What Linux missed ?

Hi all,

I am doing a research paper about Linux on Netbook. My title is "What Linux missed to make it successful".

AT least in term of share market ( currently below 5% ), if linux platform burst to between 10 to 20 percent. Then it somehow a big milestone of consumer market.

I would appreciate if anyone could share your idea?

The paper will hand to professor for industrial purpose.

I have a piece of Aspire One machine with ubuntu ( deleted the original Linpus ).

thanks,

Jeffrey

 

So what you really are saying is that you want us to do the most part of your homework for you, so you can get credit for a research paper ? Don't go away mad from this post. Just go away.

 

Here is an idea...

Try going to a Linux Forum and read.

The Ubuntu forums have tens of thousands of Linux threads.

 

why are you guys being so harsh? all he asked for was community opinion about a specific topic, you dont want to answer then dont.

 

1. For me Linux have problems with drivers - there is plenty of examples when someone is trying to run printer, scanner or camera...
2. There are problems with media players as codecs are not always open source/not preinstalled so you have to install them separately...
3. Still I'm missing full support for GSM modem and mobiles - there are some programs working but it is really difficult to set them up...
4. More advanced/job specific software does not have equivalent in Linux so IF you're lucky you have to play with WINE...


That's all I can recall now but probably there is more. So for me: Linux for fun - Windows to do the job...

 

I don't think they missed anything. One thing that is always misunderstood about Linux is that the developers have no interest in gaining a larger market share. They're not running a business, and most of them couldn't care less if their software has 100 users or 100 million. Gaining a larger market share just isn't something desirable.

What is however desirable is the feeling of being part of the best operating system currently available. Again, 'best' isn't a term that can be judged by the number of users. It's fairly easy to get more users, by simply dumbing down anything you make. This is the path Apple chose to go: reduce the options, make the basic stuff foolproof and hide anything interesting from the user. Linux coders usually refuse to dumb their stuff down, and rightly so. Why should we want ignorant people using our software. If someone wants the power and flexibility of Linux, he'll have to make an effort to learn the basics. Try telling an award winning literary writer that his books aren't good, because Joe Sixpack can't read them. Same situation with software.

 

Personally, I agree with Rapax, Linux didn't miss anything. However, on the Aspire One, I strongly believe the Acer fucked up badly by going with an obscure, poorly-maintained distro like Linpus, rather than with a reasonably popular, but more importantly, well-maintained and up-to-date distro

 

Absolutely, Linpus is everything a good Linux distro shouldn't be. They attempted to make it more 'Windows-like', and in the process sacrificed stability and consistency.

 

Linux didn't miss anything. As far as I'm concerned, it's the best OS offered for a PC today. It certainly is the most secure and configurable and expandable OS around. As to Linpus on the AAO, it works well enough for my needs. First, I recognize the AAO as a netbook computer and not a full replacement for a desktop computer. I have not done much to tweak my system beyond how it came out of the box. I'm a rather earlier adapter so still running Linpus 1.0.3 here. Other than adding a few icons to the desktop and a right-click menu, it's plain Linpus here and works very well as a netbook. I've completely ignored any "updates" from Acer. Just didn't find a need for them.

On my PCs, well they all run Ubuntu, one version or another and I find I have a very powerful Linux network with those boxes doing everything from running Apache web server, online photo albums, videos, music, etc.

Cheers.

 

For me, the fact that the least useful distros were branded as "Linux". AND that those were distributed with netbooks. When I bought my "one", I played for two hours with Linpus, all the time looking where I could find even something basic like a terminal. After two hours I gave up and installed Xubuntu instead. Anyone without Linux experience must have thought "what a crap is this Linux" and installed Windows instead. That is not against Linux (although people would formulate it that way), but against Linpus.

Had Acer distributed a useful distro instead, I doubt it had been such a disaster.

 

What Linux missed is to be distributed with the hardware. If you want to buy a computer, you don't have the choice for preinstalled Ubuntu, for example. You have to buy hardware with windows preinstalled, paying for a licence you don't want, adding your machine to the dark side of the statistics. This changed a little bit with netbooks last year. You could buy an Aspire One with Linpus and then install the distro of your choice. Bygones. Today, it's hard to find even one single Linux-netbook in the stores.

Nevertheless, actual Linux systems support netbook-hardware well. But they miss support by hardware manufacturers. My Aspire One 531 works fine with Ubuntu, but it would be nice if Acer could add some lines of code to make the wireless LED work. But manufacturers don't feel the urge to do such things.

So, after the netbook Linux experiment failed with all major suppliers, my dream would be that they add some hardware-specific support for the major distros (instead of their own Linux) and dare to sell PCs without any preinstalled OS; labelled 'Linux-ready'.

See it this way: Linux did not miss anything, the manufacturers did. The Linux desaster in 2008's netbook market was not the proof that the customer don't want Linux, it was the proof that Hardware manufacturers didn't understand Linux. That no Hardware manufacturer can become a second Apple Inc. overnight by crippling Linux to their own vision of a user-friendly OS.

 

I'd agree that failing to offer Linux pre-installed on mainstream computers is the biggest trick that Linux is missing.
I'm still at the love / hate stage with my Aspire One with Linpus. It's simple it does everything I ask of it, and adding new software is straightforward (most of the time, but I'll come back to this) and when the whole box crashes - which it has done three times in three months - the restore process is straightforward, or at least easier than Windows. Finding software is an absolute pain - with windows if you see an .exe you know it will at least install, why the f*** are there so many different types of installation 'files' for so many different Linux flavours, and when you go looking for help the language is so obscure - software should just install and work! (duh....) and then (uh uh I'm on a roll now, you shouldn't have asked!) what's all this about KDE, Gnome, Python etc etc that I seemingly need to know about. With all this obscurity Linux will never appeal to granny!
My early forrays into Linux were frought with driver problems, but so far - as long as I've taken trouble to do a bit of research - everything I've thrown at the Aspire One has worked (printers, Huawei E220, pen drives - OK so it's not a long list) first time. The only device I'm nervous about trying is my Garmin 650 GPS (it sees the drives OK). To know that everything that works with Windows would work with Linux would be a big plus - the main thing I knwo doesn't play nice is my Belkin USB Network Hub (it allows USB devices to work over the home network - particularly my USB printer and USB hard drive). Seeing my networked drives on my home network was intitally a challenge, but once sorted works fine - granny would not have coped, but granny would'nt have had network drives! The wireless networking is more reliable and easier to set up than my Windows experience.
Rant over - I hope that helps. :shock:

 

I think the big problem is that netbooks missed. My AA1 is a notebook replacement; I bought it as such, use it as such, and, because I'm a reasonably-experienced Linux user, I'm quite happy with it as such. The notebook being replaced had a 1.6GHz Athlon mobile processor, 512MB RAM, a 60 GB HDD and a 1024x768 display; now I've got a 1.6 GHz Atom, 1GB RAM, a 120GB HDD, and a 1024x600 display in a unit that's half the size and half the weight. For me it was a good trade. If, on the other hand, the AA1, or any other netbook, is being bought as a web appliance, then expecting an easy software upgrade path is probably unreasonable. As much as I dislike Linpus, the important question to ask about it is, "out of the box, does Linpus do everything a web appliance should do?" If the answer is yes, then then isn't really any cause for complaint regarding Linux on the AA1. By te way, I don't know the answer to this one, my AA1 came with Windows XP.

 

Hi all,

Many thanks of all idea sharing.

Basically, I am not throwing my homework to you; I have done much of my job but in order to reflect the real life rather than my own findings. I would appreciate if I got some idea from other people to make the paper more accurate and real.

Hoping that you all understand.

I have some basic ideas on following.

1.User behavior
. User of aged 50 or below all are growing up within MS environments. User is used to the UI, the operation method and tools that hard to change to Linux in a short time

2.Hardware Support
. As MS windows take over 80% of the PC computing market, almost all the hardware vendors designed the device default and optimize to run on MS windows
. Until recent years, hardware vendors provide limited support on Linux, most of the work contribute from the Linux community
. Usually MS windows is running stable on a machine but it could be problem for Linux on the same machine

3.Customer/end user survey and productize
. It is not the true fact that MS ( staff ~ 0.1 M ) has to be defeated by Linux ( overall developer > 0.5 or even 1 M ).
. MS has done a lot of survey to classify/prioritize/segmentation to reflect the public expectation.
. Whereas Linux, due to open source style, community work on free style and non-targeted. For public perception, Linux is a free OS which is nice to have if not having $$$$ to buy Original MS Windows OS.
. Even though, it has more than 100 Linux distros out there, the OSV basically share the same foundation, similar window manager and application as well. It is hard to have a one common distro to against MS windows

4.Default OS for most software
. Same as hardware support, most of the software designed to run on MS windows due to its huge population
. The installation method is highly customized that 1 or 2 click for completion in contrast to command line under Linux environment

The above is just part of my paper content index, I may not true and in order not to be biased, that is why I post this topic.

