8 ms·

I have to admit I'm surprised to find that anyone is still trying to make desktop Linux work for normal people, i.e. non-programmers who aren't free-software fa

I have to admit I'm surprised to find that anyone is still trying to make desktop Linux work for normal people, i.e. non-programmers who aren't free-software fanatics. I think to myself, don't they realize that it's pointless, that the year of the Linux desktop will never come, that Linux will always be the distant third-place desktop OS? More constructively, I wonder if recent Linux distros and desktop environments actually run better on 10-year-old hardware than Windows 7. My guess is that GNOME 3 and Unity require roughly as much CPU power and RAM as Windows 7. If that's the case, then maybe kids like the one in this story would be better served by a donated Windows 7 system builder license to go with that old hardware. Then they wouldn't be frustrated at a thousand points by someone's well-intentioned but misguided choice of OS.

wyager 11y ago
Linux distros like mint are basically indistinguishable from Windows to sufficiently casual users. All they ever do is open up the word processor or browser.
- astrodust 11y ago
  Google Docs and you don't even care about whatever word processor you have.
- johnmaguire2013 11y ago
  This. I know plenty of people who literally cannot tell any sufficiently user friendly distro of Linux from Windows.
  - k__ 11y ago
    Yes. The only people I heard complain about Linux were in the middle range of computer skills. Not so casual that they didn't care, but also not so good that they could easily grasp Linux.
    - unsignedint 11y ago
      I find this demography is hardest to deal with. Even when they are on a platform they are familiar with, they are usually first to complain about having something different (e.g. some UI elements moved around) yet don't know how to fix it or even not bothering with a simple search to find out the problem.
- bdcravens 11y ago
  How many parents buy their kids expensive MacBooks because "they need a good computer for school" when the truth is they just bought them a $1300-$2500 Facebook machine.
mordocai 11y ago
For one, he gave them the desktop with XFCE installed so Gnome 3/Unity doesn't factor in here.
lambda 11y ago
> I have to admit I'm surprised to find that anyone is still trying to make desktop Linux work for normal people, i.e. non-programmers who aren't free-software fanatics. As far as day to day use goes, modern desktop Linux environments are just as usable by end users as Windows. The main impediments to adoption tend to be: 1. Software that they need that only runs on Windows or OS X 2. Syncing to devices like iPods or iPhones 3. Lack of easily accessible support infrastructure for when things go wrong, major version upgrades, etc. You can generally take a Windows machine to Best Buy or some other local computer store, or a Mac to an Apple Store, and they can deal with it, but there's little accessible support for the complicated cases on Linux unless you have a friend or relative who's into Linux. 4. Lack of support by IT departments. So if you have a situation like in the original story, where someone is willing to provide that support voluntarily, and you just need a home computer with internet access and no specialized software, a modern Linux desktop will do just fine. > My guess is that GNOME 3 and Unity require roughly as much CPU power and RAM as Windows 7. Lightweight desktops like LXDE and XFCE can run fine on older hardware, and are much lighter weight than Windows 7. If you read the article, you would see that it was running LXDE, not Gnome or Unity.
- tdees40 11y ago
  "Just as usable by end users as Windows." Have you seen a non-programmer install a printer on a Linux machine? It's terrifying.
  - the_af 11y ago
    At least as of version 12.04, Ubuntu [1] automagically detects my wireless HP Laserjet printer (albeit with some slightly reduced functionality, IIRC). My wife's Windows 7 laptop struggles with it; the install process was more involved and the printer sometimes refuses to wake up when sending a print job to it. [1] The modern desktop-oriented distro I'm more familiar with. I'm sure other user-friendly distros handle it similarly well.
