Slashdot Mirror
What Needs Fixing In Linux
An anonymous reader writes "Infoweek's Fixing Linux: What's Broken And What To Do About It argues that the 17-year-old open-source operating system still has problems. Leading the list is author Serdar Yegulap's complaint that the kernel application binary interfaces are a moving target. He writes: 'The sheer breadth of kernel interfaces means it's entirely possible for something to break in a way that might not even show up in a fairly rigorous code review.' Also on his list of needed fixes are: a consistent configuration system, to enable distribution; native file versioning; audio APIs; and the integration of X11 with apps. Finally, he argues that Linux needs a committee to insure that all GUIs work consistently and integrate better on the back-end with the kernel."
I'm tired of that penguin
I am sure that only sane, rational, and courteous debate will follow. Finally an argument-free thread!
-=Bang Bang=-
that Linux IS pretty much a mess, it's just that there enough hands around at all times to fix quickly enough whenever something breaks. That's pretty much how it works at the moment and this could be better indeed.
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
I am so happy that he has volunteered to do this. I was afraid that the article might be about wanting someone ELSE to do the work.
But how would you avoid that? Set up some sort of world regulation on distros? Tax it? :) It's just a natural thing.
o_O
Is more vendor support. Every supposed real problem with Linux is based on or related to a problem with a driver; nine times out of ten this problem is caused by the manufacturer being unwilling or unable to release specifications. The various vendors out there need to realize that Linux may not be the future, but it's a more likely future than Windows, and they need to put some effort into support. Of course, some of them have, and if you reward them by purchasing their hardware, they may do more of it. Regardless, having multiple GUIs isn't actually a real problem - it's an opportunity, not a setback, and meanwhile you can trivially use libqt to draw GTK+ apps or use GTK+ to draw widgets for libqt programs (Sorry I haven't updated in a while, my last build FAILED on the build servers but worked at home, and it was a compiler error, NOT a library I forgot to specify. Nice work, Ubuntu!)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That is not a bug. It's a feature.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
First person to make a fuss about this gets a prize!
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
the problem with linux, is that to many people want it to be to many things. there is no centralised effort to get it to do one thing.
there are several GUI solutions, rather than a centralised effort, there are several browsers gunning to be the main browser, there are several sound sub-systems/servers... why cant these people learn to play together, and come up with something that fits everybody.
i know i will get comments about "choice" its all about "choice", but its not, its not at all about choice to the common user... the common user want to switch the computer on, check their hotmail account, check facebook, and then talk to their friends on live messenger... THATS IT.... thats what the common computer user does now... they dont care how their computer does it, they dont care about the morality behind it, they dont care if the guy who made their file system killed his wife or not.. they dont even know what a file system is.
its only the very advanced users who care about these things, and im afraid to say, that these users dont even account for 1% of all computer users.
if linux based operating systems are to become as big as they want to be, they need to stop fighting among themselves and centralised their efforts. otherwise, we will be having this same story in another 17 years
portfolio
and the integration of X11 with apps. Finally, he argues that Linux needs a committee to insure that all GUIs work consistently and integrate better on the back-end with the kernel.
Call me old fashioned or whatever the cute term is now. But fuck that! If I ever see programs like cp become bloated with X library calls because some news reporter needs to see a GUI progress bar, I'm going to be very angry.
My biggest issue lately has been NetworkManager. It isn't absolutely necessary but wireless connections are quite annoying without it and more and more applications are becoming NetworkManager aware which means it is increasingly important to have it. It hasn't progressed that much since its inception and it's still not possible to configure most networking options to work with it. The NetworkManager homepage makes it clear that they are not interested in profiles, and their application makes it clear they are not interested in bridge interfaces or any other kind of advanced networking. So your options are to disable it and configure networking through your init scripts or deal with the extremely limited options of NetworkManager. My biggest complainst are that I cannot get a static IP on my home wireless while getting DHCP everywhere else and it's a real pain in the ass to set up bridged networking for use with a VM.
Time makes more converts than reason
1. Why is Linux blamed for configuration files that are written by application developers? Linux is a kernel and is not responsible for Sendmail. Further I fail to see how the point and click method of configuration is better than editing a text file than can be searched, backed up and version controlled.
2. Why is it the responsibility of Linux distribution maintainers to provide a means for commericial vendors to package their product? Vendors had to spend money to get certified for other operating systems. How about putting a little work into understanding and using a Linux distribution.
