Desktop Linux Survey Results Published

An anonymous reader writes "The Open Source Development Labs has published preliminary results from its desktop Linux survey, which had 3,300 responses. The month-long online survey focused on determining the key issues driving Linux on the desktop, as well as the major barriers to Linux desktop adoption. 'What was most surprising to us was probably the top two reasons given for deploying Linux on the desktop,' OSDL's Principal Analyst Dave Rosenberg said. 'It's not TCO (total cost of ownership), or security, or lack of license fees. It was 'employees requesting Linux (user demand)' and because 'my competitors have successfully deployed Linux,' he added."

Comments

Well, there you have it.

[Atario]

Not for stability, or security, or pricing, or modifiability, or all the great things that come to us from Unixland.

It's because we're all so cool.

Who could have guessed it?

Re:Well, there you have it.

[Siguy]

Geek Chic should not be underestimated. I've known quite a few people (including myself) who have run linux on a desktop with no real reason to do so other than the "cool" factor. The problem is, once you get it running and get set up you kind of realize that it is just a computer operating system and not something inherently cool like a tiger or the fonz.
"Oh wow, I'm running Firefox. On linux! [fifteen seconds pass] Hmmm, maybe I should go download BeOS..."

Re:Well, there you have it.

[Steeltoe]

Oh Give me a break! Those powers are easily twarted by the olufant, and everybody knows it.
I'd draw an olufant over the figer any day!

Re:Well, there you have it.

[pc_abuser_ohio]

That would include me. All of my customers have 'doze with a few macs but after I started toying around with linux a few years ago I got hooked on it. Linux on the desktop has improved dramatically since the days of horrible fonts and dependancy nightmares and as much as I'd like to see it succeed on the desktop, I'd hate to see it turn into a bloated "all things to all people" OS like windows. On the flip side, an increase in popularity would drive more HW/SW vendors to develop stuff for *nix.

Re:Well, there you have it.

[bastiaannaber]

I have a friend who installs a new OS every other week because he gets 'bored' with the one he has. What a waste of time!

Re:Well, there you have it.

[khakipuce]

I just re-read this and felt I better put in a disclamer for those of you who think I am comparing Win 95 to Linux - I AM NOT, also for those of you who use Linux everyday and think I am knocking it - I AM NOT (I use it most days too) - see if you can figure out what I am driving at by reading the whole comment.

Back in the early 90's I worked for a company that was a late adopter of PC technology. At the time they had a mixture of DOS and OS/2 with Wordperfect and Lotus 123 . Email and most apps were on Minis and Mainframes. The assets were old and the users were SCREAMING for Windows/Office. Eventually (1996!) the company began a programme of upgrading the desktops with Windows 95 machines - which was what the users wanted.

Only the users found that Office on Win95 worked Ok at home where they used it for an hour or so but use it for eight hours editing multiple documents and it failed due to memory leaks. Necessarily, the desktop was reasonably well locked down so they could do all the stuff they wanted (i.e. play games and install any application they wanted).So after week or two the users were as unhappy with the "new" Windows 95 as they had been with the old DOS and OS/2 arrangement.

And I can't help but suspect that the same will happen with Linux, it may be cool at home and it may be cool to talk about it when you don't use it anger, but when you find that it hasn't magically transformed your crap job into a world of fun and entertainment, that will be Linux's fault, not becasue you have a crap job.

Re:Well, there you have it.

[coolGuyZak]

The problem is, once you get it running and get set up you kind of realize that it is just a computer operating system and not something inherently cool like a tiger or the fonz.

That's what Linux from Scratch is all about. In a land where linux is so easy to install, the only way to maintain geekhood is to roll your own. ;)

Note: No, I don't use LFS. You think I'm crazy?!? ;)

Re:Well, there you have it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux: "'Eyyy!"

Re:Well, there you have it.

[marcosdumay]

Differently from Windows, a Linux desktop works as well during an hour as during an entire mounth. So, they won't have this problem.

I'd assume the oposite, people at home have a bad time configuring their desktops to fit the usage, and don't have nice games to play. Those problems go away when you have to use the computer to work and there is a support team.

Re:Well, there you have it.

[Fordiman]

Hey, I did something like that.

Once I got over the cool factor, it was time to learn a bit, and figure out which distro was best for me. It ended up being Knoppix (Debian power with easy installation - don't even try to claim Ubuntu has easy installation. It's scripts are broken for my ancient machine.)

Re:Well, there you have it.

[rmstar]

Not for stability, or security, or pricing, or modifiability, or all the great things that come to us from Unixland.

It's because we're all so cool.

Of course, pal!

OTOH, how cool can an expensive, virus-infected, spyware-laden memory hog fabricated by a bureaucratic and evil corporation be? Perhaps the users are not at all being superficial.

Re:Well, there you have it.

[Master of Transhuman]

You mean he just keeps re-installing each version of Windows in sequence (95 to 98 to 2000 to XP to Server) over and over?

How else could he get bored - with a thousand or more variations of Linux?

Re:Well, there you have it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd hate to see it turn into a bloated "all things to all people" OS like windows

I hate to break it to you but that happened quite a while back. Even the minimal install of most major distros these days is bigger than the full install of most distros six years ago. Linux has gotten bloated. It seems like many big distros throw in everything including the kitchen sink and end up with these multiple CD sized installs. Things have come full circle. Windows is now less bloated than the average Linux distro.

I can install WinXP SP2, install all the apps that I need and then create an image of it and that image is usually arount 900MB. I can compress it and fit it on a single 700MB CDR. I have been able to do the same thing with Linux but it is a lot more difficult.

That being said I still want a computer that boots QNX from ROM and has all the apps stored in EEPROM. Oh and also a RAMdrive. All things considered Linux and Windows are both way more bloated than they should be at this stage in the game.

Re:Well, there you have it.

[msuarezalvarez]

Windows is now less bloated than the average Linux distro.

Except, of course, that with a Windows install you can... hmmm... you can... there's gotta be something... ah, yes: you can use wordpad and play solitaire. Yes. But, yes, you are right.

Re:Well, there you have it.

[fitten]

Don't forget the bloat in applications as well. Is OpenOffice 2.0 named that because of the relative size of the tarball compared to 1.2 or because of the relative startup time for the application compared to 1.2? ;) The average Linux disto has used a lot more than the average Windows with equivalent software (Office suite and development suite) for some time for me. Heck, my Windows box with those plus WoW is smaller than this Linux box with just the distribution stuff.

Re:Well, there you have it.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Even the minimal install of most major distros these days is bigger than the full install of most distros six years ago"

Do you think so? Then why my current Debian Sarge is about 350MB, including firewall, web and mail servers?

Re:Well, there you have it.

[sp0rk173]

Linux won't turn into that, because linux is not an operating system. There will be distributions that will turn into that, like Fedora, SuSE and Mandrake already have, but since you can build a kernel yourself and compile an entire system from the ground up...again...yourself, it will not turn into huge bloatware from an OS standpoint.

Re:Well, there you have it.

[AstroDrabb]

Is OpenOffice 2.0 named that because of the relative size of the tarball compared to 1.2 or because of the relative startup time for the application compared to 1.2?

OO.org 2 is has a very fast startup time for me. I have a FULL OO.org 2 install on XP SP2 and the OO.org 2 directory is only 201 MB. I also have a full MS Office 2003 install. Talk about bloat. A few hundred megs more than OO.org 2.

The average Linux disto has used a lot more than the average Windows with equivalent software (Office suite and development suite) for some time for me

Probably because you have tons of unneeded development libraries and docs installed. I stopped using Fedora Core because how big the base install is. I now use Ubuntu and only install what I need and the whole distro comes on just one CD. As far as MS development tools go, what are you using? Because I have MS Visual Studio .Net 2003 Enterprise and it is pretty big:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003
Size: 0.98 GB (1,053,724,672 bytes)
Contains: 17,984 files 3,248 folders

C:\Program Files\MSDN
Size: 1.68 GB (1,810,624,512 bytes)
Contains: 1,834 files 2 folders

Just these two folders are bigger than my entire Linux install.

Re:Well, there you have it.

[pc_abuser_ohio]

While that may be true most people that want to experiment with linux as a desktop OS will choose a default install. The default installs seem to be getting bigger and bigger and as much as I like the latest KDE. I'll stick to a stripped down gnome. And technically no, linux is not an OS but culturally speaking, it is. When most people hear "Linux", they think of a complete distro, not a kernel.

Built for Linux

[bogaboga]

I'd say that in my case, getting the word out that Linux is just a kernel and that there are many flavours built arround it is the greatest problem.

I have had folks getting an Ubuntu CD after having been told "all applications are there", attempting to install these apps on a SuSE distro!

The other thing is multimedia not working exactly as advertised or not working as expected.

With all these problems, getting Linux on the desktop is still a challenge in my case.

Re:Built for Linux

[log2.0]

Linux (or should I say GNU/Linux?? ;)) is a totally different landscape to windows. Everything is done differently. When I switched a few years ago, I saw the large number of changes and it feels weird using a windows box now.

Software for Win98 will probably work in XP. This is not the case in Linux. We know this, but average Joe doesn't. I can personally see this as a barrier to desktop linux adoption.

Either way, it has come very far in the last decade and I see it gearing up to be competitive (I use it all the time...). Time will tell and this is a very interesting time to live.

Re:Built for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

The day all hardware distributors starts writing drivers for their products in linux, will be a milestone in my oppinion. The only thing keeping me from using linux on my laptop is the lack of drivers for videocards/touchpads suspend etc. Linux for me isn't about license costs etc, it's about a stable working system at all times. A system where things eighter work or don't work at all. Thats not the case in all other OS:es...

In other words, if installation and hardware support where as good as in for example Windows, this wouldn't keep the day to day users away.

Re:Built for Linux

[omeg]

> The other thing is multimedia not working exactly as advertised or not working as expected.

MP3 files don't play back in Ubuntu, nor do most AVI and MPEG files. It's absolute horror, as one expects an operating system to simply be able to read such extremely common files, and also one of the main reasons why I would not suggest switching to Linux to the casual computer user. The last thing I want to do is tell people to switch to Linux, only to have them find an operating system that can't perform the most basic of tasks.

Re:Built for Linux

[drsmithy]

I'd say that in my case, getting the word out that Linux is just a kernel and that there are many flavours built arround it is the greatest problem.

Getting the word out is not the problem. The "problem" is that the vast, vast bulk of people neither understand or - more importantly - care about the distinction.

To most people a computer and its OS are logically one and the same. In other words, they perceive computers to be just like every other "appliance" in their lives (and justifiably so, IMHO, end users shouldn't _need_ to concern themselves with the nuances of hardware and software just to browse the web, check their email or play a game).

"Linux" still isn't at the appliance stage. Neither are Windows or OSX, to be sure, but they're a hell of a lot closer.

Re:Built for Linux

[shanen]

Well, you caught my attention, but you didn't answer my long-term question. Is there any computer that actually is "Built for Linux"? At least in the sense that some major maker promises that they will provide the drivers [for which distribution/s?] and make it painless to keep the machine alive and supported to a similar degree as for their Windows-installed models?

By the way, I have asked variations of this question a number of times, and never received any particularly useful responses. I do *NOT* want to spend a lot of time hacking the machine. Been there, done that, enough. I just want to get my work done in a reasonably reliable way, and I increasingly dislike doing it on Microsoft's 'owned' machines. I'm sort of considering Apple, though I've had some less than pleasant experiences with them in the past and I'm pretty skeptical.

As regards Microsoft, I hope they totally punt their next version of Office, and that at that very moment OpenOffice delivers a greatly performance-enhanced version that captures 75% of the market. Pretty much impossible to imagine, however, since most people are so resistant to such heavy changes. Microsoft would have to do something incredibly stupid, like allowing all of the network-dependent copies of Office to freeze and die because of some viral network crash. Hmm... Considering Microsoft's security track record, maybe there is something to hope for after all?

Re:Built for Linux

[HuguesT]

The short answer is yes, plenty of machines built for Linux.

Here are a couple of links :

Servers, desktops etc : http://www.pogolinux.com/
Laptops ! http://www.emperorlinux.com/

The laptops are well-known brands (IBM/Lenovo, Dell etc) with Linux pre-installed and supported, where everything work, including modem, wireless, suspend-to-ram, etc.

Re:Built for Linux

[NickFortune]

In some ways the linux-on-the-desktop debate reminds me of the early days of AI. People used to think up realy hard problems for computers saying "if a computer can perform task X then it will be intelligent". The trouble is that every time we find out how to make a computer do task X, people say "oh, that's not intelligence - that's just an algorithm" and start devising harder problems to crack. Computer chess was once regarded as an AI Milestone, for example.

Similarly, I think that what Linux needs to be considered desktop ready is being likewise constantly redefined. I mean the guys who were interested in Linux when Slackware was frst released saw "desktop readiness" happen years ago. The trouble is that each such milestone brings Linux to the attention of a larger, less technically adept group who look at the OS and say "Nice ideas, but it's not ready for the desktop..."

Just a random passing thought

Re:Built for Linux

[log2.0]

That isn't a question for me to answer. I am not an OEM ;) However, I expect something like that to come along as demand increases. It's like the chicken and egg problem unfortunately.

As for your openoffice dream...I share it with you. I use mostly latex to do my work since I'm in the maths field but I believe that OOo is good enough now with 2.0 and WILL take some market share just like FF has (not enough though since people are too reluctant to change)

Re:Built for Linux

[Boronx]

I was in the same boat with my one year old cheapo compaq laptop. Periodically I'd download and try out some live CDs, but there would always be something that wouldn't work.

This week I tried a new version of MEPIS and everthying worked without any tweaking.

Re:Built for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe Mandriva, SUSE, Linspire, Xandros etc all provide MP3 support out of the box, and probably other codecs, too. Contrary to popular opinion, I don't think Ubuntu makes a good "first distro"; the ones I just quoted are better for an absolute beginner, while Ubuntu is an excellent second distro.

Re:Built for Linux

[KiroDude]

Probably you're right, people gets confused with some many linux distributions. In order to solve that I show them Ubuntu, I tell them use Ubuntu (not linux). Eventually they'll say "Ah! it's linux", but by then they're already in.

I had the same problem with the multimedia stuff, that's until I ask them run Easy Ubunutu after installing ubuntu to get all multimedia codecs you need and much more.

My last conversion occured last friday. A colleague installed Ubuntu on his laptop, it recognized everything the first time, and he's a happy Linux guy now.

Every time I get someone to try Linux I'm amazed on how positive their reaction is.

<Evil Mode>Now I have to continue with my plans to slowly but gradually start showing linux beauty to the whole company (20000+ Employees) in order to throw windows out of here some day.</Evil Mode>

Re:Built for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Software for Win98 will probably work in XP. This is not the case in Linux. We know this, but average Joe doesn't. I can personally see this as a barrier to desktop linux adoption.

Wine is getting closer to fixing that.

At least we don't have the problem when it comes to running older Linux applications, even if they were made on an old Slackware they will still run on the newest Debian. That's the apps though, not the distro packages (unless using Alien). But you won't be able to install an NT4 service pack on Windows XP either.

Re:Built for Linux

[john83]

The reason computer chess hasn't been the useful AI benchmark it was hoped to be is that the approach taken to creating chess-playing computers has been very much brute force. A top human grandmaster evaluates something like 3 or 4 positions per second - the same rate as a weak player, only smarter. A chess-playing computer of equivalent playing strength evaluates millions of positions per second.

Re:Built for Linux

[budgenator]

Some of those "extremely common" file formats are patent encumbered, so if they play or not can depend on if the distro's country of origin recognises software patents, or sometimes the distro just figures they are small enough to be able to fly under the radar. I usualy figure if mplayer can't play it, it's probably got some kind of windows virus, spyware or DRM in it; I've only found it true on some porn sites. There are libaries that can be download that play most major formats, ones that some distros can't include for legal reasons.

one man's "can't perform the most basic of tasks" is another's vendor lock-in.

Re:Built for Linux

[NickFortune]

Quite true. But even before brute force had chess computers beating the Grandmasters, researchers were dismissing chess as an AI problem (or so I was told at uni) just as soon as the basics were sorted out.

It wasn't just chess, either. Look at Eliza, for instance, which was designed as a turing test candidate (and still fools people to this day). The original Zork adventure was an exercise in AI but no one ever regarded Infocom as an AI house. It seems like knowing how the trick is done takes away the magic.

Things changed a bit with the advent of Neural Networks, since they are so reluctant to yeild rules that the results never quite seem mechanical. Solutions based on emergent phenomena or cellular automata also seem to keep their mystique, probably for the same reason that it's harder to look inside the box and see how the trick is done.

But in the early days, the goalposts were on roller skates...

Re:Built for Linux

[budgenator]

It see it as more of a mind-set thing, some people buy a car, and take it to the dealership every 2000 miles to be taken care of. Some people want a car that they can wrench on and get it tricked out, some are happy with 18 inch wheels and spinners, some end up with a car with a different engine, tranny, and body pannels.

If Granny has never changed the wallpaper on her screen, she should probably stay away from slackware or gentoo, I don't ever see the 'puter being a toaster, to many variables.

Re:Built for Linux

[lubricated]

unfortunately when I looked at those laptops, they hadn't yet offered one with a 17" screen.

Re:Built for Linux

[mpe]

Similarly, I think that what Linux needs to be considered desktop ready is being likewise constantly redefined. I mean the guys who were interested in Linux when Slackware was frst released saw "desktop readiness" happen years ago. The trouble is that each such milestone brings Linux to the attention of a larger, less technically adept group who look at the OS and say "Nice ideas, but it's not ready for the desktop..."

How well would Microsoft's products do if they were evaluated for "desktop readyness" using exactly the same criteria? It's also perfectly possible to draw up a set of criteria which Linux would fulfil much better than anything else.

Re:Built for Linux

[Charmless1]

That simply isn't true. According to the http://www.emperorlinux.com/ site - The Gazel (http://www.emperorlinux.com/mfgr/sony/gazelle/?ta b=details&id=300) has

up to 17" @ 1920x1200
1600 - 2133 MHz
256 - 1 G RAM
40 - 100 GB Hard Drive
DVD+/-RW Drive
8.8 pounds

Re:Built for Linux

[mpe]

It see it as more of a mind-set thing, some people buy a car, and take it to the dealership every 2000 miles to be taken care of. Some people want a car that they can wrench on and get it tricked out, some are happy with 18 inch wheels and spinners, some end up with a car with a different engine, tranny, and body pannels.

Here you are only considering one part of the car market. Other parts include companies buying cars and issuing them to employees (known as "company cars") together with companies buying cars and renting them to people.
Things are much the same with computers, except that a greater proportion of computers than cars are likely to be corporatly (as opposed to privatly) owned.

Re:Built for Linux

[lubricated]

Well, IBD. I guess it's new, or I just missed it.

It sucks though. Their prices are MORE expensive than if you go to Dell or something. I think you are still paying the windows tax, then a middle man fee.

Re:Built for Linux

[Dan_Bercell]

Ubuntu is a very nice distro, I finally got a friend to try it out.... a day later he asked me why he couldnt play MP3s on the machine, then the next day he asked me why his porn wouldnt play on it... The next day he asked why he couldnt play his brand new game (Age of Empires ) on it.. Safe to say he was a tad pissed that he spent 60 bucks on a game that he couldnt play.

Even though Ubuntu is the nicest distro I've ever used its still not a good thing for the non-tech unless they have an inhouse tech or do nothing except email browse the net.

My biggest fear for a corp enviroment is that I push to have 100 desktops covered in Linux, then 6 months later they require Internet Explorer for online businesses (Considering 60%+ of my clients require Internet Explorer for business transactions, this isnt an absurb concern)

Re:Built for Linux

[shanen]

Sorry, but none of the ones I looked at were "well-known brands", but all appeared to be generic white-box machines.

Re:Built for Linux

[mysticgoat]

unfortunately when I looked at those laptops, they hadn't yet offered one with a 17" screen.

If plugging your existing monitor into the video port of a laptop is too difficult, perhaps Linux isn't the best choice for you. I think that, in general, the somewhat greater technical mastery that is needed for a successful migration to Linux is within the reach of almost all readers of slashdot, but I suppose there are exceptions.

Re:Built for Linux

[Saeger]

If you must support the occasional IE/windows-only app, it's cheaper to go with rdesktop/vnc on the clients + a VMware server running the windoze VMs. Or pay more for the citrix stuff.

Re:Built for Linux

[Kadin2048]

I hate to dump on any company that's selling Linux, but those laptops are outrageously expensive.

Linux:
IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T42: 1.7GHz, 14" display, 512MB RAM, 40GB disk, CD-RW; $2175.00

Windows:
IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad T42: 1.8GHz, 14" display, 512MB RAM, 60GB disk, CD-RW; $1499.00

Quite possibly it's not Emperor's fault, I have a feeling that IBM/Lenovo may not sell ANY ThinkPads without Windows (especially sad considering that IBM ought to be the one place you could get a Linux machine, if anywhere) and thus you're really paying for a copy of Windows plus Emperor's overhead and whatever it costs them for the support contract (which might be worth something to some people, but not $600!). But at the end of the day, that's a hell of a premium.

The way Microsoft has the hardware market twisted around their finger right now, it's basically impossible to get a quality, name-brand laptop without buying Windows. (I know there are some white-box machines available out there, but put one of them down next to a ThinkPad and there's really no comparison.)

Re:Built for Linux

[mysticgoat]

This is a kind of 'me too' post.

I set up my computer as dual boot between WinXP and Mandrake more than a year ago, in hopes of migrating. But I'm still doing about 100% of my work in WinXP. (I have moved to Firefox, Thunderbird, OOo, etc-- but under WinXP).

The stumbling block is that I use a Canon i9900 printer in large format photorealistic mode, and a Wacom graphics tablet in Paint Shop Pro, for a very small percentage of my work, and there are no Linux equivalents. So I'm stuck with one toe in the Windows world. I can move more than 97% of my work to Linux at any time, but I'll have to go to WinXP to print the 11x17" photos and to do some of the photo touch-ups. I spend perhaps 4 hours a month on these activities-- it really is a small but important part of my work.

And it turns out that while I am prepared for the disruptions in habits that would go with a total conversion to Linux, I dread the thought of all the broken habit patterns that would result if I try to straddle both OSs. I don't want to surprise myself by trying to use Linux shortcuts in Windows-- that is the worst kind of interruption; it would definitely make it harder to stay in the creative sweet spot.

I expect that I'm not the only guy around who feels stuck in a slow migration pattern. I expect that there are lots of individuals and small businesses who continue to use Windows because less than 2% of their work requires templates, or macros or something like that which they can't duplicate in Linux (yet)-- and that, combined with realistic concerns about unsupported straddling of both systems, is sufficient to keep them in Windows.

Re:Built for Linux

[Dan_Bercell]

Or we can just deploy Windows and save ourselves a lot of work / support. Once you start to use Terminal Service stuff it gets expensive with licenses, even if you dont go with Citrix. You still have to get a CAL for each user accessing the Terminal Server.

I Agree there are ways around any possible issue that may arise (just read any Windows vs Linux post), however Open Source requires way too much work to work with, it wouldnt be bad if we had 50 clients wanting the same solutions, then we could specialize in certain products, but I would never want to support 10-20 different Open Source products (Way too much work for the amount of money we could charge). Unless there are more usefull business applications for sale that support Linux I dont see many SMB companies using Linux on the desktop.

You often hear the term 'Killer App', Linux really needs this 'Killer App' So far Windows has Internet Explorer, Outlook and Excel...These products are almost a must in any business, if you look on the Linux side: They have Firefox, Evolution, Calc; all of which are good products, but if you use them side by side with the Windows versions, you can clearly see why they dont compare. Only close call would be FIrefox and IE, if people would stop using ActiveX, Firefox would gain a lot of ground.

Re:Built for Linux

[zalt]

I'm not meaning to flame the free desktop environments (Gnome, KDE), I'm using them myself all the time to see how far they've progressed. But am I the only one who spends his Linux Desktop-time getting excited (and amazed) over the fact that it actually works as it should, like "Whoa, i drag&dropped this file and it actually did what it was supposed to, it didn't make my desktop go fubar for no apparent reason!", things that you would expect an OS to do (as in Windows and Mac OS).

I mean, Gnome and KDE are great. I think they've come a far way and they're "nearly there". Typical office-websurf-email-persons would probably do fine with a KDE-desktop today, but I still have this nagging feeling of uncertainty when I use it, and I'm not even a complete newbie.

But when i come to think of it, this feeling might not exist among people who haven't spent time with older and unstable versions of the DE's though.

Re:Built for Linux

[Trelane]

In chemistry, this is the "activation energy." I.e. you have chemicals at an energy E0, but to get to the (lower, reacted) energy level E1, you have to pass through a bump of some height. You have to give it some kick to get the reaction over the activation energy bump, and then you find yourself at the new energy level (and, as a Linux user, I can say that it's a very nice energy level ;)

The crux of the problem is that people are at a local minimum of energy (which will be the case in any situation due to inherent forces (e.g. familiarity), but because we've been entrenched in a Microsoft monopoly for so long, it can be quite high for some!), and are hesitant to go the little bit further to gain the full benefits of having competition. On the microeconomic scale, it's very reasonable, but on the macroeconomic scale, it leads to Microsoft staying entrenched, unless people either kick themselves over the activation energy bump, someone else does it (e.g. business requirements), or the bump is lowered (and, notably, this can happen through increased adoption of Linux/Apple, up to another monopoly situation; kind of like the energy from a reaction can help other reactions over the activation energy, but not quite the same).

It's a simple model, but I think it explains things pretty nicely.

Re:Built for Linux

[lubricated]

> If plugging your existing monitor into the video port of a laptop is too difficult,

wow you are retarded.
perhaps you don't understand why people buy laptops.
perhaps you think that laptops shouldn't even come with a screen, after all you can always plug a monitor in.

Re:Built for Linux

[mysticgoat]

Oh I fail it as a geek. I'm not yet so overweight that a laptop with a 17" screen will fit on my lap.

I've used notebook computers off and on for years, plugging them into standard keyboards and screens at work or home, and using the builtin kbd and screen only when actually on the move. So that's like pretty geeky, with the cables on the desk and all. And when I'm on the move, I'm actually able to set the thing up and work on it, without taking up more than my allotted width on an airplane, at a library table, etc.

But I agree that my approach doesn't have the same kind of status symbol appeal as wrestling a supersized laptop out of your 6 mpg Hummer, buying three side-by-each airline seats so you can use the thing in flight, etc etc.

Re:Built for Linux

[Chandon Seldon]

The way I look at it is that a Windows PC is another kind of game console - like an X-Box or Playstation. If you want to play Age of Empires III, you'll need a WindowsPC. Most computer users, expecially in business settings, don't need a WindowsPC game console - they need a desktop computer. For a desktop computer, Linux is a perfectly functional operating system. Your story about your friend is interesting, but the fact is that setting up new installation of Windows is no less complex than a Ubuntu install. MP3s may work by default on Windows, but getting random video codecs working can be easier on Linux (usually if you get one working, you get them all working whereas on Windows you'll download a codec pack that screws up your system or find a 3ivX video that doesn't work).

