The Future of Linux is in aMSN's hands!

[MarkK]

Just a quick bit of encouragement to the aMSN team:
A messenger clone with voice chat is THE application that's stopping vast numbers of people from changing to Linux. Maybe you don't quite realise it but when you get live voice functionality with webcam working reliably, YOU will have finally made it possible for millions of wives, teens and home admins to change to Linux full-time. Keep up the good work, nearly there!

[H@t Trick]

Hi,
I am sure the dev team appreciate the comments, but there are limitation that cause aMSN to not have this feature. The reasons for this are mentioned NUMEROUS times on the forums (search helps find them, though I am not sure if you searched or not). It is being worked on right now though apparently. However I am not sure how important voice conversation really is. Very few if anyone I know (mostly 18-34 male and female demographics, mostly 20-26) actually use this and they use WLM.  Even my parents (mid 50s) barely use MSN to start with, and thats only basic IM, not even webcam, they don't even know WLM has voice/video conversation, and my friends parents mostly don't even use msn to start with.
<OFF TOPIC>
As for people switching to Linux...most people do not know about Linux and those that do mostly have no desire to switch to it. Most people stick with Windows because it's what they know and can easily find a friend to help out or get a pc tech without fear that the person wont know their OS. Infact I can tell you from first hand experience MANY people have NO clue what an OS is, and some don't even know what version of Windows they have (there are way too many people still using Win98). If the average person decides to switch OSes they immediately think of a Mac and if they decide to take the plunge, to which I would advise them not to as my technical opinion (please don't flame me Mac lovers), Macs are over priced PCs in fancy packaging with slick marketing and a glitzy OS that is just a nice GUI (which I find very very confusing....can I get MS-DOS (or Caldera OpenDOS w/multitasking and network support) instead please?) over top of some potentially slow/buggy wrapper code around a very stable BSD core. Basically consumers think their only options are Windows or OSX, oh and they hate Vista (aka Windows MeII), so don't tell us that aMSN+voice/video conference is the killer app that will push Linux into the mainstream. Linux itself is not ready yet, and consumers aren't even consciously aware of it. Linux will be ready for them (the very near future) before they are ready for it (years down the road).
</OFF TOPIC>

Sorry about the off topic rant kakaroto, just something I felt I had to say based on my experience with the average consumer being in internet tech support.

[MarkK]

Hi,
I am sure the dev team appreciate the comments, but there are limitation that cause aMSN to not have this feature. The reasons for this are mentioned NUMEROUS times on the forums (search helps find them, though I am not sure if you searched or not). It is being worked on right now though apparently. However I am not sure how important voice conversation really is. Very few if anyone I know (mostly 18-34 male and female demographics, mostly 20-26) actually use this and they use WLM.  Even my parents (mid 50s) barely use MSN to start with, and thats only basic IM, not even webcam, they don't even know WLM has voice/video conversation, and my friends parents mostly don't even use msn to start with.


<OFF TOPIC>
As for people switching to Linux...most people do not know about Linux and those that do mostly have no desire to switch to it. Most people stick with Windows because it's what they know and can easily find a friend to help out or get a pc tech without fear that the person wont know their OS. Infact I can tell you from first hand experience MANY people have NO clue what an OS is, and some don't even know what version of Windows they have (there are way too many people still using Win98). If the average person decides to switch OSes they immediately think of a Mac and if they decide to take the plunge, to which I would advise them not to as my technical opinion (please don't flame me Mac lovers), Macs are over priced PCs in fancy packaging with slick marketing and a glitzy OS that is just a nice GUI (which I find very very confusing....can I get MS-DOS (or Caldera OpenDOS w/multitasking and network support) instead please?) over top of some potentially slow/buggy wrapper code around a very stable BSD core. Basically consumers think their only options are Windows or OSX, oh and they hate Vista (aka Windows MeII), so don't tell us that aMSN+voice/video conference is the killer app that will push Linux into the mainstream. Linux itself is not ready yet, and consumers aren't even consciously aware of it. Linux will be ready for them (the very near future) before they are ready for it (years down the road).
</OFF TOPIC>

Sorry about the off topic rant kakaroto, just something I felt I had to say based on my experience with the average consumer being in internet tech support.

