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"I believe such a free software "service" as the one I'm proposing here would be very profitable for small developers and developer teams who wish to free their software for whatever reason (the reason could be political or simply a wish to avoid the legal problems tied to defending copyrights and patents on a proprietary app in court) but still profit from it."

Personally, I think it would put the small software developers out of business. Shareware worked/works as it lets people try something, but then to get full functionality/game levels/etc you have to pay for it. Under the model you are proposing, the developers would be under. It would cost more to make the DVD's or whatever and out on store shelves then they would take in. Unfortunately the majority want free as in beer, and can care less about scruples or free as in freedom when it comes to software. Why spend $5-$10 when, if the source is released and the program is GPL, I can legally download it elsewhere at no cost at all? The anti-piracy schemes we see today are the result of people doing just that, not the fault of the software developers that want to make money. It is all about the money my friend, nothing else matters to most folks. The way I understand your post, there would be hundreds of thousands spent for packaging and such, yet little to no income from the product. I would like to believe otherwise, however I do not from looking at normal human nature.

it's about funding not profits. Part of the reason Microsoft can bludgeon everybody else is that they get pre-sales from OEMs for those 180 MILLION* copies at $50 a pop that's money to do whatever they want, whenever and answer to nobody. Ubuntu needs to target OEMs to get them to see that for say $5 per unit they could use real Ubuntu and let Canonical take care of support and updates rather than each OEM copying it (badly, like gOS or eeePC) In a way it's "service", but it needs to be to OEMs that will value it and can pay, the only work needed from the OEM will be to send along patches for the latest hardware (much easier to NDA Canonical than random dev)... and maybe something to hook their proprietary bits for multimedia that can't be shipped without licensing.

Ubuntu wants to be a "hub" for development rather than run the whole show. That's what makes them different from Apple or Microsoft. They do need a way to point the projects in a unified direction rather than just "keeping up". They'd take part of that money and put it up as bounty to get developers to fix things (get paid for boring, bu needed, stuff!) but the stuff would still be other people's and everybody would benefit. Again, they don't want to be Red Hat or Suse putting all the "famous" people on the payroll so they don't quit projects, and many devs simply don't want to work for the "man" anyway, so they want to find a third way of doing things.

The reason I believe it would work is this. Despite all this "Broad Band" and fast internet stuff we keep hearing hype about a substantial part of the internet is still on DIAL UP and have you EVER tried to download a major app on DIAL UP!!! Not only is such activity notoriously slow but very long dial up downloads tend to crash as well. And this can also even happen on faster connections like Satalite, DSL and cable modem when there is a large "free beer" demand for the product. Furthermore the "free beer" internet download products tend to be dynamically linked with all the "dependency hell" and "upgrade hell" consequences that accompany such linking. The CD free software products I propose would be STATICALY linked to their dependencies effectivley eliminating these two "hells". The would be literally installable by simply copying the app to the hard disk just like most modern MAcOS apps. I think people would pay to get out of download frustration related to dial up internet connection crashes, high demand "slashdotting" crashes and frustrations related to dependency hell and upgrade hell. In fact I BUY all the Linux distros I use precicely because of these problems.

Not sure why someone would mod you down - I can see disagreeing with you but it's not like your post was a troll or abusive.

I'm curious how true that is. I'd be curious to know how many Linux users:

(1) use the command line for most of their file management

(2) use the command line for most of their package management

(3) use the command line to execute programs

(4) use a lot of custom scripts

vs.

How many people use Ubuntu basically like Windows most of the time. A friend of mine just installed Ubuntu and years ago I got used to doing things at the command line so I can't even answer some of his questions without fiddling around with my mouse to see how certain things work.

For informational purposes, I've set up maybe a dozen people with linux and:

1. Nobody uses the command line for file management. Everybody's used to the folder paradigm and understands it whether it starts at C: or /. Besides which, there are great GUI tools for that kind of thing (konqueror springs to mind; whenever I need to help somebody with something I just ssh with konqueror. Much easier than ssh on the command line and cp).

2. Package management has been difficult to make people do at all. This is probably what I get the most calls about ("I want a program to do X, can you do that?") I show everybody adept but only a couple people use it. I just get a lot of calls the first couple weeks and then they have everything they need for 99% of what they do.

3. I install Kubuntu for most people and encourage people to use katapult (an amazing launcher that comes with kubuntu by default). Half of people pick that up and love it and the other half stick with the regular menu; it's there, they're familiar with it, it's a no brainer.

4. Again, nobody who comes to me for help has ever needed any scripts.

What ends up happening as far as the command line is that I use it when they need help because I find it more convienent than the GUI apps (especially package management. Why open adept, search for a program, hit install, hit apply when that's 1 line on a terminal?) but everything that they need has a gui.

