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Breaking Down Barriers to Linux Desktop Adoption
Jane Walker writes to tell us that in a recent interview with SearchOpenSource.com Jono Bacon takes a look at why some of the reasons people give for not switching to Linux might not stand up under closer scrutiny. From the article: "For example, they fault Linux OpenOffice desktops for not having all the features in Microsoft Windows Office, even though few actually use all of the Microsoft stuff. So, in essence, they're saying they want desktops cluttered with unnecessary features."
I think, that in essence they honestly just want to justify the decision they make. It's harder to go out on a limb and go open source if you are the person making decisions. The old addage that "Nobody was ever fired for going Microsoft" is still correct, it's still correct as ever.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
People reject OpenOffice and reject even Mac, because they don't know any different. They have been "programmed" to use Microsoft Windows, therefore, until they are told different, they will continue to use Microsoft Windows.
We can sit around all we want and say stuff like "when people get tired of (malware|viruses|spyware|whateverelse)" they will switch to (Linux|Mac).
It's just not true. People will switch when they are told to. Nothing else. Until Companies FORCE people to switch, there will be no switching.
While he makes some good points about "lethargy" and people not wanting to learn something new from scratch (esp those not techinically savvy), there are some programs which simply will not work on Linux. If you happen to need these programs, you're just not going to switch.
Let's also not forget hardware issues. Yes, there have been major strides since I first experimented with Red Hat 5.2, but the fact that I couldn't get my non-winmodem or sound card to work under the OS turned me off from using it for some time.
There gets a point where it's not so much of lethargy as it is a hassle to deal with and *still* not being able to do everything you need/like to do on your computer.
Breaking down Barriers
Q: So. Why don't you like Linux?
A: Well... Office doesn't have features you want.
Q: Are you a freaking moron? Few actually use all of the Microsoft stuff. So, in essence, you're saying you want desktops cluttered with unnecessary features.
I can't imagine why Linux zealots have a hard time communicating with the masses.
(asbestos jockey shorts on)
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
that someone is wrong won't make them see the light. Show them what the system can do for them and how easy it is to switch over, and they will. Until then, the arguments against switching might be stupid, but arguments against those are even worse. Many many people and companies use Linux, it is the most used OS in many academic pursuits (I know for a fact Astronomy), and has its great points. But it isn't Windows, and if people are happy with Windows and use it efficiently, even if it's just because they are familiar with it, to them that's the best possible reason not to switch, and unless you can show them they can do something new and much better, they just won't care to switch. And even then, the familiarity argument will keep many where they are. People don't like change, and arguing that not linking change is stupid won't get you anywhere.
Normal, everyday people are not going to get as excited about Linux as most of the people here. Other than the price, they are simply not interested in the benefits. However most people will pay through the nose for something as long as it "just works". They don't care if it is Windows or Linux. Can they still email? Can they still write Word documents? That is all that matters and Linux seems to be too much of a hassle (and lets be honest, for Average Joe, it is).
So in order to sell Linux to Average Joe he must not be able to see the seams. He must be able to do everything and more in OpenOffice that he was able to do in MS Word. Even if he never uses the advanced features - the fact that he knows they are not there makes him think that it is not as good.
I meta-moderate because I care.
I agree with the article that a large reason that change isn't coming is lethargy. Most people have the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality. So as long as Windows suits their needs, they will think why change. There are also all the costs involved in any kind of change. I also don't think the average home user (outside of geeky types) will ever change to linux as long as Windows is what he is using at work. He doesn't want to worry about changing formats, he wants seemless integration with home and work. Most of the people I know that do use a different OS at home, they use a Mac because they say they can use it without thinking about how it works. Most of us Linux users, use it because we like to know how and why it does what it does.
when windows 3.1 was new, there was a saying that was going around. What sells windows? Three things; applications, applications, applications.
I believe it is because most people are comfortable with being part of the herd.