Re:Built for Linux

[Master of Transhuman]

You want a "well-known brand"?

You LIKE paying more for lousy support, chinzy hardware, badly integrated software, and tons of commercial offers littering your desktop?

I just hooked up a client who just ran out and bought a Dell desktop, a Dell laptop, a Dell color laser printer, and a Linksys router.

The Dell desktop is adequate, but the DVD drive door is the cheapest piece of plastic I've ever seen - I give it a week or two before it breaks. Compared to the "bank door" feel I get from my NEC DVD at home, this thing is crap.

The Dell laser printer is a fucking joke. The toner cartridges are so cheap and plasticy that's almost impossible to get them in the machine without flexing and fiddling with them. Then, if the Dell sales person was so stupid as not to tell you to buy a second tray to handle envelopes, the only way to get an envelope printed is to fiddle with the rocker front panel menu button for five minutes to tell the printer the main tray is set for envelope, THEN go tell the printer properties on the PC the tray is set for envelope. My client was so pissed she called Dell and spent an hour trying to get them to tell her how to do it, since the manual is an utter joke - a hundred pages of information in five languages - on their WARRANTY! She could use her old printer for envelopes, but it's parallel and the Dell only has USB, so we'll need a converter cable (IF such a thing works with this machine - my boss at City College tried to get one for his Canon and he can't.) It took twenty minutes to get Dell tech support, then they referred her to the wrong department, she spent another twenty minutes waiting for the right one - and then Dell support had trouble walking her through the process since they evidently aren't sure how to do it themselves (although to be fair to them, she's one of these "anxious users" that are hard to support.)

Then they preinstalled the McAfee antivirus and firewall on the machine, even after she told them not to (she prefers Norton.)

They have NetZero (THEY'RE still around?), Earthlink and AOL crap on the desktop - which has to be removed from the Add/Remove Programs list to get rid of them. Not to mention MusicMatch Jukebox, which I left on, and a couple other media programs. Nice of Dell to sell out to the RIAA.

The desktop wouldn't connect to the Linksys, so we took the router back for exchange - still need to get that working wirelessly with the laptop. Took an SBC tech support visit to get the DSL working - that was partially my fault, I swapped the power cables for the Speedstream and the router and it caused the Speedstream to go berserk (hey, the power supplies LOOK the same and we were hooking and unhooking constantly trying to get the router to work! Sue me!) The SBC guy actually tried to configure the router, which surprised me since SBC doesn't support them - but neither he nor I could get it to work.

The laptop seems adequate, but I haven't done much with it yet other than get rid of the crap Dell sprinkled all over it.

Anybody who buys Dell over a white box local store machine is nuts. You want a nice standard-parts clone PC with NO proprietary customization.

Re:Built for Linux

[lubricated]

I guess I fail it as a geek, because I don't like to squint. A 17" fits nicely on my lap, and I am not by any means overweight. Furthermore it goes in my bag nicely and is still lighter than any textbook(I'm a grad student).
Well, I still don't need glasses, though at my last eye check for my drivers license I had a hard time.

Re:Built for Linux

[Master of Transhuman]

Excellent point.

Back when I had Windows 3.1, I had only 2MB of memory on that machine. Simply couldn't run it - it was too slow. I stuck with DOS because it was fast, and I couldn't completely see the benefit of a GUI if I couldn't run it.

Same situation with Linux for a lot of people. Only in this case it's because the OS is "different" and they don't want "different" - they want "the same but different". They want "free Windows." So because Linux isn't Windows, they continue to pay through the nose in money, time and viruses to stick with Windows.

It ain't rational, but it's a problem. Where I differ from the Linux desktop doubters is that I see it as a solvable problem, one way or the other. It's really not about whether Linux is "ready" for the desktop - it obviously is for a lot of people. It's whether large numbers of PEOPLE can be made "ready" for a Linux desktop. Totally different issue.

Why is it that Linux gets slammed for not having device drivers while Windows is KNOWN for viruses and unreliability? If not having device drivers is a "show stopper" to Linux adoption, why isn't Windows security and reliabiliy faults a show stopper? Answer is obvious: people got Windows first, they don't want to change. Has nothing to do with the actual merits of the two operating systems. Both systems have problems in fact - the issue of adoption is unconnected to real problems in either system.

As I constantly say:
1. Windows is CRAP.
2. Linux is ALSO CRAP.
3. BUT, Linux is FREE CRAP.

Re:Built for Linux

[Mad Merlin]

The stumbling block is that I use a Canon i9900 printer in large format photorealistic mode, and a Wacom graphics tablet in Paint Shop Pro, for a very small percentage of my work, and there are no Linux equivalents. So I'm stuck with one toe in the Windows world. I can move more than 97% of my work to Linux at any time, but I'll have to go to WinXP to print the 11x17" photos and to do some of the photo touch-ups. I spend perhaps 4 hours a month on these activities-- it really is a small but important part of my work.

While I can't find any good news for the printer, most Wacom tablets are supported in Linux. As for Paint Shop Pro, most versions run in Wine, and I'm sure you've heard of GIMP before.

Re:Built for Linux

[Master of Transhuman]

Definitely true for video.

Mplayer on Linux handles most things out of the box. Windows Media Player is a joke in comparison. Whenever one of my videos I downloaded doesn't work in WMP or Winamp video modes on my Windows side, I try VLC or Mplayer - usually works (not always, people encode stuff in weird codecs.)

I don't use Windows Media Player for anything but streaming video - and I'm constantly looking for other tools (like the Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative I use).

Re:Built for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should they? Just publish the specs and get all that community labor for free. It opens up a market for them for almost no cost (now Linux users can use it, too, and they didn't have to pay for the labor).

Re:Built for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh I fail it as a geek. I'm not yet so overweight that a laptop with a 17" screen will fit on my lap.

Bullshit. I am 5' 10" and 140 pounds. I am probably underweight. Yet a 17" laptop fits fine in my lap. I think that you just made a really stupid comment and instead of admitting it you are just digging yourself into a deeper hole.

Re:Built for Linux

[CCW]

Can't help with the Wacom tablet, but did you try the turboprint driver for the i9900? (http://www.turboprint.de/english.html). I've used it with my i960 and been fairly happy with the results. Unfortunately Canon doesn't seem willing to release enough info to use their products with linux.

If you did try it out, please post a response as I'm curious.

Re:Built for Linux

[Blakey Rat]

That's not going to happen it's economically smart to produce drivers for Linux. And that's not going to happen until producing drivers for Linux is at least ten times easier than producing them for Windows.

If I were "running" Linux, and I knew how to program, I'd create a cross-platform driver abstration layer (make it free for commercial use, or open source) so that a company could develop a single driver, then use it for Windows, Linux, OS X all at the same time. If that existed, then there'd be no reason for hardware makers to *not* make Linux drivers, and you'd see the amount of supported hardware in Linux explode.

The only other way to change the economic equation is to get a huge number of Linux users, like a third of all computer users or more. But that hasn't happened in years and years, so making cross-platform drivers is a more likely solution.

Re:Built for Linux

[zippthorne]

Of course they were. We hadn't even begun to define the problem yet. so of course, as knowledge became better, the old definitions would be determined to be inadequate. They were useful for getting to that point though.

Re:Built for Linux

[mysticgoat]

Hmm, there seems to be an inability to recognize amusing hyperbole on this thread. I thought the bit about the Hummer and needing three seats on an airplane might have been a bit over the top myself, but evidently it would take something of seismic proportions to quiver some people's humormeter. Well that's led to a situation that is sort of funny in a slapstick Three Stooges kind of way. Unfortunately I was trying for a more erudite kind of humor, like Groucho Marx, so I guess it doesn't count.

Ah well. I'll just get these last digs in and we'll see what topples into the deeper hole I'm making. That might good for another chuckle.

While we're waiting for the clowns, the point remains that not going to Linux because there isn't a laptop that runs it that is also a great laptop envy generator doesn't seem like a significant reason for most people to avoid Linux laptops. If you want to demonstrate your prowess at conspicuous consumption, then probably Linux isn't the right OS for you. But that doesn't say anything about the people who don't think of their laptops as fashion accessories.

Re:Built for Linux

[conJunk]

users shouldn't _need_ to concern themselves with the nuances of hardware and software just to browse the web, check their email or play a game

this is 100% right on. at the end of the day, coolness doesn't mean bupkis if users aren't getting what they expect, which usually is the ability to get a whole lot of work of done with the fewest possible apps, on a machine that they can intuitively operate

for all of windows' flaws, and certainly there are many, it generally acomplishes this goal, if only through force of habit, but does accomplish it none the less

sure, I'm a geek. at home I use fedora and os x. at work it's XP. I wouldn't dream of suggesting that my users migrate to *anything* other xp right now, because the learning curve and other problems down the road would be tremendous

maybe in a few years (i hope i hope i hope) things will be different

Re:Built for Linux

[mysticgoat]

I like your analogy to energy of activation. It fits well with my situation.

When it comes time to replace the printer, chances are I will complete the jump to Linux. In the meantime, I'll check again for a Turbo Printer driver for the beast (there were none a year ago when the printer was new on the market). If I can get a printer driver that will do satisfactory drafts even if it can't handle the final version well, and if Wacom does have a Linux driver for the Intuos 2, then I'll be working in Linux before the year is out (if I can get the graphics tablet to work with either the GIMP or with PSP v8 under Wine).

[This post includes indirect responses to a couple of other replies to parent-- I appreciate those other replies, thank you!]

Re:Built for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

What is wrong with Evolution? It is even compatable with Exchange...

Re:Built for Linux

[Risen888]

Not out of the box, true. Install XMMS.

Re:Built for Linux

[bogie]

Sounds like you have no need to even use linux. If windows does everything you need well then why are you trying to move off it? Political reasons?

There are a certain class of users who find linux to be a perfect fit. At this point that is maybe 2-3% of desktop users. Don't feel bad if your not part of that very small group of users.

Re:Built for Linux

[mysticgoat]

If windows does everything you need well then why are you trying to move off it? Political reasons?

The usual reasons. Long term costs: getting away from enforced upgrade cycles. And long term archival access: Going with data formats that I'll be able to use when I'm old and gray, without jumping through lots of hoops with outdated mickeymouse applications.

I don't much care whether information wants to be free. I wannabe free, and that means FOSS.

Re:Built for Linux

[Knuckles]

You "got a friend to try it out", i.e. you were the active party, and didn't check his requirements first, or explained things to him? Quite stupid, I must say.

Re:Built for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

"Software for Win98 will probably work in XP. This is not the case in Linux"

But, but... it is!

Binary-only propietary software for Linux/Unix from ten years ago it's almost sure not to work on a modern Linux box. Still, I have software written on HP-Ux about fifteen years ago that's still able to run on any current Linux desktop.

The trick? Use the source, Luke!

Re:Built for Linux

[NickFortune]

Quite. Which, getting back to my point, casts the desktop readiness issue in an interesting light, I feel.

Re:Built for Linux

[budgenator]

Most company cars are plain stock out of the fleet catalog vehicles like the Crown Vics your city officials probably drive and but some fleet vehicles have 700 cubic inch Keith Black Hemi engines, Nitros oxide, Wrangler run-flat tires and armor plate that'll stop anything short of an anti-tank missile. The right tool for the right job.

You would be right at home in Germany, anything other than a cosmetic change to an automobile needs a safety certificate from the manufacturer, same token if your buying a database server, your going to run the hardware and software that Oracle certifies. Let an Employee use a laptop or desktop do you give him the Admin/root password, change hardware or worry if he can't watch trailers from the porn site or listen to Sony-BMG CD's?

Re:Built for Linux

[lubricated]

I think for the most part you are projecting your envy onto others. I like my 17 inch screen on my laptop for the same reason most people get a screen bigger than 15 inches at their desk.

Re:Built for Linux

[Dan_Bercell]

Actually no, I have been using Ubuntu for about 5 months now, and I did go through the same thing when I first started but since it was so long ago I had forgotten about it.

I have to agree with you though, it is Quite stupid.

One would thing that by default it would be able to play MP3 or even install a Video player (I prefer VLC on both Linux and WIndows) player that actually plays most videos by default.

No, you are expected to search online for the answer. Luckily EVERYONE that uses Ubuntu has gone through this so the answer is not hard to find for anyone who can use Google.

The point of the post was that Linux is not simple enough to be used by the general population.

Re:Built for Linux

[mysticgoat]

None of the girls I've known have ever complained that I'm short of inches where it counts. Maybe 14 or 15 inches is enough for a guy n the go?

I do like a big desktop screen. But I like a portable computer that is, well, portable. I once saw a stretch limo VW bug... but other than it being a "funny one-time", I didn't see any point to it. I guess your values and mine are very different.

It seems to still be true that there are plenty of portable laptop computers that run Linux just fine. At least I haven't heard anything yet to suggest otherwise. And certainly there can be no disagreement that Linux is a very poor choice for anyone who wants to score high on the conspicuous consumption scale.

Re:Built for Linux

[Dan_Bercell]

I agree with you about the gaming concept, but when I think of Linux on the desktop, I also consider home computers, and its hard to sell a home computer that cannot play games.

Linux is a perfectly functional operating system

It does all the basic functions like: Print, file share, Internet browse, email work processing/spreedsheet. There are very very few business out there that only do these functions though, most companies have a mission critical system that they use, either an accounting system, POS system, CRM, ERP...etc (insert Buzzword here). There are litterally 1000's of these programs, but only a very small percentage run on non-Windows Operating systems. Not to mention all the solutions that require Windows (ie, IIS, SQL Server, .NET is really growing, Office or IE) This is my main reason for not going with Linux on the desktop. It would be near impossible to justify switching to Linux, think of the cost of:

1. Retraining people on Linux and Office apps, hell most of them cant even use Windows properly, they would be lost if they were in a completly different enviroment.

2. New software, and porting existing data to the new system.

3. New training for IT staff or hiring new IT staff. IT personel is in very hard to come by in certain parts of Canada.

This is just to name a few of the cost.

In closing its not that Linux isnt good enough to replace Windows, its that there is no reson or benfit to switching. Once hardware and Software vendor start making items for Linux then there will be that reason, once the cost of switching drops there will be a benifit.

An example of needing Windows is:

Last year (I havent had to check since) there were several Canadian Government websites that REQUIRED Internet Explorer, and even 1 that required MS Java, just would not work with Sun Java! I was baffled that this site required MS Java, mind you it could have been ( probably has been ) changed since then.

Re:Built for Linux

[Dan_Bercell]

Evolution is a very nice email client, but its not as good as Outlook. Keep in mind Outlook really shines when used with Office, Exchange, Windows Mobile. For starters its an additional cost where Outlook comes with Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Nice to have 1 cost and 1 product to install, by adding additional products, you have to add additional support/install time... this basically drives away any cost reason to stay away from Office.

There is no integrated (or its not obvious if its there) with any Office suite. Evolution is a single product, where Outlook was built to work closely with other Office products, Exchange and Windows Mobile.

Seemless integration with a PDA, Ive supported both blackberrys and Palm PDAs, its a pain to support to sets of Contacts, or try to make these OSes work with an email programs, sure there are plugins/addons to make it work, but its not native to both the Email and PDA, thus not as seemless and buggy. In 2.5 years Ive never had an issue with a Windows Mobile device that was software related, where as Ive had a hell of a time with Palm and sync issues.. drives me nuts.

OWA 2003 and Outlook 2003 look almost identical, which is nice for non-tech users, they can basically use the web access with very little support from IT.

Yes its true its compatible with Exchange, but it costs like $70.00 (I think that was american, so like $100 Canadian) per license... a bit pricy for just an email client to work with Exchange.

Re:Built for Linux

[arkanes]

I have the same feeling, but in my case it's generally because the same thing *doesn't* work on Windows, which is what I use at my day job. Like, when I open up 2 different files with the same name in Calc.

I think the only reasons desktop linux is considered "nearly there" is because people move the goalpost. Both KDE and GNOME can do a hell of a lot of things Windows just can't, and do a hell of a lot of things that Windows does better. That's not good enough, though - they have to do everything that Windows does, exactly the same way, and also manage to somehow be "better".

Are there problems with a Linux desktop? Of course there are. It can be hard to configure printers. Nautilus is a crappy file manager, and Konqueror is only adequate. You don't get as much eye candy unless you're really willing to push the cutting edge and get into some technical stuff. Unless you bought a commercial distro, your 3d hardware, DVDs, and MP3s won't work out of the box. Most really good Linux software is available on Windows, but not the reverse. But if someone sat down at made a list of everything that didn't work out of the box or that was annoying or buggy about a Windows desktop, it'd be just as long. It's just a matter of what people are used to - anything Linux can't do or does poorly that Windows does is a black mark, anything Windows can't do is ignored - because anyone who regularly uses Windows won't do those things. You see the exact same thing when long-time Unix gurus try to do stuff on Windows. There's an adjustment period and it's uncomfortable and that discomfort drives a lot of people off.

Re:Built for Linux

[NineNine]

That's not good enough, though - they have to do everything that Windows does, exactly the same way, and also manage to somehow be "better".

Right. Exactly. Because change is work, and most people these days aren't too keen on doing more work when the current thing works just fine. For most people, their urgency to even consider Linux would probably be on par with that of upgrading their refrigerator ice maker's circuitry to the latest version, especially now that the masses are (finally) using an NT kernel.

Re:Built for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

GIMP is dodgy with tablets. it works for some people and not for others. but there are drivers im sure. you might already have them but you gotta setup your x config file with settings etc.

Re:Built for Linux

[runderwo]

Already such a thing exists, it is called UDI. It was summarily rejected by the kernel folks for several reasons. First, it doesn't really solve any political problems associated with getting drivers ported for products that are already released. Instead of porting your driver to Linux, you have to port it to a different interface. It only would help in the case of new products.

Unfortunately, maybe it is the kind of help we don't want, because such a driver would be slow. To some people, this makes the vendor look bad, but to others, this makes Linux look bad. And it is unavoidable that a portable driver interface would slow things down. The problem is that you have to capture not only existing functionality, but also existing developmental approaches that are completely different from platform to platform. By that, I mean that different operating systems are designed to prioritize different types of usage and methodologies, so when we go to create a "Universal" driver interface, we have two things to balance - the level of abstraction from the OS and the performance of the driver, inversely proportional. Since fast performance on Windows is a market necessity these days, a driver abstraction layer just isn't going to get any attention.

I have been led to believe, through examination of commercial open source drivers as well as proprietary drivers that are subsequently open sourced, that vendors who want to support multiple operating systems design their own hardware abstraction layer, and that this layer is typically specifically for the product in question. It suggests that creating a portable driver framework from scratch really isn't that big a deal, in which case developers can create that framework with full knowledge of the hardware and specifically to take advantage of the hardware's design, instead of using a "universal" layer designed by people who have never seen your hardware and your users' requirements. I'm just not sure that a UDI-type thing being available is all of a significant time-saver for driver developers, especially when it has performance ramifications for the end user that may affect their perception of the product negatively.

Re:Built for Linux

[Knuckles]

Actually no, I have been using Ubuntu for about 5 months now, and I did go through the same thing when I first started but since it was so long ago I had forgotten about it

This statement does not parse. You've been using it for 5 months, setup was hell, but when you recommended it to your friend you couldn't remember? Doesn't make sense.

The point of the post was that Linux is not simple enough to be used by the general population.

No, there was no point. -Ubuntu- might be not simple enough for those general users that need multimedia. If you tell your friend to use Ubuntu if you know that it does not support the features he needs, you are crazy. Other distros like Xandros or Linspire support multimedia out of the box, you recommended to use the wrong thing.
If he expects to play, Linux probably wouldn't be his choice at all, or did you also forget that most games are Windows-only? At least you should have told him about Cedega.

One would thing that by default it would be able to play MP3 or even install a Video player (I prefer VLC on both Linux and Windows) player that actually plays most videos by default.
No, you are expected to search online for the answer.

I have no idea how you got the idea it would do all these things. It is well known around here that media formats are often patent encumbered, and you probably didn't pay anything for Ubuntu, so how could you expect proprietary media support?
Anyway, the info is available on the website, although I agree that it should be more prominent.

Re:Built for Linux

[zalt]

Ah, well put!

I agree with you. Unfortunately I work at a Mac based office, and I have a hard time seeing Mac based companies switching to Linux (giving they've payed for Apple hardware and gotten what, in my opinion is, the best desktop OS available as of today). KDE and Gnome will have a harder time beating OS X than Windows when it comes to usability and general prettiness. Having said that I think my renegade PC will be the only Linux desktop machine around here, but it would sure be sweet to see it more actively used at Windows based companies. And hey - it's actually happening.

People have stated This is the year of Desktop Linux! since when, 1997? But I don't think either of the popular DE's were good enough to seriously compete with anything (other that they came with a nicer license model) up until today. KDE and Gnome are seriously usable and John "I've gotta mail my Word documents now!" Doe would do just fine using it. Some time to adjust is needed, indeed, but it would work. And that's pretty amazing.

Re:Built for Linux

[HuguesT]

Sorry, the laptops are all well-known brands, not the servers.

Re:Built for Linux

[Dan_Bercell]

This statement does not parse. You've been using it for 5 months, setup was hell, but when you recommended it to your friend you couldn't remember? Doesn't make sense.

You are putting words in my mouth, I didnt once say setup was hell, the setup is a piece of cake with Ubuntu, which is why I recommended it. There are dozens of issues when a person starts using Linux from a Windows enviroment, WIndows just works, Linux doesnt. I had explained the ins and outs of using a Linux enviroment to my friend, I had installed Ubuntu because its the cleanest install (only 1 CD, as aposed to 3-4 for other distros), nice hardware detection, and it was the easiest time Ive ever had setting up a dual boot machine.

No, there was no point. -Ubuntu- might be not simple enough for those general users that need multimedia. If you tell your friend to use Ubuntu if you know that it does not support the features he needs, you are crazy. Other distros like Xandros or Linspire support multimedia out of the box, you recommended to use the wrong thing. If he expects to play, Linux probably wouldn't be his choice at all, or did you also forget that most games are Windows-only? At least you should have told him about Cedega.General users expect multimedia to work and games to work, thats usually the reason why people purchase computers for non-business work. You are missing my point of my post. I am NOT a Linux consultant, I am a Linux hobbiest. I have a real job and most of my free time is taken up researching stuff that is needed for my real job, thus I dont have time to try the 100 different distros that are out their, if Linux was ready for the desktop, one wouldnt have to do so!

I have no idea how you got the idea it would do all these things.

From years of using Windows, people expect certain things to work.

Buddy its alright to admit Linux has weaknesses, everything in the IT industry does.

Re:Built for Linux

[Chandon Seldon]

If a given desktop machine isn't used for heavy video games or specific desktop software that licences for thousands of dollars a seat then it can be easily replaced with a Linux box. There are no real hardware or software problems in the vast majority of cases.

The retraining costs are overblown. For most office workers you can just switch them over with no more effort than upgrading to a new version of Microsoft Office would entail.

If a government website requires internet explorer, there's usually a work around (such as calling them). Even if your business requires that website, you can access it through a legacy interface machine running Windows.

It's true that some businesses have dug themselves into a "Microsoft Solutions" hole but right now is a perfect time to notice the issues with being locked in to a vendor and start working on fixing it. For a heavily locked in workplace, the benifits of switching to Linux may not be clear on a scale of months, but it's worth starting work on making it possible to switch later if it makes sense then. As soon as Microsoft stops selling the version of office you use and stops supporting the new version of office on the version of Windows you use you'll be happy you have another choice.

Re:Built for Linux

[Blakey Rat]

Well, you may have a point, but on the other hand until the equation changes:

(revenue from Linux consumers) is less than (cost of producing Linux drivers)

There's not going to be any big explosion of hardware support for Linux. There are only two ways to change this equation... make the revenue from Linux consumers go up (which is impossible, because Linux users won't buy a device that has no driver) or make the cost of producing drivers go down.

Even if the performance suffers, wouldn't you rather have a driver than no driver at all? I disagree with a lot of what the kernel team does, because they seem to have very little, or no, concern for the end-user. This exact issue being a point in defense of that argument.

Re:Built for Linux

[Dan_Bercell]

specific desktop software that licences for thousands of dollars a seat then it can be easily replaced with a Linux box.

It is getting rare to see a user 'just' use the basic (printing, office suite and email). The software solutions are basically a must in any modern business, now if an alternative came out that ran on Linux, that would be a big bonus for the 'Linux on the Desktop debate'. As it stands now, there are some solutions, but alot of them are Open Source, and the majority of Open Source products are not ready for Businesses or at least look so 'Mickey Mouse' that scare away consultants, unless the business is ready to spend big bucks supporting it/custimizing it. If a government website requires internet explorer, there's usually a work around (such as calling them).

Yes, but again another work around, seems like Linux is just one work around after another, where Windows just works.

As for the Lock-in issue, well all of my clients are locked in, but it doesnt cost them anything and their Business run smoothly. To move a business to Linux, it involves a lot of work on our part and on the clients part, and a very long adjustment phase...This is where the expensive comes in. You are correct though, if the company is not using a Business critical application, the move is not really that bad, but most are. Its a tough sell for us, trying to convince people to move just wouldnt fly.

Re:Built for Linux

[Burz]

I second the recommendation for Xandros and Linspire.

With Xandros, you at least get RealPlayer, Acrobat, Java and Flash, not to mention the longest-standing "plug-n-play" hardware detection scheme around, and everything you need to deal with a corporate environment (it's had ADC, VPN support and easy handling of folder/printer shares for years now). Its also Debian-derrived, synchronized with Sarge and highly compatible.

Linspire has *all* the plugins and multimedia stuff, incl DVD playback. I don't like its default to root user, and its obfuscated package names (which means you don't benefit from Debian), but that doesn't prevent generic LSB packages from installing.

Especially compared to Xandros, Ubuntu setup is still quite complicated. I know many Slashdotters don't read the 'PC' mags, but they *are* experts when they come to end-users and they've consistently been recommending Xandros ever since it was Corel (over 6 years now). Its quite pathetic to see the Ubuntu rah-rah crowd (who apparently used to be the Fedora rah-rah crowd) keep recommending Ubuntu as the "simplest" with ignorant abandon. It is far from being the simplest for doing anything except using OOo, and even that's too hard for most people if they must clear the installation hurdle themselves.

Re:Built for Linux

[Chandon Seldon]

Yes, but again another work around, seems like Linux is just one work around after another, where Windows just works.

It's not that Windows just works, but that you're used to the work arounds that Windows requires. Try zipping up a Windows install from the first IDE harddrive on one computer and unzipping it onto the second drive of another and getting it working again. When you do a new Windows install, how many reboots and driver installs are nessisary? Can you automate software installs, or do you need to click "next" a bunch of times? Have you ever tried to run two versions of Microsoft IIS on the same computer? Can you run a network where the users don't have admin rights, or do you constantly need to make exceptions for badly written programs?

