Submitted by The Linux Foundation has posted the second half of its long and thorough interview with Linux founder Linus Torvalds, part of the Foundation’s ‘open voices’ podcast. While the first part of the interview focused on the Linux development community, this time Torvalds sounds off on everything from patents and innovation to the future of Linux. According to Torvalds the reason Linux hasn’t taken off is that most people are happy with the way things are. “If you act differently from Windows, even if you act in some ways better, it doesn’t matter; better is worse if it’s different.” Torvalds also attributes much of the frustration with Windows Vista to this same idea. In other words, it’s not that Vista is worse than XP, but it’s different and that causes distress among users.
Most users are very adverse to change. There is one user of a program that I maintain that notices and complains about every adjustment to the UI, even if its for the better.
I have to admit I’m quite surprised about user reaction to Vista. I thought it was just wishful thinking by FOSS advocates, but I have a few non-technical friends who just can’t get used to Vista. Some of them ask about GNU/Linux. The main complaints seem to be UAC (“cancel or allow” all the time) and difficulty in playing some media (DRM, I guess).
I have the same complaint: UAC. Man that is one annoying feature. Otherwise, I could get used to Vista..and I know UAC can be disabled, but I’d prefer it be refined.
I use this free program Tweak-UAC (http://www.tweak-uac.com/) to basically enable or disable UAC on-the-fly. Works GREAT. There are times when I’m working, and I don’t want to be disturbed by UAC prompts, but it’s nice to be able to turn UAC back on without having to reboot the system. Give it a try. I think you’ll like it.
Why in hell has this comment been modded down? It provides useful information for Vista users, and it can’t be considered really off-topic since Linus mentioned explicitly Vista and different UIs in the interview.
Can we encourage people to be constructive, whatever their flaming past may be? Whatever helps people in a civil manner can’t be bad, let’s show civility in this forum.
Rehdon
OK, thanks for the link. Needless to say I don’t care for Vista, XP or Microsoft, but it’s good to know. It may be very useful when XP is finally EOL’d
Regarding UAC, see http://osnews.com/permalink?300689.
my experience for UAC is that the hype is off the mark. I only seem to get it when I’m doing something that I should get warned about. The full screen blackout is a little annoying, but it gets attention. I get a “sudo” password warning in OSx or Ubuntu about as much as I get UAC in Vista. Windows users aren’t used to thinking about what’s dangerous, and programmers don’t properly limit their program’s scope to non-dangerous functions like they do in mac or linux.
Either you must be adding a lot of software to Ubuntu, or changing a lot of system files… or, out and out lying.
There is no way Ubuntu will prompt for the sudo password anywhere near as much as UAC on Vista.
for example.
I set up a friends computer with Ubuntu, installed automatix and updated.
They have been using the machine for four months and have NEVER called asking for the sudo password.
They are a normal Joe and Jolene User family.
On my own Vista, I get prompted by UAC to run a program I downloaded, every single time I try to run it.
I even get prompted for the UAC password when I try to change screen resolution. Retarded.
Alright, I assume most people reading this blog have some sort of nack for modiying or changing OS settings. In vista it’s a piece of cake to disable the UAC. So if you don’t like it don’t run it. It’s that simple. Go to the Control Panel! I disabled it from day one.
http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2006/09/20/763275.aspx
I have been running Vista since it was RTM’ed and I have had minimal problems. Any problems I have had were due to poor drivers from the vendor side.
The reality is that the fresh install of Vista , Microsoft Drivers worked initially better in then any of the Vendors. This in my opinion says a lot on how Microsoft tried to cover most Drivers. They knew that the Vendors would take time to catch up. Prime Example Sigmatel, now IDT.
If you do have issues make sure you get the very important HotFixes. I dont even need SP1 at this point.
I am now running Vista Ultimate 64 and it screams, also runs all of my games.
Pardon, that might be true if the scenario in the marketplace wasn’t different. If there was an aversion to it, then how does one explain double digit growth of Apple Mac desktop and laptop shipments?
There isn’t an aversion to change, its the Linux distributors not creating a package which customers want, its the distributors doing nothing to improve the ecosystem when it comes to third party commercial software titles from the big names, and out of the box support for hardware with drives ready on the cd/dvd for the customer to install.
Linux right now, in its current form is more than sufficient to take over the operating system market – but it isn’t the operating system the consumers buy, they’re buying into a whole ecosystem. They’re buying into the ability to purchase software off the shelf, hardware off the shelf. Until Linux can achieve the same level of ubiquity, it won’t be anywhere beyond some niche scenario’s.
Oh, its almost certain that I’ll get marked down about this post; why? because this forum is littered with Linux fanboys who jumped on the Linux bandwagon in the last year, and have jumped to the deep end of the zealot pool of stupidity.
I’ve seen desktop promises come and go, Storm Linux, Corel Linux, TurboLinux (barely surviving), Progeny and numerous other distributions that have come and gone; never making any changes because they lacked the ecosystem which surrounds it.
I know you’re saying to yourself, “bloody hell, this guy goes on and on about ecosystems” – well, because it is important. If all you have is an operating system, what is the end user meant to do? stare at the screen all day doing nothing? a computer and an operating system allow people to do things. If the consumer can’t get the applications they want, it doesn’t support the hardware they want to use – their computer ultimately becomes a giant paper weight of liability which contributes nothing.
Edited 2008-02-12 22:41 UTC
never underestimate the power of “fashion”…
Because Apple is fashionable, and people are prepared to sacrifice comfort if they perceive that changing means presenting a different image to the world: Apple marketing manage to create the perception that buying a Mac is a statement, not just a simple purchase.
This is somewhat true for the people who switch to FOSS software for ideal reasons: they’re often inclined to accept minor annoyances and glitches in a positive way.
To the contrary, the majority of Windows users don’t have any feeling of “affection” for the OS, they use it but they have no conscious or unconscious reasons to put up with its problems or to tolerate a change who directly impacts on their usage patterns.
You are bang on when you talk about mac users, however this is not true when you talk about windows users.
I grew up on the mac, and I have the mac user mentality of waiting in breathless anticipation for the new version of the os to drop so I can play with all the cool new features. When I switched to windows for school, that was the biggest culture shock for me. I don’t know why, but mac users all act like true OS enthusiasts, far more then any other userbase I know of. Just think of it, when MS announces dropping win2k, people scream bloody murder. When XP is nearing its EOL, the online equivilent of riots break out. Juxtapose that to apple’s ability to only support the current version and the one before.
Bar nothing, the hatred of change is the thing I find the most baffling about the windows user community.
This is a good observation, but I suspect that it is the people who are not very interested in computers, who both have a tendency to run Windows (because it’s what they know from the office), and also dislike change.
I am sure that OS enthusiasts who run Windows on their personal systems are interested in seeing new functionality, new features, even something new to look at. When I was a Windows user, I was an early adopter, and while the problems were frustrating as they’d be on any OS, it was worth it for me.
The difference is that every NT based MS OS is probably worse than the previous one. The original excellent design has been ruined by backward compatibility and dumbing down for home users. Apple has only had a decent OS for about 3 years. The Classic OS was absolute junk. The earliest OSX versions were immature so it could only be replaced by something better. Apple also calls the equivalent to each MS service pack or Linux version a new OS and charges for it.
I disagree with that. you have a point, but if you look at the bigger picture, the trends remain the same.
There has been substancial improvements in windows over the years, and the very operating system that is passionately hated when it is new, becomes passionately loved when it is old. The mac attitude goes back to the classic OS, and let me tell you, there was about as much difference between OS8 and OS9 as there was between Windows 2000 and XP. Even though Tiger was perfectly good, there has still been widespread leopard adoption, even with iffy reviews and many user problems.
Hmmm …
apt-get install <insert software here>
seems a lot easier to me then buying software off the shelf (or yum, or apt-rpm). If you want to put a GUI on it then go ahead.
Buying software off the shelf is going to be replaced, and when people see that there are alternatives that are easier and better they will like the change.
Is it there yet? For most people probably not.
Do I think it will be in the future yes.
The same goes for hardware. Release your specs to the kernel developers and let them build a driver for you. Then magically you plug in the hardware and it just works. What is the business of sticking in a disk in cdrom and installing drivers?
Why should linux become better at doing things the windows way, when it can do things a new and better way.
I agree, but I don’t think that was the point that was being made. What was meant, if I read the comment right, was the ability to buy stuff like Photoshop, games, etc. I’m sure no one would object to apt-get Photoshop if Adobe deigned to release a version for Linux (save some trees over the retail package), but the biggest hesitation I have encountered with users fed up with Windows is, “But will I be able to use package X?”
Going on about WINE and Linux equivalents is just not convincing with a lot of the population. WINE to me is a dice throw, and sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. People just aren’t into the configuration gymnastics it takes to get some applications running properly. Perhaps virtualization (once it can deal with some beefier video) will improve this situation.
When I began to switch to Linux, I ran Windows side by side, slowly finding equivalents and changing some of my work habits when I finally made the “cut over.” Not all people are willing to do that. Personally, I felt like I had nothing to lose but my chains, the sacrifices involved being small in comparison to what I was getting. Not everyone feels so…romantic…about things, however.
What kind of seems a shame to me isn’t that the average user doesn’t run Linux, but that there are a lot of people who are power users and enthusiasts and really could benefit from switching, but have concluded, in some cases prematurely, that it would be too much of an effort — that they’d lose too much. I don’t include people who have given it a fair try in this, obviously.
These are the users I’m mostly concerned with and would like to win over, to the extent that I am interested at all in being a missionary for an OS.
The fact remains, however, that Linux lacks several things I’ve not been happy about living without:
(1) Good DVD authoring software. Yes, I have done this by command line and used some scripts, but it’s not the same thing. Whereas, many packages are available for Windows. As physical media is dying a slow death anyway, this problem may work itself out.
(2) Good video editing software. Supposedly, Cinelerra can do much of what I want to do but it is horribly unstable on my machine (x86_64), and was on my old machine (i686), which was a whole different architecture. Crashiness is just not tolerable in this kind of application. LIVES for KDE looks promising but it, too, is unstable on my system. Kino, an odd sort of program, *is* fairly stable and does the trick, but its interface is severely limited.
(3) Adobe Photoshop. The GIMP does everything I need it to do for graphics – everything. But convincing the average user of this is a lost cause due to the program’s…unconventional…interface. I have no personal need for Photoshop but this is the one people always bring up, and nothing short of a Linux port is going to make people seriously consider switching. It’s not even an argument worth having anymore. (Which is a shame because I like the GIMP and can be pretty productive with it for basic web graphics and so on, which is what most people use graphics programs for.)
(4) Games. One of the reasons I had no issues migrating is I’m simply not a gamer. Save the 10 minute break to play bzflag and retrogaming via emulators, I just don’t care, but this is a big one with some people.
Lastly, the thing everyone still complains about with Linux is wireless networking on laptops. I haven’t had to deal with this as I run all desktops here, but if there was one place that could use a strong focus, it’s this because people complain and cuss about it constantly.
As for hardware, it is possible to shop *for* Linux hardware, which is what I do, but then again, I build my own systems like many here, and that is not typical behavior. I think some of the problems with hardware could be ameliorated by having some kind of “works 100% with linux” certification by some kind of standards body, with an attendant stamp that could be placed on hardware boxes. Most of the pages on the net that deal with hardware compatibility are imprecise – a lot of equipment works 80% with Linux, with some functionality missing. This isn’t helpful. It would also be nice to have all of this information in one place.
Anyway, there’s no easy solution to these problems and gaps – this is a free OS, its biggest strength and its biggest weakness at the same time.
Which is why I don’t think Linux is for everyone, though I do feel it is for far more people than currently use it. I’d be more than happy with a diverse OS “ecosystem” (I had to say ecosystem again, I can’t get enough of it in this thread. Ecosystem ecosystem ecosystem. Rich, dark, gooey, melty anarchosyndicalist ECOSYSTEM). But in terms of winning people over, I’d like to see more focus on the “low hanging fruit” of computer enthusiasts who run Windows first.
Most of what I just wrote is true for the xBSD communities as well.
Ecosystem. Ecooooooooooooooosystem……..Eco…eco…eco…eco… system…system…system…system….ECHOOOOOOSYSTEM
Most apps run just fine with WINE by just associating .exe files with “wine”.
I don’t think that physical media is dying just like the internet didn’t kill newspapers.
First of all, if the “average user” has Photoshop, it’s pirated anyway. Adobe won’t port software over just to get is pirated. But I think that there’s a real market for Photoshop on Linux just as there’s a market for Maya on Linux.
Regarding GIMP: GIMP 2.4 saw interface refinements and according to a developer who was interviewed in a CCC podcast, the 2.6 interface will feature an optional single window mode.
Today’s top games are released on consoles anyway. Former PC game developers treat consoles at least equal to PCs and release games simultaneously for PC, Xbox 360 and/or PS3. Often console gamers get games earlier than the PC crowd. Even Microsoft — you know… the developer of Windows — releases every class A game for Xbox 360 first. PC gamers can be lucky if they get a late port. See Halo or Gears of War. The only PC exclusive MS game released in the last months was Train Simulator.
Nah, not really. At least not users of Intel-based laptops.
Where are the screenshots? Where is the sales clerk? Where is the support line to call if it breaks during install? Where is the package that has everything needed to run the software the user can store on a shelf? Click-N-Run on Lindows is probably the only exception to most of this, but a normal user doesn’t want to wade through 80 different burning packages to find the one that is the easiest to use. They don’t want to spend time trawling forums or the IRC. K3B is really good and all, but there is as much chance of that ending up on a normal users machine as XCDRoast or something equally as horrible.
Like it or not, apple is pretty much the only one out there with sane package management for end users. Windows is an over-complecated process, but at least they package all nessicary files together.
