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Asa Dotzler on Why Linux Isn't Ready for the Desktop
An anonymous reader writes "Asa Dotzler of The Mozilla Foundation compares the explosive growth of Firefox to the anything but explosive growth of Linux and what it needs to do to get there for the "regular user" AKA mom, dad and grandma Bootsie."
My general take on Linux, take it or leave it or try to convince me why I should change my outlook.
Linux is not a bad system, it just doesn't have anything to offer that its competitors don't already do as well or better.
The problem with Linux is not that it's not production ready, it's that it's a system that doesn't have anything special to offer and has nowhere new left to go. It has taken a large chunk of the market share away from the old, cumbersome UNIX systems, with their painful licensing models and lackluster support, but now it has no more market share to chip at because the supermajority of disk space that is left is in the form of desktops.
And Linux is just nothing special in that realm.
I speak authoritatively on the subject because my experience with Linux begins many moons ago with an old system called Linux Mandrake, now called Mandriva Linux. It started with version 5.2, a system forked from the Red Hat 5.2 release. I have since used Mandrake 6.0, Red Hat 7.0 and 7.3, 8.0, 9.0, Fedora Core 2, and variations from SuSE.
The first version I used was painful. It was a horrible system with a horrible interface and horrible documentation. Managing it was excruciating, and it wasn't uncommon for a seemingly simple change to break numerous systems in unrelated modules and drivers. The GUI was weak, disorganized, and difficult to manipulate. The desktop was hard to customize, and the interfaces were slow and cumbersome. Installing and uninstalling was nearly impossible because packages scattered files across a confusing, oblique filesystem, and it was a very common occurrence to find rpm entries had been corrupted and left unusable.
These problems I experienced were not uncommon and plagued Linux for years, leaving astute IT professionals shaking their heads, and young, energetic, and idealistic kids suffering under a burdensome system. I think it is fair to say that the rise in Linux use during the IT bubble and the subsequent pop of that bubble is not a completely coincidental correlation. Literally millions of man hours were lost in this time to troublesome Linux boxes and that sort of loss can hit new IPOs hard when it comes time to pay the piper.
It took many, many years and thousands of developers, but the system finally began to shed its inadequacies and "quirks" and develop into a full-fledged corporate workhorse. The managers who had been shaking their heads warily approached new versions and their confidence was bolstered as the GUIs began to fill out, the quirks began to shrink to the background, and more application support became the norm on new releases.
Now, Linux is a force to be reckoned with in backoffices and server racks. It is not, however, any closer to dethroning Windows as the supreme ruler of meatspace userland.
There is a very simple reason for this: it sucks.
I know, I know, I just finished zipping up the body bag on the "Linux isn't production ready" myth, but we've moved to a whole new realm here. We've gone from the terminology of fsck to frag. From SMP to MMORPG.
The problem is that everyone knows Windows and everyone's applications already run on Windows. There is no purpose in learning a new system because Windows is now polished and stable, and maintains its original attractiveness through its continued ease-of-use. Like Linux, it has shed its inadequacies and become a competent and powerful system in its own right.
So, in effect, we have the Windows system which has provided a consistent and simple interface for a decade now, and the Linux system which is an alien world to most people. Both function competently, though Linux still suffers a bit from the problem of glut thanks to its monolothic structure, and neither really offers a serious bnenefit over the other. As Joe Sixpack sitting in my cubicle, I have to think "Well, then why should I switch?" As the IT manager evaluating the cost of switching, I have to ask, "Well, how can you justify the tens of thousands I'll need to spe
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
It seems Linux has to be "like Windows" to attract a broader user base. I thought that is obvious and has been talked about for many years.
The thing is, how many of the developers are willing to sacrify what they have built so far in exchange for a bigger market share? Are linux developers really keen to get as many people onboard at all cost?
I guess what I'm trying to understand is, what are the objectives in Linux? What is it trying to achieve? Is world domination still the name of the game?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
So, in order to be a successful desktop OS, linux needs to be more user-friendly. Film at 11.
Ma, Pa and Aunt Bootsie are irrelevant. The corporate world is where the money is, and that's the area where Microsoft is most concerned about losing market share to anything or anyone. Right now, people that buy a computer for home use are to a large degree constrained by what they use at work, which is most likely Windows. All this talk about Linux being ready for Joe Sixpack belies the fact that operating system acceptance begins in the workplace and filters down from there. If the idea really is to displace Microsoft, then the place to start is the cubicle farm, not the den. The original IBM PC, all those years ago, gained widespread popularity among the corporate set because it had a ready-to-go set of business applications (and, of course, the IBM name.) Everything else flowed from there ... and it's still true today. Linux really needs (and is getting) some heavy-duty office/business applications and functionality. That's what it will take.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Make sure to tell that to Ebay, Google, Disney, Yahoo, IBM, and about upteen other major companies who have large installations of Linux desktops.
There are 4 major market segments:
1. Servers
2. Corporate/government desktops
3. Mom/Grandma home users
4. Power users/Gamers
Linux is making huge gains in the server market. The statistics show that.
Linux is just starting to gain in the corporate/government desktop market. Expect this to take at least another 3 years.
Once OEMs are comfortable with Linux (due to large orders from corporations/governments), they will start offering it on desktops suitable for basic email/web surfing. The largest limitation is lack of drivers for new hardware. As this market grows (slowly), that will change.
Which will, finally, result in power users and gamers having Linux as an option. That means that the latest hardware will be released with good Linux drivers and the games will be available on Linux. The biggest problem here is the Microsoft desktop monopoly.
Other than that, a corporate KDE or GNOME desktop can be made to look almost exactly like a Win2K desktop so there is no need to worry about training the end users.
