[LUGSB] What makes Linux great?

Adam David Alan Martin addmarti at ic.sunysb.edu
Tue Dec 23 13:04:37 EST 2003 

Michael Surkan,

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003, Michael Surkan wrote:

> I am a program manager at Microsoft doing some research around how we
> can improve our operating systems. My goal is to help us identify
> capabilities, improvements, and features that Microsoft should be
> focusing on to help our customers over the next 5 years or so.

	In order to do this, Microsoft (Hereafter referred to as M$ for brevity,
not for humour.  Face it, they DO have lots of money, which isn't necessarily
evil, and I traditionally write M$, just out of force of habit.)
must identify what their target audience is.  If their target audience
is people who are interested in Linux/UNIX style systems, then they must
also identify WHY they have been so unsuccessful at entering into this market.

	No one Operating System, software package, editor, or whatever is the
most suitable for everyone.  For living proof of this, look at the dynamic
equilibrium that exists in the Open Source world:

	1) We have several dozen Linux distributions available, and more are
made every day, by people who want things to be "Just so."

	2) We have the ability to totally go back to the source itself, and
recompile (And hack) the system out just the way we like it, if someone else's
ideas don't fit well with us (Yeah... that's me, isn't it?)

	3) We have numerous available web browsers, each with considerable
"market" share in Linux/BSD/UNIX desktops: Mozilla, Galleon, Konqueror, lynx,
whatever...

	4) And just LOOK at the editors... there's 2 to 4 major editor "classes"
out there, in the Open Source universe, each with numerous incarnations:
We've got emacs, vi, joe, and pico...  In various graphical and non-graphical
forms.  And there's tons of minor editors, and editors for the old crusty
curmudgeons out there... Teco, ed, etc.  There's no better source of
diversity I say, than the editors available.

	So all these examples stated, why does each package do well?  They
are "tailored" to the needs of those who use them.  Right now, it is my
observation, that M$'s windows platform is tailored at not-so-techno-savvy
end-users.  There's nothing wrong with this...

	If M$ is interested in attracting some of the less philosophically
devoted Open Source Software users (Those who are not quite so zealous about
insisting that they use Open Source products, and the whole nine yards about
that), then they'd better start considering a new strategy.  M$'s windows
platform works well for the kind of people it seems to be targeted at.  A less
user-restrictive, more expert-friendly platform would be needed to attract such
people.

	Most of these people have some basic requirements in selection of UNIX
style Operating Systems:

	Conformance to SOME kind of UNIX standard (The more the better...),
to mind comes IEEE-1003 "POSIX", SUSv?, and others.  These kinds of users
expect stability, and quality in the software, and the system.  They expect
clear, concise, accurate documentation, without omissions.  They expect full
disclosure of the compleat API for the system, and source-compatibilty with
other systems conforming to the same standard.  (I realise for many this is
what you understand "standard" to mean, but re-iterating it is useful, to drive
this point home.)

>
> I am particularly interested in hearing from Linux users, and get their
> input about what they feel should be the priorities. In particular, I
> would like to better understand what it is that makes Linux and Open
> Source solutions so useful for you.

	As you have probably seen by now, from the earlier postings, the
things that make Open Source solutions so viable to us are:

	1) Quality
	2) Stability
	3) Fantastic Documentation
	4) Tunabilty, and "tweakablity"
	5) Scalablity
	6) Portability
	7) Open Source (Not as a "brand label", but as a concept.  For some of
us, the most IMPORTANT thing about it, is the ability to just get deep into
the heart of the software, and fix anything to our preferences.)


	While the 7th point is not so much a requirement for some, for others
it is "religiously" required.  M$ probably has no hopes of maintaining a
business relationship with those people.

	The people they might be able to cater to, are those who wish a stable,
UNIX style environment, that is nearly-endlessly customisible.  I do not think
this will be achieved by just adding these things as half-implemented "features"
onto windows.  Many of us wish to protect our hardware investment, and do not
want to go out and by the latest Intel platform just to run a system.  Lots of
us still enjoy endless hours of productivity from our systems that are about
on the level of a 400MHz Pentium III.
>
> If you would be willing to take a survey I have put together, please
> write me at lnq at microsoft.com.

	I do not believe a simple survey would be sufficient for M$ to put
together something it would fare well with in the UNIX style system market
place.  They have three things going against them, should they start in this
direction:

	1) Bad reputation.  M$'s windows products are of ill repute in the
circles of Unix/BSD/Linux users.  (For the most part.)
	2) The UNIX market is VERY cutthroat.  Systems that are NOT up to par
quickly vanish either into obscurity, or become the butt of all jokes.  (Anyone
remember the early days of Xenix?  Hrm... and that was something M$ was involved
in.  See above point.)
	3) They have NO starting point (as far as I can tell) to enter that
market.  This means they have tons of catch up to do.

