Where Linux Gained Ground in 2007

christian.einfeldt writes "Computer scientist and media maven Roy Schestowitz takes a look at platforms where GNU Linux gained the most ground in 2007. In a thorough review which is the first of a two-part series, Schestowitz looks at trends in supercomputers, mobile phones, desktops, low-end laptops and tablets, consoles, media players and set-top boxes. Schestowitz finds that GNU Linux solidified its dominant grip on supercomputers; made huge gains in low-end laptops and tablets; won major OEM and retail support on the desktop; gained new entries into game consoles; and also spawned new businesses in set-top boxes while holding its ground in pre-existing product lines. He sums it all up by saying that '2007 will be remembered as the year when GNU/Linux became not only available, but also properly preinstalled on desktops and laptops by the world's largest companies.'"

Comments

F40PH Factor

[Anonymous Coward]

If it doesn't run on the F40PH, it doesn't matter.

Re:F40PH Factor

[ryanov]

This F40PH?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMD_F40PH

Re:F40PH Factor

[Charles Dodgeson]

Now imagine a Beowulf cluster ...

Re:F40PH Factor

[sykopomp]

keep those memes out of here!

Re:F40PH Factor

[Slashdot Suxxors]

Your ideas intrigue me. I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:F40PH Factor

[Anonymous Coward]

keep those memes out of here! and stay off my lawn!?

Not on the Wii.

[webmaster404]

Linux can not be run on the Wii as the article suggests. It can be run on the Wii in Gamecube mode, but it has no Wii funtions.

Re:Not on the Wii.

[sxpert]

running homebrew in wii mode was demonstrated at the CCC congress. check the video about the xbox360 security breakeage

Re:Not on the Wii.

[larry bagina]

it doesn't (yet) run linux, though.

Re:Not on the Wii.

[webmaster404]

Homebrew is possible (as proven in the past few days) but Linux is not. And even homebrew hasn't progressed beyond a few proof of concepts.

Re:Not on the Wii.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can execute arbitrary code on the Wii (as shown in the past few days), then what's preventing you from running Linux on it? Saying "The stock kernel doesn't support the hardware" isn't a valid defense, because, as you know, we have the source for the kernel, so somebody smarter than you or I could spend some time making the necessary modifications for that hardware.

Re:Not on the Wii.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the wii hardware have true memory protection? Lot of games systems used not to, anyway. That makes running linux proper fundamentally impossible, you have to use something like uclinux.

Re:Not on the Wii.

[tepples]

If you can execute arbitrary code on the Wii (as shown in the past few days), then what's preventing you from running Linux on it? Time. There wasn't enough time between when the Wii was cracked and when the 2008 ball dropped to port the kernel.

Where Linux lost ground:

[Anonymous Coward]

Nigger-retention. And that's a good thing!

Happy new year, everyone! (Except for niggers!)

First Post

[ultramkancool]

??? Maybe.

Re:First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Well done.

I sense some bias...

[Anonymous Coward]

On the desktop, the outlook seems increasingly bright. Two independent user surveys, one from LinuxDesktop.com and another from the Linux Foundation, saw participation more than doubling in just one year. This indicates strong growth that cannot normally be measured. When it comes to free software, obtaining absolute numbers is different from studying trends. If you extrapolate these figures, as some industry watchers have already done, then it's almost safe to assume that the presence of GNU/Linux on the desktop has doubled in the past year. Oh please. I like Linux as much as the next person (and use Ubuntu on 2 desktops), the the idea that the Linux on the desktop has doubled in 2007 is absurd. Of course I expect this kind of "reporting" from someone who insists on writing GNU/Linux all the time instead of just Linux (it's nice to be accurate, but the GNU pedantry annoys more people than it attracts).

Re:I sense some bias...

[FoolsGold]

Oh please. I like Linux as much as the next person (and use Ubuntu on 2 desktops), the the idea that the Linux on the desktop has doubled in 2007 is absurd. Of course I expect this kind of "reporting" from someone who insists on writing GNU/Linux all the time instead of just Linux (it's nice to be accurate, but the GNU pedantry annoys more people than it attracts).

I dunno. It's hard to get figures, but given how small the market share is for Linux on the desktop anyway, doubling it would not be out of the question, at least in the geek community where the majority of its desktop use would be.

Re:I sense some bias...

[Miseph]

While I too doubt the estimate that the number of users running Linux has doubled in 2007, I don't doubt it by much. I know that between 1/1 2007 and 12/31 2007 I have seen more new people install and run Linux than any other year in my memory, and I have not seen any of them abandon it after a few weeks or days. The very fact that user survey participation on Linux specific sites has more than doubled is a strong sign that, even if the actual number of users didn't double, at least the number of people interested in it has, and that's big. If only Dell would take their Ubuntu machines off of the separate page and let us install it on more than two models as a drop down alternative to Vista/XP (with a big warning dialog to scare clueless buyers away from a product they probably don't want) I think 2008 would definitely see the number of Linux desktops double.

Just as importantly, I've seen a massive move toward non-MS products even on Windows machines. My college has Firefox installed on virtually every machine, and I can't even remember the last time I saw an open IE window; I've even seen a few installs of OpenOffice next to Office 2007 on the least frozen machines. The more cross platform apps gain steam, the less reason anyone has to pay the Microsoft tax, and the less likely people are to actually do so.

So yes, doubled is probably an exaggeration, but it's definitely been a banner year for (GNU/)Linux and FOSS in general.

Re:I sense some bias...

[me at werk]

I think you're close, but not fully there. If Dell gave users an option to install both with dual boot setup easily (which might require license haggling), it could be bigger. "No worries, if Linux isn't good for you, switch back to Windows by rebooting!" It's working for Mac, isn't it?

Re:I sense some bias...

[westlake]

I know that between 1/1 2007 and 12/31 2007 I have seen more new people install and run Linux than any other year in my memory

The key word here is "install."

That word - particularly when spoken on Slashdot - usually translates to "technical specialist or hobbyist." The Geek or would-be Geek.

or, to be less charitable, "my sister, my brother, my mom and dad."

Re:I sense some bias...

[jeiler]

...the the idea that the Linux on the desktop has doubled in 2007 is absurd.

Not necessarily absurd--just count the number of Dell and HP computers that came shipped with Linux. I've no idea what the numbers are, but it's going to ping the stats. Then add how many people "converted," even if it's on a secondary box....

One desktop at a time is all it needs.

Re:I sense some bias...

[Daengbo]

How about this, then: for the first time in ten years of using Linux, I was asked by someone else to install it. In fact, two different people requested it. That' definitely different

Re:I sense some bias...

[Hatta]

the idea that the Linux on the desktop has doubled in 2007 is absurd.

Sure Linux on the desktop doubled, now there are two users!

Re:I sense some bias...

[Charles Dodgeson]

the the idea that the Linux on the desktop has doubled in 2007 is absurd. I bought a much bigger display in 2007, so my desktop has nearly to doubled.

Re:I sense some bias...

[Technician]

I like Linux as much as the next person (and use Ubuntu on 2 desktops), the the idea that the Linux on the desktop has doubled in 2007 is absurd.

An of those desktops, how many were you using in 2006? I had played with a couple distros before last year, but they simply were not a replacement for anything. Last year I converted my old PIII machine, an IMB Thinkpad, and put Ubuntu on my new homebuilt Core 2 Duo box. In the process, I have helped a bunch of people switch. There are many who abandoned old versions of Windows and upgraded to Linux last year. Last year is the first year Linux is my primary OS, not a toy.

Re:I sense some bias...

[Anonymous Coward]

An of those desktops, how many were you using in 2006? One I've had running linux since early 2006, the other since 2004. (Using Mandriva prior to Ubuntu).

Re:I sense some bias...

[fat_mike]

You know where those numbers come from? Zealots.

I haven't seen a single person install Linux all year.

You know what I see.

Big damn Blade servers running non-Linux OS's using Linux variants in a virtual machine setting.

1993-200* was the year of Linux. Nobody cares anymore. We all learned our lesson 8 years ago.

Fuck talking about 15 year old technology and move on. Watching a penguin slide down a hill with hard as shit controls and crappy graphics while calling it "Groundbreaking" does not make me believer. Nor does OpenOffice, or Fire "Give me memory...what, you only have 600gigs? I'll eat your pagefile then!!!!!!!" Fox or Mplayer with all the fucking plugins you have to install.

Ubuntu = Vista Linux - I don't want to have to supply a password for every thing I want to do. Who thought that was a good idea?

Re:I sense some bias...

[xubu_caapn]

this is an interesting idea, especially with hard drive space so easy to come by. I haven't looked recently but I'm pretty sure a lot of Dells have 500gig drives in by default, so most users wouldn't notice nor care. meanwhile they have a dependable OS to switch to when Windows acts funny.

Re:I sense some bias...

[aichpvee]

I haven't seen a single person install Linux all year.

You should come out of the basement more often. Your mom installed Kubuntu upstairs 4 months ago.

Re:I sense some bias...

[Ambidisastrous]

It gives Dell something to do in the customization step, too. When I set up Ubuntu+XP for my parents, I added a shortcut/bookmark in Nautilus and the Places menu to the "My Documents" folder on the XP partition (rw access). So all their documents are available from both OSes, they don't need to learn much about user home directories, Dad has easy access to Excel, and Mom isn't plagued by the various anti-productivity measures built into Windows and Norton Antivirus For Home Victims.

This has been a good solution for them so far, and I think I'd recommend it for general use. It might be even better to symlink ~user/.mozilla to %ApplicationData%/Mozilla, to share extensions and bookmarks, but I haven't tried it.

Not sure if offering dual-boot out of the box is even the best option, really. I think the most effective thing Dell could do for Linux would be to list usable Ubuntu laptops on the same pages and in the same categories as the Windows Vista laptops for home and business users -- Vista isn't cheap, and home laptop prices are dropping quickly, so the comparison could be very compelling for customers.

Re:I sense some bias...

[ricegf]

We hosted three Christian youth workers from England in our home a few months ago. They all had laptops, of course, but to my surprise, the laptops ran Ubuntu. When I expressed surprise (because I usually see technical people running Linux rather than Christian youth workers), one of them looked at me with a puzzled expression and said, "Linux doesn't crash so much."

I guess he told me! :-)

But I, too, noticed a much broader cross-section of the "normal" population discussing and using Linux than before.

Re:I sense some bias...

[fwarren]

Meh, it is not that hard to double.

In 2007 I put my wifes computer and a friends computer on Ubuntu. Also a co-worker in tech support who wanted a system as tweaked as mine was for responding to support issues.

So in December 2006 there was one Linux desktop. Now in December 2007 there were 4 Linux desktops.

If 25% of the community introduce 3 or 4 people to using desktop Linux in year, it would double every year.

That may not be sustainable. But there are enough dedicated linux desktop folks at this point. I would believe that it could of happened in 2007.

Re:I sense some bias...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I work at a computer surplus. We've sold over 2000 machines in the last 6 months alone with Ubuntu on them (7.04 on earlier ones, and 7.10 within days of it coming out). I would EASILY believe desktop use has doubled.. I've used Linux since 1994, but honestly within the last year distros like Ubuntu really have finally gotten easy enough to where I can just install it on a machine and hand it to someone. Or, for that matter, give them a LiveCD and let them do it.

          Traditionally we've been selling machines blank. We'd get people asking us to put windows on "No you have to put it on yourselves" and people coming back with the machine they just bought "I put my office CD in, why doesn't windows install?" "Because it's not a Windows CD?"

          Earlier in 2007 we decided to put OSes on some machines to see how they'd sell.. answer, quite well. We put 2000 on a few machines with 2000 licenses (only for one week)*, XP on machines with XP licenses for a few weeks**, and Ubuntu on a few. The Windows machines sold quicker but were a gigantic time sink; a surprising number of people got the Ubuntu machines and commented they were planning to put Ubuntu on a machine anyway 8-).

            *We did 2000 machines for only one week; they did not sell at all. Anyone who looked just asked if we could put on XP instead... "No we can't". We in fact ended up wiping them and putting Ubuntu on instead.

          **We quit XP installs for 3 real and 1 possible reason. 1) Time and effort. We deal with FAR too many machines to manually babysit the windows installer. And the automated install CDs were far too machine-specific -- very similar dells would end up needing different customized install CDs to install with everything working. It was getting ridiculous to put dozens of video and ethernet controller drivers on the CD and still end up with a non-functional network card or 16-color video. Plus the install is flat-out slow. 2) Legal. The legal guys would never flat-out say putting XP on a machine with an XP system was fine. 3) support. Due to volume the store is strictly 1 week DOA warranty, no support. But probably close to 10% of the machines with windows, people just thought that didn't apply to them and want their spyware cleaned off for them, various other junk fixed. 4) The pseudo-reason. I really wondered if eventually these machines would start failing WGA.

          After the Windows experiment was done, we essentially decided to just put Ubuntu on everything. (On the theory that if nothing else, it stress tests the machine a bit over selling it blank.) Since I have a preseeded automated CD, it takes maybe 30 seconds to put a wiped hard disk into a machine, put the CD in, and boot. (Now I recently have set up a network-based install instead so I don't have to worry about scratched and lost CDs.) The install takes like 20-25 minutes (which is weird; the text installer takes that long while the LiveCDs graphical installer takes closer to 10-15 minutes.. the graphical install can't be automated though.) Tech support has been near 0; if we forget to put the sticker on the machine listing the initial username and password, someone will call to ask what it is.. otherwise the only machines that come back are the few that actually do croak out. I would guess many are just putting windows on these. But some are certainly not. I suspect out of the people who don't know how to install windows, some don't even realize they aren't running windows to begin with, since openoffice looks enough like office, and firefox and IE both look similar enough 8-).

          Oh, and the 7.04 to 7.10 switch? It took maybe an hour.. I pulled the preseed off our custom 7.04 disk, remastered the 7.10 disk with the custom preseed, burned a copy and test ran it on a machine or two. Done. I expect when 8.04 is released it'll be similarly easy to automate.

Re:I sense some bias...

[Miseph]

"You know where those numbers come from? Zealots."

What numbers? What zealots? I dual boot Windows because as such as I like Linux it still doesn't have all the functionality I want (though it certainly has all I need; your needs may vary).

"I haven't seen a single person install Linux all year."

I'm sensing that "people" aren't really your thing... so that's probably for the best.

"You know what I see."

Your mom's basement?

"Big damn Blade servers running non-Linux OS's using Linux variants in a virtual machine setting."

On desktops... wow, you must really not be a "people person". Sarcasm aside, this obviously has nothing to do with the topic at hand, and there are plenty of non-VM Linux servers out there, many of which run non-Linux OSs in a virtual machine setting. What's your point again?

"1993-200* was the year of Linux. Nobody cares anymore. We all learned our lesson 8 years ago."

If by "nobody" you mean yourself, then you are shown for a liar by the fact that you care enough to troll on /. about it. If you really think Linux is cooked and we're all so stupid, then why are you bothering with us at all? 8 years ago Linux was at least a decade from being ready to take the desktop market, apply your arithmetic skills and you'll see that it still has 2 to go before it is even feasible.

"Fuck talking about 15 year old technology and move on. Watching a penguin slide down a hill with hard as shit controls and crappy graphics while calling it "Groundbreaking" does not make me believer. Nor does OpenOffice, or Fire "Give me memory...what, you only have 600gigs? I'll eat your pagefile then!!!!!!!" Fox or Mplayer with all the fucking plugins you have to install."

So TuxRacer (which is basically a demo), Firefox (in which I've still yet to experience this infamous memory leak after over three years of use) and MPlayer (which requires no more plugins than WMP) now comprise the best features of Linux? Please.

"Ubuntu = Vista Linux - I don't want to have to supply a password for every thing I want to do. Who thought that was a good idea?"

I do plenty of things in Ubuntu without supplying a password. Sudo is intended to make sure potentially risky operations are performed only by admin users and only intentionally; the only thing wrong with the Vista ripoff is that they just make you click a box that says OK, it would be much more solid if it required a password... and if it only asked on things that are non-trivial.

Easy Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

It got nowhere, depending on who you ask.

Where are the commercial game ports for Linux? No one wants to make them, obviously, save for the FPS crowd (and there's only an Unreal Tournament for Linux because Epic passes the buck to Icculus to get the job done, not because they have the in-house talent to do it themselves). There are a few commercial games for Linux, yes, but only a few, and there's very little variety between them. In the open source world we have a few good games (the majority of them being FPS's, what a surprise), Battle for Wesnoth if you like strategy games (turn based ones, that is). Then we have the unfortunate, ugly ripoffs like "Secret Maryo Chronicles," and other games that look like they were developed for a C64. Plenty of selection, not a lot of quality.

We have Parallels for Mac OS X, which seems to be quite capable at running Windows programs at a decent speed, with good compatibility. What do we have on Linux? Wine? Crossover Office? I think anyone who's actually tried to use either of these will probably tell you that if you really want to run Windows programs on your Linux machine, you're going to have to install Windows too...and the fact of the matter is that most of the commercial software out there is for Windows, whether you like it or not (being an Ubuntu user, I would have to say that I do not :>). Apple has the best of both worlds on their platform -- why can't, say, Canonical, or (dare I mention them) Novell? They had a few hundred million thrown at them by Microsoft, supposedly to increase interoperability with Windows and Linux...where are the results?

Distributions are still a fragmented mess, it's incredibly difficult to produce a binary for Linux that will work across all distributions (especially with Gentoo and their whole CFLAGS fiasco...thank goodness that fad died off). As much as you'd like to complain about Windows and Apple, binary compatibility is not a problem. There's plenty of smart, dedicated people out there that could find a solution to this, particularly the people working on the kernel. Why isn't it a high priority to increase compatibility -between- Linux distributions, or to form some sort of a community-based standard...one that actually works (as opposed to the LSB)?

Professional audio? Don't even bother. ESounD, ARTS, JACKD, now PulseAudio seems to be the big name in useless sound daemons...but that doesn't mean everyone will standardize on it. As if we needed yet another sound daemon anyway. If the Linux kernel is supposedly so "flexible" that it can be used in any range of devices from computers to cell phones, then why is it that 18 years or more later after the first release, there -still- isn't an easy way to do very low-latency, high quality audio recording on Linux? Linux distributions could _EASILY_ supplant a lot of the Windows based environments for professional audio if the kernel was up to the task. And for those out there who think that Audacity and Ardour are adequate replacements for ProTools...wake up.

I haven't run Windows on my PC in over six years, so clearly Linux has been capable of meeting my desktop needs...but the fact of the matter is that there's _PLENTY_ of problems that just aren't being addressed, that could solidify Linux as a real desktop computer competitor.

Re:Easy Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything you just described would require:

1) An enormous amount of work with people open source developers sitting at their computers 40+ hours a week minimum and 80+ to really get consumer grade software out the door and actually working

2) An enormous amount of hard choices with grand plans for features being cut so the tedious and unglamorous tasks of getting consumer grade software out the door and actually working get done.

3) An enormous amount of maturity that the open source world simply does not have

The failure of Linux and open source software in many ways has been nothing more than a validation of the commercial software model of development where all that matters is results and not bullshit.

Creating forks and new projects sure as hell is fun. Adding features is a blast too.

Making software that works right out of the box requires a grown up sitting at a desk working their ass off 40 hours a week getting paid a nice fat wage.

Re:Easy Answer

[Ash-Fox]

Where are the commercial game ports for Linux?

Beyond the obvious FPSes, Eve Online and Second life. There are also these game companies that have commercial ports for Linux systems.

We have Parallels for Mac OS X, which seems to be quite capable at running Windows programs at a decent speed, with good compatibility.

VMware server works fine for me. But best perforance tends to come from wine and crossover I have noticed.

I think anyone who's actually tried to use either of these will probably tell you that if you really want to run Windows programs on your Linux machine

I run all the source games (includes half life 2 and all it's episodes, portal, hl2 death match,, team fortress 2) just fine, Steam and so on just fine under. I hear World of Warcraft runs quite well too.

and the fact of the matter is that most of the commercial software out there is for Windows

Most commercial software available for the most popular platform. Who would of guessed?

Distributions are still a fragmented mess, it's incredibly difficult to produce a binary for Linux that will work across all distributions (especially with Gentoo and their whole CFLAGS fiasco...thank goodness that fad died off)

No it isn't. Follow the LSB.

As much as you'd like to complain about Windows and Apple, binary compatibility is not a problem.

I have plenty of applications that don't run on OS X from older versions of OS X. Windows Vista has issues running some older Windows programs. As for Linux... I can't think of a time EVER when a LSB program didn't work.

Professional audio? Don't even bother. ESounD, ARTS, JACKD, now PulseAudio seems to be the big name in useless sound daemons...but that doesn't mean everyone will standardize on it.

Gnome and KDE are adding support for it. gstreamer and KDE4's new sound system supporting it as a back end pretty much means it is going to be supported by a wide range of applications already.

Linux kernel is supposedly so "flexible" that it can be used in any range of devices from computers to cell phones, then why is it that 18 years or more later after the first release, there -still- isn't an easy way to do very low-latency, high quality audio recording on Linux?

Simply because the problem hasn't been addressed yet.

Linux distributions could _EASILY_ supplant a lot of the Windows based environments for professional audio if the kernel was up to the task.

I heard similar crap about when wine would run Photoshop and others. When Wine finally did for a large period of time, nothing changed at all. So forgive me if I just remain skeptical.

I haven't run Windows on my PC in over six years, so clearly Linux has been capable of meeting my desktop needs

I use Windows, Linux, various BSDs and OS X regularly.

