thelinuxlink.net

But what a useless statement. Anyone else find that kind of statement completely useless and annoying? Take Debian for example. Anyone who talks about it always says how they love it and it's so great. But none of them actually use it as a desktop system. Oh that mepis is such a nice distro...but of course I don't use it. Installing distros on a machine for a week and playing around with it and then proclaiming how great it is only to not use it is just so old and tired.

Ugh ok rant over. I'm just tired of linux being in a constant state of almost ready for the desktop and I find distro hopping a reminder of that.

Why do you care what someone else does with their spare time?

As for distro hopping, here's how I see it. There are some folks who are interested in linux, but aren't ready to take the plunge so they install it on old hardware they have around. They dick around with one distro and find things they like about it, but many others they don't. They comment on this, and then move on to another distro, doing the same thing again.

There are other people, like me, who used to have free time to try new distros out, which looked like fun. I discovered Arch this way, and have been using Arch for a number of years because of this. I also discovered a lot of other distros which were neat, but were in no way a threat to whatever I had installed as a desktop at that time. Frugalware comes immediately to mind for me - I think it's an absolutely fantastic distro with a great deal of polish, considering how few people actively develop it. The fact that the mailing lists and forums are nearly dead keeps me from installing it on anything but a "testing" box though.

So frugalware is so fantastic that you wouldn't consider using it on any machine you care about or need to use. It's so fantastic that the mailing lists and forums are dead. You have to qualify that there are very few developers for it.

Yeah I see what you mean it sounds like a really great super fantastic distro.

/end sarcasm


I don't hate so much that there are different distros. What I hate is that there are so many distros because not one is "ready for the desktop". I don't hate that someone might switch distros because it offers a unique and better solution....but rather that most switch distros because it happens to piss them off less at the current time. Most distro hopping is just trading one problem for another. It all comes down to this constant state of almost ready never finished.

You seem to either be purposely misconstruing what I said, or simply don't understand it. My point was about potential. And, frankly, yes, Frugal is a fantastic distro. The lack of fora or mailing list activity hasn't kept me from running it on my spare box quite successfully. My point was that it wasn't going to replace Arch any time soon. IMO, anyone who approaches LOtDT w/o understanding that free-as-in-$$$ comes at a price is going to be sorely disappointed.

On to your point - are you upset with the state of linux, or are you saying that people in general don't feel it's ready for the desktop? Personally, it's what I use, and have used, for several years. Yes, some things about linux piss me off, and pretending that these things don't exist isn't doing anyone any good. On the other hand, plenty of things piss me off about my windows install at work. So far, there have been more things that I like about linux on the desktop than I've disliked. Once that changes, I will probably not use linux as a desktop OS any longer.

Here is an example. Ubuntu is thrashing your hard drive so you switch to pclinux os and your wireless doesn't work. You have simply traded one problem for another. The problem being that neither one is ready. Almost ready never finished.

Linux is not ready for the desktop if you have to clean reinstall the os every 6 months to run the most up to date applications because the upgrade process doesn't work. Almost ready never finished. The fact is that the applications are what people want and having to reinstall or risk an upgrade bork every 6 months isn't ready.

Linux is not ready if choosing a distro is about which one pisses you off less at the moment. Say what you will about windows but the fact is for the vast vast majority you could install XP 4 years ago and you can still be running it today with the most up date applications and upgrades.

I don't think I misconstrued anything you said. Frugal is fantastic because of it's potential? This community hasn't had the so called ready distros live up to their potential. Almost ready never finished.

hellonorman wrote:Here is an example. Ubuntu is thrashing your hard drive so you switch to pclinux os and your wireless doesn't work.

I have a feeling that the "thrashing" that Linc mentioned was the desktop search system in Ubuntu doing indexing of the file system. So it's not a bug, it's a feature!

This really belongs in the main forum since it's Linux-related.

