Penguinistas Group Blog

2006 Desktop Linux Results

Thursday, August 31, 2006 12:41 PM

Here are the results from the 2006 Desktop Linux Market survey and the article about the results.

I always find this kind of thing interesting, mostly just out of curiosity. Ubuntu seems to be dominating today, but I personally hope it continues to grow to somewhere a little above 50%. I'm one of those who believe choice is definitely good, but too much choice is can cause chaos. Although things like the Linux standard base might help with this (although LSB seems to have had some problems, but still the idea and projects like it seem like they could really help), if one distro can maintain 50% or more marketshare, I think 3rd parties would be much more inclined to write drivers/commercial software that would be easy to install and setup. yep, commercial software - while I don't think we should have to pay for core software like the operating system, commercial software is very important for certain applications...

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Jet

Ubuntu 6.06 previewed

Monday, April 17, 2006 2:35 PM

Yeah, I'm an Ubuntu guy (Kubuntu actually), and here's an interesting review of their next version, 6.06. It's gonna be sweeet. I'm running it, it's getting pretty close to final now and have tons of new features over the 5.10 release.
http://madpenguin.org/cms/html/47/6699.html

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Kevin

Helpful Linux How-To

Tuesday, February 21, 2006 12:18 PM

A helpful Linux How-To from...Microsoft?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314458/EN-US/

Ha ha.

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Jet

My Decision - KDE vs Gnome

Wednesday, December 14, 2005 10:18 AM

Linus Torvald came out with his opinion on the battle, and I've made mine. After using Gnome for 4-5 months regularly now, I completely agree with Linus and found his arguments fit the reason I've left Gnome perfectly, and I'm now using KDE (and loving it). I wanted to support Gnome, I liked the idea of it's LGPL license and such, but in reality, KDE is just so much more powerful, feels just as smooth or smoother to me, and the options and things are like to configure are all there. I'll quote Linus here in his two replies since I believe he puts it so well, a link to the slashdot article is also provided. He definitely speaks his mind, no holding back!

Link to /.

> Frederic told that the options from the PPD file are intentionally mot
> listed in the printing dialog, the usability team of GNOME was against
> listing these options. They clutter the dialog and can be more confusing
> than useful to the user.

I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.

This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of 
Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will 
use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long 
since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do.

Please, just tell people to use KDE. 

		Linus

> That's definitely not a point of view of the GNOME Project - we're focused
> on making Free Software appropriate for users who are smart (we don't talk
> about 'dumb users'), but just don't care about computing technology. We're
> just like every other Free Software project - fixing stuff requires the work
> and attention of people who care about the problem at hand.

No. I've talked to people, and often your "fixes" are actually removing 
capabilities that you had, because they were "too confusing to the user".

That's _not_ like any other open source project I know about. Gnome seems 
to be developed by interface nazis, where consistently the excuse for not 
doign something is not "it's too complicated to do", but "it would confuse 
users".

The current example of "intentionally not listed in the printing dialog, 
the usability team of GNOME was against listing these options." is clearly 
not the exception, but the rule.

Jeff, if the explanation had been "exposing PPD features is too hard, we 
need developer manpower", I'd have understood. THAT is what open source 
projects tend to say. Not "powerful interfaces might confuse users and not 
look nice".

If this was a one-off, I'd buy it. But I've heard it too damn many times. 
And only ever from Gnome. 

The reason I don't use Gnome: every single other window manager I know of 
is very powerfully extensible, where you can switch actions to different 
mouse buttons. Guess which one is not, because it might confuse the poor 
users? Here's a hint: it's not the small and fast one.

And when I tell people that, they tend to nod, and have some story of 
their own why they had a feature they used to use, but it was removed 
because it might have been confusing.

Same with the file dialog. Apparently it's too "confusing" to let users 
just type the filename. So gnome forces you to do the icon selection 
thing, never mind that it's a million times slower.

			Linus

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1. Posted by

Will

This arguement points to the exact reason Linux has not caught on beyond engineers, scientists and geeks. No offense Jet, but people like us are helping to cause Linux to fail to reach the broader market. We assume that everyone is as technically inclined as we are. I use KDE because it's just friggen faster than gnome, but then again, I have a CS degree from Princeton. I am NOT normal.

When developing software, you have to treat the outside world like it is hell bent on your destruction. And that includes having to basically assume that you have to assume that the majority of users will do something dumb to break the software. In most markets, the customer is always right, with software, the customer is always stupid. I hate having to say it, but in order to develop for the masses (which I believe is one of gnomes goals), you must assume that the majority of people WILL do something dumb.

But yeah, Gnome does suck. It's slow; it's bloated; and it's just plain ugly. I'm glad to see that people are finally seeing it.

12/14/2005 1:46 PM

2. Posted by

Jet

I'd have to disagree with your first sentence: the reason why linux has not caught on is lack of seemless driver support and bugs in the software available for it - any linux newbie thread or conversation always leads to people complaining about drivers/sound engines/video acceleration etc. If those newbies who get turned away from Linux for the driver support reasons were not (as I was frequently in the past), Linux would already have a sizeable market share.
Software development for linux should focus on those people most likely to use it (yes, many are more of the 'power' user type), once those users are converted the subset of users likely to use it will naturally grow, and focus can be shifted as necessary. I think a post on /. ads to this nicely, also. I particularly think his second paragraph is hilarious.
"
And no, I don't consider a study conducted with people who are absolute computer illiterate (not knowing that the right mouse button is good for something) representative. They are a very specific subset of users, they are NOT the majority, and making design decisions based on experiments conducted on this very small subset of the userbase is WRONG. That is Linus' point. Is he politically correct? Of course not (" This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it.")

