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- 4DFX, on 11/03/2007, -6/+116I can't deny being a Linux fanboy, but I still hope it doesn't come to this. We mustn't have another major OS. I would prefer seeing MS, Apple and Linux each having 1/3 of the OS market share. Competition is much better.
- OBKenobi, on 11/04/2007, -8/+71Linux needs full-featured, GUI-based tools for every common system management task before it is accepted by the mainstream. Never, under normal circumstances should a mainstream user have to touch a command line or manually edit obscure config files. They should not have to remember arcane commands, or learn arcane procedures to get something done.
If you think mainstream users are going to bother learning how to use Linux out of some philanthropic reason as many devs have done, forget it! In many cases they won't even consider it if it's not "popular" and everyone they know is using it. Sad, but most people generally are too busy or too lazy to bother.
Users go with the path of least resistance, not with what may necessarily be a better solution from a technical standpoint. A mainstream Linux distro (not all) must be easy to use and maintain. Installation has gotten much better recently with more hardware natively supported, that's a major success. But other than that, management of the installation afterwards still has many glaring shortcomings that are unacceptable to mainstream Windows and OS X users. - koweja, on 11/03/2007, -3/+42Whatever. You can't predict when or if Linux will ever become mainstream. Whether or not some distros are ready to be used by every single computer person or not is irrelevant. Technology may change rapidly but it is adopted really slowly. If the perfect OS was relased today it would still take five, maybe even ten years before it made a dent in the market. The vast majority of people are not early adopters who want the latest and greatest. They stick with what they works for them until it doesn't work any more. Promises of something being better just don't matter.
This is just another article talking about how great Linux is, not a worthwhile analysis of the OS market. When you get down to it, it's just another generic "I like Linux, so it will win" or "Something good happened to Linux (Dell shipping PCs with it, in this case), therefore MS will go bankrupt in a year".
Also, "You need Windows to run Word".
No. If you can't see the present, how can you predict the future? - deadbaby, on 11/09/2007, -10/+49I dunno... IMO KDE is not the best UI to introduce to a new Linux user. Too many icons, buttons, toolbars, sidebars, options, etc. If anything it reinforces the idea Linux is hard to use. GNOME is a far better for new users because it presents a very simple and refined interface.
- TwoDeuces, on 11/03/2007, -4/+34I just recently replaced WindowsXP on my mom's older Toshiba laptop with Xubuntu 7.10. XP, with all of the security patches and virus/spyware scanning used up so many system resources that the little laptop would bog down horribly. Now with Xfce doing the window management and no virus/spyware scanning the laptop is fast again and she's perfectly happy using Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice. She's never heard of Ubuntu but she does undertand "works vs doesn't work".
- inactive, on 11/03/2007, -9/+38KDE 3.X.X was messy & bloated. Hopefully, KDE 4 will solve this (looks good so far).
- estvir, on 11/03/2007, -3/+31Actually, your worst problem has nothing to do with the actual software, distributing it, or anything.. your problem is referring to Windows users as dumb (That is your problem simplified, anyway, in greater terms it's a COMPLETE LACK of understanding of the people you're trying to get to switch).
But go on with these stories, I remember reading them in the 90s but this time there actually are decent desktop distributions (Like Ubuntu 7.10 + OpenSuse 10.3 both of which are excellent and Fedora 7 aint too bad). - h4ppydotcom, on 11/06/2007, -2/+24 "Why am I paying through the nose for a buggy, bloated, insecure and buggy Windows?"
Wow, he managed to fit buggy into the same sentence twice. Nice journalism. - Almightymole, on 11/06/2007, -1/+23You will still have competition (friendly i hope!) between the distributions if Linux was able to be dominant.
- superspud, on 11/04/2007, -4/+26Everything CAN be done with a GUI application, like Deadbaby said. The fact of the matter is, it is a lot easier for a forum member to tell someone to copy and paste 'sudo apt-get update' into that little black box icon, than to get the user to navigate the maze of menus to find a package manager and get them to select all the right options. If you have ever tried to help someone on the phone with their computer, then "Right click, or left click this time?" is a common question.
