Why Free Software is a Hard Sell

jeffro writes "Dont know if this has been submitted yet, but the Independent news UK has a rather newbiesh article on the ups and down of Linux software as a free alternative to Windows. "Perhaps Linux shouldn't be regarded as an operating system at all, but more as a sophisticated multi-player game with a large number of enthusiastic players. You can lose yourself in Linux for hours, tweaking here, updating there. It's great fun if you like that sort of thing. But if you need to produce a document, spreadsheet or presentation, you're still likely to be able to do it faster and better by sticking with the Microsoft devil you know.""

Comments

Re:Par for the course

[SirSlud]

> Can you tell I'm from the microkernel camp? :)

Hehe :)

But yeah, I hear you, man.

Re:It's still too complex

[MKalus]

Excuse me, but what is so bad about using the Shell? Because people have to type?

I read a nice statement once: "A good UI is not easy to use but let's you do what you need to do."

I think this sums it up. A Steering Wheel in a car allows me to steer left and right and it is good and simple at that, but right now they are thinking about taking away thinks like the pedals and the steering wheel and just give you a joystick for all in one (Mercedes has tested this some time ago), why? Because it is sort of like the modern Windows GUI: All in one.

Personally I think you can live with both, as long as you only want to drive down a road, but if you need to drive rough terrain or other stuff you're better off with a steering wheel, gas and clutch (okay, breaks can't hurt either).

Linux is NOT harder to user for the average user than Windows, in fact if you put them in front of it and tell them to click the icon to start their word processor they're groovy.

Personally I had less support work to do on Linux boxes than I had to do on Windows boxes, because people didn't even TRY to "tune" it.