I have heard of those IM clients, and most of them operate on closed proprietary networks, and most of them have strangleholds in various markets tho none has globally... Because none of them interoperate, it becomes necessary to have accounts on all the different services which is just stupid.
Skype have terrible prices when you compare to some of the SIP providers out there...
Apple shit only works with apple shit, but so what? You can completely ignore apple (as many people do) and suffer no ill effects... You can buy a non apple phone, download music to it from a non apple music store using a non apple computer and non apple software. You don't even to know that apple exists. Apple are only well known in the US and parts of Europe, in other countries people haven't even heard of them and yet they don't care. MS is different, you cannot completely ignore them because sooner or later you will be sent a file in a proprietary ms-only format.
Apple do not make deals with hardware manufacturers, they make their own hardware and they don't stop you running anything on it. MS actually do worse by preventing you loading linux on the xbox 360 (compare that to sony and the ps3). MS have worked to prevent hardware manufacturers selling alternatives, they did it to beos, they did it to netscape, there is documentation about it all over the internet and they were found guilty in court.
MS do intentionally hurt consumers in many ways not least of all by trying to get them locked in.. Apple may well do the same, but they are small enough that consumers can ignore them.
Google talk interoperates with other services using XMPP - a published standard... I can talk to google users without having to use their service. People can *choose* to use google's servers and accept the inherent risks, or they can choose not to and still communicate with the same people. I choose not to use their service, but i talk to a few google talk users.
Skype doesn't interoperate with anything, you have to use their service and their client. Once you have sufficient users locked in to the service, using a competitor becomes pointless because everyone you want to talk to is only contactable using skype, at which point they can screw up however they want.
Skype would be worse than the phone companies, because it is controlled centrally by a single organization... At least there are multiple phone companies, they follow standards and you can interoperate between them.
A phone company's monopoly in a particular area is often unavoidable due to the cost of laying physical cables, a monopoly of skype is just completely ridiculous and inexcusable.
More wealth isn't really being generated, it is being added to the pile because others are taking it out... A small number of individuals take far more out of the economy than they put back in.
Well to be fair, was it really such a smart move to make so much of your economy dependent on a foreign country that you have no control over? Especially a foreign country that is racking up record deficits...
Anarchy is freedom... But there is such a thing as too much freedom... Under a system such as anarchy, which provides too much freedom, a small number of individuals will rise to power, almost certainly by force, and thus take away any and all freedoms from the masses by turning them into slaves. These small number of individuals, commonly known as warlords, will send their slaves off to fight resulting in thousands of deaths.
Or you can have a system which guarantees a certain level of freedom to everyone. Sure, such a system is theoretically less free than under an anarchy, but unless you would have been in the sub 1% of people who would have risen to power, you will actually have more freedom under a more controlled system.
In short, give people freedom and they will abuse it... You need some level of control to ensure fairness.
If i setup a new linux machine, i copy my homedir over from the old one (and with it comes all my settings), and install all the stuff i want from the package manager... Takes a couple of hours tops. Setting up a new windows machine is far more hassle, even if you have an installcd which is already up to date, you have to manually download and install your apps or keep swapping physical media around if you install from media... I have seen many people at work reinstall windows for various reasons, and all of them take a couple of days to restore it to a usable state. Some linux distros these days even install from a livecd, so you can actually use the system before it has finished installing.
It is easily possible to use a modern linux distro for common uses entirely through the GUI... There is no need for the average user to use the CLI at all.
On the other hand...
Advanced tasks may still require the CLI, but similarly advanced tasks on windows may also require the cli or editing the registry which is even more confusing and cryptic than a cli...
Also, while there may well be a gui based way to do a given task, on linux there will almost always be a cli based alternative... On any system, when a user gets stuck they will ask a geek for help.. Said geek will probably use the cli based method even when a gui based one is available because: Remote support is faster via CLI CLI methods are often faster and more scriptable A CLI is easier to explain because it is closer to a conversation and much easier to convey in textual or verbal instructions.
Yes, binary apps from many years ago will still run on linux, but you do need to install the associated backwards compatibility libs...
