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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: Kees on November 05, 2003, 12:48:36 PM
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Matthew Szulik, chief executive of Red Hat, made some unexpected remarks about the choise 'normal home users' should make.
"Red Hat's chief executive has said that Linux needs to mature further before home users will get a positive experience from the operating system, saying they should choose Windows instead."
Read more at ZDNet (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5101690.html) ...
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So true. That's why Linux is crap compared to Win, from a user point of view.
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So TRUE! Linux sux a lot :)
I prefer Windows than that pile of ####. ;D
zurt
Linukso ne estas la solucio!
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It's good beeing in honest, and this guy is clearly
that. And, it's probably right for 'normal home users'.
But Linux, as he also states, is closing in on them.
And, let's see in a couple of years. Go Tux!
What I don't like about this statement is that M$
might use it as an argument against Linux.
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I agree fully :-). Tried Linux a couple of times, but never liked it.
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Is this guy nearing retirement or what. What would we all say if suddenly the world was being told "to buy Windows, at the moment - don't even consider OS4 - it isn't good enough."
Not going to happen just yet, but how many of us would invest our money into buying the OS in the first place?
Is it just me!!!!!!!
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I think its pretty stupid that a CEO of a company says 'don't use our product' ...
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I think he has a valid point.
My parents have a hard time using Windows - "Why can't I install this application by just copying the .exe file? Why must I do this and that to connect a digital camera to my computer? Why is this program slow?"
They are not untechnical - my father is an engineer, has worked as a physics and chemistry teacher, and has built his own radio. He knows his way with a soldering iron and has no trouble with etching circuit boards. He's very old-school :-)
However, he doesn't see the computer as hobbyist paraphenalia at all. It is above all a tool for everyday work: Writing letters, paying the bills and comparing prices before buying a new household appliance.
Now, imagine he was running Linux. First of all, he's got to install it. Swap partition - what's that? Do I need a web server? Should I use a KDE or Gnome desktop, and what the heck IS KDE and Gnome? Why does the web browser look different from the wordprocessor? Why do I have to log in?
With Windows, he can basically just slide a CD in the drive and click "Install", and still he wants me to do it for him :-)
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... And with XP it is finally starting to approach stable... Slow but stable..
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I'm surprised he said this but I think it could ultimately have a beneficial effect. I imagine some linux fanatics will be so up in arms about this that it might generate a "right, we'll show him!" type of response.
I think the IT industry is in a sorry state considering it is nearly 2004. I simply could not pick a "2nd favourite OS" in the opinion poll, because Windows, say, is pretty intuitive, with some terrific apps, but so obviously dated and clunky with the way the underlying stuff works (or doesn't). Linux is technically fantastic but has you pulling your hair out when you hit the common RTFM brickwall about something where you know exactly what you WANT to do and then hit the 200 page long document which could really be 20 pages. BeOS it seems was superb and was deliberately killed. Macs, ewwww, never liked 'em, but to be honest haven't tried MacOS X. I think AmigaOS et al will take some time (maybe a year or so) to mature to properly embrace mainstream technologies.
So that leaves ... errr, nothing (truly satisfying).
As he said though, linux needs to get to that level of simplicity for broad appeal, and it will. AmigaOS etc. have the appeal of simplicity already and need to play "catch up".
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Carls - Correct. You have a point.
But this is the CEO of a direct competitor of Microsoft and AOS4. Surely if there is any member of Red Hat that has the power to make his version of Linux more accessible etc. Then he is the man. Sometimes you need someone at the helm with the ability to push the software forward. If he isn't prepared to make a decision of that magnitude then maybe he shouldn't be in the position he is currently.
All in all. A stupid statement to make. Don't whinge about your software being crap. Whinge at the staff who are developing the crap software.
He has just pushed the self destruct button.
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i enjoy using linux - using mostly Quanta and gimp.
i don't do everything and i know a little something about computers so i'm not exactly an "average" user.
most people are totally clueless about computers. so, yes, for them they need an OS which is so easy to use it is invisable.
the only OS that really fits that description is amiga/MorphOS. and that isn't quite "perfect", but at least it's not a horror.
looking forward to the day when it IS perfect. :-D
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I think its pretty stupid that a CEO of a company says 'don't use our product' ...
But the product "Red Hat Linux" will no longer be made. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is where it's at.
I agree that it's odd, to say the least, to publicly say something like Szulik did. It's almost the same as saying "we failed with Red Hat Linux, and I don't know why other distributors still bother".
But he's right. Linux-on-the-desktop can't currently offer what Windows can to those "I just wanna read my e-mail, plug in my [whatever_cool_gadget] and it'll just work, and play the occasional game" users that he's talking about here.
