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Linux on the Tipping Point
Reader stormcoder wrote to mention an article on Enterprise Linux I.T. in which the author posits that even though Linux is built on a legend, the reality of Linux outstrips even the myth. From the article: "..the fact that Linux has traditionally been compared to Microsoft's Windows brand products and not the other Unix variants will most likely lead the general public to perceive all this as Linux sailing on to new horizons while Microsoft stalls out. This perceptual shift should totally reverse the previous mainstream view that Microsoft and Intel were somehow at the forefront of high technology computing -- thereby pushing Linux over the magic edge of a social tipping point."
All people want to know is if it can run their word processor, their games, and their stupid movies their friend send them.
That page was riddled with Microsoft Windows advertisements...
Really! It is!
No, really!
*cough*
Oh yeah, every year for the last several years. Examples follow"
March 2003
July 2003
November 2004
December 2003
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Kickass 3d shooter games and support for devices.
It consists of a Linux kernel developed by Torvalds and his colleagues by radically improving an earlier open-source Unix released by Andrew Tannenbaum in 1987 If he is implying Linux was is based on Minix, he is incorrect, albeit, extreamly early versions of Linux did use the minix filesystem and minix to bootstrap. In design, though, Linux and minix are fundementally different. Also I am sure Tanenbaum would disagree that Linux is a radically improved version of Minix -- as he is an advocate of microkernels.
There are many varied reasons that Slashdotters hate Microsoft. But this brings up one of my pet peeves about the corporation, the perception that it's on the forefront of computing technology.
I remember as a young lad downloading a copy of Slackware on 12 diskettes, installing it, and having a revelation as I realised that there was something better than DOS on top of which we could build a GUI and desktop system.
It was a thing of beauty, to see this brand new thing called Linux which came with source code (gasp) and made DOS and Win3.11 look like the crap it was.
Imagine my devastation when I started reading history and found out that Linux was just continuing a then 20-year tradition of open source, stability, and multiprocessing. Then I had to watch the slow decline and shittification (to coin a word) of the industry as Microsoft became more and more powerful.
It was depressing to me to watch as person after person suffered through BSODs, memory mismanagement, corrupted data, etc. whilst I knew that sitting right there on my HDD, with no marketing clout, sat the answer.
Microsoft is navigated by some brilliant captains. But they're brilliant sociopaths, consistently destroying everything that is Right and Good about our industry.
I found myself apologising to users for the lameness of the software they were using, and unable to really provide them with any alternative.
It makes me a really happy person to look at Linux these days. Thanks to RMS, IBM, Novell, SuSE, RedHat, and others (the non-sociopathic brilliant people (fuck you, SCO)), Linux is looking really, really good today.
I'm actually finally considering migrating my wife off of Win32 (she types Chinese, and Chinese input under Linux was pretty useless up until this month) and onto Mandrake 10.2b3! Milestone.
Linux rightfully deserves the title of being on the forefront of technology. Microsoft? They were holding us back.
fifth sigma, inc.
Either Windows is the standard and its emulation the ultimate goal or Windows is junk to be ignored. Which is it Linux? The only people who have satisfactorily answered that question are the fine folks over at Apple. They've forged their own path while Linux strives to be "more like Windows".
Linux acceptance has been driven by its perceived political correctness in the mass media, itself an artifact of the legend of Torvalds
/. that is)?
Linux is politically correct now (outside
Fundamentally, everybody likes to be leading edge,
Geeks do. Businesses don't give a toss.
most of those who did replace a few Windows servers with Linux soon found that the software's quality led to much bigger benefits in terms of operational stability, support staffing and the overall integrity of their information systems.
Well gee, that's new. The fact is, small companies install and run Windows, and put up with the problems, because they just can't afford a "linux guy".
Most people agree that products like Sun's Java Latest News about Java desktop don't have as many features as Microsoft's integrated office suites, but people willing to give up some bells and whistles are finding the open-source products fully functional and free of the proprietary limitations built into Microsoft's products.
