Hi guys, I've been watching this heated discussion for a few days and here is my $.02
I'm not your average computer user either. I learned BASIC on a Commodore 64 back in 84 and decided my collection of toys was nowhere hear as fun as making ascii art dance across the screen, or flying a carat symbol through a canyon made of asterisks. Then I learned sprites and within a month had the byte codes to make a circle down in my head. Amazing what young brain can do before you hit high school and ruin it with partying :-) I work in the software development field now professionally, mostly on large AIX systems. My wet dream has always been to go to a full Linux / BSD desktop for work and entertainment. I don't do a lot of gaming, so that's not a huge issue, but there always ends up being something. Some little thing that works fine on Windows and doesn't on *nix. I can usually find a workaround, but again, out of the box if it weren't for my stubbornness I would switch back pretty quickly. I remember everyones complaint with *nix systems 10 years ago was hardware support. "Oh theres plenty of software to do everything, but my XXX graphics card doesn't work" Now, it's the opposite. I spend half a day installing windows on a system and finding all the drivers, whereas *nix picks it all up right out of the box. We also had an old laptop and finally caved to give our 12 year old son his own computer. The first thing I thought was "Ok I'll just throw XP on it with Firefox and AVG" Since all he really does is look up pictures to print out and color and play flash games. I come back a month later to do some updates and make sure its all up to date and its running like a slug. No viruses, nothing like that, just Winrot. So I threw Lubuntu on it and its been humming along fine and snappy for 6 months now. It also allowed me to get in via SSH and set up a cron job to shut itself down when hes not supposed to be on it :) He adapted to the new environment easily and happily uses LXDE on an Ubuntu clone and goes to school and uses Windows. It surprises even me how adaptable he is given he has mild autism. I guess what I'm saying is coming from a blank slate, *nix works great. The problem, and the largest market share is the people in the middle. Those who are used to Windows, aren't real hackers and don't want to learn new stuff, they just want to go in and have everything look and act like they are used to. And they don't want to lose the ability to play their copy of Duke Nukem 3-D they bought long ago either :-) As I see it, the solution is kind of simple. We are already there minus the software that people may want to use that is legacy. Macintosh early on had the ability to run .exe files, and through years of hard work, they are a competitor to Windows. *nix .. sort of does. We need to work the hell out of Wine and make it built into any desktop distribution. I know easier said than done, but the end result would be worth it. The day that Bob the car mechanic can go to Wal Mart and spend $500 on a Windows 8 laptop that runs like a slug, or $300 on a laptop with some *nix distro that runs twice as fast and both allow him to just pop in the CD from an auto manufacturer and run their software will be the turning point. The way to really make it drive its point home is gaming. I don't know much about the internals of it, but *nix needs some good games or at least a fast compatibility layer to play the big ones out there now. Bottom line, make it fun and make it compatible. The lower price will attract plenty of customers. As long as they allow us die hards to install a text only system we're good :-) -----Original Message----- From: owner-freebsd-advoc...@freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-advoc...@freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Perry Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 10:18 AM To: 'Allen' Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org; hack...@freebsd.org; curr...@freebsd.org Subject: RE: Leaving the Desktop Market > > > There is no such thing as a desktop market for *BSD or Linux. > > > There never has been and there never will be. > > Oh come on now, it depends on a couple of things, and I wouldn't go > that far. > I've got a lot of family members that know next to nothing about computers, > and I got tired of fixing them all the time. > > Just as an example, my cousin basically destroyed his parents computer > and got a job, and bought himself a brand new computer, and had me set it up. > This was a while back and his Windows XP Home computer took all of one > week too have issues. I updated Windows and saw he had never tried. > > I installed Spybot and AVG and updated them and ran them. When I got > back home, I checked them and they had found over 12,000 infections! > Everything from trojans and back doors, to those fake security centers. > > He is an idiot when it comes to this stuff and I don't mind saying so. > The weird > thing was that all he did on this computer, was go online with a web browser, > IM with friend's, and listen to music and download all types of > things. He did > do some homework in between porn marathons too. > > My point for all this is that I eventually