Daily News: Why Linux will succeed on the Desktop..
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Yeah, I agree. There are many factors along with new hardware. Often you pick up that cool digital camera or mp3 place and find it is not supported under Linux and probably will not until some geek decides he wants to use one and writes the driver. Even then, they driver would probably require a ton of documention to install properly and use :) Then, as far as I know, there is no "legal" way to play DVD movies on Linux due to decoding protections. There are players, but for a place that must run legally, I do not know of them. Of course, that goes with other types of DRM that many video on demand places are using locking Linux out yet again.
John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
(By the way, you can't really count the first five years of Linux development as "trying to take over". It simply wasn't mature enough, and everyone knew it.)
Actually, I left off the first four years of Linux existance since it was first released in 1991. Back then though, it had far less of a problem competing with Windows as Windows nor Linux was that much of a system back then. Of course, back even in 1995, much of the Linux world mocked GUI interfaces and thought there will just a passing fad I guess. Their focus was not really on desktop/consumer market. It was more of a Geek OS..
Rocky <>< Blog Post: LINQ - Disconnected-Attach, no change tracking fix.. Tech Blog Post: Cheap Biofuels and Synthetics coming soon?
Rocky Moore wrote:
Their focus was not really on desktop/consumer market. It was more of a Geek OS..
For the Linux zealots, that is still very much the case. They abhor anything connected with a GUI.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
That was in the CP Daily News on the 4th. The subject has the note: (I think i've this song for the last 10 years). When I read that, it made me think for a minute. Linux has tried to take over the Windows now for about 10 years (Red Hat started in 1995). Over that time there has been a push by some, even more so in the last five yeras to take over the desktop. It is amazing that a so called "Free" OS has not been able to make a dent in the Windows desktop. Yes, I know that many people receive thier OS with their computer, but it is on their computer in the first place because people want it. Too many people poo-poo Microsoft Windows, but it appears they still have no real competition..
Rocky <>< Blog Post: LINQ - Disconnected-Attach, no change tracking fix.. Tech Blog Post: Cheap Biofuels and Synthetics coming soon?
Rocky Moore wrote:
Yes, I know that many people receive thier OS with their computer, but it is on their computer in the first place because people want it.
No. Its not. It is on their because the people want *something* on their computer to make it work. Windows does that, so the space to be better than Windows is tight. Add to this lacking Hardware support (you still have to look to get you Hardware running. With Windows its a no-brainer and bluescreens due to the crappy, defective driver are just suffered. Windows is, at a lot of places, simplt different to be different. And that often implies "worse", when the originial is nearing perfection.
Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable, let's prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
Douglas Adams, "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" -
benjymous wrote:
Give somebody with little computer experience a tidy Linux setup with Firefox, Thunderbird and Open Office (which is all the vast majority of average computer users would want) and they'd be perfectly happy.
Yeah, until they went to the store and picked up that little software package and found that nothing worked. Face it, most people are too stupid to have a computer in the first place. But, they get them because someone else says they should or family wants to communicate via email. After a while they want to do all this other cool stuff like digital photos, movies, mp3, etc.. Linux is not the place to be for someone without computer knowledge, or even for many with knowledge ;)
Rocky <>< Blog Post: LINQ - Disconnected-Attach, no change tracking fix.. Tech Blog Post: Cheap Biofuels and Synthetics coming soon?
Rocky Moore wrote:
Face it, most people are too stupid to have a computer in the first place.
A-fucking-men. Truth be told, Linux is the best choice for most "normal" users. Install a modern distro without root access, remove all the crap that's not needed beyond web, email, an image viewer and a clock, and it would be a perfect system, and much cheaper than a Windows Vista system in terms of both hardware AND software.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
Not because Microsoft Windows is too good or too ubiquitous or too well supported but because Linux is still just too damn technical to install, to use, to upgrade and to augment. When knowledge of the existence of something called "16 bit color" and what a "root" is and what you'd want a "console" for is no longer needed and phrases like "apt-get", "grep for it", "alien", "is it an RPM?", "Modular Kernel" etc, etc are no longer considered standard english by those distributing and support it Linux will succeed on the desktop where there is but one rule which *n?x heads just cannot get their enlarged brains around. "Users don't want to understand the software, they just want to get their work done!" Yes, we all know that the users are wrong and they'd be far more productive, happy, satified, useful and well rounded people if they did understand just a little bit about software but they don't care, they don't want to care and that isn't going to change. I recently installed Ubuntu 7 and it's a major improvement over the last Linux I got working, Mandrake 9, 4 years ago but in 4 years the gap between where it is and where it needs to be has barely halved. At this rate it will be at least another 5 years before Linux on every desktop is reasonable and by then MS Windows will have been completely rewritten and pretty much all the Linux advantages, other than price, may have evaporated.
Nothing is exactly what it seems but everything with seems can be unpicked.
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
At this rate it will be at least another 5 years before Linux on every desktop is reasonable and by then MS Windows will have been completely rewritten and pretty much all the Linux advantages, other than price, may have evaporated.
Actually, we only have five years left on the Mayan calendar, and we all know what's going to happen then...
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
-----
"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
That was in the CP Daily News on the 4th. The subject has the note: (I think i've this song for the last 10 years). When I read that, it made me think for a minute. Linux has tried to take over the Windows now for about 10 years (Red Hat started in 1995). Over that time there has been a push by some, even more so in the last five yeras to take over the desktop. It is amazing that a so called "Free" OS has not been able to make a dent in the Windows desktop. Yes, I know that many people receive thier OS with their computer, but it is on their computer in the first place because people want it. Too many people poo-poo Microsoft Windows, but it appears they still have no real competition..
Rocky <>< Blog Post: LINQ - Disconnected-Attach, no change tracking fix.. Tech Blog Post: Cheap Biofuels and Synthetics coming soon?
I suspect you already know this, but I'll throw it out on the table anyhow. If computers were "blank" like when we bought them in the late 80s and early 90s, the OS market would be an entirely different game. Microsoft found that niche years ago and successfully monopolized on it.
"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it." - Ellen Goodman
"To have a respect for ourselves guides our morals; to have deference for others governs our manners." - Laurence Sterne