I agree for the most part, Linux is still far from being something most people can deal with on the whole. As Dann had mentioned on the Tech Show, he attempted to upgrade his System76 laptop (which is DESIGNED for Linux for crying out loud), and afterwards his sound and wireless quit working. Obviously, the average Joe doesn't want to deal with that, and I can't blame them. Bash Windows all you want, but at least on Windows the drivers and core operating system are rock solid for the vast majority of users. You don't need to risk borking the system just to get a new release of Firefox installed.

On the other hand, Linux has been ready for the desktop since 2004 for myself. I've been entirely Windows-free since early 2005, and I have no desire to look back. For my needs, Linux is ideal, and I've been using it long enough now, that fixing minor breakage on Gentoo or Debian unstable is not an issue, and if a piece of hardware doesn't work, I simply recompile the kernel to support it. I don't hop around to different distros hoping one of them magically supports everything, because I know underneath they all run the same kernel, and they can all be made to work.

Well, god knows I've bitched enough about linux in my time, so I'm not going to bother arguing with you. Currently, it more or less suits my needs as a desktop user. Things break, I dig around and fix them - the joys of being a power user, I guess. I completely agree that many things about linux are not "mainstream" ready. On the other hand, the amount of time our IT folks at work spend unfucking broken windows boxen is absurd - seriously absurd. As strong as the Mac hate around here is, it is the single OS I have been able to let my family bang on, and have been able to upgrade over and over for years at a time w/o any issues to speak of arising.

FWIW, I have shitloads of issues running redhat as a server for a mid-sized ISP, too. OOMK fucking things up, random oopses for unknown reasons, hardware that simply refuses to work, including very common hardware, etc. In general, *computers* aren't ready for what people expect of them. People expect email to be a flawless medium for communication, and hoard their email like it's some sort of knowledge database. People expect to be able to email 100 meg pictures to sweet aunt Sally with her 56k connection over crappy wire that actually achieves 13k. The reality is that we (or our predecessors, really) pushed home computing, which wasn't ready for prime time, on a public that wasn't ready for home computing.

As much as I love Linux and the FOSS community, sometimes I really don't know if Linux will ever get it together enough to take over a large chunk of the desktop market, or if it'll continue to be cast aside as an embedded and back-end server operating system, leaving the massive desktop market to Apple and Microsoft. I recently heard that Apple has attained around 8% of the market, and adoption is increasing at a feverish pace ever since the Intel switch. As wonderful as distros like Ubuntu are, I keep having these concerns that Apple is quickly eating our lunch, and not before long, the monopoly on the desktop market will simply shift from Microsoft to Apple. The thought of Apple achieving a majority share of the market frightens me even more than Microsoft's current racket. At least Microsoft only controls the software. Apple controls everything, and as Pat has mentioned time and time again, Apple would probably be a far worse monopolist given the opportunity.

Snarkout wrote:In general, *computers* aren't ready for what people expect of them. People expect email to be a flawless medium for communication, and hoard their email like it's some sort of knowledge database. People expect to be able to email 100 meg pictures to sweet aunt Sally with her 56k connection over crappy wire that actually achieves 13k. The reality is that we (or our predecessors, really) pushed home computing, which wasn't ready for prime time, on a public that wasn't ready for home computing.

I found this last statement very interesting, and I believe that Snarkout has hit upon something here. Average home users do have high expectations for home computers. I have family members who let their teens use the home computer with XP and in less than two weeks, that computer is grinding to a halt because of installed spyware from who knows where. I have other family members that expect that using a computer is as simple as using the family fridge. Open door, to find food. Close fridge to keep things cool. It always is on and keeping things cold. You can find lettuce in the crisper drawer. If it takes more work than that to hook up your digital camera, or send email, or fix your internet connection, forget it.

Most of us are more technical than the average computer user. For most of us we might even enjoy fixing the occasional broken computer. For most of us, Linux is ready for the desktop.

I will admit that as an advanced user, I don't have trouble with my one Windows XP box. I don't get spyware or viruses. I even failed to update my virus software once for 6 months, but never got a virus on WinXP because of other computing practices that I have in place, like never using Outlook Express or Outlook, IE, and getting my mail through online services that scan all my email automatically, and everything is behind a hardware firewall.

