Just a few weeks after the beta release of the next version of their Linux based OS, Red Hat has released 7.3.93 of their software, once again, code-named Limbo. Those of you who read my first Limbo review know that I gave it a favorable review. After downloading and installing the second beta, I had to take a few days before writing this article.I say this sincerely, and I know it will incite serious debate, but I say it remaining as intentional and deliberate as I can: I believe what you witness, as you install and use Limbo, is the “first draft,” so to speak, of a true Windows killer.
What Limbo 2, as I’ve been calling it, offers is more than eye candy, although that’s what some will call it. It’s more than just Gnome2, although some will call it that too. It’s a true, fully functional system that can be used as a server, a workstation, or even a plain vanilla desktop PC. It is functional enough for the coder, the administrator, and, just maybe, your grandmother.
The install process is as simple or as detailed as you choose. It’s been drastically updated, new icons and new logos adorn Anaconda now, and you’ll notice early on that it has surpassed even Limbo 1 in ease of use in the install. By passing “linux reiserfs” to the kernel at boot during the install, as more than one reader suggested to me after my last article, I was able to mount a volume using the ReiserFS with no problem at all. Another significant change to the install process is that on first boot, you are pushed into a Windows-like registration/configuration Wizard. Though perplexed at its appearance, I found it a good idea. You can skip the registration, but it’s a good idea so that you can entitle your system for use of the Red Hat Network and up2date.
One simple yet profound change in Limbo 2 is the “theme manager.” Completely broken in Limbo 1 (at least the GUI portion), in Limbo 2 retheming and changing the window style is a snap. Customizing your system, in my effortfully neutral opinion, more logical than customizing a Windows machine. To someone using a computer for the first time, I think you could argue that Gnome2, the way Red Hat has configured it, is easier than Windows.
Another point worthly of mention is that many of the menus have disposed of the arcane and cryptic application names, such as Xsane and even Evolution and Mozilla, and relabeled them a la Lycoris with sensible terms like Scanner, E-mail, and Web Browser. To be blunt, I understand the app authors named them and deserve credit, but long live the GPL. For a desktop Linux to survive, the distribution vendor must suck it up and get rid of all app names that aren’t self-explanatory.
Of course, as a beta release, there were problems. Although I launched my favorite word processor, AbiWord, with no problem, within a minute it was broken and I haven’t been able to fix it short of a reinstall. I found the GDM configurator crashed consistently when I tried to change the login panel, but this was promptly entered into Red Hat’s Bugzilla database by a Red Hat employee. The bug that killed up2date in all Limbo 1 installs has been ironed out, and it runs now, although the up2date applet is not in the Gnome panel by default, which I liked. For the most part, this is a fully functional system.
Suggestions: I still think my chief complaint about Gnome and KDE is the lack of immediate mouse responsiveness. A reader suggested I renice my mouse, which I did on this go around, and I found that helped, but still didn’t solve the problem. First off, the mouse should be properly niced on install – most users who use the X Windows System use a mouse and want perfect pointer device control. Changing the priority of a process should be something left to admins; I believe no desktop user should ever even learn the term “renice.” Secondly, let me just once again voice my obnoxious opinion on one other issue. RPM = bad. APT = good. I don’t know why Red Hat is so insistant upon RPM. Package management is the one thing that Linux has going against it in a major way. Debian, FreeBSD, and Gentoo have it right. Even Lindows has got a package management system that is simple. I, for one, continue to find software installation through Red Hat network to be sub-par.
That said, enjoy a few new screen grabs from Limbo 2. To Red Hat: Cheers, you’ve done an amazing job and blown all other major player desktop Linuxes out of the water. You’re 99% of the way to knocking Windows completely off of my home network. To Mandrake, Lycoris, ELX, and Xandros: the challenge is on.
Red Hat Limbo beta 2 can be downloaded at ftp.redhat.com or at its mirrors.
Is Limbo2 running a cvs version of gnome2? As i don’t remember seeing a font panel like the one you showed off.
I believe what you witness, as you install and use Limbo, is the “first draft,” so to speak, of a true Windows killer.
Windows killer? It takes much more than some integration, renaming and ease of use to push Linux for the desktop. For example, does Linux has a proper IDE like VS .NET? Nope.
You’re 99% of the way to knocking Windows completely off of my home network. To Mandrake, Lycoris, ELX, and Xandros: the challenge is on.
The challenge is on, alright, but I doubt any of them would win. Sure, you could knock Windows out of your life, but could others get do to so? I don’t think so.
Woah, can that “proper IDE” do vim or emacs key bindings?
Amazing how some programmers totally demand a crutch like a fully integrated IDE.
Maybe I’m biased, but I haven’t worked yet with a programmer who both used such an IDE and was able to produce code that used any sort of software engineering.
kedevelop.
Jit compiling. Supports MANY programming lanuages. Full Debuggin support. Shall I go on? No, try it for yourself and tell me it isn’t as good as vs.net.
To the author: ever tried SuSE8? What’s your take on that one?
Does anyone ever use Kylix?
It’s very interesting that Red Hat is starting to turn in this direction. Wow, there are a lot of things in the wind right now.
I use SuZE 8 and I think it edges out Mandrake as the best of the big distros, because of YaST2.
Right now I’m writing from build 46 of Lycoris. They get closer to real Joe User Linux with every build. They have their software download center up and running too, although there isn’t much in yet. Honest to God, I wish Lycoris had the Walmart deal instead of Lindows. You can get it pre-installed on these really out of date and slow HP desktops and IBM Thinkpads, but the real problem with Lycoris is that the end user pretty much has to know if their hardware is compatible, etc. and install it themselves. Lycoris does seem to not rush things though, perhaps they are wise there. They’re almost ready.
i sorta did… then i learned java instead! hehe. i don’t want to learn pascal all over again.
and about vs.net… it may be a good ide… but then again, look at the price. you can get free ones for java, c, or a lot of other languages. besides, i don’t want to be stuck in a windows world. it just doesn’t make sense to have one big and rich company run everything in the computer industry. you might like it. but a lot of people don’t.
“I believe what you witness, as you install and use Limbo, is the “first draft,” so to speak, of a true Windows killer.”
LOL .. yeah, whatever .. Windows killer my ass. They finally are starting to get Linux down to where it’s finally useable, and now all of a sudden they have a Windows killer. So, uhhhh … where’s the drop-in replacement for FruityLoops 3.5? Yeah, that’s what I thought. As you go to sleep tonight, keep saying to yourself over and over “It’s the apps, stupid!”
“it just doesn’t make sense to have one big and rich company run everything in the computer industry. you might like it. but a lot of people don’t.”
Well, you might as well get used to it. Because if MS is ever dethroned, it’ll be done ONLY by another corporation that will quickly take its place.
Your ideas of a free and open OS dominating the desktop (even if it was far technically superior and had much better apps than Windows) is a pipe dream, and it will NEVER happen.
In order to kill the idea of a ‘commercial OS’ and all the bloatware, security holes, and spyware that goes with it, you’ve got to address the root of the problem, and that is getting rid of Corporate America
But until that happens, if these problems don’t exist on Windows, they’ll certainly exist on the next ‘big thing’ where you’ll have scum like Real Networks and AOL developing apps for it.
It may be good for networking but as a desktop OS, Linux (all versions and clones) still can’t compete with BeOS or Windoze (as much as I would hate to say that about the last…). But hey: that’s only *my* oppinion. Think twice before KDE or Gnome crashes on you…
I think it is fairly clear that redhat insists on rpm because rpm, unlike apt, cannot currently do automatic dependcy tracking and installation of packages, and redhat likes that because you will now have to use the subscription redhat update network to get this auto install feature.
