I know that heading is going to draw fire.  Flaming, diahrea, explosive ridicule most likely.  That’s ok.  It’s a true statement.  However, I obviously need to qualify it to be proper.

As I’ve said before: A person’s experience “switching” to Linux will vary as much as their DNA varies.  Every person has their own unique needs, preferences and capabilities.  This is not lost on an operating system by any means.  If you’re the kind of user that is 100% happy doing nothing but Gmail/Hotmail, YouTube, reading news, and playing games, you will likely be 100% happy with almost any operating system, including Linux (whatever distro gives you wood).

If you are a seasoned Windows or OSX user, who has developed an intricate web of applications, scripts, utilities, and configuration settings to do an assortment of specific tasks, you may not be as happy… or happy at all.  You can still do email, surf the web, manage office suite documents, play (some) games and watch YouTube all day long.  But some of the dearest things you depend upon in OSX or Windows will not make you happy on Linux.

Am I picking on Linux?  Not really.  However, it brings up the viability of the argument that Linux is “ready” to knock Windows “off the desktop” of most computer users.  For some it is.  For some it is not.

I could cite specifics like lack of specific hard device drivers, flakiness of video options, limitations and complications of various FOSS applications, and nebulous support.  To be fair, Windows can suffer from those very same issues (except that FOSS apps are only one option, not THE option).  Case in point: Which is better?  Posting the same confusing question to dozens of discussion forums and getting flamed with answers like “RTFM!” and “stupid noob”, or pulling out the credit card to call for suppor, getting put on hold and then getting some half-baked goon in Bangalore who not only can’t understand the question but reads the “solution” from a queue card and closes the case.  Not much of a choice, is it?

As for applications… I got a ton of emails and blog replies suggesting this or that as a “perfect” or “near-perfect” replacement for “x” on Windows.  Almost NONE were “perfect” replacements.  In fact, only one was (GPAR2 in lieu of QuickPAR).  K3B is not a replacement for the entire Nero Ultra suite.  Not even close.  PAN is not a decent replacement for Newsbin Pro.  gtkPod, RhythmBox and Floola are not 100% replacements for iTunes (even though I despise iTunes).  Firefox and Opera still have problems (even on Windows) dealing with some sites developed only for IE.  OpenOffice still does not provide 100% compatability with MS-Office documents.  Gimp is a very worthy contender for replacing PhotoShop CS2 however (maybe CS3).

And that’s just the apps that exist for Linux.  Then there’s the ones that don’t.

There is no AutoCAD replacement for Linux.  There is no Inventor or SolidWorks.  There is no Macromedia/Adobe Flash MX.  Sure, there’s Wine, Parallels, VMware and VirtualBox.  But those are cop-outs.  They offer a half-way solution to getting the job done.  But that’s a lame excuse.  Until these types of applications have 100% suitable alternatives there will be a large segment of OSX and Windows users that simply cannot “switch” without paying a heavy price.  Even the price of searching for replacements, and then learning how they work, and then learning to how to tweak and optimize them, is a very expensive proposition for some.  I’m speaking of those who rely on their apps for their careers.  Downtime/learning time is expense time.  It’s time lost from executing work, spent on retooling, and with almost no garantee of a net gain in the end.  Only a sideways shift or lateral move.  For a business environment that makes no sense at all.  In many cases, that cost is not recouped by the elimination of software licenses, mainly because the OSX or Windows licenses have already been paid for.  If you dump them after that, you’re literally throwing money away.

What Linux and the surrounding “community” needs (and it’s not really a community at all, it’s more of a collective label of “people that hate Microsoft and Apple”), is a desktop environment, and a complete suite of all of the top 50 or 75 applications used by OSX and Windows customers.  That would be the starting point.  If there were a package like that, it would already be sliding into every corporate office everywhere.  It’s not.  It’s creeping into IT backrooms and server rooms and IT geek desktops.  Until this is resolved, Windows and OSX are only going to continue growing.  And growing they are.  If you doubt that, check the investor reports for each company for yourself.

