orientated as
Windows is, and perhaps Linux will (as it currently does to some
extent, IMO) lose sight of it's goals as a secure and reliably
operating system, and focus on ease-of-use and user-friendliness(sp?).
To me, it seems to me that RedHat would be the kind of company that would lower prices and haggle with you just to get your buisness. A lot of people just look at the price and think it is too expensive. I bet if you got a sales rep on the phone you could make deals.
IMHO
PC users don't need high priced commercial Linux distros.
Quick site for those who don't know who Achilles was or the significance of the heel.
l
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/a/achilles.htm
RoseColor red={0, 0xffff, 0x0000, 0x0000};VioletColour blue={0, 0x0000, 0x0000, 0xffff};find / -name *mybase*|chown you
It seems to me that yes, Langa is correct: commercial support for individual users is poor. But options that Langa didn't seem to explore, like IRC and message boards, are in my view Linux's saving grace. Thousands of knowledgable power users are at any given time willing to help troubleshoot.
However, in this latest article, Langa seems able to listen to and quote Linux users just fine: when he's illustrating in his article just how dumb some of them can be.
It would be good if the Linux community, as a whole, saw these criticisms in a positive light rather than getting our collective backs up and getting on the defensive. If Linux is ever going to replace Windows, we all have to be prepared to listen to criticism and then do something to correct the weaknesses, even if the weaknesses are only perceived, because to the perceiver, perception is reality.
Free Firefox news reader.
What's to stop folks from buying from Cheapbytes or other discounters?
Putting aside the other issues for a moment, is an article that essentially cherry-picks forum posts from random people -- specifically the ones that look the most foolish and are most easily refuted -- anything other than sensationalistic journalism?
;)
Before you answer, keep in mind I'm going to pick the most foolish replies that are most easily refuted and write an article about it.
I know that's not the point of this article, but he also completely fails to even mention the most common use of a Linux install - on the server.
His points seem valid enough to me and while Linux beats M$ hands down on many points, there are still areas where Linux has to step up before it will be an attractive alternative to Windows across the board.
Having said that it is attractive in many cases now. I migrated all of my employee workstations to Fedora a few months ago and couldn't be more pleased with the results.
This way to the egress...
Regardless of its veracity.
Apple has already accomplished this with BSD and OS X. Looking at the Java Desktop System, I think that this is Sun's endgame as well. For now they'll leverage everything Linux, then slowly replace all programs with Java ones, and the Desktop with Java Looking Glass. It's hard to say how it will work out, but I wish them the best.
... that it is a defacto standard system that runs the same basic flavor of *NIX on multiple hardware platforms, irrespective of distribution, CPU type, 32-bit vs. 64-bit, 1-way vs. N-way processors, etc.
I don't.
It is exactly this sort of shit that nearly killed UNIX in the 1980s and allowed Microsoft the opportunity to supplant technically superior systems with their shoddy software and then leverage that toehold into a desktop monopoly.
Fragmentation is bad for everyone. Sun, HP, et. al. made this mistake before. If they insist on repeating it (and I believe Sun is perfectly capable of repeating acts of inane stupidity perpetually, as they really do seem to have difficulty learning from past mistakes -- remember sunview, openwindows, etc.) they will meet the same fate as before, this time with no one to rescue them.
Apple is different, in that they have always had their own OS and their own niche, and have used their underlying BSD system to actually broaden that platform some. What you are describing for Sun et. al. is a narrowing of their (Linux) platform, and undermining one of the great values of Linux
Lose that and your right back to the state of UNIX circa 1990, and that wasn't a pretty picture (or a viable state of affairs, with every hardware manufacturer's proprietary system incompatible with everyone elses).
Fragmentation is bad, and I do not "wish the best" for anyone trying to fragment the free software world in general and Linux in particular. Quite the opposite: I hope any such efforts fail miserably and teach a lesson certain parties seem quite challenged to learn, no matter how often they burn themselves trying.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
My company has a .NET shop for development with many of our internal applications going to ASP .NET. We're actually exploring only using windows machines for developers and managers/executives and turning all of the lower level end user machines to linux clients since all they really need is a browser.
.NET environment with the cost savings of linux.
Not sure how it will work out, but it seems to me a good way to leverage the power and ease of the
parent post was no troll. grr.. it says comment so i commented.
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
Aren't the high-priced Linux systems meant for those people who don't care what they get, as long as they pay a lot for it? (bosses who won't get free/low priced stuff because they see it as 'cheap') I thought they included a lot of support over competing products as well.
I think there are two issues that plague Linux:
1. Will the software and/or software driver be able to be loaded and unloaded easily without a complete system reboot? They're getting better but we're not there just yet.
2. Will we get Linux drivers that take FULL advantage of the hardware? That means something like supporting all the soundcard functions of the Sound Blaster Live! and Audigy sound cards, all the graphics-processing functions of the graphics card chipsets from ATI and nVidia, and all the functions of all-in-one printers like the Hewlett-Packard OfficeJet 6110.
It's the hardware driver support issue that is currently the bane of Linux, though of course this is less of a problem with very recent Linux commercial distributions.
Agree or disagree with the author, there is one thing he shows quite clearly: Many Linux users would rather attack than help. Regardless of whether it's an EBKAC problem or not, don't you people think that you should be using polite language to discuss the issue? A little bit of "Oh, it's all right. You merely did this wrong. Now you're up and going and you know for next time. :-)" would go a long way toward getting Linux a positive review. Instead users are assailed as "stoopid" and "the real problem is that you don't know what you're doing". This is extremely frustrating!
I myself have years of experience with Linux, *BSD, Solaris, and several other Unixes. When I try to point out a deficiency that I think should be fixed (binary compatibly, PLEASE) I merely get the "you're stupid and don't know anything about Linux", or the "You're using the wrong distro. MY distro doesn't have this problem!" Of course, you can switch, run into some other problem, then be told, "Well this OTHER distro (which you were previously using) doesn't have this issue! You should switch!"
In all fairness, many people have managed to be polite, as evidenced by many of the replies I received in my Linux reviews. Unfortunately, one bad apple tends to spoil the bunch. Stop the fighting and name calling! Work together! So much more will be accomplished that way.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
No matter how Pro-Linux anyone is they have to realize that charging as much for a distro of Linux as a copy of Windows XP is wrong. Constantly I read on Slashdot how MS is overpriced and Windows XP is not worth even half of what the retail price is but when this guy comes out and says that commerical distos need to reduce their prices the pro-Linux slashdotters go wild and a flameware ensues. I think what he said that set everyone off was that the quality was lacking in the Linux distros and that what was made them worth less then the asking price, what he should have said is that the prices are ridiculous for both commerical Linux and Windows because both are in fact priced outrageously. The price points set by Microsoft have made their OS one of the most pirated peices of software on the planet and even with their size and influence they know that there is no way to ever experience complete success against piracy of their product. We do not want the commerical Linuxs to experience the same problem or else it will slow their development because the do not have the resources of a Microsoft or an Adobe to live off of. Commerical Linux needs to lower its prices and start selling itself as what it really is, a MS alternative that may take a bit more effort to get off and running but will pay dividends down the road.
Please do not let scientific accuracy interfere with the intended humourous/interesting/insightful value of this comment
His recommendation that vendors lower prices is taking htings much too simply. As a person whose job it is to sell Linux to non-Linux shops, I can tell you there are two conversations here: 1)Linux on the server - here it is already price advantaged as most Linux deployments in server rooms are replacements for mainframe/solaris/sco enviroments and WAY cheaper than those solutions 2)Linux on the desktop - here the price issue of the distry is a secondary concern. Customers worry first about retraining, security, disruption of business due to change, application compatibility, vendor support, price of the productivity suite (Office/Openoffice) then the price of the OS.
"Would you, could you, with a goat?" Dr Seuss
Since Windows is the dominant desktop OS by a significant margin, it is the only OS for which you expect all hardware to work. (This expectation will be violated from time to time, of course, and we all have anecdotes to show it). That much is pretty damned obvious.
The original article was annoying because he "didn't want to make this an issue about tech support", but it is just that. Not everything works straight off. Some people need to be told to turn the volume on. This can take a while for a tech support person to suggest.
Grrrr. This is just more of the same: mentioning a specific case, then arguing to the general. He is annoyed that people look at his particular problem and try to solve it for him! But his general point is either completely unjustified, or so painfully obvious that we don't need to be told (since he provides no evidence or argument to support anything more).
Stop posting this stuff!
Posters recognized by their sig,
Launcelot, Galahad, and I, uh, wait until nightfall, and then leap out of the rabbit, taking the French, uh, by surprise. Not only by surprise, but totally unarmed!
Exactly. Every time someone brings up an experience they had of not being able to get some stupid piece of hardware working in linux that they easily could in windows the typical response around here is "well I got it to work so you must be dumb!" I would have switched a while ago however my printer doesn't work and in school I needed to use a specific software title only available for windows and I didn't feel like switching back every time homework was due or I needed to print something.
But I'm not complaining, linux is free and so I have no right to complain as I didn't pay a dime for it. It's just that whenever someone says linux should be on everyone's family living room computer there are a lot of things in the way. People getting offended and the mods posting trolls and people getting +5 insightfuls make this whole free software movement seem really childish. It's sad because I'm sure the people who develop linux, gnome, kde, mozilla, ect. are not here bitching about windows all day long but are actually doing something. I'd do something myself, but I'm still just learning software and I don't have the skills to write a driver for the printer or port PSpice over to linux.
I'm really impressed with KDE3.2 and it's amazing how fast it's updated that is very much beyond Microsoft. There is definatly a window of several years here until longhorn debuts and I think that linux could very well make its way into more people's houses. I just wish something just like apt-get existed for the rpm world that made it just as easy to update. However, I've read of projects in the works just for that so I'm sure "rpm hell" will be over a lot sooner than "dll hell" lasted.
From the article:
"There were a few more posts in the "Fred is lying/hiding" vein, but most of those died out when the participants in the discussion saw that the sound system indeed should have worked."
How can they see that it "should have worked" when Fred still won't Name That Hardware?
Once Fred is willing to Name That Hardware, then everyone can progress to the next round!
Is it a BUG in Linux
-or-
Is it a BUG in the hardware
-or-
Is it a CONFIGURATION/USER ERROR
But Fred sez:
"The omission was simple: I had seen no need to burn space in the original article with a list of the hardware specs because the vendor I was dealing with specifically said the system should work with their distribution (I had provided the support techs with a complete hardware rundown); and the sound chipset in question is listed on the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) site as supported."
It would take Fred less space to Name That Hardware than it took to write that paragraph.
Example:
IBM Thinkpad T40
(16 characters plus carriage return)
-vs-
Fred's reasoning why he shouldn't have to to identify it...
(approximately 400 characters)
What was that about not wanting to "burn space"?
Hmmmm.......?
Langa's criticism sounds fair to me. I've been there, done that so many times. Official spec sheet says product X supports product Y. You have product Y. You buy product X. Product Y doesn't work with it. You complain. Then you hear variations on the following theme
*Very few of our customers are using product Y.
