I just felt that this was a nice post on another lug list that should be posted.

Regards

Owen Synge

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Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 22:06:24 +0100 Sender: linux-users-admin@lists.man.ac.uk From: "Dr. David Alan Gilbert" gilbertd@treblig.org To: linux-users@lists.man.ac.uk Subject: (forw) Of Linux bigots

Hi, I wrote the following reply to Jack Schofield's article in computer weekly; I'm not quite sure where I saw a link to it from however and the URL is enormous and just going to the home page gives me a registration thing.

Dave

-- Forwarded message from "Dr. David Alan Gilbert" gilbertd@treblig.org -----

Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 21:54:11 +0100 To: cw360editorial@cw360.com User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.22i From: "Dr. David Alan Gilbert" gilbertd@treblig.org Subject: Of Linux bigots

Hi, I'd like to respond a little to your article about Linux bigots. I've got to say I fall a little into that category but I hope I have at least some pragmatism! (For reference I run Linux at home and on my desktop at work, but also run NT at work for MS-Office. Let me also admit to previously being an Acorn owner who bailed out to Linux)

Let me first agree that there are a lot of Linux bigots out there; let me say that this is a bad thing and most people in the Linux community would agree that pragmatism can help a lot!

Let me also say that I couldn't presently do everything I wanted to do to my satisfaction compltely on Linux; but most things I can and that is what I use most of the time.

So now the places I disagree. The important place I disagree is in the lack of improvement relative to the late 80's.

Fundamentally the problem with Next and NeWS were that they were only championed by one company on their hardware. That hardware was expensive and didn't keep up with the performance advances being made on the PC.

It is obvious that the PC has won in hardware terms - something I realised towards 1994 when I gave up on my Acorn Archimedes and bought my first PC (running Linux). (OK then I fell for this Alpha pack in 97......)

Unfortunatly Next and NeWS died with their hardware pretty much (yes I know NeWS went to PCs at one point - name a few people who used it? I seem to remember it being ludicrously expensive) and very little if anything developed in Next and NeWS made their way back into the rest of the Unix community - and that is the prime reason Unix hasn't landed on the desktop.

Writing graphical applications for Unix under X Windows under the traditional tools is a pain; they look crap, they are about as user friendly as a brick and take real effort to do simple things in. That is why for perhaps 15 years X looked crap and all the applications people write are crap.

So I think what you are suggesting is that the Linux users should shut up because they are never going to get out of this mess and go and install Windows?

Well sorry; I'm not going to do that - and I think we do stand a chance of digging ourselves out - but at the moment for a lot of people they will need Windows - purely because there is nothing yet to compete with MS Office (StarOffice/OpenOffice/KDE Office isn't there yet for the advanced user).

So why do I think we stand a chance of fixing the situation? Simple - KDE and GNOME. KDE and Gnome both solve the basic problem of making writing GUIs for applications on Unix a lot easier, making the applications look good and providing all the mod-cons that users expect (internationalisation, drag-drop, object linking etc).

This means that people are now starting to write applications for Linux and Unix that actually look good, that feel easy to use and are reliable. More importantly it means that those programmers are now spending their time actually working on giving their applications facilities - the ones users of large software packages have had for a while - rather than spending 6 months trying to add drag and drop.

The other thing about KDE and Gnome is that they have been developed outside of hardware vendors. This gives the fading few Unix hardware vendors the opportunity to come together rather than arguing with each other all the time. In particular Sun has been very helpful with Gnome.

Are we there yet? No. Do we stand a chance? Yes I think so - but we have a lot to do.

So back to bigots. We can do without them; we need enthusiasts; we need people who understand what Linux can be used for and push it for it - hard! We also need people who understand the limitations - and we need to address those limitations rather than turning over and giving up!

At the moment I see a big danger in the Gnome v KDE bigotry. Many of the developers are now cooperating but there are many biggotted users and developers. It is important to understand that with any tool KDE and GNOME each have their own strengths and weeknesses. Konqueror on KDE is one hell of a web browser; Gnumeric on Gnome is a pretty decent spreadsheet; there are other particularly good points and bad points about each. However the advantage of open source software is that while the tools are flexible and we can beat those weaknesses out.

The other danger is distribution bigotry. Again each has strengths and weeknesses. what is more difficult is to iron these out because many of the distributions want to fight each other. We need to take care but the point is that we should be able to make Linux usable for everyone if we are careful. Just comparing a Linux installation from today with one of perhaps 5 years ago will show you that they are now much easier; but there is still a way to go.

In summary, * bigots are bad * pragmatists and enthusiasts are good. * The Unix/X desktop has been a mess for the last 10 years+ * Finally there is some movement but there is a long way to go. * For many applications Linux or Unix is a very good choice. Even some applications on the desktop can be very well fulfilled with Linux. It is difficult to convince people - to the bigots I say don't just argue with people - show them what it can do! And if it can't do what people need retire gracefully and make sure the writers of the applications know about the shortcoming or help add features yourself!

Dave

----- End forwarded message ----- ---------------- Have a happy GNU millennium! ---------------------- / Dr. David Alan Gilbert | Running GNU/Linux on Alpha,68K| Happy \ \ gro.gilbert @ treblig.org | MIPS,x86,ARM, SPARC and HP-PA | In Hex / \ _________________________|_____ http://www.treblig.org |_______/

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Date: 12-Oct-01 Time: 23:37:24