The linux way of dynamically linking and seperately packaging everything is really kind of dated when it comes to home machines. Static comilation results in faster programs. Static compilation or packaging all dependancies together in your deployment strategy results in package management that is several orders of magnitudes more simple. Sure, you will end up with duplicate libs, but for home users who cares? A few hundred extra k is not the end of the world. I agree that linux shouldn’t copy windows, but I don’t think they are even remotely near a better solution to package management for home PCs.
I’d explain it by pointing out the minimal growth of Apple Mac desktop and laptop shipments, all other things considered. Everything is perspective.
If you took the blogosphere and technorati opinions as being absolute, then everybody would be tripping over themselves to by a Mac because of HIG, security and/or coolness.
But Linus’ opinion is sound. People are resistant to change. It’s a basic paradox for consumer electronics manufacturers, for instance. People desire features, but they don’t want complexity, increased cost or a learning curve. If you want people to adopt your product on the basis of features, then you need to make sure they offer enough of an incentive to override any potential complexity, cost or learning curve, otherwise the product is doomed to never achieve mainstream success, if any success at all. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, sometimes there’s a marketing advantage to that approach, by targeting early-adopters and niche marketing segments with the inherent profitability, without having to base your business plan on assuming mass-market consumer adoption.
So to your example, let’s look at Apple. The iPod, for instance, was brilliant. It didn’t create a market, since MP3 players existed long before it. But it redefined consumer expectations with the simple and intuitive interface, as well as the ease-of-use from iTunes integration. At the point in time it was released, particularly combined with the consumer-friendly slick styling, it was a winning combination. That’s the kind of thing marketers and product planning people dream of.
But then look at the Mac desktops and laptops. Very cool, very slick, and yes, some advantages in usability (though I’d argue against the shameless gushing people do, since it still has faults). Should be a killer product, like the iPod, since there are many of the same desgin objective in place. But they’re not as successful, relatively speaking.
Why? Because everybody has a computer, and for >95% of the population, it runs Windows. And Windows is what they know. And Windows functionality is what they expect. And, despite what powerusers and tech-oriented people like to claim, it works well enough for what people need. Windows doesn’t BSOD all the time for all people. Windows works well enough on moderate hardware for many people. Users, unfortunately, aren’t as concerned with security as we like to think they are. In short, Windows works and does a good enough job. Because of that, the gap between what users have and what Apple thinks users want is large.
Apple is *different*. Apple means learning new things. Apple means buying different software. The list goes on… People on this board may not see that as an issue in comparison to the perceived advantages Apple provides, but that same ROI calculation doesn’t provide the same result for Joe Average. Because Apple is different, it has to provide enough of an advantage to justify changing, and for the majority of users, it simply doesn’t. But again, that’s alright, I don’t think Jobs has any intentions of displacing MS. The number two player never generates the same revenue that the number one does, but they can be more profitable because they don’t have to achieve the same objectives.
The iPod didn’t create a new market, but it succeeded because consumers felt it offered such a better experience than incumbent players at the time, therefore it justified the obstacle of adoption (mostly price), and it did such a good job that it brought new adopters into the market. The iPhone, despite the lavish praise, is struggling against expectations, because despite the gee-whiz interface and functionality, doesn’t offer as *big* an advantage over the incumbents, many of whom are much cheaper, particularly when you consider the restricted carrier encumberance. Ditto the Macs. They are good, they are slick, but they aren’t necessarily targetting the mass market, but rather a specific segment of the market that values the functionality, capability and/or style of the Macs against the obstacle of adoption, once again price, and maybe availability of software or scalability.
Ditto for Vista. Any perceived advantages seem to have been lost on adopters in comparison to the convenience and cost of the systems they know and are familiar enough with. Vista simply doesn’t have a killer feature that is strong enough to lead the mass-market to jump the chasm towards adoption. Though MS has the market strength to eventually make this happen regardless, that doesn’t really count, since their market dominance subverts free-market drivers in the long run.
Desktop linux will face the same obstacles. There seems to be this perception in the community that everyone hates Windows and is desperate for an alternative. That’s simply not true. The vast majority of the population is “satisfied” with Windows, and any alternative will have to offer a substantial incentive to encourage switching, whether OSX or linux or Haiku or whatever.
As long as desktop linux tries to replace Windows by simply emulating it, then it will never achieve substantial attraction. But if desktop linux can differentiate itself, and find aspects that exceed the capabilities of Window, and market those properly, then desktop linux can stand as a viable “alternative”, not replacement, for Windows.
But at the end of the day, it boils down to basic marketing. The consumer is resistant to change, they want to deal with products they know and are comfortable with. That’s the entire basis of brand marketing. If you’re going to achieve a shift in mass market acceptance, you have to either do something new and creative, or you have to do something far better and far more advantageous than the competition.
From the view of the mass market, neither Linux or OSX is at that point. But again, that’s not a bad thing. Apple has proven that you can still achieve a considerable amount of industry and market clout even with a single digit marketshare. Jobs is brilliant in this regard; he’s a visionary, I’ll certainly give him that much credit, but he also has a brilliant business sense for making products work without requiring market saturation. That’s admirable, at least from a business perspective. And that is, surprisingly, along the same lines as Linus’ message. OSS and proprietary products still rely on the same common marketing principles for attracting adoption.
The customer is always right, no matter how much you know they are wrong.
I say this, naturally, as a linux user. I prefer linux, I enjoy using linux, I feel akward using Windows. Still, I’m practical enough to know that I can’t advocate linux to everyone I know, because for everyone I know, they all have different requirements and expectations, and linux is far from being a one-size-fits-all solution. Most importantly, linux requires a commitment from the user in terms of learning and understanding it, if they are really going to get the best advantage, and many people simply aren’t willing to make that commitment.
So we’re still far from reaching the Year-of-the-linux-desktop(tm), but that’s an artificial target anyways. We need the year-of-the-innovative-does-something-new-desktop if anything is going to change in a substantial way, regardless of who it comes from.
Do you have any ideas?
I’m not challenging you. I agree with you that such changes could make the inconveniences compelling and worth it. But just as people keep wanting to ditch the desktop metaphor for GUIs, I haven’t seen any practical alternatives. I know that when this *does* happen and someone develops a compelling, productive alternative to the desktop metaphor, we’re all going to smack our heads and say, “that is so blindingly obvious, why the hell didn’t I think of that?”
And we will be very old and sitting at a bar and boring some young person with the story of, “If only I could have been the guy who thought of that,” the same way people say that about the Pet Rock guy.
One thing that is true of Linux is that it has multiple WE/WMs, but most of the screenshots that seem to get linked to are shots of people making their desktops look like…well, let’s face it, most of the time, like OS X. One of the cooler things you can do is demonstrate how Linux (or the BSDs) can look like pretty much anything you want them to. Show a prospective user all of the different Windows managers and tell them that they can choose which they like, and if they want to start out with KDE or Gnome because it looks familiar, they can always switch later, or run more than one.
I feel the same sense about desktop GUIs as I do about rock and roll; that the well is dry and it’s all about recycling now. I hope to be proven wrong within my lifetime, but as much as I’d like to see the next big thing, I haven’t got a clue of what it is.
Mainly because I adapt to machines; I don’t expect them to adapt to me. This is atypical and suboptimal, even, if you want to sell computers to the masses, but it’s a habit I’ve adopted, which means I can use and be productive in anything, but also feel no sense of necessity of change, which is, as they say, the mother of invention. So other than irksome “quirks” that unnerve me from time to time, I’m rarely thinking too hard about how computers can evolve to be more useful by people.
Which is why I’m not Steve Jobs and have a mind numbing career and lead a penny-ante life, but hey.
But go ahead and revese my OK/Cancel dialogs. I won’t notice. I am sturdy in this way. It has yet to buy me a cup of tea, however.
excellent point. If “linux” wants to take off, more companies need to develop solutions rather than just desktops. Look at what Apple has had to do… If it wasn’t for iLife/iWork/.Mac, mac users would be so cut off from all but the most expensive apps and nobody would like it. I think the linux distros need to take a “whole” approach to their distros. Ubuntu is a start, but it needs the full suite of functions supported well, with books about how to use the programs and online services that are just for ubuntu or at least play very nice.
The other thing I’d add is that while people are “safe” with the current crappy software, it will take something Twice as good, twice as easy, and twice as cheap to break Windows monopoly. It’s got to be so much better that the cost (and pain) of switching is better than staying still. Another poster mentioned it needs to be “fashionable” as well, so that “everybody is doing it” applies.
I fully agree. Most recent mac switchers I know fell for the software solutions Apple provides. Good quality software at fair prices.
They provide solutions for both home and professional use. And they actually do it really well.
And add to that all the excellent third party applications. What more can a user ask for really?
That was Be Incs big mistake in my opinion. They relied on third parties to come up with the solutions when they could have developed them themselves instead.
Had they provided some quality audio and video solutions they would have been heroes.
I don’t think that Be ever had the financial resources to employ so many developers to actually build an entire application portfolio.
Back then they wouldn’t have needed that many developers to create competitive apps. It didn’t take Jules all that long to create Tracktion practically all by himself. And consider that he also created a cross platform toolkit at the same time.
I doubt that it was a matter of resources, it was more the mindset of the time.
It may also help to have a fully tested, guaranteed to work set of hardware packages you can buy, which is also one of the reasons Apple succeeds. There are some machines out there now which are known to be 100% Linux compatible because they come *with* Linux installed.
But they always pack some jive-ass turkey distro on these machines. I know I can’t be the only one thinking, when I encounter some new cheapo “Linux machine” being sold at Wal-Mart, “Very nice but…ugh, why’d they use THAT distro?” We all have our preferences but I think most people can agree that any of the Distrowatch top 10 are a better choice than what is commonly offered.
What would be nice is an end-to-end Ubuntu solution, laptop and desktop, which Ubuntu could be rigorously tested with, so just like when you buy a Mac with OS X, you know it works, out of the box (this is my impression anyway). Maybe they could even workout a deal to sex-up the machines with a nice Ubuntu tag/logo on it, and make them cool-looking. Yeah, this would be copying Apple but that’s hardly ever stopped Linux before.
This would also benefit the rest of us, because enthusiasts know that Linux is Linux, and if Ubuntu can work 100% with something, so can any other Linux distribution.
Anyway…
Agree with the point about Ecosystem. But to me THE most basic reason as I have stated before is Marketing. Most people are vaguely aware of something called Linux and that’s about it. How many sales guys in a computer store will try and sell you a linux box?
Its this that’s stopping linux growing.
‘Most people are vaguely aware of something called Linux’
Are they? Are they really? Go to a shopping centre near you, go up to someone you don’t know and show them the Ubuntu logo. Or just ask them if they know what Ubuntu is. Or what Linux is.
You’ll find that hardly anyone is ‘aware’ of Linux outside of sites like this, and other geeky places.
When I go to the pub and tell people that I work in IT, they usually end up asking me what kind of IT work I do. When I mention Linux, they more often than not have heard of it and sometimes want to know more about it.
Linux is fast gaining ‘brand’ recognition for people involved in the stock market and bank managers all the way down to home computer systems users. I doubt the Linux adoption wall is in Linux being unheard of.
fair enough, you just re-enforced the point I was trying to make. what i’m saying is Linux is getting more and more coverage in the news but apart from being Somefink to do wiv computers. people don’t know much about it.
Most people I know have heard of it but have only a hazy idea of what it is.
Most people only have a hazy idea of what an Operating System is.
Brand recognition in any case, not as high as it could be. I still don’t think I’m insane for the idea that a TV spot would do Linux a world of good. A spot which *showed* the desktop – maybe showed several Windows managers and showed that there was a choice, and then throw in the cubey spinny translucent blingy stuff the kids dig nowadays. Generate buzz.
Maybe get Paris Hilton. Paris Hilton and Richard Stallman. Together. Nude in a hot tub. Stallman and Hilton nude will definitely make for water cooler conversations. Maybe slightly stilted, uncomfortable conversation about the meaning of the word “freedom.”
Go for the whole angle of money, you know, Linux being free and rich girls liking free stuff so they can hold on to their bling for stuff like ornamental canines.
I like this idea of an uncomfortable conversation between a nude Richard Stallman and Paris Hilton in a soapy hot tub, and then sort of fading out to a black screen as white letters fade in, in silence:
GNU
And then a penguin.
It may not be the Mac 1984 commercial but it will definitely be a WTF moment which will stick in peoples minds. And that’s better than “Linux, what, that’s like, Lyndon LaRouche and them, right?”
Those who are vaguely aware are the same people who know what UNIX is; a piece of software run on big powerful computers, they assume because they sound they same, they must be alike – hence the question I get asked, “oh, is that the same thing as UNIX?”
People know about Linux, but when they can’t get Photoshop Elements for the new gizmo digital camera they bought, or they can’t install the latest piece of stationery making software with the easy to use wizards which makes complex layout easy – is there any wonder people aren’t moving to Linux?
People want to be able to go, purchase a machine, and then know they can go into any shop around the world and purchase software for it; contra to the BS being spread here, the vast majority still go to shops (shopping is a social experience for most people) and purchase their hardware and software (hence Dell’s now presence within retail stores, something they trialed first in NZ (which is the guinea pig market due to our relatively small size and quick adoption of new technology)). They want to know that they can grab a random device off the shelf and know that not only is the hardware supported but there are bundled applications included with the device which makes the device useful. Again, this is where Linux fall flat.
When I moved to Mac OS X – the original move was because I wanted a UNIX operating system with access to mainstream applications like Microosft Office. Here I am in 2008, with my IIRC 4th Mac (MacBook) and what made me stay? iLife and iWorks. Apple is just continuing to expand – their latest offering, Bento, the $50 database for end users.
People here crap on going, “oh, I can do that with this rigged with this, and that glued with that, and blah blah blah” ignoring the fact the end user doesn’t care. They don’t want to do all that, that is why they purchase software, they push the responsibility for providing what they need on someone else, hence the reason why we have a software industry rather than everyone just sitting around learning how to become programmers and writing their own custom applications.
