The True Challenges of Desktop Linux 505
olau writes "Hot on the heels on the opinion piece on how Mac OS X killed Linux on the desktop is a more levelheaded analysis by another GNOME old-timer Christian Schaller who doesn't think Mac OS X killed anything. In fact, in spite of the hype surrounding Mac OS X, it seems to barely have made a dent in the overall market, he argues. Instead he points to a much longer list of thorny issues that Linux historically has faced as a contender to Microsoft's double-monopoly on the OS and the Office suite."
Why do FOSS library folks hate ABI compatability? (Score:5, Insightful)
FTA:
This is one argument I really don't get, and yet the FOSS library maintainers seem to be adamant that they must be able to break their ABIs whenever they want.
Yes, I know keeping a stable ABI is hard. But here's the deal: as a maintainer, it's your job.
Let's not forget that the point of libraries is to develop software on top of them. If the library ABIs are shifting all the time, then those libraries have failed at their most fundamental task.
There's absolutely zero excuses for why an app written three years ago shouldn't run fine today. None. If MS and Apple can do it, then so can you.
But it's worse than that. Writing a GUI application that runs just on the past two or three versions of Ubuntu requires writing your own compatability layers, or at least peppering your code with #defines. Why on earth would we want to put this burden on application developers?
Re:Why do FOSS library folks hate ABI compatabilit (Score:5, Insightful)
but does the binary have to run or just work if you configure; make; make install again? right the OSS world assumes that software can be recompiled, and most only needs that. Sometimes it needs a simple patch, but yes breaking ABI isn't really an issue. Breaking an API is much more of one.
Re:Why do FOSS library folks hate ABI compatabilit (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, if you do that it's no longer the same binary.
Secondly, why would you place that burden on the user? The whole point of software is to solve problems for users, not to create new ones.
Re:Why do FOSS library folks hate ABI compatabilit (Score:5, Insightful)
So? If most of your software is FOSS and can be recompiled, why do you care if it's the same binary or not?
It's not often that burden is placed on the user; package maintainers for each Linux distribution generally take care of compiling and making sure the relevant libraries are in place. With every distribution upgrade I do there's been less and less reason to compile anything myself. In fact, IIRC, I've not compiled a single piece of third-party software for my use for at least a year or two.
A moving ABI really isn't a problem at all for the vast majority of Linux users, especially if most of the software we use is FOSS and available from a distribution's repositories. Now, that's not to say it doesn't cause a few headaches for package maintainers...
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For every binary taking a change that is recompiled by somebody other than the user, the still has to make a download, so that's just trading off computing resources and time for network resources and time. As such, all else being equal the ABI should not change.
Circle rhetorics (Score:5, Insightful)
You are talking about current Linux users and application suppliers that seem to not bother about ABI stability. If you want to get the other 95+ percent of people that use desktop computers using your product, you may want to look at their needs and not solely at the needs of the few you are catering for already.
Diversity is good for an ecosystem, evolution depends on it. However, too much instability and chaos and evolution loses because most of the deviations are too crippled to grow into something useful, even if they have some very good mutations. This is true for the development of the organisms themselves, but also for people wanting to "farm" these organisms.
Large corporations making enterprise software don't want to bother with supporting variations that rather quickly run in to thousands of different possible software combinations that require adaptation in their product or service to make it work. Why do you think Oracle is only supporting a few Linux distributions for it's RDBMS? It's not just because they want to promote their own distribution, but because it simply is a pain in the behind to have to support someone's Arch or Gentoo box and finding out after dozens of expensive analysis by actual expensive software debugging experts to find out some flag is set different during compile time, or a minor version of some library is used that has an obscure bug that only gets triggered in specific circumstances. Just a few of those cases and your profit model is out of the window. It's just way too risky.
Both MicroSoft and Apple have a tendency to announce well ahead if they want to retire some framework for binary compatibility so application developers can adapt their product to the new alternative way ahead of time and still support older versions of their product for years to come. Windows is still offering most (if not all) 16bit windows ABIs in some form on some OSes still supported today. Apple took many years to kill "Classic" support, support for PPC cpus and legacy frameworks have been around for years before they stopped supporting anything but cocoa.
If you compiled an app for OSX or Windows XP 5 years ago using the then latest standards, chances that it will run without any modification or extra work on a freshly installed system with OSX 10.7 or Windows 7 are very high. Try that with a graphical application for a Linux desktop and at the very minimal, you'd probably be looking at installing "compat libs" if your distro supplies them at all. This is a support nightmare and a nuisance at the least for people able to deal with this sort of problem themselves. For Linux to make it to the desktop successfully this needs to change. Linux needs it's Visicalc, WordPerfect, Office, PhotoShop or similar "must have killer application" to get a decent share of desktop usage and making it hard for application makers to choose Linux for that isn't going to make that happen.
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Whichever. But, if a recompile is needed, either you make it idiot-proof (ideally, one-click, with a 99% success rate), or you lose 95% of PC users.
If the configure, make.. steps are always the same, why aren't they scripted once and for all ? Is there a GUI to do it ?
Re:Why do FOSS library folks hate ABI compatabilit (Score:5, Informative)
That idiot-proof method you wish for is already there. It's called a package manager and every major distribution has one. Ok, so it's not recompiling the software for you on the fly (in most cases) but that's because someone else has done that for you so you don't even need to think about it. It really couldn't be easier, either by GUI or CLI.
Re:Why do FOSS library folks hate ABI compatabilit (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called a package manager and every major distribution has one.
Every major distribution has their own one that's incompatible with every other major distribution's. That's even though the package systems do the same job. Even distros that use the same package management system don't share compatible repositories.
So you just turned supporting "Linux" into supporting Ubuntu, RedHat, SuSE, etc.
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So you just turned supporting "Linux" into supporting Ubuntu, RedHat, SuSE, etc.
Unfortunately, that happened a long time ago, and that is a major reason why Linux never really took off as a replacement for windows.
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Re:Why do FOSS library folks hate ABI compatabilit (Score:4, Insightful)
Package managers do not solve the problem of compatibility across different distros. In fact, not even across the semi-major upgrades you see each month with a single distro. PMs also contribute to making the development environment app-unfriendly because they don't work well with anything that hasn't been subsumed into "the repository"... i.e. independent software distribution is really an uphill slog to the point where even Mozilla gave up on packaging apps for Linux-based distros long ago; Mozilla packages apps for Windows and OS X.
