Arevos

Whilst I generally agree with sentiments that Linux is more suited to those with technical expertise, I think people underestimate the usability of a modern Linux system.

My youngest sister used Windows 98 for a long while, and had all the problems associated with that rather unstable OS. She stuck with it because she didn't have the money available to upgrade to XP. After Windows broke down yet again to an unusable state, I burned a Linux LiveCD so that she could at least access the net and do her homework.

What was only meant to be a temporary solution turned into a permanent one. If all one wishes to do is to browse the web (Firefox), chat on IM (Kopete) and listen to music (Amarok), and write essays (KWord), then Windows doesn't have much of an advantage over Linux. In terms of day-to-day usability, Linux (Kubuntu in particular) seems ready enough for the average user.

The problems with Linux are, in my mind, twofold. The first is installing the thing, and one can have all sorts of problems with that, usually related to incompatible hardware. The second problem is that the majority of software in the world is written for Windows, so one may run into problems if the application you want isn't available for Linux. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't recommend Linux to someone who isn't very technically adept.

However, if you have someone to install it for you (such as a vender or an older sibling), and your needs are modest, then Linux can be a viable option.

That said, I don't think Linux is ready for general usage just yet. But in the seven years I've used it, usability has come a very long way.

Jessehk

I'm sorry to bring up an older thread, but there's a lot of good stuff here that I'd like to add to.

I use Linux because I enjoy it. I love the idea of being in control and having everything visible. I love the idea of a common community of people that works together in order to complete a finished product. Lastly, I love the self-satisfaction I get when, encountered with a problem, I am able to devise a solution through research and experimentation.

The reality is, that a Linux desktop can hardly compare to a Windows one (but Ubuntu, and Suse, etc are (arguably) coming very close). I am going to replace my Ubuntu partition with Gentoo in a week because I enjoy tinkering, fiddling, and learning about the internals of my operating system. It's a hobby, not work.

I can't (and I don't) expect "normal" people to have that same interest.

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E.K.Virtanen

@Marvie. Your post wasnt too long at all. I did read it with high interest. I actually disagree with you a lots of but i think your post was good, from your point of view.

I wonder why so many win user thinks it's for bad that *nix does have so many different desktops. Personally i see it as a great thing. Now i can choose from many variations, whats best one for my computer. For slow computer i use desktop that do not need so much resources. With windows, you cant choose. You can do some small things to set win desktop lighter, but those things in my opinion are not so much after all.

Even more i wonder when peoples says its hard to install programs for linux. c'moon, in windows if you want to install firefox, you first go to google, then you find right site, then you find right version, then you download it, then you figure out where in hell that downloaded install.exe went, then you open it and answer in three or four different license and installing path question, then you remove install.exe and now you are installed firefox.

With linux i either open package manager, choose "browsers" -> "firefox" and press "apply" or i type on console "apt-get install firefox" and there it is.

But as King sayd, if you dont like/trust how linux works, stay with windows. I dont like or either trust windows at all, so i stay with linux.

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Arevos

If by that you mean, "The Linux desktop can hardly compare to a Windows one for the average user" then I'd be inclined to agree with you

However, I don't use Linux at home just because I like to fiddle with things; for my purposes, the Linux desktop is superior to Windows, and superior by a considerably large margin. I'm far from being an average user, of course, but I just thought I'd point out that whether Linux can compare to Windows or not really depends on what you want from a desktop. Microsoft doesn't really cater for the demographic I lie in, and nor, I suspect, are they particularly interested in such a small potential market.

The problem is not with choice; it's the lack of standardisation. Considerable work has been put into this of late, but it's still a big issue. For instance, GNOME and KDE applications use different file open dialogs, different theming engines, and different icon sets. There are a number of projects to fix all these incompatibilities, but it's early days, yet.

Yep, so long as you install from the repositories. However, Linux lacks a standardised way of installing software that isn't in the distribution's repositories. Again, standardisation is the problem, and though progress is being made, Windows and OS X have Linux beat on this front.

