The Rasterman is the founder of the Enlightenment project, an infinitely configurable window manager that is working its way toward becoming a desktop, even though he thinks the desktop battle is lost. In an email interview with LinuxAndMain, he talks about what he’s doing, his view of the future of desktop Linux, the nature of development projects (commercial, community-based, and genius-based) and more.
The Rasterman Believes Desktop Battle for Linux is Lost
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Given a perusal of the grammatically correct comments on /. combined with my limited Linux useage to date, it seems that Rasterman thinks desktop Linux is dead because desktop Linux boils down to Gnome and KDE. Not Enlightenment. We’re not playing with his toys, so as a consequence, the whole venue is shit? That’s like Ford having a really bad couple of quarters and saying “the four door sedan is dead.”
Right.
Desktop Linux is getting there. When distros ship with up to date desktops that have nice fonts (still lacking) and everything has anti-aliasing turned on by default (hel-LO?!)… then a big part of the aesthetic hurdle will have been passed. Gnome and KDE look quite slick, but they lack a certain “professional” feel that I get out of Winblows, Be and MacOS. Call it personal preference- but hey, given the progress Mozilla has made, well… it’s obvious that It Can Be Done.
The desktop is lost. Never liked the default on 0.16 Enlightenment, and it takes some time to learn how to change it (more time than it should to a Grandma :-).
He is a little to much negative about Linux Desktop but he’s right about the apps thing.
The best part is when there is lots of people on a project (refering to Gnome and KDE) people spend more time on politics.
All Right.
so much for competing, i suppose many just give up and let windows take the huge home market. i agree with his reasons though, about simply lacking software users want. it’s getting better i suppose…
where i don’t agree with him is about the crashing, i Never Had A Crash with WinXP. i guess he was directing that statement towards win9x? i wish i could claim the same stability with KDE. “don’t use kde/gnome Chad.” yeah and disable anything remotely resembling a desktop OS?
i came to the conclusion to where it’s useless to dual boot for myself, a home user. i could play around with linux or something else, but for what? i’ll just keep one OS on this drive.
i miss BeOS…
If it is dead why he uses it, then ?
It is dead for the masses. But the masses never considered it alive and kicking anyway…
You cant kill what does not exist.
And if it does not exist, it does not mean it never will.
And this is part of why Beos and OS/2 died……NO apps. The other being windows is so easy to use,will load on just about any machine combo you can come up with, and, without ANY previous computer knowledge!!!
Since I came from M$ environment ie from M$DOS and then Window$, for me M$ is just lucky enough to be among the first OS for desktop. However, when I look back to my early days using Linux, the situation now have improved a lot. During those time, there are no good DE I and can’t find any usable application except Netscape browser and GIMP.
Today there are many other application that can be used for daily work and for me the biggest thing for Linux is OpenOffice (and StarOffice) since it is the turning point for those tied to Window$ platform. Office application is what most people use and get their paychek for. The remaining maybe the aspect of user friendliness and printing support which is still lacking.
And I believed within this coming few years, Linux can make way to ordinary user desktop.
I have never heard of rasterman before and with one article he has convinced me he is a biased idiot!
He works in the embeded industry, OF COURSE hes gonna peddel his wears anyway he can. Alan Cox is a great example of unbiasness in the linux community. He works at Red Hat(a company who is focused now more then ever on the server market) but doesn’t let that presuade him and his ideas about Linux on the desktop and you don’t see him go around saying Suse sux or anything like that.
Rasterman maybe held in high regard by some, but not by me. Not by a long shot.
Not really a rasterman fan but he really does say the right things in this interview. The desktop battle has been lost ever since Windows 3.1, no one will ever take over the desktop from Microsoft. However that is not at all as bad as it sounds, the desktop is going away, the vision of a computer on every desk is not dead it is just that it wont be one, it will be a dozen specialized computers.
Linux taking the embedded devices puts Linux in the position on MS-DOS when the PC was first released, it will follow the paradigm to the top, people dont want desktops. Lets say that again; People dont want desktops. The desktop is hard to use and works poorly since it has too many purposes, the specialized devices will take over, examples; the tivo, a pc could do that but no one want the hassle of a pc. Palm and PocketWindows, the new notebook, despite what microsoft wants it to look like people use it to catch up on their mail, do quick notes and manage their calendar.