Really, if you don't make it easy for curious types to make something interesting and to then share it easily with others, then the platform doesn't work. People will continue cutting their programming teeth on OS X and Windows and will stay there or with other platforms that satisfy the same criteria. So-called "Desktop Linux" doesn't even have an SDK! The longbeard hacker politics affecting the Linux Foundation demand that it doesn't have an SDK. Skittering around in Google's wake, they saw fit to create an SDK for Mobile Linux but heaven forbid if we get one for ye olde desktop.
The subculture stubbornly refuses to standardize both the user experience and that of the app developer. And so it drives both groups away.
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Package managers do not solve the problem of compatibility across different distros.
That's correct. That's not the aim.
In fact, not even across the semi-major upgrades you see each month with a single distro.
Not sure I follow. I've had plenty of day-to-day updates work with no problems over the years. My arch instalation is 4 years old and still up to date.
PMs also contribute to making the development environment app-unfriendly because they don't work well with anything that hasn't been subsumed into "the
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but does the binary have to run or just work if you configure; make; make install again? right the OSS world assumes that software can be recompiled, and most only needs that. Sometimes it needs a simple patch, but yes breaking ABI isn't really an issue. Breaking an API is much more of one.
How many of the ABI breakages about which people compile are the result of API breakage, and how many are the result of changing the sizes or layout of data types in ways that don't break the API?
Re:Why do FOSS library folks hate ABI compatabilit (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes the binary should still run, and the SAME binary should run across several distros and several versions of those distros. Even in the current messed environment it is possible if you are very careful, use the oldest compiler you can find so that all of your users have newer versions of libc and libstdc++ and build and bundle all the rest of the libraries yourself including the GUI libraries, and be careful on the X11 options on configure since you can't count on xfixes. This is why commercial development has little patience for Linux. From: Linux user since 0.92 kernel and Principal developer of a commercial desktop Linux statistical visualization product. product is still sold, and thriving on Windows and Mac, even an iPad version, but now discontinued on Linux! Sadly, Without ABI stability and at least compatibility libraries, Linux will not be more than a niche on the desktop.
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I will never forget how I tried to install JGR, which is a graphical shell for the statistical package R.
I tried this under Windows XP, and the whole process took 10 seconds and everything worked.
I tried the same thing under Linux and first found that there was no package, my distro didn't include it (for JGR was experimental at that time) so I had to use a tarball. Downloaded the tarball, did configure and make ... and was confronted by a load of er
Re:Why do FOSS library folks hate ABI compatabilit (Score:4, Informative)
It's funny you say that.. The important Linux Desktop APIs have been stable for over a decade. Look at GLib 2.x and indeed the entire GNOME 2.x stack, it hasn't been broken. You can still run an application compiled against GTK+ 2.0 on any modern distribution.. Obviously, it will have the same functionalities that it had 10 years ago, but the same can be said of Windows or OSX.
And well, GTK+ 3 has a slightly different API, etc, but so is WinRT or many of the newer OSX APIs. And Well, GTK+ 2.x is parallel installable, so you can keep using it more or less forever.
Re:Why do FOSS library folks hate ABI compatabilit (Score:4, Insightful)
We can do that in the FOSS world, because we ship the source to everything and the APIs are what matters. The ABI "problem" is a nonproblem that's really a side effect of the misguided commercial belief in secrecy.
If you're a company that only wants to sell a compiled binary to a bunch of clients, then you don't get to complain if the binary you prepared fifteen years ago for some distro using linux 2.1 no longer works in 2012.
Just tell your clients to run the older distro, or else recompile your code for a modern distro. Or you know, you could make your code open source, and reap the benefits of community support.
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Who cares if the low level binary interface that handles OS and library system calls changes?
It used to be my job. I worked on a comercial program used by digital hardware engineers. We supported many flavors of UNIX.
Just recompile the software for the most recent version of everything you've got.
You want me to compile, ship, and support a binary on every flavor of Linux a customer has? We tried to figure out what customers had, and supported the top four. This only covered about 60% of requests.
We can do that in the FOSS world, because we ship the source to everything and the APIs are what matters. The ABI "problem" is a nonproblem that's really a side effect of the misguided commercial belief in secrecy.
Paying money for closed source software is how 99.99% of users expect to get software that does the job and is well supported. If you refuse to support this use case, do not expect
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But the fact is that decision makers in IT departments will always find ways to mess about. If it isn't ABIs, it will be something else. The philosophy of the Linux community is that technical e
Re:Why do FOSS library folks hate ABI compatabilit (Score:4, Insightful)
No. You just ignore Linux and sell to people who use Windows
I don't see the problem with that. Don't let the door hit you as you leave.
Something that commercial software companies just don't appear to get is that the Linux ecosystem just isn't prepared to let them sell a big binary blob and never update it for ten years. We're not here to give them an easy time and help them make money.
If you want to make money from your software, you have to earn it.
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Actually, I think code should be distributed in an ABI-independent manner.
So distribute some form of intermediate code. Put a version number in there. And then let the OS process it into something the CPU can understand.
I have one. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's absolutely zero excuses for why an app written three years ago shouldn't run fine today.
You sound like you're a paying customer or their boss. If said maintainers are volunteers and doing this in their spare time and juggling work and family and just having a life, I think they have an excuse.
If it were me and I heard horseshit like your post, I'd say, "Here's the code. Knock yourself out. I'm taking my kid to the movies like I promised him three releases ago."
Re:I have one. (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is precisely why Linux on the Desktop is still confined to 1%.
Bingo (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't have it both ways. If you are happy with the "Whatever it is free, the quality can vary and people can do whatever they like," then cool. That's great but understand and accept it'll never be mainstream desktop. If you want that mainstream desktop, then you have to start to support users. You have to make things easy for them. "Just get the source code," can NEVER be something you utter.
So if you want Linux to always just be the "geek OS" on the desktop or something people use when they are going to stack a bunch of custom shit on (like Android) then no problem. However if you want to advocate Linux for all and a Linux desktop then you need to accept that some shit has to change.
Re:I have one. (Score:5, Insightful)
You sound like you're a paying customer or their boss. If said maintainers are volunteers and doing this in their spare time and juggling work and family and just having a life, I think they have an excuse.
Look, if you're going to pull this 'you get what you pay for' nonsense then you're not allowed to try to convert people over to OSS. You can't have it both ways.
Re:Why do FOSS library folks hate ABI compatabilit (Score:4, Informative)
I think that you are thinking of "API": Application Programming Interface. I don't think that is what Christian Schaller is referring to programming interface compatibility but to binary compatibility of software packages between Linux distributions.