Meanwhile, those of us who want Linux on our desktop systems will have the Fedora project if we prefer a Red Hat-ish distro.
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most people are totally clueless about computers. so, yes, for them they need an OS which is so easy to use it is invisable.
the only OS that really fits that description is amiga/MorphOS. and that isn't quite "perfect", but at least it's not a horror.
I don't agree that (Red Hat) Linux is difficult to use, once it's installed and configured. I'd argue that RHL with GNOME/KDE is a hell of a lot easier to understand for the average Windows user, than e.g. AmigaOS/MorphOS.
Szulik recommends Windows to those people because of the driver situation, plus the basic computer/Linux knowledge required for installation/configuration.
His 90-year-old Windows using dad would probably have a harder time finding the "IBrowse" icon (and then wonder why web sites look like crap and why he can't see those purdy animations that everybody else can see), than he would have clicking the GNOME menu and choose the item called "The Mozilla web browser" (and everything renders just like on his pals' Windows boxes).
When he plugs in his non-supported digital camera to see the photos from the old folks home's picnic, he'll be just as confused when nothing happens in both Amiga-/MorphOS as in Linux. And why doesn't anything happen when he inserts the CD that came with the camera? Why can't he get "Grand Theft Wheelchair 3" to run?
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why did he not promote osx instead? clearly that is a better OS than windows.. kinda weird of redhat to suddently back off like this, since they have been promoting linux on desktop for such a long time now.. kinda a big slap in the face to the other linux distros also.. i guess redhat got greedy... they see much more money on the enterprise side and clearly do not want to see any other linux distros profit on the desktop side, since they obiousely failed there.
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I think its pretty stupid that a CEO of a company says 'don't use our product' ...
They went enterprise server only.. they ditched desktop/free distro totally and now obiousely dont want anyone else to make profit on desktop side either.
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I totally agree with seehund...
I installed mandrake 8.x on my parents pc a year or so back, they have no problems using it at all :-D They actually thinks it is great! since they have not been having a single crash since it was installed.. uptime on 75-80 days now
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Why do I have to log in?
You can make linux/kde automaticly login the user just as windows... most newer distros ask if you want to use that option after install, just as windows.
Now, imagine he was running Linux. First of all, he's got to install it. Swap partition
that is also automaticly setup in any modern distro.
With Windows, he can basically just slide a CD in the drive and click "Install", and still he wants me to do it for him
same thing can you do with many native linux software too :-)
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I see the arguments and I love Linux and still would not set my dad up on it. I don't think it's ready for the standard home user. Most home users (IMHO) want to go to the store and buy the new XYZ software product take it home and run it. I know Linux has plenty of apps but with windows I just go to the store and there are hundreds of titles to choose from. Plus I get my favorite game running on it. Not an imitation.
Just my 2cents.
--Mithalas
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What a surprise. Red Hat pull out of the consumer market, and therefore the home market, and so their CEO talks down Linux in the home to damage the other Linux distributors.
Linux is the fastest improving OS at the moment, and this includes the desktop. Too may people try out Debian and then complain that Linux is not user-friendly enough. DUH!!!
Perhaps folks should try out the latest SuSE or Mandrake and get a real idea of how friendly Linux can be.
Honestly, does anyone seriously claim that the Windows registry (particularly the W2k and XP ones) is user-friendly???
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Honestly, does anyone seriously claim that the Windows registry (particularly the W2k and XP ones) is user-friendly???
No, I don't think anyone did claim that.
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Perhaps folks should try out the latest SuSE or Mandrake and get a real idea of how friendly Linux can be.
I personally think that newer mandrake distros are way more user friendly than any of the redhat ones.. I cant say antyhing about SuSE though, no experience with it.
I can this though... mandrake supported all hardware out of the box on both my athlon, my dads p4 and my old compaq armada laptop. Only thing i had to do on my athlon was replacing the open source nvidia driver with the official one from nvidia, to get good perfomance out of my gfx card :-D I did not install a single driver except for that.
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I think its pretty stupid that a CEO of a company says 'don't use our product' ...
Well, what he's saying is that their product is not suited for the average home user, and he's right. Linux is much more suited for heavy business apps like web servers. Personally, I like Linux and other Unix like systems, but it can be a pain in the ass to setup. I tried to set it up on my system, had it working fine but could not figure out how to install a simple NIC driver. In the end I just gave up and formatted it with NTFS and never looked back. With WindowsXP, if it doesn't already have a driver for it, it can download it automatically for you, and that's how it should be. With linux, all I was able to find a was a simple C source file, which wouldn't even compile without it being edited. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with the binary, and the linux people I asked gave me answers that made no sense to me... So yeah, I think he's totally right to say that Linux isn't ready. To be honest, I don't think it will ever be ready.
