Where Does Linux Go From Here?

With the success that Linux is currently enjoying Linux.com (also owned by SourceForge, Inc) asks the question, where do we go from here? With such a high level of success and greater corporate participation (on both the consumer and provider fronts) will the spirit of freedom and idealism remain true or will the ever-present corporate bottom line eventually take over? "Linux is surrounded by proprietary IT firms. Some of them view Linux as a profit maker, others as a threat to their profits. Both sides represent a challenge for Linux in holding to its ideals of freedom and openess. The first large IT firm to really grok Linux was IBM. It has a long and mutually beneficial association with Linux, Apache, and other FOSS projects. The company has learned the language and the mores of the FOSS world, and has made significant code contributions as part of those projects along the way."

Comments

SourceForce? Come on...

[Laebshade]

With the success that Linux is currently enjoying Linux.com (also owned by SourceForce, Inc) asks the question,

Come on editors. SourceForce? I was gonna let the missing comma between 'enjoying' and 'Linux.com' slide, but jeez, this is so blatantly wrong.

Can I be the first to say

[Mipoti Gusundar]

Can I be the first to say that it is going on the deskytop! Oh well, may be next year...

Take over?

[nine-times]

will the spirit of freedom and idealism remain true or will the ever-present corporate bottom line eventually take over?

How much do we have to worry that something will "take Linux over"? No matter what corporations do, they'll always have to release the source code, which means people can always fork it. Wasn't that the point?

Re:Take over?

[Orange Crush]

will the spirit of freedom and idealism remain true or will the ever-present corporate bottom line eventually take over?

Yes and yes (it's already happened). The neat thing is both can happen without being mutually exclusive. Such is the beauty of FOSS. Is Linux suited for big-iron, misssion critical enterprise stuff backed and supported by heavyweights like IBM, Sun, etc? Yup. Can it be tinkered with on cheap commodity hardware for "backyard" projects and hobbyist programming? Yup. And everything else in between.

Re:Take over?

[suv4x4]

With such a high level of success and greater corporate participation (on both the consumer and provider fronts) will the spirit of freedom and idealism remain true or will the ever-present corporate bottom line eventually take over?

Hehehe, that's very telling. For Linux to succeed those two need to work together. And corporations want to work together with the OSS community, but the community thinks they lead some sort of epic battle against them.

We need less hippies in OSS and more pragmatical approach at this point. The wild west time of Linux are over.

Re:Take over?

[einhverfr]

I think there is an interesting misconception about true community-developed software such as Linux. It will remain open because that is the best way to compete. Look at PostgreSQL for example. They even use a BSD-style license and everyone that has tried to offer a closed version of it has failed unless it is a niche market that the PostgreSQL community doesn't really want to be in anyway.

Re:Take over?

[pablochacin]

The problem is that as the balance goes in favor of big corporation instead of the community, in terms of who contributes more to Linux, there are less and less chances of any disruptive innovation in Linux for two reasons: firt, as big companies invest more in linux, any dramatic change in Linux threatens their insterest. It is well know that in the past IBM, for instance, didn't release some technological advances because was worried about cannibalizing their own custumers in very profitable markets. Second, there is no advantage in doing such innovations if your competitors will have it for free.

I think that big companies will focus on issues like hardware compatibility, manageability and few other things. Therefore Linux will mature, but will never develop its full potential.

Re:Take over?

[nine-times]

I suppose I see your point, but that would only argue that innovation will come from the community rather than the large companies' contributions. Once the innovation exists, though, and is proven to be desirable, it will be in the best interests of the companies to stabilize it.

So to me this sounds like different contributers bringing different things to the table. There's a danger in killing off the Linux community, but there doesn't seem to be a danger in businesses contributing too. But then, who can kill the Linux community if it doesn't want to be killed?

Re:Take over?

[Almahtar]

I don't remember if I signed a nondisclosure or not, but I recently interviewed at a company that makes a big ticket product (a few hundred K/unit) that used to be BSD based that's now Linux based. Their competition was thrilled that they'd have to hand out the mods they made to the kernel, and were pretty disappointed when those mods were pretty much *cut out huge chunk of kernel, make a call to userspace (insert big poofy cloud here), return to kernel*.

Companies must redistribute the mods they make to the kernel, but that doesn't mean their mods are helpful...

Re:Take over?

[pablochacin]

Well, what I exposed is called "the innovator's dilemma". It is a well known problem in almost any industry: once you have a dominant position it becomes more and more difficult to introduce innovations. That's why innovation usually comes from outsiders.

I found this link in wikipedia with an interesting introduction to the idea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology

Re:Take over?

[G Morgan]

If they're mods aren't useful we haven't lost anything. Free loaders don't actually cost us a thing.

Perhaps a more apt question....

[jamieswith]

With the various new fronts opening up... and the inevitable attempts to corrupt the ideals of linux (tivoization etc)

Perhaps a better question is... Where SHOULDN'T linux go from here?

Will attempts to modify the underlying licenses actually end up taking away much of the very freedom we're trying to protect?

Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[Anonymous Coward]

How about starting with the barrier that keeps me from using Linux: MS Outlook with 100% synchronization to PDAs.

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone use Outlook? Didn't you check with the magic 8-ball?

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[Anonymous Coward]

There are replacements for outlook, and exchange as well. Some are free, or multi-tiered, and many will work with PDA's. What are missing are the corporate applications that people use on a day to day basis, either free or multi-tiered pricing. I guess that someone needs to list what businesses need, and the coders to actually code the apps.

I know that Accpac offers their accounting package for linux. SAP can run linux, but what about all the other software? Business needs and geek needs are quite different, and very seldom do the apps that work great on standalone computer convey nicely to a multi-user system. Some work has to be done to integrate database backends, program for multiple users, and for the good love of Christ, accept Kerberos authentication, or even authenticate against an LDAP backend, so if you can't get Single-sign on, you can at least have a common user name and password.

Right now, I could use warehousing software, logistics software, and automotive maintenance software. We're considering hiring a programmer to write it all, and even open sourcing the work. That's a step in the right direction for the community, but we have to wait until the budget is approved.

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[Luscious868]

A proper clipboard would also be nice. The fact that you can't copy and paste more than text between applications is laughable, and even simple text can be iffy from time to time.

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[Anonymous Coward]

This feedback might be better on a GNOME or KDE forum.

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[Anonymous Coward]

There are replacements for outlook, and exchange as well. Some are free, or multi-tiered, and many will work with PDA's. I'm not familiar whith those replacements that work with PDAs. Can you pls name them for me?

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[Whitemice]

> I'm not familiar whith those replacements that work with PDAs. Can you pls name them for me?

Not to be a jerk, but you haven't looked very hard.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/410688/bionicmessage-GroupWare-sync-server-install-gude

There are several (OpenGroupware, SOGo, Citadel, and others) groupware servers that support GroupDAV. Funambol will sync with everything but the kitchen sink [pun intended].

http://www.funambol.com/opensource/

There is a GroupDAV plugin for Thunderbird @ http://www.inverse.ca/english/contributions/thunderbird_groupdav_plugin.html

And several of the Open Source groupware servers, including OpenGroupware, are feature competitive with proprietary solutions like Microsoft Exchange.

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[vtcodger]

***A proper clipboard would also be nice. The fact that you can't copy and paste more than text between applications is laughable, and even simple text can be iffy from time to time.***

The Linux clipboard is a perfectly conventional clipboard although it has some minor differences at the nuts and bolts level. (Unlike Windows and Mac, it doesn't move any data until a Paste is requested). Clipboards are an application level entity not an OS thing. All the OS does is allow the destination to talk to the source and vice versa. Unix in general and Linux in particular allow non-text objects to be moved via the clipboard just as easily as they do text objects. But the applications need to support that. Some do. Some Don't. Same is true for Windows.

You, can, for example, use the clipboard to copy images from a web site viewed in Konqueror to Kword. You can't copy the same image from the same web site viewed in Firefox, but that's because Firefox doesn't support it, not because Linux doesn't.

The only clipboard thing that is actually different in Linux is that the text mode clipboard for tty consoles is a different clipboard than the GUI clipboard (so that it can work if the GUI is dead or not started). But if you run a console application in a terminal program under the GUI, it uses the GUI clipboard so you can move text to and from console applications if you need to.

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[howlingmadhowie]

i find it more laughable that you would place your desire to have something so trivial you perceive as lacking in free software above my ability to exchange information with you.

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[Trigun]

Also, you can take a look at Zimbra, which supports lots of mobile devices

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[Anonymous Coward]

No. The reason Windows and Mac users find the Linux desktops' clipboard to be lacking is this:

1. Copy something to clipboard.
2. Close the application.
3. Start another application
4. Paste. On Windows and Mac, it works. On Linux, nothing happens.

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[Buelldozer]

Bingo!

For all of the fancy explanation in the parent post what you've stated is the truth. The clipboard does not function as expected for many, probabably a majority, of users.

It simply doesn't have the capability of other Operating Systems. This is a problem.

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[JFitzsimmons]

It doesn't even have to be "close the application". It can be anything as trivial as "close the dialog window" which is a far more frequent source of frustration, I'd say.

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[obeythefist]

Some do. Some Don't. Same is true for Windows.

No... in Windows, almost all do, only ridiculous and despised software doesn't. And nobody uses the software that doesn't support it. In Linux, it's all over the place, and really hard to guess which apps will support what.

You, can, for example, use the clipboard to copy images from a web site viewed in Konqueror to Kword. You can't copy the same image from the same web site viewed in Firefox

Copying images from firefox and pasting them anywhere in other Windows apps seems to work just fine. It seems you have discovered another inconsistency in the Linux end user experience... possibly not the message you were trying to convey?

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[glittalogik]

Klipper completely obliterates this problem. It's native to KDE (and installed by default in Kubuntu) but apparently will run happily in GNOME, or you can check out Glipper. Problem solved.

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[centuren]

I find myself a little amused at this complaint, which is the reverse of my experience. I find myself using OSX and Windows more than I used to, and it's always a relief when I find myself back copying & pasting in Linux. I still find "highlight then middle-click" to be lovely and efficient (especially with window/desktop selection bound to mouse buttons as well), but more to the point, I enjoy not having to find some intermediary place to paste the text and re-copy it in order to remove whatever formatting the original application tacked onto it. I'm copying text, after all.

I can see the issue of closing the window being annoying, but honestly it's never come up for me. I copy the text so that I can paste it, and I guess I don't insert steps between then other than moving focus to the target window. I might suggest that be classified as a user mistake. If you want to copy from one window to another, you can, if you don't close the window. On the other hand, if formatting is copied along with text, I can't always, without going out of my way to remove it.

Think of it this way: you select text in OSX, hit ctrl-c, close the window, and try to paste with ctrl-v, it doesn't work. You used the wrong key combo out of habit. If I were to close the source window between the copy and paste steps in Linux, losing the selection, I'd give myself the same forehead-palm, not blame the OS.

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[Anonymous Coward]

Reader A: But Linux is not ready yet. It doesn't do foobar.
Reader B: But it is. Try doing this and that.
Reader C: But Linux is not ready yet. This and that doesn't do that and that.
Reader D: But it is. Try doing

Maybe we just need a distro that does all that work for us?
(Reader E: But there _is_ such distro. It's called Ubuntu)

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[petermgreen]

As I understand it X based desktops have two clipboards. the select and middle click is handy sometimes but other times it is a PITA. having to be very careful not to select test while clearing out a text box to paste something. The other clipboard is more windows like but some apps don't support it (or at least have no obvious way to use it).

also I often seem to have problems with the select and middle click method with some apps, most notablly kate seems to act very intermitantly when used as a source for it.

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[vtcodger]

***

1. Copy something to clipboard.

2. Close the application.

3. Start another application

4. Paste. On Windows and Mac, it works. On Linux, nothing happens. ***

That's somewhat true. Windows and Mac have basic (single object per object type) clipboard management by default -- data is moved to a buffer when Cut or Copy are requested and are Pasted from the buffer when (if) a Paste is requested. Linux (and Java incidentally) don't. But you can run a clipboard manager like Klipper if you wish to get that behavior in Linux. KDE generally does that by default. I think GNOME has something similar although Klipper is said to work fine in a GNOME environment.. (glipper?) .

Some people find Klipper to be obnoxious. I'm not sure whether they have some set of problems I don't or just have a different world view. Anyway, they have the option of not using it or of using some other clipboard manager. In Windows (and I assume Mac) you apparently are going to get clipboard management whether you want it or not.

Re:Need some minor apps....Like Outlook

[vtcodger]

***It simply doesn't have the capability of other Operating Systems. This is a problem.***

Y'know. I thought the same thing a year ago. I got exasperated enough that I spent a lot of hours trying to find out how clipboards work on the major OSes. That isn't easy incidentally. the Documentation is scattered, obtuse, fragmentary, misleading, and sometimes wrong. What I found out is that the Linux clipboard actually does work pretty well most of the time. I started noticing that the Windows clipboard has problems. It's actually not all that uncommon for Windows to quietly refuse to copy or to paste something unexpected or to make you jump through weird hoops to get stuff in or out of the clipboard.

I think that the issue is that we get used to a particular set of clipboard peculiarities in desktop environment and are frustrated when we encounter a different set of peculiarities.

All I can tell you is that I am now doing about 50% of my computer stuff in a Linux environment -- Slackware 12 and Xfce. I probably use the clipboard more than most folks, and I don't have any more Clipboard problems on the Linux machine than I do on the Windows machine at the other end of the desk. I have some gripes about many Linux applications (e.g.why can't Ark unpack tar.gz files that tar -zxf handles fine?), but the clipboard handling isn't one of them.

Insidious Allusion?

[ZeroFactorial]

Or is the title of this post an insidious allusion to things to come? "Linusoft: Where do you want to go from here?"

not an enterprise operating system

[Exter-C]

Linux is not really an enterprise operating system at this point in time. Yes its working in enterprise environments, yes its stable in most implementations and there are good patch management solutions etc but what is missing is some standardisation across hardware vendors. There is no standard way of monitoring RAID/Fans/Hardware failures etc. Each vendor has their own tools which makes having multi-vendor environments a pain, If we compare against windows with mom every vendor has a plugin which will allow you to monitor and manage the systems from a central point. If I look at some of the other "enterprise" operating systems like Solaris and AIX they have a standard set of tools for fibre channel controllers etc which work on all of the vendors. It may sound like a small issue but when your dealing with lots of systems having to know what controller is in a system to support it makes a big difference.

Re:not an enterprise operating system

[Sadsfae]

There is no standard way of monitoring RAID/Fans/Hardware failures

SNMP is pretty standardized :) Most enterprise organizations use Nagios http://www.nagios.org/ or a similar solution for monitoring of HW, hosts and services.

Re:not an enterprise operating system

[Lumpy]

The exact same thing can be said about windows.

There is no standardization across hardware vendors for windows. RAID cards are always different, Hardware monitoring is always different... The old Compaq servers were the best but was 100% different from DELL and IBM. no standardization anywhere.

I would LOVEto see standardization like you speak of, but it does not exist. Not for Windows, not for Linux. the ONLY place I have ever seen it is OSX and SUN.

but then you are using their hardware and their OS... therefore they can make it happen.

and honestly, nothing is as beautiful as seeing 3 racks full of Mac rackmount servers and Storage vaults. it makes anything from dell,HP and IBM look like dog turds.

Re:not an enterprise operating system

[PPH]

Linux isn't anything in particular. It's whatever one makes of it. 'Linux' isn't an enterprise operating system, but certain distros of Linux certainly are, tools and all. Other distros are embedded O/Ss, desktops, set top boxes, or whatever you make of them.

Re:not an enterprise operating system

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the heck monitors fans using SNMP with Nagios? Can you point us to the open MIB which defines fan speed?

RAID implementations are largely proprietary. Do LSI or Adaptec provide a MIB for their RAID adapters?

Re:not an enterprise operating system

[jimicus]

Right.... so where's the standardised interface for the SNMP userland tools to speak to the hardware to find out details like "is the RAID OK?" "are all power supplies present and functioning?" "are all the fans spinning?" ?

IPMI is a good start, but it's far from perfect. Not all implementations of IPMI even make that much detail available.

Re:not an enterprise operating system

[SanityInAnarchy]

There is no standard way of monitoring RAID/Fans/Hardware failures etc.

Google for lm-sensors. I'm fairly sure that's at least a standard API, even if the backends aren't standard.

There's also SNMP and Nagios, which can be used to remotely monitor a system. I'm fairly sure you can tie these in to lm-sensors.

Each vendor has their own tools which makes having multi-vendor environments a pain, If we compare against windows with mom every vendor has a plugin which will allow you to monitor and manage the systems from a central point.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA....

Oh, man... wait... you were serious?

Just look at a typical Windows laptop. I have a tool for my touchpad, which is relatively standard only because it seems like Synaptic makes all laptop touchpads. I have a tool for my thumbprint scanner, a tool to update the Toshiba drivers, and while I've opted to use the normal XP wireless support (I think), there's that plus an Intel wireless utility... Even soundcards frequently come with their own system tray thing.

Now, maybe it's different in the enterprise, but it seems to me that hardware vendors are always creating their own little utilities before there's a standard, and are slow to adopt the standard once it exists, for any OS except OS X, and maybe Solaris (before Solaris/x86 and OpenSolaris).

I'll give you the fibre, mostly because I don't know anything about that, but then, consider that Google has an infrastructure basically built out of commodity desktop hardware. So, if you have to, you can always just throw known hardware configurations at it -- which is really what you should do with any OS.

Re:not an enterprise operating system

[alexborges]

Sigh...

Wrong on ALL accounts.

There IS a standard way for ALL Linuxes to monitor EVERYTHING. Smartd+snmp will do the trick and it works just about the same for them all.

As for the rest, vendors create their measly, unoperable, stupid shitty stuff to supposedly "monitor" things. They are all really pretty badly made, but its "their" way.

That being said, "Linux" as an abstract entity has no room in corpoland, you need to start thinking RHEL or SLES, and there you will see: all RHEL is monitored the same way, all SLES is monitored the same way. If you wanna use the crap monitoring stuff dell, hp and ibm attempt to push down your throat, by all means, do it, but dont come crying to us.

Re:not an enterprise operating system

[budgenator]

I just installed lm-sensors on my machine, I can watch everything from core voltages to fan rpms using either a commandline utility or two kde utility one of which is supposed to be able to monitor multiple machines on a network which I am not able to test.

Re:not an enterprise operating system

[FooAtWFU]

I work with SNMP every day. :) While the protocol for throwing around OIDs and values is standard enough, the actual meaning of said OIDs and the values assigned to them is not; nor is it trivial to massage data pulled from arbitrary devices and alerts into a useful format (or to take it in the other direction to configure the devices, where applicable). That's why my company makes the big bucks.

Re:not an enterprise operating system

[NateTech]

You missed AIX, HP-UX, and a number of others.

Anyone who makes their own hardware and the OS at the same time can easily accomplish the task of "standardized hardware monitoring", and anyone that does make both the hardware and the OS, usually do.

They also typically standardize the user interface to that monitoring system.

Re:not an enterprise operating system

[NateTech]

You monitor your touchpad for failures from a remote management server? That's hard-core, man.

Re:not an enterprise operating system

[centuren]

This is getting to the point of the best argument against using Microsoft software as a platform. I like the custom need, custom implementation approach to things. Over simplifying things, Windows is what you get, Linux is what you make of it. It doesn't always boil down to the end product being proprietary vs open source; I recommend against using (open source) Joomla for a content management tool in place of having a custom one built for your needs (which wouldn't be released open source). The custom site would run off a Linux or BSD server, if I had anything to say about it, that does just what it's needed to do.

well ..

[Sadsfae]

The way I see it, it is just getting started

Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[CyberLord Seven]

Given that this is Slashdot a car analogy is in order.

Linux is a Ferrari. It requires a real driver.

Mac is like a Toyota. A good, solid vehicle. Dependable and long lasting. Just don't expect to do any internal work on it like my dad used to do when I was a kid.

Windoze is like a Ford Pinto. It'll get you to work and back home again, just don't expect it to have any real power.

The Linux community must get away from trying to be Ford or GM (Genetically Modified?). Linux offers POWER! No apologies POWER! It ain't for your gran'ma.

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your dad can do internal work on a Ferrari?

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[TeacherOfHeroes]

I don't really see how this is a good area where linux can grow. People who *need* that kind of power and can't get it elsewhere usually already use linux (or some other unix based OS).

Maybe linux should be thought of as a way to turn your Ford Pinto into a Toyota for free?

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[Akaihiryuu]

> Windoze is like a Ford Pinto. It'll get you to work and back home again, just don't expect it to have any real power.

Very accurate. It will get you to work and back home, without any real power...but you forgot to mention that it is perfectly normal for it to sometimes explode.

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[BrainInAJar]

Solaris is like a semitruck. Without it the commercial world would collapse.

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[Luyseyal]

And here I was thinking that Linux is a tank (full text).

Original link to Neal Stephenson's website which no longer has the full text inline.

-l

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[$RANDOMLUSER]

In some ways, I have to agree with this. I don't care if the script kiddies and grannies and game players ever take up Linux. They're not the people who are ever going to appreciate find or grep, or even sudo. By the same token, if even 20% of the businesses were to use Linux both in the server room AND on the desktop, we'd see several things:
1) More big-dollar apps (Photoshop, 3DS-Max, AutoCad) making the move to a Linux version.
2) Microsoft making some real efforts on security, so that admins and the rest of the net didn't have to deal with thier crap.
3) Even more developer and vendor buy-in than we have today.
4) WORLD HEGEMONY! MUA HA HA HA!

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[p0tat03]

we'd see several things:
1) More big-dollar apps (Photoshop, 3DS-Max, AutoCad) making the move to a Linux version.

You realize that all of the above apps you've listed appeal to artists, right? The people who AREN'T as technically inclined as us coders? The same people who don't want to futz with find, grep, or even sudo?

For a company to switch to Linux on its desktops, the OS needs to be easy to use for EVERYONE, not just hardcore techies. I know many a draftsmen who can work magic in AutoCAD, but continue to call their tower the hard drive. For Linux to succeed for the geeks, we must make it appealing to the non-geeks.

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yesterday Ferrari won the Formula1 championship with a car whose value is maybe on the order of a billion dollars (project + cars + pilots + ...). Ever thought where does Ferrari take the money to participate? Yes, correct: selling thousands of much-less-expensive cars around the world.

It is easier to sell many cars if you have an expensive winning one, and it is easier to have an expensive winning one if you sell many cars...

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Solaris is like a semitruck. Without it the commercial world would collapse."

Solaris is like a Bugatti Veyron. One of a kind, high-performance engineering wonder.
(ala the quad-turbo 1000 HP engine in the Bugatti.)

It drives different than a Joe Average's car. The controls are different. The handling is different. It requires a race driver to drive it. But it's very high performance, high-quality, and extremely dependable, especially the latest "Nevada" edition. It's not for weenies.

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[Penguinisto]

Mac is like a Toyota. A good, solid vehicle. Dependable and long lasting. Just don't expect to do any internal work on it like my dad used to do when I was a kid.

I like the others you've presented, but the quoted line above ain't quite correct. "Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal" + "sudo su -" gives me everything I need to be a happy BSD-style *nix sysadmin on a Mac, thanks much. Toss in X11, Fink, the free OSX SDK, and a whole host of other goodies, and you get all the *nix love you'll ever need.

