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Linux On Netbooks — a Complicated Story
An anonymous reader writes "Keir Thomas has responded to the recent raft of news stories pointing out that Linux's share of the netbook market isn't as rosy as it used to be. Thomas thinks the problem boils down to a combination of unfamiliar software and unfamiliar hardware, which can 'push users over the edge.' This accounts for the allegedly high return rates of Linux netbooks. In contrast, although far from superior, Windows provides a more familiar environment, making the hardware issues (irritatingly small keyboard, screen etc.) seem less insurmountable; users are less likely to walk away. 'Once again Microsoft's monopoly means Windows is swallowing up another market.'"
My gf knows that Linux is on her computer, but even so, she can't understand why she can't go to BestBuy and get software. Or why she can't download Silverlight. If you put Linux on a machine and don't explain the difference between it and Windows, then you're just asking for trouble.
I am no fan of Microsoft, but it's not like they are doing anything illegal or unethical here. Even Redhat's CEO commented he didn't believe in Linux's desktop future.
Frankly, netbook looked like worth a shot for Linux. If it fails, then maybe desktop market is just too hard for Linux to win.
Of course the actual reason Linux's share of netbooks has dropped is simply because netbooks have changed from a nerds' thing into a mainstream thing.
UNIX's marketshare of all computers did the exact same percentage decline over time as netbooks are having now. It's the early adopters, stupid!
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
Mac OS X on a Dell Mini 9, anyone?
The problem for me is performance. XP runs significantly faster and has significantly better battery life than Ubuntu. Assuming your hardware is compatible Linux isn't_terribly_difficult to get running. It's hard to justify open source when propriety software just runs better though.
I am holding out hope that 9.04 will work to improve battery life and speed, and not just give me more features I don't need. Like what Windows 7 has done after Vista.
A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
It was impossible to buy a Linux netboox in my city.
too many kids are taught that "computing" means either Windows or Mac. and MS just has the critical mass whereby success breeds success.
and that unwillingness to deal with the unfamiliar is a real thing. i just installed a linux machine for a teacher in my school district, she did not look amused.
THL phish sticks
I bought an eee pc 901, linux (for the larger SSD on that model) with the intent of installing an nlited copy of WinXp on it instead of the stock asus linux. Instead I ended up installing eeebuntu and love it... although I still have the nlited XP as a second boot option in case I need it.
This space available.
I had an Asus netbook with Linux demonstrated to me, wanted to see how webpages looked on the tiny screen. In the end, the guy at the store had to pull out a cable and plug it in, because he couldn't get WiFi to run. He suggested, I should just pay extra for Windows. To that sales guy, getting Linux wasn't "buying the alternative", it was just "being cheap".
And frankly, since that was probably his first contact with Linux, that's actually quite understandable. A machine, that comes with Linux preinstalled, and it won't even run the devices that are built in? That's ridiculous, not to mention unneccessary. It's not as if building a Linux with working WiFi was rocket science.
I myself am at my second factory-preinstalled linux-based netbook (first Asus, now Dell), and my experiences are nothing but positive, The specially created interface on the asus was practical, the one on the Dell is fantastic and even stylish. I wouldn't want to have to navigate the miniature start menu of XP on my netbook. But then again I was already ready for Linux anyway. Let's see if Android will get new Linux users into the mobile devices market.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
Most of the netbooks that come preloaded with Linux have deeply flawed distributions. For example, you can render an Eee PC's Xandros install unbootable just by installing all the recommended updates. The updates aren't defective; the system ships with a 3GB RO partition and a this bug, which rendered the netbook launcher completely unusable. I've seen rock solid Linux work environments, but it takes some real effort to get one going on a netbook. Neither the preinstalled distros nor the unofficial distros that I've seen offer one out of the box.
As much as many of us would like to see it change, linux is still an operating system that works better in the hands of those that have worked their way through it's ranks. Selling linux to someone because it lowers cost will do nothing to increase the user base. Someone who has never used it has no idea what to do with it and once you tell them that they can't buy any apps at their local Wal-Mart, they panic and hand it to the first person that will give them their money back.
I really believe that these attempts to increase linux exposure are hurting more than helping the cause of the people trying to help the OS gain acceptance. Regardless of your stance on the OS itself, you have to concede that it is different and you shouldn't just dump it into somebody's lap to meet a pricepoint.
I believe that for netbooks capable of running vista, manufacturers have to put windows on it due to licensing agreements.
Don't quote me on that.
A large percentage of Windows users do not understand what an operating system is and assume if they can buy it in a store, it'll work. Manufacturers need to put giant stickers saying:
Not a Windows system, does not run Microsoft anything, none of your programs will work on this, Apple* made it.
*that is a lie, but Mac users won't be on the cheap end of the aisle.
Not that I think it will help much. I've had too many acquaintances think "ooh, cheap computer", buy one, and then ask me if Microsoft Ubuntu is newer or older than Office 07, and if it will run Vista Excel.
They usually end up returning it and I buy another bottle of aspirin.
"Once again Microsoft's monopoly means Windows is swallowing up another market, but this time Linux might just be a little guilty too"
... or maybe Red Hat is.
To clarify: At work we recently ordered a Dell Precision Mobile Workstation (forget which exact model it is) with Red Hat Linux preinstalled. When we got it we found that it did not have the necessary drivers for the Ethernet port (wireless worked fine) or the audio output device. Going to Dell's and Red Hat's web site resulted in nothing. We scrounged around the internet, but find some partly working solutions. In the end we just ended up installing Ubuntu which worked out of the box.
For me this is the sort of thing that makes Linux look bad and PCs in general look bad. It is if they don't care. For me it unacceptable for a computer to be supplied with an operating system that does not support completely the hardware it is bundled with, whether it is due to missing drivers or something else.
I blame Dell here for being to lazy to ensure quality of product. Techies may be the primary market for the product, but techies don't want to spend time fixing someone else's fuck-ups either.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The reasoning behind linux not being adopted is that the people in charge at companies are not paying attention to the needs of there employees. I am working at a company now that has 75 workstations. most of them browse the internet for data via http not needing windows, ie or ms office. i recommended linux and open office and i was almost beatup. There is a misunderstanding about linux, open office and all open source.
Just the same old story, bad hardware driver.
There is a significal different between 'work out of the box'(barely working), 'work with all the feature enabled' and 'work best'.
Most Linux distros now can do 'work out of the box', but with several crippled functions, and you will need several small tweaks to solve them. But it is not over yet, if you want to take the best of your hardware then you will have to do serious tweaking. Only after that you will have a fully functional system that is better than windows.
So in short, Linux is better than windows, but you will have tinker a lot with it. After 2 months of googling/fixing, now I have a laptop that can run on battery longer than it does on windows, cooler, faster, and I can use my GPU to decode video (with VDPAU) that I can't do the same on windows. Yes, I still have some problems, but generally, Linux runs better than windows on my laptop.
(my problems is that the monitor won't turn off if I close the lid, and some stupid IO problem, Firefox take 2 mins to start if I do some heavy file transfering in the background, and ionice doesn't help)
Windows has something Microsoft once identified as critical mass in the market. It was no accident that they arrived at that point. The choked, cheated and killed IBM's OS/2 making it the only desktop operating system for PCs. Had Linux begun to mature during that era, we would be telling a very different story as Microsoft would never have achieved critical mass.
What is critical mass? I am probably wrong or incomplete in my understanding of what that means, but to me it means they control enough market share that every software and hardware vendor must heed what Microsoft says and does or face the consequences. It also means that all users have come to expect only one user experience and is cursed to be unaware of other options and what they mean. When they don't get what they expect, they believe something is wrong.
People are okay when that "something else" is Mac OS X. They know it is different and usually comes on an Apple branded PC. It is a conscious decision that users make and are aware that "It's not Windows."
Just keep chipping away... keep chipping away. Eventually Linux will begin to mean something to users. It may mean the equivalent to the pictures that come in wallets, purses and picture frames. It may mean something that works, serves its purposes and doesn't get viruses. It may mean something that kinda works, but everything they want isn't quite available yet.
One thing that changes user perception is "standards compliance." Users don't have a clue what that means, but if it works fine in Windows and not in Mac OS X or Linux, the PERCEPTION is that there is something wrong with Linux and Mac OS X. The more pressure put on Microsoft to comply with standards on the web, the greater the possibility that alternatives could be perceived as viable.
"Critical Mass" means that people think it's the standard. "Critical Mass" means it is the defacto standard. Toppling a standard is no easy task.
the Linux desktop on the Asus Eee PC 900 out of the box is an abomination for anyone who qualifies as a power user on ANY OS. It's a dumbed down older version of Xandros modified for a tab-based UI.
/path-to/nxclient . Note that nxclient has a perfectly good desktop icon and is happy to install itself to a menu if given the chance, i.e. on any normal Linux OS.
Basically, it's a locked down net appliance UI... the only programs you can install without drastically modifying or replacing the OS that will show up on any desktop tab are the handful of programs available on the Asus repository site. Running nxclient required me opening a terminal window and using the CLI to manually enter
I turned myself from a pissed off Eee PC Linux user to a happy one by replacing the OEM desktop with a standard Ubuntu desktop plus hardware drivers from the Ubuntu-eee project, you can find out how I did it here.
However, I also have some serious doubts about the accuracy of the original "analyst" report. If Linux sucks so badly on netbooks, why are any netbook vendors still selling it to anybody? Note that by and large, computer retail stores have not exactly put any great effort into selling Linux netbooks, the only place it's easy to get them is via online ordering, so it can be assumed that people who buy the Linux netbooks thought they knew what they were getting in advance.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Assuming that they are selling between 5-10%, that is actually a pretty good jump considering that MS is putting the full press on this. Google and the telcos are now putting pressure on MS on the embedded systems that are going into ppl's pockets as well as home and even cars. Anybody who thinks that MS will allow Linux to take the desktop without a fight is dead wrong.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
One thing you should do is thank Linux for forcing MS to keep XP available for you at $15 instead of the normal OEM of $70. It is better for customers and hardware manufacturers that Linux is available as a viable alternative.
Unless the entire story has as much truth to it as the overwhelmingly enthusiastic Vista launch, the broadband density story, the Mojave Project, the "Get the Facts" campaign, and that old saw about ordinary Linux users needing to type on a command line and compile programs.
Because in that case this would be just another story about flackalysts retreading Microsoft press releases as organic opinion for pay, and some few innocent bloggers buying the routine when they should know better.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The Asus 1000HE, latest model. Very zippy, windows XP does the simple stuff well and works with IE easily so I can use it at work.
I like Linux, but it isn't worth the effort on the little machine. I dual boot my big desktop.
...because MS will use its desktop monopoly and control of protocols to limit the penetration of Linux servers.
Believe it. And it's not just squeezing Linux out but eviscerating the web as we know it. Already I have to deal with web apps at work that are just a pile of obscured javascript (often plus activex). Something like this can't be programmed, it can't be interacted with, can't be reasoned with, and it will absolutely not stop until you have learned to be absolutely helpless at Microsoft's feet...
(hat tip to The Terminator :-)
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
One of the problems that I see in the Linux world is that many of us are quick to cry "monopoly" and blame it on unfair practices.
So if it's because of Microsoft's dominant market share, why does Apple do so well in the markets that it is in (at least in terms of return rates)?
Blaming it on Microsoft is a cop-out because it lets people avoid the harsh reality that the fault really lies with Linux. Linux is far, far from passing the Aunt Tillie test. Ubuntu is nice in that it's trying to be more consumer-oriented, but so far, most of its changes are superficial.
And finally, one person's "superior" is another person's design flaw. Apple is "superior" and "innovative" (that's debatable) mostly because Apple doesn't give a damn about its ecosystem. Microsoft does. It bends over backwards and even consciously duplicates buggy behavior, all in the name of backwards compatibility (given the HUGE diversity of software and hardware in the Windows ecosystem, the (relatively small) amount of breakage between each version of Windows is actually a testament to Microsoft's ecosystem cultivation). Is this technically superior? Probably not from an orthodox perspective. Does it make sense? I think so. THIS is why Microsoft has its monopoly. Until Linux can start cultivating such an ecosystem (no, telling someone that they can just download the source and compile it for their system does not cut it), it will always remain on the sidelines. Period.
and I have to say in my view if I was anyone else in my family I would have returned it.
I have some friends that could have probably dealt with it.
but while everything i want / need it to do is working great getting there was a bit of a hassle. Openvpn was in the default OS (Linpus) install but the tun kernel module was not?? for that matter to open up the advance mode you have to hack (trivial hack but hack none the less)
several updates from acer wiped out my tun module and joystick module and I had to re add them...Nice one one of the updates screwed up all the quick launch icons / apps (which unless you've unlocked the advance mode is the only way for people to launch the apps..nice)
I love my little aspire one and it goes many places with me that my old thinkpad didn't (cause it was too much bother to lug it out and around). but the linpus has been far from a cakewalk. I thought about putting windows on it but the SSD on my 110 is really not well suited for running XP and I do like the 10sec or so boot time so after a bit of head banging getting some stuff working it looks like I'll just stick w/ linpus now.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
[Linux tutorials are] often deliberately [complicated], because some of the people who write them like to express their machismo by creating inordinately complicated tutorials. Recently I read a tutorial describing how to get a Wi-Fi card working on a notebook that recommended compiling new driver modules.
Woah, Linux documentation is sometimes complicated, but no need to make accusations. But never fear, the author of the article has ALSO written a Linux book, designed to help with this very machismo problem. Conflict of interest here?
Hardware problems were much more pronounced with the first wave of netbooks. I had one of the very first Asus Eee netbooks shortly after its release and it's hardware design meant it was borderline unusable. My hands ached if I typed for more than five minutes. In the end I sold it--I too rejected a Linux netbook.
Oh, so it wasn't Linux, it was the hardware that was giving you problems. That makes sense, but what is the point of your article?
What happens is that the software problems presented by Linux, combined with the hardware problems presented by smaller computers, push users over the edge.
I see. Do you actually know any of these users, or were they just like you, annoyed by the hardware?
What's the solution? To be honest, I don't think there is one.
So your a 'glass all empty' type of guy? I mean, Linux has problems, sure, but the falling price of hardware is going to make it increasingly attractive as an option. To say there is absolutely no solution never is a bit extreme.
And finally, this quote made me laugh
[On linux], when the user starts the browser, things change. Nothing looks right. The fonts will probably look wrong, maybe causing the page layout to be skewed a little.