Re:Built for Linux

[Dan_Bercell]

Try zipping up a Windows install from the first IDE harddrive on one computer and unzipping it onto the second drive of another and getting it working again

This only works if the program installation makes it possible, its not Windows that restricts this. When you do a new Windows install, how many reboots and driver installs are nessisary

For Windows 2000 1 reboot after its done copying the installation files, I think XP is the same.... Why does this matter?

an you automate software installs, or do you need to click "next" a bunch of times?Yes, if the installer uses 'Windows Installer' or 'Install Sheild', which is probably 99% of programs for WIndows, its possible to automate this using scripts. By you asking this question, its obvious you have not had to maintain a Windows network and dont know how Windows works.

Can you run a network where the users don't have admin rights,

You are correct, users have to run with Admin rights, however these are Admin rights on the 'Local' machine, not the network, there is a huge difference there. Its very possible to write programs that do not require Admin rights, however Windows doesnt make it simple and its human nature to take the easy way out (faster ship dates / More money / Less bugs).

or do you constantly need to make exceptions for badly written programs?

Ive seen many bad programs made for other Operating Systems, its the programs that are bad, not the OS... Sorry, but I have no clue what point your trying to make with that comment.

Re:Built for Linux

[Dan_Bercell]

Ubuntu hard to install?, its no harder then Windows... simply keep clicking next using the defaults. Actually Ive never changed settings on any OS (Linux or WIndows) install except when I am making image installs or scritped installs.

Actually I have to change the date for Windows XP installs, it keeps thinking I am in the Pacific Time zone for some reasons, cant remember off the top of my head if the Linux install gave me the correct time zone by default.

Linux for the people

[glaswegian]

The article says : "Peripheral device driver support was also a hot-button issue. In particular, USB device and networking printing were mentioned as key areas that needed improvement."

For mass consumption, this is the biggest problem I have seen. The people I know who are not technically inclined will stay away from Linux for the time being for this very reason. When they buy a sparling new ipod and the installation cd doesn't set everything up for them they end up thinking Linux is either a) crap or b) for nerds with too much spare time on their hands.

This is, of course, in large part due to vendors not giving a toss about Linux. With it's ever increasing popularity (especially in the corporate world) I don't think this situation will last very long.

Re:Linux for the people

[Decaff]

The article says : "Peripheral device driver support was also a hot-button issue. In particular, USB device and networking printing were mentioned as key areas that needed improvement."

For mass consumption, this is the biggest problem I have seen.

I may just have been lucky, but I have found in recent distribution that driver support (including for USB devices) has been excellent. A recent Ubuntu install was the first time I have ever installed an OS which fully detected and installed all my hardware - video, sound system, wireless network, USB etc. with no prompting from me at all. On the same machine, Windows requires additional drivers. I have always found Windows network printing to be far more problematic.

Re:Linux for the people

[YttriumOxide]

Working as a "specialist" in printing and printing technologies (see my post history for details), I can't help but wholeheartedly agree.

I've not found anything easier for IPP, LPR or Raw (Socket/9100) printing than a simple CUPS install with a nice frontend as provided by EITHER KDE or Gnome. It even auto-searches the network for port9100 - something Windows is yet to do.

Drivers for "toy" printers can be a pain, but even without vendor support (which I'll plug that we have) any PostScript device is a breeze and PCL devices are only marginally more complicated.

A few months ago I tried to gauge our end user Linux adoption by the number of support enquiries I was asked to assist with (assuming our technicians/first level support couldn't handle Linux) and thought that perhaps there's not so much out there. Then I find out that there's a LOT more than I originally assumed and it just never makes it to me as an enquiry since it "just works". Enquiries about other systems (Windows, MacOS and AS/400 especially) aren't uncommon (especially Windows broken excuse for printer sharing in relation to permissions and device settings causing MANY headaches)

That's just my take on it from an inside perspective of one of the supposed "key areas for improvement". Maybe these users just aren't savvy enough on printing in general, and it's not the OS that's the problem at all (it'd be interesting to give them a Windows environment and check out what printing issues they have...)

Re:Linux for the people

[Anonymous Coward]

I have always found Windows network printing to be far more problematic.

i have to agree. i have found it much easier to share a printer to windows machines from samba than i have to share a printer to windows machines from a win2k pro/server machine. i don't care what permissions or lack of permissions i place on the printer from windows, it seems that every other day i have to fiddle with the fucking printer sharing again to be able to print to it from my windows xp laptop.

i have to say that for all the dicking around in text-based configuration files i've had to do to setup a NetBSD-samba pdc, it has been far less of a hassle to do and runs more reliabley than the damn win2k server w/ active directory ever did. whoever fucking said windows was easy is full of shit.

Re:Linux for the people

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't iPod just mount like any other external hdd formatted FAT32? Where's the problem with using that on Linux, even for someone who's accounted an idiot by windows user standards?

Re:Linux for the people

[mildgift]

I had a mixed experience. On my two PCs, Ubuntu's gone in pretty clean, but the video card needed a little tweaking on the later version. On another, older, PC, no dice. Knoppix has worked great on all the computers.

Windows, however, had all kinds of problems on every single PC I've owned. Most were cleared up with a simple driver update or installation, but, even that wasn't always that "clean". Sometimes, I had to figure out how to type in the right file path.

The Macs, of course, never had any such issues.

What the unixes need is a centralized database that not only maps what works with what, but also stores the booting sequence, driver versions, and other info. Then the info can be mined to discover how to improve all the distros. It would, obviously, also serve as a master-repository for drivers, and push the system toward binary-only drivers and a better dynamic linking system for drivers.

In fact, if there were such a beast, I'd want to be able to profile my hardware, and then get recommendations on which distros work best with my configuration.

Re:Linux for the people

[theguyfromsaturn]

I also used to have trouble with these things but my latest Debian install did a wonderful job. With USB in particular, hehehe. It used to be that only Unices needed to do the mount/unmount thing, but now Windows also requires it for all these removable USB thingies. Except the unmounting in Windows is unmount/click/click (I mean the two layers of dialogs that pop up are totally useless) while in Linux is a simple unmount.

Re:Linux for the people

[glaswegian]

'cause many people who buy an iPod believe that iTunes is a must have. They want the piece of software that was written for the device. If it can't run using the official means, many users will be left confused. As I said earlier, they need it to install from CD to feel that it's usable.

I'm obviously not talking about the majority of /. readers, but about a large fraction of computer users who, for the moment, will not touch Linux because there isn't enough easy to intall software available for it.

Re:Linux for the people

[glaswegian]

I agree that CUPS works very well. I use it for printing to different network printers at work and I had almost nothing to do to get it working.

However, I'm wondering what you mean by "toy printers". Are they the ones that most home users will buy? If that's the case then we come back to my original point - the general public will find installing a printer under Linux a pain in the arse. When I started using Linux a few years ago I battled long and hard with a Lexmark that just didn't want to play. Had I not been interested in Linux for other reasons I probably would have given up then.

Re:Linux for the people

[budgenator]

I'm amazed at how much stuff just works in Linux, usually if some hardware doesn't work, it's because some required spec wasn't implimented because windows doesn't use it and the vendor didn't bother to test for it, or decided to steal some CPU cycles to work around it in the driver.

Usually if a printer doesn't work correctly in windows, the printer manufacturer get blamed, it's their hardware and drivers, if it doesn't work in Linux it's linux's blame.

Re:Linux for the people

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Exactly. I dumped a recent Linux install in favor of Windows just for USB Webcam support. The system was for a small media center + teleconferencing with family. My distro was requiring me to recompile the kernel for Webcam support. Not exactly "plug-and-play". While compiling a kernel may not be difficult, I compare having to do this with rebuilding your car's engine just to change the radio station. It also had problems supporting the TV output on the system, and problems with several wireless cards.

Linux must become fully plug-and-play, or it will never ever become a desktop of choice for the average user. Whether it is coding more generic drivers, or forcing vendors to support Linux, or both, it must be done.

I've found Linux to be the best choice in servers. I've also found it to be the choice for desktops if that desktop happens to be a system that only connects to generic hardware, a generic lan card, and you aren't sharing that desktop with anyone computer illiterate. Anything else, and its pot luck.

I've heard it over and over... someone has their mother using linux and loving it. Well, your mother is a rocket scientest compared to mine and all the other ones I know who still don't know what a right click is. Recompiling a kernel is a taaaaaad out of their league.

Re:Linux for the people

[Kadin2048]

I'm going to guess that a "toy printer" is anything that:

1) uses ink costing more by weight than gold
2) has space for less than a ream of blank paper
3) has a memory-card slot
4) costs less to purchase initially than two of its consumable refills do

So yes, basically, I think he's referring to the crummy home "hey it came free with my Dell" inkjets which are the bane of anyone who doesn't use Windows' existence.

Generally speaking, Linux has great support for high-end peripheral hardware because that's the stuff that uses open standards most predictably. For whatever reason, it's never the $20k devices that require some Windows-only proprietary driver; it's the $99 ones from Best Buy that do.

Re:Linux for the people

[Chandon Seldon]

4) costs less to purchase initially than two of its consumable refills do

This is the important one, along with your #1. A toy printer is any printer that is super cheap until you use it - at which point it becomes horribly expensive.

Unfortunately, they're wildly popular. Dell can give them away for free because the manufacturer will make a killing as soon as the user buys a replacement cartridge. This is that same scam that tries to make compatible cartriges proprietary - because their profit is entirely dependant on selling the user ink for, literally, more money than gold by weight.

Re:Linux for the people

[Chandon Seldon]

Unfortunately, there's no simple way to just make all periferals supported under Linux. It's impossible.

Fortunately, 99% of users can easily do what they need to do with the existing hardware support. Also fortunately, there's only a small window of users that frequently buy their own hardware but can't handle checking a hardware compatibility list.

The only devices that this issue actually comes up with frequently are printers, scanners, and digital cameras. Other devices either just work, or require enough technical expertise to install and use that there isn't an issue. Luckily, many of those devices work perfectly under Linux by default and there are easily available lists to check compatibility.

Re:Linux for the people

[reclusivemonkey]

For the first time in years I wish I had mod points for the parent post. Beleive it or not, a LOT of people's experience is like this. I have a Creative Soundblaster Live, along with an onboard sound card. Linux recognises both, no problems and can use either one. XP will not detect the soundblaster at all, with no useful pointers other than the crappy yellow exclamation mark to let me know its not working... hey thanks, thats really useful. Same with my cheapo, bargain bin PCI tv card (a Packard Bell). Despite its bold claims of being XP compatible, it doesn't work and everything I saw on the net about it was people saying they were taking it back to the store for a hauppauge. Of course Linux found the card no problem and it works flawlessly in Myth...

Re:Linux for the people

[killjoe]

"Linux must become fully plug-and-play, or it will never ever become a desktop of choice for the average user."

Never, not ever? Bullshit. Linux desktop adoption will be spearheaded in the corporations. Corporations will migrate to Linux because it costs less and is easier to manage. They will pick systems with supported hardware and will have no problems. The number of linux users will go up and more and more hardware manufacturers will write drivers for it. People will install linux at home so they can take work home to work on and will complain to the hardware manufacturers when their crap doesn't work with their new operating system.

That's the way it happened in windows, that's the way it will happen in linux.

Re:Linux for the people

[YttriumOxide]

$20k devices and higher? Yep, definitely no problem. You don't need to go that high that.

Again, somewhat of a shameless plug perhaps, but the Konica Minolta Magicolor 2450 is a great little printer for use under Linux and while more than $99 should be easily sub $1000.

I'm not too familiar with "Best Buy", but looking at their website, they do appear to have a lot of crud. I see a couple of PCL printers and maybe some PostScript ones too though, so even at Best Buy you can get something that'll work nicely.

Re:Linux for the people

[YttriumOxide]

Important for businesses or home users though? Most businesses of any reasonable size will have "big" printers (Multifunctional copier devices generally) rather than toy printers. Since the article is about business desktop Linux use, I'd say it shouldn't be such a concern from that angle.

If you are thinking about home use, see another of my posts in this thread regarding my personal recommendation for a really nice home printer that works perfectly under Linux.

Re:Linux for the people

[Kadin2048]

Huh, that's a slick little number for $600. I wonder how much the toner refills cost, and whether the purchase price includes real (full capacity) carts or whether they do what Samsung does with their low-end lasers and include a "starter cartridge" that only is about 20% full. I hope not the latter.

I've actually always had a soft spot for Minolta, dating back to when I used their SLR film cameras. And when I used to work in sales, their reps were some of the most knowledgeable and friendly around. I still have piles of literature sitting around about their first generation digital cameras -- maybe someday they'll be collectible or something. :)

Re:Linux for the people

[YttriumOxide]

Working in the technical area, not sales/marketing, I really don't know about prices, sales and so on. Also I'd imagine it varies from country to country and possibly even branch to branch (to say nothing of dealers and other distribution chains).

One thing I can say that it is indeed a slick little box - and I don't even work with that model (I work with the business equipment - not the "printing solutions" products)

Re:Linux for the people

[Burz]

I think you are deluding yourself. PCs hapened because the top-down, thinclient/terminal model was unsustainable. Working with the mainframe programmers to get needed features shoehorned into an old COBOL program, and sometimes finding these people asleep at their desks taught me a lesson: The rest of us who were busting our asses running PC-floppy-Lotus based Snearkernets and trying to get IBM PCs through Purchasing as often as possible needed automation that ran off our own initiative and inventiveness.

Officeworkers are still individuals who need some control of the tools on their assigned desks, not the least of whom are all the managers, directors and VPs who just *love* all their novel little toys and executive softwares, their MS Access "erector sets" etc. In a lot of ways, this dynamic acts as a proving ground for widely useful apps that are eventually scaled up and handed off to the IT people near the server room. But just because the server room still matters and contains lots of Unix, doesn't mean the mucky-mucks won't insist that most of the other office workers they interact with should run the same OS that they prefer. For most, that choice of OS is Windows.

The emerging Linux model of desktop use does little for a corporate work environment beyond the level of a call center or data entry farm or government branch office. Everything is in the hands of (very uppity) Unix sysadmins whose job is to dictate. Purchasing approved an app for your departmjent of 6 people, and it arrived in the mail on CD-ROM? Good luck, cuz nothing on your CD drive will execute and you won't get sudo or root access from us. By the way, your email client has been 'upgraded' to web-based thing with your old executable removed. Oh, it breaks the address-polling functions of your Writer macros? Well, that function sounds like a great idea.... please submit a request to the programmers in MIS to see if they'll incorporate that in the internal webportal. Have a nice day.

Corporate America long ago rejected mainframe and Unix cultures on their desktops. What makes you think it will be any different for Linux?

Excuse me please:

[Stephen Samuel]

I have a memo to go write....

actually

[iced_tea]

"It's not TCO (total cost of ownership), or security, or lack of license fees," Dave Rosenberg said. "It's about the lack of a talking paper clip."

Re:actually

[jimmyhat3939]

No way man. It's the lack of the barking doggie when you do a search.

Re:actually

[tpgp]

Exactly right - when people ask me why I use linux on my desktop I say:

"Its not what you get with linux - its what you don't get. Spyware, viruses, IE updates that break things unexpectely, Ads on your desktop and in your word processing software, I could go on and on and on...."

Re:actually

[marcosdumay]

Dont fear the lack of the dancing paper clip!

tax software

[bogaboga]

As the year steams to an end, I wonder when we shall have a free Java/QT/Mono/GTK application to handle income tax filing. Is it too late for the OSS community to cook up one?

If this software were availed, it'd significantly boost the status of Linux getting looked at seriously on the desktop. I would not want to spend any money on the so called tax software again.

Re:tax software

[AuMatar]

THe problem isn't programming one- its getting a team of CPA's to write and edit the rules. And handling major liability issues if its wrong. I know I wouldn't touch a line of code in one for the second reason.

Re:tax software

[Anonymous Coward]

FOSS Community paying taxes? We don't pay taxes. Everything in the world should be free. As in beer or speech.

Re:tax software

[el_womble]

I can only speak for the UK, but its already Java software, but its a web app. Sure you can buy Quicken UK etc, which will talk directly to the government gateway, but you can also just point any browser at government website and you can calculate and file your tax there too.

I used it last year for my income tax and it worked a treat. I kept my accounts on excel, followed the wizard (which took about 3 hours, but you could save halfway through) and it calculated my return instantly.

They also offer company tax and PAYE filling software, which is used far more than they ever expected - the assumption was that people would want to use a 'real' application. It turned out that nobody was tighter than an accountant and when faced with the option of shelling out for tax software or using a free, and very usable (if not quite as powerful) alternative they jumped at the web app.

Re:tax software

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the tax code is huge and enormously complex. Keeping it up-to-date would be a gigantic task that would probably make Firefox and OpenOffice look like hello-world.

And even if you found some way to motivate people to do it for free, at the end of the day what assurances do you have that any of it is correct? Are you willing to stake your credit directly on whether somebody interpreted the tax code the same way as the IRS?

HTML and CSS are relatively simple and well-documented. And if something is wrong, it tends to be very wrong, and (due to their visual nature) easy to spot. And yet web browsers still have trouble rendering valid HTML. Are you going to sign your name on a tax form printed out by somebody's hard-to-see-if-it-is-correct-or-horribly-wrong interpretation of the very-complex, not-very-well-understood, tax code?

I understand some (all?) of the filing services offer guarantees; a free program couldn't offer this -- so at best you'd have to settle for something not as good (in one dimension) as the other offerings.

If you really want to be able to file your taxes quickly and easily under Linux, I suggest:
(a) get your government to put everything online, so you can just fill out some HTML forms and click "Submit", and/or:
(b) get your government to simplify the fucking tax code by a few orders of magnitude

Re:tax software

[Anonymous Coward]

i live in a VERY small contry, that's not all,
we've 26 TAX systems, one for each cantons, now you know what ?

we have for 4 years now a JAVA based TAX software.
(and no it's not the same Company that does the 26 variants)

Re:tax software

[Anonymous Coward]

Any web browser, or "Any web browser as long as it's Internet Explorer on Windows"?

Re:tax software

[el_womble]

Any modern web browser.

Re:tax software

[sstidman]

That's a nice thing to wish for, but it will never happen. The US tax code is incredibly complex and constantly changing. Writing tax software takes more than just programmers; it takes an army of tax accountants who read the tax code and codify it into a set of rules used by the software. Would you honestly trust a bunch of geeks (nerd herd??) to write such software?

That said, there is no reason why someone couldn't port their tax software to Linux. Or you could probably run it under Wine. Considering that the tax software so important and that it is tax deductible anyway, is it really so awful that you have to pay for it?

Re:tax software

[Anonymous Coward]

That makes a change for a UK Government website. I thought the usual process was to contract EDS for an outrageous sum of money to build an Internet Explorer/ActiveX only horror.

Re:tax software

[aichpvee]

I can only speak for the UK, but its already Java software, but its a web app. Sure you can buy Quicken UK etc, which will talk directly to the government gateway, but you can also just point any browser at government website and you can calculate and file your tax there too.

In the United States the tax prep software industry bought legislation making it illegal for the government to directly provide such a service. Makes me so proud to be an american when I know how vastly superior our government is by protecting us from useful services it makes me want to go wave a flag right now.

Re:tax software

[BlackCougar]

I'm currently starting work on a accounts/stock package which will be oss however the tax side will be commercial mainly because of the amount of work needed to keep it accurate and up to date. However the tax would only be designed for the England/Wales tax system. See phiscalos.sourceforge.net for more details. Ir anybody wants to help drop me an email

Re:tax software

[mpe]

i live in a VERY small contry, that's not all, we've 26 TAX systems, one for each cantons, now you know what ?
we have for 4 years now a JAVA based TAX software. (and no it's not the same Company that does the 26 variants)

The ironic thing is that small countries often have more dynamic (and more resistant to lobbying) political systems than large countries.

Re:tax software

[bmalia]

TurboTax.com will work just fine in Linux, since it's a website ;) 'm pretty sure I filed taxes using Firefox last year.

Re:tax software

[mysticgoat]

(a) get your government to put everything online, so you can just fill out some HTML forms and click "Submit", and/or:
(b) get your government to simplify the fucking tax code by a few orders of magnitude

Hear hear!

It is now time to start pushing (the USA) Congress for meaningful tax reform-- meaning that the tax law itself should be rewritten as pseudocode. Or maybe in Javascript.

I'm serious.

This could be a great issue in the 2008 presidential elections (assuming the country holds together that long).

Re:tax software

[4of12]

its getting a team of CPA's to write and edit the rules.

Amen.

By now, isn't there some XML flavor for describing all of if, and, or, but, less than, greater, except condition_i then add,subtract,multiply,divide that pretty much constitute tax codes?

And, if so, couldn't governments simply distribute versions in XML, just as they often translate tax codes into multiple language versions for segments of the population that speak another language?

It should all reduce down to just a few inputs asking if I raise goats, nurture oil wells, export arms or other factors that may change my tax liabilities in a big way.

Re:tax software

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. And with the yearly changes in the tax code and all the implications of any new change, it's a full time job to change the code constantly to deal with it. Unless the OSS programmers were all independently wealthy, they'd have to be paid to do it in order to be able to eat in order to live to continue doing it.

Then... if all the code was actually written and it screwed your taxes up, you'd only be able to sue the person who wrote the code and you probably wouldn't be able to get much from someone who lives in his parents' basement. ;)

Re:tax software

[spitzak]

As other posters have stated, there are certainly things that you need to pay people to do (or conversely they won't give away the source code for, because it is a complex mess of rules that took a lot of work to figure out and that work is valuable, while the code is useless for any purpose other than implementing the exact same program so it has no value as a base for writing other software).

However there is really no reason these companies can't figure out a non-Windows-only base library and use that to produce the exact same program for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It's not like they are doing anything complex with the hardware or network, they are drawing forms on the screen. In fact this base library could be open-source, while the rules remain running atop it, and only the compiled rules are sold. Or the rules themselves could be downloaded from the internet as needed (this would prevent somebody from decompiling them all except by making every possible query).

It does seem likely that the browser will fulfill this underlying role in the near future.

Re:tax software

[Hosiah]

Total time to program it in Glade: 6 days without many features.
Time to test and debug: Another two.
Time to use it for yourself: Ten minutes.
Time to get it past the legal machine so somebody *else* can use it: infinity to the googleth power.

So, never.

Guys help please

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, this is what's happening:

my parents are out with friends, and they'll be back any minute so I REALLY need your help.

Heres some backround:

I volunteer on my sister's softball team, and so yea, whatever I meet this girl, her name is Michelle, and we've been going out for a while. We have a lot in common..... anyways....

So she came over like an hour ago, and I really want to lose my virginity, so I ask her to have sex.

She said: "No, no I can't it's not right" but I told her "Don't worry I know what I'm doing, plus I'll give you two n64 games if you say yes."

So I gave her Donkey Kong Racing, and Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball, and then she goes to my room. She's a bit confused and scared.

Then I think to myself "I need lube, right? I heard some guys saying you have to lube up or else it might not fit properly..

So I have no lube, but I really want to lose my virginity. I grab some butter from the fridge, but it's cold, it won't melt, so I microwaved it for like 5 minutes and i put it in a glass and poured it on her cooter, and now she's saying I burned it.

I don't know what to do, my parents are going to be back any minute and she's in the bathroom crying. Please help I am really really scared. Any idea how to shut her up? Should I give her another n64 game?

Re:Guys help please

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope she charges you with assault.

Re:Guys help please

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, here's what you do. Make sure she gets in the shower or bath and applies cold water. Ring 911, ask for an ambulance, give them your address, and tell them there is a burn victim in the bathroom. This will take care of the noise.

Then do a search on the Internet for shonky mental instutions, and admit yourself. This way you will avoid your parents, and find what you are looking for.

sigh*

[Tahir Azhar]

I don't know why but grandma kept insisting on NetBSD....

Re:sigh*

[yuretz]

Maybe, her hardware is too old...

Re:sigh*

[panda]

LOL. I wish had mod points. I'd mod that funny!

How representative was the sample?

[David Hume]

Looking at the results, I have to ask, how representative was the sample group? Was it, as it appears, entirely self-selected? And what does that say about the validity of the results?

I mean, 54% of the respondents use, or are considering, Ubantu? With only 19% for Red Hat, with another 26% for Fedora, for a total of 45%? Could that possibly be representative?

And the second most important application is "Digital Camera/Video?"

Re:How representative was the sample?

[n0dalus]

Looking at the results, I have to ask, how representative was the sample group? Was it, as it appears, entirely self-selected? And what does that say about the validity of the results?

They mention this in the full report under the section 'Statistical Anomalies'. "The survey had more exposure in certain distribution communities..."


And the second most important application is "Digital Camera/Video?"

Actually, the question that this answer comes from is "What mobile device support is required to meet your business user's needs?" It should also be noted that this was a 'Select all that apply' type question.

Re:How representative was the sample?

[CowboyBob500]

Red Hat and Fedora are not as popular in Europe as they are in the US. Here Mandr(ake|iva)/(Open) SuSE are the distros of choice for professional users. I've never personally met anyone who uses Red Hat or Fedora for example, and I know a lot of Linux users.

I suspect, therefore, that the survey included respondants from countries other than the US.

Bob

Re:How representative was the sample?

[Tahir Azhar]

wow. forget linux vs windows studies. its hard for some people to accept linux only studies even when they only pit linux distros against each other and their favourite distro is not at the top.

What are the chances that out of only 3,300 votes, 54% liked Ubuntu and only 19% Red Hat? Are the results really that out of place/bad that you have to question the validity of the results? Or should we say that Ubuntu paid for the survey?

It would be nice if people would start taking these polls for what they are i.e Random collection of stats from a minority of people (linux users in this case) and realize that any kind of results are possible which DOES NOT mean that the poll was biased or flawed. It is the nature of such surveys.

Re:How representative was the sample?

[budgenator]

And the second most important application is "Digital Camera/Video?"
Sure ever try to develope product brouchures without a digital camera? Last time my oldish digital camera just worked in Linux, I'm curious to try it now, the switch to udev has caused some weirdness on my Linux system running Arch Linux.

Re:How representative was the sample?

[Sonician]

Maybe the issue is that most Linux people are out of touch with what the general business marketplace really desires. Keep in mind that these people are the ones who've been groomed on Windows now for 15+ years, and they expect an alternatvie to be as similar as possible to it. Imagine some marketing guy trying to install applicatons, where he can't even find the ".exe" to install.

Re:How representative was the sample?

[JabberWokky]

Red Hat and Fedora aren't as dominant as people might think in the US. SUSE and K/Ubuntu enjoy quite a healthy mindshare here. It's the popular binary split... there's something internally satisfying about reducing things to simplistic "people use foo in area A and bar in area B", when in reality there are statistical variations rather than hard absolutes.

--
Evan

Re:How representative was the sample?

[An Onerous Coward]

The fact that it's an online survey means that the participants are self-selected. That alone means that the study is "flawed" insofar as its results do not generalize beyond the group that actually took the survey. For example, if you put up a survey about tapioca pudding, only people with strong opinions about tapioca pudding would participate. People who don't care about a subject don't participate in polls about that subject.

The worst thing you can do is create a self-selected survey, and use the results to generalize about the population at large. If you put up a survey about pet ownership, people who own pets are more likely to participate. So if 75% of respondents say, "I own a German Shepherd", it's very likely the survey got posted to alt.dogs.i-love-my-german-shepherd, and that the results have no bearing on actual pet ownership patterns.

