Were you to walk around LinuxWorld in San Francisco this week, for almost every person you’d see sitting, you’d see a laptop in front of them. And, if you’re a snoopy person, like me, you’d also see that about half of those laptops were running Linux. That doesn’t sound like that much? Think again. Even a year ago, Linux-powered laptops were a rarity. Find out why Linux journalist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols thinks the Linux desktop is poised for success.
The State of the 2006 Linux Desktop
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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No, really! We means it this time, we does!
Instead of saying this tired arguement (in, I assume, sarcasm) you need to look at it in a different light. Desktop Linux is improving to the point that people that want to use just Linux can with dwindling downsides as usability improves and there is an ever growing population of applications that can fit in as equivalents of popular Windows apps.
In the past I encountered various times that I needed to boot into Windows to get certain things done, but anymore I have less things that I can’t accomplish in Linux. And in the end that is all that really should matter.
Is it nessessary for someone to say that EVERY time an article like this to come out? But yes, the Linux desktop is most certainly ready. It will not be used is mass quantities, though, until we have open-source graphics card drivers.
Sorry but it’s the law, someone has to say it.
Is it nessessary for someone to say that EVERY time an article like this to come out?
Nope, only every time some idiot proclaims another year the year of the Linux desktop.
Nobody proclaimed this is the year of the Linux desktop. The only idiots are people like you, who pretend like people are proclaiming that this is the year of Linux on the desktop, just to be able to make a fool out of them.
Apparently it has become a sin to say positive things about Linux. Nobody’s allowed to praise it anymore without being rediculed by people like you.
Edited 2006-08-18 21:32
about half of those laptops were running Linux. That doesn’t sound like that much?
Well, considering it’s Linuxworld, no – it doesn’t sound very impressive! What were the other half running?
I’ve gotta say though, I agree with Raymond – if Linux is to stand a chance on the desktop, there has to be a version that can do everything Windows can (although you can leave out the viruses and spyware if you like).
As Enterprise desktop yes, As Home Desktop no.
linux lack of excellent hardware and software support plague the platform real bad.
Linux is an excellent server OS though and a very good workstation too.
I wish this to change but till now nothing major happened since linux started to appear, thus linux will be in the shaddows runned by experts in computing.
The Proof: If I want a decent linux workstation or server I would buy it from IBM, HP, Dell but till now I cannot see those important OEMs sell Linux Home Desktop.
That doesn’t sound like that much? Think again. Even a year ago, Linux-powered laptops were a rarity.
And this guy is supposed to have the pulse of the linux desktop scene? Linux notebooks were not a rarity “even a year ago”. What does he think they were running at LinuxWorld 3 years ago? And these aren’t Aunt Tillys hanging out there. My first “perfect-out-of-the-box” install was some flavor of Mandrake on a Thinkpad 380ed around 2000-2001. There was no sudden jump to the notebooks in the past year. We can only chalk his excitement up to breathlessly needing to proclaim that something is different this year.
No, it’s not just that he sees Vista’s manifest failings as giving Linux a golden window of opportunity. It’s that he has studied the history of operating systems and he believes that the only time an operating system can be displaced is when its hardware platform changes underneath it. Now, and within the next year and a half, as we see the 32-bit computing world give way to the 64-bit world, this is not only the time for the Linux desktop to strike, it’s probably the best opportunity Linux will get to try to displace Windows.
Where have we heard that before? Oh yeah, it was when XP came out. I’m sure he’ll be singing the same tune 5 years from now.
Raymond predicts that many people in the open-source community will not welcome the whole scale adoption of binary programs in user-space. He’s right.
And so do these same people want to see desktop Linux ever get above even 5% of the desktop market? I guess not.
Jon “Maddog” Hall of Linux International, on the same panel, believes that embracing proprietary binary drivers and codecs is a mistake. He believes that users should fight with their wallets to make vendors embrace open-standards. For example, he believes that users should buy music-players that support open music standard such as Ogg Vorbis.
99.9999% of users want an appliance. They don’t even know what source code is. And this guy is expecting them to become activists. You gotta wonder.
I recently wrote that Lenovo was the first of the major hardware vendors to seriously pre-install Linux — SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, to be exact. And, they have….
