Lasse Christiansen has a Linux desktop dream. This lengthy opinion column at DesktopLinux.com provides Christensen’s perspective on Linux usability, application support, and more.He surveys the current state of the Linux desktop, reviews strengths and weaknesses, and suggests some improvements that would propel Linux onto more systems.
“Nothing can stop Linux now“, says IDC: Unit sales of Linux-based servers in western Europe this year will reach 182,000, according to analyst IDC, and the figure is set to triple, with revenues doubling to $1.9bn by 2007.
Elsewhere, PCLinuxOnline also has an editorial regarding Linux on the desktop.
i think the less (put the favorite OS here)-aping the better for linux on desktop, and have an _option_ to ditch the client/server setup of X.
The guy says mplayer needs dvd menu support. Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t there a dvd menu support patch? I believe most distros just don’t ship with it.
I think this article is typical. I have heard a million times how Linux needs x,y, and z. This fellow needs to start coding, and stop jabbering!!!@!@#
Nothing can stop Linux now, except for (drum roll, please!):
10) incompetent developers! When will OpenOffice be a clean, unbloated piece of software that’s pleasant to use? Never. Prove me wrong, boys! Also please note that Open Source devels aren’t paid to make their product usable. How will Linux take over the world if people can’t use it? Isn’t that where Microsoft came in and took over? Somehow I don’t think there’s another way, and if there is, Apple will find it before Tux does.
9) Fragmentation. Haha, I’m just joking, all you KDE/GNOME/Enlightenment/BlackBox/FluxBox/Sawfish/IceWM/[insert any of hundreds of random window managers here] guys can put your klubs down.
8) Consistency. Hey, wait a sec – if I remap all my shortcuts manually, after rifling through my KDE, GNOME, etc. config files, I can have a limited amount of consistent shortcut behaviour – which leaves only little things like GUI layout, GUI behaviour and sundry random things that vary from distro to distro.. important things like config files should be centralized, dammit, and in the same damned place no matter whose Linux machine I’m on. Expect this to be fixed circa 2010. Lucky everybody.
7) Decent apps. Oh, wait, mplayer will be stable “real soon,” and mozilla probably won’t take all day to launch when they clean up the code sometime next year; also I’ve heard such great things about those command-line sound editing utils.. and maybe someday Linux will have a video-editing suite that doesn’t suck a fat wang. To be fair, some apps are OK. The Gimp is pretty cool.
6) Stupid names of apps. Well, this is more of a nitpick – it’s just that those krappy titles make me wanna klap the kreators upside the kranium with a klub until they kry for mercy – but they won’t be gettin’ any.
5) Xfree86. It’s a problem waiting for a solution, and I think it’s about time the sheep said “enough! no more trading performance for network transparency! no more mindless crashes of my desktop, which technically aren’t ‘Operating System Crashes’ because the kernel is still running, but in the end the result is just as disastrous as any BSOD!” Of course, the sheep in this case only number about 1% of the computer-using population (which equals < 0.2% of the population at large) so I highly doubt that this will occur.. but it’s nice to dream.
4) Lack of demand. Every computer comes with Windows, so why switch to Linux? There are enough free windows programs that nobody needs to go to Linux – all the best open source apps run better on Windows anyways. AbiWord? Mozilla? OpenOffice (as horrible as it is) and the Gimp? No more dependency resolution pickles either, if you stick to the Easy Route.
3) crappy hardware support. Let’s face it, most Linux drivers are just good enough – but bare adequacy is hardly an unique selling proposition. Why settle for compiling your own nVidia drivers every kernel update, when you can just crack open one .exe file and momsnts later, a twenty second reboot, and you’re done? Scanner support is abysmal, but it’s the printer problems I’ve had that make me wonder why we still bother with Linux at all. Want five hundred thousand pages all printed out in a single printer test? With CUPS, you can do it without even meaning to. Nice.
2)No decent games. It doesn’t make sense for a developer to target the one-percenters, so I don’t expect this to be solved anytime soon.
1) software installation. Tired of dependencies not being resolved automatically, even with Red Hat’s Red Carpet service? So am I. The funny thing is that Linux downloads for comparable packages are almost always tinier (see OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, Mozilla, etc if you don’t believe that one) and yet it’s the Linux equivalents that give dep problems. APT might be a solution to this one, but I would have figured that anybody persistent enough to survive Debian’s gruesome DOS-inspired installation routine probably has nothing better to do than whittle away some hours resolving deps.. ahh, the irony.
While I think he may have a point here, I have to say that on my home desktop, I’ve virtually crippled Javascript in Mozilla Firebird, and I will not install Flash. There’s just too damn much advertizing out there that requires flash to distract me from the page I want to view, and there’s not enough content made in flash that I feel I’m missing out on anything I couldn’t get anywhere else. Couple a big hole where flash used to be with the incredibly awesome “Block images from this server” feature, and I have a happy happy happy web experience once more. If there was a “disable flash from this server” option, I’d take Mozilla home to meet the folks, and then marry it.
Realplayer and Quicktime I can live without. Especially Realplayer. Bleagh.
I don’t understand your problems with CUPS. It works fine here. However, you cannot deny that this situation won’t improve ’till the manufacturers want to either develop their own drivers or give documentation to the developers/kernel hackers without a NDA…
No more articles about the “Linux desktop”.
You make a lot of good points. However, OpenOffice devs ARE paid–by Sun. OO is just the majority of StarOffice opensourced. So that doesn’t hold at all.
While I don’t agree with you entirely, I do certainly agree on the need for Linux to develop an easier means of installing software. The idea of compiling software to run an app is crap. Certainly the ability to do so is nice and should remain available, but it shouldn’t be a necessity (an lets face it…there is not a compatible RPM for every distro) as it is now. Windows has solved easy installs…double-click the exe…bam…done and up and running. I also hate that Linux requires the editing of config files by hand. Again, the ability to do so should remain (some people just prefer to) but the majority of people would likely think that being forced to do so sucks.
aaaaaaaaaaaa
Do you have a point?
The person who wrote ‘ think this article is typical. I have heard a million times how Linux needs x,y, and z. This fellow needs to start coding, and stop jabbering!!!@!@#’ forgets a few thinks !
1. Not every Linux user can code
2. The ones who can, might not have the time to make their own OS or part of it.
3. The article writer is telling the truth in many of his remarks about the Linux Desktop.
I couldn’t agree with you more.
You posted:
I think this article is typical. I have heard a million times how Linux needs x,y, and z. This fellow needs to start coding, and stop jabbering!!!@!@#
First, the reason that you have “heard a million times how Linuc needs x,y, and z” is that it actually DOES NEED x,y, and z. The arguements in the article are “typical” because they are true and many people would like to switch over to linux but there are a great many problems with just jumping in (in particular people who like to say “RTFM” in response to questions which I suspect you are one of).
Second, you are a weenie for posting anonymously.
that one day every article contributor will proofread his or her work and use a spellchecker. =)
I do agree with many of th points he made though, UI needs a lot of work, especially in KDE.
Yes, KDE needs help Alex. Particularly Konqueror. The rendering on web sites is just fucked and the damn thing crashes frequently. Further, why can’t there be a regular plain jane “copy” command when you right click in a web page with Konqueror. Instead there is a “Copy to” but not a reqular “Copy” that exists in every other web browser on the planet.
I don’t mean to seem like I am picking on Konqueror, but that just provides one easy example of problems in KDE.
All of use around here most likely derive some fun out of building things; home networks, fresh clean installs of an operating system, making an old computer useful again, creating webservers, etc.
However, in linux unlike a few other operating systems instead of just being a challenge to setup everything all nice and neat; for that nice sense of accomplishment. Linux is not only challenging its demoralizing. At least with other operating systems, there are easy things you can setup quickly, i.e. 6 clicks or less and its done to make you feel good. Everything in linux is pain. Want to setup STFP to validate keys you’ve generated and self signed only? Its a pain in both linxu and windows. Want to go to see a flash movie you’re friend just made for his website? In linux its still a pain – windows it not. At least Windows gives you a chance to feel like things are easy and to catch your breath. In linux everything is hard, no breaks, no downtime, nothing to make you feel like your getting anywhere.
Good, sir-
my nickname is Anonymous. HTH.
All you are doing is taking away precious time you could be fixing these problems, in true open source style, and giving something back to the community. Instead you choose to sit and babble on a community forum and make snide remarks about others. How typical.
LoL, huge amount of stuff still to do while Windows keep innovating, Linux keeps cloning and fixing bugs.
Linux will definitely be ready for desktop assuming that MS doesn’t innovate anything in ehrm.. let’s say… 5 years?
Do you think saying “Code it yourself” to plain users is a constructive step for Linux and other Open Source initiatives?
Not everyone is a programmer. Listen to feedback.
Well, most distributions I’ve tried don’t come with DVD support, full stop. DVD menus? That’s another thing all together…
—
Personally, i felt this article was kinda lame. Sure, he highlights some places that needs fixing, but when all these done would Linux be better for end users than Windows? Hardly. Plus he only highlights the problems, not possible solutions to it.
I dunno, I use ctwm with gnome apps and like it just fine,
Can anyone explain why some things in linux are so slow? Why does it take 7 plus seconds to load a text editor? Why does it take so long for Open Office to load? Lastly, why are boot times so lengthy? (its no good saying it’s not relevant because linux never crashes and thus rarely needs rebooting – if you’re using it as a home system you SHOULD switch the computer off when you’re not using it. Computers are a major fire hazard.)
BTW my machine’s 1.3ghz – its not a hardware issue.
linux is doing well over here as desktop;end of story!
But i would not mind if there was an new Operating system written all over again, that does the same job.And i think i will probably be done.
“Also please note that Open Source devels aren’t paid to make their product usable.”
Who do you think Havoc Pennington is? Last time I checked, he IS getting paid!
Don’t confuse “open source” with “volunteer”.
