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If Linux is to become a more popular OS on the home and small office desktop, it needs to become friendlier not just to the people who use it there, but also to the people who help them when they run into trouble. Copyright notice: All reader-contributed material on freshmeat.net is the property and responsibility of its author; for reprint rights, please contact the author directly. My original intention for this editorial was to write "What's In It for Me?", my thoughts about what the new features of the 2.4 kernel mean to me and whether or not I will be rushing to upgrade. (Answer: Of course not, silly; I have to preserve my uptime!) But there's really nothing I want to say about that. As Hemos says, "It's just a kernel." As I look down the features list, there's nothing that stirs my soul. devfs? Ok, that's kind of cool. Nothing I'd go to war over. iptables? Great; I get to learn how to set up masquerading for the third time. I can mount my filesystems more than once now? Well, ok... S/390 support? Well... I decided that instead of talking about my current relationship with the current kernel, I'd talk about the relationship between the kernel in general and the type of person I was a few years ago. A few years ago, I was a computer handyman. I had a dozen regular customers who called me whenever they had a problem with their machines. When their pipes started flooding their basement, they called the plumber. When their printer stopped printing, they called me. It's All About The Desktop, BabyIf I understand his various "It's the desktop, stupid" comments, I believe Linus is in favor of a penguin in every home. I don't think it's just the corporate desktop he wants to conquer with world domination, but the home and small office desktops as well. In the long run, that may mean Linux running in every refrigerator, but for the foreseeable future, it has to include more tradition Linux usage. I've previously said that I think the plumbers of the computer world will be around for the foreseeable future. Network appliances may snowball, but the PC won't become extinct overnight. As long as those PCs are around, someone needs to maintain them. People who don't want to be bothered with learning to fix them (any more than I want to learn how to fix my furnace) will get the kid next door or, if it makes them feel better to pay someone and hope thereby to make him more accountable, someone like me. As long as people use PCs, there will be a market for the skills of technophiles who can make housecalls at homes and small offices to fix quick problems. These people would like to be working with Linux, and I think it should be made as easy as possible for them to do so. Let's set aside the matter of adoption, and just assume that I, the plumber, have convinced at least some of my clients to let me install Linux on their machines. What are my demands? What do I need from the kernel and the people who package it and the software surrounding it? Be forewarned that some of these demands may be completely unreasonable. Sorry about that. I'm a user. Making unreasonable demands is our job. Drivers Must Appear With the HardwareDemand #1: I want a Linux driver available for every piece of hardware on sale at CompUSA. A common request made to plumbers is "I bought this digital camera/PDA/modem/programmable toothbrush at CompUSA yesterday. Please install it on my computer." Many times, a client will just say she needs x, and you can stop on the way to her home and buy y brand of it, making a choice based on known Linux support. Other times, the choice is already made for you, and you have to do what you can with it. Unfortunately, sometimes the best you can do is ask "Say, do you still have the receipt for this?..." Doing this casts a lot of questions on your head. "Why do you have to take it back and exchange it? What's wrong with it? It's the same one my friend Buffy bought, and hers works fine. Are you sure you know what you're doing? Maybe installing Linux was a mistake... You're not going to buy a more expensive one, are you? What do you mean you have to buy another modem? What's wrong with this 'Winmodem' that came with the computer?" Supporting Windows may be unending misery, but at least when you buy hardware, there's a floppy or CD in the box with a Windows driver. It may not work (e.g., the HP combo printer/fax/scanners), but at least it's there. A Linux driver should be readily available as well, either on the CD in the box or on the Net or in the kernel. (This is an application problem, as well. For digital cameras, the kernel team just has to make sure USB is working, then we have to make sure gphoto supports every camera in existence.) Sometimes the problem is not getting the hardware to work under Linux, but to make it work as well as it does under Windows. I bought a Visor Deluxe a couple of weeks ago, and last night I learned that it is indeed necessary to back it up from time to time. Luckily, I had just checked off most of the items on my todo list before the Visor locked up. When it finally came back to life, it displayed a message something like "Press the Address Book button to delete all your data, any other button to continue." I did what I thought was the correct thing (I'd like to go back now and confirm exactly what that message said), but the list of applications appeared with only the factory-installed apps showing. ALL MY DATA ARE BELONG TO VISOR. I went back to the Web, grabbed new copies of all the apps I had installed (and kept them this time), then tried to reconstruct the bits and pieces I could remember of the information I had lost. I reinstalled everything and it took just over five megs of the Visor's available space. The big problem now (there is a point, and I'm coming to it soon) is that I'm using a serial cradle to connect to my Visor, which means that:
$ time visor-backup.sh [snip...] real 51m52.027s user 0m4.490s sys 0m0.210s If you watch closely, you can see the battery life evaporating in tiny clouds puffing out of the top of the device. Obviously, I need to get USB working. At least I can do that now without (hopefully) too much trouble. A couple of years ago, I would have had to say "Yes, you're going to have to wait 10 times as long to back up your PDA as Buffy does, and buy new batteries for it every few weeks." Not welcome news. Modules Are GoodDemand #2: For every feature of the kernel that it's possible to make available as a module, I want it to be made available as a module. In fact, I want that when it's impossible, too. Modules are good. I'll confess my supreme unl33tness and admit that I like to compile a kernel as seldom as possible. Just give me a distribution-supplied kernel that comes with a module for everything I might want to do. Doubly so when I have to go to someone's house and work on his Pentium 166. If he's paying me by the hour, I don't want to sit in his living room for 45 minutes playing solitaire while the kernel compiles, only to reboot and realize I forgot to enable PPP (or, worse yet, only find out I forgot it when I get home and he calls to ask why he can't get online). modprobe foo.o is much more pleasant. Demand #3: I want every distribution to include every module. Just as he would have to work on a variety of hardware, a Linux plumber would have to work on a variety of Linux distributions, and would want to be able to modprobe foo.o on every system he encounters. A couple of months ago, I decided to use fbtv to turn virtual terminal 1 on my desktop machine into a screen for my DVD console. I put it off because I didn't want to have to recompile the kernel to include framebuffer support for my Matrox Millennium. One day, I stopped to look, and there was a nice gift Debian had placed on my system: /lib/modules/2.2.17/video/matroxfb.o. I modprobed, and was done. If I went to someone's house to set up the same system on his FooDistro machine, I'd want to find the same gift waiting for me. Patches are good, too. At least in some cases.Demand #4: I want every distribution to include versions of the kernel patched with every important patch. What is "important"? Someone on the distribution team will have to decide that, but take the Linux Progress Patch as an example. It seems both harmless and useful (for dealing with technophobes), but I'm not going to take up an hour of someone's time and money just to patch and compile to give him a pretty boot screen. If I could instead apt-get install kernel-image-2.2.17-lpp, I would do it. I realize this quickly degenerates into kernel-image-2.2.17-lpp-ext3-foo-bar-baz. I'm being unreasonable again; so shoot me. Maybe kernel-image-2.2.17-patches would work if a) none of the "important" patches caused conflicts with one another and b) people were willing to use a kernel with all of them applied (i.e., none of them were considered stability/security risks), especially if the features they added went into modules (I think those are good) instead of into the kernel itself, so people wouldn't have to use what they didn't want.
Rebooting is BadDemand #5: I want to be able to upgrade my kernel without rebooting. :) She may put it off as long as possible, but there will be times when a security problem is found and a plumber will need to upgrade all her clients' kernels. This means either:
How is #4 accomplished (the technical aspect, I mean)? I don't know. Maybe we run Linux inside a wrapper OS which is simpler (hopefully less susceptible to security problems) and can be controlled remotely to shutdown and reboot the system running under it. Don't ask me; I'm just an unreas... Well, I told you about that already. Unreasonable?Yes, I'm talking about a lot of work, but Linux is big business now. We have all these companies working on it; let's make sure we're getting more out of them than better penguin costumes for trade shows. Addressing issues that keep Linux out of homes is better for everyone's bottom line.Author's bio: Jeff Covey received his degree in classical guitar performance but
spent so much time with his computer that he fell in with a bad crowd
and ended up working for OSDN. He currently works on freshmeat and
runs a computer lab for the kids
in his neighborhood in his spare time.
T-Shirts and Fame! We're eager to find people interested in writing articles on software-related topics. We're flexible on length, style, and topic, so long as you know what you're talking about and back up your opinions with facts. Anyone who writes an article gets a t-shirt from ThinkGeek in addition to 15 minutes of fame. If you think you'd like to try your hand at it, let jeff.covey@freshmeat.net know what you'd like to write about. [Comments are disabled]
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Drivers at CompUSA > Demand #1: I want a Linux driver available for every piece of hardware
on sale at CompUSA.
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Upgrading kernel without reboot is possible already! See "Two Kernel Monte" at http://www.linuxfaq.de/f/cache/434.html or http://www.scyld.com/software/monte.html. (Actually, I just checked, it WAS there some time ago, the link seems to have moved. Does anyone know more?)
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Linux is heaven to install compared to Windows 9X I recently reinstalled Windows 98 for a client who made several failed
attempts to install the OS (If one can truly call Windows an OS). I was
appauled at the number of times his box had to be rebooted to get all the
drivers installed. I lost count, but *at least* once per device driver.
Windows even had to be rebooted to install a usb mouse!
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Re: Linux is heaven to install compared to Windows 9X
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Re: Linux is heaven to install compared to Windows 9X
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Re: Linux is heaven to install compared to Windows 9X
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Re: The Plumber's View of the Kernel Hi Jeff, your ideas are great, but: Demand #1: Tell this to the hardware manufacturer. There is a lot of iron without linux drivers out there, because the manufacturers didnt make the technical details available. And a lot of the drivers available are the result of intensive reverse engeneering. Demand #2: You can compile your kernel once, with ALL features enabled as module, then you have what you want. On my distribution (Slack) such a kernel is in /kernels of the distribution media. Demand #3: They're there. On a Slack distro in /modules of the distribution media for instance. Demand #4: Every distribution comes with a production version of the linux kernel. Somebody might want to have some patches, but which? THIS somebody should be able to download the patch and to patch and recompile the kernel ( especially if he calls himself a linux plumber ). Demand #5: If you wonder about, what upgrading the kernel means, you should end with this, that a kernel change is a CHANGE OF THE OS. How can you change the OS of a computer without rebooting?????!!??? Btw.: I know systems, which want to reboot if you even change the hostname. If I wonder about the allabout of your article, it seems to me you are a plumber of the Gates-Type. These folks are (only in my mind of course) people who want to fix things by a little clicking without a clue about that what they are doing. Frank
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Re: The Plumber's View of the Kernel the preview looked great Dunno what happened Frank
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Re: #5 When was the last time your users cared about when you had to reboot for
any upgrade? They don't care like we do.