I really don’t care who wins.  I really don’t want ANYONE to “win”.  I want to see intense competition.  It makes better products, and cheaper prices.  We all win.  I just think Linux and FOSS could do more to put pressure on Apple and Microsoft than they are.  The fact that Windows and Apple prices aren’t dropping drastically is a clear indication that FOSS isn’t eating away at their profit margins.

I know that heading is going to draw fire.  Flaming, diahrea, explosive ridicule most likely.  That’s ok.  It’s a true statement.  However, I obviously need to qualify it to be proper.

As I’ve said before: A person’s experience “switching” to Linux will vary as much as their DNA varies.  Every person has their own unique needs, preferences and capabilities.  This is not lost on an operating system by any means.  If you’re the kind of user that is 100% happy doing nothing but Gmail/Hotmail, YouTube, reading news, and playing games, you will likely be 100% happy with almost any operating system, including Linux (whatever distro gives you wood).

If you are a seasoned Windows or OSX user, who has developed an intricate web of applications, scripts, utilities, and configuration settings to do an assortment of specific tasks, you may not be as happy… or happy at all.  You can still do email, surf the web, manage office suite documents, play (some) games and watch YouTube all day long.  But some of the dearest things you depend upon in OSX or Windows will not make you happy on Linux.

Am I picking on Linux?  Not really.  However, it brings up the viability of the argument that Linux is “ready” to knock Windows “off the desktop” of most computer users.  For some it is.  For some it is not.

I could cite specifics like lack of specific hard device drivers, flakiness of video options, limitations and complications of various FOSS applications, and nebulous support.  To be fair, Windows can suffer from those very same issues (except that FOSS apps are only one option, not THE option).  Case in point: Which is better?  Posting the same confusing question to dozens of discussion forums and getting flamed with answers like “RTFM!” and “stupid noob”, or pulling out the credit card to call for suppor, getting put on hold and then getting some half-baked goon in Bangalore who not only can’t understand the question but reads the “solution” from a queue card and closes the case.  Not much of a choice, is it?

As for applications… I got a ton of emails and blog replies suggesting this or that as a “perfect” or “near-perfect” replacement for “x” on Windows.  Almost NONE were “perfect” replacements.  In fact, only one was (GPAR2 in lieu of QuickPAR).  K3B is not a replacement for the entire Nero Ultra suite.  Not even close.  PAN is not a decent replacement for Newsbin Pro.  gtkPod, RhythmBox and Floola are not 100% replacements for iTunes (even though I despise iTunes).  Firefox and Opera still have problems (even on Windows) dealing with some sites developed only for IE.  OpenOffice still does not provide 100% compatability with MS-Office documents.  Gimp is a very worthy contender for replacing PhotoShop CS2 however (maybe CS3).

And that’s just the apps that exist for Linux.  Then there’s the ones that don’t.

There is no AutoCAD replacement for Linux.  There is no Inventor or SolidWorks.  There is no Macromedia/Adobe Flash MX.  Sure, there’s Wine, Parallels, VMware and VirtualBox.  But those are cop-outs.  They offer a half-way solution to getting the job done.  But that’s a lame excuse.  Until these types of applications have 100% suitable alternatives there will be a large segment of OSX and Windows users that simply cannot “switch” without paying a heavy price.  Even the price of searching for replacements, and then learning how they work, and then learning to how to tweak and optimize them, is a very expensive proposition for some.  I’m speaking of those who rely on their apps for their careers.  Downtime/learning time is expense time.  It’s time lost from executing work, spent on retooling, and with almost no garantee of a net gain in the end.  Only a sideways shift or lateral move.  For a business environment that makes no sense at all.  In many cases, that cost is not recouped by the elimination of software licenses, mainly because the OSX or Windows licenses have already been paid for.  If you dump them after that, you’re literally throwing money away.

What Linux and the surrounding “community” needs (and it’s not really a community at all, it’s more of a collective label of “people that hate Microsoft and Apple”), is a desktop environment, and a complete suite of all of the top 50 or 75 applications used by OSX and Windows customers.  That would be the starting point.  If there were a package like that, it would already be sliding into every corporate office everywhere.  It’s not.  It’s creeping into IT backrooms and server rooms and IT geek desktops.  Until this is resolved, Windows and OSX are only going to continue growing.  And growing they are.  If you doubt that, check the investor reports for each company for yourself.

