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Linux Five Years Away From Mainstream
wellington wrote to mention a ZDNet blurb about a Gartner group study. Gartner indicates that 'mainstream' use of open source in IT environments may be 5 years away. From the article: "Gartner's latest Linux 'hype cycle' report shows that open source is halfway to maturity but warns the biggest test will be whether it can demonstrate the necessary performance and security to function as a data centre server for mission-critical applications. Leading-edge businesses are generally still in the early stages of Linux deployments but Gartner expects increased commercialisation and improved storage and systems management for the operating system by the end of 2005, with Linux being used primarily for WebSphere and infrastructure applications on mainframes and web services on blades and racks."
Did you know that nuclear fusion is only 20 years away? Just like it was in 1950! (No, I'm not skeptical. Not at all.)
When I wrote my article and its follow-up on directions I think a Linux Distribution could take, I expected that there would be some controversy. However, I hardly expected the shear number of responses to the effect of, "Linux is great as it is! Never change it!"
Which is surprising, because the very point of the Linux design is that different distributions were supposed to be able to explore completely different tracks. There shouldn't be any "one distro to rule them all", yet many of the respondants demanded exactly that! (Amusingly, they couldn't agree on *which* distro to rule them all.)
When I pointed this out to many responders, and mentioned the fact that I'm merely attempting to suggest a Desktop environment that would help Linux adoption, I got another surprising response: "Who said we wanted regular users? Linux is for the elite. If you're too stupid to recompile your kernel or read all the scattered HOWTOs, you're too stupid to use Linux!"
I understand that the Linux community is wide and varied, but this sort of attitude is not helping anyone. In fact, this sort of attitude causes Linux to take two steps back for every one step forward it takes in the market.
It's normal that Linux users will disagree. That's why Linux is just a kernel, KDE/GNOME are just desktop environments, and the GNU System is just a collection of Unix utilities. It's so the end distributions can build the OS necessary to meet their users. But such a design DOES NOT require that users berate each other! Rather, Linux users should understand that "idiot" users using an "idiot" distribution is okay. Gentoo users can still recompile Gentoo to their hearts content even though Ubuntu exists. Ubuntu users can still use Ubuntu workstations even though Fedora exists. Fedora users can still a have 100% "Free as in socks and gun ownership" OS even though SuSE exists.
There's no reason for this OS bigotry. It's causing confusion in the marketplace, and generally turning the public off to Linux. Just pick the distro you like, and be happy for other people who use something that works for them. K?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Linux was mainstream five years ago.
Must we hear the same spiel before it becomes the truth?
- to the tune of "Blowin' in the Wind"
Post-rock/Ambient/Drone and other noise.
Mission Critical- Does this mean that it is going to be used in military applications- or is this just some buzzwording that is demonstrating that whomever wrote the summary is a middle manager who uses buzzwords to sound bright?
for the drm wars
The best test environment is production. - Me
chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
How come every thing is "5 years away" but never seems to get here. I'll bet the writers for the Jetsons anticipated space cars in 5 years too.
Gartner Group was reported to be five years away from becoming a credible news source for the IT industry.
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Just another kooky prediction. Linux already performs just as well or better that Windows, and it does have better security, really. ...
Now all thet we need is to make it perform better and make it secure. What a crap.
As a matter of fact linux already mainstream in many areas, and for all we know, it may never replace Windows on a desktop.
But predictions are always true, right
The source of bullshit for years and still counting.
...5 years behind the times.
Many people use them everyday, but they just don't know it. Maybe we should have a "The Internet: Powered by *nix" campaign.
Thankyou Mr Ballmer, please stick to playing with chairs.
Hasn't Linux for the desktop been 5 years away for the last 10 years?
Tea and kung-fu. Life is good. Rising Phoenix
So basically, this tells us nothing we haven't already heard.
Wake me Linux is ONE year away, OK?
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
..they want their article back.
Maybe John Titor can help.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Because by the time that the actual product has been developed, people have anticipated the next thing they want, and they are then waiting for that...The original five year wait is forgotten. In five years gartner will be saying that Linux or OSS is five years from the next thing they imagine they want. Pete
That's odd, i already run mission critical apps on linux! In fact, we only have one windows server, and it's getting phased out next month.
-Pizentios
Five years to mainstream Linux -- I'd say they were being optimistic about desktops. But servers? When is this report from, 1997?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Apparently, 'Running the majority of web servers worldwide' doesn't count as mainstream.
With love,
Steve Balmer @ Micro$oft
When Linux supports the full range of hardware that is currently under NDA's and vendors that refuse to "support" Linux other than supplying tainted binary kernels; then and only then will Linux be ready.
I personally have moved to a mac because I couldnt wait any longer. Will revisit Linux on the desktop in maybe 3 - 5 years.
Linux Always Five Years Away From Mainstream
Gartner's latest Linux 'hype cycle' report shows that open source is always halfway to maturity...
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
This means that most of the software the current /.'r is running, won't show up in enterprise level distributions for several years. So yeah, five years off doesn't sound that far off the mark.
Since when did operating systems become a religion?
"Linux is, and always will be, the OS of the future."
/.
Or at least that seems to be the sentiment here on
(Note: not flaming, not flaming, not trolling, not trolling - apparently, a disclaimer like this is necessary to avoid a "Troll" or "Flamebait" rating)
A five years from now Windows Vista will be ready for public beta (=final version)!
After a quick google search, I've uncovered that:
1. Iran at least five years away from producing nuclear weapon
2. CIA five years away from terror readiness
3. Scotland: Independence 'five years away'
4. Cancer cure about five years away, British scientists claim
5. Dog returned to owners after being lost five years ago
6. Infants' gastro vaccine may be five years away
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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Mainstream? Well, I was into Linux before it was cool. I totally dig their older stuff so much better... then they sold out to the man
</indierock>
Anything Gartner says about Windows and Linux has to be taken with a grain of salt. A very large grain at that. How can you trust anything that a company that's been paid by Microsoft once to say anything realistic about a Microsoft competitor? I mean, if linux isn't "mature" why is it already in so many networks? I don't know a single ISP that doesn't have atleast ONE linux server. Even those ISPs that are Windows based still has atleast one linux box somewhere. For that matter, why are so many Unix boxes being replaced with Linux? I personally have replaced 2 Windows servers for clients with Linux in the past 6 months. My ISP, though small, has moved from 12 Windows servers to 4 Linux boxes and 1 Windows. But of course it's not stable enough to handle the work? I was getting hacked on a monthly basis with the Windows NT servers. And the remaining server got nailed by the zotob virus even though I had applied the patch. But THIS is ready for the mainstream datacenter? I mean, c'mon. If it wasn't ready there wouldn't be so many Linux servers out there. What all of these "reports" fail to be able to take into consideration is all the White boxes out there. Or for that matter all the servers people have purchased with Windows or without OS all together that get wiped out and have Linux installed. I, for one, have gotten really tired of this kind of BS "news" since it's always putting Linux capabilities down, or DRASTICALLY misreported numbers. I mean.... http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_surve y.html Most servers running apache are Linux. Just kind of tired of this misinformation.
Gartner indicates that 'mainstream' use of open source in IT environments may be 5 years away.
I wonder where he has been. I started using Linux IN the datacenter some 4-5 years ago now. One system was up for almost 4 years running DNS and Squid. For DNS, we occassionally patched it, for squid we had a job that restarted it once per week at 11pm on Sundays. It didn't make it to 4 years because the UPS had to be upgraded. We had bets if she would reboot, the na-sayer lost.
And it was a no-name left over PC to begin with. The moral of the story is that it isn't the hardware as would the other OS have you believe.
Not adopting Linux where it is suitable has more to do with an inability to change fo the better and what shares does the CEO/CFO/CIO own.
The source of "true" insight for years and still counting.
[quote]"the biggest test will be whether it can demonstrate the necessary performance and security to function as a data centre server for mission-critical applications"[/quote] Well, it DID test it's performance and security as a server for mission critical application. I wonder when Microsoft will reach that level. The fact that Microsoft actually has to copy source code from other (Open Source) projects to maintain a stable networking says all. For the users that don't know: Gartner is a Microsoft-funded marketing "research" facility that has sent out FUD-investigations before.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
that by 2005, Linux would occupy about 1-2 % of all web servers, and would not even make it in the enterprise. This study can only mean that Linux has made it in the mainstream.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"mainstream use...hype cycle...halfway to maturity...mission-critical...Leading-edge...infra structure applications"
Thought we got rid of the bullshit buzzwords during the bubble burst.
