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Why Desktop Linux Hasn't Taken Off
alphadogg writes "It's free, easier to use than ever, IT staffers know it and love it, and it has fewer viruses and Trojans than Windows. So, why hasn't Linux on the desktop taken off? When it comes to desktop Linux, the cost savings turn out to be problematic, there are management issues, and compatibility remains an issue. 'We get a lot more questions about switching to Macs than switching to Linux at this point, even though Macs are more expensive,' one Gartner analyst says."
How I am even supposed to begin to recommend Linux for the average user when there are 100 different distros, each with its own quirks and issues? Hell, even I don't have any clue where to begin on which one to recommend. And I sure wouldn't know how to support each one if they had problems.
At least with Windows, I can say "Use Home Premium at home, Professional at work." Even simpler with Macs. With Linux, I guess I would recommend Ubuntu, but a lot of Linux fans are even starting to bitch about that.
If you want simple users, make it simple to use. Linux is way too fractured right now for the average user. Get a consensus down to a single home distro, a single business distro, and a few specialized distros and then start from there.
It would probably also help if you could get Linux users to stop fighting amongst themselves over every little goddamn thing. Outsiders are really turned off by what looks like a bunch of squabbling geeks fighting over their favorite Star Trek series (which we all know is DS9, anyway). Average consumers *do not* like stepping into the middle of a fight which they don't even understand. That's one of the reasons they like Windows and OS X (all the fighting over those is kept behind the scenes, for the most part).
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Very powerful, virtually nonexistant for Linux on the desktop.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Microsoft Office
simple...
Games!
Get the games companies to release Linux version of their big titles (Modern Warfare series, Elder Scrolls series etc... etc...)
and you'll see more and more Linux desktops!!
Well that and AMD / Nvidia get around to shipping bug free drivers that is.. ^_~ lol
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
It's an application compatibility issue at the moment. Just about everything I use is browser based these days except photoshop. If I could pay a subscription to something like onlive.com for remote photoshop access, my next laptop wouldn't be a mac.
Maybe it has taken off and all this talk of it not taking off is just evidence of it having taken off?
Do you inspect a roller coaster everytime you ride it?
I work for a software company whose product line is based on linux & linux-like OS. The managers in our group are extremely hostile to linux and harass staff if they use anything other than microsoft windows. It doesn't help that many of these managers are former microsoft employees but basically they fear it because they don't know it and are way too lazy to learn anything new.
Why do we keep getting these posts that are deliberately chosen to incite flamewars between pro- and anti-Linux people?
Do we need to have more unhelpful arguments like the one yesterday when Samzenpus posted a dupe of a response to a dupe from back at the start of the year?
Maybe we need to plan a "year of the Linux desktop" to get people to migrate...
Most people do not know there is an alternative to windows or that it's as good as windows. Other issues confusion and people trying to fix things that are not broken such as completely redoing gnome in gnome 3 or brain dead things like Unity in Ubuntu which cause Mint to over take it as the most downloaded distro. Android is a good example of what can happen when people are exposed to an alternative OS. It's now the number 1 smart phone OS and Windows phone is more or less a flop.
hasn't been released yet. Playing with W8 pushed me to look seriously into Linux alternatives. (#! and Linux Mint) Valve should release Steam for Linux this year. Gabe Newell trashes Win8/Linux client near: http://techland.time.com/2012/04/25/steam-native-linux-client-near-gabe-newell-trashes-windows-8/
I just can't understand why that isn't me!
"I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
I've heard this argument so many times, I think it's posted a dozen times a year. I'm sure everyone knows why Linux isn't popular, we live in a Windows World! If the poster doesn't know this by now, he must be brand new to computers!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Seriously, Who cares? My year of the Linux desktop came in '92 even though I was born in '93! I use Linux religiously and will evangelize it to anyone willing to listen to my gospel. But so what if Linux doesn't ever get mainstream. If people would rather use Windoz or Mac, it's their God given right!
At work, I write code that has to run on Windows (multiple versions, multiple bitness), Linux x86-64, and Solaris SPARC 64. Maintaining compatibility across multiple versions of Windows and Visual Studio is trivial compared to Linux. Worse, GUI applications have more complex code execution paths that, under Windows, can be debugged without too much pain. On Linux, I cringe every time I have to fix a broken GUI.
I'm sure there are lots of Linux developers that are smarter than I am, but, really, Microsoft has pushed hard to make the developer tools usable and productive, so much so that they're actually worth the cost. The result is that it's easier to develop more apps faster on their platform.
Just one opinion.
Even the more polished Linux distros such as Ubuntu have their little quirks that you either have to live with or go the trouble to fix which could mean hours of trouble that the average person is not willing to go through. As time has progressed, this has gotten better but it is still not completely there. The other is lack of commercial software support for software that everyone already uses. I can't even watch Netflix on my Linux install without a Windows VM. Even when a business chooses to create a Linux version of their software, the software sends to have a subset of the functionality of the Windows version. I still haven't even mentioned gaming. All this said, when I can use it for what I am doing, I prefer Linux. The powerful command line alone is worth it.
IMHO, it's because Ubuntu was really the only distro that had a fighting chance at "mass" adoption (that number is relative, but considering how MacOX was sitting at 9% for an eternity...) with their tri-force of:
A pretty, and relatively user friendly interface,
A centralized software update suites that didn't requiring googling what to sudo apt-get for in a console
And pretty good brand recognition and media attention.
UNTIL they decided to completely over-indulge their own sense of relevance by forcing the mandatory Unity interface on users with some absolutely retarded idea that they would to do this for the huge wave of tablet adoption they were now going to see, since I'm assuming Desktop users are already totes in the Ubuntu bandwagon?
I think the real issue isn't that (consumer) Desktop Linux hasn't taken off, but that the people behind the main distro that actually had a fighting chance decided to chop some of the more useful limbs off of it to make it more...fingerable.
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/102599-ubuntu-14-04-will-be-a-smartphone-and-tablet-os-so-what
I've been using as my primary operating system for well over 10 years. For typical programming/office work it's just easier to deal with than Windows. This is especially true when my job requires to connecting to other Unix based boxes and the majority of my work is done on command line.. I feel neutered every time I have to go back to windows..
Personally I don't care what the masses like..
The great opportunity for Linux on the desktop was a decade ago. Back when Windows 95 sucked, Windows XP was late, and Windows 2000 cost several hundred dollars. That's when it could have happened. It didn't.
There was a second chance when the netbooks came in. But that, too, was botched. For a moment, it looked like the future of computing was a $99 Linux netbook in a bubble pack at WalMart. This terrified the industry. The EeePC Linux was badly broken, especially in the networking area. Microsoft frantically revived XP, and then, with the cooperation of the PC industry, tried to destroy the netbook industry. Companies which also produced PCs were told they'd lose their Microsoft volume discount if they sold a Linux netbook. Hence, the "Asus recommends Windows 7" branding. Similar pressure was applied to dealers. You can buy low cost Linux netbooks from suppliers in Shenzen right now, but try to find one at a US retailer. (The current ASUS EeePC 1001, at $200, which is a quite capable little computer. was supposed to be a Linux machine. It's only available with Windows 7.)
'We get a lot more questions about switching to Macs than switching to Linux at this point, even though Macs are more expensive,' one Gartner analyst says.
You mean the operating system with multiple millions of dollars of advertising and marketing behind it has a greater mindshare among the general public than the one put together by volunteers with no such backing? Colour me shocked.
(This is not to say that Linux doesn't have its problems, of course. But to suggest like the top poster here that Linux "consolidate" its distributions into one shows a serious misunderstanding of what Linux is and how it's put together.)
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
The article mentioned manageability problems with Linux on the desktop and I disagree. Check out puppet for helping to manage systems. I have a soft spot for open source, particularly CentOS and OpenBSD. Again, from the article, if the Chester County Cat Hospital in the Greater Philadelphia area can deploy Linux on the desktop and server, then just about anyone can. I was amazed that anyone could find an open source practice management system. Generally, I think this article was not too well written but I am impressed at the research done to discover the Chester County Cat Hospital. I actually know of that practice and used to live in the area. Additionally, here is an article written about a company specializing in open source usage in business. A company by the name of MTier has done it, and in the process, is able to basically architect a system that is so secure that it would probably surpass standard auditing requirements by a wide margin: A Puffy in the corporate aquarium
First, the biggest reason that business does not look at changing is the cost of retooling. Most businesses are soo tied into windows that they can not even consider an alternative. They have thousands of not hundreds of thousands tied up in the windows infrastructure that would, for the most part have to be scrapped and replaced. From communicator, exchange, Antivirus, share point, you name it and if it is a Microsoft product then it is designed to work with windows. I have known several large companies that looked at moving to Linux desktops, once you worked out the cost of retooling, retraining, and the disruption to the end user, it was cost prohibitive.
Now to home use, I think Linux as a home desktop is far more prevalent that most people think. I know quite a few non-tech people now running linux as a home desktop. I have noticed that almost every software provider has listed in there FAQ "Do you provide a version for Linux?" If it is a frequently asked question then, IMHO, it is far more prevalent than many believe. The issue here is proof, with windows it is sales but buying a Linux desktop is not as easy as going to Walmart and buying a windows one. Top that off with the fact that all systems sold with windows count towards windows numbers even when they are wiped and Linux is installed. So the real question is how many linux desktops are there and what is the best way to identify them. Until those questions are answered we really have no way of knowing how big the population is.
Great idea! But who will be arrested if this common execution runtime doesn't exist for, say KERNAL, or CP/M, or any one of these 150 Operating Systems?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Dekstop Linux hasn't taken off because people don't want a powerful OS that does what they tell it to. They want trinkets that keep them entertained. It's the same reason why McDonalds sells billions of hamburgers a year, why Home Ec is the chief focus of The Learning Channel, and why Kurtzmann and Orci keep getting work. People are stupid, end of story.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
300+ Ubuntu residential installations and many business desktops/laptops and counting. When I approach an infected Windows computer I suggest a migration from windows to Ubuntu. I charge the same price to clean windows or migrate to Ubuntu. When they realise that they don't have to keep paying me to come back and clean windows again and again they chose to go with the migration to Ubuntu and are quite happy with their choice. Almost every one of them have not heard of Linux until I come along and give them the option.
We had a chance to get Linux On the Desktop in 2006 with Vista "that looked like Windows 7 (to come later) but crashed like Windows 95". So X% of users suffered, y% stayed on XP, Z% went to Mac. Let's just say "no one" (for LARGE values of "no one" in quotes) went to Linux.
But maybe we're on the edge of an even better chance. We're all being shoved off of XP soon, headlong into Windows 8 Metro. Metro will NOT look anything like Windows. It might not even run a lot of apps so the compatibility advantage weakens.
So just maybe, if we can get a couple of overall policy direction leaders that the techies really trust, (with no single one in charge for fairness?) then maybe someone who likes Disruptive business can tap a silent investor with a BIG pocket to churn 30,000 developer-hours to cleaning up the inter-operability problems in Linux. (Maybe some cross-distro middleware?)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
There goes the idea of adding new features to your OS.
Lets say, my OS I wanted to create a new feature lets just say this feature interacts with your brainwave patterns and interprets this into flat text.
Ok I have the feature, now Programmers want to to access that feature and use it in there programs... But wait, they can't because their is a Law preventing me from doing this, unless I am willing to go threw the process of regulating it make sure my API is compatible and give my competitors all my trade secrets so they can implement this as well.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
All of the +ve praise for the Linux desktop comes from... the linux community!
Try asking non-Linux people what they think of it, and maybe you'll get realistic feedback.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
I agree, this is a stupid question. We have different DE's, and we have varying number of software options per task... But I'd say that if we had different, more thoughtful and creative culture of computer use (when the program is not supposed to be smarter than the user, but just to work well), people would appreciate free software much more, and some of the free software would have been better. But the fact we have it now, and that the industry is counting free software users as a significant part (by providing critical software for linux like Skype, Flash player, Nvidia drivers, etc) is good, although I'd want more openness from them.
Because Linux still is way behind on the desktop, and even when many things have been fixed over the years, the other OS's available have also matured, and right now a Linux desktop is harder and more time consuming to manage than OSX by any metrics. For the average user, unless you need something specific that only Linux supports (i.e. specific hardware), or unless you are a geek type and enjoy upgrading kernels and recompiling device drivers by hand every couple of months, the Linux desktop experience is still frustrating. Disclaimer: I use Linux on my desktop every day.
because everytime we get one of these posts there are a huge string of insightful comments on somethings people don't know how to do on linux, how hard it is to do things, how fractured it is, how incompatible it is with things people know etc. etc. etc. are all right. And will continue to be right. Because linux is intentionally decentralized and open. Which just makes it widely confusing and difficult for non experts.
People know windows. If that adds 100 dollars to the price of 500 dollars of hardware it's irrelevant, because people either can't do what they want on linux or don't want to waste time learning linux when they already know how on windows. For most of us in the relatively well off parts of the world the price of windows isn't going to somehow drive us out of the market. And it's worth it if it means you can sit down and do whatever you wanted with the computer, rather than spend time mucking with the computer to get it to do what you want. MS of course likes to make things difficult (see the ribbon and windows 8) but we'll see how the latter plays out.
Here's what I think are the five biggest reasons, in roughly descending order of importance:
1) Microsoft Office - like it or not, Microsoft Office is by a huge margin the dominant office suite. You have a presentation to give tomorrow? You better make sure it works on that Windows/Office computer that is connected to the overhead projector. Fuck ups in document formatting/compatibility will not be acceptable. Morale of the story: Until an open source program can read and write Microsoft office documents at damn close to 100% fidelity to their windows counterparts, this will be a HUGE obstacle.
2) Games - Despite repeated predictions of its imminent demise, the PC gaming market should not be underestimated. To some extent, this is a viscous cycle: the Linux community ignores the potential increase in market share from gamers, and software companies ignore the Linux market (because it's too small to be economically viable).
3) Poor UI choices - Unity. Enough said.
4) Package installation/management - Let's say a hypothetical windows-to-linux convert wants to install a program. If he's using a distro that uses apt/yum, and if what he wants to install is available in the repositories, and if the distro is configured to use those repositories by default, then he's in pretty good shape. If any of these conditions doesn't hold, then our user is screwed. This is one area where Windows is light years ahead of Linux. If you get a Windows installer and run it, it installs with a minimum of hassle, and you'll never ever be told that your compiler is out-of-date or to use certain compiliation flags or to manually install a dozen dependencies.
5) Lack of standardization in configuration - It is not helpful to google a problem and get eight different answers depending on which distro you use. Like the poor UI choices, this is largely a self-inflicted wound.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Ernie Ball ran a company (they make guitar strings).
One day the BSA shows up, armed marshals in tow, to do an audit.
They find a few systems out of compliance, and the lawyers negotiate a settlement.
These thing happen, right? Cost of doing business, right?
But then the BSA thought, hey, this guy has name recognition.
He's connected to music; the kids know who he his.
We'll make an example of him.
And they did.
They ran ads that named him as a pirate;
they got his case on the evening news.
Mr. Ball took exception to this.
So he went to his IT people and told them that he wanted Microsoft out of his company in 6 months.
So they switched to RedHat.
More into at http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html
My take-away from this is that Microsoft is running on inertia.
Not theirs: their customers'.
Microsoft persists because their customers don't have a compelling reason to switch.
But given a reason, switching to Linux is no big deal.
At any point in time,
most of the world is 6 months from Linux,
and Microsoft is 6 months from oblivion.
Desktop Linux is what a popular free software product looks like. Albeit one that has had next to no marketing, advertising or commercial promotion. One that has been pitched exclusively at "geeks" and makes it hard for ordinary people to know how to install, use or discover what they can do with it.
