Whats Matt have to say about freedesktop.orgs new X server? Suddenly Linux has the abilities of OSX and Longhorn right now and not 2 years from now.
Is linux ready or not?
inidividual users are not the issue: institutional use is.
Linux has institutional use, its called the Linux server. Institutional use is no longer the issue. Everyone knows for servers and for institutional use Linux is a good choice, the reason we dont have drivers, games or software for the user is precisely because all Linux users are at work using very standard machines designed for very specialized tasks.
And no, they stayed alive because of, *ba-bum* applications. Apple ensured a smooth enough migration path for Mac users to OS X so they didn't get thrown off the bus into Windows path--and believe me, it has been very tempting at times.
Why did Mac users of OS9 pick Mac over Windows? It was not because of price because Macs cost more, it was not because of software because Word didnt run and Macs barely had anything.
The reason Mac survived the mid 90s to early 2000 is because of multimedia software. Photoshop worked best on Mac. Music software worked best on Mac, the Mac hardware was designed for the niche, OSX was designed for the niche.
Look at OSX, I know art students and musicians and all of them tell me they picked OSX because of its superior artistic design. They tell me that Windows and Linux look like they were designed by blind geeks, they say geeks may know alot about software but when it comes to useability and design geeks lack creativity or the ability to innovate.
Artists respect artistic quality over functionality! Geeks respect functionality over artistic quality. Guess what? Linux already has the hackers/geeks niche, what I'm saying is why not compete directly with OSX so that Linux can be the poor mans OSX, a cheaper multimedia OS which college art students and musicians can use. Get these people to switch from Mac to Linux and suddenly Linux will have double the market share.
I'm not saying we should not focus on the corperate sector, but theres no reason to focus on the corperate sector because its becoming a success on its own, everything is already in place and governments already are switching to Linux. Most of Asia is pro-Linux, most of Europe is considering Linux, I see no reason why we should focus on energies there any further when things already seem to be taking off.
I think we should focus on building a core niche market so that people who sell software actually have an audience to sell to.
"Linux already has a niche market, and mindshare. They're called servers."
No I mean for users. They dont have schools, they dont have the gamers, they dont even have the artsy mac users.
"Pray-tell, in this day and age of MS ubiquity, what a niche market is. As soon as it has any sort of profile the Redmond Monster will roar down upon it. Niches are hiding-places, not growth zones."
Think of the movement as a tree, without roots you have no movement. There is a need for roots, corperate users do not contribute back while gamers, artists, musicians do contribute back and will defend you. Mac is only alive because of these zealots who will defend them to the death.
Someone at work can afford OSX so they will never make a good niche or community, why should they? They use the software for a living, they dont really care.
"Your reply illustrates exactly the point you are missing. The dominance of Windows has nothing to do with its user-base in homes."
Funny but Ibooks are selling pretty well and they dont run Windows.
When I'm out to buy a laptop, I'm going to buy what works.
"For Linux to achieve the same dominance, it must conquer the corporate desktop."
No I think Linux needs a niche market to build mindshare. The corporate desktop is exactly what IBM went for with OS/2 and they got beat by Microsoft because they ignored the little guy.
You need a niche market, the college student/business professional market is a good niche market. After a while when enough people use Linux, when its time to upgrade their friends will have already introduced them to Linux.
The corperate world is pointless because most people who work at corperations have the money to buy OSX, the only market for Linux is for people who want the poor mans OSX.
No ones going to care as long as the newer cards can use it. The popular cards like Gforce Series, the ATI Raedon series etc.
No one should expect the TNT or 3DFX series of cards to work.
All of these esoteric applications are things the average user never uses. The only thing average people use a computer for, word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing, emaiil/IM/chat and multimedia playback.
Nothing else matters, the fruityloop music program only producers use, the visual studio only programmers use.
So if everyone is using the same few programs the only thing Linux is missing is drivers, a professional looking Desktop, and decent fonts.
Honestly when I'm writing my paper in open office for school I don't give a damn about some esoteric Windows program which might not run, I'm trying to do my work.
Its funny that you care about applications when most Applications from Windows 3.1 did not work on Windows 98, and most applications from Windows 98 do not work on Windows XP, I'm guessing alot of old XP programs wont work on 64bit longhorn.
People who upgrade to new software do not expect ALL their old software to work, they just expect an alternative to exist.
Thats exactly my point, maybe someone like xouvert can step up and handle the role of making the drivers and submitting those kinds of patches.
driver support will come soon enough, and for people who use the standard ATI/Nvidia, we should all focus on getting Nvidia to write good drivers.