One could continue listing them but the important thing to note is that people understand and can use specialized computers that have only one task but still does it with largely the same power as a PC, the PC will retreat to becoming a pure word-processor and web surfer (though the web will most likely also change the way it looks accordingly) and at that point Windows is replacable.
Apple has already understood that, that is what all this “Media Hub” thing is about, they want to make the Mac single-puspose, to tie all the specialized computers together, and hopefully many of these will be running Linux or another nice operating system.
I for one look forward to getting rid of the PC and friends.
Maybe there are a lot of people who only want their thing to work but you can’t really compare that. Most of us are “PC guys” and most of us would never change the PC for such an embedded device. It might be true that this is a market where the most money will be made but saying people don’t want desktop computers is wrong.
It’s those who really want a _computer_ (not a DVD player or musicbox), that GNU is targeting at. And it’s doing good.
If Linux doesn’t do something different, something innovative and interesting, that Windows does not do, there is no market differentiation. If nothing compelling exists about the OS, then the only difference is price.
Remember that “innovation dilemna” ? It is why I repeatedly point out that copying Microsoft is not the way to success. Solve the same problem for the user, perhaps, but don’t do it in the same way — do it better. Innovate.
Rasterman pulls no punches and doesn’t give some sugar-coated view of Linux because he works at a large Linux company. It is unfair to him to personalize it. He’s a long-standing member and contributor to the Linux effort.
If Linux does not develop some focus, innovate, and do something important that no other operating system does, it will never compete for winning “the desktop”. Yes, in a few years it may be more competitive. But the innovation rates at Microsoft and Apple far exceed that of Linux, so it is not with any confidence that I would think a Linux desktop is going to be mainstream any time soon.
Rasterman is saying something that is tough for Linux fans to hear. Do try to get past the emotion and listen to his experience. And treasure the honesty; it’s a rare and disappearing trait.
#m
You are right of course except that I dont really think the word “desktop” really is the right one here, it is more like “workstation”. The people who use computers for the sake of computers or however I should say it dont really use desktops, they use workstations. While there is no real difference today (some people would argue that a workstation is only the things you buy from Sun, SGI, IBM and HP and so, but I am twisting the meaning a bit to fit me better) the uses are fairly easy to tell apart, a workstation is for people who are interested in the workings of the computer and/or use it to run some form of services (web-server maybe) and/or program or develop said computers and also the more specialized kind. As it happens these people are in a very small minority and will of course always be there and for them the “general” computer will remain. It will just be a rather nichy market (which gives the advantage (imho) of less messy hardware since there simply will be less to choose from (competition will kill of the crappy products more efficiently)).
So, I will put it this way, the desktop will go away, the workstation will live on quietly and the specialized computer will be where the mass market is at. (as it happens the workstation users will most likely use all the specialized computers as well, they will just have a workstation in addition to those).
Heh, it’s so surprising to see how unfamiliar people around here are with Rasterman. Apparently none of you ever ran the early Englightenment betas that would leak memory so fast they would exhaust my 386’s 8MB of RAM and 16MB of swap in about 1 minute. None of you have directly dealt with imlib and its “wonderful” cache that leaked memory, or the GTK pixmap theme engine which didn’t cache images itself but just relied on imlib’s cache.
Anyway, sorry to rip on Rasterman’s memory usage, he’s a good guy and a great graphic designer. But you kinda needed to hear that to get why this is funny:
“Personally I avoid OpenGL, as its still waay too flakey to trust”
I dunno, I just find Rasterman calling something flakey kinda funny
I long time ago Eric Raymond stated that as PC’s dropped below the $400 range that people would be less and les willing to pay the MS tax. I agree with him and think walmart and outpost.com are recent examples of this, and I feel after the release of Lycoris and Xandros we may see more. I do agree that Linux has a long way to go and many things need changed, but I also think those changes will need to happen in Red Hat, UnitedLinux, Mandrake, and Debian first. I do have one request though; I have read a ton of sources highlighting some things Linux needs to make it on the desktop. Does anyone know of 2 or 3 very good sources on what Linux needs to make it on the desktop?
The other being windows is so easy to use,will load on just about any machine combo you can come up with, and, without ANY previous computer knowledge!!!
That statement is absurd. If you have ever worked in a technical support or IT position at a large company, you would know that most people have trouble turning the monitor on. As much as you wish it to be different, human’s were not born knowing instinctively how to use Windows. Windows takes learning just as any other OS does.
