Author Topic: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year  (Read 9541 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline MP-Ryan

  • Makes General Discussion Make Sense.
  • Global Moderator
  • 210
  • Keyboard > Pen > Sword
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
If it was easier to get Linux up and running then more people would be willing to try it out as a secondary OS. But when even people like myself who are quite computer literate think that it is too much hassle to get it up and running then that is a problem with the OS itself or at least with the perception of the OS.

Exactly.  Vista had me almost convinced to make the leap, but when it's more work to set up the new OS and maintain it than the current one, it doesn't make much sense.  And with both my systems running 7 now, the only need I'd ever have for Linux is as a recovery boot disc.
"In the beginning, the Universe was created.  This made a lot of people very angry and has widely been regarded as a bad move."  [Douglas Adams]

  

Offline Spicious

  • Master Chief John-158
  • 210
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
By "too much hassle" you mean you looked at the website and it seemed too hard so you gave up straight away? Which distro are you trying?

 

Offline Solatar

  • 211
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
By "too much hassle" you mean you looked at the website and it seemed too hard so you gave up straight away?

QFT

Ubuntu and Ubuntu based distros (Kubuntu, Mint, etc.) are really easy to install. They have installers that are just as easy to use as a Windows one.  Some distros, like Mint, even have lots of standard drivers and data already installed.  My laptop worked immediately; so did my wireless card; and my HP printer was printing within a minute of my plugging it in for the first time. My MICROSOFT web-cam worked immediately upon plugging it in, no driver CDs needed.

I use Mint for general use just because it's easier and more intuitive to work with than Windows.

 

Offline asyikarea51

  • 210
  • -__-||
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
I'm just bothered by a program in Linux deciding to break itself the moment I change something in the configuration (through a GUI even, lol i'm following proper procedure, hello...), while the Windows offering never screws up... but then there's a program I need Linux for because it never works right on Windows with all the stuff I use and refuse to delete...

Oh and the fact that there's no installer-for-idiots :lol: I can never seem to manually compile and install ANYTHING in Linux without having to install, like, a million dependencies first, and even after I install all of them, the compile script most always fails with some arcane error I can't understand without having to be some in-deep techie with 100 years' Linux experience or whatsoever.

I'm dual-booting over here but right now I don't have much of a reason to use Linux more (i.e. I do use it in some way). I'd gladly make the shift if I could just get off my lazy arse and go figure out how to do even the simplest C++ without the compiler insta-error messaging or learn Blender/Gimp for FS asset creation... Both of which still look as complicated as Max and Maya and Photoshop... XD

Which leaves Windows for just... gaming, surfing (since Flash is broken for me), print/scan, FSO code SVN compiling, and general bickering around in a 100% MS-biased school environment (which pisses me off anyhow, still I don't have a choice but to accept that I alone cannot effect change of any sort).


Heck a classmate told me to just "go use Windows" and while I resented that remark deep down, I really didn't have a counter-argument. Unlike the remaining 99.99999999999% of the population where I'm at who only knows their Windows and Macs, I'm all in for Linux; but it can be a real :mad: to deal with things Windows people consider a piece of cake.

 

Offline Mika

  • 28
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
I think that the reason for not disclosing the driver code by the hardware manufacturers comes from that they have invested money to write and test the drivers. Not to mention the algorithm and memory structuring design. Of course it is possible to reverse-engineer this with proper equipment, but that means lots of time and money being spent for the equipment. Also, I don't find Linux developing principle to be very useful for paying you grocery bills - probably something that quite a lot of Linux programmers find out during the years if they are not lucky enough to find a specific application.

I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but I do have worked in Linux environment (checking driver code, followed some people's struggles with Linux in their home computers) and following problems are pretty much evident:
- Different distros are not compatible
- Program instabilities and "features" that you need to know. As in "Oh did we forgot to mention that in the manual (that was last updated 3 years ago)?"
- Useful programs not working - this is related to distros not being compatible.
- Linux developing field looks like a big mess. Like if some OS module breaks, who do you actually ask for help if it is acute?
- Poor user interface design of programs, in worst cases there isn't one!
- Non-existent user support, the standard three answers being:
     1) It worked in my box
     2) You have a wrong distro
     3) You don't have the brains to do that, do you?
- It is partially based on antiquated operating system
- Advertised real time Linuxes are not actually that real time
- "Free" software and operating systems have turned out to be ****ing expensive in terms of personnel time required, which no company wants to waste if the employee could do something more useful, like work.
Relaxed movement is always more effective than forced movement.

