[Gllug] Linux on Desktop

[Nix]

On 12 Feb 2007, Anthony Newman said:
> damion.yates at gmail.com wrote:
>> This list, I'd hope would have some beginners, but mainly be full of
>> the nerdiest geeks and Linux lovers around!  People who grew up coding
>> in assembly, typically not even with mnemonics, just raw hex :)
>
> Right. You seem to have a slightly skewed view of the demographic of
> this place, or for that matter any other LUG I've taken part in over
> the few years I've been involved. While I'm sure there are people who
> grew up programming their Sinclair Spectrum or Commodore 64 in hex,

Um, guilty?

> the days have long since passed when it would be considered more than
> a novelty, or for those who really really really have to do so. The

Yeah. I wrote a small amount of stuff for the C64 in raw hex opcodes
because it *had nothing else useful*, not because I wanted to, and
before long I wrote an assembler so I could avoid raw opcodes. (Vile and
incapable though its BASIC was --- my first exposure to an MS product,
and it was not nice --- it was certainly capable enough to do that.)

> wonder of Open Source has furnished us with a dazzling array of higher
> level alternatives which are more appropriate now we have an abundance
> of clock cycles and fewer spare minutes every day.

Yeah. I'd say that starting wth tiny machines *has* given me an
understanding of the importance of algorithmic complexity, something
that a vast proportion of my co-developers at work utterly lack. But
this certainly isn't *impossible* to attain in any other way (I'm
working with a 20-year-old with a good eye for these things: I'd guess
that he was born just after the Spectrum's production run ended!)

>> I keep reading articles from people who say similar things that I see
>> on the list, common themes show signs of a fondness of Linux but the
>> underlying belief that it's on its way to catching up.  Typically seen

That depends. I'd say that it's long surpassed Windows in most respects,
and that institutional inertia, lockin, and the vast forces of don't-
want-to-learn-it-when-this-works are a large part of Linux's non-dominance
of the desktop space.

In time, this will change. (It's not as if Linux can `go bust', after
all.)

>> connected with the dual-boot and only-at-home/only-on-the-server
>> stance.
>
> This was true 10 years ago, and it is still true now, the only
> difference being that the uptake of Open Source is now much greater
> than it was.

Indeed.

>               I fail to see a problem; unless Linux is in a position as
> market leader, it will always be one step behind. I make no apology
> for turning that into a capitalist statement.

Who cares if it's the market leader, anyway?

>> Take the Internet, tcp/ip, daemons listening on sockets, clients doing
>> interesting things.  This was almost entirely Unix, chat systems, file
>> sharing, even Web browsing was all Unix.
>
> What is your point? I don't see many of the original manufacturers of
> motor cars still producing them 100 years after their
> inception.

This itself indicates that we'll win. Eventually, all the existing
proprietary OS companies will collapse (all companies die in the end),
and the *first* time that MS or its heirs fail and the Windows code
gets sold on separately from most of the employee base, Windows is in
enormous, possibly terminal trouble. (I've seen exactly this kill
several successful products before now.)

You'd need a campaign of assassination of free software developers to
make a similar dent in the free software world. Thus, in the fullness of
time our competitors will kill themselves. (New competitors will arise,
of course, and some of those might end up more powerful or flexible or
nifty...)

>            Inventing technology doesn't give you a right to it forever

And a good thing too!

> Would you prefer that the promised hordes of Labour Government
> instantiated graduates learned about something at University that
> would not result in employment at the end of their eye-wateringly
> debt-inducing time there? They program in *Java* now, you know :-O

Mostly rather badly. (Thankfully CS is no longer as popular as it was,
so most of the people studying CS are again doing it because they're
potentially good at it and not just for the dosh it will bring in.)

> The bottom line I'm approaching is that things get judged on their
> Quality, with a capital Q meaning "fitness for purpose". Linux is

Alternatively you could judge things on their quality, the ordinary
English word ;)

> widely used, and more so than it used to be, so perhaps a little
> patience is in order.

Wide use and quality or fitness for purpose are not especially
correlated!

-- 
`In the future, company names will be a 32-character hex string.'
  --- Bruce Schneier on the shortage of company names
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