I use Partition Magic on a regular basis to manage my partitions, resizing and moving them around as needed. (I know, it's commercial software, but it's one of the more useful pieces of commercial software out there, especially if you like to change things around a lot on your systems.)
PM supports ext2 but not any of the newer exotic journaling file systems like ReiserFS or xfs.
The fact that ext3 is comatable with ext2, and can be converted back and forth is a welcome feature for those who use PM to manage their partitions.
StarOffice (and soon OpenOffice) runs just fine in KDE, is definitely "there", and has everything most average users and school kids need in an office suite.
It's mainly an alternative desktop environment (lean, mean, not bloated like KDE and GNOME, etc., etc.) but he also has an interesting way of packaging applications that's somewhat Mac-like. Basically, all of an application's files are kept in one "application directory" rather than being sprawled all over the file system as is the current practice. The only change needed from the current system is that the file manager must be aware of these "application directories", and when the user clicks on one of these directories, the file manager runs a script inside the directory that then takes over and runs the application. Applications can thus be installed simply by copying (or dragging in a file manager) the application directory from the distribution medium or tar file into any directory in your path (such as/usr/local/bin). There is no install procedure required other than copying or dragging one directory. It also means that apps are compiled purely relative to their own application directory and are fully relocatable in terms of where they can be installed - I could just as easily install it in ~/bin as in/usr/local/bin and the app wouldn't care.
Many times, when Linux replaces a UNIX solution, it is keeping that UNIX solution from being replaced by NT.
As the original poster mentioned, the very high performance/price ratio of PC hardware is one of the driving factors. Before Linux appeared on most people's radar screens, the push was to get these types of things ported over to NT to take advantage of the cheap but powerful PC hardware. If Linux hadn't come around, today's headlines would all be about how WinNT is taking over Hollywood by allowing movies to be produced and rendered on cheap, powerful PCs.
A similar thing is happening in the area of engineering workstations, although more slowly because PHBs in engineering companies are less open minded and more conservative than those in 3D film studios. Five years ago, the almost unanimous prediction was that NT will have all but replaced UNIX on the desktops of integrated circuit designers by now. It hasn't happened. It hasn't all moved to Linux yet (again because the PHBs are more conservative than in the movie industry), but many vendors are de-emphasizing their NT products and are beginning ports to Linux. Time will tell if it will catch on as well as it has in the movie industry, but at the very least, it has forstalled a mass migration to NT.
The problem with RedHat Network, for me at least, is that it is too expensive. At $20/month, it will cost $240/year. They should have another option, something between RedHat Network and simple box sales for home users. I'd pay an extra $50-$100/year for a service that would give me frequent app updates with all dependencies resolved, but for $250/year I'll continue in do-it-yourself mode.
As for the disks, one could donate them (as someone else mentioned), or they can be used in countless arts and crafts projects (my kids have managed to put every AOL cd we've received to good use). These eventually get thrown away, of course, but at least it represents a second use, and every CD pressed will eventually end up in a landfill anyway.
This is probably better than what happens to unsold boxes when the computer store has to dispose of them.
but to get there, I had to take the difficult step of getting people to stop sending me Word and Excel files. Sending around insecure, application-specific files is a bad idea anyway unless it is absolutely necessary.
At least 95+% of the time someone sends me a Word file or Excel sheet, it is something that I only need to read, not edit, modify, and send back.
I'm an independent contractor, and whenever I receive a Word or Excel file that I cannot read in StarOffice, I politely reply back that I don't have Microsoft Office and I cannot read their files. I suggest that they resend the document either in PDF format, or RTF if they can't generate PDF. For Excel files, If they can't save as PDF, I suggest saving to an older version of Excel that StarOffice can read, albeit with some loss of formatting.
I have been able to change the file sending habits of a surprising number of people, especially when they realize that PDF files actually look more consistent on other people's systems, especially if they use non-standard fonts.
I do have one system with VMWare and one copy of Office for those very rare occasions that I receive a Word or Excel file that I actually have to modify and send back, or if the sender absolutely refuses to send another format, but this option doesn't get used very often, so I don't need it on all my systems.
I agree with most everything you said. Using Linux is harder than using Windows, and I still don't recommend it to anyone except people who don't mind experimenting and taking a walk on the technical side.