3. X freezing? Umm...
Perhaps I've just feed the troll but, I'm sure the pointy hairs will read the artical and think it's all true.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
No, a committee should be responsible for setting standards, similar to how the W3C sets standards for the web. Standards are good. Besides, sometimes programmers need to have their ego reigned in and given some direction. ;)
It's a cultural thing. There's a difference between designing a distro for a need (I.E., embedded, desktop, server, special applications) and going gun-ho into creating a new distro organization for nearly every new feature.
That's the problem that I see with all of these niche distros. Many rarely see a user, simply because they're either indistinguishable from their dozen other competing niche variants or their features are already blanket covered by another distro.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
http://www.freedesktop.org/ is the link. Was that really so hard?
~ C.
We have the LSB, and distributions which make some effort to ship binary 'compat' packages, so that third parties can distribute their software in RPMv3 format (n.b. not the same format as currently used by RPM-based distros, which are on RPMv4) and it will just install and work on any i386 or x86_64 Linux system. But I wonder if that is slightly the wrong model. At the moment if you want some particular library you have the choice of statically linking it into your executable, or just relying on it being there in the target system; neither is very appealing.
For example, suppose you want GTK version 2.16 or later but LSB specifies an older GTK (actually, it specifies a set of interfaces, but that corresponds to a particular GTK version). You could statically link your app with gtk-2.16, or you could include your own private copy of the library to be stuck in /opt/myapp/libs, but then what about Fedora 10 which does include a new enough GTK?
Instead of providing a single RPM (or worse, lots of different binary RPMs for different distros), we should encourage vendors to set up a yum repository. Then to install their software you could add the third-party's repository to your software sources list and use the normal GUI tools to update and install packages. If they want to use some newer library which is not included in Ye Olde Enterprise Linux 1.1, then they can just add a package for that library to the repository, and it will be installed only on systems that need it. This also takes care of automatic updates, which are not provided if you just give people an RPM file to install manually.
Of course, we don't live in a world where you can just 'encourage' third-party software vendors to do things and they'll jump to it; otherwise Nvidia would long ago have released free drivers. So you need to make it as easy as possible to set up a repository for yum or apt-get or smart or whatever packaging tool distros are using. It needs to be trivially easy. So I would suggest enhancing yum and the other tools to work from a plain directory of rpm files served over http. Just dump the files on a webserver, let Apache serve the directory listing and let yum point to that and Just Work. Or, if that's too dirty for you, use a directory on an ftp site (which at least has a defined protocol for listing the files available).
I think a repository for package management programs like yum satisfies what the author is talking about when he asks for a 'meta-package'.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
No, a committee should be responsible for setting standards, similar to how the W3C sets standards for the web.
There is already Linux Standard Base. But what real influence does the LSB Workgroup have in the GNU/Linux ecosystem?
In the sense that there is little originality, and it seems anything added to linux has to have occurred in another operating system.
Linux/Unix has plenty shortcomings, but its evangelists believe it's so perfect it cannot be improved. Here is my short list of major peeves.
1. Filesystem metadata/permissions. Why do files still have to have rudimentary metadata? Drives are massive and a few bytes would not harm. MacOS has added metadata. An example would be that a file should be able to keep a list of all the dates it was accessed. Why can a file only have one owner/group?
2. Root is God. This must really be fixed. There should be a way for root to irrevocably divest its powers, and root does not need to access users file. A user should explicitly grant root permission to read his files. It will always be a major security issue because all one has to do is become root. Plan9 managed to do that.
3. They lie about everything is a file. Why not extend this to networking resources ('cd http://www.gnu.org/ would be cool ). Plan9 also succeeded there.
I am sure linux evangelists are going to propose (hack-filled) workarounds or reasons it can't work, but I don't buy it. That is why I left linux.
...and none of them are listed in this article. Most of these are lame rehashes of old stuff that just isn't important. How about stuff like flash not crashing on me every two minutes? A IM client that doesn't freeze on file transfers with native MSN clients (I've tried several and they just don't work), some real compatibility with MS Office (the locked excel sheet for travel expenses breaks every time and I have to unlock it to actually make it work), fix the dual screen setup so that it actually works, that the side buttons on my mouse would work without hacking xorg.conf, all the ways WINE fails me and so on. I don't care that there's plenty choices, I just want at least one choice that works...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The thing about Linux is no one can agree on one desktop, which is why there are more than one. Some people like the retardedly simple yet unconfigurable Gnome, some people like the super advanced yet buggy KDE, and some people don't care and use XFCE because it's fast. No matter which one you choose, a lot of people won't be happy, and the beauty of an open source operating system is you can't force them to use one they don't want. And if distributions being so different is a problem, don't tell your grandma to get Linux, tell her to get Fedora, or Ubuntu, or SUSE. Your argument is from the view of someone who doesn't understand the entire point of open source software. Linux users don't want our choices taken away. There are definitely issues they need to work with, like choosing one package format, but getting rid of all choices is not what's going to make Linux better.
