Comment Perception is Reality (Score 1) 966
Why do people use Windows, and aren't flocking to switch to Linux?
Ultimately people think of Windows as being more reliable. May or may not be true, but perception is reality.
1) People are used to windows, technology has become too complicated. We have to remember so many things. The alternative? People cling to something that they are used to.
2) People know where to go in windows when they want to update their drivers, partition and mount a drive, look at files. This is similar to point #1. People are used to it, and know how to find things in windows. If you can't find something Windows has a good search functionality for that too.
3) The average person doesn't like going to the command line. Cool, I'll learn that, you think. Then after trying for an hour to get some software setup, or BTRFS and a file share setup, then you just lose interest. There are a thousand different things documented online about Linux, and you have to trudge through those to figure it out. Too much information, and too complicated.
4) People on Linux forums are a mixed bag. Maybe I just had a bad experience? Lately I was writing on a Linux forum asking for help on what should have arguably been a working feature in a Linux distribution. Being able to read SMART data from a hard drive. There were some issues with my experience,
a) It should have just worked. It would have just worked on windows (perhaps this is true, and perhaps this is not true, but perception is reality)
b) The person was rude to me. He didn't have the attitude that he was there to help me, he had the attitude that I was being a pain and should be able to figure it out myself, or that I should spend hours trudging through other forums finding the info I needed. He was annoyed that I wasn't able to read between the lines on what he was saying to me. It was too technical, and I wasn't going to spend a lot of time viewing the code samples he was showing me.
5) Linux is fragmented. There are too many distributions. How can I expect consistency if there are so many packages, UI managers. It is not united
6) Linux is unreliable. Times I have tried to switch over, and a couple of things happen. Programs crash, and weird things start happening. It just takes one bad experience like that to kill people's impression or opinion on Linux.
7) Perception is reality. People think of Windows as being the software that just works. Sometimes that's not true, but as I say, perception is reality.
Linux is a great server. It's reliable if you have a fixed task like webserver, or fileserver. But it's not a great desktop operating system for most average users.
I'm sorry to say, but this isn't going to change with the current direction that Linux is going in.
Ultimately people think of Windows as being more reliable. May or may not be true, but perception is reality.
1) People are used to windows, technology has become too complicated. We have to remember so many things. The alternative? People cling to something that they are used to.
2) People know where to go in windows when they want to update their drivers, partition and mount a drive, look at files. This is similar to point #1. People are used to it, and know how to find things in windows. If you can't find something Windows has a good search functionality for that too.
3) The average person doesn't like going to the command line. Cool, I'll learn that, you think. Then after trying for an hour to get some software setup, or BTRFS and a file share setup, then you just lose interest. There are a thousand different things documented online about Linux, and you have to trudge through those to figure it out. Too much information, and too complicated.
4) People on Linux forums are a mixed bag. Maybe I just had a bad experience? Lately I was writing on a Linux forum asking for help on what should have arguably been a working feature in a Linux distribution. Being able to read SMART data from a hard drive. There were some issues with my experience,
a) It should have just worked. It would have just worked on windows (perhaps this is true, and perhaps this is not true, but perception is reality)
b) The person was rude to me. He didn't have the attitude that he was there to help me, he had the attitude that I was being a pain and should be able to figure it out myself, or that I should spend hours trudging through other forums finding the info I needed. He was annoyed that I wasn't able to read between the lines on what he was saying to me. It was too technical, and I wasn't going to spend a lot of time viewing the code samples he was showing me.
5) Linux is fragmented. There are too many distributions. How can I expect consistency if there are so many packages, UI managers. It is not united
6) Linux is unreliable. Times I have tried to switch over, and a couple of things happen. Programs crash, and weird things start happening. It just takes one bad experience like that to kill people's impression or opinion on Linux.
7) Perception is reality. People think of Windows as being the software that just works. Sometimes that's not true, but as I say, perception is reality.
Linux is a great server. It's reliable if you have a fixed task like webserver, or fileserver. But it's not a great desktop operating system for most average users.
I'm sorry to say, but this isn't going to change with the current direction that Linux is going in.
