Getting Past "Ready For the Desktop"

Jeremy LaCroix suggests in an editorial at Linux.com that the phrase "ready for the desktop" is ready for retirement. As anyone who's been using Linux for several years (or even a few) for everyday tasks knows, "ready for the desktop" is in the eye of the beholder.

Comments

How about being honest about it?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could just say that "Linux will never be ready for the desktop" and be done with it.
It's a lot more honest than simply giving up because 'it's in the eye of the beholder'.

Wankers.

Re:How about being honest about it?

[temcat]

Fuck You.

Linux satisfies all my home desktop needs for quite some time. Work is another matter, and I can safely admit that we won't have MS Office, Trados, Reason or Photoshop, or other popular specialized GUI software (dealing flawlessly with de-facto standard formats) on Linux anytime soon. But this only proves the assertion about the eye of the beholder.

Re:How about being honest about it?

[dave87656]

You could just say that "Linux will never be ready for the desktop" and be done with it.
It's a lot more honest than simply giving up because 'it's in the eye of the beholder'.

Wankers. I use it for my desktop. We use it for 40 desktops in our company. Seems to work very well there. And, if I compare it to the support required for the ~10 Windows boxes we have, it seems Windows is not quite yet ready for the desktop.

The honest answer is: it depends on what you want to do with your desktop.

DOS

[bondsbw]

Was DOS ready for the desktop? By many definitions, people would say no, but that's exactly what started Microsoft's dominance of the OS market.

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

That depends if you think "desktop" means a computer that sits on a desk or a point and click GUI windowing system.

In either case, Linux is a kernel and has been ready for the desktop for ever. When people say "Linux isn't ready for the desktop", they actually mean distros don't pander to computer illiterates; the fallacy being the assumption that this is a bad thing.

I now have to disable the unwanted bloat of most modern "desktop" features.

Re:DOS

[Aranykai]

Better question: Was Vista ready for the desktop?

I have my parents running Ubuntu. They do everything they need to, and they like it cause "it just works", something that windows has never done for them.

Re:DOS

[Kijori]

"Ready for the desktop", though, is a phrase whose meaning changes as peoples' understanding of a desktop changes. People don't expect their desktop to behave like DOS anymore.

Re:DOS

[aurispector]

This is a key issue and I think it's been glossed over for too long. Although I agree that most desktop features are crap, linux just cant be mainstream until someone puts out a distro that DOES cater to the illiterates. We already have dozens of distros specifically designed for programmers and super users. Let's face it, most computer users are essentially computer illiterates - they're users, not programmers and they have no interest or reason to learn more than a few basic tasks.

Before anyone says "but ubuntu already does this", the problem is that currently you have no choice but to learn the CLI in order to accomplish anything but basic user tasks. This forces every office (or family) to have at least one go-to person that understands the OS thoroughly (or at least better than everyone else). Think about the huge investment in time and money that has already been spent understanding windows. Switching to a new OS means retraining costs for tech support. Hence linux needs a distro that's both idiot-proof for the basic user AND easy to learn/configure for admins without requiring CLI. This isn't the 1980's. Sure the CLI gives you extreme flexibility, etc., but most people just don't need this.

The other major issue is that switching to linux also means giving up the guaranteed compatibility with commercially available software. My guess is that this is more of an obstacle than any other reason.

Re:DOS

[JamesTRexx]

That's not just Ubuntu or any other *nix OS, anything but the basic task, including troubleshooting has to be done in the CLI on Windows too.
Blaming use of the CLI is just a moot point.

Re:DOS

[martin-boundary]

The CLI is more important than the GUI. Think about it: if you've ever dreamed of just talking to the computer like in the movies, the natural approach is to figure out improvements in CLI so that we can "chat" to the OS with high levels of abstraction.

The GUI is just a stopgap, and a dead end in the long run.

Re:DOS

[Annoid]

Microsoft's dominance of the market happened for one reason, and one reason only. Apple was STUPID.

They were first to market, and had, what at the time was probably the clearly better product.

However, They also wanted to be greedy, and would not license out in order to keep the price high.

Does anyone remember the introduction of video tape recording to the U.S. market in the 70's? Sony (Betamax) vs JVC (VHS).
Sony had the technically superior tape format. Better picture, better sound. But, they also wanted to be greedy, and would not license out in order to keep the price high. JVC, with the inferior product, did license out, so there was price competition on that side. Guess who won that war? This is actually a no-brainer. The US market will kill you for greed, every time.

Many years later, Apple made the same mistake. They wanted to be greedy, and their greed cost them their chance to become the dominant player. I actually like their OS, as it's based on BSD unix. But at this point in the game, they aren't going to ever be more than a niche market player. Interestingly enough, you still see Beta tapes in use too, in video production houses where quality matters more than price. Again, a niche market.

Re:DOS

[Vectronic]

Shit man, are you comparing the current state of Linux...to... DOS?... (knows you werent)

My current usability ranking:

1. Windows
2. Linux
3. ?????
4. MacOS

Where ????? includes anything from BSD/Unix/OS2/Solaris/etc and even DOS, and probably most scientific calculators aswell... as far as im concerned, if Windows is 100%, then Linux is at about 98%... and its mostly just the installation of software that keeps it from matching Windows... once the whole automated dependancy checking (et al) has been figured out and incorporated into the main Distro's... Linux could almost take Windows overnight...and by the time thats resolved, it probably will since most of the major software people bitch about not being on Linux, is actively trying to make Linux versions...

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I think you've touched on the real issue there. Popular Linux builds have themselves been ready for the desktop for years. What is still missing from Linux that Vista has is applications that are ready for typical end users. As long as Linux geeks continue to believe that OpenOffice is as good as Microsoft Office, the GIMP is as good as Photoshop, etc., and as long as Linux doesn't have things like games and business admin software of the same level as those available on Windows, it doesn't matter how funky your window manager effects are. Real people don't use an OS because of its window manager, they use it because it hosts applications they want.

Re:DOS

[westlake]

Was DOS ready for the desktop?

You could have asked whether CP/M was ready for the desktop:

However, CP/M's concept of separate user areas for files on the same disk was never ported to MS-DOS. Since MS-DOS had access to more memory (as few IBM PCs were sold with less than 64 KB of memory, while CP/M had to run in 16 KB if necessary), more commands were built in to the command-line user interface logic, making MS-DOS somewhat faster and easier to use on floppy-based computers.

There has never been any great mystery behind Microsoft's success on the desktop:

Its focus had always been on the non-technical end user.

The balance between what he wants and what he can afford. The core hardware requirements will be midline at introduction and priced at entry level a year or so later:

Lenovo 3000 Notebook PC
Vista Premium, 14" Wide Screen Display, DVD Burner, Intel Dual Core, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB HDD, Integrated Webcam, WiFi, Firewire, etc., etc.
$650 after mail-in rebate.

Re:DOS

[JonathanBoyd]

Speaking to a computer is a horrendously inefficient means of doing a lot of tasks, some of them quite common, Anything involving the creation or editing of graphics, selecting of text, choosing a link to follow, etc. is almost always quicker and easier to do with a GUI than speech. Speech also gets in the way when there are other people about who don't want disturbed i.e. a lot of work places and is draining on the throat after a while. Don't assume computer evolution is going to follow the movies. Though even in Star Trek they're still using a GUI quite a bit.

Re:DOS

[clang_jangle]

I second that. If I need to get any serious work done in Windows, cmd.exe is indespensible. Just like BSD, Linux, and OS X you can use it without ever seeing a command prompt, but that will limit you severely. I guess the reason this gets overlooked so much is because most Windows users really don't know how to use Windows anymore than they know how to use Linux -- What they do know is how to use certain GUI frontends to certain apps. I know some MS users can be very defensive about this, and will even insist that what makes their choice "superior" is that no CLI knowledge is required, but that is just not true. Without knowledge of the CLI one can be just as "stranded" in Windows (or even on OS X on rare occasion) as in Linux.

Also it says a lot that reinstalling rather than fixing Windows is generally regarded as an acceptable practice. Because reinstalling Windows doesn't (usually) require a CLI :).

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

I very much doubt that, even if voice interaction becomes the way to input commands similar to a CLI, simply the best way to display the output is with a UI. To take it back to basics, its simply easier to look at a graph than it is to look at a chart of numbers that was used to represent the graph. The faster you can convey information the faster the tasks at hand can be accomplished.

Re:DOS

[Nossie]

I agree with your point, but why do you believe Apple will *never* become the dominant player?

Apples sales are up what 53%? Microsoft (at least their investors) would love that ratio. If MS suddenly doesnt starting generating more return on investments they'll take their money somewhere more risky. Microsoft seems to be a big lumbering Sun or dare I say it SCO? right now without the litigation.

Microsoft to the masses is becoming renowned for spyware, malware and other grey area software... don't think I'm trolling with that remark, it may not be reality but that's who joe public is starting to perceive it. They are also trying too hard to be everything, whether its in productivity, operating systems, games and/or advertising.

TBH if Windows 7 isn't a run-away success like XP was then I could see MS falling slowly down the slope of irrelativity

For now, games are moving over to consoles in droves... why is it we need Windows again? Games, Office and Adobe.

To put it bluntly, Microsoft is in deep shit right now and they know it (hence all the branching out) now I'm not going to say Microsoft will disappear over night, they wont... but MS is not the powerhouse it used to be.

I'm no MS lover anymore... as can probably be assumed from my post. But when that whole anti-trust thing came up I was really hoping it would be split up into separate entities and forced to compete with each other.. Office, consoles/games and OS. At the time I thought that would be the most brutal damage you could do to the monolithic monster (especially considering out of everything else those three are their only real money making cashcows)

However, I think MS is floundering - the MS/yahoo deal showed that... I'm really not sure what the longterm future is for MS but for shareholders and the corporations better being I'm wondering it they would have performed better split up!

Re:DOS

[Maureen Base]

Apple's only advantage is that it only works with a predetermined hardware set. If Apple started supporting any homebaked system out there, they would lose.

Re:DOS

[NotBornYesterday]

' ... as good as ... ' is one thing. 'Good enough' is something else. GIMP has more tools and abilities than I ever would use, and I use it on Linux frequently. Do I really need Photoshop? No. I'm not sure what problems you see with OpenOffice, but I use it all the time, and it does everything I need.

Plus, as more apps become web-deployed, desktop apps become less and less important.

Re:DOS

[Darkness404]

Honestly, does the average person really need photoshop? I mean many Windows users struggle using Paint, and most people who use Photoshop are at least technology literate enough to understand how to adapt to a different GUI and therefore don't fit the definition of the dumb Windows users who don't understand the difference between an icon and a program. OpenOffice is nearly as good as MS Office for most tasks, while Office will usually be as familiar to long time Office users, OpenOffice is just as good so long as you are willing to actually learn and even Office 2007's UI is so radically different that OpenOffice will feel even more familiar to Office users then 2007. As for games, many, many, Windows games either have a decent Linux counterpart or will run via WINE, and with Direct-X 10 being Vista-only if the WINE team can get Direct-X 10 implemented, Linux will become an almost better gaming system then XP. And most of the more popular games are already able to run very well in WINE such as WoW and others. The only problem would be is if some Linux person went out and bought some random game and tried to make it run, now chances are with a bit of hacking it would run, but as for the "pop in the CD and play" that won't work quite yet. But when they realize that they can get just about the same level of quality for free, they will just pop open Add/Remove Programs and find a game they think might be good. As for business admin software, again, most can be emulated via WINE and because most of it doesn't need immediate response you could always use VirtualBox and virtualize XP and use that. Granted, right now there are tons of Linux applications the problem is, most people think they have to buy software or go to some unknown freeware site to download who-knows-what, whereas with Linux it is just as simple as point, click, apply (or for you CLI folks, sudo apt-get install whatever)

Re:DOS

[Cjstone]

Okay, this is one of the things that bugs me. OpenOffice and the GIMP do everything that the average user needs them to. I know of a lot of people that use the 'Microsoft Works' bundle that came with their computer and the so-called 'photo editor' that came with their digital camera or scanner. I'd say that most of the 'average users' I know use such products. OO.o and the GIMP are far better than the kind of low-budget software that usually comes with hardware.

Re:DOS

[Ullteppe]

Sorry, but I think you are wrong here. Text is a good way of specifying behaviour in some circumstances, such as with programming. In many other situations, a graphical interface is a better way of approaching things. Just think, when somebody wants to explain something difficult, they usually turn to a whiteboard/blackboard and draw. A few figures can explain better than many pages of text. Today's OSes generally let you do both, and this is a very good thing.

As to talking to a computer, I think this is a terrible idea. It is slower and less accurate than typing. The main reason for using it would be if your hands are tied up doing something else.

On the other hand, I do think it is possible to come up with even better ways of manipulating objects than the ordinary computer mouse.

Re:DOS

[metlin]

The day I can install Ubuntu (or any flavor of Linux), without having to worry about spending half a week configuring it, or the day I can send a client a presentation, spreadsheet or document without sacrificing features (and without having to explain) will be the day I think it is ready for desktop.

Today, Open Office is simply not there. For example, Calc is great for regular, day-to-day uses, but try opening a spreadsheet with data running into several megs or more of data, and try performing complex operations. It's so slow that it's terrible. And writing complex macros? No sir.

I mean, try using Powerpoint 2007 and compare it with Impress - trying to get something done is extremely non-intuitive (if it supports it at all) and there is no fine grained control. I would shudder to think about presenting something made in Impress to a client. It's a joke.

The realistic scenario is that if I send a doc from OO.org to a client, sometimes s/he has problems opening it, and sometimes when they send me documents, OO.org has problems opening them.

And then, there are other applications that aren't available for Linux. Everything from iTunes to Lego Mindstorms SDK is available only on Windows. Hell, even Google doesn't make its applications available on Linux. I mean, to me it is a question of convenience. Until such time that I can get these applications without having to jump through hoops, Linux is still not ready for the desktop.

Re:DOS

[stupidflanders]

Release a game for Linux FIRST, that'll bring 'em in. Then six months later release it for Windows. If a handful of Linux developers would really work on something people want (games, apps, etc) then there would be a lot more people willing to convert. I know secretaries and CPA's that play WoW, but do not know the first thing about how to install a graphics driver, let alone configure Linux.
br Hell, you could ship Linux with the game!

Re:DOS

[clang_jangle]

But why limit yourself? We could do any and /or all of that as appropriate.
Besides sometimes you just have to say, "Computer! Initiate defensive manouver 'clang jangle R38' on my mark -- Engage! "

Re:DOS

[Tikkun]

A home user needs the following: A standards based web browser with flash support (Firefox and your flash plugin of choice), a simple office suite that is fast and easy to use (Google Docs), a utility for resizing and cropping images (The GIMP), a utility for managing photos (F-Spot), an e-mail client (gmail), a music management utility (amarok) and finally, an OS that does not randomly blow up or get bitrot. Linux is ready for the home desktop.

I'll explain my rational below, feel free to ignore it if you get the idea already.

Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org both suck as applications, the latter just happens to be more stable on most Linux boxes I've used. Personally I prefer to use Google Docs whenever possible, as it performs 99% of what I need for my personal life, though sometimes I must use OpenOffice.org. At work I use MS Office, as part of my job is helping users with the "advanced features" (making things look pretty) of the application.

The GIMP is not as powerful as Photoshop, but given that I don't use any of the features of Photoshop that the GIMP lacks, I don't care if it never has them. I crop, resize and use layers. Occasionally I'll change some blue pixels to green, but that's it. I'm not a graphic designer or a pro photographer, nor do I need the tools of one. Most people are in that boat.

I don't run a business at home, so the need for "business admin" (Do you mean Quickbooks?) software is a moot point.

Finally, I have an Xbox 360, so when I want games (this happens roughly once or twice a month) I use that for an hour or two.

Re:DOS

[notamisfit]

I thought that Microsoft's success on the desktop came from being slightly less stupid than all of the potential competitors. Apple and Amiga tried to go with proprietary hardware in a commodity market, OS/2 got tied to IBM's chicken-shit customer control tactics with the PS/2 line, the various open-source Unixes tried to do away with bourgeois concepts like "marketing" and wonder why nobody knows they exist, etc etc. Granted, they're not geniuses (look at the whole Vista boondoggle), but like my grandma always said, it's not about outswimming the sharks, it's about outswimming your buddies.

Re:DOS

[Rutulian]

Before anyone says "but ubuntu already does this", the problem is that currently you have no choice but to learn the CLI in order to accomplish anything but basic user tasks.

Examples please. I prefer to use the CLI for a lot of things, but the GUI tools are there: hardware diagnostics, networking setup/troubleshooting, basic server configuration, VM configuration, user/group management, installing/managing software, directory services. What are you doing that requires the CLI?

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

I have used both for years, (Windows & Linux)and yes the CLI is needed in both, but not every day. When there is a registry bug in Windows, there are registry cleaners, but a lot of times you just have no other option but go in there and clean it out line by line. And with all with the different species of Windows malware out there, normal operation and maintenance requires messing with the registry from time to time, or using Windows would be a very frustrating experience.

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong! It's not just basic tasks that need to use the CLI. I set up an ubuntu 8.04 on an old HP laptop for a mate just yesterday. It had a bog standard belkin wifi card that required me to spend 10 minutes in the terminal installing NSDIWrapper and another few minutes in the package manager installing all the extra codecs for media playback. For me it's a piece of cake and he'll never bother me about it again but I would have no chance just giving him a CD and expecting him to have it up and running. I don't care if windows is just as shit, if your grandma can't do it, it's not ready.

Re:DOS

[Nossie]

huh? chipset yes..

CPU... Windows is PPC compatible right?
GFX .... ATi/Nvidia/Intel we missing anyone?
Memory .... generic etc
hard disk... generic flash and magnetic
Monitor ... generic DVI

Its funny... OSX runs fine on my AMD Fx53... MS official SP3 can't even do that. It never saw my promise sata controller however :( I'll give you that one, but then neither does Vista/XP until I download the driver.

Win modems... I'll give you that one :) but hey you can keep em!

Walt disney webcams and scanners... well yeah that't a tricky one, but in past experience its not the OS that had problems, its the shitty quality hardware and drivers (see win modems) to begin with.

Microsoft cant seem to find the funding to keep 2k alpha or Itanium Vista in production... yet apple has with reasonable ease jumped what 4 completely different architectures in 12 years?

The days of the apple 'predetermined hardware' myth is over... I cant think of anything that wont run on OSX that runs fine on Vista

Re:DOS

[VGPowerlord]

OpenOffice and the GIMP do everything that the average user needs them to.

OpenOffice is nice and all, but it still has some weird issues with losing RTF formatting. Since I'm required to use RTF at work, opening, editing, closing, and reopening to see if OO.o fucked up the RTF formatting again isn't an option. I'm not paid to waste time.

As for GIMP, the last time I used it, it still didn't have any easy way to draw Ovals/Circles and Rectangles/Squares, something that even the most basic of image editors (MS Paint) has.

Re:DOS

[edmicman]

most Windows users really don't know how to use Windows anymore than they know how to use Linux -- What they do know is how to use certain GUI frontends to certain apps

So where's the push to get more of these GUI frontends to certain apps on Linux? There seems to be some work in that end, and Ubuntu seems like it's pushing towards making things easier to use for the layperson.

I use both OS's, and in my experience while I've used cmd in Windows a lot, it's usually for diagnosis purposes, where I can spit out a bunch of information that isn't available in a built in GUI. I rarely think I've ever had to use cmd to *configure* something. Whereas on Linux, there are some frontends to some commands, but I still end up having to manually go in, and add a line here or comment something out there in a text file just to change some setting.

I think the real point is, yes, a CLI no matter what the OS can be very powerful. It should definitely be available. But to *really* use it, you need to *know* what commands to use. Arguing to use man or search the Internet doesn't help. man can be unbearably confusing sometimes, or sometimes it just lists options but doesn't really explain what they do. Of course, man doesn't help if you don't know what the command is to do what you want to do in the first place! And searching for what the command is you want to use if you don't know what it is can be tedious, too.

But anyone can reasonably look for a System or Preferences menu, hopefully drill down to the area of what they're looking for, and toggle options or whatnot. Why is there such pushback to making things easier?

Re:DOS

[silent_artichoke]

Everything from iTunes to Lego Mindstorms SDK is available only on Windows. I don't think you meant to say iTunes here.

Re:DOS

[dotancohen]

Before anyone says "but ubuntu already does this", the problem is that currently you have no choice but to learn the CLI in order to accomplish anything but basic user tasks. This forces every office (or family) to have at least one go-to person that understands the OS thoroughly (or at least better than everyone else). But Ubuntu already does this. And everyone I've ever known has had a go-to person for their OS. Often, that was me. And of course every business should have a go-to person who understands the OS thoroughly, whether they use Linux or Windows or OS-X or Amiga.

Re:DOS

[weicco]

Care to elaborate what those tasks are that require command prompt in Windows? I've been writing software for Win NT/98/2K/XP/Vista, plus some apps and scripts for Linux and BSD, for years now and never have I had to go to command prompt but in some rare cases I prefer it (like quickly check my IP). Allthough I must admit that I haven't done anything like administrating huge networks and stuff but what I've heard you don't actually need command prompt in those cases either.

Yes, it is stupid thing that people reinstall their Windowses and loose all their apps in the process. Someone should show them the wonders of repair install.

/end-defensive-mode

Re:DOS

[rathaven]

For my own part I do not disagree, however, and this is reality - I've met a number of sysadmins of small educational networks and probably others too who do not use the CLI in 99% of day to day use! This is not including the illiterates who do not even know what the "computer" is.

The sysadmins I mention didn't fail to understand the concepts - I quizzed them deeply and was shocked to see them not using a CLI with the depth of understanding they had. Looking further into the methods of work showed that they knew them well but they had to deal with so many issues they were stretched in their time and ability to pick up all the tools required to support multiple platforms - sometimes even the one they were working on. Most of the time that meant they stuck to Windoze and mostly used point and click interfaces. That's not to say they wouldn't use the CLI for emergencies or look up commands but their scripting skills were weak so CLI was mostly avoided. If admins like these need a script they download one or download a tool that does it for them or purchase one and, surprise, most of the time it does eleviate the requirement.

To move to other OS's means that those sysadmins are looking for a system that makes the concepts intuitive to implement - without having to learn commands that aren't intuitive. The illiterates also need this to the small extent that they need the tools at all.

Before anyone jumps on this as an argument of CLI/point and click - I use the examples only to highlight a point. The argument is one of transferable skills related to the concepts behind system administration. CLIs do allow this if the CLI is standardised across OS and people are prepared to learn, but it usually isn't. GUI interfaces are rarely standardised but they are intuitive and well designed and can help boost platforms by making day to day skills easy to pick up on a platform.

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

You know Ubuntu will never get anywhere until they can get wireless working. I installed Ubuntu recently and I have tried everything under the sun to get my wireless adapter working. Including all kinds of mysterious commands entered through the command line. I personally am not afraid of entering things this way. but...

I never sucessfully got the wireless to connect except at a snails pace and now that I have been trying many things with ndiswrapper the adapter does not even connect anymore. It probably means that I have is to reinstall Ubuntu. Works out to be the same thing as windows right?

The fact is I probably will reinstall and try again a few months from now because I like this kind of stuff and I really want to learn linux.

But the average person just wants their stuff to work and Ubuntu just doesn't cut it if the averageperson cannot get it on the internet without all kinds of strange commands.

Is this a problem with Linux itself? I guess not since the device manufacturers will not create (or allow someone to create) a native driver. In the end though it doesn't matter whose fault it is it just needs to work and be configurable without a lot of strange commands. the average user simply cannot do that. Oh well

Re:DOS

[dbIII]

the problem is that currently you have no choice but to learn the CLI in order to accomplish anything but basic user tasks

While I disagree with this (the GUI allows you to do a great deal in any linux distribution now) there is also the major point that writing can convey more complex meanings than merely pointing at pictures.

We also have the two extremes of a variety of text based interfaces at one end and things like OS X and touchscreen kiosks at the other. Copying the fine details of one of several different Microsoft platforms stuck in the middle is a fairly futile exercise when you could just port your application to that platform or have a web front end to it. The platform is not chosen for it's quality or utility but because it runs on cheap hardware and has been available for a long time - that is why the application vendors write software for it.

Re:DOS

[fbjon]

I don't think it's up to you to decide what people need or should have. The world doesn't bend that way, but the other way: People need/want to run an application, and if it only works on Windows, then so be it.

Re:DOS

[HalAtWork]

What is still missing from Linux that Vista has is applications that are ready for typical end users. As long as Linux geeks continue to believe that OpenOffice is as good as Microsoft Office, the GIMP is as good as Photoshop, etc. My dad thinks so, grandma thinks so, aunts and uncles, even brothers and sisters and cousins and friends do (okay, maybe they don't use Gimp, but they definitely use Krita and in some cases Inkscape). Nobody really notices the difference in many cases, and as long as they can open their files, they're happy. A lot of the times these applications do a better job than their Windows counterparts in reading their files without giving them weird cautionary messages as well. The operating system tends to stay out of their way, and the fact that installing one application is the same as installing another makes them feel comfortable with searching for software when they felt unable to before. Installs don't ask them odd questions and talk about file settings, or have long lists of issues to read about, and plugging in new hardware doesn't ask them to put in a CD or ask them to set anything up. One piece of hardware uses the same exact software as another and doesn't have some nuanced custom software that controls only that piece of hardware. Software updates are made all from one location so the user feels safer knowing that their system is up to date all by looking in one place. They control their desktop, it does not control them, and they are a lot happier using Linux. Linux doesn't have things like games and business admin software of the same level as those available on Windows A lot of people are moving away from PC games and onto consoles for their gaming needs, especially as upgrading PCs is expensive and often not necessary, except only for the sake of games. As for business admin software, that doesn't really stop people from using it on the desktop. Workstations and servers may be another matter, but I think Linux has proven itself to be a contender there and the situation will only improve. People have a lot of trouble administering Windows machines as well so it's probably a moot point.

Re:DOS

[marsu_k]

As for GIMP, the last time I used it, it still didn't have any easy way to draw Ovals/Circles and Rectangles/Squares, something that even the most basic of image editors (MS Paint) has. Making an oval/rectangular selection and stroking it (hmm, that sounds rather perverse...) isn't that hard. But I think people should stop recommending Gimp to novices, while it is powerful the interface can be confusing at first. Krita is a wonderful alternative for simple painting / editing of digital photos.

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Just once, I'd like to see a "Linux isn't ready for the desktop" argument that isn't staggeringly contradicting itself. First, you go:

"they're users, not programmers and they have no interest or reason to learn more than a few basic tasks."

and then:

"the problem is that currently you have no choice but to learn the CLI in order to accomplish anything but basic user tasks."

Well, make up your mind already! Are those basic user tasks inclusive or exclusive? How does reading your email and surfing the web involve command-line usage? The Firefox icon is there in the taskbar. Click and use. Hacking shell scripts requires the command line, but it is not a "basic user task".

Re:DOS

[Annoid]

With anything, there is a point of no return; if you sink below that, you can't recover. Yes, they're making alot of noise with the success of ipods/etc, but as far as computers, they've been hovering around 5% of the market for years. For this reason, most major 3rd party support operations such as ISP's don't allocate alot of resources for them, there is always going to be some bit of software you want that won't run on them, so on & so forth. They can't start to gain dominance until these problems are solved, and they can't solve these problems at their current market share. Catch 22

Re:DOS

[clang_jangle]

So where's the push to get more of these GUI frontends to certain apps on Linux?

It's more like "where are the projects with apps to kill photoshop and outlook?". If we could have those two or something equal on Linux plus have pre-installed Linux as commonly available as Windows then in fact most people probably would either not care which OS they get or they'd prefer the one that doesn't moonlight as a spam zombie.

But it hardly matters anymore -- already smartphones are replacing the desktop for many consumers, and in that field the best apps are yet to be written.

Re:DOS

[Antiocheian]

I'm not sure what problems you see with OpenOffice, but I use it all the time, and it does everything I need. Here's mine:

1) No table styles.

2) Resizing a flowchart (with text boxes) results in total mess.

3) Defaults to some odd object pasting behavior which prevents Smartdraw OLE objects (at least) from opening.

4) Does not have an Access and an Outlook equivalent.

Plus, as more apps become web-deployed, desktop apps become less and less important. That's why you have no problems with OpenOffice. It does compete fairly with online suites.

Re:DOS

[KillerBob]

Try Zenwalk. The only time I've had to go into CLI since installing it was to install the NVidia proprietary drivers. And that was personal preference... there's actually a package in the repository for it.

Just about all of the important configuration options are available through the ZenPanel, and UI tweaks through XFCE's panel. And it supports XFCE's desktop compositor, of shiny video effects/transparency/etc. Unlike Compiz/Fusion (at least, the last time I used it), XFCE's compositor will use OpenGL (and the transparency effect on Terminal is a perfect example of how an accelerated desktop/transparency *should* work), but will allow you to run OpenGL programs/games without slowing down, too. I've tested it with TuxRacer, as well as with SecondLife, the latter being notorious for not working properly....

http://www.zenwalk.org/

You still have the problem with guaranteeing compatibility with commercially available software. There's Wine, or if you're more comfortable paying for something that comes with tech. support, there's Crossover and Cedega. Crossover comes with a reasonable guarantee that most of the important office software will work, though it's not compatible with Office 2007 yet.

Re:DOS

[duh P3rf3ss3r]

I'm sorry but this is just so much puffery. My grandma doesn't know how to "set up" Windows "on an old HP laptop for a mate" either. Does that mean Windows is not ready for prime time? Your efforts to suck and blow at the same time add up to a troll -- a well disguised troll, perhaps, maybe a troll in a dress -- but an AC troll nonetheless.

Re:DOS

[3p1ph4ny]

Disclaimer: I'm an engineering student, I rarely do image editing. If I do, it's to paste "LOLDRUNK!!11one" on someone's photo and send it to them.

Photoshop is not easy to use. GIMP is not easy to use. If you're just trying to draw circles/squares, you should use a different editor: one that's simpler. KDE has kolourpaint, or there's tuxpaint.

Re:DOS

[chaboud]

Is this meant to be a joke? I just set up a Heron Compiz install, and I knew-of/had no choice but to go the the terminal at least 10 times over the course of setting it up.

Some things, like setting up my EVDO modem, lead only to lengthy manual file-edit/command sequences in Google searches, leaving me ready to tear out my hair. So, taking a whack at it, I plugged in the modem, installed Gnome PPP, auto-detected my modem, put in the dial commands, set up the number, and dialed.

It worked, but even that is way harder for my parents than "Install what's on this disc."

The big problem that I see for this is that there's no centralization for any of this. There's no one place to go to handle setting up everything, and there's insufficient/disorganized help. The software I write (it's Windows software, for Sony, so I can expect to be modded into the basement.... now) has a feature called "Show Me Help" that uses instructions and red-flashing highlight boxes to give a tutorial using the media and project that you already have in front of you. You can say "I want to learn how to use a transition with video events" and have it show you on your video events.

I'm fairly convinced that the same concepts could be used in the GUI, from recordable/scriptable help documents that wouldn't be much harder than a command-list to post online. I'd like to see the same ethic of community-assistance extended to the rank beginner, because the effort it would take to make full-fledged help easy for my mother would be high.

With a guide to hold her hand, I think Ubuntu could be easier than OS X or Vista for her to jump into.

Re:DOS

[Jellybob]

Is this a problem with Linux itself? I guess not since the device manufacturers will not create (or allow someone to create) a native driver.

So if you know the actual problem, why are you trolling with the OMG - it doesn't work crap?

Every computer I've installed Ubuntu on in the last couple of years has worked perfectly, unless it required a proprietry driver to get some piece of hardware working, and you can hardly blame the people writing kernel modules if someone won't give them the specs for their hardware.

Re:DOS

[Abattoir]

That's not just Ubuntu or any other *nix OS, anything but the basic task, including troubleshooting has to be done in the CLI on Windows too. Uh, no. I don't need a command line interface on Windows to do any troubleshooting on a desktop system and neither does anyone else. The only command that is of any real use on Windows is ipconfig, and I can do everything I need that for through the network center. The Windows registry on the other hand, is required learning for any *power user*, but again, not required for the typical user.

Re:DOS

[KillerBob]

Try AbiWord instead of OO.o. It works a lot better with RTF formatting. Also, one of the Summer of Code projects this year is to add OOXML support to it, which would give it a huge leg up on OO.o's editor.

There's other applications... the three most-used applications under MS Office are Outlook, Word, and Excel. Word, I've already covered what I use instead. Excel, I use Gnumeric. For the average user, it's good enough. It does lack some of the more advanced functions, but honestly, aside from reading the docs, I'd never know it.

And as for Outlook, there's Evolution. The hard part in getting people to switch over isn't getting them to switch desktops. That's ancillary. The hard part is getting them to switch applications in the first place. All 3 of those programs have Win32 versions available... the Win32 version of Evolution doesn't work under Vista, but AbiWord and Gnumeric both do. Once people are using open source programs instead of MS Office, the rest will just fall into place.

Re:DOS

[clang_jangle]

Care to elaborate what those tasks are that require command prompt in Windows?

Mass renaming files, for one. In fact, I don't think there is a GUI file browser for Windows I don't find so clunky as to be unusable. Also, there are some NT services which are best audited and controlled from the command line. And of course, there are those times the desktop tools just sit there and ignore their mouse clicks, or times you don't have twenty minutes to wait for a file to copy, etc.

Re:DOS

[Kjella]

Though even in Star Trek they're still using a GUI quite a bit. Not to mention that to have Star Trek voice AI, you'd need really strong AI. Yes, I know it's a sci-fi show and not a documentary but try listening to how much the computer understands, particularly on obtuse commands like "scan for anomalies". Most likely you'd get a ton of useless trivia and not the important clue right away like in the series...

Re:DOS

[celtic_hackr]

Before anyone says "but ubuntu already does this", the problem is that currently you have no choice but to learn the CLI in order to accomplish anything but basic user tasks. This forces every office (or family) to have at least one go-to person that understands the OS thoroughly (or at least better than everyone else). That argument is old, tired ,misleading and just wrong. Since you are talking about illiterate users. Even in any version of Windows, requires a Windows expert to do anything except "basuc user tasks". So what is it you are trying to prove? As far as another poster saying that Open Office is somehow inferior to Word. That's just rubbish, consider that the new beta out will even take Word documents with VBA in them now and run them. Not to mention that I have a document in OOo that has multiple sorted indexes. Something that Word can't do. So, I have a Place index and a Name index. THere are many things that OOo can do that Word cannot, but I have yet to see anyone show anything that Word can do that OOo cannot. So, for those saying OOo is inferior in some way, I say prove it with at least one specific example, instead of general "Word is better" FUD.

Re:DOS

[nomadic]

The day I can install Ubuntu (or any flavor of Linux), without having to worry about spending half a week configuring it, or the day I can send a client a presentation, spreadsheet or document without sacrificing features (and without having to explain) will be the day I think it is ready for desktop.

Completely true. My last ubuntu installation took about a week to get working right, and I've been using Linux for 12 years. Running multiple X.org configuration scripts then editing xorg.conf by hand, working with the ridiculous number of overlapping sound drivers, and having to symbolically link devices in order to get certain programs to run.

Re:DOS

[Rutulian]

Is this meant to be a joke? I just set up a Heron Compiz install, and I knew-of/had no choice but to go the the terminal at least 10 times over the course of setting it up.

Not sure what you were doing then. Just go to System|Preferences|Appearance|Visual Effects and click either "Normal" or "Fancy." All done!

For the modem, it depends on the hardware support, but did you try System|Administration|Network to configure the PPP interface?

Seriously, the tools are right there if you just look for them. I agree the help documentation can be better, though. The online forums, while helpful for advanced users, don't always give you the easiest or distro-supported ways of doing things.

Re:DOS

[mysticgoat]

I disagree with the portion of parent post that I understood.

Ubuntu provides a better desktop experience for adult, first time computer users than any version of Windows. The metrics for the quality of the desktop experience are: initial ease of use; productivity in the first day of use without assistance from a mentor in common office tasks; and where the user declares himself to be on the frustration-to-satisfaction axis by the end of the day. By adult, I mean: anyone over 12 years old who is literate in English (though I suspect Ubuntu's i18n is strong enough that this could be generalized to a dozen or more other languages). By first time, I mean just that: persons who've had no opportunity to run a computer before (although they may have had to interact with programs other persons controlled).

The portion of parent post that I don't understand is where it says the user has "no choice but to learn the CLI in order to accomplish anything but basic user tasks". That is not my experience with Ubuntu. Finding and installing new software and removing applications no longer of interest are GUI pushbutton operations that are far simpler than what is available in Windows. Menu management, managing the file system, configuring hardware, etc, can all be done with the GUI at the same level of difficulty as with Windows. I use the CLI to make scripts I have written operational, but I do not consider programming, even shell scripting, to be a basic user task.

Ubuntu has arrived and is ready for the n00bes. The Ubuntu experience doesn't have the power of Microsoft's or Apple's marketeering illusions and fantasy worlds behind it. But I see its realism as a strength: it is a utilitarian vehicle capable of carrying any reasonable load its driver puts on it to any place where there is a road. It doesn't much encourage the driver to imagine he can carry impossible loads, or to go off-road into unknown territory. People who can afford to live in fantasy worlds would find that Microsoft and Apple products are better suited to dreamers who don't need to do actual work. People who are interested in a computer for correspondence, creating resumes, managing budgets and projects, doing bookkeeping, and so on will find that Ubuntu provides excellent support for home and office work.

Additionally with bash and the full complement of unix CLI tools available from the terminal prompt, Ubuntu offers excellent support to intermediate and expert computer users, far beyond anything available in the Windows fantasy. But that is a subject for a different post.

Re:DOS

[hitmark]

the thing about games are that they are like fashion. you need to be playing the latest and greatest to count.

and even more so in this age of online gaming.

i refuse to play for pay online rpgs, but none of the people i know wants to play anything but world of warcraft these days...

i recall going to lan-party in the 90's and playing all kinds of games for laughs. go to one now and its all variants of counterstrike, and its deadly serious that you and your team win or lose...

Re:DOS

[Yer Mum]

The thing is you can't really say what the home user wants with certainty apart from they don't want corporate software and they want whatever they want to do to just work.

I wanted to put Linux on a second computer (a laptop). The main requirement was TV-out support to play full-screen videos on the telly and an idiot-proof way to let you choose the video you want to play. Note: I'm not a home user but what I want the second computer to do is so simple it we can argue it's for a home user.

You'd think that it's not too much of a demand in this age of Compiz and Beryl however Ubuntu/X11/the ATI driver couldn't deliver and after a weekend of tinkering I gave up and went back to Windows. I didn't even get chance to start on the idiot-proof way of launching videos as I was stuck on something much more low level, the TV output.

I think the main reason for all this is that the Linux world does very little end-user testing yet often claims it's ready for the end user. Until relatively recently both Gnome and KDE had several hundred fiddly options, until both moved to simplify things (probably in the wake of the success seen with OO and Firefox, which both also have two of three feet firmly placed in Mac and Windows land and do do a lot of end-user testing).

So what is this claim of readiness based on if there's relatively little end-user testing? Basically there are several applications which copy how it's done on Windows and Mac (mainly Windows) and the claim comes from that. Yet it looks like Linux distros still lack an overall coherent design and a sense of 'it just works' unlike other operating systems and these cracks show up if there's a problem such as this one where I was trying to convince three separate pieces of software (Ubuntu preferences, X11, and the ATI drivers) to co-operate.

Unfortunately it's probably a fairly to fix.

Re:DOS

[Myrddin Wyllt]

Care to elaborate what those tasks are that require command prompt in Windows?

'ping' and 'tracert' leap to mind - I know there are equivalent gui tools, but not on a standard Windows install.

Re:DOS

[Hymer]

Me think you should read some MS doc...

Re:DOS

[Helios1182]

I wouldn't discount it all together though. There are certain tasks where natural language has been shown to be significantly better than a GUI. Then again, natural language doesn't imply speaking.

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

And there are still scores of Windows users who couldn't install their own WiFi drivers, configure their own wireless network or install extra codecs themselves either.

I used to be the "go to guy" for my friends and family for a long time until I stopped accepting "please help me fix my computer" requests in order to focus on my full-time career. It's amazing how many people can't figure out how to load a CD and follow the instructions on the screen, let alone know that the movie they just downloaded via LimeWire needs the DivX or Xvid codec to be viewed.

I got rid of Windows just a few weeks ago in favour of Ubuntu. I loaded up a DivX encoded movie in Totem, and not only did it tell me I needed extra codecs, but Totem launched Synaptic, downloaded the codecs, installed them and then re-started the movie for me. When was the last time any app in Windows did that? And don't say "just use VLC" because the majority of Windows users have no clue what VLC is.

Re:DOS

[Vectronic]

Because it seems too much like a toy to me, aswell as backwards... not that Windows or Linux is really that much different, but im right handed, so I naturally want most of the controls to be on the right (min/max/close/etc)... its just an OCD preference of sorts... I realize that a lot of it can be changed, but still, centered dialog buttons, etc...

