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Do you guys think linux will ever move to mainstream OS?
- Thread starter jediphx
- Start date
daniel1113
Diamond Member
I don't think Linux will ever become a mainstream OS for home users.
What is this 'features and design concepts' of a main stream OS?
Do you mean 'exactly like windows'?
A OS is a platform to run software. That's all. The major barrier is that most people have to install it to use it, and with Windows they don't have to do that. It's already installed and setup for them to use. The hardware manufacturers spent lots of time and development money into making sure that they're stuff works in Windows.
In comparison Linux you have to be more circumspect about what hardware you choose.
The next big thing is that people have gone and taken classes on how to use Windows. They've been shown how to use it at work, they figured out how to use it over the past few years. They've read books about it. etc etc. Basicly they've already put a large amount of effort into using and understanding windows.
With Linux everything is new and what many people think they learned about 'computers' they realy just learned about 'windows', which is often fairly worthless in Linux. In fact it's very counter productive for a lot of people. It's hard to make the adjustment.
There are bunches of things like that.
There are some things going for it.
For instance people complain about 'games' in Linux, but those same people would considure OS X a easy to use OS. However gaming in Linux is much better then OS X.
People complain about software installation in Linux. But if you want a word proccessor its installed by default. Firefox is installed by default. Thunderbird is usually just aviable to you to automaticly and install from a list of applications in a GUI. That and hundreds and even thousands of other applications are installable with a click of a button. That sort of thing.
It's not for everybody and I wouldn't recommend it for the average home user at this point without somebody familar with Linux to help them.
But then again I wouldn't recommend Windows either. If they asked my honest opinion, unless they had specific applications that required windows with no open source or apple-compatable alternatives, then I'd tell them to use OS X.
For the business desktop, for people that can see personal benifits in a Free software system. For server use. For people like that then I can comfortably tell them that they should give Linux a try.
For gamers Linux isn't as nice as Windows, but it'll run most everything if you want to. It's mostly for gamers that want to use Linux for other reasons and don't want to pay for windows or do the dual boot stuff all the time.
Zugzwang152
Lifer
People are conditioned to use Windows by using it in every aspect of their lives: school, then higher education (where a good number get free handouts from MS), then at work. Why would the average person bother to learn something entirely new? Obviously viruses/other malware is not a big enough deterent. There are places where OS software is taking hold, but don't kid yourself that Linux or anything else is going to take the place of Windows, barring a massive screwup by Microsoft marketing-wise.
The average user couldn't install windows (without the dumbed down restore cd) so expecting them to figure out the Linux installer won't work. Until there are major OEM's pushing linux preinstalled out the door, with "restore CD's" then it won't have widespread adoption by the average user.
I would say it's already more then a geek "toy", as there are many here that use it as their primary OS.
I would say it's already more then a geek "toy", as there are many here that use it as their primary OS.
halw
Senior member
Actually, some linux distros install a lot easier than Window$. SimplyMepis and Xandros are fine examples of this.
Before anyone jumps up about Xandros being commercial, i.e. must buy, their OCE (aka free version) is available and contains most of the features of the 'pay for' version. For a nominal annual fee you can purchase a subscription which would allow one to update OCE to a full commercial version of Xandros.
Also Mepis and Xandros have GUI interfaces which allow users to upgrade/add software easily.
Open Office is a nice and free replacement for most M$ Office elements.
Before anyone jumps up about Xandros being commercial, i.e. must buy, their OCE (aka free version) is available and contains most of the features of the 'pay for' version. For a nominal annual fee you can purchase a subscription which would allow one to update OCE to a full commercial version of Xandros.
Also Mepis and Xandros have GUI interfaces which allow users to upgrade/add software easily.
Open Office is a nice and free replacement for most M$ Office elements.
The main obstacle facing Linux may be that it's adherents are tiresome.