Well, I’m pretty new to Linux. Several years of using Windows before that, beginning with Windows 95 – nothing else. I consider myself an experienced user, being capable of writing some (X)HTML and PHP.
So far, it’s been great with SuSE8. I really like KDE3. It needs some polishing here and there, and Konqueror is a little bit unstable. But overall it’s quite usable. I managed to find an adequate text editor (nedit – not as good as my beloved UltraEdit, but sufficient), compile and install PGP (as well as import my old key), use my TV card, run LightWave under Wine and integrate the installation into my Windows network using Samba. I surf the web with MoZilla, write my mails in KMail, paint in Gimp 1.3.7 and chat with XChat.
SuSE8 does what I want – I’m happy and thinking of tossing the Windows XP installation, or keep it only to play a game once in a while. Best of all, Linux made me think about free software. Quite an comfortable environment.
I had a different experience trying out this beta. First of all, I thought it looked really nice. They’ve got good graphic artists at work to provide that professional, corporate look. They’re doing good with that. Install was easy and looks better than it used to, much more slick, but still with a few rough edges like starting out in text mode with the kernel boot messages, then switching to that ugly gray X background before finally starting up the gui. That kind of roughness has always bothered me, although it has no bearing at all on functionality. So, that’s not a big deal.
I chose a desktop install, but added the basic development tools. This gave me far fewer choices than going with custom mode. It meant that I could not choose each and every package I wanted, but had to accept certain required packages, with the option of adding some others. This is a good way to go, I think. Someone who has never installed a Redhat system would definitely appreciate not needing to know about package dependencies and such.
When it came time to configure X, the only thing I had to choose was my monitor, as my video card and memory were accurately probed. Very nice. No fuss at all about configuring X.
I originally chose to install both KDE and Gnome, but then I removed KDE after trying it out because it didn’t have the same integration as Gnome and I really don’t think they should include it at all except maybe as an extra on one of the other CDs. The new gdm login screen looks really beautiful, and a newbie never has to see the text mode login except for a split second before the X server starts up (one of those remaining rough edges).
You get a nice introductory screen on the first boot that helps you to set up your time zone and such. The time zone selector is nice, you just click on your location on a map, and it sets it for you.
Then, when Gnome finally starts up, you wait. And wait. The splash screen pops up. Then the background turns blue. Then it turns gray. You wait some more. It turns blue again as the Gnome panel appears. But it’s not done, because Nautilus hasn’t started yet. As Nautilus starts, the background gets funky blocks on it, then the desktop icons appear, and finally there is a bright picture of a dragonfly on the background. It looks utterly beautiful. Everything looks really good. Fonts are antialiased and I can see that maybe Gnome does have a future at last (after a couple years of being really skeptical).
But there is definitely a lot of work yet. Everything crawls. Nautilus windows take at least 5 seconds to open on my AMD K6 450–yes, my hardware’s getting old, but KDE3 on FreeBSD flies by comparison. They’ve done some nice things with the control center though, it’s well organized with much fewer options, finally. I never thought having one-zillion-and-one options made for good usability, that’s one of my pet peeves about KDE still. But why are the system tools separate from the control panel? Most of them, like the display and network configurators, for example, would probably fall under the category of “control panel type things”, wouldn’t they? So, I wasn’t too impressed with that. Also, the gnome menu is set up in a weird manner. Gnome applications go under all the usual entries, like Internet, Office, Accessories…but everything that isn’t a Gnome app goes under All Applications->Internet…and so on. Confusing to someone who doesn’t know the difference between a Gnome app and a “Redhat” app.
Gnome is severely lacking in some basic functionality as well. It comes with Mozilla as the default browser, but in what way does Mozilla integrate with Gnome? Not at all. A totally different look and feel with ugly fonts. Galeon is available, but it still uses Gtk-1.x. So it doesn’t integrate either. And for viewing pdf files you get xpdf! Ugh. I’m used to viewing pdfs and ps files embedded into Konqueror with Kghostview. I want embedded components because I’ve gotten used to it with KDE. I don’t want to take a step backwards with Gnome in this respect.
So, while Gnome has certainly improved, as has Redhat by integrating their tools nicely into it, it still is missing lots of functionality that I’m used to having and I don’t want to live without anymore. I don’t know how long it will take for them to get to the point where I feel it Just Works, but it’s definitely not there yet in all areas. However, great strides have been taken and they are definitely on their way. It is not a Windows killer just yet, though.
>kedevelop.
>Jit compiling. Supports MANY programming lanuages.
Full Debuggin support. Shall I go on? No, try it for yourself and tell me it isn’t as good as vs.net.
I tried Kdevelop and I think it’s utterly awful. My god, how many files do you need to create to get started on a little text mode program? I don’t need autoconf, automake, and m4. I don’t need sgml docs. All I want is a BSD makefile and a decent environment in which to compile and do some nice graphical debugging. I’ll keep using Xemacs for now.
Everybody who has ever used Slackware (I mean actually used, not poked at for 5 minutes) knows that it is the best distro out there. It had KDE 3, mozilla 1.0, etc…, way before any of the other distros even thought of including them. It is more stable, and has the most efficient tools for getting whatever job done. I’m using OpenOffice 1.0.1 for all my M$ doc compatability and wine for all those M$ specific games. ECLiPt Roaster works perfectly for burning cd’s and mplayer handles my DVD drive quite nicely. PLUS, Slackware 8.1 is the only distro I HAVEN’T had trouble getting my nVidia GeForce 4 ti4600 to work with.
Slackware ~ It was the first linux distro, and is still carving a path for the others to follow.
> M$ doc compatability
You never really tried importing a more complex Excel document, believe me.
> wine for all those M$ specific games
You probably mean WineX. Anyway, the compatibility list of WineX is rather unsatisfactory.
> PLUS, Slackware 8.1 is the only distro I HAVEN’T had trouble getting my nVidia GeForce 4 ti4600 to work with.
My GeForce Ti4600 works well with SuSE8. Tux Racer and LightWave (Wine) work like a charm. 🙂
Maybe I’m biased, but I haven’t worked yet with a programmer who both used such an IDE and was able to produce code that used any sort of software engineering.
Majority of the third party developers aren’t real programmers?
wow.
Jit compiling. Supports MANY programming lanuages. Full Debuggin support. Shall I go on? No, try it for yourself and tell me it isn’t as good as vs.net.
Does it support creating a web service (ala .NET?). Does it have support for developer collabration (e.g. more than one dveeloper working on stuff)? Believe me, I’m a fan of KDevelop, but as of now, I wouldn’t push it to be better than VS .NET.
Besides, even if we had the best IDE, it would still not be enough to make VS folks to move over. Two reasons
1) They already have a large codebase in VS
An good altenative IDE coupled with a transitional API would be great to help developers change. They don’t want to rewrite in a new API, they don’t want to redo what they have done..
2) They want to target the largest audience, Linux isn’t that.
What we need is something like Carbon, but for Win32. We could add a lot of extras that would make developers droll, and best of all, the app would work on Windows and Linux. Make it something easy to port to.
Does anyone ever use Kylix?
If you really like Kylix, Delphi is available on Windows.
and about vs.net… it may be a good ide… but then again, look at the price.
People don’t care about the price except if they are OSS developers without money. If they are better off with it, they pay for it.
The only thing worse than a Linux pundet using ‘Linux’ and ‘Windows killer’ in the same sentence, is using SLACKWARE and ‘Windows killer’ in the same sentence.
If there were indeed a Windows killer amoungst all of these distros, Slackware is DEFINITELY not it.
I’m sorry, but anything with a text-based installer is disqualified simply based on principle.