In spite of the title, the article does not state 'Linux Five Years Away From Mainstream'. In states that 'Linux is five years away from mainstream use in Enterprise IT infrastructures. This is all about high-end data-centre stuff - a niche use. This article is confusing a very specialised use of Linux with it's general use as, for example, a mid-range server where it has proved it's successfulness for years. There is further confusion where the article mentions that 'many are re-evaluating Linux use' (many turns out to be 5 CIOs out of a panel of 12).
I don't know whether this article is deliberate FUD, or just a confused mess. I suspect the latter.
Depending on whom you ask, Linux is already a major player in the desktop.
It au pair with OSX in raw number of desktops installed in a lot of places, and was pushed in a lot of countries to the desktop. Ubuntu Hoary / Fedora Core are every bit as easy to install than W2k/XP, and work equally well. Choose your desktop environment for your users and you're set.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I saw those in Tron, right?
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I've been using Linux for 13 years now (took me a week to download it on a 2400 baud modem!) and I first implemented it in a business setting 10 years ago to connect someone to the Internet.
How long has Windows or DOS or MacOS waited before becoming "mainstream"??? Certainly not 20 years!!!
'mainstream' use of open source in IT environments may be 5 years away
$#!+, I must be living in the future @ work. Eclipse, Tomcat, Rehat and Suse, big brave talk about ditching Oracle for postgres - Open Source tooling being first choice every time.
OK, a big part of it is down to $$$, but that's not all of it.
- they don't need a GUI
- linux does what they need and they use it for that
- they would rather see effort put into the inner workings to make it more stable and efficient
- they don't necessarily care if Joe Bob next door is running it
????Yes, more adoption gets more development started. But that usually is just to dumb down the rest of the OS/Dist/whatever so you can get more adoption. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Hey, I like eye candy too, and I do use a desktop occasionally. However, people are not assholes just because they don't have the same objectives as you.
Look around you and you'll see people switching to Linux(not just server but desktop) to the left and to the right. Most agree that Linux has already become mainstream. It seems like the author of that article is living five years behind our times.
Who cares about Gartner? *Websites* are mission critical for most companies. And guess where will you migrate your old Unix IT. Most companies use PCs. And Linux on the desktop is possible now. Many companies are switching esp. in Europe and South America.
What is important now is to get the remaining issues done, fix the 90% solutions. That is, we need more paid developers for key infrastructure projects such as KDE, gcc, classpath, valgrind, etc. It is just a matter of time. We will get openoffice 2 and firefox 1.5 very soon. the desktop monopoly of windows is history.
with Linux being used primarily for WebSphere and infrastructure applications on mainframes and web services on blades and racks.
So Linux will be primarily used for
-WebSphere
-Infrastructure Applications
-Mainframes
-Webservices
-In blades
-In racks
Sounds about all applications in a datacenter: way to go!
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
In 5 years, I'll wake up after 2 hours of sleep to my AI assistant handing me my rejuvination pill. I'll hop in my flying car and it'll drive me to work at the fusion plant. There won't be much work to do, because the Open Source software that runs the place does so damn well. That's OK though, we'll just play Duke Nukem Forever all day on our quantum computers and go home and fuck our supermodel wives, because geeks are cool now.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
Which is to say that:
if (avg($linuxUserBrains) > avg($winUserBrains)){
$linux_adopt_date >= yr(5);
}else{
$linux = $useless_os
)
for $useless_os, see any Microsoft product.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Statements like these always remind me of the old Tom Hanks movie The Money Pit. "How much longer to finish the house?" "2 more weeks." "You said that 2 weeks ago!"
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
Wow, you mean I'm not the only guy on Slashddot that uses FreeBSD? :P
I can't help but wonder why I have no troubles setting up FreeBSD as my desktop, on our new webserver or as automated terminal clients for our Windows Terminal Service while I can't figure out how to use Linux for anything usefull.
Could that have something to do with something called Ports and Packages?
(Seriously, I tried Linux! Several times!)
Free beer is never free as in speech. Free speech is always free as in beer.
Why does Linux keep getting faulted for installation issues while Windows gets a pass?
Linux installation is not a reason to avoid switching at a corporate or oem level.
I downloaded and installed Suse 9.3 64 bit on my new dual Opteron the night before last. The installation went really smooth but of course there was a hiccup. I had to install sensors. That involved a trip to a web site, yasting around a bit, etc.
It would be easy to blast Linux for not automatically doing everything and retreat to M$ land, except that Windows 64 bit doesn't even have drivers out of the box for my SATA hard drive and thus wouldn't work at all. If I really wanted fans to work badly enough, and could not get a device, I could write a kernel module myself and all Linux hardware stuff has excellent documentation to at least get me started.
The bulk of all OS distributions are either OEMs or corporate rollouts. OEMS have a team that prepare images for a fixed hardware, and so do corporate rollout centers. Whether you wade through driver compatibility issues on Windows or Linux doesn't matter. Both systems have similar problems and Windows wizards at that level don't really help someone who should already be an expert on the topic.
I would think that OEMs might consider locking down Linux PCs so that end users do not have the root password. So they can't break it...
This is my sig.
I think it's really important to distinguish from Linux the server platform and Linux the desktop platform, as you say. I run GNOME from an Ubuntu distro on the desktop, and it's.... pretty good. But it's not XP. No Quicktime or WMV plugin means a lot of websites like CNN and Yahoo don't really work well. Xine is ok for DVD content, but overall it's a bit slow and uses more resident memory than what I consider an equivalent XP system does.
Linux as a server has arrived, and has been here for awhile.
researching, designing and implementing (smoothly, including migrating your data to your new environment with no impact to the business) a change to a new operating system *always* takes a long time. here, we're not moving to XP from 2000 as it's not worth it: we're moving to longhorn as and when it emerges. it'd take just as much planning (probably more, in fact) to shift to linux. think upgrade cycles. think win2k going off support as a driver to change. 5 years doesn't seem all that long to me...
*runs*
If the TCO study was done over say a 5 year cycle, then Linux wins hands down as you've then got to factor in at least one forced upgrade of all your MS and non-MS applications... nobody forces you to upgrade with Linux...
--
Microsoft Windows... Unsafe on the information highway at any speed...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Assuming that this has been reported correctly (there is no link to Gartner's actual report), it shows just how far out of touch Gartner is when it comes to technical matters such as this.
I won't disect what they've said because probably everyone else reading this knows the flaws in both their arguments and facts, but if an organisation can make money producing unsubstantiated and just plain incorrect claims like this then I am clearly in the wrong job.
So, here's the plan: we set up our own global organisation, just like Gartner, and we issue our own PR, which by contrast will contain no factual errors and will not only contain details of the present situation but also predict how much better the situation is becoming (and how quickly). These reports can be distributed within the community who can then go to their customers/partners/PHBs and say "Hey, there's this great new report out which says that Linux is running on 10 million desktops worldwide and this market share is set to treble in the next 12 months". That way, coming from an authoritative source, they will naturally acknowledge that it is true.
I'm not entirely joking here - who's up for it?
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
It was about 5 years ago that Linux became mainstream in the data center.
Duke Nukem Forever is apparently going to be ready to play in 5 years too!!
I'm a Windows developer with a kid. I can't afford to keep blowing money on Visual Studio licenses when I have a son I have to put through college. I'm hoping that Linux developer tools should be good enough and constantly improving, and in any case, they are free.
The GPL to me is a red herring brought up by Microsoft to plant this crazy idea that you should only develop for Windows because on Linux you aren't allowed to make money. I can't see any reason why I can't make shareware on Linux as opposed to Windows.
If anything, writing something on Linux is at least something of a safe harbor from waiting on Windows for MS to snatch your idea as yet another feature in Office.
Sale away!
This is my sig.
People are different. Just because some very loud and rude people walk all over a forum, doesn't mean that this represents the people who are working on important bits. Often the loudest, are doing the least.
;-)
What can be damaging to your view is mixing up those you meet on a forum, or are acting immature/ignorant, with those who really matters in a project.
More interesting is that what you see as OS bigotry and elitism in others, is a feeling in yourself really. It might not have a reality in the other person. This extends to anything, and realizing it is a first step to taking responsibility for your own feelings and opinions. Who knows who others are? We don't really know each other that well yet, do we really?
So relax.. enjoy Windows or Linux or BSD.. and be happy!
Oh, yeah, Mac too
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Admittedly, Linux isn't for everyone. But to be scared of people online? I don't think that's really a problem with Linux nor the Linux community, but rather the individual who lacked the self confidence to ask questions and admit that he or she needed some help. As long as you act intelligently and politely, there are many people willing to help out new Linux users, be it via mailing lists or on IRC or in newsgroups or online forums.
