bsd licensing and windows

[reaper]

I've been wondering a few things about our Microsoft overlords.  Here's my take.

Microsoft is dominant because they control applications like Office, which are considered a requirement for business, and for the most part cannot be used outside of Windows.  Also applications are not often ported to other Operating systems, so if you desire to use these apps (games, etc), then you are locked into Windows (if you don't want extra complexitity, hassles, and what not).

Whenever I use Linux, I get the feeling the design is stellar, the apps are scalable, flexible, and powerfull, but they are half-baked, in that not as much care is taken to make things simpler for the user.  In other words, I just want to accomplish X, to work on this, and Windows is winning to make things as easy as possible.

Now I wrote this post because I think the power of Linux comes from all the free GNU utilitites, when combined together make for a very powerfull system.  I think if Microsoft had access to these peices of software it would make their stranglehold stronger.  So if software creators chose the BSD style licensing, would Windows be fun to use like Linux, and strengthen it's dominance?

Nothing beats a bash shell, and all those cool software packages.

I don't know, I just think stuff like this is cool, especially the stuff you can do with networking:

#!/bin/sh
#assign the percentage of disk use from the df command to the variable x
x=`df -H | grep 'dev/sda' | awk '{ print $5 " " $1 }' | cut -d'%' -f1`


#if disk usage is high, write to html file
if [ $x -ge 90 ] ; then
echo "fail" > /var/www/syslog/diskmonitor.html
else
echo "OK" > /var/www/syslog/diskmonitor.html
fi

[QwazyWabbit]

Linux is not popular precisely because it takes all kinds of shell magic to configure it and get things done. Your average desktop user doesn't want to have to learn all kinds of cryptic commands and switches like your examples just to get some things done. When you have to drop to cmd in Windows or shell in Linux you have failed to satisfy the majority of users' needs.

Open Office is compatible with MS Office, ODF is probably a better system but even X is hard to use at times and I see a lot of "similarities" in the GUI but often the menu item of the same name doesn't have the same function in X as it does in Windows. Innovation is one thing, flawed implementation is another.

Scalable? Most users don't know what the word means. They have a computer at the office for doing necessary work and a computer at home for games and entertainment. They are not going to spend time learning a mess of shell commands to "allocate disk quotas" or "set user access rights" so their kids can play WoW.

The biggest drag on Linux popularity is the nerds that keep "advancing" it without fixing the basic style and functionality of the necessary GUI configuration tools users need. Cool commands are a nerd thing. Users are not nerds, they don't need cool commands. They need OS/X.

[reaper]

The biggest drag on Linux popularity is the nerds that keep "advancing" it without fixing the basic style and functionality of the necessary GUI configuration tools users need. Cool commands are a nerd thing. Users are not nerds, they don't need cool commands. They need OS/X.

I agree, the thing is that most of these people are working for free, and they're just not interested in making things transparent for the user - which is a big reason why Linux doesn't have a shot to replace Windows.

[QwazyWabbit]

I don't think it's as much as a working for free issue as much as it's not centrally managed. Everyone who codes for Linux is trying to satisfy a perceived need or solve a particular problem. There is certainly no way to control the organic growth of the collection. As you say, the transparency for users comes last. Solving the immediate needs of the nerd community is first. If there is useability feedback on a particular tool, it comes from other nerds who may or may not think about unsophisticated users.

[zndkw1n]

linux is not about "easy of use" or "user friendlyness".  It's about learning and understanding how something works.  And thats why people dont like it, theyre lazy asses. 

[QwazyWabbit]

I used to be into computers because it was interesting to get into the guts of them and make them do what you wanted them to do. I designed several of my own microcomputer systems, several of which were dedicated to remote control and communications. I've toyed with RCA1802's, 8080A's, Z80's, 6502's, 6809's, Z180/64180, x86's, PDP8, PDP10, MicroVAX, and all kinds of assembly languages and HLL's. I have coded RTOS's and foreground/background systems. I have generated morse code and decoded DTMF with microcomputers. In my job I work daily with machine tool CNC controls and electomechanical systems. I no longer find "learning how something works" to be as entertaining as it used to be. Now my computers are tools. Linux is a tool. If I have to get down and dirty and turn a crank on a crufty user interface I am not entertained or enlightened. All I want to do is get some work done without having to reinvent the wheel.

You will find this is the attitude of 99% of users worldwide, they are not lazy. They just have more important things to do that learn the guts and tortured logic of why things are done certain ways in Linux. The problem with Linux advocates is they are so into the "isn't this cool" attitude that they can't identify with the "just get it done" user base. They don't care about "su", "cp" or "mv" or 10,000 other cryptic and nonsensical commands and their switches in Linux. This is why consumers buy Windows pre-installed and Macs with OS/X and applications preinstalled. They don't want to know what's inside, they just want to do cool stuff. Today, without effort, with one hand and minimal keyboarding or reading.

[reaper]

well the cool thing about computers is there is always more to learn.

networking
electronics
artifical intellegence
programming

yeah pretty much everything .  I find I want to pick and chose what I want to learn now, and I don't want to learn some complex configuration file of 'x' software, especially when there is software to accomplish the same task that is easier to use.  Computers are tools, and they should work for you .

I have generated morse code and decoded DTMF with microcomputers

you were making a modem?  how does the analog data get demodulated in hardware?  then the processor (an asic or regular processor on the motherboard or pc) gets this data, which is binary, and reads the data as a digit dialed?

