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

heh

[stoolpigeon]

What do Linux users need to do to replicate the marketing efforts of Apple and Microsoft and other corporate operating system vendors?
 
Spend millions of dollars on advertising and even more in subsidies to hardware manufacturers (or like Apple make your own hardware.) But I have no idea why anyone would want to do that. Though I confess, I don't really care if Linux gets the kind of broad use that Windows has or even OSX. I used to worry about it, because I had a fear that if not enough people used Linux it might go away. But now Linux is so incredibly successful on the server and phone that I'm not worried about that any more.
 
I really hate Apple - their whole approach but more and more I find myself telling people, "Hey, if you can afford it try out Apple." It seems to work well for normals. They appear to have less issues than the normals running Windows. Frankly, I don't get it, but then again - I don't care. I just want people to be able to do what they want so they can leave me alone so I can focus on doing what I want - which means using Linux. I'm glad I'm not dependent on winning over people that are willing pay extra for devices that are locked down physically and ideologically. (Nobody needs to get their panties in a bunch defending Apple to me. I've heard all the reason people like their stuff. It's not that I don't understand - I just don't agree. I find their products to be aesthetically pleasing as long as I don't actually have to use them.)
 
And of course MS had to break the law to get the install numbers they had. I'm not willing to go that route either for Linux.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we have done it completely wrong for a long time. Asking people to please use a platform is counter productive. Telling them they can't have it could be a better solution.

Re:heh

[Chrisq]

What do Linux users need to do to replicate the marketing efforts of Apple and Microsoft and other corporate operating system vendors? Spend millions of dollars on advertising and even more in subsidies to hardware manufacturers (or like Apple make your own hardware.)

Don't forget the smear campaigns and FUD about other operating systems, threats to sue end users over patent infringement, etc.

Re:heh

[stoolpigeon]

That's funny. I need to start quickly shutting off the monitors on my desk whenever someone walks into my office.

Them: What'cha doin?
Me: Nothing. Nothing at all.
Them: Why'd you turn off your computer?
Me: Well, actually I just turned off.. Never mind. Well I use this special operating system, I'm not even supposed to talk about it.
Them: Operating System?
Me: The software it runs, like Windows or Mac
Them: Really? Who made it secret?
Me: It's just an unspoken rule. It's rather expensive and very limited in who is allowed to use it.
Them: Wow. What would it take for me to get it?

Re:heh

[WrongSizeGlass]

So, the first run of Linux adoption is don't talk about Linux adoption? ;-)

Re:heh

[IceNinjaNine]

The first rule of Linux is that you do not talk about Linux.

The second rule of Linux is that YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT LINUX.

... two geeks walking past each other in the hallway with a knowing nod and a calluses on their fingers from their Happy Hacking keyboards...

Re:heh

[beelsebob]

It's much much much more simple than that. Be usable, have a massive pile of good applications.

Re:heh

[smpoole7]

> If you get all panty-bunched about they have to be open ...

Haven't checked further down in the thread, but I confidently predict that I'll hit a flame war over this very thing, once I scroll down far enough. Call me a prophet. :)

Free Software purists require that Linux must Make A Statement(tm) and Prove A Point(sm). If it also happens to work just as well, hey, that's a bonus. But to some of us, that's actually kinda-sorta important.

Related topic: when I switched to Linux (c. 2000), I always installed Acrobat because most of my equipment manuals are in PDF form. The folks in Linux fora online would scold me, but at the time, all free alternatives STUNK. They were AWFUL. They could display a page and, if you held your mouth just right, they might even print them correctly. But only Acrobat would allow me to zoom, search, print the zoomed portion, bookmark sections and do the other things I needed to do.

So ... I used Acrobat. The Bearded Priests of the Free Software Revolution(tm) hated me for it, and accused me of "enabling" continued bad behavior from closed source companies. I tuned them out as background noise. Hey, I was using Linux -- on purpose -- and whenever I could reasonably do so, I chose FOSS alternatives -- on purpose. If I didn't meet their standards of ideological purity, well, too bad.

Now, thank the Lord, there are alternatives that work well enough (I use Okular). But for years, that wasn't the case.

Go ask the software and hardware vendors why they don't target Linux and they'll give you plenty of reasons. Hint: it's NOT market share. There are small software shops that LOVE writing apps for niche markets. But one of the biggest reasons they don't target Linux is that it's a moving target.

They'll release a package, only to have the next update kill it, and they'll get a flood of support calls (which cost them money). The answer from the Free Software Purists(tm) will inevitably be, "well, if you'd release everything and let us build from source, you wouldn't have that problem."

They're not going to do that. Whether it's right or wrong, that's just a fact and it's time to accept it. They're NOT GOING TO DO THAT. Instead, they'll just continue to target Windows or Mac or (nowadays) Android.

Re:heh

[realityimpaired]

Which graphics card drivers do you use? If you don't care and use the proprietary ones from the card maker, fine. If you get all panty-bunched about they have to be open, then you're just as bad as Apple is with their locked-down-only stuff.

Actually, I don't care which graphics driver I use, because I haven't had to install a graphics driver on Linux in years. Since gaming is a wash on Linux anyway, and Intel graphics can easily handle stuff like compositing, I don't see the point in installing an after-market graphics card on my Linux systems.

And while it may not be gaming, specifically, that is the crux of the problem: proprietary software that only supports platform X. Both Windows and Mac have their share of software like that, and people are stuck with vendor lock-in. *that* is really what's keeping people from installing Linux wholescale... until you stop needing to run Application Y, there's not a lot you can do about it.

Re:heh

[digitig]

First get a product that is as good as Microsoft's and Apple's for that particular job. I think Linux is the go-to OS of choice for back ends, but geeks tend to overlook just how hard it is to get Linux working. Every Linux installation I've done there have been problems getting it to work with the hardware that have involved typing arcane incantations into obscure configuration files. Geeks will do that; Joe User won't. And I still haven't got sound or wi-fi working properly on my current Ubuntu installation (nobody on the Ubuntu forums can work out the problems, and all the hardware is listed as supported and works fine when I boot Windows). Not an issue for a backend, but a killer on the desktop. It's not marketing that Linux needs for the desktop, at least not marketing to users -- marketing to hardware manufacturers to persuade them to support it would be a different matter.

Re:heh

[stoolpigeon]

I've said it above - but more directly to your point about Linux being difficult - we could argue that all day. I have had a real bear trying to do some rather straightforward things on MS and Apple. The fact that so many friends are calling on me to help fix their problems on such a regular basis (and none of them are running Linux) proves to me that they are not so easy.

So I think it goes well beyond that - to marketing and business practices.

  But in my mind, this discussion about if Linux is as 'easy' as MS and Apple is a waste of time as we'll be throwing around anecdotes and such without really settling anything. So I'd rather avoid that and ask, "Is Windows the dominant OS based purely on usability?" If you really believe that, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

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:heh

[characterZer0]

As are as the users are concerned:

• Photoshop
• Acrobat
• Sharepoint
• Call of Duty
• Quicken
• Turbotax
• Support for their lousy $50 printer/copier

Re:heh

[MickyTheIdiot]

Linux us NOT missing features. This is the same B.S. we heard constantly with MacOS in the days before OS X came out. There wasn't features (or software) missing then and there isn't now for either MacOS or Linux.