But even though it makes my life a little more complicated (e.g., having to sometimes compile apps, or download dependencies), I still use it out of the very principle you espoused: Windows needs some competition.
To be sure, as much as things have improved, you still have to be a bit of a technical pioneer to want to use Linux, but if nobody takes the first steps and becomes the pioneering early adopters, there will never an alternative to Windows.
Windows may not be ready for the average home desktop yet, but as this article proves, in a corporate environment where there is a support staff to deal with the technical issues, it is possible to use successfully. Yes, at this point in time, in some ways, e.g., applications, it is still more challenging than deploying Windows, but I applaud those companies who are poineering enough to give it a go and make it work. If everybody just takes the easy way out (perhaps even against their principles), we will never see any meaningful competition.
As far as software freedom gos, I personally don't have any problem paying a reasonable price for software, and I think most members of the silent majority don't either; however, commercial competitors to MS have had a difficult time competing. Making software free (either as in beer or speech) removes one of the barriers to get people to use your software. I feel that if Linux had not been free from the get-go, it would never have become as successful as it has -- it's freeness means that is is eclectic, it is not owned by any one entity. At this point in time, this seems to be the only way to even have a chance of competing against MS.
The other thing I disagree with is the Linux user issue. Sure, there are a small minority of users who have an attitude and flame newbies in forums, and certainly this probably causes some newbies to switch back, but by far most of the Linux users I know barely have time in their lives to read slashdot let alone post here, and they are all polite to new users. I believe that there is a vocal minority that does this, and the vast majority of people trying to get Linux ready for prime time (IBM, Sun, HP, Compaq, Linux distro companies, etc., etc.) are well meaning, polite, and helpful.
I wish I had moderator points today so I could mod this parent up, but I don't, so I'll just corroborate. Certainly, if the original post deserved a 4 (despite the fact that it was basically a troll), then the parent of this deserves at least the same.
I get LOTS of work done using XFce as my desktop, as much as anyone who uses KDE or GNOME, and it has fewer features (and less bloat) than either GNOME or KDE. Most of the work gets done in the applications, not in the desktop anyway.
In addition, my 12-year-old son has begun using Linux without any particular preconceived bias, and to my surprise, he has chosen FVWM! And guess what -- he gets all his work done! Imagine that, and he's not even using KDE!
Everyone has preferences, and there's nothing wrong with that. KDE looks and feels more like Windows than the other DEs, which might make it a good choice for recent Windows converts; but there are now several modern DEs out there, and to say that you can't get as much "work" done in them is simply false.
It is a valid point that supporting a protocol too early might actually help the protocol gain acceptance.
But where do you draw the line on when to start? How ubiquitous is ubiquitous enough? Is it a good idea to have a project underway so that that you have a bit of a jump start if the protocol does start taking off? Or is it better to wait until the protocol is extremely ubiquitous, and then your Linux servers are at a disadvantage for two or three years until the projects reach maturity?
These are all difficult questions, and the answers may depend on timing. When Samba was started, Linux was still a small player in the server market, and in fact Samba was one of the things that spurred Linux in to popularity. Now that many users and businesses depend on Linux servers, it will probably mean that there will be higher expectations that protocols be supported sooner.
Is it a waste of time to start such a project before a protocol becmoes ubiquitous? I suppose it depend on the ultimate outcome. It is a risk, and life is full of risks. The downside is that some people will have wasted their time (and maybe some money) if the protocol flops. But the upside could be the success of Linux in another server market if the protocol proves to be popular.
Ovbiously there's no easy answer, and I agree that implementing *all* MS standards willy-nilly is probably unproductive, and that implementing MS standards before they become ubiquitous involves some risk. Not all risk taking is bad, however, and if the potential upside is large, I'm not sure I would call it insane.
The emphasis recently has been placed on making Linux easier to install and look prettier. This is great and necessary, but there are many more underlying (and difficult) issues that need to be solved before Linux can gain as much mainstream acceptance as Windows (XP or otherwise) for home and end-user desktops.
Here is a short list of reasons that Linux has not yet become mainstream that I ripped from one of my earlier posts:
Linux is not yet mainstream because:
I have to look through config files and search the internet to find out if my scanner, mousepad, modem, camera, network card, 3D video card, sound card, etc., etc., is supported.