Unless (and until) you’re used to it, Slackware represents the exact opposite of user-friendly. Though it’s power is not altogether obvious, it is certainly elegant once properly understood and is a true representation of ‘The Linux Way’ of doing things, which is the exact opposite of ‘The Windows Way’, which is the exact opposite that The AOL ‘Gimme’ Generation expects things to be done, hence it a ‘Windows Killer’ it is not.
With the 8.1 release of Slackware, I couldn’t even get it to recognize my f**king soundcard (something Redhat 7.2 did automagiclly), nor could I get X out of 640×480 without visiting the dreaded XF86Config. Maybe there was some command-line util that would’ve solved my problem (I tried several), but this is NOT the way you do things if you want to be king of the desktop. Not only that, but the last time I looked on their website (before 8.1 came out, but long after 8.0 was released), the Slacware documentation they had up was for Slackware 7! Add to that the fact that it’s probably the most consistantly outdated distro next to Debian, and you have a beautiful distro for those who know its power, but also the very LAST distro I would recommend to a Windows user who’s interested in Linux, unless they happen to have a Slackware guru nearby
Kylix: under Kylix3 you can use C++ and object pascal. IMHO the Delphi/BCB is the best RAD under windows.
KDevelop: if you don’t want automake you can use your own makefile.
“Does it have support for developer collabration (e.g. more than one dveeloper working on stuff)?”
Yup, it does. cant comment on the other capabilities as i don’t use an IDE either (although i’m won’t pretend that makes me a real developer
“Majority of the third party developers aren’t real programmers?”
I don’t think the person who made that comment has worked with the majority of third party developers.
I agree with him by the way. not even MS developers use VS, at least not the ones that develop Windows. i hear they use it on the office team (and i would guess the visual studio team too) but the hard core os developers use slick edit or something like that. many even use vi!
Maybe I’m biased, but I haven’t worked yet with a programmer who both used such an IDE and was able to produce code that used any sort of software engineering.
That’s the most ridiculous and arrogant thing I’ve read in a long time and I read these comments fairly often.
Maybe you are good at coding but it’s obvious you don’t know what software engineering means.
To be blunt, I understand the app authors named them and deserve credit, but long live the GPL. For a desktop Linux to survive, the distribution vendor must suck it up and get rid of all app names that aren’t self-explanatory.
And this is precisely why Linux will never be a Windows killer. All software bundled with a linux distribution is specific to that distribution, and works well with that distribution. A linux distro bundled with little or no software is unusable (ie Corel Linux).
What happened to the third parties? Why can’t third parties develop good software, with strong branding for Linux? Could it be because of the package management issues, and the fact that every distro is a little bit different? Therefore, if your program isn’t freely available to be packaged up by RedHat or Debian or Mandrake or SuSE or whoever, you haven’t got a chance.
While on the subject – is the after install package selection and mamagement any better than RedHat 7.3? For instance, during install if 7,3, I can chose to install GNOME which installed and everything was fine – until I decided I wanted to try KDE. I could find no graphical equivalent of the package selector used by the installer. I had to struggle with GNORPM and sort through a pile of package dependencies, I had to *guess* which packages to install (anything with “KDE” in it’s name?). Where’s the easy package management post install a la SuSE or Mandrake?
Oh wait, I need to subscribe to redhat network, don’t I?
I think, Red Hat rules, end of story. Flame me all u like, I don’t care, Red Hat is the best. I’ve tried, Red Hat, Mandrake, OpenLinux and Suse. Red Hat simply works!
So there, bite me! lol
I will give the other ones, Lycoris, Elx, Xandros a try (may be), but I really like Red Hat. I have been using it since 5.2!
Go Red Hat!
People don’t care about the price except if they are OSS developers without money. If they are better off with it, they pay for it.
just wanted to say that it does matter to most people. that’s why majority of software development these days happen in asia. and that’s why a lot of people still pirate software. if this were true, all would be good in the world.
besides my original point was that there are still a lot of developers and companies out there that just want to make software, but don’t want to have to spend hundreds or thousands after buying a computer and/or buying windows just to start developing. a lot of people turn to alternatives (ex. java) because of this.
and besides, there are already 2 web services that have been built that will never be toppled in the near future… the Web and E-mail! hooray!
wait wait… this all doesn’t matter to me anymore. i’m a writer/jewelry shop owner, not a computer geek. sorry.
Yup, it does. cant comment on the other capabilities as i don’t use an IDE either (although i’m won’t pretend that makes me a real developer
It doesn’t the last time I check, though I admit I’m using a relatively old version of it because the latest one is so unstable, it isn’t worth it.
I’m still learning to be a programmer, without KDevelop, I wouldn’t be anywhere :p
I agree with him by the way. not even MS developers use VS, at least not the ones that develop Windows.
How are you suppose to make an OS with VS .NET? Windows is mostly making the APIs. VS .NET is mostly using these APIs.
What happened to the third parties?
Well, my single most used app on Linux is made by a third party, Opera :-). But I think the problem is that nobody is following the LSB right now. SuSE, Mandrake, Red Hat, etc. said they will support it in future release, but as of now, still nothing. Even Debian, the community project, doesn’t support LSB. Well, one day they would…
just wanted to say that it does matter to most people. that’s why majority of software development these days happen in asia.
These Asian’s developers are code finishers used by software companies in the West to cut cost. These programmers DON’T use pirated software. Sure, piracy is rampant in Asia, but if you want to be hired by a company under BSA, using pirated software is a big no.
besides my original point was that there are still a lot of developers and companies out there that just want to make software, but don’t want to have to spend hundreds or thousands after buying a computer and/or buying windows just to start developing.
If they don’t have money to purchase these stuff, how are they gonna have money to advertise and market their apps? Besides, developing via KDevelop on Linux isn’t cheap. Sure, the software is cheap, but then the amount of distributors to support, a lot of people shun the thought: it is more expensive than supporting Windows.
Besides, on Windows, you have ample audience. Not on Linux. How are we gonna fix that? I made a transistional API suggestion up there, go read it if you please.
I fully agree with the comment “A Windows killer?”. After trying Limbo for a couple of days I must say that I’m deeply disappointed about this beta. The start up (boot) sequence of Linux looks like an UNIX Operating System from 1980. Also, where are all the killer applications running under Gnome 2? I have not seen many! I think that there’s no hope that RedHat Linux will push Windows away from the user’s desktop, at least not in the next three years.
For those looking for a modern IDE like Borland’s latest, or VS.NET, try Eclipse (http://eclipse.org). It’s an extensible open-source IDE designed by IBM and Rational. They have their commercial addons in the form of Web Sphere. Naturally, WebSphere has web-services (SOAP, UDDI, WSDL, XML-RPC, etc.) along with Java and other development languages.
http://www.google.com/search?q=related:eclipse.org
Of course there are free addons for webservices too, see:
http://www.webservices.org/index.php/article/articleview/11/1/12/
Japple is developed using it.
Personally, I’d go with a nightly build of Eclipse, they’ve made it easier to install since the 2.0 release.
So far as 3rd party I think you only need to look to
OpenOffice and Opera. Both are popular downloads. Nuts to that argument.
“Linux as a desktop”
Simple to address: Linux is whatever you and other programmers want it to be: a desktop, a server, a graphics workstation, an audio platform… Those not used to seeing Linux on the desktop need to be prepared: the demand is there, the tools and apps are there, the companies recognize that.
“A Windows Killer”
I knew using the term “Windows Killer” would upset a great many people, and it appears it did. But my opinion on this issue is solid – if you want to move Windows out, at this point, that option is viable. There are substitutions for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. There are development programs, graphics programs, and internet utilities. There are audio programs: rippers, encoders, and editors. Linux is a full enough system that it can replace Windows.
