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Linux & Open Source Software, the Present
Mark writes to tell us that LinuxForums is running the second in a series of articles designed to reflect on "what Linux is, where it came from, where it's going, how to use it and why you should." With all of the recent talk about the perceived difficulties within the OSS community sometimes it is just good to take a look at our roots.
Dear god, I'm sorry I wrote that.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
A good introduction. I have to chuckle a bit at the Fragmentation section, not because it's not valid but because I've always marveled anyone got away with trying to banish Un*x with it.
Even at its most fragmented (IBM/AIX, are you listening?) I was still able to sit down in front of any flavor Un*x and be instantly productive. Jumping from one version of Windows to the others doesn't hold the same promise of portable skills.
Regardless, more good information, always useful. Let me point to this article/blog: 10,000 bugs away from World Domination as a worthwhile read -- I have no vested interest in this author's (Keith Curtis, a former 10+ year Microsoft programmer) readership, but I think it is a great article with valuable insight into how close linux is and how far away it is at the same time. A good read, highly recommended.
On a related note is an old but still relevant essay: Debunking Common GNU/Linux Myths by Jem Matzan.
Developers: We can use your help.
FTFA: Is OSS any good? Yes. Not perfect, but better than closed source in some respects and worse in others.
In my line of work (system administration in a medium sized business) I'm often having to integrate closed source and open source solutions (or at least make them play nice). I like a lot of Microsoft's products. I also like a lot of OSS. But I find that (generally) whenever I look to the OSS community for help integrating the two solutions, I'm met with resistance or flat out rudeness.
For example, if I'm seeking help with getting samba working nicely in a mixed environment or figuring out how to run a PHP app on a windows box, I get responses like, "Just ditch XP, d00d, it sux", and "Apache is better than IIS".
I think if the community, in general, could adopt the idea quoted in TFA, a "newbie's perceived difficulties" with the OSS community would be drastically different.
The writer seems to want to bring up Gnome/KDE wars. Smells of trolling. What the hey, I'll bite.
Gnome has, with it's "more is less" focus achieved, IMO, a better new user experience than KDE. Not that KDE isn't good, I'm only saying that for people I know that aren't necessarily technical but just want it to work, I set them up with Gnome (on Ubuntu). My biggest success story on that front was setting up a Gnome/Linux PC for my cousin (RedHat in this case, it was a while ago). She used it to do homework for 4 years, having never used Linux/Unix before, and never called me once for support. The only call I ever got was one from her Mom asking me how to mount a floppy disk to get a document copied.
Personally, I don't think we have that far to go for Linux to be easily usable...
Politics, Culture, Food?
1
1995 - widespread adoption of desktop linux. yeah right.
1997 - widespread adoption of desktop linux is 3 years away
2000 - widespread adoption of desktop linux is 2 years away
2002 - widespread adoption of desktop linux is 2 years away
2004 - widespread adoption of desktop linux is 2 years way
2006 - widespread adoption of desktop linux is 2 years away
The article is not exactly ment to reflect...
Welcome to part two of a series for beginners explaining what Linux is, where it came from, where it's going, how to use it and why you should.
In short: nothing to see here, except the forever raging flamewar of KDE vs GNOME.
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
Linux is *not* user friendly, and until it is linux will stay with >1% marketshare.
Remember from 1st grade? The packman ">" always eats the bigger number...
Take installation. Linux zealots are now saying "oh installing is so easy, just do apt-get install package or emerge package":
:-) The fact that this is not simple is not Linux's fault. Quake (like the old Loki ports of games) could ship with a nice installer, but maybe it doesn't. It could even ship with a nice shell script command line installer, but maybe it doesn't. I don't know because I don't play Quake.
With Fedora, you can also go to the web site, click on the RPM, type the root password when requested, and it will install it for you or at least tell you what packages you are missing. I prefer to use yum but for those who are afraid of the command line, there are other ways.
As for installation of the distro, Linux is far easier as a distro to install than Windows is. I hate having to come back every 15 minutes and answer a bunch of questions that really should have been asked up front. And don't get me started on product activation.
User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Linux?"
Zealot: "Oh that's easy! If you have Redhat, you have to download quake_3_rh_8_i686_010203_glibc.bin, then do chmod +x on the file. Then you have to su to root, make sure you type export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5 but ONLY if you have that latest libc6 installed.
You do realize you can do essentially all of this in the GUI. And if I have customers that need this done, I usually send them a shell script so that they don't have to worry about it.
In my experience and the experience of my non-techie parents, Linux is as easy to use as Windows, and because once it works, it just works, and because it is comparitively transparent, it is actually easier to learn once you get used to it (but we are not to say that familiarity is the standard of user-friendliness are we? Because if it is, then we should never try to do anything new).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Although my current addiction to gaming means that most of my recent computing has been Windows based, I have long believed and will continue to believe that for the most part, UNIX and its' derivatives genuinely represent the way God intended man to use a computer.
