"Joe User"
This Op:Ed came to us from a DesktopLinux.com reader, "Joe User". In this article "Joe" offers some insight into his switch to Linux this past October. These are some newbie thoughts on Linux, Windows and Desktop dominance . . .
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Reasons why Linux is better than Windows . . .
a) It never crashes. I can work for a week without ever experiencing a blue screen of death. I cannot believe how stable the OS is.
b) The breadth and depth of the free software available for it is outstanding. I do a lot of scientific/engineering computing and the tools are excellent: Qcad, Xcircuit, Evolution, Open Office, Maxima, Pan, Spice, etc. Most of these applications would cost more than $100 each for Windows, if they are even available.
The thing that blows me away is that Pan is a better Free Agent than Free Agent was. And it is free. And it never crashes. And I never have to pay for another upgrade again. People always state that the Linux OS is free, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not adverse to paying for software, but I am adverse to getting locked into the upgrade/dependency relationship with vendors and all that goes with that. I'll be making yearly contributions to various Linux software developers so that they can continue their efforts.
c) Linux is totally secure. I never felt safe with Windows. We always had email viruses. I was running Win 98 connected to the internet via a cable modem. I could never have any shared folders available for others to use on our local network. I was always fixing users' accidentally deleted files. With Linux, there are no "accidental deletes" anymore. Users don't have the root password for their machines and "things" stay set up day after day.
d) I like the file heirarchy of Linux MUCH better than Windows. For example, c:\ was always full of junk files. Linux puts everything in a place. I like the lost+found directories. Cool. Someone was thinking. I like all the logging that Linux does. 'dmesg' logs the hardware boot and '/var/log' has just about everything else. I never did find decent boot logging for Windows. I like how /var/log has logs for more than one boot ! With the appropriate text tool (diff) I can easily compare one or more logs and find out when something changed, if I need to. Call that a power tool!
e) The rate of change (improvement) is greater for Linux than Windows. For example, KDE, Open Office, Evolution, etc. have all come out with upgrades recently or will in the near future. Linux is continually improving. We were running kernel 2.4.18. Now I am running 2.4.20. Kernel 2.4.20+ is out. Linus is telling us that 2.6 is going to be available this summer. It never stops.
And the improvements aren't just incremental, they are big. With Windows it was Win95, Win98, Win98SE all in 18 months or so and the improvements weren't that major. USB was the big change as far as I was concerned and I got screwed buying Win95 USB edition and then finding that it didn't support devices like Win98 did a few months later.
With Linux, we have Linus and the boys adding SMP to the kernel and new ways of divvying up the processor time and all sorts of things. Look at those change logs: they aren't minor revisions. I chuckle about the fact that Linux runs the 64 bit AMD and Intel processors before most other OSes do.
f) Linux is going to be the operating system of the future. The latest releases have dramatically improved the feasibility of Linux on the desktop. I can feel the momentum picking up. RedHat 8 has almost everything XP offers and a whole lot more that it doesn't offer. Tons more.
It is just unbelievable how deep and sophisticated the Linux movement is. Cluster computing, real time versions, Palm OS versions,open source code, tons of GNU apps, support for EVERY network protocol known to man. With Windows we were always searching for a good app for specialized purposes. We were always dealing with small software vendors, always buying software, never totally happy with what we were getting, etc. That all went away with Linux.
g) Remote computing/VPNs, etc. I run Linux boxes at home and at work, each connected to the internet via a cable modem. Using ssh and vnc I can log into my Lnux boxes at will and work from wherever. I always wanted to do that with Windows and never could.
h) NO ***** REGISTRY !!!!! We've been running 10 or so PCs in our office since 1995, all running Windows. Every second month someone was losing a PC OS due to a corrupted or dirty registry. The longest I was ever able to keep Windows running without re installing was 3 years. Then one day my registry became corrupted and I had to rebuild everything. That was both a tremendous (unplanned) productivity hit and a huge personal stress at about the worst possible time. Linux uses 'conf' files, one per application, all text based. Unless the whole hard drive fails, I will never lose my applications/OS again !
i) A real file system with journaling !!! Between this and SMART harddrives, I will never again lose data to a bad hard drive. The Windows FAT32 file system is a joke. One or two blue screens of death and there are errors that scandisk can't fix. I hear NTFS is good, but not backward compatible with fat or fat32. With Linux, you can run any one of a dozen or so file systems. Outstanding!