*Personally, I would never have recommended product Y.
*Why are you using product Y? Product Z is so much better.
*You don't really need to have product Y work with product X.
*By "support," all we meant is basic functionality. It does allow product Y to frangulate over the standard three-gnorgl raniseft. I know that the main selling point of product Y is that it can frangulate over eight gnorgls more than standard products, but we only support the basic functionality.
*Anyone knowledgeable could have told you that X's support for Y sucks. It was your dumb fault for believing the spec sheet.
*We've found that most of our customers LIKE having Product Y hang, freeze, and emit smoke.
*Oh, we're sorry about that, but it was marketing that put that on the spec sheet, not engineering.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Linux distribution vendors only have the right to charge equivalent costs to Windows if and when their distribution is equivalent or better than Windows in all respects, out of the box. This has yet to happen for the desktop market (which appears to be what he's referring to in the article).
In the server space, Linux is definitely "there". Just look at what you can do on some of the new blade servers that HP, SGI, IBM are selling.
However, even the most rabid Linux advocate will agree that you can't typically get a Linux desktop-focused distribution to work across the board, out of the box. Efforts are definitely being made, with most of the commercial vendors producing better-integrated desktop offerings that tie together the various open source projects (evolution, openoffice, mozilla, kde) into something cohesive and easy to use. Problems however, still exist. Partly due to lag-time between getting drivers for cutting-edge hardware, and secondly, because work still remains to be done in the whole "integration of the desktop".
As I read in a fellow slashdotters post a while back, "Linux will be ready for the desktop when users don't need to understand mount(8) parameters" (paraphrased).
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
First, I think it would only be fair to point out that the cost of Linux should be compared to the cost of the server version of Windows. XP Home, and even XP Professional, are much more limited than your typical distribution of Linux.
Second, if you're taking the Linux plunge, it's generally trivial to test drive a free (as in beer) distribution of Linux before making the dive into a commercial distribution of Linux that comes with support contracts and other goodies.
Third, the fact that Linux lags behind when it comes to drivers can hardly be blamed on Linux. Hardware manufacturers (whether rightly or wrongly) tend to put a low priority on writing Linux drivers, if they write them at all.
Honestly, I blame this in part on the GNU Public License, since it's somewhat business unfriendly. This is just my honest opinion, please don't flame me for it.
-Teckla
This guy misses the mark by being concerned about price. Corporations are less concerned with acquisition price as they are with operation costs.
And as for hardware support, corporations are typically smart enough to buy hardware that is listed as being supported by the software they buy. Any specialized commercial software may have more limited hardware requirements than Windows XP does, and companied will readily comply. The same is true for Linux.
This guy is really just clueless. He sounds like a journalist (I use the term loosely) with no practical experience in the business world. He certainly doesn't have CTO-level experience.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
I got as far as page 3, and then Wham! Slashdot effect!.. Does anyone have a cache of page 4:
Can someone tell me what this "Sig" box is for??
Zealots aside, I agree with this article and the former article. It's been a frequent issue for me when installing many different Linux distributions that:
1. It's not a surprise if my network card works.
2. It's a mild surprise if my sound card works.
3. (up until recently) It'd amaze me if my graphics card worked to its full potential.
Net, sound and graphics are the most important peripherals that should work flawlessly. Sound and graphics especially, as they're the sensory output of your computer, without them you don't know what's going on.
Linux does not have the same quality of driver database as Microsoft's OSes do. This is merely because Microsoft is dominant. Perhaps a sweet way to handle the problem would be to create some kind of abstraction layer that allowed you to use vendor-supplied Windows drivers under Linux, but that is extremely unrealistic, and it'd be slow and bloated (someone will now pipe up and tell me that it is being worked on).
Linux has been given a boost by the recent dominance of particular audio chips from Creative (such as the EMU10K1) and graphics chipsets from ATI and nVidia.
Sadly, Linux drivers are provided mainly by people who have some hardware that doesn't work under Linux. So they start a driver for it, get far enough for the driver to work well enough for their needs, and then leave it to deteriorate over time without any attention paid to it, as they change hardware. End users then get some kind of beta thing that hasnt been worked on for 3 years but still have to use it. This is the hardware manufacturers fault -- Linux devrs dont have the money to buy and reverse-engineer every piece of hardware. They need the specs, and ultimately they need the vendor to make a Linux driver by proxy, as vendors do for Windows.
Currently though, you don't look bad for not making a Linux driver. People don't open the box and say "wtf is this? No linux driver?!", because they morbidly expect Linux support to be limited. In the domain of onboard sound or graphics, or newer hardware, Linux support is the exception rather than the rule. Vendors need some good reason to add Linux support, and it's not up to me to decide what that reason would be. "Thanks" is not good enough.
I should also mention that even if most home Linux users do obtain a driver for some hardware, they'd be at pains to find out how to install/compile the damn thing, especially if it involves recompiling the kernel.
I'm not flaming Linux, I don't need a crock of shit from the zealot crowd telling me I'm an idiot faggot and so on, I'm just being realistic and saying there is work to be done.
What I'd like to see in the future is a Universal Driver Abstraction Layer, some kind of compile-once-run-many virtual machine that allows the same drivers to work on any OS that supports it, the only problem is that OSes make very different demands of the drivers so this may never come into fruition.
...the webserver?
;-)
Looks like it is slashdotted?
A great example is one of my early posts about how I didn't trust Linux filesystems, and that I'd lost files on numerous occasions due to power failures on ext2 systems. I went back and looked through my whole archive, but apparently this thread was before the cutoff date for archiving... lost to history.
Roughly summarizing, I posted that I didn't trust Linux in a production environment because ext2 was unreliable: you couldn't trust it in a power failure. I didn't get EVEN ONE useful response. What I got, instead, were a mix of (approximately):
1) "Well, gee, I've lost power 14,232 times and I've never lost a file"; (ie, problem doesn't exist)
2) "You should always have backups"; (problem is unimportant)
3) "You're an idiot, you should have copied a backup superblock. Moron. Go play with Windows." (problem is stupid user)
4) "I lost power to my NT machine and I lost 23,124 files!' (NT is worse so it's okay for Linux to suck.)
It was really interesting to see how different the posts were when I mentioned that a couple of years later. I can't find that post now, but by that time, Linux had journaled filesystems. We had a fairly interesting commentary back and forth about how NT 4.0 didn't really have journaling, and that it wasn't until 2K that NTFS was truly robust. But everyone agreed that journaling was good, now that Linux had it. Pretty significant shift in stance, eh?
I've seen this so many times that I'm forced to conclude it's some kind of defense mechanism.... if you really love your pet project, and it has shortcomings, gloss over them or dismiss them as unimportant. I think we would be wise to be more aware of this, and that users in general don't request things for no reason at all. They may just need education. It may be simple ignorance on how to approach the problem in Linux.
Chewing them out, on the other hand, for not manually repairing their filesystems by copying a backup superblock, well.... that's stupider than their not knowing how.
But somehow the idea that a lot of people would ever be comfortable using a system that isn't managed by a central organization is unthinkable!
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It seems to me as if Fred wrote the article knowing that he'd provoke the Linux community.
He seems amazed that people could react in this way:
Many readers thought I was trying to hide something; or was secretly trying to stack the deck against Linux; or that I had some other evil motivation in not detailing the hardware.
some readers from the Linux community are deeply suspicious of criticism of Linux.
I find it hard to believe that an experienced writer such as Fred Langa would express disbelief at the reaction he received.
Look at all of the FUD that's spread about Linux, the lies, the half-truths, the selective analysis, the ignorant writers expressing their opinions based on hear-say. Surely Fred is aware of the mass of tripe written about Linux, how can he not understand why the Linux community is suspicious?
And if he knew of this, why didn't he provide more details? Surely he should have anticipated the questions that would be asked?
Maybe Fred acts the way he does for one of the following reasons:
1) Fred is biased against Linux/Open Source and wants to make the Linux community look bad.
2) Fred loves to cause discord in general.
3) Fred isn't very perceptive or just doesn't think.
4) Fred is pro-Linux and attempts to make a big deal of certain issues in the hope that they'll be resolved faster.
I don't know, I don't care. But to act amazed at the reaction he got seems like a sham, it would appear that it's just what Fred wanted, especially as he wrote up a whole new article focused on the angry, suspicious, Linux community that won't have anything negative said about their OS!
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
Okay, I'm looking at this criticism in a positive light.
I'm even willing to fill out the bug report for Fred.
Now, maybe you can help me with some of the specifics. What chipset was it?
Ooooh. It looks like fixing this "problem" will be a little more difficult than you implied. Without knowing WHAT HARDWARE was giving the problem, we won't know WHAT DRIVERS need fixing.
Agree or disagree with the author, there is one thing he shows quite clearly: Many Linux users would rather attack than help.
... they are too busy leading real lives, be they on-line or in meat-space).
... and I'm a fan of Apple who owns one of their high-end laptops).
I disagree (rather strongly) with your use of the word "most." It isn't "most" users, it is the "loudest" users. There is an important difference.
Any crowd has its bullies, and the RTMFYDMF ("read the fucking articile you dumb mother-fucker") crowd rears its ugly head in almost every community of sufficient size (I've seen variations on that in the MSFT support groups, the FreeBSD groups, and plenty of others).
Unfortunately, while the RMTFYDMF crowd is a tiny minority, it tends to be the loudest subgroup by far, while other, helpful, normal people tend to be quieter (as they are not looking for the first opportunity to put someone down
Most Linux users and enthusiasts can take criticism reasonably well, just as most OS X enthusiasts, *BSD enthusiasts, Blender enthusiasts, etc. can. Those who cannot unfortunately scream the loudest and get the most attention, emberrassing the rest of us (I have been moderated into oblivion and flamed to hell for posting rather mild criticism of Apple on this site a time or two
I disagree with several of the points in the original article (and agree with others), but I shudder to think of the rude flames the guy probably received from the RTFMYDMF crowd.
It isn't helpful, nor is it an accurate representation of our community. It is, however, the most often seen (or heard) group because of its loud obnoxiousness, and there are certain parties that no doubt would be perfectly happy to enhance that loudness to the detriment of us all (and to their PR advantage).
While I disagree with the current article's posits (commercial Linux distros remain significantly less expensive than their commercial equivelents, particularly Microsofts) and believe it based on too few data points (RedHat is the glaring exception to the above), the author does seem to have tempered his response to what must have been some aggrivating flamage from the more boistrous, and generally more anti-social, parts of the peanut gallary.
Hopefully more reasoned and enlightened disagreement (where appropriate) will prevail in response to this article, instead of some of the knee-jerk flamage that so often gets shouted from the rooftops by an undiplomatic few.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Fred Langa is "right on" when comparing Microsoft OS offering against the attempted commercialized Linux offerings. From the perspective of a consumer.
He had the expectation that "all would work", and be "supported" (um... work) at least as well as Windows; given the the price was comparable.
From another perspective, that's wrong. If it doesn't work, get your money back -- that's what he paid for. But, Linux is a hobby system. If (or when) it works for Mr. Langa, he will know it, and use it.