	M$ will also have to learn to diversify across platforms to be
successful in this.  The fastest growing UNIX implementations are available on
2 or more platforms.

	I personally would welcome M$ as a competitor into the UNIX market,
if they're serious about it.  As a serious competitor, they'd make the whole
market grow and bring in some new ideas, and keep everyone on their toes.


> P.S. I did confirm with Mark Dragothat it was ok to post this note.

	Thank you for doing that.  Otherwise I might have gone off onto an
entirely different rant, and been pretty hostile...  Smart move :-)

	In closing, I really don't think that M$'s wish is to enter into this
direction.  As such, they're going to probably wind up tuning up the NT kernel
a bit, shaving back a bit of cruft, and throwing in a few API's that meet up
with POSIX/whatever a bit more.

	But there you have it, what is important to crazy hackers like me.
--
Adam Martin
>From harlan at sdf1.cc Tue Dec 23 14:33:12 2003
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From: Harlan Crystal <harlan at sdf1.cc>
To: Linux Users Group at Stony Brook <lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu>
Subject: Re: [LUGSB] Feelings on C# on linux?
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> Out of curiosity.... Why? To be buzzword compliant?

All the other people in the project wants to move to a typesafe
language with all their favorite toys (interfaces, objects, etc.)
As much as I hate to lose all our tight C code we've been working on all
semester, I think I'm the only one who feels this way.

C# seems like a much smoother move from our C codebase than Java.

Also, in the next stage of the project there will be a fair amount of
distributed computing stuff so their argument is that having all the
.NET libraries available makes that sort of thing much easier.

It's ironic because when we began the project I wanted to work in an
extremely highlevel language (OCaml) and everyone besides me wanted C.
After a semester of coding C, the roles have reversed =P

--harlan

-- 
Harlan Crystal          Tel: 607-339-1139
AIM: "HarlanCrystal"    WWW: http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/hpc4/
>From harlan at sdf1.cc Tue Dec 23 14:39:40 2003
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From: Harlan Crystal <harlan at sdf1.cc>
To: Linux Users Group at Stony Brook <lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu>
Subject: Re: [LUGSB] Feelings on C# on linux?
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> My point was not even that C# is a cheap knockoff of Java..... my point
> is... if something is already implemented in Language A, why waste time
> reimplementing it in Language B?

A lot of time on the project was spent cleaning up C code written by C
amatures.  While I've grown pretty good at it, I can recognize that we
wasted a lot of time on stupid mistakes which would not have been
possible in other languages.

IE:  Alot of time was spent serializing data structures, writing to
files, parsing them back out, debugging them, manage the memory and
everything else involved.  While I found it kinda fun -- I can see why
someone can find that frustrating when a language like java has an IO
library which will serialize an object to file in one line of code.

The next step in the project will involve threading and some distributed
computing -- and their argument is that if we just move the codebase to
a higher level language the longterm speedup in programming time will be
worth the time of converting it.

--harlan

-- 
Harlan Crystal          Tel: 607-339-1139
AIM: "HarlanCrystal"    WWW: http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/hpc4/
>From sarang at users.sourceforge.net Wed Dec 24 15:37:46 2003
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From: Sarang Lakare <sarang at users.sourceforge.net>
Organization: The Freedom Movement (Linux!)
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Subject: Re: [LUGSB] Feelings on C# on linux?
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On Tuesday 23 December 2003 02:40 pm, Harlan Crystal wrote:
> The next step in the project will involve threading and some distributed
> computing -- and their argument is that if we just move the codebase to
> a higher level language the longterm speedup in programming time will be
> worth the time of converting it.

Why not select Java instead of C#? Moving from C to C# will be same efforts as 
C to Java I believe.. + you are platform independent!

Sarang

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sarang Lakare
mailto:sarang at users#sourceforge.net
web:http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~lsarang/linux
!!Join the fight for freedom - Go GNU/Linux!!
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Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 00:03:47 -0500 (EST)
From: Adam David Alan Martin <addmarti at ic.sunysb.edu>
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Subject: [LUGSB] Happy vacation/holiday season
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Greetings all,

	It's ADAM, of course.  Just bored, here in Florida; and it's getting
onto midnight 20031224.  So, just wishing everyone happy holidays (or holiday
season), whatever you celebrate, if anything at all.  Hope you're all enjoying
a good time off.

	And Hooray on the release of 2.6.0....  Great end to a great year.
Hope to see all of you next year.  And it's just passed 0000 my chronometer,
here.  So Happy X-Mas to all those who celebrate it.

Have a safe and happy holiday season.

--
Adam Martin

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