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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.
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. :-)
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.
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...