"...obsolete, partially unsafe, usually extremely cumbersome IT, leading to lots of wasted time and productivity".
That is an excellent short description of Linux. The kernel is fine, but the distros and application software are mostly garbage.
Linux needs an absolute asshole to take charge of everything other than the kernel. His/her favourite word must be "no", as in, "No you shrinking violet, your code is crap and it needs to be totally rewritten. Get outta my distro."
A Steve Jobs of Linux to tell people to make it "just work" and point out the parts that are pure garbage (over 90% at this point.)
It is not clear whether a benevolent dictator can exist in an open-source world. But someone needs to try.
That's just bullshit. The design committee of the major DEs/distros are already that benevolent dictator. What have you tried that you found it was mostly garbage? I used Unity just fine for about 5 years until the recent switch to GNOME and then I went to Fedora KDE, and was surprised at how solid it is. Maybe its just you/your hardware?
The complexity you denigrate in KDE is the result of its massive configurability. The average joe might find it offputting, but I like being able to completely control my environment. I suppose that mirrors Linux in general.
If Linux had to be dumbed-down to make it a generally acceptable desktop environment, something else would invariably arise in its niche. I think things are just fine as is with MacOS as Unix for the masses, and Linux as unix for hackers.
Do not misunderstand me, I do not want to denigrate anything, as I appreciate the potential of configurability, but this is not the average case of a public employee.
It seems to me that there's no money in that. And the GPL license means that anyone can just fork your stuff whenever they decide they don't like your monetization strategy.
Maybe building a distro based on FreeBSD would work as you describe?
I haven't looked into Linux/Unix for a long time, right now I want to switch from Windows 7 to some Linux distro but I'm having trouble deciding, and I remember what a pain in the ass it was to keep a workstation Linux problem-free.
Hm. I guess you're right. Android was a bad example. Unless something new happens to desktops that would require a new OS (or significant changes to the existing OSes), Android's success cannot be repeated.
I wonder if people would be enticed by a Linux OS that runs Android apps seamlessly (and with complete functionality)... There's a lot of good apps for mobile that are better than desktop alternatives, though I wonder how it would work legally with Google's Play Store...
Yes. It has probably the worst UI of any desktop OS. The window management sucks, the global menu is stupid and annoying and the file management sucks. Trying to operate the OS with just a keyboard is absurdly difficult. They don't give you any options to work the way that you want, they only give you one option to work the way Apple wants. You're also severely limited in hardware choice. Just about everything is wrong with the Macintosh Operating System IMO.
One of the main (non-technical) reasons I've switched to Linux is to not be dictated to by a single entity, who has their own ideas (and motivations) on how I should by using my own computer.
Problem is large organizations IT departments. Instead of using tested and quality components they only consider two options: Roll own thing (LiMux) use crappy vendor (MS).
It would be massively cheaper to sponsor 5 people to work on Libre Office, and 5 people to support the distribution of choice (Ubuntu, SUSE). The remaining effort should be put into aggressive upgrade policy. They would now be running on Ubuntu 16.04 and LibreOffice and OwnCloud installation that would cost them peanuts.
Instead, they are running on LiMux where the last release took place in 2011. Half of the documents are still probably in MS format and nothing work on modern hardware.
What they will do now is to embrace Windows10. But in few years MS will push everything to the cloud and they will be left hanging with expensive licenses per user. Because of privacy and data cannot move to the US and they will be forced to use legacy Office versions. Additionally, because Windows is expensive to support they will get squeezed by Indian outsourcing centers.
Actually, thats not how open source works. But you have at least two true points between the lines:
1. Linux is not easy to install: Most of the problems during installation are still driver issues. The issues are mainly not existing drivers or proprietary binary drivers. Wherever open source drivers exist with the support of the hardware manufacturer they work just great (stable and out of the box).
2. We have lots of distributions but to my knowledge none is just awesome to use: I used Ubuntu for a few years on different machines but major updates were often problematic, and every 2 years or so you had to reinstall (sucks). On my desktop computer I used Gentoo for a while but source based distributions have special problems (dependency resolution is sometimes harder and you have all the trouble if some ABI breaks).
In the last 2 years I switched most of my computers to Arch which has the advantage of having rolling releases, so no major updates and no reinstall requirements (yeah). But while source based distributions make it easy to integrate 3rd party repositories to your system, Arch has the so called AUR (Arch User Repositories) which is even more complicated to use than Gentoo or Exherbo, as the provided tools are just not as good. But without the AUR there are many packages missing in Arch.
So for the moment I will stick with Arch, but I really hope there will be something equally long living, up-to-date, stable and even more complete and extendable.
(Btw. before Ubuntu I tried Fedora, Debian and SuSE, which all had their own problems)
To be honest, without a strong political or ideological motivation to do so, it's hard to see why any government organisation would use Linux on the desktop, or how they would justify it. Cost, perhaps, but that's always going to be difficult to really quantify, because what you save in licensing fees, you might end up spending on the migration process, hiring expert contractors, retraining users, etc.
Since you're funded by taxes anyway, you're inevitably less motivated by purely economic concerns than by the quality and efficiency of the service you can provide. While I frequently see people defend desktop Linux and LibreOffice against hyperbolic claims about their inadequacy, I don't often see people promoting them as more usable for the everyday user than Windows 10. Other than the Windows 8 debacle, Microsoft keeps the happy-path of a typical business-user workflow in decent shape.
