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Has the Desktop Linux Bubble Burst?
El Lobo writes "For the Linux desktop, 2002 was an important year. Since then, we have continuously been fed point releases which added bits of functionality and speed improvements, but no major revision has yet seen the light of day. What's going on?
A big problem with GNOME is that it lacks any form of a vision, a goal, for the next big revision. GNOME 3.0 is just that- a name. All GNOME 3.0 has are some random ideas by random people in random places.
KDE developers are indeed planning big things for KDE4 — but that is what they are stuck at. Show me where the results are.KDE's biggest problem is a lack of manpower and financial backing by big companies.
In the meantime, the competition has not exactly been standing still. Apple has continuously been improving its Mac OS X operating system. Microsoft has not been resting on its laurels either. Windows Vista is already available. Many anti-MS fanboys complain that Vista is nothing more than XP with a new coat, but anyone with an open mind realizes this is absolutely not the case."
Are gnome and KDE -really- the only choices? XFCE? ICEwm? Hell, CDE even?! ... or dare I suggest ... Bash ?
... as I'm just setting up my first 'official' linux box for someone. This person has never owned a computer and professes to know about 10% on how to use one, so I'm going to toss Ubuntu on it and hope for the best.
Of course, I'm guessing they won't even have 'net connections unless they can leach off their neighbors- doubtful- so who knows for certain how much they'll use it for. Even if I have a winmodem that will still function after 8 years of idle sitting (static bags, yes...) I hear there aren't any drivers for them.
So yes, I hope the linux desktop growing somewhat- there's definately room to improve on Windows and a little competition never hurt anybody.
The voice inside my head tells me that it's wrong to make inferences and predictions on the general trend of desktop Linux based solely on the development of the WINDOW MANAGER.
"Many anti-MS fanboys complain that Vista is nothing more than XP with a new coat..." Ridiculous...It's nothing more than OS X with a new coat...
Many anti-MS fanboys complain that Vista is nothing more than XP with a new coat, but anyone with an open mind realizes this is absolutely not the case,
I absolutley agree - it's a copy of Tiger!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
On the surface, one may look at GNOMEs development model and believe it to be nothing but random additions by random people. To me, I can see some method in it. When you have such a level of openness taking place, you will end up with a system that's completely reactive to additions in commercial products. GNOME is not stagnant, but simply reactive to changes in the major desktop systems (Windows, OSX). Yes Microsoft has "already" released Vista -- it is a matter of time before those in the GNOME community see things they like in Vista, and incorporate their favorite ideas into GNOME.
In the interests of continuity, could someone please retitle this story as, "Could 2007 be the year of Linux on the desktop?".
The change in emphasis shouldn't be a problem, by now we are all experienced enough to know the answer.
The bubble has burst! Now with compiz/beryl, windoz is an antiquated, patched together qui! If you haven't seen what compiz/beryl offers the desktop, go to youtube and look. It simply blows any other gui away (including MAC).
1) Simple Hardware Support. I know this moves beyond the desktop environment and into kernel type stuff, but I want the desktop to pop up and say "You have new hardware" and then guide me along the correct path towards setting it up. This is really more of a service, perhaps one provided through a closesly monitored and updated website.
2) Better QA for all end products. Most of the time, I'm quite happy with gnome. Its the features and addons and enhancements that I add that don't always play nice. Perhaps a documented UI standard that other developers can adhere to, and a simple set of interface libraries that make desktop environment integration brainless for basic tasks. Maybe this stuff already, but for whatever reason, a lot of OS desktop software seems to be of poor quality and stability (major players excluded.)
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
What a pointless article. It's entirely emotional and opinionated. It has nothing to say besides "Linux Suxxors". What the hell?
I don't think there's any point to responding to this, but I feel compelled to put my two cents in. People like to complain about something being "user friendly". I'm actually really tired of that phrase. I don't think Microsoft's stuff is very user friendly. I keeps making me do stupid repetive tasks that cause me carpal tunnel syndrome (from repetetive mouse clicks), keeps making me answer the same stupid questions over and over again, keeps reinstating the stupid sample photos and subdirectories into the one part of the OS that should ostensible by mine (the "My Documents" folder), keeps forcing onerous, impossible to read EULA's on me, keeps preventing me from doing legal things I want to do because they don't want me violating their copyrights... the list goes on.
What most people mean when they say "user friendly" would be better called "newbie friendly", or "neophyte friendly", or maybe "diletante friendly". I use Linux on my desktop becuase it's more friendly to the stuff that I want to do, and for the most part lets me do thing the way I want to do them.
Oh, and nice job calling linux on the desktop a "bubble". As george orwell statet, a writer mixing their metaphors is a sure sign that they aren't actually thinking about what they are writing.
At least with KDE 4, I can finally get truly free software, not - its free if you use our free OS. I love the idea of building a desktop OS that's multiplatform and X11 independant. I plan on compiling standalone apps like kate to run on my Vista computer. Its truly the best of both worlds.
When I first got my powerbook OS X was a pretty decent improvement over Linux. A few things were more advanced (especially with the nice hardware support) and I could see why people were defecting in large numbers.
In my experience this has now switched around. There have been no big upgrades (except Beryl) but there have been so many little ones it makes my head hurt. Kubuntu 6.10 on a powerbook looks *better* than the latest release of OS X. All the hardware is supported (including the shut-the-lid-and-it-goes-to-sleep-in-0.5-seconds suspend mode). We have more (useful) 3D effects (blur behind transparency is GODLIKE), more desktop widgets, better support for fonts.
There is better support for advanced networking, connectivity, roaming. There is better support for media, both video aand audio. Hell, there is even better support for the iPod than there is in OS X. The desktop (even with integrated KDE/Gnome) looks more consistent and with window shading, katapult app launcher, better virtual desktop support, sensible ways to organise windows and all of the rest of the features is miles ahead of where it was in 2002.
Up until now there has been no need for a big leap. The incremental improvements have given us the desktop Linux we wanted so badly back in 2002. I'm excited to see what the next generation of innovation will bring (a break from the me-too Windows/OSX style desktops) but Linux today is already cutting edge.
Beep beep.
Linux played catch-up not only in market share, but in features for a long time. While we can all agree that Linux generally beats down Windows in reliability and is generally a much better server solution, we're talking about the desktop here. On the desktop, Windows has been much easier to pick up and just work out of the box doing everything a person wants it to do.
While the author of the article feels Linux hasn't grown, I believe it has. It is not only fully on par with Windows, but I feel considerably more feature-rich, easier to install (for some distros), easier to maintain, has better performance, and has gained in two major areas.
1 - Windows app compatibility
2 - Gaming
Linux is very much a viable and reasonable desktop alternative to pretty much anyone on the planet today, where as that hasn't always been the case.
If that isn't significant growth, I'm not sure what is.
And let us not forget the strides that are being made in desktop search (programs like Beagle) and the 3D Desktop like Compwiz. Linux is beginning to innovate, and the big boys are trying to follow suit.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
A big problem with GNOME is that it lacks any form of a vision
Actually gnomes have the ability to see in the infrared spectrum, and get +2 to constitution / -2 to strength.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Nothing like a little pointless speculation to liven up the day.
The desktop gui's that are available are good enough for most users. The thing that slows adoption is most business' dependence on microsoft's office/email suite...Provide that stuff through terminal services, and no one complains about what the desktop looks like, but then you lose the cost savings, so why not go with windows native?
If online ajax services actually start living up to the hype, and start supplanting Office-type software, you'll see linux on the desktop like you've never even imagined.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Microsoft doesn't have 'laurels'. Just many large sacks of cash.
Laurels are pointy a mean, sacks of case are soft and comforting. I know which id rather have.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
"Linux on the Desktop", to me, is like the "Global Domination" slogan that Linus used a few years back. It's a nice slogan, but we are not there yet. Maybe never. But who cares, as long as people are having fun getting there? I have been interested in, and using Linux since, well, something like 1995. It was a perfectly acceptable desktop then, and it has only improved since.
This article is FUD, pure and simple. "Linux is Dying", "Linux is Insecure", "Linux is a Toy", "Linux is for Hobbyists" and "Linux is a Rabid Communist Terrorist Cancer that will steal your money, destroy the economy, kill your cat, burn your house down and crash your car" are all pseudo-ideas that came, were disproved and disappeared.
These days it's "OMG! Linux is Not Ready for the Desktop!!!". This, too, shall pass. Remember: even Mighty Microsoft, the saviour of the American Economy, has a finger in the Linux pie now. Soon, they will stop screaming and throwing feces at Linux and admit the inevitable: they don't stand a chance.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
It seems to me that the same can be told about linux distributions.
A lot of improvements, a bit of cosmetic lift ups, but no plans at all and much less stability.
What is lacking in the world od linux for desktops is a vision, plans and roadmaps.
These things are quite complex and some sort of projection is badly needed.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
I think this is the most ridiculous sentiment that people keep passing around.
Clearly it is a visual upgrade from XP, and people liken the visual style to something Apple would design. And I don't care for most of Vista, but Vista is a huge upgrade, the least of which is the visual style. 99% of what has changed between XP and Vista has nothing to do with Tiger, nor copies Tiger in any way.
Perhaps you should look into what major changes are there rather than look at one desktop screenshot and judge an OS simply by it's visual style.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
What bubble? In order for there to be a "bubble" in the first place, there would have to be widespread acceptance and usage. Linux on the desktop has *never* has anywhere near widespread acceptance and usage. It's never taken off, and won't any time in the forseeable future, because Linux on the desktop isn't solving a problem. Windows works. OSX works. Nobody cares about desktop OS's any more. The "OS wars" have been over for 10 years.
But it already can.
What can OS X do that KDE can't?
The sticking point now isn't even driver support - my jaw drops nowadays at all the stuff that works with Linux, even syncing my Palm works now.
The sticking points are games, and certain hobbyist things like converting AVI/WMV to MPG, and DVD ripping.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
When I started using Linux in 1996 it was 'almost ready for the desktop'. And now we're just as close to the desktop as we were then. I got tired of waiting and switched all my desktop work to the Mac. I keep my Linux box as a file server thouch. Linux has always been good at that.
-- Cheers!
You understood perfectly :-)
Hey here's another example - what if I want a fricking kernel dump when my system crashes? What, I can't dump it to disk like Solaris and every other enterprise UNIX does? I have to send it over the network (which comes to a host of problems which I won't go into here)? Yes, yes, I know about the problems of doing this for a variety of hardware, but this is the sort of thing I'm talking about
Linux is not there yet for high-end enterprise, although it is getting there. Linux should concentrate on that, which it has been doing, which is good. Trying to crack Microsoft's desktop monopoly while the high-end is up for grabs is dumb. Take the high-end and then go for the low end. Of course, people are free to work on the Linux desktop if they wish. But I'm glad the core team is concentrating on making Linux a real enterprise UNIX system.
"Oh, and nice job calling linux on the desktop a "bubble". "
Better than "blister". "Oh my God! The Linux on the Desktop blister has popped. Eeeewww!"
"You get what you pay for"? I cannot imagine a bromide that's been refuted more often by people on Slashdot than that one. People do productive work because they're given incentives. Money is a common one. In the case of a desktop environment, there is an incentive to get these systems to work well: the people who are running them are the same people who are programming them. If there's any one force that would counter this incentive, it's that the people who are attracted to Linux are interested in it for other reasons than having a user-friendly desktop; development for the desktop becomes a secondary goal. Therefore, it's a matter of the demands of people who run Linux and not a matter of lack of money. You see the exact same thing on commercial platforms which are geared towards a similar demographic -- notice how little interest there is in 'desktop-Solaris' or 'desktop-AIX'.
There ARE easy alternatives to "apt-get" and things of that nature. I think what people hate to admit is that in order to sell Linux to the masses, it's going to have to be dumbed down. Companies like linspire have done a great job of this IMHO, but lack the funds for properly propogating and marketing their works. Linspire is usually a great hit when newbies use it. It's got everything that all the other distros are lacking from a newbie standpoint. The dumbed-down side of it is that there is no compiler... But then again, my mom doesn't want, or need, one.
The problem with many linux users is that they fail to realize that your "normal" computer user is NOTHING like they are. Linux CAN succeed but it really needs a set of standards to follow. People don't like inconsistency. They really don't even like choice. They don't want to have to choose one of the 300 active distros. They want "Linux" and they want it to work as easily as Windows does.
I was a big proponent of Linux on the desktop for a while, but these days it's not installed on any of my desktops. Instead, I have a MacPro. The Mac offers me all the Unixy goodness but with a much better interface and overall integration. On Linux I was constantly wrestling to get everything to work, but on the Mac, it just works.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
It's evident that there's a competition. But it's lack of knowledge that GNOME or KDE developers are trying to compete with propriatory software. It's different market. If you don't care about freedom, then you would not care philosophy behind the things. And you would use whatever feasable for you, either with paying for it or not. You can't ignore the development pace of Linux desktop environment, when windows xp released GNOME desktop was really lacking lots of functionality. However currently it's much more better than Windows XP, and will be better than Vista or Tiger with developers get idea of best user experience ideas (call it steal or whatever) and will try to improve them.
Don't forget that developers use the desktop, and they will rely on others feedback about desktop apart from their own use. If users complain about something they will get motivated to fix stuff or add new features. If they were motivated to compete with other desktops they would behave differently and try to mimic stuff from them. But that's not the case with Linux Desktop. It's all about making computer experience better for its users. It all boils down to personas using these environments. Currently, to say, GNOME users are not newbies. Once more adoption takes place you will see that it will be more user friendly -to newbies-.
There're also technical obstacles in front of developers of Desktop environments, and these obstacles are dissepearing by time. Remember you needed to be root to mount cd or usb stick? Thanks to HAL not that's not a necessity. Now desktop developers can eaily use shinny graphics into their applications thanks to cairo and accelerated desktops.
To judge Linux Desktop, you need to check the development pace. Then compare them with time scales. I'm pretty sure anyone doing some research about features and bugs fixed by Microsoft or Apple and Linux Desktop from year 2000 to 2006, will be really amazed with the amount.
Many anti-MS fanboys complain that Vista is nothing more than XP with a new coat, but anyone with an open mind realizes this is absolutely not the case.
Weather Vista is this or that it's not the main issue here. The problem is: Everyone is moving, so why linux desktops aren't?
Er Galvão Abbott - IT Consultant and Developer
Article is right on one thing: OSX was the deathblow to Linux-on-the-desktop.
I've been a fanatical Linux fanboy since about '95.
Today, I own a MacBook Pro and run OSX. My servers run Debian. But for the desktop, OSX is what Linux will never be: A Unix with a state-of-the-art GUI.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"Show me where the results are."
And why does the KDE team have to show you ANYTHING?
KDE's biggest problem is a lack of manpower and financial backing by big companies.
Proof?
Microsoft has not been resting on its laurels either. Windows Vista is already available.
After how many YEARS? Sorry but everyone seems to agree that the Vista development has been a cluster fuck and that with 80% of the targeted features thrown out, it's not the revolution that MS claimed it was going to be.
KDE finally became my desktop some years ago around 3.2, and let me tell you I eagerly await each minor revision, because I'm seeing real results and improvements. KDE works just fine and is improving at a good rate. KDE is also working quite hard in many aspects under the hood, not just wiz bang 3d windows flying around. The adaptation of dbus by both Gnome and KDE is going to show some real results towards bridging the gap between environments. KDE is STILL the only freaking window environment that gives me freaking previews of images that I may overwrite instead of asking me if I want to overwrite the old 001.jpg with the new one. How about the damn simple button to suggest a new name automatically instead of requiring me to make one up in the case of overwriting? If I recall correctly MS and Mac don't allow you to even change the name, they just abort the copy/move operation.
The KDE team has done just fine in my opinion, and I have full confidence that they will continue to make my computer less of a pain in the ass to use in the future.
GNOME has the right model. Release early, release often. Users see actual improvements, developers get actual user feedback. And Ubuntu gets the latest GNOME release in the hands of users.
Seems to make sense to me.
"Laurels are pointy a mean, sacks of case are soft and comforting. I know which id rather have."
I got this one...
Laurels are pointy and mean, and sacks of cash are soft and comforting. He knows which, between the two, he would rather have.
"The need to build the internet comes from something inside us, something programmed... something we can't resist."
Fuck you Slashdot
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Sorry, wrong blockquote tag ended up in bold :(
Er Galvão Abbott - IT Consultant and Developer
Is it too much to want : 1) To be able to use my wireless lan from out of the box. 2) To be able to print photos on my photoprinter out of the box. 3) To work on a laptop out of the box. If anyone has read the various trilogies written by people trying to get the above done they know why I use Linux on my server and Windows my laptop. For the moment I'll stick with XP for my laptop while the world evaluates Vista. I'm waiting to see what I actually get by upgrading. Oh yes, and for the sound systems to work more often than not would help a lot. Both the speakers _AND_ the microphone ?
http://davesboat.blogspot.com/
The Calgary Unix User's Group got a great lecture from Aaron Seigo of KDE last week,
7 .html ...during which he either lied through his teeth about easily checkable claims for the near future, or KDE 4 is coming out in 2007 with significant improvements, and not just "chasing the taillights" of Mac and Vista, but leapfrog improvements upon them.
http://www.cuug.ab.ca/past-meetings/meetings.06-0
Assuming KDE 4 does come out in 2007, that'll be exactly 5 years behind KDE 3, about the same time from XP to Vista. They're developing as fast as a $100 Billion corporation, exactly how much more do you want?
The headline on this article is certainly senseless - in a "market" overwhelmed by a monopoly provider, there can be no bubbles to start with, at best you can incrementally develop a market share in small fringe areas where the monopoly's hold is weak. Mostly meaning non-US regions concerned about a lock-in by a foreign provider, especially governments. Also, particularly poor customers that can't avoid the $50 MS "tax" by piracy, because they have to play honestly, like educational institutions.
And in those areas at least, there's been slow but encouraging growth through 2006 and prospects for more. That's only a "bubble bursting" if you were deluded into imagining some take-off point of explosive growth was coming.
I wonder. Does anyone think this is the effect of huge C/C++ projects crumbling under their own weight?
Also, how about the documentation? Is the GTK+ documentation adequate (or sufficient)?
Wrt GNOME, about a year ago there was a huge brouhaha with ex-OSNews editor Eugenia Loli-Queru when she pointed out that GNOME didn't implement or care about what usability issues put forward by users. Nor patches.
GNOME has had a bad attitude problem for years (witness the brawl with OpenBSD; and FreeBSD developers say GNOME developers don't really care much about anything that isn't Linux). Would this be part of the problem in the shortage of developers?
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Strange. I remember people saying that about the 'browser wars'.
Join the anonymous, help develop the network: http://www.i2p2.de
Ok, so what does it mean that a bubble bursts? Well, first of all, there must have been a bubble. It never was. Linux has slowly gained users. That's all.
What's going on is that both KDE and Gnome are maturing products that are constantly being refined and improved upon. Since there has been no pressing need to do dramatic changes to the underlying infrastructure, the developers have been able to add new features without creating a new major revision. This is a bonus for most users.
I disagree with both notions. There are people heavily involved in the GNOME project with vision, and many of these people even share the same vision. As a result, the improvements in GNOME in recent years have been focused and in tune with other GNOME improvements. I haven't followed KDE closely, but I guarantee you that it's not the same as in 2002. Things have improved.
I'm sorry. Windows and Mac OS X aren't "competition". Linux isn't out there to "compete". It's out there to offer a free unix-like operating system to people who are interested in that. If people prefer to pay for Windows or OS X it's not a big loss for linux. Only when developers prefer Windows or OS X does it become a problem for future linux development. Even then, linux users should worry more about having fun, than dominating the market. Even if every computer on earth ran linux, it wouldn't put a cent in your pocket!
Oh, I guess I don't have "an open mind" then, whatever that means. Sure, there are some real improvements compared to XP, but as I remember it, most of these improvements were in NT 3.5 too. Basically, it's the latest version of Windows, even if they prefer to name their releases instead of giving them numbers.
In this article, the author is concerned about FUTURE progress of the Linux desktop, citing an imbalance in both the Gnome and KDE communities as cause for his concern:
1) Gnome: Plenty of money, few developers
2) KDE: Plenty of developers, little money
He also argues that because we're only seeing point releases from Gnome, progress there is slowing down, while in KDE, we no longer have significant point releases because everyone's focused on KDE 4, though there hasn't been any visual results yet out of the Plasma project.
In my opinion, this article is a lot of worry-worting. Sure, Gnome and KDE could *always* use more cash and developers, duh. But are the projects hitting some sort of dead end or breaking point where they'll cease to be effective? Hardly. Will they be able to surpass Vista and/or OSX in functionality? Depends on what you're looking for. Even now, some people prefer Windows, others OSX, and others Linux. Most people just put up with Windows, actually.
Thom is really into OS development, but I'm not sure how technical he is, so I think he may be more interested in what happens in the visual department. KDE 4 has little to show there, but a lot in the libraries that Plasma will sit on top of. I'm especially excited about Kross, which rivals MS's (as yet unreleased) Monad/Powershell.
What's unique about KDE4 (and why we really need it in addition to Gnome) is that it's going to be installable on Linux and BSD as well as Windows and OSX. That's pretty innovative if you ask me.
I don't think Plasma in KDE4 is going to bring about the radical changes some may be hoping for. There have been some interesting posts in discussion boards for both Gnome 3 (Topaz) and KDE4 for radical shifts, but usually these people are directed to look at Symphony OS, since most suggestions seem to revolve around creating a task-oriented desktop or else merging the desktop and browser into one environment.
All in all, I see nothing wrong with Gnome and KDE taking a more evolutionary approach. This is natural for any software so mature. The OSS kernels aren't going to see HUGE gains, just incremental improvements, but over the course of a year, you can see a lot of new innovations, just as you will with Gnome and KDE. An evolutionary approach to software development might not be as exciting for journalists and fans, but it sure makes more sense from a technical perspective: release early, small, and often.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
Where was I??
I've thought to myself before that much more progress could be made if fairly standard APIs could be agreed on for more things. Printing for example, how many unix "printing" solutions exist? It's no wonder than the desktop environments don't have the same ease in setting up and using printers as Windows does. A significantly higher level of cooperation, coordination, agreement, and standardization could take the linux/bsd/*nix platforms a long way.
I'm not some crazy saying we need to decide on a single widget set or should merge Qt and Gtk. But a flexable and extensible layer that is stable and mature would make developing easier. I think something generally eqivelent to Visual Basic would help too. The platforms would be much more attractive in general if there was some really "easy" development tool; Windows capitalized on this in the 90s; learn a lesson.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but working together more sure seems like a good start.
FreeBSD: The Power to Serve!
Ive tried some linux desktops here at the company I work for, and the single biggest "how do I?" I get is users asking how to drag and drop between disconnected applications. :-/ )
.. drag and drop has been around since the old mac stuff in the 80s? why cant they do it?"
... and they dont care ... they just want to drag'n'drop a movie clip into the body of an email, and have it work. It doesnt matter if they really shouldnt be doing that, its what they want.
For example, user using thunderbird for email and KDE desktop... wonders why they cant drag'n'drop the icon in thunderbird which represents an email attachment onto thier desktop and have it copy the file "like outlook does". (Yes, I know that tbird cant even do that on the windows platform..
When I explain that thier desktop is disconnected from thier mail application, or thier IM client, or whatever else I get hit with "but
-I- understand the logic of the *nix userland paradigm, but my users dont
Until all that BS "works" like they expect it too, the most I expect to get from end users is "yeah its neat, but I dont think I can get used too it"
"What can OS X do that KDE can't?"
Someone needs to sitting you down in front of the two desktops and slap the shit out of you as they step by step go through every single detail of OS X...
Drag and drop application installation...
Drag and drop between desktop and application and application to application and both in conjunction with Expose...
Text, fonts, spellchecking(could spend an entire day just on that one vast area alone)...
Even just basic functionality like a standard way for app notifications to the user
An OS X user could sit in front of an OS X and KDE desktop and generate a list thousands of items long in just simple basic functionality that KDE fails at.
KDE is a shitty and amateurish desktop that is barely functional enough to be used in a locked down business environment where users are limited in what they are allowed or need to do.
Drat! I missed it.
Well, I'll guess I'll just have to wait for the next bubble to come around.
Never underestimate a stubborn cuss who doesn't know when he's beat. Especially if he works for something other than money. As they say in Klingon, "La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid."
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
To be blunt, most of the linux community are geeks, and geeks basically don't like non-geeks. Linux developers are uber-geeks, and uber-geeks don't like anyone, not even other uber-geeks.
Yeah, that was a bit harsh, but someone had to say it.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
1. Simple, easy to use software for managing program installations. Synaptic is pretty good.
2. Simple, easy to use software for using Windows applications. Crossover office sucks. I haven't tried the Parallels solution for Linux yet.
3. Simple, easy to use software for system management. Linux has no Control Panel/System Preferences. All of that sort of configuration needs to be in one place.
4. Simple, easy to use network wide administration interfaces. I can plug in SBS 2003, babysit the installation for five hours, and have an e-mail server, web server, automatically installed groupware with a web interface, and a unified interface to administer the whole thing. Where is the Linux equivalent?
Command line programs are not simple or easy to use. While they become quicker over time as you learn all of the quirks, simple GUI interfaces for configuration don't require remembering arbitrary --configure-with-pears options. GUI interfaces to the command line interfaces make the most sense -- easy one-time setup, with fully exposed options for scripting.
And no, I will not pick up an editor and get to work. I only had to pay Apple $2000 for a laptop that was preprogrammed with the options I want.
From the article, the gist I got was that GNOME was still stuck between version 2 and 3 and KDE between 3 and 4. Why is the author so focused on the version number? Most Open Source software aren't big on high version numbers. By his argument, Linux kernel is a has been "server OS" because it is still at version 2.67. Many people would argue that Vista is nothing but Service Pack 3 and not a huge upgrade from XP. And some would even say that in its 25 years of existence, Windows XP was the first true operating system. My2cents: version numbers are not important. The author should compare improvements, new features and stability of GNOME 2.8 vs. version 2 seven years ago.
Some people consider Windows XP to be a point release of 2000. But even if XP was a major release, they still went from 2001 until Jan 2007 before making a new release (to consumers, anyhow). Sounds like KDE has until 2008 to make a new release before they're any worse than MS, if you're going strictly by "major" releases.
But even just looking at the point releases... KDE got tons better in 3.2, then again in 3.3 then in 3.4, and now 3.5... It really compares more against OSX's almost yearly "point" releases, which have all had quite a few improvements in functionality and style. Personally, after playing around with KDE for a while and enjoying it's earlier support for compositing, I went back to Gnome, and thoroughly enjoy using it (and now with Beryl/Xgl, the transparency in KDE isn't an exclusive feature in the Linux world anymore). I like Gnome, so I'm not really looking for any major changes to it... I don't want changes to get in the way of how I like to use it. It helps me use and enjoy my computer.
I do have one of the Vista RC's in a dual-boot setup on my laptop, but I only use it for work, where the software is Windows-only. I don't care for Vista. I have a hard time understanding why Vista can't pull off cool effects on the same hardware that Beryl/Xgl work so well on. But even if it could, MS is trying so hard to make an appealing product, when Gnome/KDE/Apple just plain make great products. MS wants to let us all know how hard they're trying to be cool, but in the end, they're just trying. Sure, Microsoft has a new major release coming out right now, but it has actually complicated the experience of using my computer, making me that much happier with Gnome.
