Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld) [LWN.net]

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 22, 2009 9:51 UTC (Fri) by macson_g (guest, #12717)
Parent article: Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

I'm starting to lose my faith. I've been reading statements like these ever since I've been using the Internet. But still, there is not "year of Linux on desktop", all attempts to sell personal computers with Linux are failing, and desktop marketshare stuck below 5%.

I'm starting to suspect that all Linux advocates, including myself, are living in a land of illusion. We can see technical superiority of Free software when it exists, but we refuse to see areas where Linux and Free software generally sux when compared to MS.

This article lists few crucial points; most of them where debunked as "myths" thousands times, but no matter how strong we will "debunk the myths", they still hold true.

Is anyone of you able to refuel my faith in unavoidable Linux's world domination?

to post comments

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 22, 2009 11:27 UTC (Fri) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (16 responses)

Yes, some stuff is not perfect. Maybe that's the reason we keep working on it instead of being on the beach or skying, don't you think?

What is bad is going to become better, and what is good may become excellent. There are many areas where Linux is already excellent. It's not a question of faith, It's the process! Openness and collaboration. Millions of people working on it (developing, testing, designing, discussing or simply evangelizing).

But in the end it won't matter if its Linux, GNU or BSD, what will win World domination is openness (and freedom). Try to put that genie back in the bottle!

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 22, 2009 15:10 UTC (Fri) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (8 responses)

What is bad is going to become better, and what is good may become excellent.

If only that would be true... The pulseaudio-fiasco shows that "what works, doesn't work after an OS upgrade". Unfortunately I don't really see the "Linux on desktop" thing in any better shape than in 1999. Ten years, no progress, it still in the "on carefully selected hardware most features might work" state.

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 22, 2009 18:59 UTC (Fri) by lenov (guest, #15428) [Link] (7 responses)

I am sorry, but this is totally untrue, close to gross disinformation actually.

I moved entirely to Linux in 1998 (after years of Windows for Desktop and DEC for actual work). At that time:

1) Almost no dedicated hardware worked. Desktop, laptop, that did not matter. You could only use basic computing devices.

2) The productivity tools were almost inexistent. Remember, StarOffice was not OSS. Inkscape did not exist etc. I did not care much because I became a TeX zealot at the time.

3) You had to be *very* knowledgeable to configure your machine (xfree86 ...). But even after, it was absolutely impossible to work efficiently without the console.

What is the situation today?

1) You can install any of the distributions on a desktop painlessly. Ubuntu supports an amazing diversity of hardware (EVERYTHING worked on the my last upgrade, including webcam, microphone, ACPI etc. and I have a f@&%$ Thinkpad)

2) My entire lab is working solely under Linux. From programming to writing thesis, drawing figures, building animations etc. Thunderbird/Firefox/OpenOffice/TheGimp/Inkscape and bob's your uncle.

3) The new undergraduate kids arriving fresh from university, who never saw anything else than Windows XP and Vista log-on and go. They don't need a console or anything "funny". They are at home.

So, there is a problem of market share. But it is not solely due to the capacity of the OS. Linux distribs got better and better. While Vista was a total nightmare. Many users had more problems than with Linux (I witnessed that first hand). The problem has nothing to do with technology. It is political and societal. I am working in a place packed with computer scientists. The most illiterate of the staff eat and breathe bits. Despite the fact that Linux is everywhere, desktops, laptops and servers, the institute ***buys a license for Windows and a license for MS Office ON EACH MACHINE!***

And the problem is not even limited to Linux or OSS. In scientific publishing, a new business model appeared about a decade ago, the Open Access publishing. Despite all scientists admitting it is largely better, for authors and readers, it is stuck at a few percents of market shares ...

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 22, 2009 19:40 UTC (Fri) by JoeF (guest, #4486) [Link]

"Despite the fact that Linux is everywhere, desktops, laptops and servers, the institute ***buys a license for Windows and a license for MS Office ON EACH MACHINE!***"

Would probably be cheaper to have a site license...
But anyway, I agree with you. I bought an Eee PC, with XP Home pre-installed. I installed EasyPeasy on it (Ubuntu-based), and it is slick. Normal users never have to open a console. Everything just works.
A big difference from years ago, when getting Linux to run on a laptop really was for experts.