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Not quite fair... Okay okay, points one to four are fair enough, hardware support is vital for any operating system hoping to dominate the desktop market. Saying that point five is a necessity, however, is going a tad too far given that a) A typical installation of Windows 9x/ME does not support remote access such as telnet b) Upgrades such as 95-98 (comparable to, say, 2.2-2.4 in the Linux world) are costly and cannot be performed remotely even if remote access software is installed c) There is no way in hell you could upgrade windows without rebooting. I mean, even installing a new program typically involves rebooting at least, let alone upgrading the underlying system. When Microsoft adds these features to windows, then i will agree that they are necessary for linux to dominate the market. Until then they are a luxury. Desirable, but hardly necessary.
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prehistory system design The Linux kernel design is prehistoric--people designed systems like that in the 1970's. That's both good and bad. The good part is that it's well understood, it's simple, and it's pretty efficient. The bad part is that it's a pain to write drivers for it, to extend it, to distribute loadable modules for it, and to make it autoconfigure. The fact that PC hardware is pretty clunky and that Linux tries to support prehistoric hardware as well doesn't help. Windows is actually not any better. The only reason why it appears to work better in practice is because hardware manufacturers go out of their way to make sure their hardware works with, and often ships with, whatever system the consumer is using. MacOS up to version 9 tries to address the problem by controlling the hardware platform. MacOS X is based on a more modern kernel architecture, but whether it will actually be able to translate that into a better "user experience" when it comes to hardware, driver, and kernel issues remains to be seen. Altogether, from my point of view, clunky as Linux is, it's still the best thing around. But the fact that better designed systems have caught on neither in the commercial world nor in the free software world is a disappointment to me.
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Re: prehistory system design
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Re: prehistory system design MacOS X is based on Mach, with BSD code and lots of random hacks on top of it. That is, at least in principle, a slightly more modern and flexible design than Linux. Whether that will make any difference in practice remains to be seen--even Mach is pretty old and clunky by now. (FWIW, MacOS X's windowing system has nothing to do with XFree86, although that is pretty much irrelevant to a discussion of kernel issues.)
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Re: prehistory system design
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Re: prehistory system design There will NEVER be an ideal OS and ideal hardware it could run on under the moon... Who said anything about "ideal"? I'd settle for a kernel that was written in a language with at least minimal runtime error checking and that used well-defined language constructs (rather than haphazard conventions) for its internal interfaces. That's still far from anybody's definition of "ideal", but it would be a whole lot better than what we have now with Linux (or BSD or Windows, for that matter). For you if you're so into microkernels: they don't address all the problems monolithic kernels *may* have For you: learn to read. My endorsement of Mach and microkernels was minimal. Mach has performance issues because many OS designers are penny wise and pound foolish: they pick an "efficient" programming language like C and then need to rely on much more heavy-weight mechanisms (or just lots and lots of time-consuming testing) to keep kernel modules out of each other's hair. If an unsafe implementation language is a given, you have to trade off extensibility/maintainability against performance. Subject to this constraint, Linux tries to come down on the side of performance, while Mach tries to come down on the side of extensibility. It's a choice between two bad alternatives, but with 1Gbyte/1GHz machines and a huge need for drivers and other kernel code, extensibility would seem to be a more important these days.
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... I'm not a *NIX fanatist (This word right? /me being
just a stupid german). I came to Linux because I
hated they way Windows works. Whole story. So
don't bother me with any idealistic stuff. Idealism is a
good thing, but I don't want to flame about it for
nights. So much to my person. --
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Re: ... Oh damn ... I've must been drunken or so. Please
everyone excuse my rude language. Not my
style. --
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Mozilla Crossplatform Desktop I think one problem is that most tries of bringing Linux to the desktop result in writing programs (e.g. KDE/Gnome/almost anything) that might be good/better and different than the windows programs. The enduser has to learn how to do the same things different. Why don't go the other way: Provide an easy-to-use crossplatform solution for some open problems in the windows world. I'm thinking of a Mozilla based crossplatform
desktop:
The user gets a CDROM which
Couldn't this be a way for Linux to find new friends? They first work with the Windows part, and 20 bluescreens later they try the Linux part and find a high performance operating system which is easy to administrate (of course using the Mozilla GUI)! Waiting for comments.
