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The Linux Desktop and ISVs/OEMs
olau writes "Michael Meeks, who's worked on GNOME and LibreOffice integration for many years, now for SuSE, has some really interesting thoughts on the recent Linux desktop debate and suggestions for possible strategies. He points out that regarding independent software vendors (ISVs), the real issue isn't actually the quality of the tools but the size and attractiveness of the market, and perhaps that a solution could be lower barriers for paying or donating. Regarding OEMs selling hardware with software preinstalled, he points out that while a free OS + software sounds good for consumers, it's actually a problem for OEMs on razor-thin margins, since they lose the cut they get from the preinstallations. A possible countermove could be nailing robustness and hardware diagnostics for good, lowering OEM support costs."
At the end of the day, it's a lot easier if Grandma has an OS that other family members can help her with.
No matter how much I like my Linux Desktop, I don't want to be responsible for bringing non-tech-savvy people along. The rest of the family is fully capable of troubleshooting basic windows problems, more or less.
... when you have children to feed and a mortgage to pay ... ... and the users expect all their software to be free?
Better off spending one's time addressing a market where people expect to have to pay for stuff, no?
It is 2012 everyone is using some kind of virtualization. Linux servers are as such free. They are just another vm your fire up, and the biggest savings are not having to hassle with licensing.
What linux users expect all software to be free?
I guess I did not pay for all these steam games.
Where did you get that idea?
Ah, Slashdot. You've entered a new age when anti-FOSS/anti-Linux trolling is marked as "Insightful."
Those are the 3 biggest issues for Linux desktop. So many distributions, some a little different, some very, very different. LSB is dead. The QA nightmare is significant. As a side note, games that find their way onto Linux from Windows, often enough have a number of .so's in their install directories.
The Linux GUI desktop libs suck. GTK sucks to use and rely upon. Qt is a mess. KDE(which relies on Qt) is the stuff of flame wars... too many choices and too many of them just plain suck. Even something that should be reliable as font query is a total mess under Linux. Fontconfig is JUNK. The config file is nasty-insanity and the API just plain sucks. Nothing for merging of fonts, etc.. it sucks so bad that Qt bypasses FontConfig, it only uses it to get a list of all fonts installed. Makes you wonder you know.
Linux desktop sound is painful. Atleast we are mostly past the growing pains of PulseAudio, but I cannot name any applications for money that write for PA, 99% time it's SDL dude.. which has a suck ass audio API. OpenAL is better, but lets not forget that OpenAL can be configured to pipe to SDL, PA, whatever. This happens often enough: OpenAL --> SDL --> PA.
Reliability of GL is another issue. Not so long ago, it basically was NVIDIA or bust, that is no longer true.. but with so many distros making Nouveau the default, what a failure. Comparing the closed source GL implementations from NVIDIA and AMD to the open source ones is shooting fish in a barrel, with a canon. In contrast, even the crapiest GPUs, i.e. Intel GPUs, have okay-ish DirectX drivers.... Mesa's infrastructure has a long ways to go before it can support all the features of OpenGL _3_ which is like a million years old. So yeh, open source GL implementations have so many cards stacked against them. The Linux DRM for the graphics stack is a bad joke.
Ironically, making games is more insulated from most of this crap except for the GL pain (and to a lesser extent the sound pain)... but when Steam comes to Linux, I'd bet they will simply say "Dude we only supporting Ubuntu"... not too sure what they will say on the GL drivers though.. but their Source engine is DX9 really which is OpenGL 2. Though I shudder to think what will happen when there are distros with X11 and distros with Wayland out at the same time... that will be ugly. If anyone says Wayland can exist with X11 (or even essentially rely upon it) you have no idea the nightmare waiting about GL in that situation is.
It is not that Linux is bad commercially (Android demonstrates it can be great), it is that Linux desktop for consumer is a fail-train.
and the users expect all their software to be free?
Interesting contradictory fact. Scroll down and look at the payment statistics. Linux users evidently pay about twice as much as Windows users when given the choice. I have bought two bundles before, and both times the pattern was the same as with the latest bundle.
Artificial scarcity. It is the backbone of the American economy as well as many other corporatist nations. Since you can't make money off free stuff, stores won't carry it. Even when selling hardware, if they can make more money selling restricted software along with it, they will. Before if you got a discount from buying a pre-built computer with crapware on it, at least you could wipe it all and install whatever you wanted. Now with “secure boot”, they can push control onto the software level and control the entire software stack if the wanted to. Don't like that Windows 8 Crapware Edition on there? Too bad, you're stuck with it, and the Crapware Edition won't allow you to remove the crapware on it either, plus it comes with adware and spyware (when you purchased this computer, you automatically opted-in to provide us with “information for marketing purposes”) pre-loaded which you also can't remove. I can also see this entire system pushing out build-it-yourself computers since the pre-built one offers more money. Even if some semblance of DIY hardware is still available, at the very least the pre-built systems will ultimately cost less because the hardware vendors will get a cut of the marketing and data mining profits.
I just figured I would share the future in advance with everyone so that the reality would set in sooner: Start supporting vendors which sell pre-built computers that aren't locked down as well as standardized DIY hardware. Also, start supporting home fabrication projects which will soon be able to create primitive computers, because ultimately unregulated capitalism will always find some way to fuck you otherwise. DIY hardware is already horribly unstandardized and consumer-raping. If you live in a country which is regulated so you feel you don't have to worry - just wait, you will. There is meaning behind the saying with the roots and the evil. No, not the recipe for making evil root beer.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
Linux desktop, with browser, backed by web applications.
Five OEM systems and counting.
I get paid major bank to work on software for Linux. That some of it goes out to be free is no skin off my teeth.
See free software isn't "I'm gonna write some POS and hope someone buys it" development model. Those days are dead mostly anyway. Its "Some guy wants these features put on that 'free' bit because he actually has a use case, and he's gonna pay me to meet his needs then give it away so neither of us get stuck paying upkeep and he can have me do something newer and better".
Who want's to spend 40 years doing maintenance on a some accounting or word processing software anyway. There are people who are writing better gear because they need to process words and account for money. And since they really make their money counting money and processing words, giving the bycatch code out as the "whole cost" of getting the whole pre-mod app is a huge win.
It just won't lead to "another microsoft"
That closed source model was a fluke anyway, the preceding 40 years were open source. The next twenty five or so was a grand experiment that largely failed except for a few really unexpected cutthroat operators, and now its back to the more natural state of only paying for what you need.
In a current version of word I don't use 90% of it, and I'm a technical writer and novelist, but I paid for it all back when I was that foolish. Same can be said for any person or company that has ever bought that slag. So now there is this free stuff that was made by someone who actually needed it, so it's not so much slag, and given away to others who _might_ need it, and then gotten back greatly improved by the supporters and the adders on.
That's lots of money feeding lots of people, and nobody is wasting their time or money playing the "trade secret" and "big P.R." games.
What's not to love?
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press