Indeed, these guys should just accept who the are, and be comfortable with that. And they should be able to ask questions to more advanced Linux users without feeling intimidated or scared. If they do a little bit of research beforehand, and remain polite, then they will get the answers they seek and the help they require.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I think people like the idea of having bazillions of different kinds of applications available.
The problem with Linux is that installing new stuff is a rough road for newbies. I think the thing that Linux advocates need to stress is that most end users wouldn't generally need to install new stuff because a good Linux distribution already has nearly everything.
This is my sig.
Ok, I'll pencil Linux in right between Fusion energy and my flying car.
---
Scene from an alternate universe:
Brock deftly navigated his flying car through congested lanes of traffic high above clean streams of water vapor coming from the Fusion Plant below. "Damn!", his son shouted from the rear seat, "I should never have installed Duke Nukem Forever on Windows! Linux is mainstream now, I should have used that!".
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Recent studies show that the average human will be ready to install OSS(firefox, oo.org) in approx. 5 years. Installing Linux will be the next step.
Just like Fusion is always 10-20 years in the future for commercial usage.
It depends on what your definition of "mainstream" is, of course. Right now, more people are using Linux than ever used Microsoft's DOS. Or Windows 3.1 for that matter.
Define your own reality - don't let others define it for you, with metrics based on the sales price of the OS, or the net revenue from OS sales. Linux strength is it's low cost, so it will never win at that game.
But right now, many people worldwide use Linux, or even BSD, even if it's what runs on their cell phone or inside their networked self-repairing robot-dog-feeding fridge.
And, to paraphrase Martha Stewart, that's a good thing.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'd put it off for another year.
Kind of like this article from 5 years ago, or this one from 3 years ago, or this one from Dec. 2000.
In 5 years, there will be an in every garage. Yawn...
The real question is, can anything ELSE demonstrate the necessary performance and security? (apart from UNIX, of course).
you had me at #!
They said this 5 years ago
"Mission Critical" is not a military term:
mission critical "Vital to the operation of the organization. The term is very popular for describing the applications required to run the day-to-day business."
It may once have been a military term, but its usage has long ago become more generalised, so that usage is now strictly a part of the etymology i.e. history of the phrase. Language changes, and the correct version of a word is the one in use today.
Until you can get the easy things doable by the masses, then you have a chance at taking the desktop.
Storm
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/Hard-D isk-Upgrade
Hard Disk Upgrade Mini How-To
Yves Bellefeuille - yan@storm.ca
Konrad Hinsen - hinsen@cnrs-orleans.fr
v2.11, 13 April 2000
...
Gartner is a respected company. Many companies pay TONS of money to get their two cents. Considering this, for those of you who do not like what Gartner is saying about Linux...how about you counter their findings with your findings. Here are the rules:
You should be neutral (tough for this crowd)
You should be logical (shouldn't be tough for us, but will probably be)
You should perform qualified research with backup sources.
Publish
Profit
Saying "Gartner you suck, you don't know what your talking about. You are five years behind the times" is really lame and inflammetory (if not trollish). Proving them wrong goes a LONG way.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Here's how I see it:
Personally, I just want desktop Linux to get a critical mass. It's doing fine on the server side, we're finally displacing deeply entrenched W2K servers with Linux at my work. The ideal world in my mind would be a 30% Mac, 30% Windows, 30% Linux, 10% Other, almost perfect competition and no hegemony for anyone. The downside to that of course is that the scum of the internet would start targeting Mac and Linux users as well. I used to think we needed to choke off MS, but even though they're the pan-ultimate business dirt bags, they have a place in the eco system, even if only to keep others from getting complacent.
well better tell my mom, my dad, and my girlfriend they arent allowed to use it anymore
Neither you nor the Gparent post understood one of th e main points of the great-GP post.
To answer GP:
Not in the software thats available, but in sheer choice of software.
MS Has Windows XP home and Windows XP Professional, designed for the general required use, its easy to tell epopel to get the correct version.
Sure, and it is really easy to tell the same people to buy Xandros or Lindows or even Mandriva. Just tell them to use Mandriva! Do not tell them to use just "Linux" because then you will give them problems.
Its like if someone bought a computer and you tell them "you can install Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4, Windows XP, Windows 2004 or MS-DOS if you like the command line"
Of course you will know that person and if he is not computer saavy, you will tell him just to install Windows XP Home or pro.
Make the same with Linux, as GP said, Open Source software is all about Choice, Linux IS OSS, so it is all about choice.
The problem here is that we (Linux advocates) continue to try to push this motto "Linux is Easy" or "Linux is for geeks only" or whichever but the key element is that Linux (nowadays) is all that.
"Linux is Easy" for your Grandma if she uses Lindows.
"Linux is easy" for John Sysadmin if he uses Slackware (just an example okey? do not bash me)
"Linux is for geeks only" if we are talking about Gentoo
"Linux is difficult and not functional" if talking about Lindows for John Sysadmin.
Do you understand? I think it is time to stop thinking about "linux" as the operating system -per se- and start to think about distributions there ARE distributions for every kind of person and whichever the person, if you recommend the wrong distribution it will be -difficult-
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
in the same way, we're gonna run out of oil in 20 years...or is it 8 now...or fifteen...or are we moving to nuclear power! no! aliens are coming with a renewable energy source! i just dont know anymore! damn these glorified study groups...
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
From what I can tell Gartner is full of idiots.
Does anyone remember back in 1999 or 2000 when they gave linux a 1 in 10 chance of making it out of the niche market?
Since then I've seen dozens of stupid or obvious Gartner predictions go by.
Religion is poison to rationality, and we lose sight of that at our own peril. -- Lurker2288
I haven't read it, but the topic is just silly.
Brian Seppanen
Minister of Information and Propaganda
Area 54 The Secret Government Disco Labs Provo
The article keeps flicking confusingly from Linux to Open Source.
Open Source is already mainstream. I don't have colleagues at any major enterprises that don't use it, and the smaller enterprises tend to use it for a larger percentage of their operations.
Linux adoption is however far slower, and I don't know anybody at all using it (commercially) on the desktop. I'd be surprised if Gartner's 5 years is correct, especially given the way Sun's Java Desktop hasn't exactly been the most successful business venture ever seen.
So does anybody have access to the Gartner report that can clarify whether it's Linux that's 5 years away, or Open Source software?
(Not that I rate Gartner especially highly anyway)
You know what would be nice? Out of the box WPA support for my Belkin Cardbus 802.11g card. That would really be awesome. Not ndiswrapper or wpa-supplicant, just detection and compatability during and after the initial install.
The thing is I can't tell if the lack of WPA support on Linux is because of genuine difficulty or a lack of care. There seems to be a high amount of self-defensiveness about the issue. "Use wpa-supplicant and shaddup!" and such.
I've tried many distros but if anyone out there knows of one that has this feature then I'd be happy to hear of it.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
The average home user (I'll say a 60 year old whippersnapper is getting there ) is becomming more accustomed to being able to do more advanced things on the computer with just the click of a button. Backing up a dvd is a perfect example. Or even better, transferring a VHS to DVD. On windows, they buy a piece of crap software that barely works, but does what it says it will do, and thats copy VHS to DVD. Stop and think how many steps it takes to do that in Linux. Every one is saying its mainstream now. IT IS NOT! It is industrial right now. Mainstream is when it is a house hold name. I actually keep a windows box around for several reasons (mostly multimedia in nature)just because I can get what I want to do done in a quarter of the time with that particular os. I use linux on all of my other computers because it does all that I need for those particular machines. When they make a distro that is so dummed down that my 60 year old father can pick it up and go "Why didn't you show me this earlier??" it will be ready for mainstream. There is too much configuration to do for now (/etc/hdparm.conf, ipchains, samba, etc.) that isn't done automagically or through a very easy to use UI (Suse is an exception, but it is so crippled in other respects that it can't do what else I need it to do with out doing the dependancy dance). Personally, I think Ubuntu is a good start, but it isnt perfect either. All of the distros have something to them, but none are ready for my old man...yet. Till then, It will always be 5 years away. After then, it will be the now.
Stop signs are only Suggestions
So, Gartner being Gartner, how can they spin this test with a straight face? I'll take "the jury is still out" (Linux) to "proven abject failure" (Windows) any day.
You sir, are an obvious liar. I would have been willing to accept that your Mom and Dad use Linux... But the girlfriend bit was a bit too much to swallow. Everyone knows that Linux users are incapable of getting girlfriends!
i'm the jedidiahmarkfoster your parents warned you about
I think linux will be ready tomorrow. When today is tomorrow it will be ready. Ask me again tomorrow and we can see if it is today.
