Has Linux's time come?

W

WinstonWolfe

Every year or so I have installed a Linux OS to see how intuitive they are.
For the last 2.5 years, I stuck with Ubuntu on my Dell D610 notebook. (generic hardware).
Was always disappointed with the result....secure wireless wouldn't work, fonts were crappy, printers wouldn't connect....etc etc.

But last nigth I installed Hardy 8.04 RC....and have been pleased to be able to get WPA wireless connected within 90 mins of installing :rolleyes:

Still, the fonts are weird and I did have to futz with the router and manually adjust wireless settings unintuitively. Also had to download a couple of hundred MBs of updates straight after installing, to able to run grpahics and watch Dvds.

Still a ways to go before I think I'd make it my main OS running MS Office Pro on VM Ware or whatever.....(definitely need MS Office).

But I think with Microsoft's stuff up and disdain for the consumer, via Vista, Linux's time has come to capture a serious % of the desktop market.

MS's last qtrly profit was 2Billion. If they can't evolve an OS and computer end user experience to something less OS centric on those profits, then Bill Gates didn't learn why he was able to do what he did to IBM.

Here's to the Linux community.
 
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it's still a long way for linux to become a major player in desktop market
mainly due to the fact that a lot of business software is windows only.

plus it's a myth that open source software is free
While it's free to use, you pay money for support. So in the end you don't save anything. Especially considering that you will also have to train all your staff to use linux.
 
Strannik said:
it's still a long way for linux to become a major player in desktop market
mainly due to the fact that a lot of business software is windows only.

True, but most growth in computer sales over the next 10 years will be in developing nations where the priority will be on cheaper boxes and notebooks. Vista has got unnecessarily bloated for that task. Dell are taking Linux seriously for emerging markets, and most medium and large enterprises don't need vista on their clients.

Though I haven't used it, I understand there are progs that allow windows software to run within Linux.

I am an avid excel user, and have been messing with open office for the last few days. I think Ubuntu have the right strategy in getting their OS to look and feel like Windows as much as possible.

Agree they still have a lot to do in that respect. It grates me that Linux hang onto all these arcane inner sanctum commands that no one but a full time linux addict could ever hope to know what means. Until Linux seriously wake up to the fact that computers and OSs should not impede productivity, then they will delay serious uptake of the system.


plus it's a myth that open source software is free
While it's free to use, you pay money for support. So in the end you don't save anything. Especially considering that you will also have to train all your staff to use linux.

Disagree....if the system is stable enough and they continue to develop the look and feel and operation to emulate windows, then learning curve will flatten and support won't be anymore than for Windows. probably less considering the hassles Small Business Server and network has cost us in the past....
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Disagree....if the system is stable enough and they continue to develop the look and feel and operation to emulate windows, then learning curve will flatten and support won't be anymore than for Windows. probably less considering the hassles Small Business Server and network has cost us in the past....
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In that case it will stop being free. Software developers have to feed their families too, so if you are not paying for support and you are not paying for software, where are they gonna make money from to fund new development?

With regards to windows - there are no hassles with it, just people who don't know how to set it up properly. Unfortunately there are a lot of people in IT industry who are not really qualified to do what they are doing, but they still do it.
 
Strannik said:
In that case it will stop being free. Software developers have to feed their families too, so if you are not paying for support and you are not paying for software, where are they gonna make money from to fund new development?

I don't presume software has to be 'developed' ad infinitum. 99% of people don't use 89% of Microsoft Word's features. and most companies don't need clients running Vista.

Microsoft deliberately burdens the world with higher software and hardware overhead by forcing apps developers to keep evolving their offerings to match the changing requirements of MS OSs. The life cycle of most computer functionality doesn't ahve to be as short as MS dictates and imposes. Therefore, I think the world will be better off without MS dictating things from on high. They need evolutionary selection pressure applied in buckets.

Further, for business use, there's a lot to be said for employees not understanding the OS. You just want them to use the apps required for productivitry, and a bit of net surfing on the side.

With regards to windows - there are no hassles with it, just people who don't know how to set it up properly. Unfortunately there are a lot of people in IT industry who are not really qualified to do what they are doing, but they still do it.

THey don't know how to set it up properly because MS keep changing things unnecessarily, enough so that the majority of users cannot acquire enough user knowledge before it is made redundant. The whole point of software and OSs is that tasks are automated. I'd rather see IT techs go do something more productive, like dig coal out of the ground. But that will require MS to stop futzing with basic functionality just to keep their free cash flows running. Obviously, they have lost their innovative streak and imagination, and deserve a new Bill Gates come along and do to them what Bill 1 did to IBM.

I see Linux as the only serious pressure to keep Microsoft honest. I think Ubuntu has the highest chances of gaining market share, because they are trying to flatten the learning curve for Windows users.