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Re: ...rapha
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Re: ...rapha Well, it´s got an "irc://" at it´s beginning, and if your browser is not
able to handle the IRC protocol (mine is not, either), then you probably
try to copy ´n´ paste it into some IRC Client, as for example, XChat. you
just need to precede it by an /server in XChat´s main window, that will
then connect you to the LinuxFromScratch irc server. --
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Re: ...rapha
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Demand #1: Are you being fair? In the Windows world, you pay for you OS and you demand your hardware vendor to provide drives for it. In the Linux world, you get your OS for free and you demand your OS vendor to provide drivers for all of your software. Are you being fair? Not having drivers for a piece of hardware is a real problem, but should we blame it to Linux or to hardware vendors? And now comes the flame war: (some) hardware vendors say they will provide drivers as soon as Linux has stable interfaces. Linus says Linux will not have stable interfaces in the short term, because they constraint the evolution of the kernel.
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Re: Demand #1: Are you being fair?
Who said it has to be fair ? This is the RealWorld®. End users don't care about "fair", they're on a mission. If that's putting a moustache on jpegs of their grandmother or writing the next thesis on high energy particle physics, they don't care about "fair". I agree it's unfair, but those who matter either A) don't care and B) don't even have the time to figure out if they should care. The only people that matter are the end-users, people who eventually demand the Linux compatible products from their vendors.
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Re: Demand #1: Are you being fair?
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Re: Demand #1: Are you being fair?
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Rant, indeed. Linus is in favor of a penguin in every home. I don't think it's just the corporate desktop he wants to conquer with world domination, but the home and small office desktops as well. Why in the hell would anyone bother? Linux has absolutely no chance on any sort of desktop, not now, and hopefully not ever. Come on. KDE? GNOME? Whatever-the-latest-window-manager-is? Have any of you actually USED any of that stuff to do WORK? Themes? Computers are for doing WORK. To me, work means opening a bunch of xterms and typing code in vi. For others, it means entering data into Excel. Or typing up shit in Word. Not changing screen savers, adjusting keyboard beep frequency, or choosing speed of the Matrix screensaver. With the "desktop" environments the focus seems to be on "themes, bells, whistles, and other useless crap", completely ignoring productivity. I guess most of todays Linux zealots never actually work anywhere or do anything more serious than flip burgers at a local McDonalds where the only computer they see is the cash register where they sell the burgers. People at large companies actually use computers. They use the applications. They use Microsoft Office 2000, Photoshop, et al to do real work. All of the above mentioned software has a consistent (has linux GUI ever been consistent) user interface, consistent and expected behavior, and it just lets the user do their work. How many word processors do we have for Linux? Somewhere in the hundreds. How many are actually usable? Probably none. How many spreadsheet "packages" for Linux do we have? Quite a bit. How many have the same consistent interface as our word processor, and are also usable? Well, starting with 0 we are back to 0. But how many shell scripts do we have to rename our mp3 files? Don't even start me on this one. Linux is not a serious corporate desktop OS. It's just unusable. Linux could possibly make a great corporate server, though you'd be hard pressed to find a CEO that would actually approve exchanging, say, a stable and proven HP-UX installation with Linux servers. Why bother? It works, and if it doesn't, there is a contract and a tech waiting to fix it next day. Who the hell do you blame when your Linux doesn't work? You don't blame anyone, because Linux crap is written by everyone and their mother, and big companies definitely don't like that. Oh, I should go back to usability issues with Linux software. First of all, themes need to go. Show me a corporate (or home for that matter) desktop where each user is allowed to "theme" their Windows. There aren't any. Most home users are too stupid to even find the Control Panel, let alone change anything in it. Most corporate desktops are locked down with user policies and profiles, so they aren't changing anythign either. So, why is this enormous effort going into making GUI things theamable? Sure, some 'r33t hax0rs' might appreciate it, but what percentage is that? The overwhelming majority of people who just use computers to do work don't give a fuck. What they do care about is usability, and this is severely lacking at this point. Menus all look different. Toolbars are all mismatched and in wierd places. On-Line help? What's that? There isn't even a common standard for doing on-line help for any Linux apps (im talking winhelp.exe .hlp / .chm files in windows). So each author has to invent their own shit, most just choose not to. Wow, we have tearoff menus in GTK. Show me one person who actually uses them. Probably nobody except the guy who implemented them. HTML help in GNOME? Get real. gtkxmhtml library can't even deal with non-C locale and jumbles up all the fonts close together and makes the pages unreadable. And GtkXmHTML / help browser is YET ANOTHER INTERFACE to learn. So, in order to be productive with Linux, average Joe Q Worker needs to learn that you click on the Gnome foot to get to programs, learn menus, shortcut keys, and toolbars of each program they are going to use, learn how to use the on-line help browser, etc etc. Should I go on? With Windows, they sit in front of a familiar, standard environment, and all of Office2000 shares common keys, toolbars, and menus. They already know IE5, and thus their learning is done. Color schemes? Thanks to this customizability/themeability stuff each program now looks like a competition entry for this years ugliest user interface contest. Developer likes lime green text on white background, but to a casual user who just wants to type in her checkbook