My girlfriend is absolutely computer illiterate: she thinks (well, thought) that Office is the OS that runs on his laptop. Being lazy and all she often sits down to my computer (instead of opening her laptop) to browse the net. Sometimes she doesn't even notice that instead of firefox, she is using konqueror. There is a small set of functionality that users expect at specific areas of your screen: first buttons should be back and forward, they expect an input field for URLs at the top, maybe a google search bar... and that's it. If they are there, they are not really "confused" because there are additional buttons (kget, print, even cervisia) to the right side. They don't even notice it. It is the same with the file dialog: were users really bothered by the input field? I very much doubt that - and just like Linus, I was not aware of ctrl + L until someone told me here on ./. And in the past years, I hear one bogus "usability" claim from these so called "usability experts" after another (spatial nautilus anyone?) No evidence, no empirical study, just "we say so as usability experts" with some outlandish theory to back it up... so yeah, I think he is right on spot (and yeah, yeah, we know, diplomacy is not his forte).
"

I wouldn't say that Gnome sucks really - I actually thought it was fast and had a nice 'feel', and I had it installed on an old machine too. I just think their ideas on useability are dead wrong.

12/14/2005 2:29 PM

3. Posted by

Robin

While I know many people who fail at linux due to difficulties, most of the people I know who try and fail do so due to the issue that once they have the system up, they can't make it do what they want. Often it's on server-type duties, but that's only an excuse and not a good reason. The driver situation is a real big pain though. ::giant middle fingers pointed toward ati, nvidia, and all wireless gear manufacturers except atheros and ralink::

In many ways Gnome comes from the Mac school of UI design, where they make it really, really simple and for all things their head will remain in their ass until they have a 2% market share and are just a clone of KDE. Of course, that's the same reason why I stopped being a Mac user way back in the day. Granted, even on Windows I'd have to do stupid registry or config editing, but I could do more of what I wanted. That's why I like Linux, if something doesn't work the way I want, worst case I can tweak some code and fix it, if I'm lucky (hasn't happened yet, I guess I'm too kludgy) it gets taken back into the mainline and thrown in the next os release or patch. But that said, I shouldn't have to do much more than click an "advanced" tab or button to get what I want done 99% of the time if the ui is good (IMO). That said, several versions ago the GF could use either environment without knowing much of a difference, nor much difficulty, at least until she needed the open office pos.

I also originally used gnome for license reasons, but started getting unhappy when they switched to metacity (# of options = 3) but then still stayed away from kde because kde was on a bling spree back then. Gnome started going in that direction too, seems slower, and most importantly, doesn't understand the hints from mythtv so when mythtv calls another program and then that program quits, the task bar gets the focus...WTF? So now I use KDE when I'm going to use it enough to care.

1/18/2006 5:38 PM

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Andy

question

Wednesday, November 16, 2005 3:11 PM

This is probably more of something I should email to the group rather than blogging, but I feel blogging is less intrusive so here goes:

Does anyone here know a way to determine under what kernel a file was compiled?

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1. Posted by

Ray

Is that information even stored in a compiled binary? I can imagine which operating system the file was built for (in a general sense, e.g. Linux, Solaris, HP-UX) being stored there, as well as the compiler used, but a specific kernel version seems like unnecessary information.

11/16/2005 4:34 PM

2. Posted by

Andy

That's certainly something I've considered, and I wouldn't be suprised if that's the case. I am hoping it isn't since it would be very convenient for something I'm working on.

11/16/2005 4:52 PM

3. Posted by

Dick

You might have some luck if it is an installed RPM. You could try querying the rpm with something like:

%rpm -q rpm_name

If it returns the full rpm name, then you'll know what version you're using. Build and release info is found by typing

%rpm -qi rpm_name

The date of the build might give you a good idea of whether its built on kernel 2.4/2.6 or something older.

11/17/2005 1:35 PM

4. Posted by

Andy

No it's a module that we compiled. So far the closest I've come is using

%strings filename

and it contains an entry "kernel_version=2.4.26"

at first I was unsure if this entry definitely means that it was compiled under 2.4.26, but I am reasonably confident now

11/17/2005 2:59 PM

5. Posted by

Sam

True that works for 2.4 kernel modules, and "vermagic" works for 2.6 kernel modules; but for your average compiled binary you're not going to find that information.

11/18/2005 11:12 AM

6. Posted by

Josiah

Unless it matters for the binary (for example, firewalling software may be kernel version dependent), that generally shouldn't be an issue. You should probably download the source and look around in there. If you got the package through your distro or from a third party repository, it is likely that the package was compiled with the default kernel supplied by that repository. However, this is not always the case, especially for smaller (i.e., package specific) repositories, so if you can download the source (or even better, if your distro uses .rpm, you might be able to look at the source rpm), look through the source tree at the changelogs and buildscripts. If you're lucky, you'll find any relevant info there.

11/18/2005 6:29 PM

7. Posted by

Sam

True, but in the case where the binary is kernel version dependent you aren't necessarily going to be guarranteed to find it by doing a "% strings filname | grep kernel_version". I'm not saying the information isn't in there, simply that there is no standardized way to figure out whether a binary (independent of its packaging) is kernel version dependent and which version it is dependent on.

11/21/2005 9:27 AM

8. Posted by

Josiah

Hmm. This is why packages normally have some sort of package-maintainer contact info. If it doesn't, there should be a way to get ahold of the person or people in charge of either the repository from which it was downloaded, or at worst, find the home page for the project and ask around on the mailing list(s) or forum(s). If this is important information, the information will probably be somewhere. If the information is not to be found, file bug reports.

11/25/2005 2:24 AM

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2006 Desktop Linux Results

Ubuntu 6.06 previewed

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Helpful Linux How-To

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My Decision - KDE vs Gnome

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