The future of linux

[dmartin at ne.arris-i.com (Derek Martin)]

On Mon, 31 Jan 2000, Niall Kavanagh wrote:

> > 1) ease of installation:  Did she install Windows?
> 
> For the "moms" and "grandparents" this point is moot. Installing Linux can
> be just as easy if not easier than installing windows (though I have to

Agreed 100%

> 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! >:-)

> Not much at all if it's all setup. Unfortunately, the desktop software for
> Linux is nowhere near Windows level functionality just yet. We can hope that
> Corel will help address this in the future, but RIGHT NOW there are no
> integrated office suites available for Linux that offer the features you can
> get on a windows platform. I'm talking about wizards, office assistants,
> drag and drop that works with all applications, shared clipboards etc. Some

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...

> Printing is another area where the Linux desktop is left lacking. Do all
> your desktop applications use the same drivers, or are some text, some
> postscript, some (whatever gnome uses) ... etc? There's no "standard"

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.

> In this area I'd say we (Linux users) are AHEAD of Windows. Just about ANY

Agreed.

> Printing, office applications, and perhaps a better linuxconf are IMO the
> biggest hurdles we have to get past. And we're getting there! Look how far

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.


-- 
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"    "Who watches the watchmen?" 
-Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347 

Derek D. Martin      |  Senior UNIX Systems/Network Administrator
Arris Interactive    |  A Nortel Company
derekm at mediaone.net  |  dmartin at ne.arris-i.com
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