I really don’t care who wins.  I really don’t want ANYONE to “win”.  I want to see intense competition.  It makes better products, and cheaper prices.  We all win.  I just think Linux and FOSS could do more to put pressure on Apple and Microsoft than they are.  The fact that Windows and Apple prices aren’t dropping drastically is a clear indication that FOSS isn’t eating away at their profit margins.

This article on Wired (titled: “More Firefox Bloat? Say it ain’t so Mozilla“) is pretty good, and I can sympathize with most of it.  However, the statement at the very end attributed to Chris Pirillo: “For the record, Pirillo says he swears by the lightweight Maxthon browser.” is just fucking stupid.  I have to hope that Chris’ comment was taken out of context and not intended to stand alone like this.  First off, Maxthon is not a browser.  It’s a browser “shell”.  It runs on top of IE.  Yes, that’s correct.  Don’t believe me?  Check it out for yourself.

Yes, Maxthon is a better IE than IE, however, it’s still IE, and thus it suffers from the same ailments and limitations as IE imposes.  During the entire IE7 beta program, the blogs were full of testers begging the IE7 team to give Maxthon serious consideration.  Either as a potential acquisition target, or simply as a partner.  Why reinvent the wheel?  It was a valid point and a very good question.  Microsoft ignored it entirely.  It seems as though they ignored Maxthon entirely as well.  Too bad.  They could have learned an enormous amount of things that would have made IE7 a much more impressive release than it turned out to be.  Alas, we have IE8 to look forward to.  Or do we?  Last year, Microsoft mentioned it quite often.  This year however, they’ve adopted amnesia.  IE-what?

Maxthon 2 is really nice in my opinion (probably worthless to anyone reading this).  However, even though it has the best ad blocking (especially embedded ads) of any browser or toolbar plug-in I’ve used yet, it’s also noticably slower due to the precaching and scanning it does to block those ads.  Of all the browsers, it is the slowest to render complex web pages.  Firefox 2 and IE7 are about equal, but only because some sites render faster in one or the other, so the net result is a washout.  Opera is pretty good, but not as fast at rendering many sites as IE7 or Ff2 (again, in my personal experience).

Regardless, Firefox isn’t getting off the hook by me.  I’m in total agreement that Mozilla has taken up the crack pipe and seen the light at the end of the bloat tunnel.  Mozilla!  It’s a friggin train!  Headed straight for you!!  Turn back!!  I really hope FF3 makes a turnabout in that respect, letting users shoulder the use of extensions as they see fit.  We shall see.

Opera?  What’s that?  You say Opera is superior?  In some respects, yes.  I was an early user of Opera and it never ceases to amaze me how many features Opera debuted, which were so quickly copied without any credit given.  Opera didn’t do enough to defend their work.  They also stuck with the retail business model for far too long, giving free browsers an easy opportunity to close the feature gaps, and expand their marketing.  I dare say far more humans on this planet know about Firefox than Opera.  A pity.  But it’s their own fault.  Oh yeah, the IE emulation feature was a fantastic effort, but it doesn’t work nearly well enough, but that’s for another day.

So, we have 2-1/2 browsers to choose from.  IE7, Ff2, and Opera9.  I don’t count Safari because I don’t have a Mac and Apple doesn’t stoop so low as to port it over to Linux or Windows.  I’m only counting those which are cross-platform.  I don’t count KDE’s Konqueror, or any of the hundreds of one-off browsers either, because they’re completely stupid.  I can’t understand why anyone even bothers making yet another web browser these days.  Even as crappy as the front-runners are, there’s no more room in the top three.  Find another solution to create.

What pisses me off most about the top three is the same: BLOAT.  They’re just too bloated.  IE also screwed up the toolbar and UI and treats users like robots by withholding customization features.  Firefox has a decent UI, but the code is too bloated and slow and some extensions conflict with others at times.  Opera is also getting too bloated and some of the UI features are just getting cluttered too much.  It’s obvious that fans in each camp are not going to tip their hats or hands to the others and therefore it’s never going to be easy to satisfy all the fans with one product.  I can still complain though.