KDE & Gnome should work on a standard composition manager together.
I'd hope Enlightenment could also work with KDE and Gnome on this, we need standards now.
I do not care much about the new eye candy if I cannot use it and I do not really want software based hacks.
Can this eye candy work with my ATI or Nvidia card?
Linux will never get beyond the "its hard to use" stigma until its so much easier to use and so much nicer looking than Windows that theres no arguement left. Only then will Linux truely be ready for the Desktop.
I think we need to talk to people from KDE, Enlightenment, Gnome, and all of these groups and as a combined effort build the first and default composition manager.
They found out when we did. Xouvert and Xwin are not working together, the xwin people consider them to be amateur script kiddies.
Now, theres nothing wrong with amateur hackers coding for X, this is actually a very good thing because eventually amateurs become experts. Xouverts purpose is to attract new developers.
Xwin and Xfree people do not like newbie developers and they arent open, they will not help you and they do not work with you until you prove yourself.
This is not a good learning environment and so the only way we will have faster developer uptake is if we actually have a newbie x hackers version for testing and experimental shit, and a version the professionals support.
Kind of like how we can have Slackware/Debian and then have Redhat and Suse.
Like most of the economically naive, you're confused by the difference between "money" and "wealth".
Hint: 150 years ago, 90% of the population of the United States farmed for a living.
Nowadays only about 5% of the population is on the land.
By your "reasoning" we should have 85% unemployment. But we don't. Rather, we have a civilization in which even those on welfare live a lifestyle that wouldn't have been possible for the wealthiest king of former centuries.
This FACT should clue you in that there's something wrong with your "analysis".
We also have less land owners, we have more jobs but the same jobs pay alot less, so now we have alot of service jobs and less professional jobs.
Whats your point? productivity just means lower paying service jobs, which will attract more illegal immigrants to take those jobs while the average American will remain unemployed.
Illegal immigrants don't mind living in ghettos or in the projects, they don't mind dodging drive bys every day on their way to McDonalds to work, how about you?
Why should we care about income increases? All this will mean is everything will cost more, rent will go up, and there will be less jobs.
I'm not interested in any more productivity gains, I'm not interested in robots, you know why? Robots and productivity gains cause me to get fired, make my rent go up, cause my taxes to go higher and make me spend more on education/degrees.
First lets start with quotes.
"There is a light at the end of the desktop tunnel,", Michael Tiemann, chief technology officer of Red Hat,
"We have clearly seen a limited amount (of demand for desktop Linux) to date in the U.S.,"
Randy Groves, vice president at Dell
"I would say that for the consumer market place, Windows probably continues to be the right product line," CEO Redhat.
All this year they said it was ready and now a few deals happen and its not ready?
Now suddenly IBM and Redhat volunteer to offer their opinions which we didnt ask for by the way. No one asked "Hey Redhat CEO, hey IBM, whats your opinions of Linux on the desktop?"
And even if we did ask, do we need to be told its not ready? Linux isnt ready for the super computer so why isnt Redhat and IBM volunteering to admit "Linux just isnt ready for the super computer"
Redhat and IBM are hypocrites, earlier this year they said Linux was ready.
proof1proof2
And now Redhat has changed their mind, they want to focus on the super computer now?
What is this Bullshit? Why is IBM, Redhat, and every other company going out of their way to make the statement "Linux is not ready for the desktop"
Tell us something we all dont already know stupid, of course we know Linux is not ready for the desktop IBM, what is your plan IBM to make Linux ready?
This sounds like some bullshit Microsoft would say but why is Linux going out of their way to say this? I'll explain. Its not that Linux is not ready for the desktop, its that IBM is not ready for Linux on the desktop, Redhat is not ready for Linux on the desktop, Suse/Novell is not ready for Linux on the desktop.
However we have alot of companies who are, we have Lindows, Mandrake, Xandros, Lycoris all ready for Linux on the desktop, all working to further the cause.
IBM does not want these companies to do that because IBM's companies arent ready, if Redhat or Novell suddenly had a desktop product suddenly all these 3 companies would be saying "Linux is ready for the Desktop.