What ticks me off is that Mr. Langa is being critical of Linux! You know, that hobby project. Get pissed at Suse, Redhat, Mandrake, (___ fill in the blank). Leave the hobbyist alone! Linux, Debian, et al. I am sure that Mr. Langa (as most of us) hs two standards -- one for professional atheletes, and another for amateur (Olympians, etc.). Yes, the professional bar is higher, as it should be.
If the F/OSS stuff is good enough, it will be used. Sure, criticize, but also give that community positive feedback. We aren't in it for money -- so some positive feedback would be useful.
The vilest thing that has happened to me in the Free Software world was a program I wrote (EMUL87). Distributed on SIMTEL; thousands of users. Not a word of positive feedback. Until one day (actually, 5 years later), when one consultant mailed me, and DEMAANDED I fix the software (because his client needed it). And if I didn't fix it IMMEDIATELY, I would be SUED. I told him to 'f off.
That nearly ended my relationship with F/OSS. But, I changed my mind. I like sharing, you see, and I get stuff from the community.
So, I feel that the F/OSS community is maligned and demotivated by the constant comparision with commercial software. The journalistic tack should be to take the commercial vendors to task if their offerings are so weak that F/OSS is actually competitive.
I understand why some people got defensive. Mr. Langa should CLEARLY state that the comparision is *not* with Linux or F/OSS, but with particular distributions or support organizations.
Enough of a rant.
Ratboy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
No, FUD = Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. FUD isn't necessarily false. If for example something is blown completely out of proportion, it can be FUD even if it's true. It's the intent behind spreading some information that makes FUD what it is.
From the Linus & Andy flame fest, one can see that this is in fact the only "feature" that Linux inherited from Minix.
Fred Langa addresses the most-voiced criticisms of his recent review of Linux problems, including claims that sound isn't that important in business computing. He also posits that high-priced commercial Linux vendors are on a suicidal course, unless they lower prices to accentuate their advantages over Windows.
By Fred Langa, InformationWeek
May 17, 2004
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=20300852
The flames have mostly died out and the smoke is clearing: The response to the original Linux's Achilles' Heel article was astonishing.
Many readers offered posts that were helpful, thoughtful, and informative. My sincere thanks to all who wrote in that vein! Other posts were, well, somewhat less helpful, and revealed deep misunderstandings about my original article. If the fault were mine--if my words were unclear--then I apologize. But I suspect that, at least in part, there may have been a problem on the receiving end of the information exchange, at least among some of the more fanatical Linux supporters.
For today's article, I've read through all the myriad original posts and extracted what I think are the main areas of controversy, the ones that are ripest for clarification and comment.
Let's start with an excellent, thoughtful and pro-Linux post from reader Rick Spencer on the general issue of Linux hardware support:
Fred: Linux will never be directly equivalent to Windows, for many reasons. There is no "Linux Corp." like Microsoft to centralize information and resources; the development process is completely different; the philosophy is completely different. This creates a completely different computing environment.
As an analogy, say you worked for Coca-Cola since Windows 95 came out, say as a bookkeeper. Your job has evolved since then, but you worked in the same building, on the same campus, in the same office, doing the same job.
Now, nine years later, you take a job as a bookkeeper at Pepsi-Cola, across town, the same tasks and duties, but your environment has changed. You drive a different route to work, park in a different lot, walk a different route to a different building, use a different security procedure to get inside, go to a different floor, different office, different computer, printer, photocopier.
Many of the things you took for granted at Coke are not even there at Pepsi. Pepsi has things that Coke didn't. You cannot expect them to be the same.
Linux and Windows compare very much the same as this analogy. Some hardware isn't supported in Linux. On the other hand, it is trivially easy to select hardware that is supported, and build a modern, high-performance PC that' is completely Linux compatible, but because it is a different environment, you have to make your choices differently. Some manufacturers do not care and make no effort to achieve Linux compatibility.
In another example, Windows XP allowed my scanner to work "out of the box" but required downloaded drivers and software to use the advanced features. The advanced features worked with Sane and Xsane with several Linux distributions "out of the box"--not that this proves anything.
In the end, if one makes the choice to use Linux rather than Windows (as many have) they must realize that they have moved to a new environment where the rules of engagement are slightly different. Hardware compatibility cannot be assumed, as it can be with Windows. For many, this is a show-stopper. That's fine. Make an informed choice, and stay with Windows.
But if Linux doesn't work with your hardware, it isn't because Linux doesn't measure up, it's because Linux is different, and expecting Linux to be the same as Windows is completely unrealistic.
-- Rick Spencer
This may surprise you, but I completely agree with Rick's main point that "...Linux is different, and expecting Linux to be the same as Windows is completely unrealistic." Unfortunat
Silly moderator. The only post in this thread that presents hard figures and research results on the topic at hand gets modded "troll" because they happen to be disadvantageous to Linux.
Clue: Slashdot is not meant to be a Linux fansite. There are other sites for that.
It's the hardware driver support issue that is currently the bane of Linux, though of course this is less of a problem with very recent Linux commercial distributions.
The first one is a laugher. No matter what Linux does, Microsoft has made you reboot ten times more often. I haven't had to reboot once over driver installation personally, YMMV. Perhaps my distros are more updated than my hardware...
I do agree that hardware support is keeping Linux back. But if it was the "bane" of Linux, Linux would be dead and buried long time ago. Linux managed to tag along when noone but a few hairy hackers used it and noone gave a shit. It might not get there as fast as you'd like, but I don't worry about that at all.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Seriously, someone tells you "this distribution didn't recognize my sound-card".
And you doubt him???????????
Your cloud must have significantly more silver lining than most.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
As a steady Linux user for the past 4 years, I feel Langa's response to the onslaught of reactions is even-handed and, well, fitting.
I feel embarrassed for the Linux community when I see people making such asinine remarks (/accusations/insults). In fact, I was *thankful* that someone asked him to 'write his own driver', just so that we could all see just how narrow-minded we can all be.
Supporting Linux means being fair first, and not simply being sycophants. Langa's points are somewhat salient, and they need to be addressed. Not derided out-of-hand.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
then you wrote:
He didn't use the word "most", he used the word "many", it's even in your quote. if you're going to pick nits over words, you have to at least read what he wrote! Your other points have some merit.
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
Do you think people will buy an OS that doesn't serve their purpose, just to save a few nickles and dimes?
XP raises the cost of a PC about $100, figure most people will use that PC for about four year, that comes to a whopping $25 a year. You couldn't take the family to McDonald's for $25.
The cost of any linux is not that significant either.
The best value, by a mile, is to use the OS that best suits your purpose.
So what if Linux vendors are on a suicidal course? That won't kill Linux. And even Linux dying won't kill FOSS. Debian, for one, will still be going strong. And even if that fails, we can always start new projects. As Rage Against the Machine sang: "You can kill the revolutionaries, but you can't kill the revolution."
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
before linux will hit the desktop we need a linux version of Windows Installer. RPM's don't handle dependancies!
My mother needs to be able to double click an a single downloaded icon and install the latest video driver from her KDE destop
I heard it here and there, but couldn't find any details _why_ they're considering killing rmmod. Do you know?
TIA
Szo
Red Leader Standing By!
I think you are taking yourself to seriously.
Oops, my bad.
You are correct. The point I made stands (it's a tiny minority) but I should have proofread my comment better.
Mae culpa.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
XP Home comes with an industry standard web server? XP Home can operate as a full-fledged file server? With unlimited client-licensed connections? XP Home provides a secure, virus-free work environment for the corporate desktop? XP Home comes with a fully functional word processor and spreadsheet? XP Home comes with a complete compiler and development environment?
Seems to me that XP Home is a bit overpriced.
All it can do out of the box is play music, watch DVD's, connect to the internet, and download malware while you're trying to get real work done. No, thank you, but I'll pass.
-Hope
Back when it was still cutting edge, I had a Gravis Ultrasound Max sound card. Support in Windows 3.1 wasn't too bad, but native support for Windows 95 was abysmal, and support in Windows NT (which was the operating system I actually ended up using at home) was non-existent.
Support for that sound card under Linux however? Outstanding.
But I digress.... were my troubles the fault that of the operating system? Or the hardware vendor? For the record, I blamed Gravis, not Microsoft, for the problems I had getting their sound card to work... eventually, I ended up getting a different (and inferior) card that did have windows NT support.
So why is it any different with Linux? Why should we blame the OS just because hardware doesn't work? Wouldn't it just be more practical to boycott the hardware that doesn't work and only buy the stuff that does?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Okay, let me see...
If I have an IT company that needs to provide services to, say, 100 customers a second. Say, a big database or such. I can pick Windows servers for moderate price. They will crash under the load about once a day. Because of being unreliable my company goes bankrupt.
Now if I use "overpriced" Linux services, I keep my company running smoothly. It brings profit, it exists. Uptime nearly 100%, with downtimes for upgrades etc announced a month ahead.
I pay what it's worth.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I agree that they're were not all that helpful in your situation, but if you do run a server with some form of backup, you are a fucking idiot.
No amount of metadata journaling (will short of an append-only file system) is going to save you if you (or a malfunctioning/cracked server app) does the equivalent of aorSo there.
HAND.
I don't think the criticism about pricing is valid, because when one buys a distro, especially on a server, one isn't buying it because it could run on all the hardware in the world you might toss at it -- generally people make some effort to make sure that they're using compatible hardware (and, on the server, often that they're using 'industrial-grade' stuff). Further, as Unices have several areas where things are better than Windows, it really is a crapshoot as to which is a better value (or, more accurately, it depends on what specific features you/your IT folk want). On the other hand, he does post some letters he recieved that are quite likely knee-jerk responses, especially the person who suggests that people who like playing mp3s shouldn't use Linux.
Further, it is a point that, depending on the hardware available, Linux might not work, or not work well on some systems. My present laptop, for example, has built-in wireless that was dead to me until the driverloader compatibility layer was written, and so I was using a PCMCIA wireless card until then. Still, for me using windows wasn't an option -- I'm just not comfortable on non-Unix systems because, so long as hardware support is acceptable, the other advantages far outweigh graphics/sound/whatever not being as fast/capable.
Even now, I could download vendor drivers for some of my hardware (Dell Inspiron 8500), and maybe get a few extra features or a bit more speed, but I just don't care enough.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
" As long as the "product" can be downloaded legally for FREE"
Only for Redhat.
Where can I get the lastest distro of Suse?
Oops, you can't. Gotta pay and pay big for it.
Might as well get Windows XP.
Do you see the problem here?
The users. I'm a regular linux evangelist, but when i see feedback like this guy got from us - accusing him of lying, being an idiot, working clandestinely for Microsoft, SCO or the Christian Right... I just feel ashamed and want to distance myself from the whole thing. These knee-jerk reactionaries, zealots and narrow-minded elitists make us all look like fools and tarnish the image of Linux far more than some guy who can't get his soundcard to work. It has to stop.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
If you RTFA, the man does have a point.
He states in the article that it was his expectation that Linux would install and work with common hardware because that's what the sellers of distros are pushing. And he's right!