 

Offline Pyro MX

  • 29
  • Frenadian
    • Pyro MX's Art
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
There there, we're not on a tech blog. We don't get flamed for having opinions on an operating system. I do have some something to reply though, for the sake of discussion :P.

-Compatible distros? You mean an unified package management system? If it's the case, then a standard in package management system could probably help. (At least in binary distros, not source ones). Otherwise, having different distros with different mechanisms, except that it requires the user to actually make a choice, it's not a big deal.

-For non-updated manuals, that depends on the program you are using. And this can happen even in other OSes.

-See first point.

-"Poor user interface design". That one, I'm a bit tired of hearing it. While you indeed see some atrocities in some programs (just like on any other OS), the user interface design is quite fine with the desktops available (GNOME, KDE 4 and Xfce, to cite what I've been working with throughout the years) - way better than Mac OS's or Windows' if you ask me.

-Non-existent user support? I asked help for years on both the Ubuntu and Gentoo communities and a lot of times and ended up with an answer to my questions. Not counting here the times I found the answer just by searching for it on the forums, documentation or Wiki. And that is also true for a lot of users. Sometimes, people are expecting an answer to a question that was malformed or asked in a rude manner. And then they get pissed off for not getting answers. But do we hear about it? No. we only hear that the community is being a *****. I don't say here that everybody had an answer to what they asked. But saying there's no support? Plain false.

-Linux is antiquated? Clarify.

-"Advertised real time Linuxes". Do you mean "mainstream"? If it's the case, then yes, some abuse that term.

-Implementing a different technology or switching to a new one is sure to cost money, especially if the company doesn't have the expertise to do such and implementation or that the employees need formation on it. While it may cost a lot on the first shot, it may pay big time on the long run.

There. See? No flame-thrower here. And they only have water in them anyway. :P

 

Offline asyikarea51

  • 210
  • -__-||
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
Xfce + Compiz on Xubuntu was cool, only I didn't know what emerald was for other than to get compiz-fusion to work or whatever.

That said, any way to add an entry to a command-line terminal in Nautilus (like how Thunar in Xubuntu does it)?

And I kinda hope that "real time" part is not about the kernel when talking about audio >_<

 

Offline castor

  • 29
    • http://www.ffighters.co.uk./home/
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
I think "Linux" fits excellently for these two groups of people:
1. people who, from day-to-day, use the same standard set of tools, not much interested in experimenting with anything else
2. people who like to try out and tinker with all and everything out&in there

In group 1, life is going to be easy once you've seen through the trouble of setting up everything in the way you like it.
Since there's no need to wander away from a release known to be stable, the needed maintenance effort (for desktop use) is pretty much 0.

People in group 2. don't mind the hassle that follows from using bleeding edge distros and packages - that's what they're into anyway.

The "tragedy" of Linux is that most people fall close to the middle point between those two groups, where Linux is at its worst -- people who like to try a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but are not much interested in how any of it works. So yeah, I agree that the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year probably never comes (not that it'd matter to me).

 

Offline Mika

  • 28
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
For compatible distros, I meant that I would like to see drivers written for peripheral card that work in Fedora something point something, but don't in Ubuntu something point something.

The manual stuff is true in other OSs, but it would be especially important to have them up to date in Linux that comes from millions of contributors.

I meant that the user interface is atrocious especially in Linux world. Sometimes ASCII screen seems to be A-OK, but for some reason I seem to recall that bad user interfaces by Microsoft were one of the reasons Linux started to gain momentum. Yes, this was once given as a reason to migrate to Linux. Unfortunately, I find out that the Linux software and operating system UIs aren't any better.

