Slashdot Mirror
LinuxWorld Response to 'How to Kill Linux'
aneroid writes "In response to John Dvorak's "How to Kill Linux" column, LinuxWorld has a riposte to the columnist's assertations. From the article: "Because most of the time, with mainstream devices, I work out of the box. For the "savvy user" and OEM builder, the Linux driver "problem" isn't the problem it was. The days when my poor user had to sweat blood to get me onto a laptop are long gone. Sure, if I get slung onto some random old machine there are still wrinkles, but from what I see on the Windows support forums, that's hardly unique." <update> The story is actually from GrokLaw originally - credit where credit is due.
are not the problem they were, but they are still a problem and are severe enough to put a lot of people off. That said driver issues will never be the death of Linux. Dvorak was talking complete horse pucky there.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Because we all know that the majority of computer users are "savvy".
I can attest to that actually - these "You visit illegal websites" messages that SpamAssasin has been dumping to the rate of ~50 an hour since last week must be coming into my Linux mail server from an alien civilization, not from stupid people that open ZIP attachements in messages written in bad engrish and then run the executables inside.
Quite a riposte. Not that I thought the original "how to kill Linux" column was particularly insightful, in fact it was down right dumb. Microsoft can no more kill Linux than Sun or anyone else. But c'mon. Why legitimize it with this?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
While I think the issue of drivers is an important one, WHY must some people even give credence to Dvorak's heated columns - knowing full well that he always writes something sensational and occasionally ridiculous - simply to work the ad banners on his site.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
How Can you kill a movement with thousands of members worldwide?
6 4
Dvorak thinks that just because of a lack of drivers for some hardware, that people are just going to get frustrated and leave? I have just as much trouble, if not more, finding drivers for some of my hardware for windows.
If anything we should just Kill Bill http://www.splitreason.com/productdetail.php?id=1
"Let me spell it out for you: I get used because I'm open, trusted, free and reliable"
Are all us, Linux users, like that? My guess is "no", even my hope is "yes"
It is good that LinuxWorld has dismissed Dvorak's FUD. Dvorak is more of a source of entertainment than real insight. I remember Dvorak ranting about the "System Idle Process" in the Windows task manager "eating" 98% CPU. If we want his FUD to stop, we need to stop paying attention to him and editors of Slashdot and others need to stop articles linking to his BS.
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
Linux on laptops has improved. You can get a basic install working on a modern laptop, but getting all the things windows users take for granted can take work. Lots of work, including installing kernel patches and patches to those patches. You also frequently have to sacrifice goats to get certain features working.
The worst offenders are (in no order of importance or difficulty): suspend (to disk or ram), accelerated 3d graphics, DVD playing, battery life monitoring (and general ACPI stuff), wireless networking, bluetooth, power-saving features (like CPU throttling) and making them extra buttons do things.
We buy laptops for new students each year and stick linux on them, and it generally takes us a couple of weeks to iron out all the kinks, and sometimes we dont bother. If anyone knows a UK supplier of laptops with Linux pre-installed that do all the above things out of the box, let me know, I might want a dozen in October.
Baz
Linux is the operative system with better driver support out-of-the-box. Windows fully depends on 3d party companies. Guess what happens when your support finishes or the company bankrupts? I know a few people with scanners that don't work in XP - there's not support except for windows 9x systems. Windows XP SP2, for example, doesn't supports SATA, you need 3rd party drivers in a floppy (unless you integrate them) if you want to install XP in a SATA box. Linux and freebsd just work.
Guess what will happen with "Windows 64 bits?". Tons of unsupported devices will never work on windows 64, companies are not going to waste money on redoing drivers for a dead product (specially lots of crappy devices made by crappy companies). And you know, you can run 32 bits programs but you can't run 32 bits drivers in a 64 bits kernel. Which is why the Windows world is going to take forever (give them 10 years as minimum) to switch to the 64 bit world, many people are going to continue using 32-bits Windows for lots of years.
And it's only worse for the dual-core CPUs which are coming at the end of Q2. Dual Core means that people will run SMP kernels, and it also means your drivers need to be SMP safe - its VERY easy to hang your machine with a non-SMP-safe driver. And everyone is going to run dual core machines - even the ones who want to run 32 bits windows. So, wait a few months, I predict we'll spend a few years laughing at Windows users just because of those reasons - lots of blue screens because of non-SMP-safe drivers and unsupported devices in windows 64 bits. Meawhile, in the linux world, everything will work (we'll get a few non-smp-safe-driver bug reports, but we fix those quite fast)
The whole point of the article is that Windows has more drivers than Linux has, so if Linux was to get support for Windows drivers, everybody would use Linux. Right? Wrong (of course)! Why?
The programs you are used to on Windows don't run (or don't look as good, and don't run flawlessly) on Linux. Wine is great, but Microsoft is starting to attack Wine, as Slashdot has recently pointed out. Until all programs are being built for Windows, Mac, and Linux, it is no easier to use Linux.
Even if people aren't that attached to Windows programs, many Linux programs look very different and are much harder to use than Windows equivalents. The only programs that are up to or almost up to Windows's level of ease is Firefox (compared to IE, not AOL or MSN), Thunderbird, and, just barely, OpenOffice.org. Mainly this is because, again, everybody's used to Windows.
Most people don't know what drivers are, and they shouldn't have to, as Paul Graham has said before! They just expect to plug-and-play. They won't pay for Windows drivers on Linux, because the significance of drivers isn't apparent to them.
Finally, the reason more people write drivers for Windows is because more people use Windows. If more people use Linux, more drivers for Linux will soon follow. Drivers are not the cause, they are the effect.
