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Why Linux Has Failed on the Desktop
SlinkySausage writes "Linux is burdened with 'enterprise crap' that makes it run poorly on desktop PCs, says kernel developer Con Kolivas. Kolivas recently walked away from years of work on the kernel in despair. APCmag.com has a lengthy interview with Kolivas, who explains what he sees is wrong with Linux from a performance perspective and how Microsoft has succeeded in crushing innovation in personal computers."
I'm sorry, you must have posted on the wrong topic. here you go.
Seriously, didn't we just have this conversation?
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
Connnnnn!!!!!
..oh wait.
No, it most certainly is not there. Anecdote time! Due to a hardware limitation (and don't pretend most systems don't have one goofy one or another), my new gigabit NIC would only function in slots 1-4 of my system, but not in slots 5 or 6 (something to do with the different PCI controller for each set of slots). So, I moved my video card down there (yes, it's a PCI-only server, no AGP). Next boot, my uber-friendly Ubuntu couldn't locate the video card and X11 wouldn't start.
Not only that, but it made no attempt to locate the card, autodetect stuff, etc - it just hung at a bizarre character-based "window" telling me to edit my xorg.conf. Mind you, I can do it - if I have a shell prompt, which it did not give me. Furthermore, I can edit some things, but coming up with the new PCI address of the card - why the HELL am I having to do this?
Is this a "common" activity? No. But when you add up all of the little things a user might do (upgrade the video card, move things about - essentially "touch" anything) that can completely BREAK the system, well, it's horseshit that you can convert normal people to Linux without you there as permanent on-call support.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
A failure would require a decline. You could talk about a failure if Linux had some noticable share in the desktop market and is in decline now.
This is not supported by my observations. The penetration of Linux on the Desktop is still low. Granted. But to me it seems it's on the rise, not decline. Slow rise, but rise.
People finding Vista appalling, given its data hunger and its noseyness, trying something new. Finding that there's quite useful tools that can easily replace Outlook, IE, Word and Excel. Gamers that find out that WINE is quite stable and compatible and that it surprisingly crashes LESS than Windows itself (and if, WINE is restarted faster than Windows is...). Add in the Malware flood that plagues Windows and (at least for now) spares Linux almost completely, and the news about yet another bank phishing attack, and you can easily see why people start to peek over the fence to Linux.
So when I look around myself, I see quite a few people who start to take a look at Linux, at least as a dual boot option. And it's far from "geeks only".
So I wouldn't call Linux a failure. It's slow on the pickup and it has no marketing goons behind itself to push it to the front, but people talk, people read and people want their privacy back. Sure, that's not 50% market share, not by any measurment. But it's coming. Not going.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Apologies for not reading the article or even any of the comments. Linux has "failed" with desktop consumers because it hasn't been consumer-centric for very long (and may still not be for many people). Let's look at the facts:
Windows:
- Ships with nearly every PC
- Designed for dunces
- Runs 99% of the software consumers pick up off the shelf
Linux:
- Has only recently begun to (optionally) ship with desktops
- Was originally designed for tech-savvy nerds
- Runs a bunch of apps consumers have never heard of and have never seen on the store shelves
Duh!