> In the end he threw up his hands in disgust and > stopped working on his new Linux box.
I've done that too several times on my Red Hat 7.3 system. Tried installing K3b because the version of KonCD on 7.3 was crap. Couldn't install K3b due to various issues.
Well, I can easily upgrade to a more recent distro - I HAVE Mandrake 9.2, Fedora Core I, etc. But I want to upgrade my 7.3 slowly to current so I get the experience doing it.
So while I was booting one of my various live CD's the other day, I used the fully installed K3b on the CD to backup my system - neat as a pin.
Old Linux is crap. Windows is crap. New Linux is crap - just less crap.
More important, Linux is FREE crap - so I'm not getting reamed financially as well as spiritually dealing with this crap.
There is NO software that "just works" - no matter what Mac people claim. We just have to deal with it until there is.
I spent the day trying to compile an Oracle Forms app - the stupid product would compile it, tell me it was compiled, THEN NOT SAVE IT ANYWHERE THAT I COULD FIND IT! And not only that, NOWHERE in the product can you set a path for the destination of the compiled app! Fucking unbelievable!
Oracle Forms has a couple 500-page books to explain it - and NOWHERE does it tell you where the compiled app goes. It SHOULD logically go in the same directory where the source form is - well, it didn't.
Tell me Windows software is easier to use. Go on, tell me.
Hardware is crap. Software is crap. In the immortal words of the Twentieth Century's greatest philosopher, Woody Allen, who summed up the human condition in five words: "Nothing works and nobody cares."
Complaining about Linux usability is truly laughable.
NONE OF IT IS USABLE. Ted Nelson said at a West Coast Computer Faire many years ago that there was NO acceptable software on the market. He meant it dead seriously and he was totally right. And he is still right today.
But again, at least Linux is cheap or free.
How a corporation can suggest that it would be more expensive to use Linux crap than Windows crap is just laughable.
If that corporation is worried about training costs outweighing license savings, I submit they should be worrying about stupid corporate practices outweighing both of them.
But then, I suppose stupid corporate practices has to be taken as an environmental given, not subject to change or improvement.
In which case, why bother whether Linux is ever taken up by them? It simply won't be no matter what the OSS community does. Even if we develop Hal 9000 in OSS, the corps still won't get it.
This is supposedly a valid point, but in fact it's another red herring.
Very few companies are seriously tied to any piece of software (unless it was developed in house twenty years ago and no one working there today knows how it works.)
If their software supplier goes out of business, where are they? Out of business? Maybe, depending on their cash flow situation, but usually they will simply switch over to a new system. Companies and organizations do that all the time. It can and usually is painful but it can and usually must be done.
The library at City College of San Francisco has been using one vendor for fourteen years - now they're looking to switch because the current vendor can't tie in to the college management information system effectively. Unfortunately, only a couple vendors of integrated library systems can - or so they claim. We'll see how it works out. I told them they should consider open source so they can spend the money they would give a vendor on having someone tweak the product so it can do what they want rather than what the vendor wants.
Any application - no matter how mission critical - can be replaced by an equivalent one. The only question is cost/benefit analysis - and that's only because many companies insist on migrating on a "schedule" (usually because they're in some sort of crisis situation because of past bad decisions) instead of doing so in a controlled, proactive manner.
Betting your company on software created by a third party is risky on the face of it. Open source at least mitigates that risk to some degree by providing source code.
A company needs to look at the "Big Picture" when deciding on whether to migrate from Windows to Linux. And the "Big Picture" says Linux is cheaper in the long run, regardless of whether you have to port some mission-critical apps.
And in many cases, you can just run those Windows apps on Windows machines - and everything else on Linux. Rarely does a company have to run a mission-critical app on every desktop from the CEO and his secretary down to Production.
Garbage post. Mod seriously down, troll, flamebait, utter drivel.
> what desktop is the Linux Desktop?
The one the IT department installed on your box - the one you get to live with, just like the Windows XP they stuck on before to replace the Windows 2000 they stuck on before to replace the Windows 98 they stuck on before to replace the Windows 3.1 they stuck on before to replace the DOS - or maybe the CP/M - you had when you started working there.
