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OSS Unix: Dividing & Conquering Itself
(Score.5, Interestin writes "Security guru Marcus Ranum has some interesting thoughts about how a continuing lack of consistency among Unix systems (and particularly Linux) is hurting Linux (and remaining commercial Unix vendors like Sun) and helping Microsoft. Admittedly this has been said before, but no-one else quite manages to phrase things the way Marcus can."
The 3 BSDs are much more consistent, and don't move things around on you for no reason.
http://www.olene.net/linux.html
Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
Did anyone else seem to experience a slashdot outage? I thought I would have had to go outside for a minute there.
And get a windowing system that can be tuned to be efficient if one so desires.
Bloody 'ell!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This is my problem when I'm trying to convert my friends, family, or co-workers over to Linux. There are many good package distribution systems (apt, rpm, etc.), and many very solid distros, but that's part of the problem...
Because you can move things around for good reason.
Isn't the ability to customize things to your own liking the main selling point of Linux based OSes? Mainstream Linux is going to end up being someone like RedHat or SuSe no matter how much better the little homegrown distros get because only those 2 offer anywhere near the support that a company is going to require. Let distros split and evolve as much as they want, it increases the chance of major innovations being developed. When something useful comes out of one of the offshoots one of the major players will adapt it and support it.
Please do not let scientific accuracy interfere with the intended humourous/interesting/insightful value of this comment
That is one of the things that gives Linux somewhat of a setback is the lack of common ground behind each distro. I currently use Mandrake 10.1, but I also have been a Red Hat user, but gave up on Fedora Core 3. Granted, their has been a standards committee created, but there has to be more common ground for the distro's before Linux can really challenge MS on the Desktop. Just my opinion though...
I have nothing clever to put here...
Not only has it been said, also drawn: http://www.geocities.com/msadscan/msad-1280x1024.j pg
(not linkified since it's a Geocities link and I took pity...)
While the UNIX vendors beat eachother up over what amounted to nitpicking details, another vendor offered the same consistent kind of software experience across a broad spectrum of hardware, including laptops. I am referring, of course, to Microsoft/Intel.
Yup you could always count on that blue screen of death no matter what hardware you ran on - at least it gave you a warm fuzzy feeling inside!
...and inconsistencies must there be to realize that in some cases there can too much of a good thing, i.e. choice?
I used Linux for 6 years before I moved to Windows XP and the whole memory feels like I was paying my debt to society for some awful crime.
Or is that another ball game?
Usually there are more incompatibilities between 98 and XP then between Solaris and *BSD / Linux.
I am missing Apple's OS X in the picture drawn in the article. Apple does things differently than other Unices but companies like Adobe and Macromedia are present here. At least on the desktop, Apple is a much bigger threat to Microsoft than any Linux or *BSD. (Apple is probably a threat to Linux on the Desktop because here applications is what counts.)
At the beginning was at.
"Salt Lake City Airport, Dec 4, 2005" (look at the bottom of the page)
hm, slashdot editors -- for once you've repeated news from future!
This is why more people need to get involved in projects like the Linux Standard Base. If more distros would quit trying to do their own thing and work together, Linux might be able to really take off. Autopackage will help people with installation hell between distros. And hopefully, freedesktop.org's new set of UI standards will help KDE and Gnome people get along a little better too....but then again, we are talking about human beings here.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
This is a legitimate issue, but it has no solution as long as opensource development continues to be done by insecure "14 year olds" who have no understanding of enterprise needs. The only solution I can see is for more corporate involvement , sponsorship, and ultimately leadership.
been gone a while, glad to see slashdot still sucks big donkey balls. Front page looks like my ass exploded when using firefox right now. And it took 10 minutes to even resolve. You guys suck balls losers.
This argument could go either way.
The opposing view would be that since Linux competes with itself, through survivial-of-the-fittest, only the most prefered features get passed on. This process would make the OS stronger with each iteration. These iterations are more frequent than iterations of Windows.
This is fairly different from Redmond's approach of dictating what a Windows user wants and patching it to keep it working. Then maybe with the new version of Windows every 4 years or so (or maybe some large service pack) there will be some significant feature change.
There is a more consistent look and feel between Windows versions because features aren't competing side by side with each other. In Linux, there are competing desktop evironments, file structures, startup scripts, etc. Any featureset that is determined poor or redundant is dropped and the stronger featureset prevails.
I stopped reading when Marcus said he could "just compile" across many different unixes in 1985. I think that's way off-base. I've been building stuff on different unixes since 1979, and there have always been these kinds of problems. With the possible exception of AIX, things are not especially any worse than they were then. The good news is how many of the proprietary unixes are "mostly dead".
Today, if you want a consistent software experience, you have little choice but to go with Windows
Which incanation of Windows is he talking about. I would venture to say windows xp and 2000 are about as different as Redhat and Debian.
he's right.
I've been kicking around Unix and Windows systems for as long as he has, both as a network and system administrator and more recently as a journalist, and while the techie side of me cares passionately about distribution performance and the like, I also know that what the real world cares about is: 1) Does it work and 2) Do I have to learn anything new about how it works.
That's it.
Anything, anything, that gets in the way of getting the job done with the least amount of training gets in the way of adoption.
That's why efforts like the LSB are so darn important. ISVs, CIOs, CTOs and customers, don't want to care about whether you're running Red Hat or Novell/SUSE, KDE or GNOME, they just want to stick the disk in and have the program run. Period. End of statement.
We, as techies, may love to argue and fuss over every last detail--file system fights anyone?--but operating systems are just like cars. While gearheads love tinkering with every last detail of their automobiles, most people just want to get in their car and drive.
Windows may splutter and be prone to accidents, but you just drive it.
Until Linux and the other open source operating systems stop requiring people to turn the starter crank, let out the choke, and pump the gas pedal three times before starting--with each distribution requiring a slighly difference sequence--Windows will continue to dominate the desktop.
Darn it.
Steven
Is my hero.
Finally, someone saying what needs to be said.
What I got into a huge argument saying.
I hope that the OSS people finally listen...
Guys, let's face the facts: Windows is a monopoly because short-sighted open source geeks and UNIX weenies were too busy squabbling over whether RPM was better than build-from-source or Gnome versus KDE, etc, ad nauseam.
Give me a break. Windows is a "monopoly" because of many shrewd (and questionably legal) business tactics. They were first to market with a usable GUI on reasonably priced equipment, and were successfully able to put these users on the upgrade treadmill. There aren't many "open source geeks and UNIX weenies" who actually produce code arguing about the minituae of each dialect and variant of Unix. This can be easily seen in the fact that most high quality open source apps run on each of those variants, without too much fanfare.
So the battle in the free UNIX space is entirely over command line options, system administration paradigms, installation packaging, and 3D GUI features. I've got news for you: Real Programmers Don't Care about that garbage.
I agree. So what is your point? If "Real Programmers" don't care about this "garbage", how is this hurting UNIX, and helping MS?
The open source movement is not going to hurt Microsoft to any significant degree. But it'll put Sun out of business. Good move, guys!
Actually, this is a good move. If Sun is unwilling to recognize their current situation, they deserve to go out of business. Instead of wasting time trying to create and sell something that can easily be had for little or no cost, they could invest those resources differentiating themselves into something that can reap greater rewards.
Make a system consistent and uniform across and you get easy to access, repeatable behavior in any application that utilizes it. However if the system is comprised now every application that utilizes it is now flawed in exactly the same way. In short, the advantages an application writer can utilize a hacker can utilized too.
Make a system hetorgenious where each system "rolls their own" security setup means that if one part is comprised doesn't automatically mean your system is comprised. However this is a nightmare to code through where some systems simply aren't talking the same permission objects.
I believe vendors should strive to blend both: a flexible system that behaves the same way reguardless of actual underlying system. A true enterprise solution has many layers of abstraction anyway. Hide away the parts that are different and expose the parts that are common. Do this any your SMB system will behave like your Kerbrose system and yet won't be weakened when one or the other is comprised.
Forget agreeing on the "one true system" becuase no system will satisfy everyone. What vendors should agree upon is interface API and build upon that. I really want a system where I can swap out SMB or Kerbrose or files with MD5 password hashes or whatever to all function. Diversity is key but behavior should be consistent.
Despite the humourous overtones of my subject heading here, I'm quite serious. The "lack of consistency" is actually just normal Unix diversity. That diversity is very much what has enabled Unix to stay around so long in the first place because it wasn't tied to any one platform, architecture, or even paradaigm of thought, as changes to technology occurred, Unix was always able to grow and change and adapt with the times.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
From the article: Windows is a monopoly because short-sighted open source geeks and UNIX weenies were too busy squabbling over whether RPM was better than build-from-source or Gnome versus KDE, etc, ad nauseam.
What the heck? I use and enjoy using Open Source Software because the developers and the community DO have those types of arguments. I would rather them be arguing about which type of package management system works best and then go on to make a better one (which some do) than to spend that time putting up with a system which is built on a system that does not change at all. Things need to change, and eventually Microsoft will realize that if it doesn't change, that it will get left in the dust.
You can't honestly tell me that Microsoft can keep playing their same games with customers and developers for the next 20-30 years and get away with it. Eventually, someone will come along and give Mike Tyson an asswhipping. Maybe that time is now with Linux, maybe its not. But if its something that comes from non-intelligent conversation, then I want no part of it.
When the fighter falls, all the others will start watching another fighter.
My experience writing code for different flavors of UNIX was that they were all pretty similar. About the only one I ever had problems with was HP/UX, which had a different socket programming interface from everyone else. Of course, everyone's gotta have their own package system...
The differences are even fewer on Linux dists. I can pretty much expect a C program to work the same everywhere and just have to adapt to how the filesystem is laid out. And if I want to target pretty much every business out there, I really only have to worry about RedHat and Suse.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Just think of that interview a month or so ago where Roblimo could answer "But not everyone uses Red Hat." to any question or comment that wasn't favorable to Linux, but specifically used RedHat as the distro.
:)
I mean hey, as long as there is so much variance that *any* unfavorable comment can always be countered by finding an obscure reference to something out there. It's a marketing and FUD (f'ed up data form of FUD) jem if I ever saw one.
Linux developers don't compete with MS, they hack their programs so that they are better in their own eyes. That Ray quote comes to mind: Linux will "do what it do, baby."
Linux doesn't ever "lose" because there is no contest taking place.
What we have here is just a ranting off on anecdotal evidence about how big-steel high priced UNIX vendors pushed each other out of the market and now that there is more than one linux vendor it's bound to happen here as well. The guy goes on to call linux vendors punks yelling at Mike Tyson (what the hell does that mean?) and making idiotic claims to defend Windows and MS like "Real Programmers Don't Care."
Guess what, 'real' programmers are exactly the ones who care... that's what the open source movement is all about. Any maybe, just maybe, the only reason big steel UNIX vendors went under is because MS undercut even the cheapest Unices both on the software and the hardware. Maybe they were all fighting about feature sets because they all developed vastly different versions of UNIX independently and honestly believed theirs was better than the others for any given purpose (and maybe they really, really were). And maybe that's why plenty of organizations and universities are still using UNIX decades after it's popularity began to wane.
I don't get it... looking at this dude's profile he's not a dumbass. He even works a bit with open source software. I don't know how he could post a thousand word rant claiming the Linux is going to die because UNIX did (?) without any evidence, proof, or even a theory; just childish flames and a loose correlation. It also seems like he doesn't 'get' open source with crap like the "real programmers don't care" and comparing differences in Linux distros to differences in UNIX distros.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Read in the article where the guy said he had to ask for his friends' advice when choosing which distro to install. If he doesn't know the differences himself, then he doesn't know what he's talking about. I have a lot of respect for the old-school unix admins, but I've met a bunch of them at LUG meetings and in the workplace who don't know @#*$^ about linux. They just stopped learning, and at this point the young generation of people who are growing up with linux know better.
/usr/local or /opt. With an RPM distro, I could also install all necessary base binary rpms, and then compile the exact same source software that I would on Debian.
Look, I'm a 26 yr old *nix sysadmin. I use mostly Debian, but I've set up RH and Slack, and now I've been dabbling with OpenBSD recently.
I don't have 20 yrs of unix experience. I have ~2 yrs of linux (and some BSD) experience. I feel confident that within an hour (or 2 at MOST), I can take ANY mature linux distro, install it on a server, and get ANY mature piece of *nix software installed on it (takes longer from source, and I say installed, not fully-configured). On Debian with the Debian installer, I can set up a box within 30 minutes, apt-get install everything I want, and if I need to install something else from source I can do that pretty quickly in
If he thinks this is hard and there's a compatibility problem between distributions, then he simply doesn't know how to administer linux. Knowing unix from the old SunOS days doesn't mean you know how to resolve rpm dependencies, set up yum, make debs from debian source packages, or install software on linux from source tarballs. It's not hard to learn if you're competent and willing to study, and once you know what you're doing it's easy. But if he doesn't even know the difference betw modern linux distros, of course he has this idea that there are compatibility problems because he doesn't know how to use them.
I run into this situation daily. Having to administer mostly Sun systems with a smattering of AIX and SCO systems, it's astounding to see how many differences there are between them. In fact, I was surprised to find out (the hard way) that there were some significant configuration changes just between Solaris 10 and everything else from Solaris 2.5 and up!
./configure files based on the operating system. There are still some OSS utilities that will not compile in 64-bit on Sun systems, yet 64-bit Sun compilers have been around for years and the same utility will compile in 64-bit for just about all other UNIX variants! The days of real cross-platform compatibility with minimal reconfiguration (such as with CP/M) seem to be getting farther and farther away as more and more people keep fragmenting (even here in /.) into the various "MY version of UNIX can beat up YOUR version of UNIX! Nyah, nyah, nyah!"
It's really ridiculous IMHO to see so many different options that are necessary in most
I remember many years ago when I was told to install WordPerfect for UNIX on a Sun server. It was definitely WordPerfect for UNIX, but in small lettering on the disc it stated that it was for SCO UNIX! So, the UNIX fragmentation was obvious even back then. (Fortunately, the disc was purchased before I started working there, so I couldn't get blamed for that purchase error.)
All that the Windows crowd needs to worry about is what revision of Windows they need. The same can't be said for the UNIX world. Yes, each version and revision of the various UNIX flavors has its own strengths and weaknesses, but the huge number of versions and revisions certainly is great marketing fodder for the Redmonians.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
The good thing about Linus is that he makes hard decisions and pisses people off, hurting their egos in the process, with the end result of a better product. He doesn't do it in order to piss people off, it's a necessary side-effect.
This needs to happen at much higher levels of the Linux stack. The problem is, however, that it's perceived that coders are the only ones to make these types of decisions.
I'm a lone custom programmer where I'm essentially do all of the roles from sales, marketing, developer, product manager, QA, project manager, support, documentation, training. I know first hand how important a manager is. I wish I had a good manager. My customers each individually fill that role in that they can veto certain releases if they are too complicated, buggy, poorly documented, bloated, etc. It is not the same, however, in that each customer is so selfish that they don't have the picture of trying to service the ten other customers.
My point is that Linux needs management. It needs people to make the hard decisions that inevitably get made at Microsoft. There is a great deal of truth in the statement that Microsoft has the ability to pull together disparate parts and make hard decisions across many different properties, especially in terms of integration, which translates into a better experience for the end user. Add the aspect of asthetics, which is so subjective, and it gets much harder to find the people that make the nicest, most elegant, easiest L&F the DEFAULT. BROWN as the default color scheme for UBUNTU? Give me a break. Spatial browsing as the default???? Ugh. A task bar at the bottom and the top????? Ugh.
What I can say as a ciriticism of Linux is that the developers don't take full responsibility for the process the end user has to go through. This attitude of "I do it for myself, if anyone else likes it, great, but if they have a problem they can fix it themselves" is so wrong I don't know where to begin. It's great for Linus to say that he's happy there are all of these distros out there and he would never pick favorites, but at some point someone has to make the hard decisions. At this point, it's just personally embarassing to me that I've been endorsing Linux for over ten yeras as a potential replacement for Windows, and it's really not even close to a tipping point. It still has the potential, but even I find it a pain to use. Configuring *anything* is a PITRA. I tolerated all of the different config files in the beginning ONLY under the premise that eventually there would be a strong move to a GUI for everything, while still keeping the power of the command line. This hasn't happened. Add the GNOME vs. KDE to the equation, and it gets even more depressing. They are both so sub-par in my estimation, it's not even funny.
The final complete nail in the coffin against Linux is the package management problem. Until Firefox/Mozilla can distribute it's own, single binary for any version of Linux, that can be uninstalled easily, that can have all of it's plugins installed MORE EASILY than on Windows, IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN.
As a noob without Unix coding experience, it's even harder - you don't even know what the different flavors MEAN or how to run all the tools to install them, let alone how to get it up and running and install your stupid PCMCIA card or video drivers.
Maybe I'm an idiot, maybe I'm an incompetent, but it's likely I'm more competent than 90% of the people out there.
My little site.
1) This man is comparing the ease of working _lots_ of different OSs vs one OS- compiling programs etc. This isn't very fair- all UNIXes are not one big UNIX. You could create programs that can work on just Linux (or Solaris, or BSD or ...) just as easily as Windows. The difficulty of portability comes when you want to port between more than one OS (duh). Show me a program that compiles easily on Windows and something else, and you might have a point.
2) The reason we have different OSs is because they are _different_. Otherwise there's no point. With the dawn of Linux etc., you can run one OS (even one distro) on many different architectures. So other OS have to do something different, by definition, to justify their existence.
3) All immature industries have many small companies, and as time goes by, they consolidate. We are beginning to see this with Linux distributions. I predict in 2 years there will be less distributions than there are now.
Are we all going to sit around and bitch about it . . . that the man was wrong . . . that the man was right . . . ????
Or, are we going to do something about it????
--There is no place for religion in the spirit of open source software.
After reading tfa I simply have to say this guy really gets it. And I've been saying this for years, I'll promote linux because I'd rather try than give up, but I feel it's a losing battle because of fragmentation.
There's strength in 'polymorphy', true, but *real* strength is in unity, not caring so much about you and your contribution to the grand plan but about the long term vision and it's high time - if not too late - that all these people pulling the oss wagon in 15 different directions (low estimate) start pulling it in the same direction or we'll be using windows 2009 one day... (or at least those who make a living programming).
It's all fun and games to debate one distro or another until you have a family to feed, and binary compatibility would go a long long way towards getting commercial vendors on board.
Oh, and for the real die hards: I'm a programmer, and if the price is right I don't give a damn about the source, as long as it works as advertised. If the source is available so much the better, but if all that happened is that if a corp goes out of business or abandons a piece of code that they'd open source it that would be more than enough for me.
I'd rather download a binary driver than the kernel sources to get one to compile for my kernel version, as if that should matter. Especially considering that I'm on dialup here.
