Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

people.gnome.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 78 posts

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#51

Post by eckyptang »

shmerl wrote: post #26
eckyptang wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that windows is good enough for the end users and represents good value? People don't want to make a choice or have to care about what they buy. The ISVs are quite happy to ship windows as they have reusable experience and it's just plugging things together. The reason no market share destroying competition has appeared is that people are quite happy apart from a minority of users who are quite vo…

Have you considered that windows is good enough for the end users and represents good value? Same as Linux in this day and age (if user has such option). The reason no market share destroying competition has appeared is that people are quite happy apart from a minority of users who are quite vocal. With this logic any kind of monopoly can be justified, but it doesn't make monopoly good per se. Artificial lack of comp…

Firstly, reinforcing my position before I say something good about Microsoft: I am a Linux user and have been for 15 years. Before that, it was Solaris and HP/UX. I do a fair bit of work with Windows, particularly .Net at the moment. I'm pretty much neutral. It's a box that does a job.

I don't get these arguments: the user has the option. In the UK, there are magazines on every shelf in every newsagent pushing Linux and in every PC related stored they are pretty much giving Ubuntu away (yes they even had a box at the checkout in PC World with free CDs - completely untouched). You can buy PC's with it preinstalled and buy PCs with no operating system so you can install it.

I know MANY "normal" non enthusiast and non power users from social housing unemployed to professionals who have used Linux distributions and just end up back with Windows. Everyone knows what Linux is or has heard of it.

I don't think Microsoft is a monopoly - they just work pretty well on the desktop for most users (well they did until Windows 8 but I'm not going there in this discussion ;-). The competition is there but it's not really competition in mindshare as people are comfortable.

If you forcibly removed the bundling, you are going to get nowhere i.e. people saying "Can I just have it with Windows on it". Also, at the sales desk, the salesperson is going to make a few extra readies for selling Windows with a PC so you're going to lose anyway.

Take a look at where IBM is now compared to the late 1980's. They monopolised and beat their competition to death and they didn't survive in that market. Microsoft's time will come if they fuck up or piss off a lot of people, but at the moment they do what people want for a price that people want to pay.

The idealisms of "Microsoft sucks" and is a "monopoly" remind me of Slashdot circa 2001 onwards where OSX and Linux were going to take over the world and destroy Microsoft.

Sorry it ain't going to happen and I'm not really that bothered myself.

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#52

Post by eckyptang »

drblast wrote: post #50

It's fascinating to watch people totally underestimate the lock Microsoft has on the corporate computing environment. This article suggests that it would be easier to break into the business/enterprise desktop than it would be to sell to consumers. It's probably just about the opposite. Linux is many years away from the level of plug-it-in-and-forget-it integration that Windows has. Linux is light years away from hav…

+1 I don't think there is a proposition as powerful as the entire Microsoft ecosystem on the business desktop.

There is also support, training, excellent literature and documentation, large quantities of staff, functional software at a reasonable price and as you mention: Active directory (which is awesome if you actually understand it).

If you've seen some of the shit I've seen wired up to Office in the last few years, you'll get it. It's just awesome. Entire businesses hang of it. It might not be clean and squeaky but it's functional and does the job. Google Docs + iWork + LibreOffice are precisely zero competition.

(I have to add this to each of these posts to avoid the shill downvotes: I am primarily a Linux user which suits me but I don't think it'd suit most people).

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#53

Post by fmoralesc »

josteink wrote: post #49
shmerl wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UI unfamiliarity is not equal to the lack of functionality in the program itself. Comfortable feeling about UI is also a subjective matter to a degree, so what works well for some is irritating for others.

Sure. That is a factor. But the reason Microsoft moved from the safe (familiar) UI to the new one was because they realized the old UI-model didn't scale well with expanded functionality. They decided to try to improve the user experience by leaving behind what clearly did not work. For a company which owes most of its legacy to users preferring familiarity, that's very much not a small thing. But they decided it had…

I agree. Making a turn like Office did with the ribbon interface was a bold, commendable move. Sadly (Libre/Open)Office can't follow suit unless they design and develop a good alternative to it, which is not an easy task. And because of patents, they couldn't simply build upon the ribbon UX.

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#54

Post by udp »

elchief wrote: post #3

We already have linux on the desktop. It's called OSX. Seriously, I've been reading about dreams of linux on the desktop for 20 years. Give up. Move on.

OS X is indeed a very good desktop Unix, but the kernel is Darwin, not Linux.

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#55

Post by DeepDuh »

josteink wrote: post #37
ricardobeat wrote: post #32

I'm betting long on ElementaryOS[1]. It's a distro that wants to be top-notch in UX, design, developer APIs and system frameworks. They even have a Human Interfaces Guideline. Still a work in progress, but I used their previous release for a while and it was just a breeze of fresh air after Gnome/Unity, and surprisingly stable. Two things are real blockers for Linux desktop adoption: the Adobe suite (or alt) for prof…

This looks very interesting indeed. Initially it looks like a darkly themed Gnome-desktop with a new launcher, but looking around it seems like this is something different. Unfortunately I cannot seem to find any details on the what's backing this distro. Maybe that's the point and that you shouldn't have to care, but I'm still curious. Do you have any more details on what's actually running here?

From the screenshot it looks like an OSX clone to the point. It seems like the UI designer switched to 2d-dock, inverted the colors, replaced the apple with an 'e' and called it a day.