The big lesson must about the power of marketing. Make sure that before a product is released, your potential customers (as Linux is not and never has been free - it has always needed a considerable expenditure of time, if not money, to learn) have a clear understanding of what it is, why it's better and what benefits they'll get from using it.
Linux has never done any of those things. At best it's provided a dense, arcane and occasionally accurate list of "features" (not benefits) and expected people to recognise their worth, be able to understand the small amount of "help" and then to put up with some generally poorly designed UIs.
Although the price-cost is quite low, sometimes zero, the time-cost of installing and using Linux is extremely high - much higher than the competition's. In these days when everyone is complaining about how busy they are, time is a precious commodity and the risk of spending a lot of time trying to get Linux to work, on your PC with all your specific hardware - and then failing is more than most people are prepared to gamble.
Finally, Linux has never really understood that for most people, Windows is "free". it comes pre-installed in their machines and is not an itemised (or optional) component. As a consequence, they'll use what they've already got - rather than throw it away and try something new. After all, the O/S is irrelevant - it's what applications you can run, to achieve the things you want to do, that is the only thing which matters.
Given all these basic promotional points that have been missed, ignored or done wrong, it's amazing that Linux has managed to stay around for as long as it has - and that it's achieved the penetration it currently enjoys.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I use Linux on the desktop since 2001. Used many distros. Also I gave something back: I'm the author of two desktop applications packaged into Debian and many other distros. So I'm no Linux detractor.
That said, throughout the years, I witnessed a constant stream of regressions during updates. Regressions happen in every aspect the of the system, from kernel drivers, codecs, sound system and specific apps. To make it worst, most distros, including Ubuntu, deal with regressions in the usual open source way: if there is interest and time it will eventually get fixed. Months or years can pass. IMO this is unacceptable for businesses. This lack of quality may very well be the reason Linux desktop has not taken off.
Check out my cross-platform apps
I know why I switched back to Windows - I couldn't figure out into what directory I should install new programs.
Linux doesn't tell you what you should do. You tell Linux what it should do.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You just don't get the idea behind open-source software so all your arguments are quite silly!
For me the power is the multiple choices:
- I don't like the de/wm I switch
- I don't like the OS I switch
- I would like to add a feature to some program, I do my best to actually add it myself
For the average user Ubuntu, Mint and Fedora are the OS'es I would recommend and I really don't get the whole compatability argument because the average user doesn't need to deal with the underlying "mechanics" of the system and if for example some workplace would be Linux-only with different distros they would most definetely have a Linux-admin of some sorts and for a Linux guy it's not a problem that the workplace has multiple OS'es. I've actually managed a small computer-lab (15 computers with Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Debian, Arch and a CentOS server) for the past year and I've never had any problems and I wouldn't consider myself an intermediate Linux-user in comparison to a few guys I know.
Of course for the business-side of things there is RHEL whom I consider to be a business distro and many companies use that because of the "vendor-support".
My parents have been using Ubuntu for two years now without any hiccups and although they were a bit unsure at the time it's paid off.
A similar story of my grandpa which uses Ubuntu and my in laws that use Mint.
So if you want OS'es for the average user you pick Ubuntu or Mint (haven't tested Fedora on relatives or friends). If you want a business distro you use and pay for RHEL. If employees want different distros chances are that one of them really knows his stuff, if not you hire a Linux-admin like you would hire a Windows-admin for day to day tasks or to solve problems the average user can't.
In a world without fences and walls, who needs gates and windows?
Video drivers for linux continue to suck. The GUIs to configure the video drivers also continue to suck, especially when compared against the Windows equivalents. The CLI programs work, but are poorly documented at best.
If I can't watch a movie after installing Linux, I'm not going to use it.
I'm kinda the I guy for family and friends, recommending, installing, building, fixing... PCs I've been trying out Linux every year or so for the past 10 years, and here's why I still can't use it and wont recommend it:
- Install not reliable. Only last year, Ubuntu's Grub2 couldn't handle being the only bootloader on a 100% linux AMD-chipset PC. I'm sure I ran into a weird bug yadda-yadda, except same PC was perfectly OK in Windows. Spent 4 week ends discussing the issue with the dev, who seemed nice enough, but in the end I wanted to actually use that machine, so I reinstalled WIndows. Also, configuring 2 different-size monitors doesn't seem to be easy.
- Missing apps. Sorry, but about 2/3rds of users need MS Office. Not Libre, not anything else. Import-export filters just aren't good enough yet.
- Broken stuff. As my own personnal PC, I use a dual-screen setup, with the best monitor on the right, and a junk one on the left. I need the menu bar on the right side of the rightmost screen. Ubuntu won't let me do that. Switching their wierd new UI off, I can get a right-side menu.. but it's written sideways.
- no docs. In the end, I just have one ARM nettop running linux right now. Took me about a month to set it up, helped by a guy who knew how to recompile kernels and apps. And it's still not 100% to my taste, because man pages are out of synch with what's actually delivered with the PC, and looking for info online usually returns results not relevants to my version (got me to set "screens" instead of "tmux", nowhere showing how to autolaunch a daemon in a foreground screen in Upstart... etc, etc..). Cnfig files are all over the place, sometimes litterally in several places at once, gonna guess which one is actually used.
- not reliable. This one gonna hurt most, but my Linux PC segfaults several times a week, while my Windows 7 PCs have crashed I think twice since 7's release, and I have 3 of them.
- battery life on laptops. for some reason, my nettop lasts several hours less under Linux (I think it has debian), than under Windows.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
It's the year 2012, fix sound.
Sound doesn't work out of the box. They have the abomination (IMHO) that is PulseAudio so I do an apt-get purge. Suddenly sound works.
So I go and try to play 2 things at once. [Unless you have ALSA setup a specific way with mixers it won't do it because only one PID gets to talk to hardware at once.] Wow it works. Maybe they started shipping a working ALSA config. I go check /etc/asound.conf. Everything is still set to pulse.
So I check task manager. Sure enough the pulse server is still cranking away. But by purging all the files it somehow magically started to work. So I re-install it.
I repeat the test. Somehow mplayer decides it wants to grab ALSA instead of pulse but ALSA then grabs the hardware, so pulse dies and can't communicate to ALSA (which is actually doing the hardware interfacing if I read my workflow correctly). So now I have no sound, again.
So I try it straight from mplayer specifying the hardware device and it works. Except only in mplayer. So now I'm going to spend another few hours dicking with either the dmix plugin or deciding to give Pulse a 5th chance.
Fork something or start something from scratch. Something like MATE/GNOME2. And make it 'just work'.
There are three basic reasons why I don't use Linux on my Desktop:
1. Software
I use particular software because a) I like it and b) I've paid for it. a) is the biggie here. I like FeedDemon to read RSS feeds. I paid for it. I like it. It works well. And it isn't on Linux. Indeed there is no equivalent for Linux. This is only one. There is other software that, quite frankly, has no acceptable analogue in Linux. Also, why should I have to learn a new, often substandard, application in Linux when what I know and like is already working in Windows?
2. Hardware
Specifically, drivers... Ever tried to use dial-up with Linux? Know how damned frustrating it is to be told "Nobody uses dial-up anymore." and then dismissed? I do. And I was stuck on dial-up until *this year*. Yes, I went through all the various websites, tutorials and FAQs and still had a helluva time figuring it out. Contrast with Windows where it just worked without my having to hunt down settings to use, changing MTU/MRU values, or figuring out chat scripting. Same thing is happening with my Sierra 3G/4G modem (250U by model number). Doesn't work in Linux. Searching the web, fora, FAQs leads to frustrating and contradictory "possibilities of getting it working." On Windows, I installed the software, rebooted, plugged in modem and was up and working.
3. Linux is just not ready for the Desktop
Until you can just plug & play with Linux as you can with Windows, Linux just simply isn't ready for the Desktop. Linux is a wonderful system and, frankly, I'd prefer it for nearly any other use OTHER than my Desktop where I just want things to work, not get in my way and not make me hunt down ways to make it work. Just work.
In the end, I don't find any OS better or worse than any other. Linux, however, is damned frustrating to use when you want to just work and not have to re-learn things you already know/like/prefer. /D
Think of me when you shave your legs...
With Windows I know I can just pick Windows Starter if a netbook is needed and the netbook is a 10.1" screen or less. If it's larger then it's called an Ultrabook and that means Windows Home is an option if networking isn't a big deal or connecting to a Windows network. There's Windows Media Edition for all kinds of multimedia fun but the hardware needs to be beefy enough to support it. If the home computer is going to be used for work then I'll need to make sure to upgrade or get the Windows Professional version so it can connect to the network at work. If we get a site license then there's the Windows Enterprise version and that comes with a bunch of client licenses because I need licenses every client when connecting to Microsoft's server software.
With Windows it's just so easy and with Linux there are just too many choices.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Let's see ... there's four Windows desktops and laptops and one Linux desktop/server in my household in common use.
But looking at other systems ...
Three Kindle Fires, running Android (Linux).
Two original Nooks, running Android (Linux).
Two smart phones, one running Android (Linux) and one is an iPhone (not Linux.)
One Boxee Box, running Linux.
One Chumby alarm clock, running Linux.
I'm not sure, but the cable company provided DVR might run Linux. (The DirectTV Tivo I had previously certainly did.)
In my household, it seems that Linux has already won. Just not on the desktop.
I'm the tech support person for my parents. They are smart people but I know a lot about Linux and I sure as hell am not going to be leaving a desktop Linux machine under their Christmas tree when I consider the support calls that would be coming my way. They love their Mac and supporting them on the Mac is easy. Most computer users are like my parents. They are not passionate geeks like me. Linux is for servers and passionate geeks.
I am a CS person. I work at a major university doing programming. So, when I'm at home, I rate my time at something like $10 per hour. So, especially since I get Windows for free, I need to value my time at how much I am willing to pay for an education in the Linuxes.
For a long time I had a Debian install. It took me about $100 in time to get wireless working flawlessly on it.
Then I had an Ubuntu install. It worked out-of-the-box with my wireless card, but it still cost about $10 per week in time, switching back and forth between OSes. If we consider the fact that distractions (like switching to a different partition to get at a program I need to do the fun-work I am doing) cost about 15 minutes of time, it jumps up to maybe $50 per week.
After I got World of Warcraft working in Wine, the time-money saved from not playing WoW vanished. I was just costing myself time-money. I decided to take the $20 hit to figure out how to put Windows at the top of GRUB's startup screen and went back to using Windows 7.
If I want to use Linux, I slap it inside of a virtual machine and go from there. And screw Unity. Screw it in its bevel-edged asshole.
What is compelling about Windows or OS X or Linux? These days, not much. Operating systems have pretty much become fungible. A corporation is going to pick the platform that runs the necessary software and that their staff can support. Lots of places now let employees choose the platform because often all that's really required is a modern web browser.
Individuals are going to pick what friends or salespeople recommend. I personally haven't recommended anything other than Apple hardware in the past few years just because if they call me looking for help and I can't solve their issue, they can always take their machine into the Apple store.
Instead of answering why Linux hasn't succeeded on the desktop, I'd like you to answer why it should? I don't really see anybody actively targeting desktop Linux with the goal of gaining market share. What I see is mostly people scratching their own itch without any regard to what might be useful to a very wide userbase.
Linux works great for Grandma,
Linux works great for IT folks.
Linux sucks in the middle. That is why Linux is Strong in the Server area and in the Mobile Phone area. However lacking in the desktop area.
The key features for the Middle, that isn't really all that easy in Linux.
Adding new hardware. Some stuff just works, other stuff is a real big pain. Mac and Windows (due to its popularity mostly) has the hardware vendors supply them with drivers, or when you get the hardware you have an easy to use install for the drivers. Linux you may be able to find the drivers, but you have many versions and you need to do a lot of research to see which one is going to do what you need it to do.
For example my Wifes Dell Inspiron 9 mini (Netbook) with Ubuntu display 800x600 while the screen native resolution is 1024x600... I cannot use the normal GUI to fix that. The instruction on how to do so, are cryptic and sometimes don't work. while the 800x600 stretched bugs the heck out of me. My Wife doesn't care, so I wont do much to fix it. That is after I spent time to get sound working on it, after an upgrade.
I am sorry but compared to Windows and OS X, Linux is a Free Desktop OS and it shows. Put it in a server great, put it in a phone just as good. The desktop is the troubled area.
Part of the issue I think, is they are spending too much time copying what Microsoft does or what Apple does, and the Open Source democratic structure doesn't have a few good people to say it sucks or it is good.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The answer is simple. To many people Linux is still this magical OS, which is for computing experts / geeks / hackers only. Most average joe's dont even know that an alternative OS exists.
Ubuntu for example is the perfect OS for the average joe. I know that most of the hardcore linux community doesnt like Unity (I have changed to KDE because of Unity), but for the average Joe, Ubuntu 12.04 is a fantastic OS. Many people will claim "Compatibility" issues and support issues. The truth is however that most hardware has support out of the box. No drivers installation needed.
Some examples:
1) Printers. All I need is to connect the printer. I never had to download any drivers (which I do need to download for my Canon iP 4500 or Brother DCP-9055CDN).
2) 3G wireless usb sticks. This was a huge surprise. On Windows, I need to install some weird applications to get the internet to work. On Ubuntu? I simply inserted the stick, was asked which Network Operator the sim card belongs to and enter the pin. Im connected to the internet.
3) VPN... On Windows I need to install additional applications, On Ubuntu? Its built in.
4) All other hardware. Most works out of the box. No hunting for drivers online, everything just works (On common hardware).
Of course there is the issue of the people who run non-common hardware, such as TV-cards, special capture cards, etc. where no drivers are provided for linux. But for the common user? Ubuntu is ready, it is just that the common user is unaware...
I bought my 77 year old Grandmother a Macbook a few years ago. It was the first time she'd ever used a computer. I showed her a few things, and got her a highly recommended book on the mac for novices.
She plays games like solitaire and frozen bubble, prints recipes (reams of them!), emails, enters contests, and orders a few things from Amazon (but only with gift cards - too paranoid to use a visa online, yet she'll write anyone a check).
She is now 82 and the Mac just reached it's five year anniversary.
I would have liked to have given her a Linux laptop, but I just didn't see it being consistently user friendly enough, especially over the long haul.
Can your OS pass the "Grandma test"?
People don't like choice. Linux has to much of it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More_Is_Less)
People don't like change, Linux changes too fast.
People don't like uncertainty , Linux can be unpredictable.
People like control, nobody is controlling Linux.
People like for things to be simple, in Linux things are complicated.
Fortunately some people like the things above, that's why they made linux :)
This question is in fact a complicated question, because it is loaded with assumptions about how things work. There is no particular reason why a programme needs to be in a directory.
In fact, the unix tradition is to have executables in a directory, config files in another, log files in yet another. So the answer to your question is that it was a wrong question. A better question would have been, "how do I install a programme", or "how do I keep track of installed programmes".
In general, ask questions directed towards the effect you wish to produce, not about details on how you think the effect ought to be produced.
Nerds like to fiddle, geeks like to tweak, but the average person does not see the computer as an end in itself. To them it is a tool to be used as a means to achieve other ends, and to that end, it must just work.
They do not want to spend long time configuring software. When a problem arises, they want a relatively singular solution. They don't want more options, they want better-organized options with good documentation and a support structure, and a clear "there's a right way to do it" hierarchy.
Linux is a hobbyist's system. Sometimes, it can take a week of hacking to get a soundcard to work. Often, software isn't a matter of being a tool, but a custom library that requires scripting. The normal user is not concerned about this.