MP3 Search Engine
I've tried converting people to Linux, most have been quite happy until they found a cool piece of software and then realised they had to start editing the configure files. And all because the developer devloped it on another distro.
Most users don't just want consistency, they want ease of use. What sort of OS requires a substantial chunk of software to be compiled by the user? Why do different distros have completely different configuation tools? Why does one OS need so many IM clients, when it still doesn't have a decent vector drawing app?
One word: Polish! Thats what Linux needs. The Linux community needs to address some pretty basic issues regarding usability and consistency. Theres too many developers and not enough usability bods. Under the hood Linux is pretty damn good, but it'll never take on Windows until it gets a reputation for ease of use, consistency and a 'wow' factor.
I've devloped on Sun /HP and Linux. The trouble is that there ALMOST the same. This is really really really anoying and hurts software development. Posix was supposed to help us move to a standard where we knew how the libraries where supposed to work. It didn't help.
If I write something for hpux there is a good chance it will sortof work on Sun or Red Hat or Suse. This hurts software availability on linux/unix, as its work to create different versions.
This explains why languages that are consistant and create there own "eco system" of libraries and are generaly os independant. (Perl/ Python/ Java etc..).
You forgot the BBQ. Where's the BBQ?
Microsoft is consistant only because one company rules over every detail.
Each distribution is self consistant. But each distribution offers strengths and weaknesses compared to the others.
Don't compare Windows to Linux. Compare Windows to Red Hat, or compare Windows to Novell/SUSE
The whole point of having different distributions is that one likes Gnome, One likes KDE, one likes Security, One likes to compile everything...
You don't get that kind of choice with windows, You take what Bill gives you and you like it.
or not.
Who needs an enemy when you can divide and conquer yourself?
I survived the UNIX wars, unlike most of the companies involved in them. In their day, Pyramid, SCO, Apollo, DEC, Sun, Silicon Graphics, Gould and others fought ferocious scorched-earth wars trying to win customers' minds and money. The survivors, with the exception of Sun (a.k.a., The last man standing), have either disappeared into the mists of time, or are niche players that have been forced into new markets in order to survive. Other than their conflict, what did they have in common?
They were all selling some kind of UNIX operating system.
Back in the UNIX wars, the vendors had two primary axes on which they could compete: hardware speed, and features of their flavor of UNIX. Toward the end of the UNIX wars, a third battle evolved, over the desktop metaphor, the look and feel of the workstations' GUI. If you were around back then, you'll remember the ferocious fights over whether or not the 3D-look widgets of the Open Software Foundation (OSF) Motif metaphor were just flash and glitter or whether they were actually kind of cool.
Today, few remember the argument, and the code in question would be considered remarkably tight and lightweight compared to what people now use. If you step back and look at the UNIX wars from a high altitude, the actual battlefield was very small - GUIs and features in a UNIX operating system don't really sway customers much. The vendor who won, Sun, did so because they offered a consistent software experience (SunOs, later Solaris) across a broad spectrum of hardware at different performance levels from desktop to data center. In other words, the customers didn't care if the GUI had a 3D look and feel as long as it was fast, reliable, and affordable. A lot of users got sick of the debate and switched to a public domain window manager (I used twm on all my DEC, Sun, and BSDI machines...) - opting out of the whole battle - because they valued a consistent software experience more than they valued cool 3D-looking widgets.
You don't need to be an advanced student of computer history to know what happened. While the UNIX vendors beat eachother up over what amounted to nitpicking details, another vendor offered the same consistent kind of software experiencea cross a broad spectrum of hardware, including laptops. I am referring, of course, to Microsoft/Intel. Through the exacting lens of 20/20 hindsight, it is clear that the UNIX vendors were short-sighted losers arguing over what to watch on the television and fighting for the remote control while the house burned down around them.
Now, read this carefully: I am not bashing Microsoft Windows. Nor am I bashing UNIX. As a UNIX system administrator with 20+ years experience, and a Windows system administrator since Windows 1.0, I can tell you that there isn't a whole lot of difference in the work-load of efficiently running either environment. Sure, there are lots of annoying details in either environment, but it takes about the same time for an expert to load and configure a system. In the old days, UNIX machines were faster to bring online because of the prevalence of decent tape drives while Windows was primarily loaded by floppy - but that's about the only distinguishing factor I can recall. In other words, customers didn't choose Windows because it was better (or worse) than UNIX; they did it because Microsoft/Intel was careful to guarantee them a consistent software experience across a broad selection of hardware. Equally important, application developers flocked to that consistent software experience because it meant their products were cheaper to develop without the headaches of version-specific differences.
In 1985, when I wrote code for my UNIX machine, it worked on all the other UNIX machines because there was basically a single flavor of UNIX, which all used the same compiler, and everything just worked. Today, you actually have to be quite careful if you want to write code that compiles and works correctly on S
Has anyone even noticed the fact that this was supposedly written in December of 2005? Yeah, I know - coulda been a typo. But look to see how many others noticed it :)
A PC without Windows is like Coffee without Ketchup...
the BSODs are much more consistent than they are on Unix :)
They were all selling some kind of UNIX operating system.
Back in the UNIX wars, the vendors had two primary axes on which they could compete: hardware speed, and features of their flavor of UNIX....
Ever heard of Acer? HP? Dell? IBM? Compaq? All these companies make desktops, and all have different features they use to sell their products...at least, when the companies were still relevent. Some died.
When this Marcus guy says Linux is a 14 year old kid, and MS is "Mike Tyson who could deliver a line-straight punch and knock a hole through the side of a steel I-beam," "courteous enough to pay lip-service to the threat that the 14-year-old was making," guess what - that's not an unbiased person saying new things. That is a MS supporter. Not that there's anything truely wrong with that, but...
This arguement is YEARS old, and its wrong. People have been making this same claim for a decade now...and they're wrong. Ignoring that Solaris isn't the only commercial UNIX out there that is common use (anyone ever hear of a little company named IBM that puts out an OS named AIX?) the simple fact is that there IS a consistent set of tools. There's the X api if you want to tie in there, the C libraries are C libraries, etc. If you want to install XYZ thing on Windows - guess what! You'll need to install .NET, or whatever else.
The only *difference* is that you become dependent upon MS for *everything*, as they provide all the framework for all apps. If Oracle wants to install on MS, they have to play well with MS. If Oracle wants to install on Linux, they can use a variety of tools, and pick the one best suited to them.
That Marcus wants to make a big deal about distro in this context is quite telling -
I installed Linux on one of my systems the other day, so I could use it as a teaching vehicle for my class on system log analysis. But first I had to Email a bunch of my friends and ask them, "what version of Linux should I use? Red Hat? Debian? Gentoo? Mandrake? Slackware?
It won't matter. Install ANY of them, and if you use the same syslog package (like standard syslogd) then GUESS WHAT - syslog.conf will be THE SAME, will have NO DIFFERENCES, and it WON'T matter. Install Gnome on them, and boom - same thing. They can be set up to look the same, they're still the same damn packages.
There are only 2 differences between distros - package management, and pointless bells and whistles. Gentoo uses emerge against make.conf to compile things a certain way. RedHat uses RPM to install (generally pre-built) packages. In both cases, once Firefox is installed it is still...brace yourselves...Firefox! Completely consistent, and everything! Firefox 1.01 on Gentoo looks just like Firefox 1.01 on Redhat! Crazy stuff!
This guy is an idiot, spreading FUD. So long as people adhere to the standards, which we're actually quite good at doing in the community (considering its a religious topic for some people) then all is well. An app on one distro is the same as that app on another distro.
Thanks for trying though, Marcus.
here is a somewhat better link
sco hacked page
Soon the Motorola 68000 was available, and you could run UNIX on a single chip CPU. Now anyone could start a computer company, there were a hundred groups with Unix boxes - Sun, Fortune, Masscomp, Convergent, etc. Still no cooperation. These were fully fledged Unix graphics workstations, with networking and graphics, multi-user, with real process scheduling (slower than today, of course). Imagine how they compared to x86 PCs running windows, and weenie 128k Macs. Of course, there were 100 different kinds and no manufacturer wanted binary compatibility, for fear of losing an upgrade sale to a competitor.
I don't want to go into more detail here, you can read about it on the web. But the cliches about unity all apply. Divide and conquer, united we stand, we must hang together or assuredly we will hang separately etc.
Starting early is the only way they can keep the dupe ratio monotonically increasing. ;)
I use Fedora, Gentoo, Debian and Mandrake on a daily basis. The only point where there is any significant difference is in the GUI tools for administering the computer. Under the hood i have no problem going from dist to dist. Its mostly a matter of the dists to choose the same packages but one size DONT fit all.
What one person find invaluable somebody else find utterly disturbing and thats the biggest beauty of Gnu/linux.
I really dont see what kind of drawbacks it has to be able to choose every possible flavour. Just choose one to use and stick with that dist, end of problem.
HTTP/1.1 400
My understanding is that RPM distros are very different from each other compared to debian based distros. Distrowatch has been showing a surge in debian based distro interest. The top ten is half debain based now. I think i sense a standard slowly evolving.
First off the author is looking at the wrong thing. For Linux to become mainstream means it needs to be commercialized and accepted in corporate arenas. When you ask your friends what versions of Linux they use you're mostly talking about personal preference work hobbiests/enthusiasts. What he really should have done is looked at the situation from big business' perspective.
Yes, Linux on the desktop isn't quite there. But it doesn't have to be right now either. The important thing that author has missed is that it's going in the right direction. It's not getting more fragmented. The LSB project has all the major players commited who could kill Linux by forking. All the major Linux distros are fully aware of the danger of them forking. So the LSB is going in the right direction and I think the kernel development process is as well (though that isn't the real issue here).
As far as ready-for-the-desktop goes, the big development there is the current maturing of the plug-and-play model in Linux. Eventually all distros will make it possible to never have to manualy mount your CD Rom and USB Flash drives manually. Right now for many self-roled kernels (and for me Slackware) out of the box automounting doesn't happen. That's an issue. But overall the picture is getting better not worse, and Linux' momentum is not going away quite yet.
The truth is though, that in the big picture the hobby distros don't count in the race to global domination. It's the big 3 that do. So in forgetting that fact, the author of the article missed the boat.
The date on the article says:
"Salt Lake City Airport, Dec 4, 2005"
But anyway, I agree with him, although he puts it a little to strong. Besides SUN, there are still IBM, HP, Novell, there is still Adobe, Corel, PowerQuest, Computer Associates, and there is still Apple. Microsoft has a sftware problem called Longhorn, and a hardware problem called Itanium.
I also disagree with the fact that diversity is bad. Quite on the contrary. The various Linux distro`s are a wealth of opportunity for a better solution to emerge. Each distro will try to out-run the competing distro`s on certain points. At some point, the cost to keep up the pace will necessitate the distro`s to merge efforts. Things are not quite as dark as tha author puts it.
Cheers.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
fta: I installed Linux on one of my systems the other day, so I could use it as a teaching vehicle for my class on system log analysis. But first I had to Email a bunch of my friends and ask them, "what version of Linux should I use? Red Hat? Debian? Gentoo? Mandrake? Slackware? Do you think I could get away with OpenBSD or FreeBSD?" The responses I got indicated that none of my friends use the same thing but that I could be sure that if I used Flavor X some adherent of Flavor Y was going to bust my chops about it, and that someone was sure to show up with flavor Z and have trouble making things work.
Here's an algorithm for trying out linux:
1) Pick a distribution ad random.
2) Try to install it
3) You like it? Yes -> done.
4) Pick another distribution.
5) Goto 2
As for holy wars between flavors, I've never been involved in them, you can find it everywhere (is BMW better than Mercedes? Is AMD better than Intel?) and I can say I've switched distro's many times without major trouble (slack -> redhat -> suse -> debian). No wonder, since the software is essentially the same.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Your argument is romantic but it doesn't reflect reality. Real businesses want something that works and works as is expected for a long time. If they have to support or do custom programming, it has to be a predictable environment. That's Marcus' point. The larger world needs consistency. You can argue all you want about how diversity is good for the current Linux user base but it has no bearing on the rest of the 98% of computer users. For argument sake, would Linux have more change of competing with Windows if this happened?:
1. Standardize on a GUI 2. Standardize on an upgrade system 3. Standardize on the low-level I/O stuff 4. Provide a consistent programming environment/API 5. Make all of the above near as good or better than Windows
I think anyone can see that would guarantee a very high probability of success against Microsoft. Why not work towards something that is quite sure to succeed? As Marcus says, the only reason not to is ego.
This entire article is nothing but pure flamebait. The author seems to think that only mission of Free Unix is "to hurt Microsoft to a significant degree." Linux, BSD, GNOME, KDE, and any other open source project doesn't care about defeating MS. All us Open Source developers and users care about is working together to code great projects that we can all study and use from.
What a troll. Windows is a monopoly because it was a logical extension to MS-DOS's monopoly, which Microsoft attained because it collaborated with the big PC manufacturers (such as Compaq and Dell) and sold those PCs very cheaply.
And about that bit about classic flamewars such as "Gnome versus KDE." So what! That's what us geeks do. We've had many arguments before about which editor is best, which OS is best, which desktop environment is best, etc. But explain how does this hurt *nix in general? The reason why we have Gnome, KDE, and many other window managers and desktop environments is to give users a choice.. Windows and Microsoft's monopoly, on the other hand, gives you no choice. Want a better looking environment for Windows? Too bad; you're stuck with what you have. Want to get rid of Internet Explorer. Sorry, can't do.
To sum it all up, the author wants all of the Linux and BSD developers, developers of KDE and GNOME, developers of vi and emacs, developers of Mozilla and Konqueror, and other similar groups to set their differences aside and mix all of their code into a unified Free Unix, all in the name of "consistency" and beating Microsoft. However, what good does that do? Open Source isn't about marketshare and trying to become the new OS monopoly. Open Source shouldn't be about "sticking it to The Man" (my words, not the authors)
Open Source is about developers from around the world getting together, producing quality code.
And, if you don't like that, install a copy of Windows XP and MS Office and call it a day. You'll get your "consistent" interface and become a "real programmer" by doing so. (Don't make me laugh) Nobody's stopping you from doing so.
From the article:
So the battle in the free UNIX space is entirely over command line options, system administration paradigms, installation packaging, and 3D GUI features. I've got news for you: Real Programmers Don't Care about that garbage.
Maybe real programmers don't, but real users and real sysadmins do care. In a monoculture, things just don't improve. I far prefer that RPM and apt-get both exist, than for only RPM to exist.
The other (all too common) trap this article falls into is talking about "the Open Source movement" as if it is a single consciousness:
"Has it managed to completely escape the attention of the "open source" movement that Adobe, Macromedia, Corel, and so forth have blithely continued to remain virtually Windows-only while waiting for the dust to settle?"
"The Open Source movement" doesn't have an opinion. The "movement" consists of thousands of people, each of whom may have one opinion, a different opinion, or no opinion whatsovever. There will be those who worry every day about what Macromedia is doing with Linux, and there will be those who don't care in the slightest what Macromedia, Corel or Adobe do or do not do.
Meanwhile, whether a particular Linux distribution wins in the end, or if Windows wins in the end, all this competition has been nothing but good news for consumers. The distros constantly out-do each other.
Having been exposed to Windows since 1.0, it's clear to me that many of the improvements that make it tolerable today (memory protection, pre-emptive multitasking, configuration changes without reboots, etc.) simply would not have been developed without that competition from Linux.
standardize your damn directory structures and startup scripts. Or at least come up with some sort of virtual linking scheme to provide one consistant view. "Well, *BSD puts it here, but on Linux it would be there and SYS 5 doesn't have one..."
You have managed to complain about characteristics (in bold above) that make each flavor unique; you should have grumbled about device naming conventions, too, and gone for the trifecta. You may as well complain about the variations in fruit: "well, the banana has a peel that must be removed prior to consumption, while grapes come in bunches, and don't get me started on pomegranates, etc."
The BSDs are generally do things in a similar manner. This is largely historical; it is the BSD Way(tm).
One really shouldn't just say "SYS 5". Not only is the nomenclature wrong - it should be SVR* - one should indicate which revision is under discussion, e.g. SVR3 or SVR4.
News flash: Linux is very much like SVR4. You can do some things (e.g. ps) in BSD style if you like but most practical purposes Linux is ~SVR4.
Solaris >=2 is SVR4-based, as is HP-UX. AIX (IIRC) is SVR3, but AIX administration is (or at least was) its own form of pain so the historical influence is basically a footnote.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I forgot which linux distro it was, but it was several years ago. I had the choice of two install options
1. Developers
2. Administrators
It irked me a bit, seeing is there was no "average non-developer joe" configuration preset available. I guess the "administrator" is to administrate "developers". What do the "developers" develop for? They must develop for administators, or other developers. Yet "user" is nonexistant.
It takes longer to configure code than to compile it these days, which is categorically not the case on Windows.
./configure: 11 seconds
:P The average file compile time was 6.43 seconds. I really don't know what the author was thinking when he wrote what he did.
What kind of high school class project is he trying to compile that takes longer to configure than make? Lets test a program that I'm developing right now - just a single developer project, ~7000 lines of C++ code currently. I'll compile without *any* optimization on.
make: 4 minutes 11 seconds (~23 times longer)
Heck, some of the larger, more complex individual source files took more than 11 seconds to compile
If a tree falls in the forest and no engineer observes it, does it have a drag coefficient?
The problem with rants is that they have more cutting words than words cut -- they are filled with diatribe and not fact. For example, good Marcus tells us that the reason Windows won was due to consistency. BULL SHIT. It won because it was cheaper than Unix, was pushed onto new computers using illegal monopoly practices and had a good many inexepensive and productive development tools available for it. In other words, it entered the consumer market whereas Unix was content to ignore consumers. Microsoft entered the corporate marketplace much later and when it do so, its first competitor was not the Unix bretheren but rather Novell and its lan networking products. I was there just like Marcus and I too used the gammut of products from DOS to Vaxen to Unixes of many flavour to Novell to Macs to Windows 2 and beyond. I can assure you he is talking out of his ass.
To the die hard linux guru's this guy is full of crap. To the non die hard linux guru's who want to give linux a try as a viable alternative to Windows this guy is right on.
I only know one thing. Two weeks ago I went out and bought a video game and installed in on my PC. I installed it by just clicking OK and everytime I double click on the icon on the desktop the game starts up and runs fine. That equates to "easy" and as long as Linux lacks that it will never compete.
Of course many of the Linux die hards could care less because they love their distro. Just have a Windows box handy if you ever want to play some games.
P.S. I'm also a programmer and I don't care about all the different flavors or distro's and I don't care about building from source either. I just want to have a simple way of installing it and making sure it works without having to mangle config files across different distro's.