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 22, 2009 21:05 UTC (Fri) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (4 responses)

In 1998 Linux supported my (limited) hardware. Some 2D VGA card, a SoundBlaster, a TV-card and it fit into the available memory nicely. I could watch TV on full screen and could browse the net over a dialup link.

In 2008 the 3D support didn't work with my video card. Even 2D support was buggy, so I couldn't watch TV in fullscreen mode (with the same TV-card it worked 10 years ago). Then pulseaudio broke the sound support, so I went back to Windows.

At work I still use Linux desktop (the development is done on Linux). A process called gnome-panel eats up 512MB of the available RAM, so the damn thing swaps(!) with 2GB RAM. Recently I put an audio CD into the computer but I wasn't able to play it (the default audio player application simply crashed, xmms wanted some directory(?) name but in the udev-hotplug-enabled world how the hell am I supposed to know which device is the CD-ROM?), so I listened to the CD at home.

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 23, 2009 9:43 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

In the udev/hotplug-enabled world, your cdrom should be /dev/cdrom,
always, automatically. If it isn't, something is wrong.

Much better than the mess we had before.

(Regarding the video thing, I'd say we're better off now than we ever
were. You still have to exercise some caution, but these days you can be
sure of good function *now* if you buy Intel, and *soon* if you buy ATI.
The old morass of complex everchanging rules which used to boil down
to 'use whatever the X devs are personally using' has turned into 'don't
buy nvidia' (a good idea on the motherboard front as well, shudder). I'd
call that an improvement.)

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 25, 2009 10:02 UTC (Mon) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (1 responses)

*Currently* ATIs are not well supported, you don't recommend NVidia, so actually we're back at the "use whatever the X devs are personally using" (which is Intel) stage...

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 26, 2009 9:59 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

And don't forget that the Intel drivers are still slow, buggy , and unstable. Realistically your least bad choice is probably the Nvidia proprietary driver if you want fast, stable, relatively bug-free video.

This situation actually really is worse than it was ten years ago for the hardware I own. As is the audio situation, which seems to have regressed to around 1995. Xorg configuration has the potential to be better now, except that distributions no longer seem to come with a sample that you can edit, and they've been doing away with the configuration tools - you need to configure less, but it's harder to do so.

And let's not forget that Mandrake had supermount by around 2000, which provided exactly the CDROM behaviour everyone wanted but wasn't considered the 'right thing', so we *still* have the worst automounting of any desktop OS.

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 26, 2009 9:39 UTC (Tue) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link]

A process called gnome-panel eats up 512MB of the available RAM, so the damn thing swaps(!) with 2GB RAM.

It is well known that gnome-panel is a memory hog, but 512MB is of course not normal. It is very likely that you have way too many items on your panel(s), or that you are running a version that has a memory leak. Quite easy to fix, I guess.

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 25, 2009 8:34 UTC (Mon) by MTecknology (guest, #57596) [Link]

I do really wish there were an accurate way to measure the REAL number of Linux users. Windows and Mac can both take an estimate from their updates. Linux on the other hand really can't do that. Especially with so many distributions able to quickly and easily create a single system within a building that hundreds of others can pull their updates from. (Update Proxy)

I like http://counter.li.org/ but it's obviously only going to cover a small percent of actual Linux users. While we're on this subject, when is the last time a Windows system ran for 4.24 years. (http://counter.li.org/reports/uptimestats.php)

Someday, I hope there is a nice way to measure Linux users. Then I'm sure we'll see this so called "5%" jump up to 20% or higher. Linux isn't exactly small fry, but it's lack of forcing users to do things does make it hard to count.

I'm excited to see the day when users are given a real choice over what OS they will use and understand the difference.

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 22, 2009 18:36 UTC (Fri) by xilun (guest, #50638) [Link] (6 responses)

"What is bad is going to become better"

Seems unjustified coueism to me.

