All of the latest games? Sorry, that can come only with some solid corporate backing. If we had that, linux would be a OS at #2 that could actually kick windows at #1.
I know. It's not necessarily Linux's fault that most games don't work brilliantly on it. That's not Linux's fault; it's Microsoft's fault. However, it is a problem with Linux.
Currently that corporate backing simply doesnt exist and i have always wondered why. Apple has a quick time player for windows, why doesnt it have one for linux ? Adobe PDFs - why doesnt it have a reader for linux ? Macromedia only recently release a buggy flash player (still in beta) for linux that cant run most of the stuff i could find online.
The Flash player works fine in Mozilla for me. And I can read PDFs on Linux - I have xpdf, KGhostview, GGV and the official Adobe Acrobat Reader - that's four applications on Linux that can read PDFs - four times as many as I had when using Windows.
Then some people blow smoke about "usability" and "not compatible with as much hardware as Windows XP." What shit.
Shit? Fine, maybe you'd like to come round to my house and show me how to install my winmodem on Linux. You can have fun scouring the Internet searching for a device driver, find out where to put it in my kernel source tree, compile the kernel successfully without breaking anything, and getting KPPP to recognise it. How does that sound?
You say, "I don't mean for this to come across as trollish," but that's OK. You can't hide the truth.
I know. I'm not hiding the truth. I'm presenting it for your perusal.
Is that you trade off usability for common sense. The Red Hat installer checks the other partition and asks you several times to make sure that you really are sure that you want to wipe Windows (if you do; if you don't, it comes with a disk partitioner). The Windows installer just bulldozes over whatever's already on the disk for the sake of user-friendliness.
So basically it boils down to whether or not you want something 'without the technical mumbo-jumbo' or something which 'won't wipe everything I've already got'. Unfortunately for Linux, most people choose the former.
You have that completely correct; no matter what the Linux geeks want, it's what the remaining 70/80/99% of the population want which really matters to the vendors.
Though GUI preferences are purely a matter of personal taste.;-)
Does that sound fair to you? Compare the most "user-friendly" versions of Windows and Linux.
OK, I have my monitor, keyboard, mouse, sound card and speakers, printer, graphics card, scanner, modem and digital camera.
Windows is compatible with all of it.
Linux is compatible with all of it but the modem and the digital camera. The only reason I can type this now is because I got an external serial modem to replace my softmodem, at a cost of £70 - or about $110.
So, from my POV, Linux probably won't be as compatible with my existing hardware as Windows XP without cashing out.
Alright then. I find that all of the standard elements of a windows install (refering to Windows XP here right now) collaborate to provide an ugly, uninteresting, and unproductive working environment.
The only thing I can stand about Windows' GUI interface is Mozilla. And I can run that on Linux. Everything else - widgets and window managers combined - they just don't blow my skirt up.
For the record, my server runs Linux. I considered FreeBSD, but the variety of non-standard places to look for configuration files baffled me into choosing differently. I've got a handle on it now, but... from my experiences with RedHat and Debian and FreeBSD, I prefer RedHat more.
As has been said many times before, Linux is not easier to use than Windows (I don't care what you say, it isn't), it doesn't run all of the latest games, and it's not compatible with as much hardware as Windows XP. It really is that simple.
I don't mean for this to come across as trollish; it's just that so many people here seem to want to dance around the issue of Linux's usability. I love Linux and it has many advantages over Windows, but its ease of use does leave a bit to be desired.
This Ghandi quote seems like a prudent way to start the article. many self confessed geeks see the OSS cause as a revolution of comparable importance with revolutions of a more conventional political nature. Microsoft can be seen as the established power structure which has grown greedy and corrupt, and OSS is the 'will of the people', wishing to wrestle itself free from tyrany.
That is quite like how I see the current situation, though I don't think that OSS is the will of the people. At the moment, the will of the people is Microsoft products. I believe that if OSS developers just carry on working, keep alert, and stay receptive to the needs of users and developers alike, Linux and its accompanying applications will win out over Microsoft.
It is easy to get caught up in the spirit of jihad, but if the 'war' against Micro$oft's monopoly is to succeed then such an endulgance is counter-productive.
