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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.
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You know something must be up if BillG himself is shuffling off to South America to persuade the government to lose interest in open software...
This 'threat' has been mentioned every year for the past couple of years. In order for linux to become truly something to be wreckoned with, Joe user must become accustomed to it.
All your Sybase are belong to us.
Too lazy to create a sig...
I've been really thinking about the whole Linux gaining footing thing, and as much as everyone around here just LOVES XWindows and loves to say it's as usable as OS X or Windows, let's face it, in the eyes of most users it simply isn't.
Apple has taken FreeBSD/Darwin and built their own desktop environment around it. OS X is very usable according to most people. And even though there are many camps of people who will argue that Windows is more usable than OS X or vice versa, the one point most people will agree on is that OS X and Windows are both more usable than XWindows and the various window managers. I perosnally hate both KDE and Gnome, and thus use a mostly text BSD box, but I know I'm in the minority there, as well.
Here's what I've been thinking.
What's stopping someone from writing an entire environment like OS X from the ground up, around and on top of Linux, and creating an OS X like environment that is as complete and modern as either OS X or Windows?
I know everybody shudders at the thought of obsoleting their beloved X, but even some OS X users install and use X when they still feel they need it, but I think I'm just being realistic when I think hanging onto X is just overall the wrong strategy for putting Linux on the desktop. (Counter arguments exist, and will likely be in the many replies, and I don't entirely disagree with them, but...)
I really think this is an effort worth pursuing. A new desktop environment built to be the primary way that Linux is used. A Linux based graphical environment designed from the ground up to be a Desktop GUI, following in the footsteps of OSX/Aqua.
To make things easier (here's where many will disagree with me) one could work on such a program primarily focusing on modern hardware and esspecially modern video cards. Let's face it, ATI and NVidia run the show now days anyway.
These are just my thoughts, and I hope people will constructively discuss this possibility instead of throwing around a bunch of "No way, not possible, why bother, go to hell Apple/Microsoft lover" comments.
I like BSD, and I like OS X. I would like to see something similar done with Linux.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
The GPL ensures that Linux will never cost money itself, and commercial adoption means that innovation will come in the area of user-friendliness. I'm not militantly Free, and I think that this a good step to making Linux a viable competitor in all areas currently dominated by MS. I am considering converting my entire family to Linux (I'm currently the only linux user) or Mac OS X when Longhorn becomes the only option with a new computer, because it will be different enough that either way will be a struggle on my part. Linux is becoming polished enough by big corporations that it is becoming a very strong competitor to MS for everyone. OS X though, still reigns king in my mind for ease-of-use and polish (except for games :()
I just had a knee-jerk thought. How is Linux a threat to anyone? Linux is freely available to almost anyone ... individuals or businesses.
:-)
The "playing field" is even because of this universal availability. Those that don't take advantage of this MAY find themselves at a disadvantage to those that do.
Linux isn't a threat because YOU choose NOT to use it in your business model. The real threat is a poor plan that doesn't use the tools and technologies FREELY available today.
Did that make any sense?
Unfortunately, they tend to do this on the golf course with their other CEO, CIO, CFO, and CTO buddies, instead of asking the people who have to actually support the applications and systems. They want all the stuff that looks flashy, etc. The techies, unfortunately, then have to figure out ways to make the stuff work.
Many years ago, I went to a company where they wanted to have several applications talk to each other. Two of them ran on Solaris, two of them ran on Windows. One used Oracle as the back-end, another used DBASE. How did they come up with the combination of COTS stuff? They asked the users to pick which software package they wanted for which particular function. The problem is, nobody ever really evaluated what could be done with each of them. It turned out that one of the Windows apps couldn't be made to talk with anything else because of the memory control module. The database stuff it used wanted to do its own memory allocation, and it interfered with the TCP/IP sockets library's ability to do its necessary memory allocation. I didn't last long there, because I basically made my opinions known and they didn't want to hear that they made some really bad decisions.
When going for my RHCE, the instructor was telling us that RedHat basically came into existence because for Linux to be a viable business solution, companies wanted to be able to point fingers at someone to say, "You... FIX THIS!" They didn't want to file bug reports and wait for someone to get around to it. They wanted someone to be there at their beck-and-call, providing the necessary support. This kind of thinking is what actually helped Linux become a viable business solution.