The biggest mistake that Microsoft ever made with regards to file systems was a bug that corrupted the data if the FATs weren't the same. This happened several times in our office because we used Win95 in some computers and Win98 in others and removeable hard drives in all.
I'd say we lost the data from 6 hard drives in one year when someone would put a Win95 drive into the second slot and boot the drive with Win98. I think if scandisk on the Win98 drive ran on the Win95 drive and fixed a file it corrupted the Win95 drive. We never did figure it out for sure.
j) A real command line and scripting languages. WOW ! The average user might not appreciate this, but I do. I can't believe how much work I do from the command line and how much faster it is. I like 'xterm' and 'man' and ' info'. I'm just starting to write my own scripts and I'm getting more and more productive every day.
Something I can't believe is that the DOS prompt in Windows didn't recall previous commands. Nor did it scroll. Nor was it resizable. Nor could you cut and paste from it. Furthermore, with a Windows DOS prompt there was always the issue of abbreviating long filenames to their 8.3 equivalent. What were they thinking when they designed that ???
'Xterm/bash' has command history, real filenames, cut and paste and scrolling lines !!! It is command line heaven !!! I'm so sick of clicking to perform mundane tasks like moving files, etc. GUI interfaces have their place but command line operations do too.. Linux gives you BOTH, without compromises.
k) Writing a device driver isn't a big mystery for Linux and I don't have to buy a $1000 compiler and MSDN subscription to do it !!! We use proprietary hardware on our computers, which vendors sometimes don't have drivers for and/or don't have good drivers for, even for the Windows operating system.
I know scores of people running Win95 and Win98 boxes because the vendors of some hardware have not upgraded the drivers to the WinNT (Win32) model.
(Tidbit: writing a device driver for Windows requires an MSDN subscription and the use of "Visual" C++. No other compiler will allow one to write a device driver. BTW: I don't see what is so Visual about Visual C++.)
We've got one such piece of hardware in dire need of a new device driver. The supplier gave us the source code to the DOS driver (all in C...) I'm going to port it to Linux in the near future AND share the code with everyone. Yes, the vendor should do this. Now you know why I don't like being stuck with vendors.
l) Linux is Unix. Everyone and their dog has source code for Unix applications. Every Unix OS has a compiler and Unix runs on about every piece of hardware known to man -- or soon will. What could possibly give you more freedom? I can't believe that 'gcc 'and 'Kdevelop' are free applications. In a past life I did embedded microcontroller development. For years I used MSDOS boxes and buggy proprietary compilers because there was nothing else available. Vendors didn't write for Unix because it wasn't a desktop OS and the source code for the compiler wasn't available. We were stuck. I yearned for a Unix box and some decent tools.
I'd love to use 'gcc' to write 6811 code. I wish it cross compiled to the 8051 and PIC processors. I know a bit about Bison, compilers and run time libraries... maybe I'll tackle that as a contribution to the free software movement.
Aside: Something I miss from the old days is that company called "Walnut Creek" software. They used to send us a newsletter about a dozen pages long listing open source applications. I remember when they first came out with source code CDs. We bought one set at the company I worked for and borrowed an EXTERNAL SCSI CDROM player to read the CD.
We made (compiled) several applications for our MSDOS boxes that were not available otherwise. The ones that come to mind are 'bison', 'flex' and 'rvcs.' I wish I had access to that Walnut Creek list of old open source applications. I'd love to take some of that source code and port it to Linux. They had a lot of really neat applications.
m) Kylix. I don't think there is a better "quick and dirty" development system than Borland's C++ Builder. I can crank out neat, powerful, stable Windows applications faster than I can design them using CPPB. (Please don't tell me how good VB and Delphi are . . . it isn't a language suitable for real development unless its got an ASSERT statement, which only C has.)
Along comes Borland with CPPB for Linux namely Kylix. FOR FREE. I couldn't believe they did this. I always thought Kylix was Delphi (which I don't have a liking for). Then I learned that it did C/C++ and further that all the Windows applications pretty much port and compile right over to Linux. Buttons, menus EVERYTHING. I've died and gone to heaven !!!!