I’m getting really tired of half-assed software products. It seems to be the norm nowadays. The more pressure from shareholders to get and keep marketshare, the more emphasis is put on cranking unfinished shiny boxes out the door.  I own and use each of these rough-cut gems so I can step up to the plate and voice my dissatisfaction.
Cases in Point:

FireFox 2.0 - Yes, while still my favorite browser, and miles ahead of IE7 (and crashes a hell of a lot less even on Vista), there are some irritating issues with 2.0.0.1 that I hope they resolve in 3.0. Having to restart the browser twice for most theme add-ons is one. On Vista it often flakes out with the mouse behavior. In many cases, scroll wheel movement is translated to text-scaling (aka “zoom”) regardless of settings.

IE7 - Do I really need to say why? Sheesh. Nice try (for Microsoft), but woefully inept attempt to match Firefox (or Opera). Of the current modern browsers, I place it near the bottom with Konqueror. Oh yeah - Why the hell does KDE even have it’s own browser?! WTF? Do we REALLY Need yet another friggin browser??? Does anyone use it?!?!?

iTunes 7.x - Losing mappings to remote libraries if the drive becomes unavailable. You’d think it would have a single “refresh” button, but no. You have to right-click and click “Get Info” on each track to refresh the link even after the drive mapping is re-established long ago. No click-n-drag for multi-select. Limited right-click options. No control over placement of MP4 files on the iPod (Podcast vs TV show vs Movie), it decides for you (often incorrectly).

Sony PSP - Oh my God.  I don’t even know where to begin with this one.  Sure, it’s neat.  It’s nifty.  But it’s still HALF-BAKED.  The keypad entry SUCKS SH*T. It cannot play inline media from web sites (MPG, AVI, WMV, MOV, not even MP4???).  The onboard memory is embarrassing.  The 30GB iPod costs less?  Holy crap.  Download a file from a web page that contains spaces and watch how it handles renaming (manually).  Horrible.  The memory expansion to 2GB is so-so, but the 4GB is a stupid clunky BRICK that not only adds bulk to the “portable” device, it adds weight.  It turns it from a portable game pad to a non-portable anchor.   Then comes the stupid-as-hell UMD idea.  They gave up and announced moving to SD cards, which they haven’t yet delivered on (I don’t count press releases, I’m talking about Best Buy and CompUSA store shelves). Sony failed us again.
Google Docs and Spreadsheets - Docs don’t seem to read Office 2003 Docs very reliably, even very VERY basic docs with a few words. It often says “failed to convert”. Spreadsheets has no fill-down option, so forget making a quick array of numbers or letters to layout a grid. Until it has more of the basic, age-old Excel and Lotus 123 features I can’t even consider switching. Amazing that after more than 2 decades they can’t just START with matching Lotus 123 capabilities.

Linux Media apps - They all suck at most things and suffice for the rest. I’m tired of settling. I want more. I don’t want to roll my own in C++ or Java either. C’mon. If Amarok or Banshee is the best they have, it’s pitiful. Burning CD’s and DVD’s on Linux PALES horribly in comparison to NeroVision on Windows. Almost any Window or Mac media app makes the Linux counterparts look like kindergarten. It’s a shame.

The Apple Keyboard - It just sucks. I hate it. I hate it as bad as the stupid Microsoft keyboard. They both suck. A basic QWERTY 101 key brick from Dell or HP is just fine for me. The fancy-shmancy function keys are just stupid. They scream “keyboards for f-ing idiots!” Do we really need a button to push to sync our stupid cameras? God almighty.
I hope you can see my “theme” here. I’m picking on EVERYONE, not just one or two. Quality is slipping badly. The aging programmers are retiring and nobody bothered to mentor the next batch. We’re in for trouble.

Vista - Regressions abound with so many features I can’t name them all. Inconsistent interface changes sprinkled across the platform. What the F*** did they do to the Network settings? OMG! Completely ruined! “Fiji” (codename for SP1) is aimed at addressing many of them, and remaining bugs, but won’t be out until Q3-Q4/07. Says a lot that they’re working on an SP before the RTM ships. Sad. Again: half-baked crap.

