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The Next Leap for Linux
Nrbelex writes "The New York Times is taking a look at the state of Linux. "Linux has always had a reputation of being difficult to install and daunting to use. Most of the popular Windows and Macintosh programs cannot be used on it, and hand-holding — not that you get that much of it with Windows — is rare. But those reasons for rejecting Linux are disappearing." The article discusses major PC makers' newest offers and compares them to their Windows counterparts."
Do you ever get the impression that the Slashdot crowd feel compelled to complain whenever someone points out the obvious shortcomings of Linux?
Linux doesn't work at all without a lot of time and effort put into tinkering. Here it comes...
You must not have tried it recently. It's come a long way!
Yes, I tried it in July. And used it yesterday and the day before on others' systems.
The only people who find it fairly clear as to how to go about things in Linux are those who have Unix and/or programming backgrounds. I have no idea how to compile something, for example. I have no idea what files define what. When my graphics card is only putting out 640x480, and the driver install doesn't help, I'm stymied. And I'm in the 1% of the population that even knows what a driver is.
I used to tell people how easy it was to build your own PC. Then I started trying to teach them. They ask the most bizarre, ignorant questions you could ever imagine. No, actually, that's not true. You couldn't imagine them. They treated hardy components with ultimate care and tossed fragile components on the carpet. They tried to force cables into the wrong connectors. They didn't know the difference between power and data. They forgot to plug things in. They didn't understand things like "master" and "slave." No idea what BIOS is, nor CMOS, nor OS, nor driver, nor the difference between Windows and Office.
These weren't dumb people; these were normal people who didn't have the vast experience and the resulting intuitions regarding computer basics that I had. So for me, putting together a PC is like "well, you just plug this in, plug that in, and you're off!" But each of those steps requires a set of assumptions and knowledge that I take totally for granted.
Linux is like this, but on a software level. I'm sure I could learn. But I just don't want to. I am not interested in the ins and outs of how all of it works; I just want it to work with a minimal amount of fuss. And I am so much more sophisticated than Joe Sixpack it's unreal.
Until at least someone like me finds Linux easy to install and get to running correctly, it is little more than a curiosity. A hobbyist's toy or the tool of the networking professional (or, as the article stated, someone who has no needs beyond what an Ubuntu install offers right away--provided the display driver ever works right).
These aren't stupid complaints about Linux. They're objective observations from a very proficient computer user who has no reason to go out of his way to shoot down Linux.
It just isn't ready yet.