Posted on 05/30/2002 12:33:23 AM PDT by ThePythonicCow
Digital Tools
Linux Gets Friendlier
Since its introduction as a free operating system in 1991, the Linux variant of Unix has become such a popular way to run servers that a business has grown up around supplying, supporting and charging for it. Even IBM has gotten into the act.
Now, frustrated by a monopoly whose innovation in the face of slower growth amounts to finding more efficient ways of extracting money from captive customers, users are beginning to wonder whether Linux could supplant Windows as a cheaper solution for desktop machines. My disappointed but hopeful conclusion: For normal human beings, not yet. But it's an outside possibility in corporate situations where support is at hand, and it's getting tantalizingly closer for the masses.
A couple of years ago installing Linux was an exercise in nonstop profanity. This time when I tried two different versions, both worked--mostly.
The popular Red Hat is aimed squarely at Linux veterans, and the new version, 7.3, comes on seven CDs for $60. When the lengthy installation process finally ends, a warehouseful of software has been crammed onto your hard drive, including not one but two separate user interfaces and a program that times the steeping of tea. But that cornucopia of confusing stuff will mostly give newcomers a headache.
Desktop/LX, $30 from Lycoris, a tiny startup founded in Microsoft's hometown of Redmond, Wash., comes on only one CD. Its less-is-more philosophy is aimed at users not necessarily familiar with Linux, so it looks as much like Windows as possible: Install it on a Windows machine, and it even swipes the desktop background. Whereas Red Hat asks you to choose between LILO and Grub for your bootloader and Gnome and KDE for your operating environment, Desktop/LX has mercifully decided all that for you. And though it includes far less than Red Hat, it still provides plenty, including an office productivity suite, two Web browsers, two e-mail clients, software for playing and burning CDs, a bunch of games and lots more.
But frustration is part of the package. Though Linux can be installed alongside Windows so that you can choose either system at startup, neither Desktop/LX nor Red Hat includes Windows software to make that kind of installation easy. On my Sony PC, neither was able to produce audio, except from the fan that neither could silence. Desktop/LX made it simple to access Windows systems on my network; Red Hat never managed that feat. The DVD software that comes with Desktop/LX can't play encrypted discs, which means most of them.
Neither system managed to get my printer working properly, and installing other peripherals can be a trial because manufacturers' Linux support is so spotty. When a digital camera I tried didn't work, a Lycoris guru e-mailed that all I might have to do was "issue a command like: mount -tvfat/dev/sda1 /mnt/<location you want>." That's about as far from plug-and-play as you can get, and completely unacceptable outside the world of hobbyists and corporate support desks.
And, like the other things that don't quite work, it is unfortunately typical. Though a charmingly unbusinesslike whimsy full of fanciful names and icons now pervades the parts of Linux you see at first glance, incomprehensible messages and commands lurk millimeters below. Try to get help from a particular program, and you'll often be sent to a general help screen that doesn't help at all--or refers to things that are second nature to Linux experts but gibberish to everyone else.
Want to run Windows programs under Linux? Software called Wine, under development by volunteers since 1993, is meant to do just that, but its Web site admits that it is still full of "bugs and unimplemented features" and that "Most applications still do not work correctly." One Wine adaptation, Codeweavers' $55 Crossover Office, lets Linux run Microsoft Office applications--but only certain older versions, and, in my experience, badly. Using Word and Excel was frustrating when the cursor insisted on disappearing or changing to an hourglass. Installing the Microsoft applications required a visit to the Codeweavers support site and invoking two obscure commands, one of which included a typographical error that kept it from running. Screen fonts looked horrible. Though the company says it is addressing these problems, if you want to run Windows programs, you're better off just running Windows.
Wine also figures in the forthcoming Lindows operating system, another Linux variant emphasizing Windows compatibility. For now it's hard to imagine who would pay $99 for a one-year membership, when the product is in a "sneak preview" release that the company's Web site admits "is not meant to be used in a production environment" and has functions that "will not operate properly." Even if it does work, who's going to spring for a new operating system when one comes packaged with every PC?
Maybe someone fed up with the high price of Windows applications. If Windows and its apps were cheap and trouble free, Linux wouldn't stand a chance on the desktop. What it will take to compete there is a Lycoris-like focus on the user, but with greater rigor, better hardware support, more professionally designed software and computer makers willing to deliver Windows-less computers full of flawless functionality at prices that substantially undercut the Windows/Office monopoly.
Fortunately, smart Linuxheads can learn from a fine Unix-based system that keeps users from having to understand the ins and outs of the arcane underpinnings--unless they really, really want to. I refer them to Apple's OS X.
Stephen Manes (steve@cranky.com), cohost of Digital Duo, has been covering technology for nearly two decades. Visit his home page at www.forbes.com/manes.
I wish the popular commentators realized that the success of Linux (of any computer system) was not entirely defined by the desktop. Linux on the backend is doing very well these days.
So far, I have just taken one Unix/Linux class, ugh.
But over the summer I am going to install it on an old computer that I have sitting around and just practice until I like it. One of my professors told me that if I "know" Unix/Linux - I will start out making about $10,000 more a year than I would just knowing windows.
I configured his new KDE desktop to launch all the important programs via hotkeys, and provided an HTML index that lists the keystrokes for each task. The HTML index alternatively provides clickable links for each keystroke, and is, itself, never more than one click or keystroke away.
The entire system has been imaged with MONDO. Should the need ever arise, he will be able to boot from a CD and reload the entire system (or any part of it) without having to make a single configuration decision. He will also be able to burn a new bootable CD image after further tweaking things to his own taste.
I'll be able to perform remote administration to keep the box humming along smoothly. The firewall is sealed up tighter than a drum, but I've provided a simple interface that he can use to allow secure connections from my IP address upon demand.
The money we saved on OS, firewall software, office software, anti-virus software, photo editing software, etc. was applied toward a good 19" monitor, digital camera/USB flash reader, and quality CD-RW drive.
When he boots the system up for the first time, it shouldn't take more than 30 seconds to connect to the 'net and surf or send his first email. Since his system was derived from my own configuration, I expect zero difficulty in supporting it.
He got more hardware and software functionality than his sister, and paid the same price. He's going to love it, and she is going to be jealous!
Having said all that, I can't imagine him ever setting a Linux box up from scratch. But then again, I can't imagine him setting up a Windows box from scratch either.
We spent the last three weeks of the class working with a GUI...but I was still trying to catch up on my command line and script labs...so I really did not practice much with the GUI.
Do you ever use the command line (shell) in the real world?
Aaargh. Or, you can download it for free...
It's trying to compete against Windows so the desktop is the battlefield whether you choose to admit it or not. Personally I believe Redhat, et al, should take a page out of the Apple OS X book. It's what they strive to be someday.
The majority of my computers don't have desktops -- they don't even have keyboards -- and this is where the strength of Linux really lies. The Unixes are the most network-centric operating systems, and were at the core of the client/server model... crunching numbers, providing storage and services across the network, etc. The desktop is only a small part of the picture, but it's the thing that most PC users see and interact with, and here, Windows is king.
Personally I believe Redhat, et al, should take a page out of the Apple OS X book. It's what they strive to be someday.
I'm not following you here... what does OS X do better than *ix?
According to your argument, there is more than one server for each installed desktop. That math doesn't work.
It's trying to compete against Windows so the desktop is the battlefield
What's wrong with this analogy is that it is unlikely in my view that the PC will continue to serve the very large role that it has played this last decade. The physical requirement to carry perhaps 4 people and some goods, and the relatively slow rate of change in the cost and weight of the engine required to pull such a load, have meant that the automobile has been basically refining the same solution for the last 80 years. Dominant market positions attained by such companies such as Ford and General Motors back then are still important today. Our highway system, our two car garages, some of our largest industries, some would say our foreign policy, our arrangement of cities and suburbs, and much else forms a fabric that deeply embeds the automobile, in roughly its current form, in our lives.
The fundamental physical constraints on what is required to provide humans with information storage, manipulation, communication and interaction are much smaller than my current desktop PC, and the PC engine (CPU, memory, logic, transmission and storage) is still changing rapidly, with at least another order or two more change left in the near future, perhaps dramatically more. DOS, Windows and the PC are not phenomenon that will last a century. As Gates well knows -- he's doing everything in his power to gain profitable monopolies in web, network, handheld, communications, ecommerce, server and other such markets, while he still has the Windows and Office cash cows to fund the transformation.
Linux, due in good part to its widespread availability, is strong, if not dominant, in many of these same markets. Stallman's Gnu Public License (GPL), which Linus applied to Linux, forces changes and adaptions to Linux by anyone back into the mainstream, and so far has kept Linux from falling into the trap of earlier Unix systems of becoming proprietary variants in a Tower of Babel, while continuing to provide innovators in new technologies with leading edge operating system technology that is free, unencumbered and easy to adapt.
Gates isn't so much worried about Linux taking out Windows. He's worried about it taking out his escape path, his future opportunities for continued dominance.
He has good reason to worry.
Actually, it's a BSD derivative--not Linux
Windows XP was very unfriendly to my scanner and printer since it told them they were paperweights.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.