As soon as 4GByte SD-Cards become available, videos on SD-Cards will be possible. So it's just a matter of time until SD-Card players will appear on the market, players which are able to drive ordinary TVs. So it's foreseeable that people soon will buy these players instead of Blu-ray or HD-DVD players. The video business is well advised to immediately start building and selling SD-Rom-Cards, else they were soon confronted with a unsolvable copying problem.
Live is so beautiful and there's always a solution if a problem becomes unbearable.
When do Linux enthusiasts realize that a Liunx desktop system isn't an option for ordinary users. It doesn't matter if the Linux kernel is 10 times better than any other OS and it doesn't matter if the Linux desktops (Gnome/KDE/XFCE/etc) are more or less usable, if the free applications an ordinary user wants to work with aren't available! Can't people understand that OSDL in its survey (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005 .pdf) found out that application support is the first "Top inhibitors of Linux desktop adoption". And that still 60% of all Linux users (which currently are mostly power users) still use any kind of running Windows applications (http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi-bin/survey/survey .cgi?view=archive&id=0821200617613). Sorry but as long as this is the case Linux isn't ready for prime time.
Most sadly there seems nobody interested in this matter, neither ODSL, DesktopLinux nor any other Organization cares about fixing this situation. Neither do RedHat, Novell, Sun nor IBM which pour much useless money into the wrong channels. So one doesn't need to be good prophet to predict that Linux won't be ready when Windows XP gets retired and quite possible also with Vista. It's incredible sad that the free software community doesn't seems to be able to acknowledge this situation and fix it. Not within this or the next year and quite possible not in the next 10 years as well.
O. Wyss
PS. I know I shouldn't write such a message since I most probably get stabbed like the early messengers bringing bad news to the king.
That's why they would be careful with exactly who they accept, just like they do with their Summer of Code.
Just imagine a billion would mean 1000 Summer of Codes in one year or 200 in five years. There's no need to limit it to studends but anybody participating in FOSS.
Besides the current SoC has a rather low impact since it doesn't follow any vision but only strenghten already established projects.
Can you imagine what one billion dollars would achieve if spent for FOSS?
25 clones of Tetris... 17... Eh, you get the point: Take Freshmeat's frontpage and extrapolate, and that's at best! What you'd probably get is a bunch of people demanding 55 grand a year to work on utterly useless crap.
Sure if you just pour this billion onto everybody's head. But if the FOSS projects are carefully chosen and a clear vision is followed such crap could be easily avoided. Besides a billion is so much money it wouldn't matter if some crap is also gotten. E.g. a rough estimate of about 10 million would allow to make my vision of cross-platform FOSS and CSS (http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html become true. Of course this doesn't change the world but would certainly have an incredible impact on the quality of software in general.
Can you imagine what one billion dollars would achieve if spent for FOSS? Can you imagine a world where any standard software is free of charge for any kind of computer. Can you imagine a world where even specialised software doesn't cost more a $100? Can you picture how one billion dollars could change the world if spent for FOSS?
On the FOSS side of things of course, we have merging of designer/developers and users, so the issue is somewhat irrelevant. We can still improve our communications and documentation *a lot* though.
As the owner of AMD socket 939 processor I'm going to skip any AM2 socket mainboard. It's time that processor manufactures realize the time to change sockets each year is over. Either they are able to foresee the socket interface for the next 5 years or they have to provide processors for any socket within that time line. The next mainboard I buy is the one which comes closed to this goal and mainboard manufactures are well advise to request this from their processor suppliers. I'll stick to this policy since any processor above a Athlon XP 3000+ is more that sufficient for any task I can envision (including gaming).
I can only repeat what I've already said for NetBSD (see http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195449&c id=16013982), leadership is the key point of the success/failure of a project. Debian and Ubuntu are two extremes of leadership, while Debian none leaders most probably will fail the outcome of Ubuntu isn't clear. Mark has all the powers of a dictator, lets see if he's able to circumvent the threads this imposes.
A community that's perfectly happy with EMACS and VI?...
It's not the community that's happy with the OSS UI design, it's just the posters who aggressively voice there opinion here. Else the Linux desktop would be the number one desktop and users wouldn't use Wine, etc to run Windows applications. You don't believe me? Well why then shows the OSDL survey that a majority of the Linux users still wish for Windows applications (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005 .pdf)? Or why use 60% of the Linux users any kind of methode running Windows application (http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi-bin/survey/survey .cgi?view=archive&id=0821200617613)?
