ESR's Desktop Linux 2008 Deadline

jesboat noted Eric S. Raymond and Rob Landley's essay about what the Linux community must do to achieve dominance entitled "World Domination 201". It says "Idealism about open formats will not solve our multimedia problem in time; in fact, getting stuck on either belief in the technical superiority of open source or free-software purism guarantees we will lose. The remaining problems aren't technical ones, and none of the interesting patents will expire before the end of 2008. We've got to ship something that works now. If we let this be a blocking issue preventing overall Linux adoption during the transition window, we won't have the userbase to demand changes in the laws to untangle the screwed up patent system, or even prevent it from getting worse. It's a chicken and egg problem, demanding a workaround until a permanent solution can be achieved. We can't set the standards until after we take over the world."

Comments

H.264

[TheSHAD0W]

So... Why did Adobe use H.264 for Flash's codec, considering its patent burden? How much in royalties are THEY paying? Is it really that much better than the OGM codec?

Re:Interesting Article

[NormalVisual]

A few of other things to consider:

-- Right now, to have a good conceptual understanding of Linux and to be really effective with it, one has to have a handle on a *lot* of stuff. Too much stuff. Contrast that to Windows where you could almost train a monkey to use it. Common example - if you screw up your video settings in Windows and get an unusable display, you can reboot into safe mode and fix it relatively easily. If you do the same thing in Linux, you're probably looking at directly editing the X config file or, if you're lucky, using the command-line version of SaX or something similar to fix your problem. That's not an acceptable option if you're selling to the unwashed masses.

-- Differences in distros. I think someone actually mentioned this before, but there needs to be a standard fricking way to reconfigure your system. If you want to reconfigure your network card, you need to go to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth* if you're running RH, or /etc/network/interfaces if you're running Debian, or /etc/conf.d/net for Gentoo since there's no universal config app for that. There's never going to be a Linux desktop that's popular with the non-geek world unless everyone can decide where everything goes and how it should be configured. Consistency is everything here. Yes, I'm aware of the FHS standard, but there are plenty of distros that don't seem to be.

-- The "RTFM" syndrome. Certainly, I get as annoyed as anyone else when someone bugs me with a question that could easily have been answered by spending 15 seconds in the docs. However, the docs are not in a neat, centralized place - you often have to set off on a damn quest to find what you need. Even if the documentation were more accessible, the sheer arrogance that's shown by a lot of FOSS supporters does a lot to steer people away when they *do* try to dabble their feet in the Linux waters. No one likes to be treated like an idiot (even if they are!), and no one likes to deal with a jerk.

Ultimately, what it comes down to is that Linux development and support isn't centralized. Linux is quite popular on the back-end, but when you look at that more closely you see that it's an environment where there are highly trained people who are qualified to easily deal with the crap I mentioned above. Additionally, most of the more popular back-end software packages (Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.) is generally maintained by a single group that maintains tight control, so in that situation it's more like dealing with a vendor than a bunch of individuals. I believe that we'll see Linux continue to hang on to the datacenter because it's simply a good system, but I just don't see it becoming a desktop standard to any great degree unless someone does with it what Apple did with BSD.

Re:Just remove the 'Open'?

[OriginalArlen]

getting stuck on belief in [...] free-software purism guarantees we will lose.

Staying Free is a guaranteed way to lose? Tell me more, you seem to have invented a fascinating new branch of logic, cos it seems to me that if you are forced to use non-Free software (or hardware), you have already lost.

We've got to ship something that works now. For a given value of "works", where 'works' is defined as meeting requirements. My first requirement as a software user is that doesn't steal my freedoms to share, copy, study, modify, redistribute (etc) it. If I can't do that with it, it's not working. There's a saying about he who would swap eye-candy for essential freedoms deserving neither. (Danny O'Brien I think that was.)