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.

After running into some problems meeting an urgent demand to get work done for my brother and some friends, I found running the apps inside VMware unsuitable.  If not for performance reasons, well, for performance reasons.  And besides, as I said in an earlier post: Spending a significant amount of time doing work inside a VM amounts to stupidity.  It’s not a “native solution” as I also said.  If I have to explain that, well, you’re just not going to get it anyway.

I thought, well, this might be a good time to see if the “Complete Backup” I created within Vista actually would work.

I booted to the Vista DVD and ran the repair option.  I pointed it to the backup I created on the second hard disk and let it rip.  It restored alright.  Did it boot?  Nope.  Why?  Because GRUB was still sitting in the middle of the sandbox and not letting any little Windows kids come in to play.  My guess is either the boot record or MFT still had GRUB hooks.  “Sector Error 17″ is all I got.  Enter: Vista install take II:  A complete partition rebuild.  I blew away the partitions and created one big partition, reloaded Vista and was finally back on the evil dark side of operating systems.

Problems solved?  Not exactly.

After Vista, I soon found that I still needed to install some Dell updates to get things back in order.  I will say this: if you have a Dell Dimension E520/521 and you’re running Vista: get the latest updates/drivers for the BIOS, hard drive, video card (nVidia GeForce 7300), and most importantly: the DVD/RW drive.  Before doing that, the performance was horrible.  Operations would time out just trying to read from media.  After the updates, all is working great.

I’m not giving up on Linux.  I still have my lab machines at work running Ubuntu and the VM’s with Ubuntu and Fedora are still in use.  I will post my reflections on trying to get Linux apps to reliably replace Windows apps for my needs.  It was a mixed blessing.  I continue hoping that will improve with time.

I’m not by any means trying to convey or imply any significance to those specific “roles”, just giving them as examples. I would say that many “casual” computer users would be 100% fine with Ubuntu. I dare say many would hardly notice. I’m talking about the kind of people that are awe struck at AOL. Not that this bodes ill for Linux by any means. In fact, it’s very good. The major appeal of Windows for AOL-types is ease of setup and use. Ubuntu is damn good at supplanting those attributes. Maybe not the initial setup, but then again, most of those types of users buy a computer already setup. Let’s keep this Apples-to-Apples.

For many users however, life on a computer is entirely dependent on a select group of applications software. Some of these work on Linux, some work poorly, some not at all. I do not ever consider Wine or VMware a real “solution” because it’s a bandaid on a bigger problem: a dearth of equivalent native applications. Argue all you want, but that’s what it is. Running MS-Office in a Wine session, is still MS-Office. That’s not a “clean” solution in my book. OpenOffice is (or can be, sometimes). This brings into question another argument: Should Linux have to mimick every aspect of Windows to be considered “successful”?

No. Not really. But…

It all depends on what you define as “successful” for the Linux market. Is sales and marketshare the measure? Is it vendor support and product availability? Is it magazine articles praising it’s virtues? I’ve yet to get two Linux evangelists to agree on this subject. On one hand, many will blurt out boldly that Linux can easily displace Windows on the desktop of most users. Then they hem and haw on the particulars of exactly how that could or might happen. The problem is that Windows didn’t win by technical superiority, it won by clever marketing and lucky timing. There is no “clever marketing” that I’ve seen for Linux, because there isn’t enough money behind it yet. Luck hasn’t been too kind to it either. Sure, things are improving, but very slowly based upon the numbers. Linux needs a real ass-kicking, ball-busting sponsor to take the reigns and drive the herd to the creek (in one direction). Otherwise, it’s going to remain the sideshow freak for technoweenies to gawk over. (for the record, I’m writing this on my Ubuntu desktop)

Windows isn’t a technical total failure either. It has it’s share of merits. As Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical Ltd recently said, Microsoft did contribute heavily towards the trend of cheaper priced software. It’s funny how quickly we forget that and start beating them up for escalating prices. (In case you didn’t know, Mark is the founder of Ubuntu) Remember how much a UNIX workstation cost back in 1985? I do. We bought plenty of them and I was around the Navy when they were shelling out $30,000+ for each one, and getting truckloads at a time. A typical Dell Dimension E521 today will blow one of those away in performance and capability. Part of that was the dramatic drop in operating system and basic app prices. UNIX and the proprietary apps that we bought were outrageously priced, even then.