The next time your Internet connection ***** up, call your service provider. I bet you £10 the first thing they will ask you to do will be:
Go to start
Go to run
Type in 'cmd'
Type in ping 192.168.0.1
Command line is the easiest way to give instructions: fact! - drag, on 11/04/2007, -7/+28i've been seeing this headline (or variations thereof) for 10 years."
Yayaya. And people have been saying that for 7 years now.
Does not stop people from actually using it as a desktop. For example I was listening to the TLLTS and they interviewed the guys from the LTSP. These guys make X terminals to cheaply deploy Linux 'think client' desktops in large numbers. Very usefull for educational, call center, or data entry type setups. (note that using RDP you can run Windows apps on your Linux terminal also).
In case you don't know X Windows is a networking protocol. That is to say that X Windows is like HTTP. But instead of transmitting files, Javascript, and HTML across the network your transmitting GUI data. Your desktop runs the 'X Server' which is to X Windows what Firefox is to HTTP. (Microsoft (well actually Citrix) RDP is sort of like it, but not realy)
Well anyways...
The largest install that they know of is in Brazil. They are dealing with a single orginization that is running 6000 application servers that are connected to over 120,000 Linux terminals.
And you know what? Pretty much exactly the same software they are running is built into your Ubuntu desktop.
Linux isn't much cheaper? Who says that it isn't?
Lets see.. To run a Windows Vista machine:
17 inch monitor... 1gig of ram... 80gig harddrive... That comes out to about $940 from Dell.
If you build it yourself you can probably knock a couple hundred bucks off of that.
To run a Linux terminal workstation... Minimal requirements are...
200mhz proccessor with 64 megs of ram for the terminal. but.. that's minimal. That's like getting 512 megs of ram for Vista. So a nice terminal is 1ghz Via proccessor with 256 megs of ram. No disk. No fans. _no_noise_.
Then to power that terminal you'd need a fairly powerfull server. For 60 users a dual core, maybe quad core for future capacity (I am being generous), 1 gig of ram then 64 megs per user you could do with 4 gigs of ram. (this is roughtly the recommended systems requirements.)
So to run a workstation setup for 60 workers in Vista you would need:
(these prices are lower then market value, so I am taking into account the sort of discounts a small business may get)
60 * $940 for the desktops
60 * $200 for OEM MS Office Professional
(and no.. student oem discount versions can't be used. Professional includes features that are not in other MS OFfice versions)
1 * $2000 for the Active Directory server.
Then another 500 bucks for the networking stuff. This is just a bare minimum workstation environment.. no fancy server rooms. Just a broom closet. Total cost: $70,000+
Now for a LTSP solution. Linux terminal server project has a side business called 'DisklessWorkstation.com'. It's a online store which they sell new X terminals that have been specificly tested and designed to work well with LTSP and are officially supported. The top-of-the-line system is a LTSP Term 170. Standard configuration is 369 dollars. Then server is a Dell poweredge, 4gigs of ram, 1TB of disk space (with 750 in software raid configuration), no OS.
60 * 369 for the terminals
60 * 175 for the 17" LCD and keyboard/mice
1 * $2200 for the application servers
For a grand total of: $26,000
Using Linux saved your ass: $44K
Using Ubuntu you can serve about 3 times as many people as you can with Windows...
And not only that they use fanless power supplies, fanless cpus, no drives, no nothing. Every been in a room with 60 PCs running and had everything dead quiet?
And right now you have a crapload of Dell machines that are being dumped into the market because their leases are up and Dell will no longer support them. Your looking at 1ghz machines with 256megs of ram. Perfect for high-performance Linux terminals. If your doing this for a school or other non-profit purpose you can pick these things up for NO COST since it's a charitable donation. A bit noisier, but the cost is $0. - ojk007, on 11/03/2007, -2/+22agreed, competition drives innovation. Just look at the recent Linux and Apple developments (who are trying to raise there marketshare), compared to Microsoft (who has a monopoly).