My latest kick is to combine the UI of Kylix with the power of command line scripts and build really simple, neat cool applications for our users.
n) RCVS ! We used to use SourceSafe, which should really be named SourceUnSafe, to store our changing documents. I don't know how many times I rebuilt and restored that database. Did I mention that it is easy to do a pre scheduled CRON backup with Linux. I just cannot believe how much easier my life is with Linux. Yes, RCVS is a bit ugly, being command line and all. I wrapped it in a script and I'm about to write a Kylix wrapper for the work our people need to do. A typical Linux app: simple, user friendly, solid. May SourceSafe rest in peace !
Overall Thoughts
I've been running Linux since mid October. Yes, there were some trying times. Twice I have been frustrated to the point of tears trying to get Linux boxes to boot. Some issues in Linux are hard (for the newbie) to debug, but I've had equally or harder problems with Windows 95/98. (no ide entry in the registry, for example. Getting 2 network cards to work under Windows 98.)
At first I was running Linux just to test it. I was slightly overwhelmed. (I've run it twice in the past and found issues, most recently SUSE 6.2) Now, the more I run it, the more I like it.
I've done a lot of Linux reading in the past month. Not that I had to, but because it is interesting and liberating. There were so many things that we did in Windows because we didn't have a choice. Now we have choices and power and the ability to do anything on our Palms to our servers. Routers, firewalls, VPNs, Palm OSes, HTPCs, Samba, etc, etc, etc. It just goes on and on.
I didn't appreciate how good Linux was at first. Before I installed it, I was wondering how much worse it was going to be than Windows and if I'd be able to put up with that. I wrote a document outlining all the problems I was having with Windows and what problems I expected with Linux. I was way off base about Linux. Now I see that it is much better than Windows.
There are no negatives that I can see to running Linux as a desktop OS. I don't have a laundry list of things that I could do in Windows but can't do in Linux. I didn't lose any data in the conversion. It didn't take months to get re adjusted. (It did take a few weeks.) As far as I am concerned, Linux RULES the desktop. I'm a much happier Linux computer user than I ever was as a Windows computer user.
BTW: I don't dual boot Windows as so many people do. My computer runs Linux and nothing else.
I find the whole "When will Linux take over the desktop" discussion by both the Linux users and Windows users very funny.
The Linux people have an inferiority complex from years of running without Xwindows and the modern KDE/Gnome. They've got their own list of "reasons" why Linux is not acceptable for desktop use:
It is hard to learn/has a steep learning curve.
It is hard to install new packages onto it.
Hardware detection is not as good as Windows.
Lack of decent office applications.
There are more "reasons". As far as I am concerned these are non-issues. In this day and age, with the recent Linux releases, these are largely myths.
Yes, Linux is DIFFERENT than Windows, but really not that much harder to use. I would say that Linux is definitely easier to use than Windows 3.1 ever was and that had a fairly wide desktop deployment. I don't think that Windows (any variant) is much easier to use. Linux is more different(than Windows) to use than it is hard to use. The same goes for administration.
I think Linux is WAY easier to maintain and administer. I'd gladly spend a bit more time learning about a better product than have an easy to use product that isn't reliable, stable or easy to administer or that requires continuous maintenance, like Windows does.
The whole package installation discussion is hilarious. I think that Linux has the EASIEST and BEST installation system by far. I think that Synaptic is by far the best installation system anywhere. It doesn't use CDROMs, so I can install from any computer connected to the internet. It tells me when/which updates are available. It shows me what the dependent files are. I don't have to worry about corrupting/dirtying the registry. I'm not always searching for what version of which DLL is installed on my computer. The Linux/Synaptic installation system is simply excellent.
I think that Linux does a very good job of hardware detection. I've installed RH8 on about 6 computers now without only one undetected piece: an older Cirus Logic GL544x (?) video card crashes the hardware detection software.
Keep in mind that we use removable harddrives that run in multiple computer chassis, so we are continually exercising the hardware detection. I don't know what people are complaining about.
I think the CL card crashes the hardware detection because it has less memory than any of the CL card options. The cards are 1995 vintage.
Office suites are another reason people are supposedly staying away from Linux. This is mainly what kept me from running SUSE 6.2 a few years back. (That and a buggy KDE and a few other things.)