The value of Linux doesn't exist for the last two market segments (both home segments). The value exists for the server market and the corporate/government desktop market. But that value will drive the home adoption as people become familiar with Linux at work.
The original article is correct in that having a way to capture the info from Windows would be a major boost to Linux adoption in the home segments. But without the hardware/game support, it just isn't worth the trouble for the average user.
Firefox is worth the trouble of the few websites that don't support it because of all the great features of Firefox (no ad/spyware, very few popups, ad-blocker, etc).
People who don't want to learn Linux aren't ignorant. But someone who actually would think that we should all spend our time surfing man pages and learning 100+ commands line applications so that we can do rudimentary tasks are. What would happen if you went to the bank, and the teller handed you 100 pages of documentation on how to perform a deposit?
Most people use thier computers read thier email, surf the internet, play a few games and use office-style applications. Linux offers this, but at no greater benefit than Windows or MacOS from a learning curve perspective.
But, if Mom & Dad are running Windows at home...and the schools are all running Windows...when is the next generation going to get exposed to Linux? Sure, they can tinker with it in their spare time, but they'll be expected to use Windows applications for school and work. They'll be taught how to use MS Word and things like that, and in the end we'll be left with yet another generation that is more comfortable with Windows than it is with Linux.
What we need to do is make Linux enough like Windows that people will switch over for largely trivial reasons... A price difference, a nifty feature or two, a catchy logo, the recommendation of a friend. Right now Linux has some real advantages to offer, but there's simply too much effort involved in switching over. Make it easier to switch over, easier to give it a try, and you'll get more people staying with it. And if you can get Mom & Dad to use it at home, and some of the schools to use it, then you'll actually wind up with a generation that is comfortable using Linux.
KDE, GNOME, XFCE
this has nothing to do with linux, it affects BSDs too.
The article seems to suggest that the general idea of "Putting things in the "right" place for Windows users will go a long way" is something that would be beneficial to linux switchers. The many users who have switched to OS X haven't needed this, and in fact have moved to systems where menu choices and design philosophy are significantly different to windows.
The reason for this not being a problem is that things are laid out in a way that's intuitive to those who just want to perform the action, rather than perform it in the way windows does. From my experience people who mostly use macs find it harder to use windows pc's on occasion than vice versa for precisely this reason. Windows has its usabilit nuances, and cloning them doesn't help people get a better experience from using the computer
Business Voyeur
I'm really sick about this mentality that seems to have actually increased in recent years. Everybody seems to think "well just because it doesn't work like Windows then it is flawed." We should not (and will not) bow down to these kinds of gripes. The coummunity is in the business of producing better software--not equal software.
In none of these write-ups do they care to mention viruses, spyware, or other basic design flaws Windows has. Or how things seem to bit-rot over time. All they do is moan about how things in Linux are different without digging into why it might actually be a better system. Or, if not, seeing what is being developed to solve certain problems.
Don't get me wrong, Linux has a long way to come in some areas. In others it is light-years ahead. I hope more people will join in with me to celebrate Linux's strenghts while being honest about where we are lacking and how to improve.
"Just sit down with linux for a bit and you will find it can do everything that Windows can do, just a bit different."
My point is that masses of people _won't_ "just sit down with linux for a bit." They'll spend a few minutes on it and decide it's not good enough and go back to Windows. My post covered a few of the reasons for this.
- A
Really...and how do they determine it's "not ready for the desktop"?
How about setting up someone with Linux already installed on a system? Much like Windows systems that are pre-installed on machines? I know I was the one that always had to go and reinstall windows on many people's machine because it was too confusing for them...so does this mean since people can install Windows that it's not "ready for the desktop"? The same can be said for OSX.
Any person not familiar with a computer will be confused on any system...be it OSX/Windows/KDE/Gnome. No one that's never touched a computer before will be able to just sit down and run one of them without a little reading/training. Sorry folks, but that's the truth. Each system usually has a "getting started" tutorial to get people up to speed.
Linux is as ready for the desktop as any other system out there. And all this article is just BS. It's just this guys feelings. He's not doing any tests or research. He didn't go out and test 50 grandmothers and sat them down in front of a computer and see what would happen. It's just this guys feelings and opinion.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
From the post:
(First off, I'm a little nervous about how the OP knew my grandma's name.)
If you don't help newbies with linux, especially ones not very technical, then linux may not be ready for mom, dad, and grandma. Applying this standard implies also then Windows is not ready for mom, dad, and grandma. I've spent countless hours (that I can't charge, and I'll NEVER get back) fixing, re-installing, helping, instructing, etc. in a support role for my parents from Windows 95 through Windows XP.
And, guess what? They're still struggling. Part of this stems from the fact they missed the technical revolution (and lest you diss my parents, one is a Doctor, the other is a Concert Violinist, played in the Pittsburgh Symphony). But most of it stems from the intractable problem of rendering technology intuitive and transparent to the lay-person.
Interestingly this problem plagues both Windows and linux. Interestingly, for Windows what I've found in coaxing my parents along the learning curve is Microsoft has done much if not most to make Windows obfuscated to my parents. Each new generation has left them re-learning pieces of the environment they had just about almost mastered... (they were this close!)
But, I do think linux is up to the desktop task for many who use the internet for mostly surfing, e-mail, quick word docs, and simple spreadsheets. And I think linux actually fares better simply for the rock solid reliability. I haven't set up my parents with linux because I live 2000 miles away from them, so I'm a little paranoid that should something really bizarre happen, I wouldn't know who to have help them, while with Windows, though it demands more support, if I'm not available, there's always some quasi-pseudo expert ready to jump in and "fix" things.
