Desktop Linux Adoption: An Introspection

Alan

Thu Nov 08 00:26:02 -0800 2007

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One good reason is to provide a larger market, both for paid and free software. This would encourage a larger quantity and variety of applications, as well as compatible peripherals.

Philosphically, I'd love to use Linux on my desktop, and I dual boot occasionally. But I need support for my DTP applications for my work, and video editing for fun, for example. While it's possible to do both on Linux, the applications are just not there for me to switch over without more effort than I want to expend.

Desktop Linux Adoption: An Introspection

Stefan Champailler(1)

Thu Nov 08 00:57:47 -0800 2007

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Wawo. I'm not the only one. I've been thinking about all of this for the past months and reached the very same questions. Would you mind us to think together ?

However, there is one thing you say that is pretty enlightening (and close to the conclusion I draw) :

> Still my personal affinity for software freedom has not lead me to actively proselytize any of my friends and family.

Maybe there not much more than that : we are just not fitted to actually fight for a cause. Maybe we' re just good at realizing it's importance, it's good effects, etc. But we're simply not the guy who are able to fight for it.

Fighting for a cause, IMHO, imply that one you realize how good it is for the other (which I think can be more ore less figured out in an objective way) and then you have to believe it's good for other people as well. This second point is vital in provding the energy needed to convince. I have moved all the PC's at home to Linux because I've realize free software is good but I haven't tried that hard to proselitize because it takes a lot of energy to explain, clear the FUD, etc. to other who definitely disagree with you for reasons that are most of the time result of inertia (and thus are much more psychological than intellectual).

I'm quite interested in this discussion.

stF

Desktop Linux Adoption: An Introspection

KlaymenDK

Thu Nov 08 01:36:37 -0800 2007

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You pose a lot of questions, but offer no answers.

Might the motive behind "Linux on the Desktop" simply be the furthering of your own interests? When Linux will be available for general consumers, then probably it's finally dead simple and rock solid, and maybe that's what you're after? Perhaps you don't really care about Linux for the World, you just want to have, um, Überbuntu on your desktop?

For my own part at least, I am sick and tired of the way MS treats its beta testers, I mean customers (I mean criminals?). I don't want to be made to feel like a criminal when I'm not, and I dislike being made to jump through hoops that are really only problems for the non-pirates among us.
I don't want to spend every other weekend sanitizing my in-laws computer, so I've "desensitized" it to all the malware by simply putting a standard Kubuntu on it. They hardly know the difference, and I get to spend my weekends otherwise (which usually means in front of my own computer, meh). By the way, personally I favour BSD rather than Linux; mostly because I regard the package system as being more elegant. However I readily admit that the "desktop experience" is more polished and market-ready on Linux, at least until DesktopBSD hits 2.0.

So why do I want Linux on the Desktop? I don't, per se.

All this OS talk is basically just under-the-hood talk for us geeks. What I want for the Joe User is to become aware of the restrictions and commitments that is put on him by choosing Windows; such as the lack of right to move his installation to a new computer. That's just one issue that dozens of people I know are not really aware of. And since they're not aware, they don't particularly care.

It's not uncommon for a friend to ask me to reinstall his system, and it turns out he doesn't have the Office installation files, or the license keys, or somesuch. This usually comes as a great surprise to my friend (not so much to me). And every so often I talk to them about all the crime-preventing hoops that license keys really hope to be but generally aren't, and then go on to ask them if they would like software that does not need that kind of locks. That's when it usually dawns on them how restricted their software is, and what's so neat about being able to just download what you need -- legally.

That's what I want for the general user to become aware of.

Desktop Linux Adoption: An Introspection

KlaymenDK

Thu Nov 08 01:38:00 -0800 2007

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(I apparently clicked the wrong "Reply" button. I meant to reply the author, not the poster above me. Sorry.)