However, he then goes on to suggest that the way to fix this situation is to decrease the cost of the distros so that end-users do not expect as much from them. And he's wrong, there.
I think instead that the makers of distros need to start earning the money they are charging for their distros! The primary value that they can bring to their distro and the reason that people will buy their distros rather than just downloading a free version of Linux from the 'net is to start fixing these little things to make the end-user experience a little less painless. I think great strides have already been made but, at least in Fred Langa's opinion, there is still room for improvement.
It is not that the sellers of Linux distros are charging too much; it is that they are providing too little for what they charge. At least in comparison to Windows and what it costs.
Now, I don't want to get into a flame war about the other values that Linux provides. You'll just be preaching to the choir anyway. I already made the switch to Linux because of security and stability issues. These things are worth a lot more to me than installation ease. And I'll also have to say that my experience with Windows installations (and that insludes MS's latest, XP) has not always been that smooth, either.
..I saw the name, and it brought memories rushing back of reading his columns in Compute!s Gazette, right before typing the program listings in my C64.
;)
Guess I'm getting old..
Digz
SYS 64738
You don't get it. There's good criticism and there's bad crtiticism (I'm not saying this article is bad), aka mindless bashing. If someone calls you "a geek who will never get a girlfriend" and tell you to die, will you listen to his "criticism"? How is "you suck, this is a piece of crap, Linux will never succeed on the desktop" constructive criticism? Frankly a lot of the "criticism" against Linux is very similar to that.
Blindly listening to criticism is not the answer. Just because something is criticism doesn't mean it's correct. Unfortunately, Slashdotters mod up all Linux criticism, *including the bad ones*, and whenever somebody don't agree with that criticism, he gets flamed down by Slashdotters for "not listening to criticism". In other words: Slashdotters these days expect developers to blindly listen to criticism without being critical to the criticism. Do you think that's a good thing? I don't.
People who expect developers to listen to them after having insulted the developers seriously need more social skills. Unfortunately most Slashdotters are exactly like that: they treat developers like slaves, like insects. They even go as far as denying developers' fundamental human rights! Yes it's true, I saw a +5 Insightful post that says developers should be slaves.
There have been cases when developers really did listen to the bashers. But when that happens, tons of people flame down the developers AGAIN exactly BECAUSE they listened to the bashers! And if they don't listen to the bashers, they get flamed down for "not listening to criticism"! It's completely rediculous!
" (Remember: This was never about the free and hobbyist distributions.)"
-- from page 4
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
http://www.informationweek.com/forum/showReplies.j html;jsessionid=UPDIN2KCYNLKGQSNDBNSKHQ?sid=300001 &fid=601009&tid=157800001
There they are, and they were repeated several times in that forum.
AMAZING WHAT 2 SECONDS OF READING GETS YOU.
Now would someone please MOD this piece of CRAP sub-thread down?!?
READ. You do it with your EYES.
Gawd.
Silly AC. That particular troll has been copied & pasted into several Linux stories, word for word. He is modded down because he provides nothing but Microsoft's own marketing materials and presents them as "established facts". Clue: Slashdot is not meant to be a Microsoft fansite. There are other sites for that.
If Linux wants to supplant Windows, then you have to cater to the target audiences that comprise the Windows world. Linux can easily target the system admin crowd, as system admins are technically savy enough to deal with its nuances and actually will appreciate its complex beauty.
Linux cannot, today, target the home user or even small business category _effectively_. This is because this market segment demands different (more simplistic) criteria (the pointy-clicky crowd).
So the trick therefore is to retain the technical prowess while providing for the pointy-clicky types. The system admins should be able to command-line to thier hearts content, but the average users should be able to install, use, and upgrade Linux software AND hardware without being attacked by the command line demons. When we have achieved that nirvana then Linux will conquer all.
Until then, its a hobby OS for anyone other than the hardcore non-nOObs.
That said, I am looking forward to the day when I can be Linux only, but for now its to much hastle for the benefit.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
It seems like he is making some valid points, but Langa's premise is off in a couple of respects.
First, he is assuming that business users will set up their own hardware, and therefore, everything needs to work "out of the box." They don't. That's what they have system administrators for, who can dedicate some time to keep up with the status of Linux support of various hardware, and guide the purchase of hardware that is compatible, if the company makes the decision to use Linux.
Secondly, he expressed some frustration that so many people responded to his article asking what was the sound card that he can't get configured. He thought that was irrelevant. The reasons why Linux users want to know what sound card it is are (1) so they can avoid purchasing that sound card in the future, and/or (2) so they can help him get it working. He was focussing on an "Achilles heel", and totally missed Linux's greatest strength, it user community.
Except the story I keep hearing from Win-types is that the NT kernel is rock solid, and that crashes are due to bad drivers, and that Microsoft is fixing this by placing tougher quality requirements on drivers, etc.
Perhaps a Universal Driver Apstraction Layer would be a good idea - if it could be done right. The first part of being done right would be some form of OS-neutral approach rooted in basic concepts. Unfortunately what's real to day is, "How can we reuse Windows drivers?" for a starting point. This exposes us to the same buggy drivers Win-types talk about, and probably exposes us to Microsoft's Patent Weapon, at some point. I'm sure it exposes us to relatively toothless license terms - "used ONLY to develop Windows..." that never seem to have been enforced against WINE or CygWin users.
In a different note, perhaps we need to EXPECT more out of hardware suppliers. Before buying computing equipment, I research it pretty carefully for Linux compatibility. Maybe instead, I need to just buy and try, the RETURN it if it isn't Linux compatible, and make sure I TELL the retailer why. Maybe if more of us did that, the message would get through. (Naaaah)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Just out of curiousity, where is this "seriously" place of which you speak?
Usability!
The amazing lack of intuition is based on decades of hacker-cool l33t mentality among programmers that they are the acolytes of a special deity, and mustn't let anyone else understand the ways without adequate trial through fire...
At least, as someone who has been programming under MSVC for close to 8 years, the transition makes me feel that way.
Two words would make the entire situation a lot clearer: ab straction. I don't know or care how the vast majority of components work. I just want an easy to use black box solution...
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
Bah, frankly I'm tired of people modding things like this "Insightful".
Are you completely ignorant to reality? The Internet is like the real world: there are bad places, but there are also good places! If you get flamed down at an IRC channel, big deal. Move on to a good channel where people are willing to help you.
Saying that everybody in the Linux community tells you RTFM just because someone from a certain channel said that is like saying every human is a thief because a certain human is a thief. It's a completely wrong generalization.
An excellent Linux support forum would be the ComputerTotaal Forum (Dutch). People have been very helpful to me ever since 1999. People will Linux software and hardware problems are never flamed down.
Just take a look at the GNOME and KDE mailing lists. Do you see RTFM anywhere? I don't.
Take a look at the GNOME support forums. Where do you see newbies getting flamed down?
In other words:
Stop spreading the RTFM-myth!
ist he fact commercial distros will overshow the real distros that think of opensource and the user before money. They'll sell their product in stores, but will provide it free of charge also.
:P
Sadly the way the US economy is, the commercial ones will be the representatives to linux to joe average and mr. common businessman
and they're not necessarily the best, they offer some good features, but are too narrow in what they provide, much like microsoft.
MEPIS and Mandrake 10.0 are the best for users IMHO, and if a company has some good techs on hand who want to get down and dirty to make some good low-end servers, use debian, and of course, give a nice donation
Apparently what you're saying is that a lot of assholes run Linux. Are you aware of the fact that a lot of assholes run Windows and various other operating systems? It seems to me that your problem is that there are a lot of assholes in the world. This is not specific to Linux.
The primary problem with hardware drivers for Linux is that hardware vendors (usually) aren't interested in making them.
That's close to the reason, but not the true reason. All the hardware manufacturers need to do is provide open hardware programming specifications. If the hardware is popular, the community will write and support open source drivers at no cost to the hardware manufacturer. This is what has already happened for the majority of device drivers already in Linux.
If the hardware isn't popular enough for the community to develop a driver for free, at least, with open programming specifications, a third party could pay a second party to develop a Linux device driver, preferrably an open source one.
Before binary modules, there were only open source device drivers, predominatly written from open hardware programming specifications. Binary modules are the new kid on the block, open source device drivers are the norm, going way back to 1991.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
"When you buy Linux from a commercial vendor your are presumabley buying something that they have put together well and know inside and out, putting them in a position to provide you with excellent support."
Given that more than 90% of the code was written by people that don't work for a commerical vendor, it seems odd to expect the vendor to know Linux inside and out.
What these people seem to be forgetting is that the world is full of assholes. There are a lot of assholes who run Linux. There are a lot of assholes who run Windows. There are a lot of assholes who run marathons. There are a lot of assholes who run up large credit card debt. Assholes to the left, assholes to the right, stand up, sit down, fight fight fight!
If you go into some random forum and ask for help, there's a pretty good chance that you're going to get flamed by some shithead. This problem is not specific to Linux. It may be particularly noticible in the case of Linux, because running Linux is complicated and often moves people to seek help, but Linux doesn't create or attract assholes -- the assholes were already there, and some of them just happen to be running Linux.
A couple of issues he is totally failing to address.
1. When you install windows it is capable of doing absolutely nothing. Yea you might be able to open a text file with notepad but that is as far as it goes. Now compare the cost of a commercial linux distro with it's software CAPABILITY to that of a comparable windows with the software loaded to match it. By the time you are able to match the functionality of the linux box you will have spent nearly 100,000 dollars on software licensing alone. The only functionality in a freshly loaded windows box is the capability of spreading worms.
2. As for hardware compatibility he is addressing the enterprise crowd but is talking about desktop hardware. Trust me when I buy my servers preloaded from HP they just plain work with every piece of hardware in that box. In the enterprise we do not have somebodys 20$ cheapo mexican built scanner hooked to our desktop server. We are talking high end fiber channel, san, huge memory etc.
I will take Windows seriously when it can run on
Power PC arcitecture. You see that statement really turns the tables around now doesn't it. I would say that windows has poor hardware support becuase it cannot run on PPC.
Got Code?
If the Linux vendor told Langa everything would work with his hardware and it didn't, then either the vendor was wrong or lied.
If a download some free ISO's, then I expect to get what I paid for. But if I choose to spend, say, $89 for a Linux distro instead of Windows, I also expect to get what I paid for. That includes having every piece of hardware, every peripheral, detected and properly configured during the installation. I want the printer to work: I want the scanner to work; I want the sound card to work (and don't mute the thing; that's lame: I found your sound card, and now I'll turn it off); etc., etc.
People do not buy computers and operating systems so they can waste time getting the damn things to work right.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Linux is about 13(?) years old. No one. No one can accurately predict what's going to happen with Linux and open-source software because no one has enough experience in open-source business models. No one. There just isn't enough (if any) data/time to be able to say anything meaningful about this space. It's still young and has lots of growing to do. It's like trying to predict the adult career of a toddler based on how he plays with blocks.
Articles like this are rampant in the tech press and serves one purpose: attract attention. It's a troll that makes money on ad impressions. There's nothing constructive here, move along.
