I’m sorry you found it difficult. My experience was different: it booted into the installer on the first try, and I literally just had to double-click on the “install” icon.

Keep in mind that you’ve got a 5-year-old machine that runs an obscure (relative to x86, at least) architecture. In all likelihood, your experience would have been better if you’d tried it on a newer Mac or a PC.

Ubuntu obviously hasn’t reached parity with Windows as a consumer OS. But the gap is closing.

Confused and Unconvinced in San Antonio,

Ronald Tate

I’m sorry you found it difficult. My experience was different: it booted into the installer on the first try, and I literally just had to double-click on the “install” icon.

Keep in mind that you’ve got a 5-year-old machine that runs an obscure (relative to x86, at least) architecture. In all likelihood, your experience would have been better if you’d tried it on a newer Mac or a PC.

Ubuntu obviously hasn’t reached parity with Windows as a consumer OS. But the gap is closing.

Confused and Unconvinced in San Antonio,

Ronald Tate

Also, SuSE has flash installed and correctly configured, and it works perfectly on a few sites that I visit that use flash. But there was a little bit of a headache to get SuSE to use play Dvd’s. (hint:PACMAN)

Also, SuSE has flash installed and correctly configured, and it works perfectly on a few sites that I visit that use flash. But there was a little bit of a headache to get SuSE to use play Dvd’s. (hint:PACMAN)

after some reading of various blog posts and web pages, I decided to take an old laptop (a Dell C610) and install Ubuntu. i tried to install the version that has a default Gnome desktop. the live CD would run but the installer would lock up midway through copying the files to the h/d. i d/l’ed the KUbuntu version (a KDE default desktop) and it worked right out of the box. my prior experience with mandrake v8.x was nasty; this was easier than installing Windows until I got into the tricky parts; re-config-ing X (trying to use a higher screen res I thought the laptop did but didn’t).

after installing firefox (i like google notebook and sync…) i surfed over to myspace.com since i use it and knew it would require me to install Flash. that was where things got sort of ugly — the only Flash you can get for Linux is v7 and most websites that inflict Flash on their users are at least at v8 and myspace is at v9. a v9 Flash player for Linux is still months away. while i only have a couple of days tied up here, i can see that unless there is some sort of sea change, Linux will remain crippled as a viable desktop OS competitor.

Reason 1 — Plug-ins rule. the average web user has plugins for Flash, Shockwave, Quicktime and how many other things. if you can’t use them, you may as well be blind and deaf in the land of the living web. most of the folks in linux-land can’t surf these websites and actually see the content.

Reason 2 — Cash rules. i believe that an unholy alliance of interests REALLY REALLY LOVE Vista and what appears to be its TCPA underpinnings. all the computer manufacturers like it because they will probably sell a lot of new hardware because of it. software manufacturers like it because Vista will probably frustrate users into buying new versions of programs they already own. the “fascist” element likes it because they will assert more control over my computing environment than they should ever have. now cash is in tight supply. if you are gonna spend it, where would you spend it? on a new platform where you can cause users to spend theirs to get your stuff or on a system that users get for free and where much of the software is free? for these reasons, there is a lack of incentive to build things for the linux platform.

Reason 3 — Freedom can be a problem. as observed, the fact that linux is free anyone can decide to roll up a distro. you can easily see that linux distros are like the weeds in my driveway — they just keep sprouting. this means that linux !== linux in all cases. you cannot be assured that what you develop for ubuntu or RH or gentoo or … will work in all cases. so if you are a supplier are you going to spend your cash developing for such a fragmented situation?

Reason 4 — Open standards won’t happen where vendors have a proprietary interest. it is true that IF there were a standard for Flash, someone in the F/OSS community would implement it. the problem is that macro-dobe doesn’t see how that advances their interests. it is unlikely to change since i believe they and many other s/w vendors would much prefer the lock-down features of Vista and TCPA that will NEVER get implemented in Linux. and trying to reverse engineer something like Flash would run afoul of that wretched DMCA regime.

i really believe that until there is a way to fill in these gaps you won’t see linux be a viable competitor for users desktops — they want to be able to deal with flash-besotted pages and look at quicktime files and so on — regardless of how well the actual install becomes (and in the case of ubuntu, it became EASY)…

i will most likely keep kubuntu running so that i can try some of the other multimedia apps i would need if i did switch (audio and video editing) but unless we can begin to easily address the plug-in gaps, i don’t see most people converting…

just my $0.02…

after some reading of various blog posts and web pages, I decided to take an old laptop (a Dell C610) and install Ubuntu. i tried to install the version that has a default Gnome desktop. the live CD would run but the installer would lock up midway through copying the files to the h/d. i d/l’ed the KUbuntu version (a KDE default desktop) and it worked right out of the box. my prior experience with mandrake v8.x was nasty; this was easier than installing Windows until I got into the tricky parts; re-config-ing X (trying to use a higher screen res I thought the laptop did but didn’t).

after installing firefox (i like google notebook and sync…) i surfed over to myspace.com since i use it and knew it would require me to install Flash. that was where things got sort of ugly — the only Flash you can get for Linux is v7 and most websites that inflict Flash on their users are at least at v8 and myspace is at v9. a v9 Flash player for Linux is still months away. while i only have a couple of days tied up here, i can see that unless there is some sort of sea change, Linux will remain crippled as a viable desktop OS competitor.

