Torvalds On Desktop Linux's Slow Uptake

javipas notes a Wired piece summarizing a two-part interview with Linus Torvalds that's up at linux-foundation.org (part 1, part 2). In the second part the creator of the Linux kernel gives his view on the limited success of Linux on the desktop. "I have never, ever cared about really anything but the Linux desktop... The desktop is also the thing where people get really upset if something changes, so it's really hard to enter the desktop market because people are used to whatever they used before, mostly Windows... better is worse if it's different."

Comments

Simple reason enough

[elrous0]

People invest a lot of time learning a certain UI, the way it does things and the interface. For technical people like us, it's not that difficult to learn a new UI (since we have an appreciation of the underlying works). But for non-techies, learning a new UI (particularly one that makes as much use of the terminal/command line as most Linux distros do) can be a major hassle. It's just not worth it for most people, just for some nominal security benefits and to save the $100 or so that Windows adds to the typical computer.

Ubuntu is making some inroads, with a more user-friendly GUI. But most people just don't see the value.

Re:Simple reason enough

[Lumpy]

Which is why when we were ready to switch to the new Office release I convinced management to give OO.o a try, waving huge $$$ in savings and no added costs in retraining as office 2007 is DRASTICALLY different than office 2003.

They bit it, that was 8 months ago. we are STILL using OO.o and not going to switch back to MS office. We still use outlook 2003 for email, and I am investigating the number of people that actually use the groupware aspects of outlook/exchange to make a run for replacing it with something else with zero licensing costs and liability.

Personally I love the screw up that Microsoft has done lately. I bet I can get linux in on several office machines if I can get the vertical apps to run under wine. hell sell it as a thin client/server aspect that saves even more money in admin time and licensing costs.

Microsoft single handedly removed the one barrier that linux and oo.o had. Training costs. Vista and office 2007 have the same or higher training costs than the OSS replacements.

It depends which lens you use.

[delire]

Linux is doing just fine if you consider growth rate. These statistics - and those of several other sites I've encountered (including my own) indicate it's adoption rate is as fast as that of Apple's, in some cases moreso. However, adoption looks very poor if you look to 'market share', a figure based on sale count, and by far the most popular guage.

Recently, however, the wide success of the EeePC (and apparent solid sales of Dell's M1330 w/Ubuntu) shows that Linux can work very well in the hands of the uninterested or uninitiated if it comes preinstalled. At a conference I recently attended I met an art curator using an EeePC. She said she doesn't like computers but prefers the EeePC because "it's easier than my MacBook and has better internet". For the casual and highly mobile computer user I think Linux is very much claiming market share.

At the other end, the workstation market, Linux is also making very strong ground (3D animation, film compositing/editing, engineering).

Re:I disagrrree

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with you on this one. The year of Linux on *my* desktop was 2007.
I switched to Kubuntu for 2 reasons:
  1. I finally got broadband.
  2. I took a C++ class so I needed a compiler. (So obviously I'm not one of you professional "software engineers")
This was in January. I told my (non-techie) wife what I was up to, but didn't try to evangelize or anything.
Around May she asked me to install Kubuntu on her laptop, citing fear of Microsoft lock-in.
Both of our setups are dual-boot, but we boot Windows less than once a month.
And it's really weird how she never needs help with her computer anymore.

Developers, developers, developers

[sundarvenkata]

Mod me down. But the single best thing that the Linux community can do is to develop a free IDE for wxPython development (the only sane environment so far for cross-platform development). Imagine the number of applications you would have when you have a single IDE which can provide you with installers for n-number of operating systems without any additional effort other than learning python. Also since the next generation .NET applications (WPF and the like) cannot run without a huge runtime (since .NET does not have a linker), this is the best time for such a killer IDE. Can the open source community wake up atleast now?

Re:Dual boot Ubuntu

[pandrijeczko]

I've been a UNIX geek for some 20 years (though I always have one PC somewhere with the latest iteration of Windows on it - well, apart from that Vista trash but that's another story) and I started off with Linux some ten years ago - firstly with Slackware, then Red Hat, then SuSE, back to Red Hat for a while, then Linux From Scratch.

