Yet again, no one seems to know what they expect from Linux.What will imitating Office mean for Linux and siblings? Nothing more than a reputation as a Windows wannabe. Why would a happy Windows user want to switch to a new OS if the very best apps that OS has to offer are no better than the competing Windows apps he already owns?
Here's the real deal, folks: The open source community needs to develop new apps that do things that no Windows app can do, and that Windows users look at and realize they can't live without. Give them a reason to use a Linux app and they'll use Linux.
Otherwise, why would they bother unless they're driven by the same ideological ardor that drives much open source activity.
Hello? MS is in business (catch that word?) to make money. That means selling to customers, not necessarily building the world's best OS.
Is the Linux community trying to build the world's best OS? (Not that real people care which OS is "best": Run my apps, don't crash, and don't make me read a book.) Or, is it trying to put Microsoft out of business? Or, just offer a choice?
The last alternative works for me. The BSD crowd has been offering a free choice for years now, but that crowd seems to avoid most of the histrionic arrogant, fequently ill-informed posturing that passes for discussion here.
Linux is Unix. Unix was around for almost two decades before Linus got to work. If Unix didn't "take over the world", why should Linux?
So, give it up. Stop fantasizing about normal people writing their own apps. Ain't gonna happen, no more than normal people build their own TV's. Stop fantasizing about the virtues of open sources vs proprietary software. This is obtuse theology to normal people: "Oh, they give away the source code? What's source code?"
I like Linux. Most/.er's like Linux. Leave it at that and move on. Almost everything else you will do today is more important than yabbering about which OS is better.
I wouldn't pay $15 for a download because I'm on a dialup. There's no real added value for me. If I had the bandwidth, I might spend the $15 if would save me a trip out to buy the shrinkwrapped box (is there one?)
Not being very ideologically inclined, I'd pay for some real added value -- like maybe proprietary rewrite of X that I can stand to look at all day -- even if they didn't GPL it. Open source is important, but so are my eyes.
I'm over 30, my brain isn't ossified, and I'm running Slackware and WindowMaker. Not because I need to, but because I want to. I'm interested in the technology, the tool. Actually using it is secondary. That makes me different from most of the rest of the world, who just want to get some work done and could care less -- for good reason -- about how the bloody thing works.
Computers are supposed to be easy, not hard. And, except for a few oddballs like us sods reading./. most everyone finds computers as exciting as a trash compactor.
If you want Linux to escape the server ghetto and succeed on the desktop, stop arrogantly insulting the people who comprise that market and start paying attention to what they want.
". The only way you can survive with linux, is if you have more products...
Stop telling people why they should use Linux and start giving them reasons to buy Linux if you want it to survive as a desktop. Red Hat, Suse and Caldera may survive by selling into the server market, but that will leave Microsoft with all the rest.
Debian is a volunteer effort, and the volunteers are to be applauded. But it is safe to assume that each of those volunteers is drawing income/support from somebody. If they aren't, they've got a problem, because pride in a volunteer effort won't put food on the table
Red Hat is a profit-seeking corporation staffed by people who expect to get paid. The fact that they want to charge for upgrades is less an ethical issue than it is a comment on their business model and the risky business of trying to make money selling something that is "free".
This business of treating Linux and friends as a Moral Crusade is annoying and misplaced, and thwarts real efforts to improve it. (E.g., "If your secretary won't use EMACS, don't whine about it, rewrite the code!."
I'm not a dork or a Russian, just your basic Terran, more than happy to be proud of the acomplishments of fellow Terrans Gagarin, Ziolkovsky and Korolev.
But, nation states and national borders are a human invention, invisible from space. If we are ever actually visited by aliens, I suspect they'll be amused and dismayed by our self-destructive obsession with walling ourselves off from each other based on....well, what?
I don't want an amateur building the transportation system that I drive to work, much less one that takes me to Mars.
As it was during the advance across the American frontier almost two centuries ago, the advance into space will be driven by the entire range of human attributes, some rather idealistic and some rather venal.
OK, let's see. I drive a car with a stick shift, but I live in a big city and I'm tired of shifting up and down while stuck in traffic. I think I'll just trade it in on a car with an automatic transmission. But, noooo..lurking in the dealer's doorway, is a standard transmission fanatic who yells at me: "You can change it yourself!. You have access to all the parts. Just go to school for months, build a garage, and there you go...'
