08.08
As Sun Tzu said…
So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.
FOSS advocates need to learn to make an honest appraisal of themselves and their enemies. Sitting at sub 1% marketshare with no increasing trend while declaring everyone else inferior is the very definition of hubris.
Sure large companies are like an oil tanker in that they take a long, long time to turn while FOSS is (allegedly) agile and maneuverable. However MS has had over a decade to turn the oil tanker, and Apple apparently bought a speedboat. What is frequently forgotten about the analogy is that it is a significant task to stop an oil tanker once it has turned.
Any FOSS advocates want to make an honest assessment as to why Windows 7 managed to get a larger marketshare than Linux before it was even released? Surely the very people who installed W7 in beta form are exactly the sort of people who can (and would) install Linux, not to mention the lack of Live CD’s etc. Yet Linux has had nearly 2 decades while W7 had around 6 months.
Has anyone ever done any form of survey into why people who tried Linux ended up not using it? I simply fail to believe that more people installed the W7 beta than have tried Linux.
It was the RC that had a larger install base than the cumulation of Linux. Microsoft released the RC publicly because they were caught off guard by the proliferation of the leaked beta and the MSDN beta that clogged the tubes so much that some couldn’t successfully download it before the window expired and used the audience as an opportunity for QA testing. I don’t recall figures, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that even the beta’s share stacked up well against Linux. I mean it was significant enough to launch an unexpected campaign after all. So, think about it: Windows 7 beta(s) were:
1. Well, beta.
2. Pirated (mostly).
3. Totally and completely unsupported in any way, shape, or form.
And it still probably beat Linux.
How can you pirate a Windows beta? You just have to go to Microsoft.com and enter your Windows Live ID and it spit out a license key.
Of course they expired after a year or something of that sort, but still.
Like everything else when it comes to piracy, pirating the damn thing is easier. It’s sad really.
Again, you’re talking about the RC. The “first” beta was an internal build leaked onto The Pirate Bay and the second was an MSDN exclusive (that was nearly impossible to download even with the credentials). As Kommenter said, it was easier to pirate the thing becasuse in this instance Bittorrent provided better infrastructure than Microsoft.
The beta was released to MSDN/TechNet subscribers first, but there was a public Beta. The RC was out to MSD/TechNet subscribers first as well.
I’ve tried various flavors of Linux over the last 4 years or so. I’ve found every one of them to be incomplete in some way, either with drivers that don’t exist for my hardware, drivers that exist that work in funky ways–such as one for a sound card that wanted to feed speaker sound through headphone jack, headphone sound through Mic jack, and audio input through the speakers–software that is supposed to be high quality but barely meets beta quality, and tweaking. There is no way to run Linux without having to tweak something. And let us not forget the incessant need to call up a terminal just to do something that should be point and click and done. Search online, find code stew, copy code stew, open terminal, paste code stew, enter password, cross fingers, rinse, repeat…
Linux is a hobby OS and as soon as the FOSS crowd excepts that the better for them all. The average user doesn’t have time or patience or desire to make an OS their hobby.
They want to get online, check mail, surf, and maybe watch a movie, if someone else is hogging the TV. They don’t want to go to another computer, search for why their Wi-Fi is not working, print out code stew, tinker, experiment, and maybe get it up and running.
They do not want to go online and discover that not only do they not have Flash to watch movies/play games, then try to install it to be told they need to use whatever package manager is on their system which wants a password then tries to talk them in to using some half-baked shaky FOSS version of Flash that may or may not install either, then may or may not work.
The do not want to deal with looking for why they can’t play a DVD or Blu-ray disc on their PC, find some more arcane code stew that requires opening a terminal, pasting, password, crossed fingers, only to find that solution didn’t work and another is needed.
I have had every one of these problems in some version or other with every distro I have tried. I can honestly say that over the years, I have spent more time just trying to get my PC to work correctly than I have spent using Linux to get anything actually done.
Until these and numerous other problems are addressed and rectified, Linux will always be a hobby OS that shows up as statistical noise. These problems, combined with lack of quality software of any type, 1000 flavors that get in each others’ way, and a complete lack of direction or responsibility are the things that keep driving people away.
Copy paste for me except for the hardware not working part. My hardware always worked, till there was an upgrade and everything went to the shitter. I even had OpenSUSE crash in the middle of a normal update.
fglrx (or whatever) drivers on ubuntu also made me get a complete blue screen right after boot. I’m not even joking, it was blue. They used to work fine in the old version.
GRUB 2 also destroyed my system. Pulseaudio also gave a ton of problems.
The funniest thing was when the PC Speaker driver was bugged or whatever and my PC started doing random beeping noises during startup and shutdown.
Upgrading a linux distro is an experiment in self sodomy.
I copy that Kommenter. Roll the dice and takes your chances. I’ve had several updates that fell on their face, but the best one I think was the one where everything would load up, I could log-on, then do absolutely NOTHING. A perfectly useable desktop, but no mouse, no keyboard, no sound, no Wi-Fi, NOTHING!
I used Linux nearly exclusively as a desktop system, with, retrospectively, diminishing interest from 1998-2004. The two events that caused me to jump ship (though I initially told myself “temporarily”):
1. A near total meltdown of the Debian installation, which was constantly on the precipice and a near full-time job to maintain.
2. Graduation from college and entrance into the workforce forcing me to use the most economical tools.
One of the key factors in my switch to Windows XP on a laptop is amusing, both in retrospect and at the time: network info and configuration. At the time Linux, to my knowledge, lacked anything like Windows XP’s network tray icon. It was trivially easy to refresh DHCP and/or manually enter IP/DNS information. The GNOME and KDE equivalents were both less accessible and less reliable. Command line entry was error prone, especially with ifconfig’s unintuitive syntax.
I find the above ironic as Linux is/was supposed to be “built for the network” yet to this day it has problems with basic functionality (e.g. WiFi).
@anonymous
Accessible manual IP configuration and easy DHCP refresh? YouDontNeedThat(TM)
That last part reminds me of my networking teacher who claims Mac OS was always built for the Internet, LOL.
He hated Microsoft, and loved Ubuntu. He tried switching the computers in his class over to Ubuntu, but had to dual-boot with XP for his programming classes because there was no Turbo Pascal equivalent or some crap like that. But he said “Ubuntu would be used for everything else.”
Yet the hilarious part was for the networking part of the class, it was all Cisco this and Cisco that, which was all proprietary stuff. The Cisco website’s class material was all in Flash, and it took forever to figure out how to get Flash working right. I had no idea what we had to do, but it wasn’t easy, and even though all the computers were identical and had the same version of everything, it didn’t work every single time.
Then user accounts were a mess. For Windows we had Active Directory going on for user accounts, and that was even kind of screwed up because of the idiots managing it.
Hell, I have NEVER managed a Windows Server before I was “head of the server” and everything was all screwed up. No one set permissions on user files that restricted access, so anyone could access everyone else’s files — even the teachers!!
It didn’t take me long to figure out how to fix that…
Then roaming profiles… “What are roaming profiles?” Then when I explained them, they didn’t seem to understand and didn’t want them. I said screw it and set it up on my account and a couple others who asked for it, and it wasn’t even that hard.
No one has heard of MSDN or Bing for that matter.
But anyways, in the end most people continued using Windows because Ubuntu blew monkey chunks.
Now with Unity it blows even more. I used it for about 3 hours last night and I was disgusted. For Ubuntu being “customizeable” I certainly couldn’t pin the launcher even when an application was maximized, nor could I move the Launcher from what I messed around with in System Settings.
In Windows — not Windows 7, Vista, or XP, but IN GENERAL — I can put the taskbar where ever the hell I please…
There are those that will read your post, as well as a FOSS advocate I know, that will parrot “But it’s easy for non-techies to use. Why, I set my grandmother up on a system, and she has not trouble at all doing what she wants to, and she’s [insert age].” To them I would say, “Yes, it’s easy for your non-techie grandmother to use it, because her uber-techie grandchild set it up FOR HER, she did NOT set it up for herself.”
It never ceases to amaze me that FOSS advocates are obivious to the fact that THEY are the “tech support” for all these grandparents that are forced to use Linux. It’s not really that different for the same grandmother than if she purchased a pre-built Windows system that’s already configured for her. Somehow they just don’t see it.
@Ferd Burfel
I can’t imagine what it would be like to provide support to grandparents using Linux, because I help “support” both my mothers and fathers grandparents with their computer issues — and that’s hard* enough. Imagine trying to help a grandparent by saying “Okay, now open the terminal…” “The what? I can’t hear you sonny!” “I SAID THE TERMINAL!” “Oh! Okay… Now what?” “Now type sudo then enter your password” “So do what?” “SU-DO, NOT SO DO”
Haha.
* I say hard not because the issues are complicated to fix, but because they, of course, have so many questions and to complain about “How come Bill Gates didn’t do it this way?”
While you can certainly make the argument that a significant number people today have not tried Linux nor even know what it is, you could not make such a argument during Linux’s formative years of 1995-2001 and its brief resurgence with Ubuntu in 2004.
During the 90s the average user was considerably more technically included due to the higher barriers of computer operation. On top of that, Linux was EVERYWHERE, even on TV with that IBM commercial and televised protesting shenanigans by ESR and Perens. You couldn’t pick up a computer magazine without reading “Why Linux is your next OS” and every geek, from low level up to the top, pushed the thing hard.
So it’s pretty much inconceivable that during this time frame that anyone in a decision making or recommendation capacity DIDN’T get at least a taste of Linux and subsequently reject it. You don’t even have to take my word for it. Just go back in time and read columns that contain the backpeddling phrase “Linux isn’t quite there today, but someday we’ll all use it.” Most people seemed to take that at face value, but it’s really like being dumped and being told “it’s because you’re too attractive”. We’ve all read articles like that for a decade and so has everyone else. Year after year Linux gets a shot and then rejected.
Linux is like that fat nerdy chick that could be ogled by every guy if she lost some weight and acted more like a girl, but instead her friends tell her she’s perfect and keep dressing her in ultra tight outfits with a ton of makeup.
It’s a horrible sight to behold but her friends tell her she never looked better. Sad really.
@Kommenter
But if people were more honest with one another we would never get to watch people make a fool out of themselves on American Idol every year as the demonstrate that they can’t sing, nor can they tell that they can’t sing!
“The problem is you can’t see what the problem is. I’m not trying to be funny that really is the problem.”
Ohh, that’s not much of a problem. So let’s just stop this nonsense then.
Sorry, the above post ended up in the wrong location
@Kommenter, basically, Linux and it’s community have major image issues.
Okay… so I decided to fire up Ubuntu for the first time in a few weeks. I’ve pretty much gotten tired of this clusterFv(k, but sometimes I just gotta… just to remind myself why it is I hate it so much. First thing that happens has become a common problem of late with most distros I try… it disables my Blu-Ray drive. Not just in Linux, that I could understand. No, I’m talking about disables it in BIOS and Windows too. It turns in in to Hardware Non Grata. The only way to solve this silly problem has been.. and always seems to be… drag out my PC, remove side panel, make sure PC is booted into Windows, find inconveniently placed cable on Blu-Ray, unplug, wait for PC to reboot, and hope that it doesn’t have to be repeated a couple more times. Heh… FV(K!N’ freetard progammers.
WorksForMe™ you Mafia$oftShill™. Why do you HateFreedom™ so much?
Am I doing this right? Janne isn’t fitting the standard linux user job well enough (well, actually yes, but a boring kind), where’s Adam when you need him?
Try to get on with your life and have a nice day.
See what I mean? You’re the “WhatsWithTheHate™” type, which really isn’t fun at all to deal with.
Characteristics of the “WhatsWithTheHate™” Linux user:
- Answers in a passive aggressive, condescending way
- Always responds in the same way
- Never directly argues the points being presented
- Fails to realize his attitude is part of the problem
- Never explains his reasons for preferring Linux
It’s the most boring kind. other kinds include the “FreedomNutcase™” which includes Adam, Roy or even Stallman (this one is highly entertaining).
The “WorksForMe™” kind which is by far the worst, it’s certainly not boring to deal with, they cause so much rage it’s physically impossible to feel boredom, makes up 90% or more of any Linux forum population.
There’s also the rare “Pragmatist™” which would include Linus and Lunduke, unfortunately very few linux users are the “Pragmatist™”, if there were more it wouldn’t suck so much. It also doesn’t help that the “Pragmatist™” usually has a certain preference that goes totally against common sense but he doesn’t see it.
There are more types but I’m not gonna list them all.
“See what I mean? You’re the “WhatsWithTheHate™” type, which really isn’t fun at all to deal with.”
Sorry to disappoint you.
“- Answers in a passive aggressive, condescending way”
Passive aggressive? Hmm… How can we be both passive and aggressive at the same time? Or do you mean we alter between the two?
“- Always responds in the same way”
Do you mean that we don’t tell you you are just a bunch of idiots? Trying to be civil?
“- Never directly argues the points being presented”
I think I have argued your points directly. Not all of them, but the interesting ones.
“- Fails to realize his attitude is part of the problem”
Ooops, you are right on this one.
“- Never explains his reasons for preferring Linux”
I have explained why but in this community they were obviously not valid reasons.