The advantages of having an OS controlled by one company are considerable, at least for the company in question. You don't get the sort of incompatibilities that plague Linux (at least, not as many). However, there are also numerous disadvantages to having an OS controlled by a single entity, both for the consumers and the developing company. In order to succeed, Linux needs to overcome the inherent difficulties of the Open Source approach, even as its capitalising on its advantages.

DaWei

Arevos has hit the nail on the ahead. The approach to the marketplace is controlled by the demographics. This is just good business sense. One may decry that a big-box store is killing all the local mom & pop joints, and try to defer the outcome by spending more downtown, but it isn't typically going to work. It's mom and pop that have to adapt, not Wal-Mart. Perhaps they should investigate co-op or franchise approaches in order to achieve economies of scale in their wholesale purchases.

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E.K.Virtanen

At this point, i would like to know what is yours opinion about "average user".
In my point of view, im average user. So is my girlfriend and 10 other friends. Any of us ain't so experienced user of windows or linux.

We just browse in www, read emails and chat at irc. Isn't that excatly what "average" user does? Well, we all have some sort of experience of windows and linux but in many means, i cant say we are "above" (ok, stupid word that above. sorry my english) of normal or regular user of computer.

Even though, i know something, not much but, something about programming it does not make me experienced computer user. I dont know how to fix my win register or anything when they go mad. Or when my X whines something about graphic card drivers im totally lost what in hell happened.

Maybe someones thinks standards are the key to succes. Personally i dont see it so black and white. They are for good, but they are not "the thing". Me, my girlfriend who aint even so good in english and my friends , we have survived through installation guides pretty easily. And what comes for gnome and kde differences...well, i use gnome but i have plenty of kde software here in use. Naturally kde packages are needed then too to make those applications to work, but this far it havent been any kind of problem.
Those kde installations does slow down a bit and they do use hdd space plenty since lot's of not so needed stuff are forced to install just to get something small in use. Still, that is not an problem since my linux partitions are 3, nearly 4 times smaller than my Xp partition what is allmost full.

I dont wana declare here now that linux rocks, M$ sucks, no, i think its every ones own choice what they use. But what i do claim is that if we take person who dont have any experience about computers, teach him linux, he uses it few years and then we give him windows and ask how he sees it, i bet he would say "man, this is weird and hard to use." Actually, it has been allready proven many times.

Many times i have wondered how great it would be if linux and windows would be more closer of each others, in average use, but then, would it be nice after all if boat and airplane would be same thing?

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DaWei

The purpose of standards, for one, is to give the user more choices, thus increasing competition, thus lowering prices. If the only graphics card that you can use has to come from the manufacturer of your system, you are typically going to pay out the azz.

If I decide to produce graphics cards, I don't want to have to design a different version for system A, system B, system C, etc. I want to invest my non-recurring development expenses just once and amortize it over the totality of my production. I don't want to spend it three times and only get to amortize each part of it over only one-third of my output. Plus #2 for standardization.

There's a real world out here and it takes bucks to play in it once you leave the sandbox.

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_James_

Linux is not in any way ever going to be like windows. Linux is aimed at the server and above. It is sometimes used on the corporate desktop but then it is adminstrated by experienced and trainned people.

The main investment in Linux is by companys such as IBM, Red Hat and Novell who dont give a damn about linux on the home computer. These compaines are the people who employ people to develop linux and so will not have the home computer user in their minds when they develop it. Linux will not make it on the home pc untill a large company decides to invest a huge amount of money in developing a Linux distro that is so easy to use it is just like windows. I can not see a company doing this as most PC users dont even know what an OS is let alone you can actually change the one installed.

The one issue i have with desktop linux's is that they all do things differently. They all have their own file system structure, different location and structure of config files and different desktop environments installed. This makes creating a binary that will work on all desktop linux's a pain in the ass. The best most projects can do is create binarys that work on two or three recent releases of the most popular distros. This leaves people having to either download the source and compile it (which is not always a simple as it sounds) or wait to see if their distro provider creates a binary version.