Thanks you very much of all buddies reply and sharing.

Jeffrey

 

Allow me some remarks. First of all, keep in mind that Acer's Linpus Linux is one of the worst examples of Linux at all. If you make up your mind on Linux, you should refer to a major distribution such as Ubuntu, Suse or Mandriva (that goes to RockDoctor as well).

1. Don't forget Mac users. There are Mac users using Linux and feeling better with it than with windows. That tells a lot about how user friendly Linux really is compared to windows.

2c. Most vendors add hardware specific drivers to their preinstalled windows. With windows out of the box, most machines would have the same initzial problems as with a standards Linux distribution.

4b. That's one of the big urban legends about Linux you shouldn't repeat if you really did work with a major Linux distribution for a while. You can use Linux without ever passing to the terminal. You can install thousands of software titles through a graphic installation utility without writing one line of code. You can keep your system up to date and even upgrade it with a single mouseclick. You can search the software database by keyword and install a given application by a single mouseclick. It's all there but shopping carts and serial numbers.

 

This is complete nonsense. Redhat, Fedora, Mandriva etc are all businesses out to get customers and pay their bills.

Linux's big problems as a desktop OS:

- Drivers

- Marketing

- Usability is inconsistent across distros

- Users tied in to MS by Word and Excel and scared of compatibility problems

- Poor choice of games

Most of these are made harder to fix by fragmentation of the market and lack of control - eg Ubuntu concentrate on ease of use for ordinary users, but Crunchbang, based on Ubuntu, is one of the most horrific OS experiences available today for a non techie user. This makes it hard to build a consistent brand - users who hear the Linux is now user friendly can easily try a noob hostile version.

 

The problem is Linux as a brand. Linux isn't an OS (and neither is GNU/Linux). Linux is a kernel (and GNU is not Unix). Ubuntu is an OS. Fedora is an OS. Puppy Linux is an OS. Crunchbang, Xandros, and Linpus Lite are all OSs. Is it fair to compae one of these OSs to another? Of course. Is it fair to fault the kernel for the problems cited by pling? Only for the lack of drivers. Beyond that it's up to each distro, i.e., each OS to provide an appropriate user experience

 

This is silly. It's silly for the reason that you gave at the start of your post - because Linux is a brand, and that brand is not perceived by 99% of potential users as just the kernel! This comes back to my point - Linux branding is poor.

And this is not a trivial thing: an important part of a brand is a potential users' expectation of a product before he uses it. In the Linux world this shot to hell by the variances between distros.

Yes, and that's a large part of the problem.

 

There is a big problem - no mainstream Linux distribution.
For example, if I create a program that is supposed to work on Linux, I have to test its compatibility with this and that distribution. Then I have to create .rpm and .deb compiled packages; but they will depend on other packages that are different for different systems.

I admire Google's approach. It creates web-applications that can be downloaded from their web-site, and now you even can use them off-line.
The idea "write once, run on each OS" hasn't worked before. I hope for the better future.

I hope that Google's Chrome OS will be compatible with the hardware of Aspire One. Then I'll just click on a couple of buttons and update OpenOffice, Firefox, and select and install hundreds of useful programs without any headache.

 

Users are not aware, what linux can do, there are no compatibility issues, with MS Office(try crossover office, cedega, crossover games, wine, etc....). It is true, that sometimes is hard to get the driver for the newest hardware, because all hardware companies, don't want to share their electronic in GNU world, to let someone write a driver, because it would be possible to copy the electronics itself.
In science, there is almost no other OS, than linux. If there is something still missed out of Desktop PC wold, everyone can help the community and write a program for FREE.
Linux is what you want it to be. Server OS, Workstation OS, Desktop PC, ....., you build the system you need.