As long as the 'jihad' spirit doesn't distract Linux developers, I can't really see what's wrong with it.
M$ is just another corporation going about its business.
I would argue that Microsoft is not "just another corporation going about its business" due to Microsoft's sheer wealth and power. Microsoft has the ability to buy out or atomise just about any organisation or competitor they feel the need to destroy. Most corporations or organisations don't have that advantage from sheer size, though a few others do, such as WalMart and (to a slightly lesser degree, perhaps) EMI.
I expect that many of it's employees truly believe that they are making the world a better place. The fact that many people disagree with M$ can be countered with the standard corporate arguments: 'we generate wealth for all', 'we drive innovation', and 'you are all un-American commies and terrorists'.
I doubt that MS' employess genuinely think that they are helping to make the world a better place; I think they probably just see it as a job, like most people. Then again, I don't know anyone who works at Microsoft, so maybe I'm completely way out in my guess.
I also doubt that the FUD which Microsoft is keen to spout (and ESR, one has to admit) is going to continue working for much longer. When server administrators and companies see just why Linux is getting better than Microsoft products, then they will switch. If you notice that Linux has a 99.9% uptime rate where as Windows only has a 95% uptime rate, and Linux costs perhaps a tenth of Windows, then no matter how much Bill Gates and Co. start extolling the virtues of Windows, you'll probably go for Linux.
It appears to me that the struggle between OSS and proprietary software is just one of the front lines in the struggle between corporate consumerism and everything else.
Ding! Got it in one.
When an entity as large and powerful as M$ begins to take the threat seriously one can expect things to heat up. Already we see M$ and others bending the machinery of states to their will, such things are done in the name of freedom, security and prosperity. It is tempting to ask: whose freedom, security and prosperity?
The politicians'.;-)
I guess this is turning in to a bit of a rant, so I'll wind it up now. As the article states we have moved into the 3rd stage (see above quote) of the struggle.
Indeed.
Don't be tempted into thinking that OSS is therefore halfway to winning. I think we can expect future Skylarovs to be imprisoned, more DMCAs and some laughably draconian laws enacted in the name of freedom on the behalf of the corporate opressors. This is as much a struggle of ideologies as of competing technologies or development models, and one the general public is totally unaware of.
I don't think OSS is halfway to winning. This is for the simple reason that the corporate sector (which is where I'd assume the mass sales are; after all, they buy in bulk) hasn't yet embraced Linux nearly as well as its embraced Windows. We're going to have to do a lot to improve the UI and smooth running of Linux, and to increase compatibility with Windows software.
I think OSS will win the day, but it will take decades and participants on both sides will suffer.
I too think that OSS will win the day, but I don't think it will take decades. Linux has come from a nonentity to a virus-like threat to the Microsoft paradigm in the space of just one decade. In another decade Linux could quite easily have taken over the server market and a lot of the corporate market. It'd probably be making good inroads into the realm of the home user as well.
Disclaimer: I am not a communist, terrorist or anti-capitalist. Any opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don't like it then reply or mod me down.
Your ideas are fascinating and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Microsoft is doing more than exploring how to compete. Microsoft does not compete. They destroy competition. They only explore how to destroy a competitor.
Right, and Starbucks, WalMart, Disney, EMI and Virgin aren't?
People have written object-oriented world-simulation languages, just not in exactly the way you describe; they're languages designed for writing "interactive fiction", and the two best known are Inform and TADS (with Inform being my personal preference; kind of like C, only comprehensible and with a free Designer's Manual available for download).
The only problem is, even with these, it's very very hard to write a consistent and bug-free model of the world, simply because there are so many states for a text adventure game to get itself into. Then you have players who do crazy things in them, deliberately looking for bugs. Still, they're very flexible and it can be a lot of fun to use them.
Inform (and its standard libraries) is currently on something like release 6.10, so it's very stable and likely won't be changed at all in the coming years. TADS is currently on version 2, but work on TADS 3 is advancing well.