One last point is there are too many idiots installing linux just to say i have linux (leet crap). Yes it a good educational tool, but if you have no use for it or are just insalling it becuase you hate MS or want to show off you are foolish. Windows XP is the best home PC OS around at the moment as it has drivers and all the software one could want on the home PC. Most people dont care what linux is and are quite happy using windows.

Arevos

You say this, but it's very hard to predict the future prospects of companies in the software industry. Going back a couple of decades, the landscape of the software industry was quite different from today, and there are reasons to suspect that Microsoft may have already reached its peak.

Microsoft has two main advantages over Linux. The first is its monopoly on the desktop; the second is it holds ultimate control over all aspects of Windows, whilst Linux development is fragmented in a million different parts. These are considerable advantages, and Microsoft uses them to full advantage.

But Microsoft is not without problems. The first difficulty is the need to maintain backward compatibility; this helps it maintain key customers, but also makes it necessary for Microsoft to drag behind it the cruft of yesteryear. Commercial pressures inevitably lead to shortcuts; designing an OS that will be ready for release takes precedence over constructing a solid base that will work several years down the line. Up until recently, Linux has had none of these pressures, and several times in the past even binary compatibility has been broken.

Cruft is also introduced into the source tree by Microsoft's need to maintain its monopoly; if Microsoft was built like Linux, where there are distinct layers connected by relatively clean APIs, Microsoft's competitors could take advantage and develop their own components to interface with the OS. In Linux, and other free OSes, the filesystem, the terminal, the kernel, the GUI layer, the desktop are almost all independent of one another. This compartmentalization is good for design, but bad for maintaining a monopoly.

So the very strengths that Microsoft relies on have turned out to have disadvantages of their own. One need only look at the lengthy delays of Vista, and at the many features that proved too ambitious for Microsoft to complete. Whilst Microsoft is slowing, it's competitors have jumped ahead, and from a purely technical standpoint Vista has already been surpassed even as it has been released.

Microsoft itself probably realises this, which is why it's pushing virtual machines like .NET (to solve the backward compatibility problem) and advocating relatively clean standards (like OpenXML). It may be betting that it can control these standards via hidden patents and its embrace and extend mantra that worked so well against Netscape. And they may very well be right.

But on the other hand, Linux is dominating the server space, and worming its way into Tivos, routers and mobile phones. I've used Linux since Redhat 5.1, which I found to be unusable and impractical in a desktop environment, and Windows was clearly superior, even for me. Nowadays, the positions have reversed, and I can't see the balance changing back. However, whether Microsoft manages to adapt in time, or slowly lose the majority market share, remains to be see.

It's only legacy distributions that suffer from this problem, so long as you compile your programs with static libraries; games like Quake 4 will run fine on any modern Linux distro, even though they're essentially zipped up binaries. There's also the option of using a virtual machine, such as .NET or the JVM. The lack of a common installer, or packaging system, is the real problem.

Depends what you mean by "the best home PC OS around". Best in what regard? Windows is the OS compatible with the widest variety of software, and it's cheaper than OS X, so it's probably the best OS in terms of suiting the average person's need. But Window's technical merits are less impressive; it's functionality is mediocre, and survives on the killer programs that other companies develop for Windows.

You have to credit Microsoft with that, though. They have nurtured the largest market for third-party software in history, and whilst they may be flagging of late, they've got a history of very shrewd business deals and a remarkable tenacity of being able to reverse their fortunes. Unfortunately, what's good for Microsoft isn't necessarily good for the rest of us.

E.K.Virtanen

Youre right and wrong. Linux is not in any way ever goin to be like windows and there is simple reason for it too. It is not windows and its never planned to be like windows. But i still say it is as good for "average" user as in normal desktop pc as is windows. You dont have to be so experienced or trained person if you use linux in normal, "average" user ways. That is a myth from "experienced" windows users who just says "if i, experienced computer user (here should read windows user) cant use it, how beginner could do it" posts.
Wrong. Most people dont _know_ what is linux since Microsoft has monopoly in preinstalled OS's what comes for new computers. When people buys computer and there is all ready xp, vista etc. installed, he/she just uses it in believe that it is actually only OS there is.

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