If you derive pleasure from Linux because you have access to the source, be happy. But don't ridicule other people who see their computer as a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Because there's a big disconnect between zealous ranting that Linux will take over the world and the fact that Linux = UNIX. Any OS that has a learning curve like Linux/UNIX is doomed to be a niche player. Most people just want a box that runs applications...and doesn't make them have to think very hard. Like a toaster, you know.
Make Linux the bext, slickest version of UNIX around and what's the best you'll get? Replacing commercial UNIX distros. Wanna put Linux in the homes and office desktops of the world? Then, pay attention to people like Emily. Make up your mid and get over it.
You can fix it yourself if you or someone on staff knows the source code well enough to be trusted. Access to source is a widely touted virtue of open source, but I wonder about the real world impact.
And, yes, you can pay an outside vendor to provide support. But, it seems to me that one key difference between closed and open source vendors is that the reputation of the closed source vendor is at stake if they can't make their code work. If a third-party support provider can't fathom, say, MySQL, what's to stop them from walking away?
OK. But the committment to open source is primarily ideological. So far, packaging and the install routine are the primary factors distinguishing one Linux distribution from another. The apps are all the same. If Red Hat, or any other distributor, manages to come up with an innovative and popular Linux-only application (wouldn't that be nice, eh?), they'll have s very strong incentive to tie it, as closed-source, to their own distribution and sell both as a single package, a la Windows and IE. And then, bingo. There comes the same economic incentive to capture market share that drives Microsoft.
My basic point, I guess, is that I'm tired of putting up with second-rate apps just because Linux is "free". That might sound a bit incendiary, but can anyone name a "free" GNU/Linux/whatever application that, if ported to Windows, would actually be competitive with other Windows apps as a shrink-wrapped product?
In spite of the W3C's guidance, de facto standards are determined by the market. Granted, that market might be a tad less than completely open, but there you go. Does anyone seriously think that someone earning their livelihood on the web will even consider doing anything that blocks potential customers?
Hello-o! What's the goal? Good browsers for Linux? Wiping out Microsoft? Arguing in the open that every Microsoft user is a dimwitted sucker?
The Linux market probably can't support really good browsers unless we actually pay for them.
So you wipeout MS? What then? Will you replace it with a Stallman-esque open source monopoly?
MS users terminally stupid? Unlikely, but I'm sure calling them names in public is a great way to get them, and their corporate bosses, to take a look at non-MS alternatives.
All I want is a Linux browser that works at least as well as IE 5.5 in Windows. I really don't care if Microsoft is bad, good or indifferent. I can't speak for you, but in my case no current Linux browser comes close.
While I'm using Slackware at present, I've used both FreeBSD and Linux. The FreeBSD community seems to be making a concerted effort to market into newbie territory. This wasn't always the case. FreeBSD's learning curve isn't much steeper than that of Linux, but it arguably starts higher up on the mountain. E.g., everything you need to know about VESA modes may be in syscons(4). but that presupposes that you know enough to look there in the first place.
Building that kind of database must prompt serious drooling in MS marketing quarters. I've always had my doubts that Microsoft is losing all that much money due to outright software theft -- warehouse raids stealing thousands of CD's and such.
I know there's been some pretty sophisticated counterfeiting: I lived for two years near South Africa -- before the old regime freed Mandela -- and the local computer shops were full of American software supposedly on the sanctions list. Yes, I bought it, and yes, it worked just fine.
On the other hand, it may be credible that most pirated software is simply "borrowed and copied" from a friend or officemate. There've been ways to thwart that for years. Remember the dongle? If MS was simply interested in thwarting piracy, they could adopt other tactics.
BTW, theoligical tantrums aside, Win2000 really is a pretty slick piece of work, all things considered. Current Windows users who don't/can't move to another platform should check it out.
Probably very true, but I suspect that what currently attracts typical Linux users may be lost if it does morph into something commercially viable in the desktop market.
But if genuine Linux users don't care, why all the angst expressed here and elsewhere about Linux moving to the desktop? Some of it has more than a tinge of the same old pointless rancor that characterized much of the OS/2 vs Microsoft rants.
