Language Selection

English French German Italian Portuguese Spanish

Thoughts: Where is Linux Going?

Filed under
Just talk

http://blog.therealdavidfield.com/blog/2009/9/13/thoughts-where-is-linux-going.html

My first ventures into Linux were way back in 1995 with a copy of Red Hat, and i'll put my hands up, i just didn't get it, command line, when Windows had a GUI, nothing seemed to work, and a strange command set, but even back then, not understanding Linux, and wondering what the fuss was about, i will say, i was very aware of what this ment to the industry, and knew it was important.

I have always had a penchant for "Alternative Operating systems" when people i worked with were using Windows, i would insist on using OS2, even back in the days of DOS, i was an avid Gem user.

It wasn't really until 2000 that i got an opportunity to really get my teeth into Linux, working on a project to get IT into a school, there was no buget, and Fedora solved many problems, and caused many more, however something i learnt with this mini project of setting up a SMB server, 4 Windows PC's which needed to attach to a Domain Controller (SMB Server on Fedora) and a LAMPP stack to run Moodle. has stuck with me ever since.

Linux is not Windows, you do not sit down at a Linux PC, and expect everything to work, you do not have an expectation with new hardware that the install will go a smooth as an OEM windows install. this is just a basic fact of life with Linux, and if Linux users are brutally honest, its half the appeal to Linux as an OS, it makes you think, its why we got into IT to start with, the challenge.

Linux in recent years however seems to, and this is Desktop Linux i'm referring to, taken a turn for th worst, and there is a simple reason for this.. Windows Users.

Windows is an OS found on the vast majority of PC's out in the wild, its got many well documented issues, poor security model, bugs, virus and spyware prone, apps crash and take out the whole system. However it is used by just about every company out there, because the untrained PC user, knows how to grab a mouse, double click, and open an application, and this is expected of users.

The problem starts however when it comes to general maintenance of their systems, be it in the office or at home. Most home users will be logging into thier system as Administrator, even it that account is hidden by another name, so have the ability to do most things on thier PC's and are used to that.

Also when most Windows users buy a PC, it is delivered them, if not with Windows preinstalled, then most of the system is, and its just a few licence questions on the OEM version they are using.

Microsoft does a very good job of shielding the user in the first instance from the workings of a PC.

However, the 7 year old XP system, which most computer users who are not IT related consider to be "the only OS" because they don't really know of anything else, was superseded by Vista, and this introduced a whole subsection of novice PC users to the Upgrade, which in most cases did not go very well, 20hrs, system failures, and drivers not working, cobbled together with even the popular press slating the OS in the newspapers, created a strange phenomenon, compared to the previous few years in the IT industry.

USer shift, suddenly users who were Windows XP lovers, were having issues with Vista, and started, slowly at first looking for alternatives.. and not wanting to buy new hardware, found Ubuntu, which has become the byword for Linux amongst the non technical computer user community.

This was seen as great for the Linux community, as a whole, groups of Windows users coming over to Linux, Vista was a nightmare, and on the whole all good.

Indeed there have been more improvements in the last 3 years to Desktop Linux distributions i would personally say, than in the many years before, by which i'm referring to usability enhancements, the simple things, Codecs being installed on GNOME, restricted hardware being detected on install, and downloaded and installed for you, and the recent Ubuntu 100 paper-cuts project will improve usability even further.

However, all is not good across the board, rom where i sit, this influx of Windows users coming over to the Linux world, has cause issues as well, Windows users are not used to the ways of the Penguin, you see things are different for Linux Users,

  • Systems don't come with Linux preinstalled
  • Drivers may not have been written for all the hardware on your PC
  • Codecs, we use many more than just the WMV and FLASH you may have been used to
  • The Kid next door, might not be able to tweak Linux the same way he could XP

Essentially you are now in a situation where the availability of help requires you to look on the internet, ask well formed questions, and not tell everyone how Linux should be more like Windows.

This has resulted in many people, who don't know better slating Linux/Ubuntu because it involves thinking, and they don't want to do this, it has also meant that netbooks are not the golden hardware of the Linux world.

And this has prompted my question "Where is linux going?"

It seems to me that Linux wishes to compete with Windows on Microsofts terms, it seems to be playing the trumpet of Linux if better, use it, or be stupid, and this is all wrong. in my opinion anyway.

Remember what i said before about Linux, you don't install it and expect it just to work, that is the strength of the OS as a whole, it was used by technical people, and focused on what they wanted from a desktop, and lets face it, being told by a Windows user that Linux wasn't very good, wasn't an issue, because you knew the windows user was a plank.

However in competing with Windows, Linux/Ubuntu is becoming windows, and by doing that, is going to cuase itself many problems.

Most people started to use Ubuntu back in the early days because it was innovating, changing, different at a desktop level, the last few releases however, have been unimpressive service packs, nothing providing the must have that factor, sure many fixes, under the hood improvements, but nothing WOW!!! Just when Linux needed those industry lines, conversations and plaudits, for doing it better, different and cleaner, the flagship distro seems to have decided to just roll out bland updates.

I wonder if this is a reaction to all those converts of Windows users looking to dumb down our OS, and slow down those revolutionary updates?

I also read fears of botnets based on Linux, because we have dumbed the security model down on desktop Linux to accommodate those Windows users who don't understand security models (remember, the dault user is setup as admin).

If Ubuntu, and i will say ubuntu, as it is the defacto linux "brand" Distro, keeps dumbing down the desktop, security and OS as a whole, they are going to lose those users who made it so popular, and be stuck with a whole bunch of users who want a Windows replacement.

Linux is a tech persons distro, not a home users, it requires thought, and patience. because it provides security, and peace of mind.. Linux is not Windows.

For me, BSD and Opensolaris are both looking like alternatives to Linux..

More in Tux Machines

digiKam 7.7.0 is released

After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release. Read more

Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand

Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech

The metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world. Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility. Read more

today's howtos

  • How to install go1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04 – NextGenTips

    In this tutorial, we are going to explore how to install go on Ubuntu 22.04 Golang is an open-source programming language that is easy to learn and use. It is built-in concurrency and has a robust standard library. It is reliable, builds fast, and efficient software that scales fast. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel-type systems enable flexible and modular program constructions. Go compiles quickly to machine code and has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. In this guide, we are going to learn how to install golang 1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04. Go 1.19beta1 is not yet released. There is so much work in progress with all the documentation.

  • molecule test: failed to connect to bus in systemd container - openQA bites

    Ansible Molecule is a project to help you test your ansible roles. I’m using molecule for automatically testing the ansible roles of geekoops.

  • How To Install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9 - idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, MongoDB is a high-performance, highly scalable document-oriented NoSQL database. Unlike in SQL databases where data is stored in rows and columns inside tables, in MongoDB, data is structured in JSON-like format inside records which are referred to as documents. The open-source attribute of MongoDB as a database software makes it an ideal candidate for almost any database-related project. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the MongoDB NoSQL database on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

  • An introduction (and how-to) to Plugin Loader for the Steam Deck. - Invidious
  • Self-host a Ghost Blog With Traefik

    Ghost is a very popular open-source content management system. Started as an alternative to WordPress and it went on to become an alternative to Substack by focusing on membership and newsletter. The creators of Ghost offer managed Pro hosting but it may not fit everyone's budget. Alternatively, you can self-host it on your own cloud servers. On Linux handbook, we already have a guide on deploying Ghost with Docker in a reverse proxy setup. Instead of Ngnix reverse proxy, you can also use another software called Traefik with Docker. It is a popular open-source cloud-native application proxy, API Gateway, Edge-router, and more. I use Traefik to secure my websites using an SSL certificate obtained from Let's Encrypt. Once deployed, Traefik can automatically manage your certificates and their renewals. In this tutorial, I'll share the necessary steps for deploying a Ghost blog with Docker and Traefik.