Linux on desktop gaining in OS race (Mercury News)

Posted Apr 5, 2004 1:43 UTC (Mon) by AnswerGuy (guest, #1256) [Link]

While I agree with him about MacOS X;.it's one version of UNIX that reasonably insulates a userbase from the cultural and terminology assumptions of UNIX.

Note, however, that the Macintosh userbase has their own jargon an cultural assumptions that can be just as confusing to new users as those in UNIX. To me they are harder to explain because many of them are visual and don't have an associated terminology.

As for the missing parts:

Linux does need to improve its support for wireless at all levels; including better support for Zeroconf/Rendezvous(TM), and perhaps we can finally get IPSec and PPTP (blech) support to be included and readily configured (preferably autoconfigured) in the next round of distribution releases. IPSec is in the 2.6 kernels and the latest OpenSWAN (successor/fork of the now deceased FreeS/WAN project) can hopefully gain some ground where FreeS/WAN failed (apparently for socio-political rather than technical reasons).

StarOffice and OpenOffice.org (OOo) have filled most of the productivity applications needs, though I think Abiword, KOffice, and Gnumeric still have niches within that space. The biggest contribution yet maybe a large enough market segment that Microsoft will be forced to support a truly open XML based suite of file formats, so the use tools will at long last be decoupled from the data once again.

That's more likely now than ever before with governments around the world adopting OOo/StarOffice --- even running it on MS Windows transitionally. Perhaps by late this year or some time next year this will finally reach critical mass internationally and then seep back in to the U.S. market over the next two years.

Gillmor talks about the use of Linux on aging machines, but another driving force for Linux adoption may also be Opteron (and even the few Itanium) systems. Over the next two years or so I suspect that 64-bit systems will be the default for new desktop and server purchases. It's not that people need the extra power, but that the price difference is getting too small for people to pass it up. I think lots of people will be thinking of "32-bit" as reserved for portables by the end of next year.

However, Linux does need MUCH better tablet driving software (esp. hand writing recognition for all those PDAs, tablets and other portables).

As for winmodems, isn't someone working on a shim to support winmodem MS Windows binary drivers under Linux. I've heard of similar projects to support Linux ethernet drivers under FreeBSD (et al). These sorts of driver shims can be useful to get fast, cheap hardware support; with more robust and better performing native drivers being written later.

Finally, does Xandros yet support he XPde (XP desktop environment)? I'd hate it, but I imagine that the Xandros target market would love run a window manager and desktop suite that looks mostly like XP.

JimD

Posted Apr 5, 2004 7:47 UTC (Mon) by rjamestaylor (guest, #339) [Link]

I have a Celeron 1.4 GHz desktop system with an ASUS MoBo w/ nVidia 128MB graphics card and 256 MB RAM. This is my wife's email machine and my kids' computer (the 4 year old, the oldest, plays Flash-based games on kids websites; the 2 year old plays edu-tainment CD-ROM games). I have a Toshiba Magnia SG20, modified slightly, running as the gateway/firewall between home and cable modem.

I really, really want them to run on Linux, not Windows XP. But I have to make it the same for them or no go. So far, no go.

Xandros 2.0 is great. (I've also tried Lindows 4.0 -- nice, really -- SuSE 9.0, Mandrake Move (9), Lycoris, oh and RH9, which, well, never mind). I bought the Deluxe version so I could get CrossOver and whatever else I might need.

Before I go in I have to say I have tried some optimization of Xandros 2.0 but in each case found my system already using the recommended settings. If anyone wants to take a stab at further optimization or wants a report on the current config, drop me a note (xandros-optATrjamestaylor.com).

Xandros 2.0 with all current patches, 2.4.24 kernel, etc., runs much slower from a user-preception POV than XP Home on the same hardware. User switching, useful in XP Home to move between kids' sessions and mommy's sessions has a "like kind" default in Xandros, but is much slower to take effect and has some glitches with respect to inserting CD-ROM disks with more than one current session (both try to take the disk on my machine which, along with CrossOver's attempt to run Windows CDs leads to deadlock (I mean CTRL-ALT-F1 or, sometimes, CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE moments), running Xandros Networks, oh -- never try to switch sessions over VNC (Xandros' remote desktop utility; you'll lose the session)).

My wife could adapt to using Evolution (as long as I install hotwayd to "pop" her Hotmail/Yahoo accounts). She could enjoy using Mozilla for the web. She would definitely like the games that come with the system for those 'ESC Key' moments Mommy's need. However she cannot handle not being able to use our "Linux" compatible Lexmark z55 printer (and I've followed the Debian 3.0 How-To" on the z55 with not joy). Neither can I.

Worse, my kids' games... We have 30+ edu-game CDs (two year old games obtained "free" with a "Shipping & Handling Fee"; we didn't shell out $29.99 for these things!). Some play under CrossOver -- to a point. Those that do are much slower than under XP Home (which is not easy to set up for Windows 9x/ME targeted games) and almost all that do PLAY cannot be exited through any conventional UI means (my 4 year old will not be issuing xkill commands, thank you very much!).

Being a Netraverse customer since 2001, I downloaded Win4Lin 5.0 via Xandros Networks and installed Windows 98 SE. It runs a little slower than Xandros, which runs noticably slower than XP Home. Games install pretty well -- but not all! -- for some reason some cannot run. Weird, and unrelated to Win4Lin or Xandros I believe. But they are not as responsive as under XP Home, which isn't a shock to anyone.

So, to this sad day, the computer sits in XP Home mostly until I come to futz with Xandros, play a little brickout or Frozen Bubble (I cannot figure out how to beat levelset hard level 1 -- I use "-cr" and various "-pm[-]####" settings to give myself an edge. I've made it 2/3rds of the way but...; *ahem* nevermind!).

I am trying to convert the machine to Linux full-time but until these substantial roadblocks are solved I honestly cannot.

And don't even get me started about my Dell Inspiron 5150...sheesh.