I also don't have the time needed to run gentoo because I get maybe 2-2.5 hours of "free" time on my PC daily tops and I don't want to spend all of that time installing a single app because it has to build completely from source. For all the railing against Red-Hat it's the closest thing to Linux competition that Window's faces out there because it's EASY. The OS install's in 15 minutes and binaries are installed via rpm's. EASY.
You missed an important point in your rant. ...
It isn't just that Linux/free BSD adherents are squabbling children. NO, NO, NO. They are squabbling adherents of a religious cult. In particular, the cult of UNIX. These people are cut from the same cloth as the old mainframe system operators. They believe that it is MORALLY WRONG for a computr system to be easy to use. Why write a GUI that lets a user choose from a scrollable list of options, when you can make them use a command line interface where they have to memorize the syntax of 25 option flags. If you make it easy to use, the commercial value of memorizing command options evaporates, and they might have to get REAL jobs. And if helpful souls corrupt your favorite open source package by creating GUI tools to configure and run it - rewrite the applicaiton to break all the GUI tools! The only reason for having a GUI on Linux at all is to seduce Windows users into trying Linux, knowing full well that to get anywhere they will HAVE to learn the CLI -bwahahahahahaha! I have been a faithful Linux devotee for 8 years, and with about every second release, my window manager changes, requiring me to relearn all the configuration settings, or the multimedia viewer I had been using gets dropped, and I have to reinstall it by hand from tarballs, or the CD burner software disappears and I have to find an alternate.
I will never stop loving or using Linux, BUT, for heavens sake guys, GET RID OF THE CLI, and STOP REINVENTING THE WHEEL!
Repeat after me - "Ease of use is all that matters", "Ease of use is all that matters", "Ease of use is all that matters","Ease of use is all that matters",
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
Here is a list: Fedora Core, SuSE, Gentoo, Debian, Mandrake. There are 5 distros in that list. Roll some dice to pick one. If you get a 6, roll the dice again.
Any of these will do. Really. You can do a multi-variable analysis to help you optimize your selection better. But the more fitness you demand, the more time you will waste.
Just pick one of the leading distros (which means more people will have come into the problems before you, and that they probably have been fixed by now) and stick with it. Problem solved.
I would really hate to go shopping with the author of the article.
Now where is my consulting fee?
I think UNIX, BSD, and Linux have more consistency among themselves than Microsoft's Windows offerings. The areas where they differ are product differentiators and new technologies, and that's a good thing. Eventually, when the market (rather than some pointy haired guy) decides that some particular piece of technology is really important, all vendors adopt it.
And history tells us that things that the marketing and engineering departments think are really important don't seem to matter in practice. For example, ACLs, file system metadata, Sun's "advanced" threading models, etc. all have failed to catch on, even though they are actually available on Linux. Apparently, users don't want them (at least not yet).
The kind of people who think that it's good if everything comes from one company and that decisions about technology are made top-down by pointy haired bosses and slick marketing dudes will never be satisfied with UNIX or Linux, so there is no point in catering to them. If, after trying both UNIX/Linux and Windows you think that the grass is greener on the Windows side, please don't hesitate to go with Windows and leave us with our creative chaos. We like it that way.
That said, as much as I like the concept of Linux, I simply will not try it any longer until I hear that a number of problems have been solved.
A) Having to recompile kernels/worrying that apps will be broken by upgrading that kernel. For that matter, I don't want to have to compile anything, ever. Just to make this clear, never. Come up with either something akin to Windows where I click on a standard installer, or make it like Mac where I just drag and drop the folder.
B) Any time I'm forced to drop to a command line, you as a developer have failed. Back 10 years ago, this may have been acceptable. In this day and age, it isn't. Furthermore, while once in a blue moon I may change a text file in Windows, in Linux it's a constant occurence. Again, you have failed.
C) MAN pages do not cut it. Neither does a message board where half the time I'll be called a clueless n00b, 25% of the time I'll be told to use a different distro, and the other 25% of the time I'll get genuinely helpful people giving me contradictory answers. If I'm expected to jump to an alien computing environment you'd best make sure your documentation is up to snuff. Linux sucks in this regard.
I'm an advanced user who's in favor of open source, but the bizarre, arcane, and technical details I have to jump through to achieve the same things that are comparatively simple in Mac or Windows may Linux a deal breaker. You will never, ever, become successful on the desktop until idiocy like this is exorcised from the OS.
In short, the directory structures are being taken care of.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Its all nice and everything, but as long as its only available for Apple hardware it wont be adopted by the mainstream, unless maybe when it will run more games. and position itself more as a mainstream product instead of an elite designer fashion product.
Can someone comment on why distro's seemingly *have* to have a different filesystem hierarchy? Typically when you distinguish yourself from a competitor you add value. I don't see the value here to anyone other than the distro vendor, in that given enough scripts and whatnot, if you wanted to move to a competitor it could be more of a PITA than it's worth to switch.
Further, I've not heard any arguments to why vendors cannot agree on a standard FS (not to say there aren't any - I just don't know of 'em)? Perhaps use symlinks to keep the old path functional and implement the new path. Am I just nieve?
From TFA: Today, if you want a consistent software experience, you have little choice but to go with Windows
Comparing Windows, which is one operating system, to the dozens of Linux distributions as a whole is stupid. Linux, the kernel, is consistent throughout all the distributions. In the same vein, KDE is consistent throughout distributions and so is Apache and other projects. What changes is how each distribution, which can rightfully be judged as its own OS, deals with locations and methods for specific tasks.
You should expect to see differences between Linux distributions, because they are different Operating Systems. While they share a kernel and various application suites, it's important to stop confusing them with "Linux" which is a kernel and not an OS. We've all heard it before, but someone needs to remind Ranum that Linux is just the kernel.
Windows, on the other hand, is equivalent to one distro, let's say for example RedHat. If you want to compare apples and apples as the old saying goes, you'd have to compare RedHat (or any other distro) and Windows, not "Windows and *nix" which is just stupid.
I won't disagree that it would be great for Linux distros to get together and standardize a file system and heirarchy, but I DO disagree completely with the line of reasoning that subsequently concludes that the only consistent computing is on Windows. That's like saying "If you want consistency you have to drive a Ford, everyone else does things differently".
-Jay
First, at no time in the last ten years has Unix-flavored systems done so well against Microsoft. Servers certainly so, but even the desktop. Unix is the one gaining ground. Of Unix, it is the free unixen which are gaining the most.
From about 1995-2001 Microsoft believed it would effect a clean sweep of the server scene. We all know that mostly thanks to Gnu/Linux that has not happened and eventually its expected that it will be Linux that sweeps microsoft from the server scene.
Second, its easy to bitch and moan about how everybody doesnt do the same thing at the same time. Well thats the part about freedom. People are free do to as they wish, and they will do so.
This is actually a strength because in the FOSS world more often than not everybody benefits from "There is more than one way to it". And thats because FOSS has something that was missing from the Unix wars of the 80s-90s. Choice, Freedom and Source Code.
From change comes instability but from instability brought by change comes innovation and better technology.
While there are certainly many examples one can bring about fractionary elements in FOSS communities, one forgets that this is a community that exists due to choice. And that is its strength.
Linux distributions are largely as compatible with eachother as they have been for the past ten years. As some of their paths diverge, others merge back together. As it stands there are only five major flavors of distributions.
Slackware
Redhat and derivatives
Debian and derivatives
LFS
Gentoo
By the time world desktop domination is well underway, the users of the system will generally care little about underlying system differences and will instead have much more issues with KDE and GNOME along with others.
However the degree that these systems work with eachother and the ability to have them on almost any system, all at the same time, strongly suggest that this too will be a strength and not a weakness.
Third, if you read the rant and all similar to it you will notice one thing. All problems discussed generally only seem insurmountable to proprietary software shops. Especialy notice the Adobe arguments.
There happens to be no consensus on whether allowing these folks to treat FOSS platforms as a playground for their proprietary software is good for FOSS. Most RMS's adherents would gladly see them stick to their natural environment, a proprietary OS.
In other words: Who needs them. We need FOSS replacements instead. Those who want proprietary, please stick to proprietary and dont moan and groan.
These people would answer that instead of calling for unity so that proprietary software vendors can target the FOSS platform, we should call for unity so that FOSS developers can target the FOSS platform. And for this, fragmentation is largely an understood and solvable problem. Indeed most FOSS projects have them well solved.
Dont be surprised when the proprietary windows world resolves itself to about four major software vendors with the lion share of their markets. Proprietary Windows software is not a safe market to be in.
That is not what we want happening on FOSS operating systems.
In simple conclusion.
The issue comes back to those who want Binary Compatibility at all costs and those who care only about source compatibility.
FOSS folk generally feel that binary compatibility is nice and good but only source code compatibility/portability is critically important.
Never forget that Unix was originally (re)designed ONLY for source compatibility.
The longer the laughing continues in redmond, the better it will be for the rest of us.
Photoshop was coded to the MacIntosh user interface, not X-windows, and functions on OSX as a side-effect of the excellent backwards-compatibility that Apple slavishly built into their kernel-swap.
No, it functions because of Carbon, the procedural API of OS X. Carbon does share similarities with the old Mac toolbox.
Perhaps this is what he was saying, but the way he says it implies OS X happily runs old OS 9 binaries due to some "slavishly" added binary compatibility cruft. It doesn't--the apps need a recompile and some code tweaking to become "Carbonized," and suddenly they're OS X apps through and through.
You are dead on when you note that forking is a big problem. Version control is a big problem anywhere you don't actually manage it. And we are unable to manage it because we let it lose and tell people "go forth be fruitful and multiply." Which is exactly what they did. And if you look at Distro Watch or LWN today there are 450+ distros out there, probably 70% of them have *someone* working on. And that is the deeper problem. We are spread too thin and we are too tolerant of do-your-own-thing-ism. Dude, I got this BSD kernel to boot on my clock radio and it only took 1200 hrs to do it. Schweeeeet! At the same time SUN, IBM, RH and others are struggling to corral what resources they have and attract enough attention and funding from the suits to make it all hold together. The fact is we really don't need more than 2 dozen at the absolute upper limit, of distros. And of those ~24 maybe half would account for 80% of the total use and utility in the field. That means that 12 core code bases would account for 4/5ths of the total expected penetration of Linux today. And while these are just guesses I think I'm being wildly broadminded. I think in practice the actual usable numbers are half as diverse as that.
Now companies build entirely useful OS's all the time: AIX, Solaris, Windows, z/OS and so on. All built by one company with one ethic and one model and one hand on the change management lever. And with only a few thousand people at most. But the problem is that all corporate entities like those very same IBM, SUN. etc companies see Linux and the open model as a way to short circuit their OWN development dollars and use what other people have graciously done. They are willing to take on the noise and clutter and forking because they don't care or think they don't care. What they care about is attempting to cut their own costs out of the development cycle. Building an OS is very expensive as IBM can attest. But they hope that the benefits that accrue to them by spending all that money on products like AIX 5L are worth it because it allows them to differentiate themselves and sell their hardware. They see Linux as a second tier to sell into smaller corporate accounts riding piggyback on cheaper hardware.
But the key problem is that they see it as being 'found work, found benefit'. And the fact that there are 3,000 people out there doing essentially the same work is of absolutely no importance to them. Their interests are strictly parochial. And if you have a bunch of different companies each with their own stovepipes then not only do you promote forking you actually hamper your own customers. We used to thing that hippy-code was a good thing. If I wanted to run it my way and I was the only person on earth who wanted to do that - here's the code, dude, have at it. Multiply that by a million and you don't have freedom, you have anarchy.
Sure its annoying and there may be one too many linux distro's out there but you know what, at least it keeps linux/unix honest. I'm all for competition and maybe its the competition between the vendors that's advancing at a faster rate the development of linux than what would be otherwise...
I think as techie people we should just let it play out and live with it because it keeps us employed :)
Keeping such a high number of different Distro/Flavours/Installation, also hurts the virus development efforts...
:
:
Which IS an obvious advantage.
About the problems the writer of the article complains
Today any decent distro includes most applications that the average user needs (Office suite, web surfing, e-mail, etc...) and if your not happy with that, you can still use the installation tools of your distro to install whatever package wasn't selected by default (today almost all distribution have package for all alternative application the only difference being like : if they'll select FireFox or Konqueror as their default browser) and of course the distribution makers have paid attention to build packages compatible with the rest of the distro.
The 'compiling nightmares' he speaks about isn't something the average user will come into.
Also I didn't see how linux can be compared to unix compagnies killing each other while windows is silently rising
- unix companies can kill each other and be put out of buisness.
- not the same for linux : you cannot put Linux out of buisness, it's not even a company ! You could put out of buisness companies making distributions. You can even physically kill some developpers. But you cannot get rid of Linux itself. It's an OpenSource projet. That means people will always have access to its code. And as long as there are at least a few hackers interested in it, you'll still see linux and linux developpement arround.
Look at DOS : DOS is a very old stuff (see recent posts on slashdot about CPM). All compagnies involved in it are either out-of buisness, or have abandonned the product long time ago... except that there's an OpenSource implementation of it. And even if companies' interest has declined, there are still coders around the wolrd working on it or using it.
Last but not least, there ARE people out there who are interested in being able to know what's inside the software they're running, and want to be able to freely hack it. There ARE real programmers that DO care about the freedom that only freenix (Linux & BSD) can offer to them.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
This is extremely overblown. Once you have a consistent file system arrangement between the 3 major distros, SuSe, Redhat, and Mandrake, and a packaging system compatible with all of them (yes they all use rpm, but I can't install a mandrake package on a fedora install without worry) just about all of linux's problems preventing it from receiving widespread acceptance disappear. I'm confident that this can eventually happen -- cooperation is in these distros' interest, because it creates a larger base of software that will run on their OS.
Having a consistent looking desktop is a worry almost out the door -- the next generation of Qt and Gtk will be flexible enough to easily support rendering one with the other, so as to make everything look consistent. You can already get the gtk-qt-theme from freedesktop.org to do this for you, but it's not perfect.
Running windows apps is becoming less and less of a problem -- wine's development is coming along by leaps and bounds, and can already run World of Warcraft and Sid Mier's Pirates! without cedega. The last couple of versions have seen some major improvements. Installshield is getting closer and closer to working -- once it does you can probably expect desktop distros to start supporting windows autorun and seemless installation of windows software, even adding icons to the KDE menus.
Complaints that linux requires to much command line use nowadays are just plain ignorant. If I load up SuSe I can configure everything in a GUI control panel, get updates through YaST, and do all of my normal desktop tasks through KDE and Konqueror. I never have to touch the command line. A lot of geeks still choose to because it's more powerful and faster for the knowledgeable user, and there's nothing wrong with that. Good command line utilities and good GUIs are not mutually exclusive. Linux increasingly has both.
Inconsistency isn't a problem when the application source is available. It's just those companies who think they can gain market advantage by keeping their source closed who have a problem with different flavours of Unix.
The close source companies will eventually price themselves out of the business as the open source companies gain from a huge developer base.
Perhaps because not all morons use the same phrases
to show how ridiculous they can be.
I use several versions of Linux and have had no
problem recompiling on each system.
One thing I don't understand from promoters of the
dark side is why would we want the idiots to swith
to linux? They can stay with windows or webTV for
all I care.
Yes, you could make the point that too much diversity and thus too much choice is confusing to inexperienced users. That's why distributions that market themselves to inexperienced users should take care of technical decisions for the user. If they don't, their product is faulty.
I think this is just griping from someone who still thinks there can be One True OS(TM) that will somehow magically fill everyone's needs. His point about zealots who insist that their OS is the One True OS(TM) is fine, but then he insists that Windows is the One True Programming Environment(TM) and that everything else is too confusing. This is funny considering the free UNIXes all adhere to POSIX and SUS as a baseline, where the Windows platform is an ad hoc, de facto standard that changes and accumulates cruft with every release.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
Why?
... this is entirely the point of Linux.
.. but it is the Open nature of the Build system, which makes or breaks a specific 'flavour' of the Linux viru^H^H^H^Hsystem.
/dev, etc.
Because in fact, one of the most powerful realms of the OSS sphere is: Build Systems. Not the Linux Kernel, not just Gnome or KDE, I'm talking the boring stuff: make, autotools, etc.
So there are a hundred different 'ways' to implement Linux, across the board, literally hundreds of different 'standards' for how to do things?
So what? This Is Not Broken. It is the intent of Open Source to promote such usage, which results in the condition.
What matters now is: a) Can the computer owne^H^H^H^Hadministrator build their own operating system, and b) Can you make it easy for others to build their own operating system like you do, too, in case you agree to share a standard with each other? Microsoft can say "No" to both of those questions, it is fundamental to their entire corporate nervous system that it is extraordinarily difficult to produce a Windows Build, but with Linux users, all they can say is a resounding "Yes!" in answer to both of those questions
Linux/Free Software is a collection of Standards, offering an infinity of confusion and customization. That is the breadth of its offering, it is a characteristic of freely accepted and open standardization that an infinity of different ways of doing the same thing can now be easily attempted, by any individual.
This is Not A Weakness.
Its like, there are tons of different filesystem layouts, and you need to decide to use one. With Linux: Never forget that you can decide to use one, and participate in a standard, or you can decide to make (or implement) one, and form the basis of your own standard. This is a highly useful business tool, extraordinarily so.
The upper echelon of "Linux Usage" (and I mean: Actual Use, not just 'writing articles about') is the 'Roll Your Own' [Kernel+System] build system. At the center of that upper point, are the Build tools, and guess what: These are all open for a reason. The open-ness of these tools, is the primary feature of the software.
All the distribution vendors, in their witty quoting press release adjoiners, are trying to do, is protect their Build hegemony in the language of the market
If 'industry-leading opinion' is set at the 'Linux is killing itself' position on the dial (which probably doesn't go up to 11), then all those pundits have been ignoring such things as OpenStep, ROCK, Mepis, Gobo, etc. What these projects represent are the true fact of the matter: anyone can make their own make.
In light of such 'journalism' it is easy to see why organizations mis-understand how important it is, that any Linux admin worth his salt ought to know how to roll his own kernel, root filesystem,
{corollary: it is the Linux Distribution Company Models that are broken. Wrong market to be pumping money into marketing!!}
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
If OS X was free like Linux and had all the GUI and developer goodness while being able to run on Intel, then we'd have a good Linux. That's essentially what Marcus is saying.
I'm posting this so that you (the moderator) have some context to consider twitter and not mod him up whenever he posts his filler preformatted rants about installing Knoppix or whatever that unfortunately get him karma every single time and allow him to continue posting his trademark toxic crap (read on) day in and day out. You may consider this a troll - I consider it community service. And I ain't kidding.
If you're a /. subscriber, I invite you to look through some of his posting history. I guarantee that you'll be hard pressed to find someone that is more "out there" than twitter. You'll also probably notice he's got quite an AC following. Don't just read his posts, make sure you go through the replies.