Despite continual advances and new wrinkles being thrown at us in the area of graphical user interfaces, for many tasks the console is still fundamental and without peer where speed is concerned. Microsoft and Apple can crow about their own approaches all they like; UNIX existed before both of them, and its' descendants will exist after those two companies' names have passed out of human memory.
On reading Eric Raymond's The Art of UNIX Programming, I came to realise that that book offered not just a methodology for programming, but for life in general. It also describes the thoughts and philosophies of a group of people who were as pioneering, adventurous, and brilliant as any other in human history, and to whom larger humanity will owe a debt of gratitude for at least the next several hundred years to come.
Oh, I haven't seen *that* one for quite a while... thought it was dead already.
I have a proposition for moderators, though: start modding this funny. Maybe the idiot gives up.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Thanks for the present. It was poorly wrapped, and I've regifted it many times, but it's made my life a lot better than all the fruitcakes, ties, and even toy trucks I've ever gotten. Almost as good as extra warm socks.
--
make install -not war
Being pretty much a n00b when it comes to Linux... I shouldn't.
90% of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at.
As I read this, I have a flashback to watching Mathman on Square One.
Mathman Mathman multiples of three. *chomp*
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
you're one of those windows95 babies who gets freaked out by the DOS commandline aren't you?
Translation: "I don't know because I've never had the desire to try it, but my ego doesn't allow me to admit that I don't know."
This space intentionally left blank.
Not quite sure what to say. My mother (she got used to computers at work, ... she asked me many questions about how to
using a Wyse terminal and a set of mainframe apps) could never make any sense
of MacOS, OS/2, Windows or Linux
use any of them.
My mother-in-law gave me more calls about her previous Windows installations
(ranging from 95 to 2000) than she now does regarding Slackware 10.2 with
KDE, and needless to say there were no spy-ware removal or virus-cleaning
sessions since.
As far as I'm concerned it depends on the initial set-up, and that's the
case for all current OSes. If you are a geek, or know a geek very well,
you'll be fine. If you simply want to use something, and it's not pre-installed
to perfection (in other words, to how you'd like (it) to work) there's hassle.
Cheers
First there's the hypocrisy in running free software on Windows.
.odt, but of course all Linux software is expected to be 100% compatible with Windows, or else it's dismissed as C.R.A.P. Every linux office worker will receive .doc files from their colleagues, who just *expect* them to own the £100 suite. But I would never post them .odt. Mozilla has to render crappy sites bodged to work in IE, but I'm not allowed to use transparent pngs when I design a site. None of my Windows friends will talk to me on Jabber, so I have to talk to them in MSN.
But also remember Linux is it's community. I might not write the software I use, but those who to are in my reach and willing to discuss. If I feel there is a problem, I can make others aware of that problem, leading to a solution. Microsoft doesn't have a community, there's no dialogue between consumer and producer. The backlash of Linux users against Windows users is a reaction against Microsoft not playing fair.
Microsoft purposely make their products difficult to be compatible with. They don't conform to purposeful neutral standards set out by the W3C etc, but use their own secret ways.. Office documents are notoriously difficult to read. Internet Explorer won't render perfect HTML/CSS but encourages malformed HTML. A specification for the MSN protocol has never been made avaliable. They play foul, they are a parasite burrowing deeper into their hosts. Microsoft never and aren't even expected to meet Linux half way in being able to read
XP ditched the Themes and the folder customization of 98, relpacing them with crippled junk.
Which is why I use Cygwin, but there's mingw also.
I'd use Linux if it thoroughly supported color management. And if I could use my Spyder 'colorimeter' to calibrate the monitors.
And if Adobe were to produce a Linux native version of Photoshop. Which is perhaps less likely.
Pity for me eh.
Yumex is very nice for GUI-lovers. It's just a front-end for Yum, but it's easier than explaining all the ways to grep what packages are available for a certain feature (say games).
Here's a screenshot.
Could this be reduced to the point where the general user would be satisfied? Well, I believe it to be already superior to many other popular general-purpose systems. There's some lack in third-party applications, X is still horrible for abstract graphics and distros aren't merging in drivers that are necessary (eg: madwifi), but those are deficiencies in imagination, not bugs in the code.