USB barely works. It's OK for mass-storage devices, but sucks hugely for high-bandwidth devices, or anything that's removable - and gets removed.
Video: just as bad. Put these two together and you have a mess of non-functional webcams, video applications which sometimes hold together if you're prepared to spend hours and days hunting down just the rtight combination of codecs, libraries and applications.
However, the worst part of Linux is tha parlous state of the documentation. A morass of different styles: .man .info HOWTOs, html, text-files. Almost none is available in more than one language and hardly any is kept up to date. Even less is declared obsolete, to stop people trying techniques that haven't worked in years - but is still highly-linked to on the web.
Frequently, the best documentation for an application is the string command.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I use Linux and FOSS almost exclusively for my photography workflow.
Almost.
See, when I work in film, I need to have a Mac around to handle the flatbed scanner. Because, unfortunately, Linux support for flatbed scanners really sucks rocks.
gimp has some shortcomings as well but I understand they are being actively addressed so I won't bitch about that.
I guess these are the main things without wasting too much time on this topic.
... it depends heavily on what the goal is. If the goal is to overtake windows on the desktop, then largely, yes, I agree. However, linux is in good shape on the server, actually far better shape than Windows 2003 Server in reality. It's easier to manage, it's more reliable, it's cheaper, and harder to exploit. However, if linux is going to make a serious attempt at taking over desktop market share from Windows then there are two things that must be done-- simplistic flawless working audio. simplistic flawless working video. It takes many times more effort in linux to get audio and video working cleanly than it does in windows and until that changes there is no hope of linux gaining serious market share in the destop environment. (on the other side of that coin, once it's working in linux it never breaks unlike windows.. and you can simply copy your old configs over your new when you reinstall and everything works again.)
Pantek, Inc. - http://www.pantek.com/ - info@pantek.com
+1-877-LINUX-FIX - Expert Open Source Support
Documentation
Everything else is secondary. Well, most everything. But without usable documentation, all else is futile.
Oh, and would someone do some work on documentation?
Thanks!
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
He complains:
Who else should do it?
He complains the distribution differences make life hard for people selling software. Well, tough, if they want money maybe they should work for it?
I know! Let's recreate the windows registry, but this time better!. Yawn.
Just about the shittiest article I've read for a long time.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The idea that the purpose of Linux, and Open Source in general, is to beat Microsoft has done more damage to the movement than just about anything else. It forces people to think in terms of how to obtain market share rather than how to improve software and advance the cause of free software.
The biggest single advantage of the free software model is the ability to innovate quickly, because there are more people working on it, and those people have more freedom to tinker around without having to worry about being profitable this quarter. However, since the vast majority of people in the movement these days seem to be primarily concerned with copying Microsoft products in order to beat them at their own game, real innovation is being stifled.
The fact that most major Linux distributions come with a default desktop that mimics Windows in many ways is testament to this fact. It's time to face facts: For most people, it's never going to be the year of Linux on the desktop, and that shouldn't be regarded as a failure to anyone. The end goal of free software is not to defeat Microsoft. Free software is a goal in and of itself.
My biggest complainst are that I cannot get a static IP on my home wireless while getting DHCP everywhere else
Then tell your home wireless to reserve an IP address for your laptop's MAC address. It's an option in the Netgear router I use.
What I find in *most* of these sorts of pieces is that they are either cynically or subconsciously pushing for the winozification of Linux. He makes some good points along with the bad.
(1) Package Management
This is a good point if the debian people and redhat people could work toward a solution, it could be fixed as both systems have a great deal in common.
(2) Configuration Files /etc are, IHO, better and can be backed up and diff-ed.
Bzzzt. Wrong. The foolish part of this subject is that while the Windows registry provides a standardized access to the data store, it only defines types and not what they are supposed to be. Lunux configuration files under
(3) Kernel Application Binary Interfaces
I would like to see a stabilized and standardized device interface API for standard devices, something exposing a limited subset of the kernel that would simplify simple devices like block, serial, and network types of devices.