Given the fact that it must be bought seperatly and installed it's been pretty sucessful up to now. Until you can go into the high street shop and buy a computer with Desktop Linux preinstalled you won't see it become nearly as ubiquitous as Windows. What the hardware manufactures should do is start something similar to the Apple shops. The same with Dell, SuSE and Lenovo and Sun.
davecb5620@gmail.com
Has it burst? I don't think it ever inflated!
2002 was probably Linux's swansong on the desktop. Last chance with OS-X maturing and now Vista now ready to roll. What happened in the intervening four years with KDE and Gnome ... not much. Ubuntu! Pfft. Who really cares. And it has nothing to do with free. In 2007 I want to be able to setup a printer, connect to all my network shares and install my productivity apps in under 3 weeks and avoid having to recompile my kernel.
"Steve Jobs has said that X-Windows is brain-damaged and will disappear in two years. He got it half-right." - Dennis Ritchie
>>What can OS X do that KDE can't?
In the hands of a techie or Joe Blow user?
i don't have a problem with the desktops, but they seem to be losing ground on drivers.
the state of wireless drivers could use some help.
mine works, but it's a pain.
and i have yet to figure out how to get my ATI to do full 3D.
it makes me appreciate my old nVidia harware.
I disagree with you. The "dumbed-down" environment is pretty much a solved problem. It is not difficult for even a newbie user to accomplish basic tasks in, e.g., Ubuntu. The real issue is that unlike Linux developers, average users don't give two shits about "software freedom" and are not going to tolerate excuses as to why this software doesn't run or that hardware device isn't supported. The users don't care whose fault it is that their hardware doesn't work. Either it does or it doesn't, and if it doesn't, they'll look elsewhere. They don't care why they can't play their games or run Microsoft Office. The only reality that matters to them is, they can't. So they'll look elsewhere.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
MS chase single visions, not because it's a good idea, but because they have to. They have to put out an integrated system and wealthy as MS are, their resources are finite, and increasingly consumed in the co-ordination of development rather than development itself.
The Free Software world doesn't have this problem. We can pursue lots of ideas in parallel, and let Darwinian selection dictate which ones survive. And we do. That's one reason Linux is evolving faster than Windows.
What the Global Vision thing does give Redmond is fodder for marketing. They can talk up this incredibly glossy vaporware development (Longhorn) and by the time they get to the feeble cut-down reality, everyone seems to have forgotten that all the sound breaking stuff has been dropped along the way.
But again we, we don't need that. People use FOSS not because of the quality of our advertising, but the quality of the software.
A global vision would be nothing but a handicap.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
I think the error here is in trying to develop and deploy a grand, unified graphics environment. This is extremely labor-intensive, and Apple/MS will always outgun us.
Perhaps we should be working on little graphic systems that address specific markets and do so concisely. Was abandoning the old Xt/Xaw/Motif such a good idea?
Maybe even X is too heavyweight for what needs to happen with desktop Unix. The ideas behind it are also pretty old.
What about combining the Gecko rendering code with something along the lines of svgalib or the direct console rendering of mplayer? What about an entire desktop based on XUL?
IMHO, desktop Linux/BSD is being crushed under the weight of legacy code.
Wow,... most of these comments are by the actual close minded people the topic sugggests. Vista isn't a "new coat" the visual upgrade is there, but i don't see how rewriting most the kernel, a new audio stack and new networking stack from scratch is a coat for anything. I don't mind people bashing an OS. Call it a little slow or unpolished, but don't be an ignorant dick spreading gossip.
Have you tried installing those packages that RH and SuSe distribute for those alternate desktops? They are distributed and they install, but they often have empty menus. Rarely do the companies take the effort to really integrate those alternates desktops/WMs into their distro. It's been a while since I've used Redhat (or rather CentOS), but the last time I tried fluxbox, XFCE, or WindowMaker there were a bunch of empty menus or broken links and none of the distro-specific tools were in the menus. The exception being Debian (yes, I know I was down on Debian a few days ago for having too many packages). This is an area where Debian excels. They are absolutely fanatical about getting the stuff properly configured and well integrated. When I installed Fluxbox and WindowMaker on Debian (Sarge and Etch), all the menus were populated with *working* items. Ofcourse, the packages were a little older, but they worked well and were integrated properly into the distro (that's the tradeoff with debian). (I also sometimes find myself coming back to Gnome, because of familiarity or because I'm using GTK/Gnome apps anyway - gEdit is my favorite X editor).
Paradoxically, with Sun, CDE seems to be better supported. I have a few ancient sparc-II systems. They have Solaris 10, but I still use CDE because, even now (or rather 1/2006 edition of Solaris 10), Sun does a better jobs of integrating some of their tools into CDE than their newer Gnome Java Desktop thingy, even though Sun is making a big push to move everthing over to Gnome. (Besides, Gnome runs dog slow on those ancient boxes). I could install fluxbox or WindowMaker on those boxes too, but the menus would be empty.
...and this is the first story I see?
I'll pass, thanks.
I think what people hate to admit is that in order to sell Linux to the masses, it's going to have to be dumbed down.
nah, it shouldn't be dumbed down. That is the wrong approach. It needs to be made smarter and by that I mean make the user think less about the details. I used to hate to have to update a linux box just because I had to figure out all the dependencies (I am not a Linux guru, just a very experineced users (13+ years)). Things like Yum, apt-get, what ever, take alot of the pain out of it. Updates are on my mind becuase I am installing a new Fedora Core 6 box at the moment and that is way easier than manually traversing a depdedency tree.
But there are other areas as well. Stop trying to mimic the Windows paradigm and make the UI smarter and more efficient. Is there a better way to manage multiple windows than tabbing through them? Is there a better way to launch an application? For example, if I want to write a letter, I have to open an application, then create a new document, then write the letter. Why not have have a short cut that says "Write a Letter" that does all that for me. Ok, that is a simple example, but the point is make the UI more intuitive. It is not a trivial task. Another example. I use Outlook for email, calendar, tasks, everything. Know what I hate? When I get an email from someone, I might want to add them to my contact list. Right now I have to right click the address, lookup the contact, find out they are not listed, click OK, then right click, add the contact, then fill in the information. Why not have a button that ask if I want to add the contact when the lookup fails? I could probably write up some VBA to do that, but why should I?
These may seem like trivial tasks, and individually they are. Implementing one or two would not make me swtich OS's, but if there was a smarter computing paradigm that makes me more efficient, takes the onus of managing my computer out of my hands, then that would be great. Make the computer smarter, not dumber.
The author seems to be quite ill-informed, a-technical and opiniated... I'll only talk about KDE, as that's what I use : KDE's new "under-the-hood" technologies are showing signs of progress. Anybody reading Aaron Seigo's blog, following the blogs of the Amarok developers or visiting Planet KDE regularly have seen how far certain technologies have already evolved. Qt4 is allowing a lot of cool new things, such as different method of shaping text, allowing VNC-like sessions and much more. Developers of apps like KOffice are already hard at work using the advantages from these core technologies... anybody following the Krita developer blogs can see what amazing things await us. The first two alpha's of KDE are very promising, but one has to want to see the changes so far, as most of KDE4 stuff is still in kdebase and kdelibs Most Linux software updates aren't revolutionary, it's the nature of the development model. So you won't see shocking new things, however if you look over time (The KDE 3.x branch has been running for some years now) the results are spectaculair. Any time I need to logon to a stock RHEL 3 desktop system I'm droppped in a KDE 3.0.5 enviroment, which feels so outdated compared to my 3.5.5 desktop setup... that's serious progress. It just comes in little steps.
I find it fascinating that anyone would care what a college student from the Netherlands would have to say about this subject. Not like we're talking about some high-and-mighty figure from the IT world proclaiming (again) the death of Linux on the desktop. The holiday season means slow news days, so this becomes "news" around here.
I use Linux all the time. My laptop, desktop and home server all run various versions. I rarely boot Windows on the laptop (I have a nice free Linux VMWare Server installation for that), and it's nowhere to be found on the other machines. At my job, like everyone else, I have to use Windows (even though I'm developing for Solaris and Linux platforms), but that's they way my organization does things.
This idea that Linux was supposed to provide some kind of "challenge" to Windows on the desktop is a figment of a lot of people's imaginations. If you have a use for it, use it. You have a ton of choices in Linux desktops, from the stripped down and fast, to the bloated and slow. Linux is an equal opportunity system that you can use in any way you see fit. I don't see that kind of choice with Windows. Yet, billions use it. They've made their choice as well.
And as long as we "Linux fanboys" find utility and power in this system, we're continue to use it, and people will continue to develop for it, no matter what kind of FUD continues to be spread about it.
Believe me, coming from someone who first used Linux at kernel version 0.12: nothing has changed.
Joe Dougherty, Florida, USA
The words I thought I brought, I left behind. So, never mind.
You mean DVD::Rip ?
Maybe not the easiest but still...
http://www.exit1.org/dvdrip/
I still can't understand why people even bother with Windows/Mac anymore for anything.
Linux will not get more mainstreem till it becomes easier to install. there are also still a lot of linux programs that need to be recompiled because there installs dont work correctly. But of course all the linux fanboys will tell me thats not true. i dont care what they say this has been my experience and ihave gone through hell trying to get linux to work and no luck .I finally just gave up.
By the way. Many linux users are very unhelpful and very nasty when you try to get help with their almight linux.
"What can OS X do that KDE can't?"
Good question, but the wrong question.
The answer is probably... very little if anything. But the right question is:
"What can Ms. Average User EASILY do, without tech support, on OS X that she can't do on KDE?"
The answer is probably... almost everything.
I am a rabid Linux fan, a supporter, and Linux-based systems provide the bulk of my salary. But my attempts at evangelizing the non-technical into using Linux over the years have been dissapointing. For the ultra-unsophisticated user, no problem. You set up a desktop with browser, email, and Open Office links and they are done. For the techies, no problem, we love yum and rpm and chasing down dependencies and all the other great adventures that come with Linux, and we are delighted by the fact that we are locked out of NOTHING by the platform. But between those two extremes, it is indeed pretty bleak compared to the competion from OS-X and (choking) Microslop.
I have also noticed a huge improvement in KDE's stability. With the recent Coverity scans, we see that KDE is on and off the 0 defect list. KDE seems to be the most active projects on the Coverity scan, I notice more more week to week change in KDE than in any other project. In 3.4 million lines of code, Coverity has uncovered over 1,200 bugs. All bugs have been identified and all but 10 have been closed. KDE has been on the zero defect list, but there is new development going on so new bugs do appear. Not only is KDE gaining the features you mention, but they are doing it while cleaning up the code base. KDE development seems to have a great deal of momentum, especially in Europe.
Think global, act loco
I agree, in part, with you (although I'm sure the Linux fanboy will mod you down).
Mac OS X has a wonderful GUI, there's no point in arguing that. However, it's somewhat overrated. It does have a lot of bells and whistles, but when I first bought my Mac, I didn't really think it was as intuitive as they say. Or functional. For instance, Safari doesn't hava a fullscreen mode (I get around that using Opera). I miss having 4 diffferent desktops I can just switch to using the keyboard, for instance. Etc. (Maybe things I like having in my FreeBSD?)
OTOH, the wide screen definitely helps the usability factor - and this has nothing to do with Aqua vs. KDE. It's a design choice by Apple.
KDE is beautiful and very, very functional. Konqueror simply rocks, I love the way it displays all the documents (like PDFs - although I wish you could actually _read_ a paper's first page by passing the mouse over it). Mac OS X doesn't do that (AFAIK, but I still have to RTFM - but it should do that as default behaviour). KDE is cluttered, but all it takes is some commmon sense in order to provide the user with the "correct minimal."
Now, GNOME is just stupid: outdated human interface guidelines; two bars that just make you waste vertical space; not tweakable enough. And slow (I mean, Object Oriented programming in C has got to be slow, right?). Pretty, but...
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
What laurels would those be?
I've been using KDE on Ubuntu for about five months now, on a Dell P3-850 with 512 MB RAM that's about 7 years old. It's got a lot of neat features, stuff I wish Windows had, but there's still a lack of cohesiveness and fluidity that Windows seems to be a little better at still. Mostly it's little things, like the fact that if I lock my desktop, I can't just tell it to use my desktop background; it uses the screen saver instead, and the only "show a static image" screen savers are kinda gimpy. (No, not GIMPy.) Yeah, it's a little minor thing, but there's a lot of such.
Or stuff like fonts. I realize that the whole font issue is a gigantic, historically-fraught quagmire; but after spending a solid week just trying to get KDE to allow me to use certain bitmapped fonts (and failing), and being unable to find any documentation about how KDE's font system works internally in hope of determining what's wrong, it can get frustrating. I miss how relatively easy and "it just works" (I know, I hate that phrase too, but it applies) Windows fonts were.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
If this is true, Microsoft is making a huge mistake offering no less than *six* different versions of Windows Vista. That is actually about the number of popular Linux distros tarketing the desktop.
this signature has been removed due to a DMCA takedown notice
Nonsense. The real issue here is not that Linux desktops need to progress anywhere. I use both Windows and Linux for hours a day and they both have their share of frustrations and joys. Your Quake example is a joke, since most people don't care about playing games like Quake on their computers. You might have a point if you use a more realistic example of software that simply is written to run on Linux at all. But so what? There's lots of great Linux/Unix-only software that I can't run on Windows. Although, I must say that I think the free software aspect of most Linux software makes it much more likely that a Windows port exists for good Linux software than a good Linux port exists for good Windows software.
The problem for Linux on the desktop is not usability or availability of games or a host of other problems at this point. It's things like lagging support for new versions of ubiquitous software, like Flash. It's the non-existence of any Quicken products for Linux. It's the fact that OpenOffice is a relative new-comer and MS Office/Works products have been around since the 80s. At most major computer retailers, the only operating system you can buy pre-installed on a machine is Windows. The average user never installs an operating system. Mac has a devoted base of people willing to pay a premium price for Apple products, why I'll never know, since Apple's offerings have been an inferior price-to-value proposition since at least the release of Windows 2000.
Apple is able to be profitable by serving a niche that is almost more fashion-driven than anything else. For the rest of the world there is only one choice: Windows. Linux isn't on the table. Not because of any real reason why average folks couldn't be just as happy with it, but because the perceived cost of a new computer doesn't include a component for operating system and applications expense. The bundling is the problem. The fact that MS has overwhelming market share is the problem. The fear of trying something new is the problem. People are already scared of their computers--even many IT professionals I've met seem to have limited understanding of how computers actually work. People know Windows, so they stick with Windows.
Until the consumer is informed that their hardware purchase includes a hefty charge for a Windows license and is offered Linux as an alternative (presumably at a different price point), they are not going to know or care about Linux or why they would want to consider it. They're already paying for Windows so they have no incentive to care about anything else.
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What can OS X do that KDE can't?
Convince developers they *don't* know better.
I think you will start to see many new Improvements to the desktop in the next year or two. The main reason being the changes in X11. I think you're going to see head to head competition with OSX and Vista now that X.Org is really allwoing Hardware acceleration. True 3d desktops and all sorts of crazy things. There is no HIG for the 3d world. Compriz and what not will trully open up the desktop to innovation that Apple and MS won't be able to compete with after a while. Things have really settled down and caught up with the other platforms over the past 10 years. We've come along way since fvwm. Now is the time to really push into the future, since we are not bound by the rules of marketing and PHB's. Novell and RedHat won't jump too far ahead, but God only knows what the enlightenment folks will do, or other non-commercial groups of coders. To me the only thing really missing from the desktop is good video card support. I'd really like to run compriz with 4 monitors and Xinerama. But it sure feels like the time is comming. Damn! I sound like an optimist don't I? I've been using Linux regularly since 1993, and the differences and improvements since then have been amazing. I can't but hope they will continue to improve, and at an even fater rate. I haven't been dissipointed so far.
simply put, no. the bubble hasn't burst. the community is better than ever (check out ubuntuforums). compatibility is better than ever.
don't post a story just because you want it to be true.
/Mod Article +1 Flamebait
"You might have a point if you use a more realistic example of software that simply is written to run on Linux at all." should read "You might have a point if you use a more realistic example of software that simply is not written to run on Linux at all."
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It is nice to view articles like that which although not completely objective raises a number of points which i think are valid. The lack of vision for one. It is obvious that a lot of things happen in "desktop linux" without appropriate coordination and guidance. That is why you have a lot of applications that are not well integrated and don't work well with each other. Comparisons with Vista and OSX are not that far from the truth. The key word being "integration", OSX blows anything that is currently in desktop linux out of the water. Everything works as it should, drag and drop from everything to everything, applications work in the same way, well defined guidelines exist and are followed (mostly). This is something that the development model of desktop linux environments will find hard to achieve. I also find the latest 3d accellerated X technologies to be all candy with no substance or depth. In OSX you have the candy too, but you also have robust frameworks (core image, core video, core animation in leopard), cutting-edge development environment and applications (Xcode, quartz composer, Interface Builder, opengl profiler, shader builder) and extensive documentation for _everything_. This (in combination with cocoa and other osx frameworks) makes it tremendously easy for someone to write an application that follows Apple's human interface guidelines, be easy to use, integrate perfectly with existing OSX applications and innovate in other areas. All of the above are absent or poorly implemented in Linux. It is therefore not surprising that the end result leaves much to be desired. In order for Linux to be competitive with OSX and even Vista some of these factors are going to have to be rectified.
"What happened in the intervening four years with KDE and Gnome ... not much"
Would you call Looking Glass on Ubuntu nothing or Beryl 3D nothing. Both out Vistas Vista which isn't even in the shops yet. Not to mention Novells SLED offering.
"In 2007 I want to be able to setup a printer, connect to all my network shares and install my productivity apps in under 3 weeks and avoid having to recompile my kernel"
You're obviously trolling but I'll bite. What obscure 'productivity apps' that (in all probability googled on) you had to recompile your kernel. Setting up a printer and enabling network shares do not require recompiling your kernel either.
was Re:2002 LoL
davecb5620@gmail.com
GNOME 2.0 was released in 2002. Since then, what significant part of the Linux stack below GNOME hasn't been improved to a degree comparable to what has been improved in Vista or OS X? Desktops can be defined with huge sweeping changes, but these often lead to delays and removals (see: Microsoft's Cairo.) By making a lot of little changes to the desktop, GNOME has changed as much in the last few years as have Vista or OS X. It's just hard to notice, because you haven't used GNOME 2.0 since 2.2 came out.
This is a troll post that we've seen here, in near carbon copy, at least a hundred times.
when I code server side application and I need a Linux environment, I use KDE.
So I've got a Desktop PC, and it runs fine. I prefer a nice UI over a SSH connection with Emacs under development environment.
But when I need to store my pictures, edit my video or simply browse the web I use Windows XP.
I mainly use free applications like thunderbird, open office, firefox, GIMP, Putty and all these gems on Windows XP. I don't need to install illegal copies. i've got everything I need for free and legally. I've got an all in one scan-printer (brother), I've got an USB external DVD driver. I don't ever bother trying to configure them with SUSE 9.2. Frankly speaking I've got tons of other things to do than playing around and make it work under Linux.
Sure there are "virus", trojans etc...But well I'm advanced enough to avoid most of these threats and for two years and counting I had no infection. Anyway I've got a One touch Maxtor external HD doing all the backups (another not-Linux friendly hardware).
So why should I migrate?
If you don't want to make a political stand, if you haven't fun anymore while openning various config files, reading dozens of FAQs to install such a simple thing like a printer. There is no reason to migrate. And if me as a computer engineer I see no reason to migrate...Why a lambda user who just wants to share pictures with his family, browsing the web, etc would have a reason to migrate? The question is as simple as that. Desktop Linux needs a killer application, Something that you cannot find on another platform. Mac is known for its User Interface and its simplicity. Windows is known for its compatibility with hardware and well known application. Linux is known as a free environment and that is not enough.
For example 1959 was the peak of streetcar use in America. Ford+General Motors+Firestone+Standard Oil formed a cartel to buy and shutdown every streetcar company in USA to increase their sales. Sometimes they were secretive. Sometimes they were brazen as the "motorized" America. Fast Forward Sixty years we have, urban sprawl, decaying urban centers and extrodinary dependance on imported oil. When oil and energy consumption was synonymous with economic growth, when "what-is-good-for-GM-is-good-for-America we let the monopolies run rough shod all over us.
Now information is power, we are in the information and communication age. And we are letting information/communication monopolies run rough shod all over us. And we called those dissenters luddites/poverty-lovers/socialists. We call these dissenters geeks/uber-geeks/out-of-touch. History repeats itself.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I think that's a gross oversimplication of the issues concerning geeks vs. non-geeks.
First I think part of the problem, is your average geek would prefer speed and efficiency over simplicity while non-geeks prefer the opposite. Personally I spend most of my time at the command line so I think things like apt-get install are great, however most non-geeks get worried as soon as you tell them to open up a terminal window.
I'm sure you were trying to be funny but really, geeks don't hate non-geeks, they just don't see the problem and thus no reason to fix something that isn't broken. They would rather focus on developing something cool.
This is also why I tell people who are looking at new computers to buy a mac. This way, they get an easy to use computer with all the nice GUI elements that apple provides, and when I have to use their computer, I still have access to the terminal and all the UNIX goodness that is under the hood of OS X.
Personally I would love for Linux to come up with a GUI that is as easy to use as OS X. (Yes, yes, Ubuntu is easy to use but it's still not on par with OS X... some people can be really dim) However, I think most developers don't really know how to solve the problem.
Oh, and you got it wrong, most uber-geeks hate non-geeks trying to be geeks...
If you think 2002 was the end of it all, install a distribution that was current in 2002, or hell, half way into 2003. That ought to refresh your memory as to how things changed. I still support systems running that stuff.
The problem is the author is one of these people that are the cause of marketers demanding n+1.0 releases to give the perception of great advancement. In Gnome 2.0, I think they reached the fundamental model that to me seems to be pretty much where they want to be, but that hasn't meant it didn't change drastically since then. Some of those 'bits of functionality improvements' have been fairly significant, and critical to a desktop platform, and keeping pace with OSX and Windows visual effects capabilities (i.e. Cairo and working toward Metacity compositing). From things as basic as a persistent clipboard, to things like numerous overhauls of nautilus, the mime-type systems, menu editing, embracing the freedesktop standards, new file chooser dialogs, and extending their platform to include more system administration standardization and various necessities (i.e. a screensaver consistant with the desktop).
Though there are some significant differences between gnome 2.0 basic layout and gnome 1.x basic layout, keep in mind that at least to this point Gnome major version is tied to the basic toolkit, which has essentially achieved the basic functionality they needed. Gtk 1.x was ass ugly, and not flexible enough to cleanly adopt new rendering strategies, and gtk 2.x corrected it and improved flexibility that has so far avoided the need for gtk 3.x.
Same for KDE, though IMHO, gnome spent more time struggling with what they wanted their vision to be, while KDE early on were content with their results. When I went from KDE 2.x to 3.0, it didn't feel significantly different. Again, they tie their major releases to their toolkit, QT. If QT never released 4.0, the 'revolutionary' 4.0 features for the most part would be in a KDE 3.n+1.
All this assumes also that all desktop 'innovation' can only come from the main progression of the GNOME/KDE projects. Compiz and Beryl have shown the way to advanced compositing with AIGLX/Xgl/nVidia-specific calls, for those OSX/Vista effects (and more). Ubuntu ties its release closely to the Gnome schedule, but the focus and integration of things in and out of gnome is critical to a good desktop system. Thanks to all the work in Gnome, the kernel, and other people and distros like Ubuntu doing the work to pull it all together,my desktop is as functional and nice looking as OSX or Windows. I can insert and remove media, and have it mounted and unmounted with ease, I can put my laptop to sleep and have it reliably wake up. I never want for a Windows desktop.
My only regret about the linux desktop is that GNUstep is not progressing more quickly. There are things about the NeXT/OSX interface strategy I really like, but GNUstep, despite some strides, progresses slowly overall and even with theming (Nesedah looks fairly nice), it is hard to get it to look nice yet clean.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
It is interesting, I guess, that the summary is nothing but a bunch of sentences excerpted from TFA (I supposed that's one solution to no one reading the linked article).
But KDE and Gnome are not the whole Linux desktop experience. Things like AIGLX/Xgl/Compiz/Ruby are part of that experience. Things like the availability of functionality that supports popular Windows-centric formats and service is part of that experience. There are many ways the Linux desktop experience has been advancing, recently, and it will continue to do so.
Plus, there never was a Linux desktop bubble. Linux is as competitive now, if not moreso, than it ever was in the past.
Plus they almost destroyed Toontown!
The 90's called, and they want their "I tried Linux but couldn't install it" angst back.
It would seem like hardware compatibility and applications would be where you want to focus if you're trying to build a Windows or OS X alternative. Not to slight anyone working on either project or start a KDE/Gnome flame fest, but I'm not using Linux for the UI. I'm using it for easy of licensing, because it doesn't phone home to momma every time I connect to the internet, because I don't have to activate it and because all the really interesting developments in IT seem to be happening in OSS. A lot of reasons that don't have anything to do with the desktop UI.
This discussion is overlooking that both the KDE and GNOME desktops are to the point a reasonably competent person can pick it up and start working. Both teams have done an amazing job and the improvements happen in big steps. Though I still support Windows development at customer sites, my own business runs on Linux. I have one cold and lonely XP box on my network that doesn't get to see the internet unless I'm running updates. That you can set up and run a business network without any software from MSFT or Apple is really quite amazing.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
None of that works in Windows "out of the box". Try formatting your disk, take a stock XP disk, load it up and see what you can do with it. All you get is a fucking OS, crappy drivers, and minimal functionality.
You've got to chase down a bunch of proprietary drivers if you want your laptop to work. Yes, the sound as well. Out of the box, XP sucks.
The only reason you percieve that the "OOB" experience is better is becuase the manufacturer of your laptop has added a ton of stuff to the OOB Windows install to make it work.
Put that much work into say, an etch install, and not only will you have just as good functionality, you will have a buttload of useful apps as well. XP can't touch that.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
On the rare occasion that I actually want to moderate a comment, I never have the mod points. Usually I had them the day before.
You've been modded "Troll" and "Flamebait", and I was hoping to put a +1 in there to keep you above 0. There have been at least a dozen times in the last two years where I have experienced an installation procedure like you've described above.
I can't in good conscience recommend linux to family because that kind of thing is still pretty common. Since I clearly can't recommned Windows either, I've been suggesting my family buy Macs.
This place must have some really fucked up setup, because I have never had any problem ever connecting a USB memory stick in Linux. Not in Fedora, Ubuntu, VectorLinux, and others. In fact it is the exact same steps as in windows.
1. Plug USB stick into USB port 2. Drive automatically mounts on the Desktop (or in Windows, My Computer, thus necesitating an extra click) 3. Double click drive to open 4. Do your stuff 5. Close Window 6. right click drive's icon and select "Unmount" (or in Windows click the "Safely Remove Hardware Icon and jump through two more hoops) 7. Remove USB stick
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
I think what people hate to admit is that in order to sell Linux to the masses, it's going to have to be dumbed down.
I don't think usability and power are diametrically opposed. You don't need to "dumb down" Linux to sell it to the masses, you just have to make the workflow easy by default.
The dumbed-down side of it is that there is no compiler... But then again, my mom doesn't want, or need, one.
Not having a compiler doesn't directly make Linspire any easier for your mom. The only thing it does is theoretically make developers that want to reach that market provide a binary, but I'd not wager even many of them to that, rather than let the distro do it themselves.
