Mainstreaming Of Linux

[RKASA]

A Linux rant.

  

Most people beleave you have to be geek to use Linux and that is because they want dual boot with windows and thats a mess if your not up to it.  I would recommend Linux to anyone that uses a PC, but put it on a differant PC if need be, treat it like an OS, not a redheaded stepchild, a non geek can install set up and run PClinuxOS with no more hassle then a first time XP setup. and I rarely use the commandline, not anymore then I did in XP.  and only as direacted by those whom know.  Codec and drivers (I run all my WMV WMA MP3 DivX its all there) in synaptic for everything no sorting depen. or anything like that.  If what you need is not in there ask and Tex and the gang will add it if its not junk or unstable.  One source for everything in one place.  The repos will also remove un needed and out dated packages.

   I went there this eve and got Opera 9.23 upgraded to 9.24 and a OpenOffice up

date along with some patchs that the manager

could see I needed.  In fact I didn't ask for anything all I had to do was click upgrade once. It did everything I didn't even turn off my Ktorrents and no re boot.  I have found near everything I need in the repos, from recipe software to googleearth, Audio use Amarok, but I did install wine from the repos for Ares P2P and a MP3 audio volume source file modifier which I have yet to find suited replacement for.  Finding, installing and then using software in PClinuxOS is easier then it ever was in windows and everything does not cost another 19.95 and its all at one site that sets on my desktop. (click)  PClinuxOS is close to prime if not ready for most users, but purhaps not at the same time as learning windows.  I beleave without PC knowledge or MS habits most anyone could use it in a matter of hours, but just like windows it then takes learning to know more and make better

 use of it.  Those which have MS habits will be handcapped by only knowing MS and I beleave they will find it harder then even first timers.  

   I have over 30 distro of Linux which I have run and PClinuxOS works. If you have not tried PClinuxOS you should.

  There are things which cannot be done on linux, because the software is made for windows or the site won't work without it, fine if you need that, but get Linux anyway on a seperate PC that never needs to be turned off, why do things like P2P and torrents on something that costs as much as windows, and lets face it a non geek with windows problem is just as screwed.  Just read the TV forum as proof, its no differant then Linux. Protect windows, scan stuff before exposing it to vary importent windows thats needed so much, or never expose it to strange files at all.  If more people surf on Linux and work on windows they will maybe have less windows problems.  

   I have not yet deleted my XP, I said I would wait until I had not booted it for 30 days.  I was up to 14 days, but booted it tuesday for a video conf. call because I needed MSN, but had I planned ahead I would have found the work around I now have. 

PS I think Ubuntu is way overrated.  I love the PClinuxOS. I never felt that way about a windows product.

and thats my rant.

[cdnvic]

I've used all kinds of Unix variants since the 80s and still don't think any Linux distribution will be ready for mainstream usage for some time to come, if ever. The only Unix derivative to come close is Mac OS-X, and even still, it's only 8% of the market in the US, and much less elsewhere. Mac is successful because they lock down the hardware and software to each other and eliminate the compatibility problems that will always plague Linux, and to a lesser degree, Windows. This creates an ease of use that Windows has difficulty competing with, and Linux, which has as many individual flavours as possible hardware variations, has no hope of competing with.

I've listened to Linux evangelists for years now, proclaiming that the big breakthrough is just around the corner. Unfortunately that time isn't going to come. Not until it's common in schools, can be bought pre-installed in store bought machines, and there's widespread support for it. That's where the diversity of Linux works against itself. There is no single distribution with enough presence to become the standard that everyone can be trained to. Microsoft can focus on developing, and supporting a particular version of Windows, just as Apple can with the Mac OS. There is no unifying body for Linux, and for that reason there will always be a mixed bag of Linux distributions running around, too divided the threaten even the Mac's small slice of the pie.

If you like Linux and can deal with it as an everyday machine then that's great, and even if it's only a secondary option it's still an educational and mind expanding hobby. But don't think for a second that it will ever be mainstream on the desktop. There's just too much working against it.

[cdnvic]

How Far Behind Is Linux?

October 17, 2007; Page B1

If some of Linus Torvalds's own family members back in Finland don't use Linux, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Linux, the free operating system whose development is overseen by Mr. Torvalds, has long been entrenched in the worlds of science and commerce. When Google gives you a search result, a Linux machine is doing the work. At tens of thousands of other companies, computer managers take comfort in the fact that these days, no one ever gets fired for "buying" open source.

But world domination? That's another story.

Even though Linux is easier than ever to use, the dream of many Linux buffs of it replacing Windows as the desktop mainstay is, at best, stalled, and at worst, fading. While exact numbers are hard to come by, one survey has desktop Linux users barely scraping a single percentage point of the market share. Among Microsoft's customers, concedes Mr. Torvalds, are his father and sister, though Mom has managed to resist the allure of the dark side.

