Why Linux Can't 'Sell' On the Desktop

New submitter VoyagerRadio writes "Recently I found myself struggling with a question I should easily have been able to answer: Why would anyone want to use Linux as their everyday desktop (or laptop) operating system? It's a fair question, and asked often of Linux, but I'm finding it to be a question I can no longer answer with the conviction necessary to 'sell' the platform. In fact, I kind of feel like a car salesman who realizes he no longer believes in the product he's been pitching. It's not that I don't find Linux worthy; I simply don't understand how it's ever going to succeed on the desktop with voluntary marketing efforts. What do Linux users need to do to replicate the marketing efforts of Apple and Microsoft and other corporate operating system vendors? To me, it seems you don't sell Linux at all because there isn't supposed to be one dominant distribution that stands out from the rest. Without a specific product to put on the shelf to sell, what in the world do you focus your efforts on selling? An idea?"

Comments

All major OSes are pretty well usable

[roothog]

I have two offices, each with a different desktop (WinXP on one, OS X Lion on the other), two MacBooks (Lion on one, Leopard on the other), and a home Linux system (Ubuntu/KDE). I find all systems to be fairly usable, and for the most part, I don't really care which one I'm using. I just want to be able to use the computer, so trying to push one type of system over another seems pretty pointless if they're all ultimately usable. The differences among the systems end up being pretty minor:

Linux:
- Easy connectivity to remote systems/servers.
- Easy to find, install, and uninstall software via apt-get, with reasonable assurance that the centralized repositories aren't hosting malware.
- I never think about licenses, everything is free [beer].

OS X:
- Easy connectivity to remote systems/servers.
- UNIX with a pretty GUI (though KDE is pretty nice nowadays).
- Many applications have easy installs/uninstalls, just drag the folder into /Applications or from there to the trash. (Though having to remember which applications uninstall with a drag to the trash and which need to run an uninstaller is annoying).

Windows:
- Usable as long as I can stay away from the start menu (which I find cumbersome).
- Needs a real command line that lets me ssh & scp. Having to use a GUI program to scp annoys me.
- No customizability. For example, I can't figure out how to have the clock on the taskbar also list today's date.
- Installing software via downloads of .exe's from random websites is worrisome.

some reasons

[e**(i pi)-1]

I use linux as my main work platform since 15 years. Here are a few reasons why I still use a mac. Here are the tools, I use regularly where I did not find analogues.

• dead simple and robust video editing with quicktime pro (copy paste) which is able to read and export in essentially any format
• screen recording which allows to archive any video which is visible on the screen.
• pages, to quickly make a flyer, syllabus which looks great.
• garage band which just works and does not need to be learned because one can just plug into the epiano and work.
• PDF manipulation: preview is a fantastic tool to rearrange, copy paste pages in PDF files. Nothing like this exists. I use Adobe professional to reduce the size of PDF files (especially from scanned books). Most of the time the space reduction is a factor of 10.
• Scanning: with a Fujitsu scanner, I can get a digital version of a book (cut the spine and throw it into the scanner, push one button). The result is a perfectly OCRd PDF file. No hassels, no time waste. Nothing like this seems to exist on linux.
• presentation software. The simplicity and robustness of keynote is fantastic, especially if you want to play embedded videos.
• digitizing DVD's. With handbreak, it is trivial to get a nice video file from a DVD. Throw in the DVD, push a button and wait.
• Backup. I even use time machine to backup some linux directories. Sync them over to the mac, where things are archived nicely.
• hardware: since a couple of years it is virtually impossible to get reasonably prized displays. The imac has 2560x1440. Almost all monitors one can buy now have only ridiculous 1920x1080. Even the ipad has with 2048x1536 pixels twice as many. Also the macbook air is unmatched.

Why do I use linux then?

• Have complete control about the machine
• Have a second leg just in case.
• Not to be dependent on a vendor, who might just one day decide to discontinue with operating systems because it is not profitable. (I do not believe that to happen with the Mac, but I had been burned several times in my life, like with Next). This is not going to happen to me again.
• Have a fast machine. Lag and delays (even fractions of seconds) drive me nuts. Linux allows me to customize my machine so that this never ever happens. Its like going with a racing car. I use a minimal windows manager (blackbox) and disable anything which is not needed, and also regularly buy a decent new CPU. On the mac, especially with "versions", things can become frustrating. open a document for a moment, then close preview, delete the document, then open preview. The program tries to find the old document and blocks the machine. An operating system never should slow down the user.
• Fun. I like to tune things but do not like to do too much sysadmin. Typically, I do not have to do anything once things are running.

Re:Why not

[mvdwege]

You're trolling. The default on Ubuntu is brasero, which gives you the option to burn on the fly right in the dialog.

Next time, pick a less transparent lie.

Mart

Re:heh

[hawkinspeter]

My experience is that Windows is missing lots of features. No SSH support; no support for filesystems other than NTFS and FAT; no low level disk tools (dd); poor NFS support; doesn't come with a decent text editor.... I could carry on, but you get the idea.

Re:This is an easy question to answer

[unapersson]

1) You don't need to, but anyway, it's been a long time since I've seen boxed PC software in the wild. Online there's plenty of software you can buy for it.
2) Humble Bundle. But that said, I game on PC a lot less than I used to, the Windows only policy of a lot of PC game developers drove me to console gaming.
3) Which decade did you last use Linux? I don't think I've even got emacs installed.
4) Given the tone of your post, I'm not surprised, but in my experience that's inaccurate.
5) Gibberish.