Further, in the grand tradition of communities that sabotage themselves going back to the Amiga and Apple II communities of yore, the Linux community is self-sabotaging. First, it likes to imply a dichotomy between "knowledgeable" users and by implication un-knowledgeable users, when the actual dichotomy is more like hobbyists versus people using the computer for something else. Second, it is downright hostile to users when they make requests for technical help. Finally, it spends most of its energy on "fun" projects and ignores vital upgrades to existing but incomplete projects, including documentation.
Linux is a great achievement, and my life is better for it, but it has a long way to go to be ready for the desktop. Of course, one company adopting a distro and putting in the work to make it competitive could change all this, but with the community so hostile to anything corporate, I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Futurist Traditionalism
Believe it or not, Linux has an absolutely golden opportunity to deliver a 'better than Windows' experience to consumers it will more than likely miss. some of these issues are application developers fault. Others are Linux itself's fault. A few things:
- Stop doing Jacked up things to KDE, Gnome, and similar. No more Mandatory themes per distribution. Mandriva does this with ROSA, I had to make an RPM just to replace the ROSA theme.
- Harmonize RPM and DEB. An RPM be it a Suse RPM, or a Mandriva, or Fedora RPM should generation-ally, be able to be installed on any RPM based system that uses RPM. Same for Deb, although Deb is better than that.
- Application developers: Target SDL when making games (OpenGL for 3D). Do NOT use the deprecated X11 Video, Joystick, and similar input. Some Linux games still use these conventions which can result in crashes.
- For Retro Gamers: Linux is in a better emulation position than Windows on a few fronts with a few exceptions: Those being: Atari Jaguar, Sharp X68000, PC-9801. FM Towns/Marty. Fix this, and Linux has absolute supremacy in the legacy hardware emulation realm no 'virtual console' can match.
Linux has the ability using Wine to take ground and hold ground at all cost against Windows. Wine and Samba are the best example of this. The resilience of the Samba 3.x NT Domain backward compatibility issue has shown that Linux CAN alter Window's behavior. In the Samba realm Samba 3 took NT Domains, and to over come the lack of BDC support, added LDAP and Kerberos that was standard, creating Open Directories with multiple PDCs, forcing Microsoft to maintain backward compatibility far beyond what they wanted.
Now; with the entrenched position of AD, the same thing can happen again, Samba 4.0 can extend AD by tacking on OpenAFS Cell Clusters, and other things, and overcome AD's technical design limitations in the same way; creating a superior AD experience under Linux.
Wine stands to one up Windows 7 and XP for game compatibility with 9x. Try and make 9x games and XP games that don't work right hold ground over Windows 7.
In the new game arena, make sure that Wine can stand it's ground on Steam. make sure new games work Wine even without the creator's consent. If possible, try and get them to run better on Wine.
Ensure Linux has tools to clean Windows machines. Especially remotely that does not mean reformatting the machine.
Ensure that Linux can seamlessly run Android products. As with Wine, an Android API translation layer should be availible for Linux.
Hardware wise: With a Bluetooth Module, you should be able to seemlessly pair any PS3 Controller, Wiimote, and 360 Controller without Human intervention. This does work. But it takes Human intervention. I have to install drivers and an applet, and I have to launch that applet MANUALLY. If I have a Bluetooth module, or the 360 Dongle, it should work, perfectly, with the proper Quadrant lights, the first time. Currently I can make this work, by hand. But I shouldn't have too.
I have a feeling people will screw this up. They always do.
Sorry to burst your bubble but any app that runs on Windows 7 will also run on Windows 8. It's totally backwards compatible.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is that font rendering on Linux is utterly horrible.
A couple years back I tried several Linux distributions. Looking at the browser window hurt my eyes – horribly blurry and aliased compared to the ClearType rendering in Windows. I downloaded and installed the MS corefonts and it didn't help. I even tried recompiling TrueType to support RGB subpixel rendering (which is not included by default!) and it still looked terrible compared to Windows. There doesn't seem to be any way to get TrueType to do RGB subpixel smoothing and yet for hinting to respect pixel boundaries the way that ClearType does. Instead it's all a blurry mess. Anti-Grain Geometry has some very promising open-source experimentation on font rendering, but sadly, so far it doesn't seem to be put into production in Linux or anything else.
Windows piracy is one of the major factors keeping Linux down. Linux doesn't 'work out of the box' in the same way that Windows does, and it's always a bit disheartening to come up across a glitch which there is seemingly no solution for (I couldn't get Minecraft to stop crashing after I got a new ATI card for example) but most of these things would be tolerable if your copy of Windows was £99 (your local currency may vary). However for a large chunk of the population readily available pirated copies of Windows 7 means that Windows is effectively free too, thus removing pretty much the only benefit that most people would see.
... when it is installed in a flying car.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
To say that Linux is too difficult is just plain foolish. If it`s too difficult, stay away.
At the risk of being flamed (wearing my fire-retardant underwear, so bring it) - I recently migrated my desktop AWAY from Linux for a variety of different reasons, many of which were outlined above. Like what? Well, multiple monitor support was always the big one for me. I haven't used fewer than 4 monitors on my home desktop for the last 5 or 6 years, and with Linux it was a constant battle to keep things working correctly. Why? Well, because NVIDIA (or ATI, doesn't seem to matter much) couldn't be bothered to update their code for the new kernel, or Xorg hasn't been updated for the last 4 kernels so if something doesn't work, then tough. Now, I can sit here and bitch about the plethora of issues that I was constantly having to fight (the aforementioned monitors, for example) - for example, virtually every upgrade broke X (multiple monitors, remember), but even beyond the issues that would sometimes take days or weeks to resolve there were larger issues at work. Such as? Unsupported packages (that are nonetheless required for a working setup). Devs that have no interest in supporting their own code, offering (more often than not) the standard "RTFM" (even if the issue isn't addressed, or their "manual" is a paragraph on what their software is supposed to do). The consistent elitist treatment afforded new users (and I haven't been a "new" Linux user since 1994).
This is just a handful of issues off the top of my head that prevent me from pushing Linux on anyone. If someone has more time on their hands and not enough stress in their lives I'll suggest it, but beyond that, NOBODY should have to put more hours into fixing a computer than they're able to put in on USING the damn thing...Linux is simply not mature enough to let that happen.
For teh fanbois out there: I am neither an M$ nor Apple shill...TBH they can all burn and I'd be just as happy. But the simple fact is that they are both more appropriate for end-users than Linux (both from a maintenance standpoint, as well as a support standpoint). If Linux were capable of competing in the Desktop market I would likely be just as happy to use it as any other OS...but it simply can't (and probably shouldn't) compete in that market...continuing to try to push it for the Desktop market (especially before it's ready) is only going to hurt the cause, not help it.
The poor choice of mascot has clipped the entire distribution.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
Attention all anti-choice idiots who said "fragmentation":
GET OUT
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Let's start with ignorance: corporate management frequently has no idea you can buy linux support... or that they may already have people in house with that knowledge. And the eternal "no one ever lost their job by recommending IBM, er, Microsoft"
For home users, the amount of FUD is massive. Just the other week, I happened to hear a public radio talk show, the Kojo Naambi show, who apparently has a weekly computer segment. They had a techie... who when someone texted in to suggest open source software, said that he'd looked at open office, and it had a terrible interface, and that what did you expect for something that was free.
Terrible interface? In what way? And is it worse than The Ribbon idiocy?
Home users also have a lot of inertia. How many years do they run the same o/s without even security upgrades? What's going to push them to go buy or install a new o/s? And the stores - buy a new computer without Windows? Huh?
Which distro? I've worked with a few, and the obvious to me answer is a stable one, NOT a cutting edge one. I *loathe* fedora, for example, and gnome 3 is S0 K3WL F0R K1DZ. Actually *do* something other than play with the eye candy?
And Ubuntu's descent into k3wl with Unity is a take aim with .45 with both hands, shoot foot. Now shoot other foot. I mean, menus that disappear with a wave like a sheet in the wind? That pop up with an explosion? That's certainly the way it is on a 14 yr old's of my aquaintance....
OpenSuSE or RHEL or CentOS. Yeah, they may be a few years behind the latestgreatest... but they tend to be very, very stable. They don't have 80 updates this week... and another 20 on Friday. They may not support the hardware that came out this week... but if it came out six months ago, there's a really good chance it's supported.
Finally, I've had my computer-challanged fiancee on my CentOS box, and she's had as few or fewer problems than she has on the Vista box she has at home (yes, I'm *trying* to get her to go to Win 7, if she *has* to stay in Windows, but there's that $100+ on an o/s to spend....)
So, what's the issue with "which distro"? Just look at what's used most.
mark
There are hundreds of distros of linux, each with its own niche feat. Linux in these days has become far more user-friendly than ever before. However, as I see it, there are a few things that prevent it from becoming a majority in the world of operating systems. First, theres a lack in aggressive marketing. With windows and mac, there are huge, wealthy organizations backing them and aggressively marketing them. Linux largely depends on smaller organizations and person-to-person advertising, which just isn't getting it into the worlds eye like it needs to be. Next, windows comes pre-installed on many computers and laptops. It seems that the average person is more inclined just to stick with what they already have installed than to switch, even if there is a better option. Lastly, the world in general is just too uninformed when it comes to technology. We have a lot of older people that are just starting to learn what a computer is and are, in all likelihood getting trained to use windows. We see a similar trend in the school-system. Most schools still train students on windows machines, leaving them out of the loop on what other options are available. If a person actually knows the pros and cons of each OS option or is familiar enough with technology in general, it would seem to me they would be more open and inclined toward something that is free, powerful, opensource, and all-around better, such as linux. Just my two cents (or maybe three).
http://faazshift.blogspot.com/
Sorry for going off topic like that. Couldn't resist.
I feel like there is a post like this on slashdot every two weeks.
Linux has already taken off years ago, and most savvy people are using it. I understand some people can be frustrated because they can't get the cool operating system their savvy friends use to work, but do we really need to be repeated that so often?
Let the sheeple use whatever they're happy with and get off my loan.
So, I look at what I use frequently
AutoCad, Photoshop, Illustrator, Altium, Visual Studio, AVR Studio and all of the other various specialized device interfaces, like Home Theater Master MX-850
All are Windows only. And PLEASE don't tell me there are open source alternatives..even when they exist, they are pale imitations of the originals
About the only stuff I could do on Linux is, Firefox, Thunderbird and Open Office.
Overall the Linux desktop experience is a shitty experience, it's really as easy as that. And no, I don't mean the lack of games or commercial software, I just mean problems within the Free Software world itself. The complete lack of quality control, inconsistencies, stuff not working properly and so on. It simply looks and feels like what it is: A product cobbled together by thousands of people with little or no agreement on any consistency. It doesn't help that the Free Software world likes to hit the reset button every five years to switch to a new, yet completely incompatible and still completly unfinished desktop expierence.
Wanna improve things? Get together and define one distribution independed packaging format. And while at it, make it flexible so that it doesn't require root rights to install software, make it easy to share software with it, make it easy to get access to the source and modify it. Then start working on having apps cooperate with each other, give me flexible data import/export everywhere, so that I don't have to manually transfer my podcast subscriptions item by item when I want to switch players. Cleanup /home/ so that everything is in ~/.config/. Enhance the documentation system so that it's trivial to find out what files an application uses and where it stores your data (yeah, strace is great, it's not a replacement for documentation). And so on.
At this point I don't expet Linux to ever succeed on the desktop. It was a mess 10 years ago and it's still a mess, with very little improvements in the mean time, instead a lot of useless reinvention of the wheel.
Windows 7 does not have malware issues if you have the latest service packs and updated mixed with up to flash and a good anti virus suite.
When Linux users and Mac users complain about Windows they remember the last time they ran XP SP 1 with IE 6 with all the good malware. Or there employer is behind the times because the cost accountants love their IE 7 only apps and refuse to upgrade their infrastructure.
Windows 7 for consumers is simple, easy to use, and fairly secure unless they do stupid things like install OMG Titties apps, and bizaare trojan Facebook games. Not perfect but I ran to Linux 10 years ago because Windows 98 was a POS. Windows XP was much better I may add but it had too many things run on ring 0 and IE 6 was terribly insecure with too many services and attack vectors.
The appeal for Linux for me was free C/C++, php, editors, and I can make the gui look whatever I wanted. Ethereal was awesome (now called wireshark), and it was frankly fun. Joe six pack doesn't need these.
MacOSX is even better. It has less malware, a great gui, less quirky, and graphically ahead of most cheap wintel garbage on the shelves of best buy with the terrible dark screens. It is unix for consumers.
I see no reason for Joe six pack to use anything but MacOSX or Windows. He watches movies, types things for work, browses the internet, and maybe makes a home movie or a nice mp3 collection for his player if he is an advanced user and that is it. Linux does these things worse as in more effort. MP3 support is not enabled by default, his advanced excel macros from work may not work with OpenOffice, Firefox and Chrome update often when the distro has no updates available, and flash sucks goatballs in Linux.
Linux has its strengths for nerds. Consumers have different priorities. If you hate Windows the Mac is a nice alternative abiet a pricy one.
http://saveie6.com/
...I'm afraid it's a valid concern. Not because of anything you said, but because Microsoft really does pay shills to post at places like this and pose as a regular person. It's not just Microsoft either, as this is a very common marketing tactic nowadays. We have no choice but to be skeptical of anyone who says anything positive about a product from a large corporation. That's not to say that all positive comments about products from large corporations are automatically the output of paid shills, but as a community we should be immediately skeptical of such things.
In a perfect world, corporations would not use this tactic, and thus we could immediately dismiss the "yer a shill" accusations whenever they come up, unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world. We live in this world. Any such positive statements must be treated with skepticism.
The difference is in the validity of the arguments, and in this case, I happen to agree with yours.
....confusing, non-intuitive, and not compatible with most all games and apps.
Fortunately you don't have to run Gnome 3 or Unity if you don't want to; you can install Linux Mint and use MATE instead.
It has no advertising at all and windows runs all of people's old applications which allow them to avoid buying new software.
Windows comes with pretty every store-bought computer. So for many people, it's all they've ever used. And when any new computer they buy is going to have it too, why bother learning anything else? Schools and workplaces don't want to go through the trouble of teaching people to use something else, so they stick with what everyone already knows.
But, I think this is changing. The other day I was pleasantly surprised to realize the computers at my local library were running Ubuntu. Many kids today are familiar with multiple OSes - they not only use Windows on desktops, but Android or IOS on phones, the DS or PSP interfaces, and play many games with interfaces so complicated they are like learning to use a new OS. Kids today are learning how to actually use computers unlike the last generation which learned how to use Windows. So as these kids grow up and get jobs, there's going to be a lot more workplaces comfortable with using Linux. The issue with using it in schools right now is training the teachers, but that will change as the kids of today become teachers, if not sooner.
This article combines cost to an average user and cost to a company in ways that are misleading. For the average user,: yes, the first savings is only that of $50. But I've never paid for Linux, neither updates nor upgrades to a whole new version. With Windows, you get updates free - though not for an unlimited amount of time - and then eventually you must pay for an upgrade if you want to stay current. Often Windows updates require more and more resources until the computer is not powerful enough to run the OS anymore, and many of the upgrades aren't optional or your software won't work without having the latest Windows update. When an upgrade comes out, you almost always need to upgrade your computer. Oh, and you'll get viruses galore if you don't keep Windows updated. I've never had those problems with Linux. So yes the initial savings is $50... but a couple of years down the line, Linux will really show the savings.
They didn't mention the prices of the alternatives to those open source software: Photoshop will run you $700, Microsoft Office $100 - $200. But you can use OpenOffice and GIMP on Windows too, so that's kind of irrelevant.
