Linux=windows95

[markwolfe Veteran]

Will you guys get it through your heads? Linux is a KERNEL. not an OS.

True, but many people refer to a GNU/Linux system running with the full compliment of GUI packages as "Linux" in a general sense.

Surely, you don't say "I run GNU OS running on a Linux kernel with Xorg, metacity and Gnome as my X environment, Window Manager, and Desktop Environment, respectively" :rofl:

When people refer to "Linux" like this, I just let it slide, as there usually isn't a need to be very specific unless talking about technical aspects.

[Fred Derf Veteran]

True, but many people refer to a GNU/Linux system running with the full compliment of GUI packages as "Linux" in a general sense.

Surely, you don't say "I run GNU OS running on a Linux kernel with Xorg, metacity and Gnome as my X environment, Window Manager, and Desktop Environment, respectively" :rofl:

When people refer to "Linux" like this, I just let it slide, as there usually isn't a need to be very specific unless talking about technical aspects.

I agree.

To take the point further, I find it annoying when people feel the need to be technically accurate when it is not needed in the context for which it was used.

If somebody asks me what version of Windows I run on my home PC, I simply answer that I run Linux. They don't need nor want to know any more information than that. Obviously there would be little point in booting a kernel without an interface of some kind.

[jerry]

After reading this thread, I've come to seriously doubt the maturity of most of the posters here especially fred666. He started feeding the troll and others kept on egging him on to feed the troll even more. :rolleyes:

Even a really dumb person could've figured that 'Alishan' is a troll and wants others to react & get ****ed off. You all just did that.

[Fred Derf Veteran]

After reading this thread, I've come to seriously doubt the maturity of most of the posters here especially fred666. He started feeding the troll and others kept on egging him on to feed the troll even more. :rolleyes:

Even a really dumb person could've figured that 'Alishan' is a troll and wants others to react & get ****ed off. You all just did that.

I never took the Alishan's post seriously and I'm not bothered by this thread. If this thread upsets you then I suggest that you don't read it.

In fact, I think that Alishan's post has probably been misunderstood. I think he was quoting (or trying to quote) somebody who said that Windows 95 = LInux and he doesn't like that. It is possible that Alishan was not even trolling at all.*

Granted, I may have taken this thread in a new direction but is Linux so perfect that it can't be criticized? In fact, need it not be criticized so that it can be improved?

EDIT: *Well the thread title and subtitle suggest that anyway. After rereading the initial post I am less inclined to believe that. But who knows, the first post is such a mess.

Edited August 12, 2004 by fred666

[Arckon]

Linux as a desktop = inconsistent / too many choices.

Gnome and KDE can be made to look quite pretty (look at the monthly Linux desktop thread).

Choice can be a good thing but too many choices can lead to fragmentation and confusion.

Linux as a desktop suffers from lack of central control.

Do we really need 24 text editors to be bundled with a distro?

The grass roots effort behind Linux is both a strength and a weakness.

I totally agree with this! Linux is an excellent OS, but it depends on what it is being used for. For now, It is mostly a great server OS, and it is getting better at being a desktop/home OS, but I feel that it is just too early, and many people are trying to rush it.

[jerry]

I never took the Alishan's post seriously and I'm not bothered by this thread. If this thread upsets you then I suggest that you don't read it.

This thread upsets me in the sense that a troll is encouraged by many people here. You on the other hand, started flaming the troll and posting nonsense images. :rolleyes:

In fact, I think that Alishan's post has probably been misunderstood. I think he was quoting (or trying to quote) somebody who said that Windows 95 = LInux and he doesn't like that. It is possible that Alishan was not even trolling at all.

Its obvious, he's trying to troll. Cant you see how he spells linux ? :rolleyes:

Granted, I may have taken this thread in a new direction but is Linux so perfect that it can't be criticized? In fact, need it not be criticized so that it can be improved?

I never argued about that cause I dont know much about Linux.

I love Mac OS X the most, if a troll came along and said something similar, I'd ignore him instead of turning it into a free for all flame contest.

[Fred Derf Veteran]

Its obvious, he's trying to troll. Cant you see how he spells linux ? :rolleyes:

Not everything in life needs to be serious.

The troll is only vindicated if you are upset by what they say (not unlike a bully).

I, myself, have a cavalier attitude to these things. I also do not develop deep attachments with my chosen CPU, OS or video card as some people here do.

[georgevella]

Linux is miles behind as a workstation/Desktop OS.