People here, I think, have lost touch with reality and what end users actually want. They’re too concerned with looking down from their ivory towers than accepting that computers to the average user are a means to an end. They want to get in and out as fast as possible. The hours of procrastination which might excite some geeks and boffins on this site might get the heart racing, but for the vast majority of end users, that sort of procrastination is ass paralysingly painful and worthless – they have better things to worry about than doing the job of a software programmer or a systems integrator.
Edited 2008-02-13 20:20 UTC
Lots of people actually heard of something called “Linux”. Not so many used it, but they heard of it. It depends, of course, on the age of the persons. A 80yr old granny won’t know about Linux, but a 30yr old male from the social middle class will very likely have heard about Linux.
The class system doen’t exist anymore since the pluralisation of society, but still. I’m 30 something, I know lots of people my age, architects, writers, designers, social pedagogers, actors, even a few who work for the government here in berlin. None of them have heard of linux, most use outlook express or outlook. Internet explorer is their browser. They use word every day. There not intetested in what format the data is saved so long as it’s saved. They listen to mp3s, not .ogg. They haven’t a clue what that is and they shouldn’t have to.
They don’t care about computers. They are not interested, it’s got nothing to do with their education. In the same way there are people here in germany who are in to the tuning scene, most people are not. Are you? Do you totaly customise your car? Take it apart, rebuild it with modifications, re-spray it? Make it look like something form pimp my ride?
Why not? They could call you lazy and stupid in the same way people here call those who aren’t interested in computers lazy and stupid for not switching from MS to something else.
This can be applied to anything? Did you buy an of-the-shelf, ready made house where everything just works? Or did you build it yourself? Do you know every small detail of it’s construction?
What about your clothes? Some people are so interested in clothes they make their own fabric, and make their own shirts and things? Do you? No? That would be because your lazy right? Or just don’t understand dressmaking works. Or maybe you just couldn’t give a shit because you not interested in learning as much about these things. In the same way other people don’t give a shit about computers and OSs.
That’s simply wrong, but discussing your clouded reception of today’s society would be far too off-topic.
Then they live under a rock, because e.g. IBM ran TV ads for its Linux services during prime time TV shows (at least in Germany).
The German government’s server infrastructure was migrated to Linux a while ago. At least friends within the government should at least have heard of it.
Even in journals for managers is Linux a recurring topic. It may be an article along the lines of “Novell’s Linux business is doing well. Buy Novell shares.” or that Linux helps cutting IT costs.
Heck, even mainstream media like Germany’s “Der Spiegel” covers Linux regularly. See e.g.: https://google.auth-o-mat.com/search?q=linux%20site:www.spiegel….
‘That’s simply wrong, but discussing your clouded reception of today’s society would be far too off-topic’
– Really? Or maybe you just don’t know what the pluralisation of society is, because there really are no class systems anymore.
‘Then they live under a rock’
– Of course… if someone doesn’t know about something they are ignorant and dumb. I notice btw that you didn’t comment on my points clothes and cars.
My friend doesn’t need to know and doesn’t care about the german government’s server infrastructure. Why would he need to know this? He’s not the it admin for the german government servers.
I don’t know where you come from mate, but in germany, educated people of the (as you put it) ‘social middle classes’ don’t spend all there free time watching tv like they maybe do where you live.
I’m here at os news, I know of linux, I live in Berlin and I’ve never seen these adverts. I watch maybe 3 hours of tv a week, but then I didn’t know, that in order have heard about linux, I must become a couch potato.
An obscure article in mainstream news website should be noticed by everyone? Of course, even though your not interested in the subject and it has nothing to with your job or interests you’ll be familiar with this article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7244474.stm
on the bbc (can’t get more mainstream then that). You must know that Pepper can treat ‘pigment disease’ right? After all it’s on a mainstream news site.
PS: Some people actually read the paper editions, which carry other stories.
Edited 2008-02-14 13:57 UTC
Dup. post
Edited 2008-02-14 09:15 UTC
“then how does one explain double digit growth of Apple Mac desktop and laptop shipments?”
1. There numbers where very low to begin with.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/12/24/apple-2007-bes…
“In 2006, 5,655,000 Macs were sold. 2007 will see sales between 7.7 million and 8 million—a 36 to 40 percent increase”
2. The change to Intel platform over last year , Leopard coming out.
3. Cheaper Apple offer.
4. More people are using computer due to cheaper prices.
5. More popular games are now available on Apple , namely WoW , and those from EA.
6. Apple computer can be made to run side by side :
– Mac OS X Leopard.
– Mac OS X Tiger.
– GNU/Linux.
– Windows Vista.
– Windows XP.
– Other OS.
ETC … It’s nothing compared to Windows Vista BY default sales from the other big brand named OEM.
That being said , according to offical recorded data from major OEM and hardware accounting firms more then 20 + milion desktop computer shiped with GNU/Linux as default OS last year. ( that’s not counting the whitebox who don’t report to them.)
There as been more then 600 million download of distributions last year and more then 40 million CD sold with GNU/Linux on it. That’s not counting the simple user’s who made copy to there friends.
Note : There is 700 + distributions , they release 2 to 4 time per years , some have 6 or more different variant of distrbutions.
“its the Linux distributors not creating a package which customers want,”
Every major distribution as seen increase of numbers of user’s. That’s kinda puting you in the wrong as usual category …
“when it comes to third party commercial software titles from the big names”
You failed to explain in logical and realistic terms how it is the responsability of the GNU/Linux distribution that some big names are not delivering any of there software to any GNU/Linux distributions.
I know the lame retarded excuse your going to make up , but the reality is that they where offered Millions and free porting of there application and still said no.
“and out of the box support for hardware with drives ready on the cd/dvd for the customer to install.”
You mean like these :
http://lxer.com/module/db/index.php?dbn=14
Or you mean how come those models below , rescue DVD don’t ship inside the Windows Box too ?
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/linux_3x?c=us&cs=1…
Or why the hell aren’t they shiped worldwide too ?
You also mean like
http://www.zareason.com/shop/home.php
You see the Problem is the people like you who say a ton of nonsenses and who make a lot of noise , the OEM who don’t deliver on there promise and the GNU/Linux distribution who have been fooled into the OEM broken promises.
That’s not counting all the RESCUE DVD on prototype hardware that get delivered 6 month to a year before any Windows or Apple OS is ready for the hardware in the OEM labs , but never get out of the labs.
Or the fully configured computer of the same make and model that only get distributed with GNU/Linux in Asia or south America …
“Linux right now, in its current form is more than sufficient to take over the operating system market”
It already as … It as more USER’s then anything else on the planet.
“but it isn’t the operating system the consumers buy”
Your contradicting your Big names Software vendor nonsense earlier here.
“They’re buying into the ability to purchase software off the shelf, hardware off the shelf. ”
Because everyone like to buy software instead of having it delivered online for less or gratis …
That must be why piracy is so low and why Software is delivered online less … Wait it’s the opposite.
As for hardware , There is a reason why Apple oppened it’s own stores. It cost less then having 100 PC offer next to 4 Apple offer the in store vendor is mostly clueless about.
“it won’t be anywhere beyond some niche scenario’s”
Let’s see
#1 supercomputer OS.
#1 search engine server OS
#1 Server OS,
#1 webserver OS.
#1 BLOG OS.
#1 Desktop OS.
#1 Laptop OS.
By usage.
Anyone who say it’s a niche OS in 2008 as a serious reality problem.
“Oh, its … stupidity.”
** Fanboy : Someone who as every single copy or piece of something. Fanboy are extremely rares.
** Zealot : someone who kill you because you disagree with them. They are even more rare then Fanboys.
Beside , you forgot Cultist/jihadist to make the pathetic triumvirate of complete juvenile insults complete.
“I’ve seen desktop promises come and go”
No , because GNU/Linux as been functionnal as a desktop since 1998.
“Storm Linux, Corel Linux, TurboLinux (barely surviving), Progeny and numerous other distributions that have come and gone”
-Storm Linux : ( Commercial Only ) had more marketing budget then R&D , burned true it’s cash by trying to outspend Microsoft on marketing. Based of Debian.
– Corel Linux : ( Commercial Only ) made all it’s software available true emulator witch make them unstable as hell , Also Based of Debian
– TurboLinux : ( Commercial Only ) Never as been a major distribution , but as large financial asian backers.
– Progeny : ( Commercial Only ) from the Creator of Debian who tried to take on Debian with no budget or real management or developpers or sale divisions or clear visions …
Actually all those gone add zero impact on the overall desktop , they where/are not contributing anything of value in the first place , just trying to sale Debian or GNU/Linux with nothing of value to add.
“I know you’re … it is important”
No , not at all , those who did survive have an ecosystem , They got community and commercial entity with paying user’s or community that contribute. Your just forgetting that they exists too.
“If all you have is an operating system, what is the end user meant to do?”
Install it on any hardware he want’s … Share it legally with anyone they want. Etc …
“stare at the screen all day doing nothing? ”
http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html
“If the consumer can’t get the applications they want, it doesn’t support the hardware they want to use”
There not using the right OS with the right hardware for them !!!
“their computer ultimately becomes a giant paper weight of liability which contributes nothing.”
The fact that your suggesting computers as a paper weight says a lot more about you then the OS or hardware your trying to ridiculize with your own illogical fabricated nonsense.
Point of entry is under 400$ for laptop and 200$ for desktop with turnkey systems :
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=25885&vpn=90OA01A2011211…
http://www.thinkgos.com/store.html
What to do with your older non working hardware :
– Donate it to a good cause.
– Donate it to a GNU/Linux distribution that actually care about making it working.
– Sale it in the classifieds.
– Sale it on E-bay.
– Keep it and use the Other OS with it …
I want GNU/Linux to be like Mac OS X :
NEVER gonna happen we cant legally close access to the source or remove rights from you !! Beside for the looks :
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=linux+like+leopa…
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=opera&rls=en&hs=…
Do the same thing for XP or vista ( look up google ) …
** Why Users Aren’t Flocking to Linux **
Because Linus Torvalds built a kernel OS and not a Flying device with motor for flocking. Seriously , LT is out of touch with almost anything outside the Kernel …
– 1991 was the year of the 286 GNU/Linux desktop.
– 1998 was the year of the easy to install GNU/Linux desktop.
– 2003 was the year of the GNU/Linux Live CD
– 2007 was the year of the cheap GNU/Linux laptop/desktop
– 2008 is hopefully going to be the year of the dream Desktop and laptop systems.
You care to back any of your claims up?
Based on what? Your imagination i guess
And who made that offer?
People like you must be seen as a bigger problem then the guy your replying to.
More of your usual bs and still without anything that actually shows your right.
source for your numbers? And your imagination doesnt count as a source.
Is that so.. Why cant you produce any sources to back your usual claims up then?
You know in the real world your opinion doesnt count as a fact.
But if your supposed to install it on any hardware you want why should you then be careful when you shop for hardware?
Oh you do know the word fact and yet you fail to deliver any to back your claims up.
But if you look at your ealier comment they should be able to install anything they want on their hardware
And how does those years match things in the real world?
This is the content of the link you refused to follow moron , it show you as once again , refusing to accept reality and source , because your a liar , coward thieves and traitor who’s only interest is nothing less then shutting me up only :
I did back it up , follow the link given in the discussion :
In a Stevenote sent to Apple employees at mid-year, Jobs awkwardly described the company as a chair with the three legs—wouldn’t that be a stool?—: the Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone. As 2007 winds down, it’s seems only appropriate to consider the year for Apple from that ternary perspective.
Intel CPUs, iPod Halo, Mac OS X, Windows Fatigue, whatever the cause, the effect is that 2007 will be remembered as a Mac Renaissance not seen since the early 90s. In 2006, 5,655,000 Macs were sold. 2007 will see sales between 7.7 million and 8 million—a 36 to 40 percent increase—and two to three times the projected growth of industry average. Since only the iMac saw significant revision this year, this is especially positive news. Of course, that hardware “leg” of Apple—someone find a new metaphor for Jobs—benefited from new software. Besides iLife ’08 and iWork ’08, including the spreadsheet Numbers, the tri-named Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard was released in October. During its first weekend alone, Leopard sold 2 million copies, something that took the previous iteration of OS X over a month to do. Mac sales in 2007 were great, a trend that will likely continue in 2008.
While new Macs were scarce in 2007, the iPod line launched two new models, as well as repackaging an old one and adding color to the last. While the Shuffle got color cases, the iPod Classic was kept around to keep the Zune in its place: last. The iPod Nano introduced a wide-screen display to the most popular iPod, and the iPod Touch introduced the touch screen display to people who don’t want a phone. In 2006, Apple sold 46,366,000 iPods and is expected to sell approximately 55 million in 2007, an increase of somewhere around 17 percent. While the growth rate for sales may be leveling off, that’s still a hell of a lot of media players. In contrast, music sales at the iTunes Store continue to accelerate, with Apple passing the two-billion song mark in January, followed by three billion songs in July, with four, or even five billion, likely to be announced at Macworld Expo in January. The iPod, and the iTunes Store, continued their respective market dominance, and will likely continue to do so in 2008.
Finally, that leaves the third leg of Apple, an appendage whose sales continues to elongate. Introduced at Macworld Expo 2007, the iPhone went on sale six months later, selling 270,000 units in its first two days. Seventy-two days after that, Apple sold its millionth iPhone. Now, rumor has it that the iPhone will have sold 5 million units in 2007, putting it on track to meet projections of 10 million sold in 2008. Clearly, Apple has another hit product in the iPhone.
While this has been a great year for Apple, there have been problems. Lackluster sales of the “sort of a new DVD player for the Internet age,” as Steve Jobs awkwardly described the Apple TV, has ensured the furniture metaphor will not become a table anytime soon. However, worse than the failure of the Apple TV in 2007, was the inability of Apple to bring video content to the iTunes Store. The impasse with the movies studios and NBC abandoning the iTunes Store means 2007 saw a decrease in the number of video titles available. Still, even this problem is small when considered against the spectacularly successful transition of Apple Computer.