- EvilDude, on 11/04/2007, -8/+28I am so sick of these why linux will success articles.
I decided to try out Xubuntu today. Note that : I use linux at uni, and work. I use windows at home however, and while I'd installed linux before, never really stuck with it.
Anyway decided to try it out, I like XFCE so I went for Xubuntu. Got the latest installed it... and first problem right there. The partitioning was horrible. "sda6". What the *****? Try to figure out drive letters like XP, or give me a nice picture and show me which partition you mean without me having to open gparted in the background just to make sure it was deleting the right partition.
Rest of the installation was smooth, booted into it.. and hmm I have no internet. And my resolution sucks. So I decided to try to get wireless working. It seemed to recognise my wireless card, but it wouldnt actually connect to my AP. I tried everything, from setting it up to use it manually, to just DHCP, but in the end I gave up. I started trying the networking commands (ifconfig, dhclient). Still no luck. I gave up, and had to plug my damn laptop in using the wired network cable. Even that didn't work without my manually using dhclient.
Next, I decided to enable the nvidia driver in the restricted driver section. I click enable, and I get some crap about source "nvidia-glx-new" not installed? Anyway opened up synaptic, installed nvidia-glx-new, rebooted..and yay I'm now in 640x480.
I spent the past 2 hours trying to change the goddamn xorg.conf, but you know what's just great about ubuntu 7.1? It uses its bulletproof crap and so, THE XORG LOG IS GONE! It's replaced with the damn failsafe one! I tried everything, from changing the failsafe config to installing nvidia another 5 times, but I've given up now. I'm back in XP where a driver install + reboot actually works. (I have a 6400 go just in case people are wondering)
Linux drivers suck. That's it. I spent approximately 5 -> 6 hours at work all up (spread around whenever I had some time) getting my damn TNT2 to work, and while I have a decent resolution, it's still dodgy support, with windows going black everytime I try to alt tab to them.
I've never had a perfect experience with linux, and I'm a developer who programs on linux, uses linux at uni, and in general know a fair bit about linux. These articles are pointless, writing these won't make linux automatically ready for the desktop. - johnboyholmes, on 11/03/2007, -2/+21If by saying that "KDE 3.X.X is messy & bloated" you are meaning the interface, you have a point. However if you are talking about the back end I would hate hear how you would describe gnome...
- stevedclarke, on 11/02/2007, -0/+17Oh. You again....
- arjie, on 11/03/2007, -0/+17What's the point of counting your eggs after they've hatched? You won't have any eggs any more.
/sorry - deadbaby, on 11/03/2007, -4/+20We're pretty much at that point now. If you're doing some exotic thing like installing unsupported packages then yeah, you need the CLI, but everything else can be done with GUI tools these days. (user management, display setup, package installs, software updates, disk partitioning, network setup.) Advanced tasks are always going to require more complex setup --- just look at the Windows Registry for example. To do some advanced things you still gotta go hunting in there for keys to change. That's no easier than copy & pasting a command into a terminal window.
- astrosmash, on 11/03/2007, -3/+18I like Gnome, too, (and really dislike KDE) but the bottom line is that the Gnome/KDE fragmentation needs to be solved before the Linux Desktop can move forward. It was true 10 years ago and it's true today. While the technology is improved immensely in the last 10 years, the fragmentation has gotten worse; running KDE and Gnome applications side by side is actually a more jarring experience today.
It's been clear throughout the history of KDE/Gnome that each side operates as if the other will eventually go away, and that will never happen. It's fine to have different approaches to the UI, but give that choice to the user, not the developer. When a user can install an application and not have the slightest clue as to whether the developer used the Gnome/GTK or KDE/Qt libraries (or both), only then can the Linux Desktop compete with Apple and Microsoft.