What it is missing is simply the user base to get past the tipping point where the even the worst and laziest developers and companies have to take notice because enough people squeal when you do something idiotic like put PHP code in your web page that blocks a non-Windows browser. As a Linux desktop user I still have to deal with this (though not nearly as much as I used to) when all that has to be done is to make the site work with WebKit and/or Firefox. Simple.

The second biggest category are just companies that are haters, and I have to believe Adobe falls into this area. They have the expertise in house to port the Adobe suite to Linux and Unix but they just won't do it. You can see by their other offerings that they have the ability to do it but they just won't, whether it is because of bean counting or because of OS religious hate. I also think MS probably bends their ear about it because there are plenty of developers that would leave MS behind forever (those that can't afford to go the Macintosh already) if Adobe ported their various tools to Linux.

Having said that there is a legitimate OS alternative for just about every Adobe tool now except for the super-high-end items (and yes, if you get off your butt and learn it Gimp will do just about everything PS will do save some of the newest of the new items Adobe has come up with. PS is in its place because it made itself the standard and that is what people learned. It's a great application, but 99% of the users won't use the power embedded in it).

Re:heh

[VolciMaster]

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.

fwiw, most people just do not care about what filesystem they run on. It doesn't matter to the vast majority of end-users. For that matter, it doesn't matter to an awful lot of the server world, either - if it really did, Window Server would not have the footprint in enterprise computing that it does.

While I'd love to have something like ssh for Windows standard, the fact of the matter is that Windows is a GUI environment, and ssh access to that just doesn't make sense - especially when compared to RDP (which, btw, is quite secure).

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you need to include the clueless. They're not the haters, but they're clueless and constantly advocate Windows because that's what they know. I find that many Windows advocates in business do not realize how pervasive Linux is on the internet or in other business. It's a big surprise to many of these people when I tell them that IIS is third after Apache or nginx. They also tend to believe that because ASP.NET doesn't run on Linux or OSX, neither do PHP or Java. It's a circle of ignorance.

Re:heh

[MacGyver2210]

If this is your first time on Linux...you have to compile your own Kernel.

Re:heh

[jythie]

Linux is great if your are compiling from source or installing from rpm/deb, but everything is so heavily versioned that writing apps that 'just work' is nearly impossible across any significant range of versions. Developing binary packages for Linux is an exercise in frustration and I can not blame companies from not wanting to invest in doing it. The distribution and kernel developers have stated many times that they do not really think backward compatibility of binaries is something that should be focused on so they don't.

I use and love linux, but I have no delusions about its deficicines from a developer/user standpoint.

Re:heh

[imakemusic]

I have had a real bear trying to do some rather straightforward things on MS and Apple.

I've had a real centipede giving me technical support. They weren't great at troubleshooting but their words-per-minute was amazing.

Re:heh

[TheRaven64]

How does this translate for most people? I've not used Windows for some years, but this is what I remember:

No SSH support;

PuTTY seems to work fine. It's not bundled, but it is free.

no support for filesystems other than NTFS and FAT;

Except exFAT, UDF and ISO9660. You know, the filesystems that people are actually likely to find on removable media. I love ZFS as much as the next FreeBSD user and cheap snapshots do make a huge difference, but most of the time people only care about filesystems when they come across a disk or flash card with that filesystem. Here, the most likely ones are the ones I listed and of these Windows and OS X are the only ones that support exFAT, which is the standard format for SDHC cards (even though it's patented and not publicly documented), although there is a vaguely-working FUSE exFAT implementation.

no low level disk tools (dd);

How often do you actually need to use dd as a typical user?

poor NFS support;

But great CIFS support, and I've seen a lot more CIFS deployments than NFS.

doesn't come with a decent text editor

Gvim works fine on Windows, and there's a port of EMACS too - both are free. Most users, however, are more likely to care about MS Word, which does run on Windows.

Re:heh

[TheSpoom]

Force em to use Gentoo like I did. That'll sort the men from the boys (or the women from the girls, if you're optimistic).

Re:heh

[Moryath]

You just demonstrated why almost nobody wants Linux: linux advocates are assholes like you who tell everyone not using Linux that they are "clueless." Or "too stupid to own a computer." Or some other sort of put-down.

The reality is that to get people to switch to Linux, most of the common arguments of the Linux crowd are fucking retarded themselves. Such as the first two:
#1 - " Free yourself from the Microsoft Tax!!! Build your own Machine!!! " - Most of the the buying public DOES NOT WANT to "build their own machine. They see the computer (inaccurately, but it's how they see it) as a fucking appliance. They think of computers as "I plug it in and it just runs and I get my stuff." This is why Apple's "it just works" campaign was so successful and Microsoft's ads tout "ease of use" as well.

#2 - " But Linux can do so much more... " - Actually, the problem is that out of the initial install it does so much less of what your average user wants it to do. Sure, there's plenty of "free software" out there, but someone a few comments above pointed out a list of software that Linux simply does not have a port for. The list of software not ported to Linux is pretty fucking long, and trying to get Wine/Cedega running and then run the software under that is just as much a pain in the ass. "Setting up Linux and getting comfy in it" takes a new user a hell of a long while. Which leads into my final point...

#3 - You don't understand the actual cost of switching. You say "hey we are giving away this thing and it's all FREE YAY." Fine and dandy. You dismiss the "total cost" idea as FUD. I dismiss your accusations of FUD as Fucking Retarded because I can quantify all the things involved in actually convincing someone to switch. Here is what you are convincing someone to do in order to switch:

1 - Learn how to interact with a new OS. And let's be honest here, most of the programmers in the Linux world are NOT professional GUI designers. Linux desktops, KDE/Gnome, are NOT nice on the eyes and they are not very happy to play around in. Here's one area I have to give Apple some props in: their OSX interface puts some damn pretty and friendly makeup on the pig that was the old FreeBSD interface.

2 - Learn how to interact with all the new programs they will have to use to "replace" the ones from their old Windows environment. This includes figuring out what the fuck they are called, in which of many disparate distribution groups or online package managers they're held with incredibly poorly written Engrish package descriptions, and then learning the interface for each of them because the last thing Linux programmers ever want to do is use a standard, consistent interface experience.

3 - Learn how to navigate an entirely new file structure. This is not trivial by any means. Windows and OSX both at least treat logical drives in a sane manner and clearly delineate what is housed where; /dev/sda1/sdb2/ and so on and so forth are a fucking travesty and confuse the ever-loving fuck out of new Linux users.

4 - Accept that a lot of old, favorite programs just don't exist and don't have substitutes on Linux. Ouch.

5 - Find out what of their hardware is "supported but not really" under Linux. Such as a perfectly good, perfectly working HDTV tuner card that I had in a windows-based HTPC a few years back. Had a friend who's a linux-head insist I should switch it over to Mythbuntu because it "works so much better" and "supports everything" and "uses so much less resources." Whoops. No support for my HDTV tuner card, no support for my stock ATi graphics board in the unit. Now imagine that for the non-techie you are trying to convince to switch that it's their sound card that won't work, or their joystick, or their printer. They're not going to buy new hardware, they're going to say "fuck you" and go back to Windows or OSX.

None of this is a trivial issue or a non-cost. And that's the real "cost of switching" you have to overcome to convince people to switch to Linux.

Re:heh

[Ihmhi]

We could use that exact logic to attract the hipster crowd.

