

Linux to spend eternity in shadow of 'little blue E' - twampss
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/26/dziuba_linux_desktop/

======
niels_olson
We are developing a web portal for the med students at our school
(tmedweb.tulane.edu).

Firefox: 48.8% IE: 32% Safari: 16.3% Chrome: 3%

IE would loose even more if the library wasn't full of MSFT Dells.

My wife uses Ubuntu on her laptop. It was quite painful to get started with it
two years ago, but she had already been using OpenOffice (which was her
choice, because she refused to buy MSFT Office and was prepared to use a text
editor until I showed her OpenOffice). That would have been a huge leap,
except she was already using Firefox. Which just wasn't all that big a leap.

We installed Ubuntu dual-boot because she could never get on the wireless
network at work and I'd always come in, get on the network with my laptop, and
then go online and look for how to fix her Windows problem. So she wanted to
give that a try. And she didn't want to get on the internet. She really just
wanted to send stuff to the printer.

She hasn't booted into windows in over a year. Totally her choice.

Now her girlfriends at work (~20 employees, 90% women, everyone uses their own
laptop) are asking her questions about why her windows wobble and how it is
she can fetch documents from home, and how to they get their wireless networks
to pop out of a widget at the top.

Our kids have had more exposure to Linux than to Windows. My wife also uses
her laptop to set up a movie for them to watch (the Smurfs and Bob the Builder
are their favorites), when we drive to my parents' house (8 hours away). They
play Sesame Street Workshop, Starfall, whatever.

Time. It takes time. Measured on a generational scale.

~~~
Prrometheus
Your wife has a linux expert at home. Sadly, none of my friends that knew
linux were close enough/evangelical enough to help me with my driver issues.

------
miloshh
I think those complaining about Linux in the desktop being in shadow are
missing the point. They are always implying that the problem is people being
stupid, or the costs of retraining being high, or evil Microsoft's marketing,
or sysadmins trained in Microsoft stuff that don't want to change...

Face it... Linux is _hard_. I am close to a Ph.D. in CS, have spent years
programming in several languages on different operating systems, I'm a geek
that tries out new Linux distros just for fun, and I still find it very hard
to make them work. I always find myself recompiling the kernel, sound drivers,
etc from sources. I always have to turn off automatic updates, because they
always screw up the installation - this kind of badness simply doesn't exist
on Windows.

The simple, dumb Windows model of software installation, where the vendor is
responsible for providing a working self-installer, and every program occupies
its own directory, just seems so much better than the intricate repositories
of Linux distros, which you cannot bypass without risk of screwing up your
system.

I like Linux and I will keep playing with it, but I'm not surprised by its
minimal share in the desktop world.

~~~
coryrc
"it just works": Asus EEE PC

However, unless you are a kernel developer, if you are recompiling the kernel
or sound drivers, you are working against the system and making life harder on
yourself.

There's a small glitch in newer versions of X.org that (until recently) didn't
allow proper dual-screens on Radeon cards. I didn't remove the debian package,
download the newest X.org CVS, and compile my own version. I just reverted the
package and pinned it until I felt like upgrading it. Hell, there wasn't any
reason to upgrade in the first place, so that was the first mistake.

If you ever have to compile something you are either not using a modern distro
(Debian, Ubuntu, and, I presume, Fedora) or are using the same techniques that
were required in the 1990s but are just bad habits today (I learned this the
hard way).

~~~
miloshh
Hmm.. I agree these are becoming bad habits, but what if all the good habits
fail? That is actually a very common case, I think.

I once couldn't make sound work on a laptop, so I tried all the obvious tricks
- check if the mixer isn't accidentally set to zero etc. But when all failed,
I decided to download the latest nightly build of ALSA, recompile it, and
guess what - it solved the problem. I still don't know what it was...

I have similar stories with GPU support and power management, and I think I'm
not alone. But we're getting into too much detail...

~~~
coryrc
Fair enough. I find it's easier to pretend the driver doesn't exist unless
it's packaged, and do whatever I would otherwise do.

