First of all, we should agree on what the definition of “ready for the desktop” stands for. For some of us it refers to a graphical user interface in which applications have icons and can be launched in an intuitive manner without the need of complex commands. Even a Commodore 64 running Geos could be “ready for the desktop” by this definition, but the fact is that when we read “ready for the desktop” we understand “ready to replace Microsoft Windows”.
Introduction
But this definition alone is not enough, most of the people and the mass media understands that replacing Windows is just not about booting something different than the Microsoft’s operating system, it refers to some conceptions such as commercial support, document compatibility, availability of office tools and other mainstream applications.
Above all, an operating system aspiring to replace the Microsoft’s product must able to provide at least the same commitment to the end user as Windows in political and software terms. This may sound like a contradiction in these days of security flaws but I’ll develop the idea further in this article. We all agree that we can teach our parents how to browse the Web or write a “Word” document with Linux or, better yet, we can use some Windows theme that may fool the eyes of more than one Microsoft veteran at the first glance. This is not the point though. By “ready for the desktop” we refer to a system that can be used by someone without the help of a geek-relative or a specialized magazine. More than that, we want to see Linux preinstalled by default by most of the top PC manufacturers. We want the latest games and hardware to be compatible with Linux. We want device drivers written by the same companies that produce hardware and not by computer science students in their free time.
We know what “ready for the desktop” means, but what is Linux?
A kernel. Repeat after me, a kernel. No, it’s not Suse and neither RedHat. Those are products that use the Linux kernel. But they are flavors of Linux, aren’t they?. No, they are products that use specific Linux kernels. This means that an application compiled with one kernel in mind may not work with another one. For example, at the moment some distributions use the 2.4.x while others the 2.6.x kernel. An application targeting Suse Linux is thus not necessarily compatible with RedHat Linux even though we read the word Linux in both products. Each distributor compiles and re-packs the mainstream applications for their implementations.
The truth is that we don’t have Oracle or Java for “Linux” but for some “certified” distributions, in essence, conceptually “different Windows contenders”. So, at the end of the day, a “Linux application” is source code that you expect to compile on most distributions, and the kernel alone is not granted to make it compile, the host will probably need a concrete shell and a precise set of shell utilities. It’s not uncommon to find out that a make script calls some shell utility that our distribution of choice doesn’t happen to have. When we refer to a “Windows” application, we refer to a program that we expect to run in any kind of “Windows” flavour (unless it is a specialized software that needs some special feature of the NT kernel series such certain server applications). If I have a CD-ROM Encyclopedia for Windows I expect to run it without problems on Windows 95, 98, ME, XP, 2000, etc. If I have the same product for Linux, it will be compatible with very specific distributions and if the software is in binary form it will probably brake after some years because we all know that binary longevity in Linux is not granted. I’m not talking about the ELF format, I speak in a generic way, meaning that binaries relay on too many dynamic libraries that are usually related to the target kernel release. Linux binaries usually don’t work out of the box, they often cry complaining about the lack of dynamic libraries or worse yet, glibc.
KDE & Gnome
The point here is not which one is better. There are countless articles on the matter, the problem is that we have two of them. Please, let’s not talk about personal taste and freedom of choice. Let’s talk instead of incongruity, incompatibility and development effort. Should car drivers choose whether the gas pedal must be at the left or the right?. No, they may want different colors or seats. We expect to apply the lessons we have learned when we have obtained a driver’s license in all cars. Could we say the same about Linux?. Are our private lessons on Lindows be of help to our parents when they receive their new computer running Suse or Mandrake?. If an old relative calls you from a long distance telling you that he runs Linux and that he can’t get into the Internet, can you give him instructions as clear as “Press Start, choose Run…, type cmd and then ipconfig”?. No, because a Linux desktop doesn’t have a precise way to open the command prompt. The most elemental tool, the shell, changes icon location according to the Window manager . Pressing some strange Alt+Ctrl combination to obtain the console mode is not a option, many LCD monitors don’t even support this text mode specially when it’s not the standard 80×25.
There are struggling efforts to integrate these two desktops, to make a Gnome application look like a KDE application and vice versa. It’s a good start, but if we intend to make both environments look the same, why should we have two different graphical APIs? There should be one “official” desktop for the end-user. The remaining toolkits don’t need to die, they can be used for academic or hobby purposes.
Running Gnome & KDE at the same time is only good for a transitional period of time. The X environment is already heavy, what about loading all the libraries for both KDE and Gnome just because the developer wants to choose the API she likes?. The soap opera doesn’t end here. What about when the developer chooses to use the latest API and asks the user to download a recompile the latest KDE/Gnome release?. Horrible. Bundling the latest toolkit library even statically compiled is not a necessarily a bad thing. The end-user shouldn’t even know what a toolkit is all about, she just wants to download, double click and go.
