This is not limited to the gui, a versatile user can figure out MOST gui interfaces, but try using DOS then switching to unix with no prior training. Worse, go from unix to dos with no prior training. Then sit there trying to read man pages or pass commands options. *BSD to linux to Solaris is not nearly as bad, becuase at least you can ussaully read man pages or pass --help to commands, but it's not like you instantly no what's going on even switching from one distro to the next.
Sure you can always, RTFM if you can find one, but not everyone wants to relearn how to use a computer every time they install a new OS. But then agian, some of us do.:)
And behind Debian are the people working on Xorg, and the Ati, Intel open source drivers and the proprietary ATI and Nvidia drivers, and the gnu team who're still working on stuff like bash, tar, emacs, etc... oh yeah, there's also IBM w/ JFS, and who was it that did XFS? I forgot, also there's a bunch of stuff like OO.org from Sun, you get the idea...
I think the problem (from a Microsoft perspective), with both Mac OS X and Desktop linux, is that one of Microsofts strength is that it has been for a very long time, THE, let me re-iterate, THE platform that people want to release software for. All the way back to DOS, if Apple and Linux make it to the point where most companies want to release software for those platforms, then Microsoft loses it's strongest tie-in with it's customers. Of course, Linux is far more threatening then OS X, becuase it's easy to install on PC compatable hardware, but the threat that of cross-platform, or worse, non-Windows platform software, is excaberated by the resurgence of the Mac, as well.
Well it's not net profit, becuase up to know, Canonical has been LOSING money every year. Most likely 30 million is either annual expenses or gross income, either way, you guess based off context that they're getting to the point where income=expenses.
The argument goes, I believe, that Microsoft mainly makes money whenever they put out a new OS, of course that's not really true, since they keep selling the old one to OEMs building new computers and hobbyists building their own computers, but they make the MOST money by forcing everyone to upgrade when the EOL thier old OS. And they only do this every 3-4 years.
Actually, if you haven't used the Windows command line on a PC post windows ME you should check it out, they've added tab completion! Not that it compares to real unix shell, but it's actually getting better.
Actually, you won't get the full selection of Linux (maybe not FreeDOS either) computers sold by Dell, as of yesterday, you will only see the Inspiron Mini 9 in the home section, if you google search "ubuntu dell laptop" you can find that there are actually a number of additional models available. (not that anything you've said is wrong, I thought I'd point that out though)
Ok, I don't know about Verizon, but I have AT&T internet, and if you call tech support for help setting up your connection they will ONLY tell you how to set it up with the starter CD they send you, DESPITE the fact that there virtually HAS to be some way to do it. (Although this may require you buying a non 2-wire modem).
OK, it's not that important, but why the Debain symbol? This is a story about Ubuntu, yes it's a Debain derivative, but this article is not about some pre=release of Debian booting in x seconds it's about an Ubuntu alpha.
In academia what matters is:
1) Can you write a (good) thesis? (Bonus if you public more articles)
2) Who do you know?
The grades will help you get into grad school, then they don't matter anymore.
OS X isn't that small, it's like 9% now, that's almost a potential 10% increase in market share... on the other hand, linux is about 1% market share, on the gripping hand linux users are probably the most likely to jump browsers, since while windows/mac users tend to use whatever's pre-installed. On the mutated fourth arm, growing out of my head, linux users are only going to stick with chrome if it's superior to firefox/opera. So, yeah, linux is a pretty negligable market. But if you port the code RIGHT, it should compile on any unix system, so then Mac users, *BSD users, Solaris users, and Linux users can all be happy.
There isn't for the actual release version, but phoronix has FreeBSD vs. Ubuntu (I forget version number) vs. Solaris (latest release candidate). I trust you can find the story phoronix.com yourself.
For GPL v3 to be an issue, it will have to be ADOPTED by someone first. (ok, maybe some projects DO you use it, but the kernel is GPL v2, and I don't believe that's likely to change).
While it's as unlikely as ever that 2009 is the year of the linux desktop, I think that eventually it will either happen or you'll never see linux adoption over 2%, I mean if enough people actually used linux that it became a part of the mainstream conciousness, I think you would see a flood of new users trying it out, and OEMs offering it pre-installed, as it stands now, linux is something that geeks and IT proffesionals have heard about, and they don't neccisarily even have any experiance in using it.
And when you reach something like 5% market-share, you'll see alot more commercial software ported or written for linux, maybe even a crippled version of microsoft office. And at that point another barrier to adoption comes down. Already, hardware support is pretty good, as marketshare increases it should only get better. As linux grows in marketshare, there's a sort of positive feedback to the growth, at least once it reaches a certain threshold, I thnk, on the other hand, it's possible that it just won't ever get to the point.