“the Install Process”
Yeah, I hate that first screen on the install too, but the overall process is still, I believe, overall easier than Windows. Two chief complaints: the very first screen of the install where you can pass instructions to the kernel and the gray and white X server startup. The second part is not a big deal. The first part has got to go unless you invoke it with an F8 or something.
“an integrated IDE”
I’ve resigned to this idea: developers will never agree on what’s best. More options = better.
“RPM and package management”
Red Hat should not push RPM to further promote the Red Hat network. This will get expensive, and it only takes about 3 instances of trying to use up2date and getting the error “too busy right now, upgrade to premium if you want to continue…blah blah blah” before you get really pissed. Believe me.
Compatibility
Hate me for saying this, but you don’t need compatibility in 99% of cases. Almost everything I write is now stored in .abw files. If I NEED to have compatibility, I save in .doc format. Close enough in most cases. The few rare times I need some MS specific feature, I use Windows at work.
SuSE 8
I’ve been asked many times about SuSE 8, and I have not tried it yet. I need to get my hands on a copy. Maybe that will be my next piece: Limbo vs. SuSE 8.
I like RedHat and have used it for years, but Mandrake has always been my distro. RedHat doesn’t install on half the machines I try to put it on. Mandrake does. That’s required to be a Windows Killer. Personally, RedHat is just playing catch up to Suse and Mandrake. They have been Windows Killers for quite a while now.
I’ve been using Beta2 of Mandrake and, so far, It’s the top dog, but Suse is a close second. Still love Suse!
Ellison
“If you want to move Windows out, at this point it is viable.” != “Windows Killer”, Adam.
Wanting to move Windows out is a concious decision. If someone makes such a decision the chances are great that they know what their options are and understand that a switch might be hard. A “Windows Killer” would have to be something that could be dropped in on someone’s machine and they’d never notice a difference. All of their apps would work and work identically, the file system would appear familar, the configuration system would be recognizable and understandable, etc… If you can’t put a version of Linux on an average desktop machine and get someone to use it with no retraining then the OS isn’t a Windows killer.
You blew your argument early in your review when you mentioned that you could add switches to the kernel to get different FSs to mount. No average user is going to feel comfortable configuring the OS kernel at boot time for specific instances. If it’s not in the GUI installer then it’s not something that will be considered.
H.L.:A “Windows Killer” would have to be something […]
What you just describe was a Windows clone, not a Windows killer. A Windows killer is something that has a potential to dethrone Microsoft in a relatively short amount of time (e.g. a decade, or two).
Adam Scheinberg:Yeah, I hate that first screen on the install too, but the overall process is still, I believe, overall easier than Windows.
That point is pretty mute. Most people don’t have to install Windows, it comes preinstall. Plus, Red Hat isn’t the most simplest OS install I have seen (neither is most other Linux distributions). Try out Mac OS X install, it is a no-brainer. Even my 7-year-old brother could do it.
I had a dream last night… that Red Hat followed the steps of FreeBSD and made install new program a matter of choose and click, that they used software that has proven to be stable like Debian, and that it helped X team develop a vector based window sistem…
P.S. I am not trying to be the linux M. L. King -> I just… realy had a dream (the las thing i read before going to sleep was /.)
“…mute.” should read “…moot.” Dang.
jit compiling? In an IDE? I don’t follow, what does it mean in that context?
BeOS is easy to install, looks wonderful, and is easy to use. Did it displace Windows? No. NeXTStep 486 was easy to install, looked wonderful, and was easy to use. Did it displace Windows? No. MacOS (9 or X) is easy to install, looks wonderful and is easy to use. Is it going to push Windows out of entrenched areas? No.
The list goes on and on.
To be a “Windows Killer” (such a horrible term) an OS is going to have to be a Windows clone. If apps won’t carry over and the user experience be almost identical to what the unwashed masses are used to then they will have no impetus to switch. If they don’t switch then Windows won’t be displaced.
Stop spreading RPM FUD. RPMs are very easy to install with the right tools. As easy as debs or windows programs. I don’t know about up2date on Red Hat. But urpmi on Mandrake and apt-rpm on Connectiva are as easy to use as apt-get on Debian.
Installation of software on these Distros is a no brainer no matter if they use RPM or deb packages.
Stop trolling finally.
I have just used urpmi to install xmms, SDL and OCaml. All dependancies were resolved automatically. Just don’t use rpmdrake, the GUI installation tool. It sucks (both new and old)!
http://ftp.apt-rpm.tuxfamily.org/
I think you’re right about RH wanting you to use up2date, but you can use whatever you want. I currently use up2date. red-carpet, and apt to install new rpm’s and keep my box current. Apt is the best because you can add more sources simply editing your /etc/apt/sources.list file. If you really want to get crazy with it use a Rawhide repository.
Microsoft is right now in trouble with the market since it is obvious that it has monopoly… I can understand their wish to protect their position in the market by releasing products like office only for win machines (and yes os X, but that is just because they know they can hold Apple in hand), but that will not last too long. I have heard a lot of propositions for how to force this company to “behave” but none were good for consumers. Truth is for USA, Microsoft is a big company that makes a lot of money and is , by general opinion, good for economy. Killing it or disturbing it even in this period would be fatal for a part of economy that is yet not developed – internet. Remember that USA extended the no taxes policy (if I have the right data) on internet shopping to help its growth. It would be crazy then to touch this company until the Internet market develops.
Yes, Linux is a good option but it is not accepted by average consumer and forcing the transition to it would be hard. So they decided to deal with what they have. USA will tolerate Microsoft’s monopoly until the Internet market develops well and starts functioning as well as a email system.
Is all hope lost? No. Microsoft mainly holds its position on peoples desktops with MS Office, not with Windows. Windows is not the best operating sistem in the world, and if there was any justice it would not be as well spread as it is, because it does not deserve it. We are forced to buy Windows because we want our favorite programs to run. That’s it.
The only feasable way to break the monopoly is to eather release the code to an independent organization to produce a cross platform windows API (something like WINE). Naturally, this organization would not be able to release this code anywhere and would fund itself by selling the product. Yes, it is possible to force Microsoft to do the similar, but I am afraid that they would make sure that not all functions as well as on windows.
This approach would give the users possibility to chose their operating system on the basis of quality. It would be good for Microsoft too, as it would force them to make a better product; it would give them new markets for their Office and other products, and this sensitive market would not be shaken too much.
I am not saying apt-get is the best in the world – I am saying that Red Hat would be able to make it user friendly and easy (no it’s not yet easy as you think – I dont want to change parameters in text files to be able to get the packages from a certain destination) as is an instalation on a Mac. When I first tied to install a program on a Mac I was impressed by the simplicity of the process. They can make it like that. Ok, they dont have to use deb packages – if they are stubborn they can use RPM but then make it easy and stable. I dont want to know that I need this lib for this or that to make the program run. And I want the program to be listed in the menu when I finish (a desktop link is a plus but not necessary). Is that too much to ask?
I forgot… until now FreeBSD resolved this problem in a best possible way, even if they still lack things that I mentined above.
RPMs are not a fundamentally bad format…as far as binary packaging formats go RPM works pretty well…it’s just that the actual RPM program doesn’t hold your hand as much as apt-get…if you’ve used linux for a while, “dependency hell” as some call it is not really all that bad…RedHat’s got a few warts…but all in all it’s my fav Linux distro b/c it’ll work with any Linux software you could ever possibly want to use, it’s got that extra little bit of pollish, and it just “feels” rock-solid…and really nothing compares to FreeBSD ports…after you use that everything’s inferior, and yes i’ve heard of gentoo
Linux is relatively cheap and MS is losing favor in the corporate world due to their willingness to play with their licensing plans to help out MS’s own bottom line.