Maybe this is quite relevant to "feedback and suggestions" because it may give an insight on changing attitudes here in Europe that developers should be aware of.

 There are an awful lot of people now who are not happy with American monopolies, even here in GB. The EU taking on Microsoft and now Intel do make the news and do make people explore alternatives. As a small example, the French Gendarmerie will be putting Ubuntu on 60,000 of their computers.


The main setback to widespread acceptance of Linux have been the command line brigade. Any OS that needs knowledge of CLI is doomed to remain niche and hence manufacturers won't bother to write drivers for it. Fortunately that is now changing at last and the fast improving GUI makes it usable by increasing millions of average people.
 
From reading through various Linux forums and talking to friends the clear picture is that what's stopping many new Linux dabblers  from putting it on their wives and kids/teens computers is Live Messenger, and in particular voice chat+webcam. That *IS* the single most important thing aMSN developers should be dedicating their efforts to. It would boost all of Linux.

I put Ubuntu 7.10 onto a teens and some silver surfers computers and they actually prefer it. The kids because they don't catch viruses and the oldies because they are sick of Redmond and chum$ crawling into their home through the screen, and it's free. None of them are computer savvy in the slightest. Thanks wholly to a usable GUI, they now don't have to be!

If kids and oldies recommend it to their friends it *WILL* snowball, and manufacturers will do more drivers. The credit crunch thing too will make people less inclined to hand dough  to Bill and the anti-virus racket. So I say:
PLEASE GET VOICE GOING ON aMSN ASAP !!!

[kakaroto]

Hi MarkK, thanks a lot for the feedback, we really appreciate it and it motivates us to continue working on this project!
We are doing our best with aMSN, many technological issues prevented us from having the audio/video conference but that is now something from the past, this week I've been working on finally getting the audio video conversation working and it seems that I'm on the right track.. there still are some technological challenges that I hope I can acheive, we'll see soon whether that holds true or not...
I will keep you guys informed on how it goes through this forum thread I created : http://www.amsn-project.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4799
hopefully, soon we will have full working audio/video chat in aMSN (integrated, no need for hacks or command line or anything like that...).
You should know that in the meantime, aMSN already has a great support (best available in the open source community) for webcam chat, it's unidirectional webcam with no audio.. and you can also send voice clips, which are 15 seconds voice messages... it's not real time audio but that's coming soon!

By the way, the aMSN team already knows and is very prouf of being a factor in the transition of users from the windows desktop into a Linux desktop. Many people report that they don't want to switch because they want to keep in touch with their family and friends and that aMSN allowed them to do that.. that's one of the reasons why aMSN tries to keep a clean UI and have a similar look&feel to microsoft's messenger, in order to make it easier for people to switch from msn to aMSN.

[MarkK]

That's excellent news!
As soon as you've sorted voice+cam (and I'm sure you will eventually!), I'll be going to Linux permanently and I'll be changing as many people as possible over too.
Keep up the good work (wish I had the brains...). I think some time in the future we will be reading about how aMSN gave desktop Linux the boost into the bigtime.

[H@t Trick]

I had a long message (based on my experience as an internet tech support rep) that was mostly done but I had to leave the PC before I could send it. Basically I was saying the average end user in Europe is probably more sophisticated and aware of technology and computing issues and such than the average North American end user. Most are not ready for Linux, and I don't believe Linux is ready for them. aMSN will be complete with this feature before Linux is ready for people, but Linux will be ready before them. I would NEVER consider Linux in its current state for my grandparents or other seniors. XP is idiotproof, Vista sucks. Linux is just too foreign, and don't get me started with OSX. Linux needs to completely replicate the look and feel (people don't like change remember, but eventually will explore different DEs once they have changed over) of XP (not Vista, not OS X), aMSN exemplifies this concept, but I know Kakaroto disagrees when it comes to the OS. For this reason, even I am leaning towards Xandros rather than Ubuntu, it just doesn't look right to me, but Xandros emulates XP quite nicely. Having said that I would put a little kid on Linux without even thinking twice right now. And while we disagree on much of this we all agree that aMSN is a key component to moving people to alternative platforms. Only problem is if we move people away from MS, then people will move away from hotmail and MSN, so then what happens with aMSN...transition to a new protocol? Eitherway, as I have said many times..Keep up the great work dev team!