If you were using debian or ubuntu, they removed the firmware from ALSA for
legal reasons. Ugh, I know; it would be nice if they warned someone. See
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/26294> or
[http://forum.soft32.com/linux2/Bug-434592-alsa-firmware-
load...](http://forum.soft32.com/linux2/Bug-434592-alsa-firmware-loaders-
Missing-firmware-ins-ftopict104021.html)

However, I wouldn't expect anyone else to figure out which package to add
either. But for you and I, this is at least a step up from recompiling.

------
graemep
The Register occasionally publishes a Windows vs Linux article that is simple
trolling. The Inquirer is even better because they troll Windows advocates as
well (this is presumably their idea of balanced reporting).

The give aways that this is a troll: "Users aren't stupid. They just have
better shit to do than learn C++ programming or tinker around with FreeBSD.".
How is this relevant. My wife, my daughter, my father and my daughter's former
pre-school principal all use Linux. None know what C++ is, only my father has
more than a very vague idea ("its something they use to make programs") of
what a programming language is.

"How do I PivotTable in OpenOffice?": The average user does not use pivot
tables, or Visual Basic for Applications. In the average working environment
only "the guy who knows about computers" (there is usually one per department)
uses the "advanced" stuff.

"To the average user, the computer is a means to an end.". We knew that, but
it does not automatically follow that they will always regard Windows as the
best means to the end. People pay a premium for Macs that are more different
from Windows than the default Gnome or KDE configs are.

~~~
dhughes
> The average user does not use pivot tables, or Visual Basic for
> Applications.

You've got that right! I had to help some people at work, they didn't know how
to format text in Excel; they wanted to change the font and make the cell
backgrounds light blue.

I should have known it would happen, they were stumped by the hard drive lock
on the laptop before they even started using it. I showed them it wasn't their
network password it was a different password and got "but this says it's the
password" referring to a Post-It note with someone's network password and
username on it, a manager's! I brought up it wasn't good to have that written
down, a security risk, but was told by the manager it was OK. I gave up :(

~~~
likpok
It is a good idea to have a password written down. You should have told him
that it was a /valuable/ piece of paper, that should be kept with other
valuable pieces of paper.

Good passwords are hard to remember. Good password discipline uses lots of
good passwords. This is harder to remember. Sticking a password file in your
wallet is not a bad idea. People know to keep their wallets secure. They
understand how they work, and how they need to protect them.

~~~
twopoint718
I think I'm going to start using that idea: "Imagine that this piece of paper
with your password on it is a $100 bill. Treat it accordingly (w/ respect to
not losing it)."

I wish they made US paper currency > $100. The €500 would be a better example.

~~~
dhughes
I also like the Euro currency, the bigger the denomination the bigger the
bill.

------
fauigerzigerk
Employees cannot choose the software they use. Much of it is unfamiliar to new
staff. Anyone here ever used SAP? Oracle Applications?

Yes, there's the blue W and the green X. But for some reason Microsoft decided
to take all the familiarity away from people in Office 2007. They have
replaced all the menus, dialog boxes, names, icons, etc, with something
completely new and unfamiliar.

No, not just different menu items or toolbox buttons, they have replaced these
familiar controls themselves with a huge splurge of alien somethings that
cover about a quarter of the screen with even more bloat than there was
before.

In the next few years, companies will have to answer one question: Does it
cost more to retrain our staff in Office 2007 and pay for the new version, or
does it cost more to train them in OpenOffice and pay nothing for the
software? Some may even ask whether something like google apps isn't
sufficient.

The real issues are not familiarity or cost. The real issue is file formats
and macros and glue code that companies rely on, and the fact that Microsoft
shops have Microsoft trained and Microsoft loyal sysadmins who are anything
but convinced of Linux superiority. They're not going to install Linux for you
upon request. That's fantasy land.

~~~
niels_olson
> Microsoft trained and Microsoft loyal sysadmins who are anything but
> convinced of Linux superiority

True that. That's huge. The biggest sentence in the whole post. That's your
thesis, right there. Those are the people who are married to IE and MSFT
Office. You can't even get them to install OpenOffice, and if you want to run
FF, you better smuggle it in on a thumb drive. And there are a _lot_ of these
MSFT trained folks out there. One only needs to make one call to the help desk
of any large corporation to find this out. Or try to start a new project.