Quag7s point is that if the developers use the system differently to how the users use it, the user experience is unlikely to be as smooth as it should be simply because the developers don't understand how things could be improved.

If you spend your whole day on the command line you won't really know how that one little file manager bug you've classed as "Minor" is really an irritating annoyance that ruins everything, for example.

Good point!

I mostly use the commandline when I'm moving a lot of files. Come to think of it, I haven't even checked yet, if any graphical filemanager supports copying/moving based on strings with wildcards...
That's one thing I couldn't do without if I were to leave the commandline.

maybe because those users have discovered that the command line is, for a lot of tasks, both more powerful and faster than any GUI could ever be?

Both have their places. Most Mac users i know use the command line for a lot of things too.

"The Mac OS isn't popular because it has a "pretty" screen.. It is because the whole underlying user interface is easier.

The Linux user interface isn't going to be changing anytime soon as the average Linux user/developer lives in the command line."

Actually Mac OSX is popular as it has a pretty screen. I find it's usability to be negligible. Certainly no more usable than any other interface. The single menu bar sucks rocks, and makes it almost unusable IMO. I want my active application to be up top, not what OS X thinks I should have.

As for the "average linux user...", most use the GUI these days. Please stop smoking crack before posting a comment. There is rarely a reason to drop to the command line. I drop to the command line more in OS X than I do in Linux to do basic things like ping, traceroute, etc. Unless there is a GUI tool I am not aware of in OS X that does that..which is more than possible. Please do not name one of the GPL tools either..as those are available on Linux without an extra install routine or a purchase.

/Application/Utilities/Network Utility.app

I've used Linux (dozens of distributions) for close to a decade and Windows for even more than that. Yet, last year I purchased my first Apple product, a Macbook. It wasn't for the "pretty screen."

I was curious and wanted to try a fresh alternative. I wanted to see an open source system (Darwin) with a unified interface and direction. Moreover, I wanted to get a glimpse into what Linux might be like if it had reasonable commercial support from Microsoft, Adobe and the other big companies as well as no hardware incompatibilities. Given that the price of a Macbook was identical to the Windows based models, from Lenovo, Dell, Toshiba etc., I really had nothing to lose. After all, I could always put Linux or Windows on it if OS X turned out to be a disappointing mistake.

While I still use Linux from time to time, my OS X experiment has been interesting and successful. Trying to get a hang of Applescript, Dashcode and Cocoa was fun and really forced me to learn new ways of doing things. Moreover, the interface is a pleasure to use once the learning curve is over. Having one menu bar for all programs gives a consistent target and saves screen real estate. Additionally, the Dock is a bit gimmicky but actually has some advantages over the taskbar. When you have ten or more programs open, it is much easier to distinguish the large icons. In a taskbar, the icons would be too small and the text almost unreadable. Moreover, it is useful in drag and drop operations. For example, I can drag a file to some program on the Dock and it will open it. Of course, it's not perfect. Apple has made some really silly decisions like having the cut feature only work with text. Moreover, Leopard's Dock has false perspective and the reflections are really just over the top distractions. That's why I disabled them and switched to a cleaner 2D look. Just write the following in the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
killall Dock

And here we come to one of OS X strengths and weaknesses. The customization options are more limited than in KDE, XFCE, or GNOME, if you want them through a GUI. On the other hand, this means consistent and well-thought out defaults which have been tested thoroughly. It's a balance. Obviously I could write much more about this, but I don't want to make a record for longest post. I hope my account was insightful.

most popular place for mac is usa

i know many university buy it...

but often mac lab is empty... example nebraska university...

Every 8 months or so, I try Linux. The last couple of times, one of the distros I've chosen has been Ubuntu. From what I can remember, during the past couple of days, I've had to use the command line for:
1 - adding software repositories
2 - installing sound card drivers
3 - installing nvidia card drivers
4 - compiling kernel (for sound card drivers)
5 - installing software (virtualbox, rar support, etc.)
6 - uninstalling sound card drivers (get Error 2 if done from the GUI)

I'm sure there were more things, but that's all I can remember at the moment.

While some things could have been accomplished from the gui, the HowTo's I found did things from the command line, so that's how I did them. Some HAD to be done via the command line though.

I actually had to install it twice. The first time, sound worked for a couple of sessions, but stopped and wouldn't work again. As I could find no way to make it work again, I had to start over.

You might argue that installing things is what required my command line usage, not using things, and you "typically" only install things once. However, I can install and uninstall anything in Windows without using the command line.

Argue it all you want, but to this day, Linux still requires use of the command line MUCH more than Windows does.

"Argue it all you want, but to this day, Linux still requires use of the command line MUCH more than Windows does."