Windows has the equivalent backwards compatibility libs by default because there are far more old binary apps (old open source apps can just be recompiled for a modern linux). 99% of users will never need these libs so they often aren't installed by default, but doesn't mean it's not possible.
Linux can even run binaries intended for other unixes like SCO... When linux was new, it was common to run foreign binaries for some things because many things (eg netscape) weren't ported to linux yet.
Some ARM based machines come with windows ce, which sells based on it's name.. But in reality, ce has the disadvantages of linux (less apps, not compatible with regular windows apps) to a much higher degree while also having the disadvantages of windows (cost, no package management etc).
Here's the thing... Users aren't aware that the package manager exists or how it's used... Yet they are perfectly happy with the iphone app store which works in a very similar way. You need to advertise the features of linux to users, if users know what linux can do and how cheaply it can do it they will come... Many non technical people will actually choose linux over windows if you demonstrate it to them and explain the benefits.
As for the search option in Ubuntu, yes improve it and improve the descriptions... Make it so you can search for well known commercial apps and see a list of alternatives with detailed descriptions, encouraging users to try them out.
Another option, is to detect an existing windows install on a system and offer to turn it into a virtual machine... Encourage users to migrate away from windows gradually as they find alternatives.
Yes, you need to advertise it... The package manager works just like the app store on the iphone, or xbox live marketplace, you just need to show people that the options are available (and for free too) and they will like them.
You not only need to tell users what linux netbooks are, you need to advertise the advantages too...
A lot of non technical users will choose the linux option when you demonstrate and explain it to them. They realize that they cannot generally buy software in a store and install it, but they like that they can select the software from a searchable list and have it download/install automatically for free.
To most people the linux option is better, so long as they realize it exists. Selecting something from a list and getting it installed for free is massively more convenient than driving to a store, selecting something from the shelf, paying for it, driving home, trying to install from the cd, entering codes from the manual etc... Also, with it being free and trivial to remove afterwards, people can try things out... And if you don't like it, remove it again and try something else. If you buy something in a store you often can't return it as they will accuse you of copying it.
Most of the programs are labelled that way... They have their names, and then their function next to them in brackets and the programs themselves are categorized by function. Windows is much worse, it's just that people are already familiar with the names and where they're located... Categorizing programs by vendor is pretty unintuitive.
Ubuntu already has something like that for cli based programs (if you type the name of a program that doesn't exist, it tells you how to install it)...
But i agree, it would make a lot of sense to have an appropriate menu, something like: Click on a file, it opens it using the default program for opening such files... If such a program doesn't exist, it brings up a list of packages for opening such files in your package repositories. If you right click on a file it displays an "open with" option, that lets you select an appropriate program, including installing one from the package repository.
The "war effort" isn't so much an attempt to cram linux down people's throats, as an attempt to level the playing field...
I couldn't care less what other people use, so long as what they communicate externally complies with open standards.
What I and most other people want, is the freedom to choose what works best for us, and not be forced into using something because other people send you files in proprietary formats... Since MS try their hardest to lock everyone in, the only way out of this situation is to increase the use of Linux to such a level that it becomes impossible to ignore. If things were less oppressive, people would be less militant and various alternatives would live in harmony together.
Windows does have an installer, but most apps have their own nonstandard frontends to installation, even if they call the installer on the back end.. Linux distros are typically consistent and the installer has the capability to locate and download the software too, which you have to do yourself on windows.
Typically it is only new, beta grade drivers that don't come with the kernel... Once drivers reach a level of maturity they typically get included in, and drivers for core things such as storage controllers are usually always built in to the kernel. On the 30 or so linux systems i use (mostly servers, but 3 workstations and 4 laptops) the only out of kernel driver i have installed is for wireless on one of the laptops, and that's only because the third party driver provides packet injection support (there is a driver built in to the kernel which would work for 99% of users, but i need packet injection).
You talk about linux being hard to use, and yet you suggest slipstreaming? Sure, corporates have the resources and knowledge to do this, but do end users? How will you produce a slipstream cd when your only system is dysfunctional due to lack of drivers? Linux is now trivially easy to install, wasn't one of the complaints with earlier distros that you needed some technical knowledge to get it installed? Windows comes preinstalled and ready to go, aside from that it's much harder than linux..