When I go to the computer store to buy a new card or peripheral, I have to carry a small binder full of hardware compatability lists.
To get a new TrueType font to view and print in StarOffice I have to go through three separate manual proceedures for X, Ghostscript, and StarOffice which involve editing config files that could break my system or applications. Or I could use kfontinst, which still requires a major manual setup in order to be able to be used with StarOffice.
To get the same new TrueType font to work in AbiWord, I have to go through some addition manual procedures to those that were needed for StarOffice.
As someone else mentioned, for all the configurability of KDE and Gnome, I still can't right click on the desktop to change my screen settings.
To configure my system in most distributions, I have to look in several places for the configuration tools, they all behave differently, and many times don't do everything, often forcing me to edit config files manually.
The two major desktop environment camps give me 5000 themes and two dozen window managers, but can't get together on a common object embedding API, so I will soon be faced with choosing applications by desktop rather than by features, or giving up high level interoperability.
I have to spend extra money for VMWare express or Win4Lin and still have to spend hundreds on MS Office so I can communicate with all of my friends and co-workers who send me.doc and.xls files. (and no, StarOffice, AbiWord, and Gnumeric import filters are often not good enough). This is basically the "applicatin problem" that others have referred to.
I like to do digital photography, and for the best results I still have to scan and print in Windows. (Most film scanners are not even supported at all in Linux.)
Hardware and software vendors *don't want* Linux to become mainstream. They already have to support two - Windows (multiple flavors) and Mac - and adding another mainstream OS will increase their costs. They are fighting it as long as they can, hoping it will never become mainstream.
Most of these things are not a big deal for me and other technically inclined Linux users, but if you think "Joe Sixpack" is going to find this fun, you have another thing coming
Some of these issues are far more difficult to solve than the pretty interface, an easier installation, and better hardware detection. I don't mean to belittle these things, they are important, it's just that there's much more work that has to be done before Linux is the right choice for the huddled masses.
Is that it will almost immediately be ported to Win32.
If you think about it, most of the best apps on Linux have either been ported to Win32, or are in the process of being ported. Take Gimp, for example, often quoted as a Linux "killer app". It took a while, but even this one has now been ported to windows.
Sure, there are some advantages to having our Linux apps available during those times when we are forced to use Windows, but the downside is that by porting all of the good Linux apps to windows, we are making Windows the universal platform.
I agree with this completely. I also use SBC DSL through a third party ISP, and I also know the people who run the ISP. They are basically saying the same things. PacBell makes things as difficult for them as they can get away with.
Right now, I am paying around $10/month more to go through the third party ISP, but I get 1) a static IP, 2) MUCH better service (I can get the tech guys on the phone instantly, and they actually know what they are talking about), 3) a larger allocation on their web server for my web page than I would get with PacBell (I don't want to hasle with my own server even though I have DSL).
If they are forced to go PPPoE, it will remove one of these advantages, but the others will remain.
Perhaps they might write a worm that damages your driver, making it cause crashes, and then replicates and spreads itself to other susceptable machines. It wouldn't take too long - after a few days, thousands of machines would be crashing on YOUR driver, which might be enough to get it blacklisted.
Of course, Microsoft's tracking program might be smart enough to note the sudden change in crash reports and conclude that it's a worm, but do you trust them to do so?
is not to regulate a private monopoly, nor to break it up into multiple private systems. Regulated monopolies (which tend to be natural monopolies) are difficult to regulate and are politically unpopular at the current time. On the other hand, if the system is broken up into many incompatable private systems all vying for a bigger share of the pie, the result will be a system that is difficult to use because of all of the closed, proprietary standards which will be incompatable with each other.
What the Government can do is to ensure that the new, intellegent pieces of the network are built using open standards that are not controlled by either a single or multiple corporations.
They don't have to do this through legislation either - that would be difficult and politically unpopular. They can, however, do it by using their considerable purchasing power. If the government decided not to purchase access to or equipment for, or fund research on any intellegent network technology that was not based on open standards, they can go a long way toward ensuring the development of such standards. The US Government is the largest buyer in the world and has such huge purchasing power that companies would develop open systems in order to get their business. With the largest buyer around insisting on open technologies, most everyone else would follow along.
I have a lot of libertarian political philosophies, but I disagree with the libertarians on this one.
