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OSDL's Review of Desktop Linux In 2006
derrida writes "The OSDL's Desktop Linux Working Group has published its first year-end report on the state of the overall desktop Linux ecosystem. The report provides insight into the year's key accomplishments in functionality, standards, applications, distributions, market penetration, and more. Of great interest is the Market Growth part. Quoting from there: 'Most observers believe that much of the growth will take place outside of the United States. "It will be in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries," said Gerry Riveros, Red Hat, "because of the price and because they aren't locked in yet."'"
You don't get a free pass with a comment like that. It's easy to look at what Congress has done here, and say, "boy, is the U.S. fucked." Unfortunately, we aren't alone. Europe is taking our shiny new copyright and patent crap and running with it (and making it even worse in some respects, if that's possible.) Furthermore, there's a lot of pressure being applied to bring other countries in line, pardon me, "harmonized", with certain unpleasant aspects U.S. IP law. We're all going down the tubes together: we're perhaps a couple of elbow joints ahead of everyone else, but not that's all. Too many powerful people around the world want control of their respective economies, and one way you do that is by manipulating and suppressing technological advancement.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
it's already been identified that the majority of OSS gets developed outside of the USA, i think you will find america's court system and patent laws are going to result in doing software business inside the USA to become very unpopular through the next decade. you'll end up with only massive corperate entities like MS able to cope with these entry barriers, and if you think you can rely on companies like MS for innovation......
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
In years past I have always noticed that FreeBSD always makes it easy to install. Makes it easy meaning it recognizes hard drives, network cards, even 56K modems, without a problem. I installed FreeBSD with two 3.5" standard FreeBSD install disks a few years ago over a 56K modem with no problem. Like the Apple commercials say - "it just works".
I prefer Debian and Linux to FreeBSD, but Linux distros have a lot to learn from FreeBSD in terms of ease of installation. FreeBSD makes it really easy to install itself on a PC without barfing on network cards, hard drives and so forth. It was the same situation ten years ago when I was installing Slackware on multiple floppies versus my FreeBSD network installs. And from my experience last week, I see it still holds true.
The press on Vista is so bad right now, it should really be used to push Linux adoption on the desktop in 07.
I myself switched to Ubuntu on my home desktop because of Vista-fear.
KDE in its current form is quite usable for most common purposes, and those abilities it doesn't have can probably be added as widespread adoption takes place. OpenOffice has its faults but it usually does the job. I would say at this point, it's not Linux as Linux that's the holdup. It's:
1. Legacy systems, documents, and most importantly user training in said systems and documents. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" rules when computers are the tool rather than the end goal in and of themselves, and it's hard to fault that logic. If you change your systems you're effectively "breaking" your employees in terms of their productivity, and fixing them is quite a job. It's only justified when the end benefits are worth the pain, and to be fair in most cases they probably aren't, at least in the short term. And we all know how good capitalism is at thinking long term.
2. Compatibility with the largest possible market segment. If your customers/suppliers insist on dealing in old formats (see #1) then it's rather hard to force them to change. And every minute spent dealing with such issues is one less spent on work related to producing something.
3. Costs of retraining your IT department and switching your software/machines. Yes it will take time - hardware support, IT helpdesk training, identifying and testing replacements for currently used apps, etc. Not painless at all.
I would say Linux was "ready for the desktop" several years ago, or at least as ready as Windows. KDE and Gnome are excellent systems for most users, once installed and configured properly. (That's what admins are for - work PCs are not normally maintained directly by users, regardless of OS.) Now the problem is revealed as being rather deeper than originally anticipated - it's not JUST Linux that's the problem, it's change period.
For home use, people want to play media and install thousands of commercial specialty packages, which are all written for Windows. More legacy software issues, with no budget or interest on the part of the people writing them (why target an uncertain platform populated by geeks who give stuff away?)
The problems aren't technological now - I would say they can be more accurately characterized as inertia. It's hard to give people reasons to switch from something that works, even when the new thing is BETTER than the current one. Linux, due to legal constraints as well as not quite 100% compatibility with things like Word formats, is not and probably CANNOT become (legally) a drop-in which is better in all cases.
Personally, I think the only hope for a massive switch to an open source OS is one where the software is written in such a fashion that it can be PROVEN (mathematically) to be secure/crash proof/what have you. Such a verifiable guarantee might gain enough interest/momentum to be worth the massive shifts that still have not taken place, but I am aware of no other lack in the marketplace severe enough to warrant it.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Europe is taking our shiny new copyright and patent crap and running with it. . .
It's called the Berne Convention Treaty. America was shoved into coming in line with it; and ran with it.
America's shiny new copyright and patent crap is firmly rooted in the monarchial grants of absolute right and trade guildism that America's founding fathers firmly rejected.
Too many powerful people around the world want control of their respective economies, and one way you do that is by manipulating and suppressing technological advancement.
And adoption of the Berne Convention Treaty was one of the first signs that America was heading down this path. We gave up being the industrial might driving the economy of the world for being a bunch of paper traders.
If they can manage to hold themselves together as a nation China wins. If not India wins. In any case, we lose as our bits of paper become worthless on the international market.
Jesus we used to make some good stuff.
KFG
Jesus we used to make some good stuff.
Amen. What's ironic, is that as I drove around certain parts of Western Pennsylvania a few weeks ago, is that it's not as if we don't have the capability to make "stuff" anymore -- the machinery, the productive capacity, is mostly all still there, albeit rusted, and the workforce is there, albeit unemployed and twenty years out-of-date -- it's just that the desire to do it disappeared and moved elsewhere, by virtue of some pieces of paper that swapped hands and certain handshakes between heads of state.
We have a government run by the "paper traders," as you put it, for their own kin; they have sold off the economy, piecemeal, to the benefit foreign interests and themselves, despite the obvious outcome: you cannot maintain a first-world economy and standard of living, when you are competing in a labor market with a billion-plus Chinese and Indian peasants. It just isn't going to happen, it's unsustainable: either the first-world country's costs and standards of living are going to sink, or the third-world's are going to rise, and the former is a whole lot easier and a lot more likely than the latter. (Think of it in terms of economic "mass," and of two bodies orbiting around each other; it's a lot easier to move 300 million people down towards the level of a billion poor ones than it is to move the billion up to meet the 300M.)
When the shell game is done, the U.S. is going to become a nation of aristocrats: the same paper-traders who have run the place into the ground, and thus knew from the beginning where it would end, and have moved their wealth into hard currencies; and everyone else, who will be stuck with their savings in a currency suddenly not worth the paper it's printed on (it's already not worth the metal its minted with), and forced to buy everything from abroad (since the country has long since ceased to produce anything of value), who will be stuck with the bill.
Take a look around: you're witnessing the decline of one of the world's great empires, which, like many before it, was brought down not by invaders from afar, but from mismanagement and greed from within.
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