did something that worked; > I installed > Linux on his computer, made a script to keep it updated, and > basically, I had > KDE installed, Gnome, and a few others, and by setting up KDE and > putting Web browser short cuts on the desktop, a shortcut to some IM > clients, an XMMS shortcut, and a few others so that he could do what > he was doing. I set up some Office suites as well, and this worked. > His machine stayed up to > date without any issues, and he no longer had any problems. The common denominator for these types of issues is that the average consumer isn't properly educated on how to maintain a computer or on responsible internet browsing. You can only get so far with Geek Squad before they've exhausted their knowledge and competency of computers in general. > > You know you opened a can of worms with that one. Because all the > > nerds are going to step up and say "Well, I run FreeBSD on my desktop! > > It's totally viable!" > > Like I said, I wouldn't go that far; Those of us on this list probably aren't fans > of Windows, and probably only use it when required, but in the example > I gave above, I found that people who know literally nothing about > computers in general, do really well with Linux and BSD as long as I > took the time to set > up the desktop for them and installed all the stuff they needed and > placed the shortcuts on the desktop. It worked really well. Even my > Mom who knows nothing about computers, can sit down and use Linux or > BSD without any trouble, as long as the desktop is set up properly. I am a fan of Windows for the most part, probably because I enjoy gaming and don't like looking for workarounds to what I've been accustomed to for a couple of decades now on either Windows or Mac OS (I'm 25...interpret that as you will). The problem that I've always seen with Linux or BSD in general is the fact that you have to take the time to set it up or have someone do it for you if you have no idea how to read documentation or don't feel comfortable installing the system yourself. OS X will do the job for the average consumer wanting a UNIX-like experience with a functional desktop out of the box even if it costs them their kidney. I myself have little difficulty with Linux or BSD, but I originally started out my university life in computer science and am therefore not really your average consumer. > > Dear nerds, get some perspective. You aren't an end user, and you're > > masochistic. It's okay, we accept you here. But your individual use > > case doesn't indicate a place in the market. Your basement isn't a > > market. It's a basement. Your small company isn't a market. It's a > > small company. Many companies combined create a market. > > > Back to sleep. > > Now see, that has a point, but I do personally think that Unix not > only does > fine on the desktop, but depending on which version, some versions are > more suited to being used as a desktop than others; PC-BSD for > example, along with SUSE and even Mandriva, all work well for this. That's the very problem with Linux and BSD: which version should I use? Should I go with openSUSE? Or maybe should I go with Ubuntu? Yeah, Ubuntu looks like the easier way to find software I want. But then what version of Ubuntu should I use? Unity, KDE, or something else? What is this OpenBox I see everyone raving about? I just want iTunes so I can plug in my iPhone and listen to my music; what do you mean iTunes won't work? The reason there isn't a huge market for consumer Linux or BSD is because consumers don't care about the alternatives that they have to set up themselves after figuring out what disc image to download and how to burn in to DVD or CD. What Apple and Microsoft have been very good about doing for the past 20+ years is providing consumers with two very simple options that work out of the box. Linux and BSD has yet to do the same from what I can tell, even despite the efforts made by Dell (offering a single laptop configuration with Ubuntu 12.04) and System76. The freedom that we enjoy on BSD or Linux, or just open source as a whole, is a double-edge sword when dealing with consumers. Despite some project's best efforts, BSD and Linux still require a certain level of technical knowledge that Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Fry's, and any other major brick-and-mortar retailer cannot offer assistance in (because those employees aren't technically educated either and have most likely only heard of Windows or OS X except in the case of Fry's). I am no opponent of open source at all, but the reason it hasn't done well in consumer markets is because of the fact that it's open source and offers far too many choices that the average, generally computer-illiterate consumer doesn't want to make or simply doesn't care about. All of us already know that BSD and Linux is at a technical advantage to Windows and OS X. Until it's as easy to install and set up as it is on OS X or Windows, it won't go anywhere for consumers. Stephen Perry _______________________________________________ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org" _______________________________________________ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