    - yellowapple 11y ago
      At the very most, it might involve having to navigate the CUPS web interface (which, admittedly, is a pile of shit; thanks, Apple) in order to get a printer setup. Still rarely involves having to install drivers (though some vendors are better than others; Brother and HP tend to be the most Linux-compatible, while Canon and Konica Minolta have tended to require driver installation on some distros).
joshuapants 11y ago
> I wonder if recent Linux distros and desktop environments actually run better on 10-year-old hardware than Windows 7 One of my main machines right now is an old HP workstation laptop that came out when Vista did. I can't run recent versions of Windows due to driver issues (random blue screens apparently due to the wifi driver; I only had a key for Windows 8.1 and the drivers were incompatible), but I can run Ubuntu perfectly fine out of the box with no special configuration required. In my opinion that is the biggest advantage to running old hardware with Linux - as long as you're not using oddball hardware there's a great chance it will run better than it would with Windows.
the_af 11y ago
For some users, the year of Linux on the desktop has already arrived (barring some problems like the ones lambda mentioned). Now, I won't use myself as an example, because even though Linux fulfills almost every need (gaming, watching videos, programming, browsing the web, printing, burning DVDs), I'm aware I'm a power user. So it's probably not useful to mention I haven't used a Windows computer at home in more than a decade. Therefore, I'll use my mom as an example instead: save a few exceptions, I could simply replace her laptop's Windows install with a user-friendly Linux distro (such as Ubuntu) and she wouldn't even notice. Maybe I'd have to tweak it a bit and install some useful software, and explain what some of the icons mean -- which is exactly what I did when I first installed Windows on her laptop. Honestly the biggest hurdle would probably be explaining to her the differences between LibreOffice and MS Office.
psykovsky 11y ago
You know how you make linux work? Never install pirated versions of any software on someone else's computer. When you start talking about how much they have to pay to use windows and office legally they'll change their mind and use whatever you put in there.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  Never install pirated versions of software on any computer. It is simply not worth it.
  - psykovsky 11y ago
    That also, ofcourse. But on our own machines we can decide, and if you're like me, every computer in your house uses a flavour of Linux and you don't even think about pirated software or software licenses most of the time.
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      I hope that you at least think about donating back.
      - yellowapple 11y ago
        I know I do; I've bought every version of Slackware since I started using it a couple years ago (which, granted, has been, like, three versions, but still). I've also bought a few OpenBSD CD sets, though I've slacked off a bit lately.
      - psykovsky 11y ago
        I donate my time to various open source projects, translating.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      If I set up someone's computer for them they get only programs for which they have licenses and FOSS stuff. I don't usually get asked to set up computers more than once :)
Zigurd 11y ago
> ...normal people, i.e. non-programmers who aren't free-software fanatics. Those people are not replacing their PCs. They are buying mobile devices. PC sales have been in a multi-year decline, and sell at about one-fourth to one-third the rate of mobile devices.
dodders 11y ago
> My guess is that GNOME 3 and Unity require roughly as much CPU power and RAM as Windows 7 I have a 7 year-old Dell laptop that wouldn't run Vista with anything like acceptable performance. I installed Debian/KDE and performance is absolutely fine. The only tricky bit (as other comments have pointed out) was the wireless device driver, which I had to download from the Broadcom website.
- auganov 11y ago