Poor low-level desktop integration
When Windows 95 arrived everybody complaining claiming it was just a “mask” and that underneath it was pure MS-DOS. I also was an sponsor of this concept at that time, but X is much more of a Mask for the command line based Linux distribution than Windows 95 for MS-DOS. I won’t get into the details of whether this is good or not for system stability, but the facts are clear for everybody: The Linux desktop is slow and poorly integrated. A getPixel()/putPixel() call is much more expensive in Linux than in Windows. Raise your hand if you thought “but you can project the desktop over the network”. 99% of the users don’t care about this, should we give them a two times times slower desktop just to leave the option open of sending a pixel write over the network?. The Linux desktop must get low-level graphic integration as soon as possible. There are some projects on the matter but half of the developers consider it not worth the price.
Besides graphics, the integration with the command-line environment is also poor. If you change a setting using the command line you are usually “on your own” and you are not expected to see these changes replicated in the graphical version of the tool. The graphical configuration tools are aimed for “those who don’t know how to edit config text files” which is in my own opinion an awful approach. Instead graphical tools should provide “an additional” way of modifying these files. How many times did you find a script that recalls another one with a comment that says “don’t touch this, generated automatically by Kjoe”?. The Linux desktop will never get far with this kind of hacks. It is true that part of the problem is that many utilities such as sendmail have configuration files so badly designed that it is very hard to reconstruct them by using a GUI parser, but hey, what about XML?. Every application should be able to be configured either by hand using a text editor or by a GUI application using ONE configuration file. Programmers should start to write “GUI friendly” configuration files.
Mainstream applications
I don’t understand why so many people complain about the lack of applications for Linux. This is probably its strongest side. It is true that some king applications such as Cubase (for audio production) or Photoshop are missing, but these applications will never get ported to Linux unless it first performs some house tidying (define a standard desktop and remove X or use in a way that “doesn’t hurt”). Although a personal example is always subjective I can say that while I use a Windows XP as my primary desktop, I don’t use a single application that isn’t available on Linux, in fact most of them were born on Linux and have been ported to Windows; Mozilla and OpenOffice, just to name a few. Most of these applications run much slower on Linux. Even OpenOffice opens in less than two seconds (On an AMD 2500+ PC). I have Unix tools installed so I can use most of the common UNIX shell commands. Windows only provides me a well-integrated hardware-friendly desktop. I could be running these applications on Mac OS X as well.
What we need
Let’s leave aside those who want Linux as a hacker tool or as a “matter of choice” product; for those Linux is already a stellar system, however, a system based 100% in open standards and open source software, free at least in its most basic form, and as easy and fast as Windows is the dream of most of us. We want to develop for the big public not just for other freaks like us. But everything comes at a price, which many of the hardcore developers aren’t willing to pay because many of them don’t understand that “Better” is many times the enemy of “Good”. In my humble opinion, a Linux based solution that aims to replace Windows should consider at least these ideas:
a) A Foundation Operating System
We have a kernel (Linux), not an operating system. An operating system contains a kernel and other applications like the shell that runs “shell utilities” such las ls, cd, mv, etc. It also has a boot loading system (LILO in many cases). The kernel also accepts modules that extends it and allows the operating system to recognize base and new hardware. As Linux is just the kernel, let’s call this the FOS (Foundation Operating System). The FOD should provide a standard kernel (with a granted number of drivers), one shell by default, a standard set of utilities and a configuration system for base services such as TCP/IP and hard drives. In practice, any distribution is already a FOD on its own, but what we need is a common foundation. The United Linux project seems to have this idea in mind, but not all distributions adhere to this initiative.
b) Binary longevity
Breaking binaries is a bad thing and it’s hard to find an excuse to justify it. The promise of light-speed processor-specific applications didn’t materialize. Nobody wants to spend 3 days compiling an operating system just to gain 20% of speed while a 20% faster processor maybe costs just 50 bucks more. The end-user should not need to have a development environment. It’s like saying that a car driver must have at home a shop to service his car. It is ok and also advisable to include as many interpreters as possible, including Perl, Python, Mono and Java. Applications for these interpreters should be distributed using some sort of FOS standard though. Newer kernels (and glibc libraries) should not break binaries compiled against older versions. Commercial software and games will never take off if binary longevity is not granted. Who wants to buy an expensive encyclopedia that will potentially brake with the next operating system upgrade?. Binary longevity doesn’t mean that all applications must be 386-compatible. Many Windows applications include portions of code that are activated if a given processor is installed. It’s also possible to bundle more than one binary as long as a default compatible one is supplied. The only incompatible binaries will be those that are compiled for radically different processors, for example PowerPC or Sparc. Binary longevity is end-user commitment.