[phantom]

Personally I don't think voice is so important that it should be the deciding factor in a user's choice of operating systems. It's also funny to hear people basically saying that kakaroto is the person who is keeping huge amounts of people from switching to Linux. What a barrier you are to progress, kakaroto! Shame! Kidding.

Linux needs to completely replicate the look and feel (people don't like change remember, but eventually will explore different DEs once they have changed over) of XP (not Vista, not OS X)

It saddens me to hear you say that, as I know alot of people, myself obviously included, that prefer the "classic" look of Windows 2000 and earlier rather than the "playskool" look of Windows XP and later.

[H@t Trick]

Personally I don't think voice is so important that it should be the deciding factor in a user's choice of operating systems. It's also funny to hear people basically saying that kakaroto is the person who is keeping huge amounts of people from switching to Linux. What a barrier you are to progress, kakaroto! Shame! Kidding.

Linux needs to completely replicate the look and feel (people don't like change remember, but eventually will explore different DEs once they have changed over) of XP (not Vista, not OS X)

It saddens me to hear you say that, as I know alot of people, myself obviously included, that prefer the "classic" look of Windows 2000 and earlier rather than the "playskool" look of Windows XP and later.

I never said it was all on kakaroto or the dev team.....now we are WAY off topic lol.

Why does it sadden you? I am not fond of the classic look of Win2k (which really if yo uthink about it is more 9x than NT/2K). I find the classic look is plain, and outdated. I don't find XP to be playskool (especially on the Silver theme), I find it modern, lively, and yet still professional. But what I meant by XP is basically the culmination of all the refinement in not just the look but the feel of the 9x/2k/XP GUI, the start menu, the control panel, etc.

[kakaroto]

hehe, ok, I must have missed something.. who said that I'm keeping people from switching to Linux? and why would someone say that ? :p
@H@T Trick : I didn't understand what you meant by " but I know Kakaroto disagrees when it comes to the OS"
Anyways, I don't think A/V will be the deciding factor but it will play a huge role, it's THE most wanted feature.. and everyone wants that (even those who never use it)... solution now for voip is skype but it's crappy as hell..
About look&feel, I like XP (silver theme too :p) it's nice, not too much eye candy while the old win 2000 look&feel is too 'plain'.. it's like comparing Tk with the newer (gtk/qt/whatever) toolkits...
Anyways, I'm decided in implementing the A/V soon, and we'll see how it turns out and we'll see if it helps any in the migration :p

[H@t Trick]

hehe, ok, I must have missed something.. who said that I'm keeping people from switching to Linux? and why would someone say that ? :p
@H@T Trick : I didn't understand what you meant by " but I know Kakaroto disagrees when it comes to the OS"
Anyways, I don't think A/V will be the deciding factor but it will play a huge role, it's THE most wanted feature.. and everyone wants that (even those who never use it)... solution now for voip is skype but it's crappy as hell..
About look&feel, I like XP (silver theme too :p) it's nice, not too much eye candy while the old win 2000 look&feel is too 'plain'.. it's like comparing Tk with the newer (gtk/qt/whatever) toolkits...
Anyways, I'm decided in implementing the A/V soon, and we'll see how it turns out and we'll see if it helps any in the migration :p

@kakaroto: In my thread about transitioning to Linux from XP, you said (or at least my interpretation was, so I could be wrong) that if I was switching to Linux I should look for a different look and feel. I am still exploring various *buntu flavours but I like what I see from Xandros so far, despite the cost, simply because it is very much XP-like. As for XP's look and feel I completely agree. Ithink we're cleared up though.
Yes A/V is a desired feature but maybe not overly used. We all welcome the A/V. I also look forward to your technical explanations of what you did to make things work. Is there any GUI work being done for the A/V stuff, or is it still very basic bare essentials still for the A/V?