In 1992, market share for the Macintosh peaked at just over 12 percent, an all-time high. By 1997, Apple Computer’s percentage of the PC market had plummeted to less than four percent, and that’s about where it stands now. It was only fitting then that 2007 began with a symbolic statement of the obvious, and so should we ring out the end of the year in the same way.
Apple Computer is dead, long live Apple, Inc.!
http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2007/11/15/linux-in-more-th…
I wrote last week about the continued strength and appeal of Linux for supercomputers. With this week’s release of the latest list of the Top500 Supercomputers, I wanted to quantify that dominance that is being reported elsewhwere.
It should be mentioned that HPC competition seems to be heating up for sure. Microsoft continues to stretch into the supercomputing realm with its Windows Compute Cluster 2003 and grew from just 0.4% of the top supercomputers in June 2007 to 1.2% in the latest November 2007 list. The software giant is also making deals and announced a new HPC Server 2008. Red Hat, which claims about 2.6% of super systems in the most recent list, is also pushing its HPC profile by partnering with Platform Computing. Novell’s SUSE Linux is prominent on the list and is used in more than 10% of the Top500 systems.
Other operating systems, such as AIX (4.8%), Solaris (0.4%) and Mac OS X (0.4%) make the list, but Linux is alone at the top, where it is used in 459 systems or 91.8% of the top supercomputer systems. It is sometimes paired with other operating systems, such as UNICOS or CNK, but in most cases (more than 80%), Linux is the only OS used. It will be interesting to see what happens in subsequent lists, but as Top500 organizers have said for years, Linux shows no sign of slowing down for the world’s fastest computers.
http://www.thevarguy.com/2007/07/22/ubuntu-linux-6-million-to-12-mi…
Ubuntu Linux: 6 Million to 12 Million Users
Jul. 22nd, 2007 by The VAR Guy
11
Comments
Ubuntu, the fast-growing version of Linux from Canonical, now has between 6 million and 12 million users, according to Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth.
Over the next year, Shuttleworth says Canonical will focus on multiple areas for growth, including a small business server. Shuttleworth also mentioned Ubuntu’s opportunity on mobile devices. He downplayed the opportunity on smart phones (at least initially), and instead focused on mobile Internet-enabled devices that resemble Nokia’s N800 handheld device.
Canonical is working on the mobile device initiative with Intel.
Shuttleworth made his comments during Ubuntu LIVE, a conference in Portland Oregon.
So we are supposed to believe a guy who have every interest in getting his own stuff more hyped? Very clever choice of source…
As opposed to you a disgrace to his familly name who hide under a retarded coward rodent name and offer nothing but just a pathetic projection of himself ,
the obvious answer is yes …
You got source directly in the comment , they where not enough , I offered more source , still not enough , it’s always a case of denial and of dispute when your concerned. Reality does not match your fabulation and fabricated world , it never will.
Your the one who never back-up any of your claim or offer any source , because we both know you don’t have any at all , you just want to impose your false and pathetic view as the reality.
your rodent name still being a disgrace and stupid is fitting , your spinning your web of lies and deceit and your trapped in a cage going nowhere …
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9806/12/upstarts.idg/index.html
Meet the challengers to Windows’ throne
June 12, 1998
Web posted at: 11:11 AM ET
by Lincoln Spector
The way Bill Gates sees it, a market share of nearly 90 percent isn’t a monopoly. In heated exchanges with the Justice Department, Microsoft’s chairman has insisted that Windows has plenty of formidable competitors. Ralph Nader doesn’t agree.
In early March, Nader and the Consumer Project on Technology asked six PC makers, including Compaq, Dell, and Gateway, to offer customers the option of a non-Windows operating system such as Linux (a UNIX variant) or BeOS (a newcomer to the PC platform). At press time, the CPT had not received formal responses from any of the PC vendors.
If you’ve never heard of these Windows alternatives, you’re not alone. In 1997, according to market research company International Data Corporation, Windows owned an 86.3 percent share of the market for desktop operating systems. And unless the Department of Justice succeeds in halting the Windows 98 juggernaut, Microsoft could very well claim the remaining 13.7 percent of the market.
Why should you care about market share? Software vendors focus their development efforts on the most popular platforms, so that’s where you’ll see the most new programs. Moreover, using a minority operating system invites all kinds of compatibility problems when you want to share files and data with associates and customers.
Limited Solutions
But what if you hate Microsoft and you’re fed up with Windows’ notorious instability? Such sore points are leading some users to seek out alternatives. Vicki Reeves, a system administrator for the Beauregard Parish Public Library in DeRidder, Louisiana, was writing a grant in a hotel room last year when she went online to check something. “When I tried to close the modem connection,” she says, “Windows froze. I lost 2 hours of editing.” Soon thereafter, she bought a new notebook that uses Linux.
But Linux is too difficult for all but the most technically savvy. Other solutions have their own limitations: The Mac is too expensive, the JavaOS is more convenient for IS departments than for users, and the BeOS is still too new to judge.
Though flawed, operating systems from Apple, Be, Sun, and others bring innovation to market. The best of those innovations can wind up in the mainstream.
Linux: Free, but Unfriendly
If Gates and company have anything to worry about on the OS front, the threat might be Linux–a variation of UNIX that comes with an unbeatable price: It’s absolutely free.
Linux has acquired some high-profile industry support. Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen has publicly praised the seven-year-old platform, and Corel offers a Linux version of WordPerfect.
Plus, you can now buy Linux as a commercial product (it continues to be available as a free download, too). Caldera and Red Hat sell it for prices ranging from $50 to $399 (depending on service contracts, number of licenses, and so on). What you’re paying for, of course, is a CD-ROM, printed documentation, additional features, and somewhat easier installation. Both companies also sell Linux office suites, complete with word processors, spreadsheets, and such.
As a result of all this activity, Linux is the only non-Microsoft operating system expected to gain much in popularity. IDC predicts that Linux’s share will jump from 1997’s 2.4 percent to 4.2 percent by 2001, overtaking the MacOS.
Much of Linux’s popularity stems from its use as a network OS, where it’s proving a feasible–if not very popular– alternative to Windows NT Server and conventional flavors of UNIX, especially for running networked applications and Web servers. Some system administrators find it more stable than NT and easier to control–even when you’re off site. John Morris, an independent contractor in DeRidder, Louisiana, remembers administering a network with one NT server and five Linux servers. “If one of them crashed, odds are that it was the NT box. I’d then have to come out there at 5 a.m. and kick it. You can’t easily reboot an NT box remotely.”
Linux will have a more difficult time cracking the desktop market. At this point, most desktop Linux users are either computer professionals–the ones administering those networks. For an operating system to compete on the desktop, it has to be easy to set up and use–and Linux is anything but. In our informal tests with Caldera’s OpenLinux, we found even simple tasks like reading a fresh CD-ROM to be nightmarishly cryptic.
The upshot: Linux is worth considering if your company needs a really inexpensive platform for network applications. But as a mainstream desktop operating system, it doesn’t present a viable alternative to Windows.
Mac: Now a Niche
Though Apple’s MacOS has lost much of its former market share, the vendor has plans to fight back. This summer, Apple will introduce MacOS 8.5, an upgrade that promises better Internet integration with new browsing capabilities, easier Internet setup, and faster file transfers. At that time, buying a Mac–and the MacOS that comes with it–will get cheaper: The company plans to ship the iMac, a $1299 machine that’s aimed at the consumer market, in August.
Later this year, Apple will release a network operating system code-named Rhapsody, which will act as a server for publishing and Internet applications. Rhapsody is expected to run on a number of non-Apple platforms, including Pentium systems.
But the big news should come in the second half of 1999, when Apple expects to ship MacOS X, which the vendor says will combine the power and stability of Rhapsody with the desktop support of the MacOS. The product will include advanced features, such as preemptive multitasking and memory protection. It will also run existing Mac applications, though not with the advanced features.
MacOS X will be a little late to slow the Mac’s decline, however. From 1996 to 1997, the Mac’s share of the OS market fell from 5.6 percent to 4.6 percent, according to IDC–an 18 percent drop. The research company predicts that the MacOS’s hold will fall to 1.9 percent by 2001.
As market share slips, developers will spend less money creating programs for the platform, resulting in a dearth of software. Eric Forster, a Los Angeles mortgage broker and longtime Macintosh user, learned this the hard way. Last year, he had to buy a Windows PC because a loan processing application called Byte Qualifier wasn’t available for the Mac. “I now have a PC sitting next to the Mac,” he admits.
Still, the Mac remains the best machine for professional-level graphics design or desktop publishing. For instance, the colors that it displays on screen are closer to what a professional printing system turns out. But for most mainstream business users, a Windows computer is clearly a better choice.
To Be or Not to BeOS?
It’s hard to believe, but there’s a new operating system for PCs. Be Incorporated shipped the first PC version of its BeOS in March (two earlier versions run only on Macs), and the company is planning another major release by September. Unlike Windows 95, BeOS offers true, preemptive, reliable multitasking. It can take advantage of multiple processors. And it isn’t burdened by the past: Windows’ DOS foundations have been around for almost 20 years; many of the OS’s speed and stability problems can be traced to its need to be backward compatible with older versions of itself.
But the $70 BeOS release 3.0 is still not ready for the big leagues, thanks largely to a scarcity of applications and limited hardware support. Even the vendor’s Web site warns that version 3.0 is strictly for “geeks, enthusiasts and the curious.” But version 4.0, expected in September, promises to support more hardware and to be easier to use.
More important, applications are beginning to appear, including an office suite called Gobe Productive from Gobe Software. The package contains the basics–word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation graphics–along with some novel int
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D02E4D81339F93BA157…
By AMY HARMON
Published: September 28, 1998
Submissions to Linux’s core code, or kernel, are subjected to instantaneous electronic peer review, a technological meritocracy that has so far insulated Linux from the kind of fragmentation that has befallen other operating systems built around the international Unix standard.
Despite the operating system’s reputation for power and reliability, corporations have been reluctant to use Linux because nobody owns it. That is why the emergence of companies like Red Hat and Caldera Systems Inc. — a Linux distributor with a business plan based on corporate training, services and support — is considered crucial to the success of the free operating system.
Now, bolstered by commitments from companies like Oracle, Netscape, Intel, Informix and Corel, all of whom have announced plans to support Linux in recent months, Red Hat and Caldera are getting more aggressive.
But their business plans are fragile. For instance, since Red Hat wants whatever code it writes to become part of the Linux kernel, it must be published under open-source rules. That means that http://www.cheapbytes.com can, and does, sell Red Hat’s entire Linux package for $1.99 — $48.01 less than Red Hat’s customers pay.
Red Hat’s Mr. Young estimates that as few as 1 in 10 of the people who use Red Hat have paid him for it. But that is one of the paradoxical pillars of charging only for support and services, not for intellectual property.
”My job is not to compete with Microsoft,” Mr. Young stresses. ”It’s to lower the value of the operating system market. Microsoft makes $5 billion in operating system sales. If I get that market, I automatically make it a $500 million market.”
Skeptics are quick to note that the technology companies lining up behind Linux, with its estimated seven million users, have their own competitive reasons to oppose Microsoft, which has 300 million users for its Windows operating systems.
What is more, the skeptics point out, no one knows how long Linux’s labor-of-love development by programmers will last.
”An operating system is a living thing,” said Carl Shapiro, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley and a co-author of ”Information Rules,” a book to be published this week by the Harvard Business School Press. ”Ongoing investment and upgrades are essential to attract customers. Nice cooperative thoughts are not enough.”
Still, use of Linux is growing by more than 40 percent a year, according to IDC, a research firm. And a 1997 survey by another research firm, Datapro, found that Linux scored higher with users than any other operating system. Dell Computer, which last year began offering Linux to customers who ordered at least 50 computers a quarter, said that more interest had been expressed in Linux in recent months.
James Love, director of Ralph Nader’s Consumer Project on Technology, which has encouraged the Justice Department to investigate Microsoft’s Windows licensing deals with computer manufacturers, said his office had found it impossible to buy Linux already installed on a PC from a major commercial vendor. But he managed to install it on his own computer, and he was impressed.
”This is the first time we’ve seen an industrial-strength product developed without a corporation behind it, and we think it’s amazing” Mr. Love said. ”If the operating system is in fact a natural monopoly, then what could be better than having an operating system that nobody owns?”
No one argues that Linux poses a threat to Microsoft right now. But at a time when the next version of Windows NT appears indefinitely delayed by a complexity that has grown unmanageable, Linux enthusiasts are beginning to find back-door ways to introduce the operating system into their corporations.
For example, when Randy Kessel, a manager for technical analysis for Southwestern Bell, part of SBC Communications, installed Red Hat’s Linux on the 36 desktop personal computers that monitor network operations in Kansas and Missouri, it was done on something of a dare.
http://lwn.net/1999/features/Timeline/
http://lwn.net/2001/features/Timeline/
http://lwn.net/Articles/60779/
That’s people’s fault…
Software installation, quality of the software, hardware and drivers support have nothing to do with it!
Obviously, those are important and are a deciding factor, but when it comes down to it, you can do all those relatively nicely and people still won’t switch. Look at OS X.
Well that’s for a huge part because Mac OS X only runs on Macs (legally at least).
If it was available for all PCs, more people would use OSX. No, I’m not advocating this move to Apple because I understand that this move would hurt Apple’s Mac business and in turn OSX.
The difference is that to go The Apple Way costs more then a pc, and even with that they have more users then linux, which you cant even give away.
Yeah…
I find myself disliking this trend of blaming the User for not liking it when things don’t work. I suppose the only thing keeping me from Windows Vista is my hatred for anything new.. never mind the DRM, broken networking, DRM, annoying UAC, and DRM. Did I mention I really, really hate DRM?
