Linux is ready for the desktop!

[Nadav Har'El]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2011, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote about "Re: Linux is ready for the desktop!":
> "Nadav Har'El" <nyh at math.technion.ac.il> writes:
> 
> > I didn't see Oleg's mail (I don't know why), but I definitely do NOT
> > agree that a vanilla FC15 is ready for actual use one hour after
> > install
> 
> I actually wrote (effectively) that it was ready to use 1 hour after
> you've burnt the ISO. Less if you defer installing updates. ;-) Yes, I

I think either you have tons of experience doing such installations (so
every problem you saw you could fix in less than a minute), or you're
simply being over-confident and not remembering the actual problems you
encountered in your own installations and how much time it took to solve them.
Or, perhaps you are just very lucky ;-)

> know what I am doing, but I made the point that a housewife has NO
> chance to install and configure Windows from scratch,
> either. Obviously, your point that if stores sold preinstalled Linux
> there would be no problem remains perfectly valid.

I also made the point that no housewife can install or configure Windows, so
they don't - they buy Windows preinstalled - so Linux should be sold (or
rather, given for free) in the same way.

But perhaps more importantly, because Fedora 15 (for example) is, still, less
commonplace than Windows, whatever you don't get preinstalled on your system
is much harder to add later than it would be on Windows. On Windows, if you
don't get Picasa (for example) preinstalled, it's as simple as going to the
Google site, clicking "Download picasa" and "yes" a few times. On Linux, it
is much more difficult (in the Fedora 15 case, it involves replacing Picasa's
built-in wine with Fedora 15's new version of wine). On Windows, if ADSL isn't
preconfigured, you can call your ISP and in a few minutes they'll tell you
what to do. On Linux, the ISP will probably laugh at you. And even if they
help you, you will realize that there are bugs because apparently (?) nobody
actually tested vanilla Fedora 15 with the type of ADSL common in Israel.

> > It took me almost an hour to figure out how work around a
> > NetworkManager bug and get ADSL to get reconnected during boot
> > ("service network restart" worked perfectly, but it simply didn't
> > work during boot).
> 
> Are you sure it was not an artefact of your expecting to be connected
> within a couple of seconds and not with a bit of delay because NM took
> its time? I have a noticeable delay when I start my office laptop each
> morning. Have you tried disabling NM?

I have disabled NetworkManager in every Fedora release up to 15, but it has
become much too intertwined with Fedora 15 (with its shiny new init
replacement) that I gave up and am, unfortunately, using it in Fedora 15.

But it's *not* an issue of timeout. This is what I originally thought, and
half of the hour I spent on this issue was dedicated to changing various
timeout parameters and rebooting. It didn't help, it wasn't this problem.
It turns out it is this 3 year old (!!) problem: 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=476954
The ADSL connection is easily started on "service network restart", but
on boot, it simply doesn't try because it thinks it doesn't understand
this network connection.

My point is not that Linux doesn't support ADSL - after you fix the problems,
it does - but that an ordinary user who encounters such problems is almost
hopeless in solving them, even by calling his ISP, bezeq, or the usual
suspects you'd call for such questions. He or she will want to get a
preinstalled system with all these problems already solved.

> Let's be fair. If you do not insist on "dialerless" connection when
> you arrange things with Bezeq or Hot Windows would require SW
> installed by a technician. And I do not believe the "dialer" would

This is not true. I bought the cheapest account I could find for her
(46 shekels a month for bezeq+isp - does anyone know a cheaper deal?)
and it has a "dialer" (pppoe) - I can't argue about it. But when I bought
the account they clearly gave me all the information I needed to set up
the account, and clearly asked me to call their 24/7 support to guide me
through setting this up (I didn't, but an ordinary user probably would).

> > It took me about an hour to set up all the "not-so-legal" yum
> > repositories and figure out which packages to download to enable
> > playing of music and video. And so on, and so on, and these hours
> > add up.
> 
> This is surprising, because my Fedoras come with a variety of music
> and movie players upon installation. I think the only sound thing I

I think we live in a different reality ;-)

In my reality, Fedora comes with a lot of *crippled* music and movie
players, only capable of playing free formats like OGG. But care to
take a guess how many of the music or movies she will get will be in
one of these free formats? How many DVDs will she buy that will actually
play without decss installed?

I'm not saying that installing these additional mp3 plugins, codecs, and
so on was so difficult (using the rpmfusion and livna repositories) - but
since I didn't remember exactly how to do it and what I needed to install,
it did take some time - not a single minute or anything close to it.

> (amarok?). Preinstalled Windows actually don't come with such
> packages, AFAIK. At least my father's computer that was bought
> preinstalled from a major Israeli retailer didn't. Id say that Linux
> is more "ready" in this sense, not less.

I guess it depends. Last time I checked, I was under the impression that
Windows own media player can play most audio and video formats?
Or maybe it's a few clicks away.

> I wouldn't expect a normal person from the street ask oneself the
> question "what OS should I choose?" If there were a shop that sold
> preinstalled Linux to housewives they would never know. At least until
> a grandkid suggested communicating via Messenger or something. Or
> until they found out that their bank's site or kupat holim's site
> didn't work with Firefox.

The number of sites not working with Firefox is slowly but surely coming
down as (as I observed in my previous mail) the percentage of people who
are using things-which-aren't-Windows (including Android and iOS) is coming
up.

The person who installs this "typical Israeli Linux" should make sure he
installs whatever typical Israelis would like to have. If messanger is
popular, then he should make sure pidgin (or whatever) is installed.

> I believe the various smartphones don't help too much in this respect
> (re the argument about iOS and Android making people realize there is
> more to the Universe than Microsoft): lots of people want "an iPhone"
> the way they want "a computer", without thinking "Apple" or "iOS" as
> opposed to "Google" and "Android". At most there is awareness of

But when using an iphone, they see a completely different UI than Windows,
have completely different software (e.g., no Microsoft Word), and a different
browser. Then, when they see a Linux computer which isn't Windows, they may
be less surprised.

Nadav.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |                  Saturday, Sep 17 2011, 
nyh at math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Sign above a shop selling burglar alarms:
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |"For the man who has everything"