And you can't edit a gentoo ebuild in the same way as a Makefile? Sometimes it's really just as simple as copying the old ebuild to match the naming convention of the new one, the ebuild will work out it's version based on the filename and download the appropriate sources.
I'm not sure of the history behind blender, but i seem to remember it was an in-house tool at a company that does graphics work and that a bounty was paid to open source it.
When it comes to gimp and postgres (and mysql)... Oracle and photoshop occupy relatively small niches, for the average user the free apps are more than adequate and save them a significant amount of money. As an example, for most people photoshop isn't worth the money, piracy rates of photoshop are extremely high and those who don't want to risk it typically buy something cheaper (and inferior) like paint shop pro.
There are common ways to install and remove software, but these methods are *per distribution* and not global... Once you stop lumping linux together and start thinking of each distribution as a system in it's own right (which they are really, albeit with a lot of shared components) it makes a lot more sense. The installation system on ubuntu for example, is far more consistent and usable than windows or osx.
Stable base to write drivers - Linux drivers are very stable and included within the kernel, no stable way to write closed source drivers perhaps but open drivers are better, and not having to provide binary compatibility allows the linux kernel to innovate in ways it couldn't otherwise... Conversely, the need for binary compatibility has been a thorn in microsoft's side for years, and whenever they do break compatibility big problems occur, for example: Vista - new driver model, drivers need to be rewritten, hardware makers won't write drivers for old hardware thus rendering it useless.. 64bit - 64bit XP was useless in terms of driver support, compare that to 64bit linux which supports 99% of the hardware it's 32bit counterpart did by virtue of being able to recompile the existing drivers with little or no modification. Alternative architectures - most of the linux drivers will work on other architectures, if i install linux on a ps3 i can connect virtually any usb device to it that linux supports and use it, if those usb drivers were supplied as binaries for x86 i wouldn't be able to do that... Similarly i could get a PPC, IA64, Alpha or even Sparc based system and use random PCI cards that linux supports. No, open source drivers are better, binary drivers have never given me anything but grief.. The current model seems to be working just fine, and the only real holdout is nvidia.
Too many distros is an issue, and more specifically in the netbook case - too many lousy distros being put on the netbooks.. the few i've seen were using unheard of distros where important things like the package manager were broken or crippled... Ubuntu works really well for the people i've shown it to, but not being able to (easily) install any extra apps on the netbook distros didn't do them any favors.
Games that don't interoperate cross platform are actually a step backwards... You used to be able to play Quake across different platforms, i played it on an SGI against a mix of linux mac and windows users... It seems pretty stupid to me that i can't play the same games against someone who has a different type of console.
It was always problematic to upgrade redhat, even in the days of redhat 4 etc... Debian has always handled upgrades better, and that's what ubuntu is based on.
There is no reason MS couldn't provide an upgrade application which requested a license code or credit card details, and then updated you to the latest version over the internet. The idea of distributing software on physical media is totally antiquated these days. They could do the same with anything else, have a package manager similar to the ones in linux and simply require payment (or other proof of purchase) before you can access certain apps, like the apple app store, steam or xbox live marketplace...
OSS hasn't typically been paid for... If you sell something for a profit you should offer guarantees with your product and repair it if it fails to live up to it's sales propaganda.
Second, OSS always gives you the option to acquire your own support regardless of the original author.
You would be pretty irresponsible to put your trust in something that can be pulled out from under you with no backup plan.
There should most certainly be obligations of some sort, otherwise consumers face being totally screwed when a company ceases support... On the other hand, you would be foolish to rely on something where support for it can be pulled from under you at any time.
It applies not only to areas like this, think of abandonware such as games and movies which are arbitrarily made unavailable to people who would be willing to buy them...
Continued availability should be guaranteed one way or another, and any business buying something of importance should be demanding guaranteed support. There is absolutely no reason to continue this stupid notion of machines being obsolete after 3 years, so long as it still works and does the job why not stick with it?
