Why Linux isn't on the Desktop yet, and why it probably never will be.
Let me start by saying that I love Linux. It is a great server OS. I use it at home to host two Wordpress blogs and a Joomla project I'm working on. There are many, many configuration options, lots of useful and free applications (including Joomla and Wordpress), and several distributions to choose from.…
Article comments
26 - Joe
Funny article, It seems to be written from an elitest egocentric point of view with a touch of ethnocentricity (as in group terms not racial).
Not everyone can afford new computers and update their software every couple of years as you elude to the habits of you and your friends.
Hey, go ahead and plug in that win98 box and see how long it will last without coming to a screeching halt hooked into the internet. For those that cannot afford anything else but an old computer, linux may be the only option.
When is the last time you looked at a modern linux distrobution? No command line is needed to install and use. Really.
I agree that change is hard for some but as Will Rogers once said " Even though you are on the right track - you will get run over if you just sit there”.
My very young children (10 and 5) and wife use my hand me down computers loaded with Ubuntu. My kids do not know the difference between Windows and Ubuntu. I was raised on Vax/vms and eventually x-windows. Windows was always a toy for me. I was forced to use it for the government in which I work. I have been frustrated with it ever since....so that's my view of the world and I am in no way a "super nerd".
The children are happy looking at educational material online and my 10 year old is able to type her school assignments. Their school system is looking at using Ubuntu since they cannot afford the constant upgrades of computer hardware that is forced by os upgrades and older os sytems getting eat up by viruses.
I've actually slimmed down to a sub notebook that runs linux in which I use for work. Everything I do is tunneled through the internet connected to a mainframe (Vax/vms - standard gubment issue).
My wife does not even realize she uses Ubuntu. She gets online every day to do her work. As long as my family can get on line and/or do their work they are happy.
Games are played on the playstation. That's what it was made for. Computers are for work that's what they are made for. It's actually cheaper to have both a cheap a computer and a playstation instead of buying some $3000 tricked out windows game computer with all the bells and whistles.
I will leave with another Will Rogers quote: "People's minds are changed through observation and not through argument”. If you show your friends an older linux distro they may run for the hills.
Oh yeah, I've used the command line numerous times in windows to reset network connections that could not be reset through the gui. It was either that or reinstall the os and call to let them know I am not a pirate and to please activate my computer. I even had to shell out bucks one time to MS for for telling me how to fix their built in errors as they hid the problem so deep I could not find an answer on their website or anywhere on the net. Smart boogers aren't they.
Instant lesson -- Left click on gnome desktop--low and behold a window pops up and you can easily chage the background, fonts, etc., etc, etc....
Okay one more words of advice from Will Rogers: "A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people”. :)
Are you trolling? You tossed out numerous nuggets of flame bait in this article.
27 - lefty.crupps
Eh, your users can have their MSWindows, but how good is the tech support for their software? IMHO, its generally pretty poor unless its for an enterprise that paid a lot for it. Otherwise, the support is me, and for that I want them on Linux.
Check this blog post out, it tells a LOT about the pain of Windows that no one seems to remember when they're MS supporters, but he rest of us know all too well.
As for 'sharing the knowledge' that you say these people do when they cannot find the support, are they ever putting these solutions online, in forums or blogs?
Without reporting bugs, how do they expect this stuff to get fixed, magic?
I don't expect most Windows people to do either these things, but maybe that is because they've been trained to be accepting of not having control, and willing to just be kinda stupid about going about fixing things? These days its never "my job", let someone else do it? It amazes me what people don't even do a google search to resolve.
28 - tripleii
"People want it to work, end of story."
If Linux is not for you, that's more than fine, however, and I quoted from your summary, you just described what is wrong with Windows. I will give you that it CAN be a bear to install Linux, however, in 30+ friends and family, not one, ever, has come back to me saying this app stopped working, I lost my printer, I got a virus, it is slow slow slow. Endless support of endless Windows problems forced me to go with Linux only support. My life (and phone calls to family and friends) is my own again.
Does it have the games, no, dual boot (and keep the Windows machine off the web, no AV to bog you down and no updates to hose things up).
Answer me this, if Windows really was a "just works" proposition, why does Geek Squad, hundreds of 3rd party repair applications, and literally, a many many billion $ industry? Of all the geeks reading this, do you take a weekend a year to re-install to restore speed? Why is an estimated 40% of ALL my companies IT time spent fixing Windows laptops and desktops? Windows requires constant maintenance to remain running smoothly (by Windows I mean the complete desktop and application suite)
So, in summary, buy a pre-installed Dell, System76, Lenovo with SLED, etc to bypass the SAME heartache that is a Windows install, and you get a truly just works and works experience. 3 years down the road, it is as fast as the day you bought it.
