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One Linuxers Opinion, the initial editorial regarding the Linux Standard Base issue by Robert Current Copyright notice: All reader-contributed material on freshmeat.net is the property and responsibility of its author; for reprint rights, please contact the author directly. One LINUXer's Opinion LINUX is as much a community as it is an operating system. The community is not extremely different than the Macintosh community in that it it has die-hard followers, and some of which tend to be almost ready to go to radical extremes, and zealous in their practices and attitudes. There is a distinct difference between the two, they are at opposite ends of the "user-friendly" spectrum. Another distinct difference is the attitude of some (small but vocal section) of the LINUX community in regards to the "newbie." About the only way I know to describe it is much like the attitudes of surfers in Hawaii and California in the 80's, a "locals only" attitude. I am not the first to suspect that there is an underlying "hackers only" attitude in the LINUX community, as well as how the world sees LINUX today. To be completely honest, LINUX has many great features and dimensions that other operating systems (OS's) lack. LINUX took to the internet with the GNU license shortly after it was created by Linus Torvalds. With a birth like this, networking abilities are hard to match, because they were crucial for development itself. And there is no denying that GNU itself is unmatched in what it fundamentally brings to the world of computing. Software, constantly underdevelopment, worked on around the world by large teams of people who may never meet face to face, and available for free to the public. What more could anyone ask for? Well, honestly, a lot. Rapid development is a blessing and a curse all rolled into one. When you consider that in 1991, the it all began, and by 1994 it reached v1.0, it is quite a remarkable achievement. Something that reached a working level in a short time. And when one looks at what has happened in the last 2 years, or even 6 months, it is truly remarkable, because it has become a full fledged, fully functional, competitive OS in a market of sharks (SUN, MicroSoft, Apple, etc.). A true alternative, freely available, and capable of providing strengths that commercial offerings lack. But there is a drawback, and IMHO, that is a complete lack of standards. Options are one thing, and standards are a totally different issue the way I see it. GNU development of different xwindow managers is great, and the on going battle between GNOME and KDE does lead to healthy competition. But there there could be some competition in the LINUX community that is unhealthy, and causing more problems than good. Software installation is one of these issues. There is no doubt that LINUX is a great development platform, and capable of turning a standard "PC" into a real "workstation" with even more of a personal feel than any other "PC" OS out there. I can run wm2, work with X applications, and keep all my system stripped down and command line based, and my binaries will run just fine on a system running KDE that looks totally different and much more "user friendly." But, getting the applications to run in the first place is a chore many times. Look at what is out there, there are "source tarballs" (tar.gz) for some applications, then there is Red Hat package management (.rpm), and Debian packages to mention yet another. All have their up side, and their down side. First consider the idea of compiling from source. Seems like a great idea in theory, you stand a better chance of having it run on more platforms. You also gain the advantage of doing an optimized compile to get the application best suited for your specific system. How many times do you have to ftp something for 45 minutes, "tar -zxvf" it, and struggle with "Error (1)" when the compile fails before you get sick of it? And how do you know that the libraries you have installed were the same libraries that the developers were using? Seems the libraries themselves can be updated more frequently than the applications themselves sometimes! This process is no match for the ease of "WinShield" no matter how you slice it, and problems like this will keep LINUX from ever going main stream. My mom will never run LINUX when she can buy a CD of Quicken, install it in 10 minutes without any worries of ever even seeing a command line, and then she can start to struggle with how to use the menus (face it, a very very large percentage of the population using computers has a hard time using GUI apps that would seem idiot proof already). The rpm system has the advantages that it comes as a binary that you download for your platform, and can be installed with a simple command such as "rpm -ivh program.rpm" without having to deal with compiling. Well, rpm's aren't perfect either. I haven't meet an "rpm" user yet who hasn't been subject to the "failed dependencies:" syndrome and ended up hunting sunsite and other sources for even more rpm's to get the first one to install. Then you frequently run into the "conflicts with" problem, and you can't get the thing to install anyway. And, rpm binaries don't allow you to do any optimization for your specific system. I have used SuSE, Red Hat, Open LINUX, Linux Pro, and others, and frankly, they are all so different that it's hard to even get help on some problems in LINUX newsgroups and IRC channels. Directory structures differ, packages of the same programs differ in name, and attitudes grow intense. Fractional divisions occur in the LINUX community it self where the Slackware folks don't