Right. The only thing they will notice different about the fonts is that they aren't as ugly, especially if they are used to having clear type turned off, as is the default on Windows, and makes every font look like a harsh cactus in the eyes. Now Linux fonts aren't awesome, but they don't stoop to the default windows level of horribleness (note: I have no idea if cleartype is on by default in Vista).
So what is this guy's point? I think that he needs to fill his page with words, since he is a columnist. And he does it with some rather inane and uninspiring words.
Qxe4
I think people would like Linux more if they were familiar with program names. Notepad, Paint, Wordpad, Calc... whatever. When I boot Linux on occasion, I'm more confused with what program does what than how to use them.
While I applaud the work of thousands to build such robust amazing programs and give them each their own special name, I'm of the opinion that if you give someone KDE with a few programs labeled generically "email" "internet browser" "calculator" "text editor" "Office Text/Spreadsheet/Presentation" "Network - Wireless" "Printers" and so on and so forth instead of each programs' real name, you'd be a lot closer to the #1 goal of usability: making an intuitive interface.
http://blog.datamation.com/blog/2009/04/having-fud-with.html
The anti-Linux propaganda du jour, being dutifully parroted by "news" publications everywhere, is that Windows now owns 96% of the netbook market, and that Linux netbooks are returned four times more than windows netbooks. Both are untrue and have been debunked repeatedly. Yet they persist -- why?
I think Microsoft is growing increasingly desperate, and in hard economic times is finding equally desperate publications who will say anything for a few bucks. Which may be a harsh judgment, but I would rather believe that than believe they simply don't care to do even the simplest, most basic fact-checking, or are such hard-core Microsoft fanboys that they are only pretending to be journalists when they are really stringers for Microsoft's marketing department. How else can we explain the same nonsense repeated endlessly, their allergies to saying "Windows" and "malware" in the same sentence, the short shrift given to non-Windows software, the mind-boggling assumption that Windows is computing? ...
As it is not part of Microsoft's business plan to participate in a genuinely competitive marketplace, expect to see this sort of thing become even more prevalent. If that is possible; I thought the FUD and anti-Linux propaganda had already reached the saturation point, but it looks like I was wrong. ...
[Microsoft's Brandon] LaBlanc opened [his blog post] by claiming that almost all netbooks sold today are sold with Windows. Well, no, not really. The numbers LaBlanc cites are from NPD's sales survey. NPD focuses on brick-and-mortar U.S. sales, not overall sales. Notice how many Linux systems you see at Best Buy? NPD numbers say a lot more about retail channel sales than it does over-all sales. Besides, as Canonical's director of business development Kenyon wrote, "However here is an interesting fact--when customers are offered choice on equally well-engineered computers around a third will select Ubuntu over XP.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
My favourite computer still is my 1024x768 screen 12inch iBook.
It is ONLY acceptable because of the UI feature that quickly shows miniaturized versions of the windows of all my running applications, and lets me pick one and get back into it in one click. That gets rid of most of the need for a large screen.
And the iphone ui is optimized for its screen size, etc.
Linux might do better on netbooks if a similar gui optimized for the screen size was available and worked well. I understand a few of these may be available but haven't tried any.
Have to say I'm holding out for an Apple netbook. UI of MacOSX is too much better.
I am an extreme comp-sci geek, but I have way better things to do than configure the low-level settings of my laptop.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The statistic about 4x return rates was for MSI Wind only. This could be due to problems with SUSE on their particular hardware configuration. Conversely, Dell claims that their return rates for Windows and Linux are about the same. http://blog.laptopmag.com/one-third-of-dell-inspiron-mini-9s-sold-run-linux
Also Canonical claims that "Continually repeating that we 'confirmed' a 4x return over XP when we did nothing of the sort is really not worthy of a great company like Microsoft." http://blog.canonical.com/?p=151
Sorry, this isn't a car analogy, but the next best thing.
Statistically speaking, Windows is like being straight. I would be generous if I called MacOS gay, since only 3% or so claim to be homosexual. However, God only knows what to do with Linux. Maybe it is for hermaphrodites or something, at any rate, it's numbers seem to be lower than the incidence of homosexuality...
Not that there is anything wrong with any of those things. I'm just sayin...
Remember, I did say "car analogy"!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Is it any wonder why so many people are used to the rules and non-regulations of a Windows machine?
That being said, every flavor of Linux I've tried has some different scheme to it, making basic operations unnecessarily complex.
Standardizing basic ops like install/uninstall, media player/ect. would be a good start, but probably terribly unrealistic among mainstream distros.
Linux is for Geeks and it always will be. When I built my own mini computer with a micro atx mb some time ago I was curious about how linux would perform on it vs Windows 2000 and Windows XP. XP was a total dog. The processor just couldn't handle it. Win2k ran nicely. But when I tried to install Fedora I quickly realized it was impossible. The Fedora install didn't recognize the hardware and wouldn't even boot. Of course any geek will tell you just reconfigure the discombobulator and invert the thingamajig and then recompile the root and then burn new install discs and then boot from Alt-Shift-Tilde. Which to a non-Geek is the equivalent of performing brain surgery on yourself. What the hell are you talking about? I have to do what?!? I had to hunt around on the web for several hours just to find out what the problem was, then after reading all the various explanations of how to do it and telling myself I am a software engineer and I have no idea what I just read, I finally found someone who wrote a hack to boot the system, then allow the install disk to run. And after all that I found that it ran worse than Windows becuase it wasn't optimized for the cpu. So I went back to win2k and was happy ever since. Which is why Linux will NEVER be ready for laptops or desktops or anything else besides servers. Because only Geeks have the patience to hack around and kludge it up so that it works. I just want to turn it on and have it work so I can get on to more important things like doing my job or searching for pr0n ;) Oh, and I just bought a Dell mini 9 and I didn't hesitate for 1 second between choosing Windows over Linux. It was worth the difference in price. And if want to install another OS it will be OS X and NOT Linux.
I'm surprised I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but one of the main reasons netbooks with Windows XP are doing so well is becuase Microsoft started offering netbook manufacturers lower prices on XP Home. I can't seem to find the article right now but XP Home may be offered to large ODMs for around $20-$30, with some claiming it's around the $20 mark. I think the cheapest it ever got before these new netbook-only prices was around $40.
The very clear-headed Carla Schroeder has a write-up at Linux Today. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols also noticed the figures were bogus.
Ubuntu's been paying good attention to tuning for netbooks. The downside of using Ubuntu is a user community that's not as clued as, say Gentoo or even the Red Hat variants. The upside of using Ubuntu is Canonical's concentrating on putting out something for a user community that's not as clued. I enjoy the clue hunt as much as the next geek, on occasion. But it's nice when the occasion's not constant.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Nah. Your standard end user doesn't even understand the concept of software, really. I know people who think Windows is Office, and so on. These aren't people who are totally ignorant—they work with computers every day—they're just not very good at reading. Their excuse is usually "I don't want to think about that stuff, I want to get my work done," never realizing that thirty minutes of thinking about "that stuff" could save them hours of frustration. When I heard someone who's worked in a white-collar environment for fifteen years refer to Office 2007 as "Windows Word 2007," I nearly lost it.
...and make it ubuntu.
I've stopped recommending people try linux. Rather, I recommend ubuntu, 'a type of linux'. Trying to explain how each distro is built on the linux kernel and uses a specific desktop environment tends to send people running so instead, I rave about ubuntu - which they can then go and test right away from a live CD.
On netbooks, the problem of different distributions is amplified by all the custom distros. As much as this is open source in action, it splintered the 'linux' option, especially when XP always comes as the same recognisable package. Hardware manufacturers could have put the effort into ensuring upstream hardware support and supporting key software development (ooo.org, ffox, rhythmbox? mplayer?) rather than developing their own "OS".
I think we would be seeing a different story if customers were offered ubuntu as the option to XP across the board.
netbooks have changed from a nerds' thing into a mainstream thing.
I mean that as an open question. Why the hell, as a linux user, should i care if my neighbor is using windows or Linux? While more geeks defiantly help improve things and report bugs, how does it help if there are more ex-windows newbs on ubuntu?
There is the hardware support, but even there I'm gradually seeing even supported hardware (atheros and flgrx) get nudged out by community drivers.
All i can think of are games, is that the main advantage of having more users?
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Just got a 10.5 inch Acer Aspire one D150. The sales guy said they were no longer shipping a Linux version. I have a strong educational as well as political commitment to Linux. The custom 3rd party Linux4one Ubuntu distro had terrible wifi throughput (and en0 just wasn't even there) when I installed it, so I tried again with openSUSE 11.1. This time the networking was ok, but the webcam and sound were non functional. No driver support from Acer so it's all word of mouth. Very disappointing. I'll keep trying though.
Surely, how can Linux compete against the likes of Windows and OSX with current interfaces (read windowing environments)? Linux default interfaces look dated and ugly, and do not get me started on multimedia. Now call me a troll.
I love my Dell Mini 9 with Ubuntu, and yes, I chose that netbook specifically because I could get it with Ubuntu. It runs much better than it would running XP, and I can do everything I need with it. (But, I administer unix boxen as part of my job. Would I get my mother a laptop running Linux? Not so sure about that...)
You stupid fucks blew it.
(note: ALL of my computers are Apple Computers - even the one running Linux)
It pains me that apple just let this market segment slide out of reach. They could have KICKED ASS.
Right now I am typing on my iBook G4. IT FUCKING WORKS. and it runs OS X, and all is well, except: it's a powerPC. So it's a legacy machine. Eventually developers will no longer support this machine. C'est la vie.
But: this is an awesome little box, and had Apple made a 12 inch or less MacBook running on a celeron or Atom, they'd be printing MONEY.
Why? Because Everyone Would Want One.
A colleague and recent convert at work said "My in-laws need a computer - this MacBook Pro rocks - it's easy. It's what they need..."
People Need Simple computers that Do Simple Things.
But Apple dropped the ball with their eyes on the high margin. Good move, ace. Now MS has moved in and with the exception of the eeePC, has totally and completely insanely dominated that entire market. Fuckwits.
I think it's really not too late. If Apple came up with a netbook in June, (kind of like a cheapy laptop version of the MacMini) and with a good adver campaign, they could easily blow Linux out of the water, and come to parity with MS.
but they won't.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
First time using this thing extensively, and when I get home after this trip, I'll be putting easypeasy or eeebuntu on it. Asus's Xandros, while having some nice ideas, just isn't well implemented. It feels cheap. I know other distro's do better, but joe blow won't. I *would not* put windows on here. Navigating a tiny menu is not what will work on this thing. I haven't seen a better use case for Opera's speedial (and the firefox plugin's that emulate it). Whatever I do, I'm gonna try to lighten it up, this little thing doesn't have a lot horses under the hood!
... if it weren't riddled with fanboyism and aggressive language.
In contrast, although far from superior, Windows provides [...] Once again Microsoft's monopoly means Windows is swallowing up another market.
Wrong. Fail. Abort. Windows is swallowing up another market because Linux doesn't belong on the average user's netbook, for the same reasons it doesn't belong on the average user's desktop. It is a usability nightmare, you need to be a network engineer AND programmer to fix it when it breaks, and perhaps most importantly the Linux community is hostile and unhelpful toward non-techies.
I am a network geek and programmer, and I still get pissed off at Linux on a daily basis because things that should just work, do not. Usability issues never get addressed, no one wants to touch them. "My app is fine, go fuck yourself" is the general attitude I see among app developers/maintainers. Maybe they're sick of replying "RTFM" to every single question, but to me that is a symptom of bad code. Joe Random doesn't read the README, nor should he need to. If you can spend the time to write a long, complicated README, you could spend that same time writing a small script that does all those contrived pre-installation steps for the user.
The problem is that we programmers are terrible users, because we don't use computers the way non-programmers do. The goofy little apps and utilities I make for myself, they have the most spartan, militaristic interfaces because I write the code first, then wrap buttons and knobs around it. I know how to use my stuff, because I'm the guy who built it. I know which bits of code fire when I click this or type that. Joe Random does not. We need to fix our apps to be so intuitive, even Joe Random's retarded stepchild can use them.
The netbook does not matter. Other than the size factor, it is hardly different from 3-4 year old laptops, and like any laptop, usability is top priority. If we want Linux to rock netbooks, we need to make it usable.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
As long as linux advocates curse the foolish choices of the enduser they will never succeed in increasing market share. One can ask, well is market share the goal? If not then don't begrudge windows for providing an end user experience that is preferred. Sure in your view it's a lesser ecperience, but people want comfort. More people like cheeseburgers than tofu even if tofu is better for them. Does that make cheesburger's bad or good?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I think people would like Linux more if they were familiar with program names. Notepad, Paint, Wordpad, Calc... whatever. When I boot Linux on occasion, I'm more confused with what program does what than how to use them.
Excel, Visio, Quicken, Outlook and Visual Studio aren't exactly self-explanatory.
While I applaud the work of thousands to build such robust amazing programs and give them each their own special name, I'm of the opinion that if you give someone KDE with a few programs labeled generically "email" "internet browser" "calculator" "text editor" "Office Text/Spreadsheet/Presentation" "Network - Wireless" "Printers" and so on and so forth instead of each programs' real name, you'd be a lot closer to the #1 goal of usability: making an intuitive interface.
In the Applications -> Internet menu from Ubuntu on my EeePC, I have "Firefox Web Browser", "Mozilla Thunderbird Mail/News", "Pidgin Instant Messenger", "Transmission BitTorrent Client", and several others. Compare with the Windows debacle of Start -> Publisher -> Weird Program Name.
I agree with your point, and apparently so did the distro maintainers a few years ago that made Linux much better on this count than Windows.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
So in short, Linux is better than windows, but you will have tinker a lot with it.
that is a contradiction. if you have to tinker with linux to make it better than windows, its not better.
also, i've noticed that ubuntu 8.10 runs faster on my laptop than xp. this is the first time i've seen someone complain about linux's speed.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Maybe KDE is the problem (I'm not accusing -- I don't know and don't use it), but most Freedesktop.org-compliant desktops (KDE is supposed to be one of them) use $APPNAME + $APPFUNCTION in the menu (e.g. Gimp Image Editor, Epiphany Web Browser, Empathy Instant messenger).
Maybe the problem is your distribution.
Put identity in the browser.