Some further ramblings about how Lenovo does pre-install it, but they don’t, but they do support it, but they don’t, and at the same time having an imaginary conversation between himself and Lenovo.
There’s a lesson in all this that all the PC makers, and all businesses, should hear loud and clear. The Linux desktop isn’t just for Linux fans anymore — it’s on its way to being ready for all users now.
Oops, being ready for all users, and a significant number of users actually wanting it are two different things.
Linux notebooks were not a rarity “even a year ago”.
The challenge to Linux notebooks is still there. I run Linux and BSD on all flavors of notebooks. It is still quite a challenge on _most_ laptops to get all features working. It really isn’t a fair comparison with windows, where the drivers for everything are pre-installed. ACPI is the biggest culprit. Sleep, suspend, etc. are still very hit and miss. It does no good to blame the manufacturers for their faulty ACPI implementations (which is true). To the end-user it is simple – it works in Windows, it doesn’t in Linux. And please, no responses about “Well it works out of the box on my laptop”. I’m talking averages. I can usually get _most_ everything working on _most_ laptops, but that is not the average user. I realize it is actually an OEM problem. If people had to manually install Windows on laptops (which I have done many times), they would have the same hit-and-miss problems in Windows. But they rarely every install Windows. It just comes working to them. This is what they compare to when they pop in that Linux install CD. Quite a challenge for Linux. Therefore, when we see signs of companies like Lonovo, HP (remember their Linux laptop?) offering Linux laptops (even if it is just a bare hard-drive with a Linux driver’s cd), it is a good sign. Linux and *BSD are doing a great job at laptop support despite these obstacles. However, the final solution must come at the OEM level.
…if he really wants desktop Linux to get out of single digit market share is one of two things. Either some kind of consolidation between the big vendors. Novell merging with RedHat, Novell or RedHat buying Canonical, or some combination of the above. Or, that one desktop Linux stands heads and shoulders above the rest – unlikely.
The effect of either of those is that there becomes a defacto “The desktop Linux”. It can be packaged up for mom and pop, it’s a known quantity for support, and there’s something that can be finally targetted by ISVs.
The true geeks can still have their Gentoos and Slackware and laugh at all the newbs with their newb distro.
“Novell merging with RedHat, Novell or RedHat buying Canonical, or some combination of the above.”
Novell already merged with SUSE, and what was the result?
Not much, because you still ask for more merges to solve the problem.
As I said above two things should happen to improve linux situation in home desktops: Supporting linux with best hardware and then port all important applications from windows/Mac worlds.
Novell already merged with SUSE, and what was the result?
Novell didn’t have a distro before they bought Suse. There was no consolidation happening.
As I said above two things should happen to improve linux situation in home desktops: Supporting linux with best hardware and then port all important applications from windows/Mac worlds.
What do you mean best hardware? – best drivers? Uhmm, you realize that you can’t just “port” Office to Linux right?
And I forgot, having a standard desktop Linux would also help in one huge way. Games. You think windows support is a nightmare, just think of the nightmare with various distros that have to be accounted for.
I’ve been hearing this better, more drivers and more apps for years now. It sure doesn’t hurt to have lots of great drivers and general purpose (non-geek) apps, but I don’t believe that will ever be enough.
On the flip side of more consolidation, I think if Google ever got into the linux desktop game, it would be a positive. But that’s highly unlikely, considering their gig is the web.
“It sure doesn’t hurt to have lots of great drivers and general purpose (non-geek) apps, but I don’t believe that will ever be enough. ”
I think that would be enough for me and alot of users and administrators as well.
How many web cameras are supported in linux?; simly none of which that I could buy from bestbuy, fry’s electronics, circuit city, radioshack or any of those sellers online, so how could you convince webcamera users to use linux.
almost all Canon, Lexmark and other printers and All-in-one printers/fax/scanner devices are basically not supported at all in linux and if there is a driver for them it would never work as intended or the features of the driver will not include things included in Mac/windows drivers
Video Cards, almost all linux distros never were successful to recognize my 1920x1200x32@60 monitor resolution with the most common cards on the market from nvidia 6600 GT to ATI Radeon 7500 AIO, why? Drivers which are not installed by default or if they then they are not well configured (eg like in Xandros 3 or 4) due to licensing restrictions.