> he cost of the disruption in retraining all of > the users, will far outweigh the cost of either > switching to a useable, coherent UNIX desktop > like Mac OS X, or staying on the MS Treadmill
Bullcrap. The cost of the MS Treadmill is ever increasing. If your organization does the usual stupid incompetent "corporate training", then you might be right - that's not Linux's fault. In fact, however, numerous stories exist of organizations switching to Linux and discovering that it is sufficiently similar to Windows that most of their users pick it up in a few days or weeks with minimal lost productivity.
I just used Open Office for the first time to design a flyer. Since I had a LITTLE Microsoft Office experience, I was able to do the job easily. Any "power user" of Office can handle Open Office the first day. The training bugaboo is horseshit.
As for Mac OS X, there's no way it will evolve as fast as either KDE or GNOME - Apple doesn't have the developers. And it's not going to be any cheaper to retrain someone on the Mac than it is to retrain them on ONE Linux desktop - KDE or GNOME.
> it is best to have a firewall installed (either > hardware or software or both), but it is a pain > in the butt for your average home user, and most > people aren't willing to deal with it.
Hope you enjoy your new upgrade to Windows XP - because IIRC they are gonna turn that built-in firewall on by default.
Have a nice day.
(BTW, if you can't handle a simple firewall like Kerio Personal Firewall, you have no business having a computer connected to the Internet.)
Take another example - integrated library systems (ILS). A niche market, right? Well, there are a couple Linux-based ILS in existence and some libraries are using them. Still not putting Windows-based systems out of business - yet. But the software is being developed.
It takes TIME for the OSS system to PENETRATE NICHE MARKETS - because they ARE NICHE MARKETS.
Linux has only been significant for a few years. Microsoft was around and significant for the last fiteen or twenty years - and some niche market stuff started being developed back in DOS days. Come back in fifteen years and see how much Linux niche market software there is then.
Given how little most people know about Linux, I personally am amazed at how much niche market software is already available for Linux - such as ILS software.
Nobody "uses a total OS" - you use applications that are built on top of an OS.
Only when you have to CONFIGURE the OS - for hardware or software installation or user maintenance or some other ADMINISTRATIVE task - or when the OS PERFORMANCE is an issue - do you need to worry about an OS's "usability".
Since UNIX still runs most of the world's servers, I'd say it's still an open issue as to which OS is more usable FOR ADMINISTRATORS.
> Windows users pull their hair out. Many of them > ay "damn it, this is just too hard" and go buy a > Mac. Many Windows users say "good riddance".
Windows users try Linux and pull their hair out. Many of them say, "Damn it, this is just too hard" and go back to Windows. Many Linux users say "good riddance."
Many first-time Windows (in Asia, Latin America, etc.) try Windows and pull their hair our. Many of them say, "Damn it, this is just too expensive" and switch to Linux. Bill Gates does NOT say "good riddance."
There are people who should not be allowed to touch a computer (or a firearm, or much of anything else as well). You cannot judge an operating system's usability by these people.
The other issue is training and habit. People trained in and used to running one OS will ALWAYS have trouble using one that is not what they are used to. I am used to Windows 98 and to a lesser degree Windows 2000 Explorer - I find Windows XP Explorer to be confusing with its moving screens and whatnot. In fact, I'm used to using PowerDesk on Windows 98 and 2000 - not Explorer at all, so I find Explorer confusing to use on any version of Windows.
But I CAN learn to use any OS given a certain amount of time playing with it. So can any reasonably intelligent user. And that does not necessarily translate into training expense, either - especially since most corporate "training" is a fucking joke. You don't want to spend money training people to use Linux? Don't bother training them. Just give them the product and tell them to learn to use it. Maybe give them just enough training to point out the differences. Then sit back and stop worrying about a couple months of 15% less productivity - you'll get it back later when you don't need to pay the Microsoft licenses and retrain everyone every X years for a new version of Windows that screws with the eye candy just to be an "upgrade".
And don't drag in the supposed "fact" that X billion or trillion years from now, the Universe will be entropied into stillness. First of all, this is not a "fact", it is a theory. And secondly, I'll take a few trillion years as a reasonable approximation of "forever". YMMV.
Negative sum game, indeed.
For you, with that attitude, yes, it will be.
As I frequently remark, you're going to die. I won't.
> I can say that MS didn't force Windows on > anybody; it just won out over the alternatives.