This survey might be good for getting some ideas about ways to improve Linux's usability, which is good. But there may be classes of people with classes of problems that the survey didn't reach, so those problems aren't going to show up in the results. So it may not reflect the most important issues.

From the study:

Survey questions were developed by the OSDL Desktop Linux Working Group. The
survey URL was distributed via email and was picked up by a number of newsgroups and
news outlets. 3,374 individuals responded to the survey.

A useful exercise? Maybe. But not the hallmark of good science.

Re:How representative was the sample?

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe is a big place, aparently you have been on some island or something since I have met quite a few professional users using Fedora or RedHat. Also europe, probably a different crowd....

Re:How representative was the sample?

[just_another_sean]

Don't under estimate Ubuntu! It is a great Desktop distro. I imagine that the sample is not completely representative of the Linux user community but taken in the context of the desktop I bet it is pretty spot on. Somehow I don't think those of us running Linux on our servers took much notice of this survey. But the folks who have been trying Linux off and on for the past few years wondering if it works well enough to replace Windows probably did participate.

And the second most important application is "Digital Camera/Video?"

This is the one thing that my wife still hates me for after I put Ubuntu on her computer. Yes, it's easy for me to make it work and with some tweaking I could make it easy for her, I am just lazy... But it's little things like these that Vendors refuse to support cleanly on Linux that cause all the hesitation on the part of the regular users.

Re:How representative was the sample?

[Xerp]

If you have "some marketing guy" installing software, then you're just asking for trouble!

Re:How representative was the sample?

[Cyn]

In a recent online survey, 100% of respondants noted they enjoyed taking a moment out of their day to take single question online surveys.

"This is unprecedented" an insider was quick to note "This goes to show that all our past surveys were 100% accurate as well, as it proves that 100% of our users take all surveys - I mean - it can't mean anything but that!" ... it's hard to get a good sample group, but it's easy to lead the data in the direction you want.

Re:How representative was the sample?

[sootman]

Wow, great numbers! Sounds like 2006 will be the year of linux on the desktop! ;-)

Re:How representative was the sample?

[51mon]

>... any kind of results are possible which DOES NOT mean that the poll was biased or flawed....

Yes, but when the statistics throw up something as dramatic as more Desktop Ubuntu than Redhat, you question the representativeness of the statistics, because it is extremely unlikely that would occur by chance.

Obvious browser useragents should include the entire state of the OS, and we could settle this for the webbrowsing community. I looked in my referer log, it is either Linux or Debian, don't see none of the Ubuntu, or Redhat stuff ;-). Our weblogs suggest rather more browsers claiming to be Debian than Ubuntu, but that could be Ubuntu claiming to be Debian.

Re:How representative was the sample?

[Anonymous Coward]

at one time there was a link on ubuntu's front page to take this survey. that may have skewed the results just a little.

Re:How representative was the sample?

[HermanAB]

I just installed Fedora on a few machines (client requirement) and really, just like before, using a RedHat distro feels like doing time travel - going back 3 years or so - compared to Mandriva or Suse. RedHat certainly is not good for desktop use, while Mandriva, Suse and Ubuntu are great and have been great for years already - well at least Suse and Mandriva.

Obviously....

[Anonymous Coward]

The Linux is on fire.

The State of Linux Desktop

[ccozan]

Believe it or not, i am using Linux as primary desktop continuosly from 1997 ( with just a short interval where i was forced to work on windows, or face getting fired). I've grown practically toghether with Linux as Desktop. Man, it was a challenge in the beginning. Things that for a server weren't important, they become for a desktop the equivalent of endless hacking nights. But it was worth. I was really pleased with it. Ah, and there were not that many distros, i think i started with Slackware, and since then only Redhat ( and now Fedora). I've tried also SuSE and Mandrake, but RH was the most consistent and the most easy to work with that time. SuSE was a PITA, until maybe the latest versions. Debian was out of range because of the "stable means old software" filosofy, even though i used the backports for various friends of mine, who wanted desktops with Debian.

Now, if i take a look of latest gnome, but especially latest KDE, i can tell you, boy, this a fucking marvellous piece of UI, compared with was before. And all the small bits of integration with hardware are getting close to be a commodity, and not a luxury. I know, i didn't give back to much back to the community, but i am lurking from time to time in frenode's IRC channels, helping some poor beginners. Although, i think while the user friendliness of KDE(or gnome) has skyrocketed, there are still many hacks needed to make the user get the max out of what is offered. The weakest point and also the strongest point of FOSS is this somehow fractured and all over the world decentralised development of software. We should never abandon it, even if that would hurt the potential user ( i am not saying customer, because we talk about distribution and not commercialization).

That being said, I applaud again the efforts of all developers, that keep us with the vision of a Linux Desktop.

Re:The State of Linux Desktop

[Darth Daver]

I believe it. I have been using Linux as a desktop since 1996 (server since 1994), and it was my primary desktop from at least 1998 until earlier this year when I got a PowerMac with a 23" HD monitor. I love OS X, but I fully expect to use Linux as a desktop again in the future, especially after Apple releases systems with Intel processors supporting VT. Short of that, I will need a DVI KVM switch so I can share my new monitor with my old x86 system.

OS X on my PowerBook is the most pleasant computing experience I have ever had, but I still believe Linux has more power, flexibility, and freedom. My PowerMac is an absolute joy, but there are things I can no longer do. Being able to run Linux and OS X side-by-side will be the ultimate.

Re:The State of Linux Desktop

[ccozan]

Hehe, i have never tried OS X, just a few clicks in a shop. Being used with the Linux way of doing stuff, OS X seemed a bit strange, and not intuitivelly enough. I guess that's the problem with us, geeks, we need to look unter the hood and understand how things work. Linux excells at this, and really gives a good feeling when you understand how stuff works. While not everybody is doing this ( a normal computer user wouldn't), but the ones doing it are driving the force behind the movement and helping sorting out the good features from bloat.

Thansk for answering my comment, was a pleasure to read it and to answer back.

Re:The State of Linux Desktop

[cyberscan]

I too have enjoyed Linux almost from the start. My first experience with Unix on my personal computer was with S.C.O. (Yuck! but I had to get away from Windows). When I found that I couln't write the first line of c code unless I purchased their expensive compiler, I made the switch. I first istalled Debian from a downloaded boot disk. After I played with it for a few weeks, I went to Slackware. At work, I get to use SuSE. My experience with Linux was frustrating, but enjoyable from the very beginning. Now that Linux has involved into a much better functioning operating syestem, I don't think I could ever go back to Microsoft Windows. I originally switched because i wanted to design cool features and software for myself and I was poor, so I could not afford the expensive compilers that were available for Windows or DOS. Just think, if Microsoft has offered more freedom and their products at an affordable price, Linux might have never gained as much ground as it has in these few short years.

Re:Scuttle Micropenis lost it

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe it or not, my Linux-server is standing on my desktop right now.

Full results in PDF

[millette]

Full results are here in PDF format (333 KiB), coral linked : http://www.osdl.org.nyud.net:8090/dtl/DTL_Survey_R eport_Nov2005.pdf

Cabbage Patch Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Put a pile of Linux CDs in a display in a store that has a "Grand Opening".
2) Invite news media to the opening.
3) Pay group of people to go charging into the store to fight over the Linux CDs.
4) Profi... oh wait. They're free. And you have to pay those people. Soooo ... Loss!

Pagemaker? What year is it?

[gtada]

Pagemaker? Who actually listed Pagemaker as an application they'd like to see on Linux? Quark or InDesign would make more sense. The shrinking pool of leftover Pagemaker users don't have the clout to have Adobe port it to Linux. Hell, all of the users begging Adobe to port Photoshop don't have the clout. :|

Re:Pagemaker? What year is it?

[Anne Thwacks]

It was Me. I did it.

I want Pagemaker, cos I have a ton of work I did for clients with it that I dont want to lose, and I hate booting a Win box just for that.

However, I am a FreeBSD user, and I want a FreeBSD version of Pagemaker. (And Photoshop) And I would pay $100 for either. And thats FreeBSD on UltraSparc I don't use Dell boxes.

Re:Pagemaker? What year is it?

[molnarcs]

I was surprised at PageMaker as well... But actually we do have a good alternative to PageMaker if the need for it is real: Scribus!

Scribus exists for some time now, and still, it was only a few months ago that I heard about it, and only 3 weeks ago that I installed it. And I was absolutely amazed at its quality (and standard support, even the latest pdf specs, including embedded script support!). What OSDL needs is a central place where all the great apps likely to be needed in an enterprise/office environment should be listed. There aren't that many actually, but how many of the respondends who missed PageMaker knew about scribus? Seeing the quality of the app, I was surprised at the lack of marketing/hype this application receives. Even their website ... well, it is not bad, but it isn't good either.

Right now marketing focuses on distributions or tools, and rarely on the application stack (except FF and OO.o). GNOME does a good job at marketing as well. But KDE? They formed a new marketing group only recently, and as they started to look around, they found plenty of examples for KDE use in business, like this one (Dutch Record Shop Chain Migrates 1000 PCs to KDE). Or take a look at this initiave: part 1, part 2.. Or another example here. Quote:

second, i have the inkling that we have a lot of small and medium sized business deployments out there. personally i count anything under 500 seats to be in that umbrella. at the table (which i picked at random) i ate lunch at in munich during trolltech dev days there i found myself sandwiched between two such examples. while eating the rather amazingly good food, i discovered that on my right was a fellow who works for a company that makes linux based satelite t.v. transmission software (sky t.v. is amongst their clientelle) and they use qt for their in-house engineering tools. on my left were three men from a vienese company that writes kde software for a group of five private hospitals. these hospitals all run kde on the desktop and everything from patient records to x-rays is handled on them.

Cases like these will convince businesses to adopt linux solutions, and as the article says, not necessarily because lower costs, but because of the quality of the software out there. But there needs to be a central place that enumerates and provides a short description of the application stack (I think 10-15 desktop apps, no more, that are essential for business) as well as provides examples for the various scenarious where free software can be put to use. KDE in hospitals controlling everything including x-rays, a music record chain with desktop locked down via kiosk to include the 4 necessary apps, satellite tv transmission software - this is staggering if you think of it, and it should be shown to CIOs and PHBs (make a nice newsletter/booklet in scribus for instance :)))

Re:Pagemaker? What year is it?

[Perky_Goth]

(/me tries to remember the problem with Scribus)

ah, well, you see, there's this requirement to print pages like they're in a book, ie, 4 pages per sheet with two groups of consecutive pages. i read this from an enthusiast who was publishing a magazine using Scribus a while ago.
i do wonder if it is corrected at this point, and i'd be very glad if it is.

Re:Pagemaker? What year is it?

[molnarcs]

I used pagemaker years ago (on MacOS 7.5.x) - although only casually - at a company I worked for (for a brief period of time) and I didn't know it even exists today... A month ago I began designing a new website, where we would issue a quarterly newsletter, and a yearly book (in pdf format). I haven't thought of using any specific software for the newsletters at that time, though I had scribus installed (because it was there in ports, and I heard about it on some forum or something). So 3 weeks ago I tried it, and what surprised me was that it was very easy to use, and it is just perfect for the job. I don't use publishing (and never did) software "professionally" - and I assumed that these software are fairly complex, and generally, not for the casual desktop user.

Scribus changed that perception, and that's why I think it deserves a little marketing: it is usable with little effort for Joe Average desktop user, if he or she wants to quickly compile a document or presentation that looks cool. This is not to say it is not complex, because it is, but you don't have to learn everything to produce better looking documents than you could in oo.o, and faster! A larger userbase might lead to more feedback on missing features (or bugs) and faster development perhaps. Also, it is a useful application not only for people in publishing business, but average desktop users as well...

Re:Pagemaker? What year is it?

[Perky_Goth]

i agree it's a good app, though it is counter intuitive for anyone used to word processors. i think you conviced me to have a bigger look at it, which is a good thing. i was actually thinking of uing latex, but haven't found a guide on how to change stuff yet (ie, ok, i can separate content, but how do i change styles, spacing, indexes, what are all these other modules, and so on and so forth.) shame, because it's very powerfull.
oh, anyway, scribus. yes, i'll use it again, i just used it once to make a very simple poster and some things didn't work as expected

I know what you can do

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what to do, my parents are going to be back any minute and she's in the bathroom crying. Please help I am really really scared. Any idea how to shut her up? Should I give her another n64 game?

Her crying is the least of your worries. You need to move out of your parents' house. You're like, what, 30 years old already?

Top reasons

[james_gnz]

Hmmm...

Perhaps "Employees requesting Linux" and "My competitors have successfully deployed Linux" were rated as top reasons because these were the things that got companies looking at Linux, rather than them being a final deciding factor?

Or perhaps competitors successfully deploying Linux is seen as including decreased TCO etc. And employees' requests could certainly be based on these things (especially if they are generally IT workers, which I suspect is likely).

In order to resolve these issues, the questionnaire should have also asked "what were your employees' and competitors top reasons for choosing Linux?". :-)

Re:Top reasons

[CDarklock]

I actually see evidence of a different perception driving companies' adoption of Linux.

"What he did."

Let's say that fifty companies are all thinking about adopting Linux. Making a smart decision about this takes time and money. But if you just wait, sooner or later one of them will make a decision. If you then make the same decision, you don't have to spend time or money to make that decision. You simply copy what they've done, and it will be almost like you spent as much time and money as they did.

There are subtleties, of course, like choice of distribution and usage within the company. My company uses a basic philosophy that any server inside the firewall is Windows, and any server outside the firewall is Linux. If all you see is that we took down our Windows web servers and replaced them with Linux, you might get the wrong idea and start trying to replace your internal servers with Linux. That's not what we did, so you're not getting the same benefits we get. (It may, of course, turn out to be a Big Win. Even a blind dog finds a bone sometimes.)

The flaw in this thinking is that you don't control the decision-making process. You don't know whether your competition made a long detailed study of Linux v. Windows in the general sense, or compared the performance of two file servers for a month, or just got drunk and flipped a coin. You are basing your decision purely and simply on the belief that your competition is smarter than you are. This belief usually indicates that there are things you are already doing wrong, and you know it. Copying someone else's right move will not magically undo all your previous bad ones.

This isn't new or unique; companies have *always* blindly copied the work of other companies, so they don't have to come up with their own ideas. Coming up with ideas is HARD, dammit. But it seems to me that you might get better results asking "what is my competition doing WRONG, and how can we do it right?"

That's what Microsoft is usually asking. There are two things that count: first and best. It's better to be first, because once you're first, nobody else can come along later and be first; if you're not the first, you *have* to be the best.

Microsoft rarely produces the first of anything. Do the math.

Re:Top reasons

[james_gnz]

That's what Microsoft is usually asking. There are two things that count: first and best. It's better to be first, because once you're first, nobody else can come along later and be first; if you're not the first, you *have* to be the best.

Microsoft rarely produces the first of anything. Do the math.

You've got to be kidding me. Are you suggesting that MS Windows 95 bet IBM OS/2 Warp on pure technical merit, MS Internet Explorer bet Netscape Navigator on pure technical merit, etc.? I think you're being a bit naive.

Re:Top reasons

[CDarklock]

I never said "pure technical merit". I said "better". Technical merit isn't the only thing that makes a product better, which is precisely why OS/2 and Netscape were left scratching their heads in Microsoft's wake. They thought being the technically superior product meant they would win. Unfortunately, most people don't quite understand "technically superior", and they go with whatever looks good. Netscape's default browser color was a drab medium gray, while IE's was gleaming white. The difference in contrast alone spelled "better" to many people... especially older people. And that wasn't even remotely a technical superiority; it was just one line initialising the default background color.

But it made a much bigger difference to a lot more people than any kind of standards compliance.

Gamers

[DigiShaman]

What about games? THe only reason I'm staying with WinXP is to play the latest games due to DirectX/Open GL support and the always updated driver base. Seriously, why is the entertainment aspect always left out? For fucks sake, gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry. I would THINK it would be a huge factor for home PC users.

Re:Gamers

[n0dalus]

Wine has come an incredible way since it's conception. I am amazed by how well it runs some games (and other Windows software) these days. I think it's safe to say that by the time the Linux desktop is polished enough for average Joe, wine will have advanced to a point where it runs most Windows games/software very acceptably.

I would like to think that one day wine will actually be better at running Windows software than Windows itself is. This is possible because while Microsoft is intentionaly breaking compatability between releases, wine is being developed to run programs from any Windows version. Often programs actually run faster in wine as well, since the linux kernel generally manages things better.

Re:Gamers

[rsidd]

What about games?

In a corporate set-up? "Our employees demanded games so we installed Linux..."

Seriously, lots of windows-using kids have been hooked by the games on my Linux laptop, and my wife and I often play frozen-bubble. Nothing wrong with the games available on linux. Multiperson shooters and jaw-dropping graphics do not good games make, and people who insist on those will likely as not buy a PS or Xbox or whatever (the markets for game consoles is way bigger than the PC market). 3D acceleration works fine with linux on most systems; as linux gains popularity, game writers will likely target linux, but I hardly see why linux developers should develop games.

Re:Gamers

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, most people aren't pimply lamers. That's why.

Re:Gamers

[xtracto]

I would like to think that one day wine will actually be better at running Windows software than Windows itself is. This is possible because while Microsoft is intentionaly breaking compatability between releases,

Have you seen Windows code? or you are getting this from the bottom of your ass?, Comeon, dont say something just to sound clever... you do not sound clever.

Often programs actually run faster in wine as well, since the linux kernel generally manages things better.
Ofter, actually, generally. So, I can conclude from your post that you do not know a shit, and you are only trolling.

While I can not deny anything that you are saying, neither can you show proofs about it. All that "windows software is not version compatible" is shit. Microsoft makes all the effort to make the applications for previous plataforms work on the current ones. Something open source developers does not care.

Re:Gamers

[YttriumOxide]

Purely to show my brother he should switch to Linux, I ran Doom 3 on my Linux box under WINE and it ran slightly better than my Windows box.

The hardware was radically different, including a MUCH nicer graphics card in the Linux box, so it wasn't a fair comparison from that perspective and I'm not going to say "it was faster cos it was Linux" or anything like that - but what it did show nicely is that WINE can handle the likes of Doom 3 no problem at all given the hardware to do so.

Re:Gamers

[MortimerV]

I've made a low-budget game for Windows and have ported it to Mac OSX with little hassle. For Windows I have the MSDN and for OSX I have the Apple Developer Connection. What resources are available for Linux?

Re:Gamers

[Chaffar]

I would THINK it would be a huge factor for home PC users.

I'll tell you why I stopped using WinXP even though I have been playing PC games for 20 years now... The 2 factors that drove me away from XP are:

- I was completely fed up of CONSTANTLY maintaining the Anti-virus/spyware/malware software up-to-date, and STILL get a dozen of so of them every month - I have an computer illiterate family :'(

- IMHO, the quality of PC Games has dropped substantially in the past , oh say 5 years. I used to play PC games because I felt they were usually far more creative and intelligent than any console game: god games (CIV!!!), 1st person shooters (they used to be PC-only before...), simulators ( Apache Longbow, Hind, whatever). But ever since EA has turned its evil eye towards PCs, I came to realize that PCs have started producing games that are fundamentally the same ones as the ones you get on consoles... So the PC as a gaming machine had just become, in my eyes, an expensive console. At the same time, you can see how much better consoles have become in the same period of time, which made my shift even easier.

- Oh and 3- Computer games have become obscenely ressource-hungry, usually with no graphical justification *cough*C&C Generals*cough*. I don't know if this is due to lazy coding and rushed jobs, or malice due to collusion between hardware manufacturers and software producers *cough*EAINTELWINDOWS*cough*. I'm betting on the former, but I have come to expect anything in this industry...

And gaming under Linux just keeps on getting better with time, now with Quake IV http://www.filecloud.com/files/file.php?file_id=22 97 binaries available, I believe this is the first step towards mainstream acceptance of Linux as a gaming machine.

Re:Gamers

[n0dalus]

Have you seen Windows code? or you are getting this from the bottom of your ass?, Comeon, dont say something just to sound clever... you do not sound clever.

Like I said, 'I would like to think that...'. Do I really need to explain myself? I have no idea if it will ever happen, but I think it's possible. And yes Microsoft really does intentionally break compatability between releases, and especially with their competitors. There's plenty of software that doesn't run in later versions of Windows. Think Windows 3.11 software, Windows 98 software and even Windows NT software that doesn't run on XP. Don't believe that Microsoft 'makes all the effort' to improve compatability. They precisely calculate exactly how much compatability they need to get users to upgrade, but to then break compatability with the Windows version 2 releases earlier in the process.

Ofter [sic], actually, generally. So, I can conclude from your post that you do not know a shit, and you are only trolling.

I'm pretty sure you're the one that's trolling. The 'often' and 'generally' were referring to two different things. Often software runs faster under wine that it does in windows, try for yourself if you don't believe me. And generally (ie, in general) this is because the linux kernel is more efficient than the Windows kernel.

I wouldn't call myself a full-fleged wine developer but I stay in touch with some of their paid developers and I have submitted several enhancements and bug fixes to wine. I think that gives me some credence when making my comments.

Re:Gamers

[bensch128]

Except directshow support is nonexistant.

If wine supported directshow the way it does direct3D, Premiere would run and you'd have another happy linux user :(

Ben

Re:Gamers

[EvanED]

This is possible because while Microsoft is intentionaly breaking compatability between releases, wine is being developed to run programs from any Windows version

What's this?

I can think of very few systems that have been around as long as DOS/Windows and have better backwards compatibility. I can think of only one Windows program that runs on an earlier version but not XP. About the ONLY thing that MS has done to break compatibility is prevent direct hardware access (e.g. for sound cards) in old DOS programs.

Only system I know that's better (though I'm sure there are plenty more, but still a minority) about keeping backwards compatibility is IBM mainframes. What may be the best common mainframes in the world (IBM z/Series) still runs stuff made to run on the s/390 architecture.

Re:Gamers

[EvanED]

I can think of only one Windows program that runs on an earlier version but not XP

s/one Windows program/one Windows program that I've tried

Re:Gamers

[EvanED]

And yes Microsoft really does intentionally break compatability between releases, and especially with their competitors.

Any evidence for that claim?

There's plenty of software that doesn't run in later versions of Windows.

Name some. I've only hit one program for a post-3.11 Windows version, either 9x or NT line, that won't run under XP. Hell, most DOS programs still run.

Think Windows 3.11 software

That's over a decade old. Even if they are breaking compatibility with it, I really don't think you can fault them for it.

Windows 98 software and even Windows NT software

Like I said, name some, because I've only ever run across one. (Hasbro's Clue. And a pretty poorly programmed piece of software too. Didn't even run quite right for me in its intended version of Windows.)

Re:Gamers

[LordFnord]

Web forums where you'll get lots of responses like "WTF OMG d00d j00 r so l4m3 4 wr1tng a g4me on M$ windoze LOL u sux0r".

Re:Gamers

[muszek]

Nothing wrong with the games available on linux. You made me cry, sir.

I have to wait till my roommate goes to bed before I can get a dose of Civ IV.

Re:Gamers

[ceeam]

Actually, _this_ is one of OSS advantages. On Windows and Apple you need help and manuals. On Linux you can check other people's source to see how they are doing stuff. On Windows you cannot check notepad.exe source to see how to write a simple Windows program so you _need_ artifical samples and help files.

Well, the source and the Internet of course.

Re:Gamers

[LordFnord]

I used to play PC games because I felt they were usually far more creative and intelligent than any console game: god games (CIV!!!)

Some of them still are. I have done zero hours of actual work this week because of a certain newly-released game :-)

It's like music, or films, or just about any other creatively-based industry. 90% of the stuff produced is mass-market plasticised sugar-coated crap, but there's always that 10% left over that makes the whole process worthwhile - of course, my 10% might not be the same as your 10%...

I came to realize that PCs have started producing games that are fundamentally the same ones as the ones you get on consoles

Sometimes games are technically superior on the PC than they are on the consoles. There are also many I can't play without a mouse and keyboard (and not just Quake and friends, think Baldur's Gate 2 with all its keyboard shortcuts), which isn't an option on consoles at least AFAIK.

There are also some types of games - ones that you don't just pick up and play for ten minutes, basically - that I don't think are really suited to consoles at all. Equally, there are some games - usually ones involving dance mats, light guns, or other funky hardware - that I don't think work well on PCs.

YMMV, of course, but I think to achieve gaming nirvana you still need a console *and* a computer. Hopefully in five years this statement will no longer be true, but I've been hoping that for twenty years now and it hasn't happened yet.

Oh and 3- Computer games have become obscenely ressource-hungry,

I am in violent agreement with you on this one, but then I can remember saying the same thing in 1990 when I had to upgrade the memory in my Atari ST from 512k to 1Mb so I could play Powermonger. Irritatingly this sort of "push the boundaries by releasing a game that isn't quite runnable on the hardware available today" attitude only used to be taken by luminaries like Molyneux or Carmack (who could be forgiven, as they made up for it with the games they released), whereas now everyone seems to think all PC gamers have upwards of £2,000 to spend on hardware every year.

Personally my favourite game is still the original arcade version of Defender.

Re:Gamers

[simoncrute]

I would like to think that one day wine will actually be better at running Windows software than Windows itself is.

Nah, I remember what happened to the last OS that did that.

Re:Gamers

[CrazedWalrus]

And yes Microsoft really does intentionally break compatability between releases, and especially with their competitors.

Any evidence for that claim?

Didn't the XP SP2 break compatability with a significant amount of software? I know our company waited as long as possible to deploy it because the SP had such a bad reputation. I also remember people reporting that their computers were not working correctly after the 'upgrade'.

Anecdotal evidence, sure, but it's evidence I'm certain that most enterprise IT folks on Slashdot can recall.

I think MS does an admirable job keeping compatability between releases, but they *do* break things sometimes (and not necessarily for bad reasons).

The OP's point was, I think, that wine is being coded to run programs intended for any windows release from 3.1 onward, so programs will eventally have better probable compatability with wine than with a given legacy version of Windows. Running with Wine is sort of like running with every version of Windows simultaneously.

Re:Gamers

[Anonymous Coward]

What about games? THe only reason I'm staying with WinXP is to play the latest games due to DirectX/Open GL support and the always updated driver base.

It isn't an issue for me. I have a job! ;-)

Seriously, when I got into my current set of professional-full-time computer-jobs, they keep me so busy that I don't have the inclination to spend more time in front of the computer -- Slashdot reading aside, of course. I used to be a big gamer, but now it's just not worth the effort for me. I hear that other people still enjoy games and that's great -- I certainly had a lot of fun like that when I wasn't so busy.

Re:Gamers

[budgenator]

Just today I download flash 7.0 installer.exe , right-clicked it and left-clicked run-as, Admin, password, and it broked, Admin doesn't have permission to run a file saved under a user's name, what kind of shit is that? That's somekind of effort on Microsoft's part.

Re:Gamers

[guisar]

It's not so much earlier software not running with later (although I could cite examples of internally developed software) as new software not running with the old and having no recourse other than shelling out $100 or so on an otherwise useless (to me) update. As an example, specific to gaming, the new expansion pack to BF2 is cited as only running under Microsoft Windows XP. Now it does run fine under W2K but the downloadable installer specifically checks and stops the installation so you have to work around it. There are many other examples I could cite. Games are the only reason I can imagine to keep Microsoft Windows on a home PC- they are also what most males under the of 30 actually use the computer in their home for. For teenagers, the critical applications seems to be MP3 player downloads, AIM (or varients) and, of course, games.