want to even help someone if they know how to solve the problem but then find out that it's on a Red Hat system. As a community that is the underdog in the OS world to start with, we are fighting amongst ourselves. Some of the free UNIX people I talk to on Effnet frequently are FreeBSD pilots, and I have been doing a little testing remotely through shells. There is obviously a distinct advantage to having a standard directory structure. The ports system is fairly useful also, allowing the downloading and compiling of applications without the "error (1)" or "failed dependencies" headaches. To some people it doesn't matter, it's just a challenge, but to a very large section of the population, a computer is to be used to accomplish a goal, not to challenge their "make" error debugging skills. Then there is the matter of the commercial support. There are commercial LINUX distributions, but not many commercial applications. I have no problem with someone charging $50 or $100 for their distribution of LINUX, because they are not selling LINUX, they are selling the packaged installation, media, and technical support. The product you pay for isn't the OS itself, it's the support and package they offer. But what about the applications? There are clearly two distinct problems that keep companies away from marketing LINUX applications. First, it's not yet a large market share, and their profits may not be as great as they would for Macintosh or Windows. Secondly, if they were to sell their application, what do they package it like? Not tar.gz because they don't want to hand out the source, not .rpm because that is even a smaller fraction of the linux market, so it's some type of script that hopefully finds it's way to install the application in the right directory, without conflicting with other applications, and successfully in all users paths. Good luck, there is no directory that is sure to be in all users paths, there is no standard file structure in LINUX to put the application in (some have X11, some have X11R6, some have one with a link to the other, some have both). LINUX is soon approaching v2.2.x, and soon after that point arrives, we can all count on all the major distributions of LINUX coming out with new versions of their distribution. To me, the timing seems perfect to solve some of these problems. Of course, it wouldn't be easy, it would involve a lot of work, but the benefits would be far reaching. Making LINUX into an OS that the masses could use isn't really all that impossible to do. And, even if LINUX were to reach the mass market, it wouldn't detract from it's remarkable ability to be a well functioning workstation and great development platform. If we, as a community, could work together, and develop some standards, we could gain a market share, make our life's easier in the long run, and gain the support of the commercial application and hardware businesses. I see, again IMHO, some steps we could take to do this. I will not suggest the standards, that should be decided by the whole community. But I will suggest what areas I believe where there should be standards. And when v2.2.x hits the streets, wouldn't it be great if along with a greatly improved kernel, we actually had a great complete product, not just the kernel? 1) directory structure standardized. With each v2.2.x kernel there are guidelines to where things go. Are some applications going to go in /opt or in /usr? Which applications? Where? Why? Why should I have some window managers in /opt, some in /usr, some in /usr/X11/bin.... 2) a system like FreeBSD's ports. Not their system exactly, but something similar. Untar and unzip a directory structure that links directly to an application listing. Categorized for ease in finding applications you want. Standardized so that you can count on your compiling (or whatever installation method) working the first time without getting missing library errors, failed dependencies, etc... We already have access to some of the greatest distribution servers in the world, like sunsites archives! That would be very useful. 3) An update notification system for applications. Just because we have standards doesn't mean development has to stop! If a newer version of an application you frequently use comes out, it would be great to know about it, know where to look for it, and be able to install it easily. Some sort of tool to accomplish this would be great. Like a application that you set up to check in the standard "ports" collection for newer versions of the applications you use. This would take planning, would it be a daily updated thing created by the ftp server that lists all the packages you can download, unzip, and compare to your systems installed applications? Would it an application that searched the known standard directory structure on one of the LINUX ftp servers to seek out the applications you want to monitor? There are ways to solve this problem, but the community has to decide its important enough to do. Frankly, I think we could do it. I would put some time in to help out where I could. I would love to see it happen. I would love to be able to get more reliable use out of my LINUX system. I would be happy to see LINUX gain a market share. I would like to make my workstation more suited for my work and take less of my time to constantly reconfigure. Frankly, at this point, I am thinking of switching to the FreeBSD camp to get it, but I would like to see it happen in LINUX. Robert Current (aka BadlandZ) current@plains.nodak.edu [Comments are disabled]
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One LINUXer's Opinion... Keep up the good work, its appreciated by the little guys..