"OSX? Windows? Nah, those are too mainstream for me. Oh, what do I use? Linux. You've probably never heard of it before, though. It's really underground."

And thus, by hitting the hipster buzz word trifecta ("mainstream", "you've never heard of it", and "underground"), we will get millions of trendy Starbucks loiterers to use it out of spite.

Re:heh

[serviscope_minor]

but everything is so heavily versioned that writing apps that 'just work' is nearly impossible across any significant range of versions.

So, you should do what the other operating systems do.

If the library isn't exceptionally stable (e.g. libc, libm), then you ship all the .so dependencies with your program, or statically link.

It's not hard. It's why you can download firefox or chrome or opera or libreoffice or a whole bunch of other OSS and commercial software for generic linux and have them work with no dependency issues.

You have to do exactly the same on Windows and OSX, but since those systems are rather sparse in terms of having anything of any use installed, you have no expectation that useful things will be installed on the target machines, so you already know that you have to carry round all dependencies with you.

It's only an exercise in frustration on Linux because the normal case is so easy compared to the other systems (oh hey, everything I want is already installed! woohoo!). On the other systems, you have already have to put up with the pain and suffering so you don't think about it.

Re:heh

[hawkinspeter]

Granted, I'm not a typical desktop user. Maybe I should have gone for things like spreadsheet software, PDF reader etc. You can add them, but they don't come with Windows. Also, where's the software repository so that I can install software from a known "good" source and have updates to all my software applied with just a couple of clicks?

I've actually found driver support in Windows to be extremely flaky. I've had old hardware refuse to work under Windows 7 as the only driver available is a 32bit WinXP one. I've heard stories of scanners and printers not working in Windows 7 - I don't know if they're true or not.

My experience of loading WinXP onto laptops is typically painful - load the OS, then search the manufacturer website for the relevant network driver/AHCI storage driver. Put the drivers onto a usb storage key or DVD and then attempt to install them. Reboot, get a blue screen as I've forgotten to switch the BIOS back into AHCI mode etc.

My experience of loading Ubuntu onto laptops is typically easy - boot from USB or CD, install the OS and everything is working. Sometimes (if the wireless chipset requires a proprietary driver) I've had to use a LAN cable to connect to the internet and run the "Additional Drivers" program to fix wireless, but that's easy enough.

My view is that I don't care what OS other people run as long as we're all using standards that don't care what OS we run.

Re:heh

[hairyfeet]

I'm sure I'll get cursed for pointing out the emperor's winkie is flapping in the breeze but I'll be happy to answer that, its the "busted shitters" that frankly ruin Linux. oh Linux is a nice IDEA, kinda like how communism with everyone taking care of everyone else for the betterment of all is a nice idea, it just doesn't really work in practice.

For examples there is the docs that are at best an arcane list of CLI commands with fuck all explanation of what they are or at worst a "to do" placeholder, there is Pulseaudio which even the strongest Linux advocate will get the shivers just thinking about, there is the broken driver model which causes things that don't SEEM to be connected to seriously fuck each other up, which seems to hit pulse worse than most but wireless gets shat on frequently as well, there is the insane release schedule which obviously gives the developers ZERO time for regression testing or QA, not that they are gonna do that shit for free anyway, there are the bugs that have been around for years and will obviously NEVER be fixed, please see any distro bug trackers for quite a few, there is the badly inconsistent UI which I would argue is caused by developers just being itch scratchers since they aren't getting paid and therefor don't have to give a fuck what you think, therefor some programs behave like Windows, with Win hotkeys and Win layouts, many rip off Mac horribly which is fucking sad because OSX is a APPLICATION BASED NOT WINDOWS BASED therefor ripping it off for an OS based on Windows (the document format not the OS) makes no fucking sense, and finally there is the old school Unix conventions just to throw the occasional curveball, and finally there is the leaning on CLI as a crutch, whereas in OSX or Win 7 one could remove the CLI completely and have a 100% functional OS that I would argue more than 95% of the population would never even notice CLI was removed with Linux thanks to its actually being a server OS and NOT a desktop OS at heart if you remove CLI you've completely destroyed the OS and many distros won't even boot.

Now cue the nutjobs who will swear I'm secretly a M$ Ninja robot built by Cyberdyne and plugged into a computer under Redmond, coming off as nothing more than total losers when the simple fact is you can't change reality and numbers don't lie. To get Linux up to the same level as OSX and Windows will require north of 100 million dollars because NOBODY and I do mean NOBODY is gonna take on the above problems i named, because it will take years of boring as fuck lousy shitty work that nobody willl do for free which is the essence of the busted shitter dilemma. You see you can get humans to create for free, because we like to do this, what you can NOT get humans to do is come fix that turd filled busted overflowing crapper stinking up the joint for nothing and for every creative job that needs doing you have 100 that are the equivalent of the guy that cleans up the puke at the Chuck E Cheese.

Apple and MSFT have to pay millions upon millions of dollars to get their own busted shitters fixed, which is why you can take a bog standard desktop, install XP/Vista/7 RTM, update it through all those patches and service packs and have ALL the drivers 100% functional. Its not magic, its millions of dollars spent on regression testing and working with OEMs and first party drivers and a shitload of hard nasty thankless work that ends up with something people take for granted. With Linux because of all those busted shitters the support costs will bankrupt you which is why we retailers won't carry your product. I have several XP machines that have been in the field for over 8 years bug free, in fact the machine I'm typing this on is a circa 2004 AMD Sempron still running the default XP install that I kept when a customer traded it in because it was so low powered and quiet it made for a great nettop. Compare this to Linux where I've tried LTS to LTS, LTS to regular, and regular to regular and have YET to

Re:heh

[UncleRage]

No, no, no. Don't mention that OS X has a shell.

OS X is complete and utter crap, you hear me? There's no bash or csh or ksh or anything like that! You can't ssh into a remote box and work from your Mac in an OTB situation, nor can you remote into your Mac and screen a session.

There's no vim, emacs or even nano (for someone wetting their feet); there's only TextEdit and you can only save to .iexclusivetextdocumentformat! Why without tab autocompletion, (semi)sane directory structure think of how impossible it is for someone worth their technical salt to find their way around! Just imagine a photograph of Mardi Gras, that's the exact kind of chaos that comes to my mind whenever I consider needing to edit /etc/hosts or tail /var/log/system.log on a Mac!

You cannot, absolutely cannot compile anything; you hear me? If it isn't able to be installed from Apple's walled garden, then it doesn't exist. No ability to build gcc, no ports installer, no way to install and invoke frotz, mp3blaster and htop in a three way, multi-panelled terminal session so that people think I'm doing something important when I'm really just trying to get that god damned fish into my ear while listening to 8 bit centric podcasts!

The Mac is clearly nothing but a n00b machine that costs too much!

good lord I'm off topic. I really need to cut down my caffeine.

Re:heh

[Moryath]

#1 - OSX acquired a built-in base. They converted existing Mac (OS7, OS8, OS9) users, which depending on how you measured were somewhere between 6 and 8 percent of the market, over to OSX. This included the "Classic Mode" backwards compatibility environment for OS9->OSX conversion, and the Rosetta conversion interface when the PPC->x86 conversion happened. Apple running FreeBSD, unlike most Linux projects, understood that backwards compatibility is fucking important, at least for a long enough period that most users would upgrade/update the applications that otherwise would just break on an OS update.

