Linux Needs to Master Hardware to Beat Windows

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[citation][nom]AndrewCutter[/nom]For pros gimp doesn't cut it though it does for us.[/citation]
Very true, I don't like GIMP much. PS is a resource hog and slow to start up but it's leagues beyond any other software.

[citation][nom]ravewulf[/nom]Not to mention OpenGL needs to get their act together as DirectX is murdering itAnd other issues...[/citation]
Heh, OpenGL is so far behind it's going to be hard to catch up. Lots of talk but nobody actually doing anything.
 
I've been running Ubuntu 9.10 in a VM for a week now for programming in C. I find that its quite decent to use, much better than the Ubuntu 7.10 I've used before.

However, I don't think it's ready for primetime consumption yet. I tried installing the Wakoopa tracker through Terminal but it didn't succeed and I had to do it through the Package Manager and that took a while too.
 
[citation][nom]rex rectums[/nom]This is nuts. Yeah, hardware's important. However, I use OpenOffice as my primary suite. I installed Ubuntu, and went slack-jawed when it came time to install OpenOffice. Holy crap! Why can't I just install the thing with one click?!? Why are there all these competing interfaces? Why can't the entire Linux community just frickin' get together behind a *SINGLE* kernel and interface? Okay maybe two? Rather than all these different distros? Man, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE LINUX COMMUNITY?!? Why can't everyone doing all this great development simply unify...?!?[/citation]
You are either a lair or stupid, I think you are a MS fanboy and have never used Linux in your life.
Ubuntu comes with Open Office already installed.
 
[citation][nom]ravewulf[/nom]Not to mention OpenGL needs to get their act together as DirectX is murdering itAnd other issues...[/citation]
That is because MS is buying off game developers to use only their proprietary DirectX. Open GL is still alive and kicking. It is making a come back too even though MS is fighting it at every turn. I remember when you could actually buy games written for Linux in software stores. MS was smart and quickly worked at killing it. When Windows XP was first released it fully supported Open GL and had a screen saver that had a Open GL floating around too. MS moved away from Open GL to try and kill off Linux. Apple uses Open GL for their OS X. MS knows if game developers move to support Linux and it catches on MS is in for some big time trouble. Many users (above the average like on this site) would not have MS except for gaming. Even though I have a Mini Mac and a killer home made gaming rig I personally use a Acer Timeline with Ubuntu 9.10 for my main computer for banking and shopping online because of security.
 
With Windows you only have to target at most 4 different kernel versions. 5.1, 5.2, 6.0 and 6.1. Most of then these can be rolled into a single installation package which is completely transparent to the end user. Once your hardware is working on a specific windows OS you'll hardly have to touch it except to patch bugs and touch it up should a service pack break it. With Linux you have to target the upstream kernel and provide support every single time the driver interface changes (not sure how often that is, but it does happen) as well as be prepared to provide support to people who want to hack in their own code or back-patch the driver to a previous kernel version or non-upstream kernel. It is not particularly "hard" to use various Linux distributions but as a previous poster said, hardware support is just the tip of the iceberg in solving Linux's desktop problems.
 
I don't think it's the customer's ignorance that is impeding Linux. I think it's the developers' naive nature that is holding it back.

As much as you'd like to hope, there is no way the masses will embrace the console. None. I like to think of myself as a power-user of sorts (I have Ubuntu on a virtual drive as well as some other random OSs), and I still can't help but get disappointed when I have to type out what I want to do. The problem grows even larger when obscure problems arise. Such as the time my trash wouldn't let me permanently delete the files inside. I've never had an issue with any other OS deleting files, but linux had a death grip on them. Eventually, I was fed up with it and just reformatted (which is why I test linux on a virtual machine now).

Sure, keep your console. I'm not saying to remove it entirely. But, don't expect the masses to come flocking until you have an easy GUI way to do it as well.
 
i've seen this every year "linux is growing" "its gaining more exposure". now come on who are we fooling here. linux has been around 1% of the market for the last 15 years & it doesnt look like it will ever change.

now dont get me wrong, i do use ubuntu 9.10 64bit on my laptop with no issues but i doubt linux will ever get anywhere till they get rid of those stone age terminal commands, windows still has it but u never have to use it if you dont want to.
 
Linux will never lose the command line. It's far too efficient to get rid of it just so you can get more eye candy in a GUI. However, I dare say some distros (like Ubuntu) will reduce the need for it even more, for those who don't want to use it. That's the nice thing about Linux - use what you want to use, let others keep their CLI if you don't want it. With Windows it's up to MS.
 
