Why the World Is Not Ready For Linux 861
eldavojohn writes "While many users reading Slashdot embrace Linux, ZDNet is running an article on why the rest of the world isn't ready. One note for Linux developers: 'Stop assuming that everyone using Linux (or who wants to use Linux) is a Linux expert.' While a lot of these topics have been brought up as both stories and comments on Slashdot, this article pretty much sums up why Vista could be absolutely terrible, and people would still believe there is no other option." From the article: "The one area of Linux ownership and use where it becomes apparent that there's an assumption that everyone who uses Linux is an expert is hardware support. Your average user doesn't have the time, the energy or the inclination to deal with uncertainty. Also, they usually only have the one PC to play with. Hardware just has to work. There's a very good reason why Microsoft spends a lot of time on hardware compatibility — it's what people want."
I believe in people (Score:5, Insightful)
The unix way (besides do one thing and do it well) however is to allow beginners and experts in, and help them leverage themselves so that they can be intelligent and productive in how they work. I don't care if everyone adopts Linux, but I do care if the people who want to work intelligently and are willing to be intelligent are shut out of it. I encounter people all the time who want to learn Linux for the sake of learning it. These are open minded people who want to be smart. Maybe they are smart, maybe they aren't. But honestly that doesn't matter, if they have the will, then Linux will probably work fine for them.
This comment is not meant to "save the world" or anything so grandious. It is only meant as a retort to jackass e-zine writers who don't have the desire to give it a try and have no faith in the concept of community.
Re:I believe in people (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I believe in people (Score:4, Insightful)
People have been brought up to expect everything NOW. If they have to take time to learn it then obviously it's not worth it. That's what us Manics are for. They learn just what they need and then we save the day when they need more.
Remove the word LINUX (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I believe in people (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Holy cow, are you even hearing yourself saying this? Most of the people I know that are not in the computer biz have a hard time just wrapping their mind around the concept of a directory hierarchy and the difference between a file and a folder. And then tell these people to cd into folder x and type "make", and then insmod the compiled module? Or explaining to them why some drivers are in the kernel, while others are installable modules, right after explaining what a kernel is and what it's good for? This attitude is exactly what the original article is addressing.
Re:even the linux experts get tired. (Score:3, Insightful)
Except the whole problem is that there's thousands of parts. It's simply not practical to catalogue them all, or even just the ones that work - hence why it has to be a "suck it and see".
To compound this problem, it is not unknown (indeed, it's relatively common) for two products which do the same thing but internally are totally different to be given the same model number and packaging by their manufacturer. (ADSL modems, I'm looking at you here).
Most Linux installs are not home users with Frankenstein boxes, and there's no need to target the Frankenstein box.
There is. Because there's no such thing as a standard PC - they're all Frankensteins. Just as it's not unknown for two totally different ADSL modems to have the same model number and can only be told apart by cracking open the case, the same is true of off-the-shelf PCs. Dell are particularly good at this.
They've got it all wrong... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:even the linux experts get tired. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think the main point is valid. Installing and tweeking Windows sucks just as hard as Linux. The thing is, you don't do that. You get it pre-installed on your box by an OEM who did all the work. Then your graphics card comes with drivers that the card manufacturer and the OS company have worked together on to make sure the OS gets the most out of the card. Then, you might download some piece of software, and the vendor of that software has worked with the OS vendor to make sure that it installs cleanly and uses all of the features of the OS.
Linux is hurting on the desktop side, not becuase it is hard to use, but because there isn't an army of companies working with any OS vendor to make sure that you don't really have to "use" it at all. The situation is improving, though. The number of people who run the most popular games under Wine or Cedega and use Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice natively on Linux is climbing, and as that happens, more and more vendors will be pushing major commercial vendors to provide hooks for the smooth installation and use of their software across platforms. OEMs were more common for Linux desktops in the early 2000s, but they died quickly. That trend will rise again as the user-base begins to grow.
Oracle and Microsoft's recent moves to compete with Red Hat have lit up the industry, and while most of the action is on the server-side right now, it's going to spill over onto the desktop.
Re:If they had to install(!) Windows ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Try booting Debian woody (July 2002) on that machine and let's see what goes on!