Todays market is all about "Windows" and "Microsoft",
No one knows about the alternatives (Unix *hail*, Linux, BSD, Posix systems)...
LUSERS (because they are losers) prefer to not find a way around a problem rather then using an alternative.
Ofcourse I do that sometimes too...
A friend of mine uses live mail (Thank god she looked into gmail and uses that for her personal stuff now!), If she types an recipient's adress in a new email it either @#$%'s up 20 times and she has to type it again, OR she could use gmail.
Now the fact that she still uses live still is a bit tingly on my fingers to point to gmail...
(Or I could modify my DNS settings muhuhuhahahahaaa....)
Mainly, People are getting lazy and we can't stop them from doing so.
We could solve this problem by having a brand send updates to its netbooks containing documentation when the first boot begins, Explaining in a large 22 font that Linux isn't windows and you can't run their software on it...
And notify the current users with that same documentation...
Ofcourse if they're gonna read it is still a second question, But atleast we can gain back _SOME_ market share, Take what we can get guys.
Conclusion:
Today's users are getting too lazy, Probably won't read docs and linux distro's offered by netbook brands (like Asus) should include that documentation...
Its changing slowly though, as people migrate away from Windows software. Firefox is the best example, I had Ubuntu running on my 1000he and my sister (who uses a Mac) was easily able to start browsing the web. But past that, there isn't much more. I actually removed Ubuntu (twice) from mine, as I'm still very much a novice with Linux. The familiarity with XP and the "everything just works" factor drove me to that. That could change though, I put Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it last night and am loving it. It moves quicker than XP (especially GIMP), and I've had no problems yet.
Linux simply isn't ready for the mainstream consumer market. Few hardware devices and peripherals come with Linux software and drivers. People shouldn't have to search the Internet for drivers. All Linux consumer applications should come with easy to use installers which will work with all of the major Linux distros. People should never have to install drivers and software from a command line unless they want to. I sometimes use Linux, but it's not my primary or secondary operating system.
Even when I was supporting Linux desktops five years ago, I could not have imagined seeing a Linux desktop environment on millions of consumer devices.
At the time, the only large distros with significant advantages over Windows (RedHat and Debian) were absolutely opposed to supporting desktop users, even business desktops. Since then, Debian-derived distros have had varying degrees of success on the desktop, but RedHat is (unfortunately) still opposed.
The idea of a consumer OS that wouldn't play commercial games and support third-party programs out-of-the-box was laughable. And I imagine the failure to address either of those problems is leading to the loss of market share for Linux on netbooks.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Please Linux and MAC fanboys take a hike! I challenge every one of you to put yourself in the market when Microsoft was becoming a prominent player in the OS field and not compete to win. Microsoft competed to win where as everyone now is just competing for a piece of the market. I have seen many people confuse the components of a Windows PC and Microsoft loves this, why should they complain if the users think Office is the OS. I would love to see real competition in the OS/Apps market, but I don't think it is going to come from disorientated and/or disgruntled Linux developers. If you want to move off of servers, put your money where your mouth is and form a worldwide For Profit company. But herein lies the problem, Linux at its root is based on rebelling from main stream. There are too many people out there that think their version of Linux OS/Apps is better and will fight to the death protecting them. And the analogy to cars is way off course. At least I can go to 20 different dealerships to buy a car and I will know how to drive each one of those cars without retraining. Yeah, they may look different, sound different and drive differently, but I can 'operate' any of them. I can not say the same for Linux.
You and your girlfriend are exempted from using *nix. Stick to your comfortable, bot ridden crap, and be Happy!
Explain it?? You are living in some convoluted fantasy. Just download a *nix distro, and Wubi.exe is your friend if you are too stupid to get away from the Windows Sub-culture.
That only indicates that you are an incompetent admin....review your docs, you incompetent nerd!!!
Yes, I got the 'Best buy' reference. Immaterial to this discussion. Whatever you may think.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Have you ever used Ubuntu?
I checked, just now, and I have in the menu (which is labeled Applications) under Accessories (just like Windows) 'Text Editor', 'Calculator' and 'Manage Print Jobs'. Under Internet, there is 'Firefox Web Browser' and 'Evolution Mail'. Under Office there is 'OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet' and 'OpenOffice.org Word Processor'.
A whole bunch of the other things I have installed have [Name] [What it does]. DVD Ripper, Audio CD Extractor, Media Player, Image Editor. Photo Manager, Instant Messenger, Bitorrent Client. Pretty much all of the bog-standard stuff that came with the distro spells it out for you.
If you want to install something that you randomly found somewhere, then you get strange names.
LinUx woorkKs reallY Well oN thiS NETbook... .I espEcialLly enJoy thE SmalL kkeyBoard!
If you ever set up a Linux machine for a newbie friend, just rename the shortcuts for all the common applications to their Microsoft/Windows counterparts. "Internet Explorer", "Word," "Excel", etc. Just tell them its the Linux version and they'll get it.
The likes of the big box stores - Best Buy in particular - are not selling the Eee with Linux for a couple of major reasons:
1) They can't sell support for it because ... and ...
a) they don't have anyone who can offer support for Linux
b) there's precious little to support which can be charged
2) They can't sell software for them, because there isn't any.
3) Being a lower-priced item, I'd guess there's a lower profit margin.
So, basically, there's business case impetus to "stick with Windows". I mean, seriously: for the kind of person who shops at Best Buy, which would sell better: that it has XP, so it's familiar, or it has Linux, which is free and secure?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
What I want is a really small device which connects (wirelessly?) to a really big screen.
Whoever comes up with that gets my $$$$$.
Seriously, computers should be tiny pocket-sized devices.
But not every one of us has an 18-year old's good eyesight, or wants to be viewing cramped screens. Tie a tiny form factor to a huge viewing device, and you will make a billion dollars.
Re: the firefox issue... Consider changing your disk io scheduler from cfq to anticipatory (as). You can do this as a boot-time option, or per-drive.
For instance:
cat /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler
Will show you which scheduler you're using. It'll probably return 'cfq'. In my experience, cfq is a POS for desktop use, as any disk i/o blocks horribly with the default disk cache settings on most distros.
To temporarily change (will reset on reboot or once you echo a different scheduler name to said sysfs file),
echo as -n > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler
Or add (to make it permanent) the following to the kernel parameters in menu.lst:
elevator=as
The noop and deadline elevators/schedulers are also options, but they don't really help for desktop loads. Though, YMMV.
(Anticipatory scheduler was the 'default' before 2.6.18 or so, and IMO is much better for desktop Linux. Night/day performance difference.)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
if you have to tinker with linux to make it better than windows, its not better.
I do not see any contradiction. You seem to quantify efficiency as I do nothing and it works. I quantify efficiency as once I got the thing well set. I am going to be the most efficient.
When I got a linux machine, I spent almost one day to have it the way I need it : drop kde/gnome to install a tilling window manager, configure shortcuts, install my emacs/dnotify/latex/xpdf compilation environment, my IM/IRC/mail setup in screen, automatic backups using local NFS and external ssh account, de-activating this fucking PC speaker I do not want to hear... It took me some time to reach this configuration, but once its done, I am much more efficient than I will ever be using a crappy (read proprietary/close) software stack.
Is usability/training/help for non-technical users. Technical issues aside, one of the ways Photoshop kills GIMP is in usability. This doesn't just mean the UI itself, it also means the materials available to help you learn about it. Adobe has some first rate stuff. Their help files are quite helpful and include things like pictures of what to do, they have online video training docs, and their books are awesome. That goes a long way to making it usable for the non-tech type. My mom is an art teacher by profession and while she's not scared of computers, she's not good with them. She needs things spelled out step by step. Well she tells me that Adobe does a good job of doing just that. She's found it easy to use. She knows the art aspect of what she wants to do, and their docs help her figure out how to make the software do it.
That is something major that much OSS seems to lack. The software itself might be badass, but if it is hard to use, it'll be a geek tool only. Normal users aren't going to read text man pages, Google through newsgroup posts, and try stuff on their own to make things work. They need an easy experience. To them the computer is a tool, not a toy, thus it'd better be easy to use because learning how to use it isn't fun for them.
So if Linux ever wants a big share on the desktop, that is something that is going to have to happen. All the common tools that people use will have to be nice and easy to use, and nice and easy to learn about.
However, none of that is going to happen until, as you say, they start taking a more realistic look at their products.
That seriously seems to be the main reason why most zealot types think everyone should use their platform. They want to be "right" and the more people the convert the more "right" they are. Rather similar to some religions. They don't want to admit their choice might have any faults with it (even though any choice does) and thus the reason people would make another choice is because they haven't Seen The Light(tm) not because they other choice is better for them.
So really, if you use and like Linux for what it is, you SHOULDN'T want everyone to use it. Reason is for Linux to become the dominant OS would mean it would have to change from what it is now. So if you like what it is now, you probably don't want it to make those changes needed to have a chance at being the big deal. You should want that people use it if it is better for what they do. That may not ever be more than a small percentage, but then who care? It's about what's best for what you do, not who's got the biggest epenis.
Exactly! The industry will need to settle on maybe 3 desktop distros (light, medium, pro) before there will be enough de-facto standardization for driver writers etc. to bother with.
Table-ized A.I.
To me, Linux is born in 2002. It was almost impossible to use before. And works almost fine from this point.
They've got a treat for you. I just bought a Dell Mini 9 with Ubuntu and also one with XP. I can see how the 8.04 Ubuntu Mini isn't so desireable... I installed 9.04 Beta, wow! I show it to non-techs and they prefer 9.04.
I had a friend who won an EEE netbook, which came with Linux. He liked it until he tried to use it on a website that contained Flash content. This netbook did not have Flash pre-installed, and he was unable to install it himself by following the links on the website, so he asked me for help. I am not very familiar with Linux (I try a distro each year to see if it is up to my standards yet). I was unable to determine what type of package the Linux distro on this machine supported, and was unable (through trial and error) to get any of Adobe's Flash for Linux packages to install. I ended up having to do it manually from the command line with an APT GET command that I found after a Google search. That is not an acceptable user experience for customers who expect to use this computer the same as they would use any other computer. And that is why you can expect high return rates for Linux Netbooks.
- James
I love linux. Use it. Deploy it for others. You know what bugs me most?
Dialog boxes.
When X has an issue, isn't configured, reboots, gets a borked update or something...a diaglog box can come up to 'fix' it. The dialog box is sized too big. You might be able to change settings, but the apply, ok, restart, whatever...is too far down and to the right. You can't click on it. This may be a gnome thing, or xwindows thing...but it really sucks.
Every screen can handle more than 640x480...but that is what it drops down to, and pushes things off the screen.
Every tom, dick, and harry won't know about virtual desktop scrolling....which obviously isn't automatically turned on when x takes a dump.
I wish this could be fixed, in all distros, for all time.
That and my USR5410/5416 cards with TI chipset is 'supported' but never works anymore with gnome's new network manager. Literally had several machines drop off the network after wirelessly upgrading to the new distro. Fan-flipping-tastic. An no, they won't come back on. I HAVE rtfm. But that is old hardware, dialog boxes never get old.
Excel, Visio, Quicken, Outlook and Visual Studio aren't exactly self-explanatory.
They don't need to be; everyone already knows what they are.
And here we are already, back to the problem pointed to in TFA.
One of the untold stories here is that there is a small but growing contingent of people loading OS X onto their netbooks. Apple doesn't like it much but the legality is uncharted territory. OS X is built on BSD which is open source, and it may be difficult for Apple to pursue users for modifying it to use anywhere they want. OS X Leopard runs very nicely on my Acer Aspire One. Better than on my older (2006) Mac Mini...
I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.
Linux has great desktops - at least when you get away from the proprietary Xandros yuk garbage that some of these Netbooks came with. Windows users can feel comfortable with Gnome pretty fast. But he early netbooks used things like that Xandros setup, which was a real problem. Another problem is the perennial one of being not quite workalike and file-interchangeable with MS Office. You want to be able to edit a doc, xls or ppt file and know it will look the same to the person you email it to, and OpenOffice and the other alternatives just fall a little short on this. Also, if you're used to MS Office, OpenOffice seems quite alien at first. This picture may change if cloud-based office apps take hold. Good cloud apps could get around Microsoft's Office edifice dominating the desktop.
I think people would like Linux more if they were familiar with program names. Notepad, Paint, Wordpad, Calc... whatever. When I boot Linux on occasion, I'm more confused with what program does what than how to use them.
Excel, Visio, Quicken, Outlook and Visual Studio aren't exactly self-explanatory.
Neither is "Kleenex". Linux software != well known brands.
I think the entire Linux community is fairly deluded about their importance/place in the real world. Reading through these comments prove it.
Who says ppl choose Windows only becuase it's familiar? It's also becuase they get what they want - something that works on the hardware witohout requiring to be a geek and can run the applications *they* want to run - witouht worrying about whether the source of it is available or not and getting into the entire FOSS debate. They have the FREEDOM to select the software they want to run without seeing whether its available for the (weird) OS running, understanding "compilation" and RPM dependencies and more.
Windows provides all of this.
It dominates because there is nothing better out there. No matter how much you linsux fanboys whine, there is nothing better. Nothing. This is reality. Fantasy would be the thoughts running through your head as you read this. The ones telling you that linsux is better. it isn't. if it was, it would be the more-used OS. It's not. Windows is. Even Windows 98 has a larger install base at this very moment than all of the linsux distros and MacOS combined. because Windows is better. Better at everything. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be the most widely used OS. Linsux does not have a large install base because it is inferior. It is worthless. It is garbage code, written by pompous, arrogant, unskilled programmers who are unable to write quality code. If they could, then Linsux would be the best OS. Not Windows. Windows is obviously the best OS, because it is everywhere. Linsux is not.
... even though I fully intend to wipe Windows off (after making 3 backups of it) and replace it with Ubuntu Linux. The reason is this gives me the ability to cheaply run Windows in case I might ever need to do so (happens about every 2 or 3 years). If I were to buy a netbook with just Linux on it, most likely I've be replacing that Linux with Ubuntu Linux, anyway. But that other Linux wouldn't really be giving me something extra. With these netbooks in the $250 price range with XP or Linux, it's really like getting one Windows usage license nearly for free (for that machine).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
It was cheaper than one with Linux preloaded on it. Never booted XP. Installed Fedora XFCE. The tweaking wasn't a big deal and everything works. Webcam and wireless. My Verizon AirCard recognized and works. Maybe MS should take a look at how many of the XP netbooks sold phone home for an update.