I grew up with DOS, and it pissed the hell out of me that I had to flip my slashes around when I started using terminals in Linux. The first time I used emacs I was like "what the, hell ctr+v and ctrl+c don't cut and paste!, what the hell's with that?" and, etc...
I think the fact of the matter is that windows is NO current operating system is actually intuitive to learn, a cousin of mine has been working in the peace corp, trying to teach people to use computers, they have trouble understanding the concept of "double-clicking", why is intuitive that if you double-click something different happens then if you single click? I don't know.
I think the worst case scenario (for SUN) is they end up declaring bankruptcy, slim down quite a bit, and end up being a company that sells x86 servers and becomes to OpenSolaris as Red Hat is to Fedora.
And probably trying to make money off of MySql and Java somehow.
But at the same time some degree of re-training is neccessary to learn to learn the new microsoft office suite, so it's not as big of gap as you might think. Also, it's not like open office is really hard to figure out if you've used any office suite, ever.
Maybe not for spreadsheets, though, since those are quite a bit more involved, so excell will probably linger on even if windows were to disappear, but for a word-processor open office is pretty much all you need. or Koffice. or Abiword.
And, since OO.org can import.doc files, you don't really have that much work converting old documents. you might get some funny formatting once in awhile, but you're not going to lose content.
Another thing to consider is hardware upgrade costs, I mean you can't actually run Vista on alot or 4+ year old machines, but you can run a usable, if somewhat antiquited feeling, desktop on a decade old machine with linux or *bsd, and save power while you're at it. (of course, switching to linux is even more work than switching office suites, but this is something else you have to consider)
On the other hand, you do probably have to retrain your support personel and that's definately more work. And, as you say, it pays off in the long run (by allowing you to be much less dependant on a particular software supplier, giving you the opertunity to shop for software solutions), and I'm not yet cynical enough to think that there aren't at least some people willing to take this into consideration. So... I certainly don't think EVERYONE will start adopting OS but I think more people will.
Well, according to these reviews of the Dell Inspiron Mini 12, vista already can run on a netbook with an intel atom processor and 1 GB
of RAM, sluggishly, of course, but none the less...
http://gizmodo.com/5093030/dell-inspiron-mini-12-review
Also, Dell doesn't ship the Mini 12s with Vista anymore, they now, more sensibly, ship them with XP or Ubuntu.
It might not be that you're writing a shitty app, you could be writing an app that appeals to a limited market segment. Suppose you wrote a great app for the iphone that transcribed single melody line audio input to classically notated sheat music. Your target market would then be people who can read sheet-music, have an interest in transcription, and own an Iphone. How many people fit that description? Suppose further, your software just outputs finale files, now you're market is the subset of music enthusiasts who own both Coda products and an Iphone. Suppose further that your software actually only transcribes bowed string instruments well, great now your market is for people interested in transcribing music played by strings who also own Coda software.
Is it just me, or are the majority of the comments over on the Ars Technica article (and yes, some here too) just kind of stupid? What annoys me the most is Linux users complainng: "Why aren't you working on our projects instead of doing your own thing?" I think people are missing some important, basic facts:
1) Sun doesn't have an interest in promoting linux, to some degree they have an interest in supporting open source projects portable to any unix-like OS, but not in particular Linux. Linux in fact competes agianst products that Sun sells (support for Solaris, that is). Yes, Sun sells workstations and servers that can run Linux, but these same workstations can also run Windows or *BSD, so there's no special relationship between Sun's hardware and linux. Sun may support some OSS projects, but they're a business, their job is to make money.
2) Choice to work on whatever you feel like and share that work is what has produced Linux as it is today, Linux is not just about beating out Microsoft, it's about designing a good operating system. Other people want to do the same thing but in a different way, or starting from different building blocks and there's no good reason why they shouldn't.
Related to this:
3) Just becuase a developer is porting a bunch of hardware to Open Solaris, it doesn't mean if the OS didn't exist (s)he would be working for your favorite Linux distro. That is work done Solaris != work not being done on Linux.
4) NIH isn't always bad, if everybody thought, well "386-BSD already is a decent OS so let's work on that" Linux wouldn't even exist (More acurately, I guess, "if Linus Torvalds had thought DOS and Minix were good enough, Linux wouldn't exist"). If people had thought AT&T's first distributions of Unix were good enough, we wouldn't have had BSD. And if Thompson and Ritchie had thought Multics was good enough Unix wouldn't exist.
I mean, I don't really care that much about Sun/Solaris, I can't afford their hardware and I've already got an OS I'm happy with. But I wish nothing but the best to the developers working on OpenSolaris. And if you really think Linux distro (x) needs more developers to work on project (y), guess who could be spending less time whining and more time working on project (y).
