Contrary to what you hear on/. there simply aren't enough Linux desktop users out there to make developing and marketing such a service commercially viable
Actually we hear that sort of thing constantly on slashdot - LOL, slashdot is a tech gossip site, not a linux site per se, and most slashdotters are just microsoft windows users who have heard of linux, and that comes through pretty clearly in comments like yours.
Linux market share is estimated by some to be in the same neighborhood as mac market share, and has excellent potential for growth. It's nothing to sneeze at, and no clear thinking businessman ought to say "no, I don't want this 3% of the market, I'm doing well enough already"
You do make a good point about DRM though, and that needs to be addressed, but with the convicted monopolist refusing to license the current windoze media player codecs to any linux-friendly app vendor, we're at a bit of an impasse there.
Hopefully this sort of dirty dealing will come to light and put the kibosh on any further discussion of windows media player as a "standard". There is a right way to do DRM, one that doesn't invlove handing the world on a silver platter to an crooked monopolist who will then use their patented "standard" as a weapon to exclude competion from the marketplace.
I'd think that mandating Ad-Aware and/or SpyBot would be an even bigger help. I don't know the feasibility, but if they could force any connecting machine to identify itself as having SP2 installed, that by itself would be a huge start. They just don't have the time to deal with unprotected machines.
Just to point out the obvious, mandating the install of pc spyware/adware programs could only apply to those computers running a microsoft OS. The tech savvy folks using linux, OSX or other unixlike OS are not part of the problem, and the pc spyware/adware/worm/virus plague has no base platform other than microsoft windows. Obviously, it would be worse than useless to mandate universal installation of such windows software on all computers.:)
erm, if I take a "vanilla" kernel and I can't read write to scsi-cds, etc, then THIS is wrong. why should I wait for a vendor kernel?
Huh? You don't ever have to "wait" for a vendor kernel, it ships with the distro, LOL! So-called "vanilla" kernel is not for end-users, it's meant for developers, integrators and tech-savvy hackers. You want to hack the kernel? great, go download the "vanilla" kernel and put on a pot of coffee. You want everything to just work? stick with the vendor kernel.
Kmail sucks, its horrible to use, can't have seperated POP accounts, has a crappy imap support and more crappy font support.
I see you haven't used any recent version of kmail. Back in the day it was nothing to write home about, but it has since evolved into a very nifty tool. Why is your experience so out of date? Is it that debian desktop which you say sucks so much, yet which you claim to really, really love?
Listen up dude, if you want a mac, get a mac. Life is too short to spend bitching about your tools. You can get a mac on a student loan, or a number of other ways, so get creative and make it happen!
Problem is that in 2.6.8 they changed the access rights which broke almost all apps that read/write from scsi cd-roms and almost all cd writers. Thats much better now, but if you have firewire cd/dvd writers, be prepared for funny things... Like it sees it as user, then not, sees it as root, and then not... jumping around in each new relese candidate... [2.6.9 does _not_ work with firewire dvd/cd writers for example]
LOL, if you blow away the vendor supplied kernel and roll your own from a downloaded tarball, don't be surprised if you see challenges with CD writing all all sorts of other stuff as well. I used to compile kernels for fun - back in the day, I had to recompile the kernel on slackware v 2.x in order to get my soundblaster working, so I could play doom with sound, but seriously, this is 2004. Get a life! The kernel that my vendor ships is just right, and I have no reason to change it.
As to your comments about X slowness, I just don't see it - it's snappy here. Again, hardware does make a difference.
As to mail clients, there are a number of linux mail clients that can do all the things you specified - BTW why should a linux mail client work in windows? kmail for instance, doesn't, but it is a very nice mail client just the same. There's just not a problem there AFAICS. And as for thunderbird, I'm sure it will get sorted out soon, if it's not already.
do you really think all apps in linux are available for _all_ enviroments? So I can just take gjiten and recompile it against kde/qt or take k3b and recompile it against gtk2 or gnome/gtk2?
(shrug) I run gtk apps in a qt environment all the time, and they work fine. Even java apps, e.g., azureus, automatically adopt the same theme as the rest of my kde environment. What is your point exactly?
To sum up, your comments are all very interesting, but they just don't ring true for me. I hope you find a good solution, and take care.
hmm, I honestly haven't tried firewire but I will do so and post here.
- cd/dvd writing is working on and off
Cd and dvd writing with k3b are working fine here. If I make vcds, or backup copies of dvds, they play perfectly on the computer, and on my dvd player. When I make data cdroms they work fine, when I make music cds they play fine in my car. I just don't see any problem here, sorry
- getting a second monitor working is a long thing and on a laptop horrible, because its difficult to have it on and off on the fly
I haven't tried 2 monitors, but I will put that on my list of things to try. I noticed that there is a very clear and straightforward looking dual monitor setup screen in yast, so I'll check it out.