I find OpenOffice.org to be a very good office suite. I don't think it is quite as good as the Microsoft suite, but it isn't far behind. It is much more stable. Word was always crashing on my computer. Writer is stable. I haven't had any formatting that didn't work with Writer and I had some of problems with Word. Big documents with graphics in them continuously crashed Word. (Try to make a Word document with 32 MB of jpegs in it...)
Really, I don't absolutely know what is keeping Linux from ruling the desktop, but I have a few ideas:
a) Lack of Advertising.
Everyone and their dog knows about Windows. My father-in-law doesn't know about Linux. Nor does my next door neighbor. Neither did my wife. Get the picture ? Techies know about Linux. Typical users do not know about Linux. This is a problem. Theoretically a free product of this quality would be desired by everyone. However, very few people know about Linux, especially in its current incarnation. (See reason c.) You can't "sell" a product like Linux if people don't know about it.
b) Availability.
I could not buy Linux locally. (I was looking for RH8.) I live in a city of 1 million people. I had to download the iso files and burn them to CD. My mother in law is not capable of doing this. Further, computer vendors and resellers are not really on the Linux bandwagon because there isn't much consumer demand. (See reason a.) Linux has a distribution problem !
Chapters does not sell Linux anymore. Most computer stores aren't selling it because there isn't any demand. Its a catch 22 situation.
Furthermore, most people taking up Linux will be migrating from another OS. It is one thing to update a Windows computer with a newer version of Windows, but quite another to install Linux on the same computer without losing the Windows data. I find it laudable that people compare how easy Linux is to install with how easy XP is to install. Guess what: Joe user never installs XP, the guy he buys his new computer from installs it. Joe User MIGHT install an XP upgrade over his Windows installation.
What needs to be compared in these discussions is how hard it is to upgrade a Windows computer to Linux versus XP and not lose the data that was there.
BTW: My aunt does not know how to install a second hard drive on her computer, nor does she know how to format one. Someone needs to teach her how to mount her Windows drive as 'vfat' so that it is accessible from within Linux. I don't even want to discuss dual booting with her.
These sorts of issues will prevent my aunt and Joe User from migrating to Linux as much or more than will other issues.
c) Myths.
Linux has an image problem !
Computers were pretty intimidating beasts at one time. Command line Unix was outright frightening for newbies. I think we've all got memories of using 'ctr z alt p slash w 'to format a paragraph in WordStar, way back when. A lot of people remember DOS and Windows 3.1 pretty well and they were not easy to use. Linux was pretty primitive too at one time.
Basically, what I am saying is that the only user friendly computers that most people know about are the Mac and Windows PCs. Windows 95 was UI heaven compared to pre KDE/Gnome Linux. This is what a lot of people think of when they think of Linux.
They don't know that it is powerful, easy to use, elegant and (starting to be) refined. Their judgment is clouded by myths about usability, including the ones previously mentioned above.
It doesn't help that some within the Linux computer consider vi or emacs the best editor ever. Vi sounds like something my aunt takes for her gallbladder condition. Actually, the whole Linux naming practice adds to the image problem. You and I think GNU is a neat name, just like KDE, etc. My aunt doesn't understand. Furthermore, she can't remember GNU and will probably start calling it deer or elf or something and get herself confused. Honestly, I cannot remember the name of the Linux hardware detection program. I think it is Kurd something. I've got a better mind than my aunt does and I've been in Kurd several times in the past month.
I think that the most damaging thing that happened to Linux was that there has been 3 years of talk about when it will conquer the desktop. People are skeptics, especially about computers. People know that there was/is something wrong with it because they heard about it conquering the desktop 3 years ago and haven't heard anything about that since.
Truthfully, if Linux arrived on the scene today, looking as it does in the current releases, without any of its history as being developed by "hackers", being a command line Unix OS, etc, etc, etc, I think it would just about take right off on the desktop. That is how bad I think myths hurt the Linux deployment on the desktop.
d) Human Nature
It is human nature to be scared of new things, especially when there is a history of doubt and myths surrounding the product. Such is the case with Linux.
First, we need to admit the fact that users are going to LOSE productivity for the first while using Linux. It is only natural. Nobody remembers their first days as a Windows user because that was a few years ago already and we would do
anything to get away from using DOS.
Linux isn't exactly the same as Windows. There are new applications to learn. There are new places to look for information. Cut and paste works differently. The transition from Windows to Linux is going to take the user a bit of time.