I'm not bringing this up to "bust your balls" but because I think this is a really important consideration that is often overlooked. You know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see compilers used to improve the usability of Linux, rather than be removed to "dumb down" Linux. Here's my ideal software install/management system. Take a nice, package manager and integrate it with the OS. Have it set up with at least one nice repository of software by default, with the ability for users to add more repositories. This provides for finding and downloading a lot of software and keeping that software up to date. Combine this system with OpenStep so that all normal software is a contained package that can be installed globally or within a user account and can be installed and uninstalled via drag and drop. More than that, it is easy to store and move applications via thumb drives, CDs, e-mail, IM, etc. Augment OpenStep by adding repository information to it, so that even if you only have an application on a thumb drive, the next time you use it the system can look for updates. Further augment OpenStep's existing set of binaries for different platforms with a subdirectory for source code, licenses, and build instructions that let the OS build a customized binary at its leisure and without the user having to do anything. Use the compiler to make it faster and easier, rather than removing it. Build your toolset with an official software registration service to make ACLs a practical security solution.
So where does this get you? If you're thinking of Linux strictly in terms of a server OS, this gets you unnecessary bloat. That is why this will probably never happen. If, however, you're thinking of Linux as a server and desktop and possible embedded OS, then it gets you ease of use and flexibility. Disk space is cheap these days and the ability to drag and application onto a shared server, or automatically upgrade to a new laptop with a different architecture, or IM a program to a friend who uses a different OS, and have it just work... is a huge win, in my opinion. For servers or embedded applications where disk space counts and optimization is more important than ease of use, this same system can work fine and nothing stops the OS from stripping out and discarding unused portions of the package. There are already tools on OS X that go through and do just that for people with disk space constraints that want to recover the space taken up by Intel or PPC or 32 or 64 bit binaries. Even then, since it references the repository in the package, making a shared binary work is easy (but a bit slower) so long as you have an internet connection.
The problem with many linux users is that they fail to realize that your "normal" computer user is NOTHING like they are.
Actually, the majority of Linux users and contributors are pretty focused on Linux on the server, and are not all that interested in it on the desktop. Of the 20 or so regular Linux contributors in my office right now, only two I know of are running it on the desktop. A few are running a BSD, a couple are running Windows, and the remaining majority are running OS X. And that is one of the reasons I see Linux on the desktop having less support than it used to. While there are some great, motivated projects, like the OLPC project, a huge numb
So, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that what seems easy and natural to Linux geeks is definitely not what regular people consider easy and natural. Hence, the preference towards Windows.
Which is pretty much fine with me. Having spent a long time in both camps, I do feel that the "Linux is too complicated" meme is way overdone. Many of things you cite that make Linux more "difficult" - like having to deal with file permissions, for example - are precisely the things that have made Windows a cesspool for viruses and malware. For those of us - and I realize it isn't everybody - who are not challenged by these little things, the freedom from manipulation and onerous licenses - to say nothing of cost - that Linux affords is well worth it. And yes, we do sometimes shake our heads a bit at the crap that our Windows friends willingly put up with everytime Microsoft and every other software vendor has a revenue itch to scratch. To me, the money they'll spend and the restrictions they'll endure are simply the price of ignorance and fear, but who am I to say it isn't worth it for them? The world outside the womb is a vast and scary place.
We don't look for "one size fits all" in any other domain, so why should we demand it in our operating systems? The same features that Aunt Millie finds comforting and reassuring may be excruciatingly annoying and condescending to a more experienced and knowledgable user. Why should they both use the same OS? It wouldn't bother me one bit if Linux tops out at 4 or 5% of the desktop market, because to go much further would require turning it into something I wouldn't want to use. Gnome has aruguably been going in that direction for several years now.
Prediction: Now that MS is fervently trying to get everyone on the Vista bandwagon, we will be seeing a big "grassroots" deluge of posts like this. Oestensibly from earnest users, they will complain about how impossibly complex and scary Linux is, and warn that any ordinary user who even considers touching Linux will surely go to Hell. As usual, the "experiences" that we read about will bear little resemblence to anything that I recognize as a long-time Linux user who wiped his last Windows install off of a dual-boot machine several years ago (and has never regretted it for a minute). YMMV, of course, but that's fine with me...
Linux Desktop has not yet reached international critical mass. That's a fact. In Germany critical mass is closest I'd presume and it's still a bit away. The barriers for mass adoption yet are falling one by one. We finally have an frontline OSS enduser distro that isn't subject to the whims of a single corporation - Ubuntu - and that needs to break the "Linux == SuSE" notion in Germany at least. Add in "Winmodem support" and simular end-user issues, zero-fuss USB for the get-go and rid linux of some other quirks and Linux is ready for primetime.
Windows screwing up their customerbase with Vista might help, but generally it's the Linuxquirks itself still holding it back. It's only a handfull now, but they are still showstoppers. Once all of them are gone Linux will fly. And it won't be a bubble. Linux will simply take over as the lead plattform. Since there's no money involved there's no economic bubble that can burst.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Oh, did the nonretarded-OS usage dull your brain? Click Next, pls.
Btw - have a look at an ubuntu 6.10 install, if you prefer everything clicked in a user-friendly way. Surprise, linux desktop. Click Next, pls.
...and for every child growing up right now the so-called "mysteries" of computers will be self-evident.
Click Finish, pls.
I have to say, I'd prefer that it were open, but really I'm rather pragmatic about it. At one point I like to play with the OS more, and then Linux was good. Today I find I'm more in a mood to just get stuff done. I want to just edit photos, or play a game, or send an e-mail, or write some code. It does that well.
Then there's the little touches. I love dashboard, something I never quite got until I accidentally triggered it by pressing my scroll button. Then I was like, "my god, that's so useful". Then there's expose which makes finding things on my desktop or in a myriad of windows so much easier. It's things like that which could, of course, be added to Linux, or even Windows, but it's there in OSX today and it just works nicely.
I will say I do find the hardware quirkiness a bit annoying. That is, I've got the basic vid card for my pro, and if I want a better one I only have one option really. I want to upgrade the memory, but the memory for it is crazy expensive. It's that whiff of propietariness that I've never liked, but it does work well aside from that.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
In the meantime, the competition has not exactly been standing still. Apple has continuously been improving its Mac OS X operating system. Microsoft has not been resting on its laurels either. Windows Vista is already available. Many anti-MS fanboys complain that Vista is nothing more than XP with a new coat, but anyone with an open mind realizes this is absolutely not the case."
.NET and Avalon are rip-offs of Java and XUL; the rest are rip-offs of OS X. So, you're right, OS X and Vista haven't been standing still, they have been catching up and ripping off other systems.
OS X's major new pieces of functionality, Dashboard, Spotlight, Time Machine, translucency, hardware acceleration, scalable icons, and new themes, have simply been rip-offs of smaller competitors, open source, and research. Vista indeed hasn't been "standing still", but its major new features,
Gnome and KDE are cutting edge desktop systems, in many areas significantly ahead of OS X and Vista. The fact that both of them are trying to stay close to OS X and Windows even when they are innovating has a simple reason: it's what the market demands. Gnome and KDE's ability to realize a vision are limited by market realities. But within those limits, Gnome and KDE are quite innovative.
If you disagree, I challenge you to name some features that you think OS X or Vista innovated compared to Gnome and KDE.
...does exactly what Windows does, everyday PC users will not be sold. This is a bitter fact (even more so when you tell a diehard Linux fan that he has to mimic Microsoft!) but this is the truth.
I have read quite a few responses in this thread and most of the people have complained about some common things lacking in Linux distirbutions: Fonts, Drag and Drop, lack of integration between Applications, and some of the stuff which PC users take for granted: WebCam working on your IM client, 3D hardware support etc. I agree with all of them since I have confronted the same problems, even on the most well-known distributions (SuSE, Fedora, Ubuntu).
However the one best thing which the Linux Community/Open Source delivering companies can do (and again this is also suggested by someone else in one of the replies to this thread) is to set up a shop where people can walk in and play around with Linux loaded PCs. I think its a great idea that I can walk in an Apple store and tinker around with all the stuff they are offering; I do not know much about Apple computers but having spent sometime in their store has really got me sold for the iMac and the iPod.
Overall, I would say that Linux has come a long way, but the road ahead is still longer!
Best of luck to the Mighty Penguin!
Linux is ready for the desktop. It has been for a while. Ubuntu is elegant and easy to use, all of the admin a user would need is available through easy to use GUI apps in System -> Administration and installing anything you need is as trivial as Applications -> Add/remove.
It is really clearer and easier to use than Windows.
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It does solve one problem. Lowering costs. Linux coupled with slightly outdated hardware provides the means to give someone access to a free (as in beer) computer. It's especially true now that flat panels have taken over and used CRT monitors are everywhere.
OTOH, I once heard a business professor say that competing on price alone is not a sound business strategy. If the Linux install base grows enough, MS is going to counter by giving away Windows in certain situations.
For instance there was no way to intuitively of setting a printer into draft mode for quick printing. Come on!
Go to print anything. When the sheet drops down, use the third selection list to set the options the way you want them for draft printing. Once you have what you think is a good combination for drafts, use the second selection list (Presets) and select "Save as..." Choose an appropriate name, like "Draft". Now, whenever you want to print something in draft mode, just select "Draft" from the list of presets (if it wasn't already set as the current mode). And if you want to set up a 2-up draft mode with a hairline border around the subpages, that defaults to 3 collated copies and a cover page, set one of those up as well.
Now then, I suppose I could ask you why it's easier to install gvim on OS X than it is on Ubuntu...
-30-
In my opinion, it was killed by (1) the fight between KDE and Gnome, and (2) the iPod which led to the Apple resurgence. Now, many who a non-MS, or more unix-esque desktop OS looks to OS X instead of Linux. Politically, there couldn't be more difference then between Linux and OS X, but I do think that OS X has taken users and attention away from desktop Linux.
The problem is that someone who is not using Linux (but Windows) knows only KDE and GNOME and thinks, that this is Linux Desktop. It is not.
Linux desktop is build on xorg. That's the most important thing.
Probably most important high-level parts of Linux desktop are Mozilla Firefox and players like mplayer, xmms or audacious/amarok.
Just think how much time you spend in your browser (you are using it right now).
And what is between xorg and applications? It may be big desktop manager like xfce or just a window manager like icewm, Window Maker or fluxbox.
There is also another layer - access to devices. And here we have brand new udev, plus some stuff like hal/dbus. Is it Linux Desktop for you? No? Then how do you connect your mp3 player to Linux machine?
GNOME and KDE can both die. That's not the problem. We just need gtk/QT and maybe some libs from GNOME and KDE to support the applications. Other things are not critical for the system. Person who can't live without KDE/GNOME is probably just an Windows user.
They don't care why they can't play their games or run Microsoft Office.
Actually, truth be told, users don't care if the OS runs MS Office, but as long as they try to open documents they receive and it opens fine and if they save it and send it back to whoever has the MS version that it looks fine on that too.
Think of it like replacing the IE shortcut with Firefox.
Users don't care as long as it does what they want (so same thing you said, but not including MS office).
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Most people who "choose" it will not be installing it, and don't care about anything but the cost. They will buy a bundled package, use it, and have someone else fix it when it breaks. It's still "Windows".
Linux distros require user installation and that the user learn enough to be their own tech support. For someone who is not a devoted geek this can take years. For someone who IS it can take years.
After spending years learning Windows, few people want to throw that effort away to learn another OS.
What we call fun they call tedious and frustrating.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Oh boy, are linuxers naive...
n tExpress&file=index&func=display&ceid=29 so their kids can play games. You are not allowed to do that, because Microsoft has you under a draconian contract. You do that, you're dead meat.
Let me paint you this very real picture (someone I know): you own a computer store. You do have Linux on some machines. Customers come in, they look at it. They're curious. Oh, so this is "Linux" (notice? they've heard of it; they might even know it's open source - the term free software, in English, I'm not so sure is a good one - it sounds unprofessional.). They want to know if they can still have MS Office. Can their kids play games? Windows games?
But here's where things start to go wrong: you are not allowed, for instance, to install CodeWeavers http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxoffice/ for them to see MS Office inside Linux, or Transgaming's Cedega http://www.transgaming.com/index.php?module=Conte
There's no way you can prove to Joe Dad that he doesn't need Windows, but that he can still have the Windows software he needs. That he will save money, by not having to pay for the expensive MS OS, and that he will gain in security, and save in antivirus software. In fact, your deal with Microsoft may even specify that if you even suggest that, you'll be in breach of contract.
To make matters worse, Microsoft (and Intel, BTW), will shove you a lot of money to promote your store (as long as you flash their brand names), even give you money for advertising.
So, you see, this is not such a simple world where "the best technology wins" or "as long as we have standards." This is much more than that, it's a marketing game. Linux, PC-BSD, etc, will have to start with the corporate desktop, where money matters. Unfortunately, Windows users are in a deadlock, because the FLOSS community has not been able to come up with competitive Office solutions (please, do not say OpenOffice.org is that solution - people who say that have no idea what they're talking about), including integration with the said hypothetical suite.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
They also want their joke back. I suggest you take them up on their offer...
It's attitudes like this that keep Linux from being broadly adopted. What really gets me is the arrogance of this statement. What if auto enthusiasts built cars this way? After all, why should a car be "dumbed down" so that all you have to do is turn a key and put it in drive to get to the store? According to Linux advocates, you should be forced to build your car from the ground up, but only after you've first earned a degree in mechanical engineering.
If Linux is to compete seriously on the desktop then it has to be inclusive. That doesn't mean that you still can't make it as configurable as you want. You just need to make it easy to use for the masses. Until you do, you'll never see any serious market share.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
The reason that Linux hasn't hit the desktop in any major way is twofold, and I can explain it by explaining why I (a Linux advocate and user since the days of Caldera 1.0, pre-SCO) don't run it.
It's the user interface.
Now, I'm not talking about Linux's achievements in the UI in recent years. Clearly, major strides have been made and in many ways the UI has moved well past both OSX and WinV.
But it's not enough. There's no compelling reason for the end user to move to Linux, and several compelling reasons not to, such as integration with corporate networking services, availability of mainstream games, and so on.
The real problem is that the conventional GUI -- windows, mice, pointing-and-clicking -- is now thirty years old. It has reached the end of its development lifecycle. From here on out, it's just tweaks, nothing innovative.
If Linux really wants to hit the desktop, it needs to abandon the GUI except for backward compatibility and instead embrace a totally different user interface paradigm.
I am convinced -- and the recent success of the Wii, whose sole differentiating characteristic from other consoles is the WiiMote as an input device backs me up -- that the first OS that makes the leap to the next great interface paridigm will become the "killer OS" -- the one all the others copy.
What's the next OS paradigm? It's simple: virtual reality.
Get rid of the keyboard, monitor, and mouse. Replace them with stereoscopic datashades that have attached headphones and a microphone; multi-axis datagloves; and a HUD keyboard display manipulated by the gloves if necessary.
For that matter, get rid of the computer itself as we know it. High-capacity flash drives are getting cheaper every day while CPUs become more and more microminiaturized. Imagine your computer as something the size and appearance of an 8-port USB hub.
That's just for starters, of course. I'm unclear what a virtual landscape for control of the computer would look like, but I'm guided by the novel Head Crash by Bruce Bethke. In it, Bethke's main character is a software engineer for a near-future multinational corporation. He doesn't write code: instead, he essentially drives a virtual forklift, moving around and connecting virtual objects to create virtual programs for users to interact with.
Imagine system administration in which user security is handled not by error messages, but by the user seeing prison bars around items they don't have rights to. Or perhaps simply a blank wall where administrative users see a door.
Have you noticed the Web and instant messaging as one of the major driving forces in the last ten years? Now marry that to virtual reality interfaces where a chat room is a bar -- only built and maintained by users themselves, where users are completely free to customize their own appearance and interact with their surroundings. Web sites not as semi-interactive pages in a book, but fully-interactive virtual destinations built and maintained by their webmasters.
Read Head Crash. Bethke's got it figured out.
If Linux were to marry the stability of the underlying OS with open-source implementations of a virtual reality user interface (VRUI?), it would absolutely become the killer OS. The processing power is there now on the high end, and with mega-multi-core CPUs and embedded CPU/GPU combinations on the horizon, it won't be too many years before the processing power is commonplace.
It's time to ditch X, Gnome, and KDE except for backward compatibility. The future belongs not to the GUI but the VRUI.
Microsoft leads to Bluescreen; Bluescreen leads to downtime; downtime leads to suffering.
KDE and GNOME have gotten too heavy.
In KDE, you can't just install a kde app.
It's part of kdebasekitchensink.
And there are odd dependencies all over.
$ konsole
Link points to "/tmp/ksocket-dmahurin"
Link points to "/tmp/kde-dmahurin"
kbuildsycoca running...
Reusing existing ksycoca
? klauncher,kdeinit,kded launched just to run a terminal ??
I recommend XFCE, and running GTK apps. Qt apps are ok too I guess.
But I try to stay away from GNOME and KDE apps.
If there is a need for daemons running for, printing, sound, mounting or whatever, these should all be started at boot time, not as part of running the desktop.
...there aren't many things that can be done to the Windows+Icons+Mouse+Pointer (WIMP) paradigm. Even with all the eye candy that Mac OS X has had for the past few years and that has recently been added to Windows Vista, there isn't a whole lot new under the sun in terms of user interaction. The Dashboard (which MS mercilessly and poorly apes in Vista) from Apple was about the only interesting thing above pre Mac OS X Mac OSes. And it's not so much a new way of doing things as it is a revisiting of the old "Desktop apps" from the 80s. I remember on my Atari I used to load desktop apps that I could pull to the foreground that did various interesting things in the background for me. Since they were memory resident, wasn't "running" them each time I interacted. They were already there. Dashboard is just a really jazzed up way of doing that. Expose is the same deal. It's a pretty app manager, and that's all. I was using similar features in Enlightment in the late 90s. And now with XGL, Compiz and Beryl for *nix, you'll see the same things happening in *nix distros fairly soon. The 3Dness of Vista, Sun JavaOS and Compiz really still doesn't change user interaction much other than making it "cooler" in some opinions. It's still, "look at a list of apps in some visual fashion, and switch tasks" or "set up a group of apps on one virtual desktop, do the same on a few others, then switch between the deskstop to change your workmode".
/managing a music library.
Until there is actually a change in user interaction with the machines themselves, we're stuck with uninspiring WIMPs on all platforms. They might have better tailfins, but I am hard pressed to find anything that increases efficiency in workflow that doesn't already exist on nearly all the platforms (with Windows being notably behind a bit). Really accurate and non-training-based voice recognition could enhance the end user experience a bit. But we've been promised this stuff for some time and it's not yet come to pass on the desktop. I remember when IBM was touting it for a version of OS2 and nothing happened. I played around with DragonDictate on Windows XP a few years back and it was usable but the training portion seemed a bit ridiculous. I also played with some speech recognition in Linux and was able to launch apps by saying things like "netscape" or "realplay" back in the 90s, but that was largely pointless. My cell phone coupled with the bluetooth headset and it's voice recognition is far more useful and accurate sadly... But, for a media center I think voice commands would be awesome. Imagine, "Tune BBC America", or "Schedule a recording for Saturday night at nine PM on the Discover channel". The computer asks, "Program duration"? You reply, "Two hours and five minutes. Start it about two minutes early". The computer then asks, "Program to be scheduled for 8:58PM on Saturday December 23rd 2006 on the Discovery Channel for two hours and five minutes. Recording will end at 11:03PM. Please Confirm or wait sixty seconds for program to automatically add to recording schedule". Now THAT would be very useful. Hands free scheduling of your shows with fuzzy input and confirmation prompts. The same could be applied to listening
Other changes that would be useful would be largely based on the development of new input devices beyond mouse and keyboard. Motion tracking would be somewhat useful. Tracking where a user is in a building would also be useful. (Imagine walking up to any machine in a building and it brings your desktop in it's persistent state to you based on your beacon) Predictive interfaces would be very good too where the OS makes assumptions based on your previous usage history combined with standard cues. Until that happens, it's just going to be more tailfins.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
It seems to me that much of the conversation about Operation Systems and software in general centers on this versus that. . . Think automobiles! Maybe there is not a perfect solution because there is not just one problem. Different Lniux distributions do exactly what no one company can. They provide a diverse audience with solutions to diverse problems.
Conquest aside. . . I love the fact that for the different wants and needs I have options. Driving Linux as a whole into a single line or driving the desktop options into a Microsoft like model is misguided. Sure maybe some distros and desktops should work to meet the needs of the majority of average desktop users but should they all? I sure hope not. The Linux community, Microsoft Community, Mac OS X community, Sun Solaris Community and so on can all be very happy with their product and can all be right. We do not have to impress them and they do not have to impress us (whoever they and us are). But the minute we all try to impress everyone then we become a colorless, flavorless mass and that would be terribly disappointing. No one has to dethrown anyone else to succeed. KDE = Good / Windows = Good / Mac OS = Good / Unix (All Flavors) = Good. . .
The main complaint of the article is that GNOME has no vision. I disagree. GNOME is supposed to be a Free, Usable, Accessible, International, Developer-friendly, Organized, Supported community desktop environment. GNOME also has very detailed Human Interface Guidelines: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/ . If this is not a vision, I don't know what one is!!
I attempted to launch a start-up of 150 people on linux thin clients (using KDE desktops) 3 years ago. While the system worked almost flawlessly, was infinitely cheaper than windows fat clients, and easier to admin than the windows thin clients we also used, it still didn't work for the users. They were all non-geeks (TV people) and couldn't get past it not working like windows, not running MS Office (plus the compatibility problems of Star Office and MS Office), not being able to play .wmv files, etc. Now consider they had an IT staff to admin the server, add apps, and configure printers. Do you really think these users could have successfully used a linux desktop all on their own??
...are almost never related to the desktop as such. For example, two of my headaches right now on my dad's machine is Flash and embedded WMV, there's a lot of news clips and other stuff he'd like to watch.
My experience: Flash 7 is mostly unusable (what good is an upgrade button when you end up at a 7.0 download page), and Flash 9 beta who noone but a geek would find will constantly hang the browser so it needs to be killed. I've installed the mozilla-mplayer plugin which is supposed to handle WMVs, and it pretends to play but never does.
Same goes for almost every piece of proprietary crap I have to deal with, Linux isn't second tier it's third tier or no tier at all. Opera is one of few exceptions, but beyond that it's slim. Everything that's RMS/free is working great by comparison. 80% of what's wrong with the Linux desktop is out of the community's hands.
Am I complaining? Nope. They're making huge progress. Improve whatever you're doing, let the rest tend to itself. Eventually the advantages will outweigh the disadvantages. I mean, are there any good examples where free software has really lost major ground? All I see is software that is doing more and more in a world that's rather hard limited by what people want in a word processor or spreadsheet or e-mail client. I don't care where the competition is going, the Linux desktop is closing in on what the users want.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Except that the differences in the different versions of Vista are minimal compared to those between various Linux distributions. The Vista editions are ranked, too, such that that the more you pay for the more features you're given -- while all the software is handled identically and there really isn't much of a difference ostensibly to the end user. Between distributions (let's assume for the sake of argument that they're free, although there are some that aren't), the differences lie in preferences -- desktop environment, package management system, themes, default installed software, etc.
Saying that the different editions of Vista offer a real "choice" to the user is undermining the meaning of choice. "Choice" in this case really comes down to how much money you want to fork over.
And of course, let's not forget that games that work on linux are often not built with linux as a priority, and are almost certainly not built with your distro in mind, unless it's redhat, maybe. This does not mitigate the fact that the installation is tricky, but it would do to compare like with like.
im in ur
You assume that we want to sell Linux to the masses. I'm content to let the masses of idiots use Windows so long as my computer works the way I need it to work. If people want something consistant, that doesn't work very well or offer any choices, them let them use Windows or Mac OS. What do I gain by dumbing down my OS/DE to the same level of the competition? Then I have to go and create yet another OS/DE so that I can have something that actually works. Just buy an etch-s-sketch for each of the people that want their computer to be a toy instead of a tool - it'll serve them better.
For companies that want to spend their own money dumbing things down I guess it's fine but I'd rather not see all their stupidity forced on the rest of us. If their customers really want their dumbed down product then they'll have no trouble selling it. If they can't then maybe they need to figure out that their market niche isn't significant enough.
Windows and Mac OS have created a curse in computing. Instead of actually making it easier to do complex work, interfaces are now designed so that complete idiots with no experience can sit down and play Minesweeper and look at porn. It's all about eye candy and not about usability or managing complex workflow and processes. It's incredibly stupid to emphasis keeping users trapped at a newbie level.
If anything, Linux needs a complete new direction in the desktop - one that doesn't copy every stupid idea from Windows and Mac OS but instead places the emphasis on making experienced users more productive. Why is it that experienced users still need to drop to the command-line to do real work? Because nobody has innovated in accomplishing complex tasks in a graphical enviroment since the creation of the stupid desktop metaphor. Instead of spending time cloning other environments I'd suggest spending more time on the parts of Linux that can be really annoying - make devices and services work better. These are usually better than their Windows counterparts already but they are still the most frustrating aspect of using the computer.
If you build something different but better THEN you have a killer app people will switch to Linux for. You think people are dumb but in my experience this is a lie people have been convinced of by Microsoft and Apple. I know many people that easily used DOS or even older, and harder systems, like punch cards or typing in cryptic commands on their C64. These people are now confussed by their desktop and no longer think they can manage to use their computer for anything more than the web, email, and games. They could use their computer just fine except they've been convinced otherwise and everything has been dumbed down so much that none of it has any meaning. Stop being so condescending - most people are smart enough to use a real computer.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
You won't get a steady supply of improvements without natural market demand for them. The main motivator I perceive for demand for Linux desktop is hostility towards Windows from software developers who don't like the way Windows is implemented. Well folks, that argument does not mean much to most consumers. You'll have to in their hearts and minds to create demand outside the software developer community.
Linux desktop is a hobby system for enthusiasts. That's what the market share numbers tell me.
How to install something?
Use the "Add Applications" applet. Think of it as like the equivalent applet
for Windows except the Linux version will actually go out and download the stuff
for you (rather than you needing to find it yourself).
How to install some game?
Run the installer.
No installer? Well then it's not really a supported game & puts you
in much the same position that a similar sort of problem would be on
any other platoform (iow, potentially quite problematic).
As someone who used to be keeper of the tech support database for a major
game studio, I an attest to the fact that WinDOS is no silver bullet when
it comes to games support. It has many of it's own issues involving driver
& compatability issues and just plain bugs.
If the most you can come up with is the difficulty of apt-get versus
synatic versus huntware and the fact that the industry mantra isn't
"It's gotta be Linux compatable man", then Linux is infact doing quite
well.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Microsoft releases Vista FIVE years after XP
Mac OS X has a version released at certain intervals(1 year or 6 months? Whatever.)
Those 2 WINDOWS MANAGERS are release with small updates at certain intervals. Compare the original release of KDE 3 to the release right now: BIG difference. Speed, usability and lots of stuff have been improved over time, it's numbered the same but is NOT the same.
Will Vista release small upgrades like that over time? No. They'll release security upgrades but that's about it. GNOME 3.0 won't be on your desktop until at least 2009, which will mean that by then, GNOME will not have seen a major revision in 7 years. And where was this information taken? From his mind? GNOME is still upgrading, it's NOT DEAD, upgrades to the interface and such are still being released.
Not only is this article pure shit because of points people have raised before, it's pure shit because it views Linux WINDOWS MANAGERS releasing from a commercial OS point of view.