It is funny that this interview appears just the day after I sort of switched back to Windows. I have been looking at Windows since the early nineties but could never use it because of missing applications. Now, almost ten years later the situation looks a lot better. However, this seems to be true only on first glance.
Take memory usage, for example. It is amazing how much GNOME and KDE use. Even on Windows I have lots more free memory than with either desktop environment in Linux.
Startup time of Linux is exactly the same as Windows, at least on my laptop. Where has all the talk about lean and mean led us?
OpenOffice.org looks awful. That wouldn’t be so bad if the import filters actually produced nice results. Since I am looking for a job I wanted to do all my emailing and stuff from the Linux box. I tried to open my resume in OO.o. The result is plain unusable. Bullets are all over the place, the right margin is not obeyed by each line. I don’t even want to find out what opening a .doc file produced by OO.o would look like in Word.
Many people complain about Microsoft’s lack of innovation but GNOME/KDE and their applications copy every single functionality from Windows apps. Take Evolution as a prime example.
It is frustrating to use Linux for more than just programming, emailing, and web surfing. Also, opening applications in Linux takes forever. Even with gcc 3.1 it takes much longer than in Windows.
Once all these little nagging problems have been solved Linux might have a chance, but by then Windows has moved ahead also. It took Mozilla how many years to catch up to IE? Until Linux provides users with something *new* that nobody else has, why would I need Linux?
As has been said many times: Windows has so many developers because of the great tools Microsoft gave them for relatively little money. The GPL and fellow licenses might be fine, but nowadays you are looked upon weirdly when you actually want to make money by programming. The other day someone posted a comment, either here or on Slashdot, saying that most programmers are in it for the money and produce bad code because they don’t care. Open source developers, on the other hand, so the poster, produce quality code because they work for free and out of their own interest. Maybe this kind of mentality is turning off a lot of people as well.
Oops, that should be “have been looking at Linux since the early nineties”…
Linux was the spiritual successor to UNIX. Lean, mean, open, full of accessible code, experiments, etc. UNIX was an OS for developers, not for grandmas.
And to a large extent, Linux still is the successor to UNIX.
However, the “let’s copy Microsoft” crowd has subverted the spirit of Linux.
Romendo raises the important point that it took years for Netscape to catch up to IE. Why is that when Netscape started out with a tremendous lead? Because Netscape turned into an arrogant company full of assholes, that’s why. A nicer way of putting it would be “Netscape fell into a success trap”.
Having been in the position of creating the world’s first Internet-enabled encyclopedia and having to BEG Netscape to license their browser and then turned down (“We don’t license our browser unless you can commit to selling 5 million or more copies of your encyclopedia”), the writing was on the wall. The attitude was not “let’s figure out a way to make it work”. These people didn’t get it. Netscape was dead. This was in 1996. It took a while for Netscape to perish, but they did. All it takes is a “fuck the customer” attitude. It works every time. We went with the embedded browser functionality that IE 3.0 offered and decided not to do a Mac version of the product because there was no good licensable Mac broswer. For a cross-platform product that had grown up on Mac, this situation was a tremendous shock.
Why do I bring this up?
Because what Linux could do really well — be the ultimate software development platform — is being subverted. Linux is being turned into “low price GUI OS” by some vendors and “low price enterprise runtime OS” by other vendors.
Only the small vendors such as Gentoo are focusing on the key strengths of Linux. And then this focus is just to enable the Linux user to build a non-bloated version of Linux. It’s a good step, but a far cry from what needs to be done.
So, I’m putting forth an idea. Make Linux the premier software development platform. In some ways it is already, but in many ways it is primitive. Linux should have the world’s best install/uninstall tech, the best class libraries, the best code database, the best editors, the best collaborative development, etc.
Instead of cloning Microsoft, out-innovate them. Play to the strengths of Linux and establish an unassailable lead when it comes to great software development technology.
#m
Ramendo, please understand that GNU/Linux is a completely _free_ alternative. You can use it or not. If you can’t because you are locked into some proprietory file format or you need an application that isn’t available, then you can’t use it of course, no big deal. If some Linux zealot tells you that you should use Linux anyway, tell him to STFU.
Applications aren’t slow loading though, my Gtk apps launch fast. Some launch as fast as in a second, some take a few seconds but that’s the same under windows (like Mozilla under Windows) when they aren’t preloaded.
