Linux: this year's silver lining?
With the new year under way and all of the problems in the old year still largely unsolved, people in the IT sector are looking around for a little good news and some prospects for growth. There are a lot of clouds out there right now, and Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, thinks the rain is going to be …
...but I can't see it fulfilling these predictions any time soon.
It's great if you're competent enough to tweak it until it does the things you want. Then it's well superior to Windows. But most people aren't that competent.
So the majority will continue to consume the junk food of computer operating systems, while more discerning diners on Linux won't worry too much if they're in a minority.
Some like microwave food. Others prefer to cook.
Being a linux fan doesn't stop you being wrong.
How many people running windows have to know how to install as administrator? How many people have to know how to update their virus signatures? How many windows users are told to turn off ActiveX and then have to work out how to do this?
And how many times have tales of how crap Windows security is (backed by massive activity resulting from broken security allowing malicious work to happen) and then pooh-pooh'd away with "It's just clueless users. I've NEVER had a problem and I don't use a virus checker. Because *I* know how to use the system"?
WINDOWS isn't ready either if you aren't competent users.
You mean the dell boxes that you couldn't get to from their home webpage? Or the Asus machines with linux that undersold Windows ones because they didn't have any Linux ones to sell (they sold out)?
Are those failures?
Hey, you're the one who didn't like GIMP because it has a silly name. Well yours is silly too, so I don't take anything you say as serious.
What do people go in to the stores and buy? Office. Family Tree. Graphics software. Image manipulation software. Internet protection. Hardware. Games.
Only the latter is a problem and the rest of what's needed.
So what do you need to go to a shop for? It's all available right there in the DVD.
Still bitching about the licensing costs of Oracle and BEA on SPARC servers that aren't even made anymore is not very convincing. Neither is the oft-repeated lie that UNIX itself is somehow expensive all on its own. Solaris has not cost a single dime in years. IBM is the one taking high-end unix server sales from Sun -- Linux has nothing to do with it. It was on high-end servers that Oracle was charging mainframe license fees.
@ Anonymous coward...
>Do most hardware vendors offer drivers for Linux? No.
And they don't need to, my linux box installed all my drivers automatically, even my wifi card, bluetooth and printer. I have installed windows several hundered times on several hundred systems during my life and not once has it ever installed the right wifi drivers automatically, you're lucky if XP picks up your crappy old HP deskjet.
>Do most office-type applications run on Linux? No.
Nonsense, you can run almost anything that windows runs on wine (even a lot of modern games), if you want it to be painless then spend a few quid and buy Crossover. In the worst case virtualbox runs windows XP at virtually full speed. Added to that OO3 makes MSOffice redundant in the majority of use cases anyway.
>Do most home-apps (e.g. MSN, Nokia PC Suite) run on Linux? No.
Is that your whole list??? Firstly, every distro of linux bundles a IM client that can talk to MSN, AIM, YAHOO, MYSPACE, ICQ etc. The only difference is you get less flexibility and more adverts from MSN. Secondly Nokia PC suite it's no less shitty and unreliable on virtualbox as it is on Vista, it's a miserable app anyway - I own a nokia and I can access the memory card and use it as a modem without that crap installed anyway.
Do most websites demand IE? Yes. Does that run on Linux? No.
No they don't, that's just a plain lie. I am a web designer and I can tell you right now MOST websites are originally designed using Firefox or Opera or even Safari as they are far more standards compliant than IE, just check the browser stats for the wc3 consortium. It's a subject of immense frustration to most web developers that they have to take their otherwise nice standards compliant designs and fudge them to work with IE although admittedly it is getting better over time. It is also a well acknowledged truism in web design that if you design you site to look right in IE first and _then_ try and make it look right in all the other browsers you are going to run into far more trouble than if you worked the other way round.
>Does .Net run on Linux? No. (And do not give me that Mono crap)
What a crying shame ;-( You mean I can't run erm, erm... err.... what's .NETs killer app again?
There's no shortage of virtual machines that are free, cross platform and open source such as err Sun's JAVA that run just fine wherever.
>Is Linux easy to set-up for a new user? No. (Requires too much knowledge and file hacking).
Rubbish, in all but the edge cases the big distros are as easy to install as XP or Vista, maybe easier. I don't know where you got the idea installation requires "file hacking" unless you are suggesting a new user should install slackware??? Stick to Ubuntu, Redhat and Suse and you should experience plain sailing. Also, your hardware's more likely to be supported out of the box with linux than it is with windows.
>Unless a few of those "No" responses become "Yes", Linux will have to remain the niche player it is. Window may well be crap, but it's friendly, stanardard and support crap.
STOP: FATAL EXCEPTION AT 0x00002E4F2A137
Yeah, real friendly.