#2 - They made their interface look goddamn pretty. This is something Microsoft's been struggling to achieve - though Win7 is actually damn good. This is also something Linux distributions have been fucking goddamn terrible at over the years. Admittedly, because Apple controls their own hardware spec, they have a leg up in that they charged a premium price for extremely high-res monitors (Cinema Display, etc) whereas most people experience Windows on much less high-resolution displays from manufacturers like Dell or HP where the "jaggies" can be a lot more noticeable.

#3 - Slick marketing campaigning around the "It Just Works" theme, combined with cross-marketing of other fad devices (iPod, iPhone, and the newest line of iFad tablets) to build a whole brand. Again, Linux has completely fucking failed to build itself as a true BRAND - most phone users with an Android phone don't even realize it's Linux-based, they think Google developed Android entirely on their own thanks to the Android marketing campaign.

Re:heh

[WaywardGeek]

Now there's some good marketing.

Actually, GNU/Linux is getting crusty and losing it's one time ability of fostering innovation and collaboration. Core pieces like GTK are outdated and a poor platform for building a desktop environment. If you try to contribute, you run into a buzz saw of red tape and gate keepers. If you want to write an app today and publish tomorrow, you need to be on Android or iOS. Debian is run like the Catholic Church, and only the priests have any say. We have no simple way for me to write a cool hack of a little game today, and share it with thousands of Linux enthusiasts tomorrow. That's total BS. LInux should be Linux, not GNU/Linux with all those managed Debian packages on top. We should then build a new distributed system for authoring packages, building them for various platforms, publishing and marketing them. As it is, Linux sucks.

Re:heh

[ArhcAngel]

Linux us NOT missing features.

It IS missing two very crucial features...Convenience & Trendiness
MAC & PC users in general do not care that they are using MAC OS X or Windows 7. They just care about getting what they want done AND how they look to their peers doing it.

CAR ANALOGY - The average driver does not want a car where the engine or other mechanical parts are showing but the gear head who loves tweaking his ride will go to great lengths to ensure at least some part of his engine sticks out. Also, people will buy a PRIUS or a Smart4two to appear eco-friendly despite there being other makes and models with similar fuel efficiency but less visibility as a fuel efficient driver.

I have used many different Linux distributions since 1985 ( I expect my compile of Gentoo to complete any day now ) and even Ubuntu hasn't really reached the ease of use factor I expect from a desktop OS. Is it more powerful than Windows? Absolutely! Does that matter one iota when I need to read my email or write a report on a word processor? Nope...Apple got it right IMO when they took BSD and tacked their own GUI on it to hide the power and flexibility of the underlying kernel. This is where choice has actually hurt the Linux on the desktop initiative. Add some peripheral support to Android and have it scale to the desktop and you have the killer Linux for the desktop distro. - This is tongue in cheek but not far from what I envision it will take to get Linux adopted as the desktop OS of choice.

Why not

[dokc]

Why would anyone want to use Linux as their everyday desktop (or laptop) operating system?

Why not? It simply works, I can do whatever I want.

Re:Why not

[Black Parrot]

Why would anyone want to use Linux as their everyday desktop (or laptop) operating system?

Why not? It simply works, I can do whatever I want.

And you can do that without having to buy (or steal) 50 expensive software packages to get the complete functionality you expect of a desktop or laptop workstation.

I only keep a Windows box around so I can play commercial games. For me, it's just a glorified game console.

Re:Why not

[Vanderhoth]

I think that's probably one of the biggest problems. A lot of people a use to doing what they're told, not what they want. When confronted with too much choice a lot of people just curl up into little balls and cry. Figuratively speaking of course.

Re:Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

"It simply works" -> no, it does not. It works great, but it is not "grandma simple".

Bollocks.

The iPad is "grandma simple" in the same way as the VCR is "grandma simple". I.e. as long as granny only does what she's allowed and the system doesn't have any problems or errors.

"Apple has chosen 1 a long time ago"

NO. Apple has chosen "I will TELL you what you will do, therefore it will be easy to do".

Re:Why not

[dskoll]

My 80-yr-old mother uses Linux. It was not "grandma simple" to install and set up (I did that for her), but she certainly has no trouble using it.

Re:Why not

[WrongSizeGlass]

Simple for Slashdoters != Simple for everyone

Most Slashdoters belong to a extremely small minority of the market for computers, tablets and smartphones.

I'm not saying Linux is too hard for most people to use, but the perception that Linux is "for geeks" is a serious obstacle. Letting the masses know that "Linux is preferred by geeks rather than Linux is only for geeks" would be a great first step.

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:Why not

[JimmyVolatile]

This has sometimes been my experience too. I've been with Linux Mint the last 4 years at home, doing pretty much the same set of typical home PC tasks: Reading the paper, youtube, fb, gmail, banking, watching movies, managing photos, home videos the kid's homework etc. After doing it for 2 years, I felt I'd been through whatever Linux Mint could throw at me and I actually started recommending it to a few friends, touting it as a no-cost alternative that would be worth trying. Even the local kindergarten needed 2-3 better (and cheap) PC-system for the next 2-3 years for their occasional office computing needs. They were really impressed. Then it dawned on me. The people I know who are now on LM: 1. Are more willing (and expecting) to be able to pay for better applications can now maybe get 10% of their wishes granted that way. 2. Are willing to and expecting to call someone and give them $50 to fix stuff. (They can only call me as there are no other Linux guys) The point is that the money is there for you, it's just very hard (practically) for people to spend it. Take donations for instance: This is money that you give to the developer *after* you have downloaded and used some application. Only a small fraction of people even remembers to do this. In many cases you can only donate to some foundation and then only hope that this goes towards developing that one feature you need.

Re:Why not

[ProppaT]

But, let's be real. If Open Office doesn't cut it for you, you're going to want MS Office. If Gimp isn't cutting it, you're going to want Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator. I recognize that there are commercial software packages for Linux, some of them very good, but few of them for mainstream users.

And, of course, you can dual boot or even use Wine to run some Windows programs on Linux, but this isn't what we're talking about. We're talking about Linux for the mainstream. And, to my original point, most of these free ware Linux packages are open source and are available on Windows. I know because I use a lot of them on Windows on a daily basis.

Re:Why not

[Hatta]

'growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -R -J /path' would have done the trick for you. The trick to using Linux effectively is to ignore all the GUI crap and focus on its strengths. Once you learn to use the command line, Linux is a better desktop than anything else around.

previous info, repeated

[pbjones]

ask not what OS is for you, ask what your OS can do. After the shine wears off it's about what you use a computer for. I play 1 on-line game, read the news, and catch up with a few people on FB. And I have have a diffrent machine for eMail. If Linux does what you want, use it, you don't have to sell it to anyone.

Why do you need to sell it to people?

[lattyware]

Really, why? If you can't think of a good reason for someone to use it - it's probably not for them. I've been a Linux desktop user for ages, and I'd find Windows horrible to go back to now, but I get that it's not the same for everyone.

Look, I'm not saying you shouldn't let people know Linux exists and show them how it could help them, but don't get obsessive about it.

Re:Why do you need to sell it to people?

[Black Parrot]

Really, why? If you can't think of a good reason for someone to use it - it's probably not for them. I've been a Linux desktop user for ages, and I'd find Windows horrible to go back to now, but I get that it's not the same for everyone.

Look, I'm not saying you shouldn't let people know Linux exists and show them how it could help them, but don't get obsessive about it.