When you say that things will basically end up the same whether there are controls on monopolies or not, there is some truth to that, perhaps even in a market where the network effect tends to favor monopolies. It's possible that quality will get so bad and monopoly prices will get so high that people will begin buying into the competition even if the transition itself is very painful and causes them to temporarily be incompatable with everyone else.
The problem is that there will have been a long time during which people will have lived with much poorer quality (translating into lost productivity) and much higher prices than there might have otherwise been if competition was present all along. In other words, the result of the large swings in quality and price that results with no controls (or damping, to us engineers) is lower economic efficiency.
The Sherman act is not about "big bad government" bashing the hapless corporations, it's about economic efficiency. The Congress which passed the Sherman Act realized that a competitive market leads to greater economic efficiency, and so it puts in place some damping on the large swings in quality and price (and hence poor economic efficiency) that would result if runaway monopolies and lack of competition were the norm.
The question (and one of the main points of antitrust law) is whether a monopolist should be allowed to use that monopoly to leverage a monopoly in another area of the market without any competition at all.
The problem is that since much of the software market is subject to network externalities, having a monopoly in one market could potentially lead to one company swallowing the entire industry if they are allowed to continually leverage new monopolies from existing ones without any competition.
The original monopoly was obtained because, at least to some extent, MS was competing on the basis of product features. If they are allowed to leverage this monopoly into other areas in an unrestricted way, there is no guarantee that the new monopoly products will have good quality or reasonable prices because there will have been little or no competition; yet, most of us will be forced to use them because of the so called network externalities. By that point, the cost of switching to a higher quality competetor will be outweighed by the cost of being incompatable with everyone else. This is already the case with operating systems and office suites.
Many people are reluctant to punish Microsoft because, so far, they are percieved as a "benevolent" or "beneficial" monopolist in some ways (e.g., uniformity and homogeneity can make computing easier for many users), but if they are allowed to completely take over the industry, how long do you think they will remain benevolent and beneficial?
As soon as they are allowed to take new "increasing returns" markets without any competition, you can be sure that quality will drop and prices will increase.
I can see the part about TCP/MS as being a remote possibility, but the real problem with the theory is the part about Microsoft introducing something like raw sockets specifically to encourage abuses that they hope will subsequently be blamed only on hackers, UNIX, and TCP/IP itself.
This would seem to be an extremely risky strategy due to the high potential that it could backfire from a public perception point of view. My experience is that despite the fact that some people are apologetic toward Microsoft as Cringley points out, there is a steadily growing public perception of the weakness of Microsoft products.
Many Windows users that I know use it because they feel they have to, either for the applications they need, because their workplace demands it, or because they feel they are too non-technical to use an alternative like Linux (and believe me, many of them are). They are well aware of the instabilities and the susceptability to virii, and in fact many of the Windows users I know joke about it all the time even though they use Windows for various practical reasons.
I think at this point in time, if Windows XP doesn't live up to the MS hype about it being a more stable and robust platform, and ends up in fact being less robust, they run a significant risk of damaging their public perception; probably not fatally, but noticably none the less. Given the fact that a wholesale migration to TCP/MS, while possible, is far from a sure thing, this would seem to be a rather risky strategy.
I don't know the full history of tuxracer, but this is apparently a big surprise for most users. If this has been their plan all along, then they should have been up front about it.
It won't be the first time in history that software has been developed with free betas, but it has also been GPL up to this point. I think this, combined with the apparent fact that their plans were not widely known, is what is making people upset, particularly since Tuxracer has been sort of a "flagship" Linux game, being shipped with most distros.
Having said that, they do say that they intend to ultimately re-license under the GPL at a later point, so I suppose we should give them the opportunity to persue their OEM deals and see if they make good on that promise.
I spend a lot more on Linux than Windows, even if you count the Microsoft tax payed with each new PC I bought in the past (I build them now).
The important distinction, however, is that I spend the money becuase I want to, not because I have to. Even if I download a distro, I eventually buy the boxed set when I happen by a computer store because I want to support the Linux distro companies, but unlike with Windows, nobody is compelling me to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
I use Partition Magic on a regular basis to manage my partitions, resizing and moving them around as needed. (I know, it's commercial software, but it's one of the more useful pieces of commercial software out there, especially if you like to change things around a lot on your systems.)
