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Torvalds Rejects One-Size-Fits-All Linux
Barence writes "Linus Torvalds has rejected the argument that Linux developers should pool their resources behind a single distribution. 'I think multiple distributions aren't just a good thing, I think it's something absolutely required. We have hundreds of distros, and a lot of them are really for niche markets. And you need that — simply because different markets simply have different requirements, and no single distro will take care of them all.' The calls from the Linux community have been growing due to Linux's failure to show significant market share growth."
Did you ever think that he might be right?
We need a main, reliable, one size fits all DESKTOP distro. that's what we need.
and yes, all other distros should continue, for really many of them are for niche markets.
linux basically equals webserver as of now. whereas many IIS servers house 1-2 company sites (and many of them are in-house boxes), linux distros host hundreds each.
but on desktop we dont have a strong name presence so that when you name it, everyone will know. we need that.
Read radical news here
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The reason I love linux is because I have the choice. Minimal distro, server oriented distro, etc. Trying to make one big distro is absolutely the wrong thinking, it would be impossible to decide on anything first of all, and its been proved this concept doesn't work already, by a company called Microsoft.
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
Perhaps instead of worrying about the specific distro being worked on (and distro-specific apps), developers could unite to improve the libraries, services, and interfaces that are used universally. Gnome and KDE, for example, are the "face" of Linux to the average user. And let's face it... KDE is modern but broken in many ways, and Gnome is stable but behind the times in many ways. The specific distro being improved is less of a concern if the focus is on bringing stability, visual appeal, and new user interface innovations to the frontend of Linux itself: the GUI interfaces that the average user works with on the system. Working on that aspect would make every distro benefit.
-Vendal Thornheart
Although its good that certain distribution cater for different markets, the problem is the over saturation of one area with too many choices.
Clearly you are not very familar with the linux (or OSS) community. Ever notice the wide range of opinions concerning things like design, inclusion policies, licensing, etc? Have you thought what would happen if you tried to make all those people share a distro? There are plenty of flamewars already, do that and the community would tear itself appart. New distros don't pop up for the hell of it, they pop up because people want something that fits *their specific needs*. Their needs are often unique. People need to get off this whole idea that linux is about "sticking it to the man" and that it needs to change in order to get better marketshares, just for the sake of marketshares. Linux is meant to be useful for people who want it, if it's not for you, then who cares? We're not out to become rich billionaires by toppling microsoft and apple, we're just making a nice operating system for ourselves. This is something the majority of the world can't seem to understand.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
You could say we really only need one Desktop distro. But... People work on what they like. You can not force them to work on what they don't want too.
We have Ubuntu which has a big lead on the desktop so we have some some of those benefits. The problem with Linux is the lack of commercial software and support.
You can not call the manufacture for help or geek squad. You can not go and buy software you want. There are a lot of free packages and many of them are great. The problem is the average person doesn't know what is good and what isn't. Even when the software is really good the documentation often isn't. Out side of GIMP and OO.org you will have a very hard time finding books for FOSS applications.
I know that Click and run failed but I still think a application and media store is EXACTLY what Linux needs. A super easy built in solution just like what you see on the Wii, XBox 360, and iPod/iPhone.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Don't believe everything you read.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
because we're not making money at this and seriously, who cares? Linux is a choice, not a goddamned marketing campaign.
This guy is way out there
Don't we already have that?
Linux Home Basic - Ubuntu
Linux Home Premium - Fedora
Linux Business - RHEL/CentOS
Linux Starter Edition - Xandros
Linux Ultimate - Slackware
practices. When a company or government finds Gnu/Linux fits the bill better than Windows, Microsoft comes in and essentially pays them to stick with Windows. Governments like Egypt where the OLPC people had a MOU from them but then Microsoft goes over, they talk, Egypt accepts something like $50 million in stuff from Microsoft and when OLPC shows up all they get is "Does it run Windows".
And let's talk about how HP, Dell, Lenova, etc can not advertise their Gnu/Linux products. Leaked MS memo's already showed Microsoft's hand in this too. They basically said, "you can not lead with Linux" and that meant advertise and the threat is most likely to be those millions of dollars in Marketing Program kickbacks for putting those little MS stickers on everything and saying crap like "Runs best with Windows", etc.
_That_ has been what has limited marketshare growth to a large degree. IMO. Remember, we are a world full of followers so if too many start going to Gnu/Linux, the horde will follow. That's why Microsoft spends hundreds of millions to stop the switch.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
If Linux wants more market share it needs a face, it needs something people can point to and say "Linux".
That's the way this sort of thing works.
From someone who is no longer in the tech community but is a big geek and has geek friends, we have the wrong aim, people.