I run several machines with linux. All only server roles (no gui). And only as a desktop to learn.

The TCO of linux as a desktop is far higher than a Windows Enviroment, its ok at home if something wont work with linux, not in a business or a normal home enviroment.

Linux as a desktop = ugly, slow and user unfriendly. The general software is pretty ordinary. Yes, it is free and is open source, hopefully they will take some notes from MS and get Linux up to a reasonable normal user standard.

Give me XP as a desktop anyday.

Yep, Linux does = Win95

At this point of time.

:rolleyes:

(okay this post is late but who cares)

well i disagree with you on the point that "linux is ugly slow and user unfriendly". I have been using linux for the last 1.5 years, mainly for development and some other stuff. I have used KDE 3.2 but swaped it with GNOME 2.6.1 because i liked it more. It never felt sluggish except when emerging* some big software (Open Office) but its not like I would emerge software all day long. On the other hand it runs very smooth while burning CDs and playing music.

If you have used linux and felt it slow, you should use the latest kernel. On my pc i have the latest Love Sources running but these are cutting edge kernels.

* Yes i use Gentoo, its my favorite Linux Distro, but to newcomers I always suggest Mandrake.

[Revenant]

Windows and Mac are noob OS's.....Granted Mac in a *nix platform.

Linux and Unix Variants are actually some of the best Operating systems in the world, not to mention stable.

[jerry]

Not everything in life needs to be serious.

The troll is only vindicated if you are upset by what they say (not unlike a bully).

I, myself, have a cavalier attitude to these things. I also do not develop deep attachments with my chosen CPU, OS or video card as some people here do.

hmm, it looked like you were the first person to get hurt the way you responded. :rolleyes:

[JadeWolf324]

I totally agree with this! Linux is an excellent OS, but it depends on what it is being used for. For now, It is mostly a great server OS, and it is getting better at being a desktop/home OS, but I feel that it is just too early, and many people are trying to rush it.

as do i. im all about choice but a limit should be set. its almost like every distro is trying to win a popularity contest based on

how much stuff they have. all that matters to me is that its current, and i can change around what i want in it.

[El_Cu_Guy]

This post is coming a tad late due to the shortcomings of MSN dial-up on the Pc I was at the time. Connections get dropped constantly. So here it is.

So we're just supposed to throw away our own personal distros and give into Mandrake or Redhat? Maybe we like learning about Operating Systems by building our own from scratch but we're not good enough to code our own yet.

You know I really hate it when people just can't take that at face value. They seem to think there is some underlying, subliminal, read-between-the-line, super secret hidden message in there somewhere. With that or they arejust too lazy to read the entirepost or have poor reading comprehension skills.

If you bothered to read it you know I was not referring to EVERY-FRIGGIN person out there "tinkering" with LFS.

Ever heard of Dux Linux? Probably not. It was a moronic project in which they felt the need to rewrite the Linux kernel to run "Linux/BSD/Windows/Apple" apps natively and would feature this amazing 3D GUI. Unfortunately no one joining the project actually did anything beyond thinking up names and designing web pages. Eventually they did release there own distro which was an utter disappointment.

I was also refering to those whose reasons for creating these distros is solely for dumb reasons, like the color of the logo or design of the mascot. Cookie cutter garbage bringing nothing new to the table but with a duck for a mascot rather than a frog.

And nobody said you have to give it away to RedHat or Mandrakesoft. Why not Debian, Gentoo, Slackware, etc? If your ideas are good and enough people support them, but they don't see the light of day, then I could see creating something new. Hell that what happened with NetBSD/OpenBSD.

I don't think one grand unified distro is the answer.........blah blah blah

Again, there's that reading between the lines thing I was talking about again.

Really, it's all about politics. Linux programmers are probably not the most outgoing people in the world. People would rather be a big fish in a small pond.......

@fred666

Well there's that too. There's nothing wrong with projects like Knoppix and a few others. Knoppix made a big splash by giving people a quality Live-CD distro based on Debian. People like Gentoo and Mepis because they actually bring something to the table. Unfortunately it's what the other's really need. So yes politics does hamper development. I think you'll see the community start to realize this when people start to seriously discuss this and leave out the "why OS A, B, or C is better than...." garbage because it only distracts people from the real topic at hand.