[citation][nom]Regulas[/nom]That is because MS is buying off game developers to use only their proprietary DirectX. Open GL is still alive and kicking. It is making a come back too even though MS is fighting it at every turn. I remember when you could actually buy games written for Linux in software stores. MS was smart and quickly worked at killing it. When Windows XP was first released it fully supported Open GL and had a screen saver that had a Open GL floating around too. MS moved away from Open GL to try and kill off Linux. Apple uses Open GL for their OS X. MS knows if game developers move to support Linux and it catches on MS is in for some big time trouble. Many users (above the average like on this site) would not have MS except for gaming. Even though I have a Mini Mac and a killer home made gaming rig I personally use a Acer Timeline with Ubuntu 9.10 for my main computer for banking and shopping online because of security.[/citation]
I'm sorry to say but this you have no idea of what you're talking about. MS didn't killed OGL, the ARB did. How? By being slow in introducing features that mattered to game developers. To this day they're still playing catch-up. If a game developer wants to use custom tessellation routines for their meshes what are they going to use? DX of course. MS has been quicker to adapt and that has kept the platform alive. If only there were more games made for PC...
 
currently linux has pretty good hardware support for pretty much all of the popular/ major hardware

the problem with it is the software. A novice windows users can use the OS for years and never touch command line

while with linux, it seems to force users into it.

from a average computer user perspective, suppose you are running ubuntu.
it does a ok job at avoiding command line for the average user, but it fails at many areas.

1, when someone gets a OS, they usually want to install programs they like, while OS like ubuntu have a package manager in which you just select the app and there is a 100% automated install, not every app is available on the package manager and those that are not are often in like a tar.gz file

so from the average user perspective, you find your self with a tar.gz file, the site offered no instructions on how to install it, so you google how to install it, so you open terminal and place the file in the correct place, then substitute all names as needed and copy and paste the commands into the terminal window. The install gets a error even though you did everything right so now you are frustrated, you try again, it keeps failing. So you give up for a while and another program catches your eye, but now installing it also requires command line, but this one mentions you need to edit some file in the tar.gz then make something in order for it to install and it doesn't offer a full step by step on how to do it, you are again frustrated and give up and just boot into windows,

in windows you find a similar app but this time it is so easy, just double click on the .exe file and click next.

thats why OS like windows and mac os are more popular than linux (what most people do on their computers, linux can meet their needs, the problem is that it is not as intuitive and easy to use)

another + with windows, if there is a app or task that needs command line, the makers of the app will generally include a batch file so the user only needs to double click, linux needs to learn this, if you can put instructions that are the same for everyone to get the app running, include a batch file so it can be automated.

the package manager may have a few thousand apps but in reality thats only a small fraction of the programs available for a linux based OS and the vast majority needs to be installed and set up through command line.

another problem, most freeware for linux based OS lack a GUI while with windows they generally have at least a basic GUI, and when they don't, they include a batch file which generally give the user a nice text menu where they can press the corresponding number to perform a task listed, theres none of the looking through a help menu then trying to figure out how to piece all of the info together to perform a task.

While many of us here can handle the command line crap with no problem, it is still annoying to type in ling strings of commands to perform a task that could be done with a single or double click if the app had a gui.

while many extremely novice users will have trouble with windows even though it is so simple, imagine trying to get them to use command line in linux. most of the computer market are novice users who want everything to be a button that they can press for stuff to happen and thats what windows and mac os were designed around, almost everything can be done by pointing and clicking.

When linux is able to do this then it will gain a large market share
 
forgot to mention because I know this will be bought up. sudo apt-get does not have every application.

another problem with files that are in formats like tar.gz and not something more automated like .deb

dependencies.

most windows programs come with all dependencies and only will require things that are major like .net framework for some apps which can be installed very easily

so suppose you are new to computers, you are on windows and you find a program that you like, so you click on download then after it is done downloading, you double click on it and click next on the installation window

now suppose you are new to computers and the PC has linux on it
you find a program you like but it turns out to be a tar.gz
you are not sure what to do with it, so you try double clicking on it but all that happens is you see a ton of random files in the package, you then try looking through some help files and foy find these instructions

# tar xvzf package.tar.gz (or tar xvjf package.tar.bz2)
# cd package
# ./configure
# make
# make install

you try your best to use the commands but the install fails because it needs some random thing thats a dependency but it doesn't tell you where to get it and it doesn't offer a option where you can just press a key for it to automatically get it for you so you now google for the package. and you repeat the above process for the dependency, but it also fails because it requires another dependency to be installed first. and before you know it you spend 2 hours trying to install one program only to have it give some random undescriptive error.