Let's say that you have a Fedora RPM for an app, and you wish to run that under Ubuntu.
While you can convert the raw RPM to DEB format, you can not auto-convert the binary files within the package.
The binary programs in the RPM have most likely been configured at compile time in a way that it has dependencies on libraries that are different on Ubuntu.
On Windows and MacOS, respectively, there is only one distribution, and therefore they do not have this problem.
But yes, API compatibility between versions of a library is also a problem.
Thank you (Score:3)
And I think that is also why the Linux Foundation's Desktop specification doesn't come close to cutting the mustard: It defines RPM as the standard file format, but you need a lot more than that to make it a working standard. Mark Shuttleworth used to campaign to get different distros to synchronize on some of the more common library versions (seems like he gave up though).
I think desktop distros would do us all a service by dropping "Linux" from their monikers and short descriptions. Just take the kernel a
Re:Why do FOSS library folks hate ABI compatabilit (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hard drive space is cheap.
My time isn't.
I know which situation has caused me more heartache.
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Hard drive space is cheap.
My time isn't.
I know which situation has caused me more heartache.
You mean, finding all seventy five copies of zlib.dll strewn through random directories on your system which have exploitable security holes so you can individually replace them all with a patched version?
Re:Why do FOSS library folks hate ABI compatabilit (Score:5, Interesting)
So the solution there is to ship BIG EXPANSIVE libraries with the OS, and keep on top of them so new stuff is supported by those libraries ASAP. You don't have 75 copies of zlib.dll, you have one-- and it's owned and updated by the OS.
Take Microsoft's .net for example. The library covers pretty much everything you can imagine wanting to do with a computer, and it's constantly updated as new file formats/etc arrive. But since there's only ONE .net, the library is still one holistic thing that can be updated when security problems arise without breaking anything.
That's not to say that .net is the perfect solution to all problems, but it's definitely worth examining how other vendors solve the problems in Linux.
For what it's worth, I come from Mac Classic, a platform that never had DLLs in the first place (but did have a huge expansive built-in library). Frankly, I've never been convinced that shared libraries were a good idea, even when HD space was expensive. But that's just me.
Casual User Here (Score:5, Insightful)
As a single-booting but casual Linux user I don't really know if these libraries are what makes distributing software such a pain, but whatever the reason is something needs to change, and the point about software distribution was spot on.
Package management is nice, but if something isn't available through it I won't install it. Why not? Because:
* I have to compile it myself. This often results in errors which I can't handle.
* I have to edit config files. Might be xorg.conf, might be something else. All I know is someone failed to make it work out of the box properly. Things will break.
* I have to find the application. Yes, that's right: often applications leave no trace after installing, especially when using a manager. They're buried in the complex-just-cause Unixey filesystem. Typing the name into the CLI fails too of course.
Now all of these problems can be solved, some seemingly trivially. This doesn't matter - the fact that I can edit xorg.conf means I'm probably in the top 3-5% of all computer users as far as Linux goes, meaning it could just as well be impossible for a normal user.
Users are used to the Windows XP interface and Linux is frequently more like it than Windows 7 is, so the exterior isn't a problem. The ACTUAL usability problem is installing software - it needs to work universally so people can actually do things and therefore be interested in and dependent on the OS.
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Gaining a working understanding the linux filesystem, paths, editing config files, and basic use of make would take the average person only a few hours of study.
Myopic bullshit. The average person cannot gain a basic understanding of those things in only a few hours, let alone the preposterous notion that they should.
Seriously.. your grandmother should study, and after only a few hours is going to be happily compiling programs as easily as she downloads and installs windows or os/x programs?
I got news for you. The average person is nowhere near you in computer knowledge, nor do they have any desire at all to progress in your direction. Stop being an ignorant
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if you wanted a plant, you shouldn't be playing in the garden. the best advice a gardener could give you is to get out and go to the corner shop.
whether you like it or not, my "philosophy" is truth. skilled hackers aren't working on making installing software or linux in general "easy" for the simple reason that it's already easy for them. your ideal world where anyone who writes oss cares about your grandma is a fallacy.
Closeminded? (Score:4, Interesting)
Absolutely incorrect and unfortunately myopic - there is a much wider user base behind FOSS, with motivation from the altruistic to the selfish, realistic or idealistic. Look at RMS and the FSF, look at Debian, look at all the elements of FOSS that are designed primarily with philosophical purity in mind. Look at those who just want to be able to have total control over the software they need to get their business done, don't care about philosophical purity but want to ensure their coders have the access, understanding, and control necessary to write a module, update, or fix. Look at those who believe in privacy and openness in the face of the many moneyed interests that are seeking to lock down everything they control for profit while harvesting any information they can find that belongs to others, and create varying projects to provide alternatives; believing in the betterment they bring to society. Tor is a prime example - there are many alternative darknets, proxies, VPNs etc... for hackers, but Tor is made to be easy enough for someone with a relatively modest knowledge base can make use of it.
here are most certainly elements of the Linux and FOSS community that are altruistic and create software for a wide variety of non-technical users. Mozilla is a great example - they created some of the best known FOSS in the world and provided a browser (and mail/news client) that both at the technical/code level and usage level put the software completely at the control of the user AND have successfully made it easy to use. Firefox and Thunderbird for instance aren't like lynx and pine/mutt; they're software that adheres to FOSS tenets and allows the guru to inspect and modify to their liking, while also being easy enough that anyone who has used a browser before can make of them. Even more impressive is that because of great design with respect to addons and the like, AdBlock Plus, NoScript, HTTPSEverywhere can be easily loaded with a few clicks as opposed to being the kind of thing that required expert-level scripting to use. Granted, these addons (like the software itself) were created by the knowledgeable, but were made accessible by design. These weren't tools hacked together to solve the problem of a particular user and little more, but instead were inclusive and because of that, thrive.
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It is not that FOSS developers hate ABI compatibility. It is that the value of such compatibility for important projects (FOSS ones) is very near zero, thus why should they have extra work to achieve it?
Yeah, there is a bias here. Linux developers don't think closed source drivers are important. If you think they are wrong, the burden is on you to convince them.
