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TurboLinux 10f Review - PowerDVD on Linux
BootLinux writes "The first review of TurboLinux 10f has been posted by Flexbeta. TurboLinux 10f is the first Linux distribution to include a commercial DVD player, PowerDVD. It also bundles Microsoft licensed media codecs and the ability to connect with Apple's iPods. With the addition of these and other multimedia applications is it safe to say that Linux is finally a conteder in the desktop market?"
"It plays my DVDs out of the box" is not what will make Linux on the desktop work. What makes the desktop work is the antithesis of open-source and UNIX philosophy. The desktop is not about describing your task with small tools that do one thing well, it is about performing your tasks with large tools that are designed around performing related sets of tasks. Linux hackers are bored with this problem. They don't want to bother.
What Linux needs to succeed on the desktop is a thriving community of user interface hackers led by a Steve Jobs visionary-type. Linux has nothing to attract such people. Linux, in fact, has plenty to turn these people away, from a community that thinks the Gnome and KDE wars are good because it promotes choice, and that X is a good UI solution because you can download window manager themes with penguins and hot anime babe backgrounds. These people run screaming to their Macs. Their Macs understand them.
What is missing from the Linux desktop is not features. Linux does a tremendous job of having lots of features. What it does not have is any concept of the situations in which its users might use these features. It doesn't care; if you can do something, how can it be broken? You're just too lacking in hacker spirit to figure out how it works.
Uncle Grandma is never going to have enough hacker spirit to figure out how it works. If Free Software is to solve every problem in the world, it will recognize that. But -- here's a radical idea for you -- maybe Free Software and the Hacker Ethic aren't good at everything! Maybe it shouldn't solve every problem in the world! Perhaps some problems just don't fit will with the Open Source philosophy! Perhaps Linux will never catch on as a mainstream option for the desktop! Perhaps this isn't even a horrible, blasphemous thing!
Fortunately, TurboLinux utilizes the /etc/sysconfig directory to hold most of the system settings, so it is very easy to configure the network by just using a text editor.
Linux is not ready for the desktop.
As long as reviewers keep saying that it is very easy to configure the network by just using a text editor, Linux will never be ready for the desktop.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.