About four years ago I settled on Gentoo Linux and I'm still with it - as an experienced Linux person, I truly believe that the only way of having a fully optimal and stable system as much of the time as possible is to "do-it-yourself" with rolling updates that compile everything against the library versions your system currently has. Gentoo isn't perfect but it does its job most of the time and that's what counts.

I wouldn't say that Red Hat and SuSE "sold out" to commercial interests but they are certainly no longer contributing to the adoption of Linux on the desktop, preferring to sell Linux products more for the corporate server space.

Having said that, I tried Ubuntu recently and whilst I cannot consolidate my mind into buying into any distro that expects relatively frequent "wipe and fully reinstall" updates, I was impressed with the user friendliness of it - to the point where I've pointed friends of mine at trying it when they've asked about it, they all seem to still be using it (at least dual-booting it like you) and I've not had many questions or problems thrown at me by them.

So whilst Ubuntu is of no real use to me, I very much respect what they are doing and long may they continue with it as it will be those kinds of easy-to-use distros with good support tactics that will determine Linux's penetration in the long run.

Wayback machine....

[El Lobo]

Go to the wayback machine. The VERY first cached slashdot page (from 1998) there has this interesting article conviniently titled Linux Affecting MS Sales? " ( http://web.archive.org/web/19980113193017/slashdot.org/slashdot.cgi?mode=article&artnum=419 [archive.org] ): From the article: "Could 98 really be the year Linux breaks into the main stream corporate world in a big way?". Really, it's not funny anymore.

Re:I disagrrree

[Bombula]

I can attest to being one of those recent adopters. I've dual-booted various Linux desktop distros over the years, but have never stuck with them. But I recently fired up Ubuntu 7.10 on my laptop, and it really did 'just work' - and I have to rig it to boot and install off a key drive as well.

So far I'm quite impressed with Ubuntu. The Gnome GUI works just fine for me - a nice blend(ish) of Windows and Mac OS look and feel. It lacks some of the polish of XP and certainly of OSX - I have compiz running and there are glitches here and there (window tearing, video rendering artifacting and refresh issues, etc) even with a GeForce Mobility 7600 card under the hood and the latest nVidia drivers. But I've been able to do everything I wanted using the most common applications, with the exception of importing a list of urls from a file into a download manager - for whatever reason, the most popular Ubuntu DM out there just couldn't handle this task, so I used XP and Free DM for the job instead.

I'm not a complete convert as my work requires some XP-specific apps, but I'm liking Ubuntu an awful lot so far and for basic stuff - email, internet, word-processing, etc it is perfect.

Contrary to Torvald's foolish statements, I think the key to getting Linux wider distribution is definitely pushing on the Desktop front, and we have the 'just works' push of Ubuntu to thank for that, because now it's finally getting Linux into the end-user OEM market.

Obviously Linux runs a huge portion of behind-the-scenes computer applications, but the boasts of Linux gaining market share mentioned specifically refer to desktop adopters. So it is, quite frankly, a very stupid thing to 'never, ever care about'. Linux may run the back end in tens of thousands of servers for businesses and governments, but it is only by capturing a share of the mass market - 10,000 times larger, with its hundreds of millions of users - that Linux and open-source software will have a prayer of become a genuine competitive threat and viable alternative to the M$-Mac oligopoly.

Re:People don't like change

[10Ghz]

Disclaimer: I'm a Mac-user, and mostly ex Linux-user who still, deep down, roots for Linux.

There has been a bunch of reports recently that show OS X gaining market-share. And that's a great thing! Anything that erodes the mediocrity of Windows is a good thing. One of the tools used to track the trends in OS-usage is the Netapplications survey, which monitors which OS'es website-users are using. While that tool might not be perfect for determining the actual market-share, it's a good tool to show trends where the market is moving to. And what do their results show us?

