Slashdot Mirror
Should Being Competitive With Windows Matter For Linux?
An anonymous reader writes "Is Linux being held back by distributions bent on competing with Microsoft Windows? This article argues that it's a real possibility. Quoting: '... what was apparent early on during my Linux adoption was my motivation for making the switch in the first place — no longer wanting to use Windows. This is where I think the confusion begins for most new Linux adopters. As we make the switch, we must fight the inherent urge to automatically begin comparing the new desktop experience to our previous experiences with Windows. It's a completely different set of circumstances, folks. ... The fact that one platform can support a specific device while the other platform cannot (and so on) doesn't really solve the problem of getting said device working. You can see where this dysfunction of thought can become a big problem, fast."
Just because some distros try to act like windows doesn't mean others can't or that it's going to cause others to not try something new. How else would we have 4000 of them?
Linux has a 90% share in supercomputers, a 50% share in servers (+/- 10%), and a pretty good share of cell phones and other mobiles, if you include Android and other semi-proprietary systems. The only place to expand into it the desktop, where the market share is at most 5%. So, why not?
can be anything we want it to be. It is, after all, open source and can be modified to suit many different purposes. Should Linux compete directly with Windows? That's a stupid question. Linux should do what the user wants and if that happens to put it on a collision course with Windows then so be it.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
There is hardly a soul on this planet who's life is not touched by linux in some fashion every single day. Windows has another chunk taken out of it every day it is death by a thousand cuts. If things continue on the path they currently are nearly everyone is going to be running around with linux in their pocket and soon. I saw a guy today with a droid in one hand and a kindle in the other, now that brought a smile to my face.
Got Code?
I half agree. Linux does not have to be "like Windows" to be suitable as a Desktop OS. It does however help people make the transition, and it could certainly use the market share in order to influence driver developers and video game developers to think of Linux. There is something to be said for keeping the things that make Linux lovers love it, but this is the beauty of having hundreds of distributions.
Linux must compete with Windows if there is ever going to be a "year of Linux on the desktop."
That would force manufacturers to release more compatible products, perhaps even contributing drivers to the kernel. It would spur the release of more commercial software, and gather more interest in the open source software that already exists as well as fostering new growth there.
Computers would be cheaper, as there wouldn't be a Windows tax, and additionally there would be more form factors available. How about ARM laptops with 30-40 hour battery life? Oh, sorry, that's not really happening now because manufacturers are afraid their customers will be confused, and they are afraid of losing their partnering bribes - I mean "incentives" with Microsoft.
Linux on the desktop, from the store, for average people, with first-party support, is extremely desirable for the future of computing. One thing that would be nice is to see some Linux games. Oh sure, you can run Wine or one of the commercial variants of Wine, but most people are just going to stick with Windows.
It's huge in embedded things as well.
Sent from my PDP-11
then buy Windows.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
If the objective is to be a desktop OS that everyone can use then yes you are defacto competing with Windows. That doesn't mean doing everything just like Windows does but it does mean competing.
Also if you want to compete EFFECTIVELY it does mean trying to do the things that Windows can do. That doesn't mean looking or acting precisely the same, but it means being able to handle the same kinds of tasks with the same (or better yet less) effort.
Remember that to most people computers are tools. They have various things they want to accomplish with them, and they want the tool to be easy and helpful in doing that. As such, to win them over you need to be able to accomplish their tasks, and to do so with a minimum of fuss.
Expecting people to be willing to troubleshoot and learn more about Linux is complete bullshit. It is effectively being lazy, it is saying "We can't make our shit work right or be easy to use, so we expect you to pick up the slack and learn to deal with it." That is NOT an acceptable solution, because the response from people will be "Fuck you, I'm not using it then." They don't want to become experts in computers, they just want to use them to accomplish whatever it is they are after.
It is no coincidence that as computers have gotten easier to use, more people use them. Back when computers were first invented not only were they expensive, but you practically needed an advanced degree to operate them. You had to program them in raw machine code, every program was something newly created, you had to solve electrical problems, etc, etc. There were just few people that could deal with that. As things got successively easier, more friendly, the world of computing was opened to more people.
Now it is fine to feel Linux shouldn't go the desktop route, that it should be a server/embedded OS and desktop use should be primarily incidental. However if you want it to flourish in the desktop market then that means it does have to compete with Windows and it does have to get easy to use. "Recompile your kernel," are words that must utterly vanish from any normal kind of support, source code is something a user can't be aware of needing, the command line should be for experts only, and so on.
To try and think otherwise is not only arrogant, but myopic. You only have to look at the world to realize the vast complexities of things out there, and how much we must all specialize. To decide that computers are the one special thing that everyone should want to become interested and expert in is silly.
Linux didn't kill Windows, it killed commercial unix.
Who are these mythical registry-hating end users? Nobody in my family has ever run regedit. If I asked my mom to tell me what the registry is she'd tell me that's where she renews her license.
Normal end users don't hate the registry. Half-wits who think they're power users and screw things up tweaking shit are usually the ones that hate the registry.
i recently had to resurrect a computer that had been running winXP and then the hdd died... i went out and got win7 (32bit) figuring id just upgrade to the latest/greatest... when the first post-install boot did not recognize anything useful on my mobo (ethernet, sound, video) and i was running in 1024x768 (i think) mode, i went online to see if i could find updated drivers (particularly for the ethernet)...
guess what ? my mobo (asus p5rd1-vm) was one of the ones that did NOT make the cut to be supported in win7... uhm, hello ? there were drivers for vista, but they didnt really load up or work for me (unsupported windows version msgs)...
finally, i gave up - grabbed a local copy of ubuntu-10.10 and sure enough - everything just-worked !!! ethernet, sound, video - it was all good...
this is the first time in my many years of reinstalling os systems that id EVER had this reverse-issue.... usually i was trying some latest/greatest linux version and struggling to get my sound-card-drivers working, whereas windows was always ok...
windows-7 is the final straw (i remember the horrible forced-transition from dos to 16-bit windows, then 32-bit, and now basically 64-bit)... linux is the way to go - and ive been installing it on several friends machines - and theyve all been doing fine...
Competing with Windows for customers ranges somewhere between silly and stupid. If you want more Linux on the desktop, you need to court developers and software vendors.
Linux works great as an OS. It has penetrated servers well because the server software (both new and inherited from other Unixes) is great. It has penetrated the embedded market largely because new apps were written for it and the new devices. It has penetrated embedded markets because they write everything they need anyway, except the kernel and maybe the C libraries give them a head start.
What you need to break into the desktop market with established applications from established application providers is applications as good or better. If you give gamers the chance to install games from EA, Valve, Blizzard, Bioware, and id on launch day, they will come. If you get Photoshop or some absolutely full-featured replacement for it on Linux, you'll get many of those users from Windows or Mac. If you get a true replacement for Peachtree and Quickbooks, you'll get more small businesses using Linux as their accounting desktops.
People who seem to understand network effects when it comes to social networking sites, instant messengers, P2P, etc. seem to forget all about them when it comes to desktop platforms. The more classes of application in which your platform is the leading installation target for the best apps, the more valuable your platform is. Linux has this for servers, embedded devices, and to some degree mobiles. If you want it to be a major desktop player, it needs this for desktops, too.
Personally, I use Linux on the desktop far more than Windows and I have for years. I still need some Windows or Mac systems around for the applications I just can't run well on Linux. I say "Windows or Mac" because most of the applications I can't run on Linux properly have versions for both of those platforms.
Linux doesn't even need to take developers from Windows to become much bigger on the desktop. It could become a third platform for companies supporting Win and OS X. It could become a second platform for companies doing Win or Mac. It could even replace OS X as the second platform for some software companies that do windows and Mac now. Adobe comes to mind, as they are practically at war with Apple right now anyway.
I think it's a mistake to pigeon hole Linux specifically for this type of question. A more pertinent question should be more about having an open source operating system alternative to Windows. There's no reason to use generic Linux for that specifically. There is definitely a reason to replace Windows with open source though.
If I am competing, I sure hope my opponent is running Windows.
Got Code?
"The only place to expand into it the desktop, where the market share is at most 5%. So, why not?"
Because it requires linux development to embrace the following:
- Interface design that specifically and completely bars programmers from participating
- Abandonment of 99% of the distros
- Acceptance of proprietary drivers when offered (normal people don't give a damn about open source philosophy)
- Provision of real, available, phone-based technical support
- Real, complete documentation
I have seen someone mocked for buying one package when some pinhead thought another would be more appropriate for the application. It was something like, "Well, what did you expect picking that? It's like you wanted to fail." Most people here have seen PLENTY of derision of new users.
Why not? Because a lot of the community is poison for end users. That's why not.
Consolidate, standardize, and corporatize. Staff and support. Advertise. Court developers. In other words, build a better Microsoft.
Or, remain "pure", disjointed, and niche on the desktop. Rule the world from the server. Personally I think linux should abandon the desktop. By the time they get there, technology will have made the point moot.
Very interesting discussion. For a time I used Ubuntu 10.04 and finally I think there is a version for the average person. However, there is a problem. Myself and a bunch of other people have quite a bit of money and time sunk into windows programs. I've heard all the arguments and have used openoffice myself. It is pretty good! But it doesn't have absolutely 100% compatability with office and I don't have time to play around with that unless it works right with word, excel, etc formats perfectly every single time without a hitch. That is not a realistic expectation though. Basically, until there is an easy way to run all windows programs (or nearly all of them) under linux without a lot of hassle and configuration and to where it is a one or two click install people are not going to bother with it. We can kid ourselves all night and all day for the next 20 years that people should be using linux. But if they already have windows on the computer they bought and linux won't run the software they've already invested 100's in then I don't see it happening. I know there is crossover office which is pretty good but that is not a solution for 99%+ software compatability. WINE is impressive but is even more difficult to get working with some programs. No one has the time or the energy to D*^& around with it and then still not have it work like they need to. Add to this the fact that Win 7 is now pretty good even good and there is not much motivation to change. I like Ubuntu 10.04. It is easy to use, well designed (as a consumer grade OS), easy to install programs and many comparable programs to windows. The quality of the software is pretty good. But its gotta run windows programs. Plenty of people will be offended by that. Even with compatability it would be no guarantee. Even history shows that from the OS/2 experience in the early 90's. There was a very nice OS that ran most dos and windows programs seamlessly (or nearly) but then IBM released subsequent buggy versions of the OS in a hurry and M$ stomped them with win 95 and imcompatible Win32 libraries and API's later. So, there even with compatability there is not a guarantee that people will switch. But nearly full compatability would be a huge step toward attracting more users (myself included). I am saying this from observation, from experience, and the resistance to change which is part of human nature (for most people). Windows is not perfect but Win 7 has improved stability, security, and usability to a high level (relative to all other previous versions of windows). So it makes it even harder to convince people to switch. And people are afraid of change.
Making Linux competitive with Windows? I thought that's what FVWM-95 was for! :^)
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Why do people keep thinking that Linux a a cheap, or free or open or whatever replacement of Windows. It isn't.
And you can't copy Windows. That would mean that you have to wait till Windows does something.
http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm
Linux should go its own way and if that takes down Windows, it is a nice plus. Competing with Windows should not be a direction, bceause that will be a fight that you can only loose.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
While I am more techy than most of the people I worky with (Hence I am sitting here reading this at work) most of the folks around me look at PCs simply as a tool. Can't teach them new tricks? Bollocks. A lot of my time is spent working with business teams who are looking to improve their way of doing business and teaching them about how different programs can be used to get the information they want.
Want to find your current sales trends in a way that you haven't been able to before? Okay, well, we have the data in this thing called Datawarehouse. Our reporting team will be able to provide you a set of reports, but they take a long time to develop and check. If you want to do some quick nasty analysis to fend off a crisis, there is a program called TOAD that will let you directly query your data. Look difficult? Lets go through how it works and how you write a SQL query.
Result: In the last Two years, I have introduced around 100 users who are NOT tech savvy at all to the wonders of SQL queries. They are now in various stages of competence, but they are using new things.
My (belated) point here is that while something like Toad (or now replace with Linux) isn't something that they can just pick up and run with, if people see a benefit to it, they WILL make the effort to learn how to use it.
In my mind, Linux really needs to advertise the benefits it has to the ordinary person so that they are enticed to make the effort to learn how to use it. Having said that, the easier it makes this learning process, the less advertising it has to do.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
The registry isn't bad because it's stored in binary form, or because it's heirarchical, or because it supports transactions, or because it has ACLs. These are good (or at least acceptable) things.
The registry is bad because it's global and forces a lot of configuration to be global as well. For example, COM components are registered globally, so only one DLL can be associatded with a class ID at a time. That's why you can only have one version of Internet Explorer installed on the same machine. Yes, users have their own registry subtress, but not every key can be configured under the user-specific heirarchy. Even a user-specific key can only have one value at a time for a given user. Unix systems, on the other hand, use environment variables to hold (or point to) configuration information, which results in a lot more flexibility.
