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Open discussion of Linux Limitations
dave writes "There is a thin line between publishing groundless falsehoods about Linux (FUD) and writing about serious limitations that need to be addressed by the Linux community. Nathan Cochrane opens his first in a series of editorials on Linux Today about this very subject. "
Worse, the System Registry, which was supposed to kill the confusion over autoexec.bat and config.sys files, has instead made these earlier configuration trials seem trivial.
The Registry was created to provide a place for Windows configuration settings. In a typical Windows installation you have 10-15k registry keys, reparsing an ini file over and over containing 10k keys to check if an application changed a setting would be silly, keeping it in memory is even sillier.
Remember databases are not evil. For all intents and purposes, your filesystem is a database, so saying text config files are more stable is a contradiction.
Autoexec.bat and config.sys still exist on windows 9x systems, they are DOS init scripts.
Just because windows has a bad implementation of a registry database doesn't mean it's a bad idea. AIX, MacOS, MacOS X Server, and a few other majors all have configuration databases which are extremely stable and robust.
Plus, you aren't meant to edit the registry directly. That's what that 500 meg GUI is for.
Modern X-based systems are amazingly user-friendly and often superior in design to commercial variants because they put stuff in there that we as users have demanded and created.
Superior is a strong word. Windows9x and Windows NT are extremely developer friendly. If you can get past the bloat of MFC (which Windows developers seem to have no problem doing), it is an extremely complete GUI API.
Consistancy is also an important part of the GUI experience. Microsoft has tried to maintain control over the consistancy of it's desktop for a very good reason. A user should be able to use any windows machine without having to relearn the interface.
I've never been a big Microsoft advocate. Their software is buggy and bloated, their development staff is directed by marketing, their spindoctors could make the catholic pope look like the antichrist if they wanted to, and their fearless leader has so much money that he simply doesn't care any more.
But, being a developer I understand that Windows does provide a lot that Linux doesn't... right now at least.
I'm ready to be flamed...
--
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
- If your modem has a real UART (many don't)
- If your LAN adapter is on the compatibility list
- If you know the gritty technical specs of your video card and monitor
- If your video card is in the XFree86 compatibility list
If your hardware does not meet these conditions, then it could hold any newbie back for weeks before they are able to solve the issue. It's easy for an experienced Linux user, but I've been stuck back there in newbieville will incompatible mystery hardware and it's frustrating, but also a great learning experience.As far as an honest discussion of Linux drawbacks, lets talk about the instability of the ext2 filesystem for starters. I'm sorry but I've hard three disks go south on my in three different Linux boxes which before these same three systems ran three different flavors of Windows for years without any corruptions in the filesystem. True maybe my RAM was flaky, bad disk controller, whatever, but I wish ext2 was less prone to such errors, like power failures. (Thank God for UPS supplies)
Red Hat 5.2 includes "server" and "workstation" auto-installs, which wipe the disk clean and automatically configure some sane partitioning scheme, as well as a "custom" installation that lets you have control over the sizing and mounting of partitions. I used custom, because I was setting up a dual-boot config. People who want to have control over their partitions can do just that; people that are willing to trust Red Hat's idea of a good partitioning scheme can skip the partition configuration step of the installation.
Choice can be bad, yes. The Microsoft monopoly shows that people desperately want One Standard, even if it's a proprietary and really bad standard.
But this phase, with KDE and GNOME competing, is a necessary one in reaching the One Open Standard, which is what is really needed.
I don't doubt that one will eventually remain. When KDE and GNOME will have more or less ripened, then I think development will probably focus on compatibility with each other, and after that they'll merge or something. And all those differently looking WM's will probably become skins on the One Emerging Open GUI Standard. Which will of course never stop evoluting.
Hope so, anyway.
Maybe the question should be, who is Linux for? It's strange to think that Linux could be for everyone. It's not somthing that entered my mind until recently. I always thought of Linux being my own private universe, with just a few members. It pleases me; but the idea of winning (Meaning that everyone uses it) is so strange, and cool. :> Linux on every desktop?
So I ask, what is Linux for, and who is it for? It's so damn cool to be even able to ask this question.
"Think of it as evolution in action."
KDE and GNOME are shells. Just like Windows/386 (remember that?). Meaning only a few apps are compliant.
The MacOS has an interface.
EVERY application on the Mac conforms to and uses the interface in some way. Heck, even Windows has better coverage.
I'm not picking on KDE and GNOME just because they are late to the game and have not picked up steam - I'm saying that until there is one pervasive standard that eveyone can agree upon, you can forget any notion of a pervasive GUI.
No one in the real world wants to make the distinction between KBiff and GBiff. It might be entertaining to you, but its a hassle for people who want to get things done.
That said, NT delivers none of these, and people in droves talk about migrating from IBM mainframes to NT, so there's no reason they shouldn't migrate to GNU/Linux too.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
... but, Mr. Cochrane's point that Linux's real problem isn't an installation problem, but a channel distribution problem, is still well taken. The majority of users just don't install operating systems on their on computers: they've become used to running an "update" program on their machines, or buying them pre-installed.
