Users are asking for better support for things such as third-party drivers, printer management and graphic interfaces, says NWFusion. Read their top10 requested features. Elsewhere, “Mthe adoption of Linux on the desktop is progressing, but there won’t be a “David and Goliath” single blow that suddenly slays the dominance of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows, Linux advocates said at an enterprise Linux conference Wednesday.”. Read that article at IDG.
What Users Want from Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I have said it in the past, and i will say it again:
ease of use what i want rom linux.
it is great that i can have the sources for everything, and that i can write scripts up the wazoo, but there is no easy way to create shortcuts, nautilus crashes out of the box on mandrake 9.1, and for some things i still had to use the command line.
on a more personal note, i have use linux for a client’s project to write realtime kernel drivers. when compiling a kernel with the wrong options, or misconfiguring the kernel, i got messages like ‘i have no root and i want to scream’, ‘error 0 occurred’, and my all time favorite ‘Aaaaaaaaaaarghhhh’. all without any more explanation. this kind of thing is not cool, not funny, not interesting but plain old annoying.
Int.
Some of the comments in the article are a little weird. The last comment on consolidation is really baffling. On one hand the whole article basicaly pushes the idea that things should be configurable via GUIs. I agree with this.
But consolidating the tools? The editor seems to suggest that the tools should be in one location, I presume in a directory or someting. But the quoted comment suggests that the tools (I guess GNU stuff) should be developed in a single repository like BSD. I dont’ see how this is really that relevant, and besides, are the GNU tools not all stored in a GNU repository? And the command line tools are mostly in reasonable locations like /usr/bin and /usr/sbin.
I especially agree with unifying the distributions and driver problems. I don’t really think that having all these different distributions helps Linux based systems much. A sort of standard Linux system (like an extended standard base) that includes system integration and packaging would be an immense boost.
And having the driver API change all the time is just silly. I’m sure it’s Linus’s way of trying to discourage binary drivers, even though Linus keeps claiming he’s politcally neutral. There is more than enough flexability in changing driver APIs every major revision only. So 2.4 and 2.6 could have different APIs, but point revisions should keep binary driver compatibility. Not everyone agrees with having everything open source.
i don’t like it because it maeks things too hard. when u install software (and if that isn’t a bitch to begin with) it doesn’t register extensions and u have to set them manually, and not only that but if u want to download from web u have to configure what app handles what mime type, not just once but in every browser. how is this progress over windows? drag ‘n’ drop doesn’t work with hardly anything, u can try but it just fails. copy/paste are broken for half of everything, try running kde and pasting into gnome app it just fails. nothing fits together linux is loose jumble of different apps that don’t talk together right. i dont know how linux ppl plan to fix this cuz linux doesnt have a registry so how do u register extensions???
other problem with linux is weird errors. i tried to mount floppy disk in kde and all it do is pop up a window with X and ‘mount: invalid option’ how is that supposed to help me fix problem i can’t even tell what it is. there is also crap like ‘unrecognized symbol: ___dfsaf32’ when i tried to install acrobat reader u never see these weird problems on windows because microsoft writes good error messages that ppl can understand
is more consistency in the user interface. It’s getting better with Gnome 2.4, but still needs work.
The “it just works” attitude like Apple has.
After reading the article I have to say that the vast majority of the issues mentioned are being actively addressed.
Simplicity, consolidation, monitoring tools — these things are currently being developed, both by specific organizations and by standards groups. The things that aren’t happening (like driver support) are often due to proprietary vendor issues.
Most of the people interviewed seem to be managers and CIOs, and although they do appear to know something about their technology they aren’t necessarily the people putting it together. I find that the average LUG mailing list is overflowing with people sharing solutions and suggestions to a lot of issues like the ones listed in the article.
And when you consider that the GNU/Linux project is only a decade old, its progress on all fronts is nothing short of phenomenal. At this rate there will be few articles such as the NWFusion list in the near future.
1. Integration of DEs with the underlying system, driver maintaince/setup etc
2. Easy maintance for all modern abilities (e.g. connection sharing, easy firewalling etc) all via a consistent GUI
3. Consistency across all toolkits and DEs, something freedesktop.org tries to achieve
4. Innovation on the desktop
5. some stuff I don’t remember currently
Install software with a double-click. All software, period.
Pretty good list though I think that freedesktop.org also works with the groups to try and achieve point #1 as well as #3.
Your point on #2 is pretty interesting. Most distros have tools for the things you mentioned and all their tools are pretty consistent. Are you talking admin tools that are consistent across distros?
Innovation on the desktop? That would be nice. The desktop metaphor in and of itself is getting a bit long in the tooth.
To MM:
nstall software with a double-click. All software, period.
It does not work that way for Win now. Doubleclick hit next a number of times and then it is installed. Maybe that was what you meant :-> Seriously though, some people hear say that they never hit dll hell or have problems with installs but I still see in the office — problems with drivers, Office XP over-writes dlls an old version of Visio needs, programmer comes in complaining that a new games wasting files that an older game needed, or the I installed the driver but that one did not work so I had to go and download another driver from such-n-such website blah..blah..blah.
I am not arguing that installs could not simplier in linux. Personally, you should be able to download any old rpm for your version of linux and doubleclick on it. If it needs dependencies it should resolve those through apt, yum, or urpmi. I think this will come soon. apt already makes my linux life much easier.
GNU/Linux as a whole (not just the kernel) has a glued or thrown together feel. Since most of the parts and bits were written by different groups that have no guiding hand to keep them together everything works different from the other parts. The way open source works I don’t see how this will ever improve.
That’s what I meant.:-)
I have to agree with you on the part of using apt. It had help me a lot with Fedora.
RPM’s installs sometimes, the application install, but no links to the “start” menu.
@AKH: The driver thing is not Linux being a politician, but Linux being an engineer. Binary drivers are a huge pain for kernel developers. They are so intimately connected with the system (by necessity) that maintaining compatibility is a pain, and requires an entire department at Microsoft. Also, unlike MS, the Linux developers are on the same level as end-users — they can’t use their clout to get driver sources to their development teams.
@Eugenia: I agree with everything except #4, which is the kind of vague marketing-speak I hope stays in the Windows world. Especially the connection-sharing bit — iptables can be very difficult to configure. freedesktop.org is definately a step in the right direction, but I’d like to see more interoperation at the HIG and services level. Icon themes, for example, should be standardized.
@MM: No OS has double-click installation of all software. Windows takes a lot more clicks than either Linux or OS X. What’s needed is really work on improving the quality of packages. Something like Autopackage would be nice, but I’d settle for Fedora becoming high-profile enough to have 90% of available software in a Yum or APT repository.
To add a few of my own:
1) I hope the KDE folks steal some ideas from the GNOME folks. I’ve been playing with GNOME for a couple of days in Fedora, and I have mixed reactions. GNOME is nowhere near the amount of technical prowess that KDE does. Use of common services and integration is just a league apart on the KDE side. KDE’s GUI (as of 3.2) is also *much* faster. On the other hand, GNOME 2.4 is one of the most polished desktops I’ve ever used, and its application base feels much more mature and well-developed.
2) I hope the XFree guys figure out a way to deal with the synchronization problems. KDE has become extremely fast, but lacks the illusion of solidity because of synchronization issues. Meanwhile, GUIs like OS X, which are actually quite slow (described as “piggish” on the XFree86 developers list) feel *solid* because certain GUI (window-frame synchronizaton + double-buffered windows) preserve the illusion.
For linux to survive as a Desktop and compete with Microsoft, it need good Graphics Device drivers. Most graphics drivers(X servers) are missing a number of functions. Some wouldn’t support 3d,etc. For example, any current linux distribution available in the market wouldn’t support the ATI IGP 340M graphics chip shipped with most Laptops in stores today.
Yep, it can be one big pain in the @$$, but it’s also an adventure into Oses like no other. It’s like the frontier. You can be like people back east living in relative comfort or you can hitch up the wagons and head out west. The day will be coming when it “just works”, and I’ll be glad when it does, but I’ll also miss the experimentation, the trial and error, the learning process, and the chaotic nature of it. Even with all the aggravation that comes with it, it’s also more satisfying when you do get it working. It’s nice to be able to say you did something rather than always having it done for you, and learning how something works in the process.
The problems there come from the fact that the three major parts of the user experience all have different UI toolkits.
OpenOffice has its own toolkit.
Mozilla or Firebird has its own toolkit.
Either DE:
KDE has its own toolkit.
GNOME has its own toolkit.
1. Integration of DEs with the underlying system, driver maintaince/setup etc
Will HAL do this?