All Advaned Keyboards with key assignments are never completely functional (lauch applications, back and forward keys, applications menu keys,….etc)
All advanced Mice with more than 3 buttons, do not function completely with any linux (horizontal scrolling, lauch applications,gestures…..etc)
Sound Cards, almost all linux distros cannot support midi from out of the box like in windows and mac, beside lacking advanced sound optimization like normalization, per channel configuration, DSP for audio themes, optical audio output not working in most cards, ask Creative and Philips and…
Power Saving Settings will definetly crash your linux if not choosed and configured correctly, even if you choose them well whey will crash your system due to poor support; try to standby your linux system or hibernate it or better stop the HDD after 1 hour of inactivity.
And on Software support there are alot of professional users who will never try anything else to what they’ve used to and trained on tools, and they are right because they use the best of the best from Adobe to Autodesk and the alternatives on linux are still for babies (or amateurs at best )
So, from above everything is about hardware and software support under linux and that’s the way for linux to improve and achieve, and not simply by buying the other technologies. By the way Redhat was buying alot of companies in the past 2 years without rising its Market capital above 5 billion a cent.
Happy day everyone!
That’s a pretty impressive list of hardware that you don’t believe is up to snuff on Linux. You better hope for a future stable driver API and that binary drivers don’t get driven out.
I, too have been seeing a change in the Linux marketplace. Yes, there have been vendors selling laptops with Linux installed, but currently they sell laptops where everything works, WiFi, hibernation, special keys, everything.
Now to hraq’ comments. His is the usual negativism, combined with wrong information. I have no experience with Web cams, but have certainly compiled enough kernels to see support for lots of them. And then there is this:
almost all Canon, Lexmark and other printers and All-in-one printers/fax/scanner devices are basically not supported at all in linux and if there is a driver for them it would never work as intended or the features of the driver will not include things included in Mac/windows drivers
Canon printers are all I use. I have also set up a fair number of HP multifunction printers. For Canon, think Turboprint. They make excellent drivers.
Video Cards, almost all linux distros never were successful to recognize my 1920x1200x32@60 monitor resolution with the most common cards on the market from nvidia 6600 GT to ATI Radeon 7500 AIO, why?
I still remember installing ATI drivers in Windows. It was a bit involved, but doable. Eventually I ended up with a system where I could pick the resolution I wanted. Cards like the Radeon 7500 are well supported by Xorg out of the box. Indeed, support for the mobility version is better in Linux than in Windows. New cards are a different issue. Here is what I do to install a new card, let’s say with an Nvidia GPU:
Install the card.
Boot to console. Log-in as root.
Run Module Assistant (I use Debian). Use the menus to download, compile, and install the Nvidia kernel module.
Use apt-get to install the drivers.
Make sure the xorg.conf file specifies the “nvidia” driver. You either edit the file with a text editor, or use dpkg-reconfigure.
Launch desktop.
The alternative involves downloading and running Nvidia’s own install program. It’s fully automated, but I prefer a setup that I can control with Debian’s package management system.
How does this differ from Windows? First, when running Windows, I never use the drivers that come on the CD provided by the card manufacturer. I make sure I grab the newest drivers from the Internet before even installing the card. Then, in VGA mode, I use whatever install method the manufacturer uses. What I don’t get is automatic driver updates through my distribution, something that Debian provides automatically.
I don’t use fancy, button laden keyboards or mice. I avoid them. I have gotten a few to work on laptops, particularly my daughter’s Sony.
The comments about power saving: “Power Saving Settings will definetly crash your linux if not choosed and configured correctly, even if you choose them well whey will crash your system due to poor support; try to standby your linux system or hibernate it or better stop the HDD after 1 hour of inactivity.”
The same comments about configuration applies to Windows. If not configured properly, Windows will crash (and I have had more than a few laptops do that). I have been trying Linux, or using it since 2002. Only in the last year have I bothered with power saving. I was shocked by what I found on a Toshiba. Both suspend and hibernation worked. I never set anything up.