As for what the "features and design concepts" of a mainstream O/S are, do some reading. Those ideas predate Windows, although I'm guessing you may not have been alive when a lot of this work took place and was published. There was a time when Microsoft Windows, and yes, even Microsoft, didn't exist, and still, believe it or not, people were giving a lot of thought to the problem of how to make computers more usable and approachable. A lot of the work by people like Alan Kay is as responsible for the growth of personal computing in the home and office as anything Bill Gates has done. This area of intellectual inquiry even predates... Linus Torvalds. I know, hard to believe.
It would actually not surprise me if Linux creeps into the mainstream from the top, and from the bottom(if we arrange all users in order of technical aptitude and enthusiasm). I don't know how long it will take to meet in the middle, though. For the top end of users, the argument is obvious. It is already fairly popular, and likely to become more so.
At the bottom end, the trend seems to be to more or less abandon hope in the user as a real human being, and just give them an "appliance" that they can't easily break. Linux is solid, easy to customize, stable, and cheap. It is pretty much the natural OS to have running underneath your big, colourful, idiotproof interface. The low end knows nothing of worth about computers, so they lose no useful knowledge by switching platforms, and the OEMs can hold their little hands so that they won't even notice.
It's the middle that will likely be hardest. The people who know a decent amoung of practical Windows lore, who don't get p0wn3d by spyware every 5 minutes, who actually install programs in a coherent way, who buy peripherals reasonably frequently, who use office apps with enough complexity(macros, VBscript and whatnot) that their documents would break hard with OO, and so forth. These have the most to lose and the least to gain from a switch to linux.
One trend I'm not sure about will be that toward increasingly absurd lockdown in all things that the *AAs think aid and abet piracy. On the one hand, this is likely to alienate some people, and drive them to freer alternatives; but it is also likely to swell the ranks of the "Linux can't play my (DRMed to hell and back with proprietary algorithms that you would be DMCAed in an instant for even thinking about) music. Linux sucks!" crowd. I'm not sure which crowd will be larger; but I have my, pessimistic, guess.
At the bottom end, the trend seems to be to more or less abandon hope in the user as a real human being, and just give them an "appliance" that they can't easily break. Linux is solid, easy to customize, stable, and cheap. It is pretty much the natural OS to have running underneath your big, colourful, idiotproof interface. The low end knows nothing of worth about computers, so they lose no useful knowledge by switching platforms, and the OEMs can hold their little hands so that they won't even notice.
It's the middle that will likely be hardest. The people who know a decent amoung of practical Windows lore, who don't get p0wn3d by spyware every 5 minutes, who actually install programs in a coherent way, who buy peripherals reasonably frequently, who use office apps with enough complexity(macros, VBscript and whatnot) that their documents would break hard with OO, and so forth. These have the most to lose and the least to gain from a switch to linux.
One trend I'm not sure about will be that toward increasingly absurd lockdown in all things that the *AAs think aid and abet piracy. On the one hand, this is likely to alienate some people, and drive them to freer alternatives; but it is also likely to swell the ranks of the "Linux can't play my (DRMed to hell and back with proprietary algorithms that you would be DMCAed in an instant for even thinking about) music. Linux sucks!" crowd. I'm not sure which crowd will be larger; but I have my, pessimistic, guess.
Well, excuse me for beign so 'tiresome', but I still don't know what your talking about. Giving me a 'for instance' would be nice. A starting point.
What sort of "design concept" is Linux missing? So far it's not making any sense what your saying.
I know a bit about system internals. device drivers, device files, permission models, kernels, file systems, abstractions, API standardizations, shared libraries. System scedualing, differences between hard realtime scedualing and soft realtime. Preemption. Data recovery, data protection. I know the difference between what a microkernel is and a macrokernel. I know that the NT kernel is a macrokernel even though MS claimed it was a microkernel for a while.
I know some about UI design concepts. About how the icons in the corners of the screen serve as infinately large icons. Window management. Visual notifications of events. I know that folders and icons are abstractions to make people relate data to common objects.. and it is a metaphore that fails often. You have wizards, help menus, 'unified look and feel'. All that sort of thing.
I still can't figure out what sort of 'design concepts and features' are lacking.
It already has, it is quite common in the data center now as well as on custom devices. I suspect your real question is, do you tink it will move to a mainstream desktop OS.
