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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
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 $598. Isn't this still almost half the price of Microsoft Operating Systems?
It would be good if the Linux community, as a whole, saw these criticisms in a positive light rather than getting our collective backs up and getting on the defensive. If Linux is ever going to replace Windows, we all have to be prepared to listen to criticism and then do something to correct the weaknesses, even if the weaknesses are only perceived, because to the perceiver, perception is reality.
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Putting aside the other issues for a moment, is an article that essentially cherry-picks forum posts from random people -- specifically the ones that look the most foolish and are most easily refuted -- anything other than sensationalistic journalism?
;)
Before you answer, keep in mind I'm going to pick the most foolish replies that are most easily refuted and write an article about it.
His points seem valid enough to me and while Linux beats M$ 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...
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
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
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.
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!
You're falling prey to the same error as the article writer - viewing Linux as a single operating system.
Commercial distributions are intended to be polished, consumer-oriented OS's. The writer is correct that they aren't there yet. However, Mandarake, SuSE, Red Hat, etc., are not "Linux." They're a Linux, or a Linux based OS, but not Linux.
Debian, for one example, is still around and still focused on security and reliability rather than consumer use. Gentoo is another. Linux will not lose its focus. Various distributions will have their own focus, but the focus of that distribution does not affect the focus of "Linux" over all.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
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
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.
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.
This is Linux FUD week it seems
How are the Information Week articles FUD*? They looked to me to be well-documented and logical. Plus, he could have flamed the idiots that flamed him in...and didn't. He actually gave them a respect they didn't deserve.
*by the MS definition, of course.
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
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
You have an interesting definition of FUD, it would seem.
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.
He then wrote an article about this, in which he explained what didn't work. Linux activists told him he was lying, hiding facts, actively working against Linux, that he was an idiot, a technical moron, that it was his fault, and that the part that didn't work wasn't actually needed.
Those responses were written by people with very strange ideas of how to build a wide acceptance and support for Linux. They seem to have the idea that any and all forms of criticism is written by people actively against Linux, people who should be taunted, haunted and ridiculed, and their articles hidden, removed or just written of as FUD.
This is inexplicably stupid, and actively working against wide Linux acceptance. Nobody in their right mind switch to a product that is promoted by people who cannot take criticism, people who do not listen to facts, who cannot accept an opinion contrary to their own without ridiculing the other person, people who, for whatever reason, are so paranoid that they think that there could "Never, Ever, Be Anything Wrong With Linux, and therefore anybody who says so is after us".
He bought a product. It didn't work as advertised. It could not be fixed by the support. He has every right to complain, tell everyone what happened, and not be ridiculed, called an idiot, or accused of spreading FUD for doing so.
Calling his article FUD is clueless, and actively working against wide Linux acceptance.
But I guess I am now the person, most likely paid by Microsoft, who should be haunted and taunted for pointing out something as ridiculous (sp?) as that Linux could, in fact, have areas where work needs to be done, and that anybody who has paid for a distribution has every right to write an article about it. Without clueless activists calling him an idiot.
I want to be a part of the Free Software world. I do not, however, want to be a part of a narrowminded world where you cannot under any circumstance listen to criticism, where customers must be experts and are otherwise called "idiots", and where anything negative written or said is a sure sign of mental disabilities or a covert Microsoft operation.
If that is the world of Linux, then I will never tell anyone I love it.
I don't really get anything of value out of this follow-up article from Langa. Essentially, it's a compilation of the responses that we saw in the forums. Langa, in the forums, did nothing more than *insult* other posters and attempt (but failed) to do an adequate job of backing up his claims.
It has been mentioned that Langa's sound problems were related to the fact that he was *emulating* a sound device through Virtual PC. I suspect that it was the primary reason for his problems. He did indicate that sound worked at one point in time, through some means, but eventually failed again. It's hard to tell the exact reasons. I could argue all day that there are a number of peices of hardware that work very nicely on Linux but work like shit on WindowsXP (e.g. Aureal Vortex chips, which are still showing up in new soundcards to this very day). I could argue that my UMAX scanner works perfectly on Linux, but requires a paid driver update from UMAX to get it to function on Windows XP. These are points that totally negate his reasoning for feeling that "Linux is not ready".
Fred seems to be surprised that Linux users get defensive over some types of criticism. Is it really all that surprising? We see all sorts of criticisim from "unbiased" sources almost daily, through "reasearch" that is funded by groups like the recent Alexis de Tocqueville Institution articles. Much of it is without warrant. It's another attempt to steer people away from Linux, so it's hard to tell who is right and who is just cashing in. Regardless, people work hard to make Linux an excellent OS, often without compensation. Criticism isn't a bad thing, but is it not only fair that a critic has his facts in order before hand?
Langa makes an interesting point regarding the cost of Linux software from commercial vendors. I feel that he is missing some important things though. First, desktop Linux software often *does not* cost anything near the cost of Microsoft Windows. He touted Xandros during his initial review, indicating that he had paid for a copy. Xandros standard edition costs a mere $39, and that includes installation tech support. How much more should they lower the prices?
Why is it that guys like Langa associate less value with Linux and the included programs, thus indicating that the price should be lower? Is Linux considered less of a value to him, simply because his software emulated sound device will not work through Virtual PC? I fail to see what Langa is trying to indicate.
Companies like RedHat and Novell are pricing their corporate Linux products because they offer 24x5 technical support for them, at no additional cost, for their Advanced Server and desktop products. High priority 24x7 support is available at an additional cost. They have relatively good response times, and they are covered for a full year over the web (and a shorter time over the phone). This is what you pay for when you buy a Linux distribution. There is a limitation of two incidents with Windows XP home edition before you are subject to the $35 fee for technical support. Windows 2003 Server support is available for a minimum of $99, over email, and phone support is $245.
See a connection here? If you want support, then you have to pay for it. Otherwise, there are plenty of no-cost Linux solutions for home and corporate users alike. I personally can see more value in giving a donation to Pat Volkerding (of Slackware) than to pay for the latest Microsoft OS. With most commercial Linux distributions, you get a stable and powerful OS, updates for the life of the current version (this even includes updates for most of the included applications), and you don't have to dump tons of money into extra software like antivirus/firewall/adware/spyware tools and the support to implement and operate them. How can one NOT see this as a value in its own right?
I see Windows as a value that is geared mostly to the following people; musicians and artists, PC game enthusiasts, and office dorks that need
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
Bearing all that in mind (since you can't be bothered to actually read the article, apparently), wtf are you talking about?
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...