I've just loaded an old machine up with the latest (beta) version of Ubuntu Linux and its not bad. Still a bit too geekish, but past the awkward teen period that made me dump it the last few tries.
If Ubuntu or any other Linux wants to own the desktop - and its ripe for the taking - then they need to focus the next release on useability and recoverabilty. While the forums have many people willing to answer your every problem, the OS still relies far to much on the user community for support.
Make the system auto-repair itself and never, ever fail to the point of having to understand the intricacies of Linux to resolve the problem and you will own the desktop. Make it like MAC's OS X so that users can load and go and not have to think about the OS and you will win.
But its probably too late for that. Linux is no longer an OS - its a religion. And Geeks don't really want to win the desktop, they want to show everyone why they need to be a geek or need geeks to live.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I think the linux world is schizophrenic in that there is a subset that thinks linux SHOULD be hard to use to keep out the riff-raff, there is another subset that think linux should be JUST LIKE Windows (or a smaller subset that thinks OS X) but, you know, linux. And of course there's those who don't care which of those or any other daily usability issues it is as long as it's Free(tm).
Linux is sort of like Christianity. They're all based on the same core system, but vary wildly in their dogma. Once I tried OS X and found it was everything I wanted linux to be, I dropped linux for desktop usage. It's still a fine server OS (Something Windows has never been) but is only a mediocre desktop OS (something Windows aspires to be).
Given the daily headaches I still have with Windows at work, if OS X weren't an option I would go back to linux, warts and all.
I finally got wireless working on 8.04 Yuck! 508 updates later, it's still broken. And this is a plain vanilla LinkSys card (admittedly with the dreaded rt2500 chipset). The fact that I know all that and how to fix it is whats disturbing. The fact that I have to run a shell script I wrote every time I log in to get on teh Intarweb is where Ubuntu Linux is failing. And THAT'S what needs fixing by Canonical.
On the other hand, my perfectly legal MS Office installation on my perfectly legal Windows system refuses to update because it thinks it is not legal. Is that any worse?
Post a Comment