Touching base on a couple of other aspects of this. On Sunday 09 November 2008, Phil M Perry wrote: > Do --you-- all feel that Linux has progressed to the level of > "point and click" to get any task done?
Yes, but it would really help if you had something more specific, like a list of tasks. If you mean browsing, CD/DVD burning, movie watching, document creation, basic file management, software installation, or any of the daily mundane tasks -- yes, none of those have any command-like requirement. These days I go to the command line mainly because I want to, rather than because I need to. The only time my family goes to the command line is when I ask them to, usually to do something as simple as running a 'ping' command for testing basic connectivity. > We all know that there's a free equivalent to almost any bit > of Windows software out there, but is it easy for people to > find and install it? Not quite sure what you mean. Maybe. Depends. > How about proprietary shrinkwrapped software that can't be > downloaded (should you need some for one reason or another)? I'm running some. Commercial software gets into another interesting problem -- because when you install commercial software that doesn't get updates without additional purchases, it means the Gnu/Linux OS underneath gets updates to dynamic libraries, but the commercial software doesn't. Some commercial software is built as static binaries to get around this, but some aren't. As such, I've run into the issue where a package for commercial software for my chosen distribution eventually became incompatible to the system, at least as far as the package management could tell. Other commercial software is installed via a script and thus not by package management, and that has its own problems as well. > How about marketing and promotion of Linux in general? I don't know what you mean. The free distributions that don't have a company behind them don't have any money to advertise, but the commercial distributions do. What gets promoted is therefore only what will make those companies money, and not necessarily anything you as an individual would deem important or interesting. If you want the more interesting information, you need to look at the free technology blogs on the 'net. > The article mentions that pre-loaded Linux laptops are > returned at a far higher rate than Windows laptops, because > people have been led to believe that using Linux is > "just like using Windows". Are naive users being sold a > bill of goods? When will Linux systems stop being a toy > for tech geeks and start being a useful TOOL (or do you > feel we're already there)? There are several people I know who do not run Linux as their Desktop who use Knoppix CDs to rescue information off of hard disks that fail to boot Windows anymore. As for pre-loaded Linux laptops -- of the friends I have that have purchased them, they knew that Linux != Windows. If the buyer is given deceptive advertising, that's a poor business practice, but it's not the fault of the OS. > You want the OS to recede into the background and be > unnoticed most of the time. Ideally, your average user > wouldn't even be aware of which OS their computer is > running under. Gnome and KDE work on BSD, Linux, and Solaris. And I know there's work going on to port KDE4 to Windows. If you mean you'd want Linux to look exactly like Windows, that's been done. http://www.thecredence.com/make-you-linux-desktop-looks-like-windows-desktop-in-just-3-easy-steps/ http://www.instantfundas.com/2008/03/make-linux-look-like-windows-xp.html > I couldn't make it to the monthly meeting (car was in the > shop), but if it's a major problem to supply ready-to-run > executables (as in Windows) for a wide range of architectures > and Linux flavors/levels, and most non-geeks don't want to > touch a CLI, is there a solution? Can source tarballs, etc. > be distributed in a single universal package, and > automatically compiled and linked (after bringing in any > prereqs, including compilers)? If it existed I wouldn't use it; installing software requires root access, and so the system you're describing would require root access. Put that together with how often Phishing fools people into installing malware, and it means a planned disaster of p0wned boxes. Most of the open source compiled software are released as packages for distributions under several architectures, so needing to compile isn't required most of the time. Some commercial software is likewise pre-compiled and shipped as packages for different distributions also, but there is usually a more limited selection of which distributions are officially supported. > No getting hands dirty running 'make' and related commands -- > it just takes a bit longer to install than a ready-to-run > binary. Do such capabilities already exist? I think I've heard of one Linux distribution doing something like this. > I suppose that an alternative would be to distribute Java > bytecode or scripts such as Perl -- would they be totally > platform- independent? Sorry if this was covered at the meeting! As was mentioned at the meeting, making code cross-platform requires that being a plan for the project at the outset, because each of the languages have libraries available that are platform-specific. Keep in mind that one of the very design goals for both C and C++ was making a cross-platform language -- and the same for many others. And yet regardless of which "cross-platform" language a project is written in, this is a continuing concern. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Sep 3 - Porkchop - The Areas of My Expertise Oct 1 - Ubikeys Oct 4 - Linux Fest Nov 5 - Releasing Open Source Software Dec 3 - TBD