2. Easy maintance for all modern abilities (e.g. connection sharing, easy firewalling etc) all via a consistent GUI
I believe Mandrake has the firewall part done, but it still takes roll-up-your-sleeves work to set up a nat router. I wonder if developing Gnome and KDE frontends to do all those things is enough? I guess it depends on the quality of the frontends…
3. Consistency across all toolkits and DEs, something freedesktop.org tries to achieve
Amen. As an advanced user that shuns GUI frontends to do my adminning for me, I still want consistency from GUI applications. I’ve got a nice Gnome-only setup, however. Perhaps when both KDE and Gnome get enough native software, distributions can choose one and work on making that environment consistent.
Gnome has a tougher battle, because many great gtk apps like gaim and xchat don’t really want to HIG’ify themselves, while there are very few qt-only applications out there.
A nicely setup gnome-only installation really is a pretty sight, though ;P
4. Innovation on the desktop
Innovation takes R&D money. Many, many good UI developers come up with all sorts of new ideas that fail badly at actual lab tests. Our other option is to allow configurability, which is beyond the skill or time of most users, but does potentially give most users the ability to create a unique setup that works best for them.
Configurability unfortunately won’t win over new users, only confuse them. Or waste their time.
In the mean time, Gnome and KDE are both looking more and more polished every round.
5. some stuff I don’t remember currently
How bout this one? Extend the LSB to applications, not just distributions. An LSB-compliant app would use autotools to build from source, follow FHS standards for where to put things, and most importantly have a standard config file formats.
For instance, crontab and inittab have two different delimiting characters, ‘ ‘ and ‘:’, respectively. Standardize “table” config files to have the same delimiters. Simple VARIABLE=VALUE config files should have a standard syntax. More complicated config files like XF86Config should have a standard, heirarchal config file syntax. Each config file should then have a header explaining what type of config file it is.
Then people like me that edit by hand have an easy time learning to configure new apps, and more importantly universal frontends to the /etc and /usr/etc structures could make things easy for new users, without the massive “control-center” wannabes that only complicate the underpinnings of the os.
Add a good ports system, with binary packages in the repositories for common packages (and without separating out *-devel libs), and you have a winning distro for sure.
Linux developers don’t get paid. They develop software for themeselves, and are kind enough to share it with the world for no cost, source included. And who are you, the user to complain about it?
1) Kernel level built-in clustering.
2) Faster boot and better backgrounding of time-consuming startup services without re-inventing the basic unix wheel.
3) Standardized graphical booting procedure across distros.
4) Better 3rdparty device support. This is NOT linux’s fault but the HW manufacturers and I know this.
5) Better X performance. Time to clean the kludge. Time to work with the GTK2, QT, XUL and OpenOffice folks toward a unified solution.
6) All install tools and package managers tied to a apt, yum or urpmi backend that easily configurable to add new sources.
7) Admin tools consistent across distros (its a dream I know) with as many features as webmin has right now or consolidation around the webmin interface. (I hate the web interface but love tool BTW. Yes, that is just my opinion so there.)
8) Emulation for Mozilla and OpenOffice so their UIs at least look like the native DE’s default toolkit look.
9) A fully fleshed complete multimedia layer (like gstreamer) tied to the Desktop but that works will all major known video and sound types. Yeah, like mplayer if compiled correctly or downloaded through freshrpms and apt. Each app would have tie ins to other complimentary tools like CD player tied to the ripper and the mp3 player tied to the burner etc…etc..
10) Better use of the Unix file system metaphor. No, Suse a desktop environment is not optional anymore and should not be in /opt. No, Redhat you should not just dump everything in /usr. Hate to speak ill of the dead corporations but nothing could be more optional than games so why did Loki want to put everything in /usr/local/games instead of /opt?
I may not agree with everything the LSB sets out but the madness must end.
“Linux developers don’t get paid. They develop software for themeselves, and are kind enough to share it with the world for no cost, source included. And who are you, the user to complain about it?”
I have the right to complain about this when the OSS community says it produces better software than, say, Microsoft or any other CSS company, but in fact doesn’t.
Anyway, my list:
1. Easier software management. And no, don’t go rambling on about the ease of use of apt-get or whatever other system, I mean that I should be able to download a program/app, and when I launch it, it should load a nice graphical installer. That installer resloves any dependencies (how about by adding them to the package itself? As in Windows? I know, it would make a package bigger in filesize, but so what? Broadband is spreading).
2. Better hardware support
3. Easier installation/intergration of that support
4. Better overal out-of-the-box performance
5. and, as Eugenia said, some stuff I don’t remember
Exactly, if someone doesn’t get paid, how do they get fired for doing a poor job? This programming for the benefit of the community doesn’t work. If you look at GNU/Linux as a whole it shows too.
Constructive criricism is part of software development. OSS developers know this, and not only welcome community feedback, but require it. Many people honestly just don’t know how to criticize without flaming.
“Like all people, developer’s like to feel that they are contributing something.”
This is how I know someone appreciates what I have contributed to something. They pay me for it so I can feed my family and send my kids to college.
If that inlcudes meeting deadline then I meet them. In the real world, money does mean something. It means I survive.
This programming for the benefit of the community doesn’t work. If you look at GNU/Linux as a whole it shows too.
Right Bill Sykes,
Linux does not work that is why Sun and IBM are using it. That is why Dell and other companies give you the option of ordering servers with linux installed. Why? Because the GNU/linux model does NOT work.
That is why most Sun and other Commercial unix shops would stop dead in their tracks without OSS tools like samba, apache and a host of gnu tools like top. Why? Because the GNU model does not work.
This is why MS takes the threat seriously enough to plan strategies around defeating it.
This is why percentage numbers of linux users are growing every year. Why? Because the FUD view is that it does not work.
Right.
if someone doesn’t get paid, how do they get fired for doing a poor job?
They don’t. Their software just does not included in the distros or if it does no one uses it. There is plenty of GNU software out there that is not ready or does not work well enough to be included.
“Linux does not work that is why Sun and IBM are using it. That is why Dell and other companies give you the option of ordering servers with linux installed.”
I wonder what Sun, IBM and Dell use to run thier bussiness?
I have no idea where they go or how to install’em. I have never been able to install the Nvidia binaries properly.
We also need a warning msgbox that tells the user that the RPM you just double-clicked didn’t install properly because it’s missing some dependance files.
Remove some folders. There must be more than 50+ and have no need for such complexity.
1 partition should be enough for everything. ONLY 1 for a Linux Installation (swap and root included).
There are more. Way more things to fix…
I have the right to complain about this when the OSS community says it produces better software than, say, Microsoft or any other CSS company, but in fact doesn’t.
What you want is ease of use. You want Linux to hold your hand, feed you and maybe remind you when to pee. That’s something I do respect and understand, but I hope you understand that it doesn’t make the software worst, just less accessible. Sadly, the development of Linux depend on the people… and people that are just bitching and complaining without actually doing anything to improve it are quite useless. So unless you actually do something to help its cause, no, I don’t thin you have any right to complain. You have the right to use something else, though.
First and most importantly, I want applications written in good clean code with security in mind.
Second, integration is fine as long as one application does not weaken the security of another or the kernal.
Third, there should be a few similar applications. Redundancy priovides a measure of security.
Last, there should a similar CLI application for each GUI application or the GUI application should be designed so other imput devices, such as keyboards and disability devices, can use the application.
Diversity will allow growth and longeveity.
“Sadly, the development of Linux depend on the people… and people that are just bitching and complaining without actually doing anything to improve it are quite useless.”
So what you are saying is if you don’t program, don’t use Linux? Is it alright to use it and suffer in silence?
Can you please STOP replying to AnyTroll? He is just a troll! If you stop replying to him, he will go away.
I’m just glad to have Linux. It cost nothing but a little learning which was good for me. From what I read my little computer is relatively safe. I thank all of the Linux developers and believe Linux is good for the World.
What about google? They use linux.
What about CNN.com? They use linux.
There are plenty of companies using linux for a variety of different tasks.
We use them for webservers and application servers for example.
If people did not ask for servers with linux installed then companies would not bother.
You are pushing pure FUD.
Wow! The owner of the site responds to me. I feel honored, even if it is just to say that you think my views are not honest and forthright. Just to let you know, I do in fact believe that Linux is a failure and will not be made user friendly, and that Linux developers are not interested in providing an “end-user” experience. Perhaps I am overly provacative, and if I come across this way – I apologize.
It must have been a while since you’ve used Linux because for a while it has registered extensions when installing programs (and added shortcuts in menus).
You can also cut and paste text from a Gnome app to a KDE one.
Interfacer:
What do you mean by creating shortcuts? In KDE you can just drag a file to where you want to create the shortcut and click on link when the pop-up menu appears (there’s also a keyboard shortcut IIRC).