Re:Easy Answer

[Vapula]

1) running Windows games on Linux
I've personnal experience of playing GuildWars flawlessly under Linux using Cedega. Cedega also supports World of Warcraft and other games making it probably much better than Wine (well, I should check on this one, lots of progress have been done) and CrossOver Office (which wasn't meant for games in the first place)

About Linux commercial games, you forgot about NeverWinterNights, and some promising products like Planeshift. And the upcoming "project Apricot" (Blender Foundation and CrystalSpace).

2) Audio
Very few sound engineers rely on only ONE program. Most of the time, they switch from one to another depending on the task they've to do. Don't forget that SAE is behind Ardour... They would not lose their time and money with it if it was useless...

3) compatibility
Linux rely on some standard components like openGL, X11 and the kernel. If you want to distribute some closed source binary, you may statically link those libraries which may be a problem.
Source distribution don't have many problems thanks to the autoconf and automake.
Did you already try to run some old Windows 3.1 softwares on Windows XP or Vista ? Often, Windows 98 applications don't run under Windows 2000 or XP.

4) ESD, aRTS, JACK,...
Well, ESD was GNOME, aRTS was KDE and JACK was for Realtime with low latency... You forgot about OSS and ALSA, GNOME/KDE and lots of other similar duplicate efforts.
GNU/Linux is also about choice... something lots of people have forgotten since the old ages...
COMMAND.COM or 4DOS.COM ?
Sound Blaster or GUS (now, most of the time, it's the onboard sound card)
EMM386 or QEMM386 ?

If you're "computer illiterate", you don't mind about what's installed and go with what the system install (aRTS, ESD, what are those things ?)
If you know what you're doing, well, you will choose the one which suits the best your needs...

I agree that there is still lots of place for improvement, but when I look back to the old time of Linux 0.99pl10, yggdrasil (CDROM) or SLS/Slockware/MCC (floppy) installs, the X11 Config file to build by hand (with a calculator and the specs of your monitor), very basic keyboard support (US qwerty, FR azerty and DE qwertzu, nothing more),... the way behind is much bigger than the way ahead...

Lately, I had to install a brand new computer in dual-boot Windows/Linux. Linux didn't need any extra driver but Windows needed lots of extra drivers (Video, sound, network,...). Security updates were also much faster to install under linux (and they included lots of apps, unlike Windows)... So, unless you need some specific software or plan to use the computer for gaming, Linux is going to become a better choice than Windows... Truly PnP !!!

Re:Easy Answer

[EWIPlayer]

4) ESD, aRTS, JACK,... Well, ESD was GNOME, aRTS was KDE and JACK was for Realtime with low latency... You forgot about OSS and ALSA, GNOME/KDE and lots of other similar duplicate efforts. GNU/Linux is also about choice... something lots of people have forgotten since the old ages... COMMAND.COM or 4DOS.COM ? Sound Blaster or GUS (now, most of the time, it's the onboard sound card) EMM386 or QEMM386 ?

All I can say here is that you seem to be missing the point. It's not that such things don't exist, they certainly do. All of the different types, the different implementations and flavours are all very nice and fun to have, but they simply don't measure up - they *really* don't. OSX CoreAudio and CoreMIDI are engineered properly. There's only one choice and you only need one choice. It's fast, it's clear and concise, it requires ZERO (read that word very carefully and then ask yourself how much work is required for any of the linux variants) user intervention to work with, there are no "interesting" bits of information that need to be known or configured, or tweaked and played with... etc etc...

Musicians write and perform music and the apps themselves are designed to let them do that with a minimum of hassle. Do you really think that any pro musician wants to spend any time whatsoever setting up the OS audio, let alone even having to choose which audio code to run, when OSX requires nothing of the sort and outperforms Linux anyways? I think that's the point of this whole thread (and others)... Linux may not have missed the boat here, since time is fluid and who knows what the future will bring, but OSX has given the Linux community what it's been craving for years - Unix on the Desktop - and it did it while the Linux community is still trying to figure out how to do it. Closed source simply did the better job here - it does happen. Apple could ignore any hardware issues since they controlled everything, and they could focus on the job at hand. OSS has much more "cowboy" related hardware issues to tackle, and it's not nearly as focused - OSS writes "everything" while closed source writes "something".

Who the hell could be surprised at the outcome?

Re:Easy Answer

[pestie]

I run all the source games (includes half life 2 and all it's episodes, portal, hl2 death match,, team fortress 2) just fine, Steam and so on just fine under. I hear World of Warcraft runs quite well too.

Under what? So tantalizing a sentence, yet the most important word is left out...

Re:Easy Answer

[Kethinov]

[quote]Making software that works right out of the box requires a grown up sitting at a desk working their ass off 40 hours a week getting paid a nice fat wage.[/quote]

This is why most of the best open source software is written by people who work for a company which derives its profit from elsewhere.

Re:Easy Answer

[Ash-Fox]

Under what? So tantalizing a sentence, yet the most important word is left out...

Sorry about that -- I can run them under Wine and Crossover (Crossover being the easiest) :)

Re:Easy Answer

[VGPowerlord]

We have Parallels for Mac OS X, which seems to be quite capable at running Windows programs at a decent speed, with good compatibility. What do we have on Linux? Wine? Crossover Office?

WINE is a compatibility layer. Not surprisingly, it isn't perfect, particularly not when compared to an actual virtual machine. If you want to compare apples to apples (excuse the pun), try VMWare, Xen, qemu, or bochs. Heck, there's even a specialized version of VMWare for OSX, VMWare Fusion, that you could compare it to. However, I'm guessing that since you already bought Parallels, you'd rather not spend even more money to buy another product that essentially does the same thing.

Re:Easy Answer

[Evil Kerek]

Linux didn't need any extra driver but Windows needed lots of extra drivers (Video, sound, network,...). HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH.

Did you smirk when you typed that?

Sorry, if you want to tout linux as better than windows, more power to you, but let's stick to reality when it comes to installing them. An SP2 installation is going to work on a 99% of the computers out there and maybe popping in a driver disk from the mfg or letting it update from M$. In any case, it's usually pretty simple. You CANNOT say the same for linux. Sure there are PCs it will just install on..of course then, depending on the flavor (that's one of it's biggest issues...still too many distros), you get to do the wonderful configuring blah blah blah. Oh and now we gotta find, download and manually install updates...blah blah...

Linux has things over windows - installing and updating it STILL is not one of them.

EK

Re:Easy Answer

[Stormwatch]

An SP2 installation is going to work on a 99% of the computers out there and maybe popping in a driver disk from the mfg or letting it update from M$. In any case, it's usually pretty simple. You CANNOT say the same for linux.

Installed XP Pro SP2 on my new computer. No network, no proper resolution for my widescreen monitor, without installing the drivers that came with the motherboard.

Booted with Ubuntu 7.10 CD. Network and proper wide resolution just work.

Wiped everything and installed iATKOS (hacked Mac OS X). It was a bit tricky to get running (it's a hack after all), but again, network and resolution simply work.

Re:Easy Answer

[Xabraxas]

Musicians write and perform music and the apps themselves are designed to let them do that with a minimum of hassle. Do you really think that any pro musician wants to spend any time whatsoever setting up the OS audio, let alone even having to choose which audio code to run, when OSX requires nothing of the sort and outperforms Linux anyways?

First of all ARTS and ESD are being deprecated and OSS has been deprecrated already so take them out of the picture. Linux can do low latency scheduling and in combination with PulseAudio, JACK, and ALSA it is a pretty powerful audio workstation. Thrown in Ardour and the whole thing is hard to beat for the grand price of FREE. In fact I would love to know what CoreAudio does so much better than these technologies. Do you have specific features in mind or are you just stating your opinion? I don't know anything about CoreAudio so I would love to know.

As for musicians' ability to install a Linux audio workstation...they don't have to worry about any of that. That's what distro's are for. There are even distro's geared towards audio and others towards video and graphics. It doesn't seem like you have been paying attention to Linux development for the past few years.

Check out 64 Studio

Re:Easy Answer

[m50d]

You're wrong, really. My personal hardware experience: Previous computer: Basics: all ok Graphics card (nvidia TNT2): driver download for both Sound card (via 82xx onboard): driver download in windows, supported out of the box in linux Printer (epson stylus C20UX): ditto Current computer: Basics: windows required me to find a floppy drive, and disk, so that I could install (SATA hard drive) Graphics card (nvidia GF6): driver download for both Sound card (SB live 24-bit): out of box in linux, download in windows Printer (epson C46): download for both Webcam (logitech quickcam): download in linux, out of box in windows PDA (asus a730): download in windows, out of box in linux Wireless (admtek 8211): out of box in windows, download in linux Graphics calculator (TI-84+ silver edition) TV card (winTV 250, I think): download in linux, still can't get the bloody thing to work at all in windows. Pretty close, but linux actually does a fair bit better. And none of this was researched for linux compatibility or anything before buying it - I just got the stuff and it worked, and some of it's fairly obscure.

Re:Easy Answer

[entrigant]

Where are the commercial game ports for Linux? No one wants to make them, obviously, save for the FPS crowd (and there's only an Unreal Tournament for Linux because Epic passes the buck to Icculus to get the job done, not because they have the in-house talent to do it themselves). There are a few commercial games for Linux, yes, but only a few, and there's very little variety between them. In the open source world we have a few good games (the majority of them being FPS's, what a surprise), Battle for Wesnoth if you like strategy games (turn based ones, that is). Then we have the unfortunate, ugly ripoffs like "Secret Maryo Chronicles," and other games that look like they were developed for a C64. Plenty of selection, not a lot of quality.

The following publishers develop comemrcial linux games:

http://www.pompomgames.com/
http://www.garagegames.com/
http://www.introversion.co.uk/
http://frictionalgames.com/
http://sillysoft.net/
http://www.basiliskgames.com/
http://www.guildsoftware.com/
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/
http://www.rune-soft.com/
http://grubbygames.com/
http://www.caravelgames.com/
http://www.planewalkergames.com/
http://www.graalonline.com/

There are also the high profile ones such as neverwinter nights, the doom and quake series, unreal, etc.

There are many high quality independant titles such as neverball, you mentioned wesnoth, crimson fields, flight gear, torcs, the spring project, total annihilation 3d, tecnoballZ, powermanga, tile racer, pingus, clonk, freeciv, ultimate stunts, planeshift, scorched3d, VDrift, silvertree (not complete, but being created by the wesnoth guys so likely will not be vapor), ufo: alien invasion, scourge, etc.

http://spring.clan-sy.com/
http://www.wesnoth.org/
http://torcs.sourceforge.net/
http://www.flightgear.org/
https://icculus.org/neverball/
http://ta3d.darkstars.co.uk/
http://linux.tlk.fr/games/
http://tileracer.model-view.com/
http://pingus.seul.org/
http://www.clonk.de/
http://freeciv.wikia.com/
http://www.ultimatestunts.nl/
http://www.planeshift.it/
http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/
http://vdrift.net/
http://www.silvertreerpg.org/
http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/
http://scourge.sourceforge.net/

Many of these are very impressive independently made free games. Perhaps they lack the multi million dollar marketing budget and won't make your geofrce 8800 gtxz 45 x super elite ultra melt, but theya re *fun* games, and they are numerous. Also keep in mind this publisher and free game list is only what I could find in 1 hour of searching.

Then there are freed older commercial games such as warzone 2100, homeworld, descent 1 and 2, doom, quake, etc.

Lets not stop t

Re:Easy Answer

[misleb]

We have Parallels for Mac OS X, which seems to be quite capable at running Windows programs at a decent speed, with good compatibility. What do we have on Linux? Wine? Crossover Office?

There's VMware for Linux, which operates more or less the same as Parallels. So really, OS X users are not much better off than Linux users when it comes to WIndows apps. What OS X DOES have is MS Office and high end professional apps such as the Adobe suite.

Apple has the best of both worlds on their platform -

The only two worlds Apple has the best of is Unix and NeXTStep. When it comes to Windows-only apps you're not much better off as an OS X user than a Linux user. Though Parallel "Coherence" mode is kinda neat.

- why can't, say, Canonical, or (dare I mention them) Novell? They had a few hundred million thrown at them by Microsoft, supposedly to increase interoperability with Windows and Linux...where are the results?

What it comes down to is that there is no substitute for good native apps. Windows "compatibility" can be an acceptable kludge for specific applications, but native applications are necessary to sustain any potential challenger to Windows dominance in the long run.

-matthew

Re:Easy Answer

[misleb]

I have plenty of applications that don't run on OS X from older versions of OS X. Windows Vista has issues running some older Windows programs. As for Linux... I can't think of a time EVER when a LSB program didn't work.

Considering that LSB only dates back to 2001 and only covers a relatively small subset of total system functionality, your anecdotal experience is less than impressive. What most commercial vendors end up doing is one of 3 things:

1) Statically link binaries
2) Include all the dependencies for the program
3) Build and test packages for all recent versions of all major distributions (often leaving users of minor distributions to fend for themselves)

The fact remains that installing major packages targetted for one distribution on another distribution can be tricky at best. Hell, even trying to run packages on an older version of the SAME distribution is often hit and miss.

And God forbid you're running a Linux distribution from 2001 (as opposed to running an app from 2001). In which case you're going to be compiling just about everything (and dependencies) from source. There's almost no forward compatibility in Linux distributions. Fortunately, it is free to upgrade, but still...

-matthew

Re:Easy Answer

[misleb]

Did you already try to run some old Windows 3.1 softwares on Windows XP or Vista ? Often, Windows 98 applications don't run under Windows 2000 or XP.

Oh come on! Windows 3.1 is from like 1992!

So, unless you need some specific software or plan to use the computer for gaming, Linux is going to become a better choice than Windows... Truly PnP !!!

If you consider building from source PnP...

-matthew

Re:Easy Answer

[Ash-Fox]

The fact remains that installing major packages targetted for one distribution on another distribution can be tricky at best. Hell, even trying to run packages on an older version of the SAME distribution is often hit and miss.

I can build applications against the Windows 2003 SP1 platform SDK and they certainly will not work correctly on Windows XP SP2 (Having done this myself, runtime errors popping up randomly are most common to happen in such cases).

And God forbid you're running a Linux distribution from 2001 (as opposed to running an app from 2001).

If I build applications against the latest Windows XP SP2 platform SDK. You will also find that running them on Windows XP (no service packs - a 2001 OS) will likely cause these applications to crash (if they don't crash while starting up, they will definitely crash when you minimize the application).

To put it simply, these issues exist on Windows on too - I should know since I have had a tonne of issues with this on most operating systems.

There's almost no forward compatibility in Linux distributions. Fortunately, it is free to upgrade, but still...

At the end of the day, this really depends on how the distributions decide to package their content. There are some like Slackware which make binaries that appear to 'run anywhere'.

As for OS X... Nevermind the architecture change and the Rosetta bugs with big endian and little endian. I can't get quite a few applications from 10.2 working at all on PPC versions of 10.4 or 10.5.

Running packages that were built for another specific distribution is in my opinion, a bad idea for any operating system. Linux isn't unique to this.

Re:Easy Answer

[rsmith-mac]

EVE-Online for Linux is just a custom tuned version of Cedega packed with the normal EVE client for Windows. It runs like shit and frankly is pretty buggy at times compared to running under Windows, so I wouldn't consider that a gold standard.

Re:Easy Answer

[ajs318]

Distributions are still a fragmented mess, it's incredibly difficult to produce a binary for Linux that will work across all distributions (especially with Gentoo and their whole CFLAGS fiasco...thank goodness that fad died off).

Indeed ..... and it's even more difficult to produce a binary for Linux that will work across all distributions when you factor in that Linux runs on other hardware architectures besides x86.

As much as you'd like to complain about Windows and Apple, binary compatibility is not a problem.

Not a problem? You're having a laugh. Binary compatibility on Windows has been a complete disaster, with machines falling prey to malware which at best hogs resources and at worst displays gratuitous, offensive popup adverts. If a computer couldn't run binaries which had not been specifically compiled for only that exact computer and no other one anywhere else in the world, viruses and worms would be stopped dead in their tracks.

There's plenty of smart, dedicated people out there that could find a solution to this, particularly the people working on the kernel. Why isn't it a high priority to increase compatibility -between- Linux distributions, or to form some sort of a community-based standard...one that actually works (as opposed to the LSB)?

There is already a very simple way of guaranteeing compatibility across all distributions, and even all machine architectures. That is called, distributing the Source Code. It is the business of the distro maintainer to compile a generic Source package and create a binary package which works with their distro's own peculiarities; during which process, they might well change things subtly so as to match their distro's "look and feel".

Re:Easy Answer

[tepples]

There is already a very simple way of guaranteeing compatibility across all distributions, and even all machine architectures. That is called, distributing the Source Code. Distributing the source code makes it much easier for the user of proprietary software to edit out digital restrictions management subroutines. This is a show-stopper for many publishers of proprietary software. Besides, it doesn't guarantee compatibility, as what runs on one machine may die (e.g. a PC running Ubuntu) with a nearly immediate "Virtual memory exhausted" on a smaller machine (e.g. a Nintendo DS running DSLinux).

Re:Easy Answer

[BobPaul]

We have Parallels for Mac OS X, which seems to be quite capable at running Windows programs at a decent speed, with good compatibility. You don't seem to understand what Parallels is. Parallels is the same as VMWare, kqemu, or VirtualBox... all of which run fine on Linux. Parallels still requires you run a full blown Windows virtualized and doesn't get significantly different performance than the other VM products that run on MacOSX.

To be perfectly fair, Parallels Workstation DOES run on Linux, it's just not the same product they sell for MacOSX (ie, no "Coherence" mode).

Re:Easy Answer

[BobPaul]

Installing WinXP SP2 I need to hunt down drivers for network, sound, SATA, and video (video works, but it lags when scrolling text, moving windows, etc). Additionally, while not required, there are huge performance gains for installing my nForce2 chipset drivers.

On a Linux install all of this works out of box. The only drivers I've ever needed to install manually (and sometimes fight with) are the proprietary 3D driver WLan drivers, but even those have been non-eventful recently. Both the nVidia card on my desktop and the ATI built-in graphics on my Laptop work simply by ticking the box in synaptic for the driver I want. For the WLAN, I use the windows driver on a compatibility layer (ndiswrapper-gtk) which was also very uneventful.

I wish Windows handled hardware as nicely as Linux. Seriously, this is actually a major selling point for me.

Re:Easy Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

1) You have had great experience running games under Linux for Windows -- that's great! Unfortunately, it is not a consistent _or_ easy experience for the end user. Go and look at the ratings for games on Cedega's compatibility database site; there's typically around as many people complaining that their favourite game _won't_ work as there are people who have it working perfectly (after following some additional, needlessly complicated steps and manually editing configuration files in many cases). Is that really a solution for the casual gamer? I think not.

2) I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here -- sound engineers use different software? Yes, obviously they do, I mentioned ProTools because it's pretty big in the professional audio industry. The point that I was making was that between a combination of bad solutions to low-latency audio and applications that don't meet up to the same standards as their commercial counterparts makes Linux a bad choice for doing professional audio. SAE is behind Ardour? Great. But who's behind them, who's doing the back-end that makes low-latency multitrack possible?

3) I've yet to have any Windows program from Windows 95 onward not work in a later version of Windows, but everyone's experience is different, of course (as much as it sounds like I may be complaining about Linux, there's a reason that I'm still running it instead of Vista ;>).

You state that Linux (or more appropriately Linux distributions) rely on some standards. Like the kernel? The kernel is only "standard" if you've downloaded the source from kernel.org and built it yourself. Otherwise, you're dealing with a kernel that usually has distribution-specific patches -- some distributions have gone overboard with these patches in the past, to their own expense (remember Redhat and their "special" version of gcc, the one that was hideously broken?).

4) If you're choosing low-latency professional audio recording, which one do you pick? Because as I stated, none of them are really particularly good at doing it. Yes, there's been lots of "similar" and "duplicate" efforts...and what's happened to them since? KDE is dropping ARTS, I don't know what GNOME is doing with ESounD (probably whatever Microsoft tells them to) but I hope they're dropping it. Even the people _designing_ these so-called solutions are now owning up to the fact that they just aren't real solutions.

People keep telling me that eventually, Linux will somehow be "better" than Windows. It's a moot point, in some ways it already is better than Windows. Unfortunately in some areas it is worse than Windows, and though an unpopular point to make, it doesn't change the facts.

Re:Easy Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

1) If you'd actually read my post you'd have realized that I run Linux myself, and am not a Mac user. I was using it as an example. Nice ego-stroking on your part though...yes, I do know the difference between WINE and Parallels, I've used both of them before. One of them is a compatibility layer, the other is a virtual machine -- Parallels happens to have been better in my experience, which is what I stated. You're obviously a troll, but seeing as how you did a grand total of 1 hour of work into writing this troll, I suppose I'll respond in a polite manner, something that you don't seem to have learned from childhood.

2) I think the key words about WINE in your discussion would be "the very few times" that you used it. I have a "beef" with WINE as well, apparently :> You seem to know a whole lot about me for never having met me, don't you?

Nowhere did I ever state that I "disliked" WINE, my point was that it is still not up to par with some of the commercial solutions that are available. This is just another attempt by you to turn the discussion into a flame-fest, and an obvious one at that.

3) No, I'm not kidding. Seeing as how you like to do research, I invite you to read a post from a site you may find familiar:

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/24/2230256&threshold=1

There's plenty of people posting in that thread with real experience in coding cross-platform applications (of course you simply assumed that I did so that you could insult me again, yet another obvious troll).

