Linux isn’t a threat to Windows on the desktop and is losing steam on the server as customers separate the operating system from the development model, according to Microsoft’s chief platform strategist. Bill Hilf, general manager of competitive strategy at Microsoft, said pundits have predicted for years that Linux will gain momentum on the desktop, but that won’t happen because of the complexity involved in delivering a tightly integrated and tested desktop product.
Good point.
Linux is getting every year more and more bloated; in their aim to surpass Windows, they emulate it creating bloated apps. The devs can’t care less about the hardware/processor limits because every year these, increase in power and speed. But because the bloat in apps increase too, there is no noticeable speed to speak of. It gets to the point, in which you need new boxes to use desktop environments. Thank god for window managers.
How can you tell a Windows user to switch, when it takes so long to launch an app?
xzgv
Clearly, you have not got a clue about what you are talking about.
Linux is the kernel. The kernel is not bloated.
A DISTRO on the other hand might be bloated, but that is up to the admin to cut back on the stuff that is not needed in the install.
YOU DO NOT NEED TO INSTALL EVERYTHING….. unlike Windows
“A DISTRO on the other hand might be bloated, but that is up to the admin to cut back on the stuff that is not needed in the install. “
Or the admin could save himself some work and simply make smart choices when it comes to package selection during the installation process, some distributions will even save these settings to removable media to make future installations easier. During the Windows installation process many people come to the screen for selecting Windows components to install and they’ll either take the defaults or check everything. That habit follows them as they venture into Linux, and they’ll compulsively install far more than needed just to install even more redundant applications later as a side-effect of being completely unfamiliar with the OS.
Many distributions have very sensible defaults, and you can pick a distribution with lots of software in the CD or one that will give you a bare bones system. That option just isn’t available with Windows, there’s only one CD and it comes with plenty of free (as in 0$) software MS couldn’t sell without bundling.
Anyone who says Linux is bloated hasn’t tried any of the good distributions that concentrate their effort on one Window manager or desktop environment. Those ones tend to put together some of the best user experiences imo, and they keep things within a beautifully light package compared to what Windows reaches with equivalent software.
Of course some Windows users aren’t ready to make the shift. Some are still too hostile towards Linux, some don’t want to let go of the latest proprietary hardware and games, others need human help rather than documentation but don’t know where to find it, and then there’s some people who still listen to Microsoft’s propaganda like the company isn’t just trying to keep it’s market share with lies.
Linux is the kernel. The kernel is not bloated.
That’s why it lives in a 50mb+ source tree and compiles into a 8mb+ default image?
You really have no clue do you, 39.4Mb download the source code and the kernel image for SUSE 10.1 is 1.2Mb. How can you say bloat is new drivers?
My kernel image is 912KB.
mmm, compresed kernel image, I think
You really have no clue do you, 39.4Mb download the source code
from http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/
linux-2.6.17.tar.gz 18-Jun-2006 02:10 49M
looks like 50 to me. Of course, that’s compressed Uncompressed is a bit larger:
du -sh /home/cloudy/linux-2.6.17/
311M /home/cloudy/linux-2.6.17/
and the kernel image for SUSE 10.1 is 1.2Mb. How can you say bloat is new drivers?
Once again, that’s the compressed image size. (It’s 1.6mb on the default FC5 smp image.) How big is it when it’s running?
How can you say bloat is new drivers?
I didn’t.
It’s not my fault your using the tar.gz format, try the tar.bz2
where is your proof that the Linux kernel has got bloated?, you cannot have the same size kernel as 2 years ago with all the new drivers. Maybe you should send a patch in to Linus patch_reduce_bloat.diff?
It’s not my fault your using the tar.gz format, try the tar.bz2
You’re talking about how well the compressors work. The actual size of the source tree, as I pointed out is closer to 300mb:
du -sh linux-2.6.17/
311M linux-2.6.17/
as compared to the BSD source tree at 200mb:
du -sh src/sys
200M src/sys
Of course, having three different ways to name kernel objects, dozens of similar file systems, five kinds of schedulers, two competing sound driver models, four kinds of i/o models, three different competing power management strategies, et cetera, is much better evidence than simply size of the source tree.
and that’s just Linus’ tree, before you add all the competing patch sets that do similar tings.
It’s bigger, slower, and buggier than it was a year ago. (Don’t think so? put 2.6.8 and 2.6.17 on the same hardware and do some performance measurement, especially network performance.)
Oh, so thats what it’s about, the perfect BSD.
I have not seen any evidence of the kernel being slower, in fact neather could Linus, and like he said, if anyone can send him some proper benchmarks proving it then what can he do.
Oh, so thats what it’s about, the perfect BSD.
No. It’s about being accurate. Linux has bloated a lot over the last few years, both “the kernel” and the distros.
I have not seen any evidence of the kernel being slower, in fact neather could Linus, and like he said, if anyone can send him some proper benchmarks proving it then what can he do.
Actually, Linus never said that. See http://uk.builder.com/programming/unix/0,39026612,39241978,00.htm where what he did say was that he’d like to see daily performance tests after he agreed that there was clear evidence of performance degradation.
So it’s being addressed, whats the problem?
I guess another unix clone will come along and get what BSD got wrong and say your kernel is bloated. Performance can mean any part of the kernel, i’ve actaully found the kernel to be more responsive since PREEMPT was introduced. But this performance drop of 1% could be anything and you have no evidence to say it’s bloat.
Edited 2006-06-24 05:10
So it’s being addressed, whats the problem?
It’s not being addressed. Linus called for the testing, but it’s not happening. And the kernel is getting slower, as the benchmarks continue to show.
But this performance drop of 1% could be anything and you have no evidence to say it’s bloat.
Actually, the performance drop is greater than 1%. I’ve measured a drop of fifty percent in some networking performance.
And there’s plenty of evidence. There are published code path length numbers that show things like SE-Linux adding unnecessary overhead.
So it’s being addressed, whats the problem?
I guess another unix clone will come along and get what BSD got wrong and say your kernel is bloated. Performance can mean any part of the kernel, i’ve actaully found the kernel to be more responsive since PREEMPT was introduced. But this performance drop of 1% could be anything and you have no evidence to say it’s bloat.
How does one define performance though? throughput in regards to the load capacity and the ability to perform, even when swamped with users? how about latency? perceived snappiness?
In regards to PREEMPT – I assume that it was Linux you’re referring to – IIRC, Linus was hesitent about introducing it, as he said, it allowed latency issues to be hidden rather than addressed – which is valid, considering that one should try to address fundamental design flaws rather than using work arounds.
Oh, and as for BSD, Linux and kernel size (as raised by another individual) – the standard SMP kernel, when I was running it on an x86 is ( located in /boot/kernel ) is around 5-6MB; on MacOS X, the mach_kernel size is 3.8MB with the mach.sym being around 500K – neither of these systems slow any performance degradation in respects to performance to due a large image size.
Ok ok but my question is how big is the Windows kernel?!
Linux is the kernel. The kernel is not bloated.
That’s why it lives in a 50mb+ source tree and compiles into a 8mb+ default image?
No, if Linus were to put large portions of X inside the kernel, this would be considered bloat. Oh wait, that is Microsoft that did this for performance reasons.
They put Win32 in kernelspace, not in the kernel. It’s still very much a separate subsystem.
a 8mb+ default image?
Yeah, you already said it. This may be the size when you enable any option under the sun to be built into your kernel. However no distribution I know ships such a silly image.
Most distribution come with an image ~1.5mb.
Oh and you can always build your own kernel and strip off virtually anything to save size if this is what you care about.
Tell me, when was the last time you put your windows kernel on diet? Ooops I forgot. Unfortunately not possible.
a 8mb+ default image?
Yeah, you already said it. This may be the size when you enable any option under the sun to be built into your kernel. However no distribution I know ships such a silly image.
Most distribution come with an image ~1.5mb.
1.5mb is the compressed kernel size on disk before you boot. 8mb+ is the size of that kernel on Ubuntu in memory.
Oh and you can always build your own kernel and strip off virtually anything to save size if this is what you care about.
yes.
anyone care to admit being the person who is voting down my comments that don’t violate any of the rules?
“Anyone who says Linux is bloated hasn’t tried any of the good distributions that concentrate their effort on one Window manager or desktop environment. Those ones tend to put together some of the best user experiences imo, and they keep things within a beautifully light package compared to what Windows reaches with equivalent software.”
You’re talking to the wrong guy, bud.
PII 266 128MB RAM Debian Sarge Ion3
my apps:
aterm
xfe
xchat
gqview
pine
opera
elinks
joe
Talk about a light desktop. Now try to explain this to a newbie who can understand why he can’t use KDE, Gnome, Evolution, and why every year it gets worse, etc
Talk about a light desktop. Now try to explain this to a newbie who can understand why he can’t use KDE, Gnome, Evolution, and why every year it gets worse, etc
Have you really been using GNOME or KDE for the past couple of years? I doubt you have considering they have both have become quicker and less memory intensive in that time. I’ll agree that GTK2 and GNOME2 is nowhere near as fast as GTK1 and GNOME1 but the features are totally lacking in the latter. Don’t people understand that you cannot add tons of features without adding complexity and “bloat”? If your computer can’t handle GNOME or KDE then use something else. What other options do you have for Windows? Use an old unsupported version? That doesn’t sound very appealing. Both GNOME and KDE run very well on modern machines. They also run well on older machines, up to 6 or 7 years old. If you have something older than that XFCE or Windowmaker or even IceWM will do fine. Those are much better options than running a vulnerable operating system that is no longer patched.
even IceWM
Good point. IceWM has been my wm of choice for 3 years. The fact that is light and fast is just gravy.
Gnome2 actually stripped many features from Gnome1.
They added some just works goodness but I don’t buy the fact that it was necessary to kill performance to such extent to suport it.
Eg. i still don’t know why startup time had to be lenghten an almost order of magnitude.
Guys , gnomecalc and gedit takes more time to start than emacs. That’s sick!
Gnome2 actually stripped many features from Gnome1.
They added some just works goodness but I don’t buy the fact that it was necessary to kill performance to such extent to suport it.
GNOME2 did not really strip that many features. Most of them just got reorganized under GCONF instead of being selectable within the application. Overall GNOME2 has many more features than GNOME1.
Eg. i still don’t know why startup time had to be lenghten an almost order of magnitude.
Guys , gnomecalc and gedit takes more time to start than emacs. That’s sick!
It seems that you are correct that gedit takes longer to load than emacs but who cares? Gedit uses GTK2 which has many more features and abilities than Motif. It is also a part of GNOME and must load shared libraries that emacs doesn’t have to. I haven’t tested this against the newest gedit but I know that it faster than the version I have installed.
It seems that you are correct that gedit takes longer to load than emacs but who cares? Gedit uses GTK2 which has many more features and abilities than Motif. It is also a part of GNOME and must load shared libraries that emacs doesn’t have to.
Please do not compare GEdit with Emacs or Vi. According to you, GEdit should be used because… what? It is GTK2 which as more feature than Motif! It’s the first time I read something so… well… stupid. Sorry to say that.
Emacs and Vi are wonderfull editors that GEdit is far far far away to compete with in terms of feature and abilities.
And anyway… you want Emacs with GTK2? Be happy, this is comming in the next release of Emacs. Guess what? I am already using it everyday, it’s very stable, and it’s still loading very fast, even though my .emacs file does a lot’s of processing.
Sometimes, when I read such a weak arguing, I feel ashamed. Unix world in general owes a lot to Emacs and Vi. You could pay a bit of respect to those respectables editors.
Please do not compare GEdit with Emacs or Vi. According to you, GEdit should be used because… what? It is GTK2 which as more feature than Motif! It’s the first time I read something so… well… stupid. Sorry to say that.
I never said you should use one over the other. Personally I use GVim. That’s besides the point though. When building an application today no one is going to choose Motif. GTK2 has many more features, so developers are going to choose GTK2 over Motif. Yeah it is slower but it is much more useful. You totally missed my point.
Emacs and Vi are wonderfull editors that GEdit is far far far away to compete with in terms of feature and abilities.
No one is arguing otherwise.
And anyway… you want Emacs with GTK2? Be happy, this is comming in the next release of Emacs. Guess what? I am already using it everyday, it’s very stable, and it’s still loading very fast, even though my .emacs file does a lot’s of processing.
I can’t vouch for whether or not a GTK2 emacs would or would not load faster than gedit. Even if it does, Emacs doesn’t have the overhead of Gedit’s shared GNOME libraries.
Sometimes, when I read such a weak arguing, I feel ashamed. Unix world in general owes a lot to Emacs and Vi. You could pay a bit of respect to those respectables editors.
You are clueless. I used Emacs and VI well before I ever even heard of Gedit. The problem in this discussion is not my understanding of Emacs and VI but your understanding of how software is developed.
Clearly, you have not got a clue about what you are talking about.
Linux is *NOT* only the kernel in this case. Most distros are bloated because they already include applications, which Windows doesn’t.
No one who wants to download Linux goes to kernel.org
YOU *NEED* TO INSTALL EVERYTHING….. unlike Windows
YOU *NEED* TO INSTALL EVERYTHING….. unlike Windows
Bullshit, you don’t “need to install everything” – you can pick and choose what you wish to install; grab a standard Fedora 5 cd set, stick to the defaults, and in the 1.5GB or so, you’ll have more functionality than the amount of space which Windows XP chews up.
” Bullshit, you don’t “need to install everything” ”
I disagree, for _most_people_, due to the wonders of dependency hell, it’s almost impossible to strip out what the distro maker has already put in.
One of the biggest fallacies sold to Linux potentimal new users is this crock about “you can make Linux into anything you want”.
Most people try stripping out unwanted apps, bork their system, reinstall, try recompiling a leaner more customised kernel, birk their system and them give up in disgust.
It’s fiddly, complicated, poorly documented, inconsistant & a mess.
Linux has it’s good points, this is’nt one of them.
All I know, I’ve never once had a problem doing a minimal Red Hat install and then turning it into an nfs server, nis server, or dns server, or whatever I’ve happened to need. But hey, if you think clicking on the minimal install option is hard, well…I guess.
“No one who wants to download Linux goes to kernel.org
YOU *NEED* TO INSTALL EVERYTHING….. unlike Windows
Direct link for this comment”
Assuming you’re not a blabbering idiot, just trying to start a flame war (and I doubt it), why exactly do I need to install everything.
Mind you, I’m writing this on a 9 year old Dell Inspiron 7000 Laptop with 256MB (and a 14GB disk) running Dropline GNOME/Slackware 10.2 (eating 2.5GB disk space, with full development tools installed).
The only non-automated process (read compile-install) I had to do to get the machine running, was to recompile the ATI driver with DRI enabled. (The generic ATI MACH64 driver doesn’t support DRI due to security concerns..)
Now I assume you fact clear-cut facts to support your inflammatory claims,
right?
Gilboa
Now I assume you fact clear-cut facts to support your inflammatory claims,
right?
No. We can’t compare Windows-like distros (Mandriva, Ubuntu, Lindows, Xandros, PCLinuxos) with your distros (DSL, Puppy, etc…). If you do, obviously you’ll always find a way to be right.
We’re talking about Windows-like distros in this thread. So yes, in this case you need to install office suites, browsers, text editors and utilities that ship with the distro.
“No. We can’t compare Windows-like distros (Mandriva, Ubuntu, Lindows, Xandros, PCLinuxos) with your distros (DSL, Puppy, etc…). If you do, obviously you’ll always find a way to be right.
We’re talking about Windows-like distros in this thread. So yes, in this case you need to install office suites, browsers, text editors and utilities that ship with the distro”
Ummm… Do you consider Fedora Core to be Windows like, or do you actually consider it to be low fat?
If you choose minimal Fedora installation (or select “Custom” -OR- customize the pre-made selection) you can remove -everything- you don’t like. Windows XP, on the other hand, -forces- me to install Messenger, WMP and IE.
Mind you, you can achieve the same customization level in SUSE (It has been a while since I used Mandrake, so I can’t really comment on it)
-More-ever-, even if you installed everything by mistake, nothing stops you from removing all the bloat, post installation.