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I have heard of those IM clients, and most of them operate on closed proprietary networks, and most of them have strangleholds in various markets tho none has globally... Because none of them interoperate, it becomes necessary to have accounts on all the different services which is just stupid.
Skype have terrible prices when you compare to some of the SIP providers out there...
Apple shit only works with apple shit, but so what? You can completely ignore apple (as many people do) and suffer no ill effects... You can buy a non apple phone, download music to it from a non apple music store using a non apple computer and non apple software. You don't even to know that apple exists. Apple are only well known in the US and parts of Europe, in other countries people haven't even heard of them and yet they don't care.
MS is different, you cannot completely ignore them because sooner or later you will be sent a file in a proprietary ms-only format.
Apple do not make deals with hardware manufacturers, they make their own hardware and they don't stop you running anything on it. MS actually do worse by preventing you loading linux on the xbox 360 (compare that to sony and the ps3).
MS have worked to prevent hardware manufacturers selling alternatives, they did it to beos, they did it to netscape, there is documentation about it all over the internet and they were found guilty in court.
MS do intentionally hurt consumers in many ways not least of all by trying to get them locked in.. Apple may well do the same, but they are small enough that consumers can ignore them.
Google talk interoperates with other services using XMPP - a published standard... I can talk to google users without having to use their service. People can *choose* to use google's servers and accept the inherent risks, or they can choose not to and still communicate with the same people. I choose not to use their service, but i talk to a few google talk users.
Skype doesn't interoperate with anything, you have to use their service and their client. Once you have sufficient users locked in to the service, using a competitor becomes pointless because everyone you want to talk to is only contactable using skype, at which point they can screw up however they want.
Skype would be worse than the phone companies, because it is controlled centrally by a single organization... At least there are multiple phone companies, they follow standards and you can interoperate between them.
A phone company's monopoly in a particular area is often unavoidable due to the cost of laying physical cables, a monopoly of skype is just completely ridiculous and inexcusable.
More wealth isn't really being generated, it is being added to the pile because others are taking it out... A small number of individuals take far more out of the economy than they put back in.
Well to be fair, was it really such a smart move to make so much of your economy dependent on a foreign country that you have no control over? Especially a foreign country that is racking up record deficits...
Anarchy is freedom... But there is such a thing as too much freedom...
Under a system such as anarchy, which provides too much freedom, a small number of individuals will rise to power, almost certainly by force, and thus take away any and all freedoms from the masses by turning them into slaves.
These small number of individuals, commonly known as warlords, will send their slaves off to fight resulting in thousands of deaths.
Or you can have a system which guarantees a certain level of freedom to everyone. Sure, such a system is theoretically less free than under an anarchy, but unless you would have been in the sub 1% of people who would have risen to power, you will actually have more freedom under a more controlled system.
In short, give people freedom and they will abuse it... You need some level of control to ensure fairness.
If i setup a new linux machine, i copy my homedir over from the old one (and with it comes all my settings), and install all the stuff i want from the package manager... Takes a couple of hours tops.
Setting up a new windows machine is far more hassle, even if you have an installcd which is already up to date, you have to manually download and install your apps or keep swapping physical media around if you install from media... I have seen many people at work reinstall windows for various reasons, and all of them take a couple of days to restore it to a usable state.
Some linux distros these days even install from a livecd, so you can actually use the system before it has finished installing.
It is easily possible to use a modern linux distro for common uses entirely through the GUI... There is no need for the average user to use the CLI at all.
On the other hand...
Advanced tasks may still require the CLI, but similarly advanced tasks on windows may also require the cli or editing the registry which is even more confusing and cryptic than a cli...
Also, while there may well be a gui based way to do a given task, on linux there will almost always be a cli based alternative... On any system, when a user gets stuck they will ask a geek for help.. Said geek will probably use the cli based method even when a gui based one is available because:
Remote support is faster via CLI
CLI methods are often faster and more scriptable
A CLI is easier to explain because it is closer to a conversation and much easier to convey in textual or verbal instructions.
Yes, binary apps from many years ago will still run on linux, but you do need to install the associated backwards compatibility libs...