90%+ of the desktops out there are Windows. If you have a problem, even if you cannot get it fixed, you'll be among other people who have had problems.
With Linux, you have to expend effort to find such a group of people.
What benefit is there for any particular individual to do so?
So, home users won't migrate until businesses do. And for a business, there are real benefits to migrating to Linux. Which is why more businesses and governments are.
Many people don't switch because the computer they buy already has Windows on it. Whether its from Dell, Gateway, or Best Buy, the computer already comes with Windows and it works. Considering you can buy a pd from Dell for $500 with XP, why would anyone venture to Linux? I'm an of course asking that question as the average computer user. Obviously more tech gurus like Linux, but thats a small percentage of the user base. Windows works ok and already comes on the PC. That's about it.
http://religiousfreaks.com/I think a lot of the problems with OSS stem from one issue, the fact that the developers are very out of touch with the average user. I'll give you an example:
I have been striving to use all open source or free software on my latest windows machine. I found that winamp had become problemsome for multiple reasons, and that I disliked windows media player 9 for certain reasons as well. So for video playback, I've attempted to use VLC (something I'm still trying to play with). Now, VLC seems all-in-all like a great player. However, it lacks very basic features that every single other player has.
One of these is a draggable on screen display so you can seek while you play full-screen video. While this may not be the most important item on the geek list, it's definitely important to an average person. We've grown accustomed to seeing a drag bar pop up when we move the cursor down to the bottom of the screen, and it's simply not there.
Another one, at least in windows, is the lack of reasonable playlist support. Not only does "play all" not work from windows explorer (which I honestly could say I wouldn't even expect as it is a multi-platform software project), but the playlist in general is buggy. About 50% of the time, when it goes from one video file to another, the program completely dumps and commits some type of illegal operation.
At the same time, VLC has plenty of options not in regular players that all work perfectly fine. This just goes to show me that the talent and the effort is there, but the priorities are out of line with the audience. They could fix the issues, but they'd rather work on geeky features like "background mode" instead.
I've noticed this with Linux as well. There is definitely more support for some really neat little gadgets, but then base functionality may not even work without a lot of tweaking. Not to mention, installing applications on Linux is something an average unknowledgable computer could even conceivably do without a manual or someone instructing them.
I understand that Linux and OSS is hobbyist stuff, that's why I love it. But being built by a hobbyist is a double-edged sword, you have to realize that if you are coding based on your own priorities, that your priorities might often be out of line with the average user. Which is fine if you don't want to convert everyone.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
This "out of the box" argument has always confused me. Especially in light of the fact that the original poster was talking about absolute availability of drivers, not just whether it ships in the box.
There are a lot of devices out there without ANY Linux drivers, such as recent ATI video cards, various wireless chipsets (and NDISWrappers is only a partial solution to some of them, especially if you need to do more advanced things like netstumbler), etc.. that's not even counting the stuff like the USB video encoders and the like.
This whole "out of the box" argument seems to be a smokescreen put up by people that don't want to argue about absolute driver availability.
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Being a long time linux user, I'd say most zealots (of the linux variety) tend to miss the most important point. People want the "real deal" applications. Despite the fact that it works to an acceptible degree, gimp (as an example) is NOT a suitable replacement for Photoshop. Right or wrong, people learn an application and unless a replacement is a mirror image of the original, they simply aren't interested. If the gimp folks would stop with all the chest beating and make the interface comparable to Photoshop whereas you wouldn't be able to really notice much of a difference, THEN it becomes a suitable replacement. Until that day, we'll be reading these sorts of stories over and over. I know this comment is a karama burner, but I just had to say what many think.
Karma: Neutered
...so I am as pro-open-source as the next person.
It's just not easy "enough" to switch, yet.
And people wonder why Linux gets such high uptime.
There are logical reasons to reject a Linux/OpenOffice.org desktop.