PM supports ext2 but not any of the newer exotic journaling file systems like ReiserFS or xfs.
The fact that ext3 is comatable with ext2, and can be converted back and forth is a welcome feature for those who use PM to manage their partitions.
StarOffice (and soon OpenOffice) runs just fine in KDE, is definitely "there", and has everything most average users and school kids need in an office suite.
Check out the ROX Desktop project.
/usr/local/bin). There is no install procedure required other than copying or dragging one directory. It also means that apps are compiled purely relative to their own application directory and are fully relocatable in terms of where they can be installed - I could just as easily install it in ~/bin as in /usr/local/bin and the app wouldn't care.
It's mainly an alternative desktop environment (lean, mean, not bloated like KDE and GNOME, etc., etc.) but he also has an interesting way of packaging applications that's somewhat Mac-like. Basically, all of an application's files are kept in one "application directory" rather than being sprawled all over the file system as is the current practice. The only change needed from the current system is that the file manager must be aware of these "application directories", and when the user clicks on one of these directories, the file manager runs a script inside the directory that then takes over and runs the application. Applications can thus be installed simply by copying (or dragging in a file manager) the application directory from the distribution medium or tar file into any directory in your path (such as
Many times, when Linux replaces a UNIX solution, it is keeping that UNIX solution from being replaced by NT.
As the original poster mentioned, the very high performance/price ratio of PC hardware is one of the driving factors. Before Linux appeared on most people's radar screens, the push was to get these types of things ported over to NT to take advantage of the cheap but powerful PC hardware. If Linux hadn't come around, today's headlines would all be about how WinNT is taking over Hollywood by allowing movies to be produced and rendered on cheap, powerful PCs.
A similar thing is happening in the area of engineering workstations, although more slowly because PHBs in engineering companies are less open minded and more conservative than those in 3D film studios. Five years ago, the almost unanimous prediction was that NT will have all but replaced UNIX on the desktops of integrated circuit designers by now. It hasn't happened. It hasn't all moved to Linux yet (again because the PHBs are more conservative than in the movie industry), but many vendors are de-emphasizing their NT products and are beginning ports to Linux. Time will tell if it will catch on as well as it has in the movie industry, but at the very least, it has forstalled a mass migration to NT.
The problem with RedHat Network, for me at least, is that it is too expensive. At $20/month, it will cost $240/year. They should have another option, something between RedHat Network and simple box sales for home users. I'd pay an extra $50-$100/year for a service that would give me frequent app updates with all dependencies resolved, but for $250/year I'll continue in do-it-yourself mode.
The paper (box, manual, etc.) is recyclable.
As for the disks, one could donate them (as someone else mentioned), or they can be used in countless arts and crafts projects (my kids have managed to put every AOL cd we've received to good use). These eventually get thrown away, of course, but at least it represents a second use, and every CD pressed will eventually end up in a landfill anyway.
This is probably better than what happens to unsold boxes when the computer store has to dispose of them.
Just buy a box or two of Red Hat Linux, even if you don't plan to use it. You'll be supporting the company that underwrites Cygwin tools.
Freudian slip #3857
but to get there, I had to take the difficult step of getting people to stop sending me Word and Excel files. Sending around insecure, application-specific files is a bad idea anyway unless it is absolutely necessary.
At least 95+% of the time someone sends me a Word file or Excel sheet, it is something that I only need to read, not edit, modify, and send back.
I'm an independent contractor, and whenever I receive a Word or Excel file that I cannot read in StarOffice, I politely reply back that I don't have Microsoft Office and I cannot read their files. I suggest that they resend the document either in PDF format, or RTF if they can't generate PDF. For Excel files, If they can't save as PDF, I suggest saving to an older version of Excel that StarOffice can read, albeit with some loss of formatting.
I have been able to change the file sending habits of a surprising number of people, especially when they realize that PDF files actually look more consistent on other people's systems, especially if they use non-standard fonts.
I do have one system with VMWare and one copy of Office for those very rare occasions that I receive a Word or Excel file that I actually have to modify and send back, or if the sender absolutely refuses to send another format, but this option doesn't get used very often, so I don't need it on all my systems.
I agree with most everything you said. Using Linux is harder than using Windows, and I still don't recommend it to anyone except people who don't mind experimenting and taking a walk on the technical side.