As for companies: They probably aren't buying things at that $50 difference, so I don't know how much savings is there. Upgrading Windows is much more work than upgrading Linux in my experience, and with Windows it usually means work has to stop for awhile, while I haven't seen the same thing with Linux. The cost of the extra work of upgrading and the lost production while work is stopped would have to be considered. I understand that Microsoft releases updates mostly at a scheduled time and therefore work stoppage can be scheduled, but I'd guess there is still some effect. I know that companies get discounts for Windows upgrades, but I don't know any specifics about that and how they compare to Linux corporate plans. I do know, however, that there are Linux distros that are completely free even for corporations, and the only cost of upgrading would be to have someone do the upgrade (if it isn't feasible to have the employees do it themselves) - which, again, is easier to do than with Windows.
. "A typical thing in a Windows setting is to establish some usage policies, and set up some limitations on the systems to keep them stable. Linux doesn't have those types of standards out of the box." That's bullshit. Linux has much more efficient ways to set limitations than Windows. With Windows it's everything or nothing, with Linux I can set each specific user to have access only to certain parts of something, and can change it much more easily than I can on Windows.
Commercial software that is only available for Windows is really the only valid point in this article, but really, how many people at the company need to use that specific software? And how many people that don't need the special software end up getting viruses and etc. and taking up time and money when IT has to fix their computer?
...it's nearly impossible to edit your HD video from your phone or camera on Linux. Seriously, I tried Openshot, which can't export h.264 with sound. I tried Cinelerra, which can't import .mov's. I tried 'em all within the past few months. I can't remember what all the issues were with each program, but it turned out to be impossible. For the record, I'm an avid Ubuntu user. I've tried to get some of my friends into Ubuntu (since it is quite user friendly), but this video editing problem is the big blocker. Otherwise, they find it easy & secure... even with a small learning curve of having to learn new habits. I got my 80 year old Dad using Ubuntu tho. Yay! He doesn't do any video editing though.
Linux is widely used on the desktop, in education, software development, and various other markets. It hasn't displaced Windows, but it's one of the three big desktop operating systems. If you just look at desktops, there is probably more Linux systems than OS X systems.
I think Linux will continue to grow steadily on the desktop. The big problem is really laptops, but even that is getting better.
Because it sucks.
https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/1vyfmNCYpi5
If Linus Torvalds says he can't cope with a fairly popular and mainstream distro which is supposed to be one of the friendlier ones how can anyone else be expected to cope with any of them? And this is but the tip of the iceberg.
Now you may down vote me for challenging your precious world view.
That ship has sailed and its never coming back. Save for the hobbyist minority, most other users don't care about any of the selling points of a Linux Desktop Operating System.
Tell them its free, and they will tell you they didn't "pay" for Windows and that it came with their PC. Even if this is a load of crap, they don't know the difference. Some of them will even ask you what Windows is, or what an operating system is. I hear this lots from all age groups since many people just don't care how it works.
Tell them they can customize it and there's many choices, and they'll tell you they just want to check their email and write up their reports.
Tell them there is games, and they'll argue they can't play Skyrim. Tell them they can play Skyrim with Wine, and they'll tell you its too complicated.
Your average PC user wants consistency, and that's either going to be Windows or Mac. This is especially notable in the area of people who know just enough about computers for work purposes. The only people who I have ever convinced to try Linux are those with dated hardware that don't want to run XP but can't run Vista or Windows 7.
I think it was 2007. Linux was taking off all over the place. Governments were talking about adopting open standards. Schools and municipalities were deploying Linux. You could see it really starting to take hold.
Microsoft's no stupider than everybody else. They could see it, too. And I seem to remember they dropped the price on Windows to $3. (That was on whichever version was old, but still dominant at the time. XP?) Not in the US, but elsewhere, where the danger was highest. Then they also really, really, really pushed to prevent adoption of open standards and, if that wasn't possible, to water those standards down to something that interfered less with their business model.
And, as far as I can see, they've successfully held back the tide that time.
Which isn't to say that the problems with Linux people have identified upthread aren't right. They are. Linux does have problems with lack of advertising and sudden holes where important stuff ceases to work. That is very important and something we really need to get our act together about. But the real problems shouldn't blind us to the equally real problems that have nothing to do with Linux itself.
I think he said it best. Linux on the Desktop will never happen because Mac came along.
Before OS X, many many people were dying for a Desktop OS that looked beautiful but still gave them their beloved UNIX-style command line and familiar tools (emacs, vi, gcc, etc.). They wanted a UNIX-style OS which had drivers that actually worked instead of requiring wastage of huge amount of time googling this and compiling that.
OS X came along and fulfilled the wish of many. The only people left were those who wanted a UNIX-style OS that was libre; that was a vanishingly small number compared to the first group, whose desires were more than adequately fulfilled by OS X.
http://slashdot.org/story/07/10/11/1527219/rob-malda-answers-your-questions
I was an absolute newcomer to the linux world. I knew about it, but never had it on any of my PC's. I decided to go with Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit version. I planned to use it on a HTPC with XBMC. I had problems from the very beginning - never really understood the terminal commands. (A very simple tutorial would have probably gone a long way.) Sound didn't work, but finally found the correct way to install the drivers for my motherboard. After attempting to install some drivers for a USB webcam as well as recommended updates I wasn't able to boot up. Even safe mode isn't available and getting to the BIOS isn't an option either. There are a bunch of lines of text which seem to be checks, the last one says [OK] but it just freezes. After all the problems, I would NEVER recommend it to a user like myself.
I've been using a desktop Linux distro (PC LinuxOS) for several years and love it. But I still need Windows - not just for the occasional game - but because none of the following run well or at all under Linux: Netflix (requires Microsoft Silverlight plugin with DRM) ITunes (No native version available. May work under Wine but poorly) Skype (Video mode problems) Amazon mp3 downloader (Linux versions available but PITA dependency issues)
Linux won't became a desktop standard for one simple, unavoidable reason:
Because we (as in the users) want to use our computers to get what we need to done with the software with which we are familiar/have been trained on/are given to use. We do not want to administer our system/workstation(s) and go searching for the appropriate application(s) to mimic what we already know to work under Windows or OSX.
Ubuntu and Mint were a move in the right direction, but even still... far too much of the Linux environment and software is designed by and for IT enthusiasts and hobbyists. Far too much of it assumes a fairly deep knowledge of how both a computer and an operating system work under the hood. Far too many things still require just a "little tweaking" to get to work smoothly. Too many of the applications are geared around system management and maintenance. The list goes on and on.
I use Linux running in a VM at home when I need it. Some of what I need, I can run on either side. Some I absolutely need windows (financial software, Reference/Citation manager, etc), because truly comparable software isn't available on Linux. Most of my stats and some GIS, I do on the Linux side, for the same (reversed) reason.
The simple reason is that, to almost everyone that is not directly involved in IT - a computer is a tool or an appliance to get a task done. Nothing more. It is, quite often, an unpleasant and frustrating tool that seems to always be inconveniently temperamental at that... and that is just with the heavily supported, thoroughly developed, heavily investment backed commercial software! Perpetually developed, volunteer-based, "good enough if you squint" software on Linux scares the bejeebus out of people who can barely stand the stuff that's supposed to be "off the shelf" ready.
There is Windows 7.
I tried the latest consumer preview of Windows 8 on my desktop (6 core 2.6 ghz phenomII with 8 gigs of ram) and it was very fast and sleek. If it were not for Metro I would still be using it. I got used to it after a few days and it is workable on the desktop mode (still like Windows 7 search much better than goign to Metro every task).
Windows 7 will be the new obsolete dinosaur we all will love and or hate and battle on slashdot like we do with XP today on which is better. Businesses will switch to Windows 7 as it supports EFI and can run IE 10 and up to date browsers with full security (not have gimped like XP) with full hardware acceleration. Windows 8 will be a hit with tablets in the workplace.
My guess is a new hybrid environment will replace it. Linux is just not capable on the desktop and certainly not at work. Only really old and poor consumers still use XP. It is old and like old IE is reserved for the fortune 500.
http://saveie6.com/
I've been trying to implement Ubuntu on the workplace for some time now and most of the problems that people have with it are the result of their familiarity with Windows. People don't like change, especially when they don't see its benefits, and it's hard to make people that are almost IT illiterate to understand that taking away a tool that worked perfectly for something different, is a good move. They'll move and then every little problem that they stumble upon results in a lot of frustration because they could do their work faster without all the hassle of learning something new with something they had before.
Also, there are some specific things:
- Office. With the change to LibreOffice comes complaints of documents not being shown the way they were made in Word. The need to understand the different file extensions. Some Thunderbird's quirks.
- Legacy in-house applications developed in a language that doesn't work on Linux.
- Games. This one is for home, obviously. The only reason I still have a Windows system is to play pc games. Maybe Valve can start changing that.
Yeah, that'd work great... not. Even Java programs don't work well across OSes unless they do some OS-specific stuff, and even then they all look lousy because they don't use the same graphical toolkit/widgets/etc. that the OS and window manager use. If your program is high-performance and needs better access to hardware and hardware APIs, such as low-latency sound editing applications for instance, this won't work at all.
I read these religious wars about Linux on the desktop and every time think it comes down to a couple things. 1) The Server world is not the Desktop world. In the server world, you have a only 4 main types of services (DB, Web, App, Middle tier) which all run on common frameworks, and can be ported across any OS type. 2) In the Desktop world, where are the big corporate supported, applications? Where is the Intuit Quicken? Turbo Tax? Adobe Photoshop? The apps have to be there, not some clone (which might be better) but no supported by a big corporation with no support but angry geeks when something goes wrong. Corporations need a neck to squeeze when the fit hits the shan and upper management pounces on IT because stuff broke. 3) People apply Server Logic to the Desktop world. The Desktop world needs thousands of apps, and needs 1000 ways to manage 1000 different situations. The server world can just run without doing anything different once you set it up. This is the difference.
congratulations, you win the prize for the most moronic thing I heard all day..
"I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
Elsewise known as the scariest 9 words in the english language.
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
Linux distros excel at many aspects of an OS that can, and probably should, be decided in a meritocracy style voting / debate process. These distros even have small lords that take it upon themselves to strongly influence some technical evolutions, going as far as blocking what they don't see fit and pushing for what they feel should occur.
However, all the areas where Linux has these strongholds are [very] technical. Especially in the wake of this "consumerization of IT" phenomenon that rides on a big wave of money, it has become of paramount importance to have an OS excelling in ease of use, fantastic user interfaces and overall smooth interaction with the average human being. Linux and free software in general has always been utter shit in these aspects. Everybody keeps asking why and I think everybody actually knows the root of the problem.
I'll illustrate it using an analogy with a work of art, something like a painting, a song, a poem or even some kind of complex and yet elegant mechanism. When true artists present such creations to the world, the world has no saying like "I don't like the 3rd verse, change it!" or "Maybe you should've used some yellow here! Redo it!". This is not how true works of art exist. The author assumes a certain position, creates something as a whole and then the world judges it as being overall good, great, crap, etc.
I think the same principle applies to human interaction layers in software. Great user interfaces are works of art. Their creators need to conceive something that is at the same time useful and yet it enchants your senses every time you use it. It must feel cohesive and yet it must handle all sorts of tasks that are not strongly related to each other. Worst of all, a great user interface for an OS needs to be tightly integrated with the code doing the heavy duty lifting in the background. Their creators need to assume a position on how various things are done and their creation should be judged as a whole.
Why are state of the art user interfaces missing from Linux? Because most creators of great works of art live their lives in the shadow of powerful sponsors that often profit greatly from financing the creator through their "wonder" years. There are no such sponsors in the Linux world. Every single developer of Linux software creates his own user interface as well as he can. The end result is like a giant wall of hand paintings made by 5 year olds. Cute, but clearly nowhere near work of art status.
This situation will not change until the open source / free software movements will figure out a way to finance artists and strongly integrate them with developers. It seems to me like an impossible task that can only occur in a classical style software company like Microsoft, Apple, etc. So I think Linux is doomed for a long time to run in the background, doing the heavy lifting on space stations, labs, devices and servers. Occasionally it will spawn a child that apparently is not retarded, like Android, but take a second look and you'll spot the root problems in no time.
Linux is really more like Windows 3.0, the real action with win3.0 was in DOS. The real action in linux is in the shell. All the GUI stuff is just pasted on top of it.
-- QED
I'm a brand new Linux user, and after some finessing via a Sub-Sub-distro, I landed on Lubuntu. However I'm sad to report that Ubuntu packages are not stable at all, and I've been burned by bugs bad a few times especially in the driver dept.
However I like LXDE, and if I have time some day I might look at XFCE too. But I agree priority one was to get off Unity.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Of course; I tried to explain this to my son the other day. He knows I prefer Linux over any other OS. He knows I use Windows all the time, and that I have a Mac at work, and that Linux is my choice because I can customize it... the was the WM focuses the windows, the way I can align them and snap them together, the functionality of the command line (the choice between GUI and command line has been clear to me for a long time: the answer is "both.")
On top of that, I suggest that Libre/Open Office is ready for 99% of primetime use. If people don't like it, it's not because it's good (in the same way I don't like MacOS or Windows), it's because they are not accustomed to it.
I also suggest that, except for professionals (and even including a lot of professionals that don't work in print), that GIMP is just as good. Yes, I know some of you out there can come up with some pathological example of why it isn't, but for 99% of us, all the functionality we could want is there.
I'll grant the gaming one, hands down.
I'll also admit that what you've written is NOT inaccurate, either, despite my support of the alternatives - because people want what they want, and they want what they use at school or work, they want what their family and friends use - and they often get these things for "free" for one reason or another (not the least of which is pirating, but many legal ways, too). My only argument is that people are mostly being short sighted about it - they are being short sighted because they don't care, and it likely will never adversely affect them in any way they will ever notice. They don't understand how things proprietary formats hurt the customer because, for them, their software can read their files, and that's all that matters. It's just the way it is.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Because there aren't advertisements for it.
Really. That's it. There are ads for Android, so people are drooling over Linux on phones, but there aren't any Ubuntu or RHEL TV ad spots.
It has nothing to do with advertising really but far more to do with the money the large OEM vendors get from Microsoft as part of their "Marketing Program". This money is out side of the licensing costs/deal but still tied to it. Microsoft pays vendors for putting those Windows stickers on the packing boxes, keyboards, and computer chasis along with logo's on the web pages and in the purchase literature. Lots of money.
And then there are the preloaded software kits companies like Adobe and others have contracts with the OEM's for so time-limited or entry versions of their software is installed on the computer already. The OEM's make money off that too.
I guess there is a 3rd primary reason too and that is the fact that Microsoft's _people_ will come knock on your door if you start putting Linux on some of your systems. They will smile, sit down with you, as an OEM, and place your existing licensing cost sheet down on the table and then ask if you think shipping Linux systems is really financially worth your while. Smiling, he'll say to think hard about it while tapping his finger on your existing cost sheet for the Windows OS license.
That's about it so even if customers ask about Linux, the vendors really can't put Linux on the systems unless they are the small fry guys and even then they'll probably talk you into putting it on with a 2nd disk or as a 2nd boot option on the same disk. The big guys can not cut off all that marketing money and reloaded software money when that is where they make their profits from.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Try printing an A3 pdf in landscape. It might work for you. If you are using a system for work it needs to work. If it is a toy for home it is ok to mostly work. I used to be a linux zealot. Then I "got" to use one a my main work PC. My productivity dropped off by perhaps 50%.
Have you ever considered the possibility, that some people might not want Desktop Linux to take off. But not for the reason you would think. See, if everybody started using desktop Linux, then, just like what has happened with MacOS X, malware will start appearing for it in ever increasing numbers. Lots of Linux users I know use it as a safe haven from Windows and all it's malware. I don't think they want to see that haven suddenly infested, and have to do something like switch to a different distro every few months/years/etc in order to keep their haven...
