Linux: How its panning out

[Stevehewitt]

Hi everyone,

Wasn't too sure where to post this; maybe not anywhere on TT as it's really a bit of a blog - but I'd appreciate your feedback!

As some of you may already know, I'm a WinNT system admin and have been for about 9 years.

About 3 years ago I thought I'd check out this "Linux thing" that everyone was talking about. I purchased a copy of SuSE Linux (can't remember the version - sorry) and put my feedback in one of the forums.
I was pretty negative and got slated for it!

However, I thought I'd give it another go with a more recent version to see how it is progressing. I downloaded RH Fedora Core a couple of weeks ago and fired it up.

----------------------------------------------------

Initally I'm inpressed. The setup is a lot more stable that it was when I tried it with my old version of SuSE. To be honest, there isn't a huge amount I can say about the setup that isn't great; although if your a user that wants to "customise" your machine the options are vast and can be a bit daunting.

One of my biggest hates with Linux was that applications had stupid names. OK - I'm not expecting a 'control panel' icon, after all it's not Windows. But something that related to editing the system settings in a GUI would be nice. I recall that the SuSE release I used had awful names for even the most basic of system applications which made it nearly unusable for all but experienced users of Linux and above.
However, the current release of Fedora has almost none of these names. All made pretty good sense, with the execption of a few 3rd party applications. (Which are still catagorised in the menu so you have a good idea anyway - e.g. The GIMP)

Personally, I see the biggest challenge to Linux is the desktop GUI. There's some great applications out there, and some amazing things that you can do with Linux that you can't with Windows and other OS's - but the GUI is still years behind both the Windows and Mac UI. It's awfully unreliable with simple things like chaning the system resolution broke the menu bars at the top and bottom of my gnome enviroment. I'm sure that if I spent 15 minutes of so googling for it I would find an answer but modern day users don't expect that sort of thing to break. Linux was built as a server platform with a client GUI on top - windows was built as a client UI then the backend was made to fit it. From a technical standpoint Linux is a winner, but from a users point of view? A GUI crash is the same as a server admin's box kernel going down the pan - a critical failure.
Say what you like about Windows, but the last 2 releases (2k and XP/2k3 Serv) have had a 100% reliable UI (IMHO) which users are now custom too. Linux will have to really work on this if the dev's want Linux to spread to the desktop.

Finally the other problem is that I couldn't fine a 802.11g network card with Linux drivers. After hours on the web I could either BUY a driver or 'recompile the kernel' in relation to a Open Source project called NDISWRAPPER - for a user both options are out of the question. I did try contacting my account manager at a large computer company to see if they have any ideas and the only suggestion was a wireless NIC that plugs into the RJ45 on your box and emulates a WAP. Intersting, but still £30 more than I would pay for a Windows wireless NIC.

This obviously isn't a fault with Linux, but hardware manufactures will have to get more support for Linux if we are ever going to see Linux PC's sold in PC World for joe bloggs.
(Can you imagine AOL giving tech support to a new user about their getting their new wireless router on Linux?)

Anyway - Linux has come on a huge amount. In terms of the GUI looks, application names, hardware support (my SuSE install was a mess due to resolution problems) and tje general experience was really good. If I could get my (popular) 3Com 802.11g USB adapter to work I would even have it as a secondary desktop - but the drivers are a still a huge issue. The GUI need to be a lot more durable and flexible before I'd considor replacing my Windows desktop with Linux - although GUI reliability is something that can be worked on and with time could easily outrank Windows/Mac.

GUI stability and more drivers are the forces behing why I won't be looking at installing Linux as my main desktop in the near future - although with speed of development over the past 2-3 years it's anyone's guess what I'll be using after Windows Vista.

Cheers,




Steve.

"They have the internet on computers now!" - Homer Simpson

 

[BocaBurger]

Take a look at Unbuntu Linux or Linspire for a desktop system. BTW, the current MacOS is running UNIX.



BocaBurger
<===========================||////////////////|0
The pen is mightier than the sword, but the sword hurts more!

 

[jsteph]

Personally, I see the biggest challenge to Linux is the desktop GUI

One could argue that is true with Windows--meaning that many of the instabilities in Windows stem in some way from the GUI being so tightly integrated with the OS. If Windows were not 'windows', but just a command-line, I'd bet it would be more stable (tho I'm not sure this would change security issues).

From the limited I know about Linux, it's my understanding that the GUI's are purposefully seperated from the kernel to maintain kernel stability, and the tradeoff is a GUI that some see as shaky, not responsive, and less elegant.
--Jim

 

[grande]

I have Unbuntu, I like it well enough.

-------------------------
Just call me Captain Awesome.

 

[dilettante]

One could argue that is true with Windows--meaning that many of the instabilities in Windows stem in some way from the GUI being so tightly integrated with the OS. If Windows were not 'windows', but just a command-line, I'd bet it would be more stable (tho I'm not sure this would change security issues).