However I have set up others with linux, and I've been amazed... the support calls simply stop! This is for people who satisfy the above criteria: internet surfers; e-mail junkies; and simple "office" tasks. The linux just works. There's probably a larger demographic out there that could use linux than most people think.
(Bye bye Karma...)
In the other two major desktop OSs things just work.
how the hell did you get first post with so much freakin' writing?
Did you type this up ages ago, just waiting for the day you could get first post with this?
As for my comments on your fine post:
I recently installed Linux on my non-computer literate girlfriend's computer. She was always afraid of Linux because whenever she tried to use my computer it was nothing like Windows.
I put on a nice easy to use distro, set her up with KDE, and let her go to town. She's now using GIMP, uses it for all her photographic needs (scanning, digital camera). She even sighs when she has to reboot to Windows.
She was amazed at the little things, like how cut 'n paste works. I could tell she was thinking "why wasn't it always this easy?"
Or how she can resize an entire "folder" of images with a couple of clicks and no fuss.
I really don't think it's so much a matter of Linux offering nothing of value that Windows doesn't, because that's simply not true. Linux has tons to offer the average person that Windows doesn't.
The major problem, as I see it, is that it requires changing the way you think about using a computer.
When I first started using Linux I got very frustrated for a while, simply because my mind is notoriously bad for resisting change. It didn't like having to re learn such simple stuff. In fact in the beginning I kind of felt like I was a prisoner to my computer. I no longer knew how it worked at all. No idea! How do things run at startup? How do I add a printer? It was all this huge mystery.
And then, even beyond that, everything is just Done Differently. You really have to change your mindset to become a fully functioning *nix/*BSD user.
For a lot of people that's a really hard thing to do. But the funny thing is it really doesn't take that long. No longer than a week later my girlfriend was installing her own applications, updating her system, etc.
Anyway I don't want to give the impression I don't agree with what you said, because that really was a good and well thought out post. For the most part I agree with what you said, I just wanted to add that.
That's why I recommend Linux. I don't see either item changing soon either. I've played with Longhorns betas, and nothing's different. It's your computer, you may as well use it. That's why I recommend Fedora.
What a big fucking surprise this has turned out to be.
66 comments, and what do I see? The majority of posters flaming away, or covering their ears screaming "I'm not listening, I'm not listening!"
And as long as this attitude continues linux will continue to suffer. For once in your geeky lives how about you sit back and think about what people are saying about your precious holy operating system. How about you take the constructive critisism and recognise it for what it is! These people are trying to HELP YOU! But no, you don't listen, and these problems will continue to plague Linux, and normal users will take one look and turn away leaving it forever in the hands of the fanatics.
I RTFA and it made some good points, and most importantly, they were constructive!
The author implies that one of the major reason Firefox was successful is the ease of migration. And it's true! Firefox will seamlessly "borrow" MSIE settings while leaving IE there in case you want to go back. This makes it a very comfortable transition.
Now, I don't think I'm the only windows user who thinks it would be excellent if I could install Linux and have it inherit at least some of the information from Windows. Now, I've seen enough Linux password changers for Windows to know Linux can crack open and interrogate the Windows registry.
Some really valid ideas in the article. Will people take notice? I hope so.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
I've been using Linux fulltime on the desktop since 1999-2000. What pisses me off is applications switching between ok/cancel positions themselves. When I don't need to worry about where the OK button is going to pop up in Firefox/Mozilla then I'll start to worry about the rest of the OE.
..2.8.. boxes, but hey).
I think part of the problem is Linux (as a Unix) is just so damn good on the server. So we get the distro's/developers with a kind of hybrid mindset. There needs to be some kind of official split between the Desktop and the Unix server (don't get me wrong, I love the server and cry when I have to work on our Solaris
I mean seriously, where are the UI RFC's?
So for the record this portion of we still thinks Linux on the desktop is more of a hobbyists adventure (I love a good adventure).
Quack, quack.
While Dotzler makes a few good points, I don't entirly agree with most of them. These in particular.
) . Give the average users something simplistic and good enough to do what the average user wants, and leave the complex systems (Linux and, dare I say it, Windows) to those of us who know a little bit about what the box under the desk is and are willing to learn a little more.
And what is a Regular Person to think when confronted with a choice between Helix Player, CD Player, and Music Player? Does the Music Player not understand CDs? What's "Helix" mean?
I threw this argument right out the fucking window. Anyone bought a Dell Computer lately? Ye Gods! You get Dell Musicmatch Jukebox (which has explorer controll over the music files), Windows Media Player (Movie control, I think), and Dell Media Experience. All of these play audio. Movies are Dell Media Experience, Windows Media Player, and the Start menu yeilds Power DVD by Cyberlink. Futher investigation would yeild that the Dell Media Experience seems to be nothing more than a front end for other programs, but is our so called "average user" going to be able to deduce that? Moving on to burning software, two icons were on my Dell Laptop desktop by default. "Burn CDs & DVDs with Sonic DigitalMedia LE" and "MyDVD LE". [Average User time] "So, lets see. Sonic does DVDs, so why is there another DVD program right next to it?" [Dummy mode is now on!]. And then we have 3 ISPs to choose from; AOL, Earthlink, and NetZero. Bah!
I don't want to start a desktop war but I really gotta say to the distros, pick a desktop and be happy. Regular People shouldn't have to (guess or learn enough to) choose between Gnome and KDE when they're installing your product.