- X is super slow. On my 1.4gh laptop and on my superold PIII. Windows XP is pretty fast. Even Mac OS X on and old G4 400 is faster...
I've not seen that - I get the same frame rates in ut2004, or q3a or wolfenstein that windows users get with the same hardware. I'm using nvidia cards with nvidia drivers, no idea what you were using.
- ever tried to open a link from thunderbird? oh no thats not so easy.
OK, so don't use thunderbird if it doesn't work. There are a number of nice, fully functional linux mail clients, no need to obsess over thunderbird.
- KDE/QT looks of course different than Gnome/GTK, GTK1,... etc etc
OK, and this is a problem because? You choose the environment you like and be done with it.
- I just want to listen to music and not worring why I need to setup a special settings so my soundcard doesn't blocks itself when I try to put out two sounds at the same time (and no arts is _NOT_ the answer)
I don't have any problems - I watch movies, play mps, do 3D fps gaming, and sound works to my satisfaction. Occasionally I see sound events getting blocked for a few seconds (for instance when starting up q3a immediately after some other app has played a sound) I'll be happy when that's fixed, but that's a minor nit, really no biggie.
So my final thought often is, I think I should get a MAC
Good for you, stimulate the economy! A mac is a fine choice, more power to you. BTW you're the 2nd person in this thread who said they use debian and that it sucks on the desktop...
Linux is a Timehog. It's very experimental and it uses tons of time. I gave up using it at home, because I wasted too much time getting things working instead of doing something.
LOL, that's great. I find it just the opposite - rock solid, dependable, and flexible. I don't have to waste time mucking about with viruses or worms, or trying to block popups, and software package management is a breeze. It's not at all clear what sort of "linux" you're talking about. I'll admit, back in 1993 it was fairly experimental, but what you describe doesn't sound remotely like anything I've seen in the past few years.
Personally speaking, I use Linux 100% of the time, and don't find any need to resort to windows as you sugest, to make up for some supposed "deficiencies" Then...
I sometimes work with windows 2k and xp. I simply don't see anything to get excited about in either case.
This has gone far enough. Thanks for trolling.
OK, let me try and clear this up for you. On my own time, and for my own work and pleasure, I use linux 100% of the time, but since I am known as "the computer guy" I am often asked to solve other people's windows problems.
Are you with me so far? In the course of trying to fix their windows woes, I have to actually use the OS, install/remove software, and perform administrative tasks. I hope I've made the distinction clear enough...
Again, this is new to me for Linux. I like the "almost effortlessly" part. For me, when I go to a different network, I pick the location from the "Location" menu, and within 5 seconds or so I'm on the network. When I used Linux, I had symlinks to files for things like/etc/sysconfig/networks-scripts/ifcfg-eth0.locatio n1... locationN, and the same for/etc/resolv.conf, etc. My script relinked the proper links for the proper network, and away I went.
So, basically this is not your father's linux. I can and do deal with symlinks for fun and profit, but there's no need to do so on a modern linux desktop. But yeah, I remember the bad old days, when I had to tweak things by hand - let's see, should I make this symbolic link, or ditch it all and buy an apple? My decision turned out to be different from yours...
I had to waste my time putting this together, whereas someone at Apple just did this for me.
Yep. And now someone at Novell has done it for me. I'm glad you're happy with mac, and I hope you can accept that I'm happy with Linux.
There seems to be an assumption on your part that the linux market is going to dry up, a shaky point of view, to say the least.
I consult on the side, and I also turn down the non-linux work, since there's already more linux work coming at me than I can currently accept, and let's face it, life is too short for the kind of grief that comes from a blue screened windows server at 3 am, or struggling to build and configure something like postfix, amavis, clamd, spamassasin, apache+php, database, and maia-mailguard on say, a solaris box. (I can set all that up on suse linux in a few minutes)
People can afford to specialize in linux, just as it was once possible to specialize in netware or microsoft. If and when Linux ever dries up, we'll adapt to the next big thing, whatever that may be, and we'll probably have seen it coming for some time before it actually hits.
They use Linux in the back room to render and do 'heavy muscle' jobs. They certainly don't have their designers sitting at Linux desktops to do the editing and what-not.
That was true in 1997, but where have you been since then? Linux is used on the desktop, for heavy duty graphics workstation applications by a number of special effects firms. These companies basically demanded that the vendors port the apps to Linux, and they did. Feel free to do a google search and check it out.
Sad to say, but your linux knowledge seems either very dated or severely limited.
How so?
Well, not to put too fine a point on it, you seem to be clueless about linux, generally speaking. You describe ostensible shortcomings which I haven't seen in years, and the rest of your comments are clearly nothing more than your personal preferences, stated as if they were authoritative and unchallengable.