Like any feature rich OS, Linux does take some
time to get used to. It is not all that difficult
to install if you RTFM(Read the Fsckng Manual).
It isn't exactly a no-brainer, but neither is
Win 9x or Win NT. For most things, the defaults
are choosen well, and the casual user will not
have to muddle with them much. Getting on the net
is easy. It's getting X to work that can be a
challange. However, again, if you RTFM, and
you have supported hardware, it's no big deal. I
particularly like Red Hat's Xconfigurator. It
does the job in 90% of cases I have encountered.
What it mostly boils down to is that you should
READ the documentation available to you. Most
users don't get Linux because they want point and
click mindlessness. They get it because they want
the power and stability that it offers. Anyhow
I'm done preaching to the choir.
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
All the things he mentions are limitations to gaining marketshare, but he missed one very big one: games.
Think about it for a minute. Do most people really need Pentium 3s with 128MB RAM? Or 8MB video cards? Or huge, fast HDDs? If they want to play games they do. But if all they want is MS Office and Net access, a Pentium 100 works just fine (and a Linux 486/66 box does that job even better).
But if you want to play games (and who doesn't? that's the only reason I keep a Win95 partition around), you have to go with Windows. Except for Quake, Q2, there's just no games for Linux. And games are really what drive hardware advances, and are probably responsible for most decisions to buy a new PC. If there were shrink-wrapped Linux games on the shelf at Fry's, the average guy would start noticing Linux. If you could only get Q3 Arena on Linux, you could bet that market share would increase.
I seriously don't think that Linux will ever be a choice for desktop users (and I'm talking about home PCs, now) until there are as many games for Linux as there are for Windows/MacOS.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Nah, I think this kind of thing varies wildly from person to person. Some people have a near impossible time learning a "first" interface. The oh-so-easy point and click interface has been known to baffle otherwise intelligent people.
Personally, I grew up using the Apple IIe. When it came time to switch to DOS, I found my Apple experience helped me. Same concept, just slightly different words. Then from DOS to VMS, same thing. From VMS to unix, even better. Unix command lines work the way I always wished all the previous ones had.
Like I said, it really varies from person to person.
But I'm still perplexed why you couldn't start cribbage. In both DOS and unix, it has to be in your path. You would then type the name of the executable "cribbage" (which you said you did). That should have been it. Only thing I can think of that might have thrown you is case sensitivity. But that's something that's usually stressed in any "intro to unix" sheet. The other thing would be using "/" instead of "\" if you were typing out the full name. But that, also, should be one of the first things explained to you.
Every car seems to have the controls set up just a little different (some a lot differently). But after a few minutes, you figure it out. Just don't be afraid to push some buttons and twist some knobs. And if all else fails, read the labels.
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
From a WSJ article found in my inbox today:
"""
Mr. Iams said Linux excels in four areas: Internet providers, entry-level computer networks, specialized computing devices such as network routers, and scientifically oriented computer "clusters" that link scores of PCs to make a single supercomputer.
But he said Linux currently lacks some of the features demanded by corporations that intend to run their entire business on computers. Among them are the ability to run simultaneously on many processors in a single computer and to keep a log of what the computer has done.
"""
I am tired of reading this propaganda. I use Linux happily on a number of computers. I also use Win98 and NT on a number of computers. I like Linux for many reasons but ease of use isn't one. Installing RH Linux easier than Win98? You must be joking. You compare BETA releases of the MS OS with Linux? Why? Win98 and RH 5.2 both offer disk or cd-rom boot up (depending on BIOS capabilities). Both offer the same "easy" disk administration (compare MS fdisk and RH disk druid). Both offer on the spot LAN Network configuration. None of these can be recommended to the novice. Now try setting up a dial up configuration: Win98 click an icon, answer a few questions on numbers, modem device (which more likely than not is autodetected) and tell it the name of your mail server and news server and you are pretty much Internet ready. Don't have an ISP... MS helps you look for one. Sure, your choices are limited but that's easy. Easy == lack of control.
Try installing Linux on a machine with a CD Writer or ISDN card or TV card. I ain't saying it isn't possible but it sure isn't as easy as Windoze.
Your article began promising to tackle the real issues of using Linux and ended being a propaganda piece. When are all the Linux hackerz going to realise that by giving people the false impression about Linux you are doing more harm than good?
Take Joe User: he reads this, is tired of Windoze, thinks "okay, Linux ain't so scary I'll try it." Buys the CD. Puts it in... oh dear, his AGP video card isn't on the list... what to do? Download some guys source and compile it. Oh dear his standard issue network card (say DLink DFE 530TX for sake of argument) isn't standard either. What about his ISDN card???
Net result: Joe User is never to be seen using Linux.
Tell people the truth! Linux ain't Windoze. It has power, raw power but it won't making using it easy. If you like OSs you'll like Linux. If you think a computer should be something you turn on and start using productively it ain't for you (without some expensive consultancy fees).
"Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for me and my monkey" - The Beatles "If you're not part of the solution, you'