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Remote desktop vs. remote displayRemote desktop vs. remote displayPosted Feb 26, 2013 0:17 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)In reply to: Remote desktop vs. remote display by anselm Parent article: LCA: The ways of Wayland
Nope. I'm saying again and again that the classic Linux desktop right now is unusable because it doesn't offer the complete solution that can be used by anybody. You always need someone who understands how it works in details.
Microsoft offers complete solutions - not perfect, by any measure but still /complete/. Linux needs something that at least is just as good, and right now it doesn't seem possible on classic desktops.
> I'm not doing this as my main day job (various colleagues of mine do), but in my experience supporting non-technical Linux users, actual reality is nowhere near as bleak as you make it seem.
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Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 26, 2013 1:39 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] Linux needs something that at least is just as good, and right now it doesn't seem possible on classic desktops. You keep saying »it doesn't seem possible« when you should really be saying »I didn't manage to make it work«. Other people do manage that. If you have non-technical Linux users then it means that somebody has already done all the groundwork for the migration. Who said anything about a migration? I support various people who started out on Linux. One person »migrated« from Mac OS 9 to Linux (where going to Windows would also have required expert assistance). With the one person I support who actually used Windows (XP) to begin with, the »migration« essentially amounted to copying a bunch of Office documents across to the new (Linux) computer and a couple of hours of »training«, i.e., about the same as one would have had to spend going from Windows XP to a new machine running Windows 7. All of these people are regular non-technical users (certainly not geeks in any way, shape, or form) who expect their computers to »just work« but even so they need very little hand-holding and they are perfectly happy with their Linux desktops.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 26, 2013 5:28 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
> You keep saying »it doesn't seem possible« when you should really be saying »I didn't manage to make it work«. Other people do manage that.
Yep. Maybe a team of genetically engineered kernel hackers (with transplanted genes from GNOME and KDE developers) might be able to find all the required software, easily writing missing pieces in kernel-level Haskell.
But that's exactly my point - an average admin/user CAN NOT do things that are possible with COTS software on Windows (or even with the built-in Windows functionality).
Have you ever wondered why Linux's traffic stats on popular website hover near 1% of the total? That's why.
> Who said anything about a migration? I support various people who started out on Linux.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 26, 2013 7:40 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] an average admin/user CAN NOT do things that are possible with COTS software on Windows (or even with the built-in Windows functionality). So? An average Linux admin/user can do loads of things with the content of a typical Linux distribution that are not possible (or, at least, not possible for people who are not Windows experts way above MCSE level and/or without very considerable expense) with Windows. That doesn't prove anything either way. That's vanishingly small number - less than 0.1% of total world desktop users. So what? It's still a large number of bodies. (On the other hand, there are way more people in the world who have never used Windows than there are people who have.)
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 26, 2013 15:35 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
> So? An average Linux admin/user can do loads of things with the content of a typical Linux distribution that are not possible (or, at least, not possible for people who are not Windows experts way above MCSE level and/or without very considerable expense) with Windows.
Irrelevant. By definition, these things are not used in organizations with Microsoft Windows-based workflows, so they won't affect the migration.
> So what? It's still a large number of bodies.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 26, 2013 16:01 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] By definition, these things are not used in organizations with Microsoft Windows-based workflows, so they won't affect the migration. You bet they will, if you use them to do stuff in half an hour that takes the Excel pushers half a day. Compare dskoll's experience thinking »out of the box«. I had a great summer way back when I was a university student when I was the single Unix person in a Windows shop. They hired me for four weeks to come up with a program that would collect and aggregate router statistics via SNMP. It took me about four days to write the program in Tcl/Tk (including a GUI), and I basically spent the rest of the time testing and documenting it, doing other sundry stuff and reading Usenet news. Suddenly a lot of the people there became quite interested in Unix.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 26, 2013 16:48 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
> You bet they will, if you use them to do stuff in half an hour that takes the Excel pushers half a day.
No you won't, and that's the fact.
For the most real businesses out there tasks that can be automated make a fairly small part of the workload. Having a better infrastructure - like storing documents in SVN or SharePoint instead of mailing them back-and-forth, gives SOME improvement but it almost never is decisive.
> Compare dskoll's experience thinking »out of the box«.
And they're right, you know. Do you care about the color of your stapler? What would you say if tomorrow somebody comes and says:
- Hey, we have this new paper-folding system that can replace your staplers! It can cut down on number of workplace injuries and speed up your document flow.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 26, 2013 18:25 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] No you won't, and that's the fact. It must be great to live in a dream world where you can claim what you want and are always right. In the world I inhabit, many people are deeply interested in making their business more efficient – especially in the current economic climate where cost-cutting is all the rage. For our customers, using Linux more is a very viable option in this context, and my company and its siblings next door are doing very well helping them along this path (in various different ways). You can insist until you're blue in the face that what we are doing every day is actually impossible, but money talks, so we shall simply have to agree to disagree.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 26, 2013 19:23 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] It must be great to live in a dream world where you can claim what you want and are always right. Probably. That's the world you live in, right? You can insist until you're blue in the face that what we are doing every day is actually impossible, but money talks, so we shall simply have to agree to disagree. Yes, money talks and the plural of anecdote is not data. I just don't sure why we should agree to disagree. It's pretty clear by now that Linux is a failure on desktop: it's market share was kept basically the same in the last decade while MacOS grew from couple of percents to 7% worldwide and to above 20% is some countries (namely US). That's hard facts, when you ignore them you really look silly. Now, when we go from well-established facts to the possible explanations for these facts things become blurry. You may claim that the problems with config files don't matter — fine, we can agree to disagree. If you have another explanation for the Linux's failure. Do you have such an explanation? Just please keep in mind that for such explanation to be plausible it should work for Linux only, not for MacOS (which slowly but steadily grows especially in affluent countries and high price of the hardware nicely explains why it's a failure in poor countries). I'm just not sure why desktop discussions are so different. When Microsoft posted the infamous Mindcraft's Benchmark results Linux community responded in entirely sane way: first it become angry (because it mistakenly believed that back then Linux was clearly superior to Windows) иге then, after some time, it found the relevant problems and fixed them. Somehow "desktop story" is entirely different: when confronted with facts and possible explanations Linux enthusiasts claim that all the evidence which shows that Linux sucks on desktop is riddled, then they claim that everything is fine and we just need to continue do what we did for the last ten years and when confronted with facts that this strategy does not work they explain how that don't matter because 1% "it's still a large number of bodies". Why it's so hard to talk about these things rationally?
