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The final breakthrough of Linux.

mckooiker.byethost5.com — The final breakthrough of Linux, this will not come any time soon, but this has nothing to do with drivers, GNU/Linux not being ready or not....

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mckooiker 123 days ago

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z0mbie2099, on 04/20/2008, -10/+1Scary stuff.
mckooiker, on 04/20/2008, -6/+2I'm sorry, the web-site seems to be down.......
I think I will change provider soon, since this happens way too often on sunday evening (CET)....
TheSilentNumber, on 04/20/2008, -3/+1mirror or cache?
mckooiker, on 04/20/2008, -2/+4There you are: http://users.unimi.it/madsgroup/breakthroughLinux. ...
XVampireX, on 04/20/2008, -1/+2Makes sense...
shadoweva09, on 04/21/2008, -2/+2So, no research whatsoever? here's how it's done: http://shadow-future.blogspot.com/
Planets, on 04/21/2008, -13/+3What's up with the claims that Windows is harder to install than Linux? I don't remember having to mess at all with partitions when installing XP or Vista.
- srg13, on 04/21/2008, -0/+6Have you actually tried? The first screen (of the XP install at least) is a text mode partitioning editor (http://web.suffieldacademy.org/ils/netadmin/docs/h ... )... But you can't resize partitions, just delete and create them...
  
  Ubuntu on the other hand, boots to the desktop, where you can try it out, and then if you want to install it you click the icon on the desktop, follow the four or five steps (like 'Select your timezone', and 'enter a username and password for your user account'), and everything is done for you. The partitioning is done automatically, unless you select to do it manually.
- Sammi84, on 04/21/2008, -0/+5Because Windows doesn't recognize any other operating systems and just wipes the system with one whole partition.
- joeanon, on 04/21/2008, -5/+6There is no way you can honestly say Linux is easier to install on the average PC.
  
  Consider the audience you are trying to reach. Installing to them isn't just getting to the desktop, it means getting a FULLY functional PC going with all the programs they need.
  
  You may get to the Linux desktop first, but you will then spend more time downloading programs and drivers from the scattered Linux resources of the net .. plus you then have to figure out how to install using the appropriate package manager or universal binaries. Finding good reviews on Linux software is MUCH harder than win32.
  
  In many cases you will likely eventually want to install WINE since many Linux apps just SIMPLY SUCK so bad that running ontop of WINE is still better than a thrown together native Linux app.
  
  Vista is actually the fastest installing OS out there last I saw. Not that install speed really matters to anyone.
  
  NOPE.. sorry .. I CALL *****. Installing doesn't mean getting JUST the desktop or command line going, it means the WHOLE process and for most people Windows is easier to admin, easier to find resources for, and one click installers are without a double easier to use than package managers or universal binaries. That's why MACs market share is going up fast and Linux's is barely going up. Also why Ubuntu didn't sell even as a dirt cheap Walmart PC.
  
  For the most part.. XP does what people need. Mac and Linux aren't offering anything useful that would honestly make someone need their platform.
  
  The VAST majority of Mac and Linux refinments are just ***** GUI upgrades like fancy icons and menu effects.
  
  It's hard to argue that people need to 'upgrade' from their XP install that does everything they need it to. Chances are, if your OS is unstable, it's because your running on 5 year old hardware. Linux won't be stable on a dying system either, in most cases it will be less stable.
  
  Remember the age old ***** story.. Linux runs your computer harder, so that explains why it crashes faster on bad hardware...
  
  I'm sorry but that kind fo logic wreaks of fanboy *****. More likely all the modularity comes at the cost of greater hardware abstraction, that and poorly written drivers in Linux make it crash quite happily.. I had a DVD burner that just LOVED to bring down KDE, works fine under Windows.
  
  The same goes for the majority of hardware. It may work, it may work well and rarely it will even work better, but ON AVERAGE it does not work better. The OS may make up for some of this, but really it doesn't in my opinion. Drivers are the KEY to OS performance and stability. If you had great drivers, the modularity of the OS wouldn't even matter as much.
  
  For the average person the security and stability is not worth the lacking hardware support, the lack of good straight forward administration, the lack of properly written wireless and other common device utilities.
  