–bornagainpenguin
Most users don’t care at all about DRM, they just want their stuff to work. They don’t even know what it is. It’s just another acronym in a sea of acronyms.
Windows works sufficiently for the vast majority of users, and most users don’t like change, don’t want to learn how their computer works, they just want to get their shit done so they can go live real lives. Windows is good enough for the majority of those users. And they won’t change OS’s. MS will fix the problems with Vista over time, like they did for XP, and that will be the end of it.
Oh, they don’t know or care about DRM – until they try to do something which DRM won’t allow. Or they find that their media experience is castrated due to Media Inc. thinking that all of us end users are scum sucking roaches who are morally bankrupt and depraved, and could never be trusted with their precious media.
I keep seeing this crap about DRM, which most if not all readers here know exists in multiple forms and multiple operating systems. The thing I question is if half the people complaining about it in windows vista have actually had a bad experience with it in windows vista. I use a vaio with vista home premium for nearly all of my personal computing, even the stuff that isn’t exactly legal according to `insert your big name media nazi here` and I’ve had no interuptions or slow down from DRM what so ever. Maybe it’s just me, I don’t know, but it hasn’t been intrusive and I haven’t had any men in black suits come knocking on my door because I violated a copyright. I’m not saying or implying that DRM doesn’t exist in windows vista, I’m saying that either I got a vista install that has ‘DRM lite installed’ or you guys are just blowing it way out of proportion and spreading FUD.
The UAC stuff I have disabled. It is anoying. What it’s not is no more annoying than ubuntu or anything else that blacks out the screen and prompts you for input to do “tasks that require more privilages.” I don’t see anyone complaining about ubuntu or any system that makes use of gksu/gksudo though. Any how, UAC is just an answer to the people who complained and pointed out insecurity in windows time and time again and now the same assholes are complaining about an attempt to improve upon security in windows. Go figure.
Let the mod-downs begin….
I think you fail to understand how DRM works.
For DRM to have an impact on you, the media you are playing needs to be ‘DRM Enabled'(TM), which basically means it needs to be encrypted in some form. That obviously does not include pirated media as DRM encoding on such media would completely defeat the purpose.
The part that these guys are talking about is the fact that, for DRM to become truly effective, there needs to be certain tamper proof (or more likely near tamper proof) frameworks in place. The only viable ways to do this is either using hardware (HDMI cables are an example) and/or providing certain software ‘pathways’. As the only sensible way to implement these software frameworks is by including them in the OS itself, Big Media Inc. has leaned on MS to do exactly that.
The problem is that one of these days, you may find out that a certain movie you have bought has some form of DRM and that, because you in some way don’t fulfill the criteria for playing this movie, you can’t watch it. Welcome to Digital Rights MissManagement!
in some ways i suspect they would be better of with a cartridge loading console.
want to surf the web, pop in the web cartridge.
want to do mail. pop said cartridge (or these days, pop the web one and go to gmail).
and this would repeat for writing text, doing spreadsheets and whatsnot.
hmm, that reminds me. do anyone else have the impression that spreadsheets have become a kind of uber-app?
nah, they just became the “tables” thing.
how often did you walk in an excel file with a table to be printed (no calculations involved) instead of a plain .doc/.rtf?
Amen, you hit the nail right on the head. I can’t believe that you got modded down for your comment, there was no reason for it.
The problem we see is that we have Linux zealots who look at anything proprietary as being automatically bad (morally/codewise).
Windows works, it works well, and more importantly, it works well for 99.99% of the users out there. People hate change, not just with software, but life in general.
I work in tech support for a local ISP, and we all hate Vista, cos it is different to XP etc. That’s change. It’s also human to dislike change.
Linux is so different to Windows in so many areas, that most people will not tolerate the change and move to it. Linux does not offer enough advantages over Windows to entice the average user. Stability? Windows is fine for the vast majority of people these days. Security? Ditto. Usability? Ditto. Until Linux starts to thrash Windows in these areas, it won’t succeed as a mainstream operating system. It doesn’t mean that Linux is rubbish, it isn’t, it just doesn’t do enough to entice people to switch.
Dave
It only takes Windows blocking someone from doing what they want to do once, and then they’ll care plenty. They might not know exactly what it is that’s blocking them from doing what they want, but they’ll ask their computer geek friends about it and that’ll start the ball rolling, now won’t it?
Ummm…. by what definition of “works” are you using? This new Operating System demands nearly three times the amount of system resources as its predecessor without offering anything significant in return. And even then, when you give it all those resources it doesn’t feel any faster or run any better than XP did. To people raised to believe faster is better (see the clock cycle wars) this is criminal and they will and donotice it. They may not know what it’s called, but they do know what they’re seeing isn’t right.
Of course not–the people you’re talking about don’t even know what an OS is. But they’ll talk to someone like me and I’ll tell them about how they can run the same Firefox they’re already using on this thing called Linux. How they can do their Office work on this free word processing suite called OpenOffice.org which has better compatibility with word docs than Microsoft Word. How they can have the special effects they liked about Vista without paying through the nose in slowness with this thing called Compiz on Linux.
They’ll ask me what is this Linux thing you’re talking about? And I’ll explain, it’s kind of like those Mac and PC commercials, except you don’t need to buy a whole new computer, sometimes if you’re lucky everything on your current rig is already supported…. Would you like to try it? And I’ll pull out a live cd distro like Ubuntu or Slax and we’ll be on our way…
Or in a worse case scenario where they insist on going with Microsoft, we’ll try to put Windows XP on that hardware (to see if the drivers are there for it) and make a trip to the store so they can see just how much Windows actually costs these days… Did I mention Linux was free….
I’m sorry but I have to address this. Maybe my memory is faulty, but when you say “just like they did for XP” what exactly are you referring to? IIRC Windows XP didn’t take any significant resources to run, it was just wide open for viruses, spyware and a bunch of assorted buffer overflow attacks. Windows XP actually gave a pretty good system for its memory use I thought, even if they did ship with way more services by default than actually needed.
Vista is simply a glutton, starving all your applications of RAM and offering precious little back in exchange for what it eats. I don’t see that changing any time soon, if at all. Worse yet, every service pack has eventually raised the memory requirements to Windows over time… what will be Vista’s sweet spot a few years from now? It can’t see more than 4 gigs! Where is it going to go from there?
–bornagainpenguin (thinking it funny how much Vista discussion there is in a Linus Torvalds discussion….)
I don’t agree, if that was the case, they would already be switching in droves. DRM just does not stop normal users from doing the things they want to do, send email to thier friends and coworkers, surf the web, send instant messages, download stuff and do some word processing and other things. DRM is not going to stop them from playing DVDs (I have never had a DVD I couldn’t play, ever). It isn’t going to stop them from Playing Blue-ray (most users don’t back up thier movie collection, they play the original) It’s not going to stop them from downloading pirated video or music, and it certainly won’t stop them from playing unprotected media, so I don’t see how most users could really run into problems. And once you tell them thier favorite game won’t run under Linux, and neither will the software for thier cheap-ass digital camera, they’ll be hollering for you to leave thier computer alone.
Windows XP works fairly well, for the vast majority of people, just because it doesn’t do the job for you and me, who are NOT normal users, doesn’t mean our needs and wants are everybodies needs and wants.
No, they won’t. When normal users talk to me, I tell them both the advantages and the disadvantages to switching. I do not gloss over the bad points. Invariably some people try it and like it, other people hate it, other people need to go back because thier printer/camera/music player doesn’t work. The thing is that I have found is that most people won’t try it at all. They are relatively happy with Windows, they just have a problem that needs to be fixed. I agree with Linus on this, user inertia will be the biggest thing that holds Linux back going forward.
SP2 for XP fixed a lot of the security problems that XP had. When XP came out EVERYBODY hated it. Now that Vista is out, everyone hates Vista and sings XPs praises. Either MS DID fix the problems with XP (which they have) or people got used to it (which they have)
Uh 64bit versions of Vista Ultimate and Business can see more than 4 Gigs. Also, Vista manages the ram differently than XP. Read these links (and google for more)
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/kernel/wmm.mspx
Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. (HINT: it is happening)
I agree. Which is why I was talking about Vista, which doesn’t work as well as XP did. Please read my previous comment again to see where you misunderstood me.
Again I agree. Which is why for those people with hardware incompatibilities I usually recommend Windows XP when it can be installed. Unfortunately even XP isn’t a magic bullet–some hardware OEMs are working very hard to ensure XP fades away, but for those whose hardware is compatible with Windows XP it’s usually a better solution than Vista. Of course, as I said after they see the performance differences and realize how much its going to cost them to buy a new license for XP…. Sticker shock isn’t pretty. I’ll leave it at that.
I don’t remember EVERYBODY hating Windows XP when it came out. Everyone loved XP to my recollection of things, except for the hassle of activation and the silly default theme–which many of us changed immediately. Were there issues with viruses and spyware–sure! But I don’t remember hearing too many people going back to Win98SE like you do with people rolling back to XP. Those who went to Windows 2000 usually did so because they hated having Internet Explorer integrated beyond their ability to remove it.
These days those with that complaint have largely either moved on to Linux, MacOS X, or begun using tools like nLite to install their system without it, like they used to do with 98Lite and or Fred Vorck’s methods.
Which helps all those people who purchased their new Vista machines with 32-bit processors how? Also I think it’s pretty sad when an Operating System needs to use more than 4 gigabytes of RAM to provide the same experience XP does on less than half of that….
So I keep hearing. Again, I don’t see how in this case different is good. You’re still asking that we give over three or four times the amount of system RAM to only get half or less than half the performance we got on XP… Pitiful really.
–bornagainpenguin
I’ll just reply to these 2 things:
[p]Which helps all those people who purchased their new Vista machines with 32-bit processors how? Also I think it’s pretty sad when an Operating System needs to use more than 4 gigabytes of RAM to provide the same experience XP does on less than half of that….[/p]
Doesn’t help them at all, but at the same time, I don’t think that the preformance hit is anywhere close to what you are claiming, and also, most processors manufactured in the last 3 years are AMD64 or EMT64 capable processors, so they do have options. You’d be hard pressed to find a new computer in the last year that came with Vista, and isn’t running a 64bit capable processor. If somebody did buy one, they were hoodwinked.
[p]I agree. Which is why I was talking about Vista, which doesn’t work as well as XP did. Please read my previous comment again to see where you misunderstood me.[/p]
I did not misunderstand you, I was responding to our statement about how MS didn’t fix the major problems with XP, and then got on my soapbox. My bad.
…even Vista is “different” from XP. They will be able run all software from previous Windows versions on it. Linux do not give them such possibility, still being “different”.
Someone help me out here…wasn’t there an article on not too long ago which showed that Linux (via WinE) was actually more compatible with more apps than Vista?
Here it is: http://wastingtimewithmikeandari.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/linux-has…
–bornagainpenguin
EDIT–added link
Edited 2008-02-12 22:14 UTC
I gotta say, I have no faith in that article at all. From what I have saw at work, all of our apps work just fine, but you can’t run any of our software under Linux. Take a look at the AppDB on WineHQ, that list of software is nowhere near as long as Vista’s, and to pretend it is just lying.
http://appdb.winehq.org/
Yes, but it’s damn good for many years of reverse engineering, but we are not on even footing are we.
Give Linux, native DirectX, photoshop, all other so called must have apps and sell on the same shelf as Vista and we’ll see if they prefer Vista, but thats never going to happen. Linux has picked up alot of users willing to try it but not the ones walking into the shop being fed Vista, what a surprise, OH I wonder why.
Agree. Actually, I say it’s an amazing product that is getting better with each release. Not quite there yet.
Don’t agree. I think they still would prefer Vista. Most ppl have never heard of Linux so why would the buy it over a MS product that they are familiar with?
And lost users that have tried it. Managed to get a previous supervisor of mine to try linux. Ordered Ubuntu cd’s which he was really impressed with (free cd’s woohoo). Put the cd in, rebooted and the computer locked up while loading the desktop.
As you can expect, not impressed at all.
The OP talked that article up a little much. Actually reading it, it is about a few specific games that work better in Wine than on Vista. Nothing about all, most, or even many. The article is correct, some do work better in Wine. It was the summary of the article by the OP that was a little off
Try to install Direct X 9.0c on Wine. Is’t it “a few clicks away” ? Then we will continue our discussion about Wine and games.
Perfectly fine games are possible with OpenGL. The PlayStation 3 uses OpenGL as its graphics API, many games are ported to Mac OS X which uses OpenGL as well. All Unreal Engine games can utilize OpenGL.
Not releasing native Linux versions of games is just the result of laziness on the developer’s side, not a technical decision.
No, it’s money.
John Carmack said once when he was interviewed about Rage that a single guy does the Linux builds in his spare time. Of course it’s easy for him, because the Rage engine is designed with portability in mind. OpenGL and OpenAL are used across all platforms except Xbox 360 (maybe OpenAL is not used on PS3, but it’s used on Mac and Windows).
It’s not only laziness, it also because there is not as much money support from the other Linux OS’es to do so. Unlike profit orientated Apple and Microsoft.
Its all business.
“…even Vista is “different” from XP. They will be able run all software from previous Windows versions on it.”
You clearly haven’t run Vista. Or read much about it.
“”…even Vista is “different” from XP. They will be able run all software from previous Windows versions on it.”
You clearly haven’t run Vista. Or read much about it.
“
Well, I have. I have yet to find any software that ran on previous windows that does not work with Windows Vista. I have read plenty that says “xyz does not work”, but yet when I install “xyz” the program works. I must just be gifted?
The only exception is old DOS based games. Newsflash..they did not work under XP either.
Same here. The only program I had trouble with was Gimp. Not that it didn’t work, just took a while to search for fonts (if I remember correctly). I thought there was a problem because it took too long so I ended up killing it before it got running. My fault.
