Four Things Linux Needs

by Joe Brockmeier - Apr. 10, 2008Comments (12)

Mike Gunderloy's post on FOSS Factory got me thinking about what Linux needs to gain mass market acceptance. After thinking about it, I've come up with a list of four things that the Linux community needs that aren't (as far as I know) yet in the works.

This isn't a list of impossible goals -- all of these things are attainable if the Linux industry and community were to decide that they are priorities. That's not to say that they'd be easy to accomplish, but the Linux community has proven good at working together when it's important.

This also isn't a list of technical hurdles Linux needs to overcome. Most of the technical hurdles Linux faces these days are directly related to lack of support from hardware vendors -- and that can be fixed fairly easily by growing the market and letting vendors see it's in their best interest to support the platform.

A Community Fund

Lots of major players contribute a great deal of money to open source, usually in ways that are strategic to the companies themselves. This works out great for the Linux and FOSS community in general, but what's lacking is a general fund for development and nurturing of projects that don't fit under the wing of any vendors in the open source industry.

A few halting attempts have been made to do this, but haven't succeeded so far. We should take a cue from PBS and start having pledge drives or find other ways to raise money from Linux enthusiasts and make sure the money is fairly and honestly distributed.

Google's Summer of Code might be the closest thing we have right now, but that program can only go so far (and only to code) and the entire burden shouldn't be on Google anyway.
A Real Documentation Project

The first Linux book I owned was a bound-up copy of the Linux Documentation Project (LDP) called the Linux Bible. Linux has grown and matured a lot since then, but the LDP has largely failed to grow and succeed with it.

Each Linux distro maintains its own documentation team and by and large the major distros do a good job of creating distro-specific documentation. However, documentation for FOSS projects and standard Linux utilities is lacking.

One of the things that we could really use is a full-blown documentation project that provides the kind of documentation that Sun Solaris is famous for. Again, this is one of the reasons we need a community fund that is completely vendor-neutral -- in order to be able to fund development of documentation and other materials that individual vendors are unlikely to fund on their own.
Better Statistics

When talking about Linux, it's still next to impossible to point to hard numbers about how many people use Linux, what distros are the most popular, how many people really contribute to Linux, etc.

We have a few good snapshots. Greg Kroah-Hartman's Who Wrote Linux? report, and Waugh Partners' Australian Open Source Industry & Community Report are good snapshots -- but there's no single source to turn to for this sort of information, and really good statistics seem to be available only for very specific areas. In this case, the kernel and Australia -- which leaves hundreds of projects and several continents, respectively, unreported on.
Unified Marketing

If you took the marketing budgets of all the Linux vendors combined, and then doubled that figure, and then added a zero, you might start approaching what Microsoft spends on marketing Windows. Maybe.

The ad councils for various industries have the right idea -- it's a good idea to pool your money to grow the market when you're jointly competing with another industry. It'd be much better for Linux awareness if, in addition to advertising for specific distros and products, we had a general ad campaign to get the word out about Linux and its advantages.

That's my list, anyway. How would you recommend boosting the Linux and FOSS community?

Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier works for Novell as the openSUSE Community Manager.

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by Sebastian on Apr. 10, 2008

Drivers. Just drivers. It's untrue that Linux has no driver-problem. This is the biggest problem. If I haven't had so big problems with drivers, I would have started recommending Linux to friends a long time ago. But everytime they complain about Vista or Windows in general I think about my experience (messing around with the command line, searching Google for help, etc.), I don't say anything.

What do they need to work on?

- Logitech mouse special buttons - Graphic Cards (ATI Radeon-support in Ubuntu was a joke. Even though I installed the restricted driver.)

And basically everything else. I had problems with several less popular pieces of hardware. But the two above are the absolute killer, because most people have a graphics card and many a Logitech mouse, and Linux fails badly on Logitech mouses and many graphics cards.

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by Joel Zerpa on Apr. 10, 2008

Linux need:

* Games (as Windows) * Install in all user computer...

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by Sam Dean on Apr. 10, 2008

In my opinion, there need to be more bridges between Linux and the Windows and Mac platforms. This is why I am a fan of Freespire, which is primarily an open source version of Linux but reaches out to proprietary drivers, applications, and more:

http://ostatic.com/158427-blog/freespire-an-open-os-but-proprietary-is-n...

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by kboa on Apr. 10, 2008

2 words - "Easier" and "Install". The Mac has this down. Drag to Apps and you are done. No hairy MSIs to deal with - nothing.

./configure make make install

just doesn't cut it no mo'.

That is fine by itself, but if you have a busted dependency or a conflict, you cannot really work your way out easily if you are not an expert. If it needs to hit mainstream, it needs to be more user friendly, starting with the install and uninstall.

