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Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux
by JRT on Friday 21/Mar/2008, @07:24
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There are some valid points here, and some things that are totally wrong. But first we need to make clear that KDE IS NOT LINUX. We have MS to blame for that comfusion, I suppose. They "Bolted" a GUI onto DOS and called the package Windows (even illegally registered "Windows" as a trademark -- I suppose that this is possible because X used the term "Window" [no 's']) but I digress.
KDE is not Linux, but rather a GUI that will run on any OS that uses the X-Window system and also KDE applications will run on some that don't. KDE applications will even run on windows although we can not yet run KDE on the OS that underlies MS-Windows.
MS has not consolidated its position in the field of operating systems. Last time I checked, the server market is still open and a lot of it is held by UNIX variants including Linux. To measure this market, we need a metric other than units sold.
They had won the browser wars although they used clearly illegal means to do it. Now they see the handwriting on the wall: IE8 will be standards compliant. I expect some remaining problems with this, but the EU Commission will probably take care of it -- competition will be restored in the browser market.
Where they have really consolidated their position is in the office suite software market and the desktop OS market followed. Again, they didn't hesitate to use illegal methods to finish of their main competitor. But, this is still an open issue. We don't know how many Billion dollars that Novell will ultimately receive in the WordPerfect case which is still open and still in the US court system. The wordprocessor market does tend to be a natural monopoly, or rather the file format is a natural monopoly. A natural monopoly means that government regulation is inevitable. The US DOJ has been reluctant but the EU Commission is not. Will OOXML and ODF be merged? Will the next version of MS-Word use ODF as one of its native formats?
I don't understand about the cut and paste issue. This is not KDE and it is not Linux. Cut and paste is handled by X11. It it doesn't work correctly, there are bugs that need to be fixed.
You are quite correct about fragmentation of Linux (the RPM problem). This is the problem that hobbled UNIX for many years. This must be fixed and those that are supposed to be working on it are not addressing the issue. Installing from source is one solution for this problem. If every piece of software built with no problem, it might even be a viable one. I have (mostly) a LFS installation and I can tell you that lots of stuff installs perfectly -- it could be done by a script -- there are some things that don't. :-( I say mostly LFS because I found that it is (or was) a good idea to use some Fedora stuff for compatibility (unfortunately -- more fragmentation problems -- this doesn't work very well anymore although I do have the system set up like a Fedora system). This is not good. Just because I studied EE/CS in college and can do this doesn't mean that it is simple -- and is should be simple; there is no reason for it not to be simple.
Browser plugins are an important issue. But, it is not as you state. IE does not come with Java. Firefox will install plugins on Linux just as on Windows -- if they can do it, we should be able to as well. The KDE browser plugin software has languished. This is partly due to the KDE tower of babel syndrome. We tend to have something other than a useful engineer's argument (they soon develop into flame wars) about how to fix things and the result is that, eventhough we agree that the current code is bad, it doesn't get fixed because there is no agreement on how to fix it. This was (or is) so bad with Konqueror that a new application was developed (Dolphin) rather than add needed features to Konqueror.
I have no problems with MP3 (an obsolete format that should be deprecated), WMA, & WMV files. But you are correct that there are issues with including this in a distro. RealPlayer (free Linux version) will play MP3 files (at least it will on my system). Just download it and stop complaining that everything wasn't included -- having the InterNet is a good thing. If you have an x86 system, you can download files from somewhere in Hungary and then play WMA & WMV files, it is important to understand what is happening here. MS made these file formats to deliberately be incompatible with everything else. We can all help here by refusing to use these non-standard formats. It is more likely that the EU Commission's recent actions against WMP will have a greater effect by breaking the monopolist's food chain. AFAIK, it is possible to run 32bit Flash on a 64bit system. A distro should come with this already set up.
With games, there is nothing about X11/OpenGL that makes it in anyway inferior as a platform for commercial games. Games made to run on the KDE desktop do not have to be free software. Qt is available with a commercial license and the needed KDE libraries should be LGPL. Have you considered that Windows games are still sold on CDs because they figure that there are lots of Windows users that are too stupid to download an ISO and burn it on a CD? The InterNet is a good thing -- having to order plastic disks is less good.
There is just that one small problem: the proprietary graphics cards. So, do NOT buy one. Either buy an Intel system with the GPU in the NorthBridge or get a Radion 9200 and wait till ATI graphics is 100% free again (documentation is being distributed as I write this). I admit that setting up the graphics system for the 9200 was not simple, but then I have an all from source system. I must presume that with a distro that it would be no problem as long as you have a GPU for which a free driver (actually a module) exists. But yes, the GPL is too restrictive when it comes to using GPL software with other libraries. These other libraries are often needed and this restriction is detrimental to the growth of Linux.
> The proof of the free software failure is seen also in the professional world ...
Yes, and most true professional engineering software runs on UNIX, but it is NOT free.