[MarkK]

OK, I'll put it simply:

CASE 1)
 Here in GB hundreds of thousands of spotty teens like to download stuff and jabber to their friends on MSM. Problem is, they download piles of viruses aimed at them as well, consequently their windows computer goes belly up when their parents subscription to AV runs out (even sooner if they don't bother with it). In practice there's no one there to fix their puter, which costs a lot of money, and nobody bothers renewing the AV subscription.
They now dig out their games console because their computer's up the creek.
 
Enter Linux! Games are not so important because they are now using the console for games anyway. They can download stuff without fear of viruses but (presently) they can only type in messenger. If they could voice chat as before in windows, there would be a whole new generation actively using Linux. It could become a new teen fad!

I know this because instead of repairing XP on a lady friends kid's computer I refused to re-install XP and put on free Ubuntu 7.10 which the kids are now happily using and showing their friends how to. (You read right: kids are showing other kids to use Ubuntu Linux)

CASE 2) The only reason I haven't put Linux on my wife's computer is because she uses voice+webcam to talk to her family in South America.

CASE 3) A couple of pensioners in their 60s. It was far simpler to set up free Linux for them for browsing the net and digital photography than explain to them how to de-spybot and regularly sweep for viruses. Being on a pension and capable of doing without a computer, there's no way they would have forked out for a legal copy of XP and an AV subscription. I'm sure that very soon they'll want want to keep up with their daughters by voice+webcam though , like my wife does.

The main recurring reason why Husbands aren't installing Linux on wives+ kids home computers is because here most need MSM with voice (the Linux GUI is pretty much there). That's why I'm sure I'm right in saying it would be the biggest boost to the wider uptake of Linux, definately here in GB!

[MarkK]

I agree with H@T TRICK  that as much Linux stuff as possible should look, or at least have the controls in the same places, as windows.
Where skins are an option, there should be a windows skin, preferably as default.

The market *IS* windows users, most of whom don't give a flying fart about what it looks like as long as they can use it right away with minimum effort.  Those that crave "individuality" can be real rebels by customising the look of things themselves in three clicks. It's only a computer ferflicksake!


The reward for the dubious hardship of Linuxers having to put up with default optional windows skins would be that manufacturers write more drivers for Linux, because more people were likely to use it.

[kakaroto]