Fact: my backup firewall uses FC3 and runs on a 300Mhz PII, 192MB, 1.6Gb disk.
I control the machine using SSH, serial console and VNC. Oh… VNC’s DE is
XFCE that runs just fine on 192MB.
Now, please explain, what prevents me from installing Fedora Core 5 (minimal), removing everything I don’t need, and using XFCE (DE), Abiword (Office), Thunderbird (Mail), Firefox (Browser) and vim (Development) instead of the so-called bloat?
Cheers,
//YOU *NEED* TO INSTALL EVERYTHING….. unlike Windows//
This is not correct.
Many distributions will allow selection of a wide range of what you install or do not install.
If for example one wants a console-only command prompt machine (no desktop, no GUI, no X-windows etc as overhead) then there are a number of choices of Linux distribution that would permit such a thing. Or one can use a no-mouse graphical (with X-windows) desktop if one wants to (http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratpoison), or one can use a lightweight low-overhead desktop (http://www.xfce.org/index.php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xfce) or (http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxbox).
On the other hand, there is no way to do this type of thing on Windows as far as I know. There is just one high-overhead desktop and GUI choice, and that is it.
What I see is a bunch of people who either don’t want to learn Linux or can’t using this Microsoft exec’s statement to justify their laziness and/or lack of understanding.
I have been a happy Linux user for over 10 years. I thought it was great back then and I still do.
I think it is funny that people whine out of one side of their mouth that Linux sucks because it isn’t like Windows, so the OSS crowd makes the things these people are demanding. Then, when they have a system that is in every way comparable to Windows, they whine out of the other side of their mouths that Linux is bloated. Morons! You can’t have it both ways. Features require code and the more features you have the bigger your code is going to be.
I context of this article word Linux is definately understood as distro.
Linux is the kernel. The kernel is not bloated.
You’re being overly pedantic. When People are talking about linux in this context, they are talking about common distributions. I.e. RedHat, Fedora, Ubuntu.
but that is up to the admin to cut back on the stuff that is not needed in the install.
What admin? A truly dedicated Linux admin might have the knowledge to deselect the right packages when deploying machines. 98% of Desktop installs outside of large corporate deplyments are done by OEMs and these people will just slap on a default install of Fedora or Ubuntu. Both of these run more slowly at the DE level than windows.
YOU DO NOT NEED TO INSTALL EVERYTHING….. unlike Windows
The majority of people (wether they use linux or windows) do not want to install ANYTHING…ever.) They use what they know and expect everything to work ‘out of the box’.
Linux is not up to this level yet.
98% of Desktop installs outside of large corporate deplyments are done by OEMs and these people will just slap on a default install of Fedora or Ubuntu. Both of these run more slowly at the DE level than windows.
What a load off bullcrap you’r saying there. I’m posting this reply on my laptop, runing Ubuntu 6.06, with a default instalation + a few extra packages and the damn thing just flys. I can actualy burn a dvd and watch a movie or play with an n64 emulator (running open source drivers here!) at the same time. Pause Mario 64 fire up firefox and gaim, reply my email and use the computer in just as if there was nothing going on. Try to do the same on a Windows XP desktop, and you’ll freeze up Explorer time and time again, at least on this machine, a pavillion ze4900. The machine becomes basicly unusable. The Linux scheduler just owns.
Of course Ubuntu has its share of qwirks, bugs and anoyances, but so does anything Microsoft has to offer. Plus, I can actualy acomplish something productive out of the box with a default ubuntu instalation, since openoffice is included by default.
Oh… and the whole distro fits on single cd. Talk about efficient usage of disk space.
Try before you don’t buy.
Edited 2006-06-24 21:57
kde has been getting faster with every release through the 3.x series, just as one counter-example.
Yes, but as KDE was incredibly slow at the beginning …
Xfce is the way.
Edited 2006-06-24 07:03
yes, but not fast-fast. Not like OS X vs Windows fast. Linux is only on par with windows sometimes, and most consider it only faster because it’s not preloaded with crap like your average Windows machine.
But if you take a bear XP installation against a fresh distro install, Linux is not any better than XP.
Linux keeps emulating Windows and replicating its’ functionality, but it still doesn’t give a huge reason to switch given that software freedoms do not initially mean anything to regular people. Linux needs to be better than that, it needs to be fast out of the box, support a wide range of hardware and ‘just work’ like OS X, rather than ‘plug and play’ like Windows.
“But if you take a bear XP installation against a fresh distro install, Linux is not any better than XP.”
I can blurt out unsubstantiated claims as well: Windows is an unstable, insecure OS that architecturally is designed to degrade over time as applications are installed and upgraded because of the misguided design of its registry and the misue thereof by nearly all application developers. It is an OS that calls home to inform its master on a daily basis whether or not its users are abiding all the master’s desires. It is filled with needlessly bundled technologies (e.g. Internet Explorer, Outlook Express MSIME, etc.) Oh, wait…
Seriously though, if you think a barebones Linux installation is anywhere near as useless as a barebones Windows installation, you obviously don’t know how to use Linux. I mean, considering nothing more than a BASH shell Linux is much more useful that a barebones install of Windows.
Linux doesn’t degreade over time because it simply doesn’t have all kinds of extensibility windows has.
If you have choice between system that degreades over time because new applications and services are installed and system that doesn’t allow you to have them at all what would you chose?
//Linux doesn’t degreade over time because it simply doesn’t have all kinds of extensibility windows has.
If you have choice between system that degreades over time because new applications and services are installed and system that doesn’t allow you to have them at all what would you chose?//
Say what?
My Linux install has 1189 packages installed. In the on-line repositories for my distribution there are 5441 packages listed in all, meaning that I can extend the system to over four times its current installed packages. Each of thos option extra extension packages can install with a single click.
For my previous distribution, which was KANOTIX (a Debian compatible distribution), there were over 17000 packages available to install through the GUI package manager.
How do these facts fit in any way with what you though was the case above?
Throwing heaps of compiled binaries on a single repository is not what I mean by extendability. Most of those packages doesn’t even install menu item, does they? When I my dsl modem vendor can write a driver that can be install on all distros without me messing with ifup/ifdown magic I will (happily) eat my own words.
I have far, far more entries on the menus after a fresh install including e-mail, web browsers, full office suite, cd burners, both raster graphics and vector graphics programs … you name it, I’ve got it.
Not only is it far more complete even just after I start, but my Linux distribution is far, far more extendable than my Windows installation. I could easily end up with four or five times the number of menu entries … all downloadable with a few clicks at zero cost, and all guaranteed to be free of malware and adware.
Not only that, but all my hardware works out of the box on Linux installs. Unlike the case for Windows, I have not had to hunt even once for a driver from the net.
Edited 2006-06-24 13:43
This all is proof of lax extensibility.
All your (sw and hw) goodies had to be laboroulsely integrated by your distro maker. Now try to (hassle free, which includes not resorting to command line) add some sw package or hw device that your distro maker didn’t take care of directly.
You can compile from source but you’ll probably lost all that nice integration with rest of the system.
Don’t install menu items? You want everything you install going into the start menu? Why? Most of what I have on my system is hidden, and I like it that way. If I want to run one of the programs I have hidden, I click the start button, click run and type the command to run the app. The app runs. No problems.
Another thing, if one of my applications crashes, I don’t have to reach over and hit the reset button, or worse yet, have the computer reset for me without my prompting it to do so. With Windows, the latter happens so regularly with my brother’s computer, that it probably time to put a fresh install on. Who wants to go through that? I would rather waste my time playing a game or surfing the internet, than reinstalling Windows and the half dozen apps I have grown used to. On top of that, there’s the hours of work removing all of those stupid applications Windows puts on there that you just don’t want, or need. Internet Explorer for example. Or try to remove Outlook. Can’t do it.
If there’s any OS that’s not ready for the desktop, its Windows. Everything is so mixmeshed together, that if one thing breaks, the whole OS breaks.
I think he was talking about games….GAMES man…Linux has 0 games…and no Doom 3 and Quake and UT dont count.
I do agree though Linux is about using it to get the job done. Windows seems more like a play OS compared to Linux though I am surprised at how good XP has become than when it first came out.
I think he was talking about games….GAMES man…Linux has 0 games…and no Doom 3 and Quake and UT dont count.
Huh? There are games for Linux distros depending of the desktop environments. It looks like you have not installed them or use a distro in console mode (there are even text-based games).
Edited 2006-06-24 18:33
“Linux has 0 games…and no Doom 3 and Quake and UT dont count.”
Why don’t they count? They’re games, for Linux. They appear to satisfy the criteria.
Another poster replied about how KDE has been getting faster with each release, and the same can be said of GNOME since about 2.6. It is true that there are bloated apps in some distributions but there are also many options for each task. There are multiple word processors, image manipulators, web browsers, and so on and so forth. Some have more features and some have less. If you want features you are going to have large applications, if you don’t need a lot of features you have several different smaller applications to choose from and the fact that they are open source means that they are, or at least can be, interoperble with each other. This is a much better situation than Microsoft’s offerings because they intentionally use closed formats that do not interoperate well with other applications.
The point is that more featured apps on Windows are much better performing than less featured on linux.
Since 500Mhz CPUs and 256M memory computers performance is not really a factor when choosing an app on windows. Why should it be on linux?
The point is that more featured apps on Windows are much better performing than less featured on linux.
Since 500Mhz CPUs and 256M memory computers performance is not really a factor when choosing an app on windows. Why should it be on linux?
I understand the point, it’s just that it isn’t true. I run openoffice on a 700Mhz, 256MB computer. I prefer running Windowmaker but I have GNOME installed and it runs fine. I also use evolution and eclipse, not very lightweight applications within their respective categories. What I’m talking about is computers with even lower specifications than that. You won’t even be able to run XP by itself, nevermind with bloated applications. With Linux you can install a lightweight WM and lightweight applications on a machine with a 250-300 Mhz processor and 64MB of RAM and still get some use out of it without having to rely on outdated, unpatched and unsupported software.
“they emulate it creating bloated apps”
yeah, I was afraid Linux would begin to go down the path of the overweight-donut-eating-child…..BLOATED
I hope the open-source community has a plan…
“yeah, I was afraid Linux would begin to go down the path of the overweight-donut-eating-child…..BLOATED
I hope the open-source community has a plan…
Direct link for this comment”
Oh??!?!?
OSS is all about choice! It’s not a software company that decides, -for you- what you get to use or not.
KDE/GNOME too slow for you? Use IceWM/XFCE instead.
OpenOffice is too big for you? Abiword, koffice and others are worthy
replacements.
Nobody is -forcing- you to install -anything-.
… Try getting Windows XP install to remove media player, IE and MSN
messenger during the initial installation and -then- talk.
It isn’t a good point at all. It is the tired, old, first year politician’s strategy of telling a lie often enough that some start to believe it.
It is a lame strategy from the “General Manager of Competitive Strategy” and nothing more.
I don’t agree with that assessment at all xzgv. But I will say that the lack of adoption on the desktop is “it’s the lack of multimedia stupid”. (to put a spin on the “its the economy stupid” claims during Clinton’s re-election).
Rather than banding together and demanding hardware vendors to adopt .ogg just as they do mp3, and demanding the wincodecs, iTunes, and dvd codecs.
Basically it boils down to the killer apps. And today’s desktop killer apps are the above mentioned.
When was the last big surge of Linux adoption? It was when Microsoft decided to EOL NT 4. They suggested you rebuilt Win2k domains from scratch. Many very large corporations are running windows 2k right now. When that hits it’s end of life, you will see yet another surge in Linux server/desktop usage.
I’d say that both windows AND linux are gaining ground on the server front and that linux is gaining slightly in the desktop arena.
Linux is certainly not losing steam:
The US Department of Defense is contracting Cray to build the worlds fastest computer running a SLES cluster on Opterons:
http://www.ornl.gov/info/press_releases/get_press_release.cfm?Relea…
http://www.opensource.org/docs/peru_and_ms.php Peru doesn’t agree
http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;1394751021;fp;4;fpid;3 Cisco
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prCN20118306 China is going to be HUGE in a few more years
With new technologies like Xgl and wonderful desktop environments like Gnome or KDE, Microsoft will have a formidible competitor in the near to long-term future. I see this as good for both sides as it forces innovation. Can I have wobbly windows and 3d cube virtual desktops that spin in Vista? nope.
> Can I have wobbly windows and 3d cube virtual desktops > that spin in Vista?
Do you have “open source” OpenGL drivers on Linux? – worry about that first before you worry about vista’s ability to wobble windows
some people are just dim……
can you comprehend what the OPEN part of OpenGL means ?
OpenGL has always been an open system, anyone can have the source.
Linux has had OpenGL support from day 1
pfffft
funny that this marked a 5 when it misses the word driver which is fairly critical to the original point.
the OPEN part of OpenGL means that it’s an open standard.
That doesn’t automatically get you drivers for your graphics boards…
Actually there are Open Source OpenGL-drivers to Linux.
Even alternatives OS’es have OpenGL-drivers. Not to all cards, especially not the newest from Nvidia and ATI, but none-the-less they are there.
This is symptomatic of the sort of thing that indicates why Linux fans don’t “get” why Linux isn’t making more headway. A driver that’s not for the card in the box I’m installing for is of no use. A badly written driver for that card is worse than no driver.
Until and unless the Linux community gets the hardware vendors to take supporting Linux drivers seriously, that’s going to be a huge hurdle.
It’s only a problem for very few cards. In this case it’s about Nvidia and ATI.
In those cases you have to fallback on proprietary drivers.
Problem solved.
If only that were true. Lately, I’ve encountered bad or missing drivers for commonly available raid controllers, on board nics, a wide range of USB devices, bluetooth devices, and wifi cards — all of which either already had drivers in the XP tree, or came with XP driver CDs.
Not to mention all the bugs in power management support on laptops.
It is true that one occassionaly gets a new device that’s supposed to be windows compatible that for one reason or another won’t work in a given configuration. But that’s the exception in windows land.
On the other hand, the newer the hardware, the less likely that there’ll be a working Linux driver.
If you are searching for something to criticize about GNU/Linux, I guess the graphics drivers are fair game. They are certainly a point of contention in any circle that advocates open source.
But if we step back and take the broad look, I prefer Linux over Windows any day. It’s also fun to try to keep up with the daily pouring forth of new and improved applications that I can legally sample for no cost. And apart from the software itself, it’s also fun to be on the side of the revolution.
I do not really understand your comment? Why should we worry about “open source” OpenGL drivers when there are existing OpenGL drivers from Nvidia and ATI that can be used?
Nevertheless, for the last 3 years and a couple of months, I’ve been using free opengl drivers. First the R200 drivers and now the R350 drivers on linux on an iBook G3 and G4.
Why? If you can do something in Linux that you can’t do in Windows, does it really matter how it is achieved? No.
Can I have wobbly windows and 3d cube virtual desktops that spin in Vista?
Yes you can.
Wobbly windows: Do not install a graphics driver.
Spinning desktop: Place your monitor on a Lazy Susan, then spin it. The cube is the hard part.
🙂 Nice comment, SEJeff. You are absolutely right.
“China is going to be HUGE in a few more years”
Yeah, I think with China in on the Linux deal, Microsoft had better come up with a serious game plan, we all know if business in China can get a Open-Source product to make them money,they will.
Why the hell would they pay for something like Windows XP, or Vista?
Linux is certainly not losing steam:
The US Department of Defense is contracting Cray to build the worlds fastest computer running a SLES cluster on Opterons:
Would you care to explain what relevance that has for the desktop?
I will.
Back in the late 80s and early 90s, a lot of people had PCs in their homes. Was it because DOS was great and easy to use? No. It was because that’s what they used at work.
More companies using Linux will mean more people using it. When those people buy a PC, what do you think they are going to want to run? What they run at work. Just like before.
You’re not who I quoted, and you seem to have missed the point of what I was saying.