c) Standard driver system
Drivers should be properly register in a given category (graphics, disc, etc). It should be straightforward to include and remove a driver either from the command line or the desktop. All drivers should be able to properly describe themselves. There must be an user-friendly driver tree in the file system for storing driver modules. Although Windows has a rather good system to install, uninstall and find drivers it is very hard to locate them using the command line. Most of them are mixed together and have short and non descriptive names such as NVD5443.SYS. It would be nice to be able to specify a driver at boot time when you need to include an unsupported device such as a SATA hard drive. It is very rude to ask for a “brand new kernel” just to be able to install the operating system.
d) A common well-integrated desktop
I don’t know whether it should be KDE, Gnome or something else, but it must be only one. The most important thing is that the desktop should be tightly integrated with the underneath command line environment. I don’t think that is is necessary to demand the presence of the graphical desktop. A bare-bones command-line foundation is according to me a good thing. (Most of the users will probably never choose not to install the GUI though). We all know how terrible is to repair Windows when it doesn’t boot in graphical mode. The point is that although is not necessary to allow 100% configuration through the GUI, the configuration files used should be the same as those used via the command line. For example, maybe you can’t change the MTU setting using the GUI interface but if you touch the file with a text editor, you still can change the IP address using the GUI without having two configuration files and without breaking something else. If the user breaks the text configuration file the GUI should suggest her to use the last working version. Standard folders such as “My Documents”must be provided . Applications should be packaged using a standard installer based on some sort of user-friendly script system. There should be a dedicated folder for applications, although the user may specify where to install them, a default “Program Files” folder is a must. Both on Windows and Mac OS X it is very clear where applications go once you install them, the same cannot be said about Linux. It is easy to locate the applications bundled by your distributor of choice, but if you download a new application and you forget when you installed it your are often lost.
Conclusion
As you can see most of the ingredients to integrate Linux into a winning operating system exist and are available now. We need standards and sage political decisions to prepare a good product ready for widespread distribution. If Linux continues to be driven by students who believe in freedom of choice and anarchy rather than in standards, with companies fighting to become the de facto standard alongside proposing their own proprietary systems we will never get there. I want to see the day when I can walk into a store and be able to purchase a so called “Linux application” that I will be able to install with the ease of any Windows and Mac OS X application. This is not possible at the moment, because “Linux” is just not ready for the desktop yet.
About the author:
I started computer programming in 1990. I have programmed in BASIC, C, Perl in the past and I’m currently specialized in Java technologies. I have used many operating systems including AmigsOS, Digital Unix, Slackware Linux and MS-Windows.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
Why? Because the monitor didn’t have a Plug ‘n’ Play
vendor name. Both Windows and Linux couldn’t figure out
what company made the freaking monitor.
the vendor name doesn’t matter because the edid (that’s the info struct you get from the PnP monitor) contains the timings supported by the monitor.
why xfree86 doesn’t use this properly is beyond me, i’ve seen it bork time after time even after running
xf86setup, later i found out that xf86setup doesn’t even work with xfree86 4.3. nice…
For me that “no screens found” error represents just how xfree86 is outdated.
I do agree that Linux is not ready for mainstream use but this guy has it all wrong. For starters:
In the discussion about how KDE and Gnome compete with each other he mentions his car analogy, about how all cars have the same basic interface. Hello? Have you ever driven a manual transmission? It is quite different from an automatic. In fact if you learn on an automatic is very difficult to learn the manual, much harder than any difference between KDE and Gnome.
Maybe we should have a standard desktop and many distros have tried to establish that (Gnome on Red Hat, KDE on Mandrake), its just that Linux’s current user base has resisted being tied to one desktop.
Another note, Windows doesn’t exactly have a standard interface either. The utilities to change system preferences are different if you move from Win 3.1 to 98 to 2000 to XP. The solution? When you call up Tech support they ask you which you are using and base the response on the answer. The same could be done with Linux.
As far as his whining about speed, that will vary from one system to another. I find that Linux works much faster than Windows 2000 on my dual boot computer. Besides, with the speed of modern computers, one OS being a tenth of a percent faster than the other isn’t really going to matter.
@ Bas
You really do amaze me with your comments once and a while.
If you are so happy with BeOS and/or SkyOS stick do that and do
not go trolling around here. You do not understand Linux.
Let me refresh: Linux is a kernel and its got a leader his name is
Linux Torvalds. This kernel is free and gets used by a lot of companies and organisations that use it to build either a complete distro that they sell or make a custom system that they use like google does. For this reason it is impossible to have one leader, there are dozen. You could always write the leader of Lindows, Xandros, Mandrake, RedHat, Suse etc. So is it clear now??
Did I say it was possible to have one leader? Please point me to that comment, I’d like to know where I said that. What I mean is: Linux needs one leader. I never said it was possible.
