Maintain properly? Choosing the correct distro is critical, who would suggest Slackware for a newbie for instance? Start out with SuSE or Mandrake, maybe even Lycoris/Lindows, more aimed for ease of use.
I have found using Yast2 on SuSE just as easy as anything on Windows.
"I have been saying this over and over: until Linux supports games and other multimedia applications, it won't fly on the home desktop. Not everyone plays games, but it is a killer application. Home users care about multimedia, games, and stuff like that. Linux is weak in those things..."
True enough of course, but its not Linux's fault, not much a kernel can do about about. Seriously though, until Dell or another big OEM starts selling and supporting Linux on consumer based hardware, games aren't likely to be flooding into Linux. Sure exceptions exist, such as Bioware, and ID games.
Red Hat has never been a great support of the consumer desktop yet, and this became more apparent with Bluecurve, but thats understandable, enterprises are demanding a Linux desktop/server solution as its cheaper and more relaible and offers the companies concerned greater control.
"Imagine if you were a sysad trying to explain an average secretary how to deal with troubles in linux. The problem is, that there might be a lot of troubles that the average guy isn't ready to deal with. In windows you reboot and things go fine 99% of the times. In linux you can keep rebooting and it won't improve your situation."
You don't explain how they fix it, thats not their job. You fix it yourself as you have the permissions to do so (and knowledge) and answer their queries in clearest English as possible if they ask. If they have problems clicking on icon to launch an app that secretary is going to have issues with whatever computer they use.
"It's true that in Linux you have less chances of "strange errors", but - if you have an untrained person on the other side of the phone, every error is a strange error (that in windows you solve by telling them "reboot")."
In all honesty if I reboot Linux and the issue continues and it happened out of the blue and nothing new was installed its most likely hardware.
"conclusion: if you think that linux is ready for the average desktop guy, try installing into a mid-sized company and deal with end users."
Well this is actually Linux's desktop's strong point! You don't need hardware driver support for winprinters or modems, and you don't need new games to come out on it. If a worker in said business says something does not work its the sysadmin's job to fix it, and I actualyl feel more satisfied having done a real fix, rather than a reboot.
"The Desktop is not a conquer - in fact, GNU/Linux is what it is for the sake of it. It's not a race! C'mon, who cares who wins the desktop in 2003? What's more important is that linux will become more and more stable and superior because its code quality and standards."
True:). But you've mixed up consumer desktops (which is what Matt says Linux is not yet ready for) with enterprise desktops, they are so different!
"On the long run linux will prevale. Right now that's not the top priority."
For Red Hat it never was the top priorit, they have never been interested in the consumer desktop. Actually taking a look at Matt's comments in full suggests that RH will take a look at the consumer desktop again in a couple of years, but in the meantime will concentrate on the Enterprise desktop, where Linux will exceed expectation. This is actualyl a similer route Microsoft took to get into business....Oh and MS has already lost a number of corporate customers and governments...
"now mod me down."
No need, just think about what a business needs in terms of software/hardware compared to the consumer on the street.
No, this is aimed at more the Enterprise, rather than consumer based software...Corel Linux was before its time and as others have mentioned Microsoft.
LSB is very likely to continue as SuSE was one of the first adopters of it, but LSB will not bring in more sales staff or profit. I may try calling Novell or emailing them about the LSB as I am sure Novell could push this more strongly.
IBM gave $50m, to me this is just a nod of approval to the deal.
Its easy to see why they would invest in SCO, just look at the stock price.
To draw some paralell to the dotcom era; lots of companies getting over inflated IPO's and getting lots of cash through that avenue...These people and companies getting rich don't care whether or not SCO will be around for the long haul as long as they get back more than they invested. So, if you invested 50 million and through the stock market you get back 75 million then all the better. Of course they are really aiming for some sort of victory in court, or some buyout by IBM, in which case they get back quite a bit more than that 50 million. Naturally they do their bit to spread FUD, "look at these Unix assests".
Is this really about destroying Linux? Yes and no...Yes in that they would love to have SCO Unix flourish in place of Linux and no because its much more about the money. Linux is in far too many places around the world now to be simply destroyed by anything SCO or Microsoft can ever do, at least in a world wide perspective (maybe in the US, but the US is starting to fall behind technologically, its not been the first in everything tech related for quite sometime and ever present badly formed laws have been stifling innovation for quite sometime along with a Monopoly who only got told off for trampling its smaller opponents into dust).