Because registry values are global, application developers only consider the case of running one program at a time. If you want, say, two copies of Outlook, each with different settings, you'll need two separate users. A lot of programs don't even support multiple concurrent instances, which is maddening.
Another maddening side effect of the registry being global is that it's not possible to have the equivalent of NFS-mounted home directories under Windows. Say you have a domain user foo\bar on machines A and B. It's natural to want them to have the same %USERPROFILE% (read $HOME) on a fileserver somewhere, and on Unix, that works just fine. But under Windows, when the user logs into machine A, the system will lock ntuser.dat (the file containing the registry), which prevents the user logging in under machine B. Application-specific configuration files that are locked only during actual changes don't have this problem.
The global nature of the registry also makes it difficult to maintain application configuration: if you want to isolate the configuration information used by a program, you're essentially reduced to looking at procmon output and seeing what registry keys it touches. While in principle programs should limit themselves to storing information under HKLU\Software\Blah\..., in practice, they scatter stuff all over the registry, especially when they register COM stuff. You can't keep just, say, Word's configuration under version control.
When people say they hate the registry, what they mean is that they hate that Windows is not very well-modularized. Isolating one application's registry configuration is like removing one egg from an omelet.
A better model would have been to have application-specific registries, searched according to a PATH-like environment variable. In this scheme, when the system needed to, say, look up a COM class ID, it would just search each registry in sequence until it found the right one. Applications would simply store their configuration and registration information in their own registry, making management easy.
But like most Windows brain damage, this scheme wouldn't have worked on a 386SX with 4MB of RAM in 1995, which means it can't possibly be changed in 2010. As we all know, design decisions are irrevecorable and eternal (and I'm only half-joking).
The vast majority of users aren't aware they're using NT or Darwin on their desktops either.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
> Competing with Windows for customers ranges somewhere between silly and stupid. If
> you want more Linux on the desktop, you need to court developers and software vendors.
Nope. If you want more users you need preloads. 90% of people would never survive a Windows install if it didn't come preloaded by an OEM who did all the twiddling to have the hardware mostly work out of the box. Anaconda actually does a better job compared to the Windows installer as far as leaving you a working machine when it finishes. Doesn't matter because end users can't use either one and refuse to even consider the possibility.
And that isn't a matter of techinical excellence, software availability or anything competition can address. It all about illegal monopolistic action. Microsoft signs consent decree after consent decree and over a decade after their first one you still can't buy a desktop PC without Windows proloaded except for a couple of bland Dell N series machines that are usually priced higher than the same machine preloaded with Windows.
The netbook revolution almost opened up the market but Microsoft just dumped XP into the hole until they could convince the manufactures to kill em off in favor of small notebooks running Win7. Go ahead, try to find a small flash drive based cheap netbook. All you find is three pounders with hard drives, crappy battery life and screens just a smidge smaller than a small notebook... and all running WIndows.
Democrat delenda est
Yup, as more businesses install Linux desktops it will become more widespread in that market segment. It will be a slow process, but each time MS stumbles, Linux will be there.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Excuse me, sir, but please let us at marketing do this stuff. You at the upper levels of management have no clue of how to properly defend this sorry mess that's the windows registry.
When I got as far as "forcing users to go without a valuable learning experience" I began to wonder if this article is some kind of elaborate joke played on its readers.
It's hard to be more patronizing than the "Joe Sixpack", "Grandmom" or "Sh*eple" crap that pops up here, but the guy seems to be aiming to limbo under that very low bar.
Yes, since they're competing on a number of platform (desktops, servers, and in different guises mobile and embedded), so linux should definitely aim at windows.
No, since linux is competing against a bunch of other OSes/environments (iOS, QNX, even BSD, Solaris...); and also since linux should not simply play catchup/imitate, but also innovate.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Oh, lest I forget: making registry typed was a bad decision. Plain text is a lot easier to manipulate and a lot more consistent for developers and administrators. Is storing "1" really much worse than storing (DWORD)1? (The former is actually smaller if it's NULL-terminated!)
I really don't think storing simple strings in the registry would have hurt performance much either: the registry is explicitly intended for small, infrequently changing pieces of information. The serialization and unserialization aren't really much of a problem, and Microsoft could have provided convenience functions. If the registry were loosely typed, it'd be lot easier to expose it as an ordinary writeable and mountable* filesystem. As it is, the best you can do is read-only because there's no way to tell what type a key should have when it's written. You have to provide special juju for writing keys because of the typing nonsense.
I've seen a lot of configuration bugs in both the Windows and Unix worlds. I've never seen one caused by loose typing of Unix configuration information, and I've seen a lot of pain caused by strong typing of Windows configuration information.
* Yes, Windows can mount arbitrary filesystems in arbitrary places in its name heirarchy. Few people use this facility; personally, I keep everything under C:\ just like a Unix system.
I have mustard in my refrigerator. Is it competing with mayonnaise? Does it matter to mustard that ketchup is dominating?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
You're so right. The desktop is moving towards being obsolete -- a work thing. Why should Linux care with the juggernaut Android crushing MS in the real world? Developers, don't even think about the desktop, focus on the phone and the coming andro-pad.
Desktops are stuck in a "desktop" paradigm, and so are going to be whatever they are now until they totally disappear sometime decades from now: Windows for most everyone, Macs for some specialties particularly in audiovisual production, and Linux for the very few in either the narrowest range of specialties or the narrowest band of all: those who use the best tool for the job at hand, regardless of what everyone else is using.
But the desktop is disappearing. "Mobile" computing is computing you don't have to notice computing. Especially as input leaves behind keyboards, as all displays are networked and shareable, the GUI will detach from the hardware, to be put anywhere the users want it to be, including merged together. More and more people will do what they do helped by "computers", but they won't be Windows. They'll be Android, or some other Linux variant. Because Windows is like a desktop, and most work is better done without a desktop.
It won't be Linux, either. Linux will have a place in the majority of servers, and there'll be a lot of them. But the "Internet of Things" needs something smaller than Windows, smaller than Linux. It's why even the Mac ditched the old MacOS and is now closely related to Linux, in that it's mostly a (mostly) open Unix variant.
Android is closing in on a majority of smartphones. Around the time it's the majority, all phones that do more than just talk will be smartphones. It's the software and uses of smartphones, and their closely related tablets, that will be what most humans use "computers" for most of the time. Everyone in a developed economy will have their mobile device that's their key to accessing all the people, things and info in their world. Windows will be stuck on desktops, where the first small segment of humans started using them. The rest of the world, most of it, will be using the descendants of Android in ways that Windows can never approximate.
--
make install -not war
The registry is bad because it's global and forces a lot of configuration to be global as well. For example, COM components are registered globally, so only one DLL can be associatded with a class ID at a time. That's why you can only have one version of Internet Explorer installed on the same machine.
Is the registry really the reason you can only have one version of IE installed?
Firefox uses the registry and I have more than one version of Firefox installed on a machine.
I see that Ubuntu offers "installation, application and desktop configuration support" for Ubuntu Desktop Edition at £88.42 / year.
I concede that point.
No.
Valid points were made about mobile computing. It seems to me that mobile devices are the future. For that matter, I can imagine having a computer and interface system built into a set of sunglasses or eyeglasses to where its hard to even tell they are there. That is a little way off from now. However, I can definitely see an android device in the near future that has a built in projector for video display and then another laser projection device to project a virtual keyboard and mousing/pointing/trackpad virtual device. Add on top of this the possibility of cloud services like Google Apps (which really is not yet developed anywhere to its full potential yet) and you can see that Windows 7, mac os, or whatever desktop OS will not matter (as much). Of course, they will still be around especially in school labs and in offices. But the mobile device will be king especially with a built in projector, virtual keyboard device and virtual pointing or motion based system. It will not be long before mobile devices have the computing power of a laptop (but not a good desktop). That will be enough for most people I suspect. :)
Firefox stores the vast majority of its configuration information in user profiles, not in the registry. It also uses its own COM system internally, not the one provided by Windows.
The world outside of linux and unix a long time ago came to an understanding about the way the desktop should work. The majority of desktops are either windows or mac based. A Mac and PC user could switch computers and withing a few minutes either person could get done what they were intending to get done. Not so with Linux. You can argue all day long that Linux is better on every front... but it doesn't matter. It's unfamiliar to the majority of the public. It's like one of those screwed up chairs that chiropractors invented, no matter how comfortable it is, or how much it helps your back, the things just fucking retarded. We need one of the main distro's to just give it up, clone the windows or Mac UI, hide all the linux weirdness until you entered the root password a couple of different times and then maybe people will start to come over.
I've been using computers since the C64 as a kid. I'm geeky enough to use Slashdot. I've used Linux on and off since Slackware 7"ish" (w/ all the version # skipping). Dabbled with some CS classes. I've used MS Dos . through all versions of Windows and used OS X for 4 years. .... So I think I at least have some geek credentials to post this.
I mostly stopped playing games so I don't have much use for Windows. I've preferred to use OS X but didn't want to keep my Mac. OS X is genius it really "just" works. And I've spent far less time troubleshooting and resolving issues than I ever have with Windows or Linux. I've been trying REALLY hard to move over to a PC-based 'Nix based OS for a few years now but I'm finding it a bit hard.
I think I'm of the age, have the computer knowledge necessary and have the desire enough to switch that I'm a likely target user. You need some (somewhat)geeky people (like me :) ) for now to more readily adopt 'Nixes. Depending on what you do, Granny is probably ok to check e-mail with some KDE or Gnome based distro. I'm also finding it easier to automate and simplify some daily tasks with the command line (I use a lot of the reg-ex tools Sed, AWK and dabbling with Perl and Python - nothing fancy though. The Windows scripting and command line tools is an utterly and confusing mess, I won't touch it with a 10-foot pole. This *alone* has me as an easy convert.
Here's my beefs over the years which has prevented me from switching. I note over the years as I've not tried recently to install Slackware, Ubuntu, SUSE or FreeBSD (yes, I've tried a few) or such that it might be fixed now. Some of this might not be technically accurate. So at least, try to understand that this is a general overview. I'm not asking how to fix it, but rather these are probably some of the problems people have.
1) Drivers. Some things just don't work right out of the box. I haven't tried X.org in last year-or-so, but my ATI card has been a major PITA to get working. I've seen (too) many postings on "How do I get my trackpad working" or get this working. Recompiling the kernel is somewhat challenging if you have to get to that level. Choosing the wrong option or ommitting something can FOOBAR the kernel and you have to Google till you get it right. Every kernel is a walking target.
At times, never the same result or problem from 2.4.15 to 2.4.16. That what was working on .15 for example might not work on .16 with the same options selected.
2) Too many choices of distros. I fully agree choice tends to be a good thing. But the init scripts, directory structure, system management tools (SUSE, RH, Ubuntu) all different. On top of that, each app tends to work out of the box for only a few specific distros. If you want it to work with yours, you have to wait till someone puts it in the package manager. This is where Windows and OS X have a definite advantage.
3) When X crashes or there's some problem with the xinitrc or adding an extra mouse button or adding pretty font support, its meant spending some time reading about how to install it. OS X kinda self repairs itself, and with Windows all else fails reinstall it. If there's a problem with X to begin with, reinstalling just means the same thing will be there after you reinstall. There's been more then a few times when I've just said "Screw that" and went back to using Windows.
4) There's a bit too much Windows-like emulation with the apps in KDE, GNOME and such. Apple tends to think well .... this is ok but we should do this, this and this different. If some of the apps are 'cool' and do things just Neat enough it might entice people to think, Linux is cool, i should check this out.
5) Partitioning / File management / permissions difficult. This has gotten better I think over the years with the file managers with KDE, GNOME, Xfce and such. I just find when you do ls -la on / that you get a confusing directory structure.
I'm no Apple fan, but the Linux crowd could learn something from ol' Jobs.
I'm no programmer, but I've been using computers for better of 30 years. I learned BASIC in 1983. I know my way around a command prompt and a registry. Hell, I can even write some simple C++ code. Nevertheless, I've tried Linux (Ubuntu) a few times and found it wanting. One of my first chores was to find software to play video. I tried a couple and they just didn't work correctly. Firefox couldn't import my bookmarks. Set my own wallpaper? Forget it. That was enough for me.
Granted, I could go to Fry's and buy a 500-page Linux manual and learn it. I've got no problem with that and in fact, when the day comes that I've got a spare box with which I can use to experiment, I might give it another shot just to see what it can do. But today, I don't have the time to learn how to use a computer all over again.
The fact of the matter remains, if it's gonna be difficult for a seasoned user, I can't imagine an average Windows user wanting anything to do with it. but I HAVE seen Windows users migrate to a Mac quite effortlessly.