So, with the top version of Windows Vista running at nearly $400, at least for new users, why do people continue to open their wallets wide when there's a free alternative?

One reason is that for most consumers, Windows is "free," coming as it does with their new PCs. Computer companies hardly seem interested in offering alternatives. H-P, for example, ships more PCs than anyone, but won't sell a computer without Windows, at least in the U.S.

Dell is far more Linux friendly, and offers a line of consumer Linux machines that run $50 less than their Windows counterparts. But Dell doesn't exactly broadcast the option; there's no mention of it on its home page and you need to know to click on an "Open-Source Computers" link on an inside page of its Web site before you know of the alternative.

Dell started installing Linux earlier in the year after a suggestion box on its Web site drew a deluge of requests for the system. Dell doesn't say how many Linux PCs it ships, but one survey puts it at a tiny fraction of total units.

And, tellingly, far more people requested that Dell sell Linux than actually bought a machine once it went on sale. That suggests the typical consumer user has none of the philosophical objections to Windows of some members of the open-source community. Windows works well enough that the difficulty involved in switching operating systems outweighs any slings and arrows of using it.

Full story:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1192569308....html?mod=blogs

[Gary A]

I play with Linux once in a while. The latest distribution that I have on a separate hard drive is Linspire. I was hoping to get a Linux distribution that would be faster than Windows XP Pro.

The point is that even if I would be willing to give up all my Windows software, what would I gain? I have come to the conclusion that I gain nothing except headaches. XP Pro looks like an absolute speed demon when compared with Linspire.

I have posted before that most of the Linux programs have been fiddled with and had so much crap added to them that they run slower than Windows. I swap hard drives on the same computer so I can't blame my computer. My computer is getting old but the processor is a Celeron 2.66 ghz, SATA hard drives and a gig of ram.

My Internet connection stinks so there will be no downloading any more of those HUGE, bloated new distributions.

[Crushdepth]

Ubuntu will post free CDs to you, as in 'free lunch'.

Mainstreaming of Linux will happen when you can install it and have everything just work out of the box. Ubuntu has come a long way but it still isn't quite there in terms of out of the box functionality. Its close, but there always seems to be one or two things you have to mess around with to get working (eg. this time wireless didn't work on Gutsy Gibbons without installing extra package that didn't show in Synaptic that was required to make the restricted driver manager work).

But its way better than my first ever experience with Linux - I couldn't open the CD drive because the default install didn't give you sufficient permissions, and I didn't know that either. CD went in the bin and I didn't touch Linux again for another 2 years. Experienced computer users may find this amusing, but this is exactly the kind of insensitivity that keeps Linux a geek toy.

IMHO when stupid people can install and use Linux without thinking it will become a mainstream success.

[Richard-BKK]

I love it when people talk about Linux not being able to be mainstream; I installed Linux on the neighbor’s computer. They bough a computer to do some administrative work, they write some letters, do some spreadsheet administration and Internet. They have a pretty popular food shop not far from where I live; they prepare all ingredients themselves and use OpenOffice spreadsheets to keep track of expenses.

After one month, I was asked if I could look at the computer because it made a funny sound. This was the first time I had a look after I installed Ubuntu 7.04, they had installed Wine, to be able to run a program to upload music files to the daughters MP3 player, they also upgraded to 7.10 and the son was playing Powermanga all things I did not installed. Also they had been able to install a HP printer without my help, which after I asked they confessed that they called the HP help desk, still I was impressed.

This Thai family never used a computer before and was therefore not corrupted by so-called easy MS-Windows software. Most people who say Linux is nothing, start there illegal Windows and say see how good it works, showing software they never paid for.

If I compare a MS-Windows computer with also MS-Office and some other software installed we come quickly on something of 30,000Bht of software, then the Linux alternative is not bad at all…better pretty good I will say…

The funny sounds had nothing to do with the software working of the computer; it was a ventilator which for some reasons started to make funny sounds. The shop replaced the ventilator and they are happy again….

[nikster]

If ubuntu came pre-installed on new machines, it would be pretty much mainstream for many people.

I just installed Gutsy on my laptop and the experience was bad, but mostly because of lacking hardware support. The ATI card is causing endless problems, from not being able to set my screen resolution to the native resolution of the LCD to not being able to use the snazzy desktop effects to crashing in suspend mode.

But that's because ATI's drivers are not only proprietary - which I wouldn't mind per se - but also crap.

Windows comes pre-installed and pre-configured. I want to see how many people are actually able to install Windows from scratch on a new machine and then go download all the drivers from the various places - I'd think it would not be many that can do it without assistance from the friendly geek next door. Linux is at the same level - if it was pre-installed, and pre-installed on a system that's linux friendly to begin with, e.g. NVidia cards or Intel built-in graphics accelerator, if they just had to use it, Linux is just as good as Windows.