Many applications are clones from other software because people are asking for it, simple as that. We are still playing catch up with some other systems, so innovation is no real option atm. Improvement is of course and there is a lot of improvement in detail. Galeon is just one minor example, there are countless features that where introduced by Galeon. Nautilus always had some features that are now introduced into Mac OS X. Everyone is copying from everyone, that’s just how life goes.
If you want to go back using Windows, feel free to do so, there is nothing bad about it! Heck, I recently used Win 2000 for a few months exclusively because I could be a lot more work done with it, now I’m back and I know what I want. I have more fun and satisfaction with Free Software and Linux than I ever had.
I hope it was worth typing this all and you got the message. Free Software is a lot more beyond the pro-linux zealotry, it’s just there, it’s alive, and it will improve.
When I first looked into Linux, there was a lot lacking:
– Installation was difficult
– Font anti aliasing was something to dream about
– There was no decent webbrowser
– There was no decent office suite besides the proprietory Star Office
– Desktops where premature
– No modern groupware/email suite
– Lack of driver support
This all is more or less solved now and the mostly talked about problems are now:
– Complicated software installation (there are good ideas, but nobody got it right yet with easy and realiable software installation and upgrades, the easy methods usually break after a while and the reliable methods aren’t easy)
– Difficult X configuration (and changing display settings on the fly)
When I look at what was already done in such a short time and what still has to be done, I see a clear upwards trend.
Yes, Microsoft and Apple will continue to innovate, but it’s a long while since they introduced something new that is really a major headache for Free Software. We have yet to see if this will change the next time. If not, then GNU/Linux will soon be on par with those systems in Quality.
And it will be a completely _free_ alternative, not forcing it to anything, not even to pay! No EULA’s and whatever. It’s just yours and you can do whatever you want with it.
Rasterman probably doesn’t see a big advantage in this, but Rasterman never really understood what this Free Software vision is about. There is nothing bad about that he doesn’t care, it’s just not a surprise that he isn’t excited by anything else but world domination. But that won’t happen… Free Software will always be the alternative, not more, not less. It will be the majority of the minority.
And we are talking about a minority of several million people.
I don’t know Rasterman personally but he’s definately not an idiot. I’ve read the whitepapers for EVAS for Enlightenment 0.17 which are posted on the Enlightenment web site and I have to say its a very well thought out program. Rasterman is doing a lot for the Linux desktop with EVAS though it wasn’t originally intended for the linux desktop as he denotes in the interview. Asides from Accelerated X servers there really isn’t alot of noticeable speed improvements in the X windows code.
Maybe he’s just saying this because he’ll get some critique, get people thinking about what needs improvement in X and code it. It wouldn’t be the first time I hear of developers doing this to make improvements in code. There should be a point where X and all WMs are seamless and don’t need a lot of configurations to customise. X is like this right now. Its not as seamless as Windows. Once it gets to that point there will be more competition. People aren’t using Linux desktops because it takes too much effort to change the interface the way they like *and* a lot of the apps aren’t there.
I know what free OSs can do and appreciate their availability. It is one reason why I would like to use Linux on a daily basis, but the quality of applications just isn’t there (as I have outlined in the earlier post).
Michael brings up great points. I wish Linux would have the best tools for programming since I am a programmer as well. But just deciding what to use is already a big hurdle: GTK or QT? They both have pros and cons. It seems that the biggest problem for Linux is the availability of too many choices. Sometimes it would be nice to just have a common standard. That also includes installation software. There is nothing really good out there.
BTW, whatever happened to Kylix? Is it still alive? Is anyone using it?
I agree with 99% of what Rasterman said in the interview regarding Windows having won the desktop battle (I don’t believe there was ever a battle, Windows has won since day 1). It is not good news, but it is the reality, and Rasterman was honest, and I like that in him.
The only part I do not agree was when he mentioned the stability of Windows. He probably refered to older and indeed unstable versions of Win9x, because the WinNT/2k/XP codebase is very solid on my PC. Microsoft has improved its OSes a lot the last few years. Linux will now have to do even bigger effort to catch up…
However, I see Linux being strong in the server market and this is what Microsoft afraids of. Not the desktop market, but the (always profitable) server one. Linux is a major player in that field and Microsoft knows it!
to Michael:
Please, stop demanding innovation from linux and stop forgetting about all the Microsoft’s strategy of “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” , or I’ll consider you a troll from now on.