Will this ever reach court? I doubted the licensing scheme would work, and it didn't. I also very much doubt SCO will ever take IBM to court, I expect them to keep spreading the FUD to get as much money out of this as possible, then they will say something about the code having been removed and all is now well..
"Bugs and buffer overflows may hurt me, but Microsoft and SCO never will"
"use OS X for a week or two and you'll see what i mean"
I used MAC OSX for 14 months and still preferred Linux, especially SuSE for my desktop, however, if it came down to a portable it will be a close run thing as I do like the PowerBook line.
Obscure tracks was one thing, but ws always nice to find those bands which for one reason or another weren't well known. They also supported Linux with their download manager. The previous downloads was set to 200, something I had never reached anyway, but the new limit seems to little.
The final nail came with this site:
http://www.allofmp3.com which is a Russian site (has an English page though) and they carry a far greater selection of tracks than emusic ever did for cheaper. Plus you had a better choice on how to pay, you could just pay them a lump sum for a certain amount of data ($10 gets you a gigabyte worth), or you can pay $14.95 per month for unlimited downloads.
The other advantages, you get to choose how its encoded, from MP3 to even Ogg Vorbis!
I have downloaded a track for less than 5 cents, and this from a well known band, compared to the Apple service that is charging 99 cents per song. Its not Apple's fault that they set this higher price, most likely to get a valid license reuires input from the RIAA.
"Well, I don't know if I totally agree. But I will say this - if you want to play games, use Windows. I mean, we are not talking rocket science here, while Linux is a great OS for things like development, etc, it just isn't the system of choice for gaming. Honestly, how many games are really out there, especially compared w/ the number of games in the Windows market?"
How many decent games? Enough for me, although I miss combat flight sims. But is it worth having a partition to boot to Windows? Have yo ever done so? Its a major PITA. So there you are working on stuff on Linux with their apps, suddenly you have a little time to play something, and with dual boot you have to save work, shut down and reboot and then wait for Windows to load. Of course, once you're finally in Windows you then have to reboot back to Linux because you have just missed your play time window.
"But I still have to go back to the fact that if you really really want to play latest games, have a Windows partition so that you can boot to just for that. Compatibility will never be an issue."
Compatibilty may not be an issue, but its a major PITA. After awhile you'd tire of it.
Best thing, write letters. No-one knows the exact Linux market size as you're dealing with quite a few ways with which to get Linux installed, so yes its certainly small, but how small/large is it? And is it growing?
Whether or not the game should be ported not only depends on the size of the market, but also how it is coded, and in gaming the code tends not to be well coded due to market factors:).
Few people seem to have mentioned Winelib as an option...
"Sometimes the best drivers are the ones created by the manufacturer, unfortunately Creative's work on their drivers have been limited (and only for OSS)."
Probably because its proprietry? And as for only with OSS, thats actually not true:
http://www.alsa-project.org/
They use Emu10k also, oh and there is no mention of just using OSS, but more on OpenAL.
Yes it can certainly be improved and the best people to tell is not here, but Creative Labs.
1. Most companies have a time limit per customer, which varies between 5 and 20 minutes. Time is money to the company and also aginst other customers who are waiting.
2. Management is generally poor and these are the ones who try to make sure that each agent follows "the script", unfortunately if you know the answer and give it you can actually be penalised for doing so. Not all managers/supervisers are techs!
3. Your mileage will vary. Even within companies you're going to get quite a varience with regards to tech quality. Rule here is that if you're not happy, call back until you are.
Never doing tech support ever again, just too repetitive and boring:).
Don't compare this to the whole thing though, hopefully some other vendor and maybe LUG will step in instead. LUG's may not be the best for this, especially during normal business hours as they are run by volunteers.
You're talking corporate desktop here, something Linux should be ready for. Home desktop requires high visibility and marketing on TV and radio.
Yeah biggest surprise for people from the UK at the US checkout is the tax going on. just when you get exact change counted in line they throw in tax.
But at least you can see how much tax has added to the cost of the item you purchased, and so far shopping online and out of state will exempt tax generally...
