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Exploring Linux Desktop Myths
Krafty Koder writes "Over at Newsforge (Part of OSTG, Slashdot's Parent) there's an interesting article that attempts to dispells the myth that Linux isn't ready for the desktop or that Windows still beats Linux.
Three myths are explored - that Linux is harder to use, difficult to install and that there's not enough apps ."
OK, I call bullshit. Tons of hardware doesn't work well or easily with Windows. People just never have to deal with it because Windows gets preinstalled.
My Kodak doesn't work in Linux. I plugged it into XP and it worked. Hmm. That didn't come preinstalled as I just bought it in December.
Really? I don't. Can you name any offhand?
The example I will continue to use is http://slashdot.org/. When it stops forcing a refresh to fix the sidebar then I will believe Firefox is "acceptable". It's amazing how many Firefox zealots ignore this with a brush off. General Windows users will not.
Sorry, dude, but have never had anyone I've shown firefox to complain about the ways it's different from IE. Office you may have a point about, though about 85% of companies don't need MS Office and don't use most of its features.
And again, you are dealing with people magnatudes higher in computer literacy apparently.
I use Photoshop, 3ds max, and Premiere every day I go to work. I've done that for 8+ years now. There is no collection of software on Linux that will allow me to get my job done to an equal level of quality and to file formats that I can share with my coworkers and get integrated into our final products (games).
Linux is not ready for my corporate desktop. The GIMP and Blender are interesting tools, I'll freely admit that. They are not replacements for industry standard tools like 3DS Max and Photoshop, though.
The author's marginalizing of apps he doesn't need doesn't at all imply that the apps aren't needed. The article is quite biased towards the author's views and needs. It does't present full picture of the problem.
I've been using linux for almost 8 years now. I was introduced to it the usual way: a friend came over with a slackware CD saying that if I was really tired of Windows and wanted something I could do with as I pleased, I should try this.
We're 8 years later now, and a lot of things have changed for linux. It's stepped out of geekdom and entered the corporate world, taking small steps at a time and the occasional leap. From a relatively small group of technologically very adept people, it has grown to become the new pet-OS of wannabe-geeks and even for a while Linux threatened to become a buzz-word for certain companies to shamelessly promote themselves on an IT market that had suffered a damaging blow.
Three years ago I was at a school that gave introduction courses in linux as a member of a jury for (pardon my bad English) practical final. I was judging several projects that were made during the course of 9 weeks of internships in companies, and over half of them were made using linux. Of the 10 groups that presented a linux project, only two of them were capable of presenting a flawless project.
What really got me at that moment was, that even though linux had come so far in those 5 years, many last year students hadn't even the faintest idea how their OS really worked. The argument most used for the use of linux was that it was free (as in beer), and someone even managed to blurt out that linux was actually a product from Sun. After three days of judging, I came to a startling conclusion. Many of the linux projects I had seen were dodgy at best, the students had very little grasp on the tools they used, and many webprojects failed to provide even the simplest security to their database as I happely added SQL on their URL and displayed lists of unencrypted passwords.
The Windows projects I saw however were a lot more solid. SQL Insertion failed on nearly every project, and most students were up to speed on the technologies they had used. Most of the Windows projects were finished, or nearly finished, while the linux projects seemed to have a lot of rough edges (in fact a girl actually told me : "Don't do that, that corrupts our database and we don't know why").
What does this have to do with Linux on the desktop, you might ask. Well, if 4 years of training in programming and networking hasn't even thaught you the simplest of hacks (SQL Insertion), and you're practically lost without a GUI to configure your networkcard (but manage to boast about your networking project), there is either a fundamental problem with your education or your unwillingness to use google. The truth behind it is "ease of use". MS Visual Studio comes with a bunch of tools in one package, a graphical XML schema editor, a graphical database management system, click-n-paint GUI creation, and to top it off each of those students gets 4 years of excessive training in all of those tools.
Linux on the other hand, has most (if not all) of these things, but students don't know them. Those that do have knowledge of these tools are often complaining that they ran into problems (again because of lack of training, or googling). Many have spent two days finding out how to install a certain program, and most just give up asking their supervisors for aid (which they often can't provide).
This is the problem with linux, and this is why the linux desktop will never be as succesfull as we hope it will be: our diversity in tools and lack of proper bundling. Distributions do a good job at providing us with defaults, but provide too much goodness. Most linux machines have at least 7 compilers and interpreters installed by default, 6 MP3 players, 10 office suites, and horror of horrors 2 desktop environments.
Teaching students all these things is an impossible task, and that's why they aren't prepared for the choices they have to make when they are going to actively use linux. And educating users on using office package A, while there exists at least one package for every letter of the alphabet each wi