Macs are great for small businesses. Less malware prone than Windows (though Linux still wins here), built-in non-crappy warranty service at the Apple store (handy if you live near one), employees are familiar with them already, employes generally like working with them (free morale), and Time Machine is handy for automated backup. You can put graphic design, sales guys and developers all on the same platform, assuming you're not developing for Windows.
Windows - search google for program, download it, double click it, accept spyware, malware, good to go.
linux - search google for program, download rpm file, download it, double click it....nothing rpm's are not for ubuntu
-search google again for a dpk file, download file, double click it, "missing lib.xxx.xx"
-search google for lib.xxx.xx, find a tutorial to use apt-get
open a command prompt
apt-get program'
invalad command
apt-get install program
you must be root to do that
sudo apt-get install program
bunch of stuff happens do you want to install all this stuff?
yes
installs > complete.
run the config process
cd some dir
you must be root to do that
sudo ./configure
you must be root to do that grr
sudo bash
cannot find ./program
reboot > install windows
To my understanding, Linux is even easier than windows when it comes to user/group policies. We do have it in place in our computer clusters. But not all software is available to Linux. This is one thing that holds back many places to move to Linux. There are many others. Linux is community based and developed, here in the USA this smells like communism, which was implanted in the American minds as a bad thing since the cold war times. Others think that having a company behind a software is safer, after all you need a trusted system where you will build your company's IT 'backbone'. Indeed, this is more a marketing issue because Windows is not reliable at all, everybody knows that. Nevertherless, many companies keep trashing hundreds of thousands of dollars with it. And the desktop enters here. When one looks for his/her own personal desktop s/he will look over the software available one needs to use at home and the OS they are used to. So, if they work in a place where only Windows is available, there is goes!
If you don't want to use GNU/Linux, fine. Don't use it. Also, who gives a rat's ass if the general public uses it or not? I certainly don't. Linux is self-sustaining. There are companies that make enviable incomes maintaining, supporting, and extending it. Young computer scientists cut their teeth developing it. Plenty of people use it, as do plenty of companies. Any company with vast armies of servers would be foolish to use anything other than Linux. In practice, you have to justify why you would use Windows and its huge licensing burden, the absolute opacity of its code (and of the commercial apps you'll most likely be running), and your complete dependence on others for code fixes. An average Linux user probably doesn't fiddle much with the code, but companies running tens or hundreds of thousands of boxes certainly will. Who can wait for months or years to get a bug fixed?
The Linux desktop is fine. It is a subjective choice like any other, but many people use it all day every day with no major problems. We all have apps that only run on Windows or Mac so, oh well, you also have to have a box or two to allow that. Computers are cheap enough these days that most households have two or more computers lying around already anyway. Most likely, even your elderly Aunt Tilley.
This is a dead controversy. Nobody gives two shits about it, except people who have nothing better to do than yak yak yak about pointless topics. The year of the Linux desktop came and went without anyone noticing. It's hard to say when it even was, actually, but it is in the fog of the past.
Linux doesn't tell you what you should do. You tell Linux what it should do.
This is true if you are a master of the shell. If you aren't, the linux keeps telling you what you can't do. Like install a newer version of FF than was available in the package manager so my son could do his homework on multiplication.com. "Sorry son I worked on it all weekend and I got it installed and working but now I'm having trouble with installing java, just use Daddy's computer it has windows." "Dad, when can I have windows?"
Honestly, I'm saying this after trying for 6 years of trying and really wanting it to work. I'm a poweruser with windows and a floundering retard with linux. My son has windows xp now, and I have windows 7, and we use our computers instead of struggling with trying to tell them what they should do.
-- QED
Windows 8 has not yet been released. Having XP sp3 out and stable for so long, lulled users into a false sensation of security. Just wait until 8.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Yeah, the average person is going to think that's a statue you'd find in a garden doing something amusing.
There are many good ideas in the posts and I couldn't agree more in most cases. I would like to add one more point: - What is different in a 2008 edition of a distro from a 2012 edition? Besides some eyecandy, practically nothing. The basic linux desktop experience is good enough. (At least it was in 2008, I'm not sure it still is since gnome3...). People who develop the distros should work on other projects like many of you mentioned above like: MS Office compatibilty, Game/steam compatibilty, Skype/sound issues, bluetooth, fonts, and many more functions, which is considered solved, but not really works reliably OUT-OF-THE-BOX. Those are not core functions of an OS, but without those the OS is useless. And the sad thing: None of these are even in the OS roadmaps, because "with extensive hacking, those can work with some compromise". Really, that's the best linux can offer? Looking back for 10 years of developmnet the answer is sadly YES.
I run Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 in a dual-boot configuration. I haven't even tried Windows 8 and have no desire to do so. Being a web developer, however, affords me the luxury of multiple choices when it comes to OS selection and usage. At my day job, I use Mac OS X, mainly because that's the only option. At home, as mentioned, it's Windows and Linux; Windows for gaming and media intake (movies, music, etc.), and Linux for my personal programming and web dev projects. Looking at Windows 8 on the horizon, I've also wondered what will happen when it finally drops. It's a major shakeup on the Windows desktop, for sure, which is why I will continue using my current config for as long as possible and, when I can no longer run Windows 7, I'll probably just switch to Linux full-time. OS X and iOS are great platforms, but I really don't want to spend the money for the hardware costs associated with adopting Mac for my desktop needs.
Sorely lacking in integration with current Enterprise. Face it, most people get their primary exposure to computers in their workplace. If it does not have complete integration/Replacement of existing Server 2008R2 Active Directory & Group Policy it wont fly. GP allow IT to assign resources (disk space, networked printer, applications) and lock them down so the luser cant fiddle with and break the sanctioned setup. The lengths they will go to to work around restrictions so they can SEE THE DANCING BUNNIES must be seen to be believed. It needs automated tools/samples to migrate existing A lot of it is out there in bits and pieces (many of which are not free, so there is a budget hurdle, as well). SAMBA4 is not ready for Group Policy yet, no app for editing it (you have to MS tools) and the replication of the system directory hierarchy between AD global catalogs has not been created yet. It appears to work well enough for a single site/domain deployment, but has a ways to go before it will support a forest & multi-site environment.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
1. The instant anything goes wrong, you're back on the command line.
2. There remains the expectation in the Linux community that ANY person using a computer should be required to have syadmin-level skills before they're allowed into the Internet. 3. You can't do a good user interface for users whom you hold in contempt. Many Linux developers hold ordinary people in contempt. See (2) above.
4. GUIs like KDE and Gnome have a lot in common with Microsoft BOB: the belief that if something is difficult, make the fonts and buttons bigger and that makes it all OK.
5. User interface design is hard, but Linux developers don't believe that; anything that requires a GUI more complex than "man myprogram" (or, if you want to be Stallmanishly Correct, "info myprogram") is obviously unimportant and a waste of good developer time best spent elsewhere. Getting kinda close should be "good enough". See (2) above.
6. User interfaces are all about polish and smoothness. But, like any open source project, once the sexy bragworthy stuff is done (core functionality, edge cases and exception-handling NOT included), interest in putting in the effort to refine and tweak just isn't there. There's nobody to crack the whip and say "it's NOT okay that scrolling is jumpy if there's a large JPEG embedded in the document". In other words, there's no recognition that core functionality is the first 90% of the effort, the second 90% is robustness/exception-handling, and the third 90% is polish and tweaking. With most open-source projects, you're lucky if you get past the first 90%, and by the time you're on the third 90%, all your devs have wandered off into Skyrim.
This may sound harsh and snide, but it has the property of being true.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
First of all, most IT staffers don't know anything about it, at least from my experience. Some like I have experimented at home, but not everyone brings stuff like that home with them. They have all heard of it of course, but if they don't have to use it they don't. And really for good reason, as many point out, there are 100 different distro's out there, all with little differences. Heck even if a company could pick one, and nail it down to make it standard for support and compatibility, you have the issue of lack of software, games for home, or applications for work. Sure for basic use it would be fine, but how many OS to you want to support in your org. Anyway it is not nearly there by a long shot...
However things seems to be converging. Android which is basically Linux is making BIG inroads into both phones and tablets. Both phones and tablets are becoming more powerful and more computer like everyday. Linux already had a brief appearance in consoles before Sony pulled a Sony. However there seems to be word of Valve entering the game, and with Linux support to boot (pardon pun), so I have to sort of assume that they might be going that route perhaps, if they indeed do. So now you have phones, tablets, and desktops all converging. You also have had linux and android into the netbooks when they were popular. You also see various big players starting to converge their OS, Apple with their iOS5 and Microsoft with Windows 8.
So yes I do see a time with Linux desktop, but it won't win by beating competitors at the desktop game. It will slide in sideways as devices converge.
I was first exposed to Linux when you had to be a programmer to complete an installation. I remember having to do manual configuration on graphics drivers to support my monitor. All of this was a major headache when all I wanted was a Unix platform to program on.
But, as has been posted numerous times, there needs to be a single Linux distro standard that app developers can build on. Let all the hobbyists/developers/researchers use their own custom flavors. I love Linux and I'd never touch it as a desktop platform.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Yes, the look and feel is that different. You and I might prefer Ezri Dax, but the vast majority of the public prefers Pamela.
and much more often than was the case 10 years ago, it just plain doesn't work in one way or another—social, technical, legal, or otherwise—usually in non-predictable ways and instances.
Windows, for all its non-workiness, remains more predictable in the ways that it won't work, meaning that it's more realistic for production desktop use.
Mac OS is more predictable still, and has a smaller, simpler ecosystem.
I used Linux for 16 years and wrote six Linux books. Then I got tired of feeling as though my operating system was one of the focuses of my life. But if it wasn't a focus of my life, it didn't continue to work. So I switched to Mac OS, which is infinitely more boring and forgettable. And that, for me, turned out to be great, now that I am not just an adult but edging toward early codgerhood.
I want to do stuff with my computer. Not do stuff to my computer.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
All the problems people grouse about with Linux on the desktop exist on Mac and Windows. You can find 100 pieces of hardware that won't work out of the box and require tweaking, newer drives, etc. on all of them. You can find another 100 that work on all out of the box.
Wave a wand so that Linux has 80+ percent of the desktop share instead, and people will bitch about how Windows has the problems they pin on Linux today. "My built in motherboard card didn't work without tweaking/driver." Yeah, I just built a media center PC with new components. I put Windows 7 Ultimate on it, since it will be a Netflix box. I spent ~20 minutes waiting for the OS to install and another 30+ installing drivers and plugins and whatever.
Most users don't deal with that shit because they buy a laptop from Dell or HP who does it for them. They can do the same with Linux and the user would never know. Except they don't, because MS strong armed them into loading Windows for years and now no one gives a rats ass to use anything else. For them "it just works", when really "it just works" because Dell and HP did the work for them.
Google has banned Windows internally except in situations where a business critical app requires it; Mac or Linux only otherwise. I know of dozens of small companies that are purely Linux (many of them are not involved in dev or IT) It can be done and done well. It's just buying the licenses and installing it is seen as "easier."
You know what: until you get beyond a certain point, it is. At one small company, we had 30 Windows users, I made disk images with various software loads and updated them every 6 months. Later, I worked on a huge SCCM deployment project to manage a universities desktop computers (comp labs and offices, ~5/k machines) and it was a fucking nightmare, because Windows is a horrible network OS. Meanwhile, the UNIX team hardly touched their networked machines thanks to a robust and relatively easy to deal with Puppet setup (including various addons).
Windows is better because it's everywhere and people are use to it and really it works well most of time. Linux is not as ubiquitous, but also can be made to work well most of the time. This argument is rarely based on technical merits and typically devolves into opinion and preference. And Macs are only used by douche bag hipsters :P
No sig for you!!
Can we, please, stop posting fake "complaints" and "explanations" that come from Microsoft, and serve no purpose other than FUD-mongering and misdirecting the Linux development?
Should I remind everyone that Microsoft's settlement terms after (mostly toothless) antitrust lawsuit expired recently, and Microsoft is now free to continue their monopoly-maintenance practices such as "taxing" manufacturers' devices with non-Microsoft OS, without even trying to conceal them?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
How is this any different from licensing a commercial development library? All of those have their own licensing terms, too--except they cost money, and may even result in a per-unit royalty for your final product.
Open source licenses, at least, don't require you to pay someone for every unit you ship. You just have to make sure your own code is in compliance with the licensing terms. Don't like that a library you want is GPL, because it would force your company to open proprietary code? Then that library is not right for your company/project.
You can:
1. Write your own library.
2. Purchase one and figure out how the licensing works on that.
3. Use an open-source one and make sure you're in compliance with the license.
Take your pick.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
If one of them would just do it right in the first place. A lot of the perpetual forking/competing standards comes in places where nobody is doing a decent job, there isn't a solution that works. Like the sound situation. It is a complete mess, there's competing standards which have different problems and so on. That is because none of them worked well in the first place. Had there been a sound standard that did its job and provided a good way of interfacing sound play requests from apps with sound drivers, it'd be the one that was used either exclusively, or in 99.9999% of cases.
However there never was any of that, it was always a bunch of crap, so now we have a bunch of competing crap and none of it does the job right so there keeps being the competition.
The Darwin approach doesn't work well for these things, particularly things like sound where you have to start talking APIs. You really need the creationist approach: Some power on high needs to intelligently design the thing from the ground up. You need to spend time, a lot of it, designing a good API and set of standard, considering how everything will need to play and work together, document it well and freeze it so there aren't random changes later. Then you set about implementing it well.
Anyone who says they don't know which version to recommend is a troll.
That's my official stand.
If you're using Linux, and you wanted to introduce a friend to Linux, then it's only natural you'd recommend the distro you run. Since you'll be supporting it. Or a user-friendly Linux in the same "family", and is well known.
For desktops, there's: Ubuntu, RH, SuSE, and Mint at or near the top. All offering slight differences, and most from different "families".
Then of course there is DistroWatch.
Any Linux user worth his/her salt knows these things.
The BS that "there are over 100 distros, what do I recommend?", whining is disingenuous. There are over 100 different makers of golf clubs, which do I recommend. There are over a 100 different restaurants in my area which one do I recommend? Etc. As PJ would say, puh-lease!
My wife is a total PC illiterate, and yet she has no problem using a Linux desktop. Then of course you have all those millions using Linux in smartphones and what not. Linux, in my opinion is way more user-friendly than Windows. On several list I belong to which are geek oriented (mostly old people searching genealogy), I am constantly reminded of how useful Linux is, by calls fro help from Windows users. Those of us on the list using Macs and Linux offer help to get them to a point where they can get close to the same functionality out of Windows, that is just a no-brainer in Linux or Macs. Ever tried printing to a file, and having a usable (ie can open in an OTS app) in Out-of-the-Box Windows? I can't be done. You get [filename].prn. PRN? WTF? Where's the PDF print? Oh you have to buy something to get that.
Besides, the market isn't in Desktops anymore. That is so 20th Century. The future is portables, which has, umm..., no real Windows footprint. It's all Apple and Linux baby. So KDE and Gnome better get their shit together, and get ports done. Like yesterday.
There is no easy way to make greeting cards on Linux. About all you can do is use Open...um, Libre Office's drawing program and start manually laying out the page. With Microsoft Publisher, I could click a template and have a basic card ready to go in seconds. If the average consumer can't make a greeting card, or do taxes locally on the box (not upload sensitive info to an online site), and so on - Linux will not work on the desktop. The only role I see for it on the desktop is for people like me who have to run server-ish stuff (DB2, tomcat, etc) on a development machine.
Works fine for everyone but you.