And its not really that I havent used Mac's enough, after Commodore & Atari, Mac's were my first Computer, and remained up until about 1998...

Once I got more "into" computers, how they worked, and using them for more than word processing and the odd Game (Quagmire, SimCity, etc)... I found them really impeeding... and switched to Windows... a year later, added Linux (almost every computer since has been Dual, sometimes Tri Boot)

I havent even touched a Mac since early 2002... I'm not saying that Mac's are useless, they are wonderful for standard Media (Video, Images, Audio)... but outside of that, I can't handle them for Programming, or 3D, or even more intense 2D... which is mostly what I do...

Re:DOS

[pjt33]

It's not hard, but it's very unintuitive. The interface doesn't need to be quite so confusing as it is.

Re:DOS

[Facetious]

This forces every office (or family) to have at least one go-to person that understands the OS thoroughly (or at least better than everyone else).

How is this different than Windows? I am being serious. I am that guy in the family (and at the office, sadly), and I am asked to "fix" Windows problems all the time. The only difference is that it takes me longer to "fix" Windows issues than Linux issues, and the problems occur more frequently under Windows. The error in your logic is that you believe the mythical "average user" can do anything of a SysAdmin nature under Windows just because it's a graphical environment.

Re:DOS

[Tikkun]

The fact that you had problems setting up binary drivers from a company that up until recently didn't provide specifications for their hardware so that the community could not produce decent open source drivers has nothing to do with whether any particular distro of linux is ready for the desktop of a home user.

If you want to install a linux distro yourself, learn how to setup and administer it beforehand. This may not be worth your time, unless you're into that sort of thing.

Typically end users do not administer their computers, rather they purchase their computers prebuilt from VARs (Dell, HP etc.), install software on their own after the fact, and bring in the local geek, computer repair service or the VAR itself to fix things when (they|microsoft|adobe|mozilla) break the damn thing. Quite possibly they may never try to fix their machine, rather they just hobble along until things get unbearable and they buy a brand new computer (again, preloaded with the OS of their choice).

Re:DOS

[Sadsfae]

So where's the push to get more of these GUI frontends to certain apps on Linux? There seems to be some work in that end, and Ubuntu seems like it's pushing towards making things easier to use for the layperson. Mainly Red Hat and to a certain extent, Novell, wrote most of the GTK+ front-ends you see in most distributions, system-config-* and many other gui's like SELinux front-ends and a great deal of work on NetworkManager.

Go to Help ---> About on some of your gui front-end apps on your distribution of choice and check the author/e-mail addresses associated.

As far as actual code contribution towards gui frontends I do not know that Ubuntu has contributed all that much. They are best known for just making an easy-to-use debian based distribution.

Re:DOS

[Sadsfae]

But anyone can reasonably look for a System or Preferences menu, hopefully drill down to the area of what they're looking for, and toggle options or whatnot. Why is there such pushback to making things easier? I don't think there is a pushback to make things easier. Any recent distribution will contain these tools. Check out any recent version of Fedora or Ubuntu and go to System --> Administration or Applications --> System Tools (Assuming you go with the default GNOME desktop).

There are live boot/preview features you can run from inside of windows (wubi for Ubuntu and Fedora has live USB boot with persistence)

Re:DOS

[Toby_Tyke]

Honestly, does the average person really need photoshop?

OK, stop right there. The average computer user does not exist. For example, take my dad. Most people would describe him as a fairly average user . He uses web and e-mail, writes the odd letter in word, and burns mp3s onto CDs for his car stereo. All of that could be done in Linux.

Oh, except he also records the odd vinyl album and cleans the scratches off it using a simple to use application with a step by step wizard for just that purpose. No equivalent program that I am aware of exists on Linux, so my Dad is stuck with Windows.

Or take the office were my wife works. She's a graphic designer, she regularly works on advertising campaigns that are sent to third party publications for printing. She absolutely requires photoshop, and yes, she has tried GIMP, and no, it really is not a suitable replacement for her.Now possibly the "average" office worker in her building could be moved to desktop linux ( I still think a lot of them would run into the "just one app" syndrome, but lets assume we could do it ), but my wife and quite a few other people could not, so the IT department would be stuck supporting two different systems, not a situation they would care for.

Linux is ready for the desktop. It just doesn't have the apps yet.

Re:DOS

[clang_jangle]

Some things, like setting up my EVDO modem, lead only to lengthy manual file-edit/command sequences in Google searches, leaving me ready to tear out my hair.

But in Windows you set it up how? That's right, by putting the CD in the drive and clicking on the install icon!

So then, this is not a legit Linux gripe but is actually your service provider's fault, isn't it? After all, they are certainly free to write a Linux installer...

Re:DOS

[Homer1946]

I know some MS users can be very defensive about this, and will even insist that what makes their choice "superior" is that no CLI knowledge is required, but that is just not true.. The question is, is the CLI required for what the typical user wants to do. If the answer is no for Windows (or OS X), but yes for Linux then I think that is an important distinction. I think glossing over the whole question of whether Linux is simple and user friendly enough for a typical (non-technical user) by talking about how there is no really perfect OS (no shit) does a disservice to Linux. The question should be, is Linux as good (useful AND usable) as the others for a typical user, and is it as good as it could be?

Re:DOS

[chaboud]

As far as Compiz goes, I had to apt-get the compiz config panel so I could tweak the hell out of my setup. I mean, come on. The magic of compiz is in the absolutely absurd configurability, though that same configurability means that you have to navigate this insane universe of extensions that stomp on each other and/or handle tons of things in one place.

As far as the modem goes, it actually probed just fine and worked as soon as I installed Gnome PPP. No file editing, no bullshit.

Sadly, no documentation.

Perhaps all this needs is a one-stop-shop for tutorials with an emphasis on not saying "I prefer the CLI, so I did it this way."

Re:DOS

[Altoid_X]

GIMP is ASS!!
the worst, ugliest UI outside of Blender

As a design pro and someone who can get by in Linux (and knows his way around a CLI even...) I wouldn't recommend GIMP to anybody. It may be functional and even powerful but creatives aren't interested in wasting time on it when they have an elegant functional piece of software in the Adobe suite of apps.

OOo on the other hand, works fairly well - but for online machines it's pointless with the advent of the Zoho suite or Google docs. I wouldn't wanna do page layout in either though...

Re:DOS

[mennucc1]

This forces every office (or family) to have at least one go-to person that understands the OS thoroughly (or at least better than everyone else). That's why we should advocate F/OSS in schools. If children learn it, they will bring it to families, and, in due time, to the workplace. That is also why MS is giving Window$ for free to schools, of course

Re:DOS

[drakken33]

In my experience that's just crap. Some distros may require use of the CLI (I'm thinking Gentoo and Debian unstable but I haven't used those in a while) but for the last year I've been using Ubuntu and Fedora and only use the CLI becuase I choose to. My girlfriend has no CLI knowledge but can use Ubuntu and Fedora without any problems.

This may be because I've set everything up. I'll concede that on some hardware the CLI may be required to get everything set up and working but after that it's not needed at all. I believe that with more pre-installations of Ubuntu or similar distro, with eveything working out of the box, any computer illiterate Joe can use their computer just as well as they can use Windows or OS X.

In my opinion Linux-based distros are lacking the commercial software like Photoshop.

Re:DOS

[thetoadwarrior]

Any company should have at least one user that knows more than everyone else anyway otherwise who is maintaining these computers?

ipconfig, tracert and ping are things any users needs to use when troubleshooting their connection or calling tech support regarding the connection. Where do you use those? The CLI of course. The CLI will never go away in any OS.

Ubuntu does do what most people want out of the box. The only difference is people have to get used to the idea of using the package manager, if they want to use their AIM, MSN, etc they have to use Pigdin and a few differences but I think once people know those things they would be happy with Ubuntu.

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the tools, it's the interface. As long as GIMP has such pig usability, it's going to suck, no matter how many cartwheels it can turn.

And OpenOffice is still missing a 'normal view' like Word has. The bug's been open for only about 5 years now.

Re:DOS

[Joe Jay Bee]

Release a game for Linux FIRST, that'll bring 'em in. Then six months later release it for Windows.

Such a move would be commercial suicide (unless of course it's a hugely anticipated game along the lines of GTA4 or Half-Life 2), especially since it is neither the game developer's job nor concern to improve Linux's market share - their goal is to release a game that lots of people buy, and with Linux's market share as relatively low as it is they'd have to face some serious questions from both management and shareholders as to why they didn't go the more profitable route first.

Even ignoring the commercial aspect, people would either think they don't need/want the game anyway or just wait for the Windows version. Or, even if they did switch to Linux because of it, blame the game if Linux screws up somehow or vice versa (which would be bad for either Linux or the game company).

Re:DOS

[pizzach]

It's funny. When someone uses the CLI, they expect to be greeted with by a cold machine that accepts rigid syntax. But with voice, it's supposed to natually know what you want using a syntax that can have very vague meanings. I would think the first step in voice recognition is to make a terminal that accepts typed phases and interprets them in an intelligent way...

Re:DOS

[Myrddin Wyllt]

I thought that Audacity and Lame were pretty much the standard tools for ripping vinyl to mp3. These are both available cross platform, and I have always had much better results using them in linux than in Windows. Granted the process may not be so pointy/clicky, but the end results seem to be more consistent.

As for ripping CDs, Grip on linux as a front end to cdparanoia/lame is much better than anything I have managed to find for Windows. (Even my brother grudgingly admits this, and he told me last week that the weather was too warm to consider switching to linux, and I should get back to him when Hell started to freeze over...)

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

You're offtopic, but gimp and evolution do well for most people. There will always be a market for highly specialized commercial apps. After greater desktop adoption, maybe they'll be written for Linux too.

Re:DOS

[YttriumOxide]

Agreed wholeheartedly... I'm primarily a MacOS X user these days, but my secondary system is Ubuntu, and I use it fairly regularly (and have been using Linux distros since the days of Debian hamm or so).

My main complaint with most apps on Linux these days is being forced to use a text editor where I shouldn't have to. Making a configuration program that writes these text based config files is about the most trivial GUI development task one can imagine. Is it only because it's so easy that no-one wants to do it?

(my personal reason for not doing it is that I spend most of my time working on "bigger" projects - perhaps that's also the reason no-one else does, but perhaps we can find some newbies that want to cut their teeth on a GUI toolkit, and assign tasks to them to make config programs?)

Re:DOS

[JonathanBoyd]

Fine. I'm not saying there's no place for it; I was simply rebutting the notion that it was a superior replacement for the GUI in standard computer operations.

Re:DOS

[goarilla]

what about nbtstat ?

Re:DOS

[harlows_monkeys]

This is a key issue and I think it's been glossed over for too long. Although I agree that most desktop features are crap, linux just cant be mainstream until someone puts out a distro that DOES cater to the illiterates. We already have dozens of distros specifically designed for programmers and super users. Let's face it, most computer users are essentially computer illiterates - they're users, not programmers and they have no interest or reason to learn more than a few basic tasks

Your theory fails to explain the disproportionately high Mac use among the most technically skilled computer users. Ivan Krstic, explaining his switch to Mac, had this observation:

"My theory is that technical people, especially when younger, get a particular thrill out of dicking around with their software. Much like case modders, these folks see it as a badge of honor that they spent countless hours compiling and configuring their software to oblivion. Hey, I was there too. And the older I get, the more I want things to work out of the box. Ubuntu is getting better at delivering that experience for novice users. Serious power users seem to find that OS X is unrivaled at it."

He sure hit that nail on the head. I'm a programmer. Been one for a long time. I've done Unix ports, written operating systems, done firmware for I/O cards, and things like that. I can handle anything an OS can throw at me--but I don't want to. I'd rather the OS not throw things at me in the first place, so I can spend my time working on my projects.

Re:DOS

[Toby_Tyke]

OK, try re-reading my post, and taking in what I'm saying. I expressly said he could rip and burn CDs on linux. The only obstacle he had was the vinyl thing. I pointed out he used a simple app with a point and click wizard, basically "click here to remove scratches". And you suggest he replace this with audacity, a pro level audio editing app. Does it have a "remove scratches button"?

Re:DOS

[witherstaff]

With the average cost of a AAA brand title being 10-20+ million, I don't see anyone doing this sort of gamble. It's a novel idea, but I don't see it working in the real world.

You'd have lots of secretaries and CPA's that pop in the CD/DVD, install linux and the game, then wonder why they can't play WOW.

Re:DOS

[tknd]

Okay, this is one of the things that bugs me. OpenOffice and the GIMP do everything that the average user needs them to.

Average users (American users at least) don't think logically. They think in terms of capability rather than need. In other words they are not necessarily in search for the platform that meets their needs, they are in search for the platform that will provide them the best experience even if they will not need parts of what that experience has to offer.

For example just take SUVs. For a while the cost of gas wasn't as expensive, so normal consumers didn't take MPG into account when buying a vehicle. So they show up at the dealer and figure they need a car, but they don't know which one yet. At the dealer there's a luxury sedan selling for the same price as an SUV. The sedan doesn't have as much potential as the SUV in terms of capabilities, but will do what they need just fine. The SUV, however, opens up a number of possibilities for their vehicle--some of which they won't use. So in their minds, the SUV is a better buy than the sedan if gas price, pollution, size etc does not matter.

What linux needs is more marketing acumen and to understand what users are really after. In fact, linux distros may already have what some users are after but nobody bothers to market those features in that manner. Some areas where Linux excels are security (incompatible with most malware), and "custom" user interfaces. By "custom" I don't mean that the user can customize it but rather a custom interface is presented to the user. A good example of this is the Asus eee-pc. The product intentionally has a dumbed-down interface to become a marketing point for the product. When normal people asked, Asus they didn't chant "we run OPEN SOURCE LINUX!" but instead they said, "hey, we're going to have this really easy to use interface." But instead most geeks just get on their F/OSS soap box not understanding that the average user doesn't care what F/OSS means.

Which brings up another issue. Many of the advocates of F/OSS are not marketers or business men. They are software guys, hackers that like to stick to their ideals. So this brings two goals for such a project. One goal being spreading and supporting their ideals in open source software and the other goal being to increase market share. The two goals have conflicts. If you want more market share, you must accept that some people do not care about the ideals or will even work against them (proprietary software/hardware solutions). The faster open source projects can get rid of their internal conflicts, the quicker they will become more successful in accomplishing their goals.

Re:DOS

[diggitzz]

Hrm ... what sucks is when repair install mysteriously doesn't work ...

But you can still boot to the Recovery Console (gee, a CLI) in order to manually change services, edit the registry, repair disks, or other tasks. Failing using that, you will more often needlessly reinstall Windows, unless you use additional (non-MS) repair tools. The CLI is therefore indispensable.

Extra props to anyone who points out where to find the system file checker (sfc) in any Windows GUI. I have no idea - I just use the command line.

Re:DOS

[Richard_at_work]

Mass renaming files? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320167

Re:DOS

[cecil_turtle]

There are GUI tools for everything you say you were "required" to use the terminal for. Go to System | Administration | Synaptic | search for and install ubuntu-restricted-extras and ndisgtk, and you'd have been done. Setting up NDIS wrapper via ndisgtk takes all of 70 seconds. The media playback codecs will prompt to be installed as needed. Try playing a .mov or .ra file on a default Windows install and let me know how well it walks you through installing the supporting applications.

Oh yeah and my mom (who is a grandmother) has been running Ubuntu for a few years now.

I just noticed you're an AC and I just wasted my time posting, but since I already typed it I'm posting anyway.

Re:DOS

[diggitzz]

Linux runs WinE and VMWare
WinE and VMWare let you run Windows Apps*
Therefore, Linux can run Windows Apps.
QED.

What was the problem, again?

*obviously, not ALL of them, but the typical ones you mentioned are supported.

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're trying to have it both ways a bit there, and misidentifying because of it.

I'll agree that Ubuntu requires every "office (or family) to have at least one go-to person that understands the OS thoroughly (or at least better than everyone else)." But I disagree that Windows doesn't. As you say, "most computer users are essentially computer illiterates", and when they deal with Windows beyond "anything but basic user tasks" they require that go-to person just as much.

We can quibble about individual non-illiterate task being easier or harder, but the point is that we can quibble -- each has items that are easier or harder. Neither is "ready for the desktop" for the hypothetical illiterate. Configuring a secure Windows experience is a nightmare compared to Ubuntu, for example.

I also think that "you have no choice but to learn the CLI in order to accomplish anything but basic user tasks." is an overstatement. I'm all for getting further away from it in Ubuntu, but if you check Ubuntu Forums you'll notice a sizeable number of computer illiterates are in fact managing quite well by using copy&paste advice given to them -- they don't actually learn the CLI.

The difference is that the "go-to person" is telling them to type commands they don't understand versus click panel options they don't understand. It's not that big a difference, and means both systems still require the illiterates to have a go-to person. [These days they're as likely to get "click panel options" advice too - the CLI isn't required for everything anymore, though we're discussing it specifically at the moment.]

So I'm suggesting that the CLI is a bit of a bogeyman argument. YES, the ideal and as-yet-unachieved OS for illiterates will not require CLI use. Absolutely true. But it takes a great deal more than just replacing CLI with GUI panels to achieve the ideal. Quite a lot will need to be taken care of automagically and with extreme cleverness. Things will have to be self-configuring -- almost all the GUI panels will have to vanish as well as the CLI to be considered "ready for the desktop" in a way that meaningful to the illiterate.

Disclaimers: I mostly use Ubuntu these days, and I'm the go-to guy for friends, family, and co-workers. I started with personal computers long before the GUI, and while the CLI is not strange to me I'm not fond of it. Frankly I'm getting old and find it rather tedious to un-rust the synapses to remember what the syntax is for this one when needed, and I'm looking forward to having panels with visible options for most everything. But I don't believe for a minute that's enough to make it work for illiterates.

Getting hung up on the CLI as a sign that an OS isn't "ready for the desktop" misses what really is required, and misses what Ubuntu actually does better for the illiterate, like security.

Maybe we should dump the "ready for the desktop" phrase and its accumulated baggage and just say "mainstream". The current mainstream personal computer experience includes a go-to person as a fact of life. No illiterate is going to get along okay without one. Given that, Ubuntu is mainstream now, having achieved a comparable low-requirement of go-to help as Windows, and in my experience lower worry as the go-to guy.

All that's left to a "mainstream" definition is comparable user numbers. And that's a different problem because we have to factor in the near complete dominance of Windows. Apple, which is famous for ease of use, hasn't been able to dent that much either. A Linux distro is only going to achieve comparable mainstream numbers by being significantly better than Windows. Bless Microsoft for doing their best make it so, but to overcome monopoly momentum a distro will have to offer more, something along the lines of "Killer App" more.

We've achieved comparable ease of use. We may exceed it. But to get a market share like 50% requires something else entirely.

Re:DOS

[Homer1946]

People who can afford to live in fantasy worlds would find that Microsoft and Apple products are better suited to dreamers who don't need to do actual work. Wow. What a coincidence. I have also found that insulting people really helps to get them to listen to the details of my arguments.

Re:DOS

[man_of_mr_e]

Also it says a lot that reinstalling rather than fixing Windows is generally regarded as an acceptable practice. Because reinstalling Windows doesn't (usually) require a CLI :)

No, it's a simple cost/benefit analysis. Should you spend 3 or 4 hours dicking around trying to fix something (and maybe not succeeding) or spending 1 hour to reinstall the OS (or reimage if it's a corporate machine). I'll take #2 any day of the week, except in rare situations where reinstalling will take a lot longer (my home computer, for instance, with 500+ different tweaks and programs).

Re:DOS

[Haeleth]

As far as Compiz goes, I had to apt-get the compiz config panel so I could tweak the hell out of my setup.

No, you had to install it. However, you didn't have to use apt-get in a CLI to do that; you could simply have gone to your Applications menu, clicked on "Add/Remove...", selected "All Open Source applications", searched for "compiz", and clicked on the first option in the list. 100% GUI.

Re:DOS

[clang_jangle]

Multiple != mass. Try doing what you propose with several thousand files. :)

Re:DOS

[man_of_mr_e]

Part of the problem with Linux is that you have to "know" which one of the 20,000 programs in your package manager does what you need done.

So how, precisely, does one know about ndisgtk? What's more, don't you have to even manually configure it to use the restricted extras?

Sure, Windows has a lot of stuff that doesn't work right either, but it has just as much stuff that installs seamlessly, with complete directions a moron could follow. And, if that fails, they can call Linksys or DLINK and they'll walk them through it over the phone (granted, by some guy in india following a script that the user could have followed, but still.. that works most of the time, unless you're an expert and have a problem not covered by that.. which would be the only reason the expert would call).

Millions of people buy computers, set them up, and use them, including installing software and devices, with very little technical knowledge and without asking an "expert". You only see the people that are too stupid (or too scared) to do it themselves, so it gives you a skewed view of reality.

One of Linux's big problems is that it has insufficient end-user technical support and it has limited use-case testing scenarios, so when things go wrong they go spectacularly wrong. The kernel and most kinds of server apps are typically rock-solid, but the GUI end user apps tend to be buggy as hell, poorly designed, and exceedingly complex and cryptic. We like that, end-users don't.

Re:DOS

[Haeleth]

In my opinion Linux-based distros are lacking the commercial software like Photoshop.

Photoshop CS and Photoshop CS2 run almost perfectly in any Linux distribution that provides an up-to-date WINE. CS3 doesn't work yet, but how many of the people complaining about the lack of Photoshop are actually using CS3?

Re:DOS

[westlake]

Granted, they're not geniuses (look at the whole Vista boondoggle)

There are about 200 or so Linux distributions. The problem for Microsoft is much the same: how to best to serve many distinct market segments without fragmenting completely.

Re:DOS

[el americano]

Preloaded Ubuntu has the initial configuration taken care of. Nobody will need to do this.

Re:DOS

[Haeleth]

OS X only works out of the box if all you want is what comes in the box.

I personally want my OS to recognise all the keys on my keyboard. OS X doesn't. Windows doesn't. And Linux didn't, except that in the case of Linux I was easily able to fix that with a little xkb tweaking.

Maybe when I get old I'll be less insistent on having all my hardware working properly, but right now I'm more than willing to handle the odd Linux inconvenience in exchange for a computer that gives me what I want, the way I want it.

Re:DOS

[clang_jangle]

, it's a simple cost/benefit analysis. Should you spend 3 or 4 hours dicking around trying to fix something (and maybe not succeeding) or spending 1 hour to reinstall the OS

Precisely! The Windows user feels hopeless about the prospects of fixing the problem knowing that due to the lack of education if it can be fixed it will take too long. That just underscores my point, that most MS users are not much good at using Windows. Of course I've known some who are very good, but it's not so common. For most, if the GUI tools don't work anymore it's just time to reinstall. Can't learn much that way, and the staus quo remains.

But I really don't mean to pick on MS users (there are plenty of lusers of every OS), it's just natural due to the way Windows is marketed.

Re:DOS

[el americano]

To turn on Compiz:

System->Preferences->Appearance->Visual Effects->Extra

To configure:

System->Administration->compizconfig-settings-manager->Apply
System->Preferences->Advanced Desktop Effects Settings

No CLI involved - and compiz customization is not intended for the masses anyway. Surely this is not your example of why Ubuntu is not ready for the desktop.

I still want to know some "basic" configuration that cannot be changed without editing text.

Re:DOS

[man_of_mr_e]

THere are many things that OOo can do that Word cannot

Such as?

but I have yet to see anyone show anything that Word can do that OOo cannot

Thee is no so blind as those that will not see.

I suspect that any list I give you will be met with varying excuses of "yeah, but who uses that" or some such.

But here goes, off the top of my head:

Grammar Checker
Table Drawing (uses a pencil motive to draw complex tables)
Live real-time style preview (hover over a style, see the changes applied as they would look if you actually selected it)
Programmable object model and automation API (to allow other apps to use Word as as an engine)
Fast start time (seriously).

There's a lot more than that, but that's just off the top of my head.

As for multiple indexes, that's not true. Word has had multiple index support for years.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/193145

Re:DOS

[man_of_mr_e]

There's a lot more admin stuff a user can do by themselves without an expert under Windows than under Linux.

Here's a quick example. Let's add a second monitor to Ubunutu. If it's the same size monitor, then you might not have many problems, but if it's a different sized one then you're in for hours of futzing around, trying different things depending on which driver is installed, etc..

In Windows, you just plug in the monitor, got to the display properties page, select the monitor and click "extend my desktop to this monitor", resize the display as necessary and you're done. Anyone can do that. At most they may need to ask someone how, and it can be explained in 10 seconds.

X is still *VERY* primitive when it comes to multiple monitors, not to mention the fact that different hardware vendors add their own multimonitor modes each with their own pros and cons. Will it be Xinerama, DualView, TwinView, etc? Xinerama, for instance, doesn't support 3D on both monitors, TwinView does, but then you don't get the "xinerama aware" benefits, etc.. Windows is rock solid and bone simple in this regard.

More examples, let's add TV tuner, or an non-natively unsupported wireless adapter. How much fun are you in for now?

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

What was the problem, again?

You are mistaking your technical ability to get that working (and possibly a willingness to overlook any legal concerns?) for a typical user's confidence that stuff will Just Work.

Re:DOS

[man_of_mr_e]

CS3's been out for almost a year now. I'd bet a lot. People tend to be either the type that upgrade right away, or they never upgrade unless forced to.

Re:DOS

[sulfur]

If you work with Active Directory, a lot of things cannot be done without CLI tools, such as advanced domain/trust management, or mass modification (or import/export) of objects.

Re:DOS

[sjames]

This is a key issue and I think it's been glossed over for too long. Although I agree that most desktop features are crap, linux just cant be mainstream until someone puts out a distro that DOES cater to the illiterates. We already have dozens of distros specifically designed for programmers and super users. Let's face it, most computer users are essentially computer illiterates - they're users, not programmers and they have no interest or reason to learn more than a few basic tasks.

Many that I have seen aren't even what we might call users. To make an analogy (no cars, I promise), If the programmers and super-users are carpenters, 'users' are people who competently if not elegantly use a hammer occasionally for odd jobs at home.

Too many people in a business environment are more like the people who hold the hammer half way up the handle, require seemingly a zillion taps to drive a trim nail, and hit their thumb as often as the nail.

My experience is that Linux on the desktop isn't actually harder to use than Windows. In fact, it's easier because there's less 'tricks' to remember to get badly behaved programs to do what they're supposed to do. The people who find Windows easier are mostly the people who are using it by rote and so will always find the exact layout that they've memorized (without understanding) easier than even a much better interface that does things even slightly differently.

Others who use Windows do so because of particular software they actually need. As the perception of "desktop readiness" changes, perhaps those apps will be ported.

Personally, I've been using Linux as my desktop since '95.

Re:DOS

[drakken33]

I was only using Photoshop as an example. I haven't used WINE in a while (about 6 months to a year) but last time I used it there was a lot of messing about just to get some fairly simple apps working. I hope that's changed.

Actually, think about WINE, I'm reminded of another problem with non-techie people running Linux-based OSs. You might've had an up to date version of WINE when you installed your distro but (and I'm thinking of Ubuntu LTS, RHEL and similar users here) there can be a hell of a lot more messing around just to get the latest versions if your distro is getting old.

If you're lucky there's a package or repo for your distro to make it easy but if not it's compile from source time and how many non-techie users are going to do that? Linux package management is great but if you want the latest versions of some software Windows and OS X have it beat.

Re:DOS

[man_of_mr_e]

Which "average user" would that be? The one that needs grammar checking for instance? Complain all you like about Word's grammar checker, it's still better than none.

Re:DOS

[Bodrius]

GIMP has more tools and abilities than I ever would use, and I use it on Linux frequently. Do I really need Photoshop? No.

I think you miss the real problem entirely.

Tools and abilities and features are not what Linux and Linux apps lack for 'desktop readyness' - it's a matter of how much work it takes to use the few features most people need.

Most people will find a retail app superior if 10% of the features are more accessible and simpler to use. Everyone really likes 'free-as-in-beer', but given the choice between a free app that takes hours to learn, and a retail app that doesn't, they'll be happy to pay a reasonable price.

Personal time is worth a lot of money - and most people have better things to do with their time than learning some obscure application they have to use once a month - just because the Linux geek community is convinced that learning more about computers is some form of self-improvement.

Users are (and should be) as willing to deal with config files and macros as they'd be with directing the fryer's settings when ordering food at McDonalds. Few Linux apps seem to understand this.

Linux will not be 'desktop ready' until saying RTFM is taboo, rather than a point geek pride.

Re:DOS

[Sillygates]

Was DOS ready for the desktop? Yes it was. Compared to other solutions at the time, it was easy to use, relatively consistent, and stable (though this one would have been hard to mess up).

Re:DOS

[wereHamster]

Xinerama, for instance, doesn't support 3D on both monitors, TwinView does, but then you don't get the "xinerama aware" benefits, etc.. Windows is rock solid and bone simple in this regard. The nvidia driver can (and does by default IIRC) export Xinerama info for TwinView configurations. And btw, Xinerama should die, long live XRandR 1.2 :)

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

An Ubuntu install takes 10 minutes. If that is difficult for you, I don't know what to say. Put in your name and password, then hit next.

Hell, even Google doesn't make its applications available on Linux. I mean, to me it is a question of convenience. Until such time that I can get these applications without having to jump through hoops, Linux is still not ready for the desktop.

Google Earth is available for Linux, as is Picasa.

If you need advanced features of MS Office, then it sounds like YOU need MS Office. The 99.99% of the rest of home users do not need Office, or Excel macros, etc.

This is the same for say, graphic artists who need photoshop. There is not a replacement in the pro world. That does not instantly mean that 'Linux sucks!'

Applications are a chicken and egg thing with Linux. If the software developers see a large base of users and potential $$$$, then they will make the apps. Until then people like you will continue to bash Linux.

Every OS has its pros and cons. Have you scanned for viruses today, or paid $79 to update your yearly Norton 360 subscription today? :) Don't forget to scan for spyware too. (You get my point).

Re:DOS

[Bodrius]

Honestly, does the average person really need photoshop?

That's a very good point: no, they don't. And recently, I'd bet they don't use/buy Photoshop (the full product) either.

But they'd be more likely to use simpler alternatives than the GIMP... such as Photoshop Elements or Picasa, or even web alternatives like Photoshop Express, etc.

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

The day I can install Ubuntu (or any flavor of Linux), without having to worry about spending half a week configuring it...

When is the last time you installed Windows from scratch from a Windows install disc? That process can take a couple of days, if not more after you add in updates and drivers.

I don't understand what people like you think Linux should 'magically' work from an install disc, where as Windows has never been this way (only OEM pre-install discs). For an OS install from a disc to usable desktop, Linux is far easier than the pain of reinstalling Windows.

Re:DOS

[Swampash]

I never cease to be amazed at how often I execute "dir /b > foo.txt" under Windows.

Re:DOS

[FrankieBaby1986]

As for GIMP, the last time I used it, it still didn't have any easy way to draw Ovals/Circles and Rectangles/Squares, something that even the most basic of image editors (MS Paint) has.

MS Paint is NOT an image editor. It is a drawing tool. This is why is has a few simple brushes, shapes and thats it. You can use OpenOffice.org Draw for this functionality and more, as well as being able to adjust and re-arrange the shapes you draw.

The GIMP is meant for image editing, where drawing arbitrary shapes is less likely to be your goal.

Re:DOS

[williamgrant]

I thought my three outputs (internal LCD, VGA and TV) worked fine after a few clicks in System->Preferences->Screen Resolution. I must have been imagining those images. Thanks for telling me I was hallucinating. The NVIDIA binary driver doesn't yet support this (RandR 1.2), but I believe most of the rest do.

Re:DOS

[kklein]

I'm sorry, but you're just plain wrong. I've been doing basic tech consulting for years, and about the only CLI thing I do in Windows is ipconfig. Why? Because what is usually wrong with a Windows machine?

• Spyware/viruses
• Bloated registry
• Something that you could look for for a day, or just reinstall the image and apply updates in a couple hours

Of course, to really get in and fix Windows, you might need the CLI, but there are far better uses of your time.

On the other hand, on every Ubuntu install I've done, I've had to go edit conf files. I've had to sudo something. I've had to do the things that my mom and dad absolutely could not do and wouldn't even know to think about doing.

And that's what people mean when they say Linux isn't ready for the desktop.

Before I get the typical Slashdot response of "WHY DON'T SANY ONE WANT TO LEARN SOMETHING OMG!!!! REATARDS!!!!" let me say this: I can hand my mom or dad a Windows machine or a Mac, and they can happily install things, uninstall things, and run their business without ever even knowing that the CLI still exists. Why should they feel compelled to learn some arcane gibberish when they don't have to? Do you buy butter at the store, or do you churn your own? Do you know how? Why not? Don't you want to learn anything?

I know what you're saying, and I've been on the CLI a lot more since I switched to Mac (where the CLI makes more sense to me and uses commands that I actually remember), but the point of Windows and the Mac is that you never actually need to use the CLI. That makes them "ready for the desktop."

Re:DOS

[msuarezalvarez]

Since I'm required to use RTF at work, opening, editing, closing, and reopening to see if OO.o fucked up the RTF formatting again isn't an option. I'm not paid to waste time.

Well, you apparently are paid to work on a proprietary format (the myth that RTF is an open spec is only spread by those who have never tried to implement it, or by MS) I find it not surprising that applications developed without access to the required information to deal with that format cannot deal with that format in a perfect way...

What you need is not a word processor: you need a word processor which can do RTF according to the (non-existent) spec. Well, do not complain that OOo does not do that just as you do not complain that the GIMP is not good at saving RTF...

Re:DOS

[msuarezalvarez]

In the name of $DEITY, please get a distro which ships a Xorg server less that 5 years old: any such server can run with an empty xorg.conf file on 95% of configurations.

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it wasn't, but (a) there wasn't really a dominant competitor in those days, (b) it was backwards-compatible with CP/M, and (c) IBM made a really lousy business deal to ship it on a metric ass-ton of hardware.

If Microsoft dropped to 35% market share, Linux offered complete backwards-compatibility with Windows, and Steve Jobs agreed to switch all Macs to Linux, you can bet Linux would explode overnight. For better or worse, though, these conditions just aren't going to happen again. The success of DOS is a neat historical event, but not a ruler for determining future success.

Re:DOS

[dave420]

I doubt people will settle for "good enough" when they can get the best apps on the market for Windows. Asking for people to accept second-best when they don't give two hoots about the free aspect of linux is unreasonable, to say the least. The use of linux shouldn't be qualified. It should be able to stand on its own two feet and beat Windows at its own game - not ask for the rules to be changed to give it a better chance.

Re:DOS

[Myrddin Wyllt]

Does it have a "remove scratches button"?

No, of course not. It has a "Remove Clicks" button.

Audacity is a very capable app, but doing simple stuff on it is pretty straightforward. (I'm sure my dad could do it)

My point with CDs was that this is BETTER in linux than in Windows. (You never mentioned ripping CDs BTW, only burning them; try re-reading your post)

I am sure there are a million reasons why people don't switch to linux, I was just pointing out that audio file manipulation shouldn't be one of them; if anything it's something linux does better.

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

No it isn't! it's fucking up the way people write, and in many, many situations it's downright misleading.

Re:DOS

[man_of_mr_e]

I've not used RandR 1.2, and if it fixes things, great, but that doesn't change the fact that for many years multiple monitors have been a mess. I fully agree that Linux has come a long way, and each little fix that makes the system more cohesive is welcomed. But there's a lot of those little gotchas still floating around.

Re:DOS

[Facetious]

...got [sic] to the display properties page, select the monitor and click "extend my desktop to this monitor"

I guess you've missed my point. I know very few users who would dare install a second monitor on any system, and fewer still who would dare do what you've just described.

Re:DOS

[gparent]

Shift-click instead of Ctrl-Click? :rolleyes:

Re:DOS

[gparent]

It takes just about 20 minutes to reinstall windows once I get done saving my files. I'd rather do that than waste hours looking on google to try and fix what's going on.

Re:DOS

[martin-boundary]

Not necessarily. Language is infinitely more versatile than gestures.

Speaking to a computer is a horrendously inefficient means of doing a lot of tasks, some of them quite common,

Of course, since we don't actually have systems for speaking with computers, we have systems which convert spoken keywords to keyboard or mouse input. Cut out the middle man etc.

What I'm talking about is natural language processing, either aloud into a microphone, of if you want quiet, typing into a chat window.

Anything involving the creation or editing of graphics, selecting of text, choosing a link to follow, etc. is almost always quicker and easier to do with a GUI than speech.

Quite the opposite. Editing graphics is a very low level operation at this point, whereas in a natural language interface the idea is to communicate in higher level abstractions. Don't imagine telling the computer "set the pixel at position 2005,789 to red", imagine "sharpen the image a bit", "cut out a silhouette". The target abstraction level is talking as if with another artist.

Selecting text is again a low level operation. You never select text for its own sake, you select text to do something with or to it. In a natural language interface, you would express what you want to do, and the fact that text is being selected would be automatic and incidental.

Finally, following individual links is also quite low level. Why is google so popular? Because you don't have to follow a link, you type in what you want instead.

I don't know if you remember the portal craze of the late 1990s, but the idea then was to follow links. You would have a single homepage set to Yahoo or some other now defunct company, and you'd find a link of interest and follow that, then find some other link etc. It's too limiting and low level, it's much easier to simply type an approximate destination into a search engine, as you would tell a person what you want.

In a natural language interface, links on a page would be grouped and catalogued into higher level destinations which you would choose or interact with. You wouldn't point and click, you would first ask which links give more information about XXX, then tell the computer to display only one, some, or all, or not even display them but do something else with their contents, etc.

All of these things depend on having languages with enough grammatical structure to express abstractions and relations between abstractions. And for that, the CLI is the first step.

Re:DOS

[Ice Station Zebra]

Funny, I bought a note book for my daughter and Vista came with ZERO applications. I installed Ubuntu and it automatically installed a complete Office Suite, an image editor good enough to do what she wanted and lots of games. No, extra cash outlay, extra trips to the computer store, or hours of feeding CDs to the machine. So tell me again why I would want this Microsoft Vista? As far as I can tell it does nothing.

Re:DOS

[lena_10326]

particularly on obtuse commands like "scan for anomalies".

How do you know the verbal instructions are free form? Maybe there's a syntax that's a limited sub-set of English. Maybe "scan for anomalies" translates into a SQL select statement that iterates rows in a database, analyzes the columns based on data type, and then selects records falling outside of standard deviation.

I don't recall Star Trek ever addressing how the voice interpretation works. On STNG, they often repeat the same commands "Computer, Earl Grey, hot". How do you know Picard didn't program that in on his first day?

Re:DOS

[martin-boundary]

Let me ask you this: when drawing something on a whiteboard, do you speak? Does the audience for whom you draw the ideas speak to you? Is it all happening in silence with no further communication? Of course not.

Drawing on a whiteboard is an aid to communication, but isn't the actual communication and usually cannot stand on its own. If you're not convinced, think about when you enter somebody's office and see their scribbles on their own whiteboard. Do you know from a glance what the conversation was about, and what was said? No, because the whiteboard scribbles are merely communication aids, incidental images which are designed to support the spoken word.

My point wasn't to propose speaking as an alternative to typing, my point was that pointing and clicking is a dead end compared with grammatical sentences. Whether you type those in like in a chat window, or whether you speak them to your computer directly is incidental - it's still text communication similar to a supercharged CLI. It's not GUI communication where you point at things, then point at other things, then point at some more and finally construct a command.

GUIs are the equivalent of babytalk - a tiny handful of possible operations which must be used to do everything - great to get people to use computers the first time, but much too limiting to be used by adults who prefer more sophisticated languages.

Re:DOS

[JonathanBoyd]

Not necessarily. Language is infinitely more versatile than gestures.

It's also slow and imprecise.

What I'm talking about is natural language processing, either aloud into a microphone, of if you want quiet, typing into a chat window.

You're not seriously suggesting typing what you want to say to a computer so that it interprets what you've typed as if you've said it to it, are you?

Quite the opposite. Editing graphics is a very low level operation at this point, whereas in a natural language interface the idea is to communicate in higher level abstractions. Don't imagine telling the computer "set the pixel at position 2005,789 to red", imagine "sharpen the image a bit", "cut out a silhouette". The target abstraction level is talking as if with another artist.

Firstly you just severely limited what people can do. secondly, I want precision in my editing, not for some AI to try and interpret what I want. That's a recipe for slowness, imprecision and frustration. Think about it like this: if an artist wants to draw something, do they pick up a pencil, or do they tell someone else to pick up a pencil and give them instructions? Or imagine adjusting a hue by dragging a slider. Subtle movements with a mouse are infinitely better than 'left a bit, right a bit, left a bit' ad infinitum. What you suggest might be fine for a simple consumer-oriented app designed for doing simple rough edits, but would be totally inappropriate for anything more advanced.

Selecting text is again a low level operation. You never select text for its own sake, you select text to do something with or to it. In a natural language interface, you would express what you want to do, and the fact that text is being selected would be automatic and incidental.