Oh, and if KDE is releasing a major upgrade within 5 years, why should it be wrong? Microsoft has done so with Vista. The difference is, KDE is still releasing small upgrades while XP hasn't changed one bit(except for Media Center).
Sorry, but is the GNU/Linux world only RedHat and SuSE?
What about Damn Small Linux or Morphix? And Those distros
(RH and SuSE) also offer the smaller display managers as alternatives.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
If you own a computer store, you're a small fry just like anyone else.
Now Best Buy might get some deal on bulk copies of the retail version of Windows. However, they don't have to worry about the OEM price of windows since they aren't an OEM. They just sell black boxes that they get from their distributor. It's HP and Dell that have to worry about the draconian OEM licenses.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
For starters, one cannot plug in one of those USB memory sticks into a Linux PC.
BS. What are you using Red Hat 6?
I use Ubuntu and Debian. But I know, without a doubt, that your BS even if we're talking about RH, SuSE or whatever modern Linux Distro (meant for users, not firewalls or other specialty distros that is).
Anyone of the modern Distros I've tried place an icon on my desktop when I plug in a USB mem stick, hard drive, cdrom drive or camera. Hell I even get a new icon on my desk when I put a CD into the IDE cdrom in my PC. Oh and I use XFCE, not GNOME or KDE. But you know what? This also works in KDE or GNOME.
Yes, I've used Linux for a long time and consider myself somewhat more knowledgable then the average computer user. But my wife, kids and mother are not "geeks, gurus, grizzled" or any other g word that suggests they've been using *nix for decades. And, to quote my daughter - "Dad, I plugged the camera into Ubuntu and it put it on the desktop! I thought cameras on Linux were all hard and stuff?"... My response? "Not anymore honey".
Things work differently on a Linux desktop sometimes and, as with any OS you can name, sometimes things are buggy but if usability on a fresh install of any modern distro is a problem for you guys then I can't help but think that yes, maybe these people you speak of are stupid. But my guess is they are not, probably brighter then most but you're talking about what you and your colleagues experienced 5 years ago. Kind of like people talking about blue screens in a discussion about XP. Yes they still happen, but the people who chime in about them in these discussions are usually describing their experience with 98/ME. Well this discussion is about Linux distros post 2002, not Red Hat 6. The problems you describe simply don't exist in most modern Linux distros anymore.
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The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Clearly it is a visual upgrade from XP, and people liken the visual style to something Apple would design. And I don't care for most of Vista, but Vista is a huge upgrade, the least of which is the visual style. 99% of what has changed between XP and Vista has nothing to do with Tiger, nor copies Tiger in any way.
You mean like the Spolight clone desktop search API? Or the PDF clone metro? Or the Sudo clone UAC? Or the Smart folder clone Virtual folders? Or the Quarz Extreme clone Aero? Or the Drag-n-Drop install clone ClickOnce? Or the Dashboard clone Sidebar? Or the myriad of bundled apps like Windows iPhoto Gallery?
Now I'll grant you they didn't copy Windows Defender from OS X. And they have some pretty complex DRM in there that I don't recall Tiger or even Leopard having. Innovation at its finest.
Vista is like an onion - you peel away a layer, and there's still more OS X underneath.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Light rail was as good as dead before World War I. THE WRONG TRACK The public abandoned the streetcar as soon as they could afford a Ford.
OpenOffice is fine for the vast majority of end users.
MSOffice is infact ridiculous overkill for the vast majority of end users.
It was true when WordPerfect was still on top and it's still true today.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"Have you tried installing those packages that RH and SuSe distribute for those alternate desktops? They are distributed and they install, but they often have empty menus. Rarely do the companies take the effort to really integrate those alternates desktops/WMs into their distro."
Which is why I love Mandrake/Mandriva so much. Sometimes I forget to install Fluxbox or WM when I do a fresh install on a PC. From Mandrake 7 to Mandriva 2006, if I go back and install a windowmanager after the fact, it gets it's menus properly populated. I've NEVER had an issue with it. In fact, I've been rather loyal to it because Mandrake was the first distro I used that gave me more than 2 desktop choices by default. I've always been dogged out when I tell someone I use Mandrake, especially on IRC (Efnet/#linux), but by and large things simply work on it. It's easy as hell for a newbie to use and, no matter what you think, it's still linux; ubergeeks can still use it as they wish.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
You've got it slightly incorrect. Simplicity leads to speed and efficiency, which is what non-geeks want. What geeks want is slow complexity so that they can feel a sense of accomplishment getting something to work. For them, using and configuring an OS is a hobby, not a means to get things done. Following some out-of-date HOWTO on how to get a soundcard working is perfectly appropriate to them.
"Sufferin' succotash."
For me...
My wife has been happily Winders free for 7yrs now. My brothers, 2yrs. I very carefully explained that some things they won't be able to do the same way (similar to the diff between Mac & Winders) but they'll never have to worry about inexplicable crashing, adware, viruses, or wack-ass weirdness.
If they have questions about an app, they find out about it and then ask me.
Final outcome: They accept the downsides for the glorious feeling they get when they can say "Crash? Adware? what are these you speak of?"
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
Agreed 110% Outside of geek circles and Linux fanboys, no one really knows or cares about Linux. Ask my parents and they'll look at you cross-eyed. Most IT suits won't buy into it either because of their blind MS loyalties.
And yes, OSX is now king and the need for Linux is virtually non-existent at this point.
> User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Linux?" .....
> Zealot: "Oh that's easy!
Hey AC troll, you cut/paste that same drivel every week or two. Repetition doesn't make it any more true. Q3 came with the Loki installer and it 'just worked.' assuming you already had a working GL installation. But then I doubt the Windows Q3 installer would sort out your GL driver problems either. As for obscure LD_* fixups, nope. The only fixup I have ever needed was having to run the installer under "setarch 1386" to get it to install a 64-bit install. Because when Q3 was released bi-arch 64bit installs hadn't been conceived yet.
You are adding about as much to the conversation as the netcraft troll in every BSD thread, i.e. nothing. It isn't even a joke anymore, just lame.
Democrat delenda est
That's like saying people don't like getting teeth removed because they're not used to it.
I remember reading that Santa was gay. It must be true.
"Sufferin' succotash."
You don't have to worry about or remember schedules in most European towns either, as most street car and subway lines run on a 5 or 10 minutes interval, sometimes even 24/7 (and you don't have to worry about finding / paying for a parking spot either).
This hasn't been my experience as a small business and home IT consultant. Users are very brand loyal, and while they don't necessarily like everything about Microsoft, they recognize it as "what everbody uses". They're not going to switch to some unknown thing they've never heard of without a strong, compelling reason.
The problem is that "free" (either as in beer or freedom) isn't a compelling reason for many people. The prices charged by MS, while monopolistically high (especially for Office), aren't unafforadable. People are generally happy to pay for "the genuine article" rather even if there's a free, similar alternative... "you get what you pay for" is a really basic gut instinct (which is true in most cases), and with free products they always wonder what has been sacrificed, and that it's a "cheap knock-off".
Firefox has been an easier sell because it has that compelling reason: you won't get infected (again) with spyware. They're also ready to distrust MS when it comes to security, thanks to wide media coverage and security industry advertising. But there's not nearly as much disenchantment with MS Office...
-R
Definatly agree that there has been zero progress. Although I disagree about Vista, I don't think there has been progress their, and probably for the same reasons.
The biggest problem is that people complain that Linux does not "innovate" and copies Microsoft, but when anything comes out that is slightly different than Windows in even the most trivial way, those exact same people immediately claim it is not "user friendly". This is not just trolls, but actually people working on the systems. I also suspect this same problem is why Vista, or even OS/X, is not much different, they also have to be compatable with Windows, "user friendly" trumps innovation everywhere.
The second problem is the insane complex mess of libraries you must use to get anything done. This is not the Unix way. In some ways it is even worse than Windows.
Concrete suggestions, from most important downward, for actually improving and "innovating" the Linux desktop:
1. STOP RAISING WINDOWS ON CLICK! Change ALL window managers so that BY DEFAULT you can click in a window, move it, and resize it, iconize and reopen it, without raising it. This will instantly give Linux the ability to work with more than one application window at the same time, something that was easy in 1995 but is impossible now due to the slavish copying of Windows. This would make a huge distinctive advantage between Linux and the other systems. And to all the dimwits who will whine "that's not user friendly": it is TRIVIAL for the program itself to raise the window in response to the click, so this is an api problem, not a gui one!
2. Put the "big GUI chunks" into executables, following the Unix design. Lots of complaints about "inconsistent user interface" but too many think that means that all the pixels in the buttons have to match. That is NOT the problem, what people want is the FILE CHOOSERS to match. Everybody seems to think the file chooser is part of the toolkit, but it is not, it is just that they have no imagination of any other way to call it. What I want to see is an executable file that programs run to pop up the file chooser (or the print panel or font selector or all the popup yes/no and warnings, and a far better "dialog" program for most control panels). Then it can be replaced, and people with good ideas can try them out without joining the KDE/Gnome team. As people are freely able to replace their file choosers, I think within months Linux will switch from having the worst file choosers to having the best ones. Also give these programs good names, I don't care if they are the same as some obsolete Unix utility like "open", and I should be a simple "exec". Note that this will also allow shell scripts to have a "gui".
3. Some stuff people think is "gui" is actually basic system operations and should be part of the kernel and libc. Reproducing the effect of a double-click on a file icon should be a simple call (probably exec of that file), not require a huge gui-specific library. GnomeFS/KFS should be part of the system (use Fuse?) so that I can open() any url without thinking about it, and use cat and other Unix utilities. It should be possible to execute a program, wait till it is certain it is running and showing a window, then fork it. Locating an already-running copy of the same executable and communicating with it should be built in.
4. As much as possible, configuration should be controlled by the existence and contents of text files, NOT from any daemon! For a very short time applications were appearing on the desktop menus when they were installed, this was because the installer could cause a file to exist in the gnome hieararchy and the item would appear. This is no longer true, officially you are supposed to use a library call with 30 pages of complex rules, but they did add back-compatability but you have to log out/in to make it appear. The result is we are back again at where no installers create the menu item. Try learning something from this.
I've read a lot of posts in this thread, and I think you come the closest to nailing the issue. I especially liked your questioning of why someone would pay a premium price for Apple products as I have wondered that myself these many years. I think, however, that everyone is overlooking one very obvious problem with displacing Windows. Joe Consumer goes to Best Buy and sees reams of Windows computers. Then he wanders down the games aisle and sees reams of Windows software and a few Mac-compatible games. He wanders down the "productivity" aisle and sees lots of Windows software and a few expensive Mac apps. Even if Best Buy were to devote half their shelfspace to Linux computers it wouldn't make a difference because there is no pre-packaged software available for Linux. People on this thread talk about apt-get and other such nonsense which is far beyond most non-technical people. Nevermind that it presupposes the end-user has broadband. And even if they did understand it, the selections available are dwarfed by what is available for Windows. It is the classic chicken-and-egg problem. There won't be off-the-shelf packaged software until Linux has a large installed base, and there won't be a large installed base until there is a wide selection of reasonably priced off-the-shelf software.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
"What's for dinner honey?" - "Caterpillars and worms...
Hey there is hope for the Linux desktop yet! For a few years now Microsoft Windows users have been fed a very steady diet of worms. Lots and lots of worms. Thousands of different kinds of worms. And Windows has been able to serve them up faster than McDoe's could ever hope to serve up a Big Mac!
Really, MS and the Linux desktop are simply leapfrogging over each other...in 2001 we got a prettied up desktop in XP, in 2002 GNOME and KDE leapfrogged over them with a major version, in 2007 MS will bring Vista to the unwashed masses and I imagine in 2008/2009 Linux will get more greatness from GNOME and KDE.
This is a pretty lame indictment of the Free software community if you ask me. The author of the article makes a great deal of noise about there being six or seven years between major releases of GNOME and KDE, and seems to have glossed over the fact that MS went over five years themselves, despite having thousands of developers and billions of dollars to throw at it. Furthermore, calling XP a major release is questionable...it was by and large window-dressing to Win2000 (and technically it WAS a point-release from 5.0 to 5.1 wasn't it? I think the SP2 upgrade was probably almost as significant as 2k-to-XP too...). Really, MS will have gone almost EIGHT years between major releases.
Besides, I question the focus on the numbering system as a measure of progress--I've found that historically Free software products progress faster and have more significant changes between major releases. Nobody would say that from kernel 2.0.x to kernel 2.6.x there has been a lack of progress due to the fact it'll be something over a decade after 2.0 before a 3.x.x release. Projects like the kernel and Apache (and, yes, the desktop environments) have reserved the major release number for very fundamental, architectural overhauls. If Windows was a Free software project I do not think it would be numbered like it was--Windows 2.x would've been 1.x releases, 3.0 through Me would've been 2.x and NT 3.1 through XP would've been 3.x releases. For what its worth, I think that although Apple has been the pacesetter that Linux is still easily out-pacing Microsoft in terms of modernising the desktop overall, despite the whining about lack of "major releases".
For my clunky old machines even XFCE is heavy and bloated.
I'm using FVWM with TkDesk as a Desktop system.
I've been saying this for years--the reason desktop Linux hasn't taken off is the lack of a universal desktop framework. Instead of relying on these third-party toolkits that run on top of X and compete with each other, Linux needs a universal framework for application development, app installation/uninstallation, user configuration storage, sound and graphics, and more. You need a development platform that rivals Windows and the Mac and acts as a cohesive whole. That way, a developer doesn't have to choose between multiple toolkits and desktop environments and can just target the one, big framework that covers all ground for developing modern desktop applications. And users won't have to install two entire desktop environments just to run all the apps out there.
But I've been saying this for years, and nothing has changed. I gave up on the Linux dream long ago and switched to a Mac.
"Sufferin' succotash."
But users only throw a wobbly at a command line because they're not used to it. I remember reading that CLIs are generally thought to be easiest for completely new users.
That's not necessarily true. Granted, given training and a cheat sheet, the CLI may be better, but if I take someone's grandma and put them in front of blinking cursor and keyboard, they are not going to know where to begin. You put that same grandma in front of a GUI with a mouse, or better yet, touchscreen, in about 10 minutes, she will have completed something, even if it is something as mundane as clicking "START" or "HELP". Even if you take an DOS expert and put him in front of a *NIX box, he's going to be clueless because he does not know any of the commands except the once common to both OS's, like cd.
The CLI is good for newbies when they are being supported over the phone. It's hard to screw up on the CLI. You either type it right or you don't. Not typing it right usually ends up in a syntax error and no damage is done. A GUI, on the other hand, is very easy to screw up. I had a clueless IT admin come up to frantic because she had lost the company's only NT installation files. She told me "I was moving the upside exclamation point 386 directory and it disappeared". A quick search found it. She was trying to copy it to a networked drive and her finger slipped off the mouse, moving it to another directory. That type of screw up is hard to do on the CLI.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
If you left click on the icon in the tray, then left click on the name of your device, it doesn't pop up the stupid dialog box, it just unmounts. Good eh? It's a rubbish piece of UI design, but is a useful shortcut.
Non computer people ARE NOT JUST DIM! They just do not care to learn every detail and idiosyncracy of a computer because they have _better_ things to do with their time.
puts ("Python r0cks\n");
Well if you like properly configured desktop environments and would like to see less packages (mainstream, well tested only) then Ubunutu is where it's at. (U|K|X|Edu)buntu all install easily. Each uses a different desktop but they all Just Work(TM) once install is completed. And, although you can get access easily to vast repositories of software, the stuff on the CD and available for LTS* users is limited to the best and brightest. Being a Debian fan makes it easy for me to also like Ubunutu, but seriously, anyone who needs a decent desktop for the basics (email, surf, office suite) will have pretty much everything they need once install is completed. Going beyond the basics is also made much easier in Ubuntu thanks to the Synaptic, broader repositories, the helpful community and support Wiki that has grown up around it.
*LTS = Long Term Support
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
in the home market:
for light office work on the cheapest box you can find there is Basic.
for media and games and pretty much everything else you spring for the Premium system bundle.
for the heavy hitter who works hard and plays hard on the same machine and is not starved for cash there is Ultimate.
three distinct market segments, each very easily described.
This statement is complete crap. OpenOffice.org is just as good, if not better, than MS Office in most areas. My wife who's a kindergarten teacher uses it for all of her lesson plans, to make name tags for events, to make desk tags for the kids, etc. She does more with it than her colleagues manage to do on their PCs or Macs with MS Office.
Please tell me where OpenOffice.org is lacking, especially in the context of Joe Dad and his family.
Dude, I hate to "Me too!" you, but I use "not friendly" distros (Elive{Debian} and Gentoo) and I just so happen to have gotten a freebie USB stick from a vendor. Guess what? The Winders choked on it whilst I merrily move some source files over for covert installation on the vendor platform.
Oh, and my wife's camera? The same...
Linux has all the tools to win this war because the developers write to open and usable standards. IF only the hardware vendors would realize that on a larger scale.
MS will always try to make the right tactical decisions for market share, even if it's technically or strategically wrong. For now, they win because they have been "forcibly offering unwanted advances progressing into unconsenting relations"1 people for years.
1.ass-raping
I used Linux for a while and loved it, except for a two major factors: speed and compatibility. I cannot stand interfaces that aren't 'snappy', no matter how nice they look. GTK+ 2 just wasn't snappy enough. My hardware is a P3 900mhz and 320MB of RAM - that should definitely be enough for basic tasks such as word processing and web design. So I bought a copy of Windows XP and did a fresh install. In this area, XP outperforms my old Debian install fivefold - my XP install boots up about twice as fast as my Debian install, and starting up outlook express takes about 1 second vs. about 5 to start Evolution. As for compatibility, to my surprise, devices work much better right out of the box on Windows. My next computer will be either a Linux box or a Mac. There are many things I miss in Linux, and these two issues are the only things stopping me from going back. If they have been improved upon enough within a few years, I will definitely be switching back. There's no way I'll be getting Vista, because Microsoft seems to also be sacrificing snappy interfaces for fancy visual effects. I think that the biggest problem in Desktop Linux is speed, and this problem needs attention sooner than anything else.
you didn't read whole comment, now did you ? :)
Rich
"If you have listened to Linus and his lieutenants (Andrew Morton etc.), they say they are not focused on the desktop"
;) . Something I've never been called on to do. Doesn't Linux have the Kdump utility that dumps its data to disk.
... :)
I can't actually recall reading anything Torvalds said regarding their focus. Do you have a link to what they actually said regarding the Desktop.
"They are focused on the high-end. Which makes sense to me - Microsoft dominates the desktop, the high-end is up for grabs right now"
The Desktop gets more visibility which is why when the average PHB decides to buy a server he chooses what he's already familar with, Windows. Ignoring the desktop would be a massive error.
"Linux has improved a lot for the high-end, but still needs work done. I just was speaking with someone from Oracle recently who told me how in an environment with a lot of Linuxes connected to a lot of SANs, the 2.4 kernel was complete junk. He did say things were getting better with the 2.6"
Has this been refered to on the kernel mailing list linux.kernel. Do other users of Oracle have this problem. You don't provide a lot of technical details. Is there a reference you can provide for such issues. Running a database is relativly trivial compared to calculating nuclear reactions or doing the graphics on 'Lord of the Ring' and would require very high-end equipment. What I don't understand how CERN and Weta Digital were able to get any work on the 'still needs work done' Linux OS.
"Hey here's another example - what if I want a fricking kernel dump when my system crashes? What, I can't dump it to disk like Solaris and every other enterprise UNIX does?"
You do seem to be unfortunate in your choice of OS. I don't know what use a kernel dump is unless you're actually compiling the kernel
"I have to send it over the network (which comes to a host of problems which I won't go into here)? Yes, yes, I know about the problems of doing this for a variety of hardware, but this is the sort of thing I'm talking about"
Yet more problems. I don't understand, I thought the kernel dump was a standard file saved locally and what's the difficulty in sending it over the network.
You paint a complete horror story of maintaining a Linux network. If I was reading this and had no first hand experience of using Linux I would run straight back to the nice safe OS that comes with training wheels attached. Kernel dump!!
was What do Linus and his lieutenants say? (Score:5, AstroT~1)
davecb5620@gmail.com
I recently stopped visiting OSNews due to the MS astro-turfers ruining any hope of a decent discssion whenever a topic turned to Windows or Linux. The owners/admins of the site insist they have no control and are not anti-Linux but if you look at any of the comments you will see it is not the case.
A few months ago one could actually discuss the technical aspects of operating systems, all of them, but no more.
RIP OSNews
"Saying that Linux is inferior to Windows because more people use Windows is like saying that all restaurants are inferi
don't complain when hardware companies don't bother to release drivers, or other software manufacturers don't port their products over to Linux.
You can't have it both ways. If you want stuff to "work" on Linux, you need to get a large enough user base to make it worth developers while. Of course, in order to get that user base, you need to start making stuff work on Linux.
Example: Office software
The standard for office document formats is Microsoft Office. It doesn't matter what any ISO or RFC claims. To the extent that software cannot open, view, and save a document or spreadsheet from Office and to Office, it is not compliant with the standard. In layman's terms, that means it's broke.
Another example: software installation
Any time a command line is required for a standard install of software, the installer is broken. The process should be double-click, next, I Agree, next, next, finish(maybe one or two more or fewer nexts as required).
Another news flash: Windows is free (as in beer) for 90% of its users. It comes pre-installed on your computer. And the computer may actually be cheaper than a similar model with Linux installed, which means that Linux is actually (*gasp*) more expensive than Windows.
I believe the "free software" community is truly on the verge of becoming systematically self-destructive (if it's not there already). Consider the latest Debian drama where people were actually paid to do some work. The Horror!!
For something burst there has to be significant pressure, the LINIX Desktop market has never been more than wishful thinking to begin with. So, no burst, more of a small gentle fart.
What a load of rubbish. If you want to say that you think the command line is awful, go ahead and say it, with reason. My claim is (obviously) that it's not that bad, once you're used to it. Simply asserting things with a poor analogy does not bring about the truth.
Ah, I see, you're one of those people. Fine. Come back when you have something to say.
im in ur
To you this looks easy, anyone else will begin by asking "What the hell is synaptic?"
The newcomer to Windows get pointed to Download.com. There he finds a friendly editorial page, all programs neatly cataloged and reviewed. One click to download. One or two clicks to install.
Apple is able to be profitable by serving a niche that is almost more fashion-driven than anything else.
That is untrue, that is a stereotype that is about as accurate as Linux serving the nerd in "Mom's basement". Sure it happens, but it is the exception not the rule. A minor point that you seem to miss is that Apple works pretty hard at functionality in addition to being fashionable. Some may think the iMac is cool looking, but many like the functionality of an all-in-one design. Especially now that flat panels are ubiquitous and you get back an amazing amount of deskspace. The Mini, what is fashionable there? It is small box with rounded corner, what I love about it is it's size.
A far more important point with respect to Linux is that Apple is a more viable "UNIX" environment. Not only do I get easy access to traditional unix tools, apps, and most open source software but I also get (1) some off-the-shelf software like MS Office, some games, etc; (2) a very polished, consistent, and approachable user interface; (3) comprehensive driver support (sure I can get wireless to work with my Dell laptop under Linux but it is a pain, Mac users don't have to deal with such "costs"); and (4) better support for running Windows apps I've seen various chem/bio environments that are traditionally unix move from Sun/SGI to Linux to Mac OS X. As Linux blunted Microsoft's advance into server space, Apple has blunted Linux's advance into end user space, the desktop.
Give programs names that anyone know what they are.
for example GIMP -> Graphics Editor or Photo Processor
You are right, that's *exactly* how it's done in Ubuntu. The application has its own unique name, of course, it would be rather difficult to know exactly which application you mean by "Graphics Editor", but the name you see in the Ubuntu menu and icons is "Image Editor (GIMP)".
OTOH, what's with the XP system menu, where games are installed under the "Electronic Arts" menu. WTF? "Electronic Arts" could be anything, from electronic music to rendered graphics, but I've never seen playing computer games called an "Art" outside of the XP main menu... And what about the games that are installed in the "Firaxis" menu? Firaxis? What the hell is a "Firaxis"? I want to play "Pirates", where the fuck was that game installed?
Common Menus. Menus need to be in a familiar order. File, Edit, View, Tools, Help
Yes, all the applications in my Ubuntu installation use that order in their menus.
Easy installation of programs
Sure, have you tried Adept, which is started by the "Add/Remove Programs" menu options in Ubuntu?
Desktop users shouldn't need to hunt down dependencies to get the application to work
I thought that had died with Windows98 and RedHat 7.2, right? Neither Ubuntu nor WindowsXP have that "dependency hell" anymore.
Plugging it in doesn't mean it will do anything. OS X and Windows when you plug in a camera or other hardware will load a default application which you can change who the default it.
So does Ubuntu. In the last couple of years, the hardware that has given me most problems is my Philips 200W6 monitor, which WindowsXP absolutely refuses to run at the standard resolution of 1680x1050, it insists that 1600x1200 is the right resolution in my GeForce FX-5200 card. No, the CD-ROM that came with the monitor doesn't work, all I get is a message saying there aren't any valid drivers in the CD-ROM. No, there aren't any updated drivers available, either in the nVidia or Philips sites. In Ubuntu it took me longer to plug the connector in the card than to configure the driver.
Plugging in a device and guessing what one of my thousand entries in
Well, you got me there. I haven't looked at the Linux
Linux has stalled
No, no, *YOU* have stalled. The 1990's are calling, they want their Linux installation back. Linux has been evolving pretty quickly, you should take a look at Ubuntu 6.10, for instance.
All the Linux Gods have to do is create an interface that makes openOffice look and act like Office, make Firefox look and act like IE, make KDE look and act like Windows. Make it a user option, if you get my drift. So that my parents could not effectively tell the difference. But it should not end there. Once an inner interoperability mile stone is reached, call CNN about why you are going to place a flower,(for inner interoperability), at Microsoft's Front Door each time. Ya, it will start off as a goof, but Gandhi "tweaked" an empire doing it that way, an smiled all the way back home.
What geeks want is slow complexity so that they can feel a sense of accomplishment getting something to work
All this broad stereotyping is foolish. I'm sure some IT geeks like to feel elite by doing things the complex way. But most of us just want things to work, like non-IT people.
I believe most Linux developers fail to make easy GUI applications for common tasks for three reasons:
1. GUI apps are hard work, time consuming, and less interesting than other projects. Once I have my computer up and running, I empathize with people having a problem configuring their MP3 software but I don't find writing a GUI app to ease the setup that exciting.
2. Unless you have a huge cross section of equipment, time, and software available (i.e. a business atmosphere) for testing, it's likely you'll miss things. It's all too easy to write a printer setup application that works fine with HPs and Canons but fails with a particular Epson model. Or make a nice graphical installer for a movie player that breaks with a particular version of GtK. Or a nice application for managing your music files that has the display go fuzzy at a certain display resolution.
3. GUI software requires a graphics or windowing library or engine of some sort, which involves extra work, longer build times, and extra dependencies.
So a command line app is much quicker to write, faster to compile, faster to distribute, and easier to test. I want Linux to become more popular, and I want it to become more popular because it's more free and also more easy and intuitive than Mac or Windows. But there's no hiding from the reality that a user-friendly GUI is a lot of extra hard work.
It ain't true, geeks do not really dislike some much non-geek but experience has taught them that typical non-geek are awed by jocks and jocks have a tendency to push the average pack of nobodies to harass geeks.