I really only know 1 person that is left running Linux. He also uses Windows ME (yeah!) to make up for Linux' deficiencies
I know hundreds of Linux users. Personally speaking, I use Linux 100% of the time, and don't find any need to resort to windows as you sugest, to make up for some supposed "deficiencies", which I'll wager turn out to be no deficiency at all, but rather a desire to run some particular windows-only binary. I'm not sure you see the distinction though, so I won't belabor the point.
Linux for GUI stuff is still at least 10 years below par.
You have no clue. I've seen and used your OS X, and I sometimes work with windows 2k and xp. I simply don't see anything to get excited about in either case. Can you call out some specific capability that you think linux lacks and mac/windows has?
Maybe instead of suggesting OS X, I should just say wait 10 years. But I'm sure that will get as much grief.
No need to wait, I'm using Linux now and enjoying it immensely. I hate to be the one to break this to you, but it's not all weeping an gnashing of teeth outside the mac user community, or the microsoft user community for that matter.
If xp floats your boat, great. If osx is your dream OS, bully for you. If I moved to either one of those from linux, I might gain the ability to run natively a few commercial apps which aren't currently available for linux (which I haven't needed in any case), but on the other hand, I'd have to give up a lot of power and flexibility. On balance, it would be a bad move for me - YMMV, but there's no need to concoct horror stories of supposed deficiencies in other OSes, or spin some lame "linux is dying, I only know of one person still running it" trolls.
It isn't half as irritating as being a Linux user is.
Sounds like a personal problem to me. Seriously, If I found it irrating to use Linux I would use something else - but the fact is, it gives me the least grief of any of the OSes I've seen. Sorry to rain on your parade, but I have no intention to switch to mac. Just out of curiosity, do all mac users have to bash other OSes to make themselves feel good abut their choices?
I switched from Linux to OS X because I eventually realized that desktop Linux distributions generally create far more problems than they ever solve. The reason Mac users always suggest switching to a Mac is that for a lot of desktop problems, Macs are the answer.
Like I said, I've seen and used OSX. Sure, it's cute, and it's nice that it's unix inside, but it doesn't solve anything for me, and there is no compelling reason to switch. If there were no linux, I would quite likely be a mac user, but there is Linux, and it is what it is. You mac users are just going to have to learn to coexist.
Some heads would roll if I ever told my boss that I spent a few hours resolving dependency issues when trying to install a piece of software.
I've seen knuckleheads who, instead of simply installing a package via apt (a 30 second job) waste half a day trying to "educate" themselves about how to use a compiler, and struggling with tedious grunt work which is done for you by the package manager.
I came in to clean up one shop where the previous "linux guy" had spend 2 weeks getting bind installed. BFD, installing bind! I nuked his mess and after typing "apt-get install bind" and editing the config (a 5 minute job) we were good to go.
There will always be clueless linux fudsters who claim it takes hours or days to do something, which any decent linux admin could handle in a couple minutes.
As I have said, I've used Linux for over 10 years now. I get paid to admin it, I know enough about it to leave it in the server room.
Sad to say, but your linux knowledge seems either very dated or severely limited.
Maybe for an embedded app like a mythbox or on my Linksys router, but wake me up when there is a real GUI and real working applications and a packaging system that works.
(shrug) Sleep as long as you like - meanwhile I'm using linux happily, with a "real GUI" (yes, I've seen and used OSX, and I prefer Linux). I've no idea what you mean about the packaging system - apt works a treat, as do the package formats it manages.
I laugh all the time when people suffer with Linux on their desktop.
Gee that's funny, I'm not suffering, and neither are any of the linux users I know. We all CHOSE our OS, and use it because we prefer it. But I suspect that you are suffering. Does it drive you crazy that some many prefer Linux or other OSes over your beloved OS X?
Like I said, I have no axe to grind, and if OS X is what floats your boat, good for you. It would be really cool if you'd consider extending the same courtesy to us.
"Linux is free only if your time has no value" - Jamie Zawinski
No offense to Mr Zawinski, but that's kind of a clueless statement in 2004, even though it may have sounded cute and clever, and I'm sure he must have had some reason for saying it at the time. (1994 or so?)
The reason I use linux is that my time DOES have value. I can afford to by whatever tools I need for the job, and I can certainly afford any of the OSes mentioned here, cost is not even remotely an issue. But I buy and use Linux, and it serves me well, for my particular workload (sys admin, part time webmaster, consultant, 3D FPS gamer, part time student...)
So to all the apple fanboys, I think OS X is ok, my daughter uses it and loves it. I'm glad OS X works for you, and I'm really happy for you - but it's sort of irritating that you answer every single computer related question with the stock answer, "why not switch to mac?"
mcrbids says: Geez. I just do Linux. Between being an admin at a few ISPs, and several businesses I run simultaneously, I admin between 15 and 20 servers. (always in flux as server X comes online, Y goes offline, etc) Everything I do is either Linux or Linux-centric. (Perhaps the only non-Linux app is a usually-Windows client side package written in PHP-GTK that depends on intermittent communication with a Linux server)
Trust me, I would prefer to do linux exclusively, but the occasional windows or solaris work comes right at me from time to time. I work for the most part with Linux and Solaris in my daytime career. In my side jobs, I try to avoid non-linux work because it's a headache, and I do not want to be called at 3 am because some microsoft server has blue-screened. Occasionally an old client will have some non-linux work that he really really needs done and doesn't want to call someone new, so I will occasionally agree to do some windows work but always in the context of "you know, it would really benefit you if we could move this to Linux!" - in the same vein, I also do some work on Solaris, but it's a pain to manage compared to Linux, and I try to refer the Solaris work to others.
