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."

Comments

Re:Here's how I see it

[sgant]

And since when does a fricken blog rate enough to be included here as "news"? It's a blog...which is just random masturbation of words for the amusement of the blogger himself.

There's blogs out there that still claim the world is flat and that NASA faked the moon landings...let's put them on here too! Let Slashdot become the fucking Art Bell of the internet!

Might as well. I hope Taco is enjoying all the cash that OSDN is paying him. He doesn't seem to care what goes on here anymore.

Re:Don't confuse the market segments.

[modernbob]

Unfortunately I have to agree with you and I run an ISP that uses linux (openna) and I use Fedora Core on my desktop. Drivers are a serious problem. Software installation has really come a long way since yum and apt-get have come along. However, seldom can one drop a CD in the drive and install a linux program.I haven't had to compile a kernel in quite some time. Here's the thing though, every distribution is just a little different. Some things are documented well and other things are horrible. Back in the day (RH5) it was not uncommon to spend a week or more on a problem. Most people are not willing to beg someone on IRC ( or would know where to beg) for help. As a general purpose desktop Os linux really does suck. However, it shines when you want to run services or learn to code. This is not what most people want to do with their computer. I can't count how many times I have had to do things in linux that a windows user would never do. Example: nvidia 3d drivers. windows: run the EXE and reboot. Linux, download tarball and extract. Edit the inittab file in /etc and change to boot to run level 3. Before you reboot make sure you have the kernel source installed in the right place or you will not be able to rebuild the kernel IE. build the driver. Reboot into init3 (CLI) and run the executable ./NVIDIA***, follow the prompts and hope you have everything right. Reedit the inittab file and change run level back to 5 and reboot. When you are done with this make sure you go into xorg.conf and change the item in the nvidia FAQ that need changed and then restart X. I mean really, until these type of things get ironed out you can't expect many people to really use this OS to do their work. The value most people have in their computer is their data and how productive they are with using it. If keeping the machine running is a struggle then Linux is not worth much on a day to day basis. One thing to mention though; windows is getting very labor intensive with all the spyware and viruses. The vast majority of virus software is really bad and doesn't find everything. System restore enabled almost ensures that you will be infected multiple times. Linux can be really good once it's set up right and you are familiar with the applications you need to do your work. One thing I always keep in mind is you get what you pay for and sometimes on rare occasion a lot more. :-)

Re:Well, here's my take

[SComps]

Ok, I'll grant you that. Maybe linux itself is ready for the desktop, but even the default distribution applications aren't ready for the desktop. They're (mostly) poorly written applications sitting on top of gtk or Qt or other core libraries that can change at any given moment. Sure that's not that far away from Win32 in that regard, but it does seem that with distributions as a whole it happens far more often, even within the distributions themselves. I run FC4 (yes I know it's going to break just because it's supposedly bleeding edge) and the last update has Evolution so broken that you can't even close an email without it crashing and wanting to start that god-awful bugbuddy that never works.

No, the current state of the linux [distributions] are not ready for the desktop. Gnome is not ready, KDE isn't ready. There's still too many geekisms and stuff that just doesn't work properly.

Don't get me wrong, I still use FC4 on my desktop. I know enough about the system to get around the quirks. If I foisted it on my mother, I'd be firmly smacked in the head.