But even though it makes my life a little more complicated (e.g., having to sometimes compile apps, or download dependencies), I still use it out of the very principle you espoused: Windows needs some competition.
To be sure, as much as things have improved, you still have to be a bit of a technical pioneer to want to use Linux, but if nobody takes the first steps and becomes the pioneering early adopters, there will never an alternative to Windows.
Windows may not be ready for the average home desktop yet, but as this article proves, in a corporate environment where there is a support staff to deal with the technical issues, it is possible to use successfully. Yes, at this point in time, in some ways, e.g., applications, it is still more challenging than deploying Windows, but I applaud those companies who are poineering enough to give it a go and make it work. If everybody just takes the easy way out (perhaps even against their principles), we will never see any meaningful competition.
As far as software freedom gos, I personally don't have any problem paying a reasonable price for software, and I think most members of the silent majority don't either; however, commercial competitors to MS have had a difficult time competing. Making software free (either as in beer or speech) removes one of the barriers to get people to use your software. I feel that if Linux had not been free from the get-go, it would never have become as successful as it has -- it's freeness means that is is eclectic, it is not owned by any one entity. At this point in time, this seems to be the only way to even have a chance of competing against MS.
The other thing I disagree with is the Linux user issue. Sure, there are a small minority of users who have an attitude and flame newbies in forums, and certainly this probably causes some newbies to switch back, but by far most of the Linux users I know barely have time in their lives to read slashdot let alone post here, and they are all polite to new users. I believe that there is a vocal minority that does this, and the vast majority of people trying to get Linux ready for prime time (IBM, Sun, HP, Compaq, Linux distro companies, etc., etc.) are well meaning, polite, and helpful.
I wish I had moderator points today so I could mod this parent up, but I don't, so I'll just corroborate. Certainly, if the original post deserved a 4 (despite the fact that it was basically a troll), then the parent of this deserves at least the same.
I get LOTS of work done using XFce as my desktop, as much as anyone who uses KDE or GNOME, and it has fewer features (and less bloat) than either GNOME or KDE. Most of the work gets done in the applications, not in the desktop anyway.
In addition, my 12-year-old son has begun using Linux without any particular preconceived bias, and to my surprise, he has chosen FVWM! And guess what -- he gets all his work done! Imagine that, and he's not even using KDE!
Everyone has preferences, and there's nothing wrong with that. KDE looks and feels more like Windows than the other DEs, which might make it a good choice for recent Windows converts; but there are now several modern DEs out there, and to say that you can't get as much "work" done in them is simply false.
It is a valid point that supporting a protocol too early might actually help the protocol gain acceptance.
But where do you draw the line on when to start? How ubiquitous is ubiquitous enough? Is it a good idea to have a project underway so that that you have a bit of a jump start if the protocol does start taking off? Or is it better to wait until the protocol is extremely ubiquitous, and then your Linux servers are at a disadvantage for two or three years until the projects reach maturity?
These are all difficult questions, and the answers may depend on timing. When Samba was started, Linux was still a small player in the server market, and in fact Samba was one of the things that spurred Linux in to popularity. Now that many users and businesses depend on Linux servers, it will probably mean that there will be higher expectations that protocols be supported sooner.
Is it a waste of time to start such a project before a protocol becmoes ubiquitous? I suppose it depend on the ultimate outcome. It is a risk, and life is full of risks. The downside is that some people will have wasted their time (and maybe some money) if the protocol flops. But the upside could be the success of Linux in another server market if the protocol proves to be popular.
Ovbiously there's no easy answer, and I agree that implementing *all* MS standards willy-nilly is probably unproductive, and that implementing MS standards before they become ubiquitous involves some risk. Not all risk taking is bad, however, and if the potential upside is large, I'm not sure I would call it insane.
Here is a short list of reasons that Linux has not yet become mainstream that I ripped from one of my earlier posts:
Linux is not yet mainstream because:
I have to look through config files and search the internet to find out if my scanner, mousepad, modem, camera, network card, 3D video card, sound card, etc., etc., is supported.
When I go to the computer store to buy a new card or peripheral, I have to carry a small binder full of hardware compatability lists.