Unfortunately mostly the pro EMACS and VI voicers are also developers while rather seldom any none voicer is also a developer. Therefore most UI design mistakes don't get corrected even if it would be rather easy (see http://wyoguide.sf.net/).
...try Skype, Google Earth, or the Perforce clients suite...
Neither Skype nor Google Earth is OpenSource as probably neither is Perforce. No questions these are good applications but I can't look into the code. IMO it's rather difficult to find OpenSource QT code except for KDE which isn't cross-platform. So if you are an OpenSource developer and want to find out how to code something cross-platform, there's no sensible alternative to wxWidgets. I don't know if wxWidgets is minimal yet it is definitely sufficient for any task I can think of.
Google Earth is a QT application which is cross-platform but it took Google a full year to port it from Windows to Linux. Sorry I can't imagine why. If you code like I propose in wyoGuide it won't need a full day to port between any port.
I've yet to see a better cross-platform solution than Qt. It can be used with great languages like Ruby, Python, C++, and more... and it's worth every penny. Runs beautifully on Windows, Mac, and Linux with no modification to source.
I don't criticize QT since I haven't developed any code with it. Yet I really like to see an OSS sample code written with QT, building and running unchanged on all the mentioned platforms.
If you want to look at OSS cross-platform code which truly builds and runs unchanged, go to wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) and try out the demo sample. It works out of the box on Linux and Windows and as others tell on MacOSX albeit it uses wxWidgets instead of QT. Besides this sample is a fully featured application which can be used as a starting base code for your own project. And there are may more OSS cross-platform applications listed which easily fulfill the cross-platform requirement.
O. Wyss
Usability improvements on the application level
on
GNOME 2.16 Released
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Usability improvements on the desktop are nice but when do people realize that usability improvements are desperately needed on the application level and only marginally on the desktop. What does it help if you have a perfect desktop but many of the applications one uses have a rather rubbish usability!
Usability is always measured in a greater context, a context which goes far beyond the Gnome desktop but spans any desktop used. Just think how an American driver feels when he drives in England or vice versa. You might interrupt that's rather seldom the case but not with computer desktops. Almost each Gnome users uses a KDE application and even 60% use a Windows application (http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi-bin/survey/survey .cgi?view=archive&id=0821200617613 at the bottom) and everybody knows the easyness of MacOSX.
Sure application developers don't want to lose much time with usability they want to concentrate on functionality. So they can't follow multiple separate usability guidelines they simply don't have the time. Yet usability is a very important part in the acceptance of an application. To circumvent this, application developers should follow cross-desktop or cross-platform guidelines (http://wyoguide.sf.net/).
Yet Gnome might still follow the MacOSX way sticking to there own perfect way and be happy with a rather insignificant market share. Or they help working on fighting off the first "Top inhibitors of Linux desktop adoption" (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005 .pdf).
Hopefully this admission of his mistake will lead to something being done about it. He laid out quite clearly a plan of action to reverse the stagnation of NetBSD, and hopefully his steps are taken.
Yet the most important step is the removment of foundation people and I'm rather pessimistic if that will ever happen. Well there are many other promising projects and it's more fun to work for an upstart than a dying project. It's sad but that's the way of life.
How exactly? I primarly use Visual C++ 6's IDE and have found, as with other development environments like IntelliJ, all they really seem to be good at is helping you to organize your projects files and automate the building process. Their debuggers are also often fairly nice.
So do I, thanks to cross-platform development I use VC++ 6 mostly for debugging even if I use the code later on Linux.
When I'm using Linux, I have vim, make, and gdb. The fact that I do not have these tools integrated in an environment similar to something like Visual C's means I have to do a lot of switching between terminal sessions. It's often easier to work on a project if everything is mostly in one place.
True, there's no IDE on Linux which has as simple project files as are my makefiles. You don't believe that? Just go to the wyoGuide project (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) and look for yourself. BTW I use about the same tools on Linux but for wyoEditor, this way I can use the same editor on all platforms.
It's seldom that a founder of a OSS project acknowledges his mistakes but Charles M. Hannum does it. Just for this simple action I value his reasoning very much.
IMO leadership of a project is very important because leaders always have a vision and the drive to force this vision become true. There's no guaranty that a leader will be successful with his vision but definitely comities always will fail they never have a single vision and never can agree to force a single vision become true. So whenever a project is lead by a comity stagnation is not far off.