Are you seriously suggesting that companies were using DOS on servers and supercomputers in the late 80s and early 90s?
I thought not.
And the correlation you point to is not worth much either. Computers at work are not administered by the users. Computers at home are.
Desktop Linux has a long way to go and it doesn’t help Desktop Linux that there is no officially sanctioned standard desktop environment, etc.
Well if you read the teaser, it says that Linux is losing ground to Windows on the Server AND on the Desktop. On “the Server” Linux is not losing ground to Microsoft. Just because Microsoft paid GoDaddy massive amounts of money to move several million parked domains over to a Windows based platform does not mean that Linux is moving ground, it means that GoDaddy made a smart business move because Microsoft wanted PR. Parked domains != to active and running domains.
Missed that you referred to server space for what I quoted, but…
Losing steam == growth rate is going down. There is still growth but not as much as it once was.
And regarding GoDaddy. The way I read your comment is that they previously used another system (possibly GNU/Linux based) for their millions of parked domains, and that would mean statistics were inflated in that systems favor.
Netcrafts statistics on this front have a long time been meaningless anyway, so it doesn’t matter if there are still millions of parked domains on servers running either OS.
“They suggested you rebuilt Win2k domains from scratch.”
Of course they did, and they provided a usually-sufficient migration process. Moving to Active Directory and fixing the shortcomings of the previous implementation is one of the most important things they have done for Windows Server. It was easier done with W2K than if they were to try it now. In fact, if they hadn’t revamped many of things with NT5, it could have ended up as an OS/2 in the server world (left in the dust by Internet-generation operating systems).
NT4 should be nothing but a note in history. May it rest in peace, I hope to never touch it again. I am sorry for anyone who still has to deal with it.
You can hate MS, but that guy tells true. This doesn’t mean that Linux is crap, but simply that Linux isn’t ready for normal user experience (oh yeah, 2006 is a year of Linux on Desktop, we all heard this crappy story for past 5 years and nothing have changed).
If I could use all my votes on you I would. I used to be such a Linux guy but lately, I’ve been pure windows on the desktop. I got tired of “try this browser, it’s the best” only to have it replaced a little later. Open Source is great and people can do what they want but in the end, there aren’t enough projects that get the kind of finishing touches they need to be truly good. Oddly enough, I get away with mostly free software on Windows and it almost always works better than it does on Linux
It sounds like you are rating IE superior to Firefox. Among people who have actually used both, you might be the only person I’ve ever heard from who thinks that. (If you actually think that.)
Among people who have actually used both, you might be the only person I’ve ever heard from who thinks that.
I use both regularly. I’m posting this from firefox on xp.
I find firefox to be buggier, more bloated and slower rendering than IE, and, of course, I’m stuck dealing with sites that firefox can’t deal with, so I’m stuck with IE.
sites that firefox can’t deal with
I’m currently teaching myself web design–especially CSS. As I read books and articles about the wonders of CSS, every author laments IE’s inability to correctly handle style sheets. There is a whole science of well-documented hacks to make a correctly coded page also work in IE.
I know, for example, my company’s web site looks slightly trashy in Firefox, but that’s clearly because the author hacked it until it looked good in IE, paying no attention to either Firefox or standards.
No, I like Firefox better than IE myself. I don’t understand what you’re getting at??
“we all heard this crappy story for past 5 years and nothing have changed”
If you think nothing has changed in 5 years then you are the one telling a crap story. Download RedHat 7.2 and compare it to Fedora 5 or the latest Ubuntu and tell me again that “nothing have changed”.
Fact is, Linux has made tremendous improvements in the past 5 years. 2006 may not be “the” year but every year we get closer. Every year we hear the same crap from people like you, “OMG 200x is not the year of Linux so Linux has made no progress at all!”. That’s like saying “OMG Rome is not finished today so Rome will never be finished!” I’m sick and tired of stupid statements like that. Denying the improvements just shows how blind you are.
Edited 2006-06-23 22:19
Exactly, and next year, when the Windows fanboys get to install Vista, they will realise that Windows has finally caught up to where Linux was last year.
If you’re talking about the Aero interface vs. Xgl…
1. Linux managed to co-erce a system together that was buggy and required a fair ammount of hacking to get working on any common distro. You need a CompSci degree to do it. (BTW. I tried for a couple of hours and gave up with all the legal checks over Radeon drivers). Oh but none of that matters because it’s free.
2. Windows. Hell it costs $300 BUT you put the CD in the grey box and 2 hours later, you have a complete OS installed with all the features you’ve read about working AND you don’t have to know anything about what’s going on ‘below the hood’.
I’m not trying to stop anyone from tinkering with Linux but there needs to be a distribution out there that is seriously user friendly before it will even begin to take a swipe at MS.
Stephen
You are missing the point that after installing windows you barely can do anything. You still need to download a bunch of pirated softwares and for most users they need to install antivirus software first and scan the disk.
So did windows, and MacOS and SkyOS …
Still, big ranges of consumer HW aren’t supported or integrated properly (even with oss driver in place),
Still, I have problems using removeable media,
Still, CD burinig fails without umounting CD manually (On Fedora 5)
With every year Linux is closer experinece consumer Oses had years ago. That’s not enough.
I run Linux on my system. I don’t have Windows. I’m not an IT guru. In fact, I’m what you would call a “normal user” and it works fine for me. In fact, most of your “normal users” just want to serf the net, write email, and maybe do some office work. All of that can be accomplished with the SuSe 10.0 that I use. So don’t tell me its not ready for “normal users”.
As somebody else said, you obviously have either been hiding under a rock for five years, or you have never run Linux. You don’t even have to go back five years. Compare the offerings from Red Hat, Ubuntu, SuSE, and others even a year ago and what they have today. A lot has been improved.
There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
– Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in 1977.
😉
Poor K O. He never said that, but everyone thinks he did.
maker of big business mainframe computers
someone needs to do some homework. DEC was the catalyst of the minicomputer, departmental, engineering system that shook the computer industry loose from the ‘big business’ central IT model.
There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
– Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in 1977.
How is that bad? we’re getting told the same thing, except, replace the word computer with software, and you have the software vendors wet dream.
You think that Ken Olson was behind the times? the only people who would be pissed off about that were the pure software companies who relied on the deployment of individual computers to generate revenue; now that there is a cheap way of delivering feature rich applications over the internet, it’ll now be, “There is no reason anyone would want a fat-client and software in their home.”
Oh how times, change, Microsoft once abused the heck out of the idea of centralised processing, thin clients, but they seem to have embraced it, be it under a new monkier of ‘net services’ – same shit, different delivery mechanism.
But why won’t my parents switch to it? Because right now, when they have problems with Windows (as everybody does), their computer tech support is me. If they switch to Linux, they’re pretty much on their own. They probably won’t get support from their computer vendor and they sure as hell won’t spend hours on Google when Linux won’t recognize their wireless network card. Right now, they depend mostly on me for these things, but I don’t know Linux well enough to support it like that.
It’s probably like that in most households. People most likey know somebody who knows Windows well enough to reinstall Windows, and that becomes their ‘computer guru’ .. how many people know Linux gurus in real life, who aren’t actually using the OS already ?
Edited 2006-06-23 22:00
What types of problems can they usually have?
Speaking for myself, I setup a dapper drake (ubuntu) box in the living room for my parents. It uses wireless, but of course I hand-picked that card to make sure it had the chipset I wanted (atheros). Works like a charm, my mother is actually discovering the “fun” in computing (since I arranged the way gnome works to be mom-friendly and gave them no admin rights).
And currently, I’m somewhere in Israël (instead of being in north-america), and I still haven’t heard of any problems. They can chat with me, email, play their music, all that.
The thing here is to take the time (one day?) to properly configure the box, and I mean properly, that means testing EVERY potential issue and explaining away. And… well anyway I would never have installed Windows on that machine, because, guess what, I will not do technical support for Windows.
There was some osnews user somewhere who said something I really liked, so I quote it loosely here: 99% of teaching is convincing the user that he/she is able to do it.
There was some osnews user somewhere who said something I really liked, so I quote it loosely here: 99% of teaching is convincing the user that he/she is able to do it.
That’s certainly the truth. In my previous job, I spent a lot of time teaching “intro to computers” to mostly middle-aged people. The hardest part was constantly reassuring people when they got something wrong or didn’t understand something, and went into “Oh I can’t do it, I’m computer illiterate” mode.
For a regular user doens’t matter if is Windows or Linux. They want to access the internet, write some documents and listen music. They want to clik in some icons and get the programs working. They barely feel the differenf between linux and windows.
To problem is the technical support. There is not sufficient technical people to suply the Linux support demand of the regular users.
My wife, mother, sisters and some friends use Linux because I give then support. But when someone buy a PC in Brazil with Linux in the first time they need a support normaly the “dude that know computers” in the neiborhood ask to change to Windows… Pity.
//For a regular user doens’t matter if is Windows or Linux. They want to access the internet, write some documents and listen music. They want to clik in some icons and get the programs working. They barely feel the differenf between linux and windows.//
Except for the malware. Typically a Windows computer is riddled with malware within a few weeks of being on the Internet. I have seen Windows computers of “average” users with upwards of 300 spyware programs and viruses on them.
//To problem is the technical support. There is not sufficient technical people to suply the Linux support demand of the regular users.//
To some extent this is unfortunately true.
Fortunately, because of the complete lack of malware that can be had with a Linux system by sticking to a simple rule “only install from the repositories”, or an even simpler rule “don’t give non-technical people the root password” … then there is almost no demand for Linux support because the systems simply don’t need it.
That’s certainly true, but it’s the complete opposite in my family. Both my parents & my two sisters run Linux (Ubuntu) on their machines. As your family, they know how to use a computer, but they don’t know how to administrate it, so they rely on my for that, and I’m doing this with Linux. My family has the advantage that they don’t have to care about virus, trojans & spyware, they have a rock-solid system, they have _all_ the apps they need nor free. For me the advantage is that it’s a rock-stable system and that I can do _all_ updates (except the kernel) remotely via SSH without needing to reboot, plus all the other benefits that Linux offers for administration. Since I did this switch, I’m spending much less time working on my family’s computers because they just work.
Tom
I agree with you guys. Linux is cool, but not as good and comfortable as Windows for 90% of people. I’m a daily Ubuntu user. If I were wrong, then my wife wouldn’t reboot into Windows XP each time whe wants to use the computer here.
And my father is running Gentoo (though I doubt he’s updating it – I’ll have a lot of work when I go visit him).
And I haven’t used Windows XP for the more than two months. And feel no need for doing it. The only thing I can’t do is using webcam with MSN.
But that’s hardly a loss
Hey, use aMSN amsn.sourceforge.net it’s available for BSD or Linux, and I saw someone on webcam through aMSN, so i know it works. I can’t remember if it was in BSD or Linux I used it, I think BSD, but that’s what you want. There is a Windows version of aMSN you can download and try, to test talking with people through there so that you know how works for when you install it in Linux as well.
You can use a webcam for msn with amsn. Check it out http://amsn.sourceforge.net/
Impressive. Very impressive. And thx
no problem my friend…. it actually replaces MSN for all the features except the lame ones like winks(?)
Also check out their plugins for desktop integration. Plugs in very well with Gnome or KDE.
Also speaking of *nix not being ready for the “desktop”, I have never used windows as my main operating system (except on work contracts) in the 10 years I have been involved with computing. I think I managed to get by remarkably well.
amsn is sitting quite nicely in my systray. And no winks… that’s a pro
Unfortunately accents and danish characters don’t work – apparently either tcl/tk and/or amsn don’t like utf8. But niiiice fonts. I like antialiasing.
Of course Linux isn’t ready for the desktop. Mac OS X and Windows aren’t ready either, so why should Linux be ready?
So far all systems fail in implementing the desktop idea properly, but of all the major desktop OS’es Linux does the job pretty well. But of course choosing a PC with mainstream hardware does make things easier.
And well… I haven’t used windows since the downgrade to XP – I just stick with Gentoo and Gnome.
The main problems with switching to GNULinux on the desktop are the small things.
* Driver issues with certain devices
* Opening complex Microsoft office documents(with macros and such)
* Finding technical support in your local area
* Web sites that require ActiveX crap
* Custom software that only runs on windows(POS, Access database based software)
Most of these issues are small ones that can be gotten around fairly easily, but they can be really annoying for average users.
Most people don’t care about freedom and the price of windows is nothing when spread over the 3-5 years life time of a computer.
– Jesse McNelis
If I were wrong, then my wife…
I had to read that comment several times before I understood it’s tongue in cheek.
Have you asked her why? I think you have, but here is my girlfriend reply to the same question. My laptop is loaded with gnome 2.14. It’s quite usable, even for my girlfriend that knows nuts about computer.
However when she wants to do more than just web browsing or looking at her mail, things like listening to music, writting documents, etc, she boots her Windows laptop (I shall note that she knows how to do it under Linux). so I asked her: “Why?”. Guess what she told me? “I can’t change the animations in the player, and I prefer the blue theme of windows and the cat in MS Office. Windows looks more cool.” Yes, to my girlfriend Linux is not yet a threat to Windows.
Honestly my girlfriend would give me the same response. I asked why she didnt like using Mac and stuff and she said she hated it because of the Dock. To her the Start Menu made more sense and honestly I would have to agree with her. I have yet to pop the Linux question to her but I am sure she would kill me if I installed Linux on her laptop because she wants to use Internet Explorer to check her email, and she wants to see the Start menu just to reassure her everything is ok. It took me so long to get her started on using Maxthon to show her tabbed browswing and RSS feeds and bookmarks. It is amazing. I am not saying girls are stupid or anything like that …..she is a gosh darn Nuclear Eng from Berkeley…but they are not into stuff like computers as much as we guys are I guess!
In that situation you should setup VMWare on dapper to run Windows XP. That way you can put an icon on the desktop that says “Windows XP” and tell your wife to just doubleclick that button when she wants to use the PC. She will appreciate that she doesnt have to reboot and saves a little time.
In the meantime, while waiting for XP to come up, she just might start poking around in Ubuntu. Who knows, she may decide “This is wickedly simple to use!!! Why am I still booting into Windows?” Who knows, you might be able to convert her.
I have found the biggest obstacle to converting someone to LINUX is the fact that they dont just poke around and check it out because they just want to use it. In my opinion, Gnome 2.14 has a much easier, more consistant user experience than Windows XP. People just need to actually take the time to experience it.
Please give absolutely no attention to that free unix clone, of course it is not a threat to you. No need for all those paid shills and you can turn off the FUD machine, further restrict your licensing, throw out another new look, call that an upgrade, milk those users to carry the rest of the company buying other markets and we’ll all be a lot better off in the long run.
How can you tell a Windows user to switch, when it takes so long to launch an app?
What the heck are you talking about? It doesn’t take longer to launch an app on a Linux desktop than a Windows one.
I guess Microsoft has run out of strategies to try and counter Linux, so it’s going to back to the “Ignore the Threat” square.
OpenOffice.org sure does take longer. Let’s not even compare it to MS Office (it’s not even close), the Windows version of OO.o loads faster than the Linux version. Then there are those features that requires Java (eg. Wizard in Writer), they take so long to load one would think it stopped altogether, and that’s when it didn’t crash the entire app already.
Another example: Alacarte menu editor in Gnome. I don’t understand why such a simple takes so long to load and feels so sluggish when in use. It’s ridiculous. (It seems that it is written in Python, that’s why it takes longer to load. But most users don’t care what language it is written in. If it is slow, it is slow.)
A lot of apps on Linux do load a little bit slower, but they mostly don’t bother me that much. To me OO.o and Alacarte are really the biggest offenders. (I would’ve throw in Firefox too, but I already gave up and accepted that it will always be a bit slower than the Windows ver.)
Have you ever thought of adjusting the RAM usage of OpenOffice? It will speed up OOo considerably.
I gave up on OOo, i use Joe (text editor) as my word processor.
