How Linux Can Achieve Faster World Domination

Page 4 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Status
Not open for further replies.
[citation][nom]tomtompiper[/nom]What open source software have you been using? Most open source software goes through the Alpha, Beta, Release candidate and Stable cycle, if you stick to using the Stable version the likelihood of experiencing bugs would be no higher than any proprietary software. As to support most good distros have a choice of support options. The forums and IRC support for most distros I have tried are fast, friendly and free. If you want games, dual boot or get a console as to better software ask the BBC why they use Linux to edit programs, it's not because they are broke. Just because a piece of software costs money doesn't make it better.[/citation]

ok, take a look at firefox for example, it is very buggy and leaks memory like a mofo. open office? or paint.net?

games have been and will always be better on computers, it's a fact. it's a lot easier to control a character through the keyboard and mouse especially on first person shooter games. don't even get me started when it comes to graphics power. an sli or crossfire setup will top any console out there.
 
[citation][nom]TOMxEU[/nom]I reguraly try various distros, but none works as it supposed to. Ubuntu is the funniest, it does not even have proper default resolution, you have to use TAB at first, unlike in Win95..[/citation]
u say the word man I had the same issue with Ubuntu until i give up with it .
By the why linux kernel and Xorg system contains alot hardware in their database (is see that when i installed the new Linux Kernel manually ) (same thing with Xorg system when i try to install my screen driver from xorg i found alot of options and drivers from all known and unknown brand .meanwhile Ubuntu detect my screen as unknown ?. and set max resolution at 800*600 pxl ! )
but distribution developers cut all that features and the hardware support to make their distribution smaller and less complex .
So all of Linux hardware support are useless . u feel like their no communication between Linux components like Kernel and (Gnome^KDE) and Xorg system and System Libraries and boot loader .
All are work alone and the user have to tweak them all .
 
[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]ok, take a look at firefox for example, it is very buggy and leaks memory like a mofo. open office? or paint.net? games have been and will always be better on computers, it's a fact. it's a lot easier to control a character through the keyboard and mouse especially on first person shooter games. don't even get me started when it comes to graphics power. an sli or crossfire setup will top any console out there.[/citation]

Yeah all that SLI and Crossfire power to play a port from a console, good luck with that. The PC games market is dying, the only growth is in the MMORPG, let's bleed the suckers sector, almost everything else is a X-Box or PS3 castoff.

As to the list of programs I have only used FF an OOo and have never had a problem with OOo and as fo FF I have experienced problems with flash, but that is a plugin and hardly stable on any platform.
 
[citation][nom]Exodite3[/nom]People, as a general rule, want tools that 'just work'.[/citation]
And I don't blame them. Computers for most people are tools to get a job done, not the job itself. But very few people really have a system that "just works" when you turn it on, save for Macs, because they are a closed system. It depends largely on the age of your hardware too. If you run a cutting-edge machine, no OS will support everything out of the box. Most people buy OEM PCs with hardware 1-2 generations old.

[citation][nom]TOMxEU[/nom]I reguraly try various distros, but none works as it supposed to. Ubuntu is the funniest, it does not even have proper default resolution, you have to use TAB at first, unlike in Win95.[/citation]
It does "have the proper default resolution." It just doesn't for you, probably because your video card was newer than the drivers loaded into the shipped kernel version (could be something else, but that's usually the issue). Your statement would be true if you qualified it stating that it was from your own experience, however you implied that this is a global problem, which is false.

I could say that Windows 7 has a broken .NET framework class library. But this would be inaccurate because most people would not have the issues I've had (issues that made me want to install Vista again mind you).

[citation][nom]azz156[/nom]you have to admit that 90% of programs for linux are all in tar.gz etc[/citation]
I would admit that, yes. I would also admit that 90% are in DEB or RPM packages for those not interested in compiling them, like me.

[citation][nom]Jah Rain[/nom]It takes Me about an hour to install Kubuntu 9.10 on this dinosaur Compaq.XP takes 6 hours.[/citation]

As with all software, your mileage may vary. Unless you had less than 128MB of RAM (or a recovery disc :na: ) it shouldn't have taken 6 hours to install XP. You just got unlucky I guess, like the people whining about issues with Linux. Rarely does anything "just work" unless the system is controlled aggressively (a la Macs). That's a fact of life.