Prior to that, however, I could get the back light to shut off and the hard drive to stop (think “noflushd”). With the advent of a working suspend and hibernation, laptop support is pretty much complete, and that is the point of Nichols’ article. People use Linux laptops because they work. If the hardware support works, then Linux’s other advantages come to the fore, making the use of Linux on a laptop a no-brainer.
So I agree with Nichols. I have seen a steady improvement in Linux hardware support over the past several years. I can see why attendees at a Linux convention would use the OS in a laptop more frequently.
And on Software support there are alot of professional users who will never try anything else to what they’ve used to and trained on tools, and they are right because they use the best of the best from Adobe to Autodesk and the alternatives on linux are still for babies (or amateurs at best )
And if such professionals don’t want to switch, who am I to make them. My concerns are with home and small office users, and frankly Linux is the better solution here.
Man you are totally biased and supporter of linux; but what you have said is totally worng and shows me that you never worked as an administrator or even a technician.
Do you think that I use web cams, of course not, but still others around me who use linux wants them and I have to install it to them, and basically there are no support for 95% of Creative or Logitech web cameras if you have ever seen their web sites or any linux webcam websites. Currently,and this is the right fact, the only webcams supported on linux are the legacy ones which you can not find on the store shelfs.
OK (for a printer that I needed to install for my sister) the canon ip4000 has no support in linux, and the available source drivers for it is on a japanese web site and It will not work unless you go into 30 minutes with codes on vi; even then the driver is so, so, so inferior and will sometimes not work, then you mentioned turboprint which in fact I installed on fedora 5 and for some reasons unknown worked for 2 print jobs and then stopped working with the 3rd print job! the same happened with HP deskjet 895Cse and besides all that, turboprint wont install with many distros (80% of distrowatch list) due to dependancy issues, thus makes it difficult to deal with for administrators on mixed linux distro environment when the hardware is heterogeneous.
” still remember installing ATI drivers in Windows. It was a bit involved, but doable.”
you want to convince me that installing graphics drivers of ATI on windows is more difficult than in linux and playing with xorg.conf and editing lines was easier?!!!
And for the ATI claimed default excellent linux drivers you said; have you run “glxgears” and found how bad the results of openGL in fullscreen with non proprietary drivers?! or have you played a wmvhd movie with 1080p video and 7000kpbs AC3 sound, I will be 100% unplayable without the proprietary drivers
“I don’t use fancy, button laden keyboards or mice”
This doesn’t cancel other people’s wish and customer’s demand to use them.
“The same comments about configuration applies to Windows. If not configured properly, Windows will crash”
Who talked about windows, try a mac laptop and see if it would ever crash when goes to or comes out of standby. For windows, only good OEMs were successful to implement power savings without big embarrassment. Linux doesn’t hold a candle in this area to both mac or windows.
“And if such professionals don’t want to switch, who am I to make them. My concerns are with home and small office users, and frankly Linux is the better solution here.”
Your concerns must be with home users not office users who will have an administrator to take the burden of supporting linux away from their way, but for poor kids who don’t know to administer their boxes at home I pray they wont become crazy. and saying “linux is the better solution here” is totally restrictive to experienced users or administrators but OSX is the best solution if the customer can afford it, if not then windows vista might be the last choice.
By the way I love linux and I use it on a daily basis as a server, and I am not pessimistic as you said but I am rational when judging things and I let real life senarios dectate my judgement.
Actually, I found rpm files for the IP4000 in less than 5 minutes on google.
I’ve done ATI driver installs, and NVidia installs, and honestly, the biggest quirk with the nvidia is ‘/etc/init.d/xdm stop’ before you install them.
Otherwise, it’s pretty much on the same level as Windows drivers. Point, click, hit enter, sit back and wait.
Enabling extra buttons *is* a slight pain on X11. I’ll grant that one.
Everyone says Linux isn’t as easy to use as Windows XP. Honestly, that’s not much of a benchmark. The real eye opener will be when people realize Linux can be just as easy to use as Vista (If not more so).
Comparing with OS X isn’t exactly fair, since Apple already went to the trouble of picking out hardware that is absolutely guaranteed to work with their software.
Man you are totally biased and supporter of linux; but what you have said is totally worng and shows me that you never worked as an administrator or even a technician.
