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issue149:mon_opinion

Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !


To give you some background, I have been using Ubuntu since before it was Ubuntu. That's correct, since the beta of IMPI linux. IMPI Linux was the first time I wanted to move away from what I knew at that stage. It was the first time I did not have to do a lot of work from my side. The company I worked for tried to make us all into Novell engineers, as they saw it as the future. I ended up with the local municipality as my client. They were using Sinix Z at the time, and I was sent to Siemens for Linux training. Though I saw Linux as powerful! (it certainly was, compared to some of the other stuff I worked on like WANG systems), I did not expect it ever to make it to the desktop. More exciting things were on the way from IBM, like OS/2. Remember the phrase: “No one ever got fired for buying an IBM”?

Pour vous décrire la situation, j'utilise Ubuntu depuis qu'existe Ubuntu. En fait, depuis la bêta de IMPI Linux. IMPI Linux a été la première fois où j'ai voulu m'éloigner e ce que je savais à cette époque. C'était la première fois que je n'avais pas à faire moi-même plein de travail. La société pour laquelle je travaillais essayais de faire de nous tous des ingénieurs en produits Novell, car ils ls voyaient comme le futur. J'en suis arrivé à avoir la municipalité locale comme client. À ce moment-là, ils utilisaient Sinix 2 et j'ai été envoyé chez Siemens pour me former à Linux. Bien que que je sentais que Linux était puissant (il l'était certainement, en comparaison d'autres trucs sur lesquels je travaillais comme les sytèmes Wang), je ne m'attendais pas à le voir sur des ordinateurs de bureau. Des choses plus intéressantes étaient en cours venant d'IBM, comme OS/2. Souvenez-vous de la phrase : « Personne n'a jamais été viré pour avoir acheté un IBM » ?

Compared to Windows 95 and OS/2, the Unices were as ancient as the Burroughs systems I worked on, you could not even stop and start your printing yourself. Red Hat was the only pseudo desktop OS around. I say pseudo as you could do more with your little green desktop on an Atari from the eighties than those. RPM commands were cryptic in comparison with other operating systems. You could not even play music. You had to enable extra repositories that would break your system the first chance they got. No thank you, Linux desktop sucked!

Par comparaison avec Windows 95 et OS/2, les Unix étaient aussi anciens que les systèmes Burroughs sur les quelles j'avais travaillé ; vous ne pouviez même pas lancer et arrêter vos impressions tout seul. Red Hat était le seul pseudo-système d'exploitation pour ordinateur de bureau du coin. Je dis « pseudo » car vous pouviez faire beaucoup plus avec votre petit écran vert d'un Atari des années 80 qu'avec eux. Les commandes RPM étaient mystérieuses, en comparaison des autres systèmes. Vous pouviez même jouer de la musique. Vous deviez activer des déôts supplémentaires qui cassaient votre système dès qu'ils le pouvaient. Non merci, le bureau Linux, ça craint !

The late 80s, early 90s, was an exciting time for operating systems. How Linux grew amid so many better operating systems failing, is beyond me. One day, a friend introduced me to Debian. The deb package commands were a lot simpler than rpm, and it kindled my interest in Linux again. KDE desktop was by far the most useful desktop. Then Gnome2 arrived. A combination of Gnome2 and Debian actually made for something useable. BeOS also looked very promising as a business desktop. Still, I did not really consider Linux on the desktop. Too many things did not work, and the amount of available software was tiny. Windows seemed to be the future as the pricing was so much better than Apple or IBM. I mean Linux could not even run Lotus 123. What kind of operating system can't run Lotus 123? Lotus 123 was what all the businesses were using. *big smile*

La fin des années 80 et le début des années 90 furent des temps intéressants pour les systèmes d'exploitation. Comment linux a grandi parmi tant de systèmes d'exploitation qui échouaient ? Un jour, un ami m'a présenté Debian. Les commandes des paquets .deb étaient beaucoup plus simples que celles de rpm, et ça a rallumé mon intérêt pour Linux. Les bureau KDE était de loin le bureau le plus utile. Ensuite est arrivé Gnome2. La combinaison de Debian et de Gnome2 a vraiment donné quelque chose d'utilisable. BeOS paraissait aussi avoir un avenir comme bureau professionnel. Encore à ce mement-là, je ne considèrais pas Linux comme un bureau. Trop de choses ne fonctionnaient pas, et la quantité de logiciels disponibles était mince. Windows semblait avoir de l'avenir car son prix était tellement meilleur que ceux d'Apple ou IBM. Je signale que Linux ne pouvais même pas faire tourner Lotus 123. Quel sorte de système d'exploitation ne peut pas faire tourner Lotus 123 ? Lotus 123 était ce qu'utilisaient tous les professionnels. *grand sourire*

So I only experimented with Linux as a desktop OS on the side every now and then. The friend, who introduced me to Linux as a desktop OS, came over one day and asked me what was on my Pentium II. I told him Xandros, but it was slow. I had a brief fling with Gentoo, and saw how fast Linux as a desktop OS can be, but it was so much work and took so long to install (3days), that Gentoo fell by the wayside. It was not until I was handed a copy of IMPI Linux that I actually considered Linux as a desktop OS. When IMPI Linux 2 was released 6 months later, I signed up for a CD and it was mailed to me. I installed it and was surprised at how much I liked it. Impi became Ubuntu, and, for the first time, everything worked on my desktop and laptop. Internet connection was still a bit of an issue as dial-up and ISDN fell by the wayside, but I was up and running with my PCMCIA card in no time. Looking back at that ugly brown Ubuntu now, and comparing it to my slick install of Ubuntu 18.04 this year, with modern applications like Onlyoffice, I can only say it has come a long way. Is it the year of Linux on the desktop? No, not as long as people fear Linux as the evil hacker operating system. Not as long as OEMs put Linux on inferior machines that would not even run Windows, just to get stock out the door. Not as long as Windows execs tell old fuddy-duddy CEOs that only Windows provides support for their operating systems and Linux has no “owner” thus no free support, (Not that you get free Windows support anyway) or that using Linux opens you to litigation.

I think Linux IS ready for the desktop, the only thing still keeping it back is support by the productivity companies. People need their Photoshop, their affinity, their outlook, their games. Yes, games are important as it will pique the interest of the next generation - and if Linux cannot deliver, they will stick with proprietary operating systems and carry that into the workplace with them one day. The good: It boots faster. It feels snappier. The bad: Snaps are incorporated, whether you want it or not (cryptomining scares). Settings are hidden from the user. The Ugly: Gnome3 feature creep. Easy customizing removed.

issue149/mon_opinion.1571064841.txt.gz · Dernière modification : 2019/10/14 16:54 de d52fr