The move will start in corporations, but for the home user, no. Windows and OSX will be the primary home user platform for the foreseable future.
I think that's about right.
For average home use it's not ready. There is a lot of catching up to do and a lot of it is stuff that no Linux developer can do much about, such as windows-style 'ISV' support.
For server use it's great. For work desktop use it's so-so, which is about as good as anything eles, and if you have a administrator that knows what's up, then it can be very nice.
There are a few major barriers. MS Office is a big one. Exchange with Outlook is another one, although exchange itself is inferior (IMO) to what you can get with _alternatives_ in Linux, but there is no drop-in replacement. So that can get expensive and difficult for people if they realy depend on exchange for stuff. People using AD will probably considure Linux solutions inferior.. while it is perfectly possible to do central user and resource management using Linux on a large scale, the administration tools are lacking and it's difficult.
Stuff like that. It's much easier to start from scratch with Linux solutions then it is to go from Windows to Linux or visa versa in a established orginization
The path that most people figure Linux will take is like:
1. Get used on servers. Move people away from migrations to a Windows-only enviroments to using Linux in a heterogeneous enviroment (which most people already had established prior to Linux) by allowing them to increase capabilities while reducing costs and avoiding vendor lock-in.
That's pretty much done. Linux is popular and established and has growing vendor support. This is mostly at the expense of traditional Unix systems, but I also expect that it saved plenty people from having to migrate from Unix to Windows.
2. Leverage servers to gain a foothold onto the business desktop. This currently what people are aiming for. User management, network based application support. You have projects like 'stateless linux' that's goal is to reduce the overhead of deploying large numbers of linux boxes to simply plugging them into the network. People are working on UI development, doing usability studies, establishing API standards, building groupware, increasing desktop performance, trying to attract developers. etc etc.
That's what people are working on now. The big push seemed to start around the same time as the 2.6 linux kernel release. This has attracted Novell, which has put their future on the line in regards to Linux business desktop. (Redhat has had good success in 'step 1' with enterprise applications)
The for 'mainstream' would be:
Step 3. The idea is that after people use these systems at work, they would want to use these at home to get work done.
Hardware vendors will get in line because if they want there hardware to be used on the 10-20% of Linux business desktops then it would have to work with Linux developers to get it to work, which is what they already do with server stuff currently.
So that will lower the difficulty of installing Linux for the average user becuase if you have supported hardware in Linux it's a zero-installation effort thing. "It just works". This is true for some hardware right now, but there are a handfull of significant and popular hardware devices were Linux support isn't very good and requires you to set it up manually.
By getting proven API/ABI standards and support for ISV's for the business arena, and gaining in the level of hardware support, this will also lower the barrier for game makers and such.
This is what companies like 'Linspire' are aiming for.. to be the 'AOL' of linux.
But there are a hell of a lot of 'ifs' in all of that. Currently most people that use Linux or one of the BSD on the desktop use it for the 'Freedom' aspect of it and/or for the Unix-y aspects of it.
For average home use it's not ready. There is a lot of catching up to do and a lot of it is stuff that no Linux developer can do much about, such as windows-style 'ISV' support.
For server use it's great. For work desktop use it's so-so, which is about as good as anything eles, and if you have a administrator that knows what's up, then it can be very nice.
There are a few major barriers. MS Office is a big one. Exchange with Outlook is another one, although exchange itself is inferior (IMO) to what you can get with _alternatives_ in Linux, but there is no drop-in replacement. So that can get expensive and difficult for people if they realy depend on exchange for stuff. People using AD will probably considure Linux solutions inferior.. while it is perfectly possible to do central user and resource management using Linux on a large scale, the administration tools are lacking and it's difficult.
Stuff like that. It's much easier to start from scratch with Linux solutions then it is to go from Windows to Linux or visa versa in a established orginization
The path that most people figure Linux will take is like:
1. Get used on servers. Move people away from migrations to a Windows-only enviroments to using Linux in a heterogeneous enviroment (which most people already had established prior to Linux) by allowing them to increase capabilities while reducing costs and avoiding vendor lock-in.
