[geeks] And The Linux Weenies Wonder Why They Aren't Mainstream...`

Wed Mar 1 12:03:57 CST 2006

On Tue, Feb 28, 2006 at 05:27:16PM -0600, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
| On Tue, 28 Feb 2006, Doug McLaren wrote:
| 
| > Out of curiousity, what does your rant have to do specifically with
| > Linux?  Sure, the post you're referring to mentioned `Linux
| > OpenOffice', but I hope you're aware that OpenOffice isn't a Linux
| > thing -- it's available on most of the popular *nix platforms, and it
| > even works on Windows.
| 
| Because this mindset is pervasive throughout so many of the open-source
| projects that grew up on Linux.

It sound more like Linux is just another similar open-source project
rather than the root that these projects grew up on.  Many of these
projects predate Linux ...

| All the world's an i386 running Linux, every compiler is GCC

Odd, I haven't seen this.  That is the most popular *nix platform now,
however, and gcc is the most commonly used compiler outside of
Windows-land.

It used to be that Solaris 4.1.3 was the platform that most things
`just worked' on.  Then it was Solaris 2.x.  And now it's x86 Linux.
Who knows what it'll be a few years down the road?

| and if it works on the developer's box and not on yours, -you-
| should fix it.  And if it doesn't so what you want, you have the
| source; why not change it?

... or pay me to fix it?  For commercial software, the developer is
paid to fix things.  For free software, you're at his whim to fix it
... but you can buy a lot of whim with money if you want.

Quick summary?

   Free software: the developer may fix your problem will free.
      Offer money, and he'll almost certainly fix it.
   Commercial software: the developer won't even talk to you for
      free (because you shouldn't even have the software for
      free, you pirate!)

| The author of that article just wears that mindset so well.  Silly users
| don't know what they want; they're just sheep.  We should be so kind as
| to let those ignorant morons run our software.
| 
| > People just can't look at OpenOffice on it's own merits -- they have
| > to start with how well it deals with Microsoft Office documents.
| 
| It doesn't have that many merits of its own.  It's a halfway clone of
| crap software.  If I want Office, it's because I need -Office-.

Ok, so, you're not an OpenOffice fan.  I've found it works OK for me.

| If I want to write a document, I have vim and LaTeX.  If I want a
| database, I have PostgreSQL.  If I want a spreadsheet.....well, no
| one's written a halfway decent freeware spreadsheet program,
| apparently.

I've not run into anything that oocalc or gnumeric wouldn't do for me.
But then again, I'm not a big user of Office-type software.

| > (Though I do have to admit ... Microsoft Office seems to be a pretty
| > professional product to me.

To be fair, I almost never use Office.  But when I have, I've found it
to work well.  It's too bad Microsoft won't port it to
Linux/FreeBSD/whatever else (but of course they never will.)

I didn't say it was perfect.

| > Of course, if that Mac runs OS X, it's built off of an open source OS
| > as well (FreeBSD)
| 
| OS X is OpenStep 7 with some FreeBSD userland utilities and man pages.
| It's not built off FreeBSD any more than FreeBSD is built off GNU/Hurd.

Sorry, I forgot to mention the Mach 3 kernel.  Also open source.

>From http://www.apple.com/macosx/overview/advancedtechnology.html --

   Beneath the easy-to-use interface and rich graphics of Mac OS X lies
   Darwin, an open source, UNIX-based foundation built on such
   technologies as mach and FreeBSD.'

Call it what you will, but even MacOS is built on open source software
(though of course they've added a whole lot to it.)  (And I'm not
aware of *any* FreeBSD/Hurd connection whatsoever, beyond them both
using signifigant numbers of other GNU utilities and such.)

(Openstep refers to many things, but in this case the Openstep you're
probably referring to is based on ... BSD and Mach 3, both which are
open source.)

| And it's not like I don't use open-source software constantly (I'm on a
| FreeBSD system right now).  I just snicker at the Linux prophets who
| scream "Linux will be mainstream this year" while they still have no
| clue why end users -don't- run Linux.

We all snicker at the fanboys, no matter what OS/language/etc they
preach.  I much prefer the `right tool for the job' mantra rather than
sticking to any specific OS, language or whatever else.

Personally, I think that the fact that Microsoft Office doesn't run
under Linux and OpenOffice isn't 100% compatible with it is a HUGE
reason why more people aren't using Linux.

| It isn't about how shiny you can make the desktop or how many window
| managers you can have or how many different ways you can animate a
| window iconifying itself.  It's about whether stuff works out of the
| box, with minimal fuss, and at an acceptable speed.

I can't argue with that.

| My experience has been that OpenOffice and the recent releases of the
| RPM-based Linux distributions miss that point entirely.

Now you've gotten rpm into this rant?  What does rpm have to do with this?

rpm is just a way of getting the files onto your computer.  Once this
is done, it should have very little effect on how the computer and
it's software performs.

| 69473 jp    5  20    0    99M 71484K kserel   0:04  0.00% soffice.bin
| 
| That's OpenOffice with one empty document open.

And now we're ranting about memory usage specifics.  This is your
FreeBSD box, right?

If you haven't seen it, you might want to take a look at this --

   http://virtualthreads.blogspot.com/2006/02/understanding-memory-usage-on-linux.html

I realize that it's Linux specific, but the idea applies to lots of
other OSs as well -- ps only tells a small part of the story about how
much memory a given process uses.