(4)Native File Versioning
Bzzt. Its called automatic backup people. This is a relatively new feature in Macs and barely working in Windows. Would be nice, but can't characterize it as something that's broken.
(5)Audio Application Programming Interfaces
This I 100% agree with. Choice is nice, but the geometric product of "choice" in system services means that rich multimedia applications are much harder to develop.
(6)Graphical User Interface
He sort of has a point about this and it has often been a problem.
(7)Integration Of X11 With Apps
Bzzt Wrong. X11 is a HUGELY powerful system and if you encounter a bug that crashes your session, that's a bug. Fortunately I haven't seen one of these in about 6 years.
(8)Commercially Hosted Backup And Restore
Bzzt Wrong. This is not "Linux" being broken, it is 3rd party vendors being stupid.
I agree. Clearly there are only two diametrically opposed options here. Either we immediately cease all development and enhancement of Linux and agree that the current kernel version is the absolute perfection of open source, or everyone formats their hard drives and installs Vista.
There couldn't possibly be a middle ground anywhere in there.
Video drivers. Video drivers. Video drivers. Or possibly X11. Or possibly the whole multi-layered graphics approach.
I'm not sure whether it's the fault of the Linux kernel or the graphics card companies that won't release their hardware specs / open-source drivers. To the "newbie" Linux user, that's more-or-less irrelevant. I just know that I installed Linux for the first time two months ago on a brand new computer (AMD Athlon X2 6400+, Asus M3N78-VM with onboard GeForce 8200 graphics, 2 x 2 GB DDR2-800 [PC2-6400] memory) and gave up last week and installed Windows XP after spending eight weeks dicking around with video drivers / KDE vs. GNOME / xorg.conf / etc. trying to get the desktop performance up to the level where it doesn't take a good half-second for a bloody Firefox window to stutter its way up to full-screen from the minimized state.
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
I wish there was a windows remote desktop equivalent. Yeah! I can forward X11 apps over SSH! Network transparency! Cool! But over the internet - usually painful...high latency? oops. Connection dropped? App exits. Hope it autosaves.
Ok, so let's use VNC. A lot better to be sure. Or NX, with its shockingly awesome speed and responsiveness.
But how do I get at the apps I already have running? Nifty, I can ssh in to my desktop machine at home. I know I'm logged in to a gnome/kde/whatever session. Screen locked. What if I have Eclipse open and want to pick up where I left off? :0, and setting environment variables appropriately)? Oh, look at that! Screen's locked. I'll just type in my password and get going. Works fine, except for the fact that my _monitor woke up_ and _everyone can see what I'm doing or hijack my session_ (keyboard and mouse working). Maybe I'll just quickly logout so I can start something in VNC...
-Start a vncserver? That's fantastic. I just bypassed the display manager, so no warning about concurrent sessions. Let's hope that _all_ of my apps are careful about this weird case and don't barf all over my data.
-Forward just eclipse? Maybe if I kill it first from my shell it won't complain.
-Use x11vnc (hoping my session is on display
It's ugly, all of it.
On the windows side, as most everyone here has seen, a) a session started locally can be connected remotely b) a session started remotely can be connected to remotely c) in either case, a "locked" screen is displayed as appropriate and nobody gets to see a haunted cursor and d) none of this breaks 3D acceleration or video overlays when switching back to local display. It's _incredibly_ useful. This is something you'd expect Linux to be _better_ at, a big selling point of desktop Linux...afraid not.
I tried to pick some brains once about even the simplest hacks - like being able to poll X for display updates when it doesn't have a VT. And from that, I don't get the impression Linux will catch up in this department anytime soon.
"Strangers have the best candy" -Me
consistent configuration system
What a dope; because we know this has worked so well for windows. The registry is a nightmare on Windows. Linux/Unix does have a consistent model and it is known as text configuration files. It's powerful and can be leveraged on even the slowest of links. One size does not fit all - although I've seen far too many applications use XML for this where it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
native file versioning
Seems Linux is now held to a higher standard. Again, what a dope. Outside of the VMS crowd, I've not seen a huge outpouring of demand for this feature. Having said that, I do believe a versioning FS is in the works and for all I know, some may already be available. Realistically, few people want this and most have no clue what it even means. For the general use case, RC-software already exists to fill this niche. His complaint is empty.
audio APIs
As far as I'm concerned, it's done. Pulseaudio and ALSA are all that you need. If you have more specialized needs, then JACK Audio takes care of you. For the majority of people, Pulseaudio has what you need and is also portable to Windows. Many (most?) distros are already moving or have completed their move to Pulseaudio. As far as I'm concerned, this issue is addressed, save only for migration time for slow adopters.
integration of X11 with apps
This means nothing. What a dope. All GUI applications which communicate with X are integrated.
and integrate better on the back-end with the kernel
Again, what a dope. This means nothing.