Macs would be more like the Jeep - you can do whatever the hell you want to it and it refuses to break in most cases, and it still has a style that appeals to most folks. Just that the body design (down to the seven-slit grille) is as proprietary as hell, and vigorously guarded by the manufacturer.

/P

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[foobsr]

Linux offers POWER!

Sounds more like a ZPM, which is a better analogy anyway.

CC.

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[PortHaven]

Inaccurate representation:

Mac OS X = Toyota/Lexus (fair enough, it's nice, reliable, full featured but sometimes you realize it's just not made for Americans by it's odd nuances. And is a bit pricey.)

Linux = Ford Mustang (classic), can be a really sweet ride with lots of performance when modified right. Rather uncomfortable in many regards. It requires a lot to get it into good shape. Really needs to move from Mustang (classic) to new Mustang.

Windows = Chevy Van, cumbersome and a bit clunky. Breaks down a fair amount. But provides a lot of functionality. Fully featured.

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[jellomizer]

What does find, grep or sudo have to do with Linux. Those are fairly common application on Unix systems too. (and they were First on unix systems....) as a Mac User OS X has all those features but unless I am working in the terminal or making a script, I rarely need to use them for common jobs because sudo equivalent will kick off if I try to run an app that needs more Security. For Find and Grep Spotlight does most of the work. Also google desktop and do the job too.

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[chromatic]

Toss in X11, Fink...

Do you use either one regularly on Mac OS X?

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[Ash-Fox]

I like the others you've presented, but the quoted line above ain't quite correct. "Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal" + "sudo su -"

You should use "sudo -i"

Toss in X11, Fink, the free OSX SDK, and a whole host of other goodies, and you get all the *nix love you'll ever need.

Honestly, I have issues with OS X's X11 server having very limited clipboard buffers which in some case prevents me from copy/pasting to only partial copy pastes. It can't even do drag and drop (which people keep declaring is one of the things that makes OS X great). The signaling support of OS X's kernel, XNU is atrocious and it's kind of sad that Windows's POSIX subsystem can do far better.

I also don't know why, but I have had random segfaults with Fink on various applications, despite having the latest upto date software on the system. Which doesn't make it very reliable for me.

For *nix usage, I don't agree that OS X is good enough. And while Windows' POSIX subsystem works correctly, a lot of things like IPC and forking are extremely expensive - so it ends up being really slow for certain tasks. I wouldn't recommend Windows either for this usage.

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[spud603]

Do you use either one regularly on Mac OS X?

Yes, I use X11 all the time. If I want to run big stats/math software like SAS or Mathematica from my university's servers, a simple "ssh -X" does the trick in X11. Also, the the tcl/tk implementation in Apple's X11 is much more stable than the aqua version, so a lot of the Fink packages are best under X11 (fink I use for the gimp, and kexi mostly).
Anyway, X11 and fink are not for everybody but I'm glad as hell that they're there.

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[CRCulver]

"Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal" + "sudo su -" gives me everything I need to be a happy BSD-style *nix sysadmin on a Mac

Except for the ability to examine the code running on your own computer. One should imagine a sysadmin likes to be in control of his system, but by running Apple's proprietary software you are handing control over to someone else.

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[lwsimon]

I'm a photographer and a web designer, and the only reason I've not ditched windows entirely at this point is that I can't get Photoshop CS3 to work properly. Yes, it can be made to run in Wine (3 versions old), or you can put it in a VM(and take the performance hit) - but its just not worth it. So I have a Windows box and a linux box, side-by-side, and bounce back and forth as I work. Put Photoshop on linux, and you'll start a flock towards it. You'd be surprised what us "non-geeks" can learn.

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[Jarjarthejedi]

Mod parent up, Linux is nice but it's not the easiest thing to get running correct, especially when you have proprietary hardware that's not 100% supported (Dell Duo Core, ATI card etc).

Windows Works. It may break down, but it works. Linux Works, once you get it properly set up. Mac Works, but you can't really do anything beyond what they allow you to do.

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally a true car analogy , Linux is like a Ferrari, the average driver gets stuck as soon as there is a 2 inch bump in the road (or rips the exhaust system off the car!).

Thanks, I'll take the Punto!

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[Blakey Rat]

Windoze is like a Ford Pinto. It'll get you to work and back home again, just don't expect it to have any real power.

This is what I always want to reply to people like you:

"You can't even spell 'Windows', why the hell should I trust what you have to say about it?"

Seriously, it's not clever, it's not funny, it's just stupid to type "windoze" or "M$". Grow up, and let's have an adult conversation.

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[Cro Magnon]

Windoze is like a Ford Pinto. It'll get you to work and back home again, just don't expect it to have any real power.

What do you mean, no real power? Did you see the size of that fireball?

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[PortHaven]

So what we really want is WinuX (Windows/Linux/OSX)

The program you want to run just like Windows
The ease of hardware & software installation like Windows/Mac
The tweakability and performance of Linux

Guess what we really want is a vehicle that can change between a Ferrari convertible and a Ford F350. *lol*

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[iso-cop]

The beauty of open source can be given by example of our various Linux distros...Gentoo for the power hungry, Debian for the open source idealist, Ubuntu for those who want to install and forget the details, Fedora for enterprise applications...

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[p0tat03]

If you don't mind me saying so, you are a web designer - your technical expertise from that alone will trump many artists who are *only* photographers or *only* video editors, etc. I personally know many artists that can awk, sed, and grep as well as the rest of us, but they are in the end the minority in their field.

I know many large studios are shifting towards Linux tools in the special effects industry, but these are the same companies that can afford to dedicate a large IT department towards inevitable problems as their artists run into Linux's issues. For smaller companies or individuals, the "weirdness" of Linux will keep it from taking off as a professional platform.

And hence the popularity of Macs - runs all (almost) the software artistic professionals want, and without the cruft-filled nasty goodness that is Windows, and works out of the box with no CLI, ever, for those who expect their things to just work.

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[Drysh]

Wait... Are you saying I can get a free Ferrari? Yeah!

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[CyberLord Seven]

The parts are free. You just have to create your own makefile. :)

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[Pengo]

"Windoze is like a Ford Pinto. It'll get you to work and back home again, just don't expect it to have any real power."

Except when you go to Napa to buy an oil filter, freon for the AC or any other accessories the only thing that 99% of the retailers have is Pinto parts. Sure, things can be hacked to work in the Ferrari, but it still was still built for a pinto. .. even down to the fuzzy-dice, made for Pinto.. might work in Ferrari (Your mileage may vary).

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[Anonymous Coward]

>Linux is a Ferrari.

Gas guzzling, temperamental, and expensive to maintain, and having capabilites most people don't really need?

I'll take the Pinto. A few exploded, most didn't.

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[einhverfr]

The Linux community must get away from trying to be Ford or GM (Genetically Modified?). Linux offers POWER! No apologies POWER! It ain't for your gran'ma. I beg your pardon?

My grandma was programming computers (in Fortran) since before I was born. If she was still alive, you bet she would like Linux.

There are a lot of people of any generation who feel intimidated by computers, but I will tell you that most of the senior citizens of my customer base are sufficiently intelligent for this not to be a problem. I would suggest that you limit your comments to those about your own grandma and leave the rest of us out of it :-)

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[davidsyes]

Oh, c'mon. This is a site full of hormones-raging guys. How about a love-doll analogy.

Linux is like a REALDOLL. Windows is like an inflatable.

Linux you can batter and ride like crazy and not really tear it up.

By the time you finish riding windoze, it's all deflated, wrinkly, and ready to be blown up again.

And, since RealDoll is more firmware than hardware, and Windows is more software than firmware, you can someday program your RealDoll with Linux, whereas inflatables with windoze are just windbags.

(A Secret: Realdolls are made strong enough for a nerd, but made for men and women...)

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[mpiktas]

Yeah, good driver, good lawyers and whiny boss. I am sorry, but I do hate Ferrari, but love Linux :)

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[AP31R0N]

You neglected to mention that said Ford has the most parts and modifications available(most hard and software). Finding parts for your Ferrari (video cards) will be a pain in the ass, then you'll have the additional challenge of getting it to work (drivers). The Mac as Toyota analogy fails because Toyotas are ubiquitous and well supported. They're more like Fiats or Citroens, hardly any one uses them or makes parts for them. Because of the shared suffering of the Fiat drivers, they get to be members of an elitist club that looks down on everyone else. Your Ford is also similar enough to every one else's Ford that you can hop in and drive it with a minimal learning curve. From one company to the next, windows is windows.

If the Linux community aggregated their talent into ONE distro, it would be kick awesome and a potential rival to M$, or at least to Mac.

Most people don't want a Ferrari (like OS), they want a Ford. They want something they know how to use, that has lots of cheap parts and support.

Linux is more like a fighter jet. It has more controls than the typical user could possibly use, much less understand. i don't want to RtFM, i want to play Planetside download pr0n. My local gas station doesn't sell fighter jet fuel or parts or know how to fix them.

Macs are unicycles. You look like a queef for having it and you have to struggle against it to do basic functions.

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[geminidomino]

Guess what we really want is a vehicle that can change between a Ferrari convertible and a Ford F350. *lol* Bugger that. I think I speak for us all when I say we want a vehicle that can change between a fighter plan and a robot.

Starscream Linux(tm)!

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[zooblethorpe]

Windoze is like a Ford Pinto. It'll get you to work and back home again, just don't expect it to have any real power.

Very accurate. It will get you to work and back home, without any real power...but you forgot to mention that it is perfectly normal for it to sometimes explode.

Sheesh, modded "Funny"? How about "Insightful"? (c.f. Driver Update Can Cause Vista Deactivation)

Cheers,

Re:Linux goes where Ferrari went!

[Daniel Phillips]

Windoze is like a Ford Pinto. It'll get you to work and back home again, just don't expect it to have any real power. ...and if you back into a fire hydrant, the gas tank explodes.

i know

[jollyreaper]

Where next? Linux must crush its enemies. To see them driven before it. And to hear the lamentations of their women...

Re:i know

[Bluesman]

Stallman, I have never prayed to you before, I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad, why we fought or how we died. No, all that matters, is that two stood against many. That's what's important. Valour pleases you, Stallman, so grant me one request: grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then to hell with you!

Re:i know

[riffzifnab]

The enemies of Linux have women? Sign me up! d:

Re:i know

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, Helios, but we could have told you your opinion without your help.

Spirit of freedom and idealism AND bottom line

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you can have freedom and idealism and make a buck.

I know hating on all enterprise seems all the rage these days, but eventually reality sets in, as people need dirty money to buy food and water and such.

Linux is a success BECAUSE of the bottom line, as much as all the hippie dippy sentementality that might appeal to some developers. It replaces --for free-- costly proprietary Unixes. It makes sense for the evil, dirty, capitalist bottom line.

Same old, same old.

[khasim]

From TFA:

Microsoft might become an even larger influence on Linux than it is today. What if, for example, Microsoft decided to plop a new GUI atop the Linux kernel and enter the fray with its own version of Linux? The company has never been shy about copying success demonstrated elsewhere, and Apple has done very well doing exactly that with BSD.

This is another useless article about "what if" without any thought about the fundamentals of Linux.

As you pointed out, "they'll always have to release the source code". That is what makes Linux different. That is why companies like IBM can support Linux. They will NEVER be marginalized or excluded.

It's all about commodity. About making the OS a commodity. Owned by everyone.

Re:Same old, same old.

[cool_arrow]

You're right. No need to even read the article. Linux will be whatever someone, be it individual or corp., decides to make it.

Re:Same old, same old.

[nine-times]

Yeah, as you quoted, "What if, for example, Microsoft decided to plop a new GUI atop the Linux kernel and enter the fray with its own version of Linux?"

Ok, let's examine this "what if?" If Microsoft decides to release its own version of Linux, then they have to release the source code of any changes to the kernel. Then, other developers can pick and choose between the Microsoft changes, using what they want and getting rid of what they don't. If Microsoft makes any good changes, they will benefit everyone.

What's the big problem?

Re:Same old, same old.

[Oliver Defacszio]

What's the big problem?

The problem is that's not a business. Who, in their right mind, would devote thousands of development hours cobbling something together, then cast it into the wind where basement developers use "what they want, and [get] rid of what they don't?" That's charity. I have no problem with the spirit of this OSS thing, but it's laughable to imagine that there's any kind of business potential in releasing things into the wild where they're instantly ripped apart as you've described.

I know, I know -- there are other ways to make money with Linux (something I feel isn't proven yet), but I keep seeing this expectation --and I don't put your post in that category, since you're just speculating-- that companies will be dying to do what you've suggested in your example. Unless they're either very stupid or very philanthropic, it will never happen. Idealism be damned -- a successful business cannot care what benefits everyone, unless it benefits them first.

Re:Same old, same old.

[Joe Jay Bee]

Who, in their right mind, would devote thousands of development hours cobbling something together, then cast it into the wind where basement developers use "what they want, and [get] rid of what they don't?"

Red Hat, Canonical, Novell... hell, even Microsoft have a few open source projects kicking around.

Re:Same old, same old.

[kv9]

The problem is that's not a business. Who, in their right mind, would devote thousands of development hours cobbling something together, then cast it into the wind where basement developers use "what they want, and [get] rid of what they don't?" Sun?

Re:Same old, same old.

[nine-times]

The problem is that's not a business. Who, in their right mind, would devote thousands of development hours cobbling something together, then cast it into the wind where basement developers use "what they want, and [get] rid of what they don't?"

Ok, well even if we all agreed with you, that would be a reason why Microsoft wouldn't make their own version of Linux. However, my point was that *if* Microsoft were to make a version of Linux, the Linux community would have nothing to fear from that. If Microsoft good changes to the kernel, the Linux community could get the code for those changes and use it themselves, and there would be nothing Microsoft could do to stop it.

it's laughable to imagine that there's any kind of business potential in releasing things into the wild where they're instantly ripped apart as you've described.

Yeah, tell that to the companies who are profiting from OSS.

Re:Same old, same old.

[David Greene]

Who, in their right mind, would devote thousands of development hours cobbling something together, then cast it into the wind where basement developers use "what they want, and [get] rid of what they don't?"

Hmm, let's see...

• Apple
• Adobe
• Cray

And of course the usual suspects like Sun and IBM.

Free Software can most definitely be an important part of a business strategy. For example, the company I work for uses it to leverage testing resources of the community. We also get bug fixes back from the community. We think it makes a lot of sense for a large community to share core development responsibility, the sort of stuff you find in university textbooks that is not proprietary in any way.

In the future, companies aren't going to make money selling operating systems, word processors or basic compiler implementations. They're going to make money modifying the OS to run well on custom hardware, selling plugins to do fancy document formatting and developing new compiler optimizations that make all of this run well on their proprietary computer system.

Re:Same old, same old.

[mpiktas]

Yes let us examine what ifs. I for one will check for sure for flying pigs and night rainbows if Microsoft releases its Linux desktop.

Re:Same old, same old.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who in their right mind, not just anyone. Does Sun count?

Re:Same old, same old.

[rozz]

hm... you are either a troll, a retard or someone who did not update his world-view since like the 80s .. but that shouldnt stop ppl from having a bit of fun with you, should it?

What's the big problem?

The problem is that's not a business. oh yes it is.
according with pretty much Any dictionary out there, business is any activity/occupation and it does not have to be "for profit" ... and even if you include "for-profit" in the definition, it is still business ... just ask ibm.

Who, in their right mind, would devote thousands of development hours cobbling something together, then cast it into the wind where basement developers use "what they want, and [get] rid of what they don't?" many thousands of "right-minded" people do it nowadays ... as said above, you only need to update your world view.

That's charity. may be, may be not ... but anyway, charity is also business.

I have no problem with the spirit of this OSS thing, but it's laughable to imagine that there's any kind of business potential in releasing things into the wild where they're instantly ripped apart as you've described.
if You dont see that "business potential", it doesnt mean it's not there ... it may mean that You have bad vision, though.
and since you are such a business person, i can recommend the perfect solution for your case - just buy a clue!

I know, I know -- there are other ways to make money with Linux (something I feel isn't proven yet), one can give you some samples like ibm, red hat, novell and others that make billions from this stuff .
but i have a feeling that will help in your case ... no matter how good you argue or how many samples you give, there is always that guy that "doesnt feel" ... usually you can easily spot him wandering around with a big "clueless moron" sign on his head ... check the mirror sometime, I have a feeling that may be you.

but I keep seeing this expectation --and I don't put your post in that category, since you're just speculating-- that companies will be dying to do what you've suggested in your example. i am pretty sure ppl around here do not care about the stuff you "keep seeing" ... a psychologist may be interested, though.

Unless they're either very stupid or very philanthropic, it will never happen. oops it just happened ... and by "just" i mean like >20 years ago, about the time you stopped updating your world-view.

Idealism be damned -- a successful business cannot care what benefits everyone, unless it benefits them first. oh that was the problem with your outdated world-view, you still live in the 60s with ayn rand ... i always felt that ayn rand fans should all be put on an island and left alone to live by their principles ... that will teach them the wisdom of "be careful what you wish, it may come true".

anyway, pls keep posting, ppl like you are needed.
Everybody thinks that the best way to test an idea is to present it to some smart people (and if they like it, you got a winner).
i think it works the other way too ... just put your idea in front of a few idiots and if they hate it you can be sure you got a winner ... this may even be a more effective test and the idiots are way cheaper and available everywhere ... plus the endless fun you can have by listening their "arguments".

so ... happy posting amigo.

One day, but not today

[sdkramer]

"Ubuntu is going to have to get serious about its commercial operation one of these days."

Very true, but it's going to need A LOT more driver support to get there. Average Joe isn't going to want to have to fix his wireless every time just because he's got a Broadcom chip. Average Joe isn't going to want to have to mess with ALSA or OSS if he loses his sound, and starting off leaving a bad taste in someone's mouth is not the way to go. As much as I want to see Linux on the desktop we have to keep in mind that the first "Vista-like" experience users have is going to drive them to Apple or something.

I feel like Vista's failures have given us a tremendous opportunity to make some serious inroads to the desktop market, but we're hindered by usability and driver issues.

Re:One day, but not today

[PortHaven]

Absolutely right...

You just described the current problem my wife and I are having. We bought a laptop, it came with Vista. I figured since it was new, she had nothing on it. Perhaps I'd get her started with Linux.

I really want to support Linux. I need Windows on my machine for work related tasks. So wasn't an option. Not enough hard drive space to dual-boot either.

But my wife didn't have any critical needs. So with both of us not liking Vista, we decided to get Ubuntu Linux a try.

I find driver support (ie: Broadcom Wireless which is an extremely common card), app installation (need to install RAIDar for NAS, just want to click to install). Sound issues. Etc.

Oh if these could only be resolved, I think Linux would be really making a go. The question is, will Linux fix this situation before Microsoft fixes Vista? (Considering driver issues were the same issues that plagued my prior attempts at installing Linux in late 90's early 2000's - I have my doubts. :|

- The Saj

Re:One day, but not today

[ericrost]

Broadcom:

Proprietary driver manager pops up, asks you if you want to install the driver and d/l the firmware, auto installs it and network manager pops up to connect. Easier than in windoze.

ALSA/OSS:

These days the only time you'd ever need to mess with these settings is to

a) record something using either USB or built in mic's. Record something in windows without messing with a control panel.

b) use it with an app installed through wine, and even then not so often.

Re:One day, but not today

[ricegf]

You just described the current problem my wife and I are having. We bought a laptop, it came with Vista.

So with both of us not liking Vista...

I think I see the problem. Here's the answer.

Re:One day, but not today

[PortHaven]

That's a very beneficial response.

This has made me think that there is a another thing that Linux should do next. I almost think that Linux should consider a "free consumer support" site for beginners to Linux.

Re:One day, but not today

[sdkramer]

If you're using Ubuntu I'd suggest the Ubuntu Forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/

Re:One day, but not today

[shmlco]

And I thought that one of the F/OSS "business models" was charging for support?

First, there's no "Linux" that can do such a thing. There's maybe a dozen major versions/vendors and probably a hundred or so subniches. Saying "Linux" as if it's some sort of monolithic entity just shows ignorance.

Second, there's maybe a dozen major versions, which means that support for one version doesn't necessarily translate into support for another.

Third, there are already tons of "Linux" sites out there. Search Google.

Finally, such a thing flies in the face of F/OSS when you think about it, because Linux is based on the idea that no one single version/program/site can suit everyone's needs. (Also its greatest weakness.)

Re:One day, but not today

[vtcodger]

For Broadcom support, look into ndiswrapper. It'll take you an evening to get it working (if it works) and the spouse and household pets may well be hiding under the furniture with their paws/hands over their ears about half way through the process. But on good days, it'll allow a Windows driver to work on Linux with some Broadcom hardware that the Linux driver can't support. The problem incidentally is that ^#@$*! Broadcom won't tell anyone how their ^#@$*!ing cards work

Re:One day, but not today

[Rhapsody Scarlet]

These days the only time you'd ever need to mess with these settings is to

a) record something using either USB or built in mic's. Record something in windows without messing with a control panel.

b) use it with an app installed through wine, and even then not so often.

Or when your sound card won't work because it's not supported by the version of ALSA shipped with Ubuntu, so you need to update it, then set it in OSS compatibility mode because it won't work in native mode for some reason, then try to figure out why Flash won't work, puzzle over why it cuts out when you pause music in Amarok, then tear some hair out as it stops working altogether for no apparent reason!

It's been a bad year for me and Linux.

Re:One day, but not today

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you download drivers or firmware when you can't connect to the network?

Re:One day, but not today

[ericrost]

Its called a network cable.

Re:One day, but not today

[PortHaven]

Okay, then how about for just Ubuntu as I understand it, Ubuntu's goal is to essentially bring computing to the masses. (And pretty much the distribution that basically everyone I've talked to has recommended for people interested in getting started with Linux.) ;-)

Re:One day, but not today

[tayhimself]

Or when your sound card won't work because it's not supported by the version of ALSA shipped with Ubuntu, so you need to update it, then set it in OSS compatibility mode because it won't work in native mode for some reason, then try to figure out why Flash won't work, puzzle over why it cuts out when you pause music in Amarok, then tear some hair out as it stops working altogether for no apparent reason! I've had exactly these types of issues. USB sound card (the total bithead) works with music applications but it refuses to be selected as the default sound device ALSA/OSS/default doesnt work. On another, my crappy on-board sound doesn't work with any version i've tried (6.06 to 7.10). Yet another computer works perfectly fine...

Re:One day, but not today

[weicco]

a) record something using either USB or built in mic's. Record something in windows without messing with a control panel.

I've never even touched control panel when I've done recording in Windows (and I've recorded and edited quite a few hours of live music for my own fun) so I really don't know what the heck you are talking about. Care to elaborate?

Re:One day, but not today

[l0b0]

Or when you want to get 5.1 surround sound via IEC958 (aka. S/PDIF) - I've worked days on this on Ubuntu Feisty, FreeBSD, Mandriva, and SUSE, without success. Documentation is either highly technical (e.g., "Just roll your own using this library") or vague (e.g., "Try tweaking foo, bar, and baz."), and I've yet to see a single example of a working setup.

Re:One day, but not today

[ricegf]

Thanks! Actually, quite a few beginner (and intermediate and advanced) Linux support sites exist already. The barrier to entry is quite low, and Google makes the information rather easy to find. Since I install Linux on a lot of boxes each year, I rely on them often, and they rarely let me down (though you have to separate the wheat from chaff - but as sdkramer pointed out, UbuntuForums.org has high S/N and is usually trustworthy for Ubuntu issues).