I don't see the Linux Desktop going anywhere until there *is* a Linux Desktop. - kipmartin, on 11/02/2007, -11/+25"The Year of the Linux Desktop!"
ridiculous.
i've been seeing this headline (or variations thereof) for 10 years. its just not the case. its STILL a problem that Linux is aimed at geeks and windows and MacOS are aimed at the bulk of computer users--myspacers, gamers, teens, moms, business professionals, and all those casual users who could care less about a registry. geeks and fanboys see things through their eyes and miss the obvious--linux is still not ready for primetime and may never be.
i LOVE unix and linux like BSD, Susse, and some of the new flavors of OSs look great, but until my mom can work with Linux, it will remain the choice of nerds, geeks, and fanboys and girls.
wish you guys would work on useability issues rather than how to get under the hood to massage the registry and similar hacking-level features. in other words, just as there is a reason geeks dont dominate the fashion industry, there is a reason why they should be kept out of the user interface game. the reason?
my mom will thank you. - netdroid9, on 11/03/2007, -4/+16Actually, I like Gnome. It's compact, easy to use, looks good (better than KDE IMO) and most importantly, it's functional. I don't get why people say that it's 'unable to perform anything but the most basic operations', I haven't seen anything KDE can do that GNOME can't.
- brickbat, on 11/04/2007, -3/+15While I agree with his conclusion, he missed on of the biggest reasons. The development and release cycles.
Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers
New versions of the top Linux OSs are released typically EVERY 6 months. Apple releases every 1.5 to 2 years and Windows every 3-4 years.
When I started using Ubuntu Dapper it was a pain in the ass and it was missing a lot of important stuff - eg, there was no gui based application for ripping and transcoding DVDs. By Feisty, there were several. Now its all in a repository and easy as 1 2 3. same with media playback. In 2 years (Dapper to Gutsy) Ubuntu has developed from being worse than Windows 98 to being better than Vista. So it took 2 years for Linux developers to do what it took Microsoft 8 years to do. Now think about the next 2 years for Linux. Microsoft will only be half way through Vista+1 and where will Gutsy+4 be? Its no contest.
Now to address Apple - Man, they are very good BUT it only runs on their hardware. My wife has a macbook but we have 5 pcs in our house - 3 run linux, 1 runs OSX and 1 XP with mediaportal. By the time she has to upgrade her pc, Linux will have all the multimedia production stuff running better than Apple and it will be free and it will run on any hardware i want. - norman619, on 11/04/2007, -0/+11The things which have been keeping me from going 100% Linux are the absence of my pro 3D modeling apps, a digital art app on par with photoshop, and games. So far all of my 3D apps are finally available for Linux but the other 2 things are still issues. SO the main issue with Linux IS the lack of popular software vendor support.
- aaronm67, on 11/06/2007, -0/+11...Gnome isn't brown. Gnome is blue. Ubuntu has a brown theme installed, but the default Gnome desktop is blue.
- akinas, on 11/03/2007, -2/+13Define "succeed"?
"A lot of people will use it" - you have a success right there.
"People will abandon all other OSes and use only Linux" - not bloody likely to happen, ever. - cynicist, on 11/03/2007, -4/+15My mom is using Linux right now. All I had to do was point her to the firefox icon...
- andycr512, on 11/03/2007, -0/+10"Does it run all the software their mates machines run?"
I was curious about Max Payne 2 yesterday. I had never played it, and had no idea whether it would work. I downloaded the demo, double-clicked the EXE, and the installer ran. I started it, and the game just worked. Even the post-processing shaders worked, despite being written for Direct3D.