“How will Linux take over the world if people can’t use it?”
Who said Linux is here to take over the world?
Your “feedback” is a typical example of non-constructive/destructive flaming/trolling. Basically all you do is insulting the developers (trying to destroy them mentally) while doing nothing to help making the software better.
That one day standards organizations will be developed which design protocols which define software-hardware interaction for all classes of hardware peripheals and that these protocols are open, belonging to the public domain, and that hardware manufacturers will implement their designs in such a way that a correct implementation of the protocol on the client operating system will correctly be able to utilize the capabilities of the hardware at hand. That one day all document formats will be based upon open standards and that this will put an end to document incompatibility-once and for all.
These issues- hardware support and compatability, and document/media format interchangability- are the two largest issues in the world of computers. If these issues could be resolved-95% of these “linux on the desktop” articles would simply vanish.Every user of every operating system is confronted with these issues-we all pay the price for propietary built-in incompatibilty. This is as true for winbloze users as for every other os. Yet this problem is most accute for non-winbloze users.
The issues surrounding capitalistic competition and market sustainability should be based on the myriad of ways in which open protocols can be implemented and how they are integrated into the operating system-and within this there are a myriad of oppurtunities suffcient to stablish niche-markets and allow for product/brand identification. Consumers and Users could then choose their software/hardware/OS based upon their unique implementation of common standards.
Steps have already been made on these issues. Microshit already has its own propietary protocol system to which hardware developers develop their hardware. Of course Microshits own protocol system is largely incompatabile between various versions of winbloze.
As it stands hardware and software developers tend to develop for platforms instead of developing for consumers and users. My dream is that this will one day change. Open standards cannot solve all issues, and standards bodies bring their own issues with them-yet only this approach suit s the long-term interests of the consumers and users. No propietary model can serve the best interests of consumers and users-for their very existence is dependent upon planned obsolescence and contrived incompatibilies. Recognizing implemetation-they way in which things are implemented, and consequently how products can and should be supported, which of course is defined by the implementation, as the model for capital accumulation-would allow for capitalistic free enterpise, market competition and consumers/users would finally be given choice-which is what the market is about anyway……
as pertains to the articles….
Desktoplinux.com: Crying over the relative speed and inconsistency of linux applications never changed anything. This “article” is neither interesting, revealing or informative-in essence their is nothing said in this that has not been said a 1000 other individuals. Yet again winbloze is held to be the standard by which linux and its applications are judged. As usual any deviation from what winbloze does and how microshit does it is held to be inferior,because microshits winbloze has defined the “common sense” discourse about how things should work by virtue of their monopoly-and their monopoly alone. How things “should work” is in the main always defined by the “status quo”, ie. how things have been, always have been. Such reflections are pointless to say the least and ultimately represent that against which all non-winbloze OS’s and non-microshit applications must battle-in order to accepted for what they are. The tide is, however slowly turning- the days when microshit could unlease its stuff into the world and automatically become the next standard are limited and running out.
PClinuxonline: By and large I agree ith what the author here says. I however take issue with his view of how sourceforge.net “should be”. I fundamentally disagree with this vision: for it ignores the reality of who is doing the developing and why they are doing it. The open source community should not, IMHO, try to weed out less “popular” applications-this sia a critieria which only has applicability in the world of propietary software. It should however work towards creating standards under which microshits own offerings can be subsumed-by offering more(functionality/interoperability/compatibility etc.) than any propietary system can offer. This in turn would have a normative effect on the projects out there in the open source community and would contribute to de-fragmentation of open source projects and lend to greater cooperation between various projects and greater code re-utilization.
just a few thoughts….
“if you’re using it as a home system you SHOULD switch the computer off when you’re not using it. Computers are a major fire hazard.”
Old wives’ tale – what a paranoid. If this were true the insurance companies would be screaming at all the major corporations that keep their millions of PC’s on 24/7 (clients as well as servers).
I never switch my computer at home. Offtopic I know but sometimes a lot of the idiot stuff posted here can get on ones nerves.
Note I have a friend who has the same paranoid ideas and religiously switches his computer off erery time he uses it. I bought a PC of him – eventually the power supply failed and it fried (metaphorically) the chipset. No house fire or smoke coming out – the damn thing just didn’t work properly – it was a real cooker anyway with that goddam hot Cyrix CPU maybe that why he was so scared of it catching fire.
Not so offtopic. People make much of linux’s long uptimes. Its worth asking if its really desirable to leave a machine on all the time.
>>Old wives’ tale – what a paranoid. If this were true the insurance companies would be screaming at all the major corporations that keep their millions of PC’s on 24/7 (clients as well as servers).
Good point. But I’ve seen pics of a computer where I work that fried itself overnight, burned itsself to a crisp and set the office sprinkler system off. Ruined the office and cost more than 100 000 in damage.
My pc contains my thesis, family snaps, years of CAD work and so on. My house is made of wood. It might be small risk but it’s not one worth taking in my book.
I repeat my request for an explanation of Linux’s speed problems. It was mentioned in the original article this thread stems from.
i think the author has a few valid points, too bad he buried them between other (plain uninformed) remarks and disguised them in spelling errors.
one can mount an iso image for example, but it is true that setting things up can be a pain (try replacing your cd player with a cd-r).
these are things to solve for a distro IMO. These are things where distro’s should differentiate (more than they are now).
i like the pure desktop oriented distro and the pure server oriented distro. Both stand a better chance of either making a rock solid server or a genuine usable desktop, it’s just a matter of focusing.
look at ximian desktop for example, my brother loves it as a desktop system, but that was all they had to focus on. make gnome and a few apps work together nicely. For the server stuff they just rely on the host op sys (redhat in my brothers case)
now if we had a home users distro with plugin and multimedia and video editing support out of the box that didn’t bother with delivering apache out of the box, a server distro wich is extremely secure but doesn’t even bother with providing X, a business distro etc, i think everybody would find the linux they love with the apps we have today and power users would still find some distro that they can tweak to meet their needs, it would only make things easier for newbies/non-geeks
I know that linux has to battle many issues before it can be a viable alternative to Windows on the desktop. But one thing is sure that linux developement is growth at fast pace. especially the kernel development. As major corpoartions such as redhat,suse, Mandrake, etc release their new versions of linux every 12 – 16 months time. They introduce improvements / bug fixes with each major realease. With this pace of development linux one day will become a better alternative to Windows.
Running Acrobat Reader via CrossOffice? Why? What’s wrong with native Acrobat Reader for Linux? …Apart from the fact that the guy is obviously oblivious to its existence. No, it does not ship with some major Linux distributions, but it does not ship with Windows, either.
I believe that a reference distro should be created (not an actual distro with installer etc, but an extension of the LSB). This distro should specify library versions, compiler version (and flags used), and anything else not specifically stated in the LSB that is need for cross-distribution binary compatibility. It shouldn’t specify things like Kernel version, or specific versions of GNOME, KDE, and various applications etc (this is left up to the distribution makers).
However the official sites for GNOME, KDE, etc can compile reference versions for the reference distro if they wish. Distribution makers should not break binary compatibility with these versions. Software could then be packaged in a distribution independent way (e.g. “Autopackage”), with nice scripted installers. Since they know what you’re running, the installer shouldn’t have too many problems.
The “official reference distro” should not break binary compatibility too often (e.g. less than say 3 years at a time). When it does break, it should provide compatibility libraries (a la BSD).
This way, companies like Ximian (and anybody else wanting to deploy software on GNU/Linux) can concentrate on making a great, bugfree product. Rather than wasting a bunch of time repackaging stuff for every conceivable distro, and putting all sorts of workarounds in the installer for various distroisms.
The LSB by itself wont do, I think a concerted effort to augment the LSB effort with a reference distribution would do great things to improve the quality of open source software and also ease upgrades and installation of new software.
Yes this sounds like “United Linux”, but I don’t believe United Linux is community-friendly. This “official reference distro” will be run by the community (vendors like Red Hat can of course contribute as well), and a “compatibility logo” for vendors to put on their products would not cost anything, the distro would just need to pass a series of tests (with some software, like the LSB testing software).
Adobe has developed Acrobat reader for Linux. You dont need a crossover office for that. But if you want Acrobat 5.0(Writer) then u need a CrossOffice.
>>>Adobe has developed Acrobat reader for Linux.
>>>You dont need a crossover office for that. But if you
>>>want Acrobat 5.0(Writer) then u need a CrossOffice.
I know _that_. But if you actually read the article, the guy is bitching about inadequate PDF viewers under Linux, and than says he runs the READER via CrossOffice. That’s silly.
I dream that someone will give me everything for free, I won’t have to lift a finger and then i’ll do nothing but whine and complain about things I don’t like.
You can have all this stuff with Linux today, you don’t like the labels on your menus? Friggin change them and recompile.
Want a Media Player skin for mplayer? bust out the GIMP and do it.
I’m so sick of these lazy, whining idiots. If you think your ideas have merit, post them to the mailing lists of the projects your’e whining about. Why bother telling a bunch of people who are just as lazy as you about it?
I agree with James, he has 100% right despite the clever humor he used among the lines.
But yours 2nd point isn’t right, there are many games for linux(e.g. one example of _decent_ game, quake3 as a native linux game launches numerous it’s high-quality Total Coversions as “Western Quake 3”, “Urban Terror”, “True Combat”, “Navy Seals:CovertOps”, “OSP”, “CPM” atc. which in sum makes at least 10 very good games). Then there are those that could be run through Wine.
So if you don’t play really extraordinary games(like cycling or fishing manager or all those bad RTS spamming the game world), about 30% of games are on linux at any given time not counting MMOG. And this is where the real problem of linux gaming lies as MMOG might be “the-next-big-thing” into the sad future of PC gaming.
Too bad games usually run slowly(10-100% slower than on windows) even more when run through Wine.
