| Tobias DiPasquale on 5 Sep 2004 13:13:02 -0000 |
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sep 4, 2004, at 9:54 PM, Howard Bloom wrote: These angry readers managed to reinforce the stereotype that desktop Linux I'm sure they did. But they don't speak for the intelligent Linux user. And you'd have been wise to check out their response before publishing this vastly underresearched article. Read on for a disassembly... And if that's their problem with me, I'm guilty as charged. Does anyone on this list truly hold this opinion? I've never met anyone who ever made this comment when it wasn't in jest. Our focus needs to be on getting powerful, easy, inexpensive computing to This is, in fact, the focus of OSS desktop projects like Linux, GIMP, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, KOffice, AbiSuite, etc. Strike one. I have spent my career working to help create and promote technology that Anyone who used to use an SLR camera and now uses a digital camera knows the answer to that question is yes. Anyone who used to create spreadsheets by hand and now does so via the computer knows the answer to that question is yes. Anyone who used to hire 7 clerks to manage their files and now does so alone and in far less time by use of a database knows the answer to that question is yes. Anyone who used to spend all night at Kinko's printing transparencies for the big meeting tomorrow and who now simply shows up with a laptop running some presentation software (where the pres. could have been edited on the cabride over) knows the answer to this questions is yes. Anyone who's ever used Google knows the answer to that questions is yes. Strike two. (Btw, did I mention that all of the aforementioned time-saving services are available under desktop Linux today?) computers need to keep getting less expensive and more powerful, but that Again, this is the focus of OSS desktop projects, especially the less-expensive part. Strike three. I am sure there are people in the Linux community who share this viewpoint. And what is his concept of universal computing? Its very clear that this person's opinions on desktop Linux were formed long ago and he hasn't kept up with the current state of the art in that arena. Maybe Linux - yes, desktop Linux - can provide the underpinnings for what we OS X is not Linux. People often confuse them because they are both derived from UNIX (OS X in fact and Linux intellectually). But what I said - and will repeat - is that This depends on your viewpoint. My wife uses desktop Linux without complaint because she doesn't have a very high set of requirements. Web browsing, IM, email, Flash, printing, reading and composing PDFs and Word docs, NES emulator, Web-based Java games... that's all well-handled on desktop Linux and has been for some time. True, she didn't set up the system for herself, but how many members of this list were called upon to do a Windows XP install for friends or family? I'll bet that it is the majority. As well, most people today don't set their computer up in any case; it comes from Best Buy or Circuit City pre-installed and configured. What kind of argument is that? That desktop Linux doesn't have good channel support? Ok, I'll give him that. But set them up with that and see which one is "easier to use". I'll bet it'll be a Folgers situation at that point. Also, I love how people who make this argument are never offering examples of what it is they tried to do on desktop Linux that didn't work or wasn't available; doesn't that strike the readers of this list as quite convenient? And lets throw another thing into the mix: if OS X is so easy to use, why does Apple have a support line? Answer: its not that easy to use. No desktop environment is THAT easy to use. I use OS X as my primary desktop now and it is quite smooth and integrated. However, as far as commercial apps go, you'd be hard pressed to find 10% of the applications for OS X that are available for Windows. Basically, if Apple or a handful of Mac-faithful companies (MS being one) don't make it or theirs no OSS analogue, you're hosed. Again, this guy hasn't kept up with the state of the art. Browse here <http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/> and then hit the Windows section of Tucows.com and download.com and Amazon's software section for comparison. Anyway, in short this guy basically put forth all of the arguments for a desktop OSS environments, thinking he was using them against us (and some erroneous ones, too). As such, his article is merely one man's ramble and has lost a lot of credibility for him, at least in my mind. I do believe that there is an argument against desktop Linux at this time; this just wasn't it (my former CFO had a better one than this when he tried OpenOffice.org for the first time). All he did here was make sure that I won't be reading his column again. - -- Tobias DiPasquale 202A 04C4 2CE6 B985 8520 88D6 CD25 1A6C B9B5 1595 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (Darwin) iD8DBQFBOxCjzSUabLm1FZURAh3JAJ4tiTyH11/ig9gYU32dQWWDDp32MgCgmiJ4 bbCGC6+SyDUGFyOkiujV1jE= =ZCcE -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
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