On my Reiser 3.x machine, after one power outage, the filesystem was gone. Dead. The machine was not serving anything for more hours. It was installed, configured, everything worked. The power was accidentaly disconnected a few HOURS later. It's not that the sytem didn't have the time to flush everything to disk.
At this time, I found the reference on the Reiser site "in version 4.0 the system would handle power loss". Now there's 4.0 version -- I see nowhere that they claim that the system would actually survive power loss. Anybody knows?
(On Dead Parrot sketch s/Parrot/Reiser/g)
Cost Of Ownership is the real cost of an OS, not the initial purchase price.
Spending an extra couple of hours trying to get Linux to work as well as it should, for working people, instantly makes Linux more expensive than XP, when it comes to desktops.Have you maybe forgotten all the hours it takes to patch MS OSes against the various worms that spring up, every couple of months or so ?
As a 100% exclusive Linux user, the only time I spend on them is when I read about them on Slashdot ...
I don't want to get into a big debate about Linux vs Windows (I've made my mind up, I suspect you have also), however I don't think you can just ignore the security issues that MS OSes have when making statements about the price comparisons of Linux vs MS OSes.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
I think it's telling that half the items you list as remedies include downloading third-party software. What exactly does one get when they pay for XP Home?
Also, your comment about Linux being insufficient on the corporate desktop is off-base. This very post originated from a Linux-installed computer on a corporate network. I want for very little on the office desktop.
-Hope
And sound card support? Is this all he's grading Linux on? Excuse me, but what about stability or available software. And I've installed Linux a bunch of times, even on machines made by no-name hardware assemblers where I didn't know the manufacturers of any of the hardware, and it all still worked. And all that without having to pay for a single distribution.
So he pays for something he could get for free just so he could have support, and then doesn't use the support when he encounters a problem. Whose fault is that, the distros or his own?
While I admit that there are a few problems with Linux (mostly due to the fact that not enough people use it), hardware compatibility and price aren't any of them.
If you're installing Linux in a commercial environment, where it shines, you're dealing with standard hardware configurations. You can use one system to figure out how to configure it, then put that configuration on your own custom install CD, and produce your own version, customized for your use. *This* is the power of Linux that Windows can never touch. Need a customized version of Windows, it'll cost you way more than your own custom version of Linux.
And he still hasn't told us what brand of sound card he was using. Fancy that.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Is this true? If so ... why?
Why on earth does the system once it's worked out, configured and primed your soundcard feel the need to gag it before it's even had the chance to make one note of noise?
Why would you want something that makes people immediately think that the installation and configuration process of their soundcard is broken because their OS claims it works, but they can't hear a damn thing even with the volume on max? Yet it works just fine under Windows.
Sure, "all you need to do it un-mute the volume", but if the solution is so simple, why couldn't the system do it for you in the first place?
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
It's all FUD.
Linux is perfect.
We should just stop development now because there is no room for improvement.
There is no merit to this article.
I believe that not only is he lying, but he is actually a cleverly disguised Bill Gates, and I think that Bill Gates is actually the vaguely disguised robotic incarnation of the Dark Lord Satan. All articles criticizing Linux are most likely written by Satan. One time I saw on a soap opera that Satan hates loud noises, so obviously Satan would lie about not being able to get his sound card to work to thwart the righteous cause of the angelic open source movement which is the only source of goodness in the vast expansive Universe as we know it, and probably even the parts that we don't know about.
It's an obvious conclusion.
When you don't use Linux, you are making rude hand gestures at god, but when you buy Windows, you are paying SATAN!
Wel, i think the guy from Informationweek has a good point here.
GNU/Linux hardware support is still way behind Microsoft Window's. Intel onboard sound anyone?
As a GNU/Linux user i must point that in my opinion there should be more of these articles, it means that people a considering GNU/Linux based sollutions, and are curious what it can do for them. He even praised the stability for mission critical tasks.
I think it's in no way FUD, but honest critisism.
To all GNU/Linux users, help youre favorite distribution builders and the OSS community at large by pointing out the shortcommings of current sollutions, and when possible contribute by supplying technical hardware specs, source code and bug fixing. And keep up the good idea's, thats what the Microsofts in this world fear most!
Just my 0.02,
mdw [mdw@coolkiwi.co.nz]
Maybe its because we have gone years of nill support, but as a mac user I have pretty much stopped bitching and moaning about not getting certain things and have come to accept it as the downfall of using my OS.
Does it make me want to switch, HELL NO. Heck half the fun is figuring out ways to get around some of my limitations, they very few that exist (and usually exist from use of some microsoft prodect like MS Java, .Net, WMA, etc.
If you want to use linux, fine. You could use a C64 for all I care, just use what you want to use and stop these pointless OS wars which you all realize will never be won. There will always be a place for all the OS's, so why fight?
Like I said, maybe its because I come from the really dark ages of the Mac when almost nothing was made for it, todays mac users have it very good indeed, but because of the limitations a HUGE free/shareware community started, and thrived on the mac os. Even today 99% of the software downloads on the OS X page on Apples website is shareware and freeware tools and programs to make things easier. If you like the OS you figure out ways to make it work.
Honestly I have found very little in XP to make me even begin thinking about a windows computer, but i know a lot of people love them. In my mind they are missguided, but if they like it, how am I to object to it.
So in the end i guess I can just restate the obvious, use what you like, who cares what others use, just work around it. ITs not easy but we can have a multi-OS world and be stable.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
No, he did not. Given that his primary argument this time out is that linux distros should lower their prices, this significant.
The initial article states that "Distro "XYZ" even costs roughly as much as a Windows XP upgrade". That's right, the linux full version cost as much as a Windows upgrade. Further, unless he paid much more than I've seen any linux distro retail for, he is talking about an upgrade to XP Home edition. Now compare what each product is likely to come with, out of the box, in terms of productivity software, games, etc. Which one gave the customer more for their money, and why is the argument that they cost the same misleading?
The products failure to work correctly is an issue. However, when the linux distro is already priced lower than an equivalent Windows license (or, more likely, set of licenses), then how exactly does lowering the price resolve anything?
The article's basic premise this time out is that linux is overpriced compared to Windows. This makes it FUD.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
In my not-so-humble opinion, it's the Linux community that looks bad, not Fred Langa. The virulent, dogmatic reponses look childish, especially when they sound like the folks who preach the virtues of tin-foil hats. There are real conspiracies in the universe -- being unable to get sound working with Linux is not one of them. ;)
I've been running Linux for a long time, and it's certainly come a long way; seven of nine processors (trekkie pun not intended!) in my office run Linux full-time. And it can be a pain-in-the-rump to install; I've had at least one major hardware problem with every install. Now, once Linux is installed, it offers me many facilities unavailable under Windows -- but then, I'm a developer and engineer, and what I need is quite different than what an office worker or home computist wants.
It's too bad that certain religious fanatics insist upon screaming at heretics and unbelievers when their energies could do so much more for making Linux better.
All about me
I've found it on the forums of informationweek,
it seems that links can't be made to there, so there is cut&paste
-----------
All Forums : Testing
LANGA'S HOME PC SPECS REVEALED!?
Author z b, posted 4/20/2004 01:20 PM EDT
Since Fred is being a prick about revealing his PC specs for his "Virtual PC Linux Audio Test", I decided to do some research of my own and see if I could track it down. Surely, he would have posted another article about this Virtual PC experience.
Lookie lookie what I found.
http://www.informationweek.com/983/langa_table.
Apparently, Fred's favorite Virtual PC machine is using an Intel D865GLC motherboard. This board has its own integrated sound chip.
http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/lc/
"SoundMAX 4 XL with AudioESP audio subsystem using the Analog Devices AD1985 codec"
Hardly a "standard" audio chip by any means. Nevertheless, this is a supported chip according to the ALSA docs. http://alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/index.php3?vendo
This wonderful peice of high-end hardware uses the legendary generic i810 driver that is also used in the nForce APU and similar hardware. The device is a DIRECT X DEVICE, and utilizes DirectX to do mixing in software. It has no hardware mixer. It was DESIGNED for DirectX. The problems with these "winmodem"-type soudcards is that they can only mix one audio channel at one time. If you have a program like ARTSD (KDE) or ESD (Gnome) that hogs the sound device, other programs will not be able to write to the audio DSP.
Yes, Langa, this is a drawback to using Linux. Yes, it's a known problem and is a big hassle for people like you that are too cheap to go out and buy a $5 soundcard, but it's the way things go. You can't expect to stick Chevette engine in a Corvette and expect it to perform. That's life.
I suspect that Langa was too lazy to research the fact that he was using cheap hardware that wasn't very Linux friendly. Using Virtual PC on top of it probably didn't help as well.
I'm sorry, Mr. Stephen Glass... Ahem... Fred Langa. I have a serious problem with your credibility. I hope that nobody ever takes you serious again.
Here are a few hints for writing future articles.
A) Post your system specs when you do reviews.
B) Don't get defensive and criticize your audience for attempting to offer some insight about the problem. It just pisses them off.
C) Don't write articles about something for which you are ignorant of. Don't try to back it up with reader-mail that talks about someones problem with a peice of software that's 4+ years old (like your RedHat 7 response).
Have a nice day.
> I heard it here and there, but couldn't find any details _why_ they're considering killing rmmod. Do you know?
Problematic cases where you can't *really* know it's safe to allow a module to be unloaded without using reference counting or some other schemes, and the kernel developers don't like the ones they've seen - belief is that they would make matters worse by introducing very hard to find boundary cases as a tradeoff for the very slight amount of RAM used by an always-resident driver.
I don't contest anything you've said. All I want to know is when you plunked down your money for XP Home, what exactly did you pay for? Clearly, it wasn't any of the above items since they are freely available. So what did you get, really?
Given that, what is the difference between XP Home and XP Professional?
-Hope
What MS OS contains the same value as a Linux distribution? None!! Add the applications that come with a Boxed Linux distribution and you get so much more than with a Box of MS Windows. Linux Distributions come complete with word processor, spread sheet, databases, graphic creation, utilities, games, etc. Which Desktop Linux Distribution is $180-$300 anyway, or is he comparing an MS OEM or upgrade price with a retail price?
Second, it is the job of the hardware vendor to support their device on any platform. Linux is fine. Hardware OEMs have a way to go, and they will as the community grows. One of his misconceptions is in calling being a teenager an Achilles heal. Sure your voice may change, your clothes might not fit next week, and some people just do not try to understand you, but since stopping the passing of time is impossible you will eventually mature. No Achilles heal here, just being a teenager.
Get a free ipod.
Which is exactly why Wal-mart crushes the town general store every time. It is the same attitude as that of the town council who puts up the sign on the road out of town: "Did you try to buy it in Smallville?"
Have you Meta Moderated t
Until one day (actually, 5 years later), when one consultant mailed me, and DEMAANDED I fix the software (because his client needed it). And if I didn't fix it IMMEDIATELY, I would be SUED. I told him to 'f off.