Yet leadership does not mean dictatorship as often is done by many OSS project leaders. Dictators will equally bring a project down as do comities. There's unfortunately no clear distinction when a leader becomes a dictator as many times good leaders are just lucky avoiding the path to dictatorship by sheer luck.
Since I develop everything cross-platform I regularly use Visual Studio 6.0 on Windows. So far I haven't found a better development environment on Linux than the console, the big ones are too bloated, the small ones too limited and none has a useful debugger integration.
As soon as Linux looks as shiny as MacOSX, this will change. Yet the question is, can Linux eventually reach this point. For that Linux (better said the Linux desktop) first has to solve the "top inhibitors of the Linux desktop adoption" (see http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005. pdf). Any GUI software has to use DirectFB/Cairo (see http://www.directfb.org/) as it graphic engine so it looks as shiny. And applications have to follow the wyoGuide guidelines (see http://wyoguide.sf.net/) so they have an equal usable look&feel. If these requirements are fulfilled Linux will completely replace MacOSX.
Nobody ever followed completely all the rules of ISO9000, everybody cheats to some degree even to the level where documents and actual development doesn't have anything in common. Do be ISO9000 compliant all you need to have the necessary docs.
If you want any OSS project be ISO9000 certified all you have to do is employ somebody who creates these docs. He doesn't have to actually develop all he has to do is create all the docs. Yet none of the actual developers have to change anything since what counts are the docs and nothing else. Just keep in mind ISO9000 does not show how the actual development is done, it only shows how it is documented. When you have realized this small but important difference you'll never fail any ISO9000 audit.
I think the point of OSS is that if you feel that way, it is time to get coding, or testing, or documenting, or making wikis, or helping out on mail-lists, or whatever is that you do well.
That's exactly what I do and what wyoGuide is all about, making OSS so it runs perfectly well on Linux and Windows and acceptable on MacOSX. This gives the users the choice to use whatever they like most.
Linux will be useful on the desktop when contributers decide they want to make it that way.
That's perfectly okay with me yet I will decide to use Linux on the desktop when it suits me best. Just consider Minix3 is on the rise and might become the free desktop kernel or OpenSolaris might take this role, one never knows. So if the Linux people decide to stay a server system that's perfectly fine with me. I'm sure others will fill this gap.
If you don't want to contribute but just want a cheap OS that does what you want, then pay somebody to make an OS work the way you want it to work (doubt they'll be able to make it much cheaper than Windows/OSX/whatever).
You haven't looked at the wyoGuide link (URL:http://wyoguide.sf.net), else I can't understand your comment. The very big advantage of OSS: Anybody can decide to participate, developers can choose to develop, users can choose to use.
Well market share is the single driving force for hardware drivers. If Linux ever gets a market share around 20% - 30%, there wouldn't be a single problem with the availability of drivers at all. If the ipod generation could help with this market share I'm willing to compromise.
Linux is pretty much THE dominant OS in the server space these days...
Yet I don't have or won't ever have a server at home. I have a desktop system and want to use desktop OSS. All my OSS development efforts (see http://wyoguide.sf.net/) are for the desktop so everybody can use them and not only big business with servers. So if Linux is useful for the desktop then it's fine, else I'll move to a different system.
... And just in case you would be using some other operating system, you can also install GTK for Windows or for MacOS X.
None of the people I'm looking for an SVG editor use Gnome nor any other Linux desktop system. They all use Windows and there's no chance to convert them to anything other. Besides none would ever try to install a GTK or Java-Runtime since they all are more or less computer illiterates.
Slashdot Mirror
As soon as 4GByte SD-Cards become available, videos on SD-Cards will be possible. So it's just a matter of time until SD-Card players will appear on the market, players which are able to drive ordinary TVs. So it's foreseeable that people soon will buy these players instead of Blu-ray or HD-DVD players. The video business is well advised to immediately start building and selling SD-Rom-Cards, else they were soon confronted with a unsolvable copying problem.
Live is so beautiful and there's always a solution if a problem becomes unbearable.