But selecting and copying/italicising/whatever is still quicker with a mouse than with voice because explaining which bit you want to change takes time. Natural language sucks for speed outside of certain specialised situations.

Finally, following individual links is also quite low level. Why is google so popular? Because you don't have to follow a link, you type in what you want instead.

When you're at a site, you typically have more links to follow and these links are more quickly selectable with a mouse (or touch) than voice.

In a natural language interface, links on a page would be grouped and catalogued into higher level destinations which you would choose or interact with. You wouldn't point and click, you would first ask which links give more information about XXX, then tell the computer to display only one, some, or all, or not even display them but do something else with their contents, etc.

It sounds like you're enforcing a very slow interface and method of interfacing on everyone. I completely fail to see how this is remotely advantageous to anyone except the handicapped.

All of these things depend on having languages with enough grammatical structure to express abstractions and relations between abstractions. And for that, the CLI is the first step.

None of this addresses the fundamental problems of speed and inappropriateness for many contexts due to noise/effort required. Make computers telepathic and maybe your ideas would start to work. Maybe it would be better to keep an eye on research into methods of control by monitoring the brain. IIRC, some good work has been done allowing severely handicapped people to have limited control over a word processor, allowing them to interact with the world. Give it a couple of decades more research and maybe something useful for the rest of us will appear.

Re:DOS

[JonathanBoyd]

GUIs are the equivalent of babytalk - a tiny handful of possible operations which must be used to do everything - great to get people to use computers the first time, but much too limiting to be used by adults who prefer more sophisticated languages.

That's a preposterous blanket statement. Different interfaces are appropriate for different activities. Voice command is certainly not the superior 'sophisticated' solution to all situations and isn't inherently more flexible than the current GUI+CLI combo. You wouldn't expect someone to compose a concerto by speaking instructions to someone else at the piano and neither would you expect a photographer to take a photo by giving instructions to someone else who has the camera. There are plenty of activities where you need the instant response a GUI provides rather than waiting for sufficient words to be spoken to provide the context and precision necessary.

Speech is superior or at least competitive/useful for some operations, but does not relegate GUIs to being babytalk.

Re:DOS

[nomadic]

In the name of $DEITY, please get a distro which ships a Xorg server less that 5 years old: any such server can run with an empty xorg.conf file on 95% of configurations.

Sure--running a vesa driver. Try an accelerated graphics card over DVI into an LCD TV and suddenly it gets all flakey.

Re:DOS

[martin-boundary]

How is the piano's interface a GUI? Last time I checked, a piano had a lot of keys and no graphical display to interact with.

Photography has an analog interface, unless you're talking about digital cameras with a heads up type information display?

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

using netsh commands to enable promiscuous mode on your wireless adapter. baddda bum....

don't get me started...

Re:DOS

[JonathanBoyd]

They were analogies demonstrating that sometimes we need to interact with things in a manner which is superior to what speech allows. Similar instances exist in computing where the instant input and control a GUI offers is vastly preferable to cumbersome speech. In another comment, you suggested that speech was superior for graphical work because you could give a command and have it interpreted rather than clicking on pixel (x,y), but there are times when you do want to deal with the nitty gritty and there speech becomes the slow, cumbersome approach. Making touch-screens more common would be a lot more useful than voice command and even there it's only as an accessory to keyboard+mouse for most situations.

Re:DOS

[msuarezalvarez]

Well: why did you buy hardware from a maker who does not consider making it usable for you important? I do not do that, and have not had trouble in about 10 years.

Re:DOS

[martin-boundary]

You're not seriously suggesting typing what you want to say to a computer so that it interprets what you've typed as if you've said it to it, are you?

That's exactly what I'm suggesting.

communicate in higher level abstractions. Don't imagine telling the computer "set the pixel at position 2005,789 to red", imagine "sharpen the image a bit", "cut out a silhouette". The target abstraction level is talking as if with another artist.

Firstly you just severely limited what people can do. secondly, I want precision in my editing, not for some AI to try and interpret what I want.

Yet when you want something done for which you do not have the expertise or that you must delegate, you trust a human to try and interpret what you want. Think of a computer program as a domain expert. That's where things are heading.

Think about it like this: if an artist wants to draw something, do they pick up a pencil, or do they tell someone else to pick up a pencil and give them instructions?

It depends entirely on the situation. There's no communication if the artist is alone in a room doing a pencil sketch. There is communication if he's working with others to produce artworks.

For example, a comic book artist might draw the main characters in certain scenes, and communicate with another artist who fills in the background and minor characters, another who does the colouring, another who does the words. Think of telling a program to fill in the background, another program to colour the panels, etc.

What you suggest might be fine for a simple consumer-oriented app designed for doing simple rough edits, but would be totally inappropriate for anything more advanced.

You're thinking too much in terms of existing GUI limitations. The difference between a consumer app and a professional app has to do with doing well defined specialized tasks, which are often described by a technical vocabulary that consumers don't know even exists. Yet if the vocabulary is there, it means that the abstraction exists, and therefore can be referred to in a command. So imagine "talking" to an application with a domain specific vocabulary, ie using words that a professional would immediately understand but a consumer has no idea what it means.

Adjusting hues is an optimization problem, which by the way if the artist does it by hand will depend on the characteristics of his monitor - a bad idea. At the very least, he'd want to see the final print in a good light, which suggests optimizing for the characteristics of the output device rather than the graphical display device. The point is that this can be expressed in a domain specific vocabulary, think of the sentences used by two artists discussing the characteristics of a work in progress.

But selecting and copying/italicising/whatever is still quicker with a mouse than with voice because explaining which bit you want to change takes time. Natural language sucks for speed outside of certain specialised situations.

But my point was that selecting is a means, not an end. You can use language to describe the end, and the computer can do the means.

Take a system like LaTeX, where the italicising/whatever is not done by you. Instead, you describe what you want at a higher level: what kind of article or book style, do you want a figure or table close to the reference point, or always at the top of a page, etc. LaTeX is far from a natural language interface, but it shows the possibilities with higher level instructions. Meanwhile, you're talking about selecting sets of characters, and making direct changes one selection at a time.

When you're at a site, you typically have more links to follow and these links are more quickly selectable wi

Re:DOS

[sjames]

It's a good thing Windows is so friendly and intuitive to use. Why would anyone want to edit text file configs in Linux when they can just locate the key "jknb31r289cjk1289" and change it (obviously) to "9889cfjk12q9fcvfd"

Re:DOS

[sjames]

And there are still scores of Windows users who couldn't install their own WiFi drivers, configure their own wireless network or install extra codecs themselves either.

And plenty more who happily installed the "special" codecs with a side-order of spyware so they could view the various porn spam.

Re:DOS

[Techman83]

Fixing weird dhcp and network stack issues
netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317518 and Yes I have had to do this one on numerous occasions as re-installing just because a machine wouldn't get DHCP would have been a PITA.

How about trouble shooting the firewall? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875357

The CLI is a good thing and it allows very powerful troubleshooting and easy ways to remotely configure things, sure the end user shouldn't have to use them all the time, but I get our end users using the CLI to help troubleshoot problems so I can tell them what is wrong with their machine. Hell even MS is touting the "NEW" command line functionality in Server 2008 and from what I have seen managed to munt things in the process.

The difference between windows and Linux now days is that Linux is a command line environment with GUI's that interface with it, meaning that anything you can do with a GUI, can be done via the command line. Where as Windows is a GUI with some CLI tools. So basically everything has to be done with the GUI or some very very crafty VB scripting (which can get real messy, real fast).

If I could convince more of my friends to use Linux, it would be far simpler for me to support them, not because I know linux better (Honestly my Windows Knowledge and Linux knowledge are about on par, probably a little stronger in the windows department... excluding vista)

Re:DOS

[martin-boundary]

They were analogies demonstrating that sometimes we need to interact with things in a manner which is superior to what speech allows.

Of course I agree with you, although we ought to stay within the realm of computer interaction.

Similar instances exist in computing where the instant input and control a GUI offers is vastly preferable to cumbersome speech.

I think you're conflating instant feedback with the GUI. Feedback is important to know that the computer is doing roughly what you think it should be doing. If it looks like it's not doing that, you have a chance to stop the task. This sort of feedback already exist in GUIs and in CLIs.

One difference is that in CLI interaction, programs often have a 'verbose' switch so that you can turn on/off the feedback. This is typically used when doing several things in a script. The GUI equivalent would be this: you create a script with a lot of steps, eg opening some windows, moving them about, selecting various menu items, saving files, then closing all the windows again.

If the GUI showed you the script with feedback, you'd see all the windows opening, menus opening and closing, items selected and progress bars displaying all by themselves, until the script is finished. This kind of distraction would probably be hidden by asking the GUI to NOT show feedback.

offers is vastly preferable to cumbersome speech. In another comment, you suggested that speech was superior for graphical work because you could give a command and have it interpreted rather than clicking on pixel (x,y), but there are times when you do want to deal with the nitty gritty and there speech becomes the slow, cumbersome approach.

But that's a question of the proper abstraction level. A GUI has only one abstraction level, point to an object and click. All tasks using a GUI must be decomposed until they can be described by a sequence of point and click. Language has the ability to create new abstractions on demand.

How do you edit 50 pictures to make them black and white, for example? In a GUI, you have to point and click to open a file, point and click to change the colours, point and click to save the file, and this must be repeated 50 times. The only commands allowed are point and click, with the order being used implicitly to specify the context.

In a CLI, you write a script that edits a single picture to make it black and white. Then, you have a higher level of abstraction, namely a command that "turns a picture black and white". After that, you can use the higher abstraction as a building block for even higher abstractions. You can have a script that loops the "turn a picture black and white" command 50 times. This is much closer to the natural language equivalent of "here's how to make an image black and white, now do this for all 50 images".

That's why I'm saying GUI is baby talk. It never goes beyond point, click, point, click, point, click, etc. It has no ability for abstraction.

Re:DOS

[nomadic]

Well: why did you buy hardware from a maker who does not consider making it usable for you important? I do not do that, and have not had trouble in about 10 years.

The hardware manufacturer is ATI, which makes a linux driver available. I also tried the open source fglx driver. Neither one of them worked right when installed. This is the problem, if you buy vanilla hardware and don't really care about performance then yes, graphics usually work out of the box. But if you have any sort of slightly different setup it frequently won't work without significant tweaking, and if you haven't had trouble in about 10 years then you're either very lucky or satisfied with the bare minimum of graphics performance.

Re:DOS

[msuarezalvarez]

So is ATI hardware ready for the desktop? Apparently they cannot write a working driver... and not only they have the specs: they wrote the specs!

Re:DOS

[Ullteppe]

Not necessarily true. If you look at sophisticated GUI programs, you will see that there are ways to "script" without having to write code. The example you use is possible in Photoshop or IrfanView without writing a line of code.

As to the superiority of text, I think this is a preconception programmers often have. For programming, I agree that text is hugely superior to any "graphical" programming tool that has been created - LabView etc. is really only only suited to those who haven't spent the time to learn traditional programming.

However, there are other tasks which are by nature suited to a graphical interface - for example drawing and photo editing (Photoshop), and music creation (Cubase). In these environments, being restricted to text input would be a huge step backwards. You have abstactions in the graphical realm too - look at the use of folders in a file manager, or the use of tracks->groups->notes in a music application. I would make the case that a graphical approach is superior when manipulating objects directly, while text input is best for more abstract usage.

Re:DOS

[Bohabo]

Look up an app called ExplorerXP, it's rather good with mass file renaming.

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a reason for this - if Vista came with any applications, people like YOU would be crying "anti-trust!" within seconds. You claim you expect the OS to come with applications, but what you really mean is you expect any non-Microsoft OS to come with applications.

Now watch, I expect at most one hour until the first "Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, they're held to different rules" response. Which roughly translates to "I don't think Microsoft should be allowed to compete on a level playing field. I demand laws to enforce my OS of choice on people who don't want it!" (*cough* twitter *cough*)

Re:DOS

[mysticgoat]

I have also found that insulting people really helps to get them to listen to the details of my arguments.

Oh, you silly thing, you! Your point is exactly why you should wait until after presenting your argument to deliver the insults!

Then of course always finish with a nice rational summation. Those who would agree with you anyway will still be on your side; some of those who hadn't made up their minds might be swayed by either argument or witticism or both; those who would disagree with you no matter what you said might be provoked into an angry or childish response and start throwing chairs. And as everyone on slashdot now knows, throwing a chair is not a very good rebuttal.

Re:DOS

[dave87656]

Before anyone says "but ubuntu already does this", the problem is that currently you have no choice but to learn the CLI in order to accomplish anything but basic user tasks That is no longer true and hasn't been true for the last 3 or 4 years. I do all of my administrative tasks via a gui interface on Ubuntu.
 
In fact, some things can also be done via Web-browser, something MS hasn't caught on to yet. The beauty of the Web-browser is that you have the same comfort when you remotely administer a machine

The fact is, you have a CLI option, if you like that, but anything you need to do to use the PC can be done via GUI.

And don't forget, that editing the registry on a Windows box makes the Unix/Linux CLI look like child's play.

Re:DOS

[dave87656]

It's a good thing Windows is so friendly and intuitive to use. Why would anyone want to edit text file configs in Linux when they can just locate the key "jknb31r289cjk1289" and change it (obviously) to "9889cfjk12q9fcvfd"

Excellent!

Re:DOS

[martin-boundary]

You have abstactions in the graphical realm too - look at the use of folders in a file manager, or the use of tracks-> groups->notes in a music application. I would make the case that a graphical approach is superior when manipulating objects directly, while text input is best for more abstract usage.

In a certain sense, these abstractions are "fixed", though. Language lets us create abstractions for things nobody thought of. The photoshop solution for manipulating 50 files is something the programmers had to think of putting in, either by themselves or after customers told them it would be great to have, it's not something _users_ decided to create independently through using the GUI. By contrast, the scripting example I gave was supposed to show how _users_ create new abstractions in the CLI when it makes sense for _them_.

I would make the case that a graphical approach is superior when manipulating objects directly, while text input is best for more abstract usage.

Another reason for using language is precision. It's hard to get things exactly right repeatedly and consistently. Humans aren't robots. If you're drawing circles on a sheet of paper by hand, you'll never get them right consistently, all the time. If you're _describing_ what it is you're doing to draw a circle, then you can look at the description and fix flaws in it.

In Photoshop, you'd be using the undo button to fix flaws in execution (eg the mouse overwriting some pixels), but in the next image you manipulate, such execution flaws can still appear. And if you have to do a third image two weeks later when you've forgotten how you built the first two images, you'll have difficulty making all the steps exactly right without using the undo button yet again.

The answer of course is to keep a journal with details of what you've done, but that's using language to supplement the deficiencies of straight manipulation, no? Might be easier to make the work follow the journal instead of vice versa :)

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'm not sure what problems you see with OpenOffice

1) I'm not the same person, but I've found OpenOffice to be a very slow and bloated java monster (ever tried to open multiple *big* documents..?). I prefer Gnumeric which is very fast and mature.

2) I personally don't use VBA macros and pivot tables, but if you really need those, you're going to have trouble with OpenOffice. OpenOffice does support them, but poorly (other macro languages than VBA might work fine - I don't have experience). These features are really important for the MS Office power users. The lack of good support of those features is keeping those Windows users from switching their OS.

> more apps become web-deployed, desktop apps become less and less important

This is true. And for me personally, this is absolutely true. I'm a very happy linux user.

But there are power users of those Windows apps. For them, having equivalent apps or not is *the* question.

Re:DOS

[msromike]

Ridiculous. The vast majority of Windows users have never used a command prompt, and they never will. Since the vast majority of users have never used it that means it is not required, indispensable or needed for the average user.

More rationalization. You want to know why Linux will never be ready for the desktop? Because, the people who use, develop, promote Linux, have the same mindset as the last two posters (insightful as they are.)

Instead of keying in on the strengths of Windows (ie not needing the CLI) just keep focusing on it's weaknesses. If that doesn't work turn one of it's strengths into a weakness during discussion. That will get Linux ready for the average Windows user to migrate to.

Now name me one thing that the average Windows users need to use the CLI for. While you are at it make a list of your top 10 Linux apps and compare them to my top Apps. Which do you think interests the average user more.

Outlook 2007 and/or
Office 2007
Money 2008
Quickbooks
Turbo Tax
Rome Total War
Call of Duty 4
Picasa2
Music IP Mixer
Cyberlink Power DVD
Azeureus
AI Roboform

Linux is free. That's a plus for a very few people. Most people expect to pay for things that work well for them. I don't care how bulletproof Linux is (which it was after I spent a week tweaking the damn thing after doing endless research in amateur supported forums,) if you can't run fun, easy to use, mainstream apps on it then it doesn't matter.

When something breaks I sometimes I want to figure it out. Other times I want to whip out a credit card and talk to someone in India and get it sorted out. One thing about Microsoft support, you get your money back if it is their fault or if they can't get it fixed.

Anyway, this could go on for ever. Start with what I wrote above. When you get that all that working the way the vast majority of people expect, Linux will be ready for the desktop.

Re:DOS

[msromike]

The average user does not mass rename files. The average user does not start and dtop service from CLI or from the GUI snap in. The average person doesn't copy files much, they occaisonally drap smething to their USB key or burn a CD or DVD. And even if they did do any of these (withg the exception of a mass file rename) the GUI is just as good.

Next!

Re:DOS

[msromike]

Wrong. OpenOffice does not open the latest Microsoft Office files. Interoperability is a huge issue for the average user.

Next!

Re:DOS

[Atlantis-Rising]

I think you're really missing the point.

With a good slipstreamed install image, 'repairing' any system is basically as quick as the time it takes to copy the image over onto the hard disk- minutes to an hour at most.

Diagnostics is a hit and miss thing; if you know what the problem is, maybe you can fix it faster. Of course, you have to FIND the problem first, and that's tricky.

Moreover, with an image install, you don't actually have to do anything- there's probably five minutes worth of actual work, which involves in the worst case putting in a CD/DVD and pressing the button.

Diagnostics may be faster in the best case, but it's never easier.

Re:DOS

[msromike]

More crap.

Average user is not doing what you said. Average user is reinstalling on top and most of the time everything will be just like he left it before the reinstall.

Re:DOS

[weicco]

Point taken. But I've never mass renamed files. I can see that if someone downloads a heck load of MP3s from P2P and want's to rename all those files to be more appropriate but I, personally, would write a small C#.NET program or PowerShell script for it :)

Normal user, as others mentioned, aren't even supposed to know about Windows Services. Program installers and configurators should do all the necessary service configuration stuff. If not, those are lousy programs written by lazy developers and this isn't Operating System related issue at all.

Interface that locks up is a bitch! Program is doing something lengthy non-asynchronously and blocking Windows from refreshing the UI. This is very bad behavior and program's designer(s) should be shot at noon. Luckily Vista alleviates this a bit.

Re:DOS

[mgblst]

Yeah. I have NEVER EVER EVER had to go into the CLI either, except for those times that I have had to.

As you say, ipconfig is a good one. There used to be only dos tools for telnet, ftp, and ssh. There is also running .reg to add stuff to the registry. chkdsk for a quick disk check. Then there is the net commands, Net Start w3svc to start the webserver. iisreset to reset the webserver. And a lot more.

Re:DOS

[LaurensVH]

I don't understand why finding, downloading and installing WinRAR is harder than: apt-cache search kde archive software sudo apt-get install ark ... considering both actions can be trivially done by a GUI package manager app. Problem with Windows is that you have to "know" which one of the 20,000 programs, which aren't even managed in a package repository, does what you need done. There's a lot of good Win* software out there, and there's a helluva lot of crap you wouldn't want on your PC (don't say "yeah, windows", that's too easy ;-)) -- how do you differentiate between the two?

Re:DOS

[celtic_hackr]

OOo checks grammar also, but you have to use one of those programmable object API extensions that it supposedly, according to you, doesn't have. Not sure about the Table drawing bit. Sounds a bit like CAD to me. OOo supports all kinds of table support. And no Word doesn't handle multiple indexes properly. Oh yes you can have multiple indexes, but there are severe limitations to it. Word can't handle my document, it can't handle multiple separately automatic updateable indexes. Sorry, you're wrong (as your own link proves) on this and it hasn't been there for "years" (2008 - 2007 LT 2 years), and you have to manually edit every index entry you make to set which index it goes to. Word doesn't really start fast, it loads pieces when the OS loads and loads more in the background when you launch it. So yeah OOo could do this too, if Microsoft opened up the protocols and such. So, Word may start "fast" but only by anti-competitive and improper Monopolistic behavior. I won't give you that one, because it's not a fair comparison and a cheat and a lie (on MS's part). OOo also has a programmable object model and automation API. So you pointed to two (I'm giving you the table one because I don't know for sure what you're talking about, although I'm betting OOo can do this too), but you didn't even try for one in OOo, but then you seem to be a bit prejudiced, and accusatory (pre-judging me without any knowledge of me whatsoever). Oh and I wouldn't exactly brag about Word's grammar checking, it's wrong more times than it is correct. The fact that I can catch this is not a good sign, since English grammar was always my poorest subject (mostly Bs). So for another such as OOo can open almost any document format and certainly more than Word. I can read Word documents in OOo but the reverse isn't true. Frame layout is another feature that Word can't do. Word doesn't allow the editing of lists except for the predetermined set given you. Headers and footers in Word are very limited compared to OOo. Master documents in Word are notorious for crashing Word and the sub-documents. This is not the case in OOo. These are just things off the top of my head and I'm no major Word and OOo geek. OOo is far better at many things than Word is, just because Word has a feature doesn't mean it works or is usable either. I didn't mention any of this before, and also I've not really used Word 2007, which I has some significant improvements which I used to compare against OOo, but still leaves much to be desired. Not that OOo is all that either. I've put in requests for things that were lacking. Like a nice search tool that allows true regex ability, and surprise they've actually implemented it, but then a number of other people wanted it too. Still there are things the OOo could do much better.

So, yea, you found a couple of things that OOo might not do and I'm questionable on the Table thing. I doubt there is anything that Word can do with tables that OOo can't. Unless you're talking about that wizardlike thing with Word for creating complex tables. Just because OOo didn't create a spiffy tool doesn't mean you can't do it.

Also, I use the Word Automation API, and it's a constant pain to maintain - however it means work for me, but an inconvenience to my clients.

But there are lots of other things that Word just can't do that Writer can, and by that I mean those little things in features that they both have, like working Master documents and seamless multiple indexing, and ability to alter formats in TOCs. Word has better bibliography support and there are some things that Word does better, but mostly it the other way around. And if you would give them both an equal playing field and an objective test you'd see this. Oh and in parting, OOo 3.0 is going to blow the doors off of Word in abilities and maturity. As far as I know Word can't read in PDFs, and Writer 3,0 will. Although I'm not sure how good it will be, it still sounds a bit too alpha to me. So maybe I shouldn't brag on that one just yet. It'll be a nice feature though. I doubt Word will ever support that. It is after all a competing format.

Re:DOS

[grm_wnr]

Regular users don't need to rename several thousand files. Seriously.

Also, what it really comes down to is a thing said further up; Linux is about as usable as Windows these days, give or take a little at certain points, but for laypersons even Windows is HARD. They took more than 10 years to learn something alien and foreign to them, a huge investement. THAT is the reason Linux isn't taking the desktop by storm. To be competitive, it doesn't have to be as good as Windows, it has to be obviously and significantly better.

Re:DOS

[grm_wnr]

Net Start w3svc to start the webserver. iisreset to reset the webserver And of course, millions of home users DO THIS EVERY DAY and are just waiting for Linux to make it easier? Talk about power users not understanding what "the desktop" is all about.

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe people should try some of this free alternative software before saying that the windows equivalents are any better. sure i've been using linux for years and totally dumped windows at home so i'm absolutely comfortable with cli and other linux type stuff but honestly, its not just the window managers, some software in linux puts windows software to shame
and that includes the usability areas
when's the last time you tried mastering a cd/dvd with any windows program and then tried to do the same thing with k3b?
thats a perfect example of how misguided peoples opinions are of the freely available software.
and why should i pay $700 for photoshop when i dont use it enough to justify the cost? the gimp does everything i need and is imo very simple to use not to mention any problems with any programs is a simple google search away.
i think people are just lazy and thats ok
desktop preferences are totally personal
i just think that linux has way surpassed the desktop era, and if all you people are hanging onto windows for the games, thats no longer a desktop pc but now a microsoft xbox.. just a toy..

Re:DOS

[Omestes]

I'm not a Mac fanboy (typing this on a Vista laptop, while installing Ubuntu, and listening to music on my Mac Mini media box), but you really should try some of the more modern iterations of OS X. 2002 was 10.2, I think, which was pretty damn bad, but much better than OS 8 or 9. 10.4 is pretty solid, once you get used to it, 10.5 is... not big enough an upgrade to bother spending $150 for (the Vista of Apple). The only beef I have is that you can't really customize it, it does just work, but only in one way.

The various *nix OSs are getting there (with KDE 4, and whatever Gnome is on now), but they still have a hobbiest look to them. And often completely customizing my OS is somewhat a pain. Too many choices can sometimes be a bad thing (ala cognitive dissonance).

Personally I'd put OS X and XP on the same level, followed by Vista, then closely followed by your favorite *nix window manager. Not by a very large spread, though. Since your choice of OS should really meet your needs, and therefore there is no objective standard.

The mini was my main machine until I found a cheap Vista laptop to play with (which is now my internet and work machine), the Mac is better at media (IMO) and thus its the photo, music, and creative work machine. The linux install is (right now) just a toy with aspirations of taking over Vista thanks to a virus experience, and its wonky file permissions.

Re:DOS

[JasterBobaMereel]

Photoshop - could be ported to any operating system and be exactly the same, it happens to have been written for windows, but does not rely on it ...?

Outlook is the front end to Exchange, take away exchange and it is a poor email client with a few extra features and a lot of broken ones, Outlook/Exchange as a combination is a fairly nice corporate messaging system, that happens to to email as one of it's functions... but if you have ever actually managed an exchange server you will know how badly written it is ...and if you have ever had to explain to an outlook/exchange user that, no the user you sent the meeting request to did not see the request because they are outside the exchange system/are running another client/etc ... you know how brittle it is ...

Re:DOS

[grm_wnr]

If Microsoft keeps up what they did in Vista there will be 200 versions of Windows 7 as well. Hint: Everyone hated it, it is NOT A GOOD THING.

Re:DOS

[caluml]

ipv6 install
ipconfig /flushdns
tracert foo.com

Re:DOS

[caluml]

Part of the problem with Linux is that you have to "know" which one of the 20,000 programs in your package manager does what you need done. Part of the problem with Windows is that you have to "know" which one of the 20,000 programs you can download from the internet does what you need done.

Re:DOS

[caluml]

So we're talking about avoiding using the CLI, and you come up with the answer of

I, personally, would write a small C#.NET program or PowerShell script for it You've missed the point somewhat. That's like saying "In order to avoid violence, I will slaughter all those that are aggressive."

Re:DOS

[caluml]

Try renaming all files that match a regular expression *[a-m]*, for example in directories 2 levels down from your current directory.

Re:DOS

[unikuser]

You are comparing apples to oranges here.

Apple had the advantage of ripping of kernel written by some one else(Darwin,Freebsd), which runs on any hardware you throw at it.
Compare that to windows NT, you get kernel/api(win32,win16,dos tsr/ivt...) which suck at everything, which is not very good compared to anything else, which still has to run the same application written in 80-85(dos),90-95(win16) by some dumbhead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_API
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)

Re:DOS

[gronofer]

I think you've touched on the real issue there. Popular Linux builds have themselves been ready for the desktop for years. What is still missing from Linux that Vista has is applications that are ready for typical end users.

I think you have a point, it was exactly the same when I switched to Linux in 1993. Linux was better than Windows 3.1, of course, in all kinds of fundamental ways that most users didn't care about.

It perhaps would have turned out better if RMS had cloned DOS first, and gradually upgraded it to something decent once the world was hooked.

Re:DOS

[Yer Mum]

I meant to say "Unfortunately it's probably fairly difficult to fix." on my last line

What you say may hold true for a fairly old computer but cannot be said to be true for an OS which has been recently installed (or supplied with a new PC).

Certainly Ubuntu's website does make the whole thing sound easy, mention the phrase 'it just works' and they'll even send you the CD. It doesn't mention that you may need to know the ins and outs of Linux, especially on the first or second day.

Given that Ubuntu offers to download the right video driver for you (open or binary), and there's a preferences window for screen settings, the end user is bound to be disappointed to find that after this promising start it doesn't 'just work' after all.

This is not ATI's fault... the driver they provide and Ubuntu find and downloads and installs supposedly does support dual screen and TV out.

This is not the user's fault for not being willing to become a Linux administrator. They've been told they don't need to, and certainly they shouldn't need to do this from the very beginning when it can be assumed the system is in a known clean state.

Nobody's in the wrong (ATI, Ubuntu, or X11, well, possibly X11 because they've had years to make configuration easier and they still haven't managed it) yet when you but the three together something's definitely lacking and the end user must step in to fiddle about with config files. In the end there may not even be a solution.

And this is just one example which tripped one user up right at start.

Re:DOS

[weicco]

You cleverly omitted the ":)" part from the quote.

Re:DOS

[clang_jangle]

You're completely missing the point -- Photoshop isn't free; it can't be ported without Adobe's permission. The quality of Outlook is irrelevant; it's so popular as to be nearly ubiquitous and lots of people feel stuck with it.

Re:DOS

[clang_jangle]

Why? So I can run a potential security breach in the form of a 3rd party GUI app? No thanks!

Re:DOS

[JonathanBoyd]

That's exactly what I'm suggesting.

That's idiotic given the time it would take to enter an appropriate command vs. just doing i yourself with mouse+keyboard/touch.

Yet when you want something done for which you do not have the expertise or that you must delegate, you trust a human to try and interpret what you want. Think of a computer program as a domain expert. That's where things are heading.

No, it's not, because plenty of people using computers have the skills they require and are more efficient at using them than they would be by having the computer interpret it. Remember 'Clippy'? Now imagine every task on your computer being done through Clippy. Horrible thought isn't it? As I said before, voice is useful for some applications, but where someone knows what they're doing, keyboard+mouse is vastly superior. Different interfaces for different tasks, no one interface being the ultimate solution for everything.

It depends entirely on the situation.

Exactly my point. You've been arguing that the GUI is a dead-end and will be replaced by natural language. I'm saying that there are plenty of situations where mouse+keyboard is better than voice, which somewhat disproves what you're saying. And apparently you agree, so you're contradicting yourself.

You're thinking too much in terms of existing GUI limitations. The difference between a consumer app and a professional app has to do with doing well defined specialized tasks, which are often described by a technical vocabulary that consumers don't know even exists. Yet if the vocabulary is there, it means that the abstraction exists, and therefore can be referred to in a command. So imagine "talking" to an application with a domain specific vocabulary, ie using words that a professional would immediately understand but a consumer has no idea what it means.

I'm thinking in terms of the quickest, least frustrating way to do the task. Fundamentally, natural language is pretty much a CLI. Ask an artist if they'd prefer to control Photoshop with a CLI or with mouse+keyboard in a GUI.

But my point was that selecting is a means, not an end. You can use language to describe the end, and the computer can do the means.

I understand your point perfectly well. What you're ignoring - yet again - is that your proposed interface is hideously slow in many situations in comparison to mouse+keyboard because it takes a while to describe what you want the computer to do. The more that you can with natural language, the more description you'll have to give because you have to be more precise about which task exactly you want the computer to do.

Meanwhile, you're talking about selecting sets of characters, and making direct changes one selection at a time.

Which sometimes you want to do.

Have you ever tried lynx, the old text browser? You can have all the links listed at the bottom of the page. Why is that interesting? Because when you decide where to go next, you have a choice of all destinations at a glance instead of underlined words scattered throughout a possibly quite big web page. You're not hunting around in a sea of words, and you can read the page and move on without having to scroll back and search the paragraph with the sentence with the word with the link.

There are good reasons why modern browsers don't do this e.g. you don't know why you want to follow a link until you've seen it in its context. And it's still quicker to select with mouse+keyboard than voice in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Not at all, I'm suggesting higher level navigation through natural language communication, as opposed to repetitive mindless point and click. There's no doubt that pointing and clicking a few times is quick and easy, it's just very limiting compar

Re:DOS

[clang_jangle]

Right I agree that the average user doesn't do anything from the CLI. Which is why we are seeing that almost no one has the skills to fix Windows (or even fine tune it properly), and reinstalling (which teaches a person nothing except the installer) is the norm. If anything in your XP install breaks, it's reinstall time. And lots of users reinstall frequently. Anyway, all you guys claiming no-one ever needs cmd.exe are the same guys who have to call someone who knows cmd.exe to fix your system. Or else you hide your shame by reinstalling in secret. :)

Re:DOS

[JonathanBoyd]

I think you're conflating instant feedback with the GUI.

The input-feedback loop iterates a lot quicker with mouse+keyboard than it does with voice. Say I'm creating a circle of arbitrary size in Photoshop. Do this, I click and drag the mouse, having selected the appropriate tool. It takes a fraction of a second to make a very precise adjustment to the size, allowing to quickly evaluate a range of sizes to see which is appropriate. Doing the same thing by talking to the computer would take significantly longer and be quite frustrating.

But that's a question of the proper abstraction level.

And at a certain level, voice sucks. Really sucks. Which is why the GUI will be around for a long, long, long time - it is vastly superior for certain tasks.

The only commands allowed are point and click, with the order being used implicitly to specify the context.

Not quite try. There are gestures, multi-touch, modifier buttons, multiple buttons that can be clicked, scroll-wheels, etc. Mouse+keyboard/touch is a very powerful interface.

How do you edit 50 pictures to make them black and white, for example? In a GUI, you have to point and click to open a file, point and click to change the colours, point and click to save the file, and this must be repeated 50 times. The only commands allowed are point and click, with the order being used implicitly to specify the context.

I would set up either a Photoshop action or a batch conversion in Graphic Converter. If it was a common task, I could even have an Applescript sitting on the desktop so I just have to drag the files over it to have it all done in the background. Could even set it up in a contextual menu.

In a CLI, you write a script that edits a single picture to make it black and white. Then, you have a higher level of abstraction, namely a command that "turns a picture black and white". After that, you can use the higher abstraction as a building block for even higher abstractions. You can have a script that loops the "turn a picture black and white" command 50 times. This is much closer to the natural language equivalent of "here's how to make an image black and white, now do this for all 50 images".

In some situations this would be a fine way of doing, but not every situation. In fact in most situations I would want to do the conversion manually so I can tweak how much contribution each colour channel makes. This comes down to manipulating sliders until the image looks a way I'm happy with - a task that is much quicker with the mouse than with voice.

That's why I'm saying GUI is baby talk. It never goes beyond point, click, point, click, point, click, etc. It has no ability for abstraction.

You're happy to point out this 'limitation' of mouse+keyboard, so why not accept the fundamental weaknesses of voice and admit that the two interfaces are suited to different tasks, therefore mouse+keyboard will be around for the foreseeable future and will not be entirely supplanted by voice?

Re:DOS

[dbcad7]

My main complaint with most apps on Linux these days is being forced to use a text editor where I shouldn't have to.

Examples ?? ... What apps are forcing you to edit a config file ? .. I have had to mess around with xorg.config some on Debian because of Nvidia drivers, but Ubuntu handles it quite well.. other than that, I haven't had to edit any config files on anything in recent memory... perhaps you are compiling and installing from source ? then I could see it.. and then how many times do you have to do that ?.. most things are in repositories.. so when you say "MOST APPS" I gotta wonder what the heck your doing.

Re:DOS

[mhall119]

There's also KMmail/Kontact and Krita if you're using KDE.

Re:DOS

[mhall119]

You're completely missing the point -- Photoshop isn't free; it can't be ported without Adobe's permission. I think his point was that Adobe could port it to any operating system. Heck, all Adobe would really need to do is help Wine run the latest Windows version, though a native binary would be preferred.

The quality of Outlook is irrelevant; it's so popular as to be nearly ubiquitous and lots of people feel stuck with it. All of the largest businesses I've worked at use Lotus Notes/Domino, not Outlook/Exchange. Lotus now has a native (Eclipse-based) client for Linux.

Re:DOS

[mhall119]

Making a configuration program that writes these text based config files is about the most trivial GUI development task one can imagine. Is it only because it's so easy that no-one wants to do it? There's also the fact that it's usually easier to edit a text based config file than to step through layers of dialogs and wizards to accomplish a simple task.

Re:DOS

[nomadic]

So is ATI hardware ready for the desktop? Apparently they cannot write a working driver... and not only they have the specs: they wrote the specs!

Once I tweaked X11 enough the driver worked fine, so I think it's X.org's fault, not ATI's. Or even Compiz's fault, because it got better once I turned Compiz off. And I would not be surprised if Ubuntu was to blame in some way, a lot of things that worked under Ubuntu 7.10 suddenly stopped working in 8.04.

Re:DOS

[YttriumOxide]

For you and I yes... but for many people, they'd rather have the "layers of dialogs and wizards" (as long as they're well designed of course). The main problem for these people is that the very IDEA of opening one program (a text editor) to change the settings of another program is completely alien and makes no sense to them.

In my more cynical moments, I'm quite happy to simply call these people idiots and say that they need to learn because it's REALLY not that hard, but realistically, they won't. So, if we want them as users (which is another question entirely!), then we need to cater for their needs, no matter how stupid we think those needs are.

Re:DOS

[YttriumOxide]

Examples: Asterisk, Apache, Squid.

Now, you may say "but those are more or less power tools that only a geek would want to set up" - but actually no.

My friend's mother decided to switch to Linux because she heard about Asterisk and thought it would be a great way to get rid of her answering machine and add a whole lot more functionality (call redirection, "answering machine" to email, etc).
She installed Ubuntu on her own and had no problem with any "day to day" apps like Firefox, Thunderbird and so on (which she had already used on Windows previously from my advice). She EXPECTED Asterisk to be just as simple... you can imagine her frustration when she downloaded it and started to take a look!
She still uses Ubuntu though and is pretty happy with it, but she's given up completely on Asterisk and is immediately scared off by anything that tells her that she has to edit a config file to get it going.
The second example is Apache, which she considered since she has a static address from her DSL provider and thought it would be fun to learn HTML and have her very own webpage hosted from her very own computer - just like my Mac does. As soon as I told her she'd have to edit the Apache config files, she immediately gave up on the idea and started looking for hosting services instead.
I'm now somewhat dreading the day she wants her youngest (my friend's little sister) to get online, as I'm sure she's going to want some kind of way to filter certain sites, and unless I'm mistaken, I don't know of any good way to do that without setting up a proxy server such as Squid and doing some more config file editing. (no, I doubt a Firefox plugin is acceptable to her - she'll want to filter the sites from everything, not just one app on one computer! (and maintaining the household computers individually isn't a reasonable expectation either))

I probably was being too unfair when I said "most apps", I'll definitely give you that. Most "day to day" apps do not require editing config files by hand, but as soon as you move away from them to anything even slightly outside the normal realm, it does seem to become pretty common and even the "basic users" are getting more and more savvy, wanting to do more and more advanced things.

Re:DOS

[mhall119]

For you and I yes... but for many people, they'd rather have the "layers of dialogs and wizards" (as long as they're well designed of course). They're used to dialogs and wizards, that doesn't necessarily mean they would prefer them. The command line and text files are less ambiguous than GUIs, and they change much less frequently. I can give exact CLI instructions for someone that they could run with a simple copy+paste operation, or I can give a couple pages of GUI instructions, screen shots, alternative instructions and screen shots if you're using XP instead of 2000, etc, and they'd still be lost on Vista.

The main problem for these people is that the very IDEA of opening one program (a text editor) to change the settings of another program is completely alien and makes no sense to them. Most user applications provide their options in dialogs, it's the OS services that you usually end up changing config files for. And Windows users are accustomed to opening a "Control Panel" or some other dialog to modify OS settings. Try telling a Windows user how to stop or start a system service using the Windows GUI.

In my more cynical moments, I'm quite happy to simply call these people idiots and say that they need to learn because it's REALLY not that hard, but realistically, they won't. Yes they will, they always do. Nobody wanted to re-learn the MS Office menus, or Vista, but they will anyway. Linux devs should focus on making them learn something better, not just something different, but the idea that we should make it so they don't have to re-learn anything is nonsense.

So, if we want them as users (which is another question entirely!), then we need to cater for their needs, no matter how stupid we think those needs are. I think it's equally important that we separate their needs from their wants. We should always try to cater to their needs, but should only cater to their wants when it makes sense.

Re:DOS

[dunc78]

I think I do serious work and I must say I rarely use the Windows command line. For what tasks you do generally find cmd.exe to be indispensible? I think the only two commands I ever use are "ping" and "ipconfig", and this is usually for trouble-shooting, not "serious work".

Re:DOS

[chaboud]

I don't know of any for sure (I'd have to know the whole UI to make that claim), but I know of *plenty* of things that I only know how to do with the CLI, and that's my point. The UI needs to be more discoverable. I'm certainly better at wading through the weeds than my parents, and they're the market.

