Vitaly unconciously raises an interesting point: the Linux Experience _can_ be a good one, provided you _do_ have some Linux experience to begin with, which seems like a contradiction. Vitaly, you make it seem Linux (particularly SuSE 7.2) is perfectly ready as a newbie replacement for Windows 9x for home users. The truth, however, could not be further. You specify the many things you had to do to have a truly pleasing "experience" ("putting symlinks for plugins in mozilla, enabling Acrobat Reader plugin in KDE, firing up ide-scsi, downloading windows movie codeks for avifile, configuring modules.conf manually to enable my joystick"), something that the average user would spend dozens of hours trying to figure out, if ever succeeding. You are the cream-of-the-crop in the Linux world: all your hardware is supported flawlessly, all the software you need is ported as or has Linux equivalents, etc. Once again, you are the elite. Most users would not even consider Linux after hearing of its disadvantages as a home OS: StarOffice is nowhere near as fast or feature-full as MS Office, IE is nowhere near as stable and fails to render all pages perfectly, fonts (even anti-aliased) look like crap compared to the latest WIndows / Mac desktop (my win95 installation has better / more fonts than my SuSE 7.2 installation), no standard package format, no standard GUI, no standard video / audio API (a la DirectX), etc. You seem to have taken your near-perfect subjective Linux experiences and carried them over to the objective standpoint, declaring in the meantime that SuSE 7.2 can serve as a replacement for virtually any home desktop. For me, however, the opposite is true. Win95 is my standard OS (I'm writing this in Pegasus Mail), while SuSE 7.2 remains mainly as a hobby apart from the CD-burning I occasionally do here at home. At school, however, SuSE 7.2 is more prevalent. SuSE 7.2 is the router and file server, as well as the Internet terminal. To sum it all up, Linux will need a _long_ time to become as usable as a home desktop as Windows 9x / NT. It's a Catch-22: Linux needs standards to become popular, and popularity will bring those standards. On 2 Sep 2001, Vitaly Shishakov wrote:
i just decided to share some of my thoughts with everyone.
The reason i use linux (SuSE 7.2 of cource) at home is that i take part in developing some thngs for Unix platform, and i noticed that i did not load my Win2000 for a long time. (last time i booted in it i found that sound mysteroiusly dissapered there :-) ). By this time i found almost all Linux replacements of the things i used to in Win32, such as:
MS-Windows desktop --> KDE MS-Office --> StarOffice, WinAmp + WMP -> XMMS Explorer --> Mozilla Windows Commander --> zsh command line :-) MSDev Studio --> KDev and VSlick editor + DDD.
and etc, not to mention that such things as Matlab, Corel suite, Quake, and etc, are simply ported to linux and look and feel the same.
I admired to see that on my home PC, Quake3 in Win2000 and Linux runs with EQUAL FPS. i also managed to configure my USB Joystick to work with it (just to see if it works)
But while setting up my home desktop enviroment, i had to do much of the things manually, (putting symlinks for plugins in mozilla, enabling Acrobat Reader plugin in KDE, firing up ide-scsi, downloading windows movie codeks for avifile, configuring modules.conf manually to enable my joystick, and many more)
if a mean home user, used to 'Plug and Pray' system would know that must do all this things, he will never buy it (even comparing a 30$ for 3CD of various FREE soft with ~100$ just for OS.)
I admire the SuSE develper's work, most packages come already pre-configured. Comparing to other distributions, i chose this one, because of numerous small features, that are done smarter than in oother systems.
THANK YOU GUYS! IF ONLY PIZZA DELIVERED FROM RUSSIA WOULD NOT GET COLD, I WOULD SENT IT TO YOU, REALLY!
Linux celebrated 10year anniversary with great results, and more are to be archived. This is not a point to stop. Linux have all chances to become the most Plug-and-Playable system ever, and for this we should work together.
A system will become a user-friendly if, and only if, we, (i.e. users) will take a major part in building it. This means not urgent studying C/C++ and fixing the things we want -- i think the developers will also like this, but first of all -- EXPRESSING THE THINGS WE WOULD LIKE TO SEE IN OUR SYSTEM.
KDE wishlist is fat anough already, but this about only one susbsytem.
The OS (like SuSE Linux) is a set of such subsystems, and most od them are doubling each other in functionality. It is good, cause it gives a freedom of choise. But this sub-systems must be interconnected, at least in the way it is in SuSE. we, users, must demand more features that we would like to see in OS package!
Just do not be shy to demand the features you want! demand pre-configured plugins in Mozilla, demand pre-installed codeks for movies demand auto loading and configuring kernel modules on USB device plugin. demand other behavior of right-mouse-button click and window focus tranfer, demand more features for YAST[2] And when the feature you requested appears in the next release of SuSE (or even in YOU ) -- then, put your name in Open Enviromnt buiders list -- you will deserve it!
in the coming Linux decade must become the most USER_FRIENDLY OS! And we (i.e. users) will do it!
PS: Once MS made a great work with it's users and beta-testers to build that win'95 enviroment we all familiar with. Now MS make a grave for themselves with that activation feature, and WE must use it to establish the Open Standards not only in Software enviroment, but in our common life too. -- noodlez: Karol Pietrzak PGP KeyID: 0x3A1446A0