“It’s the most boring kind. other kinds include the “FreedomNutcase™” which includes Adam, Roy or even Stallman (this one is highly entertaining).”
I think the freedom part is very important for making Linux superior to the alternatives, but not the only important thing. Functionality is as important.
“The “WorksForMe™” kind which is by far the worst, it’s certainly not boring to deal with, they cause so much rage it’s physically impossible to feel boredom, makes up 90% or more of any Linux forum population.”
It WorksForMe(TM) is important for me. As is WindowsDoesn’tWorkForMe(TM).
“There’s also the rare “Pragmatist ™” which would include Linus and Lunduke, unfortunately very few linux users are the “Pragmatist ™”, if there were more it wouldn’t suck so much. It also doesn’t help that the “Pragmatist ™” usually has a certain preference that goes totally against common sense but he doesn’t see it.”
Of course, Junior knows best.
“There are more types but I’m not gonna list them all.”
Good.
And something to make you happy:
Why are you guys so fucking braindead that you pay for Steve’s (*) inferior shit when you can get a proper operating system for free? With proper tools.
(*) insert Ballmer/Jobs
OK, have a nice day and try to get on with your life. There’s more to life than hating FOSS. Or hating Windows.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive%E2%80%93aggressive_behavior
I have seen a lot of Loons use this behaviour. Mainly Victimization.
Usually blaming Microsoft, OEMs etc instead of looking at the reasons why people don’t use it … which is the whole point of this article.
Or my favourite is redefining success …
Finally managed to get a proper response out of you, I was afraid my skills were getting rusty. It appears you’re not familiar with what we’re referring when we use the little ™ symbol. Allow me to explain.
Most people here on this blog (and similar ones) had to use Linux for one reason or another. Most of us had problems with Linux. As any normal person would do we went for the web looking for solutions to said problems.
All we found everywhere was praise, praise, praise, there were no problems. Sometimes having no wifi or no sound was mentioned as a problem but disregarded as something minimal.
There were some guides spread around but they all applied to a version that was 2 days older and as such no longer worked, or a different distro.
As a last resort, let’s try the forums, or posting a comment on a blog.
There we found the typical linux users.
A message like:
“I recently tried linux, I had the following problems, I didn’t have these problems on windows.”
Resulted in:
- “Works for me. Maybe you should study linux more before posting crap like this M$Shill?”
- “Why don’t you go back to windows? At least there they can monitor everything you do to ‘help you’”
- “Works for me.”
- “See, what you’re calling Linux is in fact GNU/Linux, or as I now like to call it GNU plus Linux, Linux is just a kernel”
- “Works for me.”
- “ROFL jst typ rf -f / to fix it n00b”
- “Works for me.”
After responses like this the user usually got a little pissed off, and as such his tone became a little more like the one you’re experiencing from us here. This resulted in:
- “Wow, so much hate, just use what you like”
- “Works for me, don’t come here spreading your M$ FUD”
- “Why do you hate freedom so much? Proprietary software is evil”
- “Works for me.”
- “L0L go bak to winblow$, so I can hak u n00b”
- “Works for me.”
- “Can you rotate your desktop on a cube on windows? I don’t think so”
- “Works for me.”
Fun bunch aren’t they? Try to guess which one is you. It’s easy.
For a complete list of Trademarks (or common phrases used by Linux users) check out http://www.tmrepository.com. Read the article on Abbie and the Loons, that’s a great one.
And the problem is?
The problem is you can’t see what the problem is. I’m not trying to be funny that really is the problem.
“The problem is you can’t see what the problem is. I’m not trying to be funny that really is the problem.”
Ohh, that’s not much of a problem. So let’s just stop this nonsense then.
“Ohh, that’s not much of a problem. So let’s just stop this nonsense then.”
See, you’re still doing it. Not understanding just how big of a problem it is.
Of course “you” in this case is not just you, but every non “Pragmatist™” Linux user. If it was really just you nobody would care.
I get the impression that the problem is you.
Thank you for proving my point. And the point of the article as well.
You’re welcome.
@Janne, are you honestly asking what the term “passive aggressive” means?
And not to get too nit picky about spelling, but “alter” is NOT the same as “alternate”.
I don’t know where you’d publish those five (?) categories, btw, but they are alarmingly accurate and need to be pinned down in print … er, somewhere on the Web.
Actually, if you want a guest column on http://www.drloser.blog.uk, then I’m happy to publish an unedited (but credited) version.
It was all good, but that passive-aggressive thing? My God, that was genius. It was exactly what I was thinking, and then the fool walked ignorantly straight into it.
Pure genius.
Meh, they need some work. Feel free to use them and extend them as you wish. No need for credit, they’re public domain.
“I think the freedom part is very important for making Linux superior to the alternatives, but not the only important thing. Functionality is as important.”
In what way is the freedom part important? In what way does it improve the product for the end user? Do you ever used the advantage of having the source available?
“It WorksForMe(TM) is important for me. As is WindowsDoesn’tWorkForMe(TM).”
Why does linux work better for your? Whenever I hear people say they personally prefer linux they never back that up with arguments as to why linux is supposedly better.
“And something to make you happy:
Why are you guys so fucking braindead that you pay for Steve’s (*) inferior shit when you can get a proper operating system for free? With proper tools.
(*) insert Ballmer/Jobs”
Because its a better OS in so many ways and it just works.
Every piece of open source software that is somehow worth using is available for windows as well and you don’t have to update your whole OS to get some new version of an application.
Plus you get a whole lot of high quality closed source software that is not available on Linux. If you want the biggest toolbox windows is the way to go and that is not debatable.
I don’t know about you, but I’m perfectly fine with paying for something if it means I get something better.
FSF does not value pragmatism, it values freedom which you could say is idealist.
We are not after marketshare, we’re after freedom to run, study, modify and redistribute software.
I hope you are using the royal We.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1
Please stop calling that freedom.
“FSF does not value pragmatism, it values being able to read/modify other people’s code which you could say is pointless.
We are totally after marketshare, otherwise we can’t fulfill out goal of having all the code in the world available, so we can to run, study, modify and redistribute software made by someone else.”
FTFY
To be fair, ubuntu is not part of the FSF.
What you say about the FSF is true, but “We” encompasses much more. Besides Ubuntu, there are about a million “Why you should run Linux instead of Windows” articles out there. It’s like advocates are attracted to the idea but understand at some level that the FSF’s core values are not remotely pragmatic, so they try to fill in the holes. They just can’t reconcile whether they want their thing to be mainstream or remain a hobby. There’d be no friction whatsoever had FOSS/Linux remained some underground geek thing, like Syllable or Haiku. Pushing this stuff into the mainstream is what caused the reaction.
Also why can you not value freedom and also gain marketshare? The two are entirely unrelated. You gain marketshare simply by being better – what you are advocating is making people use inferior software for some moral cause and don’t even have the decency to care about making it good.
You have all the freedom you want, just use gNewSense. Now leave us alone with our slavery life.
Yeah, but back in the day the FSF tried to promote their freedom by creating software that could replace proprietary software. Today, they’ve totally given up (because it can’t be done, of course) and they just tell users that proprietary software is plain BAD and they shouldn’t use it even when “Free” alternatives don’t exist or are woefully inadequate. Now it’s all about ideology, they don’t give a crap about actual software.
No wonder it’s working so damn well…
@ Rodrigo
“We are not after marketshare, we’re after freedom to run, study, modify and redistribute software.”
What about Software Developer’s Freedom to make a living for their dedication to their line of work?
Feedom to study the software would be completely nullified if the Linux Kernel only supported Runtime languages out of the box, and it’d become home to HTML 5 Online games like the Quake HTML5 WebGL demo out.
Feedom to redistribute another persons software? That leads to dividing and forking software when there’s disagreements instead of forcing unlike individuals to confront their personality differences and work together.
The GPL is the worst thing that’s happened to Linux, crippling involvement from Adobe, Auto Desk & others instead of building in the ability to sell apps to fund developers programming the OS Free of Charge, on a Free to Study Runtime.
“A pragmatic look at the state of FLOSS” uses the same exaggerations found among the here criticized advocates. Either you refer to a desktop environment on top of a Linux or not, but you cannot compare “nearly 2 decades” of Linux to the release of Windows 7. If you didn’t refer to a desktop environment, as an attempt to justify the reference to “nearly 2 decades” of Linux, then your whole argument and the never proven 1% market share falls apart as a lie.
If you didn’t refer to yourself as pragmatic I wouldn’t care. There’s no reason to trust any “thoughts” found on the Webb, but it’s usually wise to be extra careful when someone feels the need point out one’s own virtuous qualities, in this case pragmatism. Or you could keep that quality by scrupulously check given information’s truthfulness.
I fail to see your point. Desktop Linux is what is being discussed here and desktop Linux has had nearly two decades to try and make an impact. The sub 1% is incredibly well documented and is only ever refuted by biased single sample sites.
So 20 years may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it has certainly been near 15 and my point still stands.
How does the article clarify that you’re discussing Desktop Linux? I don’t see a single reference, only a circumstantial one for the ones knowing that Windows 7 is a desktop release of the same generation as Server 2008.
20 years is to double a more fair number, since Linux didn’t have a stable DE release before 1998. Even the kernel didn’t reach a stable release until 1994. In my view a more crucial date is 1999 when IBM decided to support the Linux kernel.
It’s your decision how to use information, because it’s your blog. I don’t feel any need to question any of your personal opinions or the purpose of the blog, but I question the how pragmatic it is to exaggerate to such a degree to make a point. If your goal is to please equal minded then I suppose you drive home the point independent of accuracy. I don’t need to read your blog, so I could blame myself for bothering even though I don’t care.
These guys are not pragmatic at all. They remind of the US Moral Majority or maybe the Tea Party movement. Not especially intellectual but very hateful.
This hate against FOSS was completely new to me when i found this blog less than a week ago.
I don’t need to read your blog, so I could blame myself for bothering even though I don’t care.
At least you’re honest about this. I don’t get the guys who basically say “It’s your fault for forcing me to hang around the comments all day!”
As for “not specifically mentioned”, you might notice this blog is 2.5 years old. It’s safe to assume with such a history fan base is already established and it’s not necessary to constantly explain the basics. It’s actually a pretty odd charge to levy as basically no blog restates its purpose with every post.
Whether Linux was stable or not, it was fiercely pushed as a viable alternative the whole time. Backpeddling now and saying that it wasn’t really ready back then accomplishes nothing. It’s just a variation of the perpetual five years where five years ago Linux was primitive and five years from now it’ll dominate.
You are the one playing the semantic game. It’s obvious by context that I am talking about Desktop Linux as if I wasn’t I would be talking about Windows Server. This whole blog is about usability and desktop Linux.
You do realise it’s 2011 now don’t you? There were graphical ‘desktop’ distros out in 1995, that’s 16 years. Even your more ‘crucial’ date gives it 12 years. Can you provide a decent reason why usage is still at sub 1% and stagnant?
You can choose to view it as a semantic game, but to me it isn’t. Some anonymous point out that this blog has it’s established fan base, and that’s probably the biggest difference between our viewpoints. According to your own “about” page the purpose of this blog isn’t to discuss “usability and desktop Linux”, but “a reaction to the Linux masses dumping their propaganda and FUD into nearly every technical discussion on the Internet…”. To some agree I even agree, even though I honestly don’t see such a big difference between users of any operating system.
Personally I’m not a faithful Linux user. I’m more a very none faithful technocrat using what works best for me(!) at the moment. Depending on technology some approaches seem to work better than others. Internet is probably the most obvious benefiter of FLOSS ideas. Pragmatism for me is to see what mechanisms work better for what task. Technology dependent on proprietary software can at times be ground breaking, but just as well very slow to adopt or adjust to changes. Such discussion will of course cross over and eventually involve business strategies, which is another story.
Since you brought up business strategy, I’m curious to know: in what circumstance(s) would it be beneficial to directly run Linux? I’m not talking about happening to have some Android phones or having some Linksys routers lying around or using some hosting service that happens to use Linux in some way. I mean actually basing a new deployment around Linux.
“I’m more a very none faithful technocrat using what works best for me(!) at the moment.”
So’s everyone else and they are overwhelmingly choosing not use desktop Linux. I say we have a discussion on why that is rather than devolve into semantics.
Mac users are sometimes just as bad as linux users, but not nearly as annoying. Windows users are the least annoying of all, although it’s sometimes annoying to hear their total misconceptions about Macs.
“You’re paying so much more for that crap, I could total get you a better pc for much less”
Shows me a 100€ cheaper laptop that’s 3x as big, weighs 3x as much, is filled with crapware, has a 1h battery, the trackpad barely works and the screen has a relaxing blue tint. It has some super recent ATI card which is totally awesome since I’m such a gamer.
I just look at him funny.
Getting off-topic, but Mac users overrate the quality of the screen panel, even insisting that it’s a 10-bit IPS panel when it’s easily demonstrated to be the same class of 6-bit TN panels seen in virtually every other laptop. Upper end TN, I’ll give you, but it isn’t more than it is. They fail to realize that the reason 6-bit panels are used are to conserve power.
Are there really people claiming it’s a 10bit panel?