This is name calling. That I like Linux is obvious. That you don’t know enough about Linux support to “work as an administrator or even a technician” is clear.
OK (for a printer that I needed to install for my sister) the canon ip4000 has no support in linux, and the available source drivers for it is on a japanese web site and It will not work unless you go into 30 minutes with codes on vi…
I own the Canon Pixma iP4000, and it works flawlessly under Linux, as do its iP4200 and iP5200 replacements. The iP4000 runs with the Turboprint drivers. There was no code editing involved. I simply installed the drivers. Also, there is a Gutenprint driver for it that does a decent job. Installation is via Debian package management and wizard.
As for your “this is the right fact” arguments about Web cams, I take it with a grain of salt, given your blatantly false assertions about printers.
you want to convince me that installing graphics drivers of ATI on windows is more difficult than in linux and playing with xorg.conf and editing lines was easier?!!!
No, I don’t use newer ATI cards on Linux, and have never installed ATI’s drivers. I have installed Nvidia drivers, and drivers for Intel, Sis, and the like. I have found editing a text file easy. If you don’t want to edit the file, you can use dpkg-reconfigure, and use its menus. I have found installing the drivers offered on Nvidia’s site even easier, as it is automatic. I prefer the Debian method, however, for the automatic updates and package management it provides. In short, I’ll edit a text file if ongoing maintenance is easier, and with Debian, it is easier.
Who talked about windows, try a mac laptop and see if it would ever crash when goes to or comes out of standby.
I believe you were talking about Windows, that’s why I mentioned it. You mentioned such things as driver support and Autocad in a previous post. Those are Windows centric arguments. I’ll repeat what Nichols said in his article. Linux works; that’s why you see it being used more in laptops at Linux conventions. It works at my house, where Laptops suspend and resume without issue. It works with vendors, who now offer laptops with everything working. Two years ago, that wasn’t the case; now it is.
I’ll close with this: Linux is a viable desktop and laptop platform. It is far more than a server OS. My daughter uses a Linux laptop in school. She is about to start her second year with it. I know a number of her classmates, who are wiping and reinstalling Windows, because the OS had gotten too “slow.” As a parent, I know Linux is very viable.
There is one other thing about my daughter’s computer. While it will not be “wiped” at the start of the school year, the software has changed over a year. KDE has gone from 3.3 to 3.5. OpenOffice has gone from 1.1 to 2.0.3. The kernel has gone from 2.6.14-9 to 2.6.17-8. Firefox went from 1.0 to 1.5. In other words, even in a year’s time, the changes in software are quite significant. Shoot, even dpkg-reconfigure and Module Assistant are fairly new.
My comments are Debian centric, but other distributions likewise are changing. I like the direction of GNU/Linux. I find it viable now. I look forward to the future.
Do you think that I use web cams, of course not, but still others around me who use linux wants them and I have to install it to them, and basically there are no support for 95% of Creative or Logitech web cameras if you have ever seen their web sites or any linux webcam websites. Currently,and this is the right fact, the only webcams supported on linux are the legacy ones which you can not find on the store shelfs
People using Linux and wanting to buy a USB thingy have this neat little site, called http://www.linux-usb.org, which has this neat “working devices list” link (you can’t miss it, there’s a rose text right to it), which has this bad menu (I mean, you can miss it, in the blue bar, but you can’t miss the search entry), along with list of devices by manufacturer or type of devices. And the site just shows you are way off mark with your 95 % not supported Creative and Logitech. Also, keep in mind that some entries are very old and work now. Notice that some newest devices work too. That’s where you go first when buying some USB device on Linux, except for printing, where you have linux-printing.org, and scanners, where you use SANE site.
All these sites just show you’re really a negativist, wanting to disparage Linux by all counts. You don’t even know these sites, and you claim doing support for other people ? Must be a pretty lousy support. You should be actively putting data on these sites.
OK (for a printer that I needed to install for my sister) the canon ip4000 has no support in linux, and the available source drivers for it is on a japanese web site and It will not work unless you go into 30 minutes with codes on vi
Again, plain FUD and BS. There IS support for this one, and not only in japanese, the only problem, last time I checked, is that either the free driver had poorer quality than Turboprint, or you had to pay for the commercial Turboprint with good driver. It may be better now for the free driver.
