Linux casts a lengthening shadow

In the battle for the desktop, the maverick operating system is gaining acceptance Visitors to the recent San Francisco launch of Microsoft's Windows 2000 computer operating

Friday, March 24th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

In the battle for the desktop, the maverick operating system is gaining acceptance

Visitors to the recent San Francisco launch of Microsoft's Windows 2000 computer operating system encountered a surreal spectacle as they traipsed into the convention center.

A man dressed as a penguin was attacking another costumed as Bill Gates. The mock battle attracted curious conventiongoers, who laughed heartily at the Gates surrogate being pinned to the sidewalk by the lumbering bird.

"I don't really know what their message is," one Microsoft loyalist told reporters as he walked by. "That's funny, though."

In the computer world, the smiles are fading fast, however.

The penguin is the mascot for Linux, the operating system that is taking Wall Street and the Web by storm. The OS is available for free as shareware and is open source, which means anyone is welcome to make improvements in the program coding. While Windows and Macintosh operating systems dominate consumer computers right now, the challenger is seriously angling for a crack at the desktop title.

Linux is the fastest-growing operating system in the world, and it already powers the majority of Internet machines that dish out Web pages to site visitors. Those same machines are prime targets of the new operating system being shown off this month by Microsoft, which lords over a hefty 38 percent of the market.

But the fight may soon spill into another lucrative Microsoft arena -- the consumer desktop, where Microsoft controls 90 percent of the action.

A recent flurry of development worldwide has produced easier-to-use Linux applications.

Teens and veterans of the platform have been busy bringing streaming video and audio applications to Linux (pronounced LIH-nucks, although Linus Torvalds, Linux's author and trademark holder, says Lee-nooks). Doom, Quake and other popular action games are now available in Linux versions as savvy gamers discover advantages in the operating system's speed and stability.

Inventive, attractive point-and-click graphical desktops are now laid seamlessly over the arcane, boring, techie command lines used by Linux for years to control the OS. Dozens of newly released Linux interfaces can be configured to look and behave similarly to a Mac or Windows desktop.

Programming veterans such as Kendall Clark, president of the North Texas Linux Users Group, say these recent innovations have lured a whole new audience to educational seminars. In fact, the small cadre of members has now grown to more than 2,000, he says.

About three-quarters of the "newbies" have had no experience with operating systems other than Windows.

"That's a good thing -- a very good thing," says Mr. Clark. "We love that. But we have to do our job to socialize these people into the free software world, so we started a beginners group."

And, if another innovative project piloted by former Apple Macintosh desktop developers takes flight as promised later this year, the NTLUG membership is in for another huge boost.

"Linux has the potential to become increasingly important on personal computers, mobile computers and on intelligent devices," says Dan Kusnetzky, program director of operating environments and serverware service for the market research firm International Data Corp.

"A few barriers remain, however."

In this corner
Mr. Torvalds' system was designed to be an easier-to-use Unix, the longtime operating system favorite for banking and other heavy-duty corporate chores. However, Linux requires an understanding of a whole new set of commands, and navigating through its file structures may seem confusing and odd, even for those born with keyboards and mice in hand.

Until 1998, installation difficulties alone were enough to keep the curious at bay.

But as companies such as Red Hat, Corel and Mandrake entered the market to sell support and prepackaged versions of the OS, those obstacles began falling away.

"A year and a half ago, Linux was the kind of thing only a rocket scientist could love," says Paul McNamara, Red Hat's general manager of the enterprise business unit.

Enter the desktop magic of the K Desktop Environment, or KDE, and Gnu Network Object Model Environment, or Gnome, pronounced Gah-nome.

Those two programs for Linux -- both included in most of the new commercial packages at prices below $100 -- are receiving raves from young and old users. Both KDE and Gnome bring a customizable point-and-click interface to a desktop that had looked clunky and foreign to most Windows and Mac users.

"The free software movement is a very dynamic one," says Miguel de Icaza, Gnome project coordinator. "Gnome is not only providing a desktop for end users, it is laying down a foundation for standardizing a number of issues that have been ignored for a long time by the Unix community."

Linux online discussion lists, formerly dominated by debates on the merits of "emacs" over the "vi" command line editor, are now interspersed with KDE vs. Gnome arguments of equal fervor. Young voices are chiming in: "KDE rulez!" "Gnome kicks KDE butt!"

Most new users are attracted for specific reasons. Teens see the esoteric nature of the operating system as a cool way to learn the art of hacking code. They also like the fact that most of their parents are Linux-ignorant.

Some Doom and Quake online gamers claim the leaner, quicker Linux system offers subtle advantages in battle with Windows and Mac opponents.

But the traditional role of Linux as a Web server is equally compelling for a broad group of home users. Most packages easily set up the Apache Web server, which powers most Internet service providers.

With the fast, always-on Internet connections now entering the consumer market, many users are opting to set up their own personally managed domains for displaying Web pages and exchanging files with friends. Because Linux offers tough security and can be run efficiently on older machines, people installing home networks have found it a cheap, secure way to set up their primary connections to the Net.

"My husband introduced me to Linux this year as a user, although I have known about Linux much longer," says newbie Vicki Helms, a member of a Linux discussion group on the Internet.

"I am so amazed at the ease of use this has made in using Linux. The biggest thing that keeps me from using Linux only is that, for the time being, there aren't enough software applications to make a total change from Windows."

Adds Linux veteran Jeff Hunter, also a discussion group member: "I have been using KDE for several months now, and I have to say that I am glad to finally see a [program] that provides the right balance of features, appearance and configurable options I am looking for. The installation was effortless, taking well under 15 minutes."