Don't get me wrong. I think that the day is coming. I've been keeping tabs on Linux distros since '97, and I'm very impressed with the finish on what I'm seeing.

Re:DOS

[YttriumOxide]

You do raise some very valid points, and I'm pretty much inclined to agree. I think there's just two things left that need to be addressed though.

1) How to effectively communicate that it is the "better" way? I think many people are likely to look at a text file as being "old" or "ugly", especially in this day and age of fancy GUIs (Compiz, Vista, MacOS X). This point is pretty much just "perception" though, and really I think probably "the proof is in the pudding", and once they try it, they'll become accustomed fairly quickly.

2) How to make it obvious where/how to configure it? One of the hurdles of editing a config file is FINDING the config file. If you just launched an app from your graphical menu, you may not know where the app even stores its config file (assuming you know that it even has one). Do you think it sounds reasonable to go for a "middle ground" between the GUI config program and the text file, by having a button or menu item (or whatever else makes sense) somewhere in the app that when activated will open the user's default text editor containing the config file in question?

Re:DOS

[mhall119]

This point is pretty much just "perception" though, and really I think probably "the proof is in the pudding", and once they try it, they'll become accustomed fairly quickly. I agree that the "proof is in the pudding". Given that those who most often use these Compiz, Vista and OSX rely heavily on a CLI should say something. The fact that Microsoft invested in creating a more productive command shell, and that Apple based their new OS off the BSD userland, should also tell you something.

Do you think it sounds reasonable to go for a "middle ground" between the GUI config program and the text file, by having a button or menu item (or whatever else makes sense) somewhere in the app that when activated will open the user's default text editor containing the config file in question? No, because like I said, most GUI applications provide GUI configuration dialogs. You shouldn't need to modify a text file to change settings in Gimp. It's the non-gui services that usually use text files, because they didn't include a GUI for use so it wouldn't make sense to include a GUI for configuration. Many distros make GUI configuration front-ends to things like X11, Samba and networking, but I don't think Samba should include a GTK dialog, or a KDE dialog, for changing it's settings.

Re:DOS

[Zaatxe]

It's a good thing Windows is so friendly and intuitive to use. Why would anyone want to edit text file configs in Linux when they can just locate the key "jknb31r289cjk1289" and change it (obviously) to "9889cfjk12q9fcvfd"

Why would one do this if they can just format the hard drive, install all the software again and recover backups? That's much more productive!

Re:DOS

[dbcad7]

Doing complicated things... is complicated.. No matter what platform..

I don't know anything about voip, so I've never looked into anything like asterisk. In looking at their web page, not much help as it goes into installing from source and making config files from scratch, however, when I look at synaptic on Debian, if you click on asterisk to install it, it will install default config files.. how much "reconfiguration" you might have to do with the hardware you have, and whether or not these have to be edited by hand, I don't know. Easier for you to try... I am not saying that it is definitely the case in your case, but often people take the hard route by donwloading programs for linux instead of installing them from the repository.

As to Apache... again same problems exist all platforms.. If she wants to learn html, she could try a wysiwyg editor, but will eventually have learn a little on how a web server works, and about things like directories, when she decides to put it out to the world.. She also won't learn much without looking at the code, and for most pros and non pros alike, the best html editor is a text editor.

Squid, and net filtering for kids is another area that I have not really had a need to explore. So I will take your word for it that it is probably complicated.

Re:DOS

[YttriumOxide]

Hmmm... I think this could probably be argued in circles for quite a while unfortunately. You say that you don't think Samba should have a GUI config, but honestly Samba is one of the WORST things to configure with only the text config program as it's horribly (and quite needlessly) complex in places. GUI config programs for it generally only offer 20% or so of the functionality that it can provide, and that's what the vast majority of users want. So while I agree with you in general, I do think this was a bad example!

I think I might just have to leave this here though - please reply if you have any more insights, as I actually really enjoy reading your posts, but I don't have any more time right now to continue this myself (sorry!)

Re:DOS

[ciggieposeur]

Hmm. Won't argue with your larger point, but your apps list looks very weird to me, a Ubuntu and Mac user. Here is how it compares to me:

Outlook 2007 and/or

Kmail and Mail.app . And my mail stays in mbox format for easy backups and shifting between programs.

Office 2007

Office 2008 for Mac (VERY slow and barely usable, but quite pretty), OOo for Linux, and sometimes Office 97 under Parallels or on the dual-boot Windows side of the Linux box. But LaTeX for anything more complicated than a basic letter.

Money 2008
Quickbooks

My wife does our finances, but most of the time the web interfaces to our various banks, credit cards, investments, etc. are quite good enough on their own. She could probably save a half hour every week *if* she fully trusted the integration of Quickbooks/Money with all of those financial institutions, but more likely she would update with Quickbooks and then log in to the web sites to double-check if she needs to reconcile anyway, making a net loss of time.

Turbo Tax

We use the online H&R Block app once a year for $30 or so. Installing a full program seems needless to me for a once/year use.

Rome Total War
Call of Duty 4

I don't play much games, I just don't have much time. But the occasional game can be played in Parallels on Mac or on a Windows dual-boot on the Linux box.

Picasa2

iPhoto.

Music IP Mixer

I've never even heard of this. Presumably it's for MP3 playing? If so, iTunes is fine with us. For ripping CDs I have a simple Linux app, and for extracting sound samples as phone ringtones I use Audacity.

Cyberlink Power DVD

Mac DVD player isn't bad (but the 10.4 version doesn't have slider bar which is stupid). Kaffeine in Linux is better though -- I can easily adjust brightness, contrast, and A/V sync in Kaffeine, AND I can skip right to the damn DVD menu instead of waiting for the FBI warnings. For long-running DVDs, we have a television + player.

Azeureus

Probably a bad example as Azureus is also on Linux and I use it frequently. But I also use Transmission on Mac occasionally.

AI Roboform

What is this for? Firefox 2.x on Mac works OK for us.

Now on MY list you are missing a few things:

Emacs -- The MacPorts and Linux versions work and look great, the Windows version is butt ugly no matter what I try.

HandBrake -- The most convenient way to rip MP4 files ever, costs $0, and works great on Mac. Kinda sucks on Windows though, and every comparable Windows app costs real money.

MacTheRipper -- The fastest way I've found to get a DVD to hard disk.

Development tools -- I won't outline them all, but the Unix command line tools + Emacs is the right fit for me and the languages/environments I tend to use. Nothing on the Windows side even comes close to the basic functionality. OK, I will mention some stuff: Common Lisp, C++ with STL and Boost, C, QT4, Octave, and Maple.

On the Windows side:

DVDShrink -- There is no comparable way to get a 9GB movie to a 4.5GB disk that costs $0 on OSX or Linux, and DVDShrink is quite user friendly too.

Obviously we have different needs, I tend to spend a large part of my time converting my DVDs and CDs, write longer documents, and develop code sometimes. For those purposes I find Mac and Linux very easy to use.

Re:DOS

[mhall119]

You say that you don't think Samba should have a GUI config, but honestly Samba is one of the WORST things to configure with only the text config program as it's horribly (and quite needlessly) complex in places. GUI config programs for it generally only offer 20% or so of the functionality that it can provide, and that's what the vast majority of users want. I wasn't trying to say there shouldn't be a GUI for configuring Samba shares, I was trying to say that it shouldn't be a part of Samba.

Gnome/Nautilus and KDE/Konqueror should manage your shared folders, regardless of if they're shared through Samba, NFS, or whatever else. They could managed the 20% of configuration which is all that 99% of users would care about. The rest is easier to configure by editing a text file than by providing a maze of dialogs.

Re:DOS

[dbcad7]

Again, don't know anything about squid, but "DansGuardian" looks promising for your filtering.

Re:DOS

[ciggieposeur]

Y'all are having an interesting conversation, but it seems that y'all are talking a bit past each other. I'd like to highlight this point:

The more that you can with natural language, the more description you'll have to give because you have to be more precise about which task exactly you want the computer to do.

I think the GP is arguing that the future of computers will be to know on their own what you mean when you use natural language, so that you WON'T have to be more precise. In my problem domain, I could ask something like "Could we handle the flow rate if there were 21 trays instead of 23, all else being equal?" and that would start a very long and convoluted sequence of computations that would lead to a simple yes or no answer with a known uncertainty. In the future, perhaps computers WILL be able to do that. OTOH, I could just as easily ask to the see the tower design and make small changes on my own and then ask for the resulting flow rates, which would be better with a clean GUI.

I agree with the points both of you are making. Imagine this scene between a photoshop artist and their super-advanced computer:

----

Artist: Computer, bring up image #53 from the California trip family vacation pictures.

Computer: On screen.

A: OK, take out the red eye, brighten 20%, and zoom in 5x on leftmost figure face.

C: Done.

A: Let's replace the background with an American flag. Show me a few popular flag images from Flickr.

C: Flag images on screen.

A: Use the flag from second row, third from right. Put that in the background. Assume the flag itself is three feet tall.

C: Done.

A: Shrink the flag 30%.

C: Done.

A: Manual mode. (Does a minute or so of tweaking within a GUI.) Apply those changes.

C: Manual changes applied.

A: Show me what this will look like on paper.

C: Printout ready.

A: Send this to marketing, begin attached note. Quote: I want to use this for the national parks newsletter. Respond by 3pm please. Unquote.

C: Email sent.

----

Doing all of those steps by hand could still take a experienced photoshopper dozens of minutes, but the conversation with the computer could be accomplished in less than ten minutes. This is where (I think) the GP is trying to go, and the "manual mode" step above is what (I think) you are trying to say. In other words, both CLI (the conversation parts) and GUI elements are present in this very quick workflow.

Re:DOS

[diggitzz]

The post responds to "what those tasks are that require command prompt in Windows? " from the parent. I make no representations as to what an "average user" even is, much less what they're running.

AFAIK, the System File Checker only runs in the CLI. (you know, the utility that will tell you whether an overlay install will even work in the first place? If there's nothing wrong with your system files, you'll waste your time reinstalling because you likely have a different problem)

Re:DOS

[JonathanBoyd]

Y'all are having an interesting conversation, but it seems that y'all are talking a bit past each other.

Ah, a chairperson for the debate. Slashdot almost seems civilised now!

Doing all of those steps by hand could still take a experienced photoshopper dozens of minutes, but the conversation with the computer could be accomplished in less than ten minutes. This is where (I think) the GP is trying to go, and the "manual mode" step above is what (I think) you are trying to say. In other words, both CLI (the conversation parts) and GUI elements are present in this very quick workflow.

Actually I'm saying something very similar to you: both voice control and mouse+keyboard/touch have their place. The trouble is that when I raise the issue of instances when mouse+keyboard/touch is significantly quicker, the GP starts talking about abstraction and higher order operations. The way he's arguing things suggests that in his mind, voice control is superior for all situations, which is demonstrably false.

One problem with his examples is that he massively simplifies the reality of the tasks that people engage. Actually, so does your example. People rarely think 'I want this image brightened by 20%'; they think 'this image should be brighter' then move a slider until it looks satisfactory. With a mouse and quick enough rendering (CPU power presumably isn't much a problem if a computer is capable of the language processing and interpretation suggested here), this can be done in a second or two by just dragging the slider until it looks right. Saying 'Brighter... darker... brighter... a bit more...' would get really quite irritating. I get visions of the Chuckle Brothers going 'To me' 'To you' when I think about (thought that won't make any sense unless you're from the UK). The problem with discussing an abstracted method of doing things is that it brushes over the rough edges of reality.

Re:DOS

[msromike]

Well I use 4NT so I guess I am one of the guys you never needs cmd.exe that you are talking about.

http://www.jpsoft.com/

This is quick 4NT batchfile psueudo array routine. But I don't think I am the average Windows user. Could I handle Bash, uh duh. Why would I want to? when I have TONS more flexibility with Windows. If I really need Linux I can always fire it up in VMWare

---------4nt batchfile sample
setlocal

do l = 1 to 3
    set store%l=%@eval[%l+10]
enddo

set store*

do x = 1 to 3
    echo %[store%x]
enddo

Re:DOS

[Ullteppe]

Sure, I agree that language is good for putting in this type of functionality - but you are really talking about programming. For the primary use of the program (graphics editing), I think that GUI/WYSIWIG is the superior method. Most of the time I get into discussions about GUI/CLI, the main group of people that are pro-CLI are programmers. Ask around in the graphical/arts/creative field and you will get very different answers. I think it is dangerous to say that this is because these users are less sophisticated - on the contrary they are very effective on getting their type of work done.

Rather, I would say that different applications work well with different paradigms, and that trying to find a "one-size-fits-all" solution is not fruitful.

For example, in your case, often the artistic/creative person is not interested in putting "a perfect circle" at a specific location. There are some very important differences between CAD and creative drawing. It all depends on what you are trying to achieve.

Personally, I have done dabbled in a lot of different applications, and have different preferences for text or graphical approaches depending on what I want to achieve. I am currently employed in the electronics field, and here the preference for digital chip design is to use language (HDL - Hardware Description Languages) that describes the functionality you want, and is then "compiled" to yield the circuit. In the analog domain, the schematic is still the dominating paradigm, and people prefer to work with graphical objects.

For file management, some tasks are better done using the command line (especially when using wildcards etc.), while other tasks are better accomplished by using graphical tools. I used to use Norton Commander quite a lot back in the DOS days as I found it be more convenient in many cases than using the "naked" command line, and you still had the command line available when you needed it.

It is also important to remember that people's minds work differently, so what is natural for one person may be very unnatural for others. I find that my brain is wired so that I have a much easier time when I can visually see what options I have ("out of sight out of mind") - yours is probably different. Making a blanket statement that "GUI=baby talk" is very simplistic.

As to the matter at hand, I can very well understand that Linux is having trouble being "ready for the desktop" if many of the developers share your opinions on GUI vs. CLI. Remember that computers are used for a lot of other tasks in addition to programming!

Re:DOS

[diggitzz]

There aren't any legal concerns at all using VMWare or WinE, especially not for any of those "typical" applications mentioned in the parent. Are you even familiar with these programs? VMWare creates a virtual machine into which you can install any operating system you want - like a version of Windows you own, for instance. WinE uses a free alternative to the Windows API that you can use to install and run Windows-based programs. There's nothing even legally challenging here - users install programs they own.

I made no representations on how easy it is to get that stuff working at the current time, but presumably a distribution could be built with WinE pre-configured and tested, if one doesn't already exist.

The point is that all bitching about Linux not having applications gets directed to /dev/null because Linux already has full support. Linux already has the capability to host the applications users want, it's just a matter of installing them, and if it isn't easy enough, then complain to your non-Linux software vendor that you want a Linux-native version that's easy to install. Linux can't make that any easier. In fact, there isn't any Linux project on earth that even could, in principle, make that process easier.

If we're really going to compare apples to apples, then Vista doesn't have applications either - Photoshop, MS Office, iTunes, and your favorite business admin software ARE NOT INCLUDED - you have to purchase third-party software and install them separately. Uh, that's also true on OSX. And hey, go figure, the EXACT SAME THING is true under Linux. The difference? Microsoft and Apple themselves have $$ to make sure that vendors release software on their platforms. Linux is a kernel, not a company, and therefore has no $$ to bargain with.

I don't take the position that anyone should use any platform or software that pisses them off, so if installing add-ons to get your favorite off-platform software to work isn't your idea of a Sunday afternoon, then use another platform. I'm simply responding to the complaint that the software isn't available. With virtualization, nearly ALL software is available, on nearly EVERY platform. Blaming Linux or the Linux community for lacking application support, though, is completely short-sighted and naive, as we've stepped up to the challenge over the last 10 years and done everything in our power to provide support for all those typical applications people seem to crave, and a vast majority are now fully supported... which has put the ball outside of the Linux court for a while. Linux can't really do much better in this arena - it's up to the software vendors from here.

Re:DOS

[Squeeze Truck]

ping

tracert

ipconfig

NET *

That's primarily what I use the CLI for. Some of the NET functions (mapping drives, etc.) can be accomplished with the gui, but not all of them.

Re:DOS

[Nossie]

and that invalidates my point how?

If there is an open source driver for linux, bsd it can be rewritten for osx

If there is not... there is always peer pressure :P

Apart from games I cant think of any application I'm missing from Windows and to go back to the point, most if not all the hardware anyone cares about will work on the mac.

Re:DOS

[Shadow99_1]

You have fairly accurately depicted exactly what I've said for years... I'd love to use more Linux systems, but setting them up and then managing them later tends to require a completely different toolset than managing windows machines... and in a day stretched thin by being the Director of Technology, the Network Admin, the Network Engineer, the helpdesk, and the tech support person for a school... I don't have the time to keep up on both sides...

Add in users that cannot adjust to Linux, quite possibly also for time reasons, and Linux looks horrible for our use... Even though it's expensive and causes strange issues (not that Linux doesn't have it's share of strange issues).

Re:DOS

[Abcd1234]

Use the Windows search tool, then rename from there?

Oh, and BTW, moving the goalposts is hardly an honest debate tactic.

Re:DOS

[Bohabo]

No reason, other than to prove that effective mass file renaming doesn't REQUIRE a command prompt.

Re:DOS

[man_of_mr_e]

You know very few users? I know dozens. Many of them ordinary professionals, just looking for a little extra screen real estate.

A second monitor is a great upgrade for anyone that uses their computer a lot

Re:DOS

[man_of_mr_e]

I'm not talking about add-on software. I'm talking about software to just get the hardware you have configured correctly.

Re:DOS

[clang_jangle]

No reason, other than to prove that effective mass file renaming doesn't REQUIRE a command prompt./i>

Unless one is willing and/or able to install third-party software, yes, it does. Go look up REN. :)

Re:DOS

[man_of_mr_e]

Considering your lack of ability to form a coherent sentence or to use your return key to create paragraphs, I'd question your critique of Word's grammar checker. That was extremely hard to read.

By table drawing, i'm referring to the table pencil, that lets you arbitrarily draw tables in any form you want, erase borders, etc.. It makes it simple to create a complex table layout, and has NOTHING to do with CAD. I use this feature every day, and it's absence frustrates me in OOo.

Master documents prior to 2007 did have a lot of limitations and were unstable, but as of Word 2007 things work as expected.

And no, Office does not load anything at startup, nor does the OS have parts of office in it. People keep repeating this urban myth for years. Back in the Office 2005-2000 days there was the Office quick start, but that's been gone for forever. Office starts fast because they take the time to optimize it, including regbasing DLL's, something that OpenOffice can't seem to bother doing, and thus forcing massive PE fixups on load. Not to mention the stupid Java components.

And no, OOo does *NOT* have an automation object model. At least none that i've found (and no, i'm not talking about scripting). It doesn't show up in a search of their website either. This is likely because OOo needs to be cross platform, so doesn't utilize any OS features that can't easily be propogated to other platforms.

As I said when I responded to you, you knew about all the things Word can do that OOo doesn't, but you dismiss them as unimportant because of whatever reasons.

Re:DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

But to *really* use it [CLI] you need to *know* what commands to use. Arguing to use man or search the Internet doesn't help. man can be unbearably confusing sometimes, or sometimes it just lists options but doesn't really explain what they do. Heard of info pages? Or, even complete manuals under /usr/share/doc/ in some cases.

There is also The Linux Documentation Project (www.tldp.org). "The Linux Users' Guide" under the Guides section of the site was indispensable to me in 1995 and, although dated, still contains relevant information today. I haven't read them, but, I'm sure "Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide" and "GNU/Linux Command-Line Tools Summary" are indispensable too.

If people would just take the f'ing time to read a manual or two---or just skim them to find what their looking for, *knowing* Linux wouldn't be that hard.

I've written documentation for our internal operations and it just pisses me off when others in my group who are too lazy to read come to me asking the same questions over and over about how to do something when it is plainly documented.

Of course, man doesn't help if you don't know what the command is to do what you want to do in the first place! And searching for what the command is you want to use if you don't know what it is can be tedious, too. Heard of the whatis database? The whatis database is used by the "apropos" and "whatis". There is also, "man -f" and "man -k" and 'help' for built-in shell commands.

But anyone can reasonably look for a System or Preferences menu, hopefully drill down to the area of what they're looking for, and toggle options or whatnot. Why is there such pushback to making things easier? I agree with making things easier but you still need to know the CLI for those times when the GUI just does not work no matter whether it is Windows, Mac or Linux.

Re:DOS

[outlando]

You use Powerpoint to impress clients?

Re:DOS

[celtic_hackr]

Obviously, you have comprehension issues or retention issues, because I didn't dismiss the things about Word, that are "missing".

OOo Automation, begins here:
Set objServiceManager= WScript.CreateObject("com.sun.star.ServiceManager")

You didn't look very hard.

As far as Office not loading anything at boot, you need to get a process snoop tool. Ask your friendly programming wizard for one. I'll not argue this one with you, because you obviously are clueless to the inner workings of the Windows OS. Just because you don't see it in the Task manager doesn't mean it's not there.

Fuirthermore,
"The Osa.exe file initializes the shared code that is used by the Office XP programs. When you use the Osa.exe file to initialize shared code, the Office XP programs start faster. If the Office programs, instead of Osa.exe, initialize the shared code, the programs take longer to start..." - Microsoft kb#290144

But those shared code libraries are not the only thing that Office uses to reduce load time. Office uses many undocumented calls built into to Windows to speed things up. But you will just dismiss this fact as another myth. Also, in Vista, Office is using a new tool, that OOo could probably benefit from, but I bet there are still undocumented features that Word uses that OOo won't be able to. MS has a long documented history of doing this. I remember, I was there.

As for table pencils.If you read the end of my post, that was my comment about the wizardlike thing and I gave you that. Yeah it's a spiffy GUI tool. But you can still make those complex tables in OOo. There just isn't a spiffy tool to do it with. So, OOo doesn't have a nice tool, but it still has the functionality. Something you seem unwilling to give credit for. And I was joking about the CAD, but you missed that one.

I've given you credit for your points, and then some, but you keep dismissing my points so thanks for proving me to not be the "dismisser", but that you yourself are the "dismisser".

Lastly, I wasn't aware this was a grammar test. I often write like this at 3AM (at the end of a 19 hour day of work). Be thankful it's typewritten and in one language.

Re:DOS

[man_of_mr_e]

In case you missed it, I said:

Back in the Office 2005-2000 days there was the Office quick start, but that's been gone for forever. I guess it extended to XP, but Office 2003 removed it (though it's on the CD somewhere if you want to install and run it manually), which means it's been gone for at least 2 versions.

And all OSA did was to pre-load load the OLE libraries (which many apps used, not just Office) which took the most time to load. Later, they added that "new document" functionality to it as well. Office hasn't needed OSA on any NT based OS because the OLE libraries don't have the long load times that they did under the 16 bit OS's.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826318

"Office Setup no longer puts a shortcut to the Osa.exe file in the Windows Startup folder as do the earlier versions of Microsoft Office."

As for undocumented calls. You're kind of an idiot. Undocumented calls, even if they exist (which i'm sure they do), can't help with load time, because loading happens before any application code executes. It's done by, you know, the loader. I suppose you're going to say that Windows has special code built into it to detect Office, and use the super special fast loader instead of the stupid slow loader everyone else has to use.

In reality, this is entirely down to DLL rebasing, something OpenOffice has repeatedly not bothered to do. I once rebased OpenOffice by hand to test this, and it dramatically improved load time (it was about as fast as office, not counting the Java load time). Mozilla and Firefox used to have this problem as well, but they finally got wise and started rebasing of their official builds. That's why FF now loads so fast on Windows.

Why are you so vague about this special "vista tool"?

The table pencil is not a wizard. You should undestand what a wizard is.

Re:DOS

[celtic_hackr]

I'd be careful about using that word idiot, since you don't seem to grasp that a call to an api that is built into the OS that is loaded twhen the OS loads doesn't need to "detect" Office loading. Office uses calls that are buried in the OS that are faster than anything anyone else can write because that's the way it is written. If you followed any MS litigation by other software companies you'd know this is a fact, and some vague accusation. It has been proven in court over and over. It's historical fact.

The reason I am vague about your table pencil is because ... wait for it ...

I've never used it. Therefore can't speak to it, except to point you to some article on the net that talks about it. You already know about it, so why should I? You got a nice graphical tool that let's you draw tables, well yippy for you. I'm sure it saves you lot's of time, and yes it's useful. I've said this many times already, so let it go.

You can call it what you want it does the same type of function as a wizard does, ergo it is wizard-like. I would even go so far as to say it is a Table Wizard. So forgive me for not falling into Microspeach, but I have enough words in my vocabulary without having to deal with the plethora of Microsoft generated words and phrases.

My definition of wizard is: "a software procedure that assists a user in a graphical/interactive way of accomplishing a specific task rapidly and easily."

Don't give into to Microspeach,
Microspeach leads to the Dark Side.

Cast it into the Fire, Isuldur.

"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Manip]

I'd like to coin the term "Ready for my mom's desktop." Meaning after a few hours training she can use the platform without too much hassle.

That's where Linux really drops the ball still and OS X/Windows still dominate.

The UIs are extremely poorly designed on Linux and worse still they're often inconsistent with half a dozen ways to do the same operation.

And don't even get me started on the continued use of the terminal for /any/ normal user operations.

Linux isn't a consumer desktop, in fact it isn't even making very much ground in that area. That being said it is still an awesome server and geek toy.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[soccerisgod]

I don't think that's true at all. I have installed Ubuntu on a number of computers belonging to friends and family, and everybody (they're all pretty much computer-illiterates) agrees that it's easier to use and more intuitive than Windows. Take the "start" menu: you have an "Applications" menu and the last entry therein is "install/remove". Could it be any simpler?

IMHO the beauty of Linux and all the software for it is that you can pick what you need and ignore the rest. If you want to do stuff the hard way, you can. If you just want to use a computer, use something like Ubuntu. Linux has the potential to serve all needs, and by now the modern Linux distros are doing a fine job at it.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[damburger]

Seeing as my mum and stepmum already use Ubuntu quite happily (and aren't phoning up every 10 minutes complaining that something is broken/they've got a virus) it seems Linux is already at that stage.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Whitemice]

I'd like to coin the term "Ready for my mom's desktop." Meaning after a few hours training she can use the platform without too much hassle. I don't think this is true at all. It is the generic desktop that LINUX is currently most suited to; as vertical apps are generally not available.

The UIs are extremely poorly designed on Linux and worse still they're often inconsistent with half a dozen ways to do the same operation. Are you using KDE? Because GNOME has a very detail HIG that is ruthlessly enforced - enough to spark the occasional war on the mailing lists. GNOME is a very clean and consistent interface. Via the control panel an end-user can adjust anything they need with items organized in a very orderly fashion.

And don't even get me started on the continued use of the terminal for /any/ normal user operations. It isn't required for any normal operation.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Anonymous Coward]

We've a word for that : "Intuitive". Why make up a 5 word phrase when we have a perfectly good way to describe what you are talking about?

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[SomeKDEUser]

Ready for the desktop could never have been a "point", it is a process by which at some point in reality betting a randomly chosen user will in fact find the interface friendly (that was some time ago), and in perception, when people start believing in desktop-linux in majority.

The perception part is the hardest to win. But also, it might not even be desirable: linux, as all free software, thrives when it attracts contributors. This involves attracting users, but not only. If your project is only good at catering for users, it will eventually die.

If your software only attracts developers, it might well live forever. So there is a class of users that bring nothing to free software: "linux ready for the desktop" objectively must be considered by specifically ignoring those users with no talent, literary, artistic or technical, because they are only a drain on resources.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[The New Andy]

The UIs are extremely poorly designed on Linux and worse still they're often inconsistent with half a dozen ways to do the same operation.

I seem to remember one of the hints in the Microsoft Accessibility Guidelines was that the more ways to do a single operation, the more accessible it is. I don't use windows, so I can't check now, but I'm pretty sure I can think of 4 ways to move a file, 5 ways to change screen resolution and 4 ways to shut down the computer. I don't think this is a bad thing.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Joe Jay Bee]

It isn't required for any normal operation.

It is sometimes required for some operations, usually fixing things or setting a couple things up.

In general though, the command line is very rarely used on Ubuntu, which is a good thing; if you tell a normal Windows user they'd have to use the DOS prompt to accomplish something, their eyes would glaze over.

(In fairness, Apple are no better for hiding options in the command line and requiring the use of the defaults command to set them, but at least these aren't very very basic things...)

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[sayfawa]

If your project is only good at catering for users, it will eventually die.

If your software only attracts developers, it might well live forever. So there is a class of users that bring nothing to free software: "linux ready for the desktop" objectively must be considered by specifically ignoring those users with no talent, literary, artistic or technical, because they are only a drain on resources.

Heh, how long until someone claims that it's this kind of arrogance that keeps normal people from using Linux? Man, I get tired of that one. Anyway. I agree with you, with the exception that those users who don't or can't develop might still donate money.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent's post is similar to thousands of posts here and in other /. threads. "My is using Ubuntu,...., No complaints".
If this is true, then why arent more than 5% of users on Linux? http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Keyper7]

I completely agree!

Furthermore, if Britney Spears' music sucks, how come she hit the top of the charts so many times, huh, HUH? [1]

Take THAT, you geek smartasses!

[1] I'm talking about the beggining of her career, obviously.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Anonymous Coward]

Consistency in KDE tends to be enforced programatically. Much of the Gnome HIG (and virtually all of the Apple HIG) covers stuff that's automatically handled for you by KDE's core libraries, or by Qt.

Of course, anything not handled by the framework tends to be less consistent than on Gnome.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Anonymous Coward]

You should read your own comment! "normal people" is very condescending.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to coin the term "Ready for my mom's desktop." Meaning after a few hours training she can use the platform without too much hassle. My parents recently bought a PC with Vista on it, and hated it. They have one 'specialized' windows app that they need to run, and it doesn't run under Vista.

So I installed Slackware on it. Their custom app runs just perfectly under WINE. They use it to surf, email, etc.

My mother is 67 years old. Maybe your mom's just to stupid to learn something new.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[temcat]

You really cannot tell how many people are using Linux. Each Linux distro sale or download can result in dozens of installations.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[McDutchie]

(In fairness, Apple are no better for hiding options in the command line and requiring the use of the defaults command to set them, but at least these aren't very very basic things...)

I had to use two terminal commands to turn off Tiger's "Safe Sleep" feature that makes it take about a minute for my computer to fall asleep while it dumps my 2 GB of RAM onto the hard drive. I sleep and wake my MacBook frequently so I'm not at risk of losing RAM contents, so I'm better off without this feature. I think this is a pretty basic configuration option.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Whitemice]

In general though, the command line is very rarely used on Ubuntu, which is a good thing; Or on openSUSE, or any of the mainstream distributions.

if you tell a normal Windows user they'd have to use the DOS prompt to accomplish something, their eyes would glaze over. But you do need to go to the command line on Windows to do things. "ipconfig /release" and "ipconfig /renew" being the best and most common example, but there are others. Being in charge of 200+ Win32 desktops and laptops I here the help desk steer Win32 people to the command line fairly frequently, often because the GUI is too difficult or just can't be trusted.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[jedidiah]

> And don't even get me started on the continued use of the terminal for /any/ normal user operations. ...and what "normal user operations" were you thinking of?

It's time to put away the empty rhetoric because people are beginning to not buy it any more.

If you want to declare Linux un-ready, you will have to come up with some actual reasons.

Regurgitating some advocacy trolls talking points doesn't cut it anymore.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[antirelic]

I agree that Linux is, and has been ready for the desktop for quiet some time now. Not trying to be too much of a fanboy (because I'm not, I prefer the Fedora distro line) of Ubuntu, but man, Ubuntu is what people have always dreamed a computer being like. For example: If I need a peace of software, I go to that Ubuntu software management application, find the category of different applications, browse through, click, and its installed (all the downloading and installation happens behind the scenes).

The only downfall is still the fact that most commercial software (read as: games, MS Office, and Itunes) do not run on Linux natively. So the question about Linux being ready for the desktop is a misnomer. Linux is and has been desktop ready, it is just a question of when will application developers develop popular applications for Linux.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[jedidiah]

> It is sometimes required for some operations

That simply isn't good enough.

This is the sort of vagueness that some would use to declare that the Linux GUI's is "unready".

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[damburger]

Because you mongloid the question is not 'are the majority of people using it' it is 'CAN the majority of people use it' and the answer is clearly yes.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[BadHaggis]

The OLPC interface isn't even ready for my mom's desktop. She is on of the 20% in the U.S. who has never used email, and thinks remote controls are too confusing.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Maureen Base]

It is because we don't need "ready for the desktop", we need "already on the desktop".

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[GospelHead821]

I think that the common trait among the posts you cite, however, is that most of the users mentioned have a computer literate Slashdotter standing by in the off chance that support is needed.

In this sense of the word, I probably am closer to illiterate than literate when it comes to computers. Obviously, they require more savvy to operate than pretty much any other device in my home. At the end of the day, though, my computer is an appliance to me. There are a variety of functions that I expect from it and, if it breaks catastrophically, my options are usually limited to reinstalling the offending program or replacing the offending hardware. (I am smart enough, by the way, to identify which component is acting up, so no, I don't just go out and buy a new computer.)

That said, I am above average at NOT breaking my computer, when it is running Windows and when I do, the damage is usually pretty shallow. In return, Windows provides me with reliable operation. On the other hand, I manage to make a major mistake in Linux about once a month. Sometimes I am able to fix the problem and sometimes I am not. Either way, I find crawling the web, hoping that I can find some reference to my exact error message to be very frustrating.

And sometimes, I just can't get Linux to do what I want it to do at all. I recently wanted to install Xubuntu on my laptop. I had enjoyed working with Kubuntu, but I wanted something just a little less demanding on my hardware. I never did get it recognize my PCMCIA wireless card, though. I knew, conceptually, that the underlying OS was identical between the two, so that the problem should be trivial to correct. Ultimately, though, I had no idea how.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[fitten]

I finally installed Ubuntu. The package manager is nice... but browsing through the 100s of packages there named:

aba
aba-dev
aba-dbg
aca
aca-dev
aca-dbg
aca-py-db
ada
ada-multi
ada-rro

and most of the descriptions might as well have been written in Wookie for as much as my mom would understand. Even search rarely returns a single, or even small number of results. Try searching for "word processor" (just did it on Ubuntu 8.04) returns 41 entries... some of which are:

lhs2tex
koffice
koffice-kde
kword
kword-data
libwps-0.1.1
libwps-dev
libwps-doc
libwps-tools

etc. My mom's first question would be "do I have to install all of those things?" and then when I said "no", she'd ask "which ones should I install, then? and why did it tell me all these things?" What's worse, for example, is that the documentation for some of these things is installed as seperate packages and not by default with the base package. IMO, it'd be better to assume documentation, for example, should be installed by default unless the user opts out, but that's not the way that the various dev groups work. They assume you want the minimal of everything unless you explicitly ask for it to be installed. And do the various package managers even have a way of asking you what parts you want installed before installing?

Most Windows users are used to running a single install per product and being given options as to what's installed related to that (dev libraries, documentation, etc.), not seeing each individual option listed among every other option for all other packages as well. It's just too much noise for someone who can't make out what all the acronyms are for. Sure, the package manager will indicate all the other required packages that will need to be installed in addition, but even that is noise, especially when you don't know which one to pick from the start, *especially* when the results of a search present you with so many things, and few of them being what you really searched for.

Linux developers assume that the end-user is a programmer/IT type person and that eventually, tools and such will be 'dumbed down' enough for Joe Six Pack (but not by them, that's not fun or interesting... but it's OSS so if you want that, do it yourself or eventually, someone may be interested in doing that and will do it... it's OSS after all and you have the source). Windows and OSX seem to have started at the other end of the spectrum (which is what probably annoys many geeks), assuming the user is Joe Six Pack and then working from there towards the other end of the spectrum.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Fred_A]

> It is sometimes required for some operations

That simply isn't good enough.

This is the sort of vagueness that some would use to declare that the Linux GUI's is "unready". Then so is Apple's much touted OS X line which regularly requires poking at the system from the shell. Many settings are only accessible that way.

Yet oddly enough nobody seems to mind. People just do without changing those settings. And truth be told, most Mac OS users live without making those changes. As do a lot of Linux users...

You can have to resort to a terminal if you want to poke at the system. Or you can just make do with what you've got. Your choice.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true - if you Google for instructions on how to do something in Ubuntu, 99 times out of 100 the instructions rely on terminal use (even if there's a GUI solution!). It would be nice if the instructions had a GUI equivalent, even if the command line is more efficient.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[notamisfit]

And it's a question of when the application developers will see any point in doing so. If iTunes was made available for Linux tomorrow, do you think Apple would get any praise for the move? Fuck no. They'd be condemned across the board for trying to "contaminate" Linux with their evil "non-free" software.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Fred_A]

The UIs are extremely poorly designed on Linux and worse still they're often inconsistent with half a dozen ways to do the same operation.

I seem to remember one of the hints in the Microsoft Accessibility Guidelines was that the more ways to do a single operation, the more accessible it is. I don't use windows, so I can't check now, but I'm pretty sure I can think of 4 ways to move a file, 5 ways to change screen resolution and 4 ways to shut down the computer. I don't think this is a bad thing. Not to mention the systems that have only one way to perform a task, which is so cleverly hidden that it takes 10 minutes to figure it out... (happenned to me a lot on Mac OS, I'm probably not intuitive enough for it, and on Windows because it's just weird)

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[notamisfit]

I do this in just about every article like this, and I gotta do it here; if those users declare that the GUI is in fact "unready", what the fuck difference does it make? Are they throwing money into the pool? More than likely, no. Are they going to throw in a code patch, or even a bug report that goes beyond "Application X crashed and I don't know why" or "I want feature Z"? No. Best just to let 'em be on their way with a Vista or OSX box; when they're ready, they'll find us on their own.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[slashflood]

That's where Linux really drops the ball still and OS X/Windows still dominate. The UIs are extremely poorly designed on Linux and worse still they're often inconsistent with half a dozen ways to do the same operation.

Not too long ago, somebody here linked to these two images.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[sayfawa]

You should just learn how to read. That line was a paraphrase of other people's complaints that I often hear and don't agree with.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Rutulian]

It isn't required for any normal operation.

It is sometimes required for some operations, usually fixing things or setting a couple things up. Such as? Seriously, people keep saying this, but I can't think of any normal operation where the CLI is required. There are many cases where I prefer to use the CLI, though, because it is more efficient and logical. I just finished installing Ubuntu 8.04 on a friend's laptop with all of the basic software, codecs, wireless support, fancy graphics, etc... and didn't have to touch the CLI at all for any of that.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[apt-get moo]

(In fairness, Apple are no better for hiding options in the command line and requiring the use of the defaults command to set them, but at least these aren't very very basic things...) Like showing hidden files in the Finder...

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[pablomme]

I finally installed Ubuntu. The package manager is nice... but browsing through the 100s of packages there named:
[...]
and most of the descriptions might as well have been written in Wookie for as much as my mom would understand. Even search rarely returns a single, or even small number of results. Try "Add/Remove Applications" rather than Synaptic. That comes with pretty icons, meaningful names and descriptions, reasonable multi-package bundles, and even popularity ratings. It's a mistake to tell newbies to use Synaptic.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[fbjon]

The package manager contains all available packages, what you want is the Install/Remove app that's easy to find in the applications menu.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[ArAgost]

That has changed a lot with the release of Leopard, since the only style used now is the Unified one.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Anonymous Coward]

My mother is 67 years old. Maybe your mom's just to stupid to learn something new.

If you've been doing something for years in one way and, suddenly, one day, someone told you that you now have to do it in a radically different way, would you instantly be up to speed in only a few hours? Most older people I've met would have to do the task a few times with help standing by and do it for a while with some help before that new way of doing things get locked into memory and they can do it on their own. A few hours just isn't enough for everyone.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[strabes]

My mom, dad, and sister all use ubuntu far more successfully than they used windows. After my parents got their new dell with windows installed, they destroyed it within one month because one of them has this habit of opening unknown attachments.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[sydneyfong]

I think most people have the opposite experience here.

At least, even if I don't break windows, it tends to break itself.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[dargaud]

the more ways to do a single operation, the more accessible it is. So by your definition (or rather Microsoft's), Perl ("TMTOWTDI") should be the most accessible language ?!? Scoff, cough, cough...

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[recoiledsnake]

I think most people have the opposite experience here. At least, even if I don't break windows, it tends to break itself. Are you stuck in the last decade or something? My XP install from 2002 still works fine inspite of 24/7(reboot only for updates) heavy usage. I have so many apps installed that the start menu almost goes off the screen. I never had to repair or reinstall Windows. 2K/XP/Vista are extremely stable with proper drivers. 95/98/ME on the other hand... the lesser said the better.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[danomac]

I seem to remember one of the hints in the Microsoft Accessibility Guidelines was that the more ways to do a single operation, the more accessible it is. I don't use windows, so I can't check now, but I'm pretty sure I can think of 4 ways to move a file, 5 ways to change screen resolution and 4 ways to shut down the computer. I don't think this is a bad thing.

Yep, and they're following their own guidelines well: Vista on my laptop has like 10 different ways to turn the computer off. It took me a while to figure out how to normally power the damn thing off.