Apps usually run slower on Linux than on Windows. I have used both operating systems for years on the same and on different computers. You could try apps with both Windows and Linux versions and compare. Firefox and OpenOffice shows this best. There are huge inefficiencies somewhere…
What the heck are you talking about? It doesn’t take longer to launch an app on a Linux desktop than a Windows one.
Installing Fedora 4 onto a machine with more than a minimal selection of packages leaves you with a DE that feels sluggish and,in parts, just downright slow. It took me a lot of time to ‘optimize’ my install before it even began to feel the same as XP running on the same machine, speed wise.
Stephen
yea that point is nonsense. My Ubuntu machines fire up faster than my laptop can from hibernate even and handles multitasking far far better.
A Linux Exec may make similar statements against Windows. Also don’t forget that Bill Gates made the statement that Google is not a thread for MS because: “Google, because they are in the honeymoon phase, people think that they do all things at all times in all ways.”
Linux is ready for a lot of desktops, which is why it continues to grow (though at a slow pace) in this area.
Hint: don’t just look at usage in North America…
Not just in North America…. although that is a bad kick in the balls for Microsoft, to loose the support in its home market…
The big story is governments all over the world dumping Microsoft and moving to Linux.
Here is a few examples;
China (gov)
China (schools)
Phillipines (gov)
Germany (gov)
Germany (state transport)
France (gov)
France (schools)
UK (gov)
UK (health services)
Norway (schools)
To name a few, Microsofts days are numbered, and Vista will be the nail in the coffin.
… Microsofts days are numbered, and Vista will be the nail in the coffin.
For the love of God, when will people stop making statements like this? People have been saying the same thing since Windows 95, and Microsoft still have 90+% of the market share. Even if Vista was the worst operating system in decades, crashed every hour, and ate your soul, Microsoft would still have at least 10 years left in it. Even if Microsoft lost half it’s market share, it would still be the leader. I’m not saying Vista is that good of an OS, but nail in the coffin? There is no coffin and won’t be for decades to come, at least.
`People most likey know somebody who knows Windows well enough to reinstall Windows, and that becomes their computer guru`.
Hehe. Yeah. In this household and family it’s the Linux person.
They tried to go with a former `in-law` that cracked their boxes and stole their info.
Secure. Yeah right! MicroShipwreck is as secure as USB drives in an Afghan marketplace.
As PT Barnum knew and Willy Gates knows, “There’s a Windoze user born every minute!”
Do you have “open source” OpenGL drivers on Linux? – worry about that first before you worry about vista’s ability to wobble windows
Why should we worry about open source OpenGL drivers? Proprietary ones work just fine (especially the Nvidia ones).
So the fact is: I can have wobbly windows on my Linux box NOW, using proprietary 3D drivers. That’s the bottom line.
Yes, I know he’s a Microsoft exec but I have to agree with most things he said there. If you look at desktop Linux over the past five or six years there’s been much hype, but honestly, little to nothing has changed in terms of its ability to challenge Windows.
“It’s not a Red Hat or IBM problem. It’s a model issue,” noted the former IBM executive. “The loosely coupled model of development prevents Linux from being successful on the desktop.”
A pretty insightful and truthful thing for him to have said. If anyone in the desktop Linux world is clever, they’ll take the hint. Somebody needs to take a handful of loosely coupled open source projects, and make sure that they’re the right projects from a technology perspective, and focus on integrating them together in all the right ways. On top of that, they need a business model which does not depend on selling licenses to OEMs and individuals.
No mean feat.
“The magic of open-source software is not the software. It has nothing to do with the code at all. Most open-source code is terribly inferior to commercial software code,” Hilf said.
I suppose he had to get that one in ;-). I suppose it depends on what is meant by quality. Where an open source project is focused on doing one or two things well in many cases the quality of how well it works completely blows away much commercial software – and expensive software at that. If quality is bringing things together, making them easy and straightforward to use and creating graphical interfaces for everything then commercial software tends to do a better job. Certainly not all of it mind you, but most of it.
And even though Linux may appear slick on the desktop, it can’t compete under the covers, Hilf said. Novell and Red Hat are trying to adopt Microsoft’s integration model, but the process of integrating system components and ensuring third-party applications and device drivers run well on the desktop–and testing all those scenarios–makes that task too cumbersome.
True enough I think. As much as Microsoft gets wrong, putting together a whole top-to-bottom desktop OS with all the right infrastructure for developers and users is a huge undertaking. Granted, they make life even more difficult for themselves in terms of complexity sometimes.
This whole integration thing for the desktop is something that Novell are trying, but all that’s happening is they’re integrating open source development in-house rather than using community based software to save time and effort. They simply don’t have the resources to do this, and it’ll all end in tears. Or silence.
“The user tests and reports back bugs on the desktop. The end user doesn’t want to be a tester, unless they’re a developer. It’s extremely hard and complex.”
True to an extent, and I think we’ve all seen this in the open source community with users. I don’t think it needs to be as hard or complex as he makes out though, and for the open source world much infrastructure is needed for developers and users to do more. Users who get more involved need easier ways of reporting bugs or feature requests, and rather than panel beating several bits of complex software together it’s important for an open source desktop to integrate lots of separate, but working and solid, components so bugs are lessened when integration happens.
It should also be admitted more often when an open source, desktop project doesn’t have the resources to do things which are necessary, rather than making excuses, and work out what to do about it. In all that ‘use KDE’ controversy from Linus Torvalds people missed an important posting he made a short while later on this topic, and he’s pretty insightful there:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-December/msg00022.htm…
“Martin brought that together and said we should be singing from the same hymnal, and that was a very important shift. He had a major impact on getting vision around that.”
Whoops, back into corporate executive speak mode again. Oh well.
While you make a good argument (as usual), I think you’re overlooking the most important issue. You’re right that not much has changed in the past 5-6 years with regard to the ability of Desktop Linux to challenge Windows. Desktop Linux has improved so much over this time period that modern desktop distributions are a completely different animal than Red Hat 6.2, but still it is not significantly closer to challenging Windows.
Proprietary software vendors, their customers, and even people like you believe that the distributed development model of open source is a major factor inhibiting the growth of Linux on the Desktop. However, this and all other issues relating to the features, integration, and/or quality of various Linux distributions targeting the desktop pale in comparison to the most imporant factor in Desktop Linux penetration: it’s availability.
As you are no doubt aware, even a Linux fanatic might have problems finding a hardware vendor that will sell a laptop or even desktop PC with Linux. The few Linux-friendly vendors are small and often expensive, and many of the industry giants won’t even sell you a PC without Windows installed. So how exactly is Linux supposed to challenge Windows if customers can’t buy Linux PCs?
I’m not about to accuse the hardware vendors of conspiring to keep Linux off the desktop. At this stage in the evolution of the PC and Linux, however, it stands to question why, in a more-or-less completely commoditized market space where vendors are desperately trying to differentiate their PC offerings, none of the vendors has recognized the potential of a line of fully-integrated Linux PC offerings. Linux PCs would be cool, smart, and (most importantly) different. Surely consumers and businesses interested in deploying a Linux PC would flock to the vendor that provides an integrated Linux PC product line, right?
The Linux Desktop is ready for OEMs, and all that really needs to be done is for one of the commercial Linux distributors to make one of the hardware vendors an offer they can’t refuse. Something along the lines of: “we’ll engineer all of the install images,” “we’ll service all of the support contracts and split the revenue,” and “we’ll never charge you any fees for our software/services.”
Microsoft is the only software vendor in the history of computing that was able to successfully develop a dominant software platform using indepented hardware vendors, and I believe that this is a phenomenon never to be repeated. Considering the total capital investment in Desktop Linux, it is almost equally phenomenal how competitive the platform has become and that it has penetrated a measurable percentage of the PC market.
Ten years ago, the idea of competing with Microsoft on their own platform seemed ludicrous. No one expected Linux to make the impact it has on the server, and absolutely no one predicted it would ever be more than a hobbiest OS on the desktop. By any account, and even if you could get an honest answer out of Mr. Hilf or any other Microsoft executive, Linux and open source software in general has defied all odds by getting to the point it has today.
Desktop Linux will continue to improve in spite of the fact that you really can’t buy a Linux PC. It’s come this far, and the remarkable progress is certainly not going to stop in the forseeable future. When we are finally able to get an Linux PC from a major vendor, *that* will be the tipping point for Desktop Linux. Besides more users/eyes (always a good thing for OSS), this will open up the valve on the huge service revenue stream that Linux businesses and their investors have been waiting for (not always patiently). Once we have Joe User paying $299 for a three year service contract on his new Ubuntu Linux-powered Lenovo Thinkpad (for example), the number of paid Linux developers will surge, the quality of the software will rapidly improve, and Microsoft won’t be able to get away with these kinds of statements.
Desktop Linux has improved so much over this time period that modern desktop distributions are a completely different animal than Red Hat 6.2, but still it is not significantly closer to challenging Windows.
Individual desktop environments have got closer, but the desktop operating systems as a whole just haven’t. That’s the major problem.
Proprietary software vendors, their customers, and even people like you believe that the distributed development model of open source is a major factor inhibiting the growth of Linux on the Desktop.
I don’t believe it’s an inhibitor per se. Distributed development where there is a clear goal for a few small software projects works well, and I think on those small bits of software the community does a far better job than some small department in the bowels of Microsoft. However, the open source community and companies have done a poor job of bringing all those components together to make a coherent whole. The mantra to get over this at the moment is ‘collaboration’, and while its’ necessary things still aren’t brought together into a coherent whole. Projects like Portland may enable some round about things to be achieved, namely bridging two desktop environments, ultimately this is pretty meaningless to and end user or an ISV. It’s an open source world problem, and that’s what many people involved in it fail to understand. It simply creates more work.
However, this and all other issues relating to the features, integration, and/or quality of various Linux distributions targeting the desktop pale in comparison to the most imporant factor in Desktop Linux penetration: it’s availability.
That’s why you need a good quality, freely available desktop OS. You need to build that userbase up.
The Linux Desktop is ready for OEMs, and all that really needs to be done is for one of the commercial Linux distributors to make one of the hardware vendors an offer they can’t refuse.The Linux Desktop is ready for OEMs, and all that really needs to be done is for one of the commercial Linux distributors to make one of the hardware vendors an offer they can’t refuse.
The only offer they can’t refuse is a userbase so signficantly large that they can’t ignore it. No amount of sweet talking will make much difference. The userbase needs to be built up steadily and gradually for a coherent desktop OS that it tips over the edge.
Relying on OEMs through the official channels is a mistake. Microsoft owns them, and the only way to get around it is to distribute your distribution over the internet so that people, and OEMs, make a decision to simply use it because it’s good enough.
Desktop Linux will continue to improve in spite of the fact that you really can’t buy a Linux PC.
There are a good three or four steps involved before you will see OEMs decide to simply install a desktop Linux OS:
1. Pick and create good enough technology to create a coherent desktop OS, with the infrastructure needed. This is controversial and has to be a hugely unemotional decision, and cannot be based around issues like licensing. If the more liberally licensed software isn’t good enough, don’t use it. Formulate proper requirements based on actual experience, not arguments from the vocal open source community.
Bruce Perens tried to do that with UserLinux. He came up with a licensing argument and a decision that means absolutely sweet FA to enterprises, businesses and vendors out there. That decision was made for the benefits of his and others personal and licensing preferences that mean nothign to anyone else. What people want is software that’s good enough. Needless to say, UserLinux has failed miserably as the amount of work required has become apparent and has utterly swamped it. UserLinux also obviously had no clue what was actually required and formulated the wrong requirements.
2. Make sure the technology is in the desktop OS that ISVs will need. Let them know how to create software for the OS, and hardware vendors how to create drivers. Even if they have to open source their drivers, if the market and userbase is there they will simply do it. If not, other hardware and software vendors will move in. Don’t try and force this issue. Either it’s there or it’s not.
3. Having created an OS that’s good enough, with technology in all the right areas, distribute it freely over the internet for users to pick up and create a large userbase. Create some buzz, do some Firefox style adverts……
4. As a result of this ISVs, hardware vendors and others will sit up and take notice. This should happen automatically.
5. With all this demand in place OEMs will feel confident leaving their Microsoft agreements behind – and OEMs really want to leave Windows behind.
Voila.
Edited 2006-06-24 13:00
. Linux PCs would be cool, smart, and (most importantly) different. Surely consumers and businesses interested in deploying a Linux PC would flock to the vendor that provides an integrated Linux PC product line, right?
This assumption fails as soon as you have to get device (peripherial) that’s not prvided by the oem to work.
I used to be such a Linux guy
Translation: “I want to give myself credibility as I spread FUD about Linux, so I’ll pretend to be a Linux user.”
I got tired of “try this browser, it’s the best” only to have it replaced a little later.
I’m not even sure what this means…
Open Source is great and people can do what they want but in the end, there aren’t enough projects that get the kind of finishing touches they need to be truly good. Oddly enough, I get away with mostly free software on Windows and it almost always works better than it does on Linux
So, in other words, there are no truly good Open Source software apps, and yet that’s mostly what you use on Windows??
How can you think anyone will take your argument seriously when you so blatantly contradict yourself in two contiguous sentences.
There are lots of open-source, Linux apps that are better than what you’d find on Windows. For example, Amarok, K3b and Kmplayer/Kaffeine. Oh, and let’s not forget Konqueror or Kate.
I see the astroturfers are out in force tonight…
Indeed…
There is a saying, “never throw your pearls before swine”…..
Amarok should never be ported to Windows. NEVER !
Translation: “I want to give myself credibility as I spread FUD about Linux, so I’ll pretend to be a Linux user.”
That’s your opinion. How do you know?
I’m not even sure what this means…
He’s talking about unfulfilled promises. Every release of software promises to change your life but practically none deliver.
So, in other words, there are no truly good Open Source software apps, and yet that’s mostly what you use on Windows??
He didn’t say that. He said that there “weren’t enough projects that get the kind of finishing touches…”.
How can you think anyone will take your argument seriously when you so blatantly contradict yourself in two contiguous sentences.
He didn’t contradict himself. You need to read for comprehension.
There are lots of open-source, Linux apps that are better than what you’d find on Windows. For example, Amarok, K3b and Kmplayer/Kaffeine. Oh, and let’s not forget Konqueror or Kate.
Of course there are. There are some excellent apps on Linux. Just not enough of them, according to this guy.
I see the astroturfers are out in force tonight…
The street runs both ways.
>I used to be such a Linux guy
>Translation: “I want to give myself credibility as I spread FUD about Linux, so I’ll pretend to be a Linux user.”
Translation of translation: so called ‘linux advocates’ feel so insecure they are ready to accuse anyone saying anything negative about linux in all deadlly sins.
Just remember my personal experience. I was working with RH/Gnome at university lab, a few years back. Apparently RH made some modifications to Gnome, and there were some bugs in it. Anyway, I’ve ended up not even being able to login, and the guys from tech support who knew both linux and gnome but not RH-related mods (or whatever it was) couldn’t help me. I recall they have recommended to switch from default GNOME to KDE. That solved some of my problems, but not all of them. My experience from the whole story was that certainly user interface in RH needs some serious stabilization.
Now imagine my surprise when I’ve joined the related discussion on LinuxToday and posted my experiences. I was immediately accused as an imposter, not ever runing Linux (inspite of the fact that the posting I’ve made to Linuxtoday was done from RH), a Microsoft shill and whatever you can think of (like, didn’t help the old lady to cross the street). Because of a sheer idiocy of all of those replies I’ve decided not to argue and never ever visited Linuxtoday since.
My biggest complaint with Linux is drivers. If a driver needs to be installed and updated it shouldn’t take a 2 day google seach and a trillion dependancies later to finally install… It’s rediculous…. There needs to be an easy straightforward way of graphically installing drivers without no commandline BS, no compiling and no dependancies. The linux world needs to become binary first and source second. Why doesn’t anyone follow Apple or Microsoft in this area? Linux will never work without a standardization/certification process in place. Mandriva, Novell and Fedora need to get together and make 1 standardized version of Linux, meaning they have the exact same depandancies across the board, then software vendors may be more willing to provide apps/drivers that would meet the specs/dependancies for Linux.
