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Ed Haletky: Desktop Linux Nearly There
Mark Brunelli writes "When Edward Haletky's friend asked him for help setting up a Linux desktop in the year 2000, they found only half of the Web applications needed. Since then, while researching his new book, Deploying Linux on the Desktop, Haletky has seen desktop Linux application availability and usability increase to the point where it's nearly ready for widespread corporate use. Yet Haletky does not think that Linux desktops will be widespread by 2007. In this interview, he explains why." Read on for a snippet from the interview. I know my Linux desktop (several, actually) has served well enough for "corporate use" for the past several years.
"Edward Haletky: 'The current enterprise demand for desktop Linux is growing daily and is very hard to quantify at this time. However, there are two desktop efforts going at the moment. The first is for the home user, and the second is for the enterprise. While these may seem dissimilar, they are in essence the same in most respects. The difference boils down to either the custom enterprise applications or specialized tools to access mail and enterprise databases. But in many aspects: for information sharing and training, a good Web and connection client is all that is necessary. For information generation, a good office suite is needed. Both of these are available on Linux today. There are many things to overcome before Linux will be a primary desktop for most users.'"
"Edward Haletky: 'The current enterprise demand for desktop Linux is growing daily and is very hard to quantify at this time. However, there are two desktop efforts going at the moment. The first is for the home user, and the second is for the enterprise. While these may seem dissimilar, they are in essence the same in most respects. The difference boils down to either the custom enterprise applications or specialized tools to access mail and enterprise databases. But in many aspects: for information sharing and training, a good Web and connection client is all that is necessary. For information generation, a good office suite is needed. Both of these are available on Linux today. There are many things to overcome before Linux will be a primary desktop for most users.'"
"I know my Linux desktop (several, actually) has served well enough for "corporate use" for the past several years."
I don't think that you classify as a 'regular' corporate user though. Most users don't want to learn all the stuff you did so that they can use Linux, most users want it simple, very very very simple.
Gregor
I love Linux just as much as the next /.er, but Linux for the Desktop is nowhere near ready. Both KDE and GNOME are still much too complicated. Installation of most distributions is still way too complex (Honey, what's a mount point?), and hardware support is getting there, but not there yet.
It's the realization that lots of work is left to be done that's going to get it done!
..Tux is on the third base?
So a guy trying to sell a book about Linux on the desktop says that it's nearly there? I'm so shocked!
What's even more crazy is that he discovered all this while doing the research for his book. So I guess he decided to write the book first and then find out if Desktop Linux could actually work later. Curious.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
While for me, the linux desktop has 'been there' for many years now,
there is a big obstacle: DVDs still need a DeCSS library which
linux distributions can not provide yet.
DVD on linux is actually one of my main reasons to use
linux on the desktop. You have more control about how to play DVDs.
However, I feel that it is absolutely essential that a user can just pop
in a DVD and that it will play. And that this works just after a default
installation of the operating system.
Mind that Windows cannot play DVDs out of the box -you need a codec that is not supplied with Windows.
Granted, you can purchase third-party software easily enough for Windows... I dont think there is any legal way to watch you DVDs in Linux (though I still do so without remorse).
Linux is obviously ready for the desktop, at least for some people like myself, because we use it on the desktop. It's tautological. However, some people do not find it ready for their desktop needs, and as such, it's not ready for the desktop.
Linux will never become Windows. It will never become Mac OSX. It will always be different than those two operating systems. As long as this is the case, I imagine we will continually hear the debate about whether or not Linux is desktop ready.
http://jeffkrimmel.com
Does this mean we'll get a replacement for X anytime soon?
