So how long do you think it will be until linux becomes a REAL alternative?

[BD2003]

I must admit, linux is starting to look really really good. KDE makes Windows look like a joke. KOffice is good enough for 99% of people. Hell, even konqueror and kmail is good enough for 99% of people.

But realistically, theres some serious barries to widespread acceptance. Hardware support is a joke. The GUI may be much easier to use, but something as simple as installing a driver in linux is baffling to the average joe. Why the hell do I have to mount a cd before I can use it? Simple things like this is whats preventing widespread use. Every distribution comes with 10 million programs installed default and half of them have no use to most people.

I'd love to see a linux properly configured out of the box for the end user, not the computer nerd. Even the supposed easy ones to use such as mandrake come with dozens more packages installed by default than most anyone cares about. I get the feeling that a lean configured linux os would beat window's ass performance wise even more so than it does while its cluttered.


But looking at linux a few years ago and then looking at it today, it seems like this dream may not be too far off. What do you think?

 

[DaHitman]

Linus is already a REAL alternative for the corporate desktop... most of the arguments you made are just not important in the corporate desktop.

You will see Linux make large inroads in the corporate desktop long before its in the home market... look how long it too Windows NT to enter the home market... most of a decade.. from NT 3.1->NT4->W2K->finnaly XP Home... NT 4.0 Workstation is still by a large margin THE MOST used desktop in business use.

Linux is ready for the same market that NT 4 is ready for... just about every critisim that people make against Linux these days is a MOOT POINT in the corporate environment..

- Linux doesnt have good games or gaming... Gaming is not needed for the corporate desktop. Heck.. NT 4 doesnt even support DirectX...

- Linux is hard for the average user to manage. In the corporate world, there are professionals that build installations, and tweak all the drivers for the type of hardware in use by the company etc.. The systems are locked down, and the end users usually dont even have the rights to change the screensaver. Professional people do things like choose the hardware based on how their software supports it (no hardware support problems if you carefully pick your hardware up front), and built repeatable installs, usually IMAGES of golden system installs that are then just replicated after everything is certified to work correctly... no users have to worry about any hardware or software compatability issues, other people take care of that.


I think you will see some people start to use Linux at the corporate desktop level for replacing a huge number of PC's that are only used for Web,Email, Light Office WP/Spreadsheet etc.. Companies can save millions every year by not sending it to Redmond for software subscription fees that is over-or Marge in Human Recources.


So, I think Linux will become widespread on the corporate desktop first.... who cares if billy can't play the latest shoot-em-up on it, or its too hard for mommy to send a copy of her meatloaf recipe to aunt june... that stuff can come much later, let them use Windows.

 

[singh]

Not anytime soon

 

[todpod]

I think what somebody needs to do is take the linux or bsd kernel and build a new os one top of that without gnome or kde. Its not the look of KDE or gnome it can be a real pain in the a$$ to install drivers and such.

Now I do realize that I am a noob at linux but I think its people like me are the people that need to be converted to linux if linux is going to be real compatition on the desktop. I think that it will take the likes of IBM to come with desktop specific Linux and support it, for linux to become a player on the desktop.

And quit worrying about wine and windows support, I still think that was one of OS/2's big problems, there was no reason to port to OS/2. Just build for linux, and make easy as possable.

That being said I do hope linux becomes a player on the desktop

 

[BD2003]

I currently use linux at work, and thats where I got hooked on it. Shell programming is something else. It truely is superior in so many ways to windows, including cost!

But trying to install it at home is a total headache, cause it doesnt seem to support new hardware too well.

Hopefully its time will come soon.

 

[Derango]

Originally posted by: todpod
I think what somebody needs to do is take the linux or bsd kernel and build a new os one top of that without gnome or kde. Its not the look of KDE or gnome it can be a real pain in the a$$ to install drivers and such.

Yea, you must be a noob at linux. the kernel is how drivers are supported. KDE or gnome don't controll that. So if you take the kernel and build a new OS on top of it (which you really can't do since the kernel is really the OS anyway), you still have the same dificulty with driver installs. Not that its really hard to begin with...just different from windows.

 

[Nothinman]

Yea, you must be a noob at linux. the kernel is how drivers are supported. KDE or gnome don't controll that.

