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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 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.
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.
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?"
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
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.
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..."
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.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
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.
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...
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Simulated Sig
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.
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.
Art is the mathematics of emotion
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.
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.
Rethinking email
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.
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.