Most actual professional EDA (electronic design) is available for UNIX/Linux. If you want personal level tools, gEDA is available for free. The same is true of REAL CAD, it is almost all UNIX. The only exception is Auto-CAD which did seem to find a market niche and get a high price for Windows software. As with EDA, personal level CAD is available free for UNIX/Linux. I use Q-CAD (qcad.org). The personal version is free. An interesting issue is whether Auto-CAD is really better than VeriCAD? Or, is it just the Chavis Regal effect?
I don't know why Adobe hasn't released Dreamweaver for *NIX other than OS/X yet. Perhaps it is because they don't think that there is a market for it. After acquiring Macromedia, they did release a new version that is supposed to be totally W3C compliant (the previous versions which weren't would not sell well at all for Linux). Currently, it does offer what no other web development tool does. It is integrated and simple to use yet it will produce standards compliant code. OTOH, you need to realize that many web developers write things by hand because they prefer this method. I also noticed that you didn't mention WebSphere.
Do you have a specific complaint about Scribus? You say that other applications have more features. Some consider MS-Windows applications to suffer from feature bloat!. Don't people that do DTP still use Apple systems?
What you say about Flash content creation makes little sense. Flash is a proprietary format. There would be little market for software to create Flash for Linux. The W3C standard is SMLE and I am disappointed that applications to create SMLE content are not available. Actually, Adobe would really need to add good SMLE support to Dreamweaver before releasing it for Linux.
I am not a fan of RAD, but here is a list of what is available for Linux:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Rapid_Application_Development_tools
You now seem to be veering off from the valid points when you suggest: Microsoft Visual Studio. If you use any MS development tool, you will find that it contains proprietary extensions and your work will be useless for anything but MS-Windows. I don't see the power in an IDE. I write code, I compile it, I try it and if it doesn't work, I use the debugger. If you want to do this with a GUI shell, there are such packages for Linux. Have you tried Eclipse?
You really miss the point here:
> A computer game developer would never develop free (as in free speech) games, because they have to eat.
Nobody said that games for Linux, UNIX, OS/X, Solaris, etc have to be free at all. There is nothing to prevent anyone from writing a non-free game for *NIX and charging money for it. It is just that this is driven by the market. That is why there aren't a lot of games for OS/X either. It is not in any way a limitation of the system.
> Administrative management? In Linux? There's not software in this area.
Do you mean System Administration? KDE has GUI tools for most of this. Kuser. KSysV & Kpackage for example. And yes, somethings are better done with the command line. I think that even MS-Windows system administrators use it.
> If Linux is free (in both senses)...Why the high computers-makers don't reinstall it (just a 1% make that)? Or at least dual-boot? Others, in other hand, opt for FreeDOS
The Linux market is perceived as being made up of people that would rather install it themselves.
> Others, in other hand, opt for FreeDOS.
Yes, that evil monopolist is still on the loose and committing extortion. Why are systems shipped with FreeDOS? Because it is a loophole in the Faustian contract that computer companies are forced to sigh in order to ship systems with MS-Windows. In case you don't know, they have to agree not to sell any system without an OS. Sad isn't it. And you probably thought that the antitrust action settled this. Well it didn't.
You are correct in a way that there is no PC battle. The evil monopolist is still out there. I don't see it as a battle; I see it as competition and till we have full time Court supervision of MS (something that seems to be coming in the EU), there will be no competition except for the niche markets.
> Keep defending ...
There is no need to defend any of this. People use them because they like them better. Microsoft Office is anything but simple to use for complex documents -- ever wonder why lawyers still use WordPerfect? The GUI gives the impression of simplicity, but WYSIWYG wordprocessing is not as simple as using a markup language. And no you don't have to use LaTeX directly, there are several nice GUI frontends for it -- for KDE, it is Kyle. Same with editors, people use their favorite editor because they like it and I have no reason to debate that with them. People, such as me, develop from the command line rather than a GUI/IDE because we like it. Same with HTML, people write it by hand because that is the way that they like to develop. I use SeaMonkey or OpenOffice for basic stuff. They are more than sufficient for basic web page stuff.
And finally, there is the USB modem. There is no such thing as a USB modem. It is, like the WinModem a fraud where most of the modem is in software and must run on your processor. You would NEVER want to use such a product on a multitasking OS because the advantage of being able to download while you are doing something else is lost. I am on DSL now. That was really simple. I told the system to start the dhcpcd (yes you can use a GUI to do that). When I used dial up, I installed a REAL modem and never did anything except use the configuration GUI for KPPP. I never did any other sysadmin. The OS found the modem and configured it on boot with no problem.
Where would I like to go today? As far from Bill Gates as possible; where I am free to do what I want the way I want. I bought a PERSONAL COMPUTER because I wanted my own computer. That does not mean a system dedicated to running only MS software. Yes, it is currently not as simple as OS/X, but don't compare a Linux distro to MS-Windows. Walter Mosberg (WSJ) compared Ubuntu. OS/X, and Vista, he rated Vista third for non-techies (as he calls them). Yes, OS/X came in first and it probably always will since Linux software will always give up some ease of use to gain power. Perhaps you don't understand that yet. |
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