Maybe in the bells and whistles world of Gnome, KDE and the others this is the case -- and its probably mostly true for Linux as well, but my personal feeling, being a Debian user for 10 years, is that too often very basic tools and legacy software that used to just work tend to break because of inconsiderate changes in the environment -- for example try to use OOo under Window Maker : used to work 3 versions of Debian ago. Not anymore. Even "new" fashion tools are sometimes completely broken (beyond repair?) (thinking of NetworkManager for example -- or I once took a look at almost every famous graphical music players and managed to make half of them crash in less than 3 minutes by just using my mouse, while the other half needed a PhD to understand their interfaces... we used to have xmms several years ago -- now there is nothing usable and stable resembling to that and xmms is not packaged anymore)

Another example : right now I'm experiencing delays that look like random in the order of 0 to 1000ms when using "less" or "mc" through ssh on a Etch server using a Lenny client (with rxvt terminals under Window Maker). Never saw anything like that before, and do not even know where to start investigating to fix this stupid behaviour. I'm not yet annoyed to the point I really care about it (I have a lot of other things to do -- including long rants to write on LWN :P ) but it is still a very frustrating experience, especially because I never saw a such utterly broken behaviour before. So it feels like (and I don't know if this really is the case or not) somebody has cluelessly broken something in ssh or in less or in rxvt or in X window or in the X protocol or somewhere else in the string of components that should be robust I'm using.

All of this is a pretty dark picture -- passing under silence brighter points of GNU/Linux and associated graphical environments -- but working all the time under such a system I begin to be a little tired of people that just think that it is either good or will be. It is sometimes not. It is sometimes even very bad -- and it sometimes even become worse. So in my experience the bad is not always becoming better -- and I'm far from being sure that the "process" that lots of packages adopt and even some popular distributions can help ; too often the "process" is simplified to : mix bugfix and new buggy features, then ship the whole thing to the world for testing, then start over -- I don't see the point where stable software can emerge from such a process, indeed even if you remove the "add new buggy features" part you will still fail to produce something of decent quality for big packages without at least proper regression testing, which is seen far too rarely.

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 22, 2009 19:43 UTC (Fri) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm using OOo occasionally under IceWM and I see no such issues. Could you please be more specific? Bug numbers could also help.

> right now I'm experiencing delays that look like random in
> the order of 0 to 1000ms when using "less" or "mc" through
> ssh on a Etch server using a Lenny client (with rxvt terminals
> under Window Maker). Never saw anything like that before, and
> do not even know where to start investigating to fix this
> stupid behaviour.

strace is your friend. Either an interactive trace, or a trace to a file with timestamps (-t -o somefile) .

You may need to use -p to attach to a specific PID and/or -f to follow subprocesses as well.

BTW: do you actually have an Etch system to compare with? Does the same happen on a fresh Lenny install?

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 23, 2009 9:35 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Wireshark may also be useful (less doesn't do DNS lookups, but delays of
that magnitude say 'network problems' to me, perhaps in the underlying
networked filesystem or in something path-searching is traversing).

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 23, 2009 6:00 UTC (Sat) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (2 responses)

The heir to the xmms legacy is Audacious, btw. My wife uses it and it seems quite stable and usable for her. (I personally can't stand it, but everyone's experience depends on their perspective. I find that while there are certainly plenty of things that annoy me about software -- after all, I'm a hacker -- the Linux ecosystem remains substantially better for everything I want to do than any of the alternatives, and continues to improve substantially over time. Perhaps this just means there are more people who are more like me doing the hacking these days.)

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 23, 2009 16:29 UTC (Sat) by aleXXX (guest, #2742) [Link] (1 responses)

> The heir to the xmms legacy is Audacious, btw. My wife uses it and it
> seems quite stable and usable for her.

I've been using xmms since I think 1997 (x11amp back then) and switched
to audacious last year with the upgrade to Slackware 12.1 (xmms not
packaged anymore).
How to put it: xmms was simple working better.
Audacious crashes from time to time, and there is some lag in the replay,
i.e. when I press pause it takes a moment until it actually stops.
Maybe it uses some fancy soundserver. I don't want to fiddle around to
find this out. xmms has been working without problems for me for years,
and now something that basic, where I didn't have problems with back in
1997, has problems ?
Maybe we should just forget about user-space soundservers altogether...

