Will Linux finally get a break?

[Kanaric]

linux should not get a break until at least modeately difficult errors are easy to fix and every program is as simply to install as windows. Until then it is a server OS

 

[XOR != OR]

linux should not get a break until at least modeately difficult errors are easy to fix and every program is as simply to install as windows. Until then it is a server OS

I think this is dependent on the distro you are using. I use CentOS, and everything I want is typically in a repo. Errors are simple to diagnose and packages are easier to install than on windows.

 

[Cheetoz]

linux should not get a break until at least modeately difficult errors are easy to fix and every program is as simply to install as windows. Until then it is a server OS

Uhhh, most linux distro's have had 'double click and follow wizard to install program' just like windows for a long time now.

And linux has always had a repo (they're called "App Stores" now) which made installing programs way easier/faster than windows.

 

[Veilrap]

Installing programs from a repo is a reasonably easy task most of the time. Installing programs that are not in the repo or when dependency problems arise is a nightmare that users don't want to worry about.

If deploying linux requires hiring an additional employee the business has lost financially. The largest cost for most companies is human resources (i.e. salaries, benefits, etc.) not OS licenses.

 

[XOR != OR]

Installing programs from a repo is a reasonably easy task most of the time. Installing programs that are not in the repo or when dependency problems arise is a nightmare that users don't want to worry about.

If deploying linux requires hiring an additional employee the business has lost financially. The largest cost for most companies is human resources (i.e. salaries, benefits, etc.) not OS licenses.

I get where you were going, but it's highly dependent on what's being installed. If a business is actually following proper methodology, they will only deploy servers/services that make financial sense.

Further, most places won't hire a dedicated admin for a single server, no matter the technology.

 

[Snowdog]

Don't feed the Dvorak.

Seriously this guy is a professional Troll. He generates hits by spewing the most outrageous nonsense, and then waiting for people to get riled up, tell their friends/forum buddies and the page hits follow.

 

[TheBuzzer]

win 8 isnt going to just have that tablet layout thing.

windows 7 layout is still underneath it.


it is going to be similar to like windows media center where a app goes on top of windows.

 

[Andrew_Carr]

I think once people realize what open source is that linux will take off better. I've heard too many stories now about techies installing linux on their unsuspecting grandma's/retarded cousing's machine and those people loving it. I just explained open source to a guy this morning. He couldn't understand how good programs could be free. I don't think I got it through to him 100%, but it's definitely possible to convince people of the obvious superiority of having the source code for their programs.

Linux does a lot of things right (I think OpenBSD does things better but I digress) and it will continue to improve. For example, I think things like the AppStores of today are kind of laughable since we've had the convenience of repositories for awhile, which are pretty much the same thing (except free & open source).


The biggest hurdle I see with linux is "that one program" you still need that only runs on windows. Whether it's games, photoshop, office, specialized work software, whatever, I think if people have to have that program they'll stick to windows because the rest of it is "good enough", even if linux is somewhat better at all those little things. That being said, I think linux is a good alternative for about 90% of office work out there and that its market share should steadily increase. There's a lot of people using windows that would be happier with linux (lack of viruses, ease of use, free, etc.) so I'm confident that eventually linux or some other open source OS will take over.


I hope that jumble of text makes sense. In summary, I don't expect next year to be the year of Linux on the desktop. I think it'll be a gradual process until enough people using it start explaining it to their friends & family, and then it should be game over.

 

[devil22]

I think once people realize what open source is that linux will take off better. I've heard too many stories now about techies installing linux on their unsuspecting grandma's/retarded cousing's machine and those people loving it. I just explained open source to a guy this morning. He couldn't understand how good programs could be free. I don't think I got it through to him 100%, but it's definitely possible to convince people of the obvious superiority of having the source code for their programs.

Linux does a lot of things right (I think OpenBSD does things better but I digress) and it will continue to improve. For example, I think things like the AppStores of today are kind of laughable since we've had the convenience of repositories for awhile, which are pretty much the same thing (except free & open source).


The biggest hurdle I see with linux is "that one program" you still need that only runs on windows. Whether it's games, photoshop, office, specialized work software, whatever, I think if people have to have that program they'll stick to windows because the rest of it is "good enough", even if linux is somewhat better at all those little things. That being said, I think linux is a good alternative for about 90% of office work out there and that its market share should steadily increase. There's a lot of people using windows that would be happier with linux (lack of viruses, ease of use, free, etc.) so I'm confident that eventually linux or some other open source OS will take over.


I hope that jumble of text makes sense. In summary, I don't expect next year to be the year of Linux on the desktop. I think it'll be a gradual process until enough people using it start explaining it to their friends & family, and then it should be game over.

