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Can Ordinary PC Users Ditch Windows for Linux?
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Mark Golden, a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires, tried to switch from Windows to Linux, and found it too complex for his liking. He writes: 'For me, though, using the Linux systems didn't make sense. I often send documents and spreadsheets between my home PC and the one at work, which uses Microsoft Office. And the files are sometimes complex. Meanwhile, for both personal and professional computer use, I want access to all multimedia functions. While solutions may exist to almost every problem I encountered, I was willing to invest only a limited amount of time as a system administrator. Claims by some Linux publishers that anybody can easily switch to Linux from Windows seem totally oversold.'"
As a guy who is doing the same thing he is, trying to drop Windows from my everyday computing, I feel his pain. While editing config files itself isn't too hard, knowing what config file to edit and when, and how to edit it is very difficult for a newbie.
The issue is not that they don't work, but that you still have to install drivers for them. The point being that in Linux you still have to install drivers for many hardware packages that are out there.
I have in Nvidia motherboard. I can install WinXP on the machine, but I can't use the onboard network interface until I've installed the drivers. It has USB2, but I can only get USB1.1 speeds until I install the drivers. It has onboard sound, but I need to install the appropriate drivers.
All these things have just worked in Linux for me for a long time. I haven't had to install the drivers to get them to work for me because most common hardware is supported directly. Including my Lexmark printer, my Canon flatbed scanner, my Logitech webcam, my Winfast TV Tuner card and so on.
Your point is misleading. Just because every piece of hardware off the shelf works with windows, it still requires that the drivers be installed. Linux has exactly the same requirement. You need to install the appropriate driver (kernel module) for it to work in Linux if one doesn't already exist. However, Linux comes with more drivers built in to the platform itself by default than Windows does. Its not uncommon to have to install drivers off a disc for Windows, but very common for most devices to just plug in and work in Linux now.
I think you got it more correct than the grandparent. Graphics, sound, and multimedia devices are definitely the biggest hindrance to Linux on the desktop. Last night alone I discovered that somehow Gentoo and udev had removed my /dev/cdroms/cdrom0 link to my cdrom drive so now I couldn't mount a cdrom the same way anymore. Then the copying of files to my PSP via USB failed for some unkown reason. Plus, when I mounted the thing again it was read-only and I couldn't change it. Until Linux improves it's support of the more gadgety stuff like multimedia devices and graphics hardware (don't get me started on ATI drivers), Linux on the desktop is not going to get anywhere. The problem, of course, is that this falls squarely on the shoulders of the device manufacturers. They can argue for business reasons that it's not in their interest to support a third operating system. It's a catch-22 of sorts. Linux won't gain ground until hardware support is better, and hardware support won't increase until the userbase grows a bit more.
The only way this can stop is by getting students in engineering, computer science, and information technology disciplines to learn to like Linux and see it's benefits versus other operating systems. This way, when they go to work for the device makers, they can advocate that it's good to offer support for Linux.
It took me weeks to get this stuff working on my box. Most often, a quick 'alsaconf' will solve your sound problems, burning is easily handled by k3b, and kplayer, kaffiene, mplayer, gmplayer, etc. will handle movie watching with ease.
What bugs me about this, though, is that there are simple solutions to almost every problem with linux I've seen - yet the solutions don't quite get integrated into the distros.
It's aggrivating.
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I just ran the Windows XP install CD which didn't want to give me a higher screen resolution than 1024 by 768 and didn't get the network running, or my woreless or my soundcard. :-( Such things really need to be resolved, because even if _I_, in discussion with others, would be able to resolve all problems, my grandparents surely wouldn't.
Ubuntu has BETTER hardware compatability than windows XP does out of the box.
No operating system other than Mac OSX will do what you ask. None.
This is why the OS is pre-installed on the computers you get. Windows CANT give you a readdy to go install.. Hell not even a DELL recovery CD will. I still had to go hunting for drivers.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
No, it's not. WMP is *capable* of playing DVDs providing you have installed a codec. Same with QuickTime, Real, you name it. You need the codec, which usually comes with a DVD drive. The reason it's not shipped as standard? Because CSS (The DVD encryption algorithm) is a controlled one requiring fees to be paid to implement decryption.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?