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I've been messing around on Ubuntu now for 48 hours and for the first time ever, Linux is doing most of what i need with an interface most windows users would not have difficulty with. Firefox is same on both OSs, my email client is evolution and emulates outlook express in most respects, and Open Office has done a great job on my simpler spreadsheets and word processing. I've burnt cd/s, played dvd movies, done backups...
 
I've been running Linux for 3-4 years now and I'd agree that it's certainly come a long way.

What I'd really like to see is a less Microsoft centric world and more co-operation from Software vendors to release applications that are supported on Windows, Linux and OSX. Things are changing slowly, and a big part of the market is the entertainment and media space. Games I think are the biggest bug-bear for Linux, however many developers are recognising Linux as a more popular platform to develop on.

Vista to me was more hype than substance and I think this has helped fuel many people into looking at alternatives. I do note that Mac's are more popular today too.

I think Microsoft probably recognizes that they'll never be as big as they were in the home/consumer desktop with XP/W2K, but it'll take a while for them to be replaced in the commercial/enterprise space. Heavy MS-Office/Exchange/Outlook etc. users will keep them there for a long time to come.
 
Interesting topic isn't it. I will however disagree with much of what has been said in these posts.

Linux has definitely come a long way for sure but the comments made above that it must be more windows like make me feel a little ill. Ubuntu has done a lot for Windows to Linux conversion but it is not Linux. Seems the terms Ubuntu and Linux are interchangeable these days but it isn't the case.

At any rate. The command line that so many appear to fear is actually one of the strengths of Linux. Most cringe at using it and close their minds to the potential. If you can't click on it it ain't no good. While I agree that all basic functions should be GUI driven I can't condone limiting the function of an OS to GUI aspects only. It simply isn't possible to have a graphical tick box for every conceivable portion of a Linux OS's power. That's half the problem with Windows to begin with. Closed and limited both in design and thinking.

The re-training spoken of is no different switching from XP to Ubuntu as it would be switching from XP to Vista with IE7 and Office2007.

Windows is so riddled with malware and viruses that it simply isn't user friendly at all to a non technical person. You can set it up however you like but there is nothing that can protect you from a 14 year old who clicks "yes" to install anything coming from the web. Equally it is not possible to explain to a non technical user when they should "allow" something or when they should "deny". The fact the question needs to be asked in the first case is a sign of poor design and implementation.

Linux is also not the most user friendly OS. It is far better than Windows in my opinion for a myriad of reasons.

What I don't understand is why people are sick enough of Windows to seek out alternatives only to complain that they are not enough like windows? It doesn't make sense.

You have to remember that people have spent the last 20 years getting used to and learning the idiosyncrasies of windows either by themselves, via the net or most likely through the help of technical family and/or friends. I would bet that with half the amount of effort expended the majority would have a firm grasp of the ideals of Unix and the way the system works (as well as realising that it is better because it is different). I think it very unfair that people are not prepared to invest at least some time in adapting to a new OS if a new OS is what they desire.

At any rate I agree that it's time MS lost some market share, if for no other reason than to keep them accountable for the rubbish and poor experience they push out to the world.

Pre Microsoft there was no such concept as "if it isn't fast enough then upgrade". OS's didn't slow down with continued use. Drivers for hardware worked and worked well over multiple versions of OS revisions. Bill Gates is like Ratchet in "Robots" the movie... Only interested in extracting every last penny from Mr and Mrs average.. There is still money to be made in open source and in much more honest and society benefiting ways.

With MS nothing ever gets better. Just year after year we have to buy faster hardware to run the latest OS that does exactly the same as the one previous with nothing more than a nice UI (and that's questionable in Vista). I'd rather see some innovation.

For instance. My wife gets up at a different time every day and has to set her alarm each night. Why is it not possible for her to schedule her daily wake up time in Outlook, set up how much time she uses to get ready of a morning and have the alarm automatically wake her up at the correct time each day?

It seems the days of advancement in technology has gone, replaced instead by methods of selling the same technology over and over again. Once things were designed to make our lives better and they sold well as a result. Now they are made to sell well, making our lives better is not a consideration.

Instead of companies making profit from taking the next step they prefer to make profit with inferior product that requires regular replacement and/or repair with expensive spare parts. The promise of bug fixes by upgrading to new hardware only to be met with a new set of bugs that you live with until the promise of bug fixes by upgrading to new hardware (that again still doesn't work properly). You have an everlasting money making machine until the public wake up to your tactics and start saying no. Which is what is happening to MS right now.

Linux to me is the place where money can be made but we're all better off as a result, mainly because it is not driven by profit but by interest in advancement.