In March 2007, Mac OS has market-share of 6.09%. In January 2008 that had increased to 7.57%. Not bad. And while Linux is significantly smaller, it too has something interesting to report. In March 2007, Linux had market-share of 0.4%. In January 2007, Linux had market-share of 0.67%. That's an over 50% increase in market-share in under a year. Had OS X had similar growth, they would have went from 6.09% in march to over 9% in January.

Re:It's easy - just make it better

[MrNemesis]

Personally, I think the trick is not to chase the so-called "best" option (typically XP or OSX or but to make a desktop that's a) simple and reasonably intuitive off the bat and b) easily configurable to get to where the user wants (if the user doesn't want to "go" anywhere with the UI they don'g get past (a) anyway so it's of little concern).

Personally, I think that the "big four" (Windows, OSX, KDE* and GNOME) both come very close to fulfilling (a) and some way to fulfilling (b), with KDE IMHO being the most uber-configurable whilst squirreling away most of the more frightening UI options away behind multiple tabs of increasingly complex/obscure functionality - simple changes are one or two clicks or a drag'n'drop away, but if you want to change the behaviour of window class XYZ you generally have to drill down three or four menus.

I first delved properly into OSX a few months ago with a Mac mini I was upgrading for a friend. The UI is nice off the bat, but I found it highly functionally limited when I wanted to do "power user" things. It took me about five minutes to find out how to launch an app I had just installed that wasn't shown in the dock, and I'm still at a bit of a loss as to how to switch between apps when I don't know what their dock icon looks like. I find that my way of working doesn't really fit around the Apple way of how it feels I should work, and I don't like swimming upstream.

In windows, it's easy enough to create new panels, menus, re-order this, that and t'other easily enough, but adding things like an applet to control my media player for the taskbar usually means tracking down an obscure plugin of some sort, whereas with KDE and GNOME it's stupidly easy to do IME. Similarly, configuring things like focus-follows-mouse requires installing extra tools (and breaks loads of apps as well, especially you, Outlook!), and a host of other annoyances.

The fact of the matter is that it's only annoying power users like me who want all of this functionality. Your non-power user will just stick with what they're given; some are amenable to learning that the "start menu" is at the top of the screen, some aren't. But there's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all UI; remove the power user crap and you piss off the power users. Make every config dialogue a snowstorm of options and you confuse the people who neither know nor care what they do (how many desktops have you seen still displaying the garish "Teletubbies" XP wallpaper?).

As a long-time KDE user I'm obviously biased, because I like the KDE approach the best (the first-run "Do you want your desktop be behave like Windows, OSX or UNIX?" wizard is a lovely touch) - but I do realise they could do a better job of hiding the complex functionality from novice users (I'm a big fan of the "simple/advanced" switch to load up extended config dialogues). But at least the functionality is there reasonably easily if I need it - no installing extra gubbins, no editing registries, no tweaking config files. Alot of what I think they say (said?) about UNIX/Linux currently applies alot to KDE as well - making the easy things hard, making the hard things easy and the impossible things possible.

This post not intended as a pro-KDE, anti-GNOME/OSX/windows/whatever troll. I just think this idea that "there is one desktop paradigm that is unequivocally the best for every possible scenario" needs to stop. Incidentally, my KDE setup bears almost no resemblence to the defaults, and combines the things I like from every desktop UI I've ever used because I've been able to adapt it to my needs rather than have to shape my needs around the limitations of a system.

* That's 3.5.x, not 4.0, which is pure hell to use at the moment, again IMHO.

My Seventh Grade Linux classroom.

[Prospero2007]

I work for a program in San Antonio called iMAK. (interactive Media Applications at Krueger.) We are technology magnet within the Northeast Independent School District. I was hired on as a technology teacher last year, and after the first semester I started imaging the Dell 620's in my room to run Ubuntu/--Now Gutsy. It has been challenging creating an independent Linux lab within such a large school district, but it's VERY successfuly. The kids, parents, and the other technology teacher I drag in from around the district really like what I've done. Here is a link with pictures: http://www.neisd.net/imak/classroom.html My podcast! http://www.neisd.net/imak/Beck/podcasts/Beck/rss.xml Thanks, Josh Beck NEISD School District San Antonio, Texas

Re:I disagrrree

[YaroMan86]

I agree. Linux on the desktop over the past 2 years has taken spectacular leaps forward, and the next couple of years are going to be just as bold as Linux starts maturing.