numbers that color seems rather revolting. She would rather see the entry field in that checkbook program use the same standard Windows colors that all her other programs use. But again, there is no standard with Linux. She is screwed. Contact the author? Heaven forbid, you just QUESTIONED HIS AUTHORITY THAT LIME GREEN IS THE BEST COLOR EVER! You might walk away slightly bruised, or maybe spend a few days in the hospital recovering from rude language in the reply email you got from the author. In the long run, that may mean Linux running in every refrigerator, but for the foreseeable future, it has to include more Thank god my refrigerator doesn't run Linux. Otherwise I would have to defrost it each time new kernel comes out and patch it with all sorts of security holes so that those evil hackers don't turn my frozen vegetables into stir fry mix. What is "important"? Someone on the distribution team will have to decide that, but take the Linux Progress Patch as an example. Linux progress patch is NOT important. What does it do? Absolutely nothing. It makes your Linux boot sequence look similar to the Windows boot sequence. Not exactly something that would please a seasoned linux hacker, and absolutely not something that would win a Windows user over. Winuser: Oh, Joe, that boot logo is so sexy!!! What do I need to do to get it on my computer??? You: Oh, you just need to install Linux. Winuser: DOH. What's with people these days? You tell them that "you know, you have to read this howto to connect to the internet" and they look at you and say "no no no. I want to connect NOW without doing anything". It's called America, and it's called "lazy bastards". Have you seen the news lately? "The Internet" is the best thing since sliced bread! Your latest Pentium 4 will make the internet better! With Windows XP you will have the richest Internet experience! All only a click away! Thats why nobody gives a fuck about things like Linux these days. Well, excuse me, but that's not how it goes. Linux means something close to UN*X, and UN*X was made for sysadmins, NOT for the 'I don't wanna spend time to make it work' variety of people. Yep. If you are too damn stupid to compile a kernel, or know what "make" is, like some people here, its pretty pointless to be running Linux. You gain absolutely nothing but you instead get a whole bunch of problems, like unsupported hardware, extremely (do I need to emphasize this any more) choice of software, and a system that will probably end up working much worse than Windows (after all, once you understand something, it usually works better). Lately, I'm giving the same answer to anyone who asks me if they should install Linux. "DON'T DO IT". Absolutely right! John E Doe who just finished watching the latest P4 commercial on CNN does NOT need to be anywhere near Linux. Most people who just want to play Quake or what's the latest game today don't need Linux either. All these pathetic attempts at "Linux gaming" are sooner or later going to realize they aren't going anywhere, and die off on their own. For each "Linux Game" introduced with flash and fanfares, there are literally thousands of games for Windows coming out each month. So please, don't tell me that "Linux" is a good "gaming" platform. Why? As much as I love Linux, I know other people (due to their Win9x nature) WON'T love it, they will propably hate it because they will actually have to search on how to do stuff. Again, judging from the material being pushed forward by mass media and such, things are looking pretty grim when it comes to educated computer users. These days you can find some random babble on CNET or ZDNET that makes absolutely no sense from a technical standpoint, contains hundreds of mistakes and misleads the customer completely, but who are you to say anything about it? Once and a while I follow some technology link off Slashdot or something to find some fairly amusing reading, and just wonder, how did that guy get a job writing tech stuff? But hey, that's the price of power. Power demands responsibility. And power is what you get with Linux. I like that, and I'm (personally) willing to pay the price. Also, as a freelance technician, I will never suggest to a client to put Linux on his machine, because he will have irrational demands from the O/S (support for all his crazy hardware and software), and then blame me for that. Yah. No way. Someone else reading this give me one good reason why ANYONE would want Linux on their computer installed by someone else as part of "upgrade" or something. No way. That would be like downgrading their latest P4 toy with 64mb video card and all the latest bells and whistles windows hardware to a 486 with a pc speaker for sound and s3 trio64 for video. Show me the crazy customer who will go for that, and I will gladly swap the motherboard in their PC with a old 486 board, because trust me they will not notice the difference. :) Yes Linux will probably "scream" on that P4 toy, but guess what? What can your customer do with it? Let's take a look. You: Oh, you can run Apache. It's a good Linux webserver. Customer: What's a webserver? Why do I need one? You: Linux is secure Customer: But I already type my Windows password, how is Linux different? (*YOU* know the difference, John E Random does NOT. Keep that in mind) You: Linux is much faster and more stable than Windows (Have *YOU* actually seen Windows crash since Win95 OSR2? *I* personally have not. If you know what you are doing on a Windows machine, things work perfectly well. I work with hundreds of Windows desktops on a monthly basis and people never have problems with them. Microsoft provides many, many system administration tools, it's up to the sysadmins not to use them). Customer: Will Linux make my internet connection faster? (No, because your computer has a Winmodem. You won't have any Internet connection in Linux at all) You: New kernel 2.4 just came out and it has a Journaling File System (At the point you lost the poor bastard) - timecop
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Useless statistic Just for anyone curious:
editorial: 1,872 words /me <== happy to inspire so much interest. :) --
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Re: Useless statistic
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Re: Useless statistic
I believe we've all seen Timecop's comments before and can adjust to
that.
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Re: Rant, indeed.
Yes - more times than I can count. Win2K is better but not quite there yet.
