OT: Microsoft versus Google - and Apple - and Linux ...

[sometimes99er]

Nice article.

 

Sometimes competition is perhaps good for something. But also easily related to rivalry, bribery and even war ("Business is war").

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/02/18/microsoft-google-swap/

 

 

Linux seems to be a niche for geeks. - Well, it seems popular around here, and with servers, and GPS units, embedded here and there, and that Android thing ...

 

Am I missing something in the greater picture ?

 

[Willsy]

I've tried a Linux a number of times but I always come back to windows. Installing software on Linux was always a pain in the ass for me. It's getting better. Distributions such as Ubuntu have a central respository with most of the "big name" apps available from a list. They just install with no pain. However, if you are trying to download a program from some dude's website, then you're pretty much f***ked in my experience. You're down to downloading the C source code and compiling it yourself, and adding the dependancies etc. That's further than I've been willing to go. Netbeans is very nice in Linux, and so is OpenOffice/Libre Office.

[+Schmitzi]

...in my eyes, the only problem with Linux is, that, if you have a problem, you have a problem,

and you go on having further problems at any point. And that is a really big problem.

And if you need somebody to fix problems sustained, this is a problem, too.

Ang if you get somebody to help you, you have some more, new problems.

sorry for that, but my overall-experience since Linux´ appearance

 

[+OLD CS1]

In terms of Linux and F/OSS, the "RTFM" and "write and submit a patch" mentality toward low-end users' bug reports and feature requests which run rampant, or at least used to not long ago, in the F/OSS ecosphere drives a lot of potential and current users away. I know at least a couple of times past I told my uppers there was no program available to do something they wanted because when I browsed the support forums I saw a lot of that crap.

 

In one case I recall there were a number of jerks talking about reading the manual which came with the source, but said README pointed to the online documentation which was filled with "coming soons." Or worse, on another project the documentation was a wiki which was obviously contributed to by simians.

 

Generally, people would rather be ignored (Microsoft, Oracle) than insulted.

[akator]

Interesting article.

 

Continuing the side-topic of Linux, I saw it rising in popularity a few years ago . This was mostly because of Ubuntu with easy intallation, use, compatibility, familiarity, and software. The drastic UI and functionality changes a few years ago in Ubuntu (the Unity UI) and Gnome 3 may have been what developers wanted, but many users did not react positively to those changes.

 

Since then Ubuntu's popularity slowed whereas Linux Mint has exploded. Mint provides the UI and workflow people liked from older Ubuntu and Gnome. Like others, I have also installed Mint on machines that used to run Ubuntu and am very happy with the results.

 

Every time Linux starts to gain traction and mainstream acceptance, the leading distro self destructs. This is because Linux is developer driven and not user driven. I would love to think that Mint will stick around and continue to provide an excellent and reliable desktop experience, but it is likely that sooner or later the distro will make radical changes unwanted by the user base that will once again turn people off from Linux and stall adoption from the general public.

[+OLD CS1]

Oh, how I miss the good ol' days...

 

[Keatah]

I don't like the high and mighty evangelistic attitude that revolves around Linux.

[+Vorticon]

I've tried a Linux a number of times but I always come back to windows. Installing software on Linux was always a pain in the ass for me. It's getting better. Distributions such as Ubuntu have a central respository with most of the "big name" apps available from a list. They just install with no pain. However, if you are trying to download a program from some dude's website, then you're pretty much f***ked in my experience. You're down to downloading the C source code and compiling it yourself, and adding the dependancies etc. That's further than I've been willing to go. Netbeans is very nice in Linux, and so is OpenOffice/Libre Office.

 

My feelings exactly. I have a Linux distro on a thumb drive which I fire up occasionally, but frankly I find I have little use for Linux in this day and age from a convenience standpoint. I would much rather spend my relatively meager spare time on my hobbies rather than running around in circles and pulling my hair out trying to hunt down all the dependencies of a program. Been there, done that, and no thank you...