I think the loading speed problems are due to the fact that almost everything is build with shared libraries.
please correct me if I’m wrong
or was it something to do with the linking ?
hmm, maybe I should get some sleep first
Yes it is. As components warm up they expand, and when you take away power from the circuit, they cool down and shrink. This is the number one cause of component failure.
“I know that I could remove additional services (when running Windows XP you would probably rarely run syslog, apache, snort, nessus and zebra) but that does not explain a difference in minutes. There is hopefully a way to speed things up.”
You ‘could’ do it? Have you tried it?. Remove all the unused services from the startup. ISTR Mandrake also does some hardware change detection and probing on startup that can also be disabled for a big speedup.
Also….
Windows Media player like skin for mplayer:
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/images/skin-wmp6-shot01.jpg
It’s kinda ugly though.
I agree with most of the article though… As the Linux desktop improves I think we will see more critical articles rather than less. It’s not just a warm and fuzzy OSS thing anymore, but a practical alternative to Windows.
As far as leaving computers on all the time goes, make sure you have decent fans that are not noisy and won’t wear out while you are not around!
Last week I installed Mandrake 9.1 and played with it for a couple of days before going back to Windows. It’s an improvement over previous versions, but there are still quite a few things that stop me from switching:
Inconsistent UI – I could probably tolerate things like different file dialogs and even different keyboard shortcuts. I can put up with all the annoying inconsistencies in Windows and get work done without them constantly getting in my way. But some really basic features are messed up in Linux because of it’s lack of a consistent UI. For me the lack of a consistent cut/copy/paste between apps is probably the worst thing, this is something that the Apple Lisa could do back in 1983. Overall it simply makes working with apps less comfortable and efficient, despite the quality of some Linux apps.
Applications: Some Linux apps are great, but some certainly aren’t. Sorry, but OpenOffice is still very rough around the edges, MS Office is a much more polished and well designed office suite. KOffice is looking good, but it’s still at a fairly early stage, it lacks a lot of features I require. But probably the biggest problem I had with Linux software is the state of web browsers. I encountered quite a few sites that wouldn’t open correctly with Konqueror, Mozilla crashed several times in a few minutes and the Linux version of Opera seems much worse than the Windows version for speed and stability. The whole reason I use the computer is to run apps, so I’m not going to switch to a different OS if I feel the apps are inferior, even if it has other advantages.
Hardware support: Most of my hardware was detected and configured automatically by Mandrake, the main exception was my Nvidia graphics card. I spent most of the 3 days I used Linux trying to get my dual headed display working and get a resolution higher than 1024×768. I failed miserably even though I spent hours studying the Nvidia documentation and various FAQs. In Windows installing the Nvidia drivers provides graphical configuration built into the display control panel. In Linux you still have to manually edit XF86Config and hope for the best. But to be honest I wasn’t missing much, multi headed display support is still very primitive in Linux. Nvidia’s TwinView is much better than alternatives like Xinerama, but it still doesn’t cope very well with different resolution monitors. Plus there are still problems with apps positioning windows in the middle of the two monitors and many full screen games have big problems as the see it as one large screen. For me dual monitor support is a very big deal, losing half my screen space makes me feel claustophobic.
Stability: Linux is very stable, but crashes are still possible. IME Linux isn’t robust enough to cope with crashes, every time I’ve had Linux crash it’s screwed something up. The last time I tried to use Linux I had a power cut, after restarting Linux wouldn’t even boot. Before that I had software stop working after restarting because of a full screen game crashing. This time Linux locked up while I was trying to get software suspend working. Hibernation is a feature I value greatly in Windows, I thought that since SWSUSP is built into Mandrake’s kernel it would be easy to get running. I made sure I carefully RTFM before doing anything, I carefully editted the config file before trying it. But it still crashed, making the system totally unresponsive.
On restart it didn’t give me my normal login screen, that way my first indication that the crash had damaged the system. When I started X everything seemed fine initially, KDE seemed to be working. But when I started loading apps I found that quite a few have stopped working, some crash while starting up, other’s no longer seem to exist.
I’m sure there’s the possibility that I’ve just been very unlucky and most of the time this doesn’t happen. But I’ve never had a Windows crash screw up the anything else and I’ve had a lot of Windows crashes. I find it very hard to trust Linux after this has happened repeatedly. Especially as there doesn’t seem to be any easy way of finding out exactly what has been broken so that I can reinstall the software that’s broken rather than reinstalling everything. To be honest I’m too annoyed with Linux at the moment to be bothered reinstalling from scratch and trying again.
Apologies in advance for rambling on like this.
Linux doesnt need x, y and z. Ive been using it as my _only_ os for about 5 years now and i want for nothing. We have the best media players (ffmpeg supports more video formats than anything on other systems), decent web browsers (konq, firebird), a great printing system with cups, two great desktops (gnome 2 and kde 3), easy to install software (debian) some brilliant games (kolf, napoleans tomb), proper postscript support for every application that prints, the best development tools of any system in the world (by far) and more customisability than you could ever want, and some very good java vms (all except blackdown available for win32 as well i belive). There is no part of my system that doesnt behave exactly how i want it to, and it looks great. This is a laptop and all its functionality works perfectly, i have a USB camera and mouse that work fine, pcmcia wireless lan card, laser printer, external zip drive, MBV2 (gameboy progamming tool) and ive never plugged in a device that doesnt work just fine with minimum (less than 10 minutes) setup.
There are serveral reasons why it takes so long to boot.
1. services are loaded one at a time. Some of them, like setting up the network connection (at least if you use dhcp), could benefit from a parallel boot procedure.
2. Often people install many more servers than they actually need, many which could just as well be started through inetd when needed, if performance is not much of an issue.
3. Some services are quite slow at starting. I suspect their startup script actually sleeps a few seconds, before checking its status.
Mandrake 9.1 is attempting to make things faster by launching the GUI before all services has started. On my system that didn’t seem to help though as it loads extremely slowly all services are up and running. Maybe it would help if the rest of startup was niced. (i dont really care if the daemons are running at low priority on my desktop machine)
As for application startup times. If you are a KDE user then part of it is the linker not being optimal, and part of it is possibly your distributions fault. My self compiled KDE launches programs almost instantly. (kate ~2s, konqueror ~1s) (and i didn’t really do anything special, except compiling qt without exceptions and stripped all the binaries, and compiled with -O3 -march=athlon-tbird)
Linux isn’t Windows. If you want to use Windows, then use Windows. If you just want to complain that Linux isn’t Windows, come on, we’re all too busy to listen to that. A lot of people don’t like the argument, “If you want X,Y,Z then learn to code.”, but I personally think this is a great idea. Hey, go out and learn something! Make Linux better for yourself and others. I’m learning C right now. I don’t have any delusions about submitting kernel patches to Linus and co., but I love the idea that I’ll have a much greater understanding of what’s going on under the hood.
So I see a couple of choices here…
a) Go out and learn something or…
b) Submit to the full frontal labotomy that using Windows is.
Either way, stop whining. Linux isn’t Windows.
The problem is that the reviewer is one of those guys who have used Windows so much and want any OS works like it, If you switch to Linux you have to start from zero, Linux is not Windows, don’t spec to work Like it. I Use Linux as my main OS when I installed the few thinks I needed I had to learn to install them and read documentation and search on the Internet, thats because I released that Linux is not Windows, So I didn’t spect it to work like it. And now I have a customized Linux virus free, bugs, free. fast and it can do what I want.
Conclusion: Don’t you spec Linux function as Windows, cause It wont. the fact that you have learned how to use Windows doesn’t mean you already know how to work on Linux, you must learn how to use it.
Linux advocates are constantly arguing that Linux is just as easy to use as Windows and are recommending it to normal desktop users. Some distributions are actually aimed at non-expert users,for example here’s what Mandrake say:
A computer running the Mandrake Linux operating system can be as easy to use as a computer which uses Windows or Mac OS — a fact which has been Confirmed by many IT publications. CNET (a popular technical online magazine) awarded Mandrake Linux 8.0 their “Editor’s Choice” saying: “New users, especially those looking for a quick and easy alternative to Windows or the Mac OS, will be hard pressed to find a smoother, easier transition to the world of Linux.”
So is it any wonder that people actually expect Linux to be usable without needing to learn to code, or even edit config files and compile software? You may find that fun, but not everyone is interested in that side of computing. A lot of people just want to use apps to get their work done with minimal time and effort.
Linux isn’t Windows, but that isn’t a good excuse for it to be more difficult to use than Windows. Not if it’s ever going to be a mainstream desktop OS.
…The multimedia subsystem. I think we need a proper interface from the kernel to a multimedia subsystem. Drivers for multimedia hardware should only have to be ‘dropped’ into place and everything should work. There should be NO need to compile drivers. They should be no need to optimize the soundblaster driver.
Something like Directshow on windows, where all you have to do is to install a filter and your stuff works.
A music/video player, like the one I currently use on Windows, Jetaudio. Let us divorce the multimedia interface from the toolkit, qt or gtk. Let it use its own widget set as long as this is kept small. Or maybe a new light set for multimedia apps only. Much like Apple has done with its ilife apps.
One example is XMMS. I use it all the time, but it has some big problems, at least on Redhat 9. I have set it to buffer playback quite a lot. 10 seconds worth, with a 90% prebuffer. But every time it switches a song, or starts playback, it stutters until it has buffered enough. It should be buffering playback aggressively when there is not much in the buffer, because that is when the buffer is most useless. Once the buffer is filled though, it will not skip until the next song. It should also start buffering the next song before it has played back the current playing song. Such things make Linux multimedia seem much worse and give a bad name to the platform as a whole. It does this with both the OSS plugin and the esound one. There is absolutely no reason why it should skip on a 1.2GHz machine with 512MB of RAM. I did play mp3s on 466Mhz machines with 64MB RAM with less skipping under Windows 98.
You certaintly don’t have to learn to code, to edit config files, and compile software to use Linux. Most distros, such as Mandrake, SuSE, and redhat, avoid this completely. Just use the tools they give with it.