What's it going to take to make a real desktop for the masses? A venture CAPITALIST taking up the challenge. Build an OS that's both powerful enough for geeks to exploit and easy enough for my grandmother to figure out. Distro developers are only thinking about what THEY want to see and do and they forget about the little guy who's just learning how to use a mouse. It's not because the developer is evil, he just has no incentive to write the code to accommodate the average Joe because his audience is NOT the average Joe. It's another geek who read the 500-page book. There's got to be a profit motive. If you want to appeal to the masses, you have to MARKET to them. The only reason Apple is still in business is because they know how to market a product and they build their products very well, with pleasing the end-user their the top priority.
It's been a hell of a ride these past fifteen years filled with lots
of happy memories, but I'm tired of apologizing for its weaknesses
and am simplifying my life by switching to Windows.
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Dear Desktop Linux:
For some time now I have lamented the fact that I cannot do things /everyone/ else can easily do under Windows. I
under Linux which
can't be bothered messing with driver stacks just so that I can
kill some time waching Youtube.
Yet another year has come and gone with perennial updates which
ostensibly should fix your fifteen thousand papercuts, but don't. So,
Until the situation on the ground changes for desktop users, adios!!!
- Roey
!!
Somebody at MS got a promotion and a big bonus for the work, I'm sure. They killed netbooks, IMHO. When the windows ones started to come out they were dreadful. Slow, heavy and noisy compared to the flash based ones that came before.
The Toshiba AC100 looks interesting now though. And there's no chance of windows getting on it :)
get pre-installed, ready to run from first boot products out into brick and mortar shelves.
As long as microsoft can leverage big oem discounts (i think a recent liberated slide shows a ms office discount around 90% vs retail box) to such a level that adding a couple of 30-day bundles for norton and nero makes the companies money, people will only be exposed to linux via having some geek over to do the install (and most would probably grab a geek if windows needs a reinstall as well).
The basic issue is that pre-packaged grab-n-go deals are not linux based. They are windows based unless one shop at apple. If someone walks into a store with the intent of walking out with a computer, its either windows or osx.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
>It beats me why anybody would even consider using Linux as their primary or sole desktop operating system.
If you designed chips for a living, you would change your mind.
Evil people are out to get you.
They just don't think that much of them.
I keep seeing people saying that they're 'seasoned users' who need a 500 page manual to figure out how Linux works, but I installed Ubuntu on my netbook a couple of weeks back and.. it.. just... worked. Even on my laptop, which is a far more complex system than the netbook, the only things that didn't work out of the box are a few of the special keys (e.g. play/pause).
Has anyone who's complaining about how hard Linux is to use actually tried a distro released after 1993?
This article seems like a big excuse. If you can't beat 'em then don't try. Want a great example of a Unix-like OS beating MS at their own game? OS X. Know what it took? Some quality building blocks, then dictatorial stewardship of a single company with deep pockets and a willingness to meet the needs of a completely non-technical user.
It's NOT your intention to troll?!?!?
Linux isn't a cheap alternative to windows. Linux is a completely different OS that is FAR more capable and can be customised by the user to do a million and one things windows can't. Some of this is a side of effect of freedom and openness, some is just that it kicks ass. If capability and customisation are not what you're after then maybe it's not for you.
"who wants to be the martyr and take a stand by sacrificing their productivity to deal with an operating system that cannot natively run 99% of software products, has compatibility issues, and bugs up the wazoo due to being a mish-mash of spaghetti code written by unorganized contributors?"
Exactly why I don't use windows, you've described the MS situation extremely well for me. Windows is a great load of conflicting, counter-intuitive weirdness, glued together over many years, full of obscure bugs, incompatible with a lot of hardware.
Linux just works, for me. It may not for you, but I couldn't imagine going back to an MS operating system full time. I keep one around for the odd game.
Windows XP is $100 at ebay. You can't write off the entire market as drones that will buy whatever the big box stores hand them. People know Windows, like Windows, so you have to give them a reason to switch.
Not your intention to troll?...riiiight.
Linux is my primary OS for work and most play, but I do dual-boot into Windows to play the games that won't run under Linux. So yeah, Windows is the toy OS I boot to when I want to play games. If Linux is too difficult for you then try uninstalling Red Hat 3 or Mandrake 5 or whatever the hell distribution you're using and install anything released in the last couple of years. I've had more hassles getting various versions of Windows running and hunting drivers (or buying new hardware because drivers don't exist for my old hardware) than I've ever had with Linux, from Windows 95 all the way up to Windows 7.
That may have been the theme of the article, but I think you're vastly underselling Linux. Now obviously most people aren't as comfortable with Linux as they are with good ol' Windows, but I am sure it's just a matter of perspective.
I am fairly technically competent, so I'm perhaps biased, but I frankly don't see how the rest of the planet stands using Windows any longer. I dual boot Ubuntu and Windows XP on my laptop, and my usage consists of running Linux all day for all tasks, and switching to Windows solely when I want to play games or fill in my taxes (in Australia, we have a proprietary Windows program to do taxes ... yay).
Doing any non-trivial task in Windows sucks up my patience very quickly. I often feel like throwing my machine out the window after a few minutes. Installing software is a disgrace. It always has been with Windows and it still is. If you want to install a program, you typically google around until you find a few things that look OK, download them from untrustworthy websites, double-click the installers, running untrusted native code on your machine, click through license agreements, choose where to install them, and hope they don't own your machine. Even those that don't contain malware still typically install new icons in your system tray, run services in the background on startup, and/or install browser toolbars. Even open source code still has to be installed by this same process. You talk about a "mish-mash of spaghetti code written by unorganised contributors"... but Microsoft only supports the core OS in Windows, and every other piece of software is a complete gamble.
Contrast with Debian/Ubuntu, where there is a centralised package management system. It hasn't always been pretty, but the latest Ubuntu releases make it possible to install just about any piece of software (literally, something for every need I've ever had in the past 3 years besides professional games) with the following process: Applications -> Ubuntu Software Center. Type in some keywords to find some software to install. Click the name, then "Install". Within half a minute, the software is downloaded and installed with no questions asked, and can be removed just as easily. All software is open source and vetted by the community, so at a minimum it will not install unwanted launchers or browser plugins or malware. All programs are automatically updated every day, so there is no need for each program to install its own auto updater. Sure, it's written by different contributors, but I don't see the difference between this and Windows, except that on Windows the community is not checking that the programs aren't nasty.
And Debian has had this system for around 15 years. Microsoft is just now (in the wake of Apple's iPhone store) mumbling about making their own app store which might finally alleviate these problems. But these problems are non-existent in the Linux world, and have been for more than a decade. I just don't understand how people put up with Windows, and I can only imagine it's because they have never used a non-Windows computer.
OS X is NOT "X based at it's core".
Someone I know was fed up with viruses so tried to install Ubuntu on her laptop.
Somewhere along the line it said her wireless networking card was not supported and pointed her to a big page of very cryptic instructions. There's no way she was going to manage what the page was telling her to do. Hell, even though I probably could have done it, I probably wouldn't have bothered either.
She went back to Windows (out of no other choice really). So there's one potential new Linux user who didn't get past square one.
I see it mentioned once or twice in threads like these but it's funny how Windows errors and problems are just taken in stride, ignored, forgotten, minimized. One Linux distro issue and it's practically the collapse of civilization as we know it.
I mean, how helpful is it really when Windows errors out with "Please see your system administrator" or "0x02033u723834234fuckme" hexdump? They're gonna be makin' a call to someone for their Windows hassle; why is it somehow different when they'd have to call a Linux guru (or somebody at least familiar with it) for a Linux hassle?
Anyway, I don't want to see Linux become Windows. We have a Windows already, it's called Windows. But Linux *would* get more adoption if it could do things like play Netflix streams. I know, I know, "it isn't Linux's fault". But it's Linux's *problem*, no matters who is at fault. Users don't really care about fault, they just want it to work.
I wholeheartedly agree with this; and realistically these days, there are many distros out there that "just work."
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
The problem I have with Linux desktop environments is the constant tinkering that must go on to get it to work properly. (And of course the next release comes out and breaks stuff that was working fine before.)
As others have mentioned, Linux is such a configurable system it can be like windows if you so choose it to be. That's the point.
Linux/GNU is one (many as a whole, I guess) of those things that it really is a "jack-of-all-trades" if it is understood how to do so. It is used in virtually every form of technology these days.
I personally feel that today Linux is right where it needs to be.
I use Linux on the desktop. I have for years (pushing 8 years now). I currently run Gentoo Linux with XFCE4 as my GUI. It just works for everything that I need to use it for. I have it installed this way on two desktops (my wife's, mine) and my MSI Wind netbook. I also have it installed on my Media Center PC running some custom software I've written myself (pending open source release).
I gave up on Windows completely when Vista was released (by that I mean I've stopped supporting family's PC's with anything that isn't XP -- virtually all of them now).
I run an install of XP under VirtualBox from time to time when I need to do some testing under IE 6 through 8. Although I think it's been a few months since I've done that.
To me Apple is in the same boat as Windows, I just don't want it. I've found what I want on my desktop and it exists here today with very little effort.
Linux is right where it needs to be.
I suppose the question should really be "Why?" Competition is the first answer to that, of course. That will drive innovation, keep costs down, etc. And it gives Linux a goal as well -- to strive to be more user-friendly. Apple already has an amazing Unix-based OS and Windows has come a long way. Linux on the desktop serves that interesting niche between too-expensive Apple Hardware and the too-expensive Windows software. Apple wins on easy interactivity, Windows wins on all around functionality (ie, gaming). Linux wins on...being less expensive I suppose.
Talking home desktops here, not enterprise.
This is so 1994 it's not even funny. Sorry kid. The desktop is irrelevant. When was the last time you heard someone talk about how great a desktop app was? (Games don't count.) The browser wars are over. IE 6 is dead. Javascript is (mostly) de facto standardized for modern browsers, and with HTML on the uptake even Flash is going away. Web apps and to a much lesser extent iPad apps are where it's at.
Former Lord Bill's nightmare came true, and now Microsoft is moved into IBM territory. Want a new bad guy? Pick either Google or Facebook.
Want to claim victory? Fine. Linux won the server war, the only platform war that matters.
That was my assumption on why the registry is what it is. The only other logical reason would be so that configurations could be stored in a database for quick access. If that was the reason, the proper way to do that would have been to have applications write their configurations in their own directory, and have the registry created by picking up the configurations and inserting them into the database. This way a corrupted registry would be self healing, and a corrupted config file would only affect the single program.
The problem I have with comparing Linux to Windows on the desktop is that I think Windows stinks on the desktop. I may be in the minority, but I want an operating system that is lean and mean, with no zooming windows, special effects, cute audio cues, or glassy curved "kewl" surfaces. I want an operating system to run applications.
I have become frustrated with Linux on the desktop because there is a rush to beat Windows at what it is best at: bloat . The average Windows or Linux install starts with all the features ON by default, so it takes time to first strip it down to bare bones so it is usable. This is beyond frustrating. If given the choice, I would rather have Windows 95 with a modern kernel. Just visual enough to be easy to configure, but without the freaking eyecandy that does nothing to make my apps run better, and in fact, makes them run slower. Yes, I know there are all kinds of specialized version of Linux that are designed to be simple, but they aren't supported enough for my tastes, and I shouldn't have to try 10 different versions to find one I like. Again, I want the OS so I can run apps, not the other way around.
At the very least, Microsoft should be sophisticated and intelligent enough to offer a "bare" option for installing, and let users add features if they want. Of course, in true MS fashion (and now, Linux as well) the other features will still be there, consuming space, RAM and CPU cycles even when in the OFF position. It is unnecessary, unless your goal is to force people to buy a new system every few years (and poorly implemented updates that slow the system down help with that as well).
To make an instant on computer, the system needs to be something completely different that either Windows or Linux is currently being offered as. It should be a kernel, drivers, codecs and the base API, with a singular update manager, and text configuration files. I don't want quick start applications, I want applications that start quickly. Leaving a stub of them always running is NOT the answer, and is at the very least, bad for security. I have given up all hope that any mainstream operating system will ever achieve this, as there is too much money in promoting bloatware and crapware.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I love it how people act like linux is actually *trying* to compete with os A or os B etc. Like there is some prize to be won by being the most used desktop OS. It's not a race to a finish line to kill off some other os. Linux is an option. You don't like it? Don't use it. Linux isn't out there to be in a popularity contest. It doesn't care what you think about what a desktop should look like, or what apps should work on it. It doesn't care if you use it. The people who make it, make it for their needs. If you don't like how it works, do the work yourself. You don't want to do the work? Good for you, linux isn't for you then. Go use windows or osx. Linux is useful for people making things like routers, tv's, blue ray/multimedia centers, cable boxes, lab machines, code monkeys, laptops for children in 3rd world countries, cell phones, cars, etc etc. Do you think it cares that some windows people think that it's competition? Competition would require that it wasn't free. The linux community is basically a bunch of friends that work/hack together to make something they find useful, it's not a kill or be killed "man I need to make a billion by the end of the quarter" franchise. And it doesn't rate it's success by how many people are "converted" over to the dark side. If you don't care about linux, we won't cry if you don't use it. We won't hate you either. Many of us dual boot, some of us only use it on our servers, some of us use it full time, some of us just use it in our router/tv/phone/etc.
