RE: Linux killer!

[Timothy A. Holmes]

-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-list-bounces(a)redhat.com
[mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of STYMA, ROBERT E
(ROBERT)
Sent: Monday, October 31, 2005 11:21 AM
To: 'Robin.Laing(a)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
Jeremiah 29:11
Esther 4:14

Linux killer!

[Rahul Sundaram]

Hi

> 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)
>   
>  
That case study makes up for nice reading but all of the technical 
enhancement requests should go into Fedora bugzilla for it to reach the 
appropriate developers.  If there are licensing conflicts there might be 
other good solutions. For example, mp3 is well supported by Real Player 
or the Fluendo pack.  If there is a no way to produce a open source 
solution that fits your needs you might need to get a commercial product.

regards
Rahul

Linux killer!

[Markus Huber]

Timothy A. Holmes schrieb:

>  I think the point is that if Linux is to make a bigger dent in the
>  Windows desktop, more things have to "just work". 
Depends what you want. I surely can live without DRM provided by the 
entertainment industrie, and if I want it, I still can use some Windows 
somewhere. But on the boxes which I use for work or non entertainment 
internet connection, I'd prefer a malware and DRM free environment like 
the one Linux distributions are providing at the moment.

Regards
Markus Huber

Linux killer!

[Derek Martin]

On Mon, Oct 31, 2005 at 11:42:15AM -0500, Timothy A. Holmes wrote:
>  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) 
Nice work. 

I believe a lot of the associations could be solved quite easily.  Has
Mozilla decided to look at /etc/mime.types (and/or users' own
.mime.types files)?  IIRC there was a time when it did not, but I
thought that was supposed to be fixed.  If so (or even if not), you're
right, the distribution could easily provide better defaults for that
stuff, a frustration I had for a long time...  I decided to get around
it by ignoring the whole issue, as I rarely have a real need to view
most media types.  Usually I just ignore them.  It works, but it's far
from an ideal solution. ;-)

To be honest, I dislike acrobat.  I only use it when I absolutely must
view a PDF file, and gpdf won't do it, which to date has never
happened that I can recall.  I used to have a hard time with xpdf
opening PDFs made with recent versions of adobe acrobat, but that was
quite a while ago.  Have you tried gpdf?  It should come
pre-installed, and I think the interface is much nicer than Acrobat
for Linux.

How did you install Java?  I'd agree that the symlinks should be
created for you by the installer... you shouldn't have to do that
manually.  Also some of the plugins' installers want to install in
version-specific plugins directories, when it would be MUCH easier for
the machine's maintainer (specifically avoiding using the term
"sysadmin" here) if they would install them in the version-generic
plugins directory (e.g. /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins instead of
/usr/local/mozilla-x.x.x/plugins).  Then when you upgrade your
browser, you don't need to reinstall/copy/link/etc. the plugins all
over again.  Very annoying, and so easy to fix.

This was a nice read, and I agree with a lot of your conclusions.

-- 
Derek D. Martin
http://www.pizzashack.org/
GPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D

Linux killer!

[Tim]

On Mon, 2005-10-31 at 11:42 -0500, Timothy A. Holmes wrote:
>  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)  
I think that all depends on what you need to do.

Earlier it was discussed how to do something that the school did not
want to happen.  For some reason, not being able to flout that rule was
seen as a bad point.

If a school needed a system where students can research on the internet
(browse and e-mail) but not play silly games, and use a word processor
to type up their work, another program to mess with artwork, edit audio
files for music studies, etc.  Then it can do it.  It is a good
workhorse.

To me, it's the ideal thing to advocate to parents who wanted a PC so
their child could do their homework, but not waste time and money on
toys, games, and have to cope with an abundance of spyware, malware,
etc.  

It does the work.  The user has to learn useful information to be able
to mess around with games, and that's far more educational than just
installing a game on Windows.  But if they can't be bothered to learn
about computing, then it's a tool that does the job mum and dad got it
for.

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