Re:even the linux experts get tired. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think Linux is as the point that for it to work out of the box, you need the support of vendors and commerical application providers. Ubuntu pops up on my system just fine and the install isn't a problem
Now if I can just convince her that to prove her point she has to buy me that Mac
Re:obviously they're right (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you realize that this attitude is more responsible for holding back Linux than Microsoft ever could? You just dont get it dude. 99.9% of the people using computers to either do work or play games JUST DONT GIVE A SHIT how it works, nor should they. I dont want my Lawyer to waste a SECOND thinking about Device Drivers. I dont want my accountant to tell me he couldnt get his job done because that last recompile fucked up his spreadsheet. When are people like you going to realize that a person can use a computer without having to know a damn thing about how it works? It is that kind of stupid elitism that is fucking the game for Linux world-wide.
Jet Blue might be the best airline out there right now, and they run 100% Windows, down to having electronic copies of their procedures and documentation on laptops in their cockpits. Do you want their pilots to have to sit in a holding pattern, as they slog through a non-booting laptop problem so they can find an ILS frequency for an approach? To you, because these highly trained individuals use Windows, they are bitches and idiots. Well Done, that is a WONDERFUL sales pitch for Linux.
Way to go, asshole.
Re:even the linux experts get tired. (Score:4, Insightful)
But Linux won't go more mainstream until a major desktop vendor puts together a nice pre-installed distro and has the computers displayed next to the Windows machines at CompUSA and Best Buy.
They did that; it's called "Apple".
Re:I believe in people (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:even the linux experts get tired. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's actually worse. Let me share a personal anecdote/epiphany:
Last week, I finally got around to upgrading from Linux kernel 2.4 to 2.6. After the install, I rebooted, everything came up ok, but the network card wasn't working. I did a little digging, and found out that the name of the driver module had changed from "bcm" to "tg3", so I insmod'ed tg3, network came up, everything was fine. Until I tried to launch an application, that is. If I had network, I couldn't get KDE to launch an application. Reboot, KDE works, but no network. Add the driver, KDE stops working. Talk about f-ing weird, huh? After a couple hours of digging, I finally, finally realized that the network scripts were resetting my hostname, which caused X to kick me out (I wasn't in .Xauthority). Fixed the hostname, everything was ok.
After that experience, the first thought that popped into my head was, "No wonder nobody uses Linux. That took me hours to figure out, and I kind of know what I'm doing!"
But then I thought about it a little more and realized that Windows does sh*t like that all the time - the difference is, it happens with smaller upgrades than a complete kernel upgrade, you get a blue screen and no further helpful diagnostic information to troubleshoot the problem (no matter how well you know what you're doing), and you likely have to re-gen the whole f-ing machine. It's actually a testament to how well-designed Linux is that I was able to upgrade the Operating system kernel with just a couple of hours of troubleshooting.
Re:As a new user of Linux, I have to say... it suc (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you tried to gain access to the data on a Linux partition from within Windows? It's actually pretty difficult.
When people install GNU/Linux on a Windows box they expect it to automatically set up a dual boot option and configure itself so the two continue to work perfectly and in harmony. Have you tried installing Windows on a machine which already has Linux on it? It just zaps things so you have a job getting access to your GNU/Linux install.
Windows now comes with an ever decreasing number of commandline utilities, but with GNU/Linux the opposite is true. When it comes to configuration, how easy is it to edit the all-important Windows registry when you can't boot into Windows itself? Bloody hard is the answer, unless you're prepared to pay for suitable third party tools.
Most Windows tutorials don't explain what's going on under the hood either. They explain how to use the GUI, and that's your lot, so you should probably only be comparing them to KDE or GNOME tutorials. It's all very superficial stuff.
Commandline work is always going to be the domain of those who know what they're actually doing, and not the casual user. Perhaps all we need to do is hide all the options and programs that require a decent level of technical expertise in the same way that Windows does.
Re:I believe in people (Score:5, Insightful)
Your entire post misses one of the main facts that Linux zealots regularly overlook: [Typical User]: "I do not have the time, nor the inclination, to figure out how to set the clock on my VCR. I don't care. What I do care about is watching this movie. That's it. I just want to watch a goddamned movie. Why do I have to (set my clock / install and configure WINE / use the console / download dependencies / switch to root) in order to (watch my movie / play my video game / change the way a program behaves when it starts / get this stupid thing to execute at all / look at the files in directory XYZ)."
You're right, it -is- a matter of laziness, but most of the time, it is -not- on the part of the user. There are ways of solving these problems in Linux. I've seen it done. But *nix geeks don't want to solve them; they want to continue to lazily assume that everybody is a Linux expert so that they can say that the usability failures in their software are the user's fault.