We need good communication, not analytics. Yes the OS should be improved, but in order for lots of people to adopt it we need to communicate a fairly unified, confident idea.
If Ubuntu is that face, great! Let's work on that.
If KDE is that face, great! Let's work on that.
If Gnome is that face... you get the idea.
People love consistency. We geeks want to analyze and pick apart everything, change it and tweak. Your average person DOES NOT CARE! They want something that works. Until we get that through our oversized brain/ego/whatever then Linux is not likely to take off in a really big way.
Will this sacrifice a few things? Sure it will. However, since it is Open Source those little niche OS's can still exist! That is the problem with the big players now. We can still tweak things to make them better.
Geeks like to be RIGHT and not make mistakes. I think it has something to do with smarts, or not being hugged enough as kids, or something. Their confidence/power comes from analyzing and making the "right" decision, which is why science is an analytic's passion. We can be "Right". People do not always want that. They want something that makes them feel good, simple and easy that they don't have to think about. If that thing is windows or Mac for them then so be it!
The bright spot: What if we did this and got more market share, huh? We'd be in the spot where software SHOULD be. The geeks run things behind the scenes, tweaking and improving, altering and modifying for their user base, while the average person (99% of peopl out there) can use an innovative, slick interface that runs on cheap hardware. When they want to use their special application it works! When they need software or processes tailored to what they are doing, it will be easier. Businesses will run better since there will be less down time on the user side (i think), fewer upgrade$ to the newest Mac/Windows Neon Bloat Fantastic, and fewer headaches with techies trying to make programs/systems work together.
All we have to do is learn to set aside our infighting because we want things to be scientifically "perfect) and market some form of Linux, anything, and unify behind it for the user base at large. Yes there should lots of distros for niche markets, but a general distribution would be very helpful.
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The problem with multiple distros is that you cannot support them. Let's say Intuit decides to release Quicken for Linux. They will be getting support calls from Fedora users, Ubuntu users, Debian users, Mint users, Suse, Yellow Dog, Ygdrassil (or however that's spelled) etc. Suppose further that Quicken needed a minimum of 1024x768 resolution. Where do you change that? It's not a simple matter of right clicking on the desktop, selecting properties, and moving the slider. It's not even as simple as opening /etc/X11/xorg.conf in an editor. Or let's say you needed to open a port in the firewall.
Linux is not going to make significant progress onto the corporate desktop until software companies start publishing linux versions of their software. They will be reluctant to do that because the cost of support will be so high.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Market share is the number of copies sold as pre-installs (e.g., netbooks) and retail boxes. For Linux, this number is really immaterial.
The number of interest is the 'installed base', which is the number of copies installed on hardware. For Linux, this number is hard to get. Some of the larger distributions have started making (low-ball) estimates, but even they admit the numbers don't really reflect the number installed, for various reasons.
Another question is whether or not to count the number of embedded Linux copies. If my TV, DVR, PMP, MP3, PDA and other devices run Linux (they do), should those count toward the installed base? Or should we be counting general purpose computers only?
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Linux Starter --> Knoppix (no install required!)
:)
Linux Home Basic --> Ubuntu
Linux Home Premium --> Fedora/Debian
Linux Business --> Suse
Linux Enterprise --> RHEL
Linux Ultimate --> Gentoo, of course
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Platforms do.
And except for Android, I know of no Linux-based platforms aimed at normal users and/or app developers.
Distros are too fluid and there are too many of them anyway. This situation makes coding-for and independently distributing PC applications very confusing.
The only things that would rectify the situation would be to create a fully-spec'd out and vertically-integrated (up through the GUI) platform like Android, or have the community get behind something like LSB Desktop. The latter does not seem to be happening though because it it being marketed to neither users nor app developers AFAIK.
Notice there was no mention of LSB in the article -- There's almost zero awareness of it.
I would like to point out that Linus is against forking the kernel, and his group essentially demands a unified kernel and toolchain (with different distros having different configurations of these pieces).
But when it comes to higher-level stuff that end-users require, they complain about one-size-fits all. Frankly, that attitude says to me that the audio and video architectures in Linux-based desktops will continue to be slipshod and wobbly (unstable performance and unstable APIs), and you can forget about widespread adoption at the consumer level until either the Torvalds mentality dissipates or an Android moves into the desktop space.
I think Torvalds & Co. are hypocrites who prefer showing off to their coder pals, users be damned. Even worse, they're foul-mouthed trolls who regularly make personal attacks on people they dislike while insisting on civility being directed towards themselves.
Linux will continue to act as repellent to ambitious application developers looking to make their mark or a buck. We'll have to be content for the forsee-able future with ham-fisted G-, K-, X- apps that are usually mere shadows of what they imitate.