If a disto was released as good as Vista, there would be pelnty of ppl flocking to linux.
I both read and tried. In fact I tried RC of Vista. Year ago there were problems with device drivers or utilities like iWheelWorks (then – not completed – now – available) – my favourite games run perfectly. For example good old “Star Wars Galactic Battleground Saga” (DX 8.1 AFAIR) – worked on Vista, failed to start on Wine – do not see inserted game CD. If they wrote on the Wine page that they run it – well, I try to be honest and prefer genuine games, not “cracked”.
Edited 2008-02-13 04:11 UTC
People don’t “prefer” Vista: they just get it preloaded on the computers they buy. The difference with the recent past is that more and more people would rather get the previous version of Microsoft operating system, Windows XP, to the point that several hardware companies are trying to accomodate as best as they can.
Of course when Microsoft will eventually pull the plug on XP people won’t have other choice than to “prefer” Vista, and Vista alone.
Rehdon
Why are so many people buying eeePCs? It runs Linux, not Windows.
Because of the hardware.
Edited 2008-02-13 08:48 UTC
I hope that was taken out of context and was part of some larger point, by itself that sounds pretty lame. :/
edit: ok, found it (in part 2 of the transcript). It’s actually not out of context. I really don’t share his views at all. Part of another one of his answers in a paragraph just below the one I quoted before:
Edited 2008-02-12 22:21 UTC
I think the main reason that users aren’t flocking to Linux is the fact that there is no real standardization. You can use one distribution and learn how to set it up for the hardware you’re using, then use another and it’s completely different. Sometimes you don’t even edit or create the same files in the same places to perform the same tasks. To someone who grew up with technology and is familiar with everything, this might not be much of an issue, but for those who are only mildly technical, this is a gigantic hurdle.
I feel that Linux works well for two kinds of people. Those who know so little about a computer that all they need to do is browse the web, check email, and nothing else…and those who are very technical and know more than the basics of how a computer operates. The middle category of users who don’t know much about computers but want to do a lot more with them requires this standardization that helps them figure things out on their own.
Just my opinions, anyways!
Hmm, I think you’re onto something there with the users.
Currently users with very few special needs are able to edit spreadsheets and documents, e-mail, chat, look at pictures, etc. on the web.
Intermediate users often want more advanced apps that may not be supported on a Linux platform and unwilling or not knowledgeable enough to look for alternatives.
Then there are the advanced users like you stated. We are comfortable installing a new OS (Windows or Linux) we know how much RAM our computer has, what an OS is, etc.
So in short, yes, I agree.
I agree. Those who know they don’t know much do fine with Linux. Those who do know a lot do fine with Linux, *BSD, OpenSolaris, Plan9, Haiku, Sylable. or even Windows. Those who know just enough to be dangerous think they need Windows, and in so doing make themselves dangerous.
(Excuse me while I purge this organ enlargment spam just sent to me by some botnet.)
Now, where was I? Oh, yes. It’s the self-proclaimed “power users” who really don’t know nothin’ whom I truly detest.
I had a friend who considered himself a great driver. He was very good in his own car but in an unfamiliar car he was a very poor driver. Plenty of expert powerusers are also totally hopeless outside their familiar software.
I think that Linux people are using particular distribution, not all of them at once. So, the things are standardized for them. One may try other distributions, but usually does most of the work on single one.
DG
The two part transcript of the long interview is quite informative:
– part 1: http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/openvoices/linus-torvalds-part-…
– part 2: http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/openvoices/linus-torvalds-part-…
In other words, the long interview also deals with many other and perhaps more relevant things than just “Why users aren’t flocking to Linux”…
Edited 2008-02-12 22:48 UTC
I guess you guys missed it but last year was the year of the Linux desktop.
I won’t go into all the events that occurred during the year. We saw a massive increase in the installed base both home and corporate, as a rough guesstimate by a factor of two. Alright it was from a very low initial level but it marks the beginning of a widespread acceptance. We have also seen the beginning of major suppliers selling preloaded systems. Finally we have seen it as the leader in the new field of low cost ultra micro PC’s.
I guess I also ought to mention that the selling out of 10,000 of the Everex green PC at Wallmart within 48 hours is an example of the potential rapid adoption of Linux on the desktop that last year showed.
Edited 2008-02-12 23:39 UTC
Yeah but how many were purchased after the initial tidal wave of linux fanboys? I bet the sales just shriveld up
I definitely quit using Ubuntu this January. Enough is enough. About fifteen wasted months of pointless googling and copy-paste howtos. No offence but maybe it was “the year of desktop Linux” of yours, not mine. Now I am eager to see upcoming XP SP3 in action, and my lost hair are beginning to regrow.
Autumnlover: I’m in the same boat as you are. I’ve tried most distros with no luck at all. *buntu, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Arch, Sla(x)/ckware, you name it, I’ve tried it. And I’m fairly technical/advanced user, I always follow instructions to the letter, but it doesn’t matter ’cause something will always go wrong, on different hardware too. Until Linux becomes as easy as Windows to install and operate, it’ll never become a mainstream O.S.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the Open Source nature of it, the stability, security etc. But it needs ONE bleeding unified package manager, where I can double-click something and it’ll ALWAYS install what I ask it to, without having to resolve dependencies etc. That crap simply is not needed in a 21st century O.S. I_don’t_care if it’s the “right” way to do stuff, it IRKS me that something refuses to install because I have xyz lib v1.2.3.000.1 installed and it only works/compiles with v1.2.3.000.2. and I have to waste countless hours of my limited life to hunt down info in some dark corner of the Web.
I also don’t give a rat’s ass how a driver installs itself, as long as when I restart X it WILL restart properly and give me my God damned GUI back, and never ever drops me to the command line. *That* alone will force anyone to install Windows again quickly, trust me. NOTHING says “amateur” faster than an O.S. that can’t cope with a simple driver install/update. I KNOW some companies don’t play nice, that you don’t have the source code, documentation, technical specs etc. I_don’t_care. I want something that WORKS right away without me fighting the system because it wants to be “different”.
These are just some of the reasons why I believe Linux has failed and will continue to fail if their developers don’t pay any attention to their desktop users. I know I’ll get modded down, but deep inside you people know that my frustrations reflect thousands of other users’ experiences with Linux. 🙁
I have some bad news for you… Windows isn’t very easy to install. Oh sure, there are tools that can make it much easier for you if you’re willing to put in the time and investment to learn how to use them– tools like nLite and its automated application and update installers..but even then Windows isn’t easy to install.
The difference is in Windows you (usually) have all your drivers available from the manufacturer and likely have copies of your favorite software already archived on cds somewhere. I say usually because updates can break driver compatibility and leave you stuck with an earlier edition of Windows. (I’m looking at you ATI and your damn OEM radeon drivers…)
Really as far as I can see the only valid point you have is the one you make below about there being a unified standard package manager for all distros….
I couldn’t agree more! Are you by any chance running an RPM based distro? Trying to do the install offline? I’ve run across these issues mostly when trying to istall applications offline or with RPMs. Of course with an offline install you can also run into issues with the package manager refusing to install the package without an internet connection… GRRRR….
Heh… like I said previously, you can have that same experience (more or less) in Wndows when your drivers stop being supported by the manufacturer and the OEM who built your machine. I spent at least a year stuck on XPSP1 with two of my laptops due to ATI refusing to update their OEM radeon video cards for SP2 and costing me in both latency and video playback if I upgraded anyhow for security reasons and WiFi support. Thank God for the Omega drivers people and the Mobility Modder…
Don’t think these are things exclusive to Linux, they’re not by any means!
Nah…I’m gonna mod you up!
There’s some truth to what you’re saying–but thankfully last year was the year of the Linux Desktop and we’ve begun to see Linux machines preinstalled from the factory showing up in stores… Preinstalled Linux will probably make you feel the install is as easy as Windows feels for you now… Best part about it is almost all your applications can be downloaded for free off the internet!
–bornagainpenguin
I would think that a deb based distro is just as difficult to install without internet as an rpm based.
Almost all distros use someting like apt-get nowdays regardless what packagte format the software is stored in. In fact even a windows install would be hard without internet, as there are software to register and huge service packs to download.
Another thing, if you as the grandparent of this post doesn’t manage to get any Linux distro to work even after testing all or almost all there is, and have the gift of being able to read written instructions, and it still fails, then I would strongly suspect that the hardware either is faulty (not very likely as it works with windows) or that it simply isn’t supported.
If you want to play with Linux don’t buy hardware from companies that doesn’t play well with the Linux community. This is no more difficult than it is for people running e.g. MacOS that also need to make sure that hardware and software they buy actually works on their platform. People who use supported hardware will find that Linux is both easy to install, maintain and use.
If you insist on badly supported hardware, at least make sure that drivers can be downloaded from some repository aimed at your distro. That way things will be less likely to die on you when you make kernel updates.
Not in my experience. Sorry!
I’ve had little or no issues installing debs offline, so long as I was sure to have a large pool of dependencies ready. The last time I tried to do this on a Fedora distro it screamed bloody murder and kept on demanding access to the internet to install the RPMs I had right in front of me. I simply couldn’t get the RPMs to install no matter what I did. I assume it’s intended as a security feature, but at the time all it was was an annoyance.
If it weren’t for the fact that Fedora is the only distro able to detect that there’s another video card installed as default I’d have installed some other distro on my parent’s (sister’s really–she’s the only one who uses it…) machine a long time ago. Unfortunately every other distro I tried (motly all Debian based) insisted on trying to use the onboard video card even though it was supposedly disabled…
–bornagainpenguin
My guess is that you have used a network install CD by mistake. I usually install Fedora from the full DVD and I have tried every version since FC1, with the exeption of Fedora 7, and none of them have requred internet connection. The same thing can be said about various CentOS and SuSE distros I have tested over the years.
Other than that, I think that having multiple package formats for Linux software damages the platform. It increases the cost/customer that a software vender needs to spend to distribute his software. I’m not going to argue about what format is the best, but
better of for worse RPM was chosen to be the package format for the LSB standard. The important thing is
that there is only one packaging format used by all distros.
However, a standardized package format is not enough, to make Linux attractive to software venders there must also be some kind of standard naming scheme so that you have some idea what a package named XYZ actually contains, unless of course we design some even better package management system that some way actually checks what’s in a package on file as well as library method level.
Funny you should say that, it was Fedora 7! One of the reasons it was so frustrating to me was because in the past when I had no personal connection to the internet for awhile I was able to download entire directories of RPMs to supplment my Fedora 1 or Fedora 3 install… I actually managed to get a working system that I used on a day to day basis for over a month or so that way. I couldn’t understand why it was giving this kind of crap now, given how easy it had been then.
I guess by what you’re saying this is a known issue with Fedora 7 then?
Yeah, I agree with you 100%! Disclaimer–so long as my preferred format wins and becomes the standard…oh wait… Heh…all joking aside, I was a bit disappointed to see how little progress was made in Autopackage over the years.
You’d think they’d have packages for all the major applications and their dependencies by now right? WRONG….
–bornagainpenguin
I use Ubuntu at home and XP at work it is pretty clear to me which one wins hands down as the easiest to use and best operating system – Ubuntu.
However my point was not about my personal desktop preference or your personal desktop preference, it was about the indications that over the last year there has been the beginning of a major take off in Linux desktop usage by a lot of people who are neither you nor me.
Personally for me 2007 was not the year of desktop Linux As a Linux user for six years it has been another year of desktop Linux becoming more boring as it more and more just works. The beginning of this boringness started about five years when I bought an HP all-in-one printer and plugged it into my system running Mandrake 8.2 Linux and it recognized it straight off the diver was already installed on the system and it just worked. Easier than with Windows and a lot easier than with Red hat 6 which I had been using before that and the printing system would randomly break and require a great effort to get it back working. It has got steadily more boring ever since.
Have you ever try to install USB Irda port on that “easiest” Ubuntu ?
And connect via Irda to the Internet using GPRS and GSM phone ?
Please do not spread that “one-click-does-all” myths about Linux, because this way you will only get angry linux-aware people like myself, who learned the truth about that “RevolutionOS” of yours.
And yes, after many wasted hours I finally tried “GPRS Easy Connect” and “Ircp-tray” . Both worked. But first I must compile GEC from sources, because deb available on the web was too old and incompatible with Ubuntu 7.10
On Windows ? No need to copy-paste anything to the terminal, just run setup.exe for Irda USB driver and second setup.exe for the phone modem driver. And go to the Control Panel to add modem connection, just like in the old times of analogue wireline modems. It just worked. Without compiling, googling, searching and guessing to which port device is really connected and manually editing some weird pppd scripts. (one for connecting and one for … disconnecting)
Edited 2008-02-13 03:58 UTC
I have simulair stories about installing hardware under Windows XP.
Take my old soundcard a SB Live! 5.1, I lost the CD for it and Creative only offers upgrade drivers for the card, for which the installer doesn’t like SP2, it took hours making it install.
My Brother printer only that win2k drivers available for download, it was quite the fun making that work under XP.
A friend couldn’t install her webcam on XP because she lost the CD. She is getting a little sick of losing working hardware that way.
Point is that people can have that kind of bad experience on all OSes.
Lost CD ? Same experiences ?
At least you can re-download the drivers from Creative’s webpage, and install them by simple double clicking.
No messing with compiling, reading #’s in cryptic scripts and guessing which “sound system” works best for each card.
By the way – I have the same card and I cannot remember any trouble with SP2.
Indeed, it’s no longer just a geek/hacker concern. If anything has stagnated about Linux, it’s the lack of influx of posers switching to it to show how c00l they are, since a lot of Linux distributions are pretty trivial to install anymore (provided hardware difficulties, Linux’s achilles heel, don’t occur). Pick your timezone, pick a package repository mirror, and let the installer do all the work, boot right into a colorful desktop.