About TFA, well, I've not read it yet, but if that is its best argument, it just doesn't fly. The lack of ABI compatibility only impacts drivers dev
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Yep, now that I've RTFA, it agrees with me.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why do FOSS library folks hate ABI compatabilit (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, FOSS library maintainers want to be able to break their ABIs. They do it often. And that's fine. Why? Because we have this thing called versioning. You can write your application against libfoo.so.2, and the author of libfoo can rewrite the thing from ground-up and call it libfoo.so.3. And guess what? Your application works just fine because libfoo.so.2 didn't disappear from the face of the earth. You just install libfoo.so.2 and libfoo.so.3 side-by-side and everybody's happy. This is a primary strength of open source, not a weakness.
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KDE keeps binary compatibility through all releases with the same major number. And in practice, source compatibility is broken in major ways only once every two major releases (happened between 1 and 2 and between 3 and 4).
So many articles about "linux failing on the desktop" which should be "GNOME failed as the linux desktop". People forget history, and they should read the kde mailing lists rachives from 1999, from the KDE list. The mother of all flamewars is easy to spot by the extreme number of posts.
Y
As long as there are people (Score:4, Interesting)
who think that when they buy something it belongs to them to do with as they wish, there will always be Linux. As it is seems that WIndows 8 MS is taking that away and so is Apple.
As a non developer or programmer seems to me Linux is stronger than ever.
OSX may not have killed Linux, but it's winning (Score:5, Insightful)
At my company, out of 500 computer users, we have around 60% Windows and 40% OSX, Linux users (including me) don't even account for 1% of our desktops (but factor heavily in our servers - we're around 50% Windows, 40% Linux and 10% OSX (which will be moved to Linux before the end of the year). Most of the OSX users are normal business users (finance, IT, etc) not graphic designers or other users that traditionally have preferred OSX.
There's little reason for anyone here to run Linux to do their work - Office 2011 runs well on OSX and gives users an Office Suite and Outlook that's compatible with the rest of the corporation. And there's the whole Apple Ecosystem that some people like to be inside of.
Even though I run Linux, I still do most of my work on a Win 7 virtual machine because some apps just don't run well (or at all) on Linux. I tried Crossover Office/Wine for a while to run Office, but it wasn't worth dealing with the quirks, it runs much better on Windows. Plus, some of our corporate tools and infrastructure management tools run only on Windows (or require MSIE for full functionality). We run a terminal server for OSX users that need to run Windows apps.
OSX may not have killed Linux, but it sure has kicked it into the corner.
Wordperfect could have done it (Score:3, Interesting)
Wordperfect was already being used extensively by legal offices. It would not have been a huge jump to get legal offices to switch to Linux running Wordperfect. But after version 8 Wordperfect was not a native Linux port but this convoluted thing that ran through an emulator layer which was insane. Then, not long after it died. That was the end of the chance for Linux to make an advance to the corporate/business desktop.
I'm sure some other things didn't help as well. I still think one major issue is th
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does the OSX office allow VBA? Yes this is a serious question, the engineering world seems to depend on excel and VBA to make things go 'round.
Re:OSX may not have killed Linux, but it's winning (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically you're argument is that it's all about Microsoft Office? I agree with you, then it has nothing to do with how Good or Bad GNOME vs OSX are. The Linux Desktop will not happen on any serious scale until the corporate world stops revolving around Office and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it.
Linux users just *nix users, not into politics (Score:5, Insightful)
That said
So he argues that Mac OS X has not displaced Linux because its overall marketshare has only gone from 5 to 7.5%?
That seems to be an odd conclusion. That growth is nearly twice the entire Linux marketshare according to his cited numbers. If he wanted to argue Mac OS X is not displacing Windows he would have a point. As for Linux he really offers no evidence.
Yet the number of Mac laptops seen at Linux specific conferences, and the number long term Linux users confessing they moved to Mac OS X, are so common as to be far more than mere anecdotes.
The truth is that a bunch of people out there wanted a *nix environment. Workstations were beyond their reach and Linux filled an empty niche by delivering *nix on PC hardware. Many historic Linux users just want an affordable *nix and didn't care about the politics and drama of the FSF and the "free software" movement. So when Mac OS X delivered another affordable *nix implementation that runs side by side with a nice consumer GUI environment that has support from many commercial software publishers they switched. It also helped that the Mac hardware delivers the "holy grail" of running Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Sure you can emulate but for things like games you are probably better off booting into Windows. Something many Linux users do too.
Re:Linux users just *nix users, not into politics (Score:5, Interesting)
No his conclusion makes sense for precisely this reason. If OS X increased by more than Linux's share, than the increase cannot be explained by Linux users switching to OS X. Thus there are other reasons besides Linux that users switch to OS X.
Two big problems with that reasoning:
...both of which are incorrect. Had OS X not existed, there is every possibility that at least some current OS X users would be Linux users (assuming in part that they want to run a UNIX-like OS). I'd fall into that category -- I switched to OS X 10.3 from OS/2 WARP v4.5, in significant part because OS X was UNIX with an excellent user interface, on really nice hardware (particularly for portable systems). If OS X didn't exist, I would have turned to desktop Linux. Many OS/2 users made the same jump (I chatted with David Barnes [wikipedia.org] two years ago, and he was using a Mac as well), and while I can't speak for all of them, many had no desire to fall into the Windows ecosystem, and would probably have become Linux users if not for OS X.
All that said, I'm also a Linux user -- I have two headless Debian systems on my network running various services, with Xquartz installed on my Macs for when I want to run graphical Linux applications.
The overall point being, it's possible that if OS X didn't exit, many more of the new computer users in the last decade, and those that switched (particularly from now-legacy non-Windows platforms) may have chose Linux instead of OS X. I don't think its so much about people moving away from Linux as it is more people choosing one over the other in the first place.
(One of my man claims to fame is having RMS himself tell me I'm not into OSS enough because I use a Mac -- even though I've led several OSS projects, and contributed to a dozen more. Oh well, can't please everyone I suppose).
Yaz
Hi, my name is Anecdotal Evidence. (Score:5, Informative)
I was a Linux user beginning with Redhat 3. I went through Redhat, Mandrake, Fedora, Gentoo and Ubuntu. I've also used Solaris for a daily workstation.
Then I was assigned a Mac at a new job (running Tiger), and have never used anything else for a desktop since. I've had no reason to. I still keep an Ubuntu box in the house, but it's a server.
My name is Anecdotal Evidence, it's true, but whatever. I went Mac, and never looked back.
Re:Hi, my name is Anecdotal Evidence. (Score:5, Insightful)
I was a Linux user beginning with Redhat 3. I went through Redhat, Mandrake, Fedora, Gentoo and Ubuntu. I've also used Solaris for a daily workstation.