Very true. Though "Linux maturing" can and has been relative. It may not have been ready for desktop, but it has been right on the money for such things as server side applications. And, as far as I have seen, I've seen Linux as the most commonly embedded system over anything else that tried to do the same things. The open source model is what brought it that far, one can easily customize it completely for their needs, which is why for some more "hardcore" Linux users, things like Linux from scratch are a wonderful thing. Its also the only operating system family I can think off that you can install on a thumb drive if you wanted to. However, I must agree, it is 'not yet there' though it has been shown to be easily used by non-technical users in the case of such Linux distros as Ubuntu or Mint.

* The rise of FireFox and, to a lesser extent, Safari means that the web doesn't require, nor mean, Internet Explorer.

An interesting point. Though, to be nitpicky: Use of the web never required Internet Explorer. However, for most users, and I'm talking Average Joe Shmuck here, it did "mean" Internet Explorer. This was more about Microsoft's highly unethical and illegal practice of dominating markets. Proof of this was when FireFox started seeing higher adoption, we finally got Internet Explorer 7 after a long, long time. I still agree, though that we're finally seeing some other browsers out there getting decent market share after the Netscape fiasco.

* The rise of Ubuntu as a 'standard' has helped solve the confusion of multiple competing desktops to new users and driven increased users. It's also improved support - UbuntuForums is a fantastic resource - and increasingly made GNOME as the "de facto" desktop environment.

Ubuntu is, in my opinion, the most important step toward Linux becoming an operating system Average Joe Shmuck would actually use or even care about. I remember a day where Linux was considered nothing but a "geeky hobbyists tool." Usually by those who never realized that Linux had been rather widesperead in many other markets aside from the desktop. Ubuntu has been helping Linux out a great deal with adoption, especially within the past couple years. I theorize it has been with the veritable flop that is Vista.

* Improved driver support, which is going to keep improving. It's still far from perfect, sadly, but it is most definitely getting there - when Intel and ATI are both releasing open source specifications to get proper open source drivers written, it's a good sign.

I've had firsthand experience with this. After getting fed up with Vista, which was, sadly, pre-installed on my beloved PC, I installed Ubuntu on my machine. Everything worked, no configuration whatsoever. Downgrading my Windows down to XP was a fiasco, however, with almost all of my hardware not working or in "standard mode." (By standard mode I mean the very default settings Windows foists on my hardware so that it will work, but at a bare minimum.) Took me the better part of two days to research my hardware to get XP working. Finally, only about a week ago, I reformatted my entire HDD and made Ubuntu my *only* solution and in the extremely rare instance I need Windows for anything, launch it in a virtual machine. Drivers, on my computer, were just available and worked readily on Ubuntu. Am I saying it will always work. No, I have a good friend who couldn't get a certain tablet to work correctly, another with limited webcam support, and of course, there's always the dreaded wifi network driver/widescreen display driver availability that Linux had lacked. From what I read in the 2.6.24 changelog, this had been addressed and improved on, but, not using the 2.6.24 kernel, I really can't say.

* Eye-can

Re:People don't like change

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they don't care much about names either way. As long as they can make the program do what they want it to with as little hassle as possible, they couldn't care less about its name. Besides, KDE, for one, shows a short description of the program right in the menu, so you don't even have to memorize it.

I'm not sure who "they" is, but I personally was put off by Sodipodi because of the strange name. And Ubuntu itself sounds strange. I don't know how to talk about it because I don't know how to pronounce it. Linux nerds will look down on me and regular people will just be confused. And what the hell is Kopete?

I know this is kind of shallow, and I will use things with funny names if I really need to, but to casual computer users this terminology creates a real barrier. How can you use something when you don't even know how to talk about it?

Inkscape: there's a name I can get behind. And OpenOffice; that's a good one. And Firefox at least uses real words. Plus it sounds kind of cool. Aesthetics aren't everything, but they are not insignificant, either.