However, what bothers me about Microsoft today, is that they’ve given up on core innovation. They still innovate in very focused areas, and certain products. But as a whole, they’ve become a follower. Chasing AOL, Netscape, Real, and now Google and Adobe (with Silverlight). Everything they’re hyping with maps, web-apps, is all catch-up. Even the newer “server core” Longhorn is a catch-up to UNIX and Linux. Pure and simple. And the more recent legal attack againt FOSS is just too much. It smacks of desperation and angst. Meanwhile, their products are becoming infused and obsessed with “rights management” at the expense of complexity, licensing terms, increased restrictions and increased prices.

I had to give Linux another chance.

I’ve been a casual user since college (late 1990′s) with Slackware, then early RedHat, then SuSe, and Mandrake, then on to Fedora and now Ubuntu. Of course, I’m basing a lot of what I’m saying on the Gnome desktop moreso than the KDE desktop. For the record, I still think KDE is too much and Gnome too little. I wish someone would crank out a happy medium.

So, what am I trying to say? Good question. The answer is this: Whether you will “like” what you get when “transitioning” from one operating system to another is going to depend on multiple factors. One of the most significant of these is the types of applications you prefer and rely upon. If suitable replacements exist for the new operating system, you may be perfectly happy. Maybe ecstatic. Maybe not. Then there’s the tedious hunt for replacements when there really aren’t many around. Do I need to list specifics? No. That would simply be picking another argument to waste more time.

I can list quite a few apps on several platforms that are difficult, if not impossible, to replace on another platform. It’s all market-driven. That’s why the CAD/CAM world is still stuck with too many products and file formats. It’s why AutoCAD doesn’t run for shit on Linux or OSX. It’s why you can’t run OSX inside VMware on a Windows host. It’s why Microsoft is still building translators and converters for MS Office 2007 to XPS, ODF and OpenXML formats to make the EU and China happy. It’s why there isn’t a native iTunes client for Linux. Homogeneity is not only boring, but profit-challenged. Water, temperature and electricity flow best when two points in the circuit are not equal. Same with markets. As long as each platform has differences, there will be products and services sold to bridge those gaps.

Going back, sort of, to Clive’s article, he provides a very insightful list of Windows-to-Linux application comparisons.  It’s missing quite a few that I happen to really need (on the Windows side), but even a few which are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to many Windows users besides myself.  Examples?

• iTunes –> Floola is the best Linux candidate I’ve found yet.  Though, still not perfect
• Autodesk AutoCAD –> ???
• Autodesk Inventor –> ???
• QuickPAR –> ???
• SQL Server 2005 Mgt Console –> ???
• IIS 6 Mgt Console –> ???
• UltraISO/WinISO –> ???

Clive also says “Nero” equates to “K3B”, but “Nero” is only one name for a SUITE of apps which are bundled together.  NeroWave, and NeroVision don’t have counterparts in K3B that I’ve ever seen.  Burning CD/DVD disks is mindless drivel.  Building DVD player menus, covers, and transcoding on the fly are a bit different.  I’m still hunting for the ??? items above.  (feel free to drop comments with suggestions if you’d like)
I’m digressing again.

I ran across this while searching for information on how to effectively inventory guest vm’s on a given physical host for reporting and auditing purposes.  The inventory system we use is one I developed entirely on KixTart (www.kixtart.org) which works extremely well, extremely fast and extremely reliable.  That’s pretty much, well, extreme.  I’m kidding of course, it’s not really extreme in the sense of general technique, many people use the same approach with Kix or other tools.  Regardless, I can detect VMware, VirtualPC or Parallels on Windows clients, but I’m having a tough time querying for the guest VM’s on the client.  Still researching this.