...)
Uber-geeks might have learned that the best defence is offence.
And bully really really do not like it when their victims do not feel very willing to be victimized.
So the issue is not "the Linux geek are bad people that do not want to make a nice easy to use Linux for meeeee, so I use Windows that sooo much easier to use (well when it is not very slooow for some strange and unexplained reason".
The issue is that the 99% of sheeps are not willing to push the HW makers to have other options beside Windows as a pre-packaged pre-loaded OS, and they are perfectly happy to pay between 20 and 300$ extra to Microsoft (the extra margin enabled by the lack of competition).
And since they are not willing to do this, Linux is "hard" to install (as compared to "it's allready installed).
If there would be a choice RedHat/Novell/Mandriva/Linspire/.... would compete for the Linux Desktop market and spend way more money on a "Super Duper GkNdOeM(e) GUI".
(of coure they would have to demand equal access to music and video and CD Ram cards,
The ONLY real issue about linux is the legal protectin Microsoft gets and Linux doesn't.
Cheers
[ps]
Why? Who are you? More specifically, why would you assume that the developers who are busy retooling the plumbing of KDE should take time off to make screenshots for you?
Yeah. Not only do they exist, but the GUI frontends that make installing or uninstalling much (even third-party) software as easy on Linux as adding or removing Windows components that are designed to be option on Windows are standard on many Linux distros.
I don't think that's really true; the convenience features that already exist in most distros that often geeky Linux evangelists overlook because they prefer to get down to the metal may need to be emphasized more, but that isn't really dumbing-down the OS. The power is all there, and all still accessible to the user, its just a matter of PR focus.
A compiler is, I would argue, a great convenience feature for non-developers that enables (when properly hidden behind a package management system with a GUI front-end) a lot of simplification of software delivery and upgrades that the average user will appreciate once they've experienced it, and never have to think about the underlying machinery if the front-end is decent.
The charge isn't "hefty" when HP and Dell can buy licenses in quantities of one hundred thousand, one million.
The charge isn't "hefty" when you can contract for the entire output of a half-dozen Asian OEMs for the next five years.
There are enormous economies of scale when you build for the Windows market. There is no price point where OEM Linux is competitive. That is why OEM Linux has disappeared from Walmart.com.
It's not for nothing that everyone says the MS R&D lab is called Apple.
I know, some MS Fanboy is going to mark this a troll, but there are a lot of people out there saying essentially the same thing. Including both "experts" featured in a recent slashdot analysis of the two OSes.
But that's not necessarily a bad thing for MS, especially seeing as how Apple is so much better at aesthetics. Now they've got a real backend, it's hardly a surprise they're gaining market share and shedding the "toy computer" rap.
Still, next thing you know, those "Get a Mac" ads will have PC dressing up like Mac. Now that would be amusing.
Now, this doesn't mean I won't be touching Vista. All my development takes place on XP these days, and I've no doubt we'll be moving to Vista eventually. Once I upgrade to a MacBook Pro, I'll probably even buy a copy to run under Parallels.
They're not going to switch to some unknown thing they've never heard of without a strong, compelling reason.
My example is where people don't actively care what they have, but expect it to come with the computer. Most persons/customers/clients I have talked with get rather confused when MS Office doesn't come included with the computer.
Those who are familiar or have purchasing power care, but the people I am talking about are Joe 6 pack and have hard enough time figuring out how to make shortcuts on their desktop much less open them.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
If I could mod that post funny, sad, and true, I would. It's sad that in the time it took me to write this response it got modded down to 0 points for "Troll".
I've recently installed Fedora Core 5 on a computer to embark on my first real Linux adventure. Some things were fairly easy, some weren't. Downloading the CD images, burning, & starting the install process was easy as pie. Then halfway through the install I got errors. I had checked the images and they passed the test so I turned to Google and searched the error message. The first hits I got said that FC's install image is notoriously unstable and my CD drive was probably too fast. The suggestions were to remove the drive and use a slower drive for the install. Up until this point, the install process was something that could be handled by someone with little computer knowledge. Replacing a CD drive would've stopped them cold in their tracks. I've heard nerds complaining about the Windows installer for years, but I've never had it fail halfway through without giving a descriptive reason for the failure.
After completing the installation I had Gnome running on top of FC5 and everything appeared to be fairly simple. I'd rather use Opera than Firefox so I went to Opera.com and downloaded an installer package for Opera. After downloading it I executed the package and Opera installed somewhere in the depths of the machine with no desktop launcher or applications-menu launcher. My first instinct was to use the file system's search function to look for "opera" but it returned no results. Eventually I found it while browsing /usr/bin/... but, again, this is not something a casual computer user is likely to figure out on their own. Other than that, my major turn-off is that Gnome insists on opening every folder in a new window and I've been unable to find a way to turn off that behavior.
My feeling so far is that Gnome/FC5 is much easier to deal with than I expected (I was prepared for the absolute worst), but still not easy enough for a casual user to migrate without being horribly confused/frustrated. Linux in its current state seems to be a great system for nerds, but not for the general population. Yes, my experience with Linux is somewhat limited and there may be suites out there that are more fully functioning. My choice of FC5 was based on Dell offering Red Hat Linux, going to Red Hat's website and then on to Fedora as the free alternative. I installed FC5 based on a quick Google search about Fedora stability. None of this was the "best" research or the "best" decisions, but expecting the general public to do the "best" reseach and make the "best" decisions is naive.
Nonsense. The real issue here is not that Linux desktops need to progress anywhere. I use both Windows and Linux for hours a day and they both have their share of frustrations and joys.
I think you're trying to divorce two interrelated issues. Linux and Windows both have usability issues. For the average user it i hard to tell which is better. Because of the market situation, however, Linux is at a huge disadvantage. In order to overcome that, they need to not only be as good as Windows, but need to leapfrog Windows and be significantly better in multiple ways. I don't really see Linux as being all that far ahead on the desktop right now.
Mac has a devoted base of people willing to pay a premium price for Apple products, why I'll never know, since Apple's offerings have been an inferior price-to-value proposition since at least the release of Windows 2000.
Just because Apple products are an inferior price-to-value proposition to you, does not mean they are to everyone. The last time I upgraded my mac laptop I plugged in a firewire cable to my old laptop, selected the upgrade from and old machine option, and then walked away. That same task on Linux takes me about five hours of messing around and then an hour or two a day for the next week as I find things that aren't right, and then another hour or two a week for the next month. Add all that up and you get about 20 hours worth of work. My billable rate for contract work these days is $75/an hour. That's $1500 for one feature per upgrade. If I spend $1500 more on a Mac laptop instead of a different one, I've broken even for that one feature, not accounting any other benefits to OS X. It is actually my company's money, but I hope you get the point. Now I have a Linux install and a Windows install running in a VM, instead of needing a separate machine. How much money do I save by not having to dual boot and by having Windows divorced from the hardware and automatically working without wasting a week getting it into shape? How much money is saved by my having one integrated spellchecker for all my applications, including e-mail, terminals, and IM, rather than having to copy and paste text in order to spellcheck or having to train a dozen different spellcheckers to understand all the obscure terminology I use? What about the time saved by having a universal grammar checker? What about the time saved when I IM'd a program that is no longer available for download to a remote worker that needed it and it just worked, without me having to hope I'd archived an installer somewhere?
I'll stop singing OS X's praises now. I just wanted to make my point that unless you've used multiple systems, making assertions about the price-value of the system is pretty naive.
Apple is able to be profitable by serving a niche that is almost more fashion-driven than anything else.
Well, some of the guys at Defcon and Blackhat this year were "fashionable" but I don't think you could say most of them are... and there were an awful lot of mac laptops.
For the rest of the world there is only one choice: Windows. Linux isn't on the table.
There are two significant chunks of the desktop OS market. These are pre-installed (OS X and Windows) and large organization-managed. To win the former, Linux needs to leapfrog Windows by enough in some degree that an OEM is willing to bet the farm on it. It's unlikely to happen on a large scale. The real possibility is the latter market. Big companies and organizations and governments can save a lot of money if they move to Linux and gain a lot of flexibility and security. But big organizations are notoriously slow to move and easily influenced by big piles of cash. It is a hard market, but Linux can do it if it gets the right backing.
Until the consumer is informed that their hardware purchase includes a hefty charge for a Windows license and is offered Linux as an alternative (presumably at a different price point), they are not going to know or care about Lin
What is this article about? It's asking for BIG revisions. It says something in the line of 'Change everything and you have something new. If you change bit by bit, somehow you would never get there'. Take a look at what the author defines as "stagnation": we have accustomed to the continuous flow of revisions and improvements in our desktop experience, when we use Linux. So major improvements are perceived as point revisions. We expected them. We wait as changes are happening and when they finally come we just use them. Is this stagnation? Say, if something is flowing continuously, it means it is stagnated? Then I read this thing about randomness. I thought evolution was random, as well as creativity and improvement. I even thought ideas were random by nature. Now I read this as if it's a bad thing. Ok, does he wants to see results? Install Gnome 2.0.0 and KDE 2.2 and compare. It's not about bug fixing and speed improvements, it's not the same as comparing patched and unpatched versions of Windows XP. There are real improvements! Today's versions are as different from these early versions as Vista is different from XP. And on another note, I read "not ready for the desktop" as if it really means anything. Ready for the desktop means nothing! Computers were being used on the desktop long before they were "Ready for the Desktop". The problem is every writer thinks people that use Free Software are masochists, we're not. It feels comfortable, responsive and easy to use. It's not so easy to set up, but computers were never easy to set up, it just takes time. It works out of the box just until you try to do something different. Same as it ever was. All things summed, this was a really lousy article.
The problem with many linux users is that they fail to realize that your "normal" computer user is NOTHING like they are. Linux CAN succeed but it really needs a set of standards to follow. People don't like inconsistency. They really don't even like choice. They don't want to have to choose one of the 300 active distros.
I'm sorry, but this "linux users... fail to realize.." stuff is really old. Linux users don't fail to realize, but most can't do anything about it. Saying that people don't want choice is all well and good, but... who gets to decide what choices people don't get to make? I am sure that Fedora people wouldn't care if ubuntu and debian went away and vice versa. And the KDE team would be just fine if Gnome decided to fold up shop, though I think we would all miss the stupid arguments like this thread. And if Windows went away then there would certainly be the less choice that you seem to think people want.
"They want "Linux" and they want it to work as easily as Windows does."
Now you are contradicting yourself. Regular users don't want choice, you say, even if there is equivalent functionality, especially if there is equivalent functionality.
As a Linux user, I want Linux to work more easily than windows does. And I believe most current linux users want linux to work at least as easily as windows does, but would expect more in terms of free software and capability than Windows in order to justify the switching costs. But people should be clear, when by "work as easily" we don't mean anything really to do with the desktop layout or what programs are accessible in the menus or how applications actually start or how do you manage your files. All that basic functionality is there and works as well and is possibly easier to use than windows. What we mean by "works as well" really is that we want plug and play capabilities or at least plug and play with a good sub set of peripheral devices to meet all the every day desktop and laptop computing needs.
With Linux on the desktop and laptop it seems like it is always going to be just that one thing. It is the same problem that Mac OS users had all those years. You walk into a store, you have a wall of peripherals certified to work for Windows. Some for Mac and even fewer more basic things like network cards and the like might come with a penguin on it.
But then, especially if you do your homework you can find some web site somewhere that says they got a particular device that you need to work on the distro that you are using. So you go ahead and buy it because it is the cheapest one that still has a decent brand you recognize. These days it seems to be wireless USB 802.11 devices, and PCMCIA cards or the like, at least have cause me the most problems. So you get your device home, cross your fingers, plug it in and then you find you just wasted $30 on something that some guy on some web site thought he got working, but apparently didn't write down the right steps. Oh and you wasted an hour figuring you must have done something wrong yourself. You probably did, or really I probably did, but the point is that it should have been plug and play.
Sure there are plenty of places to go and get hardware lists, and these days wikis are making it easier to get decent information, but these throw away statements about ease of use aren't very helpful to people working on these problems. Linux is easy, probably easier than Windows. But companies aren't making products to meet the demand because Windows is a higher volume market. I'd be willing to pay $5 more for a USB 802.11 dongle if I knew that it would work with my ubuntu install and I could call support if it didn't, but the market isn't big enough for the manufacturers to bother.
So, the army of volunteers making things work is a double edged sword when it comes to newer devices. The server market has been easier to crack precisely because there is a much more limited set of devices that you would want to attach to a server. Also, embe
This topic is very stupid. First off lets be real, there never was a bubble, and as long as the open source community stays the way it is, there never will be a bubble.
The reason that I say there never was a bubble is because the same places that say there is/was a bubble, are the same places that Linux is the greatest OS out there. Truth be told, Linux is a OS that has alot of potential but no unity. As long as there is a lack of unity there will be no bubble of any kind. "But thats what the open source community is about, unity." Really? Then why is it we have 2 types of desktops that don't resemble each other at all. Yeah, Windows has 2 types of desktop but at least they look alike and you don't have to start a new session every time you want to switch, might as well reboot. Why is it that we have a million different media players, text editors, and game programs that allow you to play the same fricken game. It makes no sense at all.
You might have noticed I left out the part about having a million distros too. That has to be the biggest problem. A problem that will have to be solved but if these other problems get solved then everything will just fall into place.
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux. What I hate is how it's split up into a million different projects that all do the same thing. The funding that goes to all these different projects could go to one project. Open source is all about efficiency right? If we unified, we could actually afford to run ads, make business deals and push forward alot faster.
But as far as a bubble? There never was one.
LostHobo.com
Soup Kitchen of the Internet
> Linux has a problem with it UI for Desktop usage.
No it doesn't. Random people off the street can and DO use Linux desktops, specifically GNOME on a clone of RHEL3. I'm running it in a public library setting and people just use it, kids to senior citizens. I did make a few compromises like Crossover Office installed to run the Office viewers and most importantly IE for sites that won't render in anything else. A decision that saved our butts come Katrina when FEMA's site was IE only.
And since it is a sane multiuser OS we can give them home directories, email accounts and even allow them to install into their home directory. No public access Windows allow such freedom. And yes we have people taking advantage of this. Too many people confuse 'easy to use' with 'what I already know how to use.' But when you turn people loose for a bit they learn new things.
And if you pick your hardware carefully, like an OEM would, installation is also a no brainer. Literally just plop in the DVD and answer some simple questions like what time zone you are in and which optional package groups you want.
> Give good names to the features. Give programs names that anyone know what they are.
I don't know which distro you were looking at and how many years ago, but RH has been doing that for a few years.
> But for desktop use they are a big pain. Things like install the application and the Icon to the application is in the GUI menu,
> with the correct icon.
If the icon doesn't appear correctly it is a bug to report to whoever is maintaining the package. If you are the sort of buttmuncher who insists on installing via tarball AND bitching because that doesn't work anymore in a GUI package managed world you should STFU.
> Desktop users shouldn't need to hunt down dependencies to get the application to work nor can you assume your application will be
> part of the distribution list) People want to go the web site download a program and run it.
And why should we adopt lame Windows practices like forcing people to hunt down a website, download an installer and run it when we have a much better way? Take a look at a modern package manager, you can add repos to them in a very simple manner. So if a 3rd party (I assume you mean payware since free software should get into most default repos if it doesn't suck) wants to support an OS they should provide a repo and instructions for adding it to your collection. Then installing their program AND ANY DEPENDENCIES (dependencies will even be solved across repos) becomes checking a box in a GUI and keeping it current is pretty much automatic.
> Plugging it in doesn't mean it will do anything...
If it is supported it will do something. If it is partially supported you might have to futz with it. If it isn't well then it isn't. Same as owning a Mac, everything doesn't work. Everything works on Windows because ALL HARDWARE (excepting a couple of Mac only bits and bobs) is sold for Windows, of course it kinda/sorta works there.
> OS X and Windows when you plug in a camera or other hardware will load a default application which you can change who the default it.
You say that like it is a good thing. Most of the time it suxors because they are using it to try to keep you captive to their bundled app and will even geep stealing the association back. We don't play those games.
> Linux has stalled, in the desktop...
No it hasn't. Look at the progress in Fedora/RHEL, SuSE and Ubuntu in versions spanning the last couple of years and you will see major progress in all of them. Linux long since passed the point where mere mortals can use a Linux desktop in an environment where there is a professional admin, and has reached the point where an OEM preload would be viable for many users, only it isn't available.
We will probably never reach a state where Linux desktops run Windows games so if that is you benchmark just stay on Windows and play, the rest of us have work to do and no time for futzing with Norton Anti-virus.
Democrat delenda est
Hopefully the hype and rhetoric of the Linux desktop, and the unreasonable expectations for it, are being tempered. If people wanted a free replacement for each and every one of their favorite Windows programs, then obviously they were looking in the wrong place. But that is a Good Thing. Windows has been around far too long, and the look and feel is becoming tired and boring. We don't want the same thing to happen to the desktop as what happened to General Motors.
But the various projects seem to be rather healthy, and progress very nicely, with new stuff all of the time.
I wish that I hadn't used up my mod points this morning, else I'd +1 that statement right now. Open Source is definitely not a place for people who fear change.
The whole problem with computers is that they're too damn complicated and they don't work that well. OSes aren't anywhere near what people need.
When the car was first invented, you needed to be a mechanic to drive one (or you needed to have your own mechanic). However, nowadays, they run quite well if you just put gas in them and keep the fluids and filters clean. You don't need to know anything about setting fuel/air ratios, maintaining the transmission, or even repacking bearings since that stuff's all sealed now. You can subject this complex box of moving parts and electronics to harsh conditions for years on end, and practically no maintenance is necessary.
With computers, we are still in the stage where everyone has to be a mechanic. You have to screw around with linux to make it do what you want and it's hard to find any two installations that work the same. Windows and OSX may look pretty, but it's easy to mess up a computer and you have to know what you're doing to make things right. Most people don't want to spend their time wondering about the intricacies of how their hardware and software work. They just want the gizmo to do its job. They're not stupid -- they want to have a life in the real world.
No one should care what the OS is in their computer any more than they should care who manufactured the compressor for their refrigerator or the blower on their furnace. Until the computer can be made as easy to use and reliable as just about every other product, we can look forward to perpetual squabbles over whether option A or B is better when the reality is that they both leave much to be desired.
I just need to add something here.
First, I worked a lot assisting many home users with their computer problems and for a large majority of them, internet and email ranked highest among "Things That Mattered" in terms of computer usage. Second came documents, music, and photos. That was pretty much it. (I rarely dealt with gamers, probably because gamers typically are more familiar with computer usage.)
When it came to software installations, people almost ALWAYS had me perform the installation for them, even if it meant costing them more money (I charged by the hour). People, regular people, just didn't give two shits about installing software on their own, regardless of how easy it might be. They just wanted their PCs to work. When it comes to "Making Things Happen" outside of working with the items noted above, I found that the usual limit of a person's willingness to participate before they begged to have someone else do it for them was double-clicking an icon.
When you consider regular users, the differences in how software is installed between Windows and Linux is irrelevant, because they're not going to touch that shit regardless of difficulty level. Just point them to their browser, email client, media player, photos and documents. That's all they fucking care about. "Make it easy for them" means whatever's easiest for YOU to support without THEM having to do anything beyond the simplest measure of double-clicking an icon on their desktop. Such people without computing needs beyond those cited above could chug along quite happily on Ubuntu. Of this I am certain.
Consider this manner in how Linux is spreading. Currently I dual boot, because I got tired of the bullshit: spyware protection; anti-virus protection; lack of any really decent applications on a default windows install; the amount of time it takes to keep everything on a widows box updated; 3rd party apps needlessly running in the background and treating your desktop like a damn billboard; blah blah blah. I just got tired of it all and decided to make a change. So, I installed Ubuntu... and fell in love.
Well, hell. I am outta time. The office is closing. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays.
I wish I had mod points to give you. You are right on target in my book.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
Is there something wrong with the continuous improvement we've seen in GNOME with its six-month release cycle? UNIX is a solid base; is there a need to pull a Vista- or OS X-like move by starting over? "Linux 3.0" or even "Linux 2.8" doesn't turn anything up in Google; should I be worried?
Penny - plain text accounting
That type of screw up is hard to do on the CLI.
.*".
You're forgetting the old classic. You want to remove a bunch of hidden folders from a directory. Naturally the first command that comes to mind is "rm -rf
Then you really learn about recursion.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
That comment had me in stitches... thanks!
Yeah! Didn't you all see Who Framed Roger Rabbit? :)
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
The issue is that the world largely is unaware or ignores Linux. How many of your neighbors have ever heard of Linux? I doubt if any of mine have. How many have heard of Microsoft or Apple? Most of them. To consumers, money and marketing talk. Neither XP/Vista nor OSX is completely unusable and both have considerable marketing efforts behind them. Linux may be solid and stable and have the hearts and minds of many developers and IT folks around the globe, but the average Joe simply doesn't care about it and most companies are going with the product that has a real company behind it that they can reach out and touch. I think Linux is cool but MS and Apple aren't likely to falter at this point. The Linux desktop, for most people, is probably a curiosity at best, unfortunately.
Isn't it just remotely plausible that Linux really isn't going anywhere fast? I see this fanboyism all the time on gaming forums. I've run WinXP on this system for over a year and a half without any real problems because I take care of it. I like that over 90% of software runs on it. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2047517 ,00.aspGaming is going nowhere. Your average user can't touch it because it's too complicated. And as for servers, sure, it's great if you're setting up a little business or gaming server where it's going to be on its own and you can get it set up in a few days, but it's just not an option at the Enterprise level. I'm sure you don't want to hear this, but Windows Server 2003 is far more effective at deployment, management, expansion, and migration. And Linux has nothing approaching the excellence of Sharepoint Portal Server 2003. And they're all getting a full upgrade next year.
If I'm wrong, tell me exactly why. The Microsoft is evil excuse isn't going to work because while they do engage in shady business practices, they are the only ones who are capable of generating an operating system that works on 90% of all systems, has a unified graphics API to ensure games work, keeps IT personnel employed, AND can be used by your average PEBKAC.
As for Mac OS, it will never be very common because Apple will never release a full x86 system version not preinstalled on their own hardware.
> most uber-geeks hate non-geeks trying to be geeks...
The primary benefit of open source software is that you can be a geek with it. When it doesn't work, you open up the source and muck around. Geeks love that.
Non-geeks hate it. But since their geek friends tell them how great this is, they try to do it anyway, and they fuck everything up. Then they go to their geek friends, who now hate them because they're non-geeks trying to be geeks.
But this was YOUR IDEA! Honestly, WTF is your problem?!
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
Can you expand on this? If I own my own computer shop, sell 'blank computers'...and sell software separately, for instance, the OS that I will install for them if they buy a system, what draconian terms am I beholden to MS for? Are you saying I have to sign some kind of contract just to sell MS products at my store? This contract says what I can and cannot put on a computer I sell?
I'm assuming that being a small store owner, I'm not entering into a deal like Dell has, that charges them per CPU they sell for Windows.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The newcomer to either operating system will begin by asking "What the hell is download?" Synaptic/Download.com - they're just names. You tell them to click on the icon that looks like this, or the menu item called synaptic, or type "www.download.com" into the bar in the program they're told to click on. From then, I would say synaptic is simpler than download.com, from what I remember of it - no installation programs, no separate download/install process, and so on. At any rate, synaptic is not more complex than download.com, and has advantages in terms of compatibility, and that all the programs are free, not crippleware.
im in ur
First application listed in the menu is add/remove software.The first one. There's just no way to make it much easier than that. Linspire/Freespire has click-n-run, again, pretty easy. Other major distros are similar, and it doesn't matter which package application manager scheme they use, because the newbie user will be using the one that is applicable to the OS distro that is on the machine sitting in front of him or her, they don't have to figure out whether to use a .deb or an RPM or a tarball whatever, they only will see what is there to choose from, and with all major distros having thousands of applications, the excuses are dropping down to a few propietary applications that are more commonly used in a workplace environment where professional people guide their users, and then some games, and frankly, I no longer see games as being much of an issue with the advanced consoles out there.
I'm still a CLI doofus, and it doesn't seem to matter with me running linux at all, it isn't much of an issue at all. I run stuff from cli, once in awhile, but I don't *have to*. Once a person is used to mousing around, really, desktop linux is no big deal at all, and if they are a complete raw noob to computers at all, mac, windows, linux are all more similar than not for any useability bragging rights, it's up to the new user how intutitive they are then coordinating an icon and running a mouse and you just can't overcome that without personal handholding and/or a lot of experimentation on the users part. some people are just not smooth enough with ANY operating system to use it unattended right off the bat, but most folks could get going pretty easily with any of them, at least to do some basic common tasks.
what the hell, I plug USB sticks into Ubuntu, SuSE and Debian desktops and servers and everything is just fine. Did you last use Redhat 5.2 and leave the Linux world spouting the same trash ever since?
I'm pretty sure I've read that exact comment posted here on /. before...
Linux adoption on desktops seems to be an 'everywhere except North America' phenomenon. However, this is typical. North America traditionally lags the technology curve by a couple of decades. However, Linux is slowly crawling into government and military installations. Eventually, American industry will also start to take it up, but only after going almost bankrupt. If you want to look at leaders though, you got to go to Germany, France, Portugal, Brazil and South Africa.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
That's not the problem caused by Linux desktop. Hardware manufacturers are not providing drivers for sometimes pretty weird hardware. Supported hardware works like a charm and easines improves with every new release, regerdless of Linux distro in question.
Both zsh and bash have options that prevent this.
.tmp /home/lb/fuu [yn]?
:)
lb@yuffie:fuu [9|0] % rm *
zsh: sure you want to delete all the files in
I really like this. It saved my live more than once
1. Slow as molasses.
.doc compatibility.
2. Lacks perfect
3. Can only deal with the simplest Excel spreadsheets.
People see it as an alternative to MS Office, using the MS Office file formats. Since it lacks perfect compatibility, it is a non-starter. The only semi-professional place I've seen it in use is the public library.
You can argue all you want, but this is the truth: in the enterprise, OpenOffice is completely absent. And no, a kindergarten teacher is not representative of the needs of business.
And of course, you can always just alias 'rm' to 'rm -i'. But my point was to counter the argument that the command line is 'safe'. At *best*, if you fatfinger a command, you'll get an error. At worst, it'll do exactly what you told it to.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Just as difficult as Menu->Applications->Add/Remove..., select 'Games', select 'Neverball', klick 'Ok'.
Meep.
Well, this only works in small, very densely populated areas...a classical urban city if you will.
Most places in the US...not the layout. It will work in the cities we have like that, but, I'd say the majority of people live much more spread out....and that doesn't give you an excuse to be late for work. Outside of a major urban center, parking isn't that much a problem.
In the US, we have a LOT of land, and that has fostered a feeling in many, that they like 'room' between themselves and their neighbors. Personally, I can't stand living in a traditional 'box' apartment...having to hear other people's noise, having to watch how loud I have my TV/Stereo, etc. That's why home ownership, and land ownership is so important over here. We like our own space, and the country is large enough to allow that easily.
That kind of lifestyle, however, does not bode well for mass transit...mass transit spread wide outside of a compact urban center, doesn't work...you can't depend on the schedule, and it probably won't drop you off right where you need. That last point is a major one, when weather is cold, hot/humid, or rainy. No one wants to show up for work all messed up from walking the last 'mile' from the transit center to the front door of their worksite.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
No damage done??? With one twitch of the space bar, the simple command: rm -r *.tmp becomes: rm -r * .tmp Try this, then tell me 'no damage done'.