Desktop Linux Adoption: An Introspection

N. Dan Smith

Thu Nov 08 08:41:22 -0800 2007

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Fighting for a cause, IMHO, imply that one you realize how good it is for the other (which I think can be more ore less figured out in an objective way) and then you have to believe it's good for other people as well. This second point is vital in provding the energy needed to convince. I have moved all the PC's at home to Linux because I've realize free software is good but I haven't tried that hard to proselitize because it takes a lot of energy to explain, clear the FUD, etc. to other who definitely disagree with you for reasons that are most of the time result of inertia (and thus are much more psychological than intellectual).

Perhaps I doubt the real value of Free Software to average users.  To the vast majority of users, the ability to view, change, and redistribute the sources of the software they use has absolutely zero value.  Yes, I made my own custom build of Amarok so I could load .ogg files on to my iPod, but very few people can do that.  People will experience the corollary benefits (which is my Bruce Perens section), but those are truly the benefits of Open Source and not Free Software.  Yes, I care about freedom, but as much as I am an RMS fanboy, I do not think that Freedom has much meaning to most users.  After all, wasn't the catalyst for Stallman's campaign a malfunctioning printer driver he wanted to fix?  There are very few people who can do that.

Desktop Linux Adoption: An Introspection

Ian Gibson

Thu Nov 08 05:52:55 -0800 2007

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I just want open standards to become universal in computing, so I can use whatever operating system I want based on its own merits rather than its level of support from third party vendors.

For example, this whole BBC streaming media debacle wouldn't have happened if they'd just picked an open media format and left it at that - they wouldn't need to support any particular OS. Likewise if ODF takes off as the standard document format, office software could then compete on its merits rather than its compatibility with a secret file format.

In fact, ODF is the most promising development on the horizon at the moment - far more important than linux advocacy - since it could completely transform the 'office' market. Obviously, Microsoft have billions of dollars per year at stake so they'll do absolutely anything they can to stop it, which is why I think that pushing ODF is the one thing that all OSS and FS advocates should be spending their time on right now.

Desktop Linux Adoption: An Introspection

phred14

Thu Nov 08 06:21:59 -0800 2007

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For a moment, state the counter-argument:
The personal desktop marketplace is well-served by Microsoft's near monopoly, along with a minor Apple presence. 

Let's add a corollary to that: 
The personal desktop marketplace is well-served when Microsoft has very little competitive pressure to improve those products.

IMHO the counter-argument is pretty easy to knock flat.

Desktop Linux Adoption: An Introspection

Ben Hutchings

Sat Nov 10 07:29:29 -0800 2007

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Microsoft has a fair amount of competitive pressure to improve its applications: it makes a lot of its money from upgrades, where it's competing withs its own previous versions. (This doesn't apply, of course, to applications that are expected to be "free", such as browsers. With Netscape out of the way, we saw IE completely stagnate.)

Desktop Linux Adoption: An Introspection

tclark

Thu Nov 08 06:28:28 -0800 2007

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In my work as a computer professional, I have found that Linux and related Free Software has made it easier for me to solve a wide variety of problems.  If I had to work with proprietary software, many tasks would be more difficult than they are now.  

When I observe some of my proprietary-software-using colleagues struggle with issues that Linux users either don't have or that they resolve easily, I wish that those colleagues also used Linux so that they could just stop hassling with proprietary systems and use their time to build interesting and functional computer system.

Desktop Linux Adoption: An Introspection

Sean Diggity

Thu Nov 08 08:32:36 -0800 2007

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Well personally I just want to see free software on the desktop, and everywhere else.  Doesn't matter what the distro is, although I do think the quality of almost any of the major FOSS distros is superior to the proprietary alternatives (Windows and OSX).

The real question is, why wouldn't you want FOSS on the desktop (and in your cell phone, car, etc.)?

Beyond caring about freedom, there are many practical reasons to go with FOSS.  They've been repeated elsewhere ad nauseum, and there are plenty of personal anecdotes as well (everybody's got a horror story).

