What Does Open Source Need for Mainstream Desktop?

HesAnIndieRocker asks: "So what will it take to make open source technology a mainstream alternative on the PC desktop? It feels like we've been on the cusp for many years now and the applications available for most common tasks are certainly competitive, but we still hover around a 5% market share by most accounts. I've recently written an article in my weblog about some possibilities, but I'd love to hear what others think."

Comments

Foobar2000

[jZnat]

Foobar2000

Seriously, it has to be the most awesome audio player I had ever used, and Linux doesn't even offer an alternative (other than running it on WINE) that comes close to the pure awesomeness of it. I like Rhythmbox and whatnot, but seriously, Foobar2000 could do it all. I mean, it even cured a cold I had once!

from the topic about 8 hours ago....

[XO]

There should be absolutely one installation method, that should encompass ALL distributions.
How each distribution actually DOES it can vary as it wants.

Each application should be packaged, with a file that has a lot of information about whatever is in the archive.

What each file is, wether it's source code, a library, an extension for something else, the main executeable, or some stupid utility to go with it.

Then it's up to the installer, based on WHAT the file IS, to determine where it goes.

Then you can have distributions that use the traditional *throw every executeable in the entire world into /usr/bin, every doc into /usr/doc, every lib into /usr/lib*, or a distribution that keeps every single application's components in it's own seperate directories. All using the same install format.

Of course, each would also have version information, and also "compatible with" and "incompatible with" information, particularly for libraries, where /usr/lib/xlib1.0.so and /usr/lib/xlib1.1.so are actually totally compatible with each other, so you can erase /usr/lib/xlib1.0.so when installing 1.1.so .. but, /usr/lib/xlib2.0.so has a totally different interface, so if you have programs that depend on /usr/lib/xlib1.1.so and you install /usr/lib/xlib2.0.so, the installer will know to keep the 1.1 version around as well. (this would also eliminate the idiocy of having things like "glib-5" and "glib2-2", when glib2 replaces glib .. don't take any of these examples as examples of absolute truth, i'm just using the names as examples, rather than as case studies)

    And I really love the idea of "nothing should ever be executed without the installer having previously known about it".. that would be a great thing to add to a distribution, IMO. Hell, the installer could keep track of checksums of the executeables, and make sure they haven't been modified (such as by a virus or worm or rootkit or malicious hacker) before running.

    A unified installation METHOD (doesn't have to be the same program on all distros) would solve a huge amount of Linux distribution problems, and perhaps even provide an answer to more general computing problems.

Re:from the topic about 8 hours ago....

[secolactico]

Yes, but what about apps that are not apt's repos? Or yum's or whatever.

What about downloading an installer from a web page, double click on it and have it install? (and let's find a solution for dependency hell).

But in my opinion, what Linux needs to become mainstream are games and (for lack of a better term) "bling".

Sure, VLC does everything winamp and media player does, but what an ugly, but fuctional, interface (I'm only using vlc as an example).

A lot of us look down on "skins" as unnecesary bloat. But they exists because people like them.

Also needed, a way to speed up the boot process. Fedora Core 4 takes longer to boot into runlevel 3 than Windows Server 2003 (on identical machines).

Aslo, let's get rid of any holier than thou attitude derived from our choice of OS. Let's not lecture people on free/GPL/BSD philosophy. For the most part, they don't care.

And more important: we need a leap of faith by someone big. Say, Apple porting iTunes to Linux. Or Blizzard releasing games for Linux. Running things on Wine or Winex should not be needed (and whoever offers that as a solution might be doing someone a disservice).

Windows 2020 Functionality, Windows 95 Usability

[thecampbeln]

After ranting for many years about never upgrading past Windows 2000 (mainly due to having to call MS should you need to reinstall, etc) I finally had to put my money where my mouth was when I purchased a new laptop a few months ago (eMachines m6805, AMD64). To make a long story short - I had a buddy help me install SuSE 9.3 on it and I've been on the penguin at home ever since.

What I have seen from a long time windows user perspective is this: functionality and abilities (and stability) is far greater on (SuSE 9.3) Linux then I ever experienced even under Windows 2000. The problem is the "Win95"-esque problems... such as getting my wireless networking card to work. Now fair enough... I had/have these issues with Windows upon an occasion as well, and I can work my way thru them faster then on Linux simply because I've got ump-teen years experience under Win. My gripes come when I have to follow quite esoteric HowTo's to get my gear to work (or to get this thingy to install, or, or, or).