When was the last time you used Linux? 2 years ago?
When someone say Linux need x,y,z etc. Although I myself use Linux most of my time, (as stated in previous thread, I use for my daily work at office and writing various report with it) I agree with most of the content in the article.
In the standard configuration of OO Calc for example, I’ve to press two keys to delete the contents of a cell whereas in Excel it can be done with a single <Delete> key. In OO Writer I have to press at least 3 mouse click to rotate text (normally OO require more click if I want properly format it) but only 2 in MS Word. I can list a lot more comparative superiority of MS Office.
The same goes to desktop environment, more click or button is required to be pressed when I want to configure something in any Linux desktop environment (KDE/Gnome etc) which can be done with lesser click in Windows. The consistency in KDE is better than other DE which to me about par to Windows but most application written for it still not matured enough such as Koffice which inferior even compared to OO. However I’m satisfied with web browser available for Linux but the default configuration for Konqueror need improvement so that satisfy the newbies without tweaking.
Configuring printer still a headache especially to newbies. Giving too many driver choices is bad since it is confusing. I would suggest Linux distributor to just give a single best driver for every printer. When configuring network printer, the user supposed doesn’t have to worry about IP routing or else as in Windows. In Linux it look like the GUI configuration tools is just suitable for directly attached printer but not for network printer. KDE printer manager succesfully present the good step graphically while installing printer but it still fail assist me to configure network printer, although the steps taken completed which causing me to edit various config file.
As the conclusion, I agree Linux is inferior to Windows but I am confident Linux can catchup in the near future. Feedback from end user to the developer like what was written in this forum will contribute a lot.
(Maybe there will be question: Why I don’t use Windows? The answer: I do not agree with any monopoly or overcharge services by anyone or company, and I love the clean competition in open market)
Actually the last time I used Linux was just a few days ago, when I gave Mandrake 9.1 a try (I listed the problems I had with it in a previous post). Configuring Nvidia drivers, my dual headed display and SWSUSP all still required config file editing. I spent a couple of days trying to get them working without much luck, despite hours of boredom reading documentation. Then SWSUSP caused a crash and damaged my Mandrake installation so badly that I’d have to reinstall from scratch (something that seems very common in Linux). That’s why I’m back on Windows rather than posting this from Mandrake 9.1.
The one good thing about trying Linux is that I now appreciate Windows a whole lot more. After using Linux for a few days XP Pro stops seeming like such a rip off.
I’m not saying that Linux will always have these problems, or that it isn’t a good OS for anyone. But there are still a hell of a lot of problems with Linux that stop me from switching.
… the “Linux Desktop” needs people who do the work. And usability stuff often requires a lot of work. Changing apps to be more user friendly is not that easy – at least if you don’t go the easy way and just remove the features. Especially features that create abstractions involve a lot of coding. As an example, the resign of the KDE Property Panel (http://www.tjansen.de/other/file_properties.png for an earlier snapshot ) took a week of my (spare) time. Other things, like the Location->File menu change in Konqueror, can require a lengthy discussion. And BTW you should file a request for that change at bugs.kde.org instead of complaining in articles. Alternatively there is the kde-usability list, but discussions without having the apps maintainer involved are often fruitless, and many devs don’t read the list.
> Configuring Nvidia drivers, my dual headed display and SWSUSP all still required config file editing.
Alright. Fair enough. That’s a problem with Mandrake, and not Linux then.
GStreamer comes quite close to the Direct Show architecture. But, again, the problem is the lack of resources. Creating such a things requires a *huge* amount of resources (and unfortunately most mm people are only interested in recording and playback, that’s why we have a few dozens of redundant projects like mplayer and xine that all solve maybe 30% of the problem).
I agree Emry.. there is a level of consistancy in things like KDE that parts of Windows even lacks. GNOME is getting there too, because of the focus on it’s HIG (KDE doesn’t need as big of a HIG as GNOME does because of KDE apps tend to use a lot of common dialogs)
I absolutely hate OOo’s interface. It’s horrible compared to Office2000 (but is alright compared to the alien-looking OfficeXP). Koffice and Abiword/Gnumeric have much better interfaces, but they aren’t ready for prime time. Well, to think of it, neither is OOo. Hopefully Ximian’s work on OpenOffice will continue. Most of the changes they did are simply cosmetic. Deeper changes are necessary.
Oh yeah, the KDE folks should really dump the Control Center and have a preferences IOSLAVE for Konqueror, akin to Windows, MacOS, MacOSX, and GNOME.
In the perception of most users there is just “Linux” and it includes everything that is in their distribution. Of course, each distribution is different and many people even tweak it (e.g. change the default desktop environment. That’s why there is no sane way for NVidia to write a driver for “Linux”. Every Linux is different. It would be quite easy to write a Driver for a Suse Linux 8.2 which runs the default KDE installation, or for Red Hat 9.0 with Gnome. But then the target group would be even smaller…
…and ive never plugged in a device that doesnt work just fine with minimum (less than 10 minutes) setup.
Why should it take so long to set up a device? If a device takes me that long in either Windows or Mac OS, I take it back for a different device that does the same thing.
And yes, Linux does need x,y, and z where x,y, and z are not capabilities but are actually UI improvements so that an unfamiliar user can sit down and use Linux.
This guy has some points but he also is wrong in alot of ways. I see him has on of those noobs that installed RH or Mdk and click the install every package button so i has this huge bloated install where on boot everything is being loaded i run gentoo on my laptop and blows XPs boot time out of the water. Yes linux asks more of you to be a power user but given that most ppl have spent there whole computer lives using Windows its not hard to imagine that linux seems strange and hard to learn.
Do you realy think that Linux Distros or Linux itself was made to compete with MS? Or that the people who code have any intention to compete with MS? I’ll tell you, NO!!! Its just the oppinion of trolls like you so you can look smart, but you don’t. Linux has another potential market, the enterprise, and it is good at what its doing, but, it is also good for the desktop, I use it on my PC and on my laptop as primary desktops, have full hardware support (and I have a brand new Toshiba Satellite, also got modem working corectly without to much hastle – thanks to the comunity support), and I can play also decent games with it. And if you really want Linux to inovate then start coding for it, cause I do a little bit of that in my free time. And don’t forget, MS is a commercial Corporation, while Linux is different, fragmented into commercial and non-commercial distributions. Windows has another market, and as a server Windows will suck forever.
Anonymous
First, I’ll apologige on the personal attack about your name. I’ve been on a few other message boards that insert that for people who choose not to use a name and go into the message board to create nothing but flames which tends to drive me nuts.
Second, you posted:
I’m so sick of these lazy, whining idiots. If you think your ideas have merit, post them to the mailing lists of the projects your’e whining about. Why bother telling a bunch of people who are just as lazy as you about it?
Have you considered that people are in fact posting this info to the developer’s sites? I email in regularly. I thought this was supposed to be yet another forum that we can discuss what we think needs improvement, etc.
As far as “friggin change the and recompile,” again I will bring up what a lot of other people have pointed out that you just seem to ignore. Not everyone is a programmer. Not everybody knows how to compile something.
In the media you can find articles stating that Linux is ready for the average user and that if someone is fed up with Miscrosoft and their crappy licensing and prices that they can easly go to Linux. Well that is not really true for a large percentage of the population when compiling software is a required skill for Linux.
I don’t think anybody thinks that Linux lacks ability…it has user interface problems. I am involved in human factors research and as far as usability is concerned…Linux needs work.
Another “I wish I wish I wish” article at least 50% of which is already there…
The bootup thing is a good point, but will be fixed soon, by starting services in parallel on boot. There are already ways to do this, they just need to mature a little to be included in distros. May well happen in the next round of distros.
MS Office loads fast because it cheats, simple as that. It loads itself into memory on Windows bootup, so it’s not actually opening when you run it, it was already there absorbing your resources before you needed it. If you really want this “feature” with OO.o, you can use oooqs (the OpenOffice.org QuickStarter) which does exactly the same thing.
I just bet he doesn’t pay for his distros. If he did, he’d find the paid versions of the major distros DO ship with the most common browser plugins. The free versions don’t because (duh!) the plugins aren’t free.
Power management does need working on, but hey, it’s happening.
Why run Acrobat Reader in wine? Why not run, er, the Linux version of Acrobat Reader? *shakes head*
Changing resolution on the fly is in any distribution with X 4.3. Just use randr from the console.
Media player GUI – look at gxine or lumiere.
Why would you want a graphical tool to mount ISO images? It takes all of five seconds to learn how to do it with the oh-so-challenging “mount” command. (bchunk for .bin / .cue images).
Honestly, do some research before writing articles like this, people…
Hi
Linux is not such as awesome thing compared to Windows and Mac OS X. Windows and Mac OS X are not awesome either. Linux is successful because it’s free. It’s successful because lots of us don’t like to use monopolist’s OS.
Internally, its architecture is a nightmare. Windows 3.1, 95, 98, and Me may have been nightmares too, but XP is a little bit better. OS X is another kind of quick and dirty architecture. Memory manager from one proven OS, driver architecture from another proven OS, and etc. Only UI is impressive and that attracks users.
I think that only BeOS was an OS designed for the century 21th. Unfortunately it had a real bad UI and could not attract as many users as required and many more factors had also their own impacts…
I wish I could see a new microkernel-based OS knockign out M$ and the rest as soon as possible.
Monolithism is not good
Linux will definitely be ready for desktop assuming that MS doesn’t innovate anything in ehrm.. let’s say… 5 years?
___________________________________________________
Well it won;t innovate anything in 5 years or so…Longhorn will ship somewhere in 2006.That´s 3 years!
Linux is fun, different, free and developing in a fast pace.
Thanks to the Internet and standards, we’ll se many new, fast, operating systems develop. As long as the communication is standardized, it does not matter what operating system is at the “other end”.
