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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
..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).
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.
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?
I'm with you, and I especially love it when the "how-tos" don't cover basics:
1) Where to type stuff in. Sure it's obvious to the Linux guru that "ndiswrapper -i" goes into the terminal and that "192.168.1.1" goes into the IP address field, but if I'm not an expert, I have no clue.
2) They tell you to use a path that's wrong. I've had this one more than once... on the ndiswrapper one, for instance, it tells me to place the Windows driver on my desktop, then use a root terminal to type in "ndiswrapper -i ~/desktop/windows_driver"... that's great, but that uses the desktop belonging to *ROOT* not to me, because it's a root terminal! Again, that's probably obvious to the Linux guru, but it stumped me for a half hour. (And, BTW, if you have to type in a path at all, WRITE A GUI PEOPLE! Why does Knoppix have a GUI (albeit a terrible one) for ndiswrapper but Ubuntu doesn't? Criminy, how irritating.)
3) What to do for common errors. When I tried the above, I got some error like "cp: Failed, file does not exist." Well, I know now in retrospect that it's because I was telling it to look in the wrong desktop folder, but the How-To didn't have any explaination of that error. (And no, I don't know that "cp" means "file copy." And again, if you're looking for reasons why people hate Linux, how about the obvious: If "cp" runs into an error, why doesn't it tell you WHICH FILE has the error? I mean, duh!)
4) Also covering the basics would be nice. I know now that "ndiswrapper" is a program that can "translate" (somehow) Windows networking drivers into Linux drivers, but the how-to didn't tell me that, I had to glean it after the fact.
Comment of the year
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.
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.
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.
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