On Thursday 30 May 2002 22:01, Togan Muftuoglu wrote: - Also think how many members of this very list is actually - running Linux as the only OS on their PC and using Linux for desktop - activities without Wine, Codeweaver or similar products. Maybe a greater emphasis on ease of use for the home/hobby user would put more Linux desktops in the home? When you consider how much money is spent on Win or Mac software and hardware, why wouldn't home/hobby users use Linux if they could get what they want? Brian

* Brian Durant; on 30 May, 2002 wrote:

Maybe a greater emphasis on ease of use for the home/hobby user would put more Linux desktops in the home? When you consider how much money is spent on Win or Mac software and hardware, why wouldn't home/hobby users use Linux if they could get what they want?

Here are my reasons. First of all the way software is in the Linux environment is there are more then one application for one job and they all fail with the complete functionality. For example, there is xpdf, Adobe Acrobat reader, KDE's PS/PDF viewer. In theory they all do the same thing in reality XPDF does not show documents that have fonts embebed in the pdf (if it can I would like to know) Other examples would be Office environment products ie Document, spreadsheet Chart presentations. There are many of them but like it or not they can not compete with Microsoft Office products. (maybe Sun's Staroffice will catchup) but the truth is for one simple job you have endless options which either lcak various features or if they do have the features then lack of adequate documentation is missing. In a business environment I would not want the employee to fight with the software to get out the job. Software is a tool. Business is where productivity is vital and time is money, from managers,owners shareholders POV just to hack the software so it will build properly and produce the desired outcome is killing time. So until there is a similar concortium among similar projects and the number of usable applications grow in Linux yes you may forget the big players support, like *United Linux for desktop*. It is just in my point of view, self satisfaction for many of the developers. Also consider how much money, manpower goes into development and then you end up with 80 US $ product (remember this is retail) which is actually ending up with little ROI. From business perspective unless you have cashcows in your productline survival is hard and you need investors pumping in money. So if investing momey, time, humanpower and many other resources why not shoot the big fish "Enterprises". Moral of the above if desktop is the next step; developers should start thinking how they can combine efforts rather then recerating the wheel every single time. -- Togan Muftuoglu Unofficial SuSE FAQ Maintainer http://dinamizm.ath.cx

Togan I have to agree with you 100%. Case in point: Downloaded Sun's Forte for Windows. Installation process done in 15 minutes so now I can start coding. Downloaded Sun's Forte for Linux. FOUR hours later I stumble across the solution in Sun's Forte forum. Their directions were for RedHat, and what sense I could make of their directions didn't help. Now somehow I've got to figure out how to get Java 1.4 to work in Netscape 6.2.3. Of course I'm still a newbie to Linux but I want to learn it. Eric On Thursday 30 May 2002 19:26, Togan Muftuoglu wrote:

* Brian Durant; on 30 May, 2002 wrote:

...

Maybe a greater emphasis on ease of use for the home/hobby user would put more Linux desktops in the home? When you consider how much money is spent on Win or Mac software and hardware, why wouldn't home/hobby users use Linux if they could get what they want?

Here are my reasons.

First of all the way software is in the Linux environment is there are more then one application for one job and they all fail with the complete functionality. For example, there is xpdf, Adobe Acrobat reader, KDE's PS/PDF viewer. In theory they all do the same thing in reality XPDF does not show documents that have fonts embebed in the pdf (if it can I would like to know)

Other examples would be Office environment products ie Document, spreadsheet Chart presentations. There are many of them but like it or not they can not compete with Microsoft Office products. (maybe Sun's Staroffice will catchup) but the truth is for one simple job you have endless options which either lcak various features or if they do have the features then lack of adequate documentation is missing.

In a business environment I would not want the employee to fight with the software to get out the job. Software is a tool. Business is where productivity is vital and time is money, from managers,owners shareholders POV just to hack the software so it will build properly and produce the desired outcome is killing time.

So until there is a similar concortium among similar projects and the number of usable applications grow in Linux yes you may forget the big players support, like *United Linux for desktop*. It is just in my point of view, self satisfaction for many of the developers.

Also consider how much money, manpower goes into development and then you end up with 80 US $ product (remember this is retail) which is actually ending up with little ROI. From business perspective unless you have cashcows in your productline survival is hard and you need investors pumping in money. So if investing momey, time, humanpower and many other resources why not shoot the big fish "Enterprises".

Moral of the above if desktop is the next step; developers should start thinking how they can combine efforts rather then recerating the wheel every single time.