It hurts so bad. It's like being stuck somewhere between Win 3.1 and 95.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
It's not just DVDs. It's all sorts of things like Flash, the NVidia driver, SUN Java (Blackdown doesn't cut it) mplayer will full codecs and more. I actually recently wrote a bit in my blog about how the free zealots are keeping this stuff out. Sure, some of it is legally questionable. But in Ubuntu you have to read a wiki and jump through some hoops to get multimedia to not suck. The capability is there to make it easier for the user who doesn't care about freeness to get this stuff to work in a few clicks. Let's do it.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Recently I have been bitching about all of the problems with Linux in general (stuff like inconsistencies in the Windows Manager (primarily Gnome), arbitrary differences between distros for some of the most basic of things like configuring the bootloader, etc). However, to be fair Linux as a system has gotten light years better in the last year. In the last few weeks I have been trying all of the updates that have been coming out. I have tried:
Ubuntu 5.0.4
Fedora Core 4
Mandriva Download Edition 10.1
Gentoo 2005.1
OpenSUSE Linux 10 beta
My opinion is:
Linux is ready now for the enterprise desktop, as long as you can run your mission critical apps. This is because most businesses have their own support people.
Linux is ready for the home desktop IF it supports your hardware AND you don't mind having to go to the command line to install apps that are not supplied by your distro.
On the other hand, if your computer has hardware that is NOT supported by your distro then (if you are a noobie like me) you have just entered Linux Hell (tm).
One thing I wonder about, I have noticed that the same open source tools available through multiple distros all seem to work slightly differently. This may just be a version difference (I don't know cause I didn't compare version IDs) but it seems to be very widespread.
What Linux Needs (tm) to really get established at home (in my humble opinion) is a complete end to end installer for apps and drivers. End to end means that you choose an app to install and the installer also installs any dependent libraries WITHOUT asking you where they are on the internet, and compiles the dependencies from source if it isn't available from your distro already compiled, and it handles the architectural switches (x86 vs. amd64 for example), and it ties the new app into the Windows Manager you are using (such as creating the icon to run the app from the WM menu).
Another Thing That Wouldn't Hurt (tm) is a central repository for links to non-OSS packages, especially drivers. Since most distros don't include proprietary drivers, sometimes it is tough to find them. My ATI graphics card is one such example, my Broadcom wireless networking card is another.
As for myself, I like Ubuntu for the community support, Fedora for the consistency of their distro, and Suse for their YAST2 program, although I haven't as yet decided which distro I will be going with.
To sum up though, Linux is very very close to being on par with Windows. Now if we can just get those pesky hardware drivers nailed down...
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
I hope the book is complete with instructions on how to load a driver IN PLAIN ENGLISH!
Lindows created a legal DVD player application or library for Linux, I believe... so it does exist. Distributing it along with free installs might be an issue, though, as the DVD licensing is per-user... (I may be wrong, though.)
Comment of the year
This particular article talks about enterprise applications, but you even hear it in articles when talking about the general user. Linux isn't ready for the general user because it can't run Quicken or some other such specific application. That might be a reason that someone wants to stick with Windows, but it sure isn't a reason that Linux isn't good for grandma. What cannot Linux do that the general populace needs?
"Older" hardware (1 Ghz CPU or less) with enough RAM, say 128-256MB. will run a linux desktop fine. Today, in under an hour, I added a 4 GB hard drive to an "older"(see above) XP system and installed Debian from a knoppix 3.9 CD in under an hour, dual-boot. Knoppix includes most things you need in a basic install and a lot of things you don't, so it's very impressive to anyone skeptical about the usefulness of a linux desktop.
Some people are like slinkys. They're useless, but it puts a smile on your face to push them down the stairs.
...as my email/contact/calendar/task thingy (OK, PIM) on various Fedora Core releases for the past few years; it's steadily improved and now is quite solid.
Of course, I'm probably biased since I'm working on a Ruby wrapper library for it, but, anyhow.
The Army reading list
The guy talks about a desktop-ready linux, but just one line after : "can't find half of the web apps"... to you need any desktop OS to use a web app ??? just a browser !
I've avoided linux on the desktop for one reason...the complexity of the setup. Installing it is a pain in the ass if you run into any problems. The installs that go smoothly are easy. Those are no concern. It's the ones where you have to choose the right option for video or something that are a major pain.
I just made a Knoppix cd and tried it out. Here is my question now. Why would anyone need to actually install linux if they aren't doing specialized tasks like designing the next skyscraper? A knoppix cd and an external usb hard drive is all you need and you can use ANY computer you want as long as it's not 20 years old and has a usb port. Could you install your games and apps onto the external hard drive and access them that way?
