Linux users fret about desktop fate

Two major moves by well-known Linux companies have the open-source community worried that the consumer is being left behind.

On Monday, in an expected move, Red Hat said that it would stop supporting all consumer versions of Red Hat Linux by the end of April and that it planned to support only its business version of the operating system. On Tuesday, enterprise software maker Novell surprised the high-tech world when announced an agreement to buy software maker SuSE Linux for $210 million.

For the business world, the deals seemingly confirmed the corporate role for the communal operating system. However, many Linux enthusiasts worry that the Linux community may have lost its two most popular distributions--Red Hat Linux and SuSE Linux--in a corporate equivalent of a one-two punch. "When you go into a CompUSA or Best Buy, the only versions of Linux that you can find on the shelves are Red Hat and SuSE," said Jack Alderson, a Linux and Sun systems administrator for custom-chip maker X-Fab Texas. Alderson fears that Novell will stop creating consumer-oriented versions of SuSE Linux, which he uses at home. "With Red Hat's announcement, that pulled them off of the shelf and out of the general public's view. All there was left was SuSE. Now that's going to disappear also."

The moves could return consumers to a choice of Linux distributions from smaller companies--such as Mandrake, Xandros or Lindows--or from community projects such as Debian, Fedora, Gentoo and Slackware.

Novell appears to be planning to carry SuSE's open-source torch, but it hasn't made specific comments regarding lower-priced versions of its Linux products.

"Novell is committed to the open-source community," Chief Executive Jack Messman said Tuesday in a conference call. "With SuSE, we gain access to and will continue to actively support key SuSE-sponsored open-source initiatives."

While SuSE's high-end server products retail for $450 or more, SuSE 9 Professional--which includes publicly available Linux server packages--only costs $80.

Charles Philip Chan, a Toronto resident who has used Linux for about a decade, believes that Novell's acquisition is additional validation for the open-source operating system.

"On one hand it is good, because it looks like Linux is moving in the commercial space," he said, adding that consumers still have a lot of choice among community projects on the Internet. "There are a lot of other distributions out there."

However, Chan said the consumer market will likely expand at a slower rate, because there will be fewer versions on shelves at retail stores. While Red Hat Linux won't be available at retail, the company is supporting a community project, Fedora, to create distributions based on cutting-edge Linux technology.

Arthur Tyde, the founder and former president of the Bay Area Linux Users' Group, is optimistic about SuSE remaining a choice for consumers. SuSE Linux 9 has already been released, and he fully expects to see the next version at retail.

"I think it is wait and see," he said. "It might not affect the community at all. From a consumer standpoint, I think you will still see SuSE Linux in CompUSA."

Moreover, while some have viewed troubled Novell's purchase plans as a potential threat to SuSE, Tyde said that Novell is just getting a second chance and who knows what the company will do with SuSE.

"You have to think about what they are really buying," he said. "They are not buying the rights to all that code. They are buying credibility to that space."

And, Tyde said, for Novell to gain credibility in the Linux community means keeping consumer product on the shelves.

Thanks for a civil reply. As you might have noticed, the ad hominem attacks are flying.

The machine I'm running RH9 on is a PII MMX 300 with 256mb of ram and a 40gb drive (Dell Optiplex). I figured it was fast enough to run Win2K so it would be plenty of machine to run Linux. I originally had only 128 mb of RAM, enough for Win2K but not even close for RH9.

I'll have a PIII 650 machine with 256mb available in a few weeks. I'll try that. I think I'll try it with the Redhat Pro box set before I spend time downloading something else.

If I'm going to run this as a desktop environment, it has to run XWindows and Open Office at a decent rate.

I'll spend the next few weeks trying to figure out how to get the network printer to work. I think I've read 200 pages on Samba so far. It just won't see my network printers.

Thanks again for the civil reply.