Most times, I'll get whatever widget I need to working thanks to 2-3 of these HowTo's (mainly because 9.3 is a popular distro). But if I were unlucky enough to be one of the first people with problem 'X' I know I'd be screwed. Just the number of widgets and command line prompts and whatnot I had to tinker with to get my onboard WLAN card working was stunning. Then, after it was all said and done, I still couldn't get to websites 'cause the router didn't have valid DNS IP's configured (Linux seems to be a bit "bitchier" when it comes to certain things). Thankfully I picked up on this before blaming the card!

Now... I'm happy with SuSE/Linux and I cannot ever seeing myself turning back, but I'm a nerd that enjoys the occasional hw/sw challenge (something I've not had on a windows box in probably 3+ years). But for Joe Sixpack? We (as in the all of us, or the royal... take your pick) need to bring Linux's usability up past Win95, because in my opinion, that is exactly where (SuSE 9.3) Linux is currently at.

packages

[DavidLeeRoth]

Debs, slackpacks, rpms, etc are a bitch to mess with. I don't want to alien -d xxx.rpm; dpkg -i xxx.deb every time i come across a file of that type. The linux distros should make packages that run on any pc running any distro. also, apt-get, yum, and emerge should come together to make a single repo, so all the linux systems are up to date with everything. this would make our systems much more compatible with eachother, albeit it would take some time.

More OS X like integration...

[bergeron76]

Seriously. I was recently given the opportunity to take the OS X plunge and I've had the OSX epiphany that goes along with it. It's changed the way I see user interfaces, and I finally understand why the mac "addict" types have been so rabid. It's _that_ good.

FOSS UI's need to integrate or at least peacefully co-exist, and do so with a standards-based foundation.

That's the key (or ticket depending on your view).

Re:More OS X like integration...

[avalys]

I think you are missing what's wonderful about Mac OS X.

You get to use an intuitive, easy (and yes, aesthetically pleasing) interface for simple tasks. It saves you time and aggravation. It makes working on simple things simple, like they should be. I'm talking about stuff like printing, mounting an SMB share, synchronizing over Bluetooth with a cellphone, and so forth.

This leaves you more time to spend on complicated, challenging things. And when you need to, you can just start a terminal window and (if needed) an X11 server, both of which come with the OS, and run essentially every application you can under Linux. I use LaTeX regularly on my PowerBook, and emacs is installed by default as well (though I personally avoid it).

For years I thought I wanted Linux on the desktop. That wasn't it. I wanted Unix on the desktop. And that's what Mac OS X brings me. It is the only operating system that doesn't trade power for user-friendliness (or vice-versa). Almost everything you can do in Linux, you can do in Mac OS X. The exceptions are few and far between, only due to proprietary applications or Linux-specific kernel features.

Your complaints are valid for Mac OS 9 and below. But OS X is a completely different animal. I abhorred Macs until it was released, but I switched two years ago and have never looked back. And I'm not some luddite technophobe - I'm an EECS major at MIT.

Games

[AuMatar]

Thats it. Thats all it needs. I know over a dozen people who would switch if it just had mainstream games.

Re:Games

[Nutria]

I know over a dozen people who would switch if it just had mainstream games.

• An Exchange-killer.
  
• "kids apps". Kid Pix 3, and the dozen other games that my kids like to play when they go to my father's house.
  
• A definitely legal method of playing encrypted DVDs.
  
• For 3rd-party companies (Intuit, Adobe, Autodesk, etc etc ad nauseum) to release either Linux or Wine-friendly versions of their apps.
  
• For companies like Cisco to make it easy to run the VPN Client.
  
• A perfect VT220 emulator. There are many in the Windows world.
  
• Better wireless support, both thru more drivers from "industry", and better "management" front-ends.
  
• Better looking fonts. Sure, fonts are 100x better looking than they were in 1999, but they are still better looking in Windows.

Re:Games

[HaydnH]

An Exchange-killer.

Have you tried Open Exchange? Not that exchange is appropraite to a discussion on the Desktop market.


A definitely legal method of playing encrypted DVDs.

Try xine! (btw Xine is an awesome app!)