And it doesn't work for you because you never used Linux in the first place.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
In the last few months I've done several linux installas and several windows 7 installs. I've seen all kinds of weird issues with the windows 8 boxes, and I haven't had an Ubuntu installation issue in . . . well, ever. Unity is stupid and now I can't recommend Ubuntu because of it, but mostly I can't recommend it because everyone seems to love rebooting and dealing with all kinds of malware. Linux isn't any harder than anything else any more, it's just that everyone already knows how to solve billion problems windows generates on a daily basis, and is content to have their system lock up or run super slow periodically - they think it's just the way things work. As long as games aren't an issue, linux would be better for almost everyone. As long as people are obstinate about it, it won't matter anyway. Linux's main problem is marketing now - technically (especially for casual home use) it's been at least as good as it's competitors for a long time.
When you choose what product you're going to use, there's invariably a whole bunch of things being considered. Yes, cost is one of them, but 9 times out of 10 it's actually pretty low down the priority list.
Let's consider small businesses for the time being, because they're the bulk of employers. Businesses that don't have an IT department, or if they do it's a single technician who may or may not have some sort of outside company to fall back on. Their priority list includes:
- Can we get support? (In plain English: If we want to find someone who can set this up for us and provide ongoing management, will we be able to simply pick up the yellow pages and call the first company we find? Or ask around friends and relatives to find someone?)
- Can we do our work? The instant there's one proprietary Windows app involved, you have a problem. It only takes one business-critical Windows app to kill Linux on the desktop stone dead; Wine is a non-starter because even if the app seems to work, telephone calls to the vendor for support will fall on deaf ears even if the problem demonstrably has nothing to do with Wine. Most of these proprietary apps are stupendously expensive - but they integrate so many business processes that migrating off them is even more stupendously expensive.
- Can we manage it centrally? ("Manage centrally" is a little bit more than just LDAP; I'm talking Active Directory equivalence wherever possible).
- Does it work with our existing hardware? (Believe it or not, there are large expensive printers out there that are WinPrinters).
- Where we have to interact with others, can we do so? (Yes, there are still IE-only web apps out there, and they're often found in something provided by franchisors to their franchisees, so even smaller businesses can be IE-dependent).
Cost is on the list, but if the answer to any of the above is "no", then finding some way of making it work will only happen if the cost is absolutely stratospheric.
There is a really old saying, "Linux is free if your time is worth noting."
There is no such "old saying". It's what Jamie Zawinski (then of Netscape) wrote, comparing Linux with, of all things, IRIX, many years ago. It was wrong then, it is most definitely wrong now. Though Jamie Zawinski usually has a clue when he writes software, his style of complaining about everything software-related did not change at all -- here is a recent example: http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-firefox/
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Really?
Windows ME drivers for modern cards?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Companies are run by accountants and flunkies who are afraid of it
Linux developers aren't on board with the PR that asserts that everything is shifting to social media based.
PC vendors make it difficult to procure hardware w/o an OS preinstalled.
Senior Executives given the responsibility over IT all use whatever they like and that's currently an iPhone an iPad and an Ultrabook
as Windows does, and everyone knows Windows. Zorin is by far the most Windowsy flavor of Ubuntu. To make it or some other distro work, several things have to happen:
1) It has to look like "out-of-the-box" Windows. Nobody gives a rat's ass about "changing the desktop paradigm." They want what they know.
2) Installs have to work the same way as they do on Windows. Installing on Linux is just different enough to be annoying, and believe it or not, there's a universe of software that isn't on the internet. Software doesn't begin and end on the software center. Oh, and by the way, there are still a few of us who are regularly beyond the reach of an internet connection.
3) Make the disk and file system look like Windows, with drives that have aliases like "c:" an "d:" and a copy of something that looks like Windows explorer. It doesn't matter if it's stupid. It's what people are used to.
4) Wine has to be nearly perfect and auto-configuring. Sorry, but if Word doesn't run, your chances are "none."
None of this is fair, sensible or rational. It's also true.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
At the place in which I was previously employed we were somewhat security conscious, to the point of DLP strategies etc. And most of us not only had our Windows boxes which were locked down, couldn't burn CD's, or mount USB sticks, etc., but we also had our choice of Linux distros on separate boxes.
So DLP - you simply SCP'd files to your linux box and then mounted a USB key or burned a disc from there.
It was also used to get around the web proxy. You'd just install Corkscrew on your Linux box and have it proxy your connections THROUGH their proxy to your remote server and then route all your web traffic through there. Completely bypass the proxy because the internal proxy couldn't inspect encrypted traffic.
Everytime I work myself up to switch to Linux I run into that "One" problem that makes me hesitate. This time its RAID0. I just purchased a new PC (very sweet hardware) and saw the Mint 12 distro announced here on slashdot right around the same time and took a look, downloaded the DVD and ran it on my new hardware from the disc. Very nice, it seemed to think the same way I do. And it ran faster from the DVD than win7 did from disk. Add in my total loathing for Win7 and it all sounds good right? Err... no. When I went to actually install, I got an error that seemed to say that it didn't recognize my RAID0 array, and not being a total geek wizard, I hesitated. It ended up taking me a few days to find a relevant forum, post a question and then sort the snide remarks from the helpful answers. I found the soluton, but by then I had lost the desire to tread in waters that were potentially too deep. So from my perspective, I really would like to switch, but every forum/site I found looking for help assumed that I had some level of basic understanding of Linux, it's file system, and how it's executables work. I don't. I'm a Windows Refugee and have been kept in the dark by big brother for many years. So for total newbies to the OS, there are not too many places to go where you can ask "stupid" questions, which is what all newbies need to do in order to learn. Too bad too, that damn OS was sweet, saw all my hardware(except the RAID0) hooked up to the network/internet with no questions or prompts and ran fantastically on the Dell i7-2600/16GB ram. Someday I'm gonna switch, promise.
"If the only tool that you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Donny Rumsfeld
oh yeah, the the US Gov't involved, that will fix everything....
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Every time I make a cd for a non-linux user, they always call me complaining that it crashed during install. I then have to explain that it's the graphics "saving" their screen, and to observe the install process, hit the shift key every 5 minutes. Then I have to walk them through telling X to NOT blank the screen. Leave screen blanking OFF by default, with an option to turn it ON.
In almost all distro's, X ignores the DE's power saving commands. Debian is the only one off the top that I've never had to tweak (and create) the X conf file, and it still blanks the screen during install.
A majority of them give up and go back to windows, who, at least in this case, gets it right.
Having to set the dpi for large displays manually kills linux as a HTPC for anything over 32". Sure you can set it manually, but to do that you have to connect it to a small display first. Windows get that right also.
Come on devs, it's 2012 and we still have these kind of problems?
Why is this do damn hard?
Cheers,
RM
Nobody's as dumb, as I appear to be
The reason Linux on the desktop isn't happening, is because MS controls that, with huge financial penalties for any manufacturer who install Linux on machines.
People don't necessarily care what OS they are using, as long as it is the one that comes installed on their shiny new computer. If you start shipping computers with no OS, and just a choice screen asking the user which OS to install, and giving the price of each, then you'll see Linux take off on the desktop in a hurry.
Well, not by playing the game in a straightforward fashion.
Consider Valve, for example. If Valve puts out a set-top box and uses Linux to avoid a MS license fee per system sold, the console experience may carry over rapidly to desktop linux. Now this starts as only a convenience method for delivery of Valve games only. However, Steam on windows started the same way. If Valve does the linux play for their set top box, they are likely to make the infrastructure open ended for desktop use (they don't have much to lose and I'm sure the engineers would want to enable the use case). A lot of things would likely naturally fall out of that. If there was a Steam set top box with a moderate amount of market presence, you'd have a Vevo and Netflix app come along to be steam managed under linux.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
If the ancient laptop has ME and ME is undesired and you want Windows 7, you probably aren't going to get it to work. Generally, that vintage of laptop can run a modern Linux distro, but it cannot run a modern Windows and expect to have drivers for everything (particularly a PCMCIA wireless card is likely not to have a Windows driver).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
LMOL yeah sure. No it's not. That's why Microsoft released a software compatibility check package to see if your software will run on Windows 7.
Moron.
In most cases, I can't just go to its website and download the new version. I have to learn how to compile the program and install it, which most of the time never works correctly.
The Windows approach becomes frustrating once you realize that pretty much all the software you want is probably managed by the system software manager. Updates appear in the 'system tray' and you click 'go' and your software is brought up to date, no matter who it is from. Google chrome, adobe flash, etc all get updated via the system software manager instead of manual installation and update of each piece of software individually.
Probably google searches show the bad part. It shows the 'hard' way because that's the way people have to document, generally to accommodate unpopular distributions or for developers to get in on the action with too-rough-cut-for-the-average-user versions.. The simple use case is so easy no one talks about it. This is a difficult perception problem to overcome.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
If not MS-Office, then it's Photoshop, or AutoCAD, or some game, or whatever.
On my home desktop, I don't need any of those apps, so I use Linux, and I consider it a far superior desktop experience in every way.
Ten years ago, that would have been a valid point. Today, I find Linux much easier to use, and much easier administration.
For example, I can install Linux in about 40 minutes, windows seems to take all day. Especially since windows requires me to install apps separately, then I have to install anti-virus software, and fight with all that DRM crap.
BTW: I have many years experience in professional desktop support, and systems administration, both windows, and linux. For ease of use, and admin, I'll take Linux, over Windows, any day.
Like install a newer version of FF than was available in the package manager so my son could do his homework on multiplication.com. "Sorry son I worked on it all weekend and I got it installed and working but now I'm having trouble with installing java, just use Daddy's computer it has windows."
It looks like multiplication.com uses flash, not java. You almost certainly did not need a newer version of firefox just to run the flash plugin. Correct diagnosis of the missing plugin is an essential step on both Linux and Windows.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
What on Earth are you talking about? I'm talking about BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY, do you even know what that means? It's like saying that a Playstation game will play on a Playstation 2. This means that PS2 is BACKWARDS COMPATIBLE. Windows 8 is backwards compatible with Windows 7.
How do I know this? I've been developing Windows 8 apps (for Microsoft) since October of last year.
Who's the moron?
My wife is a recruiter and if people submit their resumes in anything other then .doc(x) i tell her to push back to the candidate and get a properly formatted resume.
Really? You're openly admitting to be one of those people that don't accept self contained HTML nor PDF resumes?
I just let you know that I hate you. I really don't understand why HR does that.
from 1995,1996,1997,1998,1999,2000,2001,2002,2003,2004,2005,2006,2007,2008,2009,2010,2011
When I go a big box or electronic store, I see a dozen Windows machines. Maybe a Macbook or iMac here and there. I've never seen a Linux box on display, never mind the distro. I have Fedora at home, but stuck with XP at work. I see iPhone/iPads/Macbooks all over, so those must be popular too. I just don't see many linux distros out there, unless everyone has an environment which mimics Windows! Yes, I can tell people how cool it is, but if they don't see it at stores or at work, I'm just a lone computer geek!
These are some of the things molecules do...... given 4 billion years -Carl Sagan
I cut over to Linux recently. I loved it. The only issue I had was that there wasn't an outlook alternative. For email, Thunderbird was sufficient (I wouldn't say it was better). I used Lightning for my calendaring. This was my major problem. Things would randomly disappear from my calendar causing me to miss meetings. I had to go back to windows unfortunately. The day that there is a better alternative, is the day that I put Linux back onto my work computer.
Plus their childish insistence on labeling it GNU/linux
Is there a better snappy name for "a Linux-based operating environment that isn't embedded or Android"?
Or M$
Slashdot comment subjects are limited to 50 characters. M$ saves seven while calling to mind Microsoft's roots as a publisher of BASIC interpreters. (In old-skool BASIC, what did 10 LET M$ = "Microsoft": PRINT M$ do?)
Why should it? Linux is there as an alternative to users. You choose to use it or not. It is your problem if you want to pay OS licenses or not. Open Source in general is all about choices. I personally would love if people used Linux (any of the distros) more, but if you don't want to, that's fine. We will continue to work and try to make it better for people that appreciate a damn awesome OS.
I’m new to programming and not really knowledgeable to comment here generally, though I read Slashdot regularly mostly for the comments—you guys are great. I’ve had both Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.04 in a dual boot configuration on my desktop and laptop for quite some time. I installed Ubuntu because I was told, correctly I think, that it was a good way to get to know my machine, but I pretty much never booted into Ubuntu because I never really had to and for what I was using the computer, Windows worked really well. At any rate, a couple of days ago I get a ‘this copy of Windows is not genuine’ message at the bottom left corner of my desktop—probably because it probably really isn’t—so I upgraded to 12.04 and moved over to Ubuntu. I think I’m going to stick with it. The first thing I notice is that only one of my monitors displays, so I go into ‘display’ or whatever and see that the system isn’t aware of a second monitor. Detect monitors does nothing. So I spend some time googling and somehow after surfing I discover that there’s this nvidia-setting app on my system that I can use to configure my video card/display. I spend about 40 minutes messing with the configurations, trying different settings until, yay, I get my dual monitor display up and running. It’s running okay, but it doesn’t look nearly as crisp as it did on Windows. Also the top panel of the desktop covers the top of my applications’ windows so that I need to drag them down to minimize or close them. I am now researching moving the desktop panel, which seems to be trickier than it should be on this new Ubuntu release. I did learn a bit in the process, about drivers and configurations and settings utilities, so I’m more equipped to deal with the next issue that hits me, but none of this happens (as far as I know) on Windows and after everything, so far, Widows looks better. Now I have to set up my wifi router and I don’t think it will be as easy to do as following the prompts on the Linksys setup wizard I used on the Windows cd I got when I bought the product. Good thing, I have some free time tonight. It’s thrilling to have a solved a problem, and I was too happy having figured out how to configure the dual display (baby steps ) to worry about the display quality (though I do hope there’s way to fix it). I will more become more knowledgeable hacking my way through the OS but if I weren’t interested in learning about this stuff, I’d pony up the bucks and go with Window 7 which I think is a stellar product. To answer the question, I think the only way Linux gets respectable market share is when and if users get to choose (off the shelf) between a Widows loaded machine and a substantially less expensive Linux machine. I know of no way now to buy a machine without building it (or having it built, which is was I did with my desktop and is why I have an illegal Windows OS) and save money by going Linux. So the ‘free’ advantage is mostly moot for regular users who simply buy machines. As far as I know all machines come with Windows when shipping from major retailers.
Wish you would have told me that when RedHat 3.0.3 came out, cause that's when I went to Linux. And now that I work at home, I use Linux on the desktop for work as well.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Surely it's not an attempt to prevent printing multiple coupons
That's exactly what it is, as far as I can tell.
since even if I couldn't find a way to capture the coupon in a PDF on Windows, I could just scan and copy the one I printed.
For one thing, not if it has anti-photocopying marks all over it. For another, a lot of softer security measures aren't intended to be foolproof. They're intended to make it so that counterfeiting requires an overt, intentional act. It's easier to prove wrongdoing when you can establish intent.
What on earth are you blabbing about? What application was having trouble converting e-mail and how would that be OpenSuSEs fault? Also why did you try and install a debug version of KDE on a production machine? That's development material, not production.
Reinstalling from scratch is a Windows click monkey solution. With Linux, if you have problems, you should fix them on the machine, because re-installs will have you end up in exactly the same spot of trouble you were before.
The way you tend to try to solve your computer problems, you are just a horror to do tech support for, regardless of what OS you are using. All operating systems suffer trouble, most of them being the users themselves and you are one prime example of that. Sure, "computers should be user friendly", but the way you are using a computer, you'll end up with one schizophrenic box indeed.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
As for the rest of your points, you could have just used a VM.
For one thing, one would still have to buy a $200 operating system to run inside the VM. For another, I was under the impression that the Windows Media DRM associated with Silverlight streaming video would intentionally break if it detected a VM.
