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My Linux wish list
By Trevor Warren <Trevor@freeos.com>
I travel quite a lot and consequently I interact with people from various fields--students, geeks, hardcore academicians, marketing gurus and such. And guess what's hot with most of them? Yes, its Linux! But, in spite of its popularity and the multi billion-dollar investment that IBM has just made in Linux, I really haven't seen any sporadic increase in the nature of Operating Systems that are being shipped for desktops world over. Many of us Linux fans, would just shrug this off as an understatement and would rather confine ourselves to the fact that Linux, as a N.O.S (Network Operating System), has been able to grow by leaps and bounds (according to IDC figures it has been a meteoric rise for the Open source Operating System, somewhere to the tune of +100% last year). But the question still arises "why hasn't this gem of an Operating System not been able to penetrate the desktop segment and make a sizeable dent in Microsoft's Market share?" Pondering further on this, I realized there are a few issues we geeks need to tackle in order to ensure that Linux rules the desktops in the near future. Here, I would like to clarify that this article isn't aimed at OS bashing or criticizing the lackluster performance of Linux on the desktop, rather it is aimed at focusing on various issues and concerns which the whole Linux community should converge and work upon. As a company dealing only with Open Source technologies to implement all our solutions, I feel proud to preach the capabilities that Linux can provide on the N.O.S (Network Operating System) front, but at the same time let us also realize that mass market penetration is only possible if we confront and tackle the various issues that Linux fails to address thereby hindering its growth on the desktop front. Not that most Linux distributions haven't addressed these issues. Installing a Linux distribution has come a long way since the times when people installed Linux the hard way -- putting all the Operating System components right from the kernel to the partitions to the utilities together. A Herculean task indeed! Today, most of the Linux distributions available off-the-shelf, offer a significant amount of convenience to the end user, both in terms of installation as well as administration. But, providing the end user a `click, click, click' technology hasn't been something that we were ready to address uptill now. If I think of arguing about how could Linux installations get simpler then I might as well rest my case. I say this for the simple reason that most Linux distributions today offer the end user a very simple `click, click, click' GUI interface to handle the complete installation procedure, which in most cases outperforms the Microsoft installer. I'll explain. I recently realized that if I had to be a good Linux consultant, it was imperative that I knew exactly what my competitor had to offer. And who else to turn to than my old Linux box? I thrashed all my Linux partitions (RedHat and SuSE) and began with a fresh installation of Windows. Installing Windows95 was a breeze, but Windows 2000 Professional was a pain. The machine on which Windows95 installs and runs smoothly, one would expect the same from Windows 2000. But I was in for a surprise. Whenever I tried starting the installation/upgrade from Windows95, the installation process would freeze. And as I re-booted the machine to continue with the installation my machine went for a toss! After many such unsuccessful attempts at installing the darn Operating System, I finally managed to get it going. During this whole process I had to reboot the machine a minimum of two times for a complete install. In comparison to the Microsoft installer, the RedHat installer doesn't require any reboots and detects my hardware just as fine. But I guess all's not well after that in comparison of Linux and Windows on the desktop. Despite all its strengths Linux fails to address the unified desktop interface that has to be in place for it get on the desktop. For instance, suppose a user wants to change the resolution. How many distributions have the option of providing the user the power of changing screen resolutions without expecting him/her to go to the CLI (Command Line Interface). Or suppose a user wants to transfer a file from one Linux machine to another. Can we expect the user to go to the command line and use the arcane smblclient or mount command to mount remote filesystems for use locally? How many distributions have managed to address these issues and been successful in integrating the whole concept onto the desktop? Although, I am all praise for the major Linux distributions that have managed to make Linux such a breeze to install and use and admit that leading Desktop Enviornments of the likes of KDE and GNOME have managed to address most of the issues regarding user friendliness, I believe they have a long way to go in the desktop interface arena. In my opinion, none of them have achieved the goal of a unified desktop interface for all that a Desktop user would ever want to do on a Linux system. The latest release of KDE has done well in trying to provide the user a unified interface that facilitates such desktop maneuvers. Hats off to the KDE and GNOME developer teams! I hope they get their code in soon and beat the *#@%* out of their closed source counterparts. In addition to the above-mentioned issue, there is a plethora of issues that we need to address on various other fronts--for example, the lack of availability of DTP (Desktop Publishing) software for Linux. Yes, I know you recommend GIMP. But let me tell you that though GIMP is more than a worthy alternative, most people in addition to GIMP would also need COREL and ADOBE. As of today the whole COREL suite is available for Linux but ADOBE doesn't seem to have any commitment to the Linux platform. Of course I personally feel, it's just a matter of time before they too join the cause. Another interesting fact is that many parents buy their children a Personal Computer for playing games. Support for various high-end graphic cards on Linux is becoming a defacto standard. But, there are a lot of companies out there that just fail to see any reason as to why they should ship their cards with support for Linux. Graphic cards apart, what about the availability of games for Linux? How many of the best selling games are available for Linux. How many gaming companies are serious about providing a Linux version of their games. Probably they don't see enough of a market to invest time and developers to develop Linux versions of their software. Games apart, let us talk about business. Every business in this harsh dog-eat-dog world wants to survive. And to survive everyone needs a well-defined strategy and good accountant. What I am getting at here is the lack of availability of good financial management software for the Linux platform. Personally speaking, this has been an impediment in the path of my Accounts Department moving completely to Linux. If this be solved, it would be a dream come true. Conclusion It's quite a wish list, I agree and I am also well aware of the Open Source philosophy -- "If you have an Open Source Software and it doesn't have the features you need then go ahead and code it in." So what are we waiting for? Geeks of the Linux world, unite! Let's pool our grey matter and get our favorite open source onto the desktops. Till then?Happy hacking!
Other articles by Trevor Warren
Current Rating: [ 7.08 / 10 ]
Number of Times Rated: [ 36 ]
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