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Getting Past "Ready For the Desktop"
Jeremy LaCroix suggests in an editorial at Linux.com that the phrase "ready for the desktop" is ready for retirement. As anyone who's been using Linux for several years (or even a few) for everyday tasks knows, "ready for the desktop" is in the eye of the beholder.
Look at the facts. Writing desktops is not easy. It took Microsoft 7 years to make vista, and it still has problems being accepted as a successor to XP. And XP itself was critisized as being too colorful and kiddy when it was launched. Micrrosoft also messed up ME and arguably 98. This is microsoft with their multi billion dollar budgets.
Linux has its chance between 2001-2007 to catch up to XP, but GNOME messed up with its file manager, KDE messed up by feature creep. Also note that Firefox was only launched in 2004, IE6 had three years of 95% marketshare while linux users were in the extreme minority. Ubuntu was only launched in 2004 as well.
Now linux had its chance and it is being forgotten by all but the most hardcore nerds. Even OLPC is getting Windows now. Just accept the failure, and work on other projects.
Can play all the latest games and has support from the commercial software industry. Which Linux is not.
Why?
Well. For one thing, Hardware makers do not want to code drivers for Linux because they are terrified their precious trade secrets will be reverse engineered, Game makers are not wanting to produce games for Linux because they are terrified that their oh so important copy protection schemes will be cracked. On and on the list goes.
Most Linux OSes are designed in a consistent manner from an OS point of view. If the commercial software industry really WANTED to produce applications for Linux, they would. They don't for a myriad of religious, ideological, and shareholder lawsuit reasons and will fight until the bitter end to see that Linux does become something the masses want to adopt.
Fuck You.
Linux satisfies all my home desktop needs for quite some time. Work is another matter, and I can safely admit that we won't have MS Office, Trados, Reason or Photoshop, or other popular specialized GUI software (dealing flawlessly with de-facto standard formats) on Linux anytime soon. But this only proves the assertion about the eye of the beholder.
GIMP is ASS!!
the worst, ugliest UI outside of Blender
As a design pro and someone who can get by in Linux (and knows his way around a CLI even...) I wouldn't recommend GIMP to anybody. It may be functional and even powerful but creatives aren't interested in wasting time on it when they have an elegant functional piece of software in the Adobe suite of apps.
OOo on the other hand, works fairly well - but for online machines it's pointless with the advent of the Zoho suite or Google docs. I wouldn't wanna do page layout in either though...