That's pretty much done. Linux is popular and established and has growing vendor support. This is mostly at the expense of traditional Unix systems, but I also expect that it saved plenty people from having to migrate from Unix to Windows.
2. Leverage servers to gain a foothold onto the business desktop. This currently what people are aiming for. User management, network based application support. You have projects like 'stateless linux' that's goal is to reduce the overhead of deploying large numbers of linux boxes to simply plugging them into the network. People are working on UI development, doing usability studies, establishing API standards, building groupware, increasing desktop performance, trying to attract developers. etc etc.
That's what people are working on now. The big push seemed to start around the same time as the 2.6 linux kernel release. This has attracted Novell, which has put their future on the line in regards to Linux business desktop. (Redhat has had good success in 'step 1' with enterprise applications)
The for 'mainstream' would be:
Step 3. The idea is that after people use these systems at work, they would want to use these at home to get work done.
Hardware vendors will get in line because if they want there hardware to be used on the 10-20% of Linux business desktops then it would have to work with Linux developers to get it to work, which is what they already do with server stuff currently.
So that will lower the difficulty of installing Linux for the average user becuase if you have supported hardware in Linux it's a zero-installation effort thing. "It just works". This is true for some hardware right now, but there are a handfull of significant and popular hardware devices were Linux support isn't very good and requires you to set it up manually.
By getting proven API/ABI standards and support for ISV's for the business arena, and gaining in the level of hardware support, this will also lower the barrier for game makers and such.
This is what companies like 'Linspire' are aiming for.. to be the 'AOL' of linux.
But there are a hell of a lot of 'ifs' in all of that. Currently most people that use Linux or one of the BSD on the desktop use it for the 'Freedom' aspect of it and/or for the Unix-y aspects of it.
I think linux could one day become a mainstream OS. But not yet- There are obstacles.
Hardware. I doubt there's a problem if you try to install a new version of a linux OS on a computer with, say an Intel CPU & chipset, Nvidia video, intel HD audio and a modern 3com/netgear/linksys wireless/wired network card. But if you start moving away from such common hardware, there is more likely going to be problems.
Users. Most people are used a start menu with a few program shortcuts on the desktop plus a My Computer and then usually only a few main folders in their system drive (a clean install only gives you Windows, Program Files & Documents and Settings). As opposed to linux where you'll typically get about 20 main folders in your system drive and theres no start menu clone. Not to mention as well that installing programs in Linux is harder. Like someone said above, with a complete beginner this isn't so much of a problem but its the average person who's quite a lot used to windows who will be the hardest to convert.
Software. Quite simple more software support obviously helps. Although its good to see common open source software alreaty availabe for Linux.
As for gaming, well OpenGL obviosuly helps developers easily make a game work on both Windows and Linux. But it does seem as though Microsoft is really making directx 10 more simplified as well as more functional, and therefore (as it seems to me) more easier to develop for than opengl.
Hardware. I doubt there's a problem if you try to install a new version of a linux OS on a computer with, say an Intel CPU & chipset, Nvidia video, intel HD audio and a modern 3com/netgear/linksys wireless/wired network card. But if you start moving away from such common hardware, there is more likely going to be problems.
Users. Most people are used a start menu with a few program shortcuts on the desktop plus a My Computer and then usually only a few main folders in their system drive (a clean install only gives you Windows, Program Files & Documents and Settings). As opposed to linux where you'll typically get about 20 main folders in your system drive and theres no start menu clone. Not to mention as well that installing programs in Linux is harder. Like someone said above, with a complete beginner this isn't so much of a problem but its the average person who's quite a lot used to windows who will be the hardest to convert.
Software. Quite simple more software support obviously helps. Although its good to see common open source software alreaty availabe for Linux.
As for gaming, well OpenGL obviosuly helps developers easily make a game work on both Windows and Linux. But it does seem as though Microsoft is really making directx 10 more simplified as well as more functional, and therefore (as it seems to me) more easier to develop for than opengl.