After all, those of us who are a bit older remember the great fondness that communist governments had for 5-year plans ;-)
The Executives here try to wave these "studies" in our faces here in IT/IS about how we should back off linux migration.
This one prompted a "see it's not ready to handle enterprise/critical applications.
Until we let the CTO know that we have been depending on Linux for 3 seperate ultra critical apps for over 5 years now. and that tiny companies like GOOGLE use it exclusively for it's servers/backend.
He did his typical "suprised" look and then left us alone once again. The key is to keep your Executives informed so they become immune to the FUD and lies these "professionals" like to spread about.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
So google isn't mainstream? They have a huge number of linux servers, serving up their core business: search results.
Honestly, I doubt Linux will ever go mainstream.
The biggest problem is the open nature of the OS. Too many variations on a theme, too many GUI interaces, distros, ways to install software (RPM packages and such). In the software industry, something isn't going to go mainstream if there are 20 variations.
If the Open Source Linux community comes together and decide to throw their efforts into ONE package with ONE standardized interface then they would be a real mainstream contender against Windows. But as long as everyone in this community thinks they can make a better version then others in the community Linux will never become a mainstream alternative, just a hobby/underground OS.
Think of it, you buy a new computer and you get Windows installed. Whats the alternative? 20 varations of Linux, all with their own strengths and weaknesses. Ubuntuu, RedHat, YellowDog, Debian, Mandrake etc, etc, etc. Which do you install? Which one will be around for the next 5 years considering companies are shuffling their distros around and changing names/versions like toilette paper. Different distros all have different versions of the kernel and modules, not all use the latest and the greatest, some rely on stable older kernels, some use ones compiled yesterday. Finally after all that, what UI do you use, Gnome or KDE and variants of those themes?
Some say Linux's greatest strength is its flexibilty but this is its greatest weakness. There is no standardization and no uniform front for the mainstream consumers to see. Mainstream users are Ma and Pa, noobies, anyone that decides perhaps its time to find out what all the fuss with computers is about. These people do not want infinite choice in their OS and OS components, they want to walk into a store buy a computer and buy an OS to install on it. They don't to trial 20 different Linux distro until they find the one that is right for them, even if they are all free. Mainstream users don't want to waste the time or make an effort to find the best solution for their needs, which is why Windows IS Mainstream. It may be crap in so many ways, but its ONE choice for mainstream consumers.
The Linux community needs to stop this childish in-fighting and immature idea that there SHOULD be 20 version of Linux, and if any are serious about competing with Windows then its time to partner up and create a unified front, create ONE alternative to Windows, package it up and put it in the stores next to the Windows XP boxes and sell it for $20.
This will never happen and so Linux will be a business product and never a mainstream desktop OS!!!
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
is a long time to hold your breath..
This was already posted 5 years ago.
It has been suggested before that microsoft might have Gartner group in its pockets. Gartner group has a long history of Linux bashing so I don't see this report at credible. Show me the proof!
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
that by 2005, Linux would occupy about 1-2 % of all web servers, and would not even make it in the enterprise. This study can only mean that Linux has made it in the mainstream.
I completely agree, IMHO this study has nothing to do with the usability or adoption of Linux, but instead is about holding it back long enough for Longhorn to get a foothold for it's new release.
From what I recall, in 98 they released a report that Linux wasn't ready for the enterprise for at least 5 years as compaired to more "mature" opperating systems like SCO.
Linux 5 years away from being a major server player? It must be a pre-Google and pre-Yahoo poll. The only explanation I have is that this Gartner poll is from 1995 and took a while to get published.
Oh well, what the hell...
Tomorrow is always a day away.
Considering the criteria that Gartner used for this most recent piece of tripe, then Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server doesn't make the cut- moreso than Linux actually doesn't in their opinion.
I've long since blown these jokers off as being irrelevant- and I'm one of those people they purportedly cater to, the CXO crowd. Most of these supposed think-tanks are a complete waste of space, time, and resources- I honestly wish that they'd drop off the face of the Earth never to be replaced.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
"warns the biggest test will be whether it can demonstrate the necessary performance and security to function as a data centre server for mission-critical applications."
e mber_2005_web_server_survey.html
That statement has to be coming from the completely clueless.
I'd say that this happened 5 years AGO:
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/09/05/sept
Once that gets in full force, nothing but blessed OS/Applications are going to run anyway, so 5 years might as be 5000...
I really doubt any 'free' OS will be able to get blessing.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So, when will Windows be ready?
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
Just to be clear, those guys *do* accept who they are. And because of that, they can't be bothered with crazed Linux users. No one feels a need to support Linux. Some programs do (which is really nice of them) but the majority of the fan projects outright ignore Linux.
Also, the one fellow who was scared off from Linux was just a regular user on the forums. As a regular user, why would he want to deal with a percieved fanaticism that may be turned toward him at any point just for asking a simple question.
Take, for example, the fellow farther down this thread who upgraded his hard drive. Look at the response he got. Was it a, "Sorry you had trouble. Here's an article that might help?" No, it was a, "Idiot. It's on Google. Why can't you sort through three hundred metric tons of documentation and find it yourself? Here a link. I'm doing you a favor. Idiot."
Nice response, eh?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Huh? Did that article say that Linux needs to prove it is stable and worth in Data Center mission critical applications? Who is using anything else? I run 4 full racks of is mission critical, server for ecommerce, databases and applications servers and they are ALL Linux. Linux become mainstream? Huh? Are you on crack? Dude it is already mainstream in the server world and as far as clients are concenred, "Proving itself for data center stuff " Has nothing to do with clients adopting it. People will use it on their desktops when its easy enough for joe bob user to use without thinking.
Dude you must be an M$ lover or really out of touch.
If by 5 years you mean "30", or by desktop you mean "trash heap", then yes, Linux is ready for its place in the world.
I post at -1. Clearly I'm not a poster child for slashbot.
All you have to do to get your flash to work for 64 bit is download the flashplayer tarball, extract and copy "flashplayer.xpt" and "libflashplayer.so" to the Firefox plugin directory (as root of course).
It works on my SUSE 9.3 64Bit, both the SUSE "modified" version and the one downloaded of the Firefox site.
Mr. Universe: "They can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal."
I'm actually amazed you got modded up with that.
Software, in general, is complicated.
Even if you tell someone to "get XP Home" (Of which, I'd NEVER tell anyone to get- Home's got a bunch of crap turned on that actually destabilize the machine...) or to "get XP Professional", you still have to tell them to "get an Anti-Virus proram" (Which is best? Your guess is as good as any- and it's more off of personal preferences, cost, etc...) and to "get an Anti-Spyware program" (Again, which is best? And, it's the same story as the Anti-Virus stuff...). This doesn't even go into an Office Suite, IM, etc.
With a Linux distribution, there's pretty much all of that taken care of. And there's several different "go get the 'Home' version" of Linux to choose from- Mandriva, Ubuntu, Xandros, Linspire, and Knoppix come immediately to mind right out of the gate. For the slightly more advanced, Fedora Core or SuSE come to mind. And you don't need to buy a "server" version for someone if they need one- the same "home" version will work quite well for server use (Much moreso than Windows versions do...).
You're entitled to your opinions, of course, but they're merely that- opinions . The reality of things is a lot different from what you've espoused in your comments.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Check out Accuracy In Media:
http://aim.org/
NYT consistently misleads the public. That's actually a *serious* understatement.
If slashdot wasn't so overtly Left, it wouldn't be too bad an idea to suggest that the editors not post submissions linking to NYT. They're about as reliable a source of information as that former Iraqi information minister!
Linux is very well suited for VNC implementations, thin clients and all that. Where one service provider takes care of all the 'hard stuff' and users just do what their name implies: USE the desktop. I have seen some commercial tests for this already. Aimed at elderly people, or professionals who want it to Just Work[tm]. Users just rent a thin client, and get it all over the network. No more hardware trouble, no more update and security thingies. it Just Works. And it often proves to be cheaper then having to buy a new Dell ever two years because the latest MS stuff requires more memory, and space. Once such a philosophy gains users, it might well be a great push forward for OSS/linux on teh desktop.
Linux was mainstream that day in 1998 (or 99) I walked into CompUSA and bought the Linux version of Quake.
--fatboy
My company has over 1000 employees on Redhat 7.3
Linux users whine about driver support. Why won't the big hardware companies open their protocols for developers, or write their own linux drivers.
At the same time, they don't want to develop Linux into a desktop or business-worthy application. It's fine as it is, or as you said, there's the attitude of "let only the elite use it!" -- others are not worthy.