This is truly amusing.
Did you follow ANYTHING about the Microsoft trial?
YES - they DID FORCE people to use Windows. Maybe not with a gun or broken legs - they used restrictive contracts and the latent stupidity in industry executives and IT managers. The fact that the rest of the industry LET THEM DO IT does not change that.
I've never understood why Sun - or HP or IBM - which has thousands of developers - could not do a Linus Torvalds and simply come up with a truly better OS than Windows? It's not like there aren't thousands of better ways bandied about everywhere from/. to the Communications of the ACM. Invest a few million a year, take your time, do it right. Then - based on the success Linux has had - open-source it and let it grow.
No, Sun wanted a new computer language. Why? BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT THEY COULD WRITE AN OS IN IT! An OS based on an interpreted bytecode language! Was this moronic or what? Only when it became obvious that it wasn't possible did they emphasize the "write-once-run-anywhere" aspect (which also wasn't completely true).
IBM did OS/2 - that wasn't bad but then they ended up having to be totally compatible with Windows which meant they would forever be playing catch-up to Microsoft jerking their chain. Another good try - no cigar.
You want to know the real problem?
The IT industry is full of what I call "Geek Morons" - brilliant people without a fucking piece of common sense.
One thing you have to say about Bill Gates - he's not a computer geek, he's a BUSINESS geek. A business UBER-GEEK. And no Geek Moron is going to beat him.
And yes, I do believe Linux will eventually dethrone Windows as the dominant OS - but I suspect it will take another twenty years - and by then some new software technology may well dethrone both of them.
And neither Sun or IBM will be the cause of it. Nor will it be by Microsoft's "suicide" as Cringely suggests.
As I said in my earlier post, I agree with you that getting two OS's to cooperate in Ring 0 is a major achievement.
As for the DRM people having a heart attack, they might not, since supposedly some of this "trusted computing" stuff depends on a BIOS chip certifying the OS before it runs - which presumably means it could prevent another OS from running in Ring 0. This is just speculation on my part, but it seems reasonable.
However, as I mentioned in my earlier post, this capability does seem to have significant positive security and system integrity applications - as long as Microsoft doesn't deliberate try to break it.
Even so, it will be interesting to see if the concept can be applied to OTHER OS's - such as the Mac, perhaps?
Slashdot Mirror
> In the end he threw up his hands in disgust and
> stopped working on his new Linux box.
I've done that too several times on my Red Hat 7.3 system. Tried installing K3b because the version of KonCD on 7.3 was crap. Couldn't install K3b due to various issues.
Well, I can easily upgrade to a more recent distro - I HAVE Mandrake 9.2, Fedora Core I, etc. But I want to upgrade my 7.3 slowly to current so I get the experience doing it.
So while I was booting one of my various live CD's the other day, I used the fully installed K3b on the CD to backup my system - neat as a pin.
Old Linux is crap. Windows is crap. New Linux is crap - just less crap.
More important, Linux is FREE crap - so I'm not getting reamed financially as well as spiritually dealing with this crap.
There is NO software that "just works" - no matter what Mac people claim. We just have to deal with it until there is.
I spent the day trying to compile an Oracle Forms app - the stupid product would compile it, tell me it was compiled, THEN NOT SAVE IT ANYWHERE THAT I COULD FIND IT! And not only that, NOWHERE in the product can you set a path for the destination of the compiled app! Fucking unbelievable!
Oracle Forms has a couple 500-page books to explain it - and NOWHERE does it tell you where the compiled app goes. It SHOULD logically go in the same directory where the source form is - well, it didn't.
Tell me Windows software is easier to use. Go on, tell me.
Hardware is crap. Software is crap. In the immortal words of the Twentieth Century's greatest philosopher, Woody Allen, who summed up the human condition in five words: "Nothing works and nobody cares."
Complaining about Linux usability is truly laughable.
NONE OF IT IS USABLE. Ted Nelson said at a West Coast Computer Faire many years ago that there was NO acceptable software on the market. He meant it dead seriously and he was totally right. And he is still right today.
But again, at least Linux is cheap or free.
How a corporation can suggest that it would be more expensive to use Linux crap than Windows crap is just laughable.
