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Making the 'Best' Desktop Linux System
NorhLoudspeaker writes "Michael C. Barnes gives DesktopLinux.com readers an in-depth analysis of the technologies that make open source a great alternative to proprietary operating systems. Examining the various components that constitute a complete system, Barnes provides practical advice and instruction on how to improve your desktop experience and productivity with freely available software. He reviews desktop environments, communications using voice-over-IP, common applications, and more."
The best Linux desktop system will take advantage of the flexibility of open source and combine the ability to use any number of options.
....and I'd say it provides useful arguements for converting people from Windows and Mac platforms to Linux...but sadly, most people I try to convert use the "but this does what I want already, and that's more work, and I don't really see the benefit" excuse. It seems that people tend to suffer with what they have, if it works at all, rather than put in a little effort and change something to be much better.
Then again, I've always been a lousy salesman, so it may just be me. *wink*
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
I have used most Linux desktop managers out there, from KDE to Gnome, to blackbox, to xfce to nothing. I have used CDE. I have used Windows. I am using Mac right now. I have used BeOS and other alternatives.
... I am sure something will either mature enough, or port over. I believe Gnumeric is the closest to being a solid replacement for an Office app, but haven't used it in a year or so.
I think I liked the BeOS design best. But it lacked applications. And that is the real issue, I think. Most users just want an icon or menu to select the programs they want to use. Until an Office killer comes along, Linux is gonna have a hard time.
Not that this can't happen. Firefox and Thunderbird are awesome web and email clients. Sadly, Thunderbird can't play with Exchange. OpenOffice isn't it. I once though Word Perfect was the future, but that fell short. Oh well
Damn, but that is well written! I can't think of something better to set in front of a prospective Linux user. It is concise, easy to read, pleasant, and just detailed enough not to make the reader feel like an idiot. I have saved the whole thing to a word doc as well as a pdf to send to friends who are thinking about Linux.
http://www.busyweather.com/
I want a desktop that with a browser that supports all the major video streams, right out of the box. I don't want to install, tweak or jack with shit.
I think one of the most overlooked aspects in the article is configurations.
In theory, any desktop Linux distro would blow XP out of the water right now if it were configured properly out of the box. There are more apps, more features, a more stable backend, etc. But it never works out that way, because something always breaks, especially in the hardware area. If you effectively have two video cards and two sound cards(from integrated), as well as multiple input devices(mouse, tablet, trackball), something is going to go wrong. I've gotten used to fixing it but it's one of the things that makes the desktop the most challenging field to conquer.
I have used SuSE for several years, along with other distros - Red hat (gee, they cut us end users off though - sorry, no red hat), Gentoo, Slackware, etc...
SuSE is hands down the best distro out there for ease of install, ease of use.
shameless plug? You bet. Any truth behind it? Yes. Try it out. SuSE has some downloads available to try the SuSE 9.2 live cd right now....
have a great weekend,
dave
[but sadly, most people I try to convert use the "but this does what I want already, and that's more work, and I don't really see the benefit" excuse.]
Here in lies the greatest challenge of linux. The general user.
For me, I am a happy windows user. Now don't be mistaken I am not a windows zealot. I would happily chose Linux over windows anytime if not for its crippling weaknesses.
Linux is a great operating system but it suffers from what i would call a geek-mentality. Linux is a perfect operating system for geeks it is powerful robust and stable. But for a normal user it is hell. It is hard to configure, and learning to configure it takes ages to find out. The value saved by the free-ness of it is taken back by the amount of time needed to learn to use and configure it. It is hard to configure and can be very daunting.
Now I see many argue that this is the very essence of geeky-ness or whatever. They say that its power and configure-ability is why so many geeks love it. Thats allright for geeks and all, but to the average user they do not care about such things. Sure they would care about the basic things that can be configured (eg. themes et al) but on the most detailed things they would not want to even bother with them.
