Slashdot Mirror
Linux On Netbooks — a Complicated Story
An anonymous reader writes "Keir Thomas has responded to the recent raft of news stories pointing out that Linux's share of the netbook market isn't as rosy as it used to be. Thomas thinks the problem boils down to a combination of unfamiliar software and unfamiliar hardware, which can 'push users over the edge.' This accounts for the allegedly high return rates of Linux netbooks. In contrast, although far from superior, Windows provides a more familiar environment, making the hardware issues (irritatingly small keyboard, screen etc.) seem less insurmountable; users are less likely to walk away. 'Once again Microsoft's monopoly means Windows is swallowing up another market.'"
My gf knows that Linux is on her computer, but even so, she can't understand why she can't go to BestBuy and get software. Or why she can't download Silverlight. If you put Linux on a machine and don't explain the difference between it and Windows, then you're just asking for trouble.
I am no fan of Microsoft, but it's not like they are doing anything illegal or unethical here. Even Redhat's CEO commented he didn't believe in Linux's desktop future.
Frankly, netbook looked like worth a shot for Linux. If it fails, then maybe desktop market is just too hard for Linux to win.
Of course the actual reason Linux's share of netbooks has dropped is simply because netbooks have changed from a nerds' thing into a mainstream thing.
UNIX's marketshare of all computers did the exact same percentage decline over time as netbooks are having now. It's the early adopters, stupid!
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
That's "effect", not "cause." 9 months ago, there were tons of Linux netbooks in stores. They've gone away because they're unpopular, and get returned a lot. (Well, I can't speak for Germany, but that's the case in the US.)
Comment of the year
A large percentage of Windows users do not understand what an operating system is and assume if they can buy it in a store, it'll work. Manufacturers need to put giant stickers saying:
Not a Windows system, does not run Microsoft anything, none of your programs will work on this, Apple* made it.
*that is a lie, but Mac users won't be on the cheap end of the aisle.
Not that I think it will help much. I've had too many acquaintances think "ooh, cheap computer", buy one, and then ask me if Microsoft Ubuntu is newer or older than Office 07, and if it will run Vista Excel.
They usually end up returning it and I buy another bottle of aspirin.
One thing you should do is thank Linux for forcing MS to keep XP available for you at $15 instead of the normal OEM of $70. It is better for customers and hardware manufacturers that Linux is available as a viable alternative.
One of the problems that I see in the Linux world is that many of us are quick to cry "monopoly" and blame it on unfair practices.
So if it's because of Microsoft's dominant market share, why does Apple do so well in the markets that it is in (at least in terms of return rates)?
Blaming it on Microsoft is a cop-out because it lets people avoid the harsh reality that the fault really lies with Linux. Linux is far, far from passing the Aunt Tillie test. Ubuntu is nice in that it's trying to be more consumer-oriented, but so far, most of its changes are superficial.
And finally, one person's "superior" is another person's design flaw. Apple is "superior" and "innovative" (that's debatable) mostly because Apple doesn't give a damn about its ecosystem. Microsoft does. It bends over backwards and even consciously duplicates buggy behavior, all in the name of backwards compatibility (given the HUGE diversity of software and hardware in the Windows ecosystem, the (relatively small) amount of breakage between each version of Windows is actually a testament to Microsoft's ecosystem cultivation). Is this technically superior? Probably not from an orthodox perspective. Does it make sense? I think so. THIS is why Microsoft has its monopoly. Until Linux can start cultivating such an ecosystem (no, telling someone that they can just download the source and compile it for their system does not cut it), it will always remain on the sidelines. Period.
What is critical mass? All of my programs working and not having to pick and choose compatibility like iPhone vs. Android vs. Simian vs WinMo.
If you switch phones you have to buy all your applications all over again. Some applications are only available on one phone. Some applications run better on one phone than another.
Hardware and OS shouldn't be a deciding factor in a system. Software should be. Microsoft DOMINATES the software compatibility. That's why I bought Windows 95 over MacOS. All of the programs and games I wanted to play ran on DOS/Windows not Macintosh. Linux application compatibility at the time? HA! I installed linux around when I upgraded to Window 2000. I found it incredibly useful as a boot from floppy router (Coyote Linux). That was it. There were no applications I wanted or open source apps that were similar.
