(OT) Re: Unity ROCKS!!!

[Liam Proven]

On 3 May 2011 02:17, Isaac Hummel <isaac at daedaleus.com> wrote:
> On 05/02/2011 07:48 PM, Justin Stanczak wrote:
>>
>> Just wanted to jump in here. I want to say first free alternatives for
>> windows applications are great. They work just fine for me. However I have a
>> hard time getting windows users to use them. To that end, the single thing
>> keeping Linux from pulling an Android on Windows is applications PERIOD.
>> Linux is ready, but we have a hairball clogging the drain, and it's called
>> MS Office, Adobe, and video games. You can pretty much put video games at
>> the top of that list. When games go, Unity I'm looking at you (the game dev
>> ide, not ubuntu), others will follow.
>
> Actually, applications /aren't/ the only thing keeping Linux from pulling an
> Android on Windows. PC operating systems being a mature market is the real
> killer.
>
> In the era of (true) smartphones ushered in by the iPhone, Android was the
> only competitor for a long time. Windows Phone 7 is around now, but it's
> still behind both Android and the iPhone (in marketshare, functionality, and
> apps) and only kept from falling into irrelevance by buying Nokia's huge,
> but decaying, marketshare.
>
> As for the iPhone, true to the Apple model, they made the hardware and the
> software and wouldn't license either one to third parties. Android is to iOS
> what Windows was to Mac, essentially. If Linux wanted to pull an Android on
> Windows, it would have to go back to 1984 and establish itself as the open
> alternative to Apple ahead of Microsoft to do it.

Ah, well, if you have access to a time machine, then go talk to rms
and the GNU crew in 1988 when they /nearly/ chose the 4.4-BSD kernel
for the new GNU Unix. They decided not to, as the BSD licence was
incompatible with the GNU Public Licence AFAIK, and decided to write
their own instead: HURD. It proved such a hard task that nearly 25y
later it still doesn't work. If they'd gone with BSD, we'd have had a
free Unix several years before Linus Torvalds even started work on
Linux.

But as for today: games are too high a barrier to jump for now. If
people want games, tell 'em to buy a console.

Android apps would be no help to us - they are phone apps, or in a few
cases, tablet apps, and not much use on a desktop.

I think that with respect to business adoption, there is an elephant
in the room that nobody discusses: management tools. The management
tools for Windows in large organizations are really pretty good these
days, and many of them come free with Windows.

For Linux, it's an ssh session or VNC if you're lucky and that's about
it. There is no standard Linux equivalent to domains or Active
Directory. No, LDAP is not a replacement, any more than a pair of
roller skates is a replacement for the Shinkansen bullet train.

Linux needs more and better ready-to-use server distros, as opposed to
a DIY toolkit to built your own server from scratch such as Ubuntu
Server, and then it needs some compelling management tools for running
a whole network of Linux clients attached to said server in an easy,
point-and-click fashion.

Active Directory is extremely complex and quite hard to learn - I
speak from experience as someone who is currently studying it. It
should not be impossible to come up with something easier and more
accessible to offer as an alternative to it to manage a company full
of Linux workstations.


-- 
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