.doc as its native format. Yeah, it can open them and save to it, but people don't want to have the hassle of selecting .doc when saving (yes, people are that lazy), worrying about if it looks right saved, etc. They just want it to work and they don't know as much about computers as Slashdot readers. They don't want to have to think.
.) that Windows just wins. Yeah, there is a flash plugin for Linux, but it isn't installed with many distros and it isn't as good as the Windows version. Yes, you can get gstreamer to play mp3s and such, but it isn't as good as the Windows equivalent and there are tons of proprietary codecs that it doesn't support and won't support anytime soon. Not to mention the games and other proprietary software that doesn't run on Linux. So, for consumers, Linux often doesn't look like an upgrade because it doesn't do many of the things they are used to computers doing.
1) OpenOffice.org doesn't use
2) Linux is different. Anytime there is something different, there is a cost of switching (you have to learn something new which costs you time - time you could use doing something better). Now, if Linux ran 2 million times faster, it would be well worth the effort to learn it since it would greatly increase your productivity. But Linux isn't amazingly better than Windows - I use Linux as my primary OS, but the difference is marginal, not night and day. Plus, there are consumer things (streaming audio and video, flash. .
People buy Windows with the expectation that "anything I want can run on Windows". There is a lot of great Linux software out there, but it just isn't the same as being able to head to BestBuy and grab the latest version of Civilization and be playing it that evening. And please don't say things like "Well, there's FreeCiv" or "They could use WINE" because we all know that it isn't the same. Also, please don't say, "they can replace iTunes with Rhythmbox" because they also are not the same.
The fact is that there are many logical reasons NOT to switch to Linux. Linux is great, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking it beats Windows at every turn. There are many things that Windows does better (whether this is an outcome of market conditions or something inherent, consumers aren't going to care - telling the consumer that proprietary codecs and archaic market conditions are the things to blame for why they can't play their iTunes in Linux or watch a video online isn't going to make those files play any better and consumers don't care, we care but consumers don't).
Let's live in the real world where we can fight to get rid of the problems in both Linux and the market for operating systems so that we don't have to go around waving our arms saying "Linux Rules" - consumers will know it for themselves.
I'm sorry to say this, but frankly as far as home desktops are concerned, the battle has been won by Windows. I'm not talking about power users, but just the people who want to do their office work and deal with the minimum of hassle, maybe upgrade their drivers etc but are generally not fussed. The reason for this is that Linux is, from the perspective of end users, needlessly complex, whereas Windows is for the most part easy to use and simple to understand.
As an example, contrast installing NVIDIA's drivers under Windows and Linux. Under Windows, you download a driver file from NVIDIA's site, run it and then reboot your PC after clicking next a few times. Done. On Linux, however, that process is more like go to NVIDIA's site, download file, kill X (not a very simple task for newbies on distros which have things like GDM and KDM), find the file you downloaded using a terminal, run it and follow the instructions. If you're LUCKY, you won't need to build the kernel module and a prebuilt one is available. For everyone in the world ever, however, you need to futz around with GCC versions and kernel sources and what have you...
You see, most people would have given up as soon as GDM popped back up. Installing using apt-get or shell scripts or even configure; make; make install doesn't seem very logical to most people, they prefer just going onto a website, downloading a file and double clicking the icon.
Then there's the software which has numerous features missing. OpenOffice.org shines as an example of what software should NOT be. I tried running it on a fairly new PC, running WindowMaker on Debian. It was dog slow; menus took seconds to open, rather than being instant as they are on Windows. Just unusable. And it might sound like a small thing to some people, but there's a complete lack of decent MSN Messenger clients for Linux. The closest is Kopete, with Gaim frankly unusable, as Kopete has support for webcams and personal messages while Gaim does not. But still, on both a simple task like changing your nickname, changing your personal message or setting a display picture is a darn sight harder than it really needs to be. Hell, custom emoticon support would be nice. You might scoff at this, but for most teens and even some adults this is an important thing.