My experiences of the user support is that it is non-existent. This is partially related to distros being incompatible, but if they are, who are you gonna contact? Also, lots of primary peripheral device functions are still lacking under Linux, like USB for example. In best cases, the peripheral card (I'm not going to details about this one) manufacturer provided drivers for a specific Linux version (yes, it didn't work in newer versions), half of the card functionalities missing - yes we only found out that later when the primary job of the card was implemented.

These features were advertised, but not implemented. So, in this case it was about transferring responsibility of the hardware developer to the actual user. Surely that Linux was cheaper for the hardware manufacturer, but turned out to be really expensive to us, and we would have gladly paid the extra hundred bucks to get the Windows CE version and stabile developing platform that follows. Guess if we are going to use open source software again any time soon?

Linux being antiquated is matter of viewing things. I thought we wanted to get rid of the damn console, but in Linux everything seems to be built on top of that. Yes you don't see this when normally using it, but try developing stuff for peripheral cards...

Ubuntu probably counts as mainstream, but it definetely is not a real time system as advertised.

Quote
-Implementing a different technology or switching to a new one is sure to cost money, especially if the company doesn't have the expertise to do such and implementation or that the employees need formation on it. While it may cost a lot on the first shot, it may pay big time on the long run.

And then there is the Limux project, where the cost savings don't seem to happen:
http://limuxwatch.blogspot.com/

It is a question to me if the projected cost savings really happen. The French police has been able to cut costs with Linux, but how about their computer support? Sometimes changes cause costs to move from one department to another. I'm not saying it did in this case, but being employed by the state I'm suspicious about the government cost saving programs - they usually turn out to be money wasting programs.

Though the economic downturn may simply force a shift from Microsoft licenses to open source software. However, specialised software that I use is most likely never going to be free for any operating system. I'm not sure about what is the price of WinXP & Office -combo for corporations in large numbers. It is much less than the home user pays, of that I'm sure and it is odd that French report such high savings.

Disclaimer: I do think that Linux could work as a home computer operating system, but it is absolutely horrible when it is being used as a hardware development platform. Millions of dependencies where you must get the right version of something (not updated version, the RIGHT version)  only to find out that something else breaks couple of hours later.
Relaxed movement is always more effective than forced movement.

 

Offline Bobboau

  • Just a MODern kinda guy
    Just MODerately cool
    And MODest too
  • 213
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
- Non-existent user support, the standard three answers being:
     1) It worked in my box
     2) You have a wrong distro
     3) You don't have the brains to do that, do you?

you forgot
-you don't want to do that
and
-hey guys, I fixed it (abyssal hole where explanation on how should be)
and my personal favourite
-me too
« Last Edit: November 30, 2009, 01:45:38 am by Bobboau »
Bobboau, bringing you products that work... in theory
learn to use PCS
creator of the ProXimus Procedural Texture and Effect Generator
My latest build of PCS2, get it while it's hot!
PCS 2.0.3


DEUTERONOMY 22:11
Thou shalt not wear a garment of diverse sorts, [as] of woollen and linen together

 

Offline Woolie Wool

  • 211
  • Fire main batteries
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
I think Linux would advance greatly if there was a standardized installer that could download the dependencies of a program and compile it with no input from the user.

Of course, that could end up miring the user in dependency hell (dependencies of one program conflicting with/stomping those of another), which Windows has largely been free of since Windows 98...
16:46   Quanto   ****, a mosquito somehow managed to bite the side of my palm
16:46   Quanto   it itches like hell
16:46   Woolie   !8ball does Quanto have malaria
16:46   BotenAnna   Woolie: The outlook is good.
16:47   Quanto   D:

"did they use anesthetic when they removed your sense of humor or did you have to weep and struggle like a tiny baby"
--General Battuta

 

Offline blackhole

  • Still not over the rainbow
  • 29
  • Destiny can suck it
    • Black Sphere Studios
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
Linux will NEVER be a desktop OS for the masses.

Never say never. May I remind you that while the current open-source efforts at linux distros are failing miserably, there is always a chance some genius will come up with a better solution. People look at this as an Option A or Option B situation: either linux works or it doesn't. People forget that there is always Option C: Something completely new that no one else has even considered.

