[lbo-talk] Linux, was New Imperialism? Imperialism has beenmonopoly

tully tully at bellsouth.net
Mon Apr 4 18:52:23 PDT 2005


On Monday 04 April 2005 11:02 am, ravi wrote:
>here's an example: i am running freeBSD 4.9 (OS shouldn't matter),
> KDE 3.3. on a similar environment, try dragging a desktop icon and
> dropping it on the kicker (for non-KDE folks, that's the equivalent
> of the windows quick-launch/taskbar). at least for me, that won't
> work. i can, i think, give at least 10 other such examples.

Mine works. Just tested it to be sure. Dragged the IE icon the Crossover demo had dumped on my desktop, dropped it on the kicker, clicked the new small icon it created, and that piece of crap software opened fine.

Are most of the other 10 problems drag and drop related?


>IRC? what's that? ;-) remember, we are talking about joe-end-user
> here. GAIM, to be fair, is pretty decent as a yahoo client (though
> its sorely lacking on the regular yahoo client's fancy features).

Good point. IMs are extremely popular but I dislike their intrusions and the surfacial level of talk, so I don't use them. But for the average user, it would indeed be a necessity that IM work well.

Two apps I use alot are xmms (a winamp clone) and apollon, which accesses 3 major PTP networks including fasttrack (same one kazaa uses), gnutella, and openFT. I'm getting better results from gnutella than fasttrack, both in terms of files and bandwidth, even though gnutella only shows 3% of the users and 0.06% the file GB of fasttrack. I also like xine better than powerdvd, gimp better than photoshop, konqueror's drag and drop burner better than nero, kalarm better than task scheduler, and kmail better than eudora (outlook is malware). I use opera as a web browser (fastest) with firefox as backup and can see realplayer, quicktime, flash, etc. I have the Office 2000 suite available with crossover and have openoffice. Except for games, have I covered most of the bases needed by the average user?


>palm-sync (with Kpilot and gnome-pilot front-ends) is fairly decent,
>though friends have reported problems with newer palms. pocketPC
>support, AFAIK, is non-existant on linux. you can run linux on a
>pocketPC system like the iPAQ, but that's a whole new can of worms.

I had to look this up because I didn't know anything about pocketpcs. Is

http://ppc.palmopensource.com/index.php3?category=30 http://www.cewindows.net/wce/linux-serial.htm

anything like what you want? Seems like there are quite a few sites claiming this can be done. If nothing else, maybe plip can help help.

Another direction I find intriguing is the tablet, especially the ones that work as a laptop, but allow the screen part to be detached for use as a tablet. I think Dell makes one. That seems to be the best of both worlds, allowing a full size keyboard with all the function of a desktop and also a very portable tablet without any duplication of hardware.


> but i was talking about their graphical
> installer.

For a system install, It is pretty, but is gui bloatware and unnecessary IMO. In situations where nested menus aren't needed, I appreciate the ancient method of using a key to select instead of a mouse.

For package management, slackware has various gui apps that people are downloading alot. I'm not interested since a command line "installpkg *tgz" as root in the /tmp directory is simpler to me.

RPMs always seemed unnecessarily complex. With slack I rarely ever deal with a dependency issue, while with the other distros I felt plagued by them. I can use rpm files on slack but have rarely needed to.

But I do indeed see your point, that standard users are more likely to appreciate guis and mousing for everything. But standard users are often unwilling to even reinstall windows themselves. As I see it, the solution is to start selling computers preloaded with linux, and I don't mean the linspire (lindows) version, which keeps people dependent on M$ apps and subscriptions.

Slackware using kde would be an excellent distro to install for a newbie. I've handed this laptop to windows novices and they could use it immediately. KDE is the answer for the average windows user. More bloated than some linux purists find acceptable, but not nearly as bloated as windows. It runs fast for me. An app may crash or hang but KDE has never done it to me. No need to defrag, no reboots after an install. It is fit now to be a destop usable by anyone.


>as i partially touched upon, windows' vulnerability is a more
> complex issue than it is made out to be. one reason is its large
> user base -- crackers find it a more productive target. another is
> the plethora of features. a third is just user ignorance or admin
> laxity.

