It's sad the only reason I would like GNU/Linux to become more widely accepted, is because I think they are missing one of the greatest technological innovations in this technological era: Free Software.

People are willing to buy (or steal) what works for them. Maybe I'm one of the fortunate ones -- Windows never worked well with me. Linux (and friends) has been the best tool for me. I don't think I'd attempt to do the things I've done if I never tried Linux.

It wasn't, and still isn't easy. I've learned a lot more by being free to explore, than by being locked in a box. But that's not everybody's cup of tea.

jer

I know what you mean. I ask people to run Firefox instead and all I get every time is "What's a Firefox?" Then, I explain the whole story & at the end I get is a "No thanks, I'm fine." Then, I gotta re-enforce my point & I still can't get anyone to switch. Usually the ones who have heard about firefox did their research.
They already have. They brought a ton of people over to the Linux side (including myself). The question is how long will they last because common business logic tells me that if you spend more than you save, then you won't last too long. Granted though, Mark is a huge millionaire.
The key here is marketing & if a large computer vendor like Dell put on Ubuntu, Red Hat, or (they better not) SuSE Linux, then people will begin to take notice. Heck, the only reason I switched to Linux was because it came up in a Google search.

Actually, people are noticing. The Linux user-base is growing by leaps & bounds. (For all intents and purposes, I'm still a 'newbie' myself.) But yes, it would help dramatically if Dell (or someone) begins preinstalling desktop Linux.

Personally, MS just never worked for me. It had always been a pain in the a$$ to keep a windoze system running. I'd hoped for years for something better. Then I discovered Ubuntu. It was easy to install, easy to learn, and it's easy to use. With it's rapidly growing popularity among developers as well as users, I can't see 'the end'. I wish Canonical and the Ubuntu Team all the best.

Cheers
Bill

OMG

Why is it that ubuntu fans bash Novell the loudest? It's getting old. That's probably the main reason I couldn't take Ubuntu seriously and left it.

I too was upset when Novell made that deal with M$, and I too checked out other distributions, including Ubuntu. I'll have to give credit that in a short time Ubuntu has come a long way, and the forums are fantastic, but the distro is still years behind other distros, including suse. I laugh when people say it's the best distro. You've got to be kidding me. You'll have to try the live, server and alternate installs before you actually find one that likes your computer. Yeah real impressive. The best. LOL

The only thing I found ubuntu better over suse was the speed. True, Novell suffers from feature creep, and the bloating has slowed it down. However, the installer is absolutely fantastic, as is the hardware detection. Everything works, and yast makes it uber easy to configure just about any service you can think of. Meanwhile on ubuntu, everything is still manually done by hand. If I still wanted to manually configure everything by hand, I'd go back to slackware. They rule that market segment.

As for paying, I actually do pay $50 a year for Novell's SLED on my work laptop. It's worth it. Everything works great. No daily patches (not even weekly at times). No worries about what will change/break in the next release. Peace of mind is worth a few bucks.

ok rant done.

Back to your regularly scheduled bashing, in progress...

Sounds like you're clearly bashing Ubuntu, which wasn't my intention at all. Plus, it wasn't just Ubuntu fans, it was a major chunk of the entire Linux community.

The reason why I object to Novell's SuSE Linux is because Microsoft is highly known to be very manipulative. While I think Novell can realize that the community doesn't want Microsoft anywhere (not just Ubuntu fans), I wouldn't trust selling it because you don't know what goes on behind the scenes.

In terms of usability, SuSE has the high advantage here simply because of YaST. It's a great tool, no one will argue with that. But as you stated, it's slow & no one wants to wait 3 minutes just to add a repo.

Both Ubuntu & Debian have performed beyond my expectations which is why I recommend them (along with PCLinuxOS to the new user). Perhaps something in the install process wasn't set up correctly?

Plus, I like apt-get. Nuff said.

Very true. In fact, the FSF hated the deal so badly that they decided to write GPLv3 which is aimed at preventing MS from getting its hands on any new Linux developments.

I've not yet tried Debian or PCLinuxOS, but I can say I'm more than pleased with Ubuntu.

That or hardware incompatibility. I had no problems with Dapper on two PCs- a Gateway and a Dell.

My fav is Synaptic. Open the GUI, select the packages you want, and click "Apply". The installer does the rest, including installing and configuring the necessary support packages.

I came from Suse. Been using it for 5 years, and I bought support versions too. Yast is awesome, but it sucks as a package manager... plus I had some issues with broken packages in the official repos, and by the time I switched I didn't even notice that configuration really is harder on ubuntu because I already knew my way around the command line... enough for a casual user at least. And it has almost every program I need in the repos.
What I'm saying is I'm not bashing suse eighter, but you must admit that Microsoft deal is highly suspicious. I too hope that hadware dealers will pick ANY other distribution over Suse for pure ethical reasons.

There are many ways around the GPL.

I think people are misusing the term desktop user.

The desktop market is huge in business, though the home user is hard to sell support to as they will tend to go to the seller of the machine.