From the limited I know about Linux, it's my understanding that the GUI's are purposefully seperated from the kernel to maintain kernel stability, and the tradeoff is a GUI that some see as shaky, not responsive, and less elegant.

Well reality doesn't bear those points out.

Windows 9x had an almost grafted-on GUI and was notoriously unstable. The later NT family has very tight GUI integration and is much more stable.

Linux on the other hand is more comparable to MS-DOS than Windows in some ways. The Linux GUIs are really just applications layered over what is inherently a character-oriented operating system.

Kernels have little to do with any of it. Linux has a kernel, but it isn't a kernel.

 

[kHz]

I use Windowmaker as my window manager and have never experienced any problems.

I don't use Windows at all anymore, ever since I got Lotus Notes working on BSD (which, by the way, is much faster than on Windows!).

 

[Stevehewitt]

OK - well my post was just a review from a consumer point of view. The GUI was not stable and the system as a whole was not user friendly compared to Mac and Windows. For most users this needs to be addressed.
(Yes - I know that Mac is based on Unix)

Anyone have any opnions on the future - how it will the UI pan out? Any know on the direction and what the dev community is up to in terms to try and push it onto the desktop? (If indeed that is the plan)

Personally the poor GUI (I mean, you get the choice of 2 different UI's at installation for crying out loud!), and the pathetic support from manufactures needs to be addressed IMHO.
Without a 100% solid, reliable GUI and much better support for drivers, I think that Linux will stay a Power User desktop only.

(BTW - This isn't about Linux Vs. other O/S - I'm just interested in others views on what they think the current problems are and how they think they will be overcome in what time frames etc...)

Thanks for your posts everyone,



Steve.

"They have the internet on computers now!" - Homer Simpson

 

[jsteph]

The later NT family has very tight GUI integration and is much more stable.

dilettante
The NT kernel is substantially different than 9x and I'd argue that that has more to do with the subjective 'more stable' claim.

I believe that if Linux integrates a gui more tightly, it will likely lose some stability at the cost of elegance.

In addition this gui would be tied to the distribution, which would further fragment the Linux community, making it more difficult to unify a market share against MS, which, presumably, is part of the goal.
--Jim

 

[kHz]

Linux is a kernel and to integrate a GUI into the kernel would mean a complete re-write of the kernel which isn't going to happen.

Unix is a completely different model from Windows and a window manager sits atop. It can be thought of like PSSP and AIX for the SP.

For those of you talking about the gui and integrating it, I think you need to learn about the Unix model. X Windows was developed at MIT in (1984?) which was well over 10 years after Unix was developed.

There are numerous window managers available for Unix/Linux/BSD and they are stable. WindowMaker, Enlightenment, AfterStep, twm, fvwm, Ice, and too many others to name. Gnome and KDE are the newcomers for window managers and they are the biggest (by install size) and footprint (system resources) but give users their total gui environment they want. Gnome is jointly being developed and backed by large companies (IBM) as a replacement for CDE. KDE is a different development and useds a different toolkit than Gnome for development. I have ran Gnome before and never had any problems with it in the newest release (2.x). KDE is stable too, a coworker uses it and has never had any problems. I prefer WindowMaker though because it is small and fast; it is COMPLETELY stable.

 

[MikeLacey]

One of the strengths of Linux is that it can encompass many different philosophies and approaches at the same time.

So the window managers listed above, and more besides no doubt, are all developed and supported independently.

This is a strength because it ecourages diversity and, from that, competition. I'll happily bet that the KDE and Gnome keep a close eye on what the other is doing, each team wants to be the obvious choice when a user chooses a user interface.

Like many strengths this is also a weakness. Because of the fragmentation, development almost certainly proceeds at a slower pace than it would if a single team were carefully managed, talented contributors work hard at tasks other people are already working on, and users are presented with a choice when installing Linux...

It's hard to believe that it's the end of 2005 and we're still wondering when Linux is going to hit the desktop market; I'm convinced that it's not going to and that the reason for that failure is the same as one of the reasons for it's many sucesses. The flexible, responsive, competetive - and fragmented - development model.

Mike

I am not inscrutable.