Being a "supporter" of any OS makes about as much sense as being a supporter of one brand of microwave instead of another brand. Use what works for you. When your needs and desires change, move on.
Yes. Too many distros spoil the plot. I've seen customers stand in front of the shelves of CompUSA staring at the really few different versions of Windows and wonder what box the need to buy.
Imagine what happens if they wander down the aisle and see all the different flavors of Linux. Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, Debian, Storm, Caldera...Customers have every reason to assume that each distribution is an entirely diffent OS, not just a thin sales-driven repackaging of the same batch of software.
Freedom to choose is a valuable thing, but the multitude of Linux distributions is, I think, holding back penetration of the consumer market.
Most folks find buying "computer stuff" a pretty scary experience, largely because they don't know anything about computers, don't want to know anything about computers, and -- importantly -- don't have the time to learn. That's lesson the Linux industry needs to learn from MS and Apple: How to sell a complex, fragile, high-maintenance system to people who expect it to mirror the simplicity of a televsion.
Absent that, I fear Linux will continue to expand in the server market, but not into the consumer desktop market.
Is the goal of Linux to make substantial inroads into the desktop market space now held by Windows? If so, I'd argue that's a target audience that thinks the OS equates to the GUI and the a "kernel" is a little piece of corn, From that perspective, if it looks different, it is different.
All these different install routines, the variations in directory use and structure (why oh why do they do this??), and the games going on with startup scripts drive me nuts, and I like to pretend I sorta know what I'm doing. Expecting a newbie -- who sees this Linux thing as just another tool and is no more fascinated by the OS itself than most people are in the workings of their car's gearbox -- to somehow put in the effort to chase down all these apparently pointless differences between distirubtions is expecting too much.
Take a lesson from McDonald's -- or Windows, for that matter. Wherever you buy it, it's still the same thing.
I think it is fair to say that most people today buy -- i.e., spend their own money -- on a computer to browse the web. That's what drives the decision to spend the $800-$1000. IE is already there. Add to that the admittedly subjective notion that it looks better and works faster than Netscape. Why would anyone bother to even look at Netscape.
The lack of a stable browser that measures up to IE is, I think, the single biggest impediment to moving Linux into the desktop market.
I'm not an SA, UNIx or otherwise, but I have used Netscape on a bunch of desktop Intel Oses, including FreeBSD and several flavors of Linux. Netscape crashes on all of them, sooner or later. Now, maybe that's really the fault of X, or Netscape, or the phases of the Moon, and not actually Unix/Linux. That's small consolation when Netscape goes "poof" when you click on tghe back button.
If someone's commitment to open source is so strong that they willingly avoid use of closed source, I applaud them. Most folks, though, just know that CompUSA/Walmart/OfficeMax/WhatEver sell Windows and Linux for just about the same price.
Confusion reigns. I haven't dropped support for anything, Netscape or otherwise. I was just trying to make the point that a business decision on what products to support, or not to support, should be driven by demand from customers. Regardless of personal passion about open source, or lack thereof, why should we expect a business to support Netscape if there's no money in it?
That's not the same thing as deciding to build a version of a web site that works with Netscape. Even there, though, you could reasonably decide that the Netscape share of the market is so small that you can afford to ignore it.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the real deal, folks: The open source community needs to develop new apps that do things that no Windows app can do, and that Windows users look at and realize they can't live without. Give them a reason to use a Linux app and they'll use Linux.
Otherwise, why would they bother unless they're driven by the same ideological ardor that drives much open source activity.
Is the Linux community trying to build the world's best OS? (Not that real people care which OS is "best": Run my apps, don't crash, and don't make me read a book.) Or, is it trying to put Microsoft out of business? Or, just offer a choice?
The last alternative works for me. The BSD crowd has been offering a free choice for years now, but that crowd seems to avoid most of the histrionic arrogant, fequently ill-informed posturing that passes for discussion here.
Linux is Unix. Unix was around for almost two decades before Linus got to work. If Unix didn't "take over the world", why should Linux?
So, give it up. Stop fantasizing about normal people writing their own apps. Ain't gonna happen, no more than normal people build their own TV's. Stop fantasizing about the virtues of open sources vs proprietary software. This is obtuse theology to normal people: "Oh, they give away the source code? What's source code?"