 

Offline NGTM-1R

  • I reject your reality and substitute my own
  • 213
  • Syndral Active. 0410.
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
Considering how long it's taken Linux to fail completely at this task but at least be considered for it, I don't believe that Option C can be realistically considered.
"Load sabot. Target Zaku, direct front!"

A Feddie Story

 

Offline Galemp

  • Actual father of Samus
  • 212
  • Ask me about GORT!
    • Steam
    • User page on the FreeSpace Wiki
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
I may not be forwarding the conversation here, but I like using Ubuntu because it does what an operating system is supposed to do: run software. I have never had any problems with Firefox, Blender, Gimp, Pidgin, or anything else available through the package manager.

Windows, on the other hand, is plagued by the system registry, DRM'd commercial software, constant security updates and patches, and malware vulnerabilities. If I truly had the choice in which desktop environment to use, I'd use Linux.

Unfortunately I don't truly have that choice, because there definitely exist some problems in low-level tinkering. Installing FS2 Open was a nightmare in Linux, but in Windows it was as easy as installing from the disc, installing OpenAL, and downloading and running a different binary. Software support is also really spotty; I can't use Skype on Linux, for example, and developers large and small almost never code for cross-platform use.

My compromise is that I'm running Mac OSX. :p
"Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he's supposed to be doing at that moment." -- Robert Benchley

Members I've personally met: RedStreblo, Goober5000, Sandwich, Splinter, Su-tehp, Hippo, CP5670, Terran Emperor, Karajorma, Dekker, McCall, Admiral Wolf, mxlm, RedSniper, Stealth, Black Wolf...

 

Offline blackhole

  • Still not over the rainbow
  • 29
  • Destiny can suck it
    • Black Sphere Studios
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
Considering how long it's taken Linux to fail completely at this task but at least be considered for it, I don't believe that Option C can be realistically considered.

Once again, you can't not consider Option C because by definition Option C is something you haven't thought of yet.

 

Offline castor

  • 29
    • http://www.ffighters.co.uk./home/
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
Installing FS2 Open was a nightmare in Linux, but in Windows it was as easy as installing from the disc, installing OpenAL, and downloading and running a different binary.
Funny that my experience is the exact opposite of yours. :) Initially there was the problem with case-sensitivity of Linux filesystems (files copied over from Windows side needed to be renamed to get it to work), but that's about it. And the last time I tried to install it under Windows.. Couldn't get the damn thing to stop crashing. Dunno, maybe I was using a wrong version of the launcher (no need for that on Linux side), or possibly something went wrong with the OpeanAL install (its kind of confusing without apt-get :D )

 

Offline DeepSpace9er

  • Bakha bombers rule
  • 28
  • Avoid the beam and you wont get hit
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
Running linux is like the equivalent of going to church in the open source community. Of course, the vatican of the open source religion is obviously slashdot. :)

Now on a more serious note, linux distros AS THEY EXIST TODAY will not become mainstream OSes because of a lack of direction as far as user experience and interface goes. It basically just tries to ape windows xp and 2000 in appearance as much as possible and there is no vision for it. The Option C, imo would be a company like Google coming in and doing something with linux to make it their own, the same way apple did it with OSX, but in a more open freeish kinda way.

 

Offline Woolie Wool

  • 211
  • Fire main batteries
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
I wouldn't trust Google to do such a thing. It would spy on you and report the contents of your hard drives to Google whenever you made a file search.

Seriously, Google is creepy. Big Brother Google is watching you. He might have thinkpol, he might not, but either way he's watching you and logging every search you make, the search terms, the date and time,  your IP address, and the ID of your Google cookie that won't expire for 40 years.
16:46   Quanto   ****, a mosquito somehow managed to bite the side of my palm
16:46   Quanto   it itches like hell
16:46   Woolie   !8ball does Quanto have malaria
16:46   BotenAnna   Woolie: The outlook is good.
16:47   Quanto   D:

"did they use anesthetic when they removed your sense of humor or did you have to weep and struggle like a tiny baby"
--General Battuta

 

Offline NGTM-1R

  • I reject your reality and substitute my own
  • 213
  • Syndral Active. 0410.
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
Once again, you can't not consider Option C because by definition Option C is something you haven't thought of yet.