To get an idea of what I'm talking about, check this post out. I mean, this is an article about email disclaimers, right? The parent of the post is complaining about the ads in the linked page and so on, and twitter actually goes off on a rant to blame it on Microsoft and recommend Lynx. WTF?
Here's another. In this post twitter not only calls the OP a troll but attempts to "tell it like it is" while making some vague argument about "GNU". Yes, if you're confused, you're not alone. The reply (modded +4) proceeds to simply destroy his bogus argument. You will notice he did not reply. This is what some people call "drive-by advocacy". A sort of I'll just leave you with my thoughts here and move on to the next flamebait kind of deal. In fact, he almost never replies because he knows that his fanatical arguments simply do not hold up to any sort of discussion. It's not that he's chosen the wrong cause - he's just going at it in a completely wrong way.
More? Just read though this post and the subsequent replies. I guess this stands on its own. Or these two. Or this one.
Still not convinced? This is what twitter considers "humour" while going about his daily "M$" routine.
More? Bad spelling in astounding conspiracy theories, more offtopic FUD and uninformed "I'm right, look at me" rants, promptly proven wrong. Worse even, twitter wants to be RMS, apparently (that first one is a winner). I mean,
They're all computer games, but they're still applications. Ones that I would really like to run under XP, but they simply won't. Most of the pre-XP games I've tried to run do, to MS's credit, but it's frustrating to find some Win98 game that you always wanted but had forgotten about, plop it in, and no joy. The lines I've gotten from the software company were "Sounds like a video problem. It's the video card manufacturer's job to provide backwards compatible drivers. Besides, it was designed for 98." Meanwhile, the video card's chip manufacturer says "Hey, we only make the chipsets! Complain to the company that put it on the card." Guess what that company's answer is: "Hey, we just make the cards that the chips sit on! Complain to the chipset manufacturer!"
I know they're "just games", but to a lot of people (including me), games are a big deal in having your own private computer.
I've seen stuff be incompatible from one Linux kernel to the other, but for the things I've been interested in, someone's always come through with a fix or update to address it.
I reread it twice, what reasons did he actually give as to why the diverse linux distribution universe hurts Linux in the slightest? The only one I could see was that his friends were scared of being mocked for using the "wrong" distribution. That is not a reason, I'm sorry... that is just plain lame. You pick the one that fits best for you, and remember that know-it-all idiots will mock you for it.
In addition to that his long rant about fragmentation is totally off base. Unlike the UNIX fragmentation of old, in the free software world the competing groups work together as a pack instead of competing behind closed doors. When Red Hat writes some new code, Novell gets the benefit too if they so desire. New distributions like Ubuntu contribute more effort to making everything work better, and because of the nature of free software people will get the benefits of their work no matter who they are or what they use.
Part of the diversity of the Linux desktop also helps in providing tools that best suit the personality of the people working on them. If you like simple and sleek, you can use Gnome, if you like to configure every little thing you can do that in KDE. And these projects *do* co-operate in many ways such as menu and notification bar specs via freedesktop.org and are going to share the same multimedia framework (gstreamer) when KDE upgrades -- less duplication of effort yet again.
This article is way off base...
501 Not Implemented
At each stage the claim has been that to get anywhere, we have to change what we're doing. Each time they have been wrong. Nobody knows for sure what will work best, but the best bet is what worked already. What we have is still growing by leaps and bounds, just as it always has done.
Imagine a world in which Free Software precisely as it is today was the norm. Imagine Microsoft trying to nose into it. BSOD? DLL wars? Viruses, worms, spyware, adware, pop-ups, DRM, "no-print" flags? Downloading drivers? Re-booting with every hiccup and adjustment, and re-installing every few months as the system decays? Forced upgrades that break what you had? Ever-increasing license fees for ever decreasing value?
All such diatribes have one thing in common. They are about what it takes to get two groups to embrace Free Software: proprietary software vendors, and know-nothing bozos. The former will never embrace Free Software because, frankly, they have little to offer it, and less all the time. The latter will use what they're given and like it, as they always have. Everybody else already sees the advantage, and has switched or is planning to switch.
Of course that's what he's saying. To put it another way, the objection he was preempting is the usual Slashbot "OS X is just FreeBSD, so Mac apps can be trivially recompiled to run on Linux!" nonsense.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I think his point is that modern-day *nix code is preprocessor-happy, not necessarily slower to compile, because it has too broad a potential audience (different architectures, cpus, distros) and code is too cumbersome to write in that situation.
:)
I disagree, but I do love the digs at C James Joyce made in his k5 rant.
Just by looking at the way you write I would bet good money that a year ago you probably made a claim that apt-get or rpm were a better solution than a Windows installer, and yet here you are insulting the author of the article, calling him a "noob" and saying "in a year you'll be OK, I promise".
A tired, M$ style, flame
A tired, F/OSS style flame, incapable of accepting and absorbing any type of constructive criticism. You'd probably flame Linus if he said something you didn't like. Understand that not everything in free software is inherently better than its commercial counterparts. Your wacky absolutism only proves you can't see the forest for the trees.
Sorry, but it's people like you that many of us feel less enthusiastic about F/OSS. I wish you'd chill out a bit. We're still figuring all this stuff out.
Cheers,
-bono
What he means, I think, is that you have to take more time to write the config files for multiple OS's than what is needed to compile.
Well, anyway, class projects or single programmer projects are not real programming projects in the context of the industry. I work in a tiny shop, and each and every project here has 2 or more people on it.
What we want is a platform that can be programmed to consistently; nobody wants to do any rewriting to port to every flavor of OS avaliable.(and yes, changing directory structures IS rewriting) Even porting from Win to Mac is a hassle nobody wants to pay for, and Mac has more share than any single Linux distro! So you get apps for Win, other apps for Mac, a lot of apps that work only on ONE Linux distro, and a few select blockbusters that work on 2 platforms.
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
... because he has seen the future
Last line reads:"Salt Lake City Airport, Dec 4, 2005"
My linux system still did not divide neither conquer time. But his Windows OS did!
XML doesn't give you anything that isn't already available in a text file.
Why aren't text files the best way to configure a system?
My daughter has a large number of educational CD games (JumpStart and the like). Most of them work OK but have to be run as root. However, some kids games still won't work. Just last week I bought her a Disney game that was written for Win95/98 and will not work under W2K or XP. Apparently they have dozens of games affected in this way. The Disney site has a patch that is supposed to fix this, but I still couldn't get the game to work on her WinXP installation. At least it provided me an opportunity to emphasize that things work better with the Penguin System (Debian).
Linux has shown positive growth EVERY SINGLE YEAR.
The reality is that most people and companies do NOT switch platforms without a compelling reason to. There's just too much stress and pain involved.
So Linux will continue its steady gains, over the years. There's nothing wrong with that.
His reference of the kernel makes it seem he is implying actual binary/API compatibility.
Carbon apps are full-on OS X applications. The API shares similarities with the old pre-OS X APIs, but you still have to change things and recompile.
Carbon is the procedural API, and Cocoa is the object-oriented API. Apple lets you choose.
This article is pretty off-base on several accounts, primarily because the author doesn't seem to understand you can't simply compare Microsoft to the Open Source community. They work in fundamentally different ways.
It's more appropriate to consider the open source movement to be one enormous research and development laboratory that is constantly tinkering, improving, and designing. From it new products emerge, and experiments that sound interesting but don't work. Because there are no restrictions anyone with an idea can participate, and ideas are forced to compete on their own merit. That process strengthens Linux-based operating systems as a whole because distros can choose to include/implement the ideas that emerge from the fray as winners.
Do you compare a product (Windows XP) to a process (Linux open source development)? No. You compare it to another product (Red Hat Enterprise, for example). As CTO of some company, you're not going to install Gentoo, ArcLinux, Slackware, or Mepis. You're going to install a professionally supported, stable distribution backed by a company you trust: Novell/SUSE, Red Hat, or maybe (hopefully) Xandros. Behind the scenes it is the responsibility of those distros to select from the open source lab which features/products they want to meld into their distros.
As for Adobe and friends not porting their software to Linux, the fact that there are competing distros out there does not explain their reluctance; lack of market share does. When Adobe thought it important and worthwhile to port their software, they did: Acrobat Reader 5. When they determine enough customers would buy their product for the Linux platform to make it worthwhile to code that software, they will do so, and they will navigate the architectural-dependency problems the best way they can, because it will be financially worthwhile to do so. Money talks.
Next, is open source software forcing Sun out of business? No, but it has forced Sun to reduce its unweildy profit margins and sell products at prices the market will bear. For that matter, it's done the same to Microsoft. Without Linux and alternatives it's unlikely we'd have seen Microsoft's new Windows XP Light edition now being sold in Asia, where Linux has made serious inroads. It's also forced Sun to open up some of their code, because the market has demanded it. Linux won't put Sun out of business; reluctance to follow the market will. There's still a niche for Sun - enterprise hardware and support that no Linux distro is able to deliver. Sun integrates systems in a way Red Hat or Novell can't.
Finally, as for "real programmers don't care" about interfaces and paradigms, I think they do. The LSB movement will tighten up disparities between distros soon enough, but projects will still have to compete on their own merits. Linux isn't dividing and conquering anything. It's continually reinventing itself based on new information, new equipment, new paradigms, and new technology. That's a process that benefits everybody and introduces enough competition into the marketplace to force everyone else to innovate too. Microsoft IE now with tabs and popup blockers? Win XP light? MS Word with sidebar formatting panel? Network transparency and remote desktop access? The evidence speaks for itself.
The author is way off base.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
Every year, I've been posting that the OSS world needs one sane, unified development API for its desktops. I sometimes get modded down, sometimes get angry replies...but nobody ever actually refutes what I'm saying, because they know I'm right.
I think with the recent spat of articles, people are beginning to see that desktop Linux is never going to make a dent on Microsoft's marketshare. Not with the way things are currently going.
File extensions: Linux uses file extensions, in fact, it uses many of the same file extensions as windows eg. txt, html, jpg, mpg, whatever.
Registry versus Text Config files. So you think editing text config files is confusing? Ok why don't you go ahead and open up regedit and screw around with some reg keys. Oh you messed something up? I'm not surprised. What's that you say, you used the GUI to configure your apps? Gee, that's funny, so did I. In the event that I do need to manually configure something (because say something screwed up and now my system won't boot), at least I have the option and at least the text config file will usually have comments explaining what the various options are, I'm yet to see an comments explaining what anything is in the Windows Registry.
Short/weird meaningless names. Ok try this one, open up Task Manager and click the Processes tab. Now tell me what ANY of the things you see are. svchost, regsvc, smss? Right, thought so... Ok how about opening up c:\windows\system32.. Yeah, lots of intuitive, coherent naming conventions there.
Ugly UI. My gnome desktop has a nice, slick OSX-like theme (I'd take a screenshot but let's face it, I'm lazy). WinXP has the Giant Cartoony Bubble Blue Theme From Hell. 'Nuff said.
Batch files vs commands. Last time I checked you could do most anything from the command line OR the gui in Linux. Try installing software or surfing the internet from the command line in windows.
Generic Print Driver. Because hardware vendors refusing to support Linux is, Linux's fault... And coming up with an acceptable alternative to proprietary windows drivers is, a bad thing.. uh huh...
Buy a penguin. You have a problem with a penguin as a mascot? I've got one word for you: Clippy.
Acronyms. Because only Linux el33tists use acronyms. You'd never hear a sensible Windows guy speak of things like: IIS, ASP, MFC, VB, IE, or NTFS. Oh, wait...
Communism. While you're at it, why not just call me Un-American for not supporting Microsoft, Mr. Limbaugh? So remember kids, Not Following The Mainstream == EVIL!!
So to the author of the animation, seriously, grow up. You're obviously someone who tried to install Slackware or some similar non-user friendly distro, got confused and gave up. Therefore, Windows == "best os" because you == "clueless user". Ok so that's a little harsh. But here's a scenario for you, I just built a box with the intention of dual-booting. Fedora installed without a hitch. Only thing it needed were drivers for my wireless card and video card (surprise you need those in Windows too). Put in Windows CD and reboot. The installer starts, then fails immediately. I still have no idea why but at this point, who cares? Linux does everything I need it to. So the moral of the story is, use what's best for you and stop bashing some other os when your os has all the same or equivalant fallacies that you're attempting to poke fun at.
Microsoft/Intel was careful to guarantee them a consistent software experience across a broad selection of hardware.
It's a broad selection in brand name only. Whether it's Dell, HP, Alienware or a garage clone, it's still the same basic innards under the hood.
Linux and the BSDs run identically across a list of platforms ranging from microcontrollers to mainframes. Marcus has been around the block enough times to remember that Sun made the transition from 68K to SPARC with a brief stop in i386 land with with the old BSD-based SunOS. They did it again going from SPARC to x86 with the SVR4-based Solaris. Apple gets props for having nicely made the transition from 68K to PPC with MacOS and should probably get a couple of points for its rumored internal port of OS X to x86.
When Microsoft can release a fully-functioning version of one of its current products that runs on another platform and looks, smells and tastes like the same product on Intel, I'll agree with Marcus. Let's try hard not to remember NT on Alpha.
Perhaps none of what anyone's predicted will be Microsoft's undoing will actually be it. Maybe it will be some huge non-x86-compatible advance in harware so compelling that nobody can resist it. The race will be on to see who can have a working OS on that hardware, and I'd put my money on it being one of the Unixes.
It takes longer to configure code than to compile it these days,
I disagree.
I've been building and installing open source software for at least 15 years.
In that time I've noticed that UNIX configuration and building is improving, although the complexity of what is trying to be achieved is increasing.
In the bad old days, you would edit the makefile in 8 places before your application would build correctly.
As time passed, application developers that cared about relieving their users of this burden started to distribute their packages with autoconf and later, as binary rpms, ports
Autoconf has made it easier for users to configure and build most applications with a greater burden put on the developers to code to HAVE_FEATURE_H and to construct robust test scripts in sh-m4 land.
Natural evolution will cause configuration and building to become easier. Whether it will be yum or emerge, I don't know, but I do know things are improving.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
And yet, despite the instability of Windows systems, developing for them was relatively stable compared to the UNIX world. Sure, your app might crash, but at least you'll be able to develop it in a month and maintain it for years to come. Look at, say, Photoshop. Photoshop is still a Win32 app and never needed a rewrite as Windows went through all its incarnations--even surviving an entire kernel change.
.NET. Good luck with that! Photoshop is never going to be rewritten in "managed code."
You can even run Windows applications from the 98-era--which used a completely differnet kernel based on DOS--on XP. It's all about the stable API.
Now they're trying hard to replace it with
"In other words, customers didn't choose Windows because it was better (or worse) than UNIX; they did it because Microsoft/Intel was careful to guarantee them a consistent software experience across a broad selection of hardware."
Customers didn't "choose" windows, it came preinstalled on the computer they bought from the store. That isn't choice, that is being dictated to. Windows has a monopoly because every computer was required to have windows installed on it, earlier because IBM signed a deal saying so and later because if a vendor didn't install it on every box MS would charge them $1000 a copy for every copy of windows they bought.
"Commercial grade Windows software just works and usually keeps working."
I've had a lot of things break between all the different flavors of windows. In fact, Office 95 wasn't compatible with Office 4.2 at the time. Windows software doesn't "just work" as all the hundreds of hours supporting my friends and family on the computer attest to. All free support that helped MS by the way.
It's easy to have a single look and feel across your entire linux install.... Only install one version of Linux. There, that's simple, isn't it?
And Linux actually installs across a real "broad selection of hardware", not just wintel like MS.
He's talking like a system administrator: "just make is simple so I don't have to learn anything new is their mantra ... if we'd al just accept microsoft we'd all be happier". to hell with sysadmins.
I'm not sure what the fuck he's talking about when he says "real programmers don't care". Actually we do care about consistent software experience, command line options, system administration paradigms, installation packaging, and 3D GUI features.
I think the reason no one ever refutes your idea is because it is complete bunk; OSS will *never* have one unified anything; not a window manager, not an email client, not an IDE, not an API. OSS develops to standards, not to monopolies. So long as they mostly agree on how things should work, we can have many disparate apps working together happily.
You're right about Cocoa/Carbon apps, but OS X has various layers. Darwin, Aqua, the BSD layer, and so on. The BSD layer is there, as are the beloved UNIX directories like "/etc." They are hidden in the Finder, but a simple "ls /" in Terminal will show you that all the UNIX stuff really is there.
You can code command-line UNIX apps on OS X if you want to. Most of the command tools are from OpenBSD. While the Apple APIs are far removed from the gritty UNIX world, that world is still there and happily supported. OS X even ships with Apache, Perl, etc.
Great article? I don't think so. It is pretty amazing that someone can write an article about software wars while ignoring licensing issues. Like software licenses don't matter in the slightest ...
...
Nor can one coherently argue that GNU/Linux attracts long-term Unix users (as the author does when he predicts Sun's demise at the hands of GNU/Linux), and, at the same time argue that Linux will *promote* fragmentation. Either Linux is unifying the unix market, or it is fragmenting it. It can't be doing both
The article ignores the fact that the old Unix wars were between *secret-source* versions of Unix, that is, between *proprietory* code bases, backed by proprietory EULAs. There will not be "Linux" wars that mirror the old "Unix" wars just because of the GPL. No Linux distributor can break another's software. Any "better" version of GNU/Linux can be studied and copied, and the improvements rolled up by any other distributor of GNU/Linux.
The GPL is what makes Linux different from the old unices. It is why GNU/Linux has already reversed the splintering and fragmentation of the unices; and why we see it continues to convert users of proprietary systems (unix or otherwise).
Well, about 2/3 of his digs are completely addressed by C++ (his dislike of pointers, his complaints about a lack of string type, hash tables, etc), and most of the rest indicate that he'd be much better off with a higher level language (for example, wanting overflow checking on all integer calculations - do you know what sort of waste of CPU that would be in 99.9% of cases??). And yet, with C++, if he really wanted that sort of thing, he could use objects to do it. And what on Earth is up with his complaining about the format of main as if it's an idiosyncrasy (what format does *he* want?), or complaining that . and -> are both used for dereferencing (would you really *want* to use the same thing for references vs. pointers? Now *that* would be confusing!) ?
;)
In short, if these things trouble him, Joyce should move to C++ or python
First of all most of the combatants in the "Unix Wars" were selling complete systems, NOT just software. For the most part they sold machines that were NOT binary compatible with each other, and the fact that their OS was UNIX was based on the idea that it was better to port an off the shelf OS to their HW than write one from scratch. I worked for Gould for about 5 years. Their UNIX was a BSD/SysV hybrid. Now since Unix runs on all these binary incompatible machines the ONLY way to write code to run on all is to distribute SOURCE in some common language (probably "C"). While at Gould I was developing software for an IO controller running a National 32000 series uP. We had to port National's cross compileir to run on our Gould system. National's compiler was supplied in Unix source format, but it did not work correctly "out of the box". Most of the problems had to do with "Endian-ness" differences between the Gould Unix system's HW and National's. (Don't ask what this did to the opcode's generated for the 32000 target!)