Re:Gamers

[ookaze]

I can think of very few systems that have been around as long as DOS/Windows and have better backwards compatibility. I can think of only one Windows program that runs on an earlier version but not XP

Well, you can think, that's good. If you could think right, it would be better.
I can show you lots of programs that ran on Win9x and don't work in WinXP (my TV card capture program and its codecs are one of them).
Or that work on XP, but not as intended, but I supposed that counts as "works" for you (VirtualDub capture is one of these programs).

Look no further than Windows XP SP2.

Your experience and your thinking is clearly not representative of the majority.

Re:Gamers

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. His experience is that of the majority. Just because you have run across a few poorly developed Windows 95 applications (that probably relied on custom vxd drivers) refuse to run correctly on newer versions of Windows doesn't mean there is a systemic issue with Microsoft's commitment to backwards compatibility.

Re:Gamers

[Kadin2048]

I'm going to take a stab at answering this question, or at least my theory as to the answer.

I think it's because -- despite the stereotype of Linux developers being high school or college kids -- the people who actually work on the Linux codebase aren't gamers. Or, more to the point, most gamers aren't interested in writing code and working to make stuff run on Linux. It's a different mindset: one group sees a computer as something to play with, not just a means but an end in itself; the other group sees it as something to play on, a means only.

Maybe I'm biased and maybe I'm using a bad sample, but the majority of computer geeks and actual software developers I know really don't spend that much time playing PC games (or they use consoles), and the people who are really wed to their game machines aren't really interested in playing around with a new OS for the heck of it. It's just two groups of people which, while I'm sure there's some overlap, don't have as much in common as you might think on the surface. Most Linux users are honestly interested in their computer's OS; to a gamer it's just a launchpad that lets them play whatever they want, and the open/closed source controversy is basically irrelevant. The only advantage Linux might have is that it's free as in beer (but a lot of gamers that I know have pirated versions of Windows anyway, so it's not much of a selling point).

I'm sure this will get a lot of people responding with "but I'm a gamer and I use Linux," but before you do, realize that you're a statistical anomaly in the big picture just by virtue of reading Slashdot and caring about the issue either way.

Re:Gamers

[Chemicalscum]

"Our employees were playing Windows games so we installed Linux..."

Re:Gamers

[Chandon Seldon]

The resources for Linux programming aren't as centralized as they are for commerical systems, but they are very good quality after the couple seconds it takes to figure out where they are.

I'd start with the following:

• The man pages and info documentation included with any Linux system.
• The Gnome and KDE developer sites. If you're developing commercial software, develop for Gnome and your app will work fine on KDE.
• For specific applications like graphics and audio, you may need to use other libraries (i.e. libsdl and wxWidgets)
• If you have any questions, there is 24/7 live human technical support for application developers on IRC. Don't undervalue this - being able to ask a real human and get an immediate answer is huge. (try asking in irc.freenode.net #linux or #debian for what channel to ask specific questions if you can't figure it out)

Re:Gamers

[Mad Merlin]

Perhaps you should have compared native Doom 3 with Wine Doom 3?

Re:Gamers

[Lumpy]

Actually I got my daughter and GF completely on linux with one application.

crack attack.

that game is so addictive you can get anyone to convert just for that one alone.

Re:Gamers

[LordFnord]

On Windows you cannot check notepad.exe source to see how to write a simple Windows program

But you can go to go to Sourceforge, download an OSS text editor - which is probably orders of magnitude superior to Notepad anyway - and see how they do it. OSS isn't forbidden on Windows (at least, not yet <grin>), it's just MS's code you can't see.

In addition, all MS IDEs come with an "Application Wizard" which will build a basic app for you so you can pick through the code and see how the controls work. Just for chuckles, the one from Visual Basic 6 - possibly the most-used IDE MS have ever released - was, in fact, a simple text editor.

Re:Gamers

[Blakey Rat]

If he thinks Microsoft is intentionally breaking compatibility, they he's in for a real shock if he ever tries, say, OS X. (Apple *does* intentionally break backwards compatibility, although not very often; Microsoft bends over backwards to keep older programs running. Read Raymond Chen's blog The Old New Thing http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/ and count how many postings there are about Microsoft fixing bugs in other vendors' programs, or adding in some new compatibility code to cope with assumptions made by some older program.)

Re:Gamers

[TrancePhreak]

The breaking of apps in SP2 was more related to the NX bit being turned on. It can be turned of, thus rendering those applications useable again. Certain apps written for specific versions of other libraries sometimes break. Such as Blood Omen: Legacy Of Kain. However, someone hacked the exe to disable the check and it runs just fine on WinXP.

Re:Gamers

[TrancePhreak]

MSDN has lots of examples and answers to questions as to how to build SuperPad, which is a more complex version of Notepad. Since MSDN has it all in one place, this makes OSS's seeming advantage a disadvantage as you have to scour the internets looking for what you need.

Re:Gamers

[killjoe]

If windows is so backward compliant why is that their own software lists different downloads for XP, NT, 2K, 95 etc. Hell they even insist on service packs. Here is a hint, windows XP is not compatible with windows XP-SP2.

Re:Gamers

[DroopyStonx]

I agree with one of the above posters: Wine is great.

The Apps Database shows Top X apps in each category. Gaming area has some surprising results, one of which being World of Warcraft (!) on their *GOLD* list, meaning it's virtually flawless.

Half-Life 2 is on there as well.

There's also other apps like Cedega which have a much larger library of supported games, but I believe you have to pay for it.

In any case, some of the most popular games out can run without a hitch.

Re:Gamers

[mrcparker]

System Shock II

Re:Gamers

[MortimerV]

Thanks! This is just the information I needed, especially the IRC channels. The biggest difficulty I've run into is trying to convert Windows terms into Linux, and communicating what I need to know to Linux users. With more experience using the OS, the communications problem should go away.

Re:Gamers

[whatteaux]

"...still runs stuff made to run on the s/390 architecture."

ITYM the s/360 architecture (1960s). The s/390 architecture is quite recent, and would be nothing to brag about being still compatible with.

Re:Gamers

[Mistshadow2k4]

It's late, I'm tired, so this might be redundant, I dunno....

As I've posted before, there are far more free "little" games for Linux than WIndows. And I'm not talking crap games, I mean good games; arcade, puzzlers, shooters, etc. Games that would be $15-$20+ shareware on Windows are free on Linux. But - there aren't a lot of big games for Linux. So for those you will need cedega, but cedega works fine with a LOT of Windows games. In the end, there might be a few games you like that you can't play on Linux, but there will be many more that work great. Plus if you and/or a family member are more into the little games, they'll appreciate having all those kinds of games they can download for free.

Now, some distros don't come with a lot of games built in (though they still beat the hell out of the 4 piddling games Windows comes with), you can find quite a few more with a search engine. No, the install isn't as simple as one-click and up comes the Wizard, but they're rarely difficult to install. I was still a total newbie and I easily installed several games by just following the instructions. If you have problems, do another search for message boards about Linux in general and your distro in particular. That's part of what they're there for.

Re:Gamers

[EvanED]

my TV card capture program and its codecs are one of them

Hauppauge perhaps?

I forgot about the Win 9x version of their TV app since it came with one for 2000/XP line, so I guess that makes two programs for me.

Or that work on XP, but not as intended, but I supposed that counts as "works" for you

No, I would count that as not working. That's why Clue makes it into the list.

Look no further than Windows XP SP2. ...which is probably the second biggest change they've made. (Second to only the blocking of HW access by DOS programs with XP.) And yet, I HAVE STILL HAD NO PROBLEMS WITH IT!

I don't put a ton of stress on my computer or anything like that, but I don't go lightly either. And the numbers work out so that I had more Firefox extensions break with the 1.5 upgrade than I have had Windows programs break by a Windows upgrade, and I've got fewer than a dozen extensions installed. (I don't bring this up to denegrate Firefox at all, or even really to compare an OS to a web browser; I brought it up merely to illustrate that there are very few upgrade problems.)

I'm not claiming that all programs still work, but there's no denying that ALMOST all do.

I took an informal poll over IM of four friends; three said perhaps they've had problems with 1 or 2 programs stop working, the fourth said he's had a lot, but upon further questioning I established that they were pretty much all DOS games that hit the sound card directly.

Re:Gamers

[EvanED]

Didn't the XP SP2 break compatability with a significant amount of software? I know our company waited as long as possible to deploy it because the SP had such a bad reputation. I also remember people reporting that their computers were not working correctly after the 'upgrade'.

I don't know the exact extent of SP2 problems, but yes, there were some. But I would suggest that they still affected a pretty small percentage of programs. I personally didn't run into any.

And that's saying something, because it seems that SP2 may be MS's most damaging break of backward compatibility. Probably the prohibition in XP of accessing HW directly broke more software (pretty much any DOS game that uses the sound card for example), but since SP2 affected recent software it was probably bigger in terms of effect.

And it's notable to point out that MS's main motivation with SP2 was security, and the changes that broke compatibilty were set along that goal.

The OP's point was, I think, that wine is being coded to run programs intended for any windows release from 3.1 onward, so programs will eventally have better probable compatability with wine than with a given legacy version of Windows

May have been *a* point, even the main point, but is really irrelevant to what I'm saying. I was mostly addressing the comment that not only does MS break compatibility for a significant number of applications (which is just plain false), they do it intentionally. The latter especially is pure BS.

Re:Gamers

[EvanED]

Uh... sorta, but not really.

I did intend to say the S/390 architecture (and wasn't confusing it with the S/360). I wasn't sure if S/360 stuff was still compatible, whereas I did know that S/390 stuff definitely is.

I did though think the 390 was released in the very early 80's, which is false; it was announced it 1990. (I was probably thinking of the S/370's XA addresses, which were added in 1982.)

So by my understanding, most four-decade-old S/360 binaries can run on today's z/Series. That to me is pretty darn impressive.

Email?!?

[el_womble]

I've ranted about this before, but why are people so obsessed with email?

No encryption (unless you have a degree in IT), no authentication (because people are tight, and nobody out side of IT knows what PGP is), poor support for attachments (MIME is a hack) and no enforcable equivalent to recorded delivery.

That's before we start to think about the mess that is HTML encoded mails.

I could live without security, but I'm really suprised that corporations can.

We've been using email for over 10 years now, and it hasn't progressed at all and I don't believe for a moment that this is a 'if its not broke...' situation.

If the FOSS community could establish a new email protocol that transparnetly added real support for attachments, security and formatting and it was adopted quickly by Thunderbird, Evolution and Mail.app (I'm a Mac zealot so I want it too) the next version of Exchange would support it too. In the mean time, Redhat, Suse and Ubuntu could be peddling Linux as the next big thing in email - something that might get the attention of CEOs who's only realy contact with a computer is email.

Re:Email?!?

[m50d]

No encryption (unless you have a degree in IT), no authentication (because people are tight, and nobody out side of IT knows what PGP is)

PGP on linux is as easy as it is possible to get effective email encryption/authentication. It's really well integrated into every email client I've seen. But for encryption authentication to be meaningful the user has to generate keys, and that's the part you're probably thinking is too hard for the average user. But there's really no way to make it simpler without defeating the object entirely.

Re:Email?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

10 years?? Try 23 years :)

And, oh yeah, lots of ideas on how to replace SMTP have been proposed. None of them have caught on.

Re:Email?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

in a business environment encryption needs to be done from server to server

not so much a client issue.

Re:Email?!?

[cosam]

But for encryption authentication to be meaningful the user has to generate keys, and that's the part you're probably thinking is too hard for the average user. But there's really no way to make it simpler without defeating the object entirely.

I don't know about that. A couple of weeks ago, as I was reinstalling my main Linux box, I installed the latest Thunderbird package and the rather handy Enigmail extension. I was much impressed to be greeted at startup by a easy-to-follow wizard which took me painlessly through the entire process!

Re:Email?!?

[YttriumOxide]

APOP... Authenticated SMTP... POP Before SMTP (okay, that's a hack, but still)...

All of the above on plain old POP and SMTP. That's without going a layer or two down to things like IPSec or sideways to something like PGP to ensure the data itself is safe as it flies across the network.

Go away from POP/SMTP to the likes of IMAP and even more possibilities open up.

I'd say we've got email security... it's just not particularly good yet from a "security specialist" viewpoint - good enough for most "business" customers though.

Re:Email?!?

[james_gnz]

If the FOSS community could establish a new email protocol that transparnetly added real support for attachments, security and formatting and it was adopted quickly by Thunderbird, Evolution and Mail.app (I'm a Mac zealot so I want it too) the next version of Exchange would support it too.

Not likely. There are two ways a standard can achieve wide adoption. One is if Microsoft pushes it (you'll ruin all chance of that if it has any association with the GPL). The other is if it's already had wide adoption since MS Windows 3.1 (http, ftp, pop3, smtp, nntp, HTML, GIF, JPEG, JavaScript, Java, Flash, PDF). You need to make Microsoft think it was their idea. Build it into FreeBSD.

Re:Email?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

While it isn't a perfect system it is the only system that is widely used. It's kinda similar to normal snail mail, that, while in decline, still is one of the more reliable ways of communicating.

On my working place I would say 80% of the stuff people do is using email clients or wordprocessing. This is a small administrative unit, not a tech company.

The demands people hav from the story fits rather well with how things work around here.

Re:Email?!?

[McDutchie]

I've ranted about this before, but why are people so obsessed with email?

Because it's the most widely used and most practical application of the Internet.

No encryption (unless you have a degree in IT), no authentication (because people are tight, and nobody out side of IT knows what PGP is),

Public-key encryption is inherently difficult, it's not going to be made any easier by changing email protocols. There are very user-friendly PGP interfaces available already, the problem is getting people to use them. The bottom line is that people simply don't care about privacy or encryption.

poor support for attachments (MIME is a hack)

Give me a break! MIME works just fine.

and no enforcable equivalent to recorded delivery.

That point I can concede, but that's nothing that a simple "please send a quick reply if you have seen this" can't solve.

That's before we start to think about the mess that is HTML encoded mails.

Agreed there. So don't send them.

I could live without security, but I'm really suprised that corporations can.

I'm not surprised in the least.

[...]
If the FOSS community could establish a new email protocol that transparnetly added real support for attachments, security and formatting and it was adopted quickly by Thunderbird, Evolution and Mail.app (I'm a Mac zealot so I want it too) the next version of Exchange would support it too.

Ha! You don't seriously believe that yourself.

Re:Email?!?

[m50d]

Indeed, and any graphical gpg shell will have the same. But given that the OP is saying you can't use encryption without having a degree in IT, he presumably thinks that even this is too difficult for the average user.

Re:Email?!?

[marcosdumay]

Gaim has a bottuon: "Generate gpg keys"...

But I see what the GP means, not everybody understands that you should exchange the public keys, and how to check if the message was signed. We could tell them, but it will take a long time to convince anyone to use that.

err

[narkotix]

i find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter

Re:Why not to chose GNOME !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice Job, Whore.

why change if you're NOT nhappy with windoze

[ericcantona]

Only 7-15% reported being unhappy with existing OS (i.e., windoze). This may seem on first inspection surprising. It suggests that change to linux was not driven by the user base in these cases.
However, herein lies an important point; users are users, they rate what they can see, the GUI and the apps. They'd have to be working in a very strange company to be allowed to, for example, discover how much easier life is when config is all done by plain text files, i.e., to learn and appreciate the beauty of *nix. Thus, I'm really not sure how they are in a position to rate the OS/kernel.

Re:why change if you're NOT nhappy with windoze

[oztiks]

Only 7-15% reported being unhappy with existing OS (i.e., windoze).

the question i have is that ms FUD? or is that because users havent experienced anything better?

windows is widly known to be unstable and problematic so badly now that even when its not these things people still label it as such and from my experience everyone loves to bag ms, even the non geekish users ...

However, herein lies an important point; users are users, they rate what they can see, the GUI and the apps. They'd have to be working in a very strange company to be allowed to, for example, discover how much easier life is when config is all done by plain text files, i.e., to learn and appreciate the beauty of *nix. Thus, I'm really not sure how they are in a position to rate the OS/kernel.

I relate this to my above comments about users not really knowing anything better then windows, i suggest looking at what the newer distros of linux have to offer, perhaps looking at xandros or even suse, the problems that your discussing have been and gone along time ago. You have the advanced textfile based distros, slackware and debian (which even now can utilise the gui config apps if need be), then you have the simpleton versions xandros, suse, mandriva, etc

Re:why change if you're NOT nhappy with windoze

[supermank17]

the question i have is that ms FUD? or is that because users havent experienced anything better?

It's doubtful its FUD. Most people don't know what Linux or *BSD is, much less care. Also, I think you'll find that even if they do know about *nix, they still won't care too much. Something along the lines of "if it ain't broke..."

windows is widly known to be unstable and problematic so badly now...

Haven't used it too much lately, have you? XP actually managed to resolve most of the stability issues.

Re:why change if you're NOT nhappy with windoze

[oztiks]

okay look can you please read my thread again ..

Most people don't know what Linux or *BSD is, much less care. Also, I think you'll find that even if they do know about *nix, they still won't care too much.

This is exactly what im trying to say! Forget if its not broken nonsense, not many people have had the choise this is exactly what im getting at, i recon if people did there would be a percentile which would switch sides of the fence.

Haven't used it too much lately, have you? XP actually managed to resolve most of the stability issues.

Again I didnt question the stability, i said its widly known to cause issues. EG i work in an office full of IT people that spend all day moaning and groaning about instabilites of windows, this problem that problem blah blah i get it all day. Same with the accounts person when ever something doesnt go right for her, instant blame windows.

Re:why change if you're NOT nhappy with windoze

[supermank17]

I guess I wasn't as clear as I could've been. I was agreeing with your first point, that most people don't have experience with other OS's. I'm not sure that they would switch even if they did know (at my shop the IT department is pretty happy with windows, and even though several of them are old unix boys feel no urge to try and rework everything). As to your second point... I'm still not sure I understand. You actually do say that windows is widely known to be unstable in your first post. Granted, people gripe about windows a lot, ala "ah, crap, -random program- just crashed. Stupid Windows..." But, that doesn't mean they're looking for an alternative. In fact, I'll bet that most of the problems of that type are not OS related, but software related. I haven't had Windows completely lock up on me in a very long time (certainly less often than I've had X crash on my linux machine).

Which Linux Desktop? There are several

[dbond]

This, IMHO, is why organisations are slow to adopt Linux. KDE, Gnome or X.org, (or... or...)? The one thing you can say about Windows and Mac OS X is that if you write an application, you only have to write for one window manager. The sooner distro's start REMOVING choice of desktop environment, the better. David

Re:Which Linux Desktop? There are several

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you haven't noticed, X.org is what kde and gnome run on... and often, distros have support for both gtk and qt, so I don't see this as a problem...

5 of 5 people in this room say i'm great

[wsumark]

What general user of windows would ever be subject to a Linux forum? I hope that my employees (on ms software) are trolling the net for reasons to say that they could be more effective on open-source rather than M$.

The general user is really heated about this MS v. Open source issue, every day someone has come in early to put a flaming Office 2003 cd on our office's front steps and then demand that we hire a whole new staff to support linux. We get shit when we upgrade from one version of Office to another because it LOOKS different, not even because it ACTS different, and we are a HUGE company (the HUGE was only to show that we are not a 10 person organization working on eBay... you have definitely heard of us, we are "Kind of a big deal" -- always funny)

Who wouldn't support linux\oss becoming the standard? Or anything that is ubiquitous and user friendly... Hopefully the next volume of "The Tipping Point" re-addresses this issue. Won't be long before Microsoft pulls their head out of their ass or O.S. just blows them out of the water.

Re:5 of 5 people in this room say i'm great

[Anonymous Coward]

The general user is really heated about this MS v. Open source issue..

The general user doesn't give a shit about the MS vs OS issue. They just use the software that works for them to get the job done.

Who wouldn't support linux\oss becoming the standard?

Linux has a ways to go when different distros can't even conform to a specific desktop environment.

Penguins have bad interfaces.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can anybody tell me why most UIs (kde, gnome) look strikingly similar to Windows as opposed to OS X. I used an open source distro for a while after tossing my copy of windows but soon gave up. The interface is just bad... The GUI for linux just wasn't there either, the only difference was that now I had a box the was more philosophically sound... (i.e. I didn't have to pirate software to afford it) Alas that didn't last either...

After much gnashing of teeth my flatmate showed me a curious program called Quicksilver on Mac OS X. This interface, the speed of text, the joy of GUI converted me. I bought a mac because of it. (i was a mac hater for a long time). So basically, I want an interface in linux that doesn't suck. And maybe a linux box that had some translucent plastic and spiffy embosed tux logo...

Penguin powered for ages

[LABarr]

I have been running my business on a Linux desktop and F/OSS for a number of years. (My servers are all OpenBSD, however) I have done a number of consulting gigs where a Linux deployment is discussed, and in some cases, choosen as the exclusive desktop solution. If there are no applications that the client has that absolutely requires Windows to run, i.e. beyond what they can do with e-mail, firefox, openoffice.org, GIMP, etc. --it isn't a difficult to sell them on the idea. Especially when pointing out the many advantages of an MS free office. I once recommended a Linux solution and told the client to keep a reserve of cash on hand to purchase Windows (OS and Office suite) software if they should find themselves feeling like they couldn't get by running a Linux desktop. That reserve has long since been spent, they are still running Linux, and there isn't a Windows desktop to be found anywhere. In other cases running a handful of Windows boxes for the people that really need it mixed with a mostly Linux deployment is the answer.

Many clients have said that it is not that much of a change for them and that they wonder what all the fuss was about?

I personally have actually found myself lost trying to do even trivial tasks on a friend's borrowed Windows machine that I wouldn't have to think twice about using my own laptop running Linux... I have started carrying LiveCD's just so this doesn't become more of an issue. The tools that come standard on many Linux distro's are far superior to those available to other OS's. It's a no brainer for me...

---
Simulated Sig

Re:Penguin powered for ages

[Vo0k]

In other cases running a handful of Windows boxes for the people that really need it mixed with a mostly Linux deployment is the answer.

One more option. Windows boxes with Open Source software running. If there are 8 things the box must do, and one of them is available only for Windows (find a good driver for a big CNC milling machine for Linux... and a CAD/CAM software to go with it), use free software wherever it fits. OOo instead of MS Office. Firefox, Thunderbird, Gimp, Inkscape... and if needed, Cygwin for most of the rest.
Proprietary here: Corel Draw (sorry, Inkscape doesn't live up to my needs YET), IrfanView (well, nothing better Free ported to Windows), AVG (no Free antiviruses) and the CAD program plus the CNC driver. All the rest - free.

Re:Penguin powered for ages

[endr]

I personally have actually found myself lost trying to do even trivial tasks on a friend's borrowed Windows machine that I wouldn't have to think twice about using my own laptop running Linux... I have started carrying LiveCD's just so this doesn't become more of an issue. The tools that come standard on many Linux distro's are far superior to those available to other OS's. It's a no brainer for me...

It sounds like you're no better than the average Windows user...you've learned your operating system, and have not a clue to any underlaying logic behind tools. If you got lost trying to do basic tasks in Windows then you really have a problem, as it's pretty much geared for the lower end of the computer using population. If I switched "Linux" and "Windows" in your quote and posted that, I would have been laughed off the premesis. Of course, /. is hardcore anti-MS territory, what was I thinking.

Re:Penguin powered for ages

[LABarr]

Your point is quite valid and well taken. "Lost" is perhaps too strong a word. "Frustrated" might be a bit more appropriate word to use here. The thought comes from numerous times I have found myself in front of a Windows machine muttering to myself, "How do I do this in Windows again?" I have been racking my brain to come up with a suitable example but can't seem to think of any right now. Sorry.

Re:Penguin powered for ages

[Anonymous Coward]

Naming the computer. In Windows 9x/NT, it's in the properties of Network Neighborhood, but in 2000 they put it in the properties of My Computer.

The sad truth is

[Anonymous Coward]

Their competitor employees deployed linux. IS never admited it and is only now trying to catch (cash?) on.

The administrator account seems dull, root or su sounds much better.

Time to tighten up these shorewall rules...

Online tax software from big companies exists

[CrazedWalrus]

So it doesn't count if the application is deployed via the web?

TurboTax Online comes out in January. Firefox support remains to be seen, obviously, but I'm not overly concerned, given FF's now-relatively-high market share.

I've been using H&R Block Online under Linux for the last four years. Works flawlessly in firefox. They even keep a hot copy your records for three years - a feature I've used a few times now, and I don't need to worry about backing them up, losing the CD, etc. Tinfoil hat wearers need not apply.

This site lists a few more I've never heard of, and, of course, Googling for it doesn't hurt either. Just make sure to pick software for the right country.

No, I doubt there are any Gtk/Mono/Java/Qt/WhizBang clients out there, but who needs them? Installed clients for such things are (or should be) a thing of the past. The web offers a relatively cross-platform, painless deployment mechanism for every OS and distro.

The other obvious advantage of the online approach is, of course, that you don't need to pay for an upgrade every year. You just pay the filing cost for whatever taxes you want to file, plus the vendor costs. I usually end up paying H&R Block to e-file my stuff and to have a human look over them beforehand, just to make sure I didn't miss anything.

Hope this helps.

Re:Online tax software from big companies exists

[bmalia]

TurboTax Online comes out in January.

It's been on-line. I've used it to file my taxes for the last 5 years. I think I used firefox last year to do it too, but not totally sure. I used the H&R website once just to compare tax refund results(they were identical by the way) and highly recommend both services. I stick with TurboTax because they have all my info from last year already and pre-populate most everything I need.

Re:Online tax software from big companies exists

[ectospasm]

TurboTax Online comes out in January. Firefox support remains to be seen, obviously, but I'm not overly concerned, given FF's now-relatively-high market share.

I've used TurboTax Online for the past three years, and I know at least the last two were performed using Firefox, on Linux even. I don't remember running into any show-stopping, major problems.

Automatix

[Steeltoe]

I hear Automatix is pretty good for settings things up on Ubuntu Just Right (tm): http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=66563

Since I'm running mostly KDE-applications and didn't hear of it before too late, I didn't use this. So I've followed the various HOWTOs for installing proprietary codecs and compiled kmplayer (which is The best player for Linux right now, do yourself a big favour and forget all others), installed Real Player for Linux (found a utility that converted the install-binary into a deb IIRC). My Linux box now plays more formats than my Windows-boxes (mainly because I don't really care about all those formats, it was just so that people would not complain about it).

To compile kmplayer was just an 'apt-get install libkde-dev' (or whatever the KDE-dev package was called) and then 'make && make install'. There are some breezy deb's around, and I made some myself (I like to have everything a deb), but the links didn't work unfortunately.

For the future, the Penguin Liberation Front for Ubuntu is aiming to provide packages not provided in the free / universe / multiverse repositories: http://wiki.ubuntu-fr.org/doc/plf

They didn't have too many packages last time, but enough to put them in sources.list. I will submit my kmplayer deb's to the proper maintainers now that my box is properly set up.