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Whats Matt have to say about freedesktop.orgs new X server? Suddenly Linux has the abilities of OSX and Longhorn right now and not 2 years from now. Is linux ready or not?
inidividual users are not the issue: institutional use is. Linux has institutional use, its called the Linux server. Institutional use is no longer the issue. Everyone knows for servers and for institutional use Linux is a good choice, the reason we dont have drivers, games or software for the user is precisely because all Linux users are at work using very standard machines designed for very specialized tasks. And no, they stayed alive because of, *ba-bum* applications. Apple ensured a smooth enough migration path for Mac users to OS X so they didn't get thrown off the bus into Windows path--and believe me, it has been very tempting at times. Why did Mac users of OS9 pick Mac over Windows? It was not because of price because Macs cost more, it was not because of software because Word didnt run and Macs barely had anything. The reason Mac survived the mid 90s to early 2000 is because of multimedia software. Photoshop worked best on Mac. Music software worked best on Mac, the Mac hardware was designed for the niche, OSX was designed for the niche. Look at OSX, I know art students and musicians and all of them tell me they picked OSX because of its superior artistic design. They tell me that Windows and Linux look like they were designed by blind geeks, they say geeks may know alot about software but when it comes to useability and design geeks lack creativity or the ability to innovate. Artists respect artistic quality over functionality! Geeks respect functionality over artistic quality. Guess what? Linux already has the hackers/geeks niche, what I'm saying is why not compete directly with OSX so that Linux can be the poor mans OSX, a cheaper multimedia OS which college art students and musicians can use. Get these people to switch from Mac to Linux and suddenly Linux will have double the market share. I'm not saying we should not focus on the corperate sector, but theres no reason to focus on the corperate sector because its becoming a success on its own, everything is already in place and governments already are switching to Linux. Most of Asia is pro-Linux, most of Europe is considering Linux, I see no reason why we should focus on energies there any further when things already seem to be taking off. I think we should focus on building a core niche market so that people who sell software actually have an audience to sell to.
"Linux already has a niche market, and mindshare. They're called servers." No I mean for users. They dont have schools, they dont have the gamers, they dont even have the artsy mac users. "Pray-tell, in this day and age of MS ubiquity, what a niche market is. As soon as it has any sort of profile the Redmond Monster will roar down upon it. Niches are hiding-places, not growth zones." Think of the movement as a tree, without roots you have no movement. There is a need for roots, corperate users do not contribute back while gamers, artists, musicians do contribute back and will defend you. Mac is only alive because of these zealots who will defend them to the death. Someone at work can afford OSX so they will never make a good niche or community, why should they? They use the software for a living, they dont really care.
if it makes people say wow its useful
Xouvert is Xfree, so why not merge it into Xouvert?
"Your reply illustrates exactly the point you are missing. The dominance of Windows has nothing to do with its user-base in homes." Funny but Ibooks are selling pretty well and they dont run Windows. When I'm out to buy a laptop, I'm going to buy what works. "For Linux to achieve the same dominance, it must conquer the corporate desktop." No I think Linux needs a niche market to build mindshare. The corporate desktop is exactly what IBM went for with OS/2 and they got beat by Microsoft because they ignored the little guy. You need a niche market, the college student/business professional market is a good niche market. After a while when enough people use Linux, when its time to upgrade their friends will have already introduced them to Linux. The corperate world is pointless because most people who work at corperations have the money to buy OSX, the only market for Linux is for people who want the poor mans OSX.
No ones going to care as long as the newer cards can use it. The popular cards like Gforce Series, the ATI Raedon series etc. No one should expect the TNT or 3DFX series of cards to work.
All of these esoteric applications are things the average user never uses. The only thing average people use a computer for, word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing, emaiil/IM/chat and multimedia playback. Nothing else matters, the fruityloop music program only producers use, the visual studio only programmers use. So if everyone is using the same few programs the only thing Linux is missing is drivers, a professional looking Desktop, and decent fonts. Honestly when I'm writing my paper in open office for school I don't give a damn about some esoteric Windows program which might not run, I'm trying to do my work. Its funny that you care about applications when most Applications from Windows 3.1 did not work on Windows 98, and most applications from Windows 98 do not work on Windows XP, I'm guessing alot of old XP programs wont work on 64bit longhorn. People who upgrade to new software do not expect ALL their old software to work, they just expect an alternative to exist.
You seem to have everything planned out, you have a roadmap, why don't you start working on it right now?
Thats exactly my point, maybe someone like xouvert can step up and handle the role of making the drivers and submitting those kinds of patches. driver support will come soon enough, and for people who use the standard ATI/Nvidia, we should all focus on getting Nvidia to write good drivers.
Thats because Macs are NOT cheaper than PCs. A PC is 200 bucks while a Mac is 1000
We just need a unified composition manager. The last thing I want to see is 20 composition managers all which suck.