For 3rd-party companies (Intuit, Adobe, Autodesk, etc etc ad nauseum) to release either Linux or Wine-friendly versions of their apps.

If you can't find an alternative application in Linux you could always run Windows through VMWare - you can also disable network support for the VM so that you always have a nice clean copy of Windows instead of one riddled with ad/spyware! Further you'd be surprised how fast this can be, I run an AMD 1600+ with 1GB and Windows runs very fast in VMWare.


For companies like Cisco to make it easy to run the VPN Client.

Cisco VPN client for Linux!


A perfect VT220 emulator. There are many in the Windows world.

xterm & gnome-terminal can be used to emulate VT220, for the latter it's as simple as adding a line to your xresources file.


Better wireless support, both thru more drivers from "industry", and better "management" front-ends.

I think you'll find that Wireless support in terms of drivers is just as good in Linux as it is in Windows - just install ndiswrapper and use the windows drivers!


Better looking fonts. Sure, fonts are 100x better looking than they were in 1999, but they are still better looking in Windows.

If font's are so important to you, why not just use the Windows true type fonts in linux??


In my opinion the reason people don't migrate to Linux is because they either think it'll be too hard to use or, like the parent poster, they believe that Linux won't be able to do what Windows can - and don't bother to do any research as to whether they're correct or not.

Haydn.

For the love of god

[Wonko42]

A multimillion dollar ad campaign. That's what it'll take.

Now please, for fuck's sake, let's talk about something else. Every couple of weeks there's another damn article whining about how open source is soooooooo close to succeeding as a mainstream desktop alternative and asking what's keeping it from taking that final step, and everyone always answers "consistency" or "usability" or "accessibility" or "pictures of naked ladies", but the real issue here is that Grandma doesn't know what the fuck Linux is because she doesn't see ads for it on TV.

Goodness I'm bitter today.

Sometimes it is just the little things.

[jptechnical]

Little things like real replacements for common programs... not half assed attempts.

There are applications that I NEED on a daily basis that cannot be emulated and there is no equivalent. Don't get all bent out of shape about this, it is just a fact that noone as yet has been able to 1:1 replace Dreamweaver.

Also, if you are bound to some program for your business or home use you kinda have to go with what works.

3 simple examples:

Dreamweaver - NVU is not a replacement by any means... and the sad part is NVU is about as good as it gets in the OS world.

Quickbooks - No, emulation is not an option... it is sluggish even in windows. And don't try to tell me that the dozens of disparate accounting projects on sourceforge or freshmeat are going to come anywhere near the simplicity and dependability (damn straight it is dependable... lots of backups ;-)) of the flagship Intuit product.

Radmin - Remote Administrator by Famatech will not work on a *nix box with emulators... some forums have some well meaning people saying "So what if the keystrokes don't work, you can copy and paste text instead" - Thanks... but no. I have a hundred clients with radmin licenses and when compared directly to Radmin I would rather eat glass then install the latest VNC variant. If I had started out with VNC it might be different, maybe if I started out with VNC I wouldn't be agonizing over trying to switch to *nix.

The plain fact of the matter is, there are many programs that are not directly replaced. I have been trying to switch to a distro for 5 years. I install a new distro on a relatively modern laptop everytime one comes out. It sits on my desk and I genuinely try to use it. So far I really like the debian distros (Like Ubuntu minus the constant sound effects), where 2 years ago I would have been hard pressed to use anything but SUSE.

Everytime I make a legitimate attempt to change over I run into a half dozen piddly little sub $100 applications that I cannot emulate or replace.

I have seen Linux make great strides in the last 5 years I have been following it. I have moved most of my servers to linux and bsd (web and mail), I even replaced my SBS2k3 server in favor of ClarkConnect Home 3.1 (so sweet) to run my windows domain.

I used to get my ass kicked trying to install an HP JetDirect printer, then CUPS started coming preconfigured in the distros... man was I excited! Then I would find that dual displays were troublesome... again that has changed for the better.

All I have left are DreamWeaver (not just wysiwyg, but the templating and ftp site synchronizing) and Radmin since all my windows clients have it. I manage 50 or so client computers and a dozen windows servers in Alaska from Seattle with RADMIN... so it is kinda important to me. If I can figure out those hurdles then I am on the way.

Sometimes it is just the little things.