Reason 1 — Plug-ins rule. the average web user has plugins for Flash, Shockwave, Quicktime and how many other things. if you can’t use them, you may as well be blind and deaf in the land of the living web. most of the folks in linux-land can’t surf these websites and actually see the content.

Reason 2 — Cash rules. i believe that an unholy alliance of interests REALLY REALLY LOVE Vista and what appears to be its TCPA underpinnings. all the computer manufacturers like it because they will probably sell a lot of new hardware because of it. software manufacturers like it because Vista will probably frustrate users into buying new versions of programs they already own. the “fascist” element likes it because they will assert more control over my computing environment than they should ever have. now cash is in tight supply. if you are gonna spend it, where would you spend it? on a new platform where you can cause users to spend theirs to get your stuff or on a system that users get for free and where much of the software is free? for these reasons, there is a lack of incentive to build things for the linux platform.

Reason 3 — Freedom can be a problem. as observed, the fact that linux is free anyone can decide to roll up a distro. you can easily see that linux distros are like the weeds in my driveway — they just keep sprouting. this means that linux !== linux in all cases. you cannot be assured that what you develop for ubuntu or RH or gentoo or … will work in all cases. so if you are a supplier are you going to spend your cash developing for such a fragmented situation?

Reason 4 — Open standards won’t happen where vendors have a proprietary interest. it is true that IF there were a standard for Flash, someone in the F/OSS community would implement it. the problem is that macro-dobe doesn’t see how that advances their interests. it is unlikely to change since i believe they and many other s/w vendors would much prefer the lock-down features of Vista and TCPA that will NEVER get implemented in Linux. and trying to reverse engineer something like Flash would run afoul of that wretched DMCA regime.

i really believe that until there is a way to fill in these gaps you won’t see linux be a viable competitor for users desktops — they want to be able to deal with flash-besotted pages and look at quicktime files and so on — regardless of how well the actual install becomes (and in the case of ubuntu, it became EASY)…

i will most likely keep kubuntu running so that i can try some of the other multimedia apps i would need if i did switch (audio and video editing) but unless we can begin to easily address the plug-in gaps, i don’t see most people converting…

just my $0.02…

Tim, DRM lock-in issues aside, I’d be interested in hearing your take on the incestous relationship between iTunes/ITMS/iPod, and how comfortable/uncomfortable you’d be with those relationships if the DRM issue went away.

I disagree: the KDE interface has more customizations than Gnome does now. Note that many of the corporate based systems have Gnome as the default, and even SuSE that used to be default KDE has migrated over to Gnome for their corporate desktop. Gnome has shown a goal of becoming less customizable recently, in order to have a more consistent view. I think they’ve gone too far towards consistency, and that KDE had the right balance, but as the saying goes, let a hundred flowers bloom, let a thousand schools of thought contend…

Take a look at http://www.kde-look.org for the many examples of KDE customizations. In particular, I would point to superkaramba and programs like Yakuake (best thing since aterm)

Tim: to answer your question more generally, you should think of GNOME or KDE as roughly equivalent to the graphical programming layer of Apple or Windows (only masochists program directly to the X server anymore) and the core applications that come with each OS. So Elf’s summary (the first paragraph is pretty solid, but incomplete- each group provides not just the programming layer Elf discussed, but also the core applications- like the file browser, a simple text editor, etc., and is typically responsible for design, quality assurance, and translation of those pieces of software. So if you’ve got GNOME bugs, blame me- I ran the GNOME QA team for a long time

Finally, almost all Linux apps (GNOME, KDE or otherwise) can use the standard ctl+c/ctl+v/ctl+x combinations as well as the middle-click for copy and paste. At least in GNOME’s case, if the app does not support ctl+c/ctl+v then that is a bug and should be fixed. I can’t speak for KDE, but I assume it is the same for them.

Yes, the revolutionary idea of user choice and it’s no accident that this value deeply embedded in hacker culture, and in the GPL, also turns up in Linux distributions. To illustrate the depth of this choice, I would suggest anyone go to Distrowatch.

User choice also plays a role in adoption of linux, for example, being able to modify programs, and to have a choice when to stop running a given product, instead of having the rug pulled out from under your feet.

Most importantly, it allows me to put application menu bars at the top of the screen where they belong. The KDE preference panel also strikes me as vastly superior to Gnome’s alternative, although maybe that’s because of its similarity to the Mac OS X preference panel.