Hardware differences aside, the NSC compilier WAS a Unix application, and it DID port to the Gould Unix system quite well, once the HARDWARE differences projecting through the compiler were ironed out.
So... saying that Windows is the same across all hardware that IT runs on is really meaningless, because all hardware that Windows runs on are BINARY COMPATIBLE!. BIG DEAL! Apples (pun intended) to Oranges. QED.
The problem is that the "choice" people will come running at you with torches. These loud, obnoxious people have taken over the OSS movement and insisted that everything should be forked, there should be multiple versions of the same functionality, and there should be no standards so that everybody can choose various ones.
It's holding back a lot of progress.
I think you are a suffering from a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. The proprietary UNIX vendors cratered for a few simple reasons. Nitpicking over their GUI standards weren't much of it:
A. Their business model demanded steeply inflated profit margins, leading to steeply inflated hardware and software costs. As soon as Microsoft could do most of the same things at a fraction of the price they were partially doomed. As soon as Linux could do ALL of the same things at even a smaller fraction of the price they were completely doomed. Proprietary UNIX had its heyday because people had to pay them buckets of money for there stuff because there was no other way, not true anymore.
B. The vast majority of the for profit computer hardware and software business, is completely depdendent on high volume and economy of scale. The fragmentation that killed the proprietary UNIX vendors was steep R&D costs for relatively small and deeply fragmented customer base. Gates figured out a long time ago the cost of developing software is fairly constant. The more copies of software you sell the less it costs and the more money you make. Volume is king in most software development. The proprieatary UNIX also couldn't compete in developing things like their proprietary CPU's because with each new generation CPU development get ever more expensive to develop and the didn't have the volume to cover the cost. IBM with their deep pockets being an obvious exception.
C. Fragmentation in standards did lead to fragmentation in application development. Software developers were almost universally forced to either pick the market leader(Windows) and pander to them, or waste fairly extensive resources trying to develop on multiple platforms, especially the QA resources to test on all of them.
Microsoft wins hands down on attracting software developers because they have the biggest market and they do for the most part keep binary applications running on their platforms for nearly ever.
Its a simple proven fact of the life the thing that drains application developers of their enthusiasm for Linux the most are:
- There is no GUI standard. You either pick one and code to it and blow off all the potential customers who want to use another, or try to code to multiple standard which no one does, or users are forced to CONSTANTLY switch gears between GUI look and feel. That really hacks off users. OSX wins hands with users and developers because everything works predictably and the same. OSX wins with developers because there are finite number of ways to develop things. There are a few to many generations of frameworks to choose from but that is mostly sue to supporting legacy apps.
- There is no decent audio standard if you are developing audio apps. Between OSS, ALSA, esd, arts, gstreamer and bad mixer implementations(though these are better in newer GNOME and KDE) its simply a royal pain to develop and audio app on Linux and hope for it to run right on every machine.
@de_machina
Lets test a program that I'm developing right now - just a single developer project, ~7000 lines of C++ code currently. I'll compile without *any* optimization on. ./configure: 11 seconds
make: 4 minutes 11 seconds (~23 times longer)
I remember Borland's example programs (BGIDEMO.C) for example, taking less than 10 seconds to compile/build on a 386/33 with 2MB RAM. I know it was at least a couple thousand lines.
Progress?
Yes, I understand what your point is. I'm simply saying that I think you're taking him too literally.
I agree - Linux is Greece to MS's Persian Empire.
One factor I didn't see much commented on, is the maturing of the desktop market. We won't see double digit growth in Operating systems top line dollars, at least $100-300 ones. Given the state of the market, I cannot see Microsoft long term placing a continuous bet on getting people to upgrade (getting user weaned off of Windows 95 was very difficult for them, expect the resistance to increase over time). They also seem to be caught in an unending "support-what's-out-there" mode - which cannot pay their bills - and affects their ability to develop the new OS they would need to get its cusotmers BACK on the treadmill of OS and software upgrading. I would HATE to be the CFO at Microsoft calculating ROI, it cannot be pretty. Consequently, this is pretty grim for others that want to "take that market away" from MS - it will resemble dead money I predict before too long if it isn't there already!
Given that the hardware platforms are moving into multiple OS, multiple processing core configurations (servers started already), it will be hard to predict the exact success of Windows and Linux - though I agree that MS isn't going away (WAY too established), and Linux will be in a continuous infighting mode (too scrappy to ever be a unified front). I think the successful Linux distributions will break out of that mode (and there are enough of them that a couple of them are bound to), and MS, while will lose ground, might actually be invigorated enough to turn out a decent product. But given that it is uncertain that the ROI may be there, it could be a phyrric victory!
I think, though, the real opportunity for growth in the OS market is on the appliance computers, anyway: Such as the iPod and iPod clones, PVR's, Game Consoles, and so on. If I were an aspiring OS developer, I would be much more interested in *that* market, than the desktop, where the only money I make is by convincing users to switch.
There may be a point where MS is no longer willing to invest in "just a desktop" OS - since other OS markets are more lucrative and the liability costs are mounting eating into profitability and ROI. The fact that MS is issuing a divided, should tell us that the market isn't a growth one anymore.
If it is considered by some to be a weakness of Linux and other OS that distributions are comprised of replaceable parts (including the kernel), then others will consider this a strength. Nowdays it is extremely easy for companies to build a suitable Linux/*BSD system for their clients' needs (governments etc.) from all the available parts and while the result will not necessarily support every particular package file format (rpm, deb, ...) to be used for installing new applications, due to the diversity between distributions, one can be sure that most applications can be installed easily (there will either already be a packaged binary installation for the chosen package file fromat or it will compile from source).
PS. I don't know who exactly the article addresses, but I find the language used rather apalling.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
After reading the article, I got pretty damned depressed and then I realized that it was partly the presentation (visual impact) and the experience that this guy seems to have over people like me.
Fortunately, I read a few responses on this topic and it restored my morale by reminding me that amazing growth, maturity and big-business support is simply happening and nothing this guy said makes it go away adding to the fact that it makes his arguments somewhat hollow in light of what he has suggested.
And here's something else:
For business systems, no one in his right mind should care if their systems can run "anything" so long as it runs what they need to do business and will likely see it in the future. So depending on your business, Linux may not, at present, be a good fit but that doesn't mean it's unsuitable for anyone. Frankly, I pray for the day we can put Linux on the desktops (a coporate decision) because it will make our systems more of a tool than a toy which is exactly what Windows + add-ons and personalizations invariably end up. (Yes, I know you can lock'm down, but when you do that, your users hate you because they know YOU locked it down.)
In any case, things are shifting and a lot of big players are interested in making Linux serve the purpose and these include foreign nations, big businesses and local governments. It's happening and I'm not hearing a lot about failure in these areas yet. (The only failures I have heard of so far are from Microsoft offering a sweet deal NOT to change rather than having someone change and then go back to Windows... anyone have any such stories?)
My prediction: If Linux in business applications get useful enough, then we will see that various "flavors" mean nothing -- businesses will have one or a few guys making the "desktop load" and that is the image everyone will be using. Forget about "flavor" problems -- each business will make their own anyway -- as if we don't already do that with Windows to begin with?
Yeah... and it's a pain in the ass to port, even among Linux distros. We are going through it right now. Originally developed on Mandrake, porting to RHEL3. We don't do GUI, we don't do anything that isn't basic Un*x API type stuff (fork, fopen, and shared memory) and it isn't a trivial port because things live in different places and behave differently. What we are doing *should* be trivial but it isn't. This one thing is probably the biggest pain in the ass when dealing with Linux.
Every year, I've been posting that the OSS world needs one sane, unified development API for its desktops. I sometimes get modded down, sometimes get angry replies...but nobody ever actually refutes what I'm saying, because they know I'm right.
A few years ago, I would have argued the same thing, but it's pretty clear now that the desktop is becoming increasingly irrelevant as web technologies mature. Think of it this way: In another 10 years, it won't matter what desktop platform you use because 90% of your day-to-day software will be web-based (think intranet). But most people will use Free Software desktops simply because they're the cheapest. Businesses will buy $200 disposable desktop PCs that network-boot Linux, an open clone of Java, and whatever highly-evolved form of Mozilla / Konqueror exists at that time. No more complicated deployment. No more licensing hastles. This sort of simplicity is the holy grail of both IT and business productivity. MS has a lot less to worry about Linux than open web standards. Although Linux is a good vehicle for their delivery.
That's exactly what this is -- the article makes complete sense with the spin you put on it, but is complete nonsense with spin that slashdot put on it. You should apply. :-)
501 Not Implemented
If I had mod points I would definitely mod you up. I get VERY SICK and tired of this attitude that you must have a single experience.
If that were the case we would have only one car maker, one set of clothes, one TV, one VCR maker, etc. Gee we would have COMMUNISM!!!!
These days most operating systems work similarily (windows, buttons, etc), just like most cars work similarily (gear shift, steering wheel, gas pedal, etc). However every person shifting from one car to another TAKES a moment to figure out where the buttons and levers are.
The worst part regarding this critique is that there is always OSX, which is pretty darn good and lets me run essentially all Open Source software.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
And I don't see how XML will prevent misformatted config files.
What problems are present with text config files and how will XML prevent those?
Pure and absolutly bullshit.
If you are having problems porting from Mandrake to RHEL a non-GUI app is simply because you don't know how to do your work.
So please don't talk about "balkanization" when you should say plain incompetence... on your part.
Linux could do a similar trick. Linus owns the trademark and he, (actually his designee) would forbid you from using the trademarked name "Linux" unless your stuff passes the test suite and meets all the commonality required for cross-distribution compatiblity. (Hopefully without exhorting huge sums of money like the Open Group does with UNIX licensees).
This would twist all the necessary arms at the major distributions to use the same file layout, same (or at least compatible) packages, glibc, etc.
Everyone has been saying exactly what you've said for many years now and it still hasn't happened... It's always "in the future, all apps will be web based" but it still hasn't happened yet or even come close.
Heard it all before. It's so boring it's hard to summon the effort to argue with it, but here goes.
Firstly, unlike the UNIX vendors and Microsoft, open source software isn't a company, so the words "succeed", "fail" and "compete" don't have the meanings the author thinks they do in this context. The author is comparing open source development to the UNIX wars, but the UNIX wars were a winner-takes all battle between COMPANIES, many of which went out of business. Open source isn't.
The fact that a bunch of programmers (or wannabees) in one place are arguing about whether there should be 3D widgets doesn't mean that all of linux development grinds to a halt. This is a common misconception. Certainly there are arguments and turf wars, and GUIs can be particularly contentious, but the bickering you see in forums is just that: bickering in forums. The fact that people like to argue about KDE and GNOME on Slashdot hasn't prevented both of them from steadily improving. Since there is no requirement to continuously make money and since the code is GPLd so it can't just disappear, that steady development will continue.
It's very true that there is much fragmentation, and many different flavours, and that this is all a bit bewildering. I even agree that this is a downside of open source, but I have yet to see a single shred of evidence that this flaw is fatal, and it often isn't even a flaw at all. For example, the author whinges about the differences in installation packaging. Personally, I think the fact that package management is considered to be a defining feature of a distribution, and that people are still actively coming up with new ways to solve the problem is absolutely excellent. None of the current solutions are perfect, but they are getting better. Having wrestled with Windows Installer, it is a subject dear to my heart, and it is one that Microsoft most certainly haven't come close to solving. Why should we stick with one botched solution just so we can "compete" against Microsoft. If there is a market for shitty installers, they're welcome to it.
For that matter, why are we supposed to give a shit if we put Sun out of business? I think that snarky comment more than any other belies the true motivation behind this screed. I think it goes as follows:
Boo-hoo. Personally, I disagree entirely with his contention that with microsoft are going to somehow magically make Linux disappear because he's analysing it as if it were some 1980s UNIX vender called "LinuxCorp". Regardless of that, though, it isn't Linux's job to provide what he wants which is to rewind history, bash some heads together and have UNIX beat windows. That simply isn't what Linux is about.
"The Milliard Gargantubrain? A mere abacus - mention it not."
Heh... I don't think you've ever tried it. We *are* doing it and we've each had more Un*x experience than you've been programming at all, most likely. The first thing we saw was setuid differences (one allowing by default, the other not), for example. Sure, our programs compile for the most part but they don't *work* because of differences in distributions and their default behaviours. Compiling is only a small step towards *working*, but since you evidently know all things, you should have known that already.
Apple's Strategy For Unix Migration:
- Dump X-Windows
- Dump X-Windows
You'd think the rest of us would catch on right? Make a decent GUI system that doesn't blow goats, and then all the various 'nix flavors can put the config files etc. wherever they please, as long as the GUI config tools know where they are. (and no, GNOME/KDE don't count, they still blow in comparison to OS X/Win32 interfaces... at least in terms of consistency)After reading this article, I happily remembered when my company decided to use the open source Snort IDS rather than Marcus's proprietary "NFR" IDS software.
Wanker. NFR's server software doesn't even run on Win32, only on Red Hat or Solaris.
MR may have some points, but his ideology in this article is just as transparent and just as revisionist as the behaviour he attributes to the F/L/OSS advocates.
So, linux is harder to set up and use than Windows. This is because there's a lot of competition between different ways of doing the same thing, different implementations of the same application, etc. This is an *inevitable* side effect of open source development. There will always be some people who don't like the commonly accepted "standard" way of doing things, and will go and reimplement it. Either they will develop a new app, make a new distro, a new desktop theme, or whatever.
Maybe this looks like chaos to the outsider, but it's evolution in action. The quality of the software is better and it's going to continue to improve because, like a biological system, it's driven by natural selection. Sure, it looks like a mess, but in the end it works.
For users who want more uniformity and lower quality, there's Windows. Microsoft is not going away any time soon but neither is Linux. The open source development model is so fundamentally different from the "unix war" era that it's pointless to even draw this kind of parallel.
Here is a list: Fedora Core, SuSE, Gentoo, Debian, Mandrake. There are 5 distros in that list. Roll some dice to pick one. If you get a 6, roll the dice again. Let's say you are rolling out a content management system. Do you just pick the top 5 vendors and roll the dice and take the winner? I'd hate to be on that implementation team.
Customers didn't choose Windows/Intel over UNIX/*processor because it was better/worse/more or less consistent. They did it because UNIX systems cost a fortune, as in an order of magnitude more. And one of the primary advantages of the old workstations--the fantastic speed on offer--disappeared.
People purchased UNIX systems because they were fast. Only expensive systems needed a good OS, because people only cared about sharing the speed when the machines were so expensive. It didn't matter as much for cheaper machines. Like it or not, in the old days where there was no big monopoly, people voted with their wallet.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
How else is there to take the reference to "kernel-swap?" :) Old apps don't run because of the kernel. They run because their source has been ported to Carbon and recompiled against OS X developer tools.
Mainstream companies (i.e. companies that use computers, not companies that are creating computer related products and services) buy applications -- not operating systems.
We choose an app that does what we want and then buy whatever computer that will run the app we want -- and a lot of times that will be the computer (and OS) that the application vendor recommends. Many times the customer won't have a choice, it will run on MS Windows only, or Solaris only, etc.
I've seen app vendors embrace Linux (normally not Fedora, but the other Red Hat) and have a lot of success with it. They can deliver a less expensive product than what they could deliver with a "traditional" server OS vendor. This strategy has worked and real business are buying real commercial software that is backed by Red Hat, MySQL and Dell servers.
Its these app vendors that don't want to fiddle with Gentoo versus Debian versus BSD. Many of them played that game with AIX, Solaris and SCO and they don't like it. The app vendors would perfer to sell a single "Linux," know that they can write to a single, consistent OS and be done with it.
Once again, most business aren't going to go buy a bunch of Debian boxes because they think the OS is cool -- they are going to buy the boxes that run the apps they like.
Get the app makers and you've got the businesses.
(Of course it isn't that simple, Business also think that there is more Windows support (books, people, schools, companies) available than there is Linux support. That creates resistance. But server packages are probably going to be sold with maintenance agreements anyway, which is why I'm not talking about desktops.)
-- I browse at +5 with stripped sigs
It is however not enough to make a United Linux... if they want to succeed they all must work for it SUN, IBM, HP, BSD, Apple and Linux... and they must drop that bullshit about Linux != UNIX (it is quite destrutive and not only for Linux)...
They may keep some hw-specific details for their platform to them self but the whole UI and all tools have to be common... and I dont thik it would be too hard... all those UI's are more or less based on X...
This would make the whole UNIX family much more competitive...
The whole process will be hard, very hard... why should I buy Solaris if I can run Linux ? well... there is no answer for that question, other than "You can get support from SUN for your Solaris", there is however an answer for "Why should we cooperate ?" this answer is very simple : "We have to cooperate if we want to survive"...
HP's UNIX will soon be dead... they have changed to a hw-platform that is Microsoft-friendly (Itanic) wich they are trying to sell it as a easy-to-migrate-to-Windows solution...
Nobody know for sure what IBM want they sell AIX for some systems and supports Linux for other...
SUN have at least a clear policy Solaris on Sparc !
Pls. Put your minds together and fix this mess... the only one who cares what is behind the ui are the sysadmins and developers... and they usually do not care about the ui... Management and users care about ui and they do not care what is behind it...
Sorry great (and very wise) Debian people, but I think distros should go with RPMs or BSD style ports. Apt-get and .deb's kinda sit in the middle and are only used by Debian and it's clones. *duck*
Conversly, if Red Hat could obsorb something into Gnome (or ditch it) we'd be better for it on all fronts. Maybe LookingGnomelass? (I know that's impossible)
.\.\att Clare
In the past I would have predicted that it would come down to Red Hat and Suse (or maybe Mandrake) because they're the most polished and popular distros.
But now I don't think it's so clear. Redhat hurt themselves (and Linux in general in the U.S.) when they spun off their free version as "Fedora" and put a price on "Red Hat Linux". Fedora's quality has been inconsistant.
Suse was bought by Novell, which seems to have a knack for killing anything they touch. I do hope that won't be the case here, but still...
Mandrake seems to have the numbers (based on distrowatch anyway), but I never see it around any place of business - it's always Red Hat and Suse. Maybe things are better for them in Europe, but they've also had financial troubles in the past so businesses may be a little skittish.
Things do seem to be foundering a bit; It's gonna take Novell not screwing up with Suse, or Red Hat calling Fedora "Red Hat" again to bring things back on track.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
What is the difference between a real song and a simulated song?
