I’m writing this from my Linux box, and once again, there is always something broken.
Don’t tell me your distro is the best, that if only everyone else would get behind it, Linux could overtake Windows or whatever else is out there. It won’t happen. No single distro will ever offer what the average computer user needs. They are all too busy either meeting some other market (for commercial distros) or are captive to demands of their fanboy user base. Most of them are frankly captive of their own developer teams’ biases against the average computer user.
But with Linux in general, nothing is ever really fixed. That is, not enough of any one distro can bring together a sufficient degree of making most things work all at once. Your success on your machine(s) this time does not translate to general success for a significant portion of the average user audience, so neither your anecdotes of success, nor my anecdotes of failure, are representative. But every time I persuade someone to install Linux on their primary system, it never fails to embarrass me. It never fails to fail.
It won’t matter whether Windows is no better, either. The world already knows Windows has problems, and requires diagnosing and tweaking on a minority of systems. But why should they try Linux when it’s not any better? Better the devil you know than some other devil. Linux has to be better. Further, it has to be better no matter which distro they try. Granted, it’s more likely they’ll be trying some iteration of Ubuntu, because that’s who gets all the press. But if any release of Ubuntu is broken on enough machines, all of Linux is tarred with the same brush. Not fair? Welcome to the real world.
Want to know who keeps using Linux after they try it? The folks whose hardware can be made to work the first time — all of their hardware. The single greatest failure there is printers. The second greatest failure is sound. That is, the failure of sound drivers to sense the headphones jack on the cheap hardware just about everyone runs. You can’t tell the users it’s not fair because some manufacturers won’t open their hardware specs; they don’t care. And even when the manufacturers cooperate, Linux can fail miserably. Want to try Natty with my Brother HL-2140? Epic failure, even though Brother is wide open. But if we can get past that, the people most likely to keep it are the ones whose relatives and friends keep messing with their Windows box because they are so sure they know what’s best for everyone. These folks don’t usually know how to mess up Linux, so the system remains safe. The other group of folks who keep Linux are the ones who insist on visiting websites or trying to open email attachments with nasties involved. So folks who can’t or won’t secure their system might keep using Linux if it works with their hardware.
That ends up being a very slender minority of folks whom I can persuade to try Linux. The vast majority of computer users will never be interested, because the barriers are simply too high. In one sense, there really is no single thing we can point to and say, “This is Linux.” That means there is no simple entry way everyone can take to get inside. Too many distros, too many interfaces, and none of them standardized, and increasingly so freakish no one cares beyond that passing gee-whiz glance. At some point, perhaps someone can get enough of it all together at once, working on most hardware properly, with no frequent major changes but offers a fairly consistent user experience over a period of several years, and basically reaches out to the average consumer. Nobody is doing that, and I doubt anyone will.
Much as I like using and poking at it, I seriously doubt there ever will be a year of the Linux desktop.
I agree. The values I see as a strength of GNU/Linux for me prevent it from becoming the primary OS of everyone, or even a majority. To me, two of the key benefits of Linux are freedom and choice, but by its very nature, this liberty prevents any one distribution from gaining enough support to be Windows in a market share game. Even Ubuntu won’t win that one.
Precisely. I just wish we could shut up the idiots who are trying to sell Linux as the replacement for Windows. It’s not a contender in the market place. If it was, getting there would ruin it for just about everyone now so deeply involved. Let it be, I say.
As you know I’ve been using Linux since RH6.2. I agree with you up to a point. In the beginning HW support was pathetic at best. But after building up 2 machines from scratch that now work flawless and my stock used dell box running my firewall (smoothwall) I think it’s there*. Personally I think we’re to the point where it comes down to personal requirements. I’ve set up 3 systems for remote people (elderly) that only required your typical beginner needs. Email, web, IM, etc. Once I got those machines the way they wanted them it’s been game over.
Honestly, if you can pick your hw, linux has zero issues. If you can’t then you run into the same issues with MS (bad inf/drivers/no whql). Need a laptop w/zero wifi issues System76 and a few others work great out of the box.
If you’re a gamer or into video or alot of adobe PS, then win and the other are better choices.
Exactly. Most of my hardware is donated or whatever I could afford at the time. To be honest, I’ve never had to driver trouble with Windows other folks did. Then again, I’ve had plenty of trouble getting drivers for certain companies who produce a batch then disappear or get borged and the support site closes. HP, Compaq, Gateway and some others have simply dropped support for their older hardware and I typically tell my computer ministry clients to avoid that stuff. But the whole point is we use what works for our needs. The idea any one OS can be the end-all do-all for everyone is simply insanity.