Hi,
I'll try to be brief....
Yes, having your linux look like XP would help a lot of people transitioning, but XP itself is a b*tch! it's really bad in terms of user-friendliness, noone knows how to use it (non-geeks/win-gurus) Try asking your parents/wives/children on how to install a driver, or even what is a driver, or how to set up your network, etc.. noone knows.. the 'control panel' is shit, and nobody knows how to use it.. it's really BAD in terms of user-friendliness.. but people now know how to do this simply because they somehow got used to it.. for example, I always heard how Macs are incredibly, extraordinary in terms of user-friendliness, easy to use, etc.. I tried a mac once and it was the worst experience I ever had, i was not able to do anything, I didn't understand shit on how to configure it, etc... and why is that ? because those who say mac is user-friendly are mac users, and they're used to it.. those who say XP is easy to use are people used to it.. same goes for linux..etc.. who never ever used windows? probably noone.. you might not use it now, but you started with it for sure (when you were about 5 to 10 years old at least).. my theory is that if you give a 5 year old kid a linux system and he learns how to use it, then if he gets to 18 years and you give him XP he will not be able to do anything with it because he won't understand how it works, same goes the other way, people being used to windows will not understand linux...
You're saying you have to make linux imitate xp's look&feel.. that's not a good idea!!!! Linux is different, Linux is not windows, and it should not replicate it!!!! Look at aMSN for example, we want to keep as much as possible the WLM's look&feel, but we are so different.. and why? because our moto is "do it better than WLM"... we try to replicate it but we make it better.. WLM is bad in terms of user-friendliness, aMSN is too,  but we try to avoid the same mistakes WLM did.. yes, a user switching from WLM to aMSN might not find his options in the same place as they were in WLM, but he'll still be able to use the product.. it's the same with Linux/XP, it's not because it's bad and people are used to it, that you must replicate it..
The real goal here would be to teach linux to young people so they can get used to it instead of windows...
I remember Ali Sabil (pymsn dev) gave me a 'demo' about this last time at Guadec.. we were in the train and we were discussing this very subject, and he said how Windows was painfull for installing programs, download something, execute, authorize it (lol), a lot of 'next' pages, it asks you for the path, C:\Program files, which 90% of users don't even know what a 'path' is (apart from in the forest), or what 'program files' is ... so he took out his laptop and gave it to a girl in the train next to him and he asked her to install an msn client.. the girl didn't know what 'install' meant.. she had no idea how to install on windows, she had almost no idea how to use a computer (not even XP..), a total n00b.. and he just told her "explore the desktop and try to find how to install an msn client".. she was lost (and mostly scared by that weird guy giving her his laptop... lol)  and apparently pretty shy... so anyways, he did help her a bit, but in the end, it was easy and she said "yeah, it does look much simpler"...

Overall.. people are afraid of changes.. whether it's good or bad for them, they don't care, if it's a change, they don't like it... but I'm sure if you give anyone no choce on using ubuntu (for example), they'll get used to it pretty fast and like it...

oh and also.. most hardware works out of the box on linux, but on windows, you always have to install drivers.. and most of the times the drivers get uninstalled all by themselves for no reason.. etc.. I had a webcam, it took me hours everytime I wanted to use it, it was areal PITA to get it to work on windows, I always needed the install CD, install the drivers, reboot, reinstall drivers, reboot.. go to control panel->system, manually uninstall the drivers.. reboot, install them once more, reboot.. then the webcam worked.. after a few years of use, I had no choice but to plug it into a linux box, and I was soo afraid it would take me days to get it to work... I plugged it in, and as soon as the usb went in, the webcam was detected, driver was there, and it worked right away, it was 100 times simpler than windows... BUT.. people still want that official stupid CD with the drivers telling them 'yes, it works on linux'...

That's about it!

p.s.: damn.. couldn't make it brief...

[MarkK]

The thing is (Kakaroto) that everybody ALREADY uses windows and knows that it's crap but STILL won't change to Linux exactly because it looks too different.
That's precisely why (as you explain above) the transition for them should be made as easy as possible. Most of the functions are identical anyway (except Linux has some very unintuitive  terminology like "man pages" (gay porn?) "synaptic" (medicine?) "repositories" (to make you poo?) and a whole pile of other amateurishly-named apps.

People want a windows that *isn't* a bitch! Would it be such a big deal if the colours and buttons look similar and are in a similar place? I'm not even talking about functions that are different.
It's by far easier for a computer afficionado to change the appearance than the zillions who never learnt how because they are not fussed and just want to get on with using the damn thing.

I keep hearing bilge about how marvellously "different" Linux is. Nobody gives a shit (apart from geeks)!
95% of people just want to use the stupid thing and get on with real life.

It's precisely the tiny clique who raved about the beauty of the Linux CLI and similar shit who have held back Linux GUI, they are their own worst enemy! It's tried to look different and utterly failed in the real world because that's precisely why nobody uses it.

Virtually everybody (apart from the handful of Linux geeks) wants a windows that isn't windows underneath, and that's exactly what Linux could be, if only...!

The bottom line is: Do Linux writers want to have a marvelous little cliquey OS for themselves, or a marvelous OS that the world  will actually start to use?

[kakaroto]

that's what ubuntu is... a Linux for common people...