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Re: Rant, indeed.
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Re: Rant, indeed. As far as companies are concerned: 1) Until the tech next day arrives, your company will propably have lost $$$$$$ 2) Your company has already paid $$$$$$ for some kewl proprierary systems and their OS. That doesn't mean I endorse using linux in a corporate environment. I just say "that's the situation, do as you please" As far as home users are concerned: 1) If I DO see someone that is willing to explore, "hack' around his system, is patient and stuborn (maybe the true meaning of hacker), be very confident that I WILL tell him to go for Linux Jim
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Re: Rant, indeed. So I don't try to comment your comment, which is
only usefull for flames. Let's compare: debian 2.2, upgradet to woody(more than stable), 1000ends of good working tools, which are easy to install, easy to use. Costs: 0$ Windows 2000, Office 2000 Costs: too much for nothing to do real work You blame the Linux folk for something you don't spend Money? Are you sick? Are you happy in writing Word documents 20 sheets? So I haven't read your whole article(to much scrap in there, so 99% of it), but I think you never tried Linux.
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Re: Rant, indeed.
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Re: Rant, indeed. Never seen Win95 OSR2 crash? I am the network engineer for a fairly large bank, and I see Win95 (all flavors) and Win98 crash all day long. Sometimes badly. I have designed a linux based setup that uses NFS to restore a generic drive image so that my entire week isn't spent fixing messed up FAT's and registries. But converting 1000 computers at 80 remote locations to linux is not possible. Nor is retraining 1000 people on how to use the different interface. Most of my users are so inept that I have to send someone out to do a standard Office install. Convert all these computers to Linux? Can't do it. Suffer constantly from MS shortcomings? Job security :-)
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Re: Rant, indeed. I feel that it is my duty to respond to every valid point you made in your
message. What would I be if I didn't? Well, here goes.
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Re: Rant, indeed. whoa. WAY too many words homeboy. a couple quick point I would like to make... 1)windows crashes, is bloated as hell, and sits way too high up codewise. mac os is no better. slow, stupid, and bullshit. realtime linux builds are the only current viable solution for the next generation of audio and video dev platforms... I use virtual synthesizers- latency is a major issue- if i hit a key and the sound comes out a second later that will not do. low level drivers are not going to cut it. sooner or later the OS is going to get in the way as it does with windows and mac os. 2) windows is going xp. only. this scares the shit outta me. i hate xp. its crap. i need a way out... help me obi wan, you are my only hope... hey- folks- I seek a flavor of nix developed for audio and video use. be and next have both bailed and never excited me anyway... any builds for media use? anyone? just an idea- how about a realtime linux build designed for audio and video? (integrative multimedia) thanks!
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Excellent Article! I have read the other comments in here and to me, some of you sound conceited and just plain out of line but you are not alone in your thinking. I am somewhat of a newby and hear Linux guys say it all the time RTFM. Well when you go to read a how-to and it says something like "patch the file" or "set the file permissions appropriately" or "just remake the project" - us newby's can READ what it is saying and maybe I am just stupid but what exactly does "set the file permissions appropriately" mean exactly? Appropriately for what? Access or non-access? Read only or writeable? Hmmm? I have seen this on several occasions in HOW-TO's or MINI-HOW-TO's. If I am so stupid that I am resorting to reading a HOW-TO in the first place, how can they make the assumption that I will know how to set the file permissions appropriately? Yes, I looked, there is no "HOW-TO on setting file permissions appropriately" either. These are things that you Linux Guru's take for granted after years of experience. These are the types of things that makes it nearly impossible for someone like myself to get on board without a helping hand from people like you. I imagine most of you had someone to help you along whether it was a UNIX course you took in school or a friend that helped you when you got stuck, etc. Maybe not, maybe some of you just spent the 5trillion hours of reading required just to figure out how to patch a kernel or configure bootp. Why can't Linux be a little easier so someone new CAN actually sit down, read the manual and be up and running in a reasonable time period? I know this is going to be like pissing into the wind but MS has some good stuff in their products . Now, granted, most of the really good stuff they probably stole from other companies either through almost driving them out of business and then buying them or other similar means. Linux should look at Windows and figure out why it is so successful and borrow from those elements. Obviously, I am not alone in my thoughts or KDE wouldn't be so popular. The other day for example, I went to install "slashcode 1.0.9.tar.gz". Well, I was able to figure out how to get it installed by reading the directions but it took me about 30 minutes figuring out the TAR and GZIP switches and formats before I was done and was able to move on to reading the configuration instructions. In the windows world, it would have been about 2 minutes to do the same task. Pretty much click on the file to download, it would download and launch the install EXE, it would prompt you for an install directory, you click OK and your done. After reading the "slashcode" installation instructions and going out to the support website to read the horror stories from other "GURU's" trying to install this version on RedHat version 7.0 like I have, I decided to give it a try but after about 2 days of reading and other varios issues I am still not up and running. The straw that broke my camel's back was a message from a guru guy that he did this and did that and it still wouldn't work, so on a whim, he went back and re-did something completely unrelated and all of a sudden it worked but he couldn't explain how or why. At this point, I have completely given up on Slashcode 1.0.9. This is because in order to install "slashcode" I need to read about 2 weeks worth of MySQL, PHP, Perl and other related documentation. If this had been a Windows program, I imagine it would have been configured and running within another 2 minutes of my initial installation. I for one certainly wish Linux was a little more user friendly. I have a new saying: Linux guys have forgotten more then Windows guys ever knew. Is it a good thing to know how every detail works. I get in my car and drive it every day but I am not exactly sure how the software within my car's computer is precisely configured. I turn the key and it starts. I put it in gear and it drives. I step on the brake and it stops. I am happy. In a "conceited Linux guru" world, our cars would all be delivered in boxes of parts with a note reading RTFM. Step 13003: Set fuel mixture appropriately Step 13004: Set idle appropriately Step 13005: Set timing appropriately etc... Well, at least in that world, polution from automobiles wouldn't be a big problem. -Tim
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Re: Excellent Article!