Linux has a lot of mindshare and its traditional weakness, ease of use, is close to being solved. Applications and corporate solutions continue to grow as well. It is also backed by IT heavyweights such as IBM.
Linux will not gain traction on the consumer desktop until it is pre-installed but i wouldn’t be surprised if IT managers start to purge windblows off of their systems in favor of linux. that could start a cycle that gets Linux into the pre-install category. Within 10 years it seems reasonable that linux could be on 20% of all corporate desktops, even more.
Open source is the only business/development model that will succeed on the x86 because MS can’t destroy the development and because it keeps costs to consumers and overhead to distributors low. OS X on x86 is a sure fire failure.
Open source is the way to go on x86. Hopefully OBOS will have its own successes.
I Just love the people are who at the very first mention of Gnome in a story start talking (with a twinkle in their eye, mind you) of the wonders of KDE.
The other people that I ‘love’ so much are the ones who say “Linux is dead no matter what. They will fall. Look at all the others that fell.’.
The thing that they forget to mention is that there is no one to fall. Sure there are plenty of ‘open source’ companys that went down and more to go but free software will continue no matter what. If Lunux Torvalds dies tomorrow and every commercial company pulls out, free software will continue. Just like it did before IBM was there.
It dosen’t matter if it takes a year or a hnudred years. Linux WILL supplant windows.
Lunux Torvalds (-: heh I ofcourse meant to say Linus Torvalds.
Oh yea, and a ‘hundred’ not ‘hnudred’
“my original point was that there are still a lot of developers and companies out there that just want to make software, but don’t want to have to spend hundreds or thousands after buying a computer and/or buying windows just to start developing. a lot of people turn to alternatives (ex. java) because of this.”
You know, there ARE things out there between $0 and “thousands” of dollars. I am surprised that no Linux company (except for Inprise maybe) has jumped on that yet. If there was something easy to use out there, it would get used.
As a developer you are forced to make a decision early on: GTK, QT, or something else. Getting started in either is not that easy, especially for new developers. Why is nobody providing a great IDE for a simple programming language where you can develop applications in a matter of minutes? No library dependencies or other similar things.
On Windows, there are companies that do just that. Take Object Arts, for example. They have a great Smalltalk IDE that integrates wonderfully with Windows. If something like that was available for Linux, then I would be writing code instead of this comment…
Microsoft may not be the most innovative company, but neither are Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc. True innovation comes from small companies like the one I mentioned above.
I tried Limbo with some updates that now appeared in Limbo 2. It has ways to go before being a Windows killer. Whenever I use Linux there is “something wrong”. It starts with the usually ugly boot messages. Continues with the horrible gray X background (why can’t they switch it to just black or something, for goodness sakes!) and flashes of X (again, a simple black background would help, probably). Then you log in and click on one of those icons and – nothing happens. For a while, that is. Linux is utterly “slow”. Windows was blamed for bloat, what about the bloat in Linux?
Overall Windows and Linux might be more or less the same from a end user’s perspective. But the feeling is different. Linux always makes me wonder if something is going to go wrong anytime soon now. Like the other day when I tried to install software and nothing happened.
The shortcomings of Linux are so obvious. Where are all those OSS developers finally fixing these things? It is not that hard (simple things as fixing the annoying gray X background). Maybe it takes more than just Open Source to get a job done…
Hmmm.
Well I was really was looking forward to running the new beta after all the reviews i’ve read.
So I installed it, booted it and it hangs…
It get’s stuck when it tries to load the firewire module…
Can anyone tell me how to remove it from the boot process? I don’t need it anyways.
thnx
Linux is not slow. By Linux I mean the Linux kernel and X. Some applications are slow. But what does it have to do with Linux?
Everyone can write a slow app for Linux. Everyone can write a slow, buggy, ugly and open source app for Linux and then place an announcement on freshmeat. But it’s stupid to blame Linux or Open Source for this, isn’t it?
If your distribution sucks, blame the distribution, but remember that some distros are targeted at servers: e.g. Red Hat.
If your app sucks blame it on the author not on Linux or Open Source, but be nice, because he is doing it as a service for the community.
If Windows is better than pay for it and use it. We don’t need you. If you want to use Linux you have to accept it as it is and help improve it. By bying a good distro for example.
But for god’s sake stop whining. I don’t mean you specifically. I mean all of you Linux bashers.
i don’t really see the problem people have with Linux printing boot messages to your screen, i mean so what not like the world is going to end or something.
I’ve being using Limbo2 now for the last week and if anything i’ve notice that it’s faster to boot on my machine (P4 1.7Ghz 256mb ram) then RH7.3, aye it’s got bugs and issues but it’s beta software, you can’t expect to run it on your servers. I’m looking forward to when RH8 (or 7.4
comes out hopefully it may add to some of the nice features in Limbo
I used VS.NET and Eclipse. Eclipse is faaaaar faaar better. http://www.eclipse.org
So I do a “wine setup.exe” and all I get is an error message because of an unsupported command line option. Quite frustrating. But I guess I should stop whining because Linux RULES.
I used VS.NET and Eclipse. Eclipse is faaaaar faaar better. http://www.eclipse.org
Oh! And its free (as in beer).
Hey Kermit, this audience is intelligent enough and educated enough to know that APT and RPM are not equivalents except in the fact that they are perceived as “the application installation/mangement tool.” In that sense, APT and RPM are the same. When I need to update a program, I can use an APT command or download an rpm and use the RPM command. Not rocket science, but clearly you are too literal to understand my point.
Want your system to appeal to any mass at all? One single failed dependancy and it won’t. What would your mother say if she downloaded an .exe file in Windows and it told her that shell32.dll was missing from %systemroot%/system32?
QED
Preface: I’ve used Linux for over 4 years. I am extremely pleased with it as a server OS. I have installed it on desktops and notebooks, but ultimately I end up switching back to windows for non-server use.
Lately, I have been spending a lot of time looking at Mac OS X. To me, it seems like a viable alternative to M$ on the desktop.
When you need to install an RPM package you don’t use rpm, you use urpmi, up2date, apt-rpm, IRIS or whatever your distibution has.
Red Hat has up2date. We are talking about Red Hat. If you can’t use up2date and an RPM package has dependancies, then you can download them from the same website where you got the package. If not then blame the packager! Is that to hard to understand? Windows packages don’t have dependancies because they bundle everything together. RPM packages could do that too, but they don’t do it to save download time and disk space.
Red Hat 8.0 will be probably to hard to use for clueless users. So what? Noone cares.
First off, some questions:
What kernel patches are included with this 2.4.18 kernel?
I noticed that the low-latency patch is included and the tick rate is bumped up from 100 to 500. Is the preemptable kernel, O(1) scheduler, redone IDE subsystem, etc patches included as well?
Has printer configuration improved with Limbo? I noticed that it still does not use CUPS by default.
Second, some general comments:
– I have a Dell Latitude laptop and the sound does not properly function. On older versions of red hat, I would run sndconfig and it would fix the problem. However, this
installation does not seem to have sndconfig.
– IMHO, Red Hat needs a similar mechanism to Mandrake’s RPM update system. I know that RedHat has up2date (or something like that), but its my understanding that it is only used for errata updates. Does red-carpet work if you do not use Ximian Gnome?