Hell, when *I* saw all those choices, MY eyes glazed over. I'm not a newbie either. Whatever happened to on and off? I guess leaving my desktop on 24/7 has led to me forgetting how to power things down...

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[tepples]

Linux has the potential to serve all needs "All" is a big word. I would imagine that Windows serves the needs of gamers better than GNU/Linux does. I would also imagine that Windows serves the needs of small business administrators who have a large investment of time and money into proprietary Windows-exclusive software such as Stone Edge Order Manager better than GNU/Linux does. Or am I misunderstanding your use of "potential" or "needs"?

If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation? What's a PlayStation?

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[diggitzz]

They'd be condemned across the board for trying to "contaminate" Linux with their evil "non-free" software. Flash seems to work just fine, and it's not free. Oh, and Real Player. And isn't iTunes already available on a very easy-to-port-to-and-from platform?

It seems like it would be a snap for Apple to make iTunes available for Linux, open sourced or not, so it's just a shame they don't. I don't think they realize the importance of gaining support from users in the Linux-sphere compared to the ease with which they could do it.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[nikanj]

How about "ready for l33+ kiddie's desktop"? Linux sucks, because kazaa doesn't work, counter strike doesn't run and all the "cool hacks" you know no longer apply.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[diggitzz]

Are they going to throw in a code patch, or even a bug report that goes beyond "Application X crashed and I don't know why" or "I want feature Z"? No. Best just to let 'em be on their way with a Vista or OSX box; when they're ready, they'll find us on their own. People with those types of complaints are generally classed end users, and they're exactly the ones who are determining what's ready for the desktop and what's not. When it's ready for the end users, it's ready for the desktop. When the desktop is ready, the users will find it on their own.

Seriously, who else is the the desktop GUI being written for, if not the end users? Whose opinion of desktop readiness would matter more, exactly?

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[trooper9]

I wish I had mod points. This needs to be pointed out over and over again.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Haeleth]

Because no computing platform is "intuitive" in any way, shape, or form.

Even OS X, much touted for its ease of use, regularly reduces the least computer-literate of my Mac-using friends almost to tears as she struggles to make it do what she wants. (Which is sometimes something as simple as deleting a file from the desktop -- yes, really!)

Windows, and standard desktop apps like Microsoft Office, are even less intuitive: people who've been using them regularly for over a decade still come to me with basic questions like "why can't I change the colour of this text" or "how do I add a line to this table". (Both those from the last week!)

Increasing Linux usage on the desktop is nothing to do with making it more "intuitive". Even if it were 100 times more intuitive than OS X, it would still not be intuitive enough. What is needed is readily-available human support, either professional like the guys at an Apple Store, or informal like the neighbourhood kid who knows all about Windows. Online forums don't cut it: people who aren't comfortable using computers certainly aren't happy getting support via the blasted things! We need there to be enough real live people out there, willing and able to provide personal support for Linux users. Only then will average people begin to consider Linux an acceptable option.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Lobais]

That has changed a lot with the release of Leopard, since the only style used now is the Unified one. Yeah, because Apple actually care.

Microsoft also make good HIG's, but they don't at all follow them themselves - thus why should the third-party developers who actually need their applications to be distinguishable?

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux isn't a consumer desktop, in fact it isn't even making very much ground in that area. I call BS.

My mom uses Kubuntu without any problems for half a year now. As a matter of fact, I just today got to get my hands on her laptop to check if everything is neat and dandy. Guess what? It is. :)

Even better, my grandpa (70+, no previous contact with a computer) uses - again - Kubuntu for 7 months. Few days ago I was surprised to see how much he was able to customize his desktop (a new kicker panel with most used apps on the left screen edge, more virtual desktops, etc).

Oh, and both are just a standard 20min brick-on-the-enter-key install.

No, they do *not* use CLI at all, my mom's name is *not* Mrs. Roberts and my grandpa lives in another town, so I can't even be the "resident geek" for him.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Graymalkin]

The UI is not simply the visual theme used. The UI encompasses the layout structure of control widgets, the wording of copy text, the behavior of control widgets. It's alright for two different applications to look slightly different as long as they behave consistently. In the Mac OS image you posted each of those apps has a different visual style but follow the same interface guidelines (for the most part). The menus for these apps are always at the top of the screen, menu items like "Help" and the application name always behave the same way and the rest of the menus are laid out similarly between all applications. Keyboard shortcuts for actions with similar behaviors are all consistent, Cmd + C copies and Cmd + V pastes in all of those applications. Common UI controls also behave similarly e.g. the back and forward buttons in Finder and System Preferences look the same and are the same control and perform the same sort of behavior. Even with Windows being the UI nightmare that it is there is at least a marginal amount of consistency. UI consistency is what drops the learning curve of any specific application down to a reasonable level. If the File menu opens documents and Cmd + C copies you don't have to relearn how to do those things in an unfamiliar application.

This is where the UIs shipping with Linux distros tend to fall down. Not enough attention is paid to overall consistency of behavior so two applications with similar functionality might have wildly different behavior. Applications with different behavior means a lot mental gear shifting is required for the user. This is makes for a very hostile user environment. It doesn't matter if buttons in two apps look slightly different as long as they share their behavior. The UIs of many common FOSS apps have improved immensely over the past decade but that of distros less so. Things like checking for keyboard shortcut consistency are tedious and unglamorous. No one gets on the cover of Linux Journal for checking all of the shipping apps in a distro's default configuration to make sure their shortcut keys are consistent or they don't egregiously break the desktop environment's UI guidelines.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Jesus_666]

Well; regular windows are unified but iTunes is still a bit different, floating sub-windows are still the black thing (actually useful because it indicates that you're dealing with a sub-window) and certain apps like Garage Band still look unlike everything else. It got much better, though.

Oh, and the event detail popup in iCal is entirely unlike everything else in the OS, even to the point of being the only thing with (quite ugly) vertical stripes. iCal really got a lot worse with Leopard.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[msuarezalvarez]

That is not true. You underestimate the significance of the idiots among `the board'. Most sensible persons will be happy to hear the platform has one more app available.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[msuarezalvarez]

(99% kidding...)Then there is hope that one day the details will be fixed into a not so ugly state, without needing a complete rewrite!

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[notamisfit]

Linux doesn't rise or fall based upon what the end users think of it. That was my point. They contribute nothing by using it, they take nothing away by using something else, so why worry about them?

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Anonymous Coward]

Take the "start" menu: you have an "Applications" menu and the last entry therein is "install/remove". Could it be any simpler?

Hmm, isn't that a property of Gnome, instead of Linux? ;)

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[analog_line]

And don't even get me started on the continued use of the terminal for /any/ normal user operations.

Well, it really depends on what you mean by "Normal User Operations" now doesn't it?

At least in Ubuntu, you don't need the terminal for any of what I would consider as normal user operations at all. In fact, the reason I was forced to give up using Ubuntu and move back to Slackware was that it was so much of a pain in the rear to do things outside the GUI installer/system maintentance/config tools that I couldn't do the kinds of things I was used to. (Specifically, dealing with package management and compiling software that didn't have packages and needed different versions of libraries, without totally screwing one or the other up became too much of a headache) As a matter of fact, now that I think about it, I could probably do more without a command line on my Linux machine than with my MacOS X laptop on a stock install, since the Finder can't browse the BSD subsystem, and both GNOME and KDE default filsystem can, allowing me to use a GUI text editor to edit system files for configuration changes that I'm forced to use Terminal for on MacOS X.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[soccerisgod]

Didn't I use Ubuntu as an example here?

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[mgblst]

Some people have smarter family/friends than others. This seems to be quite clear in this thread.

Some people remember what to do when they are trying to do something, other like some of my friends, write down every single step they do, and if one thing goes wrong they are at a loss.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[ArAgost]

Photoshop is another notable exception. I still find the newest iCal better, just for the event inspector, which IS ugly (vertical pinstripes are ok on man suits, ko everywhere else), but saves me a LOT of space compared to the old drawer. Man, how I hated those drawers.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[grm_wnr]

Yes, but on OS X that's a catastrophe and on Linux it's just par for the course.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Anonymous Coward]

What planet are you living on ?

Seriously.

Please explain why I have to drop to a command (s)hell in Vista to get rid of a folder on my desktop.

Using your own remarks, Microsoft is nor ready for the desktop.

Or perhaps you're blind, I prefer my installation of Linux on the desktop more than the boring look of Windows. And, hey, the UI guidelines are followed in Linux, whereas in Windows ....

About the half a dozen ways :

How many ways are there to shut down your Vista ?

Please don't post non-sense anymore or move to another planet.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Evil Kerek]

Except that more likely, they won't bother. This is that linux attitude problem....

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Jesus_666]

I actually preferred the drawer. Sure, it made the window bigger, but it didn't require a proto-dialog that doesn't fit in with anything else. I also could look at the details for one event while having the entire month in view.

I think Apple should replace the event inspector with one of those black floating windows (cf. Quick Look). That would make it freely positionable so it doesn't have to obscure the day/week/minth view and it would make the interface more consistent.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Weedlekin]

"I don't think [Apple] realize the importance of gaining support from users in the Linux-sphere compared to the ease with which they could do it."

Alternatively, Apple may have done a cost / benefit analysis, and concluded that people who use Linux are unlikely to buy iPods or music from the iTunes store, so there's no real point in porting iTunes to it.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Weedlekin]

"Each Linux distro sale or download can result in dozens of installations"

It can also result in zero installations that actually end up being used as a day-to-day OS.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[rts008]

And one thing I never see mentioned:

Every Windows application CD I've encountered always has this (paraphrase)in the printed directions:

If the installer/aplication does not automatically start, then go to 'start'>'run' and type in 'D:\setup.exe', then hit 'enter'; where 'D:' is your CD-ROM.

I've seen this since at least the Win95 days.
It was apparently enough of a problem that they felt the need to put it on every CD.

For that matter, any MS Windows directions that have you go to 'start'>'run'>type 'foo', then hit 'enter', or click 'okay' is just a CLI with enough cammo that most users don't realise they've been suckered into using a CLI.

But let's not ever bring that up in this same, tired discussion.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[temcat]

Yes, of course.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Ullteppe]

I think that multiple ways of accomplishing things is good, but the main problem is when different applications do things in different days - one of the key problems of the old DOS days, when every program had its own ideas of which function keys to assign to which commands. Over time, this was standardized pretty well for example in menus in OS/2 and in Windows (Microsoft likes to mess it up again now and then - witness the new Internet Explorer as an example).

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[sciencewhiz]

The Add/Remove Applications program (conveniently located at the bottom of the applications menu) shows 3 items, Abiword, OpenOffice.org Word Processor, and OpenOffice.org Office Suite.

Much easier then windows, in which you would have to google for word processor and get 6,420,000.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Weedlekin]

The point I was really trying to make is that downloads of free (as in beer) software are neither a better or worse guide to its usage figures than sales (especially OEM ones) are to the usage figures for commercial software.

As an example, we know that both Windows and OS X are frequently pirated, so each copy of an OS they sell could potentially be installed on dozens of machines. However, Vista in particular has highlighted the fact that selling a copy of an OS (or for that matter selling anything) doesn't mean that the customer is satisfied enough with what they paid for to keep using it (or in the case of consumables, buy that product again).

It's pretty obvious that people are even more likely to chop and change (or outright reject) something that's free than an item they've paid for, and the fact that there are often significant differences between Linux distros means that even those who are committed to it have probably either downloaded an entirely new version of their favourite distro on a regular basis, or experimented with several different ones before settling on one they like.

So while it is indeed possible for one copy of a single Linux distro to end up on several machines, it's also not only possible, but actually fairly common for a single user to download several distros and only end up using one of them, or download different versions of the same distro several times. The only thing that we can therefore say for certain is:

1 software copy != 1 user, irrespective of whether it's sold commercially or obtained for free (legally or otherwise).

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[temcat]

I agree to all your points, one moment though: instead of "neither a better or worse guide than," I would use "as unsuitable a guide as." Since we really cannot tell how both indicators relate to the reality, we cannot even say that they are equally valid.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[jedidiah]

The problem with declaring Linux unready is the fact that it is constantly
changing and improving. Relevant changes may have occured and you could be
unaware of them even as a longtime expert user. You might not realize just
how easy certain things have gotten.

This manifests in a lot of help offered in good faith that really isn't all
that good. It's a reflection of the uber-geek giving it.

Nevermind the obvious trolls...

Rediscover your distro. You may find some surprises.

Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop."

[Weedlekin]

"I would use "as unsuitable a guide as.""

This is better way of describing it.

"Since we really cannot tell how both indicators relate to the reality, we cannot even say that they are equally valid."

They're both equally invalid unless what's being measured is a new piece of commercial software that's never been offered in any prior form or version, the manufacturer offers a no questions money back guarantee even if the packet's been opened, and doesn't count items that are returned under that guarantee as being sales:

- If there have been prior versions, then sales of a new one have no relationship whatsoever with actual usage. A prime example of this is MS Office, where the major competitor for every new version is the very large number of those who are perfectly happy with an older one, and do not therefore see any reason to spend money upgrading it.

- Sales of software that doesn't offer quibble-free money back guarantees after the customer has had an opportunity to try it out for themselves on their own machine(s) also bear no relationship whatsoever to usage, because it counts those who decided they didn't like it enough to continue using it. There have been more than a few occasions where buggy and / or badly designed software has resulted in actual users being only a small minority of the people who bought it.

- Companies who don't subtract returns from their sales figures are deliberately trying to pretend that they have far more users than is actually the case.

Totally True

[Anonymous Coward]

Been running Linux for 3 years. My main machine uses Debian most of the time with Xfce and my mother has no problems using it (well, after teaching her of course). Yeah, she might not be able to handle any problems, but my dad can't handle most Windows problems on his computers and gets me in to fix those too. Guess which machines have less problems.

1995 was the linux "Year of the Desktop" ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

1995 was the linux "Year of the Desktop" for me. This phrase is different for each person, just as windows is. Some people have yet to use windows, so it still isn't MS windoze "Year of the Desktop" for them either. Get over it. It is the "Year of the Desktop" for linux whenever YOU start to use it more than anything else. Stop following the sheep, for Pete's sake...

Re:1995 was the linux "Year of the Desktop" ;-)

[Dogtanian]

1995 was the linux "Year of the Desktop" for me. This phrase is different for each person, just as windows is. Then you've missed the point- the phrase refers to Linux making a breakthrough in the traditional desktop market, both in terms of general usability for the typical "desktop" user and also (as a result) in terms of numbers of actual desktop Linux users.

If you think that's a pointless discussion, or if you just don't care about Linux's market share in that segment, that's your choice, of course. But this question is distinct from a Slashdot-poll style question asking when individuals started using desktop Linux.

Re:1995 was the linux "Year of the Desktop" ;-)

[RiotingPacifist]

Exactly, and TBH i dont really give one when other peoples 'year of the desktop' is, ive only been using linux for 2 years now and while an increase in market share will mean more support for peripherals, as long as the linux crowd has enough dvelopers to take care of itself having 100% market share isnt really going to help it will just up the noise/signal ratio.

The Truth in "Ready For the Desktop"

[sleeping123]

Linux has always interested me. I've been a computer nerd since I was born, and first tried to install Linux when I was somewhere around ten years old. Well, we've seen a decade pass since then, and there's a lot of truth in this statement. I stuck with windows so long because of the inaccessibility of installing and putting together a distro the way you wanted. Now, more than ever, we are seeing a trend toward usability, starting from when you first boot the kernel. I personally love this phrase because every advertising campaign needs a slogan and with all the usability-centric distributions out there (case-in-point, Ubuntu), we've come a long way and we are finally ready for the average users' desktop.

Re:The Truth in "Ready For the Desktop"

[Whitemice]

... with windows so long because of the inaccessibility of installing and putting together a distro the way you wanted. ... Of course the "desktop user" has no interest at all in "putting together a distro".

I provided LINUX desktops to user in various places starting years ago... they worked and people were productive.

When did Word Perfect first become available for LINUX? Mid 90s...? I don't recall. But LINUX has been serviceable as a desktop since then.

Oh dear...

[FoolsGold]

If this story doesn't garner at LEAST 1000 comments, then Slashdot isn't ready for the Internet.

Re:Oh dear...

[rastass]

Oh... it will get over 1000 comments ;) I use Linux regularly "on the desktop", and IMHO it's all there and working nicely - EXCEPT 64 bit Flash. I use 32 bit Ubuntu on my old laptop and it works better out of the box than the *genuine* xp32 cd installer does. What pisses me off is when I try to get 64 bit going on any modern desktop, the only thing that consistently doesn't go is Flash. As unimportant as Flash is in reality, it's still needed due to the sheer amount of this shite out there. And until it works I'm not going to install Linux on any n00b relatives PC. Fix it Adobe. Or release the source and let us fix it - as you won't.

Re:Oh dear...

[besalope]

It's not just x64 Linux that has issues with flash. x64 Windows XP/Vista can't do it either (provided you're using IE x64 or even Firefox--Minefield x64). This is neither Microsoft nor the Linux community's fault, rather that of Adobe for being completely lazy and worthless.

Re:Oh dear...

[Fred_A]

It's not just x64 Linux that has issues with flash. x64 Windows XP/Vista can't do it either (provided you're using IE x64 or even Firefox--Minefield x64). This is neither Microsoft nor the Linux community's fault, rather that of Adobe for being completely lazy and worthless. Nah, it's just that Adobe can only afford PentiumII machines to program on because nobody ever pays for Photoshop.

Get Windows users to buy their software and they'll upgrade to 64 bit. ;)

Re:Oh dear...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have modded my parent Insightful instead of funny.

Ready for the desktop?

[code601]

My definition of ready for the desktop would be the ability to install any application I choose without having to know that the terminal exists.

Re:Ready for the desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

And what's your definition of "any application"?

Re:Ready for the desktop?

[Horatio_Hellpop]

//And what's your definition of "any application"?// Probably an application. Like, any of them.

Re:Ready for the desktop?

[Keyper7]

In Ubuntu, this ability is called Synaptic.

And for third-party applications, if the third-party only wants to provide a non-compiled .tar.gz or a .sh, it's not really Ubuntu's fault, is it?

Re:Ready for the desktop?

[adrianbaugh]

Exactly. You can find Ubuntu packages for the vast majority of applications (and likewise for SuSE, Fedora etc.) Certainly you'll be able to find at least one application to do whatever you want to do (though it may not be your obscure pet application of choice).

The fact that there's some weird little application used by about 5 people (including the maintainer...) that Ubuntu can't be bothered to package doesn't mean that Linux isn't ready for the desktop.

Re:Ready for the desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Including xterm?

Re:Ready for the desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, you're right........I went to softpedia and tried installing a number of the applications on my Mac OSX but they didn't work, therefore OSX is not ready for the desktop

Re:Ready for the desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

csh

Re:Ready for the desktop?

[SwedishPenguin]

By that definition, there is no desktop ready operating system. There will always be some applications that require the use of a terminal to install, that's not a shortcoming of the OS, that's the choice of those who publish the application.

Re:Ready for the desktop?

[apt-get moo]

My definition of ready for the desktop would be the ability to install any application I choose without having to know that the terminal exists. Reminds me of a friend telling me that Windows is not ready for music recording because of the inability to run Logic Studio. Which is an Apple Inc. product.
Being able to run every application you can think of is neither reasonable nor realistic to demand.

Re:Ready for the desktop?

[CBravo]

Most applications in Ubuntu let themselves be installed via synaptic, a gui front-end to apt-get. About 24000 are available. I think you are setting your standards too low ;-).

Re:Ready for the desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess Windows isn't /Ready for the Desktop/ then either? I can't buy Final Cut Studio Pro and install it on a Windows box, can I? That qualifies under 'any application' right?

Re:Ready for the desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ho ho ho. Then install Cygwin on Windows without using the command line. Is Windows ready for the desktop?

Re:Ready for the desktop?

[msromike]

No it's the fault of the amateur developers who make up the bulk of the programmers who write the apps that are available.

Next!

My brother and daughter have no problem

[Peter Simpson]

Neither is particularly geeky, and both of them use Ubuntu Linux for day-to-day email and web browsing. They both say they think it's faster and more dependable than WinXP.

Linux doesn't suck any worse than Windows.

From TFA

[Undead NDR]

The fact is, there are just as many people out there who have difficulty using Windows as there are who have trouble using Linux.

Well, I really hope that isn't the case, given the respective market share.

Re:From TFA

[tech10171968]

Well, I really hope that isn't the case, given the respective market share. Sorry to inform you of this, but this really is the case; otherwise there wouldn't be a need for a "Geek Squad". In my experience a lot of the users who deride linux for its "lack of usability" are the very same folks I see constantly tripping over themselves in a Windows enviroment (it's also amusing to see how they totally miss the irony). This just tells me, for example, that one could hypothetically create a 100% "Plug and Play" OS, everything working out of the box, no need for dropping into a CLI (like DOS or a *Nix shell), and users will still have the same complaints only because "it's not like Windows". Window's marketshare has nothing to do with any sort of superiority; it's just that people feel more comfortable sticking with the devil they know.

Re:From TFA

[Undead NDR]

Window's marketshare has nothing to do with any sort of superiority;

That's for sure, you're preaching to the choir there. But I suggest you re-read the quote from TFA very carefully.

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft invented it's own "geek squad", which is nothing more than a clique of people who can say they know how to fix shit that the rest of us can't. It's called the IT industry right now. You pay a bunch of money to get into the club, and suffer if you actually KNOW about computers aside from how Windows works.

Re:From TFA

[pablomme]

Hint: "there can't be more linux users with problems than linux users".

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you missed his point. If there are the same number of people who have difficulty using Windows as there are who use Linux, then Windows is doing great and Linux is in trouble. When you factor in the number of people who use Windows versus the number of people who use Linux, there should be a much larger number of people who have trouble using Windows than have trouble using Linux, even if Windows were 5x as easy to use.

Re:From TFA

[Dephex Twin]

WHOOSH!

Decade of Linux on the Desktop

[essence]

I like to think of 2005 to 2015 as the decade of Linux on the desktop. It's really only the last few years that linux has become usable by grandma, so long as grandma has the right hardware. I'm hopeful that the next 7 years will see much improvement for linux. By 2015, Linux will be on par with/ superior to other OS's on the desktop.

Always Ready != Not Being

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are always READY TO use Linux as desktop, you are never using Linux AS your desktop. Like Google is always ready to pay you 1 million :D

From the first half-dozen comments I see here...

[Keyper7]

...one can already notice that the article has a point. Each one has a different definition of what "ready for the desktop" means and none of them is completely right or completely wrong.

For more evidence, check the Ubuntu forums: there's no real consistency in comments about the readniess of Ubuntu for the mainstream: some computer illiterates say it's ready, some don't. Some geeks say it's ready, some don't.

Ready for the laptop!

[drolli]

Ubuntu is ok already, but parts of my experience are still somewhat inconsistent.

Re:Ready for the laptop!

[adrianbaugh]

Yeah, I have that too. Large parts of my experience are still pretty inconsistent, particularly most of the drunken times at university.

Not sure what it has to do with linux being ready though... ;-)

I don't want linux ready for the desktop

[kipman725]

If ready for the desktop means GUI everything and consistant style (read intigrated everything) you can count me out. The fastest to use programs use keyboard shortcuts for all common tasks, this is initialy slower than a gui but eventualy multiple times faster. I prefer a fast CLI, with the gui only used for software that benifits from it.

Re:I don't want linux ready for the desktop

[cbart387]

If ready for the desktop means GUI everything and consistant style (read intigrated everything) you can count me out. The fastest to use programs use keyboard shortcuts for all common tasks, this is initialy slower than a gui but eventualy multiple times faster. I prefer a fast CLI, with the gui only used for software that benifits from it. Done properly, I don't think those two goals are mutually exclusive. For example, Fedora's update notifier provides an easy way to 'point-and-click' for updating packages. What do I use it for? Just as an announcement so I know that something can be updated. Then I go to the command line and simply type 'yum update' since that tends to be quicker.

My point is that the GUI environment will generally use a command-line program as the back-end. So my hope is that 'desktop-ready distros' will give the option to use the command line.

Re:I don't want linux ready for the desktop

[quincunx55555]

I use the keyboard, sans mouse usage, with GUIs all the time. Just because the keyboard is faster than the mouse doesn't necessitate CLI usage. In fact, sometimes writing out words in a CLI is slower than pressing alt+(insert letter here).

Had its chance in 2001-2007

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the facts. Writing desktops is not easy. It took Microsoft 7 years to make vista, and it still has problems being accepted as a successor to XP. And XP itself was critisized as being too colorful and kiddy when it was launched. Micrrosoft also messed up ME and arguably 98. This is microsoft with their multi billion dollar budgets.

Linux has its chance between 2001-2007 to catch up to XP, but GNOME messed up with its file manager, KDE messed up by feature creep. Also note that Firefox was only launched in 2004, IE6 had three years of 95% marketshare while linux users were in the extreme minority. Ubuntu was only launched in 2004 as well.

Now linux had its chance and it is being forgotten by all but the most hardcore nerds. Even OLPC is getting Windows now. Just accept the failure, and work on other projects.

Re:Had its chance in 2001-2007

[badpazzword]

Is this the linux version of the "OMG netfoobar confirms: *BSD is dead LOL get over it"?

Because if you strolled through the Ubuntu boards you'd see a different story.

Re:Had its chance in 2001-2007

[Dogtanian]

Now linux had its chance and it is being forgotten by all but the most hardcore nerds. Even OLPC is getting Windows now. Just accept the failure, and work on other projects. I'd say the fact that OLPC and Eee PC went with Linux first and that MS released a cut-price version of XP in response (their *old* OS that they *were* trying to phase out) was an indication that you were incorrect.

Of course MS were going to fight back, and I'm not too surprised that OLPC is now running XP (though I'll admit to being disappointed).

Personally, I'm not convinced that Joe Public will ever be that bothered (or necessarily know) that he's running Linux on such-and-such a device- he may just use it without giving it a great amount of thought. And the question is whether there'll be a consistent interface (which *is* the OS in a lot of ways to most people); but they'll still be running Linux in such cases.

Windows' ease of use vastly overstated

[cptnapalm]

If Windows is so easy to use for the computer illiterate, why have I spent untold hours fixing other peoples Windows machines, teaching people how to double click on icons, teaching people not to double click on anything which is not an icon, teaching people how to connect to a wireless hotspot, etc etc etc?

Who do you think the "No, I will not fix your computer." t-shirts were inspired by? Mac users? Linux users?

Re:Windows' ease of use vastly overstated

[maxume]

Computer users.

Re:Windows' ease of use vastly overstated

[Anonymous Coward]

Well... take in account that the number of Windows users is waaaay bigger than Mac or Linux. Are you sure that you would not get fix requests from illiterates using linux? Be honest. Problems will arise wherever there is an illiterate.

Re:Windows' ease of use vastly overstated

[transporter_ii]

I agree 100%. I figure the local computer guy would lose about 60% of his income if everyone switched to Linux, because 60% of his income comes from removing viruses at $50.00 a pop, as well as other windows bugs.

With Linux, a person could make some money installing drivers, software, printers, etc. for people.

But note the difference. One person is making money fixing crap software, and the other person is making money increasing the functionality of the system.

transporter_ii

Re:Windows' ease of use vastly overstated

[crossmr]

why have I spent untold hours fixing other peoples Windows machines

Because windows users are targeted relentless by various scams, viruses, malware, etc. When you have a user base in the hundreds of millions or billions you're bound to get some gullible people. The same as you see any number of "intelligent" people fooled by real world scams and con artists.

teaching people how to double click on icons,

You'd have to do the same in Linux..

teaching people how to connect to a wireless hotspot

You would have to do the same in linux, assuming the wireless card was supported as was the authentication type... When I wanted to connect to the college network I was at a couple years ago, I had to go beg people on the project for my wireless adapter to write something to support LEAP authentication.

If 95% of the market share suddenly belonged to linux we'd all be wearing shirts that said "No, I will not run make for you"

Re:Windows' ease of use vastly overstated

[RobBebop]

How about tee-shirts that say, "Yes, I will fix your Linux computer."

Truth be told, when people ask me for help on most computer applications my first answer is usually to try to get them to use a F/OSS alternative. In most cases, I usually know how to get the free application to do what they want it to do, whereas there is a very limited number of Windows tasks (that I would want to do) that can't be done on Linux.

Re:Windows' ease of use vastly overstated

[Anonymous Coward]

The t-shirts for Linux and Mac looked something like this...

Mac - "No I will not buy a new computer"
Linux - "No, that is not compatible"

Re:Windows' ease of use vastly overstated

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had people who ask me to come over whenever they get a new piece of hardware or software and ask me to install it even before they open the box, because they know how impossible installs can be on Windows. You have to make sure software doesn't hijack your preferences and defaults, or install companion software that has nothing to do with the original purpose of the software, or install some spyware. And even then you may have to turn off automatic updates individually for that application so that some stripped-down ad-laden version doesn't come downstream later on. For the hardware you have to go through some complex wizard on the CD that installs some custom software for the hardware that doesn't really integrate well with your other software and probably has its own update method. I've set a few people up with Linux and they have no problem using Synaptic or just plugging in some USB device that just works and the correct application just loads up. If they want to go as far as installing a PCI card or something it would be detected automatically and work right away.

Re:Windows' ease of use vastly overstated

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that the well of human stupidity is infinitely deep.

Re:Windows' ease of use vastly overstated

[fyoder]

With Linux, a person could make some money installing drivers, software, printers, etc. for people. Or helping n00bs when they screw up. For example, I was called in to fix the server of a n00b screwed over by trying to make it more secure. He'd learned somewhere that chmod 640 was a secure permission setting, so he ran, as root, chmod -R 640 / But note the difference. One person is making money fixing crap software, and the other person is making money increasing the functionality of the system. Or simply restoring the functionality of the system when they totally hose it. The argument could be made that some people would be better off with Windows precisely because it constrains what you can do. I suppose the counterargument is that if you're a n00b learning linux, don't do your learning on a production server. K'ching for me, but an expensive lesson for the n00b.

Re:Windows' ease of use vastly overstated

[Anonymous Coward]

If 95% of the market share suddenly belonged to linux we'd all be wearing shirts that said "No, I will not run make for you"

Then you'd be out of the market. Right now I find myself turning down people who want me to fix Windows problems, it's always a virus or spyware problem and no matter how you lock down the OS they always seem to find a way to bugger it. When I set people up with Linux, things are so much simpler for both me and the end user.

Re:Windows' ease of use vastly overstated

[msuarezalvarez]

With Linux, a person could make some money installing drivers, software, printers, etc. for people.

And that is different from Windows or OSX how, exactly?

!ready for the desktop

[Toreo asesino]

The way I see it, it's ready for YOUR desktop when it can run all YOUR apps seamlessly and without a problem.

My girlfriend for instance, just browses the net, plays mp3's, checks her emails and occasionally writes documents, prints them, and occasionally uses Skype. Linux is ready for HER desktop.

Me on the other hand, I'm a .Net dev, play lot's of PC games, work with doc & docx files every day, and actually like iTunes (for the iPod). Linux is not ready for my desktop, nor is it likely to be any time soon.

To say "Linux is ready for THE desktop" is quite frankly very short-sighted.

Re:!ready for the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

You're spell cheque soft where's knot reddy for the desktop.

Re:!ready for the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean that you are using an iPod without Rockbox? What are you doing here?

Re:!ready for the desktop

[bigpicture]

Yes we all use our computers to play games, that's what they are for? They don't make any specialty boxes for that?

You can get an Asus MB for your girlfriend, with Express Gate/Splashtop, with no waiting for Windows boot. And sooner or later the universal mobile OS will be Linux based, because I don't see them forming any Windows standardization consortiums, do you?

Re:!ready for the desktop

[RobBebop]

This "girlfriend" you speak of... I think you are making a point that Linux is ready for the uses of most illiterate users.

And I don't know what PC games you need, but I've always found games on Linux to be enjoyable timesinks. Also, you can work with doc and (coming soon) docx files on Linux. Comparatively, I would estimate that 65-75% of the world's computer's do not have the ability to work with docx, anyway.

Lastly, I don't know what features are in iTunes that you need, but I know that I've seen posts on here by Linux uses saying they have no issues synch'ing with their iPods.

As far as being a MS.Net developer... I'm sure you'd be happy being a PHP or Ruby or Java or C/C++ developer if you could find an employer that will pay you to develop those non-Microsoft developed languages. Right? You only develop .Net because that is where the money is?

Re:!ready for the desktop

[Toreo asesino]

This "girlfriend" you speak of... I think you are making a point that Linux is ready for the uses of most illiterate users.

Yep, pretty much...I mean, she's not much of a computer interested girl, just uses some laptop for the basics and that's it, so Linux would be perfect.

And I don't know what PC games you need, but I've always found games on Linux to be enjoyable timesinks. Also, you can work with doc and (coming soon) docx files on Linux. Comparatively, I would estimate that 65-75% of the world's computer's do not have the ability to work with docx, anyway. I'm sure there are some good games for Linux, but how about some of the big-namers? I'm currently playing BioShock - top game incidentally.
My point is that I need flawless MS Office document interaction. OO doesn't do that. SharePoint services too; OO doesn't do them either. Again, for a friend only yesterday recommended OO as she just wanted a word processor to type her essays up in Spanish, and the version of Word didn't allow Spanish dictionaries. But it's not for me.

Lastly, I don't know what features are in iTunes that you need, but I know that I've seen posts on here by Linux uses saying they have no issues synch'ing with their iPods. iPod + iTunes is a seamless experience on Windows. Podcasts, music libraries, downloads etc; it all just works. Syncing is one very small peice of the pie; if you can garauntee there's a Linux equivalent that'll do all of what iTunes does, maybe I'll switch.

As far as being a MS.Net developer... I'm sure you'd be happy being a PHP or Ruby or Java or C/C++ developer if you could find an employer that will pay you to develop those non-Microsoft developed languages. Right? You only develop .Net because that is where the money is? I develop in .Net lingos because the tools are really good, the technology is solid and wide varying (web-services through to smart devices), and frankly it's the most dynamically growing development platform there is from what I can see. I'm sure there are other languages that are good too, I used to be a Java dev, but nothing that covers so much so effectively. In short, I think .Net rocks, and have no intention of switching to anything else right at this moment.

Re:!ready for the desktop

[Ira Sponsible]

Yeah. Linux is definitely ready for my desktop. I've been using FOSS apps on Windows for years, now to the point of near exclusivity. Periodically over the last few years, I would try one distro or another to see if they would suit my needs and they weren't quite there yet. Always a handful of showstoppers for my particular needs. And now I have a new laptop with Windows Vista on it. My Vista experience has consistently been "What the fuck is this shit?" since day one, as compared to "Hey, this isn't that bad but it's better than it used to be" when I'd tried Linux. WinME worked better than this Vista crap. So a few months ago I tried Ubuntu 7.10 on the laptop (Live disc) and my experience was suddenly "Damn, this is just about there, if only the sound and my card reader worked..." Guess what? I've been running 8.04 from the live disc on my laptop for the last three weeks. Everything works, even the sound and card reader. Better and faster than Vista ever did. I have yet to have any need to reboot into Vista to get anything done that I can't do with what's included with this live disc. I guess it's time for me to ditch Windows altogether. Linux is ready for MY desktop, and I imagine it's ready for many desktops, even if not quite there yet for you or many other people.

Re:!ready for the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was this modded insightful? It's just a paraphrasing of the article!

Re:!ready for the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Me on the other hand, I'm a .Net dev, play lot's of PC games

I'm thinking you should pick up some 2nd-grade edutainment software. If you're lucky, it might run in Linux.

Well done Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

A classic is Linux ready for the desktop flamewar! Despite many old memes and trolls have moved on, Slashdot is showing some of its original allure that attracted me to trolling this site back in 2001!

In 2001 Linux had, Kernal 2.4, KDE 2.2 and Gnome 1.4, and distros included Mandrake 8, SuSE 7, RedHat 7 and Ubuntu was never even thought of. Antialiased Fonts were not implemented, no support for winmodems, mozilla was still 0.x and XP had just been released.

The Question Should Be:

[FurtiveGlancer]

Is Linux ready for the average windows user?

Re:The Question Should Be:

[eapache]

I really want to meet this mythical 'average user' someday. Every user has different needs and different expectations.

Re:The Question Should Be:

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the answer is yeah, and the reason is: Because all the average user does is web browsing, checking e-mail, maybe do some IM, maybe play some music on the computer instead of a mp3 player, maybe watch a dvd on the computer instead of on a tv. Most of the "applications" they use are web based specifically or open protocol network based stuff generally (IM, e-mail). They don't really use the computer just for *local* applications. All these folks really need is a fast connection X-terminal with some speakers for the audio. And they would be happy, because their needs are modest.

Gamers? They're not average users. They are the guys who shop for the high performance hardware and pay big $$ to get the latest game, and you can be sure they'll do whatever it takes to make their OS run their games correctly. For them the #1 priority is making the game work. And if your OS doesn't support their games, they're not going to use your OS. For examples, look at comments from gamers about Vista vs. XP. They may or may not be a significant minority, but they *are* a minority.

What does that leave? Folks who use windows who are power users? They use apps like photoshop, quicken, or whatever that only exists on Windows and the only way they are going to stop using windows is if you pry it out of their cold dead hands. These folks are another minority. They'll be the last ones to give up on windows when it dies (*if* it ever dies).

That's why for example I got my mother a greenPC from Walmart for Christmas and she couldn't be happier. So yeah, I do think Linux is ready for the *average* windows user.

Re:The Question Should Be:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a bit short sighted, the average Windows user has become acclimated to using Windows because they never had to use anything else. Surely all of the odd things they believe about computers won't apply to Linux, and won't even apply to OS X for that matter. It's pretty unfair to rate an OS by that metric. Windows users have to deal with some pretty convoluted and complex issues.

Re:The Question Should Be:

[JohnBailey]

Is Linux ready for the average windows user? Is Windows? No computer is ready for someone who doesn't know and doesn't want to learn how to use it.

Re:The Question Should Be:

[AaxelB]

I really want to meet this mythical 'average user' someday. Every user has different needs and different expectations. Well, yeah. I think you might be fuzzy on the term "average." The average user isn't some guy down the street with exactly 2.4 children, it's a more abstract concept. Saying "Linux is ready for the average user" means it meets the needs and expectations of a large portion (probably a sizable majority) of those various different users you're so uniquely aware of.

Re:The Question Should Be:

[Anonymous Coward]

It is, and it was a long time ago. (like: 1992)
When people can read and write (or, to be more precise, type), they can use Linux. They just don't realise it.

Is the average windows user ready for linux? That seems to be another (and more serious) problem.

Ready for the desktop directly translates to:

[Zombie Ryushu]

Can play all the latest games and has support from the commercial software industry. Which Linux is not.

Why?

Well. For one thing, Hardware makers do not want to code drivers for Linux because they are terrified their precious trade secrets will be reverse engineered, Game makers are not wanting to produce games for Linux because they are terrified that their oh so important copy protection schemes will be cracked. On and on the list goes.

Most Linux OSes are designed in a consistent manner from an OS point of view. If the commercial software industry really WANTED to produce applications for Linux, they would. They don't for a myriad of religious, ideological, and shareholder lawsuit reasons and will fight until the bitter end to see that Linux does become something the masses want to adopt.

Re:Ready for the desktop directly translates to:

[DeathCarrot]

Well. For one thing, Hardware makers do not want to code drivers for Linux because they are terrified their precious trade secrets will be reverse engineered, Game makers are not wanting to produce games for Linux because they are terrified that their oh so important copy protection schemes will be cracked. On and on the list goes. Maybe I'm confused, but are you saying reverse engineering binary executables and libraries is somehow easier if they're compiled for Linux?

What in hell? \0_o/

Re:Ready for the desktop directly translates to:

[Zombie Ryushu]

Even if I can't directly reverse engineer the hard coded executable, stack traces, and Kernel documentation will allow a determined cracker to find some flaw in the copy protection scheme. There's just too many resources at the Linux developer's fingertips.

Re:Ready for the desktop directly translates to:

[SwedishPenguin]

There is no need for Linux box to crack the pathetic copy protection schemes out there. Windows users appear to do that just fine on their own.

Re:Ready for the desktop directly translates to:

[Anonymous Coward]

Game makers are not wanting to produce games for Linux because they are terrified that their oh so important copy protection schemes will be cracked.

Faster still?

Re:Ready for the desktop directly translates to:

[tepples]

Hardware makers do not want to code drivers for Linux because they are terrified their precious trade secrets will be reverse engineered Maybe I'm confused, but are you saying reverse engineering binary executables and libraries is somehow easier if they're compiled for Linux? Not all hardware is a printer, scanner, or something else that can be handled with a tidy user-space driver; some hardware needs a driver in the kernel to avoid significant performance penalties. Linux doesn't have a stable driver binary interface, on purpose, because closed source for kernel-mode drivers impedes the detailed diagnosis of kernel failures. So as I understand it, a maker of hardware that requires a proprietary kernel driver would have to release a separate driver for each kernel version. What did I misunderstand?