I agree. Red Hat desktop Linux sucks big time. It takes more machine than Win2K, runs pitifully slow, crashes and doesn't recognize WinXP network printers. I haven't dared to try the USB stuff yet. In addition it isn't as easy to install or setup as Windows.

Huh? Last night I set up a box with an Gigabyte MB and an Athalon 1800+ that used to have Win2K on it with RedHad 9.0. Using the DVD that came with the software (so I didn't have to swap CDs), it took less than 25 minutes to get through the interactive part, and I just took all the defaults. The system was up and running in about the same time as getting a Windows system up. And it recognized the USB mouse without any problems. Add another 60 seconds to configure the printing to a HP PSC 2110 all in one, directly attached to a WinXP Pro workstation (and RH 9 has the right drivers for that printer too!) and I had no problems at all! And the system seems a bit faster, or at least as fast as the Win2K system that was running on the same hardware.

Mark

Now as far as Novell and SUSE, this is a big deal. When you marry the Ximian desktop and red carpet with the second biggest commecial Linux distribution, then add Novell's worldwide sales and support, things are getting interesting. SUSE currently has offerings on the shelves of most of the big retailers. Consider 60% of PCs sold worldwide don't go through what we would call retailers in the US.
I think what you are seeing is that the 'pay penguin' is making it's market debut as support and upgrades sales. Not as free software. Money is being made in penguinville.

I wasn't a big fan of IBM when they wanted to rule the world of computing and am not a big fan of m$ now that they want to rule the world. Mono-culture in the marketplace is bad, whether it is computers or cars. Market choice rules.

The SuSe/Novell deal is especially interesting with Novell's announcement some time ago that they would be un-bundling the NetWare services from the OS, and in NetWare 7, you would be able to run the network services on either the NetWare OS or on Linux.

However, I do remember the UNIXware fiasco, where Novell actually pitted one of their own products against another! When it comes to taking terrific products and technologies, few companies have been more inept than Novell. Given the history of Novell (having the #1 network installed base, and losing all that market share, buying the #1 word processor program, and letting it die a slow and painful death, buying UNIX and doing nothing with it, except trying to sell it as an alternative to your main product, etc...), this may be what kills Linux completely!

But I hope that's not the case

Mark

"I set up a box with an Gigabyte MB and an Athalon 1800+"

I was running it on a Pentium II MMX 300 with 256MB. Win2K ran fine. Redhat Linux 9 does not. It finally ran on the 3rd clean install.

It took over an hour to do the installation (stock RH9 Pro setup). Also, I am still trying to get it to recognize a network printer. I'm sure there is an easy way to do it, but the documentation is so overwhelming that I have been unable to do it. I have about 4 hours invested in the printer setup.

It appears that RH9 requires a better, faster, stronger computer than Win2K. That is disappointing because Linux users have been telling me it runs fine on old equipment. I guess they were running older versions.

I'll post again when I try it on a faster computer. I hope the PIII 650 that I will have in a few weeks will handle it. I can't afford to take a 2GHZ unit off-line to test Linux. I might be able to get my hands on a PIII 900 with 256MB. Then, I'll start evaluating the business software that is available for Linux. The mahjong game is excellent once it boots.

Who gives a crap about the Linux desktop? What it has is plenty good for engineers, developers, and the like (and much better than most other Unix variants), and I don't see a particular need to pander to the home market. Let Apple or someone like that take care of it.

Where Linux really kicks ass is on the server-side, and for that you don't need or really want a shiny drooler-friendly GUI anyway. Much ado about nothing says I.

If you want to buy a new Apple computer, you *must* use OSX.

On the other hand, OSX is just about the finest desktop OS currently being produced (or ever, though OS v9 and prior were giant turds), so that isn't particularly tragic. At least for desktop usage, I can't think of a better OS. And you can always put LinuxPPC on it if you want; some Apple resellers sell machines with LinuxPPC pre-installed. In fact, the US Navy uses Apple computers running LinuxPPC for some of their combat sensor systems.