It's so damn unstable. Really. I use Red Hat 8.0 and going (on the GNOME menu) System Settings > Packages causes it to bring up a dialog box about reading the system state and checking dependencies before it completely vanishes without a trace. So, the graphical list of packages doesn't work. up2date installed the latest version of Galeon (1.2.6) fine, but I didn't like it. When I try to uninstall it with "rpm -e galeon" it just freezes dead and has to be killed, meaning that Galeon is gone, but RPM still thinks it's there, so I can't install the RPM of version 1.2.5...
He was asking whether or not the keyboard itself could run Linux all by itself, not whether or not it would work with Linux.
Since people have managed to get Linux to run on things like XBoxes, toasters and Game Boy Advances, then it wouldn't surprise me if somebody managed to get Linux running on a typewriter-cum-keyboard.
I think they must mean the use of alcohol after you get into a situation requiring the amputation of limbs. Maybe pouring/injecting alcohol into the site of a wound lowers the chance you need to amputate.
Then again, I could just be talking out of my hat.
1. Do they need to know how to install the OS first, or should I let them look that up on their own while I make them power-users?
Explain what the installation will do, step by step (disk partitioning and the like). I'd recommend showing them around the installation process, but coming up with something for them to do for the 10/20/30 minutes it takes to install.
2. What distributions of Linux and BSD should they be first introduced to? (I'm only familiar with Debian, and I know virtually nil about *BSD.)
I know next to nothing about *BSD as well, but I'd recommend showing them at least two different Linux distros (RH and SuSE, perhaps?).
3. Initially, do they need to be more adept at the GUI, or do they first need to know how to use the shell?
I know a lot of people will disagree here, but I would actually show them the shell first. Bash can do a lot of things here, and show them how to use the basic commands (rm, cd, cat, ls, w, id, top, grep, etc.) and then show them some of the cool stuff like Perl, tr, and awk. Then tell them a bit about X and desktop environments; then let them play with the pretty widgets like xmms.
4. Should I give away Debian CDs no-questions-asked, or should I talk with the almighty Parents so little Daniel doesn't install Linux over Dad's 'work computer.'
Knoppix. And talk to the parents as well, yeah.
5. Are there any other key issue I need to think about?
Tell them what not to do, and (most importantly) say WHY not to do it. If you just say "never never do 'rm -rf/'" then you can probably guess what's going to happen. On the other hand, if you say "if you do 'rm -rf/', you'll delete all of your important files (if not the entire thing) and then you'll be up the creek." Though they should be able to figure this out by themselves once you tell them about how the filesystem works and rm's different command flags.
Forgive the stupid question, but would it be possible to replace my current kernel (2.4.18) with this older one (2.2.23) if I wanted to run Linux on an older machine (P200)? From what I can see here, 2.2 is less resource-intensive than 2.4.
The librarians would've found out immediately. As soon as they tried to visit their own website, the censoring software would've popped up an alert page saying that it was censored. They wouldn't have needed to bypass it at all.
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I know. It's not necessarily Linux's fault that most games don't work brilliantly on it. That's not Linux's fault; it's Microsoft's fault. However, it is a problem with Linux.
The Flash player works fine in Mozilla for me. And I can read PDFs on Linux - I have xpdf, KGhostview, GGV and the official Adobe Acrobat Reader - that's four applications on Linux that can read PDFs - four times as many as I had when using Windows.
Shit? Fine, maybe you'd like to come round to my house and show me how to install my winmodem on Linux. You can have fun scouring the Internet searching for a device driver, find out where to put it in my kernel source tree, compile the kernel successfully without breaking anything, and getting KPPP to recognise it. How does that sound?
I know. I'm not hiding the truth. I'm presenting it for your perusal.
Is that you trade off usability for common sense. The Red Hat installer checks the other partition and asks you several times to make sure that you really are sure that you want to wipe Windows (if you do; if you don't, it comes with a disk partitioner). The Windows installer just bulldozes over whatever's already on the disk for the sake of user-friendliness.
So basically it boils down to whether or not you want something 'without the technical mumbo-jumbo' or something which 'won't wipe everything I've already got'. Unfortunately for Linux, most people choose the former.