True to a point, but it is much more precise to say, "OK, read that line back to me, letter by letter, space by space" than it is to say, "OK, which button did you press and describe to me what the icon looked like". Another example would be trying to get a customer to move up a folder in explorer vs the command line. "Press the yellow icon that has a green up arrow that looks kinda like it's coming from under the folder at the top, under the title bar, under the menu bar, but just above the address bar, if it exists because it might be turned off." vs. "type in see dee space dot-dot and press enter"
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
What games? You can run the few that Id gives you. You may be able to run a few converted titles. But no one is developing games for linux beyond a few companies that do it because they feel like it. What are you going to do when you can't run DirectX 10 titles?
When I first started using Linux I was drawn to it by the amazing amount of free software it had to offer, and the convenience of the command line. I decided to install Linux on my own machine and got rid of Windows. And oh my god, all hell broke loose. At the time I had to recompile the kernel in order to get my graphics card to work, sound setup was very difficult - things took ages.
*But* I was overjoyed when I got it working, a truly rewarding feeling. On the other hand, when programs crashed or failed to install in Windows I would find it frustrating, especially since we are talking about commercial software, which is supposed to work flawlessly.
Quickly becoming a penguin enthusiast I decided to install Linux with KDE on my mum's, my brother's and my girlfriend's (I know, I'm not a proper geek) machines. I administer these remotely and have, 3 years later, not received a single complaint regarding usability. They all use their computers to browse the web, send/receive emails, chat, manage photos, listen to music, print, write documents... all of which can be accomplished easily. And they are happier - mainly because it's free.
Yet would they use Linux own their own? No, definitely not. The only way for this to happen would be if administration was much simplified, in fact it would have to be pretty much inexistent. Non-technical users cannot be burdened with current Linux administration, because it is too challenging, too time-consuming and simply requires too much technical knowledge.
So in my opinion, it's not the GUIs that should take the blame. They don't think there is a lot that needs to be dumbed down. I know a lot of people who are intrigued by Linux and especially by Amarok, but who cannot find entry into the Linux world with their current computer proficiency, simply because of the administrative burden. And they all like choice.
Normal computer users aren't being served well by Windows, either. Dumbing down an interface won't help my Grandma (actually a friend's grandma) at all: she's a retired MD, businesswoman and druggist. Which is to say she's a normal person, not a moron.
What she needs is a way to change something without writing a program, something she doesn't know how to do. Therefor she needs a graphical representation of the subject matter, such as her patient records, and a way to manipulate and edit it symbolically.
As it happens, the company that did the research in that area is Xerox, and the one which popularized is is Apple. Windows is a non-starter, so don't make the mistake of copying it...
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
I wasn't trying to invalidate your statement in any way. Just said that there are more or less intelligent features which help against such stuff.
The rm vs. rm -i thing is another interesting point, though.
When i'm deleting something, and get asked everytime, with time, the keystrokes will get automated. I've got this problem in windows - per default, you will get asked, and then the files will only get moved to the recycle bin. So i automatically hit "Shift-Delete, Enter". Which kinda counters the asking behaviour. I think the rm -i thing will do the same.
Don't warn / popup needlessly. I've seen so many users clicking away the norton prompt, asking them to renew their subscribtion...
True, but it won't be the customer who'll need to choose. It'll be the retailer telling the customer which is the best version. Or worse, it'll come bundled with the computer. This is so unlike having to choose the best Linux distro, then choosing the best desktop environment and all the way down to the single apps. And all this out of opinion found in web-forums.
People love to be told "This is the best for you". And they'll get told Windows Vista is the best for them.
:(){
Mod Parent AC post Up. Kudos for Debian. If only the other distros enacted the same policy for their package maintiners to follow, then alternate desktops would work properly.
Every year, there's a slew of folks here that like to bandy around the "year of the Linux desktop" line.
That's funny, I never see any of those posts. Would you point to one or two of them? I know that I have not been hopeful for more use until recently. With more than a million users, there's sure to be one of every kind of post imaginable, so your task should not be very hard.
It always has the air of some sort of criticism. There's some implication that it was supposed to be already, has yet to happen, and never will.
It's intersting that you can read into posts that don't exist, but yes it is obvious that there should be a greater Linux market share. The GNU/Linux desktop has enjoyed numerous advantages over non free software for close to a decade and it's cheaper. A free market would have more free software in it. The continued M$ vendor lock is both puzzling and outrageous.
what exactly is the phrase supposed to mean?
It's the tipping point, where a combination of M$ user frustration and standards adoption undo the power of non free software. Firefox is a good example of how that power is broken. Because IE sucked, people on Windows adopted Firefox and this has made the internet a more standards based and friendly place. With 20% of users, and most of them influential trend setters, on Firefox few websites are willing to risk using some crappy M$ toy that does not work outside of IE. This alone has made a dent in M$'s hold because the easiest way to make Firefox work now is to move to free software. Companies like Chrysler and IBM are already moving. When enough users get on free software, the FUD will be gone. Hardware vendors and home users alike will be happy when they can quit worrying about the "M$ network effect" and paying the M$ tax to simply make their computer work and exchange information with each other. If you think about it, the odd thing is that people managed to give Bill Gates so much power over their work. The tip will be fast and the transition complete within a few years of it happening.
2007 and the introduction of Vista will do the trick. It's so bloated, so restricted and so expensive that people who want the features are leaving the M$ world in droves. There is nothing it can do that you can't get done with less hardware and less trouble in the free software world. I predict Linux Desktop use will surpass 15% this year and that the conversion will grow exponentially, 30% in 2008, 60% in 2009 then dominance in 2010 and beyond, tapering off to 95% of the market with some niche use of non free software for very special legacy purposes. This will eliminate their ability to influence laws and the "IP" nightmare laws will start to be undone.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Apple and Microsoft have PAID USABILITY EXPERTS who conduct studies, research- they have resources to figure this out.
...And don't even get me started on Linux on Embedded devices or in Aviation/Military- Horribly Insecure- and irresponsible.
Yes, I guess this explains wonderful little joys in the Windows OS like the Start menu, where you choose "Turn off Computer" in order to Restart the thing. A stroke interface brilliance.
Please do. Explain how embedded Linux is more insecure than Windows. Or, are you talking about how someone might have horribly munged an otherwise secure OS in a particular embedded implementation?
Problem numero uno with Linux being as accessible as OS X or Windows is right there: "dumbed down". The idea that making an OS easy to use and install for Joe or Jane Average Computer User means sinking to a level of intelligence lower than that worthy of someone running Linux is, IMO, the main reason that Linux remains something for the geeky or curious. For the record, I use OS X as my main OS. For the record, I also run Ubuntu Linux on my old G3 laptop. My experience with Linux has been interesting: I've learned a lot of things about the OS and OSes in general. I have compiled software, hunted down dependencies, edited .conf files and tweaked xorg.conf to get direct rendering going. And, while all of these things have been fun to me because I have learned things I didn't know, none of them would have been interesting to me if I wasn't curious.
For someone who just wants their computer to be a tool, all of the things I had to do would've been a pain in the ass. And the Geek Machismo one sees on Slashdot--the idea that if you aren't willing to edit config files then you shouldn't really be using a computer--rests on twin assumptions, neither of which I believe. The first is that anyone who isn't willing to dive into the internals of their OS doesn't really deserve to use the thing. This idea, that pedantic technical knowledge implies a general superiority, isn't unique to computer geeks; I see it in audiophiles who feel that someone who buys a $199 WalMart stereo shouldn't be allowed to listen to music or foodies who think that olive oil from the supermarket renders a meal inedible. In all aspects it is wrong, elevating a narrow slice of personality above all else. It's really just a fuck you to anyone who doesn't have the knowledge.
The second assumption is that someone with superior technical knowledge will want to use it at all times, and I think it, too, is bullshit. My dad, an aerospace engineer, has been using computers longer than most people posting here have been alive. He is fluent in several computer languages and has written his own finite element analysis software. At home he uses a Dell with Windows on it and doesn't want to mess around it more than he has to, because he's at home and has better things to do. I think both of these assumptions need to be abandoned before Linux really goes mainstream.
In other words, the problem really isn't with the technology. It's with the presentation and the preconception of what people who use the computer value and want to deal with. For Linux to be really successful on the desktop some group needs to really think about marketing and catering to stupid end users who still think it's a cup holder. And, more than that, some group will need to make the decision that the people who think the CD tray is a cup holder are the most important group of computer users out there. Because it's the people who get harshed on Slashdot, the people who don't use IRC or never touch the command line, who really decide success or failure in the marketplace. Simply put, there are many, many, many more of them than there are of those who will ever compile Beryl from source.
I know I've conflated Slashdot and the Linux community somewhat, and I know that although there is some overlap they are not one in the same. My comments about geek machismo are intended more for those here whom I see exhibiting that trait. For the record, the Ubuntu community has been great and has answered a lot of my questions to the best of my ability. However, for Linux to be truly mainstream it's going to have to be "dumbed down" even more. A lot of the tweakability is going to have to be hidden away behind GUIs like the BSD stuff is in OS X. And people who gladly use AOL and think that the computer is a magic box are going to have to
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
Just cut a distro out of the herd, let someone sell it without source and call it "MYScreensOS 2.0" "the desktop Operating System alternative to Windows for the rebel in all of us." NEVER mention Linux or Unix in marketing. Of course, simplify it. Who says it has to have drivers for everything? Sell it with drivers for standard setups. Five printers; three scanners--who really cares? Select Gnome OR KDE, don't confuse the public with two. It isn't meant to be an enterprise solution. People do NOT want to make these decisions. Make them for them. Partner with equipment manufacturers. Point is, the greatest advantage of Linux--its free, open source requirement--is also its downfall as far as public awareness is concerned. That kills the possibility of it being a serious desktop OS for the masses. No commercials, no desire for it. No demand for it, no pressure on OEMs. Communism is relatively free of capitalistic energy, so is the Linux world. And that is a problem apparently.
E Proelio Veritas.
I don't know of a desktop Linux distro which doesn't automount USB storage devices
Not knowing something doesn't make it untrue.
I see no improvements in desktop functionality overall for the last 5 years. I'm writing from a Mac Mini.
/tmp directory from the file browser.
There's hardly anything useful and noticable to me compared to KDE/Windows 2000 as I used otherwise.
If anything they don't let me reach the
The eye-candy is just for the developer's amusement.
Copy and Paste, open window, close window. Tabbed browsing. That's just about all one needs from a desktop.
Speed is just about all that is lacking, but its mostly managable.
Stephan
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
If it's all about the desktop and it's look then both KDE and Gnome is way nicer than Windows XP64 that I've compared it with. Take Slashdot: the gradations in the menus with Firefox look much better and even the anti alaising is better something that really surprised me. I haven't had the possibility to compare it with Vista as it's not out in my language yet. Where is the bubble?
I can speak to this because quite recently I became so angry with my windows box having to use up what seemed like a third of my RAM to prevent the machine from being exploited or invaded by virii or mal-ware, that I searched for the easiest and safest Linux-distro I could find. All I wanted to do was get an old p3 with 256MB of RAM going so that I could use the internet and maybe type a document and listen to an MP3. The basics. So I scanned through the live-on CDs and found PuppyLinux. You burn the CD, boot with it, and with some mild setup you are running Linux. The GNOME vs KDE problem is not relevant to me since it runs XVESA or XORG. It works and I am happy. If linux people want windows joe-blow, and the real question to ask is "do you REALLY?", to adopt linux then it is going to be more about the simplicity of the distro than what windows manager is used. Right now linux should be marketed as an OS to run a "second computer" that runs FAST on ancient hardware. Then you will get people like myself who have had enough of Windows and all of its security problems. No not your mom, but like the techish male who knows enough to change a hard-drive or install RAM.
I helped my brother-in-law by a new PC a few months ago. We went to the Cosmos, which is like what people in America call Best Buy or another large, "honey take my wallet and whatever you do don't give it back to me until we leave no matter what I say when we're inside" electronics megastore. They were selling two versions of the same high-end full bells-and-whistles workstation. One version had Windows XP and Nero burning software and one came with Debian with loads of extra applications filling the rest of the second DVD. The Windows version was about 260eu more than the Debian box despite the fact that hardware-wise they were identical and software-wise the Debian discs were about ten times as useful (the Windows box didn't even have any OEM office software like that shitty Works program they sometimes throw at you). The only problems he's had so far was getting his iPod working with Linux, but even Windows can't deal directly with HFS+. Say what you want, but I call that pretty damn competitive. They're even selling cheap Linux-based DVD players here in the LIDL grocery stores now. The days of Windows dominance are definitely numbered.
brandelf: invalid ELF type 'KEEBLER'
I just searched this whole page of comments for "mp3" and failed. Why does everyone here overlook the fact that a default install of a modern distro can't play mp3s, flash, and basically all video formats (like someone said earlier: it doesn't matter whose fault this is.) I've used Linux for years and I still don't bother trying to get any of this working, never mind getting it to work smoothly with stuff embedded in web pages. I know most of it is theoretically possible, but once you're hacking autoconf files and manually setting LD_LIBRARY paths it's beyond what many people want to deal with.
... also, I can kill you with my brain.
Personally, I have never liked the Mac interface. I haven't spent that much time with it, but it has always frustrated me. For work, it is Windows - it just makes doing THAT particular job easier. I just want the right tool for the job. I am just glad I know how to use more than one tool. I don't really care if Linux gets mainstream acceptance, I just like it for what it is. (sometimes) Sometimes it frustrates the hell out of me, but that can happen with technology in general. It might be easier to set up printer sharing over your home network on Windows, but there are lots of other things that are easier on Linux. Think I didn't curse a bit when I upgraded my Kubuntu version recently, and had to re-hash out all of the X and Nvidia crap? Hell yes... but once I got it sorted out (again) I am back to being very happy with Linux. I like it despite its flaws, and I choose to use it. Not everyone can make that choice.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I believe the answer would be run MS Office. Love it or (more likely) hate it, Office is pretty much a requirement. If you want to take work home, edit school work, Office is pretty much a necessity. Yes, there are functional alternatives like Open Office, but it just isn't the same (fonts shift, line breaks change) and there isn't anything like PowerPoint. Office is so damn cheap (about $130 for the student/teacher version) and about $200 (bundled with new computer) for the Small business versions it's hard to compete with.
This is what I love. On some level my interest in Linux came down to a question of choice and freedom. When it really first came to prominence, Apple was floundering and Microsoft seemed on a path to total hegemony. I liked Linux because it was free, and free, and gave me a choice. Sometimes it was harder to do things in Linux than it was under windows, but then I came to learn that there were a lot of things that then became easier. I loved how many tools I could get for it that were also free and free.
Today I have 3 very solid choices (more, possibly, depending on how you count your linuxes) and we can all find the right environment for us. I love that, on my new computer, I can run OSX, Linux, and Windows, not just on the same box, but even at the same time. When I work from home I have OSX on one screen and Windows XP running in parallels connected to my work desktop. Theoretically I could probably hook up a third monitor and have a Linux desktop running too, but that'd be a wee bit of overkill (and I don't have nearly the desk space).
It still frustrates me though how much support is given to windows to the total exclusion of all else. I understand the business reasons for it, but it does drive me nuts that I have to dual-boot my computer just to play a game. But we are making progress I think, and perhaps growth in OSX may help Linux down the line, encouraging developers to write software that can take advantage of all platforms more easily.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
My wife was so pissed at me when I deleted all of the music/movies/shows we had on the network by accident when I typed "rm -rf /mnt/storage" instead of /mnt/storage/backup like I had meant to. There is just some music we'll never get back.
Now I have an external hard drive backing up EVERYTHING to make recovery from such a mishap possible.
Back to the topic, after I moved from Windows on the desktop to Linux (Gnome) full time, I've actually had less "Honey, make it work!" from my wife. She got a new scanner/printer, hooked it up, went to "Add a printer" and it worked. She asked how to scan stuff and I pointed her to xsane. Opened xsane, it found it. When she needed them in the Windows install we have running in VMWare, she had so much trouble. Not because she had to add the removable devices to the VM, but from the hassle of finding drivers, installing them, but being prompted along the way to install 10 extra programs, etc.
The "Honey, make it work!" tally:
Linux - 1
Windows - at least 5
Nothing to see here, move along. I'm typing this from a Linux desktop (laptop in docking station, actually). My desktop machine at home is a Linux box. GNOME works fine. KDE works fine. The other Linux desktop environments work fine. Linux on the desktop won't take off until you can buy a desktop machine from a major Windows OEM with either Linux preinstalled or no OS and the price of Windows deducted. There are no longer any technical or usability obstacles to Linux on the desktop. GNOME 2.0 and KDE 3.0 are already better desktop systems than MS Vista, and they will continue to get better at a faster pace. It is entirely a distribution and applications capture problem.
I guess with the long, long awaited release of Vista the MSFT guys have time now to hit the blogs and resume attacking Linux at any level. This article is straight Flame Bait. Where are the moderators?
2006 was the year of the set-top box. This is where Linux is big and what kids want. Blu-ray & HD DVD were the first true mandates for the set-top box era. For now on, words like DLNA, UPNP, HDMI, HDCP, AACS, "plays for sure" and "certification" are going to take the place of words like OpenGL, Vista, Window, and "start menu".
Seeing as how Final Cut Pro is THE choice for video editing in the professional realm? I wouldn't say that FCP is a bad choice
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Even Office for the Mac lacks "perfect" .doc compatibility. Does your average home user need perfect .doc compatibility? No.
Sound like you haven't used Windows XP? Or maybe it have been introduced in a service pack - I can't remember.
Windows XP usually pop up with window, where you can choose (like explore it) what to do with the connected USB drive. I think this is much better than just showing an icon on the desktop, where you might have to minimize windows to get to it. I have to admit, that I haven't connect a USB drive to a Linux box for some time, so it might have gotten better.
The other thing with Windows XP is that you don't need to use the "safely remove hardware"-thing. When the connected USB drive is finished writing data, you can unplug it. I believe it's because Windows XP flush the cache right away (or it's turn off?), so when the device is done "blinking", you can remove it. How Linux reacts... I don't know.
So the steps on Windows is more like this:
1. Plug USB stick into USB port 2. Select action (explore it) 3. Do your stuff 4. Remove it, when the USB stick is not blinking anymore.
Are the steps for Linux the same today?
I use the AMD-64 version of Ubuntu/Kubuntu Linux at home and use Windows XP in a small business at work. Both operating systems seem to be about equally easy to use. Installing and properly configuring Ubuntu was much easier than with earlier versions of Linux that I had used a few years ago. It correctly identified all my hardware with the exception for having to use a GUI to select the correct printer driver. It automatically found my DSL modem and automatically connected me to the Internet. Whenever I insert a USB Flash drive or a CD, an icon for that device appears on the screen (like Windows). There are easy to use point and click GUIs for configuring things. It is not only easier to install and use but feels much more polished and refined than the older versions of Linux. So the Linux desktop is getting better.
When downloading new software, I use either Synaptic or Adept which are easy to use GUI front-ends to the apt-get package manager. I then select a program from the the amazing list of available free programs. Then after about a minute or so the free program has been downloaded and installed. To get new software for Windows XP, I typically need to drive to town, pay for the software, agree to the the stern threatening terms of the EULA, perhaps respond to a pop-up warning from my firewall, and then enter the activation code. With Windows software, I frequently also discover that other software I hadn't asked for was also installed. With Ubuntu Linux removing software with Synaptic or Adept is just as quick and easy.
The typical Linux desktop applications have also improved noticeably over the last few year. Five years ago, the typical Linux application had all the necessary essential features but did not seem like full featured commercial quality software. Now most of the major free Linux applications seems mature and full featured and equal to commercial software. Linux has never had a problem with viruses or spyware, so I don't need to bother with downloading virus signatures or scanning for viruses and spyware. When I had to reinstall Windows 2000 on a computer, I had to first spend about 10 hours looking for the original installation CD before I could even get started. With any version of Linux I would have just downloaded the free iso and burned a CD.
I realize that most commercial games are not offered in Linux versions. I am not a gamer so for me that doesn't matter to me. Some popular industry standard programs such as AutoCAD and Microsoft Office do not come in Linux versions but as a home user, I don't really care about that either. Most companies don't bother writing any Linux drivers themselves, so inevitably there is some hardware out there that is not supported in Linux. Perhaps, as the author suggests, KDE and Gnome developers should get moving, but at the moment I am a happy Linux user. Besides, for me, it isn't purely about who has the latest and greatest new features. I don't want to have to deal with Windows product activation or licensing issues. I recently heard a commercial on late-night talk radio where the Business Software Alliance (BSA) was encouraging people to call them to get a reward for reporting the use of unlicensed software by their employeers. They said that each violation could cost a company $150,000 per seat. I have read elsewhere, that just using licensed versions of Windows and Office and the original installation CD is not always enough to be avoid being accused of software piracy. They must also be able to find records showing where and when they purchased the software. I feel much more comfortable just using Linux instead and knowing that I have the freedom to use it however and wherever I please.
Most people have never even heard of Linux, and even if it is free and getting better all the time, I don't expect many people to give it a try anytime soon. There will continue to be a passionately loyal group of Linux desktop users. I value my freedom too much to even consider using Windows on my main home computer.
The counterpoint to your argument is: Apple. Apple is very different from Windows. It won't run any of the same applications (you can buy some of the same apps altered to work on a Mac, but your old CDs won't work). People still buy them. Ubuntu is about as easy to use as a Mac. So give people some legitimate reasons to try it (it's free, it's more secure, it'll work better on an old computer than Vista, it supports community involvement, open standards, and Freedom (tm)), and there's no reason it can't remain a successful niche market, and even grow.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Actually, the majority of Linux users and contributors are pretty focused on Linux on the server, and are not all that interested in it on the desktop. Of the 20 or so regular Linux contributors in my office right now, only two I know of are running it on the desktop.
That really points up (besides your other excellent points) one of the barriers to Linux as a desktop OS, even in a business environment. There are applications for Linux that are state of the art, best of breed for what they do - but they tend to be directly related to a server task or management. Other applications range from very good to lousy. Some don't exist at all on Linux. I recently worked with one group investigating the opportunity to move to a Linux desktop. There were 5 applications that were mandatory. For two applications, Linux was either the best choice, or an equal choice with any other OS. These just happened to be server related functions. A third application was promising, except for it being in beta and with limited hardware support. The forth application was bloated, inefficient, and a nightmare to customise. The fifth didn't exist on Linux - not as a port, not as an OSS project, nothing on the horizon. As much as they wanted to move to Linux, it simply wasn't feasible.
If I have criticisms of OSS, it's related to that. A shiny, "cool" project that relates to Linux as a server will attract a ton of developers, while some dull, routine desktop function that a clerical person needs will attract no one. The result is that Linux is now an outstanding server OS, but a mediocre desktop.
Windows XP usually pop up with window, where you can choose (like explore it) what to do with the connected USB drive. I think this is much better than just showing an icon on the desktop, where you might have to minimize windows to get to it.
I know. KDE's copied it, and it's really annoying a lot of the time. (I just told it to open the folder in Konqueror and not bug me about it for USB devices...)
I've been looking, and I don't see these major advances between XP and Vista. For those that need to know, I use Windows exclusively - not a Linux Zealot. I'm just someone who's trying to see what the big deal is, and why I should spend the money to upgrade.
A two-door Honda Civic/Ford Focus/Toyota Corolla would meet the commuting needs of 90% of suburbanites. Yet they buy SUVs and large sedans.
Needs matter, but so do wants. Microsoft exceeds your needs, exerts anti-competitive pressure, and spends billions on marketing to convince you to want their product.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
"linux distro that happens to run on a desktop computer" != "desktop linux distro"
When I attach a USB storage device to my Kubuntu PC, I get a windows-like "autorun" dialog. It always includes the options "Open in new window" (opens a file browser) and "Do Nothing", and includes contextual options depending on whats in the root of the device. Photos, videos, music, etc, all yield different options. On my work machine I have it set to never ask and always just Open in new window. Attach, automount, autoopen. Bam. Beats the hell out of windows.
That's because it has, many times, all the way down to the use of the wrong angle bracket.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
This is the same argument you used last time. . . you like to use Quake as an example, but it's a bad one because installing Quak3 IS comples.
Lets try word processing software. It comes pre-installed on Linux, but to get it on my Winodws desktop (legally), I would have to go to the store, get my debit card out, hand it to some college kid and spend 400 dollars. Then I have to go home, put a CD in and install. Am I done? No. Now I have to connect to the internet (if not already) and allow "Activation", sending my computer's fingerprint into Microsoft.
If, by some chance, it is not preinstalled on Linux, I can type in "yum install openoffice.org or I can open a program called "add/remove software" from the Applications menu (on Fedora).
How about CD burner software, image editing software (beyond basic drawing), etc. They're all the same. I am constantly facinated by the lack of installation options in Windows, why IS it called Add or Remove programs? You can't get programs from it, there's no repository there. . .
"He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. [...] It's what drives men mad, being methodical." G.K.Chesterton
The fact that the original post was modded -1 troll only helps to prove your point.
I love my sig.
And of course, everyone coped when there was no GUI available.
:)
Everyone as in the relatively low percentage of the population that was on computers, compared with the relatively high percentage on computers today?
As for neverball, that looks fun. emerge neverball is running now.
I love my sig.
Most people don't have any reason to migrate to GNU/Linux on the home desktop. Their computer comes with Windows. They pay for Windows either way.
Windows does everything they need.
Even Office usually comes with the new computer or can be added to the bundle for an insignificant price.
Most families with children aren't going to move to GNU/Linux, if only for the reason that their off the shelf games can not run under GNU/Linux.
Not to mention off the shelf tax software.
WHY would a home user want to migrate to GNU/Linux?
I develop on Debian GNU/Linux at work, but at home I use OS X and reboot via Boot Camp to play Windows games. GNU/Linux does absolutely nothing for me on the home desktop, and I'm sure that I'm more likely than Joe Average to have an interest in using it. But even I don't.
``Take sound for instance... There are many competing frameworks (ecasound, jack, esd, etc.) Many applications only support one or two''
Isn't that what libao is for?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I buy a new computer;
I ask for an itemized bill.
Price of Windows should be refunded by Microsoft.
Why can you not get a bill for a new computer showing what you paid for Windows?
I want a refund for x dollars from Microsoft for my Toshiba laptop.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
...that Microsoft zealots like you would get a clue. It becomes so tiring to have to to rebut the same old bullshit lies over and over again. Oh well, here we go (again).
"Linux is *not* user friendly, and until it is Linux will stay with >1% marketshare.
Take installation. Linux zealots are now saying "oh installing is so easy, just do apt-get install package or emerge package": Yes, because typing in "apt-get" or "emerge" makes so much more sense to new users than double-clicking an icon that says "setup"."
What version of Linux are you trying to install? Oh yeah, you're not. You're a Windows user just parroting old FUD.
I haven't used every distro out there but I have used Mandriva, Suse and Ubuntu. None of them require using any command line commands to setup the OS or to add software after. THEY ALL HAVE GUI INTERFACES THAT DO EVERYTHING FOR YOU.
I find that setting up Windows is far more difficult because I almost always must install my hardware drivers from a separate CD. And yes reboot after each driver is installed. With Linux I don't have to go through that pain. Everything is installed and configured automatically for me. No hassles.
"Linux zealots are far too forgiving when judging the difficultly of Linux configuration issues and far too harsh when judging the difficulty of Windows configuration issues."