I find the cutoff is 500mhz 512k P3s and I like 512 mbytes(256 is min for me). Anything slower can't run the heavy gui. Faster cpus don't do much but cost more, especially if you are just internet browsing and doing office/gnucash type tasks. You can even play some games quite nicely. WinXP on the same box is no better or no worse, just costs more.

I canibalized all my older machines when gnome 2.0 came out. The new feature rich guis don't do well on slow limited memory boxes. The new 2.6 kernel due RSN will speed up things a notch and lengthen the life of P3s even further. I won't touch a machine if it is under the mins. I then go to recommending white box machines, like Walmart or others. UNIX has always liked cache so you can gain a lot of speed from extra processor and disk cache, the new 8mB cache disks are the trick setup.

Open Office has been slow to load on most systems. There has been some recent tuning done which GREATLY improves the startup times and somewhat speeds up the base program. Look for updated rpms RSN, OpenOffice.org is doing some qa on them now. ABIWord is fine if you are just doing light wp tasks(what most peopel do). I use OpenOffice to translate and ABIWord to work with the docs. If you don't need the features, why pay for the baggage.

I you have the net bandwidth download Koppix 3.3 11-03 version ... here is the forum http://www.knoppix.net/forum/. Burn a cd and stick it in any system. It doesn't disturb what you have on the box but allows you to quickly see what the fit with Linux is like. It is a full blown KDE debian cd and if you want to install it you can do it from the cd. Takes about 20 minutes to install to disk on my test 'slow dog'. Win2003 entrprise server took almost 3 hours when I did a OEM install on the same hardware. Win2003 did run somewhat faster since it has most of the consumer stuff stripped out.

There really isn't much measureable difference in the Linux versions as far as performance goes. Most enterprise kernels are just backporting some 2.6 kernel features to speed up things. Using the appropiate kernel compiler switches is what gives you the selection and variation. The 'pro' versions just cost more and have a few extras in the box.

Interested to see how you do.

Also, I am still trying to get it to recognize a network printer. I'm sure there is an easy way to do it, but the documentation is so overwhelming that I have been unable to do it. I have about 4 hours invested in the printer setup.

Hmmm... I didn't even bother looking at the docs. I just thought I'd give it a try. Is the Windows computer you want to access the printer on in a domain? In my case, it's just a workgroup. But all I did was add an entry to the /etc/hosts file for the WinXP computer, then started the gnome print manager. (BTW, I did install the Samba system during the initial installation, but didn't do any configuration of it. You will need if for the SMB protocol.) I just "filled in the blanks." That was it: It printed immediately. Of course, you need to be sure that you tell it the user name of an account on the WinXP system.

Mark

Thanks.

I'm trying to run a network printer that is attached to a WinXP computer on a giant University domain that requires a logon. I created a user with the same name and a passward that matched and tried everything I could think of, but it didn't work. I think I have to figure out how to logon to the domain with the Linux machine. So far I have had no success. I refuse to pay a Linux nerd to do it for me and the RH people are baffled. They are free, but dumb.

This reminds me of early Novell setups with my first
Arcnet.

I'm trying to run a network printer that is attached to a WinXP computer on a giant University domain that requires a logon. I created a user with the same name and a passward that matched and tried everything I could think of, but it didn't work. I think I have to figure out how to logon to the domain with the Linux machine. So far I have had no success. I refuse to pay a Linux nerd to do it for me and the RH people are baffled. They are free, but dumb.
This reminds me of early Novell setups with my first Arcnet.
Have you tried adding a LOCAL user to the XP machine, rather than trying to logon to the domain? If you're not sure how, right mouse click on "My Computer," then choose "Manage." Then select Local Users and Groups -> Local Users, then add the user.

It's funny that you mentioned Novell, since that's my specialty, not Windows. I know that there's a way to configure Samba to authenticate to a Domain, but I've never tried doing that.

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