  I think Windows 7 generally runs better than Vista. IIRC Windows 8 should also use less ram than 7. My Dell Inspiron Mini 10 ran windows 8 smoothly, just couldn't run Metro apps because of the low resolution (there's a minimum res required).
yellowapple 11y ago
> More constructively, I wonder if recent Linux distros and desktop environments actually run better on 10-year-old hardware than Windows 7. This depends entirely on the desktop environment / window manager. The machine described in the article uses Xfce. As a real-world example of its low requirements, I very recently setup an old Dell laptop running openSUSE 13.2 with Xfce; said laptop has a single-core processor and somewhere between 512 and 1024 megabytes of RAM (I forget the exact number). Runs like a champ, while a "modern" version of Windows would - in my experience - choke even with much more resources at its disposal. I've also run Xfce-based setups on even weaker hardware, though at that point you start to run more heavily into performance issues. You can go even lighter than this, of course, by switching to a plain window manager instead of a full-fledged desktop environment. Tiny Core Linux, for example, uses FLWM (a lightweight FLTK-based window manager); combined with its use of busybox instead of the GNU userland, it's able to run on as little as an i486 and 42MB RAM. That's a bit on the extreme end, though, but going a bit bigger than that, I've had good experiences with Openbox (and similarly lightweight window managers) on a full GNU/Linux system running on systems with Pentium II processors and less than 256MB RAM. Heavier desktop environments like GNOME, Unity, and KDE certainly have additional performance impacts, especially due to their heavy reliance on compositor effects. However, in most circumstances, a system with 1-2GB RAM and a mid-200x single or dual core processor will handle these fine. In the case of KDE, you can also turn off desktop effects, thus reducing computational overhead even further. In the Windows world, you can generally get a system comfortably to the same realm by turning of Aero (in the case of Windows 7). I'm not sure what the customization options are for Windows 8/8.1/10, but I expect the option for a "Windows Classic" look/feel still exists, and I further suspect that it would allow some additional usability. However, in my experience, Windows is quite prone to slowing down over time; even with routine maintenance (defragging non-solid-state drives, running CCleaner, etc.), performance will typically degrade over several months to a year after installation. For newer hardware, this isn't a huge problem, but for older hardware, this becomes a significant obstacle to usability that GNU/Linux and BSD systems don't typically have.
r3bl 11y ago
I'm not a free software fanatic. I'm dual booting elementary OS with Windows. On my Windows installation, I have Office 365, Visual Studio, Microsoft SQL Server, etc. I also have 1TB of space on OneDrive. Everything completely legal of course. But, I haven't booted to Windows since mid-April (and even then my Windows adventure lasted for like one hour or less, I just got bored and wanted to play one game I haven't played in a long time). elementary just gets the job done and it looks pretty damn sexy while doing it. My laptop is currently running on 59 degrees Celsius. It's been up for 22 hours now and its running Firefox, Thunderbird, Spotify, Atom text editor, MEGA client, terminal emulator and a .pdf viewer ever since I booted my laptop. Of course, I didn't use it the whole time, but my laptop was still running while I did some other things. I can't even compare that to Windows (8.1) that jumps to 75 degrees as soon as I boot into it. Plus, elementary looks like 10x as better and I don't have to search the web to find something like a freaking C compiler or a SSH client. I don't have to worry about the registry and I don't have to worry about junkware being bundled with some piece of legit program. I don't have to click on the freaking Next button for 15 times to install something. All I need to do is to enter one command and enter my password. I don't really consider myself as a programmer.