O. Wyss
When do Linux enthusiasts realize that a Liunx desktop system isn't an option for ordinary users. It doesn't matter if the Linux kernel is 10 times better than any other OS and it doesn't matter if the Linux desktops (Gnome/KDE/XFCE/etc) are more or less usable, if the free applications an ordinary user wants to work with aren't available! Can't people understand that OSDL in its survey (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005 .pdf) found out that application support is the first "Top inhibitors of Linux desktop adoption". And that still 60% of all Linux users (which currently are mostly power users) still use any kind of running Windows applications (http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi-bin/survey/survey .cgi?view=archive&id=0821200617613). Sorry but as long as this is the case Linux isn't ready for prime time.
Most sadly there seems nobody interested in this matter, neither ODSL, DesktopLinux nor any other Organization cares about fixing this situation. Neither do RedHat, Novell, Sun nor IBM which pour much useless money into the wrong channels. So one doesn't need to be good prophet to predict that Linux won't be ready when Windows XP gets retired and quite possible also with Vista. It's incredible sad that the free software community doesn't seems to be able to acknowledge this situation and fix it. Not within this or the next year and quite possible not in the next 10 years as well.
O. Wyss
PS. I know I shouldn't write such a message since I most probably get stabbed like the early messengers bringing bad news to the king.
That's why they would be careful with exactly who they accept, just like they do with their Summer of Code.
Just imagine a billion would mean 1000 Summer of Codes in one year or 200 in five years. There's no need to limit it to studends but anybody participating in FOSS.
Besides the current SoC has a rather low impact since it doesn't follow any vision but only strenghten already established projects.
O. Wyss
Can you imagine what one billion dollars would achieve if spent for FOSS?
...
l become true. Of course this doesn't change the world but would certainly have an incredible impact on the quality of software in general.
25 clones of Tetris
17... Eh, you get the point: Take Freshmeat's frontpage and extrapolate, and that's at best! What you'd probably get is a bunch of people demanding 55 grand a year to work on utterly useless crap.
Sure if you just pour this billion onto everybody's head. But if the FOSS projects are carefully chosen and a clear vision is followed such crap could be easily avoided. Besides a billion is so much money it wouldn't matter if some crap is also gotten. E.g. a rough estimate of about 10 million would allow to make my vision of cross-platform FOSS and CSS (http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.htm
O. Wyss
Can you imagine what one billion dollars would achieve if spent for FOSS? Can you imagine a world where any standard software is free of charge for any kind of computer. Can you imagine a world where even specialised software doesn't cost more a $100? Can you picture how one billion dollars could change the world if spent for FOSS?
O. Wyss
On the FOSS side of things of course, we have merging of designer/developers and users, so the issue is somewhat irrelevant. We can still improve our communications and documentation *a lot* though.
5 .pdf) mentions "Application support" as its first "Top inhibitors of Linux desktop adoption"? And why still use 60% of all Linux users some kind of running Windows applications (http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi-bin/survey/survey .cgi?view=archive&id=0821200617613)?
If this merging would be true, we all and not just a few percents would use a FOSS desktop system these days. Just think why does the OSDL survey (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov200
O. Wyss
As the owner of AMD socket 939 processor I'm going to skip any AM2 socket mainboard. It's time that processor manufactures realize the time to change sockets each year is over. Either they are able to foresee the socket interface for the next 5 years or they have to provide processors for any socket within that time line. The next mainboard I buy is the one which comes closed to this goal and mainboard manufactures are well advise to request this from their processor suppliers. I'll stick to this policy since any processor above a Athlon XP 3000+ is more that sufficient for any task I can envision (including gaming).
O. Wyss
I can only repeat what I've already said for NetBSD (see http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195449&c id=16013982), leadership is the key point of the success/failure of a project. Debian and Ubuntu are two extremes of leadership, while Debian none leaders most probably will fail the outcome of Ubuntu isn't clear. Mark has all the powers of a dictator, lets see if he's able to circumvent the threads this imposes.
O. Wyss
If you want to achieve anything with execs you need numbers to prove your case. I don't know in which business you are in but if you are in SW you might look at the links in this message (http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=196175&ci d=16079080). If you read more of my comment at Slashdot or at wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/index.php?page=Cross-platf orm.html) you'll find more numbers and hints.
O. Wyss
A community that's perfectly happy with EMACS and VI? ...
5 .pdf)? Or why use 60% of the Linux users any kind of methode running Windows application (http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi-bin/survey/survey .cgi?view=archive&id=0821200617613)?
