Posted on 09/17/2005 7:32:48 AM PDT by ShadowAce
When Jack Messman, CEO of Novell, stands up and tell the attendees at BrainShare that the enterprise desktop is the way his company is going, isn't that a pretty good clue that Linux on the desktop isn't such an anathema as it used to be?
Well, apparently not, as pundit after pundit called out to the masses this week all that was Evil (and Good) about the Linux desktop. By Wednesday night, I was reeling from trying to pick and choose articles that were trying to represent a balance of opinions. And that wasn't easy.
While some of these articles were trying to goad developers into building a better desktop in a sort of "tough-love" strategy, a number of them were coming from the "status quo" camp, which basically asserts that What Is Will Always Be. I know a lot of people assume that these pundits are somehow in the employ of proprietary software vendors, and I have said before that 99 percent of the time that is not the case. Instead, a far less sinister motive for maintaining an anti-Linux stance is likely the culprit, though far more lazy.
"Microsoft is It. It Will Always Be It. Nothing Will Change That," the pundits write, assuming from their lofty perches that because Windows is number one, it will always be number one. Somehow in their minds, they have even retroactively applied that to history as well. They must have, because they seem to have forgotten one important thing: something else was King of the IT Hill before Windows (and we can debate what that was). Therefore, simple logic dictates that something else will be King of the IT Hill after Windows.
I maintain that something else will be Linux. Others might point to other technologies, and we can debate that, too. But to blindly assume that something will maintain its prominence for the sole reason it is the most prominent thing now is arrogant, short-sighted, and stupid.
I think this is the argument that makes me the craziest from the pro-Windows camp: "It has a 90-percent installation base. Linux will never be on the desktop."
Excuse me? What the heck does current install numbers have to do with Linux? All that tells me is that Linux hasn't entered the global collective conscious yet. And even that is changing.
No, a 90-percent number can change seemingly overnight. US President Bush used to have a 90-percent approval rating. Now it's around 40 percent. The Roman Empire used to control most of the European continent and we all know how that ended up. Things that are popular one moment can be replaced by something out with nary a qualm. People will use what it easier, what is cheaper, what is faster, and what is better.
Massachusetts is the most recent example of an entity that has figured this out. They realize that proprietary standards are ultimately bad in the long run. They are looking ahead, and thinking of the future.
And for the first time, I think Microsoft is genuinely worried. Because Massachusetts wants something that they simply will not give up.
That's the way it starts—when something big and powerful comes down. A dam can hold back millions of tons of water pressure on a daily basis. But it's ultimately one single crack only big enough for the smallest droplet of water that will bring that dam down. Other states will watch what Massachusetts does and when it works, they will emulate it. Business in those states will follow along, as will schools. Once schools get into the technology, the home user will follow along.
One little crack.
I am not short-sighted enough to think that Linux will be the Be All End All forever, either. Eventually, something else will come along and be the next King of the IT Hill. It's the way of things. But, just as the historical repercussions of the Roman Empire can still be felt all across Western society, I think the imprint of Linux and the concepts of free and open source software may be felt for many years to come. This is one of the few things on which I agree with Richard Stallman: freedom is the most important thing. Not what kind of software is running on what machine, or what name we should call a piece of code.
Things like that are short-sighted, too. Concepts like freedom should be upheld for the longest haul. Sure, we can all strive to give to the next generation of coders a great operating system. But they will learn from us and probably build something better. What we need to do is teach them to keep their code free and open. So they can teach their children. And their children beyond that.
Is there a corresponding "lin-rot?" I don't think so.
I had never heard the term winrot before. But it sounds like a good description of what happens to a consumer-level machine after all the installs/uninstalls, etc. Business-class machines are a different story due to company policies that may be in force.
The reason linux doesn't suffer from this is due to the fundamental difference in how programs install, and the way the system keeps track of installed programs. There is no complicated registry in Linux, and thus if a program can install itself, it all also have the necessary permissions to uninstall everything it installed.
History and human nature bump.
I've experienced 'win rot' as being the computer person for my family.
People install all sorts of useless crap, from themes to programs they use once and never do again, to whatever their friends tell them about via email. Then it comes to me, where I hear "The computer is running really slow" or "It keeps crashing" or whatever problem is caused by whatever combination of programs they're running that day.
After being told exactly what happened - (i.e., what you did caused it. You installed too much crap and didn't have clue what you were doing.) their solution is to go out and buy another computer. Where the same thing will likely happen again.
Most people just don't get it. They think a computer is like a microwave or remote control - you can just keep doing whatever you want with it and it will work automatically.
Let's hope that if anything comes along and drives our most profitable tech company out of business, it's another US business equally as profitable, and not some foreign clone given away for free.
Absolutely worse, known as "dependency hell".
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%22dependency+hell%22&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8
ROFLOL
Easily solved with a decent package manager. Since I've switched to SUSE linux I've had zero problems installing new apps. Painless, quick, everything working.
Petty bad comparison seeing as how Rome controlled most of europe for about 600 years. They certainly didn't disappear with "nary a qualm".
Here's a quick wrap up of how to install APT for RPM:
Once you've got APT for RPM up and running, here's how to use my APT repository:
If you want to build from source RPMs, also add the following line:
rpm-src ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/apt/ SuSE/9.3-i386 suser-guru
(note: replace "9.3-i386" by "9.2-i386", "9.1-i386", "9.0-i386" or "8.2-i386" if you're using SuSE 9.1, 9.0 or 8.2 respectively)
Well, there *is* an extremely nice UI: the YaST Control Center.
So nice that I've never had to use the command line to update things. A few button clicks ad I've updated existing packages, added new packages etc. It took me all of 4 or 5 button clicks to install the latest Mozilla. I'm getting positively spoiled!
Dude--anyone can post a search. That is proof of absolutely nothing. Nor is it a "link to back up your points" as you so hastily add every time someone questions you.
The obvious difference is, my search link completely backed up my claim. Yours on the other hand, was nothing more than your normal name calling, since you have no other response to the facts.
Still looks like an excessive additional pain.
http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/tmp/doc/manual/sles-admin_en/html/ch02s03.html
Normal name calling? When was the last time I called anyone a name? Even when you called me a "chicom lover", I refrained.
My post was not name calling, but rather an example of how dumb it is thinking that a yahoo search is actually backing up anything.
You will get results on anything you enter as a search criterion, and merely linking to a search proves nothing.
"dependency hell" is also out of date, as every major distro uses a package manager that will check for and solve dependencies automatically.
What can I say? I've had nothing but excellent experiences using the tool, and I'm looking forward to installing SuSE on my new computer at home.
Wow, for somebody who doesn't use Linux, it looks like you've got this down. (/sarcasm)
Yeah--GE doesn't like anything about any OSS product. He'll try to find something nasty to say about it, as evidenced by his earlier post.
Unless, of course, the OSS product is BSD-licensed.
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