If FOSS has "conquered" then how come Linux is still only running on about 10-15% of the world's desktop computers?

I'll leave you with that thought, and nothing else, as it's generally my policy not to "feed the trolls" as it were. When you're ready to grow up and have an intellectual discussion without resorting to childish insults, perhaps I might give you more serious attention. As it stands, you have nothing useful to add to the discussion.

Re:Easy Answer

[ajs318]

Distributing the source code makes it much easier for the user of proprietary software to edit out digital restrictions management subroutines. This is a show-stopper for many publishers of proprietary software.

True, true ..... Look how many distros apply a certain patch to XPDF! However, DRM won't be around forever ..... it's a fundamentally flawed concept and once people realise that, its days are numbered.

Besides, it doesn't guarantee compatibility, as what runs on one machine may die (e.g. a PC running Ubuntu) with a nearly immediate "Virtual memory exhausted" on a smaller machine (e.g. a Nintendo DS running DSLinux).

Well, them's the breaks, unfortunately. Breaks as in, when it breaks, you get to keep all the pieces. At least having the Source Code makes it possible for you to produce a "lite" version which trades some functionality for more efficient resource usage, though.

Re:Easy Answer

[philicorda]

"If you're choosing low-latency professional audio recording, which one do you pick?"

Jack. As none of the other servers are intended for low latency professional audio recording.

"SAE is behind Ardour? Great. But who's behind them, who's doing the back-end that makes low-latency multitrack possible?"

No one needs to do the back end because it's already been done.
I've been doing low latency audio on Linux for about five years or so. The first RT patches for Linux appeared some time in the 2.4 series.

If you want to do professional audio on Linux, you use Jackd. It's as simple as that. There is not a combination of solutions, there is only one solution. If you had used Linux for audio, you would know this already.

One of the reasons for this is that the different sound servers fill different needs. Jackd is callback based and clients run synchronously. This is important for latency, but demands that all the audio apps should be real time safe. The other sound servers are for much less critical situations and work somewhat differently.

On Windows, it's a bit more complicated as there are a number of competing sound standards (ASIO,MME,DirectX,WDM,GSIF,EASI,KStream etc). There is unfortunately no equivalent to Jackd (the Windows port is not finished yet), but you can sort of do some of the same stuff with Rewire.

Re:Easy Answer

[EWIPlayer]

... and the whole thing is hard to beat for the grand price of FREE.

While this is very cool (I much enjoy not having to shell out $$ for something), it is a non-issue. Pros (in any field) aren't concerned with the fact that something costs money or doesn't. It's just not an issue.

In fact I would love to know what CoreAudio does so much better than these technologies. Do you have specific features in mind or are you just stating your opinion? I don't know anything about CoreAudio so I would love to know.

This whole discussion is in the realm of opinion, so I can't say I don't have my opinions here, but there are some things that seem to be advantages which outshine the Linux solution (these are CoreAudio and "overall" advantages):

• No setup required. Literally just plug in and go. With Linux you may have to recompile your kernel (I had to do this on my latest Linux install to get the chipset right) in the worst case, load a module in the almost worst case, figure out how to get that USB audio interface to be recognized, and what its device assignment is in the really annoying and very bad case, and have to configure things even a little bit in the best case. Linux is not nearly as sophisticated in this area. OSX has gone this extra mile, and that last mile is a long one. I have spent time trying to weed out these kinds of things from programs and it takes a large amount of development.
• A documented, stable and controlled API. This is enormous. The documentation is lucid, the design and implementation are both strong and easy to work with and what you need is standardized in the OS. The build system even understands that, if I use API version 6 that I am excluding certain older versions of OSX and will prompt me with, "Are you sure you want to screw old OS versions like this?". Releases are "known entities".
• Stable hardware drivers. You're not integrating with every piece of audio hardware out there. Hardware is certified to run in OSX or it isn't. Linux has, unfortunately, an after-the-fact mode of operation. The hardware is released, and it later is supported in Linux. With OSX hardware is released after it is certified in the CoreAudio HAL. When you get the hardware, it tends to just work.

You can't forget your target audience and what their abilities and goals are. In this case, they're musicians. Musicians aren't Unix heads or computer geeks by nature; they're musically centred. They want to make music, and that's they're goal. There's a reason why Macs are preferred over Windows boxes for making music (and art in general), and the same reason applies to why they are preferred over Linux.

I know that installing Linux is WAY easier than it used to be, but I challenge you to do something... every time you make a tweak to your system to make it more usable, write a script, compile the kernel, su to root to do some privileged thing, compile a library, compile an app, download and install some third party piece of the system, respond to errors like "Where's gcc?", deal with odd dependency issues, back up your system, use the command line for anything at all, etc etc... ask yourself if your average heavy metal guitarist is going to have a friggin' clue what the hell you just did. Linux detracts from the goal, and the goal is writing and performing music. Nobody who has that goal in mind wants to deal with anything else. Why would they choose an OS that doesn't get them as close to that goal as possible? We're tech heads... they're not. If everyone were a tech head, then there would be no jobs available for tech heads... and we're very well employed.

Linux is a great OS. It's just not a great desktop OS.

Re:Easy Answer

[misleb]

I can build applications against the Windows 2003 SP1 platform SDK and they certainly will not work correctly on Windows XP SP2 (Having done this myself, runtime errors popping up randomly are most common to happen in such cases).

The question is, why would you do that when targeting say, Win2k, is adequate for most applications?

If I build applications against the latest Windows XP SP2 platform SDK. You will also find that running them on Windows XP (no service packs - a 2001 OS) will likely cause these applications to crash (if they don't crash while starting up, they will definitely crash when you minimize the application).

If you're running XP with no service packs in 2008 you're going to have a lot bigger problems than running apps from a developer who doesn't know how to target his Win32 applications for maximum compatibility.

To put it simply, these issues exist on Windows on too - I should know since I have had a tonne of issues with this on most operating systems.

And yet the end users rarely sees the issue on Windows. Linux users, on the other hand, often can't run the same package on different versions of the same distribution spanning more than a couple years. Look, I'm no Windows fan. In fact, I dread using the OS for anything more than playing games, but it does have one thing going for it and that is decent backward and forward application compatibility.

At the end of the day, this really depends on how the distributions decide to package their content. There are some like Slackware which make binaries that appear to 'run anywhere'.

I haven't used Slackware since around 1996 so i can't really confirm this, but the fact that so many things depend on your distribution only goes to prove my point.

As for OS X... Nevermind the architecture change and the Rosetta bugs with big endian and little endian. I can't get quite a few applications from 10.2 working at all on PPC versions of 10.4 or 10.5.

Well, least you can run apps for PPC on x86 at all. Windows and Linux users are still struggling with 32 -> 64bit on the SAME architecture.

As for OS X versions and backward/forward compatability... 10.3 is pretty much the minimum that you need these days. While not as good as Windows, it is better than the Linux distribution mess.

Running packages that were built for another specific distribution is in my opinion, a bad idea for any operating system. Linux isn't unique to this.

I'll assume you're using the term "distribution" lightly and are including major versions of an OS such as OS X 10.4 vs. 10.3.

In which case I can only say that you often have little choice. It woudl be awesome if all developers could produce unique builds for every major release of your favorite OS, but it just ain't going to happen. I've been running OS X Leopard since it came out and I don't think I'm running a single application that is targeted specifically for Leopard aside from the apps that came with it. The only reason Linux is even usable when you do a major upgrade is because nearly all the apps are upgraded at the same time. But this isn't very sustainable. At some point there's just going to be too much software out there to include (and test) in the with OS and still maintain a reasonable release schedule. And using commercial software is still a problem.

-matthew

Re:Easy Answer

[rufus t firefly]

Professional audio? Don't even bother. ESounD, ARTS, JACKD, now PulseAudio seems to be the big name in useless sound daemons...but that doesn't mean everyone will standardize on it. As if we needed yet another sound daemon anyway. If the Linux kernel is supposedly so "flexible" that it can be used in any range of devices from computers to cell phones, then why is it that 18 years or more later after the first release, there -still- isn't an easy way to do very low-latency, high quality audio recording on Linux? Linux distributions could _EASILY_ supplant a lot of the Windows based environments for professional audio if the kernel was up to the task. And for those out there who think that Audacity and Ardour are adequate replacements for ProTools...wake up.

I don't know about the rest of your points, but I can definitely argue this one.

If you're looking for "easy" low latency audio recording, I'd think Ubuntu Studio or 64Studio or a host of other alternatives would give you easy access to a preinstalled low-latency kernel and all the audio/video tools you need to make your own high-grade recordings.

Just because Pro-Tools is the piece of software which is handed out with most pieces of pro audio equipment doesn't mean there's no support for them.... My studio has been powered by ardour and JACK for the last few years, and I've been watching more and more people pick up this software. (See the forums and donations flooding into PBD on the ardour page for evidence of this.) Whereas I may have agreed with you a few years ago, saying that "ardour isn't a replacement for protools", I don't think that really holds water anymore. If you really have knowledge of some feature that you want in ardour so badly, go and put your money where your mouth is. I'm sure Paul would appreciate the support, and you'd get the features you want. </shameless plug>

(As an additional anecdote, one of my friends was going to school for audio engineering and mixing in Florida, and mentioned that the school he was going to actually *encouraged* use of Ardour and friends down there ... )

Also, please don't bring audacity into a pro audio discussion. There are plenty of better tools for handling audio than audacity unless you're doing cutting or other simple tasks -- it's more of a "Cool Edit Pro" replacement than anything.

Re:Easy Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

I will turn the question around and ask "Where has Microsoft/Windows gained ground in 2007" ?
Microsoft has released a over hyped version called Vista which has ended as the greatest fiasco (commercial and technical) since Windows ME.
...and XP still crashes without reason (it may be not a BSOD but the only possible recovery is a reboot) and so do MS-certified drivers and even MS own drivers.
MS Office 2007 is mostly an updated UI and a new file format (which btw. is NOT 100% compatible with Microsofts own OOXML format).

Re:Easy Answer

[blazerw]

Good arguments, on both sides. I'll let you argue with yourself.

The fact remains that installing major packages targetted for one distribution on another distribution can be tricky at best. Hell, even trying to run packages on an older version of the SAME distribution is often hit and miss.

The question is, why would you do that when targeting say, the older version of the distribution, is adequate for most applications?

See what i changed there. Nice!

And God forbid you're running a Linux distribution from 2001 (as opposed to running an app from 2001).

If you're running a Linux distribution from 2001 with no service packs in 2008 you're going to have a lot bigger problems than running apps from a developer who doesn't know how to target his Linux applications for maximum compatibility.

Again, excellent points. Are you a lawyer? You argue both sides with excellent acumen.

What most commercial vendors end up doing is one of 3 things:

1. Statically link binaries
2. Include all the dependencies for the program
3. Build and test packages for all recent versions of all major Windows versions and service packs (often leaving users of minor HotFixes or special editions (MCE) to fend for themselves)

It woudl be awesome if all developers could produce unique builds for every major release of your favorite OS, but it just ain't going to happen. I've been running OS X Leopard since it came out and I don't think I'm running a single application that is targeted specifically for Leopard aside from the apps that came with it. The only reason Linux is even usable when you do a major upgrade is because nearly all the apps are upgraded at the same time.

Note: I especially like this part of your argument, "The only reason Linux is even usable when you do a major upgrade is because nearly all the apps are upgraded at the same time." That is a great point that should really be emphasized when talking to your Mac or Windows using friends. You go on to argue that it is unsustainable because there are just too many applications for Linux. Ahh, another refutation of an often cited negative of Linux. Remember? Linux isn't as good as these other OSes because it doesn't have very many applications.

There's almost no forward compatibility in Linux distributions. Fortunately, it is free to upgrade, but still...

And yet the end users rarely sees the issue on Windows.

Your argument here is so subtle, it is genius. Everybody knows that the most often cited Windows Vista complaint (after slownewss, DRM, lack of drivers, too many versions, etc.) is that many older applications don't run on it and some applications run on some versions of Vista and not on others. Brilliant!

Re:Easy Answer

[AlexMax2742]

Nice commercial game developers you have there. Unfortuniatly, none of them are well marketed (except for Introvision, but they're the exception, not the rule), plus their word-of-mouth advertising doesn't get nearly as much 'airtime' in the open source community as truely open source project. So they might as well not exist in the minds of the public.

Not that open source's offerings are any better, mind you. Most of them are poorly cobbled together and rely on "HOLY SHIT ITS OPEN SOURCE" word of mouth instead of actually concentrating on being a fun or good looking game. Thankfully, there are a few games that buck this trend (Warsow, Battle for Wesnoth), but for the most part, the state of open source gaming is pretty sad.

There are also the same handfull of "big money" games that get tossed around. such as Doom, Quake, etc. However, there are...you guessed it...even more problems here.

What kind of problems, you may ask?

1. Installing the game usually requires downloading a seperate set of files. Who is going to know to do that except the technically inclined?
2. In the case of Unreal Tournament 2003 (or was it 2004), which has a linux client on the disc itself, the discs aren't even labeled properly, so you have to insert them 'out of order'. Such a screwup would warrant a recall if it was something other than Linux, but they basically told the community to 'roll with it'. Plus the installer was nothing special either. And with UT3, they nixed the idea of even providing a linux client on the DVD itself, leading to point 1.
3. The games being released don't really matter to a sizable portion of the market. Quake and UT are not relivent on the mainstream scheme of things any longer (and both recent iterations of the series have been flops, the latter monumentally so). The chances of Neverwinter Nights 2 appearing on linux are virtually nil.
4. A continuation of point 3. The games that people truely want to play, such as World of Warcraft, Counterstrike, Diablo 2, Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty 4, Battlefield 2, and most of Popcap's offerings, are totally and completely unsupported in Linux. It would be a lie to say they don't run, since we have wine, but wine is unsupported by EA, Blizzard, Valve and Popcap, so one bad patch can completely kill the game in wine. No, I don't care about your own personal experience where wine ran the game out of the box, people have to know that wine exists in the first place, know how to set it up in case it doesn't run correctly out of the box, and even then they are still flying blind. Also, see point 1, but in a different context.
5. Virtually no major studios have thrown their Linux hat into the ring since the 'fad' of doing so a few years ago. The only one I can recall is CCP making an official Eve Online linux client avalible, and they're doing a pretty half-assed job of the release, by simply relying on Cedega (which in and of itself deserves none of your attention)
6. People still haven't figured out a way to make a decent distro-independant way of installing or patching that works well on all systems. Heck, the distro-dependant ways of patching are kind of sad too, a good portion of distros "lock" all applications, including distro-distributed games, to a certian version number unless the change is security-critical. So what happens when a patch for a multiplayer game comes out? Sorry, you're outta luck, chum.

Re:Easy Answer

[misleb]

The fact remains that installing major packages targetted for one distribution on another distribution can be tricky at best. Hell, even trying to run packages on an older version of the SAME distribution is often hit and miss.

The question is, why would you do that when targeting say, the older version of the distribution, is adequate for most applications?

See what i changed there. Nice!

I know you thought that was clever when you wrote it, but it doesn't work in reality. Linux is such a fast moving target that aiming for an older version of a distribution would significantly impact the user experience. I, as a user, don't want to run apps on a modern distribution that are built against GTK 1.2, for example. Can you imagine if you had this nice shiny new GNOME 2.20 desktop and all your favorite apps were still using GTK 1.2 for compatibility?

And even if it was a simple matter of targeting an older version of a distribution, you would still have to deal with the dozen other distributions and their various packaging methods, file locations, and specific library versions.

Try again.

If you're running a Linux distribution from 2001 with no service packs in 2008 you're going to have a lot bigger problems than running apps from a developer who doesn't know how to target his Linux applications for maximum compatibility.

Again, excellent points. Are you a lawyer? You argue both sides with excellent acumen.

Oh please. You're trying to suggest that the difference between a Linux distribution from 2001 and a Linux distribution today is comparable to the difference between Windows XP and WIndows XP SP2. Not a chance.

What most commercial vendors end up doing is one of 3 things:

1. Statically link binaries
2. Include all the dependencies for the program
3. Build and test packages for all recent versions of all major Windows versions and service packs (often leaving users of minor HotFixes or special editions (MCE) to fend for themselves)

It woudl be awesome if all developers could produce unique builds for every major release of your favorite OS, but it just ain't going to happen. I've been running OS X Leopard since it came out and I don't think I'm running a single application that is targeted specifically for Leopard aside from the apps that came with it. The only reason Linux is even usable when you do a major upgrade is because nearly all the apps are upgraded at the same time.

Nice try, but you're comparing the difference between Windows with and without patches to the difference between linux distributions. And that is just stupid.

Note: I especially like this part of your argument, "The only reason Linux is even usable when you do a major upgrade is because nearly all the apps are upgraded at the same time." That is a great point that should really be emphasized when talking to your Mac or Windows using friends.

I would, but the smart ones would say, "Wait a minute, you're telling me that you can't easily install third party software that doesn't come with your distribution. And if you want to get recent software that hasn't been backported to your distribution, you have to upgrade everything all at once? That's stupid."

Sorry, but having every single one of your applications linked in a complex web of dependencies really isn't a selling point for your average Windows or Mac user. As a relatively recent Linux => OS X desktop convert, I can honestly say that I prefer being able to simply drop an application in /Applications and have it just work. And if I want to upgrade said application, I just copy over it.

You go on to argue that it is unsustainable because there are just to

Re:Easy Answer

[Ash-Fox]

The question is, why would you do that when targeting say, Win2k, is adequate for most applications?

At the moment, I do this to fix annoying bugs, such as weird 64bit oddities with your 32bit applications.

If you're running XP with no service packs in 2008 you're going to have a lot bigger problems than running apps from a developer who doesn't know how to target his Win32 applications for maximum compatibility.

I find that argument amusing. That is like saying, "This isn't a problem with Windows because the insane amount of issues have forced you to update!" -- Yet apparently Linux doesn't quite give you enough issues to force you to update -- but because it isn't perfect, it's bad.

And yet the end users rarely sees the issue on Windows.

When users encounter runtime errors and odd crashes, they don't suspect it is because their Windows system is out of date. I know from hours of debugging issues with users.

Linux users, on the other hand, often can't run the same package on different versions of the same distribution spanning more than a couple years.

I honestly couldn't recall ever needing to. Being a programmer though, I am aware of issues between using libraries compiled against a specific libc while the programs being compiled against another causing a issue. But, since you are doing something that is considered unsupported, of course it's not going to be easy - the easy work around would be to just grab the package and requirements and have the paths setup in such a way that it will rely on the libraries you downloaded instead of on the system.

Which in my opinion means: If you aren't getting packages made for another specific distribution working, you are doing it wrong. Because it is definitely possible despite being unsupported.

I do have older software such as Staroffice, Unreal Tournament, Winex and so on from many, many years ago that I used in previous distributions that still work 100% fine today.

In fact, I dread using the OS for anything more than playing games, but it does have one thing going for it and that is decent backward and forward application compatibility.

As I've said, I've never had a problem with Linux software that was using things like the LSB. I am not even aware of a compatibility issue ever ocuring.

I haven't used Slackware since around 1996 so i can't really confirm this, but the fact that so many things depend on your distribution only goes to prove my point.

Sorry, I didn't get your point.

Well, least you can run apps for PPC on x86 at all. Windows and Linux users are still struggling with 32 -> 64bit on the SAME architecture.

I acknowledge that, but it still doesn't change the facts.

As for OS X versions and backward/forward compatability... 10.3 is pretty much the minimum that you need these days. While not as good as Windows, it is better than the Linux distribution mess.

I have 10.3 applications that don't work either on 10.5.

I'll assume you're using the term "distribution" lightly and are including major versions of an OS such as OS X 10.4 vs. 10.3.

In which case I can only say that you often have little choice. It woudl be awesome if all developers could produce unique builds for every major release of your favorite OS, but it just ain't going to happen.

Indeed, this is why developers either create software for a certain subset of distributions or make as I've mentioned before, generic packages and binaries that work on all distributions.

I've been running OS X Leopard since it came out and I don't think I'm running a single application that is targeted specifically for Leopard aside from the apps that came with it.

Any applications that take advantages of the newly introduced APIs in 10.

Re:Easy Answer

[misleb]

If you're running XP with no service packs in 2008 you're going to have a lot bigger problems than running apps from a developer who doesn't know how to target his Win32 applications for maximum compatibility.

I find that argument amusing. That is like saying, "This isn't a problem with Windows because the insane amount of issues have forced you to update!" -- Yet apparently Linux doesn't quite give you enough issues to force you to update -- but because it isn't perfect, it's bad.

I'm not saying Linux is "bad." I like Linux. I still use it and even prefer it to Windows by a long shot. I'm just saying Linux has poor backwards and forward binary/package compatibility. And it is true. A Linux distribution from 2001 is all but useless without quite a bit of work (read: compiling stuff from source) unless it is sitting in some closet doing some fixed task that doesn't require recent software. Whereas Windows 2000, for example, is still quite useful as a general desktop OS. It can run the majority of Windows software out there today. Not that I, personally, would want to use it in such a capacity.. I'm just saying if you wanted to it would be no problem.

When users encounter runtime errors and odd crashes, they don't suspect it is because their Windows system is out of date. I know from hours of debugging issues with users.

So you update them. Big deal. Imagine if it was the other way around and you were helping end users with Linux and you found they were having lots of problems because they were running an old distribution. How frustrating woudl it be to have to upgrade their entire system, applications and all, just to fix some minor incompatability with a particular application? Suddenly applying a service pack on Windows seems pretty straight forward, doesn't it?

