Slashdot Mirror
Shuttleworth Says Ubuntu Can't Just Be Windows
ruphus13 writes "When Mark Shuttleworth was asked what role WINE will play in Ubuntu's success, he said that Ubuntu cannot simply be a better platform to run Windows apps. From the post, according to Shuttleworth, '[Windows and Linux] both play an important role but fundamentally, the free software ecosystem needs to thrive on its own rules. it is *different* to the proprietary software universe. We need to make a success of our own platform on our own terms. if Linux is just another way to run Windows
apps, we can't win. OS/2 tried that ...' The post goes on to say, 'Linux simply isn't Windows (nor is Windows Linux) and to expect fundamentally different approaches (and I'm not just thinking closed versus open) to look, feel, and operate the same way is senseless.'"
I like it much better.
On windows I can't set up my own dns forwarding proxy with a few simple commands, or add a powerful compiler or set of scripting language interpreters and libraries with equal ease.
Ubuntu is great for me. I don't give a crap about running windows apps.
Time to eat your own ass.
I've never bearded a dragon, that sounds difficult. What if the dragon hasn't gone through puberty yet? :-o
Joking aside, I disagree. Linux needs to be good (and easy, if you want the same market share and same market demographic) at the SAME THINGS, but not necessarily the SAME PROGRAMS. There's a vast difference.
Now, being able to go between the two - including file formats - is important. But I don't need to run, say, MS Office on Linux. I do use OpenOffice 3 and it works well (except for Impress, last time I tried using it). And going between MS and OO.org isn't a problem, for the most part.
Firefox, chatting (I even used Pidgin on Windows), etc.
Where I see Ubuntu (8.10 and just upgraded to 9.04) right now is multimedia. Video playback isn't all that great, Flash video full screen is jerky (not related to sound) ... (I know, video drivers [ATI], but you're not going to convince the average person that Linux IS better, it's ATI that's the problem...). Sound can sometimes get tied up between applications. PulseAudio is not very standard yet and doesn't work with all apps. Songbird is an OK itunes replacement but it's not as good. Amarok 2 doesn't play well with Gnome/ALSA/Pulse as far as it running and other sound-enabled apps running.
I think the Linux community needs to focus more on being able to do the basic stuff easily and well, and forget trying to run Quake 3 or Far Cry or Half-Life 2 [or whatever] with a higher FPS than native in Windows.
(and by the way, lest anyone think I'm just an Ubuntu guy and not a Linux guy, I used opensuse and only recently switched to ubuntu [after trying a variety of other ones, including Mint, Mandriva, etc) at home, and redhat/SLES[/hpux/solaris/aix] at work)
Well, I use Cygwin...or more precisely CygwinX ...basically cygwin, with xwindows thrown in. I fire up cygwin. Start X from that...and open up a bunch of xterm windows. Works pretty well...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
To me the difference between purchasing Windows and choosing to go open source can be compared to the difference between getting a Dell desktop or going to Newegg and making your own.
Sure you can save a lot of money at newegg and make a powerful machine. You need to assemble it yourself (which for myself was much fun). Service wise its only adequate. I had a DVD burner break down, it was still under warranty I consulted my return policy, did what I had to do and had a new DVD burner back in my machine in a week.
But with Dell. You pay much more for a really good rig. You dont have to assemble it (and while assembly is fun - it can be a hassle). Service wise, as someone who works in the industry - Dell is fantastic. With the right warranty they will send a local technician straight to your office to repair anything. Peace of mind can be bought. You can have a warranty so good you can toss your insanely expensive laptop out a window for kicks and have it replaced shortly.
As long as there are people in the world who cant handle the extra hassle of servicing open source - there will be a market for Windows. But given the direction the world economy is taking that could change fairly soon (in my lifetime anyways). Right now whoever provides the best service wins. And in an environment like Open Source. Its hard (not impossible) to guarantee top notch service. Sad but true.
And this has been another installament of Captain Obvious!
The cost is beside the point.
I am a long-time Linux (and much more recently OS X) user, and if I am presented with a piece of software that requires Windows to run it, I usually prefer to just do without.
Fortunately in my discipline (biotech) developers are beginning to realise there are alternatives - for instance, Geneious is a stupendously fine example. It's definitely not free, but it is available on multiple platforms, which is a big step away from where we were a couple of years ago.
Compare this with Endnote which is rapidly losing ground to Zotero because the developers refuse to cooperate with the *nix world.
Look at the history.
If IBM had gotten its shit together and gotten OS/2 out the door in the early 1990s as originally intended, Windows would have been known only as the GUI interface. Windows would have been to OS/2 as Gnome is to Ubuntu: a pretty front end to a powerful and secure operating system.