  I find Linux neat, but I have almost two decades of computers experience.
  
  As a Linux fanboy, Linux will always appear better to you and Windows will always appear alien.
  
  Most Linux users simply have no perspective on the average users needs. That's why Mac is eating up your market share.
  - Darkx1337, on 04/21/2008, -2/+4That is the longest piece of bs I have ever seen on digg...
  - Cyberbladewolf, on 04/21/2008, -0/+2I liked working with Windows XP, it had alot of great resources and was fairly speedy. But to say that Linux drivers and software are scattered more then Windows is just plain not true.
    
    Most of the time Linux will just boot with the appropriate drivers installed and not even need any more then that, Windows on the other hand often requires you to search some manufactures web page for what seems like forever for every piece of hardware you ever install. The same thing applies to software. If I wanted free CD burning software for my Windows computer, I had to spend forever searching through the mountains of BS to find something real, and often enough it didn't support the functions I wanted. Linux on the other hand, I just open up Synaptic, search "CD Burner" and I have a list of fully compatible software that is easily installed, and typically a list of supported actions making it even easier. To add further salt to Window's software wounds, on Windows every program must be updated individually either manually or by its own updater, on Linux, everything can be updated at one time, with the same updater, with no complicated menus or command prompt necessary.
    
    I loved working with Windows XP. It was simple and fast, but it was also beginning to show its age. I tried switching to Vista, but they lost what made XP great. They made it slow, complicated, and ugly. Every few moments a pop up would ask if I really wanted to do something, even if I absolutely wanted to tell that last pop up that I absolutely wanted to say yes to the one before it. I'm using Linux because it is currently the best out there for my needs. If something better suited to my needs comes out, I'll be sure to look into it and change, but until then I'll just use what works.
- mckooiker, on 04/21/2008, -0/+1I rarely have seen a post that has more contradictions in it, but before I comment on those I would like to remind you the point of the article, which (reading your opening phrase) you seem to have forgotten: If one would not have to install Linux it would rapidly become more popular: in that case one would not have hardware problems, since it's all already installed.....
  
  In the first place, using the standard package manager that comes installed with the OS, you will never have to worry about scattered packages etc. The repository has it all, or knows where to get the packages. However, a few lines further you mention that the "The VAST majority of Mac and Linux refinments are just ***** GUI upgrades like fancy icons and menu effects.". First you complain that installing is not only installing, but also upgrading etc. What is it, do mac and linux users need the upgrades or not? But I take it as a compliment that you define Mac and Linux such a complete OS's.
  
  Old hardware is less a problem for Linux than for any other OS, and sorry, but there are a lot of computers that are still running and performing well on old computers (with windows or linux or whatever installed), I don't get your point on the instability that causes...
  
  Vista the fastest installing OS? are you kidding? UBUNTU, PCLinuxOS beat Vista at least by half an hour, having all required software already installed (wordprocessor, gimp etc). And I did not even mention Damn small linux and puppy linux....
  
  That's why MACs market share is going up fast and Linux's is barely going up.
  That's *****. Last six months linux went up more than 50%, not other OS managed such an increase.....
  "That's why Mac is eating up your market share."
  Linux share is growing, MAC share is growing.....Guess who's being eaten here?
  
  Last little point: it is not onlystability and security that linux users gain, it is FREEDOM.
TeacherOfHeroes, on 04/21/2008, -1/+2To summarize the article, linux will become popular when it's pre-installed on retail computers by OEMs, since people don't usually install OSes themselves.

This has been a popular notion for a little while, now, but it remains to be seen if it will be the "final breakthrough of Linux".
- joeanon, on 04/21/2008, -1/+1Linux HAS to get one click installers to even be a competitor to Windows and Mac.
  - Darkx1337, on 04/21/2008, -0/+2.deb
  - frsrblch, on 04/21/2008, -0/+1You mean like an application manager? Where you can not only search for free software, but automatically download and install it?
    