Linux users, on the other hand, often can't run the same package on different versions of the same distribution spanning more than a couple years.

I honestly couldn't recall ever needing to. Being a programmer though, I am aware of issues between using libraries compiled against a specific libc while the programs being compiled against another causing a issue. But, since you are doing something that is considered unsupported, of course it's not going to be easy - the easy work around would be to just grab the package and requirements and have the paths setup in such a way that it will rely on the libraries you downloaded instead of on the system.

And that is exactly what I'd be afraid of if Linux ever became mainstream on the desktop. Vendors would resort to bloating each application with a redundant set of libraries. Think of the security implications. You coudl no longer fix a system-wide vulnerability by patching a library. You'd have to ensure that each individual application vendor that used the vulnerable library provided their own patch.

I can guarantee you that Linux ever became mainstream on the desktop, users would not be upgrading their distribution every time a new version was released. They would expect to be able to do what you consider to be "unsupported." Like they can on Windows.

As I've said, I've never had a problem with Linux software that was using things like the LSB. I am not even aware of a compatibility issue ever occuring.

Well sure, if you limit the app set to LSB compliant ones, but what apps are LSB compliant? How inclusive is the LSB? Can you make a GNOME application, for example, that is LSB compliant and will install (binary, not source) on most any Linux system? What package format would you use?

My experience with Linux distributions (mainly Debian based) is that you are more or less stuck with whatever applications were available when the distribution was "frozen." Unless you are willing to compile stuff from source or get a backport of a package from the "unstable" release of the dist.

I ha

Re:Easy Answer

[entrigant]

Wow, sensitive much? There wasn't an insult in my previous reply, and I'm pretty sure I was feeding your trolling. Anyways, no sense in continuing this despite having some things I'd like to say. You'll probably just misread it like you did my entire previous post.

Re:Easy Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Games: No comment 8-). Others have given various lists of games and companies... which honestly don't generally include the A-list titles. My best hope for this is honestly wine; I've seen it run GuildWars (and at slightly better framerate than a tweaked Win2K install on the same system.)

          Parallels: Yes, and Linux has qemu. Or virtualbox. Or vmware. qemu and vmware for sure support loading up a kernel module so the OS etc. is run essentially at full speed (as opposed to doing CPU emulation which would be quite slow.) The real Linux pusher just doesn't mention qemu or the like, because the idea of installing Linux just to run a paid-for copy of Linux under it is distasteful 8-).

          Distros a mess: Not nearly as bad as you make out. I've downloaded binary apps and run them under ubuntu, gentoo, and in the past slackware. It wasn't a problem. I've found most distros also seem to have compatibility libraries available, so if I did come across a stubborn app, I could make foodistro have redhat-compatible libs for instance. Windows isn't some panacea regarding this! Depending on the age of app, apps will need the right .Net version installed, various Visual Basic runtimes, maybe XML libraries, etc. etc. Installing these isn't a big deal, but neither is installing "libcompat" or similar on the Linux system.

          Pro audio: That's what I would have thought. It honestly looks like an unholy mess to me. But, from what I've read a fair number of pro-audio types are in fact going from Windows to Linux. There's two factors. 1) hardware compatibility. Most pro-audio cards are now fully supported. I've read in particular about people having problems with their costly card losing support during windows upgrades (98->2000, 2000->XP and especially XP->Vista.) Vista in particular apparently has no support for low-latency audio, unusual bitrates and sampling rates, etc. 2) Audio distros. There's a few distros like Ubuntu Studio where they've got all the crap (jack, alsa, maybe pulseaudio.. I don't think esd and arts are used anymore..) juggled around for low latency for apps that support it, and compatibility with other audio apps (so regular apps can make their noises as needed.) The user just doesn't have to worry about it, the distro maker already did.

Re:Easy Answer

[entrigant]

Unfortuniatly, none of them are well marketed

Yes, it turns out that in gaming, just like music, movies, and many other forms of entertainment, in order to find the really good stuff you have to look for it. Waiting for it to be shoved in your face doesn't really work.

Most of them are poorly cobbled together and rely on "HOLY SHIT ITS OPEN SOURCE" word of mouth instead of actually concentrating on being a fun or good looking game.

Does that definition of good looking coincide with whether or not it stresses the most recent 3d graphics card? A well themed mud can be good looking. All of the examples I pasted are games that are more or less complete and are well designed artistically. Notice I did not include long standing foss vaporware such as, e.g. adonthell as many other lists trying to paint a rosy picture do?

1. Installing the game usually requires downloading a seperate set of files. Who is going to know to do that except the technically inclined?

E.g. the kind of people who enjoy an OS like linux? Personally, I dread the day linux becomes attractive for the non technically inclined.. I do consider the two mutually exclusive (techie OS vs. "average joe" OS, and I still hate it that the current status of the world is where we try to hide that average people are morons behind some silly moniker like that).

4. A continuation of point 3. The games that people truely want to play, such as World of Warcraft, Counterstrike, Diablo 2, Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty

I have no desire to play a single one of those. Mainstream gaming is not the only gaming there is, and a system not being mainstream does not mean that it is not capable of being or is not a viable gaming platform. I've kept myself busy with a variety of games for 7 years now running only linux. If you must play what everyone else plays and what ign spams then linux probably isn't the right OS for you. I just like to play games. I don't care what game, as long as it's fun.

So, it appears that the majority of times the issue is mistated. Linux is not a bad gaming platform, it's a bad high budget, extremely hyped, mass media gaming platform. Two very different things.

it would be a lie to say they don't run, since we have wine, but wine is unsupported by EA, Blizzard, Valve and Popcap, so one bad patch can completely kill the game in wine.

True, however, and leading into the next topic, blizzard and valve I know have working relationships with transgaming to beta test patches against cedega before release.

CCP making an official Eve Online linux client avalible, and they're doing a pretty half-assed job of the release, by simply relying on Cedega (which in and of itself deserves none of your attention)

And why is that? I have a nice neat list of windows games in a nicely contained application I can go to. If I want to install a game I click "install" and "detect game disc". That's it. It appears in my list of games. I select the game, and I hit Play. It's very, very well done. I have a say in the direction of development. They work with game developers and form relationships with them. Some are even offering to let transgaming test pre releases to help ensure compatibility on release day.

Please tell me this isn't some crap about how the wine project pitched a fit when everyone on the project suddenly decided they didn't like the terms of their own license, then screamed, bitched, moaned, and cried over someone taking advantage of those generous terms.

Virtually no major studios have thrown their Linux hat into the ring since the 'fad' of doing so a few years ago. The only one I can recall is CCP making an official Eve Online linux client avalible, and they're doing a pretty half-assed job of the release, by simply relying on Cedega (which in and of itself deserves none of your attention)

If EA doesn't then I won't be too broken up about it. I tend to like blizzard, but not mmorpg's. So I am looking forward to sta

Re:Easy Answer

[Ash-Fox]

A Linux distribution from 2001 is all but useless without quite a bit of work (read: compiling stuff from source) unless it is sitting in some closet doing some fixed task that doesn't require recent software.

I know I could get the original binaries working just fine, using only packages from the original distribution by setting things like path variables. No compiling required. Yes, it's more difficult than click and run, but this exact issue exists with Windows software when you target a specific version of Windows too.

How frustrating woudl it be to have to upgrade their entire system, applications and all, just to fix some minor incompatability with a particular application? Suddenly applying a service pack on Windows seems pretty straight forward, doesn't it?

Very frustrating. The most common issue is that people aren't updating because things aren't working in SP2 - From CD burning software to wireless card, graphic card drivers.

How frustrating woudl it be to have to upgrade their entire system, applications and all, just to fix some minor incompatability with a particular application? Suddenly applying a service pack on Windows seems pretty straight forward, doesn't it?

No, not really. I don't want to have people screaming at me because SP2 broke their system (because certain drivers no longer work, or certain applications), made it continuously bluescreen etc. again.

I've experienced that too much in the past and I don't intend to have any more of it.

And that is exactly what I'd be afraid of if Linux ever became mainstream on the desktop. Vendors would resort to bloating each application with a redundant set of libraries.

This is what happens on OS X with it's self contained application folders.

I can guarantee you that Linux ever became mainstream on the desktop, users would not be upgrading their distribution every time a new version was released. They would expect to be able to do what you consider to be "unsupported." Like they can on Windows.

An easy fix would be making the package manager refuse to install such packages, much like Windows installers refuse to install on certain versions of operating systems. Power users will know how to get around that and set it up manually if they need to. To do something that is not considered supported at all.

Well sure, if you limit the app set to LSB compliant ones, but what apps are LSB compliant?

Pretty much the ones that don't come with my distribution usually.

How inclusive is the LSB? Can you make a GNOME application, for example, that is LSB compliant and will install (binary, not source) on most any Linux system?

I know I could do it within the confines of the LSB (infact I did already once with packaging a generic Gimp-gnome build).

What package format would you use?

LSB standard is RPM. Any distributions that follow LSB compatibility will support RPM. Before you say it, yes Debian/Ubuntu support RPM packages just fine, despite being Deb based. They offer to install it, then convert RPM packages on the fly with tools like 'alien' to a .deb package, and then install it (just from double clicking the RPM in the GUI).

My experience with Linux distributions (mainly Debian based) is that you are more or less stuck with whatever applications were available when the distribution was "frozen." Unless you are willing to compile stuff from source or get a backport of a package from the "unstable" release of the dist.

If you don't like it, use another distribution that focuses on having the latest "unstable" stuff. Different distributions have different rules and that is what the beauty of it is.

But that is the exception to the rule. On linux it is the other way around. The rule is that

Re:Easy Answer

[rxmd]

I will say that when the foss community puts their weight behind something, you can usually expect results.

True. Usually you can expect not only results, but multiple incompatible results, with major flamewars going on between them on licensing issues and minor technicalities. Examples include free Unix-like operating systems, desktop environments or Linux package managers.

Competition and choice can be good things, but so is coherence, and excessive partisanship, fragmentation and compartmentalisation of the available workforce are almost always bad things. I see this as the major roadblock towards success of open source software in general and Linux in particular. (The other is forwards, backwards and cross-distribution binary compatibility, partly because of the same fragmentation, partly because of a lack of interest of developers in having stable binary interfaces to things.)

Re:Easy Answer

[mr_mischief]

If the goal is "my audio workstation set up just the way I want it" and Apple's software doesn't feel quite right, you might be surprised how many people will take the time to learn to set up their own stuff. People who point out the costs of commercial software in terms of money are often dismissed with the "pros don't care if it costs money" line. Well, I'm pretty sure pros have been known to invest time into projects when they couldn't find a way to fix things with money.

Commercial software has the visible cost of cash. It also has the hidden cost (which doesn't stay hidden long when you're trying to do something new with it) of usually being pretty inflexible. Another hidden cost is vendor failure. Apple won't be gone tomorrow, but what about the little third-party shop that made your audio filter plugins? How do you get support for those after they're gone?

Open software tends to have a visible cost of time. What are its hidden costs? Sometimes there's incompatibility, but outside of specific Apple/MS-developed or Apple/MS-sanctioned software you have that on Mac and Windows too. Mac is better about it than either Windows or Linux, sure. So are NetBSD, Solaris, Irix, and AIX when you're using the small body of software meant for each one of them. Where else besides Windows do you have as big of a software selection, though? The modern Unix systems, including Linux, the BSDs, and most commercial Unixes, get along for the most part pretty well at the source level. Some of them get along on the same platform at the library level. A few can even run each other's binaries. That means that there's a huge body of software written for Linux or that can be pretty easily ported to Linux. Compatibility issues are going to result, sure.

Try running you favorite web browser or even text editor from OS 6 or OS 7 on OS X. The most basic of tools for Linux can usually be used on future versions on the same hardware. With Mac you're talking about three platforms with two entirely different operating system families. Now if I want faster performance for my PPC-only OS 9 and OS X binaries, I have to find a way to get OS X on an IBM Power machine or a Momentum box. Meanwhile, there's no MacOS for anything handheld, but there are certainly handhelds out there using chips derived from the Motorola 68000-series. Linux runs on many of them. That means I can conceivably take a Linux program from an Amiga or M68k Mac and at least hope to run it on another M68k-derived device. I can take my Yellow Dog, Mandriva PPC, or Ubuntu PPC stuff and put it on a Power system. Where's Apple?

Re:Easy Answer

[AlexMax2742]

Does that definition of good looking coincide with whether or not it stresses the most recent 3d graphics card? A well themed mud can be good looking. All of the examples I pasted are games that are more or less complete and are well designed artistically. Notice I did not include long standing foss vaporware such as, e.g. adonthell as many other lists trying to paint a rosy picture do?

Please tell me this isn't some crap about how the wine project pitched a fit when everyone on the project suddenly decided they didn't like the terms of their own license, then screamed, bitched, moaned, and cried over someone taking advantage of those generous terms.

Yeah, how dare the developers want compensation for all their hard work? Mind you, I'm not in the "Everything should be GPL" camp. However, taking freely avalible code, adding some much-wanted functionality, donating nothing back to the people who generously gave you access to the code, and then closing or obfuscating the resulting code and charging a fee seems like a supreme dick move. And from my point of view, Wine has made far more progress in Win32 API emulation than Cedega can ever hope to make in an equivilent period of time because of community support.

Are you referring to the idea of stable, testing, etc repository like setups? The game distributor is more than able to provide their own deb/rpm and their own updates, and the user is free to install them. That would make it more or less like it is in windows now.

Making a program with installer for one target (two if you cound x64, three or four if your program needs a special Vista version, five if you want to provide support for Windows 9x, but the vast majority of users are covered under one) is tough enough. How can you expect all but the largest projects to provide or have volunteers able to produce installers for all of the popular distros?

E.g. the kind of people who enjoy an OS like linux? Personally, I dread the day linux becomes attractive for the non technically inclined.. I do consider the two mutually exclusive (techie OS vs. "average joe" OS, and I still hate it that the current status of the world is where we try to hide that average people are morons behind some silly moniker like that).

Enjoy your self-appointed elitist title. Meanwhile, the rest of the Linux community is busy making Linux palitable into an operating system the average joe would want to use.

I have no desire to play a single one of those. Mainstream gaming is not the only gaming there is, and a system not being mainstream does not mean that it is not capable of being or is not a viable gaming platform. I've kept myself busy with a variety of games for 7 years now running only linux. If you must play what everyone else plays and what ign spams then linux probably isn't the right OS for you. I just like to play games. I don't care what game, as long as it's fun. So, it appears that the majority of times the issue is mistated. Linux is not a bad gaming platform, it's a bad high budget, extremely hyped, mass media gaming platform. Two very different things.

Good games are timeless and budgetless. You can make a crap game with tons of money riding behind it or very little, and they can be a decade old or a few months old. Ultimately, though, if you stick to Linux for your gaming fix, you're missing out on a bunch of genuinely good games. Writing off non-Linux gaming as "too mainstream" is ignorant at best and a weak rationalization at justifying your use of Linux for gaming at worst. I dare you to sit down for a game of Team Fortress 2 (first being sure to clear the patronizing "MAINSTREAM GAMING :rolleyes:" thoughts out of your head and taking the game on its own merits). I guarentee you that you'll have *gasp* fun with a high budget title.

Re:Easy Answer

[EWIPlayer]

(I deeply apologize for the length of this. I understand if you skim or disregard completely :D)

I agree that there are costs to whatever you choose. The bottom line here, for the moment, is that Linux is not an audio platform of choice. I've tried to get it to do what I want to do (before switching to the Mac) and it was a total non-starter. It was inflexible, bug ridden (yes this aspect may be better now, but...) and totally featureless when it came to the product landscape. Yes there may be some users who are unhappy with what the OSX platform shoehorns them into, but this is not the general case.

Try running you favorite web browser or even text editor from OS 6 or OS 7 on OS X

I can't, as you well know, but let's not just make up requirements here. It's extremely rare when someone says, especially in the audio realm, "Let me run this really really old piece of software!". People clamour for the latest and greatest, in almost any marketplace. Not being able to run ancient software is definitely not something that the vast majority of people want to do.

I can take my Yellow Dog, Mandriva PPC, or Ubuntu PPC stuff and put it on a Power system. Where's Apple?

Let's state the obvious: Apple creates proprietary technology. One of the absolute main reasons I believe that they are so successful at this stuff is because they don't worry or care about every Tom, Dick and Harry's hardware. They run on specific equipment. Do you pay for that in choice? Of course! Are the bulk of Mac users unhappy with the hardware they're forced to run on? No... if they were, they would go somewhere else and run something else. Of course you can always find someone who's unhappy, just like you can always find that one quack that really wants to run his OS7 software on OSX, but let's be realistic and discuss the general case and not the <10% cases.

Also, people don't care about interchanging binaries or libraries... hell, Java has taught us that if nothing else. Remember the "write once, run anywhere" marketing fluff? You never hear that anymore and there's a good reason for it: people don't care about that. I've written a lot of apps in my life and no company, no individual expects to be able to run that same app on a ton of different platforms. When I wrote Java apps, they were geared towards Unix, Solaris specifically, and that's it, and nobody cared at all. Are there edge cases? Of course there are, but arguing edge cases is, as I've alluded to, a waste of time. For each edge case on the right, I can find an edge case on the left and negate the whole thing.

I clearly understand that open source is alive "forever". Don't misunderstand me here... I love open source, I think that it's a truly marvelous way to create software, and I believe that Linux is *the* choice for a backend server. I understand that companies may die, but let's face another fact here: If the company died, it's generally because nobody was using their software, or tons of people were using it and weren't paying for it. In the first case, nobody will care if they die (or that <10% comes back and we're not concerned with that), and in the second case the public deserves what they get.

I understand what you're saying, and you've presented it well, but I really think you're arguing edge cases here. It is not the job of any company, or open source group to deal solely in edge cases, or to put in 80% of the effort for 20% of the audience. There will *always* be edge cases. And let's also not forget what's really happening in the world - very few people are using Linux professionally for audio (actually, I don't know of any but I assume that the number is not actually zero). And, at the very least, almost all (again, I know of none, but it's not fair to say it's zero) commercial and professional applications and plugins are targeted at non-Linux platforms. There is a reason for this, for sure... people are happy to make c

Re:Easy Answer

[Corwn of Amber]

And that is exactly what I'd be afraid of if Linux ever became mainstream on the desktop. Vendors would resort to bloating each application with a redundant set of libraries.

This is what happens on OS X with it's self contained application folders.

And this is bad exactly how? I don't see maintaining packages as a principal activity being profitable in the long run. Disk space is cheap, compatibility is priceless.

Application vendors bundling their apps with all required libs, tagetting a minimum standard base (I haven't read the LSB so I don't know what basic functionality it covers), would be a killer app for F/OSS. I suppose Linux could evolve into a sort-of "OSX on Hackintosh with Fink or MacPorts"... Which is what I'm using, for one.

Re:Easy Answer

[mr_mischief]

The main target for Open Source, of course, is edge cases. Far more people run across one or another edge case with Windows or OS X than you might at first think, though. One of Open Source's biggest strengths is that people can work around their edge cases ro have someone do the work around it for them.

If you're willing to stick to the most bog-standard hardware, Linux can support it nearly as well if not as well as OS X. The Linux on Mac people for example typically only worry about supporting Apple-approved hardware and little if anything else.

As for the applications being all developed by the same people, that's simply not true. Lots of people do contribute across many projects. The kernel team, libc team, and text tools teams are all different, though. KDE and GNOME have completely different sets o programmers. Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Exim, Postfix, X.org, OpenOffice, FireFox, and more focus on their applications and not on the OS software. Some audio applications are bundled up with their desktop environments, but several are independent.

Slag, for example, is a simple and useful (but not very pretty) drum machine program that uses JACK as output. JACK in turn uses OSS, ALSA, coreaudio, or portaudio. TuxGuitar is a tablature editor and player which supports ALSA, OSS, GCJ, and coreaudio. FST supports VST plugins on Linux. Rosegarden is a synth/MIDI sequencer, composing, and editing suite which supports LADSPA, DSSI softsynths, and some VST/VSTi plugins. It uses some KDE libs but can be run under other desktop/window manager environments, and uses ALSA (MIDI) and JACK (synth) for output. FFADO handles many Firewire audio devices. Audacity is a good wvaeform-level soundclip editor. Ardour is cross-platform and has had commercial support.

The main problems are not that one team works on everything or that it's not a suitable platform. The main problem is that if you want to use something that uses EsounD with something that uses ALSA, you have lots of workaround hassles. OSS, ALSA, NMM, and lots of other sound servers have tried to correct deficiencies along the way. Now it seems that PulseAudio will be taking over for EsounD possibly also for aRts, NMM, and ALSA. If there was one or even two sound systems from which to choose, most audio software would be targeted to work together. So yes, in this respect OS X has a nice leg up by limiting the audio servers available. If PulseAudio (which also works on Windows) takes a single prime spot on Linux and is well maintained, it's just up to the application developers to keep up. All it takes from there is time.

Re:Easy Answer

[Ash-Fox]

And this is bad exactly how? I don't see maintaining packages as a principal activity being profitable in the long run. Disk space is cheap, compatibility is priceless.

There are advantages and disadvantages. Since we know already the advantages, here are the disadvantages:

• Libraries which aren't shared take up additional RAM when applications using the same libraries would take less.
• When there is a new security vulnerability, each of these applications have to release a update rather than the single library just being updated.
• Generally, it's a lot easier ensuring one library that is global is updated than tonnes of 3rd parties who have their own release schedules, making a system more vulnerable.