The screen isn’t that much better, it’s just better enough to make a big difference. The colors look right while on other screens they don’t.
I assume, since Janne is referencing (yet not linking) http://piestar.net/2010/06/22/ayatana-missing-the-point/, which is a year old, he has at least looked at the archives.
Which makes this supposed theory that you should clear your throat and declare your objectives before you even start a new post EVEN MORE FEEBLE-MINDED AND NOXIOUS.
Oops, sorry, broke into capitals there. Reminder to self: buy Linux keyboard with FOSS drivers.
@Janne ( 2011.08.09 16:20 )
Let’s walk down memory lane, shall we?
Linux zealotry is the act of promoting desktop Linux to consumers. To ensure that the consumer switches to Linux, Linux zealots half-bake shoddy facts. This gets the consumer to use Linux, and all the while the consumer struggles with it even though the consumer expected Linux to be a libre et gratis Windows.
Click here for a bit more insight into Linux zealotry.
Go on Penguin Day and you’ll see desktop Linux advocation in the early 90s. Back then they were trashing “Chicago”, what Windows 95 was called before it was officially named. I can’t remember if linux_victim had it specifically, but Linux (and OS/2, etc) advocates would call it the “Great Chicago Fire”.
So, yeah, if it hasn’t been 20 years it’s been like 18.
I don’t know how much further Linux’s marginal consumer share can be “proven” as pretty much every general source has published it at 1% or less. Single site figures like w3cschools are inherently biased due to inadequate sample selection. An exception would be Google, though they haven’t published figures since 2004, since they are ubiquitously accessed.
P.S. It’s a little ridiculous to pose an argument then, when you’re finished, nullify that argument by essentially saying web talk doesn’t matter.
I suppose you’re addressing me. It’s not that difficult to find the dates. Windows 7 was release in 2009 and I would hesitate to think about Linux desktop as a competitor before 1999. Even if you extend it 1998 when KDE had its first stable release, it’s still just 11 years. Very few expected the Internet boom we’ve seen in the 90′s, and so didn’t Microsoft either, so what kind of computer landscape folks saw at that time probably differs a lot from what we discuss here.
w3schools are “inherently biased” only because statistics gets hit by more technically interested computer users. If bias I question, because how well does other stats represent computer users. I think a compromise between figures is a more correct estimation. We just don’t know, and does it matter? I’ve no problem with 1%, since it means about 20 million users. As I understand the purpose of the blog, it’s not about numbers, as if a personal choice of tool is better or worse, but criticism of how some users take this choice too personal (which of course makes it tricky to criticise without repeating the same error).
I didn’t say “web talk doesn’t matter”, I said it cannot be trusted. A big difference.
“As I understand the purpose of the blog, it’s not about numbers, as if a personal choice of tool is better or worse, but criticism of how some users take this choice too personal (which of course makes it tricky to criticise without repeating the same error).”
Not so much personally, more like religiously. There are no flaws and anyone that says there are is being payed by Microsoft, which is Satan.
w3cschools is inherently biased because it is of narrow interest, not because it specifically targets technical users. If you prefer, pretend it sells women’s shoes. The problem with “compromise” is that people who attempt this tend to not understand statistics and mash together generally available figures without regard to sample sizes or data collection techniques.
“w3schools are “inherently biased” only because statistics gets hit by more technically interested computer users.”
Of course it’s biased, it’d be like standing outside a Star Wars convention doing a poll on people’s interest in Sci Fi. Anyone who even remotely considers taking these numbers to represent the global situation as a whole is an utter retard and if you accept such methodology you can easily prove just about anything. Hey, I did a poll outside a gay bar and it turns out that 90% of this country are homosexuals!
Seriously. Every single source that attempts to eliminate bias comes up with the sub 1% figure. Deal with it.
The whole point is usage is spectacularly low and maybe this isn’t a good thing and can be changed with effort and self assessment.
“The whole point is usage is spectacularly low and maybe this isn’t a good thing and can be changed with effort and self assessment.”
KimTjik might be open to a nice discussion about it after he’s done arguing semantics, but Janne for example sure isn’t. Maybe Adam? Buahahahahaha.
Muahahahahaha!
Kerberos said: “Seriously. Every single source that attempts to eliminate bias comes up with the sub 1% figure. Deal with it.”
Why try to pick an argument over something I already said is OK? I’ve no problem if the number would be 0,1%. I own a lot of things that very few own. I don’t mind the 1% figure, I just have reasons to not trust some statistics. A market share number is also only one factor, and doesn’t reveal the state of Linux. You could make a survey to find out how many users who actively support either technically or by other means their operating system of choice. The relation won’t tell the whole story either but it will indicate how active a user base is. However, as I already stated in this and earlier comments, numbers don’t influence my choices of tools, be it software or hardware.
I actually don’t understand Linux users who are overly concerned about desktop market share either. Sure, maybe market share could help in convincing some manufacturers to make better drivers for Linux, but on the other hand why bother so much when most of the best manufacturers already do? Unfortunately folks don’t seem to care and buy all kind of crappy devices, just because it has a Windows logo on the box. The irony is that the same people might spend 2 months reading and testing before choosing a vacuum cleaner. I might only use Linux until something better comes up, but Linux users have very little reason to worry about desktop market share, since Linux already dominates so many related markets. No need for paranoia.
“Even if you extend it 1998 when KDE had its first stable release, it’s still just 11 years.”
Or more than half the time to raise a human being. Imagine you had a kid that could hardly talk or walk at that age. That’s pretty much what Linux is.
“Very few expected the Internet boom we’ve seen in the 90′s, and so didn’t Microsoft either”
If you are talking about the early 90s, then yes, but old bags like myself do also remember how MS made a big deal out of IE 4 particularly in relation to the “push” (or the “web looks for you”) hype in the years that followed. And in case you wonder what that was all about, simply look up “Active Desktop” on Google.
“Even the kernel didn’t reach a stable release until 1994.”
Right, because slapping random whole numbers onto a pile of code automatically make it stable enough to be programmed against.
Who the hell needs well-defined ABI or API? It’s just an OS kernel, after all.
“[S]o what kind of computer landscape folks saw at that time probably differs a lot from what we discuss here.”
The first version of Windows came out in 1985, and it didn’t take 10 years to completely take over the PC market. On the other hand, given 20 years of supposed progress, I still can’t make a simple dialog box without scratching my head over which “widget toolkit” I am supposed to use. If you think ISVs – no matter how big or small – want to invest money in a platform like this with the hope that it will eventually take off somehow, then think again.
Every line of code you write is a cost, and every line of code that you can’t sell to someone is a sunk cost. And as long as Linux keeps on being utterly fragmented and unstable like it is, it simply won’t get anywhere far.
“w3schools are ‘inherently biased’ only because statistics gets hit by more technically interested computer users.”
You mean people that have been told since their first year at college to use Firefox and Linux as the de facto standards for software development regardless of actual technical merits? No wonder so many web developers these days can’t even comprehend the impact of a simple CSS definition, HTML tag or javascript has on the behavior of the rendering engine.
“As I understand the purpose of the blog, it’s not about numbers, as if a personal choice of tool is better or worse, but criticism of how some users take this choice too personal.”
Unless you are talking about doing your hobby stuff in your own time and with your own dime, every choice you make in regards of tools has an impact on how much people can get out of their investment. And last time I checked, no one here was interested in what you wanted to use for your hobby.
What I meant by “not very long,” btw, is that the days of LAMP stacks are very nearly over. Like it or not, even the server is being commoditised. And only an incompetent lunatic would recommend RedHat (support costs, what? Plus needlessly expensive sysadmins) over Windows Server 2008.
(You can even run a LAMP stack over it, if you want!)
That’s what I meant by the days of Linux on the server being numbered. Let me know in three … no, you folk like five … five years if it turns out I’m wrong.
I don’t know, Kommenter … that sounds like a definitive win to me.
Muahahahaha! indeed.
If only the younger members of the Collective Linux Hospital of Bethlehem were nearly as engaging and incisive.
And generically to Janne and KimTjik:
Show us a version of the Linux Desktop that isn’t hideously broken (and in the case of Ubuntu, deliberately going backwards … just a personal opinion, but still), and you have something worth-while to say. You could also say that “Linux is an excellent alternative on servers.” That would work, although it won’t last for very long.
All this drivel about counting the years? Try the Mac OS. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to admire it. But you have to admit that it did, in roughly three years, what the Linux Desktop was not able to do in whatever timescale you choose, and will never be able to do, purely on a foundational and philosophical and technical basis.
Basically, Apple took a version of the hideous and outdated and I would have said worthless Unix family — that being BSD — and magically fixed all the bits that are obviously crap. Once they’d fixed those, they built their own superstructure on top.
You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to admire it. You sure as shit don’t have to buy it (I’d recommend VMS … oops, Windows. A far superior form of Multics).
But ya gotta admit that it’s nimbler and smarter and more customer friendly than Linux.
Or am I missing some crucial part of your argument?
Dr Loser said: “Or am I missing some crucial part of your argument?”
It’s difficult to answer, since most questions and statements are quite fuzzy. I couldn’t find anything really substantial in JoeMonco’s comment above and hence drop it.
First I would like to point out that I don’t know of any desktop, OSX, Windows, BSD or Linux based that isn’t broken in some aspect. Add to that personal user patterns and we’ve a quite an intriguing situation. You refer to a broad and inherently subjective definition: “But ya gotta admit that it’s nimbler and smarter and more customer friendly than Linux”? The simple answer is: that depends on who the customer is. There seems to be a consensus among this blog’s “fan base” that only the 99% share of customers counts.
Unfortunately neither OSX or Windows (even though still being a Windows admin) don’t provide me with a decent desktop for my kind of use. OSX could work, but unfortunately I would be forced to run another window manager on top, and OSX ports of those packages aren’t up to date. Notice that I haven’t once bashed any operating system, and I don’t intend to. As I already said I’m not a Linux faithful user, but at the moment it’s the only system that provides me with the kind of software and desktop environment I depend on, while still supporting all possible hardware I could use.
…
By the way, what do you mean by: “You could also say that ‘Linux is an excellent alternative on servers.’ That would work, although it won’t last for very long.”? Do you refer to some kind of SMB servers? I’m sorry, but as it stands now it doesn’t make any sense.
It’s not difficult to answer at all.
Stop pissing about.
You talk of Windows timescales against Linux Desktop timescales. I bring in OSX.
It really isn’t at all difficult to answer. And Monco doesn’t even come close to it.
Here’s your not very difficult question to answer: if a company that didn’t really want to do it in the first place manages to produce a BSD-based desktop with most of the major bits of Unix crap fixed, then why can’t any given Linux Desktop distributor (your choice. I am a generous man) do this within your own self-declared period (again your choice) of ten years or more?
You are a steaming lying pathetic little troll. I don’t normally say that; I normally respond to arguments.
But then, you have nothing, do you?
“As I already said I’m not a Linux faithful user, but at the moment it’s the only system that provides me with the kind of software and desktop environment I depend on, while still supporting all possible hardware I could use.”
We could use some examples you know?
By the way we’re not so much bashing linux as we are pointing out clear flaws that for some reason go ignored by the “online press”. It is in an of itself a problem that that is seen as “bashing”.
Apple did the only viable and smartest choice. Just look at the resources Microsoft has to spend in supporting several kernels and the huge work it took to fairly well sort out the main kernel, something that opened up the way to Core.
IBM wasn’t and still isn’t interested in supporting Linux with a purpose to offer a desktop Linux. Red Hat isn’t interested either, and chooses to grow and earn money on the server market. The desktop market is a mine field and I doubt there’s any player with resources enough to battle it out. SCO is only taste of what it would take. I don’t even understand what strategy Canonical has. Intel has acted quite ambivalent, even though being heavy users of Linux; first they backed what now is part of Meego, but probably got scared when it could challenge their own x86 position. We’ve seen some other smaller players as well.
Honestly I don’t think it’s worth it. I fully understand why Google simply ignored the “classical” desktop. There’s no way a community effort would make it either, and it would probably just kill what makes community efforts live.
Despite Linux originally being kind of a far shot desktop only initiative, we now have the weird situation that the whole industry is dependent on Linux, and more or less all big names contribute. Desktop Linux gains from this even though by some extent not being able to compete for mainstream acceptance. In a sense this makes Linux desktop users quite content with the situation, and I rarely see an eager to conquer the desktop world market. Journalists and some few rise a lot of dust for nothing, but I suspect the general Linux user to be maybe too satisfied to see their operating system of choice staying quite independent of company decisions.
“Apple did the only viable and smartest choice. Just look at the resources Microsoft has to spend in supporting several kernels and the huge work it took to fairly well sort out the main kernel, something that opened up the way to Core.”
What in the world are you talking about? Apple just took the work that was done on NeXT, while Microsoft brought NT to the desktop. They essentially used the same strategy.
But you have to admit that it did, in roughly three years, what the Linux Desktop was not able to do in whatever timescale you choose
And they did it twice, though Torvalds was a child the first time around.
Apple took a version of the hideous and outdated and I would have said worthless Unix family — that being BSD
It’s even worse as NeXT was based on 4.2 and 4.3 and not 4.4 like everything else is.
