Problems Linux Enthusiasts Refuse to Address

[Samuel Thurston]

On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 1:13 PM, Douglas Pollard <dougpol1 at verizon.net> wrote:
> On 04/05/2011 01:25 PM, Michael Haney wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 1:16 PM, David Gerard<dgerard at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>> On 5 April 2011 17:50, Samuel Thurston<sam.thurston at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>>>  I think
>>>> in 2011 it's time to stop holding Linux to a standard that doesn't
>>>> exist anywhere outside the sealed-box hardware monoculture of Apple.
>>>
>>> While this does seem unfair, we need to consider the model for
>>> disruption from below: the disruptor is (a) cheap (b) does some
>>> important thing *better* than the incumbent.
>>>
>>> This is why Linux has taken over *everything* outside the desktop.
>>> Your phone, your *television* run Linux.
>>>
>>> So to take over the desktop, it does in fact need to succeed in some
>>> respect that is sufficient to push it forward.
>>>
>>> The year of the Linux desktop was 2007. I say this because that was
>>> the year when it was finally price competition for Windows - with
>>> reports of Microsoft charging $0 to $5 for XP on netbooks, just to
>>> keep Linux the hell off them. Before that, OEMs were at their mercy.
>>> This was bad enough for it to show up in Microsoft's financial
>>> statements of the time.
>>>
>>> So, price was actually enough at that time - we didn't win the
>>> desktop, but we gave it a damn good shake. What other thing could
>>> Linux do ridiculously better to beat Windows?
>>>
>>> Ubuntu is taking a plausible approach: the Mac has the slickest design
>>> and Microsoft has proven utterly unable to compete, so apply design
>>> skills to the problem. This has variable results, e.g. Unity doesn't
>>> work properly, and even if it did it's deliberately missing far too
>>> much actual functionality. But this is why we have many distros.
>>>
>>>
>>>> "I'm not talking about dumbing anything down, mind you. No, I simply
>>>> want to see all of us decide that we either are going to start taking
>>>> our platform seriously or opt to forgo the usual long-winded speech
>>>> about how superior it is in comparison to the alternatives."
>>>
>>> This is an example of what I meant by the tech press and ad-banner
>>> trolling for clicks. These are the words of a professional troll.
>>>
>>>
>>>>  If Uncle Steve absolutely needs peachtree
>>>> to handle his existing accounting files, ask: Do you feel like
>>>> tinkering with a compatibility layer in order to make a required app
>>>> work?  If the answer is not a relatively emphatic "yes",
>>>> fuhgettaboutit.
>>>
>>> People don't seem to realise just how good Wine is these days. The
>>> apps that don't Just Work tend to be (a) large (b) recent. But the
>>> thing keeping someone on Windows is more often that Just One App that
>>> they can't do without - and that app will usually work flawlessly in
>>> Wine. YMMV, of course, but it's *always* worth a try.
>>>
>> There's a channel on Youtube dedicated to Linux gaming and it often
>> has videos of Windows games running Wine.  The most recent were Dead
>> Space, Starcraft 2 and Call of Duty 4.  I used to play Guild Wars via
>> Wine on my current Linux box.  But, the machine is getting old, the
>> video card is an 8xAGP Nvidia Geforce FX 5600, and the processor is a
>> single-core 32-bit 1.2GHz Athlon XP.  It doesn't have the hardware to
>> run any of the modern games.  If I had the money I'd build a new
>> gaming system using Linux and Wine.
>>
> I have been sitting here reading these post and concidering where I have
> come from in using a desk top.  I started out using a Texas instrument
> computer with no programs no hard drives only tape drives and almost no
> memory.
>    Microsoft came out with 3.0 and 3.1 shortly after. I thought they were
> wonderful I had an IBM machine with a hard drive and Windows was great.
> After I sold my buisness fooling with my desk top became a hobby. After
> windows 97 I began fooling with Debian.  It was more than I wanted to
> struggle with. I did like the ( misguided ) idea that it was being done by a
>  bunch of hobbyists.  Along came Ubuntu and windows 98  I kept fooling with
> both. I now use Ubuntu and do video with it.  Works great I like Corel auto
> painter in xp.  Does a few things I want to do. Tried it in Wine without any
> luck.  MY point is wine would not have brought me over from widows. This is
> what Ubuntu needs to do I don't think wine will help.I have a good friend
> who has been using Windows from the beginning and he thinks I am crazy for
> fooling with Linux and he thinks that anyone that uses apple is crazy.  He
> will tell me that he is not wedd to windows but there is nothing else out
> there. This is the problem I think, It's one of marketing.  I can't help but
> admire Bill Gates in that he has been a marketing genius.   I have always
> subscribed to the you can fool some of People ,and so on.  Bill Gates has
> fooled almost all the people and done it for one heck of a long time.  Its
> not that he is crooked though he may be, it's that he is really smart.
> Ubuntu's share may be 2% for ever if they do not market it better.  I am not
> sure that free is not a part of that marketing problem. In the minds of most
> people you pay for what you get.  So free may be worthless. I think business
> doesn't like free software because it's a slap in the face to them.

That depends entirely on the business.  Pretty much every software
company including microsoft has embraced free software in one way or
another.   OSX uses the gnu baseutils, apache and mysql on its server
platform, webkit (the rendering engine from KDE's browser Konqueror)
was dramatically enhanced by apple for use in safari.

> Movie
> makers do not use anything that is cheap, much less free how do you mark up
> a free item to make 30% a third of nothing is nothing.

Last I checked almost every major CGI production house (pixar,
dreamworks, etc.) use Linux render farms.

>  A friend is mad as
> hell about creative commons cheapening photography. In no way, will he use a
> free program.

No browser then? Or is he one of the dozen worldwide opera paid users.

> He tells me with pride, I pay for what I use.  He says even
> Mandrake is based on free even if you have to pay a little something for it.

And that's a valid point.  Those big production houses with Linux
render farms?  You bet they all pay some 3rd party vendor to deal with
maintenance and repairs.  There's definitely an economy based around
what you call "free." Red Hat and Novell (which was almost exclusively
in the linux business before they were sold) are both very profitable,
based around services and enhancements to free software.

Canonical is profitable too. You can certainly pay for Ubuntu if you
want, through Ubuntu One services, service & support contracts and so
on.  Does that make it more desirable for desktop users? Maybe ones
like your friend but I think he is an outlier.  I don't dispute that
there are still those that hold his mindset within the business world,
but I think a lot more have opened up to the TCO arguments behind
linux installations.  Pay for licenses, pay for upgrades and pay for
maintenance, or just pay for maintenance?   That's an easy business
decision.