I get the whole VOIP thing, you take the analog signal, voice works out where you can sample it at 64k a second to get good quality (chop off the high and low frequencies), and that's why we have ds0 signalling.  this is also why fax messes up with voip.  it also looks like the big carriers are going to be doing voip for their trunks, so looks like SS7 and DTFM..pots all together will eventually be gone.

[QwazyWabbit]

you were making a modem?  how does the analog data get demodulated in hardware?  then the processor (an asic or regular processor on the motherboard or pc) gets this data, which is binary, and reads the data as a digit dialed?

No modem. It was a repeater controller. The morse was for ID purposes. The DTMF was for control signalling - telecommand. You commanded the system with a DTMF pad. Mitel MT8870 chip did the encode/decode. Phase locked loops and some digital filters in the chip, as I recall. Microprocessors weren't up for DSP applications, at least not affordable systems at that time. The chip set a bit and a 4 bit decode when it received a valid tone. I used the bit to issue an interrupt and the ISR would read the nibble and pass it off to the command buffer. End of the command string was signalled by dropping the radio carrier.

[jägermonsta]

linux is not about "easy of use" or "user friendlyness".  It's about learning and understanding how something works.  And thats why people dont like it, theyre lazy asses. 

Much like learning the English language, eh?

[quadz]

The problem with Linux advocates is they are so into the "isn't this cool" attitude that they can't identify with the "just get it done" user base.

I agree but I'm not necessarily sure it's a problem. 

As the saying goes: Unix is user-friendly. It's just picky about who its friends are.

To clarify - if the goal is to turn Linux into a mainstream desktop operating system, then I'd agree the attitude you mention above would be part of the problem.  However, my impression is that many Linux developers and users are quite happy with their OS filling more of a developer/power-user/hobbyist niche than the closed, black-box-but-consumer-oriented operating systems like Windows or OS X.

They don't care about "su", "cp" or "mv" or 10,000 other cryptic and nonsensical commands and their switches in Linux.

Agreed... and I can accept that the unix commands might seem nonsensical to users who just want to click on icons.

From a software developer's perspective, though, I love the unix shell.  I've used DOS since PC DOS 1.0 in 1981... Over the years, Microsoft has tacked on some unixisms like pipes and stream redirection (i.e. 2>&1) ... but there appear to have never been any unifying principles underlying the design of Microsoft's shell environment--perhaps doomed from the start as a poor CP/M clone.

By contrast, the focus on being able to connect the input and output of a series of small programs together, each performing discrete units of work has been central to the evolution of Unix.  This goes hand in hand with the overarching design philosophy that "A file is a bag of bytes and everything is a file."

This has led to a system where commands interoperate from the simple:

  ls | wc -l

to the sublime:

  # archive a directory from system A, outputting the acrhive file to system B
  # note that the archive file never exists on system A, even temporarily:
  tar zcvf - /wwwdata | ssh root@192.168.1.201 "cat > /backup/wwwdata.tar.gz"

  # play mp3 audio files piped to multiple computers
  mpg123 -s *.mp3 | ./nettee -in - -next machine1,machine2,machine3, ... ,machine6

  etc.

Again, though, I would agree that the vast majority of consumer OS users would neither comprehend nor have much chance of being educated to appreciate the value of a system based on powerful, interoperating commands like those in the examples above.

. . . OS X is of course interesting, in that it has a consumer-friendly GUI, with Unix under the hood...

Er... but anyway....

[quadz]

Not five minutes after posting the above, I got a request from my employer to locate and fix every occurrence of an old piece of data across all the code and data files on their website.

So i typed:

vi `find www code -name "*.rb" -o -name "*.txt" -o -name "*.html" -print0 | xargs -0 grep -l "503-531-84"`

...and I ended up immeditely editing just the relevant files.

[reaper]

that's what Microsoft doesn't get.  yeah powershell is better than dos, but without all the utilitites installed (mostly by default) to tie everything together, they don't get the power and flexibility of a unix system.

*nix doesn't seem to get the desire and need for transparency of applications.  I want the gui tools to work well, even if I modify the configuration file myself.  not to mention the all the options aren't in the gui tools, and many times they don't even work right.

edit: I always though xargs was kinda neat

[[BTF]Jehar]

"A true geek will spend an hour automating a 5-minute task just so he never has to do it again"
How appropriate Even I, a non-programmer, have been off of winblows for almost four weeks now (woohoo!), and the experience has been mostly painless. You know what? I *like* being able to run something from the console so I can get full logging of everything... I *like* being able to run complex commands with a simple symbolic link. Hell, I even made a script for nautilus to upload files to an ftp server with a single click. Simply put, I have more information at my disposal, more options, and best of all, it all *fits well*. Sure, 80% of the time I'm using the gui, but the power comes from making that gui do things the way I want at a highly efficient pace.

If linux is going anywhere, it'll be at the point of "my grandma can use it" (this may already be the case), but without losing any real power at all. Dig a little bit, and it's all still there.

[quadz]

You know what? I *like* being able to run something from the console so I can get full logging of everything...

Plus, chicks dig it:

[quadz]

"A true geek will spend an hour automating a 5-minute task just so he never has to do it again"

So true.  I also like this from someone's signature on a programming mailing list:

  Poor workers blame their tools. Good workers build better tools. The
  best workers get their tools to do the work for them.