Out of the items you mentioned, all are done from the GUI with the exception of compiling a kernel, which you would not do on Windows. Though to be honest I don't use *buntu at all, as I prefer openSuse. It could be in *buntu one needs to drop to a command line to do the things you mention. Again we were talking about the "average user", which is not who comes to OS news. The average users are the ones that the majority of us IT folks support, not each other. I do have a couple of my users using *buntu and they have yet to require the command line for anything. Yes, I asked them if they needed to use it and the answer was no. Of course, they would not be compiling a kernel either for that matter.

This is hilarious and never gets old, no matter how many times I see it.
Somebody says, "I had to resort to using the command-line and a little bit of voodoo to get video/sound/whatever working in Linux." To that somebody usually responds with, "Well, you were obviously using the wrong distro." LMAO!!! Classic.

This little point underscores one of the fundemental reasons why the Linux user experience will never be as smooth as that found on OSX. It's kind of hard to fix a problem when nobody wants to admit that a problem actually exists.

Edited 2008-07-24 18:17 UTC

In Ubuntu you don't need the command line to do any of those except maybe compiling a kernel. Adding repos in Ubuntu is dead easy to do from the GUI. The same with installing apps and 3rd party drivers. In-fact installing 3rd party drivers like nvidia drivers is much easier on Ubuntu than on most other distros. There is very little that needs to be done through the CLI. However most walkthroughs use the command line because its far less verbose and easier to tell a user to paste a command in the terminal, rather than actually explaining how to do it through the GUI. People looking for help mistake this and think that its the only way to do things, especially newbs. That is not the case and you hardly need the commandline at all in most distros.

When I first installed ubuntu, the first thing I had to do was figure out how to get it to configure my monitor, which was giving me a headache due to the very low refresh rate because the system wasn't smart enough to configure it automatically.
I still don't know how to get the mouse buttons to work on my intellimouse.

The command line is fun. It's like the good old days of MS-DOS : )

say...for example...blackbox? 'any' should be used with some caution there.



well, here's the interesting bit: usability isn't really about what you think, it's about what the majority (in a group of users with several levels of experience) feels conformable with.

I'm still waiting to see the focus groups results of *any* linux window environment on a wiki somewhere. if not a pdf. anything really! are there focus groups? what are we letting bleed through as "usability"? randomness? a "hyea, that looks good there?" kinda' thing? that's not usability, that's freeware back when Pascal was king and we used zmodem as a protocol to download something at 2400 baud.

"well, here's the interesting bit: usability isn't really about what you think, it's about what the majority (in a group of users with several levels of experience) feels conformable with."

Actually usability is about what I think, as it is what everyone else thinks. What is useable for one person is not necessarily useable by another. This is not a right or wrong issue, it is a persons preference. All the focus groups in the world can say something is useable, but that does not mean it is for everyone.

http://www.betterdesktop.org

You can also check out http://www.openusability.org for more info on the work being done.

sweet!

I stand corrected.

thank you.

You know... There is a way to make you understand ideas about OS X UI: RTFM! ;-)

I've been using various Linux distributions for about two years now (but before that I was toying with dual booting and never actually using it), and there are only rare occasions I use the command line.

The first is when a program I've just installed isn't running. I run it from the command line so I can get some error feedback. Usually just to find out I'm missing a particular library, then it's a simple matter of installing that.

Second, and rarest for me, is if I know exactly what I want to install, to the letter. It's quicker to type 'apt-get install' than it is to open Synaptic and search, when I know what I want to install.

The third case is often coupled with the first. Compiling a program from source. I know, a lot of fanatics (and normal people) compile everything from source religiously, but when I can double click a .deb or use the package manager, I will. Since I'm currently using Mint, which is completely compatible with the Ubuntu repositories, practically the only time I ever need to compile something myself is when the latest SVN version of a program has a must-have feature. More often than not, the version in the repositories is good enough, or sometimes, the program's site has a more recent .deb.

"The Linux user interface isn't going to be changing anytime soon as the average Linux user/developer lives in the command line."

Are you in the dark ages? I've been using PCLinuxOS for almost 3 years now and have yet to open a command line. Oh yeah, and last I looked, the command line was pretty popular in Mac OS X. They even use "sudo" just like Ubuntu does.

Edited 2008-07-24 20:36 UTC

According to your comment, "the underlying user interface is easier" on the Mac as compared to Linux. The underlying user interface of the Mac (e.g., below the "pretty screen" as you put it) is UNIX. The same (more or less) interface underlies Linux as well.