[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]ok, take a look at firefox for example, it is very buggy and leaks memory like a mofo. open office? or paint.net? [/citation]
Firefox certainly used to have memory usage issues, although I think they are largely gone now. Chrome certainly sucks up plenty of memory, by design. Open Office I haven't used enough since early 2.x releases to comment on (1.x was horrendous so I used Star Office :)). Paint.net is a Windows program so I don't see the relevance. Perhaps you means GIMP?
 
I think the open source movement is starting at the wrong end by trying to make everyone switch to another OS and abandon everything familiar at once. If they make everyone slowly switch to open source for their every day applications, media playback and games, while still running Windows or OSX, then the switch to Linux would come naturally for people. The transition would be much easier when they can keep using the same applications. People will begin wondering "Why do I pay so much money for Windows licenses when all the software I use is free and available for Linux?".
We're already getting there with stuff like OpenOffce and Firefox, but more is needed. There are too many applications I can not live without that still have no Linux equivalent.
 
[citation][nom]tomtompiper[/nom]Yeah all that SLI and Crossfire power to play a port from a console, good luck with that. The PC games market is dying, the only growth is in the MMORPG, let's bleed the suckers sector, almost everything else is a X-Box or PS3 castoff. As to the list of programs I have only used FF an OOo and have never had a problem with OOo and as fo FF I have experienced problems with flash, but that is a plugin and hardly stable on any platform.[/citation]

ha ha ha, you say computer gaming is dead, i don't think so. there may not be as many games for computers, but they are far better when it comes to game play and involvement. sure blame the plugins for crappy open source, lol
 
1. i think open source has a lot of potential... the greatest "success story" of open source IMO is Wikipedia (if you stretch the definition of open source a bit). some of the things that helped Wikipedia are a) negligible fragmentation, and b) a very low barrier to entry (and therefore a large community that contributed). Personally, I like this article's comment on Python; IMO, Python is the best answer (at this time) for (b), although it's possible that in future, there'll be even easier programming languages with lower barriers to entry. A Python layer on top of the Linux kernel that gives access to the many underlying libraries (that have been already written in other languages, e.g. C++) could help.

2. I think Linux will win the battle in the mobile space first. if you look at this article: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=3205164 the number of ARM chips out there significantly surpasses the no. of Intel chips: Intel sold it's 1 billionth chip in 2003, AMD sold it's 500 millionth chip in 2009.... on the other hand, ARM has 2.8 billion chips shipping in just 2009 alone. And a lot of ARM devices are Linux-based, not just Android. Lots of ARM-based devices run Linux without you even realizing it.

3. Memory has already become very cheap it's very easy now to put a copy of Ubuntu onto an 8GB thumbdrive (of which Ubuntu uses only 4GB). With a RAID-style mirroring device (convert something like this to have RAID mirroring: http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/06/hdd-stage-rack-evolves-again-now-holds-twice-the-hard-drives/), why not have shops (or your office) whereby you can just plug in an empty 8GB thumbdrive / SSD & come back after lunch with your thumbdrive / SSD installed with a full version of Ubuntu / Fedora / etc.? Then just plug in your thumbdrive / SSD to boot into Linux instead of Windows. Alternatively, maybe hardware vendors could put a copy of Sun's VirtualBox into the hardware, and we could seamlessly switch between 2 SSDs on a laptop? Intel is aiming their Moblin Linux to about 2 seconds boot time (http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/04/intel-aims-for-2-second-boot-time-with-moblin-linux-platform.ars)... i think with SSD only. When you turn on your laptop, within 2 seconds you get Linux... (then invoke VirtualBox to load Windows 7 from the second SSD if you really really need it--which you won't if you're just aiming for some simple web surfing / Google docs /etc). With laptops, maybe people can live with long boot times, but for mobile devices people might just find anything more than 30 seconds too long a wait.

4. Software Installation: I think Linux can have a much better software installation than Windows. I already like the 1-click install in Ubuntu's (old) Add/Remove. I hope Ubuntu finds a way to go back to 1-click installs (in Windows it's rarely 1-click). Also, a list of top 50/100 programs (with user feedback/ratings) like Apple's App store would help. Plus the ability to recommend / suggest an app to a friend (the way Facebook does it) would help.
 
Red Star Linux, Comrade. Dear Leader, Kim Jung Il says the only way to peace and harmony in the world of technology, is to switch to the OS he created for us as a gift from his divine wisdom.
 