To the contrary. All realistic options left have been considered because they pay people to consider that, and most of the unrealistic options too. They're called "contingencies".

More directly, Option C has been considered and rejected as a realistic option due to the logistics of setting up a workable operating system. The days of the lone genius creating masterful software for the masses are dead and done. Option C is the open-source community abandoning Linux or somebody dropping by to seriously try and take on Microsoft on Microsoft's home turf.

...you see how silly it sounds now?
"Load sabot. Target Zaku, direct front!"

A Feddie Story

 

Offline Pyro MX

  • 29
  • Frenadian
    • Pyro MX's Art
Re: 2010 will not be the "GNU/Linux on the desktop" year
Now on a more serious note, linux distros AS THEY EXIST TODAY will not become mainstream OSes because of a lack of direction as far as user experience and interface goes. It basically just tries to ape windows xp and 2000 in appearance as much as possible and there is no vision for it. The Option C, imo would be a company like Google coming in and doing something with linux to make it their own, the same way apple did it with OSX, but in a more open freeish kinda way.

The interface and user experience are both defined by the distros and their respective desktop environments. If you think that desktops environments like KDE, Gnome or Xfce tries to imitate Windows XP/200 in appearance or user experience and that they have no vision, then I'm sorry, but I think you need a new pair of glasses. To my knowledge, having tried around 4 different desktop environments (one of which isn't really a "known" environment since I chose the components manually), none of them were imitating the Windows look and feel. Just take a look around : KDE 4.3, Xfce 4.6, GNOME 2.28. All these environments have pretty clear goals and visions in terms of design (and that's counting the application that are developed for each of the environments). Because you don't understand the way they work doesn't mean they don't have any direction. You have to take into account that people have been using Windows for years - having a different thing in front of you is certainly uncomfortable for a certain period of time. And it is definitely hard to make the effort.

And now for distribution-specific : Ubuntu and OpenSuse. Read on a bit to see what they have to offer.

As for dependencies, you know there's an invention called package managers. While they are not unified in formats, they sure manage the dependencies well, whether it's a source or binary package manager. And you tend to forget the advantages. First of all, all the applications are maintained in a central place. You remove, add, update and reinstall every component on the same place. No need to have around 5 update managers for every single application. Secondly, if one or more programs share a library, it doesn't have to be re-installed for each application. Let's take the example of Firefox and Thunderbird. Both rely on xulrunner and proably a couple more libraries. When you install these two programs on a GNU/Whatever distro, both the programs share the same library. Install these two on Windows, and you'll install all the libraries twice. the result is a smaller system in terms of disk space (depending, of course, of the quantity of applications and libraries used). Speaking of installing programs, most of the times, no need to go around tons of sites to download the software you need to build your desktop. Go to your package manager, search your components and install them. Your system is starting to have a lot of stuff installed? Uninstall your unnecessary apps, "depclean" the whole thing and hit the "repair" button when necessary. And read before you uninstall something important (like I've seen and done some times :P).

Finally, it's not like Windows is entirely free of "dependencies" - while it certainly make less... visible use of them,  applications sometimes require different versions of the .NET framework. Also mentioned above, Freespace relies on OpenAL for the sound. Some OSS also install components like GTK+ or Python (when they're not directly bundled in the app itself). Also note that some software is available in distribution-independant packages (I'm not necessarily talking about compiling the source - some offer binaries with the dependencies inside).

Speaking of the command line, while it's not the thing people like to learn, it is a very powerful tool. I don't know why people try to exterminate it at all costs. On what you'd call your "everyday" desktop, you'll probably won't have to rely on the CLI to do your stuff. With the new Xorg versions and the xorg.conf progressively disappearing, chances are, you won't have to rely on it. However, when developing applications or working with servers, it's a very, very nice tool to have. It also provides a backup if one application freezes the current display (switch to a virtual terminal, kill the process that is freezing the GUI, go back in and enjoy). As for myself, I constantly use it - after about 5 years on GNU/Linux I found the CLI to be a very powerful tool. And I certainly miss it when I work in Windows. Even Mac OS makes use of it - some options that aren't available on the GUI are set using the terminal.
« Last Edit: November 30, 2009, 10:09:08 pm by Pyro MX »