At any rate, do you know what I think about Linux for the masses? I really don't care. It does what I need it to, and that's all I care about. In fact, perhaps it not being mainstream and having a reputation for being hard to use is an asset - the harder it sounds, the less idiots will use it, and the signal to noise ratio will improve for better questions. - yoyar, on 11/04/2007, -0/+10The development and improvement of Linux is relentless and unstoppable. Take a look at the improvement over the last few years. That's just going to increase in intensity. I know that its been a long time coming but I don't care. One of these years its going to happen. Patience my pretties, patience...
And by the way, the number of uninformed diggers is really comical - hard to install programs, vitalize? (take a look below) - Try out ubuntu and make an informed opinion, and learn to spell, and then maybe I'll think you have a good argument.
OR - continue to get screwed by MS and be blissfully ignorant of your options.
Patience... - rebelwoaclue, on 11/03/2007, -1/+10I don't think you, or a lot of people, are looking at the big picture dkoon.
Desktop Linux is succeeding and gaining ground. I can certainly relate to your statement about this year or the next. I have dabbled in Linux for 8 years now but have always returned to Windows. Within the last year I have mostly abandoned Windows except for gaming. I have been able to abandon Windows because the desktop for Linux has matured considerably.
That is quite a feat when you put it into perspective. How long have Microsoft and Apple been developing and refining their desktops? How much do you pay to use their desktops? How much have they paid to develop their desktops? The quality of the Linux desktops - which have mostly been in development for less than 10 years, are created largely by a volunteer development team, and are given away freely - are on par with the "big boys."
Also, it is an undeniable factor that with Microsoft or Apple you have one entity. Linux's advantage is also its downfall to the average consumer, and that is the number of choices made available. To us geeks it is great to have so many distros and desktops. Choice is good. To my 60-something mother, her eyes would glaze over if I started talking about the advantages and disadvantages of KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox, etc. As if that isn't complicated enough for the average consumer, if you start comparing Linux to BSD or Debian-based versus Red Hat-based versus Slackware-based versus Gentoo-based, well then you have a big mess that I guarantee 85% of the computer users in the world could care less about. Windows and Mac make the choice easy.
I don't think 2008 will be the year that desktop Linux takes over. 2009 looks doubtful too. But, unless Microsoft comes back with a stunning OS to make up for the Vista disaster or Apple cuts their prices in half or opens the OS up to non-Apple hardware, I do think that the future of desktop Linux is very bright and within the next 5 years the "establishment" will either innovate or suffer.
One last note, I also agree with your statement about Windows users not being dumb. Think about how many people are now going to miss your post, which had a few reasonable points, because you couldn't leave comments about Bush (unrelated to the topic) and accusations about fanboy-ism out of your post and that got you dugg down. Oy! - andycr512, on 11/04/2007, -0/+9That's what the "Long Term Support" releases of Ubuntu are for...
- matx, on 11/02/2007, -1/+10or you could just use apt-get or emerge and have a photo imaging suite that works and didn't cost a single penny?
- InferiorWang, on 11/03/2007, -0/+9It's usually easier to teach someone linux when all they know is how to play solitaire and get their email because they don't have much to unlearn. You're starting with a nearly blank slate.
- Meep3D, on 11/02/2007, -0/+9most dont even have GUI mount tools yet.
- regeya, on 11/03/2007, -0/+9Indeed. KDE4 will of course be nice, but 3.5.7 is also awesome. And you're right; KDE is set up by default more gaudily than even Windows.
Personally I run a hybrid KDE/GNOME system (kind of a necessity when you're using AWN ;-) and though it looks nice and works just fine I wouldn't recommend it for anyone other than myself.
I haven't tried any other Linux distros lately but the main reason I'm using Kubuntu is because it tends to be set up fairly decent out of the box. The main dev is a KDE user (an important detail) and the Kubuntu team works hard to deliver a solid KDE experience, even if they get treated like red-headed stepchildren. I hadn't expected 3.5.x in Gutsy to be a slick as it was, yet it is!