That’s actually a user preference, in Gnome, you don’t have to have the menubar, the panel bar and tall title bar. But like you, I prefer KDE, although I continue to have a sweetspot for blackbox, which I ran for over three years.

My observation of SuSE Linux on ThinkPad is that the power conservation works better than windows, and probably about the same as a MAC. That was one of the reasons why I bought the ThinkPad–because IBM had released the modules for running the power processes. So they sold hardware because of their contribution to free software.

Tim, DRM lock-in issues aside, I’d be interested in hearing your take on the incestous relationship between iTunes/ITMS/iPod, and how comfortable/uncomfortable you’d be with those relationships if the DRM issue went away.

I disagree: the KDE interface has more customizations than Gnome does now. Note that many of the corporate based systems have Gnome as the default, and even SuSE that used to be default KDE has migrated over to Gnome for their corporate desktop. Gnome has shown a goal of becoming less customizable recently, in order to have a more consistent view. I think they’ve gone too far towards consistency, and that KDE had the right balance, but as the saying goes, let a hundred flowers bloom, let a thousand schools of thought contend…

Take a look at http://www.kde-look.org for the many examples of KDE customizations. In particular, I would point to superkaramba and programs like Yakuake (best thing since aterm)

Tim: to answer your question more generally, you should think of GNOME or KDE as roughly equivalent to the graphical programming layer of Apple or Windows (only masochists program directly to the X server anymore) and the core applications that come with each OS. So Elf’s summary (the first paragraph is pretty solid, but incomplete- each group provides not just the programming layer Elf discussed, but also the core applications- like the file browser, a simple text editor, etc., and is typically responsible for design, quality assurance, and translation of those pieces of software. So if you’ve got GNOME bugs, blame me- I ran the GNOME QA team for a long time

Finally, almost all Linux apps (GNOME, KDE or otherwise) can use the standard ctl+c/ctl+v/ctl+x combinations as well as the middle-click for copy and paste. At least in GNOME’s case, if the app does not support ctl+c/ctl+v then that is a bug and should be fixed. I can’t speak for KDE, but I assume it is the same for them.

Yes, the revolutionary idea of user choice and it’s no accident that this value deeply embedded in hacker culture, and in the GPL, also turns up in Linux distributions. To illustrate the depth of this choice, I would suggest anyone go to Distrowatch.

User choice also plays a role in adoption of linux, for example, being able to modify programs, and to have a choice when to stop running a given product, instead of having the rug pulled out from under your feet.

Most importantly, it allows me to put application menu bars at the top of the screen where they belong. The KDE preference panel also strikes me as vastly superior to Gnome’s alternative, although maybe that’s because of its similarity to the Mac OS X preference panel.

Gnome is written in C, and was written to be GPL from the beginning; KDE was written in C++ by a commercial group that released a GPL version, and therefore has a much more unified API and heritage. Gnome’s attitude has been one of customizability, which leads to its infinite variety of themes; KDE is much less interested in skins and customization. You get what you get. Businesses like KDE for that reason; lots of old-school linux hands like Gnome because both its API and the end product feel less coporate.

Gnome is written in C, and was written to be GPL from the beginning; KDE was written in C++ by a commercial group that released a GPL version, and therefore has a much more unified API and heritage. Gnome’s attitude has been one of customizability, which leads to its infinite variety of themes; KDE is much less interested in skins and customization. You get what you get. Businesses like KDE for that reason; lots of old-school linux hands like Gnome because both its API and the end product feel less coporate.

To put this a different way: are there philosophical or technical difference between the way Gnome and KDE are put together that should make me jump on the Gnome bandwagon? Or are they mostly glorified window managers, with one working about as well as the other?

To put this a different way: are there philosophical or technical difference between the way Gnome and KDE are put together that should make me jump on the Gnome bandwagon? Or are they mostly glorified window managers, with one working about as well as the other?

Binary incompatibility is either a Unix-vendor-esqe platform-dooming flame war or a master plan to build a global all-Free Software computing platform.

(Yes, two panels is too many for me, too. On new GNOME installs I do this: Right-click on the bottom panel and select “Delete this Panel” then right-click on the top panel, select Properties, and make it the bottom panel.)

The copy/paste behavior of the mouse is a matter mostly of habit. I’ve been using Unixes of various flavors for so long that I consider the Windows way of doing things to be just odd.

Binary incompatibility is either a Unix-vendor-esqe platform-dooming flame war or a master plan to build a global all-Free Software computing platform.

(Yes, two panels is too many for me, too. On new GNOME installs I do this: Right-click on the bottom panel and select “Delete this Panel” then right-click on the top panel, select Properties, and make it the bottom panel.)

The copy/paste behavior of the mouse is a matter mostly of habit. I’ve been using Unixes of various flavors for so long that I consider the Windows way of doing things to be just odd.