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Thinking Linux

There are many ways to consider Linux. You could look at its API, at its basic utilities and consider it is just an Unix clone. But you could look at the fact Linux is free and runs on unexpensive hardware and then you will see an operating system who has the potential to become a system for personal computers and for dektop computers provided it is adapted to a different environment and to different users.

Linux for personal computers

It could seem obvious but the user of a personal computer is not at work doing tasks mandated by his boss. His motivations are having fun, hobbies, managing his household. When thinking in such a user games you have to think in games, software for image or sound creation, for house automation or personal finances. Everything who can be fun or useful for real life. Web server or C compilers are unimportant here, at least for "normal" users.

Users of a personal computer don't have an experienced system administrator caring for them until they become grown up users. The simplest tasks can be difficult for them, RTFM is not an answer for their problems: there is a critical phase when the user will be unable to find the doc, don't master the tool for reading it and will perhaps be unable to understand the docs. Here we need a robust system who forgives user's mistakes. We need to learn to put essential info under the user's noise (something Unix programmers regularly forget) provide sensible defaults and tools for simplifying system administration even if those tools don't scale well to large sites.

Many users of personal computers will never see another Unix than Linux in their whole life. They have no special reason to use such or such program just because this is the "traditional Unix tool" so forget about traditions and about your personal tastes and provide what is best for the user.

The strong "hackeristic" background of Linux should not make us forget about people who have real work to do and whose goal in life is NOT learning computer science. Linux has office suites as good as the ones available for other systems so people willing, say, write a thesis could do it on Linux but if we don't learn to provide distributions who are as ready to use as possible then they will use Macs and Windows for this kind of work. It is specially important to get rid of the "kernel recompiling myth". Since kernel 2.0 it is possible to provide canned kernels supporting all but the most exotic Linux features while the performance difference between a canned kernel and one compiled by the user is negligible. So there is no excuse when a distribution provides a kernel who, due to lack of features or poor performance, will force the user to recompile it. It is this kind of things who makes people choose other system for real work.

Private users connect to the net through dial-up links. It is vital to allow PPP configuration as soon as possible. We also have to provide for mail and news configuration and ensure traffic is routed when the link is brought up. For most home users the PPP link is the only way to ask for help. You also have to think that in many countries phone is expensive so proxies should be used to make connections as short as possible.

Linux in small organizations

Small organizations deploy a small number of computers and while inbig ornizations training costs could be recouped by license savings on a large number of boxest hey will not in small organization. So we have to ask ourselves if some traditional servers like sendmail or INN are not overkills in such orgnizations. And provide a range of "typical" prebuilt configs for Samba or netatalk.

Linux on the desktop

At times it looks like if Linux designers were unconsciosly persuaded that no sane person would use Linux on the desktop. Unix lost the desktop war not beacause it was user hostile (it lost the battle in DOS times and DOS was as user-hostile as Unix) but because it was expensive. This made that no sane businessman would use Unix for taks, like WYSYWYG word processing, who could done on PCs. And so those companies who tried to port file managers or word processors to Unix found that sales were disapointing.

But Linux is cheaper than Windows or NT, it is more stable and in addition in our times of internetted computers the lack of security in Microsoft software is becoming a serious problem. There is no reason it could not invade the desktop if we learn to think in productivity software, in office suites and get rid of some Unix features like manual mountings who were designed for servers not for workstations.

Conclusion

The present Unix-like Linux is perfect for a fraction of the Linux users, but we should not allow being coerced into keeping Linux in the narrow Unix boundaries. There are other users -less influential and less vocal but potentially biggr in number- whose needs are different. Linux growth needs we adapt to those users and we can do it while providing traditional Unix-like interface to traditional users. We will have to learn to think in allLinux users. We will have to learn to Think Linux and keep our minds independent of traditions