(And yeah, I can say that about redheads...look at my profile pic. :-P) - oobuntu, on 11/03/2007, -1/+9Dont' believe the hype. KDE 3.5.7 is slick, crisp and excellent. It also isn't always presented in the best way (icons, fonts, theme), but KDE power users often have really fine setups. All it needs is a distro to do this already out of the box and the gnome users might not give up so quickly. I used gnome for a good couple of years but found that KDE suited me better.
- hockey, on 11/02/2007, -0/+8The moment money gets involved friendly goes out the window.
- stevedclarke, on 11/02/2007, -2/+10I didn't bury him. You on the other hand...
- srg13, on 11/02/2007, -1/+9Applications -> Add/Remove Programs. Type something into the search box. Check an application. Click install
There are even easier ways - you can download a deb and double click it. Or you can just type sudo apt-get install [app-name]. - GawtMilk, on 11/03/2007, -2/+10All three have made *huge* improvements. Take Vista, Leopard or Ubuntu back six years and people will crap themselves in amazement.
- paulsmith288, on 11/03/2007, -1/+8only because they dont like paying $$$ every six months. A new windows needs a new computer. A new linux doesn't.
But you do have a point - but there are linux distros that cater for more testing , slower release cycles - redhat enterprise for example. - andycr512, on 11/06/2007, -1/+8At least Gnome doesn't ship with shiny, candy-coated icons that make my eyes bleed.
- duckyinc, on 11/03/2007, -2/+9Obviously a fan boy
- TooManyHobbies, on 11/03/2007, -1/+8Windows isn't user friendly. It's just that we've grown used to it's little quirks and flaws and we take them for granted.
- eboulian, on 11/03/2007, -1/+8Honestly, is Windows really that user friendly? When you compare the two to those uses, they are equivalent. Installing is the same complication, mind you a newbie may not understand partitioning at the start which Windows may fail that part a bit compared to K/ubuntu's Auto Partitioning.
- stevedclarke, on 11/02/2007, -2/+9Using words like 'lintard' doesn't really help you get your point across. You know that, don't you?
- javaroast, on 11/02/2007, -2/+9CD installs are so last generation.
- yeti22, on 11/04/2007, -0/+6Moms are the perfect target market for Linux, assuming they have a tech-savvy son or daughter (or neighbor) to help when things go wrong. (Isn't this true for Windows anyway? How many moms troubleshoot their own computer problems?) Moms don't tend to demand much from their computers (as opposed to gamers, for example), so the basic web and office functionality provided--for free--by Linux is a perfect fit.
Oh, and Linux doesn't have a registry. - 47f0, on 11/03/2007, -5/+11From the user side, Linux can be as complex as you want it to be - but give a newbie a pre-install, and they're up and running in no time. Without such complexities as viruses, trojans, and registry rot. My neighbor/friend/family support calls have virtually vanished from those I've gotten to try Linux.
Most computer users don't want, or need to do complex things - and Linux has the basics pretty nicely covered. - stevedclarke, on 11/03/2007, -0/+6Although my preference tends towards KDE, I agree totally with what you said. But how would that happen without a unified widget set or something because although you can sort of get the effect with skinning, in reality it doesn't really cut it.
- inactive, on 11/03/2007, -2/+8I would disagree with you partially. I am the network administrator for a mid sized manufacturing company that uses Windows. I have both the knowledge and the curiosity to use Linux in my personal computing, but I support over 100 users who don't have the time or inclination to make the switch. We are further hampered by the interoperability issues and networking architectures that our vendors and customers use. For instance, we sell to Walmart and the electronic invoicing system is a Windows based system for the clients. (We use an AS400 running Mapics andExtol for the backbone.) When you have to deal with the real world and the consequences of switching are measured in dollars and cents, then Linux and even OSX become more difficult to switch to.
- Lionhart, on 11/02/2007, -0/+6"What single reason would the man on the street, ie non-IT geek, have for wanting Linux?"
Uh, it's free. -
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