The consistency bit can be annoying, hopefully freedesktop.org will achieve its goals (and there seems to be goodwill on everyone’s part to achieve them). However, I can’t say that it’s really that big of a deal once you get used to it. After all, not all Windows apps have consistent UIs…
“1. Easier software management. And no, don’t go rambling on about the ease of use of apt-get or whatever other system, I mean that I should be able to download a program/app, and when I launch it, it should load a nice graphical installer. That installer resloves any dependencies (how about by adding them to the package itself? As in Windows? I know, it would make a package bigger in filesize, but so what? Broadband is spreading).”
You’re used to graphical installers; they have some benefits. Frankly, however, apt/portage/ports are way easier to use and upgrade; use a graphical front end where you can double click if you want.
Graphical installers are ok if you want to install a few apps; I’d *hate* having to manually run one for every application I have installed, much less every time I want to update. For installing one program, apt/etc and having to double click; next; repeat; done may be comparable. For more than one program, and automatic upgrades (“Hey, I can type one command, or perhaps click one button, and upgrade my whole system!), the Windows paradigm is painful.
Apt/portage/ports/pkgsrc/…. all resolve dependencies.
If someone wants to bundle dependencies, fine, but I’d rather not risk yet another way to clobber my libraries. With the systems I’ve already mentioned, dependencies are handled automatically so there is no gain, but there is a loss – people who already have the dependencies need to download more, and not everyone is on broadband/doesn’t have tiny bandwidth limits.
“2. Better hardware support”
Yes. Badly needed. It’s improving dramatically, as is auto-detecting, but there’s a huge way to go.
“3. Easier installation/intergration of that support”
With things like Knoppix, which autodetects very well, and kudzu/hotplug/yast/etc, it’s becoming less of a problem. Even on Gentoo, which is a hobbiest distro, it took under 3 commands to set up my printer and scanner.
“4. Better overal out-of-the-box performance”
Somewhat distro-dependant. When it happens, it will be good; some things, such as KDE, have gotten a lot better performance-wise recently (KDE 3.1 is nice; KDE 2 was a lot clunkier – KDE 3.x ran better on a pII 300/64mb RAM that I have than KDE 2 does on an athlon 1.5 ghz / 128 RAM; ymmv).
2.6 also seems pretty nice, performance-wise; otherwise, the gentoo/gaming patches to 2.4 give you a pretty high-performance kernel, but that’s not out of box for most users. Etc.
“5. and, as Eugenia said, some stuff I don’t remember”
Could be good, yes.
So what you are saying is if you don’t program, don’t use Linux? Is it alright to use it and suffer in silence?
No! You can be a normal user and still contribute to its development, either by testing, writing documentation, doing bug reports, making some suggestions, etc. What I don’t like is all those people that used Linux once or twice (or maybe even never used it!) and are bitching it like no tomorrow. For example, Eugenia made some contributions/suggestions to GNOME even if she doesn’t program (am I right?). I support those people. I just don’t support those that want Linux to “just work” without even bothering to do something for it. Bitching it in a public forum won’t help its development *IMO*.
Money isn’t the only form of compensation that will motivate programmers. For some, it’s not even the most important. Some gain gratification from people using their app, contributing to it, some do it just because they can, as a challenge.
It’s not all about money, especially outside the U.S.
That said, there are quite a few open-source programmers that are paid to do their work. Some work at IBM, some at HP, others at SUN, some work for academic institutions, and so on.
You have quite a reductive view of the Open Source process…
Ronald:
One partition? What for? Even on Windows systems it’s better to have more than one partition. When I install a new Windows system (I’m the “family tech guy”, a burden I’m sure most of you know about…) I always put at least two partitions: one for the OS and the other for Data. That way if a reinstall is necessary there’s no risk of losing data(a reinstall often being the case with Win98 – lots of people still only use this, and I don’t believe in pirating OSes, so I won’t install Win2k if they don’t have the CDs…)
On my current Linux system I have eight partitions: /, /usr, /usr/local, /var, /home, /mnt/public (shared NFS + Samba partition), /mnt/siddhartha (for large media files) and /mnt/win_c (my old Windows partition on which a copy of Win98 grows old, unused – I might format it soon…)
I have every right to complain when something isn’t as good as I’d like to see. That’s what the whole idea of OSS is based on! Saying normal users should not complain is like… totally denying the very existence of OSS!
I just can’t understand where these “End-users are astupid useless idiots” come from.
Oh, I’m not a dumb-end-user by the way. I can manage my Linux box pretty well, if I say so myself. Funny in this context: yesterday, after years of dual booting, I got rid of my Windows install. For good? I don’t know. I like dual-booting
Hate to say it, but if I could integrate Linux with Windows even better than is currently possible (which is pretty decent work, all things considered), it’d be easy to sneak a Linux box in one of these days, then tell my boss that my job is easier because of “that machine over there. Oh, it doesn’t run Windows, is the thing. See…” then start in to a nice sales jive
I’d also like that because it’d give me an easier way to sneak Linux in to the workplace. I do inventory using MS Access to take care of 3 sites, and that number’s going up. We just bought this expensive CRM software from MS costing us about $60,000 total. If I’da been hired in time, I coulda saved a lot of money for us!! And added flexibility.
“1) Kernel level built-in clustering.”
It exists; look at mosix or openmosix, for instance.
“2) Faster boot and better backgrounding of time-consuming startup services without re-inventing the basic unix wheel.”
Search the gentoo website; there’s some discussion of that, iirc involving loading services in parallel, although it’s experimental.
“3) Standardized graphical booting procedure across distros.”
To an extent, this could be decent; I’m not sure exactly what you mean. Some specialist distributions will never have X11; some people still want to run it on hardware where a graphical boot won’t work, eg, with 4 megs of RAM.
XDM/KDM/GDM all seem to work decently, and be reasonably intuitive to use; you can also automatically log-in to x11 on boot – I don’t really see any kind of problem here.
“4) Better 3rdparty device support. This is NOT linux’s fault but the HW manufacturers and I know this.”
Yup, but preferably open ones. I’ve had a reasonable amount of trouble with binary drivers for linux, and always had far less stable systems with them. YMMV.
The Windows driver wrapper that osnews announced may end up helping; dunno.
“5) Better X performance. Time to clean the kludge. Time to work with the GTK2, QT, XUL and OpenOffice folks toward a unified solution.”
X actually works pretty well, imho, especially with a ‘light’ window manager like blackbox.
What do you mean by a unified solution? As long as they all work, I’m happy; a way to configure them all identically would apparently please a lot of people as well. I think having different APIs is probably useful; the user just shouldn’t be forced to deal with it if he/she doesn’t want to.
“6) All install tools and package managers tied to a apt, yum or urpmi backend that easily configurable to add new sources.”
Add portage to that list, strike the all to all general-purpose ones, and agreed.
“7) Admin tools consistent across distros (its a dream I know) with as many features as webmin has right now or consolidation around the webmin interface. (I hate the web interface but love tool BTW. Yes, that is just my opinion so there.)”
I just use vim/etc for the most part, and those tend to be consistant, although config file locations aren’t, nor things like rc formats. Could be useful to some people, perhaps. If something is way better than the alternatives, distros tend to pick it up, except possibly when they have their own ‘solution’; eventually what works tends to become popular.
“8) Emulation for Mozilla and OpenOffice so their UIs at least look like the native DE’s default toolkit look.”
Sounds like 5)
“9) A fully fleshed complete multimedia layer (like gstreamer) tied to the Desktop but that works will all major known video and sound types. Yeah, like mplayer if compiled correctly or downloaded through freshrpms and apt. Each app would have tie ins to other complimentary tools like CD player tied to the ripper and the mp3 player tied to the burner etc…etc..”
Tied to the desktop? Eek. I like being able to use tools without unneeded restrictions, such as which desktop. I think konqueror does a lot of what you want, eg with CD ripping, but I tend to use standalone tools. mplayer works fine for me, but I’ve read the horror stories. Ever tried Xine?
“10) Better use of the Unix file system metaphor. No, Suse a desktop environment is not optional anymore and should not be in /opt. No, Redhat you should not just dump everything in /usr. Hate to speak ill of the dead corporations but nothing could be more optional than games so why did Loki want to put everything in /usr/local/games instead of /opt?”
Standardization is useful to the extent that it makes users/admins/developers lives’ easier. It’s not to the extent that it makes specialised needs impossible to meet. What’s annoying is software that works standardly across linux, but fails bitterly on other Unices, imho.
Good luck. Nothing wrong with dual booting.
You might find some odd specialized app with no linux equiv or a game you want to play.
I wish that people would stop the don’t complain comments too.
I prefer don’t just complain here but please, please pleeeze put in the bug reports and stuff if you want to make things better.
Hide the underlying OS, make it easier to work with Samba, consistency, fewer options (KDE has far too many), distributions that don’t come on 3CDs and don’t include 25 versions of the same application.
I can’t believe how difficult it is in Fedora to edit files on a Samba mounted drive.
That is why Dell and other companies give you the option of ordering servers with linux installed. Why?