You have that completely correct; no matter what the Linux geeks want, it's what the remaining 70/80/99% of the population want which really matters to the vendors.
;-)
Though GUI preferences are purely a matter of personal taste.
Does that sound fair to you? Compare the most "user-friendly" versions of Windows and Linux.
OK, I have my monitor, keyboard, mouse, sound card and speakers, printer, graphics card, scanner, modem and digital camera.
Windows is compatible with all of it.
Linux is compatible with all of it but the modem and the digital camera. The only reason I can type this now is because I got an external serial modem to replace my softmodem, at a cost of £70 - or about $110.
So, from my POV, Linux probably won't be as compatible with my existing hardware as Windows XP without cashing out.
Alright then. I find that all of the standard elements of a windows install (refering to Windows XP here right now) collaborate to provide an ugly, uninteresting, and unproductive working environment.
... from my experiences with RedHat and Debian and FreeBSD, I prefer RedHat more.
The only thing I can stand about Windows' GUI interface is Mozilla. And I can run that on Linux. Everything else - widgets and window managers combined - they just don't blow my skirt up.
For the record, my server runs Linux. I considered FreeBSD, but the variety of non-standard places to look for configuration files baffled me into choosing differently. I've got a handle on it now, but
Won't corporate numbers be more important, due to the fact that most companies by machines in greater bulk than home users?
As has been said many times before, Linux is not easier to use than Windows (I don't care what you say, it isn't), it doesn't run all of the latest games, and it's not compatible with as much hardware as Windows XP. It really is that simple.
I don't mean for this to come across as trollish; it's just that so many people here seem to want to dance around the issue of Linux's usability. I love Linux and it has many advantages over Windows, but its ease of use does leave a bit to be desired.
That is quite like how I see the current situation, though I don't think that OSS is the will of the people. At the moment, the will of the people is Microsoft products. I believe that if OSS developers just carry on working, keep alert, and stay receptive to the needs of users and developers alike, Linux and its accompanying applications will win out over Microsoft.
As long as the 'jihad' spirit doesn't distract Linux developers, I can't really see what's wrong with it.
I would argue that Microsoft is not "just another corporation going about its business" due to Microsoft's sheer wealth and power. Microsoft has the ability to buy out or atomise just about any organisation or competitor they feel the need to destroy. Most corporations or organisations don't have that advantage from sheer size, though a few others do, such as WalMart and (to a slightly lesser degree, perhaps) EMI.
I doubt that MS' employess genuinely think that they are helping to make the world a better place; I think they probably just see it as a job, like most people. Then again, I don't know anyone who works at Microsoft, so maybe I'm completely way out in my guess.
I also doubt that the FUD which Microsoft is keen to spout (and ESR, one has to admit) is going to continue working for much longer. When server administrators and companies see just why Linux is getting better than Microsoft products, then they will switch. If you notice that Linux has a 99.9% uptime rate where as Windows only has a 95% uptime rate, and Linux costs perhaps a tenth of Windows, then no matter how much Bill Gates and Co. start extolling the virtues of Windows, you'll probably go for Linux.
Ding! Got it in one.
The politicians'.
Indeed.
I don't think OSS is halfway to winning. This is for the simple reason that the corporate sector (which is where I'd assume the mass sales are; after all, they buy in bulk) hasn't yet embraced Linux nearly as well as its embraced Windows. We're going to have to do a lot to improve the UI and smooth running of Linux, and to increase compatibility with Windows software.
I too think that OSS will win the day, but I don't think it will take decades. Linux has come from a nonentity to a virus-like threat to the Microsoft paradigm in the space of just one decade. In another decade Linux could quite easily have taken over the server market and a lot of the corporate market. It'd probably be making good inroads into the realm of the home user as well.
Your ideas are fascinating and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Microsoft is doing more than exploring how to compete. Microsoft does not compete. They destroy competition. They only explore how to destroy a competitor.
Right, and Starbucks, WalMart, Disney, EMI and Virgin aren't?
What's special about Microsoft?