I just feel that if you could completely remove the "install" process you would find a whole lot of people that would be willing to adopt. Everyone loves to turn on a machine and have it just work without having to do anything.
I've found the average desktop user never puts a video DVD in their drive. I see it used for video watching often on laptops, but never desktops. I don't think the average home or "enterprise" user cares.
Developers: We can use your help.
Linux will not be accepted by the masses until you can point and click your way through everything and be able to do Administration tasks from any old account. It won't be accepted until they get 50 cent a minute 900-number tech support that's corporately backed and own the computer for a year without ever knowing just what the hell CLI is.
Fortunately, GNU/Linux is not about any of that, and hopefully never will be; however, this means that it will never overtake the more proprietary operating systems like Windows. I
I have been using linux exclusively 8 years now. (I sort of miss the excitement of it in 1997... oh well.)
I have used debian almost that entire time. The packaging system is just so beautiful. I now use Ubuntu.
I think one of the major challenges, though, is that people are used to buying software off the shelf. I think the OSS world would benefit from adopting a mac OS kind of program-in-a-folder system. It doesn't have to take over everything -- can just be on top of the distro's own packaging system.
And I think that having a stronger LSB is important, so independent groups can package programs easily and have some assurance they will work on most distros.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
I've heard this for 10 years. When will people realize that Linux is great for alot of things--but not everything. For instance, it isn't good for the mainstream desktop, and it's odd that geeks are still saying that it will be "soon." It won't. Oh, you'll hear it is. But don't believe it.
In the meantime, I'll be using my Mac. They've been ready for the mainstream desktop a long time.
If mod points could go higher than the "5, Insightful" that you already have, I'd throw some of my mod points at you. Instead, I'll blow them in a reply.
I second pretty much all that you have written here: Linux is ready for the corporate desktop (we have had several Linux desktops in my corporate area for a few years now); Linux is ready for the home user. The downside is that you need to check hardware compatibility (scanners, etc) and you can't be afraid to jump to the command line and do 'yum -y install' for some apps that didn't show up with your distro. Fortunately, you don't need to do that very often.
At home, my wife has been a Linux user since Red Hat Linux 7.1. Today, she's a happy Fedora Core user. She's definitely a non-technical user (she doesn't understand what "USB" is, but she knows our printer is "USB" and can recognize the right slot for the plug.) But she's become a complete Linux devotee, even to the point where she decided she's going to upgrade to an Intel Mac when they're available next year - and insisted that I install Linux on it! :-)
At work, I gave a presentation to our CIO a year ago about Linux on the desktop, and it was enough to convince him to install Linux for himself on a scratch desktop machine. He loves it, and we've had no problem with considering Linux part of our "enterprise desktop solution." When we look at new tools and software for the enterprise, Linux desktop support gets equal attention to Mac and Windows.
When giving that presentation to our CIO, I found that (briefly) walking him through the evolution of the Linux & UNIX desktop really helped. TWM .. olvwm ... Motif/MWM ... fvwm ... fvwm95 ... AfterSTEP ... GNOME. Somewhere in there, he recognized a Linux desktop that he was familiar with - and by the time we got to GNOME, he was totally impressed with the state of the current Linux desktop. He said he hadn't realized that Linux had progressed so far and had become so easy to use.
To sum up though, Linux is on par with Windows. Now if we can just get those pesky hardware drivers nailed down...
From your blog:
"What would be extra cool is if there was a way to make a deal with software companies to allow us to distribute their software. If it isn't possible, then perhaps we could create an illegal distribution and host it in some country that doesn't care. I always wonder, if it is legal for mplayer to host all the codecs on their site for free download why would it be illegal to host a distribution including all those codecs on the same site? A lot of what people do with their computers now is multimedia. If Linux can cast away a few zealots it can show that it is the best multimedia playing and managing operating system. Once it catches up to Apple in the content creation department it will be unstoppable.