I think I read rather recently a conspiracy that Dell had a pact with Microsoft arranged such that Dell would ship computers with Linux installed so that Microsoft could point to it in anti-competitive lawsuits.
This is why percentage numbers of linux users are growing every year. Why?
Another theory I had was that most OSS developers write software to increase their portfolios. I once knew this person who hung around a support forum for free and answering questions that newbies had. He also managed an open source project at that time that was going pretty well. Then for a year or so he disappeared and his open source project was halted. When he came back after a year we heard that he was now employed and was looking for someone else to take over his project. So my theory is that with the large number of layoffs of programmers, most of them are turning to OSS development.
“Hide the underlying OS, make it easier to work with Samba, consistency, fewer options (KDE has far too many), distributions that don’t come on 3CDs and don’t include 25 versions of the same application.”
What do you want hidden?
I disagree about KDE having too many options; there have been a lot of times when I laugh about how useless a feature is, then a year later find myself having to depend on it, or it being quite convenient. That aside, you don’t have to use KDE; there’s gnome, which has moved towards eliminating configurability (I’ve grown to like it much less, unfortunately), icewm, blackbox, plan9wm….
There are lots of distributions that don’t come on 3 CDs, and don’t include 25 versions of the same application. You might like debian; I like Gentoo, personally.
“I can’t believe how difficult it is in Fedora to edit files on a Samba mounted drive.”
Well, other than telling Fedora and/or Samba that and how you want it to work, no suggestions, as I’ve never used either.
It exists; look at mosix or openmosix, for instance.
I know but it needs to be standard. I do not believe (correct me please) that it is.
XDM/KDM/GDM all seem to work decently
Not graphical login but a graphical bootup process like Suse or Fedora but everyone is going in their own direction and it looks to be an upcoming mess.
What do you mean by a unified solution?
I mean that you can’t blame gui performance on just X and that speed improvements are needed. Toolkit, Desktop Environments and X all impact the general responsiveness of the gui.
Ever tried Xine?
Yes but unlike everyone else in the universe I generally prefer mplayer. I have it running and can view quicktime videos off the web with the mplayer plugin as well.
Standardization is useful to the extent
It is just that unix has a standard very livable scheme for app placement that distros and even commercial *nixes constantly ignore. People from the Mac OS X world talk about App directories. I see this a lot like the way opt should be used for things outside of what your distro ships with.
/opt = Commercial and third party software
/usr/local = things compiled locally for that box only. /usr = for the distro shipped user land stuff
/ = the things needed to boot the box.
/var = log files
It is all there and distros should follow the conventions is all I am saying.
Now which folders do you suggest we remove? There is some duplication (/opt really doesn’t need to exist, neither do some proprietory extensions like /usr/kde in Gentoo) but almost all of it serves a purpose. If you got rid of some of those directories, then Linux would lose functionality. Simplicity is nice, but remember, a solution should be as simple as possible, and no simpler. The current FHS is the result of the demands of intensely networked environments, and we are only getting more networked, not less.
Also, device drivers go in /lib/modules/<kernel-version>. I have a seriously hard time believing that you’ve never gotten the NVIDIA drivers to work. I’ve never had them fail. Just make sure you have copy of the kernel sources available, and a compiler, and the NVIDIA installer program should do the rest.
Lastly, Linux *can* use swap files, but there are performance issues inherent in swap files. Its much faster for the kernel to have a raw partition to write swapped pages to than to go through the filesystem layer to do it. It also avoids dead-locks and possible race conditions between the swap layer and the filesystem layer. I’ve seen two virutal memory related issues (one of the very major) in the last year and half on XP.
Well how about a directory with only stuff for installed applications? Each application would install all the files it needs, and any odd shared object libraries in this folder. All of the files will be together for that application to facilitate a quick removal. You can call this folder /Program Files.
And then, you can move the system stuff and the boot stuff into one generic directory, and just call it by the name of the operating system so that the user knows not to mess with it unless they are experts. They can call it /Linux, or /Mandrake, etc.
“It exists; look at mosix or openmosix, for instance.
I know but it needs to be standard. I do not believe (correct me please) that it is.”
Standard how? Compiled by default in the major distribution’s kernels? In the default kernel source tree? I disagree with at least the first strongly; it would bloat the kernels, and more importantly, increase security risks, for a feature which very few people would use.
“Not graphical login but a graphical bootup process like Suse or Fedora but everyone is going in their own direction and it looks to be an upcoming mess.”
I’ve not been using Suse/Fedora/Mandrake/Redhat much for a few years; how are they diverging? How is it a mess?
They boot, using their different RC systems, they may autodetect hardware, using their various detectors, and they start X11; what’s problematic?
All else aside, different hardware detection programs are good in that some people only have luck with some of them; bugs should be fixed, but in the meanwhile it’s nice to have something which works.
“I mean that you can’t blame gui performance on just X and that speed improvements are needed. Toolkit, Desktop Environments and X all impact the general responsiveness of the gui.”
Absolutely. With work on DRI (direct rendering), and how much quicker KDE has gotten, I’m hopeful on this front.
2.6 also seriously increases the general responsiveness over vanilla 2.4, although on raw thoroughput on uniprocessor systems it’s not always ahead.
“Yes but unlike everyone else in the universe I generally prefer mplayer. I have it running and can view quicktime videos off the web with the mplayer plugin as well.”
I prefer mplayer as well, so no complaints. You’re using mplayer-plugin, right? It’s nice in that it lets you view quicktime inline rather than pecking through the source for the exact url.
“It is just that unix has a standard very livable scheme for app placement that distros and even commercial *nixes constantly ignore. People from the Mac OS X world talk about App directories. I see this a lot like the way opt should be used for things outside of what your distro ships with.
/opt = Commercial and third party software
/usr/local = things compiled locally for that box only. /usr = for the distro shipped user land stuff
/ = the things needed to boot the box.
/var = log files
It is all there and distros should follow the conventions is all I am saying.”
It could be nice; I don’t see it as a huge deal, but I can see why a lot of people would. I feel obliged to quote Tanenbaum; “The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from”
Users should not even KNOW about Linux, they should only know Gnome or KDE. Linux is a kernel, no user in there right mind would or should know about it. Easy as that, I mean does Microsoft tell you about KERNEL32.DLL etc, no.
As soon as we can get the users to understand that Linux is nothing but a rather complex (usually about) 600KB file on your system, perhaps then we can allow for easy use of the system.
I can’t stand how comfused society seems to be about what exactly Linux is. I am not being a GNU zealot either, I just don’t like that people name a system after one of the smallest parts of that system… LAME!
First, a few replies, of which 3 are sadly fallacies.
ACK writes: “Emulation for Mozilla and OpenOffice so their UIs at least look like the native DE’s default toolkit look.”
This is currently done via offsprings. For example Galeon for GTK+, Epiphany for GNOME. Iirc there’s also a KDE browser for this but i’m not sure (no, not Konqueror). If you’d like to see it in a different way i’m looking forward to any constructive idea.
Bill Sykes writes: “This programming for the benefit of the community doesn’t work. If you look at GNU/Linux as a whole it shows too.”
Straw man. You don’t state futher logical thinking after your last sentence, which is a conclusion.
Thom writes: “I have the right to complain about this when the OSS community says it produces better software than, say, Microsoft or any other CSS company, but in fact doesn’t.”
You again, without arguments nor premises. Nothing but a conclusion on a hot topic; which means it’s a troll/flame.
AnonyTROLL writes: “Well there’s the problem. Someone lied to you. Big surprise that it was someone from the OSS community.”
Dicto simpliciter. Plus what i said in my above reply to Thom here above still counts; no arguments are stated.
Bill Sykes writes: “I wonder what Sun, IBM and Dell use to run thier bussiness?”
Thanks for sharing your wonderful thought. So?
Bill Sykes writes: “So what you are saying is if you don’t program, don’t use Linux? Is it alright to use it and suffer in silence?”
What he was saying is: “Sadly, the development of Linux depend on the people… and people that are just bitching and complaining without actually doing anything to improve it are quite useless.”
Mind you, there are other ways to constructively contribute to the community. Which you don’t seem to understand.
Examples: writing bug reports, helping people with problems, writing reviews, writing documentation, translating documentation, writing websites, graphics, sysadminning of boxes which have to do with a project, hosting, mirroring of servers to name a few.
—-
First of all it makes me wonder how people can start about GNOME when we’re discussing the Linux kernel. Oh well, guess GNU/Linux distributions are meant again (2 major differences, of which the GNU/Linux one is debatable, but the distribution thing is commonly seen as important). Then i read a comment from a user who has problems with KDE, but doesn’t state which distribution, distribution version, KDE version s/he’s talking about. Constructive? Zero, nada.