This also irked me a bit. How many of the average users actually install windows now? Going back to my Dell Laptop I just got, WinXP was already installed on it, so much that I didn't have to activate the installation. If a computer company like Dell, IBM, Compaq, Sony, etc. were to preinstall Linux on their machines instead, would they allow the user to select the desktop on bootup? Personally, I think they would choose one and have you be stuck with it. The "average user" probably would not know the difference.
Meh. I liked the idea of Raskin with the Archy OS (http://rchi.raskincenter.org/aboutrchi/index.php
Vol~
That's like saying the house you build that won't stand a 10km/h wind shows how "construction work is easy".
If windows were easy to use it would be easy to use securely.
The fact that grandpa can't install, update, manage, us the anti-{spy, mal, virus, windows} software you have to install shows that it's not easy to use.
Next you'll say open-heart surgery is easy as well....
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I put "power users" in there because that's how they describe themselves. They're the ones who buy the latest toys for their machines/OS.
Linux rocks for real power users. The people who will rip out anything they don't want and jack up the priority on what they do want. Real power users read the documentation and launch apps with command line flags.
But Windows has resulted in people who believe that clicking on a "use DMA" button is "hacking" their machine.
These are the kids who just love to have the newest toys. Toy-philes. I work for one of them. He likes to show off his newest PDA toy, but he doesn't have a clue how it connects to the Internet.
That's where I come in. I set it up for him and write all the steps down so if it breaks, he can set it up the same way it was. He loves toys, but he doesn't have a clue about the technology.
There is no way he would be happy with Linux until he could drop in his latest purchase and just click on a "make it work" button to complete the installation (even better would be for it to just magically work). That's not going to happen until Linux has 51%+ of the desktop market.
So I just tell that segment of the population that Linux isn't ready for their "power user" needs.
Unsurprisingly there's already a lot of "bah, this guy wants Linux dumbed down for n00bs" comments on this thread. Which totally misses the point:
Linux-on-the-desktop isn't just too complicated for n00bs -- it's too complicated for reasonably sharp users, too. And that's the problem.
I offer myself as an example. I am not the God of All Things Computing. But I've been tinkering with PCs since MS-DOS 3 days, I've used Windows, Macs, Linux and even CP/M for pete's sake. Today my primary desktop at home runs Ubuntu Linux. I'm comfortable compiling software from source tarballs and rooting through Google for HOWTOs and FAQs.
In short, I know my way around a computer -- and yet Ubuntu still manages to throw me for a loop more frequently than I'd like.
Example. The other day I installed the new Deer Park preview of Firefox. For some reason, its installer (bonus points to it for even having a graphical installer, btw) didn't add a shortcut for launching it to my GNOME panel. So I wanted to add one myself.
Easy? Right? Bzzt.
On Windows, here's the steps for adding a new item to the Start menu:
I figured there must be a way to manipulate the GNOME panel in a similar fashion. Nope. There is no direct way in Ubuntu Hoary to add a panel item to the menus through the GUI. Instead you have to open a shell, find /usr/share/applications, and create a .desktop file in there for your application.
But! You don't have permission to do that by default, so you have to use sudo to create the file. ("You do know how to use sudo, right Mom?")
And then -- once you figure out that you need to create a .desktop file, and where this file needs to go, and what format this file needs to be in, and you actually go and create it -- nothing happens! That's right, you don't see the item in your panel until the next time you log in, unless you manually restart the X server with CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE.
(Yes, you have to restart the window manager, or else it will appear that all your work was for naught. "Just restart the X server, Mom. Mom? Hello? Noob.")
The icing on the cake is that to find this answer, you have to go through three levels of redirection:
("You do read standards documents, right Mom?")
I went through all that and finally got my shortcut added to the panel. But how many average users are gonna put up with that? (And Ubuntu does better at this stuff than most others.)
With all the spit and polish issues that Linux has, Asa is not the only Mozillian to find fault with it; former Moz UI gadfly Matthew Thomas (aka mpt), who's now with Ubuntu sponsor Canonical, recently posted a list of 69 usability flaws in Ubuntu Hoary, and old skooler Jamie Zawinski gave up Linux for OS X for good.
My case was not a case of "user who could not snap out of Windows-ism". I'm more than willing to embrace a better approach when I see it. But this is not a better approach fo
Read my blog.
"Linux is going to need a serious migration plan"
"When Regular People fire up the Linux desktop for the first time, the browser, office suite, email client, IM client, file manager, etc, each need to carry over as much as possible of the Windows application settings and all or very nearly all of the user data. Without this, the hill is just too steep to climb and Regular People will not make the climb."
Anything that makes the switch less painful is a good thing.
Emerald Astrology
Linux excells where Joe Sixpack does not have to fiddle with set up. That includes situations where the computer is not visible to the users (embedded and servers) as well as those where someone else completely manages the box (eg. corporate desktops).
For the general home user I agree that Linux is a pig. I can't get my PC to play MP3s. The Winmodem needed a bunnch of hacking etc.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
People always say "Linux" like it is one big community all moving towards one ultimate goal. It's not. All "Linux" is, really, is a kernel that can be used as the core of an operating system.
:-)
Look at the comments in the article. Do all the comments apply to all Linux-based distros? Many of the criticisms are not only already known (in a general sense), but also being addressed by some distros. If you look at Ubuntu Linux, for example, they've already taken steps to address many of the issues Asa pointed out. (One GUI, remove app clutter, focus on simplicity.) So exactly what is this "desktop Linux" he says is not ready? Is he talking about Ubuntu, RedHat, SuSE, Debian, Gentoo, etc., etc. Really, he's just talking in generalities.
And thinking and talking in generalities is a major part of the problem - how do you address a problem with 100 distributions? How do you standardize all these operating systems out there based on Linux? You can't, really. You can't sit around and wait for even a majority of distros to decide to come up with, and support, some standardized "Desktop Linux" experience.