- Mike
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Honestly, does anyone seriously claim that the Windows registry (particularly the W2k and XP ones) is user-friendly???
Yeah, but only experienced users should ber messing with the registry, and some of them really shouldn't be either. There are times when you can tweak things by editing the registry, but i've never seen a case where it's absolutely necessary to edit a registry. It's not like you need to edit the registry every time you install something. Sure some things might get left behind when you uninstall, but so what, hard drives are big and cheap these days! :-)
- Mike
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At last! A linuxer, who finally cuts the crap and tells the truth what linuxers do not want to admit to even himselves/herselves. :lol:
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SuSE 8.2 rocks.
But I still can't use it as a Main OS (due to lack of drivers and software) :-(
Edit if I could get Reason to work in Linux (Using Wine, Reason boots fine but can't load or save due to some file system error :-( ) I would probably use Linux a lot more.
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@Glaucus
Well, what he's saying is that their product is not suited for the average home user, and he's right.
No, he's not. He's saying that his competitors' products are not suited for the average home user. That's a very significant difference.
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@Glaucus
Yeah, but only experienced users should ber messing with the registry, and some of them really shouldn't be either. There are times when you can tweak things by editing the registry, but i've never seen a case where it's absolutely necessary to edit a registry. It's not like you need to edit the registry every time you install something. Sure some things might get left behind when you uninstall, but so what, hard drives are big and cheap these days!
It's not a question of hard drive space. It's a question of obsolete configurations, or Windows refusing to install something properly because you had it installed before and the uninstall process failed. It's a question of programs you try out and can't then get rid of because they install themselves to start up automatically and have no uninstaller. It's a question of adware and spyware installing itself without giving the user the option of removing it.
Sure, if nothing ever goes wrong you wouldn't need to touch the registry, but things do go wrong and the only way to fix them short of re-installing the whole OS from scratch is to edit the registry.
As for re-installing the whole OS, that not only sucks, but takes much longer to do than Linux (re-install+reconfigure). You should not have to re-install Linux, but doing so is easy because all the confugurations are held in the user's home directory (and therefore don't have to be wiped) while in Windows it's all in the registry, which is often the very reason why you have to re-install Windows in the first place.
I must admit, I've tried Linux a number of times over the years and always found it lacking, so I went back to Windows. However, after WinXP gave me incomprehensible problems again a couple of months ago I switched to the latest Mandrake and now I find it perfectly adequate for all my daily usage. There are still some specialised programs that I can only use in Windows, but then I rarely have to use them anyway.
One thing to note is that I can have a multi-functional system out-of-the-box, without having to pay huge amounts of money to achieve the same functionality with Windows applications. I'm happy that Linux is capable of being a home desktop system already, and I'm no expert. I have absolutely no doubt that it will continue to improve and that the Red Hat CEO's statement is deliberately setting out to damage a sector they no longer cover.
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Linux is fine on the desktop. It works for individuals that simply want a system that works and offers standard applications along with a few games. Businesses could save a lot of many in technical support if they switched their users to a Linux or BSD OS. Most only use office applications and play Solitaire. I know because I used to work in tech support for a national computer company. If not Linux, then MacOS X rocks. You can buy software for it in computer stores--even MS-Office. BSD, which OS X is based on, is better than Linux anyways. Linux distributions (other than Red Hat, which isn't very good anyways) that are found in Wal-Mart and computer stores would fit most user's application needs. I'd rather buy a Linux distro than AmigaOS, since at least Linux has a truck load more applications than AmigaOS; Linux is also more stable than AmigaOS. BeOS was the superior OS by design, but we all know how Be, Inc. killed it.
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I don't agree that (Red Hat) Linux is difficult to use, once it's installed and configured.
i agree. i had a friend install my RH on my multiboot laptop and it runs fine. in fact it runs great!!!
i can't recompile the kernal - but my feeling is: if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
i love my linux! :-D
i'll love my pegasos when i get it :-D
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Finally, a dash of realism. Linux was never designed to be a domestic OS, so I don't know why everyone was so enthusiastic about it.
For a long time, Red Hat has been trying to change Linux into a desktop machine, and Linux people have outright resisted it. Many people I've talked to refuse to recognize Red Hat as "Linux". I think Red Hat just got tired of the backlash.
Personally, I don't think Linux, as a GNU/XWindows package, will ever break into the desktop market. The technology was not designed with that use in mind, and the people who use Linux now have little, if any, interest in dumbing down the OS for normal people. Linux was created as a low-cost UNIX for college students, and many have used it as a programming and server platform. It will probably remain in that arena.