Before you call me lazy, realize that I've got more than enough linux work to keep me very very busy, and even if that were not the case, one can't be an expert in everything, so you pick your field of expertise and go for it. Mine happens to be Linux, which works for me and it works for my customers.
I do linux gigs on the side. It's all been word of mouth "Hey, I heard you do linux, is that right?" from people who know people who know of a need for some linux skills - They need a vpn/firewall, a new mail server, or to migrate their webservers from windows to linux, etc, etc. Almost all of the word of mouth customers have become permanent customers, and they call me when they need something done. A few of the customers (a shipping company, a finance company) have become regular customers who have me work remotely several hours a week, and the $500-$1500 per month extra from working from home does come in handy.
Of course - the register is a linux shop, thus sparing their customers the plague of microsoft security issues, and it sounds like they intend to require their partners to step up and show some accountability as well.
Maybe not the kernel, but one thing that I despise about Linux is the library dependency hell.
I see you're new to linux. a package manager will take care of those details for you. on any of my suse linux systems, I could type for instance "apt-get install openvpn", and it will grab and install all the dependencies, as well as openvpn itself, in one go. find out what package manager your distro provides and start using it, or install something like apt, which is native on debian but available for a number of distros.
I can download a binary onto Windows, and it just works.
LOL, if only that were true. I can't tell you how many times some family member has tried to install a shrink-wrapped win98 game on a win2k pc, and it simply won't install, period, due to inccompatibilties.
OTOH, with Linux, I haven't seen any such problems. am I just lucky? I dunno, but I don't see things breaking as the FUDsters are claiming. For instance, that good old 3D FPS shooter q3demo from 1999, which I originally ran on redhat 5.2? Guess what folks? It has run just fine on every linux distro since then: redhat 6.x, 7.x, 8.x, 9, fedora core 1, suse 8.x, suse 9.x, currently 9.2. It's been running fine, without being "recompiled", on kernels 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5 and 2.6 - amazing really, when you consider how drastically linux has evolved in that 5 years.
Same thing BTW with ut2004 - it ran fine on my redhat dekstop with 2.4 kernel, it still ran fine when I installed a 2.6 kernel on it, and it ran fine on suse linux which shipped with a 2.6 kernel.
In general, I found that every single program that shipped with the redhat 8, 9 and fedora core 1 systems - vpn, firewall, mail, ftp, dns, desktop apps etc, etc - all continued to run just fine when I upgraded the kernel from 2.4 to 2.6, in stark contrast to the shrill cries of the naysayers.
Isn't it perhaps more likely that a program that has to be recompiled depending on the kernel version is just an example of piss poor programming?
Today, Solaris is far less expensive than Red Hat or SUSE. The list price on a two-way Red Hat is about $799 per year. My first year price for Solaris with service and support and the right-to-use license is about the same as Red Hat.
Of course, you CAN find expensive versions of Linux - how much do you want to spend? I'm sure we can find a way to accomodate you. Big corporations tend to go for the expensive options when it comes to OSes and software.
But what the man doesn't want to mention, is that you can get suse professional for $59 and set up a desktop, server, or whatever. updates for 2 years via suse/yast, or install apt, and get upgrades & legacy support that way. Many small businesses are quite happy with that arrangement.
Suse Linux runs just fine on my laptop, or on my 4-way opteron server, or on the mainframe, if I want it, and the Suse tradition of reliability and solid engineering continues under Novell's leadership.
The main reason why I don't use Linux on my desktop is GAMES.
I have been using Linux on the desktop for years. I play games, way too much in fact. I like 3D FPS, so I play things like ut2004, doom3, and that old standby quake 3 arena, which still has a lot of people playing it out there.
On the mellow side there are things like frozen bubble as well as pysol and other variations on the card-game-with-soundtrack theme.
Sure, there aren't as many titles currently available as there for the ms windows platform, but if that's the worst of my problems, then life is good. I certainly see no reason to switch to ms windows just to make it easier to play a few games that aren't native linux. If the game doesn't have a linux port, too bad - it doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned, and meanwhile life goes on.
Slashdot Mirror
Contrary to what you hear on /. there simply aren't enough Linux desktop users out there to make developing and marketing such a service commercially viable
Actually we hear that sort of thing constantly on slashdot - LOL, slashdot is a tech gossip site, not a linux site per se, and most slashdotters are just microsoft windows users who have heard of linux, and that comes through pretty clearly in comments like yours.