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This is not limited to the gui, a versatile user can figure out MOST gui interfaces, but try using DOS then switching to unix with no prior training. Worse, go from unix to dos with no prior training. Then sit there trying to read man pages or pass commands options. *BSD to linux to Solaris is not nearly as bad, becuase at least you can ussaully read man pages or pass --help to commands, but it's not like you instantly no what's going on even switching from one distro to the next. Sure you can always, RTFM if you can find one, but not everyone wants to relearn how to use a computer every time they install a new OS. But then agian, some of us do. :)
And behind Debian are the people working on Xorg, and the Ati, Intel open source drivers and the proprietary ATI and Nvidia drivers, and the gnu team who're still working on stuff like bash, tar, emacs, etc... oh yeah, there's also IBM w/ JFS, and who was it that did XFS? I forgot, also there's a bunch of stuff like OO.org from Sun, you get the idea...
I think the problem (from a Microsoft perspective), with both Mac OS X and Desktop linux, is that one of Microsofts strength is that it has been for a very long time, THE, let me re-iterate, THE platform that people want to release software for. All the way back to DOS, if Apple and Linux make it to the point where most companies want to release software for those platforms, then Microsoft loses it's strongest tie-in with it's customers. Of course, Linux is far more threatening then OS X, becuase it's easy to install on PC compatable hardware, but the threat that of cross-platform, or worse, non-Windows platform software, is excaberated by the resurgence of the Mac, as well.
Well it's not net profit, becuase up to know, Canonical has been LOSING money every year. Most likely 30 million is either annual expenses or gross income, either way, you guess based off context that they're getting to the point where income=expenses.
The argument goes, I believe, that Microsoft mainly makes money whenever they put out a new OS, of course that's not really true, since they keep selling the old one to OEMs building new computers and hobbyists building their own computers, but they make the MOST money by forcing everyone to upgrade when the EOL thier old OS. And they only do this every 3-4 years.
Anyway, if you stick to something that works with Mono, it'll still be fairly portable.
Actually, if you haven't used the Windows command line on a PC post windows ME you should check it out, they've added tab completion! Not that it compares to real unix shell, but it's actually getting better.
Great, instead we can blindly click on icons!
Actually, you won't get the full selection of Linux (maybe not FreeDOS either) computers sold by Dell, as of yesterday, you will only see the Inspiron Mini 9 in the home section, if you google search "ubuntu dell laptop" you can find that there are actually a number of additional models available. (not that anything you've said is wrong, I thought I'd point that out though)
Ok, I don't know about Verizon, but I have AT&T internet, and if you call tech support for help setting up your connection they will ONLY tell you how to set it up with the starter CD they send you, DESPITE the fact that there virtually HAS to be some way to do it. (Although this may require you buying a non 2-wire modem).
OK, it's not that important, but why the Debain symbol? This is a story about Ubuntu, yes it's a Debain derivative, but this article is not about some pre=release of Debian booting in x seconds it's about an Ubuntu alpha.
They are, it's called "OpenSolaris".
In academia what matters is: 1) Can you write a (good) thesis? (Bonus if you public more articles) 2) Who do you know? The grades will help you get into grad school, then they don't matter anymore.
OS X isn't that small, it's like 9% now, that's almost a potential 10% increase in market share ... on the other hand, linux is about 1% market share, on the gripping hand linux users are probably the most likely to jump browsers, since while windows/mac users tend to use whatever's pre-installed. On the mutated fourth arm, growing out of my head, linux users are only going to stick with chrome if it's superior to firefox/opera. So, yeah, linux is a pretty negligable market. But if you port the code RIGHT, it should compile on any unix system, so then Mac users, *BSD users, Solaris users, and Linux users can all be happy.
Maybe the problem is we need to take the chips off of the shoulders and put them in the laptops?
There isn't for the actual release version, but phoronix has FreeBSD vs. Ubuntu (I forget version number) vs. Solaris (latest release candidate). I trust you can find the story phoronix.com yourself.
For GPL v3 to be an issue, it will have to be ADOPTED by someone first. (ok, maybe some projects DO you use it, but the kernel is GPL v2, and I don't believe that's likely to change).
Wow, it sounds like apple re-invented Synaptic!
Or for Arch users:
Apple reinvented pacman!
While it's as unlikely as ever that 2009 is the year of the linux desktop, I think that eventually it will either happen or you'll never see linux adoption over 2%, I mean if enough people actually used linux that it became a part of the mainstream conciousness, I think you would see a flood of new users trying it out, and OEMs offering it pre-installed, as it stands now, linux is something that geeks and IT proffesionals have heard about, and they don't neccisarily even have any experiance in using it.
And when you reach something like 5% market-share, you'll see alot more commercial software ported or written for linux, maybe even a crippled version of microsoft office. And at that point another barrier to adoption comes down. Already, hardware support is pretty good, as marketshare increases it should only get better. As linux grows in marketshare, there's a sort of positive feedback to the growth, at least once it reaches a certain threshold, I thnk, on the other hand, it's possible that it just won't ever get to the point.
whatever you grew up with is intuitive.