@ dpi
You still haven’t proven why a benovelant dictator hierarchy style works better than a democratic chosen core group (not one leader) or consensus.
1. SkyOS’ rapid development;
2. Microsofts dominance on the desktop market;
3a. Apple’s ‘dominance’ (too big a word, I guess, but you get my point) on the graphic design market;
3b. Apple’s dominance in the portable MP3/electronic music store industry.
All ‘companies’ led by one man.
Democratic chosen core group? You really don’t have a clue do you? Please point me to the place where the elections are held for the kernel group on the Linux kernel. Dude, they are asked/appointed, not elected! Where did you get that crazy idea?
Did I say it was possible to have one leader? Please point me to that comment, I’d like to know where I said that. What I mean is: Linux needs one leader. I never said it was possible.
Ehm, if A is needed while A is impossible, you try the alternatives B and C. What you propose is simply not realistic as i have pointed out 2 times now with intriguing questions which you evaded, failed to answer. Because there is no answer which supports your argument.
1. SkyOS’ rapid development;
2. Microsofts dominance on the desktop market;
3a. Apple’s ‘dominance’ (too big a word, I guess, but you get my point) on the graphic design market;
3b. Apple’s dominance in the portable MP3/electronic music store industry.
All ‘companies’ led by one man.
(Yeah and Google uses software not led by one men.
You have still not proven why consensus doesn’t work. Studies have proofed it is scalable in hierarchies up to 150 individuals under the best circumstances; hence it’ll be less in most hierarchies.)
SkyOS “rapid”? As i stated insignificant plus porting software is quite easy. The home user desktop is simply no big market. These people will mostly download and burn an ISO rather than buying it. They don’t want professional, payed support, they’ll ask a friend or the neighbor youth to fix the casual problem puting them a lil’ bit of EUR eventually, but no contract of support or professional pay rates at all. Because it ain’t worth it. The money lies in the corporate environments. These people cannot afford to use warez (yeah, some do…) hence the price vs quality argument is more fair, too. RedHat knows this, hence Fedora. Novell knows this, hence they chose Linux as their base to target corporate environment. Not Joe Desktopuser.
Market share says nothing about quality at all, and it is even more _laughable_ next to your SkyOS argument who don’t have any significant market share at all!
As for companies, no. They’re not by definition led by one person. They’re owned by stockholders and the board of directors to which the executes have responsibility to. That’s not a real dictatorship. You do think there is no consensus there? This is normal in NL too, those are called BV and NV. What you mean is VoF or eenmanszaak (which Apple, Google, Microsoft, Philips, Novell etc are all not equal to VoF / eenmanszaak).
Not to say examples 2, 3 are not succesful. However, many consensus-based or democratic core group chosen hierarchies _are_ succesful and that goes beyond things like FLOSS. I work as volunteer for a NGO in my free time, and i believe we are succesful in our efforts.
Democratic chosen core group? You really don’t have a clue do you? Please point me to the place where the elections are held for the kernel group on the Linux kernel. Dude, they are asked/appointed, not elected! Where did you get that crazy idea?
How about i wasn’t refering to the Linux kernel here, but rather to the way Debian, GNOME, NetBSD and FreeBSD work?
I feel i’m wasting my time with you. Later.
“3. Linux is virus-proof, eh? Hmmm. Really? Hmmm. http://www.viruslibrary.com/virusinfo/Linux.htm Next?”
Worm != virus, despite many people including AV vendors claiming otherwise. But yes, ELF infecting viruses are reality.
See also for example the ELF virus writing howto: http://www.lwfug.org/~abartoli/virus-writing-HOWTO/_html/
People simply said, “I don’t like Linux, it’s not my cup of tea” instead of “It’s not ready for the desktop, nobody should use it.”?
I also feel that Linux* is not ready for the desktop. (*Mandrake. It is all I have tried)
My experience with Mandrake:
1. The installation procedure was very easy, for the most part. I didn’t understand the need for two partitions, and at one point I was prompted to choose a drive or partition to place Lilo on. The “dev/” stuff was very confusing to me. I can accept that this may simply be ‘different’ than what I’m used to, but in Windows and BeOS, I can at least identify my drives and partitions because drive capacaity and free space are displayed to me. I don’t remember seeing this information in the Mandrake installer.
2. The first thing I noticed was that my monitor’s refresh rate was set too low, and it was giving me a headache. I looked around Mandarke and Google for an hour, and I never found a way to change it.
3. I tried to install a piece of software. To do this, I had to open a command line window and type in several lines of non-intuitive text. Then an error message told me that I needed to install 250+ development packages or libraries or something.
4. It was very slow compared to Windows XP on the same machine. After an hour of usage, opening a simple command line window would cause seven seconds of hourglass animation.