"4. Software Installation: I think Linux can have a much better software installation than Windows. I already like the 1-click install in Ubuntu's (old) Add/Remove. I hope Ubuntu finds a way to go back to 1-click installs (in Windows it's rarely 1-click). Also, a list of top 50/100 programs (with user feedback/ratings) like Apple's App store would help. Plus the ability to recommend / suggest an app to a friend (the way Facebook does it) would help."

Not sure is other Distros are doing the same but PCLinuxOS have started an AppStore,

http://www.pclinuxos.com/appstore/

It is in it's infancy, but it has one click install and ratings and I know they are planning to add more apps as time goes on. I think it will depend on demand whether it is a success or failure but it proves that it is possible.
 
[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]ha ha ha, you say computer gaming is dead, i don't think so. there may not be as many games for computers, but they are far better when it comes to game play and involvement. sure blame the plugins for crappy open source, lol[/citation]

"ha ha ha, you say computer gaming is dead"

No you did, I said it was dying.



"there may not be as many games for computers,"

As I said PC gaming is dying, glad you agree.



"but they are far better when it comes to game play and involvement"

Sales of console games would tend to disprove this statement.



"sure blame the plugins for crappy open source, lol"

Flash is not open source, I only wish it was then it would be stable and secure.
 
[citation][nom]tipoo[/nom]So why can't AMD get their damn graphics drivers on Linux right?[/citation]

AMD can't get their Windows drivers right.
 
3 ways to run Far cry, Bioshock, Left 4 Dead, Modern Warfare2, FEAR 2, and others:

1-Wine. Some games are a headache.
2-PlayOnLinux. Better compatibility. Easier to install
2-Crossover. Non Free 🙁
3-Cedega. Supports SecuROM and other DRM, so you don't ever need to crack tour games. Non free 🙁

Need For Speed 4, Tomb Raider 1, and 2, no more runs on Vista/7 nor 64 bit windows, so they ONLY run on Linux.


As a programmer, I say that the most necessary thing that Linux needs is Visual Studio (NO. I don't mean Momo. I mean the Visual Studio integrated environment), and ANTS profiler.
 
[citation][nom]marraco[/nom]3 ways to run Far cry, Bioshock, Left 4 Dead, Modern Warfare2, FEAR 2, and others:1-Wine. Some games are a headache.2-PlayOnLinux. Better compatibility. Easier to install2-Crossover. Non Free 3-Cedega. Supports SecuROM and other DRM, so you don't ever need to crack tour games. Non free Need For Speed 4, Tomb Raider 1, and 2, no more runs on Vista/7 nor 64 bit windows, so they ONLY run on Linux.As a programmer, I say that the most necessary thing that Linux needs is Visual Studio (NO. I don't mean Momo. I mean the Visual Studio integrated environment), and ANTS profiler.[/citation]
check kdevelop4...
 
[citation][nom]azz156[/nom]the day linux breaks the 2% market share is the day they abandon terminal commands & make all programs install using .deb . you have to admit that 90% of programs for linux are all in tar.gz etc & are a nightmare to those new to it. i've given up using the ./configure, make, make install commands since they never work. ether terminal goes wtf or your miss x amount of lib's to complete the install.[/citation]

As Linux is sitting at 5-6% would you say your statment is still valid?
 
"using this driver i had several game crashes and even had windows 7 64bit enterprise give me a blue screen of death from a machine check exception causing my raid controller to corrupt all the data across all my drives to a point that recovery was impossible. Switched to the new driver nvidia released the other day and have had no problems since."


From the Nvidia thread, for those people claiming paid software is better and does not contain bugs. Real boats rock.
 
Linux as a desktop under performs. There are still significant design flaws in the kernel scheduler that have been ignored by the senior members of the kernel community including Linus himself. The OS is not as user friendly and the applications are not as cohesive as they need to be. This results in users needing a lot of help and there is a MASSIVE problem with "elitist attitudes" among the linux community. In my experience this is the case all the way from Linus all the way down to experienced linux users. The Linux community is not helping its-self at all. If you don't believe me, go post a simple question on a Linux forum or irc channel. Odds are you'll see either "RTFM" or "learn to use the MAN page" rather than a simple answer. Linux users try to justify the behavior by complaining that everyone asks the "stupid" questions all the time rather than reading the mountain of manuals. If 900 out of 1000 users have to ask the question, it's a design flaw or a bug.

