Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

yep, the same reason we now have xorg rather then xfree...

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

It is quite amusing that you are using flash as an example. The main use, today, for flash is to display videos. Most prominently youtube.

Guess which site recently converted all their videos to h.264, which is an open standard? And why did they do that?

The web is changing, and evolving to open standards. Why? Because big players like Google (youtube...) and Apple are working towards open standards. Sure, they are not working for the beauty of free software. But it is still positive.

In the long run, flash is dead. It is a question of selling your point to the corporate mindset. As long as only linux users could not run flash, managers of shoddily designed web sites thought: "it's only hackers, they don't have money and they should use windows on their PC anyway". Now millions of people complain that the site does not work on their iPhone, and they think: "We must do something about it, because iPhone users are a rising market".

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

A couple of reasons to consider:

- XP support will end next year (except for EEEpc and the like), more Vista-only apps will come.
- Malware
- Microsoft [spying] [on] [you]. Not as tinfoil-hat as you might think.
- in case of Vista: WGA, DRM hassles

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

All good points, I'll admit. I'll see how Hardy HGeron goes for me when I'm not feeling lazy.

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

Not to mention, if we're discussing Vista, UAC.
I just know some of their experiments are gonna go horribly wrong. Oh well, at least they're so bumbling they managed to order up a crate of chainsaws. Don't know what they thought they'd use them for, but they might come in handy.

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

Ubuntu and some other distros are making headway, but even then they are breaking standards and conventions set by the "debian standard". Ubuntu and openSUSE are good options because they make things simple. Linux users seem to think that everyone does or should know as much as they do on computers. People of all walks use computers, from kids to the elderly, and expecting all of them to navigate the command console and recompile kernels to fix problems is unrealistic. It just isn't going to happen.

People go to a mechanic to fix their car. Sure, they can learn how to do it themselves but not everyone wants to spend the time and energy. Anyone is capable of masonry, gardening, gravedigging, and so on if they took the time and energy to learn how to perform those trade skills. Hell, if you went to medical school you may be able to diagnose yourself. If you went to law school, or just read up on applicable laws, you could defend yourself in court. See where this is going? People pay other people to do the job so they don't have to be a superman skilled in everything.

Recompiling a program to work for your specific distro and/or needs just isn't a viable option for many people. For this reason, linux will always be a market minority. I have ubuntu installed, but it took me a few distros and a lot of time just to get the resolution of my laptop monitor to be the native 1280 x 800 instead of the "default" 1024 x 768. When I was searching for a solution online someone suggested recompiling the linux kernal to fix the problem. I have no idea how to recompile anything! Some people said they just gave up and used the 1024 x 768 resolution. This option was unacceptable for me. I finally installed ubuntu and was able to easily fix the problem using propriety drivers that ubuntu was able to acquire.

Moral of the story: linux in general caters to the highly informed user. Most of the population are not of this type and do not care to spend the time, money, and energy needed to become a guru. People are even willing to use (and sometimes pay for) windows rather than use a free OS with no easy support.

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

then again there are laptops like my sisters, that will at times make games that use the built in 3d card crash because of some flaw in the driver. thing is, the card maker, nvidia, tells her to go to the laptop maker, hp, for the driver. and they have not released a new one since 2006.

if one tries a third party modified driver that removes the checks nvidia have put in place, it works, at first. but sooner or later it will make the display stay black when the computer is booted.

osx, windows, they both are fine os's, if one stay inside the walled garden. stray outside of said garden, or do something "god" dont like and things come tumbling down.

linux, and others like it, basically tells you that the world is a wild and dangerous place.

hell, i recall reading that the people that work on acpi support for linux run into trouble because the chips have flaws that are covered up by the windows drivers, or are tested against the microsoft testing tools. tools that do not match the behavior of the intel tools.

and was there not a optical drive that would go into firmware update mode if it was poked by a signal that normally was used to toggle a option in rw drives? reason it was spotted was because a distro used it to check what kind of drive they where dealing with, and expected any sane drive to return a error on standardized but unsupported signal?