/Kenneth
Linux itself, while in it’s strictest sense is monolithic in nature, avoids most of the bad parts of being monolithic through kernel modules. The *BSDs do also in similiar ways.
Pure microkernel-based OS’s, while technically good on paper, are going the way of the dinosaur. The complex design of microkernel-based OS’s often takes forever to implement properly.
Anyway, it doesn’t really matter in this day and age. BeOS didn’t fail because of it’s UI– it failed because of a lack of focus. Be should have agressively gone after the enterprise market instead of perpetually being a hobbist OS. Linux already has a headstart in this manner because it’s not just a hobbist OS. It’s one of the most successful server OS’s.
I think this article is typical. I have heard a million times how Linux needs x,y, and z. This fellow needs to start coding, and stop jabbering!!!@!@#
Well mybe he doesn’t know how to, have you thought of that.
Shit guys this has been said over & over cuase, we haven’t seen 1 thing come from it. Programing & compiling isn’t fun & a hobby for everyone. Honestly people what is wrong with just using linux as a os and not a app. builder?
“I have a dream. A dream of one day having a Linux desktop that would actually be better (or even comparable) in useability, administration and looks than Windows XP.”
I stopped reading.
I DON’T WANT MY OS TO LOOK LIKE WINDOWS XP!!!
If I hear one more person compare Linux to Windows, I think I’m gonna hurl
Linux isn’t Windows!
I second that motion!
Why does everyoen assume that the commercialized likes of RedHat and Mandrake are the only real options for Desktop Linux? I’m not saying the distro I use has any real grounds for Desktop Usage (I use Slackware because I take pride in a clean system which I feel is based more on tradition than only pleasing the end user), but I’ve heard wonders about apt-get on Debian (or your choice of Debian made easy Distros). I’ve also heard great things about Gentoo and their method of software installtion and such.
Where does this boot time thing come in? My Linux boot time’s depending on which system you’re talking about are anywhere from 16-25 seconds, nothing more. I’ve got Windows XP which boots in about 20, and then freezes up for a good 25 seconds after I’m in so it can continue loading stuff. Mind you I can’t do anything while it slows to a crawl.
OpenOffice boots slow, yes, my number one complaint about it. Why? No one seems to know, not even the developers… I think if this could get fixed it would be one of the only things necessary for a truly functional Linux desktop.
There’s tons of great environments out there. Just recently OS News had the thing about XFCE 4.0 (which I downloaded and now enjoy quite a bit, despite that I only use the panel)… it’s fast, flexible, and works great with Waimea as it’s Window Manager.
One last question… why is the Author running Adobe Acrobat under crossover office when there’s a native Adobe Acrobat reader for Linux?
Honestly, if you hear people telling you that Linux is as easy as Windows, then turn away or shut them out. The people that say these things are just as bad as the people who bitch about Linux not being like Windows.
Linux isn’t at all like Windows, maybe that’s why I love it. I’m not here to tell you all to use Linux, I enjoy it because that’s just me, I like to build fix and patch. Right now I’m learning GTK programming and I’m attempting to dig into the kernel. I can’t completely use my Dolby 5.1 speakers, but my SB Live 5.1 is still recognized and my center speaker doesn’t add a whole lot anyways. I can’t pull up a DVD menu (i’ll patch that later). These things aren’t my concern. If I want to play a DVD or listen to music it’s either my Mac or boot into Windows.
Linux is my toy, I can plow through all the source make modifications, compile and optimize. It’s a learning experience and it’s not all closed doors like Windows. I have no beef with Windows, it’s fast, widely supported, tonnes of software, practically every single piece of modern hardware runs on it.
Can’t we stop forming our little groups and cliches. It’s really silly to see people arguing over Operating Systems. When you really look at it, OS’s are tools, you don’t see carpenters arguing over their preference of screw driver. Because they probably use them all, and for good reason. One may do a job better than the other, hey it’s no problem whip out the better tool and go at it.
Even KDE only, comes with more apps than Windows XP (I haven’t counted but maybe Windows Xp comes with 50+ apps).
If one compares KDE 3.1 and Win XP application, by application, the only applications where XP is better is probably the web browser and media player (but not for long… Konqueror is improving rapidly).
How long does it take for you to setup a typical Windows XP machine with the normal apps (word processor, cd burning sw, chat program, ICQ, games, ftp program, scanner program, pdf reader, etc)? 1 Day? 1 Week?
On a fast machine, Mandrake 9.1 installs in 30 minutes…
Linux is superior already, although not always as user friendly
But what the heck, there aren’t any newbies here, or?
/Kenneth
Linux is fun, different, free and developing in a fast pace.
That’s the one and ultimate truth.
You can say what you want but you can’t disagree with these points.
Sometimes I think that the Free Desktop would progress slowly. But then I sit back and realize that I’m only following this for about four and a half year now.
Let’s take a look back when I started (SuSE 6.1 or 6.2 I think).
The installation was text based and an adventure. It was still labeled a “success” to get Linux running at all.
Even though SuSE’s “modern” YAST made this quite easy. Package installation (during installation) meant to manually look through thousands of packages and select those that sound neat. Special hardware? Good luck recompiling your kernel. With ISDN I had luck, beeing a german company SuSE’s YAST already could load the ISDN driver. With Mandrake later I still had to modprobe manually and of course I had to configure all this isdn-utils stuff myself. It worked aprox. one out of three times.
Getting online was really cool.
Getting a graphical GUI even cooler. XF86Setup was your friend (or foe). Then type “startx” (after “Linux for Dummies” told you that “xstart” is wrong). Then edit XF86Config to get it actually working.
KDE was _the_ desktop so I loved it (didn’t understand the free software issues anyway back then). It was looking almost modern and had a few neat games (and a calculator). Many other apps (Gtk, Motif, …) looked somewhat praehistoric. A bit later I heard of GNOME, but…
http://gnomedesktop.org/scr/oldgnome/1.jpg
The most powerful browser was Netscape 4.x with those leet Motif widgets. But… but… it could do Flash and Java (which would make it hang on a regular basis)!
Quite a bit later Mozilla came, unstable, ugly and fast as a snail, one window only took about 90% of my system ressources.
Anyone remember the fonts? Don’t even talk about TrueType. Nope we had those kickass type1 fonts. Antialiasing? Good joke. Scaling? If you like stairs… You would be lucky if you could even read your website of choice.
I could go on and on.
But let’s do a timeshift:
2003, Red Hat 9 + XD2
Installation? Put CD in, watch beautiful screen, click ok a few times, a nice system is installed.
Hardware? No need to configure anything, if it’s supported, you just turn on the computer and it will work.
X? Don’t worry, the system will boot straight into a nice graphical login screen.
Desktop? Ximian at your service (or KDE 3 at your choice). Usability that is rivaling Apple, a professional look and functionality that is rivaling Microsoft.
Powerful applications like Evolution, OpenOffice, Gaim, GnomeMeeting, you name it.
Browser? Oh a while ago I read a Linux critic which stated as a problem that we have too MANY browsers now. How is that?
Two kickass and competitive free software browsers, one kickass and competitive proprietary browser. Make your selection.
Fonts? TrueType, antialiasing, free high quality fonts (Vera). Installing new fonts? Drop them into your fonts folder.
Changing resolution on the fly? Not yet but the functionality is there (an often cited critic).
Modern mousecursor with transparency, shadows and animations? Hell yes!
Using the command line to configure your system? Hell no!
Graphical root authentification? Check.
Graphical software update and installation? Check.
Powerful hardware accelerated 3D and modern games? Yes.
Cut & Paste between different toolkits? No prob.
Mouse selections overwriting your clipboard? Fixed (Don’t laugh, that was a common complaint).
Automatic detection of network servers and printers including nice UI? Bingo.
I’m sure I have forgotten a lot. The point is, all of this and more was not available four and a half years ago.
It went from “total crap but stable” to a serious contender on the corporate desktop and a really cool home desktop unless something you need something special that isn’t supported or available.
It is certainly not “better” than XP or OS X yet, no.
But like Kenneth said, it’s fun, different, free and developing in a damn fast pace.
Ask distribution makers like Mandrake, SUSE, Lindows, etc. and the Linux advocates who constantly claim that Linux is a better desktop OS than Windows. Is it only OK to compare Linux to Windows if it’s favourable to Linux?
Windows is the main desktop OS, it’s what most people who try Linux have already used. So it’s inevitable that people will compare the OS they’re trying to the OS they are used to. Linux distribution makers and advocates claim that it’s now easy to switch from Windows to Linux, so complaints related to switching are very valid IMO.
Anyway, I hardly ever see people criticise Linux for not being like Windows, I see people criticise the elements of Linux that simply don’t work as well as Windows. That isn’t a case of people wanting Linux to turn into a clone of Windows, they just want it to work better.
Personally I think comparisons of Windows, Mac OS X and Linux distributions aimed at the desktop are perfectly valid. They’re all competing for the same market and they all have their own advantages and disadvantages. Copying the best features of other OSes and learning from their mistakes is a good thing that makes them better products for all users.
KDE is much more MS Windows like than old window managers such as TWM, does that mean that the KDE developers want to turn Linux into a copy of Windows? How about graphical installers, package managers and configuration tools? Should the hundreds of other features that were in other OSes before Linux have been added? Should the people who first suggested those features been ridiculed and ignored for the crime of comparing Linux to other OSes?
Some things in Linux are simply different and there’s nothing wrong with that. For example, multi-user features like file permissions are a bit alien when first using Linux, but I don’t have a problem learning how they work. However some Linux features are unambiguously inferior, just like there are Windows features that don’t work as well as Linux equivalents. For example, multi-headed display support is much more primitive under Linux than in Mac OS or Windows.
If something in Linux doesn’t work as well as in another OS, it should be compared with the superior feature. Surely that’s the first step in improving it so that the Linux disadvantage no longer exists. If Linux advocates care about Linux competing with Windows on the desktop, they should stop making excuses for Linux problems and start looking at how to fix them.