I've puzzled over why I don't find the same quality of information for Microsoft's operating systems, especially given the excellent quality of their developer support. I've concluded that Microsoft itself is too focused on corporate (read: high-dollar paid) support for their operating systems to make good support information available for free to the unwashed masses, and independent free sites lack the copyrights to cover a lot of cases such as driver downloads or any analytic information beyond trial and error. Plus, the F/OSS community just strikes me as a lot more friendly and helpful by its nature than Windows' or Macs'.

That's my highly subjective and probably controversial opinion - but honestly held from 30 years of experience nonetheless. :-/

Re:One day, but not today

[ericrost]

I gave up on that one too via the USB dongle I had. It was a non standard interface (as there is a standard for S/PDIF over USB) so I just chucked it, it was only $20 when I bought it, and the drivers sucked under Windows too.

For standard stuff, though, you really shouldn't have to touch it.

Hot air rises

[spleen_blender]

There are two fields where Linux is lacking compared to Apple and Microsoft: How easy it is to screw things up and games. Of course driver support is important, but that is driven by demand of the market, not demand of the developers, so I consider the previous two reasons of higher importance when discussing how best to expand Linux in the market.

Now I know ideally we should all be intelligent enough to be able to operate Linux without screwing something up, and if we do be able to fix it. But the layman is not and will not have our technical ability, however simple the task may be. Since Linux does not have technical support often in the same way Apple and Microsoft do, users are driven away for fear of an inoperable computer. They would rather have a computer that works 50% of the time than 25% of the time. As far as business use for Linux, obviously they have the resources to be able to have any problems fixed and prevented, but personal users can not do that.

As far as games, Tux Racer does not cut it. Email and web browsing of course are workhorse reasons for having a PC, but you can do that on your cell phone nowadays. Honestly, game development seems to be in a bit of a catch 22 in the same way that driver support is a problem. Investors need to see profitability in the market, so they want to see market demand. However market demand isn't rising because there isn't enough of a reason to switch to Linux when you can't play the hottest new games on it. Of course games do get ported, however initial release of games for Linux I think is vital to bring the average computer user into the fold of open source.

Just my two cents.

Re:Hot air rises

[QuantumRiff]

On the game front, the one thing that I have never been able to figure out, is why game vendors don't use a linux base for their games? It seems like it would be a pain to develop, and more importantly, troubleshoot and support so many combinations of OS/Hardware, etc (xp, 7 versions of vista, etc). why not just release a game, with a pared down version of Knoppix or other "live CD" type of media, and just boot from the disk, have the hardware detected automatically, and just run? (ie, like a console, where the hardware is pretty standard and stable). If someone wants to run it while also running other apps, instead of booting from the CD, load a minimal VM that will then load up the CD in a seperate VM than windows. No license worries, and since you can pare down the kernel to only the necessary features, you could get a whole lot of performance out of it with no overhead.

Re:Hot air rises

[Ash-Fox]

How easy it is to screw things up

I haven't noticed to tell you the truth.

But the layman is not and will not have our technical ability, however simple the task may be.

In my experience with average Joe users, they complain (doesn't matter what OS), but there hasn't been a occasion where I have seen one screw up their preinstalled linux install

Since Linux does not have technical support often in the same way Apple and Microsoft do, users are driven away for fear of an inoperable computer.

I have used Microsoft and Apple's support, normal consumer support and corporate support - Sorry, they utterly fail compared to the support I have gotten from Novell.

They would rather have a computer that works 50% of the time than 25% of the time.

I can easily say that a preinstalled linux setup tends to work the majority of the time like Windows (although it doesn't appear to get as bogged down over time).

As far as business use for Linux, obviously they have the resources to be able to have any problems fixed and prevented, but personal users can not do that.

Eh? Most companies do not like pouring resources at all into these things.

As far as games, Tux Racer does not cut it.

All my games under Steam run under Wine just fine (for some reason I get better FPS than natively under Windows with the same hardware).

Honestly, game development seems to be in a bit of a catch 22 in the same way that driver support is a problem.

I haven't noticed driver issues since restricted-manager came out for Ubuntu. They seem really well supported. Games like Unreal Tournament Original/2k3/2k4, Quake I/II/III, Doom I/II/II, Defcon etc. all run natively under Linux just fine too.

Although there is a lot less incentive to develop games natively for Linux these days when Wine can run the source engine games (Half life 2, Counter Strike Source, Portal, Team Fortress 2 - blah blah blah), World of Warcraft, Eve online and quite a lot of other games (and some how manage to give me at least better performance under Linux than I do running the games natively Windows with the same hardware - no 'hacks' or 'tricks' to get the games working either, just open the installer, install, play).

I am however, constantly seeing better development on Linux. More companies are interested and develop new products constantly for the operating system. Major OEMs are selling it like IBM, Lenovo, Dell, HP etc. The major graphic card companies are producing drivers for it ATi/AMD, nVidia, Intel. ATi/AMD are working on developing new opensource drivers with the community, Intel opensourced their drivers with the community.

Re:Hot air rises

[spleen_blender]

Okay, that is good. But how can we make it better than the status quo is the issue, though.

Re:Hot air rises

[Ash-Fox]

Okay, that is good. But how can we make it better than the status quo is the issue, though.

The problem in my opinion is that Microsoft products are free.

In a lot of cases, Linux distributions don't have 100% of what Windows can do. If someone has a choice between a Linux distribution that does 90% (and 20% of other stuff) verses 100% of what they're used to and likely want. They'll likely choose Windows -- Unless they had to shell out money to get Windows.

Usually when people have to shell out of money, they become more willing to live with compromises in certain areas that the alternative isn't good at.

Now, while you may say that "Windows isn't free". Everyone and I mean, everyone has a friend who has a friend which can get a copy of for free.

Additionally, because when you goto a computer shop and purchase a computer, you're not told "If you want Microsoft Windows, you'll need to pay 100USD extra (or whatever the price is)" verses the basic install of some free distribution.

If there was a lot less piracy a seven years ago, Linux seen as a option in stores. I would be pretty sure that Linux would of obtained a lot more development and would of passed Windows and OS X in functionality in all ways by now.

I think what is needed, is a better WGA anti-piracy technology.

Re:Hot air rises

[bendodge]

I develop on a platform called Game Maker. It's kinda slow and bulky, but it makes game development fast and easy and there are quite a few good casual games made with it (goto yoyogames.com to see some).

Game Maker makes DirectX games which don't work in WINE, but the runner is currently being ported from Delphi to C++ to allow the games to be played on Macs, and I'm hoping it will have a side-effect of finally allowing Game Maker-made games to run with WINE. So hopefully there will be a LOT more games available around the middle of 2008. I sure hope so, because I hate booting XP to run my own games.

Re:Hot air rises

[Blakey Rat]

This idea keeps coming up, and it's still a bad idea.

They don't do it because:
* The LiveCD can't possibly have drivers for all future video cards
* The LiveCD can't even guarantee the ability to read the host computer's HD to save the game. The HD could be encrypted or in a format it doesn't understand.
* The LiveCD can't possible guarantee it will have every game accessory the player may use during the game (like a voice chat program, or maybe a web browser), and if it did, it would have to be re-configured for every game.

Running in a VM is a new angle I hadn't seen before, and might solve a couple of these problems, but it still seems a lot more trouble than it's worth. The number one most important reason is this:

* DirectX already exists. Why reinvent the wheel?

Re:Hot air rises

[LocoMan]

Don't know about you, but any game where I have to reboot to use it is a game I'll never be using on my computer... not to mention that it would defeat the point of having an OS that already has dealt with the specific details of that particular computer (for example, in the computer where I use ubuntu I have to add some extra commands in the boot options for the network card to work, without them I get no internet)

Re:Hot air rises

[LocoMan]

I wouldn't say "world of warcraft" being no hacks or tricks to run on linux. At least on my computer (won't say about performance because the video card is worse than on my main gaming computer) I had to open several configuration files and do some changes in wine's registry to make WoW work, and still have problems with sound (it stutters no matter what I try) and some effects (full screen glow, for example) have to be disabled.

Don't get me wrong, gaming on windows has made some great strides forward, but it's still very far from where windows is now, that you can practically go to the store, pick up almost any game you can see and be sure it'll work.

Re:Hot air rises

[LocoMan]

of course I meant "gaming on linux" on that last sentence.. 8^)

Re:Hot air rises

[Ash-Fox]

I had to open several configuration files and do some changes in wine's registry to make WoW work, and still have problems with sound (it stutters no matter what I try) and some effects (full screen glow, for example) have to be disabled.

I can say (just tested) I experience none of this on Wine version 0.9.47 (WineHQ's build) under Kubuntu Gutsy.

Re:Hot air rises

[Eli Gottlieb]

Well they could just port from Delphi to Lazarus, which would enable their games to compile and run natively under Windoze, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Re:Hot air rises

[cadeon]

Who's up for starting an open source, good, unbreakable WGA alternative, and giving it to Microsoft for free?

Here, use this. You're stuff will get pirated less.

Re:Hot air rises

[LocoMan]

I'll try it again soon (waiting for a new video card to arrive for main computer, then the ubuntu one can inherit a better card), also haven't tried it since I upgraded to 7.10 this last weekend, so maybe it's better now.. 8^)

Re:Hot air rises

[Ash-Fox]

I'm curious. Were you using the WineHQ's repositories for Wine? Because I didn't see this issue on Edgy either (I was using WineHQ's repositories).

Re:Hot air rises

[civilizedINTENSITY]

"DirectX already exists. Why reinvent the wheel?"

Exactly! OpenGL already exists, why in hell would anyone invent DirectX?

Re:Hot air rises

[rabiddeity]

I think what is needed, is a better WGA anti-piracy technology.

I disagree. WGA is already restrictive enough to prevent casual copying by most nontechnical users. What's needed as a first step is to decouple Windows from the supply chain. At the moment it doesn't matter whether people can pirate it or not, because most people don't NEED to. They pay for a legal copy anyway, without much choice. You said it yourself, if people had to pay $100USD for a copy of Windows with their PC, they wouldn't buy it. The simple fact of the matter is that it's really REALLY hard to buy a PC without Windows paid for and installed on it, and even if you can get a Linux distro preinstalled or a blank hard drive, the manufacturer doesn't pass that savings on to you. Thus the biggest draw of Linux for most users-- its price-- is quietly dodged. Sure you can get around this by building your PC from parts, but most people don't do that.

Re:Hot air rises

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to buy a computer without Windows pre-installed! I think forcing me as a customer to pay money to M$ every time I buy a computer is very very immoral!

Actually, the first large firm

[WindBourne]

would have to be DEC. They started supporting right before they fell. But amongst CURRENT major one, they were the second. MS had already taking it serious and had a tiger team together. In fact, it is possible that the formation of a tiger team is part of what ultimately triggered IBM to chase it; The enemy of my enemy is my friend!.

Tagged psuedointellectualism

[antifoidulus]

How many articles are we going to have on the same topic? Just a bunch of nonsensical ramblings about "corporations" and "freedom" with about 0 substance. You don't like the direction Linux is taking in terms of "corporate influence", then fork it, end of story.

Re:Tagged psuedointellectualism

[notamisfit]

They don't want to fork it. They want somebody else to fork it and give them the benefits with no effort on their part.

Next stop is the desktop

[javilon]

It is already happening with Ubuntu, and it will help linux get drivers for all of the hardware that is out there.

Re:SourceForce? Come on...

[Xentor]

Great, now they're going to start calling themselves SourceForce to cover up the typo.

I mean, it does sound pretty cool, but it's totally meaningless.

This is not the typo you are looking for..

[Chas]

*Handwave*

Linux and its apps can be better

[bogaboga]

Where does Linux go from here? Well, distros can make Linux better. What about making total solutions possible. My gripe is with normal server tasks. When it comes to email serving for example, one has to deal with several pieces in order to have a "total solution." How about making total solutions a main-stream paradigm?

I am impressed by what folks at http://www.open-xchange.com/ and http://www.tummy.com/ have dome with group-ware products.

Re:Linux and its apps can be better

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo.

Re:Linux and its apps can be better

[ericrost]

how about: http://www.zimbra.com/ http://www.citadel.org/

Re:Linux and its apps can be better

[bogaboga]

When it came to Ubuntu 7.10, a distro I love and find easy to work with, Zimbra failed me completely. There does not seem to be an install-ready Ubuntu or Debian package, though I hear Zimbra is an open source solution.

Their [flash] demo is quite impressive. I haven't seen anything that comes close to Zimbra's style, features and capabilities. I will check out Citadel. This is new to me. Thanks.

Re:Linux and its apps can be better

[ericrost]

You should run it on Dapper (the LTS release). They have an installer package for it. You need a dedicated server (or VM as I have) for it, since it installs its own versions of packages.

Give it a whirl on Dapper, I got it running on 7.04, but there were some hacks that aren't pretty that I had to do, but I was already far enough in that I didn't want to rebuild the VM as a Dapper machine.

I am using it as my personal email and calendaring server, and really like it. I use Thunderbird with the Lightning plugin as my desktop client, but I hear the integration with Outlook is REALLY good (better than with T-Bird as that's what the dev team focuses on).

Anyhow, just plugging a solution I personally use and like.

Isn't it too early in the day

[zappepcs]

For a flame war on Linux fanbois?
There are several 'hobbies' that I partake of, and inevitably, in all of them, as someone is introduced to the hobby, they have great enthusiasm for it, try to re-invent the wheel, or loudly proclaim how great something is, despite it's aging status technologically.

Linux is proving it's point. IBM and others ARE contributing (to Linux and many other projects... Thank you IBM) but I think that the real point is that F/OSS is becoming popular, not *just* Linux. Where proprietary systems have been the bedrock of business applications, F/OSS is making strong inroads. LAMP anyone?

The problem is that you can't talk about how good it is without comparing it to Windows or other such products. THAT is the problem... comparing it. When you go to the hardware store to buy a hammer, do you notice if the head is round or fluted? Do you compare the steel quality of new mower blades before deciding on which to buy? A tool is a tool. Seldom, IF EVER, will you find yourself thinking "Oh noooes, I can't dig a hole with this shovel, it was not made by Acme"

Interoperability is the key. The interface between hammer and nail is a pretty open standard. The interface between dirt and shovel is a pretty open (if dirty) interface. The PROBLEM is not whether F/OSS and Linux is good enough.. it IS. The problem is that interface to content. The one remaining major hurdle is MS document formats. Once that interfacing/interoperability problem is solved, Dell will be making money shipping Linux configured desktop systems. The problem is as much user perception as it is anything else.

For about ... ummm ZERO dollars I can setup up an application development station for Linux apps. Compare that to the MS equivelent? yikes. As soon as it makes no difference to users whether they use Linux or Windows... I bet the cost of the MSDN drops to something your mom can afford to buy you for christmas. Lets face it, Linux and F/OSS ARE the only thing creating competition to MS. Mac is nice, workable, and user friendly... but the price tag is a bit much for someone shopping for the Hyundai of home computers.

Re:Isn't it too early in the day

[Blakey Rat]

For about ... ummm ZERO dollars I can setup up an application development station for Linux apps.

I don't know what goes into your "station", but for $0 you can make a .net application for Windows using any of the Express development tools.

Re:Isn't it too early in the day

[ratboy666]

So where do I get Windows for $0?

Inquiring minds want to know...

Or are you suggesting running the free Windows tools under Linux?

Re:Isn't it too early in the day

[jez9999]

Where proprietary systems have been the bedrock of business applications, F/OSS is making strong inroads. LAMP anyone?

Trouble is, you chose a bad time to make that comment. Right now, LAMP's populatiry and superiority are being seriously threatened by C# w/ .NET w/ Visual Studio w/ IIS6/7, which offers an extremely convenient and powerful development package. OSS really needs to develop its own equivalent, and importantly, a damn good IDE to go with it. Java with Eclipse is probably the closest at the moment.

Re:Isn't it too early in the day

[Anonymous Coward]

Untrue. You need Windows (150$). You need support, you need MSDN (1000$).

Re:Isn't it too early in the day

[Arterion]

Your point is valid, but the Express editions are limited when you start getting into database-driven applications, which is pretty much anything in the corporate world. Of course, getting right down to it: the .NET SDK is free, so you could write all your code in notepad if you wanted to, and compile it from the command line.

Re:Isn't it too early in the day

[Anonymous Coward]

No you don't. Express editions of the Visual tools are 0$. MSDN library is online. Windows came with the computer. What's not to like?

Re:Isn't it too early in the day

[Snufu]

LAMP anyone? No thanks, I'm trying to cut down.

Re:Isn't it too early in the day

[Arrawa]

Windows came with the computer, means you have paid too much for your computer. Ask for a pc or laptop without Windows and you will get a discount.

Re:Isn't it too early in the day

[weicco]

Yes, Express editions are somewhat limited but they are still very usable. I've made several apps and websites using them. I like the Professional edition better of course and I like to have MSDN on my local hard drive but I can manage with Express and online MSDN.

And for database stuff you can use SQL Server Management Studio Express, which is also free and freely downloadable (as is SQL Server Express edition).

So if you have Windows license your development costs are only limited to your own personal time, electric and internet bill.

Re:Isn't it too early in the day

[Zoxed]

> So where do I get Windows for $0?

Damn noobs on Slashdot: try starting here :-)

Re:Isn't it too early in the day

[TheQuantumShift]

"Once that interfacing/interoperability problem is solved"

It has been solved. Several times in fact. And 2.3 nanoseconds later, here comes yet another version of office with new formats.

Re:SourceForce? Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ewe muss bee knew hear.

OpenSolaris!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do we go from here?

To take things to the next logical level, OpenSolaris, of course!

(Did you expect "Linux"? Um, no.)

Re:OpenSolaris!

[Anonymous Coward]

That may be the previous logical level, surely not the next. It has a few bright spots, but that's it.

Would you like it if the human race evolved into apes?

Forget about it

[tepples]

Come on editors. SourceForce? It could have been worse: SourceForget. Wasn't there a big wipe of projects' MySQL databases on SourceForge.net a few years ago?

Re:Forget about it

[zcat_NZ]

Wasn't there a big wipe of projects' MySQL databases on SourceForge.net a few years ago?

I wish... It's called 'sourceforget' because 90% of the 'projects' are something someone thought might be a good idea, started a project in the planning stage, and then gave up when they realized nobody was going to write it all for them. Starting a new project on sourceforge is easy. Writing code is hard.

ugh

[nomadic]

With the success that Linux is currently enjoying Linux.com (also owned by SourceForce, Inc) asks the question, where do we go from here? With such a high level of success and greater corporate participation (on both the consumer and provider fronts) will the spirit of freedom and idealism remain true or will the ever-present corporate bottom line eventually take over?

Let's be honest here; the majority of people here (and I count myself among them) expected Linux to be a hell of a lot more successful than it has been. After 15 years of development it still commands a tiny market share, even in the server market.

Not that the questions raised by the article aren't valid at some level, but I wish we'd get rid of this whole unjustified "rah rah Linux is finally taking off!" attitude that's been around for about 12 of those years.

On a related note, neither 2007 nor 2008 will be the "year of the desktop" on Linux.

Re:ugh

[Endo13]

Linux is never really going to "take off". That's because the whole Linux/FOSS model is anathema to what it takes for a desktop OS to really take off. What Linux needs to "take off" is a single, easy-to-use viable distro for the public. Which is not going to happen, because Linux and FOSS are all about having lots of choices and having everyone customize it for themselves. Sorry, not going to work. Software developers don't want to worry about working around the differences (whether real or perceived) in umpteen dozen different distributions (and variations of those distributions), most of which have significantly less than .1% of total desktop market-share. Heck even Ubuntu (currently the distro that most nearly meets these requirements) has at least three variations.

Re:ugh

[Ash-Fox]

Let's be honest here; the majority of people here (and I count myself among them) expected Linux to be a hell of a lot more successful than it has been. After 15 years of development it still commands a tiny market share, even in the server market.

Here is the reason: Windows is free too.

Hopefully WGA will put a stop to this.

Re:ugh

[FooBarWidget]

I thought you might have a point until you said "Heck even Ubuntu (currently the distro that most nearly meets these requirements) has at least three variations.".

Just what is wrong with having 3 variations of Ubuntu? They're all Ubuntu, i.e. they're binary compatible with each other. If you make an Ubuntu package, that package will work on Kubuntu and Xubuntu as well. The package manager will install any dependencies you might need. The differences between the Ubuntu editions are smaller than differences between Vista Home, Vista Professional, Vista Ultimate and whatever the other 3 Vista editions are called. Just like a .exe will work on different Vista editions, a .deb will work fine on different Ubuntu editions.

Now, I'm not arguing that that .deb may not work on other Linux distros, but I really don't understand why you're complaining about Ubuntu havving different editions. I really don't see the problem.

Re:ugh

[JakartaDean]

I thought you might have a point until you said "Heck even Ubuntu (currently the distro that most nearly meets these requirements) has at least three variations.".

Just what is wrong with having 3 variations of Ubuntu? They're all Ubuntu, i.e. they're binary compatible with each other. If you make an Ubuntu package, that package will work on Kubuntu and Xubuntu as well. The package manager will install any dependencies you might need. The differences between the Ubuntu editions are smaller than differences between Vista Home, Vista Professional, Vista Ultimate and whatever the other 3 Vista editions are called. Just like a .exe will work on different Vista editions, a .deb will work fine on different Ubuntu editions.

Now, I'm not arguing that that .deb may not work on other Linux distros, but I really don't understand why you're complaining about Ubuntu havving different editions. I really don't see the problem.

Maybe that's part of the problem?

I'm not picking on you in particular, but I'd like to suggest that having multiple choices does benefit those with a few years of Linux under their belts, but is anathema for those thinking about adopting it (or any new technology). Users need to be confident that they are doing the right thing before they change, and they simply can't. There's no single "Linux" to install, and they won't be confident they are doing the right thing if they don't even know which version of Linux they should choose. This is currently a bigger problem than drivers or hardware incompatibilities (although these are still too daunting).

No business would ever try to launch a new product by offering hundreds of different versions, with different brand and model names, at the same time. Yet this is actually what the potential Linux user is faced with. Maybe /. types are too anti-corporate to want to understand basic marketing, but that doesn't change the facts.

Re:ugh

[petermgreen]

most people at least in the west get windows bundled anyway and with XP wga is easilly avoided by simply disabling automatic updates.

Re:ugh

[Ash-Fox]

most people at least in the west get windows bundled anyway

But not Office and even then, many people will choose the 'free' Microsoft option over openoffice.org.

and with XP wga is easilly avoided by simply disabling automatic updates.

Not with XP service pack 3.

Re:ugh

[FooBarWidget]

Why? Vista adaption is held back by many things, but the existence of different editions doesn't seem to be one of them.

Re:ugh

[petermgreen]

Not with XP service pack 3.
so what? pirates who want to avoid wga can simply avoid sp3, I don't think there is anything earth shattering in it.

Re:ugh

[Endo13]

I didn't say there's anything wrong with having multiple versions of Ubuntu. I said it's the type of thing that's part of the problem keeping Linux from ever being truly mainstream. Sure, there's multiple versions of Vista. Except really not. They're all the exact same OS, the only difference is some of the "versions" have various features disabled. The same disk is used to install all of them. And you don't even need to install anything extra to go from Home Basic to Ultimate. All you need to do is enter the right key.

