Comments on: Why Linux Will Never Go Mainstream

By: Erius

Erius — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 09:08:40 +0000

Well IMHO ubuntu is not for noobs…

I had installed Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Mandriva 2007, and beyond those three I preferred Mandriva 2007.. (probably because I suck at installing MP3 codecs by myself at Ubuntus)

Now at Mandriva I got stuck again when I want to install Firefox 2.0. What I got from mozilla site is a damn tarball, what I can only do with tarballs is to extract them and I have not enough speed to contact the repositories (to get a RPM instead) from the installer program.

So, in short, I agree with you that Linux isn’t going mainstream until they REALLY improve the easiness / usability.. Now Mandriva 2007 is enough for me just to browse, type a bit, and listening to MP3s, but.. I agree with you that they need to improve a lot more, for more user to do more.

By: Aldacron

Aldacron — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 19:02:58 +0000

When I consider the hours of productivity I’ve had in Windows compared to the hours of productivity I’ve had in Linux (zero), it’s hard for me to keep a positive impression. I’ve used Ubuntu, as recently as a few months ago, and though it’s a far sight better than any other distro I’ve used it can still be a PITA. I wiped it from my hard drive in frustration at one point (I think it was when I upgraded my sound card).

But that’s all beside the point, really. My gripes are there to contrast my experience with that of the average user. The main point of my post is that the average computer user just isn’t savvy enough to use Linux. The two of you, obviously, are not average. You’re willing to go through a lot more to learn how to use it. Myself, I have yet to reach that comfort level.

Vista scares me, though. So I’ll be looking to move to another platform once MS stops supporting XP in another couple of years. I’d like it to be Linux, since it’s free, but I need to buy a Mac anyway.

By: Uzair

Uzair — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 13:08:11 +0000

You’re right, if anything displaces Vista, it’s going to be OS X. But interestingly enough, Linux devs are no longer blindly aping Windows — they’re blending the philosophies of Windows and OS X, and the result is quite usable.

I’ve had the same sort of eagerness and disappointment with Linux that you describe for years, but then I tried Ubuntu/Kubuntu and was pleasantly surprised — you never have to dick around with config files, the package manager doesn’t overwhelm you with manual dependency tracking, and you’re only *shown* the apps/utilities you’re actually going to need. My one complaint is that, out of the box, there’s a bunch of stuff that you still need to set up, be it restricted codecs or multimedia apps.

One final note of agreement: the notion that Linux can get by on documentation-by-newsgroup/chatroom is the biggest load of malarkey out there. I had a problem with Kubuntu (where it said it couldn’t start ‘kstartupconfig’) that no one was *ever* able to figure out, and for which I still have no solution. I’ve just switched to Ubuntu and tried to get used to GNOME…

By: larsivi

larsivi — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 11:04:29 +0000

You seems to generalizing a lot, and mixing the issues. I’m not going to say that Linux is the holy grail for everyone, or even a large part at the moment, but that a common install of one of the most used distros (SuSE, Ubuntu, …) provide an unusable desktop is not particularly true. Most of these distributions provide a base set of desktop applications which you would use hours to install on Windows after installing the OS itself. Now, this is only an argument for those who actually install Windows themselves, which is very few.

But for ease of installation: I go to my start menu, choose Add/Remove programs, and I get an interface where I can write a search term, and I will get a list of the available programs and I click on them, and then click install. They’re then ready to use, no restarts, no need to concern myself with where I install them.

Why should a user ever need to worry about this?

What I may possibly agree with you about, is that Linux can be hard to get a grip on for the power users (especially those who are well known with Windows) that need more than what the desktop provides, but don’t want to become a full-fledged system administrator. I haven’t used Linux all the time, but tend to like the tools available there better than those I found on Windows.

As for community, there has been quite a bit of elitist behaviour, especially in certain communities. I have mostly dipped my feet in the (K)Ubuntu camp and KDE communities, and I have only met friendly ppl and friendly help, even though not all issues always are resolvable just like that. But how many other OS’es has their chief around so you can chat to him about that sucky wireless driver module? For a while, after I solved my own problems (related to putting Linux on a brand new laptop), I continued to stay in the same channel and helping others, although I’m not doing that now due to time constraints.

I don’t think Linux will take over the world anytime soon, especially as long as it is not recognized by more hardware producers as a viable platform. But as long as I don’t have time to play all those gorgeous games out there, I won’t miss Windows.

As for the Vista/Linux/Mac prediction … Since won’t be an easy upgrade for everyone, and the mainstream media says as much, some adventourus souls are likely to try Linux instead. If they succeed, you will have a ball (possibly very small though) rolling. Mac is probably a much more different desktop for most people coming from Windows, than most Linux desktops, and with the price for a Mac on top, that won’t always be the obvious choice either. Sadly, too many will probably just stick with WinXP (or oh horror, WinME).