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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.'"
...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, 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.
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.
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.
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...
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
I think he's talking about the fragmentation caused by multiple non-interoperative desktop APIs.
That's the thing though. From everything I've seen of Looking Glass, it supports GNOME and KDE apps just fine. It's actually less of a Desktop Environment (like GNOME), and more of a Window Manager (like Metacity). I don't know where Sun is going with this, but they may decide to integrate GNOME and Nautilus into Looking Glass. They've certainly hinted at it by saying that "Looking Glass is a technology demo. Expect to see parts of it slowly migrate into the Java Desktop System."
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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 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?
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?
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I won't deny that for many, Linux has been a good, useful, and reliable OS. But each time I have tried it, I have come away disappointed, for a number of reasons. My most recent experiences with SuSE and with Mandrake were not bad, but not great. Neither of them was able to handle my mainstream AGP card in the mode I prefer, and neither even showed that such a mode existed.
While I have been comfortably using Windows as my primary tool since the days of NT4, I have also been looking for alternatives. BeOS came closest to being something I would have switched to.
At any event, I am not in the pay of MS, and although my work depends on their OSes, I do keep hoping for a viable alternative.
As close as Linux is getting to viability in some respects, the desktop continues to disappoint. Or more accurately, the quality of many of the alternative apps on the Linux desktop disappoints. And like it or not, folks, the desktop is at the core of acceptance for anything beyond server farms.
Another of the areas of weakness for Linux has long been the documentation (or lack thereof.) In recent months, the situation has improved somewhat, as the LDP seems to have been fueled with some new energy. Still, to me an OS is merely a tool, and not a religion or a cause. I expect and require competent documentation.
Finally, as a developer for whom gcc is not the tool of choice, the various distributions appear to be a minefield of irregularity that makes DLL Hell look good. Although in the main, my interest is for turnkey systems where I can select a distro and stay with it, thereby reducing the problem substantially, I am yet mindful of the reality that the libraries shipped with any given distro tie me somewhat to that distro, or commit me to an expenditure of time that I wish to avoid in changing libraries.
Linux has many attractive features; it's least attractive feature, however, is the anarchical nature of its support.
--- Bill
The original author of the magazine article and -- surprisingly -- all the comments I've seen to date appear to be unaware of the reason for this.
The soundcard manufacturers make sound cards to work under Windows. They cooperate with Microsoft to have drivers written, and their contract precludes (and, I am told, in some cases explicitly forbids) the writing of drivers for Linux, and the publication of driver details to those who would otherwise do the job (ie us, the dev community).
It took Alan Cox all of 25 seconds to explain this to me in the pub a few years ago (unless I have misunderstood it all). Why does no-one else seem to be aware of it?
Let me put it more bluntly: the hardware manufacturers don't give a tinker's shit about Linux, which has 1% of the market. They do give very many tinkers' shits about Windows, which has 90-whatever % of the market (they seem to be lukewarm about Apple). It's not about linux "failing" to support these cards -- it's about Linux simply not being important enough (yet) to warrant their attention.