Fast forward to today and Apple has seen some improvement on the app front. Still no where near PC but if you're willing to spend an extra $100 for Vista you can also run your Windows programs. There isn't a single application which tempts me over to the apple side. Avid/Premiere > FCP. Nuke > Shake. Everything else is cross platform.
My Windows installation runs pretty much every single application on the planet that I want. I use applications, not operating systems. And Windows is more than good enough as an operating system while offering millions of more programs for me to run. Millions of programs, billions of features and tools. That beats the socks off of a supposedly improved kernel.
Bad thing about eees with Xandros is that it sucks. And people who'll see it would think that Linux generally sucks. MSI had a more acceptable pre-installed Linux offering; that's why return rates are about the same with Windows and Linux MSI Winds.
... if it weren't riddled with fanboyism and aggressive language.
In contrast, although far from superior, Windows provides [...] Once again Microsoft's monopoly means Windows is swallowing up another market.
Wrong. Fail. Abort. Windows is swallowing up another market because Linux doesn't belong on the average user's netbook, for the same reasons it doesn't belong on the average user's desktop. It is a usability nightmare, you need to be a network engineer AND programmer to fix it when it breaks, and perhaps most importantly the Linux community is hostile and unhelpful toward non-techies.
I am a network geek and programmer, and I still get pissed off at Linux on a daily basis because things that should just work, do not. Usability issues never get addressed, no one wants to touch them. "My app is fine, go fuck yourself" is the general attitude I see among app developers/maintainers. Maybe they're sick of replying "RTFM" to every single question, but to me that is a symptom of bad code. Joe Random doesn't read the README, nor should he need to. If you can spend the time to write a long, complicated README, you could spend that same time writing a small script that does all those contrived pre-installation steps for the user.
The problem is that we programmers are terrible users, because we don't use computers the way non-programmers do. The goofy little apps and utilities I make for myself, they have the most spartan, militaristic interfaces because I write the code first, then wrap buttons and knobs around it. I know how to use my stuff, because I'm the guy who built it. I know which bits of code fire when I click this or type that. Joe Random does not. We need to fix our apps to be so intuitive, even Joe Random's retarded stepchild can use them.
The netbook does not matter. Other than the size factor, it is hardly different from 3-4 year old laptops, and like any laptop, usability is top priority. If we want Linux to rock netbooks, we need to make it usable.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I think people would like Linux more if they were familiar with program names. Notepad, Paint, Wordpad, Calc... whatever. When I boot Linux on occasion, I'm more confused with what program does what than how to use them.
Excel, Visio, Quicken, Outlook and Visual Studio aren't exactly self-explanatory.
While I applaud the work of thousands to build such robust amazing programs and give them each their own special name, I'm of the opinion that if you give someone KDE with a few programs labeled generically "email" "internet browser" "calculator" "text editor" "Office Text/Spreadsheet/Presentation" "Network - Wireless" "Printers" and so on and so forth instead of each programs' real name, you'd be a lot closer to the #1 goal of usability: making an intuitive interface.
In the Applications -> Internet menu from Ubuntu on my EeePC, I have "Firefox Web Browser", "Mozilla Thunderbird Mail/News", "Pidgin Instant Messenger", "Transmission BitTorrent Client", and several others. Compare with the Windows debacle of Start -> Publisher -> Weird Program Name.
I agree with your point, and apparently so did the distro maintainers a few years ago that made Linux much better on this count than Windows.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The likes of the big box stores - Best Buy in particular - are not selling the Eee with Linux for a couple of major reasons:
1) They can't sell support for it because ... and ...
a) they don't have anyone who can offer support for Linux
b) there's precious little to support which can be charged
2) They can't sell software for them, because there isn't any.
3) Being a lower-priced item, I'd guess there's a lower profit margin.