You must be a noob too cause X has it's own set of drivers =)

You only need kernel graphics drivers for DRM, you can run just fine in 2D only without them.

 

[Sivar]

Originally posted by: DaHitman
Linus is already a REAL alternative for the corporate desktop... most of the arguments you made are just not important in the corporate desktop.

You will see Linux make large inroads in the corporate desktop long before its in the home market... look how long it too Windows NT to enter the home market... most of a decade.. from NT 3.1->NT4->W2K->finnaly XP Home... NT 4.0 Workstation is still by a large margin THE MOST used desktop in business use.

Linux is ready for the same market that NT 4 is ready for... just about every critisim that people make against Linux these days is a MOOT POINT in the corporate environment..

- Linux doesnt have good games or gaming... Gaming is not needed for the corporate desktop. Heck.. NT 4 doesnt even support DirectX...

Well, there are some commercial games available, and there are several open source games that are okay. Linux does now have Transgaming, which takes care of playing the very most popular games just fine (but it is more convenient to play then in Windows, usually)

- Linux is hard for the average user to manage. In the corporate world, there are professionals that build installations, and tweak all the drivers for the type of hardware in use by the company etc.. The systems are locked down...

Yep, Linux does pretty well in the corporate world. Most of the management stuff is not at all difficult, it is just different.
Samba is a noteable exception.
Of course, there are things that are difficult to do in Windows that are easy in Linux, too, like setup the system to update its own software automatically. I would say it is at the point now that Windows and Linux, all things considered, are about equal to businesses... Except for Office, which I'll mention below.

I think you will see some people start to use Linux at the corporate desktop level for replacing a huge number of PC's that are only used for Web,Email, Light Office WP/Spreadsheet etc.. Companies can save millions every year by not sending it to Redmond for software subscription fees that is over-or Marge in Human Recources.

Already happening, but not as fast as one would expect.
Windows has alot of inertia.

So, I think Linux will become widespread on the corporate desktop first.... who cares if billy can't play the latest shoot-em-up on it, or its too hard for mommy to send a copy of her meatloaf recipe to aunt june... that stuff can come much later, let them use Windows.

Those things aren't really that difficult if Billy's game is supported by WineX.
I think one of the biggest roadblocks to widespread adoption, though it seems everyone has a theory about this, is Office. (and a standard installer, i'll post hat separately)
Office is a fairly irritating suite of programs, but it really is superior to anything that can run on Unix but itself. StarOffice probably comes the closest, but it is incredibly slow compared to Office, even if a "quick start" option is enabled. StarOffice looks ugly, is slower, screws up importing of the all important Office format documents unless they are fairly simple, doesn't follow the look of the OS (KDE/Windows/etc), is slightly less intuitive to most people, doesn't have many features of Office, and is still a bit buggy.
The Office format is so complex that I have to doubt if it will ever be supported unless Microsoft somehow makes it an open standard, which isn't likely.
Sure, it is now possibly to run MS Office under *Nix, for the most part, but that defeats the purpose---Windows isn't what costs so much. It is Office. Office is the simple most important product in modern business, though its continued dominance is questionable.
This will all eventually be ironed out. Linux improves faster than Windows, but Windows is certainly still a moving target. Microsoft has more of a task keeping up because of some of the horribly architecture that they have to deal with, and because programming for Windows is far more difficult than doing so for, say, KDE or GNOME. (though Microsoft has substantially more resources to work with)
Linux also has a rather large advantage--it is perfectly reasonable to have a few big servers run all of the apps and have everyones workstation be a simple terminal. Many terminals, like the Sun Ray, have no moving parts and have essentially zero maintenance. This allows a business to worry about only a small number of machines, the servers, rather than a very large number, the servers /and/ the workstations.
I'd give it two years before there are few compelling reasons to use Windows over Linux (/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/whatever), but I am certain Microsoft will always make sure that there are at least a few compelling reasons lying around. That is good--we don't want either party resting on their laurels.