If that corporation is worried about training costs outweighing license savings, I submit they should be worrying about stupid corporate practices outweighing both of them.
But then, I suppose stupid corporate practices has to be taken as an environmental given, not subject to change or improvement.
In which case, why bother whether Linux is ever taken up by them? It simply won't be no matter what the OSS community does. Even if we develop Hal 9000 in OSS, the corps still won't get it.
Let them eat Windows - and choke on it.
This is supposedly a valid point, but in fact it's another red herring.
Very few companies are seriously tied to any piece of software (unless it was developed in house twenty years ago and no one working there today knows how it works.)
If their software supplier goes out of business, where are they? Out of business? Maybe, depending on their cash flow situation, but usually they will simply switch over to a new system. Companies and organizations do that all the time. It can and usually is painful but it can and usually must be done.
The library at City College of San Francisco has been using one vendor for fourteen years - now they're looking to switch because the current vendor can't tie in to the college management information system effectively. Unfortunately, only a couple vendors of integrated library systems can - or so they claim. We'll see how it works out. I told them they should consider open source so they can spend the money they would give a vendor on having someone tweak the product so it can do what they want rather than what the vendor wants.
Any application - no matter how mission critical - can be replaced by an equivalent one. The only question is cost/benefit analysis - and that's only because many companies insist on migrating on a "schedule" (usually because they're in some sort of crisis situation because of past bad decisions) instead of doing so in a controlled, proactive manner.
Betting your company on software created by a third party is risky on the face of it. Open source at least mitigates that risk to some degree by providing source code.
A company needs to look at the "Big Picture" when deciding on whether to migrate from Windows to Linux. And the "Big Picture" says Linux is cheaper in the long run, regardless of whether you have to port some mission-critical apps.
And in many cases, you can just run those Windows apps on Windows machines - and everything else on Linux. Rarely does a company have to run a mission-critical app on every desktop from the CEO and his secretary down to Production.
Garbage post. Mod seriously down, troll, flamebait, utter drivel.
> what desktop is the Linux Desktop?
The one the IT department installed on your box - the one you get to live with, just like the Windows XP they stuck on before to replace the Windows 2000 they stuck on before to replace the Windows 98 they stuck on before to replace the Windows 3.1 they stuck on before to replace the DOS - or maybe the CP/M - you had when you started working there.
> he cost of the disruption in retraining all of
> the users, will far outweigh the cost of either
> switching to a useable, coherent UNIX desktop
> like Mac OS X, or staying on the MS Treadmill
Bullcrap. The cost of the MS Treadmill is ever increasing. If your organization does the usual stupid incompetent "corporate training", then you might be right - that's not Linux's fault. In fact, however, numerous stories exist of organizations switching to Linux and discovering that it is sufficiently similar to Windows that most of their users pick it up in a few days or weeks with minimal lost productivity.
I just used Open Office for the first time to design a flyer. Since I had a LITTLE Microsoft Office experience, I was able to do the job easily. Any "power user" of Office can handle Open Office the first day. The training bugaboo is horseshit.
As for Mac OS X, there's no way it will evolve as fast as either KDE or GNOME - Apple doesn't have the developers. And it's not going to be any cheaper to retrain someone on the Mac than it is to retrain them on ONE Linux desktop - KDE or GNOME.
While I haven't done it, based on what I do know about Linux, this would be a nearly trivial task for any decent sys admin.
Ever hear of g4u (it means "Ghost 4 Linux")?
C'mon, morons, "Score: 0"? I cracked up! Mod this up!
Off-topic? Gimme a break! This is a flame war about Linux vrs. Windows! How can it be off-topic on
This is /. and these are geeks.
They can't not ever not stop not doing whatever it is they never were not stopping not doing - not.
I will now code in Perl, APL, and LISP for the benefit of those who believe C++ is an equally readable language.
Not.
> Microsoft OWNS web development
Oh, so that's why Opera crashes a lot.
Thanks, I didn't know.
Owns web development, my ass.
Owns web development by morons, yeah, I'll give you that one, you can have it, have a nice day.
> it is best to have a firewall installed (either
> hardware or software or both), but it is a pain
> in the butt for your average home user, and most
> people aren't willing to deal with it.
Hope you enjoy your new upgrade to Windows XP - because IIRC they are gonna turn that built-in firewall on by default.
