Are Computer Manufacturers Hurting OSS Chances?
Open source seems to be the new buzzword of the day. It seems like every company that can get their hands on open source software to distribute is doing just that. I think this is a great trend, but are these same computer manufacturers actually hurting the chances of the open source distributions?
I recently had the opportunity to help set up an Eee PC for a “new-to-Linux” user. If you don’t know, the Eee comes with the Xandros distribution of Linux. I thought it was very interesting that when we started the computer, there was no option available to go from the “Easy Interface,” which uses a one click button system, to the “Advanced Interface Mode,” which uses the KDE desktop environment which resembles a Windows XP environment. To change to this interface, you have to “Google it” then go through a series of moderately complicated processes.
When you go into Firefox (the default internet browser), and try to watch some youtube videos, you will find that neither Flash nor the Java Runtime Environment has been preinstalled. These are two applications that are required to watch a good majority of multimedia on the internet. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer make installing these applications very easy on Windows, but with Linux, it isn’t so easy. You have to have a decent knowledge of command line or have a good idea of what you are actually looking for on the internet to find good directions to install these two applications.
Also, installing new applications isn’t the easiest process. Xandross uses an application called Synaptic to search repositories for applications available for download. A repository is a place that applications will be downloaded from to be installed on your computer. Not every repository has every piece of software that you may want, and there are many repositories that you can add. The repositories which are set up by default on the Eee are only the repositories provided by Asus, which have a very limited collection of applications available. I immediately added the repositories that Xandros provides with a fresh install of their system, giving a much larger collection of free applications which are compatible and easy to download and install.
After doing all this, we tried to install a couple applications that we couldn’t find in Synaptic using Console (the KDE equivalent to DOS). I immediately found that many of the “libraries” (reference applications that are required for programs to run properly) had been removed to conserve space, and had to be installed before some applications would work properly.
*Note: None of the missing libraries are needed for the applications that are available by default. These were just needed for extra applications that I was installing.
With all this said, it took us about four hours for a moderately experienced Linux user to help set up an Eee for a user for the first time.
So, what does this do for people who are not moderately experienced with Linux? I would think that many people get frustrated with the new system when it is advertised that it is “Easy to Learn,” but is anything but easy at first. I watched the person who got the Eee get frustrated before I started helping.
Don’t get me wrong though. I think the netbooks/super-ultra portables/whatever you want to call them are an amazing innovation. I think the Eee is a great computer and will be very useful when set up properly (in fact I’m probably going to get one when the 900 comes out). I am a proponent of open source, but I’m also realistic. Most people want a computer to do everything it’s supposed to do the first time they turn it on. They want installations to be easy, and everything to work properly. If the computer manufacturers don’t do something about these complicated systems that they are using to distribute on their “easy-to-use” computers, then the open source community could get knocked back a couple years by consumers’ love for Mac OSX and Windows XP.