I like Linux. Most /.er's like Linux. Leave it at that and move on. Almost everything else you will do today is more important than yabbering about which OS is better.
Not being very ideologically inclined, I'd pay for some real added value -- like maybe proprietary rewrite of X that I can stand to look at all day -- even if they didn't GPL it. Open source is important, but so are my eyes.
To put it in perspective.would you buy a PC if it cost you 150% of annual income? Say $120,000?
Oh, and then there's the business about you gotta have electricty to run the thing.
I recommend spending some serious time in places where they eat corn meal and sour milk three times a day to cure these myopic views.
Computers are supposed to be easy, not hard. And, except for a few oddballs like us sods reading ./. most everyone finds computers as exciting as a trash compactor.
If you want Linux to escape the server ghetto and succeed on the desktop, stop arrogantly insulting the people who comprise that market and start paying attention to what they want.
Stop telling people why they should use Linux and start giving them reasons to buy Linux if you want it to survive as a desktop. Red Hat, Suse and Caldera may survive by selling into the server market, but that will leave Microsoft with all the rest.
Red Hat is a profit-seeking corporation staffed by people who expect to get paid. The fact that they want to charge for upgrades is less an ethical issue than it is a comment on their business model and the risky business of trying to make money selling something that is "free".
This business of treating Linux and friends as a Moral Crusade is annoying and misplaced, and thwarts real efforts to improve it. (E.g., "If your secretary won't use EMACS, don't whine about it, rewrite the code!."
Sure...
But, nation states and national borders are a human invention, invisible from space. If we are ever actually visited by aliens, I suspect they'll be amused and dismayed by our self-destructive obsession with walling ourselves off from each other based on....well, what?
I don't want an amateur building the transportation system that I drive to work, much less one that takes me to Mars. As it was during the advance across the American frontier almost two centuries ago, the advance into space will be driven by the entire range of human attributes, some rather idealistic and some rather venal.
Male. 5-speed manual.
If you derive pleasure from Linux because you have access to the source, be happy. But don't ridicule other people who see their computer as a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Because there's a big disconnect between zealous ranting that Linux will take over the world and the fact that Linux = UNIX. Any OS that has a learning curve like Linux/UNIX is doomed to be a niche player. Most people just want a box that runs applications...and doesn't make them have to think very hard. Like a toaster, you know. Make Linux the bext, slickest version of UNIX around and what's the best you'll get? Replacing commercial UNIX distros. Wanna put Linux in the homes and office desktops of the world? Then, pay attention to people like Emily. Make up your mid and get over it.
OK. Name a Linux application that a Windows user might have a reason to run. I'm serious...
You can fix it yourself if you or someone on staff knows the source code well enough to be trusted. Access to source is a widely touted virtue of open source, but I wonder about the real world impact. And, yes, you can pay an outside vendor to provide support. But, it seems to me that one key difference between closed and open source vendors is that the reputation of the closed source vendor is at stake if they can't make their code work. If a third-party support provider can't fathom, say, MySQL, what's to stop them from walking away?
My basic point, I guess, is that I'm tired of putting up with second-rate apps just because Linux is "free". That might sound a bit incendiary, but can anyone name a "free" GNU/Linux/whatever application that, if ported to Windows, would actually be competitive with other Windows apps as a shrink-wrapped product?
In spite of the W3C's guidance, de facto standards are determined by the market. Granted, that market might be a tad less than completely open, but there you go. Does anyone seriously think that someone earning their livelihood on the web will even consider doing anything that blocks potential customers?
Hello-o! What's the goal? Good browsers for Linux? Wiping out Microsoft? Arguing in the open that every Microsoft user is a dimwitted sucker?
The Linux market probably can't support really good browsers unless we actually pay for them.
So you wipeout MS? What then? Will you replace it with a Stallman-esque open source monopoly?
MS users terminally stupid? Unlikely, but I'm sure calling them names in public is a great way to get them, and their corporate bosses, to take a look at non-MS alternatives.
All I want is a Linux browser that works at least as well as IE 5.5 in Windows. I really don't care if Microsoft is bad, good or indifferent. I can't speak for you, but in my case no current Linux browser comes close.