For the simplest installation, I would recommend Automatix though. I've heard alot of good about it, and messing around with all of that yourself takes alot of time and frustration. I mainly see computers as a tool to relieve me of work, but I also like that tool as good as it can be, so I put up with it.

Re:Automatix

[Master of Transhuman]

Wow! I just took a look at what that thing does!

Somebody immediately redesign this thing for Mandriva and every other distro!

Fucking amazing! It installs EVERYTHING anybody could ever need that was missing from the default distro!

Install your Ubuntu, run this thing, you're good to go.

Fucking brilliant! I want it for my Mandriva!

Re:Which Linux Desktop? There are several

[miyako]

I've come across this argument a lot, and I still fair to see why it's that big of a deal.
Right now I'm running KDE, and of the applications I have open, half were written in GTK+ and the other half in Qt, plus a Java application written with SWT and a Windows application running under Crossover Office.
If I didn't know a thing or two about Linux and about these programs I wouldn't have any idea that some of them are "KDE" applications and others are "GNOME" applications. All of these applications pretty much have the same look and feel. I can copy and paste between them, access all of them from a single menu, put GNOME applications on my desktop or toolbar, etc.
So I don't really see why this is a big dea.

Mod parent right, right up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Possibly the best post in the history of Slashdot. Although you called it Donkey Kong Racing, when in fact it was Diddy Kong Racing -- but fair enough. And it was a great racer, so any decent girl would oblige. And kudos to you for finding a girl who loves N64 games.

In fact, it's probably just a great troll, but superbly funny anyway. The maddest props imaginable to the writer!

Re:Why not to chose GNOME !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

1. If you make posts like that, it's no wonder you get treated like crap by a dev community.
2. There's nothing magical about C++ as oppose to C. C has object-orientation as well and compiles much more cleanly. There's no reason GNOME shouldn't use C.
3. Big companies (like Red Hat, Novell, etc) are putting their money into GNOME primarily. GNOME has a future, though you are too small-minded to see it.
4. It's people like you that cause the unfriendly groups that form in development communities.
5. Pull your head out of your ass and realize that KDE and GNOME are _different_ and are better that way. If you want something with all the latest whistles and bells, 'ding' sounds when you click on things and shiny bits spinning all over your desktop, use KDE. If you want something to give you the best working environment and leave you to get down to your code, use a paned window manager or something lightweight like fluxbox. If you want something inbetween, use GNOME.
6. So what if KDE is used by 2/3 of open source desktop users? At least 95% of desktop users are using Windows, does that make it better than Linux? No. Statistics serve very little purpose.

Check out Cedega

[Anti-Trend]

http://www.transgaming.org/

Costs $15, but well worth it. Also, there are more native Linux games than you might think. Check out http://www.icculus.org/ , http://www.linuxgames.com/ http://www.happypenguin.org/ , http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/ , http://www.tuxgames.com/ , http://games.linux.sk/ , http://games.linux.sk/ , http://www.linux-games.com/ , http://www.linux-gamers.net/ ... Of course for me gaming is just gravy, Linux is my ideal OS for actually getting work done. But I find that games run much more consistently in Linux than in Windows, which makes my gaming flings that much more enjoyable when I do have time for the occasional LAN.

There are much more games for Windows, so if gaming is your number one reason for owning a PC Linux will probably dissapoint you. If you're like me and gaming is secondary, I think you'll get along just fine. ;-)

-AT

Re:Which Linux Desktop? There are several

[dbond]

It's a big deal in the same way that Firefox is a big deal and Mozilla isn't; in the same way that the iPod is a big deal and the thousands of other mp3 players out there aren't. Yes, they're functionally the same. Who cares. It's the non-funcationals that hook people and Windows has that in a consistent UI, with the Start bar, Control panel, System tray, "My Computer" etc.etc. all in the same place, meaning that *your grandma* can go from one Windows machine to another and *know where TF everything is!* Long and short of it: Linux is far to fragmented UI-wise at the minute to ever be a big hitter. What we need is something a little more Mac OS X, and a little less "I understand it therefore you're a f**kwit." David

Personality

[whitey5386]

The only real reason I use linux for is that it matches me. If I'm just wanting to get a few things done? I'll open up fluxbox and be real minimalistic. If I'm sitting there for normal usage, I have enlightenment running. If I'm replying to a slashdot post, I use Windows Explorer because AutoDESK didn't/won't/can't port damned Inventor 10 to *nix and my engineering class requires it. Seriously though, one of linux's greatest strengths has to be it's adaptability. I've run in on ppc/sparc/x86/x86_64 and it's familiar on all of them.
        What's really nice about gaming under linux? The responsive-ness. I know, not all games are like that, but I installed Quake4 under Crux-X86 and Windows2000. Set the desktops to be as minimal as possible (.xinitrc = exec /usr/bin/quake4 and least possible things going in windows) and Quake4 was snappier under *nix. go figure. It may be a fluke or whatnot, I'm not an expert. Just a loyal hobbist.

Re:Personality

[John Nowak]

You're cute! Tee hee. :D

Re:jesus h. fucking christ, same old shit on slash

[etymxris]

it's amazing you guys delude yourself into believing you can seriously compete with one of the largest corporations in the world.

Who is "we"? IBM, Novell, Red Hat? It's not david v. goliath anymore. Many very large corporations want to humble Microsoft. Being able to leverage its OS is a serious advantage these corporations would rather it didn't have.

just because you can bang out some obscure computer code, or deal with archaic unix-like systems, doesn't mean you're qualified to make business decisions, nor act like gods.

Well that's where Gates got his start anyway.

do you think people give a fuck about "free" software, when it's five years too old, has 25% functionality, no real commercial support, and impossible to use?

Even if these accusations were true, you have to remember that DOS/Windows took a while to catch up with its contemporaries. But people didn't care. They wanted cheap and functional. Turning to today, if MS has to compete on price with linux they lose.

Re:Why not to chose GNOME !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

a valuable member of the GNOME community came up with an idea (together with his girlfriend) to shave "GNOME GIRLS"

I, too, want to shave GNOME girls. Where do I sign up?

Re:Which Linux Desktop? There are several

[Hakubi_Washu]

Speak for yourself and yourself only. "We" don't need a thing.

I have never understood people insisting on Linux Look & Feel to copy Windows Look & Feel pixel precise if possible, since I've never had much touble finding my way through a menu structure for example, as long as it has some logical connections (e.g. I don't care whether "print" is under "file" or "tools"). I've seen people aghast at OOo because it ain't Word... Guess what, I don't notice the differences, because I think in functions (and their names and icons), not "second to left icon in the third row".
To make a long story short: If you want your grandma to use Linux, get her one consistent Distro (SuSE is good, or Linspire if you're really interested in Windows Look-alike, whatever) and be done with it. She's not going to install anything of importance anyway. But don't tell ME how I "need" to organize my computer, ok?

Top inhibitors for adoption

[wysiwia]

Amazing, this survey lists the first fact what I pray for years: "There are not enough common applications on Linux"! And the solution for this is: "Cross-platform development". Cross-platform development is easy if you do it as wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) suggests. Besides see this summarizing eWeek article http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1893639,00.as p.

Bandwagon

[kahei]

So, in other words, Linux was installed not for business or technical reasons but because the next guy has it so we should have it too and people are talking about it so we should get one and so on.

Linux is all grown up! Finally it is behaving in the marketplace the way real money behaves -- soon, CIOs everywhere will be propounding their 'Linux strategy' and writing articles in trade rags about 'how a switch to Linux allowed us to give our clients a competitive edge'. Heck, they already are! Then in 10 years, we'll be reading about how 'evaluating Linux alternatives forms a major part of our strategy for cutting the soaring costs of server farms' and so on and the cycle will go on.

Yay!

How to make this into a profit situation

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Put a pile of Linux CDs in a display in a store that has a "Grand Opening".
2) Invite news media to the opening.
3) Pay group of people to go charging into the store to fight over the Linux CDs.
4) ...
5) Profit!

SuSe is king of the Office Desktop

[N8F8]

Reading between the lines on question #12 and you'll see SuSe has a combined 60% share but Ubantu, a relative newcomer, already has 53%. Realistically I'd say SuSe is way ahead in terms of an enterprise ready system. They just need some more polish.

Re:SuSe is king of the Office Desktop

[JabberWokky]

I really wish these polls would separate out Kubuntu and Ubuntu statistics. Almost all split the SUSE variants but not the Ubuntu variants.

--
Evan

Framemaker? [was] Re:Pagemaker? What year is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Frame was available for a time.... i think i still have a copy floating around, but i can only use it if i retard system time by something like four years? :-)

Re:Which Linux Desktop? There are several

[lachlan76]

Consistent Windows look and feel you say? It seems that just about every program I install has its own widget toolkit.

Summary

[trollable]

It was 'employees requesting Linux (user demand)' and because 'my competitors have successfully deployed Linux,' he added.

In other terms: PRODUCTIVITY
(I'm not surprized)

Re:Summary

[killjoe]

More like "conpetitive pressure". If you rival is spending 100K less on software then you are at a serious disadvantage.

Re:jesus h. fucking christ, same old shit on slash

[oztiks]

microsoft has some of the most intelligent individuals on the planet working for them, never mind the fact that they're highly compensated, work on projects full time, etc.

GNU (what Linux utilises), BSD, Unix (the original) all made by academic NUTS working in university labratories and linux to this day is contributed by arrays of academics around the world who structure the os in the most efficent way possible.

Now lets take a look at microsoft, dos originally purchased off a uni student who didnt quite finish it, windows ripped off from xerox so someone else made this. When it became a streamline it started getting patched and blundered left right and centre this is what we call windows nt and windows ME (you remember these guys, ms would perfer they didnt).

Now as far as secruity is concerend its only in the last couple of years have they realised this issue needed to be remedied.. On top of all this they've even suggested (microsoft this is) that they should recode the whole thing from scratch because its so botched togeather..

I remember hearing that ms purchased themselves some sun programmers at one stage and sure they have piles of very good programmers working for them in their offices but you know your dead right about one thing ..

Your right about highly compensated and work on fulltime projects, but heck these projects have timeframes, deadlines and ofcourse viability factors, and viability of secruity was not recognised seriously by windows until the days of xp. On top of this deadlines sacrafise quality, not a problem in linux world because deadlines are not enforced passion, drive and excellence in knowelege is linux's underlaying strength, not making somebody else millions and billions of dallors.

it's amazing you guys delude yourself into believing you can seriously compete with one of the largest corporations in the world.

Linux has never gone out of its way to compete directly with microsoft, you dont hear the CEO of RedHat raving and romping around the office throwing chairs saying their going to kill their competition and you defintly dont see linux advocates stopping _anything_ that microsoft does directly, they mearly just do what they do and this is what directly affects ms (not the other way around).

Microsoft competes with linux, one reason, scared.. why? linux is the better product but just like in the movie Pirates of Silicone Valley when Billy Gates character turned and faced the Steve Jobs character in the final few scenes and Steve Jobs said "we have a better product" Bill Gates said "it doesnt matter" .. Too bad that internet and computers are evolving to the point where people are beginning to realise it does matter and for a lot of reasons.. but its up the experts to set the trends.

I recommend that you go back to msfanboys.com chat forum and worship your evil underlord billy gates someplace else ..

Re:Which Linux Desktop? There are several

[Anonymous Coward]

The one thing you can say about Windows and Mac OS X is that if you write an application, you only have to write for one window manager.

That makes as much sense as saying "The one thing about DOS is that if you write an application, you only have to write for one color scheme (i.e. white on black).

If a program has a problem with which window manager decides how the stuff around it's window looks (Linux window manager), or which color it has (Windows themes), the program is defective.

I use Fvwm, and I never had to download a program made specifically for Fvwm. Quite the opposite, most of my programs are Gnome programs, "written for" Metacity, if you want to put it that way.

Re:Why not to chose GNOME !!!

[oztiks]

Did your therapist suggest that it would be a good idea to publicly reconcile that you are responsible for contributing shonky coding to the Open Source community?

OR

Are you jealous and angry with your ex-codevelopers because they could program better then you?

OR

Are you just overly arrogant and think your better then the entire GNOME development team?

My guess is that you are guilty of one of these three things because quite sincerely buddy, you have no right to make such accusations on a public forum or post to news threads like this and you really need to seek some professional help.

Linux on desktop attempt #43565?

[lRem]

Are we seeing "Once more unto the breach" press tactics or something?

Figer sells more

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just that the olufant isn't as sexy. Looks sells, easy as that.

OpenOffice in browser

[c_fel]

On the 21th image (the last one), it is asked "What does your Linux desktop browser need to support ?". Am I crazy, or I just can't find what "Open Office" does in that list ? (And by the way how come there's so many persons who chose it ?)

Re:OpenOffice in browser

[spitzak]

I assumme they mean that they want to click on a link to an OpenOffice document, and have it open inside the browser window, rather than launching OpenOffice.

I would agree, I find it annoying when seperate programs launch for what looks like no good reason. In particular .tiff or .bmp other unusual image files. I hate the fact that Konqueror will run some weird text editor where space does not page down when plain text is encountered. And in general am annoyed when random links to text open unexpected programs or offer to save to disk, rather than displaying the text in the window (it seems it could look at the first 1K or so of the document and decide if it looks like ascii).

However what is weird is that sometimes I *prefer* seperate windows. I like having pdf's open in their own window, and I like having movies open a windowed movie player rather than trying to display in the browser. It is possible the difference is that I don't want it to ever open an "editing" application, but a "display" application is ok. However I am not really sure what the difference is.

Re:OpenOffice in browser

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft Word allows you to view a word file from within a web browser using OLE embedding. I have seen Open Office do this in certain browsers in certain situations, but it is still iffy with linux. I know that viewing .doc files in a browser is kind of stupid and shouldn,t really be posted to the internet anyways, but with things the way they are, many can't really live without it.

Re:Which Linux Desktop? There are several

[dbond]

By "we" I meant all use people that *would* move over to Linux if only it wasn't so fragmented.

Clearly, you're happy and comfortable with your self-tuned car. It's probably runs faster and sweeter than mine. I bet I couldn't get into it and drive it though.

David

Re:Which Linux Desktop? There are several

[dbond]

So you mean I don't have to write seperate config for my application shortcuts for KDE and Gnome?

I didn't realise that.

Could you point me at the NSIS (http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page) equivalent for Linux please? I'd love to have all my C# (Mono) applications run using a single installer under Linux.

David

Re:jesus h. fucking christ, same old shit on slash

[Anonymous Coward]

Granted the GP comes across as abrasive, but your response doesn't really do anything to refute his points.

MS is huge, and MS is smart. They didn't get to be so profitable by being lucky, and despite what many people on slashdot would say (over and over again like little harpies) MS didn't get so big by solely backstabbing and abusing a monopoly, either. They got to where they are by being a good business.

You bring up things like ripping windows off xerox, or windows being botched together or ME being buggy, etc (I'm surprised you left out BSOD). Sure the idea for windows was ripped off of xerox, but do you really think the windows of today has much similarity? You may as well say KDE rips off of xerox. As for windows being buggy, yeah the 9x days were certainly bad, but linux wasn't in much better shape at the time you know. Plus MS was trying something extrememly difficult in retaining backwards compatibility with dos for so long. That backwards compatibility was likely more responsible for windows security woes than anything else. As for ME, yeah no silver lining there; it was garbage.

But MS products are pretty mature these days. XP is as solid as a rock for anyone who knows the slightest about computers (if you can admin a linux terminal, I guarentee you can keep a windows machine running tip-top, assuming you apply any effort). Office is also sitting pretty as the number one office suite, and that won't be changing anytime soon. The reason for the quality of these products is not that they have been beat down upon us by some mystical level 4 mace of abusive monopoly, but rather because they are damn fine pieces of software that have had just as many talented people working on them for just as long as any open source project.

The GP is right that MS is an extremely powerful and influential company. It may seem sometimes like they are resting on their laurels (and a scrouge-mcduck mountain of gold) but that simply is not the case. MS has smart people; not just programmers, but business types too. People smart enough to know what they have to do to stay at the top. If that's producing betting software, great. If it's crushing young upstarts into the ground, well that's capitalism.

To hear people here constantly rag on microsoft is like seeing an old man shaking his fist to a storm on the horizon. Worrying about it won't make a damn bit of difference. In the case of open source programmers, writing good code should be its own reward (if it's not, then I suggest finding something else to do with your time). Constantly crying about the big bad evil is counterproductive at best.

Finally, before you go tell me to go back to "msfanboys.com" (very cliche by the way, but I applaud you for never using "M$" in your post) you should know I'm typing this on a linux box. I was using linux long before you could just pop in an install cd, slap a pinguin on your monitor and consider yourself part of a grand community of cyber-hippies. I was using linux while most of the linux "fanboys" that constantly karma whore on /. were (I'm assuming) still in grade school.

Because users ASKED for it?

[Anonymous Coward]

What users are these? In my professional life, I've yet to meet anyone who has even heard the word "Linux" other than IT staff and executives.

The problem with this survey is that the respondents are self-selected.

A random sample would probably return "Limux? What is computer?" 98%; then split the remaining 2% of responses out as shown in this survey.

Better block I/O in Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not hard to find Windows apps that run faster on Linux, every time. Pretty much anything that is disk-based shows such behaviour.

I guess this indicates that Linux's block I/O and disk driver system is superior to that in Windows, although it could also mean that Windows does a poor job in that area. Who knows.

Also, anything that uses a lot of processes tends to run faster on Linux, whereas if it uses a lot of threads then it tends to run slower.

It's no surprise. Each O/S has its plus and minus areas in performance.

Switching to Linux: MyLinuxStory.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at this blog. He's blogging the story of his switch to Linux. MyLinuxStory.com

Re:Why not to chose GNOME !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

seriously, wtf? He has no _right_? Whatever happened to "freedom of speech"? IMO you're the one in need of counseling since you seem to be unable to accept any form of dissenting oppinion. If you disagree, tell why, if you don't think this is the right place, say so and why. Don't fucking say he "has no right" to speak. Who the fuck do you think you are? Kim Il Joung?

I wasn't impressed with Wine and Transgaming...

[antdude]

A few years ago, I tried Diablo 2. It was choppy/slow, missing 3D sounds (EAX), etc. Have those things been resolved since then?

Re:I wasn't impressed with Wine and Transgaming...

[Mad Merlin]

I played a lot of Diablo 2 through Wine, I'd say it was something like 80% of the speed versus Windows. Very playable, and on pretty modest hardware (1.3 Ghz Pentium M, Radeon 7500 Mobility, 512M RAM). DirectDraw mode is (was?) significantly faster than Direct3D mode though, so that might have been part of the problem for you. I stopped playing it about a year ago though, so I don't know if things have progressed since then.

Re:I wasn't impressed with Wine and Transgaming...

[antdude]

Yeah, I think I played it on a Pentium 2 300 Mhz or a Pentium 3 600 Mhz back then. I am pretty sure I used Direct3D back then.

not me

[r00t]

My guesses would have been:

• no need to track the silly hologram cards in fear of a BSA audit
• no need to deal with the accounting department before installing an OS
• not falling apart over time (from stuff like Sony's rootkit)

That's not quite the same as license fees and security, though those may be the root causes. The license fee itself isn't so bad, but the associated hassle of budget approval and tracking sure is. Lack of security related to break-ins might be tolerated (yuck), but unknown random DRM crud mysteriously destabilizing the machine is harder to accept.

Re:Which Linux Desktop? There are several

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you don't. When applications are installed, there is a standard place where their "start menu" entries are put in some config directories. That way, no matter what desktop or WM you have, these programs will show up and in the same place. On some distros, like Gentoo, it's pretty broken, but other distros take care to make sure it works. So I know after using KDE for three months, I can go into GNOME and find that for the most part, all my apps are in the "start menu" and in roughly the same place and with the same names.

or you just pay for it

[Anonymous Coward]

A commercial distro can just pay off fraunhoffer for MP3 playback a one time fee of 50 grand and be done with it. It's more legal but not as leet politically correct as downloading from the increasingly shrinking pool of places that don't recognize patents on software. Instead they encourage their users to go to some other repository wink wink nod nod to get the warez. Hate to say it but eventually the WTO will force most nations to adopt the patents and they will start throwing lawsuits at those dodgey repositories as as the media companies are now suing file sharers. It would suck to both get nailed by the **AAs in a file trading suit plus get nailed for "illegal software", but it will happen sometime and become common.

Re:Which Linux Desktop? There are several

[Hakubi_Washu]

You still make one classic error: The assumption that the Linux coders want people to "change over". Simply put, that's not the case. Some want it, some don't. Most devs I've talked to are quite happy to cater to accademics, hackers or whatever group they count themselves in, but usually that is not "windows users about to change over"... Projects for these exist (Linspire, XPDE, etc.), but they're not the biggest ones around simply because there's no majority of devs that want that.
There is the misconception that Linux (nevermind the fact that there is no such thing as a collective will here, that can at best be attributed to different Distros) needs or even wants to attract new users. That is wrong (and a highly dangerous anthropomorphization). "Linux" neither needs nor wants anything but exist, which the GPL guarantees. End of story.
To adapt your metaphor: I'm happy to tinker with my self-tuned and self-assembled car, some parts of which I've bought pre-assembled (done by the Distro), while I avoid the one offered complete (Windows, MacOS, etc.) because they weld the hood shut (so I cannot look at their proprietary engine design, that's pretty shabby, judged by repair costs and parts that can be found after an accident). That doesn't make me want to stop anyone from using those and I don't think my "kit" will gain anything from anyone who "changes", but I am dumbfounded when someone suggests that those "kits" should come pre-assembled, because they would be easier that way... It's simply missing the point by assuming a definition of "successful" that rarely matches the intention of the original creators (Namely: Being used by many people, being commercially successfull, etc.).

Agreed -- Windows very unfriendly

[Anonymous Coward]

whoever fucking said windows was easy is full of shit

Yes, the alleged "user-friendliness" of Windows is a very odd prevailing notion, and totally untrue.

What they mean of course is that the Windows desktop is full of visible icons and menus, and any computer-illiterate grannie can click on one so it must be "user friendly". What they fail to mention though is that clicking is only the first step in the process, and everything else in the O/S is a highly user-unfrendly nightmare.

The only area where Windows was more user-friendly for a while was, I think, in the one-shot installation of applications using InstallShield. However, now that we have "apt-get", "emerge", etc etc in the various distros, installation is even easier in FOSS than with InstallShield.

More importantly though, the key to user-friendliness is transparency of problems. The Unix world has always had it, whereas Windows has always HID it and thus been inherently unfriendly.

I can tell you straight up

[farker haiku]

why people don't adopt linux. It's because of the driver support. I've tried 3 different flavors of linux, and none of them will detect both my wireless and my wired nics. 3. Windows, of course, works like a champ upon install. This wouldn't be a problem except that all those idiot guides to linux or whatever don't cover modules or kernel recompilation. Listen guys, I'd like to run linux. I really would. But you don't make it easy.

Re:I can tell you straight up

[ajpr]

I have had similar problems in the past. The only thing that works is Ubuntu on my laptop, although I haven't bothered tring to install the nvidia gfx drivers for it :/ Distro's that I've had serious problems with detecting and using hardware: Mandrake, Redhat 8.0, Debian sarge, Ubuntu 5.10. My current problem is getting Ubuntu to use my TV card. There is some sort of conflict between it and my sound card whereby Ubuntu thinks my TV card is a sound card. This then prevents any tvtime software from working, and of course sound doesn't work due to fact it's trying to use the TV card. Everything in my system has simple well known chipsets. I've done what most people do and spent 50+ hours trying to fix this problem without success. I posted on forums and tried many things. The only result that I can tell you is that trying to get things to "just work" tends to mess up the OS. I have installed/removed so many different files that I have no idea what's on my machine (nor what's meant to be on)! The people on Ubuntu forums are very helpful, but they couldn't actually help. The only solutions were: 1. Remove TV Card, or 2. Run alsaconf after every boot in order to unload all sound drivers followed by loading the correct one, and then modprobe bttv Obviously #1 is a no brainer and #2 is just a pain to do. I see myself as the bridge between the PC guru's and the average person. I know a reasonable amount of techy stuff, but I don't know things like compiling kernels/source code. I can setup basic networks, install programs, troubleshoot things, build PCs etc. For me, linux is just too difficult to get to work. Linux is ok for the average person and for the techy types as they don't try to do things they can do in windows but will ultimately fail in Linux. Things like setting up a printer over a network (standard parallel port type) I have yet to do in Linux, but in windows it's fairly straight forward... share printer, check firewall settings, ok done. These two things in Linux I imagine require a lot more time and expertise to learn how to do and to actually do. Personally I think Linux needs to be able to win over people like me inorder to become mainstream. Generally speaking, it's people like me that help their friends fix their computers or install new things. Without us being "on board" I don't see why the average person will want a linux pc, as they won't have that "easy friendly help" that most people have at the moment with windows.

Re:I can tell you straight up

[ajpr]

For some strange reason, I lost all my "return" formatting so that all that was posted was one large block! sigh

Re:I can tell you straight up

[ratboy666]

Which version of Windows detected your wireless NIC on install? (implication was that you did NOT install additional drivers to get this piece of magic to occur -- the driver was included with Windows -ver?-).

I really want *that* version of Windows -- because I tried XP and it doesn't even recognize the optical drive it was loaded from...

Linux and wired NIC issues? I would like clarification of this as well.

Ratboy.

Re:I can tell you straight up

[gaveawaymyname]

I have nothing but good things to say about hardware support for Linux.

When I installed my wireless NIC (basic Linksys G from your favorite retail store), XP had a hard time with the install. Maybe a faulty CD that came with it, but autorun didn't pick up on it at all, and even manually executing the binary didn't do a thing. I had to go through the driver wizard and it worked fine after that.

I recently installed Ubuntu 5.10 and it could not have possibly been easier. I knew it wouldn't have a problem with the card, I used a Knoppix and an Ubuntu live CD and it worked fine on both. During the install process, it asked me what the SSID was and maybe the channel or the gateway IP, but that was it. It had access to the Internet on first boot. No driver install. No wizards.

I don't miss Windows a bit.

Re:I can tell you straight up

[spitzak]

Are you saying one version recognized wireless and another version recognized the wired card? That is bad.

However if one of the cards refused to work ever that means the manufacturer did not provide enough information to support it.

Re:I can tell you straight up

[doon]

There is a reason for that preview button :)

Re:I can tell you straight up

[Lifewish]

It's because of the driver support

Yeah, it sucks. The basic problem is that Microsoft has vendors lining up to write Windows drivers for their products, whereas Linux developers are lucky if the company doesn't try to sue them for reverse-engineering, let alone provide any sort of help. This makes hardware support somewhat tricky.

Re:I can tell you straight up

[Chayak]

I'm in the opposit situation. Windows requires a ton of driver disks on floppies that hardly anyone uses anymore but Ubuntu installs fine. It was fast with the default install but after I recompiled the kernel for my processor and SMP and trimmed off drivers I don't need it leaves the XP pro install that was on the same computer in the dust wondering what the hell just shot past it.