[kjordan2001]

El_Cu_Guy: Are you talking about just people who try to distribute their own distribution then? I'm using my own LFS distribution, but I won't do anything with it unless I make something groundbreaking on my own. At first I thought you meant people should stop using LFS and just use a pre-existing distribution. But I agree, unless people can offer something new, they shouldn't put out a new one. That's why we were all against the person who on here wanted to put out a Debian distro called Neonix or something.

[JadeWolf324]

El_Cu_Guy: Are you talking about just people who try to distribute their own distribution then? I'm using my own LFS distribution, but I won't do anything with it unless I make something groundbreaking on my own. At first I thought you meant people should stop using LFS and just use a pre-existing distribution. But I agree, unless people can offer something new, they shouldn't put out a new one. That's why we were all against the person who on here wanted to put out a Debian distro called Neonix or something.

here here.

[Fred Derf Veteran]

That's why we were all against the person who on here wanted to put out a Debian distro called Neonix or something.

Yes, Neonix perfectly represented the type of useless distro that El_Cu_Guy was talking about.

On a larger scale, it would be nice if people could put politics and ego aside, and then projects like Mepis could be reintegrated into Knoppix or Debian or wherever it came from. I don't mean to pick on Mepis but it is a fairly new and fairly popular distro.

[scoobydoobie]

c'mon people. even Gartner says that Linux will only be about 3% of the desktop market by 2007..It's a blip on the Desktop radar...

Why are you even discussing this stuff?

[[moribundi]]

Dictionary.com (Y)

And its too early to say that Linux has failed as a desktop OS, its still in it's infancy.

You consider a 10 year old an infant? Just because it may be new to you, doesn't mean it's new.

[El_Cu_Guy]

If you have your own personal distro for your own use that's fine. There are a number of people that do this as well as a number of organisations. This is actually good because you can truthfully keep everything to yourself (no need to distribute to the source if you don't distribute the binaries).

It just really ****es me off when some jerkwad runs around screaming about his new distro will do this and that and it pulls people away from existing projects. Some ideas aren't excepted simply because there is a more popular way to do things. It just irritates me that eveyone out there feels the need to build there own distribution (often badmouthing another) when they could very easily find it in another. Other distribution ideas are just plain dumb.

Example:

Guy whines because Debian-based distro A has a goldfish mascot

Runs out and creates his own Debian-based distro exactly like distro A except its mascot is a rabbit

Debian based distro B is an exact copy of A and already uses a rabbit

Guy gets lotsa email informing him of this fact

Guy whines and changes mascot to a Duck

Now you have 3 cookie cutter distros that are EXACTLY alike except for their macots. Wow! All that time wasted that could have been used to suck it up and simply improve distro A. Now even if that guy did was create a a cookie cutter distro but with with an uber-badass installer that could be geared toward both advanced users and mindless morons, that'd be a different story.

Edited August 13, 2004 by El_Cu_Guy

[Mike Douglas]

,Aug 12 2004, 19:13] You consider a 10 year old an infant? Just because it may be new to you, doesn't mean it's new.

Just because the kernel is 10 years old, doesn't mean the desktop is. GNOME was only founded 1999 and KDE in 1997

[Rudy]

linux is an awesome server but as some other people said its lacking as a desktop OS

[sting3r]

Man, could someone please teach this idiot some english? Believe me, i'm

11 and i can type better then you you a$$pit :p

[markwolfe Veteran]

c'mon people. even Gartner says that Linux will only be about 3% of the desktop market by 2007..It's a blip on the Desktop radar...

Why are you even discussing this stuff?

Please don't pull numbers out of the air. A google news search for "linux windows market idg" and "linux windows market gartner" give recent articles with the following:

By 2007, IDC estimates that Linux will have 6% of the desktop market in terms of units, Kusnetzky said.

and

Analysts expect shipments of computers with desktop Linux to increase in the coming years. Gartner, a market research firm based in Stamford, Connecticut, predicts desktop Linux's market share will reach 7.5 percent by 2008.

If you don't want to discuss, fine. Simply refrain from posting. :yes:

[ootput]

If you don't want to discuss, fine.  Simply refrain from posting. :yes:

I'm all for *Nix discussions. This thread doesn't seem to be the right place for it, though. Consider the Thread Title, the Initial Post, and its Author.

[JadeWolf324]

I'm all for *Nix discussions. This thread doesn't seem to be the right place for it, though. Consider the Thread Title, the Initial Post, and its Author.

then perhaps we should start a definative thread for this topic?

[Fred Derf Veteran]

then perhaps we should start a definative thread for this topic?

Go ahead.