5. I wasn’t overwhelmed by its visual aesthetic. The fonts didn’t seem to be rendered correctly.
Here is a quote from this very forum thread:
——————-
“> hell after recompliing kernel module for ati 3d driver i still got no 3d!!!
maybe you forgot to use fglrxconfig (/opt/ati/bin/fglrxconfig) to set up the driver.”
——————-
On any “desktop” OS, I never want to have to compile anything, or “fglrxconfig” anything. I also never want to have to “$$$-.._][-CliPcLoPP_z7656%$AweSomEE” anything.
Having to type such inane things into a command line window is not conducive with being “ready for the desktop”.
I’d honestly like Linux (or some set of apps on a kernel, whatever definition of an OS is appropriate) to “get there” regarding normal desktop usability, as I enjoy choice.
I do think it is almost there. I just wish it was faster, and I wish the above issues were no longer present.
I don’t want people like you using it. In fact, stay off linux, let’s keep it pure. Intelligent users only please . Of course, most people will read that and realize I am kidding (mostly), but for those of you unable to grasp humor: It was a joke calm down!
He made a point about Linux just being a kernel and how specific products were just that. Then he went on to complain about KDE and Gnome, and argument debunked if he uses a specific distro that standardizes on one of the two. In fact, boot into RH and try Gnome and then KDE. Tell me about how different they feel; I doubt you notice much difference except that KDE’s menu has more stuff in it.
I’ll put up the first vote to never standardize on things like DE’s. Is Linux not ready for the desktop? Or is the desktop user not ready for Linux? Maybe we should quit trying to conform to the average Joe, and make the average Joe conform to Linux; after all, that’s how the real world works anyway.
…in my own opinion, of course, is the emergence of standards. For instance, although it may not be possible now, in a year or two, you might find that the only difference between GNOME and KDE is the toolkit! I’m no developer, that’s just an example.
Similarly, if all config files used the same syntax or what have you, it wouldn’t matter if you like a GUI tool or you prefer to edit by hand. Again, example.
What I hope to see from any distribution currently available and from any others that might be popping up in the near future, is adherence to standards. Autonomous package management (ie same package will install on any distribution) is a bonus in my book. My personal opinion is that if it’s not available for your distribution, try to make it available, maybe do it yourself or let packagers know – don’t say “Ah, someone else will tell them.”
Disclaimer: Haven’t read all of these comments.
Cheers,
Chris
As a normal user I find it increasingly hard to understand why in order for me to get an application to run properly/integrate with my existing desktop installation, I need to go to distribution provider to find one that they’ve packaged * – ask yourself: would the same thing be thought a good idea in the Windows world?
Well, it is almost the same in the windows world. As soon as some application gets reasonably successful or better than what Microsoft can offer, Microsoft will buy it and and package it for you. The list of such applications are long just think Stacker, MS-SQL Server,…
The article is about how to make Linux like Windows with no choice.
I’ve used Linux exclusively as a Desktop OS since late 2000. I have several companies using Windows, Linux and Mac Desktops. The users are not computer geeks, just average users.
As for non-techies: My parents use Linux, with no problems – and no worms, viruses or spyware. My best friend uses Linux. My kids use Linux. My wife is finishing up her doctorate work, running Linux.
Linux is great as a Desktop OS. Mandrake 10 is fast, and there is no lag when using X. If you want super fast, compile Gentoo. Speed is an issue when running a 266mhz machine, but a >1Ghz machine with 512Mb ram is fast enough for Desktop use in any OS.
If XP didn’t come pre-installed, pre-configured and take over 1/8 of your hard drive with a restore version, because you will need it, there is no hope whatsoever that it would be ready for the desktop. Every pundit known to man compares apples to chairs. I just finished my 32nd, yes, my 32nd convertion from Windows to linux for a friend of mine. When I OEM it, it is 9 times as easy as windows, simply because everything, from browsers to word processors to printer setup to scanners to digital cameras to photo software to photo albums to burning software to music players to CD players to internet set up to email are all INCLUDED. I refuse to support Windows for anyone, it is Linux or nothing. My Mom, 70+ years on Linux for over 3 years now, no problems and I get ZERO technical calls. Similar for all the others. Once a modem went bad, I told them the one to buy, not the one the store hawks, they plugged it in. Know what, they had to do NOTHING. NOTHING and dialup worked with ZERO changes.
When computers ship blank, and a hapless user is given an XP CD or 3 and told install it yourself, then you can compare the two. Anything else is just flapping your gums. I know, personal experience ranging from clueless (but nice), to technical, 32 converts and counting. My distro of choice for newbies, Mandrake 10.0 Official. For the slightly more literate, Suse 9.0.
Total number of Linux re-installs due to slowdowns, trojans and virus’s, ZERO. Number of times I re-installed before my zero tolerance policy, too many to count. But yet, Windows is desktop ready. LOL.