This is directly hypocritical. If linux gurus so L33T, figure out how to make the drivers yourself and stop griping, because the manufacturers couldn't give a crap about your L33T systems. Once people are really interested in migrating wholesale to linux, those manufacturers are going to notice. Which means that yeah, to get people to make hardware that appeals to you, there has to be a market. For there to be a market, you have to remove your head from your ass and look around. Everyone stands to benefit if Linux cleans up the user interface, gets some application integration going on the desktop.
As evil as big corps are, Apple has a very polished and well-integrated product going for it. Microshaft isn't great, but it's somewhat more cohesive than most linux desktop apps. Interoperability, and the ability to get stuff done without relearning an interface for every application. It doesn't stand up to Apple standards by any means, however.
Given the terrific ability to script everything behind-the-scenes on the command line, a good chunk of XML standardization for data, etc. *nix applications could create standards, share data, and have applications give "heads ups" to one another (cf Apple Events) about what's going on in the system. But they don't. It's nice for security, but computers are reflections of people and need to maintain a healthy communication and interdependence with one another. Complete isolation and paranoia is a swift death -- mind, body or soul -- for a human. As a human interface, a computer (in this instance, applications and application data) can't afford complete paranoia and isolation.
I don't know what's up with using Linux in a server environment, but I'm sure there are businesses loud enough about the problems with using a linux distro in the server room that someone can look into fixing them.
---- I'm out of your mind!
I'm all for good open source drivers. I would and have gladly paid more money and waited longer for them.
Linux hardware support is great compared to OS X hardware support. On either system, you can buy a machine on which every single piece of hardware is supported out of the box. However, if you upgrade your machine, you are FAR more likely to find drivers for graphics or other peripheral cards you plugin & probably as likely to find drivers for USB and other devices.
This space intentionally left blank.
When Siemens Electric were using Linux 0.98 machines as print and occasional file servers.
davecb@spamcop.net
I suggest you take 15 minutes out of your life (vs > 45 min for Win X) & do an Ubuntu installation. The only potential user hurdles are because it has to be installed- it it came on the machine there wouldn't be much difference between it & Windows. I say this because I've installed it for Joe non-technical user and they're fine with it.
This is the case now- not some nebulous prediction.
Uh. You have to have a userspace shim to do wpa, its not something thats going to be implemented in the kernel, per se.
Now, the integration of a standard WPA interface in kernel drivers is happening, at least. Next you'll see something like NetworkManager support WPA via wpa_supplicant and then you'll forget you even had these arguments.
If more vendors actually had support for Linux, you'd not have to use ndiswrapper, though. Intel sure as heck has been throwing enough support at Linux compared to Airgo (I'm guessing thats the belikin card you have). Having to use ndiswrapper just means you're buying hardware from companies that are not supporting open source, and thats definately not a Linux problem.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
Having worked in banks for many years, nearly every server has been Sun or sometimes M$ kit. In many industries, Linux has not proved itself to those that 'matter' - cautious, anxious middle managers.
Windows NT had not reached mainstream. You know, back before it demonstrated the necessary performance and security to function as a data centre server for mission-critical applications. [rolls eyes]
And remember Windows 3.x? Remember when it took it's huge leap forward in stability from crashing every 10 minutes to Windows 95 only crashing 3 or 4 times a day? Yup, those were the days.
Can you provide a link to this supposed discussion so we can all see for ourselves how it transpired?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
And How many times...
Is slashdot going to keep posting OSS/Linux "news" from frikken zdnet and frikken zdnet blogs...
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
This is before you even get to Linux distributions. And still before you get to the distribution, you've the C library to contend with. There are several for Linux, and this will determine what you can run and how it will perform. So, choosing a different C library essentially changes the whole picture.
Oh, and on top of that, you need to decide how generic/specific the kernel and C library are to be, with regards to hardware. Do you want something that'll run on any white box with the processor of your choice? Or do you want something that runs specifically on your machine, as it stands right there and then?
Then, there's your choice of init system. There are quite a number listed on Freshmeat and there are probably as many more again that aren't listed. You also don't need a classic init system, if you've something specific in mind and it won't change - you can write a program that starts up whatever you like.
Assuming a fairly standard init, to have a working Linux system, you need to be able to connect to it somehow. There's about a dozen getty-type packages out there, with different strengths and weaknesses. There are several login programs. For graphical logins, the number od xdm-like packages is unbelievable. I've lost track of the number of username/password systems, which may or may not use PAM or something similar.
So far, the number of combinations is astronomical. We've not got as far as a working system, all we've got is a skeleton that'll allow connections and trigger things.
My personal preference would be to have a meta-distribution that is compiled on a central system, where you pick the options from a pick-list and it builds the distribution from your choices.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
pretty easy for me on ubuntu. /usr/lib/win32 or somesuch (don't remember the exact directory, but it's documented in like a million places online.)
1) install mplayer and mplayer-plugin via synaptic
2) download the codecs file from the mplayer site and unzip into
it seems to me that most major distributions are afraid of redistributing the codecs files from the mplayer website for legal reasons, so no one packages them up. for most distros that means you have to download them yourself, or use unofficial packages. for ports based systems like gentoo and *BSD that allow you to download files from arbitrary places as part of package installation, it's not really an issue.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
404
damn
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
If you want to know what is keeping linux off the desktop, I'll tell you. Setup.exe. That's it. That's all linux needs and Microsoft will be no more. You see, I (and a lot of other people) are used to double clicking on one file, having it do it's thing, maybe ask us a few questions, and that's it. The program runs just like it's supposed to whether it's a corporate mail server or the latest FPS. With linux (even using RPM) the myriad levels of dependencies after dependencies required usually cause me to saw screw it, I'll find a Windows version. When I do get a program to work on Linux and the author requests a donation, my donation is inversely proportional to the amount of effort it took to install. I figure that I have as much work in some programs as the author so why should I pay?
Maybe what we need is for someone to do for/to Linux what Firefox did for/to Mozilla - basically make a totally stripped, clean, no-nonsense distro that hides a lot of the stuff that pros like but confuses the hell out of non-tech types. This isn't to say that you couldn't do some cool stuff with the distro if you wanted, but Linux still requires way too much tweaking - which gets REAL old when you just want the OS to be an enabler for applications. The open-source community can learn a lot from Firefox - why/how it managed to break into the mainstream while Mozilla was primarily relegated to the tech community for years .
Bob
If you mean the WCNews discussion, no. It was private communication that came up while we were discussing portability.
If you mean the hard drive thread, go here.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Sigh. Another day, another dollar and, surprise surprise, yet another Gartner report. Funny how Gartner's conclusions always side with the big boys. I'm sure it can't be anthing to do with where their fees come from.
Linux is as ready for the desktop as you want it to be. Many organizations run thousands of near-identical desktops that are used for little more than writing letters and email. Linux is very ready for those. It's much, much harder for Joe User at home because of the sheer variety involved - zillions of hardware combinations, some proprietory gizmos plugged in by usb, the kids need Windows for this and that, etc.
So there's more than one type of mainstream here. And even if it isn't Gartner's mainstream the other, corporate mainstream is still a huge market.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
Here's the way I would take Gartners comments. Yes: by waiting 5 years you will reduce risk and pain of transition. You'll also be late. If on the other hand you don't want to be late and transition now- you'd be making a reasonable decision. For example- you can spend the next 5 years using unpeer-reviewed O/S / Distro / Kernel / util suite "X" or you can migrate to something more linuxish or BSHish now. What would be the value? Depending on what flavor you chose: performance, stability, cost. Here's an example - I recently replaced a commercial OS with a flavor of linux and a task that was taking 40 hrs now takes 12 hours. I increased speed, held stability constant, support constant and reduced cost. ... be my guest.
If some of you want to wait 5 years for this because Gartner says so
"Jam Yesterday, Jam Tomorrow, but never Jam Today".
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Last year, Linux on the Desktop was supposed to be a year away. Now it's five years away? How far away will it be 4 years from now? 15?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I'll be generous and say Gartner is only five years away from getting a clue.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Windows is still five years away from being a reliable and safe platform.
We expect this to be the case for at least the next ten years.
... than proprietary.... is what this is saying.
Figuring this is simple since Linux began development about 10 years behind MS OS...
With this math, in 20 years there won't be much closed source...
You want to be a LUnix zealot? Well, I guess if you really like the Commodore64 that much, you'd pretty much have to be in for zealotry.
You sure have a strange way of defining "mainstream".
I would think that, from you comment, you believe "mainstream" to mean "home user".
What is mainstream? You car? TV? Bank server? Internet email server? Internet web server?
And where does Solaris, AIX and HPUX fit?
As to being an "alternative to Windows"; why would you think that? Do you WANT a linux-based Operating Environment to be an alternative to Windows? And why?