Re:I believe in people (Score:5, Insightful)
Every interest has a small subset of people who find the internals fascinating. I usually pick on the example of cars. Most people really don't care about how all of the internals work. They just want to put the key in the ignition, turn it on, and drive. Is it within most people's ability to do a significant amount of their own maintenance? Yes. Do they? No. They have other things to do with their time. The Linux community needs to understand this. Unfortunately, all too many Linux folks would rather engage in a protracted flae-war over some nuanced difference between KDE and Gnome, Red Hat and SuSE and Gentoo and Ubuntu and,
Oh yeah, I've been using Linux since Red Hat 5.0 in 1998. Its great. I just installed Fedora Core 6 on three different systems (including one laptop) and the installs all went flawlessly. I only had to resort to the command line for some "under the hood" changes that a typical user wouldn't do. Its getting there. It would help if there wasn't so much noise about how terrible such a default installation is from all the bit twiddlers.
Cheers,
Dave
Spot on. (Score:5, Insightful)
I burned the disk, backed up my data and took the plunge.
The problem was immediate. I have a lcd monitor, a top of the line NEC monitor that is smart enough to whine, moan and complain when the resolution isn't 1280x1024. Ubuntu however gave my top resolution options as 1024x768. I thought Ubuntu probably needed the NVidia drivers so I headed over and discovered that installing NVidia's Linux drivers made the US tax code read like a harry potter novel by comparison.
Needless to say, this ended my experiment with Linux. (And yes I know there's a command line to reconfigure the graphics shell but any time you need to send anyone to the command line to get an install working you've pretty much admitted failure.)
But wait! It doesn't end there! A few days later on Digg there was a thread about Linux being ready for the desktop! I relayed my casual user experience almost exactly the way I have here. Two hours later my user experience had been burried down to negative numbers as had all the other "negative testimonials". Yep, the Linux fan bois had run roughshod over anyone who actually had the nerve to explain why they still thought Linux wasn't ready for the desktop and there were legions of them.
So the problem is two fold really. Linux still doesn't nail the "out of box installs" anywhere near as well as Windows does and there is a sizable portion of the community that would kill the messengers rather than address the problem.
Re:I believe in people (Score:3, Insightful)
Or perhaps only the super-intelligent understand the need to spend all day configuring devices before using them. Us 'dumb' people think of machines and tools merely as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself.
Re:I believe in people (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I believe in people (Score:3, Insightful)
But more importantly, what you've described has been done before, and maybe we should just go back to our simpler roots. We're seeing a lot of effort put into Linux on the enterprise/corporate side, with a lot of money going into things like compatibility with exchange...
But "normal" home users don't need that.
We've seen a lot of time and effort put into things like 3d windows with transparencies and a lot of other fluff.
But "normal" home users don't want that.
So if we're going to be goal oriented, and ask what does the home user want. The problem is that we're not "normal" home users, and while we might know some, the fact is that we'd only be guessing. Honda put a lot of R&D into building a vehicle designed for generation Y, with a lot of focus groups and input from people within that demographic. The majority of Honda Elements are sold to middle-aged family types. Even with research, while Honda found a market, they missed the target.
So let's assume they want a general purpose computing client. You need to pick the tasks they want to do, and create an extraordinarily simple menu... perhaps a column of buttons down one side of the screen with such generic icons (and text) for "Web", "Email", "Word Processing", "Spreadsheet", and "Imaging". I can't think of anything else. Beyond that you are looking at narrower and narrower groups. A catchall "Other" with the ability to put that "function" on the menu would work.
Then you have to limit them to one application in each category.
What we're really talking about is something like the NeXT Step interface from 20 years ago.
In other words, I think we've overshot the target... I think we've seen people try to accomplish this before, but they didn't want to take away the configurability (is that a word?) and so put in hooks where you could install a number of word processors; a number of spreadsheets; then it became more complicated. Someone using Windows with MS Office doesn't have to select from three or four word processors - they just use the one.
So in Linux, you'd have arguments over which programs to use; and the developers say "fine, we'll put all of them in there." And then it never gets any better or easier for the average user.
Re:even the linux experts get tired. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep, you just re-stated my case. The smoothness of the installation and support are directly connected with how well your hardware vendor supports your OS. When that breaks down, both Windows and Linux suck to install from scratch, but are equally usable when pre-installed by someone who goes through all of that for you (OEM).