Linux killer!

[Timothy A. Holmes]

-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com
[mailto:fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of STYMA, ROBERT E
(ROBERT)
Sent: Monday, October 31, 2005 11:21 AM
To: 'Robin.Laing at drdc-rddc.gc.ca'; 'For users of Fedora Core releases'
Subject: RE: Linux killer!

> 
> If they are not supposed to be watching the videos on the school 
> computers, then block them at the firewall as our business 
> does.  When 
> they cannot watch them on Windows it won't make any difference.
> 
I think the point is that if Linux is to make a bigger dent in the
Windows desktop, more things have to "just work".  In a similar
experiment
to the one which started this thread, I slowly converted a non-technical
family with three computers from windows to Linux and recorded the
issues which came up.
(http://www.swlink.net/~styma/LinuxForTheMasses.shtml)
The current distributions of Linux still need a technical person
to get things working.  The technical person would still have no clue
as to how to get these things working.  Many of them require a fair
amount of research on the web.  I understand the reasons mp3's and
wmv's don't play right out of the box, but to get "Joe Sixpack" using
Linux requires an update process simple enough for "Joe Sixpack" to
use to get this functionality working.

If making Linux really simple is not working out, another model might
be to have pay subscriptions to remote maintenance services.  The FC3
and FC4 boxes I maintain for my friends I can access remotely via
SSH and VNC.  On a Windows box, if tech support cannot talk you through
the problem, the user ends up taking the box in and paying big bucks.
ssh, /etc/hosts.allow, and iptables could provide a very effective
support
mechanism.  On my friends boxes, I am the only one with the root
password,
not that they would understand what root was anyway.

Just my 2 cents worth.  My point is that Linux needs to be simple in
addition to being better.

Bob Styma

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[Timothy A. Holmes] 

It goes again to the issue of what is the purpose of Linux -- if it is
to replace or at least provide significant competition to Windows, then
I agree, if it is to stay in its server / techie niche market, than it
has achieved that.  The linux community as a whole (all distros) needs
to define its purpose and begin improvement based on that.  A further
area of difficulty is the installers.  RPMs work most of the time, as
does synaptic on Ubuntu, but once you get outside of that, forget it --
my experience with compiling from source is terrible at best (over 60
hours trying to get a satellite tracking program working on Fedora Core
3 (I finally gave up, reformatted the box, and installed windows -- the
equivalent windows program installed in 3 minutes (including download)
FOLKS THAT'S GOTTA CHANGE)  if one thing will kill linux, it is the
whole installer issue -- we gotta fix that. Right now, there is no way
that I would consider taking our school to linux for front end
applications (stuffs not available for linux, and wine DOES NOT WORK
(that's a whole other story but the time total on that one was about 20
hours before I gave up) 

It comes down to one very very simple thing -- STUFFS GOTTA JUST WORK --
if we want to have linux become mainstream in our society


Thanks for listening


TIM
 

Timothy A. Holmes
IT Manager / Network Admin / Web Master / Computer Teacher
 
Medina Christian Academy
A Higher Standard...
 
Jeremiah 33:3
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