Then I was assigned a Mac at a new job (running Tiger), and have never used anything else for a desktop since. I've had no reason to. I still keep an Ubuntu box in the house, but it's a server.
My name is Anecdotal Evidence, it's true, but whatever. I went Mac, and never looked back.
Your experience is so common it goes beyond anecdotal. Many Linux users just wanted a *nix environment. They did not care about the FSF, the GPL, the free software movement, etc. They just wanted to run some *nix applications and tools. Linux was originally their only affordable option to workstations back in the day. Mac OS X comes along and they have another affordable *nix option. One that also gives them a consumer oriented desktop and off-the-shelf consumer and business productivity software. Mac OS X basically offers a superset of the software they can run under Linux.
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This is the reason I'm writing this on a MacBook Pro. I went to mac 10 years ago. That was during their "switcher" campaign. Fact was all the people I know who "switched" went from Linux to Mac, not windows. It was only after the switch to Intel and the release of the iDevices that a lot of my non-tech friends went mac.
But the main reason why I went to mac was I wanted a *iux that worked. And trying to get Linux to work with laptop hardware back at that time was nearly impossible. Sure it may run, but
Re:Hi, my name is Anecdotal Evidence. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is exactly what happened with me.
I'd been using Debian and its various derivatives since Woody was the unstable distribution, and I had always been happy with it (so I thought)
Then, in April it was time to buy myself a new laptop, and I bought a 13" MacBook Pro on a whim, knowing that I could install Debian if I wanted to with no issues, but I figured I would try OSX out to see what the deal is.
5 months later, Debian has been relegated to running in a VM Ware Fusion instance that takes up 8GB of disk space, and gets booted once a month or so, and I am really wishing I had just bought a Mac back in '99 when I first started pissing around with Debian.
Re: (Score:3)
Your experience is so common it goes beyond anecdotal. Many Linux users just wanted a *nix environment. They did not care about the FSF, the GPL, the free software movement, etc.
Actually, some even did that - I know I still say Free Software and not "Open Source", I've done a couple things for the EFF, talked with the FSF, etc. etc.
But, I tried out a MacBook Pro one day, fully intending to install Linux on it, and in the end I never did, because I discovered how pleasant working with computers is when everything just works and I can focus on whatever it is I want to get done.
And that's the part the Linux desktop misses - getting out of my way and letting me get my stuff done. I don
Re: (Score:3)
I think it's pretty well established that that Apple's hardware-software combo has been superior to everything else on the market for about five years now aside for niche markets such as gaming. If Apple released a $300 laptop tomorrow Microsoft's Windows business would be destroyed within a matter of years.
Why is Apple not doing that? Well, I'll tell you why. Apple cares about profit, profit margin and market share counted in dollars (and not in users or units shipped). They've probably concluded that they
Better than the first but still off target. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the real root of the difference is that Linux serves a different market. Apple Mac OS X is a consumer product pitched for people who want their computers to "just work." Windows is a consumer/business product geared to people who want (and are convinced they need) a high level of support. Linux is not either of those and never will be. It's a system made by and for programmers and other techies who want to be free of the monopolistic practices and have full control of their own machines from top to bottom.
I think Linux may in fact be close to saturating that market. It may make inroads into the business and consumer user spaces. I think it will and should because businesses shouldn't be using things that are very expensive and promote lock-in when there are good-enough alternatives that meet most of their needs. Corporate customers are very conservative about risk, and they perceive that buying a professionally supported commercial product is a lower-risk option. And they've drunk the Kool-Aid regarding how efficient their office applications are.
In reality, Windows customers probably pay the steepest price for their OS choice. It requires tons of support in a corporate environment and exposes you to a much higher risk of malware infections and security breaches. Maybe you need Windows on a few of your machines -- those of people who need to establish an appearance of "Corporate" credibility. And maybe you need some Macs for certain applications where the Mac apps give you enough of a productivity improvement to pay for the expensive system. But most of the worker bees can do as well or better on Linux at much less cost. But it will never come with support. Support will be either hire-your-own or contracted separately.
Re:Better than the first but still off target. (Score:4, Interesting)
Windows is a consumer/business product geared to people who want (and are convinced they need) a high level of support.
Lolwut? I know there are many businesses that want support because it's their bread and butter, but my home desktop isn't supported by anyone and I think that's pretty common. The reasons are more:
1) It's what most other people run meaning most shit has been found by somebody else and fixed. Maybe the driver developers should care that they have crap support for the 1% that's Linux or the 5% that's Mac but they sure as hell care if 90%+ of their market think they're crap. Of course this is a chicken and egg situation, if Linux had 90%+ market share it'd be the one with stellar support but it isn't. How any laptops still have problems with power management and suspend/resume? How many dare ship a laptop with those functions broken in Windows?
2) Because most people are on Windows, most software is written for Windows. I'm sure you can try arguing that quality beats quantity, but it doesn't hold up in practice. Most of the commercial software have people to do all the boring and tedious work and polish that so often is skimped on in the OSS community. Not to mention most OSS is available on Windows, sure if you want to use GIMP you can but you can also get Photoshop or whatever else you fancy. The list of Linux-exclusive killer apps is short if not empty.
3) With lots of users, there's also lots of people that might be able to help you. If people have any kind of installation instructions or guides or tutorials for something, it's likely to be for Windows and possibly Mac. How to do it in Linux? You're on your own. It's not that I can't find out on my own and there's usually something analogous but it's still time spent and if you don't like to play with those details then it's time wasted. If you get any training at work it's likely to be for Windows or Windows applications.
Using Windows is travelling down the well worn path, if you're using Linux you're far more paving way. I'd also wager that any person able to manage a Linux box could just as easily have managed a Windows box, Seriously, if you spend any significant time managing your home desktop then you're doing it wrong.
minimalist (Score:2)
Perhaps Linux needs a minimalist leader. Throw everything out. Then step by step, bring back features and see what works, and what doesn't. In the process make sure that everything has a consistent look and feel.
The minimalist Linux PC has been done. (Score:3)
Perhaps Linux needs a minimalist leader. Throw everything out. Then step by step, bring back features and see what works, and what doesn't. In the process make sure that everything has a consistent look and feel.
EEEpc 2G Surf [asus.com], from 2007. The first "netbook".
It wasn't a huge success, but it panicked Microsoft. For a brief moment, the future of mobile computing was Linux. Windows Vista wouldn't fit on the thing. Microsoft had to re-animate Windows XP to compete.