"These guys are in the US, and they're trade.. so they're getting their parts at well below $200, and probably have a margin of 50%, excluding labor, which, admittedly, could be the deal breaker in the bloated US salary market."
Salary market is not really bloated. Living expenses are far more numerous here than in the UK and average pay, depending where you are isn't that great (non grads are lucky to get anything above $10 an hour). May complain about suffering whilst waiting for the NHS, but at least you won't be denied (legally they have to stabilise you), or end up with a bill over $10,000.
But I do miss seeing the whole price and nothing but advertised:).
Wow, first/. posting of something Mandrake related in some time. Is it just me, or have a lot of announcements not even mentioned Mandrake recently?
Even though I don't use Mandrake I do wish them the best, especially with a number of Linux distro's competing for the desktop. Hopefully they will make some money from this venture.
But make it a supportive "protest"! Bring them some positive PR.
Lets go a step further, "protest" outside of Microsoft saying we support innovation and the rights of the individual, but make it kind of supportive, with the words, "sco will get you next". SCO have basically made indirect threats to the whole IT community, and really if the IT community did get united on issues like this no other indutry could stand against us on issues we share common ground on. We're not always going to agree, but it shows maturity to at least know when to bury the hatchet.
Virgin Radio are streaming in Ogg Vorbis, tried to get this submitted as news that some would be interested in, but yet again the person checking for submits did not think it was news worthy.
Just go to www.virginradio.co.uk its there.
Wish one could see the stories they reject. Wonder if you have to actually be a subscriber to get stories submitted?
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe there will be a few more new jobs opening?
I couldn't take anything he wrote as being serious, was he actually being serious?
StarTux
Maintain properly? Choosing the correct distro is critical, who would suggest Slackware for a newbie for instance? Start out with SuSE or Mandrake, maybe even Lycoris/Lindows, more aimed for ease of use.
I have found using Yast2 on SuSE just as easy as anything on Windows.
StarTux
"I have been saying this over and over: until Linux supports games and other multimedia applications, it won't fly on the home desktop. Not everyone plays games, but it is a killer application. Home users care about multimedia, games, and stuff like that. Linux is weak in those things..."
True enough of course, but its not Linux's fault, not much a kernel can do about about. Seriously though, until Dell or another big OEM starts selling and supporting Linux on consumer based hardware, games aren't likely to be flooding into Linux. Sure exceptions exist, such as Bioware, and ID games.
Red Hat has never been a great support of the consumer desktop yet, and this became more apparent with Bluecurve, but thats understandable, enterprises are demanding a Linux desktop/server solution as its cheaper and more relaible and offers the companies concerned greater control.
StarTux
"Imagine if you were a sysad trying to explain an average secretary how to deal with troubles in linux. The problem is, that there might be a lot of troubles that the average guy isn't ready to deal with. In windows you reboot and things go fine 99% of the times. In linux you can keep rebooting and it won't improve your situation."
:). But you've mixed up consumer desktops (which is what Matt says Linux is not yet ready for) with enterprise desktops, they are so different!
You don't explain how they fix it, thats not their job. You fix it yourself as you have the permissions to do so (and knowledge) and answer their queries in clearest English as possible if they ask. If they have problems clicking on icon to launch an app that secretary is going to have issues with whatever computer they use.
"It's true that in Linux you have less chances of "strange errors", but - if you have an untrained person on the other side of the phone, every error is a strange error (that in windows you solve by telling them "reboot")."
In all honesty if I reboot Linux and the issue continues and it happened out of the blue and nothing new was installed its most likely hardware.
"conclusion: if you think that linux is ready for the average desktop guy, try installing into a mid-sized company and deal with end users."
Well this is actually Linux's desktop's strong point! You don't need hardware driver support for winprinters or modems, and you don't need new games to come out on it. If a worker in said business says something does not work its the sysadmin's job to fix it, and I actualyl feel more satisfied having done a real fix, rather than a reboot.
"The Desktop is not a conquer - in fact, GNU/Linux is what it is for the sake of it. It's not a race! C'mon, who cares who wins the desktop in 2003? What's more important is that linux will become more and more stable and superior because its code quality and standards."
True
"On the long run linux will prevale. Right now that's not the top priority."