Which is to say not great, there's still many things that people need help with both on Windows and Linux (and Mac). But relatively good.

Mainstreaming of Linux will happen when enough people get fed up with Windows. And looking around me, I have to say the drawing is on the wall: My computer-illiterate neighbor just went ahead and installed Ubuntu as dual boot on his Windows system. It's a sign when non-geeks start installing linux out of the blue.

Going to try PCLinuxOS now...

[nikster]

PCLinuxOS Live CD started up, and proceeded to boot me into a screen that can only be described as pixel garbage. Couldn't see anything - restart and goodbye, PCLinuxOS! Will try you again next year!

Compared to that Ubuntu worked like a charm...

[Gary A]

Linspire is the best distribution I have tried. It's relatively user friendly and worked as installed. It installed all the drivers for what my machine has. YES, I could easily use it but since it is so slow I won't. It also seems like any extra programs you want must be paid for.

[cdnvic]

If ubuntu came pre-installed on new machines, it would be pretty much mainstream for many people.

It doesn't though.

Mainstreaming of Linux will happen when enough people get fed up with Windows. And looking around me, I have to say the drawing is on the wall

Been hearing almost that exact same quote since about 1994

[RKASA]

Ya I have been hearing it too. but one thing I never saw back then was half the PC's on display at Tesco Lotus in Phitsanulok have linux installed and some still have XP pro.  

[jackk]

That's just a question of habits: whatever OS you use, when you use it for 10 years it's always hard to switch from Windows to Mac or to Linux. I always used Linux, and last time I helped a friend with his XP computer (I didn't touch/see any windows Pc for something like 4 years) I was thinking: how the hel_l can he work and waste his time on such a bad OS and how comes he even paid for that? He boots his 5 years old OS in 45 seconds, I boot my latest distro in less than 30s with twice more services loaded. I have over 25,000 programs available with one click, he must find and download overbloated sharewares that will put 10 more icons on his desktop and systray and a nagscreen reminding him he must pay for that. I upgrade my kernel by downloading 30Mb, he will soon need to download a full DVD for his service pack. I really never understood how people can work with that

The most important is to buy a computer that is compatible with your OS. Every distros I tried worked right out the box. Same for a printer or any device, I always ensure they are compatible before buying.

And about the future, I really don't see any changes, computers will be sold with Windows, MAC will do their best to avoid any compatibily with other hardwares/softwares, Windows users will have no reason to switch to Linux, Mac users will have no reason to switch to Windows, and Linux users don't care because they can run their favorite distro on PC or MAC .

[mdailey]

This is an interesting topic -- I've been a Linux fan for 15 years, but I don't see much hope for mainstream Linux in SE Asia, if by that we mean significant numbers of home users using it for their desktops.

I've now taught about 100 master's students here to build serious Web applications on Linux. This year we're using Feisty; last year was Fedora Core 5. Under Fedora where you had to do considerable extra work to get proprietary drivers installed, most of the students wouldn't bother to use it on their own PC, only in the lab. This year under Feisty, the student uptake is much improved. As long as they can install the OS easily on their laptops they're happy to use it for their server software development, and most get quite good at it.

However, even these same technically proficient students who beat the Linux learning curve and see first hand the quality and usefulness of free software still switch back to Windows for gaming, MSN, word processing, and other day-to-day stuff. They even use Windows as a platform to write their theses in Latex. The quality and ease of use are simply better for these day-to-day tasks, in their view. Less than 5% really get the open source bug and remove Windows from their disks.

These young people are very supportive of open source software. And they are also very practical. As long as Windows is better for the things they like to do and essentially free, they will continue to use it. The equation would likely change if Microsoft and/or governments really start cracking down on piracy for home users. But how likely is that?

If not even the geeks of SE Asia will replace their Windows desktops, who will?

[wineman]

I swap drives on my pc (I have 2 HD's) between XP and Ubuntu 7.4. Well, that was the intention anyway.

As I know virtually nothing about Ubuntu I thought it would be interesting to give it a go. Over the course of a couple of months, I suppose I only booted it up a couple of times and then had just a brief look. Anyway, just recently I decided to put a real effort into learning the system.

When I started to type my access password, it actually showed the letters instead of little dots as on previous occasions. When I deleted the letters and re-typed, it then did show dots, however, when I pressed "Enter" it told me I'd used the wrong password. I know I had not.

Has anybody heard of this before, or personally experienced it?

[Insight]

Ya I have been hearing it too. but one thing I never saw back then was half the PC's on display at Tesco Lotus in Phitsanulok have linux installed and some still have XP pro.

Simple reason for this, and the same reason some PC's have that FreeDOS installed - because it's simply an OS to sell the PC with. What's the odds on the first thing going on those PC's after being sold is a dodgy copy of XP/Vista?