So, basically, there's business case impetus to "stick with Windows". I mean, seriously: for the kind of person who shops at Best Buy, which would sell better: that it has XP, so it's familiar, or it has Linux, which is free and secure?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Is usability/training/help for non-technical users. Technical issues aside, one of the ways Photoshop kills GIMP is in usability. This doesn't just mean the UI itself, it also means the materials available to help you learn about it. Adobe has some first rate stuff. Their help files are quite helpful and include things like pictures of what to do, they have online video training docs, and their books are awesome. That goes a long way to making it usable for the non-tech type. My mom is an art teacher by profession and while she's not scared of computers, she's not good with them. She needs things spelled out step by step. Well she tells me that Adobe does a good job of doing just that. She's found it easy to use. She knows the art aspect of what she wants to do, and their docs help her figure out how to make the software do it.
That is something major that much OSS seems to lack. The software itself might be badass, but if it is hard to use, it'll be a geek tool only. Normal users aren't going to read text man pages, Google through newsgroup posts, and try stuff on their own to make things work. They need an easy experience. To them the computer is a tool, not a toy, thus it'd better be easy to use because learning how to use it isn't fun for them.
So if Linux ever wants a big share on the desktop, that is something that is going to have to happen. All the common tools that people use will have to be nice and easy to use, and nice and easy to learn about.
However, none of that is going to happen until, as you say, they start taking a more realistic look at their products.
I had a friend who won an EEE netbook, which came with Linux. He liked it until he tried to use it on a website that contained Flash content. This netbook did not have Flash pre-installed, and he was unable to install it himself by following the links on the website, so he asked me for help. I am not very familiar with Linux (I try a distro each year to see if it is up to my standards yet). I was unable to determine what type of package the Linux distro on this machine supported, and was unable (through trial and error) to get any of Adobe's Flash for Linux packages to install. I ended up having to do it manually from the command line with an APT GET command that I found after a Google search. That is not an acceptable user experience for customers who expect to use this computer the same as they would use any other computer. And that is why you can expect high return rates for Linux Netbooks.
- James
Excel, Visio, Quicken, Outlook and Visual Studio aren't exactly self-explanatory.
They don't need to be; everyone already knows what they are.
And here we are already, back to the problem pointed to in TFA.
I am a software developer, and the guy all my friends bring their PCs to. I LOVE the UNIX environment, and HATE the Windoze environment, and I have an 8 port KVM on my desk with Linux, Mac, Solaris, and Windows at my fingertips.
I always use Linux or Solaris for server stuff if possible. To me putting a database application or a WEB server on a Windows box is just silly.
But I am typing on a Windoze XP machine. (Vista does not exist in my world) I seldom use the Linux machine because I always need to switch to the Windows machine for something the Linux one cannot do, and there is nothing the Windows one can't do, so I just end up on the Windows machine. The MAC is nice, and I use it occasionally, but it too just cannot do everything I need, or is more frustrating to get it done. When I first got the MAC, I thought it was so cool and used the hell out of it for a while, but simple things can be quite hard to do sometimes because it tries to be so "easy" that it can become hard to do anything the MAC guys did not think of an easy way to handle. So back to the Windows machine... again because I need to do something the MAC has difficulty with. As a desktop, Solaris is useless for most stuff.
It is like a trap in a way. Once I go to the Windows machine for one application I cannot do easily or at all on whatever other machine I was on, I just start doing stuff on that machine, and soon forget about the others. Cygwin and PuTTY do not help either because with that working, grep, find, and ssh is there, and I'm just done. (The Cygterm hack is my console, cmd.exe is dreadful.)
I really wish this were not true, but ...
Has anyone entertained the thought that people might actually choose windows because it's the best available option?
Part of the blame are the bug-ridden cheap distros that come with the computer.
I've seen a whole community trying to help a guy to get his notebook, mainly the wi-fi, to work.
Days later he gave up and installed Ubuntu. It just worked.
"Linux .. is a usability nightmare, you need to be a network engineer AND programmer to fix it when it breaks, and perhaps most importantly the Linux community is hostile and unhelpful toward non-techies"
You're talking total nonsense. Any modern Linux distro is perfectly usable. And to fix it when it breaks, which is a rarety - is just as easy as the Install-Program option in Windows.
As for the hostile Linux, you are equally inaccurate in that statement. Join a forum, politely ask a question and get a response else pay for a support contract.
"I am a network geek and programmer, and I still get pissed off at Linux on a daily basis because things that should just work, do not"
Maybe you should try an other occupation?