For Red Hat it never was the top priorit, they have never been interested in the consumer desktop. Actually taking a look at Matt's comments in full suggests that RH will take a look at the consumer desktop again in a couple of years, but in the meantime will concentrate on the Enterprise desktop, where Linux will exceed expectation. This is actualyl a similer route Microsoft took to get into business....Oh and MS has already lost a number of corporate customers and governments...
"now mod me down."
No need, just think about what a business needs in terms of software/hardware compared to the consumer on the street.
StarTux
No, this is aimed at more the Enterprise, rather than consumer based software...Corel Linux was before its time and as others have mentioned Microsoft.
LSB is very likely to continue as SuSE was one of the first adopters of it, but LSB will not bring in more sales staff or profit. I may try calling Novell or emailing them about the LSB as I am sure Novell could push this more strongly.
IBM gave $50m, to me this is just a nod of approval to the deal.
Really no comparison to this and Corel.
StarTux
Its not fair, they fail to provide ports of this to Linux as a native application.
Form a group that helps develop an alternative to Photoshop, just like what happened with Film Gimp, now known as Cinepaint.
Its easy to see why they would invest in SCO, just look at the stock price.
To draw some paralell to the dotcom era; lots of companies getting over inflated IPO's and getting lots of cash through that avenue...These people and companies getting rich don't care whether or not SCO will be around for the long haul as long as they get back more than they invested. So, if you invested 50 million and through the stock market you get back 75 million then all the better. Of course they are really aiming for some sort of victory in court, or some buyout by IBM, in which case they get back quite a bit more than that 50 million. Naturally they do their bit to spread FUD, "look at these Unix assests".
Is this really about destroying Linux? Yes and no...Yes in that they would love to have SCO Unix flourish in place of Linux and no because its much more about the money. Linux is in far too many places around the world now to be simply destroyed by anything SCO or Microsoft can ever do, at least in a world wide perspective (maybe in the US, but the US is starting to fall behind technologically, its not been the first in everything tech related for quite sometime and ever present badly formed laws have been stifling innovation for quite sometime along with a Monopoly who only got told off for trampling its smaller opponents into dust).
Will this ever reach court? I doubted the licensing scheme would work, and it didn't. I also very much doubt SCO will ever take IBM to court, I expect them to keep spreading the FUD to get as much money out of this as possible, then they will say something about the code having been removed and all is now well..
"Bugs and buffer overflows may hurt me, but Microsoft and SCO never will"
Yes they could turn that off, but how would MS earn extra money through advertising via its affialites?
"use OS X for a week or two and you'll see what i mean"
I used MAC OSX for 14 months and still preferred Linux, especially SuSE for my desktop, however, if it came down to a portable it will be a close run thing as I do like the PowerBook line.
Obscure tracks was one thing, but ws always nice to find those bands which for one reason or another weren't well known. They also supported Linux with their download manager. The previous downloads was set to 200, something I had never reached anyway, but the new limit seems to little.
The final nail came with this site:
http://www.allofmp3.com which is a Russian site (has an English page though) and they carry a far greater selection of tracks than emusic ever did for cheaper. Plus you had a better choice on how to pay, you could just pay them a lump sum for a certain amount of data ($10 gets you a gigabyte worth), or you can pay $14.95 per month for unlimited downloads.
The other advantages, you get to choose how its encoded, from MP3 to even Ogg Vorbis!
I have downloaded a track for less than 5 cents, and this from a well known band, compared to the Apple service that is charging 99 cents per song. Its not Apple's fault that they set this higher price, most likely to get a valid license reuires input from the RIAA.
StarTux
To a point, how many have the time when you're busting your butt at work to look for another job?
:).
Its not easy getting a job when employed either, but...At least if you're unemployed in a bad economy its not so hard to know why
"Well, I don't know if I totally agree. But I will say this - if you want to play games, use Windows. I mean, we are not talking rocket science here, while Linux is a great OS for things like development, etc, it just isn't the system of choice for gaming. Honestly, how many games are really out there, especially compared w/ the number of games in the Windows market?"
:).
How many decent games? Enough for me, although I miss combat flight sims. But is it worth having a partition to boot to Windows? Have yo ever done so? Its a major PITA. So there you are working on stuff on Linux with their apps, suddenly you have a little time to play something, and with dual boot you have to save work, shut down and reboot and then wait for Windows to load. Of course, once you're finally in Windows you then have to reboot back to Linux because you have just missed your play time window.