Because Java isn't proprietary?
As a result, the fact that Linux has traditionally been compared to Microsoft's Windows brand products and not the other Unix variants will most likely lead the general public to perceive all this as Linux sailing on to new horizons while Microsoft stalls out.
No, the general perception is that Linux is arcane, and Windows is kind of annoying but "easy". I'm talking about moms and pops' perception...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
If users who get their computer knowledge from fashion magazines see a change, it will be from Windows to a marketed, hip, device. The Mac being currently marketed to such segments almost as an "internet attachment" to your iPod makes it the most likely candidate for the fashionistas who are tech-clueless.
The class of managers and marketers who are tech-clueless and perceive the PC as a fancy addition to their typewriter or calculator may very well perceive Linux as the new and better upgrade to the PC.
One thing that's frequently downplayed is that Linux will run on both Mac and PC hardware. Showing off Linux running on these two hardware platforms will go a long way toward telling the tech-clueless that Linux goes well beyond traditional personal computers: both in abilities and in their lack of turf wars and platform exclusive tricks. (And if it helps enlighten a few politicians, judges, or patent attorneys about what an OS is, all the better)
Linux is the tech of tomorrow that can replace the dodgier tech that's being pushed today.
This was exactly the same way for servers back in 1999, 2000, 2001. In fact, the only ones to get it right was IDG and Gartner, when they proclaimed that Linux would have less than 1% of servers on the internet by 2005. And we all know that Linux on the servers have not gone well. Right? Oh wait....
I suspect that we have allready gone over the tipping point. It is now just a matter of companies such as IDG/Gartner to point out that they were wrong on this as well. Of course, their own income will plummet.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It can also be a sudden burst of mass insanity as mainstream public opinion gets caught up in a new myth like the "new economy" of the dot-bomb era. Such a one-sided definition totally misses the point of how or why such change (for which "paradigm shift" was the previous buzzword) occurs.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Doesn't it take two hands to type?
I predict the following: Linux will never threaten windows on the desktop.
People want windows because:
1) They want everything to just work instantly. Windows does this, as far as the average user can tell.
2) They want access to all programs out there, just in case they ever need them. Just having web, email, and a word processor is not enough, because there is always a small chance that they might need to install something exotic two years down the road.
3) They want to be able to play games. Even my mother wants this, and she has only played two games in the last 10 years.
Sorry, but something really extraordinary is needed to even threaten Microsofts dominance, much less overtake it. Linux can hope to become as popular as Macintosh, but even that is very hard. Apple stuff is easy, remember?
It is very likely, however, that Linux becomes as dominant as Windows is on the desktop for everything that isn't a desktop (or has a gui). And this in itself is pretty awesome.
Will code a sig generator for food
Linux is in exactly the same position, and the free software world needs to recognize this. Unlike Windows, Linux's monopoly was not created to exploit its users; unlike Windows, Linux's monopoly is not -really- exclusive (it is just Unix). But Linux's chief selling point is still mere compatibility -- with both hardware and software -- and because of the power of this inertia, Linux can succeed without actually being better. This is what makes Linux the next Windows.
Unix was a great system in 1970. It was a far, far better way to manage a computer than the most popular approaches at the time, and became successful because of this. It was a great contribution to computing.
Today, however, by all rational measures it should be obsolete. Nobody designing an operating system today would make it anything like Unix, unless they wanted it to be compatible with Unix. I don't want to get into specific critiques -- if you disagree on this point, then just ignore me. If, however, you see the myriad outdated approaches in the design of Unix, then you will realize the problem here.
Systems like Plan9 or EROS use designs obviously superior to Unix, and are destined to fail because of this, not in spite of it. If we do not figure out the problem here and fix it, we will be stuck with Unix for as long as it took to get rid of Microsoft -- maybe longer.