Cooperation and consolidation

[Anonymous Crowhead]

We don't need a new distro every week. Too many people are wasting their time reinventing the wheel. They need to cooperate and consolidate. Until then, a mainstream desktop will always be 2-4 years away.

Lets quit bullshitting ourselves

[stinerman]

1) Drivers
2) Drivers
3) Drivers

Re:Lets quit bullshitting ourselves

[acd294]

*lightbulb*

Thats what we need, trendy cool Linux Stores (tm)!

High Level...

[cgenman]

From a High Level, to convince people to switch systems, you have to offer them something an order of magnitude better than the system they are invested in without giving up any substantial functionality. This means:

The computer should do exactly what the user wants, whenever the user wants, without the user having to think about it. This means extensive end-user testing and brutal simplification. The user should never see anything unrelated to exactly what they want to do. The folder heirarchy they see on the drive should ONLY contain things relevant to their activities. They should be able to re-arrange everything on their disk and still have it all work. They should never have to edit a config file. They should have to wade through "interface spam" of a million options which one in a million users will ever actually use. And yes, this means extensive high level architecting of everything that goes into the system, something OSS isn't traditionally good at doing.

The computer sould be able to replace legacy systems. That means being MS Office compatible, not a small feat. Not just word, but scheduling, and Excel macros must be readable in the new system.

The computer still needs a killer application or usage that makes everone want to switch to it. Apt-Get is pretty killer for me, but command line functionality will never reach the average desktop user. What else can the nature of Open Source provide? How can we use dynamic re-compilation to do something amazing that retail software can't provide?

No offence, but Linux as a desktop OS is still pretty hacky. There are a million unnecessary (to me) files hanging around when I'm just trying to do something, dozens of different ways to try to do something but four or five of which will work, command line still being integral to anything fun on the system (and even some baseline functionality), etc. My feeling is that the current state of Linux isn't the way to get there, any more than Dos should be the way to get to Windows. Perhaps it is time to throw our collective weight behind SkyOS, Zeta, or another upcoming Desktop-oriented OS, and refocus Linux on being the kick-ass server OS we all know it to be.

Re:High Level...

[amper]

"The computer should do exactly what the user wants, whenever the user wants, without the user having to think about it. This means extensive end-user testing and brutal simplification. The user should never see anything unrelated to exactly what they want to do. The folder heirarchy they see on the drive should ONLY contain things relevant to their activities. They should be able to re-arrange everything on their disk and still have it all work. They should never have to edit a config file. They should have to wade through "interface spam" of a million options which one in a million users will ever actually use. And yes, this means extensive high level architecting of everything that goes into the system, something OSS isn't traditionally good at doing."

Yes.

And additionally:

1. Stop writing code from the kernel up, and start from the user's external experience, and work your way in.

2. Calendaring and Scheduling.

3. Go read Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines.

4. Calendaring and Scheduling.

5. Sleep/Suspend/Hibernate

6. Did I mention Calendaring and Scheduling?

7. Forget everything you know about How Computers Work, and think like a user who has never seen a computer before.

8. Pervasive distribution of user state.

9. oh, and Calendaring and Scheduling.

OEM Contracts

[heinousjay]

Simply put, 95%+ of all users don't care at all, and see no reason to change.

I can tell you why...

[HRbnjR]

I have been using Linux on my desktop since 94, so I can relate to this feeling.

I tried to rip a music CD on my Fedora Core 4 system the other day...

I put it in and ran Sound Juicer... it saw the CD and loaded all the track info for it. So far, so good.

I wanted to set it to rip me an OGG at quality 6, the same as all my other ones I ripped in windows. It would let me choose between OGG and FLAC (no MP3), but there was no quality setting. An audio ripper with no quality setting?!? Impossible I thought...

I looked in the help file, and it said nothing. Though the help file mentioned if you wanted MP3, you could use something called 'gnome-audio-profiles-properties'. There was no link to run this in the program, and I can't find it in my Gnome menus, so, being the guru I am, I ran it from the command line...

This is a GUI which has a text field to type in a GStreamer pipeline!

"audio/x-raw-int,rate=44100,channels=2 ! vorbisenc name=enc quality=0.5"

Like anyone (especially grandma) is gonna know how to fill in that!

Anyhow, me being the guru I am, I fish through it and see the quality setting... I want OGG quality 6... so what does "0.5" mean in OGG terms? Well, let's look in the help file...