Windows has the equivalent backwards compatibility libs by default because there are far more old binary apps (old open source apps can just be recompiled for a modern linux). 99% of users will never need these libs so they often aren't installed by default, but doesn't mean it's not possible.
Linux can even run binaries intended for other unixes like SCO... When linux was new, it was common to run foreign binaries for some things because many things (eg netscape) weren't ported to linux yet.
Some ARM based machines come with windows ce, which sells based on it's name..
But in reality, ce has the disadvantages of linux (less apps, not compatible with regular windows apps) to a much higher degree while also having the disadvantages of windows (cost, no package management etc).
Here's the thing...
Users aren't aware that the package manager exists or how it's used... Yet they are perfectly happy with the iphone app store which works in a very similar way.
You need to advertise the features of linux to users, if users know what linux can do and how cheaply it can do it they will come... Many non technical people will actually choose linux over windows if you demonstrate it to them and explain the benefits.
As for the search option in Ubuntu, yes improve it and improve the descriptions... Make it so you can search for well known commercial apps and see a list of alternatives with detailed descriptions, encouraging users to try them out.
Another option, is to detect an existing windows install on a system and offer to turn it into a virtual machine... Encourage users to migrate away from windows gradually as they find alternatives.
Yes, you need to advertise it...
The package manager works just like the app store on the iphone, or xbox live marketplace, you just need to show people that the options are available (and for free too) and they will like them.
You not only need to tell users what linux netbooks are, you need to advertise the advantages too...
A lot of non technical users will choose the linux option when you demonstrate and explain it to them. They realize that they cannot generally buy software in a store and install it, but they like that they can select the software from a searchable list and have it download/install automatically for free.
To most people the linux option is better, so long as they realize it exists. Selecting something from a list and getting it installed for free is massively more convenient than driving to a store, selecting something from the shelf, paying for it, driving home, trying to install from the cd, entering codes from the manual etc...
Also, with it being free and trivial to remove afterwards, people can try things out... And if you don't like it, remove it again and try something else. If you buy something in a store you often can't return it as they will accuse you of copying it.
Most of the programs are labelled that way... They have their names, and then their function next to them in brackets and the programs themselves are categorized by function.
Windows is much worse, it's just that people are already familiar with the names and where they're located... Categorizing programs by vendor is pretty unintuitive.
Ubuntu already has something like that for cli based programs (if you type the name of a program that doesn't exist, it tells you how to install it)...
But i agree, it would make a lot of sense to have an appropriate menu, something like:
Click on a file, it opens it using the default program for opening such files...
If such a program doesn't exist, it brings up a list of packages for opening such files in your package repositories.
If you right click on a file it displays an "open with" option, that lets you select an appropriate program, including installing one from the package repository.
The "war effort" isn't so much an attempt to cram linux down people's throats, as an attempt to level the playing field...
I couldn't care less what other people use, so long as what they communicate externally complies with open standards.
What I and most other people want, is the freedom to choose what works best for us, and not be forced into using something because other people send you files in proprietary formats... Since MS try their hardest to lock everyone in, the only way out of this situation is to increase the use of Linux to such a level that it becomes impossible to ignore. If things were less oppressive, people would be less militant and various alternatives would live in harmony together.
Windows does have an installer, but most apps have their own nonstandard frontends to installation, even if they call the installer on the back end.. Linux distros are typically consistent and the installer has the capability to locate and download the software too, which you have to do yourself on windows.
Typically it is only new, beta grade drivers that don't come with the kernel... Once drivers reach a level of maturity they typically get included in, and drivers for core things such as storage controllers are usually always built in to the kernel.
On the 30 or so linux systems i use (mostly servers, but 3 workstations and 4 laptops) the only out of kernel driver i have installed is for wireless on one of the laptops, and that's only because the third party driver provides packet injection support (there is a driver built in to the kernel which would work for 99% of users, but i need packet injection).
You talk about linux being hard to use, and yet you suggest slipstreaming? Sure, corporates have the resources and knowledge to do this, but do end users? How will you produce a slipstream cd when your only system is dysfunctional due to lack of drivers? Linux is now trivially easy to install, wasn't one of the complaints with earlier distros that you needed some technical knowledge to get it installed?