It strikes me now as something rough which needs continued polishing, but it is no longer a purely DIY concern.
I always urge people who have had difficult experiences with Linux to return to it every 2 years and give it another shot, because things really have evolved significantly since I first encountered it back in the late 90s.
Wow, after 15 months you still don’t know how to use Linux?
I’m sorry to destroy you fluffy illusion of Windows but it’s shit.
Somehow Windows Media Payer destroyed itself on my WinXP installation. It tells me to reinstall it. A reinstall tries to spy on me with that WGA crap. Of course I didn’t install WGA because it sucks. No other operating system nags its users with activation and “genuine advantage” checking.
OK, then I decided to uninstall WMP completely. Yeah, like that was even possible. The uninstall method just hides (!) the application. It’s still there. When I delete it manually, it reappears immediately. WTF?!?
The integrated web browser (IE6) doesn’t work most of the time. It has no tabs, no pop-up blocker and so on. The updated version of it (IE7) looks and feels like ass. Why can’t MS follow simple design rules like putting the menu bar ABOVE the toolbar, not below!? And what’s with that f–ked up toolbar?
Why does Firefox, a cross-platform web browser, look better integrated into the Windows desktop than Windows’ own browser?
That brings me to another point: Why look and behave so many Windows apps completely different? I thought Linux is the OS with different GUI toolkits mixed. Just look at MS’ own stuff: MS Office (each release with a whole new GUI theme), WMP, IE7, and WordPad (WordPad serves as an example of an app that respects my desktop theme settings). Don’t get me started on 3rd party apps like Photoshop (Elements) and HandBrake.
The icons on my WinXP desktop constantly regroup themselves. No, the option to group icons automatically is not activated.
Oh, that System Restore feature is another favorite of mine. Actually in theory it’s a nice idea to automatically generate restore points when new software is installed and so on. But this horsef–k doesn’t work! It either doesn’t create restore points or they are broken. With such a broken mechanism that feature does nothing but eating up HDD space. Luckily I was able to deactivate it completely.
Updates are another problem. Not only that WGA stuff mentioned above but the actual release cycle of updates. Yeah, there are these smaller updates every month but why can’t the biggest and richest software corporation in history not release a Service Pack every 3 to 8 months? Apple does it, most Linux distributions do it, but Microsoft does not.
Even with an updated WinXP install CD, WinXP comes with almost no drivers. Even with a slipstreamed install CD from summer 2007 I still had to install drivers manually, because sound and network didn’t work at all and the graphics card had no accelerated OpenGL drivers.
I could rant about Windows forever but I have more important things to do. I have installed WinXP on my PC next to Linux but I rarely boot XP because it annoys me so much.
I’m not saying that Linux is perfect. No, it’s far from perfect. But even with its different GUI toolkits, it offers a more consistent environment than Windows does. When an app freaks out, in the worst case scenario I have to remove its settings folder.
Overall it’s not as annoying as Windows.
What a conclusion
Don’t you think that I can use it ? Isn’t logical to assume that person which could compile a program is also able to use Linux ?
But… I also learned that in case of Linux you get what you pay for. And I am sorry for being so rude – but this whole “free” thing really sucks.
Maybe many people can build a washing machine or even a car themselves and successfully use it – but I am simply too lazy and I have more interesting things to do, than build a car with my own hands.
Have luck with that “everything-done-in-simple-mouseclick-now” of yours, I simply just left that wagon.
And be sure that if eventually Linux will dominate the desktop world, I manage to use it and configure myself, you don’t get a penny from me for “support”, if this is a “long term goal” of that evangelism of yourself and others alike.
And for the time being – when sitting at my computer in spare time I will enjoy Windows XP and shooting down hordes of B-29’s at cockpit of my trusty Huckebein, (thanks to Sturmovik’46) instead of googling for howtos and combat endless waves of OS limitations.
Edited 2008-02-13 16:39 UTC
horsef–k? Just as the size of space and the universe (and therefore its possibilities) is comforting to me, so is the fact that there are always new, avant-garde ways of using the F word.
So here’s to the F word. And a proposal for a new distribution: Horsef–k GNU/Linux. If someone can work Horsef–k out to a recursive acronym, we will seriously be in business. What would be even more cutting edge is if you could work the two hyphens into the acronym.
You obviously never saw any episode of the Angry Video Game Nerd 😉 http://cinemassacre.com/AVGN/Nes_Nerd_videos.html
There are plenty of examples where people accept “different”, it just has to be a better different. Solve someones specific problem better than the current offering and they’ll quite happily accept different.
The problem is when different is just different and not necessarily making peoples life easier.
Why is it that Linux Developers just don’t get it – Users want stuff to just work. Sure, you might have to go install something extra, but a User shouldn’t have to beat his/her head against the wall just to add what should be a simple additional function. Case in point – OpenSUSE 10.3 is beautiful and functional, but I needed PAN for UseNet. Great, I’d added additional repositories for any extras (though PAN is, I believe, on the main distro disk), so I add PAN via YaST – no problem. But binaries on UseNet are in RAR/PAR format, so I need to be able to scan/repair the files, and then stitch them back together. So… there’s no PAR support I can find in the repositories, but “Parchive” is available as an RPM. I get it, and point YaST to it… nada, nyet! YaST doesn’t see it & won’t install it, and even if it did I’d still be putzing around with the command line. This is what bugs me about Linux. Maybe there’s a great non-CLI version of RAR/PAR (hint to Linux Devs – see “UnRARX” for Mac!), but I don’t see it. Stuff like this may be small for some people, but it’s a show-stopper for me. (I find it unbelievable that there’s no good, windowed RAR/PAR interface out there across Linux distros.) “Little” things like this poison the market for Linux, and give it the “Nerds Only” label it continues to cling to.
and this proves exactly what..? If users wanted things to just work, then nobody walking this earth would use Windows. Because per se, it does not work at all.
You have to install just about every single application you can think of and even most drivers.
If I set up Windows from scratch, it takes me the better part of a day.
Yet, most people will prefer Windows, so the explanation must surely be a different one.
I salute you for being possibly the only human being on planet earth in 2008 for being discouraged from running Linux because it’s not tough enough to handle Usenet.
And I’m not being sarcastic or cutting in any way.
(And no, that’s not sarcasm in saying I’m not being sarcastic!)
That is truly punk rock. You walk into some LUG and say, “Yeah, I thought about using Linux but I said, nah, it’s not enough OS for a man like me because it doesn’t meet my Usenet needs,” you are going to be the ALPHA MALE.
Pan is a reasonable UseNet newsreader – I’ve used it for years, but I refuse to go back to the command line to run PAR – certainly not after using Unison & UnRarX on OSX. It’s like going back to the Stone Age (or going back to Gopher after using Mosaic).
It’s just one small example that can add up to the final straw.
Why would you download Linux software from Usenet? Repositories are there for a purpose. If the binary isn’t in your repository you build from source.
You are kidding me, right? Build it? How quaint! You just answered the question of why Linux isn’t ready for the desktop – Earth to Nerd!!!
This interview is about many different things and not just about why users are not (or are) flocking to Linux. If there’s a common thread to the material it’s motivation: what motives people, and in particular what motives software developers. See, in particular, the concluding paragraph.
The majority of folks stick with Windows for entirely rational reasons. What they have is familiar and “good enough”. Changing to Linux brings them few if any tangible benefits and a lot of risks – voiding a warranty, losing files, finding the whole thing not to one’s liking or simply too forbidding technically, etc.
This means that in general the people who run desktop Linux do so because they want to and choose to – and they have enough technical know-how to do it. This is always going to remain a small – some might say vanishingly small – segment of the overall market for desktop operating systems outside of special situations – kiosks, enterprise spins, etc. But then, of course, such choosing is also called motivation.
For all these reasons I simply don’t believe desktop Linux is going to grow all that much in Western countries – though the East and the developing world are another matter. Growth is likely to be slow for the home userbase, and it’s likely to come from creeping familiarization with Linux through UMPCs like the Asus Eee and other gadgets, and through the use of Linux at work together with much more effort by the strangely named “distro” outfits at quality control and listening to what users want. What does a “distro” really mean and amount to? Why do we think this arrangment so special since, arguably, it has produced the most fantastic market fragmentation?
Whether this growth will happen is anybody’s guess. Going that extra mile in terms of polish, consumer focus and hardware compatibility is hugely expensive and complicated, imho. I’m not sure anyone really knows whether the open source model is sufficiently well funded and well organized – with developers agreeing to cede some of their territory to marketing considerations, for a start – to manage it.
Edited 2008-02-13 00:02 UTC
While it’s true that Vista is still pretty similar to XP, MS have been changing quite a bit lately.
They’ve pretty much renamed everything in the control panel (for reasons which escape me), they’ve removed the pull down menus from IE, Media Center, MSN etc, and then there’s the Office “ribbon”. I think these changes are going to prove to be costly mistakes
I have to admit that after using it (the ribbon) for a while, it is actually a better mouse trap, but it basically turns every Office user back into a novice again! I know it’s not part of the OS, but from the point of view of a lot of users; Office is Windows.
Edited 2008-02-13 00:06 UTC
As a Windows user, I’ll tell you why I haven’t made the switch to either Linux or Mac. Well, I have tried to explain it before and it appears that people still don’t get it, so let me give you a couple of recent examples:
1. I have an mp3 player that basically works as a UMS device, so I can copy audio files to it using pretty much any OS. However, I recently had a need to update the firmware because there was a bug where the player wouldn’t recognize large files over a certain size (I’m an audiobook junkie). When I looked on the vendor website, the only firmware update that was available for download was for Windows.
2. I recently got a PSP Slim and wanted to put custom firmware on it. On all the tutorials I saw, the software that I needed to actually do the modding was for Windows.
I dunno.. I’ve heard people say that they’ve been ‘Windows free’ for x number of years and they don’t miss a thing, but I figure these people probably don’t do much more with a desktop machine than check their email.
Well I use my Linux desktop for Check mail, browse the web, develop software for a living, watch videos, listen to music, transfer music to my mp3-player/phone, chat over IM, play online games, transfer files to and from my PS2 with a HDD… etc.
Likewise, I have to use Windows every once in a while because of a specific app for stuff that I rarely do these days and in some cases, the overhead is not so much that I can’t do it from VirtualBox.
Having said that, I have been using Linux comfortably for years for lots of things including but not limited to:
1. Web browsing with Firefox, Opera and Konqueror;
2. E-mail and other “office” tasks using KDE PIM;
3. Office tasks using OpenOffice;
4. Using several P2P networks including Bit Torrent, E-Donkey, Gnutella, FastTrack, Soulseek, DirectConnect and lots of others;
5. Watching DVDs – encrypted or not – and all sort of (non-DRMed) video formats using MPlayer, Xine and/or its front-ends;
6. Listening and managing my digital music with a media player that’s superior to anything else available on other platforms: Amarok;
7. Read comicbooks in the CBR or CBZ formats using Qcomicbook;
8. Web development using mostly vim and Quanta;
9. Vector image editing using Inkscape;
10. Raster image editing using GIMP;
11. 3D imaging using Blender;
12. Light non linear video editing using kdenlive;
13. Play chess using clients capable of connecting to FICS servers such as Knights;
14. Instant Messaging and Skype;
15. Home banking;
16. IRC;
17. Manage our family pictures using Digikam;
18. Playing my favorite games – the KOF series – using the gngeo emulator and several old classics from system such as the Nintendo SNES, Sega Genesis, several types of arcade cabinets and others using other emulators.
Some Win32 applications are simple enough that can be run using Wine without any problems and for those that can’t, I can always fire VirtualBox and do whatever I need to do on Windows there.
I’m not a hardcore gamer and when I want to play something I usually prefer my PS2 anyway, so don’t waste your breath arguing on that point.
KDE scriptability takes the desktop to a whole another level and after having used it for years – bear in mind that I am one of those people that used DCOP extensively and actually appreciate the configuration options that KDE offers – it is really hard to go back to something like Windows. I can install and keep all my applications up to date using a package manager whereas there is no such a thing on Windows. With ddclient, SSH and GNU screen, I can do things with my computer from anywhere even on a dial-up connection that power Windows users only can dream about.
I cat put my mind at ease leaving my daughters using our computer to access the internet and play their online games as I have deployed DansGuardian with a highly customized filtering list (required because portuguese is my mother tongue and most content filtering software do not take that into account) and Ad blocking to prevent them from seeing or clicking stupid ads that shouldn’t be in sites intended to be used by children in the first place. And when the time that they will start using e-mail comes, I’ll setup POPFile to keep their mailboxes clean.
I understand that I can do most of these things on Windows as well and that my usage pattern does not exactly match what some people do with or expect from their computers (I don’t do fancy things with my cell phone for starters and neither intend to in the foreseable future), but I fail to understand what exactly am I missing from the Windows “User Experience” apart from the constant viruses and security threats.
Regarding point #2 it can certainly be done on linux, if you are talking about the pandora battery trick (else I don’t think you need your pc for anything besides copying the files to the memory stick).
You just have to use fdisk instead of mspformat.exe and dd instead of msinst.exe.
There are a lot of people in this world who don’t know and/or don’t care what an operating system is, let alone the differences among them. They are not unintelligent — the wealthy and the well-educated number among them. Their expertise is just not in computers. They just want to get their work done with a minimum of fuss. These kinds of people are resistant to change because, for many, change is hard. Even from XP to OS X.
I’m not surprised that Torvalds has the opinion that he does. He is a hardcore geek and I admire his technical achievements. I wonder if he would think the same way if he were in my situation. My training is as a music teacher, but I administer, troubleshoot, and otherwise maintain a network of about 25 PCs, including an Ubuntu-based server and a few Macs. My coworkers are great, intelligent people, but they are clueless about computers. My boss is a master teacher, and I hope that I’m half as good in the classroom as she is when I have taught as long as she has. About a month ago, she asked me how to burn an audio CD.
