TUX Desktop Watch -- August 29, 2006 _________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the TUX Desktop Watch This Week: The Quote Heard 'Round the Community "No matter how painful, no matter how ugly, we must enable the Linux desktop to run Windows media, to support iPods. We may not want binary programs in user-space, but we must have them." Eric Raymond, author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" in a panel discussion at Linux World 2006. I would encourage everyone to search for more information on the discussion and the background. Of course, it is nothing new to readers of TUX and TUX Desktop Watch. I've been talking all around the subjects which are the foundation for his remarks. The Register was the first to break the story and you can find their report here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/17/eric_raymond_linux_compromise/. It's funny how we filter information. We each bring to every bit of information every experience that makes us unique. When we add new information to that unique mixture of experiences, it becomes like chemistry. There are interactions between our experiences and the new information, those reactions often form what we take the new information to "mean". So it is with Raymond's comments. We all read or heard what he had to say and then like chemistry we arrive at our reactions (our conclusions). For me, I think that Raymond is spot on some of this conclusions. Now I'll admit his conclusions about the switch from 32- to 64-bit technology and the closing window for Linux are areas I've not considered. But I see in his comments one critical conclusion. In his book The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Raymond documented his first hand experience with what makes the Open-Source software development process work. In my opinion, no one can begin to understand what makes Open Source different, special, and mysterious without reading his book. So I believe he is uniquely qualified to have voiced what he did. So I believe Raymond sees a disconnect between what we all want Linux to become and what the developers working on Linux want. For TUX and our readers, we want a Linux that just works, but Linux developers don't really care what we want. Now I'm talking about the vast majority of individual developers who contribute to Linux and not the corporate interests of Linspire, Xandros, or Novell. From the other perspective many within that same development community believe that Linux represents everything that the ideals of the Free Software Foundation proclaim. They believe that Linux should always reflect those ideals and should never be diluted with software that does not guarantee the free software ideals. Many people first encountering Linux ask questions like Raymond proposes,"does it work with my iPod?" After telling many college students here in Puerto Rico about LInux, a very common question was, "does it run Windows Messenger?" To which I was like, mouth gaping, saying to myself "don't you mean does it support connecting to the Windows messenger service?" From both perspectives we have a gap, (I know here he goes again with the gap crap again...) that are uncrossable. So I believe that Raymond has recognized that the two ends have no way to meet in the middle, so he made his call to the Linux community to make the effort to meet the users where it is most important to them. Whether that compromise is drivers, or codecs, or whatever, the community must move the mountain to where the users are. It's the only way! Raymond knows it and whether everyone else cares, it is the only way to reach widespread Linux desktop adoption. Otherwise, we have a great deal of cool content for you this week, which you can find below. We have plenty of great Weblog entries, plus a chapter on compiling and installing source code from the book SUSE Linux by Chris Brown from O'Reilly Media. We wish you much learning enjoyment! With best regards, Kevin Shockey Editor in Chief, TUX Magazine