In this keynote, OSAF founder and chair Mitch Kapor asks if the same collaborative development methods that created success in the corporate arena can now make open source software central to the consumer desktop. ZDNews TechUpdate has an article on the subject too. Elsewhere, Linus Torvalds has published the last release of the current Linux development kernel, clearing the way to start work on the long-anticipated 2.6 kernel. And, this is an interview of the Ark Linux core team and a couple of contributors, while Gaël Duval tells why Mandrake Linux is better than Windows.
Linux: The Desktop; 2.6-pre Kernels Soon; Ark, Mandrake News
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
In my experience, its not a good idea to go and mix applications from different environments and expect them to interoperate. If you can’t get your application needs met within an all KDE or all GNOME setup, and you aren’t willing to make some work-arounds (like saving the image in Gimp and opening it up in OpenOffice) to incorporate a foreign application into your setup, then Linux probably isn’t for you. However, don’t go spouting off about inconsistency and interoperability problems, because that makes Linux users think you’re loony. I don’t notice any inconsistency in my setup, because I’m a 100% KDE user. My desktop is a whole lot more consistent than any of my Windows desktops ever were.
There are a couple of legitimate criticisms of Linux, and a couple of falsehoods that are prepetuated by those who don’t use it. Unfortunately, whenever I see anti-Linux people, they’re spouting off about the latter.
Legitimate criticisms:
1) Hard to configure. Yep. Gentoo is harder than most. RedHat is pretty good, I managed to set up an entire RedHat server, only having to bypass the GUI tools twice (once for the firewall, once for the MP3 jukebox). In the long run, however, getting the optimal experience requires stuff like configuring your own kernel, etc, which isn’t easy.
2) Unpolished. GNOME is probably more polished than Windows in places, but KDE most definately isn’t. Its getting better (the right-click menu in CVS Konq has only 15 entries, vs the 18 in the 3.1 release
but still not there yet. Dialogs still need some asthetic work, not resizing so weird, and being more font-sensitive.
3) Lacks application support. Yep, we still don’t have Photoshop or Illustrator or Quark or Dreamweaver. However, its not as bad as most people make it out to be. My application needs are hardly lightweight, and Linux fills them, mostly within KDE even.
4) Lack of hardware support. Legitimate if you buy random hardware form CompUSA, not so much if you actually take 5 minutes to check for supported hardware first. However, if Mac people can handle that, Linux newbies certainly can!
Illegitimate criticisms:
1) It’s slow. In the window-wiggle benchmark, maybe, but not in anything else. The superficial stuff isn’t so much lack of speed, but lack of polish. Windows goes to great lengths to make stuff look smooth. Most Linux desktops don’t. So you see more flicker, more rubber-banding, etc. However, when someone uses Linux on a regular basis, what they notice is that the GUI never freezes up under load, unlike their WinXP machines. I can run “emerge world” in the background, and have a big compile going, and not even notice when it finishes because it had little to no effect on the GUI.
2) Its inconsistent. Not if you use the proper apps it isn’t. If the proper apps don’t fit your needs, its an application compatibility issue, not a consistency one.
3) Dependency hell. I haven’t encountered dependency hell since I used Windows. If you’ve ever manually downloaded an RPM and tried to install it, you deserve what you get. Manual application installation is so 1990. What Windows has is better than what Linux had circa 1995, but the present soluation of omnipotent package managers is much better than any other OS on the market.
“” However, when someone uses Linux on a regular basis, what they notice is that the GUI never freezes up under load, unlike their WinXP machines. I can run “emerge world” in the background, and have a big compile going, and not even notice when it finishes because it had little to no effect on the GUI. “”
This is misleading and totally dependent on the machine you’re using to run your desktop. Eg I spent yesterday compiling Glibc-2.3.2 on my little k6-2/384mb from a KDE 3.1 desktop. Granted nothing stalled, but after leaving that compilation running for a little while (5 minutes or so) and returning to click on another window it would take an age to swap everything back in from disk (10-20 seconds, and yes I have DMA turned on and reiser running noatail,noatime). Seeing as I’ve never compiled anything that big on Windows I’m not able to make a direct comparison, but saying that, in general, a big compilation has little effect on GUI responsiveness is simply untrue.
Perhaps instead of using the term “average user” we should try and use the term “normal home user”.
A “normal home user” has a few requirements. Mail, Web, Games, Word Processing, Home Accounting.