Desktop Linux Adoption: An Introspection

disco

Thu Nov 08 09:08:15 -0800 2007

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The reason freedom. The reason to evangelize it to others is for freedom to triumph we need a critical mass that forces the proprietary systems to support open standards. It doesn't have to be a majority of users but it must not be negligible (like desktop Linux currently is). If you don't obtain that critical mass the proprietary systems can crush freedom. Firefox has hit the critical mass in the browser space, forcing IE to better support web standards. We need ODF and desktop Linux to get where Firefox is at to ensure freedom's longevity in their spaces.

Hardware Support

stephen

Thu Nov 08 09:34:41 -0800 2007

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If 2008 was the year of FreeBSD on the desktop, and as a result manufacturers released more specifications and Linux got better hardware support, I would be ecstatic.

Desktop Linux Adoption: An Introspection

GuyFawkes

Thu Nov 08 09:35:39 -0800 2007

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There are three aspects...

1/ Linux is (usually) free, as in gratis.

2/ Linux is open source, as in you can not just see, but tinker.

3/ Linux is egalitarian.

A certain portion of the market will like linux for reason #1, these are the same people who'd be quite happy to use a warezed copy of XP, apart from any perceived risk of getting caught.

A certain portion of the market are coders, so reason #2

We've just accounted for about 99% of the installed linux userbase, including stallman et al.

A tiny minority, and I include myself in this (hence picking debian some years ago) are into reason #3, we want it to do everything good that xp does, eg games and software like photoshop and premiere, natively, and we quite like the idea of it being open source cos of all the cool community hacks this would enable, but the over-riding reason is #3, we want something that CANNOT be "leveraged" or subverted or subsumed into any kind of commerical scam that involves a shift in the power base away from egalitarianism.

So I promote / install linux at every opportunity, for free? yes, have done for years, and what I see is the three reasons above as the result, whether they stick with it or not.

Year of the Linux Desktop?

Larry_Dillon

Thu Nov 08 11:08:39 -0800 2007

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For me, that was the around 1996-7.  When Windows 95 users were rebooting daily, my P90 at work with Red Had Linux had over 440 days of up time.  It finally got rebooted because of a power outage.

(I heard that Windows 95 had a bug in a counter where it couldn't have over 30 or so days of uptime.  Almost no one ran into this bug because it never stayed up that long.)

But for Joe Average? 
The desktop market hasn't recovered from the monopolistic practices of the 90's.  If you buy a Ford car and decide a few years down the road to buy a Chevy, nothing's stopping you.  With software, one is locked in by the knowledge invenstment of the platform.  For some, it's far from a trivial invenstement.  Add to this overt acts like proprietary formats and vendor lock-in contracts and you have a thumbnail sketch of how the desktop evolved after DOS.

Personally, I fear for the health of the Internet because of the amount of Windows boxes on zombie networks.  Over 90% of the spam that arives at our email gateway comes from zombie Windows boxes.  I think Microsoft should be held accountable for this degragation of service.

My one worry about Linux on the desktop is that it might "suceed" in the wrong ways.  The trend of "dumbing down" Linux distros in the name of making it easier for new users makes my life harder.  For a useability point of view, my main complaint against newer versions of Windows is that they keep making things harder for people who know what they're doing by hiding everything behind a wizard.  Many Linux distros are following those tail lights.  They muck with the location and format of configuration files until the only way to get it to work is to use the GUI ... and pray.  Personally, I'm insulted when I see:  "Config file generated by  xxxxx, Manual customization of this file is not recommended."

Yet inroads are being made.

Have you seen the GOS Everex PC available at WallMart for $200?  http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=7754614

Universal sharing

zogger

Thu Nov 08 12:22:52 -0800 2007

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Good for the whole world. Just that simple. Computers run the world now, the cheaper/better/faster and *more open and accessible* they are, the better. The opposite, closed down software, closed hardware, way WAY expensive, etc was how it used to be, and we can see the difference in just two decades.