Linux shouldn't try to be like Windows because there's no longer any reason to choose one over the other.
I personally use Windows most of the time but when I need Linux I just launch my Ubuntu image and do what needs to be done. I'm sure other people are in exactly the same boat but need Linux most of the time and can virtualize Windows.
Yay me! ^^
It's natural to want them to have the same %USERPROFILE% (read $HOME) on a fileserver somewhere, and on Unix, that works just fine. But under Windows, when the user logs into machine A, the system will lock ntuser.dat (the file containing the registry), which prevents the user logging in under machine B. Application-specific configuration files that are locked only during actual changes don't have this problem.
Not to derail your insightful post, but this is one of the main reasons I switched to linux. You can actually place system folders on different partitions so that 1. fragmentation of cat pictures doesn't slow down the OS, 2. the OS can be wiped while retaining user data. It used to take me a whole day to force Windows to install like that - where Documents were on one partition and Program Files were on another, pagefile was on another, etc. That was several years ago, and now I tried doing some of the same thing in Windows 7 and broke my Windows Updates because they rely on things being on the same partition /even if you create a junction point/. It's like Microsoft is just relying on drives getting bigger, faster, and more reliable than actually doing something intelligent with their OS file system layout.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
Hence "network effects". A "large enough market" is made, not born. It is "large enough" for different developers at different points, and those points often depend on which type of application they write to fill which niche.
If you get the developers, you'll get the preloads. Microsoft reducing their price in response to low or zero cost Linux preloads only works because Microsoft already has the developers. If Linux had the same apps and XP cost $1 then Linux would still be $1 cheaper and have the same apps.
I agree that there are a lot of good commercial applications out there for Windows, and far fewer in the commercial space for Linux.
But you should not equate "commercial" with "full applications" (versus "1-function free" apps). I don't do much art stuff but when I do I use Inkscape and it's perfectly fine ... it seems to be compatible with illustrator. (Gimp sucks though, but that is simply a bad example of open source.) My brother uses Blender for all his 3D production work.
If your mentality is "you should use what everybody else uses", then obviously you will be using Windows. In that case, I can't argue with you, because it is not the case that everybody uses Linux. We may as well never change anything.
I personally hate MS APIs, especially DirectX. I switched from Direct3D to OpenGL and I find it much nicer, and of course it works across many platforms including on Windows. I agree Visual Studio is a pretty nice IDE but again, it locks you in to using Microsoft everything. If you're happy to use Microsoft languages and Microsoft APIs and write software that only works on Microsoft Windows, then Visual Studio is for you.
I try to be as portable as possible so I avoid using Windows-specific (or Linux-specific) APIs. I don't use an IDE, not because I don't have a good one, but because I am far more comfortable using a really good text editor (vim), a really good command-line (Gnome terminal + bash) and a huge range of perfectly fine compilers for a huge range of languages (gcc, python, ghc, javac, etc). This is where the "do one thing do it well" mentality of Unix works really well: I'd much rather use a bunch of quality disconnected apps than a single monolithic IDE which is only "reasonable" (i.e., just an "ordinary" text editor in Visual Studio).
For example, COM components are registered globally, so only one DLL can be associatded with a class ID at a time. That's why you can only have one version of Internet Explorer installed on the same machine.
Worth noting that, specifically with respect to COM, there's registration-free COM which uses config files. Though I guess it just reinforces your point.
No. A thousand times no.
Most of your rant is incoherent middle Marketing management hyperbole.
- Interface design that specifically and completely bars programmers from participating
So, how would GUI's get done? Really. Because IDE's have tried over the decades and none has succeeded. Zero. There's another toolkit that inevitably follows the last big thing in GUI's.
If you say something along the lines of "a gui should be as simple as scripting" I agree, and KDE4, XFCE4 have it. Your bash script magically appears as a nice gui in some cases. winetricks.sh comes to mind.
Acceptance of proprietary drivers when offered
Done. ATI, Nvidia, Epson and HP(networking driver) are three examples that have binary drivers and the distros have done a good job at integrating them. The companies behind them have been pretty good to the Free software community too. (Epson exception. Epson printers work, only sort-of compared to HP's full featureset)
Provision of real, available, phone-based technical support
I know this industry and I don't see any of this for software. Apple? Briefly. Adobe? cha-ching! Oracle? Microsoft? More money for support. If you need it, just look around and you'll find it. The AOL of Linux, Ubuntu will hold your hand for a reasonable fee. Red Hat will hold your hand for an Enterprise contract. HP? IBM? They all got it.
- Real, complete documentation
I don't accept this. Most apps have great man pages. Certainly as good as what passes for documentation included in a Microsoft OS release. Not as good as some of the commercial UNIXes, but great in most cases. Man pages are certainly enough in most cases. Please, do not take this as an opportunity to tell me about the ONE app you downloaded from who knows where having nothing to do with the distro you used. It's not a legitimate complaint.
If you want to wail and moan about how it shouldn't be necessary to dig through man pages, then you are applying a completely wrong standard to general purpose desktop operating systems.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The point is there isn't much competition between Windows and Linux. Windows is mostly used by either Fanboys or people who don't know anything else. There are few people deliberately deciding to use Windows, and for those who do the main reason is extreme backwards compatibility.
That's why Vista didn't sell. In a commercial enviroment you "buy" software meaning you get a binary file of version X which you can hope to execute on your newer computers.
(Oh yes, there are in fact _some_ people who don't understand security and believe the recent advancement of security somehow outweigh the braindead software distribution model of Windows)
Hmm.
*looks at the folder structure on his current PC*
Well lets see, Windows is on my SSD drive, my profile folders are on my spinning disk.
User Profiles have been moveable for ages now. It used to break stupid ass software which did dumb stuff like hard code in "C:\Documents and Settings\..." but MS has changed that folder's name enough that now almost everyone uses the apporpriate environment variables.
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Just look at console video games. In the beginning there were lots of "exclusive" 3rd party titles. Then, one day developers (& publishers) realized that it's stupid to sell software exclusively for one platform. It's clearly more profitable to sell cross-platform software.
Why limit your target market to just one platform? One reason is to take full advantage of the platform. If even video games (which need to take as many advantages as possible can navigate the road to cross platform development, then it should be a realistic expectation for desktop applications like Photo Editor X, Word Processor 2010, etc (which have nowhere near the demand as a game) to be cross platform.
Of course, MS goes out of their way to screw over FOSS (see: Samba, OpenGL, etc), so they're not going to make it easy to write cross platform software. Even so, I write cross platform code, and it's really not that hard. I don't use libs like Qt, SDL, etc anymore, but they do make developing cross platform software much easier.
Our plea to hardware and application developers for more Linux support is slowly beginning to matter as more publishers realize that the money we saved by not buying an OS could be used to buy a cross-platform version of their software -- if only such a version existed.
On the other hand, for most users Linux IS ALREADY a decent windows replacement. My neighbor is a 71 year old retired Air Force Sergeant. Sarge has been using Windows since v3.1, and he's set in his ways more than anyone I know. Last year I installed Ubuntu on his PC after a fatal widows crash. Instead of buying the latest windows version he decided to give Linux a try (Both Gnome and Win7 are equally different to him compared to XP). After a week of adjustment ("Where is feature_X", etc.), Sarge has been a happy Linux user ever since; If he can switch to Linux, anyone can.
In conclusion: Should competing with windows matter? Not if it means doing anything different than what Gnu/Linux is already doing. Linux should just focus on being a better Linux. Cross platform software is becoming the norm, which platform matters less and less. Not even MS can fight the pressure that the free market exerts as developers ask themselves, "Wait, WHY DON'T WE SELL a version for platform X?!"
Ok first off, a lot of the visual effects actually serve a purpose. Translucent windows provide depth information about where different windows are in the Z-ordering. Audio cues are, well, audio cues. They alert you that something has happened.
Secondly, none of these things effect your system performance anyway. The vast majority of the "special effects" in Windows are offloaded to the GPU, they aren't consuming RAM, they aren't hitting your CPU, they are essentially free.
Best case you have a minor improvement in UI, worst case, things look pretty and you aren't hitting the CPU anyway.
And of course you can turn all of these effects off. The "Classic" theme is still there in Windows 7. Most ultra-portable laptops come preconfigured with at least some of the Aero visual effects disabled so as to cut back on GPU usage and therefore help battery life (to whatever tiny extent it makes a difference...)
Hell if you want to you can change your shell from Explorer.exe to cmd.exe (or preferably Powershell :) ) and run everything from a CLI.
Slashdot's crappy JS consumes far more CPU cycles than all of Windows' Aero effects combined.
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Switching to Linux has allowed me to use my computer in pretty awesome ways; true. It has also cost me weeks (possibly adding up to months over the years) trying to solve particular technical problems caused by badly supported hardware or simply hard to understand configuration issues. The thing is that I knew I was getting into that before I switched.
I agree that attempting to directly outdo Windows on its home turf (people who don't know how to use a computer, and don't feel like spending time learning it) is not a good war for a Linux distribution to get caught up in. I picked Ubuntu for its very ease of use when I switched, but am getting concerned that with each distribution its user interface becomes a little sleeker and "easier", exchanging power for simplicity.
You can't entirely foolproof an operating system without locking your user in, like MS and Apple do. Linux cannot become as "user-friendly" as these without turning off power users. Sure, maybe different distros will evolve to fill each niche, but with free software development being driven mainly by its users, it will be hard to find volunteers for maintaining a distribution that no programmer would want to use.
If Linux wants to win, make it easier to use and develop on than an iPhone, without Apple's kind of closed walled garden. Make it more pervasive than HTML5/JavaScript/CSS without all the mess with browser incompatibilities. Trying to compare Linux to the dead last OS-to-go (fact: Windows' market share has been declining, on both desktop and mobile - especially mobile) in the consumer market is already a sign of weakness in the FOSS space.
GUI != Windows. Mac does not have a Windows interface. Ideally, the GUI is a front-end to CLI. That way people in a hurry can just hunt and click and people whi need/want a deeper knowledge so they can be efficient can have their way too.
One time I tried to install XP on a desktop machine that wasn't being used and it said the network card wasn't supported. Out of curiosity, I put in a Debian DVD and it recognized it immediately. The vendor website was useless, they only offered drivers for Vista. I finally did find an XP driver, but only after heavy googling and clicking on a few links in Chinese (I don't read Chinese, I just tried links until I saw the model number in a download link).
But mostly because they probably don't personally use apps remotely and don't even realize that they are tossing one of the greatest ideas in computing history down the shitter.
And what's the worst part is *why* they're doing it - because they want better visual effects. Obviously *their* idea of being competitive with Windows is "adding more visual effects". What a bummer. If they said "to make games work and eat Windows' lunch in that field", yeah, I'd understand that. But "visual effects"? If I were younger, I'd have had a seizure reading that stupid blog entry of Shittleworth, but I just shrugged and thought "well, that's going to have a lot of knowlegdeable people use something else".
BTW, Ubuntu's decision isn't all that bad - X11 isn't going nowhere as long as "graphical" means X11 for apps. AIUI Wayland runs X11 as a Wayland client, so X11 remains in the system and can be used just as in the old times. And if applications in the long term really abandon X11 for Wayland, that will take years and you can bet somebody will implement network transparency for Wayland until then, or X11 will just remain usable.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
The global nature of the registry also makes it difficult to maintain application configuration: if you want to isolate the configuration information used by a program, you're essentially reduced to looking at procmon output and seeing what registry keys it touches. While in principle programs should limit themselves to storing information under HKLU\Software\Blah\..., in practice, they scatter stuff all over the registry, especially when they register COM stuff. You can't keep just, say, Word's configuration under version control.
And what prevents an app from scattering its config files everywhere where the user has write permissions. SomeProgram in theory should store the config in /etc/someprogram.conf and /home/user/.someprogram/someprogram.conf, but in practice it can store the config in /home/user/.kde/kde1.conf just as well.
The global nature of the registry also makes it difficult to maintain application configuration: if you want to isolate the configuration information used by a program, you're essentially reduced to looking at procmon output and seeing what registry keys it touches. While in principle programs should limit themselves to storing information under HKLU\Software\Blah\..., in practice, they scatter stuff all over the registry, especially when they register COM stuff. You can't keep just, say, Word's configuration under version control.