Red Hat left the desktop market just as Linux was proving itself a viable solution for the desktop - KDE tends to head up that front. Was it the right business move for Red Hat to do that, probably yes even though their timing was bad; they had invested but it did not return so they moved out. They could go back their sometime in the future and probably will. Their move to exclusive to the server made sense at that moment because the year before figures showed that was their support would net the most profitable dollars.


Unix has always been used in business and for quite sometime Xenix was a very popular office based Unix, but curses and dumb terminals was the state of the art in the those days.

The main reason SCO got miffed about Linux was because it was about to take their X86 market.

Windows 95 heralded a new age of the desktop and at that time Windows was the best choice for an X86 desktop machine, a lot of businesses converted over and whilst their DEC machines still ran the servers a new breed of Information Tech guy was getting conversant with Windows which then lead a few years later to Windows moving onto the server for quite a few businesses.

The real problem of getting business to adopt Linux on the desktop is support. The small office needs to be able to have support if the consultant is not there, the larger business needs a line of support their internal support can call on.

The home user after warranty expires also want support, but at very reasonable price.

I think Ubuntu will pull it off, they seem to understand each sector. But, what will help any Linux distro offering support is making sure customers know about it. The same guys who put in Window into the limelight are the same folk to move businesses to a full unix house.

And it wasn't just the Microsoft marketing guys it was the people at the coal face of business IT and the tech friend who gets asked when a new computer is being bought; the consultants, developers, tech support guys were the ones who generated such large adoption of Microsoft Windows. These are the people decide what OS gets to the top slot.

We all know that pre-installation is a major reason for selection of OS, but shrink wrap software also plays a part. I think Ubuntu needs to find a niche market and spin off a top notch bit of shrink wrapped software. That shelf space is very useful to reassure computer buyers, and that is what is missing from the Linux World to a degree.

Another trick could be to sell an official manual with a piece of OpenSource software, focus on the software but bundle the book, that way we can have a load of Penguin logos on the shelf, but instead of being placed in the book section it gets placed alongside the other software.

Gimp, Open Office, KDE, Gnome, Smoothwall, Nessus, Inkscape etc are all good candidates for this.

So, if Ubuntu starts to act like a software company and works together with existing infrastructure and OS projects whilst giving a commercial spin it can move quite dominantly into the desktop market.

FTA:
Ok. Where do I sign/pay? I would happily pay for Ubuntu on the Desktop. I started Linux back @ about RH5 era. I experimented around with Suse, RH, Fedora, Mandrake, Gentoo and finally settled on Slack for many years. I was never able to make a clean break from Windows with any of those distributions. I always had to boot to Windows for this or that. I tried Ubuntu starting 5.04 and I was impressed. When Dapper arrived, I decided that I would give running pure Linux a try. I've never looked back. One of the biggest changes though was ... ME. I am getting older and don't play as many games as I used to. I always hear about how the $ is all in the server market, but surely the expense of Windows on 5000+ clients, not including Office tools has to be significant. I can't think of a single job that is done in my workplace that couldn't be done on Ubuntu. I'm not a corporate businessman, but there has to be some level of profit in this.

Dennis

Dennis, here's the sign/pay link for Ubuntu support.

http://www.ubuntu.com/support/paid

I can relate to your level of dedication. Dapper was my very first distro. After only a couple of days running the live CD, I completely removed windoze from my system during installation. I've yet to find a reason to regret that. However, the automatic updates are free, as is the community support. As for the price of paid professional support, expect a surprise. The fact that Ubuntu works so perfectly only relinquishes the need for support even further.

Cheers
Bill

The key is the OS or the desktop-once Ubuntu have a nice market share, it could convince manufacture to shipped computer with Ubuntu-that where most of the profit come from-potential competition with MS. If I were the CEO of Ubuntu I could also make google a run for their money. =)

1. Many people don't trust a product unless they see it on a commercial on their television, see it on display at a nationwide electronics superstore. Since all commercials about Linux on the television have to do with business computers, many people probably see Linux as something for IT professionals to use. Since they don't see it on displays in their town, it remains off their radar.
   
2. Many people don't trust a product that is free or very cheap. They believe that quality is directly proportionate to cost.
   
3. Many people still believe that IBM/PCs run Windows OSes, Macintoshes run Apple OSes. Therefore, they believe any other OS must run on another platform. Therefore, many people believe that they will have buy a brand new computer to run Linux.
   
4. Many people still believe that their OS was invented by a rags-to-riches genius. He is rich, therefore, they believe that whatever he touches is gold. People blame any problems with their OS on viruses or hardware problems.
   
5. People are scared to relearn a new operating system. Telling people isn't enough to convince anyone, they have to try it first hand.
   

...correct all of these problems and misconceptions, and then maybe another couple hundred people will make the switch.

That pretty much sums it up, General. As for point #5, it doesn't even matter that each new version of Windows looks and operates differently; It's still Windows, and they need more reason than that to switch. However, more and more people are finally finding good reason. I know; I'm one of them.

(Although the majority won't yet be convinced!)

Cheers
Bill

Likewise. Its nuts.