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Linux Desktop Ready, Says Mainstream Media
DeathElk writes, "The Sydney Morning Herald recently featured an article espousing the virtues of desktop Linux. From the article: 'Linux is shedding its hard-core techie image in a bid to woo ordinary human beings seeking an easy-to-use operating system that can be downloaded for free.' Is this a step forward for widespread GNU/Linux desktop adoption? Too bad the article doesn't mention the large range of live CD/DVD distributions available for try-before-you-fly, or the range of Windows applications tested and working under Wine." Also, the article is slightly unclear on the concept of open source, defining it as an arrangement "where the source code can be modified upon the request of users or other developers."
The mainstream media is never confused with the meaning of open source.
Lies.
"If you don't have eyes you shouldn't have wings" -- Carl Pilkington
What about the geeks who use Linux because it's not mainstream? What will they use now? Dragonfly?
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
If the Mainstream Media says Linux is desktop ready, then desktop ready it must be!
After all, the Mainstream Media is well known for its expertise in IT and its reliability as a source of proven facts and sober analysis!
Hrm.
Actually, now that I think about it, I do believe this is proof positive that Linux is absolutely not desktop ready.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
"Linux Desktop Ready, Says Mainstream Media"
"World is Ending! says People in General." A lone man on a streetcorner was quoted....
If the user isn't the administrator, then I could, but for the average every-day user?
I'm more tech savvy than most and I still find Linux to be a pain in the ass when installing applications and setting up stuff. The problem is while most distros share a general code base, a lot is slightly different enough to make compiling/installing apps a royalpain, and the documentation is often less than stellar.
Having recently put a lot of effort in getting Gentoo, Ubuntu, KUbuntu, and before that spending several years with Red Had machines, I cannot see giving normal users Linux machines.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
How exactly does one Australian newspaper with a circulation of 365,000 (Wikipedia) count as the mainstream media?
it's ready alright, but for whom?
Sent from my desktop computer
I used to play with Red Hat in 2003, and I found it just a little too hard for everyday use to keep using, so I went back to Windows/OSX
A few weeks ago, I started playing with Ubuntu, and I gotta say, there is no reason why it can't replace windows on the desktop. If Dell will start installing it on systems (thus knocking $100 buck off the price of a machine), then it can make some serious in-roads, and knock Windows back.
I don't know if it's ready for a corporate enviroment, though. Although I don't like MS, their combo of Exchange, AD, and DC is pretty powerful.
FTA, Ubuntu's marketing slogan - "Linux for human beings"
I feel like pluto, according to Ubuntu, I'm no longer human...
I've been playing with Linux since I discovered Suse 6.1. I love the concept, but the execution has been flawed. People have enough trouble with maintaining Windows PCs, much less having to delve into command line shells to get things done.
I've tried virtually every distro out there (and some that don't exist any more) and what I've found is the only one that matches the ease of use of Windows and BeOS is.....
Linspire (also working as freespire)
Funny, from the man everyone loves to hate (and I admit, his bragging has been pretty outlandish) comes the only linux distro to get it right.
I used BeOS as my prime OS for several years, so I'm no stranger to command lines, bash shells and working with obscure items, but Linux, as a concept, has a long way to go.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
when exactly was this quote taken? what is he talking about, am i missing something?
granted, i havent used Ubutuntu, but i used Red Hat, SuSE, and Fedora as a desktop for a few years, and all were very easy to install and use.
IMHO, linux has been ready for the desktop for years, but the world just isnt ready for linux.
I like Windows XP Home Edition much more than the Linus-operative system.
... plus even more!"
It is the most powerful operating-system for Pee Cees. It looks not as metrosexually-oriented as Mac OS X by Steve "Rim" Jobs and has 1,0000,0000 times more softwares that the Linus-operating-system (I mean real software, not shareware like GUN).
Plus, it comes with every Pee Cee for free. People who have grown acusstomt to paying RatHat 699 $$$ or more can hardly beleive this when I consult them with my proffesional Internet- and Network-Service-Center-Bureau.
When I have a new customer, I take him to the back-room to show him the "alternative" to XP Home, which is Suse Linus 7.0.
I have set-up an old Pentium 133Hz and a small monochrome monitor to show the customer what Linux looks and feels like.
I have it set-up so it runs a fullscreen-Flash-splash-screen on the KDE-4-beta-desktop. It takes 13 min until the mouse cursor responds.