 

[Sivar]

One very LARGE missing item in the Unix world, for home desktop users anyway, is a universal, standard installer.
It seems every other distro/OS has its own method for installing software and even when two distros use a similar method, they are often incompatible. For example, there are usually RPMs for both SuSE and Redhat.
There has been great progress in Linux made, but still the methods are "geek only." Gentoo Linux supports a package system similar to FreeBSD"s wonderful Ports collection. If you want to install an app, you simply open up a shell and type "emerge foo" (where "foo" is the name of the program to install)
Gentoo will then download the source code and compile it using GCC flags specified in /etc/make.conf

On the surface, this is actually easier than software installation even in Windows, but it has serious flaws for non-geeks:

1) It requires use of the shell. CLI interfaces seem right at home to old DOS users, but shocking to Mac and most Windows users. The mindset is that if there is no icon, there is no program. A shell is simply a black block on the screen with a little blinking line thingy. You can type notes in it, but every time you try to go to the next line it tells you that the note is an invalid command or something like that.

2) Source code. If a user with a reasonably slow system emerges, say, KDE, Bitboys will have a card on the shelves before it finishes. There is a binary system, though.

3) It works only on Gentoo. Apt-get works only on Debian-based distros. Ports works only on the BSDs.

Windows, however, has a standard installer in which the user can simply click on "setup.exe" and will be guided through the install process. It works almost identically whether they use Windows 95, 98, NT, 2K, or XP. The installation rarely takes long, though they lose the advantage of optimized source (which will be unavailable for any commercial app anyway), but it works fine and the user doesn't have to remember much to install anything.
I have thought of starting an installer project, but I doubt little old me could get all the distro companies to agree to use it, assuming I could write it in the first place. This is one thing that needs to be done, though.

 

[Nothinman]

Apt-get works only on Debian-based distros.

You might want to email Connectiva's developers and tell them their distro doesn't work then.

Windows, however, has a standard installer in which the user can simply click on "setup.exe" and will be guided through the install process. It works almost identically whether they use Windows 95, 98, NT, 2K, or XP

No it doesn't, MSIs are very new and pretty much suck. Setup.exe is just a standard name, the installers vary widely from ones distributed with VB to Installshield to WISE, hell even Nullsoft has their own installer.

I have thought of starting an installer project, but I doubt little old me could get all the distro companies to agree to use it, assuming I could write it in the first place. This is one thing that needs to be done, though.

No it doesn't, there are GUI wrappers for rpm and dpkg. The problem (if you can call it that) are that there are a lot less install-time options because the main one Windows lets you choose, the destination directory, is already chosen (it can be overriden, but it's not recommended and would likely cause problems).

The only real problems are coherency in distros and packages. If I install an RPM on RedHat will it put an entry on the KDE menu for me? Maybe, maybe not. Will it add one to the gnome menu? Maybe, maybe not. Most of the time you can just click on an RPM and install it, most new users do that then go "did it install? where's the icon?".

This is another thing Debian has in order, their menu system keeps all the menus in sync with the packages. It's still up to the packages to add their entry, but if it doesn't add one a bug is filed against it and it gets fixed.

 

[sodcha0s]

I played around with Redhat and SuSE a few years back, and finally gave up because it was just taking too much time to try to figure out how to do the simplest things. I had several programs that I wanted to try, and could never get them installed because I didn't have the proper lib versions installed on the system. I searched and searched and never could find them anywhere. I am by no means any kind of computer expert, but I feel I'm more knowledgeable than your typical home user. I build my own systems and can fix my own problems, but Linux was just too complicated for me. Maybe it's better now, at least thats what I hear. And I have no doubt that it can be a very viable OS in the corporate world, but I just can't see it ever becoming mainstream for the average home user. The way I see it, and it's just my opinion, if you make it as automated and end user friendly as Windows, then you will be crippling it and therefore negating any advantage it would have in the first place. There were a lot of things I liked about Linux and I can easily see why so many people use it and all the advantages it has, but for people that just want to surf the web, use e-mail, play games, or create and print documents, it's too much.

 

[Sunner]

I think one thing that does need fixing is how drivers are installed.

There really should be one standard way to install drivers, and it shouldn't be too complicated.
Building and inserting a modules may be a daunting task to many users, and if it comes as an RPM, it's a PITA for users of non RPM based distros, etc.