Most Linux OSes That's part of the problem: the market for GNU/Linux is split among numerous Linux operating systems with different kernel configurations and different packaging systems (e.g. deb vs. rpm). In the Windows space, it's either XP or Vista; in the Mac OS X space, it's either Tiger or Leopard. So which versions of which distributions is your product going to support?

Ugh

[PhotoGuy]

This reeks of "if you can't meet a requirement, change some definitions" approach. "I did not have 'sex' with that woman." "It all depends upon what your definition of is is." Or like the Bill Gates deposition.

It's pretty clear what "ready for the desktop" means. It means for the typical consumer. Linux has clearly been ready for the desktop for geeks since its first stable release; we know the ins and outs, the quirks, the configuration, so it's was ready for the desktop for a certain group of people.

The phrase clearly means the masses, the typical consumer, your grandma. With Ubuntu's great hardware support, flash, and Java, I think it's almost there, if not there. The fact you're seeing EEE PC's, Wal-Mart PC's, and other consumer electronic entries into the field, shows that it's starting to take root.

Changing the definition or throwing out the term "ready for the desktop" because we took longer to get here than we should have, doesn't reflect well on the Linux community or its confidence in the consumer market at all...

my mom

[FudRucker]

my mother happens to be a 74 year old great grandmother, she uses Slackware-12.1 and loves it (especially the kdegames package). of course i admin it and what i noticed is i have to do less work with Linux on her desktop as i did when it was running windows, i run the the same thing so i know when i need to drive across town and install an update that when i get an update then i just copy the update to a usb memory stick and take it to her house...

i think people that are clueless about performing tasks on computers are equally clueless on Linux as they are on windows (it is not the OS so much as their refusal to apply themselves to learn and remember the methods used to perform a given task)

GUI is ready, hw

[Coopjust]

I'd have to fully agree with the author's opinion. Like an earlier poster, however, I've had several people (including 70+ yr olds) to the Ubuntu GUI. When compared to Vista or XP, they agreed it was easier.

Linux faces a few problems that are slowing widespread adoption:
-Hardware support. This becomes less of a problem everyday. Dell supplies Linux drivers for every component of my 2 year old budget (less than $1000 USD) laptop, and as a result, Ubuntu compatibility is amazing.
-Program support. This is currently the Achilles heel of Linux- many people are trained on Outlook, Photoshop,etc. GIMP isn't as elegant to use, and while Evolution is much more intuitive in a lot of ways, some people just don't want to switch.
-Protocol support. Sorry, but I haven't found a reliable or consistent way to import DOCX/XLSX/etc. files into Openoffice. And Evolution flat out refuses to work with my Exchange server (with the same settings as the Windows partition on the same PC). Sure, I can use IMAP personally and always save as DOC. But every day it's more frequent to get those new Office 2007 files from others, and my work email isn't really a choice for me. If I have to constantly bootup into my Windows partition, Linux is more difficult to use.

I'm really excited about the progress that desktop Linux has made and will make. Wireless support has gone from poor to amazing within the past 3 years, and other hardware support has gotten better too. Repositories have grown, programs have become more stable, distros have become easier (easier than Windows!) to setup and maintain...in a lot of ways, Linux IS "ready for the desktop". The community has a few big issues to tackle before more people adopt it, however.

Re:GUI is ready, hw

[jonbryce]

I have the opposite problem from you. Evolution (and Entourage) will quite happily talk to my Exchange Server at work, but Outlook flat out refuses to do so.

Re:GUI is ready, hw

[straponego]

I think that you know this, but I think it's worth noting that the protocols and formats you mention are troublesome because they're Microsoft formats, deliberately designed to cause problems with software from anybody but Microsoft.

This doesn't fix your practical difficulties getting along with MS software at work today (believe me, I feel your pain), but over time I think the trend favors OSS and open formats (which are designed to solve problems) over MS software and lockin formats (which are largely designed to cause problems).

Re:GUI is ready, hw

[dbIII]

With MS Exchange you are pretty well stuck but that may change when Microsoft notice that people want to get email on their telephones now instead of a fairly unstable desktop computer program. Once they move back towards standard email then other email clients will work properly with MS Exchange. It improves with every verion - the "open relay by default" patch was removed and complete email backups without a second mail server (using a more reliable program) have been possible for some time!

It's all relative - after having to work around a lot of problems I do not beleive MS Outlook is ready for the desktop especially now that 2GB local mailboxes are very likely and there is nothing but a third party shareware tool to use to recover email in that situation.

Face it guys - the office desktop is really a mess whether it's an XP, CDE, KDE etc interface and people spend far too much time staring at unresponsive screens.

Re:GUI is ready, hw

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought most people had heard. Photoshop CS2 works nearly flawlessly with Wine. You can stop using that as an excuse now.

Re:GUI is ready, hw

[Richard_at_work]

Its pretty obvious you haven't actually got any knowledge of Exchange at all, other than what you seem to have picked up here on Slashdot.

Exchange provides Pop3, IMAP and SMTP interfaces as standard. 'Other email clients' can work fine with those.

Exchange 2003 upwards provides a webmail interface that does not necessarily rely on IE to work - yes, it has added functionality in IE, but it will work just fine in Firefox and Safari.

Since Outlook 2003, the local folder size has been 20GB.

Re:GUI is ready, hw

[dbIII]

The most recent versions of Outlook and Exchange are not used everywhere and that is where many problems lie - in the past they had very major flaws while now they have "quirks" that stop Exchange working properly with a variety of email clients on occasion. This still makes using MS Exchange with a non-Microsoft email client pointless becuase eventually the user may miss some important information due to a "quirk" in the standard.

The "pretty obvious you haven't actually got any knowledge of Exchange at all" is interesting - both a blatant insult and a sign that little is known by the poster of the dark buggy history of MS Exchange before it became what it is today. While MS Exchange 5.5 installs still lurk out there it is so old that a lack of knowlege of that and earlier does not make the earlier poster a newbie - but it still makes the insult that reveals their ignorance amusing.

The point that may have been missed is that full backups in earlier versions of MS Exchange were not possible without one of a few approaches. There is the option of shutting down the mail services for the duration of the tape run (this approach uses NT Backup). There is the option of aliasing the mail to another server and backing up the mailboxes there (which also means every user deleted messages still goes into the backup - occasionally useful). There was the option of some third party backup software that had special hacks to deal with MS Exchange. All of that is in the past now at all sites that have upgraded - using shadow volume copy properly means that backups can be done with a running MS Exchange.

The open relay by default was an annoying consequence of a patch to MS Exchange 5.5 and just at the time when blacklists were starting to become quick to respond.

Re:GUI is ready, hw

[Richard_at_work]

Your entire post just basically says 'Exchange is bad to use because bad system admins have left vastly out of date versions running when the vast majority of their problems would be solved by a newer version.'

Your problem is not Exchange, its bad system administration.

Re:GUI is ready, hw

[dbIII]

One point is that there have been very major improvements with every version and the quick points about unfortunatley still present versions were to show this. The major point which was missed is that it is likely that MS Exchange as it improves will move back towards proper support of established standards as people demand that their iphones or similar appliances work correctly with it - otherwise third party solutions will win out instead.

For now however there is no reliable alternative to interface with it other than Microsofts own programs.

The final line in the above post was a bit of a conclusion to jump to especially after the fairly extreme examples that were given. Microsoft's website has a large section of white papers on how to solve various current MS Exchange problems if you really want to get some indication of the current state. Also keeping very old versions of commercial software running when new versions are available is almost always a resource problem so insulting the poor sods that have not migrated off the platform due to budget constaints is missing the mark. It is a very expensive platform and I don't use it on my domains due to there being many better applications if you only want to deal with email.

When will Windows be ready for the desktop?

[mlwmohawk]

I am so sick and tired of the when will "Linux be Ready" crap. Linux is far more than ready.

The real issue is the Microsoft monopoly. If Microsoft's monopoly did not distort the computer industry, ISVs and big applications would already be supporting Linux in a big way. Boards and shareholders are cowards, if there is no financial incentive to do it, it won't happen. As long as Windows is preinstalled on over 80% of new desktops, no one would be able compete no matter how good their OS is.

Speaking as a long term Linux user, I laugh at Windows. It is almost useless at its core. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't work well at all. It is a confusing mess of incompatible technologies. The "control panel" is a joke. Its networking ability basic at best.

A kununtu/Ubunto/RHEL desktop is easier to navigate and use. A basic Linux install has so many more features and capabilities. I am *always* saying to Windows users, "let me do it, its easy on Linux."

Supporting Linux is easier too. Ask any "non-moron" internal support person. In my company remote Windows support is a mess of 3rd party utilities. The guys prefer Linux because they can use ssh and don't even have to rely on the user.

The *only* advantage Windows has in the market place is its monopoly position that is being illegally maintained by Microsoft. Basically making it a financially losing proposition for ISVs to support Linux.

For anyone who doubts that Linux is "ready for the desktop." I dare you to install Kubuntu, OpenOffice, Firefox, and all. And honestly try it for a month.

Re:When will Windows be ready for the desktop?

[notamisfit]

If Microsoft's monopoly didn't distort the computer industry, someone else's would have. Maybe Apple, maybe IBM, maybe in that bearded Spock universe, it would have been Amiga or Be, Inc. Nobody, not software houses, retailers, or Joe Average wants to go back to the days of five or six different major platforms.

Re:When will Windows be ready for the desktop?

[mlwmohawk]

Nobody, not software houses, retailers, or Joe Average wants to go back to the days of five or six different major platforms.

I call bullshit on this statement. Standardization would have resulted if no player gained dominance. Back in the days when Word Star, WordPerfect, and Word were fighting it out, everyone could read everyone's formats. Progress was being made in standardization until Microsoft started making extensions to DOS and Windows for Word. Word was the WORST!!!

Why are there multiple car companies? Why are their multiple television companies? Why are there multiple kitchen sink makers? Because of standards and competition.

As an ISV I hate the Microsoft is so dominant. It is such a difficult platform to do anything non-trivial. I have code that runs across Solaris, Linux, BSD, but the one that requires extra hacks is Windows.

Retailers would LOVE to have the option of multiple platforms. "Options" means opportunity to make money.

Joe Average probably doesn't know that he should want competition. Imaging competing platforms servicing the needs of users. That's what capitalism is supposed to do.

Re:When will Windows be ready for the desktop?

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Boards and shareholders are cowards, if there is no financial incentive to do it, it won't happen. Wow... Wtf? What's the problem with that? Are you implying that businesses should actually switch to Linux, even if it offers no tangible benefit... just because it's Linux?

If Linux's TCO is higher than Windows', what company in their right mind would switch?

If there's no increase in productivity for the same cost, what company in their right mind would switch?

Re:When will Windows be ready for the desktop?

[mlwmohawk]

Wow... Wtf? What's the problem with that? Are you implying that businesses should actually switch to Linux, even if it offers no tangible benefit... just because it's Linux?

No, I am saying that almost every company I've worked at, on some level, hates the fact that they have to support Windows and *would* support other platforms if they could make the case.

The problem is the "chicken and the egg." ISVs won't invest development until Linux has more users. Users can't use Linux unless there are more ISVs supporting it.

The Windows market is pretty much all fished out. People are buying the same old applications and upgrades. There is very little movement. The moving target treadmill that Windows is, means ISVs can't take time to refactor their code and port to other platforms unless they get additional resources.

Intuit, for instance, could probably open a whole new segment of users if they supported Linux, but it is hard to make the case.

The ISVs are like the "Ghost Riders" having to work for ever and barely keeping up. Sure, some do really well, but most just run a lean business without the resources to explore new markets.


If Linux's TCO is higher than Windows', what company in their right mind would switch?

Linux has been proved to have a much lower TCO than Windows, but it takes up-front investment to get there. Should packages like "Quick Books" be available on Linux, that initial investment would be lowered.

If there's no increase in productivity for the same cost, what company in their right mind would switch?

Linux is cheaper, easier to support, costs less to own, and is more reliable. Microsoft's strangle hold on the industry makes switching to a different OS intentionally more difficult than it needs to be. The OOXML bullshit is Microsoft at work protecting its monopoly. Without its monopoly control over formats, the market, the hardware vendors no one would use it.

Re:When will Windows be ready for the desktop?

[wwahammy]

Why would Intuit spend the time to target a small market of around 5%? Additionally, consider that that 5% consists of a large portion of people who dislike proprietary software? Consider also that there are probably a number of packages that do the same thing or close to the same thing for free and that are downloadable from the shell. They could justify selling for OSX because Mac users don't think twice about spending money on a piece of software. Linux users almost never spend money on software.

Re:When will Windows be ready for the desktop?

[mlwmohawk]

Why would Intuit spend the time to target a small market of around 5%?

Intuit is not a classical "Enterprise" solution. It mostly targets small companies and such. The phrase you are looking for is "Market Development."

Additionally, consider that that 5% consists of a large portion of people who dislike proprietary software?

Yea, I guess Oracle should never have ported to Linux. Didn't I read, a while ago, its the #1 OS base now?

Linux users almost never spend money on software.

Speaking as a Linux user, I buy Linux software. RedHat, Mandrake, and others. I bought Applix when it was available. The only problem with the Linux market, if you really say there is one, is that

I absolutely would buy TurboTax. I would buy Quick Books. As long as they are "real" versions, not Frankenwine builds or proof of concepts. Like Corel Draw was a few years ago.

Re:When will Windows be ready for the desktop?

[Draek]

They didn't want to go back to three major platforms in the console arena either, but the free market has a way of not giving a shit about that when it's free of the constrains of an abusive monopolist.

Re:GUI is ready (cutoff subject title)

[Coopjust]

And, for reasons unknown, Slashdot decided to cutoff my title. Sorry. "GUI is ready, HW support is better, still probs."

Top marks for interesting point

[Toreo asesino]

0 points for delivery.

-10 points for nullifying point by alienating the entire /. crowd with last addition.

All in all, a fairly typical AC comment! Good to see no moulds are being broken today on /.

Re:Top marks for interesting point

[KGIII]

Ah the irony. The first post was pretty much what I'd expected to see. Even here at /. it seemed likely that there'd be an AC posting drivel. It makes me wonder how they manage to get the first posts. But you fed the troll, but I digress... ;)

I'd add that I actively avoid using Linux on the desktop unless I must and then it is only normally Ubuntu. I use CentOS daily but not on the desktop.

I'd say that *I* feel Linux is long since ready for the desktop and that it is an excellent choice for those who want it. Even as someone who's yet to find a desktop (the last KDE was kind of nice) that suits my learned styles, found a package manager that was simple enough for drunken binges, inability/undesiring tinkering with the plethora of issues I've always had when attempting to use the various flavors on laptops, and my own lack of expertise with Linux -- it is still, and has been, ready for the desktop.

I'd like to think that the average "user" could pick up a PC with Linux on it and function with it in a short time. They may not be experts. They may not like it. But I'd like to think that they could pick it up and use it to accomplish their day-to-day needs.

The real question.

[jellomizer]

Is Linux ready for a majority position on the desktop. The answer is no and Ill expect it always will be. Because I don't see the desktop being the dominate platform for much longer. As smart phones are getting smarter, replacing many of the most commonly used desktop uses and as the price of powerful hardware is rapidly dropping I am seeing a world where we have more appliances then desktops. The key for Microsoft dominance in the desktop for the past decade has moved from 3rd party software variety to the fact that people need 100% office compatibility. (Even office for the Mac offers 99.999% compatability... not good enough) Open office offers 99% compatibility meaning normally 3 day a year you will need office, to view a document. Now if Microsoft looses it office share or there are complete solutions to share the files Microsoft will go down as well as the desktop. And we will move back towards appliance applications, for personal use. Granted they will be more like under powered desktops but using todays terms for $200.00 you will get a system that is roughly the power of a first generation core solo, a small k unupgradable box with Wi-Fi a keyboard with just office like applications. Games will be relegated to the console. All the appliances will have internet connections so most 3rd party apps will be web based. Yes slashdot will scoff and be overall displeased by this but this direction would seem to make the most sense. As it would be more economical, people will not feel the need to upgrade every 3 years. Closed Source Developers would like it as it can reduce piracy of their software. Desktops will not Die, just as the Mainframe didn't die but the desktops would be more for people like the stereotypical slashdot user who uses more of the PC power then the rest of the population. Nothing says these appliance apps will not run on the desktops.

Re:The real question.

[azgard]

So, are you saying that in the future, people will prefer 3 inch screens and crappy keyboards of mobile devices to large monitors and comfortable keyboards of desktop computers? I don't think so.

Re:The real question.

[PhoenixAtlantios]

So, are you saying that in the future, people will prefer 3 inch screens and crappy keyboards of mobile devices to large monitors and comfortable keyboards of desktop computers? I don't think so. You're assuming that in the future mentioned we will still be using keyboards as a primary method of input; research into other methods (such as voice recognition, motion capture, etc) would seem to indicate otherwise.

Re:The real question.

[RobBebop]

Closed Source Developers would like [software appliances] as it can reduce piracy of their software.

And Malware developers would like it as it can increase their ability to put their software in your toaster so they can burn your house down.

Re:The real question.

[azgard]

Really? Both the methods you mention are worse than keyboard or mouse. Voice recognition is slower than keyboard (just try to write C code via speech or try to navigate a document via speech). Motion capture, I am not sure what you mean, but if you mean something like Wiimote, it has been tried on light pens and proven that hand hurts a lot more from prolonged usage of such devices than from using a mouse.

Re:The real question.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with all your points save one: the ultimate result of The Death Of The PC. I believe that all these devices will add diversity and make the PC less central (it's obvious that trend started in earnest at least three years ago), but they're simply not going to replace the desktop PC outright. There's a lot of reasons the PC is here to stay for the next couple decades at least, but the main one is that people aren't going to stop using them at work. Why then would they completely shun one at home?

Re:The real question.

[msuarezalvarez]

The density of information you can achieve using a keyboard is going to be very hard to beat using motion capture or voice recognition.

Re:The real question.

[turing_m]

I certainly see a move to low power, passive, small form factor but acceptably performant computers. Re-reading your post, I think I see a lot of the same thing.

If there is an exception, I think it will be hardware manufacturers realizing the power of the repository to provide a vast amount of functionality for zero investment. As for closed source, for-profit software, I see it either being web-based or being crafted into some sort of one-click install solution. Or perhaps a password protected repository that you pay for access.

I guess it comes down to how people use a TV versus a computer. The environment a person watches a movie or a TV show is different form how they surf the internet or use an office suite. I certainly don't like to watch a movie unless I'm reclined somehow, and the screen should be large. An appliance that plays games, music and HD video is useful in this space. At the same time, using a computer for office or net surfing is something best done privately, at a desk.

As for games on that system for the desk, I think it the quality of games it receives will depend on the ability of gaming companies to extract revenue from such a system. It all depends on how many are on desks. Given enough desks and games-performant hardware, there will be a market and the games will be ported.

I think this will happen for games as well. At the moment the PS3 and the XBox use about 190 Watts, while the Wii uses about 18 Watts. The Wii is relatively non-performant graphically, yet successful commercially. This makes a good argument that as the polygons get smaller, those needing more polygons are a smaller and smaller niche market.

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1102/

Re:The real question.

[Anonymous Coward]

people will not feel the need to upgrade every 3 years. I disagree. At least in the U.S., three years is by far the longest one goes with the same cell. Free phones from providers usually convince everyone to upgrade at the end of the contract. Team that up with a lot of people willing to pay for the newest Blackberry or the next iPhone and you don't see many phones older than three years. I think your point is good, and it will be more economical, but people upgrade their phones here more than their computers (Hard not to when it's free :)

It's still slow and ugly :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux has come a long way but it is not time to congratulate yourselves yet. There is still work to be done before you can claim to have clearly better alternative to Windows and OSX.

1. Make it BOOT FASTER.
2. Make it REACT TO USER INPUT FASTER. Ubuntu practically has wait cursor as default cursor.
3. Stop pretending to be graphical designers and get help from someone who really knows how to do it. Both KDE and Gnome look like crap out of the box and most themes are not much better.
3. Stop internal bickering and just make everything work together so that users never need to know things like differences between rmp and deb.

I know there probably is a Linux distribution that boots in 1 ms by not loading any drivers and another distribution that reacts user input in -2 ms if run on cluster of 300 Playstation 3s, but that is completely meaningless for desktop use.

Windows has numbers on its side and OS X has religious following, so it's not enough for Linux to be ready for desktop, you have to make it look and behave far better than competition.

p.s. I do like how easy it is to install common programs in Ubuntu. That's one area where Linux has surpassed competition.

Re:It's still slow and ugly :-)

[Vectronic]

Hmm... granted im speaking for myself, but I have never found any Linux distro to take signifigantly longer than any Windows or Mac to boot up... I think its mostly a perceptual thing, you probably prefer, and have gotten used to how your Windows or Mac boots up, and therefore any difference to that seems like it takes longer...

If you have 2 computers, one has a single boot screen... takes 30 seconds to boot... fine...

The second, has 3 boot screens, and the cursor is visible while booting, yet still only takes 30 seconds... it "feels" like it takes longer, because more things have happened, and becuase the cursor is visible, you mentally start thinking "I can do stuff"...but you cant...

Same with the cursor, its generally a perceptual thing... if the cursor stays 'Normal' but you cant do anything yet, it seems quicker than if the cursor changes to 'Wait' and you cant do anything...

Some distro's have figured this out... some havent... even Microsoft, improved some aspects of it with Vista, but also made some worse... and frankly, I dont care about Mac at all...

Re:It's still slow and ugly :-)

[colinrichardday]

1. Make it BOOT FASTER.

I've only had to boot my desktop machine once in the past six months (power cutoff). Not much of a problem.

3. Stop pretending to be graphical designers and get help from someone who really knows how to do it. Both KDE and Gnome look like crap out of the box and most themes are not much better.

I would say that neither looks any worse than default Windows XP.

Windows has numbers on its side and OS X has religious following,

OS X has religious following? What do you call the Church of GNU emacs?

Re:It's still slow and ugly :-)

[EEBaum]

I've only had to boot my desktop machine once in the past six months (power cutoff). Not much of a problem.

Some of us old-fashioned types like turning their computer off at night... granted, I guess hibernation could be a substitute.

OS X has religious following? What do you call the Church of GNU emacs?

GNU emacs isn't an OS. Analogy fail.

Re:It's still slow and ugly :-)

[colinrichardday]

GNU emacs isn't an OS. Analogy fail.

It isn't? I've heard that it's only missing a decent text editor.:-)

But more seriously, you don't believe that there is a "religious" aspect to the Free Software Movement?

Re:It's still slow and ugly :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say that neither looks any worse than default Windows XP.

You mean the thing most people refer to as the Fisher-Price of GUIs?

Just because the competition looks like shit doesn't mean you don't have to try harder.

Re:It's still slow and ugly :-)

[colinrichardday]

OK. GNOME looks cooler than Windows XP.

Re:It's still slow and ugly :-)

[toddestan]

Hmm... granted im speaking for myself, but I have never found any Linux distro to take signifigantly longer than any Windows or Mac to boot up... I think its mostly a perceptual thing, you probably prefer, and have gotten used to how your Windows or Mac boots up, and therefore any difference to that seems like it takes longer...

Maybe it's better with some of the latest releases, but Linux booting seems to be a very serial operation. Do this one thing, then do that one thing, then do this one thing, etc. I remember back when booting Linux with your ethernet unplugged would add a couple of minutes as the whole thing would hang while it waited for DHCP to time out, though that seems to be better now. Windows used to be that way with Windows 2000, but then they made it so several things could happen in parallel with Windows XP, which is why XP boots so much faster than 2000 ever did.

I Hate These Threads

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I hate these threads. Y'know why? Because they're futile, and almost always degenerate into a flame war. I agree with the poster. We really need to move beyond "ready for the desktop". The real question is, whether it's ready for you. The trick with deciding whether or not to use Linux is to try it. If your computer has trouble with it (closed or non-standard hardware), or if there is some program you just have to have, then don't use it, and take the live CD out of the drive. This whole discussion was pointless to begin with.

Re:I Hate These Threads

[jilles]

> This whole discussion was pointless to begin with.
So is posting comments like this. But hey, it's Sunday and I'm bored.

It's always the same people claiming linux is ready for the masses and obviously better than windows. The market has proven them wrong for more than a decade now. Desktop linux is mainly sold as a cheaper alternative to windows, not as a better one. The main competition now is in the very low end of the market where windows is too expensive for vendors to be able to compete with their linux shipping competitors. The experience is limited & mediocre but the price compensates.

Re:I Hate These Threads

[colinrichardday]

The market has proven them wrong for more than a decade now.

And if the market is wrong?

Re:I Hate These Threads

[sydneyfong]

The real question is, whether it's ready for you The real question is, why should I (or you) switch?

Don't be mistaken I've been using Linux on my desktop for more than seven years now, almost exclusively. It's just that I don't see a marked advantage for people to risk trashing their computers by switching from Windows to Linux.

The real challenge is to find OEM vendors who are willing to ship Linux pre-installed (the progress seems slow but at least there's some progress here). Otherwise for most average users switching to Linux is nothing but a unnecessary hassle.

Re:I Hate These Threads

[sydneyfong]

Windows the Microsoft product is not better than Linux.

What's better:

- 3rd party applications support. Almost no major company writes apps specifically for Linux, but many target Windows.
- 3rd party hardware support. Hardware manufacturers test their products on Windows, and have to fix any problems with Windows before they ship it. They also have to make a working windows driver. They don't have to do this for Linux, and many don't.
- User familiarity. People are used to the quirks of Windows. They know what ctrl-alt-del means. They know what windows updates is doing. They know that many problems could be fixed after a reboot.
- Windows is pre-installed. You don't have people running around bitching how hard it is to install a generic copy of windows. The rescue disks from OEMs contain the drivers for the hardware. Linux is hard to install because making an easy to use generic installer for ANY machine is hard, and this is part of the user experience when a user decides to switch to Linux.

Tell me about any significant areas that Linux is behind Windows which don't fall under these 4 categories. Windows is simply technologically inferior, the only major advantage it has over Linux these days is its existing market share. Of course this doesn't mean anything from the general consumer's perspective, but since slashdot is heavy on tech discussion, the technological aspects are discussed more here.

Re:I Hate These Threads

[jilles]

Markets are not right or wrong. Just the people that operate in them. It might be that people just don't get it or it might be that the product is not good enough. Anyway, calling that many people idiots is quite a stretch.

Re:I Hate These Threads

[jilles]

Better is a point of view. The market reflects the point of view of the people in it, voting with their wallet.

Support, testing, user familiarity & general usability, hardware support. It's all part of the product and for ordinary users can be the difference of having a working PC or a useless brick. Also these require massive investment to get to the level Microsoft is delivering for hundreds of millions of users. Linux is behind in all those non functional areas.

I never said windows was better technically. I actually believe, like you, that it isn't although on the other hand I think Linux technical advantages are mostly irrelevant for users whereas its non technical flaws aren't. Linux is quite good if you know what you are doing which is why I don't recommend bothering with it to people who don't. On the other hand, if you just want to plug in a headset + webcam and chat a bit with your mom over skype ... Well, good luck making your mom get that to work on Ubuntu on the other end of a phone (not a hypothetical situation in my case, and yes she managed to do it in windows).

I think Linux is doing quite well in the market given its flaws. The market tells us that desktop linux is either being used by hobbyists, in very controlled enterprise deployments, or in cheap devices. There is still virtually no demand among normal users. That's progress from just a few years ago and I'm sure it will continue to improve.

Re:I Hate These Threads

[colinrichardday]

Markets are not right or wrong.

Then they cannot (GP notwithstanding) "prove" anything, either.

Anyway, calling that many people idiots is quite a stretch.

But less of a stretch than saying that Linux isn't ready for the desktop.

Are there gui apps ready for it yet?

[shdowhawk]

Before anyone starts pestering me on this, I want to mention that I've been using *nix based systems for a long while now. I'm a software engineer, and I worked at a linux based ISP for two years on top of it. I've installed countless distro's and eventually stopped using them all (mostly for gaming reasons). The one problem I have every time I go back to loading up gentoo (still my fav) is lack of applications I like.

Example: Trillian for windows / Adium for mac (click on Xtras, top right of screen). They're pretty looking, they're functional and have lots of addons. Linux has gaim (which I love actually, but it's the point of the matter. I don't have the option to switch from "clean and basic interface" to "fun with extras").

I'm a web developer, and my favorite database program to date was for Mac (Yoursql .. or look at this image). It's small, it's light, and it does 99% of what I need (which is just quick look ups and checking data). In this case, I LIKE not having 20 ways to do the same thing with an interface with a billion options. And no, don't tell me to use phpMyAdmin, or to use the command line, that's the easiest way to DETER someone from using linux. Yes I CAN use the command line (all my queries are written from scratch, I dislike those gui query builders).

Next is editors. Simple fixes here and there, I use Vi(m). But for my Php/xml/html/javascript/css, I want to see a program that just does web languages. For Windows and Mac there are TONS of them. For linux, there are a few, and most are either bloated to hell (eclipse, since it handles ALL programming languages for the most part) or just unstable with practically no features (line numbers? good color switching between php/html/css? tabs for multiple windows?). Given Bluefish is good stuff, but programs like this (IMHO) are few and far between.

Mac, I believe has it down the best. There are many programs, and (which is also the problem IMHO) many of them are not meant to do EVERYTHING. In the end though, you have a bunch of options(programs) to choose from, and they're really well built for what they need to do (lots of planning to put only what is generally NEEDED, while spending time to make sure the DESIGNS look good and are simple. The whole "i don't like it because it took too many mouse clicks" mentality that mac users have), instead of one or two programs that are meant to try and do everything =/. As much as I hate to admit it, eye candy is a major player. It's sad because Desktop wise, linux is AMAZING at it Linux vs Vista (I'm not trying to bash Vista here, i'm just making a point).

While I mentioned web development based things, I'm sure this is generally true for most people in most aspects of computing (I've had a lot of friends mention this about various things). I believe that biggest problem is the idea that "a program should do everything" mentality. When we build some more basic programs that are quick, clean and easy to use for any and all purposes (even basic text editors), then I believe that many more people will start to use linux because they won't be so lost from needing to search all over the internet for "a program to do X" (ubuntu / gentoo / suse all that those threads in their forums, the stuff really isn't that easy to find...) or overwhelmed by seeing the 500 options when they just wanted to write a few notes to themselves. Ubuntu was a great step at simplifying and getting people curious to install, now we just need to add more "stuff" to keep people here! The "Ready for Desktop" can be thrown out as it IS ready for desktop. Now we just need to work on the "Simple and Easy to Use" .. which will eventually lead to the new,shi

When developers can make money...

[cyclocommuter]

... writing software for it (Linux Desktop) then it might be ready. Or when when smallish companies which bankroll software figure out a way on how to make money of it. I am not talking Office software here but tax preparation and other small business software for Accounting, Billing, Inventory, etc. It may also help if a small company can hire developers that can develop desktop software on it in true RAD fashion without the need for these developers to know how to do it in C ala Linus.

Also when users of these software (outlined above) are confident that nothing will break after 6 months when it is time for them to upgrade to the latest build of Ubuntu or Simply Mepis, Mandriva, or whatever desktop distro it is they are using, then it is ready for the desktop.

Re:When developers can make money...

[Anonymous Coward]

These types of things (Tax software that you have to re-buy every year anyway) are being offered on the web as services. There's a ton of billing software that works on Apache, not to mention some native solutions for Linux itself. As for the updating thing, I don't think you can even do that with Windows service packs or upgrades, and that IS with a bunch of testing.

Re:When developers can make money...

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are saying Red Hat, IBM or Novell don't make any money what so ever off of linux?

Re:When developers can make money...

[Weedlekin]

Red Hat and IBM make money off enterprise customers who buy support contracts (and pricey hardware in IBM's case) for servers; RH gave up on any hopes of earning money from desktop Linux several years ago, and IBM no longer make personal computers, so they have no interest in it either.

Novell started making money this year after a long period of losing it. Again, the vast bulk comes from enterprise customers running servers -- their income from desktop users is negligible.

As Loki and others have shown, it's extremely difficult to make enough money selling commercial software to desktop Linux users to support even a small company, let alone cover the porting, marketing, and support costs of larger ones.

Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[Hercules Peanut]

No, I'm not trolling, I trying to clear the misconception. Linux just isn't ready.

Recently I built a new PC. That puts me in the above average user (not above avg /.) category immediately. I've used DOS, Windows everything, Mac OS everything and even Solaris, This time I tried Mint. It installed beautifully. It was easier and quicker to install than Windows.

Unfortunately, my mainstream Nvidia card did not have drivers and the pkg installer for Mint didn't work. Now what do I do. Well, I had to get out of X. Care to tell me how to do that in Mint? Someone had too. It's a multistep process requiring strange keyboard combinations using function keys. Then I had to run the installer. Double-clicking is intuitive these days "sh" isn't.

Well now my video card works but I can't map any drives and my computer is constantly flooding the network with queries (how embarrassing). Our IT department is wanting to know what I was doing. I don't know. I manage to figure out the circuitous route to accessing shared drives on the network but when I doubleclick on the openoffice document on one of those network drives, I see the open office splash screen but it never opens the document. I learn that there is more to do than just "get to" the shared drives.

I finally gave up, formatted the drive and installed Windows. I'm not a hacker or even an overclocker anymore. I'm an administrator now and the final straw was when I realized that work was piling up on me while I fiddled with my OS. Playing with linux was cool but when it all boiled down to it, I had work to do and just wanted to get my job done.

I know, that's just one distro but how does anyone know which distro is right? I tried another whose name I cannot remember. It was worse. Sure, if I had a linux guy around I could have had him set it up for me but that's the point. You need a linux guy and until that changes, it's just not ready IMHO.

Yes, it is my humble opinion but I seem to recall that Red Hat shares it. I'm glad to see linux. I'm glad it's getting better. It's a great thing for the computer industry and will only get better as long as we don't delude ourselves into believing it is something that it is not. At least not yet.

P.S.
For all of you who have "set up a machine" for their parents and it "works just fine", I submit that requiring an expert to set up a system for an end user is the very definition of "not ready". In today's world that end user (even Mom) might need to change something, install something new, access something different and then things require an expert to "ssh in to fix things".

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[shish]

For all of you who have "set up a machine" for their parents and it "works just fine", I submit that requiring an expert to set up a system for an end user is the very definition of "not ready".

By that defenition, Windows isn't ready either :-|

In today's world that end user (even Mom) might need to change something, install something new, access something different

My parents have found changing settings and installing programs easier on linux (Ubuntu) than Windows :-P

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[neuromanc3r]

For all of you who have "set up a machine" for their parents and it "works just fine", I submit that requiring an expert to set up a system for an end user is the very definition of "not ready". And how exactly is that different from Windows? I'm definitely not a Linux fanboi, but Windows is not ready to be set up by my parents (without my help) either.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[Hymer]

For all of you who have "set up a machine" for their parents and it "works just fine" our parents wouldn't be able to install Windows so your statement is pure bullshit.
Many people can't even restore their system from a system restore CD. Windows is only "Ready for the Desktop" because it is preinstalled, installation of a real (retail) Windows is a real pain in the ass (this is true for every version from 3.x to XP both incl., I don't do Windows any more so I don't know if it is true for Vista too). The only system that is Desktop Ready by your definition is OS X... but it is only so 'cause it is like an OEM Windows: all necessary drivers are included.

--

Linux is desktop ready. Whether you are ready for Linux or not, depends on your dependency on software based on Microsofts products.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[RealityThreek]

Unfortunately, my mainstream Nvidia card did not have drivers and the pkg installer for Mint didn't work. Now what do I do. Well, I had to get out of X. Care to tell me how to do that in Mint? Someone had too. It's a multistep process requiring strange keyboard combinations using function keys. Then I had to run the installer. Double-clicking is intuitive these days "sh" isn't.

You unfortunately have a point here. I recently had to do the same with my 9600 GT and was surprised it wasn't supported in Ubuntu yet. For me it was something like 'sudo apt-get install build-essential && sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop && sudo sh Desktop/NVIDIA-installer-thingy.bin && sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start'. Then you go through and answer confusing questions like whether you'd like to download a kernel module or compile your own. That's a poor user experience.

Well now my video card works but I can't map any drives and my computer is constantly flooding the network with queries (how embarrassing). Our IT department is wanting to know what I was doing. I don't know. I manage to figure out the circuitous route to accessing shared drives on the network but when I doubleclick on the openoffice document on one of those network drives, I see the open office splash screen but it never opens the document. I learn that there is more to do than just "get to" the shared drives.

This entire paragraph makes no sense though. Samba under Linux is better than Windows' implementation and Gnome makes it dead simple to use. It REALLY is as easy as going to Places : Network, browsing to your file on a shared folder, and double-clicking. In general, Linux computers don't "flood the network with queries" so I'd have to know what you were doing. Remember that the majority of the internet is served on a Linux server so you can assume it knows how to play nice.

For all of you who have "set up a machine" for their parents and it "works just fine", I submit that requiring an expert to set up a system for an end user is the very definition of "not ready". In today's world that end user (even Mom) might need to change something, install something new, access something different and then things require an expert to "ssh in to fix things"

I set up Windows on my grandmother's computer and it works fine. I could have just as easily set up a Linux computer for her and she would still need me to come by and fix things on it occasionally. Windows isn't easier to setup, it's just easier to find an "expert" to help you in Windows.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitch at nVidia then.

Mint did its part. nVidia's shit drivers are what caused your problem.

Seriously now people, put the blame where it belongs. nVidia won't support a good linux driver, or even a basic libre driver, so it's not going to work out of the box with linux. And how are you going to install a driver for X if it's running? It's like installing a windows driver and expecting it to run straight away.

If I buy a sports car and expect it to be able to tow my boat, on who does the blame fall?

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[Tikkun]

Auto makers build cars for users, users drive around until check engine light comes on or 3,000 miles go by, users then take autos to mechanics for service and maintenance. No where in this picture do users service their own cars unless they really, really feel like it.

Why should computers be any different?

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically drivers should be provided by the HW manufacturer (and so are almost all Windows drivers) so I'll suggest you go bash nVidia, ATI, Lucent (WinModem), the WiFi motherfuckers, etc. instead of bashing Linux.
--
Just remember the wise words from Redmond: don't buy it if it isn't on the HCL.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[stubear]

If drivers aren't available it is up to the OS to provide SOME sense of functionality (even if it's 640x480 or 800x600 display resolution with 256 colors) so the user can get around and fix the problem. To assume that anyone would want to troubleshoot a problem like this in a console is ludicrous. Notice that the console in Windows and OS X are LAST resorts ONLY for troubleshooting. I would love to have been at the meeting where someone had to tell Steve Jobs the Terminal was a "required" app in OS X.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[Hymer]

The Terminal IS required in OS X... you just don't need to use it. That is the exact same situation as in most Linux distros.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[pablomme]

It's a multistep process requiring strange keyboard combinations using function keys. 1. Hold Ctrl
2. Hold Alt
3. Press F1

I agree, it's totally multistep. Still need to figure out the most important bit, though:

4. ???
5. Profit

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[Rob_Bryerton]

Because they're not cars?

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[dbIII]

Unfortunately, my mainstream Nvidia card did not have drivers

Just like with MS Windows you go to the Nvidia web site and download it.

As for the rest - it is unfortunately very different and knowlege of MSDOS will not get you very far without reading some instructions. The hardest thing with an unfamiliar computer system can be setting it up - I would not recommend it to anyone that has not used the system before but fortunately there are things like "knoppix" that allow you to run linux from a CDROM without installing anything. From that you can see whether it is worth doing in your case and if there are applications that do what you need. Ultimately the distro does not really matter since nearly every application that will work on one will work on all of the others.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[markkezner]

For all of you who have "set up a machine" for their parents and it "works just fine", I submit that requiring an expert to set up a system for an end user is the very definition of "not ready". In today's world that end user (even Mom) might need to change something, install something new, access something different and then things require an expert to "ssh in to fix things". I'm willing to argue that the same is true for Windows.

Does your mom feel comfortable installing and setting up a Windows machine from scratch?
Would your grandmother know that in order to get her devices working, she has to look in Device Manager, identify the device, and hunt down the driver at the OEM's website?

The fact is that lots of "illiterates" would not even be willing to try, regardless of the OS they're using. When it comes to anything remotely technical, often they would rather just call their local geek.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[crazy_monkey]

FYI, the "flood the network with queries" is something that's come up a lot with the last (not sure about most recent) release of Mint. Here's a forum post on the problem. Of course, it's actually a 'feature' :)

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[crazy_monkey]

Oops; corrected version with actual link: FYI, the "flood the network with queries" is something that's come up a lot with the last (not sure about most recent) release of Mint. Here's a forum post on the problem, with the solution. Of course, it's actually a 'feature' :)

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[Anonymous Coward]

You call yourself an administrator, yet you (1) install an unfamiliar distro for the first time on the production network without even playing with it first offline, and (2) aren't willing to invest some time to update and expand your skills? Remind me not to hire you.