Indeed, installations on both PCs and Macs have been honed for the consumer in recent months. Dell, Compaq, IBM and other large computer manufacturers have begun offering preinstalled Linux packages, too.

Sound card configuration is still buggy.

Although it is extremely adaptable in the right hands, all hardware is not yet supported with the ease of the Windows and Mac plug-it-in-and-go models.

Mr. Clark of NTLUG says if users want to install Linux on Windows or Mac machines, they should make sure to jot down their video, Ethernet card and other hardware types before proceeding. Research, he says, is paramount.

"The auto-detection stuff is getting very good," says Mr. Clark. "If you have standard stuff, you almost never need to specify stuff explicitly.

But if you get stuck and don't even know your hardware details, you're screwed."

Younger users are also taken by the installations of PhatLinux (www.phatlinux.com) and WinLinux 2000 (www.winlinux.net), two free versions of the OS designed specifically to install easily on Windows machines.

If all else fails, NTLUG members will gladly help you install the system at one of their monthly meetings (see www.ntlug.org for details).

The pace of Linux desktop innovation is bound to continue, says Mr. McNamara of Red Hat.

"The thing to look at is just how fast this model is moving forward," he says. "In the short space of 18 months, we've driven it to where we have a highly graphical interface in Gnome and KDE.

"We have applications that are aimed more towards desktop users. You can expect that those kinds of improvements, in terms of ease of use, will continue. And, as it does, we'll start drawing more and more people into the Linux sphere."

Under construction

Although new programs arrive daily in the Linux world, true desktop adoption will never be possible until files at work and home are interchangeable.

Currently Linux has StarOffice, Applixware and Koffice, as well as a fleet of stand-alone word processors such as AbiWord, Maxwell and WordPerfect 8. But the fact that Microsoft's Word is a de facto standard in most businesses and homes still presents obstacles.

Applixware and StarOffice allow users to import Office documents, including PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets. But working with Word documents full time on Linux is tricky for neophytes.

Paul Oswald is a KDE developer working to make the Linux desktop friendlier to a wider range of programs.

"This is more than a matter of courtesy, it is a matter of survival as well," says Mr. Oswald. "The selection and quality of office suites available for any OS is one of the most critical aspects for adoption of that platform on the desktop."

Soon, he promises, such issues will be permanently resolved.

Open source developers are also stymied on other fronts. While RealPlayer, the most widely used audio and video streaming program, has been made available for Linux, Microsoft's Media player has not. Linux users can't open those files yet, and the prospect that Microsoft's player may yet dominate Internet streaming is troubling for Linux devotees.

A Linux version of Netscape comes standard with most commercial distributions and functions well, even with Shockwave plug-ins and other bits of Web fun.

But, of course, Microsoft's Internet Explorer will not be fashioned for Linux any time soon. And playing games on the Linux platform is still, by and large, rudimentary.

The future

Last fall, a group of industry veterans, buoyed by the Internet's explosive growth, announced they were going to help Linux make history.
Michael Boich, Andy Hertzfeld and Bud Tribble were all part of the original Apple Macintosh team that began a computing revolution back in the 1980s. The threesome founded Eazel and have put some of the world's best minds to work in building yet another graphical way to overlay Linux.
This one, promises Mr. Boich, will wow even the most ardent Windows and Mac aficionados.

"Our goal isn't to re-create what we did 15 years ago," says Mr. Boich, Eazel president and CEO. "It's to combine a next-generation desktop with Internet-based services to deliver a superior user experience."

What the Eazel people have in mind dovetails with visions often associated with the so-called post-PC era. Rather than maintaining a huge hard drive on a central home computer to run a wide variety of expensive software, they envision homes and offices being outfitted with smaller, specialized machines running Linux. Most of the required software would be stored on and accessed from Web sites.

That means a kitchen-based computer might only be required to handle e-mail and access the Web. The entertainment center computer unit, on the other hand, would have to handle streaming video, audio and other more intense computing chores.

Linux, supporters reason, is uniquely qualified to be the operating system for such Internet appliances because it can be highly specialized and modified to run with bare-minimum system requirements.

Already, some television set-top boxes such as TiVo, the hard-drive VCR that allows users to pause live television, are powered by Linux operating systems. At this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Intel showed off its Linux-based prototype for a kitchen computer hooked into the Web.

In "PCs vs. Information Appliances: Who Will Win the Battle for the Consumer?" IDC predicts that "the appliance will be more pervasive over time." It also contends, however, that "many users of appliances will come to eventually purchase a PC, attracted by their learning experience and taste of advanced interactivity."

Beyond servers, the growth of Linux will be tied to the rising tide of Internet appliances in the marketplace -- and not, presumably, to the waning PC, say the experts. In a recent Internet news service story, "Death of the Desktop," Forrester analyst Simon Yates says, "The laptop will be a dinosaur in a few years; the keyboard will be an exhibit in information museums."

Meanwhile, Giga Information Group's Stacy Quandt says, "In the near-term future, Linux devices such as smart phones, personal digital assistants, Web pads, and set-tops will morph the perception of the traditional desktop."

Look for Linux to be right in the middle of all that, says Dr. Daniel Frye, program director of Linux Technology at IBM.

"It is maturing faster than any other operating system in history," says Dr. Frye. "Within the foreseeable future, Linux is going to be a very, very viable option for a wide range of people who never heard of it today."

Staff Writer Doug Bedell can be reached via e-mail at dbedell@dallasnews.com.