Alas, even excellent software like Firefox doesn't get major UI flaws (like radio buttons always disappearing) because of this situation... Mozilla doesn't even bother packaging their apps for "Linux" anymore... you gotta unzip it to /usr and make all the correct linkages and icons yourself.
The other great FOSS app, OpenOffice.org, is fairly complex to install/upgrade even with rpm/deb packages... and proper desktop integration will be either absent or badly broken. Again, SUN/OOo would rather attempt a fit-and-finish on proper platforms like OS X and Windows than play the bitten-by-a-hundred-repository-hackers game.
There, fixed that for you.
Linux already has significant market share. Look at the web and the Internet infrastructure: the vast majority of it is powered by Linux, technologies that are based on Linux, or utilize Linux in some indirect way. Linux is gaining traction left and right in the embedded market. No competent system administrator hasn't at least fired up a LiveCD to see what all the fuss is about.
It's true that Linux isn't as strong on the desktop as many advocates would like, but that's mainly because there's not yet any big company throwing their weight behind it to leverage business deals and spend billions in marketing to the consumer. (Canonical is trying, but they're still pretty small fish at the moment.)
As I've written repeatedly, ever since the very beginning Linux has had steady but slow growth. This isn't a good thing, nor is it a bad thing, it's just how it is. I think what we're seeing now is that more and more people are looking at Linux and open source and saying, "now, how can I make a quick buck off of this?" and realize they really can't and then spend all day lamenting about it in their blog.
Ubuntu is a necessary good. For some reason, we need a distro for the Windows masses.
Fixed that for you.
I'm surprised that the reason behind having a distribution with a more consistent look and feel and a bit of "polish" to it would be quite so hard to understand for a lot of the Slashdot crowd.
From the perspective of end-users who like to change some advanced settings, without becoming a certified sysadmin in the process; Linux as an OS is a stubborn, inconsistent, misleading, and often frustrating piece of crap by and large. Some parts of it are examples of exceptional engineering and sleek design (I can't think of one at the moment though). Other parts leave you wondering if anyone has even looked at it from the mindset of a user in the 2000's instead of the 70's when everything was timeshares and terminals.
There is a large subset of users between the type like someone's grandmother who never touches or needs to understand a thing (only be shown how to do it one way to follow their written instructions) and a system programmer (who knows how it all connects on the inside) which want to have some control over things like printers, modems, dual-monitor displays, VPN connections, network file sharing, media playback codecs / applications, games, wireless internet, Firewalls, Digital Cameras, MP3 Players, and such but not be inundated with mundane, backwards, or otherwise archaic nonsense when trying to change only semi-complex settings. Things like which of two monitors is the primary desktop, how to set their printer to a different paper size, configure their default browser for links opened throughout the system, how to get a software firewall to auto configure based on network they attached to, setup their wireless network connection to always connect to their home network when it's in range, how to open files on another machine in their house, how to setup their scanner, etc. These are some tasks which still have a long way to go to be reasonable for the average sorta-knows-whats-going-on Joe under many circumstances because they have little "gotcha" type bugs which crop up frequently or simply poor design from the beginning. Unfortunately these little "gotcha" bugs tend to come with 40 pages of reading about every other technology even remotely related to try and understand the problem.
Some people want to actually use their mp3 player instead of learning how shitty the sound system in their operating system is or why their sound card only runs with one program at a time (depending on Distro). Some people want to play games without learning what a binary video driver is or how it taints the kernel licensing / support. Some people want to print their business cards without learning all about CUPS. They just want to plug, click, go. There is nothing wrong with that really.
Also, Ubuntu has something to offer the Mac users in the same vein which other distributions may not have done quite so well with in the past. As Apple is considered to have one of the more "polished" operating systems of the three I am discussing for end users.
Most people just want consistency and functionality. Some others want security and flexibility. Everyone wants something a little different. All (K)Ubuntu attempts to do is bridge the consistency/usability and security/flexibility gap. Judging by their popularity they must be doing a decent job so far.
- Toast
P.S. Now while my post may read as a flame on Linux it is not. Linux is only what people make of it and it is constantly evolving and for the better in my opinion. My post is a flame on the prevailing attitude around here of everyone needing to understand the really useless crap and have a well formed reflex to having to learn a little about 40 things to make 1 simple thing happen, and that they should like it. Linux is just as complex of a beast as Macintosh and Windows just below the surface, it just doesn't hide that fact as well as some of it's competitors and tends to drown the "power user but not administrator" types with it's incessant little quirks for a great many "normal" activities which people have grown accustomed to being "easy" and relatively "thought free".