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Linux Can't Kill Windows
nberardi writes "Infoworld is running an article in which the author claims 'Linux is established and has a niche that, as various pendulums swing, will grow and shrink. Show me charts and stats and benchmarks that prove Linux superior to Windows in every measure and I'll not argue with you. But no matter how much money and dedication is poured into Linux, it will never put a dent in Windows' mind share or market share because Linux is an operating system, a way -- and probably the best way -- to make system hardware do what it's told. But you can't turn Linux into a platform even if you brand it, box it, and put a pricey sticker on it.'"
I didn't read the article.
But history has shown that the short term impact of most new things tend to be over-estimated, whereas the long term impact tends to be under-estimated.
Who knows where Linux will be in 20 years? I sure as hell don't, but I have a rather optimistic view.
.: Max Romantschuk
It's the mindset of most people that keep them from using Linux. They've been using DOS and Windows for YEARS, and they're so familar with how things are, that changing that even slightly is very confusing for most people. If Linux had been in Windows place, and had 90% of the market, people would LOVE Linux and HATE Windows. Simple as that.
For example, my dad is a Windows person, and his SO has a Mac with OS X. He can't seem to understand how OS X works, so he dissmisses it and claims that Windows is better (on the fact that he knows how to use Windows).
It's not that Windows is "special", it's just that that's all most people know. And half those people don't know much, if anything, about Windows anyway, so it's no wonder Linux has a difficult time trying to enter the mainstream market.
Will the /. editors stop posting flamebait articles?
Simon.
"But you can't turn Linux into a platform even if you brand it, box it, and put a pricey sticker on it."
What does branding it, boxing it and putting on a price tag, have to do with a tool doing a job?
what
Very poor indeed.
If GNU/Linux was a platform, in the sense that MacOSX or Windows 2003 was a platform then how come you need to recompile software depending on your distro or hardware ?
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
A way to fight network effect is to have platform independent applications.
The web is a first step.
XUL and other technologies like thsi is one step is the right direction.
Open and RF standards are also a key in this process.
Linux cannot make a dent??? I'd say it already has, else why is M$ running "Get the facts"?
That said, there is an important point here: Linux probably won't "kill" windows, it will be RedHat, or Mandrake, or Debian, or even Linspire :/
Linux at it's heart is nothing more than a Kernel, it's a GNU/Linux distro that people ultimatly install (mostly anyway).
Linux as a brand cannot compete with Windows, because Linux is not a brand, not a product. There is not even a single definition of what "Linux" is, except a bunch of software running on top of a specific kernel.
Even the concept of "competition" is a straw man.
Linux represents a total, brutal, and unstoppable commoditization of technology that follows the same rules which drive "Moore's Law". When you remove the costs of improving a technology, its marginal cost will fall to zero as people compete to be the key suppliers.
Software is basically becoming free, and this is what will kill Windows, whether or not it's something called "Linux" that takes over.
Most likely, "Linux" will never become more than a niche OS, excellent for servers but rare for desktops. But what it represents - unlimited and perfect software at no cost - will, inevitably, rule the desktop as it will rule every single computing platform, for the simple reason that no amount of lock-in or marketing is going to get people to keep paying more than the going rate for a commodity.
Apple's strategy - where the OS and a bunch of software is basically thrown in for free - is the trend of the future.
I hate to say it, because I truly love using Microsoft's well-engineered products, but between the commoditization of their core markets and the parasites eating their way in from the internets, they are dead, Linux or no Linux.
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Many GNU/Linux users don't compile their own binaries anymore. There are almost always precompiled binaries for GNU/Linux, that mainly depend on which hardware architecture you use (e.g. SPARC, x86, PPC). This would happen with Windows (x86) and Mac OS X (PPC) also if they supported multiple hardware platforms! It's just that GNU/Linux allows you to choose your own architecture if you so wish. It's an advantage.
Yeah, a moving platform. With countless widget sets, multiple clipboards, different directory structures, an infinite number of combinations and permutations of shared libraries, and just as many sources of outdated, incorrect, misleading or utterly superb documentation, and crap vendors like Redhat which drop version support in a third the time of Microsoft.
One place where GNU/Linux is relatively stable is in POSIX and a vague semblence of commonly accepted extensions to the standard. That makes it a nice platform for server software, but does nothing on the desktop.
Windows was never an OS. It contains an OS, they changed OSes in the product lifetime, but the product has always been a desktop environment and a consistent, well documented, and long-supported API.
