Linux, Inc.

An anonymous reader sends in a link to Businessweek talking about the business of Linux, and the increasing threat to Microsoft's operating system monopoly.

Comments

Re:Linux Desktop Thoughts...

[Brandybuck]

one point most people will agree on is that OS X and Windows are both more usable than XWindows...

XWindows, or more properly "the X Windows System", is not the desktop. It's a low level GUI API, not much different in purpose than Windows' own Win32 and GDI libraries. Except for one difference. I've programmed in both bare Xlib and bare Win32, and Xlib is by far the better library. It may take a bit more "scaffolding", but it's much more sensible and easier to use for the moderately experienced developer. (Ditto comparing Motif to MFC, the latter being completely unusable without the help of Visual Studio's wizards.)

Let's move up a step. You next mentioned window managers and desktops, so let's talk about them. The Windows desktop is perceived to be user friendly *ONLY* because it is familiar to people. The window manager portion of it is actually quite rudimentary and difficult to use. Usability features like snap-to and rollups are simply missing in Windows, yet standard offerings for even the most humble X11 window manager. Similar problems exist for on "desktop" side of things. Consider the "show desktop" button in Windows, which will minimize all windows, but tells usability to smeg off when it won't subsequently restore them. And where are the multiple desktops?

I haven't really used OSX that much, so I can't comment on it. But in comparison to Windows, Unix/X11 + [KDE|GNOME|XFCE] is far more usable and friendly. But people don't know it because they haven't been steeped in it like they have been for Windows.

I spent a couple of years using FreeBSD/KDE at work (until they forced me to stop). The phrase "wow, how did you do that" in reference to my desktop was often uttered in my cubicle. This wasn't in response to the "cool" stuff of KDE, but in response to the ordinary everyday things I take for granted. Such as multiple desktops, "show desktop" that also restores, snap-to windows, rollups, z-ordering, etc, etc.

As long as Linux/Unix has newbies from Windows-land, we will continue to hear whines of X11 being difficult and obtuse. But that's only because they refuse to learn the new culture. In many ways the X11 desktops certainly are difficult and obtuse, but they are a lot less so than Windows.