Don't get me wrong, I've used both Windows and Linux plenty and Linux is _FAR_ from perfect but it's made real progress on the desktop in the last year or two and by spouting crap like you do above you are just spreading misinformation. With most big distros you can buy support for linux if you want it and it's likely to be of a higher quality than the helpdesks microsoft provide (which are about as much use as a chocolate teapot)
Linux got good enough for me to ditch my permanent XP partition last year and it will get better over time to the point where playing the latest 3D games and editing multimedia will be as smooth as it is on other platforms. It may take a few more years but Rome wasn't built in a day... it took MS 20 years to get to Vista and it'll be 25 by the time Windows 7 comes out. By way of contrast GNOME/GTK+ is less than 12 years old, a relative newcomer, give it a break.
I just speced and build a pc for general office use which includes a lot of graphics work using software which heretofore only ran in Windows.
In the build process I skipped Vista and reverted to XP SP3. Also, I noted that one of our primary graphics tools was now available for Linux. So I installed Ubuntu 8.10.
After installing it, I was amazed that the program runs circles around its Windows version. Subsequently I found that two more apps that run well in Wine and they also run faster than in Windows . The only bottleneck is printing but I think with some effort this can be solved....then goodbye Windows.
Your employer is heading the way of the dodo, and good riddance.
Now go and ask Bill, or whatever fucktard's taken over the sinking ship from him, to give you that raise while he still can.
Oh, and start getting some real qualifications - you're going to need them soon.
> Also, your hardware's more likely to be supported out of the box with
> linux than it is with windows.
This is such a red herring. Your hardware is more likely to be supported AT ALL with Windows. Yes, it will involve the arduous task of popping the accompanying driver CD/DVD into your drive or downloading a file from the hardware manufacturer, but after that you'll be good to go. OTOH, if your hardware doesn't work out of the box with Linux, well......good luck with that.
I was really impressed with my desktop install of Ubuntu 8.04. Everything was recognised and 'just worked'. However, on my laptop, I had to recompile ndiswrapper to get the Wi-Fi dongle working and the webcam was a lost cause. Then I tried to attach my Digidesign Mbox audio interface to the desktop - not a hope. Ditto for my USB MIDI interface. Much as I would have liked to give up Windows completely, I'm afraid that while Linux is great for standard internetty things, disk and file manipulation, etc, there are some tasks that I can personally only perform on Windows (Or OSX if I had a Mac).
Not a shill - just someone who wants to get things done, and sometimes Windows offers the path of least resistance. Sometimes Linux offers the path of least resistamce, too. Backing up DVD's has never been easier for example, and I didn't have to fork out for a copy of AnyDVD - everything I need is just a few tick boxes away in Synaptic.
WHICH version of Windows?
Vista? Nothing really more than 2 years old (even if it were sold as Vista compatible). XP? Less and less and nothing more than about 10 years old.
And fuck all on the CD from MS in any case. No ATI driver, no NVidia driver (2d completely acceptable in the nv driver), no intel 950GA, nothing.
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/emea/segments/gen/client/en/ubuntu_landing?c=uk&l=en&s=dhs
Guess that fucks your argument...
And now try it on Windows.
Windows 98.
Go on.
It's still "Windows".
I have a Cannon inkjet. No drivers for it for any of the NT series of Windows. None. Works on Linux no worries.
Sorry, did I miss something? Major 3D design software now running on Linux? Building Information Management suite for Ubuntu? Autodesk shipping aps with Gnome-based UI mods? No? (checks under desk, behind pot plants, in firdge) Nope. None of that.
Back to my Vista 64bit desktop then. I must say the W7 beta runs rather swiftly, and seems pretty darn good for a beta.
Linux might be useful in toasters, traffic lights, set-top boxes and routers, but mainstream desktop? Sorry, emacs & gimp won't replace real-time 3D building modelling.
You mean there is no lightwave or Maya on Linux? What are they selling then????
Pixar aren't *really* using Linux, just saying they are???
You are a twat.
Well,
usually people keep saying "this will be the year of the linux desktop". And while i doubt Linux while be shipped on more desktops than Windows it will probably be installed more often than mac-osx this year, or maybe next.
Nonetheless it has been year of Linux for quite a while. I'm pretty sure Linux is installed on more devices than Windows, though i would really like to see some hard numbers to back my assumption. Most DSL-routers run Linux, most NAS-devices run Linux, quite a few cameras and video recorders run Linux, a growing number of smart phones, GPS-systems and who knows what else. Sure that stuff doesnt have a "Powered by Linux" sticker or anything, but its running Linux nonetheless. Its more like the desktop is the last bastion of Windows.