While I'm using Slackware at present, I've used both FreeBSD and Linux. The FreeBSD community seems to be making a concerted effort to market into newbie territory. This wasn't always the case. FreeBSD's learning curve isn't much steeper than that of Linux, but it arguably starts higher up on the mountain. E.g., everything you need to know about VESA modes may be in syscons(4). but that presupposes that you know enough to look there in the first place.
I know there's been some pretty sophisticated counterfeiting: I lived for two years near South Africa -- before the old regime freed Mandela -- and the local computer shops were full of American software supposedly on the sanctions list. Yes, I bought it, and yes, it worked just fine.
On the other hand, it may be credible that most pirated software is simply "borrowed and copied" from a friend or officemate. There've been ways to thwart that for years. Remember the dongle? If MS was simply interested in thwarting piracy, they could adopt other tactics.
BTW, theoligical tantrums aside, Win2000 really is a pretty slick piece of work, all things considered. Current Windows users who don't/can't move to another platform should check it out.
But if genuine Linux users don't care, why all the angst expressed here and elsewhere about Linux moving to the desktop? Some of it has more than a tinge of the same old pointless rancor that characterized much of the OS/2 vs Microsoft rants.
Being a "supporter" of any OS makes about as much sense as being a supporter of one brand of microwave instead of another brand. Use what works for you. When your needs and desires change, move on.
Imagine what happens if they wander down the aisle and see all the different flavors of Linux. Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, Debian, Storm, Caldera...Customers have every reason to assume that each distribution is an entirely diffent OS, not just a thin sales-driven repackaging of the same batch of software.
Freedom to choose is a valuable thing, but the multitude of Linux distributions is, I think, holding back penetration of the consumer market.
Most folks find buying "computer stuff" a pretty scary experience, largely because they don't know anything about computers, don't want to know anything about computers, and -- importantly -- don't have the time to learn. That's lesson the Linux industry needs to learn from MS and Apple: How to sell a complex, fragile, high-maintenance system to people who expect it to mirror the simplicity of a televsion.
Absent that, I fear Linux will continue to expand in the server market, but not into the consumer desktop market.
Is the goal of Linux to make substantial inroads into the desktop market space now held by Windows? If so, I'd argue that's a target audience that thinks the OS equates to the GUI and the a "kernel" is a little piece of corn, From that perspective, if it looks different, it is different. All these different install routines, the variations in directory use and structure (why oh why do they do this??), and the games going on with startup scripts drive me nuts, and I like to pretend I sorta know what I'm doing. Expecting a newbie -- who sees this Linux thing as just another tool and is no more fascinated by the OS itself than most people are in the workings of their car's gearbox -- to somehow put in the effort to chase down all these apparently pointless differences between distirubtions is expecting too much. Take a lesson from McDonald's -- or Windows, for that matter. Wherever you buy it, it's still the same thing.
I think it is fair to say that most people today buy -- i.e., spend their own money -- on a computer to browse the web. That's what drives the decision to spend the $800-$1000. IE is already there. Add to that the admittedly subjective notion that it looks better and works faster than Netscape. Why would anyone bother to even look at Netscape. The lack of a stable browser that measures up to IE is, I think, the single biggest impediment to moving Linux into the desktop market.
I'm not an SA, UNIx or otherwise, but I have used Netscape on a bunch of desktop Intel Oses, including FreeBSD and several flavors of Linux. Netscape crashes on all of them, sooner or later. Now, maybe that's really the fault of X, or Netscape, or the phases of the Moon, and not actually Unix/Linux. That's small consolation when Netscape goes "poof" when you click on tghe back button. If someone's commitment to open source is so strong that they willingly avoid use of closed source, I applaud them. Most folks, though, just know that CompUSA/Walmart/OfficeMax/WhatEver sell Windows and Linux for just about the same price.
Confusion reigns. I haven't dropped support for anything, Netscape or otherwise. I was just trying to make the point that a business decision on what products to support, or not to support, should be driven by demand from customers. Regardless of personal passion about open source, or lack thereof, why should we expect a business to support Netscape if there's no money in it? That's not the same thing as deciding to build a version of a web site that works with Netscape. Even there, though, you could reasonably decide that the Netscape share of the market is so small that you can afford to ignore it.