What i’d like to see is several things. I don’t have a real priority, since i’m very glad with GNU/Linux distro (mainly Debian GNU/Linux). However i do have criticism to various free software projects as a whole, X has some problems. Regarding desktop i’d like to see a X implementation which has *real* transparancy (so no imlib hacks). Y, recently in OSnews, seems like a good replacement but this would take a looong time to implement from scratch. Then there’s also this cosmetic problem which doesn’t allow me to move my MPlayer without losing the graphics. AmigaOS, MorhpOS and Zeta/BeOS can do this, which is nice. Also, i’d like to see E17 once, but with E16 i can still live, too. If that’s what you call innovation on the desktop, ok. What i call innovation on the desktop is the easy choice between 30 free WM/DE’s. I have yet to see a proprietary OS which allows me this.
Package Management is wonderful in my distro (Debian GNU/Linux). It’s wonderful i never had big problems with Sid [except libc 1 time], let alone with Woody/Potato/Slink.
I’m happy.
“Sykes, we have to get this capitalist vs. communist nonsense from you everyday..”
I didn’t use those labels.
Bill Sykes writes: “This programming for the benefit of the community doesn’t work. If you look at GNU/Linux as a whole it shows too.”
“Straw man. You don’t state futher logical thinking after your last sentence, which is a conclusion.”
Well the last version of Linux that I had installed was Rehat 7.1. Before that I had tried Caldera 2.6 I believe, the disks aren’t handy. Before that I tried Redhat 5.0. Aong time back I used Coherent which came with many GNU and GNU type tools.
DOS with Desqview was my main OS though. I bought a sound card and found that to really utilize it I needed Windows 3.1. After that I have used Windows exclusively.
I find that Linux (at the level most users experience it from a box) is a bunch of seperate apps and tools that fail to work together. I feel that is mainly because it is written by a bunch of people that don’t work together but as individuals. It shows in the product that is produced.
“Users should not even KNOW about Linux, they should only know Gnome or KDE. Linux is a kernel, no user in there right mind would or should know about it. Easy as that, I mean does Microsoft tell you about KERNEL32.DLL etc, no.”
Aren’t Linux kernel developers users too?
I find the comparision between Microsoft out of line. The Windows CLI is inferiour to the various shells available on a *NIX. No readline, tab completion, extensible scripting, to name a few. GNU/Linux users should have a choice between CLI and GUI configuring and should be invited to learn. Something which MS Windows does not invite one to, because it does things for user and uses all these graphical toy boxes with animals et al.
Frankly, i don’t even care at all for lazy users. I hope those will either change or stay with a LazyOS. If i look on other structures (communities), lazy people blow it up for the hard working people who do try their best to achieve something.
By fearl (IP: —.ph.ph.cox.net) wrote “I can’t stand how comfused society seems to be about what exactly Linux is. I am not being a GNU zealot either, I just don’t like that people name a system after one of the smallest parts of that system… LAME!”
Not the fault of people only. For example, Gentoo Linux is called […] and RedHat Linux is called […] and Mandrake Linux is called […] and Slackware Linux is called […]. With such a name, you don’t learn your userbase they’re using GNU/Linux. I think the media also contributes to this. Perhaps people will think when they hear about Debian GNU/FreeBSD or Debian GNU/NetBSD
i can’t seem to find a reason which justifies calling a Linux distribution Linux.
By Nathan O. (IP: —.pinnacle-exhibits.com) wrote: “Hate to say it, but if I could integrate Linux with Windows even better than is currently possible (which is pretty decent work, all things considered), it’d be easy to sneak a Linux box in one of these days, then tell my boss that my job is easier because of “that machine over there. Oh, it doesn’t run Windows, is the thing. See…” then start in to a nice sales jive
”
Tons of LiveCD’s, Xen, WINE, CrossOver, free software ported to Windows, stuff like ZipSlack.
I wish they’d just do something about the fonts in X. That’s what bugs me most about using Linux as a desktop OS. The fonts are horrid. I can’t understand why they haven’t been able to correct this situation by now??
Just yesterday I was playing with Mandrake 9.1, and I couldn’t stand surfing the web with it because the fonts were so crappy. I don’t know if other people have better vision than I do or what, but I find the fonts in X very harsh on my eyes. Not comfortable to read.
By Bill Sykes (IP: —.75.214.200.Dial1.SaintLouis1.Level3.net) writes “Well the last version of Linux that I had installed was Rehat 7.1.”
This is not a version of Linux. This is a version of the Linux distribution called RedHat. There is no Linux kernel 7.1, see http://www.kernel.org
“Before that I had tried Caldera 2.6 I believe, the disks aren’t handy.”
Which disks? Why not? Oh well, i don’t know about Caldera (SCO), and i don’t care a dime about them.
“Before that I tried Redhat 5.0. Aong time back I used Coherent which came with many GNU and GNU type tools.”
Very old. It’s the same like saying things about Windows 98
“I find that Linux (at the level most users experience it from a box) is a bunch of seperate apps and tools that fail to work together.”
They seem to work wonderful here. What’s the level most users experience it from a box? Why do they fail to work together? Which seperate apps actually do?
Perhaps you’ll like a *BSD more because it’s an OS instead of a distribution. Several people work on it as an OS, instead of some on the kernel, some on compiler, some on a distribution of the combined software.
“I feel that is mainly because it is written by a bunch of people that don’t work together but as individuals.”
I feel this as 2 fallacies since you still fail to argument your statements. You do not proof, in any way, that your GNU/Linux experiences with the distribution of Caldera 2.6.1, RedHat 5.0 and 7.1 are because of ”they don’t work together but work as individuals”. You do not proof they don’t work together, either.
“I wish they’d just do something about the fonts in X. That’s what bugs me most about using Linux as a desktop OS. The fonts are horrid. I can’t understand why they haven’t been able to correct this situation by now??
Just yesterday I was playing with Mandrake 9.1, and I couldn’t stand surfing the web with it because the fonts were so crappy. I don’t know if other people have better vision than I do or what, but I find the fonts in X very harsh on my eyes. Not comfortable to read.”
Check if XFS (X Font Server) is running: ps aux | grep xfs
If it doesn’t, start it: /etc/init.d/xfs start
Also check out Mandrake forums/mailinglists.
Search if the question is already asked. If not, don’t feel eager not to ask.
If not, don’t feel eager not to ask.
Triple negative! Well played, sir!
is a unified library. One that dosent have to be updated every couple of months because of a new release
“They seem to work wonderful here. What’s the level most users experience it from a box? Why do they fail to work together? Which seperate apps actually do?”
If I am using Open Office how do I link a LAN diagram from the flow charting app to a document? If I have a .jpg in a spreadsheet and double click on it will GIMP open up in the document and let me edit the .jpg or .png as the case maybe?
Please give me some examples of how “they seem to work for you”
“If I am using Open Office how do I link a LAN diagram from the flow charting app to a document?”
I’m not an open office expert, i don’t know what a “LAN diagram” is and i don’t know what a “flow charting app” is. Can you enlighten me on these 2 definitions?
“If I have a .jpg in a spreadsheet and double click on it will GIMP open up in the document and let me edit the .jpg or .png as the case maybe?”
Which spreadsheet? Why should GIMP open it? There are other programs which can edit a .png/.jpg as well. Just save the picture in question, start up GIMP and open the .png/.jpg
“they seem to work for you”
My WM (Enlightenment) doesn’t allow me to bind an extention to an app. I don’t want that either, because in Windows and KDE/GNOME i always misclick somewhere/something and then weird things pop up. I rather do these things myself, but i know one can set up such things in KDE/GNOME. I don’t know if such would cooperate with non-DE apps.
As for all my other apps, all work fine exactly as i want to. I finetuned my desktop a lot. I mainly run Firebird, a few Eterms, Enlightenment and sometimes Xmms. Chat and server programs are outsourced. Sometimes i run GIMP, and so far i’ve done everything i want with it, because the documentation is very good. Any other apps you run?
What about the other elements in our discussion. No proof for or analysis on
“I feel that is mainly because it is written by a bunch of people that don’t work together but as individuals.” ?
@anontroll: That’s a terrible idea. First, it sucks for networked environments. What do you do when you want to keep your apps on a central server (for ease of administration)? That’s why the whole /usr thing exists. Second, seperate directories for programs plays hell with your PATH. One thing that royally sucks about developing on Windows is that there is no sane idea of a standard binary path, so your build-scripts have to go through hoops pointing at specific application directories. Third, what is up with the caps and the spaces? One of the reasons the Windows CLI sucks so badly is that it does stupid things like that. “progams” and “home” are just as easy to understand as “Program Files” and “Documents and Settings” but infinately easier to type. Lastly, its unnecessary. The user should have no knowledge of where apps are installed. They should just be command-names in their path (for CLI folks) or links in their menus (for GUI folks). The UI does not need to be any more complex than that. At that point, the FHS can be constructed for ease of maintainence and administration rather than ease of use.