Windows95 with IE 5.0 was pretty good for functionality, if a bit crash prone. Most drivers could be installed by adding them manually with the Add New Hardware control panel, and most programs could be run right from the HD without needing an installer. If something was difficult, at least it was consistant so you only had to learn it once. I can re-install Win95 in a snap.
Once Microsoft started introducing wizards to do everything (including the annoying "Clippy" mascott in MS Word), everything really started getting frustrating. Every manufacturer has a unique way of doing things, programs won't run without registry keys, wizards galore ask you stupid questions that aren't needed, installers support pop-ups for all sub-functions, things have to be installed or pluged in a certain order for them to work, you HAVE to download critical updates regularly to patch the "automatic download" security holes... the list goes on.
Windows is at the end of its life cycle, and has really gotten out of control, so saying Linux is better than Windows really isn't saying much at all. It won't be long before the Explorer system is discontinued and replaced with something else. What bugs me is that many companies clone the Microsoft way of doing things, becuase MS has been so successful with it, so the next generation of OS's may not be better. Many Linux systems aimed at the desktop market are adopting Microsoft methods. Faster, more efficient, but not more functional. I'd have more respect for MacOS X if Steve Jobs wasn't devil incarnate. The way he runs that company is rediculous. No motherboard upgrades for G4 towers? Gimme a break.
And for OS4 or MorphOS, I need proprietary hardware. There's no way in hell I'm buying a new OS, for that much money, without trying it first, and I can't do that on my x86 box. They have unrealistic ideas of hardware platforms. The future of computing doesn't look too bright to me. No wonder Microsoft owns it all.
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@Tomas
Yes, and the he encounters a problem like the one I have just solved. Flash Player just crashed all the time. I had to go through my syslog to see that there was some problem with the audio (all my other apps using audio worked fine - xine, xmms etc.). To solve this, I had to download and compile ALSA, rmmod the original drivers and modprobe the new ALSA drivers. I also had to edit modules.conf.
This is nothing a normal home user would want to do.
(My sound chip is a SiS 7012 - very common on cheap MoBos nowadays)
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@Tomas
Installing nvidia's own linux driver requires heavy usage of the command prompt as well as hand-editing of your XF86Config. Yes, I tried Yanc etc. but it added stuff in the wrong sections and basically behaved badly.
You also have to understand the concept of root vs. normal users to do something like this.
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@carls
Installing nvidia's own linux driver requires heavy usage of the command prompt as well as hand-editing of your XF86Config.
Eh? It involves logging into a console and executing a .bin file. That's all there is to installation.
To enable it you need to change ONE entry in the XF86Config (or -4) file from saying "nv" to "nvidia". A few other entries will enable other features, all of which are fully described in the readme.
Hardly rocket science.
Besides, you need to remember that's not an aspect of Linux, but of the way nVidia have chosen to distribute their drivers.
Similarly, the ALSA driver problem you describe tells me you are using either an old distro or a user-unfriendly one. Up to date user-friendly distros do all that for you automatically (and install ALSA drivers by default anyway)
BTW, how many Amigans have never edited a system-startup or user-startup file by hand?
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bhoggett: BTW, how many Amigans have never edited a system-startup or user-startup file by hand?
How much effort does it take to learn startup-sequence? How much more documentation is in the AmigaOS book compared to the docs of a Linux distro? How does the syntax compare? Do a file count of your "S:" directory and tell me there's more crap in there than an "etc" directory.
Definately not the same monster.
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@Waccoon
True. But there are two things to remember: most Linux distros have GUI tools to set the preferences, so you don't have to edit the files by hand, and Linux does far more than AmigaOS ever will.
AmigaOS is simple to follow because it's simplistic and limited. As you said, different beasts altogether.
The fact remains that editing ANY files by hand on a desktop system is an archaic method. I assume AmigaOS4 and MorphOS have automated that side of things so that manual editing is not required for configuration.
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Poster: carls Date: 2003/11/7 13:42:20
@Tomas
Installing nvidia's own linux driver requires heavy usage of the command prompt as well as hand-editing of your XF86Config. Yes, I tried Yanc etc. but it added stuff in the wrong sections and basically behaved badly.
You also have to understand the concept of root vs. normal users to do something like this.
I just typed: "sh Nvidiadrivername.bin" or actually i just typed sh NV and pressed tab, as that completes the filename, just as nickcompleter in nick :-D
Then i went into my favorite txt editor and changed the gfx driver name from "nv" too "nvidia" and pressed save. that's all there was to it.. takes you a couple of minutes max :-D no reboots needed either, other than restarting the xserver/logout from X/kde
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@Tomas and bhogget
Well, I had to hand-edit my XF86Config to configure TwinView to use TV-Out. I also wanted the pointer shadow :-)