Kevin
Pretty much my experience of linux on the desktop as well.
However, if linux comes pre-installed and pre-configured on a box there aren’t that many issues anymore. As long as the user doesn’t change much that is.
I wouldn’t expect the avarage user to understand why the filemanager suddenly stops working when he updates gnome like it did for me. In fact, even I had to spend a lot of time finding the cause of the problem. (couldn’t find it with google)
But as long as you restrict the user to just installing software off the CD then it should work nicely, however such restrictions aren’t acceptable in a home environment.
In a corporate environment however, linux would do very well.
I use linux as a web development OS, and it works very well for that, it’s easy to install and configure. For that purpose I prefer it over Windows any day.
But for regular desktop use, BeOS is still the king of the hill in my world. The simplicity and ease of use hasn’t been matched by any other OS to date.
You are becoming a SkyOS zealot, the first i guess so good for you
SkyOS is nowhere near Linux or BSD and has no market at all therefore its not to say if its a good OS system and/or formule. We will see.
If you want to compare a Gnu/Linux distro to SkyOS you better take Xandros or LInSpire and you will see how far SkyOS is behind.
I understand that you like windows and/or SkyOS and that you would like to see that Linux would become that or sort of but you must keep in mind the whole porpose of Linux was that i could NOT be controlled or led by ONE man/woman.
Its ok for you to stick your head in the sand and ignore the nature of Linux what made it come this far.
Windows XP/200x actually does have a good disk management!!!
Under Administrative Tools | Computer Management | Storage | Disk Management one can either ‘Assign the following drive letter’ to a formated partition or ‘Mount (it) in the following empty NTFS folder’.
One can change every drive letter or mount assignment, except for the system partition (it stays the drive letter that was picked during installation)
I you remove a disk or add a disk or just change it from primary to secondary or to RAID controller – the drive letters (and ‘mountage’ for that matter) stay the same.
I coudn’t say the same for our beloved Leanux.
Note: I’m nevere gonna switch to a non-ClearType desktop.
The point here is not which one is better. There are countless articles on the matter, the problem is that we have two of them. Please, let’s not talk about personal taste and freedom of choice.
Why not? Why not talk about taste and the freedom of choice. Why not talk about the freedom to fork? Without all that, Linux would have never become what it is today. Take it away, and you’ll see Linux evolution stagnating right away.
Don’t like it? Raid your savings account, buy an Apple. There’s your standardized unix platform. (Assuming OS X is ready foryour desktop.)
You are becoming a SkyOS zealot, the first i guess so good for you
SkyOS is nowhere near Linux or BSD and has no market at all therefore its not to say if its a good OS system and/or formule. We will see.
If you want to compare a Gnu/Linux distro to SkyOS you better take Xandros or LInSpire and you will see how far SkyOS is behind.
I understand that you like windows and/or SkyOS and that you would like to see that Linux would become that or sort of but you must keep in mind the whole porpose of Linux was that i could NOT be controlled or led by ONE man/woman.
Its ok for you to stick your head in the sand and ignore the nature of Linux what made it come this far.
Me? A SkyOS zealot? Yeah right, guess you didn’t read my 4 pages on SkyOS on OSNews the other day. I critized the project openly. But instead of me being pushed out, ignored, yelled at by Robert, Kelly Rush and other die-hards in the SkyOS community, they praised me for being open, honest and, in some cases, even blunt. Zealotry is when you blindly support an OS. I don’t blindly support SkyOS. No one inside the SkyOS community does so. Drop by on #skyos once in a while, or read our forums, critizism and sceptizism all over the place. Critizism is something the elitist part of the Linux community don’t want. Reminds me of something…
Anyway, of course I understand the nature of Linux, and I like the fact that it’s open and for the most part freely available. I’m even a great fan of it; used Mandrake as my main OS for quite some time (still follow the dev closely, and if you payed attention, I always try to submit interesting news from the MDK newsletter to OSNews). I’ve used every version of Mandrake since 8.0 (including snapshots/betas/RCs).
It are the people like you that stopped me from using Linux. People that say they support choice, but in fact force Linux and OSS down everyone else’s throat.
If I compare the Desktop Linux from now with that of two years earlier, I don’t see any development. Easthetically it improved, speed-wise it improved, but did usability improve (for the end user)? No it didn’t.
Don’t like it? Raid your savings account, buy an Apple. There’s your standardized unix platform. (Assuming OS X is ready foryour desktop.)
Don’t assume too much. Mac OS X is a nice desktop indeed, but its not better than e.g. Fedora with respect to usability. Especially if you run Gnome. In many cases Apple have fallen into the trap of sometimes making things beautiful at the expense of usability.
To reach all configurability that is available in OS X you need to go to the command line just like in Linux/Gnome.