In a nutshell, his complaints are silly, meaningless, or have been addressed. As far as I can tell, his only complaint which has any merit is audio API standardization and that has been achieved.
How can you blame anyone for coming to this conclusion? When you "face the facts" and clearly come to the conclusion that the pros do infact weigh heavier than the cons you have to ask yourself, "And why aren't we all using OSS yet?". Thus beating Microsoft is not relevant, but beating proprietary code is, and thus indirectly also Microsoft, Apple etc.
I am the lawn!
Until "Linux people" start recognizing that to the average user, these distinctions are totally irrelevant, it's not going to be a success on the desktop. Maybe you don't care, but if you want users to embrace the OS, the whole system has to work well, not just the kernel.
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
There is also the notion that "copying" someone else's work as a target is a good thing to do.
Innovation rarely gets it right first time round. There are few examples of big innovations working well first time out.
The huge number of hands to code Open Source projects does enable fast innovation, but copying should not be seen as an evil thing. I don't think there are too many projects where copying the exact functionallity of Microsoft or Apple products is the aim. I would humbly suggest that copying the good parts and improving the poor parts is what drives innovation in many areas - and that this isn't a bad thing.
Cheers
Duncan
Car anologies are of course famous on slashdot, but I won't do that. I will do instead something radically new. A MOTORcycle anology. Yes, you saw it here first!
What is wrong with motor-cycles.
The list goes on. Any of them can be fixed BUT the moment you do that, you no longer have a motorcycle. You got something else.
Back to linux. The NATURE of linux is that it is free. Not just free as in beer or whatever but free as to what anyone does to it. Anyone can create a distro or a new UI or whatever because that is what it is all about.
Change that and you change the nature of linux and you get... well depending on who does it. A Red Hat or a Windows or an OSX. It might be BASED on linux, but it ain't Linux. Same as OSX ain't BSD. It uses it at its core but it ain't BSD. Similar to how Mandriva ain't Suse.
The suggestions made CAN apply to a distro, even perhaps a collection of distro's but NEVER to Linux.
It ain't just about the name, the author talks about kernel interfaces and X11 as if they are the same thing or indeed got anything to do with each other. They don't.
There are already efforts to standarize Linux distro's making them use the same directory layout.
But to make any such effort to official, that is the way into development hell that Windows and for that matter all gigantic software has become.
Notice that Linux constantly improves, constantly changes. Well those two things go together. Either you get Linux that is a constant moving target or you get MS Windows that doesn't change in years and then breaks everything at once. Oh yeah, remember how Vista was such a dud because all its interfaces changed and none of the drivers work? Well guess what, to fix that, the next windows won't change... so you get a NEW OS in the a couple of years that hasn't improved at all, just a few bug fixes, if you are lucky.
Apple knows this and just threw everything overboard two times already, last time with OSX because sometimes if you want to move on, you just got to break things.
GNU/Linux is what it is because of what it is. Change that and you get something different and that might be to big a price to pay to end up with yet another commitee developed OS. We had those. You can get PLENTY of unixes developed by a single entity. Not a single one of them is a popular as linux. (Oh alright OSX might be more popular but that ruins my argument so I am ignoring it)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"When talking to grandma about trying Linux since all she wants to do is check e-mail, look at pictures of the grand kids and keep her MySpace page updated, you get the question thrown back..."why so many different ones? Are they all different?"
Why the hell is your grandma worried about which Linux is she going to use? Does she knows about the differences between distros? Just grab her a Fedora or an Ubuntu and get over it.
"Stop being so darn elitist! You want people to use it, then be friendly about it.". No. They will come when they are willing to learn. GNU/Linux is not a shrink-wrapped product - it's a very versatile and configurable tool. And no. I don't want them just to use it. I want them realizing it is a better choice and, if for them it's not, I want them to use whatever makes sense for them. There is Windows and there is OSX. There is a lot of choice around.
"We should be able to point the average Windows user to "Linux", a single cohesive product."