Thanks.
I don’t know for sure, of course, but it might be that Rasterman hasn’t used Windows for a while. He is developing on Linux, after all. So the comment probably was geared towards Window 9x, which is kind of a non-issue nowadays. Windows 2000 has been very stable for me.
Let’s see, if I get this right.
Embrace = copy Microsoft apps/menus/icons/everything
Extend = implement Microsoft .NET API’s on Linux.
Extinguish = Palladium
All your code belong to us.
#m
Why is the Linux Desktop dead? We may have lost previous battles and the current one but does that mean we will never win?
That is a logically stupid assertion. If Linux wasn’t continually evolving then that might be true. But it isn’t and new projects arise all the time and old projects get better.
Once people complained that Linux couldn’t do this or that. Now that it can, they move onto other areas. These people do not remeber how bad Linux actually was and how it has grown.
When you could use 20% of hardware.
Now you can use 90% and people still whine.
When there was like 2 games
Now there are many but people still complain.
Those who fail to understand history will also fail to understand the future. Linux has overcome huge obstacles in the past. A desktop is nothing compared to them. Just wait.
Gnome is prettier than any desktop (the kitchy look of OSX has aged too much, IMO). Gnome is as fast as MacOSX (I haven’t seen Jaguar live yet).
Linux software, unlike Windows software, can be run within certain well-documented constraints. .NET has changed this somewhat – they finally have a security model. But this exists only for apps that run within .NET, and that’s not the desktop environment or the things that commonly break in an OS. Because of this, there is (theoretically) less chance of breaking a Linux system. I see more potential in Linux here.
The idea that a desktop war is over is what’s strange. I mean you can beat your enemy into submission but everything I read shows the Linux desktop growing (admitedly from a tiny amount). This is distinctly unlike the browser wars where a popular browser was beaten down.
I’ve read no data that the desktop of MacOSX or Linux or BSD is shrinking.
Desktop machines aren’t a temporary phase. I will still want to type out an email on a local machine in 20 years from now. While there is still a need there is still a fight.
“If Linux wasn’t continually evolving then that might be true. But it isn’t and new projects arise all the time and old projects get better.
The thing is (as someone else already pointed out) that although Linux continues to evolve, so does Windows and its apps. So, even though Linux will probably overcome its current issues, MS will always be too steps ahead.
For example, the newest version of MS Office (Office XP) has speech recognition built right in. How many Linux office suites have this capability?
And for those people who love Linux because it is free and open, let it catch on enough so that it catches the eye of the commercial bastards, and watch your ‘free’ and ‘open’ applications/file formats go right out the window – it’s only a matter of time. So, if you like it the way it is and want to keep it that way, pray that it doesn’t catch on. Because if it does, the scum of the Windows world like Real Networks and Sharman (makers of Kazaa) are going to come in flocks.
the linux desktop has to be better than windows for people to use it, it will never ever ever gain anything more than a foothold until such time. In order for it to climb in marketshare it simply has to offer more than windows offers. Seems easy doesnt it.
that’s right. parity and “free” aren’t enough for people to switch. Linux needs to be _easier_ than Windows in order to “catch on.” But I don’t think linux needs to “catch on.” It doesn’t need to be on the desktop because it’s doing fine on servers and tivos and other devices
He is right. KDE and GNOME, as well as a bunch of smaller WMs are arguing “My TK/API is better than yours!”. That’s why when you open a GTK+ app, a KDE app and a GNUstep app, they all look so different…and act different. X11 too isn’t helping. The current specification doesn’t have support for Unicode and AA, for example. Xlib is also the cause of the desktop inconsitentcy. If it was much more complete, people could write their TKs and libraries upon it, once and for all killing the desktop fragmentation forever. Personally, I think either the desktop would die off or some other OSS project would take over.
I agree with 99% of what Rasterman said in the interview regarding Windows having won the desktop battle (I don’t believe there was ever a battle, Windows has won since day 1). It is not good news, but it is the reality, and Rasterman was honest, and I like that in him.
Windows didn’t win since day one. Many DOS users dismiss it. Those who are already using GUI OS dismiss it. Why? No apps. Then Windows 3.x had a uphill battle with OS/2 and Macintosh. It was almost certain that Microsoft would loose, because Apple is much more experience, and IBM had much more money. Both Macintosh and IBM products were also better (both OS/2 and Mac has a better UI, plus OS/2 is much more stable than Windows). That battle was won by Microsoft, I think they deserve their bounty 🙂
Those who fail to understand history will also fail to understand the future. Linux has overcome huge obstacles in the past. A desktop is nothing compared to them. Just wait.