KDE & Gnome should work on a standard composition manager together. I'd hope Enlightenment could also work with KDE and Gnome on this, we need standards now.
I do not care much about the new eye candy if I cannot use it and I do not really want software based hacks. Can this eye candy work with my ATI or Nvidia card?
Also if we can do all of this why not go further and use the video card fully?
Linux will never get beyond the "its hard to use" stigma until its so much easier to use and so much nicer looking than Windows that theres no arguement left. Only then will Linux truely be ready for the Desktop.
I think we need to talk to people from KDE, Enlightenment, Gnome, and all of these groups and as a combined effort build the first and default composition manager.
They found out when we did. Xouvert and Xwin are not working together, the xwin people consider them to be amateur script kiddies. Now, theres nothing wrong with amateur hackers coding for X, this is actually a very good thing because eventually amateurs become experts. Xouverts purpose is to attract new developers. Xwin and Xfree people do not like newbie developers and they arent open, they will not help you and they do not work with you until you prove yourself. This is not a good learning environment and so the only way we will have faster developer uptake is if we actually have a newbie x hackers version for testing and experimental shit, and a version the professionals support. Kind of like how we can have Slackware/Debian and then have Redhat and Suse.
For the Desktop Suse is better, even you cannot deny this fact. Debian is amateurish and looks like it was hacked together by a bunch of teenagers.
We need a unified Linux effort, the question becomes why debian? Theres Lindows which is based on Debian, theres also United Linux, why plain Debian?
Like most of the economically naive, you're confused by the difference between "money" and "wealth". Hint: 150 years ago, 90% of the population of the United States farmed for a living. Nowadays only about 5% of the population is on the land. By your "reasoning" we should have 85% unemployment. But we don't. Rather, we have a civilization in which even those on welfare live a lifestyle that wouldn't have been possible for the wealthiest king of former centuries. This FACT should clue you in that there's something wrong with your "analysis". We also have less land owners, we have more jobs but the same jobs pay alot less, so now we have alot of service jobs and less professional jobs. Whats your point? productivity just means lower paying service jobs, which will attract more illegal immigrants to take those jobs while the average American will remain unemployed. Illegal immigrants don't mind living in ghettos or in the projects, they don't mind dodging drive bys every day on their way to McDonalds to work, how about you?
Why should we care about income increases? All this will mean is everything will cost more, rent will go up, and there will be less jobs. I'm not interested in any more productivity gains, I'm not interested in robots, you know why? Robots and productivity gains cause me to get fired, make my rent go up, cause my taxes to go higher and make me spend more on education/degrees.
First lets start with quotes. "There is a light at the end of the desktop tunnel,", Michael Tiemann, chief technology officer of Red Hat, "We have clearly seen a limited amount (of demand for desktop Linux) to date in the U.S.," Randy Groves, vice president at Dell "I would say that for the consumer market place, Windows probably continues to be the right product line," CEO Redhat. All this year they said it was ready and now a few deals happen and its not ready? Now suddenly IBM and Redhat volunteer to offer their opinions which we didnt ask for by the way. No one asked "Hey Redhat CEO, hey IBM, whats your opinions of Linux on the desktop?" And even if we did ask, do we need to be told its not ready? Linux isnt ready for the super computer so why isnt Redhat and IBM volunteering to admit "Linux just isnt ready for the super computer" Redhat and IBM are hypocrites, earlier this year they said Linux was ready. proof1 proof2 And now Redhat has changed their mind, they want to focus on the super computer now?
What is this Bullshit? Why is IBM, Redhat, and every other company going out of their way to make the statement "Linux is not ready for the desktop" Tell us something we all dont already know stupid, of course we know Linux is not ready for the desktop IBM, what is your plan IBM to make Linux ready? This sounds like some bullshit Microsoft would say but why is Linux going out of their way to say this? I'll explain. Its not that Linux is not ready for the desktop, its that IBM is not ready for Linux on the desktop, Redhat is not ready for Linux on the desktop, Suse/Novell is not ready for Linux on the desktop. However we have alot of companies who are, we have Lindows, Mandrake, Xandros, Lycoris all ready for Linux on the desktop, all working to further the cause. IBM does not want these companies to do that because IBM's companies arent ready, if Redhat or Novell suddenly had a desktop product suddenly all these 3 companies would be saying "Linux is ready for the Desktop.
Mono is not Ximian, Mono is an open source project which alot of companies contribute to. Ximian is red carpet, not mono and not gnome.