No. Because GNU/Linux is not a single product. It's not even a product. It's, like I said before, an immensely versatile tool backed by a community of fairly bright people. It's made by them and for themselves. If you want to try it, fine. But don't start making suggestions or bossing them around. Did you pay for it? No? Then don't be surprised if they don't feel like they are your employees.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
The core of the problem is that this entire argument hasn't changed (much less resolved) in oh, about 14 years. Linux at some point looked like it could succeed Windows 98 to become the OS of choice, and then Win2k (and then XP) killed it. That was what, 1998? Just for reference, there was barely a google.stanford.edu then, AltaVista was still the king of the hill, Novel ruled the small server market, and NeXTStep did pretty much everything OS X does today.
The Linux companies (never mind the 'community'; hackers will do what hackers want to, by definition) need to wake up and band together to fix some underlying core issues with the platform: file structure layout, configuration and preferences storage, device support, user management, etc, etc. They are invested way too much in making their *versions* of the platform work as opposed to making the entire platform work, and their versions excel.
...it seems like someone with very little experience wouldn't know exactly what package would best suit them....
Isn't that going to be true with any operating system? If you don't understand it, you ask, or buy it premade for you.
If someone isn't willing to investigate, then the only way they will start using linux is if someone installs it for them. Whether that person be a friend, or a store-bought eeePC with a debian etch variant.
the kernel application binary interfaces are a moving target.
That's why we have glibc, which abstracts that ABI from applications.
Kernel driver interface - the horse was already beaten to death many times ( see here ).
a consistent configuration system, to enable distribution;
Windows tried that with Registry - and it didn't worked. And it will never work since "one size never fits all" requirements of all applications.
native file versioning;
Was tried many times before and failed miserably. As long as majority of files are blobs, versioning on level of file system makes no sense. Versioning on level of applications is implemented already more or less everywhere it was needed and SVN/git is there for the rest of applications.
audio APIs;
See ALSA and its user-space libraries.
See SDL.
and the integration of X11 with apps.
As was shown by FreeDesktop initiative not really needed nor X folks want to be bothered by all the end user bells and whistles.
Finally, he argues that Linux needs a committee to insure that all GUIs work consistently and integrate better on the back-end with the kernel.
Committee?? Buahahhahahaha!!!1!!cos(0)!!!!!!!
All what he says was tried before (see (11)) and generally can be described as "failed".
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Windows users are not used to choice, thus, don't give them any.
WTF? So now I have to give up choice and competition in the OSS field because you want to cater to the lowest common denominator windows user?
If you don't want choice just take Ubuntu. Don't think about it, just take it. It's the most popular distro and it just works, and to make it even better they don't ask you to choose between Gnome and KDE.
But don't take my choices away from me just because you want to have all of yours made for you.
If Linux beat Microsoft, it would probably mean Adobe programs and most or all commercial games would be released for Linux, which would mean I could stop dual-booting.
Consequently, the single greatest "feature" that Linux could work toward in terms of improving my experience as a user would be to "beat" Microsoft. Really, everything else works fine for me; I can't think of anything else I want. It's better for me than Microsoft products in every other way except those. Oh, wireless drivers I guess. More and better wireless drivers. And you know what? That's another problem that would solve itself if Linux took over as the market leader.
Games. Adobe programs. Working 100% at release. That's what I want, and it likely means beating Microsoft. Or, beating Adobe to become the industry standard in its arena(s), then still beating Microsoft to bring in gaming. Either way.
(I understand and respect your sentiment, just giving one perspective on why it can be reasonable to want Linux to "win" for reasons other than "M$ is teh suxor!")
Yup. That's an idea, let's break out of the prison of choice into the bright new freedom of the one true windows dictatorship.
Well, ignoring the false dichotomy and overall tone of this, the prison of choice is, in fact, a prison nonetheless even if the walls are painted the colors I like most. So many here want to see real commercial software delivered to the linux platform, yet are not willing to agree on much of anything. How can we expect commercial software developers to want to target a moving object? How is that realistic or financially solvent?
Free software is nice and fits the needs of some, but a lot of the good software out there that people need is just not available for it.
When the popular distributions can not even agree on a single package manager, this is not something that will change. The LSB is selectively followed at best. Until the community comes together and makes some basic decisions like .tar.gz, .rpm, .deb, .pkg, etc. then how can we possibly expect development houses to even give serious consideration?