I doubt it. The past obstacles, like making the kernel cross platform, making the installation easier and so on. But that’s technical overhaul. Right now we need a attitude overall. Compromise between rival projects to promote consitency and compatiblity. A company that truly understands the desktop (like the need of a transitional API for Windows apps, a need of very good IDEs..)
that’s right. parity and “free” aren’t enough for people to switch. Linux needs to be _easier_ than Windows in order to “catch on.” But I don’t think linux needs to “catch on.” It doesn’t need to be on the desktop because it’s doing fine on servers and tivos and other devices
Windows wasn’t easier to use than OS/2 and Macintosh when it literally killed them. Ease of use and technical merits is secondary in a Windows-killer. (Anyway, notice OS/2 and Macintosh machines were more expensive than Windows machines…)
At Borland, we were building apps and tools for Windows 3.0. But it wasn’t until Windows 3.1 that we finally saw that Windows had somehow landed in goodness. Not that we liked Microsoft, but props were due. Windows 3.1 was not clunky and funky like OS/2 and it wasn’t a low volume OS with a fucked programming API on expensive hardware (Mac).
Windows was easier to use for many people than OS/2 which had a lot of jargon. I ran an OS/2 group at Borland for a few months until I realized OS/2 was a stupid waste of time; it was never going anywhere. We were paid a huge amount of money by IBM to port Borland C++ to OS/2. We did and we lost track of the Windows market and squandered our huge lead to Microsoft. At the time, I reminded Paul Gross there were more Amiga computers than OS/2 computers. He killed OS/2 shortly after the first version.
Linux does need to do something better than Windows. If Linux had a development environment that surpassed Visual Studio and a few other compelling tools, it would be the premier software development platform. That is gold when it comes to getting ISV’s to write apps for your platform.
People bandy about the term “desktop” like it’s a piece of cake. Building a great desktop OS is not simple. It doesn’t simply mean an integrated user experience, one set of libs, or a particular kind of framebuffer. It is about everything that the user touches, the interaction model, the metaphors, the jargon, etc. I have no doubt that Linux is capable of putting out a good desktop OS variant. But there’s nothing out there today that is state of the art on Linux. So it will be down the road a bit.
We’ll see what happens to Linux. I hope some interesting innovation shows up.
#m
“This all is more or less solved now and the mostly talked about problems are now:
– Complicated software installation (there are good ideas, but nobody got it right yet with easy and realiable software
installation and upgrades, the easy methods usually break after a while and the reliable methods aren’t easy)
– Difficult X configuration (and changing display settings on the
fly)”
Those are two. The other two major problems are:
Bad handling of removable media. The user should never have to unmount
a disk. All media are removable nowadays, not just Zip disks and CDs,
but also hard drives in caddies and drives on a network which will
disappear at any moment.
Far too much imitation of Windows. The Linux people need to look at
some other OSes or, better, think things out from principles of
usability and design. Windows has never been a good example to
imitate.
“I know what free OSs can do and appreciate their availability. It is one reason why I would like to use Linux on a daily basis, but the quality of applications just isn’t there (as I have outlined in the earlier post).”
See, this attitude is fine. If you don’t think Free Software is good enough for you, don’t use it. Wait for it to mature and if it doesn’t mature to be of good use for you, then don’t use it, no problem.
Like I said, I was back to Windows 2000 and got my work done much faster but I was still looking for Free Software alternatives. I came back a few months later and discovered a lot of improvements (namely Gentoo/Portage and Gnome 2) and I’m really happy with them now. I’m confident, that more and more people will be satisfied with Free Software offerings as time goes on.
Just please don’t make the mistake to think choice is bad. Linux might have a lot of weaknesses, but the choice between different toolkits (for example) is definetly no weakness. You should use what works best for you. It should only be a problem for you if you are looking to make money from application development, but then again the Linux market is tiny anyway.
@Darius: You are wrong, if Linux becomes popular, of course there will also be a lot of proprietory development but this isn’t a reason for me to hope Linux will be small. I’m not and I will never be forced to use those software, so why should I care? If Kazaa want’s to do a Linux version, this want make me magically use it. =) GNU/Linux already isn’t entirely free anymore, that’s why I sometimes use the term “Free Software” instead of simply “Linux”. The free part will never become non-free and the free part is the part that will never die but keep growing.