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by Rob on Apr. 10, 2008

Like others have said, drivers. With all the work being done on Linux, it seems weird that hardware issues that were around a decade ago are still a problem...

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by an anonymous user on Apr. 10, 2008

Three of you have exhibited zero knowledge:

- there already is the very big and successful 'Linux Driver Project' - nobody uses 'make, make install', anymore'; we have something called p a c k a g e m a n a g e m e n t.

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by an anonymous user on Apr. 10, 2008

I frankly haven't had any noticeable trouble with drivers. My pain is with GUI configuration widgits which should be self-explanatory but aren't, and help communities which insist on command line solutions for GUI problems. I tried to configure samba on Ubuntu 7.10 using the GUI and couldn't do it. The GUI SHOULD have worked. I asked for help on the *buntu forums on using the GUI to fix the problem. My 'helpers' provided only CLI help and finally flamed me when I insisted on a GUI solution. I'm still sour on *buntu.

MHO, when Linux's GUIs actually work and are self-explanatory, Mr Gates will think he got run over by a herd of alligators.

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by Chris Lees on Apr. 10, 2008

People who are suggesting drivers and installation methods have not properly read the article: "This also isn't a list of technical hurdles Linux needs to overcome."

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by an anonymous user on Apr. 12, 2008

i think linux needs more companies using it and backing it. what i mean by this is more software companies writing useful software across all areas of computing and day to day use of computers- work and play. perhaps if the future lies in web2.0, 3.0 and beyond then linux should try to be the os that blurs the boundaries between your desktop and the web - i.e. be the most rock solid browser base from which to run your life in web apps. your average not-so-savvy computer user, i find, alarmingly isn't aware that their computer has a different option to windows, unless they buy a mac which comes with flashy and expensive software. marketing, publicity and spreading the word apparently should therefore definitely be a focal point.

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by an anonymous user on Apr. 13, 2008

Need to change upstream conception: Example:

samba package should have samba.lmc file, in which described how to edit config and which elements are shown in graphical interface. This file goes to /usr/share/lmc and any vendor configuration utility takes it and shows "Samba settings" tab.

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by an anonymous user on Oct. 19, 2008

look at mak and you will understand that the need for linux

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by an anonymous user on Sep. 13, 2010

Despite the fact the article says "This also isn't a list of technical hurdles Linux needs to overcome" it's still a chicken and egg type scenario. Without more users, you won't get more company support for drivers and without better driver support, you simply won't be able to get certain users. I have to agree with everyone who mentioned issues with hardware. I'm having plenty of those myself and it's enough to keep me from being able to make any real use of Linux on my desktop. I appreciated Sam Dean's comment on bridges. For the person, who mentioned problems installing, check out utility programs like Zero Install and see if they come any closer to what you're looking for. I personally think backward compatibility of software and binary compatibility are major issues for Linux. If these were solved, you wouldn't have as much of a problem with the installation issues. I don't consider package management the right solution for everyone. It's not so useful to anyone who wants to customize how the programs are built or who uses programs that someone hasn't already built a package for (such as programs built specifically for a company or person or software that's not the most popular for a distribution). Also, see how anxious you are to try to do package management if you have no Internet connection on your machine. It works great for some users but is sorely lacking for meeting other users needs.

Documentation is an issue, but only for certain areas. There are some great projects in the works to document Open Source software. It's more a case of specialty issues and specialty software that you have trouble finding documentation for. Of course, programmers will be biased on adequate documentation, because they can always read the source code when available. Average users who aren't programmers may not feel as comfortable with that solution. Better statistics would be great. I'd love to see statistics on what hardware to buy that works and with which distributions of Linux. I'd also be curious to see what areas Linux is being used for and what areas it's not. That might give a good indication where it's lacking. I have a feeling, at least in the US, Linux does better with users with fast Internet connections and not so well with users without Internet. Would be very interested to see statistics on issues like that. Unified marketing sounds great, but keep in mind, word of mouth recommendations can sometimes sell a product better than any amount of money you put behind advertising. Probably the biggest thing lacking for selling Linux to the business world is feeling comfortable that if something goes wrong, they're still supported. There are companies such as Red Hat and Canonical filling this niche, but maybe they need to do better marketing advantages to businesses. Many big name software companies these days promise support, but do a very poor job of it or out-source it and don't put an emphasis on it. If companies supporting Linux could let businesses know they were willing to do a better than average support job and would be willing to get them set up initially as well as to continue to support and solve problems when critical issues that have to be fixed immediately came up, I think more businesses would think about the switch.

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