But then you have Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and I don't know what else. They don't even share the same GUI. Sure, to someone familiar with Linux in general and Ubuntu specifically that's such a non-issue it doesn't matter. But when you're a software developer trying to maximize your potential marketshare for your effort, it matters. So you want your package to integrate with the GUI. Do you make it for Gnome, or KDE, or perhaps even a different popular GUI? And who's package manager should you develop for? And so on. To you, Mr. Every-Day-Linux-User these differences are so easy to work around it's nothing. But like I said earlier, developers who are not so familiar with Linux don't even want to worry about perceived differences. Because they see lots of time involved in not only coding, but also testing. Sure, you can leave it up to the various distributors to do the final packaging, etc. to make it work with their own GUI and package manager, but then that means the software publisher is leaving his potential marketshare decisions to someone else. To make sure his software is available to all those distributions and variations, he has to do all the work himself. So in the repackaging and retesting process they see hours of extra labor for each slight variation, often times for what would amount to a few hundred more sales at best, if that.

So until it's so easy that a software developer can make the equivalent of one or two different .exe's that work on ALL current distributions and variations of Linux, with a simple double-click to install and no extra tweaks needed, it's just not going to happen.

If it wasn't for the fact that this is really the only hope of ever breaking MS's stranglehold on the desktop market, I wouldn't be bothered at all. But since I still find myself forced to use Windows for my PC games because no one wants to tweak their game for umpteen variations of Linux, (not to mention the lack of display drivers, which can also be attributed to this) I find myself very frustrated.

The only way I ever see this happening is with some kind of Ubuntu project funded by a true big-leagues company such as Google. So until we've got a one-size-fits-all Goobuntu, it's a pipe-dream.

It is an existing company, you insensitive clod

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.sourceforce.net/

Scuttlemonkey is their PR agent.

Re:It is an existing company, you insensitive clod

[Zonk (troll)]

http://www.sourceforce.net/

Scuttlemonkey is their PR agent. That looks like a typo squatter to me. I couldn't find anything there that isn't an ad.

Re:It is an existing company, you insensitive clod

[Anonymous Coward]

Just looks like a cybersquatter page.

Re:It is an existing company, you insensitive clod

[budgenator]

Yeeewww! pop-ups, now this computer probably has cooties!, I'm going to have to malware scan the whole machine, your a fucktard

Re:It is an existing company, you insensitive clod

[Pie-rate]

Only because you're a fucking moron using Internet Exploder on Windows.

Why would you expect sympathy for that on Slashdor?

Re:It is an existing company, you insensitive clod

[ThePengwin]

Hey! Sometimes IE is beneficial to browsing the internet....

like....

um.....

ar.....

wait, I retract that. XD

Re:It is an existing company, you insensitive clod

[budgenator]

Seriously, I was using mozilla on win XP SP2 and the site popped a few pop-ups through and the CPU utilization pegged at 100% for the mozilla process and stayed that way. My home machine is Linux so I really don't worry about that stuff, so it did worry me on the machine at work, I though I got p0wned. Now that I'm home I went back there and after showing a nice pretty rendition of the "My Computer" in windows XP and telling me that I had the a "system error" of running Opera 9.24 In Linux, they asked me to install an ActiveX control, but I saved it instead.

Blah blah, woof woof

[Whitemice]

> Linux is surrounded by proprietary IT firms. Some of them view
> Linux as a profit maker, others as a threat to their profits.
> Both sides represent a challenge for Linux in holding to its
> ideals of freedom and openess.

Blah blah, woof woof. Maybe the best part of all this is that the fundamentalists will pull up camp and mover over to BSD leaving LINUX and related Open Source projects to do what software is meant to do - provide solutions. Because the solutions are what it is about, most of the "proprietary IT firms" get this. There isn't any loss in an Open Source solution because most users, certainly Enterprise users, don't give a *6*&^*@&$ about the source, why want a *solution*. IBM certainly gets it, I think most companies do.

So the fundamentalists can boot up their proprietary Macs, listen to music on their DRM encumbered iPods, and post about the terribly threats to the pure ideals of freedom and openness of BSD; and leave the useful people alone so they can write code.

From the article: "Linux and free software are here to stay."

Yep, because they provide solutions. They will remain free and open, in the useful sense, because it benefits everyone. There is no market for a MTA, there is a market for e-mail solutions, there is no market for file-servers, there is a market for corporate storage & data-retention solutions.

Q: Where Does Linux Go From Here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: Where Does Linux Go From Here?
A: To the Oven ..lol

Sincerely yours,

ballsac

the real next stop

[rucs_hack]

should be spacecraft OS development. Silly? Think again. How much money do you think is going to be in that field when commercial spacecraft take of? Enough for microsoft to buy up any startup with the slightest inkling of how to control an attitude jet, that's for sure.
Asteroid mining? Ok not yet, but think about all the minerals on earth we can actually get at, then forget the number because it barely counts as a fraction of what's floating around in the Solar system. Then there's all that near earth junk, old satellites, empty booster stages and lots more relativelly easy to reach stuff.

I'd feel a lot happier travelling in, or sending cargo on, a spacecraft that had an open OS at it core. That way we have a greater chance to avoid things like secretive burying of known problems that might effect a companies profits.

Who likes and who hates Linux?

[erroneus]

That's as easy as following the money!

For those who get paid by making software as a product, they hate Linux. For those who get paid by installing or maintaining the software they probably like or even love Linux. You don't have to pay for Linux and you still get paid for doing the work for people.

So "product side" hates Linux. "Service side" likes Linux. I don't think it needs to be much more complicated than that... it is, though... all those "Microsoft Partners" out there making a living by supporting Microsoft stuff *ONLY* might have something to worry about since their skills and certs aren't all that applicable. But there was "IT" before Microsoft and there will be "IT" after Microsoft and there *WILL* be an "After Microsoft" period just as the unshakable "Novell" fell from its pedestal. (Unthinkable back when all business systems ran on Novell.)

Its the hardware not the software!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment is valid but misplaced. SGI uses Linux on its Altix line of hardware and their add on software makes it aware of the specialized hardware within Linux.

The main problem that your pointing out is a problem with x86 hardware. Windows and every other OS that runs on x86 have the same problems. The problem stems from there being no standardization and no evolution of the technology. Essentially all of these 50K x86 servers are just big beefy PC's with built in redundancy and some extra monitoring options and are essentially an evolution of the original IBM product. The vendors are moving in the right direction though and Linux is supporting this hardware as they need to. For example the IPMI interfaces and BMC interfaces have direct access with ipmitool where you can read chassis and sensor information. Window's cannot natively talk to the IPMI interface without add on drivers. Linux supports MANY of the raid controllers from within its kernel unlike windows that has to have drivers to even see the drives.

Im a big Solairs fan myself because it truly is an integrated hardware and software platform. The big issue is cost. Thats why a number of companies in the industry are willing to put up with the shortcomings of x86 hardware and related OS's. Its a big trend now for people to go with the cheap mantra when in actuality it costs them more in the long haul in downtime and data loss.

Even further into the cheap cheap cheap mantra is the concept of VM's which were abandoned in the 1970's because they never worked and because of the political battles between departments for resources of the mainframe. This is being looked at again for the concept of energy savings and hardware savings but virtual machines really equal virtual performance. Many companies have the concept that you can oversubcribe the resource of one machine and serve many users and "hopefully" not all of them will need resources at the same time. The Administrator of a VM box is under the pressure from that many more users when there is a hardware failure. It amazes me that companies put all their eggs in one basket on cheap commodity hardware that is known for failure. Loose a system planar or other low level non redundant piece of hardware and suddenly you have hundreds of servers down instead of just one. And of course because we are cheapskates we have to call up and scream at our vendor to get out ASAP because we were to cheap to have a spare kit and an Admin onsite and or capable of switching out hardware.

You get what you pay for one way or another and most people are obsessed with the price tag rather than the true costs. Buy the bottom of the line machine and spend your time down on the phone to India.

Re:Its the hardware not the software!

[Reivec]

"It amazes me that companies put all their eggs in one basket on cheap commodity hardware that is known for failure. Loose a system planar or other low level non redundant piece of hardware and suddenly you have hundreds of servers down instead of just one. And of course because we are cheapskates we have to call up and scream at our vendor to get out ASAP because we were to cheap to have a spare kit and an Admin onsite and or capable of switching out hardware."

More true words have never been spoken. I see this literally every day, not because of using virtualization, but the same concept of cutting corners to save money and then making a big stink when something fails because you didn't have a backup plan.

To working....

[PortHaven]

I really, really, really want to support Linux. However, frankly, I just don't have the time to hassle with it. I have made 4 endeavors in the past. And currently have a 5th endeavor for my wife. If I were to give Linux a score grade it would "C-".

I know that's not what a lot of you want to hear. But it's the truth. I don't want to spend several days trying to get a 802.11g wifi card working. I don't want to have to use some install manager or try to figure out how to get some script to run from the terminal in order to install an application. I simply want to be able to click and launch it, and have it install. Sadly, driver & software installation hurdles plague Linux. (In fact, these were the same issues that plagued Linux when I tried it repeatedly in the late 90's early millenials.)

I will say, it's improved quite a bit. At least in video card support apparently. But the truth of the matter is, I'd take XP & OS X over Linux. And that's because I'm anti-Linux or don't support Linux. Far from it, I wouldn't have tried it for my wife's (non-critical use) machine. So please guys....focus on these issues. (And don't say "Linux isn't really for the masses." Because everyone else keeps trying to push it that way. And that is the slated goal of many.)

Best of luck all...

- The Saj

Re:To working....

[Jugalator]

Agreed; Ubuntu 7.10 is working great for me, but I know another one who installed it on a laptop with a SATA DVD-ROM , and while the installer had absolutely no trouble reading from the disc and he have basically just toyed around with it a bit, now suddenly the device scd0 is in /etc/fstab, but can't be mounted anymore. I mean... As useless some may treat Windows, I haven't really heard of cases with DVD drives suddenly disappearing. Suggestions on the web were about disabling ACPI support, command-line editing, etc. But why do ACPI support need to be fiddled with in Linux (and no it didn't help anyway), but not in Windows? And so on... He said "what a typical weird Linux problem" when noticing what had happened, and I can't say I can blame him with a clear conscience.

Re:To working....

[Anonymous Coward]

You are consumer not Enterprise. Why dont you install Windows server 2003 enterprise on your wifes laptop? what that would be silly? then why are you using a server/workstation OS on your wifes laptop?

Enterprise is where linux shines and it shines well with competent IT behind it. Just like how solaris is incredibly stable and works great with competent IT behind it.

you are not a computer expert, therefore you need to use an OS that is not designed for Computer experts.

you are a user with limited skillsets and education. you need an OS that holds your hand.

Re:To working....

[phobos13013]

But the truth of the matter is, I'd take XP & OS X over Linux. And that's because I'm anti-Linux or don't support Linux.

I'd say this is a Freudian slip, but lets just chalk it up to typo.

Regardless, I'd like to see your proficiency on using Windows 95 or OSX 8. I'm sure everything was just so naturally intuitive when you walked into it, right? Unfortunately, most people have for so long worked with ONE type of interface, of COURSE it's intuitive. Sit a PC-only user in front of a mac and they say "Oh, this doesnt make sense to me!" or a Mac-only user in front of a PC and you get the same response. If instead of complaining about how utterly unintuitive an experience Linux was and took some effort to learn how that box in front of you worked, maybe it would start clicking.

Additionally, driver support in Linux is pretty much at an "It-Just-Works" state, its a lot better than the days of Win 95 and even 98 when i used to get driver problems ALL the time.

Linux is providing us with a FREE, OPEN, community-driven alternative to computing. If you want to support a small group of self-interested organizations ultimately only interested in power over usability, then go waste your money, I'm saving mine and having an AWESOME and FUN time doing it!

Go Gentoo (PS, a great way to get FORCED into learning about your Linux system!)

Re:To working....

[JoshJ]

After the first time, you should have went out of your way to pick hardware that is known to work on Linux, rather than just buying whatever and getting Linux to work on it. That said, check out www.system76.com , www.dell.com/linux , and similar sites so it'll be pre-installed and already configured to work.

Ubuntu's installer is simple- you click a checkbox to pick what you want, then click "apply" and it'll install. You don't have to use "sudo apt-get install".

Re:To working....

[Jugalator]

Btw, maybe I should also add on my conclusion part from these things happening every now and then... And having tried distros now and then from since about Red Hat 5.

When Linux works and e.g. OpenOfficer fulfill your needs, and you don't need any Windows-only software, it's awesome, like running a non-hardware dependent OS X that's free and with an incredible community. Using Linux don't even need to imply giving up on a great user interface anymore. I honestly think there's no match anymore either in Windows Vista or OS X. Vista is really too "heavy", and tries to do too much at once out of the box, and OS X has problems I can't really see any open source fan can enjoy. I think it's even worse than Windows in the proprietary sense. People would start foam if MS started tieing their own hardware with Windows copies and get retailers to sell that crap, but at Apple, that's routine. Obvious advantages with hardware compatibility, but obvious disadvantages from a personal philosophy in how you want to use your computer.

The problem with Linux is however than if things break, or don't run, it can be the most weird problems to someone used to Windows. Like it not working well on a 1 year old graphics card. Now I'm not talking about what people whine about with Vista and Geforce 8's, but that you don't even get a picture from the X server on the live CD, even in VGA mode, if you have such a card.

So Linux IS unfortunately still very much "hit & miss" to me, and that's the #1 thing I'd like to see improve. The examples I gave depends a lot on hardware manufacturer support, but I could just as well have given software examples. For example, in the very latest KDE version (of the 3.5 branch), Konqueror's column icon view didn't even work with keyboard navigation. It skipped icons and jumped around. It works well in Windows, and Nautilus. This is a very very basic feature to me.

Re:To working....

[PortHaven]

"You are consumer not Enterprise. Why dont you install Windows server 2003 enterprise on your wifes laptop? what that would be silly?"

Actually, I know quite a few people who use Windows Server 2003 as their OS. Why don't I? Simply because I don't have the spare $$$ and no longer have corporate access to it.

Furthermore, if I did install Windows Server 2003 I'd not have many problems doing just the basic things. (ie: I am sure I could play sound, connect via wifi, etc)

"Enterprise is where linux shines and it shines well with competent IT behind it."
Second, I don't recall this article specifying "ONLY ENTERPRISE DISCUSSION". Fine, it shines in Enterprise. So is that any reason to not have desktop users? Oh, guess what, Novell shined in enterprise and failed to address these types of issues. And it pretty much killed Novell.

"you are not a computer expert, therefore you need to use an OS that is not designed for Computer experts"
Nope, just have a computer science degree. And have been working with computers since 1993. Thank you.

"you are a user with limited skillsets and education. you need an OS that holds your hand."
No, I am a person like many others who has a family and hobbies all while working 1-2 jobs. I don't want to spend all my free time having to fiddle with basic computer operations and add to my skill sets. In fact, I'd rather focus on those skill sets which I need to perform my tasks at work (ie: programming).

***

That said... you are "an anonymous coward" and a "blithering @$$hole" who can't even stand by your own words.

You are also the #1 thing holding Linux back. If Linux could just shut-up all the idiot jerks like you it would be a long way toward improving itself.

The one downside of open source is that one's "technology evangelists" can be your worse advertisements. Linux suffers from this greatly. Thankfully, I am mature and intelligent enough to know that stupid people like this guy only represent a small portion of Linux advocates.

So I still have hope...

Re:To working....

[nuzak]

> Go Gentoo (PS, a great way to get FORCED into learning about your Linux system!)

Watching compiler messages scroll by does not constitute learning how a system works.

Re:To working....

[PortHaven]

"I'd say this is a Freudian slip, but lets just chalk it up to typo."

ROTFLMAO, my bad...but dang that's funny. Yes, there should be a "not anti-linux..."

"Regardless, I'd like to see your proficiency on using Windows 95 or OSX 8. I'm sure everything was just so naturally intuitive when you walked into it, right?"
No, of course it wasn't. But it hasn't been since DOS/Windows 3x that I was constantly editing script files, and fussing to get just anything to work.

That said, I've only been using OS X for 5 months. And the time to transition to the new environment was quite short. That's not to say I don't have to haggle thru on some things. Or drop into terminal or run some scripts (ie: to view my hidden .svn files). But to just get up and running for the basics was very little problem.

"If instead of complaining about how utterly unintuitive an experience Linux was and took some effort to learn how that box in front of you worked, maybe it would start clicking."
Trust me, I spend several days trying to just get the wifi & sound working. Got sound 3/4 working and finally had to have a friend get wifi working. Fun fun fun...

If I had the time to waste I would. I simply don't...

"Additionally, driver support in Linux is pretty much at an "It-Just-Works" state, its a lot better than the days of Win 95 and even 98 when i used to get driver problems ALL the time."
I'd say it's in the "Windows 3x" days with regards on many driver aspects.

"Linux is providing us with a FREE, OPEN, community-driven alternative to computing. If you want to support a small group of self-interested organizations ultimately only interested in power over usability, then go waste your money, I'm saving mine and having an AWESOME and FUN time doing it!"

I guess part of the problem is I just don't have much time for FUN these days. I'd much rather go out shooting with my digital camera than sit for three nights working on a wifi driver installation.

Re:To working....

[phobos13013]

I completely agree

Re:To working....

[Anonymous Coward]

My DVD drive randomly disappears in Windows sometimes... :( It comes back after a while, but it's still a pain.

Re:To working....

[jimicus]

The whole thrust of the GPs argument stems from reading sites like /. and ZDNet announce "Finally! Linux is ready for the masses" and taking this comment at its face value.

Nobody double-checks that their hardware works with Windows. The very idea that it might not is completely alien. And when Windows users try Linux, having been told that "Finally! Linux is ready for the masses", they don't expect to have to check that their hardware will work.

Linux doesn't have this level of hardware support yet. Sure, basic things like networking, hard disks and that are fine - but times have changed in the last 10 years. For your average desktop user, "basic things" now includes WiFi, suspend/hibernate and that cheap nasty webcam they picked up in Walmart for $9.95.

Re:To working....

[PortHaven]

"After the first time, you should have went out of your way to pick hardware that is known to work on Linux, rather than just buying whatever and getting Linux to work on it."

See, then it's not free. This was a laptop that I picked up for my wife for $350. To do that I'd be spending several hundred dollars or more. Secondly, it's near impossible to get details of the specific hardware before purchase. In fact, many of my model had a different wifi card that was highly recommended by Linux users.

"Ubuntu's installer is simple- you click a checkbox to pick what you want, then click "apply" and it'll install. You don't have to use "sudo apt-get install"."

I tried using the installer to install the RAIDar software and it didn't seem to know what to do with either of the three Linux packages on the disk.

I intend to revisit it, and I am sure I can get it installed...but trying to get the free time means a week or two wait.

***********

Anyways, my point is - this article was asking where to go next for Linux. So I provided feedback on areas that Linux needs improvement. Ironically, doing so usually gets one bashed. (Though I'll take some of that on account of my typo.)

***********

But I'd really love to support Linux. Or I wouldn't be bothering trying to get my wife using it instead of Windows Vista. (I guess, I could take everyone's advice and simply spend more $$$ and buy only Macs. And join the crowd of TANSTAAFL folks.

In truth, we had two PC's die which left my wife needing a computer. Just having a baby, and a car accident repair and numerous other events I was in no position to dish out a lot of $$$ for a new machine. So I went with a $350 laptop and a Ubuntu. ;-)

I'm trying...

Re:To working....

[Kjella]

I know that's not what a lot of you want to hear. But it's the truth. I don't want to spend several days trying to get a 802.11g wifi card working. 1. Buy supported hardware.
2. Use the latest desktop-oriented distro.
3. Did I remember to say buy supported hardware?

There are always people trying to make non-supported hardware work on Linux, who are trying out various arcane command line incantations, alpha-quality reverse engineered drivers and hacks like ndiswrapper to make it work with Linux. If you do not want to be part of them, you must accept that said card will not work under Linux. No, you can't expect every piece of hardware, working as it might be in Windows, to also work in Linux.

I don't want to have to use some install manager or try to figure out how to get some script to run from the terminal in order to install an application. I simply want to be able to click and launch it, and have it install. "britney_spears_naked.jpg.exe [Open] [Save] [Cancel]" is the biggest source of viruses, trojans and malware on Windows. I go to "Add/Remove programs", type in the name and install and it's as easy as can be. Almost all the good software is in distro repositories, can you tell me what it is you'd like to install, that isn't there? Particularly when you include the multiverse repository (Ubuntu, but others have similar) which tend to have all the free closed-source software as well. And if you desperately wnat payware, click-n-run is better than downloading random executables any day.

Would duplicating Windows' method be any problem? Hell no, I see it every time I run "wine setup.exe". Linux has it's variation of that too, but I prefer the distro way. It's not like a distro is anything like a monopoly, consider it more like a megamart with a searchable index. Why you'd try to chase down random snippets of code to run *and* and the same time claim you want mainstream userfriendliness, well it just doesn't compute.

Re:To working....

[slashme.slashdot]

Hi , Please don't mind , but from your post it seems that you are doing a great favor to Linux by using it.
To me your complain does not look genuine , why don't you want to use install manager ,all you have to do is select the application and press install button. And whats wrong with the running the script in a terminal if the application require you to do so ?

I want to ask you a question , why you really want to support Linux :
a) Its Free
b) Ideology
c) Other

I use it because it saves me thousands of dollars and i admire the attitude and people behind it.

Re:To working....

[Whitemice]

Yep; Gentoo is a distribution that makes no sense at all. Mostly a whole bunch of people who think burning CPU time to compile stuff, verses stuff compiled by someone else, is actually going to benefit them somehow.

It isn't. Compiling code isn't magick. It is just a boring, tedious, and fantastically consistent, process. The "fantastically consistent" means it doesn't much matter where, or by who, some chunk of code gets compiled. And, yes, I know about compiler options, etc... In reality, "-O2" verses "-O1" ain't going to buy you anything noticable, and there are reasons not to use "-O2"; if you don't know what those are.... you shouldn't be diddling with compiler options.

The real questions is, why do I waste my time typing something like this? Won't matter. Gentoo is 31337!!

Re:To working....

[Epi-man]

I simply want to be able to click and launch it, and have it install.

This is so timely for me. I just received some USB network interfaces for work (which indicated Windows and Mac OSX support, but not Linux. Of course I checked online first to see if they would work) and have both XP and Linux machines to use them on. I was amazed at what a pain in the ass the XP install was. I had to insert the CD, it opened this screen that gave me the option of seeing which flavor of Windows Readme. I then plug in the device, and I believe 4 mouse clicks later it is finally done installing the drivers, and after (seriously) about 5 minutes I am ready to use my NIC. On the FC6 and the Ubuntu 6.10 boxes, I plug the device in, and within 15 seconds it is ready to go. This project has really made me wonder how anyone gets anything done in Windows anymore.

Re:To working....

[TheModelEskimo]

Sounds like somebody needs to pick up a machine with Linux preinstalled. Try System76 or Dell...that ought to give you a better base to compare. I bought a Dell Ubuntu laptop and guess what, all the hardware works perfectly.

The fact that you can install Linux on a machine you already own, for free, is just icing on the cake and purely YMMV territory. Especially if you want to impress your wife.

Re:To working....