[Keatah]

My feelings exactly. I have a Linux distro on a thumb drive which I fire up occasionally, but frankly I find I have little use for Linux in this day and age from a convenience standpoint. I would much rather spend my relatively meager spare time on my hobbies rather than running around in circles and pulling my hair out trying to hunt down all the dependencies of a program. Been there, done that, and no thank you...

 

..that's right. Messing around with OS'es has been boring for quite some time. So that means full-featured systems like Windows or Mac will have to suffice.

 

I spend more time conducting theoretical activities and getting real things done than I do messing with OS'es. Except for the occasional occurrence when it *IS* part of my hobby time. Then I might tweak Windows here and there.

[+mizapf]

OK then, one message too much...

 

[... deleted ...]

 

Although, thinking a bit longer, I'm not going to discuss the pros and cons of Linux with you, since this is a group for our TI. Suffice it to say that I am a Linux advocate, and as always, your mileage may vary.

 

If anyone is actually interested in getting real, positive user experience, you can mail me personally.

[Willsy]

OK then, one message too much...

 

[... deleted ...]

 

Although, thinking a bit longer, I'm not going to discuss the pros and cons of Linux with you, since this is a group for our TI. Suffice it to say that I am a Linux advocate, and as always, your mileage may vary.

 

If anyone is actually interested in getting real, positive user experience, you can mail me personally.

I completely understand that millions of users around the world are perfectly happy with Linux. They can't all be wrong. Part of the problem is laziness on my part. I can't be bothered to make the time investment required to get proficient with it. I think the reason for that is because I can already get Windows to do the things I want. As I get older I find I have less time *and* less patience

[Omega-TI]

I completely understand that millions of users around the world are perfectly happy with Linux. They can't all be wrong. Part of the problem is laziness on my part. I can't be bothered to make the time investment required to get proficient with it. I think the reason for that is because I can already get Windows to do the things I want. As I get older I find I have less time *and* less patience

 

Exactly! Different strokes for different folks, can't get more simple than that..

I toyed with Ubuntu, but I didn't have the time to get up to speed on ALL of it's applications or to devote even more time to locating replacement programs for all my Windows applications, or to give up some programs entirely because no replacement exists. I'm sure many people love Linux and will continue to use it.

 

For me, I stayed with Windows because I've had no issues with Windows being unstable, let alone crashing or had any other problems since I installed System Mechanic Pro on all my computers (years ago). So I figured, "If it ain't broke, why fix it?"

[+Schmitzi]

yeah, and most customers who ask for Linux do it to save licences/costs on the windows-side.

With this fact, that the linux-product is for free, they also seem to expect that the technicans

are also for free. And this, where you must have more technical expertise to drive Linux,

much more than with supporting windows-systems.

But 100% of my customers who decided for Linux in a project, came back to windows later,

and told me never ever again. ..and asked: why didn´t you tell us before

[+Vorticon]

OK then, one message too much...

 

[... deleted ...]

 

Although, thinking a bit longer, I'm not going to discuss the pros and cons of Linux with you, since this is a group for our TI. Suffice it to say that I am a Linux advocate, and as always, your mileage may vary.

 

If anyone is actually interested in getting real, positive user experience, you can mail me personally.

 

Just to clarify, I absolutely do not think bad of Linux as an OS. With most of the latest distro's, things work just fine out of the box so to speak. The difficulties arise when one tries to add new programs and stuff. While the messing around and exploration is fun for a while, it gets old pretty quickly and starts hampering productivity, at least for the average Joe. I still remember trying to install an early version of Slackware Linux on my 386 PC back in the early 90's. Oh boy... It took me a week to finally get most of my hardware working, never mind getting X going. And then came Win 95 and the rest is history

[+mizapf]

I am actually using Linux at home as well as in the office as the main OS. I also have Windows installations, either as dual boot or running in a virtual machine. For some years now, my usage of Windows is almost exclusively restricted to playing games or editing MS Office documents which could not be imported correctly by LibreOffice.

 

Personally, I do not know a single person who opted for Linux in order to save money. Me, I can certainly afford a Windows license.

 

Well, then, the reasons why I use Linux:

 

- does everything I need (from programming to image and text processing, video editing, web browsing, mail reading, ... ).