(It also had a terrible variant of Linux. I have two of the things. The WiFi code is unreliable, and the "union file system" which makes one read-only and one read-write file system appear to be in the same namespace leaks inodes. The hardware is solid,
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, products like that are bad for Linux. They made the general population see Linux as the cheapo toy operatiing system, that doesn't really work and doesn't really have any software.
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps Linux needs a minimalist leader. Throw everything out. Then step by step, bring back features and see what works, and what doesn't. In the process make sure that everything has a consistent look and feel.
Linux on the desktop hasn't happened for one reason, and one reason only: Linux is fractured. There are several desktops, window managers, package systems, even kernels. This isn't the case with OS X or Windows, where you have a single API and standard to develop for. No commercial developer is going to write software for a chameleon operating system with a half dozen desktop packages.The same thing that caused Linux to take off with hobbyists and adapt so well to the server room is the same thing that wil
Not for everyone (Score:3)
But I can't see how the majority of users would be happy with it. Hell, my wife doesn't even know how to run a browser on it. Users want to have their phones auto mounted, printers working, scanners working, xbox controllers, nintendo controllers, games and whatever they buy at best buy and plug in, to just work.
So where do you stop? What's a minimalist distro?
Use
Re:minimalist (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps Linux needs a minimalist leader. Throw everything out. Then step by step, bring back features and see what works, and what doesn't. In the process make sure that everything has a consistent look and feel.
Believe it or not, that used to be Ubuntu. Back 8 or 10 years ago, there were all these distributions that offered 'choice!' by loading the biggest Gnome or KDE desktop crammed to the gills with EVERY and I mean EVERY app that was available. Stable, beta, working or not. You opened a panel and there were 17 calculators to choose from, 23 IRC clients, about 15 web browsers, 7 different terminal apps... you get the idea. Most of it was half-broken shit.
The beauty of Ubuntu in the beginning (I thought) was that they cut out all of that. You got a nice, slick installer that installed Debian Unstable (which we'd all known for years was fine for everyday use) with a slick graphical installer. You booted up to a nicely themed Gnome desktop with only the best ONE of each type of application installed. They were smart about choosing what apps to include by default, and I felt that their choices resonated very closely with experienced linux users who generally all agreed on the best app for a particular usage. The whole Debian repository was mirrored and available, but you didn't have to dig through a bunch of crap to find the stuff that you most likely would have chosen to install yourself. Configs were all clicky-clicky, but all your fave debian cli tools like aptitude still worked as expected.
I really thought that Ubuntu was going to become the polished distro that brought Year Of The Linux Desktop(tm) from fantasy to reality. I still think that they had a real chance to pull that off. (At least up until about 8.0, then it started to get weird).
My $0.02 plus tax.
polish? (Score:2)
The reasons listed make good sense to me and most could help explain why a comparable or even a better desktop experience could still fail to get adoption, especially in the enterprise.
But is it really the case that the desktop linux experience really is as polished as the windows or Mac? Please understand I am not trying to start a flame war, I like all these platforms, I use Windows mostly for my personal desktop use and Linux mostly for my servers.
I have not spent time recently trying to configure the be
obviously, polar opposites (Score:3)
Open office (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Evolution is a viable Outlook replacement, if configured right. Trust me, I have experience with eGroupware and Evolution. It works.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone needs to tell the Linux distro creators... (Score:4, Insightful)
No more "New Distros". No more new package managers, If you have applications, make meta-packages. What really needs to happen is, DEB and RPM need to talk to each other. Stop making "New Distro that changes everything needlessly again."
Make applications that solve problems, make meta-packages for large suites of applications, make it so RPM distros can talk to DEB databases and vice versa. Agree on a system. And give the "I'm going to make a new distro where the Wallpaper is blue rather than brown" a big glass of shut-up juice. There needs to be one overlording Linux.
Linux: by nerds, for nerds (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the basic issue is that Linux is an OS by nerds, for nerds. Which is fine, as long as they don't pretend they're something else.
- While using a preinstalled Linux system can be OK (if the system is vanilla, well installed, and you don't want to change anything), installing/admin-ing a Linux system requires the CLI within 10 minutes
- the code might be good, the documentation is horrendous. Codenames are fun except when you don't care about them and have to keep a post-it note to remember if Carmic Crap is 8.10 or 9.14; once you know that, you got to try and find relevant info (MAN pages are often out of sync and/or a bit unclear; forum posts rarely states which versions they apply to or not...). I think this is both accidental (writing doc is boring and unglamorous) and by design (if only a few people can make head or tail of something, their market value increases)
- the feature set is chosen to impress your programmer peers, not to seduce/help non-techies.
- many distros, GUIs... are *released* in what is barely a beta state (early Unity, KDE4...). People howl at MS putting out crap v1s... Linux does worse with v4s...
Engineers often wonder what the world would be like without marketing- nor business-men. The answer is: Desktop Linux.
The elephant in the room (Score:2)
Why does it have to be someone else's fault? Why's it Mac OS X's fault? Or Microsoft's monopoly? Or even ABI compatibility? Where's the analysis of whether the bulk of average-joe users actually like using Linux desktops?
Seriously, it's the first explanation that needs to be looked it. Yes, many of people love their Linux desktops, and they're very vocal here on slashdot. But is there any Linux desktop that is there today, or has been, that could be loved by the masses?
I switched from Linux desktops about y
no one killed the linux desktop (Score:5, Informative)
Its just to much of a pain in the ass to deal with on a daily basis, and I have been fighting it for at least a decade
Killed by... (Score:3)
Yes, OS X did kill the Linux desktop. But not for the reasons usually mentioned. What it did was take the pressure off that had been driving Linux.
You see, many of simply wanted an alternative to windows, preferably a unix-like system. There was none after OS/2 died (lots of early Linux fans moved in from OS/2, do you still remember?) and academic alternatives like Oberon went nowhere. So we worked on Linux.
And then OS X came along and gave us what we wanted and we went there. Not the story of everyone, but one you hear again and again.
At least two thirds of the Mac fans in my circles used to be Linux, not windows, users.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, UNIX is the umbrella. Linux is a kernel under that umbrella. OSX is an OS under the umbrella. Stop trying to rewrite computing history.
Um....no. (Score:5, Informative)
Linux is not BSD. BSD is not Linux.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux [wikipedia.org]
Re:Um....no. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:mac is linux (Score:4, Informative)
Mac is certified, official Unix. (from your opengroup link)
Re:mac is linux (Score:5, Informative)
If it's "all about the kernel", then why would you include OS X (which does not use a linux kernel) with the things we call "Linux", which do?
here's a thought: educate yourself on a topic before speaking about it.