Well, I'm bound to catch hell for this opinion, but I admire crackers for their skill and for what I see as their performance of a vital public service of debugging, conducting the quality control that the software vendors fail to do in their rush to get new features out the door. Crackers provide their labor for free and shouldn't be jailed, but instead congratulated and immediately hired by the vendors. But the vendors can profit more by letting the crackers do their job for them and letting their customers take the hit. Vendors insist the crackers are criminals, but I see the vendors as the real criminals that users should be suing for damages instead of jailing crackers while wealthy vendors get even more of a free ride. Just another one of my somewhat less than mainstream perspectives... ;}


>as my trivial example illustrates, windows still scores higher on UI
>usability. i believe it also scores higher on available apps. who
> cares about the MS monopoly? i might, but i dont know if the
> average user does.

The average user does care about price and usability and linux shines in both.


> some CIOs and IT folks are beginning to realize
> the downside of being at the mercy of MS, but is their discomfort
> enough to over-ride the advantages of windows? i see no signs of
> mass defection, the occasional slashdot hurrah notwithstanding.

The linux market is doing well in the server market. It will take time for it to reach the desktop market. We need better penetration of pre-installed linux machines on the market, which I'm sure would help.


>similar vulnerabilities exist in linux/unix apps. see for example
> the GIF heap overflow bug at:

I know. But I think many of the crackers are using linux or macs and there is a loyalty there, an honor among thieves if you will. I doubt we'll see any serious attacks on linux or mac machines until M$ is no longer the monopoly. Then the focus will switch to whoever is viewed as profiteering the most.


>so, if linux is less the target of crackers because of MS's
> popularity (i.e., security through obscurity), aren't you making my
> point here?

Like I alluded above, I don't think its the popularity (goodness) of the product that earns it the attacks. I like to think that the crackers see themselves as activists with a mission to destroy elitist power. No doubt I'm romanticizing, but maybe not too badly.


>its probably true that bugs/viruses/holes per box is still higher
> for windows than linux. again, the question remains: is the cost of
> dealing with this higher than the cost of shifting from windows to
> linux?

The community college where I work decided it was better to purchase new XP machines for one lab than to upgrade their very functional Win98 machines. I think its a racket.


> when attempting to educate end users (read: non-techie friends and
> family) my problem almost always has been to convince them that
> these things are worth learning and following. people like to treat
> their computer like any other appliance -- if i can get a small
> shift in that attitude, it would do a lot more to achieve security
> than a switch of the OS.

It sure would, and I've been trying to help others in that direction for years. I intentionally gave myself a virus (actually a worm, one of the matrix variations IIRC) so that I could figure out how to help a friend who was in trouble. As most have no doubt gathered by now, I'm also a lunatic and I really wanted to see what happened. I was so impressed as I watched it change files and the registry. I was able to fix it without a format/reinstall (which wouldn't faze me since I've done that dozens of times) but it was great fun.

I have managed to get some spyware on the machine during a time I couldn't even blame any .exe files on kazaa, so I suspect there may be the possibility of hidden buttons on popup windows, which is the only thing I could think that I'd been careless about. But I've had no other security problems. I refuse to run AV in windows because of the terrible performance hit. I have used pandasoftware.com's free ActiveScan on occasion, which finds all the infected file attachments since I last ran it and disables them. I've also used lavasoft.com's ad-aware to get rid of the spyware I'd gotten.


>btw, what according to you is the greatest tull album, ever? i
> maintain its "heavy horses", but almost nobody agrees with me ;-).

I do! Superb album. I'm so delighted to find someone who has heard something besides Aqualung, much less can appreciate Heavy Horses! I so love the more traditional sounding acoustic work Tull did. Have you heard any of Stage Left from Martin Barre? I gotta get it. I've not cared much for Ian Anderson's solo stuff and had always wondered just what Barre was contributing. After the cuts I've heard from Stage Left, I can see how important Barre is. But I think its like Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, etc., where the combination is required to create the full magic. It helps to remind me that together we are more than the sum of our parts.

--tully



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