Clearly you are unfamiliar with patent and copyright law but as you point out: there are legal impediments to shipping certain non-free software. In fact restrictions can just as easily apply to free software (see e.g. http://brian.mastenbrook.net/display/5 ) and creating illegal distributions is hardly likely to help make "us" unstoppable.
The people you call 'zealots' are the people who wrote the software and constructed the distros in the first place and they are entitled to impose whatever policy they see fit. If you don't like Mark Shuttleworth's strong open source stance or the Gentoo social contract, I suggest you quit your ignorant whining and make your own distro.
Your remarks suggest though that you'd be happier with warez than with FOSS and you certainly don't understand what most of the latter is about and what motivates the people who create it. Certainly the creation of FOSS is an activity far removed from the selfish criminality that you advocate, and it is quite sickening to hear someone like you saying that (absurdly):
"...those zealots will have to learn to deal with the fact that the only way to be truly free with multimedia is to use some non-free software."
If you cannot respect the views of the people whose creativity you take advantage of you could at least try not to make a complete fool of yourself.
- surfing the web
- email and chat
- music, movies, photos
- office applications
- games
While priority could vary, I think that these are things which need to work well in order that an operating system can be used by the entire family. OSX does that. Most people will hardly want to bother with different operating systems. DVD's on linux laptops has to work in order that people switch. If they are forced to use windows on their laptops, also the desktop will not change.I never bought windows per se but all PC's, I had purchased
so far, which had windows preinstalled, came bundled with
a DVD player. I usually look what is there, before I
whipe it off my harddrive.
Let M$ stay under the crosshairs of the script kiddies and virus/trojan scumbags.
And if it did become "big", the commercialized scumbag profiteers would try to squeeze out the "free" folks. And of course M$ would be behind this push, funding it like they funded SCO. The sheer greed of M$ knows no bounds or limits..
I like it as is, an obscure and out of the limelight system. I like when I talk about Linux and people act as if I'm from another galaxy and have three heads.
And I most of all don't want to see distros grasping at the "look and feel" of M$. All the bling-bling eye candy and playskool icons are for babies and they can keep that crap. I don't want to run ANY M$ apps on my machines. Not one. If you do, you may as well just reformat your drives and install XP.
Use Linux or do not, there is no compromise.
And lastly, I want to see Linspire fail completely.
What a total pile of insecure and unstable trash. Putting people into Linspire and selling them the fairy tale that they are "safe" is doing people a disservice.
Let's keep Linux where it should be, in the hands of the capable.
Open-source desktop environments have made enormous progress over the years. I'm greatly impressed with what GNOME and KDE have been able to accomplish. However, there are still plenty of rough edges that are a problem. (Disclaimer: I haven't checked out KDE for several years now, so they may very well have a lot of these issues covered.)
:/
As mentioned by others in this thread, there are plenty of problems that are impossible or difficult for open-source coders to solve. These include playing DVDs (patents, CSS issues), device drivers (many hardware manufacturers do the dirty work of writing drivers for Windows, and specifications can be hard to get), support for lots of printers, etc.
There are also plenty of problems that can (and probably will) be resolved by the open-source community. I've been struggling lately with the clunkiness of running a dual-monitor desktop in GNOME (as compared to Windows). Many GUI components are far less responsive than their Windows counterparts. (When composing an email in Thunderbird in Windows, I'm accustomed to highlighting a URL then pressing CTRL-L and ENTER rapidly to create a hyperlink. In Linux, that doesn't work because the CTRL-L dialog box doesn't come up fast enough.) And don't even get me started on out-of-the-box support for notebooks, such as power management, hibernate, and whatnot. (My latest install of FC4 had my notebook's speedstep running at ~600Mhz even when plugged into AC, until I manually tweaked some files.)
So, I wouldn't recommend Linux for standard desktop deployments just yet. If the next 3-4 years show as much progress as the previous years, then a solid Linux desktop may be just around the corner. In fact, I think that Linux has the potential to offer a much more solid desktop platform than Windows -- at the very least, it doesn't suffer from the brain-dead Windows memory manager that thrashes my notebooks's slow hard drive around every time I click something.