    Yeah, it has that already.
  - TeacherOfHeroes, on 04/21/2008, -0/+1Windows and Mac HAVE to get package managers to even be a competitor (feature-wise) to Linux and *BSD
- weizbox, on 04/21/2008, -0/+1yup yup...
  CNR, apturl, etc etc
VirgilNilson, on 04/21/2008, -2/+3I take issue with him saying that the bitching about driver issues is unfounded. I recently decided to give 8.04 Ubuntu a shot, having not played with Ubuntu since 7.04, and spent an entire day trying to get my Broadcom wireless card to work.

I remember the last time I tried Ubuntu, I once again spent hours and hours trying to get my video card drivers to work.

I love the idea of Linux, but the hardware support just isn't good enough for prime-time yet.
- TheWindBlows, on 04/21/2008, -1/+1hardware support vs hardware utilization , they could get it working but it would be unoptimized, slow, and be incomplete.
- nemoder, on 04/21/2008, -1/+2If you bought your computer with Linux pre-installed then you wouldn't have had any wireless problems, it would have just worked.
  - weizbox, on 04/21/2008, -0/+1I would hope so, lol.
    that's kinda a given, isn't it?
- joeanon, on 04/21/2008, -0/+1Try Linux Mint if you want a more optimized version of Ubuntu.
  - weizbox, on 04/21/2008, -0/+1if you want optimization, use Gentoo.
TheWindBlows, on 04/21/2008, -0/+1I use linux but, i will admit the issue i see is the lack of standardization as much as people would hate to admit it, it would be great if GNU/Linux went through some standardization to increase usuability.

This lack of standardization may be the reason business's are neglecting it too.

Such as use common port techinques between KDE/GNOME/Xfce so that people don't make applications that require all the libraries.

One gripe i've been having is the lack of any stable Video editors, Kdenlive is nice but crashes quite often and if you accidently change the interface the wrong way you have to struggle to get the defaults back, Blender isn't all that nice to use for video editing, all other video editors have no image support require you to uncode videos to dv's (a very long process especially if you decide you don't want that clip), Open Movie Editor doesn't support format i can't import anything for use in it.
mckooiker, on 04/21/2008, -2/+3Though there is no doubt that GNU/Linux needs a lot more development before becomming the perfect system, we are talking about mainstream applications here. Don't tell me that the mainstream uses the features of Photoshop that Gimp can not do. Do not tell me that more than 25% of the people having a computer use video-editing programs (and pay for the licences required to be able to use it).
People often confond those two things, the "average user" uses about 10% of the potential of a computer.
- matx, on 04/21/2008, -0/+4I have Linux as my desktop pc and does everything most users would want. It may not support many games but I can browse the internet, listen to music, edit music, edit videos, touch up photos, write a letter and no risk of getting a virus or spyware. I would say Linux is already the perfect system for most users.
- ELLIS1128, on 04/21/2008, -0/+3Agreed.
joeanon, on 04/21/2008, -7/+1Linux should consider the future of OS.

Look at what MS is doing. They are taking their ENTIRE Windows framework portable, so they can just throw it on top of any OS.

You have a couple important ideas there. First off, the approach to GUI is important and it can be part of the patented framework which keeps people coming back. Secondly, the .NET apps can be made to run on ANY OS that MS wants, thus the new generations of Windows apps can just move from kernel to kernel with MS's framework. Thirdly, DX can be ported, but kept within the windows framework.

This way, no matter what awesome Open Source kernel comes out, MS can just throw Win.Net on top of it.

If hardware support starts fading for WIN32, MS can port to BSD AND Linux. Since MS has a unified platform, they can bring more apps with their framework than both the competitors platforms combined.

MS is just making all their API's portable as a defense to growing OS competition and cross platforms efforts like Java.

See Java got it wrong... because Java isn't really cross platform and it depends on API calls and such.

MS went the whole step, in theory, with .NET and brought the programming languages and the API's with them.

It's also a setup for rapid OS development since a portable framework should be much easier to work with than a monolithic or pieced together one.

MS knows it's strength is in developers, by making the framework portable, they keep their armies of developers with them regardless of what OS becomes popular.

BUT unlike a total open source effort, MS can still protect it's API's from becoming cross platform (to some degree).

The good news, of course, is that the long term strategy seems to suggest MS will have to make DX cross platform. They will try to keep it locked into .NET, but I'm sure Linux guru's can reverse engineer it once MS has done the heavy lifting.