Hard to answer a blatant generalization without being rude so I'll just say that most blatant generalizations like the one you just gave are made by people who don't really have any facts and just want to group people to make it easier to attack them.
You give an made up story about how "Linux zealots" would go about setting up Quake on both Windows and Linux an what they might say. Very cute but just a made up story none the less.
"So, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that what seems easy and natural to Linux geeks is definitely not what regular people consider easy and natural. Hence, the preference towards Windows."
The first part of this statement is true. Geeks are a special breed. The second part makes a bullshit assumption that Linux REQUIRES geek skills to setup and use. Then you draw a bullshit conclusion based on your bullshit premise.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Definitely so. While there are some differences in getting things set up initially, the constant nagging little pains and annoyances of Windows where it won't get out of the way certainly add up. And similarly, while newer versions are much more stable than they used to be, it's still considerably less stable than Linux or OS X.
For the most part, well put.
True. Availability for the newest flash versions does still tend to lag for all non-windows OSes. But, flash isn't a necessity for a lot of folks, either, so this isn't a real deal-breaker either.
True again. Intuit, seemingly forgetting it's early origins, has been an extremely Windows-centric company for years now, at least where Quicken is concerned. There are a number of decent competitive products out there available on other OSes. Are any really as nice as Quicken Premier Home and Business, with all of it's features? Not that I've found yet, but there are some products that are becoming quite competitive with the entry-level version.
Again, true. It's worth noting that, for the most part, OpenOffice has almost reached feature parity with Word, and has reached that point very rapidly, considering how long it's been around. It's also worth noting that it's increasingly common that even folks working for M$ have had to resort to using OpenOffice to salvage presentations they were making at Industry Conferences. While Office is still the leader in Suites, it can still be finicky, especially PowerPoint, and sometimes (though less so) even Word.
I've also had several occasions where colleagues have had problems with viruses attached to Office documents, while I, using OpenOffice on Linux, was totally unaffected, and was able to (again) salvage the documents and provide them virus free.
Sad, but true.
I think perhaps you don't know because you've bought into complete and utter FUD, based in old preconceptions, not the modern market.
Let's make it easy for the next commenter to bring out the old tried and true /. checklist.
A price comparison done today at Dell and Apple's websites for a very reasonable entry configuration, between comparable Dell and Apple Laptops, configured with nearly identi
I'm not suggesting that you should, but Vista is a serious departure from XP.
I think XP is the best iteration of Windows ever released, and Vista is an undue resource hog. But that's just my opinion.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Phew! I'm glad it's the Linux bubble that has burst, because GNOME and KDE are AWESOME on FreeBSD!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
So all we really need is a common menu format, so that all the WMs can point to the same file(s). Isn't freedesktop.org working on a spec for that? What's happening with it?
Constitutionally Correct
For the 789th time.
Make it look and operate like windows, and everybody will switch. Install wine by default. Make sure all the codecs are loaded, and that it plays dvds, cds, and most windows software.
Thank you.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
For the full thread, read the gentoo-user mailing list archives.
And somebody please cue the "Netcraft confirms, Linux is dying" lines...
- The X Windows foundation
- The lack of a diverse array of superfriendly, fast end-user applications and games that you can buy for Linux off-the-shelf at OfficeMax, Staples and OfficeDepot
- The X Windows foundation
- The lack of more closely integrated OpenGL with both the window manager and the graphics card driver
- The X Windows foundation
And, oh, did I mention "The X Windows foundation?"
Face it, in order for Linux to become the next Desktop "phenomenon," it can't do just as well as Microsoft XP/Vista, it must be notably BETTER. However, it will never be as long as it is tied to X. X is great when you want graphics over a network, but it will always be mediocre used for a desktop. A successful Linux desktop must be next generation, not last generation.
You want success in the Linux Desktop? Save X for the "Remote Desktop" features when you want to login over a network, and get behind building a high-performance bleeding edge desktop built on something more like DirectFB. A successful Linux Desktop GUI has to really push the envelope, and it just ain't doin' that right now.
Sure, X can be enhanced with "work around" features to bypass TCP/IP when the client and server are both in the same box, but not without performance cost compared to something like an XBox or a Playstation II, which is the kind of GUI performance you need to at least appear to be "next generation" in comparison with XP/Vista...
I actually spent a couple of years using Linux as my primary desktop at home but I don't anymore, as I ended up dual booting into W2K and then ended up spending all of my time in W2K running the apps and even developing some OpenGL programs, because the performance was so much better. As much as I hate Microsoft, even W2K beats out KDE and Gnome on the two factors that are the most important-- graphic application availability, and performance. You can't get the former instantly, that's sure, but you can't get it AT ALL unless you've got the latter...
Oh, and BTW-- I have been using Vista lately, IMHO it really IS just a warmed over XP. They added UAC (privilege tokens), added a few other security elements here and there, changed the interface graphics a bit, and moved things around and reorganized the menus so it looks different (such as moving search to inside start menu), but otherwise it seems just about the same. The new IE interface seems worse, and the new Windows Explorer interface is horrible.
My analogy makes perfect sense. It's a fact that a GUI is easier than a command-line for users. You like the command-line and assume people just aren't used to it, but for most people, the command-line is horrible. Hence, for them it's like saying they're not used to being punched in the face for three hours.
You can act all offended if you want, but I'm just going by the majority of users, decades of human-interaction testing, and the fact that GUIs are easier to navigate and visualize data.
I acknowledge your lack of a counterargument.
"Sufferin' succotash."
It's likely that you're having this problem because Firefox doesn't use the AOSS wrapper by default. Try running $(aoss firefox) (or in Debian edit /etc/firefox|iceweasel/firefoxrc|iceweaselrc and set it to use the aoss wrapper). That fixed it for me.
If you aren't using Firefox/Iceweasel, it's likely that it's a similar problem.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Those APIs all sit on top of and are different ways of developing for the Win32 framework.
"Sufferin' succotash."
The GNOME and KDE people have been copying and working towards the Windows model. The original X and Unix designs were great because of their customization and features and the network-centric design. To this day, I'm not sure GNOME particularly likes it if you have two desktops running off the same network share. (It works, but I'm not sure it works as well as it should.) I can't speak for KDE, not having used it in a while.
The obvious problem with having lots of customizable features is that it overwhelms the user. The solution was not to remove all the features (a la GNOME). The solution was to create customizable "profiles". So that users can simply say whether they are a "novice" or "developer" or whatever. This allows beginners to "just use" the system. And advanced users to tweak to their hearts content. A very scalable system.
Who develops these profiles? Well, the author of the software certainly could. But I imagine what would have happend is that each distribution has in mind various groups of people they target. So the distribution makers would take the job of deciding what sets of features their audience prefers.
Don't underestimate the power of this in a network environment either. Any company, school, etc. will likely want a certain set of default profiles for their audience. Being able to customize this to their own environment is exactly what makes Windows such a pain to administer. Unix makes this easier with text based config files. But having a profile infrastructure would make it a no-brainer.
Unfortunately, it seems like the Linux desktops haven't had any focus in this direction, choosing instead to emulate the single-user mentality of Windows. The last version of GNOME I really liked was 1.0. Since then I've cared less whether I was in Linux or Windows because they're both irritating in the same ways now.
Complaints aside, I'm quite pleased with the way these projects have developed (or fostered development) of things like DBUS and the way we handle auto drive mounting, etc. The GNOME font rendering engine is also quite nice, if a bit slow.
OTOH, I once heard a business professor say that competing on price alone is not a sound business strategy.
He's absolutely right. Linux is in no way a perfect replacement for Windows, hence, companies cannot even give Linux away for free. If it's free, and people still don't want it, then I gotta say that the product is a dud. Linux on the desktop was DOA. I own a business, and I gladly buy all of my software (the only OSS thing we use is VNC, and that's in one tiny instance).
It does solve one problem. Lowering costs.
For who? Windows is *cheap*. It's a few hundred bucks. Big deal.
Actually, the majority of Linux users and contributors are pretty focused on Linux on the server, and are not all that interested in it on the desktop. Of the 20 or so regular Linux contributors in my office right now, only two I know of are running it on the desktop. A few are running a BSD, a couple are running Windows, and the remaining majority are running OS X.
Huh?
So all those *nix admins responsible for a few dozen, a few hundred, or a few thousand systems are doing what? Using their company-provided MacBook or Windows desktop to ssh into the server? Running X remotely? Using Cygwin? Shuffling their chairs around or plugging in VGA cables or serial cables so they can sit at a connected monitor to get some work done? Investing in elaborate KVM setups?
Maybe you need to rethink your conclusion as "not interested in the desktop." I'd suggest the reality is that there is no overwhelming desire to write GUI applications to replicate what is traditionally done in a terminal window so that novice users will find things "easier". Unfortunate for some, maybe, but the reality is that *nix is designed around the concept of a terminal. Gnome, KDE and friends are mostly there to provide wallpaper.
Here's a tip. Many of us do use *nix as a "desktop". At the same time, most of us know there is no real distinction between desktop and server. Except for the wallpaper, perhaps.
I'm a little confused. What the heck is this story about? It just seems to bash Linux desktop for no apparent reason. The difference between Vista, OSX and Linux desktops is the first two arrive out of the box, and you (if you so wish) build the Linux desktop to your requirements. With regard to features etc, the Linux desktop has the features the user chooses. I'm willing to bet that more or less any desktop feature you can find in Vista or OSX is available or in development for Linux... Features available in the end users copy of Linux are defined by which packages a maintainer has decided to include with a Linux distribution. I think Ubuntu is making steps towards creating a nice desktop operating system and we'll see something much more refined appearing from the Ubuntu team over the next couple of years.
It's conventional to claim that OS/X is a more "user friendly" desktop than Ubuntu ... but I don't think I agree. I've used both, and I've helped my wife with both. Neither of us like OSX, and I like Ubuntu (well, Kubuntu).
The problem is in applications. Animation programs, iMovie, iTunes, etc. Linux just can't compete there as far as the end user is concerned. Worrying about the perfection of the desktop is wasting time. Let it get better as it is improved, but worry more about stability and fixing bugs. Leave added glitz to the applications. (The exception here is that Gnome *REALLY* *REALLY* *REALLY* needs a menu editor. It's unusable to many people without easy customization.)
OTOH, Gnome may be aimed at commercial users who don't want the end user desktop to be customizable. If so, I fee that this is a mistake, but fortunately KDE exists.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
ts a shame that those running /. give you extra karma for ignorant totally off the wall remarks that you make.
Everyone else.. feast your eyes..
It's pretty clear that you're equating "eye candy" with "functionality". You also don't seem to grasp that in the context I used it, desktop refers to the desktop computer. In general, operating systems originally meant for servers do not necessarily make good general-purpose desktop computer operating systems. Just because they can be used doesn't mean they're great at it - they tend to be mediocre at best.
There's no such deal: Dell's OEM license only covers the CPUs they sell.
Hey, what OS do they use? I've used Windows, Mac, and Linux, and I sure haven't found any version of those 3 that doesn't crash from time to time.
:wq
I think that's the first "Score: 0, Insightful" I've seen here...correctly, I might add.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
The only problem with Linux on the desktop at this time is the distros doing a LOUSY job of testing their releases and wasting time and manpower adding on 3D "eye candy" to compete with Apple and Vista instead of making sure their instsllation and update mechanisms are rock-solid dependable, not to mention things like KDE and GNOME services that actually run the desktop.
I've had trouble with installing, updating and KDE services on THREE distros - and not some lame one-man distros, either, but Mandriva 2007, SUSE 10.1, and Kubuntu 6.06 - in the last month or so. This made Linux on the desktop for me as bad as Windows - maybe more so. This is NOT what I switched to Linux FOR. I switched to Linux for security, reliability and freedom. Currently I'm getting the first and the last, but NOT the second. The Linux kernel doesn't appear to be a problem - it's the desktop, installation and update software that is the problem. Applications, of course, vary as to quality - but if a distro is including an app as its main app for an application class, such as media, that app needs to WORK RELIABLY.
There needs to be a "feature freeze" on ALL the major distros and a system software cleanup and tweaking period. I suggest ALL of 2007 be devoted to this, since Vista isn't going anywhere for a long time anyway.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
If I own my own computer shop, sell 'blank computers'...and sell software separately, for instance, the OS that I will install for them if they buy a system, what draconian terms am I beholden to MS for?
In the (real) scenario I depicted, you already ship machines with the OS installed. Plus, you have them on display, running Windows. Additionally, you have some machines with Linux (and some with Mac OS).
You can't install Microsoft software on a machine with Linux.
Are you saying I have to sign some kind of contract just to sell MS products at my store? This contract says what I can and cannot put on a computer I sell?
Yes, so I'm told. See above.
Note: this refers to MS practices in Brazil, in a major town, in a big shopping mall. I would just love to learn the Microsoft does nothing like that in the U.S. or Europe. Anyone care to share their experiences?
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Long term vision seems to be what the FOSS community generally lacks. Innovation in FOSS tends to be dominated by disruptive technologies. For example, nobody probably predicted that Ruby on Rails would grow as it did before it was already on its way up.
.Net et al. for MS, and ObjC, Cocoa, Quartz, etc. for Apple). Where's our modern, coherent set of API/Frameworks for the Desktop? C#/Mono? C++/QT/KDE? XUL/Javascript/Whatever? GTK/C? ObjC/GNUStep?
Recall that initially, the FSF/GNU vision of what the GNU OS would look like would be a combination of HURD, the GNU userland that we know today, and GNUStep for graphical applications.
But the FSF's approach with GNU was always a long term approach. The GNU userland took a damn long time to build. In many ways, not having to concentrate on writing a kernel (because Linux stepped in), and not having to write a GUI layer (because it largely languished from lack of developers), has enable GNU to produce a pretty kick-ass userland, compiler suite, etc. As a BSD fan, I'm fully aware that even BSD stands on the shoulders of FSF giants (for example, say, gcc).
Along the way though, developers have scratched their own itches. KDE came along and was an ambitious project written in C++/QT. It had some less than desireable traits to a significant number of developers: C++ is an ugly bastard, and QT wasn't (then) libre.
Enter GNOME. They didn't want to use C++ so they decided to write a desktop environment in C. In retrospect, that sounds to me about as smart as Be trying to write chunks of the BeOS kernel in C++ (eek!).
Both start on relatively shaky foundations (for various reasons) but HUGE amounts of developer effort are poured into beating the other. Labors of love and things of beauty are built on those relatively unstable foundations. Some of the problems disappear: QT goes GPL. Some of the problems are addressed: GNOME begins to write software in the more elegant, but less proven C# with its Mono project. But certain perceived problems remain: C++ is still inelegant, C# has Microsoft smell all over it, and furthermore We have our camp and We want to beat Them.
Meanwhile, work continues on GNUStep. GNUStep allows GUIs written for OS X (NIBs) to be used in GNUStep and vice-versa. GNUStep starts being used to write some more serious applications. Gnustep even starts looking more modern with the addition of themes (everyone always cares more about flash themes now, than a useable development framework tomorrow).
Fact is, the NeXT design has proven itself 2.5 times already in a big way. When NeXT was NeXT, NeXTStep was the most innovative thing in town and was revered by All. When NeXT acquired Apple (for a large negative sum), the architecture was proven again (Mac OS X anyone?). Now, GNUStep is soooo close. The framework is there and stable, but it needs: 1. integration into a coherent environment. 2. applications of all colors, shapes, and sizes.
GNU's long-term vision is starting to be realized with GNUStep, but it doesn't have the critical mass. Too many disruptive technologies have, well, disrupted that vision. It's less exciting to stay the course with long-term vision, but at some point, that is what will make a "successful" Linux desktop. Too much of our core infrastructure is rotten to compete long term. Of course, success here is relative. FOSS has already been successful on teaching people how to hack. Where it hasn't been successful is as a consumer, desktop, market competitor.
Both Microsoft and Apple have modernized and made their development environments more consistent (C#,
I think at this point it's about goals. Do we want to compete on the Desktop? For all the people who say yes, I recommend getting together and swallowing some pride, quashing some egos, and coming together to push for it. Even if we can build and maintain 7 competing desktop environments, development platforms, etc., the rest of the world doesn't want to deal with them.
Of co
. Penguins Surely Ca
simply to get the splash-over benefit of the people using OS X and to tempt a few back. I'd rather be using a GPL OS
I'm totally cool with using Mac OS X. First, because in terms of FOSS, I use FreeBSD too, and not Linux (for a variety of reasons - all technical, and one "political" - the license). Since FreeBSD and Apple exchanged code and Apple hired FreeBSD people, I don't think I'm "betraying" anything or anoyone by buying Apple.
This is a very different view from the GPL crowd. From my standpoint, I _want_ open source code to make into proprietary code. I mean, you have to buy a computer, anyways. Nobody is going to give you the hardware.
Besides, if anyone wants to study the code, they can look at Darwin. To a limit, that'll give you an idea on what was done. The particular solution is left to Apple alone to know. Fair enough.
So, us BSD license lovers are different people than GNU folks. I mean, I don't understand the concept of saying something is free and then have this concept narrowly defined, as in my definition of how you can use the freedom. Either you give people the freedom, or you don't. The inherent values of things are not given by what you tell me, but by the things themselves. If you work on a free software project, you can't complain if your code makes into a proprietary solution. If you envy that, than make proprietary software. Instead, on the GNU camp we see Debian cry babies, complaining that Ubuntu developers are getting paid and they're not (or, more recently, Dunc-Tank). For instance, there's inherent value in the freedom of FreeBSD. The fact that Apple has proprietary code in their machines in a way, devalues them. Mac OS X may be better in many ways, but it's not as free as FOSS.
For instance, KDE is cool, very cool. There's inherent value in there, does somethings better than Mac OS. FreeBSD is great, love it better than Debian (yes, I was a zealot). I think it's better that people take good quality open source code and just merge it with their stuff. OpenSSH is everywhere now. A Good Thing. It makes the world a better, safer place. This is really sharing. Like before all this licensing paranoia we all live in nowadays.
I just mean to say that it's very confortable being somewhere between these two worlds. Because dichotomies cease to exist. The false sense of morality ceases to exist. The anger ceases to exist.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
If I have criticisms of OSS, it's related to that. A shiny, "cool" project that relates to Linux as a server will attract a ton of developers, while some dull, routine desktop function that a clerical person needs will attract no one. The result is that Linux is now an outstanding server OS, but a mediocre desktop.
And how do you suppose you'll get vendors to work on a GPL OS?
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Really, only $80 ? Well, I'm actually suprised. I haven't used Window since 1995, and I'm not on par with the prices.
However, I believe here in Brazil (where I live), Windows costs more.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
The primary benefit of open source software is that you can be a geek with it. When it doesn't work, you open up the source and muck around. Geeks love that.
No. Adolescents and young adult college students geeks love that.
Once you graduate, you are too busy working on your programming to have the time to fix the stupid little problems that crop up in Linux all the time.
That, BTW, is one factor explaining why BSDs get less press on blogs, etc. Since the systems work in a more consistent manner, their users are not blogging about their workarounds or political problems so much (oh, the GPL3, the Debian vs. Ubuntu, etc.);
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
apt-get is not easy. Besides, apt-get sufers from dependency hell. Instead of making things simple, they added yet another layer of complexity (I'm talink about makefiles vs. debs).
PC-BSD, Windows or Macs are easy. You download the package and double-click it to install it. Pronto.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
This is also why I tell people who are looking at new computers to buy a mac. This way, they get an easy to use computer with all the nice GUI elements that apple provides, and when I have to use their computer, I still have access to the terminal and all the UNIX goodness that is under the hood of OS X.
It's not UNIX. It's barely 10% UNIX. Ask any Mac developer.
Maybe FSF/GNU had it right to begin with. Maybe it's time to take another look at HURD too.
Maybe it's time you stop the (nice) proselytizing (where are the screenshots, BTW?) and start reading the papers by the microkernel community. Maybe you'll learn why some of them are not working on The HURD, and why even The HURD developers talked about moving to L4, IIRC.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
My only Os is suse linux, and i am not a techie as such. i would like to see linux adopted by a larger community, but i don't see it happening any time soon. The real question here is if ordinary endusers can be expected to understand how a product works in order to use it. Linux is extremely userfriendly for (mostly nontech-hostile) geeks, but it isn't at all for people who don't know and don't care about how a computer works. Should everyone be a car mechanic in order to drive a car? It would be a hell of a lot more convenient, but the thruth is most people just want to use a product, not develop it. Untill linux developers grasp this concept of people not wanting to be linux developers, linux will remain at +- 1% marketshare no matter how much better it is. The real problem is not about incompatibility or people not wanting to change OS, it is about techies who refuse to take endusers into account in their spare time, because of that attitude linux will remain the exception on an average desktop, not a broadly accepted OS like it should be.
I work in local government and we used TCS on an AS/400 until a couple of years ago to manage our entire system. From payroll and rates to the library and animal management, TCS handled it all. TCS was even used to total and handle our election results and recently did the prepoll voting for a referrendum we held a few months back. Not bad for a machine that is nearing 20 years old. The reason we replaced it was two fold: 1) We couldn't get continued support for the platform and 2) because of this, the 15 year sunset clause forced us to move away from the system. In its place we deployed three systems, Civica Sypdus (library management), JD Edwards (assets, finance and HR mostly) and Pathway (animal management, rates/property, planning...basically what ever was left).
Now TCS doesn't look like the most user friendly environment. To begin with it was old school green screens. You keyed everything in and even though we had newer platforms you rarely used a mouse. Almost all of our users after getting over a short and steep learning curve, loved the system. After we deployed JD Edwards in particular, I know of one old woman (she had grandchildren) who had no issues with TCS and being textually driven but hated JDE's web interface. Having to remember "screen numbers", that said, she had a list of screens she went to regularly on her desk. Think book marks but you just key a number in - much faster. It is in a way worse than the CLI because "./quake_3_rh_8_i686_010203_glibc.bin" means you can see something, translate that to "type 401 to pull up the screen to install Quake 3 and once its installed head to 508 for the application loader and you're in." She retired from her job quoting the new interface for her job as one of the biggest reasons for leaving the organisation. She had years of experience and was one of the longest serving members of her department (this is a department which appears to replace 90% of its staff every three years).
The problem I have is that people comment that GUI systems are user friendly. A well designed GUI system can be very userfriendly. Conversely a poorly designed GUI system can be far worse for the same reason that makes CLI systems hard: They present too many options. The CLI allows insane amount of flexibility (and for those Windows users who don't believe me, download and install the 'PowerShell' or Monad from Microsoft, Linux and Mac users learn how to user Terminal if you don't already) and for those who know what they're doing and have high typing speed, are far faster than their GUI counterparts as KLM modelling siggests. This is why many Linux users comment they spend lots of time in a shell, it is far faster to do tasks when you know what you're doing - and that is the key. If you do not know what you're doing (e.g. you haven't been trained in the use of the system) then a GUI will usually beat a CLI or other keyboard based system.
As a final note, JDE rated worse out of all of our corporate information systems. It rated worse than the fact that our proxy filtered their web traffic so that they couldn't waste their day on web mail, forums or cricket scores. TCS comparatively didn't have the same level of angst.
I always wondered where this setting was...
The question I have is do we have the same level of training for all people who use a computer compared with the old days of the mainframes? Compared to this, what is the number today? What is the number of _specialized_ training courses that are offered and supported? And how many people only use a computer as a small part of their job compared to a much larger portion. With the percentage of the population using computers increasing, the amount of training each individual user receives has been reduced. This can be attributed to the fact that the computers are not only smaller but a lot cheaper. If a user did something deadly to a mainframe system, the repairbill would be far more than completely replacing an entire desktop PC and reimaging it.
I always wondered where this setting was...
alacarte
easy GNOME menu editing tool
Alacarte is an easy-to-use menu editor for GNOME that can add
and edit new entries and menus. It works with the freedesktop.org
menu specification and should work with any desktop environment
that uses the spec.
Added in 2.16; Appears to replace SMEG (Simple Menu Editor for GNOME) which from a bit of Googling was around in 2.10
I always wondered where this setting was...
I can't agree and I would not be so kind as to use the word geek. Geek is now sort of an endearing commentary on a person's ability. Anyone can be a geek. There are many kinds of geeks. A jock is a geek about what he does with their own quirks.
The term for those that negatively impact linux acceptance needs to be zealot or even extremist. They try hard but can't keep their head on straight. They are in face very negative to Linux.
Time will purge them and Linux will make it to the desktop.
Apt-get is a utility that demands high speed internet access. Windows installers do not require any sort of internet access. When Linux apps can be installed the same way a Macintosh installs apps then Linux will conquer the desktop, PERIOD!
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Just as GTK, QT, Motif all sit on top of and are different ways of developing for the X Windowing System. But both low level frameworks are relatively hard to get into compared to the layers that are built on them, which is why they were written. The difference is that GTK and QT appear to be portable enough to run on more than just the X windowing System, but also run under Win32 as well. GTK is even flexible enough that there is an engine that uses QT to draw its widgets.
I always wondered where this setting was...
I'm starting to get confused.
... desktop monopoly. So don't we all want Linux with a killer front end to be a serious choice for the desktop? It turns out, I grew up with GUI's. I happen to like a two dimensional spread of my options; it's easier on my ailing memory.
... a mysterious massive injection of cash and manpower into a thunderous release of some 3 unified brands of Linux ... and STILL free as in everything.
I'm pretty conversant with the Windows situation. I thought that was all about the
For a long time I have been aware of the "other fight" between "Truly/Sorta Free" Linux and Ox X, "Free Core but just as proprietary on top." Hello, Animal Farm.
The obvious solution would be
Could the final showdown really come to the fact that free-but-unfocused loses to proprietary slavery-but-polished? Could it be that if Linux *now* stagnates, having missed Microsoft's worst unproductive lull ever, that the whole concept will splinter into 12 decaying variants headed by bickering factions?
This is the 4th cousin to the music debate - at the most brutal level, every week costs the overhead of Roof-Car-Food. (And the trimmings.) One's actions that day have to convince someone else to pay for that day's cost. Something given into a diffuse value chain takes too long to whip around to pay for This Week's Rent.
I want nothing more in the world than for someone to master diffuse value chains in a manner that solves these kinds of problems.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I always wonder why people complain about stability when the distro they are using was originally copied from a repository better known as "Debian Unstable (Sid)" and quickly released from there. There is a reason Debian isn't on the bleeding edge: the bleeding edge is always broken. This is true of any moderate to large sized project. What do you think the swarms of Debian maintainers do with their packages? Just run the scripts and push it off to their nearest repository? No, they don't. They sit down and make bug fixes, security fixes and all sorts of other fixes on top of this released software. If you're not too worried about 'usability' and having the most up to date applications, grab Debian Etch when it is released as stable. If you want something more up with the times, you can always head to Debian Testing. If you like life on the edge, give Debian Unstable a go.
I always wondered where this setting was...
And yet, I have yet to have seen any of the hardcore Linux Geeks knock a newbie on stuff. I have seen strangers (who then disappear after a couple of posts) jump in and knock them (in lists), but that is not the same thing. OTH, I have seen some folks be obnoxious about pushing for a response while being rude.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Anyways, although I prefer Kubuntu. I have no problem whatsoever in using windows XP and admire some stuff in it. I just don't think vista is such a big deal, I actually dislike stuff from it. There are a lot of things that are just wrong with vista beginning with the huge system requirements, DRM and WGA that it seems crazy to support it right now. Seriously.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Of everything I have read and I have read a lot; of everything I have tried with Vista, and I have Vista from the beta and release candidates; I would say that Vista is really nothing more than XP with a new interface.