Nobody likes to do a task that is new and will take extra time and effort. When does one have time to learn a new OS ? When does one have time to be less productive at work ? For myself, the fall is usually a less busy time, so I did it in October. I've been through this sort of thing before. It was a conscious decision.
However, the thing to remember is that it is a ONE TIME INVESTMENT. You only have to learn Linux once. Windows, on the other hand, changes significantly from version to version. (Win95 to WinNT to Win2000 to WinXP.) It
is like moving to a new house. The new house is bigger, faster, more comfortable, etc. but you have to pack, move, unpack, find the light switches, arrange the furniture, etc., etc., etc, before it feels as good as the old house did.
Predictions for Linux
I've spent a few years studying the marketing and sales of new products and technologies. For years people have been asking why Linux didn't overtake the desktop. The answer is this: it didn't fit all the needs that users had. For a better understanding of this, read Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm". You'll get the picture.
However, Linux is now at the point that it does fit the needs of a large group of computer users AND it is constantly improving. We've got the early adopters convinced and the innovators are coming on line. Geoffrey Moore has another book that describes what happens when a quality product meets all the needs of a large market and has a decent value proposition: "Inside the Tornado". As the title implies, the market RAPIDLY adopts the new product and makes it the standard for the market.
This WILL happen with Linux. This is happening with Linux. It isn't a matter of if, but when. All products start migrations to mass adoption with niche markets. Mac had the desktop publishing market. PCs had the spreadsheet. Linux had servers and is now getting a really good look by European countries. It isn't important WHY the niches are using Linux, only that they are and that their experience serves as a stepping stone to the mass adoption of Linux, ie it gets better rather than gets hung up due to the lack of a product feature.
Linux will take the market in a tornado type fashion. This is due to the communication issues with getting the value proposition out to the users and the reluctance of certain personality types to deal with change, fear,etc. (Read the books, they are excellent.) Unix never became a whole market product because it never handled all the needs of the market. It wasn't a GUI OS and it needed to be to be usable to the mass user base.
Windows was a hit because it was a GUI that ran on PCs that were affordable and common,unlike the Mac which people viewed as being unaffordable and uncommon. Windows also had a familiar and installed hardware base, as does Linux, whereas Mac never did.
Linux is different than Mac and Unix. Linux is a GUI OS. It runs on a common, installed hardware platform. Its value proposition is excellent. There is a growing interest in changing to a better/different OS. There are no "holes" in the product to stop its adoption. There are a few weak areas, but every product has them when it starts to be adopted en masse. Those spots will get firmed up as the market demand/interest builds. With market demand comes revenue, which means profit which means investment which means growth which allows re investment, etc. There is nothing about Linux that cannot/will not be fixed/improved/upgraded with a little
time, money and effort.
Consider this: I bought Windows 95 and Linux 1.3 in the same week in 1996 and Gates et all had been working on windows type OSes since 1990. The fact that Linux is as strong or stronger OS than XP TODAY is speaks VOLUMES about the EFFECTIVENESS and EFFICIENCLY of open source software development. Just think of what is going to be accomplished in the next 7 years !
(Here is a thought for you... what if Microsoft had developed Windows on top of its PC Unix OS, Xenix ???? Theoretically, all they had to do was put Xwindows and a window manager on top of it and they were done.)
Linux is going to overtake the desktop, no doubt about it. The speed at which it does so depends on the following:
a) how quickly the value proposition gets communicated to the masses. (VP is more than just the price of the product. Remember that lost productivity...)
b) how quickly the myths get overwritten by success stories.
c) how quickly the need for change occurs. There are millions of PCs running Win95/98 out there. Some of these PCs are going to be retired. Some of their owners are looking to replace the OS and upgrade the HW. Microsoft's decision to abandon Win95/98 support might backfire on them.
d) how quickly the distribution channel picks up on the customer desire for the product and starts supplying it.
Consider myself as the prototypical non Linux person. (Warning: this is often a very bad way to make marketing decisions. You are probably not the typical consumer of your product.) Six months ago I was an unknowing frustrated Windows user. Now, I've already converted another Windows user to Linux. Once organizations start deploying Linux on the desktop en masse, the adoption rate will skyrocket, not because large groups are converting, but because it will influence factors a,b,c and d above. Throw in a bit of press coverage and free advertising and Linux is going to be an "overnight" success, again.
- "Joe User"