And what prevents an app from scattering its config files everywhere where the user has write permissions. SomeProgram in theory should store the config in /etc/someprogram.conf and /home/user/.someprogram/someprogram.conf, but in practice it can store the config in /home/user/.kde/kde1.conf just as well.
Oh, and
As we all know, design decisions are irrevecorable and eternal (and I'm only half-joking).
Well, you cannot break backward compatibility or the users will not upgrade to the new version. Microsoft found that out with Vista.
You can have Windows directory in a different partition from the boot files (boot.ini, ntldr...). Tested With Windows NT4 and XP. You can even have more than one copy of Windows.
Program files, Documents and Settings can be set to whatever you want. I, for example, have set %TEMP% to C:\Temp instead of C:\documents and settings\user name\Local settings\Temp
Actually, even the Windows directory can be split up. On one PC I have moved "dllcache" to a different hard drive when C:\ was running out of space.
Oh, and no need for links - everything can be set in registry and/or environmental variables.
On one hand, Linux should remain true to the principles that make unix so powerful in the first place, however if you're that worried about that type of thing, one of the BSDs is probably a better fit for you anyway.
However, unless Linux is user friendly enough (via available add-ons, etc) then it will never get a large enough market share for manufacturers to give a shit enough to release drivers or programming specs.
IMHO - add all the user friendly shit you like. Just ensure that it is up in user-space where those who don't care for all the windows-like crap can strip it out. Options are good. Being a good unix-like operating system and having a shiny Windows-like GUI *available* are not mutually exclusive options.
For users who never need/want network transparency in X, etc (and simply want a free operating system that "just works") it is just another vector for their machine to be compromised via unforseen security vulnerabilities in such features. If auto configuration is done right and actually works, you shouldn't NEED to fuck around configuring things manually. Sure, you may lose nerd cred points, but those of us who have been doing that sort of shit for years most likely by now have better things to be doing than rooting around manually making something work.
User/admin time spent configuring something that the computer can and should be able to do automagically is dead, wasted time that does nothing to help anyone get their job done or solve any of the world's problems. Some people (actually most who aren't in the hard core / look at me I' leet / unixnoob crowd) just want a tool to do a job, and un-necessary time spent rooting around trying to make the tool work is time that could be better spent actually doing something productive.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
I'm vegetarian. Whenever I'm eating with others who are eating burgers, they assume I want a veggie-patty to fit in. I don't. I'm not interested in pretending to be a meat-eater, or I'd probably just be a meat-eater.*
TFA points out what is basically the same deal... I don't want GNU/Linux to be the same as Windows or I'd probably just use Windows.*
*Aside from all applicable philosophical reasons against doing so.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
Because /opt and /usr/opt exist.
Nothing more, and nothing less.
(Of course, "Linux" in this context is not the kernel, but "Linux+GNU+X.Org+Gnome/KDE/*+...)
Method 1: invent a time machine, go back to that day in the early 1980s when the Digital Research CEO was out flying his plane when the guys from IBM called, and get the contract for supplying the OS for the original IBM PC. That's the only way you're going to re-create Microsoft's business model.
Method 2: look instead at what has worked for Apple since the second coming of Jobs:
Just because the OS is free, it doesn't mean that bundling Linux is a zero-cost option - it needs serious investment and support. The one thing the FOSS community is not interested in doing for free is providing "customer is king" support. Of course, the big PC box shifters aren't good at that either: that should be an opportunity.
Of course, (post-iMac comeback) Apple had the advantage that Macs had a (deserved or otherwise) reputation for being reliable and easy to use. Linux has the opposite customer perception. So perhaps the answer is Don't call it Linux - at least, not in large letters on the front (see: Android and all those embedded systems).
Asus got about 3/10 with the original EEEPC, but they didn't invest enough time in customising their distro and ensuring that there was a stream of interesting apps coming into their repository. Then they essentialy lost interest and started pushing Windows instead.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
And what prevents an app from scattering its config files everywhere where the user has write permissions.
Nothing prevents it from doing that today. Nothing but convention. Does that mean the registry is a failure because programs have filesystem access and could theoretically litter all over the place? No, it just means that conventions usually work.
If the convention says "store all configuration data in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\%APPNAME\" then people would do that. Some wouldn't but those people wouldn't use the registry under the current convention either.
Well, you cannot break backward compatibility or the users will not upgrade to the new version. Microsoft found that out with Vista.
No, Vista just taught them that doing something badly yields bad results. Randomly breaking backwards compatibility is usually unneccessary as more nuanced appreoaches are available.
Getting rid of an old API is as easy as deprecating it, providing a clean migration path to the replacement and dropping it one or two major releases later. Microsoft could do that with the current registry and it would work.
Just turning off the registry from one release to the next without warning the developers beforehand is a horrible idea, of course. Modifying it so it transparently accesses per-user-per-application hives, designing it so that old programs still work would give the Windows world the benefits of per-application settings while maintaining compatibility.
Or, if that's too hackish for you, offer a new per-application configuration API and the old registry in parallel but deprecate the registry and drop it in a few major releases.
Yes, people will complain that their program from 2010 doesn't work with their Windows from 2020 but the Windows from 2018 is compatible and will be supported until 2028. And if you still need that old program at that point chances are you'll need old hardware to run it anyway so you might as well stick with Windows 2018 on that box.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
My non-Apple mp3 player (acquired expressly for fast-forward acceleration for long format podcasts) only pops up in Lucid Lynx about every tenth try - even with Rockbox installed. Who's to blame? Obviously the hardware manufacturer. Why do they not care? Because, compared to Windows, Linux doesn't matter.
There's a website listing the benefits of GNU/Linux. IMHO the main things are:
The main reason I disable the effects isn't about performance, they are just annoying. Translucent windows are about the only effect that might have some purpose, although I don't particularly need them. Audio cues? Do I really need to know that I just closed a window? Or opened one? And the Aero UI *does* use RAM and resources, even if the heavy lifting is on the GPU, but it doesn't matter, again, it is just annoying. I am used to being able to hot key swap and click at a fairly fast rate and do so often, which is why the zooming is infinitely annoying.
Classic UI in Windows 7 isn't classic. There are several serious deficiencies that slow me down. I put an icon up on the taskbar, ie: Chrome. If I start Chrome, the icon goes away, so I can't easily start a second instance. Instead I have to either click on the desktop icon (which I never used to even have) or open a new tab and separate it from the parent. And yes, this is something I do many times per day. There are 100 little things like this that simply take more time for each step than it used to.
Don't get me wrong, Win7 is better on the security front, finally, and has some decent refinements in some areas, but it is still has too much tied to the OS and tries to do too many things. The alert system is pretty much a fail. They have managed to make networking even harder than it was by virtually forcing you to go throw their wizard and explain what kind of network you have. (jesus....) and wireless support may be better, but I've had to explain to more people how to get it to work than I did with XP, so not sure what to tell you there.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Wikipedia: "Competition is a contest between individuals, groups, nations, animals, etc. for territory, a niche, or a location of resources." Since you can get Linux with 0 cost, there are no resources transacted.
I saw some Linux netbooks in stores (no laptops though) and they were using Linpus which is a Taiwanese Linux distribution. But at least back then it looked rather ugly and didn't have compositing :(
I had a crazy thought. What if MS didn't have monopoly in OSes and there were a lot of different OSes holding similar pieces of the marketshare? I'm not talking free only of course. At some point in time, the companies behind those OSes would have to work out a common standard, an API/ABI compatibility layer and stuff so they wouldn't lose their marketshare in favor of OneTrueOS(tm). I think this is perfectly doable. Then we would buy PC and then go to a store and chose from 5-10 ten OS products. Most of the applications would run natively and flawlessy on all of them. I know that this is a distant dream, but It's not something strange, It happens in all markets in some degree, except the software one.
Has been trying to make it into something Windows users like.
This is not a popularity contest, first off. It's about doing what you do well. So long as your share is 'sufficient', who cares about the rest.
Secondly, think about the technical reasons for Linux's leadership in the datacenters of the world. The sensibilities of Linux map well to most Datacenter concerns with its heritage of imitating Unix philosophy while at the same time adapting to new things. It has also found a place in the hearts of 'power users' who appreciate the flexibility. However, go onto the average desktop, and the open-endedness becomes a liability. Even if you do a good job of hiding the advanced flexibility under the hood, application developers have a hard time coping with the large landscape of possible configurations and paths whilst supporting users lacking the ability to navigate. In short, Linux started from a high-end philosophy and has had to work down, with a bit of awkwardness at the home desktop. MS has the opposite issue, they are taking philosophies built around the home desktop and trying to go up without compromising the home desktop. As a consequence, they cannot achieve equivalent flexibility and capability unless they alienate their base. I think on a technical level, Linux would have to sacrifice things that would make it no longer good at its core.
Finally, the desktop isn't about intrinsic quality, by and large, it's about being 'default'. Most of those desktop numbers are people who never change from default. As a consequence, there is an established economy around paying hardware vendors to allow crapware in. Every windows license on a pre-made desktop/laptop system is probably a net profit for the vendor due to the crapware it comes with. Windows when installed without agenda isn't nearly so horrible as Windows installed by either your corporate standards or your vendor. Datacenters are going to reinstall the servers any way you slice it to meet their own standards and manageability, so they have less attachment to on-disk software.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
But does the existence of /opt prevent an app from creating a file in /home/user/.kde even though it's not KDE?
"The registry isn't bad because it's stored in binary form,"
Actually, yes, that's part of what's wrong with it. For instance, let's say I have a registry problem that's preventing a proper boot of the machine, and a Linux CD. I can boot the machine using my Linux CD, mount the logical disk containing the registry, but then what? I'm limited in my ability to fix the registry because in order to do that I need the tool that the broken registry is preventing me from accessing. By contrast, if I have an alternate system capable of booting into Windows and accessing the hard drive with a broken /etc config file, I can go in with any text editor to fix the problem.
The other major problem with the registry is that it's centralized, so if it's hosed for one thing, it can easily be hosed for everything else. Compare that to a Unix system, where if you have a problem with a config, it affects only those things that the config controls (and any dependencies on those controls). So if there's a problem, you're more likely to get a partially functioning system, enough to be able to locate what's wrong, fire up your text edit, and fix the problem.
I am officially gone from
Perhaps you like playing 3D games on your uber spiffy PC?
If all the games requiring the performance of an "uber spiffy PC" are non-free, what's the marginal loss of freedom from a non-free driver?
Perhaps there's a bug on your particular 3D driver that doesn't render the crosshair, cursor or other effect correctly.
Or perhaps there's a bug on your particular game that doesn't render the crosshair, cursor or other effect correctly. If the game were free, you or I might fix the bug on a weekend. But unlike free drivers, which enhance the value of hardware, I can't see how free games can make money for their publishers unless they're massively multiplayer. In the case of a single-player or local multiplayer game supported by advertisements and distributed as free software, one could rip the ad network code and distribute that.
Try convincing Nvidia to fix a cursor bug in a 6 month old proprietary graphics driver
And try convincing EA or Activision to fix a bug in a 6 month old game.
Making software of any kind should be oriented on performing a task. Copying what others did, other than using familiar convention to reduce learning curves, just muddies things. Viewed objectively, a skilled user of Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows Seven are about on par with their weapons of choice, and only occasionally have a "ooh... that's neat, I wish mine did that" moment. To move forward, we need to identify the tasks users perform and rank them by their frequency. Evaluate each in turn on how efficiently this task is handled. Make changes as appropriate. Develop new solutions as needed. Walk away from convention when legacy limits abilities. We can make these changes more rapidly than Microsoft or Apple, and become the preferred tool with only a little marketing.
True, the specialized PC distributions you refer to do not share the goals of general-purpose desktop/server distributions such as Debian or Fedora. But they can still be written to be compatible with an application binary interface (libraries, package environment) identical to that of a more popular distribution, or in other words the same as Debian or Fedora with a different set of packages installed by default. This way, if one wants to add a given service to a machine running the networking distribution, such as a language or database on a web application server, one can add packages from the popular distribution's repository.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.NOT really but I always have been a fan of not being so proud that when you see something cool it can inspire you to create something yourself.
You're saying that because linux isn't great for games, that it's "abandoned" the desktop? With that sole exclusion, it's no worse than windows at desktop work.
In order to get into homes, you need the games. And to get the games, you need to convince the developers of the games to test their products on Wine. And no, a console is not the answer if you value freedom.
Your laptop is thin, light, has a long battery life and is also the first of its kind without volume production to drive cost down?
Toshiba isn't the only maker of ARM netbooks. I saw a bunch of Chinese 7" netbooks with Windows CE on a kiosk at the mall the other day. It runs Internet Explorer and other apps designed for Pocket PC.
and in the case of commercial software multiple binaries for the various architectures could be provided.