Certainly there are features that were added and features were improved. No one can doubt that. For the average person most of those feature enhancements have already been thwarted. You can still install malware and that malware can still damage your system through IE. The feature for escalating privs from the basic user to the admin level privs is old hat for Linux, mac, and unix.
On top of that there are some extremely serious issues with DRM particularly around content protection.
Vista essentially has little more. I have seen the refinements of programs and I see the 3d effects and I have used these since the beta release, but one thing is abundantly clear. Vista is nothing more than XP with a new interface with a few security enhancements copied from other operating systems that are already exploited or easily turned off, making them useless.
The requirements for additional hardware are excessive and the costs are outrageous.
Essentially you get forced into using Vista in the next couple years with all the DRM, content protection, microsoft proprietary features and rules, constant spying on you and what you are doing even with your own content, a anti-piracy feature that will harm more legit users than pirated copies, with enormous cost increases in hardware for the average home user not to mention on top of the costs associated with the purchase of the OS. From that the users get less choice. They loose more control of what they do on their computer and their computer is being used against them to control what they do on their computer.
Linux doesn't do any of this. You can grow with linux. You can increase your usage and incrementally increase your hardware without additional software costs. You don't have to report to anyone about your legitimacy and you can choose from any number very good software products such as open office and firefox. No one will check your machine daily, weekly, monthly to see if you should be using it or not and no one will threaten to shut down your computer. You won't have to report to microsoft every 6 months to prove that you are legit when you were legit 6 months ago.
I think 2007 is the year of linux if we can rid ourselves of the zealots and create a stable desktop with easy to install programs with alot of power. With Microsoft's super huge massive monopoly that is completely uncontrolled and not accountable to anyone we'll see many more people adopt the desktop of linux.
Ballmer knows this. That's why he threatened Linux. Microsoft is very afraid of the success of Linux because I blows their content protection monopoly out of the water. This is the very same reason Microsoft is fighting so hard to take over the DRM market. They know that DRM is to data what the OS/API is to applications. You get control of that OS/API and you control alot of other markets. You get control of the content protection and DRM and you control markets far outside of the computer.
The worst thing that could happen over the next 5 years is to have people adopting Vista. Please, promote linux in your community with your family and friends and tell them what microsoft is doing with content protection and DRM. The more people that know these details and see the linux side of things will join Linux and make it a larger stronger community.
Reading the recent commercial publications about Vista it is clear that many of these magazines and trade journals have been glossing over the negative aspects of Vista and over-emphasizing the copy-cat features of Vista. They degrade our trust in them by doing this. When you read an article talking about how User Access Control works remember that you have been using it in Linux for a long time, and when you see the nice 3d interface remember the high hardware costs
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
..you make some good points, can't argue with them much. I think common packaging and getting rid of shared libraries would be a good thing although it isn't the old school unix guru way because...uhh..because everyone is running a ten meg hard drive with 64k RAM on a 300 baud modem I guess..*snort*.
.deb is probably on more desktops and debian derivatives have probably the most exposure. And like you said, lin-freespire is really hitting the OEM installs (and they have the easiest for-pay after market applications in their click n run service, that should be of interest to you), they are debian derived, and ubuntu is now the current top dog, also a debian. Go that way for the most exposure for your niche, you aren't trying to get on biz desktops with games, but home users, so there ya go. Now I personally run fedora, but it really doesn't matter to me either, I am just as happy using knoppix live cd for instance, or even a mini distro (I love those things!), just more familiar with redhat stuff because it is what I started with and it works pretty well for the most part.
I come from an old mac classic background, about the easiest it gets for packages, download, run, and that's it. Stick it wherever you want to, still works. Have multiple copies and different versions-it doesn't matter.
Good luck on getting the linux devs and enthusiasts to agree on any of that though, I think the best advice if you want to support some linux is just shoot for what YOU think is the best packaging way and best distro and just be done with it, let others sort out how to make it work on others. For most practical purposes,
If you have to do a GUI app, let's call it "foo", I would suggest you spend a some time creating "libfoo" first, to get the bare functionalities in place, its unit-tests (to keep yourself sane), then do "foo", the command line version you will use yourself, and then "gfoo" (or "kfoo", if I were a KDE person), the dumbed-down versions users that can't be "smarted-up" will use.
This way you end-up with three parts - a piece that can be reused and tested in a simple way, a part you can use yourself and another part your users will be happy to use. This way you can mitigate the risk of making the GUI tool do everything you need, because you will have the command-line tool for that.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
The article talks about the lack of vision on the part of GNOME. It's the application, stupid! If GNOME or KDE or any other desktop platform for Linux only concentrates on itself, there can be only so far that any of them can go if they only concentrates on itself. What the vision needs to be is to line up hundreds of commercial software vendors to port their software to linux. The day we see this mass porting is the day we will see linux being seriously adopted on the desktop, regardless of the technical merit of the desktop itself, it could suck for all people would care, but it had to do something useful, i.e. apps! Give me an ugly desktop, but tons of useful apps, I will take that any day over beautiful eyecandy any day.
I'd say what it all comes down to is STANDARDS. If all programs on X operating system used Y procedure to install and provided Z options to do so, it wouldnt much matter if it was GUI or CLI. the power of a CLI is the ease of scripting repetitive processes and development. The power of a GUI is giving the user the ability to see in a graphical, organized way, all the options available to them. a CLI however, can provide GUI-like features, such as more verbose interaction or more human readable commands. rm? chmod? man? what do these mean to an uninformed user? but on a gui: "remove file", "remove folder" (context based) "help" etc.
As an XP user who has tried linux several times, I found the biggest issues to be here. what the heck is XSANE? the GIMP? how bout HP IMAGING? photoedit? photoshop? windows media player vs XINE? which are easier to see for the first time and be able to guess at what they do? XINE or WMP? the GIMP or Microsoft Photo Edit? "Add/Remove Programs" or "apt-get"?
May be nitpicky, but if you are trying to gain users, don't confuse them with random names. More descriptive names.
ERROR: SIG NOT FOUND (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?:
See, this is where the problem starts. You'd think they could figure something out by looking at the screen, but some people are actually afraid of computers. They won't read a message that appears on the screen or even try to understand what it means. I've experienced this first hand as a warning or error message pops up and they just click okay and then freak out when something unusual happens.
rm -rf /
OH SHI-
Great Intellect...
"1. Slow as molasses."
.doc compatibility."
I've used it on both windows and Linux. On both it was faster or as fast as MS office on windows. How many YEARS has it been since you used it?
"2. Lacks perfect
I never noticed it, and export to MS-office type docs all the time. Maybe if you load it up with macros and such, but can you really expect that to work? You may as well complain Firefox doesn't support VBS.
"3. Can only deal with the simplest Excel spreadsheets."
Once again, never noticed it, but I don't import that many excels, so I will give you this one as a chance.
"Since it lacks perfect compatibility, it is a non-starter."
On the OTHER hand, MS office lacks compatibility for most everything other then Microsoft's own document types. What about PDF, for example? And as I said above, I have never seen this. If it's so major an issue, then send me one doc that I would be unable open in open-office.
Great Intellect...
They've dumbed down both Guhnome and KaydeeEee to an annoying level. Something as simple as typing a path to a file in a file dialog is missing. Sheesh.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Here's one for you. You want Desktop Linux to succeed (or perhaps to be more commonplace)? Easy, let me tell you how. Just convince Michael Dell that is a good idea. Pick a "user-friendly" distro (eg Ubuntu, Linspire, etc), and (here's the clincher) get Dell to PRELOAD it on the computers that they sell, and offer some kind of user support package for when newbies are stumped by gnome. The hard bit is the first sentence :-)
Wherever you go There you are
So this solution is far simpler *and* safer than the windows way of doing things, which is, frankly, retarded.
In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
Actually, a few companies off that list didn't make Windows ports of some games.
What's wrong with that?Wait for Wine to support it I guess. Although I'm pretty happy with my current collection.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
"The average user never installs an operating system"
:). Most of the ones I know usually end up losing personal files, which I know is mostly a backup issue, but that is sooo "complicated" that few ever do so on a regular basis.
/kommonstuff directory tree, with a daily updated mirrow of the changes or additions on a second physical drive and occasionaly to a third drive. I access them from over two dozen Linux distros, most of which are VM's, as well as from other Linux boxes on my lan. Like I say I forgot the year I last lost personal files from an OS crash, but I can remember the OS and it was not Linux, nor was it OS/2 or BSD, guess which OS it was.
I don't disagree with the basic premise of your points but there is another view you are missing here. Indeed very few average users will ever do an install of a NEW OS. But most are well versed in reinstalling a certain one from system restore media every few months, guess which one that is
I forgot the last time I installed, reinstalled, upgraded, or updated an OS and lost ANY, that is zero, null, nill, zip, not a frackin one, of my personal files in the process. I have made many many backups of my personal files and will continue to do so, but the only time I have ever had to restore any of them on a Linux system was due to the death of hardware. Not only have I migrated my personal files between new hardware, but many of them between several Linux distro's, OS/2 and BSD, and of course between several file systems as well.
Today I keep most of my personal files in an over 100gb
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
If it isn't easy. I blame the developers/company for this (I don't own a copy of Quake 3).
Installing Unreal Tournament for me is just inserting the CD, double clicking the
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
You are describing the difference between a geek and a professional. Most technical professionals have an inner geek the same way adults have an inner child; 90% of the time, it's hidden away because its responses to situations are wholly inappropriate. The other ten percent of the time is when we do things like gather around a PC in the lab playing "Truck Dismount" as a noncompetitive team sport.
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
Oh yeah: or post on Slashdot!
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
Do what Microsoft does to constantly improve their GUI---i.e., track the Mac's progress. The Linux world can even better track the Mac's progress than Microsoft by getting over their religious opposition to Objective-C and just use GNUStep for the desktop. I'm not kidding either, this just seems so intuitively obvious to me; as opposed to the Linux desktop directly tracking Microsoft, which is what Gnome seems to be all about. You don't need pass or keep up with Apple, you just need to pass or keep up with Microsoft.
I beg to differ. *Some* non-computer (non-geek that is) people are not dim. (Oh wait you said "NOT JUST DIM", I'll assume you meant "NOT DIM" otherwise my point would be redundant.) Quite a number of non-geeks are actually quite stupid. They don't want to learn anything about computers (no matter how easy it is to learn), they also don't want to learn how to check oil in a car or lawn mower. That is laziness sure, but sometimes you have to teach them how to do something every time.
...
I used to think that people weren't all stupid, computers were just hard. Now I think it is more likely that some people are stupid, some lazy and some both. When I have to show someone every single time how to do something, well
I wank in the shower.
A classic example of why Linux can never win
Two words: killer app. That's how it worked before, and that's how it will work in foreseeable future. Those customers - surprise, surprise - are asking about windows killer apps. What linux offers them now? Ditch those! Not very good point.
If the sales argument is mainly eye candy, well, it doesn't need a big system to operate that, only a decent graphics card. It's always been ridiculous that the core processor should be doing that work instead of the graphics subsystem.
I just took Ubuntu off my laptop to test Fedora Core 6 (too big and doesn't support my WiFi, Ubuntu will be back on shortly) but for entertainment I installed Beryl as well. Lightening fast, funny and as much contributing to my efficiency as the MS Office paperclip, i.e. not at all.
Somehow the idea that we need a system to do our work seems to have gotten lost at Microsoft, it's all about using a system to pay them more money. Well, I'm taxed enough already (and even if I would agree with it I would like the $$ to go to the country that provides me my living) so no thanks.
I can't see the point to pay a premium to mainly support the vendors of anti virus products. I'd call that a HUGE product deficiency, and as there is fundamentally no reason why this cannot all be done under Linux or OSX there's little chance I'd get back onto the Windows bandwagon. Well, OK. maybe for accessing password protected WinZip archives - haven't had time to research an alternative for that.
But eye candy as a sales argument: not for business, and even so there's Compiz, Beryl and Looking Glass - again a wide choice versus the "let's ram our choice down your throat" DRM infested MS products. Yes, they're safer (again) but they're seriously behind the curve on that too. And even Gates is coming down from the DRM hype, so that leaves little more than bug fixes..
Insert
Personally I love this copy/paste troll, they all make the mistake of not reading the fundamental typographical error in the first line:
Personally I'm very happy about having a greater than one percent market share. And I wouldn't want to move out of this position. And I bet all the other OS companies who currently hold a >1% market share will give the same sentiment.
It's time to be realistic about the linux desktop. If it were ever going to happen, it would have been years ago.
Progress has been made on the Linux desktop front, but a grocery list of fundamental, and insurmountable problems remain.
1. Nobodies pushing linux desktops to the end user. There's no (positive) brand recognition (among desktop users), there's no marketing, there's no sales people at best buy pushing it. It might be on the shelves (in a few places) but so is a lot of software that no one ever notices.
2. Setup difficulty. Setup has improved immensely over the years, and installation is actually fairly decent now; however, it's still to hard because
2.1 Desktop users are used to *not having to do any setup whatsoever*. They are used to the OS coming with the machine. Setup on the windows and mac side consists of unpacking and hitting the power button.
2.2 Hardware detection sucks on linux. This isn't entirely linux developers fault, since they don't always have proper documentation for hardware, etc, but all those excuses mean is that it doesn't work properly, and it probably never will.
2.3 Drivers. These have gotten better, but they still suck. See 2.2 about excuses.
3. Configuration difficulty. Unlike setup difficulty this hasn't improved measurably over time. Linux configuration is still absolutely horrible from the desktop users perspective. The primary problem is flat human readable configuration files being used in places where desktop users have always used guis. The most obvious offender here is xorg.
Human readable config files make sense to developers, and administrators, but desktop users will never learn where all the files they need to edit are, let alone *what to do with them*. Unsophisticated users need preference panes, but there are few integrated into software on linux. This probably has something to do with the fact that there is no global configuration framework (like defaults on osx, or the registry on windows). Similar things exist for gtk (gconf), and indeed gnome software tends to be easily configurable, but configuration isn't a gtk specific problem and system level software like xorg can't depend on gtk to take advantage of it.
Oh, also before anyone says that novice users won't need to edit their xorg.conf, let me point out that in fact they *will* need to edit their xorg.conf because of broken hardware detection (see 2.2) and because if xinerama is turned on (most laptop users need dual screen), users can't even change their *resolution* without screwing with *at least* xorg.conf. Probably for days.
4. Linux is buggy. Very buggy. This comment is likely to earn a few flame posts, so I'd better explain it in more detail even though I think it's perfectly obvious what I mean.
The software provided with most linux distros has all sorts of very prominent show stopping conflicts, and configuration issues that users most spend *days* fixing by hand before they get a usable system. These issues eventually get fixed by the distro makers, but then new issues pop up immediately. Everyone who has installed linux on the desktop and used it for more than a few days has run into these issues.
These problems come down to the fact that the relatively small distro makes don't and can't spend the amount of money on QA that apple and microsoft can. OSX and windows certainly have all sorts of bugs, but they don't have the basic usability issues that plague linux. For OSX and windows the latest os (the one that's preloaded on it) is tested with the hardware configuration, and issues fixed before it's sent out. Patches are tested internally by a fairly large audience before the public ever even sees them. Neither of these things can happen with linux, so we are left with major usability issues that desktop users don't have the skills or patience to work through, and that many others simply don't have the time for.
5. Games don'
Hussle of finding drivers ? How about the hussle of installing them, seeing your X die because for some obscure reason official NVidia drivers and official Ubuntu HowTo on installing those drivers weren't really compatible with each other, reinstalling, finding some 3rd-party HowTo (heck, a howto to install friggin drivers !), spending half an hour in commandline (I have nothing against commandline, heck I would love to have such a versatile tool in Win, but that's not the case in this case (all pun intended)), and than STILL having to modify config files by hand to get the desired screen resolution yada-yada. Is THIS simple ? Is THIS simplier then double-clicking on setup.exe, waiting for a few mins, rebooting (OK, bad part but still) and having it all work ? Please don't start "But Win drivers are the creation of Satan which will hang your PC". Never happened in all those years I use XP (happened with 95 and 98 though) and doubt will happen if you have brains and put them to use while downloading some 4th party tuned, overclocked and rewritten drivers for your mouse wheel or extra mouse buttons (speaking of which they don't work on Linux). Linux was NEVER intended for users and should not be advertised as such. I am yet to see a single user happily sudo make | sudo install an application.
It is undeniable, except by stubborn morons, that the command line gets easier to use with time, and is easier than the GUI in certain cases. This does not mean it is better in every situation, or even overall.
Logical. I acknowledge the lack of an argument to counter.
im in ur
yes, fear of computers is in top 10.
... [5 minutes pass] ... hullo, Help Desk ? I just pressed a key and all my work dissapeared. You bastards, you certainly did something to my computer: come here and fix it".
Arrogance is in top 5: "kids are supposed to be able to do it, so me, a PhD in *****, should do better
Most users don't like the mouse training, don't want to listen when you show them how the interface works and what to do first when they use unfamiliar software, just expect it to work by magic. CLI or GUI ? It does not matter. What's important is the attitude of the user.
I run gnome actually. It's great. The comment in particular was towards Compiz & Beryl, however. They suffer from many shortcomings which I am sure are being worked on as speak.
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
I haven't tried alacarte.
I have tried an earlier Gnome menu editor (don't know the name) and was quite underwhelmed. It was significantly less capable than the one that shipped with Gnome around 1999...before they started dumbing it down. (Sawfish? Sawmill? around that time.)
Whatever. If it requires mono I'm not going to be looking at it...otherwise I'll check it out.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
OK, now I've tried it.
/usr/local/bin it locked up as soon as I tried to get out of /home/~.
It looks nice, but twice when I tried to add a program from
Now it wasn't so badly locked up that I couldn't kill it, but this ISN'T what I think of as friendly behavior.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Is this a joke?
Proposing that the command line is easier to use than a GUI is the definition of a geek who just utterly does not understand what regular people prefer to use on a computer. You say that everyone coped when there was no GUI available. That would be wrong. Computer usage did not take off until GUI's made them easier to use. Until that point only geeks and folks who HAD to use them used them. After the GUI computers were bought by the rest of the public who merely "wanted" a computer.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Did it ever occur to you that the overwhelming majority of computer users has absolutely no desire to progress onto more complex tasks? They only want to surf the web, send emails, play video games and use office software. For those who want more they're pros and they're extremely rare among the general computing population.
And how can you possibly have trouble managing more than a few windows or apps on OS X with Expose? Are you the one lacking in intelligence here or something? Its brain dead simple.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Many anti-MS fanboys complain that Vista is nothing more than XP with a new coat, but anyone with an open mind realizes this is absolutely not the case. No, Vista is a whole new bunch of crap to pollute the desktop world. On the Linux desktop front, just because a number did not jump from 2 to 3 it hasn't improved? Come on. A lot has happened to make Gnome rock on Linux. I have been using Linux as my work environment for a while now and it is certainly ready for desktop use. Linux has already won in my work place.
Just pay no attention to what people here say about GUI v. CLI. GUI/mouse addicted geeks would never understand that.
I can over phone tell guy to fire up terminal and then letter-by-letter tell him commands - and he would read me their output. It takes only minutes to educate him how to do that.
Trying to do the same in GUI - Windows or GNOME - normally ends up in failure. If VNC/etc isn't available - it is next to impossible. Did anybody in helpdesks actually tried to count all the possible error messages Windows' Computer Management can produce? I lost count long time ago. Or for that matter how often GNOME changes layout of their control panel? Ah... Damm just fire up terminal, type few commands and it's done.
And there is even more to it. It is easier to teach somebody to type verbatim (or copy'n'pase) command into terminal - than to explain precisely how user needs to click his way thru the GUI. You can print command (and their output) for later reference. But to precisely describe what was done in GUI to achieve some particular task - is next to impossible. Especially in modern Windows' dynamic GUI. (Actually several my friends were collecting all CLI tips I were giving them - if not to learn, but at least to have in case if problem arises again). And my experience of working with computer-illiterate people was precisely confirmation of that GUI badness: configuration of open windows on screen can be so confusing that normal people never really are getting used to it. And if you are called on phone, how can you get out of user what's happening with his computer? Maximize button is often seen as panacea (or at least as placebo) but not really a solution. Terminal? It's DUMB. Specifically to avoid all the mess.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
What about Alacarte Menu Editor?
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
I see, actually if you are s small business under BSA radar it's even free. Now stop thinking small and consider a corporation with tens of thousands of desktops. Even with massive discounts the cost of an OS upgrade alone is in the millions of $$. Add actual useful software and Linux is suddenly starting to look damn good.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
So, us BSD license lovers are different people than GNU folks.
I'm a pragmatist. I think both GNU style and BSD style licenses are ideal for different circumstances and for different goals. I think Linux's ability to attract developers and gain popularity over FreeBSD is largely due to the licensing. A lot of people want to contribute to something, but they want more in exchange for their contribution than simply credit and getting the code out there. They want to be repaid with the contributions of others and they want to make sure that their contribution is not sold back to them. This makes the GNU style license work very well for end user applications and many other projects.
Sometimes it is more important to an author to get their code used, than it is for them to get contributions back. Implementations of new, standard protocols, for example. For these applications a BSD style license often provides more benefit.
I don't blame Apple for using BSD style code and closing it, nor for not opening their own contributions. So long as they aren't going against the wishes of the authors, more power to them. I merely mention that the code in an OS being GPL'ed as opposed to licensed with a BSD license or even being closed source, provides more benefit to me, the end user, rather than to developers. It is a feature. All things equal, I'd rather be using an OS that is GPL'd than one licensed the other ways. This is self-interest, not ideology.
So all those *nix admins responsible for a few dozen, a few hundred, or a few thousand systems are doing what? Using their company-provided MacBook or Windows desktop to ssh into the server?
This is funny because I daily use my Macbook to SSH into three servers I use. I'm not sure, however, I understand your point.
Maybe you need to rethink your conclusion as "not interested in the desktop." I'd suggest the reality is that there is no overwhelming desire to write GUI applications to replicate what is traditionally done in a terminal window so that novice users will find things "easier".
I'm not talking about replicating CLI programs to make them more accessible to non-power users. I'm talking about everyday applications and functions of the OS that benefit pretty much all users. Using an OS X workstation I can use the same spellchecker on all those SSH sessions, in vi, in Word, in Adobe InDesign, in my mail program and Web browser. I can do the same with my grammar checker, and language translation service, and auto-bibliography citation, and dozens of other useful services. This makes it superior to my Linux and Windows workstations for the same task. It has nothing to do with making it more accessible to novices.
When I upgrade my Mac laptop I use as a workstation, it is basically one step. I plug in a firewire cable to my old laptop and it sucks all my settings, licenses, user accounts, programs, VMs, files, etc onto the new machine. It works across acrhitectures. When I come back from lunch, I can get to work. With a Linux or Windows machine this migration takes me days or weeks to get everything in the right state. This has nothing to do with me being unable to use a command line. It has to do with me having to do things, at all.
Those are just a couple of examples. That functionality could be replicated on another OS, but most people who care have already moved to OS X.
Unfortunate for some, maybe, but the reality is that *nix is designed around the concept of a terminal. Gnome, KDE and friends are mostly there to provide wallpaper.
Your conception of UNIX is pretty limited. Linux is no more UNIX than OS X or IRIX. The GUI provides a better way to accomplish some tasks. Try editing images for a living from the command line.
Many of us do use *nix as a "desktop". At the same time, most of us know there is no real distinction between desktop and server. Except for the wallpaper, perhaps.
While one machine can be both a desktop and a server, they are pretty distinct roles. Desktops provide a user with their interface to do work. Servers talk to other machines, including desktops. Very rarely does a user primarily access a server via the local console. I suspect you're trolling with your wallpaper comments. If so, good job. If not, you need to expand your world view.
Alias rm to move the file/folder to /tmp, and make a backup if one already exists there. /tmp/*' every so often.
Then have cron '/usr/bin/rm -rf
The slashdot lameness filter won't let me post my code, but e-mail riotxix@gmx.net if you want it.
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
Linux, because volume is perhaps 40 million installations versus 20 times that for windows, has a hard time to compete on volume, but not on quality. It will compete based on stability. But instability forces innovation, so all the products, such as Microsoft's, the Mac or Linux, will have to innovate as new dual core /4 cores processors and the like drive innovation. Does that mean linux is for the geeks?
So the bubble is there! As for geeks, Open linux means that developers/geeks live around the world, not just in the USA west coast, hidden from view. Today Linux is used in the schools, and taught in the Universities. Linux is open and affordable. In summary the MS geeks are invisible, and the latter linux ones, are known around the world.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
The cost of having Windows preinstalled is not zero. Think about it. If Microsoft wasn't raking it in on the sale of Windows licenses, they wouldn't be going to such great lengths to try and prevent piracy of their software. They could easily just charge for support contracts, but they don't.
I do not have a signature
It's possible that my willingness to consider Apple fairly against Windows and Linux evaporated back before they came out with OS X. I have seen nothing compelling about OS X or Apple's offerings since that convince me that they're much more than a fashion statement. Your single example touting one system against one other system is good information, but not compelling on its own. There is definitely some trend among the IT crowd to gravitate towards Macs lately, but they don't seem to be making any serious inroads elsewhere-- which makes me think some of that supposedly newfound popularity among techies is a protest against Windows (more fashion than reason). I recognize that some element of it is a desire to have a UNIX that actually works on the hardware (especially a laptop) without a lot of hand-holding. In all, I'd say the ongoing base for Apple is people used to Apple, people who believe Apple's marketing about Mac being really easy, and people who think Apple is cool.
I do not have a signature
OpenOffice.org is that solution. Perhaps you just haven't used it for five years or so...
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
> That is why OEM Linux has disappeared from Walmart.com.
... don't know where you're getting that from...
_ id=3762912
Umm
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product
They have at least one other too, with Xandros. Both "In Stock" last I checked...
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
I plug my USB key into the slot. Nothing happens. I find someone using a Solaris machine who looks Unix savy and ask about mounting the drive -- said Good Samaritan enters a few commands and then gives up. I ask one of the "consultants" (student hourly worker, but a fine, fine students of engineering) and am told about logging into a Windows machine, transfering the files to the shared drive, and then accessing them from my Unix account.
I will use the comments to my Troll-modded post to shame the sys-admins to upgrade to a current version of Linux (I believe they have Debian). But my comment was that the problem wasn't necessarily inherent in Linux -- the problem was cultural, and we were talking an Engineering College computing center and the people who run it, not Grandma.
Just for kicks, I tried installing the latest Ubuntu on my Acer 5103WMLI and it installed happily.
Getting wifi (WPA-PSK) up and running took a little googling. (Not something that your average Non Computer Guy would have been able to do), but it did not take as much time as I'd expected.
Sound and Microphone 'Just Work (TM)' - it's not really a trade mark, but hell M$ look like they are about to trade mark 0 thru 9.
I have to get the 3D drivers for the screen, but I've done that before for other boxes and it's a big deal. And then I need to check the card reader. I have doubts about the built in web cam, but that's not a show stopper.
I still think for "Joe User" it's not a runner. But it's a lot easier than I expected.
So I am Sorry for basing my expectations on my experience of a year or so back, it has moved on a lot. Back then It started to become a hobby in itself.
I still need Dual Boot, some of my college stuff (evening degreee) is M$ only.
But if hibernate works, then I'll be booting into Linux most of the time.
http://davesboat.blogspot.com/