When? Linux has been at 1% of market share for like 10 years. Lack of viruses? Modern Windows doesn't suffer much from viruses, mostly trojans and scareware which would run just as easy on linux. You can say users won't enter a password for just anything, which always struck me as an arbitrary sentiment, but then, users won't want to enter a password to install every program either. And it would be easy for MS to switch UAC from consent prompt to password credential prompt, if there was any use to it. Ease of use? Windows is already good there. All linux has is 'free' really, and that's not going to be much use when most everything I want to do with my computer is Windows only.

But who knows, maybe one day linux or free OS whatever, will rule, but I see no indications of that becoming a trend right now, except in smart phones, which I think are too trivial to be relevant.

 

[Khyron320]

I work with Linux all day we have close to 3000 machines in the environment. I would never trade my work os for windows.

But when I come home I run windows. Linux will never break into the game market in any meaningful form.

I do agree that selling Linux to small biz is much easier.
Linux is a better workhorse with knowledge than windows which is a double edge sword.
But Ms has a monopoly on PC gaming.

 

[lucacuchi]

Linux is beautiful open OS that will never hit the masses like windows or mac does. That said, I really don't want Linux to go mainstream, I want to keep it a secret for the main stream. That's what Linux is, it's the work horse that one see, but everybody depends on for stability in the computer world. 67% of servers run on a Linux based OS, Why'?, because its cheap, speedy and easy to use( from a technology point of view ). Linux is what it want to be. That makes it the best OS to use.

 

[KnishofDeath]

I love linux, I really don't want it to become a mainstream OS. IMO I think that is what cannonical is trying to do with Unity, and frankly I hate it. That said, I think if Linux got some solid gaming support it could see a beneficial, moderately sized growth in market share. For example, I think solid minority of [H]ard types (as in custom builders and those that like to tinker with things) would run Linux full time if it also supported many of the mainstream games out today. Linux will never take over as the dominant OS, and frankly I don't want it to. But gaining 5-10% market share would be quite beneficial.

 

[pxc]

I love linux, I really don't want it to become a mainstream OS. IMO I think that is what cannonical is trying to do with Unity, and frankly I hate it.

If the problems were only limited to Unity. BTW, it often gets mentioned, but you can select GNOME 2.x from the log in screen and never use Unity if you dislike it.

GNOME 3 IMO is even worse than Unity. It seems to have been designed by people making random UI decisions who didn't care one bit about usability at all. It makes poor use of screen space, repetitive actions are required for basic task management. The app selection method is many times worse than classic menus. And lack of UI widgets to manipulate window state is the most puzzling joke I have ever seen... and my first GUI was GEOS. I wanted to give GNOME 3 a fair shake before passing judgement. I've used it a month without (unofficial or official) tweaks and I just can't stand it. It truly is the worst GUI I've used in a very long time.

 

[Red Falcon]

There are serious fiscal advantages to running linux, but none of them involve "free". At least, not in a larger business environment.

Still, in the SMB sector, linux is a godsend. If I had to replace all the linux boxes I had out there with the equivalent windows, I'd end up spending multiple thousands of dollars.

Same here, and I don't agree with that article. There are far too many needed and useful apps on the Windows platform to make Linux the dominate OS for desktops.

 

[KnishofDeath]

If the problems were only limited to Unity. BTW, it often gets mentioned, but you can select GNOME 2.x from the log in screen and never use Unity if you dislike it.

GNOME 3 IMO is even worse than Unity. It seems to have been designed by people making random UI decisions who didn't care one bit about usability at all. It makes poor use of screen space, repetitive actions are required for basic task management. The app selection method is many times worse than classic menus. And lack of UI widgets to manipulate window state is the most puzzling joke I have ever seen... and my first GUI was GEOS. I wanted to give GNOME 3 a fair shake before passing judgement. I've used it a month without (unofficial or official) tweaks and I just can't stand it. It truly is the worst GUI I've used in a very long time.

Thanks for the tip. I run Ubuntu on my macbook pro and have actually been using ubuntu classic already, I tried unity for a week and couldn't take it anymore. I really don't know what I am going to do by this time next year, GNOME 3 looks terrible and I am no fan of KDE.

 

[Spooony]

99.9 percent of the apps you get on windows you get on linux. The only thing saving windows arse and what Microsoft is clinging onto are direct x. That's it if the linux community stop creating 10000000 distros and pulled they're fingers out their arses they couldve created or developed open gl to standard game developers couldve used and gave dx a run for their money.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Every day at my job (99.999% windows) I tell myself "I wish this was Linux, it would be so much easier". And it's true. Linux actually *IS* easier, at least now. Back when any app you had to install required to go through a large hierarchy of dependencies, it was hell, but things have changed. Program installation is a non issue. Command line? Lot of stuff can be done in GUI too now, and being open source, nothing stops you from writing your own GUI or web front end to do stuff. Look at stuff like Freenas and Openfiler, they are simply front ends to existing Linux tools that you normally have to do via command line. Try doing something like this with Windows and you'll get sued for copyright and all that BS.