I bought my Eee at a Best Buy.
~ C.
I'm a rabid Debian GNU/Linux user and will never again use a Micro$oft product but I'm the first one to admit the Xandros thingy the asus guys had available on the eee was a miserable failure. It looked like something for retarded kids.
If I ever bought an eee unit, I'd instantly slap a real OS on it, such as http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC
Nice small X series with a new slc ssd and some ram.
Dual boot and be explore the world wireless computing.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The problem with your argument is that everyone already *knows* what Excel, Quicken, Outlook, etc are. Those brands are mainstream. As a result, they can get away with not saying Excel Spreadsheet and Outlook Mail/News and whatever in your start menu. The Linux programs can't, so they should be as self-explanatory as possible. Instead of Firefox Web Browser, it should just say Internet. Instead of Mozilla Thunderbird Mail/News, it should say E-mail. And so forth. The average user doesn't care what clever name you chose for your mail client, they just want to be able to get email working on their newly-bought PC with minimal fuss.
Linux is linux because it is linux. CHange it and it won't be linux anymore.
What is Linux anyway? Is it Linux from scratch or Ubuntu or Linpus (the Linux Acer used to put on its netbooks).
They are all linux but radically different products. Some distro's go for cutting edge, compiling straight from Linus keyboard, others present a product as unchangebale as your VCR "OS".
The linux that most geeks use is probably the cutting edge stuff, we can deal with the problems it gives because, well we grew up on it and we accept that it is the price to pay for having the features we require. I KNOW my linux desktop is not as smooth as Vista's is (firefox especially is a bitch) but I have become so accustomed to the X way of presenting a desktop I would quit any job that told me to use windows.
This however makes it hard for linux to ever kill windows which is what some seem to desire. Linux but its nature is a niche market. How can you sell a product that is free and where the users have no need of tech support or even worse, give said tech support for free? Oh and are also high resistant to adds being displayed. So, you can't sell a boxed product, can't sell support and can't run it add supported.
That is why there is no linux desktop startup.
As for mass market, support is expensive. Sell a $50 profit product, get one support call and watch your profit fly away. How does MS do it? Simple, they don't. MS does NOT give consumer support, that they leave up to dell.
Since linux is not yet capable of being 100% windows (and its current niche market audience has no desire for it to be windows) you can count on any boxed product customer generating at least one support call to find out why their windows software don't run on it.
Simple put, linux is linux because it is a product by nerds for nerds. It can't go mainstream in a similar way that kit-planes can't. Not everyone has the knowledge to build their own plane and if it became so easy any idiot could, one of the kit-plane fans would buy it and the idiots don't have the pilot license needed anyway.
Some things are just meant to be niche.
What would help Linux far more if the world came to accept that windows is not the only OS. I therefor like Apple (despite hating almost everything about them) as any Mac sold means 1 more PC that ain't windows, doesn't do windows and won't do windows. 1 more user wanting opensource or at least portable apps. 1 more user against windows only "standards". 1 more twit railing against wind-mills.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Is it just me or are there a lot of back handed compliments to Linux in this story. Like this guy who says he spends a day setting up his Linux computer.
Using most distros it takes at most 1/2 hour to get things installed.
After that you are installing new software, which happens the same on windows as is does in Linux.
I think the MS trolls have invaded Slashdot.
Based on using the Xandros/KDE install on the original EEE, I can understand people's urge to return them. Most people aren't linux-adept or patient enough to learn how and install something more familiar like Ubuntu. Even then, Ubuntu is very different than, say Windows XP.
This is just another excuse for 'free desktop' people to clone the Windows(R) look-and-feel, and maybe even have a highly tuned and compatible WINE installation out of the box. Now there are actually legal grounds for it, because if MicroSoft absorbs the netbook market too, then there really is no Linux sanctuary on consumer devices. That spells monopoly in the NetBook OS market for MicroSoft. Also, in terms of mobile devices, it's also very hard to say whether or not Android will live up to its expectations.
Maybe the user-interface should be standardized somehow for the GUI on consumer products. At least that way, MS would be forced to code to a certain standard, which would be the same standard that everyone would be forced to code to... e.g. Apple, various Linux's, etc.
ISO, or ISO-like standardization has seemingly helped even the playing field in the past; UNIX to POSIX for example, or MS Word to ODF.
everyone already *knows* what Excel, Quicken, Outlook, etc are. [...] they can get away with not saying Excel Spreadsheet and Outlook Mail/News and whatever in your start menu.
So why does the Vista start menu have a search function?
Because no, not everyone knows all programs. Recently I organized an online meeting and downloaded the client from gotomeeting.com. After installation, I couldn't find it and after a couple of minutes, found it it's reachable through Start -> Citrix -> GoToMeeting.... Seasoned ~7yr. experience IT professional.
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Sage goes in every field
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Netbooks were a terrible idea anyway.
They're too big to fit in your pocket, and too small to be worth the hassle of carrying around a backpack.
I've got a 17-inch laptop that can play Crysis, and i'm going to complement it with a pocket-sized handheld computer, not another notebook.
that is exactly my point. i too spend half a day setting up (k)ubuntu, and i like it because it works better for me. but usually, people have a very specific goal in mind when they get a computer, they expect it to work well for usual tasks from the start. they don't want to spend any more than five minutes in setting up.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
I am a software developer, and the guy all my friends bring their PCs to. I LOVE the UNIX environment, and HATE the Windoze environment, and I have an 8 port KVM on my desk with Linux, Mac, Solaris, and Windows at my fingertips.
I always use Linux or Solaris for server stuff if possible. To me putting a database application or a WEB server on a Windows box is just silly.
But I am typing on a Windoze XP machine. (Vista does not exist in my world) I seldom use the Linux machine because I always need to switch to the Windows machine for something the Linux one cannot do, and there is nothing the Windows one can't do, so I just end up on the Windows machine. The MAC is nice, and I use it occasionally, but it too just cannot do everything I need, or is more frustrating to get it done. When I first got the MAC, I thought it was so cool and used the hell out of it for a while, but simple things can be quite hard to do sometimes because it tries to be so "easy" that it can become hard to do anything the MAC guys did not think of an easy way to handle. So back to the Windows machine... again because I need to do something the MAC has difficulty with. As a desktop, Solaris is useless for most stuff.
It is like a trap in a way. Once I go to the Windows machine for one application I cannot do easily or at all on whatever other machine I was on, I just start doing stuff on that machine, and soon forget about the others. Cygwin and PuTTY do not help either because with that working, grep, find, and ssh is there, and I'm just done. (The Cygterm hack is my console, cmd.exe is dreadful.)
I really wish this were not true, but ...
I bought two netbooks with Linux preinstalled, an HP2133 and an Asus Eee PC. The pre-installed versions of Linux (SuSE and Xandros) had serious problems: bad fonts, bad desktop setup, misconfigured update sources, bad drivers, etc.
But the problem wasn't a problem with Linux--with stock Ubuntu installed, both of them are great machines. The problem was incompetent and overly zealous customization and installation by the vendors.
If MS's "monopoly" is really the cause of every "Linux on the desktop" setback then you might as well give up because MS's market share isn't going to go down if Linux can't grow.
Rather than use the monopoly excuse, Linux fans should figure out the specific reason for the setback and try to address it.
Or you could just sit on your hands for another 10 years and say it's all MS's fault.
That's exactly what I wish I'd done. I've bought two EeePCs, a 701 and a 1000. I bought the Linux versions in both cases because I wanted to show support for Linux, and in both cases I've replaced the default distro (crappy Xandros) with Ubuntu (with the array.org kernel) and been very happy.
However, I still require XP from time to time as I am studying a course (Network+) which covers lots of OSes including XP.
It woud have been better to have an XP licence for my portable computers.
I still have one for my old Dell 8200, I use WinXP running in VirtualBox on that machine. I confirmed the licence with Microsoft so it seems to be legal to do that.
Bottom line is that even to a Linux zealot like me, XP is still useful to have around.
The problem _is_ the distribution. Actually, under SuSE, there is the reverse problem: only the application function/type is displayed and the name appears on hover.
For those of us long-time linux users, this is a tad annoying... But then, changing the behaviour is two clicks away :)
Apache vs IIS. Well, whatever.
The biggest difference I see (as a Sysadmin, not a web developer) is that IIS on an Active Directory domain accessed via Internet Explorer provides single sign on access to web-based tools and applications. If tight security is required and your number of directly supported users is beyond a certain level, say two or three, IIS will allow you to apply your existing security model to a web site without requiring retraining of users, which I'm certain allows the Windows Server license and the CALS (...I hate CALS) to pay for themselves.
For anonymous access websites (see everything on the internet), Apache tends to be more straightforward.
I like being able to use VBScript to spit some info back through a browser though.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
I just bought two acer one netbooks for the office. They came with windows which I rapidly replaced with Ubuntu UNR and they look damn nice.
My office has been running Ubuntu for 6 months and as the staff are familiar with it, Ubuntu on the netbook is "familiar" to them.
In fact, after using Ubuntu, my staff are hooked. My Secretary even brought her personal laptop in to me to have windows replaced with Ubuntu.
I agree though, the problem with linux on netbooks is the dumbed down interface. When you get a machine with XP it is just the normal desktop. If they stick Linux on them with a normal and more familiar desktop setup, they would see far less people returning them.
RebateFX.com - Spread rebates for Forex traders
It's only after they are familiar with these that you can start working on the operating system transition.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
> if you have to tinker with linux to make it better than windows, its not better.
I'd like to confirm this. A friend, who bought a linux netbook, found that wifi wasn't working. He needs wifi to work so he can connect to his network. He looked into it for a bit, but gave up, returned it and got a windows one instead, which just works. This guy is no idiot - he's got a PHD and uses a lot of computers in various parts of his research, but he's not prepared to fuck around just to get a network working. Stuff like that really has to work out of the box.
Is this the future of Linux? Are people still going to be struggling to get networks, sound, 3d graphics, scanners etc working in ten years time?
The plural of anecdote is bullshit. Let me contribute my story to the pile of manure :)
My latest date runs Linux. There's an "internet" icon in her panel, every once in a while she clicks the "update" thing and answers a few questions and everything Just Works (tm).
[her xbf, an avid user, might have had a hand in setting it up, though].
Has anyone entertained the thought that people might actually choose windows because it's the best available option?
Most of the programs are labelled that way... They have their names, and then their function next to them in brackets and the programs themselves are categorized by function.
Windows is much worse, it's just that people are already familiar with the names and where they're located... Categorizing programs by vendor is pretty unintuitive.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Once again, the best OS for the platform for the majority of users won.
How is this news or a surprise?
à_à
Part of the blame are the bug-ridden cheap distros that come with the computer.
I've seen a whole community trying to help a guy to get his notebook, mainly the wi-fi, to work.
Days later he gave up and installed Ubuntu. It just worked.
not the year of Linux on the Netbook?
'Once again Microsoft's monopoly means Windows is swallowing up another market.'"
Which is why, if the rumours of Microsoft giving XP to netbook manufacturers is true, they are guilty of predatory pricing which is basically summarised as discounting heavily with the intention of forcing a competitor out of the market.
Open and shut case really although it'll probably take the EU stepping in to do something about it.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
I'm going to call you an idiot because the setup procedure on a EeePC to restore factory settings is so brain dead (just choosing the recovery option on boot), it's not even funny. This gets a broken system working within seconds.
Taking the EeePC as a example again... Why would you need to do that? Infact, any netbook that comes with Linux won't require you to do that to get Wi-Fi working, what are you talking about?
To my knowledge, there is no netbook out there that doesn't have WPA support and I have seen quite a few. Even the earliest Linux netbooks have WPA support.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
If i setup a new linux machine, i copy my homedir over from the old one (and with it comes all my settings), and install all the stuff i want from the package manager... Takes a couple of hours tops.
Setting up a new windows machine is far more hassle, even if you have an installcd which is already up to date, you have to manually download and install your apps or keep swapping physical media around if you install from media... I have seen many people at work reinstall windows for various reasons, and all of them take a couple of days to restore it to a usable state.
Some linux distros these days even install from a livecd, so you can actually use the system before it has finished installing.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I bought a Samsung NC10 that came with windows XP. I installed Ubuntu really easily and have never looked back.
It was easy to do and the software you get "out of the can" is all I need for my daily tasks as a very busy student.
The entire process was simple and easy and worked. I do not think too many Windows users would have too many problems if they went through the same process.
In short, installing and using, seems simple enough! (to me?)
Only if you've spend ages trying to learn how to use Photoshop first.
Coming to BOTH new, they use different paradigms and GIMP on Linux beats PS on Linux, whilst GIMP on windows loses to PS on Windows.
Photoshop SUCKS in usability.
Once you've learned how to force PS to do what you want, or, more commonly, learned not to do what PS won't let you do, you are not able to determine GIMP's usability. Each think you've learned how to make PS do, GIMP may not do the same way and that's considered bad. There are some things GIMP won't *do* that PS does. That's considered very bad. But you don't try to do things anew and so you don't realise that there are some things GIMP lets you do that PS doesn't. And because you don't TRY (you've learned from PS not to try) you don't see this as very bad for PS.
So you're not going to see the downsides of PS since you've learned to move around them.
PS sucks.
GIMP sucks.
It's a very sucky problem to solve. They solve it in different ways. But once you've learned PS, you want GIMP to do the same.
Don't.
Learn anew. Then you'll find yourself swearing at PS when you want to render that outline as a repeated pattern rather than as one of the selected options of line stroke. You'll wonder why there isn't a good macro language for scripting manipulation of your 10,000 stock images. PS will be shown to be sucky.
wifi is the most visible example.
even when you get it working, just try switching off the physical wireless switch on your laptop. later when you switch it back on, you can click on a button in windows to rescan. in linux, (k)ubuntu atleast, you have to restart. you just can't tell it to look again. maybe there is some covulted cli way, but i dont want to mess around with terminal just to fucking rescan for network.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
First of all, netbooks are great for accessing the net wherever the net is available, but when you travel, your access to the net becomes patchy, sporadic, restricted, unreliable, limited, and in many cases, it's just not available. What most Linux users don't realize is just how hardwired the majority of them are to the net. Even when they use the WiFi, their access is usually through a wireless router they themselves have administrative access to! I bought a couple Eee PCs. First there was the 701, and today I use the 1000. Both came with the custom Xandros, and both are currently running XP. I'm not a developer, and I really don't have the time to learn to write my own drivers and software. I just needed a highly portable computer and the netbook fills that niche. Having been a long time Mandriva user, I gave Xandros an honest try on the 701, but I found that it lacked certain tools by default and relied too heavily on 3rd party repositories. When I tried to tinker to get the applications that I wanted, it would cause unpredictable behavior. It's not like I have time to go in and read nonexistent Man pages, so I'd just used F9 (Eee's "reset") and started over. Its over-dependence on the web at that point was painfully obvious when you realized that repositories to recover your preferred basics can't just be stored locally.