Linux market share is estimated by some to be in the same neighborhood as mac market share, and has excellent potential for growth. It's nothing to sneeze at, and no clear thinking businessman ought to say "no, I don't want this 3% of the market, I'm doing well enough already"
You do make a good point about DRM though, and that needs to be addressed, but with the convicted monopolist refusing to license the current windoze media player codecs to any linux-friendly app vendor, we're at a bit of an impasse there.
Hopefully this sort of dirty dealing will come to light and put the kibosh on any further discussion of windows media player as a "standard". There is a right way to do DRM, one that doesn't invlove handing the world on a silver platter to an crooked monopolist who will then use their patented "standard" as a weapon to exclude competion from the marketplace.
I'd think that mandating Ad-Aware and/or SpyBot would be an even bigger help. I don't know the feasibility, but if they could force any connecting machine to identify itself as having SP2 installed, that by itself would be a huge start. They just don't have the time to deal with unprotected machines.
:)
Just to point out the obvious, mandating the install of pc spyware/adware programs could only apply to those computers running a microsoft OS. The tech savvy folks using linux, OSX or other unixlike OS are not part of the problem, and the pc spyware/adware/worm/virus plague has no base platform other than microsoft windows. Obviously, it would be worse than useless to mandate universal installation of such windows software on all computers.
erm, if I take a "vanilla" kernel and I can't read write to scsi-cds, etc, then THIS is wrong. why should I wait for a vendor kernel?
Huh? You don't ever have to "wait" for a vendor kernel, it ships with the distro, LOL! So-called "vanilla" kernel is not for end-users, it's meant for developers, integrators and tech-savvy hackers. You want to hack the kernel? great, go download the "vanilla" kernel and put on a pot of coffee. You want everything to just work? stick with the vendor kernel.
Kmail sucks, its horrible to use, can't have seperated POP accounts, has a crappy imap support and more crappy font support.
I see you haven't used any recent version of kmail. Back in the day it was nothing to write home about, but it has since evolved into a very nifty tool. Why is your experience so out of date? Is it that debian desktop which you say sucks so much, yet which you claim to really, really love?
Listen up dude, if you want a mac, get a mac. Life is too short to spend bitching about your tools. You can get a mac on a student loan, or a number of other ways, so get creative and make it happen!
Problem is that in 2.6.8 they changed the access rights which broke almost all apps that read/write from scsi cd-roms and almost all cd writers. Thats much better now, but if you have firewire cd/dvd writers, be prepared for funny things ... Like it sees it as user, then not, sees it as root, and then not ... jumping around in each new relese candidate ... [2.6.9 does _not_ work with firewire dvd/cd writers for example]
LOL, if you blow away the vendor supplied kernel and roll your own from a downloaded tarball, don't be surprised if you see challenges with CD writing all all sorts of other stuff as well. I used to compile kernels for fun - back in the day, I had to recompile the kernel on slackware v 2.x in order to get my soundblaster working, so I could play doom with sound, but seriously, this is 2004. Get a life! The kernel that my vendor ships is just right, and I have no reason to change it.
As to your comments about X slowness, I just don't see it - it's snappy here. Again, hardware does make a difference.
As to mail clients, there are a number of linux mail clients that can do all the things you specified - BTW why should a linux mail client work in windows? kmail for instance, doesn't, but it is a very nice mail client just the same. There's just not a problem there AFAICS. And as for thunderbird, I'm sure it will get sorted out soon, if it's not already.
do you really think all apps in linux are available for _all_ enviroments? So I can just take gjiten and recompile it against kde/qt or take k3b and recompile it against gtk2 or gnome/gtk2?
(shrug) I run gtk apps in a qt environment all the time, and they work fine. Even java apps, e.g., azureus, automatically adopt the same theme as the rest of my kde environment. What is your point exactly?
To sum up, your comments are all very interesting, but they just don't ring true for me. I hope you find a good solution, and take care.
- firewire doesn't work all the time
...
... etc etc
hmm, I honestly haven't tried firewire but I will do so and post here.
- cd/dvd writing is working on and off
Cd and dvd writing with k3b are working fine here. If I make vcds, or backup copies of dvds, they play perfectly on the computer, and on my dvd player. When I make data cdroms they work fine, when I make music cds they play fine in my car. I just don't see any problem here, sorry
- getting a second monitor working is a long thing and on a laptop horrible, because its difficult to have it on and off on the fly
I haven't tried 2 monitors, but I will put that on my list of things to try. I noticed that there is a very clear and straightforward looking dual monitor setup screen in yast, so I'll check it out.
- X is super slow. On my 1.4gh laptop and on my superold PIII. Windows XP is pretty fast. Even Mac OS X on and old G4 400 is faster
I've not seen that - I get the same frame rates in ut2004, or q3a or wolfenstein that windows users get with the same hardware. I'm using nvidia cards with nvidia drivers, no idea what you were using.
