Re: A few comments about Knoppix 5.1

On 1/18/07, gilpel@altern.org <gilpel@altern.org> wrote:

Le 18 Janvier 2007 02:05, (positive) Gilles van Ruymbeke a écrit :

Dear positive,

How I would like to be positive too!

> Hi Gilles,
> Don't worry about Linux, it is growing big time
> in Europe and even more in Asia.

Really? Europe has internet too, I suppose. How come Linux share of
visits on servers is dwindling big times?

(1) November: 0.37%
<http://marketshare.hitslink.com/
report.aspx?qprid=2&qpmr=15&qpdt=1&qpct=3&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=94>

This is down from 0.47% in August.

Linux users really have a positive prospective. The remotest the
place, the better the results, it seems. Do you remember when Linux
was supposed to make it big in Mexico and Peru? Do you remember the
letter from congressman DR. Edgar David Villanueva Nuñez (man that
was a nice name) ?

<http://www.linuxtoday.com/
news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-05-06-012-26-OS-SM-LL>

Shit, god knows what happened, but nothing happened. Maybe they too
had problems with those little details no Linux developer cares
about. Now, if i can't get my keyboards to work in OOo here in
Canada, imagine the Chinese with their thousands of characters!

> Linux and the Open Source cannot be stopped and will be the
> preferred platform for people with limited ressources and for the
> new startups.

There's no doubt about it. For the time being, though, here, where I
can check, Microsoft gobbles everything.

Recently, I was bowsing DslReports and I clicked a link to Bell.ca , by
far, the most important ISP in Canada(1). I received the following
message:

(1) <http://www.isp-planet.com/research/rankings/2005/
canada_q42005.html>

-----------

Browser Support

Bell.ca is designed and tested for the best experience in some of the
top browsers used in the market today.

Bell.ca supports Internet Explorer 7.0, 6.0 and Firefox 2.0, 1.5 on
the *WINDOWS XP OPERATING SYSTEM*. These OS/browser combinations have
been selected because over 95% of customers and visitors to the site
prefer these combinations.

We've detected that you're using a browser that bell.ca does not
officially support.

< http://bell.ca/home/portlets/personal/browserdetection/landing.jsp>

-----------

You then don't proceed to the page you wanted, but to Bell's homepage.
Thereafter, navigation is really painful. All the _javascript_, and
there's lot, doesn't work. Must be MS _javascript_.

Microsoft has more or less acquired Sympatico, which is Bell's name
for its ISP services. Hotmail now takes care of Sympatico's users
email.  And, of course, Sympatico works hand in hand with the state
television. Radio-Canada's site is even used for it's portal:

<http://sympatico.msn.radio-canada.ca/index.shtml>

And Radio-Canada webcasts its video content in wmv  format.

Pretty much all the major ISPs have pages that display and sometimes
work better with Microsoft products, as they use MS products to build
their pages.

What does this all boil down to? The supercomputer's performance on
Linux is not what finally counts. What counts is the user-base.
Otherwise, geeks might soon  have to exchange their patches through
snail mail...

Optimism has been "de rigueur" in all Linux discussion. Otherwise, one
was qualified as a ranter or a flamer. But the fact is today that
results are just not there. Linux is not a young OS anymore and it
built absolutely NO user base. This problem must be addressed by
taking more care of the so-called "details".

For years, I've been waiting for a distro I could hand to beginners
without saying "Listen, here's a great distro, unfortunately, don't
count on having accented characters here and there. Even programmers
can't fix it." or "Don't count on reading what you write in your URL
window. Characters are too small. Even programmers can't fix it" or
"Don't count on printing, Gutenprint has gone BadPrint with this
release", etc., etc.

I don't mean to say it's Klaus' or anybody's fault, but Linux's
development model just doesn't work in order to get a product that
works for the vast majority of people.

Now, you might think Linux is doing better in Peru, China or Myanmar
and call this optimism. I call it self-deception.

Sorry.