 

[Chooco]

Linux already is an alternative like dude said:
-Linux is free
-most Linux distros include KDE which includes KWord (like MS Word), KSpreadsheat (like MS Excel), KPresentor i think it's called (like MS PowerPoint).
-Linux can run ANY Windows program (but not DOS programs sadly, Wine can't install my dad's Quicken2 for DOS)
-most software is free except for games or web tools
-it's easy to use if you are in KDE
-stuff actually works in the console so it's a lot faster if you know the commands
-the command 'xinit' allows you to run GUI programs in a tiny X windows so it has the speed of console but the GUI of well a GUI lol
-Linux compiler is free (GCC and G++)
-Linux can run anything Windows can

the problems holding Linux back are:
-constant hassle to be super user while installing things (the general public is too stupid to understand the concept of the 'su' command)
-certain commands are needed to enable your webpage to be viewage such as 'chmod 755 (web folder name)'
-installing stuff is not just double click, it includes 'tar zxvf (file name)' then going into the thing and 'config' then 'make' then 'make install', which is all fast but too complicated for the average person such as my dad or my brother
-uninstalling stuff is not easy..........
-installing new stuff such as a printer or whatever can be a hassle because the average person doesn't know what to do (such as me)
-video driver support holds back potential users
-not being sure if they will be able to get the computer to actually run WINE without any problems to play their game (Half-Life in my case)

it's a realistic alternative but more for the upper intelligence bracket, i'm stuck between Windows and Linux but leaning more to the Linux side.

 

[Charles]

Interesting question. I myself been thinking about this for a while.

IMO, Linux won't be a desktop OS alternative unless it offers GUI for most of its operation and configuration. Which means:

• Simple 'back, next and cancel, finish' wizard to install programs or drivers.
• Standard Display dialog where you can actually change resolution, refresh rate and other display settings without rebooting X Server.
• Other GUI dialog for changing other configurations.

 

[smp]

I have to agree with DaHitman ... except I'de like to add ...


If Linux becomes widely accepted as a desktop OS (for the average joe, not corpo) then geeks will have nothing to feel special about.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: smp
I have to agree with DaHitman ... except I'de like to add ...If Linux becomes widely accepted as a desktop OS (for the average joe, not corpo) then geeks will have nothing to feel special about.

Well, they can allways moce on to *BSD and start slamming Linux.
Or maybe HURD will be the next geek's toy

 

[Chooco]

no no no no, then the geeks will move to shell scripts and C to blow the normal people away

 

[Nothinman]

There really should be one standard way to install drivers, and it shouldn't be too complicated.

This won't happen on a wide scale because the kernel developers won't support binary-only modules. It's not terribly hard to write a script to copy a module to /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/whatever but if the running kernel is missing something that module needs it won't load or worse on the off chance the kernel has a different implementation of what that module needs it could oops the kernel.

-Linux can run ANY Windows program (but not DOS programs sadly, Wine can't install my dad's Quicken2 for DOS)

Not really, wine is still really young and fails to run many apps. And if you need DOS programs look at dosemu.

-constant hassle to be super user while installing things (the general public is too stupid to understand the concept of the 'su' command)

This is why GUI rpm apps need to be suid root and need to prompt the user for the root password before the install can proceed, I believe the majority of them do this already.

-certain commands are needed to enable your webpage to be viewage such as 'chmod 755 (web folder name)'

Nearly all the GUI file managers have a method for altering permissions on files and directories. But if you're running a web server you should have some understanding of how the thing works anyway otherwise you're going to get r00ted.

-installing stuff is not just double click, it includes 'tar zxvf (file name)' then going into the thing and 'config' then 'make' then 'make install', which is all fast but too complicated for the average person such as my dad or my brother

Then don't install from source, right click->install on an RPM isn't too hard.

-uninstalling stuff is not easy..........

dpkg -P package, apt-get remove package, rpm -e package or using the GUI software managers aren't hard. If you installed from source you deserve the pain it causes you and should be prepared to deal with it.

Standard Display dialog where you can actually change resolution, refresh rate and other display settings without rebooting X Server.

You need to restart X for those things, it's how i's designed and AFAICS noone's redesigning it any time soon.

 

[Sunner]

This won't happen on a wide scale because the kernel developers won't support binary-only modules. It's not terribly hard to write a script to copy a module to /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/ whatever but if the running kernel is missing something that module needs it won't load or worse on the off chance the kernel has a different implementation of what that module needs it could oops the kernel.