The customer will then make a sound like: "BAH!"
Then I tell them: "See, this is how it is if we let the communists make software."
Then we have a good laugh, wich is psycologically valuable for the customer-relationship.
I always tell them:
"Windows XP Home Edition is all you can do to embiggen the producationality of your human resourcers and empower to leverage the outcome-bottomlime of your stickholders
My customers usually are like: "OMG!"
You should really try it one day; it has a very nice light-reddish color theme to hit your tastes.
Thank you!
I got sick of answering my moms problems with viruses and spyware on her windows machine that I finally switched her to Ubuntu. It detected her scanner, her digital cammera and everything right off the bat. She's 65 and she says she hasn't had a single problem with her computer and that it works great!! She h0onestly says it's the best system she has ever had and ever more impressive, I didn't have time to train her on anything and she has pisked it all up wonderfully on her own. She understands Open Office and doesn't notice the difference between that and wrod.
;)
Honestly, for everyone but gamers, Linux meets their needs. For graphics developers, Macs meet their needs
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Too bad the article doesn't mention the large range of live CD/DVD distributions available for try-before-you-fly, or the range of Windows applications tested and working under Wine."
I would say, TOO GOOD that they didn't do it. I am sure that any user having the slightest curiosity of ditching windows will be overwhelmed after looking at more than 500 (or lets say 40 "main") linux distributions.
Or sure tell them how "tested and working" are those Windows applications under "Wine", so that when after they install their preffered linux distro and say, "okay now how do I install my 'tested and working' Winamp on Linux" their head will explode searching at zillions of forums/faqs/howtos/irc/etc.
The *only * way a WinApp-in-Wine would work is as google did it with picasa (i.e. the company will have to make something) or that a Linux company like Linsipre added such applications to their Click'n'Run service (of course they would have to buy licenses to each of the software they will sell). I like this idea a lot.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
But didn't you just say you used Ubuntu? Last I checked OpenOffice, FireFox and Evolution were installed by default....
1. The check is in the mail
2. I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you.
3. I won't cum in your mouth.
4. Linux is ready for the desktop.
The Aussie paper saw that "Bruce" was a staunch proponent of OSS, and figured if it's good enough for Bruce, it's good enough for everyone!
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
No DRM
No Viruses
No Spyware
No Malware
It's cheaper
It's Free
I've been using Linux now for over 5 years and I honestly don't think I could go back to using Windows at home. The need for virus checkers, etc. just leaves me feeling paranoid. So what that I can't play many games on it, I have a PS2 for that...
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
...does it have the latest version of "Microsoft Drm?" Because I'm not buying it if it doesn't manage my digital rights.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
I am so tired of two sets of articles: those discussing whether Linux is "ready" for the desktop, and those that say that "NOW is the time when there will be massive adoption of Linux on the desktop."
On the first set of articles: Linux is already "ready" for the desktop. I use it on my desktop already, and it does everything I need it to do. It is for me a superior choice.
On the second set of articles, what they usually mean is that upon some event, there will be massive adoption of Linux on the desktop in rich, developed countries. "some event" varies and is typically purported to be 1) the coming of a new Windows version, such as Vista, which will be expensive and have high hardware requirements; 2) some big vendor preinstalling Linux, or 3) some big Windows security flaw, or 4) some other pain in the ass thing that MS is newly implementing, such as more DRM or copy restriction.
Well I've got news: it's highly unlikely we will ever see "widespread adoption" of Linux on desktops in rich developed countries. People in these countries can afford Windows, and switching is a big pain. Windows is crappy, but not crappy enough to switch away. It would be amazing if we even saw adoption rates that paralleled the adoption rates of Firefox in parts of Europe, but I think even that is unlikely. Note that I'm not saying anything about developing countries, where the dynamics--economic and political--may be quite different.
I'm tired of these articles because I don't understand why they're relevant. It's much more likely that we would see massive adoption of the Mac than of Linux. But we don't see articles crowing about that. Macheads are secure in their superiority complex; they don't see a need to sit around and predict when Mac world domination will happen. They don't worry that the Mac is irrelevant, no matter how small its market share is. Macheads are happy because their machines do what they want them to do. As a Linux user, I feel the same way. My machine does what I want it to do. My platform is not irrelevant--huge companies like Adobe, IBM, and Intel realize its importance even on the desktop. I do not care that roughly ninety percent of people use Windows, and I do not care about world domination.