What are you talking about man ? The differences between distros has no bearing on drivers, apart from different kernels.
A sound card/network card/webcam/TV Card driver works across the board, but besides that, Linux supports more hardware out of the box than Windows
Who cares if Windows supports less hardware out of the box? You may get more unsupported hardware out of the box, but making the hardware supported by installing a driver is almost idiot-proof most of the time. On my PC (which I never use anymore), any hardware not supported out of the box has drivers a few clicks away from Windows Update and http://www.nvidia.com.
I still remember the horrors and hours upon hours of getting the sound card working under Linux, it was bloody ridiculous. Do I care if it is the vendor’s fault as opposed to the kernel devs’ fault? Nope, I just want my bloody sound to work without me having to run laps and google for hours on end. A regular user would have given up after 5 minutes, and Linux would promptly be replaced with something like Windows.
So you really saying that Windows dont have problems like this? All hardware installs fine on Windows?
Give me a break, thats why techsupport lines get jammed with people wanting to get there scanner and printer working. Get back into the real world.
A regular user of Windows is incapable of installing drivers or even understand why it doesn’t work.
And no, not all devices work with Windows. Not even with the right drivers.
Some times webcams, printers, sound cards, CPU, memory modules, keyboard and motherboards just won’t fit together.
ersonally, I use Ubuntu, and I find that it suits my needs.
But here’s the thing. Most users buy their computers fully integrated with drivers from an OEM like Dell or Gateway. They don’t have to buy or locate drivers. It doesn’t matter whether there are more or fewer drivers. The fact of the matter is that Dell or whoever decides what hardware they put in their machines — and they only put hardware in their machines for which drivers exist.
Since few OEMs offer desktop Linux, the level of integration between the OS and hardware is necessarily poorer — because no distro is going to have all possible drivers. You can’t tell end users that they need to hunt for drivers, either.
Linux will advance only when OEMs offer integrated solutions; until then, it will remain a server OS and perhaps, a novelty on the desktop for enlightened hobbyists.
If you can’t get a device working with Windows, and you have the right drivers, the problem isn’t Windows, or the device
What is the problem then?
* Take an USB-webcam
* Plug it in
* Install the drivers from the CD
* Notice the error message when trying to use the webcam – usually something along the lines “the device isn’t connected” or “device isn’t supported – install the drivers” (sic!)
How much can a person do wrong?
– plug in the cam
– install the driver from the cd
and yet sometimes it fails.
Did you check the drivers for the USB controllers on the MB? I find them to be a cause of problems if they are out of sync with the rest of the chipset drivers, say if you have a VIA chipset, which have different drivers for the chipset, USB and raid controllers.
Sometimes I have even found that a bios upgrade is in order, especially with a very new board and windows XP, as sometimes the early revision bios is not up to snuff. I also have a found that really cheap webcams sometimes don’t work very well with thier supplied drivers, I have a $60 webcam here that works flawlessly everytime and a $20 webcam that sometimes bluescreens the system if I use it’s drivers, but I found that it is actually a logitech, and if I use thier official drivers, it works fine (took me a bit of digging to learn that)
My own system works fine – but I could never get my friend’s webcam to work on his system (didn’t try it on mine though). Personally I tend to blame it on the drivers shipped with the cam.
You and I know how to flash the bios, or install drivers etc.
But how do you expect ordinary people to do this?
Oh, I don’t, but similar problems effect both Linux and Windows, 3rd party drivers are always a pain, and we always need them, because new devices are always coming out.
I still remember the horrors and hours upon hours of getting the sound card working under Linux, it was bloody ridiculous. Do I care if it is the vendor’s fault as opposed to the kernel devs’ fault? Nope, I just want my bloody sound to work without me having to run laps and google for hours on end. A regular user would have given up after 5 minutes, and Linux would promptly be replaced with something like Windows.
Boy you must of tried the kernel itself, because if you tried PCLinuxOS or Mepis you wouldn’t have no problems.
I don’t really thing that was what he meant. Please let’s not start to suggest this distro and that distro. And we don’t even know when it was that he last tried anyway, but that’s not the point either.
This problem is real. And here are my two cents: you should not have to switch distros to have working drivers (unless some distros bundle proprietary ones with black magic). I, personnally, have started linux 2 years ago and I’m lucky enough that 100% of my hardware is supported. I’m glad for that, but I would be pissed if it was not. Just like I bought an atheros-based card because my previous wifi card had a realtek chipset (and now, one year later, it works out of the box.. lucky me)
Less lucky you and better driver support, I surmise. It’s evident from his comment that he hasn’t tried Linux for a long time or he tried the harder distro’s.
Hard working people put out distro’s that just work and instead of people trying them they do what this person did and complain after trying one obsecure or old, old version.
Sure not everything is supported yet; however, that is changing on an almost daily bases. I don’t want to start a big argument here, but I will not stand by and not have the truth be told by MS Fanboys.
That’s why I suggsted PCLinuxOS at http://www.pclinuxos.com and Mepis at http://www.mepis.com there are even OEM Sellers that are selling Computers with Linux installed at http://linux.v2w.org and http://www.seascape.us/
Hard working people put out distro’s that just work
for some subset of users. I’ve recently installed dapper and fc5 on new hardware where XP just works, but it took quiet a bit of effort to get either dapper or FC5 to work.
There are very few laptops around where any distro “just works” — and those are mostly older Thinkpads.
Those two imho are not that friendly, nor work out of the box. Try Mepis at http://www.mepis.com , so far every laptop I tried it on has worked.
Who cares if Windows supports less hardware out of the box? You may get more unsupported hardware out of the box, but making the hardware supported by installing a driver is almost idiot-proof most of the time. On my PC (which I never use anymore), any hardware not supported out of the box has drivers a few clicks away from Windows Update and http://www.nvidia.com.
I still remember the horrors and hours upon hours of getting the sound card working under Linux, it was bloody ridiculous. Do I care if it is the vendor’s fault as opposed to the kernel devs’ fault? Nope, I just want my bloody sound to work without me having to run laps and google for hours on end. A regular user would have given up after 5 minutes, and Linux would promptly be replaced with something like Windows
Well, if you created a blueprint for manufacturing taps and distribute it, and later a user comes along and says that your taps cannot be used with company Y’s pipes, is it your fault? Especially if its company Y that created the pipe not following standards?
The thing is that vendors specifically tailor their products for Windows. Its not our fault that they decide to not follow standards, or that they don’t come up with one. The Windows situation (where you can simply create drivers to interface with your bizzare hardware) only worsens it. Why don’t you blame them for that? Why are you blaming us for something that is not our fault? It makes no sense!
People like you, who already know the real reason for this, and continuously blame the wrong entity, are wasting Earth’s resources. If not, I dare you to write your own kernel and provide drivers for ALL hardware in existance. I really think that, if you haven’t acheived that, you should simply shut up before other people clean up the mess you are. I’m sorry for being so offensive, but its the best way IMO to put it through
What are you talking about man ? The differences between distros has no bearing on drivers, apart from different kernels.
Except to the extent that the distros have different patches for a given driver. Each distro has its own priorities, and some drivers work in one but not another, because the distro’s patches haven’t made it upstream yet.
A sound card/network card/webcam/TV Card driver works across the board, but besides that, Linux supports more hardware out of the box than Windows
It may support more total, but it supports far less of the hardware people are currently buying at any given time. And the support is often much poorer, even when it is present.
Linux supports more hardware out of the box than Windows
This may be true ‘by numbers’ but if you discount the 100s of Ham radio interface drivers and obsolete Tape archive drivers, the issue is very different.
So I want to install drivers for my Radeon Graphics card. 5 days later and I’m bodden down into some legal discussion about the legality of Binary Blobs linking their headers into an open-source kernel driver. I mean WTF.
Likewise, my TV Card. Windows: 10 minutes. Linux 10 Hours, and I end up with , after having to edit config files, a flickery image that keeps dropping out. Altho I’m told that my TV card should work ‘out the box’ with Distro X.
// ]]Linux supports more hardware out of the box than Windows [[
This may be true ‘by numbers’ but if you discount the 100s of Ham radio interface drivers and obsolete Tape archive drivers, the issue is very different. //
Au contraire, the original statement is absolutely true.
For nearly every install of Windows I have ever performed there is some part of the hardware that a Windows install disk does not recognise. I am forced to either insert an additional driver disk from the equipment manufacturer, or I must hunt for a driver on the net.
The most recent time I installed Windows, only half of the audio driver components installed. No amount of searching under Windows turned up a driver on the net or even a name of the chipset.
Of the machines I have installed Linux on, for most modern distributions, the success rate of having a correct driver out of the box is significantly higher.
Windows rarely installs with all drivers working out of the box.
Linux installs rarely miss installing all drivers out of the box.
Of the machines I have installed Linux on, for most modern distributions, the success rate of having a correct driver out of the box is significantly higher.
Windows rarely installs with all drivers working out of the box.
Linux installs rarely miss installing all drivers out of the box.
Your mileage definitely varies. You wouldn’t, by any chance, be installing mostly on older hardware? Not using wifi? Not trying to support USB web cams? Not installing on laptops? Not using bluetooth? Not running NVidia or ATI graphics? Not running Intel gig-e motherboard nics?
I ask this, because in the last month, I’ve had XP installs work fine for all of those devices when identically configured Ubuntu or FC5 systems have either not had drivers, have required me to load third party drivers, have required significant hunting around on the net for drivers, or have turned up with broken drivers.
Your mileage definitely varies. You wouldn’t, by any chance, be installing mostly on older hardware? Not using wifi? Not trying to support USB web cams? Not installing on laptops? Not using bluetooth? Not running NVidia or ATI graphics? Not running Intel gig-e motherboard nics?
On the contrary.
I know after a little googling which wifi chipsets have the most hits and eventually are de facto best supported.
So i went for anything atheros based.On the atheros website:http://customerproducts.atheros.com/customerproducts/
you can check any brand your local pc-shop sells wether it has an atheros chipset or not.Mine sold only d-link so i went for the d-link DWL-G520.
During text mode install of Ubuntu the wireless NIC was detected so i only had to enter the SSID and pass,simple.
Not running NVidia or ATI graphics?
NVIDIA is one of the few vendors that has the best (graphics) support for systems other than windows.Linux,Solaris,FreeBSD to name a few.Only ATI is practically windows only.
Not running Intel gig-e motherboard nics?
On the contrary.My mobo has a nvidia gigabit lan (forcedeth driver),which ubuntu (A lot of linuxen btw) supports out of the box.I could also install the oficial linux driver from nvidia if i wanted (sound also).But since a lot just works i didn’t think it was worth the while.
Not trying to support USB web cams?
Nah,why should i?I don’t need them.
I ask this, because in the last month, I’ve had XP installs work fine for all of those devices when identically configured Ubuntu or FC5 systems have either not had drivers, have required me to load third party drivers, have required significant hunting around on the net for drivers, or have turned up with broken drivers.
Ohw,i forgot to mention that all the above is valid for FC5 also.
I know after a little googling which wifi chipsets have the most hits and eventually are de facto best supported.
So, not “out of the box”, but rather “if you do your homework.
you can check any brand your local pc-shop sells wether it has an atheros chipset or not.
Not really. Various vendors, especially Netgear, but even dlink, have been known to change chipsets without changing part numbers.
NVIDIA is one of the few vendors that has the best (graphics) support for systems other than windows.Linux,Solaris,FreeBSD to name a few.
It’s hardly “out of the box” support, though is it, since the purists jump all over any distro that actually ships the NVIDIA driver.
Not running Intel gig-e motherboard nics?
On the contrary.My mobo has a nvidia gigabit lan
Um, I said Intel and you answered nvidia so, no, not “on the contrary”.
Nah,why should i?I don’t need them.
You shouldn’t. But if you’re not supporting typical systems, then expect your mileage to vary from that of the typical user.
What gets me… is the fact that either people don’t understand the main issue, or they ignore it in hopes that if they don’t bring it up nobody else will think of it. Why doesn’t someone interview me regarding the Windows Linux debate?? 🙂
No that’s not the issue either in my opinion. 😉
The problem is people look at Linux and open source as a competitor to Windows and it’s NOT.
Linux and the open source movement are a paradigm shift. Open source wrestles control away from software companies and puts it in the hands of those who are actually trying to do something. Business owners and their staff; consumers; etc..
Why is the fact that it’s a paradigm shift important and trumps all other issues?
Every day you’ll find a new article on the internet about how Linux doesn’t do this… security that… yada yada yada. The fact is it doesn’t really matter. Yes I know it matters in the here and now when you’re trying to do something, but in the long run it doesn’t.
See since Linux is owned by the public there’s no way to put it out of business. That’s not true of Mac, Solaris, IRIX, etc… Now MS may succeed in putty a given commercial Linux distribution out of business (eg. RedHat, SUSE, …), but what does that get them? Nothing. Linux will continue to grow under a different group. It will keep chugg’n away and eventually people will add ever feature you could have ever wanted. Maybe next year, or the year after that, or 10 years from now. Doesn’t really matter.
The main issue is open source is a paradigm shift that puts control in the hands of the users instead of those trying to sell a product (software) to you.
What does MS have to compete with that? Coming out with a new version of Windows or Office is a useless defense to that shift over a long enough timeline.
Redhat, SUSE HP, IBM actuall lead a preetty much developements that actually matter to corporate environments. They also hire or sponsor organizations that hire many of key developers.
Their demise would seriously hurt linux adoption in corpos and where else its siginficant? In some web companies maybe…
When all you vista users cant use your warez anymore. 2007 will probably the beginning of OSS on windows. If they allow it. And in the meantime I enjoy my free an legal linux software, wich just work. No rare swapping of disks, strange knocking on my firewall from Redmond. Linux was ready for many years on the desktop. And I really dont care about Microsoft. The time will learn. It did allready didnt it?
I really hope that linux stays on the fringe of the techo-nerd crowd. I enjoy having productive conversations with other Linux users that produces real solutions.
The last thing I want is for everyone to start using linux en-mass and start posting support questions to b-boards, news-groups, and mailing lists that either don’t make any sense at all or are so lame they make you stupider just having read them. After an hour on the phone trying to help someone connect a USB device only to finally realize they somehow jammed the usb connector into the eithernet jack, (true story) I swore off helping windows users.
I don’t understand this crazy notion that once Linux is used by the majority of computer users it has finally accomplished something. Linux has sort of become my oasis from the world of poeple who make my head hurt and I want it to stay that way.
Linux has sort of become my oasis from the world of poeple who make my head hurt and I want it to stay that way.
Good. I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way. I think a good place to be would be just enough users so that hardware vendors will have to open up their specs (or at least make drivers for us)
But even if Linux usage stayed in the ~5% range, I’d prefer that over the likely scenario that you present should it get really popular.
But it’s not snobbery. Snobbery would be if you didn’t want the masses to be able to use Linux so that it would make you feel leet. But not wanting people flooding Linux forums with stupid questions/complaints/suggestions is a valid desire.
Especially when there’s the danger that a developer will actually listen to them. Oh, the irritation I feel when someone posts an ‘idea’ on how to make Linux better when in actuality it would make it worse and the only reason it was suggested is becasue it’s the way MS does it. I don’t need more of those users.
I “forced” my girlfriend to use and love opensource software……Breezy Badger was the first round and I must say I had a big fight, but I succeeded….
So now we dual boot Ubuntu and….FreeBSD (with Gnome) and she hardly sees the difference:-)
She’s comfortable with especially Ubuntu and she can use all her stuff on it (ipod and canon digital camera).
So let this MS guy talk what he wants, certain people are moving away and more will follow….you know why?
Because opensource gets better and better…..and so does MS, but the latter with a price….
We from the opensource family must continue our “war” and show how we are at ease with our solutions and they will follow….
So let this MS guy talk what he wants, certain people are moving away and more will follow….you know why?
Because opensource gets better and better…..and so does MS, but the latter with a price….
We from the opensource family must continue our “war” and show how we are at ease with our solutions and they will follow….