The current way is fine with me(though there's room for improvement), but if Linux is ever gonna go mainstream, it will need a standard way of installing drivers, and a good one.

Wether Linux should go mainstream is another question of course.

 

[Sivar]

Originally posted by: Sunner
I think one thing that does need fixing is how drivers are installed.

There really should be one standard way to install drivers, and it shouldn't be too complicated.
Building and inserting a modules may be a daunting task to many users, and if it comes as an RPM, it's a PITA for users of non RPM based distros, etc.

Modprobe works well as the infrastructure for driver installation (simply put the module somewhere and run modprobe on it--it needn't even have an install program) but it is ideed another thing that could use a standard, graphical, simplified installation and packaging system in which you download a file, run it (by clicking on the icon, of course), and the driver is suddenly installed. Even better would be to very rarely require a reboot--already one of Unix's strengths.

 

[Chooco]

Nothingman, the only windows program i could not get to work was MS Word, that strange though becuase installed MS Excel from the same CD and it works fine......Word keeps saying that it can't write to disk when you try to save something

 

[cleverhandle]

Modprobe works well as the infrastructure for driver installation (simply put the module somewhere and run modprobe on it--it needn't even have an install program) but it is ideed another thing that could use a standard, graphical, simplified installation and packaging system in which you download a file, run it (by clicking on the icon, of course), and the driver is suddenly installed.

But that's exactly why Windows drivers suck so much. You point, click, and some conflict makes your system explode. Great, maybe if you boot to safe mode, you can remove it... or maybe it will leave crap in your registry. Sometimes you can't boot at all. In linux, you just modprobe, and, at the very worst, something hangs and you reboot. The driver is no longer loaded and you can delete it or figure out your problem with no lasting damage.

 

[Sivar]

Don't get me wrong, I use Linux frequently, run a FreeBSD server, and really like many features of Linux (and I am, in fact, posting this from KDE3), but some of these points I am going to have to disagree with.

Originally posted by: Chooco
Linux already is an alternative like dude said:
-Linux is free

Yes, but that is not something that I feel should be stressed much. The initial price of a software package does not necessarily mean much when one considers tje time to learn it, how useful it will be, how expensive or time consuming it will be to support, and whether it does everything you want. Not that I am saying Linux does or does not do these things, but it is something to consider.

-most Linux distros include KDE which includes KWord (like MS Word), KSpreadsheat (like MS Excel), KPresentor i think it's called (like MS PowerPoint).

All good applications in their own way, as is StarOffice and the Gnome quasi-office suite. However, none of these is 100% compatible with MS Word. MS word is also faster, FAR more common, and its format--like it or not--good thing or not--is the primary standard among businesses for keeping of documents and calculation of spreadsheet data. Nobody can say that the compatibility is "good enough" unless it is perfect because you cannot know how good "good enough" must be for anyone but oneself.

-Linux can run ANY Windows program (but not DOS programs sadly, Wine can't install my dad's Quicken2 for DOS)

That is laying it on a little thick. Linux can most assuredly not run every Windows program. Run "Thief: The Dark Project" or "Worms 2" or "Microsoft Access," though a single example would have sufficed. In all fairness, and quite ironically, Linux runs some Windows programs better than Windows itself. "Grim Fandango," for example, frequently crashes in Windows 2000/XP and is explicitely "not supported" in those, but runs flawlessly in WineX for Linux. <shrug>

-most software is free except for games or web tools

Indeed, but much of the best free software is available for Windows as well. StarOffice, Apache, Mozilla. Of course, Unix has its share of excellent commercial software, too. Zeus is arguably the best webserver ever to exist.

-it's easy to use if you are in KDE

Many things are easier in KDE than in Windows, but many things are easier in Windows as well. Though I must say that KDE looks, IMHO, far better and certainly has far more features than Windows.

-stuff actually works in the console so it's a lot faster if you know the commands

Computer savvy people often find the console extremely useful, as there are many things that can be done very quickly in a console that just weren't meant to be done in the GUI, but for regular users the console essentially does not exist. Good luck teaching Grandma BASh scripting or the chmod command.