Want great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at faq219-2884

 

[jsteph]

Linux is a kernel and to integrate a GUI into the kernel would mean a complete re-write of the kernel

That's more or less my point--one of the reasons for the relative stability in Linux is that it doesn't have do deal with all the windowing stuff at the kernel level--a windowing shell can crash but the kernel is still humming along--not always the case with MS. When the windowing stuff is introduced into the kernel I believe that's when you start to lose control of things.
--Jim

 

[Sympology]

LOL,
SteveHewit, you opened a whole can of worms here (and clearly did in the past), you made the fatal mistake of criticising Linux.
I too tried an early Linux a Redhat one, something like 1.3.2.1.5.7.8.4.3.2.rev a subversion d or something like that. I what horrendous. Mount CD? What the hell is all that about? I gave it a good go, but all I could think was that it was several years behind my old Atari.
Of course it moved on, it's like comparing 95 with XP, but it needs to take a more public friendly line.
Linux, "may" be more secure than windows, it "may" be faster than Windows, BUT, until your mum or granny can take a blank pc and have it working by chucking in a couple of cd's, it will NEVER be as good as Windows. This is why Windows dominates.
I'm not on about how it works, how more stable it is or whatever. I'm on about a simple thing: Ease of use. This is the reason Windows dominates the market, an idiot can use it (namy do unfortuantly)
Now of course I'm going to get hammered by the Linux, fanatics (yes Windows have them as well), but unless people listen and are willing to accept criticism, then it will always lag behind. It has potential to be very big, but not if it remains in the realm of the Techie and Geek.

Cue flames....


Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[BocaBurger]

Linspire, Unbuntu and other distribs will install on many machines a lot easier than installing Windows. One reason Windows is popular is that it is installed before the average user gets to it. If you have ever installed a Windows product on a blank c\drive, you will know that many Linux distribs are a lot easier today, and you don't have to reboot 6 times.
There are also several "live" CDs that allow you test drive Linux without installing anything! Try doing thast with Windows.

I liked the Amiga OS. Full GUI, video processing, fast on a 68000 chip with 4 meg of RAM.

Where are those develoers today? Get them on the GUI for Linux and Mr. Gates will have to live on his interest



BocaBurger
<===========================||////////////////|0
The pen is mightier than the sword, but the sword hurts more!

 

[jsteph]

Stu,
You may have hit it right about Linux being in the realm of the techie/geeks. It's like the old DOS gurus when Windows started taking over in the early '90s. The DOS gurus all of a sudden had to reconcile the fact that for years they were the lords--when someone wanted help copying a file, they sat on high and were the only ones able to help the peasants by using their command-line expertise.

But now an idiot could drag-and-drop a file from one folder to another--and virtually all of the commandline tasks were now accessible to everyone from 5-year-olds to grandmothers. The legs of the gurus' thrones were cut down to stubs, and skills they had spent years learning and perfecting were now intuitive gui no brainers that anyone could pick up in minutes.

I will say that I've seen a bit more of a welcoming attitude from many Linux folks than I remember from the DOS days, but unfortunately I happen to sit next to a 'Linux guru' who truly gives the Linux community a bad name, being the most extreme personification of my above 'guru' comments.
--Jim

 

[Sympology]

BocaBurger,don't start me on the crap code rant. I had an Atari Falcon (with an prosessor upgrade, 1gb HDD (that was huge then) and 32mb ram...ooooo), running 99 DirectToDisk tracks on Cubase, whilst running another program at low priority in seprate cpu and memory space. The p120 my friend had could manage a whole 8 tracks at a push. Now that's coding! (And well designed hardware)....

Maybe that's the secret, look at the old machines and find why we had such a love for them, what made them good, and bad. From there, learn and move foward. Linux / Windows could both learn form the old skool hardware.
Linux could threaten Windows if it got more user friendly,
Windows could threaten Linux if it got less bloated and faster.

Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[Kozusnik]

Here's another $.02.

For my daughter's 7th bithday this year, I ordered a pc from walmart. $200 and I didn't have to order a part. It came with Xandros installed. Not too bad, but I prefer Mandrake. I've been with them since version 6.1. In some aspects, I'm also new to Linux.

I dispise M$ so I decided to give my daughter Linux. I installed Mandrake 9.1. It worked fine. However, I'm lazy and didn't want to run a cat5 cable to her room. I bought a new wireless router and nic for her cpu. Of course...no support. Ndiswrapper did not want to work for me either.

I then loaded K12 LTSP thinking it would be good for a child. It is. She loved Gcompris. I was able to get the wireless nic to work, but it dropped on occasion. It wasn't the fault of Linux, but my frustration was rising. I installed W2K. It "functioned". The nic still dropped. Must have been out of range.

I found that she likes watching yahoo videos. Yahoo doesn't support Linux browsers. Nor does nickjr or disney. So guess what... she still runs Winblows.

Maybe it will be supported in the future and I can give my daughter Linux. But for now this was easier.

She was able to navigate either UI, so that wasn't the issue. The fact was the hardware and internet support was not there. I agree that KDE and Gnome are almost there, but I doubt that they will be the UIs to replace M$. However, until M$ repairs the inherent insecurity of their product and the install isn't so painful...they'll never get my vote.

We may want to design a UI with the 70 iq avg joe in mind. To do that, we'd have to comprimise some security. I'm not willing to allow a normal user to modify system files, so I can't get on board. Personally, I love Linux the way it is. We keep making progress into the mainstream. Someday, both OSs will coexist better and the people will have a real choice. (After more vendors get on board!!!)

Mark

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.