I think what you should have done in this case is ignore the initial harshness of the request - the guy was obviously desperate, you should have let him know that custom repair work was $10k a pop. I think that was a chance for some easy money!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Saying that Linux vendors should lower their price because of product difference is tantamount to saying Ford should lower the price of their vehicles because they do less or different things than a competing vehicle. And while that may very well be true as long as the market will bear the cost then why should anyone be making such a suggestion? It's all supply and demand. If Linux vendors find their demand going down (possibly due to lack of sound card support) they can either supply the added features or lower the price. You don't lower a price simply because your product does less or is different.
TT
Seems like Mr. Langa found a bug in the Linux code. In the HCL, in particular. He should be reporting it.
Linux distros do not have the resources to independently test each and every hardware config with each version of their software. They copy from each other. Seems like some tester, somewhere, was sloppy and this sloppiness got propagated. This glitch should be corrected.
It is even possible that Intel released false specs for the particular chipset. Based on the specs, Linux should work, and so the chipset got in the HCL. (Intel to release false specs? Unheard of!)
But why does Windows 95 work, while Linux does not? W95 being a widely used OS, it is understandable that mainstream hardware would be tested for backwards OS (pun!) compatibility. Perhaps even with input from Microsoft hw engineers. But Linux does not get such testing, nor do hw companies specifically ensure Linux compatibility. So there.
Bottom line, Mr. Langa should be reporting the mistake. The chipset should be removed from the HCL until Linux properly detects it.
Why Mr. Langa does not do that? That, my dear reader, is left as an exercise for you. Or perhaps he can enlighten us...
Mr. Hydrogen Chloride (HCL)
He bought a Linux distribution for as much money as Windows would have cost. He installed it on his PC. It didn't work as advertised.
Dit it? Did the box say: "Sound system xyz supported out of the box?" If i recall the article correctly, he just expected the distro to support his sound system. Well, I once expected MS-DOS to run on my C64, too, and it didn't, but back then my complaints went unheard.
Besides: he got the sound to work under ALSA, but "only until I rebooted. Then the sound went away again." I suspect a (probably trivial) problem with his particular configuration of ALSA, not with Linux itself.
My first. I must have touched a nerve.
I'll reiterate: What exactly do you get when you buy XP Home? Is this a real value?
And while you have your thinking caps on... how does that compare to XP Professional? What exactly are you paying for?
Device compatibility? At home? Maybe. But, at the office? Office computers are ordered to specification. IT should know whether the operating system runs on a computer before purchasing it. Otherwise, they're not doing their job.
As an aside, we have an assortment of computers at this office, and Linux runs on all of them with no lose of functionality whatsoever. I cannot say the same for XP, 2000, and NT.
-Hope
My experience getting linux-related support mirrors the experience that was given in this article - ie it was ineffective.
We bought some licenses for a certain unnamed (to protect the guilty) linux product. We were planning on buying many more, but I think that plan is dead now since when we experienced and reported a critical bug the vendor basically threw up their hands saying they couldnt figure out what the problem was. How very sad. Why would I pay money for "support" like that?
So when all is said and done, what have you paid for?
Also, if you would like to list one single virus that is make the rounds this afternoon infecting Linux computers, I am all ears. Security is a matter of degree. "Fat-free" does not mean no fat; it means less than epsilon. I stand by "virus-free," and assert that epsilon is exceedingly small.
-Hope
The content of the articles, regardless of correctness, are sufficient to generate a giant interest in viewing the articles and participating in the forums. Has it occurred to anyone that what they write is secondary to their possible goal of load-testing a new server setup? What better way is there to do it?
-- Fratz, human
Well argued points... Ordinarily, I'd debate you point for point, but I'm actually pretty busy with work. :)
On the whole though, I don't consider any of the Windows operating systems anything more than a hardware abstraction layer and GUI. Since Linux is substantially more modular than that, any value comparison is moot until you get to feature set. Literally, does it provide what we need? If wide hardware compatibility is your need, then fine. I just don't see it on the corporate desktop.
-Hope
The problem is that for Linux to become mainstream, people shouldn't have to dig through loads of config files and have to spend days trying to get their sound to work. Remember, I said mainstream.
If Linux is to become as popular at home as Windows, and not just a hobbyists pastime, it needs to be easier. I've used Mandrake, and it does do a lot of this, but there are still little things that creep up and are prtty much impossible for the not so computer savvy person to figure out. If you want Linux to continue being something only for people who have a masters in CS then this is fine. But for Linux to survive as a viable alternative to MS, it needs to be easier and more stupid user friendly.
I think This guy based an article on a very small premise. I couldn't write that much on an experience like that. I also think that he was a bit off in saying it cost as much as windows. But I think a point does come across that Linux is harder to use, and quite frankly, for the average user, it doesn't compare to MS in compatability and ease of setup.
Don't get me wrong, I really hope the day comes soon where I don't have to dual boot to play video games. (WineX is NOT a reasonable alternative. I prefer to play my games above 3FPS) And I want to see my parents using Linux because its more secure. But right now, for a lot of things, Linux is not a reasonable desktop alternative.
Put the dvd in, WiMP pops up and starts going. Or do I have some unique magical copy of WiMP? (maybe I downloaded some obscure update that added it??)
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Someone forgot about the endless drivers searches that ensued and the IRQ conflicts and other melodrama of trying to get a sound card to work in Windows 95, which wasn't even really an OS, it was a front end for DOS 7.0...
Linux may have difficulty with some sound cards. But the same is true of Windows. The only OS that wouldn't ever have difficulty with any hardware is one where the hardware and software manufacturer are one and the same. Apple is one such company. Sun is another. Cisco another.
Not saying that Windows is better than Linux or vice versa. They both have their application. Simply stating that Windows 95 didn't have full compatability with all sound cards.
-LoneWolf-
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
it's very good for dealing with rpm dependancy hell as long as your running a mandrake box... but isn't there a version of apt for rpms now too?
is that unlike MS products, Linux products do not integrate with each other. Outlook can use Word as an email editor, but can Evolution use OpenOffice.org's Word Processing program as an email editor. There already is some Linux integration with PHP and MySQL and other things, but how often to F/OSS products integrate with each other?
GnuCash can integrate with many databases, but can it use OpenOffice.org to export to office file formats for reports and other things?
Can programs use Netscape or Mozilla or Firefox to display HTML content?
Can the various F/OSS developers work with each other? I tend to think so, and it very well may be possible to do so.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I know we're getting off topic, but I'm glad at least one other person around here thinks Brad Pitt is a great actor.
I also enjoyed his roles in
Ocean's 11
The Mexican
Se7en
I know Ocean's 11 was nothing special, but it was enjoyable none the less.
I was reading the second article, and came to the bit about "No, I didn't forget to un-mute, because when there's no sound system recognized, you don't get a mixer tool" - and was hit by a sense of familiarity.
Looked around the back of my machine, and yes, built-in moboard sound plugs unused, and an older SoundBlaster with my audio plugs in it. And remembered, not a year back, a frustrating afternoon of re-installs wrestling with both the built-in LAN and the built-in sound. I finally settled on using the built-in LAN and disabling the sound because I wasn't doing anything with the old SB anyway.
It wasn't the hottest new motherboard - an ECS bargain-level; and at least the Linux was free (MEPIS). I'm planning to make a voluntary contribution at next upgrade but that little wrestling match dissuaded me on the first MEPIS install.
So I'm afraid I'm right in the same boat as Mr. Langa. I don't care WHAT the problem is, if you ruin my afternoon, I don't want to give you $100 for the OS.
If there's a bug in your salad, you don't have to pay the restaurant. It's an old rule, really.
Fred posted his hardware specs on April 20th in this thread on the Information Week forums.
-Mike
Schrödinger's cat is not amused—maybe.
His origional messages didn't bother me much but it was the email I got before I read it that made me angry. That there was a major flaw in Linux that will prevent it from becoming truely popular. Then read the article finding that he couldn't add a driver. Was a major letdown. It was Information Week that I am more annoyed at.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
On the other hand, he spoke of Microsoft's support for all new hardware as if it meant that Windows was a better product, as if compatibility with new hardware was one of MS's technical achievements. This is a pretty close-minded view of the situation.
The fact is that it's primarily the new hardware which is designed and tested to be compatible with Windows , not the other way around. Can you imagine a vendor releasing a new soundcard without testing to make sure it worked on all major Windows variants? Of course not. If there are bugs in the Windows 98 drivers, the hardware vendor will work around them... even if that might mean breaking the standard interface. It's a no-brainer, considering what OS their average customer runs.
So Fred is on target with his main criticism, though he doesn't understand the chicken & egg nature of the problem. And I tend to agree with him that Linux vendors should keep prices low, partly because they can't offer quite the same experience yet, but also partly because as Linux spreads, the compatibility problem will just go away on its own. Once the hardware vendors are losing significant sales because their product can't be run on Linux, they will sit up and take note.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
I already have a job but I'm looking for a gf if any ladies are reading this in Perth West Australia. I am not pathetic.
Please tell me the irony of your sig is intentional.
Same old scrap from the same old Windows trolls.
I've had to reinstall Windows 2000 TWICE in the last week because the Registry got hosed (once from a third party program, once from who knows how).
I look at the various system recovery options in 2000 and XP. Guess what? Most of them are COMMAND LINE.
I ran Windows Media Player 9 for a few hours for the first time (I usually use Winamp) the other day. Thing eventually refused to play videos it had played twenty minutes before. Black screen only. Obvious memory leaks. And try to find the menu item to turn off the control bars with full screen. Buried in an "advanced" menu item no newbie could find if he was paid to.
This is intuitive? This "just works?"
Gimme a fucking break.
I'll say it again. Windows is CRAP. Linux is also crap, but it is FREE crap.
And Langa's complaint that commercial distros cost as much as Windows is absolute ruminant evacuation. Since when did Windows come with a free Office Suite, TWO databases, development system, etc., etc. ad nauseum?
Langa is a moron. The Windows trolls are morons.
Linux is going to eat Windows lunch.
Mod this trollbait. Mod this flame.
Is that all you got, huh? Are you nuts? Come at me!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
- "Linux" is not a product companies buy; it's a technology that other vendors use to build solutions (e.g. Red Hat).
- When companies talk about using open source, they're really using a commercially-packaged solution offered by one of these vendors. Very few, if any, Fortune 500 companies deploy Linux or other open source software through the "completely free" (as in beer) route.
- So when you talk about Linux vs. Windows, you now have a real baseline to compare total costs and "value" obtained from each.
Microsoft's argument (and this is straight from the mouth of Bob Muglia, MS's VP in charge of Windows Server) is that when you break it down in this way, you start to find that the Linux/OSS solution really doesn't cost significantly less than a Windows solution.Right? Wrong? It's hard for me to say, personally. Companies like Red Hat definitely seem to be cooking up high-price-tag subscription schemes that are comparable to what you could get any other OS for.