AmaroK is a nice application for Linux, one I do miss while on Windows (I run Win2K as my primary OS). But still, what Linux is missing is a Windows Media Player/iTunes-alike. Something that rips CDs, syncs to iPods, burns CDs and plays music files all in one program. Yes, you may cry, there's Sound Juicer/KAudioCreator and yes, there's Rhythmbox but both of those have very serious flaws. KAudioCreator is, and not to mince words here, a pile of shit. It is a pain in the ass to use, a pain in the ass to configure and a pain in the ass in general. Sound Juicer follows the GNOME philosophy of hiding features from the end user, and so is a pain in the ass to use. Grip, for all its power, has no usability whatsoever. What most people want to do is just open Linux Media Player, insert a CD, click the start rip button, wait 5 minutes and come back to find a load of MP3s. That's it. This is a serious failing on the part of Linux desktops, people like this sort of integrated functioning.
I'm not going to bother with the arguments about not having MS Office or games, because they're bleeding obvious and have been rehashed many times before. But Linux has a long way to go before it is even remotely as usable as Windows or Mac OS X. It's simply far too complex for the average end user to understand, and the software which most people want and need to use day in day out is woefully inadequate.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
It's a shame that people in the OpenSource community get so easily worked up when people say they want "unneccessary" features. All it tells me is that no one has taken a really good hard look at Office.
Office alternatives are never going to unseat office until a few things happen:
1) The ease of use and development of a databse similar to Access is created. I've used a lot of databases, and none of match up feature-wise to Access. Yes, I know, there's more powerful databases out there, and ones that can do X. But none out there use the native Operating Systems widget set to build applications.
2) The interoperability of the various Office programs is unmatched. The ability to use a custom Database built in Access to pull information from the corporate server, which then uses Word to display reports, and Excel to put the information into usable formats is currently unmatched, and a bigger "unnecessary feature" than OpenSource developers give it credit for.
3) A long, hard, cold look needs to be taken at Office. As long as people continue to beleive that Word is "just a word processor" and Excel "just a spreadsheet", and Access is some "database throwback to the 90's" then you're never going to make any headways against office. The Win32 API/OLE/ActiveX/Acronym of the Day combo is a much more powerful set of tools than most people give it credit for.
4) Hardly anyone buys Office for home. Most of them pirate it from work. As long as work drives their usage of Ofiice, it's going to stay entrenched. As long as companies continue to use the "unneccessary" features of Office, nothing else is going to manage to make a dent.
Reeses
Interesting. I built an XP vanilla box over the weekend, and it took about 15 minutes to get the sound card working. (went to the manufacturer's site, downloaded the driver, double-click, install, done).
Oh, but nevermind. As previously mentioned, XP "sucks out of the box" for drivers.
Frammin' on the jim-jam, frippin' at the krotz!
When my shop has a bunch of extra Spark Laptops lying around that I would have to upgrade to XP, I'll take that as a valid rebuttal. Until then, I've got a bunch of Dell equipment which runs XP just fine, and would have gods know what problems switching to Linux. Yes, the driver issue is the fault of the hardware manufacturers. It's still a problem.
As for 64-bit, can someone give me a good reason to have this on a machine who's primary purpose is to be an over-glorified typewritter? On a developer machine I can see it, but on an office machine, it's overkill.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
1) Software. By far the biggest reason not to use Linux on the desktop. It seems that there are always a few MS applications that many users feel they must have. Dual boot systems, running two computers, or using emulators; are all inadequate solutions. I know lots of people who say they would like to use Linux, but then they wouldn't be able to this particular game, or that particular application. I know there are Linux alternatives to a lot of standard PC software, but it only takes one "must have" app to kill the deal.