Linux installs will supercede Windows in the corporate world not in 5 to 10 years but within 2 years at the outside. In the home user market add another year or two, max. That is the amount of time it will take for retailers to preinstall linux in lieu of MS Windows, but preinstalls are not a problem in the corporate sector where an IT staff can install over a network or use disk images for the rollout of thousands of linux desktops at no more cost than is required to configure a single desktop.
You say that linux is not a Windows killer but it is. The deciding factor is cost. And the linux desktop is much nicer than Windows overall – much more versatile, powerful and customizable and much, much prettier. Then you complain about apps. MS Office suffers from the same problems that Windows in general suffers from. Bloat and bugs, with no serious effort on the part of MS to change the situation. MS Windows installations (all versions therof, including XP) suffer from deterioration within a matter of months. Swapfile corruption and fragmentation and registry corruption require reboots and reinstalls across the board. Viruses, trojans, and instability plague Microsoft servers to the point Microsoft Windows isn’t even considered for mission critical applications and services in the corporate world. MS has already lost to Linux, decisively, in the corporate server market.
Both Gnome and Kde are looking very good. Both are superior to Microsoft’s explorer.exe. Don’t worry, games and commercial apps will be ported from Windows to Linux in quantity within the next two years. Within two years MS Windows will no longer be the chosen platform for game development or shrink-wrap consumer oriented commercial software. Linux will be. That’s two years, not ten.
Even in the one area in which MS has been innovative, building on the good things about java while discarding most of java’s negatives, Microsoft’s .NET is already being superceded by a free and open equivalent, mono. Mono is multi-platform and already supports both Qt and Gtk. It’s not a finished product by any means but it has a great future. .NET has no future because it is tied to the MS platform and MS has no future.
Microsoft is finished. I’m disgusted by the number of Microsoft apologists who participate in this forum who should know better. The US economy and worldwide economy can only be helped by the demise of MS, the sooner the better. Perhaps your careers won’t be helped by the same. Why not be honest about the situation, astroturfers!
People *do* have compelling reasons not to use Windows. Cost, insecurity, instability and Microsoft’s increasingly exploitative licensing policies, invasion of privacy and disrespect for the data of its customers. If you think Joe User doesn’t care about these things you are very mistaken. Joe User has no vested interest in MS. Corporations fighting desparately to survive and governments in need of affordable IT solutions have even less of an interest in apologizing for Microsoft or continuing to support its exploitation of themselves than Joe User does. The tide has turned, any you will be shocked at how quickly the majority of the computer using world can pull the chain and flush the filth that is MS Windows down the toilet.
oh come on!!! You cant piss on linux cause it uses a text based boot process. You rather have just a picture with a little bar that shows “its working”, instead of a fully descriptive process that shows you what it found, where there were problems, and best of all, why it WONT boot when it doesnt.
To the guy that didnt like the text based logins, if you REALLY dont want them there, go edit your init scripts (/etc/inittab is where im guessing it is) and take them out, oh, wait is that too hard for you? Stop whinning then. Not _everyone_ loves X, i know people (including myself) that can go weeks without going into X sometimes. X is not Linux, X goes ontop of Linux, when linux boots, X is not available, so i do think you will have to live with those text messages for a while yet.
A lot of the anti-linux-desktop arguments i’ve seen in these comments were horrid. They arent arguments, they are excuses. If you are a VS.net programmer, im guessing you LIKE Microsoft, so dont switch, fine by me, if you dont like Microsoft, why support their .NET?
Unless you actually bought MS windows (or own it legally) i dont think you should have the right to bash any other operating system because you are a theif.
To view pdfs you need to install ggv from the CD (I thought it was installed automatically)
It’s called red carpet – part on the ximian offering. It installs nicely with existing RH setups, and offers the package management that RH had been lacking.
It’s called Kylix and you can get a open source version that can do C++ and Delphi.
http://www.borland.com
People need to embrace kylix so linux can get the flood of applications similar to what happened with windows 3.1 when Visual Basic was released.
All Linux Distros need to include support for Kylix so just a exe can be distributed. They just need to have a standard location for the kylix libraries and include them in the distro.
Ive tried just about all the distros out there including the betas, and I just keep coming back to SuSE 8. Its just better. Slackware does rock, but you need to really know what youre doing for Slackware. I know what Im doing and I still enjoy the conviences that SuSE 8 provides its users in the GUI. Ive run both Limbo betas and to be honest I think the author is sorely mistaken about it being a windows killer. I still think SuSE 8 is better than Limbo or mdrake9. Say what you will about Gnome2….I thought it looked beautiful, but was totally disfunctional as a UI compared to KDE3 or Windows. First thing I had to do with Gnome2 (most distros) was go in and setup all my file associations manually for Nautilus (Nautilus is still too imature to be called windows killer) Konqueror is much more up to the task when compared to Explorer. Anyway, just my $.02
Nautilus is too slow to be useful on my K6-2 400 with 96 MB RAM. Gnome needs a fast explorer-like file manager to become a Windows killer.
IDEs: Codewarrior ( http://www.codewarrior.com ), Kdevelop, Anjuta2, and whatever Borland sell (i’ve never used their IDE).
PDFs integrated in nautilus: ggv, it’s part of gnome so will be on the cd.
Installing RPMs: The simplest way i know if is using up2date from a console – so you can do “up2date kdebase” and it will download and install kde and all it’s dependancies for you (just like apt, and yes it is free). That does involve using a terminal though so isn’t ideal for newbies – ximians Red-Carpet is probably more approprait for them (you _don’t_ have to install the whole of ximian gnome, you can just install red-carpet and only subscribe to the redhat-7.x channel (but they don’t support beta releases so you’ll have to stick with 7.3 for now or wait for the next stable release)
By the way the screenshots in the article look really nice, I’m looking forward to the next redhat release 🙂
away all this anti-Linux FUD and TROLLING like you can on Slashdot.
And it’s a shame none of these posts from the bearded GNU-freaks DESTROYING the Linux is a joke on the desktop posts aren’t properly labeled +5 Insightful.
Reality 1, Open Source Zealots 0
There is also Code-Forge a commercial IDE.
>To the guy that didnt like the text based logins, if you REALLY dont want them there, go edit your init scripts (/etc/inittab is where im guessing it is) and take them out, oh, wait is that too hard for you? Stop whinning then. Not _everyone_ loves X, i know people (including myself) that can go weeks without going into X sometimes. X is not Linux, X goes ontop of Linux, when linux boots, X is not available, so i do think you will have to live with those text messages for a while yet.
If you’re referring to my comment about the momentary flash of a text mode login before gdm starts, I will say that I was not in any way whining about it, I was only giving one small example of why this is not a Windows killer. Windows has a higher level of polish than this. They’ve gotten rid of all text mode three or four years ago. Maybe to you this means nothing at all and you can’t understand why it would be an issue. I guess I just like things to be aesthetically pleasing, and flashing between text mode and X is anything but pleasing to the eye.
I personally do not have a problem with a text mode login, it’s what I prefer on my FreeBSD box which I use almost all of the time. I was merely comparing Redhat to Windows, and giving some opinions why Redhat isn’t quite there yet.
And it is damn nice. Not what I would consider a Windows killer, but Redhat has put together a great product that will be a Windows killer at least in the server arena. I could not image an easier server to manage.
Commercial IDE’s on Linux:
KDEvelop is great, but most *nix developers that I know use vi or emacs. When I was writing code for Windows, I would use a mix of tools, including VC++, and I pretty much used what was best for the job. For writing generic forms and simple apps the Visual Studio products are excellent, as are products by Borland and Kylix. Visual Studio is not the be all even on Windows just as KDevlelop, GLADE, or even vi are not the be all tools on *nix.
I don’t understand all this about IDEs Linux has lots.
The success and failure of Linux will not be decided by the
availability of IDEs.