And this article doesn't even begin to talk about mmap()'d blocks of
I/O memory.  For example, my X server isn't really using 350 MB of
memory like ps reports.  I think the true figure is closer to 50 MB.

As for the OpenOffice memory and cpu usage, try AbiWord.  It uses less
of both and has most of the functions of OpenOffice and is almost as
good at reading Microsoft Office documents.  My wife uses AbiWord for
all her word processing needs and seems quite happy with it.
(Personally, I just use emacs, but she likes the pretty fonts and
such.)

AbiWord on my Linux box, with nothing loaded --

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND           
 3576 dmclaren  15   0 37552  18m  13m S  0.7  1.8   0:04.61 abiword

(And now I've thrown yet a third OS into the already muddled
memory-usage melee.  To be a bit more fair, here's OpenOffice 2.0
writer on my system with nothing loaded but an empty document --

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 3802 dmclaren  15   0  153m  48m  33m S  2.3  4.8   0:06.10 swriter.bin        

... though it's still not clear what figure I should use to say
`oowriter is using THIS much memory.'

| 2674 Microsoft  1.8%  0:02.79  2 80   441  17.3M  57.2M  34.4M 444M
| 
| That's Word 2004 for Macintosh with a long, complicated legal document
| open.  It's nearly half the size!

Your ps formats are changing, so I'm guessing that we're comparing
different OS's here?  MacOS vs. FreeBSD?  If you want to be fair,
let's at least stick to one OS.  (And on the other hand, if you just
want to rant, stick with whatever looks like it supports your argument
the best.)

| Here's Firefox with nothing open:
| 
| 69921 jp   5  20    0 48600K 36656K kserel 0   0:02  0.00% firefox-bin

Firefox is known to be a resource hog.  Hardly OpenOffice's or Linux's
fault.  But if you want to be fair, run it on your Mac and report what
you see there.

Also note that `nothing open' doesn't mean much unless it also means
`nothing has been opened since the process was started.'

And here's firefox 1.5 on my box, with nothing open --

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 5328 dmclaren  15   0  124m  30m  17m S 12.2  3.0   0:11.64 firefox-bin        

| Here's Safari with nothing open:
| 
| 2685 Safari 0.0%  0:01.52   5   113   182  4.62M  21.5M  12.7M 357M

Safari is based on Konqueror, which is open source.  If you want to
compare Safari to an open source browser, compare it to Konqueror.
And do it on your Mac, because your Mac is the only platform that can
run both.

Konqueror on my box, freshly started :

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND           
 5426 dmclaren  15   0 41368  25m  18m S  4.0  2.5   0:03.53 konqueror          

| I recall the numbers for WinWord and Internet Explorer being similar,
| but I don't have the bandwidth to rdc to a box and find out.

It's probably best.  You'd be throwing yet another `look at different
sorts of memory usage' comparison into the fray.

| At that rate, I have to buy twice as much computer to use the "free"
| software than I do to run the "non-free" software!  I'm willing to use
| FireFox over IE when I'm on a Windows box just because IE is such a
| flaming ball of garbage, but it always leaves me with a sinking feeling
| of "-This- is the best we could do, over a decade after the web went
| mainstream?"

Sounds like you'd be happier with Konqueror.  It's very similar to
Safari.

| I don't so much care.  My usage of Office is mainly to read other
| peoples Office documents and to print envelopes.

I'm similar.  So far, OpenOffice and AbiWord have worked fine for me.

| Well, I use Excel as well, primarily because there are no free
| software tools that fill the same gap nearly as well.

As I mentioned, oocalc (OpenOffice spreadsheet) and gnumeric have
worked fine for me, even in loading Excel documents.

| > (Unless you're a big customer, and you're deciding if you want to
| > renew your $500k/year support contract, of course -- then we'll fix it
| > right away.)
| 
| Not always even then, as $ork has discovered with a particular EDA tool.

Then they're not properly pushing their weight around.  Threats like
`we're not renewing support until you fix this and this and this!' go
a long ways.  Putting specific dollar figures next to fixing/adding
specific defects and features motivates both open source and closed
source developers alike!

| I guess I should boil it down:  When I want to hack code (either my own
| or, lately, the FreeBSD kernel source), I don't really mind when things
| aren't just-so; if they were, I wouldn't have anything to do.  When I
| want to do budget calculations, print address labels, or do other
| mundane computer tasks, I want the box to be as unobtrusive and fast as
| possible.

And you're probably not alone in that.

| FOSS only really "gets it" with regards to developer tools (like
| vim, which is just perfect).

Then offer the developers of the products you're interested in money
to fix the issues you're interested in.  Microsoft Office costs a few
hundred dollars for just one seat ... the amount of money even a
single small company spends on it would probably be enough to get a
developer to fix many of the issues in OpenOffice that bother them.

But if you're not willing to pay for something, you'll have to either
ask the developer nicely to fix it, or `fix it yourself'.  People
write OSS because it's fun, or because it scratches an itch that they
have, or to gain experience or exposure -- very few do it for a
living.  And if you're not paying somebody or have some other sort of
contractual obligation, you can't reasonably expect them to be at your
beck and call.

Or just get the commercial software that does what you want it to.
But as you've already mentioned, even that's not perfect.

| But vim won't put Linux on Grandma's PC.

Why would you want to?  Grandma probably doesn't even want MacOS on
her PC if she's already familiar with Windows.

-- 
Doug McLaren, dougmc at frenzy.com