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Who takes gartner fucking seriously anymore? I haven't taken tehm seriously since 1998, when they tried to get me to purchase some 'enterprise messaging guide' and they were pushing Exchange to replace a 193,000 seat Lotus Notes install. I wish I knew where to begin, but they have to be one of the most clueless consultards I've ever met. It is patently obvious to anyone who reads their 'recommendations' that whoever is paying their fee this week will be the 'new internet buzzword platform de jour.' This is so far from being newsworthy as to be almost a bad troll. Linux is here, and it accomplishes REAL WORK in the REAL WORLD. Really.
Only the most clueless PHBs pay attention to Gartner, the biggest whores in the IT business.
I had forgotten how much cooler teenagers look when they are smoking. Oh, wait
Did you know that nuclear fusion is only 20 years away?
Actually, it's only ~8 minutes away (as the photon flies).
-- The Genesis project? What's that?
I expect that in 10 years or so, these computer thingies will be used by regular everyday people. And powdered wigs will no longer be considered high style.
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
The guy was anonymous, so he's probably not even reading the responses. He also said this happened years ago, so telling him how to do it isnt't going to help him anyway, but the first response DID give exactly the information needed. No one called him an idiot, though it was one of the most trivial things to do in Linux, which I worked out the first time I installed RedHat 6. And finally, this is Slashdot, not a Linux newsgroup or mailing list.
How many years until Windows "can demonstrate the necessary performance and security to function as a data centre server for mission-critical applications"?
* Mr. Coward takes a look at the nearby data centre rack hosting mission-crticial applications and notes the marked lack of Windows *
Perhaps you are right! I wonder how many /. readers would agree with your suggestion that it is ready for the general user and that with the addition of Open Office is ready for the desktop?
Therefore, try not to get to worked up about this. In the end, whether Linux makes it or not depends on many factors, few of which have anything to do with how Gartner thinks of it.
Can anyone remember a positive story from Gartner about OSX before it came out? Could anyone have imagined based on Gartner's initial reactions that OSX would be as big a force as it is now? Could anyone have imagined that Firefox would be as big as it is now, based solely on Gartner's views.
Gartner after all, is made for big industry, which is wary of big changes and new fads. To big industry, anything new is suspect, until it's been around long enough and has enough users, and then suddently, out of the blue, it becomes the "new and hot" item.
I can tell you that our storage devices (which don't run Linux) are used by customers to serve Linux servers running mission critical apps like Oracle, SAP, SAS, CAD. Not to mention that virtually every animated film and every digital special effect today is done from clusters (grids) of Linux compute services ... you might have heard of
Lord of Rings, Star Wars 3, The Incredibles, etc. Not to mention to mention that
virtually all seismic analysis (i.e. hunting
for crude oil deposits) is done from
Linux grids.
This is happening despite the warts in Linux. It is all about cost. Linux is good enough, and more than cheap enough. Linux is disruptive.
And I'm not even a fan of Linux; far from it. I'd prefer it if opensolaris were driving the low cost, disruptive compute space since there'd be fewer interoperability bugs for me to dead with, but I'm not going to get my wish. My customers don't care if Linux causes me pain; they'll find another storage vendor if I don't deal with it.
This is actually pointless. Linux, at the server level, is already in data centers. It certainly can beat Windoze in uptime and security. It's already doing mission critical jobs. Will it be more robust in 5 years? Sure. Is it still something to be avoided in the data center because its not secure? No. Too many people are using and thankfully DESPITE Gartner.
Aren't Gartner Group the ones who did a study that claims MS is cheaper to run than Linux? How can they make such a comparison if Linux is not mainstream? Please stop paying attention to Gartner Group. They have zero credibility.
The number one problem I have with linux is program installation. I use Ubuntu and sure there are lots and lots of programs in the Syanptic program manager, but if you want one that isn't then the trouble starts.
I think the problem is that once you get to be enough of a Windows nerd to try Linux you are used to searching out programs that are not very common. So when you try to find LInux equivelents (and often they are the same program since they are often open source) if it ain't in Synaptic then you have to know the commands to install it, find the correct pacakges or know how to compile the program.
As long as this is still the case, then Linux won't be ready for prime time. I've got it installed as the primary OS in a multiboot system but 90% of the time I end up booting into windows because I can't get program x to install, or I don't feel like hunting down the proper package or whatever.
Make an installer that you can just double click on for linux and then you will ready for the mainstream.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Did pilot Oracle on Linux project for large midwestern city, been busy building enterprise class systems for county governments and cities since. The first systems are still cranking along, doing revenue and licensing and vehicle tracknig and such. So I think Gartner is a little behind the times, what with IBM and HP selling big robust hardware/software supported SMP servers for a couple flavors of GNU/Linux
I've been running FC3 (and now 4) since January on my home PC. It does almost everything I want right out of the box. Media apps are still a problem. On FC3, I ripped a couple CDs to FLAC only to find the installed player didn't do FLAC. Not sure if this carried over to FC4. Also, you can't play DVDs out of the box - gotta "yum install" libdvdcss or some such. Oh, but I don't think you can just type the command, you have to configure yum to use the correct repository first. I recently upgraded my kernel and now the machine hangs when I insert a DVD. Media apps are just not the same as other OSes. My USB flash stick auto-mounts if it's plugged in at startup, but not if it's plugged in later. When I setup my printer, one of the dialogs was some old Motif thing and I completely missed one of the pull-down menus for some time because of this (It was obvious when I figured it out - I flashed back to 1995).
These are all minor things that can be fixed relatively easily by the right people. I'm not flaming, I really like my FC4 box. It's just not as easy as Windows 98 yet. OTOH, as FC gets better with each release I feel windows gets worse over time - I can hardly function with XP. My guess is that FC5 will be almost perfect for most people, but still rough in a few spots.
I don't want to be so harsh, but it is time that you grew up and faced reality. BSD is going nowhere. Deal with it.
Unfortunately, what you're suggesting doing is taking away everything that many Linux users love about Linux. In short, you're talking about:
:)
;-/ Except maybe base it off FreeBSD and sell it. :)
- Making things easier (no fun, no elitism!)
- Making Linux more common (losing the 'status' of using Linux)
- Becoming more like Microsoft, or a commercial software package in general (becoming instead of fighting the establishment)
- Removing the need for package management (which many people feel is the coolest over-engineered solution to a problem ever created)
In other words, you're making Linux everything the Linux community stands against. You're making software for people who need to get work done, not software for people trying to make a statement. Consider trying to sell a fuel-efficient hybrid car to a man in a mid-life crisis who's looking for something to bring in the chicks or give his friends the impression he drives into the mountains regularly. Your wise words of efficiency and cost savings will be lost on this man.
As a similar situation, when Japanese animation started becoming popular, the existing fanbase became appalled at the thought of 'dubbing' anime into English. Many of them thought it would never work. If it had been up to that community, it would have been just fine that most people never experience anime, even great classics like Miyazaki's films, because they felt most people couldn't even appreciate them, especially in "Americanized" (aka dubbed) form. So is their cause to promote Japanese animation, or to create a small, tight-knit community of people that is unique and non-mainstream? I'd say more the latter than the former. Who DID promote anime to the masses? Companies, who saw money to be made from doing so.
Your ideas are great. You're really on the right track about what Linux needs to expand the market for Linux software, but I think you're going to need to look to non-traditional sources for help. I've been following your progress, but I'm not sure what to suggest as:
- most Linux users who'd support your ideas are probably already employed and have "bread and butter" jobs limiting their ability to contribute
- commercial Linux distros like selling subscription services, so removing the need for a package manager is probably going to turn them off to this idea
- Venture Capitalists are going to ask how you'll make money from this, but the idea is to make Linux so easy that it doesn't really need extra support, and since it's Linux, most people can just burn CDs for each other without having to pay for anything
So boiling everything down, the question becomes - outside of a genuine desire to improve Linux and give alternatives to Microsoft, who can you find who'd be willing to put resources into the project, and how can you motivate them to do so?
After I thought about this quite a bit, I came to the conclusion that Linux on the desktop was going straight for the enterprise, where vendors can charge big companies huge subscription fees just to ensure their Linux keeps working. Home users are strapped for cash and won't be seen by companies as a large growth market, so those users'll keep their Windows box or move to Mac next time they buy a computer. Linux for the average user will remain, as it has been, a hobbyist OS, and I'm not sure that even if you developed these great tools that such hobbyists would adopt them.
So in short, I think it's a great idea, but I'm not sure how you can make it real.
You bet.
Have you tried recent KDEs?