I would like to point out that I don’t know of any desktop, OSX, Windows, BSD or Linux based that isn’t broken in some aspect.
What’s being discussed is value derived by comparison. Perfection doesn’t exist, and not all flaws are equal.
Apple did the only viable and smartest choice.
Smartest choice? Most likely. Only viable? Debatable. BeOS was still on the table, and Apple could have taken another stab with building their own. NeXT gets too much credit. What brought Apple back was Jobs. If NeXT somehow didn’t come with the package he would have worked out some other deal.
Just look at the resources Microsoft has to spend in supporting several kernels and the huge work it took to fairly well sort out the main kernel
As Kommenter said, this was the way it was done. 32-bit preemptive multitasking systems were “the future” since the 80s but it took 20 years for the hardware to catch up. In the meantime we needed “junior” versions and got the 8-bit “BASIC” type systems, the 16-bit GUIs (Apple, Amiga, Win16), the 32-bit tweener (9x), and the “real” ones (NT, OS/2, OSX). There was no other way to do it. Microsoft proceeded in the most efficient fashion and the market rewarded them for it. Other vendors either stuck with old stuff or attempted to leapfrog a generation and they all failed.
“Or am I missing some crucial part of your argument?”
They have an actual argument? I demand proof of its existence.
“Seriously, just use what you like, what’s your problem, I use Linux because it works for me, I won’t specify why, it should be obvious. Windows however doesn’t despite all the tools I need to do work with being available there.”
Something like this.
99.9% there.
“It’s also the best platform for embedded software development ever invented!”
Well, I guess it has a C compiler.
“Apple did the only viable and smartest choice. Just look at the resources Microsoft has to spend in supporting several kernels and the huge work it took to fairly well sort out the main kernel, something that opened up the way to Core.” (Emphasis mine)
I don’t think I am even bothered enough to respond to this, so let me do the right this time around and reply to this farcical tidbit with a series of armpit farts.
*booop* *booop* *booop*
May I join in?
*booop* *booop* *booop*
I believe you have missed out the final raspberry.
*thrrrwwwpt!*
I too, would like to know what those mythical “several kernels” are?
And what is this “Core”?
And why was there a need to “open up a way to it” (what, is it a mountain village, and there was a landslide)?
Janne said: 2011.08.09 16:20
These guys are not pragmatic at all. They remind of the US Moral Majority or maybe the Tea Party movement. Not especially intellectual but very hateful.
Look who’s talking!
This blog has been mentioned here multiple times, apparently freetards can’t click on a link. So here is it again:
http://penguinday.wordpress.com/category/linux-archeology/
Speaking of “Not especially intellectual but very hateful”:
—-
Pete was SAVED but CHAD is still ILL!
CHAD has been doing this for quite a long time now
and it may be we have to wait for Microsoft to BANKRUPT
their OS division before we can save his SICK MIND.
…
Microsoft is but a mere mortal where Linux is a god!
..
Come on guys!… lets act like the UNIX royalty we are, and forget about
the Micro$not/Macinturd peasants out there…
…..
hey why didn’t that deranged terrorist blow up Redmond instead of that place in Oklahoma?
My thoughts exactly. One bomb like that beneath each ugly X building.. Hmm…
—–
Freetards (not all but many of them that is) are the most hateful group in tech bar none. Most people who found their way to the Linux critic community got there because they were sick of the hate-cult that accompanies Linux and FOSS.
I admit though, the situation today isn’t as bad as it was in the 90s and early-mid 2000, the time when the cult was at its most insane high.
Oh, and the notion that Linux only got popularity in late 1999/2000 is pure LOL, you must have been born in 1995 to say that. The hype and hate was in full swing already in 1996:
http://penguinday.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/blast-from-the-past/
Like was said, “Great Chicago Fire” comments abound circa 1993-4 and by 1996 they were shipping “Howto Linux” books that included CDs. I probably have one somewhere. A “For Dummies” book was released in January 1998, and by then every techie had at least heard of it. Otherwise there’d be no reason to make a “For Dummies” book as the series is notorious for exploiting trends.
“Oh, and the notion that Linux only got popularity in late 1999/2000 is pure LOL, you must have been born in 1995 to say that.”
Most of the younger Linux loons I have encountered seem to be born around that time to me, too.
You see, these chumps most likely wouldn’t even have a clue about the XMS/UMB gymnastics one had to go through just to get something – anything – running in DOS. Even now I still remember the config.sys/autoexec.bat crap that I used to hack away at all the time:
1) DEVICE = C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS X=A000-C7FF
Since DOS has inherent memory addressing limits of 640kB for system (or “conventional”) memory and 384kB for hardware-related bits and pieces (in the so-called “reserved” space), what EMM386 basically does is to use the paging ability from 386 and fill the leftover gap in the reserved space with actual memory from above the first 1MB address space (or what they used to call the “extended” memory). The fun thing about all this is that if you didn’t manually lock out the segment between 0xA000 and 0xC7FF, EMM386 would often end up paging extended memory to the address space reserved for VGA output and even the shadow video BIOS copy and, needless to say, result in a glorious system crash.
2) DEVICE = C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DOS = HIGH, UMB
This is my most favorite. The Extended Memory Specification (or “XMS”; people were actually bothered enough to make a specification out of this swill) describes a function in the memory manager that opens the A20 address line (i.e. the one right about the last used in real mode) in order to create a 64kB-sized space called the “high memory area” (or “HMA”, and I don’t remember which version prescribes that). The HMA is not just for anything but for storing parts of the DOS binary image in order to free up space in conventional memory. Once you have got HIMEM.SYS running and the “DOS = HIGH” directive in config.sys, mem.exe will tell you that “MS-DOS is resident in the high memory area”. The “DOS = UMB” part, is for stuff like this…
3) DEVICEHIGH = …
loadhigh …
All that EMM386.exe mucking around would be for naught if not for these two beasties. What they basically does is to tell DOS to run what follows them inside the extended-memory filled gaps (or the so-called “upper memory”) instead of the conventional memory. Here’s where the fun begins – the upper memory usually doesn’t come in a contiguous chuck, and since you can’t break up and store the binary image of an executable in piece meals, you often will need to figure out where or when exactly to stuff the bugger in above the conventional memory. Sometimes you are so short of contiguous space you’ll have no choice but to put the largest stuff in the upper memory and leave smaller things like mouse drivers (usually around 5kB in memory) without loading “high”. This stuff is made out of sheer pain however you try and manage it, and “memmaker” in MS-DOS 6.0 and latter is nothing more than a total joke when it comes to handling this particular issue. This is even not to mention that, in some cases, the only thing you can do is to completely forgo some of the stuff that you don’t usually need (like sound card and CD-ROM drivers, since they are usually pretty memory consuming by DOS standards) and only load them into memory when you absolutely have to. Of course, some drivers simply don’t allow you to load them from the command line, and you don’t really want to go through the DEVICEHIGH crap every time you want them in memory. Hence…
4) MENUITEM = …
goto %CONFIG%
Hell… Seriously, if any one of you kids wants to know more about this kind of crap, loving Google it (or Bing it if you happen to be a “Paid M$ $hill”™). All this recollection about the “good ol’ days” gives me nothing more than a raging headache.
Anyway, here’s my point – this is the kind of nonsense that we old bags had to put up with, but, still, people still preferred DOS to Linux because [i]it supported stuff that people actually wanted to run on their PCs[/i]. If you wanted to give someone Linux, you might as well give them nothing. Linux was nothing more than a load of hot air then, and it’s mostly definitely nothing more than a load of hot air now.
A trip down Memory Lane.
Those glorious days of CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT configured for multiple memory configurations…
Loading CD-ROM device drivers and MSCDEX.EXE…
SET BLASTER=A220,I5,D1 and configuring sound for every game…
Only being able to fit five or six games onto your 40Mb hard disk, and agonizing over whether to use DoubleSpace or not…
Running MemMaker in the vain hope you’d maybe squeeze those last few K you needed…
It was fucking great when Windows 95 came along and consigned it all to the dustbin.
Only one minor nit-pick; if I remember correctly, EMM386 required HIMEM to be loaded first.
Running MemMaker in the vain hope you’d maybe squeeze those last few K you needed
For me, the only thing memmaker managed of being was an utterly useless piece of garbage. If you wanted to squeeze a few extra kilobytes out of the conventional memory, manual configuration + config.sys menu would be the way to go.
Of course, you could also try QEMM, which had an overall smaller memory footprint than himem.sys + emm386.exe, but I did find its tendency to cause some applications to behave erratically a bit off-putting.
Only one minor nit-pick; if I remember correctly, EMM386 required HIMEM to be loaded first.
Yes, that’s because EMM386.EXE requires an XMM to provide the extended memory pages needed for the creation of the upper memory. Otherwise, you simply won’t get anything out of the “RAM” or “NOEMS” parameter. That notwithstanding, I think it’s pretty obvious I wasn’t mentioning those things in the order of a proper loading sequence.
memmaker was decent at arranging services to fit in available contiguous regions. While it was theoretically possible to do this manually, I never heard of anyone that did so.
QEMM was substantially slower, especially if you didn’t need EMS, which always slowed things down. The only alternative memory manager worth using is UMBPCI, and that’s only in a post 486 world.
memmaker was decent at arranging services to fit in available contiguous regions.
Kind of, except when it wasn’t. My Pentium 90 machine had extremely fragmented upper memory, and memmaker was unable to figure out the best way to get the most out of it.
After all, the upper memory allocation problem is not supposed to be easy for a computer to solve.
While it was theoretically possible to do this manually, I never heard of anyone that did so.
Now you have. And complete with a config.sys menu, by the way.
Anony-Muss said: “I too, would like to know what those mythical “several kernels” are? And what is this “Core”? And why was there a need to “open up a way to it” (what, is it a mountain village, and there was a landslide)?”
I’m surprised that this cause so much questions. I would suggest you searched the web for Mark Russinovich’ talks/interviews on the matter. I thought the audience here were familiar with Microsoft products, since Core, or with its whole name Server Core, was the result of a long effort by Microsoft to sort out calls between kernel layers. Anyway there’s no need for me to waste space here explaining what others explain better.
…
Judging by comments it looks like I’m an older computer monkey than JoeMonco, but what does it matter. Still it’s funny to remember the days before the 80′s and forward. It put things in perspective.
Yeah, so can you answer the question?
What “kernels” are you talking about?
And while you’re at it, please do tell us what you know of Windows Server… go on, tell.
To JoeMonco:
If you’re interested Microsoft actually has to support different kernels. They’re not that portable as you might think.
“If you’re interested Microsoft actually has to support different kernels. They’re not that portable as you might think.”
Are you trying tell me stuff about DEC Alpha and MIPS, which MS has long stopped supporting since more than ten years ago? Or ARM, which thus far no version Windows supports as of now? Hey, look – you are not the first one and not the last I have seen pretending to have lived the life that you haven’t and pretending to know things that you don’t, but, alas, I certainly don’t mind having a few good chuckles to lighten up my day.
KimIlTjik said:
“Anyway there’s no need for me to waste space here explaining what others explain better.”
Oh please do explain, I mean, surely you would not deny us of your wisdom…
“I thought the audience here were familiar with Microsoft products, since Core, or with its whole name Server Core, was the result of a long effort by Microsoft to sort out calls between kernel layers.”
Hey, people – Ohio Ham alert:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms723891(v=vs.85).aspx
http://www.petri.co.il/understanding-windows-server-2008-core.htm
A friggin’ product, indeed.
Well, he’s *kind of* right here. Russinovichs’ talk on MinWin described issues with Server Core: basically, to reduce size/attack surface many components should be stripped from Windows, but noone (not even automatic analysis) could sort out all dependencies in Windows to make clear surgical cuts. Which means that even though all included server roles are actually tested to work as expected on Server Core, everything around it provides Linux-ish kind of stability.
What he forgets is what Microsoft did after that: they’ve acknoledged problem and started to solve it. In a SINGLE product cycle (Windows 7 one) they’ve layered ALL Windows code starting from MinWin upwards. All without even slowing down active development of those components. All those apisets, kernelbase/kernel32 and api-ms-win-*.dll are parts of this layering project.
I did bail out but saw the message by some Anonymous above. You’re absolutely right, and I agree and haven’t forgot that it eventually will enable Microsoft to get a more coherent product cycle. At the moment though Microsoft has to continue to support different kernels. Why I’m interested in this is because is will possibly, as you point out, increase security. I’ve kind of changed profession now, but it’s still in our common interest to see these improvements.
Not sure what different kernels do you mean, but you are actually right. Microsoft has NT (3 versions of it are currently on sustained engineering), it has CE and it has Azure and Xbox (both of which are forks from NT and are still pretty close to NT, but not NT). But I’ve lost your point. What it gives us? Isn’t it common knowledge that Microsoft divisions frequently compete with each other (just remember that famous comic on management styles)?
Also both WP and Xbox are expected to move to stock NT pretty soon. Which gives us what?
“I did bail out but saw the message by some Anonymous above. You’re absolutely right, and I agree and haven’t forgot that it eventually will enable Microsoft to get a more coherent product cycle.”
So you still insist on making stuff up as you go along, eh?