2) Hardware. Since Linux only commands about one quarter of 1% of the desktop market, it stands to reason that hardware manufacturers are not overly concerned with making Linux compatible products. Linux will always lag MS in this area. I don't think I have seen Linux drivers included with any PC hardware. It is possible to put together a Linux box that runs all the hardware you need, but it takes a lot of careful planning. With windows, hardware is not an issue, the OS is typically pre-installed, and any PC hardware comes with windows drivers. You can read right on the box which windows versions will work with the peripheral. With Linux you have to look it up, or guess. Even if a driver does exist, you may have to go all the web to find it, you may also have to compile the driver - which most average users don't want to do.
3) Cost. Practically all PCs come with MS operating systems installed. PC buyers will never get their money back for those operating systems. Which mean Linux is just an additional expense. You may also have to buy an emulator if you want to run your windows apps, or partition magic if you want to dual boot. Yes, OS-less systems do exist, but none of the majors sell them (Dell, Gateway, Compaq/HP, Apple). Most people don't feel comfortable buying Wal-Mart or no-name PCs.
4) Performance. Without a GUI, Linux is very fast, and will run with minimum hardware. But, once you run KDE or GNOME, Linux performance is much worse than windows. I know there are other trimmed down GUIs, but they don't generally have the functionality of GNOME or KDE, and certainly don't approach the functionality of Windows or MacOS.
5) Lack of standards. No standard distribution, no standard interface, no standard way to upgrade, no standard installation for OS, or applications, or drivers. Frankly, no standard anything. Those who like to tinker endlessly consider this an advantage. But, the vast majority of desktop users don't want to endlessly tinker.
6) Support. Your ISP many allow you to use Linux, but don't expect the level of support a windows user would get - not even close. If a peripheral isn't working correctly, don't expect the hardware manufacturer to you if you are running Linux.
7) Convenience. With MS, the user can purchase a PC, with OS installed at any department store or electronics store. Applications are also easy to find and install. You never have to wonder if a particular peripheral will work with windows. You don't to search all over the web for drivers. You don't even have to install the OS. With windows you just go to CompUSA and pick up what you need.
8) Relative reliability. Linux advocates like to say that MS systems are too unreliable. That may have been true, with Windows 9x, but 2000 and XP seem reliable enough.
9) Available free software. Linux advocates also like to point out all the free applications that come with Linux, but there is tons of free software for Windows, including a lot of the same free applications that Linux advocates are so happy about, like OpenOffice.
10) Ease of use and installation. Linux is getting better, but still lags MS.
I also call bullshit, especially on a home built computer. What kind of magical system do you own? Maybe you just aren't smart enough to realize that half your shit doesn't work. I can count the number of times I haven't had to install a third party driver from an OEM install on one hand because that number is exactly 0. I'd wager that in the past 6 months I've installed XP OEM on probably 100 computers.
Time makes more converts than reason
But here we have a problem. Sissy or no, the average computer user doesn't want to have to surf websites or go to chat rooms to get their computer going. The topic isn't why geeks don't use linux, it's why the average user doesn't use linux. The average user just Wants It To Work. I may not mind spending a few hours getting things working. Hey, I'll coming out knowing even more about the system so it can even be fun! But this isn't the mindset of your average user who wants to get things going so he can go play minesweeper. That said, I'm often impressed at how far Linux has moved in the way of Making Things Just Working. Xorg is a great example. I will never, ever miss the days of having to do a detailed config by hand. On the whole Linux hardware support have seen these sorts of improvements, but there's still work to be done. Don't blame the average computer user for being an average computer user. It's up to us computer geeks, who actually like this stuff, to put together a system that will consistently work well for Dad who just wants an easy way to burn to dvd a camcorder video of his kid hitting a home run.
I love my sig.
Riiight.
This last week I did a massive hardware upgrade of two of my home machines, which required a from-scratch reinstall of Windows and Suse. I lost count of how many times I had to reboot with Windows - not just from the endless security updates and upgrades from Microsoft, but because I had to download the latest drivers for most of my equipment, install them, and *they* wanted to reboot as well.
