[clue-tech] Mephis linux

[Nate Duehr]

David L. Willson wrote:
> OK Nate, I'm all inflamed over your use of the word "parasite" in reference to my favorite Free OS (Linux) and my favorite IT ecosystem (FLOSS), which implies that my favorite Free Collaboration Suite (Zimbra) is also a "parasite", and I'm completely annoyed at your implication that OS X is some sort of level that we in the Free software community have yet to attain to.  So, I'll ask you directly:  Since Zimbra and OpenFiler aren't your idea of better, and since Linux isn't, and since OS X is, what the ~Heck~ are you using for criterion?  I've ~used~ MacOS X.  Here are my criterion for calling it crap: It's over-priced, feature-limited, a non-Free copy of a Free OS (BSD), less stable than Linux, less robust than Linux, harder to deploy than Linux, less well-documented than Linux, and it has much less available software than Linux.  We must have way different criterion.

No need to get mad.  My point is (and has been for a couple of years 
now) that software (in general) isn't getting all that much better.  The 
"hockey stick" effect, like you see in business when a product line 
stops selling like hotcakes and levels out with low growth at the top... 
I think that's what the "software innovation" curve looks like right 
now, in general.

Linux is just "busy" copying everything that was already created in the 
closed-source world right now, and claiming "great growth" and "huge 
uptake" by the common man... well sure... copy some company's 10 year 
old software (often poorly) and offer it for free (as in beer) and sure 
you're going to grow the user base.

But it's not innovation.

OSX was innovative with a lot of things, like the use of Objective C as 
the basis for most code, the interesting way they handle screen displays 
(everything's actually a PDF behind the scenes, kinda... very easy to 
pass the screen or graphical data between applications, which is kinda 
where you'd expect X or even the Windows API to be by now), but even OSX 
  hasn't really innovated much since about 10.2 or 10.3.  They're in a 
rut, but they've maintained simplicity for the end-user.  I think MS 
tried pretty hard with Vista, but the new interface freaked too many 
long-time users out (myself included...).

We've already discussed the mess of this thing we call the "Linux 
Desktop".  When you have to play 20 questions with a newbie to even 
figure out what Desktop manager they're using, Linux distros just 
haven't come to any reasonable SUPPORTABLE standard yet for desktop use.

Try leading someone around the GUI via telephone between Ubuntu's KDE, 
RedHat/Fedora's, and Debian's flavor and you'll quickly see what I mean.

> Referring to my other post:  What is your proposed solution to Linux's "problem", and what are you personally doing to hasten it's arrival?  I want to know what your direction would be, if you were Mark Shuttleworth or me.  This is, after all, a Linux technical list, and you're on it by choice...  so, what is it that you want out of Linux and what are you doing to make it happen?

Stop focusing on Linux "versus" everything else, drop the open-vs-closed 
battles, forget about all the "stuff" that in the end means NOTHING that 
whole books are written about when talking about software these days -- 
and get back to the days when thinking hard about something new you want 
the computer to do will pay off in spades, perhaps?  New killer apps. 
Something as earth-changing as e-mail, or perhaps a REAL way to 
authenticate e-mail end to end that is handled at the SERVERS, to dry up 
the spam problem forever... you know... things that make a major difference.

Problem is... many people have the talent and the ideas, but there are 
business reasons to "leave it all alone", mainly that companies make BIG 
money on patches and upgrades.  Writing software ONCE that works is not 
in ANYONE's business models anymore.  Maybe it once was, long ago... but 
it's not coming back.  Service contracts are big money.  The sad reality 
is... having to have a service contract means you KNOW the software 
won't work right.  Deep down, that's the only reason to buy one, isn't 
it?  The MAJORITY of "IT workers" rely on this fact that keeps them in 
their jobs (myself included), seemingly forever:  Software devs CAN'T -- 
literally CAN'T -- write bug-free code for any reasonable price.

The latest big craze has been virtualization.  Commercial folks came up 
with that on mainframes in the 80's.  Really.  It's not new at all.

Here's what I think:

Computers become commoditized in the 90's and we still haven't gone 
through the phase of "Do we REALLY need a computer for this job, or is 
it actually more efficient, more secure, and smarter overall -- to use a 
piece of paper, a pen, and a filing cabinet for this particular task?"

We haven't hit that point -- a um, for lack of a better word -- "luddite 
stage" yet, because we haven't had a complete meltdown of something very 
important to us all (say, the banking system) due to bad software... 
yet.  (We will, eventually.)

Meanwhile the things we tout as "computers getting better" is just that 
we have faster hardware that can crash faster and reboot faster after 
the crash.

Think about it this way, if software was getting THAT much better, 
wouldn't the Mainframe be completely dead by now?  Why isn't it? 
Because it sits there and runs and runs and runs, and the software on it 
was developed under a much different mindset.  "Downtime not allowed". 
That era is long gone, but the results of that work (quality work) are 
still running key applications today.  We may have ported that code over 
to newer hardware, but it's still the code written in the era of 
"mistakes are costly", not the "aww, just release a patch, and blame it 
on the QA department".

What I would HOPE Linux does... and I do think it can do it with 
leadership and vision, is become the OS that shoots for BETTER quality 
than the others.  Right now, it's shooting for quantity not quality.

Now that seemingly "everyone" knows what Linux is, somehow, somewhere 
the quantity vs. quality pendulum MUST swing for Linux to survive 
long-term as anything more than a niche OS or a server-only OS.  The 
server application folks recognize this, but they also moved to running 
on ANY underlying OS long ago (Apache, for example - some of the highest 
quality code out there, but it'll run on anything... they don't care if 
you use Linux anymore, and never will again).

Just some random thoughts... I think this is headed into the ditch again 
for "clue-tech", so we can go over to clue-talk, but it never leads 
anywhere.  The devs that have the talent to really pull this off, aren't 
hanging around here, AFAICT.  I'm certainly not one.

My dream/vision for the real growth (as in getting smarter) in computer 
use isn't all that realistic, I know.  It's an ideal.  Lots of people 
voted for ideals in the last election that aren't realistic either, so I 
guess I'm allowed my little fantasy too, aren't I?

Nothing for you to get upset or depressed about.  You like Linux on the 
desktop, I don't... so?  I still use it on servers... and probably 
always will... until something better comes along.  (GRIN... darn those 
users, they're fickle, aren't they?  Especially the ones that have no 
emotional ties to their software like becoming part of an open-source 
cult or similar.)

Nate