This is actually the best point I’ve seen. Not that Microsoft isn’t getting better, but that so is Open Source, and it doesn’t cost a dime. That won’t win people over by itself, but it’s a great start. I also like the tactic of showing how easy it is to do things, because linux desktop share is only going to grow by breaking out of the idea that it’s all tech oriented and takes 4 days of solid work to setup.
I “forced” my girlfriend to use and love opensource software……Breezy Badger was the first round and I must say I had a big fight, but I succeeded….
I have to wonder why you think it was important enough to “force” your girlfriend to do anything. In my experience, people tend to resent force, even if you’re right.
Its not force, per say, but its when you’re used as the free technical support service, to fix every damn problem with their computer, it does start to be come annoying; for me, I don’t help any one with a PC problem, unless they show me some cash, or a combination or either cash with some beer or a cake of some sort.
I got out of IT to avoid that kinda shit, I certainly shouldn’t be dragged kicking and screaming back, as the modern day Jesus of computer healing.
You ‘forced’ your girlfriend to use Linux?
Wow … 🙁
Not new, its obvious…
Funny how people say distros or Linux is getting bloated, actually if you take GNOME the source code is smaller than 2.8.
Talking of bloat, how big is Vista? and why does the windows directory get to be over 1.5Gb!
Those who can – do.
Those who can’t – use Windows.
Proverb of a Slacker.
And even though Linux may appear slick on the desktop, it can’t compete under the covers, Hilf said. Novell and Red Hat are trying to adopt Microsoft’s integration model, but the process of integrating system components and ensuring third-party applications and device drivers run well on the desktop–and testing all those scenarios–makes that task too cumbersome.
This statement isn’t true at all. Linux becomes more integrated all the time. DBUS and HAL are allowing devices and applications to communicate with each other in a desktop agnostic way. EDS allows integration of several groupware applications. Linux is actually doing this in a much saner way than Microsoft. Applications interoperate better because you don’t have to worry about hidden APIs or paying for access to applications. As for third party applications, they usually only target Redhat and/or Suse which isn’t a problem in corporate environments and isn’t an issue for home users either because PC vendors that ship Linux PCs only usually support Redhat or Suse. Drivers are not an issue either because they come preinstalled. The only real issue that faces Linux on the desktop now is marketing by major PC vendors.
“Vendors come in and buy piece parts, and they try to assemble a mini Microsoft development model. But who is going to test it? It’s the user,” Hilf said. “The user tests and reports back bugs on the desktop. The end user doesn’t want to be a tester, unless they’re a developer. It’s extremely hard and complex.”
This is another false statement. If you want to purchase, or even download a commercial distro you can. If you want to use Fedora or OpenSuse, you can do that also. The community distros are for testing. Linux vendors can and do release stable distributions that are perfectly capable of tasks performed by ordinary users.
The funny thing with bug-reporting is: Microsoft also relies on bug-reports from end-users, just like any other OS. Or why did Microsoft upload the latest Vista Beta DVDs for community testing, if not for reporting bugs?
Keyword: Community testing
Linux needs to have more unity among applications, a more solid development platform for users. This distro buisiness imho is just spreading Linux even more apart. Everyone does something their own way and it’s a horror to find something specific to your distro. I do see some chance for distros such as Fedora and Ubuntu I’ve tried Ubuntu personally and I saw it as a great alternative to Windows.
Linux is taking major leaps but they are right, it’s just not there yet. I’m not saying I agree with everything they say there is wrong with Linux, I’m just agreeing with that one statement. Linux isn’t ready for the desktop.
And as for Linux not being a threat? They’re right. I doubt Linux was concieved with the sole purpose to destroy Windows. It is there as a FREE alternative. Theres nothing saying you cant use it ALONG with Windows. People make things so black and white sometimes it’s rediculous.
“Linux is taking major leaps but they are right, it’s just not there yet. I’m not saying I agree with everything they say there is wrong with Linux, I’m just agreeing with that one statement. Linux isn’t ready for the desktop.”
Yes, Linux took major leaps. That’s true, but the “Linux isn’t ready for the desktop” is not completely true. For some tasks it is already a better OS than e.g. the ever-popular Windows. In other areas, Windows is still the best solution. It really depends on what you want to do, what knowledge you have and so forth. But saying “Linux isn’t ready” is simply wrong, as there are at least as many Linux users as there are Mac users. And is Mac not ready for the Desktop?
The very fact that Linux is used for desktop machines proves that it is a solid and very good alternative. But it is not the right solution for everyone, that is for sure.
“I doubt Linux was concieved with the sole purpose to destroy Windows. It is there as a FREE alternative.”
Very true. Choose whatever works best for you. If it’s Linux, so be it. If it’s Windows, fine. Or Mac, Solaris, BSD… everyone has his own preferences and that’s fine.
“Choose whatever works best for you. If it’s Linux, so be it. If it’s Windows, fine. Or Mac, Solaris, BSD… everyone has his own preferences and that’s fine.”
That’s exactly what it boils down to, and that’s why I switched. Choice. If Windows had a 100% market share, there would be no choice. The world would be Windows, and if it sucked, too bad. But Windows don’t have 100% market share, and that’s a good thing. Choice is a good thing. Use cars as an example. If we only had Ford Motor Company building cars, and all other car companies went out of business, what incentive would Ford have to give us a better product? There wouldn’t by any. So we would have the same model year in and year out. No changes, and very few advances. Choice forces innovation, and if you don’t think Linux makes Microsoft innovate, you need to think again. For a while in the 90’s, it was only Mac competing with Windows. Now, we have Linus, Mac, BSD, and several other unixes vying for workspace.
The home user is going to use what they see at work. I think somebody else said that in a previous reply. The fact is, more people are going to see it at work because Microsoft is screwing the pooch at the moment. They have missed several deadlines, giving the other software companies a chance to play catch up. And contrary to popular opinion, there is innovation going on in the Linux community as well. Its just you see it in Windows first because Linux don’t have a big fanfare rollout of the technologies being pushed.
//Choose whatever works best for you. If it’s Linux, so be it. If it’s Windows, fine. Or Mac, Solaris, BSD… everyone has his own preferences and that’s fine.//
Agreed. Exactly correct.
What I simply don’t understand is the apparent need of Windows people to try to say such things as “Linux isn’t ready for the desktop” or “Linux doesn’t have applications” or “Linux is hard to use” or “Linux program names are confusing” or “Linux has no hardware drivers” or whatever … when clearly it just isn’t so.
Why do people invent this stuff?
I believe he was referring to the fact that nvidia and ATI’s drivers are not open source, and a large part of the actual OpenGL stack implementation resides in the driver, discounting things like MESA.
This is a very effective way to spread FUD, I’ll give him that…
Yes, Linux is no threat to Microsoft on the desktop. Year after year we hear “200x will be the year of Linux on the desktop”, and it never is… The desktop market grows, and Linux never grows above the market.
However, this guy throws the server into the mix… If he says Linux sucks on the desktop and it does, then if he says Linux is loosing steam on the server, it must be true… Unfair logic, but it mostly works. Why? Ever noticed how people start blabbing about the desktop when one is trying to talk “server”? People confuse the two.
Linux is indeed a threat to Microsoft on the server. Not in the “Linux will kill Microsoft” sense but “Linux is keeping Microsoft from dominating”.
The monopolist mentality is deeply entrenched inside MS, and they are having trouble coping with the fact that that won’t happen anytime soon (if ever) on the server.
If they can’t grow on the desktop because they mostly have it all, and they can’t grow as they wanted on the server, then that’s going to hurt their bottom line.
So, as Linux starts going back to its “definitely geek” status on the desktop, expect more FUD articles like this one.
“Year after year we hear “200x will be the year of Linux on the desktop”
Who says this, links and proof?
I never heard Linus say this, or Andrew Morton.
Edited 2006-06-23 23:12
archiesteel wrote:
“what the heck are you talking about? It doesn’t take longer to launch an app on a Linux desktop than a Windows one.”
My point exactly.
What I notice is that people who are completely computer-illiterate have no more trouble with Linux than they would with Windows or Mac’s (less if you count the continual Windows virus du jour). I have started at least six formerly computer-illiterate neighbours and acquaintances using computers, all with inexpensive Linux boxes I set up for them. With no preconceived Windows bias, they get along well with Linux.
People who are highly knowledgable and skilled around computers have no trouble switching to Linux, either; they understand what is happening behind the scenes, and know the difference between a web browser and the Internet Explorer icon. They easily adapt to Firefox instead of IE, or Thunderbird instead of Outlook.And most of all, they appreciate the strengths of Linux, and the tremendous freedom and power that it gives the skilled user, from powerful scripting languages to the ability to run a web server at zero cost.
It’s the middle-of-the-road Windows user who has great reluctance to try Linux. This is the person who knows how to tweak his Windows desktop background, but does not know how to do the same on Linux; the person who knows to use Photoshop Elements well, but does not know how to use the Gimp; the person who knows how to install a Windows driver, but does not know what modprobe does or how to install a Linux driver that isn’t already built into that particular Linux distribution.
This middle-of-the-road computer user knows how to accomplish her/his tasks in Windows, without understanding the details beneath the surface, which prevents her/him from transferring that knowledge to Linux. He or she knows Word, Outlook, Excel, and Powerpoint, but does not really understand what a word processor, email client, spreadsheet, or presentation software is, so he or she does not take easily to alternative software such as OO Writer, Evolution, OO Calc,and Impress. He/she knows where the Windows control panel is, but does not understand what it does and is not comfortable with the Mandriva or Suse equivalent.
It will take time for Linux to reach these users, but such huge strides have been made in this direction in the six years I’ve used Linux that I have no doubt it will happen. Its only a matter of when, and where. And make no mistake, big Linux rollouts on desktops are happening around the world right now.
-Gnobuddy
Excellent observations! The problem is that the median-skiled user is really the sweetspot of the computer market.
Agreed, I have the same experiences I’ve installed Linux on boxes for people who couldn’t cope with Windows and their happy. The problem is unless thee or me install Ubuntu on their PC how are they ever going to try Linux?
Also Agreed Linux also needs to full embrace the “median user” you a right this is where the problem is.
Agreed 100%. A housemate of mine _never_ was in touch with computers until about 2 years ago. She was really a computer/technology hater. Well I was running Linux on my box, and it happend that she used it from time to time, then more, and more, and even more – until she decided to have their own computer. It happened that she bought one very quickly, she didn’t ask me but she found a indeed very good & cheap offer, another friend recommended it to her. Well it was a good buy, but this thing of course had Windows pre-installed. My housemate was almost shocked when she booted her new PC the first time, she ran to me almost screaming and told me that she didn’t know what she has bought there, she thought she bought the wrong thing because she didn’t actually know what an OS is and that there are more than just one. She was one of the few people thinking that Linux was THE operating system. Not that Windows is bad, but she just absolutely didn’t know it, and couldn’t work with it at all because everything was new & uncommon & different for her. Well I installed Linux for her, set up everything almost like I had and she was happy again 🙂
Tom
Headline i Wonderland:
Microsoft fails yet again!
Microsoft had to admit earlier this week that the long awaited Vista would again be postponed. It is now 3 years late, and will be at least 4 years late and have few features added. Most functionality have been scrapped in order to get something released before Microsoft reaches EOL.
——
Microsoft in great trouble with Vista, and now they attack GNU/Linux w. X+KDE / X+Gnome.
FUD again, because Microsoft cannot deliver what they have promised, and then they fall back on the old tactic.
I am starting to think FreeBSD is becoming more of a force to be reconed with on the desktop and that if FreeBSD had just a little bit more development power that it has the potential to become a real player in the desktop market, likely even surpassing linux.
Most of what he says is true, but I think FreeBSD is the sleeping giant here.
I recently Installed PcBSD 1.11 on my spare box and it autodetected my sound (a feat that only Slackware has been able to accomplish in the linux world), all the .pbi’s that I installed worked and it was as simple as installing software on Windows or Mac, FreeBSD (PcBSD is FreeBSD6.1) has some definite potential and the system just integrates so well.
Microsoft better watch out or the sleeping giant will come get them.
All of this is coming out the mouth of a long time Linux user, currently have Gentoo, Gentoo, PcBSD, OSX, and OpenSuse 10.1 installed on my various systems. I’m not trying to bad mouth the OS I love.
Edited 2006-06-24 00:06
Well, by the time I used computers I have reached to a point of understanding that one goal cannot be achieved with one tool; you will definetely need many tools to achieve what you want to achieve.
For Example, I have found that linux/solaris/freebsd beats windows hands down in networking and immunity from infectious agents online. Whereas windows beats linux in productivity applications, hardware drivers and hadrware applications availability, and ease of installation of the previous. And I have found Apple to beat all of them in ease of use for example.
So, I have decided as many more like me to split the job I need to do to more than one PC. One PC with windows installed to run my applications which are not available with any other platform (for learinig and productivity and gaming), and another PC with Fedora to give me access to web and all kind of secure communications + using it as my preferred multimedia machine (using xine+codecs).
So windows must be afraid from linux because some people who depended previously on windows to do all the tasks they need now started to deviate to another OS and maybe one time they will question weather to use windows or not, like what first happened with foreign governments, schools and instituations, And now in US even at sporadic areas but which tend to grow every day.
The fact that MS dedicated couple of pages on their web site just to debunk the power of linux shows how much they are afraid of this claimed to be a baby linux.
People who refuse to consider opposing viewpoints simply because those viewpoints don’t conform with their world view — particularly ones that make sense — are setting themselves up for disappointment. Reality is a tough teacher.
What do you mean?! Please, Explain!
You said, “Don’t listen to him”. That’s short-sighted. Your competitors aren’t going to get things right all the time — but there are glimmers of truth in what they say. For example, I don’t think Hilf is right about Linux servers losing ground — but he’s correct about the Linux desktop. I think that we do a disservice to ourselves when we decide not to listen to competitors. We perpetuate our own mistakes.
Clearly, you have not got a clue about what you are talking about.Linux is the kernel. The kernel is not bloated.”
I talked about apps, devs, and the tendency of ignoring the processor to apps ratio. Don’t try to change the subject. The APPS are bloated.
Not really.
Well, Gnome applications may be bloated code-wise, but seldomly functionality-wise.
Gnome needs some work, since GTK+ applications work reasonably when running in GNUstep, though no way near native GNUstep apps.
May be that Gnome/KDE applications are bloated – but exactly bloated in what sense?
Code-wise yes, functionality-wise no. And this is true for for Windows, *BSD and Mac OS X as well. All the more mainstream systems are bloated.
Well it has been 6 years now since I read an article in Eweek back in 2000 how Linux could take over the desktop…..still waiting.
Although it has come a long long way, Linux is still miles behind professional OSes like Windows and OSX. Problem lies with the Linux community that live in utter ignorance and denial about what the masses really want.
Frankly, after installing Suse 10 and looking at FC5, I have no confidence that Linux is ANY where close to becoming a mainstream OS. Fine for geeks, but that is it.
And gehersh, I agree with you completely. One of the biggest drawbacks to using Linux is the community. Funny how I have gone to numerous Windows groups for issues and never do I see people calling others “noobs”, yet EVERY single Linux group has these people. Its as if these fat little geeks think they are special because they know Linux, so they feel the need to use this idiotic word every few sentences. Even more, I have had several issues that have never been addressed. Now Linux zealots like to claim that their community is their strength. I would like to say it is their biggest drawback. Funny, I never encounter this problem with Solaris users as well, just Linux.
Edited 2006-06-24 05:19
The biggest drawback is the community??? o.O I wonder which bad forum you went to… I switched to Linux partly because of the community. Every problem was discussed in detail, all users were very friendly to me.
Now I am some kind of a veteran in the Linux field and one thing is for sure: Those who use the term “noob” or “newbie” most are those who are new to Linux, not the ones who already use Linux since several years (At least that’s my experience). And they say it because they ARE new to Linux and need a special guidance, step by step instructions, a good explanation of what certain commands do, how the system is built from scratch to top. It is nothing negative, but simply a short form of “attention, I am new and need help with exact description on how to proceed as I dont know anything about this new OS”.
