Your Thoughts On Main Streaming Linux What next?

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

nice article there divya, but from my experience, I liked Wine 0.9.1 better than CrossOver Office 5.0 because they both do the same thing, but Wine does it for free and open source.xboxrulz

[unimatrix 0]

Call me more cynical by the day, but Linux seems to be popular more and more because of a loud screaming geeky fan-base. I used Linux starting back with Slackware 2 on a 486 DX4. Got it to install, but then what? there wasn't a whole lot of useful things I could do with it at the time since I wasn't running a server. Fast forward to SuSE 6.4 (the last Linux distro I used) with the nice GUI installer and useful productivity tools. Still my sound card and printer didn't have drivers, so it wasn't much use to me other than to write and test LAMP scripts. Basically I used Linux to learn Unix basics 101. But it's like drinking fake beer, after a while you want the real stuff. Linux was really my crutch into the world of Unix when I settled on the FreeBSD and OpenBSD operating systems for web-server enviroments. Linux, to me, is a cobbled together hacked mess. BSD is far more structured in development and designed to usually to do one thing and do it well. In FreeBSD, that is as a server. For OpenBSD that is out of the box security. Plus, read the BSD licenses against the GPL. Tell me which product offers more freedom? Linux has seen popularity in the server room of companies because of three letters: I.B.M. If IBM wasn't taughting and offering products and support, Linux would be a damn hard sell to most businesses. I worked at one company that knew that the days of their Sun Microsystems were numbered. They would never have looked at Linux if the equipement and service contracts didn't say IBM on them. They bought into Linux NOT because of Linux, but because of IBM. I think many in the Linux world don't put two and two together on that front. In 2002 I left the world of Linux pretty much for good. The only execption is that our company website is hosted on a shared Linux server from 1and1 internet. But considering my interaction with that is pretty much limited to FTP....Now I use Macintosh. Just about every web developer I know has made the move to Macintosh. Why? Now they could write and test Apache/MySQL/PHP(or PERL) scripts in a native Unix enviroment AND have their Photoshop/Dreamweaver all on one box in one boot. Now they could buy a Powerbook and work from their local coffee shop in bliss. (thanks to WiFi). Manyof the companies that used to purchase Sun workstations have purchased power macs, especially after the G5's came out. A 4Ghz system with 8GB of RAM for USD 6,000 each? Damn that was a bargin considering I remember spending upwards of $20k a seat for Sun Workstations with a quarter of that much horse power. I think it would interesting to do a survey back when Apple was running the switch ads and see the percentage of people that "switched" from Linux to OS X verses Windows to OSX...I think one would be surprised.

[yordan 10]

the percentage of people that "switched" from Linux to OS X verses Windows to OSX...

I switched from MS-Dos to Windows 98 when the home PC's startend beeing sold with Win98. I switched to WinXP because my new computer has been sold with WinXP installed. My next computer (hopefully in a couple of years) will probably be sold with Linux Installed, then I will have switched to Linux.I guess a lot of home users have the operating system sold with the computer bought, so they will naturally switch to Linux when the market (and the customer service people) will be ready for that, I think it's beginning right now and will be more and more precise within the next five years.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

unimatrix. IBM wasn't the reason why so many people use Linux. The real reason was RedHat.If it wasn't for RedHat, many people would still use Windows and the infestation would already covered the world.One real life example is my dad's office. When he was planning to get a server, if it wasn't for the RedHat "ad" mail and HP's "ad" mail, then he would've landed and used a Windows server.xboxrulz

[abhiram 0]

If it wasn't for RedHat, many people would still use Windows and the infestation would already covered the world.

I guess that's true to some extent. People started seeing Redhat boxes in stores along side windows and for almost the same price. And since redhat was 'selling' linux, it needed to advertise. Even now, people prefer to use Windows everywhere I go to. This isn't because of it's 'ease of use' or 'ease of maintanance ... it's because of it's 'ease to get plenty of tech guys who can take care of the system'.

I chose Linux a year ago because it's completely free and because it gave me more control over the system than windows. Also, it's more fun to use Linux than windows because it's more 'geekish' in nature .