Yeah, I'm always amused at the notion that we "should" market Linux. So long as there are enough participants to support a well-rounded free software environment, Linux will have its niche.

It's not competing with OSes sold for other niches.

Also, its purpose is to let geeks do stuff they want to do, not to saturate the consumer market or pump up someone's stock portfolio.

There's no reason for its creators, users, or proponents to do anything other than what they've always done.

Not going to happen. Windows is "good enough"

[RogueyWon]

I don't think the answer here is about Linux, I think it's about Windows. Simply put, there isn't enough "wrong" with Windows these days.

There was, I felt, a moment where Linux had a chance to make a breakthrough onto the mainstream desktop. It was around the point where Windows ME was failing horribly and Windows 2000 had yet to get much public acceptance. At that point, there was a lot wrong with Windows. The technology underpinning 95/98/ME was creaking horribly. It's hard to believe now, but if you were a heavy PC user (particularly a gamer) back then, your Win98 machine would need daily reboots just to maintain basic performance and stability. Over on 2000, until it got a service pack or two, there were horrible compatibility issues with many applications, particularly those that required directx.

And then the moment passed. Windows 2000 got patched up and then Windows XP went on, after a rocky start, to become a stable, pleasant to use OS. Even the debacle of the Vista launch couldn't undermine the general dominance of Windows - because the major competition to Vista was coming from XP, not from Linux.

If you want to unseat the dominant market player, you have to not just be better than them, but be a lot better. It's not just that you have to have a few killer features; you have to be able to at least match the dominant player in every other significant respect as well. Linux is nowhere near that kind of position in respect of Windows these days (take gaming support as a case in point, but there are plenty of other examples).

Re:Not going to happen. Windows is "good enough"

[stoolpigeon]

It will be interesting to see how Win 8 fares. I agree that Windows is not horrific for normal desktop usage at home. Windows 7 has progressed to be close enough to my Linux/KDE setup that I actually don't mind it too much, especially with power shell. But the changes in 8 are rather significant. I've been running the preview in a VM on my Fedora box and there are some huge changes. I think MS may continue pushing more customers to Apple with it. I don't see it being much of a boon for Linux because Linux just isn't on most people's radar.

Re:Not going to happen. Windows is "good enough"

[gbjbaanb]

don't worry, Ballmer won't let you down. Metro is coming.

Re:Not going to happen. Windows is "good enough"

[RogueyWon]

I think the problem for MS's competitors is that, as we saw with the Vista launch, even if MS get something badly wrong, they've got a market dominance safety margin because a) their older OSes are still out there and usable, barring some kind of actual kill-switch and b) the competition needs, in many key areas, a few years to catch up to them even if MS stands still.

Agree that Apple rather than Linux is the more dangerous competitor for MS, particularly if Apple starts to take gaming more seriously in a post-Jobs world. Don't underestimate how many people's OS choice is driven by the games that they and/or their kids play. And it's in gaming support that MS is currently many years ahead of the competition (gaming on Linux appears to have made little substantive progress over the last decade).

Re:Not going to happen. Windows is "good enough"

[ratboy666]

Actually, I think you have that backwards. Windows 95/98/ME were trying to compete with Linux. Microsoft used illegal means to compete -- fair competition would have resulted in OS/2 and Linux on top.

Finally, in 2001, Windows XP achieved some parity with Linux and OS/2.

OS/2 has gone away; Linux hasn't. But, even today, Windows 7 is no particular match for Linux. Does Windows run on Z-series mainframes? Sparc? Anything other than x86? Big-endian? Embedded? With how much compatibility?

The Linux kernel is remarkably successful. What is amazing is that even with all the illegal efforts at exploiting a monopoly, and actual engineering efforts that have been put into Windows 7, that Linux is even considered competitive.

Wrong Approach

[Penguinshit]

You don't sell Linux as a product: You sell it as an idea.

The idea is that you can do anything you want with it.

Re:Wrong Approach

[Gaygirlie]

General populace is not interested in ideas. That's the whole crux of the thing; they want something concrete, they do not care about the ideas behind the product as long as they can feel they got what they wanted.

Re:Wrong Approach

[fisted]

>> I chose Windows because I couldn't do what I wanted w/ Linux.
FTFY

Re:Wrong Approach

[Blakey Rat]

Well: 1) You can do anything you want with Windows, and it's equally "free" in the eyes of the consumer, so what's your point?

And of course 2) no you can't. Can I play Skyrim in Linux? (Yes, yes, WINE, whatever, the answer is: no, no I can't.)

Dear god this blog post is terrible

[Idimmu Xul]

It's a Livejournal period drama featuring Teamspeak, Gnomies and Google+ hangouts; a total mashup of the entire Internet.

It name drops, it backlinks, it links images with contribution, it bolds, "quotes", paraphrases and italics. There's even a google advert.

It just doesn't say anything at all. Which is quite impressive considering how long it is.

If only it was compressed down to 140 characters, might have been less painful to read.

Marketing is not the problem

[dejanc]

I make my living on Linux I spend and for the last 12 years I've been using it on desktop. I am very happy with Linux - I spend better part of my day in Linux consoles on various servers. However, 6 months ago I switched to Mac OS X for my desktop needs and I'm not going back. Why?

Firstly, now I have a sane desktop environment which doesn't change often. It took some time to adjust to it's workflow, but with 27'' screen it wasn't that hard (just keep everything open).

Secondly, I get access to all applications I need - ranging from Adobe products to MS Office to various ingenious applications from independent developers. I can still access all console utilities that I had under linux, so nothing is lost but a lot is gained.

Finally, I get a better software selection than I had with any distribution I tried. The foundation is solid, I don't have to worry kernel upgrade will break binary graphic drivers (which I also get from e.g. Debian Stable), but I can keep Firefox, Virtualbox, etc. up-to-date with a click of a button (which I would get from a rolling release distribution).

Simply put: Linux is great, and there are many excellent distributions out there. But until they settle on a DE (including broken DE's like early versions of Gnome 3 or KDE 4 is just not acceptable) and until Adobe, Microsoft et al. start selling their software for Linux, many people will simply not be satisfied with Linux desktop - which has very little to do with Linux itself.

Linux still isn't trouble-free

[mikael_j]

The biggest problem is, IMHO, inertia. In order for Linux to beat the others it has to be clearly superior

And of course, Linux is still far from being trouble-free. I've been a Linux user since the mid-90s (although for a period I mainly used FreeBSD) but switched over to an iMac as my main workstation a few years ago. Was this because I couldn't get Linux to run right? No. Was it because Linux was "too hard"? No. Was is because of marketing? No. It was because it was UNIX and a turnkey solution. I know it's a tired phrase but it just works. I no longer fear software updates (apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade used to terrify me, had a few incidents where it ate its own package database or simply uninstalled necessary packages (like my X server) for no particular reason) and it stays out of my way.

Now, obviously this isn't for everyone. I still have Linux desktops at home, they're just not my main workstation because I still can't quite shake that feeling of "well, it's stable now but it took two days of configuring and god knows what'll happen next time I update some software"...

What about Ubuntu? Well, it's sometimes more user-friendly than Debian but it also breaks in new and exciting ways (for example, for the longest time I couldn't get it to accept the idea of an interface having a static IPv4 address and a dynamic IPv6 address using the GUI tools, and editing config files somehow broke the GUI tools so they would constantly assume that I had no internet connectivity at all).