To get a new TrueType font to view and print in StarOffice I have to go through three separate manual proceedures for X, Ghostscript, and StarOffice which involve editing config files that could break my system or applications. Or I could use kfontinst, which still requires a major manual setup in order to be able to be used with StarOffice.
To get the same new TrueType font to work in AbiWord, I have to go through some addition manual procedures to those that were needed for StarOffice.
As someone else mentioned, for all the configurability of KDE and Gnome, I still can't right click on the desktop to change my screen settings.
To configure my system in most distributions, I have to look in several places for the configuration tools, they all behave differently, and many times don't do everything, often forcing me to edit config files manually.
The two major desktop environment camps give me 5000 themes and two dozen window managers, but can't get together on a common object embedding API, so I will soon be faced with choosing applications by desktop rather than by features, or giving up high level interoperability.
I have to spend extra money for VMWare express or Win4Lin and still have to spend hundreds on MS Office so I can communicate with all of my friends and co-workers who send me .doc and .xls files. (and no, StarOffice, AbiWord, and Gnumeric import filters are often not good enough). This is basically the "applicatin problem" that others have referred to.
I like to do digital photography, and for the best results I still have to scan and print in Windows. (Most film scanners are not even supported at all in Linux.)
Hardware and software vendors *don't want* Linux to become mainstream. They already have to support two - Windows (multiple flavors) and Mac - and adding another mainstream OS will increase their costs. They are fighting it as long as they can, hoping it will never become mainstream.
Most of these things are not a big deal for me and other technically inclined Linux users, but if you think "Joe Sixpack" is going to find this fun, you have another thing coming
Some of these issues are far more difficult to solve than the pretty interface, an easier installation, and better hardware detection. I don't mean to belittle these things, they are important, it's just that there's much more work that has to be done before Linux is the right choice for the huddled masses.
Is that it will almost immediately be ported to Win32.
If you think about it, most of the best apps on Linux have either been ported to Win32, or are in the process of being ported. Take Gimp, for example, often quoted as a Linux "killer app". It took a while, but even this one has now been ported to windows.
Sure, there are some advantages to having our Linux apps available during those times when we are forced to use Windows, but the downside is that by porting all of the good Linux apps to windows, we are making Windows the universal platform.
I agree with this completely. I also use SBC DSL through a third party ISP, and I also know the people who run the ISP. They are basically saying the same things. PacBell makes things as difficult for them as they can get away with.
Right now, I am paying around $10/month more to go through the third party ISP, but I get 1) a static IP, 2) MUCH better service (I can get the tech guys on the phone instantly, and they actually know what they are talking about), 3) a larger allocation on their web server for my web page than I would get with PacBell (I don't want to hasle with my own server even though I have DSL).
If they are forced to go PPPoE, it will remove one of these advantages, but the others will remain.
Linux to become the source for a whole bunch of free SDL games (some of them with commercial-level quality)
:(
I guess commercial software is still generally higher quality than free software
Might there be issues with the legality of one company disabling another company's products without their permission, regardless of "qulity" issues?
I'm not a lawyer, so I'm asking this, but it seems that they might be asking for trouble here.
Perhaps they might write a worm that damages your driver, making it cause crashes, and then replicates and spreads itself to other susceptable machines. It wouldn't take too long - after a few days, thousands of machines would be crashing on YOUR driver, which might be enough to get it blacklisted.
Of course, Microsoft's tracking program might be smart enough to note the sudden change in crash reports and conclude that it's a worm, but do you trust them to do so?
is not to regulate a private monopoly, nor to break it up into multiple private systems. Regulated monopolies (which tend to be natural monopolies) are difficult to regulate and are politically unpopular at the current time. On the other hand, if the system is broken up into many incompatable private systems all vying for a bigger share of the pie, the result will be a system that is difficult to use because of all of the closed, proprietary standards which will be incompatable with each other.
What the Government can do is to ensure that the new, intellegent pieces of the network are built using open standards that are not controlled by either a single or multiple corporations.
They don't have to do this through legislation either - that would be difficult and politically unpopular. They can, however, do it by using their considerable purchasing power. If the government decided not to purchase access to or equipment for, or fund research on any intellegent network technology that was not based on open standards, they can go a long way toward ensuring the development of such standards. The US Government is the largest buyer in the world and has such huge purchasing power that companies would develop open systems in order to get their business. With the largest buyer around insisting on open technologies, most everyone else would follow along.