Hours upon hours of acquiring drivers off the internet, downloading them, installing them, rebooting the goddamned machine, and tweaking the fuckers according to various FAQs. Oh joy.
Suse Linux, on the other hand, need ONE reboot - and that's after downloading some 150 patches (automagically), not to mention installing all of my favorite software. Funny, I ended up picking up ONE driver from the manufacturer for each machine, both of which were for the video cards. Not that the cards didn't work without the drivers (they did just fine), but simply because it was recommended in case the driver that came with Suse ran into problems.
I haven't even gotten around to installing my various pieces of Windows software yet. I decided to defer *that* nightmare for another day (or two, or three, since my Linux is up and running and already has all of my apps installed).
Why do I even have a Windows partition? For a) games, and b) Photoshop. And if the games came with a non-WINE linux install I'd toss Windows altogether and put behind me the driver hunt-install-endless reboot nightmare forever.
Anyone who says that Windows is easier to install than a modern version of Linux is a jackass.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
If everything must 'Just Work (TM)', then you should not even need to install drivers on your system.
For this to work, one needs to be able to design an OS that can take into account the set of all hardware that exists and will ever exist, and to accomodate for that you should have a (very) limited set of hardware interfaces together with a limited set of protocols for each of these.
Of course, USB comes very close to this ideal. However, protocols depend upon their application area, and for every kind of functionality, you need some additions (eg. wireless LAN vs. Ethernet LAN).
I do think, however, that it is entirely possible to build a Linux desktop which can accomodate many types of users.
I have created a Linux system for my father, consisting of Debian with KDE.
He can mail, surf, uses QCad and OpenOffice, and I am able to do remote troubleshooting and repair.
For scanning we still use his old 100 Mhz Pentium system with Windows 98 and Ultr@VNC. That is because he has an old parallel port scanner, and also a SCSI slide scanner (the SCSI card is ISA). He is very satisfied with this system.
We even added a webcam once, but the GNOME application which connected to it was unstable and tended to crash.
I do not need to reinstall/repair his system every so often, which was the case when he ran Windows. This makes it possible for us to concentrate on finding out and learning functionality.
Every six months or so, I provide him with an update of Debian unstable (after I tested it) so that his system expands in functionality.
I added an account for my brother too, so that he can surf and check his email on Yahoo. He did not have any questions or problems at all.
I am fairly confident that I can apply this to other people also (a colleague of my wife has mentioned his interest).
Things which now have gotten better in Debian unstable vs. Debian 3.1 functionality : mostly that KDE now supports USB Mass Storage devices out of the box with hal and DBUS. That is the most basic reason that I need to upgrade my fathers system, he gets more and more requests to exchange things via memory stick.
Other things that I need to check out : printing from QCad and GIMP I still haven't tackled on his system (it works for me) and activation of sound on his desktop (but I haven't done that for myself either, mostly because I do not really need sound functionality on my systems).
What we need (and what I have planned, now only find time) is a public requirements specification on what the basic functionality of a desktop must be and how this can be filled in on most popular distro's.
Part of this public requirements should also be about adding new hardware, after a desktop has been configured and used. This should lead to public recommendations about what brands of hardware to choose.
Another part should also be a list of available software in stores and what alternatives there exist for them.
This must lead to a public integrator manual which should contain easy steps to configure a chosen distribution to the required functionality.
I stress that one of the main points should be that these documents should be public, easily reachable and easily readable, to make it clear to hardware and software companies which do not make it easy to use their products on Linux are not mentioned and to make it feel to them that they are not mentioned.
This manual should be usable by the less-than-average geek, which can then support his family and acquaintances, and make recommendations on hard- and software to use.
I think that the main barrier to adoption is just the lack of local, simple, easy to remember and easy to find knowledge for the average computer enthusiast who normally supports his neighbourhood.