I don't consider myself an advanced Linux user, for I have never compiled a kernel, nor have I programed a line of code in my life. I sometimes distro hop out of curiosity, which is why I tried Foresight. Although all distros are built off of the same base, it is interesting to see the features each distro brings to the table that are unique. Personally, I believe I could make a number of distros my daily desktop, and I have for the last 3 years, at home, and 90% of the time at work too. I could make Slackware work for me (I loved its speed), I could make Ubuntu work (Easy installs and great package selection), I could make Fedora work (Easy install, great community, and pretty to look at), and I'm making Foresight work (Undo of bad upgrades is simply magic), and finally I can even make DSL work for me too (beautiful on old junk that people are throwing away). All of those distros are ready for the desktop, they are certainly ready for me. They are even ready for my family members if they would give me the time to fix issues on my schedule, and be willing to live without Windows' games and software.

One other thing which I believe is a part of this question. Since I started using Linux I use computer for more than I would have ever used them for when I was just using Windows. I would never have bothered to build a network like I have now, nor would I have a computer (GeeXBoX) hooked up to my TV, nor would I have a file server (FreeNAS) in my home. I also rescue computers destined for landfills, and turn them into productive machines that get things done. Doesn't Linux get a little bit of a break as our desktops, when it opens a whole world of possibilities for the use of computers in our homes.

Wally Balljacker wrote:Apple controls everything, and as Pat has mentioned time and time again, Apple would probably be a far worse monopolist given the opportunity.

This is a popular sentiment with very little to back it up. Sure, Jobs is a prick, and Apple legal does some seriously scumbag things sometimes, but they'd have to work *VERY* hard to be bastards on the scale of microsoft. At the very least, apple doesn't spend millions on keeping the user from doing what they want with their own computer. As far as DRM goes, they are certainly less evil. Slapping fairplay on most of the aac's they sell at ITMS is not even in the same realm as the insane shit MS has done with vista. The bottom line is you eat your dogfood no matter which choice you want to make:

Linux = free or very littls $$$, but the onus is on the user to keep their stuff unbroken, and to be savvy enough to fix it when it breaks. You have total control over the software and hardware, but lots and lots of hardware simply doesn't work with it. Some manual hackery is involved with running *any* distor I've ever run - conf file munging, or whatever. Pretty damn secure, though often securing it is black magic, assuming you're running services, and it's only as safe as it's default configs, usually, unless you do the manual munging I spoke of.

Windows = evil empire, prone to viruses, and extremely popular. In theory you control the hardware, but the reality is that 99% of all computers are spawn of x86 boxshifters. There is almost not doubt that if you have a problem or want, and you use windows, you will be supported. Anything that happens on the internet has windows in mind, generally speaking. Point n click, pretty much. Security is absolute dogshit. I don't care if it *can* be secured - the fact that it *has* to be secures with multiple 3rd party apps is enough to qualify this statement, IMO.

Macintosh = expensive fancy pants hardware with a "lickable" UI. The UI is something some people love and some people hate, but it is what it is. You have no control over the hardware, except for aftermarket stuff, and it has a compatibility list that is in between linux and windows, but closer to the linux HCL by far. Point n click here as well. Generally as secure as linux, but has had a few notable issues over the past year (some of which have been unproven).

Basically, make your bed, lie in it, and try to be happy.

I stopped caring about whether or not GNU/Linux will take over the world or even gain big desktop share. I just care that it has a big enough presence on the desktop that it can't be ignored by hardware and software providers. And I have no doubt that within relatively short order it will exceed Apple's share on the desktop and that concern will be gone once and for all. As far as it not being ready for the desktop, that is total bull/FUD. I've been using Ubuntu for almost 2 years now and I am not a command line geek. In fact, I've been able to run Ubuntu as my sole PC, without having to learn how to configure xorg or ever having to drop to the command line. I'm actually embarrassed that I'm still such a newb in those respects. That's one of the reasons I plan on switching to pure Debian or Sidux pretty soon. I want to learn more. Also, I don't see why anyone would get bugged about people trying out different distros and commenting on them. It just seems like good fun to me.