Personally I do not like them I have yet to see one that
can handle a large hetrogeneous (developers, development
sites ,processors, tools) project.
If the IDE you use works for what you need to do great. The
point is to use the right tools for the right job. Linux
has a much wider chocie of tools than anything else.
Romendo, the best you can do is shut up because you’re out of context. I repeat, BEFORE TALKING ABOUT ANYTHING, LEARN ABOUT IT FIRST. If it complains about unsupported command line blah blah, have you tried wine — setup.exe?!?!?!? Or have you even configured everything PROPERLY? I also had problems with wine, but IT WAS MY PROBLEM, because I was the one that didn’t configured it right! As soon as I did, IT WORKED FINE! WHY DON’T YOU TRY CONFIGURING THINGS? Money does not fall out of the sky’s and things just do not suddenly get configured by dark forces, you know? And about you saying “But I guess I should stop whining because Linux RULES.”… I do not have that opinion. In fact, I even consider some aspects of Linux a fraud. But… facing what we have to choose from today, it looks like a better alternative for some kind of users. It may not be a windows killer, it may not be for my Grandma, it WAS ONCE for the advanced user… Now, it is not getting easier enough for the not advanced user, but also becomming extremly difficult for the advanced. Nevertheless, if you want something working right, DO IT YOURSELF! As I do, I use my own distro in some machines. Wine… wan’t wine working? Then configure it propery… it’s a good start. Btw, wine works good even with a fake windows partition. No complaints.
But there are frontends to RPM that do the dependancy checking (autoupdate, yum, urpmi, rom-update, et al).
ARGH!!!!! I can’t stand this horribly inaccurate portrayal apt as a package management system. Debian does not use apt as a package manager, it uses Dpkg. Apt sits atop the package manager and manages updates, dependencies, and conflicts. You can even get apt for rpm at http://www.freshrpms.net so that you can use it there. It is at least as good as up2date and is exactly the same in operation as the apt for dpkg. RedHat has chosen to use RPM because they started the package management system that is RPM. In case you have been blind to the standards body the Linux Standards Base even specifies that RPM is the standard package format for an LSB compliant distribution. RedHat has said that it will take quite a while for them to become completely standards compliant but they moving from RPM to something else would be a move in the wrong direction.
Listen if the secretary over in the corner loves windows and lives with windows and plays games on windows then I leave her the hell alone.
If the mac fiend across the street loves their Mac OS X with the Unix under the hood and the X style interface straight from the hearts of Job’s best folks then I leave him alone.
If I know a developer, sysadmin or network engineer that hates their windows workstation and wants the power of unix on their desktop then I suggest SuSE 8.0 or Mandrake.
I honestly hope that Linux does not go prime time and I cringe at the idea of people buying Wal-Mart machines with Mandrake installed. Why? I do not want linux dumbed down for the masses. I want it polished up for the hard core geeks that want to get away from Windows but are still UI whores at heart.
Making Linux clone the look and feel of Windows is the worst of ideas. One of the reasons I left Windows is that I hated the look and feel and even with the more difficult configuration preferred Linux to the Windows way of doing things.
Calm down, stop shouting, or you will see all your comments moderated down as your previous one did.
Its ignorant comments like that which will make sure OpenBSD and to a lesser txtent Linux will NEVER beat microsoft apps.
If you make people become programmers to get rid of bad code, you restrict your appeal to techies.
No Domestic windows user would dream of changing their applications code to make them work better, they just change to other BETTER applications.
Which, indirectly, is why I am typing this on Opera on Windows 2000 – Because ignorant jerks wont address the flaws in their software, they just insist that the people who identify them are responsible for fixing them
My answer to that is to say – keep your software.. there’s better stuff out there and that’s what I’ll use.
I just presented an example and you assume that I did not even setup anything correctly. You assume way too much. You have no clue about what I did in order to get this thing running.
If things take that much effort to get them running, Linux will never be more than it is now. And trying to point out its shortcomings always causes comments like yours. I hope that one day an OS will come along that is as easy to use as Windows and that runs on cheap(er) hardware. Maybe OBOS is it? We’ll see.
BTW, it wasn’t wine complaining about unknown command line option, it was setup.exe, and I didn’t pass anything to it. So it was wine that screwed up something.
“Don’t worry, games and commercial apps will be ported from Windows to Linux in quantity within the next two years. Within two years MS Windows will no longer be the chosen platform for game development or shrink-wrap consumer oriented commercial software. Linux will be. That’s two years, not ten.”
Assuming you’re right, when that does happen, then you can sream from the rooftops that Linux has finally arrived. Until then, nobody cares.
Those of us in the Win32 world are well aware of Windows’ problems, and having pundets like you repeatedly reminding us is like hearing non-smokers say for the 1000th time that cigarettes cause lung cancer. (Hell, I don’t even smoke and even *I* find it annoying.)
Alas, the reason why most of us (at least the power users) are still in Windows land is because we are not intersted in open source ‘alterantives’ to what we are already using that are simply ‘good enough.’ And because we feel this way, we are willing to put up with an ‘inferior’ OS, and we also realize that if Linux finally catches on as you predict, it’ll be pretty much like Windows is now, so we might as well stay were we’re at.
Linux is whatever you and other programmers want it to be
And that’s the problem. Linux is whatever linux programmers want it to be. Which is really great, if your target market is linux programmers.
I talked almost two years ago with a red hat developer who worked on the Anaconda installer. I mentioned a few usability problems that had bothered me (stuff that would confuse end users into not booting into X, modal dialogs that blocked crucial information, etc) and his response was “you don’t think it’s pretty enough?”. To be fair, Mandrake also has the same wrong idea with their installer, as seen by all the ambiguous star-shaped widgets they use (in an attempt to make it “pretty”). While redhat uses less ambiguous widgets than mandrake, they are no less guilty of making stuff confusing because they lay out their unambiguous widgets in extremely ambiguous ways. If you look here (yes, I know it’s 7.3 and not limbo, but red hat has a habit of being backwards-compatible with their usability problems)
http://www.redhat.com/software/linux/screenshots/installer-installc…
Notice they use some sort of “hierarchical radio buttons” where the gap between the “Install” and “Upgrade Existing System” is the size of a small asian country. Radio buttons are effective because they group choices together (making use of a psychological principle called “chunking”), but they start to lose their effectiveness if they are spaced too far apart. Radio buttons also are not appropriate for conveying hierarchy. While Microsoft is orders of magnitude incompetant at designing user interfaces, not even they would create something this bad. What’s worse, we see this kind of design quite often in many pieces of free software. What’s even worse than that is that many people in the linux community seem to not notice these problems because they are able to use their prior linux expertise to get around the most confusing and ambiguous parts of the installer. And some of them testify that linux is perfectly ready for the desktop.
Guess what happens if some poor schmuck hears that linux is a usable alternative to windows and then hits these confusing areas of the installer’s interface? He writes off linux as “an operating system written by nerds for nerds.” A badly designed linux UI is more deadly than Microsoft’s best FUD.
From what i’ve heard, this is something Windows always did: they run some components of the interface (and surely the mouse thing) at a higher priority by default. Therefore the good responsiveness of the Micro$oft desktop.
I can’t imagine how the mouse responsiveness could possibly be a problem UNLESS you are silly enough to leave gpm running. Turn off gpm and use the PS/2 mouse interface that comes with XFree86. Gpm is bad and should always be turned off on a system that uses X Windows. Red Hat might figure this out some day.
