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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."
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.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
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
Nice Job, Whore.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
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...)
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
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
Working in a DevOps shop is like playing in a band made up entirely of keytarists.
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.
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.
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.
Play Command HQ online
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.
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.)
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.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
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.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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.
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.
Not out of the box, true. Install XMMS.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!