The problem with commercial entities at the moment is that they all compete to lockout all others instead of seeing the possibility that even more money could be made for all people with a little co-operation. To me it's a scarcity mindset vs an abundance mindset.

I'd certainly urge everyone who isn't satisfied with MS to go buy a Mac or have a techo friend install Linux (for free). I've done it for people and for their use (net surfing, email, office, music/video) Linux does everything they need without all the crap that comes with Windows (and without incident).

Cheers,

Arkay.
 
Psyck and Arkay...well said....Arkay, my preference for Linux to emulate Windows is purely to help gain market share. Plus I think there are many intuitive things about windows .....

I am not saying dump the command line of Linux....I actually spent a lot of younger years on dos 6 using word perfect and messing with batch files etc etc. but all that is redundant now.

Linux at least has not made the past redundant.....I was using unix before windows.....pine email, lynx, mosaic, and gopher for browsing the internet (pre images)...was all university and govt depts in those days.

However, I think for the sake of Linux capturing market share, they have to realize the ubiquity of Windows, and give the option of allowing people to move between the two OSs easily.

but it goes without saying that many of the linux commands are a language all to themselves, that should not be imposed on people trying to use computers for specific productivity use.

And I agree that computing potential could be better realized via deconcentrating its profits and MScentricity.
 
I agree that the command line shouldn't be imposed upon people and I think by and large these days it isn't. Most people don't need to use it for the basics of computer functionality. Can't entirely agree on Windows being intuitive. Certainly it's streamlined and a well known gui model but there are many things about it that have always felt wrong to me. Particularly when I came from the days of Commodore and the Amiga whose GUI was also intuitive in a differing way to Windows.

I think though that either KDE or Gnome are both similar enough to Windows for people to easily make the switch. I often find it amusing that people can't traverse a simple menu and pick an application because it isn't called word and isn't under "program files". It really isn't that different.

I use just about every major OS on a daily basis. Windows XP/Vista, Linux, OSX, AIX, HPUX, Solaris etc etc. My take on the situation is that none of them are good enough as a desktop OS. Of those listed Windows, OSX and Linux are desktop OS's and all of them are lacking compared to what I envisioned we would have by the year 2008. Linux stands out for me due to it's ability to scale form a handheld device through desktops to massive clustered supercomputers. I admire the versatility.

I seriously wish the legal systems of the world would remove the patent system and let innovators compete on a level playing field. Microsoft is more a legal firm than a software company.

Data formats in particular should not be subject to patents and licensing. If that were the case the word document format would be open to all. Video players could play any format etc. Software would then compete on the basis of their implementation of a format being better or the software being more feature complete, not on the format itself. There should be no reason that I can't open a word document on a competing OS.

I rather hate the fact that I have to go out and buy 5 electronic devices in order to use the 5 formats of media I use because each device's format is proprietary. The worst part is the public are suckered into it. No one stands up against it and the only way to defeat it is to simply not buy, but that will likely never happen.

Vista spends a lot of time in the background verifying that your media is not pirated. Digital Rights Management it's called. What the hell that is doing in an OS is beyond me. I didn't ask for it, I don't want it, but you can be sure as hell that I'll pay for it in my Windows licensing cost.. (If I bought an MS product that is, and I never would). I was given my copies of Vista by Microsoft and the price of using them is still too high :eek:

It's also criminal that I cannot buy a brand PC in this country without having to pay the licensing fee for MS windows (which comes factory pre-installed). That is just plain anti-competitive and should be outlawed. You should try and tell Dell or HP that you want a $200 discount and the machine to come without Windows installed and watch their heads spin! At least in the US Dell and others are now selling machines with Linux pre-installed. Nothing here as yet though... Should start a business :)

To me the ideal culmination of what is currently available would be the open nature of Linux with it's core kernel OS with Apple Macs Interface and the software base of Windows. At present games are only available on Windows so I do keep a Windows partition on one machine for that purpose alone. Also doesn't matter when it mysteriously dies from a virus or any other random event. I use OSX/Linux for desktop, web, mail, video and audio software and I have a Linux backend media server at home also. Between the 3 I can do everything I need to do and fortunately it's only the least important of all those functions that I trust to Microsoft, who, for me, have had a very bad stability, data loss and performance track record.

At least things seem to be changing. Some market share is drifting to Linux and OSX and as a result developers and hardware manufacturers are starting to support non windows platforms. It all helps and in ten years hopefully we'll see something that really is new aimed at advancement rather than solely profit.

I certainly take my hat of to Bill Gates as the worlds greatest system designer (from a marketing perspective, pity about software) but I can't help but think the world would be a better place had he slipped on a Banana Peel all those years ago :eek:

Cheers,

Arkay.
 
WinstonWolfe said:
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What's with all Microsoft bashing? Not only Microsoft employees need to eat, other software developers do too.