Kris
Why all the fuss about up2date? It costs less than the Mandrake club(it is free or $5 per month) and works just as well or better if you consider that there is more support for Red Hat than Mandrake. If you can’t upgrade your stuff by hand (with gcc, alien, or rpm ), then you need to learn Slack and then come back to RedHat after a while. Red Hat should stick with what it wants. Especially if those who criticize don’t even know how to compile their own stuff or download an appropriate library. Easy peasy. This goes for those who can’t pass options to their kernel during install because its too haaaaard. Nuts.
at least for me:)
I have used Linux for desktop 1,6 years already now. Linux is already good, Limbo is probably even better.
uhh, I don’t know what your smoking, but slackware is not a grannie’s desktop distro. It’s more for server stuff, and do it yourselfers.
Don’t get me wrong, I use Slackware 8.1 at home, but the 8.0 branch was not updated for way too long. There aren’t that many native packages, and auto configuration of anything (X especially) is way behind the other distros.
There is no APT vs RPM debate. As a couple of people pointed out, it’s APT vs up2date or rpm vs dpkg. apt4rpm.sf.net has been doing wonders for those of us who love apt and rpm. Also synaptic (get it at freshrpms.net) is the best GUI package manager out there. It uses apt4rpm. Debian doesn’t even have this one, I’ve used it on Yellow Dog and RH 7.3. In fact apt4rpm is quickly becoming the way many distros update their distros. Yellow Dog and Connectiva use it officially and it supports Suse, Mandrake, RH and a couple of others. I expect Mandrake (always the populist distro) will drop urpmi for apt4rpm in a release or two (complete guess based on their past decisions).
I only have up2date around to notify me of updates, I use apt4rpm to get them.
Please quit making it sound like you have to choose apt or rpm. This is a really annoying piece of misinformation that always dominates discussions about RH. It’s invalid and dead.
Whenever I use Linux there is “something wrong”.
It starts with the usually ugly boot messages. Continues with the horrible gray X
background (why can’t they switch it to just black or something, for goodness
sakes!) and flashes of X (again, a simple black background would help, probably)
Whoever said this. You are an idiot. Go away.
I tried limbo1 and limbo2, both times giving up my customised and perfectly working desktops running kde3 on redhat 7.3 and suse 8 respectively. Both times I ended up disappointed. There was a minor flaw in ftp based installation for limbo1, the button’s functonality was swapped -ie you have to press the one left to the one that you really want to press. Its carried over to limbo2.
But thats a small thing. Every body who tested limbo seems to run gnome2. I chose KDE both times, and on both occassions, I couldnt run a single KDE program without a crash.(Limbo1 seemed to have a cvs kde release pulled out
very recently, which might contribute to the problems)
The only thing I was interested is the claimed
difference in application load times and hopefully execution times due to the changes in HZ value from 100 to 1000.
I beleive the application response times showed better response times, KDE apps tried to load faster, only to crash
before getting loaded fully.
In the mailing list someone said that 1000 is way too high and redhat will come up with a value lesser than 1000, that takes care of the crashes. Anyway, limbo will be interesting (to me) not because of the vanilla things directed towards wooing windows users, but because of claimed increase in application load times. But I have decided not to touch a beta again, at least not to try it on my linux workstation for everyday use.
Redhat should concentrate on the server market. Thats where the money is. Windows users will not switch in near future, simply because they have no compelling reason to do so and evenif they wanted to, the learning curve is so steep. Linux should try to gain more share from solaris and
windows 2000, redhat should concentrate on creating a kernel with massive vertical scalability -like the solaris one
and combine that with clustering support so that linux becomes attractive to data centers. Let other vendors like
mandrake concentrate on desktop centric distributions and anyway linux will be used mostly by admins/linux lovers as a workstation.
One funny thing, many US government websites seem to move to win2000 and IIS in the last 6 months. Try
netcraft.com and check the OS type. 95% of websites that have the greatest value of uptime are freebsd!.
RG wrote: “I think it is fairly clear that redhat insists on rpm because rpm, unlike apt, cannot currently do automatic dependcy tracking and installation of packages, and redhat likes that because you will now have to use the subscription redhat update network to get this auto install feature.”
I agree RPM is the most important road block keeping Linux from the ordinary Joe’s desktop. But if Red Hat tries to take its clientele hostage with hard to figure and carry out installs, people won’t put up and pay for its update network. They will start looking for another distributon.
Meanwhile RPM or, more generally, puzzling apps installs are hurting ALL of the Linux community.
I don’t know what the complaint is about RPM. I’ve never had a problem with it.
“…it still is missing lots of functionality that I’m used to having and I don’t want to live without anymore.”
I don’t know what “functionality” you people are talking about because RedHat has everything that the average computer user needs: email, office, browser, chat and messenger, etc.
RPMs are actually excellent. They contain lots of info that currently isn’t used. Thats why you can install a prog like apt-rpm and it works with standard rpm packages. Mandrake uses URPMI I think which basically does the same thing.
But yes RH doesnt want RPM to do too much cause then instead of buying upgrades the avg user and corporates would just download all upgrades and install. Look at what Ximian has done to RPMS. RPMS are perfect if you are looking to make money from services. This is the plus for redhat and other rpm distros.
Wow..they have really polished the desktop. It looks really good. I love redhat’s gnome config. Ximian tries to do too much and I HATE that MAC type bar that they put at the top of the screen. KDE = Bloated Junk. I love Redhat 7.3 so I can’t wait for this release (use it at home and work). Since everyone else is listing the pos/neg things about linux thought I should drop a few lines as well. For an IDE (when I use one. I still have a passion for VI)I use Anjuta. Gotta love the gimp. Quanta Plus is not bad for website design and man, evolution is the best thing since ketchup! I use galeon for a web browser (lighter than mozilla or at least it seems that way). But the one main downfall of linux that hasn’t received any attention from the dev world still remains…GAMES. I just don’t get it. All multiplayer games release a server for linux, why not a client? I know there has been a couple (doom, quake, and diablo i think) but we need more! I know developers develope for the wide audience but I wouldn’t mind paying more for a game that runs on my rock solid linux box than paying less for a game that runs (and CRASHES) on a POS windoze box. Does opengl suck on linux? I know there is no directX but all games and graphic cards support opengl. If every video game company made a linux version then there would be NO NEED FOR WINDOZE…at least from where I sit.
I don’t know if it’s necessary to point this out, but I will.
>I originally chose to install both KDE and Gnome, but then I removed KDE after trying it out because it didn’t have
>the same integration as Gnome and I really don’t think they should include it at all except maybe as an extra on
>one of the other CDs.
Perhaps you should not blame KDE. It looks as though Red Hat doesn’t like KDE, according to this article from a couple of weeks ago:
http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=148
(I’m neither a KDE nor a RH user, BTW, but I certainly think RH should have dealt more fairly in this case.)
Still my complaint about Gnome/KDE desktops is network intergration. Just think about it, with windows all you have to do is connect to your office network, log on to the domain. Thats it, now you can easily share files(no need to
go type username/passwords everywhere) Outlook connects seamingless to the exchange server, no need to run and ask te sysadmin about password/hostnames etc. Same goes for using a printer, no big hassle of setting it up and finding the right printer.
Now, th MS implementation may suck, but there is no reason someone cant take the idea and do it right. The infrastructure is here (SLP, LDAP, Kerberos, PAM/NSS are the keywords) it just needs Gnome/KDE intergration.
Having atleast set up openldap, pam/nss_ldap(thanks http://www.padl.com) , mit-kerberos as a _very_ nice repacement for NIS has helped us alot with atleast central userinfo & password managment. Its still a hassle to set up, and Redhat seems to be the only one that got their /etc/pam.d/ configuration “right” for easily setting up client machines. A great thanks to RH’s “authconfig” tool also.