Weblog entry #105 for ajt
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[1] beranger.org/index.php?page=diary&2007/08/15/14/13/22-what-nix-has-wrong-for-the-deskt
Comments on this Entry
For example cron periodic scheduling is irrelevant for a box which is off most of the time, and if the author doesn't know how to do once a day scheduling independent of time, than that isn't a problem with Unix like systems, but with his knowledge.
Having a feature that isn't useful to the desktop isn't that big an issue, and seems a minor one. MS Windows has (awful) scheduling features, and having these hasn't held back its desktop adoption as far as I can tell.
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You are correct though that Windows is pretty awful too and though it can be tweaked I agree that a tweaked Linux box is more optimal than a tweaked Windows box.
I totally agree that all the comments are easily addressed or irrelevant but I think it's important to realise that new Linux users see these issues and can't deal with them as well as easily as experienced users. I'm not saying that we should change all the defaults for a distro like Debian, but I believe that there should be an install option that picks all the right packages for a newbies desktop and sets them up sensibly. You could say that is what ubuntu/MEPIS/Xandros are all about.
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
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I just don't think this list is the relevant list of issues.
Some of the issues beginners have are the kind of thing that can be best addressed by people like DELL, since it is unreasonable to expect every distro to provide a laptop suitable configuration for every laptop (or even every desktop).
Afraid I'm not convinced on the Ubuntu side, Xandros does okay, I've not tested Mepis properly. But Debian provides, and should aim to provide, a Desktop metapackage, rather than rely on other distros to fill the gap. I think Debian does quite well here, but falls down on the marketing. On the Ubuntu front I see a lot of work, but whenever I touch it, I hit bugs that aren't in Debian. Making Debian easier to install, at the cost of making it harder to run, isn't a plus in my view, since end users don't generally install operating systems (nor should they need to).
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I must confess that I'm not convinced with ubuntu either. I don't have any problem with Debian as a desktop distro either.
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
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I repost here my comment to Béranger. Some may recognize a subject covered in this article.
The only flaw in the original UNIX design that makes it less suitable for desktop is that it lacks the concept of "the user in front of the machine".
A UNIX machine is inherently a multi-user environment, in the sense that several users can log in at the same time. This is very different from the experience a user can have with other OS, where the one and only user at the keyboard is "The King of the Machine".
The automount is a typical consequence of this: if the system automatically mounts the USB drive or CD-ROM as soon as you plug it in, who (which user) should be allowed to access that media? Either:
- you give up the multi-user philosophy, assume that ony one user is logged, and then allow him to access the new media; or
- you must go into a maze of checks to identify who is the user currently acting as The King, and prevent corner conditions (like a CD left mounted after the last user logged off, so nobody can eject it).
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