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you really have to post this?

Hard to sell what is free?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used Linux as my primary OS for 10 years now and wouldn't consider going back. The things 'people' want in a desktop/laptop PC (YMMV): Stability, reliability, security and speed. But there's another, less tangible aspect. When you're ahead of the curve (or even a little to the left); you're cool. You get that innate smugness when someone proclaims their new Windows x/OS y machine ePeen score that you're just a little bit more awesome than them.

Collaboration and openness; it's the future. First software, then government & enterprise.

Question is: Why *should* it happen?

[F69631]

It's important that we have a free (both meanings of the word) alternative for an operating system for those who want it. However, as long as the existence of that alternative is relatively safe it just comes down to competition. You need to invest something (money, time, etc.) to a system and you gain something from it (be it the knowledge that your system is "free", more stability or the UI and applications you prefer) and if most people say that they'd rather go with Windows... why is that "wrong"?

I guess you can make the point "They might not say that if they KNEW more about Linux" but at that point you are no longer asking "How to increase Linux market share" but rather "How to educate people about Linux so we get more competition" which should be approached with an entirely different mindset. I find it difficult to even think "We should boycott MS because it's EVIL"... Maybe it still is so, but there are so many even more horrible corporations around that I feel a bit apathetic about that.

Summa summarum... If you know that someone would benefit from Linux, it should be easy to sell. If you don't know, why should you even try to?

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.

Re:All major OSes are pretty well usable

[jamesl]

For example, I can't figure out how to have the clock on the taskbar also list today's date.

Win 7 ... My taskbar clock also lists today's date.

It's interesting that many have complained over the years that Windows is too complex because MS gives users too much flexibility.

This is an easy question to answer

[Charliemopps]

This is an easy question to answer:
          I can't go to the store and buy software for it.
          I can't play ANY games on it that aren't total crap or 10yrs old
          It's hard to use for most people. (editing text files in emacs is not easy for most people)
          The linux support community are a bunch of assholes. Try and post a question in a linux forum asking how to do something, you get treated like an idiot.
          Even if you had someone to support you, the entire appearance, function and utility of it differs widely from distro to distro... even from release to release. Win7 may be a lot different than Win95... but not nearly as different as 2 Ubuntu distros that are less than 5yrs apart. So even a linux pro can be lost unless you drop to command line, and even then they may be confused unless you're using the same distro... not to mention that its virtually impossible to support a novice, over the phone, while they're entering console commands.

None of this is new... it's the same problem that linux has always had.

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.

Re:'cause it's better

[metacell]

No, it's not the same. Until Windows Vista, the vast majority of users were logged in on accounts with full Administrator priveleges on their local computers. That made it much easier for small security loopholes to escalate into big security loopholes when a user ran a program or visited a web site they shouldn't have. Even on Windows Vista, users tended to turn off the security features because they were badly designed and too cumbersome. And remember that the decade-old Windows XP is still the most widely used Microsoft OS (unless it's been overtaken in the last year).

Also, until around the turn of the millenium, Microsoft didn't believe in the Internet. It may sound ludicrous today, but Microsoft claimed the Internet's popularity wouldn't last, and instead pushed their own proprietary online service, Microsoft Network, which, back then, was similar to America Online. Microsoft products were adapted to a LAN environment, not an Internet environment, so their security was seriously lagging behind, and it took many years for them to catch up.

Internet Explorer has also historically had much more security problems than the most popular browsers on competing operating systems (Safari, Firefox, Chrome, etc).

Saying that Windows OSes get more viruses because they're more widely used is only part of the answer.

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.

Attraction vs. Promotion

[Lorien_the_first_one]

I use Linux because I find it very attractive. Sure, there are problems I encounter but I'm committed to working through them. That's how I learn how computers work and I have learned more about how computers work with Linux than I ever have with Windows. I simply cannot imagine myself going back to jail with Windows or Mac. For me, Linux is the Swiss Army Knife of computing. Anything I want to do, I can do it with Linux faster than I can with Mac or Windows.

For those who want to use Windows or Mac? They're not attracted to Linux for their own reasons so I let them be. They're paying for the subsidy I got on my computer, which has a Windows license. Since they're spending their own money, they have a right to their choice and I support that. I even offer support to fix their computer when they need help, for a reasonable fee. But if they want to convert to Linux with a little boost to get them started, I do that for free.

When i got my last computer, I imaged the hard drive, and put the image away (making Windows installation CDs is very slow compared to a quick image of the drive). Then I proceeded to install the distribution of my choice and I've been happy ever since. I've been on Linux exclusively at home for almost 5 years and I have no plans to go back to Windows, nor do I see a need to sell Linux. If people want what I have, I help them get it. If not, they always have Windows or Mac to use. It's their choice.

I would prefer the use of Linux to grow by attraction rather than promotion.

Z-series mainframe as a desktop?

[F69631]

OS/2 has gone away; Linux hasn't. But, even today, Windows 7 is no particular match for Linux. Does Windows run on Z-series mainframes? Sparc? Anything other than x86? Big-endian? Embedded? With how much compatibility?

The discussion is about desktops so pretty much none of that is relevant... Or maybe there is relevance that you didn't elaborate enough and I'm just not getting? I don't think that anyone here denies that Linux is superior to Windows in that kind of specialized systems but that's just not important in this context.

Re:Nope, fewer viruses because Linux is harder

[Gaygirlie]

There are as many or more Linux desktops than Mac ones

I really doubt that.

then Apache would be the most virus laden product in the world, as opposed to Windows with that "honour".

You're comparing apples and oranges; Apache is a web server, Windows is an OS. Compare Linux to Windows and Apache to IIS.

But you can STILL get a drive-by virus even with the latest, most secure, most up-to-date Windows OS. You don't have to do anything other than connect to the internet.

Don't try to spread lies, that hasn't been true for a good while now. That was true with XP, yes, not now. And heck, even with XP that was no longer true after SP2 which enabled firewall by default.

RMS said it best

[brad-x]

In a recent interview with an Iranian Linux publication, RMS had this to say about the very issue addressed here - it's an opinion I share.

"LR: What's the best way to advocate Free Software? Some Free Software users engage in technical debates with Microsoft and Apple fans, trying to convince them GNU/Linux is more powerful. Another group focus on philosophical and cultural aspects of Free Software and try to make people care about their freedom. Which of the two mentioned approaches are more effective?

RMS: They are both "effective" but they lead to different results.

If you convince people that some free software is technically superior, they might run some free software, but they will remain ready to use nonfree software in the areas where that is technically superior. They will continue to judge an important question based on superficial issues. This is just a partial success.

However, if you convince people that they deserve freedom, they will start rejecting nonfree software whether it is technically inferior or technically superior, because they will see that free software is ethically superior. They will understand the important question and judge it right. This is a full, deep success.

Another weakness of technical arguments is that nontechnical people probably won't care about them at all. But they can understand ethical arguments. Ethical arguments are the only way we can convince nontechnical people to become free software supporters.