Application vendors bundling their apps with all required libs, tagetting a minimum standard base (I haven't read the LSB so I don't know what basic functionality it covers), would be a killer app for F/OSS.

LSB gives options for this. Also LSB compliance specifies minimal bases that you can rely on being there always.

I suppose Linux could evolve into a sort-of "OSX on Hackintosh with Fink or MacPorts"... Which is what I'm using, for one.

Honestly, Fink, Darwin Ports, MacPorts are quite... annoying with their dependency hell issues.

Hmm.. What was that Linux distribution that followed the OS X way of packaging things into folders? I can't remember it's name.

Re:Easy Answer

[entrigant]

Yeah, how dare the developers want compensation for all their hard work? Mind you, I'm not in the "Everything should be GPL" camp. However, taking freely avalible code, adding some much-wanted functionality, donating nothing back to the people who generously gave you access to the code, and then closing or obfuscating the resulting code and charging a fee seems like a supreme dick move. And from my point of view, Wine has made far more progress in Win32 API emulation than Cedega can ever hope to make in an equivilent period of time because of community support.

If the developers felt that way then they should have licensed the code accordingly. This is the entire point of the GPL. If they wanted the code to remain free and they wanted forks to be forced to contribute back then it should have been licensed under a license that forces the issue. While I may understand and even sympathize with how they felt, they did explicitly give permission to use the code in such a way for anybody that wanted to.

Making a program with installer for one target (two if you cound x64, three or four if your program needs a special Vista version, five if you want to provide support for Windows 9x, but the vast majority of users are covered under one) is tough enough. How can you expect all but the largest projects to provide or have volunteers able to produce installers for all of the popular distros?

I'm pretty sure that after all of the effort of developing and producing the game the couple of hours it'll take to make a rpm and deb isn't really going to be a problem.

Enjoy your self-appointed elitist title. Meanwhile, the rest of the Linux community is busy making Linux palitable into an operating system the average joe would want to use.

Aren't all elitists self appointed? If that is the label you wish to apply to me, then so be it. In the meantime users who have replaced religion with using linux will continue to preach about and create some non existent war between linux and windows while the devs (including myself) will continue to make apps they want to use ignoring this user created "war". That is the status quo, and I am rather confident it will remain that way.

Good games are timeless and budgetless. You can make a crap game with tons of money riding behind it or very little, and they can be a decade old or a few months old. Ultimately, though, if you stick to Linux for your gaming fix, you're missing out on a bunch of genuinely good games. Writing off non-Linux gaming as "too mainstream" is ignorant at best and a weak rationalization at justifying your use of Linux for gaming at worst. I dare you to sit down for a game of Team Fortress 2 (first being sure to clear the patronizing "MAINSTREAM GAMING :rolleyes:" thoughts out of your head and taking the game on its own merits). I guarentee you that you'll have *gasp* fun with a high budget title.

Nowhere did I say all mainstream high budget games are bad and all independent low budget games or good. Perhaps you were reading something else? I'm also pretty sure I've tried team fortress 2, and I'm pretty sure I didn't like it. Believe it or not not everyone is into the multiplayer fps thing. I don't even like the free and open independent FPS games. However, some of the mainstream big budget games I do enjoy:

Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Black & White
Warcraft 1, 2, 3
Starcraft
Most of the command and conquer series

And there are many more. Most of them I play on cedega or dosbox.

Re:Easy Answer

[AlexMax2742]

If they wanted the code to remain free and they wanted forks to be forced to contribute back then it should have been licensed under a license that forces the issue. While I may understand and even sympathize with how they felt, they did explicitly give permission to use the code in such a way for anybody that wanted to.

Coders can be naieve and idealistic. Chances are, if they knew someone was going to pull such a dick move, they woudln't have gone with the original license in the first place.

I'm pretty sure that after all of the effort of developing and producing the game the couple of hours it'll take to make a rpm and deb isn't really going to be a problem.

Easy for you to say. I've seen countless open source projects with nothing more than a source tarball and tell end users to figure it out.

Nowhere did I say all mainstream high budget games are bad and all independent low budget games or good. Perhaps you were reading something else? I'm also pretty sure I've tried team fortress 2, and I'm pretty sure I didn't like it. Believe it or not not everyone is into the multiplayer fps thing. I don't even like the free and open independent FPS games. However, some of the mainstream big budget games I do enjoy:

Pretty sure I read between the lines, no matter if that was your intent or not. And speaking of RTS's, if you liked those games, you might want to give Dawn of War Dark Crusade (the original and winter assault aren't bad either) a spin. It's fantastic for a game being based on a licencsd property, and runs perfectly in wine, and a third expansion is on the way that will bring the total number of playable races to nine.

Re:Easy Answer

[misleb]

I know I could get the original binaries working just fine, using only packages from the original distribution by setting things like path variables. No compiling required. Yes, it's more difficult than click and run,

I'm sure *you* know how to do it, but most people don't and it isn't generally considered the "right" way of going about installing software on Linux. The standard way of installing Linux software is to either install it from teh distribution and be stuck with that version until you decide to upgrade your whole system all at once, or hope the someone has built a package for your particular distribution and version. Well, i guess there is that tiny fraction of software that has "universal" installers. But those is quite the exception.

but this exact issue exists with Windows software when you target a specific version of Windows too.

It is a darn good thing that very few vendors do it... or need to do it. Basically what you are saying is that Windows can theoretically be as difficult as Linux when it comes to transfering binaries between distributions, but in practice it generally isn't an issue. It is very much an issue on Linux.

LSB standard is RPM. Any distributions that follow LSB compatibility will support RPM. Before you say it, yes Debian/Ubuntu support RPM packages just fine, despite being Deb based. They offer to install it, then convert RPM packages on the fly with tools like 'alien' to a .deb package, and then install it (just from double clicking the RPM in the GUI).

Yes, thanks, I've installed RPMs on Debian before, an my experience was rather mixed. I pretty much determined (as have many others) that is something you generally want to avoid if at all possible. Though I can't say I've tried anything that is LSB compliant. In fact, I can't say I've even seen much LSB software. But then I haven't used Linux on the desktop for about 2 years. Maybe things have come a long, long way since then, but I doubt it.

My experience with Linux distributions (mainly Debian based) is that you are more or less stuck with whatever applications were available when the distribution was "frozen." Unless you are willing to compile stuff from source or get a backport of a package from the "unstable" release of the dist.

If you don't like it, use another distribution that focuses on having the latest "unstable" stuff. Different distributions have different rules and that is what the beauty of it is.

Its strength (beauty) is also its greatest weakness. Users shouldn't have to worry about whether or no they chose the correct distribution. Not everyone has time or the inclination to tinker with distributions like you or I do.

Now, trying to get Windows XP SP2 only optimized binaries working in Vista (Note: To my knowledge, very few of these binaries exist, but it is still a option when compiling)?

So you are comparing what COULD BE the general situation on WIndows with what IS the situation on Linux? What is even the point of making such a comparison?

I should note that Linux developers don't have the luxury of clicking a check box which determines what distribution to target.

My stance on this issue remains unchanged, running binaries compiled for a specific platform, distribution will cause issues, no matter which OS.

Your stance is moot. Not wrong, just moot.

Re:Easy Answer

[Ash-Fox]

I'm sure *you* know how to do it, but most people don't and it isn't generally considered the "right" way of going about installing software on Linux. The standard way of installing Linux software is to either install it from teh distribution and be stuck with that version until you decide to upgrade your whole system all at once, or hope the someone has built a package for your particular distribution and version. Well, i guess there is that tiny fraction of software that has "universal" installers. But those is quite the exception.

Sorry, I see nothing wrong with what popular distributions are doing. We don't even need a universal installers anymore when we have the LSB which dictates RPM support. Distributions support the LSB software, most odd software out there will come with it's own loki installer or a RPM, DEB while the binaries inside are LSB compliant.

Those are considered supported by distributions and those are currently being used by proprietary software on Linux. The only software I can think of that doesn't come packaged that nicely from the developers that provide binaries is Mozilla's. Even then, it doesn't matter since most distributions provide Firefox, thunderird etc.

It is a darn good thing that very few vendors do it... or need to do it. Basically what you are saying is that Windows can theoretically be as difficult as Linux when it comes to transfering binaries between distributions, but in practice it generally isn't an issue. It is very much an issue on Linux.

It's not a issue in my opinion because distributions repackage the same software anyway and they optimize the binaries for their systems, doing otherwise is considered unsupported in most distributions. I think what they are doing is correct.

Its strength (beauty) is also its greatest weakness. Users shouldn't have to worry about whether or no they chose the correct distribution. Not everyone has time or the inclination to tinker with distributions like you or I do.

Then they can live with the faults. Like OS X users live with the faults of OS X and Windows users live with the faults of Windows. I don't see a issue honestly since most distributions have the same software anyway, doing otherwise is considered unsupported in most distributions.

So you are comparing what COULD BE the general situation on WIndows with what IS the situation on Linux? What is even the point of making such a comparison?

I am saying the issues exist with both. There are Linux distributions that package everything into folders like OS X (can't remember the distro name right now), there are Linux distributions that make 'universalish' binaries like Slackware.

I should note that Linux developers don't have the luxury of clicking a check box which determines what distribution to target.

You're right about the checkbox. I have to take a additional step. I just have to specify the base URL for the deb repositories to build my deb packages against with pbuilder. I could do the same with RPM-based distributions using another tool.

Your stance is moot. Not wrong, just moot.

I honestly could say the same about yours.

Re:Easy Answer

[entrigant]

Very cool. Thank you for the suggestion.

Re:Easy Answer

[Corwn of Amber]

And this is bad exactly how? I don't see maintaining packages as a principal activity being profitable in the long run. Disk space is cheap, compatibility is priceless.

There are advantages and disadvantages. Since we know already the advantages, here are the disadvantages:

• Libraries which aren't shared take up additional RAM when applications using the same libraries would take.

Not a very good argument, IMO. If the system is designed in any reasonable way, there should be at least enough RAM in today's computers to take care of that... Of course, if every app needs a full low-level graphics lib and all the layers above, then... then stop programming in DOS.

My point is, application-specific libs belong with the app. The more self-contained the better. So that it won't fuck up the system like MS Office does Windows (not to touch the subject of the Norton line... Nope... must ... resist...), or induce Dependency Hell like "missing lib version 14.15-rc4alpha, won't compile even though you have other revisions, plural" in Linux.

• When there is a new security vulnerability, each of these applications have to release a update rather than the single library just being there.

I'm shaking my head in disgust, thinking Now that is a good point. Why not use the vulnerability to spread the fix? That's how some famous virus (can't remember which) originated, iIrc : someone was trying to deliver software in an automated way without having to do anything on the client machine. Maybe that's actually a good idsea.

• Generally, it's a lot easier ensuring one library that is global is updated than tonnes of 3rd parties who have their own release schedules, making a system more vulnerable.

Error. That's the situation already. Major apps must be updated with their own, "Invented HERE!!1!ZOMG" updater. (See : Office, Adobe Suite, Norton xxx, ... ) and minor apps almost all have a "check for update" command. When it's not "Do you want to install update? -y -Installing... Installed. Click to relaunch."

Application vendors bundling their apps with all required libs, tagetting a minimum standard base (I haven't read the LSB so I don't know what basic functionality it covers), would be a killer app for F/OSS.

LSB gives options for this. Also LSB compliance specifies minimal bases that you can rely on being there always.

.....

I suppose Linux could evolve into a sort-of "OSX on Hackintosh with Fink or MacPorts"... Which is what I'm using, for one.

Honestly, Fink, Darwin Ports, MacPorts are quite... annoying with their dependency hell issues.

Every package manager sucks. All of them. No esception. I've had major breakages on all of them. Windows Installer, Gentoo Portage, BSD Ports, MacPorts, Fink, apt-get, rpm, YaST, and so many others I lost count. They. All. Suck. They all have Dependency Hell issues. They depend on metadata such as file dates, which are NOT reliable. Or they use "the filesystem as database", which is a disaster waiting to happen. Not to be waiting long. Databases suck, they're never properly updated. Tracking each file individually? Sssllloooowww.... Depend on 3rd-party uninstallers? Yeah, right.

Hmm.. What was that Linux distribution that followed the OS X way of packaging things into folders? I can't remember it's name.

Me neither, but I remember thinking that it would be the easiest distro in the world. "Install stuff? Copy folder. Remove stuff? Remove folder. Depende-what? Apps that Just Work from a computer to the other? Apps in BINARY FORM? Hell has frozen over and Adobe is going to port its

Re:Easy Answer

[Ash-Fox]

Not a very good argument, IMO. If the system is designed in any reasonable way, there should be at least enough RAM in today's computers to take care of that... Of course, if every app needs a full low-level graphics lib and all the layers above, then... then stop programming in DOS.

Todays computers, come with 1GB of RAM and a 32bit operating system. Most 32bit operating systems on x86 cannot address more than 3.2GB of RAM.

Sorry, RAM is still limited today.

I'm shaking my head in disgust, thinking Now that is a good point. Why not use the vulnerability to spread the fix? That's how some famous virus (can't remember which) originated, iIrc : someone was trying to deliver software in an automated way without having to do anything on the client machine. Maybe that's actually a good idsea.

Because then you need to implement viral code for each different application uses this library in a certain way and some how deliver it? Not to mention. I think you're bloody insane to suggest that.

Every package manager sucks. All of them. No esception. I've had major breakages on all of them. Windows Installer, Gentoo Portage, BSD Ports, MacPorts, Fink, apt-get, rpm, YaST, and so many others I lost count. They. All. Suck. They all have Dependency Hell issues. They depend on metadata such as file dates, which are NOT reliable. Or they use "the filesystem as database", which is a disaster waiting to happen. Not to be waiting long. Databases suck, they're never properly updated. Tracking each file individually? Sssllloooowww.... Depend on 3rd-party uninstallers? Yeah, right.

Works for me when used correctly.

Me neither, but I remember thinking that it would be the easiest distro in the world. "Install stuff? Copy folder. Remove stuff? Remove folder. Depende-what? Apps that Just Work from a computer to the other? Apps in BINARY FORM?

I am not sure if they would work between other Linux systems honestly. Sorry, I don't remember the name. I wasn't too interested in the distribution and neither are others which obviously why it's hardly heard of.

Hell has frozen over and Adobe is going to port its line to Linux, like, Real Soon Now! And Duke Nukem Forever will hit retail!" Yes, it made me THAT happy. Then, well... we can't even remember the name.

Oh shit, I don't remember the name for everything. I must be a giant Encyclopedia of knowledge and have every detail in my head!?!

Especially with that kind of response I am not going to bother looking for it.

OSX...

[EWIPlayer]

Switching from Linux to OSX (after using Linux exclusively for over 10 years) ranks up there as one of the largest impacts, for the better, to my personal productivity and enjoyment of programming, and computing in general, that's ever happened to me.

I admire the work being done with Linux on the Desktop, but all of this talk of "Linux on the desktop in 200X!" is getting to be kind of silly. There's a monstrously large Elephant in the living room and it's not getting discussed much... You want Unix and a production quality desktop with tons of high quality third party apps with a buttload of real-world usage? Stop waiting on Linux and switch to OSX... What you want is here, now.

Forget about all of this "It's got to be 'free', man" stuff and just recognize the fact that it has to work, and work well... 10 years I was with Linux, set up hundreds of machines in various places. Now, I just tell people to go buy a Mac and let the computer work for you instead of having to learn (what is to the lay-person) a bunch of voodoo magic.

I await the inevitable flamebait award...

Re:OSX...

[samkass]

I agree with you in general. I've pretty much been Mac-only at home since 1988. However, as a Java developer the Mac is obviously very, very lacking. In addition, the hardware is frustrating-- no 2nd mouse button (why can't they do a Mighty Buttonbook?), no dock, no 2nd monitor out (which I get with a dock on my work Dell).

If I wasn't so tied to Macs, I'd be seriously thinking about a Dell right about now.

Re:OSX...

[Ash-Fox]

I admire the work being done with Linux on the Desktop, but all of this talk of "Linux on the desktop in 200X!" is getting to be kind of silly.

Article nor the summary says that.

You want Unix

Unix is not important to me, I also don't think the majority of people who use Linux, use it because they want something Unixy. But! If I were to choose a system for Unix capability, I would choose windows over OS X since Windows' POSIX subsystem actually behaves completely to spec for one, unlike OS X's BSD subsystem (which still managed to some how get certified). My first choice would be a Linux distribution for the main reason that lots of things would just work without having to work too hard. I mean for one, the x11 support in Linux is superb. It supports drag and drop, no clipboard issues, X11 communications work flawlessly unlike on OS X with it's poor x11 support.

and a production quality desktop with tons of high quality third party apps with a buttload of real-world usage?

Tons of high quality third party applications and you are going to mention OS X? Can I have what you are smoking? There isn't that vast large amount of third party applications for any specific given version of OS X, never mind claiming the majority of those are high quality.

Stop waiting on Linux and switch to OSX... What you want is here, now.

Having used OS X for many years and still using it. Sorry, I don't agree with your reasoning

Forget about all of this "It's got to be 'free', man" stuff and just recognize the fact that it has to work, and work well... 10 years I was with Linux, set up hundreds of machines in various places. Now, I just tell people to go buy a Mac and let the computer work for you instead of having to learn (what is to the lay-person) a bunch of voodoo magic.

I use Linux because I consider it superior for my uses. I also find the desktop environment available are superior for my uses. I have even paid for certain distributions like SuSE and Mandriva and I have no problem with paying for Linux software which I have done also in the past too.

Re:OSX...

[EWIPlayer]

Naw, I won't start a Java war :) Sufficed to say, I never touched ObjC before I met my Mac, and I gotta say it's wicked cool for development. Mix in some C++, Python and Ruby, all of which are well supported now, and it's shake and bake.

But you're right, if you're a Java guy then you're somewhat hosed... but I'll never fault apple for that very fine decision :)

Hardware issues notwithstanding (yeah, you're tied to the hardware, unless you get a machine that runs OSX86 well) it's a great OS - turning back just doesn't seem like an option for me. BTW on the macbook pro (that's all I've ever used, so it may be on everything else as well), the touchpad has a second mouse button - just tap with two fingers. This a bloody godsend!

Re:OSX...

[Christopher Rogers]

no 2nd mouse button There's an option in System Preferences to set tapping with two fingers to trigger a right-click. It's under the Trackpad tab of the Keyboard & Mouse section. However you need a Mac laptop made within the last couple of years to get this functionality. If you can scroll with two fingers on the trackpad (enabled by default I think; if not, yet another very useful feature), then you can enable this function.

Re:OSX...

[nacturation]

In addition, the hardware is frustrating-- no 2nd mouse button ... Yeah, Linux shares the same problem. I installed Linux on my PowerMac and it only had one mouse button as well. It's too bad there aren't any third-party products which would alleviate this problem.

Re:OSX...

[Divebus]

The biggest drawback for Linux isn't the platform or OS, it's all those dumbass Klingon sounding names for the applications. Fix that - and for god sake don't make people use a perl script to install it - and you might be able to claim more inroads into general public market share. People don't WANT to use Linux, more people just don't want to use Windows because they've realized how treacherous it is. The iron is hot.

For that reason, your instincts are good for OS X because I've seen many people switch off the Windows platform in 2007 and never look back. They love their Macs mostly because the OS leaves them alone to work plus they've discovered all the software that comes with it. If you are the kind of person who can install any Linux flavor and be able to answer the question "ok, now what?" then Linux is for you. That excludes the vast majority of people who just want to use a computer.

Re:OSX...

[EWIPlayer]

Article nor the summary says that.

Google is your friend... I'm being general.

Unix is not important to me, I also don't think the majority of people who use Linux, use it because they want something Unixy.

Wow... well, I think you just might be wrong there.

Tons of high quality third party applications and you are going to mention OS X? Can I have what you are smoking?

What do people do most of the time? Photo editing, surfing, word processing, spread sheets, movie watching, music playing, IM, email and gaming. Adobe Creative Suite, Omniweb (very nice app, by the way) - Firefox - Safari (not great), MS Office, Apple office suite (very very slick, IMO), Quicktime with codecs (quite nice, in fact), iTunes (not great, but not bad), Apple Mail (very nice app), various IM progs are all pretty decent, games... I don't play games, so I don't comment. You've got great interoperability in these apps, drag and drop is superb, man... it all just works.

But as well, how about artists? Incredible audio app support like no other. Most of the apps that windows has (and some it doesn't) but supported in an OS that understands how these things should be done - CoreAudio and CoreMidi - not bolted on by some third party guys after the fact. It's integrated and works extremely well. People are tossing out their synthesizers and studio gear for a powerful Mac and their favourite apps, and they're not afraid to take the gear on stage. Try this stuff with a linux box... I still have my wife using a linux box and she can't even get her email to work right because people send her attachments that are *still* a bitch to read on a Linux box, and I am not about to put in the effort to get it all working right... I've grown very tired of doing that stuff.

But! If I were to choose a system for Unix capability, I would choose windows over OS X...

For Unix compatibility, you would choose a non-Unix over a Unix... Thanks for playing :) I just started being a Windows programmer about four months ago - Unix-like, it aint. Wow... what a thing to say - you are probably the first to ever write down such a thing. Congrats.

Re:OSX...

[EWIPlayer]

People don't WANT to use Linux, more people just don't want to use Windows

That's a brilliant observation and it's one I tend to overlook, but you're totally right. People don't necessarily want to use Linux, OSX, freebsd, Joe's OS, but they simply are tired of using Windows and desperately need an alternative. OSX doesn't immediately run on their Windows hardware, so the next choice is Linux.