- ever tried to open a link from thunderbird? oh no thats not so easy.
OK, so don't use thunderbird if it doesn't work. There are a number of nice, fully functional linux mail clients, no need to obsess over thunderbird.
- KDE/QT looks of course different than Gnome/GTK, GTK1,
OK, and this is a problem because? You choose the environment you like and be done with it.
- I just want to listen to music and not worring why I need to setup a special settings so my soundcard doesn't blocks itself when I try to put out two sounds at the same time (and no arts is _NOT_ the answer)
I don't have any problems - I watch movies, play mps, do 3D fps gaming, and sound works to my satisfaction. Occasionally I see sound events getting blocked for a few seconds (for instance when starting up q3a immediately after some other app has played a sound) I'll be happy when that's fixed, but that's a minor nit, really no biggie.
So my final thought often is, I think I should get a MAC
Good for you, stimulate the economy! A mac is a fine choice, more power to you. BTW you're the 2nd person in this thread who said they use debian and that it sucks on the desktop...
Linux is a Timehog. It's very experimental and it uses tons of time. I gave up using it at home, because I wasted too much time getting things working instead of doing something.
LOL, that's great. I find it just the opposite - rock solid, dependable, and flexible. I don't have to waste time mucking about with viruses or worms, or trying to block popups, and software package management is a breeze. It's not at all clear what sort of "linux" you're talking about. I'll admit, back in 1993 it was fairly experimental, but what you describe doesn't sound remotely like anything I've seen in the past few years.
hackstraw said, quoting me:
Personally speaking, I use Linux 100% of the time, and don't find any need to resort to windows as you sugest, to make up for some supposed "deficiencies"
Then...
I sometimes work with windows 2k and xp. I simply don't see anything to get excited about in either case.
This has gone far enough. Thanks for trolling.
OK, let me try and clear this up for you. On my own time, and for my own work and pleasure, I use linux 100% of the time, but since I am known as "the computer guy" I am often asked to solve other people's windows problems.
Are you with me so far? In the course of trying to fix their windows woes, I have to actually use the OS, install/remove software, and perform administrative tasks. I hope I've made the distinction clear enough...
Again, this is new to me for Linux. I like the "almost effortlessly" part. For me, when I go to a different network, I pick the location from the "Location" menu, and within 5 seconds or so I'm on the network. When I used Linux, I had symlinks to files for things like /etc/sysconfig/networks-scripts/ifcfg-eth0.locatio n1 ... locationN, and the same for /etc/resolv.conf, etc. My script relinked the proper links for the proper network, and away I went.
So, basically this is not your father's linux. I can and do deal with symlinks for fun and profit, but there's no need to do so on a modern linux desktop. But yeah, I remember the bad old days, when I had to tweak things by hand - let's see, should I make this symbolic link, or ditch it all and buy an apple? My decision turned out to be different from yours...
I had to waste my time putting this together, whereas someone at Apple just did this for me.
Yep. And now someone at Novell has done it for me. I'm glad you're happy with mac, and I hope you can accept that I'm happy with Linux.
This will be your failure
There seems to be an assumption on your part that the linux market is going to dry up, a shaky point of view, to say the least.
I consult on the side, and I also turn down the non-linux work, since there's already more linux work coming at me than I can currently accept, and let's face it, life is too short for the kind of grief that comes from a blue screened windows server at 3 am, or struggling to build and configure something like postfix, amavis, clamd, spamassasin, apache+php, database, and maia-mailguard on say, a solaris box. (I can set all that up on suse linux in a few minutes)
People can afford to specialize in linux, just as it was once possible to specialize in netware or microsoft. If and when Linux ever dries up, we'll adapt to the next big thing, whatever that may be, and we'll probably have seen it coming for some time before it actually hits.
They use Linux in the back room to render and do 'heavy muscle' jobs. They certainly don't have their designers sitting at Linux desktops to do the editing and what-not.
That was true in 1997, but where have you been since then? Linux is used on the desktop, for heavy duty graphics workstation applications by a number of special effects firms. These companies basically demanded that the vendors port the apps to Linux, and they did. Feel free to do a google search and check it out.
Sad to say, but your linux knowledge seems either very dated or severely limited.
How so?
Well, not to put too fine a point on it, you seem to be clueless about linux, generally speaking. You describe ostensible shortcomings which I haven't seen in years, and the rest of your comments are clearly nothing more than your personal preferences, stated as if they were authoritative and unchallengable.
I really only know 1 person that is left running Linux. He also uses Windows ME (yeah!) to make up for Linux' deficiencies
I know hundreds of Linux users. Personally speaking, I use Linux 100% of the time, and don't find any need to resort to windows as you sugest, to make up for some supposed "deficiencies", which I'll wager turn out to be no deficiency at all, but rather a desire to run some particular windows-only binary. I'm not sure you see the distinction though, so I won't belabor the point.
