Whenceforth the Ubuntu fanboyz now?

Fri Feb 9 00:31:03 UTC 2007

ted leslie wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-02-08 at 17:22 -0500, Stephen Allen wrote:
>> On 08/02/2007 George Nicol wrote:
>>> Perhaps not.
>> Yeah I don't think the Linux desktop is ever going to be reality. It
>> goes back to understanding what the market that uses Graphical Desktops
>> want. <ie> Marketing for normal everyday users, as opposed to hacker
>> culture needs. Nothing wrong with hacker culture though.
> 
> I agree if one restricts this to desktop thinking, but I think
> relatively soon (upto 10yrs) most cell phones, PDA, PVR, PS3/4, web
> appliances, TV's, even mobo bios will be Linux , so I am hoping that
> fact will just make it take off on the desktop, i.e. coming from a whole
> different angle.

Absolutely.

I understand Linux is huge in the embedded market. I'm not sure if it's
possible to get on the computer desktop at home though, at least the way
the computer desktop metaphor is these days. I personally believe it's
the licensing hurdle and the associated hacker culture.

I guess I should point out, I agree with  most people on why Linux is
great -- I simply don't see my favourite operating system through rose
coloured glasses when it comes to mainstream use on the desktop. Wishful
thinking it just that ... :)

>> Apple has spent litterally millions on getting it pretty close to what
>> users actually want and like (although not perfect). I don't see Ubuntu
>> being the solution either.
> 
> And whats really bad is that SUSE claims to have sat generic computer
> users down and done evaluations to build a easy to use system.  They
> improved in some areas (i think) and actually got worse in others.
> With all the $$$ spent in Linux, you'd figure they could just sit 
> down a nice population (statistical representation of)  5000 users,
> capture the issues they have and solve the issues, its not like its rock
> science, its just a bit of coin needed. What would it cost to have 5000
> people submit to 160 hours of "monitoring"? at 16$/hr thats 12M$,
> someone just spend it (in the linux camp) and be done with it for pete's
> sake. 

Agreed. I Wonder why Ubuntu doesn't do something like this? As I
understand it, all Ubuntu does is primarily package proprietary drivers
and use the Debian developers hard work in order to look good.

Remember in the late 90's when some Apple developers went on their own
and developed that money pit, Nautilus? What a bloated piece of crap!

>> I've been using Linux for probably a decade or little more (mainly as
>> server OS). There just isn't the full suite of applications that I need
>> to use on a daily basis for the Linux desktop to be reality where I work
>> or at my home.
> 
> I'd be interested in what it is you use that you can't get on Linux ...
> I stopped using Windows 5+ years ago because it couldnt give me what I
> wanted, only Linux could. Win32 was a dead end for video capture tech.
> and programming development, and of course IE was totally screw'd.

Well professionally almost everything. I use Photoshop, Final Cut Pro,
Maya, After Effects, Quark and InDesign regularly. There is nothing open
source that has the polish or penetration of those applications (Scribus
is improving nicely, but it's still just a brother of PageMaker). Heck I
need to use Acrobat as well, and in the type of work I do, it's just
easier to use a desktop GUI. Personally I prefer to use vim, but it's
kind of hard to work with creatives whom all use proprietary
applications when you're using open source. Unfortunate, but true.

> One thing that is interesting at my work, is that they just got a
> crackberry outlook express server thingy. And the installing company
> says to interface with it from Win desktop you need to go to the full
> 2003+ office suite, that has a outlook client to support corp.
> calendaring (or so they say). So i google and hopefully Evolution
> (windows client) for free will come to the rescue. If it does, i can
> hopefully steer another 10-15K$ away from Bills pocket.

There is an open source connector for Exchange called Brutus. I've never
used it but might be worth to take a look at;

	Brutus is an Exchange connector and development framework that 		
offers access to all of MAPI and therefore to all versions of 		
Microsoft Exchange from version 5.5 onwards. It is a complete 		
wrapping of all of MAPI into a (large) set of CORBA interfaces. 		It
enables any groupware client to integrate seamlessly into any
organization with large Exchange deployments on an equal footing 	with
MS Outlook. Being based on CORBA, it is platform 				independent, and
works equally well on Linux, the BSDs, Windows, 	or wherever there is a
CORBA implementation available.

<http://freshmeat.net/projects/brutus/>

>> Like another poster suggested earlier this week, the desktop application
>> suite has to be developed for Linux, in order for the desktop to be even
>> a good sell to most people. Unfortuantely that will require  copious
>> proprietary products being supported by vendors for Linux. I don't see
>> that happening. :(
> Hopefully the Fluendo example will start to change this.
> 
> If adobe wasn't so dam screwed up, it would be a better situation.
> How such a completely useless company can have such a critical suite of
> products baffles me. The Flash 5  IDE  product was a grade school
> computing class project at best. The slowness of flash for linux for
> years was costly to Linux, and the lack of photoshop, and to a lesser
> extent premier doesn't help. Personally it would be nice to see every
> Linux user ban adobe, but then that would drive some back to Windows
> just to get flash ability. Its a vicious cycle with adobe, someone has
> got to put them out of their misery. Gimpshop is great, and I can power
> my way to get what i used in Premier in Linux products, but no choice
> when it comes to going to a web site and having to view flash, for that
> I have to rely on those bastards. 

Well I like Adobe, more so since they bought Macromedia and brought
their hacker culture to Adobe. I don't share your disdain of Flash, in
fact I love Flash, and what I can do with it server side now. Rich
Internet Applications are about to take off big time.

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