Thanks for the insight.

Re:OSX...

[abigor]

How is OS X lacking in Java development? A part of my bread and butter is enterprise Java stuff, and I do it all on a MacBook. What am I missing exactly?

For years, it was impossible to develop with Java on Linux because all of the implementations sucked so badly. OS X made Java development on a Unix box bearable (note that I'm not a huge Java fan, but whatever, it pays the bills).

As for the mouse thing, the OS supports multiple buttons, so I just use my Microsoft mouse. I'm not sure if I've ever even used an Apple one, as this MacBook is my first Apple.

Re:OSX...

[Anonymous Coward]

all those dumbass Klingon sounding names for the applications

Abiword, Cinepaint, Gimp, Inkscape, Open Office, Scribus, Firefox... I'm having some difficulty here, please give me a klingon lesson and tell me exactly which names you're referring too.

Re:OSX...

[Divebus]

No 2nd monitor out? If you're using a MacBook or iBook, the 2nd output will only mirror the display but the PowerBooks and MacBook Pros will certainly drive a second independent monitor.

Re:OSX...

[Stormwatch]

The biggest drawback for Linux isn't the platform or OS, it's all those dumbass Klingon sounding names for the applications.

Someone once said... programmers should never be allowed to choose the name of their apps! XD

Re:OSX...

[Stormwatch]

I'm having some difficulty here, please give me a klingon lesson and tell me exactly which names you're referring too.

Try anything related to KDE...

Re:OSX...

[Kymermosst]

Yes, but those of us that want a real ****ing button with a real tactile click are out of luck. Especially people like me who think the pad is for pointing, the buttons are for clicking.

Until Apple sells a laptop with at least two (preferably three) independently clickable buttons, I'll never get one.

Oh, and a USB/bluetooth mouse or trackball is not an option. The point of a laptop is to have everything you want built-in. Ever try using a mouse on a plane?

Re:OSX...

[Divebus]

all those dumbass Klingon sounding names for the applications Abiword, Cinepaint, Gimp, Inkscape, Open Office, Scribus, Firefox... please give me a klingon lesson and tell me exactly which names you're referring too.

You picked a few names that showed SOME thought. Tell someone using Photoshop on a Mac that you're going to replace it with Gimp on Ubuntu and they'll give you a shot in the chops just for the names. GnuCash? Kopete? Pdftk? Xournal? nGhost? GnoTime? PyCoCuMa? Feisty Fawn? Gentoo? (ok, that's a breed of Penguin)... pyBackPack? Kdissert? Zune?.... oh wait.

Re:OSX...

[Anonymous Coward]

You want Unix and a production quality desktop with tons of high quality third party apps with a buttload of real-world usage? Stop waiting on Linux and switch to OSX... What you want is here, now.

And yet, we're not "waiting on Linux". We're using it on our desktops today. What does that say?

Forget about all of this "It's got to be 'free', man" stuff and just recognize the fact that it has to work, and work well...

I saw a NeXT cube when I was in college, and I thought it was the greatest computer ever ... until I saw a Pentium-75 running Linux 1.0 (without even X). I suggest that it is you who are ignoring the elephant in the room. We've seen Mac OS X. We've used it. We've developed for it, and played games on it. And we still want Linux! We are not so shallow to think that if it's Unixlike, then it has all of the benefits of Linux. You can put our words in 'quotes' and pretend that we talk like stoner-dudes, but it does not change anything.

I realize that if you've been setting up hundreds of Linux boxes, you're probably just ranting, and want nothing more to do with something called "Linux" no matter how good it is. I could tell you that these days it's pretty much "insert Ubuntu installer CD, reboot, press return" (you don't even have to give away personal data like on the Mac), but you wouldn't hear me. That's OK. We'll still be here in 20 years if you ever decide to come back.

Re:OSX...

[Max Threshold]

What, so I can pay $250 a year for updates that break my apps? Riiiight...

Apple and Microsoft both need to stick to hardware.

Re:OSX...

[Ash-Fox]

Google is your friend... I'm being general.

Great, so you're leading towards off topic.

Wow... well, I think you just might be wrong there

Seriously, I never hear people wanting to use a Unix like system in general as the reason why someone uses Linux and I know a lot of Linux users.

What do people do most of the time? Photo editing, surfing, word processing, spread sheets, movie watching, music playing, IM, email and gaming.

I definitely wouldn't put photo editing first and I don't find it that common to see people watching movies on their computers outside of Youtube either.

Adobe Creative Suite, Omniweb (very nice app, by the way) - Firefox - Safari (not great), MS Office, Apple office suite (very very slick, IMO), Quicktime with codecs (quite nice, in fact), iTunes (not great, but not bad), Apple Mail (very nice app), various IM progs are all pretty decent, games... I don't play games, so I don't comment. You've got great interoperability in these apps,

Sorry, I'm not seeing a 'ton' of applications there. That doesn't even come close to my definition of a few high quality 3rd party application. Now high quality? That's arguable, especially with how Firefox is unstable (hint: known to crash) on OS X, how most of the applications you mentioned don't even follow Apple's HiG.
(I find it strange that you didn't suggest VLC as a media player, which is known to be very popular with OS X users).

drag and drop is superb, man... it all just works.

Except when it comes to x11 on OS X. Then drag and drop absolutely sucks :P

For Unix compatibility, you would choose a non-Unix over a Unix...

Windows' POSIX subsystem behaves CORRECTLY unlike OS X's BSD subsystem. If you really wanted to get something because it behaves like Unix properly then using Windows' POSIX subsystem would definitely be a choice over OS X. Since it can't even do signals properly.

Unix-like, it aint.

Look up Windows Services for Unix.

Re:OSX...

[hardburn]

Java was pretty bad on Mac prior to OS X, though. Has always been bad on BSD, too. Not so great on Linux, either. So much for cross-platform development.

As for mice, I've got a wireless Mighty Mouse myself. The two-button interface is dodgy sometimes, and the scroll ball gets easily jammed up with dirt. I've yet to see a mouse from Apple that I liked.

Re:OSX...

[Daengbo]

If you lived and worked in areas of the world which I would call "developing," you would favor freedom more than you do now. For some of, forgetting about "it's got to be free, man" is like giving up on real democracy and just accepting the corruption that exists and destroys as inevitable. Free software may not mean much for the deleveloped nations of the west, but for the rest of the world, Free software equates to national freedom.

Re:OSX...

[Lord Kano]

You want Unix and a production quality desktop with tons of high quality third party apps with a buttload of real-world usage? Stop waiting on Linux and switch to OSX... What you want is here, now.

If I could run OSX on whatever hardware I wanted, I'd consider it.

LK

Re:OSX...

[abigor]

Yeah, I never used a Mac before OS X, but I believe you. Don't forget that the Java that gets shipped with OS X is Apple's, not the BSD one. And anyway, with the GPL'd Java, all those half-baked free alternatives (Blackdown, etc.) will hopefully bite the dust, and the cross-platform thing won't matter as much.

As far as the actual development goes, though, IDEA + vim + Quicksilver (which is unique to OS X) + Umbrello (soon to run natively, rather than under X) + iTerm + Parallels (for when I have to deploy to a Linux server, usually RHEL) = development nirvana.

Re:OSX...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a lot of words just to say "I'm gay."

Re:OSX...

[skeeto]

Switching from Linux to OSX [...] ranks up there as one of the largest impacts, for the better [...]. Now, I just tell people to go buy a Mac and let the computer work for you instead of having to learn (what is to the lay-person) a bunch of voodoo magic.

I can share my operating system and all of the installed software with my friends. You can not.

I win.

Re:OSX...

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice that the parent says the *hardware* is frustrating.

Re:OSX...

[EWIPlayer]

And yet, we're not "waiting on Linux". We're using it on our desktops today. What does that say?

That's not the point. I understand people are using it... like I said, I was using it for over ten years, and I always said that if something better came up, I would switch. When I switched, I knew I made the right choice... by a mile. I still say the same thing, though... if something better comes up, I'll switch. You're right, if Linux turns out to pass OSX someday, I'll switch again. But for now, OSX has got Linux beat by a long shot...

Re:OSX...

[EWIPlayer]

I win.

Congratulations :) I'm not sure that there was anything to "win", and I'm very sure that the concept of "sharing" code has nothing to do with the code itself. I can write a free "hello world" program and share it all over the place, but I don't think that that makes it better than Propellerheads Reason for handling audio. But hey... it's free, so it must be better. Interesting argument...

Re:OSX...

[EWIPlayer]

If you lived and worked in areas of the world which I would call "developing," you would favor freedom more than you do now. For some of, forgetting about "it's got to be free, man" is like giving up on real democracy and just accepting the corruption that exists and destroys as inevitable. Free software may not mean much for the deleveloped nations of the west, but for the rest of the world, Free software equates to national freedom.

I get it... seriously. I understand the wonder of FOSS and I was an enormous proponent of it for years (I used to be quite the Linux zealot) and still support it to a very high degree. However, you might want to consider that, because you're living and working in areas that you call "developing", that you might have lost a bit of objectivity here.

You're actually equating the idea of being able to see and modify source code to national democracy, and that if you take it away, somehow it affects national freedom. That's not the case. If all the code you had went closed source, but was still free (as in beer), what would really happen? So you couldn't modify the source code of all of the apps and the OS you run. Do you really do that now? Do you think the average Linux person does that now? Come on, be fair. Apple, in this case, is not what I would call "corrupt". They're not a pharmaceutical company raping the people of the third world, or a clothing manufacturer exploiting workers... they're Apple. They write software. Yes, they probably have some ties in with something bad when it comes to the hardware, but I highly doubt that the software is causing any *real* problem in that regard.

Richard Stallman is a freak, not out for free as in democracy, or national freedom. He simply hates companies, hates people and has some pretty wicked narcissistic tendencies (hell, he scours newsgroups he's not a part of to see if people are saying bad things about him). I've talked with him a few times and only after talking to him, did I stop following him - I used to follow him very strongly.

Software is the least of the developing nations' problems, and if you take the "free" (as in speech) out of it, people will notice, but it certainly won't bring the nation crashing down, and all told it probably won't do anything significant whatsoever. Ask yourself what the free (as in speech) aspect is actually *doing* right now and you might bring your viewpoint a bit more to centre.

Re:OSX...

[aussie_a]

I'll move to OSX the second I don't have to throw away my perfectly usable hardware.

Re:OSX...

[Daengbo]

I'm not a follower of Stallman. I only know what I see as the result of OSS. The FOSS movement in Thailand when I lived there did real good for the country. OSS gave the country a way out of piracy, putting it back in the good graces of the WTO. The software offered real opportunities for localization so that young people who had never studied English could learn to use a computer without a dictionary. Before the Linux movement there, even adults with the standard, required education had real difficulty using MS Windows. The IT industry began creating software which made them (instead of MS) money. The government saw a way to stop sending the citizens' money overseas for basic operation.

This was all real. This was in stores. There were Linux desktops on sale in every hypermarket. There was local software for these desktops on the shelves.

Then MS came in, and in a back-room agreement with BCAA-style blackmail or who-knows-how-much money as palm grease, reversed the government policy so that it officially supported MS solutions, filled the school with half-asses localized copies for nothing, offered virtually free copies of MS for everyone, and killed the opportunity.

Yeah. I'm bitter about it. I don't put all the blame on MS. The Thai people carry at least half the guilt for selling themselves out for a few free copies of Win98, only to lose them six months later when it was EOLed. Thailand is now in exactly the same situation that it was it eight years ago, without a real IT industry of its own and a center for software piracy. Sure, the fabs are there. The little bit of outsourcing they get continues. That's it, though.

Still, for six months or a year, I saw what could happen. I saw the way it could be. I'll never forget it.

Re:OSX...

[EWIPlayer]

That might be today. Check out the OSx86 project. It might not work for you but it's worth a shot.

Re:OSX...

[EWIPlayer]

I don't dispute a damn thing you have to say about corrupt governments and companies. We could enjoy many a beer talking about that, I'm sure.

But Thailand wasn't making use of the free speech aspect of Linux, which is what we were talking about. The free beer aspect was being used to a great result. It was functionally the same thing as piracy, in the sense that it was copies of software from one source all over the place, but in this case copying was OK because the OS was free beer. If MS made Windows, and all of the apps that people use, free beer to the Thai people, and continued that until such time as it was reasonable to change it to a pay scenario then they wouldn't be screwed. The fact that MS products are closed source makes no difference here. It's not closed source versus open source, it's free beer versus gougingly overpriced beer, and that's a totally different topic.

Re:OSX...

[Daengbo]

You're missing the point, actually. Sure, the lowered piracy and budget impact were important, but they weren't the interesting or useful long-term part. The freedom to modify, to localize, and to produce their own was the part of the equation which promised to create a thriving IT industry based on local demand, which was quite high.

In reality, your "If MS made Windows, and all of the apps that people use, free beer to the Thai people, and continued that until such time as it was reasonable to change it to a pay scenario" was pretty much exactly what happened, but the local industry was still screwed.

Re:OSX...

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice parent thinks grandparent should buy a new mouse for his Mac.

Re:OSX...

[EWIPlayer]

The freedom to modify, to localize, and to produce their own was the part of the equation which promised to create a thriving IT industry based on local demand, which was quite high.

I'm sure it would have been good, but let's face facts here... nothing was stopping people from doing that and creating their own businesses. Sure MS did some bad shit, but it doesn't stop things. One has to wonder why a country that had Linux on the desktop, and had all of these wonderful aspects that were available were pirating windows and switched to windows when win98 was free. There's something to that argument I think. I agree it wasn't as good as what could have been but clearly Linux was not delivering on some aspects that windows was. But I think we're arguing in circles now. I certainly concede that you know more about this than I do and that your points are quite valid. I simply can't accept the idea that Linux would be "the" solution for any large group. It can't interoperate with Windows very well, it's not as media rich, and it simply isn't as easily usable for the average joe. It's a great OS, but it's not a great desktop OS.

... was pretty much exactly what happened ...

No it's not. They brought out Win98, which was a piece of crap and way outdated, and then EOLed it without giving away XP and friends for free, correct? That's not what I was suggesting at all... If there's a reason to put Win98 up for free then there's no reason not to do that with XP and friends... all MS did was bait and switch. That's crap.

Re:OSX...

[Daengbo]

I think we understand each other. We disagree on some things, but that's OK. Cheers.

Re:OSX...

[jcast]

OTOH, I can say that switching from KDE to MacOS X is one of the worst mistakes I've ever made. From the feature levels of the default applications --- mail, audio, pretty much everything but the web browser --- it feels like moving back to Windows. The great thing about Linux is that the best applications come right out of the box. If you tell me iTunes is the best audio player for MacOS X, you're lying. Running Amarok in X11 is superior.

Re:OSX...

[EWIPlayer]

I don't disagree at all. But I'm not much of a GUI user so it's not a question of switching from KDE to OSX... I used to use ION as my window manager because, personally, KDE was brutal and ION gave me a buttload of great features and stayed the hell out of my way. Now, switching from THAT to OSX has been painful, but it's been totally worth it. I don't "fiddle" with things anymore ... hell, I don't even have printing working from my linux box because it requires me to screw around with a bunch of crap to get it going... what the hell is that? I plug it in to the network, and my Mac says "Bonjour!" and I print. It's stuff like that that I got tired of mucking around with. I want to code, I want to surf, I want to edit photos, read email, view attachments, watch movies, etc etc... I don't want to go and modify fstab to get my USB mounts working right, or futz with the printer subsystem to print a document, or install something that can play mp3's from the browser, etc etc... that's all just busy work that I shouldn't have to do. I could switch to Windows, but hey, that would be stoopid. So I switched to the Mac.

At the end of the day, if the UI let's me open terminal windows and surf the net then that's all I need. If your window manager is actually more important than the OS then, yeah, you probably want an X11 unix so that you can use any window manager you want. But I'm more concerned with my machine doing the right thing than how it presents my windows to me.

Re:OSX...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the point. I understand people are using it...

Sure it is. You were saying you switched from Linux to Mac OS X, as if because the only Linux holdouts were people who didn't know about it. I'm saying we know about it -- and we're still using Linux. Therefore, for our criteria, it's not better.

like I said, I was using it for over ten years, and I always said that if something better came up, I would switch. When I switched, I knew I made the right choice... by a mile.

I've been using Mac OS X since it was called NeXT. I didn't think I'd *ever* switch, but then I saw Linux 1.0. I've tried the Mac three separate times since then (10.1, 10.2, 10.4), and I keep coming back to Linux.

I don't think Linux is perfect. When (not if) something better comes along, I'll switch. (HURD, possibly. Tannenbaum is right: the monolithic kernel is a dinosaur.) But it'll have to be a lot better than Mac OS X. The people who saw Linux for what it was when it was 1.0 aren't going to be swayed by pretty graphics, no matter how awesome they are.

Re:OSX...

[Hymer]

Pls. excuse my obvious ignorance but why is it marked Offtopic ?

Re:OSX...

[EWIPlayer]

Heh, cuz you have a choice of "flamebait", "troll" and "offtopic" and you can't pick all three, so a roll of 1 or 4 is flamebait, 2 or 5 is troll and 3 or 6 is offtopic. Somebody pulled out their die and rolled a 3 or 6. Personally, I was hoping for flamebait or troll cuz offtopic is really really boring, but hey... you can't have everything :)

Moderation points and karma, they're just bits in the ether. If it's got more than 3 responses, then it is de-facto on topic, <sarcasm>or the topic was wrong to begin with</sarcasm> :P

Re:OSX...

[John Jamieson]

Well, I am glad Linux lost another "Linux zealot", the linux camp does not need people like that.

If you think "freedom" or restrictions on it can be segmented into parts of life you are mistaken. A society that accepts restrictions on freedom in one area is much more ready to give it up in another. Maybe that is why the U.S. is slipping into facism?

You realize what you write about Richard Stallman is LIBEL? If he is as bad as you say he is, you just caused yourself a lawsuit that will bankrupt you. I bet he is better than you think he is, and your not as good as you think you are.

Re:OSX...

[Billly Gates]

The problem I have with OSX is that its a bad programmer platform for anything non mac or web.

Mono is not on OXS yet (I could be wrong) and Java under Leopard is really not support that well or at all anymore. Even a simple JOptionpane will not display the title of the applet or program.

ALso what about using KDE and gnome libraries and apis? Sure you can run X but its not that well support or integrated with aqua.

Linux is still ahead in these areas but OSX has the apps like Office and photoshop so it depends what you use.

Re:OSX...

[EWIPlayer]

It's "fascism". Now, learn to spell or the Department of the Written Word will come and arrest your family.

(yes, I consider the rest of what you wrote to be nonsense... now don't sue me)

Re:OSX...

[EWIPlayer]

Dead on. You're absolutely right. I simply find programming for the Mac a buttload more fun. The support for coding what Apple has decided is better than anything I've seen. So, as long as you're willing to live inside ObjC/C++/C/Python/Ruby and Cocoa/Carbon then you're really very happy. If you can't live with that then, you're quite right, it's not a great place to be. I've simply found that, given a ton of choice, I've got to settle down to *something* (i.e. I don't code in ObjC/Java/Python/Ruby/C++/KDE/Gnome/wxWidgets/ALSA/OSS all on one project. I'd probably write all of my apps in C++/Python/KDE/OSS and stick with that.) Settling down to the choices that Apple has given, and the really great tools they've given to work with (the new interface builder is really quite nice), it's a very positive settlement.

Re:OSX...

[Haeleth]

How, exactly, are these names worse than "iPod", other than the fact that the "iPod" name is now familiar enough that its weirdness is no longer obvious?

(Apart from "Gimp", which is stupid and offensive. But Krita is a better program anyway for many purposes, and Photoshop - still the only option for professionals - runs fine with Wine.)

Re:OSX...

[Divebus]

The name iPod wasn't unexpected because iMac, iMovie, iTunes etc were already out as marketable names. It was less alien than half the GNU, GNOME and KDE based names. Really, when Joe Consumer browses the software menu, something with an upbeat, descriptive name that costs money may look more attractive, competent and mature than some "I'd like to buy a vowel" named software.

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter what something is called. A great name won't save a shitty product and a good product will usually overcome most naming handicaps. So far, only a handful of Linux apps have done well on Joe Consumer's radar; Firefox... possibly Thunderbird... or not... maybe I'm being optimistic. Even "Windows" which had "Win" attached to half the products a decade ago looks like a loser now.

Re:OSX...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mono is not on OXS yet

You make this sound like it's a bad thing.

Linux on the desktop is redundant now

[petrus4]

Want user friendly UNIX? Mac OSX.
Want a free UNIX, which is only marginally less user friendly than Ubuntu, and about on the same level with most other Linux distros? FreeBSD.

With both of the above alternatives available, I can't see any reason for using Linux on the desktop at all. The other wonderful thing about using either of the above is that it means that I can also bypass the freak show that is Linux's user community and the plague of the FSF, as well.

Linux's modularity and potential small size mean it might still have a place for embedded devices, but even there, if you don't mind less initial user friendliness, there's NetBSD...and with NetBSD not only do you have arguably greater portability, you've also got a more liberal license, and the above mentioned social benefits, as well.

Anyone I come across who doesn't know about Linux and who is planning to try it, is going to get told about the above alternatives, and then urged not to bother. It's just not worth the pain and suffering.

Re:Linux on the desktop is redundant now

[Ash-Fox]

Want user friendly UNIX?