I agree that there are always some “nerds” who think using Linux is “geeky” and their knowledge should be regarded as some arcane, mystic knowledge and everyone should worship them. But those are immature kids and a minority and they also exist in the Windows, BSD, Solaris and Mac field.
Good ol’ MS.
Cool.
I run Linux on the desktop and save $200/year. I don’t have a problem with viruses. I have every application I need. I did take a little bit of thinking a few years ago. Now it is just easy.
I am starting to think FreeBSD is becoming more of a force to be reconed with on the desktop and that if FreeBSD had just a little bit more development power that it has the potential to become a real player in the desktop market, likely even surpassing linux. …
I agree!
I quit using GNU/Linux for FreeBSD. FreeBSD is more mature and polished than any Linux distro I have tested so far, including Slackware and Debian.
Now that it even got easy to install, I don’t see a reason why people shouldn’t use it.
I find FreeBSD + KDE easier to use than windoze and also more integrated. The only system I’ve seen which I find more user friendly than KDE is MacOSX with Aqua.
I have to admit that I do miss some applications, like a proper TV program or games, on FreeBSD. But I have a nicer GUI and none of the usual windoze trouble, that saves me so much time and aggravation.
I installed Slackware at my mom’s home. The reason what that windoze stopped working. SuSE wasn’t that stable either. Since she’s got slackware, we haven’t had any trouble and not a single crash in more than a year. She doesn’t find it more difficult than windoze. It is much faster too. What really annoying her are mounting CDs or USB keys (I kind of solved that with the automounter), the lack of driver for her printer and her cameras.
I think that GNU/Linux and *BSD systems with KDE or Gnome, have some drawbacks. But they have all the applications 95% of the people need, they are at least as user friendly, many distros are quite easy to install and come with more drivers than windoze; and once these systems are installed, they keep working great for years (unlike windoze that has to be reinstalled every 6 to 12 months).
As far as I am concerned the price is not the reason I use a free system. I would actually pay not to use windoze, because I am much more productive and my system is much safer (no spyware, viruses), using FreeBSD (or any other *BSD GNU/Linux based OS).
I think that thanks to the effort of many volunteers, GNU/Linux – *BSD systems are more than ready for the desktop, but people should stop being sheep using a system only because they think everybody else is doing the same thing.
Let’s be fair about this: Linux is not ready for the desktop … yet. Coming from a Windows background I found myself strugling with things like compiling drivers into the kernel, resolving dependencies, installing a new version of GCC to compile an app that I couldn’t find as an installable package, trying to install (and failing) Nvidia drivers, messing arround with x.org config file, messing up my installation trying to make it boot faster, mounting by hand my fat32 partition, googling for mp3 support, RTFM and so on.
Of course, I didn’t have all these problems with only one distribution. Some got some things right, some didn’t, but none got all of them right. So I gave up for now.
If there weren’t tens of distributions to write for, maybe vendors would realease more of their products for Linux. Maybe, if Linux would use binary drivers, hardware vendors would make drivers for it. Maybe if the Linux world would work in one direction we’d have an OS ready for the general public. Maybe if the community would be more OPEN to proprietary sollutions we would have a real alternative and not just a wanna-be desktop OS.
Just my .02€
I don’t think Linux bloat or speed of opening applications is slowing down uptake on the desktop, I use both XP and Ubuntu and there is no significant difference in speed between the two. I’m sure ¼ of a second each way will make no difference to the “normal” user. Bloat and speed in Linux is more of interest to the “CLI is best” minimal windows manager users, who generally don’t care much for “normal” users.
As for Linux on the desktop many “normal” PC users would be better off with Linux now. Widows security – having to keep XP patched, run a firewall, up-to-date Av use Spybot is way too complex for many. So why don’t more people have Linux desktops? Probably several reasons.
· Some things that should be easy, are just too complex in Linux distros – want to play a DVD on SUSE, let alone installing wireless drivers etc, and the “CLI is best” gurus don’t help.
· More apps, games, drivers for XP – and instillation is always (almost) easy – using a tarball is not an option for many
· This is not what they use at work / friends use.
On the first point things are getting slowly better, on the second online repositories are making things much easier but still not as easy as Windows. On the last point if Linux becomes common on the corporate desktop then it will begin to make its way into peoples homes.
So I’m wondering about Vista – if MS get the security right why should folk change to Linux? Well maybe they will also get anti-piracy systems sorted out too. If all those users in China, India and the third world plus those in the US, UK etc who use pirate MS Windows no longer have this as an option the Market for Linux may well grow exponentially. Then we may really see more Linux aps, and a sustained market pressure to improve Linux usability etc.
Piracy – probably works in Microsoft’s faviour ending it might be a real shot in the foot.
The only thing missing in Linux is QA. I find way too many bugs as an end user, and that shouldn’t be the way it goes. Maybe that’s my distribution, but I’ve had similar issues with the big and commercial distributions.
I doubt the situation has changed.
Realy? Well I have news for Microsoft. Today, after I saw the last WGA download… I’m installing Linux. Allready transfered all my emails to a linux compatible format… and now I am waiting for the system to finish my document backup. After that… goodbye Windows… Hello Linux.
Congratulations!
I’ve just looked at the top500 list, and you know what?
It’s upside-down! Look:
http://www.top500.org/stats/26/os/
Or maybe… not. I’ve heard that these “managers” are relaxing this way, I mean standing on their heads (blood flows better etc).
If it is really not a threat, why do they deal with it so much?
We hear every week that a MS executive declare that Linux is not a competitor for Windows. Why? Because they have to say that. It’s about marketing, nothing more. These are meaningless statements, they have to say these because they have to make their investors to beleive they are still without competitors. But we all know: the true is a little bit differs from that.
I think they spend a lot of time with some kind of sniffing about other operating systems (OS X, Linux, Unices, BSDs, etc…) but of course nobody will admit that at MS in public.
I just want to say that these news items are really meaningless, because of the nature of a company like MS. They have to say this, so the only thing we hear is this. That’s all folks!
Apparently Micrsoft’s Linux strategy is back to just denying the threat, although now it would seem they are trying to back it up with a very extensive astroturf campaign.
Linux has seen tremendous growths in many areas since 2000. However, some of them have reached obstacles, or will reach them soon.
For example graphic drivers. There is no easy way out of this situation with ATI and Nvidia.
Microsoft is not only a big OS developer, it is also a central authority. They have power to force developers to do what a “design” part of the company wants. They can even force manufacturers to conform. Windows becomes a de-facto platform when it is released. Not so with any linux distro (except maybe RHEL in server area).
Something like that lacks in linux, either a certain project doesn’t have resources or they don’t want to pick up direction that other people would want and nobody can’t do anything about it.
Open source software can only achieve higher level of integration and cooperation through a well organized voluntarism, and for that a central resource management is needed. Many people are willing to do something but don’t know where they can help. Maybe ubuntu model can shed some light on how to approach tis problem. A site where developers and users would advertise what is really lacking in open source software comes on my mind. The site could also be a cooperation place where project leaders can share their thoughts and ideas with people working in similar area.
Ubuntu handled that well with launchpad, but something more globally acknowledged (and on bigger scale) would be a big plus for open source community. Otherwise we will continue parallely solving ideas in varous community distributions, while software developers won’t even see user objections.
Again, what is it expected that he’s going to say?
No CIO/CTO worth his salt is paying any attention at all to what executives are saying, the do their own *technical* evalutaions that, you know, actually applies to their environment.
This is just not true. I’m using exclusively linux for more than 2 years now, I don’t have any intention on switching back to windows…
I don’t care what Microsoft says, it won’t change my mind.
There is only one reason people dont use Linux yet: inertia.
guys, I am 150 times reminded why I am a happy OSX user.
And as whether Windows is threat to linux growth.
Looking at things from the distance both systems had their strenghts and weaknesses:
Windows: stability, security, usability (sometimes), bloat
Linux: lack of intergartion, lack of end-to-end devlepers ecosystem and adequate RADs, lack of stable apis, unixish vision of usablitity, lack of commercial grade apps, lack of device support.
To me MS addressed stability with XP on the desktop and with WSS2003 on server ;
security is an ongoing problem but if half of their promiisses turn out to be true about vista there will be definately a progress here.
They’re trying some new approaches with usability on Vista, and with bloat, well, it’s not improved but not catastrophically worse either. Generally Windows usually works OK on <5 years old PCs.
What on the linux front?
Integration: we have some rays of light in form of dbus and HAL but it’s still just a start and really a skin deep effort. Besides most distros are still heap of bash hacks (differing from distro to distro) with python gui slapped over it and hope that it will work together.
Adding e.g. a new type of Dsl device is absolutely impossible without serious hacking of undocumented scripts. (having OSS driver in place)
devlepers ecosystem: still the only serious developenemt environment is java/eclipse. Other than that you’re left with fragmented, half documented apis, mesh of scripting languages and buggy ide’s and good advices. Ultimately you end up using the only mature editors on Unix Vi or Emacs. If you are not totaly hooked in unix philosophy a look at every new Visual Studio version and more things it automates makes you only more depressed.
lack of stable apis/abis: this only gets worse, sometimes intentionally.
unixish vision of usablitity: it’s partially fixed (in gnome especially) as long as you constrain yourself to handfull of apps. Still have to see a distro that doesn’t force me to resort to command line twice a week. So the whole effort on making easy to use guis lands in a dump (at least in SOHO scenario).
lack of commercial grade apps: linux is still quite hostile for commercial app vendors: lack of stable apis and inconsistent distros successfully make supporting commercial app on linux more headache than it’s worth.
lack of device support: hard to imagine the situation improving (esp. on the desktop) given combination of lack of stable kernel abis, developement ecosystem (official books, support, conferencesand ,dev kits) and meager market share. If kernel devs think that HW vendors will tie their products shedule to kernel and (all) distros shedules they need to get back to the ground fast. Frequently a single rev. of a HW product have shorter life cycle than time from submitting driver to kernel org to having it (fully) supported by majority of distros.
In the same time CPU and memory requirements bumped dramatically and you’d better not try using anything below 512M/1G unless you’re ready for time trip to 1995.
Note that I only mentioned things that are fixable from the community side. The worst showstoppers remain closed protocols and formats.
So, yes MS is a big threat to linux future, but nowadays it’s mainly due to community developement model shortcommings.
Why do you feel it necessary to invent criticisms of Linux that bear little relation to the reality?
http://www.pclinuxos.com/news.php
http://www.pclinuxonline.com/wiki/HomePage
http://www.mypclinuxos.com/downloads/root/PCLinuxOS_User_Guide.pdf
A Linux distribution like the above that is targetted at new users is easier to use than Windows, and many times more complete and capable out of the box than a bare Windows install.
A Linux liveCD (say this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanotix http://kanotix.com/index.php?&newlang=eng) is fully integrated, complete with a full range of applications, has no setup at all.
Neither would require any use of the command line.
Both are far better off in terms of applications than any install of Windows.
I can’t understand you need to pretend otherwise.
>>Another poster replied about how KDE has been getting faster with each release, and the same can be said of GNOME since about 2.6.
And why are their two completely different desktops with two completely (often duplicated) set of programs for each desktop? What a waste of duplicated programming effort.
//And why are their two completely different desktops with two completely (often duplicated) set of programs for each desktop? What a waste of duplicated programming effort.//
I know of no Linux programs that run under one desktop only. Can you name any?
I know of no Linux programs that are duplicated – one version for one desktop and a different version for another desktop. Can you name any?
If you cannot name any, why do invent false tales about Linux? What is your purpose?
I believe that he’s referring to the fact that duplicated apps exist for both Windows and Linux desktops. Not that Linux apps can be run under multiple distros of Linux.
>>Amarok should never be ported to Windows. NEVER !
It’s just an iTunes clone anyway. What’s the big deal about a music player? Many applications on Linux that are open source HAVE been ported to Windows, and they work on Windows just as well and often better. And what is with all of these stupid names of Linux software. All of the projects have names that I can’t seem to relate to. Too many acronyms…
//It’s just an iTunes clone anyway. What’s the big deal about a music player? Many applications on Linux that are open source HAVE been ported to Windows, and they work on Windows just as well and often better. And what is with all of these stupid names of Linux software. All of the projects have names that I can’t seem to relate to. Too many acronyms…//
Amarok has no DRM. It can work with an iPod but does not require one. Hardly an iTunes clone – more like a far superior alternative.
To start Amarok on my Linux system, I select the following menu entries:
Menu -> Multimedia -> Sound -> Audio player (Amarok).
Surely you can relate to an “Audio player” Multimedia application?
Given this context, I don’t even have to know the name of the program at all, as I can tell from the menus (context) already what it is.
On Windows, I would have to know the name of the software vendor before I could find a program that I wanted.
Edited 2006-06-24 13:34
On Windows, I would have to know the name of the software vendor before I could find a program that I wanted.
Try this one:”Haupauge WinTV PCI 878″.The vendor driver and apps haven’t been changed in the last decade.
I just compiled kradio from source for amd64 on ubuntu.Man what a difference compared the pathetic radio app that comes with the card for windows.The same is true if you want to watch tv.Tvtime and kdetv are so much better.
//Try this one:”Haupauge WinTV PCI 878″.The vendor driver and apps haven’t been changed in the last decade.//
I’m not sure what you mean here. The original comment was a complaint about the names of programs, and my response was trying to show that programs are easier to find on Linux menus.
For example, my system is dual boot Windows and Linux. If I encounter a PDF file when I am running Linux, I could choose from the menus:
Menu -> Office -> Publishing -> PDF viewer (KPDF)
If I was on Windows, I would have to choose something like:
Start -> Programs -> Adobe -> Acrobat reader.
The Linux context on the menus is clearly far better, and it is far easier to find the right program.
Now it is true that on Windows I could just double-click the PDF file itself – but that happens also to be true on Linux.
So I can’t for the life of me see any validity to any claim “the names of programs in Linux are confusing for new users”. Utter rubbish. The names in Windows clearly are far more obscure.
Now it is true that on Windows I could just double-click the PDF file itself – but that happens also to be true on Linux.
Yes
Edited 2006-06-24 14:09
I’m not sure what you mean here.
My bad.Well i actually meant:”People ought to have the right to choose whatever suits them best”.
The childish tone in the article doesn’t suprise me at all especially now the Vista deadline is most likely coming to an end.Nevertheless i know my way around multiple OS’s and use them (windows included) on a regular basis.For example:hyper terminal has been scrapped from Vista.According to MS people have to use 3rd party apps to fill the gap.No problem,since gtkterm does a good job.
According the article:
“The magic is the community and how you interact and participate in a community and make development transparent enough that the community believes in you and trusts you.”
Well is this the way to participate?
I highly doubt it.FUD has never created quality code and moreoften disrespect is gained.
Edited 2006-06-24 14:48
The Linux context on the menus is clearly far better, and it is far easier to find the right program.
I think you mean can be far better.
I can never figure out from distro to distro where they’ve but shell windows or emacs in the gnome menu, for instance.
So I can’t for the life of me see any validity to any claim “the names of programs in Linux are confusing for new users”.
Well, it’d be nice if all the distros called gaim ‘gaim’ in the menu, because it’s confusing switching back and forth between, say FC5, where it has a generic phrase in the menu, and Ubuntu, where it’s called gaim in the menu.
I find FC5’s use of generic terms without indicating the program confusing when they apply it to programs where there are multiple choices that might be installed, like irc clients.
I see articles like this and I just sigh a little bit. People that really use Linux every day to do ‘desktop’ work know that you can do almost all your office tasks on Linux. All my writing, research, web surfing, music listening happens on Linux. I honestly don’t care if every Windows user comes on board. The Linux community isn’t going to stop because of what Microsquish does. Could things be made simeple on Linux? Certainly. Are there problems with drivers and hardware? Yes, they can be a royal pain sometimes. I like to keep in mind that as I watch Windows users upgrade from Windows 2K to XP and now Vista they had to pay someone for that software. I think the last software I purchased was in 2001. Software patents are more of a threat to me than what MS does.