General purpose programs are different. Look at the standard libraries on OS X or Windows. You have a complete windowing toolkit or two (Win32 / Avalon, Carbon / Cocoa), a media plaing framework (DirectShow, QuickTime), an HTML rendering engine (MSHTML, WebKit) and a whole host of other things which a guaranteed to be there. You can build your app expecting them to be there.
On Linux (or *BSD for that matter), alternatives to most of these things exist. In some cases, several alternatives exist. The problem is that you can't guarantee that they will be there. You can statically link everything, but then you have to update your entire app whenever small updates to dependant libraries are released. Alternatively you can just release the app dynamically linked, and hope that people have all of the required libraries (where you expect to find them), and hope that the distribution will package your app in such a way that it will work. The only way to really make sure it will work it to package it complete with dependencies for every distribution you plan on supporting, which generally limits things to Red Hat and maybe SuSE, even though the code would work with no modifications on a large number of other platforms.
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Yeah, a moving platform. With countless widget sets, multiple clipboards, different directory structures, an infinite number of combinations and permutations of shared libraries, and just as many sources of outdated, incorrect, misleading or utterly superb documentation, and crap vendors like Redhat which drop version support in a third the time of Microsoft.
To take the points in order:
countless widget sets
A few major widget sets. If you're going to include every kit, you might as well include the buttons here in Opera, which are completely non-standard as far as Windows is concerned.
multiple clipboards
Yes, annoying and stupid.
different directory structures, an infinite number of combinations and permutations of shared libraries
Uusually well managed by your distribution. A cross-distro way to create a standalone installer would be nice though, LSB doesn't quite cut it.
just as many sources of outdated, incorrect, misleading or utterly superb documentation
Most projects have a homepage. That is the source of the most up-to-date information. Though most of the time, the docs in the package is enough.
crap vendors like Redhat which drop version support in a third the time of Microsoft
And Debian gets scolded each time they're mentioned for actually supporting something for a while.
Windows was never an OS. It contains an OS, they changed OSes in the product lifetime, but the product has always been a desktop environment and a consistent, well documented, and long-supported API.
Linux does that. But you should really mention a long-supported ABI. Linux does definately not have that.
In short, I see all of this as signs that Linux is moving too fast for people to consolidate and work out standards. Being more bazaar than cathedral, that is natural. But that is like a brake on a streamroller already in motion.
We're in a transition period where people are held back by old systems, but seek cross-platform compatibility on new systems. It's like watching pressure build for a switchover. Just because there's been no mass exodus you still see them untangle themselves from Windows strangleholds.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
A set of APIs and an ABI for writing graphical programs which is still supported now in spite of being over 10 years old and can be guaranteed to be available on 100% of Windows systems?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Many of us call that CHOICE .
I can pick the Linux distribution that best fits my needs, be they toolkit-driven, tool-driven, UI driven or otherwise.
With Windows, you get... well, Windows. You have to shim other things onto it to get it to be useful. For example, I don't use icons, toolbars, window frames or titlebars. Show me how I can configure Windows to provide that interface, in an easy way... you can't. Not without 10 different third-party products.
Its all about choice.
Any idiot who thinks Windows works "right out of the box" has obviously never tried to use Windows "right out of the box".
Here is where you miss the point of "out of the box".
When your average idiot buys a computer from Dell, Gateway, HP, $RESELLER. He gets it home, opens the box, plugs it in, and lo and behold it WORKS. That is what the phrase means. All Joe Luser knows about Windows is that he buys a computer and turns it on and it WORKS.
Currently, you cannot do this with Linux. Mainly because almost no one sells preconfigured Linux boxes that you can just plug in and work. Lindows barely scratches the surface.
Installing Windows from scratch is a totally different story. It is, as you say, fraught with perils. But this is the same no matter what OS you try.
Joe Luser doesn't care about installing windows or any other OS. He wants a computer that he plugs in and it WORKS. He gets this from all major distributors.
Until a major reseller can offer a Linux PC that does the exact same thing CONSISTENTLY, Joe Luser will not use Linux.
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
I regularly use three platforms; Windows, Linux (Fedora) and OSX. Conclusion? I cringe at having to use Windows. I find that once you learn UNIX it is faster to get anything done.
That's your conclusion. My conclusion is that you just don't know Windows.
For example, how many of your regular tasks have you offloaded onto the Windows Scripting host? Unix users all have their favourite scripting language, and Apple users are always blathering about how wonderful AppleScript is, but Windows has just the same functionality, except it can control native GUI applications well (unlike Perl/Python on Linux, which are great for munging text files but not so great for hooking a word processor and a spreadsheet together) and you can choose what language to use (unlike AppleScript, which forces you to use Apple's horrible proprietary COBOL clone).