In fact, the main issue with most *nix-based distros is that they're bound by their components and build systems to remain mostly the same as other *nix distros. They're different enough to not be the same, but similar enough not to really be different. There's a glut of distros but there's not that much going on in terms of actual desktop work outside of people tweaking GUIs and maintaining packages. So long as no one wants to try anything radical, how does anyone plan on this new and compelling alternative to Windows appearing?
But I wouldn't want to stop yet another person from pointing out the same deficiencies that people have been pointing out for years. Somehow it seems it's still news here.
My father, who has been using Windows on an almost daly basis since the Win3.1 days, is like that. Yesterday, for the umpteenth time, I had to go and help him because he said Word was no longer coming up. It was coming up, but had been inadvertantly resized to just the top window frame, and was so small that he hadn't noticed it. There were about a dozen instances of Word, all on top of each other.
And who here hasn't helped somebody who had accidently dragged the Winddows task bar to another edge of the desktop?
I would love to see a linux distro and/or window manager where I could lock down the behavior, preventing the user from accidently screwing everything up. I imagine you could do something like that, with a bit of effort, with icewm or fvwm. But it would be nice to have a ready-to-go distro, ubuntu-grandma or something, along with some remote admin tools already set up, like sshd and an easy way to connect a Remote Desktop session so I could see exactly what they were seeing.
A ridiculous example of equating "different from Windows" with "too hard" is the article's comment about Helix Player. "Helix Player" is no less intuitive than "WinAmp," it's simpy different, and not arbitrarily so, because it would be a lie (and probably illegal) to call it "WinAmp."
What makes Windows popular and "easy" today is its history. Microsoft went through years of trial and error during which the Windows GUI was turned into a (relatively) intuitive handle on the Windows system. Windows was popular during this awkward growing period because of a variety of forces that no longer apply today. Microsoft seized the one and only chance to make a crappy, immature desktop GUI a commercial success, and now they have the advantage of a huge user base.
Linux simply can't replicate what happened with Windows. It must become polished before it becomes popular, and there aren't any shortcuts. The goal for Linux GUIs must be to make Linux as easy to learn and understand as possible, not to make Linux into a Windows work-alike.
It will need to install on machines next to Window, leaving that completely intact and easy to return to, and carry over all or nearly all of the user's data and settings.
/usr/local/bin (thus unpackaged), and most of those were things that I wrote. Of the others, an nzb client, a readline wrapper to add readline support to apps that lack it (not of interest to the typical user), and a fuse userspace utility are the only things sitting in there. ~/bin contains a few more unpackaged things, but again almost everything was written by me -- the exceptions include a bin2iso converter, a grep colorizer, an ebook converter, a process memory dumper, a Gnutella client that I hack on, a parity file generator, an X11 memory usage analysis program, two interactive fiction game runtimes, a console MUD client, a console UNIX-DOS linefeed converter, a pair of programs to pack and unpack executables for reverse engineering, and a Super Nintendo emulator. A couple of those programs would be interesting to the typical user, but most probably would not. The rest of the binaries on my system come from just usage of yum. I will admit that configuring yum properly to use third-party repositories is a bit of a pain, but it's not *that* hard, and there are step-by-step instructions on dag/dries/atrpms/etc. And that's really the only unusual step.
Not going to happen. Doesn't happen with Mac OS. Too much proprietary setting information that changes format from version to version. This is a significant convenience, but I do not see it as crucial to adoption. People reconfigure all their apps when they upgrade their computer anyway -- Windows has extremely poor support for retaining application settings.
A user should be able to install Fedora Core 4 and go grab the latest Firefox release from Download.com and have it work without the need for finding and installing compat-libstdc++ or whatever.
I'll give that the environment is not perfect, and could be improved, but running a program, getting a list of packages and just choosing what you want and having it all automatically downloaded and installed (with dependencies autohandled, just as they have been for a long time) it's honestly easier to use than the Windows world. I'll give you that not everything is packaged, but I am a developer and power user, and I have only a few binaries in
The problem comes in when people treat Linux distros as they do proprietary software, which is designed around systems where all the vendors can't cooperate to provide downloads, because they *sell* their software. They start hunting around webpages to download software, when all they have to do is just fire up their package downloader. And compat-libstdc++ and friends get handled automatically.
Asking them to figure out complex system library and kernel compatibility issues is a one way ticket off of their desktop.
Is asking them to try synaptic or yum or another package manager?
I mean, Windows Update has at least as complex an interface, and Windows users are expected to use *that*.
I guess that some users might want somethng a bit more like Red Carpet -- a package manager that does a bit more hand-holding ("click on this square if you want a program to write letters with, and this one if you want to get games"), but it really isn't *that* complex. It's just different.
Regular People shouldn't have to (guess or learn enough to) choose between Gnome and KDE when they're installing your product.
IIRC, Fedora Core lets you choose which desktop environment you want to use every time you log in -- it's not as if trying it out is that bad. (I can't be sure of this, because I just use sawfish+gkrellm+xbindkeys, but I distinctly remember seeing a friend using a vanilla Fedora Core having a menu to select.)
Regular People don't need 15-20 mediocre games in a highly visible Games menu at the top of the Applications list.
Actually, I don't think that
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Yep. Most people don't buy an OS for the OS (except during the Win95 roll out).
They want to run certain apps. Their apps.
But the first step is getting their hardware supported. Once the hardware is supported, the Linux desktop market can start to grow.
Then we'll see how large it grows and whether it provides enough of a market for the developers of those apps to port them to Linux.