To add to the FUD, you took one among the few printers that had a LOT of problems on Linux, and dare tell people it’s common.
you want to convince me that installing graphics drivers of ATI on windows is more difficult than in linux and playing with xorg.conf and editing lines was easier?!!!
No, he wants to convince you that installing graphics drivers of ATI on MS Windows is more difficult than in a consumer linux distro, but he was awkward.
Taking Mandriva as an example, it detects the change at boot, and takes the process of installing the driver for the new card, be it by CD or by internet connection.
And for the ATI claimed default excellent linux drivers you said; have you run “glxgears” and found how bad the results of openGL in fullscreen with non proprietary drivers?! or have you played a wmvhd movie with 1080p video and 7000kpbs AC3 sound, I will be 100% unplayable without the proprietary drivers
No, they’re not bad. In fact, it depends on if your card is supported or not by the free 3D driver. It’s supported until r300.
Aside from the fact that WMVhd is a crap format fpr 1080p, yes, ATI does not provide information for implementing XvMC support on Linux. There is support for that on NVidia card only. That’s also one of the reasons I discourage people to buy ATI cards for now. You can still play these videos with powerful enough processors.
Your example is clearly BS though, as this is a pretty elite thing, and 7000 kbps AC3 sound won’t be any problem, as it won’t be processed by the CPU, unless you’re stupid enough to decode such a good sound in software (which defeats the point of such good sound), and not use passthrough with a good receiver.
It’s suspicious too, as I don’t see the point of WMVhd for 1080p at all, H264 would be the best bet.
How many web cameras are supported in linux?; simly none of which that I could buy from bestbuy, fry’s electronics, circuit city, radioshack or any of those sellers online, so how could you convince webcamera users to use linux.
almost all Canon, Lexmark and other printers and All-in-one printers/fax/scanner devices are basically not supported at all in linux and if there is a driver for them it would never work as intended or the features of the driver will not include things included in Mac/windows drivers
which is why I’ve been working on a way to get Windows scanner drivers running under Linux. It’s nothing like ndiswrapper – the solution is purely user-space, and printer drivers work very similarly.
Sound Cards, almost all linux distros cannot support midi from out of the box…
Most sound cards have no MIDI anyway, and MIDI synthesis can be done via pure software anyway.
And on Software support there are alot of professional users who will never try anything else to what they’ve used to and trained on tools, and they are right because they use the best of the best from Adobe to Autodesk and the alternatives on linux are still for babies (or amateurs at best )
To find out why, read http://plan99.net/autopackage/Linux_Problems and cry…
Yes, IHV hardware and ISV software support under Linux is terrible ATM. But you might consider doing something about it instead of complaining about it and spreading FUD.
“But you might consider doing something about it instead of complaining about it and spreading FUD.”
I am not going to do anything about it because I don’t have the time and will, and I am not spreading FUD when I just lay down the crystal-clear facts about linux on the table and let you see the real problems the administrators face on linux on a daily basis; of course other platforms are not without problems but they tend not to bring migraines, thus require more than Aspirin.
“if Linux is to stand a chance on the desktop, there has to be a version that can do everything Windows can”
Not really, it only has to do what people need it to do. Windows does a LOT of things that the majority of the home users don’t need.
Not really, it only has to do what people need it to do. Windows does a LOT of things that the majority of the home users don’t need.
And I’ll make the argument of doing something radically different than what windows does. What that is…I don’t know. But what’s the point of always chasing windows, when you can just buy it for $70, or more likely for most people, just think it’s the “part of the computer” that you just bought and not even calculate the cost.
Actually, I did have an idea a while back for something like a croquet desktop. http://www.opencroquet.org/. And couple that with some sort of hybrid language that is part visual and part almost natural language. But who knows.
Edited 2006-08-18 06:57
What Linux needs is a ‘Linux Store’; like an Apple Store if you will. A place where people can buy certified Linux hardware, with a distro pre-installed, with helpful sales people who know the answers to the questions, as well as providing support.
But then, I believe that compared to other OSes, generally, Linux users don’t care much for joe-public; much less have to work a full time job actually serving these ‘stupid’ people.