Microsoft

[goober1473]

So.... Microsoft to deploy Linux on the desktop because their nearest desktop OS competitor has?

Don't buy from Emperor Linux

[Skizac]

They charge a windows tax. The only company that I know of that does not charge you for Windows for a Linux laptop is Linux Certified: http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux_laptops.html

I have this 17" laptop from them, and I love it!
http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux-laptop-lc2500. html

OS/2 we hardly knew thee...

[tomcres]

[Please don't mod this as flamebait until you've read the whole thing; it's a very honest criticism as to what I feel is lacking in the current crop of Linux desktops.]

I remember when I got my first PC, I was coming over from the Amiga. My PC was an AST 486 that came with Windows 3.1 preinstalled. I couldn't believe how unstable and lacking in multimedia Windows was out of the box. Within a week, I went to CompUSA and bought OS/2 Warp 3 ("Warp for Windows"). It multitasked well, crashed rarely, ran Windows applications, and came with decent multimedia apps and internet and a web browser all in the box. Then like a month later, Microsoft released Windows 95 and with all the new Win32 apps coming out, I was forced to abandon OS/2 because of the lack of software that would still run on it. Dual-booting was an option, but I only had a 540M hard drive at the time.

The one thing I truly miss about OS/2, though, is the Workplace Shell and Presentation Manager. As much progress as has been made on GNOME and KDE, I still feel that the most fluid, intuitive, and powerful OO desktops were OS/2 and classic Mac OS. It's subtle things like real aliases (or in OS/2 terms, "shadows") and useful metadata and integration of that metadata into the desktop that really made the OS/2 desktop (and classic Mac OS) great. I just don't feel I get that with GNOME or KDE, at least not fully. Neither with Windows XP or Mac OS X. I liked BeOS enough to actually buy both R3 and R4, but it was buggy, and hardware support was atrocious. Software was lacking, too, but why develop software for something that has practically no driver support? Multimedia apps, for instance, are pointless if you're forced to use a VESA video driver and have no sound! And this was for what was supposed to be a media-centric OS!

Personally, I use Windows XP most of the time because I have a large software library of mostly games that I don't want to give up. Other than that, I use Firefox and MS Money. I also have a Slackware box that I use mostly for hacking and coding as a hobby. But I would totally switch to Linux in a heartbeat if I could have a forked filesystem that actually did something and a truly integrated desktop that worked intuitively and was not a collection of miscellaneous libraries and esoteric dependencies (GNOME) or something that tries to be all things to all people to the point where it has something like 3 media players in the default installation (KDE). And yes, I know about GNUstep, and *STEP annoys the hell out of me with the way it substitutes directories for real resource forks. And plists are annoying, too. They should be real attributes, not text files.

Maybe it's time to take the Linux kernel and do something other than GNU. Throw out trying to be Unix and just build a good desktop operating system in the same mold as OS/2 or Mac OS on top of a Linux kernel. Sounds like a project! :-) There's probably better designed kernels out there also, but the nice thing about Linux is that it's got pretty good hardware support (drivers) and I'd hate to have to rewrite drivers when the work has already been done on Linux. So, Linux is probably "good enough" in that regard. As much as I'd love to find a replacement for X, too, X.org has good support for most video cards, so it might be wise to stick with that as well. Most everything else will probably have to be written from scratch, including the filesystem :-(. But the main goals of the project would be quality and user experience, not to reimplement Unix. Maybe I'll set something up on SF this weekend and start planning this out in earnest. Stay tuned!

Re:OS/2 we hardly knew thee...

[Chandon Seldon]

Why are you so attached to forked filesystems? There's no technical advantage that I'm aware of to making the filesystem more complicated rather than making the file manager more complicated.

Either way, anyone who actually wanted to implement something like that would need to deal with all the issues that come from producing a completely new operating system. I'd reccommend that you either do it, or accept the fact that modern operating systems are eithor Unix or watered down VMS - and that the MacOS/Desktop Linux solution of hiding Unix is probably the best end user solution in the forseeable future.

until...

[tomcres]

Wine has come an incredible way since it's conception. I am amazed by how well it runs some games (and other Windows software) these days. I think it's safe to say that by the time the Linux desktop is polished enough for average Joe, wine will have advanced to a point where it runs most Windows games/software very acceptably.

Of course, that will all change when Microsoft makes significant API revisions. Has WinFX been ported to Wine yet, for instance? It's a never-ending battle that will never be won. Windows is a moving target. The best way to run Windows software is and always will be to run it on Windows. However, if Linux and other alternatives continue to increase in popularity, and now, especially with Mac OS X moving to Intel, it might be a good incentive for developers to start compiling against winelib, in which case, you'd have binaries that are ready to run on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. The main problem would be dependencies--requiring DLLs that haven't yet been implemented in Wine, but this could be alleviated somewhat by linking against cross-platform libraries like SDL and ogg wherever possible instead of using Windows-specific APIs. If the Linux and Mac OS X audience is big enough, then the software will be there. I can already see a huge incentive for companies like Intuit, who would no longer need to maintain two separate versions of Quicken for Mac and Windows. Compile the Windows code against winelib and it will not only run on Windows and Mac OS X/Intel, but also x86 Linux and *BSD. Retarget some of the UI code to WxWindows (or whatever it's called now) or Qt, and you could even keep the native looks so it doesn't look like a Win95 app on your nice OS X desktop. :-)

Re:until...

[Mad Merlin]

Of course, that will all change when Microsoft makes significant API revisions.

...and developers only support that API, and stop allowing their installers to provide the necessary dlls, and those dlls are under highly restrictive licenses. Remember that doing that would cut out all XP, 2K, 98, etc users too. Wine can (and often does) use Windows dlls, as it only implements core OS APIs. The VB runtime or MFC for example are totally out of the scope of the Wine project, but Wine can easily use the already existing dlls, and any installer worth it's salt will install those potentially missing files for you, thus the issue becomes moot.

Furthermore, as a smart developer, you aren't going to cut out 50% or more of your potential audience, now are you? Even now, more than 4 years after the release of XP, something like half of Windows users aren't even using it yet, no? Do you honestly think all of those users are going to immediately jump ship to Vista? Very doubtful. Thus, those developers need to support at least XP and 2K, and by doing so, they also support Wine. Of course Windows is a moving target, but it's not as if you can break an app for Wine without breaking it for Windows at the same time.

hmm 86% need Macromedia Flash support

[helix_r]

Sadly, macromedia is sitting on their hands when it comes to supporting Flash on computer that use 64 bit processors.

Basically, if you have an AMD 64 running linux in 64 bit mode, you can't see flash on websites.

Re:hmm 86% need Macromedia Flash support

[moexu]

How exactly is this a bad thing?

Re:hmm 86% need Macromedia Flash support

[mcphail]

I run firefox from a 32bit chroot, and Flash works fine with this. With a little tweaking, it runs transparently from the 64bit desktop.

Re:hmm 86% need Macromedia Flash support

[helix_r]

Thanks, I'll look into that!

However, the work-around required to do something like that just is not realistic for the vast majority of users. I expect it will take an hour or two of reading and tweaking for someone who is reasonably comfortable with software.

Macromedia has it within their power to build a 64 bit linux version of Flash and doing so would save thousands upon thousands of people a lot of hassle and would help linux gain marketshare. An hour or two of tweaking multiplied ~300000 times adds up to a lot of hassle work. Even worse, there are orgs and individuals that will just drop desktop linux from consideration simply because they can't get flash to work on their machines "out of the box".

Re:hmm 86% need Macromedia Flash support

[Petrushka]

"Sadly"?

I jest, I jest. I know what you mean, but it's still a twisted thing to be pining for.

he's right

[tomcres]

Poor guy got flamed and modded off-topic, but this definitely is on topic, for the simple reason that most Linux distributions seem to have settled on GNOME as a desktop, and most of what the writer of parent wrote (at least in the first part before he started rambling a little) is absolutely correct. GNOME has some major problems. It is more of a patchwork than a coherent desktop. Most of the work since GNOME 2 has been trying to smooth over the rough edges because so many of the projects that make up GNOME make Windows 95 DLL hell look like fun. The simple fact is that there really are huge gaping holes in providing anything near a useful set of reusable objects. I understand that many in the GNOME camp view this diversity and freedom as a strength, but in reality, it is an achilles heel. It sacrifices functionality and useability for the sake of programming freedom. The biggest strength that KDE has is Qt, and GTK and the million or so other libraries that are hacked together with it to make up the base of GNOME, are not even close to equivalent as a logical, consistent framework to develop real applications. All the effort is put into making the desktop look polished without fixing the underlying issues that make GNOME development a freaking nightmare, especially compared to any other environment, like KDE, Cocoa, Windows, or even Java, that provides the developer with things like reusable toolbar widgets (to use the author of parent's example). I wish the author hadn't posted AC so I could mark him as "friend." Yes, it's an invitation to be flamed when he writes things like this, but you have to see that he makes a lot of valid points, and I really do believe that GNOME as the de facto commercial Linux desktop is really going to hurt Linux desktop adoption in the long run, and that is very much in keeping with the topic. Modding the parent off-topic was underhanded IMHO.

Re:he's right

[segedunum]

for the simple reason that most Linux distributions seem to have settled on GNOME as a desktop

Well no actually, because actual usage is far different from pretending. As a Red Hat exec said, everyone's talking about it but no one's actually selling anything, and that isn't going to change because some people want to continually keep pretending that Gnome has cornered the corporate desktop market.

Since that is so laughably stupid as well it gives the Windows fanboys a huge amount of ammunition. It looks like certain people are going to continue to look stupid and pretend until someone with the purse strings points out that they haven't sold anything, nor are they anywhere near being significant in any desktop market. Pretty sad really. It's a big reason why desktop Linux at this point in time will amount to absolutely nothing.

Re:he's right

[Anonymous Coward]

most of what the writer of parent wrote (at least in the first part before he started rambling a little) is absolutely correct.

No, it's bullshit. You can't say something is correct when it's just an opinion.

It is more of a patchwork than a coherent desktop.

Opinion.

Most of the work since GNOME 2 has been trying to smooth over the rough edges because so many of the projects that make up GNOME make Windows 95 DLL hell look like fun.

How so? You mean because you have to install 20 libs? If you take a look at KDE, the same is true - except they simply bundle those 20 libs into one gigantic KDE-libs package. The same thing could easily be done for GNOME, simply make a new directory with a new configure.in and a new Makefile.am with all the other lib src trees as subdirs. How does this make anything better? What if there's a security hole in one of the smaller libs included in the massive bundle? As a user, that means I have to upgrade MassiveLibBundle instead of updating LittleLib.

Maybe you define this as "dependency hell" because you compile everything by hand. Why the hell would you do that? There exist good package managers out there TODAY that resolve dependencies for you. All of the GNOME libs also follow strict API/ABI compatability, so there's no real "hell" here either.

The simple fact is that there really are huge gaping holes in providing anything near a useful set of reusable objects

O RLY? Please, good sir, pray tell. Oh wait, you don't know what you're talking about. Nevermind. Please continue your il-informed rant about something of which you know nothing about...

The biggest strength that KDE has is Qt, and GTK and the million or so other libraries that are hacked together with it to make up the base of GNOME, are not even close to equivalent as a logical, consistent framework to develop real applications.

More hot air? This just makes me laugh... as a GNOME developer there are very few things that feel this way. I can only assume you're rattling this off because some random clueless Joe spouted this and you read it on Slashdot and so It Must Be True(tm).

All the effort is put into making the desktop look polished without fixing the underlying issues that make GNOME development a freaking nightmare, especially compared to any other environment, like KDE, Cocoa, Windows, or even Java, that provides the developer with things like reusable toolbar widgets (to use the author of parent's example).

Wow. So much cluelessness in a single sentence. Where to begin? As someone working on this very aspect of GNOME, I can tell you that this is laughably fictitious. Oh, and btw - there is a reusable toolbar widget. It's called GtkToolbar, but I suppose it's too much to ask for someone to actually have a clue before spouting off like you did.

Apologies for coming off as a flame, but you asked for it with your ranting.

Re:he's right

[Jason Hood]

You are on the right track. Gnome while providing a clean nice and usable interface (for grandma), has an extremely poor infrastructure. KDE on the other hand has a top notch framework that is very consistent and extensible. I still use gnome daily but get put off by the dumbed down file choosers and lack of ioslaves. But it is pleasant to use other than that.

KDE is extremely powerful, I dont really give a crap if it uses 200MB or 2GB on the drive, what matter is speed and memory consumption. 1GB costs 50 cents right now. The term Bloated is so overused, I am not really sure what it means anymore. KDE is a complete environment, that is its purpose. If you want a WM use flux or gnome.

Neither environment provides a consumer grade UI just yet. They both lack in many areas, but they are getting there (In the sense of bumping around in a dark room). What they really need is more corporate influence by way of usability expertise and possibly artwork. Anyone can code, its how well you code.

Re:he's right

[CarpetShark]

Agreed. Well said. As an aside, though, I should point out that "dll hell" isn't a factor if you use a decent distro with a package manager that can handle dependencies. There's nothing at all wrong with an app using lots of libraries; that's mainly where the integration and code-reuse and comes from. Doesn't hurt for reliable modules of well-tested code, either. GNOME got that part right, it's just what's *in* the libraries that's so screwed up :)

Re:Why not to chose GNOME !!!

[oztiks]

Freedom of speech is completly different from slander and personal resentment ...

Here is an example

"it is believed that your a fucking asshole" but thats my opinion and therefore freedom of speech.

"i have proof that your a fucking asshole" slander and personal resentment if i dont have anything of real substance behind me.

It is quite clear this guy is attacking a free source development team for his own personal motives, i dont believe for a second that GNOME is as horrible as makes it out to be but he seems to only outline the worst aspects and also put commentry about how badly formed the social aspects of the dev team are, further he hasnt given actual real referrences insted just 1 stupid screen shot of his desktop... great use of freedom of speech *roll eyes* ..

Mass Management

[jbellows_20]

I have a question for the /. crowd. In my workplace we have about 100 Windows desktops all on a Windows domain. I've looked into deploying a Linux distro, but the things that keep me from doing so are:

1. Mass Deployment (i.e. Altiris, Ghost, etc.)
2. Mass Management of settings

What do the rest of you do to do these two things?

Re:Mass Management

[ghbpiper]

Partimage'll do the imaging. So will landesk, plus landesk can also manage configs. But, landesk is expensive. Cross-platform, but expensive.

Graph # 2

[carguy84]

The second graph is why Linux as a Desktop is going to have a very very very hard time of becoming a widescale or mainstream desktop.

Re:jesus h. fucking christ, same old shit on slash

[oztiks]

I was using linux long before you could just pop in an install cd, slap a pinguin on your monitor and consider yourself part of a grand community of cyber-hippies. I was using linux while most of the linux "fanboys" that constantly karma whore on /. were (I'm assuming) still in grade school.

Ahh your one of these people "Oh in my day i used to walk on hands and knees over 5 miles of broken glass to reach my wang terminal so i can etch binary in a water cracker stick it up my ass and make out like i walked the earth before everyone else who has ever touched a keybord..."

Geesh what a looser, at least i dont have this huge egotistical view of myself like i was born into this world for computers and everyone beneith me are just minions, you dont know nothing about me and to be as smart as you are to attempt to dissect my artical you obviously didnt read it well enough to understand the jist of it. I suggest trying to actually read otherwise go back to your wang terminal and and attempt to jack off at monocrome cga graphic photos of marilyn monroe or who ever was your teenage heart throb you fucking fag!

Its Xen, not Zen

[suso]

I'm surprised nobody has commented on the fact that in the subnote for people using virtualization that they spelled Xen as Zen by mistake. Probably the person editing it thought it was a mistake.

Re:Its Xen, not Zen

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised nobody has commented on the fact that in the subnote for people using virtualization that they spelled Xen as Zen by mistake. Probably the person editing it thought it was a mistake.

I think that they might have been talking about Zen.

http://www.novell.com/products/zenworks/linuxmanag ement/index.html

Evolution?!

[segedunum]

Where does this business class Novell Evolution shit continually come from? It's unstable, and considering that they're talking about calendaring has pretty much zero support for any open source groupware out there apart from a half-working Exchange plugin. Where does the calendaring come from?!

Re:Evolution?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it supports Exchange, OpenGroupware, and Groupwise.

Oh, and it comes from the fact that there's nothing better.

Re:Evolution?!

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't support Exchange or Groupwise reliably at all, and I'm afraid there is something better. Thunderbird beats it all over for plain e-mail and Kontact actually has reliable groupware support for many, many servers.

Nothing better is not non-functioning groupware support and questionable IMAP problems.

Re:Why not to chose GNOME !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ali Ali Ali... when will you learn? You are such an asshole (without even the balls to post using your name) to everyone in the GNOME community it's no wonder they don't listen to you. You never haver anything nice to say, all you can do is insult people and go on about how you have 20 years experience programming and so therefor you must Know It All(tm). Yet whenever any of us look at your code, it's pure utter crap, poorly designed, poorly implented, etc. If you really have 20 years experience, I guess what you really mean is that it took you 20 years to write hello_world.c

You want respect? Be prepared to give it, otherwise go rot in your sorrowful miserable existance.

You hop from GNOME to KDE and back again at least once a month. Today you're flaming GNOME, no doubt on GimpNet IRC channels trying to start a flamewar. You'll probably threaten to leave the GNOME development efforts if people don't do things your way like you have dozens of times in the past. No doubt you'll leave us in peace on GNOME IRC for about a month pretending that you are "leaving the GNOME community". But no doubt you'll be back again a month or so later flaming KDE on the GNOME IRC channels trying to win favour among the crowed thinking that we're all a bunch of KDE haters or something rediculous.

All you are is a fare-weather friend with no talent. Do everyone a favour and piss off permanantly (or at least until you grow up and stop acting like a 12 year old).

(I don't recall my /. passwd, but if you ask in #gnome-hackers who said this I'll speak up and let you know it was me)

It's the drivers, stupids! Learn to co-exist

[Anonymous Coward]

The OSDL has not seen the importance of drivers. May be they don't print anything on paper. May be they have no reason to print a photo, May be they have no reason to print a CD, May be they have no reason fire a missile from the desktop, etc, etc.

The importance of drivers was not put to test. I don't see it in URL given (http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS5481370522.htm l).

Btw, do you guys know it is ILLEGAL to access Linux kernel services for closed source binary drivers? If you have trade secret to guard, which stupid company will ever develop an open source driver for its product?

Open source is a great way to develop software. Everything has advantages and disadvantages. The world is like that. Open source has the potentiality to make less error software because everybody can have a look at it. But it cannot protect trade secrets. In business to succeed you need a competitive advantage. How about defense related? can defense equipment manufactures release open source drivers or specs for open source geeks to jump on it? They cannot risk anybody else develop drivers for their equipments and weapons and they can release closed source binary drivers only.

Not everybody is white, not everybody speak the same language. In this world, we need to co-exists. If hardware manufactures develop open source drivers, its very good. That's the best. BUT it always doesn't happen. So legal restrictions on the Linux kernel either must be relax so that closed source binary drivers can co-exists with open source drivers or we need to sit and think a solution how to provide kernel services to closed source binary drivers in an efficient manner. Is this a technical problem impossible to solve?

Migration of Linux to desktop is severely hampered by lack of drivers from original equipment manufactures.

Re:It's the drivers, stupids! Learn to co-exist

[Anne Thwacks]

If you have trade secret to guard, which stupid company will ever develop an open source driver for its product?

If your livelihood depends on no one being able to reverse engineer a device driver, then you better take an evening course in agressive begging.

Just because you release the API doesnt mean you reveal how the hardware works, just how to control it.

The real reason that companies do't like to open source their device drivers is because the code is so sh*tty that they are embarrassed. I should know, I have spent over 30 years developing device drivers for Un*x and Windows.

(Frequently the real reason is that the companys legal team is anally retentive, and has a limited grip on reality - but they are still the legal team).

You're kidding, right?

[charnov]

When we did our disaster recovery and business continuity plans, we discovered that along with our financial data (we are a financials company) email was the only app that we actually HAD to have. Along with phones and fax, email is an absolute necessity for most forms of business today. Hell, we just got an employee put in jail for trying to sell our contact list (over 100,000 clients). It's that important.

On the the questions of authentication, encryption, and attachments. Uh, Exchange, Exchange, Exchange.

There are three huge problems with linux in business as a workstation and as an infrastructure base. One, lack of a coherent and consistant interface throughout all apps and the OS. Novell is getting this one going. I think the KDE4 project is starting to address this, too. Two, most drivers need to get the hell out of the kernel. It's time for Linus to wake up to the fact his baby is becoming a commercial beast and that companies that invest billions into their software IP are never ever going to open it up for any reason. There is no longer any compelling technical reason to keep all the drivers as kernel modules anymore. Just look at OS X. They got it right on this one (mostly). Three, the big one for busines, a lack of enterprise thinking towards infrastructure. Yes, you can do single sign on (painfully). Yes, authentication/authorization is robust and do have some interoperability. And, yes, there is LDAP, X400, DAP, etc. available for a directory structure. The problem is that no one entity has brought it all together in a single package that works from the desktop to the router to NOC to the SAN to, well, you get the picture. Novell has superb infrastructure products although lacking at the desktop integration level. IBM has some really great stuff at the big iron level. Microsoft has this nailed. It is very nearly perfect with the 2003 products. No, it's not the end all be all, but they are definitely writing the book on this one.

For rolling out linux/bsd at home, really the only thing that is left to do is roll a good distro (Ubuntu, Sun JD, Novell/SuSe) and fix the driver model. Drivers really are the biggest hurdle. I would like a consistant UI, but that is something that will probably come from competition and not a mandate. I can't believe I am excited about a KDE project (KDE4).

Fun to setup, but pita from then on

[JamesR2]

I find that it is fun to get a new distro going on hardware or VM, but too pita to run on a regular basis. Easier to run OSS on Windows like Perl, PHP, LAMP, Python, MySQL, etc. etc.

Re:Fun to setup, but pita from then on

[lasindi]

I find that it is fun to get a new distro going on hardware or VM, but too pita to run on a regular basis.

Care to elaborate?

I've switched a couple people

[Sir_Cockalot]

to Ubuntu and they're happy. They're happy that they don't have to deal with annoying updates of several spyware programs, just to keep their windows box working smoothly. They're happy because they don't have to have their system firewall popping up and telling them that such and such is trying to access the internet. They're happy because they don't have to deal with scanning for viruses a few times a week. They're happy because of the stability it has and it contains all the basics, which is all they use. This may seem like trivial reasons, but they make a big different for people that don't want to deal with anything, complete opposite of slashdot users.

I can't use Linux full time because it doesn't have Ableton Live and all the music software plug-ins I need. It's also not PhotoShop, Illustrator, and Indesign friendly. I know it has some alternatives, but not a complete solution. The day it does, I'll jump on the bandwagon; until then, I'm sticking with OS X.

Re:I've switched a couple people

[fitten]

Another issue... we still don't have broadband all over the USA. I'd hook my mother up with a SuSE box or something but I know she'll have to get a dialup ISP. As soon as she has problems, she'll have to call the ISP to deal with it and they will not know what to do with Linux and she'll be stuck and I'll be on the phone trying to diagnose something I'll most likely have no control over. How many of you have called up an ISP and their first thing to say was "can you pull up Internet Explorer?". Saying "I don't have IE" blows their scripts away. Also, it costs more for ISPs to have both Windows and Linux training and the people who take those CSR jobs usually don't know anything about computers anyway and just read scripts.

Luckily, the broadband ISP providers I've had have had Linux knowledgable CSRs (whether by luck that their CSRs happen to be enthusiasts or through actual training) and I ask for them when I can't fix whatever it is. I actually helped (one very large national service carrier) diagnose their network from home and identified a router that they had in another city that was going bad. When I *finally* got to a knowledgable rep (took about 3 days) and explained the problem (for the umpteenth time), he confirmed the issue, thanked me, and it was fixed within 2 hours.

Your scenario is not plausible.

[jotaeleemeese]

Amongst the many reasons for this:

-Linux is not a novelty. It is a OS with a long history and distinguished family.

-The architecturl model of Linux lends itself much better to escalate properly when put under stress. One application may slow the system but very rarely will completely crash it.

-Linux desktop solutions did no appear yesterday. Gnome, KDE and others are mature and usable and throw les an d less surprises to the unsuspecting user.

-You have far much more people ready to help with Linux problems. I have found very few issues that get not solved with a bit of googling.

etc.

Yes.

[jotaeleemeese]

Sun

HP

IBM

Dell

The first 3 I know are for real. I don't know much about Dell, but much more prominenet like that you can't have it.

And altough other manufacturers (shame on them) are less helpful (Toshiba...) they may be weaking up to the reality of the marketplace that Linux is becoming. You would need to hack far less since many hardware manufacturers are realising Linux is here to stay. You did not have a resource like Toshiba's a few years ago.

The old pitiful excuse not to use Linux argueing there is no hardware officially certified to run it, should be soundly ignored.

Why does this come as a surprise for me ?

[hdante]

Now it seems so obvious... Market society is fuss-driven, completely irrational. We have seen the few thinking ones switching over to linux because they decided they would get more productivity-security-whatever and now the great mass is going for it because it's the new trend.

Man, completely wrong arguments up to now. Linux is fashion, linux is chic. Linux everywhere. Do it now.

Get VMware workstation.

[jotaeleemeese]

Install one of their supported distros (I am using Fedora, it is unsupported but it works fine).

Install vmware on top of that and then create a vrtual machine with Windows wathever on it, Look at this as an application trash can.

Do you work in Linux, and for those embarrasing moments that are bound to happen every month, launch your virtual machine with the software of the Beast, print your magna pr0n, and carry on as usual in Linux.

Linux tax

[JourneyExpertApe]

You forgot to mention that they have the Linux tax included in the price. You know, that elusive extra cost that makes Linux computers cost 50+% more than an equivalent Windows computer. For example, I bought a notebook with a 3 GHz pentium 4, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB HD, DVD+/-RW DL, 15.5" widescreen, 802.11g, and Windows XP for about $1000. The only downside is that the battery life totally sucks. Can you show me a comparable Linux laptop for anywhere near that price? Some of the laptops on the site you linked cost > $4000! Who pays that much for a laptop anymore? Some low-end Windows laptops are approaching $500.

Number Crunching for Linux Deployment

[queenb**ch]

This is a real-life case from one of my consulting clients. They are a small construction company with 3 servers (2 file and one email) and about 10 workstations. They chose to convert to Linux based servers and workstations for a variety of reasons. The cost savings on the software purchases were plowed into a one-time expense of employee training and they've been quite happy with the results.

$189 per seat vs. $50 per seat for the Codeweaver's Plugin
Microsoft Office = Same price regardless
($700 + $35 per CAL) x 2 = $1750 vs. $0 and $0 CAL's for Server
($700 + $35 per CAL) x 1 = $1050 vs $0 and $0 for CAL's for mail server

That's well in excess of $4000 in savings. The employer wisely chose to invest this in training and sent a couple of his people off to class. This cost him about $2000 for the both of them at a local community college. He then had those two train the rest of the staff. After some initial pain, he's enjoyed a $2000 savings just in his first year on the software alone.