Tsuroerusu wrote:

hellonorman wrote:Here is an example. Ubuntu is thrashing your hard drive so you switch to pclinux os and your wireless doesn't work.

I have a feeling that the "thrashing" that Linc mentioned was the desktop search system in Ubuntu doing indexing of the file system. So it's not a bug, it's a feature!

I think "thrashing your hard drive" refers to this:

http://beranger.org/index.php?page=diar ... s-killing-

A nice little 'feature' in and of itself, I might add...

greggh wrote:In fact, I've been able to run Ubuntu as my sole PC, without having to learn how to configure xorg or ever having to drop to the command line. I'm actually embarrassed that I'm still such a newb in those respects.

Hell, that's a skill in and of itself as far as I'm concerned. That's more than I've been able to do.

Wally Balljacker wrote:I agree for the most part, Linux is still far from being something most people can deal with on the whole. As Dann had mentioned on the Tech Show, he attempted to upgrade his System76 laptop (which is DESIGNED for Linux for crying out loud), and afterwards his sound and wireless quit working.

Well, then maybe a distro that has a six month release cycle isn't the right thing for Mr. Ultimate Computer N00b. You can only do so much testing in six months!! I agree Ubuntu has done a slew of good work, but things like upgrades are just .... yeah, you said it yourself.

Wally Balljacker wrote:As much as I love Linux and the FOSS community, sometimes I really don't know if Linux will ever get it together enough to take over a large chunk of the desktop market, or if it'll continue to be cast aside as an embedded and back-end server operating system, leaving the massive desktop market to Apple and Microsoft.

The "get it together" statement is really somewhat interesting. Having a semi-UNIX heritage (Being a UNIX clone) has been great for things like security, stability, reliability and flexibility. The problem with such a long history is that through that time, many integral components have collection so much garbage, and they need to be fixed! Some months back I heard some X developers saying that even with all the good stuff in X.Org 7.3, it would still take a bunch more years to really fix X so that it would work really well, without tons of crap code from the early to mid 90'. Such things take time, despite the rapid phase of free software. Printing has been huge pain for a long time, and it's starting to look much better. X has made ginourmous progress during the last 2 years, and with Intel's great graphics support and AMD's release of hardware specs, it's just gonna get better, but it will take time.
I think that GNU/Linux will, over time, gradually cater to more groups of people. Today it is perfectly usable for mission critical servers, large mainframes and embedded devices (Mobile phones, multimedia devices etc.). The desktop maturity I think is a little 50/50. A GNU/Linux desktop works fine for geeks, for us it's absolutely perfect. For people who have lots of time, but no money, it's also fine. People who don't know much, but can install Windows, load drivers and install a few applications, can also use it without too many problems. Whether people like my mother can use a GNU/Linux powered home desktop computer depends on a few things. First of all, if I set it up for her, then there's no problem at all. I'll just throw a big icon on the desktop saying "Internet", and another one saying "Photos", and show her how to import pictures into Digikam. In this scenario where an experienced person can take care of things and offer support where needed, GNU/Linux is also fine. I think that people like my mother, who do not have an experienced computer guy nearby, running GNU/Linux is extremely hard. Not because KDE and GNOME aren't easy enough to use, they are, but because for my mother the concept that she can't buy "a computer program" in a store, or get an unauthorized copy from a friend or family member, and just always have it work, makes no sense at all. And the reason is like it was mentioned previously, people want computers to be like a fridge or a freezer, "Open and then close", and computers just aren't like that. I have a bunch of friends who're girls, who probably could use GNU/Linux without problems (These two are actually quite smart), but the problems come in when they get a docx ("Open"XML) file from school, or get told to buy certain dictionary software, which of course will not work since it's made for Windows. I don't know what to call this area of problem, but it's about GNU/Linux not being well known enough for people to be able to say "Does this work with GNU/Linux?", the few people I have met who have a Mac can ask this, when looking for software for their Mac, despite them not knowling donkey d!ick about security, or that a friendly guy in Nigeria just isn't going to help them earn a billion dollars.