I keep meaning to dive into some of the code and contribute to GNOME reaching this "last mile" of desktop usability, but I have so many projects on my to-do list ahead of that.
I dont think there is any legal way to watch you DVDs in Linux
Sure there is, it's called fair use. Now selling someone a way to watch DVDs in Linux, maybe that's illegal, but actually watching a DVD you legally bought isn't.
you just don't want to use it.
I second pretty much all that you have written here: Linux is ready for the corporate desktop (we have had several Linux desktops in my corporate area for a few years now); Linux is ready for the home user.
That's not what he said, though. He said "Linux is ready now for the enterprise desktop, as long as you can run your mission critical apps." That's a big "if", and it negates my company, which needs a ledger system which is available only for Windows, and Quickbooks Accountant Edition. Quickbooks might be replacable, I don't know how easy it is to convert Quickbooks data to something that runs on Linux, and don't know if there's anything on Linux that has all the features we use. But as for the ledger system, I highly doubt there's a solution for Linux. We need something which supports electronic submission of W-2, W-3, and 1099 information. This is besides the fact that we'd have to retrain everyone to use different software. It's not at all feasible.
As for the home user, he said "Linux is ready for the home desktop IF it supports your hardware AND you don't mind having to go to the command line to install apps that are not supplied by your distro." Even then, I'd add in that Linux doesn't support most games. There are other applications, too. For instance, I highly doubt there will ever be a version of Party Poker's software which runs on Linux.
I'm still considering trying the switch, again. I'm sick of Windows security. But the installation is going to be a pain in the ass, since I've only got a small hard drive on my laptop and AFAIK I don't have a working CD of Windows in case I want to switch back. Maybe I'll look into running Linux off a CD for a while. I think my girlfriend's computer has a CD burner on it.
(1) Software - for tax and money management. I NEED to be able to run something like TaxCut (the web-based ones don't cut it) and Money / Quicken (with online banking & bill payment). I don't mind paying a similar prices for those apps as the Windows verisons.
(2) Hardware - I desire accelerated 2D and 3D support for my video card that is comparable to Windows (when I move a window, it should instantly reposition without taking 100% CPU - and accelerated OpenGL support should also be solid). This is less for commercial games, more for my own coding (I have an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro). My printer (some mid-range Canon USB thing) should also work (see #1 - for tax and financial records).
And that's about all that's keeping me on Windows. When Linux can do those, I'm sold. And when FreeBSD can do it, I'm there instead.
After 10-15 years of farking around with Linux and various things, I have completely given up.
I'm sick of spending hours getting things working after updates. Of spending hours getting new hardware working. (then finding out any support software is void of any useful function, ie cameras, sound hardware, etc)
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
That 'all-in-one' versatility that you speak of matters more for a college youth in a cramped dorm room, or a schoolboy with a PC in his 'room' than it does for grownups.
An adequate DVD player is $35 at WalMart. You put it in the living room, away from the computer in the den.
Linux is ready for corporate use. Except for IT, nobody needs to get under the hood for 99.9% of corporations. All that needs to be done is have speciality software ported over to Linux, and have IT lockdown the system so that the average user can't mess things up. At the bank I work at, we use 2 tools that are installed on the computer, and one that's web-based. One tools is where we run all of our transactions, one is a suite of programs where we look up accounts, statuses, and anything else related to the account, and the web-based is to look up signature cards. If we (since the bank I work at owns the software company that produces our software) made Linux ports for the transaction program and the inquery suite, we could port to Linux without any problems. The only thing I can think of right now for why we haven't is because we haven't had a need. For us, what we have works. I've never had Win2K freeze up on me, and the only problems I've had with the computer are with the programs that my bank made. Now, I suppose once Microsoft stops supporting Win2K, my bank might have a reason to make the switch, but for right now, it would be an un-necessary cost.