@xander – Fonts were something that were solved in Linux awhile ago. Gentoo, RedHat, and SuSE have great fonts out of box, the former via the MS Core Fonts and the latter via the Bitstream Vera fonts. Truetype is an excellent renderer (I’ve posted screenshots of my setup before) if your fonts are good quality. If Mandrake 9.1 has poor fonts, its the fault of the distro for not shipping high-quality fonts. If you want to improve your fonts, just copy the fonts from your Windows directory to /usr/share/fonts and restart X. You should then be able to select the MS fonts as your main system fonts, and everything should look peachy. If you want to splurge, buy some high-quality commercial Type1 or TrueType fonts, which should run you about $100-$150.
“I’m not an open office expert, i don’t know what a “LAN diagram” is and i don’t know what a “flow charting app” is. Can you enlighten me on these 2 definitions?
LAN – Local area network. Diagram – jeez look it up.
“Which spreadsheet?”
In Open Office
Why should GIMP open it? There are other programs which can edit a .png/.jpg as well. Just save the picture in question, start up GIMP and open the .png/.jpg”
Which program will open it in Open Office if I double click on the document with the linked .jpg?
“As for all my other apps, all work fine exactly as i want to. I finetuned my desktop a lot. I mainly run Firebird, a few Eterms, Enlightenment and sometimes Xmms. Chat and server programs are outsourced. Sometimes i run GIMP, and so far i’ve done everything i want with it, because the documentation is very good. Any other apps you run?”
Do you use your PC for doing any work?
“Chat and server programs are outsourced.”
Huh?
I can put up with GNU/Linux’s ideosycracies, different HIG’s, toolkits and so forth, however, until GNU/Linux gets mainstream applications from the Adobes, Micromedias and Quarks of the world, people are simply going to say, “why should I move when I can’t get the applications I want”.
People don’t run operating systems, they run applicaion on it. If the applications aren’t there, they end user might as well stare at a washing machine sitting idle for 14 hours.
The problems there come from the fact that the three major parts of the user experience all have different UI toolkits.
OpenOffice has its own toolkit.
Mozilla or Firebird has its own toolkit.
Either DE:
KDE has its own toolkit.
GNOME has its own toolkit.
Thats rather humorous considering that every new user I have talked to has never complained about different toolkits, because quite frankly as an end user, they don’t know what a toolkit is. Btw, the look ‘n feel can be neutralised quite easily with having a unified theme, which is what has been happening. Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last year, Mandrake, Red Hat and SuSE all have a unifed theme that spans qt, Mozilla and GNOME. As for OpenOffice.org, look at http://www.ximian.com and the interface tweaks they have done so that it takes on the theme of GNOME. http://www.sun.com/javadesktopsystem which SUN has done the same thing.
Most new users complain about a lack of support for the latest hardware and a lack of “off the shelf” applications from the same vendors they used to buy Windows software from.
“Linux does not work that is why Sun and IBM are using it. That is why Dell and other companies give you the option of ordering servers with linux installed.”
I wonder what Sun, IBM and Dell use to run thier bussiness?
Dell is a Microsoft fanboy that is now the poster child for Microsoft and dot-net, aka, yet another so-called “Linux supporter” selling out to Microsoft.
IBM, what are they? Linux? AIX? Windows? what? where is the unified direction? on one hand they praise Linux yet the amount of middleware available for Linux definately doesn’t show this. Where is Websphere IDE, Rational, Lotus Smartsuite, Lotus Notes and so forth. OUt of the $1billion so-called money they spent, they would have been alot better off purchasing Corel and opensourcing their whole product line for people to port to Linux rather than investing $1billion of this fictional money into projects already under way. NGPL, what a waste considering that a better solution was already in the works, before NGPL jumped on the schene. JFS, do we really need another Filesystem? how about getting the features working on the filesystems that are already included with the kernel.
Porting Lotus Smart Suite and Notes would really help Linux alot. IBM is the company that could put alot apps to Linux. I believe it is IBM’s best interest to keep Linux small time. No large technology corporation is going to fully support Linux. They are afraid of it because they can’t own it.
Can’t people see how Suse and Redhat? are trying to get handle on some sort of intellectual property they can call thier own. OpenExchange.
Yeah, they do complain. They complain all the time.
The end users come out beating their chest and screeching stuff like, “this thing has no unified look and feel” or it feels to quote the message I replied to all “glued together”.
No they do not talk about or know about toolkits. It is not the language they use.
I have not been hiding under a rock. And a theme is not going to do the job. When the apps, the widgets, the preferences and everything acts different from app to app then users complain. I have actually done a linux workstation rollout so I know and on top of that I don’t understand the arrogant out of hand tone you are taking with me in your message.
I use Epiphany myself so my browser has the same look, feel and behavior as the rest of my desktop apps since I use Gnome. I use Abiword for light text processing and gnumeric for spreadsheets. Still, when I have to look over some large word document I have to break out OpenOffice’s Writer.
I use Ximian on my Suse box at work. It is nice but not quite the same at all as having a real gtk2 version of OpenOffice. A gtk2 app does not act like a XUL app or QT app or a OpenOffice app. Oh yeah, people do notice.
This is coming from a person that does real work from a linux workstation no MS in my cube every single day.
Which program will open it in Open Office if I double click on the document with the linked .jpg?
If you insert a graphic and then doubleclick you get a line waiting for you type in text over your graphic. However, OpenOffice has built-in drawing functions for editing graphics.
You can create your LAN drawing in Dia or Kivio or there is an old X app that was designed for the sole purpose of lan drawings save it off as a jpeg or whatever and then insert it into your spreadsheet.
Do you use your PC for doing any work?
I love this one.
Just say that you like Windows and you prefer it and be done with it. The “I hate Gnu/Linux and must diss you” thing on a discussion of what user want from Linux is really tiresome.
I am a Unix sysadmin who works from a linux workstation. All the engineering, programming (we write unix apps), and Q&A folks work from linux workstations in my office.
Here was my day at work.
I worked on a consolidated list of third party applications used by my business group in all environments doing this in Gnumeric and saving it in xls format.
I used gaim to coordinate with the tester across the office on when to start an implementation of a new app in the Development environment.
Replying to emails and sending out meeting requests in Evolution.
Listening to my tunes in Rhythmbox. Ripping a CD with Grip (I have Sound Juicer at home and like it better BTW) in the background.
I wrote some basic notes in Abiword on a task list for a new server install and sent it out in rtf format.
I highlighted about ten files in Nautilus and used my Naut script “SCP Files to Location” to send the ten files to a remote server.
Using gnome-terminal and vi worked on a new build script and make files on remote servers.
Browsed the web with Galeon since it is Ximian at work (I prefer Epiphany and use it at home).
I browsed over to the network share in Nautilus I was working in and copied the script file to my desktop and did more editing in Anjuta because I had a syntax error in one loop I was not seeing in vi from the Solaris box.
For the hell of it I hacked together two graphics together with the gimp and sent it to the networked color printer. Put the company logo into the installer I am using for the packaging for the program I am building.
Oh yeah, I looked up a word in the dictionary app.
Yeah, man, I do real work every single day.
As far as my “Do you use your PC for doing any work?” I was responding to dpi and this (of course I am sure you are aware of that):
“As for all my other apps, all work fine exactly as i want to. I finetuned my desktop a lot. I mainly run Firebird, a few Eterms, Enlightenment and sometimes Xmms. Chat and server programs are outsourced. Sometimes i run GIMP, and so far i’ve done everything i want with it, because the documentation is very good. Any other apps you run?”
Does it look like he is doing much work with his PC to you? Go back and read the whole exchange between dpi and me.
ACK! posted:
“Just say that you like Windows and you prefer it and be done with it. The “I hate Gnu/Linux and must diss you” thing on a discussion of what user want from Linux is really tiresome.”
I don’t hate OS’s of anykind. I might hate using Linux, but it would be silly to hate an OS wouldn’t it?
Yeah you would think. However, the absolute anti-linux positions you have taken seem very negative toward not just using linux but towards the OS itself.
Please keep in mind if you have never seen me post before I am not a linux zealot and call things like I see them.
Unix engineers and programmers and such folks in my office work fine off of linux. Linux makes a fine webserver, dns servers, chrooted sftp server, Netvault backup server, Test Tracker Pro (bug tracking program) server etc..etc.. at my work.
We use Solaris on the nas servers and the database servers and a couple of mission critical app servers.
We use redundant MS 2003 servers for specialized apps that can’t be run on anything else. The managers use MS 2000 or XP pro and I would not have any other way. It works fine for them and it is not coming out of my business group’s budget but corporate IT.
A hetereogenous server and desktop environment is usually better than trying to shoehorn a platform into a solution it does not fit for.
In my experince with companies of 50 and less employees and not enough money for a full time IT staff MS products make the most sense. That is my opinion.