which seems easier to you, the windows method or the linux method?

command line is not very efficient and it is not intuitive, keep in mind that most OS started off as being command line based, but the GUI came about, this wasn't a random event, it came about because there was a need for it, and once the GUI came out, the market for computers exploded, what does this tell you, it tells you that most people prefer a GUI rather than trying in commands, it is easier to click a button than to type a long command to do the same thing
 
Linux has better driver support than Windows. For most hardware, Linux 'just works', because drivers are distributed with the kernel. Just try and get that a SCSI adapter to work that Windows doesn't support (which, is unfortunately most recent models). Even fairly recent versions required a driver to be provided on some kind of weird low capacity, ultra-low speed media, called 'floppy disk'.
I don't understand the claims that Direct3D is in some way better than OpenGL. My experience is that OpenGL programming is easier, and Direct3D currently has nothing that gives it any serious advantage over OpenGL. If you are going to make such statements, at least bother to justify them with some facts (and not some weird esoteric features copied from some marketing checklist). Some people have been reading to many MS propaganda sheets.
For all the ignorant people calling for 'Linux standardisation' - it already exists - it is called LSB. It is easily possible to write a single click installer that supports all x86/x86-64 flavours of Linux. You just target the oldest glibc that you need to support, and ship any non-LSB libraries that are needed, and any C++ libraries (eg. Qt) as part of your program (since C++ ABI is not stable between GCC releases). Note, before people start asking for a stable C++ ABI - even Microsoft hasn't managed this with VC++, hence the redist package hell - for which no good installation solution seems to exist. I agree that free software developers need to improve installation of software that is not in the package repositories, but for anything that is, typical Linux package managers are infinitely superior to anything that exists on Windows.
 
Linux will gain a lot of market share when pc manufacturers stop forcing you to buy windows.
I know that some systems can be bought with linux but it should be possible to buy any system without OS.
By not shipping an OS by default the end user has to make a choice and although most would still chose windows some might chose linux or no OS at all and find their own OS on the web.

Endless discussions about hardware manufacturers shipping linux wont do linux or any alternative OS any good while getting some OEM copy of windows including a load of crapware hurts both windows and linux or any other alternative OS.
The only way to make sure people use an OS they really like and want to use is by forcing them to chose between several or just allowing to order a system vanilla.

Also while ubuntu is linux, linux is not ubuntu as in a penguin is a bird but not every bird is a penguin.
Ubuntu is a fine os for a lot of users but does not provide the complete linux experience because its crippled to suit the needs of people that have trouble stepping from windows to linux.
Read the comments above and you will notice lines like "sudo apt-get doesnt have everything" and "my system had a deadlock on my garbage bin".
Though the first is some one that clearly doesnt understand what he is doing and only knows the result he would like to get and the second ran in to problems with user permissions on files or folders both would not be having major problems if they knew not only the end results of their actions but also what those actions did.
This is where ubuntu partly fails because of their semi unique permission system.

Now i wont claim that giving them root power would solve their problems, to be honest i would expect them to run in to more.
However knowing that sudo means "super user do" or give user rootlike powers to "do something" and apt-get means "aptitude get the program described" where aptitude is the CLI end of your package manager and where "get" means getting it from any known repository.

Now knowing this a user might be interested to add more repo's like in example pacman to get a hold of more software this part is a leap and requires the user to think for himself and maybe google.
But the simple conclusion should be if i can become super user and i can get programs using the cli pkg manager from the repositories already defined it should be possible to get it from any other repository if i define them somehow somewhere!

Now the next problem the one with he garbage bin:

The user read the part above and some how caught on to the idea of a user not having all permissions by default (and really should never have root powers).
So he or she could think about what happens when you delete files and maybe come to the conclusion that switching to root or super user will allow you to delete anything and maybe even go as far as to realizing that a super user or root user can change permissions so you can make user you can empty the trash on your normal user account.

I know it might be asking for a lot in this last (maybe a bit of a rant part) but its simply thinking logical thinking that would help out both users.
However the more computers we get and the more people use them the less thinking is a part of the process even to the point as where MSCE/MSCA simply cant do anythign on any system other then microsoft systems mostly because they are not trained to solve logical problems but they are trained to follow a route.
Ofcourse there are a lot of MSCE/MSCA out there to which this doesnt apply.
 