Alex

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 24, 2009 2:29 UTC (Sun) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link]

...switched to audacious last year with the upgrade to Slackware 12.1 (xmms not packaged anymore).

Xmms is back in Slackware 12.2 (and I'm happy about it!).

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 25, 2009 8:15 UTC (Mon) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

>"What is bad is going to become better"

>Seems unjustified coueism to me.

Why? Did I said Linux was perfect? It's not. All complex software has glitches, but I can tell you (I'm a professional software developer) your typical Linux system has _very_few_ glitches for it's size. And when you take into account the complexity and pace of development it's just astonishing.

The fact is, Linux *is* improving in capabilities, usefulness, user-friendliness, quality, speed, broadness of applicability... and all at the same time! And the only reason is the love many of it's developers put in what they do. And this is not self-delusion, it's pure and verifiable facts.

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 22, 2009 11:30 UTC (Fri) by TxtEdMacs (guest, #5983) [Link] (2 responses)

Linux need not dominate to have a positive effect, i.e. just making MS behave in a more civil fashion is a gain for humanity. And, perhaps for MS itself.

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 22, 2009 12:33 UTC (Fri) by nixternal (guest, #41048) [Link] (1 responses)

I couldn't of said it any better myself. I think the "Linux Crusade" is fighting a battle that is much larger than the desktop itself. Personally, if there is a day where Linux is the leader, I guarantee I will not be alive, and I am only 35.

We need to stop trying to be the #1 desktop, it is virtually impossible right now. What we should be doing is working on creating an amazing alternative, making what we already have better. According to stats, Linux is #3 in the desktop world, that still puts us on the podium and is a feat in itself that we should be proud of.

As for the interview itself, it was the typical ex-MS employee who has either gone Mac or Linux. In some cases, he sounds more of a fanboi than I do :)

Though with that said, lets continue on working for world domination :p

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 22, 2009 17:49 UTC (Fri) by shmget (guest, #58347) [Link]

"he sounds more of a fanboi than I do :)"

The same ex-MS employee predicted in a self-published book that the Linux Kernel will be rewritten in C#... so, one should take his 'predictions' with a huge grain of salt.

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 22, 2009 11:53 UTC (Fri) by mchehab (subscriber, #41156) [Link] (1 responses)

> I'm starting to lose my faith. I've been reading statements like these
> ever since I've been using the Internet. But still, there is not "year
> of Linux on desktop", all attempts to sell personal computers with
> Linux are failing, and desktop marketshare stuck below 5%.

Desktop market is for sure the hardest scenario for the battle, especially if you're considering non-enterprise desktops: it requires Linux to have full support for all sorts of gadgets and to support all sorts of applications.

One important step for desktop would be to have focus on this market. This means not only to have some desktop version, but to be sure that third party companies will release their software capable of running under Linux. If you go to a computer store and look at some random software box (outside the OS section), I bet that it will support some versions of the dominant O. S. and (with luck), it will support some Mac OS. It is really unlikely that you'll read Linux there.

There are very good applications that are FOSS, but there are some parts that aren't much offer, or where the user really wants an specific application, like for example in the game market. The user wants _that_ game, to play against his friends.

While there are some alternatives to play some of those software under Linux (with Wine or some paid version of it, or inside a VM), the user experience is generally far behind what they would have when the vendor properly supports the OS. Also, it is a big challenge to teach your 7 year old kid how to install his games under Wine.

I have the faith that Desktop presence will grow, but we need to do more to increase maketshare in this segment.

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 22, 2009 13:46 UTC (Fri) by nevyn (guest, #33129) [Link]

> > I'm starting to lose my faith. I've been reading statements like these
> > ever since I've been using the Internet. But still, there is not "year
> > of Linux on desktop", all attempts to sell personal computers with
> > Linux are failing, and desktop marketshare stuck below 5%.
>
> Desktop market is for sure the hardest scenario for the battle,
> especially if you're considering non-enterprise desktops: it requires
> Linux to have full support for all sorts of gadgets and to support all
> sorts of applications.

And not only is it hard, after you are done you'll need to spend a lot on marketing ... and after all that no one has any incentive to give you money (see RH CEOs saying they can't find anyone to sell to, and Canonical trying and failing to find someone to sell to).

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 22, 2009 15:14 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (3 responses)

> I'm starting to suspect that all Linux advocates, including myself, are living in a land of illusion. We can see technical superiority of Free software when it exists, but we refuse to see areas where Linux and Free software generally sux when compared to MS.

I know I can see some of it pretty easily.

Stuff like:

Lack of easy binary compatibility between Linux distributions. It's stupid to have multiple operating systems that are essentially running all the same exact code, with very close to the same versions of that code, released close to the same date, require radically different packaging systems and have different dependency issues.

Especially since it almost works pretty good. If you go and look at software like Opera...
http://www.opera.com/browser/download/

They actually use the same deb package for most of the Ubuntu versions. Only the very old version is different, which uses a different C++ ABI. And the RPMs provided for Fedora and other Linux distributions are in the same boat. All using the same packages except for very old stuff.

And if you look _INSIDE_ those packages Opera is using the SAME BINARIES for Fedora and Ubuntu and CentOS and everything else, again except for the oldest versions using a different C++ ABI.

But yet Opera provides a dazzling array of packages, because that is what they have to do to make it "easy".

I know that a lot of 'ProFreeSoftware' guys figure that is only a issue for proprietary software and that packaging systems can take care of it. Of course they don't realize that it still hurts Free software and makes life miserable for both open source developers and companies as well as end users that really do care about open source.

Why? Because of two reasons:

1. Every distribution has to repackage it's own software. It's not efficient and it's not distributed. Essentially all the work that Debian has to do is completely wasted and Fedora users and developers can't benefit from it in anyway.

And the sad part is that the majority of binaries are going to mostly work on both systems. Not perfectly, but besides relatively minor technical reasons it has mostly to do massively with usability reasons.

Something as stupid as not being able to agree on a versioning standard for software packages causes huge headaches. Headaches that are only avoided because of the huge effort that distributions pour into re-doing the same mind-bendingly tedious work that every other distribution must do. All this time and effort just getting packages to work rather then fixing bugs and that sort of thing.

2. The developers of the software are much better qualified to make packages then downstream distro-makers. They have their tested environments and prefered configurations and all that stuff. It's unlikely that any of that will be really well documented.

If distributions could get their act together and work out some relatively small details then as part of the development of software upstream authors could simple build the packages as part of their normal compiling.

Instead of:
./configure
make
make install

Type dance it would be something like:
./configure
make
make rpm

What is needed then is simply nice tools for automating the creation of packages and dependencies, and to get those tools integrated into the popular build systems that everybody tends to use.

It's really quite poor form for people compiling software to simply have the contents dumped all over the file system, and tools for monitoring the installs and building gimped up versions of rpm or deb packages are difficult to use and have relatively low success rate.

Plus any time that any end user is expected to use any developer tools at all just to do something as mundane as installing software is HUGE DESKTOP FAIL.

Did I say a couple? Here is one more:

3. Because having distributions re-packaging software and recreating all the work that everybody else already had done at some point in the past is a very inefficient way to do things.... and the fact that users are going to be unable to cope with using developer tools to do something as basic as installing software... means that new software goes under the radar.

If people release new software and it doesn't get the attention of one of the guys working with one of the popular distributions then it's not going to get packaged.

And since users are going to be so dependent on package management tools to be able to locate and install the software they need then unless it's packaged and provided as part of the distribution then that new software is going to be invisible to them.

And if Linux ever took off as a popular desktop environment then you'll see a explosion in little tools and and programs all over the place. Both commercial and open source.

There is no way in hell that the system which is just barely capable of keeping up with software development now on the desktop... is going to be able to keep up with something that is very popular.

With Windows you have .exe files and MSI files and that sort of thing.
It's not expected that Microsoft goes and puts all the work into packaging the massive amount of software aviable to end users.

Of course this means that users are sumbitted to horrindous amounts of bullshit software.

But with Linux distributions they should still do the package management systems... it's just that instead of getting source tarballs from upstream then should be getting binary and source rpm's from upstream which they test and make sure is decent before adding to their extended repositories.