I figure that users can judge for themselves whether program A is more convenient than program B. So I don't try to convince them about that sort of question, except when someone has preconceptions about free software and has not tried it. I focus on talking about freedom. "

It's not about marketing

[grumbel]

What Linux needs isn't marketing, what it needs is to become the better product. Back in the Windows98 days one could make some good arguments for Linux in terms of stability, security and such, but those days are long gone and Microsoft and Apples OS offerings are just as stable as your Linux box these days, if not even more so. Which doesn't leave much arguments for Linux on the desktop. In terms of usability it's a complete clusterfuck, the user interfaces are an inconsistent non-backward compatible mess (we used to complain about QT looking different then GTK, now GTK3 apps don't even look like GTK2 apps), the packaging formats are all incompatible (even if everything uses .deb, it's still all incompatible) and there still isn't a standard way to ship third party applications on Linux. The fact that it is all Free Software is essentially irrelevant as it rarely povides the user with any pratical benefits over a proprietary alternative (data formats from one app can't be handled by another, etc.). Security is also rather terrible for a desktop OS, as it provides little to no sandboxing for applications, thus making it risky to try third party applications.

In essence, stop complaining about lack of games, hardware suport or third party support. While those are holding Linux back, they are in large part simply the result of the underlying framework being rather shit. If it would be trivial to build and distribute Linux software, a lot more people might actually do so, but it's not, so the support overhead is rarely worth the effort.

Why? I have reasons...

[Lumpy]

Here are the reasons why my non techie wife loves linux over windows.

1 - her computer just works. I dont need to take it and work on it for a weekend here and there. it Just works all the time.
2 - backups and upgrades lose nothing at all. When I do a complete OS upgrade most of the time she never notices. Only the last Ubuntu change to the Unity desktop has she noticed that it is different. All her app settings and even the desktop wallpaper is effortless to backup and restore.
3 - effortless free software. She installs a lot of her own software from the computer on her own. Apple recently did this as well and it is the future for the typical user.

4 - No viruses. And yes this is a fact contrary to all you fanbois. She cant get any of the viruses or trojan horses and spyware that all her friends seem to get weekly on their windows machines. IT just does not happen.

Drawbacks she does not like.

Cant use itunes. This has become a moot point with icloud and her iphone and ipad. she could care less about itunes anymore.
Print spooler still get's finicky at times. Honestly the linux print spooler is great until a printer screws up. For some reason still to this day the linux print spooler does not recover on it's own gracefully. I still have to re start the print spooler to get it to flush the waiting jobs. But we have had no problems at all with printers. In fact the brand new HP color laser we just bought was EASIER to install on her linux box than it was on the Windows 7 machine I have. Yes, Linux is EASIER to install hardware than Windows 7.

Once in a while she complains that she cant install some cupon printer, until I point out that that "printer" is a trojan horse that causes many of the issues her friends have.

She is a light user. Internet, and College masters classes. She understands that professors are not bright demanding "MS WORD ONLY" and turns in Libre office documents saved as word all the time and is acing her classes and never has had any complaints. This is her 5th year using linux for home and School. And yes she plays all those damned games on facebook without problems.

Linux = zero problems desktop for free. You cant get that for a home PC vwithout paying for Apple hardware.

And yes, we used her linux laptop for taxes this year.

Are you sure it's the marketing?

[Kjella]

I switched to Linux full time in 2007 after dabbling with it on and off since around 1999, I switched back to Win7 in 2011 after three and a half years and it wasn't because of Microsoft's marketing message. The reasons were complicated but one of them was that very often I got dragged into problems I didn't want. For example one classic was that I discover a new feature in an application I want. Is that version in my distro? No. Can I find a backport? No. Okay but I can upgrade my distro. Oh, new version has regressions. Oh, upgrade is buggy but problem goes away if I do a clean install - it's the "Why should you reinstall every 6 months" for Linux. One of the great reliefs I've had on Windows is that I can install the latest version and it won't end up hosing the base system.

Without further ado I'll just state the next one simply: There's quite a few Windows applications that either have no counterpart in Linux, lacks features, is buggy or user-unfriendly and WINE/VirtualBox is not always a solution - in particular WINE constantly needs tweaks and has regressions. Saying "you got what you paid for" makes it sound like you had a choice when there is no choice to pay for commercial software, it's either find some way to live with it or ditch Linux altogether. There's many times I wish I could have put down $20 or $50 or $100 for a Linux port and not deal with the OSS abomination. The "all or nothing" approach tends to make people choose nothing, particularly since a lot of good OSS runs on Windows too.

The only part I really miss in Windows is some kind of application update center, where software could register URLs to check for upgrades so you could do it all at once instead of every app running their own updater, not from mostly one repository like on Linux but still centrally managed. Overall though I can't really say I've missed Linux, it's okay enough if Windows turns to shit but it's not a very compelling value even though the cost is very low. But since some now live in the browser I suspect they'll be happy with Facebook, Facebook Chat, Webmail, YouTube etc. and the actual platform is irrelevant. OTOH "switch to Linux, you won't notice the difference" isn't that good a selling point...

It's easier for the REAL tech support

[Dr. Manhattan]

My 80-yr-old mother uses Linux.

This.

I have my parents on Linux. They used to use Windows, but I got them on Firefox and Thunderbird, and then switching them over was easy. Now when we come over for dinner, I'm not spending half an hour or more cleaning out malware and untangling registry cruft and so on. If they have a problem when I'm not around, I can SSH in and tweak it.

In the real world, most people don't know how to administer a computer, be it Windows or Linux or even Mac. So they get their brother or sister or kids or their friend who's "good with computers" to support them. (My wife got me a t-shirt to wear to family reunions that says, "No, I will not fix your computer.") So if you're going to be supporting someone's computer, shouldn't it be a system that's easier to support?

Linux's hurdles are different from Windows

[unixisc]

There are 2 answers to this one:

• The risk factor - the fact that for the users existing hardware, a Linux driver may not exist, or that future hardware that intrigues him may not have a Linux driver. More often than not, they'd have to buy more expensive hardware to be ensured of its support. In other words, Linux may be free or cheap, but the things that would support it or work well w/ it ain't, like sound. Also, if the networking doesn't work, the user is SOL, since s/he can't even download the correct drivers.
• The choice ceiling - if someone is going there from Windows, then one has to make sacrifices during the move - it's like when one moves from a bigger house to an apartment. Few software titles in Windows have Linux counterparts. So it only makes sense if one knows what one wants to do under Linux, make a list of what one needs, and then go w/ it, knowing fully well that that fantastic game just released will probably not run under it

I think Linux could be more successful if computer vendors bundled complete Linux solutions w/ their systems. Something like say a laptop or netbook preloaded w/ Linux, along w/ things like printer, wi-fi and so on, working right out of the box. But Linux needs to have as complete a driver model as Windows. Right now, since Windows is the default, if a peripheral doesn't work under Windows, its manufacturer knows that they have a problem. But if it doesn't work under Linux, it doesn't apply, since a manufacturer can credibly claim that they never claimed to support Linux.

The other aspect is the risk factor for any PC vendor who might preload a PC w/ Linux and sell it. Problem being that if the customer buys something else to work w/ that PC, be it a new printer, stereo speaker or so on, and it doesn't work w/ the Linux PC, while it's not a problem for the vendor, the result is an unhappy customer. With Windows, this is never an issue, for what I said above, but for Linux, it very well is. That's why Apple limits what they claim will work w/ it, and explicitly tell their customers to buy only their stuff if they want it to work. Which PC manufacturer can do that, unless we have a re-incarnation of Sun or SGI?