They also have extremely limited technical skills and are likely to be confused by any problem that doesn’t come with a good explanation and something to click. They have no interest in expanding their knowledge of their OS because they work hard all day doing something non-computer related, and want their computer to “just work” when they get home because they have no interest whatsoever in ploughing through manuals/faqs/howtos. They don’t want the command line, because it feels threatening, they want nice big buttons with meaningful text on them. They don’t want to fight with their distro to get something installed, they just want to click a few buttons and have the new application ready to run. They have no idea how to configure stuff and whether it’s being configure via textfile, registry entries, command line, GUI, they will hardly configure anything because they think doing something wrong might break the entire computer. They don’t understand why they can’t do things the same way they can do them on other operating systems, if it has a desktop, has little icons, little menus, a bar at the bottom and a mouse pointer they’ll expect it to behave like the Wintel/Mac computer they’ve been using for the past decade.
**That’s not an attempt to denigrate the “normal home user”, it’s simply describing the way they are based on my personal observations.**
I could go on, but you get the idea. Let’s face facts, when we talk about the “normal home user” we are not talking about the people who post to OSnews. Trying to say Linux is ready for the “normal home user”‘s desktop based on the experience of anyone posting to this site is, quite frankly, ridiculous. While it might be ready for the desktops of more technically minded people, or people that can get support from Linux savvy relatives/friends, it is not ready for the desktop of the “normal home user”, and without some standards that actually get followed it will take a long time before it is.
you seem to keep changing your story. First you’d switch to Linux “in a flash” if all your pet hates were fixed and all your apps were ported. Now you’ll switch “in a flash” if you can use Dreamweaver. What’s your next offer?
Saying you have to drop to the CLI to see which packages are installed is just silly. In Mandrake, run the package removal tool. I’m sure Red Hat has a way of doing it too…if it doesn’t, I’m amazed
.
“While it might be ready for the desktops of more technically minded people, or people that can get support from Linux savvy relatives/friends, it is not ready for the desktop of the “normal home user”, and without some standards that actually get followed it will take a long time before it is.”
I find this interesting. It perpetuates the common fallacy that everyone magically knows how to use Windows. No, they don’t. It’s just as idiotically designed and irritating as Linux is to complete newbie. *Everyone* I know who’s bought a computer and never had one before has resorted to asking friends (including me) how to use it *FREQUENTLY*. This is under Windows. That would seem to indicate that the “normal home user” is in fact someone who is used to asking other people how to work their machine, whatever OS they use…
I’ve read a lot of comments about how fantastic linux is (i aggree) but… i also read a lot of comments on how linux can be improved. We need more comments on how linux can be improved, this is what can really bring it too the masses. I do believe that 1-2 years and we will see a *very* usable desktop for “mid range” people. I’ve been using Mandrake 9.1 for the last two months. I’m lazy, and mandrake is wonderful.
We need major software houses to port to linux (like Adobe, and Macromedia), with their core packages. We need to get people off their pirate Windows copies and on to linux. We need to buy hardware that is linux compatable and has OSS drivers made by the hardare manufacturer. We need our Windows friends to start using Open office, Gimp and other cross platform programs. Then moving to linux won’t be such an issue.
Well that’s my $0.02
Microsoft was created by consumers like YOU who were sucked into the PC abyss.
Oh so now we’re responsible for creating Microsoft? You know, it would help your arguments if you actually tried to make sense.
What stopped you from buying an Amiga back in the Windows 2.0 days?
I was the happy owner of an Amiga 2000 until it died. Great machine – especially the games. Heck, I even used Video Toaster on an Amiga 4000 up to five years ago. Don’t blame me for the Amiga’s current state of Undeath – or consumers at large for that matter. Rather, blame Commodore’s management for stupid, stupid business decisions.
(Damn, a former Amiga user – now I can’t be as angry towards you! 😉
I’ve used since 2.x for petes sake!
Do you work for SCO? Because your statements change with every post! First you were saying that you used Linux since 1994-1995, then you said you have “been in the thick of it since its creation,” then you say you’ve used it since 2.X…what is it going to be tomorrow?
It isn’t ready for the generic desktop.
What’s a “generic desktop”? Who uses it? Again, you go on with vague generalities and half-assed arguments.
For offices with fixed requirements
Which is a very large number of offices…
Linux is MORE than adequate, however, for the end users desktop whose purpose constantly changes, Linux cannot provide a viable solution
I disagree, and challenge you to elaborate on this and give us some examples.
“”It perpetuates the common fallacy that everyone magically knows how to use Windows. “” – AdamW
From my original comment:
“”They don’t understand why they can’t do things the same way they can do them on other operating systems, if it has a desktop, has little icons, little menus, a bar at the bottom and a mouse pointer they’ll expect it to behave like the Wintel/Mac computer they’ve been using for the past decade. “”
Which part of that indicates that I expect them to “magically” know how to use Windows. I thought I’d made it very clear that the reason they know how to use Windows is *drumroll* they’ve been using Windows for a while and are comfortable/familiar with it. Apparently I didn’t make it quite clear enough.
