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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."
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.
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?
Where next? Linux must crush its enemies. To see them driven before it. And to hear the lamentations of their women...
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
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.
> 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.
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
Oh! Oh! I know! How about incorporating kernel-level spellchecking?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
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
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.
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.
My Babylon
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
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.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
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.
Easy.
Lunix is a unix-like OS for the C-64. There's probably about 15 or 20 people worldwide who use it.
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