*clicks help button* .... *application promptly dissapears*

No "this help file does not exist" dialog, no stack trace, nothing. *Poof* Gone.

This is why Linux still isn't really ready for my desktop.

Re:If you had a chance to read the weblog article.

[furiousgeorge]

I'm sure I'll be flamebait, but i'll have to file you under "you still don't get it". (that and shamlessly promoting your blog.)
Not only don't you get it, you won't listen. Sure - argue that I'm wrong. Willing to take a bet which one of us will still be right in a year? Two years?

You said: "Instead, the problem with Linux is that not enough people are getting it preinstalled on their computers."

Bzzzt. Wrong. Do you think everybody would automatically love Linux if it was dumped on them? No. Not by a mile. Remember, Linux is FREE and can't compete on the desktop with stuff that isn't. Stuff that is generally either put out by an evil empire, or a fruit company

I stand firmly behind JWZ's statement: "Linux is free if your time is worthless".

99.9% of the people out there use their computer as a tool. They aren't interested in tinkering with it, or even worse, fighting with it to try to get something done. I don't want to have to screw with my computer for simple things any more than I want to screw with my car just to get to work. THESE ARE SOLVED PROBLEMS.

If you want to get Linux accepted on the desktop, I suggest you take a good hard look at trying to do even the most simple things that people do on other platforms every day.

-play music
-configure a printer
-move files around the network
-play games
-adding/changing hardware
-etc

These are simple and linux still has plenty of problems with them.
Play sound? ALSA or OSS or something else. Barf. And doing something like adding a new graphics card? *shudder*. The ensuing Xwindows pain in the ass makes me sweat just thinking about it. "You've bought the latest wifi card? Oh sure, you just need to grab this patch, patch a kernel module, recompile, reconfigure, modprobe, and you're set!!" OH COME ON!

If the only way to set something up is to edit a config file, YOU FAIL. Period. This is not open to discussion. You will not win on the desktop. When my mom/dad/sister/grandma calls, I can walk them through GUI's to change settings. I can't/won't dare have them editing some random file in /etc. Thats playing with fire.

I contrast this with windows. A recent event for me: the onboard firewire port on my laptop died. I bought a firewire PCMCIA card. I plugged it in. Windows detects it, finds the drivers, installs them, and is done. I plug in my iPod and up pops iTunes, it syncs, and everybody is happy. IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE THIS SIMPLE.

And i'm not even going to go into the KDE/GNOME/whateverdesktopyouchose wars and inconsistency nightmares that are going on.

(And even more, i'm not going to go into the incompatibility issues with the different distros and system configurations. AIEEEEEEEE)

It's not an exposure issue. Linux still isn't there yet. If you think it is, I suggest you go over to an usergroup like mythtv-users for people setting up that particular media server. You wouldn't belive the fucking nightmares people have to deal with for things like getting digital audio working out of their box.

THIS IS ALMOST 2006! PC AUDIO HAS BEEN A SOLVED PROBLEM FOR A LOOOONG TIME FOR THE REST OF THE UNIVERSE.

To replace windows Linux doesn't need to be as good, it needs to be BETTER. I'll tell you I'm perfectly willing to pay $100 for windows/MacOSX for the shear amounts of headaches it saves me vs. trying to run linux on my desktop (and yes, I have done it). If you think paying $50-150 (arguably, whatever the OEM cost is) for windows over a 3-5 year windows product cycle vs. the amount of trouble it saves you is too much money. Well, I'll just have to say we must live in two very different worlds.

I am soooo not a microsoft fan, and I think a lot of their user interface work is junk, but they **still** beat linux's ass when it comes to general usability.

I *want* to look for the penguin logo

[tepples]

The drivers are great if you buy supported hardware.

"Linux isn't free; it costs $150 to replace my scanner." Those who rely on donated hardware cannot choose to obtain supported hardware over unsupported hardware. Those who are switching from Windows to Linux on paid-for hardware have similar problems.

There's a lot of hardware that won't work well on Mac either, but you won't find it in Apple's store.

For peripherals compatible with Macintosh computers, I can look on the front of the box for "Compatible with Macintosh computers" or (better yet) a certification mark on the front of the box. I haven't seen any penguins on home PC peripherals available at Best Buy or Circuit City. Which stores in Indiana should I be trying?