[JoshJ]

Oh, I wasn't trying to "bash" you. I was just noting a common failure point- it's well known among the Linux crowd that hardware is a sticking point- I just got my Broadcom card to work via ndiswrapper not too long ago, myself- and that if you're planning on using Linux, you should be picking hardware that Linux works on. I bought my laptop before I really knew much about Linux, so in a sense I'm lucky it works.BR> I have no clue what RAIDar is, and it doesn't show up at all in the package manager for Ubuntu (Feisty) so maybe it's something they got rid of due to bugs.

Re:To working....

[PortHaven]

RAIDar is the software for accessing a Infrant/Netgear ReadyNAS server. As such is probably proprietary and therefore probably not included with Ubuntu.

I have the RAIDar for Linux software on a CD (it includes a couple package format, including Debian which as I understood are the one's compatible with Ubuntu). I had hoped that I could just click a file and have it install. Or right click and run a install script (akin to an .inf file). But neither option availed.

I am sure I can eventually manage it, I've just found myself so busy the past few weeks that I've not had an evening to sit down and figure out "how do I install a file".

Where as with Windows it's a simple matter of finding a setup.exe file or sometimes right-clicking an .inf file. Even with my recent switch to OS X at work, though I confess installation was rather different. I was able to intuitively figure out how to do so fairly easily.

So I think this is an area that Linux could greatly improve. :)

Re:To working....

[PortHaven]

See, I thankfully avoid opening up exe files of that sort. I guess it's one of the reasons I haven't fallen prey to virus'. Really the only one's I've encountered in recent years has been virus' in Word docs.

Anyways, that said...the particular software I need to install is:

RAIDar which is the utility/access software for Infrant/Netgear ReadyNAS servers.

Being proprietary software would be the reason it's not in a repository. I know I can google and find out how to install. And I'll do so once I'm home and have some free time. But it would be nice to see Linux improve this area, at least IMHO. :)

Re:To working....

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really really really wanted to use Linux, why didn't you just ask about wireless support in the ubuntu forums? There are plenty of cheap usb devices that are plug and play, I use one myself.

Re:To working....

[Kidbro]

I don't want to have to use some install manager or try to figure out how to get some script to run from the terminal in order to install an application. I simply want to be able to click and launch it, and have it install.

I see this a lot, and I just don't get it. I understand a lot of the other gripes people have with Linux, but one thing I've always thought was so fantastically much better handled in the Linux world than anywhere else was software installation.
Please explain, how can it be easier to have to search of the website of the software of your choice, find the download link and then install it than it is to be presented with a list of virtually all software you can think of and pick the ones you want to install.

Or maybe I'm just spoiled with Debian, and other Linux distros don't really handle this well at all (as rumors imply)?

Re:To working....

[uglyduckling]

Where as with Windows it's a simple matter of finding a setup.exe file or sometimes right-clicking an .inf file.

But you need to understand that the "simple matter" you describe is not intuitive, it's just familiar. The only way this could "improve" would be to make Linux more like Windows or OSX - and indeed some distros do attempt to do this, like Linspire for example.

Personally I've been using Debian then Ubuntu as my primary OS for so long that I'm pretty disoriented when I sit down at a Windows box. Typically I'm at a friend's house, tired and have had a good meal and a beer or two so not at my best. They ask me to diagnose a networking issue, I open a DOS box and type ls. Brings up an error. I do that a couple more times then realise the command is dir. Then I want to view a file: cat randomscript.bat do that a couple more times before remembering that the command in DOS is type.

Same thing with the GUI - trying to find all the different properties to configure networking on the various flavours of Windows takes me a while now, although I could do it easily 4 years ago. The other night a friend wanted me to set up Windows ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) - took me ages and in fact still isn't working. I've been messing with computers for years and have a degree in Computer Systems Engineering but Windows is just different to what I'm used to. There are inconsistencies in the Windows GUI that ought to be fixed, but the point is if I was supporting Windows boxes for 8 hours a day again then I would remember all that stuff.

The problem you're describing is software for a relatively obscure piece of hardware which has obviously not been set-up to use the Ubuntu package management system. If it did, it would install when you double-clicked the .deb file. That's not Ubuntu's fault - any more than it would be if the Windows version were distributed as a .rar file with 30 different dlls that you had to manually copy into the correct directories. The setup.exe file you describe is something that has been provided by the software company because they've followed the Windows convention. If they had followed the Debian/Ubuntu convention with the Linux equivalent you wouldn't have a problem. The fact that they've ignored the Debian/Ubuntu convention is their fault, and if the hardware claims to support these OSs then I would complain to them, just as you would if the Windows version were similarly confusing.

Re:To working....

[jvin248]

Last Windows installation I did was more painful than three Linux installs. Googling "where's the magical .dll driver?"...like looking for Waldo.

Point is, most people think Linux is hard to install because they have never installed Windows from scratch - they just went to big-mart down the street and bought a pc already loaded up.

If you're a linux newbie get something like SimplyMepis or Xubuntu.

Re:To working....

[El_Oscuro]

I had the same experience with a Kodak Camera:

Windows 2000

1. Plug in camera to USB port. Nothing. No new E: drive, no message about new hardware detected.
2. Insert CD, find setup program, go various screens, eventually install about 100MB of crapware.
3. About 30 minutes later and few reboots, I can finally see my photos.

Suse 10.0

1. Plug in Camera to USB port.
2. Click 'Yes' when asked if I would like to import my photos into F-spot. Total time, about 10-seconds.

Re:To working....

[JoshJ]

Last time I tried to install something out of the DEB, I was able to just doubleclick on it and have the deb installer take care of things, but it could be complicated if the dependencies can't be met by what's in your repositories.

Re:To working....

[jhfry]

I would agree with you 100%... except your wrong! Linux CAN be difficult to install. You MAY have hardware issues. You WILL need to spend some time adapting.

However, for most (and I mean almost any average user), you will not experience the frustration you experienced when installing the latest Ubuntu (and likely other) distros. It seems that the primary, and only very common, hardware issue is with wireless cards... most of which will automatically install after your first boot (as long as you have an alternate internet connection such as dial-up or ethernet).

If given a decent chance, taken in baby steps, it really takes very little time for a windows power user to become proficient in Linux. I have been 100% linux for about 6 months now and I honestly get bored on my computer now. I used to constantly have to remove malware, defrag, update drivers, etc. just so I could be nagged by a dozen or so shareware nag screens, WGA nag screens, windows update reboots, virus scans... and maybe I would actually read an email or two while I kept my system running lean and clean. Now, I can update everything (except firmware) within a minute or two, and that includes keeping up with the latest drivers.

Do yourself a favor... grab an older laptop, or perhaps a quiet desktop, and keep it somewhere that it's handy to have quick web access... kitchen, den, whatever... and when your bored pick a topic and see if you can do what you need to do with that system. Nothing mission critical, just tinker a bit. For example, I got started with linux purely to use mythtv. You will find that some of the projects you pick will be absolute frustration, but don't blame the OS, or the software... if you were as proficient with linux as you are with windows you wouldn't have the problems. What you will eventually find is that though your ignorance and windows background makes things seem difficult at first, things slowly begin to feel easier, and much more friendly than windows. (Friendly in a, "I'll let you to do what you want, when you want" kind of way... not a "I'll hold your hand through this" kind of way)

Oh, and get into the command line. A graphical file manager is all fine and dandy, but once your comfortable at the command line, most file managers feel clunky. With wildcards,regex, piping, and all of the other handy commandline tricks, you can do some pretty amazing things in a single command that I only dreamed of doing with entire batch scripts in windows.

I still find some things that I miss from OSX and Windows... I would love to be able to work with disk images as easily as I do on my Mac... and I sometimes feel the lack of windows when it comes time to update firmware, or I want to try out a new game... but those are easily relieved with dualboot or a second machine if your not committed to the transition as I am forcing myself to be.

And most importantly, if you do give it a shot, participate in the "Linux community". Hop on IRC, report bugs, read and post in forums, etc. I have found the community to be the most encouraging thing about Linux. The fact that I can actually discuss my problems with the author/maintainer/packager of a piece of software I use, and often single handedly influence the future of that software really makes me feel as though it's truly MY COMPUTER for a change, and thus it is only limited by my desire and imagination.

PS... A year or so ago, I never would have imagined these words coming out of my mouth... I felt the same as you do then.

Re:To working....

[Draek]

I really, really, really want to support Linux. However, frankly, I just don't have the time to hassle with it.

then you don't really want it that much now, do you?

with that said, though, I'll have to ask: are you comparing apples to apples here? for example, are you comparing an OSX-running laptop from Apple to a Linux-running laptop from a Linux vendor? did you buy your wifi card blindly for all three OSes, or did you check the manufacturer's website (or at the very least the card's box) to see whether they supported all the OSes you're trying to use it on?

dunno, I didn't buy my laptop from a Linux vendor but it worked perfectly (then again it's an IBM Thinkpad). When I bought my el-cheapo wifi card, I asked the vendor whether it worked under Linux and he replied that it was the one he used at home on his Ubuntu machine, and guess what? it does work, no terminal-fu required. And applications? well, you're free to download the .debs yourself and install it with a double-click, but excuse me if I'd rather use Synaptic.

and then we have the other side of the spectrum, for example with my tablet that specifically said "Windows 95/98", and while it does work under 2K/XP the half-assed driver doesn't support pressure sensitivity (nor does on Linux, to be frank), or my ol' Powerbook that refuses to acknowledge the PCMCIA ethernet card I bought for my older laptop (and that *does* work on Linux).

but comparing both of my experiences would, of course, be an apples to oranges comparison, because while on one I did my homework and researched the products I was going to buy, on the other I just stuck my old hardware on my shiny new OS, and just had some bad luck. Not that Linux won't have shortcomings compared to Windows and OSX even doing an apples to apples comparison, but still, it's better to be fair to all, IMHO.

Re:To working....

[cylcyl]

Where can I find list of supported hardware, separated by distro? Is it comprehensive and up to date?
(It's an honest question, I've held off trying linux myself for similar reasons)

Re:SourceForce? Come on...

[Junior J. Junior III]

Oh! Oh! I know! How about incorporating kernel-level spellchecking?

If you love linux, set it free ...

[whichpaul]

Linux means different things to different people. To some its an icon of a new age in computing, to others it's a free desktop OS and the rest its probably "that free thing that's supposed to be good". Linux distributions will probably never be THE desktop OS, neither will the server distributions take over the enterprise. But there is unquestionably a place for Linux wherever computing will go.

However, ever increasing abstraction is going to mean that Linux itself will be ever less visible as the layers of progress continue to be deposited above it. As this happens will Linux itself become the invaluable bedrock of new technology, or will it become silent and redundant? It will be crucial that Linux (and Open Source in general) set the trends and lead the way rather than merely playing catch-up with proprietary technologies.

My question: where do we want to go tomorrow?

IBM does not grok Linux

[AHumbleOpinion]

The first large IT firm to really grok Linux was IBM.

IBM does not grok Linux. They do not share the ideals of the GPL faction of the FOSS movement. Linux is merely a low cost entry point into the IBM family. As a hardware and service vendor they don't mind not having to write all the software. Donations to Linux devs are like outsourcing, but even cheaper. IBM's commitment to Linux is like Apple's. It's useful for now, it'll be abandoned if and when it is convenient to do so. As Apple did when they briefly supported Linux while Mac OS X was being developed.

Re:IBM does not grok Linux

[whichpaul]

All the more reason why Open Source developers need to be proactive and focused on creating new and useful technologies. Forget trying to copy Windows XP functionality, how about making a spam-proof e-mail system or a radical new way for people to interact over the Internet. Leadership in technology will cause Linux to boom, emulation will be a slow death.

Re:IBM does not grok Linux

[nschubach]

I actually looked up grok, and I came up with an interesting definition :

grok (grawk) vt., vi. [Martian, to drink]
1. a) to merge, blend, intermarry; lose identity in group experience
1. b) to become one with
1. c) being identically equal
2. to understand something so thoroughly that you merge with it and it merges with you 3. the observer becomes part of the observed

I wish I hadn't. It's like reading a religious text now with all the "become one" and "lose identity in group experience." It's not a damn cult as much as Microsoft and Mac fans want you to believe. It's software.

Re:IBM does not grok Linux

[AHumbleOpinion]

Well the word does come from a sci fi book, Heinlen's Stranger in a Strange Land. There was a metaphysical angle IIRC, its been decades since I read it.

Linux isn't done yet

[MobyDisk]

Okay, I'll get flamed and modded down to the depths of trolldom, but here goes....

I love Linux as a concept: An open-source, free as in beer, free as in speech, tweakable operating system offered and supported by multiple vendors. But Linux as a reality is an hodge-podge of incomplete applications spread across multiple subtly-incompatible distributions.

Moments ago, I read the following thread on the Rapidsvn mailing list. Rapidsvn is a very nice front-end for the Subversion version control system. I've compiled it, made changes to it - it's quite nice. I like it especially since it works on Linux, Mac, and PC -- all three are OSs I use to some degree. So the following is not a dig on this particular project. It is one example of something that happens a million times every day:

(P.S. I chopped the thread for brevity to make my point)

Hi, I have downloaded rapidsvn 0.94. I am trying to install on SLED 10sp1. I enter ./configure
at the command prompt. I get a lots of messages and finally:

checking for APR... not found
configure: error: APR is required. Try --with-apr-config.

I tried...[various things] but got the same error message. I installed all the available APR's for
listed listed as version 1.2.2-13.2

Any ideas how to install rapidsvn -- I really want a gui interface on
linux similar to tortoisesvn on windows.

[various responses about apr-config, apu-config, downloading pre-built binaries, etc. but no solution] So we have a fairly simple GUI program, with no crazy dependencies. This application is not available in binary form for this distro, and since there are many major Linux distros and you never know what will happen if you install an RPM from another one. You can't compile it from source without a CS degree, and you need gigs of development libraries to do it.

This is the Linux I know, and it is why I have Linux on that other partition so I can boot it up now and then and see what the state of Linux is. But so far, it's always stuff like this. The challenge with Linux isn't learning the UI or thinking differently or anything. It's just getting stuff installed and getting it to work properly. I've never gotten a Linux distro up to the productivity of either my Mac or my Windows PC. I've maybe gotten 80% of the way, but with 500% of the effort. It's just not worth it.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, ur right. I also have many the same experiences before.

But maybe the solution is to *contribute* back to the project so others would not suffer the same problem?

It does not matter whether open source or not, real work still has to be done.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[holviala]

How about "apt-get install rapidsvn"? The reason people fight getting Debian installed is that they only have to fight once, not every time they want something installed.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like you've made an honest effort to "get to know" Linux, and that it didn't work out for you. That's fair enough.

However, for every anecdote, there are is a counter-anecdote. For my part, my switch to Ubuntu was not painless. I had to spend time getting things working. But overall I find Linux to be more powerful and more productive. The amount of time I've saved over the last few years using Linux is far greater than the initial time required to learn the new system and to get it working on my hardware. (E.g. system admin is easier without anti-virus to worry about, software installation from repositories is faster, not having to "fight" the operating system is more efficient.) So, for me, it has been a net positive.

With regard to your mailing-list anecdote, it would be trivial to find a similar-sounding anecdote for a Windows program (or even a Windows core component). The fact is that when it comes to computers, there will always be things that need extra tweaking, or things that don't work properly. On Windows, the vast majority of binary downloads will "just work," but then again on Linux the vast majority of repository installs will also "just work."

I'm not really arguing against anything you've said. We can all agree that Linux has faults. An overly technical "culture" and sometimes cryptic software installation is certainly not a good thing. But more and more, Linux is becoming streamlined and accessible. For many of us, it is already more productive than alternative operating systems.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[Daishiman]

Your expectations are too high. Using a compiled application in a Linux distro is like grabbing the sources for a Windows application and compiling them with Visual Studio yourself. Te equivalent of donwloading a nice .exe installed on Windows is when the package is available for your distro of choice. If you can't wait until then you'll have to live with compiling, just like any other platform.
Your only "problem" is that since the development process if much more transparent you want to get the product before it's ready for everonye. Consider that a benefit in itself.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[dylan_-]

From the rapidsvn wiki:

SuSE

The guys from Novell/SuSE dont include RapidSVN with their distributions. One of the unofficial sources is:

        * http://packman.links2linux.de/package/rapidsvn

I could only find a thread for this from google with one response, which the guy never replied to so I'm not sure what makes you think the given solution didn't work? Is there another thread? Feel free to let him know about the above repository.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[JK_the_Slacker]

Incorrect. I am a CS major at college... I don't have a degree yet, and I HAVE compiled it from source.

One of the things they taught us in one of our most basic courses (critical thinking) is that you can't reason from one experience to a generalization. Statistically speaking, as you increase the number of samples, you can get a pretty good feel for the reality of things. There are plenty of people out there who have exponentially increased their productivity after a switch to Linux - myself included. I'd like to see a real survey, and real statistical analysis of the results, detailing real-world productivity by OS.

And in the background, hundreds of software engineers continue working in a quest to give us what we keep asking for...

Anybody who's had to create software for use by somebody else can attest to the fact that you can't make the perfect program... you can only meet the specs, and hope they don't change TOO much. I for one think that the Open Source community, and Linux in general, does a pretty good job all told.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[Anonymous Coward]

My thoughts exactly. I try linux once a year for me and my wife's home machines and always get to about 80% functionality before I'm advised to start editing text files, wrapping drivers, etc. I know one day I'll have to jump off of the MS wagon because my student discount ($5 Windows) will be gone, but for now I want my system to work and do everything I want it to. As much as I dislike MS, XP installs cleanly as do the other apps I need. Download.....Double-click, next, next, ok, done. Simple. Works.

I really really really hope linux gets there before my discounts are gone...

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[domatic]

Disk space is cheap these days. I just keep "gigs of development libraries" installed. I don't even particularly care what they do so long as the apps I'm building against them are happy. I pretty blame problems like what you mention on the upstream project rather than blaming it on "Linux" in general. One of the measures of quality for a source distributed project is how much of a pain in the butt is it to build. I'll do ./configure, make, checkinstall and even "apt-get install foo-dev.version.deb" a couple of times if the ./configure complains. As long as the process is reliable and simple, I'm not knocking things like SCONS either. I don't care as long as project build files are robust and don't require me to be a build management maven to get the thing going. The very best of them will even say things like "You need to install the development libraries for 'foo' before running this again." If I get nothing but lots of console spew for my trouble, I move on to the competing project. It's probably already in Ubuntu's repositories for that reason. Most of the time, the project maintainers of problem children will unwittingly warn you not to try their software. The warning goes something like this: "Frobnosticator requires the CVS version of libfoo to build." or worse "We require advanced functionality only found in the pre-alpha version of libfoo!"

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[Colin Smith]

You aren't a typical computer user. Neither is anyone else who uses Subversion.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[TheNarrator]

On ubuntu you run

sudo apt-get install rapidsvn

Output of this command:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
    libsvncpp0c2a libwxbase2.6-0 libwxgtk2.6-0
Suggested packages:
    libgnomeprintui2.2-0
The following NEW packages will be installed:
    libsvncpp0c2a libwxbase2.6-0 libwxgtk2.6-0 rapidsvn
0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 3817kB of archives.
After unpacking 10.8MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ feisty/universe libsvncpp0c2a 0.9.4-1ubuntu3 [73.1kB]
Get:2 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ feisty/universe libwxbase2.6-0 2.6.3.2.1.5ubuntu6 [567kB]
Get:3 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ feisty/universe libwxgtk2.6-0 2.6.3.2.1.5ubuntu6 [2875kB]
Get:4 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ feisty/universe rapidsvn 0.9.4-1ubuntu3 [303kB]
Fetched 3817kB in 16s (237kB/s)
Selecting previously deselected package libsvncpp0c2a.
(Reading database ... 157987 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking libsvncpp0c2a (from .../libsvncpp0c2a_0.9.4-1ubuntu3_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package libwxbase2.6-0.
Unpacking libwxbase2.6-0 (from .../libwxbase2.6-0_2.6.3.2.1.5ubuntu6_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package libwxgtk2.6-0.
Unpacking libwxgtk2.6-0 (from .../libwxgtk2.6-0_2.6.3.2.1.5ubuntu6_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package rapidsvn.
Unpacking rapidsvn (from .../rapidsvn_0.9.4-1ubuntu3_i386.deb) ...
Setting up libsvncpp0c2a (0.9.4-1ubuntu3) ...
Setting up libwxbase2.6-0 (2.6.3.2.1.5ubuntu6) ...
Setting up libwxgtk2.6-0 (2.6.3.2.1.5ubuntu6) ...
Setting up rapidsvn (0.9.4-1ubuntu3) ...

Wow! That was so easy! Took me 30 seconds to install including downloading. Would have taken longer to install on windows just to find the rapidsvn website, download the files, click the install button and hit the next button on the wizard. Geez people start using Ubuntu or at least a Debian based distro. It's not 1997 anymore.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[Americano]

One of the things they taught us in one of our most basic courses (critical thinking) is that you can't reason from one experience to a generalization. [ . . . ] There are plenty of people out there who have exponentially increased their productivity after a switch to Linux - myself included. I'd like to see a real survey, and real statistical analysis of the results, detailing real-world productivity by OS.

Translation: "Watch as I make the same logical error I've just claimed you made!"

Your claims of increased productivity are no more statistically valid as an indicator of Linux's effects on productivity than the GP poster's claims that it's been a productivity drain. And as far as the GP poster's over-arching point, that Linux suffers from multiple, subtly-incompatible systems competing for marketshare with one another, I think he's actually making a very useful point that Linux developers would do well to bear in mind.

In short, you admit that you've not seen a "real" statistical analysis of the productivity gains or losses related to an OS switch... so why even bother to chime in, except to tell us you're a CS major and you've compiled some Linux stuff from source? (As for your claim of "exponentially" increasing your productivity by simply switching to a new OS... come on now. I'd think that a critical thinking class would also teach you that making wildly inaccurate & unfounded claims with no supporting evidence is typically met with derision and skepticism...)

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[MobyDisk]

Subversion isn't just for source code. Many many companies use version control systems for binary files, documents, etc. And many of the users of those systems are QA testers or UI designers or technical writers or end-users.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I`m using Linux now to post this message and I`ve had a great experience with this OS so far. Virtually everything I want I have available in Linux (and I am not a super-geek).
Burn DVD? Yes (k3b rocks!) Listen to music? (Amarok is deliciously SUPERIOR to MS Media player)
I also like the adept manager that installs/upgrades everything for you.
The only thing that would make me come back to Windows was Counter-Strike. Well, then I discovered Wine...

It`s been a long time I don`t boot Windows, and don`t feel the need to.
Also about GUI stuff... Gnome is ugly. KD is beautiful. Have you heard of Compiz Fusion? amazing... girls like it when you show them the cube lol. You can even get a girlfriend with the help of Linux.

Now, I`ll give you the same advice a friend of mine gave me in order to do the OS transition.
First, you install Slackware inside Windows with VMware. Slackware will force you to learn the basics of Linux and if you screw things up (and will), you can ctrl+tab back to the safety of Windows. Then you google for help and fix the problem and go back to Slackware.

Then, install Slackware in a different HD (buy one, don`t bother with partition stuff).
Then when you start to get bored by the lack of user-friendliness of it, you install Kubuntu.

That`s all! you will love the Linux experience.

Bye

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[imsabbel]

The thing is that this method just makes you an mindless slave of your ditro. If the developers of the app dont get the distro-makers to like it, it might not exists at all. No way to put an "intstall.exe" on your homepage and be done with.