-Linux compiler is free (GCC and G++)

GCC is available for Windows, DOS, and in fact most operating systems.

-Linux can run anything Windows can

Already stated above.

the problems holding Linux back are:
-constant hassle to be super user while installing things (the general public is too stupid to understand the concept of the 'su' command)

I wouldn't say that they are stupid. The general public does not know as much about computing as you or I, but they will all have their own areas of expertise.
WOuld you be able to diagnose Acute Retinal Necrosis Syndrome, explain legal options to an injured worker, or increase the horsepower of a 2001 Honda S200 by 6% for under $800? Some that cannot understand the concept of super user can.

-certain commands are needed to enable your webpage to be viewage such as 'chmod 755 (web folder name)'

I don't know if that can be classified as something holding back Linux. Would you expect the general public to be able to setup IIS themselves? ;-)

-installing stuff is not just double click, it includes 'tar zxvf (file name)' then going into the thing and 'config' then 'make' then 'make install', which is all fast but too complicated for the average person such as my dad or my brother
-uninstalling stuff is not easy..........

Big agreement here, thoguh there are better methods of installation they are still not as good as Windows. (in some ways)

-installing new stuff such as a printer or whatever can be a hassle because the average person doesn't know what to do (such as me)

That is now fairly easy--my mother installed a new printer on her RH/GNome system using CUPS, and she is *not* computer savvy. (she is using Linux only because she is suck of Windows)

-video driver support holds back potential users

True; I'd say 95% of cards are supported, just not particularly well.


All stated, Linux has come a long way as a desktop OS compared to Windows, but it still has some key areas that need big improvements.

 

[BD2003]

Using linux has nothing to do with intelligence. The fact that many things that are much more complicated than should be lead me to believe that it takes a sub par intelligence to even think of dealing with them.

But go on thinking that using linux makes you smarter and better than the average person if thats what floats your boat.

The simple fact is that people, stupid and smart, dont want to have to read a 22 page manual to flush their toilet. Things should not be any more complicated than they need be. Flexibility is a good thing, but not at the expense of ease of use. Of course its obvious which comes first in the cycle of development, which leads me to believe its only a matter of time. Linux is finally easy to install, compared to a few years ago.

Yes, you can do practically anything you can do on windows, but that does not mean you can do everything AS WELL as you can on windows. Are you going to argue that the gimp is BETTER than photoshop, or even paint shop pro? That KOffice is BETTER than MS Office? Combine that with ease of use, and thats why linux isnt even considered for most people.

Its not because theyre too stupid to use it. Its not because they dont care about privacy, or care that windows cost money, or none of the above. They dont want to learn how to do something that they shouldnt have to.

Sure manual trans is a little better than automatic in many senses, but who the hell wants to keep shifting all the time?

 

[Nothinman]

The simple fact is that people, stupid and smart, dont want to have to read a 22 page manual to flush their toilet.

While that's true a computer and it's uses are infintely more complicated and varied than a toilet's and as such the manuals are much thicker.

Things should not be any more complicated than they need be.

Right, but different environments demand different complications. Not that one environment is actually harder than another, it's just that they're different and anything you don't really understand looks more complicated than it is.

Flexibility is a good thing, but not at the expense of ease of use.

Very debatable.

but that does not mean you can do everything AS WELL as you can on windows.

Apples and Oranges. There's a lot of things I can do a lot better on Linux than Windows. Each has their strong points, although after using OS X I'm trying really hard to remember what Windows's were =)

Are you going to argue that the gimp is BETTER than photoshop, or even paint shop pro?

For what I do? Yes, definatly. For you? Maybe not. I've seen Photoshop users say the only thing Gimp is missing is CMYK support, so maybe it's not as far off as you think.

and thats why linux isnt even considered for most people.

No, Linux isn't considered because all their friends have PCs and they're not going to be the ones to stray, if for no other reason than they can ask them for help and pirate their software. Just like people with friends with Macs generally also get Macs.

They dont want to learn how to do something that they shouldnt have to.

Driving a car requires classes but using a computer doesn't? Computers are so much more complicated than cars it's not funny.

Sure manual trans is a little better than automatic in many senses, but who the hell wants to keep shifting all the time?

Compromise, get a M3 with one of those 'shift-if-you-want' transmissions =)