I think the reason OS X is considered more desktop ready than e.g. Fedora is more in the user state of mind than in actual technichal features. The Mac user usually accepts the limits of the GUI while the Linux user doesn’t. If the normal MacUser started to fiddle around in the terminal window, the press would be full of stories on how MacOS is not ready.
Mac OS have a slight advantage though, there are more apps that would appeeal to the home user. The question is, does that little difference make it desktop ready.
My household has been using Linux as our desktop OS for over two years now. I have a computer background and my wife doesn’t. Even so, Linux provides for both of us, what we need for our day-to-day computing activities.
….And better yet, we haven’t been bothered with all the problems that go along with using a MS-Windows desktop.
From our point of view, it’s Microsoft who’s not ready for the desktop.
“Critizism is something the elitist part of the Linux community don’t want. Reminds me of something…”
Haha. Man oh man. Follow any mailinglist or blog like Slashdot. In any grassroot organisation (self-)criticism is _needed_. Vital. It is a core element of consensus while it is often less taken into account in more strict hierarchies.
However, some criticism has to be taken with a grain of salt because some people simply don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. This while there is no constructive criticism; it is not in depth, leaves out factors of reality, the user does not contribute time nor money nor resources.
“If I compare the Desktop Linux from now with that of two years earlier, I don’t see any development. Easthetically it improved, speed-wise it improved, but did usability improve (for the end user)? No it didn’t.”
Your opinion, not mine. For me, XFce4 is a major improvement which helps me majorly to introduce new users to Linux. Mozilla Forefox as well. And several interesting projects have started, or evolved.
Usability for the HOME END user could be better indeed and if you ask me it has improved for example with the new XFce4 of with Firefox. I have posted criticism on the usability aspect which i see mostly a problem where no payed, prof. admin is available (home / end user, not most corporate levels), with details and implementations, i have done that before, and i’ll do it again. Continued, i have much respect for people like Keith Packard and Robert Love who are up to a change (i’m also very glad i’ve been able to see their implementations IRL at FOSDEM 2004).
As such as it is, you seem to be a constructive contributor for SkyOS. I hope you’re aware that you’re not one for the home / end Linux desktop. Talking here doesn’t change much if anything at all. At least, that’s my NSHO.
Though I do agree with many of the points in the article, I notice glaring lack of understanding of certain aspects of Linux as well as the general progress already made towards addressing some of these issues.
For instance, KDE and GNOME being two seperate “desktops” doesn’t really cause too many problems that cannot be resolved quite easily by the distributions. For instance, newer version s of Redhat’s Linux includes the Bluecurve UI (ok, ok, I know some of you don’t like it) which tries to integrate the two desktops and does a pretty decent job of it – not perfect, but it is still progress.
So as long as the distributions can figure out how to keep the positioning of the icons, handle issues such as installation of applications and their icons and startup links etc.. standard in the system no matter which desktop – kde/gnome is being used, then the user will really not mind.. perhaps the user will actually enjoy having these two desktops installed.
The primary irritants in Linux, as I see it,are the driver installations, application installations and overall system configuration.. which are still quite complicated and very non-intuitive. If these are also fixed, Linux will be quite usable.
Thats my 2 cents
For some great software development – http://www.songbirdtech.com
So….I’ve got a question for you repo haters. What other install system is there in Windows other than .msi?
Oh wait, you mean Windows has a package manager too; and it’s not compatible with anyone else’s package manager? Oh wait, you mean many programs are distributed differently for 9x and NT series systems? Why that’s horrible, it’s almost as confusing as autoconf/automake (which will get any package working from source on any linux system, as long as the deps were installed properly).
Geee, so what this guy above (myself) is saying is that there already is a standard install system, and there has been for a long time? He failed to mention that there is even a standard set of install instructions. Yea, those ones that say it at the top “these are the standard instructions”.
Well boy, doesn’t that just debunk this “let’s ruin linux by making it all the same and chase all the techies/geek/intelligent individuals off to BSD so that average Joe can feel like he’s still using Windows” talk.
This article and most of the comments that I could bare to read do not describe the Linux desktop that I know. From what I can tell by reading the comments is that there is a learning curve from migrating from the Windows way to the Linux way. I use and support Windows NT, 2000, and XP at work, so I have a great understanding of both systems. One argument that I have is that any modern Linux desktop is greatly superior to at least Windows NT, if not the later generation. If you don’t believe me then you must have never installed or tried setting up drivers for NT on a desktop or a laptop. I constantly see inconsistencies with the GUI and broken applications.