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

"Recompiling a program to work for your specific distro and/or needs just isn't a viable option for many people. For this reason, linux will always be a market minority."

I've used many varieties of Linux especially in recent years, and I haven't had to recompile a program since -- oh, I think I had to do it 15 years ago. Now that I think of it, that was recompiling Linux, not a regular program.

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

GNU/Linux and OSS in general is being held back because it's too open. Users are afraid of openness. We all want to be given the least amount of freedom as possible when it comes to consumer products so that we can be told what to like and how to like it, rather than having to choose ourselves. Free thinking and freedom itself is too much for the average joe to handle.

OSS will remain a niche until something like Mozilla Corp. who came and told users to use Firefox and like it.

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

Fact of the matter is that 'common people' don't think that much of\about computers. It's just like how we see a phone or a telly.. a means to an end. A tool to do a certain thing. Most will probably just check on the machine's brand, and the visible characteristics of the machine... and think of how fast\easy it can help them finish their office work.

Do OSS coder want to cater to them? People who essentially don't care about your work, your cause?

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

No; OSS coders would rather they stay with Microsoft.

The benefits:

• Not having to worry about making things nice for them
• Not having to hear them whine in spite of your efforts to make it nice
• Having a continual source of rage on tap in Microsoft's domination
  (Note: serious coding requires at least two of the following elements as fuel: rage, caffeine, junk food)

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

Those ppl would fork over their cash for a solution before forking off your project.

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

But that's where the strawman is.. IMO anyway. The goal for Linux is not to replace Windows, because to do that it would have to be just like Windows only much better. The reason I and lots of other Linux followers (not to mention developers) moved to Linux was because we don't _want_ to use Windows, we don't like it, for different reasons - or some may like it, but still feel limited by it.

For example, MS Windows is a lot about uniformity: There's just about one single way of using the graphical interface, you're supposed to accept and like the 'click to focus' paradigm, the 'the window you enter text in will be on top' paradigm, and so on. And it's understandable, from MS' point of view - you avoid a lot of coding that way, because there are way less cases to handle.

When I first came in touch with a Unix/X-Windows (X11) system (which was a Sun system back then), I spent the first few days trying out all possible window managers, shells and configurations, until I found one I liked (virtual desktops, focus-follows-mouse, etc. etc.) Later I started to look for Unix-like systems for PCs, and then Linux came around and I moved over.

Developers move to Linux because they want to be able to do what they want to do, basically. And if enough other people want to do something similar you have a collaboration that keeps the thing alive (e.g. the gtk+ developers, people writing window managers, lots of other applications).

There are also of course some people who think that Linux should replace Windows, I think they are mistaken because it won't ever work - as I said, it would have to basically _be_ Windows then, and the effort would be better spent in lobbying groups pestering Mr. Gates & co. to fix whatever problems you see in Windows.

That doesn't mean that there isn't room for Linux, because there are lots of people out there who either want something different, or something free, or any other reason really.

Finally, as for problems with Flash and other proprietary software, there's really not much the Linux developers and distros can do - they don't have access to the code so they can't fix it. Adobe must fix, nobody else can fix Flash. The users would do better lobbying directly at Adobe instead of Unbuntu (or other distros).

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

This whole thread feels wrong somehow.

There's this underlying assumption that success in terms of gaining market shares is something that "Linux" (who-/whatever that is) certainly wants and that there's some details that prevents it from happening. (Again, I read between the lines: If only we could iron out those details, then...)

The assumption as such is wrong. There's a fight for market shares among commercial products, and ATM it's MS and Apple who are the main players.

The reason why GNU/Linux is there in the first place is not to conquer the world and beat MS once and for all. (Who would benefit from this, anyway?)
GNU/Linux is there for those who need/want it the way it is: free, open, a playground for experiments, a great learning aid and the unique chance to individually put together your components (from all the diversity out there) in a way so that they best suit your needs.

This is a niche thing and always will be. 97,962% of the computer users don't want to learn about their systems or customize their boxes the way they could with GNU/Linux. They are far better off with Windows or OSX. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's no reason to convert them to GNU/Linux.