You need to be willing to relearn how to do things you've gotten used to and it doesn't hurt to have a friend help show you how it's done.
Provided that one knows how to find such a friend who lives within a reasonable distance of oneself.
Let me know how well those flash videos work and the good weekend setting up a new rig when Joe Six pack just plugs his new shiny Windows box from bestbuy and it boots up and works.
I am glad I do not use Linux anymore with the shitty Unity UI and keep it around in a VM. Windows 7 is supperior as I do things desktop oriented when not working and do not have time to have the system crash because an update screwed it up with no ABI like every other OS has.
My ATI card can easily go black at any time if there is an update. Not worth the effort and is laughable if you think an average Joe should put up with that.
http://saveie6.com/
...plane and simple.
- "Most people" won't use Linux until they are 100% sure that the programs/hardware(incl. drivers) they want are available for Linux.
- "Most people" won't use Linux until they are 100% sure that the files they exchange with others are compatible. Granted, people seen to "accept" that files from different versions of MSOffice aren't compatible.... I'm not sure why.
- Most companies won't support Linux until they are sure that their efforts will pay off.
Because of this "simple" problem, Linux will continue to have a limited appeal :(
When I visit my family, my mom closes the lid of my laptop and I freak out. "Why don't we just buy you a real computer?" they ask.
Forget suspend/resume. "Stop cooking my finger oils from the keyboard onto the laptop screen!" Next time she does it, leave fingerprints on every window in the house.
I know somewhere that had similar issues.
So one guy got smart. He started mentioning how old our version of office was etc. The techies followed with the same mutterings.
After that circulated around, it was announced that we were going to bring in a newer version of Office (nobody said MS Office). By making it sound like an update/upgrade, rather than a newer version, acceptance was greater and everyone actually seemed to like it.
This article is based on estimates from Gartner. They are both biased and ill informed. From the article:
__________
In addition, the free versions of Linux are only supported with free fixes for about a year, says Michael Silver, an analyst with Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner group. "You have to switch to the new version of Linux every year," he says. "Microsoft supports each version of Windows for ten years -- I don't have to pay any more money, and I still get security fixes. Even vendors that do offer extended security fixes for Linux, like Novell or Red Hat, they're going to charge every year for the privilege."
__________
The claims made by the analyst are simply false.
The bottom line is that the desktop form factor is in rapid decline. Tablets and phones are eating away at them. In addition, most stores do not offer Linux preinstalled. The consumer, a mindless sheep, uses whatever is placed in front of them.
The article is both a non-starter, and old news. What is the premise, other than FUD? Do they really think that Linux users will abandon their cherished operating system because they are at "2%" market share? No, the article is to put pressure on IT shops and software companies to abandon their Linux efforts.
You're such a paid shill that you literally reek! GTFO and don't let the door hit you on the ass. A pox on your house and the crappy people you represent.
Jesus, it's 2012 and we can't even get shills who can come up with new FUD? This crap hasn't even changed a micron since the year 2000.
Die in a fire, a*holes.
If not us, who? If not now, when?
I guess I will comment on this story next week when you re-run it with a different source.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
MATE Something even MORE obscure. No thanks.
People are not buying desktop PCs anymore, they buy laptops, netbooks, tablets or use their smartphone most of the time. Linux on laptops could be big nowdays if distributions and productivity apps didn't suck that much (give an Outlook user Thundebird and they'll complain about its lack of a proper calendar despite Lightning; give an MS Office user LibreOffice and they'll find some feature that doesn't work as well or similar enough to MS Office ...). And then there's games, why isn't WINE there yet after all these years?
.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Endless compatibility issues, imperfect rendering, fonts, layout problems, etc.
Are the differences between LibreOffice Writer and Microsoft Word in thise respect substantially bigger than those between versions of Word, or even between installations of the same version of Word on machines with different default printers or different default paper sizes?
...when Desktop Linux usage approaches half of that of Microsoft's most recent failure, Vista.
The lowest estimate for Vista usage at 7.49% is 5x that of the average estimate of Linux usage at about 1.33% here.
Ken
it has nothing to do with compliance with exisitng apps like office (yes, I cd spell if i cared)
it has nothing to do with gnu/linux wars, eas of instal, or any of
NONE OF THAT STUFF MATTERS
What matters is, *why should I change * ? /., ever changed anything.
if there is no *compelling * reason, noone, in the history of hte univererse, except for 5 or s6 geeks on
you need a compelling reason to change.
visicalc was compelling
getting easy to load cheap music ipod was compelling
etc
and the funniest thing is, the linux people are so stupid, they won't patent it (assuming they ever get it) and MS will just blow them away..
The last bastion of independent analysis, the seeker of truth and the purveyor of equanimity.
Oh wait, I'm thinking of someone else.
Really, if you do everything which Gartner advises you not to, you won't go far wrong.
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
I work in a Software Engineering department for a major company (>3k staff), with over 150 Linux desktop users, and a team of only 3 linux desktop admins.
These guys have things down to a science here, and are far less authoritarian than the Windows Desktop IT team, who won't even let us change our screen saver settings without forcing us to open a ticket, which all stems from security issues and lame IT policies.
Everyone here is an educated and skilled engineer, and is expected to know how to *at least* perform normal day-to-day operations using a linux desktop. The defacto here is Fedora Linux, for many obvious reasons.
All of our engineers have the freedom of sudo to install/configure their system accordingly, within the realm of support. If they decide that they are better-off administrating their machine on their own, then they have free reign to change the root password, and the linux desktop staff no longer has to support their needs. They are then on their own and considered skilled enough to support themselves.
Our Windows Desktop infrastructure is an entirely different story. There is an entire team of ITSEC engineers who are constantly watching the network traffic, and often remotely snooping on users desktops.
Linux is here for those who are educated, skilled, or curious enough to figure it out and use it to their heart's content. Linux is not here to replace Windows or Mac as a desktop, unless you yourself (as I) have chosen to do so.
It's ironic that MS pays Gartner and PC World and all these other 'sponsored' media outlets to spread PR/FUD against Linux-based systems. They'd be better off fixing the bugs in Windows, with those funds, rather than misleading the short-sighted Managerial types who continue to make bias decisions and ruin companies thanks to these lame efforts to secure a market share.
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Switching directly to GNU/Linux seems to cause too many compatibility problems. I spent a year dealing with mostly free software on my Windows computer. Switching to GNU/Linux was a breeze.
Half the time I think people hate GNU/Linux so much because it's so different to what they're used to.
I still have Windows in a Virtual Machine in case I need to get Windows compatible, although I don't use it that often. (I also have my old Win partition dual-booted, but I don't use it)
When I was writing my post I went back and forth between flash and java, the java hassle must have been when trying to get the minecraft client working. I've been trying to forget the trauma of the whole thing so the details are mixed up. I did get flash working eventually, java/minecraft not.
-- QED
Your message contains very insightful observations of desktop computing. Hats off to you.
I miss the days when I had absolutely idiot jobs that required about 1/10 of my brain 1/10 of the time, and I could do things like check out old hardware, install Linux and screw around until my fingers fell off. I have blown up many an operating system, and fixed many of them in turn.
Right now, I'm just a VM junkie. While Windows has improved quite a bit (I never knew it had a built in sort command until today) it's sometimes great to have a virtual Linux or BSD box for experimentation and development.
Then again, I've got another emulator also. I keep KEGS running in the background in case I need a quick game of Arkanoid or Centipede.
Futurist Traditionalism
I know why I switched back to Windows - I couldn't figure out into what directory I should install new programs.
Linux doesn't tell you what you should do. You tell Linux what it should do.
Then other angry Linux nerds will yell at you about what you *should* have done.
Who're these angry Linux nerds of whom you speak? Well, maybe on /. that's apropos.
My first question would be, why aren't you using the supplied tools to install your program? If it's in the repo, the system will install the correct version for you in he right place. If it's some source code you want to fiddle with, put it under your HOME directory somewhere.
I'd also suggest (politely) where to find answers to similar questions. Obviously, he didn't look in the right places.
IFF you know what you're doing, and it's source code you want to build for everyone on the system to be able to use, Linux standardized on /usr/local last century.
Every system comes with somewhat of a learning curve. The beauty of the *nix way is supposed to be that everything you learn makes all the rest of what you need to learn easier; the learning curve flattens out the more you learn.
It's Linux geeks, btw. Nerds are the guys wearing pocket protectors, and tape holding their glasses together.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
I got slammed with this today at work. I finally got my nice experimental Linux box going this weekend after procrastinating for a year, and when I mentioned to one of my snarky younger colleagues "It's a free operating system", he said, complete with grammar as is, "So it's like a Microsoft (sic) but a lot worse?"
But get this - I see all news these days through the eyes of a former Magic the Gathering player perspective - no one story means anything. Combos of stories - NOW we're cooking! It's like they deliberately release separate components of a dangerous combo separately to soothe the masses from staging revolts.
Media: Songs/Movies/maybe Books: "I don't want to pay a red cent! Gimme free even if I technically break the law!"
Operating Systems: "Free, at the cost of doing a little work? Eew! Please make me pay $500!"
That just reeks/screams Combo. "1000 songs and 100 movies free if you use the free Operating system Linux!"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
*Some people* find asking someone else to handle their problem far easier than looking it up online. By some people I mean the majority of people.
That's called "being lazy" and "not wanting to learn." Can you not understand how tiring that sort of person can be to those who aren't lazy and do try to learn?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Sucks you are anonymous, you could learn something here.
This is the mindset that needs to die. You dont get it. Most businesses arent in the business of making software. The GPL makes complete sense, you want to enhance a software package, and contribute back to the community, of which you know will also contribute back making everyone have better software so you can get on with YOUR BUSINESS. Think of it as a global software pool that just gets better.
Dont think that can work? Here is a case study for you from real life: Business needs to get its information out to a website, the content is important, Apache, Postgres are simply tools. They pay 50,000 a year for support to a vendor. The vendor provides patches and fixes. At the end of the year, if they have support hours left over, they add "nice to haves", which enhances Apache and Postgres for everyone. There are businesses doing this today, right now, and they are more productive and have better support. Why? Because there is no lock in, they could choose a different support team next year if they weren't satisfied, and the enhancements and bugfixes are coming from everywhere on the planet.
In my work, the number of features of an application I use regularly has increased exponentially, because different business interests are paying to enhance the suite, something we couldn't afford individually.
I usually give up when I need to install a program I've downloaded from the web. ... When it starts telling me to open a terminal and enter a string of commands, I get lost and give up. Fix this one issue and I would be a convert.
Fixed long ago. All the various distros have their own repos. Synaptic is a GUI that interfaces your system with your distro's repo. No, I don't use synaptic, but others swear by it (I prefer CLI). At least Suse and Redhat can do essentially the same thing, and Slackware and its downstreams do well here too.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
IMHO the problem has a lot to do with managing a large number of computers.
Also solved a long time ago. Check the /. archives. I saw a story about a guy who was setting up a bunch of machines for a convention, and he wanted to know how to keep them synced. There's plenty of ways.
Something along the lines of MS's Group Policies is needed.
No it's not.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
It basically comes down to Windows does more out of the box than linux because it was designed to be that way.
You must be a manager. I can't believe that anyone who actually knows their way around IT would believe this. Windows out of the box runs supplied crapware, other vendors installers, IE, and a couple of games.
Linux out of the box offers you the opportunity to download and install ca. 18,000 programs (in the case of Debian) for free. If you're a developer, you can go to work at once because all the tools are already there.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
The cost? The fricken cost? WTF are they smoking? Linux only costs on the desktop for business if you follow the windows paradigm. Throw it out the window. Linux is perfect for business on the desktop. Get rid of all employee computers, replace with 3d accelerated thin clients (or re-use the desktop machines as the thin clients). Centralize applications, centralize document management.
This is the IT dream: Users cant install applications, they must focus on their work. Software only gets installed in one location. The actual hardware lasts a long time, and there are no licenses to track. All documents and emails are centrally stored, and with a modified workflow they all are tagged with metadata with the users name, edit history and date.
This is a no brainer, but IT in most places are a bunch of microsoft drones that cant get oout of the rut that Microsoft has trained them to stay in. Be inventive, use the current tools, think thin and simple.
It's not. The aim of BSD is to propagate and be used elsewhere, even in commercial products. Where do you think Linux's original TCP/IP stack came from? Or Windows's for that matter. Or Netapp's operating system?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I have absolutely zero idea what you are trying to say here.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
So you like Metro then?
Honestly, I don't see what's so great about Windows 7's GUI. It's fine and all, and I do actually like Windows 7- but it's only marginally different to the paradigm used in XP, 2000, NT, 98, 95...
Unity, Gnome 3, KDE4, they're all very flashy and modern (to the point that it irritates me). Unity & Metro are both coming from the same stable of thought (and both get the same reaction from the /. crowd). Gnome 2, MATE, XFCE, they're all more or less the same as XP/Win7.
Try printing an A3 pdf in landscape
Okay...
>>>goes away and prints an A3 pdf in landscape from Ubuntu.
Did you forget to turn the printer on or something?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Imagine a private person being able to put a fence around the city park and arrest people for tresspassing.
I kinda thought Linux guys in particular understood the difference between physical and digital goods.
A better analogy is having the gardener of the city park help you create your own garden, which is exactly identical, and you then decide to put a fence around it.
GPL is the gardener telling you in advance that he'll only help you if you never do such a thing. Not neccesarily unreasonable, but also not a no-brainer, and completely unacceptable if you planned to wall it off all along.
There is a GUI. It is called X. And KDE is the standard desktop. GNOME needs to fold into it. But even 2 main choices isn't huge.
Yes, it is.
No OS, ever, has successfully supported two simultaneous GUI environments. X be damned. That's not what the user sees.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Flash videos run fine at 720p (my screen is only 768) on my laptop, and it's a low-powered (for battery life reasons) thinkpad with integrated graphics. As for the "good weekend". When my sister got her netbook (netbooks have long been known as the least compatible machines), it *litterally* took less time to fully install ubuntu, WITH full home-folder encryption, than it did to drive to the store and buy it. After 2 years of using it, the only problem she's had with it (barring physical damage she caused by dropping it) was some recent hdd corruption no doubt caused by inadvertant hard-shutdowns due to the battery being worn out and that only took me a half hour to fix. As for video cards going black from an update, I haven't seen any reports of that since the 9.10 days, and I spend a LOT of time in the #ubuntu channel helping people out.
Slightly off-topic, but guess what the #1 most common support issue has been in the #ubuntu irc channel for the last 2 weeks? Minecraft shitting the bed because Oracle is fucking with Java.
Submit them to WHOM?
How many OSes have even GUI environments? That's not exactly a large group.
But as far as successful OSes with different GUIs DOS had: Windows16, Many Dos shells particularly popular was WordPerfect's.
Sun had both NeWS and X.
Amiga had Workbench and Magellan
And JavaOS (dumb phones) which is possibly one of the most successful OSes of all time has more GUIs than I can even list.
Also good examples.
And no I do think that's what we are talking about. What would an OS look like that had multiple GUIs? Well it would either have to have most of the complexity at layers other than the GUI. In the case of Linux when the multiple GUIs developed (and still mostly today) the CLI where the GUI is just a thin shell around the CLI like ti was for DOS. Or the complexity would be things that the end user doesn't control like in industrial use or phones.
Obviously you aren't going to have the complexity be in the GUI and have multiples. Which may have been your point but it is subtly different... that Linux is unlikely to develop a complex GUI culture (like Windows) as long as it has multiple GUIs. Which is likely true, Linux is likely to never develop a GUI culture where API's are built at the GUI level.