Windows sucks in direct proportion to the ignorance of its administrator. Badly-administered Windows sucks more than anything in the world, but for most purposes, well-administered Windows can hold its own with any Unix you care to name.
If you have to use it a lot, I really suggest you learn how to use it properly. It will make your life a lot more pleasant.
You know, I honestly don't care if this is true or not. So what if Linux can't kill Windows? Windows can't kill Linux, that I'm positive of. And that's really all I care about. Sure it'd be nice if enough people abandoned Windows in favor of Linux to "kill" Windows, but whether that happens or not, I can still use Linux to my hearts content. If other people continue to use & support Microsoft, that's up to them, and while it will have some effect on me, I doubt it will be a significant enough effect for me to really care.
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1991 : Linux? A plaything for college students. It'll never work like *real* Unix.
1996 : Linux? So it makes a simple web server. It'll never scale as an enterprise server.
2001 : Linux? Yeah, it's nice for my enterprise servers, but it'll never give end-users any satisfaction.
2005 : Linux? So hackers have pretty desktop. Didja see the effort they had to go to make it work? It'll never be easy enough for our secretary Jane Typist.
Nope, Linux will never compete. Not even that Novell Linux Desktop that has proliferated our workplace and made every desktop look the same (but secure). It'll never happen.
H0ek
Think you're smart? Prove you've got brains!
I think what's needed is a good bridge between the two operating systems. You can get people to walk over to the dark side (mouahahaha) without giving them a bridge. The bridge between Windows and Linux is cross-platform apps, like Firefox and OpenOffice. Get everyone using these apps, and then point out to them that "hey, you could actually use the exact same apps on linux, why are you paying for windows?"
.. like... ONE person using OpenOffice. Since everything's working fine they have no need to switch OS, but if their Windows installations ever got totally bunged, I might suggest Linux.. and since they're already using these apps, I think they might be more open to it. Of course, they're using Firefox now so spyware isn't much of a problem for them... so the chances of them needed to switch OS is down about 90%... ah the irony..
You have to take things one step at a time. First the apps, then the operating system. Change everything at once and it won't work.
I've gotten a couple of people using Firefox, and
10 years ago IT was only beginning to look at Windows and did not seriously thought of Windows for most of their server infrastructure.
Now people say the same thing but about Linux.
Why did Microsoft succeeded ?
1/ network integration with personnal computers
2/ marketing
3/ ease of use
4/ price compared to Unix systems
5/ drivers & software
Points 1 and 2 are Linux weakness.
Point 3 had a lot of improvements.
Point 4 : Linux is at advantage (until you dont buy Red Hat Server that costs more than W2003 SRV).
Point 5 is improving for linux.
Some experiment in our corp. We wanted to use Linux to host antivirus repositories & Windows Update Service & hardware+software inventory tools. None of the tools we selected work with Linux. Therefore we have to pay a W2003 for each box... hardware : 1300 euros, system : 700 euros, software : free or licenced per user. We plan to have tens of such computers.
The lack of software compatible with Linux costs a lot of money. And slows down the propagation of Linux.
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
The big reasons beta lost were shorter play/recording time and the fact that manufacturers had to pay licensing fees to Sony to use it. VHS was the free and open standard that won. Also, as the above poster pointed out, beta came first.
I understand the point you're trying to make, but the analogy was the wrong choice.
to quote "it will never put a dent in Windows' mind share or market share"
Hasnt linux already largly DENTED windows mind and market share, how many governments moved to open source and nix from windows systems, those XX,000 Systems dont count as market share?
Linux wont ever replace windows but, your a fool to think windows will remain uneffected.
> So when Joe Luser gets home with his computer and plugs it in he's ready to:
> Open Excel and do some work?
I have a cheapo e-machine I bought to run Windows games on (at which it has done surprisingly well, I might add). It came with Windows Works, which is not unusual. Joe Luser gets home, plugs it in, and he's got a spreadsheet. Not a terribly good one, but Joe doesn't know the difference.
> Watch some DVD's?
It also came with PowerDVD 5, which is even more common than getting Works. Actually, it plays DVDs better than any of my Linux boxes, and did so right out of the box.
> Browse the internet risk free?
No, but Joe doesn't know this and can't see it. He double clicks on Internet Explorer, and it's teh Intarweb! Works right out of the box!
> No, he can't do any of those things "out of the box".
Actually, yes, as far as Joe can see, he *can* do all those things right out of the box He doesn't see how poorly or brokenly they may be done. All he sees is that he can't buy a Linux box that he can just plug in and have do these things with no requirement that he do things he doesn't understand.