Linux for GUI stuff is still at least 10 years below par.
You have no clue. I've seen and used your OS X, and I sometimes work with windows 2k and xp. I simply don't see anything to get excited about in either case. Can you call out some specific capability that you think linux lacks and mac/windows has?
Maybe instead of suggesting OS X, I should just say wait 10 years. But I'm sure that will get as much grief.
No need to wait, I'm using Linux now and enjoying it immensely. I hate to be the one to break this to you, but it's not all weeping an gnashing of teeth outside the mac user community, or the microsoft user community for that matter.
If xp floats your boat, great. If osx is your dream OS, bully for you. If I moved to either one of those from linux, I might gain the ability to run natively a few commercial apps which aren't currently available for linux (which I haven't needed in any case), but on the other hand, I'd have to give up a lot of power and flexibility. On balance, it would be a bad move for me - YMMV, but there's no need to concoct horror stories of supposed deficiencies in other OSes, or spin some lame "linux is dying, I only know of one person still running it" trolls.
It isn't half as irritating as being a Linux user is.
Sounds like a personal problem to me. Seriously, If I found it irrating to use Linux I would use something else - but the fact is, it gives me the least grief of any of the OSes I've seen. Sorry to rain on your parade, but I have no intention to switch to mac. Just out of curiosity, do all mac users have to bash other OSes to make themselves feel good abut their choices?
I switched from Linux to OS X because I eventually realized that desktop Linux distributions generally create far more problems than they ever solve. The reason Mac users always suggest switching to a Mac is that for a lot of desktop problems, Macs are the answer.
Like I said, I've seen and used OSX. Sure, it's cute, and it's nice that it's unix inside, but it doesn't solve anything for me, and there is no compelling reason to switch. If there were no linux, I would quite likely be a mac user, but there is Linux, and it is what it is. You mac users are just going to have to learn to coexist.
Some heads would roll if I ever told my boss that I spent a few hours resolving dependency issues when trying to install a piece of software.
I've seen knuckleheads who, instead of simply installing a package via apt (a 30 second job) waste half a day trying to "educate" themselves about how to use a compiler, and struggling with tedious grunt work which is done for you by the package manager.
I came in to clean up one shop where the previous "linux guy" had spend 2 weeks getting bind installed. BFD, installing bind! I nuked his mess and after typing "apt-get install bind" and editing the config (a 5 minute job) we were good to go.
There will always be clueless linux fudsters who claim it takes hours or days to do something, which any decent linux admin could handle in a couple minutes.
As I have said, I've used Linux for over 10 years now. I get paid to admin it, I know enough about it to leave it in the server room.
Sad to say, but your linux knowledge seems either very dated or severely limited.
Maybe for an embedded app like a mythbox or on my Linksys router, but wake me up when there is a real GUI and real working applications and a packaging system that works.
(shrug) Sleep as long as you like - meanwhile I'm using linux happily, with a "real GUI" (yes, I've seen and used OSX, and I prefer Linux). I've no idea what you mean about the packaging system - apt works a treat, as do the package formats it manages.
I laugh all the time when people suffer with Linux on their desktop.
Gee that's funny, I'm not suffering, and neither are any of the linux users I know. We all CHOSE our OS, and use it because we prefer it. But I suspect that you are suffering. Does it drive you crazy that some many prefer Linux or other OSes over your beloved OS X?
Like I said, I have no axe to grind, and if OS X is what floats your boat, good for you. It would be really cool if you'd consider extending the same courtesy to us.
I cant imagine how much extra work you have to do every day dealing with Linux.
Congratulations, thats quite a troll - but why do you think Hollywood special effects companies use Linux?
Think about it.
"Linux is free only if your time has no value" - Jamie Zawinski
No offense to Mr Zawinski, but that's kind of a clueless statement in 2004, even though it may have sounded cute and clever, and I'm sure he must have had some reason for saying it at the time. (1994 or so?)
The reason I use linux is that my time DOES have value. I can afford to by whatever tools I need for the job, and I can certainly afford any of the OSes mentioned here, cost is not even remotely an issue. But I buy and use Linux, and it serves me well, for my particular workload (sys admin, part time webmaster, consultant, 3D FPS gamer, part time student...)