When your IT dept calls to ask why your machine is flooding the network with mystery queries and you can't answer because this is the first time you've ever tried this software and don't know your way around it or even what it does, you aren't an administrator, you're one of the lusers that competent administrators have to clean up after instead of doing productive work. It's not Linux's fault that you're (1) working out of your depth, and (2) don't have the judgment to realize it and familiarize yourself with what you're doing before you try to do it in a production environment.

Am I being a snobby elitist? No. It's okay (and inevitable) to be a newb, and it's okay (and inevitable) to make mistakes, lots of mistakes, bad mistakes. But know your capabilities and act accordingly. And if you fancy yourself an admin, be willing to put some effort into learning. Those aren't advanced technical skills, they're just common sense and basic responsibility.

And until our parents don't need help with their Windows machines, Windows is also not ready. Sheesh, Windows even has the advantage of coming pre-installed and ordinary users still need tons of help with it.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[sydneyfong]

I finally gave up, formatted the drive and installed Windows. I'm not a hacker or even an overclocker anymore. I'm an administrator now and the final straw was when I realized that work was piling up on me while I fiddled with my OS. Playing with linux was cool but when it all boiled down to it, I had work to do and just wanted to get my job done. Generally, if you're not paid to fiddle with your workstation at work, it's a good idea not to. I don't know how sophisticated your office network is, but if your office IT infrastructure doesn't support linux installing a linux machine on your workstation and expect everything to work is a bad idea. Of course samba etc works fine these days, but why bother with the risk? It's not like you're going to increase your productivity with linux anyways, since you don't seem to know the OS as well as you know windows...

Also, if I had to install windows now, I probably have the same things to say: problems finding drivers, problems dealing with advanced network configurations, inexperience with OS quirks, etc...

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[Anonymous Coward]

Mint? What's that? Can you try with Ubuntu or Fedora next time? Ubuntu and Fedora would do what you need and have a larger community built around them to deal with issues.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[Jim Hall]

Recently I built a new PC. [...] This time I tried Mint. It installed beautifully. It was easier and quicker to install than Windows.

[..problems and solution..]

Well now my video card works but I can't map any drives and my computer is constantly flooding the network with queries (how embarrassing). Our IT department is wanting to know what I was doing. I don't know. I manage to figure out the circuitous route to accessing shared drives on the network but when I doubleclick on the openoffice document on one of those network drives, I see the open office splash screen but it never opens the document. I learn that there is more to do than just "get to" the shared drives.

I finally gave up, formatted the drive and installed Windows. I'm not a hacker or even an overclocker anymore. I'm an administrator now and the final straw was when I realized that work was piling up on me while I fiddled with my OS. Playing with linux was cool but when it all boiled down to it, I had work to do and just wanted to get my job done.

(emphasis mine)

Putting the question of "ready for the desktop" aside for a moment ... As an IT manager, I found your post to be really, really funny. And really sad. I'd have hard questions for any sysadmin of mine who (1) built(!) or installed his work PC, (2) without the desktop support staff being aware of it, and (3) did it during work hours when he's supposed to be doing his real job (not doing desktop OS re-installs, letting his work stuff pile up.)

I may work in a University, but we support the Enterprise, so basic rules still apply. If you want to run Linux on your work desktop (and I do ... Fedora 8 on my Dell D420 laptop ... will upgrade to Fedora 9 soon) that's fine. Really. But I ask that you make sure the desktop support folks (and your manager) know about it, and that you don't mess around with the install when you're supposed to be doing other things. Other things, like your job. (We pay the desktop support staff to do desktop support ... I pay you to admin the UNIX systems.)

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[modestmelody]

The truth is, Linux is as ready as Windows was ever for the desktop. When vendors build machines they test their hardware configurations. They find the right drivers and often load their own drivers to increase functionality. I've never heard anyone who bought an Ubuntu Dell complain about compatibility. There's work done on the part of the vendor to make sure that everything in your setup works well. People forget this step when they try Linux for the first time. Often, their struggles represent the struggles vendors initially have and quickly fix internally before releasing more hardware configurations. Having build my own PC, I've come across many of the issues people complain about with their first Linux install using Windows. I had to persevere and figure some things out myself to configure Windows to work the way it should. I had to do a little bit of the same kind of work with Linux. What this debate has always been about is what stage the consumer is being brought in on the process. Loading Linux often means taking a step back, before you buy a machine for your use, back at the vendor creating their image for a particular machine. This gives the user power, but also responsibility. A novice will always be at least somewhat intimidated, barriers will always exist, however, an excellent community and a bit of self-confidence on the part of the end-user can help to make these barriers fall away even amongst the most hesitant users. And FWIW, I use Ubuntu, not Mint, and have had success with both ATI and Nvidia cards installing the restricted drivers with no problem and Ctrl+Alt+Backspace restarts X right away, no complex combination, just an equivalent to Ctrl+Alt+Delete but instead of a task manager you just get "out".

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[arevos]

No, I'm not trolling, I trying to clear the misconception. Linux just isn't ready. Not ready for your desktop, perhaps. I can understand not reading the article, but didn't you even read the summary?

Let me offer a counterpoint. Linux is not only "ready" for my desktop, it surpassed Windows some years back. Should I claim that Windows isn't ready for the desktop? Of course not, because some people clearly find it the best OS for their needs. Likewise, Linux is the best OS for my needs. As the summary said:

"ready for the desktop" is in the eye of the beholder.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, my parents installed linux (openSUSE) by accident.

I left an install CD near their computer and they managed to install it with no issues. The only thing they want me to change is to make Windows be the default boot option. I guess I could have told them how to change it (YaST has a nice gui for things like that), but I was going up to my parents' house that weekend anyways.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[Hercules Peanut]

I may work in a University, but we support the Enterprise, so basic rules still apply. If you want to run Linux on your work desktop (and I do ... Fedora 8 on my Dell D420 laptop ... will upgrade to Fedora 9 soon) that's fine. Really. But I ask that you make sure the desktop support folks (and your manager) know about it, and that you don't mess around with the install when you're supposed to be doing other things. Other things, like your job. (We pay the desktop support staff to do desktop support ... I pay you to admin the UNIX systems.) You must be kidding. Are you seriously telling me what I am "supposed" to be doing on my job? Do we know each other? Do you know what my job description is?

It amazes me how many people on /. post their opinions of other people's actions on the job without knowing the first thing about which they speak. What you have just done is projected your own experience onto my post, then commented on the wrongness as if I were working for (or with) you.

This is NOT the tragedy of /.

The tragedy of /. is that you managed to score a 3 for it. This is especially true considering the way you lead with:

Putting the question of "ready for the desktop" aside for a moment Come on mods, by definitiion this is "off topic"

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[Hercules Peanut]

Bitch at nVidia then.
Mint did its part. nVidia's shit drivers are what caused your problem.
Seriously now people, put the blame where it belongs. I don't believe I "blamed" anyone. I said it wasn't ready. I didn't say it was anyone entities fault in particular.

I'm not a big fan of using Macs for gaming either. The hardware is fine, the OS is fine but the drivers are not as mature as their win counterparts and most games never make it to the Mac. Whoever is at fault, it certainly doesn't make the Mac a good platform for gaming. It COULD be but isn't.

If I buy a sports car and expect it to be able to tow my boat, on who does the blame fall? The blame falls on you or the salesman but your sports car still isn't ready for boating season and putting the blame squarely where it belongs won't change that one bit.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Terminal was an application bundled in NeXTSTEP and shown on the version 3.x video, we can assume that Jobs knew quite full and well that there would be a CLI in OSX.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[ilikepi314]

No kidding. I've installed Windows 3.1 -> Vista, and they're not that easy. Well, maybe once you get to the GUI section they're ok, but it first starts off with the DOS box with a terrible font and annoying blue background (I think even Vista had that if I recall!! WHY?!?!). The average person isn't going to know what any of that means, they'll just turn it off and call someone else to mess with it.

Also, I feel for the above poster for the driver issues, but the same happens on Windows, really. I just reinstalled on an older machine, and had to go one by one and find and install the proper drivers. Which isn't the easiest to do when Windows does not detect your mainstream NVIDIA/ATI card and you need to install drivers (the window to install the drivers is bigger than my resolution! who thought that was a good idea?). I realize I could have done slipstreaming and probably should have just done that this time (I've done it before), but will the average user know what that is or how to do it?

I think it's quite true that the only** thing preventing wide-spread Linux adoption at this point is lack of pre-installed Linux on mainstream computers (Dell, HP, whatever, although Dell just started so that's nice). Few manually install Windows or bothers with the drivers; you get a PC from a manufacturer that comes pre-installed with Windows with the correct drivers for all your devices... otherwise it would have many of the same problems a Linux install has. You get Linux pre-installed with the appropriate drivers, and it will be just as easy to use, or even easier.

**ok, so not only, but for 90% of computer users, its more than good enough.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[turing_m]

Linux is desktop ready. Whether you are ready for Linux or not, depends on your dependency on software based on Microsofts products.

Very elegant comment - as simple as possible, no simpler. You have identified the biggest problem someone has when moving to Linux. Drivers can be dealt with easily enough - either buy a pre-packaged linux system, or go hunting for hardware that is known to be working in Linux. Software is the deal breaker.

Each individual software that will only run on a Microsoft product is like a separate claw of the monkey on your back. If you snip each claw off, one by one, the monkey falls off. Just don't try and rip the monkey off with its claws still in you - that way lies pain.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[Anonymous Coward]

This is largely unfair. I think you should try another Linux OS. Mint is certainly not main stream enough to be even remotely comparable to real Linux OS such as Fedora, Suse or Ubuntu, to mention a few.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[RealityThreek]

Windows Update provides most drivers automatically (if it wasn't on the CD). Ubuntu's auto-update is supposed to (and often does) provide the latest drivers too. It just failed to in this case.

I also didn't bash Linux. I agreed with the parent post that said that it was a bad user experience installing an NVIDIA driver under Linux. Which.. it is.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[RealityThreek]

Ubuntu does a really great job of making sure you get into X even if it can't detect your graphics card and monitor. See also: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BulletProofX

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[msromike]

Ridiculous. Another attempt to take a Windows strength and turn it into a weakness with unsubstantiated comments that on their face are obviously false.

The average parent could place a Vista disk in a brand new computer (with a brae drive) and end up on the Internet with fully functioning graphics. Not necessarily true with many Linux distros, especially if the can't figure out all the LILO options on the live CD.

Not that the average parent would need to since Windows is going to come pre-installed on anything they buy anyway. Upgrading is not an issue, because upgrade means buying a new computer that has the new version of Windows that they want.

Next!

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[msromike]

Not true. Almost anyone can slap a Vista CD in a bare metal box and get it up and running. Your statment is unsubstantiated bullshit.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[jedidiah]

IOW, a wanted to use a particular 3rd party product and it didn't have support.

This is a pretty simple situation actually. There's no need to overcomplicate it.

This simple situation doesn't have a resolution of course but that's not the problem.

YOU wasted time because you didn't pay attention to the painfully obvious.

Linux didn't waste your time. You chose to do that yourself.

Yeah, perhaps it takes an "expert" to "set up" a Linux box for a typical end user.
Guess what? All of those end users don't "set up" their Windows boxes either. They
all have someone else do it.

I said this to people 10 years ago right here: If some default out of the Linux
install doesn't do what you want of it, and you don't want to put extra effort
into it, then DON'T. Come back and try Linux again later sometime (or not). We're
not trying to enforce an alternate hegemony on anyone.

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[Britz]

1. I have never heard of Mint, even though I do use different distros a lot.
2. Getting out of X has always been pressing Alt+Strg+F1
3. Why do you need to get out of X to set up you video card? Common desktop distros have comfortable config tools
4. Nvidia is one of the most common cards. I don't believe that X came without the nv driver. You don't get 3d, but very good 2d support.
5. You actually do need a computer expert to install Microsoft Windows. Common desktop distros are so easy to install that you don't need an expert anymore.
6. I have never heard of a distro that "flooded the network" (what does that mean anyways? renegade DHCP server?)

For the reasons stated above I am sure your comment is a troll. Nice one, especially since you fooled the moderators. /. isn't what it used to be.

Common desktop distros would be: OpenSuse, Mandrive, Fedora, Ubuntu, Xandros

Re:Sorry Guys, It's Definitely NOT Ready

[Haeleth]

I'm an administrator now and the final straw was when I realized that work was piling up on me while I fiddled with my OS.

Someone who experiments with installing a non-standard OS on a computer connected to the live corporate network, in work hours, is not a good administrator. You wouldn't reject Windows because someone with no Windows experience or training failed to connect it to a corporate network -- however much experience they had with VMS and NetWare. So why do you hold Linux to so much higher a standard?

The way to use Linux in a company is to get Linux administration training first, after which you will know how to install drivers and how to connect it to a network. Amazingly enough, if you'd done it properly, you wouldn't have had such big problems! Instead, you chose to jump in blindly, and wound up wasting your time and your company's money. The outcome would have been the same whatever OS you'd been playing with -- even a new version of Windows. You should count yourself lucky you still have a job, and if you'd been fired it would certainly not have been the fault of Linux.

Yes, let's look to the post-PC future

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I had an account with karma to mod you up.

The future of appliances and datacenters will still need developers. The critical goal for Linux and OSS in general needs to be maintaining developer interest to always be relevant in these product spaces. Free systems need free software and the ability to modify things.

We need to be "ready for the workstation" and "ready for the grass-roots developer". A hazard for free software is if all commodity-grade, affordable platforms become locked down appliances and we cannot reach out to budget-conscious students and developers.

UI is an interesting problem

[Josh Booth]

My girlfriend's dad just got her a Mac, and for the first day I found that I had a vicious Mac envy. But on the second day of using it, I am ready to go back to my three year Dell with Kubuntu. The explanation is simple: Mac OS X looks great and is intuitive, but doesn't fit my workflow well. This is pretty much the same reasoning Linus has against GNOME--the stuff he wants to do is not trivially possible.

In most ways, GNU+Linux is ready for the desktop: it has almost all of the required applications, they provide the requisite features, and they work. These are the requirements for 80% of the people who use a computer: they just want something that works and are willing to learn, but just once. As long as you don't change anything, they are fine. These people would adapt to a KDE, GNOME, Mac OS X, Windows, or Sugar desktop equally well, for that matter. And the main reason is that they feel they have far too many other things that are important in their lives to worry about how efficient they are on their computer, regardless of how many hours of their life they could reclaim by investing another hour learning a new interface.

But those 20% of users who are power users are the ones who are worried about whether Linux is ready for the desktop. Once you didn't /need/ to do anything from the commandline, Linux was ready. But for those power users, they typically have some efficiency axe to grind (myself included). Linus complained that GNOME didn't let him map some mouse key to some obscure function (among others). Mac weenies demand that everything looks as though it works out of the box the first time, even though it really doesn't. Windows junkies want to be able to download some spyware-laden utility to magically give them 2 fps more on Quake or make the desktop do something goofy. I just want an orthogonal interface--is that too much to ask? Needless to say, these people will never be appeased.

It seems to me that one day, we will be able to combine all of these concepts programmatically, and the result would be a really wonderful piece of software. But that has got to be at least 20 years away.

Either way, GNU+Linux is ready for the desktop for most people, but the cost of retraining 80% of the computer-using population is high. That is why I thought it was great to install Linux by default on these tiny laptops, because it is extremely appropriate to use Linux over Windows XP to take advantage of the low power and storage, and people are willing to learn a new piece of hardware. But Micro$oft is quickly killing that idea with XP on the new EEE PCs. Oh well.

Re:UI is an interesting problem

[Evil Kerek]

Pretty interesting post...maybe next time you could write it without having to insert a windows jibe.

Windows junkies want to be able to download some spyware-laden utility to magically give them 2 fps more on Quake Why couldn't you have written:
Windows junkies want to be able to download some utility to magically give them 2 fps more on Quake

It gets your point across without painting you as a linux fan-boi just trying to bash windows - instead you call your entire post into question by the need to insert irrelevant insults into an otherwise interesting post.

Seriously guys - you want to beat windows? Stop acting like 8 year olds having a trantrum eveytime you write something involving windows. Personally, I just want to get my job and make money (and play games) - right now, windows is by far the best avenue for that. It's a waste of my time to even try linux (I'm extemely busy with clients) nor, honestly, do I want to bother with it after reading posts here - they are so full of inane slaps at gates/windows/microsoft that I can't take most of them seriously. It's so seldom that someone writes a thoughtful post (there actually are in this thread for a change) unmarred by mostly cheap shots, that most of the time, I don't even bother reading the threads.

Which version is ready?

[Wowsers]

If I was to say Linux is ready for the mass desktop market, I would say, sure, the 32 bit version probably is. The 64 bit version certainly is not. For the average Windows user, it would be impossibly difficult to install the 32/64bit kludge to get the 32bit Flash / 32bit Java* (for websites), and 32bit Skype running with ease on a 64bit setup.

When I finally started to seriously use Linux after playing around on-off for years, I had a new 64 bit machine which I setup to dual boot with Windows XP. While I now use Linux most of the time, Linux still cannot do ANALOGUE video capture properly and video editing is problematic and not refined as some Windows packages. The webcam support, while not the fault of Linux, is still bad. Usenet readers are bad, in Linux they all seem to assume you're constantly on-line 24/7, and most don't save locally what you post. And on KDE, compiz uses far more system resources then Beryl (they never did seem to merge the best bits of Beryl back to Compiz).

Some packages like Skype are light-years behind in development compared to the Windows versions.

* There is a 64 bit version of Java that does work with Firefox, but has may problem sites where it just refuses to run.

Re:Which version is ready?

[notamisfit]

These kind of issues aren't going to go away until most users have some kind of reason to go with a 64-bit OS.

Re:Which version is ready?

[pxc]

You think Linux support for 64-bit is bad? Windows' 64-bit versions is incomplete at best. It's not ANY GNU/Linux distribution's fault that Adobe doesn't distribute any 64-bit Flash binaries.

What do you really need to be "ready"?

[sircastor]

Interpreting "Ready for the Desktop" to mean "ready for an average computer user" is something that probably never happen for Linux... In fact, It won't happen for Mac OS X either. Years and years ago when I used to be a crazed Defender of the Apple Faith, I would scratch my head at Windows. It did things weird (to me), and after logically thinking it out, those things were often unnecessarily complicated. But when a windows user would need to know how to do something on a Mac, the method would always be bizarre to them. Even though the Mac way made more sense logically, and it was more intuitive, they had been taught to work a different way. People don't like change. They don't like learning new ways of doing old things (in general), especially if they are our Moms, Dads Grandparents, or Anyone else who doesn't work with technology regularly. So there are only two ways that Linux will be "ready for the desktop", or ready for the regular Joe-schmoe: 1) Linux behaves like windows 2) Windows becomes so uncommon that the interface and it's idiosyncrasies become non-standard I don't see either of those things happening in the near future.

Re:What do you really need to be "ready"?

[dodobh]

Or you have lots of new users who have never used computers before learning to use Linux.

Preaching to the choir

[westlake]

I have my parents running Ubuntu.

This line - or something very much like it - is woven into every Linux "conversion" story posted on Slashdot.

Meanwhile, a billion users worldwide somehow manage to run Windows without the free technical support of a resident geek.

Re:Preaching to the choir

[Fred_A]

Meanwhile, a billion users worldwide somehow manage to run Windows without the free technical support of a resident geek. And, speaking on behalf of the spam botnet industry, I'd like to warmly thank them all.

Re:Preaching to the choir

[Rutulian]

I have my parents running Ubuntu.

This line - or something very much like it - is woven into every Linux "conversion" story posted on Slashdot.

Meanwhile, a billion users worldwide somehow manage to run Windows without the free technical support of a resident geek.

O rly? I think you are looking through rose-tinted glasses...perhaps not considering yourself/friends "resident geeks" who can help out with computer problems. I know plenty of Windows users, and without "resident geeks" they would be completely helpless if something happened to their computer. The point is, Windows comes preinstalled on every computer and it is something people use as a result. They aren't using linux because they aren't the type to go and try to install it. Even MacOS X wouldn't be used by people if they had to install it. So if somebody installs it and sets it up for them to use, they can happily use it without problems (specific software needs aside, of course).

Re:Preaching to the choir

[westlake]

The point is, Windows comes preinstalled on every computer and it is something people use as a result. They aren't using linux because they aren't the type to go and try to install it. Even MacOS X wouldn't be used by people if they had to install it. So if somebody installs it and sets it up for them to use, they can happily use it without problems (specific software needs aside, of course).

The OEM system install has been the gold standard for the non-technical end user for damn near thirty years. You unpack the box. You connect the cables and you are good to go.

People don't want to be dependent on a geek who may not be around when they need help. What they want is the toll free number, the extended warranty, the in-home service contract.

When the geek says: "I have my parents running Linux. It's great!"
His audience is thinking: "My god. I'm going to need an engineering grad - some snot-nosed SOB on-call to keep this thing afloat."

Re:Preaching to the choir

[Rutulian]

The OEM system install has been the gold standard for the non-technical end user for damn near thirty years. You unpack the box. You connect the cables and you are good to go.

Isn't that exactly what I just said? Windows comes preinstalled and configured, so it is what people use and what major companies write software for. Actual usability has very little to do with it.

People don't want to be dependent on a geek who may not be around when they need help. What they want is the toll free number, the extended warranty, the in-home service contract.

Agreed. But you're make a lot of assumptions here. First of all, service contracts are available for Linux. Second, what Windows users do you know who prefer telephone support to asking somebody they know for help? Computer users like quick fixes to their problems...they don't really care how they get it. If they can just buy somebody coffee and have them come over and fix their problem, they usually much prefer that to dealing with tech support on the phone.

Re:Preaching to the choir

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe not a *resident* geek, but everyone's got that person that they bug for help.
 
On a side note...it's one of the stranger parts of human nature that someone will pay somewhere between one and two grand for something and not read the manual.
 
I even know people that have been calling Geek Squad. Eek! My point is, Windows is not so simple that it doesn't require a knowledgeable admin. Sometimes you can get away with only knowing how to launch your one or two preferred apps, but those are exactly the people that end up with tons of crapware and have to take their Windows machine to the shop every six months.

Something else I thought of.

[Zombie Ryushu]

The Windows economy seems to be able to "hurt" the Linux economy but not vice versa. One of the things Linux needs to be able to do is defeat its enemies. Defeating its enemies is something it isn't doing very well and I for one would love to take the offensive position and really do some damage to Microsoft AND Apple.

How can we judge?

[bsDaemon]

I'll be 24 in a month, but have been using some varient of UNIX since I was 12 or 13. For half my life, my computer has either run FreeBSD or Linux (Slackware, RedHat, and lately LinuxMint because the only computer i have with me here right now is a Dell d830 and I'm absolutely reliant on Wifi and too lazy to cut firmware by hand), often in dual-boot, though I have occasionally been forced to use windows machines of opportunity. I also had a G4 iBook for a while, but I gave it to my sister because it pissed me off.

There has been a MARKED improvement in being able to plop my ass down and just do "windows" things on Linux in the past few years, however quite frankly I find it somewhat less usable than I did when I was in jr. high.

I used to have these incredibly elaborate .Xdefaults, .tcshrc, .bashrc, .dircolors and .vimrc files, which are now pretty much useless.

I haven't been able to get ANSI fonts like Nexus to work in Eterm and display colored BASH prompts properly since Red Hat 6.0.

Everything has some GUI interface to it now that rights configuration files in some way that I never would have had I been doing it by hand and then I'm afraid to do a hand edit, because something usually ends up breaking.

Frankly, it seems like the push in the last 5 years especially has been to try and make a free ripoff of Windows that isn't Windows and then try and get "average computer users" to switch, for some reason which isn't even clear to me -- so why it would be to them, I have not clue.

In 8th grade I was captain of my school's BASIC programing team to the Great Computer Challenge at ODU university (sort of like an ACM competition, only stupid), and I also competed in an engineering competition where I tossed a mousetrap car together the night before in about an hour and ended up coming in 2nd place, ahead of about 30 other people.

I took the money I won from the engineering competition and bought a book on C. I had some exposure to FreeBSD through an ISP shell account that I messed with, so my uncle gave me a copy of RH 4.1 or something so that I could get at the free dev tools and learn C. I was then captain of my high school's C team for 3 years.

I started using UNIX because I wanted to use UNIX, NOT because I wanted a "cheap version of Windows that wasn't Windows." Frankly, I think the dev community, and evangelist community, have gotten far, far away from "The UNIX Way," and in the process haven't even really gained what we sought -- which for some reason was the "can any random old person or idiot use this system without me having to be on call 24/7?"

Why random people would need a multi-user, multi-tasking operating system when all they want to do is chat on IM and watch DVDs is beyond me.

So, in the long and the short -- we barely know what non-geeks want, and apparently forgot why we wanted *nix in the first place. How can we judge if the system is "ready for the desktop, then?" It seemed just fine before...

Seriously undercooked

[antime]

Yesterday the Fedora Core 9 installer couldn't even manage to produce a working Grub configuration, and I bumped into one bug which locked up KDE within five minutes of eventually managing to get it booted up. Ready for the desktop my ass.

Re:Seriously undercooked

[Zombie Ryushu]

Fedora Core is trash and I really wish Red Hat would stop pouring dirty laundry into the Linux world like this. They do the entire Linux movement a disservice by doing so.

Mote and Beam Dept

[frisket]

"ready for the desktop" is in the eye of the beholder.

So long as people keep thinking this, Linux never will be ready for anything.

Yes, of course some things which one user regards as essential, another will regard as peripheral, but there is a core of stuff which has to work intuitively and flawlessly, which currently doesn't. It's very close, but still needs work.

The recent story about one guy who tested Ubuntu on his girlfriend is an excellent example of some of these items, and helps to explain why this woolly "in the eye of the beholder" thinking is so wrong.

Linux interface usability has made huge steps forward in the last few years, but there is still a residual "if it was hard to write it should be hard to use" mentality among some developers (decreasing, fortunately) and still a baffled look from many developers when you try to explain why using their internal terminology on a user-level error message is counter-productive.

OOXML Converter

[Zombie Ryushu]

Thats funny. Because I can edit OOXML Files just fine. Why? I installed Novell's odf-converter package that was in PLF. Problem solved.

Re:OOXML Converter

[notamisfit]

Great, now you're going to wake up with a horse's head in your bed from the Groklaw types.

Mac killed the Linux Desktop years ago

[ducomputergeek]

I used linux on the desktop around 2000 - 2001. It was usable for the basic applications I needed back then, other than my sound card never did work and the only modem I had that would work was an old 33.6k that had jumpers. But it worked for my main task of developing LAMP projects back when it could take a while to upload a large site with a lot files. It did teach me the basics of how *iux works. But I still had to keep a drive with windows 2000 loaded so I could use Photoshop and a few other applciations that just didn't exist for Linux.

In 2002 I was getting ready to leave the country. My Viao laptop was 3 years old and frankly I was getting tired of fiddling with Linux and not have things like video cards and soundcards work and I was tired it crashing and viruses, etc..

Apple came out with OSX, then OS 10.1 which I took a look at and said, "Hmmm, a Unix based operating system with photoshop...." So I bought an iBook as did a lot of people who were trying linux at the time. Over 80% of the people I knew who were "switchers" came from Linux to OSX, not windows. Why? We weren't zeloats for Opensource. It was pragmatic. We developed for and deployed on Linux servers, later FBSD actually, but when it came to our desktops, Apple gave us cake and we ate it.

When Apple switched to intel chips, just about everyone I know that does anytype of developement are running on MacBook Pro's. They use OSX and also boot up XP pro in VMware or Parralells all on one machine.

It's always been about applications. I just spent the past 6 months using FreeBSD on an older dell laptop I have for a project. I was impressed as hell at the fact that it reconized my generic Atheros card, had no problems connecting to the internet, KDE et. al had matured a lot over the years, all the basics were there for me to use, and there were things I really liked. I also recently used SuSE 10.x for a couple weeks, as a general OS for just surfing, it's not too bad and there are a lot of people who just check email and surf the net and need a basic office suite. Linux can work for that.

But at the end of the day, Apple has the apps and on the new MacBook*'s I can boot into windows if I need it.

Ready for Win users. Is it ready for Linux users?

[blind biker]

Wait before you flame me/missunderstand me: the typical Windows user can use most any Linux distro that boots into a GUI. He/she will be a bit confused by the difference between XFCE/KDE/Gnome/IceWM etc., but will cope, as long as he/she uses always the same GUI.

A typical Linux user however, especially if with vast experience, will have strong opinions on some Linux GUIs, and will most likely refuse to use KDE or Gnome or FVWM (OK, actually everyone loves FVWM though they won't admit it). Same goes for some Linux apps: I know I like to use OO.o but hate Abiword with a dragon's burning passion.

I am afraid the typical Linux user may find more to criticize about Linux on the desktop, than the average Windows user. The problem is, most Windows users aren't exposed to Linux enough to start actually using it.

The truth is...

[blahplusplus]

... that people don't care what OS they use, they care about OS like they care about screw drivers. Does it get the job done for what I want it to do?

Most people are too time strapped to diddle around on the computer, considering the modern person works most of his adult life, why anyone would expect the majority of people to want to switch OS's is pretty naive.

Linux has a niche but the truth is piracy has a lot to do with why linux will never be totally mainstream, installing another OS has to have some benefit over the one you are using. I've used windows 99% of my life and linux for the average user is quite transparent, most users don't care about technical stuff, they only care about the apps they themselves use. There has to be such a major switch in efficiency / speed or usability for me to switch an OS and linux is just not it, even though from a technical standpoint I am down with the linux concept from a user perspective who doesn't want to have to dick around with stuff, windows 'just works'.

There's a reason why console game machines have an advantage over PC's with OS's - platform stability. The average user doesn't have to worry about spending time maintaining his system, since if you get seriously into tech it's like having a 2nd full time job.

When I was younger I used to fix other peoples PC's, now that I'm older I just don't want to spend the time fixing others problems.

The next killer app is automating management, delivery and maintenance of applications without user intervention and that can intelligently roll back if something is borked (by accident).

Re:Used to call that a COP OUT !!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Day of the Herd of the Nerds. A nerd herd, as it were, if you will.

The question is irrelevant

[SpinyNorman]

With Dell, and even Walmart, selling Linux on the desktop, it has undoubtedly already arrived.

Linux is also the desktop OS of choice for a whole new class of low-cost computers from the OLPC to the Asus "Eee PC", MSI Wind, etc.

I think the "desktop" goalposts are also moving... The future of mass-market home computers (or at least a very major segment of them) is surely more along the lines of the simple-to-use internet appliance with a launcher menu rather than the general-purpose install-your-own-software PC. In this environment you could care less what the OS is, anymore than you care what OS your DVD player, Tivo, or the bank's ATM machine is running.

Re:The question is irrelevant

[msromike]

First smart post supporting Linux in this thread. But, not yet and maybe never. Saying things are going where you want to see them get isn't necessarily the same as reality.

Let's live in the here and now.

Its not that hard to define

[crossmr]

Is the average hardware the end-user is going to use easily supported?
I realize not everything is supported "out of the box" in windows, but is it supported at all in linux?
To dual boot ubuntu I've temporarily switched from using my SB X-fi to my built in real-tek because I don't want to crawl down behind my PC To change the speakers every time. The x-fi finally got 64 bit drivers..but no 32 bit drivers yet.

Yes yes blame the hardware manufacturers..Its not linux's fault. It really doesn't matter whose fault it is, until that problem is solved linux isn't ready for the desktop. They need to get some clout and start putting pressure on hardware vendors to support this kind of thing.

And no, I'm not really interested in that time you supposedly had to sacrifice a goat, kidnap bill gates and have him personally write a driver to support some obscure piece of hardware you claim you couldn't get working.

It IS a perspective issue.

[MBC1977]

Do I personally think Linux is ready for the desktop. Emphatically no. However, I respect the fact that, that is just my opinion. A lot of people (some smarter and some not) think so. Personally, I don't like dicking around with command lines. Nor do I care if I don't have access to the source code for the OS (which in my case would probably be a good thing, since I'd probably hose it or worse).

That being said however, it IS a perspective thing. And a bunch of overpaid hacks (called analysts) who say what is (or is not) ready can go pound sand for I care. The question is: What do YOU think?

MS-DOS beat unix ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

Was DOS ready for the desktop? By many definitions, people would say no, but that's exactly what started Microsoft's dominance of the OS market.

MS-DOS was fine for its day, 1980s give or take. Hell, it even beat unix. Microsoft tried to sell OEMs on unix with their xenix product.

The masses are getting ready for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know where people get this misguided idea that Linux should be getting ready for the masses, when they mean the Windows-contented masses. This is doomed to fail unless Windows becomes so unbearable that their own masses WANT to desert them.

The masses are getting ready for Linux, because they're not all being indoctrinated into Windows anymore. Those who already have been may be a lost cause. Progress happens one retirement or one funeral at a time.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

The New Catchphrase Should Be:

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Let's kick Linux up a notch.
2. We're taking Linux to the next level.
3. Everything is easier on Linux.
4. OOXML - That says it all.
5. LINUX: As cohesive as OLPC.
6. We GNU you'ld like Linux.
7. Stuff that matters.

Would be a lot easier if mfg's published specs

[Peter Simpson]

A huge reason why Linux doesn't support as much hardware as Windows, is that the manufacturers will only release drivers for Windows.

I'm not sure who this benefits, but it's certainly the reason behind the "Linux doesn't recognize my...." complaints. So, I suggest that when we evaluate whether Linux is ready for whatever, we give it a pass on not supporting certain hardware.

Now, as to the Nvidia card, Linux supports mine quite well, and my wireless cards, and my Bluetooth dongle, all of which were problematic in the previous release. I'd say Linux is making good progress on peripheral support, in spite of reluctance on the part of vendors.

"Good enough"

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The "good enough" argument is a fair point, but for these specific examples, I respectfully disagree that they are even "good enough". Sure, if you're literally only writing a trivially formatted letter or resizing an image, they can do it, but of course, so can much simpler programs. The big problems come when you want to do things a little bit more advanced, where using a real word processor, spreadsheet or image editor is actually necessary.

It's not just the functionality, though that has some pretty serious limitations. I'm not sure how on-topic the specifics are in this thread, but if you're interested in OpenOffice in particular, go ahead and Google my user name and terms like "OpenOffice" on site:slashdot.org, and my previous detailed commentary is easy to find. It goes without saying that OpenOffice Writer is quite some way ahead of all the major OSS alternatives in features, at least on paper, so I think it's fair to use it as a benchmark of where the Linux+OSS world stands relative to a traditional Windows-based system.

More seriously, the big problem with a lot of everyday OSS applications is quality control. The unfortunate reality is that OpenOffice has always been horribly bug-ridden, often in quite fundamental ways, and worse, the dev team show no great inclination to fix some of these things even though they have been consistently highly voted in the bug tracker for years. If I have a word processor with a major selling point in PDF export, but PDF export is completely borked with OpenType fonts, that's a downer. Spreadsheets that can't sort data when the cells contain simple calculations are pretty broken, too. And so it goes, and so it has been with many other everyday OSS packages I've tried. Sure, Windows products are hardly immune from bugs, but at least the main features in major applications are normally usable. So, until this sort of thing is fixed in the major OSS applications, I find it hard to believe that any amount of "many eyes making all bugs shallow", "with the source code you can always do it yourself" advocacy will convince the average punter that Linux and the applications that run on it are ready to replace the typical Windows-based set-up in practice.

Re:"Good enough"

[symbolic]

I didn't thing it was possible for such a basic function to be so broken - especially in a 3.0 release. Sure enough, I created a simple set of seven values in a column, one of them a numeric value based on the sum of numbers in another column, and it *completely* messes up the sort. While I do have respect for what they've accomplished, they need to get this kind of stuff fixed. Soon.

Re:"Good enough"

[Whitemice]

The "good enough" argument is a fair point, but for these specific examples, I respectfully disagree that they are even "good enough". Sure, if you're literally only writing a trivially formatted letter or resizing an image, they can do it, but of course, so can much simpler programs. The big problems come when you want to do things a little bit more advanced

Like maintain multiple hundreds-of-pages documents with chapters, table-of-contents, multiple indexes, etc... Like that? Because I do this with Open Office and it works very well.

unfortunate reality is that OpenOffice has always been horribly bug-ridden, often in quite fundamental ways, and worse, Well, I'm one satisfied user who pushes it pretty hard every day.

Spreadsheets that can't sort data when the cells contain simple calculations are pretty broken, too. I sort spreadsheets by formula results multiple times every day.

Re:"Good enough"

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I call bullshit.

For a start, one of the many serious flaws I have previously observed with OpenOffice Writer is its complete inability to generate more than a single table of contents with the page numbers updating properly.

For another, a second poster has already commented in this thread that they also just tried sorting a spreadsheet with formula-based data and got bad results, so apparently it's not just some fluke of my system or the particular formula I used.

Heck, most of the things I (and others) have pointed out are logged as confirmed bugs in the OO.o tracker. The PDF/OpenType fiasco I mentioned gets several highly voted bugs just on that one topic alone.

If you're really pushing it hard every day and you haven't hit any of the numerous problems identified in this and previous Slashdot discussions, then frankly, you've been very lucky. Even if that is so, your anecdotal data point doesn't counter the mass of evidence that OO is full of serious bugs, starting with their own bug database.

Re:"Good enough"

[Whitemice]

>For a start, one of the many serious flaws I have previously observed with OpenOffice Writer is its complete inability to generate more than a single table of contents with the page numbers updating properly. If you read the post carefully you'll noticed I said "multiple indexes" not multiple tocs. And yes, it does work, every single time. I have an ODM that links in 40 writer files and correctly generates a TOC and three indexes using separate concordances. It works, you can call it bull... or anything else you like.

If it really is unable to generate multiple TOCs (specicially) I'd call that a minor bug since multiple TOCs would be pretty weird.

Heck, most of the things I (and others) have pointed out are logged as confirmed bugs in the OO.o tracker. The PDF/OpenType fiasco I mentioned gets several highly voted bugs just on that one topic alone. I didn't mention the PDF output of OpenType fonts. My documents generate to PDF fine, but I'm only using the "standard" fonts provided by the distro & OOo.

Even if that is so, your anecdotal data point doesn't counter the mass of evidence that OO is full of serious bugs, starting with their own bug database. I'm a developer on a couple of largish code bases (not OOo); and I know very well that a bugzilla needs to be read with a great deal of context. Only an active OOo developer is qualified to interpret the contents of the OOo bugzilla.

Re:"Good enough"

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

If you read the post carefully you'll noticed I said "multiple indexes" not multiple tocs.

OK, so your "demanding" uses happen not to include the buggy one. Unfortunately, that doesn't tell us anything useful other than that this particular bug in OO will not annoy you personally.

If it really is unable to generate multiple TOCs (specicially) I'd call that a minor bug since multiple TOCs would be pretty weird.

Actually, it's pretty routine for serious textbooks in many fields. You'd often have a high-level TOC with just the chapter and appendix titles, and a detailed TOC with all the subheadings, for example. Some more traditional books include a brief paragraph of text summarising what each chapter is about in the high-level TOC as well, though this is unusual in modern books.

I didn't mention the PDF output of OpenType fonts.

Which again means only that the bug doesn't annoy you personally, not that it isn't there and isn't a show-stopper for many other people.

Only an active OOo developer is qualified to interpret the contents of the OOo bugzilla.

Like the ones who keep posting comments in the discussion of the OpenType bugs, you mean?

Seriously, I'm happy for you that these sorts of bug don't annoy you, but please don't assume the rest of us in the conversation are clueness newbies. The bugs are real, and they really are in the database, and they are acknowledged by real high-level OO developers, and they really do have many votes, and they still really aren't getting fixed. The same could be said of many other mainstream, everyday OSS applications. This isn't a criticism of the developers, many of whom are no doubt very hard working volunteers. It's merely an objective observation of the general state of OSS projects today, for comparison with the state of established alternatives available on non-Linux platforms, to support my argument that Linux itself is not the problem with Linux on the desktop but the applications running on it are.

Re:"Good enough"

[Chemicalscum]

"Spreadsheets that can't sort data when the cells contain simple calculations are pretty broken"

Sorry, but you are either an idiot or a liar. This statement is false. That Openoffice Calc cannot sort cells containing simple calculations with relative cell references is true. However the same is true for Excel, I just tried it doesn't work there either. Both Calc and Excel (similarily Gnumeric) all work fine when the equations use absolute cell references.

Given the lack of veracity with the above I wouldn't trust anything in your entire post until I tested it myself.

Re:"Good enough"

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

That Openoffice Calc cannot sort cells containing simple calculations with relative cell references is true.

Given the lack of veracity with the above I wouldn't trust anything in your entire post until I tested it myself.

Don't trouble yourself. Given your apparent failure to grasp basic logic (hint: true != false) and your apparent willingness to launch ad hominem attacks rather than discussing things objectively, I doubt you would have anything worthwhile to contribute anyway.

For the record in case anyone else is interested, I just built a simple table of numbers and their squares in Excel 2007, with the squares defined using relative references to another cell in the same row, and sorting the rows based on the squares column worked just fine.