What I don't like is how dismally hard it is to recycle components once they are past usefulness and are obsolete. I wish there had more thought earlier on to making them much easier to be scrapped out and reused, down to the chemical level I mean. Same for all the gadgets really. It used to be, you didn't change gadgets much and just kept them repaired, now that is getting to the point for most folks it just isn't practical. My dad was the local TV and Radio guy, what we call the "whitebox shop" on the side when I was growing up, so I remember this stuff, along with fixable vacuum cleaners and toasters and such like. Every little town had a fixit shop or two. Totally different now, for the most part it is run stuff until some tiny part busts, making the whole thing non functional, so it gets trash canned. Big fat e-waste and an environmental nightmare. Anyway, due to the amazing amount of different ways you can set linux up, you can hang on to older hardware and get a lot of useful life out of it before scrapping, although the high end polished full bloaterized distros tend to like the more powerful and newer boxes obviously, same as the closed source competition....but you still have some good choices there.

I think that's why I like the OLPC and eeePC and the new gOS PC stuff, functional enough, cheap, less power to run, probably less to construct, steps in the right direction. And they run desktop linux, which is cheap or free and based on universal sharing, the community barn raising of the 21st century. I can see custom coded stuff being expensive, but mass produced universal desktop OS and apps-to me, same as any other digital bits,music, movies, etc, better to get it out the door for what downloading and cheap replication on plastic disks is worth and a tiny scosh more for "profit",. do it on mass scales.

I actually would have no probs paying for a very well built distro if there was a way to setup micropayments to all the contributors along with the distro packager's and maintainer's, as long as 1) still cheap, perhaps ten bucks for the disk or 5 for the download, and 2) not every two months or something, at most once a year,and 3) limited to maybe the capacity of half a Cd for the base install, no need for a full one or geez lowqeez a DVD worth. Who *really* uses all the apps on a linux that comes on a multi gigabyte DVD?

For example I like fedora ( I used to pay for the RH boxed set before they ended it for hundreds of dollars "workstation" version, but they don't want my loot now for a cheap desktop, so oh well...), but I only install every other one now, twice a year is just too much, the dang download patches are just a never ending stream to keep updated, serious PITA with dialup now. I honestly think they should do five year freezes based on expected hardware it will run on, and not rely so much on faster chips every year and ever increasing RAM etc, help to cut down on waste. Better code, concentrate on efficiency and stability and security, less blinkenlights new shiny stuff that pushes "too fast" hardware upgrade cycles. Same with cellphones, etc.

And some sort of STANDARD BATTERIES for laptops, cellphones and portable music players, etc, this proprietary design and sizes etc is for the birds, I have seen too many times a replacement battery costs more than a new whatever. That's just nuts and wouldn't happen with standard battery sizes. I have an older toshiba satellite and a powerbook, both still work, both have no good batteries in them because replacements are just too high, and they wouldn't be with some sort of standard sizes. It worked for flashlights and radios for decades, why not modern gadgets? Heck, I am sitting on a stack of cordless drills that would still function with new batteries, but quite literally it is cheaper to just buy a new whole package, drill, batt, charger, etc.

Universal sharing

Uncle Entity

Thu Nov 08 16:00:40 -0800 2007

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I honestly think they should do five year freezes based on expected hardware it will run on, and not rely so much on faster chips every year and ever increasing RAM etc, help to cut down on waste.

I know some distros have the extended, multi-year support cycle. Don't know about RedHat or Fedora but Ubuntu 6.06 LTS had 5 year server and 3 year desktop support.

I would think after it's all stabilized the security patches would barely keep coming in. My favorite is where they update a multi-package, multi-hundred-megabyte program like OpenOffice that takes a while to download on broadband and you look at the changelog;"updated maintainer's email address".

Then you have the BSDs who support their old releases until the end of time...

Desktop Linux Adoption: An Introspection

deek

Thu Nov 08 17:52:24 -0800 2007

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I am using Desktop Linux right now. At work. I do all my office editing with the OpenOffice suite, and the only thing that I really need windows for is Outlook and Internet Explorer (for a ticket tracking intranet site).