Of course, a plan to migrate every computer to Windows is just that: a plan. And IT plans have a bad habit of colliding messily with reality. It seems more likely that, by 2023, Munich will have a lot of computers running Windows 10, a lot still running LiMux, and a lot still running old versions of Windows. Or maybe the political landscape will have shifted again, and they'll be in the middle of a switch to Apple, Chrome OS, Ubuntu, or who knows what?
27 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 55.2 ms ] threadThat is an excellent short description of Linux. The kernel is fine, but the distros and application software are mostly garbage.
Linux needs an absolute asshole to take charge of everything other than the kernel. His/her favourite word must be "no", as in, "No you shrinking violet, your code is crap and it needs to be totally rewritten. Get outta my distro."
A Steve Jobs of Linux to tell people to make it "just work" and point out the parts that are pure garbage (over 90% at this point.)
It is not clear whether a benevolent dictator can exist in an open-source world. But someone needs to try.
More specifically, KDE has too many configuration options, while GNOME is dictating how one has to do things.
As an example:
> "Documents is a document manager application designed to work with GNOME 3. It's included in the default set of core applications since GNOME 3.2."
The file system has been used for decades as a document manager, why is this in the set of CORE applications ?
If Linux had to be dumbed-down to make it a generally acceptable desktop environment, something else would invariably arise in its niche. I think things are just fine as is with MacOS as Unix for the masses, and Linux as unix for hackers.
Maybe building a distro based on FreeBSD would work as you describe?
I haven't looked into Linux/Unix for a long time, right now I want to switch from Windows 7 to some Linux distro but I'm having trouble deciding, and I remember what a pain in the ass it was to keep a workstation Linux problem-free.
It had sort of worked with Android, so there should be some.
> Maybe building a distro based on FreeBSD would work as you describe?
Is there anything wrong with macOS? ;) (I know, I know, it's not exactly BSD)
Android... I dunno, the way Google makes money is mainly from apps on the Play Store? Is it even possible to replicate that on a desktop?
Yes. It has probably the worst UI of any desktop OS. The window management sucks, the global menu is stupid and annoying and the file management sucks. Trying to operate the OS with just a keyboard is absurdly difficult. They don't give you any options to work the way that you want, they only give you one option to work the way Apple wants. You're also severely limited in hardware choice. Just about everything is wrong with the Macintosh Operating System IMO.
One of the main (non-technical) reasons I've switched to Linux is to not be dictated to by a single entity, who has their own ideas (and motivations) on how I should by using my own computer.
It would be massively cheaper to sponsor 5 people to work on Libre Office, and 5 people to support the distribution of choice (Ubuntu, SUSE). The remaining effort should be put into aggressive upgrade policy. They would now be running on Ubuntu 16.04 and LibreOffice and OwnCloud installation that would cost them peanuts.
Instead, they are running on LiMux where the last release took place in 2011. Half of the documents are still probably in MS format and nothing work on modern hardware.
What they will do now is to embrace Windows10. But in few years MS will push everything to the cloud and they will be left hanging with expensive licenses per user. Because of privacy and data cannot move to the US and they will be forced to use legacy Office versions. Additionally, because Windows is expensive to support they will get squeezed by Indian outsourcing centers.
1. Linux is not easy to install: Most of the problems during installation are still driver issues. The issues are mainly not existing drivers or proprietary binary drivers. Wherever open source drivers exist with the support of the hardware manufacturer they work just great (stable and out of the box).
2. We have lots of distributions but to my knowledge none is just awesome to use: I used Ubuntu for a few years on different machines but major updates were often problematic, and every 2 years or so you had to reinstall (sucks). On my desktop computer I used Gentoo for a while but source based distributions have special problems (dependency resolution is sometimes harder and you have all the trouble if some ABI breaks).
In the last 2 years I switched most of my computers to Arch which has the advantage of having rolling releases, so no major updates and no reinstall requirements (yeah). But while source based distributions make it easy to integrate 3rd party repositories to your system, Arch has the so called AUR (Arch User Repositories) which is even more complicated to use than Gentoo or Exherbo, as the provided tools are just not as good. But without the AUR there are many packages missing in Arch.
So for the moment I will stick with Arch, but I really hope there will be something equally long living, up-to-date, stable and even more complete and extendable.
(Btw. before Ubuntu I tried Fedora, Debian and SuSE, which all had their own problems)
I wonder if ms moving its hq and everything that comes with it sped up someones decision making.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15779226
Since you're funded by taxes anyway, you're inevitably less motivated by purely economic concerns than by the quality and efficiency of the service you can provide. While I frequently see people defend desktop Linux and LibreOffice against hyperbolic claims about their inadequacy, I don't often see people promoting them as more usable for the everyday user than Windows 10. Other than the Windows 8 debacle, Microsoft keeps the happy-path of a typical business-user workflow in decent shape.
Of course, a plan to migrate every computer to Windows is just that: a plan. And IT plans have a bad habit of colliding messily with reality. It seems more likely that, by 2023, Munich will have a lot of computers running Windows 10, a lot still running LiMux, and a lot still running old versions of Windows. Or maybe the political landscape will have shifted again, and they'll be in the middle of a switch to Apple, Chrome OS, Ubuntu, or who knows what?