So the other distributions of Linux weren't quite ready for prime time on the netbook just yet, and the Linux versions of Eee came with Windows drivers. Slipstream SP3 with nLite, and installing Windows is a snap! All the hardware "just works". The sound, the microphone, the camera, the bluetooth, the true DUAL SCREEN VIDEO, the WiFi, the USB ports, the power management... ALL THIS STUFF JUST WORKS! It's a no fuss system!
Of course you have to add in a few extras to make Windows behave... my short list- Audacity, CCleaner, FoxitReader, Firefox, OnlineArmor, OO.o, Vlc, and don't forget to tweak the registry, toss in the lame_enc.dll, and all of the other install files that can be stored locally on a backup drive. Best of all, these are all non-gratis!
Of course Linux has its place: Use Parted Magic to backup your highly fresh activated install of WinXP to a partition on a USB drive. You have the perfect "system restore"! Suddenly, my netbook isn't so helpless without the net anymore. I can do everything a typical PC user can do. RIP/Burn DVDs? Got it. Organize MP3s? Yup. Log in with my CAC? Done. Play Half Life? Sure! Writer, Calc, Impress? Check, check, check!
Now it doesn't work as nice, but occasionally I'll boot from an SDHC on the 1000 into Mandriva 2008.1 (KDE 3). I have to use the NDIS wrapper to get the WiFi working, never got the camera up and running, and capturing audio... eh... it's still a little dicey. Don't expect the dual screen to work just right, and if you've got Compiz up and running with an external monitor, there's going to be a somewhat funky "screen in a screen" parallax. The USB ports generally work great, but I've never figured out how to get my SCR 331 to work in Linux.
So what's complicated? It's not Linux on the netbook... The complicated part is just Linux and the fact that it generally relies too heavily on access to a network. Period! Linux on a cell phone? No problem! Linux on a router? It's a go! Linux at home? Cool beans! On a server? You bet! A single purpose box like a kiosk or PVR? Great idea!
Linux on a traveling netbook? Blows.
How complicated is that?
Blessed with all the brains that God gave a duck's ass, and twice the charisma.
i got a hp 2140 and well, they (hp) put suse sled 10 on it. it was terrible slow, old software, and even the webcam didn't work! then i tried ubuntu's netbook remix based on upcoming jaunty. well, it was much faster, up to date software, webcam and everything else worked. wlan connected much faster (took up to 2 min on sled 10) only problem: the kernel (2.6.28) can't boot if the DC power is plugged! http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12984 i really want linux since i only use linux, but it is a bit hard to go mainstream based on such a level of quality... preinstalled linux is horrible and the more recent software has bugs.
It's problem solving on anything more than a basic level seems to require you are a programmer. The solution to so many things seems to be is looking at source code, or messing with a script and so on. This is a problem for me because I'm not a programmer. I don't care for programming, I tried it, didn't like it. I actually know a fair bit about it, but I'm not a programmer and don't care to be. Thus I always seem to have trouble with Linux.
I think sometimes OSS people forget that most of the people in the world are not programmers. Not just a majority, but like 99.999% or more. Even many computer people aren't programmers. I'm a network and systems admin, but I'm not a programmer. Thus if your OS needs you to be a programmer to troubleshoot it, you exclude a lot of people. However they seem to think that since you have access to the code, that should mean you are willing and able to get in there and mess with it whenever it is required.
Now that's fine, nobody is saying your OS needs to be designed for everyone, however you can't then demand that everyone should use it. This would be like writing a book in Latin, refusing to translate it, and then getting pissed that only a small percentage of the population reads it.
Second, the Linux UI on the Eee PC is a dumbed down, locked down older version of Xandros modified to provide a tabbed interface designed as a Net appliance whose program selection for ordinary installation is limited to a handful of programs), and a response to another post of mine downthread says that Acer's Linux UI is similar. If you install anything that is not in the Asus repository (presumably via binaries) it will not show up in any of the UI tabs. To run that installed program, one will have to open a terminal and invoke it via CLI.
So your whines about the differences between Linux software and XP are completely irrelevant to any recognizable netbook reality. The current and last generations of netbooks are too underpowered to run large-scale Linux apps with large datasets, and the screen size is really too small to make that class of work comfortable. I deal with the CPU power problem when need be by running a remote control connection to my far more powerful desktop from anywhere around a wireless AP.
The real problems with Linux sales on netbooks are:
Any problem with Linux on netbooks comes down to the manufacturers using Linux to deliver a net appliance experience. Remember the companies that used to sell net appliances? The ones that still exist don't sell them anymore. Not to say that for the few people left who are still unfamiliar with computers, a net appliance is necessarily a bad idea, I think I could hand a Linux netbook to the proverbial computer-illiterate grandmother and get her websurfing in a few minutes. But these people are increasingly rare, everyone else expects a computer to have a recognizable desktop with icons that do things and a bottom panel with a start menu and some apps that can be selected from it.
Manufacturers can do different things with a smartphone UI because we don't have fixed expectations of what a phone UI is going to look like other than we expect some way to enter phone numbers and a button to push to accept a call when the phone rings.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Please, this has been said before and the CEO of the company said publicly that windows was being returned a lot too.
Why are you all rambling here? Start writing code, slackers! :)
It is always better to be a first grade version of yourself than a second grade version of someone else.
I think we have the wrong perspective here. The term "Linux" (and "GNU/Linux", for that matter), as commonly used isn't a single OS, it refers to hundreds, or even thousands of operating systems that share a common codebase. If I buy a netbook loaded with Windows XP Home, it's the same operating system, whether I buy an Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, or other netbook. If I buy a netbook with "Linux" on it, it may be Xandros, Linpus Lite, or Ubuntu; and when I install "Linux" on my netbook, it may be any of the three Linux distros mentioned here or Fedora, Crunchbang, Moblin, Puppy, Kuki, Suse, Mandriva, etc... Each of these is a different operating system; they have their own unique way of doing things. The principal failing of netbook manufacturers has been pre-installing versions of "Linux" that don't allow their customers to do what those customers expect to be able to do with their netbooks. If the expectation is that a netbook should be able to browse the web, play videos, do email and video chat, read and store data on a variety of flash media using built-in card readers, etc..., then it's up to the manufacturers to ensure that they install the software required to do this. Given the current situation, where no two netbook manufacturers offer the same version of "Linux" (whereas they offer identical versions of WinXP) just tells me that there is no one Linux distribution that clearly meets the needs of the manufacturers.
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
Quite simply the race to the bottom a seems to have become a race back to the top in an attempt to preserve profit margins.
I don't believe it's just about unfamiliar look-and-feel for non-geek Windows users. I've seen so many non-geeks switch from Windows to Mac because Macs are shinier and they're in all the Hollywood movies, but also because OSX seems to "just work" for them. People have no problem learning how to handle a new operating system if the UI is well designed. Despite Ubuntu's efforts this is not true for Linux of any flavor.
This is not only due to a lack of design skills in Linuxers. I think the more important reason is what Thomas calls machismo:
Now at this point, a wise user will hit Google and find instructions on how to fix their problems. Sadly, these instructions are usually complicated. Often deliberately so, because some of the people who write them like to express their machismo by creating inordinately complicated tutorials.
While the following anecdotal evidence he presents might be flawed (it could just be an outdated tutorial or one specifically intended for hardware hackers), that machista attitude is a salient feature of the FLOSS community as it is. It's also the reason for the extreme gender gap in FLOSS vs proprietary software developers.
What I find weird is that Thomas is able to diagnose that attitude in Linuxers and then pretends there's nothing "we" can do about it.
I have come across a lot of netbooks, I have never ever seen this issue. I am extremely doubtful that this "friend" exists from the very vague description so far.
Only thing I can suggest, did he try the restoring to factory settings crap? Addtionally, was the wi-fi switch turned off?
Seriously, there is no information really here to diagnose the issue, I am doubtful that companies will ship out netbooks with wi-fi that don't work, so my immediate assumption is a PEBKAC error.
A PHD doesn't mean anything, you either know what you're doing or you don't.
In all honesty, I can't remember a time when I plugged in something on a Linux machine and it didn't just work a second after.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
So I finally installed Ubuntu on a machine, having decided that it was high-bloody-time that I learned how to use Linux. It's been the sore spot on my geek cred for years now.
It works nicely at first glance, but in trying to install a Wacom graphics tablet, I found myself lost and confused. Help forums at Ubuntu seem to assume a working level of knowledge which I simply didn't have, and gaining that working level of knowledge required, from what I could determine, that I already have it. It felt like I did back in grade school when I was first trying to come to grips with the world literature, politics and global history. --It's all inter-woven, no one piece is understandable without knowing the whole.
--But unlike the world of literature, politics and global history where there is a huge, organized, multi-billion dollar education system filled with teachers and learning resources, Linux for the most part only has engineers. --And most engineers suck at communicating with people who are not engineers. This isn't a criticism. I think engineers are awesome. But it does mean that I banged my head against the computer screen and made almost zero headway after two days straight.
I have long been aware that engineers simply organize and communicate ideas differently. --Much like Linux, the engineer's brain is similar only cosmetically to that of the non-engineer brain. (This comes as no surprise to me whatsoever; everything in the world, I realized some years ago, is metaphor.) Vi is an excellent example of this. Never have I encountered a more non-intuitive system of editing than with that gawdawful program. But then, I must remember, I learned how to manipulate text on a computer screen starting at a very young age, always using software programs which managed keyed in text and commands which were universally consistent. If I came today to a text editor with no knowledge of computers, then I'd probably be baffled and alternatively enraged by the complexity of the whole thing. Vi is the result of a different evolutionary path which only engineers were exposed to while growing up. Everybody else was taught the Microsoft/Apple way.
The "man" files in Linux, (which I eventually found out about), seemed like a brilliant idea, but because they were written and organized by engineers for engineers, they were no help to me whatsoever. Even though I could detect a human warmth in the billions of lines of instructions, the logical streams used to convey information were such that they very quickly fused my synapses together and drove me insane. It's like English v.s. Chinese. Not Fucking Compatible.
It reminded me of being in Math class, where I struggled mightily for years on end until being ejected from highschool having mastered only the bare essentials. I later learned from discussing this with an awesome girl I later fell in love with, that she had experienced pretty much the same thing. (We fell in love in part because we understood one another instantly on every subject; felt like we'd been wandering around on an alien world most of our lives, etc.,) Turns out, as everybody knows but doesn't realize until it hits them square in the face, that there are different learning styles, and I'd been an extreme example of the one which fit worst with the teaching system as applied to mathematics. The problem is, while Linux is just a complex system which can be learned and understood regardless of how you happen to learn, the people doing all the explaining appear to embody an extreme expression of the exact other way of thinking which doesn't fit with my head.
Learning Windows is little better; it took me years. And Apple. . . --I still get a headache whenever I try to get a frickin' Mac to do anything useful. At least with Linux when I get frustrated it's because the road signs through all the HAL guts confuse me. With an Apple, not only are there NO road signs, but the Ritalin-soaked Fischer-Price OS won't even let me look under the hood; if I can't get what I
Don't get me wrong, I've got 4 computers at home with Linux on them, but the reason Linux isn't doing well on netbooks is that netbooks are no longer only for business people and Linux SUCKS for the desktop.
You can call me a troll if you want, but I routinely have problems with multimedia. I had to update my own codecs for simple stuff, something I never had to do on Windows. I can't even use my Netflix accounts instant viewing because of lax Silverlight support. I routinely have problems with the Flash player online, youtube and Google Analytics are the only sites I can count on working 100% of the time.
I have problems with Google earth, new browsers (Chrome for instance) and just generally can't use the software everyone is talking about without a days wirth of tinkering.
As an administrator it brings me peace of mind to get my hands dirty, but as just a computer user I don't want to fuck around with any of that crap.
"Open Source", as nice as it is for learning, will prevent Linux from ever doing well on devices heavily used for multimedia and general usage because of the "Damn hippies" mentality around it. Multimedia on Linux is like if a crack dealer opened a free methadone clinic in their city.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
"I write the code first, then wrap buttons and knobs around it" - by billcopc (196330) on Friday April 10, @11:37PM (#27539173) Homepage
I'm curious, on this note from you, which I have quoted - thus, would you answer a question for me: What dev. tools/ide's are you using, that you do things in THAT particular order?
(I ask, because I have not built an application that way, since the "olden days" of using MSVC++ & Borland Turbo Pascal for Windows (where you had to use a "resource studio" to build the front-end & then 'tie in' the code for the controls to their appropriate codeblock(s) after), circa version 2.x or so))
Hey - I mean, w/ the "RAD" development tools of today, such as VB6 & below, Borland C++ Builder, & Borland Delphi, & even Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET?
I would say @ least, that those tools for GUI application development @ least, build via the
"Build the interface & the code @ the same time"
Type templatized interface + code build design (for lack of a better way to put it, that is how I describe those tools & how to build with them...)
APK
P.S.=> If, by your statement, though, you meant:
"I build it in my mind first, & then do the interface designs"
Then? Then, I understand... otherwise, I am curious as to what tools it is you use for development, & for what platform(s), as well as the kind of development for GUI apps you do... thanks! apk
There's also something else, too--current netbooks with 1 GB of RAM, 160 GB hard drive, 1024x600 display and Intel Atom N270 CPU are easily within the sweet spot for Windows XP Home Edition. As such, Windows runs reasonably fast on these netbooks, and because it's Windows XP it also means maximum commpatibility with all the third party hardware out there, too.
'Once again Microsoft's monopoly means Windows is swallowing up another market.'?????????? I have a hard time blaming Microsoft for end-user laziness.
This was hashed out in the recent thread on 96% windows penetration. The fact of the matter is that:
1) Some vendors actually had the gall to sell netbooks that didn't have working wifi under linux, then claim they were netbooks. They saw higher return rates but others (dell and was it acer?) didn't. Chalk one up against the basic premise of the article.