So to all the apple fanboys, I think OS X is ok, my daughter uses it and loves it. I'm glad OS X works for you, and I'm really happy for you - but it's sort of irritating that you answer every single computer related question with the stock answer, "why not switch to mac?"
tja!
mcrbids says:
Geez. I just do Linux. Between being an admin at a few ISPs, and several businesses I run simultaneously, I admin between 15 and 20 servers. (always in flux as server X comes online, Y goes offline, etc)
Everything I do is either Linux or Linux-centric. (Perhaps the only non-Linux app is a usually-Windows client side package written in PHP-GTK that depends on intermittent communication with a Linux server)
Trust me, I would prefer to do linux exclusively, but the occasional windows or solaris work comes right at me from time to time. I work for the most part with Linux and Solaris in my daytime career. In my side jobs, I try to avoid non-linux work because it's a headache, and I do not want to be called at 3 am because some microsoft server has blue-screened. Occasionally an old client will have some non-linux work that he really really needs done and doesn't want to call someone new, so I will occasionally agree to do some windows work but always in the context of "you know, it would really benefit you if we could move this to Linux!" - in the same vein, I also do some work on Solaris, but it's a pain to manage compared to Linux, and I try to refer the Solaris work to others.
Before you call me lazy, realize that I've got more than enough linux work to keep me very very busy, and even if that were not the case, one can't be an expert in everything, so you pick your field of expertise and go for it. Mine happens to be Linux, which works for me and it works for my customers.
I do linux gigs on the side. It's all been word of mouth "Hey, I heard you do linux, is that right?" from people who know people who know of a need for some linux skills - They need a vpn/firewall, a new mail server, or to migrate their webservers from windows to linux, etc, etc. Almost all of the word of mouth customers have become permanent customers, and they call me when they need something done. A few of the customers (a shipping company, a finance company) have become regular customers who have me work remotely several hours a week, and the $500-$1500 per month extra from working from home does come in handy.
Novell Linux desktop
Of course - the register is a linux shop, thus sparing their customers the plague of microsoft security issues, and it sounds like they intend to require their partners to step up and show some accountability as well.
Maybe not the kernel, but one thing that I despise about Linux is the library dependency hell.
I see you're new to linux. a package manager will take care of those details for you. on any of my suse linux systems, I could type for instance "apt-get install openvpn", and it will grab and install all the dependencies, as well as openvpn itself, in one go. find out what package manager your distro provides and start using it, or install something like apt, which is native on debian but available for a number of distros.
I can download a binary onto Windows, and it just works.
LOL, if only that were true. I can't tell you how many times some family member has tried to install a shrink-wrapped win98 game on a win2k pc, and it simply won't install, period, due to inccompatibilties.
OTOH, with Linux, I haven't seen any such problems. am I just lucky? I dunno, but I don't see things breaking as the FUDsters are claiming. For instance, that good old 3D FPS shooter q3demo from 1999, which I originally ran on redhat 5.2? Guess what folks? It has run just fine on every linux distro since then: redhat 6.x, 7.x, 8.x, 9, fedora core 1, suse 8.x, suse 9.x, currently 9.2. It's been running fine, without being "recompiled", on kernels 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5 and 2.6 - amazing really, when you consider how drastically linux has evolved in that 5 years.
Same thing BTW with ut2004 - it ran fine on my redhat dekstop with 2.4 kernel, it still ran fine when I installed a 2.6 kernel on it, and it ran fine on suse linux which shipped with a 2.6 kernel.
In general, I found that every single program that shipped with the redhat 8, 9 and fedora core 1 systems - vpn, firewall, mail, ftp, dns, desktop apps etc, etc - all continued to run just fine when I upgraded the kernel from 2.4 to 2.6, in stark contrast to the shrill cries of the naysayers.
Isn't it perhaps more likely that a program that has to be recompiled depending on the kernel version is just an example of piss poor programming?
Today, Solaris is far less expensive than Red Hat or SUSE. The list price on a two-way Red Hat is about $799 per year. My first year price for Solaris with service and support and the right-to-use license is about the same as Red Hat.
Of course, you CAN find expensive versions of Linux - how much do you want to spend? I'm sure we can find a way to accomodate you. Big corporations tend to go for the expensive options when it comes to OSes and software.
But what the man doesn't want to mention, is that you can get suse professional for $59 and set up a desktop, server, or whatever. updates for 2 years via suse/yast, or install apt, and get upgrades & legacy support that way. Many small businesses are quite happy with that arrangement.
Suse Linux runs just fine on my laptop, or on my 4-way opteron server, or on the mainframe, if I want it, and the Suse tradition of reliability and solid engineering continues under Novell's leadership.
The main reason why I don't use Linux on my desktop is GAMES.
I have been using Linux on the desktop for years. I play games, way too much in fact. I like 3D FPS, so I play things like ut2004, doom3, and that old standby quake 3 arena, which still has a lot of people playing it out there.
On the mellow side there are things like frozen bubble as well as pysol and other variations on the card-game-with-soundtrack theme.
Sure, there aren't as many titles currently available as there for the ms windows platform, but if that's the worst of my problems, then life is good. I certainly see no reason to switch to ms windows just to make it easier to play a few games that aren't native linux. If the game doesn't have a linux port, too bad - it doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned, and meanwhile life goes on.
SuSE, Turbolinux, and Connectiva. Not exactly a star studded cast
SuSE was the star, since UL was basically SuSE, with the other 3 distros along for the ride.