I can have a standard web server with php, mysql, apache, postfix, DNS etc running in under an hour. Tweak and setup backups in maybe a day or so. Linux is the master when it comes to automating things. If I had a large Linux environment I could easily write scripts to automate all this and make it even faster. Deploy machines left and right with ease. No cost.

In Windows, even simple things like running a script off a remote server is a pita, with half ass support for UNC paths (which is their own invention, yet they can't even fully support it). Lot of stuff like this is just a PITA from an admin point of view in Windows. Then you get random weird unexplainable issues that can happen at times.

Today for example, I was working on a silent installer for a program called Meditech. The installer provided does not do much so I have to create the shortcuts myself. So I created one manually, copied the .lnk over to the setup repo, and my script copies it to the machine at all users desktop and all users start menu. For whatever reason the start menu one screws up and the ownership goes missing. WTF? Why? These are the type of things that make me hate windows. Something that is very simple and should work, but does not, and has no reason to not work.

When Linux fails, it has a very good reason to, and usually has an easy fix.

Companies tend to go Windows because it's the "corporate thing to do" and it has support and all that, but really, how often does one actually need to call Microsoft? And when you do, can they even help you? Often the biggest problems are so environment specific that Microsoft won't really be able to help you. for example, you get some odd issue related to a corporate app. They can't help you with that. It's IT's job to just get it to work, that's why you get paid, so why pay extra just to get support... we *ARE* support!

Speaking of weird Windows screw ups, I had made a small modification to permissions on one of our IIS servers. Basically I added a group with read/write access on top of the existing permissions. BOOM entire web server fubared. It was prompting people for a password and doing other screw ups. So figuring I must have somehow caused this I go and remove that group and put it back how it was. Still screwed up. We ended up having to restore a VM backup of it. WTF Microsoft? This is the kind of crap that makes me stick to Linux for my personal/online stuff.

I had a Linux install crap out really bad on me once, I could not even ping the server. Turns out the power supply blew. Install new power supply, press power button, booted back up like a charm and everything was working. Linux systems go down for a reason, Windows systems go down just for the lulz.

 

[Sly]

Even though I liked Vista, the media and public sheep did not. Microsoft survived that, so negative feedback of Windows 8's new UI will be a breeze to surive.

Anyways, the new UI frontend just overlays the standard desktop. I'm 100% confident it can be disabled or not used. Other than that, the basic AERO UI looks very similar to 7.

To be honest, i don't think the new UI is much different from what EXOPC did. Any chance of EXOPC suing microsoft soon?

Or heck, it's no different from Win3.1 acting as frontend for DOS.

 

[devil22]

Red Squirrel...blah blah blah

Thanks for the anecdote. Your Windows screwed up and your linux didn't, well I guess that's scientific and unbiased enough to conclude "Windows drools linux rules" Since Vista then 7, I've not had a problem that was not hardware based that wasn't my fault or easily fixed. Linux? Well, I like to play games when I get done working, so not now, probably not never. Another anecdote from some random internet guy isn't going to change squat there.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Thanks for the anecdote. Your Windows screwed up and your linux didn't, well I guess that's scientific and unbiased enought to conclude "Windows drools linux rules" Since Vista then 7, I've not had a problem that was not hardware based that wasn't my fault or easily fixed. Linux? Well, I like to play games when I get done working, so not now, probably not never. Another anecdote from some random internet guy isn't going to change squat there.

I'm basing this on many Windows machines and many Linux machines in all sorts of environments, not just mine.

That weird file copy example is just one of many instances of windows stupidity that I've seen, where something should be simple and just work, but does not.

Windows has come a long way, don't get me wrong, but I still prefer Linux and always will.

 

[heatlesssun]

Speaking of weird Windows screw ups, I had made a small modification to permissions on one of our IIS servers. Basically I added a group with read/write access on top of the existing permissions. BOOM entire web server fubared. It was prompting people for a password and doing other screw ups. So figuring I must have somehow caused this I go and remove that group and put it back how it was. Still screwed up. We ended up having to restore a VM backup of it. WTF Microsoft? This is the kind of crap that makes me stick to Linux for my personal/online stuff.