And distributions should be accepting the same packages. It's not good that each distribution has to use a very-slighty-different-but-functionally-identical software all the freaking time.

================================

Another example of why Linux sucks on the desktop:

In a small business to medium business environment is were Linux is most likely to gain traction in the first place. Why? Because they are cost sensitive and tend to have IT support of some merit.

So lets examine the experiences of company A vs company B:

Company A wants to use Microsoft Windows on it's desktop and has 60 employees.

Company B is the same, but they want to use Ubuntu.

Company A:

* Install Small business server.

As part of small business server they have:
- Active Directory
- Exchange Server
- IIS Web server
- Sharepoint
- domain servers, etc etc.

* Install Windows XP Pro or Vista business in their desktops. During the install point them at your domain.

The admin then has to add users to the domain and then head out to some Microsoft knowledge base articles and figure out what Group policies he needs to apply to get the right configuration for the desktops if that is at all needed.

* Install Microsoft Office.

So you get email, groupware, central management of users, central management of desktop configuration, web-based collaberation tools, and lots and lots and lots of other features.

Windows business is pre-configured to integrate into the active directory environment. It's dead simple and a is well documented. So that a person with minimal computer experience can go down to the book store and get enough information in a evening to get it working pretty well.

Now compare that with Ubuntu:

* Install Ubuntu server.

With that you get... what? Apache? Unconfigured Samba?

* Install Ubuntu desktop.

Now anybody tell me what is the best way to get it configured to work together?

Email server, webmail server, calendering, SSL encryption, LDAP services, Kerberos services, WEb-based collaberation tools...

What is the best configuration engine to use to manage desktops?

Puppet? CFengine? How else is the best way to impliment group policy for Ubuntu?

I don't even think that you can come close to matching what SBS can do for you by default.

And don't F-ing tell me that your going to stick passwords into OpenLDAP or use Samba's NTML method of replicating a windows directory service. Those things are CRIPPLED in their capabilities and provide a MUCH MUCH MUCH weaker level of security then what you get out of Kerberos, which is what Microsoft uses. If you think that your simply wrong, and due to legal requirements is not even possible in depending on what sort of business your in.

And to get even get close is going to require a massive amount of knowledge about how Kerberos works, what GSSAPI is, figuring out what network services are allowed to exist, and how to tie them into a LDAP server and use Kerberos for authentication. If you think that PAM can help in some way with that.. FAIL. PAM can't be effectively used with Kerberos for anything network-oriented. It's worthless to even try and can lead to huge gaping security holes.

Then you have to deal with SSL certificates.. I mean your not going to allow your users to transmitt their documents over the network in plain text, right? So for web-based collaberation you're not just tasked with getting LDAP and Kerberos integrated, you have to get SSL working to, with proper certs and everything.

Email must be tied into kerberos also. Doing passwords over LDAP is miserable and error prone, so it's a security risk. Sending passwords to the IMAP server in plain text is fail. SSL-encrypted tunnels will probably work ok, but users are going to be pissed about having to re-enter their passwords all the time. The alternative is to store passwords on people's desktops by clicking 'remember password' and such.. but doing that is a security risk and is weaker then what people get from Outlook or whatever integrated into AD whose cach'd credentials are only effective for a few hours.

So only a tiny fraction of email clients would even be able to work in whatever configuration you'd choose to use and they are probably not going to be your first choice in usable software.

Once you get that done then you have to start with Samba...

AND THEN.. you have to figure out how to integrate Windows into all of that f-ing mess. Why? Becuase any business is going to run into times when they will have to deal with Windows-only software. Either if it's for doing Fedex billing or dealing with documents from customers that require MS Office for compatibility, or the thousands of other small bits of functionality that businesses need on occasion that only exist for Windows.

So then you have to do rdesktop or setup a Windows desktops for a few people, and make it friendly, and give all the same features that AD provides, etc etc.

It is simply beyond the capabilities of businesses to even deliver a 20% the same functionality that they get from Microsoft SBS or a real AD domain.

There is simply no comparison for Linux on the desktop. It's just insane how neglected and poorly designed all the open source side of things is, and just how massive of a mismatch that the Linux desktop is for most businesses.