But OS/2 was crippled by infighting among the divisions of IBM, and was tilting at windmills in its pursuit of true multitasking on the Intel 80286 microprocessor. (One of the best quotes ever from Bill Gates was when he described the 286 as being "brain dead"). While IBM got itself all tangled up trying to do something never done before-- true pre-emptive multitasking on a microchip with all the appropriate security that would need-- Microsoft took advantage of an escape clause in its contract to develop Windows for IBM, and tied this GUI front-end on top of DOS, which could not do multitasking and had no security model at all. Micorsoft also jumped over the 286 and developed for the 80386 microprocessor (then backfilled to provide some limited capabilities on the 80286). Thus Win3.0 came on the scene, complete with "cooperative multitasking"-- which meant no true multitasking at all.
If OS/2 had been released even as late as 1992, Microsoft would have been unable to compete with its technical superiority. We would have OS/2 and not Windows. A lot of things would have happened very differently... the delay in OS/2 was a significant historical cusp.
Will
I completely agree. Synaptic and the whole "Add/Remove Software..." (I think that's what Ubuntu calls it) thing are fundamentally different ways of obtaining software than what people are used to with Windows or Mac. I told someone today that I had only paid for one (non-game) piece of software in my life, and they thought I meant I was a huge pirate or something. "Download" has become synonymous with "illegal" for most people and telling folks they can just download whatever software they want for free is going to require some serious de-indoctrination.
When that lightbulb goes off in someone's head that they can download any of the software in that big list for free, legally, and easily, and then that it (generally) just works... it's a beautiful thing. That's when I think people start to realize how awesome OSS can be.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
And with Windows it's Right-click on 'My Network Places' -> Properties. Then pick the connection ->Properties. Pick the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) option ->Properties. All mouse-driven, all GUI, all easy. Adjust away.
That's the difference. With Ubuntu|Linux, you've got to *know* how to get to the Terminal, then you've got to type stuff, then you've got to edit config files. Then restart things. Then something else breaks, which requires not the usual 'Add/Remove' program function to fix it, but a trip into 'sudo aptitude blah-blah-blah'. Then maybe that works, maybe it doesn't. Of course, it's trivially easy to find umpteen tutorials on *how* to do this stuff. Linux-lovers get excited over that. And that's totally cool. And I'll buy the argument that it is "better" to actually learn how your O/S works. But casual users, mainstream users, money-spending users, no way. They just want it to work.
I have three notebooks; one running Vista, one running Ubuntu 9.04, and a Macbook. I use them interchangeably, depending on what I'm doing. Ubuntu 9.04 is the best release of Ubuntu yet, but it's still kludgy compared to Vista or Mac. And when things break in Ubuntu (like when my WiFi simply stopped working after a recommended update & reboot) it required quite a bit of troubleshooting and 'tinkering' to get it working again. After a half-hour, I was back in business. But it required a half-hour of work to fix. Enjoyable fun for the computer nerd. But not for Grandma. People want apps that are easily installed, easily removed, and consistent in their method of installation.
And until some Linux distro figures that out (Ubuntu 9.04 is *damn* close) they'll never capture enough market share to hit critical mass. Based on the improvements I've witnessed from Ubuntu 6.xxx through today's 9.04, they may be there by Ubuntu 10 or 11. Here's to hoping. :-)
"Even reasonably non-technical dumbasses could do such a thing in windows."
No they can't.
But this does not solve your problem. How have you tried to do it? Perhaps we can help.
Every single person in my dorm in college in 1998 was able to figure this out on their first day with no help from the school. They were all using Windows or Mac OS Whatever Was out Then. I can't comment on the difficulty of setting up a static IP in Ubuntu, but in windows and MacOS, even 10.5 years ago it was trivial for even first time computer owners.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
There is a proper time to push WINE compatibility with Ubuntu -- after a few major industry players, as you describe, put out an Ubuntu version of their software.
The key is to get a user's most important apps running natively, so that there's an incentive to switch. Then you add the compatibility layer for their other miscellaneous apps to take away the disincentive to switch.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
We casual computer users will use the applications we find unless they don't do what we want.
I never wanted to learn computer science, I wanted to use a word processor instead of a typewriter back in 1990 when I got my first PC. I used WordPerfect-5.1, had to learn DOS memory management to get WP to run in (faster) expanded memory mode. Note I said "had to" not "wanted to." I even wrote macros to make editing docs more rational than WP's infamous interface.
When Windows 95 came out, DOS was obviously deprecated, and I got on the upgrade treadmill, installing WP-6.0a for WIndows. Alas, my macros wouldn't work. Also I hated Windows' registry. I could still run WP-5.1 under DOS, but W95 kept crashing under it.
I tried Linux in 1997. Got SuSE 5.0 installed and it was ugly. Tried again in 1998 when WP ported version 8 to Linux. My distro was Caldera 1.3; I liked KDE, which seemed more advanced than W95 to me, and ran WP-5.1 under DOSemu. I moved to Red Hat 6.0, which I used for six years, learning to update and upgrade with RPM and by compiling. By then, I needed a newsgroup client; Pan was just coming into existence, and I volunteered to build RPMs for that project while using NX under Wine as Pan was still unstable as all hell.