You said that you tried Gentoo already, but it seems that you didn't look too carefully at it, as it really does all of these things already. Portage is the best thing since sliced bread, although it's not really alone in that respect. I find the biggest mistake that new users make with regards to Linux is that they totally ignore their package manager, then get frustrated because they want the source tarballs to do all the things that the package manager already does. (I did it too when I was new to Linux...) Of course the blame lies in the fact that there is no package manager at all in Windows, and too many people equate Windows with computing, thinking that everything must be like it. I don't think there are any package managers that don't already do automagic dependency checking and resolving, although if you snag random rpms off the net and try and install them you may run into problems (which is why you always check your package manager first!).
As to non-free items, both the ATI and NVidia binary drivers are one emerge away (emerge ati-drivers or emerge nvidia-glx, respectively). You can specify to use win32 codecs (set win32codecs in your USE flags) for Mplayer, Xine and most every other media player on Linux, and Portage will snag those automagically too. I really can't say enough good things about Portage, I've never been happier.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
If you can't recover Windows if the Linux experiment messes up your Windows install then I highly reccomend you buy a second hard drive and swap them out (one for Linux, one for Windows). I have accidentally clobbered my Windows install more than once while trying Linux distros, so be careful.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
That's good news. I'm not bashing Gentoo but until they get their GUI installer out, I am not skilled enough (nor do I have the patience) to deal with their method of setting up Linux. However, I look forward to trying the install again once the GUI is available.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
I'd just like the mention that Ubuntu theoretically has all of this, mostly thanks to Debian. They've got a centralized repository, so if you pick an app in your favorite APT frontend, you should be able to install it and that's it (of course, sometimes reality intrudes and you have to resolve a conflict). apt-get source --build is also quite easy, though I don't know of any frontends to handle it for you. The 'menu' system has been around for ages and has always worked for me; any window manager or whatever sort of thing supports a menu, can tell Debian how to add all of your apps to the menu. And Ubuntu's at least as good as anyone when it comes to making non-free stuff reasonably easy to install, though for some reason most vendors still think that RPM is the be-all and end-all of packages.
The only way I'm doing the experiment is through a live-CD or a network boot. I'm not touching my hard drive until I decide to abandon Windows.
I could buy a second hard drive, but as it's a laptop I really don't think it's worth it. I'd rather boot off disk or CD and use my linux server to serve up an NFS drive.
A lot of my friends do listen to music and watch movies on their computers, just as I do, but the simple fact is that I've never seen any of them watch a DVD or listen to a CD on their PC. It's all MP3 and DivX. While it would be nice to have better (read: legal) DVD support for Linux/BSD, it likely falls under "nice-to-have" rather than "necessary" for most users.
This poo is cold.
though for some reason most vendors still think that RPM is the be-all and end-all of packages.
I recently started using Ubuntu on my laptop, and I've found that Alien is your best friend when you run into RPM-only packages of the apps you're looking for.
This poo is cold.
Agreed. It's not a major problem most times, just an inconvenience.
Apreche, unfortunately, it doesn't even stop there. To have Linux ready for the desktop, it need more than just the GIMP for Graphic Editing. hell, Paint Shop Pro can do more than that can and it's easier to use. Right now, there is a few windows applications that will run in linux, but it requires Crossover Office, which is a $40 investment, 1/5 of the way to a windows CD.
Most of the software is in constant beta testing and once it reaches a point, it's abandoned. There are a very few games that will run under linux, and most of them are pure CRAP, like a Yahtzee clone that doesn't randomize properly, board games, only a few 3D games, and the 3D drivers are unstable. I had to reboot a few times because of the instability. Windows may have spyware, but at least it had tools that I could use without extensive configuring. Kaudiocreator, for example, has no instruction at all, and that's the only software there is to rip CDs in linux.
I am even thinking of moving back to windows, and I will stay with windows XP, until there are more applications in linux. Of course, I doubt that will happen, because linux hasnt changed much in a few years. You're right about the "free zealots" keeping this stuff out. They have the attitude that "information wants to be free". What I'm talking about there is they feel all software for linux should be F/OSS under the GPL license. Unfortunately, the only Software development tools are under the viral GPL license, which means that if you write software for distribution in linux, you pretty much have to go under the GPL as well.]
To the mods, I am not trying to be a troll, I just want others to know what I have gone through before installing linux.