Chris Mattern
Even with a restricted set of architectures you don't really need to compile. MacOS pretty successfully supported 68k and PPC at the same time with fat binaries. I think the difference is that most users neither knew nor cared what that meant, and Apple made it so that for the most part they didn't have to.
English is easier said than done.
Does he not realize that OS X is simply a packaged up pretty version of BSD, which is almost identical besides licensing to Linux.
False analogy.
Let me make it clearer to you by making the following two statements:
1. Linux revolves around the kernel. Every time you muck with the kernel to bring about yet another set of "gee whiz bang" features, dozens of things are broken.
2. Mac OS X and Windows revolve around the interface. On the library level, new interfaces are added, but older ones are still supported for a surprisingly long time (see Carbon / Classic Runtime Environment for Mac OS X, or Win9x Compatibility Mode / Application Compatibility Toolkit for Windows 2000 / XP). Certainly, support is eventually dropped, but the pace is normally quite slow for popular APIs.
On a visual interface level, both Apple and MS try to keep consistency in the interface. Sure, you'll see major changes in interface every 5-10 years (Windows 95, Windows XP, Mac OS X), but that's a pace most people can cope with, and they try not to change EVERYTHING in the process. Linux, on the other hand: for any random distro, you can't be assurred GUI consistency.
Tell me, how many people really know if there were major kernel revisions between all the Mac OX X releases? I imagine not many, because programmers don't have to care. That's the beauty of revolving around interfaces.
Until Linux stops revolving around the kernel, it will never break out of the server niche.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
The real killer app for widespread acceptance of desktop Linux would be Microsoft Office (or a 100% work-alike). Openoffice.org and Evolution have come a long way, but they're only (IMHO) about 85% there in terms of replacing MS-Office.
The other thing which would drive acceptance of desktop linux would be the availability of games. If Joe User could walk in to Best Buy and see that all the popular games are available in Windows and Linux versions, he might consider switching. As it is now, even hard-core Linux geeks usually have a Windows partition for gaming.
As an aside, Given the success of live CD distros like Knoppix, I'm suprised that game makers haven't considered releasing their products under a custom bootable Linux distro.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I think the one thing that's really slowing Linux on the desktop uptake are all the dependency nightmares and package inconsistencies. Yeah, things like yum, apt-get, emerge, et al have made things a lot easier, but they are not perfect. Last night I was trying to apt-get (I hate yum with a passion) proftpd on my FC3 box and no matter what I tried in the config, users could not authenticate - I kept getting "bad password" in the logs. I ended up compiling from source and guess what, it started working. Apparently the binary package had something funky going on with its UNIX auth module.
And then there's this thing that happened yesterday. I'm experimenting with groupware and picked up Conflux. My boss walks in and sees me looking at the demo site they have, and says "that looks cool, install it". It was winding down to the end of the day, and I say "Eh, I'll do it tomorrow", to which he says "You just can't click on the "Install" icon?"
That's when I told him the tale of how I had to get the following operational on the system first: apache2, python, mod_python, postgres, and a smattering of other libraries. Then I had to write the config files to make it all work together. And I've never worked with postgres, so I don't even know how to define users or a database in it yet.
The moral of this story is that installing software on any flavor of Linux is still a royal pain that Joe user won't tolerate. Without a unified base distro and a universal package management system, that will never change.
-R
I think that the idea that GNU/Linux should replace Windows, or anything else for that matter, is faulty from the start. The driving force before GNU and much of open source is people who want to write software for themselves, and share it will all those who are willing to share. The motivation for using GNU/Linux is that it fits your needs, not that it is Not Windows, or something else for that matter. Pressing requests for features, and complaints of lacking technical or customer support are outright ridiculous and should be laughed at. Why? Because no one is forcing anyone to use GNU/Linux. If anything, one should be thankful to those who put forth the effort to get it done on their own time. But the developers should not care anyhow, because they do it for themselves and those who share.
The war between open-source proponents and windows proponents does not fit in with GNU/Linux ideology, it is a totally foreign concept for it in fact. The war was started by Microsoft because they could not buy open-source, and was picked up by people who already disliked Microsoft and by those who thought it was 'cool' to participate (myself included).
But anyhow, to answer your original question of what drives debian development, here is my take on it. Developers want features for themselves, their clients, customers. Developers want neat solutions to show off to potential employers and graduate school admissions too. And something like that. Don't try to find in the list something like "Users Bob and Carloine want a button that whereupon thrice clicked will take her...".