Before you walk a mile in someone's shoes, you should insult them so you know how they are and what they're doing.
I have to agree with this.
... and it has nothing to do with X protocol, its fine, blah, blah, blah. Whatever has been done with X.org makes X a lot faster now. I don't care of the technical details. With that attititude, nothing would ever have been done.
;)
I think the kernel config as a whole needs a major revamp, or at least some of the things should be reworded and such. I've avoided the 2.6 kernel and use 2.4 because make menuconfig (yes, there's a plain text file too) because its too bloody confusing.
Before the X.org project, people complained 'X was slow'
I think binary, closed source drivers should be allowed into the main kernel. Maybe it would make installing the ATI drivers and Nvidia drivers easier for the rest of us.
And I always get some RTFA jerk (there's plenty of nice people though). Perhaps, I've read as much as I can understand and can't use the same technical jargon. Maybe the documents (read: man pages) just aren't written very clearly.
I think what is killing Linux is the frequent changes to the way things are done (kernel, X) and a high threshold of learning which makes it too hard to convert to.
I'm comfortable enough using Slackware, but there is still a lot to be done before I replace Windows with Linux.
Sorry, if I sound too critical. I do not intend to be. Afterall, I know many contributors to the projects are doing it on unpaid, free time. You have as much of a right to your opinion, on how things "should be" as I do. If not more, since you're doing 'all the work'
Because most of the time, with mainstream devices, I work out of the box.
That's because you're either working with fairly generic devices (i.e., disk drives, ethernet cards), or of the more "exotic" devices, you're specifically buying the ones you KNOW have proper driver support.
When you expand your scope of hardware to include things like multi-function printers, webcams, wireless ethernet cards, USB video digitizer boxes, etc. your chances of success are greatly reduced.
To put it another way: if you were to be handed some random piece of hardware from a Best Buy store, you still don't have the utmost confidence that it'll work "out of the box" because there's lots of hardware in retail stores that either doesn't have a Linux driver or at best requires a long, convoluted install process in order to get reduced functionality (i.e., your multi-function printer can now print, albeit at a lower resolution and the scanner functionality doesn't work).
By contrast, at least you know with Windows that that random piece of hardware should at least in theory work with Windows since there was obviously a Windows driver written for it.
Linux, in my opinion, still doesn't win this challenge.
I have a suggestion that might make this conversation more fruitful: If someones is going to use language like The linux core is more stable and more reliable than the windows core. Period., that someone should back it up with some real statistics. Otherwise he/she should maybe say something like In my experience Linux core has been more stable and reliable, that way he/she wouldn't be talking out of his/her ass.
Drivers are only an issue for the desktop market, where GNU/Linux can't be killed - because it's been stillborn. There isn't any Linux market to kill. Support for high volume, low quality hardware is less important for the server and embedded market, which are the only ones with a significant Linux presence.
I dunno... I'm a linux supporter, but I can honestly say that I've had linux act like this at times. Sometimes audio on flash movies will play, sometimes it won't.
Sounds like a problem with flash, not Linux.
It usually requires only a reboot, but it still shouldn't need to.
Linux isn't windows and you shouldn't be rebooting for this. Whatever is crashing on you system can most likely be restarted with a one line console command.
But it's significantly less of a problem than corrupted IDE drivers, especially considering it could (and probably is) the flash player's fault.
Yep. If ALL your sound quit working, you might have a sound driver issue, but it sounds like you have an issue with crappy, probably closed-source flash software... part of the reason I don't have flash installed.
Life is too short to proofread.
No, Linux is more like European higher education. You don't get in based on hand-outs, parental connections or a fat wallet - all you need is proof of your intelligence by way of examination, and if you get in... it's free.
Same with Linux. It's free, assuming you can grok it. As a CS major its' hardly a self-compliment to state that you can barely figure your way around it.(You mean you still can't listen to music, watch videos, browse the web, have a decent desktop?) There is really no excuse for it with the copious amount of documentation and support, especially for someone whose familiarity with computers extends past 'surfing the Internet Explorer.'
You are likely to reply back, smearing this as "elitism" or some related non-sense. Alas, you would have misunderstood.
You miss the point. Installing Debian is nothing. Getting your sound to work and getting the desktop to display at the right resolution is a bitch. Getting a laptop to work correctly is hard.
I can't comment on Slackware, but I gave up on plain Debian after a week of frustration. I could install it, but I couldn't use it how I wanted.
Thanks God Ubuntu came....(and Mepis, Xandros, Knoppix, take your pick)
Open Source Sushi
One month ago, I rebuilt two PCs for my sister and her kids on Windows 2000. I showed them how to update and run virus checkers, spyware checkers, defrag and cleaning utilities. Each time they run one of these tools, they call me on the phone first and I talk them through what to do.
However, one month later, both PCs are totally screwed - mainly because the kids play a lot of online games and sit in chatrooms. Both PCs are infested with "XXX Popups" and now cannot connect to the Internet.
Sure, I run Windows 2000 at home and it runs smoothly without any real problems, provided I take the time to check the PCs on a regular basis. However, the time I spend on Windows 2000 maintenance is probably more than what I spend on my Linux PCs, after I've done all the security updates, scans, etc.
The fact is that clever Microsoft marketing has convinced Joe Average that Windows is quick and easy to maintain when the reality is that most of the Joe Averages have to rely on friends, relatives, the local PC store and re-installation CDs to keep their PCs working.
Let's be under no illusion - using Linux requires a degree of PC knowledge and a steep learning curve but Windows is no different by the time you have to start running virus checkers, spyware checkers and applying virtually constant updates.
If Windows does kill Linux, then it will be as the result of clever Microsoft marketing, not because of drivers.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.