I have developed a driver for a board which has FPGAs, used essentially as a co-processor. I have many years experience as a linux admin and as a software engineer. I found it very difficult to try to get good examples of drivers to use. There is severe lack of documentation, and what there is is usually out of date. What examples I found (in the current kernel source) were all over the place in terms of whether they were using current methods, or old legacy stuff.
 
I find that funny - many comments here saying "this doesn't work in Linux, I mean when I plugged in the hardware and installed the driver manually like I do in windows, I didn't get anything".

Just a small story, illustrating this.

A friend of mine wanted a throwaway machine with very little possibility for virus infection in browsing the Web. She asked me to install Linux on it, so I did, then I told her: take that machine home, plug it into your DSL box, DO NOTHING ELSE, and browse the Web.

Being an exclusively Windows-made user, she decided to put the ISP's CD in the drive, install the DSL box' driver and utilities, and then see. Of course, the CD being Windows-only, the apps didn't install, the driver didn't load, and because the installer script couldn't make head nor tail of the system, threw up an error and crashed. So she called me, saying the DSL didn't work, that Linux was a POS, and that she wanted Windows installed on the machine. She brought the machine back, and I had a look at it. Lo and behold, I found the ISP CD in the drive, and asked her what did she expect. "Well, it needs the CD to access the Internet, no?" I repeated, no, you plug that box in your (pre-configured) DSL box, you open Firefox, and you browse, NOTHING ELSE (yes, I raised my voice).

So she did, and she called me, bewildered: "the machine works without the CD, without installing any driver, without asking anything. Is it magic?" My answer was, no, it's just Not Windows (tm).

Long story short, she enjoyed the machine for a while; then, there was the dreaded Missing Feature (the latest funky plugin for MSN Windows .Net Live! Instant Messenger - I'd like MS to settle on a name) that didn't have a counterpart in Linux, and she wanted Windows on the box. It was an old box, so she paid for Windows XP Home ($100), and asked me to install it. I did, and prepared it so that it'd work well with the DSL box even without the CD, but I told her that she had asked for a safe machine first and foremost.

Lo and behold, one week later, she had a virus that the free antivirus I had installed didn't know (well, it happens to any antivirus: none are 100% reliable on zero-day virii spreads) so she paid for a yearly Kaspersky license. So, up front, that machine cost her $140, not counting what she would have owed me had I asked for payment for all the time I spent on it.

But, at least, she can now enjoy her free MSNWNLIM plugin. As for me, I'd rather keep using plain text in my IMs.
 
[citation][nom]Aweuighwreugwhreug[/nom]Linux has better driver support than Windows. For most hardware, Linux 'just works', because drivers are distributed with the kernel. Just try and get that a SCSI adapter to work that Windows doesn't support (which, is unfortunately most recent models). Even fairly recent versions required a driver to be provided on some kind of weird low capacity, ultra-low speed media, called 'floppy disk'.I don't understand the claims that Direct3D is in some way better than OpenGL. My experience is that OpenGL programming is easier, and Direct3D currently has nothing that gives it any serious advantage over OpenGL. If you are going to make such statements, at least bother to justify them with some facts (and not some weird esoteric features copied from some marketing checklist). Some people have been reading to many MS propaganda sheets.For all the ignorant people calling for 'Linux standardisation' - it already exists - it is called LSB. It is easily possible to write a single click installer that supports all x86/x86-64 flavours of Linux. You just target the oldest glibc that you need to support, and ship any non-LSB libraries that are needed, and any C++ libraries (eg. Qt) as part of your program (since C++ ABI is not stable between GCC releases). Note, before people start asking for a stable C++ ABI - even Microsoft hasn't managed this with VC++, hence the redist package hell - for which no good installation solution seems to exist. I agree that free software developers need to improve installation of software that is not in the package repositories, but for anything that is, typical Linux package managers are infinitely superior to anything that exists on Windows.[/citation]
You haven't worked with windows for years if you are having problems with a SCSI card in windows.. and also let you know that Microsoft had nothing to do with the drivers for that card. Are you really that naive? And don't know any better, that the manufacturer is partly responsible for providing this? Pull your head out of your ass. Stick with Linux because you think its better, I'll stick with windows because I know what works.
 
Ease of software installation is badly needed. As others have stated, you try to install something outside of the ubuntu community and it can be an all night deal trying to compile it. If (and there is no reason it can't be done) they did software install like OSX, IE drag to the applications folder and you are done, I think Linux would boom. Some software has an install feature, but very very few do. There is no reason why everything made for OSX cannot also be made for linux. Driver support is pretty good now days (albeit less developed drivers) compared to Mandrake and Redhat days. Wireless is one of the last real driver issues with linux.
 