I believe it will. Just as the Linux server segment grew enough to support Oracle sales. But server apps are different than desktop apps so I may be wrong.
The OS is just the portion between the apps and the hardware.
This question seems to be popping up every few weeks, and we have a huge discussion if Linux is better, suited etc
I did a comprehensive study about a year back to see if Linux can push Microsoft out of the office. In the study I compare SuSe, RedHat, Mandarake and a bunch of others. They fell wowefully short in the desktop, a major reason being the UI, it is just too unstable and compared to GUI of Windows and OS X looks shabby. Second, the lack of support, I will stick my neck out and say this, the level of support that is available to Linux is just not there. If I pay RedHat everytime based on their tier system to service my PCs, I might as well go with windows.
However, in the server space Linux is quite competitive, its easy to administer and maintain. I have a built a ton of servers using Linux, but for stability I am kind of partial to Free BSD.
For Linux to break into the Desktop market, it needs a fresh UI. Something, like what Apple did with BSD and packaged it with this Fresh UI. If the UI is stable, fast and looks great, the rest of pieces will fall in place. But before that lets not even have this discussion and just say Linux is a great server OS.
as a former fedora core 3 user who returned to mac, here is my take....linux is a really cool os that is usable as long as everything installs off the rpm or disc correctly the 1st time. if i had to install from source (i.e. that tar.bgz BS) i was sunk. i rate myself as an average user of average ability, but if i couldn't ever figure it out i doubt my mother and/or grandparents could. i think i represent the type of users linux needs for widespread adoption. i gave up on linux when i went wireless and FC3 did not support my wireless card (d-link dwl g510). i believe linux can become a widespread OS if it can be more user friendly but it is obviously not there yet.
I'd agree that Linux isn't ready to be installed by average users. Neither is Windows. I think MacOS is the only OS I'd be happy to see installed by anyone - partly down to Apple's good work but also because of hardware compatibility.
I'd disagree about the need to install alongside windows and shift settings etc. Mostly only nerds upgrade their OS. People buy a computer they switch it on and expect it to work. Many companies are already selling PCs with linux preinstalled. It is up to them to choose good default software.
I think Linux is perfectly ready as a configured desktop for any user. Many of my friends come round my house and have no problem operating my computers - they're often unaware they're using Linux. A browser is a browser. No one has had a problem using Juk.
What I think is more important is that Linux is ready to be connected to a network. Windows obviously isn't. As network services are essential to so many desktop applications this has to be an important consideration.
Maybe MacOS X is ready for the generic desktop and networks. But after being shafted 3 times by Apple hardware I'll wait until I can install it on the quality components of my choice.
For most desktop applications I think all 3 major OS's are 'ready'. The network security is really where the pinch comes. Businesses need secure data and robust systems - a lot of people should be fired for choosing windows.
Not only will "power users" be the last to use Windows because they want all their hardware supported, but they are also usually specially "windows power users" they have invested a lot in learning how Windows and whatever apps they use do things, but they do not actually understand how they work so their "knowledge" is not transferable.
This is actually the group who the article call "regular users", real regular users are quite happy with Linux desktops - copy their files over, export their bookmarks and import into Firefox and that's it. This has worked fine for my father, my wife and some guys who worked for me (one is now planning to install Linux at home).
I also do not understand what he is talking about when it comes to installing applications. There are only three pieces of software I have installed which required anything more complicated than downloading the RPM, clicking in it to start the installer, and then typing the root password and clicking OK a few times. These were: Erlang, Firefox and Thunderbird.
In fact, bar Erlang (which needed to be compiled), Firefox has been by for the most problematic thing to install.
Indeed, a power user having trouble with power management?!?!
Seriously, though, you're right. That's Linux's main problem at this time, as I see it. I have fun tweaking and fixing things every day in Gentoo, but like the original article says, it's not for Regular People (and probably not for many of the Rest either). It will probably be a few more years before things like that really get ironed out. I'm trying to keep a positive attitude (and I sure hope I'm not kidding myself).
Mod parent up.
Things don't have to black and white. An OS can be both user friendly AND powerful.
Look at the companies that Slashdot users rave about: Google, Apple, Mozilla.
All three have something in common...they make powerful and EASY-TO-USE applications. Easy enough for Joe Onepack to use without spending much time to learn. Yet they are powerful enough to satisfy the most hungry power user, and allow for users to tinker all they want.
For example, Firefox with it's plugins, extensions, etc...
Google Maps with it's API
Mac OS runs on BSD
Despite the power, they are easy to use even for first-time users.
The scoop made me think that this would be a nice comparison of what made Firefox get adopted so quickly, and Linux so slowly. Instead, it gives the same old crappy arguments of why Linux is "not ready":
``The first issue, migration, is pretty serious.''
No, it's not. You don't need to run it next to Windows. You don't need to provide the same applications. You don't even need to provide an equivalent for every app. Nor all the games. OS X doesn't have all this. Is OS X not ready for the desktop?
``The second problem that blocks massive Linux Desktop growth is stability.'' (The use of "stability" is confusing. What he means is: you can go to a website, download an application, and expect it to run, i.e. binary compatibility)
This is the Windows Way. Linux has a better alternative: packaging. Applications packaged, tailored, and tested for your distribution. Try Debian. Go through a number of installs, uninstalls, upgrades, and dist-upgrades. Then tell me if you like the Windows Way better.
If you do like the Windows Way better, there is hope for you. It _is_ actually possible to distribute binaries that work. Opera has been doing it. StarOffice did this last time I checked (a very long time ago). I'm sure there are others.
``The third issue is a lack simplicity.''