Until such time comes that Linux is ready for mainstream use. I would beg the linux people to not push linux into the mainstream. The reason is the same reason as why it is not good for U2 to have a unfinished version of their song spreading about on the internet. When people have tried it they get a first impression. They would get scared away by linux. If they try it at first they would get confused and be scared away. If ever you try to convince them again to try it they would remember their first experience and would not try it again. First impressions do count.
So I would like to ask the slashdot crowd. Linux is not ready for use with the general user yet. And until it is ready do not push it down the throat of the general public. It is bad for linux, it is bad for you(since linux would not get the acceptance you desire) and it is bad for them.
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As a personal comment in regards to security, viruses et al., I would say that the amount of viruses, spywars, adwares depend on the market share of the operating system. The greater the market share the greater the amount of viruses, spywares etc. Though I could be wrong. The theory will come about when linux does gain a large market share and is ready for desktop use.
Agree that Linux is fine for corporate machines. One big reason being that corporate machines are predominately Intel and Intel writes the Linux chipset/IDE/video drivers and sticks them right into the mainline kernel.
The home machine landscape has a lot more nVidia/VIA/etc stuff where support is usually volunteer and often reverse-engineered.
My laptop currently triple boots Mepis, FreeBSD, and win2k. I'd like to believe I'm weaning myself of Windows since I feel it's just a matter of time til this system is compromised, but I've managed to keep it tight and problem free so far. I'm not fond of plenty of things about windows, but frankly the usability is great; Cut & Paste works everywhere, apps are often fully usable with just the keyboard, and many of the applications really are top notch.
For example Nero just spanks K3B, PowerDVD looks way better than any OSS player I've seen (better filters I suspect, and more optimised); You can get tools like KProbe to analyze CD quality. The list goes on and on. It may feel good to bash windoze, but if you're careful and you know what you're doing, everything just works and many of the best of breed applications are win only.
Mepis is terrific. It just works out of the box, and it's the best of Debian, so it's free-enough and easy to keep it current. Its a great live-CD, so it's easy to test it and know what you're in for, and trivial to install a well configured system. The package management is simple, my windows fonts look better under XFree86 than they do unders windows (probably the sub pixel hinting). It's not all a walk in the park; Cut&paste is a mess (different pasteboards for different applications, and it's too easy to click and past 2K of random text into a root shell). Keyboard layouts get forgotten, desktop icon behaviour is often non-intuitive, and KDE communications go haywire too often. I had to hack the S3 display driver config to get the system stable.
I would set my parents up with this distro, and I'm sure it would remain usable longer than any Windows install in their hands, but it wouldn't be a walk in the park.
That said, I spend almost all of my time on this laptop running KDE under freeBSD 4.10. I have set it up to be nearly identical to my Mepis install, and though I have run my servers on FreeBSD for about as long as it has existed, I feel that freeBSD is now a top notch desktop for hackers willing to put in gobs of time learning how all the pieces fit together. Obviously this is personal preference, and you have to be a bit of a sadist to go this route. Anyway, the BSD documentation is the best I've seen, I love the ports system, and I am most comfortable configuring FreeBSD, since it's exactly the same as my servers. I feel that it's a lot more work to get a freeBSD system to the polish of Mepis, but once you've learned all the KDE/X11/acpi/automount/etc-etc glue (which is admittedly huge) it's easier for me to further configure it, and I certainly know it better and own it more (in the sense of knowlege, control, and maintainability).
My freeBSD system is better configured and tuned than my linux install. Aside from this, the only functional difference I have noted between the 2 (in my world) is that my winmodem will probably never work under BSD, and I'm not holding breath to get Kismet working under BSD (It doesn't work under Mepis either, but I think I know how to patch that).
For me, each of these is best at something. I think it's awesome that OSS is really a viable alternative on the desktop. It doesn't yet have the 'cut from a single cloth' integration that I'd like to see, but it's clearly making great strides, and I love the way my OSS desktops work.
I quite liked the original article, it's like looking over the shoulder of a knowlegeable geek. I saw a bunch of things in there I've got to try.