We run thousands of Windows servers where I work and do this type of thing constantly. A couple of the servers apps that I support are retiring this year have been running for 8 years and the only thing we've had to do to them is replace some failed hard drives a couple of years ago. And actually Microsoft has helped me out on an app that was written by some folks that didn't know what they were doing. The app went from crashing constantly to now not having failed in two years with the exception of a database space issue because once again the people that originally designed the app didn't plan for proper deleting and archiving. I admit that Microsoft support in the past used to suck, even for corporate customers, they are MUCH better these days and when you engage them properly they can be of a lot of assistance, I've heard this a lot at work from other folks.

I think like a lot of people you think that Microsoft just sits on cash and isn't evolving and making better products and services. They are and I think in the coming years they are going to surprise a lot of folks, especially now that they aren't under the government scrutiny that they for the past decade ago. Microsoft is a an extremely adaptable and persistent company. Not usually the first or the most innovative but they will keep at a number things for a long time until they get some success.

 

[Red Squirrel]

It really depends on the environment too. In our case, we're virtualized. They wont touch that. If you have a physical server for each app and it's of approved OEM and all, then they'll probably be more willing to help, but if there's any slight thing they don't like such as a virtualized environment (unless it's HyperV) they'll find an excuse not to help you.

Actually here's another example of a weird stupid microsoft issue. (google this, we're not the only ones)

We have an exchange 2003 server and at random, the free/busy information for users/rooms/resources will be blank. We went by MS's site and put a GPO to be able to see 36 months or w/e the limit is. For some it works, for some it does not, then suddenly it completely stops working, then next day it works etc... we also have other issues such as calendar items disappearing and other weird crap like this that's enough to get us to pull our hair out. This stuff just does not happen with Linux. If it's suppose to do something, it does it, and it does it the same way every time.

Today, MS stuff does not really go down like it used to do a lot, it just screws up, like in these examples. The system is still running and 99% doing what it should, but you get that 1% quirky issues like that which are enough to drive you insane.

 

[heatlesssun]

I agree that Microsoft has dragged it's heels on non-HyperV VM support but even that is changing as customers are simply demanding it. All of our Windows servers are going to VM Ware by year's end and we're as big and important a customer that Microsoft has, they simply are being forced into it.

 

[brom42]

It really depends on the environment too. In our case, we're virtualized. They wont touch that. If you have a physical server for each app and it's of approved OEM and all, then they'll probably be more willing to help, but if there's any slight thing they don't like such as a virtualized environment (unless it's HyperV) they'll find an excuse not to help you.

Actually here's another example of a weird stupid microsoft issue. (google this, we're not the only ones)

We have an exchange 2003 server and at random, the free/busy information for users/rooms/resources will be blank. We went by MS's site and put a GPO to be able to see 36 months or w/e the limit is. For some it works, for some it does not, then suddenly it completely stops working, then next day it works etc... we also have other issues such as calendar items disappearing and other weird crap like this that's enough to get us to pull our hair out. This stuff just does not happen with Linux. If it's suppose to do something, it does it, and it does it the same way every time.

Today, MS stuff does not really go down like it used to do a lot, it just screws up, like in these examples. The system is still running and 99% doing what it should, but you get that 1% quirky issues like that which are enough to drive you insane.

Why in the hell are you still running Exchange 2003? Exchange 2003 is garbage compared to Exchange 2007. It improved everything by leaps and bounds. Exchange 2010 is even better than 2007.

I am running a fully VMWare infrastructure. I've gotten support from Microsoft no problem, but then again I am running Exchange 2010 SP1 on Server 08 r2. MS fully supports running that configuration even with HA turned on.

 

[heatlesssun]

You bring up a good point. The quality of modern Microsoft products has improved almost dramatically in the last 4 years and I'd say especially the last 2 years. A lot of folks are often bashing Microsoft on technology much older than the competing products in comparison. But that's the native of Microsoft's business model. You tend to get large and expensive deployments that people are hesitant to upgrade for cost and effort reasons.

 

[pxc]

...and other weird crap like this that's enough to get us to pull our hair out. This stuff just does not happen with Linux.

Wanna bet? Software is software. A bug in any software (if that's the cause, which it may not be in your example... I suspect data corruption or replication problems) can cause strange behavior. I have seen P-L-E-N-T-Y of problems like you describe and worse on various *nix environments. Ask me about permissions disappearing problems on RHEL. Or just google it.

If it's suppose to do something, it does it, and it does it the same way every time.

lulz, are these quality requirements for all *nix software because I don't think many developers have understood that.

Exchange 2003 isn't the pinnacle of or even the last word on *nix vs Windows based software. Exchange 2003 is somewhat fragile, and relies on repair utilities too much, IMO. But it's hardly unique in that way.

 

[Spooony]

Why fight which is the best? One is free one is not. So what stop you from using the FREE one as well. If you don't wanna use it tough shit its your loss but the vs thing is bull. Use both. Get the best from both worlds simple.