This didn't go over so well back in the Windows NT days. Windows NT was ported to several architectures, but the vast majority of publishers of proprietary software chose to continue to distribute their products only for the most popular instruction set (that is, i386), not as fat binaries.
All you find is three pounders with hard drives, crappy battery life and screens just a smidge smaller than a small notebook... and all running WIndows.
I don't know about the Windows issue, but the screen size issue was largely due to aging eyes. Most web sites nowadays are designed for a window 1024 pixels wide, and 1024x600 on a 9" screen is smaller than a lot of users with poor eyesight can comfortably read, and the keyboard that matches a 9" screen is smaller than a lot of users with adult-size fingers can comfortably type on. My Dell Mini 1012 is a lot more comfortable to type on than the Asus Eee PC 900 that I had before that.
> Ok first off, a lot of the visual effects actually serve a purpose.
No they aren't. They're just eye candy to sucker the rubes.
Calling these things "useful" is just self delusion by those spending far too much time fixating on stuff of no importance.
No. This crap is all about making the system "pretty" for marketing purposes.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Linux has no reason to try to compete. Windows will always dominate the enterprise market due the group policy and other ways of locking the idiots out. Linux is great for home use for people who want to use it. The downside to HP/Dell etc. selling Linux distros on their laptops/desktops (if they still are) is when the customer takes it to said store for support, chances are the tech will not know anything. I'm just assuming this since the techs know nothing about Windows either, which pegs their skill level between a mould covered brick and a noob that thinks they are a power user. There are things however that Windows OS absolutely fails at. A good example is Server Fileshare clusters. FAIL FAIL FAIL.
linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm
No, because I want a better Linux desktop, because that's what I use Linux for along with a server. I want Linux to be a better desktop than Windows.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
I switched from Windows to Linux not because Windows is terrible, but because Linux has reached the point where it has become
"good enough". I can play WOW on it and install my operating system the way I want it. It has reached the point where I can
find the hardware I need to run on it out of the box without having to install drivers from a CD. Everything on my compaq
laptop works with Linux Mint Debian installation. Ive reached the point where if a piece of hardware isnt 100% linux out of the box
compatible I just wont buy it. Yes some of the lesser name vendors, such as TP-Link, do pay attention and get
customer loyalty because of it.
Do we need 100% marketshare, no. I think 10% marketshare would be the point where I can go into best buy and the salesman can say
"Yep this printer works with linux" because there would be a "Linux certified"
sticker on it not because hes an ubergeek.
The GUI is nice but people switch when they say to you "Hey all my stuff works with this...are you sure this is free????"
When switching to something new, don't think about what you're moving from, just embrace the features that the new language has to offer. You're not learning a new language to use it for the same things, you're learning it because it's a new tool.
I think this can apply to operating systems too. Why should we be making copies of Windows when we have something genuinely unique*? We should embrace the uniqueness and refine that to bring something that is very good at what it does, instead of being moderately bad at doing what something else does.
In other words, we should be focusing on being different. That's the geeky way anyway, geeks hardly try to fit in.
As a question, why is it important that Linux gets desktop market share, anyway? I always saw Linux as a hobby-supported and donation-supported thing. I never expected that money would actually be an issue. In fact it seems to be working out just fine right now, too. Maybe not enough people are donating?
*Unique of course if you count *BSD and all the distros together, I know they're a little different but it's not actually by all that much.
As a longtime developer using Windows, my dream was to move our desktop machines to Linux ad use virtual machines when needed. Since this was my idea, my windows machine of 5 years was wiped and replaced with Ubuntu. About a month later, I haven't had any need to return to Windows. We use Notes as our mail, so I have a Linux client there. Firefox, Open Office, and my IDES also have a Linux version. My machine runs faster, and it is easier to find things! My music plays fine, and my printers and network were found without issue. Ubuntu is not exactly like Windows, but when you learn the Linux way of things, it works out better actually. With that being said, the laptop and desktop are being replaced with mobile devices. I don't think the form factor has been settled yet, but "smart phone app" metaphor is clearly the popular OS choice. I love the Linux packages, but the "app store" seems to work better for most users. The good news is those run Linux too.
"Ones and zeros were everywhere. I even think I saw a two!" - Bender
> Ok first off, a lot of the visual effects actually serve a purpose.
No they aren't. They're just eye candy to sucker the rubes.
Calling these things "useful" is just self delusion by those spending far too much time fixating on stuff of no importance.
No. This crap is all about making the system "pretty" for marketing purposes.
I actually like my desktop-switching cube, it gives me a somewhat natural feeling of organization, and this increases my productivity. Oh wait, we're talking about Windows here. Where opening a folder produces a sound. Oh well...
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
My honest opinion is that if Linux were to become "like Windows", then it would stop being the suitable Desktop OS that it currently is. Windows has never been a suitable Desktop OS, ever.
The folders I junctioned were c:\windows\winsxs and c:\windows\SoftwareDistribution
Didn't want that crap hoarding space on my SSD... perhaps it was a stupid move.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
The problem is that Linux is a pain in the ass at times to fix all the installation issues or hardware problems. Understandably I am not a pro user, but you shouldnt have to wade through command line to fix a Matlab installation when you follow on screen instructions and read everything given to you. It may not be the fault of linux, but its still a fault with the platform as a whole. I used Ubuntu and CentOS quite a bit before. For awhile I even switched to Ubuntu before it got bogged down by various problems. Frankly, if they want to take more of share of desktops they need to make it easier to use or at least developers for the platform need to have some stricter guidelines when they make their software. Maybe Google would have the vision and administrative control to release a competitive distribution that could compete, as they have with Android. Don't get me wrong, I hate Microsoft. They have way too much market share to be making the crappy OS's, office software, and Xbox software they do. I always have problems with my Xbox streaming video from my Windows 7 based machine, but the Xbox works streaming video from my Mac with literally no problems whatsoever. That is ridiculous. I just think that Linux is too fragmented to work for what people want.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Agreed.
Seconded.
The word you are looking for is "Debian". Seriously, I just switched back from Ubuntu to Debian on my main laptop, and it's so nice to be rid of the bloat, the stupid UI tweaks, the indecipherable decisions to break what already works well. I will grant you that the default desktop install of Debian installs GNOME, but you can easily install LXDE ('sudo tasksel install lxde-desktop') or XFCE ('sudo tasksel install xfce-desktop') or Fluxbox, Openbox, wmii, ratpoison, etc.
Nathan's blog
You think? I think about 30% of people would never install their own OS. I think if it's easy (and it is), then about two thirds or so of people would be willing to install an OS.
I heard arguments like yours about browsers, too, but here we are looking at usage for non-preloaded browsers of around 50%.
Besides, I don't think your point retorts the OP's point. If Linux had lots of developers (and, actually, it does) then its software would become "good enough" (and, actually, it pretty much is) and then there would start to be some preloads (and, actually, there is a small amount of that).
The exceptions are a few games and my video editing software, which may actually run in Wine for all I know but I've never felt the urge to try it.
I hate rebooting my PC. If Linux can run 99% of the software I need and Windows can run 100%, I'll just use Windows.
If I have to boot Windows to play games, I might as well browse the web, watch movies and write documents using windows too...
Ever tried to install the actual Firefox on Debian? It's harder than just downloading an installer binary and running it.
Can you install Linux software from CD or flash drive? Will it work with the regular package manager? Let's say i have a PC without internet connection. I can download the software and record it on a CD on my regular PC then go there and install it, Can I do the same with Linux software that is not part of the install CDs?
Linux way of installing software is great until you want to install a program that "the community" does not like for some reason. Maybe the software is closed source. Maybe it uses patented code (even though my country does not recognize software patents and I do not care about them).
I loathed Office 2003, including Word and Lookout, er, Outlook. Then came 2007, and I discovered I *HATED* them with a passion.
You can guess how I feel about the effort to make Thunderbird and OpenOffice more and more like them.
Give me a skin for t-bird that makes it look like the original, which displayed email the way they *used* to, with at *least* the To:, From:, and Subject: at the top of the email, not in an idiotic half-a-line thing that chops off half the subject.
And as for OO.o, give me a skin so that it looks, and works, like WordPerfect, the *vastly* better word processor that lost to M$'s monopolistic and illegal deals with hardware OEMs, and a "marketing" dept. that couldn't market their way out of a wet paper bag with the help of the Terminator.
Give me something *useful*, not it-must-look-like-M$
mark
Of those here who are serious about using Linux for their day to day, take a few minutes over the next few months for each person you encounter that might be interested in Linux on the desktop and ask them about their interest. Give them some input as to how well it works, what the desktop environment is like, how it isn't as prone to viruses as Windows, how all the software is free. When you are done ask them to ask you the most important question they can think of about it. If they don't reply with a question about whether it runs Windows software, then ask them about that. I'll bet you can see the issue right there.
I am not promoting the idea of Wine or crossover or any other package. The people you need are the average person just using it, showing it to their family and friends, not someone who is willing to add extra stuff to make it run Windows programs, to make it a Windows clone.
The most important things that holds people back are that it won't run Windows software (all of it) and that it tends to break on updates.
I use Linux and have for many years. I have it installed on about 15 computer in my shop. I have brought customers in and sat them down in front of Linux (without telling them anything) and they just use it. WITHOUT explanation. They pick up the mouse, find the familiar icons, double click, and go. Most have no idea that it isn't Windows and lots ask if this is the new Windows (meaning it is so familiar to them that they think it's just an update to Windows).
The goal should be to cease adding features of features sake and get with making it so that it doesn't break. I'd sell the idea of Linux more often if I didn't have to worry about it breaking every time a new update is downloaded (no I'm not implying that all updates break Linux, but there are enough that will that make my job harder after the fact).
So, once everyday people can use Linux without it breaking and they can understand that it is quality enough to be an environment in and of itself and we don't have to worry about some distro hijacking the direction of Linux (making some major change such as the display server change and the desktop manager change--where inevitably both will lead to major clusterfucks) then Linux will be a more viable home desktop environment where people can feel free of the virus monsters and not worry about having to pay for software junk that barely passes for shareware, and they can get on with their lives and be happy about their choice.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I like that my ubuntu laptop "just works" for the most part. I dislike that for things that aren't quite the way I want them, it is becoming more impossible to fix or change them.
KDE is a great example. Years ago, I liked their initial efforts of borrowing from the best UI elements that worked in other environments (OS/2's WPS, for example). Now they simply chase Microsoft. Gnome is guilty of this too. I love the concept of drag/dropping colors/patterns to nautilus to change it's appearance. Why isn't this used throughout? Why is it constrained to only the background? Why is it applied globally, and not available per object? WHy doesn't nautilus maintain the size of windows for different folders?
Windows is not a great interface. There are many things that Linux UIs do, and have done, better. Unfortunately, those good things seem to be going away as everybody seeks to mimic windows rather than stick to the better way of doing things, or come up with better ways of doing things. All in the name of "making it easy for windows users to transition". That should not be our goal. Our goal should be an elegant, intuitive, and customizable UI.
In my mind, Linux really needs to advertise the benefits it has to the ordinary person
The "ordinary person" doesn't even know Linux exists. They think Windows is "the computer".
Free Martian Whores!
Keyboards are for entering text. But even now programming is almost all entering symbols and references. Text is a lot of work entering lots of characters when a single symbol is produced. Typing allows all kinds of mistakes.
Because typing allows mistakes in a word processor, word processors have red underlines to highlight misspelled words. Because typing allows mistakes in a program editor, program editors have syntax highlighting and a similar use of red underlines. Furthermore, program editors have tab completion to speed up entering symbols.
And possibly most important, typing doesn't match the practice of mainly reusing code - you're always writing things from scratch, even to refer to existing code.
I've seen dataflow diagrams in products such as Rocky's Boots, LogicWorks, and Widget Workshop. In these environments, when you point-and-click to reuse code as a node in a dataflow diagram, you're drawing a lot of lines to hookup all the inputs and outputs to the other nodes, and you're drawing the lines from scratch. You're also pointing and clicking to find the reusable component you need as the needle in the haystack of components installed on your machine. And besides, how would the components be created?
20 years from now, if you're still programming, you'll be flowcharting and speaking.
Speaking? Overuse of the vocal cords invites the various dysphonias. I don't want the stranger sitting next to me on the bus hearing what I'm doing or (worse) thinking I'm criminally insane and calling the police on me. And speaking is just as linear as typing.
There will always be better accuracy and therefore faster communication when augmented by hands touching something that touches back
And until haptic feedback makes leaps and bounds that I haven't anticipated, "something that touches back" is the action of a buckling-spring keyboard. I'd like to see links to prove otherwise.
[Mobile phones] have keyboards mostly because of texting and the truly archaic phone numbers that are already being replaced by software directories
You still need a keyboard or on-screen keyboard to search the directory.
and directly messaging contact info around.