I’m getting really tired of half-assed software products. It seems to be the norm nowadays. The more pressure from shareholders to get and keep marketshare, the more emphasis is put on cranking unfinished shiny boxes out the door.  I own and use each of these rough-cut gems so I can step up to the plate and voice my dissatisfaction.
Cases in Point:

FireFox 2.0 - Yes, while still my favorite browser, and miles ahead of IE7 (and crashes a hell of a lot less even on Vista), there are some irritating issues with 2.0.0.1 that I hope they resolve in 3.0. Having to restart the browser twice for most theme add-ons is one. On Vista it often flakes out with the mouse behavior. In many cases, scroll wheel movement is translated to text-scaling (aka “zoom”) regardless of settings.

IE7 - Do I really need to say why? Sheesh. Nice try (for Microsoft), but woefully inept attempt to match Firefox (or Opera). Of the current modern browsers, I place it near the bottom with Konqueror. Oh yeah - Why the hell does KDE even have it’s own browser?! WTF? Do we REALLY Need yet another friggin browser??? Does anyone use it?!?!?

iTunes 7.x - Losing mappings to remote libraries if the drive becomes unavailable. You’d think it would have a single “refresh” button, but no. You have to right-click and click “Get Info” on each track to refresh the link even after the drive mapping is re-established long ago. No click-n-drag for multi-select. Limited right-click options. No control over placement of MP4 files on the iPod (Podcast vs TV show vs Movie), it decides for you (often incorrectly).

Sony PSP - Oh my God.  I don’t even know where to begin with this one.  Sure, it’s neat.  It’s nifty.  But it’s still HALF-BAKED.  The keypad entry SUCKS SH*T. It cannot play inline media from web sites (MPG, AVI, WMV, MOV, not even MP4???).  The onboard memory is embarrassing.  The 30GB iPod costs less?  Holy crap.  Download a file from a web page that contains spaces and watch how it handles renaming (manually).  Horrible.  The memory expansion to 2GB is so-so, but the 4GB is a stupid clunky BRICK that not only adds bulk to the “portable” device, it adds weight.  It turns it from a portable game pad to a non-portable anchor.   Then comes the stupid-as-hell UMD idea.  They gave up and announced moving to SD cards, which they haven’t yet delivered on (I don’t count press releases, I’m talking about Best Buy and CompUSA store shelves). Sony failed us again.
Google Docs and Spreadsheets - Docs don’t seem to read Office 2003 Docs very reliably, even very VERY basic docs with a few words. It often says “failed to convert”. Spreadsheets has no fill-down option, so forget making a quick array of numbers or letters to layout a grid. Until it has more of the basic, age-old Excel and Lotus 123 features I can’t even consider switching. Amazing that after more than 2 decades they can’t just START with matching Lotus 123 capabilities.

Linux Media apps - They all suck at most things and suffice for the rest. I’m tired of settling. I want more. I don’t want to roll my own in C++ or Java either. C’mon. If Amarok or Banshee is the best they have, it’s pitiful. Burning CD’s and DVD’s on Linux PALES horribly in comparison to NeroVision on Windows. Almost any Window or Mac media app makes the Linux counterparts look like kindergarten. It’s a shame.

The Apple Keyboard - It just sucks. I hate it. I hate it as bad as the stupid Microsoft keyboard. They both suck. A basic QWERTY 101 key brick from Dell or HP is just fine for me. The fancy-shmancy function keys are just stupid. They scream “keyboards for f-ing idiots!” Do we really need a button to push to sync our stupid cameras? God almighty.
I hope you can see my “theme” here. I’m picking on EVERYONE, not just one or two. Quality is slipping badly. The aging programmers are retiring and nobody bothered to mentor the next batch. We’re in for trouble.

Vista - Regressions abound with so many features I can’t name them all. Inconsistent interface changes sprinkled across the platform. What the F*** did they do to the Network settings? OMG! Completely ruined! “Fiji” (codename for SP1) is aimed at addressing many of them, and remaining bugs, but won’t be out until Q3-Q4/07. Says a lot that they’re working on an SP before the RTM ships. Sad. Again: half-baked crap.