2) After Microsoft decided to really enter the netbook market netbooks with linux on them suddenly became impossible to get. Whether this has anything to do with Microsoft or more with the stores choosing brand awareness I don't know. The fact remains, people that went into a store somewhere in the last few months were extremely unlikely to even be offered the option.
I've recently broken down and ordered an MSI Wind. I'll probably not bother to try and get a refund on the Windows (it's a huge hassle, and I might never see the money) but it's gonna run Ubuntu either way.
What we really need is someone to come in and make the major suppliers give us the option of getting a laptop without an OS pre-installed. Why the hell in 2009 are we still dealing with this shit where you simply cannot buy anything in a laptop form factor or below without paying the Microsoft tax. (disregarding macbooks for a minute)
If users mainly want the "familiar experience", then just give them the familiar experience - it's that simple - there is no good reason why a Linux-based Netbook, in 2009, can't have a similar interface and layout for most of the main functionality to Windows XP, which is now so ancient there has been plenty of time to create window managers that are clones to the pixel (or "similar but better").
Microsoft's other main so-called "monopoly benefit" here is application compatibility. But again, in 2009, why is this still such a major problem? Especially since, again, XP has not exactly been much of a "moving target" lately, hell it's been sleeping. If users want application compatibility, give them application compatibility - find out why it's so hard for ISVs to put their apps on Linux, and *fix* that.
Bottom line, give users what they want and they'll flock to you, don't give users what they want and they won't. If they want a familiar experience and application compatibility for most apps, they won't care if it's Windows or Linux, they'll look at the price tag. But if you're definitely NOT giving users what they want, then don't blame "Microsoft's monopoly".
"Linux .. is a usability nightmare, you need to be a network engineer AND programmer to fix it when it breaks, and perhaps most importantly the Linux community is hostile and unhelpful toward non-techies"
You're talking total nonsense. Any modern Linux distro is perfectly usable. And to fix it when it breaks, which is a rarety - is just as easy as the Install-Program option in Windows.
As for the hostile Linux, you are equally inaccurate in that statement. Join a forum, politely ask a question and get a response else pay for a support contract.
"I am a network geek and programmer, and I still get pissed off at Linux on a daily basis because things that should just work, do not"
Maybe you should try an other occupation?
to Linux on my Eee if there was a program like EeeCtl for Linux that would let me make the screen ultra-bright when I use it outside. I don't think I'd use the crappy factory Xandros, but most other distros don't boot nearly as quickly as it does. (And it boots only slightly slower than XP which is only slightly slower than Windows 7, which is what I'm running now.)
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
Excel, Visio, Quicken, Outlook and Visual Studio aren't exactly self-explanatory.
They don't need to be; everyone already knows what they are.
No, just because you know what they are doesn't mean everybody does. In fact, I have no idea what kinds of apps visio and quicken are.
I don't see why they can't vim ~/.config/openbox/menu.xml and add their own titles!
Don't panic
The problem is, most people don't "set up" a new Windows machine. They use the pre-installed OS as-is out of the box. They don't re-install either; they either live with the spyware slow-downs or take it to Geek Squad every few months to have the crap cleaned out.
Compare what you're doing with the Mac OS X experience. New computer, OS pre-installed, boots to registration/setup screen, lets you hook up the previous computer in Firewire Target mode to copy all the settings and user files. (Unfortunately it doesn't copy unix-y customizations like /etc/profile or /usr/local, which most users won't even know about.) The "few hours" it takes is the time to copy files from the old machine, with only a few checkboxes (all checked by default) to tell it what to copy.
Non-geeks won't stand for having to spend hours to set up a computer. They also won't stand for crap like focus-follows-mouse and 3-button copy/paste that X-windows if famous for, and only the most hardcore of geeks love.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
The solution to so many things seems to be is looking at source code, or messing with a script and so on.
The corresponding problem on the Windows/Apple side is that many times there is NO solution to a problem, you just have to live with it.
I think sometimes OSS people forget that most of the people in the world are not programmers. Not just a majority, but like 99.999% or more.
I think in the distant future programming will be a skill so fundamental that everyone will be taught it like arithmetic. The same proportion of people who won't be able to program in the future will probably mirror the proportion of people who cannot do basic arithmetic today.
If the netbook makers would quit putting crap homemade versions of linux on the netbooks, and simply go with a mainstream distro most of the problems would disappear. Especially as soon as users discovered they simply open a window such as synaptic and can download and install in seconds for free thousands of programs. Instead they put crippled versions of linux on their desktop, defeating most of the wonderful advantages linux has over windows.
Living in Chile
Since Arm Netbooks will never be able to run Windows XP/Vista/7 this will be a pivotal moment.
From a battery/functionality the Arm units will rock, especially if they have a good video/flash/OpenGL support.
The units should be MUCH less expensive and if a large supplier like HP or IBM sell them it will be interesting to see what Dell/Intel try to do. :-)
Competition is good.
You really think something as complicated as programming will be something the majority of the population will know? Ya right. Programming is not like arithmetic. Hell, knowing arithmetic, and a good deal more advanced math (like algebra) is a requisite before even beginning to understand programming.
I know that geeks think that being able to program a computer is the be-all, end-all of being smart but it really isn't. Most people don't know how to program, and never will. It is that whole specialization of labor thing at work again. Nobody can be good at everything in a modern society, so some people are good at it, and they do it for everyone else.
The only way everyone in the future will program is if programming is made so simple that the term isn't meaningful in it's current form. If computers are so advanced that programming is just describing in a natural language what you want them to do then sure, everyone is a "programmer". Of course that really isn't what the term means.
So no, not everyone will be a programmer anymore than today everyone is a farmer. Farming is far more vital to day to day life, yet we have few farmers. Some peopel specialize at it and make enough food for everyone else.
Sorry, there are no second chances. Joe user tried it, had a bad experience, and will forevermore avoid Linux. Techie, you lose.
Way back in the day I bought Kylix for Linux, thinking I would be on the wave of a new trend. After three days of intense research and fiddling, I got my notebook computer working, with sound, network, reasonable screen resolution, etc. I then spent about two days contemplating this, and decided that my target market (as an application developer) would not have the time, interest, or technical expertise to make Linux work. I chose not to write Linux applications for the same reason that I chose not to write Sharepoint applications; The user would have to jump through too many hoops before he/she even met the entry requirements to use my software.
False.
I wanted to buy a netbook at Best Buy but they said that customers are asking for it but the manufactures stopped making them.
Linux won't take off on the desktop until there until more familiar commercial software is available on that platform and better drivers support for gadgets like printers, cameras and scanners. What good is a free OS if I can't buy software for it or install the software that came with my new camera?
The big difference between the Mac OS and Linux on the desktop is the availability (and choice) of purchasing commercial packages like Microsoft Office, iTunes, etc. Yes, Adobe Flash and Java are available for Linux distros, but many of these nice, free, plug ins like Flash aren't bundled with the netbooks sold these days. What precisely is the problem with vendors such as Dell or HP bundling commercial drivers or packages on Linux? Why can't these netbooks give users the full experience out of the box without the pain?
I, for one, don't mind paying for and running commercial software on a free OS if this software was available (yes, I know I can purchase Oracle or DB2 for Linux, but what desktop users need them?). I don't have a problem with it it all. It certainly beats waiting for someone in the community to do it themselves.
Really?
I'm posting anonymous for a reasons but I'll get into a few projects that Postgres has helped me not only achieve, but make money with.
I was a software company that managed many millions of images, that company eventually sold to HP. It serviced names like Kodak and Walmart. You wouldn't know because it was white label. All powered by postgres.
I've written voice applications that now manages over 10's of millions of voice elements in archive. That product has made our organization million of dollars in revenue, and has never had a minute of downtime. All powered by Postgres.
I've written and own a billing system which manages transactions for hundreds of thousands of customers, totaling 20+ millions of transactions.
I've worked on almost 30+ other small pet projects, all of which have had abusive levels of load, and most importantly have created an environment where I've been able to make my own fortune with zero downtime.
The only problem I haven't been able to figure out with Postgres is a database that can scrub numbers against the national DNCL registery. Scrubbing hundreds of millions of records against hundreds of millions of records. I ended up abandoning the project for MySQL, put it on a machine with 32 gigs of ram, allocating 20g for index buffers and it worked like a snap. Only gotcha was disabling table indexes while bulk loading the large (250+ million tables).
Anyone that thinks Postgres isn't up to any 'serious' load is just simply not capable, or not the person that is writing the check for the software.
Commercial SERVER software has never been part of my software stack. That said, I do enjoy some commercial development tools (Textmate comes to mind) :) I feel much better contributing back to the projects in the form of paid consulting and support rather than shelling out, what would cost us, hundreds of thousands in server software licenses. There have been projects that I've done that have been thin enough margins, such software and license costs would of made it unviable.
The funny thing is, my partners and past associates have made millions on the back of Postgres and Java (Now Rails), and I don't think any of them realize or care which DB the systems have run on, only that it was free and most importantly worked.
They don't need to be; everyone already knows what they are.
First, the point was that Linux program names aren't inherently stranger than Windows'.
Second, familiar or not, the Windows app names I listed are definitely non-descriptive.
And here we are already, back to the problem pointed to in TFA.
I don't know what TFA said and wasn't replying to it. I was replying to someone who said that Linux app names were confusing and hard to find, and I assert that menu items like "Office -> Gnumeric Spreadsheet" are clear enough that this is no longer an issue.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The average user doesn't care what clever name you chose for your mail client, they just want to be able to get email working on their newly-bought PC with minimal fuss.
Study after study shows that people prefer branding to generics. "Firefox? Oh, just like on my PC!" is a lot more enticing than "Internet", which sounds like it should come in a white-labeled can with black text.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
In all honesty, I can't remember a time when I plugged in something on a Linux machine and it didn't just work a second after.
Refresh your memory:
No sound.
No Wi-Fi.
No 3D acceleration.
You really think something as complicated as programming will be something the majority of the population will know?
Is writing absurdly easier than programming? I don't mean being capable of writing down a grocery list, I mean being able to write an informative essay or a narrative story. You may think it is, but then if your education was similar to mine you've had 12-15 years of writing practice in school and college, from forming letter shapes to spelling words and diagramming sentences on up to writing 20 page papers. If you had had a decade of programming classes starting at age 6 you would find programming as easy as you find reading or writing to be now. (When I went through public school, there was a total of six weeks of learning computer programming out of the entire 12-year curriculum. Maybe there is more programming in the curriculum now.)
Farming is far more vital to day to day life, yet we have few farmers. Some peopel specialize at it and make enough food for everyone else.
They are only capable of that because farming is a tangible good where economies of scale can work well. Software isn't producing a tangible good, it's putting a thought process down in concrete form, just like writing.
Contemporary example: At every white-collar job I have worked, everyone has to deal with Microsoft Excel. Accountants, shipping clerks, administrative assistants, receptionists, engineers, doctors, managers, marketers, project managers, B2B liasons, everyone uses Excel. And every time someone opens up Excel, they are entering a realm where programming might make their job easier. Yet almost every one of those Excel sheets is unique to that situation. There is no way a few dozen or even a few hundred "Excel sheet companies" could provide all of the Excel sheets that everyone else uses in their jobs. Worse, we have obsoleted the ability to do those jobs without something like Excel: we can't go back to paper balance sheets, hand-crafted Gantt charts, etc. In our relentless drive for growth, we have caused Excel to become the new basic literacy. I believe that once enough people are used to programming in their day jobs, it too will become the new basic literacy.
I know that geeks think that being able to program a computer is the be-all, end-all of being smart but it really isn't.
I personally don't think programming is the ultimate bar for anything. I just think economics will force it to become more fundamental to modern life. I used to be paid to program full time, but I left the software industry in 2004 to be a chemical engineer. From a programming perspective, my skills are a bit dated (I've never touched Ajax or cloud computing or Plone/Facebook/Rails/etc.). But my non-bleeding-edge Java and Visual Basic skills have proven very valuable at work in my engineering role -- I've been able to perform certain optimizations that other engineers struggle with just because I know how to put together some I/O and simple calculations. One of those just saved the company $250K this year; the next might be worth $120K. My company seems to see me as an engineer-who-can-program, not a programmer-who-can-engineer. They also have accountants-who-can-program who produce more bang for the salary buck than accountants-who-can't. Same with chemists.
I actually wish modernity would slow down a bit and leave room for people to NOT have to be so business-skilled just to survive. I wish we could have more artists, musicians, amateur sports players, etc., who could make a decent living.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've played with linux for years, checking it out to see if it worked for average people yet. Ubuntu was (is) close. Now i've tried Dreamlinux 3.5. everything in that distro just works. I run it off a flash drive when i'm surfing the web. No issues. Flash is in and works. I can save materials to my NTFS drives very easily. this is a distro that could easily oust MS. It needs very little to work on the mass market. and that's the problem. there are scores of distros and none with the out of the box functionality like MS Windows. Except DL. The linux community needs to take a close look at itself. Most computer users use their computer as a tool. They don't want to learn the command line. that's why windows is sold today instead of DOS. Most people don't want to try and try to load flash; it should be in the distro. DL seems to recognize these issues. Its mp3 player is far superior to itunes and lets you drop and drag songs onto an ipod or off of an ipod.
Unless a distro like DL gets placed into the public's reach, linux on the desktop will continue to be a 1% specialist's os.
I looked, but didn't find any posts by me. I still don't recall when *I* plugged in something on a Linux machine and it didn't just work a second after.
It's also pretty amusing that out of all the links you gave, the only one that was even close to recent was a wi-fi issue caused by a PEBCAK error for a non-consumer-friendly distro (where you would expect these problems to arise with today).
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I have no idea what Visio is, and I work in tech. I am vaguely aware of what Visual Studio is, mostly through secondhand stuff people say here on Slashdot. Again, I work in tech. So, you were saying something about names?
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
So you want to rename Firefox "Internet?" GTFO.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on the netbook arena. They're just the only mainstream OS option available without resorting to breaking some EULAs and/or piracy. It's been quite clearly shown that there is a huge desire for Apple's Mac OS X to be made available to the netbook market. As it is, some people have gone to great lengths to install Mac OS X on the machines due to the underwhelming performance of Windows XP and the lack of commercial software support from the linux end.
Getting Mac OS X into the netbook arena resolves both issues, you get a stable, responsive OS with support for commercial produced software, while still having access to most of the open source market as well.