Ken Thompson said it thusly:
I don't know of anyone who considered linux a significant technological breakthrough. Its claim to fame has always been how it was "free." (even by people who don't understand the issues behind software freedom.) The only thing this article contributes is a tie-in with the latest jargon of the day "Tipping point." BTW I agree that BSDs should deserve more attention than linux, but I don't think articles like this will help achieve that.
Jenna Jameson will show us the way.
I converted one of my workstations over to linux as a means to broaden my horizions. Not too long after that I got a call to finx one of my friends computers. After 3 hours of cleaning up malware of all kinds I learned that 1) He had a fetish for hot asian teens, and 2) I would only get this call again, since he didn't want to learn to use a newsreader.
So I floated the idea of him getting a mobile rack and putting linux on a cheap 40 GB HD. I selected Mandrake since I had grown to loath Redhat.
6 months or so later he uses linux almost exclusively. I don't have to say why. And he's bragging to his friends as work how awesome it is to surf for porn on linux, and how him computer isn't crippled by shit.
But the masses, they don't hear the kind of cloistered evangelism taking place on Slashdot. It doesn't even exist in their world. But the dream of malware free porn does. It might not be the high road, but the way is there. And it has nothing to do with the rambeling delusions offered up in groupthinkgeek pieces.
Linux will reach critical mass in germany within the next 12 months. Everybody with more than 2 braincells and some IT knowledge has predicted this for years. For more and more partners I work with it isn't a question of wether or not one should use Linux, but how to apply it. It's actually a thing I bet my business on two years ago and to date I haven't regreted it. :-)
MS Windows is done with. People allways call me insane when I say this, but even the most notorious Windows users here say they will migrate to Linux when Win2K support ceases.
It could very well be that MS will pull a publicity stunt and start releasing their own Linux Distro, with DX9, NTFS and all. They'd have to admit having done a big mistake, they'd be 3 years late, but I guess with 40 billion on the bank it's not such a big problem taking hold of the 15% growth FOSS IT services market in something like 6 months flat.
Anyway you look at it, the next years are going to be interessting and probably lot's of fun aswell.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
A lot of people on Slashdot have tons of experience typing with one hand.
That's not really the problem. It has more to do with Linux as a game development environment totally lacking any good tools and debugging. Game developers don't want to have to make these tools themselves, that only hinders development times.
I have to disagree. The lack is not in code or tools to produce code. Linux does not really lack for game code -- it is at least as rich as the Windows world in available game libraries, and vastly richer in codebases to crib from. Some very extensive projects have been conducted, and very little has been built on them (Crystal Space is a great example).
The lack is in content -- audio, video, graphics, and even well-written English text. Almost every Linux game project I can think of has a severe lack of content.
On the Linux Game Tome today, if I search for top-rated games, the top-rated is Battle For Wesnoth. That game at one point used cribbed graphics from a commercial game, currently has a very limited 2d sprite set that would have been par-for-the-course in the Super Nintendo's heyday, and has character facial portraits that are atrocious (one more comment about the prince looking awfully fruity, and I think everyone will go insane). And this project is known for having rather good graphics for the Linux gaming world. I don't mean to bash the Wesnoth people (hell, I've hacked on the codebase), as they have a fun game. But the limiting factor is very definitely graphics.
Another game I've enjoyed is lincity. Good game, all open-source and not just a clone of a closed-source game -- but the graphics are reminicent of bad MSDOS game graphics.
After Wesnoth on the "top rated Linux games" list is Freeciv. Freeciv has graphics that are reasonable...for a decade-old game. It does not improve on the game it is cloning.
Next is BZflag, possibly the most popular 3d-accelerated multiplayer Linux game. It has incredibly simple graphics (note that 2.0 has improved things a bit). DOOM is really more graphically complex than BZflag. Again, fun, but it's simply not remotely able to compete with modern 3d games when it comes to texturing and modelling.