[citation][nom]kyeana[/nom]Personally, i find installing software on linux much easier then i do on windows. Being able to type in (arch) "pacman -S firefox" (or whatever program you want) in my mind is as simple as it gets. Given, there are some programs out there that may not be in the repositories. However, in those cases you can often find a .deb file (for debian based distros, such as ubuntu) which act the same as a .exe file in windows. If worst comes to worst, and you have to install something via the command line, i have yet to find something that didn't provide detailed instructions on how to go about it.But regardless, this just further increases my previous point. Linux isn't about over throwing windows. It is a different way to think about an operating systems. You can have more control over your system, due to the very nature of open source. On the flip side you may end up with some things such as programs that do not work right or are slow on support. This will appeal to some people, while other will prefer the Windows way of doing things. To each their own.[/citation]

If you like command line vs. a visual GUI prompted way of installing software sure. Programmers like command line because the GUI approach adds overhead to your work, slows things down, adds "unnecessary" complexity, etc. But for those of us that like / need a visual computing experience because it's more intuitive for us, well, that's why the Mac and PC beat out UNIX years ago, and still beats out linux and probably always will. Yes I know linux has a GUI, but I'm talking about installations, updates patches, etc. they are all easier on a Windows or Mac platform, those companies have invested billions in polishing their software for ease of use for the simplest computer user, while still allowing hard core programmers 95% of what they want in an OS.
 
[citation][nom]mitch074[/nom](...) But, at least, she can now enjoy her free MSNWNLIM plugin. As for me, I'd rather keep using plain text in my IMs.[/citation]

Man, don't even mention this latest version of MSN (or Windows Live or whatever they call it). I already miss ICQ dearly, and had to "accept" MSN because since it was basically integrated with Windows with the release of XP most everyone moved to it, but this latest MSN is THE PITS. They thought it would be a great idea to turn an IM into some kind of multimedia player app, and that thing is not only big, bloated and buggy, it just looks ludicrous. I moved to aMSN (http://amsn.sourceforge.net), and while aMSN still has quite a few quirks that need ironing out, at least it looks like the older MSN and does its job well.
 
It isn't the vendors fault that the Linux market is so niche. I wouldn't waste my time developing Linux drivers for anything unless I used them internally. My software engineers could be developing windows drivers for the products that I plan to sell in a few months.

Which sells more, hardware on Windows/OSX or hardware on Linux? Like it or not, Linux is too niche to care about in many instances.
 
Well aside from the occasional network driver that doesn't work I think the main problem facing Linux is graphics. Both video and gaming on linux are not on par with Windows. Of course that might be because a lot of graphics software and drivers are proprietary, there is however no reason why Linux graphics drivers published by hardware manufacturers should be inferior to their Windows counterparts, but they still are, I'd say that's the first step that should be taken.
 
[citation][nom]twu[/nom]It because you don't know the concept and the flexibility. Nothing wrong with the Linux community, the problem is on those people who like you that don't know how to use it.[/citation]

When we released software on Linux we had to test on 6 different systems... All of which had their differences. As a *for profit* company this cost us an enormous amount of money to accomplish. If there were a few flavors of Linux it simply would have cost less.

Not saying I like either or, just pointing the fact out that companies that are in the business to make money tend to shy away from Linux due to the lack of a single standard platform for testing and quality control.

If a bunch of users want to get together and hack away at their own distro, they need to be prepared to start writing drives to gain support. Few manufacturers will spend that money to write these drivers and test on 30 different variations of Linux.
 
"If a bunch of users want to get together and hack away at their own distro, they need to be prepared to start writing drives to gain support. Few manufacturers will spend that money to write these drivers and test on 30 different variations of Linux."

They could start by writing drivers for Ubuntu, which is by far the largest and most accessible linux flavor. Besides, a lot of linux flavors use the same fundamentals, so drivers wouldn't have to differ more than those of Windows XP and Vista for example.
 
Driver's update & Application Update remains an issue with Linux.
I run ubunto on my PC and it requires more work get every hardware working.

Application needs to be searched. Not readily available for common people.

The mass market which is > 98% of pc users are none tech people that just want to enjoy the use of PC. These segment don't care about the details of the OS and Hardware. Immediate use is its primary goal with ability to add usable application. Linux is far from that stage.

I love linux/unix. I use it at work. That's the OS environment of engineering world. Can't live without it.
 
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