While the MacBook Air is arguably a "netbook", it lacks the size and form factor that has made actual "netbooks" like the Acer Aspire One, such a runaway success.
If Apple ever plans to penetrate the PC market with Mac OS X world-wide, the netbook market would be the best place to start. Netbooks generally aren't modified by end users in the same way desktop computers are, so Apple could easily develop a standard for officially supporting Mac OS X on them.
Once users have experienced Mac OS X on their netbook, they might even consider buying an actual Mac for their desktop machine.
The netbook market is something Apple really should consider embracing while users are still up in the air over which OS they want.
8==8 Bones 8==8
The use of netbooks, Open Source Software, and Linux must be critically evaluated with clear expectations. Using the wrong tool of the job is like trying to use a Mazda Miata to move a house, or worse, fuelling a diesel truck with unleaded. Use the right tool for the job or you will get poor results regardless of the quality of the tool.
In the real world, there is a place for netbooks, and a place for desktop replacement laptops, just as there is a place for closed source software and open source software.
If you need a computer on the go, and can deal with a slightly smaller keyboard, get a netbook.
If you want a 17" screen and are basically looking for a desktop unit with a built in UPS, get a big laptop.
If you want to go to Best Buy and grab software, stick with Windows.
If you want good purpose built software for free download, try Linux.
If you want stable, top dollar, industry standard software that surprises you with a bug now and again where the manufacturer will spend a lot of time fingerpointing to the OS or drivers, use closed source software.
If you want decent free or low cost software capable of 90% of the functions of closed source software with the occasional bug where the fix is on the net ready to be googled or the programmer will work to fix it, but may take a while, use open source software.
Find where those break over points are. These will be unique to the organization and the user. We use Fedora10 on the desktop on both laptops and netbooks in our office. These were chosen carefully a good fits. Your mileage will vary.
The REAL reasons M$ is gaining ground in this is due to a combination of vendor ignorance, marketing pressure, and manufacturers with no clue how to prepare a Linux machine.
If companies like Best Buy, etc. will not take the Linux versions, then the sales of Linux based netbooks is going to be weak.
With no financial incentive, it is even worse.
How do machines with a "free" OS happen to cost the same as ones with Windows?
Let's see, if we make the Linux ones with smaller, but more expensive SSDs, and sell them at the same price as machine with a HDD that is 4 to 8 times the size?
Hmm, what will the chains and consumers choose?
Add to this distis and manufacturers offering less and less Linux models.
Case in point:
eeePC 1002.
Specs show it comes in both Linux and M$ versions.
In fact, in N. America,ASUS are not shipping the Linux version.
Finally, calling Xandros "Linux" is a pretty sad situation.
Ever try using it?
Contrast this to eeeBuntu on the same hardware and the difference is astounding.
In the end it boils down to 2 things:
1) Vendor and manufacturer ignorance of how to prepare a Linux machine.
2) Sales channel fear of anything "unusual"
3) M$ marketing pressure and incentives.
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
and a Verizon wireless card, and those stupid face-morphing image programs, and a decent VPN client that supports whatever not-quite-standard firewall your small business uses, and Google Earth, and online poker software, and a typing tutor, and the Kinkos print driver, and a diet planner, and a genealogy program, and this lamp, and that's all I need.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
gimme a break :)
you've obviously never done tech support for office people. Very smart guys and girls, who have studied long years and still use winword.exe to browse their filesystem (you will notice when they call you panicking because all their files are gone: yes, they try opening excel sheets from winword and if you do not choose show all files, only word files are shown then).
So do not give me that crap. Users know very little about computers or applications (which is also the reason most IT guys and girls have jobs).
They just know winword = typewriter that can print documents after checking the spelling; oulook = something to send/open silly powerpoint attachments with; excel = for when they need printing something with a table in it. This caracterizes 99% of all their business needs. The other 1% is usually a webapp or with the company's database application.
Do you really think those people need ms office in their netbooks. Of course not. They just want to have what they use at work. So if at work they start using openoffice.org ...
Natxo Asenjo
I have no idea what Visio is. and I've been using computers since 1984, although not much Windows. Commodore, some pre-NT then over to *nix.
As a non-newbie, you imply I should know based on a name. but Visio means no more to me than it does to my cat.
Hell, knowing arithmetic, and a good deal more advanced math (like algebra)
Wait, what? Algebra is basic math. If you can't do algebra, you are unable to:
* shop effectively
* invest intelligently
* reduce a recipe for twelve into a recipe for one
* farm
* etc.
APK:
I use FLTK 1.1.7 in the course of my work. FLTK has a decent graphical GUI builder called FLUID. (IMO, it's better than anything that came out of Redmond between VS6 and VS 2003. [0]) I write about 50% of my GUI-driven code in the manner that billcopc describes. Why? The primary function of the bulk of the GUIs that I create is to kick off behind-the-scenes functions and to collect and pass parameters to them. If I've done all the necessary up-front design work, said functions can be stimulated by a CLI driver or a compiled testing driver or any number of things.
Don't get me wrong... the GUI also gets prototyped and mocked-up during the design phase. I simply don't require its presence for much of the coding phase.
[0] I have no experience with the GUI builders in VS 2008, so I can't compare the two.
I got an aspire one from Costco and returned it a month later and got a combo deal walmart was offering for the 160gb and Dual Capacity Battery for $5 more than I paid for the one at costco for an 120gb. I run Ubuntu and nothing else on mine, I just wanted the extra storage (yes I have a 32gb SDHC in it also, and have performed hacks to give it internal bluetooth and gsm modem) but I got rid of mine for the harddisk size and battery capacity and nothing else. I love my netbook.
But I had no intention of using Windows. MSI just doesn't sell a netbook with Linux anymore (Did they ever really? I can't find anyone who actually has one.) Anyway. I can't be alone in doing this. But the problem is my netbook is counted in the Microsoft column even though it shouldn't be. The numbers are skewed.
If it's more familiar, it's more usable, and therefore superior for users.
It's as if linux advocates measure "superiority" as an intrinsic quality, whereas users see superiority in terms of usefulness to them.
Obviously you haven't been on the EeePC Forums. The "dumbed down" version of Xandros is easily and simply bypassed to a full power-user level. The OS is not locked down, it's just presented in a hard-to-bollix format for non-power-users. And how hard is it to replace it with a full version of Xandros, or one of the various Ubuntu remixes for netbooks? Personally, I'm quite happy with the stock Linux on my Eee PC 901, but I'm hardly a power user.
actually, I have indeed been to the Asus Eee PC forums.
... Enable Advanced Desktop Mode - The Easy Way. Now everyone with an Asus EEE PC ( 2GB, 4GB or 8GB) can easily enable the advanced desktop using ..."
"The Feb 4, 2009
Oddly enough, my PC 900 is a 16G machine with NO "Advanced Desktop Mode" available.
The challenging part was installing Ubuntu in a way that wouldn't give me warranty problems if I had to send the unit back for warranty repair... i.e. installing it onto an SDHC card that actually works with the internal card reader. (I use the internal SSD with the OEM OS intact as a data drive)
If all you want from the Eee PC is net appliance functionality, it doesn't matter what the OS is, it's just fine.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Just glanced through your linked article. I installed ubuntu on a eeepc 900, and it was painless (I used the eeepc distrib, and then upgraded to more mainstream ubuntu)
On the netbook-remix interface, I removed the "maximizer" program from the session, and now windows aren't covering all the desktop, and the box is roughly usable.
You can still get Linux EEE PCs at http://www.newegg.com/ . They're the ones with the SSD drives. Matter of preference, but I consider the idea of a netbook with a HD a trifle silly. I expect a netbook not only to be lighter than a laptop, but more rugged. I'd like a netbook that at least has the chance of normal operation after it gets dropped.
Agreed about the desirability of an OS-free option.
As for a netbook on which wireless does not work in the OEM configuration . . . a vendor selling it deserves anything bad that happens as a result, up to 100% returns and/or including a class-action lawsuit. That isn't the fault of Linux, that's the fault of an idiot vendor.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Open Office runs just fine on an Linux Eee PC even in the OEM default configuration and equally well after replacing the toy OS with a real one. While one has to find the right UI desktop tab to make this possible, the difficulty is on the order of finding one's ass with both hands and a map.
Odd that your argument went from "it won't run high-end graphics software" to "Linux doesn't run MS Office" once you got called. Note that with Crossover Office installed, you don't even need XP to run MS Office should Open Office not fit your needs. However, OO should work fine for at least 95% of average MS Office users. Particularly since doing serious document editing on a netbook given the keyboard and monitor size is a Really Bad Idea regardless of OS, if I absolutely have to do it, I plug in an external "multimedia" PC USB keyboard. And would be doing this with any M$ OS as well.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Your case has highlighted two things that have bugged me for a while:
1. Red Hat has exited the desktop market a long time ago. Instead, their test bed community run distro (Fedora) is the desktop version. Red Hat Linux is mainly a server operating system.
2. I see dealers who consider only Red Hat and SuSE as viable commercially supported distros. The argument is that they have hardware support from the hardware vendors (HP, Dell, IBM, ...etc.)
When I mention that Ubuntu is really a mature desktop operating system, the argument is : the hardware vendors don't support it.
In your case, it was exactly the opposite of what the perception is: Red Hat and Dell did not provide a working solution, while Ubuntu did (indirectly).
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
I installed to an SDHC card plugged into the card reader to avoid hardware warranty issues, the OEM install is intact. I carry a USB card reader in case I have to read flash cards in the field, though that's really a plus, since the card reader is SD only and the card reader will read almost anything. Insisting on doing it that way was most of the pain, I went through 3 different cards on my reinstallation to an 8G card (not covered in the article, I did that months later) before finding one that worked. (A Kingston Class 4 8G SDHC card)
My netbook is 100% usable... though the minor irritations that go with Gnome are just severe enough that I may actually install KDE 4.2 on the netbook one of these days. But that's just a matter of adding new repositories, i.e. doing it the same way I would install it to a desktop Ubuntu Intrepid.
Tech Public Policy stuff
16G local storage is not a problem given the way I use the netbook. I have nxclient set up on the netbook and nxserver on my desktop. I don't keep work-related information on my netbook, if I need to access it, I remote-control to the desktop... and if I need more horsepower than the netbook has, I run programs on the desktop.
If my netbook gets stolen, it's merely a matter of replacing the hardware, I don't have to panic about what's on it, all I actually keep on mine is multimedia content, and a few hundred e-books.
Of course, this also means I have to be within range of an AP to do any serious work, but IMO, the tradeoff is worth it.
Tech Public Policy stuff
A few of the problems with Linux becoming more mainstream is:
a) Linux doesn't have any ads. People feel that a product that is advertised to them is superior then the one they have either never heard of or barely heard of. It's not unheard of for a company to make a no name product and turn around and make the same identical product for a brand name with only the tags being the difference. When people are looking at the 2 of them they will assume that the brand name that they have heard advertised to them is better then the no name just due to the familiarity even though it really is the same product.
b) Linux is free, Windows isn't. That effects the perceived value. This is one of the things that hurts Linux and helps other companys like Windows and Apple. People like to assume that the more they pay for a product the better it must be since you get what you pay for. If it's free then it can't be very good is the typical mindset.
c) Linux isn't Windows. This is the biggest issue people have when they get Linux the first time since a lot of people like to call Linux a Windows alternative. They hear Windows and assume it has to be an exact clone of Windows and freak out and declare its garbage because it isn't a clone of Windows. I find that the best way to help people use Linux is to tell them up front "This isn't Windows, it won't always do the same thing as Windows. It is also a brand new and difference OS then Windows so there is going to be a learning curve since it isn't Windows" I also point out that every problem I've had with Linux (Ubuntu 8.10 in my case) has been solvable by just googling "How to do X on Ubuntu 8.10" (that tends to be the biggest thing to help them relax). Giving these bits of truth from the start are good so they don't come into Linux with false idea's and feel like they were lied to and deceived.
I learned something new. Thank you. I assumed that the procedure that worked on my 701 would work on my 901, and if you are correct (I'll check later), it won't. Hmm.
I just couldn't get the really javascript heavy webpage I wanted to load to come up. It was ridiculously slow. I tried tons of treaking to FF and installed Opera which ran a little faster but still glacial. I was about to send the thing back when I found someone doing daily builds of Chrome (Chromium) and downloaded a version. THAT worked great. Faster than my home machine (iMac/FF), in fact.
So it may also be the software on these netbooks just isn't ready for such lightweight processors.
You can custom order any kind of hardware you want on a bare bones no-OS, linux-OS or windows-OS notebook from smaller OEMs like powernotebooks.com. They are building on the same chassis used by Dell, HP, etc and offer industry standard warranties and support. This is a good way to get gaming/Linux hardware for a laptop platform as you can get "real" video cards, without shelling out 3-4 large for a big name gaming laptop.
You will fail to use Linux optimally on laptops for these reasons:
1. hardware is too new, and uses all proprietary hardware that is designed to be "made for vista". Vista was designed with DRM in mind, the hardware is going to be bent in favor of closed source.
2. hardware sold with linux is designed to be "cheap" or "low power", which is not really the best market for linux, although it can do that. Linux users are no dummies, and the dummies are the ones returning the laptops (or netbooks).
3. Linux is best at driver minimization and unification. If you can get linux to run on hardware, that means the hardware is popular, is going to be well supported, and is non-proprietary meaning you should be able to find people that are familiar with it enough to fix it. Linux should be the watermark by which to determine if hardware is reliable. If it is "wintel" designed, it is going to make use of memory-sharing hardware that sucks down the CPU to add more features.
4. Linux is best on used/older laptops, people who pay for new hardware are the fools who pay for the bugs, every linux nerd knows this.. The market analysis data is flawed considering how it determines market adoption, by new laptop sales.
Just say no to license servers!!
This has been bothering me for along time, I have begun to see people covering up their sheer, unforgivable incompetence by claiming that it is the Linux way. Hard to use? Makes no sense even to Linux users? Stupid little two bit bullshit fuckups (I mean, that's what pisses me off, it's a bunch of little things that do matter, but are not rocket science damnit) left and right? just plain sloppiness and neglect?
"Oh, you should learn how to use it!"
"it's the Linux way!"
Makes me want to projectile vomit!