I use Linux on a few of my devices, but the truth is that Linux is nowhere near where it needs to be in order to give Microsoft a run for their money.

Lindows was the best attempt to date that I've seen for desktop Linux to have a serious chance at becoming accepted. Unfortunately, Michael Robertson sold out after a little pressure from Microsoft.
 
[citation][nom]randomizer[/nom]You should have done a quick format. There's little reason to full format a HDD any more.[/citation]
Unless you want a fairly safe wipe of your info without running a sweep tool.
 
[citation][nom]captaincharisma[/nom]then it will never catch up to windows in the mainstream then. Linux will continue to he the least used mainstream OS[/citation]
It will never reach Windows because OEMs sell Windows on their PCs at a much greater capacity than Linux (which typically gets sold only with a few netbooks). The only reason people consider Windows dumbed down and easy to use already is because they are so used to the little quirks that they don't notice them any more. Then they switch to OSX or Linux and suddenly the little quirks of those OSs appear huge.

Unfortunately the academic world as well as the home continues to indoctrinate people into the Windows way when it is not necessarily the best (nor the worst, it's situation dependent). Because of this new users, who would have just as much trouble with Linux, OSX or Windows from lack of any computer experience, aren't always going to be as productive or efficient as they could be. The same goes for businesses in long-term contracts with proprietary software manufacturers.
 
dstudentx said:
I like the romantic thought of linux but it just takes too much work to achieve a simple task. I been using Ubuntu for sometime now. I think Linux is amazing for anything scientific but when when it comes to everyday computing its not with the time it takes to get simple programs running.

Are you kidding me? I have about 12 customers that now use linux and love it. Not one of them is a tech guru, and they have no problems doing anything. Installing apps could not be any easier than opening the package manager and clicking on what you want.
 
My only issue with package managers (and this is where the Ubuntu Software Center or the older Add/Remove is good) is that people generally search for programs, not package names or libraries. Usually a search will find the right thing based on its description, but normally you won't find less than 20 results at once for a search query. For example, if I'm after open office (yes I know it's normally included already), I get all of the programs contained within the Open Office suite in the list, but no package simply called Open Office. There's also gnome-office and koffice and several other office programs in the query results. This is fantastic for those of us after something specific, but not for someone who doesn't know that you can (or doesn't even want to) install or remove individual OOo components with ease.

Canonical definitely has the right idea with the software centre, because most programs the average user will need are there and labelled simply. Also, since it's just another front-end to APT, it retains the superior capabilities of package management over conventional software installation where the package manager is fully aware of what has been installed, and can remove all traces of it, rather than just most of it.
 
[citation][nom]sailfish[/nom]First, invest millions of donor dollars on making a monkey-proof version. Second, give it a name change like, Utopia, Shangri-La or Hollywood. Third, accept what you cannot change. Forth, embrace nichehood.[/citation]

Wrong. It's not that hard to write some tiny OOP blocks to "overload" the standard command line options and replace them with something a little more familiar, if not at the very least something a little more understandable for new users - ESPECIALLY for linux coders, considering they need to know more about code than your average programmer. It would be equally as simple to provide an option for/against command line upon install for veteran linux users or new linux users. I'm sure adding tutorials to a fresh rip would be a cinch as well. I also wouldn't change the name at all. Linux means something to me and many others (even though I've only ever touched it once), but as a technical specialist I have alot of respect for what linux does, has done, and can do.

Making a monkey-proof version isn't necessary. A version needs to be made only as far as the average technically inclined user can make sense of it. I learned DOS and Win 3.1 just from WATCHING my mother. I helped spread it to my cousin who spread it etc. Once you can get the technically inclined familiar with it, it will spread the same way people are still obsessed with XP. You can still find people who swear by XP and pray to their manuals before bed at night 😛

People don't just up and buy macs. Some do, but the rest are acquainted with it from some other source. I was acquainted with it at my job, and now at my school. I only wont go to it because there's no backward compatibility like there is with windows. So just because there's a monkey-proof version of linux produced doesn't mean people are just going to switch over to it in droves.

It boils down to a matter of familiarity and introduction. Cars aren't easy to use for the pre-license driver, but it's easy to familiarize one's self with it. I feel that way about windows. I can't speak for linux, but i'm sure there are those who can say the same for linux.

Linux, just like everything else in the world, has the potential to do many and amazing things - it's all about how well it can be executed.

Fourth, you're the monkey.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom