Mike Dewhirst wrote:
Mark Crean wrote:
Marc Chamberlin wrote:
Colin Carter wrote: Hmmm this ought to provoke an interesting discussion
[snip]
Great post, bang on the money in my experience. Well said!
<snip>
I'm new to Linux and so far only seen Suse 9.1. But I've been around since CP/M on 2MHz Z80s and 128kb single sided 8" diskettes.
I had a great deal of difficulty getting my head around Suse. I installed it only because I wanted to run two applications:
1. Firebird RDBMS server for some Windows based (where all the customers are) client application development; and
2. Subversion source code repository served via Apache2
To cut a long story short, I got Subversion and Apache going and I have to thank this list for helping me when I was about ready to apply a rusty razor-blade where it would do the most good. Firebird is still a work in progress but not a Linux issue.
This is my newbie take on Linux ...
Linux (or maybe I should be saying Unix or SuSE - forgive my inattention to detail which doesn't interest me) was developed by technical gurus to be a very powerful server. For them, performance was and is everything.
Following advice from this list I studied the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard so I could maybe get a handle on things. I learned that *nix/linux (not just the FHS) is entirely aimed at sysadmins who need to keep servers up and performing to the max. Period.
New users will become Linux gurus or fall by the wayside according to darwinian self-selection. I'll probably drop off the perch before I learn enough. Linux sux unless you are prepared to devote considerable brainspace to it. Compared to being "competent" in Windows it's a different place. No comparison.
This discussion should really be about KDE versus Windows not Linux versus Windows. Don't want to offend any Gnome users out there, I haven't even seen Gnome. Anyway, that is the comparison which mattters.
The first thing you need if you are going to take market share from Bill Gates is a strategy which begins with seeing things the way they really are rather than the way you want to see them. That's a reasonable definition of sanity :)
Begin with a name. KDE is a marketing black hole. Gnome is a better gname only if the marketing ploy is gnu-based. But even so, Gnome sucks too. Apple is brilliant but it is taken.
Windows the GUI has successfully blurred the distinction between the operating system and the GUI. Linux as the OS should be in the background; the GUI (whatever GUI) should be in the marketing foreground. There should be a boot level 6 where you never see the Linux OS booting up - instead you should see your favourite photograph and a progress bar.
I reckon the time is right to launch a sharply named GUI to compete with Windows. Longhorn will be released too soon - under the direction of the accountants who need to keep the shareholders happy. It will generate heaps of bad press. Windows users are all savvy nowadays. They know what Bill is like. Just give them something they can hang their hopes on.
The big selling point for the GUI is that it runs on Linux which is brilliantly stable and forever being improved and tested by millions more users than Windows is tested by. It is secure and comes out of the box to reveal a fortress against the vandals who understand Windows so well.
Everyone needs at least one server and that gives you another marketing point for the (you do need a name!) GUI is that it interoperates with Linux servers just naturally. Finally, it also interfaces with all the legacy Windows systems out there.
Bottom line for me is that SuSE Linux is a server not a workstation. To be a workstation it needs a snappily named GUI with simple apps and simple documentation aimed at my simple clients. They are the ones you need to convince. Not me.
Regards
mike
Linus once replied to an article that said Linux was just a server OS ...that he always used Linux as a desktop, that's the way I've always used it, with the exception of installs on zSeries and on Enterprise Sun SPARC. I went from Win 3.11 to Linux on desktops and Win95 to Linux on laptops with the achieved aim of interoperating in a sea of Windows at work. We never had networking in early Linux, I think we had olvwm working well before we had a proper IP stack, there were battles and the original network maintainer gave up under the weight of criticism, but things got better with the input from Donald becker of NASA. Back then if you wanted a server, you used BSD which was too large for the hard drives available at afordable prices for home use. The good networking stack that eventually arrived drove Linux as a server, but the majority of early users were desktop users like myself. For the length of time I've been using Linux as my only desktop OS and keeping up with my work needs, it arrived a long time ago. If you install Linux on a box and give it to a Windows user, like I did for my daughters with SuSE 9.1, you discover there is not much you have to teach them, plus you have a quiet life - my daughters used Linux to watch DVD's before they bought a DVD player, played music CD's, Word processing, spreadsheets etc., with little input from me at their home, they use Windows at work and the Linux machines at my home for surfing the net and email. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce ... Hamradio License G3VBV, Keen licensed Private Pilot Retired IBM Mainframes and Sun Servers Tech Support Specialist Microsoft Windows Free Zone - Linux for all Computing Tasks