It's not the community that's happy with the OSS UI design, it's just the posters who aggressively voice there opinion here. Else the Linux desktop would be the number one desktop and users wouldn't use Wine, etc to run Windows applications. You don't believe me? Well why then shows the OSDL survey that a majority of the Linux users still wish for Windows applications (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov200
Unfortunately mostly the pro EMACS and VI voicers are also developers while rather seldom any none voicer is also a developer. Therefore most UI design mistakes don't get corrected even if it would be rather easy (see http://wyoguide.sf.net/).
O. Wyss
...try Skype, Google Earth, or the Perforce clients suite...
Neither Skype nor Google Earth is OpenSource as probably neither is Perforce. No questions these are good applications but I can't look into the code. IMO it's rather difficult to find OpenSource QT code except for KDE which isn't cross-platform. So if you are an OpenSource developer and want to find out how to code something cross-platform, there's no sensible alternative to wxWidgets. I don't know if wxWidgets is minimal yet it is definitely sufficient for any task I can think of.
Google Earth is a QT application which is cross-platform but it took Google a full year to port it from Windows to Linux. Sorry I can't imagine why. If you code like I propose in wyoGuide it won't need a full day to port between any port.
O. Wyss
I've yet to see a better cross-platform solution than Qt. It can be used with great languages like Ruby, Python, C++, and more... and it's worth every penny. Runs beautifully on Windows, Mac, and Linux with no modification to source.
I don't criticize QT since I haven't developed any code with it. Yet I really like to see an OSS sample code written with QT, building and running unchanged on all the mentioned platforms.
If you want to look at OSS cross-platform code which truly builds and runs unchanged, go to wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) and try out the demo sample. It works out of the box on Linux and Windows and as others tell on MacOSX albeit it uses wxWidgets instead of QT. Besides this sample is a fully featured application which can be used as a starting base code for your own project. And there are may more OSS cross-platform applications listed which easily fulfill the cross-platform requirement.
O. Wyss
Usability improvements on the desktop are nice but when do people realize that usability improvements are desperately needed on the application level and only marginally on the desktop. What does it help if you have a perfect desktop but many of the applications one uses have a rather rubbish usability!
y .cgi?view=archive&id=0821200617613 at the bottom) and everybody knows the easyness of MacOSX.
5 .pdf).
Usability is always measured in a greater context, a context which goes far beyond the Gnome desktop but spans any desktop used. Just think how an American driver feels when he drives in England or vice versa. You might interrupt that's rather seldom the case but not with computer desktops. Almost each Gnome users uses a KDE application and even 60% use a Windows application (http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi-bin/survey/surve
Sure application developers don't want to lose much time with usability they want to concentrate on functionality. So they can't follow multiple separate usability guidelines they simply don't have the time. Yet usability is a very important part in the acceptance of an application. To circumvent this, application developers should follow cross-desktop or cross-platform guidelines (http://wyoguide.sf.net/).
Yet Gnome might still follow the MacOSX way sticking to there own perfect way and be happy with a rather insignificant market share. Or they help working on fighting off the first "Top inhibitors of Linux desktop adoption" (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov200
O. Wyss
Hopefully this admission of his mistake will lead to something being done about it. He laid out quite clearly a plan of action to reverse the stagnation of NetBSD, and hopefully his steps are taken.
Yet the most important step is the removment of foundation people and I'm rather pessimistic if that will ever happen. Well there are many other promising projects and it's more fun to work for an upstart than a dying project. It's sad but that's the way of life.
O. Wyss
How exactly? I primarly use Visual C++ 6's IDE and have found, as with other development environments like IntelliJ, all they really seem to be good at is helping you to organize your projects files and automate the building process. Their debuggers are also often fairly nice.
So do I, thanks to cross-platform development I use VC++ 6 mostly for debugging even if I use the code later on Linux.
When I'm using Linux, I have vim, make, and gdb. The fact that I do not have these tools integrated in an environment similar to something like Visual C's means I have to do a lot of switching between terminal sessions. It's often easier to work on a project if everything is mostly in one place.
True, there's no IDE on Linux which has as simple project files as are my makefiles. You don't believe that? Just go to the wyoGuide project (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) and look for yourself. BTW I use about the same tools on Linux but for wyoEditor, this way I can use the same editor on all platforms.
O. Wyss
It's seldom that a founder of a OSS project acknowledges his mistakes but Charles M. Hannum does it. Just for this simple action I value his reasoning very much.
IMO leadership of a project is very important because leaders always have a vision and the drive to force this vision become true. There's no guaranty that a leader will be successful with his vision but definitely comities always will fail they never have a single vision and never can agree to force a single vision become true. So whenever a project is lead by a comity stagnation is not far off.