I'm running Ubuntu 7.04 and XP Pro at home, and find when I'm home I'm using XP more, and when I'm away I'll leave Ubuntu booted up as I get more control over the machine using SSH.

There's a simple reason for using XP when I'm in front of the thing - I find the Ubuntu Gnome desktop slow and ugly to use. Let's admit it - it's not the greatest first impression. Large, inefficient Sans Serif font, a choice between a brown desktop background or a browner desktop background. Firefox drags badly when using Google Reader, much more so than when using Firefox for the same site in XP. And unless the drivers for the new hardware that you've just bought are included in within the Linux build itself, you're in for a mission for most items which will scare away the average timid home user.

Of course, the server side of Linux is brilliantly reliable and configurable and, as mentioned, the power of BASH scripting is spot on, but what percentage of the average home user is interested in that?

Linux will always have its place in the industry, between the server specialists, hobbyists and curious, but MS are pretty consistent in providing good systems best suited for home users.

[RKASA]

When I first started out I did some reading on the desktops various forums and many times it was said by people they liked the KDE more.  I never tried the Gnome.  I set my first install up with KDE.  I find no speed issues at all with 512mb ram and 1.8ghz clock.  The swap is out on the usb drive I would think that would slow things down, but its so rare that it even uses the swap.  Only when doing a video convertion or making a image for a live cd.  Many programs have their own desktop and never get closed, and the Ktorrent ramps up when I am not using the PC so its 100% productive 24/7. Without bashing windows I have to say I don't miss anything about it.  As for dodgy OS's it may get a lot harder to do going forward, if not, MS should at least give the rest of us a brake on the WGA junk and try something else.  Its a strange mind set that a person would steal an OS when there are 100's that work fine, and they want to give them to you??

[Richard-BKK]

The Linux critics who say Linux is not ready for the mainstream market have no idea what they talk about. I guess, some did try Linux in a early stage, most try to install Linux on a computer with lots of peripherals that were designed to run MS Windows.

This people are somewhat lost, MS Windows Vista also support almost none of the Windows only hardware, and therefore this people are now searching for an alternative. They cannot install Windows Vista, or have apply hack after hack and more hacks every 30 days or so to keep Windows Vista running. Applying some of this Win Vista hacks Linux bash commands seem easy, also in modern distributions you hardly see any bashing or text editing.

And if you have to open the terminal, it is a nice small text windows, and the command to install something is very simple even today copy-past works so not even have to type the command.

People who want to use Windows, please do so ...pay 4000 Bht and a 10k to upgrade your computer. For me, I not need to select anything I run everything I want right on top of my Linux distr

[Insight]

The Linux critics who say Linux is not ready for the mainstream market have no idea what they talk about. I guess, some did try Linux in a early stage, most try to install Linux on a computer with lots of peripherals that were designed to run MS Windows.

Strongly disagree there. Think you'll find the average PC hardware produced over the past few years has been designed with Windows in mind because it's the mainstream.

For the install of Ubuntu 7.04 on my home desktop, the RADEON X1300 graphics card was not detected, the network driver was buggy (sometimes on, mostly off), and my el-cheapo webcam needed a lot of work before that one came up.

Installed the correct ATI driver with a few command line tools gathered from the Ubuntu Forums, but Compiz was also spitting the dummy out when launching in Gnome after the correct graphics card driver was found. Gave up with the internal network card and got threw a wireless one in there - which to Ubuntu's credit - came up instantly.

All fell apart when I swapped the ATI card out for an NVIDIA job though - back to the command line, rather than a generic VGA driver. Command line again...

Morally, I'm all up for Linux, but I personally still believe we're far from the day it'll be a valid option for many. Maybe 7.10 might be an improvement, but waiting until I get a dedicated machine for it first.

VMWare and VirtualBox is are impressive, but too slow for what I need to use XP for regularly.

[sajal]

im a linux user for over a year... using fedora 7 ...

but it is still not ready for mainstream usage, I need to borrow a win xp pc or fire up resource hogging vmware to work on following.... mac can do these tasks i think.

1) Ms publisher... found it one of the easiest tools to make booklets, catalogs, flyers and posters... tried scribius... but then i cant pass it around and its tedious to use.

2) Photoshop... unsuccessful in instaling it on linux, use mainly gimp, but need photoshop for some of their nice text effects and playing with web templates.. GIMP is cool, has some more features than photoshop also... but some things are limited.

3) some tools here and there... webdev tools like banner maker...etc

4) to preview what my site would look to a windows user,

5) flash

that said i am very happy on the linux environment. love the CLI .. can do many tasks with one command which would take a windows user to buy additional software or keep on pointing and clicking.

[cdnvic]

I used to have trouble getting flash to work, but it works just fine now using Kubuntu.