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2009, Year of the Linux Delusion
gadgetopia writes "An article has come out claiming (yet again) that 2009 will be the year of Linux, and bases this prediction on the fact that low-power ARM processors will be in netbooks which won't have enough power to run Windows, but then says these new netbooks will be geared to 'web only' applications which suits Linux perfectly. And, oh yeah, Palm might save Linux, too." The article goes on to skewer the year of Linux thing that seems to show up on pretty much every tech news site throughout December and January as lazy editors round out their year with softball trolling stories and "Year End Lists." We should compile a year-end list about this :)
I almost forgot. The author says that Linux doesn't have all the available plugins to enjoy the web. What plugins is he talking about? The most commonly used plugin is Flash and it has been available for a while. Java is available too and Silverlight support is close to done the last time I looked. Which magical plugins am I missing on my Linux laptop? Whatever they may be they haven't seemed to hinder me yet.
Time makes more converts than reason
I'm pretty much a full time Linux user, save for times when I want to do music production. I've spent a ton of money of Windows music software, and feel like I shouldn't abandon it. So last month I happened upon JAD and Ubuntu Studio (two music-oriented distros). Let me tell you, they work. And they were set up by the community, not big corporations. More importantly, they allow me to use all my expensive VSTs/VSTis quite easily. The last time I had tried to manually set up a real-time kernel environment that could actually use ASIO, I gave up in frustration. I just could not get all the pieces working. Now because of these two communities, the install took about an hour, plus the install of all my VSTs.
And I get better latency on this machine than I ever did using WinXP.
Granted, this is pretty niche, but apparently big enough for two different non-commercial developer communities to create specialized distros. And you see it with commercial companies as well - Cedega for gaming, Crossover for business apps.
So yeah, corps are important for mass adoption, but don't discount the communities.
There are many pragmatic reasons for a non-geek to switch to linux.
1. Package managers and the ease of installing free software e.g. easy to search for without entering commercial sites laden with ads and sometimes trojans, no EULA type nag screens.
2. Better jukebox software. Amarok can easily rip music off of ipods, which is widely appreciated by non-geeks (some people have their entire music collection trapped on a single ipod, and when linux can make that ipod send its songs to the outside world they become believers).
3. Better video playback software. Even though mplayer and vlc are ported to Mac OS and MS Windows, they work best on linux e.g. smoother playback and response to controls, better OS integration, current feature set closer to developer feature set, etc.
4. Best videogame console emulators. Since many emulators are open source (with notable exceptions) they are primarily developed as linux apps with windows ports that lag behind in features. Also, WINE really does run many recently popular games.
5. Superior performance in all things hard drive related, linux is better at reading, writing, and not going into retarded fits of swapping data to the drive like MS Windows is so fond of doing.
6. Better network security, and better multi-user PC security.
7. More aesthetically and functionally customizable.
What are the current aspects which prevent linux from achieving its critical_point of adoption on the desktop this year?
a. Lack of familiarity with the OS and applications.
b. (really a corollary of 1) Some favorite applications are not availible.
The solution to both (a) and (b) is marketing, which linux does not get very much of and hence the perpetual delay of its year.
In fact XFCE has an entire Unbuntu distro shown prominently on their site as an alternate to the standard version.
There again I suppose actually looking at the website and what you are downloading is too much research.
*continues to brandish herbs and a bar of soap at grandparent*
I'm not exactly sure where you got your information on XP, or what your experience is with it, but I would not classify a 1GHz pc with 128MB of RAM a GREAT setup for XP. It is a minimal setup for usability. It will work, but not with any kind of speed. On the other hand, XFCE or fluxbox window managers on Linux will be quite happy with that hardware. To be REALLY fair, no modern system will be blazing with those specs.
Also, I don't know when the last time you did a Linux configuration was, but it is far more simple than it was a year or two ago. I have not had any of the "massive, time-costly research" that you indicated in any of my many installs this year.
As soon as people agree that every OS sucks, we can get on with our lives and forget this petty bickering.
"Trust that little voice in your head that says 'Wouldn't it be interesting if...' and then do it." - Duane Michals
As a developer I have to say that packing for multiple distribution is a major annoyance, so much that I have given up even trying it, because it never really works and is a huge amount of work. And as a user of course, third party debs seldom work in harmony with what the distribution provides, conflicts on dist-upgrades are pretty much unavoidable and that assumes that they work in the first place, which they quite frequently don't (old Ubuntu deb doesn't work on new Ubuntu, Debian deb doesn't work on Ubuntu, etc.).