wyager 11y ago

Linux distros like mint are basically indistinguishable from Windows to sufficiently casual users. All they ever do is open up the word processor or browser.

astrodust 11y ago
Google Docs and you don't even care about whatever word processor you have.
johnmaguire2013 11y ago
This. I know plenty of people who literally cannot tell any sufficiently user friendly distro of Linux from Windows.
- k__ 11y ago
  Yes. The only people I heard complain about Linux were in the middle range of computer skills. Not so casual that they didn't care, but also not so good that they could easily grasp Linux.
  - unsignedint 11y ago
    I find this demography is hardest to deal with. Even when they are on a platform they are familiar with, they are usually first to complain about having something different (e.g. some UI elements moved around) yet don't know how to fix it or even not bothering with a simple search to find out the problem.
bdcravens 11y ago
How many parents buy their kids expensive MacBooks because "they need a good computer for school" when the truth is they just bought them a $1300-$2500 Facebook machine.

mordocai 11y ago

For one, he gave them the desktop with XFCE installed so Gnome 3/Unity doesn't factor in here.

lambda 11y ago

> I have to admit I'm surprised to find that anyone is still trying to make desktop Linux work for normal people, i.e. non-programmers who aren't free-software fanatics. As far as day to day use goes, modern desktop Linux environments are just as usable by end users as Windows. The main impediments to adoption tend to be: 1. Software that they need that only runs on Windows or OS X 2. Syncing to devices like iPods or iPhones 3. Lack of easily accessible support infrastructure for when things go wrong, major version upgrades, etc. You can generally take a Windows machine to Best Buy or some other local computer store, or a Mac to an Apple Store, and they can deal with it, but there's little accessible support for the complicated cases on Linux unless you have a friend or relative who's into Linux. 4. Lack of support by IT departments. So if you have a situation like in the original story, where someone is willing to provide that support voluntarily, and you just need a home computer with internet access and no specialized software, a modern Linux desktop will do just fine. > My guess is that GNOME 3 and Unity require roughly as much CPU power and RAM as Windows 7. Lightweight desktops like LXDE and XFCE can run fine on older hardware, and are much lighter weight than Windows 7. If you read the article, you would see that it was running LXDE, not Gnome or Unity.

tdees40 11y ago
"Just as usable by end users as Windows." Have you seen a non-programmer install a printer on a Linux machine? It's terrifying.
- the_af 11y ago
  At least as of version 12.04, Ubuntu [1] automagically detects my wireless HP Laserjet printer (albeit with some slightly reduced functionality, IIRC). My wife's Windows 7 laptop struggles with it; the install process was more involved and the printer sometimes refuses to wake up when sending a print job to it. [1] The modern desktop-oriented distro I'm more familiar with. I'm sure other user-friendly distros handle it similarly well.
  - yellowapple 11y ago
    At the very most, it might involve having to navigate the CUPS web interface (which, admittedly, is a pile of shit; thanks, Apple) in order to get a printer setup. Still rarely involves having to install drivers (though some vendors are better than others; Brother and HP tend to be the most Linux-compatible, while Canon and Konica Minolta have tended to require driver installation on some distros).

joshuapants 11y ago

> I wonder if recent Linux distros and desktop environments actually run better on 10-year-old hardware than Windows 7 One of my main machines right now is an old HP workstation laptop that came out when Vista did. I can't run recent versions of Windows due to driver issues (random blue screens apparently due to the wifi driver; I only had a key for Windows 8.1 and the drivers were incompatible), but I can run Ubuntu perfectly fine out of the box with no special configuration required. In my opinion that is the biggest advantage to running old hardware with Linux - as long as you're not using oddball hardware there's a great chance it will run better than it would with Windows.

the_af 11y ago

For some users, the year of Linux on the desktop has already arrived (barring some problems like the ones lambda mentioned). Now, I won't use myself as an example, because even though Linux fulfills almost every need (gaming, watching videos, programming, browsing the web, printing, burning DVDs), I'm aware I'm a power user. So it's probably not useful to mention I haven't used a Windows computer at home in more than a decade. Therefore, I'll use my mom as an example instead: save a few exceptions, I could simply replace her laptop's Windows install with a user-friendly Linux distro (such as Ubuntu) and she wouldn't even notice. Maybe I'd have to tweak it a bit and install some useful software, and explain what some of the icons mean -- which is exactly what I did when I first installed Windows on her laptop. Honestly the biggest hurdle would probably be explaining to her the differences between LibreOffice and MS Office.

psykovsky 11y ago

You know how you make linux work? Never install pirated versions of any software on someone else's computer. When you start talking about how much they have to pay to use windows and office legally they'll change their mind and use whatever you put in there.

JupiterMoon 11y ago
Never install pirated versions of software on any computer. It is simply not worth it.
- psykovsky 11y ago
  That also, ofcourse. But on our own machines we can decide, and if you're like me, every computer in your house uses a flavour of Linux and you don't even think about pirated software or software licenses most of the time.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    I hope that you at least think about donating back.
    - yellowapple 11y ago
      I know I do; I've bought every version of Slackware since I started using it a couple years ago (which, granted, has been, like, three versions, but still). I've also bought a few OpenBSD CD sets, though I've slacked off a bit lately.
    - psykovsky 11y ago
      I donate my time to various open source projects, translating.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    If I set up someone's computer for them they get only programs for which they have licenses and FOSS stuff. I don't usually get asked to set up computers more than once :)

Zigurd 11y ago

> ...normal people, i.e. non-programmers who aren't free-software fanatics. Those people are not replacing their PCs. They are buying mobile devices. PC sales have been in a multi-year decline, and sell at about one-fourth to one-third the rate of mobile devices.