Have a nice day.
(BTW, if you can't handle a simple firewall like Kerio Personal Firewall, you have no business having a computer connected to the Internet.)
Er, what part of that 90% marketshare is the Mac part?
And last I heard, Linux has exceeded Mac on the desktop (albeit a few quibbles about the exact numbers, perhaps).
Er, HP OpenView?
IBM tools?
Or do you mean FREE stuff?
Okay, what will Microsoft do in 2010 with less than 60% market share?
Not good enough? How about 2012? That's only EIGHT years away from now.
Want ten? I can spot you ten - let's move it to 2014.
Real question: what will you do when Microsoft has less than 60% market share?
Probably post on Slashdot: "Dream on."
My REAL REAL question: what will you do when Microsoft has NO market share - as in OUT OF BUSINESS?
Have a nice day.
No, they use Exchange - or their ISP uses some Windows crap - and the virus/worm/trojan/exploit crashed the server and he never got the meeting time.
Or maybe the server simply crapped out when they got too many emails because Windows crap is not scaleable.
Or maybe he decided a national lab really wasn't worth selling to... I might.
Ah, yes, I thought it had to be a reference to the wife.
As for being married, oh HELL NO! (At least, in the conventional sense - I view consortship as a superior form of bonding.)
Because it's a NICHE market, as you said?
Take another example - integrated library systems (ILS). A niche market, right? Well, there are a couple Linux-based ILS in existence and some libraries are using them. Still not putting Windows-based systems out of business - yet. But the software is being developed.
It takes TIME for the OSS system to PENETRATE NICHE MARKETS - because they ARE NICHE MARKETS.
Linux has only been significant for a few years. Microsoft was around and significant for the last fiteen or twenty years - and some niche market stuff started being developed back in DOS days. Come back in fifteen years and see how much Linux niche market software there is then.
Given how little most people know about Linux, I personally am amazed at how much niche market software is already available for Linux - such as ILS software.
Nobody "uses a total OS" - you use applications that are built on top of an OS.
Only when you have to CONFIGURE the OS - for hardware or software installation or user maintenance or some other ADMINISTRATIVE task - or when the OS PERFORMANCE is an issue - do you need to worry about an OS's "usability".
Since UNIX still runs most of the world's servers, I'd say it's still an open issue as to which OS is more usable FOR ADMINISTRATORS.
> Windows users pull their hair out. Many of them
> ay "damn it, this is just too hard" and go buy a
> Mac. Many Windows users say "good riddance".
Windows users try Linux and pull their hair out. Many of them say, "Damn it, this is just too hard" and go back to Windows. Many Linux users say "good riddance."
Many first-time Windows (in Asia, Latin America, etc.) try Windows and pull their hair our. Many of them say, "Damn it, this is just too expensive" and switch to Linux. Bill Gates does NOT say "good riddance."
There are people who should not be allowed to touch a computer (or a firearm, or much of anything else as well). You cannot judge an operating system's usability by these people.
The other issue is training and habit. People trained in and used to running one OS will ALWAYS have trouble using one that is not what they are used to. I am used to Windows 98 and to a lesser degree Windows 2000 Explorer - I find Windows XP Explorer to be confusing with its moving screens and whatnot. In fact, I'm used to using PowerDesk on Windows 98 and 2000 - not Explorer at all, so I find Explorer confusing to use on any version of Windows.
But I CAN learn to use any OS given a certain amount of time playing with it. So can any reasonably intelligent user. And that does not necessarily translate into training expense, either - especially since most corporate "training" is a fucking joke. You don't want to spend money training people to use Linux? Don't bother training them. Just give them the product and tell them to learn to use it. Maybe give them just enough training to point out the differences. Then sit back and stop worrying about a couple months of 15% less productivity - you'll get it back later when you don't need to pay the Microsoft licenses and retrain everyone every X years for a new version of Windows that screws with the eye candy just to be an "upgrade".
As I've said before, you're absolutely right.
If the document is readable, the font is fine.
GUIs are NEVER intuitive, that's a fantasy for Geek Morons. But if a few widgets can make things work easier, fine.
Whether a box is beveled or not, who cares?
The only issues of important in software is:
1) DOES IT WORK RIGHT? (i.e., does not crash, does what it is supposed to do?)
