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Asa Dotzler on Why Linux Isn't Ready for the Desktop
An anonymous reader writes "Asa Dotzler of The Mozilla Foundation compares the explosive growth of Firefox to the anything but explosive growth of Linux and what it needs to do to get there for the "regular user" AKA mom, dad and grandma Bootsie."
Look, the year is 2005. You don't have to keep posting these "Why Linux isn't ready for the desktop" articles rehashing the same shit over and over again.
This is like pointing out over and over again why the fat girl isn't going to the prom with a date.
We *get* it already.
-blah ect
Why on Earth do I need to "migrate Windows settings"?!
WHAT settings? Other than my browser settings - why the FUCK do you think I use Firefox? (Or Opera in the past.) Email? How hard is it to set up a new account in whatever email client you use? Such as Thunderbird, for Christ's sakes!
My data happens to be sitting on a FAT32 partition that I can easily access from Linux. Try the reverse in Windows (without using a third party tool like explore2fs)! Yes, it would be nice to have a tool that converts it to EXT3 or whatever without losing the data, but that's hardly critical.
Everybody needs to get a grip. There is NOTHING about Linux that is a showstopper to migrating someone to it except the EXPECTATION that it will IDENTICAL to Windows.
And this nitwit wants to perpetuate that by babbling about migrating "settings."
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
And since when does a fricken blog rate enough to be included here as "news"? It's a blog...which is just random masturbation of words for the amusement of the blogger himself.
There's blogs out there that still claim the world is flat and that NASA faked the moon landings...let's put them on here too! Let Slashdot become the fucking Art Bell of the internet!
Might as well. I hope Taco is enjoying all the cash that OSDN is paying him. He doesn't seem to care what goes on here anymore.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
I thought Linux never crashed?
________________________________________________
suwain_2
And it really truely sucks... Can't edit the menus, can't edit the sysem colours, can't edit the file types, can't cancel configuration changes, can't page scroll with a mouse wheel, can't install things where I want them, installing any program is treated like an operating system upgrade, has a case insensitive file system with arcane commands and a filesystem hierarchy created by a drug crazed monkey, ok/cancel buttons are the wrong way round, natulius, I could go on and on, and do whenever anyone at work says anything positive about this shit system.
i encourage my competitors to use windows. ha ha. (incase your slow, it's because it fucks up and makes me look just that much better)
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Unfortunately I have to agree with you and I run an ISP that uses linux (openna) and I use Fedora Core on my desktop. Drivers are a serious problem. Software installation has really come a long way since yum and apt-get have come along. However, seldom can one drop a CD in the drive and install a linux program.I haven't had to compile a kernel in quite some time. Here's the thing though, every distribution is just a little different. Some things are documented well and other things are horrible. Back in the day (RH5) it was not uncommon to spend a week or more on a problem. Most people are not willing to beg someone on IRC ( or would know where to beg) for help. As a general purpose desktop Os linux really does suck. However, it shines when you want to run services or learn to code. This is not what most people want to do with their computer. I can't count how many times I have had to do things in linux that a windows user would never do. Example: nvidia 3d drivers. windows: run the EXE and reboot. Linux, download tarball and extract. Edit the inittab file in /etc and change to boot to run level 3. Before you reboot make sure you have the kernel source installed in the right place or you will not be able to rebuild the kernel IE. build the driver. Reboot into init3 (CLI) and run the executable ./NVIDIA***, follow the prompts and hope you have everything right. Reedit the inittab file and change run level back to 5 and reboot. When you are done with this make sure you go into xorg.conf and change the item in the nvidia FAQ that need changed and then restart X. I mean really, until these type of things get ironed out you can't expect many people to really use this OS to do their work. The value most people have in their computer is their data and how productive they are with using it. If keeping the machine running is a struggle then Linux is not worth much on a day to day basis. One thing to mention though; windows is getting very labor intensive with all the spyware and viruses. The vast majority of virus software is really bad and doesn't find everything. System restore enabled almost ensures that you will be infected multiple times. Linux can be really good once it's set up right and you are familiar with the applications you need to do your work. One thing I always keep in mind is you get what you pay for and sometimes on rare occasion a lot more. :-)
Good heavens, I'm sick of seeing posts (almost) exactly like these. (the almost is because your first paragraph is really pretty decent.) Sorry, yes this is a flame. That's what you get when you post flamebait. If you don't want to be flamed, then by all means, don't read this. None of it is vitally important, you're just the umpteenth post along these lines that I've seen, and yours happened to be the one that put it past my limit. So I'm flaming you.