But good luck.
I have a lot of libertarian political philosophies, but I disagree with the libertarians on this one.
When you say that things will basically end up the same whether there are controls on monopolies or not, there is some truth to that, perhaps even in a market where the network effect tends to favor monopolies. It's possible that quality will get so bad and monopoly prices will get so high that people will begin buying into the competition even if the transition itself is very painful and causes them to temporarily be incompatable with everyone else.
The problem is that there will have been a long time during which people will have lived with much poorer quality (translating into lost productivity) and much higher prices than there might have otherwise been if competition was present all along. In other words, the result of the large swings in quality and price that results with no controls (or damping, to us engineers) is lower economic efficiency.
The Sherman act is not about "big bad government" bashing the hapless corporations, it's about economic efficiency. The Congress which passed the Sherman Act realized that a competitive market leads to greater economic efficiency, and so it puts in place some damping on the large swings in quality and price (and hence poor economic efficiency) that would result if runaway monopolies and lack of competition were the norm.
The question (and one of the main points of antitrust law) is whether a monopolist should be allowed to use that monopoly to leverage a monopoly in another area of the market without any competition at all.
The problem is that since much of the software market is subject to network externalities, having a monopoly in one market could potentially lead to one company swallowing the entire industry if they are allowed to continually leverage new monopolies from existing ones without any competition.
The original monopoly was obtained because, at least to some extent, MS was competing on the basis of product features. If they are allowed to leverage this monopoly into other areas in an unrestricted way, there is no guarantee that the new monopoly products will have good quality or reasonable prices because there will have been little or no competition; yet, most of us will be forced to use them because of the so called network externalities. By that point, the cost of switching to a higher quality competetor will be outweighed by the cost of being incompatable with everyone else. This is already the case with operating systems and office suites.
Many people are reluctant to punish Microsoft because, so far, they are percieved as a "benevolent" or "beneficial" monopolist in some ways (e.g., uniformity and homogeneity can make computing easier for many users), but if they are allowed to completely take over the industry, how long do you think they will remain benevolent and beneficial?
As soon as they are allowed to take new "increasing returns" markets without any competition, you can be sure that quality will drop and prices will increase.
I can see the part about TCP/MS as being a remote possibility, but the real problem with the theory is the part about Microsoft introducing something like raw sockets specifically to encourage abuses that they hope will subsequently be blamed only on hackers, UNIX, and TCP/IP itself.
This would seem to be an extremely risky strategy due to the high potential that it could backfire from a public perception point of view. My experience is that despite the fact that some people are apologetic toward Microsoft as Cringley points out, there is a steadily growing public perception of the weakness of Microsoft products.
Many Windows users that I know use it because they feel they have to, either for the applications they need, because their workplace demands it, or because they feel they are too non-technical to use an alternative like Linux (and believe me, many of them are). They are well aware of the instabilities and the susceptability to virii, and in fact many of the Windows users I know joke about it all the time even though they use Windows for various practical reasons.
I think at this point in time, if Windows XP doesn't live up to the MS hype about it being a more stable and robust platform, and ends up in fact being less robust, they run a significant risk of damaging their public perception; probably not fatally, but noticably none the less. Given the fact that a wholesale migration to TCP/MS, while possible, is far from a sure thing, this would seem to be a rather risky strategy.
I don't know the full history of tuxracer, but this is apparently a big surprise for most users. If this has been their plan all along, then they should have been up front about it.
It won't be the first time in history that software has been developed with free betas, but it has also been GPL up to this point. I think this, combined with the apparent fact that their plans were not widely known, is what is making people upset, particularly since Tuxracer has been sort of a "flagship" Linux game, being shipped with most distros.
Having said that, they do say that they intend to ultimately re-license under the GPL at a later point, so I suppose we should give them the opportunity to persue their OEM deals and see if they make good on that promise.
the important thing is that it doesn't have to.
I spend a lot more on Linux than Windows, even if you count the Microsoft tax payed with each new PC I bought in the past (I build them now).
The important distinction, however, is that I spend the money becuase I want to, not because I have to. Even if I download a distro, I eventually buy the boxed set when I happen by a computer store because I want to support the Linux distro companies, but unlike with Windows, nobody is compelling me to do so.
Or perhaps Windows logos...