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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."
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.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
For a flame war on Linux fanbois?
... 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.
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
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
"I'd say this is a Freudian slip, but lets just chalk it up to typo."
.svn files). But to just get up and running for the basics was very little problem.
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
"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.
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.
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.
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.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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
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.
Hmm, let's see...
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.
Develop software to sell the hardware and provide the full experience with Sun One product suite etc.
"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.
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.".
.exe will work on different Vista editions, a .deb will work fine on different Ubuntu editions.
.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.
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
Now, I'm not arguing that that
#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.
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.
./ titled "Is this the year Linux will conquer the desktop?".
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
In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda ~ Bill Durodié
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...