The Linux desktop is moving at a very rapid pace. I have seen it change 10 times over. And it keeps getting better every day. I like having a choice of my desktop. I run Gnome 2.7 (development) on my Gentoo machine at home. I have used KDE but I like the elegance and consistency of Gnome much better. I do, However, respect people that prefer KDE. I use Fluxbox on my old Dell laptop at work that isn’t fast enough to handle Gnome or KDE, and the laptop runs like a champ. For applications, there is hardly a windows application that I miss on my Linux machines. Dreamweaver is nice, but HTML is dead and I just code CSS, PHP, and HTML by hand in bluefish. The only thing that I truly miss are the number of games on the other platform. For this I bought a Playstation2.
Linux is ready for the desktop right now! That is why you have so many developing countries installing it instead of Windows. Linux is not ready nor may never be ready for people unwilling to break their old windows habits.
I am not a programmer or computer scientist, but a teacher in educational psychology, and I have used GNU/Linux with XFCE as my primary desktop and OS for several years. It’s really been no problem at all. Some ‘learning’ has to occur, but that ends in time.
When do we know that Linux is “ready for the desktop?”
My wife has given up on Linux, my daughters have not. I have not, either. I use Xandros and Win 2000 in a dual boot system. Xandros to work with Internet and Win 2000 for everything else. I think that Xandros applications crash a little more than Windows and they are much slower (on the same machine), but I don’t care as long as I can work safely from viruses, worms etc. The firewall took some time to set up and it is not user friendly for dial-up connections.
Before I got to Xandros I tried Suse. It was useless.
I am an everyday user (internet, e-mails, letters, spreadsheets) and application developer who wants the things get done.
From my limited experience, I dare say that many Desktop Linux applications are just as bloated and unreliable as Windows applications. Maybe they all suffer from the same problem: complexity due to featuritis and unsafe languages (C/C++). I like OCAML (combined with Fortran for numerical speed). But as I said – it depends for whom and for what.
Anyway, I am very glad that we have the new Linux world because it gives us more choices and teaches Microsoft to behave – it IS competitive already. Thanks to all the wonderful Linux hackers who created this new world.
Martin
idiot.
you missed the bus entirely. now go get hit by it.
Sorry but I think you got it all wrong.
I like suggestions on how to improve Linux but not on how to change Linux from Linux to MS-Windows.
The problem is people compare Linux to often with MS-Windows. A lot of Linux desktop initiatives look a lot like existing MS-Windows features because we think people want what they are used to on Windows… My Documents, taskbars etc. etc. Wrong.
If we want to compete and be leading (and not following) in the desktop market we have to build a better desktop and not copy a desktop… this is going on to much.
That’s worse but don’t make it even worser with suggestions like control panels, registries and drive letters.
We (linux users) have our own problems (challenges!) and do not need the MS problems too.
People and companies must be begging to use and build apps for these Linux desktops (based on the same standards !)
Almost all of the complaints in this article caused by the fragmented nature of Linux distributions. If this same article had been written by someone using FreeBSD, it would have been reduced to “Why do we need both KDE and Gnome?”
If you want all that shit to happen, fork the kernel, fork your favorite distro, and do it yourself. All you want is Windows with a different name.
Linux has always been about choice. You can’t break that. That and doing things yourself. So hack away. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of followers who won’t be willing to contribute a thing–just bitch that they don’t like anything else.
thanks for this article. While some UI solutions may be different from Windows, they should be attempted. And right now, I agree, Linux is not ready for the desktop.
The worst is the perspective of the developer community: they expect me to learn a new configuration file format or command line arguments for each new application. Before I can install it, I have to install X,Y,Z dependencies, one of which gives me trouble compiling. Talking about integration: well, there isn’t even a single working clipboard-standard (copy&paste) available. X11 does it’s thing with some inconvenient (but standardized) mouse clicks and for text only. KDE and GNOME do their thing. Can’t copy and paste reliably, can’t drag and drop — all these things I can do in OS X.
Well, there is much more. But everytime I bring it up, I get told, I’m a ‘troll’, writing ‘flamebait’.
PS.: I am an IT professional and geek. But I have better things to do with my time than to figure out how to configure my machine.
I agree with the premise “when we read “ready for the desktop” we understand “ready to replace Microsoft Windows”, after all that is essentially what the argument that is posed. I fully understand why Windows is the “standard”, but I have never understood why so many users and “IT professionals put up with it. I also understand why so many users cannot get comfortable with many Linux distributions, but as users gain more knowledge many will find perfectly usable “Desktop” distributions like ‘Linspire’, ‘Mandrake’, ‘PCLinuxOS’, etc. Those who argue the point are usually comparing a free download to the commercial MS products.
Geeks and IT types will happily use their choice of a Linux or BSD distribuiton, or any other “alternative” OS they like, and assemble the desktop of their choice (those who use a GUI).
All users who purchase a supported OS and commercial software have all the usability they could want without the horrors of Windows. Linux is definitely ready for the desktop. The issues come down to marketing and distributing.