"But I still have to go back to the fact that if you really really want to play latest games, have a Windows partition so that you can boot to just for that. Compatibility will never be an issue."
Compatibilty may not be an issue, but its a major PITA. After awhile you'd tire of it.
Best thing, write letters. No-one knows the exact Linux market size as you're dealing with quite a few ways with which to get Linux installed, so yes its certainly small, but how small/large is it? And is it growing?
Whether or not the game should be ported not only depends on the size of the market, but also how it is coded, and in gaming the code tends not to be well coded due to market factors
Few people seem to have mentioned Winelib as an option...
"Sometimes the best drivers are the ones created by the manufacturer, unfortunately Creative's work on their drivers have been limited (and only for OSS)."
Probably because its proprietry? And as for only with OSS, thats actually not true:
http://www.alsa-project.org/
They use Emu10k also, oh and there is no mention of just using OSS, but more on OpenAL.
Yes it can certainly be improved and the best people to tell is not here, but Creative Labs.
Because it gave them a choice? Other companies will settle for KDE and have equally valid reasons for doing so.
Interoperability is the key I believe.
Here is three facts from my time doing Tech Supp.
:).
1. Most companies have a time limit per customer, which varies between 5 and 20 minutes. Time is money to the company and also aginst other customers who are waiting.
2. Management is generally poor and these are the ones who try to make sure that each agent follows "the script", unfortunately if you know the answer and give it you can actually be penalised for doing so. Not all managers/supervisers are techs!
3. Your mileage will vary. Even within companies you're going to get quite a varience with regards to tech quality. Rule here is that if you're not happy, call back until you are.
Never doing tech support ever again, just too repetitive and boring
Yuck, who was the vendor and the LUG?
Don't compare this to the whole thing though, hopefully some other vendor and maybe LUG will step in instead. LUG's may not be the best for this, especially during normal business hours as they are run by volunteers.
You're talking corporate desktop here, something Linux should be ready for. Home desktop requires high visibility and marketing on TV and radio.
Bad SGI, Bad SGI
Wait till SCO comes for you
There is not enough money in our pockets,
For all our expensive jets
Bad SGI, Bad SGI
Wait till SCO comes for you
We know you must have stolen
Our Unix code
You've just encountered what happens on the average help desk call...Now times that by 20 or thirty or more...
Yeah biggest surprise for people from the UK at the US checkout is the tax going on. just when you get exact change counted in line they throw in tax.
:).
But at least you can see how much tax has added to the cost of the item you purchased, and so far shopping online and out of state will exempt tax generally...
"These guys are in the US, and they're trade.. so they're getting their parts at well below $200, and probably have a margin of 50%, excluding labor, which, admittedly, could be the deal breaker in the bloated US salary market."
Salary market is not really bloated. Living expenses are far more numerous here than in the UK and average pay, depending where you are isn't that great (non grads are lucky to get anything above $10 an hour). May complain about suffering whilst waiting for the NHS, but at least you won't be denied (legally they have to stabilise you), or end up with a bill over $10,000.
But I do miss seeing the whole price and nothing but advertised
And with the savings made you too can eventually get that G5!
Wow, first /. posting of something Mandrake related in some time. Is it just me, or have a lot of announcements not even mentioned Mandrake recently?
Even though I don't use Mandrake I do wish them the best, especially with a number of Linux distro's competing for the desktop. Hopefully they will make some money from this venture.
StarTux
But make it a supportive "protest"! Bring them some positive PR.
Lets go a step further, "protest" outside of Microsoft saying we support innovation and the rights of the individual, but make it kind of supportive, with the words, "sco will get you next". SCO have basically made indirect threats to the whole IT community, and really if the IT community did get united on issues like this no other indutry could stand against us on issues we share common ground on. We're not always going to agree, but it shows maturity to at least know when to bury the hatchet.
StarTux
apart from the fact that D2 sucks, they do make good games now and then.
However, there have been better...Total Annihilation for one.
Virgin Radio are streaming in Ogg Vorbis, tried to get this submitted as news that some would be interested in, but yet again the person checking for submits did not think it was news worthy.
Just go to www.virginradio.co.uk its there.
Wish one could see the stories they reject. Wonder if you have to actually be a subscriber to get stories submitted?