I just spent the last week with my father-in-law who is a sole proprietor of an engineering company out of New Jersey. We talked about computers a lot, since it is a common interest. One of his very first laments was being strapped to Windows on all of his computers because it is a requirement for Solidworks. This is a man who would love to change his OS because he started with and loves *nix, but cannot because of his software requirements. I asked him about using Pro-E, since I know it supports a few different *nixes, and he said that it never worked right on them, and that graphically it was inferior to Windows.
His software needs?
Solidworks
Pro-E
Lightwave
This is true for everyone that works for him as well. A whole office of people that are strapped to Windows because of the software.
We can lament that it is the software makers fault for only producing for one or two OSs, but the reality is a chunk of graphics and engineering software supports OS X just fine. It's not a question whether they would produce it for *nix then, but a question of how we can make linux attractive as a platform.
One way to absolutely make sure that does NOT happen is to keep moving the targets and to keep living in our prison of choice.
Why the hell should we have to? I prefer having a choice. Windows users have plenty of choices when it comes to desktops -- Litestep, emerge, talisman, Aston and many more -- so why shouldn't Linux users? Simple answer: NO.
Clearly what you want is Mac OS X, not Linux. So use it instead of bitching that Linux isn't what you want.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Free software is not monolithic entity with a single purpose in mind, and never will be. That is why there are so many licenses. Who are you to decide what free software's goal is? Seriously, what makes you think you can tell other people what their motivation for developing software is? If people want to write software to compete with Microsoft, that is their right. Every person involved has a different motivation from the next.
Laying this kind of idealistic thought process on people stresses them out.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Do nothing at all! This isn't a problem, it's a symptom of a healthy open source movement. If anything, be happy that there's so much interest in Linux and open source.
The kernel and tools that constitute a Linux distribution are open and free, and there is nothing you can do, legally or otherwise, to prevent someone from creating another distribution. This is the very essence of open source and the GPL, the thing that gives it (and you) so much power.
And it's not like a lot of these smaller distributions are expecting a huge following. Often they fill needs or particular niches and are usually happy remaining small and focused upon a certain thing. This isn't a competition by any means. You don't win any prize for having the most users of any distribution (RedHat notwithstanding). To think this way is treating Linux as a vehicle to stroke your own ego and is an incorrect attitude.
checking for libvirus... no
ERROR, libvirus.so not found, terminating
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Windows target may change, but most well written programs written to API's and system variables instead of hard coded paths will work with all versions of Windows from 98/NT on. And as far as msi, exe and cab files go, the msi format has been used since Windows 2000, and cab files are just another compression format.
A well written program from 1998 will still work and install today.
Unfortunately, the effort to lure MS Windows users to GNU/Linux results in copying bad features as well. For example, one of the great things about Unix in general is the hierarchical file system. When I want to work on a certain project, I cd into the appropriate directory and fire up a program such as emacs, which then defaults to looking for files in that directory. However, programs that aim at compatibility with MS Windows don't do this. If I start up OpenOffice.org in my project directory and ask it to open a file, it displays the last directory in which it looked, which may be far off in a different corner of the file system. I then have to navigate into my current project's directory one click at a time, without the speed and ease of the command-line.
Making this kind of behavior available as an option for people new to GNU/Linux is fine, but software running on GNU/Linux ought to take advantage of the core features of GNU/Linux. As a long-time (26 year) Unix person, I resent having inferior features of MS Windows imposed on me so as to attract MS Windows users.
Until the community comes together and makes some basic decisions like .tar.gz, .rpm, .deb, .pkg, etc. then how can we possibly expect development houses to even give serious consideration?
The package format is totally unimportant. Making Redhat use .deb or Ubuntu use .rpm would fix absolutely nothing, since the distributions would still be as incompatible to each other as ever. The problem is the underlying dependency tree not the way in which you package the software, said dependency tree is what makes it impossible to install software outside of that tree (i.e. installing Ubuntu7 deb on Ubuntu8 doesn't work, since the dependency tree is a different one).
To fix this issue you would first need to get rid of the dependencies, but to do that you would need a large enough and stable enough core system on which applications could depend instead, but given how Linux development works its not clear if that is ever going to happen or even desirable.
There are however two things I really miss:
* a standard way to ship or even just build third party software that will work across distributions
* a way to install two different versions of the same piece of software
The first problem is somewhat tackled by things like autopackage and LSB, but it still feels more like multiple layers of ducttape instead of a robust solution. The second problem is a direct consequence of stuffing everything into /usr/bin/, which makes it impossible to have two different versions of the same package, a workaround is of course two just build the software yourself to a different --prefix, but it would be nice if distributions had such a feature build in instead of forcing the user to completly bypass anything the distribution provides.