Next is Neverball. While this game has decent-looking textures, it also has no more than a handful of textures all told, perhaps a tenth or a hundredth of what a commercial, closed-source 3d game would probably have.
Next on the list is NetHack. NetHack is a terminal-based game (not that I think that this inhibits gameplay, as I just finished a four-hour stint playing Tales of Middle Earth), with extremely simplistic tile-based graphics. There have been a few attempts to improve things -- Falcon's Eye is a notable NetHack fork, with music and alpha-blended graphics -- but still nowhere near modern commercial-quality graphics. Now, as the NetHack aficionados among you know, NetHack can be a lot of fun, and while long-term replayability depends more on game logic than graphics, anyone who thinks that graphics and sound don't play a key role in making a game enjoyable is simply not being honest with themselves (and I would suggest that they try watching a horror movie with the sound off).
I am not demanding that open source developers do differently. I hack on games for the fun of it, and would not be interested in producing graphics, because I am not a good artist, or someone that finds creating game graphics fun. Good coders like donating their time -- perhaps because they are in a position that currently pays well and lacks enough employees that they do not need to compete as hard, and can afford to give away work as gifts for the sheer enjoyment. Artists work in a rather more competitive world (there are simply more people that want to be artists than there can be funded artists), and do not seem to be able to enjoy the same gift-based culture.
Another consideration is degree of work commitment. Code is largely opaque to the user, and differences between programmers large
- Manufacturers start releasing Linux drivers for their hardware along side of the Windows and MAC drivers
- Web sites stop building their sites to only work with IE on Windows
- PC manufacturers sell more systems with Linux pre-installed for the average user (which makes my job of playing everyone's Professional Geek easier).
- PC manufacturers reject the idea of hardware which *ONLY* works on Windows (read: winmodem, Windows only printers, etc.)
- It becomes easier to convince average users that yes, your little home PC really does work better (fewer viruses, spyware, etc.) with Linux
- Budget ISPs (like WalMart, BlueFrog, Nescape, NetZero, etc.) release dialers and connection utilities for Linux, so I don't have to custom configure a system if a friend wants to use a dial-up provider instead of spending $45/month for a Cable or DSL service he or she only uses once in a while
- At work, I don't have to fight with the IT group every time they try to re-image my workstation with the latest "Standard" XP image, or explain yet again why I really *DON'T* need to update my anti-virus software on a daily basis in order to keep their network free of virus threats.
I could go on, but these are a few reasons off the top of my head why I think it really does matter that Linux is continuing to gain traction on the desktop. There really are advantages to gaining momentum. Linux was my primary OS long before it was "Popular" or "Politically Correct", but I can see plenty of advances that have come about because Linux is now on everybody's radar screen.Do I think that 2005 will be the magical "Tipping Point" for Linux? I don't really think we are going to see a mad rush for Linux on computers sold at stores like CompUSA, Best Buy and WalMart, or even online stores like Dell, but there is certainly a smell of change in the air...
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Non-computer people see the computer as a single entity - it's not quite Windows that crashes, it's "the computer" (but they do seem to know that Microsoft is to blame). They really don't give a crap about the distinction between the OS and the computer, so they may see it as more reasonable to get a whole new computer rather than perform what they perceive as "brain surgury" to put Linux on it (and which Linux should it be? Red Hat, Linspire, Gentoo, etc... kind of confusing for someone who doesn't follow this stuff and isn't quite sure what role Linux plays on their computer).
So here's the logic as I see it: now that a Macintosh can be had for a reasonable $500, and getting a new, "different kind" of computer seems like the best solution, the Mac Mini seems more likely to replace Windows on the average desktop than Linux. Everyone's heard of the Apple Macintosh, and Mac software does sometimes appear in retail stores (besides Apple stores). It seems to be selling well enough.
Now, we know that it's cheaper to install Linux on your existing hardware, but just try to put yourself in the shoes of average, don't-care-about-computers-they're-just-a-tool person and imagine how they see things.
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