I was discussing the functionality of Linux today with a friend as I struggled to get sound working on an FC2 new install. I speculated that Google may be a future answer to the struggles of Linux. Google is and continues to develop new levels of functionality. Google runs linux on its server farms. Google is powerful, cash-rich, and business-savvy. If anyone can do it, Google can.
I heard that Google is working to develop a desktop environment, maybe a browser, who knows what, the rumor mill is rife with speculation. What if Google tried to deliver what could be the knockout blow to MS and takes on the challenge of funding a comprehensive, secure, functional, and most importantly user friendly distribution of linux? Could Google unitle the linux clans, or is that fundamentally anti-linux/open source thinking?
I have been a linux user for 2 years.
The thing that impressed me about this story is that sound in MEPIS seems to work right out of the box -- across a full spectrum of apps. I'm using Mandrake now, and I'm still fighting incompatible sound drivers that work with some apps and not with others. I desperately wanted to get Skype working on this box, but no amount of monkeying with the audio driver settings got it functioning. I was getting pretty fed up with Linux audio in general after this experience. Now I read that MEPIS even comes with Skype!
Business who use MYOB and Access will be destroyed by those businesses with the smarts to run up to the University on a Saturday Night with a couple of pizzas and six packs (of soda), and recruit themselves a code-monkey who can crank out L.A.M.P.-type apps.
Man, I really missed Paradox until I realized what Perl and CGI::Application can pull off...
What's even cooler, is NOTHING can beat Perl's handling of all sortsa goofy legacy crap... (as in, "I can abstract away all the hairy data transformations from/to the legacy system with a shitty logical design") into it's own module with ease...")
Think of the web page as "Just Another Fucking Report", and... Well, Enjoy!
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
My roommate, does hobby music with Windows trackers, like FruityLoops. He is an IT student, he was a Linux sysadmin and he used Linux a lot. He is now forced to use winXP because there's nothing that is even close to Windows audio editing software. The collection of plugins that you can find for FruityLoops is to say the least gigantic. Is there anything likely for Rosegarden?
As for the GIMP its power is crippled by the horribile interface. It's not the main interface design -it's odd but you get easily accustomed to it. It's the details. It's senseless you have to dig deep in menus,preferences and buttons to do a single straight line.
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
Personally, I think KDE is way better than XP as a desktop environment. And anything you don't like, you can configure. For instance:
Multiple desktops, Klipper, Select & Middle-click paste, and if you drag/drop a file, you get a very helpful tool-tip asking whether you want to copy, move, or link it, which is far better than the MS way of:
if (different disks){
copy, by default
}else{
move, by default
}
BUT if (shift){
do the opposite
}
Incidentally, there is nothing so dreadful about the Linux copy-paste system. Just get used to the fact that there are really 2 clipboards. It can sometimes be really useful to utilise this behaviour!
Also, once Linux is installed, no-one needs to ever use the Shell (my Aunt certainly doesn't!). But it's great that bash is still there - I for one find it can be extremely useful!
I think you summed up the issue nicely.
When changing a monitor resolution, Windows gives the user 15 seconds to decide that wether that res is good. If the user does not say 'yes', it reverts to the previous. There is no Ctrl-Alt-Plus (Which I for one never heard of...)
The difference between Linux and Windows on this is that Windows will use the device in a generic mode if it doesn't have the correct driver, Linux will not use it. Moreover, noone recompiles the Windows kernel, while I know people that do every 2 days on Linux. ("Yes, there's a patch for program X") A normal computer user does not 'compile' the 'kernel'. He simply doesn't understand that. Not would he trust it, if he knew what a 'kernel' is.
'The Geeks' often forget how the normal computer user thinks. He wants things to work right away, because if it goes wrong, he doesn't know why or how to fix it, if he understands what the error(-message) is. Like installing a TV: place it, plug power and cable in, push the button (one problem: configure the channels - usually done by the shop though) and it works.