Well DirectX and OpenGL are not analogious.
What is more accurate would be something like LibSDL vs DirectX and Direct3D vs OpenGL.
SDL is 'simple direct media layer'. It's a cross-platform system to abstract multimedia and file system stuff accross many platforms. (OS X, Linux, BSD, PS2, Windows, etc etc). Basicly it is designed to take away the nitty-gritty details.
the differences between DirectX or SDL and something like OpenGL is that OpenGL is 3d-only. That's it's only job.
DirectX on the other hand deals with sound, input and output and stuff like that. So SDL is similar.. it deals with file systems abstraction, 3d acceleration (thru a wrapper around OpenGL (for most platforms)), joysticks, windowing, and other details like that.
Here is a article describing on how to use SDL and Direct3d together.
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article2249.asp
A example of a major games that uses it is Quake4 and the Linux ports of Unreal Tournament 200x.
Quake4, at least I know for Linux, not sure about windows, uses SDL for input/output, sound, and other things like that.. However they directly code the 3d graphics using OpenGL. With UT they use SDL for everything except the sound, which they use OpenAL (which they used because originally SDL sound was stereo only, which has since changed)
SDL and DirectX aren't directly compariable, but it's closer I beleive.
It seems to be most popular for games, but it can be used in mostly any multimedia aplication you want. Like a movie player or whatnot. (although in Linux you have things specificly for handling media like gstreamer and such)
What is more accurate would be something like LibSDL vs DirectX and Direct3D vs OpenGL.
SDL is 'simple direct media layer'. It's a cross-platform system to abstract multimedia and file system stuff accross many platforms. (OS X, Linux, BSD, PS2, Windows, etc etc). Basicly it is designed to take away the nitty-gritty details.
the differences between DirectX or SDL and something like OpenGL is that OpenGL is 3d-only. That's it's only job.
DirectX on the other hand deals with sound, input and output and stuff like that. So SDL is similar.. it deals with file systems abstraction, 3d acceleration (thru a wrapper around OpenGL (for most platforms)), joysticks, windowing, and other details like that.
Here is a article describing on how to use SDL and Direct3d together.
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article2249.asp
A example of a major games that uses it is Quake4 and the Linux ports of Unreal Tournament 200x.
Quake4, at least I know for Linux, not sure about windows, uses SDL for input/output, sound, and other things like that.. However they directly code the 3d graphics using OpenGL. With UT they use SDL for everything except the sound, which they use OpenAL (which they used because originally SDL sound was stereo only, which has since changed)
SDL and DirectX aren't directly compariable, but it's closer I beleive.
It seems to be most popular for games, but it can be used in mostly any multimedia aplication you want. Like a movie player or whatnot. (although in Linux you have things specificly for handling media like gstreamer and such)
Let me try this again: I didn't say that Lunux was missing anything, though you could possibly infer that. I said it was continuing to evolve in the direction of supporting the kind of features that a mainstream O/S needs. When it first came out, did it have a GUI? Has nothing been added to it that makes it easier to use? Really, I didn't think there was all that much in my statement to argue about, but then again, I neglected to remember that this is the Linux community, after all, and god forbid you should suggest that the O/S didn't spring forth from the hand of God complete with everything anyone could need.
Ah, I see that you agree.
Merry Christmas, trolls 😉.
/shrug
my linux box has way more functionality and features out of the box and out of the starting gate then your XP box, untill you pay for/install a couple hundred bucks worth of apps. When Microsoft first came out, did it have a GUI?
if you want to say "When windows Xp first came out" then you need to look at a desktop oriented distro, such as Ubuntu. If you look at Ubuntu, when it first came out, it DID have a GUI.
I 'infered' it because you said "get close to having the features and design concepts of a mainstream home O/S"
As in, it currently does not actually have some features and design concepts of a mainstream OS.
I tried to ask you what features and design concepts that it still lacked and you told me that I was tiresome and had to read up on the history of Alan Kay's work order to understand what your talking about.
Which I have before, to a certain extent, but I still don't know what you were talking about. I was hoping that you had something insightfull to say.
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