I know I'm not the most technical person here (an interesting contest /. should host sometime) but I know if you want to beat the champion, you have to take risks.
Find a technical solution to the various issues with forking. You need to fix this while we have Linus. Linus can't hold things together forever- and I doubt IBM, Red Hat, Novell, HP, SUSE, et al can coexist on their own. This is an opportunity, not a problem.
So find a technical solution in the kernel itself (to avoid losing too many developers to new forks) and stick with it. Should it be acceptable to design a distro to exclude competitive software? This is the great technical challenge of our generation- interoperability and platform independence. This is what Linux should be good at.
The point is he shouldn't have to port at all. The base Linux system should be consistent between all distrobutions, with the value of each distro coming from support/package management/community, not that they put libfoo in /usr/lib and not /usr/share/lib
Good Lord, you're a pompous moron!
Linux is dynamic (and sometimes rowdy), but that's a sign of health, vibrancy, an enthused and motivated base of both commerical developers and non-professional hackers and end-users. Its diversity is a strength, not a weakness. Even though you claim to be neutral, it's quite obvious that you're a Redmond fanboy / sock puppet. You talk about "UNIX Wars" and how everyone involved with Linux and OSS are essentially immature buffoons who can't get their act together...but you can't (and won't) square that against the steady rise of Linux in both the Enterprise and Desktop arena, or the fact that entire governments are embracing Linux and dumping Windows.
God, you are a pompous, clueless, tired old ass! Programmers don't care? Correction: you don't care, because you're too impressed with your own "seen it all and I'm so above it now" arrogance and insecurities.
Now step aside and go back to your NT Workstation while the OSS community continues to transform the world.
I propose a portability test. Let's have some Windows zealot write an app for XP using MS's development tools. We'll have a Linux programmer write to the same design using g++ and open source libraries on Fedora. Then each of them can use ports of their own development environment to port their apps to OSX, Solaris, FreeBSD, Debian and Windows Server 2003. The Windows guy can do Server 2003. He may be able to manage OSX. He won't ever complete the other three. The Linux developer should be able to get his code to run nearly everywhere.
...just check out the date on the article - Dec 4 2005 :)
Adobe Photoshop on Solaris SPARC
ancient version 2 or 3 or so. It existed, just didn't go far in the market.
Thats why Linux growth is skyrocketing and Windows is stagnating.
Consistency is not always good.
The parent makes it really sound like it is, but no, no it's not. The big movie studios like consistency. They put out crappy buddy flicks every year because they know they'll make money, and a certain number of people will go to them every time. Doesn't make them good movies though. Doesn't make for a good OS either.
A certain amount of consistency is good, of course. For example, when I buy a car I expect the gas pedal to make it move. But that doesn't mean I want exactly 17.5 meters of cubic interior space and 17" tired and 28.7 MPG on every car I use.
Yeah, Microsoft is consistent. So consistent it takes them 10 years to innovate and they still support MS-DOS.
Linux: made by users; made for users.
P.S. Parent is troll.
Everyone has been saying exactly what you've said for many years now and it still hasn't happened..
Yes, because the relevant technologies are only now starting to become mature. People jumped the gun with this claim back in the late 90's. Today, we're finally seeing realistic possibilities. Note that I never said that all apps will be web-based. But all business / communications / database apps will be. This will also include the demise of office suites -- replaced by document management systems and a new generation of flexible databases. For the forseeable future, we will still need local apps for graphics and multimedia.
Go google "Marcus J. Ranum" before you make a complete ass of yourself. Whoops! Too late!
There is no GUI standard. You either pick one and code to it and blow off all the potential customers who want to use another
I'm running evolution, some GUI terminal emulators, firefox, xpdf, and abiword. All of these are running in Gnome. If I quit gnome, I could start KDE and run all these same applications.
What is the big deal about some different environments? If you link to Qt, it will look like Qt, and if you link to gtk+, it will look like gtk+. The user at most has to install some libraries.
Just because a developer finds Qt more useful for his application, and I use Gnome, doesn't mean that he has excluded me. I can still run his app just fine.
Sure, it's frustrating to new users to understand a few different desktop layouts. But why does everyone act like it holds up the whole development process? It's not like evolution and openoffice and firefox don't exist.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
...who wants to use a computer has to complete a college level intense CS course? Do you drive a car? Do you have mechanical engineering and thermodyanic engineering degrees? Would it be necessary for that just to drive? Do you live and work inside someplace? Do you think it should be necessary to have an architectural design degree and at least a journeyman's level skill set in building to be able to use a home or office space?
Linux has been around longer than WinNT so therefore it is not the upstart here.
The Linux kernel was not set up to compete against MS. It was written to be a good kernel that is all so tech folk did not have to suffer using early Windows.
Arguably KDE is written to compete with Windows but then it is very cross platform and not related to Linux. But the basic X environment has been around a lot longer the MS.
The author could be considered to be correct about the multiple distributions having an adverse effect on Linux aceptance... but then Linux is not in competition.
Is OpenSource trying to compete with Windows? Or, are a few companies, selling open source software, trying to compete with windows?
The apps may work happily together (assuming they've agreed on the cut and paste thing) but the user isn't especially happy when every app has a different look and feel, different conventions for keyboard shortcuts, different file choosers, yadda yadda yadda. 3133t h@x0rs may think that "choice is good" but to the average end user it looks like an incoherent mess.
I'll take you a step further: I think Linux not only need a single unified API for GUI applications, but I think that Linux needs to create an entirely new windowing system from scratch. I've never seen an X11 application that didn't look, or work, clunky. You'll never get rid of all those applications that don't support (say) copy&paste correctly unless you 1) FORCE them to port the programs to a new API, 2) Make is easier in the new API to create correct copy&paste than incorrect copy&paste.
Look at Apple's development tools. They rewrote the window manager from scratch, put in every great feature they could think of, then they specifically designed the API (Cocoa) to make it really easy to develop GOOD applications, and really hard to develop bad ones.
How many OS X applications do you see with bad GUIs? Maybe 5% of them? And half of those are ports from other OSes.
Comment of the year
That's one of the best written rants I've read in a long time. FWIW, I think you're wrong. Firstly, distros are similar but different to the old vendors. Secondly, freedesktop is strongly pushing convergence. Thirdly, linux is 'good enough' for a great many people already. Fourth, the big software houses are either porting their software to linux or else watching the OSS alternatives slowly mature to replace them.
.c files on the install CD where I proceeded to ignore them.
Firstly, yeah, distros are remarkably similar to the different un*x vendors, but there are a few key differences. No 1. is probably that they get more of their software from the same places and so have compatability pushed down from upstream. They can introduce incompatabilities, perhaps in the name of consistancy, but every time a new upstream version comes out they become compatable again -- it is just too hard.
Secondly, freedesktop is actively addressing all of the major incompatabilities and systematically fixing them. KDE and Gnome don't work well together? They work better together than they did last year, and will work better still next year. Same for Fedora and Debian, same for fonts, X11, etc...
Thirdly, I run linux on my computer. When I go down to the local computer shop I can buy a machine sans OS without any strange looks. I can even pick up scanners and read on the back "Linux compatable", though I don't really have any assurance what that means yet -- last time it meant they'd copied the GPL source out of the linux kernel and dumped the
Linux might not be the default, but it isn't hard to be a linux user any more. You might get laughed at by the gentoo haxors for using linspire, or by the debian croud for choosing gentoo, but you'll still be able to interact with them and get stuff done.
Fourth, have you used kword lately? It is pretty damn smooth -- and many people view it as second rate software compared to openoffice! Similarly, gimp is still a PITA to use, but compare it to the last version and it is a walk in the park. What do you think the next version will be like? About photoshop 3 level? Better? kpdf is already better than acrobat reader in most regards, though not all. Macromedia is much better than the OSS offerings currently, but less so than last year (was there an OSS flash creator last year? there is now). Last year to install windows software point-and-click you bought codeweavers but now you just install the free winetools.
Now, you're claiming linux will fall apart thanks to ego. Software will change to much or something. Isn't this exactly the sort of thing that any given distro works against? Say you pick, *shrug*, Xandros. Is Xandros consistant from release to release? Why, yes it is. Does it really matter for a xandros customer that ubuntu looks different? Especially if they play nicely together, it seems a moot point to me.
I think it's more mjr making a complete ass of himself. ::yawn::
First of all, if you can't be bothered to write without all the lame abbreviations (a complete lack of respect to the people you are talking to) I will not necessarily concede that you are one of the normal people, because I find you extremely pedantic.
/. reply....
Conceding you are not like this in real life, what you are saying is nonsense.
UNIX has succeeded and continues to succeed every day: companies that need mission critical systems normaly look for UNIX base solutions first since it is a proven, economical, scalable choice.
Not that Linux is in town big companies are looking at it, and frankly Linux has taken by storm the back office in many companies (ISPs could not be viable without Linux. Googlewould not be viable without Linux).
So frankly your measure of success must be quite particular.
And as for UNIX backups not being easy, I will pass and will not explain to you how wrong you are. Ignorance and inexperience is something that can't be put straight in the short time it takes to write an
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Obviously the switch from OS 9 to X isn't a "kernel-swap", anyway. That should be your first clue that he's not speaking literally.
.... to decide how many distros are needed?
You know what, If I feel like creating a distro tomorrow neithr you or anybody else should be mocking my attempts. THat would be my damn problem, if you want the comfort of a supported OS, and you care about OSS you have choices.
I don't understand why people are so set on in the monopoly mentality. They get a choice to exercise their freedom, and what to they do? Demand to lose that freedom of choice.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
That is a flawed comparison.
Apt can be used for RPM too.
YHBT HAND
The point is, you do not need to do a multi-variable analysis for everything.
Now Linus many moons ago had an opportunity to nudge things along into the standardization direction, and for his own reasons he chose not too, he chose anarchy over actual cooperation and decision making. This is neither terrible nor brilliant, it's merely a decsion he made appaarently because he just didn't want to decide, he likes kernel hacking, not OS building or business. Swell, no probs with that, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be done either, just he chose not to be the guy who did it, nor did he even indicate a direction to go in.
I think it's time to decide if computing society is ready to just go ahead and make a decision beyond his "who cares?" non-decision, then work towards that goal. The 1% niche hobbiests can have whatever they want,they can stick with "who cares?" anarchy and build your own and whatever like it is now, and I am saying there's definetly a place for that as well, but there needs to also be something else for the other 99% of humanity out here to at least look at and use, not tinker, actually use.
For all practical purposes there's Windows, OSX, and then this other thing which you can't even point at with one finger because bits and pieces of it are all spread out all over in a non compatable "kit" form. The 99% of the potential user base for a computer operating system, business, government, home users, do NOT want a hobbiest "kit". It's just reality. I think people would actually like a decent alt
The other funny thing is he says in his rant "Corel doesn't care"...yet aren't they the owners of Xandros??? lol
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
This gets me to thinking: could someone just make a toolkit that is easy to use and will generate a binary that will work with multiple toolkits? Something like GGI's backends to work with X, SVGALib, etc. Only you write once, compile once, and link to a library that would dynamically detect what toolkit is currently in use and use it. Heck, they do it for cross platform toolkits like Tk and Qt, why not do something similar for all the toolkits on Linux?
Methinks something like this probably already exists, but if not, well it can go on the end of my endless list of things todo (right after "save the world"). Off to freshmeat.net to look . .
Nathan's blog
Windows is pretty, with windows it just works, you don't have to support multiple windows configurations.
What, am I the only one who remembers the days of DOS/Win3.1/Win95/WinNT overlap? emm386.dll? I'll admit, I was only getting started in sysadmin as a summer job back then, but I've seen a shop try to deal with supporting all of those at the same time except NT. Speaking as a user (gamer), I can tell you things sure don't work that smooth between versions of windows either.
And yes you could argue that the above is equiv to RH 7, 8, 9... but that's not accurate. RH is targetted to the same people whereas Win95 and WinNT certainly weren't.
He's saying that linux has lost (or will lose) because it hasn't done anything about the MS monopoly (due to it's fragmented nature). Duh! It's a monopoly. High costs to entry, hard to dislodge. MS had their monopoly with Windows 3 at the latest (realistically, probably earlier with DOS). We didn't start really seeing linux distros until what, 94-95? That's post 3.1, that's starting to push Win95.
That linux has not only survived, but flourished against a monopoly should actually tell you a lot more than his scare-blog-post. Microsoft has successfully crushed 2 other competetor OSes (OS/2 and Netware) and has an assist on a 3rd (BeOS - the Microsoft OS lockin on hardware vendors).
Now, I'm not saying that the LSB isn't a great thing. I'm just saying that I don't think multiple distros (or desktop enviroments) is bad.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
Nah, Corel sold their whole linux division, including corel linux, some years ago. Not long after they'd poured enough hours into wine to make it run 'word perfect' properly. The people who bought corel linux renamed it Xandros and hired most of Corel's old linux programmers.
It's actually quite a nice product if you're looking for a desktop where duplicate applications have been removed and everything conforms to standard guidelines.
What you call convenience, some would call clutter. Does the average user really need 3 instant messaging clients installed by default?
And "the horror of Windows drivers"? If I want to install drivers for my ancient printer under XP, I just select the make and model. I don't even want to think about the problems I'd have to deal with to get it working under Linux. I still have a headache from trying to compile my wireless card drivers.
And the problem with playing video on Linux is the same as trying to use Video Lan Client on Windows: It's great when it works, but from my experience, the success rate is closer to 75%.
mark obviously hasn't used a windows computer much, or he'd see teh nightmare of clashing incompatable settings and app that are typically installed. sure linux is very self incompatable sometimes, but if you stick to installing the packages and not making your life complex past that, it's a damn sight easier then windows.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Ugh, going in reverse chronological order, I am now a little sick to the stomach of the idea of making yet another layer of abstraction on top of all the various GUI/Sound toolkits out there. While this is a neat idea (and perhaps even marketable), I could easily see it ending up in the same exact "problem" we have now (ie, too many toolkits). I say "problem" because many who think that having all these choices are a bad thing are short sighted. Consistency is one thing, but mandating that everyone use the same tools is just stupid. Choice isn't the problem; incompatibility, inconsistency and bad design are.
Anyway, back to my original subject, I found one project (Generalized Interface Toolkit) which looks to kinda-sorta do what I described in my previous post (which, yes, I am responding to). Looking at this project, it became apparent that this wasn't exactly what I wanted, and my goals don't align up perfectly with theirs, so I would probably have to start a project of my own if I wanted to see my ends met. This got me thinking about Doing-It-Yourselfness, as well as choice, and one synapse lead to another, and I started to get queasy thinking about how GITK is (and my project would become) just another layer of abstraction competing for the same mindshare. Don't get me wrong, abstraction can be good and useful, but when taken too far, or used unecessarily, it confuses people and slows things down.
Anyway, I guess my point is that while it might be useful to some ("write once for ALL Linux GUI's!"), the idea also sort of disgusts me. As with many ideas that disgust me, however, it would probably make a lot of money. Look for your copy of GUI Uber Alles(tm) at a computer store near you soon!
Nathan's blog
All I see is people bashing what he is saying. Well, just because you don't like what he is saying doesn't mean he is wrong.
There are standards for a reason. People break standards to create *Lock In*. Thats why MS created JScript instead of happily using JavaScript, and while sometimes unintentional all the packaging systems that now exist. (rpm, apt-get, emerge, etc) Fragmenting software installing methods. This causes more headaches for software vendors and everyone else that writes software. It's why you will see RPMs for some software and only contrib apt-get and damn near all emerge.
No one wants to standardize. They all want to be unique becaues *they* are better, or want to evoke lock in. It's Ego (be unique) or Business (create lock in) Lock in creates consistance, unique create fragmentation.
Only open source can give you the best of both, but there is a problem is... I bet you can guess what it is...
Every year, I've been posting that the OSS world needs one sane, unified development API for its desktops. I sometimes get modded down, sometimes get angry replies...but nobody ever actually refutes what I'm saying, because they know I'm right.
Hmmm... Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that libx and freedesktop.org provide these. Beyond that, it is just a choice of widgets. No more, no less. Of course, if you just choose widgets you could still have GNOME ported to the framebuffer as opposed to X... But the freedesktop specs should still be valid.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
and refrain from commenting about things he clearly does not understand.
When I perform different tasks I use different programs. Each program does a different thing, and its UI is geared towards what that program does. I do not expect my word processor to display my playlist and let me pause and fastforward or rewind my spell checking. I use linux as my desktop (have for 10 years now), and recently moved my parents to a linux machine (they finally trashed one box too many even behind a firewall). My parents use 4 applications, that's it. I use 8 + a collection of compilers, interpreters, databases, servers. Of those 8 primary ones, they all run on both windows and linux, so I choose linux. Think about it, the applications most people use are very few in number. Consistency isn't important, because it is more important that they do the job they do well. Do you complain that Never Winter Nights and Doom3 don't have consistent interfaces? I mean I sure wish Doom3 worked more like my spreadsheet! :)
Unix didn't lose the Unix wars, Microsoft doesn't control the world. Just because most people are to indifferent to use something else (and that's all it is folks, they just don't care) doesn't mean that MS won. It just means most people's lives are suboptimal. Sucks for them.
Microsoft maintains its monopoly through its proprietary Application ABI/APIs and the proprietary hardware driver ABI/APIs, which are inheritently more difficult to support by other OSs due to their closed source nature. Microsoft is one of the least interoperable parties, by refusing to release any source code which would help Wine better support Windows applications, and its lack of even a nearly standard system API and GUI APIs.
People should have the freedom to choose what OS to use. The goal of Linux should be to give people another choice, encourage OS freedom not by becoming the next MS but by encouraging source compatability standards so that code is compatible on all operating systems.
I am tired of hearing people say that the lack of a "consistant UI" is what is holding Unix back. I think this is nonsense and does wonders to distract attention from the real issues, the problems of driver and application API incompatabilities hindering software and driver portability. Every WIndows application I have used has a different look and feel. I dont think it really sets users back much. What really sets users back is when they cannot use their camera or their printer on Linux without having to troubleshoot it.
What people really want is to be able to use their hardware on whichever OS they choose and as well have a reasonably straighforward installation and configuration process. However, this also must be done without taking away freedom and a high degree of configurability in software use and choice. Their is a misconception that in order for software to be user friendly it has to have a barren sparse user interface and virtually no advanced configurability at all, basically an inflexible unconfigurable piece of monolithic software, that works one way, the way the desiners think you should be allowed to use it. But software can be simulataneously user friendly and expert friendly, simultaneously simple to configurable and configurable to the hilt. Simply put the most frequently and commonly used options most prominently placed and the more complex options in expert user screens for those that want them, and allow the software to use a set of reasonable defaults which can be changed but do not have to be set for the user to use the software. This goes for many things, including system configuration. Also, just because we need plug and play device detection and GUI tools, doesnt mean we have to make things unconfigurable for the expert. The GUI tools and plug and play can simply be front ends for underlying command line tools configuration files, so the expert user still has all of the customisability and fine level control they had before. Just make GUI tools a front end for, or work alongside as an optional component, a rich and complete command line environment, and we can have the best of both worlds.