I have doubts that most desktop users care that much about their desktop being UNIX

I can't see any reason for using Linux on the desktop at all.

Well, there are those who have philosophies - opensource, free. Don't want to pay for a expensive machine just get to get OS X (since Apple machines are higher priced and higher speced than the low end in the PC industry).

And then there are people like me, who don't really care about price. But use a OS because they feel it is technically superior for their needs.

In my case: OS X is too difficult - Getting things like applications in Darwin ports working is far more difficult than just using your average linux distribution. The GUI is simplified beyond my liking, I am a power user and I like to customize my desktop a little. Most OS X applications are geared towards the user who has never used the program before but don't hold applications for the more advanced users -- To explain this as simple as I can, a VIM user is likely going to be much faster with LaTeX from scratch to make a pdf document than a user that uses a GUI centric application like Pages and/or Microsoft Office to do so the same.

The reason is that the experienced user with VIM is capable of operating a lot faster with his aliases, tiny commands and so on than a user who has to rely on the mouse and various GUI menus popping up offering various options (yes, I am aware there are VIM ports on OS X). The problem is that OS X in this scenario doesn't really have many applications that even do a compromise by doing 50/50 in capabilities.

OS X doesn't handle x11 properly. I want to use a x11 application, that means I expect to be able to do simple things like drag and drop and copy/pasting properly.

I personally find OS X slower. I run Linux on the same hardware and I find general multi-tasking is just 'faster'.

I find OS X's bugs annoying. Can we please FTFF! (No, Leopard didn't) I am sick of stupid bugs that cause Finder to freeze up on silly things like file shares and even crashing on ungraceful events.

What is really sad is that OS X managed to get Unix certification, but still the BSD subsystem can't handle signals properly. Even Windows' POSIX subsystem does this correctly (that's right, Windows is capable of being more UNIX-like than OS X is in it's current state).

My Linux system does not have these limitations. I hope this was informative to you as to why at least I don't use OS X -- I don't particularly have any real philosophies when it comes to proprietary or opensource software.

Linux's modularity and potential small size mean it might still have a place for embedded devices, but even there, if you don't mind less initial user friendliness, there's NetBSD...and with NetBSD not only do you have arguably greater portability, you've also got a more liberal license, and the above mentioned social benefits, as well.

It is my belief that Linux has been ported to more architectures and platforms than NetBSD has. There are RTOS versions of the OS even that NetBSD does not have. Heck, take a look at the Linux on xbox, Nintendo DS and other random projects people have created. It seems to be running anywhere these days.

Re:Linux on the desktop is redundant now

[Anonymous Coward]

In my case: OS X is too difficult - Getting things like applications in Darwin ports working is far more difficult than just using your average linux distribution. The GUI is simplified beyond my liking, I am a power user and I like to customize my desktop a little.

Sorry, but if you can't get Darwin ports running then you're not a power user. Just stick to things that require you to drag an icon to the Apps folder and you should be okay.

Re:Linux on the desktop is redundant now

[Lord Kano]

With both of the above alternatives available, I can't see any reason for using Linux on the desktop at all.

Better device driver support.

LK

Re:Linux on the desktop is redundant now

[Ash-Fox]

Sorry, but if you can't get Darwin ports running then you're not a power user. Just stick to things that require you to drag an icon to the Apps folder and you should be okay.

Seriously, the issues with Darwin ports are stupid things like dependency hell. The applications randomly segfaulting (on a brand new OS X system you just setup). Packages that are referenced, but don't actually exist.

These issues were resolved years ago on Linux distributions.

Re:Linux on the desktop is redundant now

[fatrat]

I agree with a lot of what you say (and I'm a Mac user), but for editing one of the things that keeps me on a Mac is that there is no Linux port of the wonderful TextMate. It's biased to Emacs keybindings, not vi, but it's much the best editor I have ever used. Keyboard short cuts for everything, easy automation, source control, syntax highlighting etc etc.

Re:Linux on the desktop is redundant now

[Ash-Fox]

It is not my intent to plug a Linux program. However, I am aware of a program that may do what you want on Linux:

I agree with a lot of what you say (and I'm a Mac user), but for editing one of the things that keeps me on a Mac is that there is no Linux port of the wonderful TextMate.

I have never used TextMate (I'll try that out a bit later), but after reading your post and the site.. Have you perchance managed to try Kdevelop out yet?

It's biased to Emacs keybindings

If you don't like the default key bindings in Kdevelop, you can set the system to to be more like emacs, vim or whatever you want using 'systemsettings' or 'kcontrol' and set any application specific keybindings for tasks in kdevelop it self.

Keyboard short cuts for everything, easy automation, source control, syntax highlighting etc etc.

Kdevelop seems to have the features stated on the website and the ones you underlined in your post. I obviously can't make any useful comparison between the two since I have yet to use TextMate.

That said, if you have used kdevelop - I would like to hear your criticisms on it.

Re:Linux on the desktop is redundant now

[fatrat]

I last used it several years ago, so, yes, I should give it another go.

Re:Linux on the desktop is redundant now

[EWIPlayer]

Seriously... power users aren't GUI users (and as you said earlier, you as a power user, want to customize your GUI desktop more flexibly, you know, like a power user would do :D), and they aren't Darwin ports users. I compile every non-closed app from source, and I use the command line for almost everything. That's where Unix power comes from... not from pre-made packages that aren't compiled the way you would like them (for example, take any distro and try to install a headless system that includes Python, and see if you don't have to install all of X11 with it along with a bunch of GUI widget libs that you'll never use... ack!).

Sorry man, you say you're a power user, but power users know you're not. You're out of your element, which is why people are calling you a troll. You make unsubstantiated remarks as though they're coming from a "power" user but the statements themselves negate the entire idea behind a power user. I have no doubt that you've been doing this for a long time but I think you haven't been exposed enough to what really makes Unix a power environment. Try installing base Slackware and then customizing the system through source apps instead. That's a great way to learn to become a power user. As well, learn to write scripts, use the command line more and read up on some shell books or something. Take a look at the kernel source, take a look at the source of some of your favourite apps, read some of the unix programming books from addison wesley, etc etc... You're missing out on a LOT of what power users have enjoyed for a *very* long time.

Oh, and power users always know that they don't know enough to be power users.

Re:Linux on the desktop is redundant now

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously... power users aren't GUI users (and as you said earlier, you as a power user, want to customize your GUI desktop more flexibly, you know, like a power user would do :D), and they aren't Darwin ports users. I compile every non-closed app from source, and I use the command line for almost everything. That's where Unix power comes from... not from pre-made packages that aren't compiled the way you would like them (for example, take any distro and try to install a headless system that includes Python, and see if you don't have to install all of X11 with it along with a bunch of GUI widget libs that you'll never use... ack!). You're just being elitist, saying: Ohh, look at me, I compile my apps from source.

Why should I want to do that for everything? I am not a masochist. I can compile apps and the linux kernel from source and will when I need to, but it generally isn't worth my time.

I am competent on the command line and use it on a daily basis, I even write shell scripts occasionally, but it is not faster/easier for everything, so I use a GUI mainly, A GUI also provides a visually appealing environment in which to work and preferring to use one is not incompatible with being a power user.

You do seem to have a weird definition of what a power user is. A power user is someone who likes to customize their environment and make use of advanced features to make themselves more efficient.

I have done a base Slackware install and compiled any apps that weren't included in the official repositories. I have also built a LFS system. But doing those things don't have anything to do with being a power user. Why? Because they do not lead to an increase in productivity. I don't do that anymore because it is very time consuming maintaining a system like that if you want to keep it up to date. Instead I use a distro which gives me all the control I want (it doesn't try to manage everything for me), and is easy to maintain and keep up to date, and why yes, it also allows me to install Python without X should I want to.

IMO, there was nothing in Ash-fox's post that indicated he/she is not a power user, just that he/she doesn't your fit odd definition and you want to say how much better you are by compiling your apps from source and not using a GUI.

"pain and suffering"

[smittyoneeach]

You're right: learning and knowledge are completely overrated, and intellectual curiosity is merely some historical fiction.

Roy is a bit of a nutjob...

[flydpnkrtn]

I understand that there is "telling it like it is" and not pulling any punches, but if you've read http://boycottnovell.com/ for more than a day you might start to think that Roy Schestowitz is a little bit paranoid... there are several people in the open source world that have openly argued with him on his blog, because he has made baseless accusations without factual evidence.

See http://boycottnovell.com/2007/11/25/gnome-foundation-ooxml-ecma/ for an example of this... Jeff Waugh (of the GNOME foundation) is one example of someone who has argued with him

Fragmented mess?

[betterunixthanunix]

People who say that a problem facing Linux is that there are too many distributions and too many different ways to do things have the wrong perception of what an OS is. Different distributions are different operating systems, and expecting binary compatibility across different OS's is folly regardless of what kernel is in use. That's why systems like automake/autoconf exist, and standard API's like POSIX, exist, so that source code can be recompiled on different platforms without too much pain.

"Linux" is not a single operating system, it is just a kernel. The kernel can be run without GNU utils, without X11, etc.

Re:Fragmented mess?

[usurper_ii]

I think a lot of different distributions is a good thing, but I think everyone is going to gravitate toward a few dominate distributions, and the rest will end up as niche products.

Usurper_ii

Re:Fragmented mess?

[aurispector]

You just nailed it. How many different linux os's are there? "Linux", in it's perpetual drive to get everywhere at once, will fail to get anywhere. This is precisely what I hate about "linux".

The problems associated with this massive fragmentation can only be solved if one distro takes precedence. Frankly, I don't think Ubuntu can do it. Sure, it works great when it works, but look at wifi - if there's a problem you have to SUDO everything and go back to the command line of the 1980's. Ubuntu desperately needs a better way to tweak stuff.

Granted, the problem starts with the vendors failing to provide developers with the information they need (Hello? Broadcom? Are you there?) but there's a long way to go.

Software developers and consumers alike need to know that all linux compatible software will work on all the (major) distros, otherwise FUD is king and windows wins.

Re:Fragmented mess?

[Mr. Slippery]

How many different linux os's are there? "Linux", in it's perpetual drive to get everywhere at once, will fail to get anywhere.

Uh, no. Linux is getting everywhere. It's in DVRs, cell phones, desktops, servers, and PDAs. It's "perpetual drive to get everywhere at once" is in fact succeeding.

The "fragmentation" you speak of is actually diversity. Diversity is a prerequisite for evolution. It's a positive, not a negative, attribute!

Re:Fragmented mess?

[Kelbear]

Diversity as a quality taken by itself is definitely useful. However, in this case it diversity is bringing up cross-compatibility issues. If software works on one fork of diversity, but fails to work on another, each fork has been locked into that road, resulting in less diversity everytime a fork is made.

Windows definitely has limitations that Linux OSes can offer(I definitely prefer this alternative to the Windows Startmenu and startbar/systray), but in terms of software, Windows has more compatibility with more programs. When a program that's important to the user doesn't work on one platform that's a valid reason to stop using that platform, even if it's not the platform fault that the program isn't compatible.

My EEE PC is a small offshoot of Xandros 4, an offshoot of Debian. I want to run Ventrilo which has been made to work for Ubuntu with Wine and a hacked together script, works spotty on mine, but hopefully that script /might/ fix it. Thank goodness somebody in a forum went and made that script for people like me. I want to add the plugin "Extended Preferences" in Pidgin. I just drag+dropped the .dll into the plugins folder for Pidgin on my Windows desktop and laptop. But as for my linux laptop, I can't do it since it's made to work on Ubuntu, or Redhat, and some other OSes, I don't know the differences between them, but I do know that I don't have them, and they don't work with the EEE PC without creating issues with built-in hardware functions

So I try to compile it using ./configure, finds that I don't have a compatible C compiler? I don't know what compiler I've got, what it wants, where to find it, how to find the answers I want. Every one of these additional steps and requirements for installation is more complication and another lock-out point. I'll have to live without this plugin that worked on my Windows machine.

I tried installing Mumble instead of Ventrilo, a program made multi-platform off the bat via QT dev tools. Instructions are there for windows and 4 other major linux distros...but not mine. Installed it on my Windows machines with the installer program. Great program, much better than Ventrilo. As for instructions for other open-source OSes: I need to compile it with QTmake a command that I need to implement by installing QT dev tools via synaptic. After doing so, QTmake still doesn't work. Troubleshooting takes me from mumble, to synaptic, to QT, to EEE PC forums, but the answers elude me, if they're even out there.

I honestly don't know a lot about Linux, but I do know that the commercial OSes work for me, while Linux is far more complicated and do not work. I would love to use a free solution, but when things don't work, I'm going to continue to pay for those commercial OSes and so will others at my level of technical expertise and all those below. Compatibility and simplicity is a very real problem for Linux adoption and would have to be addressed for Linux to surpass Windows and OSX.

It's not that these problems don't exist for commercial OSes, it's that they're not nearly as common, involved, or significant.

Re:Fragmented mess?

[mhall119]

How many different linux os's are there? None, just like there are no Mach or NT OS's out there. Windows is an OS, OS X is an OS, Ubuntu is an OS, Fedora is an OS, Suse is an OS, Linspire is an OS.

Now think about it like this: Write one driver for windows, one driver for OS X, then just one driver that covers all of those others.

Or how about software: Write one version for Windows, one version for OS X, then just one version that covers all those others? Even if you have to account for differences between Ubuntu and Fedora, they are minuscule compared to the differences you face between Windows and OS X.

Re:Fragmented mess?

[mhall119]

Look, you bought a stripped-down version of Xandros for an ultra-portable device, you shouldn't expect it to work like a desktop OS. You don't expect WinCE to run all of your Windows apps, do you? Well the OS that comes with the EEE PC is essentially" XandrosCE". I'm sorry your Linux experience hasn't been as positive as you had expected, but your expectations for it are way above your expectations for those "commercial OSes". For a good measure get a recent version of Ubuntu or Fedora, install it on a somewhat recent desktop or laptop (not a EEE, Classmate or Nokia tablet), and you will see that things are much better at "just working", and that more software is available for easy installation.

Re:Fragmented mess?

[rastos1]

My EEE PC is a small offshoot of Xandros 4, an offshoot of Debian. I want to run Ventrilo which has been made to work for Ubuntu

You missed the point of the parent post completely.

You want to run Application X that was built for OperatingSystemA and you wonder why it does not work with OperatingSystemB.

I might wonder why my LinuxApplicationX does not work on MS-Windows. In fact I might wonder why IIS works on Win2003 Server but does not work on WinXP Pro (hint:because the vendor puts roadblocks in it).

Mod parent Troll.

[Anonymous Coward]

He's begging for it, read the little chain up above.

"Seriously, I never hear people wanting to use a Unix like system in general as the reason why someone uses Linux and I know a lot of Linux users."
WTF else does one use Linux for, but to have a UNIX-like system? It's not because they're all too poor to afford a copy of Windows.

Adobe Creative Suite, Omniweb (very nice app, by the way) - Firefox - Safari (not great), MS Office, Apple office suite (very very slick, IMO), Quicktime with codecs (quite nice, in fact), iTunes (not great, but not bad), Apple Mail (very nice app), various IM progs "Sorry, I'm not seeing a 'ton' of applications there. That doesn't even come close to my definition of a few high quality 3rd party application."
You wouldn't know quality software if it hit you on the nose.

"how most of the applications you mentioned don't even follow Apple's HiG."
Troll say what?

"Except when it comes to x11 on OS X. Then drag and drop absolutely sucks :P"
Troll say what?

"Windows' POSIX subsystem behaves CORRECTLY unlike OS X's BSD subsystem. If you really wanted to get something because it behaves like Unix properly then using Windows' POSIX subsystem would definitely be a choice over OS X."
ROFLMAO

"Look up Windows Services for Unix."
Oh God, you can't be serious. Yes, let's all use Windows, the real UNIX.
You are such a bad troll, and I feel a little sick because I know your twisted little mind might actually believe the garbage coming out of your mouth.

Re:Mod parent Troll.

[Ash-Fox]

WTF else does one use Linux for, but to have a UNIX-like system? It's not because they're all too poor to afford a copy of Windows.

I personally find it technically superior for my needs. Others have philosophies. Some because it works for them while other stuff doesn't etc. Google for more reasons.

You wouldn't know quality software if it hit you on the nose.

Personally I am not impressed with the majority of software out there. The fact you would see all these applications as apparently "high quality" tells me your standards are set too low.

"how most of the applications you mentioned don't even follow Apple's HiG."
Troll say what?

Apple Human Inteface Guidelines.

"Except when it comes to x11 on OS X. Then drag and drop absolutely sucks :P"
Troll say what?

If you don't even know about these issues in OS X. You certainly don't know OS X well at all.

"Windows' POSIX subsystem behaves CORRECTLY unlike OS X's BSD subsystem. If you really wanted to get something because it behaves like Unix properly then using Windows' POSIX subsystem would definitely be a choice over OS X."
ROFLMAO

Yeah, it's funny how OS X took BSD code and still messed it up to the point where signaling doesn't even work correctly. While Windows gets it right.

"Look up Windows Services for Unix."
Oh God, you can't be serious. Yes, let's all use Windows, the real UNIX.

I didn't say it was the real UNIX nor did I imply it. I am saying that Windows's POSIX subsystem has the correct UNIX behavior, where Mac OS X does not.

You are such a bad troll, and I feel a little sick because I know your twisted little mind might actually believe the garbage coming out of your mouth.

Why don't you refute what issues I have mentioned instead of flamebaiting me?

Re:Mod parent Troll.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he's confused about what you're saying. _Even_ Windows gets signaling right while OsX, a bastard BSD, manages to mess it up.

Personally, I'm more annoyed by not being able to access hardware though device files. That one alone convinced me not to bother porting my software to OsX.

Re:Mod parent Troll.

[John Jamieson]

Excuse me?

This "troll" is making DIRECT point for point rebuttals, staying on topic and providing background for his points. He shows a technical knowledge far superior to the parent.

If you don't agree with the points... prove him wrong. This is not like a fanboi who writes "I used product X for years, but product Y is better and everyone should switch" - now that may be trolling.

Freedom.

[babbling]

Freedom is the main reason a lot of people use Linux.

Re:Freedom.

[EWIPlayer]

Freedom is the main reason a lot of people use Linux.

No it's not, not remotely. MOST people don't give a crap about that. I agree completely with what Divebus said: "People don't WANT to use Linux, more people just don't want to use Windows...". People want to switch from windows and they can't run OSX on their hardware (or maybe they don't know that they can - OSX86 might be the answer for them), so they use the big popular *nix for the PC. If it was "freedom" they cared about then Linux isn't the only choice, and some would certainly argue it isn't the first choice at all.

But let's even ignore that point altogether and think really hard about this: What do people look for in an OS? Is it strength, quality, uptime, ease of use, power, resource usage, responsiveness, networking tools, security? No no... forget all that stuff, I guess... it's "freedom". "Give me a piece of crap OS! Yes! So long as it gives me freedom I'll use it!". Give me a break... the "main reason"? One finds it difficult to see that it's a "reason" at all.

Re:Freedom.

[babbling]

It's the reason I use Linux, and I bet there's a lot of people around here who use Linux for the same reason. Otherwise everyone would just use Windows or OSX.

Note that I didn't say it was the reason everyone uses Linux or even the reason the majority of Linux users use Linux. Just that a lot of Linux users really do care about the freedom aspect.

Re:Freedom.

[EWIPlayer]

Hold on... the reason you use Linux is because it's "free"? That's not a distinguishing reason... why not freeBSD or openBSD or Hurd, or... I'm not saying that it isn't a factor in some peoples' decision to use it, but to say it ranks up there as the most important thing is silly. If Linux were crap, but free as in speech, you wouldn't use it.

But at any rate, you're an edge case. I could easily find another person to counter your personal point of view. Hell, I could probably even find a Linux user who doesn't understand what the GPL is about, what it means, or what "free" really means to the end user. Talking about edge cases in a general sense is really not very productive.

Re:Freedom.

[babbling]

I use it because it is free and suits my needs. I agree that there are other factors to be considered, and maybe if all of the "free" options were bad enough, I'd even be forced into using something proprietary. But that isn't the case. Since Linux suits my needs and is free (as in freedom), I would never replace it with something proprietary like OSX.

I bet you could find a lot of Linux users who don't understand the freedom aspect, and I bet I could find a lot who do. Keep in mind that there's also a lot who only understand some of the freedoms that the GPL grants them. For example, I bet the majority of Linux users understand that they have the right to share the software. Maybe not all of them realise they have the right to the source code, but I think a lot of them understand from the vibe of the community that they are free to use the software for any purpose, and that they're generally not restricted by EULAs telling them they can't run it in a virtual machine or use it for some other purpose that Microsoft/Apple might not approve of.

So there is in fact three groups of Linux users: those that don't understand any parts of the freedom aspect, those that understand some parts of the freedom aspect, and those that understand all of the freedoms they get with GPL'ed software. I reckon you'd be hard pressed to find very many in the first group.

Re:Freedom.

[EWIPlayer]

So there is in fact three groups of Linux users: those that don't understand any parts of the freedom aspect, those that understand some parts of the freedom aspect, and those that understand all of the freedoms they get with GPL'ed software.

You left out the one group that I'm talking about, and the one group that started this whole discussion - the very large group that you and I both belong to:

I agree that there are other factors to be considered, and maybe if all of the "free" options were bad enough, I'd even be forced into using something proprietary. But that isn't the case. Since Linux suits my needs and is free (as in freedom),...