She is the kind of person that doesn’t want to be bothered with partitioning or permissions. People like her would rather be listening to MP3s than trying to figure out what in the world this Ogg Vorbis thing is.
Unless a someone understands this and can make a distro with ride as smooth and polished as OS X (and, no, *none* of them are) and market it amazingly well, Linux will not make major traction in the desktop market for a long, long time, if at all
Great comment… shame I can only mod you up one point!
I think that such a thing could be done, if, as I mentioned previously, someone made an effort to sell heavily branded, unique PCs, in configurations with known-to-work perfectly hardware, running a distribution someone actually cared about (like Ubuntu or SuSE).
Some small companies do this but no one’s made a solid go of it.
We are moving in that direction. But progress is hampered by the old guard, and those who fancy themselves as being old guard. Even something so simple as an RTFM-free help forum is a controversy. Of course, it is too politically incorrect to attack distros on the basis of having them, so more indirect means are used. We, the elite, are ambivalent about letting the riff raff in. We want to be more popular. And they can play Rachmaninov till the cows come home, and we’ll clap for them. But if they don’t know vi… well are those really the kind of people we want to let in here? Best to discourage them.
Amazing people spat off about how they dislike windows and how hard Linux is and yet they refuse to USE OS X. They say they need apps OSX has it say they want nix os x has it. then they go to vendor lock in as the issue. Nothing will ever be good enough. all vendors will not deploy for linux, windows will always be windows os x will always be os x but it is a happy medium if you are will ing to pay.
Personally I am rather techie and I swap my gear every 3-4 years any way so that puts me fine in the apple model, regardless if they are a hardware company I provide solutions and I prefer to have my commercial proprietary apps, and my nix.
OSX is nice – I’d never buy an Apple just get it, but I do use it on my generic x86 from time to time to keep up with the progress. I’d buy OSX if it were available to purchase separately.
I am not buying the people are afraid of change bit. It is not about change as much as it is about expecting certain things. Let’s face it, it is a no brainer to install software on a Mac or a Windows PC. The same can’t be said for Linux. Here is one example: VMware tools. For a VM guest running windows you simply choose install tools from the VM menu. On the Guest Windows os, autorun starts and you follow the simple prompts. Now try this in an Ubuntu guest. You get a window with a couple different packages, one of which does not work in Ubuntu. There is no double-click this to install and most desktop users would throw their hands up and call their IT guy.
Make things truly easy in the Linux world and you would have a winner. I hate to say it but if someone would make things as easy as it is on OSX with drag and drop installs or a standardized installer format then you would get further…
Just my thoughts having used all three of these OS’s.
I recently passed my RHCE and I run RHEL5.1 Server with extra applications for Evolution (and Exchange connector for email). I run Fedora8 on my workstation at home and work, I can use every application from one of my machines. To me it is a choice, I am lucky in the fact I can run it at work and have static IP addresses that allow me to have customized machines.
I started out with Red Hat 6.0 Professional I believe I paid over $60 for it in the store. Back in those days Red Hat actually had free 30 phone support with the software. I had no clue as to what I was doing back then. However a hobby turned into a career. In 10 years I am sure something else will have for sure come along and swept it away. But I will ride the wave until a new one comes along.
I find the vast amount of software available from the Open Source movement is almost intimidating if you are looking for a application you can find it. Most like 10 different ones, I myself like having 10 options. A lot of people do not like this, they want one vanilla flavored do all-be all set in stone pick.
To me it is an advantage having so many distro’s, I don’t want to ‘one’ of them. That is why the Windows software development on 64 bit is dead. I supporting dozens of 64 bit RHEL5.1 AP Servers. To me 64 bit is the way to go, however it is Windows that is clogging up the path (hardware) in getting there on the desktop/laptop market.
quite ironic that the ‘Father of Linux’ would allow his message to be delivered in a ‘podcast’.
He can steal mindshare from Redmond bit by bit with each innovative solution.
This is why people like Bill Joy and the folks at SUN or SGI aren’t leading the industries.
They can’t sell a vision.
You know there are different industries than the desktop, right? Both SUN and SGI lead their respective industries at some point and never really competed with Apple.
Correct, but they both competed with Microsoft [they common link between Apple, Sun and SGI] and they lost.
Since the race isn’t over, and never really will be, there’s still plenty of time for Apple to lose. And for Microsoft to lose, for that matter.
I didn’t read all the comment but well…
I was and still am to some extent a windows user, I now currently use Ubuntu with some fallback to windows for specific use (games as wine is honestly crap for that, far too slow. And a few programs I didn’t find any equivalent under linux, like a good binary usenet client with ssl support)
What I find makes Linux not appropriate to the average user is you still have to rely on the command line if you want to do some “advanced” things (even if it’s far less than before), the other things is the package management wich is great with most distro but hardly simple for non computer geeks.
The example I’d take is Mac OSX, wether you like it or not it’s very different compared to windows, but it’s so easy to use : no dependency nightmare, no mandatory command line (even if you can and I do use it), easy drag and drop install, you name it. All is done to make the system as easy to use and configure as possible. I’m no Apple zealot but their OS is spot on (as bloated and heavy it is, your standard user don’t care about that)
IMHO what Linux lakes to be adopted by the average joe’s is simplicity, at least they got that right with the eeePC linux…
Edited 2008-02-13 10:01 UTC
Vista is what comes on your computer, unless you build from scratch. THE END
Ok not the end, but that is true most of the time. The main exception is Apple computers. My grandma doesn’t re-install OS’s. Ask HER what Vista is and she’ll tell you “a view?” Ask HER what Lepoard is, and she’ll tell you it’s “a cat.” Ask HER what Mandriva is and she’ll say “excuse me?” She may not even know what XP is, even though she’s been using it for years. Her computer was probably from Costco or something. She doesn’t buy computers online, so no OS X for her unless she stumbles into a Best Buy that has some Apple stuff in there. It really is a good solution for her, if she picks up a box of software (family tree maker) it’ll run. She’s not going to run into Mac only software.
“Grandma” is a large chunk of end consumers. Add in that group a son who want’s to play Crysis (the grandson is hooked on consoles.) As for small business, well Grandma probably owns it and Grandpa may be the “IT” guy, so guess what they’re using. (yes, it might be DOS/98SE)
Big business has a big base of Microsoft. I guess, linux is chipping away at the server slowly and slowly on desktop. Maybe when desktops become almost kiosk like, locked down, set functions (difficult to break, less training/cost, set applications.)
I work for a shcool district, we could ‘switch.’ That would be a ton of work. We have some linux on back end, mostly 2000/3. Some OS X in classrooms, mostly XP though. When we buy new systems we’re gonna go with the path of least resistance.
-Bounty
(p.s. Managers don’t look that far ahead, I mean least resistance now.)
Go to http://www.dell.com and look over the desktop wares there. The top choices, and in some cases the *only* OS choices, are XP variations. (Or Linux, but that’s a separate discussion.)
Your Grandma knows that. Why don’t you?
Get with it, whippersnapper! 😉
Edited 2008-02-13 19:24 UTC
That’s why I said “most of the time” XP EOL Jan 2009. Main thing being that you don’t see a large variety of OS X, linux or BSD offerings. They’re Microsoft creations that will run “Family Tree Planner 2007.” That trend will continue for a while.
And that’s why I corrected you for saying that. As of the time of this writing, most machines come with XP. I’d prefer that most came with Linux. But Vista does not ship on “most machines”. And that’s an OK consolation prize. Five years, and billions and billions of dollars, to create a product that they can’t even force upon people with bundling deals.
Priceless…
OS acceptance has to do with applications. Yes most of the general bases are covered: office suites, graphic apps, even multimedia production but there are still many specific apps that simply don’t work in Linux even with versions of wine. For some people those are killer apps. It’s not the OS’s fault itself but apps get made by the OS maker courting developers and even universities.
My killer apps are Gurps Character Assistant and a functioning easy to use Media Center. MythTV drove me absolutely batty and wasted hours if not days of my time.
These kind of improvements require commercial projects in order to get them built, tested, and functioning on a decent time schedule for people. And THAT the Open Source only people oppose. Unfortunately I don’t know what the solution is to let the meet in the middle though.
Ten “Attaboys” is worth one “Oh Shit”.
You are not the first to have doubts about MythTV. I’ve not used it because I don’t care about TV. But my impression is that it’s the Kaswan Ordeal and the Kobyashi Maru roled into one. If it doesn’t kill you, your crew, or your sehlat, it makes you stronger. 😉
Don’t forget real, industrial strength business accounting. What little we have to offer in that area is a joke compared to the commercial, closed source, competition. (That’s the “Oh Shit”.)
At least for now. But we *have* accomplished much. (That’s the ten attaboys.) In the years ahead, we will be building upon what we have. Patience is not just a virtue… but an essential quality for those of us who believe in OSS. “Decent time scale” is a relative concept.
What a lot of ‘designers’ (I wouldn’t call these jokers developers) repeatedly do is blame the people complaining of resisting change… Change is not necessarily a bad thing – unnecessary change with no actual improvements in functionality while major underlying problems remain or go unadressed, while introducing slow-downs, bugs, overcomplication and general annoyances is where the problem lies.
You see this in UI design ALL the time… There was NOTHING WRONG with the Windows 95 start menu apart from vendors abusing it by adding multiple directories to it insted of keeping the launchers nice and clean like KDE or Gnome do… Yet with every windows release they’ve overhauled it for little if any improvement, a lot of BAD IDEAS (‘personalized menus’ for example – the point of a menu is supposed to be to show you ALL the options), and worst of all goof assed animated bullshit that consumes memory and resources while at the same time REDUCING functionality. I click on a menu item, I want it to appear NOW, not five seconds from now after some trash animation finishes. I switch tasks I just need a list of the window and file titles, not goofy thumbnails that I can’t tell the difference between the five text editor and terminal sessions I have open (Apple is worst at this, their handling of task management has to be worst in the industry), etc, etc, etc.
As I’ve repeatedly said, if my 92 year old grandmother can figure out windows 98, you are ****ING DONE with the UI, FIX THE OTHER DAMNED CRAP before adding more goofy eye candy – or maybe if you WANT TO WASTE TIME screwing with the UI, how about doing something useful like optimizing the code and making it run faster in less resources.
‘new’ isn’t the problem. Goof assed eye candy bloated manure nobody asked for is the problem…
Though in linix’s case, having some basic functionality that hasn’t even caught up to Windows 98 in ease of configuration continues to be the problem… Having desktop applications that lack major functionality found in windows 3.1 applications continues to be the problem… and the biggest problem, at least as far as using it as a desktop OS goes, is that almost EVERY howto involves using the command line – Even when there are ways in the GUI to configure things. Yes, explaining the GUI is tougher, but joe six pack is STILL going to tell you to **** off when you tell them to ‘sudo nano /etc/xorg.conf’ or worse, ‘tar xvfp libGL-backup.tar’ – for those of us who know computers that’s fine. Grandma is going to flip you off and go back to her soft comfy windows.
There’s a reason that *nix continues to be for servers, and Windows continues to be for desktops – and attempting to vary from that is usually more headache than it’s worth unless you’re some unwashed hippy with a social agenda.
Amen to That. I like Vista, but there are basic issues. Like the way Windows Mounts drives; this has not been fixed for years. Small idiosyncrasies like this should be fixed instead of adding Glitz and Glam. I also agree with the Linux Comment.(Have used Mandrake, RedHat and SUSE in the Past) My biggest beef with Linux is the spanning tree of endless h3ll in installing applications. I need a bazillion tars, gzip .. whatever to install one application, which waste my time
Edited 2008-02-14 05:06 UTC
And why don’t you just use the package manager? when you only have to choose the application you want to install and it takes care of all dependencies.
Maybe Linux has come a long way, but I have not used since 5 years ago. Back then I had to download a portion of BSD to be the download manager. This was mainly Red Hat which was the biggest pain to deal with.
Out of all the flavors I tried then the best for me at the time was Mandrake.
Now is this package manager intuitive or is this something you need to us from the terminal? Also RPM for Red-Hat back then was pretty good, but it was not the complete solution.
Ok, to be fair – you should probably give one of the latest Ubuntu builds a go. For all my above ranting about it being ‘backwards’ and ‘not caught up to Windows 98’ they have made huge strides in a lot of areas. The Synaptic front-end for apt-get makes software that is IN the repositories simple – just choose what you want from the list, it resolves the dependancies, installs binaries if practical – and even compiles for you if need be. It’s nowhere near as simple as installing a program on MacOS (the ONLY thing I like about Apple), but it’s gotten so much better that if you’ve not used linux in five years it’s likely you won’t even recognize it. Even when you install a downloaded package not from the repositories, a lot of companies (like opera) have made proper .deb files available that you open the file, choose install – and you’re DONE. Of course, Ubuntu’s pulling their head out of their ass, giving the dirty hippy floss zealots the finger and enabling ‘multiverse’ and ‘universe’ by default, as well as tossing in a ‘restricted drivers’ manager has made life WAY simpler when it comes to using ‘non-free as in freedom’ ESSENTIALS.
Nowadays the only time you NEED to resort to the command line is when you are trying to do something outside the norm – like run more than two displays (twinview and xinerama is cute – too bad I’ve been doing multi-display since Windows 3.1) or use hardware that is poorly supported. (broadcom and lucent anyone) or just settings that flat out don’t work with the automated configs (128 bit SHARED WEP? – OPEN is fine, SHARED KEY still doesn’t work worth **** without adding ‘restricted’ via the command line or the boot script)
It is so close you can taste it – and worth a look if you know what you are doing and can live with sub-par applications and a trip in the wayback machine… It’s just not to where I’d put granny on it. (but then, my granny is JUST computer saavy enough to get in trouble)
That’s the problem with making ANY statements about linux – or any other OS for that matter. They are ALL moving targets.
Edited 2008-02-15 06:05 UTC