<quote who="Julio Cesar Ody">
> Really, who cares about the name? Was the name Google that made it a
> success in the SE world? That's obvious enough. I feel silly by saying it.
"What a stupid name! They can't even spell!" ;-)
> The desktop Linux effort is scattered. It's like politics. A group
> believes it should be done this way. Another group believes it should be
> done that way. And another... and another... and so on.
Good news - collaboration between projects, while it has always been pretty
good, is cranking up a notch. A fresh round of focus (and investment) in the
desktop is happening *right now*, which bodes well for the future.
> Thus, the hundred-distro-one-for-each-task syndrome. ALL OF THEM fail to
> deliver a desktop experience that's as user friendly as Windows XP.
Depends on which market segment or use case you want to please. I honestly
think that we have gone far beyond Windows XP on a number of levels, but a
lot of scale is required to extend beyond a few particular market segments
or use cases.
> Simple reasoning:
So, this is the problem with simple reasoning...
> - lots of things don't work as they should.
Can you honestly say this is not true for Windows or OS X? Lots of things
not working as they should is not a barrier to adoption. Massive incumbency
is a bigger issue than even major technical shortcomings.
> - to install software ABC it's *not* just a matter of putting a CD in a
> drive, having an installation screen popping up and one clicking
> "install".
In the best distros, you don't even have to put a CD in to gain access to a
world of software. Yes, this is a different model. But there are powerful
positives associated with it. It's not worth ditching those.
> - There's nothing like COM for Linux yet.
This is an interesting one. Firstly, you're only raising COM because it has
extensive buy-in across the Windows platform. If it didn't have that breadth
of buy-in, you wouldn't care about it. Microsoft drove that buy-in *really*
hard. There are equivalents to COM available on *nix platforms, but they do
not have the breadth of buy-in or de-facto standardisation that COM enjoys
on Windows. Secondly, COM isn't a huge thing for Microsoft anymore either.
> - <insert another example here>
... but you didn't raise any of the good ones. :-)
> As long as this is true, you'll need to market the idea better than MS
> does with Windows, because their system might not work properly every
> time, but at least they were the ones who *defined* what user-friendly
> means.
Apple did (and continues to do) a much better job of defining what user
friendly means. Microsoft just managed to score the de-facto standard. I
didn't get into Windows because Windows itself was good for me as a user,
there were strongly manipulated network effects *around* the platform that
got me to switch to it (years ago).
There is no simple answer to any of this. The battle to make Free Software
relevant on the desktop [1] is being fought on far too many fields for any
one person to track them all. It's not going to take a killer app - there's
no such thing. It's not going to take a product name taken straight out of
Soviet Russia.
It *is* going to take a lot of work and people, hacking or otherwise.
- Jeff
[1] ... and that's an astoundingly short-sighted goal, if we have to put it
in those terms.
--
GUADEC 2006: Vilanova i la Geltrú, Spain http://2006.guadec.org/
"NASCAR is not race per se. It's just a contest about who can turn left
the best." - Unknown
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