- no hassles during installation (put in the USB stick, boot, wait some time, and you get a ready-to-use system); in many cases much easier compared to Windows, which still requires specific chipset drivers after installation

- very effective update management (centralized, in contrast to the mess you find in Windows)

- appealing desktop with a wide range of customizations

- reliable use of older hardware (lots of Windows drivers have been discontinued in the meantime, e.g. for my DVB-T box)

- remote login

- powerful tool set, out-of-the-box

- complete programming tool chain

- powerful command line processor (took long until Windows caught up here)

- immune against most threats; of course, this may change once there are enough users to become attractive to hackers, but what counts for me is now, not later

- distributors usually have a very short response time after the discovery of bugs / exploits (no such thing as a "patch day")

- not a black box; there is no easy way to hide backdoors because the crucial points in the code are under close observation, and you can limit all installation to signed software repositories (which is the default). It is certainly true that there have been successful attacks on the algorithmic level (weakening of pseudo random generators), but there is a chance to discover it

 

- and it is not Windows. This may sound weirtd after the list of concrete points, but for me this is a fully justified motivation. I do feel some sense of responsibilty to support diversity in the very same way that I feel a responsibility to preserve nature. For that goal I am willing to give away comfort, even if ultimately all those efforts are in vain. I mean, we neither know whether our nature/climate preservation actions are actually effective in the long run.

 

I agree that anyone should use the system that fits best for his goals, but what makes me upset is the recurring "Linux is for geeks" or "too complicated" or "lacking important tools" or "too many distributions" or "less than 1% is using it" or ... whatever.

[+Vorticon]

 

I agree that anyone should use the system that fits best for his goals, but what makes me upset is the recurring "Linux is for geeks" or "too complicated" or "lacking important tools" or "too many distributions" or "less than 1% is using it" or ... whatever.

 

• Linux is for geeks: wellll, this may not be a universal statement, but let's face it you rarely see a non-technical person using Linux if they have a choice
• Too complicated: Much better than it used to be, but still behind Windows/Mac in user friendliness
• Lacking important tools: Quite the opposite, hence the geek appeal
• Too many distributions: Can't deny that. It's mind boggling and confusing for the newcomer
• Less than 1% are using it: 1.34% according to Wikipedia

[Keatah]

There ^are^ too many versions of linux. I wouldn't know where to begin. And the few distros I tried didn't work out.. Drivers or something. Also, linux doesn't have the toolset I like for low level disk operations.

 

 

- no hassles during installation (put in the USB stick, boot, wait some time, and you get a ready-to-use system); in many cases much easier compared to Windows, which still requires specific chipset drivers after installation

 

- reliable use of older hardware (lots of Windows drivers have been discontinued in the meantime, e.g. for my DVB-T box)

 

I have yet to experience this instant install. And the reasons I tried out linux was for using it on older hardware. Maybe that will change someday.

[+mizapf]

I think it is a common misunderstanding that there are "versions" of Linux in the sense that you have to commit yourself to one of them. People usually talk about "flavors". I could switch from openSUSE to Ubuntu from one to the next day. Indeed, this is a frequently mentioned point, but there is no easy solution. Some people (like me) want diversity for the sake of customization and having a choice at all, some people want unification for the sake of simplicity.

 

The visible difference is the desktop, either based on the Qt library (KDE) or the GTK library (Gnome), and I also heard arguments like having to develop for all of them, but this is not really true either, because a GTK application will check and possibly trigger an installation of missing libraries within a Qt environment and vice versa.

 

The only pain that I currently see is that the distributions have not yet agreed on a unified package management (RPM or DEB). There have been lots of standardisations in the last years, so maybe we'll see some changes here as well.

 

[We won't come to a conclusion, of course - as I said and as you can see, I'll advocate Linux in the same degree as I did (and do) advocate our TI. ]

[Algus]

Kind of confused by an article slamming Google as the new Microsoft turned into a Linux debate LOL!

 

I love tinkering with Linux builds in VMs and stuff and used Ubuntu as my main OS for several years but one thing that annoyed me about it was that stuff I wanted to do simply wasn't supported. I don't mind tinkering but I'm not so in love with my OS philosophically that I tolerate not being able to do things, like stream internet video from my cable provider, for the sake of having "free" software.