I don’t think that GPL software will ever be econmically as viable as normal copyrighted software. This is my opinion. It doesn’t mean I hate an Linux.
Some of the attitudes of the proponets, though I find quite disturbing. Attacking individuals that work for the shareholders of thier companies. We are about talking about personal attacks. Attacking poeples desire to make a profit from thier business. How is this going to help Linux find a place in business?
General ideas from some of the comments so far.
Linux needs:
One boot process that looks the same across all distros.
All GUIs should look and behave similar and be integrated with the hardware.
All applications should have the same look and feel. Plus integrate with each other.
Too many similar applications is confusing.
A standard file structure across all distros.
A standard configuration file structure for all applications.
A standard package system.
MacOSX and Microsoft Windows provides most of these. Linux as a whole will not. Common users have different needs than system admins. Linux can provide an experience for different types of users. That is why there are many distros, many GUIs, and many similar applications. Hopefully, it will stay that way.
If all distros have the same functionality, the same look and feel, and the same applications, what would make each distro different enough to warrant its existance?
Diversity is the key to growth, longevity, and creativity.
I don’t think that GPL software will ever be econmically as viable as normal copyrighted software.
A lot of real companies and the majority of web servers running on the ‘net use Apache (not sure if it is straight GPL) and Redhat is profitable. GNU software backs up and supports the corporate proprietary software my company and many other companies use.
Some of the attitudes of the proponets, though I find quite disturbing. Attacking individuals that work for the shareholders of thier companies. We are about talking about personal attacks. Attacking poeples desire to make a profit from thier business.
I hope you are not on one of those linux or gnu software equals socialism bents.
I read most of the replies to you after taking your comment to dpi as a linux cannot be used for real work remark.
Where did people say that companies should not make a profit?
I hope Havoc Pennington who works for Redhat sees his efforts turn to a profit for the big Shadowman corp.
I hope that the support Suse has given to the KDE group helps them to make a profit as well. I hope that Mission Critical Linux that puts out kimberlite and puts out Convolo DataGuard makes a profit and the sourceforge guys too.
A number of linux developers work for corporations. To wish ill on them would bode poorly on the community as a whole.
The key is to not get sucked into the hype and to see where linux fits into a larger consolidated server scheme.
If you work in a small organization with no dedicated IT staff then linux might not be the best solution for you just like Solaris or AIX or even BSD. If you worked in a small Mac shop of artists I imagine trying to introduce a big Compaq server with Win 2003 Server on it would be problematic.
@Sykes: Hmm, my desktop doesn’t consist of much more than KOffice, Kopete, Konsole, and Konqueror. With those 4 apps, I could do 99% of my work. Koffice imports ours simple technical documentation well enough, and it exports to PDF for professional-looking documents. Kopete allows me to keep in contact with friends, which, while not work related, is necessary for my sanity. Konqueror lets me browse the internet, which covers most of my research and documentation reading needs. Konsole is the major app. Konsole is my complete IDE, my file manager, my documentation editor and my ftp/scp client.
@Scorched Earth: Your statement that too many similar applications is confusing is frightening. In a healthy free market, there are *supposed* to be lots of similar applications. People are supposed to choose whichever alternative best suits their needs. That ensures the continued progress and improvement of the software industry. While it might be *easy* to know that you’re supposed to use Office for word processing and spreadsheets, and that you’re supposed to use IE for internet browsing, etc, that’s ultimately a very unhealthy situation for the industry. Its all basic economics — what’re they teaching in schools these days?
A lot of real companies and the majority of web servers running on the ‘net use Apache (not sure if it is straight GPL) […]
Apache uses its own licence, the ASL (http://www.apache.org/LICENSE.txt). It’s not compatible with the GPL but it’s quite similar to the BSD licence.
In my experince with companies of 50 and less employees and not enough money for a full time IT staff MS products make the most sense. That is my opinion.
Or they could a thin client setup from SUN loaded with StarOffice and so forth. Buy one of their 2 way SPARC machines, SUN Ray clients, bobs ya uncle, everything is working. If you need it setup, a few hundred dollars later, again, you will be able to start working out of the box.
I don’t think that GPL software will ever be econmically as viable as normal copyrighted software. This is my opinion. It doesn’t mean I hate an Linux.
I wouldn’t agree with that assertion. Something more accurate would bet that Linux will never make super huge profit margins like Microsoft or IBM, however, they will be profitable. The big money, however, will come from hardware, software and services packages.
Businesses don’t want to concern themselves with the day to day running of IT, they just want it to work like any other piece of business equipment. We have too many IT people here who think that people buy IT equipment for the sake of having IT, which is incorrect (obviously!). IT is seen as an investment to improve efficiency, IT companies have *FINALLY* realised that Joe Business person simply wants to tell the IT provider what he wants and simply let the IT provider who their work.
Some of the attitudes of the proponets, though I find quite disturbing. Attacking individuals that work for the shareholders of thier companies. We are about talking about personal attacks. Attacking poeples desire to make a profit from thier business. How is this going to help Linux find a place in business?
I don’t know. That is the big problem with alot of Linux users, alot of passion, very little fore thought about what they say. Just look at the threats I got for simply saying that Solaris is a superior solution to Linux on the server. This is why people look at the Linux community and ask themselves, “what the fork is happening there?”.
Porting Lotus Smart Suite and Notes would really help Linux alot. IBM is the company that could put alot apps to Linux. I believe it is IBM’s best interest to keep Linux small time. No large technology corporation is going to fully support Linux. They are afraid of it because they can’t own it.
That is why I find it very hard to believe that IBM has a so-called “Linux statergy” when in actual fact they’re hell bent making sure that it is maginalised in comparision to their “real” UNIX equipment and software.
Yeah, they do complain. They complain all the time.
The end users come out beating their chest and screeching stuff like, “this thing has no unified look and feel” or it feels to quote the message I replied to all “glued together”.
There you go, that is PROOF that it doesn’t happen. End users DON’T talk about “Look ‘n Feel”, if they were to comment it would be along the lines of, “applications on linux look at different and are kind of strange in comparision to how I would normally use Windows”. That is what and end user would say, not “this thing has no unified look and feel”.
QT for C++ and GTK+ for C and a unified “look and feel” delivered by Galaxy Theme or Bluecurve Theme which makes QT/KDE and GNOME/GTK look and feel the same. The only one that standards out is OpenOffice which uses an operating system independent SAL which means it is easily portable. As for Mozilla, who cares? it has a skinned interface. Why don’t I whine like a sheila for 40minutes about how Microsoft Mediaplayer doesn’t use the same widgets as most Windows applications, or how about complaining about how confusing the command line window is on Windows XP because the window border doesn’t use the Luna them when the rest of the operating system does.
I have not been hiding under a rock. And a theme is not going to do the job. When the apps, the widgets, the preferences and everything acts different from app to app then users complain. I have actually done a linux workstation rollout so I know and on top of that I don’t understand the arrogant out of hand tone you are taking with me in your message.
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, Wordperfect and Word don’t have the same location for their preferences! my brain is going to explode!!!! stop the insanity! too complex for minuet brain to process!
I use Epiphany myself so my browser has the same look, feel and behavior as the rest of my desktop apps since I use Gnome. I use Abiword for light text processing and gnumeric for spreadsheets. Still, when I have to look over some large word document I have to break out OpenOffice’s Writer.
I use Ximian on my Suse box at work. It is nice but not quite the same at all as having a real gtk2 version of OpenOffice. A gtk2 app does not act like a XUL app or QT app or a OpenOffice app. Oh yeah, people do notice.
So, how do you propose porting OpenOffice to GTK2 if you know jack-fork-squat about the OpenOffice SAL? Read the SAL then come back to me claiming that you can implement it and re-arrange all the menus to suite the GNOME HIG.
Stop trying to kid yourself, the only operating system had as a good unified look and feel is MacOS X. Windows doesn’t even come close, the only reason why it is popular has nothing to do with how great it is, it is popular because there is a huge ISV network that provide the applications people want.
People run computers to run applications to get work done, they don’t run operating systems so that they can cream themselves with delight knowing that the screeensave is cool.
I wouldn’t agree with that assertion. Something more accurate would bet that Linux will never make super huge profit margins like Microsoft or IBM, however, they will be profitable.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This is exactly what economic theory would expect. Capitalism guarantees continual improvement of products and continual growing of resources, not large profit margins for companies. In fact, as markets approach perfect competition, economic profit approaches zero, and companies subsist on marginal profit. The fact that profits margins are dwindling in the software industry is a simple byproduct of the fact that software is becoming a commodity, just like packaged meat and canned soup.
Support for my ADSL modem 😛 as it is now I have to dual boot into Windows XP on my home machine to connect to internet.
I’ll be buying a new (supported) modem soon thought so it isn’t the end of the world, but it’s still a nucianse that it won’t work with the current one.