It's a bit like healthy food:
You could argue that people would eat a lot more vegetable and less burgers and french fries if it only carrots tasted a bit more like fries and broccoli didn't look and taste like broccoli. Then you could suggest they'd sell vegetable with artificial colors&taste and prepare them with a lot of fat so that the new taste really is strong. What do we have then? Artificial carrots without vitamins but with hundreds of calories and ominous chemical ingredients instead. - Would those who wanted more healthy food be happy now that people eat those carrots? No.

So, could we streamline GNU/Linux to make it mass market compatible?
Yes. But we'd take away everything it's there for. The diversity, the experiments, the learning (and failing), the openness. And in the end we'd have a system that maybe could compete with windows, but... I would choose Windows then. It's the original, and the castrated mainstream-GNU/Linux would be a copy.

(And before somebody says so: Of course the existing diversity lets you put together individual systems that come very close to a mainstream, consumer-friendly OS. Ubuntu does a good job here, and, yes, ITOS isn't all that bad, either. But still they heavily rely on core components not under their control, so I guess it will never be 100%.)

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

I agree with benny1967, and I guess I tried to say the same thing in a slightly different way in my previous post.

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

I agree with both of you, and just forget what I said. :p

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

which part of what you said? the "I agree with both of you"?

I could never forget anything you say. You're the reason of my virtual existence in this forum. ;)

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

No, I meant my pontification on tribalism vs capitalism. :D

And I refuse to take the blame for your presence here. :p

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

yes, this linux marketshare thing may well be a press created issue, as its simpler to grasp then (it fits better into the existing pattern of things).

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

Very true. The linux market does not seem all that interested in making it very consumer friendly. Besides Ubuntu and openSUSE, and maybe a few others, the community seems very content being a niche market.

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

If it means not having to answer the same basic questions over and over again, then I'm all for keeping Linux a niche market.

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

So what happens when it is the questions you are asking that people don't want to answer?

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

You go figure out the answer on your own.

As long as it is constrained to people who actually want technical competence, they will see many troubles not only as something they need fixed, but as something they don't know how to fix yet, and want the knowledge worse than the fix. So they'll research (and/or just think, sometimes) before posting, because that will go farther to their goal. When all you want is a quick fix, it's often easiest to ask first, as someone will probably give you the answer, or at least point you much more specifically toward the answer. You just won't get a good understanding of the system that allows you to fix the next problem yourself.

So there won't be near as many questions , and the situation where nobody knows the answer becomes more prevalent than that where everyone's tired of telling the answer.

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

So basically it's best to continue just as a 'hobby' thing..? Nobody is paying for it, so everyone keep their day job and work on this when they can and when they feel like it?
Or the occasional antisocial coder w/ no life who dedicates everything to tech (reiser?)?

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

No, you leave the de-niching to people who are getting paid to do it; that's Novell, Red hat, etc..
Or to the complete *****s who actually do it on a volunteer basis; that's Ubuntu, etc..

But, yes, it's best for us if as far as we're concerned it stays niche. Leave the consumerification of UNIX to Apple; they like it.

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

Excelent. Like the anti-science. Standing on the toes of giants.
Instead of progressing technology, everyone spends time doing the same thing over and over again out of fear of looking like a newbie.

Which is I guess an reasonable description of how linux appears from the outside.

However, regardless to 'ego linux' distributions, it would be nice to have some sort of distribution that was good for normal people so they don't have to keep funding microsofts desire to copyright everything in computer technology. I suppose that is where ubuntus market is and it has made very impressive progress so far, to the point that there is a linux that is close to something those normal people can use.

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

Everyone looks stuff up in the manual, out of fear of looking like a newbie? Well, I don't think that's why, but any reason's a good reason. I think it has more to do with wanting to learn, and recognizing that a man page is a much better way of understanding grep than a single regex someone responds to your specific "help me please" question with.

(And what's this mean: "Instead of progressing technology"? Do you think that the people who ask dumb questions instead of Ring TFM are likely to bring about any technological progress? Or am I misunderstanding your point?)