 

One thing using Linux heavily did though was teach me a love for UNIX and I think that's why I fell into OS X and the Apple honeypot. A lot of the useful CLI stuff I learned from using Linux for a few years translates very well to my Macs.

[TheMole]

I think those that say Linux is too hard to use for them, or for the average user, are probably looking at it with a certain level of expectation bias. Most modern Linux distributions are much more simple to use than Windows, and are in my opinion at least on par or even better in terms of user experience than OS X. However, since there's this perception that Linux has to be hard, people who have been using Windows for a long time are much less willing to invest the time to understand the differences between the new platform and their tried-and-true Windows environment to even get to the point where they can start appreciating the simplicity of the system. The fact that it seems hard at first takes away any incentive to learn.

 

Contrast that with people switching to OS X, where the mantra is that no one knows how to make a better user experience than Apple, and all of the sudden they accept the fact that it is different and the initial learning curve is just something that they have to get through. It might seem hard at first, but instead of calling it 'hard', we call it 'different' and we stick with it because this is meant to be easier, so the incentive to spend more effort is larger.

 

Having said that, the one thing that is in my opinion a fair point against Linux is that it can't seem to remain consistent enough over time. Where Ubuntu was absolutely magical in the pre-Unity days, they fucked it up since then and now most people point to Mint for the easiest to use distribution, which I'm sure they will mess up as well and another group will stand up and carry that banner. And each time you'll need to learn the (admittedly very small) differences.

[TheMole]

Kind of confused by an article slamming Google as the new Microsoft turned into a Linux debate LOL!

 

I love tinkering with Linux builds in VMs and stuff and used Ubuntu as my main OS for several years but one thing that annoyed me about it was that stuff I wanted to do simply wasn't supported. I don't mind tinkering but I'm not so in love with my OS philosophically that I tolerate not being able to do things, like stream internet video from my cable provider, for the sake of having "free" software.

 

One thing using Linux heavily did though was teach me a love for UNIX and I think that's why I fell into OS X and the Apple honeypot. A lot of the useful CLI stuff I learned from using Linux for a few years translates very well to my Macs.

 

For me personally, it is not about using "free" software (as in speech; nor as in beer) but about supporting platform diversity, which protects us from monopolies and stagnation of technological innovation as we've seen with Windows in the Windows XP years. If my provider does not support freedom of choice, I stop using their product and tell them why. It usually doesn't yield results in the short term, but I think we've seen more openness and broader platform support become more prevalent over the course of the past decade or so, and I do believe this is at least in part due to the pressure from Open Source advocates, and superior open source products (Firefox, Chrome, Linux on servers, Android, ...).

[+mizapf]

Kind of confused by an article slamming Google as the new Microsoft turned into a Linux debate LOL!

 

Actually, I did not want to unfold a longer Linux debate, and I did not start that discussion. However, what we see here is what happens just too often, not only concerning Linux.

 

There are, as always, pretty different experiences with a complex system like Linux. If I would have kept quiet, just waiting for the thread to get back on track, almost all messages concerning Linux range from "too complicated", "does not support XY", "geek system", up to "sucks" (not here, but in general). What should a newcomer think about this kind of system? - Not an option.

 

In my opinion this may be also be an effect of being such a minority in the overall market that makes Linux users form some kind of separatism. As a result, they could fall back into thinking "Why should I bother to make people change their minds? I know what's good, right enough for me."

 

Accordingly, as I am supporting Linux, I feel urged to add some own comments here, just to give that community a voice.

 

On the bottomline I would say: Linux is an option today, more than in the years past, but it is not Windows, and it is not OSX.

[+OLD CS1]

I started with Amiga; all others are inferior

[Willsy]

With reference to the article above in post #1, all I know is, Google, considering they are a web company make some the very worst user interfaces in the entire world. I should not have to puzzle solve to use an application, but with Google I do. Also, Google+ is an utterly useless steaming pile of turd.

 

There. I feel better now.

Edited February 22, 2015 by Willsy