Not quite. In your analogy the gardener would create that garden for you, for no or minimal cost, but with the condition that the second garden not be walled off and if you add worthwile ideas to it, that the gardener can incorporate those ideas at no or minimal cost in his own garden.
Not neccesarily unreasonable, but also not a no-brainer, and completely unacceptable if you planned to wall it off all along.
This reads to me as: Don't want to be bound by the GPL, don't base/derive your own (additive) work from GPL licensed code.
But that is the crux of the matter, isn't it? If only it were possible to take all that GPL licensed code, add a brilliant smidge of your own and then be able to monetize all of it under a license of your own choosing.
That is possible with BSD licensed code. That makes BSD business friendly, very much loved and very much underdeveloped, because very little that is worthwile is contributed back. If it is sellable, the worthwhile bits will be relicensed under a proprietary license.
# touch universe # chmod +rwx universe #
As the COO of a company and avid Ubuntu user I find that this is the ONE issue that keeps our firm from going 100% Ubuntu on the desktop (we are already 100% Ubuntu on the server side). Support, management, desktop share, hardware compatibility...its can all be handled in one way or another. However, LibreOffice's lack of interoperability with MS Office and the weak capability inside are a total show stopper. I am not going to have a Windows VM on every Linux desktop, just to run MS Office and Google Apps is just weak sauce. Lets face it, MS Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) is a great set of applications and people are used to that level of quality and feature richness. If I could change one thing about the Linux community it would be to configure it to make LibreOffice a HUGE priority going forward....almost on the same scale as the kernel itself.
Linux is likely to never develop a GUI culture where API's are built at the GUI level.
This already exists, it's called either Qt or GTK depending which desktop you're developing for.
Sock Puppets: damn_registrars=pudge_confirmer=jimmy_slimmy=raiigunner=cml4524=a_klavan=red4men=ronpaulisanidiot
There's "linux" - as in "Linux Is Not UniX". It's good enough for "plain ole linux"
My aim here is to defuse snarky replies from pedants. Linux by itself is a kernel, as a pedant will likely point out. Some might think the embedded uses of the Linux-the-kernel, such as those that use Newlib or uClibc instead of glibc, are in a way "plainer" than the commonly used desktop stack. Perhaps X11/Linux might be a better anti-pedant term for those desktop Linux flavors that aren't Android.
BASIC? Aggh - my eyes!!!!!
Which is part of the point of saying "M$": to make Microsoft hurt your eyes the same way old-skool BASIC did. I agree with you that "Micro$oft" is pointless, but M$ still has value in comment subjects.
The fucking topic is why Linux hasn't taken off on the desktop, some damned MS shill tells a bunch of damned lies about Linux, and setting the record straight is offtopic?
Please bring back the old style metamods!! Whoever modded the previous comment "oftopic" should NEVER EVER get mod points.
Now, THIS comment IS offtopic.
Free Martian Whores!
UNTIL they decided to completely over-indulge their own sense of relevance by forcing the mandatory Unity interface
sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop [and then] Tell me how "mandatory" Unity is.
You just proved my point.
What point did I just prove? You called Unity "mandatory", claiming that Canonical was "forcing" it on Ubuntu users, and I explained how to turn off Unity by installing a single metapackage. Please help me understand how that doesn't make Unity not "mandatory" or "forc[ed]". If you were referring only to the default install from the ISO, should I have said "install Xubuntu instead of Ubuntu" instead? Or perhaps your point was that Ubuntu lacks a discoverable GUI for installing other desktop environments; they're hidden as "technical items" in Ubuntu Software Center. If so, I'll grant that.
Just buy a $20 router and tell them to configure THAT for the internet connection.
It's not just the PC that has to be configured; the modem also has to be associated with the Internet access subscription. "Sure. Just connect your PC running Windows or Mac OS X to the router, and then run our proprietary software to configure the modem for our service through the router."
I take it you like the Mac world where Steve Jobs (even though he is now dead) makes sure you have no choices.
One GUI, heck only one mouse button, One Way Of Doing Things and sue anyone that makes something better than dare run in Apple's walled garden!
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Is someone being paid by microshaft or crapple to post these stories? I swear this is the second or third one in a few weeks. Anyways, everyone should use gentoo, just like me.
For a brief while, there, Ubuntu proffered a best-of-breed Linux desktop experience. Indeed, Unity is quite pleasant to use on a suitable device like a notebook or something. However, 'Nix-heads hate it because of the dearth of UI tweak options, the rest of us hate it because it's ceased to be a Desktop desktop.
In my experience, this is typical of the development of Linux desktops. They hook you and then turn a corner that makes you spit them right back out again.
Microsoft does the same thing - some folks run Windows 7 with Windows 2000 look and feel; others never made it past Win 98, but you don't quite get that "shafted-under-the-hood" feeling when Windows upgrades that you get when a new release of your distro comes out.
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
So, why hasn't Linux on the desktop taken off?
Yet Another Linux Desktop Takes Over The World Analysis Thread.
Because the Lords of Kobol know the world has a recurrent need to frequently resucitate a no-longer-original nor informative, late-1990's/early 2000's already putrified dead horse just to beat the living shit out of it. Yay!
Seriously, this horse has been beaten down to its elementary particles for the last 10-12 years. And we just recently had a thread just like that. This is like, wow, dejavu of the uninformative kind.
Or, I suppose I should say, cause there are dozens of window managers and what-have-you to choose from... which are all garbage in different ways. Linux is a -fantastically- excellent server OS, because if you want a server OS, you may or may not be running it in headed mode (I do - I run a server application on mine that wants a GUI), but you're still probably not interacting with the GUI aspect of it on a regular basis. And Linux itself is great.
But as soon as you start talking about the (user mode, not actually part of Linux itself) GUI aspects of a proper, modern, WIMP-based OS, you've got loads of choices... but they all suck major balls. So no thanks.
The GPL "you must distribute source" part only applies if you distribute the modified binaries. If it is kept within the company, you don't have to distribute the source. AFAIK, anyway.
Yes and no. Certainly QT has the whole KDE stack and GTK the Gnome stack. But many of the core open source applications like OpenOffice and Firefox use their own stacks and aren't integrated. Porting applications over to these stacks has stopped. Back when KDE first started they used to migrate apps over to use the KDE application framework, this isn't happening anymore. The idea of a common API has been abandoned.
So a fictional Linux Admin, admining 10000 machines remotely ... is better than ... reality? Yeah, and Fairies are better than Genie in a bottle.
AND a well qualified Windows admin can maintain same level control (possibly better) as a Linux admin. Microsoft has its issues, however system administration isn't one of them. Win 2K8R2 and Win 7 are very maintainable by one guy, even in the 10000s. And we don't have to use Obfuscated Perl and Bash Scripts to do it.
If you're gonna bash Microsoft, at least do it where they deserve it (i.e. Win 8)
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Linux desktops never endure - they become popular, gain prominence, and then they take a left turn. Mint is nice, but it is too dependent on Ubuntu, and Ubuntu is a sinking ship. As soon as Mint detaches from Ubuntu and becomes its own distro, they'll just do the same thing. It's what Linux distros do.
Desktop Linux blossoms, and then perishes - hard.
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
If you cant secure Windows, it's because you don't want to, and haven't bothered to figure out how to.
I don't see any need to switch to linux except for research/coding/geek reasons, and none of these are for average users.
It's kind of interesting how Linux fans brag about all of the software that comes pre-installed with every Linux distro but bitch and moan if any extra software is installed on a Windows box. Why isn't the software that you'll probably never use on a Linux box a bonus but gets called bloatware on Windows? I'd personally rather start with a blank slate or a standard image with standard programs that are always used by everyone (PDF reader, Office suite, Flash) than have to go through to uninstall a bunch of shit I won't use.
I'll tell you the main reason my company doesn't use Linux and restricts its usage - because it's FOSS. The integrity of the code is, at best, shaky. I'd also say that having an anonymous FTP, SSH, and HTTP server running on a box right from the get-go is a giant security hole and should be plugged up quickly if it won't be used. Also, have you heard of Windows PowerShell? It's pretty much the bee's knees for a shell (and is secured by default) and comes standard with Win7.
In a properly secured corporate Windows environment (basic AV/malware scanner and non-paper thin firewalls), malware is a non-issue and easily caught to be fixed. There's multiple good solutions for pushing non-MS software updates, Lumension being a step above the rest.
In a home environment, Linux is good enough for most anything except bleeding edge gaming. Gaming is a huge market for computers. Something that Linux cannot compete in without Wine which only works sometimes with some games and not easily configurable for the average end user. Most of Linux is really just not very friendly to your average end user even with a lot of the improvements I've seen the Linux desktop go through over the last decade. It's friendly to techies and computer savvy people but to average people, there's a steep(er) learning curve compared to Windows. Who here that installed Linux for their grand/parents didn't have to sit and show them some of the basics for getting around that would've been fairly intuitive on Windows?
You're right, if you took your ass-hat off whilst making your point you might even convince people.
Simple version.
Read news in Combos. Any one IP-related story is bad enough, but take them in doubles or triples and ghastly things are emerging.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Unless you are trying to get a piece of unsupported hardware working, a normal user should never have to touch the command line
So in other words, unless you're trying to actually use the hardware you paid for, you don't need the command line. But until Walmart and Best Buy start selling PCs with something well supported like Ubuntu on them, as opposed to previous short-lived experiments with consumer PCs that had an absolute crap distribution of X11/Linux, unsupported hardware will be the reality. And if you're trying to call programming students and hobbyists "abnormal", I rese(nt|mble) that remark.
and there being THREE fucking "User Data" folders in three different directories of each user's account.
I know what at least two of these folders are for. In Windows XP at least, ~/Application Data is for your roaming profile that follows you to any computer on the domain that you use, and ~/Local Settings is for your local profile specific to one computer. What's the third?
It's a bad analogy.
In your example, the GPL says nothing about your "garden".
The users are not limited in _any_ way. Distributors are limited, in that they need to provide source for the original code, and the improvements, _if_ they distribute the original code.
You can use GPLd software, improve it, and never share anything. The only thing you can't do is distribute GPLd software and keep the source to yourself.
Perhaps you forgot, but this is a thread replying to a Slashdot article entitled "Why Desktop Linux hasn't taken off". Maybe you're mistaking me for Microsoft or someone who likes them.
Your "you can just jump ship" is exactly the underscore I'm talking about. Been there, done that. Can't remember how many window managers I've used, lost track of all the distros I've switched between. Ubuntu is merely the most recent and, probably, one of the most promising contenders: Unity makes a really nice netbook / laptop desktop.
No sooner had they gotten everyone calling Ubuntu the "rising star", the "desktop hopeful" than they lock sites on some specific target niche and leave everyone else with a "don't like it? just use a different distro/spin/flavor".
I'd be really happy to see the Mint team break the trend, but right now my hunch - based on everything I've seen - is that we'll see another Redhat/Fedora situation with Mint :(
It's a shame, I suspect Windows 8 is going to bomb worse than Vista did, at least on the desktop and for different reasons. This would be a great time for Canonical to refocus some of their efforts on their desktop support and be ready to catch some of the "I went back to Windows" types rebounding to Linux.
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
OMG, it was a joke to show how ridiculous the claim of too many Linux versions was.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Really? Groups on Linux is baked in, and has been since forever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, these comments have made depressing reading (okay so i only read about 300 hundred or so). Slashdot is a site that is supposed to be News for Nerds, and is famed for having a strong Linux-using (the nerd part) reader base, not to mention heritage. Yet, so many of the comments (and the highly rated ones, at that) have been by clearly very inexperienced, and ignorant PC/Mac users whining about how they couldn't do something they way the were used to, and who, rather than learning how to do it, gave up, and proceed to claim it can't be done in Linux, or is too difficult, or that the mean forum members were so wude to them (i experienced nothing but friendly help, and advice, provided FOR FREE, in the forums, concerning many different distros, when i was a noob). Perhaps if you tried to HELP YOURSELVES first and thus refined your knowledge of the problem, you would get more effective advice. Honestly, you should all go over and swell the ranks of Lifehacker. It's not that i am being elitist, you are just literally wasting everybody's time by spewing inaccuracies and inanities.
I agree with you. Red Hat has proven that open source is a very viable business model. But it is true that most businesses are heavily invested in the Office/Windows model, and that is going to be very difficult to upset, especially when most home users are using Windows or Mac OSX; Linux is an alien creature to Mary Jane Receptionist. That is not to say this can't change. I hope it does. If we can sort out the less pleasant aspects of open source (lack of easily accessible tech support, compatibility, and support for common business apps), home users and businesses both can be enticed towards open source. Certainly I would love to live in a world where software is treated like technology, not music.
The penguin made me do it.
totally agree - except that i have stuck with delphi 7 pro
.net, uninstalled it, and it has been sitting in a cupboard ever since. only reason i didn't return it was that it came with another delphi 7 license.
i bought delphi 8, installed it, saw the blasphemy that is
Someone commented before me that the opportunity for Linux on the desktop existed when other OS (Windows 95-98) were the only alternatives, etc., and that this opportunity was missed. I submit that if the same opportunity shows up today, say Microsoft goes bankrupt and a mysterious virus leaves all Windows OS irreparably inoperable right now, Linux on the desktop won't succeed either, 20 years later. In my opinion, the reason is a fundamental cultural difference with commercial alternatives. Commercial products/companies put (or at least try to put) the usability, the comfort of the user as a top priority. On the other hand, the Open Source culture, of which Linux is part, puts at the top of the priority stack the developer, programmer, freedom, choice, etc. Usability, the user, is secondary. You got to be nice to the developer, the new CS graduate, your colleague at your nonprofit org, etc. You have to provide lots of choices, lots of configurations, etc. For the average user, and for many advanced users (like me), what is important is a system that is easy to use and maintain. I don't really care for the many choices and freedoms that I don't use. And they bug me if I have to learn them to actually exercise my sacrosanct right to make the choice. That takes time, and I have to get my job done. Endlessly learning and re-learning what has changed since the last release, and which didn't have to change in the first place because all was working alright before, is at the bottom of my preferences. Thus, the new graduate from the CS MS program invented a super-duper new GNOME desktop, convinced others about its greatness and made GNOME 3 the standard desktop of the 'cutting edge' distro Fedora 16. Sooooo, I either have to spend days or weeks learning the 'new ways' of doing the same things that I am used to do, and unlearn what became the common way of navigating my applications, menus, filesystem, etc. to use the greatest-and-latest CS MS production. Sorry: I don't have time to help you developer/MS CS student/graduate: I need to have my work done: I will use something else instead, something I am familiar with. For now I switched to KDE on Fedora, but it also suffers from some of the same 'greatest-and-latest' syndromes. Windows seems a better option: things keep working there more or less the way I am familiar with. It is also more stable than ever and the fonts of the desktop don't suck. Actully I am writing this on a Windoze machine. I would have preferred not to. But the Open Source culture forces me. By the way, according to what I read on the web, users have run away from GNOME 3 and from Fedora as a result, in mass. No, you can't force hundreds of users to learn your stuff. I am happy you got your degree. Just don't make pay for it. I understand your heart, Open Source developers. I am a software developer too, with a few decades of experience in that. But I am also a user. I need to get my work done. Some more user-friendly distros (Ubuntu, to name one that I use) try to mitigate all this. But there is little they can do: mitigation is against the culture: can't succeed, I think. Yet Ubuntu keeps it more usable. I can continue with this, as I have followed the history and evolution of Linux since nearly the beginnings (my first desktop was RedHat 2 or something like that) but whoever wants to, can get the picture of what I am trying to say. All the symptoms described in the article and the comments are just the symptoms. If we want to cure a disease, you attack the source, the bacteria, virus, etc., not just the headache. Is the cultural disease of Linux curable?. I am not optimistic. It is a culture, after all.