I swear, if my stuff were as shoddy as some of the bs I have seen on this ubuntu install (just STUPID SHIT!!!) I would shoot myself, some people have no dignity, no pride, no BALLS to do shit RIGHT goddamnit! If you are going to build something and release it, be responsible and get your shit together!!!!!!
The FLOSS/GNU/Linux way does NOT EQUAL INCOMPETENCE!!!! How come *BSD is fucking clean and tight and slick and stable and highly usable and beautiful!?!?!?!?!!?
I find sloppiness and half-assness to be unnaceptable! I have seen worse fuckups in some FOSS GNU/Linux than I have seen in M$FT stuff! That is disgraceful! Dishonorable. A travesty.
Someone, please enlighten me.
SARAVA!
I think it would be doing itself and the world a favor if Mocrosoft put Windows on top of Linux. It would also kick Stevie J.il in the made, too. Since the Linux community hasn't consolidated it's work into a compelling GUI shell to beat Windows, why not.
Or failing that, perhaps Stevie J. should do it with it's latest cat.
3D Planet Viewer
Google Earth
Bit Torrent Client
KTorrent
Download Manager
Kget
etc......
This is no worse than Windows, and in fact I can find the programs I want to run easier, I can remember a time when I installed some arcane named app on a windows box, and chose not to let the installer put the numerous shortcuts on the desktop and taskbar, then had a hell of a time finding it in the menu, because I failed to pay sufficent attention to the install process.
> Odd that your argument went from "it won't run high-end graphics software" to "Linux doesn't run MS Office" once you got called.
You're confusing my response with the other guy's.
My point is simple: Windows vs Linux on the "desktop", and Windows wins almost every time. When netbooks became regular PCs and not just internet appliances, MS owned the market.
However, I will note that netbooks are way more powerful than many systems I've run Photoshop on, so I wouldn't dismiss them purely on that account either.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Unfamiliar software and hardware are just one reason.
2. The main reason is there is no economic reason to install Linux. The cost of the OS and software are only a small fraction of the price and it's not worth the cost of having different models with another OS. Linux users will just install their favourite version anyway.
3. There is no Linux desktop, there are hundreds of them.
4. There is no performance gain. By the time you run Linux, X, KDE and GNOME and Open Office etc., XP with Chrome is faster.
Note there is an advantage over Vista, which is why Microsoft kept and discounted XP for netbooks. You can't claim Microsoft are dumping and old OS when the competition is free.
When Linux is useful is running a cut down system on low power devices, especially once XP is gone.
What The Fuck is Quicken!?!?!?!?
I would not know what is Visio and Visual Studio, unless I was in IT.
An literally, got to know what Visio meant only 2 years ago. I am in IT for 10 years!!!
Same story with Visual Studio. I learned of it's existence only by searching for a C++ compiler!
So really, this is utter nonsense that: "everyone already knows what they are. "
You mean for sufficiently popular applications. If the app you want, or the version of the app you want isn't in the repository, it's a *LOT* harder than in Windows to get that app working on your system.**
Compared to apps that are not supported by the current or mainstream MS OS? This never happens?
HaHaHaHa!
Where do you think slashdot got it's name from?
(hint: the './' command from *nix+play on words/terms)
Or for the newly converted from Windows:
R click on the app file, mark as 'executable', and then either dbl click>>'okay/ok/continue, or R click file and select either 'open in terminal' or 'open with X'
At any rate, get with the times. This has not really been an issue in recent years with *nix. This is just regurgitated FUD/misinformation that is severely outdated and just muddies the waters...not a bit helpful or constructive.
If you've ever tried to upgrade your RHEL kernel to a newer kernel than currently supported, you have to deal with getting those drivers into the kernel.. i know, i've had to do it.
And this is different in MS land, how...? If it's not supported, it's not supported, and will take work to implement...whether on a *nix distro, or a MS OS. What's your point, really?
We aren't fooled by the 'Chewbacca Defense' here! You need to try a different tactic.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Has it ever occured to you that maybe Microsoft has a monopoly because users don't want more variants of OS's?
Uhmm...no. It has occurred to me though, that most users accept what they use at work, and are offered by the OEM/retailers.
I have worked tech support before. You can't BS me. For most users:
1. have no clue how to make a new folder
2. have no clue they can save files to any other than the default location
3. have no clue that anything other than 'the Big Blue E' iss the internet
4. have no clue what an OS is, much less the faintest clue about how their PC works5. have no clue there is any choice except Mac/Apple, but that is viewed with suspicion of the unknown
5. this could go on forever, I'll just say Ad nauseam
I'm sure the very concept that users don't want 500 choices of something is hard for you to comprehend.
Then why do we have/want:
1. more than one TV channel
2. more than one musician/band
3. more than one menu item at a restaurant/bar/pub/inn/tavern
4. more than one...DO YOU GET THE PICTURE YET?
What a maroon!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I've learned that many people will move to Linux if the have the right help. In the past year I have helped over a dozen people with their Windows addiction, and now they are happily running Ubuntu 8.10. In the end it really comes down to users having a friend they can goto with their questions.
Just thinking aloud here. FOSS is the bulk produce section maybe: you have to retrain a bit to find out how many peaches is 20 ounces, but there are some rewards:...
The "Betty Crocker Cookbook" is your friend here. A lot of good stuff that applies to your excellent analogy.
This is where someone usually will chime in with "RTFM, n00b!", or refer you to the manpages for peaches. I'm not complaining, as I am one of those that would be naturally inclined to 'RTFM', and the manpages before asking. I value independence, knowledge, and self-sufficiency...not just with computers, but in general.
It is a culture clash.
F/OSS points you towards independence, and MS wants to lead you by the hand.
Two fundamentally opposed perspectives on OS implementation. I expect both cultures to survive in their sphere of influence.
I, for one, welcome our new bulky peach overlords!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
... if it weren't riddled with fanboyism and aggressive language.
In contrast, although far from superior, Windows provides [...] Once again Microsoft's monopoly means Windows is swallowing up another market.
Wrong. Fail. Abort. Windows is swallowing up another market because Linux doesn't belong on the average user's netbook, for the same reasons it doesn't belong on the average user's desktop. It is a usability nightmare, you need to be a network engineer AND programmer to fix it when it breaks, and perhaps most importantly the Linux community is hostile and unhelpful toward non-techies.
I am a network geek and programmer, and I still get pissed off at Linux on a daily basis because things that should just work, do not.
I think you're completely wrong ; the netbook indeed, and specifically linux based netbooks totally belong to the average user, because (s)he's unlikely to severly push the enveloppe.
The problem is you, as a category, the so-called power users, high priests of a low cult, as some have put it.
A real computer geek is a new product first adopter ; he knows what to expect, and is not surprised nor set back by minor difficulties. A true average user wouldn't be upset either : the dumbed down, tab based interface has nothing different from his cell phone, and he doesn't expects to use his netbook more than his desktop or laptop anyway.
The real problem is the intermediate population of people knowing in fact nothing about computers that's not Windows based, and unwilling to learn a couple of new tricks. They are the one force feeding windows upon their unwilling famillies, coworkers and friends, because they bluffed their way to be seen as last resort authority about everything computer related, while all they truly master is image / Format / reinstall / image back.
This is how we happen to have a full thread about photoshop, when, truly, WTF ? Photoshop on a 9 inches wide screen ? Are you sir serious ? Oracle ? On a freakin' netbook ? C'mon !!
If power users could have more sense than money, netbooks would all be powered by linux, and Acer, Asus and the likes would really feel a desserved market pressure to streamline the quirks in their systems.
But as long as they feel with reason that power users are buying prescriptors for the masses, we're going to be showered under countless Windows-running clones, because Windows is a flattering system for those seeking cheap fame and admiration. It's good enough for doing some work at the expense of constant tinkering, and it offers countless opportunities to some people to hang on a "political" power, one that doesn't require actual knowledge but a toolbox of dirty tricks to help clean a mess they created in the place by favouring the wide deployment of windows solutions.
This power users are heinous of unix because there's no way on earth they can hide their shortcomings in front of a unix box. If you have no true knowledge of the system, no kitchen recipe will ever help you out. As such, unix (or linux) undermines already filled positions of authority and power over the average crowd.
That's why mainstream linux must die : it makes some infatuated people, full of themselves, redundant. And that's not acceptable for them.
Its not complicated - really, its not. People want windows. 100's of millions of people, over years and years and years. Even the ones that pirate it want it. More here on my blog: http://iamtheblackfish.blogspot.com/2009/04/linux-on-netbooks-its-not-complicated.html
I think the real problem is the distribution the netbook manufacturers deliver with their netbooks. Like the ASUS EEE for example. It has a complete custom interface that people aren't familiar with on notebooks or PCs. Also every manufacturer delivers another distribution. Why don't they all deliver Ubuntu on their netbook? It is the most standard distro at the moment and it has a more familiar look and feel for most people.
You make me think of a new feature to add (is already present ?) in packet managers to extract the list of package that have been installed by the user. You can even add a mapping function from a version of the distro to another one to do hardware migration easily.
It's fairly easy to prove that the problem with Linux on vendors is in fact the drastically customized version of Linux that's sold on them, not Linux itself.
Here are customer reviews of a Linux netbook, about 95% of which mention replacing the ASUS OEM Xandros OS. Of those, almost everybody replaced the OEM OS with some form of Ubuntu, a handful replaced it with XP, one user replaced with Vista and is wondering why not all peripherals work. One person said he's tried both Xandros-OEM and Ubuntu and prefers Xandros. Linus Torvalds wasn't a Newegg customer, he publicly announced that he replaced Xandros on his Eee PC with Fedora Core.
When the great majority of users replace an OS / UI with something else, one can conclude that the OS / UI has big problems, which it does. I suspect that if XP had gotten the same kind of UI that various incompetents have foisted on Linux, people would be dumping XP just as fast.
A reasonable test of Linux v XP on netbooks would involve the regular Linux desktop UI vs the XP UI. That isn't what happened.
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I dropped in on a Newegg customer review page of the version that succeeded my PC900... the OEM OS was dumped by users with startling unanimity. The advantage of changing out the OS my way is that if you ever have to return the netbook for warranty service, all you have to do to get it ready to ship (assuming you got your data off) is to pull the SDHC card out of the internal card reader.
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Forgive me for the title but I just had to.
Down to the point. After I bought my EEE 900 I endured a whole half a day before I shrieked in desperation and installed ubuntu on it.
Now that's me. Any other person with average computer skills probably would have found the Xandros tab system quite comfortable and easy to work for their e-mails and surfing. They probably would have freaked out and grabbed their seat when discovering the "voice command" option while shouting nervously: "Honey... Honey, come look what my netbook can do!".
Anyway, the thing is, I believe that anyone buying a netbook with linux that has no previous linux experience, is either going to return it during the first week or give it as a gift to "that computer nerd cousin that does my taxes".
On the other hand, anyone complementing their linux desktop with a netbook running linux, will find the same experience, good and bad counted.
As in any OS.
"I'm taking this loop off." - Jack O'Neill
"the problem boils down to a combination of unfamiliar software and unfamiliar hardware, which can 'push users over the edge.' This accounts for the allegedly high return rates of Linux netbooks"
If there was any truth in the unfamiliarity portion of the above analysis then where is the high return rate for Macs?
./filename perhaps sudo etc.
I have friends who've purchased Linux netbooks (EEE etc) use them for a week or two and then ask me how they can put Windows on it. It seems to me that unfamiliarity is an unhelpful oversimplification of what is going wrong.
Although things are better than they have ever been for desktop Linux, and getting better constantly, Linux is still soundly thumped on usability by Mac OSX and even Windows.
Which is exactly why Macs hardly get returned because they are not Windows, because Mac OSX doesn't really have any showstopping problems and oh if you don't like OSX that much you can easily have Windows XP/Vista by Boot Camp or Fusion.
From my experience one reason was installing software, not the lack of software choice. Next general usability problems, a rather limited in power perhaps dumbed-down GUI, and for everything else there is the Shell with it's prohibitive learning curve and epic discover-ability failure.
So you want to open a application you have on a USB key? Ok so you quickly double click on the binary, but that doesn't work, doesn't this know what to do with a binary? So you google to find out what is wrong. It turns out you need to open terminal, chmod +x,
The important point to note here is that, these things are NOT possible for a novice to figure out by herself without consulting documentation or Googling, or asking someone who knows. Indeed I know enough to help people, but I can't help seeing their side of the argument. You can see someone laying down a few hundred bucks on a new laptop starting to question the return on their investment when they encounter showstopping usability problems. Also I recall be asked something like "This is bullshit. Can I have Windows back now pls".
The problem is the novice doesn't have benefit of prior initiation into the Linux universe. With no understanding why these things are the way they are in the first place, you could be forgiven for asking who wrote this crap?
Basicly it disappoints me, that the netbook OS developers didn't try to resolve some of these long-standing usability problems from the bleeding-obvious department. They should also be stongly communicating the free and open nature of linux, which goes a long way to helping people understand they paid for the hardware, not for the operating system.
As more people learn what Linux is about things will change, and usability is improved, along with the sentiment towards the end user in developers throwing them a bone or two.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Er.. Windows is free.. isn't it? :)
It has circumventable copy protection and installs on anything. Mac OSX: not so much.
The ever present shadow-ecosystem that piracy provides is actually a nice feature. Despite Microsoft's proprietary license, their OS is comparatively more Free as in Freedom than we care to admit.
So Windows is trivially pirate-able and on 90% of the worlds computers. You think that is a coincidence?
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Yep and I've noticed lately that every month whenever there is a windows update the stupid WGA thing would pop up. Very annoying for somebody who deals with PCs all day long and the shop is 100% legit. Sheesh
Seems Microsoft is getting worried now about losing revenue due to Linux and whatnot. It's their restrictive practices is making me want to scream, "I wish we're all Linux shop!". Ah well. It's a curse which I have to live with since my users won't really want to deal with a new operating system and we're 99% WinXP shop.
My gf's problem was slightly different. The linux that came with her Aspire 1 ran ok but whe wasn't familiar with the layout or apps (why a proprietary mail client???) so she asked me to put something else on. She was used to Ubuntu so I installed the netbook remix... slow as a dog. I don't know why and don't have the time to figure it out but for her she is faced with a disappointing choice. When the next release comes out next week I'll try that for her; if that doesn't do it then I suspect she is going to want to go to XP.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
M$ fanbois.
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Thank you, I did a test today with each scheduler and it seems like anticipatory is the best :)