Luckily, we have a teminal server at work, and I use the excellent rdesktop software to connect in and run what I need. The bonus is, I don't have to run that bloated monstrosity, Outlook, directly on my work PC, thus saving more RAM to run my own programs in.

The Year of the Linux Desktop was last year, for my father. I installed Ubuntu on his PC, replacing the crashing and freezing Windows 98 that he had. He's been happy with it ever since, and loves to play Mahjong and the wide assortment of card games that usually accompany Linux desktops. Otherwise, he just uses it for browsing, which Firefox on Linux can do more than adequately.

I don't really care if Linux takes over the world. I don't mind if Windows stays number one for OS software. I'm pretty happy with how things are. I would prefer more software support from companies though, and if increased market share leads to that, then bring it on!

Desktop Linux Adoption: An Introspection

Paul Jackson

Thu Nov 08 18:33:05 -0800 2007

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I remember teaching my wife how to use Linux instead of the windows she was used to, I told her "just single click the icons instead of double clicking" and off she went. Of course she complaint that she was afraid she'd "erase" some of my files by mistake I told her she couldn't because she wasn't root, the same as I couldn't erase hers when I wasn't root, between limited users and a journalizing file system 95% of the common desktop problems simply aren't possible.

Desktop Linux Adoption: An Introspection

Richard Young

Thu Nov 08 21:37:32 -0800 2007

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This question really depends on whether you are talking about using Open Source desktops in the home or at work.

If at home, I think that the majority of users can be served currently by most modern distros (Excluding the usual 'what about xyz game' debate)

The corporate world is very different.  The desktop relies on large amounts of back office infrastructure.

Generally you need a single sign on, directory enabled authentication system in place.  You then want to be able to link that to remote application deployment (Lets face it, SAP/Autodesk etc are never going to release a open source client which means licensing woes),  Hardware/Software auditing, user desktop rights/restrictions (including corporate branding and access control) and the ability to plug in other authentication based controls that may crop up (Remote Access cards for servers spring to mind for instance).

Now if we could petition Novell to open source E-Directory and Zen-Works, the problem would be solved :-)

Seriously though, I don't think that enough emphasis is ever placed on the supporting infrastructure for desktops within the Enterprise.  Very few Enterprises will use desktop Linux until it can seamlessly integrate with the back-ends that they already have.

Desktop Linux Adoption: An Introspection

trentreviso

Fri Nov 23 19:17:59 -0800 2007

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I am another one who daily looks for signs of Linux adoption, and I, too, often wonder why I care so much.

I think that mine is mostly a cry for respect. I once used the OSs of that big company exclusively. I enjoyed building my own computers, tweaking the hardware and software to my specs, and imagined myself to be some clever artist/engineer.

Then, the big company stopped allowing me to upgrade the motherboard. They complained if I changed too many things in my system too quickly, and demanded that I telephone them if I wanted to keep using my upgraded hardware. They wanted me to reassure them that my hardware tweaks were not an attempt to steal their software. They made it more expensive for me to donate my old computers to some relative or neighborhood kid than it was for the relative or kid to just go out and buy a brand new computer. Increasingly, I began to feel like I was some schlep that the big company was using as a doormat. Increasingly, and weirdly, I began to feel that the abuse was personal. Increasingly, I began to wish that someone would put big company in its place.

Then along came Linux. It was everything the big company used to be, and more. It was freedom; but, more importantly, it was respect. I could do anything I wanted with Linux, and no one cared. I could install it on as many computers as I wanted, and no one would come after me, demanding more money. I could change the hardware all that I wanted without phoning home to the mother ship for permission. Linux was freedom, and it felt wonderful. I wanted to jab my fist in the air and shout "Viva Linux," as though I was some improbable Marxist revolutionary!

I began to care about the open source movement, because it seems like it is one of the few really positive things happening in the world at the moment. I want it to succeed, because most of the other things I care about seem to be failing. I care about it way more than I should, and way more than I generally let on to those around me. I want to see something good happen to the world, something that can make life better for people.

Viva Linux! Viva FOSS!