“Sometimes I think that the Free Desktop would progress slowly.”
currently i’m having the same feeling, although i’m generally very optimistic about linux on the desktop-it seems to take much too long for even minor flaws getting ironed out (still under the disappointed impression of xd2)!
not too speak of the major construction sites like userfriendly installation of add. software (why doesn’t just one distribution steps up to support autopackage or a similar approach?!), printing, accessing windows-pcs without any restrictions or tighter integration of the various apps (like mediaplayers in browsers etc…).
the only thing were i currently see progress is in tasty goodlooking themes (at least for gnome).
of course one can’t compare the heterogenous oss-community and the distributions with a huge commercial and tightly managed company like mfst, on the other hand, the distributions are competing with it, and while linux still struggles to reach the usability and maturity of windows (or os-x) on the desktop, the monopolist isn’t sleeping either (longhorn)…!
so at least i really would like to see a major step forward in autumn when the next gnome and kde (as well as kernel 2.6) will be released (i also would like if they would provide the impementation of new features between major releases, means when they’re ready).
i’m also very curious if the next red hat (at least the boxed one) will contain all the necessary plugins like flash, java, mp3 etc.) which is long overdue (don’t know about the current other distris).
so yes, it has come a long way, but it could (and needs to) develop a bit faster.too in the future.
“Using the command line to configure your system? Hell no!”
Things have certainly got a lot better, but there are still a lot of things that have to be configured by editing config files. Setting up a dual headed display and software suspend using SWSUSP are two examples from Mandrake 9.1.
“Usability that is rivaling Apple, a professional look and functionality that is rivaling Microsoft.
While different apps still have totally inconsistent UIs, I don’t consider that to be true. KDE has some really nice features, I love the way you can set the panel to pop up when the mouse pointer is pushed into the screen corner. But 99% of the time I’m using it to run apps, the design of the DE is unimportant in comparison to the quality of the apps. Consistent apps are very important to me, the consistency has a big effect on how enjoyable and efficient using the system is. While I have to mix GNOME, KDE and other apps like OpenOffice, it’s far less consistent than Windows.
“Two kickass and competitive free software browsers, one kickass and competitive proprietary browser. Make your selection.”
I’m still very unhappy with the state of Linux browsers personally. I haven’t found a browser as fast, stable and feature rich as Opera for Windows and there are some web pages that only display correctly in IE. There are usable Linux browsers, but I still much prefer web browsing in Windows. The same is true of most things in Linux, I can get work done with GIMP and OpenOffice. But I’m more efficient and suffer less frustration doing the same job in Windows.
“Cut & Paste between different toolkits? No prob.”
Only if you don’t cut/copy/paste anything but plain text. When will I be able to paste a selection from GIMP straight into KOffice or OpenOffice?
The biggest problem with linux is the lack of standardisation. Openness means little if you can’t agree on simple things like file system layout. And that’s just one example. You have all these people -lycoris, redhat, suse, mandrake, ximian, etc – working on the same things in different ways. Because every man is doing the same thing and reinventing his own wheel, most of these efforts are half-hearted. There’s always something that someone forgot to do. Look at Mandrake 9.1. It has great potential, but some of the mistakes or bugs in it almost make you laugh. You ask yourself: how can a serious company make stupid mistake like this??? How can it roll out a product with so many careless mistakes???
i’m also very curious if the next red hat (at least the boxed one) will contain all the necessary plugins like flash, java, mp3 etc.) which is long overdue (don’t know about the current other distris).
Well you could always buy XD2 professional.
I think the main issue here is that plugin installation for Mozilla needs to be much simpler. Installing Java, Flash but also more obscure plugins should be as easy as a click. And if you don’t have a plugin, it shouldn’t send you to a page which has everything but a usual plugin for your browser… If plugin installation would be somewhat automatic, bundling wouldn’t be that important anymore.
I’m also hoping for progress with the various Mozilla plugins which allow to embed all kind of Bonobo components (to basically view all file types which Nautilus can view) and a Gstreamer plugin to hopefully view all kind of supported multimedia files.
Things have certainly got a lot better, but there are still a lot of things that have to be configured by editing config files. Setting up a dual headed display and software suspend using SWSUSP are two examples from Mandrake 9.1.
There are always things that aren’t supported yet, those two features are obviously only half supported, but you don’t need text files for general configuration. I think I never touched a text configuration file since I installed Red Hat 9 (RH 8 even). Sometimes it is useful or allows you to do advanced things, but it’s usually not necessary anymore.
While different apps still have totally inconsistent UIs, I don’t consider that to be true.
I just meant the desktop. Applications are also becoming more and more consistent with a few exceptions.
Personally I use Office barely ever and I don’t use KDE applications either, so most of my apps are consistent. The only inconsistent one is jEdit but that’s not much better under Windows. I don’t have a problem with using applications which aren’t 100% consistent if they do the job well. Of course I would always prefer more integrated ones but this issue is a bit overrated. And the _look_ really isn’t important at all as long as applications work well together with the rest (which freedesktop.org is making huge strides to).
I’m still very unhappy with the state of Linux browsers personally.
Some will never be satisfied. However, all three of those browser are very good at supporting web standards including modern features like CSS, DOM and more. Gecko even has quite a bit more support than IE 6. While Mozilla once was a slow and heavy monster, it’s now a rather lean application which can integrate very well in form of Epiphany (not perfect yet but very close). A few years ago, I would have had a hard time to imagine that we would reach this state so soon.
The last time I used Windows, I even found that Firebird worked better for ME than IE. The differences are becoming marginal and sometimes just a matter of taste. The only time I ever get trouble viewing pages is, when plugins come into play (see above).
I can get work done with GIMP and OpenOffice. But I’m more efficient and suffer less frustration doing the same job in Windows.
You will also pay a hell of a lot more money though. If that’s no issue for you, then fine, but for many people that actually is an issue (especially for students and hobbyists). I also never claimed that there would be as much and as powerful applications for Linux as for Windows (for all tasks). That would be illusionable. There are very good ones for most tasks though and most of them are Free.
Only if you don’t cut/copy/paste anything but plain text. When will I be able to paste a selection from GIMP straight into KOffice or OpenOffice?
That’s an outstanding issues.
I somehow have the feeling that the point of my posting didn’t come across all to well.
Nowhere did I claim that the Free Desktop was perfect, I merely pointed out what was accomplished during the last few years. It would be weird to expect that we will see less accomplishments in the next five years and that’s actually all that matters to me. Weither Linux beats Windows or not won’t affect my life the slightest. If I wouldn’t care for freedom and legality and had some good connections to warez groups (or too much money), I would probably stick with Windows too or buy a Mac. And I couldn’t care less that this is exactly what most people are doing. 
Ask distribution makers like Mandrake, SUSE, Lindows, etc. and the Linux advocates who constantly claim that Linux is a better desktop OS than Windows …. Windows is the main desktop OS, it’s what most people who try Linux have already used. So it’s inevitable that people will compare the OS they’re trying to the OS they are used to.
Exactly! When people who have used Windows for most/all of their computing lives try Linux for the first time, what do people expect them to compare it to, QNX ???
Linux distribution makers and advocates claim that it’s now easy to switch from Windows to Linux, so complaints related to switching are very valid IMO.
Another valid point. I look around most tech-related web forums and all I see is LINUX this and LINUX that, and … “M$ sucks and Windoze is crap, use Linux!!!” So after hearing this 8 million times, some people actually start to believe it, and so they give Linux a try. And once they try it and realize that the Linux fanatics were blowing smoke up their ass, they’re like “Ok, I’ve tried your OS and here’s what I find wrong with it ..” And what is the response they get from the Linux zealots? “Well, if you don’t like it, learn to code and fix it yourself!” I mean, how damn arrogant do you have to be to have an attitude like that?? You want me to learn how to code so that I can do things that my OS of choice has been able to do since the early/mid 90’s because the wanna-be, knock-off OS that YOU claim is superior can’t cut the mustard? Sometimes I think there’s a big field where crack grows abundantly that every Linux pundet knows about but isn’t sharing with anyone else.
In short, wanna know why these articles keep popping up? Because Linux is way overhyped and people get pissed at you for spreading the Linux is as easy to use as Windows bullshit myth and wasting their time.
So, once again – here’s a reality check for the uninformed – If you take a Windows user away from Windows and put them in front of an OS that works ass-backwards from everything they’re used to, it is NOT going to be easier to use for them than Window!! How fucking hard is that for you pinheads to understand???? And it’s not that Windows users are stupid – just that we taken for granted the fact that we don’t have to spend days or even weeks just trying to get the simple, mundane shit working. So yeah, I guess you could say we were lazy
And no, we don’t expect Linux to look/act like Windows out of the box, but we do expect things that work out of the box in Windows to also work in Linux.
Is it only OK to compare Linux to Windows if it’s favourable to Linux?
This is where the hypocrisy comes in. Why is it that the Linux crowd seems to have no qualms about comparing Linux to Windows when it comes to security and virtual desktops, but the minute you go into something that doesn’t reflect Linux in a positive light, then all of a sudden it becomes taboo to say anything about God’s gift to OS’s when it compared negatively with Windows?
And another thing – for the lusers that say Windows is not Linux and people shouldn’t expect it to be, why do some of these same people bitch when they go to a Windows box and can’t recompile the kernel? Hello???? Why don’t you listen to your own rhetoric?????
Seriously. Why is it that people always complain that drivers on Linux suck and go on to compare them to Windows drivers? Think about what you’re doing here; Linux drivers are generally not written by employees of the hardware companies. The developers only sometimes have access to technical documentation. Even when the developers have access to documentation it can be incomplete or wrong. The Windows drivers are written by the company that designed the hardware, by employees on company time, with access to the engineers who designed the thing when it doesn’t work as expected. In short, the fact that Linux does support the hardware it already supports is a major acomplishment.
