Don't just blame the designers, plenty of times it's the clients too. I've been a web designer for the last decade and to this point I've never once built a "Flash website". However I get asked to do this several times a week. In fact I just walked out of a meeting where the client wants one of those live video gimmicks where the spokesperson walks onto the screen and starts speaking, "Hello and welcome to our website." Because everyone loves talking websites, am I right?

As a developer this leaves me with two options. I can roll over, take the extra cash and add in the bells and whistles or I can try to keep the project grounded and focused on things like content, usability and SEO. The problem is you can only argue the point so much and, I'm sorry, but usability, just isn't sexy. Moreover when I refuse to give the customer the giant animated American Flag with their favorite Toby Keith song playing in the background, they'll shop around until they find a developer who will.

So the next time you come across an obnoxious website, curse not only the developer who built it, but also the client who approved it. :-)

I relocated to Florida a few years ago (near Tampa Bay) and my property is infested with Hunstman spiders. As someone from the Northeast of the US, prior to moving to Florida my definition of a big spider was on the order of about 3 inches. However the Huntsmans here are nearly as big as my hand (easily). So far I've killed three large adults, over five inches, and about a half dozen juveniles no bigger than a fifty cent piece. Most of the kills were in my house though I've currently got one in my storage shed that has to be close to six inches but I just can't catch it. These things can see you coming from about ten feet away and they move like lightning.

Sadly pest control can do nothing about them (they call them Australian Tarantula, for what it's worth) so I've got to kill them manually.

I have to admit this is the first smooth Ubuntu install I've ever had. It actually detected my wireless adapter right out of the box. No fiddling, no CLI hackery, no sacrifices to the pagan gods of open source (which is good because my lease forbids livestock and the downstairs neighbors frown upon blood dripping through the ceiling.)

Not bad, not bad at all.

I own a small web development studio and a few years back I was on the hunt for a web programmer. Being fairly new to business myself (the company was about 3 years old back then) I filtered through all of the applications, keeping the college grads and tossing all of those without a degree.

The subsequent interviews were interesting to say the least. None of the college grads had any experience in PHP or Javascript, the two baseline skills required for the job. This was despite the fact that PHP and Javascript were among the many different languages showcased on their resumes. When questioned, just about every candidate said the same thing - they were quick learners and felt that if I'd take the time out to teach them the languages they'd surely be able to pick them up. Of course this wouldn't be free training, most wanted to be paid anywhere from $75 to $100 an hour to take on the continuing education.

Needless to say, these people were appalled when I ultimately turned them down. On one occasion the applicant's mother actually called me to find out why her little snowflake didn't get the job. And it was with that event in mind that I decided to toss all of the college grads and went back to those without degrees. To my surprise, the interviews were much more productive. The applicants showed up on time and with portfolios. They were professional, qualified and had realistic expectations. No doubt these expectations were a result of people like me tossing out their resumes before they even had the chance to interview.

In the end I found a good compromise in the "under educated" group. He was a first year college student who had the misfortune of paying his way through school. He was smart, self-taught and most of all humble. He hadn't been corrupted yet with unrealistic expectations.

I guess when you're Microsoft accounting is more important than marketing.

It was a (poorly conceived) joke. :-)

My point was, I've been downloading software from corporate websites for years and have never been subject to any sort of attacks (MITM or otherwise). Moreover to suggest that repositories are inherently a superior method of installation based simply on the merits of the underlying process means were fundamentally discussing two different things. I'm expressing this opinion from a user's perspective, not describing the fundamental technologies.

That said, let's say I just purchased a new printer and I'm going to use it on my Mac, my Windows PC and my Ubuntu box (a situation was actually faced with). On the Mac I open up the CD and double-click the installer. It runs through its paces and complete. The Windows experience is identical and at no point during this process did I feel unsafe or confused. Now, for Ubuntu the "easy" install. Here was my general experience:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

wget -O foo2zjs.tar.gz http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/foo2zjs.tar.gz

tar -zxvf foo2zjs.tar.gz
cd foo2zjs

sudo make uninstall

make ./getweb 1020

sudo make install install-hotplug cups

sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys restart

Clearly much more intuitive. ;-)

It's a valid point and I think Linux (Ubuntu, especially) has shown it can be versatile and useful in niche markets. Netbooks are a wonderful example. Most run some Linux variant and perform their jobs admirably. But in these cases they're almost kiosks, really. What happens when they do want new software and no one is around to show them how to add unsupported repositories?