Re:mac is linux (Score:4, Informative)
There is no argument, you are simply wrong. OS X does not use a Linux kernel.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ad hominem much? You know, it really takes away from the power of your argument... So do typos/grammos.
No. What he said is pretty much true. Mac OS-X uses a heavily modified BSD kernel. It is 100% not Linux. Also, I don't see anything wrong with suggesting somebody check their facts before posting. Saying something is ad hominem doesn't make it so.
Attempting to discredit somebody's point by criticizing their grammatical and spelling errors is, however, ad hominem. [wikipedia.org]
Re:mac is linux (Score:5, Funny)
Now THAT's a proper ad hominem.
Re:mac is linux (Score:5, Informative)
OSX is not Linux. It is a UNIX (i.e. BSD-derived in this case), while Linux is UNIX-like, i.e. a clean (sort of) room re-implementation.
WRONG! (Score:4, Funny)
clearly, OsX is a white rabbit , about 6 feet tall, whose name is Charlie. He gives me carrots if I sing American Pie in falsetto while on tiptoe. I told him that I shall stop, for the store sells carrots for 6 pence and 3 shillings. He told me very well.
I went to the store. No carrots.
Explain that to me? Will you?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Linux is a kernel. Nothing more, nothing less. What makes it usable are 3rd parties that bundle it with other required components.
OSX is a complete system as shipped from one vendor. If you want to talk kernels, there a Mach kernel in OSX.
Same for BSD, its a complete system shipped from one 'organization', not just a ( important ) core component.
Re:Fuck Firefox 14. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fuck Firefox 14. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think the parent is trolling. This is practically the sorry state of Firefox, which would probably be something like version 4.6.7 using the old versioning system. WebKit has left Mozilla in the dust, maybe they should switch bandwagons and just release a Firefox-y application wrapper built on WebKit?
Re: (Score:2)
The basic mistake you made, IMHO, is that you fixed something that wasn't broken. You were largely up to date. I'll agree that things aren't easily interchangeable, and they should be. Canonical or any other distro maker could socketize their distribution for just this purpose, but the nature of upgrades is that people usually buy something new in a system, then do an initial install, then don't change it. We're taught to do this as hardware got much faster each few calendar quarters, but these days, that's
Re: (Score:2)
Hibernation is a valid point - perfect on the right hardware for years and still not working at all on some other hardware - win7 has problems there too but not as much. Older wireless hardware sucks in general but since it's no longer such a moving target (some stuff even had completely different chipsets within the same model number
Re:Let me summarize this blog post (Score:4, Insightful)
As for Linux's share of the desktop, well, everyone knows as long as you continue to count all dual boots as windows and all OS free hardware as nothing, then Linux will continue with a far smaller market share in mass media fantasy than in actual reality.
Both Apple and M$ wet their pants in fear of Android and Android is Linux.
Re: (Score:3)
OS X targets the retarded appliance user that an actual computing environment is a waste to give to. One can easily argue, that it transforms a computer into something that isn't a computer anymore, but a information and entertainment appliance.
Linux targets people who actually use their computer as a *computer*. People who automate their work away, by writing shell scripts, and calling them from udev, cron and keyboary shortcuts, etc. People who adapt the system to their needs, and gain the vast amount of power resulting from really using a universal programmable computing machine. The greatest machine ever invented. The holy grail of information processing.
Nobody of the latter group could even use the former system, since it would be completely crippling and basically useless.
Gee, I use the former system and I'm a member of the latter group. The devices on my "desktop" (really laptop) machine don't change often enough that the absence of something as general as udev doesn't matter, and there aren't that many tasks that need to be done periodically for me to bother firing up crontab, and the other shell-script stuff I just do directly from a terminal window rather than binding it to keyboard shortcuts in the GUI (I assume those are the "keyboard shortcuts" to which you're referr
Blames (Score:5, Insightful)
I am using Linux
I have been using Linux since the early 1990's
In other words, I am no fanbois of Windows nor Apple
But, reading TFA and the previous one (the one accusing Apple for killing Linux Desktop), I got that uneasy feeling that people behind the Linux Desktop are adapting the stance of blaming others for whatever they have failed
No, I am not saying that the Linux Desktop people haven't put in much work into making Linux Desktop a reality - they have - or else we wouldn't have so many choices like we have today, from KDE to GNOME to Enlightenment to many others
But what I am saying is, whatever failure there is, regarding Linux Desktop, should be examined within the Linux context
Blaming Microsoft or Apple or even the Almighty Himself won't make Linux Desktop a better choice
If we really want Linux Desktop to be used by more people, we must explore ways to make the UI truly intuitive, and that by itself, has been a constant challenge for the Linux Desktop people
In fact, we don't need to look further than "Unity / Gnome 3" to find what's WRONG with Linux Desktop
Maybe you will disagree with what I have said, but the truth is sometime not hard to swallow
We must admit that Linux Desktop is a failure, and we must find way to re-make Linux Desktop so that it doesn't sux so badly
Re: (Score:3)
I've always thought that the "problem" with the Linux desktop was the compatibility of applications.
We spent a few years being Linux only. Teachers expecting the kids homework in .doc, and OO not being exactly right, Flash Player for Linux being so far behind that some websites failed to display content, stuff like that is what killed it as the day-to-day OS. Then again, on the security side, Linux is excellent. Even with Win Vista or 7, most of the Windows users I know kill off UAC and use administra
Re:Blames (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the developers in Linux could not care less what you use on your desktop, and conversely they do not care about your opinion of what they use on their desktop.
This "Desktop war" only exists in the minds of people that feel threatened by what's running on someone else's desktop.
KDE has been my default desktop for many years, and it does everything I need, and looks great doing it. I have yet to visit one site where flash player from Adobe does not work. libreoffice is damn close to M$, and the differences there is only because M$ does not follow any standard when making their applications, not even the standards they have written. You can hardly blame Linux or any of the applications it runs natively for the lock-in tactics of Microsoft.
For me, at least, I don't see a reason to add to Apple's war chest, or support Microsoft when both of them use the money to harm the computing field in general. This means I can't play EVERY game out there, but there are a lot of games that run natively in Linux, and a mind-boggling amount that will run fine in wine or dosbox.
I am an avid photographer and video editor, and DigiKam and Kdenlive has me covered there.