Thats a worse groupthink then even apple ever had.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[ratboy666]

I call BS.

Yes, compiling source, even autoconf'd is not ideal. But, if the application is NOT OTHERWISE AVAILABLE -- at least you can try.

If the application is not available AND the source is "closed" you can't. End of story. "OOOh, that shiny application is only available on IBM Z-Series. I want it on my Windows Server".

The user having the problem CAN pay to have it fixed -- heck, that's part of what I do... By the hour, or fixed price ports. And I am not alone in the "ecosystem".

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[Americano]

This is the Linux I know, and it is why I have Linux on that other partition so I can boot it up now and then and see what the state of Linux is.

And this is also the general outline of my experience... and it's the primary reason I have a MacOS system with Parallels running WinXP for the occasional drop into Windows if I need to test / install / run something there. My experience with Linux in the past few years (Gentoo, Fedora, Red Hat before it was Fedora, and Ubuntu) has been frustrating, and "80% of the way with 500% of the effort" is spot-on. That said, I *am* quite keen to get my hands on a small Dell or System76 system with Linux preinstalled, and see what the new state of Ubuntu is on "supported" hardware, to see how it runs there. I'll concede that I may be pleasantly surprised, and will certainly be happy to admit it if I am...

My real problem with Linux has been that I just don't have the time or patience to endlessly dick around with my computer settings. If a preinstalled, fully vendor-supported Linux system will eliminate that need, then great... until then, I'm quite happy with my Mac Book, with a full BSD Unix subsystem for when I need a slice of Unixy goodness. I expect I'll spring for one of the low-end Dells sometime in early 2008 to see if it looks like something I could actually use at this point. I've been told Ubuntu has made great strides in usability on the desktop, and a large part of my frustration in the past was hardware -- driver incompatibilities and other such nonsense.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[JK_the_Slacker]

No, you can't reason from one example to a generalization... but, speaking from a statistical standpoint, you can take a sample of sufficient size and reason to a generalization. That's the point I'm working with.

I thought I was making it clear that my experience provided one such example. I never claimed that you could reason from my ONE example to a generalization. However, the fact remains that there are two opposing possibilities, and that I would like to see the true statistics of the thing. I remain neutral until I see the facts.

In other words, I see p and p' and wish I had more to work with to arrive at a conclusion of P or P'.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[pebs]

Installing it with GUI tools (e.g. Synaptic) is also equally easy.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[value_added]

As for your claim of "exponentially" increasing your productivity by simply switching to a new OS... come on now.

Dunno about you, but I don't have too much trouble

- envisioning the writing a short, rudimentary shell script that would equal a day's worth of clicking and pointing on a Windows system

- implement or restore a specific configuration simply by copying some files from one system to another

- accurately diagnose or monitor a problem using the mundane (system logs, debug, verbose options, etc.) or by using readily-available standard tools (file or process monitoring, tcpdump, etc.)

- fix or restore a completely borked system, or install a new one

Seems to me that the time savings from one or more of these obvious or garden variety chores can easily be shown to be exponential.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[Americano]

Well, thanks for explaining elementary statistics to me. But let's look at what you wrote:

Statistically speaking, as you increase the number of samples, you can get a pretty good feel for the reality of things. There are plenty of people out there who have exponentially increased their productivity after a switch to Linux - myself included.

To reword that: "I believe that I have exponentially increased my productivity by switching to Linux. Therefore, I think it's reasonable to state that there are plenty of people out there." You are generalizing from your single data point, just as you accused the original poster of doing.

I never claimed that you could reason from my ONE example to a generalization.

You most certainly did, by stating that "plenty of people" have seen this increase, and giving yourself -- a single data point -- as an example, with no corroborating evidence for your assertion that a simple change of OS gave you *exponential* increases in productivity. (A claim which I remain quite skeptical of, unless your definition of "productivity" varies wildly from what I would consider "productive" use of a computer.)

However, the fact remains that there are two opposing possibilities, and that I would like to see the true statistics of the thing. I remain neutral until I see the facts.

And yet the lack of any statistics didn't keep you from arguing to the grandparent that Linux provides exponential gains in productivity to a statistically valid set of users, and that he was way off base because he claimed that for him, Linux has always been 80% of the functionality at 5 times the effort. How curious...

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[Americano]

Seems to me that the time savings from one or more of these obvious or garden variety chores can easily be shown to be exponential.

Problem is, we're not talking about time saved on specific tasks that happen "now and then" (if at *all* for most computer users), we're talking about exponential increases in *productivity* -- what you get done, using your computer. And unless you are a system administrator, none of what you just listed as possibilities for "exponential time savings" are frequent enough occurrences that they would amount to any more than an occasional, incremental bump in productivity for the average "general computing" user.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[slashflood]

On Gentoo you run

~ # emerge rapidsvn
~ # genlop -t rapidsvn
* dev-util/rapidsvn

Mon Oct 22 23:13:36 2007 >>> dev-util/rapidsvn-0.9.3
merge time: 1 minute and 13 seconds.

Wow! That was so easy! :-P

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[Anonymous Coward]

One word: Gentoo

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[master_p]

The fault lies with using paleolithic tools like C and the abstractions of files/processes/etc.

If a LISP-like language was used, coupled by a database to provide the persistence layer, things would be much better.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[rjames13]

on Slackware 11 I just used ./configure --with-apr-config=apr-1-config --with-apu-config=apu-1-config

and it worked.

How did I know to use apr-1-config
first I ran ./configure and got the same error
then I looked in the package listing for apr-1.2.7-i486-1 and it says
usr/bin/apr-1-config

I match that to ./configure --help saying
    --with-apr-config=FILE Use the given path to apr-config when determining
                                                        APR configuration; defaults to "apr-config"

and the same goes for apu
however it 0.9.4 does not compile as there is an error I google the error
`OnOK' is not a member of `CheckoutDlg' rapidsvn
Get one page saying it works in 0.9.3, so I try that and get the same error.
I try to download the latest build but all they have on their site is win32. They however have a link down the bottom of their page to their subversion repository.
$ svn co --username guest http://rapidsvn.tigris.org/svn/rapidsvn/trunk
$ mv trunk rapidsvn-$(date +%F)
$ cd rapidsvn-2007-10-23
$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure --with-apr-config=apr-1-config --with-apu-config=apu-1-config
$ make
$ su -c 'checkinstall'

open up a prompt and
$ rapidsvn

There we go

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[petermgreen]

Yes, compiling source, even autoconf'd is not ideal
Personally I tend to think autoconf is more trouble than it's worth.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[ericrost]

Umm.. wrong. Anyone can build an rpm or a deb. MOST apps not in the repos of your distro have an rpm or a deb. If they don't its BECAUSE they're not ready yet, not because "someone doesn't like them". See the whole point is the tools are out there for everyone to freely use. See, freedom.

The reason the devs haven't packaged it yet, is because they're busy.... developing it until its ready for general consumption (ie packaging).

If you have the skill and the time, you can usually get these dev projects running yourself. Then, as it approaches readiness, which you'll know from using it.. you can get off your lazy ass and help package it.

STOP BEING A WHINY LEECH.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[ericrost]

Yes, but what you fail to realize: Using linux will MAKE you into a system administrator. Once you see that all the buttons are there, easy to press, and no, you won't "accidentally change something", you start having fun with it.

I now run a mail and calendar server, a blog, a firewall/dhcp/dns/proxy server, a music server, and a network file server just for the heck of it. Because it makes my life easier, more enjoyable.

And I make changes to those setups all the time. I figure something out that will make them run more efficiently, or make them more scalable, or more accessible, etc. I do this because I can. Because my Free OS gives me the toolset and the applications to do so.

I am thankful to the devs that have worked and given me the code to do this. I am not a CS major, I have not written a line of code that goes into any of the servers in my network. I have fixed configs, fixed make scripts, etc.

Once you are given the tools, and pick them up, look at them, and realize that they are easy to use if you can get over the fear, you will be Free.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[Americano]

Yes, but what you fail to realize: Using linux will MAKE you into a system administrator

What you fail to realize: The vast majority of people who are NOT systems administrators by trade do not have the time, patience, or inclination to be made into a system administrator.

Incidentally, how does running all those things "for the heck of it" translate to exponential gains in productivity? You really mean to tell me that fiddling with keeping an email server & calendaring application online in-house makes you MORE productive than, oh, I don't know, pointing Thunderbird at GMail? You plainly state that you're not a dev and don't write any of the code running on your server... so why reinvent the wheel? How is that in any way a "more productive" use of your time?

And I make changes to those setups all the time. I figure something out that will make them run more efficiently, or make them more scalable, or more accessible, etc. I do this because I can. Because my Free OS gives me the toolset and the applications to do so.

Let's be clear here.

"Busy" != "Productive"

What you just stated above is this: "I spend time constantly fiddling with tweaking & configuring my tools." That's not "productive", unless you're a systems administrator. What you've described is better termed "pouring your time & effort down a black hole"... which I'll certainly concede may be fun, if you're the sort of person who gets off on fiddling with gadgets... but it is certainly not making you more productive, it's simply giving you another thing to play with in your free time.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[ericrost]

"Incidentally, how does running all those things "for the heck of it" translate to exponential gains in productivity? You really mean to tell me that fiddling with keeping an email server & calendaring application online in-house makes you MORE productive than, oh, I don't know, pointing Thunderbird at GMail? You plainly state that you're not a dev and don't write any of the code running on your server... so why reinvent the wheel? How is that in any way a "more productive" use of your time?"

Because it saves me time on things like keeping track of my schedule and appointments (datebooks etc never worked, and something that's not accessible everywhere and on a server I run just didn't do it for me) thus reducing the chaos that was my life full of missed appointments and undone tasks (resulting in angry significant others).

I'm not reinventing the wheel, I'm keeping my data where I want to keep it. The other thing is, it doesn't take much time once I got done with the hardcore learning curve when I first switched to linux. That's what you're missing, get over the learning curve, and all of a sudden, building a server doesn't sound like a huge task that will suck up your time, you realize that its something that, research included, may take an active hour of your time (with some dead time in there for letting it crunch).

The music server is better than anything I can get anywhere else as it allows me to remotely sync the multiple music players in our household with the same library as well as use my laptop as a "radio" in any room in my house.

It allows me to backup all of my systems in my house to one central location that can then be backed up to a server off-site so I don't lose my data, nor do I have to worry about actively doing anything about it.

The firewall/etc. server allows me to connect to any machine on my network via hostname without maintaining host files on any machine or running an ldap server. It also allows me to easily manage firewall rules for my domain.

Everything on my network is there for a reason, and the reason IS to make my life easier and more productive. It also happens to be fun.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[Americano]

Because it saves me time on things like keeping track of my schedule and appointments (datebooks etc never worked, and something that's not accessible everywhere and on a server I run just didn't do it for me) thus reducing the chaos that was my life full of missed appointments and undone tasks (resulting in angry significant others) [...]

You know what? It's just not even worth responding... Your claims are so ridiculous that it's laughable. Go troll elsewhere, fanboy. I'm happy to have a real discussion about what efficiencies might be gained from using Linux, but outlandish claims and ridiculous anecdotes don't exactly further the dialogue.

Re:Linux isn't done yet

[ericrost]

Just because you don't understand something doesn't make it true. I run a Zimbra server.

http://www.zimbra.com/

I am in the middle of buying a house, and it has been invaluable (since I rely on a calendar at the office to keep track of all my work especially) to have the convenience of not really needing to remember when I set things up (inspections, walkthroughs, meetings w/my mortgage company). Perhaps you haven't been busy before. Or perhaps you're just not scatterbrained (as I am).

The point is, the toolset in linux allows me to do these things (like running these servers) without having to spend the hours (that I've spent in the past for others) setting up windows apps to do the same thing. Tools like dpkg, dselect, diff, patch, grep, awk, shell scripting, etc. Research them and you'll see the types of things you can do with it.

Where to Go?

[phobos13013]

THE MOOOOOON!!!!!!111!!1!ONE!

Linux isn't surrounded; instead it surrounds

[postbigbang]

Like other inflection point products, the concept of open source and a Unix-ish kernel caused quite a ruckus.

The attitude that Linux is surrounded by proprietary products is an inaccurate observation. Instead, consider that Linux development, along with other community application efforts, have changed the industry, probably for ever. If you believe in Stallman's version of free, and you look at the other free/freedom projects that have emerged, I'd say that freedom is surrounding other efforts, if not just quietly living beside them.

Re:Linux isn't surrounded; instead it surrounds

[razpones]

I agree, its true that some people will try to abuse of the freedom of the software, but the manufacturers are realizing that in fact they can sell their machines with a free OS or with out one at all. Making them free as well from the monopoly. I imagine that at some point that will be the conventional way to sell machines and that microsoft will be the optional install for an extra fee. It just makes sense. But maybe am too optimist.

Re:Linux isn't surrounded; instead it surrounds

[postbigbang]

Imagine: Boot up, and Microsoft asks you for PayPal.

Or perhaps, Google checkout.

Or, in a more perfect world, which EU open license you'd prefer.

Ok, the last one required too much science fiction.

Re:SourceForce? Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

L O L !

Eh... not so sure.

[IANAAC]

It is already happening with Ubuntu, and it will help linux get drivers for all of the hardware that is out there.

I'm not so sure. I think the real next stop is actually handheld devices, be they cellphones or tablets. Not only that, but I'm willing to bet most people won't even know or care that these devices are running linux. The only people who have ever cared about what they run on their desktops is A) Geeks and/or B) Fanboys.

Re:Eh... not so sure.

[Penguinisto]

The only people who have ever cared about what they run on their desktops is A) Geeks and/or B) Fanboys.

YMMV, but I have noticed that people tend to care what's on their desktop after being root-kitted, crashed, or so bogged down with registry corruption that it takes up to 30+ minutes just to boot.

And of course, they show that they care when you mention an alternative and they reply with: "but I have $$$ worth of software that only runs on Windows!"

Funny, that.

/P

Standardization and unity

[Cannelloni]

Though I am a Mac user, I applaud the great work being done by the Linux guys. I want Linux to be a huge success and eventually replace Windows as the default platform in the world. Free and open software is a beautiful thing.

I haven't read TFA yet (I will), but what is missing in the Linux community is unity and standardization. It would be great if people could rally around a single distribution of a common software framework, so that there is consistency and compatibility between different distributions - or better yet - that a single major flavour of Linux that more or less replaces Windows.

I wonder, is that possible? A unified set of standards in the Linux world would give us reliable and secure computing, something that simply cannot be attained in the Windows world. Ease of use, stability, reliability, security and open source software, that's what needed to replace today's bloated and ridiculously insecure and unreliable Windows systems.

Re:Standardization and unity

[sherriw]

I very much agree. Very good point. Too much energy is being wasted on the assorted distros. Let's narrow down to just one or a personal and commercial flavour and start refining. It's time to unite and conquer. hehe.

Re:Standardization and unity

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally disagree. Why I like Linux - indeed, the reason I use linux, is its open modularity. "There's more than one way to do it" as they say. Making it easy for Aunt Tillie to use Ubuntu is nice, but what about us hobbyists and experimenters?

If you want to cater to one set of users that's fine with me - but not if it is done so at the expense of others.

Re:Standardization and unity

[JustNiz]

The problem with having only one distro is that it gives Microsoft something coherent to go after.
With Linux being so fragmented, they have to go after many different distros to kill the whole thing off. Currently its too big of a problem even for MS.

Re:Standardization and unity

[Nurgled]

With respect, I think this is a red herring. "Linux" isn't really an operating system, it's a component which can be used to build operating systems. Examples of operating systems are Mac OS X, Windows XP, Ubuntu, SuSE, Fedora...

Really, Ubuntu users need not know they're using Linux any more than they know that the desktop is linked against Gtk+. Ubuntu is an example of the standardization you're talking about: it's a collection of software components packaged in a (hopefully) consistent manner for the end-user. If it makes you feel better, just forget that Ubuntu uses the Linux kernel. The distribution is the operating system.

Re:Standardization and unity

[Cannelloni]

I of course knew there would be responses like "Linux is not an operating system" etc. But while that may be technically correct, it does not matter to businesses. What large companies need, for several reasons, is a consistent and unified user interface on the surface and a standardized and truly universal operating system framework to support it. To be adopted by the business community, the various Linux distributions need to merge and form a strong alliance around ONE distribution, heralded buy large corporations such as IBM, Google, Sun and HP. (I hesitate to use Dell's name in that context, byt they need to be in the mix too.) Once that happens, the transition to secure computing will be possible. And I think we will see this happen in stages, starting with point of sale systems and the like.

Re:Standardization and unity

[zrq]

Once that happens, the transition to secure computing will be possible.

Standards are good idea, in general. But I'm not so sure about this part.

Possibly (one) of the reasons Windows has such a problem with viruses etc. is that the platforms are standard. Once a virus, trojan or malware writer discovers a vulnerability on a Windows system, they can be fairly sure they can exploit it on all unpatched Windows systems.

I'm not suggesting that this is the main reason that Windows is so insecure. Nor am I suggesting that it isn't their (Microsoft) fault for releasing an inherently insecure system in the first place.

But if we look at it in terms of biology, what we have at the moment is a large mono culture of Windows machines, compared with a large number of miscellaneous Linux/Unix machines all setup and configured slightly differently.

The mono culture of Windows machines are all vulnerable to the same attack exploits. Once one machine in a network gets infected, the rest become infected fairly quickly, because they have the same vulnerabilities.

The Linux/Unix community may be less vulnerable, because a virus, worm or trojan may be able to spread across machines based on one particular Linux distribution, but at the moment it would be more difficult to create a malware program that infected all Linux/Unix variants. Simple things like the default install of different distributions may use different email clients, firewall programs etc.

If we had a true mono culture, with all machines everywhere setup in the same way, we (the whole world) would be vulnerable to a zero day exploit that could infect all machines in one go. In biology, genetic diversity makes the species as a whole more resilient to attack, even if some of the individual variants are in themselves less 'fit' than their 'normal' siblings.

Re:Standardization and unity

[Zoxed]

> but what is missing in the Linux community is unity and standardization. It would be great if people could rally around a single distribution of a common software framework,

Funny: that is what I *like* about Linux etc. I do not have to stick with someone else's idea of what is good: I can choose different distros/apps etc, or I can roll my own. Horses for courses, and all that.

Re:Standardization and unity

[Nurgled]

If that is true, then surely it is also a problem that Windows, Mac OS and Linux coexist? Would you argue that those three must also converge before any one can take hold?

If companies want a standard platform, they can evaluate the various available operating systems based on their needs and choose one. Currently most of them choose Windows. There's no reason why they couldn't potentially choose Ubuntu if they found that it suited the needs of the company. When I make recommendations to my boss for what OS we should run on our servers, I say "Debian", not "Linux".

All operating systems are assemblies of distinct components. The kernel is irrelevant if you are looking for "a consistent and unified user interface". From this perspective, the distinction between Ubuntu and Fedora is no different than the distinction between Windows and Mac OS: they are just two operating systems supplied by different companies. It's the assembled product that is important, not the components that it's built from.

Easy

[Daniel Phillips]

Bigger, faster, shinier. There, I did not even have to read the article :-)

Seriously, we have not even begun to scratch the surface of what is possible with a (well design) object embedding, event driven model. On the kernel side, besides the usual tide of incoming devices, there is a whole lot more room for optimization of pretty much every major subsystem. Believe it or not. The dominant trend will be more kernel functionality running in user space, like FUSE, power management, and features we haven't yet imagined, but which are just an awful lot easier to write in user space, and less easy to break the rest of the kernel. Besides bloating up with dozens or hundreds of new features, the embedded kernel variant will start to shrink in order to fit better on embedded devices such as low-end feature phones. Even more developers will switch from developing on Windows to developing on Linux. By 2010, millions will carry tuxpods :-)

KDE

[12357bd]

The 'windows killer' linux feature is the KDE desktop programming.

The power of the combined Kernel + Qt + KDE api's, are the most important threat to the MS programming model. If the desktop programming has to be the next battlefield (server side has already been taken), the KDE programming environment is the most powerfull asset in the linux camp.

I am not trying to feed the old Gnome/KDE flame war, just pointing at the fact that the toolset that KDE provides, is the best tool for graphical desktop programming. Just remember how Novel 'switched' to Gnome after Suse's acquisition (the biggest KDE promoter at this time), that was a 'political' move, not a technical one.

Re:KDE

[yuna49]

I continue to be puzzled as to why none of the major distros have adopted KDE as the standard desktop. I hate how GNOME tries to hide things from the user; in some ways, it's worse than Microsoft Windows in that department. As you say, SuSE was the only major distro to support KDE, but the Novell acquisition put an end to that. What is it about GNOME that makes it so compelling to distro manufacturers?

Re:KDE

[pappy97]

"What is it about GNOME that makes it so compelling to distro manufacturers?"

It's because linux geeks perceive KDE as pandering to the windows crowd and people like GNOME for the simple fact that it isn't trying to be a windows clone. I personally don't like GNOME and prefer KDE, not because it is more "Windows" like, but I like the look, feel, and layout better. Some distros are KDE-friendly. After all, you can get kubuntu (although I think regular ubunutu install cd should give you a choice during install of KDE or GNOME, but I can understand the desire to conserve CD/DVD space.

Re:KDE

[smash]

Here here.

BTW, on slackware, KDE is the standard desktop. Gnome packages aren't even included :D

The big thing I like about KDE is the ioslaves. Sure, some of the user interface stuff might appear a little cluttered - but clutter i can deal with once I understand it. What really shits me about gnome is that in the interests of "user-friendliness" they've castrated UI so that fairly common tasks require some extra steps to perform. Why? Is making the user spend 5-10 minutes to learn a UI and then be productive in it worse than making it look nice, but crippled for anyone with an IQ above 50? Am I on crack to think that catering to the user for the *other* 99.999% of their computing use after the first 10 minutes is a bad thing?

Personally I'd really like to see OpenStep and objective C programming take off on Linux. If it in a usable state, and was part of a standard insallation, writing cross platform stuff between OS/X and Linux/Nix would be a lot more feasible.

I know where you can go...

[sherriw]

There are still a few things holding me back from Linux... so I hope the community focuses on these soon:

- User-friendliness. Instructions on how to accomplish something should never involve command line anything. Some users just don't get it.

- Software support. Start pushing major vendors to make Linux versions. Start with major tools like graphics suites and IDEs. Then games. For example, I need Dreamweaver for it's code editor and Photoshop. And no, I don't want to use Gimp or buy the bloody expensive PHP IDE when I already own Dreamweaver licenses.

- Hardware support. Drivers for all my stuff.

- Make sure that the whole OS has integrated Help for anything you want to do. Again... no "Open a command window and...".

-Work on the attitude of the Linux fans on various support forms so they don't laugh at basic user questions. I need a supportive and friendly environment where I can go to for help.

It's been a while since I was looking into these, can anyone let me know if any (or all) of my points are already solved?

Re:I know where you can go...

[realdodgeman]

Send the list to canonical, with a copy to the kernel team, and post on every major linuxforum. It might actually get you somewhere. I would have modded you +111 insightful if I had modpoints left.

Re:I know where you can go...

[pebs]

There are still a few things holding me back from Linux... so I hope the community focuses on these soon:

- User-friendliness. Instructions on how to accomplish something should never involve command line anything. Some users just don't get it.