"Tell you what -- actually give it a try. Actually make an effort. Then come back with some real, legitimate complaints -- because those do exist. Your feedback will be welcome, your patches even moreso."

I've got an Kubuntu box under my desk. It's got Hardy on it but it's not on my network because the wireless doesn't work. I'd blame the five adapters but they work fine on my other systems. I'd blame the lack of commercial support for proper drivers but even then when I found a supported card, the hoops I had to jump through were absurd. Even more absurd than the "arcane" process of going to the developers website and downloading an executable as I'd have to on Windows. Though, thankfully, for me ATI has never initiated any MITM attacks.

"As it is, you really don't know what you're talking about."

You're 100% right. I've been poking around with Linux since Yellowdog on PowerPC and I still don't get it. I've used Knoppix, CentOS, Redhat/Fedora, Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Debian and although I'm repeatedly told how impressed I should be, I always walk away confused. And it's not that I hate open source software, its that I think the ideals are often in the wrong place.

The underbelly of an OS shouldn't be exposed to end users. Is this belief wrong or just subjective? Either way it stands in direct opposition to what I've seen of the Linux movement. I wouldn't suggest that the guts of the OS should be inaccessible to advanced users, thus hobbling their workflow, but that know-nothings like myself shouldn't have to see or interact with it.

"Not only that...once you hit circular dependencies or find that "sudo apt-get install xyz" returns "installation of xyz has been kept back...," you cannot appreciate the problem with installing apps on Linux."

Well said. Just because an advanced user finds apt-get to be logical doesn't mean a novice will find it intuitive. I've used it enough to say that there's nothing superior about a four hour scavenger hunt for dependancies that apparently depend upon other things you're already depending upon (and missing). Especially when the successful end result breaks your wireless in the process (thanks Ubunutu!).

The point is, to suggest apt-get is more logical than double clicking a file sitting back and watching it install clearly shows a giant misconception about the end user. As far as I'm concerned, relating technical concepts transparently to the user is a bit absurd. A "friendly" OS should obscure what's going on under the hood at the user level. But of course this goes against everything Linux stands for. Want to write a letter? Excellent, but first we're going to have to construct some paper and pencils. Okay now let's add the graphite repository...

I'm not trying to be an anti-Linux shill here, after all I do have an Ubuntu install and run CentOS on my server, but I'd argue that your example doesn't reflect the norm. For example, lots of people in my family run the Mac OS. Why? Because I'm a Mac user and got them set up. That doesn't mean, however that this is the year of the Mac desktop and no one has actually noticed. It means a handful of people I know were persuaded by my advice (and free lifetime support).

Now I could make that argument that this is the year of the Mac in light of Apple's resurgence and relative growth, certainly more so than Linux in the same market space, but it's a bit shortsighted I think. No more shortsighted, however, than suggesting no one uses Linux in the comments of Slashdot. I'll give you that. :-)

Well but that's my point. The percentage of people I "meet" online that use Linux is astonishingly high. Yet in person I've never seen it in practice. And the few Linux people I have met first online and then in person really didn't use Linux anymore than I did - which amounts to having it installed in a VM or on a spare box.

In regards to dependancies and app installs, sudo apt-get might be more logical for you than say dragging an application into a folder as you do on the Mac or double-clicking an installer executable on Windows but that doesn't mean its relatable to the average user.

I love reading articles about how Linux is really shaking things up on the desktop (or is it laptop now?) yet I've still never met a single person that uses Linux as their primary OS. I know several people who claim to use it daily (eg. they run a VM), I also know many people using it for hosting or specialized purposes (including myself) but Linux's real-world usage on the desktop is a mystifying thing. We brag about how its making inroads and how its impacting the marketplace but we rarely see it in person.

In my opinion, until Linux gets a unified interface, a sane way of installing applications and dealing with dependancies and manages some actual commercial support I just don't see it appealing to the average consumer. That's not to say it won't find a niche in specialized devices (which practically describes the netbook movement) in addition to its strong position in the server and hobbyist markets, but I would suggest that Linux as a replacement for Windows or the Mac OS on the desktop seems very unlikely to me. Almost as unlikely as it having any significant role in Microsoft's presumed decline.