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 22, 2009 18:55 UTC (Fri) by xilun (guest, #50638) [Link]

Just to be clear, you forgot to say that all the versions listed at http://www.opera.com/browser/download/ does not proof anything about the binary compatibility on classic GNU/Linux systems vs. the binary compatibility on a classic Windows. Opera optimise for "every" distro because they can. But their "Other/Static" will run everywhere. The Windows version is equivalent to the "Other/Static" Linux version, that's all. Windows does not even have a good packaging system, yet alone useful shared libraries (Microsoft recommends that every program redistributes its own libC!)

Believe it or not, but there are tons of binary only proprietary software (most of the time professional) for GNU/Linux that runs fine on pretty much every distro under the sun -- with only one version of the binaries.

You fail to understand that the diversity you point at, thinking its bad, is indeed something _more_ than what can be done in the Windows world. That is not even mandatory : you just _can_ do it. If you don't want to, just build as you would build for Windows, shipping every library bits along with the executable.

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 25, 2009 8:58 UTC (Mon) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

Very good points.

On the other hand, distributions have to make their own packaging for two very simple reasons:
1. because that's the only way you can trust what's in the system, and
2. it's the only way you can make your own decisions.
You may not be aware of it, but Debian started more as a meta-distribution than a final user one. It was supposed to be a common base over which you can build on. Guess what? It didn't work. Each distro needs to be in control of its own destiny.

I agree with you that software vendors life could be made easier, the same way crappy release-and-forget hardware makers would see much easier times if the kernel supported binary drivers. But this approach is not exempt of problems, as Windows exemplifies so well.

Finally, I have no experience what so ever with Ubuntu server, but it would be nice indeed if integration with Ubuntu desktop (and Windows and Mac OS X) was easy.

Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 26, 2009 11:00 UTC (Tue) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link]

Maybe it helps to think that the main raison d'etre for a distribution is to integrate existing software and to differentiate by adding some, and that, according to the SOHO anecdote, not all of them suit your particular needs out of the box. That is to be expected.

Every problem you describe, of course, has already been solved. Especially the integration of Linux with Windows is not at all impossible, but also not something that can be yanked off the shelf, for obvious reasons. If you really want to be able to use AD features on Linux systems -- which is not necessary -- you should really complain at some Microsoft forum about this.

Disclaimer: it has been a while since I actually integrated anything useful, but I am writing this from my Linux desktop, in an arguably more challenging environment than your trivial example.

World domination has been happening for some time, just slower than we might like.

Posted May 22, 2009 19:41 UTC (Fri) by prl (guest, #44893) [Link]

> Is anyone of you able to refuel my faith in unavoidable Linux's world domination?

In 2004/5, I worked at a (UK) government science research lab. Their policy was that all user's desktops had to run Windows - all email must use Outlook, all web browsing must use IE. Nothing else was supported. That site would I'm sure, count as a "MS shop" to its own management and any outside observer. As my job was to look after a Linux compute server - the word "Linux" even appeared in my job title - I had a special dispensation to run Linux on my official work desktop - as long as it was in a virtual machine.

One of my first jobs was to get a Windows secure client working for access to this cluster as all access was to be crypto authenticated. I visited various researchers, to ascertain their requirements. Guess what? Every single one of these guys had on their desks a minimal "official" PC, supported by the IT department. Next to it was a huge PC with a big screen, bought with their own budget, running Linux. When I started talking about access to the cluster from Windows, these guys said "can't we just use ssh?" - and I replied that as far as I was concerned that was great, but the site had a policy of Windows, and so we needed a Windows client... and they looked at me with pity and explained that they actually did their *work* on Linux, and only used the little Windows box for email.

That was 5 years ago, and even then Linux did all they needed. Before long, these researchers will be become managers, and the old managers - the ones who were themselves rebels in the 80s when they installed Windows PCs and overthrew the old tyranny of centralised IBM/DEC systems - are retiring.

So don't worry: first, the published number of Linux desktops out there is almost certainly a vast underestimate. Second, the problem of mass acceptance is not technical, it's due to the fact that any big change requires a whole generation of middle management to turn over.