Re:Advertising and the hardware vendors

[bersl2]

It needs to be the large hardware vendors and game company devs push this, they are the only ones who can really crack it, it is NOT, repeat NOT, going to come primarily from the software side of the equation by some billion humans deciding one morning to "tryout this li-nux thing" they heard about. Ain't happenin'. Not any time soon, anyway. You aren't going to change human reality that people run what comes pre-installed. It just "is" is all.

You're falling into the same-old the-chicken-or-the-egg trap that we've been in for the past few years: the only way the hardware vendors and game devs widely accept Linux is if the demand is there from J. Sixpack. And as you mentioned, we aren't going to change human nature.

Wide acceptance for desktop Linux can only come about through the same back door that the PC came to the home, and this is acceptance in the office. It's going to be an even longer and harder process, but by that vector it is actually possible. And because the FOSS community often goes out of its way to provide portability, we lack powerful traditional pulls, that of lock-in and incompatability.

What's this "lunix?"

[Dragoon412]

It feels like we've been on the cusp for many years now and the applications available for most common tasks are certainly competitive, but we still hover around a 5% market share by most accounts.

As someone who's not particularly adept with Linux, but has attempted to use it many times over the years, allow me to say that this may be part of the problem. Linux is absolutely nowhere near the cusp of acceptance for mainstream desktop usage, and for good reason:

For starters, drivers. Rarely, if ever, have I installed any flavor of Linux (starting with Slackware back in '99, having since used Redhat, Ubuntu, Mandrake, Knoppix and SUSE, not necessarily in that order) and had everything work. You need to futz with obscure config files to get something as simple the mouse wheel working, much less buttons 4 and 5. Video drivers are rarely up to snuff; as I've had ATi cards for the past few years, I've yet to even play Chromium BSU. Sound? Forget it. Basically, and I think this is the single biggest issue, virtually anything requiring a driver in Linux is a hassle. No one wants to spend hours pouring over forums and HOWTOs to install a bloody driver.

Then, there was the package dependancy hell, which has been somewhat resolved by package management systems. However, my experience with these systems has been that they're unbelievably unintuitive, and have an awful interface. Take Ubuntu's system, for example: it's 2005, yet its interface (at least when I last used it, maybe 7-8 months ago) looks like a circa-1990 BBS.

On top of it all, there's the hideously outdated UIs. There's little, if any, consistancy between apps in appearance, and most of the default themes I've seen in the various Linux distros still look like a clusterfuck of a Win98 box. They don't even match up to WinXP's level of consistancy and polish, much less OSX's.

Linux really does have the functionality to put it on par with Windows and even OSX in a lot of cases. The problem is that Linux is, by and large, an OS developed by hobbyists and developers for hobbyists and developers. Its level of polish is orders of magnitude off from Windows, and not even on the same plane of existance as OSX. It's just a hassle to install and configure, and not particularly nice to look at. Sure, it's less of a hassle now, but it's still just not good enough. ...and that's the thing: I want it to be good enough. I want it to be better. And for a while, I was even trying to migrate away from my Windows desktop. Then I got an iBook. Linux hasn't even been a consideration since.

At this point, I honestly don't see what point - other than being free of cost - that Linux on the desktop serves. Sure, more competition is always welcome, but Linux is already a phenomenal medium/heavy-duty OS - does it really even need to be on the desktop, too? And more importantly, without a serious overhaul by a group of artists and GUI designers, does it even have a chance? My guess would be, on both accounts, no.

I'm feeling a severe lack of drivers.

[tepples]

Perhaps you need to switch to linux

Buy me a new flatbed scanner and I'll try it.

Re:Windows 2020 Functionality, Windows 95 Usabilit

[coaxial]

Cronjobs are never "simple fixes". 'chmod -w' is much easier. Anyway, the desktop is doomed as long as you have to edit anything (via a gui, but especially by hand) to get simple peripherals to work.

Re:Windows 2020 Functionality, Windows 95 Usabilit

[thecampbeln]

Firstly... I whole heartly agree with your points. But, as was mentioned in another thread here on this story, Linux needs a unitified install method. If Linux had that, then the "HowTo's" could be rolled into installers and noone would have to run all over YaST and the command line to get something working. If it were more like "download this EXE and follow the prompts" where it could then ask questions like "point me at your Windows WLAN Card Drivers" and then you'd be past Win95.