~~~
blasdel
There's a horde of "IT" people out there that barely deserve the title of
'Technician' (much less 'Engineer'). The only education they have or seek is
strictly vocational.

------
frisco
I don't get why all the responses are basically, "this guy's a jerk and is
completely wrong." No, he isn't--Linux is still terrifying black magic to most
of the general population. But, this article _says exactly how to fix that!_
You have to go after the perceptions around computing, and change the way
people view computers. The author is absolutely right that on average, PC ==
Windows. However usable Ubuntu is won't change that. It's basically attacking
the wrong problem, but it _is_ possible to attack the right problem.

(Intelligent) Trolling usually makes a point; HN should know this. I don't
understand why so many people responded saying, "he's wrong, (insert numbers
here), cars vs horses" and ignored the valid point he was making. The troll
said it was impossible to overtake windows; come on guys, as hackers we should
take that as a clue he means it isn't!

------
imgabe
Yeah, people will never use cars. When they want to travel somewhere, they
expect to saddle up their horse and ride for several days.

Travelers aren't stupid, but they have better things to do than learn how to
operate a two-ton mechanical contraption when they already know how to ride a
horse.

------
tialys
I can't tell, is this satire? I really hope it is... if not, then wow. I mean,
is he debating the merits of operating systems by familiarity? The people he's
talking about can't remember what they did in Word yesterday, so why would it
make a difference if they changed the program. The argument is weak.

------
Silentio
I'm not with him 100% but he does have a point. I know too many people who
think that "little blue e" is the internet.

------
dimitar
From the article:

>Users aren't stupid.

So don't act like they are. A already setup Linux machine is in fact more
usable than a random Windows machine.

I started using Linux when I was 13 and I hardly knew anything about computers
except playing games and using a browser. I was impressed by the functionality
and elegance of the KDE desktop that the then popular Knoppix CD provided.
There were a lot of cool stuff you could do without much hassle (except
playing games) more accessibly than Windows and it got me hooked. Also there
weren't viruses and anti-virus software so I felt I could safely mess around
and install stuff. My younger sister (she was in the first grade) also enjoyed
drawing on the computer and my mom didn't mind using Mozilla to use the Web.

Even a 5-10 years ago Linux was very usable and stable. Hardware support was I
guess spottier but if someone gave you a configured system you would enjoy it.
Thats why I think vendors should concentrate on improving and polishing
existing releases, proving support for many applications. It would be very
good if RedHat started supporting desktop machines for the retail market,
maybe using resellers to protect the RedHat brand. I wish CentOS had the same
huge Desktop community like Ubuntu does. Regular users don't have to endure
the growing pains of Linux.

Also I hope appliances running on a virtual machine like Xen would spread.
Virtualisation is the true path to reliability and IBM for example figured
that out back in the seventies. The desktop Linux should not try to emulate
windows machines but turn-key IBM ones. We have the processing power, the
memory and the storage to do it so why not?

------
point
Linux fails because the creators are too arrogant. They want people to switch,
but remember, those people were doing fine before you came along. If you want
people to switch, compell them with something they want. All linux gives is
problems and headaches. Even though I am a developer, I have never had to use
the internals of linux, so the fact that it is open source is irrelevant.

What really kills linux is just the arrogance of the developers.

~~~
igorhvr
> They want people to switch,

Who do you mean by "they" in this sentence? There are lots of people involved
in building "Linux", and certainly not all of them want or care about other
people switching to Linux.

> All Linux gives is problems and headaches.

Not true. Linux gives me personally much more than that: high-performance
comes to mind, and a good development environment out of the box too. There is
much more, but since you are just trolling, I won't bother to make a bigger
list.

> What really kills linux is just the arrogance of the developers.

It doesn't really make sense to talk about something that "kills" Linux - but
assuming you mean something along the lines of "small adoption on the desktop"
I will point out that Linux usage has been steadily increasing.