TripleII
29 - Alvare
People *THINK* windows is easier, but reeadin 10 manpages and making a script isn't harder than looking the web for a program , the crack, the patch, etc. They just startded wrong, let them start using linux and they will notice, people is already used to do windows stuff and they think that linux stuff is harder, but it's totally relative !!!
30 - tripleii
"Because you see, my friends are not converting all of their music to OGG., and they are not going to re-rip all of their music in non-DRM format."
Forgot to mention, my condolences on your purchase of DRM infected content. I bet the folks who bought from MSN music are thrilled. As will billions of iTunes songs once the transfer to 5 machines is exceeded. MaybePlays was a HUGE success, never causing millions lost time and money. I hear it's making a comeback. Seriously, use whatever OS you want, never invest in DRM infected content. Music has been freed, movies will be next, but only if people refuse to be treated as criminals first, revenue second and customers 45th.
TripleII
31 - Brian
Good Post and your 100% right. All I use is Linux but I don't expect others to also...Linux is a choice if it works for you then great. I do have the time to (make) things work and the knowhow.
32 - dca
Geez, where was this article four years ago??? What, you mean it wasn't written in 2004? Nevermind then...
33 - Robert Pogson
What a load of nonsense. GNU/Linux is on about 70 million desktops this year and will likely be double that number next year. Just look at the web stats. In the most M$-popular regions, M$ is on about 90% of PCs. According to Apples's 10Q, they sell about 3% of the PCs sold, globally. That leaves 7% for GNU/Linux. Even NetApplications shows more than 50% per annum growth of GNU/Linux on the client.
Apart from the primary thesis being wrong, TFA is wrong on most points. Even one of the points TFA attempts to debunk is enough to convert one user to GNU/Linux. There are a lot of points so a lot of users are migrating to GNU/Linux.
The biggest motivation, globally, to move to GNU/Linux is that it works, and is inexpensive. Billions of people around the world can afford the new low-end machines that shine with GNU/Linux. They are not locked-in to M$ and will happily accept GNU/Linux. Countries like Brazil, China, and Russia are actively promoting GNU/Linux for schools, government offices and the general population. Look at the ASUS eee PC. It is widely accepted by kids/women/students/mobile folks because it works, is convenient and they do not care what OS is on it. ASUS has been limited in production due to shortages of components, not buyers. Many retailers are sold out. There are a dozen makers of similar products within a year after ASUS breakthrough. GNU/Linux is less expensive. The growth in the PC market is not with rich folks who already own 1.5 PCs but with the emerging markets for whom most of TFA's arguments are irrelevant. GNU/Linux works.
34 - Mark Dean
OK, lots of old, outdated stuff here-definitely a lot of silly arguments. I've been running Linux as my main OS on my desktop and laptops for the last 8 years. I'm a Unix Engineer so it makes sense and that makes me biased very much.
There are two main reasons why Linux adoption, although growing, is not what it should be:
1) Hardware vendors have only recently starting shipping with Linux and it is still hard to find on their sites. The reason why this is a problem is the vast majority of users buy a computer and "it just comes with Windows". Now if when they were configuring their systems the choices were to include Linux, it may be very different. But even if it did, problem two will most certainly cause a lot of problems.
2) Application compatibility/interopability. Think about this: the vast majority of computers are purchased at Best Buy, Wal-mart (who did have a Linux system for a while), Comp-USA, etc. At many of those types of places, especially the electronics and computer stores, there is a corner for Macs, and then there is the rest which is Windows. Where is the Linux? Who knows. Now, let's say a user, Joe User and his wife Jane User is able to buy a computer and it has, let's say Ubuntu since it's so popular. They get it home hook it up, it's easy, no driver issues, after all it came bundled with the computer. So far, no difference with the end user experience. Until...
Jane goes to a web site and it doesn't work. Why? Apperently the moron web designer has some sort of ASP or whatever and it REQUIRES IE and some Active X control. BAM! we got a problem. Jane doesn't know what it up. Well, strike 1!
Joe decides he wants to start doing his own taxes and while at Wal-mart he picks up a copy of Turbo Tax and throws it in the cart (when is the last time any user ever looked at the edge of the box for minimum requirements?). He gets it home, and guess what? No autorun. He notices a CD showing up on his desktop, opens it up, finds a file called setup.exe, double-clicks it, and, guess what? If Wine was not installed, he'd get an error. Strike 2!