This is the group that I'm talking about: The group that is very happy to have the "free" software so long as the "free" software delivers better for them than anything else. In other words, once it stops delivering, once it stops being the best thing for that person, they'll switch and (happily or otherwise) leave the "free" aspect behind. The "license" really doesn't amount to much at all - it's merely something that people can claim to bind themselves to because the software under that license is of high quality. I won't give up the Unix aspect of my OS, but I'll give up the license, just like you said you would do, if the OS didn't "deliver". It stopped delivering so I gave up that one aspect of the software (I mean, most of the other apps I still use because they're not "Linux" apps, as many people like to think). But even that other software I use, I don't use because it's "free"- I use it because it's "good".

And that's my entire point at this position in the conversation - we've whittled things down from the original topic a fair bit. :) Richard Stallman, for example, will never give up the license. He'll use the crappiest thing in existence (or write something new) so long as it's free. You and I, and almost every other Linux user out there, aren't quite that hardened - we care more about the quality of the product, and how well it fits in our way of life than what license it's under. We'll leave behind the "free" software and go proprietary, if that proprietary software works better for us. I did that with OSX... our thresholds for what's "good enough" and "bad enough" are merely different.

Re:Freedom.

[babbling]

When I say "bad enough" I mean such that I can't actually work with it. So I think my "bad enough" is quite different from yours.

I'd be willing to give up the Unix aspect of my OS as long as it was Free Software. In fact, if Windows was Free Software I'd possibly it and try to improve its flaws.

Re:Freedom.

[EWIPlayer]

When I say "bad enough" I mean such that I can't actually work with it. So I think my "bad enough" is quite different from yours.

You're making the same point... it's not the freedom, it's the quality. It would just have to be "bad enough".

I'd be willing to give up the Unix aspect of my OS as long as it was Free Software. In fact, if Windows was Free Software I'd possibly it and try to improve its flaws.

And here you contradict the original point you made, and the same point you just made above. You might give up the Unix so long as it were "free" but that's not relevant; you'd give up the "free" as soon as you couldn't work with it anymore. You're not abnormal... like I said, this group is huge unless, of course, you want to break up this group into a hundred smaller groups where it would have be "1% bad enough" all the way up to "100% bad enough". Or you could call the group "those who can't work with it anymore". I couldn't work with it anymore... at least not as a desktop OS. As a server OS I'm still going strong with it.

And I believe we've definitely come full circle at this point...

Re:OSX...IRC?

[Anonymous Coward]

A friend of mine uses osx and was complaining that there are (she cannot find anyway) any free beer osx irc clients. Are you aware of any that aren't 30 minute timeout nagware apps? Thanks in advance.

PST Files and Synch with HP Phone

[AO]

These are the only things keeping me from switching all of my home computer over to Linux (Main box - Vista, Web Camera box - Xp , Home Automation box - Just switched to Ubuntu during the Christmas break, Poker Night Laptop - XP but really only needs Java, Wife's laptop - Vista, and Windows Home Server - Yes, I now know I can do all of the same things under Linux, but this was easier at the time)

The Home Automation box (misterhouse) just got switched over...the laptop I use on poker nights is next, followed by the box running the web camera security system (I haven't looked for software, but I'm sure it will be out there :)

I have saved emails since 1998, always under Outlook pst files. I tried Linux 2 years ago, but there was no way to transfer over the emails...as far as I can tell, you still can't!

My wife won't care what OS she is running (I already deleted IE and installed Firefox on her laptop) but she would freak if she lost all of her email.

Truthfully, I don't even care about syncing my phone. But how do I get all the email stored in PST files?

Answer

[StarKruzr]

I believe the GameCube has memory protection, so I'd imagine the Wii does.

Re:OSX...IRC?

[StarKruzr]

Colloquy.

Re:PST Files and Synch with HP Phone

[Anonymous Coward]

Just restore the pst in outlook then connect to your other account as imap, then copy the folders from one account to the other. on a q-mail server for instance, the mail becomes files that can be compressed, and are perfectly portable, the e-mail is text, the attachment is the file itself. no worries mate.

Re:PST Files and Synch with HP Phone

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't Thunderbird import PST files on Windows? Then just transfer the Thunderbird-Windows mail to Thunderbird-Linux.

There's also this:

apt-cache show readpst
Package: readpst
Priority: optional
Section: universe/utils
Installed-Size: 192
Maintainer: Ubuntu MOTU Developers
Original-Maintainer: Joe Nahmias
Architecture: i386
Source: libpst
Version: 0.5.2-1
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.5-0ubuntu1)
Filename: pool/universe/libp/libpst/readpst_0.5.2-1_i386.deb
Size: 56626
MD5sum: 7b21a877cbdbd89f659ada29169c208d
SHA1: d797c660608c97ef7717c003ee16fff2b847f096
SHA256: 56061a3e9aa6fb34d668d84424b4b5ef6edfc67f714e8346ca9e58926470c55d
Description: Converts Outlook PST files to mbox and others
  ReadPST is an application that can take a Microsoft Outlook PST
  (Personal Folders) file and convert it into mbox, kmail, its own
  recursive format, or separate each email into its own file.
  .
  It can currently handle emails, folders and most contacts.

Re:OSX...blue screens alot

[rubycodez]

my daughter has OSX, sure it's cool and I can do Unix admin tricks to manage it remotely from my GNU/Linux box, but the truth about Mac OSX is that it's slightly too bleeding edge and unstable. Fork out $120 for the latest version of Mac OSX and things bring in return. And MacOSX has issues with my favorite coding language.....

s/bring/break

[rubycodez]

things break in return

Re:OSX...IRC?

[Ash-Fox]

A friend of mine uses osx and was complaining that there are (she cannot find anyway) any free beer osx irc clients. Are you aware of any that aren't 30 minute timeout nagware apps?

xchat aqua, bitchx, irssi.

Linux FTW!!!!

[advocate_one]

I took the hard disk out of my broken Packard Bell laptop (daughter had spilled cola over it and it refused to work again) and put it into my Sony VAIO laptop... started it up and it booted perfectly into KDE... absolutely no problems at all... and all the hardware was different... different mobo chipset, different processor, different graphics card.

We were able to rescue all her data and coursework that she'd been working on when the accident occurred...

Out of curiosity. when I tried to boot the windows XP on the other partition it blackscreened... with a cryptic FATAL error code...

Ubuntu Linux 1 : Microsoft XP 0

Re:Linux FTW!!!!

[Frederico Camara]

I was using Linux as my primary OS before 2007 (Debian, then Ubuntu). Before the switching, I was using XP and Linux alternatively. Both were installed with equivalent applications, and I bought a 160Gb hard drive. I became very angered by the fact that Windows XP started overwriting the beginning of the hard drive after it reached the 137th GB of the drive. I was not aware that this could happen. Well, this is a very dumb limitation for XP that was corrected in sp1. I thought at the time that it shoud have been corrected at least before XP was ever shipped. At the same time I thought 'Linux may have this limitation as well' and started searching for it. Although a simple search at google showed me the problem with windows XP, with Linux nobody was having this problem. The reason for this is that this problem is related to XP, not the filesystem. Fat32, NTFS and EXT2 all have limits beyond some Terabytes. It's been corrected in 200X. But in my opinion, an operating system that have such lack of vision, of problems that would affect it some 5 years in the future, can not be taken seriously. Ubuntu Linux 2 : Microsoft XP 0

Re:Linux FTW!!!!

[Frederico Camara]

I was using Linux as my primary OS before 2007 (Debian, then Ubuntu). Before the switching, I was using XP and Linux alternatively. Both were installed with equivalent applications, and I bought a 160Gb hard drive.

I became very angered by the fact that Windows XP started overwriting the beginning of the hard drive after it reached the 137th GB of the drive. I was not aware that this could happen. Well, this is a very dumb limitation for XP that was corrected in sp1. I thought at the time that it shoud have been corrected at least before XP was ever shipped.

At the same time I thought 'Linux may have this limitation as well' and started searching for it. Although a simple search at google showed me the problem with windows XP, with Linux nobody was having this problem. The reason for this is that this problem is related to XP, not the filesystem. Fat32, NTFS and EXT2 all have limits beyond some Terabytes.

It's been corrected in 200X. But in my opinion, an operating system that have such lack of vision, of problems that would affect it some 5 years in the future, can not be taken seriously.

Ubuntu Linux 2 : Microsoft XP 0

Re:Linux FTW!!!!

[advocate_one]

which moderator was on crack this time... stupid troll mod...

Easy Block.

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is why most of the best open source software is written by people who work for a company which derives its profit from elsewhere."

Yes, and for those companies we have adblock

Troll Alert - or user is dated.

[John Jamieson]

I remember this guy, he has been a big Mac Pusher for at least the last two years. If you have not been using Linux during the last six months, you are out of date.

The other rebuttals will take care of your actual errors.

Re:Troll Alert - or user is dated.

[EWIPlayer]

I use Linux as well... just not nearly as much. I force my wife to use it because I still need it as a server and she uses it as a desktop. I actually did mention earlier that it still can't handle email attachments properly but you might have missed that.

Lighten up, man. Guess what... you know why I've been pushing OSX for two years? Because I switched to it two years ago after 10 years with Linux... and I'm still pushing it after two years... but I guess that's meaningless. I'm sure the 10 years you've logged running OSX (yes, I know it hasn't been around for 10 years) gives you license to know what you're talking about...

Re:Troll Alert - or user is dated.

[John Jamieson]

Well, I am sorry we will not see eye to eye.

10 years in Linux means nothing to me, heck, I have played around in it for that long as well. The fact I started using apple products 22+ years ago is as relevant as your 10 year old Linux experience (It is not relevant). Linux for the desktop is progressing at a much faster pace than any other OS I know of, thus it is the distro's you've done in the last 6 months that count.

I naturally recoil from people who seem to be fanbois, repeat corporate marketing mantras (It just works, etc). OS-X is not near suitable for everyone, yet your post does not even acknowledge market segments.

While the very low value Apple places on the customer makes me want to root for OSS, I still realize that Linux is not for everyone yet - same as Vista or OS-X.

Re:Troll Alert - or user is dated.

[EWIPlayer]

10 years in Linux means nothing to me, heck...

Hmm... that's sad. I respect the fact that you've used this stuff for a long time, as it means you have an informed and experienced opinion. Clearly you don't recognize the same in others. That does hurt your ability to put forth a convincing argument since it shows that you're rather self-centred and "nobody's as good as me" kind of a thing. Just FYI... that's how it comes across. If you're not willing to give credit where it's due, you're not worth listening to. But I'll give you a shot.

Linux for the desktop is progressing at a much faster pace than any other OS I know of...

Of course it is... it has a long way to go. The first 9 miles of a 10 mile race are a lot easier than the last one, and that last one takes a *long* time to do. Are the developers doing an amazing job? Absolutely. Is Linux an amazing OS? Absolutely. Is it at the point where it belongs on a large number of users' desktops? No, and let's face it... the public has spoken on this one. If they wanted it, they'd use it.

... thus it is the distro's you've done in the last 6 months that count.

Ouch, that really hurt your argument a fair bit. You're saying that 6 months ago, it was shit and someone's opinion would be negative. You're saying that it's so unstable, and changes so much that it can't even remain the same for six lousy months. I could try it six months ago, and have a completely different opinion today. Considering that it's been around for so long, what are you saying? Was it shit all the way up to six months ago? Or was it great two years ago, then shit up to six months ago? Fortunately, I know that it's not that bad... it's pretty stable, and doesn't change so dramatically, so quickly. If it did, then it would be a nightmare to use... upgrade every six months and find a totally different beast in front of you! Yikes!

But to back up what I've said, a coworker worked with Redhat, Debian and Ubuntu over the holidays (having never used Linux before), and he said they were all less than great. He now has a new appreciation for Windows installation and just how sophisticated it must be (great, installing Linux gave him a new appreciation for windows... lovely). I tried to talk him through a few things and he might go and try again to see what he can do, but it was not just "click and go". All installations had problems and once he got them up (and not remotely configured - the video wasn't right on most (even nVidia says, "We simply can't keep up with all the changes in Ubuntu" and they say it probably won't work right), printing didn't work, his raid wouldn't work, etc etc...), he was less than impressed with the UIs. He liked N features from KDE and M features from Gnome, but both on their own left him wanting. He couldn't successfully merge the two. And that was *last week*. Recent enough for you? And that's also your target audience... a non-Linux user. And this guy is actually really sharp when it comes to hardware and Windows. He can make that stuff work really well, so he's not an idiot. After everything he told me, I was impressed he got as far as he did, since he hit so many problems.

I naturally recoil from people who seem to be fanbois, repeat corporate marketing mantras (It just works, etc). OS-X is not near suitable for everyone, yet your post does not even acknowledge market segments.

Again, this is unfortunate. Just because someone uses a marketing phrase doesn't make it wrong. I've got news for you... for me, it just works. I don't fiddle with anything at all... that's the definition of "working out of the box".

While the very low value Apple places on the customer makes me want to root for OSS, I still realize that Linux is not for everyone yet - same as Vista or OS-X.

I never said it was for everyone, but um... OSX is the Desktop Unix with a l

MOD PARENT DOWN

[shentino]

Such racism is not appreciated here.

In this litigious country you could probably be convicted of a hate crime just for making such a statement.

But racism is nasty anyway.

You are Soooo out of date

[John Jamieson]

OK, now I think the Linux distro's you installed were ALL a decade ago.

Hey, even Corel Linux (remember that one) handled USB ports. Now, almost 10 years later I can tell you I have NEVER had to "modify fstab to get my USB mounts working right" or install something that can play mp3's ... etc.

Man, the distros I try just work out of the box. In fact, if you want something that "just works", some of the Linux distro's come with every codec you can think of. Files that the average Windows and OS-X user can't play, just come up.

The only thing that the Linux user has to worry about is that a few devices don't work with Linux... but hey, us OS-X users know NOTHING about that, right?

So, it turns out that you are really comparing ION to OS-X not Linux to OS-X. You also seem to mirror the attitudes of the main(only?)ION developer, Valkonen. In fact, he has also recently started writing windows software just like you. By 2004 ION was considered a project to make Linux like a MAC, hmmmm, also Valkonen became really pissed off at the OSS community.... ARE YOU VALKONEN?

apples and oranges

[John Jamieson]

The guy knows nothing about tech if he tried installing Red Hat on a home computer.

The guy knows very little if he decided to use Debian as a newbie.

A beginner like him should have bought a Linux compatible computer(try dell). That is what we do when we buy a MAC! THAT is why it just works(we overpay, and have few choices).

Maybe he could have even used a newbie friendly distro... say Mandriva or (cough cough) Linspire.

Thanks

[John Jamieson]

I wanted to say thanks, I have appreciated your well written posts.

BTW, You may not be responding to a mentally whole person when they start to "feel sick" from reading your rebuttals.

Keyboard anyone?

[tepples]

Until Apple sells a laptop with at least two (preferably three) independently clickable buttons, I'll never get one. I thought laptops had about 80 clickable buttons, many of them with letters on them.

Re:Keyboard anyone?

[Kymermosst]

I suppose technically the keys are buttons. :)

I want three mouse buttons!

POSIX: Vista Ultimate vs. Leopard Standard

[tepples]

(I find it strange that you didn't suggest VLC as a media player, which is known to be very popular with OS X users). I have never used VLC on Mac OS X. But on Windows XP, it likes to cut off the first half-second and the last half-second of every Vorbis file I play.

Windows' POSIX subsystem behaves CORRECTLY unlike OS X's BSD subsystem. Windows XP Home Edition and Windows Vista Home Premium don't even have a POSIX subsystem: "Note: The product will not install on Windows 9x or Windows XP Home Edition". You need XP Pro or Vista Ultimate to make a POSIX workstation.

Re:POSIX: Vista Ultimate vs. Leopard Standard

[Ash-Fox]

Windows XP Home Edition and Windows Vista Home Premium don't even have a POSIX subsystem: "Note: The product will not install on Windows 9x or Windows XP Home Edition". You need XP Pro or Vista Ultimate to make a POSIX workstation.

I am not surprised, but finding that out annoys me all the same. Did you know you can't even access the ACL file permissions GUI (security tab in property dialogs) in the home edition? Honestly, the things they try to do to give incentive to upgrade to a higher version feels like they personally made that edition be annoying.

I hate Microsoft's home editions, I'd be happier if they got rid of this stupid edition non-sense.

Anyway, the point remains that the Windows POSIX subsystem does behave correctly.

Look out Jimmy! That train just jumped the track!

[EWIPlayer]

Ah yes. That's it. It was the distro. It's not that he used a recently made distro (which was something of great importance to you before), it was that he didn't use the *right* recently made distro - he did choose the three most popular flavours, I believe, but clearly those aren't right. Of course, he should have read the label: "Only for users that have installed the baby Linux distros in the past - sure this is one of the most heavily developed ones, and one of the most popular, but it's just not for you, kiddo". I guess he missed that one. What if he used one of those "good" distros six months ago? Would that have been shit too? Just a "good and easy distro for the kiddies" made in the last six months would have worked, huh? Wow... this is getting pretty specific and it sounds like you think it's near impossible to have a correct *installation* of the product. We haven't even discussed *using* it yet.

I think I have a much better opinion of Linux than you do... I actually like it - just not as much as OSX. I'm having a really tough time following this flip flopping logic there guy. And I think I have better things to do...

Cheers.

Whom to blame for gn- prefix

[tepples]

You picked a few names that showed SOME thought. Tell someone using Photoshop on a Mac that you're going to replace it with Gimp on Ubuntu and they'll give you a shot in the chops just for the names. GnuCash? GnuCash and GnoTime follows exactly the same pattern as AbiWord. Gnu and Gno are prefixes alluding to the GNU and GNOME projects, and Cash or Time is what the program tracks. If you want to blame somebody for the gn- prefix of "gnu" or "gnome", blame the Indo-Europeans for using words built on gno- for "to know" (incidentally, Germanic kn- comes from IE gn- through Grimm's Law), and blame the Bushmen for using !nu to mean "wildebeest".

Zune?.... oh wait. Likewise, "Xbox". Worse yet, "Xbox 360" means three PlayStation controller buttons.

Re:Whom to blame for gn- prefix

[Haeleth]

Likewise, "Xbox"

Indeed, a dreadful name, just like all those other unimaginative Microsoft X-names like ActiveX, DirectX, Xcode... oh, wait.

Thanks, but no thanks.

[Haeleth]

That might be today. Check out the OSx86 project. It might not work for you but it's worth a shot.

Yeah, very nice, I'm sure. But I can run Linux on my hardware legally. Unlike some people, I prefer to respect copyright holders' wishes and only use their intellectual property in the way they desire. Come back when I can run OS X on my hardware without violating the EULA.

Professional Audio

[Anonymous Coward]

(Professional audio? Don't even bother. ESounD, ARTS, JACKD, now PulseAudio seems to be the big name in useless sound daemons...but that doesn't mean everyone will standardize on it. As if we needed yet another sound daemon anyway.)

Ok lets make this very very clear - jackd is *THE* sound daemon for professional audio on linux. That is all there is to it. Other sound daemons do exist and some older sound programs require legacy support for these deamons but I challenge you to find a new audio program on linux that does not support jack.

(If the Linux kernel is supposedly so "flexible" that it can be used in any range of devices from computers to cell phones, then why is it that 18 years or more later after the first release, there -still- isn't an easy way to do very low-latency, high quality audio recording on Linux? )

Low latency has only recently become a priority in linux development, so until recently patched versions of the linux kernel were required for low latency. This is no longer the case... The only part of your statement that is at all valid is easy. That is - you have to figure out that you have to run Jackd and get permission from the system to run it as a realtime task... A media oriented distro (I use Ubuntu Studio) will do a lot of this work for you.

(And for those out there who think that Audacity and Ardour are adequate replacements for ProTools...wake up.)
Well I have to say this - you might be right but then there are those who would say that there are no other software tools that are a replacement for protools. Protools is as much about being a hardware platform as an editing program... Nobody else has the resources to match that. I use Ardour on a regular basis and have to say that the basics are all there & it gets the job done. Sure there aren't plugins to compete with the multi thousand dollar plugins for protools - But then they are multi thousand dollar plugins I simply can't afford.

Sure Linux is not as easy to set up for protools as other systems - but it is plenty capable and it is possible to get high quality results.

Re:Look out Jimmy! That train just jumped the trac

[John Jamieson]

"he did choose the three most popular flavours, I believe". This thread is about Linux on the desktop, so NO he did not pick the three most popular, let alone the three best suited.

But, if you really know what you claim to about Linux you ALREADY know REDHAT is a SERVER OS. You already KNOW that since Linux is the most diversified ecosystem you can find, ANYONE could find distro's that are not appropriate.

You KNOW that Apple supports VERY little hardware, and you HAVE to buy the hardware with the OS... but yet you blame Linux for not flawlessly supporting FAR more hardware than OS-X. It still stands that if you are willing to spend a fraction of the money on hardware that we already do on MAC's, Linux would just work as well!

Claiming I flipflopped is bull, You made up the scenario, or your friend is not informed. There is not Linux Newbie FAQ on the planet that would tell you to pick redhat or debian.(and there seems to be thousands)
If I bought Apple TV and could not do everything I want with it, do I claim OS-X is not ready for the desktop? (That is what it runs) Of course not, I am intelligent enough to know that not all implementations of OS-X are appropriate for me.

Yes, I'm sure you have better things to do than troll these posts, I thank you in advance for going and doing them!

Re:Look out Jimmy! That train just jumped the trac

[EWIPlayer]

Yer funny :)