You still need a keyboard or on-screen keyboard to enter the recipient of the message the first time if you have met this recipient in person.
and keying text messages will start to be reliably replaced by speech to text (spoken over the network to the STT server).
With everyone else in the room hearing. That kills the big advantage of texting over speaking, namely the silence.
So by the time 20 or so years comes around, young programmers will use
...graphing calculators. Everything else that's programmable and affordable for home use will be cryptographically locked down to run only programs developed by professional programmers working for businesses and approved by the hardware maker.
Convenience and cost for the billions of users will probably mean most people just touch surfaces or gesture in the air for selecting options, while workers use "pens" that don't feed back unless they're working on the machine's state, not the state of more abstract work. People who must communicate more precisely or verbosely with the machine will use pens that feed back, and perhaps surfaces and objects that deform to interact with the pens, because the human wetware has the most expressive and receptive interface in that manner.
Which creates a bigger divide between the haves and the have-nots. Pens that feed back will be expensive, just as a 3D mouse is expensive, and for at least the first 20 years until patents expire, applications needing preci
So, linux does run on smartphones. One flavor is called Maemo
Too bad none of the four major U.S. wireless carriers and none of the major U.S. electronics chains have a Maemo handset. I'd love to try one so that I can consider buying it.
But the desktop is disappearing. "Mobile" computing is computing you don't have to notice computing.
Until you notice the bill. Internet service for all the desktop PCs in a home costs $40 per month. Smartphone service, on the other hand, costs $70 per month for each handset, and you get cut off after you've downloaded or streamed a couple movies' worth of data in a month.
That just means that it doesn't work on all hardware.
Mac OS X doesn't work on all hardware, but it has a well-known brand of hardware with which it works wonderfully. GNU/Linux has neither the near-universal compatibility of Windows nor the well-known hardware brand of Mac OS X. I can't just walk into Best Buy, try a Linux box on display, and buy it; every PC there that isn't made by Apple has Windows 7 on it.
Linux has a 90% share in supercomputers, a 50% share in servers (+/- 10%), and a pretty good share of cell phones and other mobiles, if you include Android and other semi-proprietary systems. The only place to expand into it the desktop, where the market share is at most 5%. So, why not?
I mostly agree with that, and i certainly don't see 'Linux' being held back by being a Windows competitor, i mean Linux is doing just fine. Maybe adoption of desktop linux distros is affected by just trying to be a windows alternative rather than being something new and different but there needs to be a level of familiarity for users to be comfortable, you need a Windows-esque distro to start the transition to linux then as the users get comfortable they can make the progression - if they wish - towards systems like Gentoo. I don't think any of this affects Linux itself though.
I assume by modern game you really mean proprietary game written for Windows.
It costs money to make video games with production values comparable to those of an EA or Activision product. How would the developer of a non-proprietary game come up with this kind of money?
In your eyes the lack of proprietary applications are what make Linux painful for you. This is hardly the fault of Linux, and entirely the fault of the vendors of said applications.
It's partly the fault of distro makers for not making their distros attractive to the vendors of said applications.
AFAIK keyboard focus is instantely switched, you can ignore the visuals and just keep on typing.
Though quite frankly I almost never minimize an app anyway (I just shove something else on top of it :) ), so I haven't even noticed the zoom effect until you mentioned it and I explictly went to check it out.
Of course WinKey-M minimizes everything w/o a zoom effect.
You can read over on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog (Scroll down to "Desktop Graphics - Reduced Memory Footprint
") about how window contents are stored purely in GPU memory.
Middle click the running instance of Chrome in the taskbar to open a new instance. The icon is still there, it has just been expanded out.
Granted this is 100% non-discoverable... But I think the idea is that anyone who wants to open umpteen browser instances probably also reads sites like /. :)
Another way to open a new instance is to hit shift-winkey-#, where # is whatever numbered position the chrome icon is on your taskbar when the taskbar is empty.
Reply with a list of'em and I'll see how many work arounds I know. :)
Being able to slam windows to the side and get them sized to 1/2 screen is insanely useful.
I actually really appreciate this, as when I bring my laptop over to someone's house, or to any WiFi hotpot that I don't trust, I can just select "Public" and know that my HD contents aren't going to be shared out over the network. On the flip side of things, home networking actually works now! YAH! (About damn time)
My main issue with XP was that half of the damn wireless cards would co-opt the really good Windows Wireless UI with their own POS UI that couldn't do half the things the Windows UI could do.
Haven't had many issues with Win7's UI. Normally my interaction with it consists of clicking on the tray bar icon and then selecting whatever network I want to connect to.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Without taking the luxury of going through 500 comments before me, I'm pretty sure/confident that someone has probably already said anything I could say, but I'll say it anyway. I couldn't care less whether or not linux is competitive, the only thing I care about is whether or not it's viable for personal use. secure/stable/hardware support. In order for Linux to be competitive it would have to gain market share with countless legions of people I couldn't care less about. More succinctly, NONE of the qualities in linux which attracted/drew me towards it, have anything to do with it's profitability, market share, or adoption rate. You could perhaps argue that linux needed to attain a certain -mass- to attract the resources necessary to gain the qualities that I DO care about, but let's just say the necessary mass to do that is far less then it would require to "compete" with microsoft.
Don't download crappy freeware/shareware apps from no-name companies?
If I start a company to develop and publish software, how do you recommend that I make it not no-name?
Maybe it uses patented code (even though my country does not recognize software patents and I do not care about them).
Even if you do not live in the United States, if you do business with people who live in the United States, you may still have to worry about United States patents.
...to do a million and one things windows can't.
Name one.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Installing software is a disgrace.
You have a problem double-clicking? Holy shit, how in the world do you get by in Linux?!!
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Inkscape and it's perfectly fine ... it seems to be compatible with illustrator.
There are a lot of things Illustrator can do that Inkscape cannot. I remember doing a 1-off project in Inkscape because I did not want to drop the cash for Illustrator, and then finding all these easy ways to do things in Illustrator that I was struggling with in Inkscape. I think Inkscape is a good program, but like GIMP it just doesn't compare with the real deal.
It's not about using what everyone else uses. If you need to perform a function often enough you are going to find the best tool for the job. It's like the weekend warrior who buys a $20 wrench set compared to the mechanic that has the $2,000 set complete with rolling tool chest. The $20 wrenches work just fine, but they do not compare to the professional kit. I have never seen a high end user application for which the open source version was superior. One may exist, but I've never seen it.
If you're happy to use Microsoft languages and Microsoft APIs and write software that only works on Microsoft Windows, then Visual Studio is for you.
Fortunately you only lose about 10% of the market this way. Not a big negative there.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
No, as I explained, I have a problem:
All of which are solved if using the apt-get system or a similar package manager.
Ever tried to install the actual Firefox on Debian? It's harder than just downloading an installer binary and running it.
I have, in fact, for example tried to run early betas. It's not any harder than installing software on Windows, but it's not quite as nice as when it's already packaged in apt.
Can you install Linux software from CD or flash drive? Will it work with the regular package manager? Let's say i have a PC without internet connection. I can download the software and record it on a CD on my regular PC then go there and install it, Can I do the same with Linux software that is not part of the install CDs?
Yes. The apt-get system obviously only works properly when connected. But what apt-get is doing is just automatically downloading and installing .deb files. You can just as easily manually install .deb files from a CD or another website. Once installed, they do work with the regular package manager and appear as a normal package once installed (and can even receive automatic updates if they are also in the online repository).
In fact, most third-party software for Linux comes as a .deb or RPM package which you install by double-clicking. So it's just like Windows except it installs into the package management system.
Linux way of installing software is great until you want to install a program that "the community" does not like for some reason. Maybe the software is closed source. Maybe it uses patented code (even though my country does not recognize software patents and I do not care about them).
Not at all. You're sort of implying that the Linux package manager is like the iPhone store (or more closely, the new Mac App Store), where if Debian doesn't approve, then you can't use the package manager and have to do everything manually. This isn't true at all.
The apt system, by default provides the Debian repository, but you can always add new repositories from any website you like, providing all the benefits of package management. The best example of this is Launchpad, which lets anybody have a "PPA" (personal package archive). I can add your PPA to my system, then install your packages using the regular package manager, receive automatic updates, etc. Of course, I would have to trust you, but the choice is mine. In Ubuntu, there is an easy user interface for adding PPAs and other archives.
So yes, the Linux way of installing software extends beyond the "Debian-approved" (or Ubuntu) packages to everybody who wants to provide a repository, including closed source code.
Ever tried to install the actual Firefox on Debian?
Yes. apt-get install firefox
Debian doesn't have the nice "Ubuntu Software Center" because it isn't a desktop-oriented distribution. But I would say it is easy to install software.
It's harder than just downloading an installer binary and running it.
Maybe. It depends on whether you already know what to do or not. If you are learning it for the first time, then yes, it is probably more difficult, but only because it is different. Also, Mozilla has that big download button on their first Firefox page that automatically detects the version and everything for you. That's nice. But most software distributed for Windows is not that easy.
Can you install Linux software from CD or flash drive?
Yes. How do you think your distribution gets installed in the first place...usually from a CD/DVD.
Will it work with the regular package manager?
Depends. If it's packaged then yes.
Let's say i have a PC without internet connection. I can download the software and record it on a CD on my regular PC then go there and install it, Can I do the same with Linux software that is not part of the install CDs?
Yes.
Linux way of installing software is great until you want to install a program that "the community" does not like for some reason. Maybe the software is closed source. Maybe it uses patented code (even though my country does not recognize software patents and I do not care about them).
I use at least four proprietary (read: closed source) applications on my linux desktop on a regular basis. I had no trouble installing those. They didn't use the package manager, yes, but that's mainly because they would have to tailor it to individual distributions, which is too much of a pain. So they just shipped it with their own binary installer, and it works just fine.
I would definitely like to see better cross-distribution package management. It's a problem a number of projects have tried to address. But it's difficult. And I guess the benefit is not great enough to persevere.
Only because MS snips and picks features. To get a system equivalent in functionality, Windows costs way more.
Ultimate: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116718&cm_re=windows_7_ultimate_64-_-32-116-718-_-Product
VS2010 Pro: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116864&cm_re=visual_studio_2010-_-32-116-864-_-Product
Easily a thousand or more if you want an "official" platform that isn't crippled and begins to approach what is available in every Linux distro.
I have, in fact, for example tried to run early betas. It's not any harder than installing software on Windows, but it's not quite as nice as when it's already packaged in apt.
Maybe it changed since I last installed it, but I had to extract the files to /opt/firefox, changing permissions so te directory is writable by regular users (for automatic updates), create some symlinks, hunt down where the "open source flash" plugin is so I could have "Adobe Flash" etc.
A bit harder than just double clicking on an downloaded .exe and next->next->...->finish.
So yes, the Linux way of installing software extends beyond the "Debian-approved" (or Ubuntu) packages to everybody who wants to provide a repository, including closed source code.
And again, it is more difficult to do than just double click a downloaded .exe or .zip. For example - do you know a repository where Firefox is? I can download FF in an archive from the official website, but I have not seen any links to a repository.
Yes. apt-get install firefox
Debian doesn't have the nice "Ubuntu Software Center" because it isn't a desktop-oriented distribution. But I would say it is easy to install software.
Interesting. When I tried it earlier this year, it didn't work, apt-get said that the package was not found, even though I had selected the "unclean" repositories.
I had to download the archive from Mozilla's site, extract it to /opt/firefox, change permissions to that directory so that automatic updates worked for regular users, hunt down where the "open source flash" plugin was so I could remove it and install "Adobe Flash" (which came in an installer IIRC, great) and create a link so I don't have to type /opt/firefox/firefox.
This to me looks like more work (and I would not have done it without googling) than just double clicking an .exe file and clicking Next->Next->...->Finish.
But people buy systems that do what they want or need. They don't buy systems with software they don't need to make a "fair comparison".
I'm not sure what steps are involved, but it looks like Mozilla currently provides a .tar.bz2 for Firefox. If you unzip it, it is all there, so you can just run it straight from the directory. I guess installing it would be harder and not for "normal users" which I suppose means it's easier to install Firefox on Windows than on Linux, assuming that Firefox isn't included in the Linux distro's repository (which it almost always is...)
But that isn't a problem with Linux. It's a problem with the way Mozilla packaged it. They could have provided a .deb package, which would install with a double click. Failing that, they could have provided an executable file which installs Firefox manually, just like the Windows version. There is nothing inherently special about Windows that allows installer programs where Linux does not.
Well yeah ... in Ubuntu it is installed as the default web browser, and automatically updated. If you don't want the official Ubuntu one, and want a bleeding edge version, you can google "Firefox PPA" which takes you to Launchpad where you can install the Mozilla daily build PPA.