As mentioned by the guy above me, the whole Server Core ordeal had hardly any impact on the product cycle. What’s more, it hardly had anything to do with the kernel. But, still, by all means, tell us all about this “several kernels” thing that you speak of. A number of us are still waiting for your answer.
Yeah, we really would like know about these “multiple kernels” that you speak of.
———————–
Across all PC roles it’s just the NT kernel (a single one) and ARM devices will be joining the PC in using it, Xbox will be following (the only remaining things will be specialised devices and large scale systems).
Microsoft publicly speaks about Windows everywhere – and they want a uniform platform.
Don’t insult the great Ham of Ohio with this guy – he just watches Channel 9 videos and believes himself knowledgeable as a result.
Le Ham on the other hand is a proper lunatic – and we should respect proper lunacy…
Since most comments now tend to focus on person instead of subject I bail out. I’ve busy day ahead with little time for “coffee breaks” anyway. I got an idea though about this blog.
Enjoy your stay!
(Assuming microsoft has a ton of kernels, all the ones I know of are NT, the one on the Xbox and CE)
What’s wrong with that? At least they aren’t trying to shove the same crap on a toaster and a super computer. Ever heard of Android? Do you know why it’s not Linux? Go find out. Other people can explain it way better than I can.
It’s not like Linux is any more of a cohesive kernel. Besides the near daily version churn, there are like 10 versions marked as current/stable, and that’s not counting distribution versions, which tend to be significantly modified. The radical differences in API and ABI between versions are well documented. Furthermore, the NT kernel is invisible to just about everybody whereas on Linux not only must the average developer consider kernel interfaces but the user must get involved with ensuring his system is consistent with application needs.
Not even DOS was this bad. It standardized around v3 and v5, and by the time v5 was required v3 was about 10 years old and the whole thing was about to be replaced by Windows 95. Meanwhile DOS was significantly extended without modifying the kernel. It wasn’t pretty but compared to the Linux development process it was as elegant as a professional ballroom dancer.
Nobody here seems to understand the point of Piestar. Janne pussies out and comes to a conclusion that this place is not pragmatic. KimTjik says he’s leaving the comments section.
Seriously, the whole point of why we’re here is that there are little kiddies who delight in trolling consumers and having them wasting plenty of days. We’re here to collaborate in stopping that. If you didn’t get that by now, now you should.
Linux zealots are the ones who troll random places and shove the operating system into consumers’ throats. To make sure that they use it, Linux zealots pull out invalid points from their brains. For some reason, Linux zealots think our effort is to eliminate Linux and FLOSS from the world. If you think that, you are missing the point completely. The effort that we do is to stop the Linux zealots from trolling the Internet.
You’ll ask, “why do we do this”? We do this so that consumers don’t fall for the Linux zealots. The consequences are severe: people who use Linux and get frustrated by it lose much productivity. These people are told that they can fix it themselves, but do they know how to code? Why are Linux zealots forcing people to ditch quality products for half-baked clusterfucks in the alpha stage of development? Why is it that normal Linux users think our objective is to eradicate Linux?
This is not a laughing matter. Thank you for listening.
-reactosguy
You’re trying to reach Linux fans with this post, you could not be doing a bigger waste of your time.
After writting a very similar post to what you just did, and getting a nice:
“And the problem is?”
I summed it up in just two sentences:
Kommenter:”The problem is you can’t see what the problem is. I’m not trying to be funny that really is the problem.”
But they really don’t get it, and I don’t expect them to. People who use Linux aren’t exactly doing it because they tried every option and found out it was the best, oh no, they do it because it makes them feel “l33t” or some shit, they LIKE having to use stupid workarounds, they LIKE messing around with nonsensical config files, they LIKE writing LongBashCodez™, it’s a bit like Stockholm Syndrome only funny instead of horrible.
Productivity is not what’s on their mind. They claim to be more “productive” on Linux and yet they enjoy jerking around with the terminal while moving wobbly windows in rotating cubes, oh and they reconfigure their system every day till it’s just perfect, only for everything to go to the shitter 6 months after, and then they do it all again.
Notice how they never explain WHY they prefer Linux? Because there’s no real reason, they took on a “cause”, as retarded as it is, and stuck to it.
Trying to explain to them that people lose productivity by using Linux and that making false claims about it everywhere on the web is bad, is like explaining to a monkey that drinking his own piss isn’t good for his health.
Trying to explain to them that people lose productivity by using Linux and that making false claims about it everywhere on the web is bad, is like explaining to a monkey that drinking his own piss isn’t good for his health.
This really crossed my mind.
blackbelt_jones engaged in explanations, but everything he said boiled down to “automation saves me time”. Not only were equivalent methods available on Windows/Mac but mostly the same tools (I think he was all about perl and mencoder or something).
They never come up with an explanation AFTER you’ve shown them the same thing can be done on windows or mac at least. Besides the honest “Linux is free (as in cost)” sometimes.
Here I am again. I happened to have kept this in a tab and curiosity made me read newly added. I’m not here to continue some of the old discussions, but if you have the generosity to simply allow me to address some of the specific questions in this section.
“For some reason, Linux zealots think our effort is to eliminate Linux and FLOSS from the world.”
I don’t think you do. The problem here is equally shared on both sides of the argument. A Linux user might read this blog literally and hence get that impression, just as some here seem to view all who utter support for Linux as zealots. Some rhetoric attracts certain responses and hence I think you shouldn’t get surprised when ridiculing someone’s choice might spark equal rhetoric. It’s quite similar to how some of the worlds conflicts can survive (by killing) generations.
“Seriously, the whole point of why we’re here is that there are little kiddies who delight in trolling consumers and having them wasting plenty of days. We’re here to collaborate in stopping that. If you didn’t get that by now, now you should.”
I understood that, but for some reason I got challenged somewhere in this comment section, as if that wasn’t you goal. Probably some misunderstanding. On the other hand I think you’ll spend more time sharing thoughts with equal minded, that really addressing these consumers. To me it looks a bit counter productive though.
I’ve one friend who tries to convince everyone to by Macs and one working mate who shouts Windows whenever a possibility arise. Personally I don’t understand the point of either supporters. My typical answer when folks look for advice, like “should buy Windows or a Mac, or would Linux be a good alternative for me?”, is to as neutral as possible point out strengths and weaknesses of each system. Some here might suspect that I’m some kind of “all bets on Linux” guy, but frankly I don’t want any responsibility for what operating system persons choose. Sure, I might be more tired helping people with Windows, and sometimes pretend I know nothing (just like Emanuel in “Fawlty Towers”!), and Linux works as a great façade, as I’ve never seen a Windows system!
“Why are Linux zealots forcing people to ditch quality products for half-baked clusterfucks in the alpha stage of development? Why is it that normal Linux users think our objective is to eradicate Linux?”
If you’re approached by someone acting this way I’m supporting your opposition. On the other hand I suppose you agree that it’s equally silly when some attack open-source technology as being a communist plot, don’t you? I’ve met surprisingly many such people. My main desktop (and consumer oriented server solutions) Linux distribution, be it at work or at home, is Arch. Let me quote its “Forum Etiquette”:
“Respect Other Distributions and Operating Systems
Maligning other GNU/Linux distributions, operating systems, or users thereof is prohibited. The entire Arch team is happy to volunteer their time and energy to provide you with the Arch Linux distribution, documentation and forums. Kindly show respect toward the volunteers, users and communities of other distributions and operating systems as well. Views, experiences and opinions are always welcome, but unproductive slander is not.”
That’s the kind of environment I engage in when dealing with Linux. As I understand you, reactosguy, it’s a mind set you share.
…
Here I address some thoughts of Kommenter.
“People who use Linux aren’t exactly doing it because they tried every option and found out it was the best, oh no, they do it because it makes them feel “l33t” or some shit, they LIKE having to use stupid workarounds, they LIKE messing around with nonsensical config files, they LIKE writing LongBashCodez™, it’s a bit like Stockholm Syndrome only funny instead of horrible.”
Most of the Linux users I personally know (I don’t count Webb acquaintances), don’t understand Bash or whatever other shell used. For the ones you understand Bash or the like, what’s so bad about it? Why not let people feel “l33t”-ish if they want to? Sure some are annoying, and you have the same kind of arrogant Windows guys, but why not just ignore them?
My impression is that you, and this blog generally, focus on less technical consumers allegedly being victims of Linux zealots. Still I don’t think you mind that consumers consist of technically driven users as well. I meet Windows users who while not needing it for administrative purposes, love to use PowerShell. Maybe they feel “l33t”-ish as well, but I don’t mind? Technology solutions, tools like Bash or PowerShell, aren’t bad and their users aren’t bad, and if someone boosts an ego by using them, that’s their personal problem and doesn’t negate the usefulness of the tools. Bash aliases are probably one of the simplest and most useful tricks even less technical users learn.
I do agree that Linux users as a group has more geeks, or wannabe geeks (real geeks are rarely a problem, but the latter group is a pain sometimes). Geeks are fine and usually funny, but some cross the line and take their interest too seriously. Therefore Linux probably has more radical users, with whom it might be difficult to deal with. In pure numbers they’re probably not more than their peers using Windows or Mac, but in percentage of all users of their operating system they’re probably more. The twist is: if they didn’t use Linux or BSD, they would most likely use Windows or Mac, so do you really want them on your side of choice? As a joke: I think you do better by leaving them alone, and let normal Linux users deal with them. You have your share of these wannabies already.
“Notice how they never explain WHY they prefer Linux? Because there’s no real reason, they took on a “cause”, as retarded as it is, and stuck to it.”
I don’t understand why the choice upset you. As reactosguy stated this blog isn’t really aimed at attacking Linux as software, but a certain user group. Let me be the retarded one explaining why I use Linux.
Let me first point out: I don’t represent the majority of Linux users. In my case one reason is that I prefer a desktop environment which works perfectly well without mouse interaction. I think the rodent is a slow and ergonomically bad solution for many tasks. Hence I depend on a tiling windows manager combined with either Firefox+Pentadactyl or some browser with built in support for vim keyboard bindings. Besides the tiling concept a prefer to set up automatic preferences for in what virtual desktop a program will run and other similar options. I see that some here don’t like the shell, but I find it extremely useful for even simple tasks, like playing music, locally or remotely, listen to radio, mail quick messages, chat, besides the usual stuff like ssh connections and file transfers. Anyway, I can achieve a compromise by using some not that frequently updated OSX ports, but the painless solution is to run it on top of a *nix like system. You could argue that I’m lazy.
The reason I started to use Linux was curiosity and that it’s needed for some technical solutions on the company I worked for at the time. A reason why I kept it, is that it’s far easier to emigrate an installed system between computers, cloning it to radically different hardware while not being forced to cumbersome preparations and procedures. Windows have become much better in this aspect since the days of XP, but this reason is very valid. Another thing I appreciate and use is that some distributions, like the one I mainly use Arch, is rolling, e g it never gets a version bump that requires a reinstall or risky upgrade between versions. Therefore I use the same install I did many years ago, despite that the PC has gone through at least three total hardware changes. I have got used to this and hesitate to spend much time on maintenance. I don’t say that you cannot do this with Windows, I’m only saying that I find it more time consuming to do so.
I have no real philosophical reason to choose one system over another. I strongly believe though that it’s positive for the totality that we encourage individualism, and that means we need to accept that even some technical solutions fit some individual needs better than others. What some view as technical is for others plain natural. I’m not trying to convince anyone here to use Linux or BSD (depending on task we use Windows, Linux and BSD at work), I’m only referring to my own choices.
Ok firefox totally bugged out and I lost my comment so I’ll post a shorter version instead.
Thank you for pointing out your reasons for prefering Linux. You’ve now proven to be a Pragmatist™, your weird preference being tilling window managers.
Nothing wrong with that, but there’s always some weird taste :p, at least tilling window managers make some sense, unlike an unstable ABI.
Also realize you’re in the minority. 90% of linux users (that are vocal on the web) are zealots.
You can get tilling window managers for windows and mac, but by your description of the way you work they wouldn’t fit. In my case they would be better since they integrate with the existing functionality and allow for mouse control.
You still don’t seem to quite get it, so I’ll just point it out again, hopefully you will:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/08/ubuntu-college-girl-dropping-out-laptop/
Important quotes:
“Instead, Dell, her internet provider Verizon, and the college to which she was enrolled, MATC, all help her to stick with Ubuntu.”
INSTEAD OF FUCKING GIVING HER A WINDOWS CD, SHE DIDN’T WANT UBUNTU GOD FUCKING DAMN IT.
“Sadly the follow up piece also touches upon the agressive and defensive response targeted towards both Abbie and the news-station from the Linux community.”
Oh yeah, girl isn’t really tech savvy and would like a normal computer with windows, let’s attack her.
You know, if it weren’t for the zealots, specially the ones that write garbage like “I tried Unity for the 500th time today, and I’m starting to like it a bit, I’m 70% slower at doing common tasks… And it’s ugly as hell and non-customizable, but canonical is going in the right direction”, maybe Linux could become a good alternative. I wouldn’t mind a good free ($0) os.
I understood that, but for some reason I got challenged somewhere in this comment section, as if that wasn’t you goal.
