At the top of my head now, Linux is hitting the mainstream desktop market, in many variants:<\/p>\n
I’m sure I’ve missed out some really amazing devices. But that’s not the point. Do you see a problem with the above?<\/p>\n
Xandros, gOS, Ubuntu and Maemo run DPKG, using APT\/DEB’s for package management. Fedora, uses RPM. Foresight uses their own Conary based system. OK, lets scratch the package manager woes, now noting that they’re all different. Let’s focus on the desktop environment.<\/p>\n
Xandros is some form of KDE, locked down on the Asus. Foresight presumably ships with GNOME by default, as do the Ubuntu on Dell machines. The OLPC ships with Sugar (granted, its market is specific). gOS ships with XFce. Maemo uses GTK, but is remarkably different from a regular GNOME desktop. So now we’ve got different desktop environments too.<\/p>\n
Should I then go into package managers? Or down to the nitty gritty, where the init scripts are in a different location? Or that they all use a different method to connect to a wireless network?<\/p>\n
So what am I getting at? Complexity<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Not only from a users perspective (say, I go out and buy an Asus Eee PC because its so cheap, and I find Linux sufficient for my needs. Then I need a desktop, so I find the Shuttle KPC which is cheap. However, at this point, the interfaces are completely different, and I’m lost.) but also from a support perspective (Windows XP, Vista is down? I’ll just call my pimply 14 year old niece\/nephew to fix it. Linux is down? Problematic? What do I do?).<\/p>\n Some of you are saying, they should be turning to their LUGs if they needed help. Sure, but LUG mailing lists aren’t the most friendly. Newbies can be blatantly told to RTFM.<\/p>\n Let’s then visit their local LPI certified candidate, who’s running a support business. Oh wait, he’s only certified against RPM’s and is clueless with DEBs or Conary. You get the drift…<\/p>\n My beef with all of this, is that there is no standard<\/strong>. There is the GNOME Mobile & Embedded initiative – good. There is the Ubuntu Mobile team – great. What are their aims? To standardise on something for the mobile platform (presumably, like the Eee PCs, the Nokia n-series tablet devices, etc.). Will they achieve it, without hardware vendor buy-in? Probably not.<\/p>\n There lies a problem with mainstream <\/em>consumer hardware running Linux. Linux is getting friendlier, but all the distribution variants only serve to complicate things, for the end user.<\/p>\n What do you think, the free and open source community can do, to address these issues?<\/p>\n (remember, I didn’t even get into varying versions of shipped software and the problems that can face… or how some devices will come without basic MP3 or DivX decoding support (Fedora has vaguely fixed this with codeina\/CodecBuddy, but the others haven’t caught on)… the list can go on)<\/em><\/p>\n Technorati Tags: linux<\/a>, consumer hardware<\/a>, xandros<\/a>, foresight linux<\/a>, asus eeepc<\/a>, shuttle kpc<\/a>, fedora<\/a>, olpc<\/a>, gOS<\/a>, gPC<\/a>, maemo<\/a>, Ubuntu<\/a>, dell<\/a>, package management<\/a>, desktop environment<\/a>, gnome<\/a>, complexity<\/a>, support<\/a>, lug<\/a>, lpi<\/a>, standards<\/a><\/p>\nShare this:<\/h3>