My argument is in the very common case ("it is Debian-approved"), installing software in Linux is a total no-brainer, and much more secure than the Windows way, and it will keep automatically updated. Otherwise, in the case where the provider has done as much work packaging it as they have on Windows, it will be no harder to install on Linux than on Windows. Obviously, if the software provider has done a poorer job packaging than they did on Windows (as Mozilla seem to have), your mileage may vary.
Yes, that is certainly a lot more work. Thankfully, it is unnecessary. There was a Firefox rebranding issue with Debian, so they started calling it Iceweasel instead. So try apt-get install iceweasel and see if that works. I'm kind of surprised it didn't pop up a message saying there was a replacement package for firefox. Usually they are pretty good about putting those notes in the repository.
For the flash plugin, you need:
apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
According to the database it is in both unstable and testing. If you are running stable (Lenny), you need to add the backports repository to get it.
When I installed Debian (Lenny), Iceweasel was lower version (3.0.x IIRC) than FF and didn't have the nice features of Firefox >3.6.x
I downloaded flash from adobe's site, that wasn't a problem, the problem was that I had to hunt down the "free" flash plugin because for some reason it was used first if both were installed.
When I installed Debian (Lenny), Iceweasel was lower version (3.0.x IIRC) than FF and didn't have the nice features of Firefox >3.6.x
Yeah, that's why you need to use testing or unstable if you want the latest software. The stable branch is really stable, which necessarily means the software is usually at least one if not a few versions behind the latest. Don't worry, you can use testing or unstable safely. It's just the way Debian does it's versioning...it's not going to break horribly if you use it.
I downloaded flash from adobe's site, that wasn't a problem, the problem was that I had to hunt down the "free" flash plugin because for some reason it was used first if both were installed.
Yes, but if you use the package, you can take advantage of the features the packaging offers, like automatically updating your plugin registry to use it by default instead of the open source version. There's a reason why package managers are so favored in the linux community. You should try to use it (dpkg/apt) as much as possible when installing/removing/updating/configuring software on your machine. It's there because it's good.
That's the main problem.
The second problem is that half the users run around screaming about how proprietary software is evil. Not exactly a welcoming environment.
I recently started a job at a company that uses the full range of Microsoft products on its desktops. The latest apps are attractive, easy to use, and after a day spent using them, I feel like the smiling members of my high school rally committee were beating me with bats all day.
We are using Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Sharepoint (as a Web site), Microsoft Sharepoint (as a standalone application), Microsoft Communicator, Microsoft OneNote, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Communicator, Internet Explorer, all in Windows 7, along with I don't know how many other major and minor applications. Each one has a button on the toolbar to launch one of the others. I've got Word embedded in Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer embedded in Word, Outlook trying to pass everything through OneNote to one of the Sharepoints (I forget which one), and in general, every damned application is trying to climb on top of every other application, while shouting, "Look at me! I'm the prettiest!"
Meanwhile, in a corner, there's PuTTY, where I'm logged in to a CentOS box, where maybe I can fix an actual problem.
Seriously, I don't think Linux should compete with Windows. I think Linux should just try to do things competently.
Zooming windows can be useful, also - the graphics card does the rendering, unless you are anal about powersaving, it's pointless not to have it - even then - just don't use it if the GPU doesn't have enough horsepower. Special effects are in the same category, if the GPU doesn't choke, they come free, seen as they are a temp load - comes and goes. Audio cues? Can be annoying, when appropriately packaged, are gone and not littering the system with a sudo yum remove. Same goes for the previous, though the amount of code for the aforementioned is laughable, AFAIK.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
To some of us, the zooming is simply ugly and "appears" slow, even if it isn't. When I want to switch to another window, I simply want that windows to POP, and be in focus, so I can do what it is I wanted to do. Snap / snap / snap. I don't need the old XWindows method where when you mouse over, the new window gets focus (not sure I could get used to that), I just want an OS to feel snappy and responsive. Linux needs work on that when starting apps as well.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
the last donated perperials I recieved was a scanner (does not work on windows above XP), 3g dongle (does not work on windows above vista) and a printer (does not work on windows above xp), all of which worked fine under the latest version of Kubuntu -- out of the box.
I tried to switch to Mandrake with a Microtek ScanMaker 4850 scanner that several years later still has no SANE driver. My aunt just moved, and now the wireless router has moved from the room with her oldest son's Ubuntu box to a different room, and Ubuntu doesn't recognize a spare USB WLAN adapter that the Windows PC now in the same room as the router used to use.
Don't worry, you can use testing or unstable safely.
But if I only want the newest version of FF (IW) but leave the rest of the system as is?
I assume if I add the "unstable" repository the updater would see that half of my system is out of date and would update it.
Yes, but if you use the package, you can take advantage of the features the packaging offers, like automatically updating your plugin registry to use it by default instead of the open source version.
And I would have used it if I knew that if I added "unstable" or "testing" repository, I could get Adobe flash I would have. I didn't know that, so the first thing I did was to go to adobe.com and download Flash for Linux.
Linux has always taken ideas from Windows. It was the first Unix to really go after the Windows crowd, essentially the first Unix community built by people that had grown up in a windows environment. Here is the most popular desktop in 1996: http://xwinman.org/screenshots/fvwm95.gif
And I would have used it if I knew that if I added "unstable" or "testing" repository,
Or use the lenny-backports repository I mentioned above. Incidentally, I don't run Debian anymore, and they've changed the repositories around (you used to have to add a different repository to get things like Flash which you don't have to do anymore). But the first hit when you Google Debian Flash is the Debian Flash wiki, which redirects you to the Debian FlashPlayer package, which tells you where you can get it. And if you do a search on packages.debian.org for Flash, you can see which repositories it is in. You can do that generally for any package you might want to install.
But if I only want the newest version of FF (IW) but leave the rest of the system as is?
I assume if I add the "unstable" repository the updater would see that half of my system is out of date and would update it.
Mmmm...I knew you were going to ask that question. You can install only a single package (with the required dependencies) from the unstable or testing distributions, but this is definitely a more advanced configuration. You have to use apt-pinning. Here is a simple tutorial,
http://jaqque.sbih.org/kplug/apt-pinning.html
This is one thing that is nice about Debian. It allows you to do things like this even when it's not recommended. Keep in mind, the larger packages like Firefox and OpenOffice touch the system in a lot of places, so you will probably find it upgrading a number of packages when you install them (things like gnome libraries and glibc versions). You won't get a clean upgrade of just a single package. But it won't upgrade things it doesn't need to. I suggest setting it up to pull newer packages from just the testing repository first. You will be able to get most of the things you want in that distribution. You only need to add unstable if you really want to be on the bleeding edge.
Go buy a N900 (or 800 or 810)
I walked into a T-Mobile store back in May, and they didn't have one.
from, uh... ebay?
If it turns out that I happen not to like the look of the N900's screen or the feel of its touch screen, I'm probably $80 out of pocket for shipping, return shipping, and the 15% restocking fee. That's why I said "try one".
Snappy is a function of the CPU and IO schedulers. They do need more flexibility in latency/throughput trade-offs. Prelink and profiled prefetch/caching ought to take care of startup times. Ubuntu uses them, AFAIK.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Now I know... thanks.
For now I can leave it like this (also, when installing Firefox from Mozilla's site, I didn't have to upgrade any package at all) - automatic updates work etc.
For now I can leave it like this (also, when installing Firefox from Mozilla's site, I didn't have to upgrade any package at all) - automatic updates work etc.
Yes, that's because the libraries are statically-linked...it doesn't use any of your system libraries, but includes it's own. There's a huge debate over which approach is better. I personally think dynamic-linking is better, for security, maintenance, and resource-usage reasons. But then Apple takes the opposite stance with their "App-folders" where every application bundles its own libraries. There are never any dependency issues, but at any given time you might have 10 different copies of a font library (or something like that) loaded and running because each application uses its own and none of them share.
In that case, statically linked ftw. Actually, newer versions of Windows have this figured out in my opinion. Use dynamically-linked libraries, but if the app wants a DLL that is a different version than the one in the system, install it to a separate folder (winSxS) and use it only for that app and others that want that version. No longer apps can muck up the system by installing an incompatible DLL.
I don't know how Linux does this, but I should not replace half of my system to run am app that wants a newer library.
I finally upgraded to Win7 by virtue of buying a new computer a week ago. I've spent the last week tinkering to get it to work properly for my tastes (which, in the end, involved switching out the entire freaking file manager, in addition to several other things). Linux doesn't have a monopoly on that particular issue, sadly. Though perhaps releases happen more frequently than they do in Microsoft-land.
It's not really about the app wanting to use a newer version. That's an easy problem, and unless the versions conflict in some horrible way (like libc6), you can easily have multiple versions of a library installed. The problem is when you install from different distributions (testing and stable are effectively separate distributions from stable), the apps are linked against a different set of libraries (it may be the same version, but a different name or whatever). That's why cross-distribution packaging is such a pain. Most distributions use more or less the same library versions, but they name them differently, and version control (the package itself, not the library) them differently, so the binary package isn't cross-compatible, but the source is. The solution so far, for things like Debian stable, is to have a backports repository where newer software versions are compiled against the libraries in stable. Then you just have to upgrade the single package and not everything in your distribution. But yeah, cross-distribution packaging would be nice....
Otherwise we have to go Windows-style and have every software package ship with it's own installer and no knowledge of anything else that may be on the system, no way to centrally update them all, and no way to universally apply security patches to every package that uses a given library (ie: every package has to have its own crappy update utility running in the system tray bogging down everything and irritating you with annoying popups all the time).
Just checked...the newer Firefox (err, Iceweasel) is in lenny-backports. So there's another way to get the latest version without apt-pinning.
Or mix the two. For example, declare what distributions the package was made for and if the distribution does not match then install the package (and all associated packages) somewhere where they do not interfere with the system.
So, if I want to install the package for "testing" on "stable", it and all of its dependencies that are not already on the system get installed somewhere where they do not affect the rest of the system, even if that means having two copies of some library but named differently.
As for updating on Windows - you can have update managers or the app check for updates when you start it and not constantly run some updater. Firefox does that (on both Linux and Windows). When it's running it checks for updates and if it finds one it prompts me to restart FF and applies the update when I do (which is not always immediately).
And Debian updater out-of-the-box is worse than Windows. You have to be root to apply updates, which means that if I'm not there and I don't want to give the user root password the system stays out of date. Windows updates automatically even when the logged in user is not an admin (though on windows it's OK to log in as admin).
And Debian updater out-of-the-box is worse than Windows. You have to be root to apply updates,
Well, it depends on your perspective. You may not want it to update without your approval. But there are ways to do unattended updates. The easiest is to probably use the Ubuntu update manager, which I think is also available on Debian.
So, if I want to install the package for "testing" on "stable", it and all of its dependencies that are not already on the system get installed somewhere where they do not affect the rest of the system, even if that means having two copies of some library but named differently.
That's not a bad idea. I wonder if it could be easily implemented....
Once upon a time autopackage made some inroads into the cross-distribution packaging problem. They aren't around anymore. I really think it's just a matter of having a good way to map library names and locations across distributions. It requires the cooperation of all of the distribution maintainers, though, so it will probably not happen any time soon.
Just found this,
http://listaller.nlinux.org/
The problem I have with comparing Linux to Windows on the desktop is that I think Windows stinks on the desktop. I may be in the minority, but I want an operating system that is lean and mean, with no zooming windows, special effects, cute audio cues, or glassy curved "kewl" surfaces. I want an operating system to run applications.
Glad, i'm not the only one. I think some part of M$ gets this, hence server core. On the other-hand, im one of those XP/2003 guys because I cannot deal with the lag in vista/7 due to the changes in the graphical model, moving GDI (the API that 99% of windows the applications use) higher up in the software stack and loosing 3x-20x drawing performance drives me nuts.
Plus, I want to run "apps", and strangely enough some of my apps are 10-15 years old. Of course some of them are brand new, but I don't always feel like keeping an old computer around just to use my old eeprom burner.
Oh BTW, You sound like the kind of person who would have enjoyed MR BIOS in their day. Basically instant on BIOS. Now days I just leave my machines in S3 all the time. My windows machines are stable enough to never need rebooting, and handle S3 well enough, I have my desktops doing WOL and S3 standby on a 10 minute cycle. Solves the boot problem, of course with all the shit cut out the machine cold boots in ~10 seconds anyway.
Is it possible for Linux community to refrain from telling users to DIY.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
I think OP has missed the point. [Normal] people don't really care what theyre using... they just want it to work for their needs.
I've always run Ubuntu on my laptop for example, because it works well for what I need my laptop to do. I dont run it on my desktop because every game is unsupported, multi-monitor support is brutal, silverlight support for my stock portfolio is non-existant, etc.
A computer is a tool; and as with any tool: sometimes you need a spoon, and sometimes you need a backhoe.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.