The point I was trying to make, and I admit that it’s buried a little, is that Linux can’t expect “normal home users” to throw away that sense of familiarity and venture into the unknown without a heck of a lot of support. If Linux wants to reach the home desktop en-masse then it’s going to have to provide a Wintel-like interface to get these users over that initial changeover period. No amount of explaining that “This way is better”, or “You can’t do that because…” is going to help. Either they can use the environment they are already comfortable/familiar with or they are going to stick to whatever they are currently using until some external influence (OS price perhaps) forces them to change.
It’s about time the section of the Linux community who advocate Linux as ready for the desktop stopped expecting the “normal home user” to change to suit Linux and started changing Linux to better suit the “normal home user”.
you seem to keep changing your story. First you’d switch to Linux “in a flash” if all your pet hates were fixed and all your apps were ported. Now you’ll switch “in a flash” if you can use Dreamweaver. What’s your next offer?
My first issues were relating to the lack of applications on Wine, the second time I posted I replied stating that I would move to Linux AGAIN if I could run the applications I want under wine. After looking at the progress of wine, the issue will now be a matter of months rather than years before the basic infrastructure is setup.
In a nutshell, I can put up with all the idiosycracies of the desktop environment, however, I do want the ability to use the same applications under Linux and as I did point out, wine is almost there. I say give it 3-6months and 1.0 should be released.
Saying you have to drop to the CLI to see which packages are installed is just silly. In Mandrake, run the package removal tool. I’m sure Red Hat has a way of doing it too…if it doesn’t, I’m amazed
.
Or I could use kpackage if I wanted. This was related to the use of automatic dependency resolving scripts. Redhats one is useless as it hides the version and other necessary information, however, since I haven’t tried Mandrake, I can’t comment. One that IS good is SuSE Linux. Having used their distributions for many years, that is what I call a solution for an end user.
“While it might be ready for the desktops of more technically minded people, or people that can get support from Linux savvy relatives/friends, it is not ready for the desktop of the “normal home user”, and without some standards that actually get followed it will take a long time before it is.”
I find this interesting. It perpetuates the common fallacy that everyone magically knows how to use Windows. No, they don’t. It’s just as idiotically designed and irritating as Linux is to complete newbie. *Everyone* I know who’s bought a computer and never had one before has resorted to asking friends (including me) how to use it *FREQUENTLY*. This is under Windows. That would seem to indicate that the “normal home user” is in fact someone who is used to asking other people how to work their machine, whatever OS they use…
Windows is shocking. Even with Windows installed, users are still confused. MacOS users, even newbies, are the ones less likely to ask a stupid question like, “what do you mean by double click?”. Yes, I worked on a helldesk, and there were two users I loved, Linux and MacOS users. They listened, wrote notes and you never heard from them again. Windows users, well, we would end up with the same user ringing up 3-4 times a week because they screwed up their system. Worse still, we were an ISP providing technical support to these people that has NOTHING DO TO with the core function of our business.
I find this interesting. It perpetuates the common fallacy that everyone magically knows how to use Windows. No, they don’t. It’s just as idiotically designed and irritating as Linux is to complete newbie. *Everyone* I know who’s bought a computer and never had one before has resorted to asking friends (including me) how to use it *FREQUENTLY*.
I don’t really know what your point here is, but you are most certailny right. Most Linux advocates will ask “But people learned how to use Windows, so why can’t they learn to use Linux?”
Well, the answer to this question is, most people don’t ‘learn’ Windows … they normally call a friend/family member who ‘knows computers’ to help them fix whatever is wrong. They don’t pour through FAQs, howtos, etc. Problem is, most people don’t know any ‘Linux gurus’ so they have nobody to turn to for help if they were to give Linux a test drive. And the minute you suggest Google to them, most of them will suggest back to you their middle finger.
You’re right, there needs to be more family members skilled in Linux before the home desktop is won. This is why Linux will not win the desktop overnight, but will take its time. First people will use it in the office, then trailblazers will use it at home, then it will become more prevalent.
Telling me to cut and paste from some random website does not make URPMI any easier to use for a first time user. And URPMI did not work straight out of the box. There were no sources configured.
-G
that shouldn’t be the case. If you install from CDs, it should have sources defined for the CDs. If you install from an internet source, it should have sources defined for the repository from which you installed. You can get the functionality of the Easy Urpmi page from a rather neat application called urpmi.setup , which is in contrib (so included in the bigger paid-for sets of Mandrake). But I’ve found that most newbies I’ve pointed to the easy urpmi page have been able to use it.
darius: my point was that CooCooCaChoo was making a false comparison; the way he phrased things implied that you needed someone to help you learn to use Linux and you didn’t need anyone to help you learn to use Windows. The truth is that most people need teaching to use either.