RE: tlug: Fw: Could Linux Kill NT?

[Matt Gushee <matt@example.com>]

Jonathan Byrne - 3Web writes:

 > that he sets forth, conditions that I think are right on.  The biggie is the
 > one about the standardized user interface.  Most users, IT staff, and -
 > especially - IT managers want predictability.  Predictability = ease of
 > setup, ease of use, and lower help desk costs.  Look at the great popularity
 > enjoyed by MacOS and Windows 95 and look for the big reasons why, and that's
 > what you find: ease of use and predictability.  They're all the pretty much
 > the same.  The company that takes Linux and delivers it packaged for the
 > enterprise and with a predictable UI will make a killing.

Indeed. The GUI is going to be a tough one, though. There was an
interesting discussion on slashdot.org about the standardization
issue, with Jamie Zawinski saying that GTK is a waste of good
programming talent, and that LessTif is the way to go, being standard
on commercial UNIX.

I have to wonder, though. JWZ says that commercial UNIX vendors will
never leave Motif unless they find something obviously, hugely, better
(whereas GTK is just a little better) and that we ought not to turn
our backs on our "natural allies" (not sure if that's a quote or a
paraphrase) at Sun, SGI, etc. ... all of which makes a good deal of
sense.

But with all due respect to one of the movers and shakers, I think
he's wrong. Maybe it depends whether the <CLICHE>paradigm
shift</CLICHE> is a top-down (i.e., driven by IT managers and so on)
or a bottom-up affair. People who run networks may choose Linux for
performance and stability, but for most individual users, even if they 
appreciate those benefits, they're not going to migrate en masse to
Linux unless it has a great GUI. And regardless of how developers view 
the relative bugginess/stupidity of the various toolkits, from an end
user's standpoint (at least from mine) Motif doesn't cut it, not by a
long shot.

Windows is a set of 32-bit extensions for a 16-bit shell for an 8-bit
... yeah, we know all that. But give credit where credit is due. When
you click on a Windows icon, it jumps up and does something (even if
what it does is stupid); when you hit the tab key,
the cursor usually moves in a reasonable way ... all sorts of
normal and intuitive GUI behavior that is annoyingly broken in Motif. And
the stupid backspace/delete thing ... alright, I guess it's not
Motif's fault, and it's a trivial fix for most of us. But if we want
mass appeal, those sorts of problems have to go away.

So if Motif isn't good enough, and GTK isn't better enough .... ? Ha
ha! Maybe Jonathan and the pundits are right ... we need IBM or some
such deus ex machina to rescue us.

In fact, here's an idea -- remember you heard it here first: how 'bout
we have IBM port OS/2's Workplace Shell to Linux? And of course, we
don't want all the Microsoft people to be Homeless in Seattle, so we
give them jobs doing what they do best, designing cute graphics
... now THAT would be a killer system!

Just my 2 yen.


Matt Gushee
Oshamanbe, Hokkaido
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