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hit some marks
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Why do the comments in disagreement not get posted? None of the comments in disagreement are showing up in the comments section of this page. I know of a few and none of them are displayed here.
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Re: Why do the comments in disagreement not get posted? You'll have to explain what you're talking about. You "know of a few"? What does that mean?
Sincerely, --
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Seriously, I agree I've been programming for 4 years. Let me compare the (minimal) process
involved in developing a windows application, releasing it and then when a
user installs it in his system:
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Re: Seriously, I agree My first time on linux was to deal with ./configure It scared me out. After some time I got used to it. You can't expect every user to get into it without deciding to go to a more merciful os. I really think that linux is superior and that's mostly the reason I would want it to be more friendly to new users. It could replace the propietary OSes that are not as good. I wouldn't live without nautilus' emblems I never had a better organized PC.
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I agree, twice God, I agree with you. I've been in professional software development for
about 10 years and many more a home developer. I've been a early Linux user
and I'm an active Open Source developer.
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Welcome to Linux It's been awhile since I've used linux as my main operating system. I recall using slackware with 1.3 kernels and without a packaging system. Last week I started maintaining my first webserver since then and I can honestly say a lot has changed in the way of ease of use. I highly recommend anyone to try it out. --
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Another Linuxers Opinion Wow! I believe Mr. Current is very astute, and obviously has some
perspective, thank you. --
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You are missing a few things, I think. I am a linux newbie (using it about 2 months now) and I disagree with you
on many points. Standardization is in my view a great aspect, but in the
end leads to limitations for the advanced uders (I think we all agree that
linux is more powerful than windows because of that). I like the Idea of
the gentoo portage (and am using gentoo) and gentoo policies on choice.
Linux is really all about choices and standrdization would eliminate much
of these choices. You mention ease of use as something that is great, but
actually it takes away the strength out of everyhing. Yes it is true that I
have to read a million-page manual just to get something to work and it is
true that this prevents mass usage, but when it works it works PRECISELY
as I want it to work and we shold not sacrifice strength of an OS just to
gain additional people.
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I must disagree
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gentoo is very close to BSD port systems gentoo is a source distribution whihc is inspired by BSD ports. It has a
portage tree which is maintained by gentoo devlopers. Any gentoo station
can syncronize with the latest port(age) tree and then what ever is
required can be downloaded and compiled. But its no doubt not easy to use.
But it is optomized and gives a real good performance (at the expense of
waiting for things to compile in the first place) If linux is handwriting
then gentoo is caligraphy..not for every one . but surely this is as close
u can get to LFS(linux from scratch) with a major distribution --
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Good effort i do appreciate. This is very good article. I have got some more information about, with
very clear in meaning. I hope that you will write the same articles with
the same tone.
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Re: Good effort i do appreciate. You're not the only one Faisal! Welcome to the club :) --
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Good effort i do appreciate. This is very good articals. I have got some more information about with
very clear in meaning. I hope that you will write the same articals with
the same tone.
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Agree... I definately consider myself a Linux "newbie". There may be a stuck up attitude with some Linux users regarding newbies, but that shouldn't discourage anybody from using it. A great majority of the users I've talked to are just normal people who will help if they can.
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A VERY VERY good article. Thanks for writing this great article Robert, i really enjoyed reading it. I must agree to everything you say in the article especially the hacking part. Thanks agian for the great article. --
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Re: A VERY VERY good article.
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