Unfortunately it's often pro-Linux people (rather than just random press idiots) who promote this world domination crap. We need to realize that we've got a great platform, it works for us, and it's continuing to improve and work for even more people. The world domination and "ready for desktop" talk is tiresome and it just makes us look stupid.
Penny - plain text accounting
I've only been using it on the desktop for 6 years, and now it's finally ready!
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
It's originally from an episode of the Simpsons. Wikipedia to the rescue!
"When I can play games on Linux with all my funky graphics and sound card options and controllers working right out the box like I can on Windows, then I'll make the switch. Last time I installed Linux, about a year ago, I had to spend a day finding drivers, had problems with the display and half my peripherals didn't work. Much as I don't like M$, I don't get those kind of problems when installing Windows XP. It takes 30 minutes, 1 install of SP2, a couple of drivers installs and a reboot and I'm back to normal. One point to make about Linux and enterprise and use in business. Linux doesn't ghost very well, which is a problem as far as I am concerned."
I want to discuss most of your points... (but not in order):
1 - "Linux doesn't ghost very well". No, but it tars and dds well. Why are you trying to use a Windows tool which isn't needed?
2 - Windows XP does take 30 minutes to install. "a couple of drivers installs" -- I run XP SP2 in VMware. The last time I tried to install it on real hardware: I needed drivers for the IDE driver, the audio, the network and the video. None of which were included. Of course, the drivers were too big to put on a floppy, and XP refused to see the CDROM drive it just loaded from. Of course the network required a driver as well. Way to go! Fedora Core "just works" on this machine -- needing a driver for the video only.
3 - Play games... If you want to run Windows games, use Windows. End of story. No other explanation is needed.
4 - "funky graphics and sound card options and controllers working right out the box". This is bullshit. THEY DON'T WORK RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX WITH WINDOWS. You need to install drivers. Which are very dodgy at times. If anything, Linux has FAR more quality drivers than Windows "in the box". I still use QIC tapes: is there a Windows XP driver that is supported for those?
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Also, a nitpick - GNU/Linux isn't ready for the naive user, but X/Mozilla/OpenOffice/Linux might be. Compilers and command-line tools with extra-long option names and EMACS are all fine things, but they're for somebody who's willing to RTFM, not for the couch-potato consumer.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I have installed Ubuntu onto about 6 PC's now. Each time I hand it over to the person & never get another call back. My worst case was with a Compaq desktop (PII 500 IIRC), I couldn't get the integrated soundcard to work. When I looked it up, seems it's a proprietary chip & not even WinME supported it. Oh well, in went the $5 Soundblaster & off went the PC. For people who only want to do simple Web browsing, E-mail, and word processing, Ubuntu should be the prefered OS, much lighter than Windows, better security, and it works well on old, cheap hardware. Let's face it, a P IV 3K+ chip is great, but it really only takes a pII 500 to run 90+% of the web - excluding of course video in WM formats. Email could be done just as well on a P I as a P IV, once you cut out all the bloat in Email programs.
Next, as far as administrating the box goes, how many people really do any administration beyond clicking the install updates now button? 90% of the people I know do auto updates for Windows & when something goes wrong they show up at my door & cry. From what I hear from other people who are techs, it's about the same everywhere. People don't know how to 'administer' a computer, and they don't want to know. Ubuntu & Fedora use yum, Debien uses apt, between the 2 I don't think I have had to manually compile a program for any generic use. Last one I compiled was the BRL-CAD system I wanted to play with. Not exactly something that's high enough demand to get packaged for a repository. I've had to install & configure autocad on systems also - it wasn't any harder to do the compile.
Last note, what documentation have you been reading in the proprietary software world that's much better? The booklet that came with the HP I was working on this week was a font of usefull information telling me that everything is golden out of the box & call this number if it wasn't. Supposedly there's documentation in MS software, but I've never found it to be usefull if it wasn't just pointing me to which menu selection to use to do something - Excel seems to be the exception there, but it didn't start as a MS product IIRC.
Hasn't Linux been touted as desktop ready annually since about 1999?
Each year, I will admit, it gets closer and closer due to the hard work and efforts of the Gnome and KDE teams, but it still has a way to go.