Accessibility Feature

[karvind]

It is much superior in Windows. Linux has long way to go. Not everyone is compiling kernel out there.

What about the users?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can tell not even the vast majority of users are "ready for the desktop". So how the hell would an OS accomplish that?

Heck, people even manage to adjust to a changing interface on their newest mobile device so you can't tell me it's that hard to dive into a new OS where the simplest tasks are done quite the same. Some people rather complain about the differences between the several OSes instead of actually accepting the learning curve which comes with every complex software. Welcome to the information age!

To all the guys bitching about the CLI:

Some GUIs might do all the fancy stuff to attract their users but i'd rather prefer a CLI where i know the commands wouldn't change in a 100 years than trying to sort out which button to press after a complete interface overhaul. But that might be just my opinion.

PS: AC because I'm actually to lazy to create an account :)

Your cases prove the point.

[gnutoo]

GNU/Linux is ready for preinstall by vendors and it would be better for most users. Your case, thankfully, represents a tiny intersection of niche interests. Your girlfriend represents better than 99% of all computer users. We would all be better off if those users were given a platform that does not have the security problems Microsoft has. They will be better off when they discover all of the good free tools available without cost. Who knows, they might learn to do more with their computers than consume that way. Dell, Asus and other vendors have realized this and are now shipping and making good money doing it. Everyone but Microsoft is going to be better off.

Re:Your cases prove the point.

[Toreo asesino]

Yeah, and i expect Linux will make some inroads into the desktop scene; i'm just not sure how much.

Windows, if nothing else provides a standard for devs to target. I.e, software today you can buy will say "Compatible with Windows 2000, XP, Vista".

Imagine the same with Linux... "Compatible with Ubuntu 6.10, 7.04, CentOS X, Mandriva Y, ...." you see where this is going. There's a lot more permutations in the Linux world that in the Windows world.

Also, people say "why not Linux?", but the same argument goes both ways "Well, why not Windows?". Sometimes, as we've seen, Linux when pre-installed isn't actually much cheaper, if at all.

Re:Your cases prove the point.

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember this is a twitter sockpuppet you're replying to.

It already is

[houghi]

Even if you look at the different definitions people put to it.

What is missing is pre-instalations. And I am not talking about some odd system here or there. I am talking about 50-100% of the machines out there in either single or dual boot.

Most people will want to buy a computer that works and do not care wether that runs Windows, Linux, MacOS or whatever.

And even then most people will keep on using Windows, because people do not like change. To most people Windows is not broken, so they have no need to fix it.

Point of reference

[MrNougat]

Comparing Linux (or Mac or FreeBSD or VAX) to Windows is pretty much necessary. It's a common point of reference that almost everyone has, so it can serve as a starting point for determining the relative merits of a given OS.

Windows XP will soon go out of print

[tepples]

The only problem would be is if some Linux person went out and bought some random game and tried to make it run, now chances are with a bit of hacking it would run, but as for the "pop in the CD and play" that won't work quite yet. But when they realize that they can get just about the same level of quality for free, they will just pop open Add/Remove Programs and find a game they think might be good. Citation needed that the Free games in GNU/Linux distributions' package repositories have "just about the same level of quality" and production values as proprietary commercial games such as Half-Life 2 and World of Warcraft.

As for business admin software, again, most can be emulated via WINE and because most of it doesn't need immediate response you could always use VirtualBox and virtualize XP and use that. But how will you find a legit copy of Windows XP to load into VirtualBox? At the end of June, Microsoft will put the Windows XP operating system under a sales moratorium until the year 2097.

Re:Windows XP will soon go out of print

[Darkness404]

Citation needed that the Free games in GNU/Linux distributions' package repositories have "just about the same level of quality" and production values as proprietary commercial games such as Half-Life 2 and World of Warcraft.

I am not talking about all those games, but the games most casual gamers play, games such as solitaire, Tetris and others. Most of the games that you are talking about will run happily in WINE with a bit of tweaking and most of the people who play those type of games are PC gamers. They aren't your clueless Windows noobs who don't know Firefox from firewall. Most of the people who play online games or other major games are gamers who will build their own PC and understand how it works, most even know about Linux.

But how will you find a legit copy of Windows XP to load into VirtualBox? At the end of June, Microsoft will put the Windows XP operating system under a sales moratorium until the year 2097.

Oh I don't know, perhaps with all the Windows XP install CDs that have come with computers since 2001 or so? Considering that just about every computer comes with either Vista or XP, it shouldn't be to hard to virtualize any of them as the ones with Vista on them are powerful enough to virtualize Vista for an application or so without taking a huge hit in how well they run. And just about every computer that doesn't come with these CDs either runs Linux (which means they already know how to use Linux) or Mac (on which installing Linux is a large pain and OS X doesn't suffer the same major faults as Windows as it is BSD based)

Re:From the first half-dozen comments I see here..

[Anonymous Coward]

I think "ready for the desktop" can definitely only be decided by the owner of the laptop.... but Linux would have a lot quicker acceptance rate if only that owner knew exactly what hardware to choose. It takes me a day or so to double check that the hardware I'm piecing together is going to work outta the box with any modern distro.

Hardware manufacturers are always going to keep Linux a step behind the other OSes for the few who don't know they aren't gonna be able to get Ubuntu to work outta the box with any laptop they buy at Circuit City... at least not without hours or days of work.

When informing others of the greatness of Linux, make sure to tell them that all hardware isn't supported... and they'll save themselves from headaches if they research before they buy their next computer.

Alien packages?

[tepples]

You can find Ubuntu packages for the vast majority of applications (and likewise for SuSE, Fedora etc.) But how well does a package for one distribution work on another? At least with Windows, there's only one distribution in wide use, so maintainers can get away with targeting one distribution.

The fact that there's some weird little application used by about 5 people (including the maintainer...) that Ubuntu can't be bothered to package doesn't mean that Linux isn't ready for the desktop. Unless I check the project's web site, and it makes binary packages available only for SUSE and Fedora because the maintainer doesn't have any machines that run Ubuntu.

Re:A Lot of Hypocrisy.

[Joe Jay Bee]

Only free software gives people the ability to really chose what they want or to make what they need.

Too bad for you, most people who need an image editor have not chosen the free GIMP and use Photoshop instead. They have the choice, and they chose Photoshop. And I speak as someone who actually prefers GIMP, but uses PS simply because trying to get GIMP to work under OS X Leopard was just too much damn effort for me (something about incompatible X11 versions, I don't care, just let me at a virtual paintbrush.)

But your little flame ignores the point - free software like the Firefox, GIMP and Open Office are much better than what most hapless windows users get. This is not a big deal because people are learning to escape.

Like I say, I prefer GIMP for my usage, but you simply cannot for a second pretend that actual professionals doing actual work could use it. The lack of CMYK support is one of the most common complaints, even on here.

People are moving, but a lot slower than you'd like - the OS that's gained the most ground recently is Vista, and from my family's use of it (Home Basic) on their laptop I personally can't see where the problem is. Although, someone I know who's a little slow on the uptake as it were switched to Ubuntu recently, so I suppose that's progress.

Re:A Lot of Hypocrisy.

[Joe Jay Bee]

Oh yes, I forgot to mention: OO.o is getting there but needs a lot of work, and Firefox is pretty much there and is better than IE (if only by virtue of IE being a piece of shit), GIMP is alright if you only need basic tools. The basic message of this is that yes, free software tools work, yes, for a large number of people they're appropriate and work well, but there are at the same time a lot of people who for their particular line of work find that these tools compare very unfavourably to the ones they're used to.

And, just out of interest, what would you recommend to a Windows user as a decent FOSS audio player? Compared to iTunes, Winamp or Windows Media Player they're pretty much either very basic or very techie-oriented (Foobar2000 springs to mind, although that said I quite like it).

Puffs != Kleenex

[tepples]

I am not talking about all those games, but the games most casual gamers play, games such as solitaire, Tetris and others. Solitaire yes; Tetris(TM) no. I don't recall Tetris Holding ever licensing the Tetris brand for a Linux-native game. But then I haven't tested Tetris Worlds or Tetris Zone in Wine either. And I know what you probably meant: there are plenty of other tetromino games such as Lockjaw, many of which work in Linux.

Oh I don't know, perhaps with all the Windows XP install CDs that have come with computers since 2001 or so? OEM copies of Windows XP are tied to one PC case, which has the Certificate of Authenticity on it. If you buy a new case+PSU and put a new mainboard+CPU+RAM+drives inside, you need a new license as I understand it. How can anybody be sure that copies of Windows XP Professional (retail version) will not become collector's items?

Re:Puffs != Kleenex

[Anonymous Coward]

This does not apply for anybody outside of the corporate-paradise-like US and A.
And Virtualization is allowed with the EULA upgrade which came with Vista SP1

Some GIMP tips

[Anonymous Coward]

As for GIMP, the last time I used it, it still didn't have any easy way to draw Ovals/Circles and Rectangles/Squares, something that even the most basic of image editors (MS Paint) has. I believe this is done by using the rectangle or oval selector, then Edit -> Stroke Selection. A similarly indirect method is used for outlining text.

Straight lines are drawn by holding Shift and clicking on the desired endpoint. (The start point is wherever your last click was in the image.) Works with most drawing tools (ex. brush, eraser, smudge, etc).

Yes, these functions could stand to be more discoverable.

Ready for my pocket

[symbolset]

I think we're past the "ready for the desktop" question and well into "ready for your pocket" territory.

Linux owns HPC. It rules the server room. Phone makers are going to put it in 100 million cell phones. Sure, it's on millions of desktops too, but who cares really? It's time we unchained the PC from the desk and let our teams get out to where the action is.

WiMax is taking off, and its competitor too. The network is now everywhere. The Atom is going to amplify the mobile productivity space a dozen times or more. Via and AMD are not dead yet either. Flash drives get cheaper every week.

I think in three years we're going to look down on that quad-core 4GB 500W monster we just bought the office typist so he could continue to draft the same form letters he's been writing since 1987 and shake our heads. What were we thinking?

Just make it easy to install drivers and apps!

[dupersuper]

it should be as easy as running a .exe file on windows. right now its a mess. download a tar/deb/rpm etc or bin, change permissions, run installer in terminal etc etc. and thats the easy way. normal users don't really enjoy editing text config files in root mode in case u developers haven't noticed. standardise on a package format for drivers and apps and include ALL the required files in it. this will eliminate the need for repositories and the whole mess of unupdated apps in the repositories. and finally add a remove menu to consolidate and allow removal of these apps/drivers.

"The Desktop" == "Connectivity to the Web"

[omnirealm]

I just got a call from my mother last night. She is running Ubuntu on
her ThinkPad, and she absolutely loves it. She spends 99% of the time
at home using her own wireless network, and there are no problems at
all. Running Ubuntu on her laptop solves more problems than it causes,
since she is the kind of person who double-clicks on random crap
people forward to her. For stuff she absolutely has to do in other
operating systems, she runs KVM+QEMU. I have her system set up to SSH
into my own box on the rare occasion that I have to connect remotely
and install something (happens maybe once every two months).

Last night though, she was at a hotel, and she wanted to connect to
the hotel's wireless network. Through many years of experience with
Linux distro's and wireless devices, I told her right off the bat that
she had about a 50% chance of actually connecting with a reasonable
about of time and effort. The wireless device was in Roaming mode, and
that obviously was not working. So, she went ahead and selected the
hotel's ESSID, chose DHCP, and then activated the wireless
device. Does she need a WPA key? Who knows; the interface in Ubuntu is
mum on whether or not it is in the clear. Well, of course, it did not
work. And of course, I was not the least bit surprised.

We both had much better things to do with our time than to struggle
with iwlist, iwconfig, and ifconfig settings in an xterm over the
phone, so I just told her that she would have to wait to get home to
connect back up to the Internet.

The vast majority of folks out there really just want to use the web
for their computing tasks. The whole computer is quite literally a
"web interface" device. The desktop-ability of the device rests almost
entirely on its ability to actually connect to the Internet.

My own personal experience over the years with numerous wireless
devices (iwl4965, prism, atheros, etc.) has left me a bit disappointed
in the vendors in terms of driver features and quality. The wireless
setup utilities in Ubuntu and Fedora are okay, but they could be a
little more informative about is actually going on so I do not have to
drop to an xterm to dork around ("Okay, so exactly why don't I have an
IP address now? Are DHCP packets actually making it out, or what?").

If I could pick any one top-priority problem still facing the entire
Linux package today, it would be wireless connectivity to the
Internet. My mother needs to be able to walk into a hotel, turn on her
laptop, and, with little or no effort, just get a link to the
Internet. She should never have to call someone to figure out how to
get to her gmail account. Maybe scan the AP's on boot and have a
wizard pop up when it detects a change in the wireless environment or
something of the sort.

I have a friend to works at Canonical, so maybe it would be more
effective to ping him on this than to rant on Slashdot. Just had to
get this off my chest though.

I'm NOT a poet!

[linhares]

"What do you mean Ubuntu won't install skype?" Stop with the verse shit. I'm not a frigging poet. Multiverse, Universe, shittyverse. Who cares if skype or google earth are NOT free as in speech? They're cool and _users_ want them. Users know about one repository: the internet. Each little new thing we have to teach them about just throws them away. If you really think users _should_ care whether something comes from multiverse or restricted, you're into fundamentalist propaganda, which is obviously unable to make things mainstream. Jesus guys, make it "a download center" and take away all unnecessary terminology and F/OSS propaganda.

Re:Flash 64-bit Linux options

[John Dowdell]

Hi, I see you feel strongly about this. But I'm not sure whether you're aware of running 32-bit browser plugins in 64-bit browsers via nspluginwrapper, and contributing to the Tamarin Project to move the just-in-time compilation and garbage collection to a 64-bit memory space. http://gwenole.beauchesne.info/projects/nspluginwrapper/ http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2006/10/whats_so_difficult_64bit_editi.html http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/ You can get what you want now, and contribute to getting what you want in the future. Useful...? jd/adobe

this, AND..

[plasmacutter]

In my recent foray back into linux territory from osx.. I noted something STILL curiously missing which is ESSENTIAL for average end users: a "sudo" dialogue in nautilus.

it should be part of the standard requirements for a file manager in gnome, but I tried a dozen and none of them have one. This means anything even mildly advanced MUST still be done through a command line.

For the modern naive user, the command line may as well be a tablet written in one of many dead languages. And even as an advanced user I dislike the idea of having to type out basic file management operations.

The article contains the answer

[Rob Y.]

Windows has tons of commercial apps, which forces a huge chicken and egg dilemma on OEM's that might want to support Linux. That, plus they actually make a teeny bit of profit on the Windows OS.

OS/X has the Macintosh hardware behind it, so no OEM problems. Beyond that, they have some great mythology and some pretty good software.

Linux has... linux. It's great software, perfectly usable in many cases, but no compelling reason for OEM's to provide it. So, it's limited to geeks willing to install (often over a paid-for copy of Windows) and some businesses that understand the potential savings.

There was a brief glimmer of hope in the EeePC and it's copycats (all prodded by the OLPC). Pre-installed linux made perfect sense on low-end hardware intended to be sold cheap and for limited uses. Microsoft's caught on to this bit of momentum, and is attempting to squelch it with XP. It remains to be seen whether they'll succeed, though press accounts suggest they might.

It remains for other Open Source stuff (most specifically OOo) to make inroads as a real cross-platform money saver. Once businesses stop using MSOffice/Outlook, they can seriously consider ditching Windows. And they might have the clout to get the OEM's to do it.

Interestingly, OOo, because it's own 'yet another cross-platform toolkit' is not shared by other software, it is nicely poised to be distro-agnostic on Linux. That could be a plus.

Re:The article contains the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way that stuff comes is if you buy software. Admittedly, that's tough, but like with BSD, I bought moneydance, which is OS non-specific, and win4BSD, and cxgames. Admittedly, cxgames, is the Linux version which I boot into for serious use, but I voted for freebsd as my main app.

The bsd version is still quite primitive, but it gives me the chance to vote with my money.

What tends to happen though is that server hardware and such gets huge support from commercial software, databases, network stuff, backup things for enterprise applications etc. And the desktop stuff tends to be slower.

Linux has a bit of an advantage because there's more commercial software available already to get things going.

As far as desktop goes, that's a relative term, I've been using freebsd as my primary desktop for years, except for a hiatus due to hardware, I've been using it for nearly a decade now. It does almost everything I want, and for the rest, their's crossover, and emulation stuff to bridge the gap. The only complaint I have is color calibration. Something Linux does now have.

Re:Ready for Win users. Is it ready for Linux user

[Stickney]

Hooray FVWM!!!

Re:Installing Apps in Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm positive you're just making shit up. You don't have to use the CLI on ubuntu to do what you describe. Also, Synaptic already has tabs for many different categories of software, including the ones you list. There's nothing your "friend" needed you to tell him that ten seconds on google wouldn't have--and you fail to realize that everything worked 10 minutes after that phone call.

What's the problem exactly?

OpenSource is being boycotted

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not either a linux nor a windows fan but let me share an interesting experience. So i buy this pb laptop. They did not warn me of me buying it with preinstalled windows vista nor that vista did not come on a cd/dvd/scroll or something like that. Naturally when i went home i wanted to reinstall the os with dual boot and i needed to repartition the disk.
My pb version of vista installation thing REQUIRES me to erase my partitioning table ergo documents and some other redmond unimportant stuff. How desktop ready is this? Windows requires you to remove all your nudy pics, projects so it can reinstall itself.
BTW when windows crashes, it tends to last longer to fix it then to do a clean install not that ppl would know how to fix the damage left by a worm or something.
So naturally i resort to ethnic slur about bill's family and ask parted to resize my disk. Naturally i kept vista in there on some 20G in case some wacky game will not run properly under any flavor of wine.
OpenSuse behaved rather nicely even with the cool compiz thing even on an integrated gpu.(using less cpu and memory then a classic win manager) so i keep it for practicality rather then niftiness. Now i need to get my wireless running and here's where ppl say linux/bsd is not desktop ready. I have a rtl8187b wireless card. Notice the b at the end for i had already a rtl8187 module in the stock kernel. The b stands for a different irq/dma but no other changes in the way the board works. Is this a linux issue? Are the linux dudes to blame for not knowing by paranormal means that realtek will release a "vista only" device?
I must say i only wish for 20 lives or so(care to donate a liver or anything?) to rewrite linux parts the way i feel would be better but the main reason why linux is called even by redhat ceo not desktop ready is because software companies are scratching each other's backs not releasing software for linux. No gimp will never be as good as photoshop as neither photoshop is as good as corel but guess what? Corel is no longer released for linux but it's there for mac os. Same glibc and same xorg?
As for windows being desktop ready don't get me started on that one. Not even solitaire works properly in vista not to mention others though i saw some novel and nifty features to it like statistics so now i can know how big of a looser i am. I buy an os just to have the need to buy fauna removers just to realize that i need to further buy a text editor and all of this because some golf playing pin pricks to quote David Gilmore will always be able to settle under the Bush administration. I say there should be a law to force hardware manufacturers to release drivers for the most popular operating systems or on customer demand. I have to disagree with the way linux implements drivers though. And about console, i once wanted to start my own distro and stood in console mode for more than 2 years before feeling the need for a window/desktop manager so desktop so for some ppl a computer without a desktop is like a fish without a bike.
But i guess in the long run it's ok for ppl to use windows as this will give hackers a well earned loaf of bread.
Andrei

Not ready? only in the context of what you know

[gelfling]

Linux is only not ready in the context of what you already expect Windows to be able to do. Linux will never be Windows therefore the people who insist on 'ready' being exactly like Windows will never be happy.

Mac isn't Windows and it never will be. But it has its own advantages. It has its own learning curve. Same with Linux. If you never saw a Windows machine you would learn Linux differently and you would have an entirely different set of criticisms.

I don't see how windows would have worked

[Anonymous Coward]

either. Really, windows doesn't tell you if you need a key or anything.

It either works or it doesn't.

With Linux you're given enough information (even if well hidden) to find out. With Windows, you may be lucky and there's a known way around.

Linux has been Desktop Ready(TM) for years.

[Jesus_666]

There's a clear industry standard at work here: "X ready" means "supports at leat the very lowest possible definition of X, even if just barely". "HD Ready" means 720p (and only because 720i doesn't exist); "Vista Ready" means "capable of booting Vista Home Basic"... "Desktop Ready" obviously has to mean "supports any GUI that follows the desktop metaphor".

Linux deserved a "Desktop Ready" sticker as soon as it got X11.

Wow

[MisterBlueSky]

I never tried Vista, but seeing that image almost makes me. Even with so many windows 'n' stuff it looks great. Makes my KDE look a little... 90's.

Re:Wow

[CopaceticOpus]

That's funny, I had the opposite reaction. The Vista screenshot made me want to run screaming. It has some nice modern touches, but it is also massively busy and icon happy. The translucent title bars result in ugly bleed through colors and only serve to further increase the visual complexity of the screen.

If it's already installed...

[Anonymous Coward]

then Linux is ready for the desktop. Ubuntu et al when they're up and running aren't going to daunt anyone but the most computer illiterate.

Installing Linux on a green PC, however, is a still hit and miss experience. Installing Ubuntu is quite painless these days, but if your machine has any quirks or unsupported hardware it can be a real ball ache.

The same is, of course, true of Windows. But most people don't install Windows, do they?

Technically . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

DOS doesn't have a desktop. So the OP's question is essentially meaningless unless it refers to the physical desktop.

Maybe this is the problem with the whole "Is Linux ready for the desktop?" question. There's Linux's desktop (its window managers) and the desktop owned by potential Linux users.

Maybe a better question would be "Are users ready for Linux's desktop?"

My mind spins like a machine.

Assumed Knowledge

[Totenglocke]

Very true. However, as someone who's new to Linux (I wiped XP off my laptop and installed Ubuntu 8.04 the day Hardy was released), I've found that there's a degree of assumed knowledge involved with using Linux. I've played with computers since I was young in the 80's and originally majored in computer science, so I'm well aware of how to use a computer. However, I never would've known to go to "all open source applications" to install compiz - I would've used apt-get to install it, merely because I wasn't aware that I SHOULD do as you instructed to install it using a GUI.

I love Linux - love it, but there are a lot of things that people are assumed to "just know". Being a computer nerd doesn't mean you magically know everything. Just imagine how much worse it is for the average person to pick up. Until that's changed, Linux won't be ready for the mainstream.

Re:Assumed Knowledge

[ricegf]

As someone who's used Windows since 1.0 (literally, to run Pagemaker and Micrographx Designer), can you tell me what I need to go find to "tweak the hell" out of my Windows XP setup?

Seriously, even the "power toys" I've managed to find come no where close to the configurability and eye candy I get from compiz.

If Windows didn't come first, I cannot imagine ANYONE would think it was "ready for the desktop" today.

Re:Assumed Knowledge

[Abcd1234]

I think you're just seeing Ubuntu through coloured glasses. Your background has given you just enough knowledge to know about things like apt-get, and subsequently, your impressions as a user are skewed. I find myself in the very same predicament going to, say, Fedora... I expect things to work a certain way, not realizing there are GUI tools, etc, that make my job much simpler, all because my experience has taught me to not even bother looking for them.

A far more interesting experiment would be to take a Windows user, give them a five-minute tutorial on Ubuntu (ie, this is the program menu, etc), and then see how they fare.

A matter of perspective

[sentientbrendan]

"As anyone who's been using Linux for several years (or even a few) for everyday tasks knows, "ready for the desktop" is in the eye of the beholder."

For instance, if you're a zealot who isn't willing to admit that Linux has flaws, Linux *is* ready for the desktop.

On the other hand if you are a rational human being, you might think of Linux as a great server operating system, that some people, painfully, force themselves to use on the desktop for ideological reasons. Kind of like the computing equivalent of a hair shirt.

See? It's all a matter of perspective.

Another matter of perspective. If you tend to agree with me on this issue, you might mod this article "funny," but if you disagree, you might mod it "flaimbait."

Getting past the "desktop"

[Scroatzilla]

I think ultimately we need to just get past the "desktop" metaphor altogether. The word "desktop" connotes work, and while PCs are certainly used to help people perform "work," "desktop" is a rather exclusive word that is becoming more and more inappropriate.

I've been a PC user since the first version of Windows-- my dad is a computer guy and, when desktop PCs became affordable, we immediately got one and he made sure to teach me the ins and outs of organizing my files, how to navigate around in the various windows, and how to do stuff from the command line. But, to my Geekiness discredit, Solitaire and Paint were the coolest things to me.

It was only when the multimedia capabilities and the processing power to run them finally met that my head turned and my imagination started churning away. Sure, I could type papers on DOS-oriented word processors with the best of them but, let's face it, I was forced into doing those types of things. It was cute, it was easier than using a typewriter, but it still wasn't "fun." It was a virtual replacement for a physical desktop.

Multimedia and the idea of convergence really started to chip away at the idea that a PC is a virtual desktop. Then, the WWW happened, and Communication poked its nose into the mainstream. So now what we have, and seem to be stuck with, is the notion of a box, that you turn on and that shows you a desktop from which you can perform many tasks or be entertained.

Yawn. I'm a musician, and I've now got an Ubuntu machine for my web surfing and CD collection, a decent Windows machine to do my home recording on, and an older Windows machine that functions as a family machine for my daughter to play games on (with the ability to bolster my home studio when needed). And for fun, an Internet-connected Wii.

My machines are appliances. Certainly the idea of Computer as Appliance is not new, but we're now at a point where that doesn't mean a cheap piece of non-powerful, non-upgradeable, bearly-passable poop. The iPhone may well indeed fulfill 99% of an average person's computing needs. The eeePC might be Just Enough to satisfy the needs of a student. The Wii might be the exact right thing for one's gaming. And yes, my Windows box is Just Enough to satisfy my home recording needs.

In terms of mainstream ideology, we definitely need to get past the idea that people want a box that can do every single thing known to man without ever breaking down. People want a Communication machine, or a Game machine, or a Creativity machine. They want them in different rooms around their house, or in their pocket, or in their backpack. They don't care, nor do I believe they should care or have to care, about the Operating System.

I admit that I shudder to think of ever ridding myself of a startup screen with rows and rows of icons that I forgot the functions of, or the pesky Update notices for some obscure program that I didn't even know I had. In the end, though, those things are obstacles to what I want my machines to do.

Specialization of functionality. Appliances. Keep the Desktop at work. The proles will (and indeed must) survive under whatever conditions the Powers That Be foist upon them anyway.

Re:Getting past the "desktop"

[Weedlekin]

"The word "desktop" connotes work, and while PCs are certainly used to help people perform "work""

Personal Computers were all about work when the term was coined. Home computers were called "home computers", and tended to be sold without what were then expensive peripherals such as disk drives and dedicated monitors (although these could sometimes be added). It was actually quite unusual for the first personal computers to have any graphics capabilities at all: CP/M machines were usually connected to serial text terminals, and IBM's later offering initially came with a Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA) that was also only capable of displaying text. Sound was likewise limited to a device that was intended for emitting beeps (although programmers became adept at coaxing a lot more out of the IBM PC's less than spectacular sound hardware).

"Multimedia and the idea of convergence really started to chip away at the idea that a PC is a virtual desktop"

The term "ready for the desktop" is used to denote a machine that's fit to be used _on_ a desktop by the sort of people who usually sit at desks in offices instead of being put in a server room, factory floor, pocket, sound or movie studio, or the inside of another machine (embedded system). It has nothing whatsoever to do with the increasingly old desktop GUI metaphor, especially nowadays when it's rare for any of the so-called "desktops" to bear even a remote resemblance to the top of a desk with some stuff on it.

"Keep the Desktop at work"

That's the environment Xerox originally intended to use it in, and Apple's Lisa (and later Mac) that were inspired by them were also primarily intended to be business machines.

It's ready

[sc0ob5]

I had to rebuild my mothers PC after it had died from a blown cap and thought that it'd be time for her to be converted over to GNU\Linux. I installed Ubuntu 7.10 on her XP2100+, 1GB DDR, ti4200, 2x80GB HDD. She was blown away by the responsiveness compared to her previous XP install which was about a year old and by the sleek looks of compiz. I mounted the ntfs partitions so she could access the documents created on windows. She was able to do everything that she does in windows, create and edit word processor documents, create and edit spread sheet documents, upload photos from her camera to her email and to a storage area, crop photos, browse the internet (virus free!). She was even able to install a canon printer without my help, something that she never would have been able to do in windows. Granted she didn't install ubuntu but she didn't install windows either so I think it's a fair comparison. She has NEVER EVER had to go to the command line either (in windows XP or in ubuntu) so that argument is dead in the water. I am yet to get a call from her asking for help and she is just loving it. It's ready and those that don't think that it is obviously haven't met my mother. I think there is a big misconception about what a normal user does on their machine.

Windows has always been gui-centric for everything

[jesterzog]

I think this is just a philosophical difference between Windows and Unix (and similar systems). Unix was built from the ground up for the command line to be the main input device, with GUIs as an added extra. Unix programs and admin tools frequently have good command line interfaces which interface using plain text, and GUIs are often built over the top of the command line. Most Unix admins I know spend a lot of time in the command line, sometimes by choice and often because it's necessary. Windows was built the other way around. GUIs are the primary interface for administration and everything else, they often exchange information using tersely specified protocols and binary formats. A command line interface is an added extra on many occasions, if it even exists. Most Windows admins I know spend a lot of time in the GUI either by choice, or because it's necessary.

I run Debian Linux at home and use Windows all day at work, and I have to admit that my personal preference is the command line way of doing things. It just feels a bit more powerful, I guess. YMMV but I usually find I can type much more quickly, delicately and specifically than I can move a mouse pointer around and click things, or even use GUI shortcut keys. (This makes sense too given that a mouse effectively reduces 10 fingers to a single line-it-up-and-thump-it device.) Having said this though, I rarely use the command line at work. This is probably because the Windows GUI tools and apps tend to be more powerful, but it's also very much because the Windows command line just feels klunky in comparison to something like bash or tcsh running inside an xterm.

It's as if Microsoft's primary command prompt has hardly changed at all from DOS days. It's not very customisable, and it also runs inside one of the most horrible windows for a command line. ie. Not easily resize-able or reconfigurable for things like window size and column width without drilling into a hierarchy of menus. The ability to string commands or tools together in Windows is very limited, unless two commands were specifically designed to interact, so there's much more reliance on monolithic tools or third party applications to do things. The PowerShell is a good step, but it's directed more at scripting than command line interaction. (It's also stuck inside that hideous fixed-size window.)

Re:Used to call that a COP OUT !!

[dave87656]

Today, it's called a Linux Syndrome.

I remember hearing about Linux in 1991, Slackware. I tried it and man did it suck. But hang in there suckers, one day WILL be the day of the herd. This coming from someone who tried Linux in 1991. Perhaps you should try something from this millennium before commenting.

Office 2007 is not ready for the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Being normally a Linux user, I had to use my wife's WinXP computer a few days ago to quickly print a Word document, as my computer was in a few pieces. She has Microsoft Office 2007 installed. I was in a bit of a hurry, and after spending 10 minutes on it, I still never found any way to print my document. I ended up just pasting the contents into Wordpad and printed it from there. Had I have had more time, I probably would have figured it out, but honestly, I felt is was ludicrous that MS chose to hide the PRINT icon.

With that said, Linux is ready for my desktop, but still lacks seriously in the financial area. Linux needs a Quickbooks like program badly, and after using Linux for 10 years, I cannot believe there still isn't one. That too is ludicrous! I am still using WINE to run Quicken, and I shouldn't have to do this.

Actually, the question should really be:

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the average Windows user ready for Linux?

Linux is not going to change for the worse. Proprietary code/software? Preinstalled crap? WISE installation system? Admin account by default?

The Linux desktop environments are there to make Linux look easier to use by providing easy workarounds for doing more complicated things. Deep inside though, Linux will not be Windows and that's something the Windows user has to get used to.

Re:A Lot of Hypocrisy.

[Draek]

Too bad for you, most people who need an image editor have not chosen the free GIMP and use Photoshop instead.

I'd argue that most people using Photoshop today haven't even heard of TheGIMP.

Like I say, I prefer GIMP for my usage, but you simply cannot for a second pretend that actual professionals doing actual work could use it. The lack of CMYK support is one of the most common complaints, even on here.

Fair point, but "actual professionals doing actual work" *isn't* an apt description for most of the people using Photoshop today. I'd bet most Photoshop users don't even know what CYMK is, let alone need it.

People are moving, but a lot slower than you'd like - the OS that's gained the most ground recently is Vista, and from my family's use of it (Home Basic) on their laptop I personally can't see where the problem is.

Lucky them, but after using Eclipse on a friend's laptop with 1 GB of RAM and waiting *seconds* for the program to respond to a single keypress, I can see the problem perfectly. Incidentally, I wonder, how well does Photoshop run on a Vista-using machine with "only" 1 GB of RAM or so? 'cause a sluggish RAM-consuming behemoth running a sluggish RAM-consuming behemoth doesn't strike me as the best of ideas...

You don't want Gimp

[amake]

As for GIMP, the last time I used it, it still didn't have any easy way to draw Ovals/Circles and Rectangles/Squares, something that even the most basic of image editors (MS Paint) has. If you want to draw, then you want a vector image editor like Inkscape, not a bitmap editor like Gimp. Yes, that's even if you are drawing on top of bitmaps. Just import the bitmap into Inkscape and draw whatever you like on top of it. If the output must be a bitmap, export to PNG. There are very, very few instances where you should be drawing shapes in a bitmap editor. (An example where this is appropriate: Creating and editing selections. Surprise! You can do this very easily in Gimp.)

Please master Command Line User Interfaces first

[Anonymous Coward]

I currently give most Linux Distributions a z-- grade on the a+ through f- scale. What got me so angry? I learned dhclient. Dhclient = " deprecated " now - chanting " deprecated " when what used to work doesn't work anymore in your distribution/s really pisses off users! Any responsible distro packager would note the sudden change in a half decade of user experience and ship entries in an alias file to eliminate the re-learning period. Inflicting a painful and needless re-learning period on your users requires them to suffer a level of addiction comparable to the most pathetic drug users to still want to stay with your trash!

This kind of severe abuse of the users keeps them terrified of the CLI so you need to gui-ifie everything to get any attention from them.

Ready when this happens

[Anonymous Coward]

I will switch to Linux full-time if one of the two things happen:

1. Valve releases a Linux version of the Source engine
2. These two bugs are fixed in Wine.

Linux without a friendly GUI = !desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

The basic problem is: The Linux developers hates GUI and thinks the CLI is the only solution for all users (including your mother :)). The kernel is a well-developed, but without a USABLE gui for "normal" user he will never see the desktop from masses

P.S: Sorry the bad english, is not my natural language and I don't like to use online translators (is buggy as hell to translate brazilian portuguese to english)

Linux has lost the desktop - forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Here we go again. Someone makes a post about desktop linux and we have the usual diatribe of n00bishness: 1. Linux is ready for the desktop. It's just a matter of time before the Evil Empire falls. 2. Linux is ready for my desktop. Who cares about the rest of you. 3. 20xx will be the year of Linux on the desktop! You'll see! Blah, blah, blah. Linux has lost. The war is over. Get over it, n00bs. Long Live the Empire (Microsoft). JamesNT

Re:Flash 64-bit Linux options

[rastass]

Yes I have heard of this - but the question remains... why should I have to go through this if Linux is 100% ready for the desktop ? Adobe, get with the program.

Re:From the first half-dozen comments I see here..

[Weedlekin]

"check the Ubuntu forums: there's no real consistency in comments about the readniess of Ubuntu for the mainstream: some computer illiterates say it's ready, some don't. Some geeks say it's ready, some don't."

People post inconsistent opinions on MS and Apple forums too, though. OS X 10.5 is the bee's knees, OS X 10.5 is a buggy piece of crap and I hate the transparent UI bits; Windows Vista is so great that I'd gladly sell my own liver and give the money to Microsoft, Windows Vista is a slow resource-hogging POS. And as with Ubuntu, both positive and negative comments come from newbies, geeks, and everyone in between.

Just A Quicky

[BigBlueOx]

Just a fast comment and then I've gotta get back to my war against our Texas Ant Overlords before they destroy humanity.

I recently had to upgrade our household to XP from Windows2000 (because my wife got a new phone)(a new PHONE! - kill me now) and, from personal experience with two computer "users", I can say that it's just as important, if not more, to have a "guru" around for XP as it is for any Linux install.

And yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, your point is STILL invalid, since DOS never dominated the desktop.

It was only with the advent of Windows 3.11 when MS hit it's stride... and it wasn't even because of the desktop itself so much as it was the ease (and especially the low cost) of getting it networked. Networking wasn't as simple as it is today... what we have today is ALL because of Microsoft making network simple and cheap.

There used to be a REALLY high expense associated with running a network... we are talking about $10k for a server license, and whatever for the honor of using the networking software. And, of course, all the labor involved in getting it running and keeping it running. Microsoft changed all that for the better, and have been hated for it ever since.

"Ready for Desktop" just a perception

[abhitux]

Well "Ready for Desktop" yes it is..The 3d effects cube and stuff are way better than Xp and Vista...the only thing lacking with linux is publicity ..so very few people actually know about that ..some don't know whether linux is user friendly or even whether it exists ! We call windows "user friendly" simply because any users use it and we've been using it for years ..if you give a 12 year old boy who has never touched a computer a linux kde or gnome desktop he would find it very "user friendly" The term "ready for desktop" is a mere perception rather than a fact Linux is ready for a massive virus attack windows?? huh! Well user friendly or loser friendly let the people decide !!

Re:DOS -- You're WORKING wrong IMO

[zukinux]

...for years now and never have I had to go to command prompt but in some rare cases

I'm a linux user, and when I work on Windows I open CMD immediately... you ask why?

tasklist /v 2>&1 --> Shows every task running
taskkill /f /im process-name (or /pid #pid_num) --> to quickly kill all the... i.e: notepads which are open
python --> Just to run python
I've putted rar on my path and rar.exe e filename.rar will open rars on cmd.
I've putted UnxTools on my path and now I got things like awk,sed,grep,...
for /R, for /F, --> Parsing files, repeating commands, doing dir with full path on selected filetypes
quick opening of menus such as msconfig, compmgmt.msc, firewall.cpl, services.msc, etc...
network actions such as ping or other to check if my network is up.

And there are many many more... Yes, of-course Linux BASH is much much better, but not using CMD is just not working right, and losing time for regular tasks in my honest opinion

Re:DOS -- You're WORKING wrong IMO

[weicco]

I'm not working right? Wow! You are actually saying that I should use command prompt to unzip/unrar files and not doing so costs in development time? Well I get something like 1 ZIP packet in a month by email attachement. I double click the attachement, select Open and copypaste files to wherever is suitable.

Listing processes and killing them? Why? I just switch to the process window and click ALT+F4. I'm not the type who constantly keeps 20 browser windows open at the desktop.

Why would I need command line UNIX tools? I have Visual Studio which has all the nice regexp search and replace stuff I need plus very, very nice code refactoring feature. My job is not to edit text but to produce code.

Ping. Now there's something which I do from command prompt. But last time I pinged something... I think it was in February. Network action is shown in the nice little network icon on systray. I don't need command line tools for that. DHCP renewal, WLAN access point selection and such can also be done through that icon.

I really don't do any those like ever! I don't scramble with various config files or multi-task-kill processes. I do config stuff through UI and it has worked fine all these 12 years I've used Windows. I'm not a newb, I can tell you. I've developed ways to do things efficiently and command prompt would only slow me down on Windows.

My previous post is deleted

[TheDarkMaster]

Is forbidden to Brazilians to post into slashdot? My previous post here as "anonymous" (now i created a account) is deleted from here. I commented the problem of linux desktop is simple: Linux delevopers hates GUIs, he thinks all users is happy with CLI (even a normal user). Because this a good desktop will never happens.

apropos helps...

[jknapka]

Arguing to use man or search the Internet doesn't help. man can be unbearably confusing sometimes, or sometimes it just lists options but doesn't really explain what they do. Of course, man doesn't help if you don't know what the command is to do what you want to do in the first place!

apropos can be a big help. As in, apropos foo will list the names of all the commands whose man pages contain foo.

But anyone can reasonably look for a System or Preferences menu, hopefully drill down to the area of what they're looking for, and toggle options or whatnot. Why is there such pushback to making things easier?

It's only easier if (a) what you're looking for is actually in the menu heirarchy, and (b) the heirarchy is organized in a way that makes sense to the user. But one user's "sensible organization" is another's "chaotic mess".

-- JK

No, not really

[musicmaker]

Most people have a similar set of basic needs including printing. I just installed the latest Ubuntu, and I can't print at all. It won't let me install a printer. This is a constant problem in Linux. Printing is a nightmare. Spreadsheets and Documents are the other stuff. Open Office still sucks, and can't import MS Documents properly. And as a professional programmer, I need a diagramming tool. What the hell is available on Linux? dia? kivio? Please, both are terrible. If you are a programmer and don't need a diagramming tool, then I pity you. Design is a wonderful thing, and a picture says 1000 words. Windows has Visio, and Mac OS X has OmniGraffle, both of which are great tools.