Nonetheless, there are bugs in the software, and yes these can be fixed. If there's a code audit, a random number of bugs will be found on each sweep, so the time taken to fix all of them will be indeterminate. The correctness of any given fix will also be indeterminate. If we propose an average rate of 1 bugfix every 3 days (this includes time for tracking down even the most obscure of bugs, testing the fix, and having it filter through the usual chain of developers), it would take about twenty thousand programmers a decade to reduce the number of bugs to the absolute minimum - I'm guessing that this would be in the low hundreds. (As the code is being developed, new bugs will be being added, so there will come a time when the bugs being added by the core developers will exceed the bugs being developed by this hypothetical army.)
A more rigorous method would be to use formal software methods to validate each function is doing what is intended. You could then be sure no new bugs were being added by the bug-stompers. However, because ANY change would totally trash the calculations being done, you would need to fix entire functions at a time, regardless of how many bugs there were. I'd say that it would take the same sized mob about the same length of time, but with greater certainty as to what was fixed and what was left to be fixed.
By this logic, Microsoft or IBM could have fixed their flagship Operating Systems to the point of being pretty nearly invulnerable to defects of any kind. They've had the manpower, the time and the money to perform the kind of total code review suggested. They have clearly not done so, suggesting that the marketplace is largely unaffected by the number of defects in software, but is far more influenced by application availability. Where applications are equal, then the fight is decided by brand.
Is there anything that can independently confirm this suspicion? Yes. The BBC Microcomputer had branding and software. The Acorn Business Computer had neither, even though it was technically made by the same people. OS/2 and NT4 were built from the same underlying codebase, but NT had the applications. Guess which won. The history of computing is littered with such examples.
This is why I am always skeptical of the argument that large numbers of bugs are inevitable. I believe it is closer to the truth that users don't give a damn (except when they lose data, and then they blame the computer, the dog, the telephone - anything but the software). I also believe that computer companies know that the users don't care, and therefore lower their standards to meet those expectations.
At present, Coverity's software seems to indicate that Open Source is down to the low hundreds of bugs per million lines of code, for those classes of bug their software can detect - which is some unknown fraction of the number of possible bug types that could exist. (I'd guess 10%, which would mean there's about a thousand bugs per million lines of code.) I see no reason why, within a decade, we could not be seeing reports of Open Source having fewer than a hundred bugs per trillion lines of code - other than nobody wanting to invest in that much clean-up when almost none of the mainstream users
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If the Quake3 installer is anything like the one for Tremulous (which it should be, since Tremulous is based on the Quake3 game engine), then all you have to do is download the binary (a .run file), mark it as executable (either with chmod or through the GUI), and run it (command-line or double-click). The only extra step vs. Windows is setting the execute bit, and I think the underlying reason for that step (to avoid spyware/viruses) is sufficiently useful to justify leaving it in.
If you want to install it into the system directories you need admin priviledges, of course; Windows has the same requirement. However, I had no trouble installing the program into my home directory (it even autodetected the non-admin state and chose a reasonable directory to install into). I have no idea why they recommended setting LD_ASSUME_KERNEL; I know what it does, but Tremulous installed fine without it, and Quake3 should also, since the underlying binary is essentially equivalent.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
"Remember from 1st grade? The packman ">" always eats the bigger number..."
I can not stand by and allow you to use improper terminology. Clearly ">" is an alligator.
Jeeze, let me just ask: What the fsck was that?!?
I'm not even sure I know what you're angry at...
This sig rocks the casbah.
..I'd sure invest as in reasonable cash money into an OS and applications desktop-oriented distro that upfront prominently said that their main purpose was NOT new eye candy but secure bug-free as possible code, and that part of what I was paying for was constant overlapping audits. That concept - run through the appropriate marketing speak translator - might help sell an open source distro in the general market place.
BAD CAR ANALOGY TIME
I can see the TV commercial, new shiny whizzbang motors latest release! Mega fins and wings, curb feelers, 29 channel surround holovision, purple paint with flames and giant rims with triple reverse spinners! Plus, its an SUV *and* an economy car, at the same time! Or so says the advert....
Dude goes to drive it off the carlot after buying it, heads out to the "information superduperhighway" the road sign says, he gets two flats immediately,an oil slick under the car appears, a couple of wheels fall off,the hood pops open, magic smoke release, bad guys jump out of the side of the road and mug him, take his wallet and credit cards,and etc.
Cut to the next scene, a normal looking solid car, smiling driver, driving right past the gas station and not pulling in, right past the carlot where the previous guy just got his new whizzbang, right past where he is broke down on the road and got robbed, now there's a cop car there with the blue lights..... keeps driving, gets out at home, walks into his normal looking house..fade back to the driveway...the camera zooms in to the odometer on the dash, it reads 2,678,000 miles on it.....
Announcer in the background goes..."Now really, which would you rather drive?"
Must we always confuse idiot-proof with user friendly. Just because a command prompt makes you panic doesn't mean it's not user friendly