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 26, 2013 19:59 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] Why it's so hard to talk about these things rationally? Search me. It is patently obvious what the Linux community would have to do to make Linux more interesting on the desktop. Unfortunately the strategy in question is unlikely to fly with the people who would most have to cooperate to implement it, so it isn't going to happen unless a major miracle occurs first. However, this does by no means imply (like Cyberax seems to believe) that Linux is completely useless on the desktop. There are fine Linux-based desktop systems which are great for non-technical (and especially for technical) users to get actual work done. It's just that these systems are not particularly popular, because the vast majority of users buys computers with a pre-installed operating system that, while inferior to Linux in various respects and superior in others, appears to serve these users well enough so they do not necessarily feel the need to install Linux instead. The problem with this situation is that it is self-perpetuating as long as Microsoft essentially owns the PC manufacturers, who also don't want to jeopardise their Windows discounts (and preinstalled-junkware kickbacks) by pushing other OSes too hard. After all, even though it would be perfectly possible to market pre-installed Linux systems, selling Windows PCs is most of their business. This is unfortunate but not a reason to give up on desktop Linux altogether. I've been using Linux on my desktop for 20 years now and I don't intend to stop anytime soon.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 27, 2013 2:50 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
> However, this does by no means imply (like Cyberax seems to believe) that Linux is completely useless on the desktop.
I never said that. Linux desktop can be used in niche markets, sometimes it can be used to a great effect. That's self-evident.
However, I'm claiming that Linux is a failure in the _general_ 'classic' desktop market for a variety of reasons. These reasons are certainly disputable but the failure is evident in the marketshare. You can argue until you're blue in the face, but that won't budge 1% share of Linux desktop at all.
From my personal experience - desktop Linux lacks an ecosystem around it (from third-party developers to cheap sysadmins).
>The problem with this situation is that it is self-perpetuating as long as Microsoft essentially owns the PC manufacturers.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 27, 2013 6:50 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] Yet in 90-s and early 2000-s the most popular OS in Russia was pirated Windows (sometimes installed right in the computer shops), even though Linux was readily available. Speaks volumes. Possibly, but it certainly doesn't imply Windows is the better desktop OS. I agree with you about the lack of an ecosystem, but on the other hand, even at 1% market-share, Linux does seem to be able to sustain itself on the desktop (and has done so for a couple of decades). It would sure be nice if it was more popular in the general community, but as I said this is unlikely to happen for a variety of (mostly fairly obvious) reasons.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 27, 2013 7:02 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
> Possibly, but it certainly doesn't imply Windows is the better desktop OS.
It kinda does. People choose Windows overwhelmingly, even though alternatives (BTW, it included OS/2 as well) were readily available.
I actually agree with them - Linux in early 2000-s was nothing but embarrassingly clumsy for general users. It started to get somewhat usable only close to the second part of the last decade.
>I agree with you about the lack of an ecosystem, but on the other hand, even at 1% market-share, Linux does seem to be able to sustain itself on the desktop (and has done so for a couple of decades).
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 27, 2013 7:43 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] People choose Windows overwhelmingly, even though alternatives (BTW, it included OS/2 as well) were readily available. I don't think people walk into a computer store in Russia (or for that matter anywhere else) and the sales clerk asks them »Do you want Windows on your computer or Linux?«. People aren't actively asking for Windows in favour of Linux (or. in the 1990s, OS/2). For the most part people are unlikely to be aware that there even is an operating system apart from Windows, and that would include many computer salespeople. So the popularity of Windows is less due to its overwhelming technical superiority and ecosystem, but mostly due to the fact that it is the default assumption. This in turn stems from the fact that Windows used to be pretty much the only game in town in the early 1990s, and that Microsoft used that time well to cement its predominance. You can be pretty sure that (a) Russian computer stores wouldn't bother with Windows if Windows hadn't already been popular in the US, the Far East and western/central Europe (which is where most of the celebrated »ecosystem« was), and (b) Windows wouldn't stay as popular as it is if Microsoft were to really crack down on piracy (Ballmer famously said about the Chinese that »if they must steal an operating system, let them steal ours«). Also, Windows does for most people roughly what they expect, including the crashes and virus infections, which many people have learned to accept as facts of life (sort of like getting the flu – a nuisance but normally not the end of the world) – hence looking for alternatives to Windows isn't something that figures big in most people's minds. At this rate and attitude? Might be not for long. The demise of desktop Linux has been predicted for so long that I'm not unduly worried. People have been saying that Unix would disappear long before Linux even came out, and see where we are now.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 27, 2013 9:19 UTC (Wed) by BlueLightning (subscriber, #38978) [Link] Microsoft never owned computer producers in Russia (or xUSSR). Yet in 90-s and early 2000-s the most popular OS in Russia was pirated Windows (sometimes installed right in the computer shops), even though Linux was readily available. Speaks volumes.Not really. At that time Linux was vastly less capable and polished than it is now.
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