I, for one, love to challenge people like you. You know, people pretending to know things that they really don’t.
My typical answer when folks look for advice, like “should buy Windows or a Mac, or would Linux be a good alternative for me?”
Right, like you actually have anything worthwhile to contribute. No wonder your fellow went nuts there overhearing the amount of pure nonsense you spewed at your co-workers.
I would still like to hear about your opinion on that “several kernel” thing, though.
Sure, I might be more tired helping people with Windows, and sometimes pretend I know nothing (just like Emanuel in “Fawlty Towers”!), and Linux works as a great façade, as I’ve never seen a Windows system!
Is anyone here buying this? Because I ain’t.
Unless by “façade” you mean handing out advices to you colleagues in front of everyone else.
And you use Arch at work, right?
That’s the kind of environment I engage in when dealing with Linux.
To quote Geoffrey Rush’s character in Pirates of the Caribbean: the Curse of the Black Pearl, “The code is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.”
And given the supposed knowledge and wisdom you have thus far shared with the rest of us, I think we have pretty much known everything we need to know about you as a person.
You have your share of these wannabies already.
You mean you?
I don’t represent the majority of Linux users. In my case one reason is that I prefer a desktop environment which works perfectly well without mouse interaction. I think the rodent is a slow and ergonomically bad solution for many tasks.
Even though the keyboard and the chair that you sit on are far more likely to give you work-related neuropathy?
As reactosguy stated this blog isn’t really aimed at attacking Linux as software, but a certain user group.
That’s just his (as usual, faulty) opinion, and the subject matters covered by this blog are clearly more than being about any group of users.
I don’t say that you cannot do this with Windows, I’m only saying that I find it more time consuming to do so.
I think a number of us here have already figured out why.
[A]nd that means we need to accept that even some technical solutions fit some individual needs better than others.
That really depends on whether there are any real technical reason for choosing one solution over another.
And you? I ain’t sure about that.
I’m not trying to convince anyone here to use Linux or BSD (depending on task we use Windows, Linux and BSD at work), I’m only referring to my own choices.
You mean your choice of popping up here and giving us such gems as “Core” being a “product” while claiming yourself being a Windows admin that uses Arch? Tell us something we don’t already know.
@KimTjik
As reactosguy stated this blog isn’t really aimed at attacking Linux as software, but a certain user group.
No, I said that this blog reports on Linux zealotry and its followers, not a group of Linux users, because some zealots might not have even used Linux in the first place.
Please read again next time.
@JoeMonco
That’s just his (as usual, fawlty) opinion, and the subject matters covered by this blog are clearly more than being about any group of users.
That’s pretty much what I tried to say, and KimTjik was misunderstanding it.
Linux zealotry is not a group of Linux users. It is not.
~wondering if this Scientific Linux I keep hearing about ranks as a hypothesis or if it has reached Theory level yet~ and by Theory I mean the scientific definition of theory, not the common one of “guess”.
Scientific Linux For Grandmas!
Scientific Linux For Toasters!
I seriously doubt whether it is used on a single supercomputer out there, which the Loons are correct in telling us is the One Big Win of Linux.
I wonder how it works with SELinux? Gosh, that would be fun.
Alternatively, as a common or garden user of scientific software and various algorithms, you could just use the Mac or Windows and download Python XY and be done with the whole heap of steaming pretentious crap.
And the file system would work, too. Which is nice, if you want to save the results.
(Not just a sly dig. Our PhD intern at work today told us in the stand-up spit spit spit meeting that he’d got all the calculations working, but he couldn’t get the results.
(It wasn’t me who said, “Ah. You know this because your computer warmed up and threatened to burn a hole in your desk.” Oh no, It wasn’t me.)
]ou could just use the Mac or Windows and download Python XY and be done with the whole heap of steaming pretentious crap.
Real scientific software designed for laboratories can cost up to thousands of dollars per pop. And they generally only work on small-scale experiments and are 100% close-source at that.
Crap like “Scientific” Linux is just as way for CERN and the like to save money from IT costs so they can, you know, spend it on what they actually do as scientific research organizations.
I thought Scientific Linux was just RHEL with a different wallpaper?
Kerberos wrote: “I thought Scientific Linux was just RHEL with a different wallpaper?”
It’s a clone, just like CentOS, but SL differs in some aspects as they add packages and modify some parts of the system. SL declare all changes: http://scientificlinux.org/distributions/6x/rnotes/sl-release-notes-6.0.html#changed
…
To JoeMonco:
Server Core is an installation option, so if the debate is in choice of definition I agree that it isn’t a stand alone product. I admit that my wording wasn’t accurate. Still this option is called Server Call, and its support on server roles depends on which version of Server 2008 you choose. I was accused for “playing the semantic game”, but what you put so much rage in is also a question of semantics. The Server Core option is anyway dependent on the so called MinWin project, so what’s the big deal?
You say “I, for one, love to challenge people like you. You know, people pretending to know things that they really don’t.”, but where do I find your credentials? I haven’t been rude or made any personal attacks; you do and hence I can expect you to present more openly your references that justifies such behavior.
Just a correction before anyone explodes. I don’t why I wrote “Server Call” when it should be “Server Core”. To much multitasking I suppose.
It’s a clone, just like CentOS, but SL differs in some aspects as they add packages and modify some parts of the system. SL declare all changes: http://scientificlinux.org/distributions/6x/rnotes/sl-release-notes-6.0.html#changed
Yeah, SL has openafs. Apparently, that’s some cutting-edge, sciency thingamajig that you won’t find in a datacenter.
Just don’t let the fact that the damned thing works in Windows put you down.
Server Core is an installation option, so if the debate is in choice of definition I agree that it isn’t a stand alone product.
I’d give you that if you didn’t claim that you work with Windows for a profession. Seriously, how deft could one be to confuse a mere install option with a “product”?
“[A]nd its support on server roles depends on which version of Server 2008 you choose.
Server Core is just a minimal install option for the Server 2008 releases. Like every minimal install option in every piece of software, every Server 2008 release is essentially based on that particular configuration with additional functionality layered on top of it.
There is simply nothing exotic in Server Core that a Server 2008 release needs to “support”.
But where do I find your credentials?
(Alleged) credentials are what you use to act pretentiously on the Internet. Even in meatspace resume-forging is hardly a recent invention. Wanna be the biggest hot shot in town? Let our dear friend Adam King shows you how that’s done.
Knowledge, on the other hand, stays with those who have actually done the hard yard. Things either work in a given way or they don’t, and there is no third possibility or middle ground. If you want to cite a fact, give us the reference or show us how it can be reproduced. Don’t go around making stuff up and expect any one of us here to believe you simply because you claim to be a professional of some sort – I am loving Elvis as far as you know I am.
I haven’t been rude or made any personal attacks
To quote Dr. Loser, “You are a steaming lying pathetic little troll. I don’t normally say that; I normally respond to arguments.
But then, you have nothing, do you?”
“Core”, “coherent product cycle”… Do we need to hear any more from you, really.
And we still haven’t got any answer on that “several kernels” thing from you yet.
“It’s a clone, just like CentOS, but SL differs in some aspects as they add packages and modify some parts of the system.”
So there is no decent reason for it to exist then? If software and drivers were modular and standardized then the reason for 99% of distros to exist would disappear.
There are only two real clones of RHEL so I don’t think it matters much. SL exists because of internal needs, but in common fashion it’s available for the public. And why not? It’s not our business to decide what other individuals or organizations decide is necessary for them to do.
It does matter. With a sane driver model and a modular system based upon standards rather than an interlocking properietary dependency mess then there would be no need for the dozens of clones. Windows has 90% of the market with one version and you never hear of people wanting a custom fork for reason X as Windows is the base and it’s the software that provides functionality.
I suppose to form it into a question, leaving out server + specialist distros, what is the gain from having a dozen or so slightly different variations? And how would Windows benefit from having the ‘Linux model’ imposed whereby you had two dozen or so versions of Windows?
Windows has 90% of the market with one version and you never hear of people wanting a custom fork for reason X as Windows is the base and it’s the software that provides functionality.
You are kind of wrong there. People use Windows in different versions, e.g. Windows XP, Windows 7, et cetera. There’s no sole Windows version (at least, after 1987).
Even then, those are versions, compared to distros, which are different Linux OSes. Windows versions come out one after another, unlike Linux distros, which are maintained at the same time.
True, but there is pretty much no reason to use XP/Vista with 7 out.
Kerberos wrote: “I suppose to form it into a question, leaving out server + specialist distros, what is the gain from having a dozen or so slightly different variations? And how would Windows benefit from having the ‘Linux model’ imposed whereby you had two dozen or so versions of Windows?”
First of all, I appreciate this calm approach to a discussion. As to the question about my opinion, I think it’s to compare apples and oranges. The benefit for Microsoft has to be balanced against share holders’ wish to get maximum profit and customer demands. Microsoft control Windows code. I doubt Microsoft would gain anything from an expansion of their product line. In a sense I think some of their choices about differentiating three editions of desktop Windows 7 is bad. I don’t see multilingual support in 2011 as something that should demand a user to by the most expensive edition. Globalisation means people frequently speak and use several languages and it’s not some kind of luxury.
A Linux distribution is, as I’ve seen you write about in some other blog post, sometimes a product of personal curiosity or part of a study process. The code isn’t closed and that invites whoever that so wishes to fiddle around with it. Therefore you have corporate initiatives just as community efforts, and they benefit differently. Corporate initiates will succeed or fail just like any other business. Some community efforts reach industrial quality standard, while some, or quite many, don’t add something particularly useful (I’m sure a suddenly got 100% of fellows of this blog to agree with that last opinion!). Still it’s never good to dictate over other peoples lives; if they wish to duplicate somebody else’s work, they’re free to do so, while I still wish some put their energy into something more beneficial.
Many of the so called distributions could as well just be labelled remasters. Some don’t add any innovative feature or idea at all, but to add extra packages or in contrast to its master distribution include codecs that in some countries might be disputable (we had a court decision in the US not long ago indicating that if challenged there seem to be little reason to worry about personal use of such codecs even within the boarders of the US). I would like to see a better standard for what qualifies to be a Linux distribution. I don’t say it’s a total mess, because the obvious choices aren’t that many, but for sanity it would help.
Some Linux distributions are very specialized. Some for forensic purposes, some for copying, cloning and partitioning, some as fast live-systems, some as firewalls, some for specific server purposes and so on. That’s useful and I’m quite sure many administrators of other operating systems have some of these in their toolboxes. Nothing new, and you for sure know about these specialized distributions, but still good to remember when seeing the mere number of Linux distributions.
Kerberos: True, but there is pretty much no reason to use XP/Vista with 7 out.
Not everybody has the time to upgrade to Windows 7, you know.
KimTjik: Nothing new, and you for sure know about these specialized distributions, but still good to remember when seeing the mere number of Linux distributions.
Or, why not take many, if not all, major and specialised Linux distros, make them into one OS called Linux and keep specialisations off by default?
That would make life so much damn easier.
“First of all, I appreciate this calm approach to a discussion.”
I try.
“but to add extra packages or in contrast to its master distribution include codecs that in some countries might be disputable”
But why do you need to do this at the distro level? Anyone can release packages or codecs for Windows or OSX without requiring a whole new OS.
“Some Linux distributions are very specialized. Some for forensic purposes, some for copying, cloning and partitioning, some as fast live-systems, some as firewalls, some for specific server purposes and so on.”
Indeed. I have a SmoothWall box that’s been running fine for over 7 years now (i think) but the power of diversity is not harnessed by a billion desktop distros almost all entirely alike.
The questions is why do you need a whole other distro to do things which should be distributed as software updates? I get that you could have a Gnome distro, a KDE distro etc as the DE is fairly integral, but a dozen Gnome distros? Not so much.
Leaving out specialized distros, and things that can (and should) be done as addons (think Flash as a plugin is better than a ‘Flash Browser’) what reasons are there for multiple distros, and how does anyone benefit?
Kerberos wrote: “… what reasons are there for multiple distros, and how does anyone benefit?”
One practical benefit I notice is a combination of competition and collaboration. There’s a “cultural” difference for how ideas compete. I suppose there are many internal mockups being tested in Redmond and from there a few are tested publicly. In Linux the process is more or less public from mockup to final release. While being different distributions many collaborate when an idea is proven to be more beneficial than others.
Some distributions are sponsored efforts, in some cases by governments for administrative purposes within its organisation or/and to serve its educational system, like Pardus (no particular reason for why I picked Pardus as an example). Still its in common fashion a project open for the public and its progress benefit all Linux distributions. The country backing the effort benefit by contributing money to an educational project that eventually serve other national needs. Besides these kind of projects you actually have some that aren’t more than editions, even though viewed as distributions, that support rare languages and their needs.
On an individual level Linux is probably the opposite extreme end of Apple’s “one size fits all”. I don’t expect everybody to share the same wish, but some really like the idea of finding a system design that fit their way of being. We’re all different. I know Linux users who are more or less allergic to the way Arch works, but for me it’s just the simplest distribution to work with, and there isn’t any real alternative to it. This is the most subjective benefit, but I think its neat that we have such a good and easy access today to technology, so we can pick and choose what we like.