What's not included in this is that they will be able to use the same hardware for at least one additional year. Had they upgraded their operating systems to the current Microsoft releases, they would have had to upgrade their server hardware as well. Some of their workstations would also have required new hardware. Another expense that's not included in this is not having to purchase antivirus or anitspyware products for the workstations. Since 99%+ of these things are Microsoft-targeted, they simply fail to execute in a Linux environment.

2 cents,

Queen B

Easy to do

[porkThreeWays]

1. The "enterprise" distributions generally come with a feature where you can set up a single box, save the configuration , selected packages, etc etc, to a form of media, and mass copy. When going to install a new system you pop in your bootable linux CD, and pop in your config media (say, a usb key), and say to install based on those parameters. Once the base system is created, creating a clone of that generally takes about 25 minutes per box. The first 3 of that are the only ones with user interaction. Off the top of my head Red Hat and SuSe support this, but I'm sure there are plenty of others.

2. I know red hat has tools to do this. Ximian (purchased by SuSE) also has tools.

Basically at this point, if you go with either SuSe or RedHat, you'll have end to end coverage. I'm sure there are others, but those 2 I know will definatly do it.

Re:Easy to do

[jbellows_20]

Setting up the config settings on install I can see, but how do you change settings en masse after an install? Say the NFS server changed that is used to mount the home directories, how would I change that all at once on 100 machines?

Re:Easy to do

[porkThreeWays]

http://www.redhat.com/en_us/USA/rhn/

This product from redhat will allow you to do that.

Re:Easy to do

[Anonymous Coward]

automount + ldap.

not trivial at first, though.

something to get you started:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8119

Re:Easy to do

[timbo234]

look up cfengine
A simpler solution is to just have a script that rsyncs or scp's the configs out. There are multiple ways to do this kind of thing in Linux.

It's GNOME isn't it.

[krischik]

Shure - Evolution is GNOME based and GNOME programms are generally unstable.

Well the GNOME comunity might not like it but C is a programming language for low level (speak kernel) programming and unsuited for complex deskop applications. Hence GNOME applications crash a lot.

The KDE offerings is a lot better in that respect. More features and more stable then GNOME.

GNOME tries to sell you now that simpler and less features is better - but that is because they can't do any better.

Example:

The first Nautilus (GNOME filemanger) version had the coolest features available at the time. A lot cooler than the Konqueror at the time. If only Nautilus would not have crashed faster then you can start it up again. And now: They have slimmed down Nautilus to a what Konqueror could do 2 years ago and giving "We don't want to many features to overwelm the user" - Year, right - I belive that.

At the same time Konqueror increased there feature set and can do all the cool stuff from the original Natilus and more.

Water under the bride: Well I have a large harddrive and so I have installed both the GNOME and the KDE packages. I wanted the rip some of my CD's:

Grip (GNOME) - looks nicer, good feature set, crashed every other CD.

KAudioCreater - looks not quite as nice, rips the next track while encoding the previous one at the same time, and still never crashed. Not even when rippen 2 CD at the same time.

But then: KDE is qt based and qt is european product - we can't have that on our computer, can we.

Martin

XGI may release OSS display drivers for video card

[BluSteel]

Phoronix reports that XGI may be releasing drivers for their upcoming Volari 8300 graphics card. If that happens, make sure you give it a good look. If sales are good enough, other hardware manufactures may follow.

"...today we have much more head-turning news and that is XGI's intent of releasing their complete display drivers for their Volari 8300 product. Yes that is right, XGI Technology is presently investigating the benefits of opening up their entire driver development process as well as the various open-source models through which to release their software. In addition, the code may be released as soon as the middle of next month when the 8300 part reaches market, or so we have been told. Although we will not share all of the specifics as to their drivers open-source intentions, as all of the details are presently being worked out, we are most reasonably certain that the complete code package will be released, and in a GPL-like fashion. By Christmas of this year, if not Q1 of 2006 when the XGI Volari 8 parts are widely available, we can probably expect to see an official announcement from XGI."

Phoronix's report is here.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item =323&num=1

Re:jesus h. fucking christ, same old shit on slash

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, just wow. I would say the grandparent was overestimating your age when he assumed you were in grade school while he was using linux. You write like a 14 year old, and barely have the maturity of one.

"fucking fag", indeed kid.

Here's my observational study results...

[raw-sewage]

In my experience, it's the same story over and over again:

• No major distribution channels. Sure, there are plenty of places to order your off-the-shelf system with Linux installed, but none of the big players offer it (or if they do, it's tucked away so as to be practically non-existant).
• No real cost advantage. Yes, it's free, but enonomies of scale make Windows pretty cheap when installed on a new PC, and that cost is hidden anyway. Just look at all the recent discussions about major PC vendors' Linux offerings: they're not any cheaper or possibly even more expensive!
• Stability is no longer an issue. Or, Linux no longer "competes" in the desktop stability realm. When I first started running Linux, the stability and multitasking capabilities blew Windows 95 out of the water. With Windows 2000 and XP, I've yet to see anything beyond anecdotal evidence that Linux is more stable.
• Nobody cares. At least, none of the PC desktop consuming masses care. If people have a working Windows PC, why should they switch? For idealogy? Doubt it.
• It's too hard to use. This is a Catch-22 we unfortunately can't get away from. Sure, there's plenty of anecdotal evidence of the "my grandma runs Linux without any problems" variety, but most people are used to Windows. For whatever reason, most people learn to live with the differences Microsoft introduces from one Windows version to the next. But most Linux distros are still too different from the familiar for the average person to make the leap. The catch is that, if Linux was an exact clone of Windows, again, why would anyone switch?
• Zealots. I don't think this affects most people, but at least one of my co-workers hates Linux (and open source in general) because of the zealotry he was subjected to in the past. He thinks that all open source is created just to undermine Microsoft, that it's all hard to use, that it's all just a rip-off of Microsoft, and some other nonsense. But it does irk me when the Linux Fanboys get modded up here on Slashdot for their asinine anecdotal stories about why Linux and open source is so much better than Microsoft's offerings. Have a little humility man! If it truly is a "war" to you, then that kind of arrogance is only going to get you killed. Have a little humility, admit that Linux isn't perfect, and make it better.
• Easier development platform. Again, speaking to a smaller audience, but the development tools for Windows are much more mature and integrated. Okay, let's just assume that feature-wise, the two platforms are equal. But does any Linux development environment have the level of integration and ease-of-use that the latest version of Visual Studio does? I mean, you can really start developing your project in Visio , and have Visual Studio start building your class interface for you! And what does OSS have? Graphviz? It's so sad, but I work with a lot of effectively lazy programmers---people who like to code, but (just like the masses with a desktop) want their development environment automatically set up for them, and they only want to know exactly what they need to to get the job done (they're not "true hackers"). The kind of sophistication combined with ease of use that Visual Studio offers a novice programmer simply isn't avaible in the open source world. And the business world loves this: they don't want their developers spending time learning and configuring their environment, they want them turning out code (even if it's not very good code).

Windows 95 and ME were junk, Windows 98 is debateable, but Windows 2000 and XP are decent competitors to Linux. I'd like to think that Linux was responsible, at least in part, for the bettering of Windows---it's real competition! But I think it's up to Linux to make the next big leap in offering something special, something unique.

Furthermore, speakin

Re:Here's my observational study results...

[timbo234]

I'd mod you up if I could because I think most of your post was spot on. However there a few things:

"and have Visual Studio start building your class interface for you! And what does OSS have? Graphviz?"

Have a look at KDevelop. It is certainly nowhere near all the features and integration of VS but it does the basic things that a developer-friendly IDE would do - eg. auto-generation of boilerplate code, integrated visual editor for widgets (QT Designer) etc.

"A typical fanboy claim is that Linux is so much more secure than Windows. Look at the installed base for Windows compared to Linux!"

Linux is in the majority when it comes to webservers and is a significant part of the server market. It still doesn't have all the security probs of Windows, although that might change somewhat if it was popular on the desktop there's no indication that it would be anywhere near as bad.

"Look at the distributions that use root as the default user login!"

None of the major ones do, Linspire was the only one and they've stopped that.

"Why isn't there an effort, as in OpenBSD, to audit the Linux kernel and other security-centric tools and libraries for security vulnerabilities?"

They are, there are security researchers crawling all over Linux all the time and finding and reporting vulnerabilities, just like with Windows.

Re:Here's my observational study results...

[FukYa]

Claim: "No major distribution channels."
Comment: There are many, but you really don't need one if you know what you are doing.

Claim: "No real cost advantage."
Comment: Ha-ha, crack kills dude. There are HUGE cost advantages, give it a try sometimes.

Claim: "Stability is no longer an issue."
Comment: Tell that to the 90% of computer users bringing their broken/infected Windows 2000/XP operating systems into the repair shop for reload at least once every 6 months.

Claim: "Nobody cares. At least, none of the PC desktop consuming masses care. If people have a working Windows PC, why should they switch?"
Comment: Most people's Windows PC DOES NOT work reliably because of continous spyware & virus infections and the need to continously apply bandaids to hide Windows' insecure design.

Claim: "It's too hard to use."
Comment: You're kidding, right?

Claim: "Zealots. I don't think this affects most people, but at least one of my co-workers hates Linux (and open source in general) because of the zealotry he was subjected to in the past."
Comment: I think YOU are that person that hates Linux. Or perhaps a paid Microsoft FUD slinger?

Claim: "Easier development platform."
Comment: So, you are saying that a closed, proprietary, secretive, expensive operating system + development environment is easier to develop with than a totally free, completely open, fully publically documented on the Internet including source code, development + operating system environment? I don't believe that you really think that unless you're nuts.

Claim: "As much as I love Linux (and have used it exclusively, at least at home, for nearly a decade), I feel that overall quality of a Linux-based desktop has suffered somewhat recently."
Comment: I think that you probably have never used Linux in your life and actually work for Microsoft, spreading a little more FUD during the leisure time.

Good Points

[pingveno]

Ah, I see. Let me try to put it a different way. Linux and the applications build on top of Linux certainly have some great features not available on Windows. However, it also has flaws that can be ignored when the work is light, but become a major annoyance when used over a long, hard work day. Just like Windows. That horribly boring job isn't going to suddenly get better just because you switch over Linux.

Summarized top 10 reasons for switching to Linux

[dtfinch]

1) Employees want it
2) Competitors are using it
3) Corporate direction (?)
4) Source code
5) Vendor independence
6) Manageability
7) Total Cost of Ownership
8) Unhappy with existing OS
9) Reduce licensing costs
10) Security

The grid they gave with the results was a little hard to read, so I tried to make a top 10 ranking out of it. I just figured this using a simple average rank, treating N/A as 8, so it's not as accurate/meaningful as it could be. The top 3 make no sense to me, but they may have just consistently scored in the top 5, whereas some issues are either very important or entirely unimportant.

I tried it

[inkswamp]

I installed Linux on a machine at work with my boss's blessings and was, sadly, less than impressed. I'm not trying to troll. I'm no fan of MS, and I really wanted to like what I saw, but thus far, I have been underwhelmed. This was my first experience with Linux and I'd be hesistant to recommend it to anyone based on what I saw.

The big problem I have right now is that it simply cannot find the network. No matter what I do, the network connection is dead. I've read on help forums about how to remedy it, and nothing so far has worked. The connection I'm using works fine when plugged into the Windows machine next to it.

I also tried to play some mp3s on it and none of the audio players installed would recognize the file. I've since read that I may need to install additional software to get those programs to use mp3s. WTF? Something that minor, playing an mp3 file, shouldn't be that big a hassle.

Re:I tried it

[Anonymous Coward]

What island do you live on? there are millions of servers and desktops running Linux on the Internet, and you can't get it to connect? What a moron! check your network cable and make sure it is connected.

Re:I tried it

[inkswamp]

Exactly the kind of idiot response I had hoped not to receive but knew I would just the same.

Re:I tried it

[timbo234]

The big problem I have right now is that it simply cannot find the network. No matter what I do, the network connection is dead

Sounds like a driver issue. Unfortunately you may be out of luck with this kind of thing, although buying another NIC is pretty cheap.

I also tried to play some mp3s on it and none of the audio players installed would recognize the file. I've since read that I may need to install additional software to get those programs to use mp3s. WTF? Something that minor, playing an mp3 file, shouldn't be that big a hassle.

Its not a big hassle, although if your net connection doesn't work it might be. Its only some American distros that have had to cut MP3 support by default for legal reasons (ie. Fedora and Suse).

Re:I tried it

[Javaman59]

I'm no fan of MS, and I really wanted to like what I saw,

I tried Linux for the same reason, in 1999, 2001, 2003, and each time I realized that I was just causing myself headaches, for no gain, so returned to Windows, with a little more respect. I realized that it is no accident that it works so well.

Re:I tried it

[bhav2007]

You shouldn't base any judgement of any operating system on your experience with a computer that clearly wasn't installed completely. Linux has pretty much run the internet for quite some time, and any pretty much every NIC is supported some way or another (well, except for wireless cards). As for playing mp3's, software to do that should be included in pretty much any distribution that is meant for desktop use. If it wasn't, then you should be able to install it with great ease. One of the greatest advantages of most linux distrobutions is that they have the ability to download and install any new program and everything else it needs to work with one simple command or mouse click. Seriously, there are distributions which can play mp3's without even being installed. You might want to revise your definition of "tried".

Re:I tried it

[inkswamp]

You shouldn't base any judgement of any operating system on your experience with a computer that clearly wasn't installed completely.

Then I have a gripe with the installer. I was very attentive to the whole process, reading up thoroughly before attempting it. If the installer screwed things up, my complaint still stands and I couldn't recommend it to others.

pretty much every NIC is supported some way or another

I checked out all the hardware before installing. Everything in the machine is explicitly supported except the display and I don't appear to be having any issues with that.

they have the ability to download and install any new program

Then I have a catch-22 on my hands that has never occurred for me on any other platform--other platforms that also have the ability to download and install new programs with a mouse click (puzzled as to why you chose that feature as a unique to Linux.)

You might want to revise your definition of "tried".

Perhaps you're right. I suppose I haven't really "tried" it if I can't do anything useful with it immediately after installing it which, sadly, appears to be the case.

Re:I tried it

[inkswamp]

Its not a big hassle, although if your net connection doesn't work it might be. Its only some American distros that have had to cut MP3 support by default for legal reasons (ie. Fedora and Suse).

Legal reasons. Sheesh. I should have known it would be something that stupid. :^/

Anyway, thanks for being the only person to respond with a civil tone. I'm not sure what the hostility is all about. I'm starting to think some Linux users are trying to outdo Mac users for platform arrogance. (And yeah, I'm a Mac user so don't anyone freak.)

Re:I tried it

[lasindi]

Without any details, I can't really help you with the network connection, but ...

I also tried to play some mp3s on it and none of the audio players installed would recognize the file. I've since read that I may need to install additional software to get those programs to use mp3s. WTF? Something that minor, playing an mp3 file, shouldn't be that big a hassle.

The algorithms used in MP3 are patented by the Fraunhofer IIS. For this reason, many Linux distros simply don't include MP3 support to avoid licensing issues and possible lawsuits. There's really nothing in the world Linux programmers can do except wait for the patent to expire. If you want, you can pay Fraunhofer $0.75 for a license.

Or, you can do what I do. When I get ahold of an mp3, I run it through the command-line decoder that Fraunhofer provides (free as in beer, but proprietary), and then encode it to FLAC (not Ogg, because I don't want to convert from one lossy format to another lossy format). Kind of ironic that I'm using Fraunhofer's own tool to avoid playing MP3, but yeah ... IMHO, setting MP3 as the "standard" lossy audio codec is one of the ISO's biggest mistakes ever, given all the patent issues.

Anyhow, in short, the MP3 issue you're running into has nothing to do with how good Linux is; it has to do with the legal issues surrounding MP3s.

Re:Which Linux Desktop? There are several

[miyako]

I've been saying this for a long time. To many people are worried about Linux getting popular. I have to say, as both a user and a developer, I prefer Linux to be relegated to the servers and the boxen of the unwashed masses.
As a developer, I like the ability to write an application for people and being able to target an intelligent, computer literate user. I like the freedom to make decisions that may make the application more powerful while sacrificing ease of use, and know that the people using the application are going to appreciate the power of the program, instead of complaining about the uglyness of the GUI. I like not being bombarded by users who cannot figgure out how to use a contextual menu. I like to know that the people who use my application have some appreciation of what I put into it.
As a user I like having a system that can provide a critial thinking challenge, and rewards me with greater power when I figure out how to do something. I like being treated like I know what I'm doing. I like being told exactly and in detail how the programs work, even if that means I might have to pour over man pages longer than an animated tutorial with a cartoon paperclip. I like to be able to compile my programs from source, it makes me feel more like I'm interacting with the system. I like that I can drop to a powerful command line to interact with the system, develop scripts to automate tasks, and edit configuration files to dictate exactly how my system will work- even if that means fewer wizards and automatic configuration tools are available. I like having choices in what runs on my system, from a scheduler to a desktop enviornment- even if it means I have to do research to figgure out whats best suits my needs. I like being part of a community of people who share my ideas of how a system should work, who share software and ideas, and who work together to build a system that works the way we want it to instead of the way that will generate the most sales, or appeal to the most users.
In short, I like Linux the way it is, and while I'm not opposed to more people using it, I don't think we should worry to much about changing the way things are done in Linux just to appeal to Joe User.

What's In Vogue

[Anonymous Coward]

> It was 'employees requesting Linux (user demand)'
> and because 'my competitors have successfully deployed
> Linux,'

Translation... Computer users are just as driven by the
media as those Americans that live and die by Hollywood
and Oprah.

The Tyrany of the Office-App Users:

[Hosiah]

Should we just abandon the office desktop to Windows and be done with it? Really, trying to appease the OfficeMax crowd seems to be more trouble than it's worth. There are plenty more areas where Linux has conquered (servers, developers, engineers, some businesses, the home user), and just talking to an OfficeMaxer makes me depressed.

An OfficeMaxer has three loops: (a)"It'sNotWindowsIt'sNotWindowsIt'sNotWindows..." , (b)"It'sNotMSWordIt'sNotMSWordIt'sNotMSWord...", (c) "It'sNotPhotoshopIt'sNotPhotoshopIt'sNotPhotoshop. ..". You get any of these three loops by asking them (a) Why don't you like Linux? (b) Why don't you like Open Office ? (c) What's wrong with Gimp?

Of course, it goes without saying that there's no inherent quality in any of the dominant applications in these sectors. Yes, yes, yes, I know, fuck me and the horse I've ridden in on. Heard it before, you know, I've played Slashdot a couple times before. Face reality: The ONLY reason office workers prefer the MS tools that they use is because they ONLY KNOW THOSE TOOLS. Check back in your time machine when papyrus was invented - where there a bunch of stone age secretaries decrying papyrus's faults and declaring they'd never let their stone tablets and iron chisels go? You bet your sweet bippy! Neanderthals can give it a rest: we know you love your precious Windows, and not only do I want you to keep it, I'm arguing in favor of condemning you to NOTHING BUT!

Back to Linux: All I hear is "Gramma can't use it yet." Well, there's a lot of things gramma can't do. Gramma can't bungie-jump. Gramma can't surf. Gramma is beyond her time to participate in gross olive-oil-soaked orgies. Are we to abolish the simple joys in life, or worse yet, make all the bungee-cords a maximum two-feet and drain the oceans to six inches depth and put training wheels on all the surf-boards? "Joe Sixpack can't use it." Joe Sixpack hasn't finished a book since high school, but burning down the libraries doesn't sound very good, does it? Better to keep the libraries there for the people who have EARNED THE RIGHT to read the books by APPLYING THEMSELVES. Same argument for Linux. Linux is worth it for me because I learned it AND HENCE EARNED IT!!! I learned it all for free in my spare time while pulling a fifty hour week with a full family in the house, and there's nothing exceptional about me in any way at all, save that I ignore television.

Linux has made all the advances in the office that it can, or at least all that's worth it. Indeed, the people I call "Linux strategists" (we can take Linux and CONQUER THE WORLD WITH IT) remind me of a jigalo with a dozen gorgeous, doting women under his roof; so he ignores them all in order to pursue the fugliest mule in town who won't have anything to do with him anyway.

I propose we designate one Linux distro (Ubuntu is absolutely in heat for this one!) as "the office competitor". The rest of Linux can be back to being left the heck alone. The "office competitor" can be morphed (or have a distro spun off of it) which shall be named "I Can't Believe It's Not Windows!(TM)" It shall strive to be such a complete ape-copy of Windows, Gates himself would be fooled in a blind taste test. It should have NO non-Windows apps in it at all...because, of course, a Bash shell prompt makes Joe Sixpack queasy, remember? No goodies, no GNU...NOTHING! Just Windows copycat. And it should be sold, and be closed source. And for God's sake, disable the whole security thing, because we know gramma isn't going to remember her root password. You see what I'm getting at...it should no longer be called "Linux".

And herafter, there would need never again be these gasbags judging everything from awk to Perl to Konqueror to gcc to Frozen Bubble to Firefox to sed to Emacs to vi based only on whether Secratary Suzy and Middle Manager Moe can compose an office memo in it. The system that's just perfect for the server (Debian) the hobbyist (Fedora) the developer (Slackware) the kids (Mandriva) the cyber

No, YOU'RE kidding, right?

[FukYa]

"There are three huge problems with linux in business as a workstation and as an infrastructure base. One, lack of a coherent and consistant interface throughout all apps and the OS."

Ever heard of gnome/gtk+ or kde/qt? Crack kills dude.

"Two, most drivers need to get the hell out of the kernel... There is no longer any compelling technical reason to keep all the drivers as kernel modules anymore."

Wrong. Modules are not "in the kernel", that's why they are called "modules" and are loaded from outside the kernel. Companies can write proprietary modules that will compile and run with any kernel at any time they like. They are not required to give up their intellectual property when creating driver modules. Ever heard of Nvidia? They make self-installing video driver modules available for downloading/distribution.

"Three, the big one for busines, a lack of enterprise thinking towards infrastructure. Yes, you can do single sign on (painfully). Yes, authentication/authorization is robust and do have some interoperability. And, yes, there is LDAP, X400, DAP, etc. available for a directory structure. The problem is that no one entity has brought it all together in a single package that works from the desktop to the router to NOC to the SAN to, well, you get the picture."

WTF? Most companies with 20 to 200 employees don't need anything more exotic than what is already offered in common distributions. Large companies with 200+ employees have enough resources to customize GNU/Linux to do whatever they need. Your problem description is very over rated.

Re:No, YOU'RE kidding, right?

[charnov]

""There are three huge problems with linux in business as a workstation and as an infrastructure base. One, lack of a coherent and consistant interface throughout all apps and the OS."

Ever heard of gnome/gtk+ or kde/qt? Crack kills dude."

>> Neither of which enforces a single standard human interface accross every app.

""Two, most drivers need to get the hell out of the kernel... There is no longer any compelling technical reason to keep all the drivers as kernel modules anymore."

Wrong. Modules are not "in the kernel", that's why they are called "modules" and are loaded from outside the kernel. Companies can write proprietary modules that will compile and run with any kernel at any time they like. They are not required to give up their intellectual property when creating driver modules. Ever heard of Nvidia? They make self-installing video driver modules available for downloading/distribution."

>> Now who's smoking crack? Read Linus' own words on instability of the ABI or vendors cursing every kernel change. Most drivers live directly in the kernel tree and most of the modules have to be rewritten every single minor revision. What I was proposing (and has been proposed many, many times) is pull all but the most essential drivers out of kernel space into user space. Yes, you give up some performance, but a modern computer has lots to give. Read up on OS X's model. It is exactly what Apples engineers came up with.

""Three, the big one for busines, a lack of enterprise thinking towards infrastructure. Yes, you can do single sign on (painfully). Yes, authentication/authorization is robust and do have some interoperability. And, yes, there is LDAP, X400, DAP, etc. available for a directory structure. The problem is that no one entity has brought it all together in a single package that works from the desktop to the router to NOC to the SAN to, well, you get the picture."

WTF? Most companies with 20 to 200 employees don't need anything more exotic than what is already offered in common distributions. Large companies with 200+ employees have enough resources to customize GNU/Linux to do whatever they need. Your problem description is very over rated."

>> Now that is just naive. It is patently obvious you have no clue what you are talking about and have never either been a part of nor led an infrastructure team. My organization is just 15,100 individuals and the last thing we would be burning cash on is trying to shoehorn a distro into our business needs on the desktop. We use BSD's and to a lesser extent, Linux's, in our appliance devices and we do maintane some custom distros for that reason, but nothing near the complexity of a desktop system or trying to string together all the pieces necessary to compete with a full Novell or Microsoft infrastructure.

Space is cheaper than memory

[BobPaul]

I hate to break it to you but that happened quite a while back. Even the minimal install of most major distros these days is bigger than the full install of most distros six years ago. Linux has gotten bloated.

Yeah, but disk space is cheap, and this helps ensure that people have the tools they need since there's less software you can purchase for linux and most windows programs don't run on wine and it's derivatives.

What I like is how much less bloated linux is memory wise. I run all the same stuff as I did before (ftp server, ssh server, vnc, firewall, etc) that I had in the background on windows, but I'm only using ~100MB ram with Gnome loaded and 248Kb of swap space.

Sure beats Windows demand to use almost half my memory and a significant portion of my swap just because they're there.

Open-Source virus-scanners?

[Rozzin]

"One more option. Windows boxes with Open Source software running. If there are 8 things the box must do, and one of them is available only for Windows..., use free software wherever it fits.... Proprietary here: ... AVG (no Free antiviruses)"

What about ClamAV?

Re:Open-Source virus-scanners?

[Vo0k]

actually, http://www.clamwin.com/ for my case. Thanks for the pointer. Citing Barney, "one less horror in the world". Bye AVG :)

Reality Check:

[Burz]

UI readjustment is not such a huge barrier (as long as the UI makes sense). Gamers adjust to new UIs all the time.

Average users cannot install their own application software or drivers on a Linux distro. They must go to the "repository" and see what's offered there. That disk that came with your scanner or internal cablemodem? Forget it... come to the distro forums and twist in the wind with the rest of us. Learning to compile can be fun!

That's why creative software genres are scarcely appearing at all on "Linux"; Its not a stable platform yet. There are these distros with vast repositories of software that look like vast mountains of parts, and every 6-12 months those mountains tremble and move! And if you don't open-source enough of your application's code, then it ceases to run on the latest distro in 2 years time because too many parts would have to be recompiled in the new environment.

That is not a stable platform and it drives creative types away. They want to think about their detailed vision for a greap app or game, not which layers need to be GPLd, or creating 3 different package formats for each verion they release and maintaining relationships with downstream maintainers at SuSE, and Fedora, and Debian and giving them all mostly the same discussion. More than anything, they DON'T want their app to be kinda-sorta glued onto the OS.

People also to be able to buy the software off the shelf, or download from the vendor's website.

Answer this question: Where does the OS end and where do the appliations begin? Can't answer that question?? Then don't bother end-users; sysadmin types and hobbyists are about as far you'll get.