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Abusing the word "appropriate" in HOWTOS
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Re: Excellent Article!
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Windows is just as horrible You forget to mention an important thing here, windows or MacOs in any version is just as horrible to support as linux, freeBSD, Solaris, IRIX or whatever flavor of *NIX you want to try out. Maybe there is a difference in horror, but in the end, you spend just as much time. How many times did you have to fight for hours to discover some application isn't compatible with another? How many times did you get fscked by some paperclip that set alls the configuration items the way they work in the office of the developer, but not in the real world? It's really frustrating to have to hack obscure registry-keys with illogical names or even worse, non documented stuff like the metabase and other wierd propriatary files. Getting support for hardware usually is just as bad for windows as it is for linux. Most of the "older" hardware requires W95, but doesn't work with NT or W2K, because it's no longer being sold and the manufacturer has no commercial interest in developing drivers for a new OS. Because of a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo and manufacturers being afraid someone might secretly use their patents, the specs to develop hardware-drivers for these parts are just as unavailable for windows as for any other OS. Brand new hardware usually doesn't come with a W2K driver, if you are lucky it works with ME, usually you wind up using W98 which is a lot less stable then W2K or ME, just because the vendors didn't release a driver (yet). Admitted, the wizards make it look easy, but if your setup isn't the default one, I'd rather have _any_ *NIX operating system over windows, at least I can read config files and scripts to fix what's going wrong. On a novice level, windows seems easier, especially if you have already some experience as an enduser, but if you have to actually admin it on the level you are describing here, it's just as bad as any other OS. I'm sure that if you set someone that has never worked with a computer before up with a nice linux-desktop box, gave him/her good office tools like staroffice, KDE or whichever you prefer, they will learn to use it on an enduserlevel just as easy as any windows version. Most people just claim it's difficult because it's not like the windows they already know, not because it really is. If you have been in ICT for 10 years and have fiddled with 10 different OSes, it's just another OS with its ups and downs, it's quirks and its neato features. Spend time learning it like you have to for any other OS, or for any trade for that matter, it's not harder or easier then windows, MacOs or whatever other desktop OS you have used before.
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I'm dissapointed in you, Jeff! Linux is not big business, it's big press releases.
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Re: I'm dissapointed in you, Jeff!
This is the real world. End users don't care who is to blame. They just want hardware that works. Microsoft has a support organization that deals with this and provides this developer service for little or no cost. In contrast, you need rocket scientists to get Linux drivers to work - and there are plenty of these rocket scientists around in the form of consultants but they cost real $$. In some cases the Linux solution is preferable since you end up getting a higher quality result with fewer $$ - if you pick your consultants properly. In the end, the Microsoft model greases the skids for developers and makes the end user pay. The Open Source/Linux solution makes the developer pay and pass on the costs to the end user. SOMEONE ENDS UP PAYING. The other thing that needs to happen is education. End users need to know to ask wether there is Linux support. IBM, DELL and other companies know that they need to have products that work with both MS and Linux and this becomes a differentiation point for them. Their suppliers have specs that require them to support Linux. There is no easy story. The good thing about Linux is that there is a great set of driver examples right in the source code. Little is hidden. However, this also becomes a nasty situation for companies with proprietary information they want to keep from cmpetitors. Every way you look at this, the set of companies/products that will have a compelling reason to have Linux support is smaller than that of Microsoft's products. Microsoft also struggles with this problem, for quite a while Win2K had a major HW compatability problem. The likely thing is that it will be possible to have all the desired functionality on Linux in some way or another. The issue then becomes, how do you get people to ask the "does it work on Linux ?" questions at the counter and hence only those products with Linux support being the successful ones. Going back to the original point. Wether the hardware vendors are to blame or not is irrelevant. The Linux story needs to be improved on all fronts. Web sites (the names escape me) that show how well Linux is supported, need to be kept up and prospective customers need to be using them. Maybe freshmeat could have a special hardware section that hardware vendors dial into religiously when they make updates to their driver support. Maybe a Linux boycot page for products that have no Linux support.