As a result, if a vendor decides to sell Linux, they inherit all the problems that come along w/ it. While Windows support is provided by PC vendors such as Dell, there is an organized chain of command to go to, if it doesn't work. Here, even if one ignores the gazillion distros, the fact remains that support for Linux when things don't work is limited, which is why the scalability is just not there. As a result, Linux continues to be a case of pull rather than push marketing.

Re:Linux's hurdles are different from Windows

[wierd_w]

The fundemental problem with drivers on linux (which I do use at home as a desktop) is that there is a decided conflict between hardware vendors and the linux kernel developers.

The linux kernel philosphy is that you are open, straight forward about what your hardware does, what resources it needs, and how to access it.

The hardware vendor philosophy is that you keep all of that secret, create a potentially encrypted or obfuscated blob driver that hooks documented interfaces, loads special proprietary magic code into itself on init, or some other "clever" thing to frustrate people emulating or counterfieting their product, and refusing to budge from it.

The linux devs say "we won't let you make binary blobs, damnit! Not only is that against our project's development model, it is also a violation of our software license! Doing this makes it so we cannot distribute our software legally if you don't comply! To frustrate you and keep you from doing that shit, we will PURPOSEFULLY change our binary ABI for kernel mode drivers on every release, to force you to work yourself to death trying to catch up, until you see the light and just fucking release the driver source already!

The hardware vendors say "if that's the way you want to play, we will go over to microsoft's place. They know the value of a good stable ABI, and the importance of keeping secrets. They also have the lion's share of users, so you linux dweebs can go fuck yourselves. You will take binary blobs and like it, or you can go play somehwere else!"

A small handfull of hardware OEMs "get it", and see how opening their surce code for the linux market, especially in server hardware circles, can firmly cement them as a desirable brand name for hardware that "just fucking works!", like IBM and pals, but for the most part, it is the former, which causes the linux user community (since the line between linux developer and linux user is purposefully blurred by design) have to reverse engineer all the behaviors, quirks, requirements, and secrets of the "oh so secret!" Mainstream devices in order for them to work. Since the users doing this are basically trying to reinvent the wheel with that hardware, they can and often do get things wrong in their reversed driver implementations, and screwy things happen as a result.

Sometimes hardware makers purposefully try to thwart such reverse engineering, like fucking broadcomm. Their wireless chipsets have to pull a secret binary INTO special memory inside themselves from the driver stack in order to turn on. These binaries are signed, and copyrighted. The card won't accept binaries that aren't blessed with the magic number. As such, you have to cheat and use fwcutter to rip the magic blob out of a windows driver, or load the windows driver fully using ndiswrapper.

Either that, or spend a few centuries trying to derive the magic key, by which time nobody will care anyway.

Unless linux reniggs on the open driver requirements (at which point, how is linux different from any other kernel again?), or the hardware companies stop being little bridge trolls (there are some signs on the horizon that show that they might be slowly coming around. A major offender, nvidia, recently said they would start contributing to nouveau, the reverse engineered community driver for their cards. High profile OEMs changing policies and embracing the linux model will only improve adoption, and we can hope more follow nvidia's lead on that), then linux will never have the same direct to market hardware compatibility as windows boxes do.

It's just the sad truth.

Applications Don't Matter Anymore

[echusarcana]

Ten years ago, applications might have mattered. However, OpenOffice (or whatever it is called today) is IMHO superior to Microsoft Office. Gimp and Inkscape are great drawing programs. Casual games tend to be cross-platform while hard-core games don't universally work on Windows anyway - this is what a game platform is for. The printer "just works" without any need for the user to fuss with drivers. The good tax programs are all web-based now. Sharepoint - seriously? - does anyone use that pile of crap? Most importantly, videos and music plays without a fuss. NFS networking actually works all the time, unlike tempermental CIFS. There are no virus worries. And Linux is so much simpler to use than Windows.

We have 5 computers in the house. My household was purged of Windows about 3 years ago and it was the best move I've made. Maintenance is low. No one is complaining, except the Windows users I know that want me to fix their computers.

Windows is still dominant because Microsoft uses its monopoly to force manufacturers to charge for it and preinstall it. End of story.

Re:Applications Don't Matter Anymore

[Moryath]

Ten years ago, applications might have mattered.
They still do.

However, OpenOffice (or whatever it is called today) is IMHO superior to Microsoft Office.
That's fine for your opinion. Unfortunately, your opinion is solidly in the minority and you need to do more than just scream "IMHO THIS IS SUPERIOR" to get people to switch. WHY is it superior? WHAT makes it a better, more user-friendly program? WHAT can it do that MS Office can't?

Gimp and Inkscape are great drawing programs.
Great. I can run GIMP on Windows just fine. I can also use Paint.Net. Or any of a number of other programs. Including, if I care to shell out $50, Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Casual games tend to be cross-platform while hard-core games don't universally work on Windows anyway - this is what a game platform is for.
Actually, Windows is the platform to target for hardcore games, they don't target OSX.

The printer "just works" without any need for the user to fuss with drivers.
Until it doesn't, and then you're up shit creek without a paddle, likely to find some Linuxite telling you "STFU Noob, ur printerz not supprted, go buy a diffrent printer nstead."

The good tax programs are all web-based now.
Sure, until you get into filing anything more than the 1040EZ.

Sharepoint - seriously? - does anyone use that pile of crap?
You're not going to get people to switch to your alternative - wait, what was your alternative anyways? - just by calling their current solution a "pile of crap."

Most importantly, videos and music plays without a fuss.
Some of the time, other times not. Which is a lot like OSX and Windows come to think of it. Best experience I've had with video is running Windows with VLC 2.0.1 installed.

NFS networking actually works all the time, unlike tempermental CIFS.
Right until you try to interact with OSX or Windows boxes.

There are no virus worries.
Because so few people on the planet use Linux as their desktop that no sane virus writer would even bother. Get yourself any appreciable market share and watch that change in a nanosecond.

And Linux is so much simpler to use than Windows.
Bullshit.

Re:Wait wait wait

[gbjbaanb]

yep, that's pretty much what I'm getting at. Just because you insist on one extreme over the other (and therefore claim your view is good, while the opposing view is evil), the reality is that they're both extreme positions that attempt to impose your ideals on someone else.

Sure, I like OSS, but there is still the argument that a closed environment allows a company more freedom (internally) to produce better products knowing that they can make more money from it, thus encouraging them to do so.

The graphics driver issue is one anomaly in the OSS world though, I agree OSS is better than closed, but I'm quite happy to use a proprietary driver for a gfx card as I need to buy that card and the driver only works with that card. So it doesn't matter if its free and open or not. When I buy a new card, I expect the best driver there is to work with it, regardless of openness.
If this means I have to 'suffer' a closed driver, then that makes no difference to me. It definitely makes a difference to me if the only driver available is poor though.

Hence my position that the "only open" view is just as extreme as the "everything closed" view.

Works for me

[OhHellWithIt]

Linux works for me. I've been using it exclusively for home use for about 8 years now. I don't try to "sell" it to other people beyond an occasional nudge because it would be obnoxious in the way that pushing one's religion on others is obnoxious. If someone is interested enough to ask, I'll tell him/her about the benefits I get from it, the same way I would if asked about my religion. But it's a personal choice.

I frankly am tired of these "Linux desktop is dead" trolls. The user base seems to be growing, and aside from the travesty that occurred with the introduction of Gnome 3, it's getting better and better.