My two cents (from someone who has been using Linux desktops since the late 90's):
<since JDS stayed behind the expectations.> JDS never took off b/c imho it "was" based on a platform (GPL/Linux) that was, on hindsight, never suitable for a desktop OS. A desktop involves as much hardware as it does software. GPL was developed strictly from the point of view of software. Essentially all the GPL demigods fail to recognize that while software can be protected by copyrights, hardware cannot. For a hardware company, once you "open source" your little secret, you are instantly reduced to nothing. Your shareholders will never allow you to do that, and if you do, there is a potential for criminal liabilities. (If you are from Linux background, treat my last statement as FUD.) We have several clients in Taiwan which are hardware manufacturers (memory, OEM notebooks, motherboards, graphic chipsets, ASICs, etc.) The insistence of GPL to exclude proprietary hardware drivers from the kernel absolutely excludes them from having any interest in Linux desktops. (Many of them are interested in embedded Linux, but that's a different story.) Most desktop hardware manufacturers also don't have the resources to write drivers for Linux. One of the key reasons why Microsoft Windows has been so successful is that, at least in the beginning, it never "trusted" hardware makers to write drivers themselves. Instead, Microsoft devoted a good chunk of resources to help hardware makers to, under NDA, write drivers. In Linux, in addition to the exclusionary obstacles of GPL, there are also concerns (grave) about the enforcibility of an NDA with a kernel developer. (So I breached the NDA. So what? Sue me--and you will get nothing but bad publicity and a perpetual curse by the Linux community.) This concern may not be well founded, but it nevertheless exists. I don't know how many respected participants of this forum have used the proprietary nVidia drivers in Linux. You need this proprietary driver for even some of the mundane functionalities such as dual-head, TV-out, STR, etc.--the native (i.e., open-sourced) "nv" driver simply won't cut it. Since the nVidia driver cannot be included in the kernel, every time you update the kernel, you will lose your graphics (this can be a shocking experience to a lot of desktop users) until you recompile the link interface. I don't have enough experience with Solaris to make any comment that can be taken seriously. However, as I mentioned in a previous thread, I have noticed that JDS (more particularly StarOffice 7) behaves much better (faster, more polished) on Solaris 10 than GNOME on Fedora Core ( 1 through 4). I understand that this comparison may not be fair since Sun might have jointly developed the graphic driver with nVidia (under an NDA). However, isn't lack of cooperation (b/t kernel developers and hardware makers) one of the most critical weaknesses of Linux? OTOH, this can, indeed, be one of the strongest arguments for Solaris to be accepted as the platform for opensourced desktops. <Better take a look at KDE.> My experience with KDE, vis-a-vis GNOME, is that KDE has more bells and whistles but not as stable as GNOME, especially after GNOME 2.6. More recently, I have been using GNOME (on Fedora Core 3 and 4) exclusively because of its integration with iiimf. I will be willing to consider KDE if iiimf is similarly integrated. This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