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Re: Analogy
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Interesting demands... Well, you have stated several interesting demands. I personally am quite happy with several things as they are now, eg. I don't want to run linux in linux just to be able upgrade the kernel. I'm glad I can upgrade modular things without rebooting - that's enough for me. As for the drivers, I don't know who is this demand addressed to. I believe the only reason why there are no drivers for bleeding edge computer appliances is the fact that vendors either don't provide them or they refuse to release the documentation. As Alan Cox once mentioned, open source sofware is always late - as it is with linux kernel now, first there is hardware and then might come support. But if there are no docs, there won't be any support. And no, let's not talk about binary-only modules. This is a matter of faith in what is good and what is bad and I believe that source code drivers are good. The solution is in vendors to understand this and provide either the driver or documentation. If they don't understand this, I'm not going to buy their hardware. I know they won't care because they have Windows users to pull money from. I perfectly understand them as economic subjects and I often repeat to myself: "This company is not here to provide me with services, it's here to make money". But there is (and will be) place for vendors who are interested even in the relatively small linux userbase and make money on it. And I'll happily stuff my few cents in their pockets as long as they either provide proper drivers or documentation or, ultimately, both. Regards, Lubomir
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From a home user's view... Personally, as an end user and a developer, see the whole situation otherwise. I simply don't care. I am willing to spend time to make something work. What's with people these days? You tell them that "you know, you have to read this howto to connect to the internet" and they look at you and say "no no no. I want to connect NOW without doing anything". Well, excuse me, but that's not how it goes. Linux means something close to UN*X, and UN*X was made for sys admins, NOT for the 'I don't wanna spend time to make it work' variety of people. Lately, I'm giving the same answer to anyone who asks me if they should install Linux. "DON'T DO IT". Why? As much as I love Linux, I know other people (due to their Win9x nature) WON'T love it, they will propably hate it because they will actually have to search on how to do stuff. But hey, that's the price of power. Power demands responsibility. And power is what you get with Linux. I like that, and I'm (personally) willing to pay the price. Also, as a freelance technician, I will never suggest to a client to put Linux on his machine, because he will have irrational demands from the O/S (support for all his crazy hardware and software), and then blame me for that. Well, no thank you very much, I'll just pass... "Real men use the keyboard"
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Booting Linux from Linux Well, not good enough but a step in the right direction - LinuxBIOS uses a patch called LOBOS to load a Linux kernel from another Linux kernel. The next step would be fall back or simultaneous kernels (the latter is far trickier, I think).
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Re: Booting Linux from Linux There is a module that was developed by Scyld for use with Beowulf clusters called the Two Kernel Monte "It allows Linux to load another kernel image into RAM and restart the machine from that kernel." I've used it with their cluster software, but I have not tried it out on my workstation.
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Where can I get MS-Linux? (kidding!) I have to say, I agree with Jeff Covey's (non-technical) points. Linux still demands that it's users be willing to do plenty of homework to get their system running. I am not a hacker. I'm not even approaching that status. I know a little HTML and just enough Unix to do a little web stuff. I installed Linux (RH7) on my new home computer because I was curious about the system, and had nothing on my new system to risk. Everything went swell until I tried to use my modem. Yes, it was a Winmodem, a term I'd never heard of until it was much too late. If my experience is at all typical (and USNET posts I've read on newbies attests that it is) then Jeff and Linus are right. It's the desktop, stupid. Linux won't be on desktops until it either provides the drivers or becomes so popular that hardware isn't sold without Linux drivers. It's a chicken/egg problem. I am now on my third modem, after installing an external that worked but stalled every 25 or 30 seconds and then replacing the Winmodem with a modem that 'works with Linux' according to it's box. But RHL 7 came with kernel 2.2.16-22 and the fine print on my modem claims it's for kernels 2.3 and higher. Well. I read about tarballs and got the files and read the HOWTOs and READMEs and looked at the Red Hat site's information and decided I was ready to compile 2.4.1. Except 'make' isn't on my system. When I installed RH I declined the 'developer's tools.' I'm not a developer, I just want to be a user. [Long story about USENET groups and the kindness of strangers deleted.] Now I know I should have installed the developer's tools. At this point, I've decided to wait for a new release with a stable kernel that has a driver for the modem. It's not fair that hardware manufacturers feel compelled to write drivers for Windows but not for Linux, but that's the way it is. If Linux get's popular, manufacturers will provide drivers. Linux won't be popular without drivers. Hackers (and you know who you are) need to donate drivers whenever they can, and guys like me can write letters to Dell and US Robotics.
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Re: Where can I get MS-Linux? (kidding!)
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Re: Where can I get MS-Linux? (kidding!)
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Re: Where can I get MS-Linux? (kidding!) I'm using a winmodem under suse linux 6.0
I got pretty frustrated installing linux and I'm a long time tech
guy. The linux guys don't communicate as well as they might because:
a: they, like many experts, have forgotten the painful little steps they
went through learning what they know I'm still very interested in Linux because:
a: windows crashes all the time I need windows still to:
a: play a decent game
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Re: Where can I get MS-Linux? (kidding!)
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Re: Where can I get MS-Linux? (kidding!) Corel has contracted w/ MS to write it, according, more or less, to their recent annual report
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