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

nicely said abriham, I chose Linux because it was free, then I found out that it was far better than Windows, then I discovered about Microsoft's evil regime. Without Linux, I wouldn've never knew Microsoft was playing the good guy, but under their "skin" they were demons from hell (except the gaming studios, (especially Bungie) and the XBOX)xboxrulz

[iGuest 3]

I think it all depends on the user. I mean not everyone who's good at computers actually know how to use Linux at all. Same otherwise, that some who use Linux don't understand some of the very basics of normal windows and etcetra. One of my old computer teacher's teacher was so good at Linux things, he can practically do whatever programs he want to make given the time. When he tried to do some basic things on the normal windows, it actually took him awhile to know what was what XDAnyways, I think that Main Streaming it wouldn't really help at all. As many will stick with Windows and Mac, I don't really see much in advancements. It's just something that reaches it's limits during this time of a generation.

[Jguy101 0]

Well, first of all, I think we're going to need to have more easy-to-use Linux distros, such as MEPIS.

 

After that, there has to be some sort of PR campaign, to try to convince people that Linux is not only for nerds who have doctorates in Computer Science. That belief seems to be rather prevalent; there are actually people out there who think it's some sort of hacker tool.

 

Once that's all done, the pool of Linux users is probably gonna grow big time.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

tried that "tactic", doesn't work. I tried advertising SuSE Linux, but from feedback, the only reason they don't want to switch is the drivers/software issues they would have.xboxrulz

[abhiram 0]

I mean not everyone who's good at computers actually know how to use Linux at all.

That's the whole point. You don't have to be good at computers to know how to use linux. Everyone's been trained to use windows from the start. It's a mindset with everyone that windows is the easiest OS available. If you were given linux instead of windows when you started out with computers with no other alternative, you'd have gotten used to it and felt that windows is for geeks .

Linux has great common desktop potential. These holidays, since I prefer using gentoo rather than windows, I installed gentoo on the home system. Since my mom and bro need it to listen to songs, watch movies, surf the net and play solitaire , I showed them how to do it in GNOME. No problems at all, they're just as comfortable with it. They just needed a little help initially and then no problems at all. Mind you, they're hardly interested in computers like me. I always fix up the computer whenever I come home so that they have no problems with it.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

nice, but too bad that's not the case with my family. I tried to convince my parents to install Linux after their computer got nuked by a virus, but they still refused after I told them all the advantages...xboxrulz

[the empty calorie 0]

Windows is not going to be dominant forever. It may be a while, but soon enough, Windows will have gone the way of CP/M, but with less of a hobbyist community behind it than CP/M. I can easily see Apple taking the market from Microsoft, and I really think they deserve it. Who wants a computer that doesn't work, honestly?

[Quatrux 4]

@ the empty calorie, you're dreaming, but your dream is quite nice.. and I won't like if apple dominates the market too No one wants "a computer which does not work" but people will still use it. It is best to have a market with a lot of OS'es where non of them dominate, but has a big concurrency market and they want that people would use their product instead of others, by lowering prizes and stuff, making it work great and faster and having a lot of more features, but of course it has a problem too, the companies will start cheating and manipulating that people would use their products by adding non standard features and it might get harder to port software from one OS to another, one OS will have a game other won't have and stuff, everything can happen, and besides what OS will we need to use in school on informatics lessons ? by taking exams ? or we will be able to choose ?

[Jeigh1405241495 0]

I wouldn't mind a market with a few 'dominant' OS's but I don't think having alot would be beneficial. All current OS's have problems of varying degrees, and the more OS's there are the more liekly each of these is to have more problems since they'll have smaller groups working on each OS thus limiting the abilities of those groups to resolve said issues. I could be wrong but I cant see flooding the market with popular OS's being a positive idea (by different I mean completely different, not like how linux distros differ since they have the same core)Oh, and I agree that Apple won't take the market from Microsoft. Just cant see it ever happening.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

unless, Microsoft collapses because it made huge mistakes like adding TCPA/TCP, DRM into Vista.Force upgrades and etc.Most of my friends and family opposes that idea.xboxrulz