As for interfaces, where Mac has only one (Aqua) Linux has dozens. You can use Gnome, KDE, XFCE, and Fluxbox (just to name a few) or all of them! All of these interfaces are endlessly configurable to resemble Windows, Mac, Amiga, BeOS or any combination in between. Add the dizzying effects of Compiz-Fusion to the mix and configuration possibilities increases ad infinitum. In short, with Linux you can truly have your interface exactly the way you want it. It might take a bit of work on your part, or you can simply choose a distribution that shares your aesthetic ideals and comes pre-configured the way you prefer. Please don't put down Linux because you think its interface is somehow inferior...that just doesn't make sense considering the options available. Just my $0.02

The Mac OS is popular because it actually works, and the reason for that is that it runs in a controlled environment. Linux on the other hand is supposed to run on any odd PC that it is thrown at.

As for the Linux user interface not changing, I don't know where you got that idea. Gnome releases new stuff every six months, and then there is KDE4 that is evolving faster than any user interface I ever seen, it may not be ready for the masses just yet, but when it is, Microsoft and Apple will really need to watch out. It's not only skin deep, things like nepumuk will not only change how things look, but also change how we work with the Linux desktop.

Besides,whats wrong with the command line, it complements the GUI very well. Some things are better done in a script or a oneliner, even Mac users knows that.

No, sorry. You may call me troll as much as you want but there's plenty of people who actually *gasp* do not freaking like OSX's interface. I don't need any UI "fashionist" to tell me what's good taste and what isn't.

And don't give me the "enough experience" (so it's not so "just works", eh?), I've been using OSX daily for months at work.

To each its own I suppose.

I honestly dislike the OSX interface too. Drives me insane when people with other tastes claim you are an idiot or don't know what you are talking about because you don't like something *they* like.

people, if we all liked the same thing, humans would be pretty f--king boring.

"Oh yeah my friend, there is one, and it is called Network Utility located at /Applications/Utilities. Every OS X user knows that this tool is built in with OS X, that means two things. First, all your bla, bla, of getting more into command line in OS X than Linux is juste pure crap and second, you don't have enough experience and knowledge about Mac OS X to make any judgement on it.... And so comes the question, what's your point besides just trolling around?"

I use OS X, though I did not know that existed. So think before you accuse someone of being a troll will you? Just because one uses an OS, doesn't mean they know every little utility that comes with it. Thanks for pointing out that exists. I guess every user doesn't know that is built in eh?

Well, to the person who couldn't find it, I found it myself and have only used Mac OS X for a total in my entire life about 30min.

But the first thing I did when I saw the network utility was "They copied GNOME!!!!"

The Gnome Network Tools look almost exactly the same. The only difference was that the tabs were in a different order for Lookup, finger, whois, etc.

The only thing I was thinking was "Ok, which one copied which. The Gnome one has been out for a VERY long time now."

The network utility app was a near direct port of a similar utility from NextStep. I'm pretty sure this would predate gnomes version.

KDE developers are doing exactly that with KDE4. And apparently no-one pays them big cash for doing it.

You are right, though, that this kind of enterprise takes time. The user interface of KDE4 is not quite ready yet but the underlying frameworks look most promising.

True, many (if not like 99.98% of them I'd guess) KDE developers are not paid to work full time on KDE4 and its UI.

It goes without saying that OSX has had the consistent, smooth, and pleasing UI (and related application frameworks and services) for several years now while KDE4 is still quite far away from delivering the "real KDE4" experience completely bug free and speed optimized (OSX behaves and looks great on integrated Intel GPU's).

I do hope that Nokia's purchase of Trolltech helps Qt mature even faster and all that work can be reflected nicely in KDE (it would be nice if Nokia took interest in KDE's development and hired a few programmers and artists to work on it full-time [KDE could scale to smartphones and MID's quite nicely with all the work on SVG they are doing]).

Edited 2008-07-24 16:09 UTC

Please explain.

I mean, hopefully Shuttleworth and Canonical will put more resources into upstream projects (i.e, helping with development instead of simply distributing) rather than just standing on a soap box.

And hopefully Steve Ballmer will GPL MS Office and encourage the community to help port it to multiple platforms.

If wishes were fishes... but I don't think either is going to happen.

Deleting photos on the camera would be a feature and GNOME doesn't support features.

Agreed. I'd tell you about the fun I'm having right now trying to find a decent video capture program that can record from my webcam. So far XawTV and Zapping have an almost 100% failure rate. Zapping should be capable of doing it, but it's been badly packaged (& the version in the 8.04 repository is downright broken!)

It looks like I'll have to install a bunch of -dev packages and build from source to get a usable application.

Take that Apple!

Install digikam for your mom. It's a much better tool than F-spot.

I can't even figure out how to view the "Date Photo Taken" information without first pulling it into a photo app.

Sun has never been a desktop/usability specialist. I doubt they will get more off the table than just a slightly crippled version of Gnome.

Err, Sun is/was a major backer of the usability and accessibility work done inside GNOME.

Lack of a real gaming API? (There is nothing comparable to directX)
Lack of games? (Ask your local store)
Because Linux users in general don't pay for games? (Ask Loki Games or id Software)