Windows comes preinstalled and ready to go, aside from that it's much harder than linux..
And you can't edit a gentoo ebuild in the same way as a Makefile?
Sometimes it's really just as simple as copying the old ebuild to match the naming convention of the new one, the ebuild will work out it's version based on the filename and download the appropriate sources.
I'm not sure of the history behind blender, but i seem to remember it was an in-house tool at a company that does graphics work and that a bounty was paid to open source it.
When it comes to gimp and postgres (and mysql)... Oracle and photoshop occupy relatively small niches, for the average user the free apps are more than adequate and save them a significant amount of money. As an example, for most people photoshop isn't worth the money, piracy rates of photoshop are extremely high and those who don't want to risk it typically buy something cheaper (and inferior) like paint shop pro.
There are common ways to install and remove software, but these methods are *per distribution* and not global... Once you stop lumping linux together and start thinking of each distribution as a system in it's own right (which they are really, albeit with a lot of shared components) it makes a lot more sense. The installation system on ubuntu for example, is far more consistent and usable than windows or osx.
Stable base to write drivers - Linux drivers are very stable and included within the kernel, no stable way to write closed source drivers perhaps but open drivers are better, and not having to provide binary compatibility allows the linux kernel to innovate in ways it couldn't otherwise... Conversely, the need for binary compatibility has been a thorn in microsoft's side for years, and whenever they do break compatibility big problems occur, for example:
Vista - new driver model, drivers need to be rewritten, hardware makers won't write drivers for old hardware thus rendering it useless..
64bit - 64bit XP was useless in terms of driver support, compare that to 64bit linux which supports 99% of the hardware it's 32bit counterpart did by virtue of being able to recompile the existing drivers with little or no modification.
Alternative architectures - most of the linux drivers will work on other architectures, if i install linux on a ps3 i can connect virtually any usb device to it that linux supports and use it, if those usb drivers were supplied as binaries for x86 i wouldn't be able to do that... Similarly i could get a PPC, IA64, Alpha or even Sparc based system and use random PCI cards that linux supports.
No, open source drivers are better, binary drivers have never given me anything but grief.. The current model seems to be working just fine, and the only real holdout is nvidia.
Too many distros is an issue, and more specifically in the netbook case - too many lousy distros being put on the netbooks.. the few i've seen were using unheard of distros where important things like the package manager were broken or crippled... Ubuntu works really well for the people i've shown it to, but not being able to (easily) install any extra apps on the netbook distros didn't do them any favors.
Games that don't interoperate cross platform are actually a step backwards...
You used to be able to play Quake across different platforms, i played it on an SGI against a mix of linux mac and windows users...
It seems pretty stupid to me that i can't play the same games against someone who has a different type of console.
Try one of the hacked installs of OSX on a non mac and see if you like the mac version...
It was always problematic to upgrade redhat, even in the days of redhat 4 etc...
Debian has always handled upgrades better, and that's what ubuntu is based on.
The point is that the upgrade is not seemless...
There is no reason MS couldn't provide an upgrade application which requested a license code or credit card details, and then updated you to the latest version over the internet. The idea of distributing software on physical media is totally antiquated these days.
They could do the same with anything else, have a package manager similar to the ones in linux and simply require payment (or other proof of purchase) before you can access certain apps, like the apple app store, steam or xbox live marketplace...
OSS hasn't typically been paid for... If you sell something for a profit you should offer guarantees with your product and repair it if it fails to live up to it's sales propaganda.
Second, OSS always gives you the option to acquire your own support regardless of the original author.
You would be pretty irresponsible to put your trust in something that can be pulled out from under you with no backup plan.
There should most certainly be obligations of some sort, otherwise consumers face being totally screwed when a company ceases support...
On the other hand, you would be foolish to rely on something where support for it can be pulled from under you at any time.
It applies not only to areas like this, think of abandonware such as games and movies which are arbitrarily made unavailable to people who would be willing to buy them...
Continued availability should be guaranteed one way or another, and any business buying something of importance should be demanding guaranteed support. There is absolutely no reason to continue this stupid notion of machines being obsolete after 3 years, so long as it still works and does the job why not stick with it?