Similarly, Sun's argument these days is that it will sell you Linux (licensed from SuSE or Red Hat, or bundled with the Java Desktop) but if you ask them, Solaris is the better deal. They claim that Solaris is the result of years of more sophisticated engineering, with more enterprise-class features, and can be had for significantly lower TCO than Linux. Seriously. They say Solaris is cheaper, in the long run, and that's not a 20-years type long run, either.
Sure, it could all be FUD, but the D in that acronym is definitely present already. Red Hat hasn't yet figured out what the market will support in terms of Linux support licensing. I bet they could charge less than Microsoft does, but so far lower cost doesn't really seem to be the strongest link in its value proposition.
Breakfast served all day!
For any desktop user who might want to do videoconferencing, the lack of support for current cheap webcams (the Logitec Quickcams and no-names) is a major hindrance. I'm not downplaying the difficulties driver authors face: silently changing chipsets, proprietory compression formats ... but who's at fault is not the issue. The problem is that consumer-grade webcams are mostly unusable unless you track down specific (possibly older) models based on their USB identifiers. Yuck. And even if you find something compatible, you are likely to see significantly inferior performance (fps, color balance, mic, snapshot button). I have been told to buy a webcam with its own IP address: basically a web-ready streaming video server that costs a couple of hundred dollars. That's a far cry from a $15 webcam from OfficeMax. Overall, the consumer grade Linux has a ways to go.
Perhaps it would help readers to understand this point if the author hadn't chosen a title ("Linux's Achilles Heel") which is blatantly sensationalistic and deceptive for an article which claims on page 4 that it "was never about" the subject of its own title.
Um, except for about five lite-version proprietary applications from the Kompany. Everything else in SUSE (including Yast and Sax) is covered either under the GPL or an even less restrictive license.
So why would you need FIVE copies? One copy is enough as long as you don't install the proprietary apps more than once.
I didnt really get a chance to see the original article to which his responses were made but all in all his comments do seem pretty fair. I think that sometimes some of us linux-heads can get a bit fired up about things that are worthy of taking on face value.
Its a perfectly valid to point out areas where linux has problems, and i'll be the first to admit that sound is probably the biggest problem area.
Id also like to point out that if linux is to continue to become more and more mainstream as is happening at the moment. This generally means that more and more less techie people are going to be using it. And if we want linux to become more and more successfull then we must address the needs of you regular joe-sixpack user. Thats a fact, it is also very well dissing the man but he is presenting a genuine viewpoint, broadly speaking that point is that linux does not always deliver the expectations of the average joe-sixpack user. There are two ways to adress this problem, and that is for distro vendors not to make overrated claims etc. Or, fully test distro's to ensure that their claims are met.
Its perfectly acceptable for Microsoft to lie and bullshit about windows, because thats what people have come to expect. We dont wont people to think linux vendors are full of shit too. We need to be much more diligent because Linux isnt yet in a position to have its problems accepted and taken for granted like they are with windows.
And for christs sake us linux-heads should really be nicer to people who are reviewing and testing our beloved OS, because sooner or later this guy is going to do another review. It would be nice if he remembers the linux/open source community as being a friendly and helpful one. Instead of one full of elitist zealots thinking that every person that uses windows must be thick. * (some people)
The other point that I would like to make is that pointing out problems is actually good for linux because highlighting them will generally, hopefully lead to them being addressed. Its a little embarrasing for us when they are pointed out in a high profile review such as his was but, at least he has got his point heard.... I submitted a bug with Arts some weeks ago, i dont even think anyone has actually even looked at it yet, but hopefully it will. New users with problems should be encouraged to submit bugs, problems and wishlists to open source projects. Everyone can help make Linux better no-matter how techie/non-techie you are. The best thing about Linux and Open Source is by far the community. Generally speaking we are a helpful bunch and only to happy to help freinds and newbs out because its something we love to do.
Lets be nicer to each other!
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
I haven't read the thread here and wasn't getting anysatisfaction trying to post on informationweek _BUT_
His ALSA problem is bad tech support plain and simple.
ALSA defaults to all channels muted when it's first fired up, but ALSA people forget to mention it.
That's right, nobody told him to turn up the volume, or at least that's been suppressed to drive traffic.
Move along now, theres nothing to see here..
No one would use XP home in an office. What you have to use there costs way more than anything from anyone else. By the time you get finished with Exchange, CALs, Office on each of the machines and the whole nine yards that makes M$ even remotely comparable to any Linux distro, you have thousands of dollars in charges.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
In all the distributions, both free and paid for, the problems invariably turned out to be some essoteric configuration issue: the default configuration files had a setting incorrect for my box that hours of research finally corrected. Needless to say, further installations on my mini-serverfarm were informed by that research - making things go much smoother.
I never had to rebuild kernels, build or find drivers, except in one case: Debian. The 'out of the box' stable (Woody) Debian distribution did not support sound at all - which would require a kernel rebuild. I could have used one of the 'unstable' versions - but wanted the security and stability that the stable version offered.
I ended up falling back on, for me, the tried and true: Slackware (my first distribution was Slackware, by the way - back in 1992).
I do agree with the writer's thesis: if you are advertising your business as a particular 'fit' for a hardware set, you best have all the kinks worked out of the distribution, or else a support team that can quickly help the customer through the configuration 'work around' on a consistent basis. I can't blame a customer expecting an equal level of support for the money (either through the software 'just working' - or a technical support apparatus that makes fixes quick and simple for the user).
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
So... a 'techie' who wrote drivers 20 years ago discover a linux distribution that has a problem width his hardware, don't even care to tell slahdot people what hardware (sound car) is, but wrote 2 articles about it?
Sorry Fred but that stinks. :)
What's in a sig?
What's in a sig?
Fred makes a living by providing people with computer advice, you would think that he'd have done some more research before he bought. Reading the outside of a box is not enough research, yet that's all he did. I would cut the n00b some slack if he were not so vocal, universal in his condemnations or applied them evenly.
Where is his condemnation of Microsoft? I have a long list of hardware that half worked with Winblows, especially AV equipment. So does he because that's what's out there and how it works. Does this clown say silly things like "Windows is overpriced" when this happens to him? No, he just says that the piece of hardware sucks, regardless of why, and demands that the hardware maker get on better terms with Microsoft, hmph.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Brad Pitt playing a stoner in True Romance. Seven Years in Tibet...
Very nimble, diverse acting.
Remember back in the decades just before and after WWII when black athletes were beginning to appear in national football and baseball teams? There was a lot of racism and those guys had to work twice as hard as any of there white teammates in order to be accepted -- even though they were much better at what they did. It's just prejudice.
It seems to me that when a lot of these industry pundits decide to air there views on Linux, their opinions are colored by about 10 years of Windows experience and maybe 1 day's worth of struggle to get a completely new operating system to work. It's all too easy for them to make judgments based on their expectations alone.
With this kind of prejudice, I fear we may have an uphill battle on our hands until Linux can do everything Windows does in addition to all of the things that Linux does better already.
I agree with Fred Langa that Linux does not support as much hardware as Windows does. But I don't think just lowering the price of Linux is the solution to that problem.
True, some distros of Linux are rediculously priced (like SuSe won't even ship with Apache unless you order the enterprisey version!) but others aren't. And many distros, if you don't want to shell out the money for a boxed copy, you're allowed (and in some cases even encouraged) to download.
As for the fact that going with Linux restricts your choices as far as hardware is concerned, leaving you with a more limited hardware-compatibility list; this too wouldn't bother me if only one thing were different: if only it were easier and more straightforward to find the stuff that is on this more limited hardware-compatibility list.
Finding hardware to put together a Linux system can be a very daunting task for many would-be Linux users: and not just because there are fewer things supported. If you go into a store looking for, in this example, a DVD rom for your computer: if you're running a version of either Windows or MacOS, you can look at the box of each piece of hardware, and it will usually tell you if it supports your system. No such luck with Linux. Only once do I recall ever having seen something with a "Works with Linux" sticker on it: and I don't remember for sure what it was, but it sadly was a device that was meant for doing something that I had no use for at the time.
Let's start with what I will call "Step 1". To find stuff that works with Linux you have to deal with complex Hardware Compatibility Lists. And you will want probably be able to access it while you're in the store. This will require you to either (a) massacre some trees to print out several pages worth of informatioin or (b) access the online copy *somehow* while you're in the store. My CompactFlash memory drive (the only piece of at-the-time Linux compatible hardware I was ever able to find without my dad's help or someone else's) I found because the clerk was able to allow me to use option -b-. Usually, however, unless you're willing to be ruthless to our green-leaved neighbors, you are already out of luck.
Now to Step 2. Once you're in the store with a means of figuring out what will and will not work with Linux, you have to hope that something on the list is still on the shelves. (You can't guarantee the quality of something you get used - and if you're planning to try to order it new online that can be a whole can-of-worms to some people too - and yes, people whom Linux will have to accomodate in order to gain wide acceptance.)
Doing this may be possible if you are running the latest version of Linux - which you may have perfectly legitimate reasons not to want to be constrained by such a requirement. For example, I use RedHat Linux 7.3 because I don't know how to fix all those dysfunctional things in Red Hat Linux 9. (I know there is a way to do it - but I don't know how.)
Of course, in theory, I could download and install the drivers necessary that came out since 7.3, and thereby increas my hardware selection to what's supported by RH 9.0, and beyond even that. But in reality, that option is only availabe to kernel-experts.
Now, I'm no fool or computer newbie. I'm a heck of a good computer programmer, if I do say so myself. And if finding Linux hardware is above my head at times, then it is probably beyond the look-up-in-the-sky range for the typical user that you'd have to appeal to to get widespread Linux acceptance.
As for Step 1: I think a database could be put together which contains several bits of information on each piece of hardware, including what major distros the piece of hardware works with, how hard is it to work with the hardware (I mean: is it supported out of the box or do you have do download and install driver?) and channels of availability (What stores is it available in? And if a store has an online version
You must ask yourself, "What is that website's main goal?" The answer is NOT to provide information, or present tech news. It's to SELL ADVERTISING. That's how they make money. How do they sell MORE advertising? By generating more hits / attracting more readers. What's the best way to generate hits / attract readers? The same for any media outlet, GENERATE CONTROVERSY. Tick people off, scare them, whatever it takes to generate controversy. It's the same thing used by radio stations and TV stations (especially during "sweeps" week.) All he's doing is trying to generate controversy to sell more adds (or increase the cost of adds), and we've bitten so hard, that he'll stay on this subject as long as he can (hence the second article.) His editors and bosses are quite happy right now, and you can bet they're expecting him to do something else to ruffle the feathers of the linux enthusiasts since we've caused quite a stir and provided their website with millions of hits.... hits which let them sell the ads on that page for a pretty penny ;)
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
Yes, people expect things to work when they PAY for something. To charge the same price for Linux as Windows then not provide at least as good of support(install in this case) is just bad business. The idea that sound and other components are not necessary might have been a valid argument in the late 90's but now, now way! This becomes even more important at the desktop level. The 'average user': mom, dad, even gamers, don't necessarily want to learn everything that Sys Admins. know in order to use their machine. For Linux to succeed on a wider scale more effort needs to be put into the details. Windows kicks butt in the desktop, standardized interface for users. Windows falls flat on its face in the server realm many times because of its feature heavy stance while having lack of security and unwillingness to 'play nice' with vendors. Linux has already succeeded in the hard part. There needs to be a different view when trying put Linux into the desktop. Things like driver support, font support, GAMING support, and portals for updating are a must. Don't expect everyone to compile all their own apps and just 'like it or lump it'; that attitude combined with current Major Linux vendors charging too much will keep linux 'in the dark' for most users.