dodders 11y ago

> My guess is that GNOME 3 and Unity require roughly as much CPU power and RAM as Windows 7 I have a 7 year-old Dell laptop that wouldn't run Vista with anything like acceptable performance. I installed Debian/KDE and performance is absolutely fine. The only tricky bit (as other comments have pointed out) was the wireless device driver, which I had to download from the Broadcom website.

auganov 11y ago
I think Windows 7 generally runs better than Vista. IIRC Windows 8 should also use less ram than 7. My Dell Inspiron Mini 10 ran windows 8 smoothly, just couldn't run Metro apps because of the low resolution (there's a minimum res required).

yellowapple 11y ago

> More constructively, I wonder if recent Linux distros and desktop environments actually run better on 10-year-old hardware than Windows 7. This depends entirely on the desktop environment / window manager. The machine described in the article uses Xfce. As a real-world example of its low requirements, I very recently setup an old Dell laptop running openSUSE 13.2 with Xfce; said laptop has a single-core processor and somewhere between 512 and 1024 megabytes of RAM (I forget the exact number). Runs like a champ, while a "modern" version of Windows would - in my experience - choke even with much more resources at its disposal. I've also run Xfce-based setups on even weaker hardware, though at that point you start to run more heavily into performance issues. You can go even lighter than this, of course, by switching to a plain window manager instead of a full-fledged desktop environment. Tiny Core Linux, for example, uses FLWM (a lightweight FLTK-based window manager); combined with its use of busybox instead of the GNU userland, it's able to run on as little as an i486 and 42MB RAM. That's a bit on the extreme end, though, but going a bit bigger than that, I've had good experiences with Openbox (and similarly lightweight window managers) on a full GNU/Linux system running on systems with Pentium II processors and less than 256MB RAM. Heavier desktop environments like GNOME, Unity, and KDE certainly have additional performance impacts, especially due to their heavy reliance on compositor effects. However, in most circumstances, a system with 1-2GB RAM and a mid-200x single or dual core processor will handle these fine. In the case of KDE, you can also turn off desktop effects, thus reducing computational overhead even further. In the Windows world, you can generally get a system comfortably to the same realm by turning of Aero (in the case of Windows 7). I'm not sure what the customization options are for Windows 8/8.1/10, but I expect the option for a "Windows Classic" look/feel still exists, and I further suspect that it would allow some additional usability. However, in my experience, Windows is quite prone to slowing down over time; even with routine maintenance (defragging non-solid-state drives, running CCleaner, etc.), performance will typically degrade over several months to a year after installation. For newer hardware, this isn't a huge problem, but for older hardware, this becomes a significant obstacle to usability that GNU/Linux and BSD systems don't typically have.

r3bl 11y ago

I'm not a free software fanatic. I'm dual booting elementary OS with Windows. On my Windows installation, I have Office 365, Visual Studio, Microsoft SQL Server, etc. I also have 1TB of space on OneDrive. Everything completely legal of course. But, I haven't booted to Windows since mid-April (and even then my Windows adventure lasted for like one hour or less, I just got bored and wanted to play one game I haven't played in a long time). elementary just gets the job done and it looks pretty damn sexy while doing it. My laptop is currently running on 59 degrees Celsius. It's been up for 22 hours now and its running Firefox, Thunderbird, Spotify, Atom text editor, MEGA client, terminal emulator and a .pdf viewer ever since I booted my laptop. Of course, I didn't use it the whole time, but my laptop was still running while I did some other things. I can't even compare that to Windows (8.1) that jumps to 75 degrees as soon as I boot into it. Plus, elementary looks like 10x as better and I don't have to search the web to find something like a freaking C compiler or a SSH client. I don't have to worry about the registry and I don't have to worry about junkware being bundled with some piece of legit program. I don't have to click on the freaking Next button for 15 times to install something. All I need to do is to enter one command and enter my password. I don't really consider myself as a programmer.