Now I use an Ubuntu variant and run WP-5,1 under QEMU. Pan is now useful, so I quit using FA; VLC, Dragon Player, Gnome viewer and Digikam have replaced Irfanview under WINE for me. Ytree has replaced Xtree Gold. Sylpheed mail replaced Forte Free Agent under Wine.
I found Linux programs I needed on the internet, gradually, over time, the same way I found Windows apps.
As I said, I never *wanted* to learn CS. But I have, I have.
And doubtless many other unwilling CS hobbyists will do the same, find Adept or Synaptic and explore it, or find mention of an app on the internet and try to install it.
Shuttleworth is quite right, but after almost twenty years, I have NOT replaced WP-5.1 with emacs or the like; I most profoundly do NOT want to learn another macro language. WP-5.1 serves me very, very well still, thanks to Freedos http://www.freedos.org/ Ultimate Ubuntu and QEMU.
Out of curiosity did the machine have an onboard graphics card? When Vista was launched I noticed alot of hardware manufacturers selling machines (laptops in particular) with 512MB of ram and 128MB Intel on board graphics cards. That in effect meant the machines had 384MB of ram.
When XP was launched on board graphics cards were 16MB at most (more often 4MB). When the manufactures did that they were selling machines which had 92% of the recommended ram. When Manufactures sold Vista machines they were selling them with 60% of the minimum required ram. In modern terms its the equivilent of running XP on 48MB's of ram. Possible but makes the system seem like a bloated piece of rubbish.
I honestly think most of Vista's perception problems were caused by manufacturer's being stingy on their hardware and lazy in writing their drivers.
Yes.
Freedom is great. However, freedom requires choices. Choices impede adoption. Imagine there was one Linux distro. Well, now to convince people to try it out, they have to partition their drive and set up a dual-boot. Icky, but a well-written setup program can accomidate this. So, let's say you can make a Windows installer that re-partitions the drive, and installs Linux, sets up the dual-boot properly. Now, you can convince people to download and try Linux.
Now, every choice you make means I have to try to research what I want, and every bit of extra time you ask for me to make a choice between two things, I have three options. A, B or screw it.
I don't mind reparitioning and installing a new OS... I did that so I could dualboot 2000 and XP. But I really don't want to have to make tons of little choices. I don't give a shit, but my pride doesn't let me choose arbitarily. Give me one thing that works. I don't want to tinker with the OS.
So, KDE + Gnome slows adoption by quite a bit, which means that fewer people write apps, which has a chilling effect, etc.
Sure. And as a developer I have to do dig through a heap of inaccurate documentation. I hate it. But my customers (for the reasons I outlined above and many others) use Windows. I create software to make money, so I create software for Windows.
And yes, we try to abstract out the OS, so that we can port it later. But it's never been worth our while to actually do so.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Aside from running Photoshop and Quicken, it does everything a computer should do, perfectly. I run work and entertainment applications. Play movies, browse the web, play music, invert matrixes, find eigenvalues, do fourier transforms, administer databases, etc.
And what I don't need to do: no need to run virus scan, no need to defrag disks, no need to buy memory upgrades, no need to buy software, no need to run regedit, etc.
What windows can do but is much easier in Linux: run a web server, run a mail server, run a file server, run *any* server.
No hassle, no regedit, no googling forum after forum looking for answers, no downloading drivers, no reformatting, no reinstalling. The "and more" that Linux does perfectly now is what a computer should do, it runs year after year without any intervention. I have a Linux server running without *any* input at all since 1992. It does its simple task exactly as it was meant to.
On the desktop side, the "and more" means I can configure my desktop and icons in the way I prefer without any problem, I just select whatever I want without having to worry about "security". The system is secure because it was designed that way, I don't need to buy or download anything. I can configure the way the desktop works. I can select between several different desktop managers. High performance (KDE), easy to configure (Gnome), low hardware requirements (IceWM), you name it.
And, if something doesn't work the way it should, I have no need to reformat and reinstall, download newer drivers, repeat, ad infinitum. With Linux there's always one more resource, google the problem and you'll find a forum somewhere with the answer, even if it means you'll have to recompile something. It's better to recompile than to fall back to reformat and reinstall...
First of all, what percent of academic writing includes typeset equations? A very small percentage.
Secondly, if I could get style files for the journals I publish in, I would seriously consider LaTeX. But since I can't, it's certainly not worth my time to learn. I've looked into it three separate times over the past 8 years, but its never been close to user-friendly enough for me.
And ps: while I don't do it for a career, I have coded many times. I'm not ignorant. I just know what I want to spend my time doing.