I've been trying yet again for the 4th time in 5 years to give Linux a go to see if it has matured enough for it to go mainstream desktop, and though I can say that it has improved tremendously over the years, it is sadly still not ready for primetime ordinary folks desktop. It is most certainly good enough for the fanboys and geeks here, but coming also from a geek but not really a fanboy, it is just not ready yet. Let me qualify:

Stability(!): Yes, I know there's a big gasp amongst some of you, but my trial installation of OpenSuse 10.2 on my Gigabyte 965P-DS3, C2D E6600, nVidia 8600GT was actually not stable. Although things run solid on XP, I kept getting hangups after just a few minutes of use. So in my book, (due probably to drivers as usual) ... this is a stability issue.

Drivers: What more can I say - try getting your peripherals, cards etc. to work without being a hacker.

Control Panel: In Mac or XP, everything is easy and self-explanatory. Try navigating (if you're not a geek) through the 'control panel' in Gnome or KDE (KDE is better but still...). "Should I use YAST or should I go to 'Internet'?!" "How the hell do you connect do a PPPoE?" ... these things should be idiot proof - but in Linux - they still are not. You just still have to drop down to a terminal to do many things, despite the nice glossy UI these days.

Fonts!: Sorry dudes, fonts in Linux just look horrible when compared to Windows or the Mac. And this is one of the biggest reasons that keep would keep me away from using Linux Desktop. Linux is fine for backend stuff and does a great job at it - but on the frontend, despite the nice eye-candy in current Gnome and KDE - the font engine still sucks! As I type this in Windows, everything appears smooth due to ClearType. On Linux sometimes I get non-aliased fonts and most times, the fonts just appear bad.

Names: Yes, it is a great tradition in the hacker culture to come up with cool sounding names for apps - but that's not something that will draw ordinary folks to use Linux. I mean, how would any ordinary folk guess what 'YaST2' is at the menu? Getting the ordinary folk not intimidated by all these weird names was and still is the whole point of Apple. Windows followed and though may not have the style of Apple, it sure is a helluva more usable than Linux.

OK - some may argue that I didn't set things up properly or I am not competent enough to set things up the right way - but that's the point! I shouldn't need to be more competent than being able to press a few mouse-clicks to be able to get what should be a minimum base in a modern computing environment:

* Beautiful fonts rendered as if it was printed.
* All programs appear in a menu (and not hidden deep inside some mysterious command).
* Cohesive presentation of applications (Look at YaST appearing all over the place in KDE).
* Plug and Play (no this is not the 90's but Linux implementation of this is not usable - I buy any peripheral and I still have fear on if there's a driver for it.

I guess what you pay for ..., and for what its worth - for something that's free, Linux is pretty usable and a good bang for your buck. But if you ask if I'll pay US$300+ for something that's a lot more cohesive, has a lot more apps (and not free rip-offs), 'stable' and most importantly user-friendly ... yes I would.

Now if only ol' Steve will finally let OS-X run on any x86 hardware ... //