OCO is Loco
That being said, most of the *iux developers I know today, including myself, dumped Linux for Apple especially on laptops. Granted this was 3 - 4 years ago and OSX versus Linux of the day was no contest. However, I haven't known of anyone that's gone back from OSX to linux. Some have linux boxes they use as cheap test boxes, but I even converted my old x86 box into a FreeBSD server for my house.
Still if I am going to pick between a Linux box or getting a Macmini or is it MiniMac...anyway, I think I'm going to spend the money on the Mac. Again it comes down to needs and software. iLife is a great set of tools for home use. Its easy to use, simple, and works. Linux has come a long way since I started using it circa Slackware 2, but it still has aways to go as well.
I say this with a grain of salt: but the some in the rabid Pro-Linux community is still hurting the image. There are still those that want it in the realm of the uber-geek hacker. As the song "Every OS sucks" by three-dead trolls in a baggie says: "Linux or Lineux, I'm not sure how to you say it or install it or how to use it, but its for elitest nerdy smucks".
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
To draw the parallel, it seems like this would make Microsoft comparable to, say, Acme Cesspit Corp., a fictional company that might have invented and patented cesspits and the means and tools for keeping them safe and usable in a city environment.
The public is crying out for a better system, which has been developed and is proving itself in municipality after municipality. But Acme is freaking out and suing or hiring thugs in towns where they dominate in order to maintain control of your bodily waste.
A company like Acme could do well to embrace the open standard and move on to the next step, since even with an open standard, people are going to continue needing help disposing of their wastes.
Likewise, Microsoft would do well to embrace open source software and operating systems. People will still need great apps and services, and they'll be willing to pay for them. But if they weren't so dependent on the volume of money coming in from their operating system monop^H^H^H^H^H division, they might realize that letting go and moving on to other types of products and services might be a hundred times more profitable.
Or, better yet, 100 times more beneficial to humanity. Minesweeper is a great game and I'm glad they include it, but nobody ever cured cancer by playing it.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Cant Linux remain Linux. I can appreciate X becuase its the same as it was 10 years ago, and it will remain the same.
There will always be typewriters, toasters, mobile phones, audio players, video players, game consoles and Macintoshes that will be better than Linux in some aspects and for some groups of people (that said, they could of course be made Linux-based, thats another thing).
I want Linux because it compils and runs the huge amount of useful and fun open source toys, tools and server programs I like. I like that the VIM/gcc/make-development environment is constant. I dont need to upgrade to the latest version before I continue with my hobby-projects. grep, sed and friends are always there, and they always make the same great job. That means a problem solved today, is a problem solved in ten years. If you throw X out, thousands of man-years are lost, just because we want to copy a desktop innovator.
For desktop purposes, BSD and Linux kernels would basically do the same great work. Apple chose the BSD kernel for license reasons. The Apple advantage is that they have great design, and full hardware control. That gives them the opportunity to create a superb user experience.
Linux should continue to be the plattform of choice for geeks who just want their "problems solved", for once and ever. Then companies and people will find amazing ways to use the great technology - and one day you'll find Linux in your toaster, game console or car...
This was certainly considered and many, many people tried. But nothing really came of it. It now looks like the way to progress is to modify X into a modern system.
The biggest impediment was in fact the opposite of what you are claiming: using X gets you the modern hardware, and alternatives don't. Any and all advanced drivers are written for X, and the X driver interface was so complex and linked to how X worked that it was impossible to reuse them for anything other than X. Thus the very first thing any replacement for X would encounter was that it would not run in anything better that SVGA mode and would run quite slow without even rudimentary 2D acceleration. This has killed Berlin, Fresco, KGI, even kernel framebuffer interfaces, and every other alternative to X on Linux. Every one of these projects has been forced to make a "run in an X window" implementation so that they can at least write tests yet run their screens at their natural resolution, which means they will never work better than X and will all be subject to any and all glitches in X.