But don't take my choices away from me just because you want to have all of yours made for you.
Amusingly a lot of fun was had at Microsoft's expense for having multiple versions of Vista.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I was citing one office as an example, not as the definitive sole issue holding back linux. Be realistic. No one piece of software will make or break an OS, but my use of Solidworks, Pro-E, and Lightwave are, in this case, definite examples that keep this particular office from looking at linux. Denying the existence of the elephant in the room does not make its actual presence a fact.
You can extrapolate from that to include Photoshop (no, GIMP is not good enough for serious work), accounting software, 3DS max, and much more.
The point was that by presenting a real moving target, that the lack of software is rather self-inflicted.
Windows presents much less of a moving target that linux ever has. Games that ran on my 2000 desktop over 8 years ago work just fine on my Vista desktop. Old Photoshop works fine too.
I'd love to see real graphics packages ported to linux. Having Photoshop and a real 3D package (3DS or Lightwave) available would go a LONG way to making it my primary desktop and not just my development box.
GNU/Linux is absolutely the Free Market. Not a free market of MONEY, but a free market of IDEAS. The very same principles that make Capitalism work are the ones that make GNU/Linux work. Only here people are doing it for Merit or personal satisfaction/need rather than money (Although there are plenty of people that make good money off of Open Source work as well.)
The key difference is the mechanic. In Communism, everything is directed by the Central Planning group. Whether that group be a committee, or a single "strong man" everything runs through that central group, and there can be NO WORK DONE without prior central approval. This means that communistic or centralized economies (and organizations) are slow to react to change, prone to error, and monolithic in approach to any issue. It's a poor way of getting things done.
In Free Market Capitalism, people make their own decisions on where to work, what work to do, and whom (if anyone) to work for. They work to fulfill their OWN NEEDS FIRST. Whether that need be for money, or merit. By each individual fulfilling their own needs, the "invisible hand" of the Market brings together all those disparate desires into a cogent whole. This is the very definition of Open Source. GNU/Linux falls quite neatly into this arena.
In other words: Proprietary Software is Communism, Open Source is the Free Market.
The sooner we all understand this, the better off GNU/OSS will be.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Actually, it's past that stage of communism. It's more like the communist ideal: all forms of control abolished, people contribute out of good will and the sense of reward they get.
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
It would be foolish to say Ubuntu is seriously competing for Red Hat's userbase.
It would be foolish to say they aren't in competition. They are in competition for users, for developers, and for overall mindshare.
A distro without developers dies. A distro without users loses developers. A distro without mindshare loses both users and developers.
You don't get a more classic example of the free market than open source development. It is totally darwinian, if its fit for purpose and accessible, people find it and it lives. If not, it dies and becomes extinct - except for the sourceforge search results.
In other words, all distros compete for resources, and if they fail, they die?
The problem with this whole argument is that there's no such thing as a free market, and there's no such thing as a completely communist system, nor no such thing as a system with no communism whatsoever, so every side has something they can latch onto to make their case.
Linux is communism in that it's a community effort. Linux is centrally planned in that Linus is the master of all things kernel, and distros all have a central planning body of some sort. Linux is 'free market' in that there are various distros all competing with one another. Linux is capitalism in that anyone is free to enter the marketplace and try to make money off of Linux. Linux is socialism in that everyone involved 'owns' Linux.
Just about the only things Linux isn't (at least, not very much), are things that are dictatorial. Linux isn't terribly feudal, or monarchial, or despotic. This is because there's no real way to 'force' any of those systems, and all of those systems depend on force to get to full steam.
There is a major problem in Ubuntu which the Ubuntu community seem unable to comprehend. n the Screen Resolution dialog in Ubuntu 7.10 it was possible to change what type of monitor you are using if X.org was unable to properly detect you're hardware. This functionality was removed from Ubuntu 8.04 and Ubuntu 8.10 and Kubuntu 8.10 with KDE4. The Ubuntu community seem completely unable to comprehend why this is a problem, however users who try Ubuntu and install the drivers for their video cards find themselves locked in at a resolution of 640x480 with no clear way of fixing the problem. In 7.10 it was as simple as opening the Screen Resolution dialog and changing what monitor you have, but now that functionality is gone. This is a big problem that can put off new users from ever giving Ubuntu or Linux in general any serious consideration and that is unacceptable.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home