Wally Balljacker wrote:I recently heard that Apple has attained around 8% of the market, and adoption is increasing at a feverish pace ever since the Intel switch.

I heard that as well, although I am highly sceptical of that number. I don't know whether it's because I am living in a country that I jokingly refer to as being "under Microsoft occupation", but the thing is Windows is so ingrained in society, that it's just such a tragedy. I mean people entire assumption of computers is what Windows is like. All the problems that Windows has, people assume those are problems of computers general, because in 99,99% of people's cases, Windows IS "the computer", because that's the only thing they have seen, or heard of for the last 15 years, or that their parents heard of 10 years ago, and they then grew up with. I guess that I'm even like that a little bit myself. Sometimes I feel that I use KDE or GNOME is sort of a Windows-style way, and whenever I try to use just Fluxbox, Xfce or WindowMaker, and anything generally seen as more "hardcore UNIX", they just feel very unnatural to me.

greggh wrote:I stopped caring about whether or not GNU/Linux will take over the world or even gain big desktop share.

Same here, because the things that would have to be done, to make GNU/Linux cater to the dumbf!uck 15 year old teenage girls that get piss drunk and end up having sex with some random 21 year old guy every other weekend, is just so against what I want to see done that I think it's not worth it. To me, popularity and market share is only valuable until it starts messing with our core values, which I think lies in the freedom that people can get from a GNU/Linux system. Yes, I know most people do not care, but I care, and I know some other people care. Also, if we had to desecure our OS, to make it brain dead easy to install anything and everything I would turn into a freaking Theo de Raadt emulation or something!!!

greggh wrote:I just care that it has a big enough presence on the desktop that it can't be ignored by hardware and software providers. And I have no doubt that within relatively short order it will exceed Apple's share on the desktop and that concern will be gone once and for all.

I really don't know about the "exceed Apple's share on the desktop", because people I couldn't ever imagine discovering GNU/Linux on their own, I do see use Macs. So I don't think that that is true.
What I do think, is that the whole issue of hardware support is largely solved. I have yet to try installing ANY GNU/Linux distro on a PC and not having it work at all. On all the machines I have ever installed it on, the disk controller has worked fine and ethernet networking has worked fine. The remaining problems lie in the places where the hardware aren't cheap commodity stuff that everybody makes. This is stuff like wireless cards (Although, the historically crappy wireless support in the Linux kernel was mostly caused by an absolutely dogsh!t driver structure, which has gotten fixed with 2.6.22), graphics cards and laptop specific features like suspend and hibernation. The graphics card one I think will be completely eliminated in a year, thanks to AMD's release of hardware specifications, and Intel's phenomenal support of graphics drivers. The wireless one I foresee being completely knocked down in two years. I recently tried Fedora 8 Test 3 on my ThinkPad X31 laptop, and was surprised to find the internal Atheros card working, because I know that Fedora absolutely refuse to include proprietary drivers. I poked around and found that Fedora had stuck in a snapshot of a developmental version of the ath5k driver, which is the new Atheros driver based on OpenBSD's free HAL code, and the damn thing worked. I tried doing some network stress testing, and I had largely files transferred without problems (I did a checksum comparison to check, using sha1sum AND md5sum). Every big problem that we face today, is gonna be solved in time. And as each one gets gradually gets solved, GNU/Linux will be usable for more and more people, all that's needed at that point is letting people actually know about it!

greggh wrote:As far as it not being ready for the desktop, that is total bull/FUD. I've been using Ubuntu for almost 2 years now and I am not a command line geek. In fact, I've been able to run Ubuntu as my sole PC, without having to learn how to configure xorg or ever having to drop to the command line.

Hehe yep, I've seen my mother happily use KDE and Digikam to manage her f!ucking huge amounts of pictures of her stupid flowers. Watching her do all that without problems, except the occasional "How do I do this?" question, just makes me laugh at the morons that whine about GNU/Linux not "being ready for the desktop" or "Linux UIs being hard to use". KDE and GNOME both kick ass (Although I do have a fairly hefy preference for KDE, however I would of course use GNOME in heartbeat over Windows or Mac OS X), I do not care what anybody says!!