- Software support. Start pushing major vendors to make Linux versions. Start with major tools like graphics suites and IDEs. Then games. For example, I need Dreamweaver for it's code editor and Photoshop. And no, I don't want to use Gimp or buy the bloody expensive PHP IDE when I already own Dreamweaver licenses.

- Hardware support. Drivers for all my stuff.

- Make sure that the whole OS has integrated Help for anything you want to do. Again... no "Open a command window and...".

-Work on the attitude of the Linux fans on various support forms so they don't laugh at basic user questions. I need a supportive and friendly environment where I can go to for help.

It's been a while since I was looking into these, can anyone let me know if any (or all) of my points are already solved?

Well, I've been using Linux since 1995, so I've seen it go through many changes. I just installed Ubuntu 7.10 and was amazed at how far they have gotten and how well it worked (I wasn't too impressed with the last two released). Using this distro, I'll address your points:

User friendless: I still do things from the command-line out of habit, but then find that I could've done the same thing from a GUI settings manager. Barring something unusual, I think the typical user could get by without ever having to use the command-line.

Software support: I don't see how to push commercial software vendors other than a mass-migration to Linux. Commercial entities can only be manipulated by money and potential for gaining/losing profits. The only real choices the community has is to develop alternatives or work on improving things like WINE to support popular software such as Photoshop/Dreamweaver. I believe at least older versions of Photoshop work in WINE.

Hardware support: Similar problem to software support. This problem lies with the vendors for not supporting Linux. But its difficult to get them to release Linux drivers, especially open-source drivers or closed-source drivers that are kept up-to-date. People can reverse-engineer drivers, but this is especially difficult in things as complex as Wifi drivers. Wifi support is quite good these days, if you buy the right hardware and don't need any bleeding-edge features. My wifi card was supported out-of-box with 7.10. So was power-management (Suspend, Hibernate) and other features (CPU scaling, battery monitoring, etc) necessary for laptop use. It's important to buy the right hardware if you want a pain-free Linux experience, however. You wouldn't buy a copy of OS X and then expect it to work on any hardware.

Integrated help: Haven't checked this out yet.

Attitude of Linux fans: I understand that you have to deal with these people if you go to user-driven support forums. Supposedly, Ubuntu forums are quite friendly from what I hear. I don't spend too much time in support forums myself, so I don't know. Personally, I'd like to see Apple fans quit being such douchebags, but that doesn't stop me from using it. Expecting some kind of mass change in human behavior is just unrealistic. However, the more normal people that start using Linux, the more there will be a change in overall attitude, because more regular people will be using it to outnumber the rabid fanatics. I've actually noticed that trend with Apple, and a general decrease in douchebaggery, but the core douchebags are still there if you look in the right places. This is because Macs have appealed to a wider audience by switching to Intel and allowing Windows easily in VM's or natively. Linux is experiencing something similar, but the people with the attitudes will still be around.

Re:I know where you can go...

[jimcooncat]

"Instructions on how to accomplish something should never involve command line anything. Some users just don't get it."

A large part of why I use Linux is community support. When I help someone fix a problem or do something new, posting the command is the simplest way for me to do it. I can help them with their problem, usually without worrying what user interface they have. And when others help me, it's simple to save a little text, modify it to my needs and reuse it.

Sharing a command makes it easy for me to contribute and receive help. For the little bit of Windows support I do (mostly at work), I usually have to prepare a huge document with screenshots. Most Linux support I give doesn't require so much effort.

"Work on the attitude of the Linux fans on various support forms so they don't laugh at basic user questions."

It's become much better over the last few years. Of course if you take a random crowd, you'll get a percentage of jerks. But you're reading /., so you know that already.

Then we open it again.

[SanityInAnarchy]

First, this has been tried, and while the GPL deliberately and specifically allows this, some armchair lawyers turned armchair crackers kept breaking in and taking the code back.

Second, even if it were done, all that means is the community needs one person to buy the product, open the CD/DVD (or encrypted archive, get into this century already), and upload it to a public FTP (or HTTP/WebDAV, get into this century already). Remember, it comes with the GPL, free or not, which means a license to redistribute.

Yes, it could get expensive, but the only point at which this becomes entirely closed is if it is GPLv2 (not v3) and used for a service, like a website. There are likely a few similar loopholes such that a company can sell proprietary, GPL code, and be fairly confident that it won't reach the Internet.

Then again, I would hope that the fairest, most likely way to get paid to develop GPL code is by the feature, not by the license. That is, someone pays you to take some existing GPL'd software and add the functionality they need. In general, corporations are competing on things completely unrelated to the software they use, so they could care less if their competitors get to use the features they pay for -- so much the better, if said competitors also improve said software.

Sure, you could keep those improvements to yourself, but the cost of keeping your own private set of patches up to date with the latest development is prohibitive, when compared to simply letting the community (including you and your competitors) maintain it as a single tree.

Re:Then we open it again.

[budgenator]

In general, corporations are competing on things completely unrelated to the software they use, so they could care less if their competitors get to use the features they pay for
I'm not sure I completely agree, if your software matches your business methods, then releasing everything reduce your competitive advantage, if it doesn't your missing out on the real benefit of OSS, make your software fit your business rather than forcing your business to fit your software.

Re:Then we open it again.

[SanityInAnarchy]

if your software matches your business methods, then releasing everything reduce your competitive advantage

If I may ridiculously oversimplify things:

AT&T gave us C.

Or, something that might be easier to understand:

Is Excel really meant to fit the business in question? No, it's a generic tool. I think it's a crappy one, but it's possible to have good generic tools. Thus, if a company invented the first spreadsheet to use internally, it might be in their best interest to release it as open, unless they really wanted to get into the software business.

That doesn't mean they have to release their spreadsheets.

This could be done in MANY other places. Accounting, taxes, inventory management, etc... All of which, once open, can certainly be tweaked within a company, without those custom patches ever seeing the light of day. But any code shared that doesn't expose trade secrets about your business is both good, generic code, and an opportunity for someone else to improve your business.

Where Are The Users?

[rumblin'rabbit]

There's something missing from the article "Where does Linux go from here?"

The users. There's virtually no mention of them. There's talk about companies who are connected with Linux, about the technology, about the freedom of open software. But of the actual users there's only one passing reference.

If you want to advance Linux, start thinking about the users - their needs, their desires, their problems, and so on. To begin anywhere else is to neglect the most important part of the equation, and Linux will remain a "system for nerds" forever.

And so far as "Where does Linux go from here", send it to rewrite.

Re:Where Are The Users?

[pebs]

The users. There's virtually no mention of them. There's talk about companies who are connected with Linux, about the technology, about the freedom of open software. But of the actual users there's only one passing reference.

Well, in some ways, companies are the users. But I agree with what you are saying about the end users, whether they be desktop users, server admins, or whatever.

it's crazy

[fuliginous]

People don't strategise the direction of Free Software including Linux. They decided their need and push for it. The crowd then moves that way. That surely has to be its prime advantage over the Windows model which is the empire decides the needs of the little people and then makes it and send it forth.

That to me makes the premise of the question absurd.

Re:it's crazy

[ClosedSource]

Well, as long as there is a strong alignment between Linux developers and users that model is OK. However, in the larger world of computer users, developer goals are unlikely to correspond to user needs. In that larger world, changes in Windows have a greater potential to be useful to users simply because there's more motivation to cater to paying customers.

Re:it's crazy

[fuliginous]

the "more motivation" might be true when there isn't a captive market.

But you missed my point. A company like Microsoft has to talk up its features and hence is motivated to do things because it gives it something to talk up. Sometimes they are better sometimes not. They don't necessarily come from the users asking for them. Who asked for the ribbons in the latest Office? Not the majority of users.

So in the Free Software model users push for their need, if they are corporate they might sponsor someone to do it and try to get it in the main line. Individuals suggest it and if they are lucky or put the suggestion to the right audience it gets taken up by a developer. In the end the effort goes into developing toward either a perceived (evidenced preferably) need or to adding something that the developers see might be useful.

The developers live in far less isolation than the marketing driven model of corporate land. My claim why this must be evidently true is how otherwise could a smaller largely spare time group of developers keep up with and often surpass a multi billion dollar super corporation of tens of thousands of staff?

In short I think I am saying you are wrong:-)

A linux console of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux should be copying the Xbox idea, but with more of a multi device consolidated approach.

If I were a Linux activist I would be pushing for game developers. MS's hold on DX is a BIG FREAKING deal and if platform wars get heavy they will wield more and more power by owning DX. Sue them or develop a competative suite of game development tools and API's that doesn't have that pieced together Linux feel. When convincing developers to jump ship, the lack of standardization in gaming development especially sucks a bit.

A media center/game console and maybe someday wifi hub. That way when internet costs 200 bucks a month we can start out own privately owned public network without regulation. Once a few more super wireless techs trickle down into mass use the idea we are locked into communication providers dwindles a bit as goes government regulation on our interpersonal communication.

A WIFI network hub, chained such as the old CB communication network and perhaps in law reception areas equiped with grid antennas and booster would seems to be to be an easier to scale solution to the millions of miles of cable out there. As fast as cable is, it's slow compared to even a crappy WIFI signal, plus you could host sites basically for free though you need some type of load balancing/distributed hosting model.

It's just, there is no reason to buy a PC, a game console and exist on a network with all that equipment mostly idle. You could almost give away a media PC as long as you got the users idle CPU cycles, especially right now with dual cores sitting there doing nothing.

It's like municipal wifi, but really better and vastly cheaper. The government/private corporations would still need to setup points for dead spots. I think pushing wifi to the next level first would also be wise to ensure a decent return, for now it's distance is still a bit low. However if you look at the 3G/WiMAX technology that more or less proves you could soon run a wireless user owned network. If they were really focusing on the technology better we would have seen breakthroughs like IBM's new 100x faster than wifi technology (though lets see the range on that). Still the bandwidth potential for wifi is high and the cost will likely only get cheaper vs rolling out new costly fiber lines. I'm sure wireless bandwidth also drops off when compared to terrestrial, but the cost advantage is likely more important since the average users bandwidth to the home is so low.

The install costs basically on land lines will eventually make them less and less appealing since they will only go up and wireless will only get faster. Why not make our cell phones mobile data routers on an open network. Monopolizing the control of the ad revenue alone would make you an endless fortune. Plus the customer loyalty and amazment of providing a new low cost communication medium.

It would also be WAY cheaper to own PCs since it consolidates several uses. Instead of Verizon paying for equipment the user does and since the devie is consolidated, but quickly depreciating people would upgrade them often, just as they do gaming consoles and PCs. The fact it gives you a free wifi network on top of everything just makes it the worlds most necessary gadget for anyone because who doesn't want to pay less for phone, tv, and internet service.

The solution to lower these costs is consolidation and self management. No extra costs from regulation because it's privately owned. No worries about censorship because the data in encrypted and anonymous. Instead of pretending TCP/IP isn't broken you'd also have the option to create a new secure network protocal.

The way I see it, how could a device like that not initiate an economic boom. It would change peoples lives like the internet, but really more so by showing them they can own infrastructure also.

Right now MS's Xbox is the closest thing but we all know they wouldn't be interested in a privately owned network nor will they even accept the idea of making the Xbox a PC. My thinking

User Hostile

[PenGun]

It's on purpose. We do not need the hordes of riff raff pawing our lovely OS. We need the many greedy assholes who would like to coral and milk to their purpose even less.

  Have a nice day marroons.

2 "philosophy" forks

[unity100]

1 - The "Server" people, who is going to strip unneeded stuff from server distros and better server functions

2 - The "User" people, who are going to get the existing distros, strip server stuff and better and make the user stuff simple.

evident

Corporate Linux

[HangingChad]

What I always liked about Linux was that developers didn't need to be driven by bottom line concerns. If changing the color scheme bothered them, that's what they'd work on. If someone else didn't like it, they could go fork it themselves.

I'm a little concerned when corporate interests take over funding much of the Linux development that business concerns will start trumping community interests. In some ways that's inevitable and, from the standpoint of the paid developers, not all a bad thing. Still, I think we'll lose some of the community feeling. Like when AOL users descended on the internet.

Sort of like the difference between playing golf as a hobby and as a craft. Takes all the fun out of the game.

Re:Corporate Linux

[Hatta]

I'm a little concerned when corporate interests take over funding much of the Linux development that business concerns will start trumping community interests.

No matter how much corporate money is pushed into linux, that's not going to stop anyone from developing for fun. It's not a zero sum game.

Sort of like the difference between playing golf as a hobby and as a craft.

I, like Mark Twain, prefer to think of golf as a "good walk ruined".

Re:Corporate Linux

[ClosedSource]

I don't see much difference between developers making choices I disagree with vs. business concerns driving choices I disagree with. It's not as if core Linux development has ever been a democracy of developers.

Re:More patting ourselves on the back!!

[ronadams]

You know what's really neat? Facts to back up your statements. Got any of those?

My take

[east coast]

Being a person with no real love or hate for Linux I don't see Linux being the problem to the adoption of Linux. Most people really don't care about the OS, what they care about is the apps that the OS can run. Linux is kinda stuck here since a lot of the big office productivity and home entertainment vendors are passing them by.

Linux adoption will be proportional to third party software support for Linux. And sorry, no, cheap knockoffs like the GIMP don't really go far in this area. I use it and I like it but I'm not a professional graphics artist. That's the crux of the matter.

Re:My take

[lsolano]

And sorry, no, cheap knockoffs like the GIMP don't really go far in this area.

I really like linux as a server. I've been using it for around 8 years now.
And I've gave it a shot as desktop. I often use it as desktop computer... but every time that I have to use Adobe Photoshop, I see the big difference.

Re:My take

[JustNiz]

Just run photoshop (or whatever) under WINE. easy.

Re:My take

[lsolano]

well... if the idea is to have linux as desktop, only linux, how could someone do that?

I'm not a Wine expert, but, I think it needs windows to be installed to run the applications. At least, to install them. If so, the problem is not solve for linux yet :-(

Freedom vs corporate bottom line: false dichotomy

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

will the spirit of freedom and idealism remain true or will the ever-present corporate bottom line eventually take over?

Um. Freedom helps the corporate bottom line of everyone except perhaps the more inefficient mass-market proprietary software vendors.

Open Source Support

[PortHaven]

One of the big arguments that is given for paid versus open-source software is support. There are a lot of companies that offer enterprise support for Linux. And there is a lot of information scattered about on forums. But often this can be a bit cryptic for the newbie to Linux. Furthermore, such posts often assume additional knowledge. One can easily find oneself looking up a chain of topics just to get something simple working.

Perhaps what is needed is "Open Source Support". A website who's focus is to help the newbie to Linux on the consumer end. The site would have volunteers helping via IM chat, email, and perhaps VoIP. Said site would only support the most basic of activities (ie: setting up basic configurations such as mouse, video, printer, basic networking, etc. Basic software installation. Etc).

The support agents would be volunteers. The website would provide email alias & accounts. And even an option to "tip" your support representative via "Paypal" or perhaps other means. The site would avoid any more complex issues (ie: setting up your own web server, etc). Not saying a support contact might not help someone. But any such request could be politely declined.

It'd be an interesting idea. Not sure if it could be pulled off, but if it could I think such a site would do wonders for helping people migrate to Linux. (Which would then entail much more support on the corporate end for drivers, development and enterprise activities.)

- The Saj

Re:Open Source Support

[hkBst]

I guess you've never been to any of the IRC support channels that all self-respecting distros have.

Pretty much.

[khasim]

Since Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop (yes they do, the court ruled so) there isn't much in the way of options.

#1. Develop your own system, keep it proprietary and hope that Microsoft doesn't see enough value in taking it from you.

#2. Support Microsoft's system and hope you can:
  2a. compete with everyone else doing the same
  2b. make enough profit to survive, but not enough so that Microsoft moves into the market itself.

#3. Go Open Source / Free Software and try to get your system enough marketshare that you can turn a profit, somehow.

#4. Give up on the computer industry and close your shop.

Sun has realized that #3 is the only option short of just giving up. At least they have something marketable - their expertise in the systems that they designed and that they built.

Re:Pretty much.

[PsychoSid]

In my (limited) opinion I think that Sun follow roughly the same business model in the enterprise that Apple do for the consumer - and limited business desktop market.

Develop software to sell the hardware and provide the full experience with Sun One product suite etc.

Re:Pretty much.

[G Morgan]

Yes but Solaris isn't locked down to Sun hardware.

Re:More patting ourselves on the back!!

[zcat_NZ]

Easy.

Lunix is a unix-like OS for the C-64. There's probably about 15 or 20 people worldwide who use it.

Someone must be kidding here...

[Giloo]

"Linux is surrounded by proprietary IT firms. Some of them view Linux as a profit maker, others as a threat to their profits."
Now, let's see what advertisement I was given while reading the summary: http://www.frequence3.fr/~gilou/go_linux.png Can't be more accurate about "surrounding" I guess...

Let's make the desktop better

[dannys42]

Can we get rid of the obvious Microsoft plant heading up GNOME? ;-)

You can't. It breaks stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

It screws up all the "referers" in Apache :(

Towards Apple and Away from Unix

[Eli Gottlieb]

The biggest thing holding Linux back is its insistence on maintaining backwards compatibility not merely with POSIX, but with every single other "standard" of old Unix systems.

Unix was a timesharing operating system meant for mainframes, so of course its modern-day clone makes no inroads outside of the mainframe-like server market!

Now Apple understands what users want, and Apple understands when to break backwards-compatibility for the sake of those users. Linux developers working on desktop software should stop trying to compete with Windoze and start trying to compete with Mac OS X. When Linux gives me a configurable, free-as-in-beer-and-speech POSIX system underneath with a pretty user-interface and desktop ease-of-use (like bloody .app files/directories!) I could picture myself finding on a Mac, then maybe I'll switch back to Linux.

Re:Towards Apple and Away from Unix

[GnuDiff]

Hmm, I don't really understand. What kinds of standards would be those that supposedly hold Linux back?

I have checked out Mac OS X and a comparatively recent version of Ubuntu Linux.
My vote goes for Ubuntu, definitely. However, since it is a matter of taste anyway, I would just like to say I was able to do with Ubuntu whatever I was able to do with Mac. If anything, as a non-Brith/American, I would praise Linux support for Unicode, which, in my experience, is better than on Mac OS X (particularly Mac's X11 emulation layer doesn't well support unicode).

Re:Towards Apple and Away from Unix

[Anonymous Coward]

"Unix was a timesharing operating system meant for mainframes, so of course its modern-day clone makes no inroads outside of the mainframe-like server market!"

Uh. WHAT???

Do you think a DEC PDP-11/23 or 11/45 is a MAINFRAME?

Unix was implemented in a 64k byte address range (32K 16 bit words). Maximum memory capacity was 256 KBytes (-8k for I/O).

It was not and never has been designed for mainframes.

Re:Towards Apple and Away from Unix

[Eli Gottlieb]

Mac has excellent support for Unicode in its native applications. The only problem I've ever run into is a refusal to put punctuation marks on the utmost left when using a right-to-left language.

Hmm, I don't really understand. What kinds of standards would be those that supposedly hold Linux back? Insistence on doing everything through the Unix filesystem layout (since Mac's .app directories and Gobo Linux's appdirs are pretty much the best package management I've ever seen) and X11 (do you have any idea how ugly it is under the hood?) are probably the biggest offenders.

ALSA and OSS standards that require the user's desktop environment to install a sound mixer so that multiple applications can use the sound card at the same time. On my Mac sound multitasking and mixing Just Works as part of the operating system.

On a desktop system, autodetection of devices should take place automatically. I think some Linux desktop environments do this pretty well, but it should really be standard. If you don't want to automount devices, at least add them to a list of user-mountable devices that the user can access via the GUI.

All of these bugs and misfeatures are hangers-on from a time when you had a dedicated Unix mainframe/server with an administrator to handle the ugly bits like software installation, sharing of I/O devices, disk mounting and maintenance of a dedicated OS kernel. Keeping them for backwards compatibility or because some people like pretending to be old-school Unix hackers won't make a system that users will like.

My vote goes for Ubuntu, definitely. However, since it is a matter of taste anyway, I would just like to say I was able to do with Ubuntu whatever I was able to do with Mac. I used Ubuntu for work this summer. It was pretty damned nice, but I wouldn't take it over my Mac, if only because of appdirs. They really are a killer feature, because native support for appdirs allows installation or uninstallation of software to become a click-and-drag affair that any idiot user can work with and for which any idiot developer can develop.

Yep couldn't be more true... Same old, same old.

[pravuil]

Problem with this. Let me go over some points I learned over the years in dealing with software companies. Initially when a startup software company gets going they have to have a product to sell. Within the time alloted between development and the release they advertise their service to VC's who will fund their project off the ground. The VC's money gives them power over the project most of the time which can complicate the development process. Once the final product is made, the company releases it to the public and then provide a service of support. The support begins when the product is released. A company is considered unreliable if they do not provide support for their product. For companies with existing products already out in the market, they still provide a service by developing new features or patching security holes. Now if a company would decide to make upgrade after upgrade for sheer profit while sacrificing security, well you end up with a bad product while the consumer spends more and more money for each "upgrade". Consumers tire of this quickly.

When you have an OS made out of hundreds of programs all made from various individuals or groups, a business would be the only way there could be any type of support for such a system. The company would monitor all changes from the developer or forks and figure out how new patches can be applied and distributed to their consumer base. The developers who make the software decide for themselves on how they wish to handle their product within the market, whether they wish to profit off of it or not. The best thing to happen to a project is for that project to be incorporated into the business who is providing OS support. That way it provides jobs for coders and developers while allowing new ideas to fully develop and gain popularity. This all happens without having a Venture Capitalist to lay their money on a risky venture. If the developer wishes to profit from their program, they don't have to use the GPL. They also have the option to sell the rights of their software to big industries such as Google, RedHat, IBM, Novell, and Sun. If you don't have a hacker mentality in the real world you will never be able to make money. There are opportunities everywhere but often times we don't see it because we don't care to see anything other than what we are so dependent on. If it works why fix it right? Well, for a lot of developers, coders and hobbyists the system was broke a long time ago. What's going on right now is because of the same type of apathy that this is all charity and yet no one does anything to fix the existing problems. If you don't fix the problems yourself, someone else will do it for you. In the end whose really to blame?

Re:More patting ourselves on the back!!

[ronadams]

>. ihbt

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't have said it better myself.

I for one...

[seandiggity]

...welcome our FOSS-gobbling corporate overlords.

Kudos for the Conan reference...

[tjstork]

Made my day.!!! You should be modded up!

Can we call it for what it really is, please?

[Atriqus]

First, I keep seeing that the issue Linux has is that the desktop environments are not feature and behavior equivalent to Windows. That's a problem, because if you define Perfection to be "Windows+A few gimmicks", then Linux can never win, because it will always fail the first requirement.

And second. Can we stop blaming Linux for desktop inadequacies? The graphical admin tools are the responsibility of desktop developers who support the platform. How Linux takes heat because there's no system configuration for feature X in kcontrol is beyond me... oh yeah, because no one can remember what Linux is. Due to years of misnomers, people not well versed in the OSS world think Linux is the whole system. As much as I find this obnoxious, I wonder if people should have listened to Stallman and called it GNU/Linux; that or have just hidden the kernel name from the project name altogether.

I'd gladly donate for better hardware support

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu or canonical or somebody should put together a "support fund" which would encompass a wishlist of hardware that's not supported very well currently in Ubuntu. They could solicit quotes from professional development companies (or maybe even the hardware manufacturers themselves) to build FOSS drivers. Each wishlist item would have a cost attached. If you want to see that item supported, you can make a voluntary donation towards the project. Once the goal is reached, the company will be hired to produce the drivers and the next version of Ubuntu will have perfect built-in automatic FOSS support.