If you own a Widget made by Xyz Corp. and it isn’t supported under Linux, email them and ask them why it isn’t supported and when they plan on offering supporting. If you’re shoping for new hardware, try to buy something that you know will work with Linux. Whatever you do, don’t complain because a driver written by a guy in his spare time with incomplete documentation that he had to get unofficially from an ex-engineer doesn’t work exactly as you’d like on your Widget Model QUX-3 Rev. 72 board. Linux and Windows are a world apart in that respect.
That and; Really, Acrobat Reader under Crossover? While we’re at it, if Konqorer does such a bad job why doesn’t he just use Mozilla or Firebird all the time?
Most of the author’s points are pretty self serving. They have some merit in most cases, but they are specific to his needs. There are plenty of other issues on the Linux desktop that he didn’t address. I think we can all agree that Linux is on its way – with sincere efforts all around – KDE, Gnome/Ximian, Redhat, Xandros, Lycoris, etc. They’ve all made significant contributions to the potential that the Linux desktop has. Over time, we’ll see the lowest common denominator in Linux desktops improve dramatically. Can you imagine what the high-end Linux desktop will be then? 🙂
I have a dream: piracy is over. When people really have to pay they don’t care about cosmetic features.
This is the reason why OpenOffice and Linux is becoming a success in third-world countries.
Linux is viable for business desktop now with careful planning. I am putting a basic linux with an X server on old computers and using it as an X terminal. People can run OpenOffice even in a Pentium 100 with this trick.
The only problem is still the lack of offer of professional commercial programs in some niches, like CADs and Desktop Publishing, but for most of people a set of browser, email client, word processor and a spreadsheet is sufficient. And Linux+ OpenOffice offer this possibility.
The major problem for opensource success is piracy, which stimulates lazziness and dependecy of american software-houses.
If e.g. Microsoft would manage to stop the pirate copying of their products, Open source products would dominate “instantly”.
Who would pay 500$ for MS Office, when Notepad or Wordpad is enough and Openoffice is available for free for those who need more advanced features.
And instead of installing a pirated copy of Windows XP at home, the newest Linux distributions would give most bang for the buck.
/Kenneth
“Well you could always buy XD2 professional.
”
actually, my point was that the “boxed” (commercial) versions of redhat or whatever distri should by default contain all this stuff, following ximian’s example (not everyone likes xd)…
for people like you or me who know how to install and get those plugins, and which might have downloaded their linux for free anyway, it would be a waste of money and definitly not needed.
“I’m also hoping for progress with the various Mozilla plugins which allow to embed all kind of Bonobo components (to basically view all file types which Nautilus can view) and a Gstreamer plugin to hopefully view all kind of supported multimedia files.”
i’m using gxine at the moment, which integrates flawlessly within mozilla. however, loadingtimes for streaming media is still too slow, and it has some real handicaps like if you want to view one streaming file twice, it has to fetch this file again every time you want to watch it:-(!
reg. gestreamer: from what i could see from the gnome mailinglist, it is still in it’s infancy because they lack programmers. there was a big discussion there if they should ship totem with the xine-backend instead of the gs one until the latter is ready, or even if gs won’t be ready if they should ship one player at all-excuse me…?!
as someone here put it nicely: ” as long as a needed program isn’t gnomish enough, the user has to suffer”. that’s one of the things imo which hinders the speed of development.
and again, why doesn’t a distribution puts those things on their prioritylist-it should be just a matter of days or weeks to integrate xmms or xine (kxine–gxine) into mozilla(-based) or konqueror, and it is one of the weak points that _really_ suck from a users (buyers) perspective. it all takes too much time! same goes for mounting windows-shares.
“While Mozilla once was a slow and heavy monster, it’s now a rather lean application which can integrate very well in form of Epiphany (not perfect yet but very close).”
that’s another topic-should gnome 2.4 include eph. or galeon, or should it include none…
for folks like me, it’s really hard to understand where the major difference is between those 2 browsers (it seemed also a problem for many gnome-maintainers). again, the user might have to wait longer because of such internal fights!
but i agree that for example mozilla is at least as good as ie, and that firebird will be even better.
nevertheless, still keeping the faith;-)
A few points I’d like to make:
Linux isn’t a windows clone.
Mozilla is less bloated and more stable then IE
Could the OS Community stop bickering amongst themselves and work together?
Linux will NEVER be any competition in the desktop/laptop market because windows is preloaded onto every desktop before the user gets to choose what OS he/she wants.
Marcelo
I have a dream: piracy is over. When people really have to pay they don’t care about cosmetic features.
This is the reason why OpenOffice and Linux is becoming a success in third-world countries.
In other words: “If people who pirate their favorite commercial apps actually had to pay for them, then they would probably use Linux/OpenOffice, because at least that’s better than nothing.” People in 3rd world countries would probably rather have the commercial stuff, but can’t afford it so of course, they’ll take anything they can get – that’s not exactly a shinning endorsement for Linux and open source, is it?
Kenneth
And instead of installing a pirated copy of Windows XP at home, the newest Linux distributions would give most bang for the buck.
First of all, if people wanted to pirate a copy of Windows XP and couldn’t, they would probably stick with their existing version of Windows instead of switching to Linux .. I doubt people would actually want a copy of XP would be the type who are sick of MS and would consider Linux as an option.
It’s doubtful that people with a computer don’t already have a copy of Windows already. If you’re getting a new computer, unless you’re getting a whitebox or buying from a local vendor, you’re getting Windows XP, and probably MS Office too, or at least MS Works (which has Word 2002) or Word Perfect Office, so no need to pirate any of these.
dr_gonzo
Mozilla is less bloated and more stable then IE
LMAO!!! Even when there are ‘101’ reasons to use Mozilla over IE, they STILL feel the need to make up shit. Why?
Linux will NEVER be any competition in the desktop/laptop market because windows is preloaded onto every desktop before the user gets to choose what OS he/she wants.
I wonder how many of these people would actually choose Linux if given the option? Probably not very many, unless the salesman was a zealot who insisted that Windows ‘crashes all the time.’
Linux will NEVER be any competition in the desktop/laptop market because windows is preloaded onto every desktop before the user gets to choose what OS he/she wants.
I suppose that is why I have been eyeballing a P4 pre-loaded with SuSE?
” I wonder how many of these people would actually choose Linux if given the option? Probably not very many, unless the salesman was a zealot who insisted that Windows ‘crashes all the time.'”
The point is that they don’t get to choose anything, not even windows. There should be a law against this.
>Linux will NEVER be any competition in
>the desktop/laptop market because windows
>is preloaded onto every desktop before the
>user gets to choose what OS he/she wants.
You’ve hit the nail on the head, my friend! No matter how excellent Linux on the Desktop will become; the consumer will not use (buy) it because they prefer to use the OS they received with their H/W and are most accustomed to.
A friend of mine bought a PC for $1700.–(AUD) preloaded with Xp Home. You can’t expect him to go and purchase RH9 Personal for $35.– if Xp Home does excatly what he expects it to do. He is not a computer enthusiast – he is a typical joe user like 95% of people out there.
BTW, would he got Linux instead of Xp, he would have accept it. In other words, he doesn’t care, as long as it fits his purposes….
So what’s your point? That if windows was also free and GPL’ed no one would use linux?
(Um abraço)
My belief in the power of open source code to create amazing pieces of software is only surpassed by my belief that traditionalist unix geeks who tend to dominate the open source community are the most very worst people you could ever task with creating usable desktop software.
Well, this guy may make some decent points, but with all due respect this man needs to learn proper grammer, spelling, and capitalization. This is an actual editorial on a reputable site, not a Slashdot talkback post.
Amen Ilan. That point seems lost on a lot of people. They try, they really do, but the number of developers who really are trying to make things usable are vastly outnumbered by the old school Unix hackers who just don’t care and think Emacs is easy. It would take a small miracle to change that.
This kind of thing keeps on coming: comparing linux distro’s to windows, ending with a lengthy conclusion windows is better at being windows. It get’s really tiring. Linux is at heart a UNIX-clone. Not a windows-clone. In the UNIX-paradigma it is tradition to make technical advanced flexible little tools, and leave it to the technically advanced user to adapt to the technology. In the windows/mac/GUI-paradigma it is tradition to hide the technology and adapt the technology to the user. At the moment the linux-world is aiming at both paradigma’s. It is not quite there yet, obviously. On both sides there is a better alternative (*BSD, win XP). But it does make it the most fun, powerfull, flexible OS out there. Examples of ways UNIX-people adapt themselves to the technology to gain productivity:
– LaTex: Less frustrating than MS word or clones, because it doesn’t do any crazy stuff behind you’re back. You describe in a mark-up language what you want the document to look like and render it. It will look like you ment it to be (less eye candy though, but no scientist cares)
– Fortran: A language designed for calculations. You won’t be able to do all the same with merely Excel.
– Perl: the ugliest language ever created by man. Still it is possible to do a lot with just one sentence of incomprehensible letters and signs.
– Web server, firewall etc.: though easy set-up methods exist you can smell and breath the TCP/IP stack if you set-up, maintain and optimize a server the UNIX-way.
Somewhere above here some people made comments about the progress of Linux, and some found that it goes very slow.
Now I have used many different versions of Linux. I started with RedHat 5.0, which came out in 1997. I got it in 1999.
– Text-mode installation, CURSES-based. No ability to resize Fat32 partitions.
– Little hardware support. Not for my video card, not for my network card, not my soundcard. The mouse wheel did not work.
– No nice desktop. Fvwm95 was considered user-friendly, the KDE project was not even at version 1.0. Gnome did not even exist.
– No decent webbrowser. There only was Netscape 4.0
– TeX textformatting. This is not that user-friendly too. Lyx did not exist.
