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Why Aren't People Abandoning Windows For Linux? (slashgear.com)
- Updates on Linux are fast and "rarely call for a restart" -- and are also more complete. "Updates are typically downloaded through a 'Software Updater' application that not only checks for operating system patches, but also includes updates for the programs that you've installed from the repository."
- Windows "tries to serve a variety of markets...cramming in a scattered array of features" -- and along those lines, that Microsoft "has gradually implemented monetization schemes and methods for extracting user data." And yet you're still paying for that operating system, while Linux is less bloated and "free forever."
- "Because less people use Linux, the platform is less targeted by malware and tends to be more secure than Windows"
The article also touches on a few other points (including battery life), and predicts that problems with Windows are "bound to get worse over time and will only present more of a case for making the switch to Linux."
Long-time Slashdot reader shanen shared the article, along with some new thoughts on why people really stay with Windows:
I think the main "excuse" is the perception of reliability, which is really laughable if you've actually read the EULA. Microsoft certainly doesn't have to help anyone at all. I would argue that Windows support is neither a bug nor a feature, but just a marketing ploy.
Their original submission suggests that maybe Linux needs to buttress the perception of its reliability with a better financial model -- possibly through a new kind of crowd funding which could also be extended to all open source software, or even to journalism).
Thank you. Came to say something similar. Every day on here someone talks about a video or audio driver which doesn't work and the hoops they had to jump through to get something to work. Somewhat.
"Oh, it's not bad. Just go to xyz/fjg and do wth~ to unload the driver. Then go get the 2.4.1a version. If you get anything higher your video will look like Don King's hair. Then unload the driver into yur\opq\mnb and set the parameter to . . ." And on and on and on.
And which distribution? There are what, 200 different flavors of linux? The person has to do research to figure out which one might be the easiest for them to use, but if they're essentially computer illiterate they stop when they see all the choices.
People want something which works. For all the whining about Microsoft and Apple, their software works. Linux, not so much.
I manage a small network for my parents. My dad is a lung doctor, and my mom is a nurse. I cannot get their current EHR system to run under Linux (WINE) and wasn't able to get their previous EHR to run under Linux either. So, for them, I do not save the thousands of dollars that were required to be spent when Windows XP was deprecated, and thousands of dollars again now that Windows 7 is approaching it's end-of-life because I cannot run one critical desktop application under Linux.
We evaluated OpenEHR. It would have required substantial modification to be able to collect, and present, patient data in the manner that would have been useful to their medical office. My software development company could have provided these modifications. As could another, more experienced, software development company that supports OpenEHR. We came to the conclusion that those modifications would be more expensive, and risky, than the commercial licensing, and constant Windows replacement costs. The commercial solution was ready, out of the box, and (not very well, but still) supported.
Until Linux offers better desktop application replacement support, there will be many corporate environments that depend on Windows application which cannot be migrated. WINE is not easy to get everything running under.
The software development company I use relied exclusively on Linux, and open-source software for our developments. However, that does not mean it is a good solution for everyone. Saying "everyone should use Linux" is just as wrong as saying "everyone should use Windows." There are different use cases for different technologies, and attempting to shoehorn everyone into a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't (in my experience) lead to a good outcome.
Cause slashdot is beating a dead horse.
Joking aside, Linux support has gotten better from the days when posting on a forum would be met with RTFM. It's still not enough to get folks to turn away in masses to Linux. I honestly don't know what the answer is.
It's not games. Valve went as far as to create their own flavor of Linux.
It could be apps. I find that MsOffice is still better than everything else out there. I'm great with Gimp simply because I'm too cheap to pay for Adobe products, but adding stroke to text is still a lot more difficult than it has to be (select layer, convert layer to path, etc)
It could be hardware compatibility. Some of the more "pure" distro's refuse to include binary drivers.
It could also be my cousin Vinny, who is sort of defacto tech support for aunt Jenine (I really don't have an aunt or cousin named that)
Maybe it's the ease of entry as a professional. Windows 10 basic cert is easy, Linux, not so much.
Maybe it's something I just heard in my Security+ training, that GUI's prevent mistakes.
Maybe it's the accountability, you know who you're dealing with, there's at least some central number to call for support, instead of a fragmentation of 10 different companies.
Maybe it's the government, who still swears by windows for a lot of things.
I really don't know. I know I'm typing this from Windows, in a chrome browser. I have my reasons. Having been on slash since the beginning, this question is just never answered. It's almost like Incels asking, "Why can't I get laid?"
For many users, Outlook and Excel are the reason. Granted, the Outlook web interface is pretty good, but it does not quite equal the native client. With Excel, the Linux alternatives are poorly known and a point of (often unjustified) concern. I'll add that the Excel interface is generally better than the open source alternatives as well, particularly with things like column fills and conditional formatting.