And with regards to software development - for most people Windows 3.1 would be enough. They don't use 95% of other features of a computer.

I have had customers buy a laptop with the sole purpose of playing Solitaire. I was tempted to sell them a deck of cards instead, along with the game rules, but then i wouldn't make any money.

Luckily it's not those people who drive the software development market.

Your point about software development not needing to continue ad infinitum can be expanded to include other areas. I can point out at least a dozen of other areas which don't need development ad infinitum, but they are still being developed.
 
Arkay said:
I seriously wish the legal systems of the world would remove the patent system and let innovators compete on a level playing field.
Click to expand...

In that case nobody will bother inventing anything. Because if you cannot patent your invention, anyone with a big pocket can copy it, and put it in production at cheaper prices and bigger quantities.

I think instead of completely removing patent system it needs to be changed to allow for a protected period of 3-5 years, in which the inventor can benefit from it, and then make it free for all. i think the same system is used for medicines now.
 
I installed 8.04 on the weekend and was really impressed. A fantastic OS for my Dad's first ever computer (a cheapie Dell laptop).

All the basic apps he would ever use and eye candy all preinstalled.
 
Hi David.

Yeah I futzed with it all weekend and felt there's been significant progress in the last few years. Though I have been turned off in the past because I couldn't get WPA wireless internet connectivity working on the Dell laptop.

If you could give an opinion about the following, I'd be interested.

- connecting to printers, scanners, camera memory sticks, backup devices etc
- wireless connectivity to the internet or router
- watching DVD movies, playing mp3's or music cd's.
- viewing pictures

Obviously, whenever you want to do something underneath the bonnet, you need to understand the unintuitive unix command system and the folder structure

Downloading and installing software can still be an arcane experience.

My mother (in her 70s) recently bought her first computer, a Dell notebook. She never touched a computer before this. She got together with two friends and they both went to a Senior Citizens group to get advice and do intro lessons. It was recommended they get the same model Dells set up the same way so they could help each other. Anyway, she has progressed quickly and surfs the net and sends emails fine. I suppose that highlights the disadvantage of Linux....no common frame of reference......but if a Linux distributor just focuses on basic functionality, I think they have a serious chance of capturing significant market share...

Will be interesting to see how Dell go over the next 2 years with their prepackaged Linux strategy and roll out to developing nations.
 
WinstonWolfe said:
If you could give an opinion about the following, I'd be interested.

- connecting to printers, scanners, camera memory sticks, backup devices etc
- wireless connectivity to the internet or router
- watching DVD movies, playing mp3's or music cd's.
- viewing pictures
Click to expand...

Music CD's are fine, play right out of the box. Same with viewing pictures.

To get MP3's and DVD's to work you need to install a package that contains all the Ubunutu apps that cannot be shipped with the OS due as they are not open source. I watched a DVD movie last night on it, it was fine. Under the package manager select 'all packages' and type in 'exclusive' in the search box to find it.

All networking has worked automatically and flawlessly for me even on version 7.10. All I had to do was type in they key.

I'm not 100% sure however I believe the integrated Dell webcam only worked once I put 8.04 on (only because I noticed it flashed blue for the first time).

I haven't tested the memory card reader yet. I wouldn't be surprised if that didn't work. My Dad plugged his camera cable in and it automatically detected it all and prompted him with a nice 'Import photos' button.

The biggest issue I had in 7.10 was that the video card was blacklisted and all the eye candy didn't work, however in 8.04 it works fine.
 
Every now and again I trial the latest Ubuntu release.
Am running 9.04 off the cd currently.....
wow......they have really moved things along.....

anyone else got an opinion about unbuntu or linux?

My main concerns still relate to commercial compatibility with MS Office.
I don't even know if there's a version of Office for Linux.

Thoughts?
 
amy21322 said:
WW,

Don't profess to know anything at all about Linux, but I'm pretty sure there's no Linux version of Office? Have you looked at OpenOffice as an alternative, or perhaps even Crossover may be of some use?

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxlinux/

Cheers

Amy
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Amy, I trial OO every now and again on some complex xls and they just don't cut it.
And that's going to be the biggest hurdle for OO imho. Any xls that is used for productivity purposes is going to be complex and contain a degree of automation via macros. Until OO comes to terms with that, then their market will be limited to non commercial environments.

As for crossover, if the product works as advertised, then great. Though i'll have to re-jig my partitions to install Ubuntu to hdd to install it.

more time :(
 
I've tried OO a few times. And evaluated it for an organisation.

The org used the programming language behind Word and Excel (VBA) extensively. OO only had an earlier version of ms office macro language which was much more limited.

The last two times I tried to download it, after downloading 80mb, I got a message to say "cannot install".
 
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