2) For the developer or company IT department: Is it maintainable at a reasonable cost?
Everything else is eye candy and irrelevant.
Geeks twiddle widgets for the same reason font makers twiddle fonts and assembler programmers twiddle bits.
i.e., they have no other purpose in life.
K3B is a CD burner program.
The other has me stumped, too.
It would be nice - but boring, too - if OSS used some sort of rational, boring, corporate software names instead of hacker handles to name software.
Although not everyone gets "Nero Burning ROM" either, you know.
I think Ben was blinded by a massive ass...
How about calling it "Loquacious"? Or maybe even "Locutus?"
Linspire?
Morons.
Dumbest product name I've heard in years.
Although I thought Lycoris was not too bright either.
Get off the "L" monkey, guys. Linus thought of it first.
> We'll still all turn to dust, though
Speak for yourself, primate.
And don't drag in the supposed "fact" that X billion or trillion years from now, the Universe will be entropied into stillness. First of all, this is not a "fact", it is a theory. And secondly, I'll take a few trillion years as a reasonable approximation of "forever". YMMV.
Negative sum game, indeed.
For you, with that attitude, yes, it will be.
As I frequently remark, you're going to die. I won't.
Have a nice day.
> I can say that MS didn't force Windows on
/. to the Communications of the ACM. Invest a few million a year, take your time, do it right. Then - based on the success Linux has had - open-source it and let it grow.
> anybody; it just won out over the alternatives.
This is truly amusing.
Did you follow ANYTHING about the Microsoft trial?
YES - they DID FORCE people to use Windows. Maybe not with a gun or broken legs - they used restrictive contracts and the latent stupidity in industry executives and IT managers. The fact that the rest of the industry LET THEM DO IT does not change that.
I've never understood why Sun - or HP or IBM - which has thousands of developers - could not do a Linus Torvalds and simply come up with a truly better OS than Windows? It's not like there aren't thousands of better ways bandied about everywhere from
No, Sun wanted a new computer language. Why? BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT THEY COULD WRITE AN OS IN IT! An OS based on an interpreted bytecode language! Was this moronic or what? Only when it became obvious that it wasn't possible did they emphasize the "write-once-run-anywhere" aspect (which also wasn't completely true).
IBM did OS/2 - that wasn't bad but then they ended up having to be totally compatible with Windows which meant they would forever be playing catch-up to Microsoft jerking their chain. Another good try - no cigar.
You want to know the real problem?
The IT industry is full of what I call "Geek Morons" - brilliant people without a fucking piece of common sense.
One thing you have to say about Bill Gates - he's not a computer geek, he's a BUSINESS geek. A business UBER-GEEK. And no Geek Moron is going to beat him.
And yes, I do believe Linux will eventually dethrone Windows as the dominant OS - but I suspect it will take another twenty years - and by then some new software technology may well dethrone both of them.
And neither Sun or IBM will be the cause of it. Nor will it be by Microsoft's "suicide" as Cringely suggests.
the FSF's ongoing EFFORTS to neutralize legal threats to software freedom.
When I see some SUCCESS, I'll applaud.
> Oh yeah, disks fail
And how often do they fail if they are ONLY used for backups?
How often do tapes fail when they are ONLY used for backups?
I submit tapes fail FAR MORE OFTEN than disks when both are ONLY used for backups.
Prove me wrong.
And then explain how all the retensioning and other maintenance worries one has with a CONTACT MEDIA (versus floating heads) is not significant.
> Have you ever sent drives offsite with a
> messenger service? And expected them to live?
Anybody who does this is an idiot and should not themselves expect to live.
As I said in my earlier post, I agree with you that getting two OS's to cooperate in Ring 0 is a major achievement.
As for the DRM people having a heart attack, they might not, since supposedly some of this "trusted computing" stuff depends on a BIOS chip certifying the OS before it runs - which presumably means it could prevent another OS from running in Ring 0. This is just speculation on my part, but it seems reasonable.
However, as I mentioned in my earlier post, this capability does seem to have significant positive security and system integrity applications - as long as Microsoft doesn't deliberate try to break it.
Even so, it will be interesting to see if the concept can be applied to OTHER OS's - such as the Mac, perhaps?