“One practical benefit I notice is a combination of competition and collaboration. There’s a “cultural” difference for how ideas compete. I suppose there are many internal mockups being tested in Redmond and from there a few are tested publicly. In Linux the process is more or less public from mockup to final release.”
Or you could call it what it is, standards proliferation and NIH syndrome. Read my post a few back about standards. It would be perfectly fine if one victor was to emerge and be adopted but it doesn’t work like that. Someone wants to create a new package format? They’ve just splintered the userbase even more. deb, rpm, .tar.gz, portage, etc. Imagine we had 6 different ‘flavours’ or TCP/IP? How fun would that be?
All your examples are theoretical ‘in an ideal world’ stuff which do not represent reality. All I ask is for one, non theoretical, reason why having 12 Debian forks is a good thing without mentioning things that are solved at the software level on all other platforms.
“but some really like the idea of finding a system design that fit their way of being.”
The software is important, not the OS. The great Linux swindle is despite the billions of distros the only thing that anyone ever will notice is the DE and the apps. You use OO.org or Gimp on Gnome 2 and it’s OO.org or Gimp on Gnome 2 and it doesn’t matter what the distro is, only that it is introducing incompatible standards and forking the userbase and support structure.
If Gimp does not ‘fit your way of being’ then the number of distros that package Gimp is irrelevant. Adding another distro ‘flavour’ is not going to make it any better and only serves to create problems. The only ‘choice’ distros offer aside from the DE is entirely invisible to 99% of the target market.
Kerberos wrote: “All I ask is for one, non theoretical, reason why having 12 Debian forks is a good thing without mentioning things that are solved at the software level on all other platforms.”
I don’t, and I already stated that I would prefer a stricter policy for what qualifies as a distribution. I’ve stated that more than once here, so I think we’re done with that question.
Still, if only beneficial stuff would be allowed to exist, life would be extremely boring. So even though I don’t see any benefits in such forks and would never approve a dictatorial approach. There are tons of applications for Windows copying the same ideas, without adding anything particularly useful either. What do we do? We don’t use, and then that’s solved.
“The only ‘choice’ distros offer aside from the DE is entirely invisible to 99% of the target market.”
And what’s wrong with that? You’re back on this fixation about market share. What the majority do isn’t important for all and never has. Just because 95% of Soviet inhabitants drove a LADA doesn’t mean it’s the perfect car for Soviet inhabitants. Think broader and bolder and encourage a free flow of ideas, because from there you might get something even you will like. Arch users might be only 0,01% of all computer users but 99% of them are interested in operating system design, and not just the DE with its software. Value is found in both mass markets and niches.
“You’re back on this fixation about market share.”
Bug #1 in Ubuntu is that MS has majority marketshare. Then, when the reasons that Ubuntu doesn’t have majority marketshare are discussed (lack of quality software, lack of stable ABI/API, update breakages, standards proliferation) someone always acts like the unhappy people don’t really have a point, or that their opinions are invalid. As if it really was that great more people would use it. What if only 100 people used it? 10? zero? Marketshare is a reflection of its ability to fill a need and the low number is because the lack of that ability.
Kerberos wrote: “Bug #1 in Ubuntu is that MS has majority marketshare.”
I suppose it’s a joke. Don’t take everything too seriously. I don’t think you take every word by Ballmer too seriously either. On the other hand if Canonical seriously would adopt this as a policy, it’s in my view quite stupid.
There’s no sole Windows version (at least, after 1987).
What are you referring to, Windows/386? That’s more of an optimized build of 2.x. The real split didn’t come until Windows for Workgroups and then NT 3.1 shortly after.
Not everybody has the time to upgrade to Windows 7, you know.
XP was deprecated nearly five years ago, and 7 is over two years old. It’s well past the point where at least 75% of XP users and 33% of Vista users should have moved on.
What the majority do isn’t important for all and never has.
But it is important when it comes to allocation of resources, and market share is a reflection of a market economy.
I don’t see multilingual support in 2011 as something that should demand a user to by the most expensive edition. Globalisation means people frequently speak and use several languages and it’s not some kind of luxury.
That depends on what you mean by “multilingual support”. Pluggable language packs are usually for businesses that have licensed the Enterprise edition of Windows in bulk and need the UI to be displayable in several different languages at the same time.
For everything else, localized releases of Windows has been around since as early as version 3.1.
The edition I use has IME support from Arabic to Hindi and almost everything script you care to name. It’s called “Windows Home Basic”, by the way.
Some Windows admin…
Some for forensic purposes[...]
“Forensic purposes”… Whatever that’s supposed to mean.
[S]ome for copying, cloning and partitioning[...]
Again, whatever that’s supposed to mean.
[L]ive-systems[...]
Ditto.
[F]irewalls[...]
Ditto.
That’s useful[.]
But that still doesn’t mean the practice of forking the entire code base for whatever “special purpose” you are aiming at is at all technically necessary as far as operating systems in general are concerned.
And you are still, as we speak, simply offering us nothing more than the bog-standard arm-waving that we get every day from IT press cretins.
JoeMonco wrote: “For everything else, localized releases of Windows has been around since as early as version 3.1.”
I’m not referring to input methods but to the ability to switch between languages. To avoid yet another misunderstanding I’ll quote from Microsoft English page (I really hope you’re not deliberately trying to misinterpret what I write, because I’ll make plenty of lingual mistakes as English isn’t even my second language of choice):
“35 languages
Whether you’re multilingual, trying to learn a foreign language, or just want to travel the world on your desktop, language packs in Windows 7 Ultimate are a powerful (and fun) way to switch easily between any of 35 available languages. Included only in the Ultimate and Enterprise editions of Windows 7, language packs translate most of the Windows user interface: menus, dialog boxes, help topics. Once you’ve installed the language packs you want for free through Windows Update, switching between them is easy.”
So use the version in your own language then.
What’s with this nonsense about language packs, unless you need to have different users use the same PC and they only understand different languages – in which case using Ultimate/Enterprise is worth vile, so you really have no issue?
————————–
By the way, Windows 8 will come with language pack support across all SKUs, so again you really have nothing to complain about.
I’m not referring to input methods but to the ability to switch between languages.
This is where you miss the plot completely. The MUI packs and LIPs are supposed to change the displayed language of the UI from one to another and nothing else. Even loving Wikipedia has a screenshot showing you exactly how that works. Every edition from 2000 upwards supports both displaying and inputting different languages. You don’t trust me? Here, have a screenshot.
All test strings are all taken from this Wikipedia page, by the way.
To avoid yet another misunderstanding I’ll quote from Microsoft English page (I really hope you’re not deliberately trying to misinterpret what I write, because I’ll make plenty of lingual mistakes as English isn’t even my second language of choice):
Oh, oh, oh… Are you trying to tell us stuff from the MS marketing department? Let’s hear it:
Whether you’re multilingual[...]
Plenty of people are, and if you understand one language, then I wonder what the reason exactly is that you need the UI to be in a different one.
And Windows supports displaying application UIs written in any language as long as they are properly UTF-16 encoded.
Or not. As long as you know how to do a few tweaks in Control Panel.
[T]rying to learn a foreign language[...]
You want to know what the equivalent of “Computer” is in Swahili? Take a proper language class, then, goofball.
[O]r just want to travel the world on your desktop[...]
So people all of the sudden lose their ability to understand their own native tongue because they are in a different country? Or are there just that many people who want to break some wacky Guinness World Record by sharing their laptops with as many people around the world as possible?
Either way, that’s one of the dumbest selling pitch I have heard from MS thus far.
JoeMonco, I don’t know why you spend time explaining something at first that’s totally unnecessary. I suspect you deliberately misinterpret comments (or mostly commenters) you don’t like and then fiercely argues. It’s a waste of time.
Are you serious about the rest you wrote? So now you have an argument with Microsoft’s marketing department, as if it’s a quote that’s factually crucial some argument. Don’t you understand that it’s simply a quote, could be from somewhere else on Microsoft’s page, just to make sure you understood what I referred to? And if you and anonymous don’t understand how practical it is and why it shouldn’t need a premium price, maybe you some day do. If such support will be available in Windows 8, and I hope it comes true, then that’s a sane move, and even make support in multilingual environments a bit easier.
The only thing you’ve proven with all your rage is how unbalanced it get. If the subject is Linux it automatically means you spew out as many insults you can, but if some dare to even suggest an improvement to a Microsoft offer, the approach is the opposite, to attack the person who dared to suggest something so insane. Fortunately Microsoft doesn’t work this way, and do react to feedback and pick up ideas from others.
Are you serious about the rest you wrote?
That’s the question I want to ask you.
And if you and anonymous don’t understand how practical it is[...]
That’s something you never care enough to explain, like that “several kernels” thing.
And, speak of which, can we have an answer from you now, please?
Home Premium SKU, Kim Tjik, is intended for home users – the required language comes preinstalled.
Professional SKU is intended for less demanding business users – again, the required language comes preinstalled.
For businesses that need multilingual support on the same machine (should be rather rare) the Enterprise version has it.
For demanding users there is The Ultimate SKU – if you want the high end features, that 99% of users don’t need, then pay for them, what’s the big deal.
———————
“If such support will be available in Windows 8, and I hope it comes true, then that’s a sane move”
It was, supposedly, already announced by MS.
“and even make support in multilingual environments a bit easier.”
Nonsense, support in multilingual environments is excellent (and easy); you’re buying the wrong SKU, and complaining after the fact, just deal with it already and buy Enterprise – it’s cheaper for your company (or Ultimate if you are a home user).
Oh, and when you complain again about this, please explain your user scenario, so that we can see, what the hell are you doing, that makes language switching so bloody important to you.
Next you can explain why Ultimate or Enterprise SKU is not an option for you and your company.
And while you’re at it, you can well explain the miraculous “multiple kernels” as well.
I’m back. Fucking idiots.
Wonderful news, where have you been? Fucking idiots.
By the by, I very much fancy this new rule of adding “Fucking idiots” to the end of a line. Fucking idiots.
Is it going to replace CR/LF/CRLF in the freetarded world? Fucking idiots.
Damn.
It’s “Damn. Fucking idiots.” Fucking idiots.
Just so you know, Digital. Fucking idiots.
Ah yes. NubuntuFuckingIdiots — the crucial distribution for those of us who need an alternative eol character. Now available in a (forked) multi-lingual version: NubuntuConsRacailleuses …
I LOL’d at this:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-express/+bug/461000
“Everybody ignores Ubuntu” is a bug. These IncontinentImbecile™s must love to file market share issues as bugs.
I expect it to be closed with a WONTFIX
@KimTjik
You said: “A Linux distribution is, as I’ve seen you write about in some other blog post, sometimes a product of personal curiosity or part of a study process”
In otherwords, as I said in a post early in this discussion, Linux is a hobby OS. I have no problems at all with this, as long as it isn’t touted left, right, and center as a viable alternative for every scenario. Sadly, if you poke around in the tech universe you find that people are touting it is the do-all, be-all, end-all solution for everything from large hadron colliders to a fuckin’ digital watch… all the while proclaiming it as “free” as in beer (which I can understand) and “free” as in open source, yada yada yada.
What many of these town criers don’t understand is that some of us are old enough to remember when it was sold in a box at all the finer electronics stores and they couldn’t get rid of it even after dropping the price from $100+ to $10 or less. Then came the great “free” as in no $$$ distribution effort of bagging these self-same disks and sticking them in to every tech mag that came out.
In all that time, Linux has never made any forward progress on the desktop because people who do try it inevitably realise this is just someone’s hobby software and decide they want to get things done with their PC and go back to Windows or Apple (see my first post early in this article for a list of reasons why they go back).
There are a lot of people who use their computers every day to do tasks ranging from the mundane to the exciting who get blasted by every tech site and blog about how great and liberating Linux truly is. They get suckered in and try it and too many discover that it Doesn’tWorkForMe(tm). When they make comments about it not being a good alternative they face the wrath of a community who mistakenly believes that Linux is a viable solution… never stopping to realize that the creator of Linux started it–more or less–as a hobby OS, a position it still maintains after 2 decades and will still maintain 2 decades from now unless someone gets real and decides to include all the things that Linux zealots rage against. Sigh.
DigitalAtheist, you know Linux isn’t a hobby operating system, because that would be to ignore all stuff that surrounds you and make you technological world spin. In this aspect we have to limit the discussion to desktop Linux, or more fairly to what specific software you use, and not make it all hazy by at one sentence talk about how the Linux kernel came to existence, Linux zealots using a Linux based desktop distribution, and next to that suddenly say that Linux as an operating system is a hobby system. With all respect that would be deny our digital existence (I suppose that’s not what you try to convey by your nickname). You practically cannot do anything today without coming into contact with some Linux based system, so that’s not the issue here.
As I said before, numbers aren’t that interesting. If you think I’m stupid and lose productivity by using desktop Linux, OK that’s your opinion, but it doesn’t change a thing. If such an opinion would have been correct my life would have looked very different though. However I count I come to the conclusion that Linux has grown in numbers proportionally to the increase of connected computers. So even if it hasn’t taken market shares – how we now can be so certain about that – it’s a least a kind of status quo. The only system that has increased, even though not to the numbers of its old days, is MacOS.