The complaint here is that Linux gives you too much choice. Choice is not an antonym of simplicity. Try Ubuntu. Installation requires that you select a drive to install on, create a user account, select your keyboard and timezone, and wait for stuff to install. No hard choices there. Once installed, it has a nice GUI environment with one app for every job. Just because the choices exist, doesn't mean _you_ have to face them. You can have other people make them for you.
All the 237584704908c34 window managers are for people who like to experiment and try new things. If you don't want to bother with them, then don't.
``The final major issue is comfort. Linux must feel comfortable to Windows users.''
AKA, everything needs to be called the same and be in the exact same place as on Windows. Again, see the earlier argument about OS X. As for the new concepts of mounting and unmounting, have you heard of automount? I believe KNOPPIX uses it, complete with icons appearing on the desktop when you insert a drive.
So, with all these issues declared junk, what do I think is holding back Linux? Here's my list:
1. Linux isn't shoved down people's throats. This is why people have to "switch" in the first place. When people start using computers, they run Windows. At work, computers run Windows. When you buy a computer, it has Windows installed. Sure, there are exceptions, but for all practical purposes computer = Windows.
2. People don't care. Many in the Linux community want people to switch to this "better" system. To most people, Windows works fine. Why fix what isn't broken? This is also why Firefox users are still outnumbered by MSIE users.
3. The issues you raised are widely _seen_ as problems by people who haven't actually used Linux. Linux has a bad reputation for being user-unfriendly, which is entirely undeserved (and has been for years). One could even argue that the security problems with Windows make Linux easier for non-experts.
4. People are not sufficiently aware. They are not aware of how bad Windows is. They are not aware of how good Linux is. They are often not even aware that there is an alternative (they may have heard of Linux, but not understand what it is). If we want more users to switch, we need to educate people.
As for me, I don't really care what other people use. I've used DOS, Windows, various Linux distros, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Mac OS, and OS X. I like how I can write a program on one of the unix systems, then compile and run it on another. I don't like that it won't work on Windows, and that Windows is missing so many basic things, but Cygwin goes a
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I make the claim because I have known people for whom it is true. "Power users" known recipes for getting things done, and secondly their knowledge tends to be very narrow.
I think that you do not understand how people who know absolutely nothing about computers approach them. I would have agreed with your statement at one time, but I have slowly realised how many people get a lot of stuff done by learning sequences of actions, rather than actually understanding what is going on. Yes they do inevitably learn a little (especially if they start writing macros), but it is much less than you might think. If you have absolutely no idea of how computers work, you have no framework to learn from. A computer becomes a black box device that produces certain outputs for certain inputs and that's it.
Most people do not actually do much configuration beyond installing software (which these days is easy), and setting backgrounds and screen savers (and even there many users call the former the latter).
As of the narrowness of power users knowledge, let me give you a few examples. Many years ago I came across someone keeping a database in Wordperfect. They knew WordPerfect so they wrote a set of macros to do what they needed. That is a power user in action. More recently I have seen Excel used to circulate information - so that in order to see a single page that you wanted, you had to download an Excel file that ran to several megabyte with macros etc., the file had to be manually copied to the file server at each branch office. Putting the information on a web server would have been obviously better. This was the product of a "power user" who knew how to write VB scripts in Excel but little else.
As for software installation, I have not used OS X , but I would say that the better Linux distros (such as Mandrake) are at least as easy as Windows - easier if you stick to software from your distro. The hardest are of course very difficult to install (both OS and additional software), but they are designed for a different user base.
I've been banging on about this with Linux (KDE especially) for years now.
KDE and the QT toolkit just seems to waste space - buttons have massive empty areas, scroll bars are way thinker than needed (and I've never found an easy way to scale them down).
The first thing I do when I boot up an XP machine from a fresh install is move the top window size down to 20 and scrol bars to 12. Yet in KDE you seem stuck with massive obtrusive buttons. Windows has a nice 2 pixel seperator, KDE will have about 12 pixels. Total waste of desktop real estate.
Then don't buy their shit.
Seriously. I use ubuntu. Linux is my ONLY computing system and has been for years now.
Just don't buy their shit. it is not your "right" to use their hardware, nor is it your "right" to force them to sell or support something for a market they choose to ignore.
Support manufacturers who are reasonably friendly to linux. Vote with your feet.
Basically an installshield equivalent, that then becomes capable of installing on any distro. Sure, you still have the speed of installation being an issue what with compilation, but hopefully a system like this will be available in the not-too-distant future.
im in ur
That's the problem with you linux guys, you talk about "user bases." If anything's too hard to use or install, you just lay the blame on the user for trying to breach his assigned "user base."
Take a look at Mac OS X. A power user can calibrate his color, run an Apache webserver and encrypt his files completely from a friendly GUI. For security he can enable a firewall and manage access ports by clicking check boxes. There's no "user base" bullshit saying "those things are too advanced, you must use a command line."
The first step in improving linux is tearing down the notion of exclusive user bases. Software can be easy to use and powerful, not just one or the other.
I don't think that you have used any of the Debian-based distros. The Debian apt-get is fantastic (the RPM-based apt-gets are still inferior). You need to know the name of the program that you want to install. After that, it is: apt-get install mozilla-firefox . And apt-get resolves all DLL-Hell-ish dependencies for you (recursively).
If you prefer GUIs, 'synaptic' shows you lists of all known applications, you click the apps that you want, and synaptic runs apt-get for you.