Your post made me pissy, and slightly perturbed. It was irresponsible and shallow. ...So it's OK for a Linux Zealot to insist that this man can't set up his hardware right, or that he needs to read the manual, or that he is a Microsoft stooge, or that he should have consulted the Linux community, or that he should have taken 9,000 extra steps like adopting a different distro... WHEN IN FACT, THERE WAS NO SOLUTION... That he did things the RIGHT WAY...
But ADDITIONALLY, he should spoon feed you something to complain about... AGAIN.
This, AFTER he's already been through the BEATING OF A LIFETIME.
There is ZERO added benefit to his re-posting his card stats in this article. None. Why? Simple - it would cause a repetition of the same discussion that had already occured on their forums.
1. You miss the point of the new article completely, and you cling to this sad notion of "if only" - like you're the only Linux user that could've helped, or that you hold the key to alerting the proper people, the ones maintaining these particular sound card drivers.
2. You add to the mounting proof that people would rather argue than admit the potential for improvement - if you were SOOOO dedicated to making things better, you'd take 2 minutes to read those forums, plain and simple.
3. It's not HIS job to tell the back story YOU demand. Your lack of research is not his obligation. You want the cliff notes version for other people to read, then it's up to you to make it. You "don't want to go wading" --- yeah? Then your reply will be meaningless noise. Granted, this post is ALSO meaningless noise, but hey, that's what AC is for.
Guess what, jerkwad - he doesn't "want to go wading through the entire discussion from the original article"... again. and again. and again.
He's not a fool.
without: commands lines of any kind, editing huge text files, having any internet connection (not including activities on the internet- this applies to support and function), basic knowledge of what parts of a computer are (ie: it should work for people that think the CPU is the monitor and the actual computer box is the "memory").
Note: I am not advocating that Linux needs to be on the home desktop. I am just saying for it to be successful in that market, this formula must be complete. And it might be.
Hey! Linux SUCKS because it won't recognize my hardware. To find out what hardware it is, I want you to go wading through my online discussion site and DRIVE UP MY AD HITS!!!
So, we're looking for "SoundMAX Digital Audio".
Just by coincidence, that is the same as on the IBM T40 laptops.
Now, I boot a Knoppix 3.3 CD in the T40 I have right here and....... it works. I get sound. I get automatically detected and configured sound. I get automatically detected and configured and working sound on the chipset that HE SAID DID NOT WORK.
And I used a distribution that he said he used.
Now everyone knows why Fred would not Name That Hardware in his articles.
He wants to write a couple of articles about how Linux sucks when compared to Windows.
When the fact is that there seems to be something wrong with the hardware he has, or the virtualization software he is running.
If anyone else wants to try, just download the Knoppix CD (3.3 was out when he was writing, so using the new 3.4 version would not be fair) and try booting it on a machine with the "SoundMAX Digital Audio" onboard chipset.
It works for me with an IBM T40 laptop.
Fred says he has lots of problems.
A little research and some experimentation can work wonders.
i need mod points today...
Yet someone complaining about how Linux users are so immature and petty receives a +5?
I've heard the same thing from developers. They simply CANNOT get the specs from the manufacturers. Not only with sound, but with video cards as well.
This is different in the NIC market.
The fact is that until Linux has 51%+ of the market, the home use items (like sound and modems) will work better with Windows.
This is not "Linux's Achilles Heel" as Fred claims. This is basic economics.
The way around this is to clearly identify what does and what does NOT work with Linux. This is something that Fred has resisted in his articles. Why? Well, only Fred can say for sure.
While this relates more with the original article, I want to bring it up now. I agree with the author that sound support is definately one thing in Linux needing serious improvement.
My old computer had a pci-based aureal vortex2 soundcard (au8830). While compiling the driver and getting the sound working was never really a problem to me (except for a 2-day fight with creating the correct symlink to sources in Debian), there was one big problem. That is, the sound "crackled" badly. And no matter what I did, tried several tweaked/forked drivers, played around with nice, etc.. nothing helped. Scroll a web page or do *something* while xmms/whatever was running = snap crackle pop. I tested this with several distros including but not limited to Debian and Mandrake, and the problem existed on all platforms.
Same with my current nforce2-based system. Whether I use the nvidia binaries or some realtek drivers in Mandrake 9.2, the same kind of sound crackling exists.
In Windows (9x/2k/XP) the sound is and was crystal clear on both systems.
I call bullshit, source please? My experiance has been completly different. Also there is no such thing as a Linux 7.0 webserver, Linux is only at version 2.6 at the moment, and isn't a complete OS. I'd realy like to know where you're getting your numbers on webserving to. Would you care to follow up with actual supporting information rather than just made up bullcrap?
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
IBM T40 laptop with the SoundMAX Digital Audio integrated.
Knoppix 3.3
Automatically detected and working.
Fred could have saved himself a whole article if he had just included that. Hee hee hee.
Unless he wanted to write another article about it.
It seems to me that Mr. Langa has a valid beef with his commercial Linux distribution vendor. To pay money for a product that claims to support his chipset but doesn't, well, that would not make anyone a happy camper.
So what do we do about this as a community? We can join the individuals on his discussion forum in calling him names and blaming the problem on everything other than the actual lack of Linux compatibility for this sound card. But how is bringing ourselves to that level helping anyone out?
I think the deeper message one can gain from this story is that Linux distributions are currently in a catch-22 (or chicken-and-the-egg, if you prefer) situation. There aren't enough development resources to go around and write drivers from scratch for every sound card, especially if the manufacturer is less than forthcoming with technical information about the hardware. So, the ideal situation (from the OSS community's standpoint) is to have the manufacturers write and include Linux drivers with their hardware. However, manufacturers aren't going to commit the resources (read: money) to develop those drivers unless there is a demonstrable benefit to their bottom-line. And while we may have demonstrated a benefit to _some_ manufacturers, obviously we haven't shown one to _all_ of them or else we wouldn't be having these problems.
I really don't have the answer to this...
Linux works great for a small business environment (providing that they don't already have systems/software).
The only market where Linux lacks is the pre-installed home market.
The only market that most "journalists" know about is the pre-installed home market.
So they take the pre-installed home market and extrapolate any flaw they see there to cover the entire industry.
The title of the original article was "Linux's Achilles Heel". Sound will NOT be the factor that kills Linux. Poor sound support MAY slow Linux's progress in the pre-installed home market. Or maybe it won't matter.
Fred did not support the title of his article with the contents of his article.
"Until then, its a hobby OS for anyone other than the hardcore non-nOObs."
Incorrect. Linux can take over the server market yet have very little success in the pre-installed home market and not be a "hobby OS".
You're also focusing on the pre-installed home market and thinking that you're viewing the entire industry.
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5 But the people who recognize it as a problem and know that it is being worked on..... will tell you what? To wait until the next release?
The simple answer to your unasked question is, what do you want?
Half the population is dumber than the other half. You'll see lots of answers that you will consider "stupid" if you ask a question on a public forum.
Particularly when there is not an answer that YOU consider to be correct.
In some situations, there will not be a solution that you like.
I was right with him on some of the wrinkles with the setup gottchas and such...I've seen them elsewhere. But the fact he waited until the "decision" part of the article before anouncing using virtual PC pretty much ruined his credibility...after all, a normal user isn't going to use another $100+ program to run that $39 Linux on ...are they!!!
"It doesn't matter if it's a distro from "Joe's Baitshop and Linux Consulting" or Redhat. If something is sold with the expectation that it will work and it doesn't, it's not the buyer's fault."
And if it does NOT work, then he can complain about THAT SPECIFIC DISTRIBUTION.
But the did not limit himself to that. He said he had found "Linux's Achilles Heel".
So he moved from complaining about a specific distribution to complaining about Linux. That's the problem.
I can say that SuSE does not support my sound card even though my sound card is listed as being supported and that SuSE wasn't able to get it working but it worked with Windows.
That's legitimate.
But I can't say that Linux sucks because Linux doesn't even support the sound cards that it says it supports.
That is what Fred is doing.
Typically out of the box, you can't usually connect to the either net either...because that requires additional software from your ISP, or Drivers for your Cable/DSL modem... Windows also doesn't do 3D graphics....those drivers are writen by ATI & NVidia. They don't do sound...that comes from your sound card manufacturer...or chipset drivers....Don't even get started on Applications!!!
None of that software "comes" with MS Windows either...but at least the Linux companies try! Sure, it comes with your hardware....but that's aonther company that put time and effort into writing those drivers/software....that credit doesn't belong to MS wholey.
Why is it that just because the sound card works in windows, and does not work in linux, that it is some huge oversight on the part of the developers of linux. Why not ask the manufacturor why it doesn't work in linux. Most of the drivers for windows were written by the company that made the hardware, not windows. Don't be so quick to assume that its some linux developer's duty to make some obscure on board sound card work for you. Go blame the manufacturor.
In my humble opinion, we all need not care whether each other are linux zealots or not. For me, Linux is fantastic! Absolutley one-hundred percent groovy. But obviously, others have different needs so it might not work out so grand. What I'm trying to say is this: The entire world can say 'Linux is dumb,' mankind can spew out as much propaganda as they want - they can even all be "Microsoft funded" for all I care; All I want is the good coders to keep coding for it and for Linux to continue surviving on my PC. :) Don't worry about some guy saying Linux didn't suit him. If he doesn't like Linux, I still find no reason to stone him, just leave him be. Natural selection will take its course. . . :)
we've got one of those.
Down every weekend for "scheduled" maintenance. A joke.
Actually, sitting next to my Linux boxes at home is a nice dual-G5 running OSX 10.3, so I'm right there with you. However, as soon as Yellow Dog handles G5 better, I'll be dual-booting. Fink is good, but it's not the greatest way to get functionality, and while I enjoy the Mac immensely, there are still things that I find it does not do. All my Windows boxes run cygwin for the same reason.
-Hope
So much time spent on JOSRTS and I STILL couldn't get you to learn patience
JOSRTS taught me that if things aren't done soon, then people get bored and go away (not to say there should be a rush, but things should be done) - Seeing as I spent several months checking the forum daily even when nobody posted, I'd think that very patient indeed...
Also, the forum is broken now, so not even me & Virum (he came back after a few months, wondering where everyone else went) can get on with things, which is a bummer. My final exams & stuff are over in 2 weeks, and I was hoping to spend my holiday getting JOSRTS to the point where it did something :( (Before the forum died I got some code done, but I never did a UI or main function, so you can see what should happen by looking at the code, but nothing actually does anything :/ linky. Also, the game got moved to space, to simplify some things so that we could get the project made in series rather than in parallel ^_^)
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment