Collection of Interesting Articles on OSS

[thewisecrab]

The Upper-Mid-Range: The “Set It and Forget It” User
That's where I belong

[amitabhishek]

Nice initiative Rahim Bhai. This will give much needed CPR to this section. I have not read the articles but will surely do in leisure.

BTW where is NucleusKore uncle ? We are missing his tuts and news posts?

[a_rahim]

^Thanks
But even I am feeling disillusioned at the state of this section now.
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@wiseone: I am trying to get into "The Power User" Category

[a_rahim]

Five ways the Linux desktop shoots itself in the foot

I don't just write about the Linux desktop; I use it every day. At my desk, I tend to use MEPIS and Mint, while on the road, it's Ubuntu on my Dell netbook and openSUSE on my Lenovo ThinkPad. I do this because they work well and they're as safe as a desktop operating system can get. So why aren't more people using them?

Microsoft is the biggest reason. Microsoft is a jealous monopoly that doesn't want to share the desktop with anyone. Desktop Linux is just another target in a long list that has included OS/2, DR-DOS, and -- that eternal thorn in their side -- the Mac. It's no surprise, then, to see in the history of the Linux desktop that Microsoft has always tried to crush it.

The very first attempt at a mass-market Linux desktop, 1999's Corel Linux Desktop, lasted less than a year. Why? In 2000, Microsoft paid off debt-ridden Corel to kill it.

Much more recently, Microsoft, caught by surprise by the rise of Linux-powered netbooks, brought XP Home back from the dead and offered it to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) for next to nothing to stem Linux's rise on low-end netbooks.

It's hard to beat a monopoly that will do whatever it takes to make sure people don't see there's a better, cheaper alternative. I understand that. At the same time, Linux has shot itself in the foot quite often. How?

1) Lack of Linux vendor support

Every Linux distribution has a desktop version. But how many of them actively try to sell them? Not many. Red Hat is the number one Linux vendor, but makes its hundreds of millions from the server, not from the desktop. Canonical, Ubuntu's parent company, has arguably the most popular Linux desktop, but if you look closely, you'll see its hopes for making significant profits lie in server and cloud-based services.

Only Novell, with SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop), tries to make a real business out of the desktop. For everyone else, the desktop gets a lot of lip service, but it's not really part of their core business plans.

2) Lack of Linux advertising and marketing

Companies like IBM and Oracle have made billions from Linux. Along the way, they've spent some advertising and marketing dollars on Linux. But neither they nor anyone else have spent more than pocket change on promoting the Linux desktop.

Think about it. If you use the Linux desktop, chances are you're a techie who deliberately sought it out. Even now, most people have never even heard of Ubuntu, never mind any of the rest.

3) Too much bad techie attitude

In 2009, any reasonably smart person can use any major Linux distribution without much trouble. You can run Linux without ever seeing a shell or manually tuning a conf file. But what if someone new does run into a problem with installing Adobe Flash and asks for help online?

If he or she is lucky, they'll get a considerable and informative answer from an Ubuntu forum or LinuxQuestions. But all too often, I've seen such questions answered with responses like "RTFM you noob! What are you doing running that trash distro anyway! It's GNU/Linux, not Linux!"

Yeah, that's going to encourage new users. If you don't have anything nice and informative to say to new Linux users, then don't say anything. Far too many Linux users seem to confuse acting superior and being rude with how people should act online. It's not.

4) Too much infighting

In a little over a week, Windows 7 is coming out. So, what are hardcore Linux users doing to get ready for the coming of the next major threat to the Linux desktop? A lot of them are fighting about whether Miguel de Icaza, founder of the GNOME and the Mono implementation of .NET on Linux, is "a traitor to the Free Software community."

This is just the latest chapter in the ongoing fight between free-software purists and open-source pragmatists. It's an obnoxious little war that's been flaming up over one personality or issue or another for ages now. I am so tired of this bickering — and more to the point, no one outside of certain developer circles cares. What does matter that is anyone from the outside looking in sees not a group of rational people working to create great systems, but a bunch of loonies fighting over ideological issues.

While otherwise bright people continue to squabble, Microsoft keeps quietly gaining more mind-share and users every day. Good work team!

5) Not enough developer co-operation

Back in 2005, a miracle happened. Linux desktop developers from feuding camps came together in the Portland Project and found out that, when they talked to each other face to face instead of screaming at each other over IRC (Internet Relay Chat), they had more in common than they ever would have believed. The result was a lot of useful cooperation between KDE and GNOME Linux developers.

That's the good news. The bad news is, after two years of working together well, the programmers began drifting away again to work on their own little development islands. There are still efforts afoot to keep Linux desktop programming coordination going, but it's nothing as concrete as it once was.

If Linux is to attract more ISV (independent software vendors) to make desktop programs, the desktop programmers must keep working on interoperability. No ISV wants to write one version of their program for Debian, another for Fedora, and yet another for openSUSE. If the Linux desktop developers keep wandering apart from each other, we'll lose those ISVs, like Adobe, that are willing to release some programs for Linux. That, in turn, will make desktop Linux less attractive to end-users.

If Linux gets all these things right, will it stop the Windows desktop monopoly? Nope. But it will be a good start towards making desktop Linux more competitive. If nothing else, making sure that users always have a good, inexpensive alternative to Windows will always be a worthwhile goal.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Cyber Cynic

[Cool G5]

M$ k bhi bure din aayenge. Windows 7 a threat to Linux desktop? I don't think so!

[thewisecrab]

Most Linux users us the various distros out of choice and their own free will. It would be wrong to say that Win7 will affect this attitude. Sure, there are many who actually rip the kernel apart and code as well, but for the lay man (like most of us, or more importantly me), it'll be the curiosity to check out and make something that's different to work that will drive their interest in Linux to a higher level.

Win7 has nothing to do with it.

[a_rahim]

^Both of you should read into the various reasons given for Linux's problem and not just Win 7 is a threat. Linux will never be a threat to Windows if simple things are not ironed out. Linux developers and users, sometimes ,live in their own fish aquarium and doesn't want to accept their own catch-22 situation.

Linux Distros should be backed by more powerful companies, otherwise the independence of the developers, would actually harm the OS as they lacks a concrete focus and path. They give their services for free, agreed; but the devs are working too much away from each other.

But yes Linux is growing, albeit at snail's pace, but it has a long way to go from being a secondary OS in one's Grub menu, to being the only OS in one's system.

Heck, good articles are so hard to find :@

[Krow]

Windows 7 is not a threat to linux desktop. It is a threat to vista and xp. Most people will still prefer to boot linux as a secondary OS just to keep viruses at bay or some like me who use linux while studying so as to keep away from games.

Windows 7 is a threat to mass adoption of linux yes, but linux won't lose any of the users it has already. So many who move to linux as a secondary system stick to it. I doubt if linux will lose users due to Windows 7.

On the other hand, you guys have been nice to me in my ongoing learning process, so point 3 is invalid for here at least.

[Cool G5]

Originally Posted by Techalomaniac

Windows 7 is not a threat to linux desktop. It is a threat to vista and xp. Most people will still prefer to boot linux as a secondary OS just to keep viruses at bay or some like me who use linux while studying so as to keep away from games.

Windows 7 is a threat to mass adoption of linux yes, but linux won't lose any of the users it has already. So many who move to linux as a secondary system stick to it. I doubt if linux will lose users due to Windows 7.

On the other hand, you guys have been nice to me in my ongoing learning process, so point 3 is invalid for here at least.

Not a threat for XP definitely since MS is implementing it on netbooks & have even extended its support. So you can safely say it will be with us for a long time to come. Many organisations/firms have XP in their premises & overhauling all XP machines to Windows 7 is not needed especially when all their work is being done efficiently under XP. Not to mention business don't need all those multimedia & snazzy AERO effects.

Vista will surely be affected & will phase out. Regarding Linux, they have GNOME 3 desktop coming, KDE is now a matured product & then the ultra fast 10 secs bootup of Ubuntu & to follow on Fedora 12. It can't get better than this for the OSS.

[Krow]

Plus there are no attitude problems on some Indian forums too. Well, XP will go I'm sure, but maybe 7 will become ordinary later on when no one uses x86 OS anymore.

[Ratnadeep]

I recently used windows 7 RC. First one week or two was nice(because of looks). And then started typical windows problems as slow responses, viruses (and so on this). One more important thing, seeing my KDE desktop after watching Windows 7, one of my friend argued that it is windows 7 and not linux..
So after Mac, Netscape, it's linux (or already copied KDE) to be copied by M$ ??

[Cool G5]

Windows always is fast when one installs it without any software. But it becomes laggy upon use. I'm not saying its bad but MS should improve upon this front. Let's see today is a big day for MS, hope they atleast clean the bad impression left by windows vista.

[a_rahim]

I have used Windows for so long and you believe me, never ever was infested by a virus. So when people complain about viruses on Windows, I just think why that didn't happened to me.
Linux will always be in a nascent stage and thats not a bad thing :P

[Krow]

Well, the W7 taskbar is a rip off of KDE and the Mac Dock. Otherwise it is running good for me. Yeah, viruses have not plagued me either since October 2007. Lin is much more hassle free to me at least. Some may say that it is tough to get used to and buggy, but I disagree. When I first learnt using Windows, I had faced many problems, just like I did when I first used Linux.

[Ratnadeep]

Ya one can remain unaffected by viruses on windows with a genuine copy of antivirus which is frequently upgraded.. otherwise a windows installation can't survive more than 4 months...for me it never never never worked well above 3 months.. 3 months and complete reinstallion or repair or it's irritatingly slow..

[Krow]

^I use AVG Free 8.5, which is good enough for me. Also, user stupidity is mostly the cause for viruses to enter the system. No need for paid antivirus software. But, updates are necessary.

[j1n M@tt]

^^AVG Free edition is good, but it will only Quarantine viruses...in almost all cases it wont disinfect files which are already virus infected.

IMO use BitDefender or Kaspersky Internet security. They are only 600/- for 3 user licence.

[Ratnadeep]

<font size="5"><div align="center">Who Needs Windows 7 When You've Got KDE?</div></font>

As a devoted free software user, I'm almost as likely to stick my hand down a running garbarator as buy a copy of Windows 7. In fact, so far, I haven't tried Windows 7. But if its features list is any indication, I'm missing little that I don't already have with the latest version of the KDE desktop.

Of course, exactly what Windows 7's new features are can be difficult to tell. The features list is as much a marketing document as a technical one. In places it's more apt to give you an overdose of adjectives than any specifics. Nor is every feature available in every edition of Windows 7.

Then, too, a few listed features, such as 64-bit support, are so far from new that I wonder why they are mentioned.

Another difficulty is the sheer scope of the comparison. A desktop is a big place, and you can easily miss features because on one desktop they are part of a default installation and on another they are an option squirreled away beneath several layers of menus.
Still, when such matters are taken into account, in terms of features, Windows 7 appears a minor upgrade at best. Judging from the advertising, it has no killer apps that outperform KDE, and its few unique features may turn out to be oddities rather than genuinely useful features.

Windows 7 bests KDE mainly in administrative tools, and even here the advantage is counter-balanced by standard features that KDE has had for years.
Desktop experiences

The most important feature that Windows 7 has and KDE lacks appears to be BitLocker, a utility for driver encryption. By contrast, while a feature for directory encryption is just being introduced in an unpolished form in Ubuntu, so far, no corresponding tool is standard with most distributions, let alone with KDE.

Otherwise, the difference on the desktop is slim. In fact in many cases, Windows 7 is just catching up to KDE.
Translucencies? Animations? Thumbnail previews of applications on the taskbar? KDE already has them, although Windows 7 does add to the usability of previews by allowing you to view them full-screen.

The same goes for widgets -- or gadgets, as Windows 7 calls them. The feature lists boasts that these minor utilities are no longer confined to a taskbar and can now be placed anywhere on the desktop, but that's old news to KDE users.

Ditto for running applications from the taskbar. As for measurement conversions, the only difference is that KDE has been doing them in KRunner and Windows 7 does them in its calculator.

Move on to applications, and in many cases Windows 7 is still behind. Why would anyone consider the clutter of Windows Media Player when they could use the rich feature sets of Amarok or Digikam? Windows Media Player would have to be utterly transformed to compete seriously against applications that are the ultimate in their categories.

And use Internet Explorer instead of Firefox? Whether you are talking in terms of native features or the ecosystems of extensions built around them, Internet Explorer is barely in the running, especially if you want to do things exactly your way.

Admittedly, much is being made in Windows 7 reviews of Aero Peek, Aero Shake, and Snap.

Yet, despite all the attention they are receiving, these sound like small features: Peek turns all open windows translucent, so that you can see the desktop, while with Shake you can jiggle the mouse to make all except the active window disappear. Yet another solution for desktop chaos is embodied in Snap, which allows you to drag windows to the edges of the desktop to resize and position them.

While such features may astonish Windows users, for KDE users, these are only specific implementations of features that they already know -- translucencies, mouse gestures and hot spots on the edges.

The features may not be available for exactly the same purposes as in Windows 7, but they are recognizably the same technology -- for instance, you can make a window translucent as you move it to see what is beneath.

Nor are they the only ways to move and organize windows, as browsing through the wealth of settings in KDE's Windows Behavior settings soon proves. You might very well be better able to organize your desktop just as effectively without Peek, Shake, or Snap.