1). More sponsored kernel-space engineers fueled by Big Companies. Just like IBM/SUN/SGI/HP are doing.
2). More casual programmers experimenting, researching, and developing user space tools.
3). More marketing for Linux
4). More hardware vendors writing drivers(open or closed) and providing support for Linux.
5). An open source body devoted to User interface design, research and standards.
6). Simpler man/info pages.
7). More developers shying away from the horrible design features of MacOS and Windows.
8). Two more X window systems, Xfree really needs competition.
9). More DEs
10). More competition for Linux. As it is now, Linux has very little competition except the *BSDs.
A short look at windows applications: Photoshop, Nero 6, WinonCD and many others. All of these programs have a different UI-philosophy, that is far from being consistent. I don’t see the point. There is almost as much consistency in Linux-Desktops as in Windows. My girlfriend installed MDK 9.1 two weeks ago and she never argued about inconsistency on her KDE-Desktop. She argued about that horrible module-based Nero 6 on her Windows partition. There is something to learn if you switch to Linux, but if you would make it the other way you would also have to learn. But for every thing I have to argue about Linux, there is a little thing on the other side that makes me argue about windows. Linux misses some apps like Quicktime etc. people are used to – and no, wine and Crossover is not the answer. It is good to have them, but I want it native.
RE: EZ (IP: —.nada.kth.se) – Posted on 2003-10-24 07:48:59
Support for my ADSL modem 😛 as it is now I have to dual boot into Windows XP on my home machine to connect to internet.
I assume that it is a USB modem. They tend to be more of a problem than they’re worth, however, since most telcos give them out to customers who sign up for a 12month contract, many customers are quite happy to save AUS$150-AUS$250 by not buying an ADSL modem off the shelf.
Rayiner Hashem (IP: —.res.gatech.edu) – Posted on 2003-10-24 06:44:00
I wouldn’t agree with that assertion. Something more accurate would bet that Linux will never make super huge profit margins like Microsoft or IBM, however, they will be profitable.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This is exactly what economic theory would expect. Capitalism guarantees continual improvement of products and continual growing of resources, not large profit margins for companies. In fact, as markets approach perfect competition, economic profit approaches zero, and companies subsist on marginal profit. The fact that profits margins are dwindling in the software industry is a simple byproduct of the fact that software is becoming a commodity, just like packaged meat and canned soup.
Well, if you look at Perfect Competition and the GPL license, both of them work hand it hand. Perfect Competition is the pinacle of capitalism when all the distorting factors are removed and there is pure competition taking place.
A perfectly competive market place has the following market structure in which all firms sell an identical product, are price takers. have a relatively small market share, buyers know the nature of the product being sold and the prices charged by each firm and the industry is characterised by freedom of entry and exit.
So when it boils down to it what makes the difference is alliances, brands and extra valued products that are added ontop of Linux. Linux is the perfect example of a pefect competive market in action. Strong brands are pushed, anyone can enter the market and start their own distribution, the market shares by the distributions is pretty much shared nicely with no one distro with an overwhelming majority and most importantly, all distros are basically selling the same product.
Imagine if Windows was opensource and there were multiple versions each competing with each other, you would then end up with a superior product as each vendor would try to add something to push themselves ahead, then another vendor will add ontop of that development and because of the nature of the GPL, there is a constant push to move forward where as today companies can develop and sit on their lorals for a few months knowing that it will take time for the competition to catch up. Is that what we really want or would customers prefer seeing a constant movement foward of constant improvement.
…is a linux gui (gnome/kde/whatever) ‘start’ menu that doesn’t suck. i want to be able to drag and rearrange the shortcuts, i want to right-click rename, etc. i don’t want to find that adding a single program can blow the whole menu out of the water!
that’s honestly it. that’s all i want out of linux at the moment. the latest kernels have made the desktop snappier, all my hardware is supported, Opera have made the browsing experience pain-free, and everything else ‘does exactly what it says on the tin’, so…
There you go, that is PROOF that it doesn’t happen. End users DON’T talk about “Look ‘n Feel”,
Depends on the linux users you support. I support Unix programmers and Q&A staff.
Programmers complain like this and I have implemented a linux workstation to programmers and Q&A staff.
If someone says that linux feels glued together this is one of the reasons.
Why so defensive?
I use linux on a day to day basis and have a short list of rather minor criticisms and you blast me like this:
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, Wordperfect and Word don’t have the same location for their preferences!
BTW, I always like WordPerfect better than word :->.
and
Stop trying to kid yourself, the only operating system had as a good unified look and feel is MacOS X.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the major groups could work toward a real unified look and feel through the desktop.org project?
You make it sound like I am a Win troll on linux list. I actually admire some Mac OS X features and qualities and would like my fav desktop OS linux to be more like that.
So what?
So, how do you propose porting OpenOffice to GTK2 if you know jack-fork-squat about the OpenOffice SAL? Read the SAL then come back to me claiming that you can implement it and re-arrange all the menus to suite the GNOME HIG.
Realizing something as a shortcoming or a reason why someone feels that things feeled glued together is not the same as saying I have a solution.
It is not as if I am crying that linux sucks. (look at the conversation between Bill Sykes and me and others on doing real work on linux).
My actual solution would be more for the Gnome project to actually focus on the Gnome Office project and get projects like Abiword, Gnumeric, and others (the proposed Presentation tool that never came to fruition) tied together to the point I do not have to use non-gtk2 tools.
As a non-programmer when I have a suggestion for office projects or find bugs I report them. When there are errors in makes for different platforms I send in messages to the lists.
I do my part as much as I can.
Why don’t I whine like a sheila for 40minutes about how Microsoft Mediaplayer doesn’t use the same widgets as most Windows applications
We can do better than MS or Windows if we dare to think outside of that beige box we have our UI minds wrapped around.
people fall in the same trap.
The demands of the home user (the stuff which is almost exclusively focused on in threads like these) are pretty much 100% opposite of the demands which corporate administrators want from a desktop OS. They don’t want people installing random software. The system’s configurability should be limited to whether or not the mouse buttons are swapped. 3D support for the lame i8xx extreme graphics chips commonly found in corporate desktop systems? What for?
The system only needs to be configurable for corporate administrators, and locked from tampering by the corporate users. Freedom sucks from an administrative point of view.
4, 6, 7, 9, and 10 suggest that what they want is OS X, if they want a Unix like that, and most of the rest make no sense as linux already has those! security? stability? yeah linux is short there!
the more articles like this i read, the more i am convinced that the average company could change to all linux and BSD servers and mixed linux and OS X desktop/notebooks and they would see an increase in productivity.
windows products are a festering boil an the backside of computing, and yet the major reasons to change from them to the other 3 major operating systems are listed as things people would like to see. clearly they haven’t looked.
i guess this proves the power of FUD/marketing.
Linux isn’t yet ready for home users who want to run genealogy software
What about Gramps? http://gramps.sourceforge.net/ Its a great piece of software for genealogy.
What linux needs is to have hardware companys realize that linux is here to stay and make linux drivers for there products. Other than that i would change nothing if you make linux to simple it would become like microsoft windoze. who’s ploy is to keep the user in the dark and feed them sh17. If you want plug and play linux get Lindows. And you will get what you deserve. linux needs to be hard to force you to understand what is going on with your os
I have no idea where they go or how to install’em. I have never been able to install the Nvidia binaries properly.
See http://www.nvidia.com . They have a nice installer. Just follow the instructions.
We also need a warning msgbox that tells the user that the RPM you just double-clicked didn’t install properly because it’s missing some dependance files.
Go to http://www.ximian.com and install RedCarpet. It’s easy , but it only works if you have an working internet connection…
Remove some folders. There must be more than 50+ and have no need for such complexity.
Why? You’re supposed to work in your home most of the time.
1 partition should be enough for everything. ONLY 1 for a Linux Installation (swap and root included).
Except for the swap, you can have a working system on one partition. What advantages I have in a swap file?.
This is nonsense.
There are more. Way more things to fix…
There where MORE</R>, seems to me NONE (so far…)
.
“IBM, what are they? Linux? AIX? Windows? what? where is the unified direction? on one hand they praise Linux yet the amount of middleware available for Linux definately doesn’t show this. Where is Websphere IDE, Rational, Lotus Smartsuite, Lotus Notes and so forth.”
Websphere is available and runs on Linux. Lotus Notes is being looked at from what I understand, as Domino server, which Notes requires, runs on Linux as well. No idea on Rational though.
Eterm with a CLI app can do work. Ssh, mutt, lynx, fetchmail, vim – you name it. I don’t need all the fancy GUI, Enlightenment itself is fancy enought. I do about everything (local|remote) on CLI. On slower boxes (non-home) i run Fluxbox with Firebird, xterm et voila. So yes, it works perfectly for me.