Strike 3 is just any other software or file that 80% of their friends will share with them that simply will not work or will have problems.
Now before everyone jumps on me, I happen to know that Ubuntu comes with Wine installed, at least I believe when I evaluated it did. That's a good thing. But if it is not, can't you see the problem is not about freedom, not about crashing it is about interoperability and compatibility.
Now I'm not one of those who posts a problem without its solution so here's the solution:
What needs to happen is, now that virtualization has been added to the kernel, we need to have a low level driver of some sort or program, that uses that technology to shim not just the Windows library like Wine, but a complete VM, but hide the OS. In other words, if John inserts the Turbo Tax CD, the kernel looks at it, sees it as a Win32 CD, sees the autorun.inf and proceeds to launch, without any display a Windows XP or Vista VM-with the only thing visible being the Turbo Tax windows. To John and Jane, they can use ANY x86 software! You see, it's not about alternatives, it's about running the software the USER wants, be it Windows or Linux based.
The other solution, and much more likely due to licensing, to actually work, is to make Wine if not part of the kernel, at least part of a "standard" desktop build. In other words, a user should be able to double click on a setup.exe and it install successfully. And if Linux was purchased with a computer, the OEM should install Wine and get some basic codecs as well other things to mitigate that.
My friends, until those two main problems are solved, Linux adoption will be great for many, including business (Novell is doing great work in that area) but not for home/soho users.
35 - tripleii
Mark, you speak the truth. I OEM lots and lots of Linux machines, and get to one on one explain the software repository, etc. The dam is about to burst though. How long can Apple ignore the UMPC market. When that hits 10M Linux units sold by end of the year, the demand for iTunes client will be loud enough. With SLED being a VERY VERY well received completely compatible to the Active Directory shop, especially in Europe, shrink wrapped and downloadable mainstream applications will follow.
MS has done an admirable job developing and enforcing an MS only economic ecosystem, had a good run, but with Apple, the Web, iTunes, Google, UMPCs, more and more OEM support for Linux, losing the MID and Mobile space, etc... they don't really get to tell the world how they will compute anymore.
TripleII
36 - Chris Lees
If Linux is not on the desktop, why do I use it? Why does my father and my workmate use it? (neither three of us work in IT). If Windows makes a better desktop, why does Linux adoption keep growing amongst personal users?
@Mark Dean: Those are all reasons not to switch to the Mac OS, either. People are smarter about software compatibility than you'd think; do you know of anyone who has bought a Wii game and tried to play it on their PS3? Or tried to buy Office for the Mac to use on Windows? Or bought a natural gas cooktop to use with bottled propane?
37 - mark
I think the linux world is a bit confusing in how many varieties there are. Installing software can be confusing even in ubuntu where if you search you will get not only application but all the dependencies. The list can be very long with limited descriptions of which app to use, however this is improving.
The number one issue is drivers, whether they be video, audio, network, wifi or support for usb devices such as mobile broadband. These things often don't work out of the box if they are newish (released in the last year or so) so you have to spend hours and hours finding and implementing a solution.
Basically Windows just works because you always get drivers so that everything built in or you buy.
Lastly with windows I can control the power management better than I can with linux, like reduce the brightness of the LCD display, turn off network cards or other built in devices. I find linux much harder to do this.
Linux will only become mainstream with consumers when it is the default operating system on a new device.
38 - ces
You need reasons #25 and #26:
#25: Linux is faster. I installed Linux on my 8 year old daughter's 7 year old computer, replacing the existing XP install. Her first comment? "Wow, Dad, that's fast!"
#26: You can use it. I switched to Linux the day after I installed a new hard drive on my Windows XP machine. When I rebooted, the machine said I didn't have a license. I called tech support in India and they told me where to stick my problem. I sent a letter to the BBB and to Microsoft, and a week later they offered to help me get things running again. I told them where to stick it.
39 - Brian
So basically you are saying that most operating systems do all the same things. Surprise! Surprise!
It's all icons and double clicking for most basic users. I've used about every OS out there and I can say there isn't much of a difference between any of them.
As far as installing an OS to a harddrive. Well even basic users can't do that with osx, xp, vista, windows 7, or versions of linux without problems with their wifi or other drivers. It takes a bit of technical knowledge to do these things so saying that's a problem with linux is unfair. My mom could NOT install ANY OS on her own.
Use what you enjoy.
Personally, I find flavors of linux help me get more work done faster, but hey I have heard the same arguments from osx, vista, xp, etc etc etc. So just use what you enjoy.