Lastly, I wish there were no zealots on neither side.
@KimTjik
I tried it, it simply doesn’t do what I need and when I say this and provide reasons I get called an idiot or a shill. *That* is the reason this blog exists. *That* is the reason for the 1%. Everything else is spin and until the community starts listening to the people that are not satisfied, rather than just listening to the happy minority then nothing will change.
It’s a hobby OS until it a: decides who it is targeting and b: starts caring about their needs. Surely saying ‘don’t like it don’t use it, tough’ is the very definition of a hobby OS? If you create something because it’s fun and interesting with no desire or goal of mass adoption then it’s a hobby. End of.
So, how about telling us about those multiple kernels now?
You’ve left us waiting long enough, don’t you think?
Kerberos wrote: “I tried it, it simply doesn’t do what I need and when I say this and provide reasons I get called an idiot or a shill. *That* is the reason this blog exists. *That* is the reason for the 1%.”
I’m very sorry to here that and it’s something I condemn.
You condemn pro-Linux shilling?
Then why do you do it yourself?
The hobby OS thing isn’t debatable. Linus himself has said this directly and indirectly repeatedly over the years. Other entities may may take it more seriously as a platform but then they fill the holes by building an administrative infrastructure that is generally unnecessary with alternatives, with the goal being to recoup the cost via platform flexibility and the absence of licensing fees.
But the fact remains that, at the top level, Linux remains a toy for its creator. Anything Linus does not want to do will not be done. This is not how a serious product is managed. Linux is a rare exception in that
a) Despite its hobby status it has commercial value
b) Advanced 3rd party leveraging is legally viable
Usually stuff like this is either totally worthless but kinda valuable but its creator has “don’t touch my stuff” syndrome. What usually happens is that hobby projects of value are bought out, which happens even in FOSS.
To quote Kerberos: It’s a hobby OS until it a: decides who it is targeting and b: starts caring about their needs. Surely saying ‘don’t like it don’t use it, tough’ is the very definition of a hobby OS? If you create something because it’s fun and interesting with no desire or goal of mass adoption then it’s a hobby. End of.
this and nothing more. I called it a hobby OS, and I meant it. That doesn’t mean that just because it is a hobby OS that it has no use. There are plenty of people around who like to tinker and tweak, and hell I even like to download and try various distros to see who is doing what. But for the average every day user, Linux is a dud. They see it for what it is: a bunch of people who have decided to try to make something useable even though they spend as much time stepping on each other’s toes as they do making any thing that resembles progress while never actually seeming to give it that final polish that marks it as “serious”.
Or perhaps, with the words of DrLoser:
“The original point of Linux was to be an excellent hobby system.”
“The immediately subsequent point of Linux was that it coincided with a number of fortuitous circumstances and got some quite clever people very excited. The point of Linux on the downside of this curve is that Men In Suits suddenly realised the potential for a rip-off.”
http://drloser.blog.co.uk/2010/09/09/what-is-the-point-of-linux-9348384/
http://penguinday.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/the-most-effective-terror-weapon-against-its-own-work-force/
Stallman achieved his goal… in a way…
@Dr. L.
I’ll take a stab at it.
Installing software. How many of you didn’t install an application or game at least once directly into directory C:\, messing the entire directory structure, not being able to find your music or pictures since all the C drive had over 100 folders? I know I did, and that was after around 1 week of playing with Windows.
i>
Never. I’ve been using Windows since the 3.1x days and I’ve never done this nor had problems with this kind of nonsense. However I did try to uninstall Firefox one time and have it delete every other file on the hard drive, including Windows itself.
Partitioning.When did you do your own partitioning on your own? I’m sure you didn’t use fdisk or Partition Magic in the first three days of your Windows experience, when even the term ‘booting from CD-ROM’ was unknown to you.
The only time I’ve ever partitioned a drive is with the newest one that I have, a 1Tb monster that i wished to split off some of for backup purposes only, and there is plenty of easy to use software out there to do it with, including the one supplied by Windows… which I used. And so what if no one partitioned their drive? Most people never need to nor desire to.
Drivers. How much did it take until you fixed drivers for a sound card or modem on a Windows Me/Windows 98 installation after something went wrong?
Never had this problem either. The hardest thing I ever had to do is unplug the device boot, shut down, install device reboot and be back up and running. (That is until I started using the recent versions of clusterfuck OS… ooops.. Linux… which tells every bit of my PC that my Blu-ray drive doesn’t exist).
Mounting ISO images. Don’t tell me you knew about Daemon Tools the first day you used Windows. I know I didn’t, and it took a while only to find out about CD images and that they can be mounted as a virtual drive. Note for Linux: it can be done not only using CLI as root, but with a graphical menu in your file manager of choice, and you don’t have to use an entire application for it.
Again, this is not something that your average user ever has to deal with… EVER!
While this may have been a problem in the 9x days (if it ever really was a problem then) it proves nothing about Linux. I can guarantee that there are Linux users out there who have never had to mount an ISO/Disc Image, and if asked to do so would have no idea where to go or how to do it.
Video and codecs. Was it long before you settled upon a video player and a codec pack of choice, like the Classic Media Player and K-Lite Codec Pack combination? Lately I tried Vista on my mother’s laptop, and surprise: you still have to install codecs!Although most of the codecs I ever installed seemed to be mostly to watch one movie in some stupid format noone ever heard of before or since.
Again, it’s not my intention to disrespect the Windows users, it’s only to point out, once more, that Linux is not Windows. Installing software is different than in Windows, getting drivers is different than in Windows, gaming is different than in Windows, mostly everything which works some way in Windows is done in another, different way on Linux. Which leads to the conclusion that you need to invest time and a learning curve in order to use Linux, just like you did first, when you started with Windows.
The reality of it all is that if you are lucky, very lucky, and patient, very patient, you may be able to scrape together a Linux system that has some semblance to usability, with time and effort. For most users, the fight to cobble together what they need to get anywhere near a normal out of the box Windows experience is a pain and a deterent to adoption.
As a final advice: don’t make the switch with the philosophy that in Linux you’ll find a free Windows, and that’s the only difference. You’ll find a completely new operating system, working in a completely new different way.
You’ll find something that turns on you PC and lights up your screen. Working is a debateable point for most users.
On Linux:
Installing Software – You either accept using an outdated version of an application, or you’ll have fun with “make make install”. Forget about using older versions too, or, even worse, multiple versions at the same time.
Partitioning – Right… What filesystem am I supposed to choose again? Is it the one that damages files? (ext4).
Drivers – If they exist and they work, they’ll break 6 months later. This is assuming they exist and work, that’s like a 1 in a million chance right there.
Mounting ISO images – Lets not forget mounting USB drives when Linux forgets it’s supposed to do it automatically.
Video and codecs – ARE EVIL! DO NOT USE!
Getting actual work done – Play with wobbly windows and cubes instead. Or write bash scripts, bash scripts are cool.
Linux even fails at it’s own pre-selected points.
How many of you didn’t install an application or game at least once directly into directory C:\, messing the entire directory structure, not being able to find your music or pictures since all the C drive had over 100 folders?
I ran into this once in high school when I used the same floppy for everything throughout the year. Everything was small text files of some sort and I didn’t bother organizing it so I eventually ran into the limitation, which is 512 entries, not 100, though I think 256 is the more practical limitation due to LFN support.
when even the term ‘booting from CD-ROM’ was unknown to you.
That’s because it didn’t exist until 1997 or so.
How much did it take until you fixed drivers for a sound card or modem on a Windows Me/Windows 98 installation after something went wrong?
This was a problem, but it was often from people using 16-bit driver disks that came with their GUSes and AWE32s rather than obtain the updated 32-bit versions. Also this era had notoriously flaky hardware, especially at the retail level. Windows got a lot of blame for what was really a vendor problem. Many/most of the “trouble” devices weren’t supported in Linux at all.
Don’t tell me you knew about Daemon Tools the first day you used Windows.
LOL, 95% of Daemon Tools’ use cases involve installers obtained from TPB. Also, please. If we’re talking about the mid-90s, back then it was reading the mkisofs manpage for a few hours then feeding it 400 CLI options. And that’s after you spent a weekend figuring out how to use Jörg Shilling’s cdrecord, which required weird, non-standard stuff at every step. Even its CLI was opaque, and how it interfaced with Linux’s ATA/SCSI subsystems was inconsistent. Hell, even among reboots, let alone kernel versions. Simply plugging in a ZIP drive was enough to fuck up the (emulated) SCSI IDs.
surprise: you still have to install codecs!
1) Chances are you don’t unless you’re into the encoding “underground” where everyone uses MKVs and exotic subtitle formats. Windows 7 now supports H.264 (and it’s actually one of the better codecs–so much so that codec packs default to it rather than push ffmpeg), which was the last major holdup.
2) Pretty much nobody but home theater guys and pirates watch video files anymore, and both of those groups have the resources to address compatibility shortfalls.
“LOL, 95% of Daemon Tools’ use cases involve installers…”
You’d be surprised and excited by how many users have even heard about Daemon Tools.
LOL. Yours Sincerely, etc.
7-zip, WinRAR, and probably every other 3rd party archiver (which pretty much everybody who installs software has dealt with) can read ISO, etc. files. They just can’t emulate a CD-ROM while doing so. In the absence of Daemon Tools most people would just burn the CD-ROM and think nothing of it. As much as Daemon Tools fucks around with your system and how arcane the mounting process is in Linux, burning the ISO is probably the most economical choice anyway.
DT doesn’t fuck anything up.
It simply provides a nice sidestep to the cretinous DRM limitation – the insert CD/DVD to use idiocy.
And as an aditional bonus you can also mount ISO files, but really who stores anything in an ISO file (or tar.gz for that matter)?
Daemon Tools installs SPTD, which can interfere with actual drive operation, especially since it’s not uninstalled along with the main program.
Never caused any issues to me, in years.
Has for me. Only reason I know about the subject and the obscure uninstaller you need to get rid of it.
I would think that disabling the driver, rebooting and deleting SPTD.sys (or any problematic driver actually) should do the trick.
That’s how I removed Creative’s drivers that would instantly blue screen my PC (don’t ask) back in 2008.
Incidentally, Mr π this threading thing isn’t working too well. I recommend that you revert to Gnome 2.99999999. Or the KDE equivalent.
Just not easy to track down the specific comment … that’s all.
Seconded. I need to “flatten” the conversations by searching by date.
Thirded, threaded conversation is a pain when you want to read the newest comments.
I like how well ordered the conversation flows are, however.
Fourthed … wait a moment, I can’t fourth myself. Actually I quite like threading for browsing purposes, although it falls down when a thread forks — which they do, all the time. As perceptively noted above, the two approaches are essentially a subject matter — timeline dichotomy; each has its merit.
It’d be sorta nice to have a big ole button that switches from one to the other.
And, incidentally, that “fun” with configure make make install?
Apparently it was meant to take all of the installation problems out of the equation. It was so much better at this than Apple and Microsoft.
And it is entirely obvious where you have breakage. I’m serious. I actually did this with a rather neat X-based admin visualization system, and it worked!
On the other hand, I’d rather press a button and have other people deal with this crap. Basically, Linux Distros do not scale. And have no appeal to the average user. Oh, and did I mention that they rape hamsters? I didn’t? Good, because it’s just a personal obsession of mine.
Much like the entire concept of a Linux Desktop is a pathetic obsession of people who are too smart to know better.
What installation problems?
We always installed by extracting archive contents to the desired location.
These morons actually invented a problem to solve haven’t they, well, they’ve “solved” it all right…
Linux: a solution in search of a problem to solve.
Luckily, the problem managed to escape; who knows what would have happened had Linux got him.
This hate against FOSS was completely new to me when i found this blog less than a week ago.
Most of us don’t hate FOSS, we just don’t like being told that we’re immoral for not using the FOSS alternatives all the time. Many of us are pragmatic; We’ll use whatever is good. In certain cases, the FOSS tool works best; Chrome is an excellent example, which actually usurped Firefox after it started getting slow and crappy. We’re not married to a particular browser; we just want a fast one that can display all the pages we visit.
This isn’t the case with things like office suites, graphics software, audio software and games, though. GIMP is NOT a Photoshop replacement, OpenOffice is NOT an MS Office replacement, etc. And we’re not going to let some sort of idealism get in the way of us using the best options. I’m not going to punish myself in the name of an ideal. Let the zealots flog themselves for their false gods, I’m going to get some work done.
Your blog puts words to my pain. I just used GIMP for some simple things, like bucket filling with transparent and drawing a rectangle. Even the simplest things are so damn hard to do in GIMP. To find consolation in not being alone in my frustration, I googled ‘GIMP sucks’ and found your site. BTW, I just downloaded Paint.NET and got the job done in one minute.
As for trying Linux and not using it, I’ve been there and done that too. It’s just too infuriating when you want a program that’s not in the repo. So, you follow a guide to install it and most of the time you get a screenful of errors. Don’t Linux geeks ever test their own guides before publishing them on their sites? I’m sure Linux is great on servers, if you have someone who works fulltime with them and gets a daily refresh of all the commands, switches and config syntaxes, but on the desktop it’s just a world of pain.