The key is to make things user friendly and expert friendly simultaneously.
I think it also important for their to be a diversity of software, including allowing the user to choose their OS, their window system, word processor, etc, etc. Agian, I dont thing the "look and feel" thing is what is really holding back Unix, rather its he hardware compatability and software compatability issues with Windows, which needs to be addressed not by adopting Windows' ways in system design, but through compatability layers like Wine. Perhaps there should also be a hardware driver compatability layer for Windows drivers.
An important aspect to OS choice is allowing an application and hardware to be used on any OS, and the key to obtaining that is to encourage standard system level APIs, POSIX and single unix spec, and a standard low level windowing system, X11, in order to obtain source compatability, the abaility to recompile software on any compliant OS without modification. Compatability layers, such as Wine, are also important, in the case of Windows. Microsoft already has the benefit of having the allegiance of most hardware and software companies, so all they have to do is make
Firefox with 9 tabs==37MB for me - dunno why you had 49MB with only two. Oooh - could it be the PAGES you were viewing? Anyway - not really important. It is your choice to run whatever browser you want...
He references a kernel-swap--i.e., the change in kernels. He mentions backwards-compatibility built into this kernel change.
I'm saying there was no backwards compatibility built into this switch. The Carbon APIs compile to the new system. The new system doesn't run the old.
Every tab had a Slashdot page open.
37MB is still nearly twice as much as Opera's 20MB.
The diversity of Linux and Unix distributions is a wonderful reflection of the diverse computing problems they have addressed. System adaptation is NOT a problem for building solutions, it is only a problem when you want to have wide distribution.
/etc/passwd) can manage locking issues so legacy interfaces can be kept working for people who prefer them.
MicroSoft provides a few "somewhat" defined platforms but they are not nearly as adaptive as Linux. The embedded domain is an example where this can really be seen. MS OS's also suffer the same problem as Linux as they are NOT "completely defined". You can't actually write software for the platform and "know" it will work. Since there is no standard, ALL you can do is test on it to find the failures! Once you ship product you never know if a new patch will break your product!
A lot of old MS Windows software simply does not work on the newer platforms. Even some new software simply fails even on Win XP! Mis-matching installed libs on XP is still a bear to deal with. It's simply way too easy to screw up the platform. While we are at it, rebooting to install basic add-on software is simply unacceptable in my opinion. To be brutal, Win-XP is STILL not ready for my Desktop!
Knowing the stucture of file systems, the location and formats of important information is problematic. As is knowing what code you can leverage(libs and tools). It's not unlike dealing with the diversity of hardware. In both cases one needs to discover what's there using static databases or dynamic probes. Autoconf is only a partial solution, software really should be run time adaptable. Running software should leverage new code(libs) as it is installed!
Solution's to this kind of problem have presented themselves many times. The Internet uses the exteremely large tree/table solution called MIB's (Managed Information Bases) to describe the interfaces to most all the hardware in our networking fabric. A very simple protocol called SNMP(Simple Network Management Protocol) provides an exremely effective interface to this "distributed" database. One can discover hardware, find out what information it has, then interact with it, all using a simple API. What Linux/Unix needs, or for that matter any system, is a MIB that describes it in detail.
If each system has an onboard specification that can be accesed via a standard protocol/API then you can write software that will work on all such platforms. Installation can query such an information base for details such as
"install root",
"document location"
"available desktops"
"available tools to leverage"
"installed libs and versions"
Applications can also register for MIB change notifications if desired. For example one should be able to download some new encryption code and have your web browser start using it immediately(no restart required).
Storage of MIB information is an implementation dependent detail. So no need for a registry like file... Flat files, DB, RDMS, OODB's are all valid solutions. As is memory based and supply on request via probes... Wrappers(agents) to existing information bases(e.g.
One could use MIB's and SNMP for this task, there is a lot to be said for that as a solution. The problem is that there is a bit of a learning curve to be able to write MIB's. It's also not in the data format de'jure, i.e. XML.
oh ... you are insane ? ok :D
... i DON'T care ...
..
...
... it can only go down from there ( you should at least try to learn a bit about history and evolvment ... nothing ever lasts, especially if it is as unstable is the redmond crap )
anyway, why should i care if 99.99% of the people on earth are stupid enough to buy windows for their money if they could have *bsd or linux for free ?
it's easy
if i want to to put up a server, i choose a reasonable amd/linux or amd/*bsd box, if i want to put up a pc for nephew who only wants to play around, i could consider windows.
but where the hell do you come from dear marcus? i wonder if we have TONS of unix specific server software already which basically only works because it's being run on unix, how can everyone's future be in bloody w*nd*ws ? it can't be, someone has to manage the software, and someone has to make improvements to it even if bill gates takes over the world.
considering the major security 'features' that windows has by todays date, a proper investor should be insane if he would set his server software running on windows
marcus, i think you are a gui lover, go do it, love it , i don't care
but please don't try to be ultra provisional and generate stupid ideas from the watermark that you saw in the toilet
w1nd0ws will never be as popular as it was in 1995-2002
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
a) Linux is technologically superior to Windows. By technologically I mean as in "filesystem", "stability", "networking", "security" and "performance". There is some very impressive development going on in areas that are normally unseen (scheduler, VFS, memory management, networking stack etc) to the end user.
b) Linux is about control and hack value. The people that actually write the code (instead of whining in Slashdot) have their own priorities. In the end, polished GNU/Linux programs can be technically excellent. The developers do NOT care about world domination. Take it or leave it, it's free.
c) Many countries and companies have strong reasons to support Linux for their own good. Places like India and China (AND Europe) would really prefer using Linux instead of the prohibitively expensive MS products. If 10% of India + China use Linux, that's equal to the US population. (also note that many of these people don't have computers so they are not yet addicted to the MS Way of Doing Things(R)).
d) If you prefer Windows, stop bitching about it and keep using them. It's OK, really. I don't try to convert people to Linux (although, interestingly, people do try to convert me to Windows--at that point I usually shove Tanenbaum's book up their asses).
P.
That didn't help the tropical paradise of Guam which has been turned into a snake monoculture. Yes, as soon as something that eats snakes goes feral in Guam it's going to devastate the island's snake population, but that's not going to bring back all the birds and other wildlife.
Monocultures may be more risky, but all of our most productive systems (agriculture) and monocultures. Hopefully we'll maintain enough diversity in agriculture to avoid famine, but there will always be a market for weird produce sold in organic health food shops; the poeple that shop here don't particularly care what other people are eating.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
The author makes a case for software monoculture. Yet a monopoly does not lead to long term market stability. Monopolies at some point become too entrenched to foster innovation. As long as there is a MicroSoft monopoly there will be a Linux. Given enough time they will both be considered passe.
I would basically agree with that. And the thing with computers is, it's easier to increase your skill set safely compared to driving or building structures, etc. I am not sure how to implement it, but some sort of minimum design functionality required by law to access the web safely-a warranty in other words-would force the software devs and box sellers to at least release stuff to the general public that is a lot safer and easier to "drive" than the kludges we have now. In other words, less skins and themes, more useful and secure functionality. I think a normal consumer waranty like with other products would go a long ways to achieving this goal. As long as software is allowed to be sold, err I mean "licensed to use", with zero consumer warranties, it will continue to be buggy and insecure, no matter who makes it, closed or open source, because they will concentrate on blinkenlights "improvements" instead of secure functionality.
Just like you can't put an Athlon into an Intel-socket, you can't use a rpm on debian
.deb or .rpm... just like application developers sometimes need to note the 'endianess' of the chip they're programming for.
.rpms or whatever to this new thing. The reason you might want to start from scratch is that you don't want to create a new system that contains the least-subset of all the existing systems.
/Applications makes it available to everyone. The applications themselves are folders, which contain shared libraries and whatever else is required to run the application... it is really simple.
If they got everyone in a room to work out exactly what's required for package management, and the most flexible way to let everyone do it their own way, there could be a genuine unified package management system...
That wouldn't mean that software vendors wouldn't have to worry about
It's just a matter of separation of concerns, and hiding details that are really just a pain in the neck for vendors.
Ideally, instead of trying to 'fix' all the current methods, something would be designed from scratch, and you'd be able to port
On OS X (and Classic), you can install most programs by dragging them (from CD/the internet or whatever) into _any_ folder. If that folder is in your home directory, then the app is available to you,
What would be even better is if all libraries had meta information in them, and when a library is copied onto your multiple times, a smart filing system tracks them, and possibly even saves disk space by using symlinks. If the applications also had meta data (I need libxyz version 2.2 exactly, or >= 3), then a unified tool (like apt-get) could update all required libraries, and leave the user free to move everything anywhere they want.
It could be designed such that it's very hard to break your system by fiddling with it.
It's a dream, but the powers would do well to start thinking about combining their resources on this problem.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
"so-and-so won't work with so-and-so-else, let's start a whole new operating system development tree! Wow. Grow up."
That's what Lenin must have been thinking when just another baker opened a bakery....
What's going on here is just healty software economics; the best products get selected by distribution maintainers just like sony or samsung select the right chips for your DVD-player. This is simply the best way to get the best result. That's why capitalism works better than communism and that's why difference is good.
The fact that this leads to the problems described by the author is also very similar to the DVD-player case; cables or extras for brand A may not fit on brand B while the brand C amplifier has another color just like binaries for Red Hat may not work with Slackware and your KDE application may look a bit different from Gnome. It's simply the cost of a free market; you have to make choices. You cannot have it both ways.
Oh. And there is no such thing as the 'Open Source Movement'. It simply doesn't exist. There isn't a 'Windows movement' either, nor an 'Apple movement'. It's all just individuals doing their own little thing. Just like in normal society where you can buy a car from one company and then get this ultra cool add-on from another company and it may not just fit, you won't go whine about how the 'car movement' movement needs to grow up.
0x or or snor perron?!
YAST isn't a package manager, though it has a front end for RPM.
If people want a cathedral experience with Linux, they can buy an officially-supported version, like Red Hat, or SUSE, or even Linspire.
He can complain that these vendors need to do more to create a consistent GUI across applications, but complaining that the bazaar isn't a cathedral just seems to be missing the point.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Ever hear of OpenAL? It doesn't fscking care what the underlying sound API is. In runs on Windows and OS/X too. Period.
Performing sanity checks on your own beliefs is vital in avoiding poisoned koolaid.
The author draws a parallel to the earlier UNIX wars and the current variety of Linux distributions, and then claims that because of this, Microsoft are laughing all the way to the bank. I think he's wrong, and here's why.
1) Although it's true that there are a lot of Linux distributions, in practice at most five of them would be used by 99.5% of the Linux using population. Of those five, (Debian, Red Hat, SUSE, Mandrake, and a tie between Gentoo and Slack) three are RPM-based, which to a degree limits variation in their overall style, and also, many of the more popular "smaller" distributions are themselves derivatives of Debian or Slackware. Because of that, it's possible in practical terms to pare the core number of most popular distributions down even further, to just two: Debian and Red Hat's offerings/RPM based derivatives.
2) I myself haven't seen any of the division he talks about in the commercial space. From everything I can see, in the corporate world Red Hat is the undisputed king, as much as it pains me to admit it. Corporations won't buy anything unless a contract to feed them, burp them, and change their nappies goes along with it...and for that, Red Hat and IBM are the two primary sources.
3) Microsoft are doing anything but laughing these days. The author needs to go here and learn about the attitude Microsoft have developed towards Linux on their own, and it's not one of bravado. The stench of fear coming from Redmond over the past two years ago in particular has been palpable...Ballmer has been trying to hide it, but he is fairly obviously terrified of the progress Linux has been making, and with good reason. If Microsoft are so confident that Linux isn't going anywhere, then why has Darth Bill been making flying visits to different places lately, including Australia? Why did Ballmer personally try and prevent Munich's conversion to Linux, if it wasn't significant? I also notice that mention of Longhorn was conspicuous in its absence from the article...this is understandable, as it would not have aided the author's argument.
4) The UNIX wars were not on their own responsible for Microsoft's success. They didn't help, sure...but before Linux UNIX would not have achieved mainstream relevance regardless of what happened. The reason why I can say that with complete confidence is because UNIX as an operating system/s was written with the assumption that the human being at the keyboard actually enjoyed using his or her brain, when the truth is that around 95% of human beings do not. The main reason why Windows took over the world where computing is concerned is because it was written with the assumption that whether the person using it was intelligent or not, the one thing most human beings despise doing more than anything else is engaging in intellectual effort. The *only* reason why Linux has come out of the closet now is because of the effort that has been made towards user-friendliness for it. In the 140 IQ crowd, the BSDs are still almost entirely non-mainstream.
That said, open source UNIX is the future, and I believe it could possibly define computer use for the next several hundred years, assuming humanity lasts that long. The reason why is that OSX and Linux are proof of concept that although usability was not an issue that UNIX's initial userbase cared about, it is not a hurdle that the operating system is unable to overcome.
Gates was lucky. At the birth of anything new there is chaos, and for a while a number of different competing lifeforms exist. Eventually however, natural selection kicks in and standardisation takes place, as is gradually occuring now. Gates was able to take advantage of the primordial soup phase, and I begin to suspect that in the furthest recesses of his own soul, he has the necessary level of awareness to know that, as much as he may not want to accept it on a conscious level. Microsoft are indeed a dinosaur, and their extinction, albeit a slow process, is already at hand.
The liver is the channel in an airport departure lounge. Captain james cook was an english naturalist. He published his theory of evolution in a book entitled the origin of species. If you want to think that i cannot imagine, however it seems to be killed. I see so much sickness. The enemy surrounds. You are the computer program, and i am an enemy of stupidity.
I'll never see myself in the wars for their genocide. Decimated by manifest destiny. Tortured and enslaved in the wars for their genocide. Decimated by manifest destiny. Tortured and enslaved in the class how to break things. The sun is a long time. William shakespeare was an italian artist and scientist. He put forward the theory that the universe is regulated by simple mathematical laws.
That's kind of unix operating system.
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the wars for their genocide. Decimated by manifest destiny. Tortured and enslaved in the wars for their genocide. Decimated by manifest destiny. Tortured and enslaved in the hand is worth two in the neck. Beef is the star at the end of the workstations' gui. Cool.. Share it with me.
Because you are a part of an indigenous people. You need to get a ppc machine. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the time taken for the next 2000 years. Because you are a part of an aeroplane.
What am i bashing unix. As a unix system administrator with 20+ years experience, and a windows system administrator with 20+ years experience, and a windows system administrator since windows 1.0, i can tell you that there isn't a whole lot of difference in the neck. Ok, running p2p software is a limb extending from the shoulder of an ass and a tragedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who think and a cute saying are all it takes longer to configure code than to compile it these days, which is categorically not the case on windows. I like to think they can change the world are the one asking all the other unix machines because there was basically a single flavor of unix. Blood is a member of an ass and a cute saying are all it takes longer to configure code than to compile it these days, which is categorically not the case on windows.
May i say what a great voice out of heaven every stone about the weight of a talen; and men blasphemed god because of the house and have access to at microsoft for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there's no end to what people now use. If you step back and look at the end of the workstations' gui.
I wish that i could tell you, but i don't think end users can be trusted to protect their computers.
First of all, you should be obvious from my ability to move, and does not want to think they can change the subject...Do you hear the kind of software experiencea cross a broad spectrum of hardware, including laptops. I am now sharing this with the confiduential information you had access to all data and the hips.
I like to tell you, but a simple nmap shows every port under gods lcd monitor open. Linux philosophy is "laugh in the face.
I've not heard anything else since, but in the wars for their genocide. Decimated by manifest destiny. Tortured and enslaved in the unix wars didn't end and, consequently, the "last man standing), have either disappeared into the mists of time, or are niche players that have been forced into new markets in order to survive. Protoplasm is the one asking all the open software foundation (osf) motif metaphor were just flash and glitter or whether they were actually kind of software experiencea cross a broad spectrum. The lips are the fleshy edges of the workstations' gui. Great news for you: real programmers don't care about that garbage.
A pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes longer to configure code than to compile it these days, which is categorically not the case on windows. The sun is a rhythmic movement of the house and have access to at microsoft for a period of a firearm.
"They just sat back and watched free UNIX fail to become a credible threat because, well, frankly, it was in the hands of egotistical, detail-oriented amateurs.'
Amen, brother, amen.
Insert witty sig here.
Economists have this concept called friction. Basically, it's anything that gets in the way of exchanging goods and services, but the same general idea applies to information.
Email imposes less friction than snail mail.. you don't have to put the letter into the envelope, put a stamp on it, take it out to the mailbox, wait for the postman to come, etc, etc. Open Source imposes less friction than closed source.. you don't have to get involved with lawyers, licensing agreements, and all that sort of thing.
Today's Linux installations still have their share of friction. That doesn't make them evil or hopelessly flawed, but it does limit the rate at which people adopt them.
Individually, the sources of friction in Linux tend to be fairly small. Of course, so is a strand of hair. Put a whole bunch of strands together and the phrase 'wearing a hair shirt' starts to be relevant. Every inconsistency between tools that are otherwise similar (do I need 'make', 'gmake', or 'bmake' to compile this program.. oh, and what version?) is just one more source of friction that limits the spead of OSS.
Now.. I used to be a machinist, so I am deeply familiar with physical devices that are still in the process of being built. We start with a rough-cutting process where you remove 99% of the unwanted material quickly and efficiently, and get something that looks pretty much like the finished piece at a casual glance. But the entire thing is coated with burrs.. the machined surfaces are ridged like tiny files and the edges are miniature saws. That's why we go back and do a second, slow and gentle cut to take off that last tenth of a millimeter. And if you happen to be doing precision work, there are lapping, polishing, and wearing-in phases.. each of which takes longer than the one before.. which can make the phrase 'mirror smooth' seem very unimpressive indeed.
My point is that I see Linux at the 99% point. That's good, but it doesn't mean "we're almost there." It means we have enough big things out of the way that now it's important to spend a whole lot of time and effort getting that last tedious-and-unexciting 1% right.
The things that stand in our way are the "it's good enough" mindset, and the tendency for developers to make up their own standards as they go. Almost all command-line utilities accept '-x' options.. but not all of them. We still have things like 'dd if=some-file of=target'. Some commands use '-x argument' while others use '-xargument'. Some allow option stacking, like 'command -xyz', while others require 'command -x -y -z'. And then there are the '--extended' options.