/. who didn't get linux within the first week they tried it. Smarten up, or go away.
If you are my aunt or grandma or mom are you going to know if Gentoo is better then Fedora?
Tell your aunt or grandma or mom which distro is newbie-friendly. Better yet, install it for them.
Are you going to know how to patch up to the latest kernal?
I have never needed to patch a kernal [sic]. And yes, I have recompiled my kernel several times, but patching it has never been necessary. Unless you've got some really screwy hardware, the chances you will need to patch (or even compile) the kernel (or anything!) are pretty small.
What are all these crazy things talking about when I boot up?
It is fairly easy to find distributions that hide all the kernel and init bootup messages (Mandriva for one). If your aunt/grandma/mom objects to lots of messages (nobody objects to POST messages BEFORE the OS even starts, though...), then install one of those. Additionally, the distros that do this tend to be the distros that are newbie-friendly... hmmm, coincidence? I think not.
Son...why is my computer "Panic"ing?
The only time I have ever seen my kernel panic is when I had deliberately screwed it up to see what happened. Not an issue.
Why can't I run iTunes or any of the software I see at bestbuy?
Say it with me: W-I-N-E.... No, its not perfect, but out of "any of the software I see at bestbuy", there is a significant subset that will run. Furthermore, if your aunt/grandma/mom asks you this question, then find and install the equivalent of whatever app it is that she is looking for! Then, show her how to find and install these herself! If you don't know enough to do so, then find a local Linux Users Group, and I'm nearly certain that they will help.
In other words, while I agree with your general sentiment in the first paragraph that if you have no real need or desire to use linux, you probably shouldn't, as far as the second paragraph goes, you are a) wrong, and b) parroting the same old, hackneyed misconceptions parroted by everyone else on
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Ok, I'll grant you that. Maybe linux itself is ready for the desktop, but even the default distribution applications aren't ready for the desktop. They're (mostly) poorly written applications sitting on top of gtk or Qt or other core libraries that can change at any given moment. Sure that's not that far away from Win32 in that regard, but it does seem that with distributions as a whole it happens far more often, even within the distributions themselves. I run FC4 (yes I know it's going to break just because it's supposedly bleeding edge) and the last update has Evolution so broken that you can't even close an email without it crashing and wanting to start that god-awful bugbuddy that never works.
No, the current state of the linux [distributions] are not ready for the desktop. Gnome is not ready, KDE isn't ready. There's still too many geekisms and stuff that just doesn't work properly.
Don't get me wrong, I still use FC4 on my desktop. I know enough about the system to get around the quirks. If I foisted it on my mother, I'd be firmly smacked in the head.
The world according to SComps
Firefox will run on Windoz and Linux will not. How difficult is that to understand? Enjoy.
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway This is the road to hell
Of course, a lot of your troll is wrong.
/. was smoking. No ordinary user I know was ever upset by button order !!!
The lot of toolkit is a "problem" on every OS : Windows, MacOS X and others. But it would destroy your troll to admit it.
We refer to each OS by its name, without adding OS. Nobody says Windows OS, though they should, because windows have nothing to do with OS.
Anyway, if a Ubuntu users wants to install KOffice, he uses the package installer, which does and downloads everything automatically for him, without having to know anything more than KUbuntu installation guide or KOffice site tells them to do. Every commercial distribution does the same btw, so your example is completely wrong.
No user ever complained to me about "button orders", and I still wonder what crack the man that first introduced that on
Nor Windows nor MacOS X are more consistent than the two major DE on Linux. They all have several toolkits, but it would destroy your troll to admit it.
This is not a problem now, it won't be one later, and it surely is not what is holding Linux desktop back (if sth is holding it back).