I'd gladly drop $50 a piece on 100%-compatible nVidia drivers and Broadcom drivers. I'm sure many others would too. Let's pool our financial resources.

brand new not a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Brand new hardware is not the best choice to run Linux on, unless it is one of the rare boxes where it comes pre installed. Stay a generation behind "new" and the hardware support out of the box is better than windows for the most part. Think about it, brand new = not very many devs have had a chance to even look at it yet. That and avoid known issues, a few companies out there just do not release hardware that is even close to being open source friendly, so ten minutes googling in advance will avoid 10 hours headaches in the future. Wait a bit, wait for knock down sales when the next generation of hardware comes out, pick up what you want at half off or something. It will still be "new", just not bleeding edge new. If you bought something with vista pre installed, it is too new to have the best possible linux support right now. just reality. And no matter when you try, if you insist on "new",chances are linux will never be totally supported, so just wait a year or so, then hit the sales, it will still be a more than adequate machine, you'll save tons of cash, and you can search and see which models seemed to work out the best.

This works with cars for that matter, wait until the new models come out, the older "new" stuff sitting on the lots gets wicked cheaper, and it's still "new", especially to you, and a whole year has passed where any glitches or recall action would have been found out and fixed. Same deal, sorry for the car analogy, but in this case it is pretty close.

Ending configure; make; makeinstall

[Zombie Ryushu]

Stop doing the configure make make install. Everything has to work within the package management Schemas. I'm serious! Stop! Your means of compiling an application should be: rpm -ba rapidsvn.spec.

It should meet all requirements and install all packages and resolve all dependency. If it doesn't, the developer isn't doing his job. ./configure; make; make install is not something you should ever execute again. I'm serious! Stop doing it that way, and if a SPEC File doesn't exist, MAKE ONE!

Re:SourceForce? Come on...

[budgenator]

Cmdr Taco, "Gee ScuttleMonkey, your right, the company who's name you mis-spell lat week seems to have dropped a zero form your paycheck, no problem I'll have HR fix, should only take 6 months or so."

How about app-killing Exchange?

[WheelDweller]

I work with a storefront that has Linux clients, but the first card off the deck is always Exchange and all that middle ware. Almost everyone in town is on it...if that weren't the case, I'd be able to live like the rest of you, blowing wads of cash on things decreed as 'cool' at least once in 7 years. (The time I've been required to stay here for my aging Mom.)

What kind of alternatives exist to this crazy mindset?

Easy answer

[houghi]

Pre-instalation. People are lazy and will run what is on the PC when they buy it.

Other options

[huckamania]

#5. Develop for the web ala facebook, google, ebay, etc.

#6. Develop for something other then the x86 desktop, ie. cell phones, portable game devices, game consoles, etc.

On my own, I've tried #6 and #5. I've made a little money on #5 and no money at all on #6. Still, gotta keep trying or just accept working for the man.

When will we hear the last of this futile dispute?

[thevirtuesofxen]

This arguement seems to go on and on, but few of the comments left on this article actually attempt to make a resolution to one of the great problems posed to Linux today. As I see it, Linux only has two paths: The first is to accomidate its enthusiasts, and the second is to appeal to the mainstream computer users. However, Linux is not built to accomidate mainstream users and I feel that the community is rushing things. Linux has a long way to go before it can support mainstream users. Distributions like Ubuntu have done the best job of supporting users, with its ease of installing products. But what of proprietary media codecs, and games? These qualities are the only reasons why Windows is still dominating. Typical computer users of nowadays love media, but media is one of Linux's weak points, as it only can legally support it with a valid Windows license that contains said codecs. Users want to be able to edit photos, listen/watch music and movies and play games. If you think about it, the process for using such things requires much effort and patience. Support for photos is no big deal, but many complications come into the light with Music and Movies, as the user now has to tackle the issues with Xine and its codecs. And don't even think about games. Wine is garbage, and unless you're a UT2004/Quake fan, you're out of luck. So really, Linux only provides 1/3 of what users really need. Browsing is all right, but many sites are or claim to be incompatible with Linux, and playing media from the Internet is limited.

I've learned to work around these problems on my Kubuntu PC, but most users migrating from the PC will hate it. Linux has a lot to offer, and getting everything working on it requires more knowledge, patience and effort that doesn't appeal to the rest of the users. Also, Linux doesn't seem to be making much progress towards solving these problems. And think about it guys, what typical user REALLY cares whether or not the software they are using is open source.

(please excuse any grammatical mistakes, Safari on Windows doesn't check these things.)

Re:More patting ourselves on the back!!

[rainman_bc]

What I do find interesting though is the bloat that's going into the Kernel nowadays.

My issues are more with the desktops now than with the kernel.

Let's be honest about where Linux truly sucks. On the server it's awesome and vastly popular.

But the desktop is another story. Wireless networking support is spotty, and so is photo printing. It took Adobe FOREVER to release an updated flash for Linux. Video editing sucks ass ( Cinelerra? C'mon get real folks ), and so is photo editing sucks too ( Gimp != Photoshop and is way inferiour ) On my Mac, I get all the awesomeness of Unix, with the beauty of OSX. I can install Photoshop if I like, and I have iPhoto and iMovie that do pretty good.

I tried with Linux for over a year. I now own a Mac because I'm tired of it.

Re:SourceForce? Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

Never underestimate the power of the SourceForce.

Re:SourceForce? Come on...

[ThePengwin]

Luke: "where am i going to find a free, open source FTP client?"
Obi-Wan: "Luke, use the SourceForce!"

corporate bottom line eventually take over

[nurb432]

Welcome to the real world. Corporate greed is what make the world go round now.

Next step, consumer devices.

[chris_7d0h]

CPUs, memory and storage are today getting to a price/performance point where it starts making sense for manufacturers to contemplate building consumer devices on top of a scaled down but familiar platform with few or no license fees associated. Chinese manufacturers are I think leading the way in this area atm. and we'll soon see the fruit of that interest.

This is a good thing. Consumers are many and varied and most of them are non-techies. To sell to non-techies you have to really nail the (user interface) experience and lessons learned during the next 5 years will eventually trickle back the desktop domain.

So "Linux on the desktop" will i.m.o. not be something that will happen until Linux is in most of our tiny devices (iphone/ipod clones, nokia phones, portable media centers, wearable GPS devices / personal network hubs and whatever other gadgets of today and tomorrow.. ). So my guess, 5-6 years before we start seeing Linux widening noticeably on the desktop, but at that point the current obstacle holding Linux on the desktop back will have vanished and then it will be the final time we see an article on ./ titled "Is this the year Linux will conquer the desktop?".

Re:More patting ourselves on the back!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: ultrafamous quote:

"I think there will be a world-wide demand for about 5 computers"...

Re:SourceForce? Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny. But of course you don't really need a comma. Thank goodness. But you do need success. The success Linux is enjoying?

Where?

Where to Go? Smooth wrinkles and make good apps

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Right now, Linux has a bunch of quirky fucked up wierdness that needs to get fixed. Someone above noted gettign some minor UI problem fixed. Another person noted that getting an 802.11x card installed is a nightmare. Stuff like that MUST GO AWAY. Period. Forever.

At the same time, the apps have to improve in quality.

GIMP is mediocre. OpenOffice is good, but not quite there. HiDef Video editing? BWAHAHAHAAAAA!!! Video FX? Nope. Professional music production? Sorry, not there yet. A true page layout app (viz Quark, InDesign) that will print to a high res film printer? Nope. The list is long...

Sure, you can brag about the POWER OF LINUX, but it doesn't mean shite if people can't get their work done on it because there's no application support.

Frankly, I think if Adobe moved their software to Linux, THEN Linux wouuld be in a Really Good Place, and Microsoft would basically whither away.

But until then, it's a place for specialists and fanboyz. Not a bad place, but never a contender.

RS

Patent death

[Thyrsus]

I'm mad as hell about it, I think it is tyranny, but thems with the gold has made the rules: I think the following is the most likely scenario:

US software patents are for real; just ask RIM. The patent battle is not another SCO. Red Hat loses the patent battle. It teeters on bankruptcy paying out the indemnification of its customers. US vendors stop shipping large chunks of Linux. Developers enslave themselves to Microsoft's patent indemnification, because Microsoft is the only entity wealthy enough to pay off all the patent trolls. Due to network effects, Linux market share evaporates until it becomes as common as, say, QNX.

If you want to avert that scenario, you need to buy^H^H^Hmake fabulously handsome bundled campaign contributions to 60 senators and 220 or so members of the house, and let them know precisely what to do with software patents. Better include the winning presidential candidate as well.

Re:SourceForce? Come on...

[budgenator]

Maybe it was part of the joke

Where does Linux go from here?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a great question. Linux has built itself to become a great OS. I think the next big step would be for someone to decide to bring this "Linux" thing to the desktop. Imagine this - a Windows type environment, except running on Linux! If somebody, anybody, decided to do this, one day we might just be talking about the "Year of the Linux Desktop." A man can dream...

Key point of the GPL - who cares where it goes?

[pyite69]

The key of Linux is that people take it wherever they want it to go, and nobody can take it back away from you.

Portable applications

[merphant]

I think that for Linux to really take off in the desktop area, all of the Linux programs that people would want to use should be ported to, and work well on, both Windows and Mac. That way, people using those platforms could start using all the cool apps available for Linux, but under the OS that they are already used to. Once people are using all free apps, the underlying OS will be a lot less important.

Getting (native) GTK working well on Mac would be a major improvement; that way both Qt and GTK, the two major free toolkits, would be available for developers on all platforms.

I hear KDE is coming out with a native Mac release. I am really looking forward to it.

Oblig. Quote

[schmiddy]

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Gandhi

I've suspected for a few years that the "they fight you" stage couldn't be far away, since we've arguably passed the "laugh at you" stage — and I'm afraid we've quietly entered that phase. First, it was SCO, EU Software Patents, then Novell/Microsoft, and now Ballmer has openly done his saber-rattling. The worst of the war is yet to come, I fear.

what linux needs: a standard "platform"

[smash]

Being open is all well and good, but one of the reasons Linux is so hard for commercial software houses to deal with is that it's a moving platform.

It's stabilising gradually, but there's a lot to be said for the "windows way" of maintaining backwards binary compatibility and having a fixed API for drivers, etc.

QT? GTK? Which version? DRI? Which threading library? Mono? Java? Which version? Which sound library, OSS or ALSA? E sound daemon? Which package format? Which C library? Some of those aren't necessarily a problem any more (i haven't run desktop linux on a regular basis for a couple of years), but the general problem of no fixed standard platform is still there.

I love free software, but certain apps (in particular, games for example - the "boring" sofware code-wise is another - eg, business accounting software, tax software) just aren't well catered to by Free software - the projects are bigger now-adays than some kid in his bedroom can manage. Until a company can write for a set platform and expect that his app will work pretty reliably on most machines out there, they'll be reluctant to spend too much time on it.

One of the reasons I like FreeBSD is that FreeBSD = FreeBSD. It's less fragmented, documentation from 2-4 years ago still usually works (even if there's been code updates, most of the time the "interface" side of things remains consistent - I've no idea how many times i've gone through linux howtos over the years to find that they're a year old and everything has changed), and the base platform is a known quantity. However, the same problem exists to an extent - the base platform isn't comprehensive enough...

Ubuntu has gone some way to help out, but there's still some way to go...

Re:what linux needs: a standard "platform"

[Ash-Fox]

It's stabilising gradually, but there's a lot to be said for the "windows way" of maintaining backwards binary compatibility

I'm still playing with old UT, Quake binaries etc. We don't even get the sourcecode to them, so we couldn't recompile them if we wanted. So, yes, that exists.

and having a fixed API for drivers, etc.

Seems the same standard as Windows's really with the drivers API. Every new release of Windows breaks older things and brings new features. Pretty much like new releases of the Linux kernel.

QT? GTK? Which version? DRI? Which threading library? Mono? Java? Which version? Which sound library, OSS or ALSA? E sound daemon? Which package format? Which C library?

Honestly you have this issue on Windows too. Java? Mono? Microsoft .net? Which versions? Even with sound.. Do you use directsound? win32's native APIs for sound? OpenAL? Vista's new audio system? Which installer system? Install shield? NSIS? Vise Installer?

but the general problem of no fixed standard platform is still there.

And there isn't under Windows either.

certain apps (in particular, games for example - the "boring" sofware code-wise is another - eg, business accounting software, tax software) just aren't well catered to by Free software - the projects are bigger now-adays than some kid in his bedroom can manage. Until a company can write for a set platform and expect that his app will work pretty reliably on most machines out there, they'll be reluctant to spend too much time on it.

I have used a tonne of business applications from Novell, Codeweavers, Vmware for openource platforms and I have to say... I don't find them at all unreliable

As for games, they work really well for me. Unreal Tournament original/2k3/2k4, Quake I/II/III, Doom I/II/III, Uplink, Sauerbraten etc. all work reliably on opensource platforms just as well as they run under Windows. Wine lets me run pretty much all the source games for Steam without an issue as well as world of Warcraft and others.

One of the reasons I like FreeBSD is that FreeBSD = FreeBSD. It's less fragmented, documentation from 2-4 years ago still usually works (even if there's been code updates, most of the time the "interface" side of things remains consistent - I've no idea how many times i've gone through linux howtos over the years to find that they're a year old and everything has changed)

I'm not too keen on running outdated applications just to get the correct documentation - although I might add I haven't seen this issue in recent years on Linux.

and the base platform is a known quantity.

What is that supposed to mean?

Ubuntu has gone some way to help out, but there's still some way to go...

Based off your points - not really.

Re:To working....Yep; Gentoo is a distribution tha

[ZekeSpeak]

Yep; Gentoo is a distribution that makes no sense at all. Mostly a whole bunch of people who think burning CPU time to compile stuff, verses stuff compiled by someone else, is actually going to benefit them somehow.

You don't think so? Why do you need support for EVERY language compiled into your applications? Why do you need MYSQL support compiled into your applications when you use postgresql?

It isn't. Compiling code isn't magick. It is just a boring, tedious, and fantastically consistent, process. The "fantastically consistent" means it doesn't much matter where, or by who, some chunk of code gets compiled. And, yes, I know about compiler options, etc... In reality, "-O2" verses "-O1" ain't going to buy you anything noticable, and there are reasons not to use "-O2"; if you don't know what those are.... you shouldn't be diddling with compiler options.

So, compiling specifically for my laptop, my P4 desktop and my P3 router doesn't matter? My applications contain support for ONLY what I require.

Re:More patting ourselves on the back!!

[CyberdogOSX]

but can it run DOOM?

Re:More patting ourselves on the back!!

[garaged]

perfectly understandable from a guy comming from windows, think what would you say if you actually knew free software tools as good as propietary ones.

Re:To working....Yep; Gentoo is a distribution tha

[Whitemice]

>> Yep; Gentoo is a distribution that makes no sense at all. Mostly a whole bunch of people
>> who think burning CPU time to compile stuff, verses stuff compiled by someone else, is
>> actually going to benefit them somehow.
> You don't think so?

I know so; no, it doesn't matter.

> So, compiling specifically for my laptop, my P4 desktop and my P3 router doesn't matter?

No, it does not matter. Other factors are going to constrain the performance of any commodity hardware before the minor (and often theoretical) CPU specific optimizations will be able to present themselves. On a modern desktop or router the ~1-3% performance bump you might get isn't even going to be noticeable and certain isn't pragmatically worth the effort of having to install an entire development environment (now there is a real loss; empty filesystems are faster then ones with more stuff in them).

> My applications contain support for ONLY what I require.

And the catalytic converter on my car is orange, and the one on my neighbors car is blue.

The sophisticated virtual memory logic in any current OS makes the "don't link to that library to save me memory" argument bogus, and it has been for quite some time. This is the same as people looking at ps output of an app like evolution and seeing 196Mb and going "OMG! What a bloated cow! This thing should be modular!". Only Evolution, and GNOME, is highly modular and that size in ps doesn't mean anything like you've actually 'lost' anywhere close to 196Mb by running evolution.

http://virtualthreads.blogspot.com/2006/02/understanding-memory-usage-on-linux.html

Most "bloatware" is only bloated between the viewers ears.

Re:To working....Yep; Gentoo is a distribution tha

[nuzak]

The customization possibilities in Gentoo are possibly its only redeeming factor. It's technically possible to build a dietlibc system or even possibly a ucLibc system off the same portage tree (reality is that it isn't all that smooth, but the idea is still good). I submit nonetheless that it still doesn't really teach you jack about how your system really works or that it even has any measurable impact on performance.

BTW, Debian's able to strip message catalogs for unused languages from its packages too. It sure doesn't require recompiling.

Re:More patting ourselves on the back!!

[rainman_bc]

perfectly understandable from a guy comming from windows First of all, I use a Mac now.

Secondly, if Linux wants to seriously compete on the desktop it needs to have a competitive offering. Instead we get hung up on Gnome vs. KDE, Beryl vs. Compiz, GPL2 vs GPL3 vs LGPL, etc etc... There's some good desktop stuff out there, but it's not quite there yet to give people a viable alternative. That said, my wife quite likes Linux on her laptop right now as all she does is word processing, email, and internet surfing.

Re:SourceForce? Come on...

[CommanderIsm]

and i thought this was a serious discussion. you would have to be microshaft employee to think otherwise. congats' to SlashDot on your recent anniversary keep up the great work love and peace

Re:what linux needs: a standard "platform"

[smash]

As I said, I haven't run destop linux for a little while, however, some of the responses you've made to my points have conveniently avoided some of the pitfalls compared to windows. Eg, on windows, sure there's different sound standards. In practice, it all "just works". Linux? Oh, if you have sound daemon X running it fucks up the sound for apps that run using API Y...

As I said, it is stabilising, but if you'd been around long enough to remember the a.out and c library changes, you'd know what i'm talking about when I'm referring to compatibility issues. Back in the days of redhat 5.0 for example, the switch to glibc caused huge numbers of apps to break both in terms of binary compatibility and *source* compatibility.

Yes, there's various packages that may or may not be present on a windows box, however, any app can rely on win32 to be present, along with directX 7 or later. As vista is pushed out, at least some version of .net is present as well. However, the package specifics aren't relevant - what is relevant is that there's a usable base desktop OS present on any windows box, with a known set of components. All the vendor has to put on the box is "needs windows *shiny verson*" The differences between each linux distribution (and customisation by the user of each of those distributions) mean that this is not true for linux. MacOS has the same advantage as Windows here - there's a known "base platform" that is actually useful for desktop applications - Linux does not have this, and needs it, if it's to become more than a hobby OS for the mainstream - on the desktop. Server space is another matter, i've been running Linux boxes in the enterprise since 1996 :D

I mean for a start, if i'm building a desktop app right now for Linux, I pretty much have a choice of either KDE or gnome, and whichever I choose probably half (or more) of the linux systems out there will not have the required components installed (some with have KDE some will have gnome, some will have neither). It's something as simple as a fucking toolkit - and there's no "known quantity" that every linux system will have.

I'm not too keen on running outdated applications just to get the correct documentation

If you look at the FreeBSD ports (which is where most of your "applications" come from, you'll probably find that they're as up to date or more than any linux distribution.

The base system however is fairly solid and the *interface* on the included base apps remains consistent. as a random example: you don't get 3 different boot loaders with their own terminology and documentation. You get the freebsd boot loader, which works just fine, and has remained consistent from a user perspective forever. You don't get, for example the deprecation of an entire firewalling toolset, to be replaced by a new toolset with incompatible syntax. Sure, FreeBSD has 3 different firewalling toolsets (why isn't exactly clear to me) - but even though for example, there have been major improvements to pf over the years - the interface has remained consistent - the new version is a superset of the old. You don't have the situation where, for example, in the linux world, you throw away everything you know about ipfwadm, and learn ipchains. Then you throw all that away and need to learn iptables. etc.

Pulling the old "freebsd has outdated sofware" shit just shows you either have no idea or are just being deliberately antagonistic.

Ignorant writer == crap article

[SigmundFloyd]

From the article:

What if, for example, Microsoft decided to plop a new GUI atop the Linux kernel and enter the fray with its own version of Linux? [...]
Apple has done very well doing exactly that with BSD.

Good job, Joe: a classic Usenet-advocacy-group-style "analysis".

Re:what linux needs: a standard "platform"

[Ash-Fox]

some of the responses you've made to my points have conveniently avoided some of the pitfalls compared to windows. Eg, on windows, sure there's different sound standards. In practice, it all "just works". Linux? Oh, if you have sound daemon X running it fucks up the sound for apps that run using API Y...

You said earlier:

Which sound library, OSS or ALSA?

On modern Linux systems, OSS and ALSA are both provided by ALSA, hence there is no issue. Sure, I suppose if you're running sound daemons that are being deprecated (ARTs in KDE, esound etc.) there is going to be issues since they aren't even being used anymore. I haven't had issues using ALSA, OSS, gstreamer simualtaniously on Kubuntu mind you (no configurations or anything)

As I said, it is stabilising, but if you'd been around long enough to remember the a.out and c library changes, you'd know what i'm talking about when I'm referring to compatibility issues. Back in the days of redhat 5.0 for example, the switch to glibc caused huge numbers of apps to break both in terms of binary compatibility and *source* compatibility.

Why should I care about what was a issue in the past? This isn't a issue anymore.

Yes, there's various packages that may or may not be present on a windows box, however, any app can rely on win32 to be present, along with directX 7 or later.

Linux Standard Base works well in my experience.

As vista is pushed out, at least some version of .net is present as well. However, the package specifics aren't relevant - what is relevant is that there's a usable base desktop OS present on any windows box, with a known set of components.

LSB has been a solution for this for quite a long time.

I mean for a start, if i'm building a desktop app right now for Linux, I pretty much have a choice of either KDE or gnome, and whichever I choose probably half (or more) of the linux systems out there will not have the required components installed (some with have KDE some will have gnome, some will have neither).

So just stick the requirements on a webpage, it's not hard to just say "requires KDElibs", it's not like I haven't got "Requires Java", "Requires flash 9", "Requires .net 2.0" and requiring me to install those to get the application in question running.

It's something as simple as a fucking toolkit - and there's no "known quantity" that every linux system will have.

The "fucking" LSB requires GTK+ and Qt among other toolkits. It requires OpenGL and many other things that are generally used. Since the majority of major distributions even comply (except for Gentoo for obvious reasons) with the LSB to make things work across cross distributions.

Server space is another matter, i've been running Linux boxes in the enterprise since 1996

Admittedly I haven't been using Linux since 1996, but in my current daily life. I use every day OS X (I loathe it), Windows (2k3, xp, vista), OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Kubuntu Linux, SuSE Linux... I have a very good idea what is going on with the OSes I use daily.

If you look at the FreeBSD ports (which is where most of your "applications" come from, you'll probably find that they're as up to date or more than any linux distribution.

Okay, I'm just going to take a application that's open on my desktop and check the versions.

I have Dolphin 0.9.2 on Kubuntu Gutsy.

On FreeBSD, the latest is 0.8.2 (Information taken from the KDE ports page).

as a random example: you don't get 3 different boot loaders with their own terminology and documentation.

Most Linux distributions aren't going to ask you "Do you want GRUB or LiLO?" unless you check the advanced install feature. They're just g