Not that this is bad per se though.

Edit: They even pretty much copied the icons for browser, address book and dictionary.

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#56

Post by exDM69 »

sliverstorm wrote: post #10
exDM69 wrote: post #6

After using a desktop linux box for about 15 years, I have moved on. Not because the desktop experience was bad, in fact I think it was one of the best out there. Sure, there are rough edges but the user experience of regular desktop activities (launching apps, browsing files) worked for me better than redmond or cupertino -flavored desktops. No, I moved on because I realized that I don't like the desktop paradigm. T…

If you've still got a desk computer which runs linux, regardless the WM you've still got a desktop linux box. "Linux on the desktop" doesn't use "desktop" in the sense by which we refer to the place that contains "My Computer" and "Recycle Bin". No, "desktop" refers to "on the top of your desk".

> If you've still got a desk computer which runs linux, regardless the WM you've still got a desktop linux box.

Semantics. I prefer to call it a personal unix workstation :) I have a similar software setup on my laptop, which you can't call a "desktop". We can call it a portable unix workstation then.

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#57

Post by takluyver »

eckyptang wrote: post #51
shmerl wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that windows is good enough for the end users and represents good value? Same as Linux in this day and age (if user has such option). The reason no market share destroying competition has appeared is that people are quite happy apart from a minority of users who are quite vocal. With this logic any kind of monopoly can be justified, but it doesn't make monopoly good per se. Artificial lack of comp…

Firstly, reinforcing my position before I say something good about Microsoft: I am a Linux user and have been for 15 years. Before that, it was Solaris and HP/UX. I do a fair bit of work with Windows, particularly .Net at the moment. I'm pretty much neutral. It's a box that does a job. I don't get these arguments: the user has the option. In the UK, there are magazines on every shelf in every newsagent pushing Linux…

> In the UK, there are magazines on every shelf in every newsagent pushing Linux and in every PC related stored they are pretty much giving Ubuntu away (yes they even had a box at the checkout in PC World with free CDs - completely untouched). You can buy PC's with it preinstalled and buy PCs with no operating system so you can install it.

Is this the same UK I live in? The newsagents I see might have one Linux magazine lurking behind the iPad magazines. And you really have to go looking for computers that come with Linux preinstalled or no OS. Dell stopped offering them online, and I haven't seen a Linux PC in a retail store since the brief wave of Linux netbooks. I found a small business that sold me a computer with my choice of distro on, but they didn't really promote the option at all.

> If you forcibly removed the bundling, you are going to get nowhere i.e. people saying "Can I just have it with Windows on it"

"Sure, that will be £20 extra" (a complete guess at the OEM Windows price)

Obviously preinstalled Linux systems aren't going to topple Windows overnight - there's a lot of network effects and familiarity there. But at the same time, it would definitely benefit Linux adoption if consumers regularly saw an option to use Ubuntu, say, with known-good hardware and without having to install it themselves. Not many would take it at first, but a few people would go home and look it up.

> Everyone knows what Linux is or has heard of it.

Many people have heard of it, certainly, but they often have some vague idea that it's a command-line interface for ultra nerdy experts. That's why Android and Ubuntu both avoid using the word 'Linux' in their public branding.

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#58

Post by dkhenry »

Part of me is happy that there is a member of the Gnome community that is speaking the language of business. The truth is for the longest time Linux geeks have been speaking the parlance of technology. In this article I see things like this.

""" a better ISV story """

""" Channel issues """

This is the first step towards actually making inroads. That right there is BS and its the language of the corporate sales cycle. Linux will need advocates who are fluent in the language of the corporation to make the partnerships and sales deals that will be required to get Linux onto the corporate desktop. We are not there yet where we can walk into a sales room and compete on a corporate sales cycle with the professional sales guys who pitch solutions based on Microsoft, but at that point that's the battle that needs to be fought.

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#59

Post by mverwijs »

DeepDuh wrote: post #55
josteink wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks very interesting indeed. Initially it looks like a darkly themed Gnome-desktop with a new launcher, but looking around it seems like this is something different. Unfortunately I cannot seem to find any details on the what's backing this distro. Maybe that's the point and that you shouldn't have to care, but I'm still curious. Do you have any more details on what's actually running here?

From the screenshot it looks like an OSX clone to the point. It seems like the UI designer switched to 2d-dock, inverted the colors, replaced the apple with an 'e' and called it a day. Not that this is bad per se though. Edit: They even pretty much copied the icons for browser, address book and dictionary.

Check their blog. It's more descriptive than their website.

http://elementaryos.org/journal/when-its-ready

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#60

Post by manamana »

DeepDuh wrote: post #55
josteink wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks very interesting indeed. Initially it looks like a darkly themed Gnome-desktop with a new launcher, but looking around it seems like this is something different. Unfortunately I cannot seem to find any details on the what's backing this distro. Maybe that's the point and that you shouldn't have to care, but I'm still curious. Do you have any more details on what's actually running here?

From the screenshot it looks like an OSX clone to the point. It seems like the UI designer switched to 2d-dock, inverted the colors, replaced the apple with an 'e' and called it a day. Not that this is bad per se though. Edit: They even pretty much copied the icons for browser, address book and dictionary.

The browser icon has changed since: http://elementaryos.org/journal/new-midori-icon-elementary
Post reply on HN