Luckily, later on in 1999 I had collected some additional software. An X-server, KDE 1.1.2 and StarOffice 5.0 made the RedHat-system usable enough for daily work.
Then, I believe it was the year 2000, I got SuSE 6.4. It was a great step forward, with KDE 1.2 and StarOffice 5.1. It also supported more hardware, but not my sound card. It was just my customised RedHat 5.0 collected into one package. Oh, it also added an early Mozilla beta, and had Yast2 for an easy, graphical first-time installation.
Then I got SuSE 7.3. It added KDE 2, which was way better, a newer StarOffice, wheel mouse support, but still my soundcard did not work. It also contained Mozilla 1.x, and YaST2 could also be used for system configuration.
Now I have SuSE 8.2. The desktop is translated to Dutch, including OpenOffice. KDE3 is great, Konqueror renders almost all webpages. My soundcard now works, even with Audio-CD support.
So what progress has been made in these 6 years?
Installation: textmode graphical
Hardware: almost nothing almost everything
Desktop: fvwm95 KDE 3.1 / Gnome 2.2
Filesystems: ext2 ReiserFS + LVM
Office: Latex LyX KOffice and/or OpenOffice
Webbrowsing: Netscape 4 Mozilla 1.3 / Konqueror 3.1.1
Software
installation: rpm -i pkg.rpm Yast2 / synaptics / Red Carpet
XFree86 has also gotten much better: TrueType, anti-aliasing, RandR, (which just works in SuSE 8.2) and it seems it also has vsync screen updates – moving windows is smoother than in Windows 2000.
Hello friends,
I’m I the only sick brother around? I mean, I migrated to Linux because I wanted to do things myself. Fine, you can’t get plugins to work right on Konqueror. Has it occured to you that it might be a distro specific issue as opposed to a general Linux gripe? The same goes for watching dvds on mplayer. So let me see, your critisim on Linux desktops is based on your experience one distro. I would call that a fair sample size,, would you? Yes, installing packages on cetain distros are much easier than other. And yes, Konqueror those come with preinstalled plugins on certains distro. Or installing those plugins is as easy as installing to packages. I found the review seriously skewed for these reason. Before you begin generalising on Linux Desktops it would be fair to collate your observations on a larger sample size.
But infwis said it all. I applaud his/her constructive reasoning. There’s much truth in what he/she say. And what he has listed in the bane the industry in general and Linux in particular.
“That one day standards organizations will be developed which design protocols which define software-hardware interaction for all classes of hardware peripheals and that these protocols are open, belonging to the public domain, and that hardware manufacturers will implement their designs in such a way that a correct implementation of the protocol on the client operating system will correctly be able to utilize the capabilities of the hardware at hand. That one day all document formats will be based upon open standards and that this will put an end to document incompatibility-once and for all.
These issues- hardware support and compatability, and document/media format interchangability- are the two largest issues in the world of computers. If these issues could be resolved-95% of these “linux on the desktop” articles would simply vanish.Every user of every operating system is confronted with these issues-we all pay the price for propietary built-in incompatibilty. This is as true for winbloze users as for every other os. Yet this problem is most accute for non-winbloze users.
The issues surrounding capitalistic competition and market sustainability should be based on the myriad of ways in which open protocols can be implemented and how they are integrated into the operating system-and within this there are a myriad of oppurtunities suffcient to stablish niche-markets and allow for product/brand identification. Consumers and Users could then choose their software/hardware/OS based upon their unique implementation of common standards.
Steps have already been made on these issues. Microshit already has its own propietary protocol system to which hardware developers develop their hardware. Of course Microshits own protocol system is largely incompatabile between various versions of winbloze.
As it stands hardware and software developers tend to develop for platforms instead of developing for consumers and users. My dream is that this will one day change. Open standards cannot solve all issues, and standards bodies bring their own issues with them-yet only this approach suit s the long-term interests of the consumers and users. No propietary model can serve the best interests of consumers and users-for their very existence is dependent upon planned obsolescence and contrived incompatibilies. Recognizing implemetation-they way in which things are implemented, and consequently how products can and should be supported, which of course is defined by the implementation, as the model for capital accumulation-would allow for capitalistic free enterpise, market competition and consumers/users would finally be given choice-which is what the market is about anyway……
as pertains to the articles….
Desktoplinux.com: Crying over the relative speed and inconsistency of linux applications never changed anything. This “article” is neither interesting, revealing or informative-in essence their is nothing said in this that has not been said a 1000 other individuals. Yet again winbloze is held to be the standard by which linux and its applications are judged. As usual any deviation from what winbloze does and how microshit does it is held to be inferior,because microshits winbloze has defined the “common sense” discourse about how things should work by virtue of their monopoly-and their monopoly alone. How things “should work” is in the main always defined by the “status quo”, ie. how things have been, always have been. Such reflections are pointless to say the least and ultimately represent that against which all non-winbloze OS’s and non-microshit applications must battle-in order to accepted for what they are. The tide is, however slowly turning- the days when microshit could unlease its stuff into the world and automatically become the next standard are limited and running out.
PClinuxonline: By and large I agree ith what the author here says. I however take issue with his view of how sourceforge.net “should be”. I fundamentally disagree with this vision: for it ignores the reality of who is doing the developing and why they are doing it. The open source community should not, IMHO, try to weed out less “popular” applications-this sia a critieria which only has applicability in the world of propietary software. It should however work towards creating standards under which microshits own offerings can be subsumed-by offering more(functionality/interoperability/compatibility etc.) than any propietary system can offer. This in turn would have a normative effect on the projects out there in the open source community and would contribute to de-fragmentation of open source projects and lend to greater cooperation between various projects and greater code re-utilization.
just a few thoughts…. “
“1) software installation. Tired of dependencies not being resolved automatically, even with Red Hat’s Red Carpet service? So am I. …”
I use Mandrake 9.1, and all I have to do is select an RPM to install (from a GUI window), and MDK automatically notifies me which packages (if any) need to be installed to satisfy dependencies. Then I click OK, and it installs the RPM.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s as easy as Windows.
OK, my english is very bad but it is not my native language ! Only in american movies indians, E.T.s and foreigns speak english…
I think that only geeks like many of us would choose Linux instead of Windows if computer makers let us choose the operating system for the SAME price.
Why ? Because Windows is better than Linux ? NO !! Because:
a) windows is a monopoly and there are no offer of native versions of many important programs;
b) people are most accustomed to windows. The laziness factor will give and advantage to Windows.
Second, in third world countries we don’t buy Dells, Compaqs, HPs, etc. We use white-boxes mounted by little vendors with chinese motherboards and other parts. With the only exception of notebboks, the tradition here in Brazil is to buy whiteboxes, cheaper than Dells, Compaqs, etc. Therefore, people DON’T PAY (even in embedded form with OEM hardware) for software. They use pirated copies of Windows, M$ Office and so on.
Here in Brazil the domestic piracy is over 90%. The problem with it is that the same people will demand these applications in their jobs, but there are a brutal campaign against piracy in enterprises and government. When these firms and government are forced to pay the abusive prices they begin to experiment Linux.
M$ likes piracy because is the most efficient marketing. People are addicted and they will force your enterprises to acquire legal copies. In Brazil there are many moviments to break this endless cycle, forcing by law to use free software whenever it is possible.
“M$ likes piracy because is the most efficient marketing.”
M$ was also instrumental, through its anti-piracy initiatives and the consequent pressure it applied to the chinese government, in leading to the mass exectution of (ca. 4000) “software pirates” in China between 2000 and 2002. The “software thieves” were blindfolded, hands tied behind their backs, kneeling- as they were shot in the head from behind.
—————————-
So what’s your point? That if windows was also free and GPL’ed no one would use linux?
—————————–
No, if Windows was freeware only (without source code) most of the people will even try to use linux, only the idealistic people who cares with freedom… It is sad but it is the reality…
My desktop PC use linux because I am a geek and I like freedom. I think that linux is viable as desktop if people are ready to learn other point of view. Linux is not a Windows clone. It is ANOTHER operating system based on Unix.
I am not addicted by Windows because I have 34 years old and my first computers are Sinclairs, MSX, Apple II, etc. I used also DOS, Win3.X, SunOS, HP-UX, mainframes, etc. The principles are the same. The differences are cosmetic and I don’t see any technical reason to spend US$ 200 (this is the price of Windows XP Professional box in Brazil, twice of the minimum salary) to a secretary type letters, browse web and send/receive emails. Linux can do all these functions for U$ 0 and I will not be dependent of a single vendor. The OpenOffice differences of M$ Office are cometic only. MS Office is still better than OpenOffice but are little differences.
Stop to see my comentaries with american vision of the world ! Piracy is a plague in third world countries because it stimulates lazziness. We don’t buy a pack with PC + Windows + MS Office because it is very expensive. We use cheap hardware (and frequently obsolete) with pirated copies of american softwares. And your BSA’s representatives is pressing our companies to pay the abusive prices of software .
Linux is the only viable and definitive way to third world countries. You americans can make Bill Gates richier but we cannot make it !
You said:
[/i]M$ was also instrumental, through its anti-piracy initiatives and the consequent pressure it applied to the chinese government, in leading to the mass exectution of (ca. 4000) “software pirates” in China between 2000 and 2002. The “software thieves” were blindfolded, hands tied behind their backs, kneeling- as they were shot in the head from behind.[/i]
I don’t doubt you at all…but do you have anything to back up your claims. It would be nice to spread this sort of info IF there is a legit source to confirm with. Otherwise it is just spreading FUD.
In the beginning, there was the command prompt. And it was good. Now you have a GUI to make it easier, easier for say, the non-technical people. Give an inch, take a mile.
You kids that cry about not being able to play a DVD under linux make about as much sense as the people cried when they couldn’t play an audio-cassette in one of the early home tape-backup units. If you want to play a DVD, get a DVD player.
When you hit your teens you will crying about porn not being as good as the real thing, as if you’d know.