The future of linux

[NKavanagh at psgroup.com (Niall Kavanagh)]

>> admit, Windows 2000 and Windows Millennium are a breath of fresh air
>> compared to NT/98/95 during the installation process). Most of these
people
>
>I'd expect you do say that! >:-)

I can't help it! ;) Most of my development experience has been Win32, and
lately for the web (backend on Win32/SiteServer/SQLServer/ASP and
Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) which is mostly Win32 clients. Unlike a lot of folks
I don't think Windows is a bad operating system -- unfortunately it's not
open source and it's controlled by a corporation I certainly don't admire.
Security is a nightmare I won't even get into right now.

>Yes, I'll concede that, but I've never seen anyone actually USE those
>features either.  I suppose this is part of my techie prejudice getting in
>the way though...

(re. all sorts of feature I don't use either) But they do. As technical
folks we set things up and then return to our utopian lofts to play with our
efficient, customized machines. If you've done tech support you know that
the bulk of your calls are not hardware (i.e.. my mouse doesn't work) but
software related (i.e.. How do I use feature X in application Y? application
Z had it as a menu option! I want Z back!). To simply matters we could make
a sweeping statement: "People are lazy" (hey, it's better than "People are
dumb"). They don't want a specific tool for each job, rather a generalized
framework where each component acts in a similar manner to the others.

>I'll concede that too. I guess I'd say that's Linux's biggest obstacle to
>universal luser^H^H^H^H^Huser exceptance, though I don't think the
>printing picture is a grim as you paint it. The scripts that RH provides
>work well if you have common hardware (read as HP printers :). I can print
>from any application I use at work to my HP printers defined by RH
>printtool, wether the ouptut be text, PS, or graphics (non-PS) and the
>print filters handle it just fine.  Despite that, we could really use a
>nice, standard interface to printing.

Does Redhat automagically detect what printer you have and configure the
filters accordingly? It's been awhile since I've printed from my linux boxen
;)

We need nice standard interfaces for everything, printing, print preview,
saving files, opening files. And we're getting there.

>Again I'll agree, but as you point out, these are already being worked on.
>I'd be interested to hear any thoughts on things you think are missing
>that are not being worked on to any great extent.

Personally I think all the important bases are covered though I may not
agree with the technologies and implementations (I hate CORBA. Hate SOM/DOM
for that matter too. OpenDOC sucked also.) If I had the free time I'd jump
on the documentation bandwagon... all these tools and features are great,
but amount to nothing if they're not documented. I'm in the process of
(re)writing the Linux-NT mini-howto in an attempt to help our Win32 brethren
make the transition to a happier, saner place. Find something that isn't
well documented that you're comfortable with and start typing! Or pick up an
un-maintained howto (there's plenty of them). It's easy as pie, especially
when you use lyx for the authoring. It can convert your finished product to
the SGML markup that can make just about any other flavor of document you
want.

--
Niall Kavanagh (niall at kst.com)
News, articles and resources for web developers and professionals:
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