I use only KDE programs for at least one year and a half (kubuntu). Apt/kynaptic provides my apps a consistent API for installation/deinstallation, and One Widget Kit Rules All (Qt). It has been a long time since I used a "foreign widget kit" application -- unless you count mozilla, which is perfectly integrated with my desktop (thanks to qt-gtk gtk2 theme).
And I am sure many GNOME-using folks will describe experiences like mine.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
that number seems to fit with the estimates giving M$ less than 10 years of dominance in market...
Power to the Penguin!
(NOT A FLAMEBAIT)
my Kubuntu experience is not really similar:
I put Hoary in the drive, installed away.
Kynaptic had a (graphical) way for me to install universe, multiverse, and backports -- explained in the wiki.
libdvdcss was pulled from the net and installed.
yeah, dvd playback is kind of "jerky" (mplayer gives "my machine is sooo slow messages", and I don't know if it's the ProSavage video fault or not)... audio playing, in any format, is flawless to me.
My dataCD/dataDVD/USB/compact flash/etc storages work flawlessly -- differently from Windows, I oughta mount/dismount them, but mounting is automatic when I double-click in the media:/ konqui, and umounting is there in the context menu for the media.
Printer setup were all-graphic-KDE-styled.
So, I have to say it's -- to me -- exactly as easy as my work win98 machine. Even easier -- my office's win98 machine likes some foreign drivers that I have to go to the Net and fetch before I reinstall it -- which I do once or twice a year.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I've tried using Ubuntu, and I must say that even the easy-to-install variety of Linux distros is not without a serious learning curve. I absolutely do not understand Linux to the point where I feel comfortable relying on it.
Let's see, with Ubuntu, I was unable to figure out how to install NVIDIA drivers, just as I was unable to get unicode support in any of the distros that I tried. Linux is far more than 5 years away from being mainstream.
linux is not unusual anymore, it can be found anywhere you look and what is more, everybody knows the 'linux' word, ofcourse that doesn't mean they want to use it.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I guess it is 5 years away... Linux has been mainstream in our company and industry for about 5 years now.
I think the misconception is that linux is not ready for joe sixpack. Actually, I think most people in the business sector are not looking at that. They are discussing when it will be a viable and stable replacement for SUN, HP-UX, AIX, and other carrier-grade UNIX systems that run the infrastructure of the banking, healthcare, utilities industries. The fact that it may not be ready for my [ insert usb gaming/mp3 device ] is not at issue.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
apt-get install mplayer
apt-get install win32
apt-get install mplayerplug-in
apt-get install realplay
Simplest way to get all multimedia in Ubuntu is to install the add-on cd.
CNN, Yahoo, BBC, NPR all work just fine.
The Linux marketshare as far as servers go has been growing faster then any other OS. Same goes for desktops.
There are several distros that are setup almost like windows, for example: Xandros, Linspire. Other easy distros to install and use include MEPIS, Mandriva, SuSE, PCLinuxOS. Give someone that has never ran a PC a Linux machine and a windows system, they will find the Linux system easier to use.
Linux is the technology of the future. Resistance is futile.
That's funny, what exactly has Linux/Unix and Apache been doing the past few, I dunno..... forever? I don't remember the web being dominated with IIS.
LMAO, You've got to be kidding.
I was referring to the WCNews discussion. But since you've stated it is private, and we cannot all view it, your claims may very well be baseless. How are we, as the Linux community, supposed to improve our ability to help new users if we cannot see the posts describing their problems with the help they are currently receiving? Although in this case it may very well be a situation where the user got the help he or she needed, but perhaps encountered some strife because he or she was less than polite.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
If you really want people to use Linux, here's a few starting points,
... that speaks volumes about Linux. I've tried to adopt Linux about 5 times now ... starting in 1993 - and last trying in 2004.
... you've put so much effort into the OS ... and the fundamental problems, ... "sorry, X-Windows must be installed in path Y").
1. Get Coca-Cola or Nike to advertise it
2. Change the name to "Windows"
3. Get Redmond's Uncle Bill to release it
4. Get people to think outside the box for the first time in 500,000 years
5. Stop producing 5 equivalents to each other that are all incompatible [ie. standardise]
6. Document what/how/where/why in simple plain english that anyone can follow.
Last time I tried to use Linux, I could not get my sound card to work, nor my video card driver. As a user of computers for around 20 years
I'm sorry to the Linux community
- the chasm between KDE and Gnome
- installer anyone [RPM is the absolute PITS... anyone heard of circular references?!?!?]
- incompatible configuration tools [KDE v/s Gnome]
- inconsistent ways to set up X-Windows (eg. when installing my video card
Linux's freedom of choice "to develop what you want, how you want" kills Linux for the average joe.
Then again, thank goodness for Knoppix/Ubuntu! The only distros I know of that focus on ease of use. Then again, with 50 different choices, a fragmented community and no documentation, how would I know any better?!?!?
AC
Trying to do her a solid and not push her too hard, I set her up with windows XP again, replaced all of the commercial applications with OSS which have packages available for *nix. This way if she buggered out about something, I could always put her back on whatever commercial windows app she needed, and without hassle. If it all works out though, I could possibly move her to Unix later, knowing she could keep the same apps.
So far it has been several months, and she has given me mixed feedback, but mostly positive. The other day she even asked me when I was going to install Unix on her laptop. I was shocked, and was like.. for real? She said, yeah as long as I can use these same programs and you can show me how to rewind DVDs. She added, "I just want to use what doesn't suck, and I know all that stuff about Microsoft cheating people and stealing your stuff." I about fell out of my chair laughing (I swear, I did not brainwash her). Anyway, seriously about Unix being ready for the desktop? I say the bigger question is wether or not manufacturers are willing to stop with the dirty dealing and give customers a choice, and by choice I mean more than just a Linux option hidden on an optional parts list. I mean get those demo systems in the stores in plain sight. It won't happen though, and everyone knows dang well the reasons why.
That you're about 10 seconds away from getting a big cock in your ass? No, really! Whorevalds is right behind you, yielding his tiny little prick, cackling with glee. Linsux may be 5 years from "mainstream" (undoubtedly, this will be 2-3% of the desktop market, according to the average faggot monkey zealot), but today it plain sucks cock, just like you and that little faggot zealot monkey Whorevalds. Eat a dick, OSS, it's all you're good for. And as far as the faggot zealot monkeys go, well, you know you're worthless air consumption devices =]
People will naturally resist change.
One solution I really liked was linking Linux with a new PC. You want a fast LCD convert to Linux. This forced user buy in. Very clever.
Didnt they say this 5 years ago?
Am I the only one who likes GNOME/Ubuntu more than XP? Am I the only one who finds using XP irritating because it lacks a whole range of usability features such as virtual desktops, actual attractiveness, package management, a control panel that requires less than a dozen clicks to do anything, text file and PDF icons that indicate their content, a way to mount ISOs without hacks like Alcohol and useful, configurable panels? Linux is still behind Windows in some areas, but in usability it is in many ways ahead, so I have to look at comments like these with incredularity.
The main pitfalls of Ubuntu are oversights in out-of-the-box functionality, which, I admit, are oversights nonetheless. For example, there has been an mplayer plugin for Mozilla around for ages that does precisely what you describe, but it wasn't included. For Real, there's RealPlayer and its plugin; you have to get it from the universe repository. Recently, a Totem plugin for Firefox and Epiphany was released; I expect it will be bundled with Breezy, but at the moment you have to install it with Ubuntu Backports and a strategically placed symlink. Others, such as the unfortunate lack of a clipboard daemon in Hoary and the default of spatial mode for Nautilus, can also be easily fixed, but shouldn't really require fixing to begin with.
Yet these problems are both more repairable and less significant than XP's pervasive poverty of usability. I would much rather use GNOME or OS X than Windows; your comment that Ubuntu is "not XP" is either a compliment or really baffling criticism. Thank God it's not XP!
According to many, Linux is not "ready for the desktop" till it can download Window's EXEs from a Window's site and install them in a Window's fashion. The game is rigged, Linux can never win. So why play?
Open Source Sushi
I am sorry but it doesn't take a bright person to realize this is a futurist point of view.
.5 seconds for a person of reasonable intellegence to come to the same conclusion, it is not insightful.
Seeing as we don't have flying cars, lack a cure for the common cold, and are waiting for an AIDS vaccine , most people could figure out the same view. Not that it isn't nice for a first post but seriously. Also, is it really neccessary to link to your own blog multiple times.
Moderators: Just because you agree with something does not make it insightful or informative. If it only takes
Ubuntu?
Actually, despite being a moderator on the Ubuntu Forum I would say that Linspire is closer to what a home user wants. They can buy it preinstalled on a computer from Wal-Mart. And it has many things like codecs and such out of the box that Ubuntu won't have (because one of the goals of Ubuntu is to be a libre OS).
