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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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Google. That would've helped to shake up the PHBs a little more effectively, given this is BusinessWeek.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
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...
The only reason they're not doing that is the simple fact that they are effectively a monopoly. If they let Linux get a small share, then all that Linux will do is take up some of the slack from people who would have a higher chance of not paying for MS products anyway. What it also does though is give them something to point to. "See! They have some of the market...we're not a monopoly" can be their response to a judge.
Soon, hopefully, Linux won't be at MS's whim that much. But for now...they're letting us get any gains we have.
Buying decisions are made by suits, though. Most CIO's are former CFO's working towards becoming COO's. They don't give two shits about what "hackers" like.
If it were not from grown-ups (in suits) working for Red Hat and IBM driving the Market, Linux would still be a nifty project on University campuses, instead of the multi-billion-dollar industry that it is.
Not even M$ has the change to buy IBM and they are the biggest 'Linux' company out there.....
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
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.
I have seen headlines about the linux revolution for a few years now.
I use linux at home and love it.
Wake me up when linux breaks double digit market share in the desktop world and then we can call it a revolution
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.
Having RMS walk in in his St. Ignucius getup is enough to make anybody lose their lunch...not just the suit and tie crowd.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
While this article includes nothing new for any regular /. reader, it's still a really good one. It avoids the all-to-common journalistic practise of balancing one positive statement with one negative statement. This article doesn't serve as a bullborn for FUD, it's entirely positive wrt Linux and the open source model. And it's written in a way that any shmoe can understand.
So why would us slashdotters care about an article written for average shmoes? Well, because we can forward it to friends and family who have a hard time relating to this "Linux" thing they keep hearing us enthusiastically blathering about. I've already sent it to my friends and family, you should too. C'mon, get going.
No, I have no stock in BusinessWeek, don't be so cynical.
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?
I read somewhere an interesting theory that companies (and organizations) that don't try to compete directly with Microsoft (plan their buisness around beating Billy) and just concentrate on making a good product end up succeeding. (Imagine that!).
One of Microsoft's tactics over the years is to bait companies into direct competition with them. Usually companies that take the bait lose.
As long as LINUX continues to improve NOT because of MS but because people are interested in making better software, then I think success will continue.
I'd imagine it's as if you were playing some game like raquetball or tennis and some dude is at the fence trying to get you to "compete" when you are perfectly content to play whatever you are playing, and get better.
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
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...
IBM has more developers working on Linux than RedHat has employees. I'd say that makes them as much a Linux company as RedHat, wouldn't you?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
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.
Bah and Humbug...
1 - The X protocol can be easily and widely implemented. There is a free reference implementation that (a) works, and (b) is free.
It is *easy* to implement X on anything that has a frame buffer, or is scan-line writeable.
2 - Drivers? Init the hardware and get going. Yup, you may have to figure out the reverse engineering. Suck it up.
3 - The attempts to be "better" than X failed -- because -- (wait for it), they weren't better. They may have been more "Windows" like, or "Mac" like, but certainly not better than X.
And that's all there is to it.
What is "Better than X"?
To start with, it would have to support the features of X. And NONE of the attempts (including the Current Mac OS X) does so.
Not that it couldn't be done, it just hasn't been. (why is left to the reader).
-- Network transparency
-- Extensible
-- Reference implementation
-- No OS, device, or platform specific features, except as extensions.
-- Good performance across a wide range of platforms
-- Support for multiple visuals
-- Good event support
-- Easy porting
And the final "killer" feature:
-- Should be able to support legacy X (easy), and also (with efficiency) drive X as a back-end.
The final point would be a testament to portability (Note to gentle reader: X does this already, with XNest: X in X).
With all of this in place, I would certainly consider replacing X Native -- I would have nothing to loose. I could even start by "staging" NewGUI on X, and as applications used NewGUI, finally replace X.
But, if X is being used purely as final rendering tool, it can only be replaced if an alternate rendering protocol is arguably better. And this hasn't happened.
Instead, X Extensions tend to take up the slack, and we proceed.
In other words, X *IS* the driver interface to render visuals. Unfortunately, Apple disagrees: putting X *on* OS X, instead of OS X *on* X. Making the Mac useless to quite a few people.
If Apple were confident that OS X protocol were more efficient (less network traffic) than X, why not compete?
Either (1) it isn't more efficient, or (2) the user base doesn't care about that feature. And, it's a major feature to lose. At least for those who use hetergenous platforms.
Ratboy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Not as bad as Indonesia. I have spent two months in Ecuador and the corruption there is NOTHING to what you see in Indonesia.
It is true, though that if you bribe the right people, you can usually get some traction. However, things have unpredictable consequences.
When I was in Indonesia for six months, there was a massive movement among businesses to switch to Linux. So, I wondered why, and I asked a few people. The answer really didn't surprise me, but it is of interest to this discussion.
It seems that the Indonesian Government had begun a serious crack-down on the distribution of pirated movies and software (apparently due to presure from the US). Now you couldn't get Windows for $10 anymore, and nobody wanted to pay for it, so they were adopting Linux wholesale.
So, in this case, you have to bribe a WHOLE LOT of people. And in the long run you still lose.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP