will linux ever be able to takeover windows in popularity

982

October 09, 2008 10:36 AM

Quote:Original post by Tha_HoodRat
Quote:Original post by phantom
Quote:Original post by greenhybrid
Quote:Original post by phantom
The fact you have to do it via the command line is another minus against Linux [...]

* YaST
* Synaptic
* Click'n'Run, etc.

Ah yes, the other flaw with linux; 1001 ways to do one thing.

No, this is not a Good Thing(tm).

Why is this "not a Good Thing(tm)"?

Yea I also wonder this, as for things like 3D graphics on Vista I have the choice between using OpenGL, Direct 3D 9L, or Direct 3D 10, whereas on Linux I lose 2/3 of these choices.

Windows offering me the most choices in how I can do things is why it's my primary OS.

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Raghar

97

October 09, 2008 10:47 AM

Quote:Original post by MikeTacular
My little brother just told me he saw this picture so I googled for it and found it. I know the numbers aren't 100% accurate, but they are close.

My little brother said? This is a wonderful proof, you know. When your little brother would show an image with similar windows share, would you post it?

I personally think any user should exercise right to hide what OS he is using to avoid a discrimination... Quite a lot of people masquerades theirs Linux as a windows XP.

dave

2,188

October 09, 2008 10:47 AM

Quote:Original post by greenhybrid
Quote:Original post by Dave
Because it hinders people getting used to the system. If every application in windows followed different conventions for appearance, layout and common functionality, the software would be harder to use.

I admit on your conventions argument, and it's exactly that why there are two Major Desktops with standard software each (like with Windows/Office/Visual Studio, KDE/KOffice/KDevelop, and so forth; a plus for software like Code::Blocks or Open-Office). Users can stay with that software. And like someone here already pointed out, Microsoft hisself breaks his own rules every few years w.r.t. Look+Feel (one of the reasons why I switched to alternatives), and isn't it Microsoft who permanently wants to push his own standards, like that unnecessary gigantic OOXML, or his own Dialect of HTML?

Be honest, have you never been in the situation where you look for an alternative to your software? (I hear, e.g., Notepad++ has a good reputation along windows-users)

Btw, synaptic is a gui-frontend for debian-archives, YaST is for rpm-archives. A distribution generally sticks to deb or rpm. Package-Managing is transparent to the user, he usually only double-clicks a software-description, presses 'fire', et voila, its gonna be installed.

Like i said in my longer post earlier, i am open to other software (naming Linux). I am not an ignorant user of computers, i will use anything that improved my productivity. I havn't tried notepad++, but i have visual studio which i suspect fulfills my needs better.If something comes along that provides something worth switching for, i'll switch.

But that analysis of a product is very subjective, there is no this-is-the-best-software software at all.

Mithrandir

607

October 09, 2008 10:52 AM

Quote:Original post by phantom
Quote:by people
...tweak tweak tweak tweak...

It's funny you know, apart from a brief 'zomg! power user!' phase I went through back in 1999/2000 I haven't felt the need to 'tweak' Windows at all.

XP I used as default and even Vista just gets installed and used.

All of which brings up an important issue; how many normal end users really really care about being able to tweak every last thing?

For your average user this is NOT an advantage, certainly not one which will let Linux 'take over' the desktop.

Agreed. At my last company, we had a new manager take over that was obsessed with the ability to over-customize everything. So we spent about 10x as much effort making things customizable, only to find out when the product shipped that no one even used the damn features.

Customization is something people always say they want, but never actually utilize in the end.

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stimarco

1,071

October 09, 2008 10:53 AM

Quote:Original post by greenhybrid
Quote:Original post by Dave
Because it hinders people getting used to the system. If every application in windows followed different conventions for appearance, layout and common functionality, the software would be harder to use.

I admit on your conventions argument, and it's exactly that why there are two Major Desktops with standard software each (like with Windows/Office/Visual Studio, KDE/KOffice/KDevelop, and so forth; a plus for software like Code::Blocks or Open-Office). Users can stay with that software. And like someone here already pointed out, Microsoft hisself breaks his own rules every few years w.r.t. Look+Feel (one of the reasons why I switched to alternatives), and isn't it Microsoft who permanently wants to push his own standards, like that unnecessary gigantic OOXML, or his own Dialect of HTML?

I don't get people like you. You whine and bitch and moan about how Microsoft are evil, how their software sucks, how their operating systems are flaky and unreliable, how everything they do is just plain Bad®, and yet...

...and yet, the entire Linux community seems to be hell-bent on copying everything Microsoft do! Why? In the name of all that you hold dear: WHY!?

The GNU / Linux community had a perfect, blank-slate opportunity to create something genuinely innovative, but all we ever see from them is tacky clones and rip-offs of corporate, commercial tools and applications. If I just wanted a UNIX clone with a fancy GUI, I can already choose between OS X, Solaris and BSD! What the hell does Linux offer that those do not?

Where's all this innovation and scintillating brilliance the Free / Open Source Software movement was supposed to bring? Where's the much-vaunted evidence of its superiority as a development methodology?

Quote:Btw, synaptic is a gui-frontend for debian-archives, YaST is for rpm-archives. A distribution generally sticks to deb or rpm. Package-Managing is transparent to the user, he usually only double-clicks a software-description, presses 'fire', et voila, its gonna be installed.

Yeah. Pity it's a real bugger to uninstall apps again afterwards.

And how, pray, are developers supposed to support multiple distros? Are we all supposed to have dozens of Linux installations for QA purposes? As if having to support the myriad hardware configurations wasn't bad enough! Now we're expected to consider specific kernel versions, KDE (and/or GNOME, etc.) versions, XFree versions...

F*ck that for a game of soldiers! I'd rather slit my own wrists than deal with such support issues.

Sean Timarco Baggaley (Est. 1971.)Warning: May contain bollocks.

stimarco

1,071

October 09, 2008 11:08 AM

Quote:Original post by greenhybrid
Quote:Original post by Oluseyi
Quote:Original post by greenhybrid
blah blah blah, Africa

Have you ever been to Africa?

Not in this life. Why?

Because Oluseyi was born there. (In Nigeria, if memory serves.)

I've met, and worked with, quite a few myself as I live in London (UK). For five years, I worked at a school specialising in teaching students from abroad. 90% of our intake each year were Zimbabweans fleeing Mugabe's increasingly demented rule, but I also worked on a daily basis with students from Côte d'Ivoire, Namibia, Zambia, Nigeria, Mozambique and more.

"Africa" is not a single nation, any more than Europe is. Each country has different cultures and mores, its own language(s) and religions.

I've personally had to tell a student that her own sister had just been burned alive back in her homeland.

Thank your parents for raising you in relative luxury and wealth. There are people far, far worse off than you or I who have never even seen electricity, let alone Linux.

Sean Timarco Baggaley (Est. 1971.)Warning: May contain bollocks.

Oxyd

1,162

October 09, 2008 11:10 AM

Quote:Original post by stimarco
Yeah. Pity it's a real bugger to uninstall apps again afterwards.

I can't comment on apt-get or any other deb-based package manager as I don't use that, but I've always percieved clean and easy removal of packages a definite plus against Windows' messy way that leaves files and registry entries scattered all around. Granted, it's not Windows' fault, it's the (un)installers' fault.

Quote:And how, pray, are developers supposed to support multiple distros? Are we all supposed to have dozens of Linux installations for QA purposes? As if having to support the myriad hardware configurations wasn't bad enough! Now we're expected to consider specific kernel versions, KDE (and/or GNOME, etc.) versions, XFree versions...

F*ck that for a game of soldiers! I'd rather slit my own wrists than deal with such support issues.

Distro devs support your application on their distro, not you.

choffstein

1,090

October 09, 2008 11:11 AM

And while the Linux and Windows users wage their bloody wars in the valleys, the Mac OS X users continue picking flowers and being generally amicable in the fields above...

(cue LessBread, Oluseyi, or any of the other lounge argument juggernauts posting 10 or so links to rabid Apple fanboy stories...)

Raghar

97

October 09, 2008 12:14 PM

Quote:Original post by stimarco
...and yet, the entire Linux community seems to be hell-bent on copying everything Microsoft do! Why? In the name of all that you hold dear: WHY!?

Are you sure it's not other way around? Are you sure they both didn't inspired themselves by OSX?

While some programmers could be accused of xxx ther reason is the same as reason why some people are using C#, brownosing to MS.

Neither XMMS, nor GIMP had any resemblance to MS product.

Thought some developers are obcessed by client server architecture, and are forgetting a single user mode. On the other hand MS is guilty as well, quite a lot of slowdowns and useless features on Vista has been instpired by "networked computer".

Quote:The GNU / Linux community had a perfect, blank-slate opportunity to create something genuinely innovative, but all we ever see from them is tacky clones and rip-offs of corporate, commercial tools and applications. If I just wanted a UNIX clone with a fancy GUI, I can already choose between OS X, Solaris and BSD! What the hell does Linux offer that those do not?

Linux is free of charge.
Linux permits unrestricted access to your HW.
Linux support application neutrality.

I doubt they had a blank state opertunity.

Quote:Where's all this innovation and scintillating brilliance the Free / Open Source Software movement was supposed to bring? Where's the much-vaunted evidence of its superiority as a development methodology?

Nobody said it's faster, or superior. It's diferent, and it's reliable. When all comercial OS distributors would try to rob the user dry, Linux wont jump the bandwagon.

Quote:And how, pray, are developers supposed to support multiple distros? Are we all supposed to have dozens of Linux installations for QA purposes? As if having to support the myriad hardware configurations wasn't bad enough! Now we're expected to consider specific kernel versions, KDE (and/or GNOME, etc.) versions, XFree versions...

Personally my applications are installed by unzipping them into folder, and checking if all requirements are satisfied. Nobody forces you to require a house and a dog. I actually check if Sun Microsystems Java 6 is installed, and if there is present an accelerated Nvidia driver.

XFree versions? Does OpenGL 3.0 work? Who cares about a version of the XFree when OpenGL works? Does ALSA/OpenAL work? Kernel versions? 2.6+ is enough.

Honestly an user who decides to install the program on a replaceable drive is larger problem than Linux versioning. (Thought an user who installs program on a replaceable drive doesn't require link into START->PROGRAMS Linux equivalent.)

Mithrandir

607

October 09, 2008 12:22 PM

Quote:Original post by stimarco

I don't get people like you. You whine and bitch and moan about how Microsoft are evil, how their software sucks, how their operating systems are flaky and unreliable, how everything they do is just plain Bad®, and yet...

...and yet, the entire Linux community seems to be hell-bent on copying everything Microsoft do! Why? In the name of all that you hold dear: WHY!?

The GNU / Linux community had a perfect, blank-slate opportunity to create something genuinely innovative, but all we ever see from them is tacky clones and rip-offs of corporate, commercial tools and applications. If I just wanted a UNIX clone with a fancy GUI, I can already choose between OS X, Solaris and BSD! What the hell does Linux offer that those do not?

Where's all this innovation and scintillating brilliance the Free / Open Source Software movement was supposed to bring? Where's the much-vaunted evidence of its superiority as a development methodology?

That's because anyone who is truly innovative isn't going to be dumb enough to give their hard work away for free. They make it and sell it. Open source will always be behind because anyone who could be making money with their creations already is.

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