There is only one reason I have a dual boot partition to Windows 7. I have an anrdoid phone that only allows it's firmware to be updated in Windows. Same with the linux based GPS I have. It's a slap in the face from the developers of these devices, and if there were any linux only options, I would buy those devices instead.
I guess what I am trying to say is this:
Vote with your wallet, and only support companies which have business practices that you approve of. There is something about voting that seems to be lost on some countries. Sure you only have one voice... but that voice counts. Vote for something you agree with, no matter if it's the third/last whatever. When enough people agree with you, that underdog BECOMES the leading party... but this won't happen unless you vote properly, instead of the lesser of two evils. (Ms/apple or rep/dem)
Re: (Score:3)
I got that uneasy feeling that people behind the Linux Desktop are adapting the stance of blaming others for whatever they have failed
There's nothing really wrong with that, because MS really did pull a lot of monopolistic moves to try to stop Linux before it gained too much momentum. However, there's been numerous failures inside the community to, not only in dealing with these challenges but with other things too. I felt the second article was pretty fair in this regard, in assessing both the internal a
Re:Blames (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem hasn't been with the Linux desktop UI for about 10 years now. Gnome 2 was fine. KDE 2 or 3.x was fine.
The problems are to do with driver support, upgrade breakage, package manager brain damage and ABI breakage scaring off commercial software.
The desktop itself is fine, and no amount of faffing about with 3d rotating desktops and other nerdgasm worth stuff will fix that. Stop fucking around with eye candy and fix the core issues the operating system has first. The current progress seems much like the old "re-arranging the deck chairs on the titanic", and I say that as a former Linux on desktop user since 1995.
I got sick and tired of the core issues remaining whilst shiny-new-desktop of the month kept being released and replacing all my somewhat stable apps with new buggy replacements.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem hasn't been with the Linux desktop UI for about 10 years now. Gnome 2 was fine. KDE 2 or 3.x was fine.
The problems are to do with driver support, upgrade breakage, package manager brain damage and ABI breakage scaring off commercial software.
Years ago, I saw a printer on clearance at Walmart that had a picture of Tux right on the box. Tux! On the box! If that doesn't say "Linux compatible" then I don't know what does. I was shocked and awed, and bought the printer immediately.
What resulted from that buying experience is a very good example of what's wrong with "desktop Linux" (ie. casual home users browsing the web, maybe writing a term paper, sharing some photos with Grandma, etc.) in general. True, the actual GUI side of things has been
Re:Blames (Score:5, Interesting)
I think both the hardcore and "user-friendly" Linux versions can coexist fine. I have used the former and the latter, but I settled on Debian when I got my 64-bit computer (a cheapazoid dell AMD refurb...)
The old farts like myself who cut their teeth on Commodore 64's and Atari 800's are still looking for something to tinker with (there are exceptions, of course), and Linux fills that need nicely. I can remember installing Slackware from floppies while in college, because I wandered into the computer lab and started dinking around with HPUX.. Back then there wasn't much of a WWW... Of course the hacker in me grew substantially when I found I could use a free OS on my PC. Sure it was a beast to get my ET4000 card recognized by X, (I never got it fully working), but having my own shell prompt on my lowly PC rekindled my love of tinkering. Not since I got my first Atari 800XL for Christmas (with a datasette) had I felt like using a computer was fun again...
That is not to say I want to force my love of tinkering on anyone else... heck, I remember trying to free enough RAM in DOS to run certain games... that was the "not fun" side of tinkering, and I can see why people are reluctant to return to those lawless days of yesteryear. :)
Linux can thrive and succeed without 95% of the marketshare. Sure there are some high profile things the commercial OS vendors will always keep close to their chest... but for everything else, there's always an alternative. Linux represents that, but cannot gain traction because those who have an idea about going to Linux remember the stories the "old farts" liked to tell about the hell it was getting the OS to work....
Would I like to kick Microsoft to the curb? Most assuredly. Would I like to see Apple again become a niche player? Without a doubt... but where Linux is going is exciting enough, and well it should make others take notice. (and your sig is so appropriate... mine was 2004 - 2011, though. ;) heheheh.)
Re:It is a lot simpler... (Score:5, Informative)
One of the biggest reasons that Linux hasn't made it on the desktop is poor Video Game Support!
Maybe it was a concern 10+ years ago when if you wanted to play the latest Doom you had to have a PC. But things changed, starting with PS3 and ending with a number of other usable consoles. I got PS3 here, for example, and a bunch of games on BlueRay disks for it. Since then I stopped playing on a PC, except a few old games that I care to remember now and then.
But I don't run Linux on my desktop - even though I'm well aware of Linux and I run it on a few servers here and elsewhere. I simply have zero reason to do so. The Windows tax, about $50, is paid at the time of purchase of a box, and I cannot imagine suing MS to get it back. Besides Win7 is pretty good as it is. IMO Win7 is better than a typical Linux distrubution. All the software is available for it; most of it is free enough. As the geeks get older they also get richer, and they value their time more than money; they learn that the money can be earned, but the time cannot. If a piece of software costs $100 (say, Quicken) and takes 5 minutes to get from nothing to a fully functioning system it is better than to spend $0 and waste weeks trying to cobble together a comparable solution. (Comparable? With WebConnect? Hard to believe; I haven't checked on GnuCash recently, though.)
So why in the world would a generic, average user want to use Linux? What are the advantages? In some cases I can understand that Linux can be easier to administer remotely, like when you are building a computer for your grandparents. But VNC is an option on Windows as well. Resistance to viruses? Perhaps - until a virus for Linux shows up. Anything else that a common man would care about? Something for what a common man would wipe his $50 investment clean and install Linux? I don't see a convincing reason to switch at all. Microsoft was wise enough to hide its tax well; on top of that if you go to Fry's and look at a computer with Linux, the price is the same - the money just goes not to MS but to the place where that Linux box was assembled. The customer does not feel a difference price-wise, but he feels a lot of difference usability-wise. That's why Linux on desktop is going nowhere; MS wares are cheap enough and good enough. Some even say that they are better than Linux (see above) but that may end with release of Win8.
This is also the reason why Linux on servers is alive and well. MS charges a lot of money for even an entry level server ($800 for a Small Business Server, IIRC) - this money will buy you a lot of stuff if you don't care about windows-specific functions like the domain controller or SharePoint services. Apache is even easier to configure than the IIS. Still, many businesses buy into SBS just to get MS Exchange.