I grew up with DOS, and it pissed the hell out of me that I had to flip my slashes around when I started using terminals in Linux. The first time I used emacs I was like "what the, hell ctr+v and ctrl+c don't cut and paste!, what the hell's with that?" and, etc...
I think the fact of the matter is that windows is NO current operating system is actually intuitive to learn, a cousin of mine has been working in the peace corp, trying to teach people to use computers, they have trouble understanding the concept of "double-clicking", why is intuitive that if you double-click something different happens then if you single click? I don't know.
I miss DOS.
I agree.
I think the worst case scenario (for SUN) is they end up declaring bankruptcy, slim down quite a bit, and end up being a company that sells x86 servers and becomes to OpenSolaris as Red Hat is to Fedora.
And probably trying to make money off of MySql and Java somehow.
But at the same time some degree of re-training is neccessary to learn to learn the new microsoft office suite, so it's not as big of gap as you might think. Also, it's not like open office is really hard to figure out if you've used any office suite, ever. Maybe not for spreadsheets, though, since those are quite a bit more involved, so excell will probably linger on even if windows were to disappear, but for a word-processor open office is pretty much all you need. or Koffice. or Abiword. And, since OO.org can import .doc files, you don't really have that much work converting old documents. you might get some funny formatting once in awhile, but you're not going to lose content.
Another thing to consider is hardware upgrade costs, I mean you can't actually run Vista on alot or 4+ year old machines, but you can run a usable, if somewhat antiquited feeling, desktop on a decade old machine with linux or *bsd, and save power while you're at it. (of course, switching to linux is even more work than switching office suites, but this is something else you have to consider)
On the other hand, you do probably have to retrain your support personel and that's definately more work. And, as you say, it pays off in the long run (by allowing you to be much less dependant on a particular software supplier, giving you the opertunity to shop for software solutions), and I'm not yet cynical enough to think that there aren't at least some people willing to take this into consideration. So... I certainly don't think EVERYONE will start adopting OS but I think more people will.
Well, according to these reviews of the Dell Inspiron Mini 12, vista already can run on a netbook with an intel atom processor and 1 GB of RAM, sluggishly, of course, but none the less... http://gizmodo.com/5093030/dell-inspiron-mini-12-review Also, Dell doesn't ship the Mini 12s with Vista anymore, they now, more sensibly, ship them with XP or Ubuntu.
It might not be that you're writing a shitty app, you could be writing an app that appeals to a limited market segment. Suppose you wrote a great app for the iphone that transcribed single melody line audio input to classically notated sheat music. Your target market would then be people who can read sheet-music, have an interest in transcription, and own an Iphone. How many people fit that description? Suppose further, your software just outputs finale files, now you're market is the subset of music enthusiasts who own both Coda products and an Iphone. Suppose further that your software actually only transcribes bowed string instruments well, great now your market is for people interested in transcribing music played by strings who also own Coda software.
Is it just me, or are the majority of the comments over on the Ars Technica article (and yes, some here too) just kind of stupid? What annoys me the most is Linux users complainng: "Why aren't you working on our projects instead of doing your own thing?" I think people are missing some important, basic facts:
1) Sun doesn't have an interest in promoting linux, to some degree they have an interest in supporting open source projects portable to any unix-like OS, but not in particular Linux. Linux in fact competes agianst products that Sun sells (support for Solaris, that is). Yes, Sun sells workstations and servers that can run Linux, but these same workstations can also run Windows or *BSD, so there's no special relationship between Sun's hardware and linux. Sun may support some OSS projects, but they're a business, their job is to make money.
2) Choice to work on whatever you feel like and share that work is what has produced Linux as it is today, Linux is not just about beating out Microsoft, it's about designing a good operating system. Other people want to do the same thing but in a different way, or starting from different building blocks and there's no good reason why they shouldn't.
Related to this:
3) Just becuase a developer is porting a bunch of hardware to Open Solaris, it doesn't mean if the OS didn't exist (s)he would be working for your favorite Linux distro. That is work done Solaris != work not being done on Linux.
4) NIH isn't always bad, if everybody thought, well "386-BSD already is a decent OS so let's work on that" Linux wouldn't even exist (More acurately, I guess, "if Linus Torvalds had thought DOS and Minix were good enough, Linux wouldn't exist"). If people had thought AT&T's first distributions of Unix were good enough, we wouldn't have had BSD. And if Thompson and Ritchie had thought Multics was good enough Unix wouldn't exist.
I mean, I don't really care that much about Sun/Solaris, I can't afford their hardware and I've already got an OS I'm happy with. But I wish nothing but the best to the developers working on OpenSolaris. And if you really think Linux distro (x) needs more developers to work on project (y), guess who could be spending less time whining and more time working on project (y).