The truly annoying thing is that a real alterantive would probably have a much better driver interface and if it succeeded we would have many more and better drivers and hardware support than X has. Not only that, more alternatives would be easy to write because these new drivers could probably be reused easier. So it is all a catch-22.
The other lesser impediment was the need to provide compatability with X so you could run your existing applications. Ideally this should be done by an emulation library atop your new system, however Xlib is such a mess that this is incredibly difficult and will not be done by a new development. So at least initially, either X programs don't work, or they work in an incredible kludge where the hardware is shared by two low-level systems (like the OS/X solution) which makes the windows behave in annoyingly imcompatable ways that produce a worse user experience than plain X does.
I personally thought this was an excellent idea and fully expected it to happen, may favorite solution would be to return to IrixGL days, where OpenGL was used to draw every single pixel you see on the screen. But it never materialized, I followed development on a dozen systems but nothing ever came of it. It now looks like the future is in Xorg and the freedesktop standards, where they are trying, however painful it is, to modify X into a modern system, by replacing the driver level and adding new X calls to do modern graphics.
I can't remember if this is from patent, copyright or trademark law, but isn't there a legal requirement somewhere to defend your IP as soon as you know of an infringing case? And if it can be demonstrated that you knew about it and chose to not defend your IP against infringement then you lose the right to sue in the future based on that same IP?
Being employed by REAL fortune 500 companies I can assure you IBM has a Huge investment in Linux Software ( they are phasing out AIX in the next 12 months) Just because they don't make a Linux Distro, doesn't mean they are'nt a linux Co. Last Co I worked for, you could go in the data center and see rows & rows & rows of rack mount IBM servers in cases all running Linux and some other IBM software DB2, Tivoli etc.....
Thier new Cell processors, guess what OS they will be running them on, YUP linux.
Go back to playing half life2 or whatever in your parents basement. If you don't think IBM has bet the bank on Linux then you need to get out more.
Their Super Computing cluster??? Only runs Linux.
Now thats not what they sell, but they are moving quickly to a linux only model. The Co I used to work for, they cried never Linux on desktops, now IBM is pushing them in that direction. The Company is a well known fortune 500 company, with Billions in Assets and Income.
You need to think before you type.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
But consensus is really the key. Why does OS X work so well? It's not just because they have a different window manager and widget set. It's because they build in consistency and uniformity from the ground up. That covers widgets, fonts, colours, textures, menu layouts, shortcut keys, toolbars, cut'n'paste, drag'n'drop, file locations, selection, high-level GUI metaphors like drawers and tabs, Dock behaviour, and so on throughout everything in the system. It's all been designed to work the same way (i.e. the way you expect), and to interoperate.
It's not perfect, of course; some choices are questionable, and there's the occasional oddity. But in general, apps look, feel, behave, and work the way you expect them to. And I think it's this consistency which is the real difference from Linux: not just in the low-level look of individual components, but in the mindset and user experience too.
The flip side of this is that it gives developers less choice. Using the system widgets (where appropriate) stops you getting creative in designing your own. Letting the user choose colours and skins may make your app stand out, but it detracts from the whole system. I don't want the choice of umpteen skins and looks -- I want ONE that WORKS PROPERLY! (Sorry for shouting, but I've struggled against so many apps whose authors seem to think that providing a choice of skin or other decoration is the answer to an ugly, awkward or unusable UI.) Similarly, using non-standard shortcut keys or whatever may be better for your app, but the lack of consistency reflects on all apps.
So IMV the main problem with getting a decent UI which is easy for casual users is that it requires app developers to be disciplined and to restrain (or at least channel) their natural creativity and ego. That's why a corporate setting is probably the best bet for such a system; not because individual developers lack the skills, direction, or organisation (as Linux &c have shown), but because a decent GUI needs restraint, obedience, and submission to central authority.
The only way such a system could be possible would be to have a very strong leader who knew exactly what he wanted and could take steps to ensure that apps complied, but who could also inspire lots of developers to join in -- a tough combination.
In the meantime, while developers still consider the natural unit of functionality to be the application and not the whole system, I'll keep on using OS X!
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
How come the date on the article shows a date of January 31, 2005?