See eclipse.org for a nice Linux IDE…
“That statement is absurd. If you have ever worked in a technical support or IT position at a large company, you would know that most people have trouble turning the monitor on. As much as you wish it to be different, human’s were not born knowing instinctively how to use Windows. Windows takes learning just as any other OS does.”
Flatly not true. I know complete idiots who bought their first pc’s and within days had installed instant messengers, mp3 players, free long distance apps, etc etc etc all by themselves, while even experienced pc people have trouble with linux after many attempts.
“Bad handling of removable media. The user should never have to unmount
a disk. All media are removable nowadays, not just Zip disks and CDs,
but also hard drives in caddies and drives on a network which will
disappear at any moment.”
I agree completely. Look at BeOS: there is the mount/unmount concept, but just insert a removable media and it gets mounted, just press the “eject” button on the CD and it gets ejected… is it so difficult? There are many patches to the linux kernel that implements Automounting: Automounter, Supermount, etc. I simply don’t know why they don’t get integrated in the main tree… and BTW, have these to be integrated in the kernel? Why does ANYTHING have to be integrated in the kernel when we speak of gnu/linux?
Well, there we have it-Linux as a desktop is dead. RIP. So is rock in roll, so what?
Why did Microcenter in Boston sell out of Mandrake? Why is RH 7.3 so prominently dislayed. Why are Microcenter having so much trouble moving units of XP, and XP Pro?
Why is there so much interest in KDE and GNOME in the relatively mainstream press?
To state that Linux has “lost” the fight against Windows on the desktop market sounds a bit odd imho. I don’t know if I’m living in another world than the rest of you people but from what I’ve seen among people I know, Linux is more popular now than ever. And no, I’m not just talking about servers here. I see people converting to Linux (and even FreeBSD) every single week. Of course most still use Windows but hasn’t that been the case from the very begining? And is the issue really about “winning” or “losing”? Like someone stated before most people prefere a PC nowadays but does that mean the Mac is dead? To think that Windows will instantly vanish into thin air might be a bit stupid but the same goes for thinking the other way around. As long as there’s people who like Linux and develop on it it will be alive and well. Maybe in a small scale compared to Windows but still alive. And not to flame Rasterman but just because he’s been a part of the Linux world for ages doesn’t mean he’s allways right.
Why did Microcenter in Boston sell out of Mandrake? Why is RH 7.3 so prominently dislayed. Why are Microcenter having so much trouble moving units of XP, and XP Pro?
Why? Were they clearing out RH faster than XP?
Why is there so much interest in KDE and GNOME in the relatively mainstream press?
There is? I don’t know, maybe in Linux reviews in the computer pullout, but I have never seen a KDE centric article. I saw quite a amount about Ximian, but was mostly about Mono.
I didn’t even know there was a fight between linux and windows.
I use Linux when i want to and Windows when I need to.
Linux for me is just pure fun, I work on it, play around with it, am amazed by it’s speed and responsiveness, plus a thousand other things.
Why not just use your preffered tool for the job at hand?
Why keep up silly discussions about who or what has won?
As long as someone keeps koding on Linux it’s still alive, and even if noone keeps up the work, as long as the Internet exists you will probably be able to get hold of a distro.
Linux is what it is mainly because a lot of people develop what they want or need on it and redistribute (like rasterman and e) it for the rest of us to enjoy and fiddle around with.
Some PEOPLE fight against MS (FSF and GNU)
but most of all I just agree with Linus… Just for fun…
(wich is why I use gentoo :-))
HI ladies,
OK what I have read is utter bollox, at home I have linux server that does everything servery, and running for years without a hitch [never rebooted it either]
But my main machines are linux desktops, for the wife and kids & myself. We finally got rid of windows [2000] when we realised that we had no need for it.
The kids have a playstation2 [which rocks, only the Japs can make good games] and the wife and myself have some games on linux, others through wineX but mainly do internet stuff. Openoffice does all office shite, which we rarely do.
We dual booted for DVD’s [coz have bigger monitor than TV]
So whats this all about? Windows free for over a year now and not missing it whatsoever.
I kinda like enlightenment, but prefer KDE [on BIG systems] but anything under 400Mhz and 256MB I use the lightweights.