Yet leadership does not mean dictatorship as often is done by many OSS project leaders. Dictators will equally bring a project down as do comities. There's unfortunately no clear distinction when a leader becomes a dictator as many times good leaders are just lucky avoiding the path to dictatorship by sheer luck.
O. Wyss
Since I develop everything cross-platform I regularly use Visual Studio 6.0 on Windows. So far I haven't found a better development environment on Linux than the console, the big ones are too bloated, the small ones too limited and none has a useful debugger integration.
c omponents/wxscintilla/build/Makefile?view=markup) you can view my most complex makefile, you probably have no problem to understand it. Another sample how easy you can develop with the console is at wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) which can be used as a tutorial if you have some C++ knowledge.
Yet I've to admit, thanks to using wxWidgets my makefiles are seldom larger than 100 lines and never larger than 200. Here (http://wxcode.cvs.sourceforge.net/wxcode/wxCode/
O. Wyss
As soon as Linux looks as shiny as MacOSX, this will change. Yet the question is, can Linux eventually reach this point. For that Linux (better said the Linux desktop) first has to solve the "top inhibitors of the Linux desktop adoption" (see http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005. pdf). Any GUI software has to use DirectFB/Cairo (see http://www.directfb.org/) as it graphic engine so it looks as shiny. And applications have to follow the wyoGuide guidelines (see http://wyoguide.sf.net/) so they have an equal usable look&feel. If these requirements are fulfilled Linux will completely replace MacOSX.
O. Wyss
Nobody ever followed completely all the rules of ISO9000, everybody cheats to some degree even to the level where documents and actual development doesn't have anything in common. Do be ISO9000 compliant all you need to have the necessary docs.
If you want any OSS project be ISO9000 certified all you have to do is employ somebody who creates these docs. He doesn't have to actually develop all he has to do is create all the docs. Yet none of the actual developers have to change anything since what counts are the docs and nothing else. Just keep in mind ISO9000 does not show how the actual development is done, it only shows how it is documented. When you have realized this small but important difference you'll never fail any ISO9000 audit.
O. Wyss
I think the point of OSS is that if you feel that way, it is time to get coding, or testing, or documenting, or making wikis, or helping out on mail-lists, or whatever is that you do well.
That's exactly what I do and what wyoGuide is all about, making OSS so it runs perfectly well on Linux and Windows and acceptable on MacOSX. This gives the users the choice to use whatever they like most.
Linux will be useful on the desktop when contributers decide they want to make it that way.
That's perfectly okay with me yet I will decide to use Linux on the desktop when it suits me best. Just consider Minix3 is on the rise and might become the free desktop kernel or OpenSolaris might take this role, one never knows. So if the Linux people decide to stay a server system that's perfectly fine with me. I'm sure others will fill this gap.
If you don't want to contribute but just want a cheap OS that does what you want, then pay somebody to make an OS work the way you want it to work (doubt they'll be able to make it much cheaper than Windows/OSX/whatever).
You haven't looked at the wyoGuide link (URL:http://wyoguide.sf.net), else I can't understand your comment. The very big advantage of OSS:
Anybody can decide to participate, developers can choose to develop, users can choose to use.
I'm grateful that ESR started this discussion.
O. Wyss
No end user is going to use a product if it NEEDS documentation.
Something I want to help get fixed in OSS with wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/).
O. Wyss
Well market share is the single driving force for hardware drivers. If Linux ever gets a market share around 20% - 30%, there wouldn't be a single problem with the availability of drivers at all. If the ipod generation could help with this market share I'm willing to compromise.
O. Wyss
Linux is pretty much THE dominant OS in the server space these days...
Yet I don't have or won't ever have a server at home. I have a desktop system and want to use desktop OSS. All my OSS development efforts (see http://wyoguide.sf.net/) are for the desktop so everybody can use them and not only big business with servers. So if Linux is useful for the desktop then it's fine, else I'll move to a different system.
O. Wyss
You're expecting people to switch platforms for a graphics format?!
No, why do you come to this conclusion?
O. Wyss
None of the people I'm looking for an SVG editor use Gnome nor any other Linux desktop system. They all use Windows and there's no chance to convert them to anything other. Besides none would ever try to install a GTK or Java-Runtime since they all are more or less computer illiterates.
O. Wyss