Distributing third party software outside of Linux is one big ugly non-functional hack.
Seems kind of dumb anyway, since the majority of netbooks are running Intel Atom chips, which not only can run Windows, but at 1.6 ghz (with 1.5+ GB RAM) can actually do a pretty damned good job of running Vista.
I'm sure there's some netbook somewhere using Arm chips... who makes it and where do you buy it? My Wind has a Intel Atom. My buddy's Eee PC has an Atom. Dell's Mini 9? Atom. HP Mini? Atom.
Comment of the year
I use VMWare running Windows XP as a VM to VPN in to my work (and use Remote Desktop) all the time.
Needless to say this was damn tricky to get working correctly.
I used alot of network management software to try to allow XP on VMWare to VPN in to work, and this stuff was often horribly broken on Ubuntu. Some stuff would partially work while other stuff didn't work at all. Very frustrating.
You would figure a Linux distro would have better support for network software.
Skype for Linux has had video calls since the beta last year.
He obviously has not used any Linux distro within the past 2-3 years. A plain vanilla install of Ubuntu, Fedora or even OpenSolaris can do all of that and then some. For free (as in beer).
Well, Dapper Drake is getting pretty dated. It's no longer officially supported by the Ubuntu team. Your best bet would be to stick in a LiveCD for Hardy Heron (8.04) or Intrebid Ibex (8.10) and do a fresh install.
Before doing so, copy your entire home directory off to some other media; another computer, an external hard drive, whatever. When you re-install, select a manual partition of your hard drive. Carve off a partition for /home. Complete the install normally, then copy your data back over.
Then, the next time you need to do a full upgrade, you won't be forced to do the copy off, copy back routine if you don't want to. Just select manual partition again and tell the install script not to format the partition dedicated to /home. Makes doing Linux upgrades sooo much nicer than Windows! :)
It's frustrating, because you're doing it totally wrong.
You say you've got Ubuntu installed. Look for a program called Synaptic, or Adept. It'll ask for your root password when you start it.
Once it is running, look around for a search bar. Type what you want to do in the search bar. Not the name of the program, what you want to do. In this case, instead of 'firefox' you would type in 'web browser'.
You'll get a list of programs that may or may not meet your needs. Read the descriptions. Choose to install what you think will be interesting. Most programs are set up to put an icon on your start bar menu.
As a new user, your better off only getting programs from the official repositories. Once you've got your feet under you, it's not to hard to stray, but stay where it is safe for the time being. All the dependancies and such have already been worked out for you.
Adept/Synaptic/Yum ARE the killer apps for Linux.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
You're ignoring the elephant in the room: gaming.
Given that XP/Vista Explorer puts the tree view in the side pane as well, in the precise same spot as Nautilus, I don't quite understand what you mean. And you haven't elaborated futher on the "ugly, horrible, restricted" part.
Yup. You said it yourself - it's for "advanced users". Which is why it is accessible via Ctrl+L shortcut, or you can fire up gconf and flick the switch that will make it stick to textbox (and I think that, in the recent Gnome versions, you don't even need gconf, as it's on the Nautilus preferences pane).
As I understand, it's more of an FS limitation. On Windows, you can pretty much assume NTFS these days, which has alternate file streams, perfectly suited for out-of-band file metadata (they get copied when the file is copied, NTFS-aware backup software will correctly back them up, etc). Gnome runs on many platforms (Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris), with numerous filesystems, which can furthermore be mounted in many different ways.
That said, it really is the kind of thing that freedesktop.org is standardizing, so perhaps there is something in works; or will be, some day.
Um, what's wrong with the Nautilus detail view? It shows modification date, size, and permissions - that is pretty much all the same stuff as ls -l. Makes sense to me.
Yep, that was a flop, and I don't even buy into the argument that it's somehow more intuitive for new users. I haven't seen it work that way back in Win95 days, at least.
Luckily, it's three clicks away to change: Edit -> Preferences -> Always start in browser mode (I think that was the name of that setting). It had been in the preferences UI for at least the last two years (before that, you had to use gconf).
On the whole, I actually find Nautilus to be a pretty faithful clone of Windows Explorer.