I'm not saying that new users shouldn't use Ubuntu, but in those cases I recommend that you- the nerd- set it up for them.
Open Source Sushi
Well, now that I have it running - I like it.
The reason why my mediaplayer didn't work was a sound issue. I also couldn't figure out why RealPlayer wouldn't spawn.
I figured it was related to my Microsoft Digital Sound System 80 USB Sound system. It appears that was it. Although the sound system worked fine under fedora, it didn't here. But after I found driver support for it, and got it running, I had this problem:
http://ubuntuguide.org/#configuresoundproperly
Luckily, the technique there fixed it.
My NVIDIA card did not work correctly, and running the shell script from init level 3, and getting it configured - and then STILL not having work because I didn't have a base scan rate in xorg.conf to match my Sylvania monitor so I had to make one, which took my about 4 hours to figure out why it wouldn't go past 800x600, and now - after all of this - finally haviong WMV support for Mozilla and all the tools working like Eclipse that I want to code with... now... ok, it works pretty good and I like it. It does some wasteful things I had to tweak to get turned off, like run cupsd for printing and syslogd. Xorg sits memory resident at about 45M, and javaw runs at a whopping 80. Compare that to XP's java runtime and explorer.exe footprint. And, now that I have native Nvidia drivers loaded and have the desktop with virtualization (something the XP powertools will give you, btw) it runs good - but it's a bit slow on refresh. I optimized Mozilla but clicking through tabs has a noticeable laggy nature.
Still, I'm glad to be free of Microsoft. I can use GNUCash now to manage money, and a host of other tools I am much happier to work with, not the lease of which is the fact I have a bash shell, gcc and g++ on my desktop machine.
But let's not pretend this is fun, or that XP lacks package management (.msi) or that I am completely off base.
Having said all that, I am happy here and am leaving my home server on Ubuntu. Your bafflement baffles me.
Oh, I think you're wrong on Valerie Plame as well. Anyhow...
Whoops. One mistake in my last post.
/etx/X11/xorg.conf and fixed my scan rate problem to get 1600x1200 AFTER I had to do this:1 1/ubuntu-and-nvidia-geforce-6600
I modified
http://www.uberdose.com/journal/archives/2004/12/
I'm thinking most average users would have given up a LONG time ago and never got it working. Luckily, the great oracle of Google pulled me through.
First Post!!!! Lol2 L0L2.
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ah crap.
Of course its a Linux problem. Its not the hardware manufacturers duty to support Linux, its the Linux developer's duty to support all the hardware out there. Sound unreasonable? Of course it is. But no more unreasonable than expecting a movement to spring up around the GPL which it has.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
1: library developers who care more about infestimal performance improvements than compatibility. With many libraries (including big names like gtk) if you build on a system with a newer version you can't run on a system with an older version even if the app doesn't use any new features. (yes there are workarounds but they can be tricky to apply and are not well known)
2: nothing to really match VB and (especially) delphi for easy gui development. kylix is dead and hard to make run on recent linux, lazarus isn't really mature yet.
3: a very irregular learning curve, things are deceptively easy at first and total newbies may even find some linux desktops easier than windows but for experianced windows users coming over to linux there is a huge learning curve to get the kind of control they had in windows.
4: hardware support, some types of hardware are really well supported, others aren't. fixedwire nics drive controllers and 2D display always tend to work out of the box. Sound often does (though i have one system with intel onboard sound that crashes the sound subsystem if i try and play anything mono!) but other types (modems wlan adsl modems 3d graphics) can be a lot harder to make work.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The article cites older examples of where Linux is currently being used in the business world. It's originally information probably came from IBM or other commertial Linux vendors (this is the feel of the article, and presumably the report).
Linux is going to make the 'mainstream' in a whole lot of other areas that are going to become very important to big business, just at data processing, email and web has become. It that it is already starting to happen, and the desktop and server are part of it.
The beauty of linux is that all of previous work, but vendors and businesses isn't lost in the process. What's on the Mainframe today can be used on the desktop of the future.
Areas to look out for:
- Telephony - VoIP and associated call handling and voicemail messaging.
- Distributed data handling and processing - enhancing the bittorrent model to enable easy persistant distributed network storage (google does this).
Others?
Congratulations you have managed to address every niche except the one the parent post addressed.
Keep up the good work. I'm sure with people like you, Linux will be mainstream in no time.
*snicker* Interesting moderation. Looks like someone out there either really loves C64 Lunix, or just doesn't like you... or both.
Linux is a great Server OS, but it has a ways to go until it will be in as many homes as Windows is now.
My reply and my bafflement were not directed specifically at you. To me, your post represented an irritating trend among Slashdot Windows users dabbling in GNOME: that of their declaring, "its not tehj w indow". I remember someone wrote in a story, for example, that GNOME 2.12 was looking good but that it was still "miles behind Windows". There's only so long I can be astonished by a pattern of idiocy before I pick someone I think symbolizes it and attack them. You were that someone, so consider my annoyance accumulated over time by many comments rather than created all at once by yours.
XP lacks package management (.msi)
I thought you might point this out, but it really only validates my complaint: XP is behind Linux. If you honestly believe that Windows' package management compares in any mildly favourable way to
I optimized Mozilla but clicking through tabs has a noticeable laggy nature.
Very true. This is a Firefox problem, and if you check the 1.5 beta you'll find it's been fixed somewhat. If it annoys you too much, you should try Epiphany, which is much, much faster, but lacks some Firefox features.
Look, I'm not blind to Linux's faults. Really. They are plentiful. But Windows is just awful, and having switched from it precisely because I find it inferior, I have trouble accepting reflexive, dismissive comments of its superiority. The main thing I want to defend here is GNOME, which, while itself not perfect by any means, is better designed than anything else out there save Mac OS.
What's that? Is it something to do with Subversion?
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
You're comparing apples & oranges.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Packaging a distro is just a tiny fraction of the total work it takes to make a compelling product for the masses. Perfecting the installer so that it handles oddball hardware gracefully is hard.
Having a 24/7 staff answering tons of naive questions requires manpower. To be compelling to the masses, especially when your product is not a mainstream commodity like your neighbour's, you need an easy-peasy support infrastructure: People answering phones, people on IRC, IM, news, whatnot.
Community support alone will not cut it. Truth be told, the Joe Sixpacks will annoy the hell out of the community support forums. Joe Sixpacks need a helpdesk. They expect a helpdesk. Geeks don't want to do helpdesk work.
If you are pushing a product for the masses, you don't want geeks manning your helpdesks. You want smooth, reasonably intelligent people with an all-round skillset, with a nice voice and an intelligible accent. These people will be answering the same questions most of the time, so they don't have to be techs. They just have to be very good at doing queries in the knowledge base (you'll have to maintain a kick-ass knowledge base) and passing on the few genuinely hard problems to the techs.
You must also communicate with hardware manufacturers and independent software vendors, because there will be interoperability problems (not necessarily you fault, but still your problem), and your l33t inhouse haX0rs will not be able to solve them all by themselves. This can be a major time sink.
Finally you will need a hell of a marketing department, and some managers to herd the different departments (support, engineering, marketing, hr, accounting, legal, whatnot) in the same direction.
Am I the only one who likes GNOME/Ubuntu more than XP?
No, you're not.
So who funded this study? -- Debian GNU/Linux http://www.debian.org/
Remember these are the same people that said Linux would never be adopted as a mainstream OS.
Bah!
Wait for next year. GNOME 2.14 will certainly contain Totem with it's plugin for Mozilla/Firefox/Ephihany, and by that, you could install plugin drivers for GStreamer to watch Quicktime/WMA. And by that time I guess all you will have to do is just click - enter your password - accept to install required packages (I don't know how far is Ubuntu another installer (not Synaptic), but it is very promising).
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
For you newbies out there, there are a few versions of linux called redmond, and mepis. GOOD FOR NEWBIES.... As for anyone else who has been active in the linux community, use the distro of your choice. Ive used linux repeatedly in an enterprise production environment successfully. Squid proxy server, Apache web server, UltraMonkey load balancing. I use these as a staple in my infrastructuring designs. With tools like webmin, remote linux administration becomes simple. Most kids nowadays can speak general linux lingo. Im personally waiting for "Bills Bloated OS" to DIE. Viva La Revolution
'Nuff said, back to work^Hd.
Actually, I think you'll find that the mplayer plugin for Mozilla/Firefox is quite capable of playing both WMV and Quicktime. Although I've only used it in Gentoo I'm sure it can be no more difficult to set up in Ubuntu, if not less so.