And that's only the command line. Would you be prepared to bet $100 that all your manpages are in perfect synch with the actual binaries? Can you find the default httpd.conf file under Slackware, Debian, RedHat, FreeBSD and NetBSD? And you'll find similar kinds of roughness all the way up to the desktop.
None of these problems are huge, and none of them are particularly difficult to solve individually. Cleaning them all up would be a huge effort, though, especially when you think about having to polish all the scripts and utilities that rely on the currently-1%-rough standards.
The big question is whether anyone will have the determination to do all the tedious, unrewarding work necessary to bring Linux/OSS up to the next plateau of reduced friction. There's no technical barrier in the way, just a huge gumption barrier.
But I'll make this prediction: If someone does create their own low-friction distro, and the conventions they choose become the new standard, in five years the people who are currently saying Linux/OSS is good enough right now will point back and say what a mess the 'old ways' were.
My understanding's a little fuzzy, but I seem to recall that Windows (surprise surprise) doesn't play well with others, and demands that it get the main boot record of the hard drive all to itself. I'm not sure if that's what's happening here (stories I've heard talk more about Windows formatting the MBR and hosing grub or lilo in the process), but it might be somewhere to start if you ever decide to retry setting up a double-boot configuration.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
just use rpms, kde, ext3, and kill all diversity and innovation?
GNU/Linux is ending the UNIX wars by forcing the UNIX vendors to switch to GNU/Linux or to seriously consider supporting it. The UNIX world has been divided and has had infighting since the first time BSD was ever distributed and LONG before Linux ever appeared on the scene.
An oligopoly of GNU/Linux vendors and supportors is much harder to defeat than several different vendors with disparate versions of the same operating system.
Eliminating proprietary UNIX and unifying the UNIX sector under one banner is a necessary first step to ending Microsoft's monopoly.
Later, GJC
Thank, GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
It is certianly possible to build an Carbon application that is ABI/binary compatible with both OS X and MacOS 9.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Exactly!
You don't know *shit* about Windows, other than the lies you hear from fellow Linux zealots.
In case you didn't know, in the last few years:
The Windows GUI is also dramatically more stable than the old DOS-based versions.
Don't like ads or EULAS in your instant messenger client? Download GAIM, the same fucking application you can get on Linux, and countless other platforms!
Please, before you comment on something, try to use before coming to a conclusion.
I think that while he most definitely does have a point, especially as regards RPM vs apt-get vs ports and the KDE vs GNOME fiasco I think he most totally absolutely misses or missed the boat when it comes to the adoption and future direction of Linux.
As others have noted here, Linux, in its most basic form, can neither win nor lose. It's not in any competition at that level. The people who work on it do it for pleasure, not money (some do it for money but I'll get to that in a minute).
On the commercial level, while he might have a point if debian, mandrake, gentoo and Ubuntu were in serious consideration for adoption by large software vendors, the fact of the matter is, that for all intents and purposes, enterprise Linux consists of Red Hat and Novell/SuSE. Oracle, DB2, Sybase, SAP and the numerous Java application server vendors all certify their products on one or both of those distros.
And that brings me to IBM. IBM is a serious, a very serious business software and services company. IBM would not have invested the enormous sums it has in the last few years into Linux if it didn't feel that Linux was worth it.
And what about the numerous big name governments, cities and corporations that are publicly switching to Linux? The sheer uptake of the OS and above all the growth in that uptake indicates that Linux is doing just fine, thank you, despite all his worries and pessimism. Three years ago, after the dotcom bubble went balls up, you could not find Linux job adds easily, especially in a country like the one I live in, Switzerland, which is arch conservative. These days you can.
And I think that the desktop and package issues are slowly being solved by natural evolution in that there are now tools that intergrate RPM's on non RPM systems and vice versa and even KDE and GNOME are slowly but surely trying to come to a point where they are interoperable. I fully expect that in five years, it will not matter whether you prefer one or the other as they will finally be compatible to a large extent. The market and common sense demands it and that's the way it will go.
As for open source developers being squabbling children, I think I should point out that projects such as Apache, Tomcat, Mozilla etc are in no way squabbling rabbles, and their uptake by the general public and market prove that.
And talking about squabbling children, what would you say to Steve Balmers lunacy and Microsoft's cliched FUD campaigns which generally backfire on them as the public generally doesn't react well to negative marketing? Would you call that grow up?
the OSS world needs one sane, unified development API for its desktops. ...but nobody ever actually refutes what I'm saying, because they know I'm right.
I'll argue with you -- Do you have any idea how many APIs are avaliable to Windows desktop developers? There's probably 100s. Has that hurt Microsoft? Hell no.
The biggest problem in the Linux world is that Code Rules, and therefore these "APIs" become products in themselves.
There's absolutely no reason that an end user should know or care whether the developer used "Qt" or "Gtk". But *nix developers have insisted that the difference between these APIs be right in the user's face as some sort of retarded marketing effort. When the user complains, they simply say "Hey, if you want a working desktop, just make sure all of your programs use OUR API and not ANYONE ELSES".
And then developers go forth and rewrite every godamn program so that it "fits into their desktop" burning 1000s of hours that could have been used catching up to the commercial world.
Keep all the APIs, but kill the stupid "desktop war". Make it so the end user could care less what API or programming language your program uses.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
OK, I'll add yet another audio API to the list. Heard of it, lost track of it. To many bloody audio API's to keep track of and figure out which one is IN and which ones are OUT.
How many actual Linux machines is it installed on? Not on mine.
Didn't have the license immediately obvious on the web page. Is there a BSD'ish license that lets you link it in to a commerical app to get around it not being installed everywhere.
How exactly does it get around that fact that if the machine is running OSS, which is still the standard on 2.4.x kernels, and some other app has the sound device allocted that it can't get to it. Its not terrible getting one app to work with audio on Linux, its more of a pain to get two or more apps to work on Linux at the same time and share.
@de_machina
Thought freedesktop had something like it wxWidgets or something. Tried it a while ago and don't think it did Qt but I forget now.
Probably wont play particularly well with a serious application developer who likes to QA their stuff, and document it well with screenshots for example. You still have to QA it on all the toolkits your going to see it run on unless you are half assed.
There is some new mode now where you can force GTK apps like OpenOffice to use Qt, I've been meaning to try it soon. I'm a KDE user and would like OpenOffice to play right with KDE. Would consider Firefox to maybe were it not so much more bloated and slow compared to Konqueror.
@de_machina
They don't look the same, they don't work the same, the use different UI conventions, they interoperate better than they used to but still don't interoperate especially well. And you are massively bloating up the memory footprint loading two or mote massive GUI frameworks who do pretty much exactly the same things differently.
You can pretend its OK to tell an ordinary user, not a geek, to deal with this bullshit but they will probably back away from you slowly and switch to OSX or Windows where they don't have to put up with lack of consistency in UI standards.
@de_machina
As in every technical field, it's up to those people who can be bothered to study the matter to tell the rest what to use, and what not to. The difference with computer software is that they have long failed miserably in their responsibility to distinguish the gold from the dross, and to tell others. Instead they have become boosters and toadies of the reigning monopoly. Toadyism has a long and in a few cases distinguished history, but is no more honorable for it.
oops...guess I got it backwards....oh well, there go my hopes for a native Paint Shop Pro on linux :(
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Hmm, that existed once, I'm sure of it... I think it was PSP7 though...
:-(
However, a large part of Corel's contributions to wine was support for their internal libraries, so I would expect it to run better than photoshop in wine. Especially since IIRC Alexandre was paid by corel to do the port, and he is still working on wine.
Checks the appdb... version 5 is gold, 7, 8 are silver, and 9 is bronze... I guess the library is slowly diverging...
Sure, I agree with you, one API would be great... but which one?
And that's the problem in a nutshell. Nobody knows which one. Some people think they know, but how do you know if they're right?
The safest path is to let everybody do their own thing and let the market sort it out. Sort of like democracy crossed with natural selection.
Well, PSP wasn't a Corel product until a few months ago. Corel just bought out JASC software (PSP's creators) recently.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
oh, I really don't expect it to happen, just feel it would be more useful than not. As to picking one distro over another and paying for it, that's my point, at this time it's still one distro, standardized to itself. Kinda silly. Not even close to what I am describing.
Anyway, I think my point will be proven, as it is already, this "Linux" thing, despite have some pretty decent software, is still amazingly under utilised by the computing public at large, as an installed base percentage wise. And it will stay that was as long as the fragmentation continues, and as long as the fragmentation contiues you won't be seeing it come pre installed by any major vendors. I am postulating that is one (one, not all) of the primary reasons why that is so at this time. Again, you can see it at the retail level, very little actual "linux" on the shelf at the major retailers, it's just not on most peoples radar, because they can't even see it. I've kept track, at least in my area. this year I have been in 5 stores that sell computers/software, and one other store that has software as a side issue, a Barnes and Noble bookstore. The B&N was the only one to have at least some "linux" on the shelf, in fact I went there on purpose to buy some books and a Linux OS disk. The other retailers had zero linux software titles, zero machines with any Linux pre installed. It was pure XP. I realise that is merely one anecdotal, and could be different in other areas, but I think it's more typical than not.
As long as the "linux community" fails to understand the significance of this, and belittles any advice as to how maybe to do things just a little bit different, this situation will continue. If that's the results anyone "you" want, to stay at around a small single digit percentage of usage with computer users, well then swell, keep doing things the same fragmented and niche OS fanboy way you are doing them. If anyone "you" want different results, it might pay to at least realise that there are some alternative ways to do business out there. If constructive criticism isn't wanted, then again, no probs, as in "who cares?". I don't have a dog in the hunt, I have no particlar niche product to push at anyone myself, not my job or interest really. I would like to see better products available for joe consumer, products of lasting worth, not things released one day and still in beta broken stages and obsolete the next day, repeated ad infinitum.
Linux is pushed as a "community" effort,I have read that so many times, so I merely suggesting go even more in that direction, and try to develop a larger, tighter, more integrated "community" rather than developing hundreds of smaller arguing squabbling semi non cooperating "communities" that divert resources and efforts into reinventing the same looking wheel constantly and can't even develop any standard ways to go about the same thing. It's friendly advice based on observable and quantifiable data, that's all. If the goal is to remain a small effort, then never mind, it has achieved that goal splendidly, it works for that purpose. Even with several larger companies "going to Linux", at the rate of adoption in the total scheme of things it will still be decades (some large number of years anyway) before it even approaches a 50/50 split parity with MS, if that ever happens, which I doubt at this time because of the basic design incompatabilities.
Even such a thing as merely people in huge numbers adopting an open source browser, not even near as radical a move as changing out an entire OS, has slowed down considerably from just a couple months ago. There was a real nice honeymoon surge with FF, now it's slowing down considerably. I think that is quite telling really, because it indicates what sort of reality you are up against with societal inertia and mind and market share. Take the FF example and magnify by 100, that's what you are up against in the market. This linux "you" have two choices, cooperate and present a more coherent and united front and of
i use urpmi you insensitive clod!
ALSA can run from outside of the kernel. Check out their site. They have a 'dmixer' software mixer, that is compatible with oss sound implementation, if some software insists on using oss api.
Im a gentoo user, so I have a link to good howto (its somewhat gentoo centric, but I've set up the sound in slack more or less similiar way, before I even heard of gentoo).
In any case HOWTOs are your friend. Google for somethign that has 'howto oss software mixing' or the like. I suspect you'll find a solution.
This is slashdot, I am here. I am fully aware of the difference between a kernel and a complete operating system. This discussion was about the adoption of "linux", the phrase commonly used in casual speech as a shorthand word for the operating systems running that kernel-by this "the masses" guy, if he's even heard of it that is, which most haven't yet, let alone "Fred's linux OS" or any of the other incompatable "me too" distros out there, all squabbling over who's the bestus and reinventing the same round wheel. It's a big fat waste of time unless all you want is some tiny hobby distro. There's the big difference in the discussion, and I already said if that is what you want, you got it, and I have no probs with that. Really, none at all, and it's not even what I am talking about. I'm talking about something completely different here, an actual well supported standardized release that is world class and is actually a reasonable alternative to XP or OSX, in feature set, ease of use, professional support, community support, agreed upon standaridized layout, etc, etc. and most importantly, from computer vendors, support from THEM. It doesn't exist yet except a few widely sparse token examples..
Instead of actually having a very decent well fleshed out and non betaware "Linux OS" sitting on the shelves pre installed in millions of computers for sale, we have daily *more* fragmentation and actually less community. It's like little teenage gangs or something, it's ridiculous in that respect, and that part is only tangential to what I am interested in.
No, I don't mind paying for functional non beta ware software. Betaware I am not going to pay for, I get it free for testing it, that's why it's beta. I dislike when someone attempts to sell me off on some distro and call it a full fledged release, when it's still alpha or beta, even though they just slap some big number on it like "release 3.0 Gold final!!" and it's not much different from "3.99RC25!" and has just as much new bugs as the old ones they just fixed, and it's the same bugs that x,y,z,a,b,c distro are "working on". That's not a "community" effort, that's ego-centric near-cult like behavior. It's called "fanboi" here on slashdot, for a reason, it *fits* as a description. It's embarrassing really, reminds me of decades ago watching people get all worked up over their "team" in some sports deal like it was actually important or something. I didn't understand it then, and still think it's pretty stoopid actually.
I would prefer software I purchase to be open source though, the model works better than it doesn't, and it's "more fair" to people actually using it and developing it. I agree with the principla and philosphy.. I would prefer it-an OS- even more to be a linux kernel based, standardized layout system, standardized package management and update scheme that is both a widely adopted community effort and also supported in full by the various large hardware vendors,chip makers, box makers, graphic card makers, etc, various peripherals makers, etc to the point that this theoretical Linux OS of the future is actually on the retail store shelves in at least a parity with Windows, especially pre-installed on machines. I think that's a worthy goal, but can just about guarantee it's not going to happen with any of the two thousand-whatever "me too" distros and more arriving daily. No big hardware vendors are going to take any of those efforts seriously. It's going to take some actual true standardization to crack that, IMO. My best guess is those hardware vendors will *eventually* just get tired of the fragmentation and squabbling in this "community" and just release their own version, which might become the default "linux" this "the masses" guy will use, not one of the "me too" cult versions out there now. Or, they will just stick with one of the top three out there now.
We can disagree on this, that's ok, just think about it next time you go to the computer store and look at all the new computer systems
I am amazed that everyone talks about "fragmentation" as if it's some force of nature that just *happens* or it's some pre-existing condition. That's NOT how it worked. Remember, once there was ONE BSD. Once there was ONE LINUX. Once there was ONE UNIX. It was egotism, commercial greed, and "not invented here syndrome" that caused those common codebases to become the wad of competing kludges that we're looking at now. It's ironic that now people are talking about a unified LINUX platform. Damn it, we HAD one - we didn't stick with it. It's not just geeks that have done this, it's short-sightedness among commercial interests as well.
I think the posters that said "research is important" are 100% right. But once you've done your research, either fold it into a single code-tree, or let it die. We need to be more darwinian about code. Microsoft is. They killed off DOS, right? They killed off WFWG, '95 and '98 and so on.. Operating systems are a carefully orchestrated strategy for Microsoft. The UNIX community has a very important lesson to learn from that! They experiment and they research and they pull the important innovations (including "innovations" they borrow) into the main thrust of their codebase over time.
If we (the combined UNIX geeks of the world) were serious about taking on Microsoft we'd be willing to toss our pet projects and - screw convergence - pick something and stick with it. Is there that much benefit to having 120 distros of UNIX? Hey, I'd be thrilled if I could get OSX running on everything from an Intel box, to a Mac, to a big-ass SPARC to a mainframe. Or Solaris on all of the above. Or damn near anything; I just want a common codebase and a common environment. If it means a few egoes get squashed in the process, so be it. They're going to get squashed anyhow when the computing world eventually passes UNIX by as "the really good operating system that never got its act together." What, can't wrap your ego around the concept of all your hard work getting ignored? I know MULTICS, TOPS-10 and VAX/VMS gurus you need to talk to, to get some well-needed perspective.
mjr. (yeah, me)
On one side was Sun and AT&T pushing Open Look, and on the other was OSF (backed mainly by DEC, HP, IBM, and a few others). Both sides pretended that the fight was over GUI technology, but it really was pure politics. AT&T, which in those days still had some control over UNIX, had decided that a new version, to become the one and only standard, would be produced mainly by Sun.
I suppose AT&T thought that DEC, HP, and IBM would be happy with this. Somehow AT&T just didn't understand that these companies were all competitors, with four distinct and incompatible hardware lines.
So, the non-Sun companies formed OSF, and OSF then developed Motif to run on top of X.
It was all about control of UNIX. The techies (of which I was one) argued about scroll bars, pinned windows, context menus, and such, as if it mattered.
One might call the UNIX GUI wars stupid and wasteful, but aren't all wars? At the time, the people involved thought the issues were important. That's usually true, I guess.
One additional comment: UNIX has always suffered from different, annoyingly incompatible variants. By "always" I mean since about 1973, when there was the assembler version and the C version. That is, for the first 3 years or so there was only one system, but the chaos has now gone for roughly 32 years. It's not something that afflicts UNIX--it is UNIX!
I created this account just to let you know:
I WIN. YOU LOSE..
Have a nice life.
Thats the problem with linux now, let alone Unix of christmas past. Linux is trying to wow customers with all of these amazing stats, when all the desktop user wants is: a back button on internet explorer. An X in the top right corner of every window, and most importantly a C:\
The developers (and those of us who actually use the address line in My computer) have been annoyed by the movement of My documents to some god forsaken corner of our hard drive. However for most users, they just want a My documents button, everywhere it'll fit, and that is what they got.
Linux is designed by engineers for engineers. As long as that status quo is intact, linux will never even compete with microsoft. If the linux community could get, grandmas, artists, businessmen, and school girls involved it would be an unstoppable force, because these are the people who use Windows.
I dont' see many of these people willing to dedicate themselves to an engineering hobby anywhere in the future. Microsoft succeeds because it's designed by engineers for the customer, not for what the engineer wants. How are you going to (for free) get the average joe involved in open source development? How are you going to get the Grandma down the street onto Linux? It's not going to be by making the new Kernel 64 bit compatible. It's not going to be by offering the best overhead mememory management system. It's going to be by making the user never know they have a firewall. It's going to be by making the GUI an opaque barier to the inner workings like Apple has done. Linux needs Microsoft. Linux needs Apple. Linux needs developers willing to use the foundation to make a useable product. Linux rhetoric is like saying that the Unreal engine is a spectacular piece of software. It may be, but unless someone makes a game around it. 99% of the world doesn't give a shit. So here is my call of action to the Linux community. Make a useable OS for the masses, and the masses will embrace it just like the engineering community.
Again, that's what the nice, standard Filesystem Hierarchy is for. All of the major distros support it to some extent and are moving closer to supporting it fully all the time.