See, MS has no choice but to do this because they don't just sell OS's now. They run comcast and they have a strong console market.

Well, what happens if IBM makes a new chip that blows Intel out of the water.. the Cell 2 or such. MS will have to rush to move DX to this chip or their console my suffer badly.

That means DX has to be designed to be portable so that random hardware breakthrough don't leave stuck on X86 while the world goes to quantum chips or such. Plus with the way GPU's are upgrading it's a difficult market to predict, so they have to be ready.

Unlike the PC market, MS cannot just hold back console advances until they catch up. A bad product like Vista might kill MS's console business and it's a good business to be in.

SOoooo... that the future of the OS... a portable framework of languages and APIs that can plug into nearly any kernel. That way hardware transitions are transparent and don't require major development time.

Java needs to think like this because when everyone is cross platform Java will just be some learners language at the very SLOW rate it has been going.

I mean.. Java 3D was supposed to be kicking ass like 10 years ago. Most game developers still have no respect or need for Java... and WHY WOULD THEY.

Anyone who KNOWS jack about C++ grasps that it's damn portable enough as long as you learn to write portable from the start and in gaming YES something like 10-15% performance difference is HUGE.

We aren't talking just about your benchmarks going down 15%, but nearly every process intensive aspect of the game. It's more like saying 15% of every CPU cycle is lost then just thinking your frames per second goes down. AI and scripting takes CPU cycles too and YES they add up. Now, perhaps dual and quad core CPU's negate some of that point, but I'm not seeing much mass appeal in anything but rather simple games for Java. For that.. yea I agree.. why not.. it's obviously easier to make a nice simply online game from Java.

BUT it makes more sense to learn C++ if game programming is the goal. If only from the perspective that C is still the most popular language around AND it's the professional language of choice.

Even C# seems to have more potential than Java.. i rather like the syntax, but I'm not sure about it's future. It appears to be gaining more support and XNA is sort of a good idea, though I wonder if the world really needed another framework. At least MS is investing in game creation tools also, which more or less helps everyone.

The gaming issue is HUGE, much bigger than most people realize. We are in a recession, but console sales are up 57%.

When life sucks and you just got fired from your job... You're not going to Disneyland, but you can probably afford to veg out on your Xbox or PS3.
Hollywood did very well also during the great depression for instance. Some entertainment markets do well in economic down times. I think for the money game console is one of the cheapest forms of entertainment you can get per hour. Sales seem to reflect that. A good game only costs 40-60 bucks (as much as taking your GF to the movies twice with popcorn) Yet, you will get likely hundreds of hours out of this game and only maybe 4 or so out of the movies. PLUS all your friends can play and many games are two player.

Gaming is a smart investment entertainment wise. For many people it even rivals TV
and since you can borrow and rent games it's very cost effective.
- mckooiker, on 04/21/2008, -0/+1Your post seems miles off-topic to me, but ok, some comments:
  If I got it clear, what windows is trying to make is a kind of small Kernel.....let's say like the Linux kernel....on top of which they can build API's, in a modular way, and these API's are able to communicate with programs.....
  Let's say that they want to make a new OS that is super-modular and therefore very fleible.
  A bit like Linux.......runs on watches, mobile phones, X-box, Play-station, Mac's etc......name it and it will be able to run Linux!
ELLIS1128, on 04/21/2008, -0/+6What? are you crazy? I'm not wasting my time reading that *****.
agisten, on 04/21/2008, -2/+2Besides all fact-less claims by author, look at Dell Linux desktops - are they any cheaper that windows? NO!
So STFU
- mckooiker, on 04/21/2008, -0/+1Thanks for your very educationed reply.
  In the first place, they ARE cheaper, not by much, but they are.
  Second: Did the article state that computers with GNU/Linux should be cheaper in order to become popular?
  Reading is difficult......
khail250, on 04/21/2008, -0/+1I drank Steel Reserve 211 (8.1% alc beer) and having zero knowledge of unix, installed it on my computer, granted i no longer have the pictures/movies/porn that i used to, I now no longer have Vista! woohoo
weizbox, on 04/21/2008, -0/+1very ugly formatting job...
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The final breakthrough of Linux.

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