Course this would be moot if there were linux drivers, right? But as you also mentioned, thus far many Linux drivers assume that "you are at least this smart" to install it (my Linux ATI drivers, for example... So my latest kernal didn't come with the source code... how do it get that...). I suppose more users like me (nerds who enjoy the odd hw/sw issue) asking for Linux support then it'll get better, but there are things WE can do as well I believe. Starting with nicer application names (what the hell does "NDIS" mean anyway!? And "abcde" is a what? Oh, a CD ripper, I guess I should just know that, huh?).

It has to work.

[mellon]

Here are some basic things that are wrong with my very slick ubuntu system:

1. Sound doesn't work without massive fiddling. I think I happen to have gotten unlucky in this, but it took me a huge amount of effort to get sound working. I am not sure what I did to get it working. I think it was one of several support libraries that wasn't installed. Moral: don't unbundle. Throw in everything the user needs. If you are a moby geek, sure, go for a slimmable distribution, but if your target is the other 95%, it has to Just Work, out of the box. So sacrifice disk space for functionality. X has to successfully probe the monitor and correctly identify the modes that it supports, as well as its physical dimensions; when a new monitor is plugged in, X has to be able to cleanly identify the new modes that are available, and support multiple monitors, and all that crap that Windows and OSX Just Do, completely transparently. Because Xorg is so dependent on static configuration, if something blows away the magic config you put in xorg.conf (which happened to me recently), you're in for an hour of hacking on the part of a serious geek to get it working nicely again. Most people are simply going to wind up with a configuration that isn't optimal, and not know what to do about it. Impression: linux is ugly. It isn't if it's configured right, but it's hard to configure it right. My linux screen looks really nice now, but it took a lot of extremely geeky fiddling to get it that way.

2. UI is massively inconsistent, and massively clunky. You want a person's first experience of Linux to be "wow, this is a lot easier to use." If it's "wow, this is a little funky," then they're going to stick with Windows. The 5% that are running Linux are early adopters, and they're willing to suffer to be on the bleeding edge. Most people aren't early adopters; for them it has to Just Work. Say what you want about Windows - after it's installed you're going to be sorry - but it works out of the box, for the most part, and when it doesn't, it's a matter of downloading a few drivers that install easily with installshield. Linux is better technology under the hood, but the usability isn't there.

3. Consistency. My laptop moves around a lot, and peripherals change a lot. My trackpad doesn't work if I start X at my desk, because I have a trackball and keyboard at my desk, and these throw off the device probing. You hear a lot of stories like this. I put my machine to sleep, and nine times out of ten it comes up with a blank screen and I have to hard boot it to get it back; the other time, it works fine. Things sort of work, but they're fragile. If something works, it's got to keep working. This kind of inconsistency is just not something anybody but an early adopter is going to accept. It looks like the problem with X is that it's simply not probing APM correctly, which is because my system does ACPI, not APM. The X wizards probably already have a solution for this, but it's not on my running system, Ubuntu Breezy, so it's not helping me.

4. None of my data transferred over (I switched from Mac), except for IMAP email, because that uses IMAP. All my address book information is stuck on my Mac where I can't use it. My calendar is on my Mac too. There's no interoperability, nor even a way to transfer the data over once and leave it. Given that there are standards for exchanging this data, it ought to be possible.

5. The sights are too low, so even early adopters are underwhelmed. Linux doesn't try to do anything new - it just does what MacOS X does, only not as well. Under the hood it's about the same as OSX, and much better than Windows, but from the user's perspective it's not as good as either of these two competitors. It's hard to compete, because Windows and Mac are both single corporate messages, and Linux is a free-for-all; both its strength and its weakness.

You'd think that free word processing and stuff would make a difference, but people would ra

Linux should never be mainstream

[Yonder Way]

To be mainstream it will have to lose many of the features that make it attractive to tech enthusiasts.

If you want a very nice and easy to use *NIX desktop, head down to the Apple store.

Re:My current rants

[amliebsch]

As far as the font rendering. It turns out Microsoft doesn't actually render fonts correctly.

Ah, well, whether it renders them "correctly" or not, they look much, much better and are (I find) much easier to read. (My biggest gripes with most Linux font rendering have to do with inconsistent stroke weights and character spacing, not to mention the antialiasing which straddles the line between ugly and intolerable.) I say, if the correct way looks like ass, better to do it the wrong way.