Linux No Threat to Windows
Well, you can close your eyes and repeat “it’s not there, it’s not there, it’s not there”, still, when it kicks your butt, you’ll have some surprise
I am a long time windowser and also a fairly long time linuxer. I use and code on many machines a week, about half time on win, half on lin. Today I have to tell, ther is absolutely nothing in or for a windows desktop that would convince me that I should choose it over linux for desktop use.
For average pc users though, the whole thing is a different matter.
Still, saying Linux is no competitor, is just dumb and silly. Well, I can’t say I’m surprised, since one way to convince the masses of your truth is to repeat it so loud and so often to make them believe. Nothing new under the Sun.
I dont know how the Open Source comunity feels about ads, but i know i see a Microsoft add atleast once a day, either billboards downtown, a magazine, or TV.
I know its expensive, but you need to get word out to the masses. Tell them flat out, tired of paying X hundred dollars for Windows? B4 you buy Vista, go to http://www.getlinux.org and see what you can get for free instead!
i know that this probobobly cant happen for simple monitary reasons…but i think its really the only way that your going to get people to try it out.
Most people that i talk to dont really even know what linux is, and if they do, they dont know nething about it. Most people are i like, “i heard some one say that b4, but i dont really know what it is” and if you tell them about it they are usually interested, and think its a good idea.
Just get everyone to go to the site, and get a live cd/DVD. Try it out, and if u like it, hit the “Install Now” button on your desktop.
I dont think you will ever grow quickly without getting word out to the masses, and the only way to get it out quickly is with advertising.
Nobody runs a computer just to run the computer. If an OS does not run the apps you want to run, then that OS is essentiall useless to you.
Most major app makers either do not support Linux at all, or not nearly to the degree that they support windows: Intuit, Autodesk, Adobe, all the game makers, and of course, Microsoft.
No matter how fast an OS boots, how easy it is to use, how little it costs, how nice the interface looks: if it doesn’t run the apps, very few people will want that OS.
I am very happy running CentOS as my small business server (Dell PowerEdge 2850) using various thin clients devices to connect to it (using NX server and NX clients for remote display).
It also runs VMware server to deliver the few Windows apps that I need. And of course it runs all the other server software (Apache, MySql, Sendmail, OpenExchange, etc) without a hitch (uptime of 18 months). No need to worry about drivers for graphics, sound, and other toys for end users. This is all about business.
Linux should just concede defeat on the desktop and focus on the server and supercomputing where it has a decent chance to have a sizable share of the market. It has NO chance of gaining significant mindshare like Windows or even MacOS X does in the desktop space.
The problem is, there were many competent server oriented systems in the past and they were all killed by MS Desktop driven war machine.
You cannot completely separate those two faces nowadays. Strive for better desktop produces technologies that are sooner or later indespensible in the server world. Besides, MS is unwilling to open their Desktop-server protocols anytime soon so they can always diminish alternative server oses suitability this way.
OpenOffice.org sure does take longer. Let’s not even compare it to MS Office (it’s not even close), the Windows version of OO.o loads faster than the Linux version.
I wouldn’t know, I don’t use OO.o (I use MS Office with Codeweavers Crossover).
That said, I know there’s an OpenOffice quick loader app available for Windows…there might be the equivalent for Linux. Preloading is the reason MS Office loads faster (a perk of MS’s OS monopoly…when you control the OS, you can optimize it so it loads your apps faster, therefore giving it an unfair advantage over the competition).
Another example: Alacarte menu editor in Gnome.
The menu editor that comes with KDE is quite fast…but I don’t think it’s written in Python! 🙂
Apps usually run slower on Linux than on Windows. I have used both operating systems for years on the same and on different computers.
I disagree, and I’ve also used both operating systems for years. My apps are as snappy when I boot into Linux than when I boot into Windows. I do believe your bias is affecting your judgement on this one.
That’s your opinion. How do you know?
Because I’m psychic. Didn’t you know?
He’s talking about unfulfilled promises. Every release of software promises to change your life but practically none deliver.
Show me any software release that has promised to change anyone’s life. Never mind “every release”, show me just a single one.
Oh, wait, that’s right, you can’t. Because this promise has never been made.
Do you have anything else apart from strawman arguments, or is that the extent of your disingenuousness?
He didn’t say that. He said that there “weren’t enough projects that get the kind of finishing touches…”.
You left out the “to be truly good.” And then he goes on to say that he uses almost exclusively free software apps. Apparently, there are enough Open-Source apps that are “truly good”, otherwise he wouldn’t be using so many.
He didn’t contradict himself.
Yes he did, and if he disagrees with my assessment he can argue his case himself.
You need to read for comprehension.
Oh, I understood what he said very well. But then again, unlike you, I’ve stopped drinking the Redmond Kool-Aid long ago.
The street runs both ways.
There aren’t any Linux astroturfers: none of the Linux company are rich enough to afford setting up fake grassroots groups and online forum shills to support it.
Also, Linux doesn’t have a monopoly to protect, because it’s not a company. I suggest you educate yourself on what “astroturfing” really means before spouting nonsense about it.
Translation of translation: so called ‘linux advocates’ feel so insecure they are ready to accuse anyone saying anything negative about linux in all deadlly sins.
Not at all. If you had been on this website as long as I have, you’d know that the recent trend for anti-Linux posters is to begin their posts by saying “I love Linux but…” or “I’ve used Linux for a long time and…”. Then, they launch full-scale FUD attacks against the OS, even though it’s usually pretty clear that their experience with it is outdated, limited or simply non-existent.
Do you have a link to your original post on Linuxtoday? I’d be curious to read it to make my own opinion about it…because I’ve reported bugs before in many online forums, and I never met with this kind of reaction.
Of course, if you begin your bug report with “Linux sucks because…” then don’t be suprised if people have strong reactions…also, you have to realize that there are many anti-Linux provocateurs who constantly posts on these forums, which makes people a bit defensive. If Microsoft and its (real) shills didn’t spend so much energy trying to attack Linux and actually decided to play nice, then such knee-jerk reactions would be even less common.
I find FC5’s use of generic terms without indicating the program confusing when they apply it to programs where there are multiple choices that might be installed, like irc clients.
I agree. It’s better to have both, or just the name of the app if you don’t want both IMO.
Linux should just concede defeat on the desktop and focus on the server and supercomputing where it has a decent chance to have a sizable share of the market. It has NO chance of gaining significant mindshare like Windows or even MacOS X does in the desktop space.
I disagree. Not only can Linux take away market share from Windows, it’s doing this as we speak…just very slowly! 🙂
Linux has a comparable desktop share to Mac OSX, and yet I don’t see you saying that OSX should “concede defeat”. In any case, it’s not a contest, there is no “conceding defeat”…that’s a very narrow view of the situation. As long as people and businesses want to use Linux on the desktop, and there are more of these every day, then it will continue.
OS X is where it is only because MS allows it to be. Otherwise, there would be no MS office for OS X and all the other commercial apps; these do not and probably will not ever be available on Linux natively.
Outwardly, Apple and MS compete. But behind the scenes the two are undoubtedly in collusion to maintain the status quo.
5 days later and I’m bodden down into some legal discussion about the legality of Binary Blobs linking their headers into an open-source kernel driver. I mean WTF.
I’m sorry, if you’re bogging yourself down in such a discussion, then it’s your own freakin’ problem. I am a strong Linux advocate, but I have absolutely no problem with binary-only drivers.
Not only that, but I know for a fact that it is perfecly legal to use Linux with binary blobs. What you’re talking about can in no way be considered a drawback for Linux except by the biggest stretch of the imagination by an anti-Linux, pro-Microsoft propagandist.
Otherwise, there would be no MS office for OS X and all the other commercial apps; these do not and probably will not ever be available on Linux natively.
By “commercial apps” you mostly mean MS Office, I imagine. It doesn’t really matter if they’re not available native for Linux, because they run *flawlessly* with Crossover Office.
Not only that, but with the variety of virtualization options available (such as VMWare or Xen), it doesn’t really matter anyway. I can run all the Windows non-game software (and a few games as well, although I do believe that consoles have the upper hand in that market anyway, by a wide margin) inside a Windows virtual machine.
MS has tried ignoring Linux, then mocking it, then fighting it, looks like it’s going back to ignoring it…that’s fine with me. In the meantime, the Linux desktop continues to gain in quality at a breakneck speed (much faster than Windows or even OSX, incidentally). That’s all that matters to me.
anyone care to admit being the person who is voting down my comments that don’t violate any of the rules?
Yeah, it happens sometimes. One of mine got voted down as well for no apparent reason. It’s better to just let it go… 🙂
Anyway, I’ll mod you back up, I appreciate your comments even if we don’t always agree (which would make life boring, if you think about it).
Yeah, it happens sometimes. One of mine got voted down as well for no apparent reason. It’s better to just let it go… 🙂
Yeah, I know. I was just bemused that I’ve had more comments modded down in this thread than in all of my prior postings put together.
Apparently misuse of modding is on the rise on osnews.
So, not “out of the box”, but rather “if you do your homework.
To be fair, most of the problems occur with Broadcom chipsets. Many of these will be supported “out of the box” as soon as the Devicescape stack is in the mainstream kernel (it might have already been included – I personally use Linuxant’s driverloader, which has a very easy web-based installer).
It’s hardly “out of the box” support, though is it, since the purists jump all over any distro that actually ships the NVIDIA driver.
It’s not really about purists (because they are a small minority) but rather the legal issues with distributing a kernel with built-in proprietary drivers. That said, some distros (such as Xandros, and the Mandriva Club edition IIRC) do ship with NVIDIA/ATI proprietary driver support out-of-the-box. So it is possible, however there are a few legal aspects to take into consideration.
That said, EasyUbuntu is the answer to all these issues (on Ubuntu, at least…)
You shouldn’t. But if you’re not supporting typical systems, then expect your mileage to vary from that of the typical user.
The situation with USB webcams is improving, however we’re still at the stage where you should always check to see if they’re compatible before buying them.
That said, I bought a Nikon Coolpix L2 yesterday and within a few minutes (well, once I’d spent 2 1/2 hours charging the batteries) I was able to take pictures and organize them with Digikam. No software to install, no drivers, nothing. The Windows install CDs are still in their wrappers…
There are very few laptops around where any distro “just works” — and those are mostly older Thinkpads.
On my four-month old Compaq Presario Laptop, everything “just worked” with dapper except for proprietary stuff (wireless, 3D graphics). But the laptop was usable right away without those features – everything else worked.
Now, consider that you have a laptop with no OS installed (in order to make the comparison valid) and install WinXP on it…there are things that won’t be working once you’re done, including probably the wireless and the 3D graphics.
Until Linux comes pre-installed, with all features pre-configured, then the comparisons won’t be fair. After all, Windows comes pre-installed on all PCs, and OEMs make sure the setup is working before selling it to you. Same thing goes for Apple…imagine if you could install Mac OSX on just any PC, the amount of problems people would have to make it work with hardware X or USB gadget Y…
Right now, if you want to use Mac OSX, you’re limited in the hardware you can use. The same holds for Linux (though Linux actually supports more hardware than OS X).
I’d love to be able to buy a Compaq or Dell or Toshiba Laptop with Linux pre-installed…maybe this will become easier now that it’s become harder for Microsoft to flex its monopolist muscle and scare OEMs away from pre-installing Linux…we’ll see, I guess.
I mean both hardware and software that you can buy off the shelf where most normal users go shopping. I still have a printer that isn’t recognized in linux and theres plenty of hardware that everyday people use on the desktop that still lacks good support – webcams, scanners, multifunctions etc etc. I know some do work but for others its hit and miss.
The linux cult is indeed, alive and well.
Wise words from a KDE developer to shut up all the naysayers and whiners in this forum:
“My child, don’t be a grumbler”. The occasional dip into ancient works like the Didache (second century AD) may bring up a gem that’s applicable to everyday life. As in this case: “my child, don’t be a grumbler” is something I want to say to all this kiddies who infest webforums (probably because they are too young to remember Usenet) and who apparently do nothing but grumble, grouch, mope, whine and rant — with very little originality, doing nothing than repeating each other.
And while I probably shouldn’t mind, there are serious consequences of this eternal grumbling: it makes life unpleasant for the people who do real work (the comments on the dot aren’t exactly motivating me right now), it’s noise that drowns out useful and civilized discussion, and it actively driving away people who might want to use the software we make (and to which the grumblers never contribute) or who might want to help out in any way. Who might have had fun, who might have found satisfaction in working on free software. This paper, especially secion 1.2.5 makes that abundantly clear.
So, don’t be a grumbler, my child. You may think you’re fearlessly exercising your inalienable right to voicing your opinion (anonymously, often), but all you are doing is shitting in the well. You’ll have more fun if you spend your time doing something constructive.”
http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi/2006/06/24#grumbler
Linux might not be an immediate threat to the windows desktop. However, what can not be denied is that the introduction of gnu/linux to the IT world has had a profound impact on the way IT operates in the present and will in the future. Instead of paying for software like windows 2003 server which require obstrusive updates, some which make you reboot a server without asking the user if its ok or not, and in certain versions geared towards “more bang for your buck” like small buisness server, disallow the use of more than 2 cpu’s and 4 gigs of ram, which is a huge drawback when you have to run sql server, active directory, and exchange among other apps all on the same box. And to top it all off, ms doesnt even _offer_ a viable SLA (unless you are a microsoft certified partner, and even then the SLA is rediculous 3 tech support calls per year for 450 dollars, for ms partners, and for non ms parnters 99 per email support, 245 dollars per tech support call during non-buisness hours, and 490 dollars for non-buiness hours). Is quite simply put rediculous. And more and more IT proffesionals are beginning to agree once they “get the facts”. When I sited to one of my proffesuers in college around the year 2000 that I was interested in becoming a Linux administrator he snapped back at me stating “no large cooperation would ever use Linux in the production workspace.” This is the old way of thinking, before gnu/linux was realized for the potential it had, and has, to deliver better performance, more bang for your buck, superior optimization, and less pay, prey, and repeat. Yes commercialy supported gnu/linux has its flaws, but at least with commericaly supported gnu/linux brands you can recieve support when things break, without having to give up 240 dollars a tech support call. I understand this is why there is a reason to hire ms proffesionals instead of going it alone, but you are forced too. And yes I make my money supporting gnu/linux applications, but if something breaks and warrants a tech support call, at least I can have the piece of mind that I have an _option_ for an SLA. This is why gnu/linux has such a huge impact, in a IT world that increasingly demands you do more with less, gnu/linux helps enable this demand. This is why ms should be scared, because people are beginning to realize that you don’t _have_ to do it thier way or the highway. You can do it your way.
Edited 2006-06-25 02:37
linux is no threat to windows on my desktop….
How can you be a threat to something that doesnt exist
I recently gave Linux another try in form of CentOS and failed. I wanted to set up a DDNS Server (+other stuff) and found myself 3+ days studying howtos & searching the web before I gave up. What I really miss in Linux is a MMC “Thing” where programmers can hook their adminatration interface into to make things easier to adjust/configure. This don´t have to be on a web/Apache basis. Sure Linux has another adminstration aproach, but I don´t think this must stay the same for ever. I also miss access rules like domain policies on Windows. Until this is finished I stay with Windows running in virtual machines on a nacked Linux 😉
sounds like what you WANT is windows so I would just suggest sticking with it…
You do know that people take courses to learn the microsoft operating system and pay big bucks for them also.
I wish I could do complicated things without having to learn anything it would make life so much simpler.
flame on
1 – if there was not a threat, then there would be no article by the ‘chief platform strategist’
2 – Whole article and tone reminds me of what is called ‘suggestive leading’. If you tell a child he is worthless, then he grows up to be just that. Say that Linux on the desktop is not a threat and , well, you get the point.
Good points by the author – now go forth & forget the suggestion but hear the needs and act accordingly..
Edited 2006-06-25 17:23