If a die-hard ‘year of desktop linux’ user actually had to stand and serve wave after wave of customers asking a massive range of questions, they’d soon realise how unready Linux actually is for the home-desktop. Heck, I used to work full time helping customers with Windows, and even that isn’t all that useful or easy for home-users.
The hype is starting to overtake the reality with Linux. Enterprise/server and Enterprise Desktop? Absolutely! Home desktop, no, not yet.
Yeah, agreed.
GNU/Linux could indeed learn some things from Apple. You could make for example a custom machine with some (custom?) distro, where EVERYTHING worked properly and was compatible. Then users could use more “advanced” multimedia things like webcams and other things more easily.
Really, this is what Apple is doing. They made OS X on top of UNIX (BSD, was it…?), and made sure everything is stable and reliable. The fact that they know their own hardware is an important factor.
The IS a company doing something like this:
http://system76.com/
It seems kinda good, but OTOH they seem to want to a bit too much LIKE Apple to me, instead of taking the concept towards some other direction.
‘Will it run my iPod?’
I have problems understanding this one.
Is it some kind of slang or common short form?
Are they talking about some software called iPod?
So far I assumed that an iPod was a portable music player by Apple, which I hoped would run by itself.
My guess is they meant running iTunes, which of course can be used with an iPod, but neither requires the other one AFAIK
The year of the Linux Laptop?
Lol.
Every year’s the year of the Linux Desktop – not every desktop perhaps, but certainly mine and a growing number of user’s
Raymond thinks, though, that, “No matter how painful, no matter how ugly, we must enable the Linux desktop to run Windows media, to support iPods. We may not want binary programs in user-space, but we must have them.”
If GNU/Linux on the desktop (or laptop) can become a good alternative to MS Windows and Mac OS, then it has a purpose for its existence. But if one agrees with Eric Raymond that Linux must win MS Windows at any cost, then GNU/Linux cannot be a real alternative any more and it has already lost its original purpose.
If GNU/Linux on the desktop (or laptop) can become a good alternative to MS Windows and Mac OS, then it has a purpose for its existence. But if one agrees with Eric Raymond that Linux must win MS Windows at any cost, then GNU/Linux cannot be a real alternative any more and it has already lost its original purpose.
Interesting interpretation of his remarks. I didn’t see “win” anywhere in his comment, especially in the block you quoted.
Here’s my own interpretation:
I think the point ESR was making is that for linux to become a good alternative to Windows/OSX, it *has* to support what the customer wants– not what the ideologists want.
Ideally, there should be a middle ground that both sides should be striving for, but there’s far too much ego involved.
Interesting interpretation of his remarks. I didn’t see “win” anywhere in his comment, especially in the block you quoted.
Don’t be such a smart-ass. When Mr Raymond talks about what we “need” to do and what we “must” do, he’s obviously talking about competition and about what we “must” do in order to win that competition. But winning is not really important — what’s important is that GNU/Linux continues to be a real alternative to the non-free, closed-source operating systems also in the future.
I think the point ESR was making is that for linux to become a good alternative to Windows/OSX, it *has* to support what the customer wants– not what the ideologists want.
GNU/Linux doesn’t *have* to do anything to become an alternative. You’re missing the point that GNU/Linux already is a very good alternative to the non-free operating systems, and I want things to stay that way. It’s OK if “the customer” likes MS Windows better than GNU/Linux — they can continue using MS Windows for all I care. But I happen to prefer GNU/Linux and I don’t want it to become like MS Windows.
Pull the other one, probably only saw two laptops and the author’s was on windows. The only place I saw windows in that whole show was in wine, vmware and these wireless pocket pc’s with headphones being used for a mass storage lecture on tape sort of thing nobody was trying on. There were at least 20 laptops I saw passing through the lounge and every one was running some form of linux.
I believe when mega-corporations try to pigeon-hole linux into a paid-for product to get as much profit as possible, something is going to seem awfully wrong when it doesn’t succeed as many people would like.
How about a ‘Next’ > ‘Next’ > ‘Done’ process? Come on guys… too complicated for a person with other things in life to do besides these kind of steps.