Finally, let's think about graphics and sound, which are still sketchy way too often on Linux after all these years. Just a month ago, I watched a skilled Linux sysadmin spend days trying to get a 3-monitor setup to work properly. He ultimately succeeded, but what a nightmare!
A big part of the problem is this: The world has a near infinite number of problems out there that are all clamoring for attention: Whatever you do for work, The environment, mowing the lawn, Political Parties, taking the cat to the vet, gridlock on the drive home, What's for dinner, Today's school shooting, List of HoneyDos on the weekend, political scandal of the week, Homeybees are going extinct, the neighbors next door don't want a solar power plant built down the street, there is a rally a city hall for a righteous cause, churches asking for money, the list goes on and on and on.
The last thing you want to do when you home is spend energy trying to figure out why your computer isn't working. So it isn't a case of deliberate ignorance, it is a case of being worn out at the end of the day and not wanting to deal with another problem. Windows is a know entity that works well enough. The barrier to entry for linux is that everything looks different and acts different enough that people don't want to have to be retrained, especially then they have to use windows at work and Linux at home.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
I've thought about this recently, and it goes something like this: I think there are some rings which help categorize whether using Linux makes sense...
Ring 1: Development Applications.
IDEs
Text editors
Compilers
Ring 2: Server Applications.
Web Servers
Routers/Firewalls
Storage/Data Transfer
Databases
Ring 3: Lowest-Common-Denominator Desktop Applications.
Desktop Window Environments
Productivity/Office Suites
Web Browsers
Mail Clients
IM Clients
Audio/Video Players
Ring 4: High Level Desktop Applications.
Audio/Video Editing
Architecture
Finance Software
Legal Software
Medical Software
Point of Sale Software
etc....
Rings 1 and 2 are things that software developers tend to know a lot about, making it very easy to code them well. In most cases, software fitting into those categories are superior to Windows-only applications. The LAMP stack is basically the default for web hosting at this point, and plenty of software-based routers run on Linux or BSD while doing that on Windows is almost comical to suggest.
Ring 3 is pretty mature in general at this point, but it's pretty easy to need a particular function in Excel that isn't available in Calc or some such. The more complex the needs are for a particular application, the more likely the Linux equivalent is going to be a bit of a problem. Even if it can handle it, the learning curve makes it undesirable without an even bigger reason to do it.
Ring 4 is hit-or-miss. Content creation creeps along on Linux, but it's far from mature, and lots of plugins aren't available for the platform. Plenty of line-of-business software *needs* some sort of commercial support, and it's the chicken-and-egg problem that everyone runs Windows because their vendors require it, but none of the vendors make Linux software because virtually none of their clients are running Linux on the desktop. Lots of high profile use cases simply require Windows (or possibly OSX) because there's no reason to develop for what will likely be a support nightmare, and even if one vendor tries to standardize support on Ubuntu, everyone's SoL if the next vendor standardizes on CentOS.
On the dubiously-good side for Linux adoption, the everything-in-a-web-browser trend makes the number of software titles requiring support to decrease as time marches on, making it easier to switch. However, anybody arguing that it's easy to switch has clearly never worked in tier 1 tech support.
Speaking as someone who has dual booted since around 1993 (Yggdrail plug and play Linux) ...
... These costs must be offset by something that is specific to Linux, and the things that Linux advocates speak of when talking to Windows users are often not meaningful or interesting to the latter. So the typical Windows user sees no gain.
... the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) reduces the number of such things. Various *nix tools or utilities that fit a particular task better than their Windows counterparts are now conveniently available from the Microsoft Store for free. Note that some long time Linux users are finding that WSL lets them have their *nix toolchain under Windows, that's pretty convenient for cross platform development. Kind of a repeat of what we saw with Mac OS X and the BSD console and posix API being available. Such things just make Linux less special than it used to be. In 1993 when I started using Linux it seemed a godsend, I wished I had it for undergraduate CS studies. Fortunately I had it for grad school. But today, its just less special.
Primarily, there are a lot of people that need an app or utility that is only available for Windows.
Some will argue that there are FOSS replacements for the functionality provided by these apps but most of these FOSS replacements are not Linux specific and run under Windows too. Someone wanting to save money by using Gimp does not need Linux.
Secondarily there is the network effect. As the dominant OS Windows just has more people you can ask questions, ask for help. Same for those dominant non-FOSS apps.
Related to this is virtually any hardware gizmo you might want to buy will be supported by Windows. Linux, maybe not.
In short there is a cost from switching to Linux, software availability, what others are using, compatibility,
Regarding things specific to Linux
To be VERY VERY clear, the above is strictly discussing the typical user desktop. If you want to discuss embedded or server environment, of *nix based workstation use, things are quite different than the consumer desktop.