I suspect, too, that Shake and Snap in particular are going to alarm users who move the mouse in a careless moment and see their open windows disappear or change size. But even if that is not so, the point is that Windows 7 is advertising nothing on the desktop that KDE either does not have or could not easily add if anyone cared to make the effort.
Administration Tools versus Still-Missing Features

In some cases, such as wireless connections, Windows 7 and KDE offer almost identical tools. Still, there is no denying that, compared to earlier releases, the KDE 4.x series is still light in administration tools. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that Windows 7 has parental controls and location-specific printing, but KDE does not seem to be even working on parental controls, and is scheduled to introduce geolocation features over the next couple of releases.
However, you can borrow administration tools from GNOME if KDE lacks them, and, in its next release in January 2010, KDE should allow you to change not only printers according to settings, but icon sets and other desktop features as well.

In other cases, Windows 7's main advantage is more in the interface than in actual features. In particular, Windows 7 has a habit of slapping a wizard on top of routine tasks, such as configuring a printer, or accessing remote desktops.

For example, Windows Easy Transfer is a wizard to assist switching from an old computer to a new one. Similarly, Windows 7 includes a Getting Started window for configuring a new computer. Other examples of this kind of repackaging include Jump Lists (separate favorite lists for applications) and Libraries (collections of links on the desktop). While these tools are trivial refinements, you might legitimately argue that KDE would benefit from more such features for first-time users.

However, many such interfaces -- especially the administrative ones -- are likely to be used occasionally at best. For most users, I suspect they matter far less than the number of features in KDE that are still not standard in Windows.
I am thinking now of features like multiple desktops and activities, or a multiple-entry clipboard for the entire desktop (MS Word has had one to itself for some time), or an external device manager. I'm thinking, too, of customization options for everything you can imagine, including three separate menu designs, and dozens of compositing effects.

While Windows 7 seems to have made some improvements in customization, such as configurable notifications, I see no signs that it has caught up to KDE. Although some of the areas in which KDE has the advantage are non-essential, I suspect they are far more important to many users than a lack of occasionally-used administrative tools.
Rival Desktops

I don't pretend that I am unbiased in this comparison. If nothing else, Windows 7's proprietary license would keep me away from it. But if that is all that you take from my comments, then you’ve missed the point.

The point is that, contrary to widespread belief, the free desktop is no longer struggling to equal its proprietary rivals. Instead, it is approximately equal and in some ways ahead.
Yes, you can point to a genuine Windows advantage here and there. But you can also find examples where KDE had features first, or has superior ones. Nor, where Windows 7's advertised features are ahead of KDE's, do they have such a lead that KDE could not implement equivalent features almost immediately. I suspect that the same would be more or less true of GNOME, although I judge it slightly behind KDE in features.

Of course, I might change this opinion after actually using Windows 7. However, I don't think so. The point of advertising is to put the product in the best light, and, if the hype can't make Windows 7 enticing to a KDE user, I doubt that hands-on experience would do any better.

I don't know about anyone else, but I plan to celebrate Windows 7's release day acquainting myself with some of the lesser used features of KDE. Or maybe I'll mark the day by trying a completely different window manager, in recognition of the free desktop's diversity. Either way, I suspect I'll be making better use of my time than exploring Windows 7.

By
Bruce Byfield
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sry for that wrong title formatting..

do we need to take care of anything while copying reference articles here in this thread ? already given writer name though...
(m new here..)

[FilledVoid]

Windows 7 is a threat to mass adoption of linux yes, but linux won't lose any of the users it has already. So many who move to linux as a secondary system stick to it. I doubt if linux will lose users due to Windows 7.

False, Windows isn't a threat whatsoever. Its Linux itself that is a threat. Reasons are quite clearly pointed above.

[Krow]

^Yes, agreed. But, its too less used today, to be a threat as of now.

[Cool G5]

^Don't worry, its progressing slowly but surely.

People have just heard the word "Linux" but most don't know what it means. We need to spread awareness amongst people to make it grow at a rapid pace.

[azzu]

^ spreading awareness yes thats right
but i see people often think that Linux means sumthing that is only used by programmers and console oriented OS
we have to distribute linux (such as Puppyos) to spread awareness and show how user friendly and Graphically good the Linux can be

[Cool G5]

Originally Posted by azzu

^ spreading awareness yes thats right
but i see people often think that Linux means sumthing that is only used by programmers and console oriented OS
we have to distribute linux (such as Puppyos) to spread awareness and show how user friendly and Graphically good the Linux can be

It started its journey as being a Geek's OS but it has now comfortably reached the level where any normal computer user can work with ease. You're right we should make them use Linux & then it won't take too long for them to decide whether to continue using it or not.

[Krow]

Most people use PC's for merely browsing the net and playing occasional flash games. They work on word files and thats the toughest work they do on PC's. Such people are the primary targets for Linux usage as of now due to lack of major game support. For gamers, lin is but a secondary OS.

[Ratnadeep]

do we need to take care of anything while copying reference articles from some blogs here in this thread ? In one above i already given writer name though...
(m new here..)

[a_rahim]

Welcome Ratnadeep
It is better to mention the source of the Article. A little bit of formatting makes the article presentable and easy to read.
Hoping for more interesting articles from you.

[Ratnadeep]

Yes, Ubuntu can absolutely be the default Windows alternative

And I don’t just mean for geeks. I mean a real, viable alternative to Windows for many users despite the apparent quality of both Windows 7 and Server 2008.


About a year and a half ago, ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes asked, “Is Ubuntu becoming the generic Linux distro?” and concluded that “the evolution of Ubuntu into the generic Linux distro isn’t a bad thing”. Fair enough, but Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth took this idea a bit farther during a press conference call yesterday:

“We’ve already done a lot of work in developer ecosystem and we’re now increasingly interested in the non-developer consumer ecosystem, so that’s what all the OEM work is about,” Shuttleworth said, declaring that his focus was on “making sure that Ubuntu gets pre-installed and Ubuntu is available from Dell.com and others and making sure that Ubuntu is the default alternative to Windows.”

He didn’t mention Apple, which, to many consumers, is the only alternative to Windows. For all its buzz in the tech world, Linux (or Ubuntu) is hardly a household word. Competing with Apple, though, which already has an impressive ecosystem of hardware and is the reigning king of usability, doesn’t make sense anyway and this ad from Novell would never fly outside of the tech community:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDgEd...layer_embedded

So how can I be so confident that Shuttleworth’s vision of becoming the “default alternative”, and not just the default Linux for those geeky enough to try it, will become a reality? Because he very clearly tied it to a vision of platform. If Ubuntu can work well on every device users encounter (including non-Intel smartbooks and other new classes of portable devices that will be emerging in the next couple of years, displacing notebooks for many consumers), then name recognition will follow.
Obviously, the PC space is dominated by Windows. Yet no matter how spiffy Windows 7 is (and even Shuttleworth acknowledged that it was a good OS, worthy of competing with Ubuntu), Vista taught us all a lesson (consumers and techies alike). There are alternatives to the latest and greatest from Microsoft, even if that’s Windows XP. We don’t have to upgrade.



This “PC space” is changing, though. Windows Mobile stinks. Microsoft has no plans to develop Windows on ARM platforms. The cloud is here, not because of the economy, but because of the value businesses perceive in it. Ubuntu is actively developing in all of these spaces and their latest, highly polished OS (available Thursday) shows off many of the technologies.


What forced Microsoft to crank out it’s best OS in years (some might say it’s best ever and certainly the most stable prior to a service pack or two)? Competition. Competition from Apple, certainly, but also a growing awareness of open source concepts in general. Many artists are releasing DRM-free music (and still making money). Books are widely and freely available. Content is everywhere, much of it for free. Something that you pay for, then, like Windows, better be a heck of a lot better than its free alternatives. Competition is our friend, whether we’re consumers, pro users, or CIOs.

Microsoft may very well continue to dominate the desktop PC space. However, a quick look around at the variety of ways people access online content and cloud-based resources suggests that the importance of the desktop PC as we know it is diminishing. Ubuntu is ready to capitalize on that in ways that the average consumer won’t recognize until he or she finds him or herself using Ubuntu on a MID, a netbook, a kiosk, a phone, a virtualized OS, or a smartbook. Can Apple, Microsoft, or any other Linux distributor say that? Competition might be our friend, but an ubiquitous platform is the friend of developers who can start creating the next generation of killer apps, easily ported to whatever screen we might be using.

Article by: Christopher Dawson
Original article here
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A free Open-Source Magazine http://www.opensourc3.org/
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Posted again:
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A free Open-Source Magazine http://www.opensourc3.org/

[Cool G5]

Ubuntu indeed has the potential to be the killer OS to replace windows on home PC.
Given the ridiculous ease of use & huge community support, home users need not to worry about about getting in any problems.

[drsubhadip]

ya .. ubuntu 9.10 is great..