(at least in the sense some people would like them to be).
... for me (a computer dilletante, to put it mildly) there's no question that Linux is nicer to deal with. Much less frequently, but I've certainly over the years seen a number of "crashes" (sometimes less spectacular than on Windows, but if the system becomes unrecoverably unresponsive, well, that's a crash) on Linux systems, too, and depending on your chosen distro, there's usually a great many more interface inconsistencies to choose from than with Windows :) But those are drowned out by the obvious benefits:
... why on earth? It's great, and helpful, and instructive, that there are so many different ways people have chosen to combine the Linux kernel with all the other bits that can make a day-to-day computing environment. This is true not just in that there are different complete distributions (hundreds of 'em, maybe thousands by now), but in the case of individual software projects that run on free operating systems, too. KDE v. Gnome? Even if that *were* the only "competition," it would be a good thing; improvements are constantly introduced in each of those environments because of ideas introduced in the other. But the borrowing and idea-generation goes on also with other desktops, because someone has the terrible idea that their priorities are worth spending chunks of their life energy to achieve, and others end up agreeing in whole or in part.
It's just that some OSes have landed there anyhow, because the telepathic, user-conforming, natural-language, all-seeing, all-knowing, vibrating-massage OS is not here yet.
OSes churn, because conventional wisdom shifts re: the "best" way to do certain tasks, because meme spreading makes some approaches to controlling bits on a screen seem more intuitive than others (people who first saw the GUI-based Apples in the early 80s can relate), because the advance of hardware makes it imperative to accomodate new devices or relative strengths of the various pieces that make up a personal computer, etc. OSes would probably look different if RAM cost one tenth (or ten times!) what it does now, or if optical drives were 10 times faster. A Live CD (or booting from flash) could be the "normal" / "obvious" way for computers to hold their OS.
There are flaws in Windows (crashes, user-interface failures and inconsistencies), and I don't much like the aesthetics of most Windows systems I've seen. I'm not expert enough (nor interested in spending the time to become expert enough) to get rid of some of the annoyances that even facially non-malicious Windows software likes to impose.
For instance: At the moment, I have an old laptop running Windows XP; I installed a newish, tiny Konika-Minolta laser printer's driver on it, but rather than simply now being able to print, I get two large pop-up messages about the printer's status every time I boot that laptop. I've gone through every menu option I can find to try to disable this annoyance (yeah, I know whether the printer's connected right now or 1000 miles away; thanks), no luck so far. Similarly, I know that my father's Windows machine starts up quite a few programs that he's not specifically asked for every time he boots it up; much Windows software is this way -- arrogant, presumptuous, intrusive -- and people just seem to put up with it, for the most part. By the way, your Virus Protection from McAfee is out of date, can we sell you more?
Linux-based systems aren't perfect, but
1) competition -- some people like to complain about the proliferation of distros, but
2) Tons of great free software. Debian users have had the longest sustained crowing in software history, perhaps, because of the thought that went into Debian package management. Nowadays, there's a surplus of good package managers and control systems, though, and the users of just about any Linux system can grab new free software (with a net connection) with greater ease than the conventional Windows approach of driver
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
>But didn't you just say you used Ubuntu?
Fake mustache falls off...
Oh my God, it's Ballmer! Get him!!!!
Summation 2
i just build a new computer, using new off-the-shelf parts, and immediately installed linux.
Quake 4 and UT2004 worked "out of the box" on this 64-bit system.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
I'd say that the problem with linux is not that it's not "laptop-ready", but that it's not "toy-ready."
It's the annoying little things, like the built-in cardreaders (the usb ones for desktops work fine, but I've rarely seen a laptop one work), some wireless chipsets (getting better... but despite having supposed kernel support I still haven't gotten my broadcomm chipset to work without ndiswrapper), hotkeys, and various other little things that don't quite work in linux.
On the other hand, there are lots of really cool things that only work in linux, or work better in linux, but those tend to be outside of the main area of interest for the general public.
That being said, I've seen vast improvement in the area of compatability with various hardware in 'nix. In the last few years I've seen more webcams, capture cards, and other of the 'fun but not essential' hardware come out with linux drivers that work (if not always work wonderfully)... and I'm hoping that such things will have more support in the future.
sounds like a vmware problem
He said "the last time I tried to install it on real hardware", so it was likely not a Vmware issue.
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."