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

...and, just as a side point, let me say this: if anyone reading this thread is (or should be) considered a "newbie", then you would do well to learn (via which, you will learn to love) regular expressions. O'Reilly has a (big, and somewhat expensive, but definitely worthwhile) book on the subject.

regex will, more than anything else in unix/linux-dom, move you well along the path out of newbie-ness and into power-user-hood. :)

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

one question here is how to measure progress in technology, words like innovation and similar are thrown around so often now that its become more or less meaningless...

i say, progress is a evolutionary process, not a revolutionary one...

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

Progress is an evolutionary process, and evolution does kill off a lot of the branches, especially if other things are evolving faster.

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

Sorry - I searched the whole thread, and didn't see any reference to a manual. What are you refering to? In fact, what are these manuals. One thing that I am always impressed with is how poor the documentation is for any of the linux stuff. I know why - developers hate doing documentation. I am a developer, and I hate it. I just have to do it at work.
OK, there is the man pages, which work fine if you know what tool is necessary to do the job you want to do, but if you don't then you have a few hours of googling trying to find something.

I did a google tonight. I was trying to find out why I couldn't install the mind manage app somewhere here. I couldn't find some python library. First thing I found was something on the python page telling me I had to have the tablet in R&D mode, which I didn't really want (or feel necessary). So I did a bit more searching. Then after about 4 different searches, I found the phrase I needed for the library I was looking for, as I assumed it was some abstract repository I had to add (and obviously, I didn't want to look like a ****** for asking as I should know all the repositories used everywhere), so I followed the link. It was somewhere on here asking where to get the library from which was answered by someone providing a link to google. I searched the whole of ITT, and that was the only reference, so I don't know what they were going on about.

a man page is an awful way of learning a how to do regex, and that goes on the basis that you know what a regex is and what the name of the tool that does it is. If you don't know what the tool is called, or about regex expressions, how are you supposed to know?


If there was a FM then that would be a valid point.

But anway, they do progress technology. They buy the products enabling the products to be produced. If it was just linux enthusiasts, there wouldn't be enough to make it worth doing.

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

..............................

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

/me chuckles.

if i wasn't feeling so lazy tonight, i'd go dig up the url to one of my favorite xkcd comics...

;)

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

For the unenlightened. http://xkcd.com/208/

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/regular_expressions.png

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

Ahhh, now I know the problem when my system at work stops working. It is flash that is broken! Also opening more than 6 IE windows means that I cannot also open Adobe Reader- yep Adobe owns Flash- the culprit is found.

I thought all this time it was the fact that the OS is Win2000 sp4 instead of Ubuntu.....It is much better with a Pentium4 and a Gig of memory. Must be less flash in the air.

It matters not that 32 million NEW desktops in Brazil are now using Ubuntu, or that most European State Business is FOSS. Too bad they don't have Flash to know how broken those systems are......

tic for those all rattled.

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

Now I understand why commercial software coming from Redmond still have problems that were solved 30 years ago.....

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

GA --

yep. that's the one. please accept my virtual "thanks", as that option is not available on this thread. :)

my next favorite xkcd (no need to link it) is "sudo make me a sandwich". ;)

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

Um, why the thanks button is not available anymore? Did i miss something?

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

Ubuntu is coming on strong so Adobe will put flash on it. MS is no longer the driving force for anything. As for Linux and open source, linux works and I care not if any proprietary app runs on it as long as it works. I use both OS and closed to design and build web environments. I also use MS and Apple for the same thing. In the long run OS will rule because no closed environment can be the end all and be all for solving the kind of complex problems that arise as the web increases it's influence on all things dealing with commuting.

Re: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
 

That's what Google is for. And that's what every newbie in every sphere needs to do learn first: how to search successfully in Google and Wikipedia.

For instance some sites for regular expressions you can find:

http://www.regular-expressions.info/
http://www.rexv.org/ (Cough cough - this site is mine :), the next extended beta is here: http://rexv.bundyo.org/)
http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/regex.htm