People have written object-oriented world-simulation languages, just not in exactly the way you describe; they're languages designed for writing "interactive fiction", and the two best known are Inform and TADS (with Inform being my personal preference; kind of like C, only comprehensible and with a free Designer's Manual available for download).
The only problem is, even with these, it's very very hard to write a consistent and bug-free model of the world, simply because there are so many states for a text adventure game to get itself into. Then you have players who do crazy things in them, deliberately looking for bugs. Still, they're very flexible and it can be a lot of fun to use them.
Inform (and its standard libraries) is currently on something like release 6.10, so it's very stable and likely won't be changed at all in the coming years. TADS is currently on version 2, but work on TADS 3 is advancing well.
It's so damn unstable. Really. I use Red Hat 8.0 and going (on the GNOME menu) System Settings > Packages causes it to bring up a dialog box about reading the system state and checking dependencies before it completely vanishes without a trace. So, the graphical list of packages doesn't work. up2date installed the latest version of Galeon (1.2.6) fine, but I didn't like it. When I try to uninstall it with "rpm -e galeon" it just freezes dead and has to be killed, meaning that Galeon is gone, but RPM still thinks it's there, so I can't install the RPM of version 1.2.5...
And so on and so forth.
Doesn't combustion generally imply the presence of oxygen?
The Mozilla 1.3 alpha has built-in anti-spam software. Just wait for it to go stable, and you'll have another demonstrably cool feature.
...can't you just pick a profile from the list of install options, and it takes care of the packages for you? I could be wrong.
;-)
Besides, some of us like the look of the sans-serif non-anti-aliased fonts.
He was asking whether or not the keyboard itself could run Linux all by itself, not whether or not it would work with Linux.
;-)
Since people have managed to get Linux to run on things like XBoxes, toasters and Game Boy Advances, then it wouldn't surprise me if somebody managed to get Linux running on a typewriter-cum-keyboard.
...the last time I checked, the sun wasn't burning. Should we be worried?
I think they must mean the use of alcohol after you get into a situation requiring the amputation of limbs. Maybe pouring/injecting alcohol into the site of a wound lowers the chance you need to amputate.
Then again, I could just be talking out of my hat.
Democracy is Rupert Murdoch and a lamb voting on one to eat for lunch.
Explain what the installation will do, step by step (disk partitioning and the like). I'd recommend showing them around the installation process, but coming up with something for them to do for the 10/20/30 minutes it takes to install.
2. What distributions of Linux and BSD should they be first introduced to? (I'm only familiar with Debian, and I know virtually nil about *BSD.)
I know next to nothing about *BSD as well, but I'd recommend showing them at least two different Linux distros (RH and SuSE, perhaps?).
3. Initially, do they need to be more adept at the GUI, or do they first need to know how to use the shell?
I know a lot of people will disagree here, but I would actually show them the shell first. Bash can do a lot of things here, and show them how to use the basic commands (rm, cd, cat, ls, w, id, top, grep, etc.) and then show them some of the cool stuff like Perl, tr, and awk. Then tell them a bit about X and desktop environments; then let them play with the pretty widgets like xmms.
4. Should I give away Debian CDs no-questions-asked, or should I talk with the almighty Parents so little Daniel doesn't install Linux over Dad's 'work computer.'
Knoppix. And talk to the parents as well, yeah.
5. Are there any other key issue I need to think about?
Tell them what not to do, and (most importantly) say WHY not to do it. If you just say "never never do 'rm -rf /'" then you can probably guess what's going to happen. On the other hand, if you say "if you do 'rm -rf /', you'll delete all of your important files (if not the entire thing) and then you'll be up the creek." Though they should be able to figure this out by themselves once you tell them about how the filesystem works and rm's different command flags.
It's called barratry.
This is one of two posts made by someone else after my account got hacked. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Forgive the stupid question, but would it be possible to replace my current kernel (2.4.18) with this older one (2.2.23) if I wanted to run Linux on an older machine (P200)? From what I can see here, 2.2 is less resource-intensive than 2.4.
The librarians would've found out immediately. As soon as they tried to visit their own website, the censoring software would've popped up an alert page saying that it was censored. They wouldn't have needed to bypass it at all.