With OSX and Win32, you must go out on the Internet and find the packages that you want to install, download them, download any other packages to satisfy dependencies, and then use the 'easy' install procedures (in the correct dependency-driven order). Apt-get wins hands-down.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Really. How many times can we hear this? About once every 2-3 months we get an article about how linux isn't ready for the desktop. We get hard ot install, hardware not supported, blah blah blah almost none of which is true anymore.
My girlfriend has, if I had to guess, 3 brain cells that have any knowledge of computers. She uses ubuntu. You know how hard it was to install? I stuck in the disk. You know how hard it was to get it to run all her hardware? Again . . . I stuck in the disk.
It's got a fully functional desktop that comes with software that would cost you in excess of a grad using windows for comprable programs (and in many cases inferior programs depending on your POV). Done and done. easy to install, use, and update.
The naysayers get their panties in a nbunch for one reason: linux isn't windows. They can't "click the start button" or "open the My Documents" folder (notunless they create one, which is takes a right click). They can't open a doc file in word, they have to use openoffice. Which has a strange layout and a mysterious interface. they forget the time they spent learning windows in thje first place and assume that they were somehow hardwired with this knowledge from birth.
Bottom line, if you like windows and you don't mind spending a few thousand dollars for software to make your system behave like linux does out of the box then fine, run with it. I care not. But to say that it's not ready for the desktop just because you're not ready to use it is dumb. it's an outmoted idea whose time has come.
I honestly don't care if Windows users stay Windows lusers. Linux isn't going away and I will continue to use it to my hearts content. It's way better than Windows and MS users of course will stand in line to bitch about how hard it is to use linux and display a high level of group think in this regard so as to feel better about themselves. And Linux users will use a different sort of group think to justify some the hurdles they jump to stay linux users. Who cares? Use what you want and STFU!
One thing these "linux is not ready for the desktop" type articles miss is that computers in general aren't really ready for the "regular user" AKA mom, dad and grandma Bootsie."
If you can't get your mom and dad to use windows or a mac, how are you going to get them to use linux?
1. Hardware support is a problem, we all know this. This is not a problem that is inherent with Linux itself but a problem with hardware manufacturers not supplying drivers for Linux. However, even this is understandable as Linux can be vastly different distro to distro and even kernel to kernel? I mean, if you're a hardware manufacturer and you_want_to provide Linux drivers, you have to decide which distros/kernels you will write them for? There are so many and so many variations you'd probably just give up and say, "Why did I even think about producing drivers for Linux?".
;) but they get by. They can listen to their mp3's, surf, send email. That's basically all this person does on the computer anyway. So, what seems to be the overriding factor? A plethora of FUD. Plain and simple.
Ok, so you decided you're not going to produce the Linux drivers after all. The best way to get your hardware supported on Linux would be to release the source for your other drivers. Personally, I don't see the problem there. However, perhaps hardware manufacturers have some kind of incentive _not_ to release the source code of their drivers. I'm not positive what these might be but there are a few possible guesses.A) they don't want people to see how bad their code is? B) other os's *ahem* provide incentive for you to not release the source. this can include money itself, provide product placement (on their search engine, in press releases, through their contacts in the community - writers, reviewers, etc.) - or C) by intimidation.
2. Users. FUD.
There is a certain computer here shared by myself and two others. NONE of us are experienced Linux users. On this computer is OpenOffice.org, as well as Mozilla. One user has plenty of MS Office experience but their is no MS Office on the computer. It took them about 3 days to get used to OpenOffice and are now very productive with it, yet the user still says they'd rather have MS Office. Why? I have no idea. Fear of change I guess. Fear of change goes for the third user as well. I was sitting nearby when they were frustrated by the pop-ups on a certain site (using IE). I told them, use Mozilla then! They used it for that session and that session only. Next time I witnessed one of their sessions, they were back using IE. I have no idea why. It's a browser and even though Mozilla's is (to me) better, it's not like the interface is vastly different.
I am a Linux novice. I have used a few Live CD's (SLAX & Knoppix). Done a couple of HD-installs of them. I decided to make the leap on a secondary computer around here. I installed Ubuntu on an old laptop that is used by two out of the three users. There were two problems with the install. The screen res. was stuck at 640x480 and the Winmodem didn't work. Wow, big deal. It was easy enough to fix. I edited the xorg.conf file and did something wrong which prevented the xserver from starting the next time I booted. A dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg was all it took to fix. I didn't even have to search the web for this command, it was in a FAQ I had read before I installed it. As for the winmodem thing, well, let's just say I'm glad I had an old full-hardware external modem sitting in a drawer upstairs because I'm not quite comfortable with recompiling yet. heh.
All that aside, the other user who utilizes the laptop does fine with it. This is the same one who on the Windows box will not use Mozilla instead of IE. Granted, they only use the Ubuntu computer when they absolutely have to (and to play Mahjongg, of course
For me it's slightly different. When I get a new computer (No $, what can I say) I am going to switch everything I have over to Ubuntu aside from the new computer and that's only for games. Even with games, I could probably use WINE and/or Cedega for gaming on Linux but I'd keep Windows around just to keep sharp, a bunch of people want me to be their personal techs even though I only have an A+ (Computer Kindergarten diploma?) w/limited experience.
As to what Linux can do to better
Last I checked, Firefox isn't winning novice users at that rate on technical superiority, either. It's winning them because Microsoft has abandoned them in the cesspool that is Internet Explorer 6. If Microsoft stopped patching Windows and let it sit for a year or two, I'm sure you'd start to see a desktop migration of the same magnitude.
Linux and Firefox share technical superiority over their so-called adversaries, and that wins adoption among geeks and corporate users, which takes longer to filter down into the population but eventually does. Other "non-literate" users will wait until it's painfully uncomfortable not to change (ie, a spyware ridden system that never works).