Linux suffers not from prettiness from from common sense. Windows has several fairly simple standards. Drivers as ini files (although some ignore that), programs as MSI or exe. Linux doesn’t. it has endless different methods of installing software all of which are awkward and ridiculous. People may talk about not needing to use the command line but you do – constantly. These simple “driver package” “program package” must standardise on one type which i used universally.

However that will upset the nerds who’ll say such cheerful things as they want to run make, then make install, then make something else. To a newbie this is just miserable and frustrating.

The worrying thing is will Ubuntu become pretty and still difficult. The trouble is with usability.

Windows presents a badly organised box of tools. OS X is a very neat, beautiful set of chromed tools. Linux gives you a big sheet of metal and a lathe. Endless flexibility but you’ve got to know what you’re doing before you can use it.

I’d have to agree with Tom A. Linux desktop appearances can be damned ugleeee.

Though I’m more p*ssed off with support for ATi graphics cards at present, as there’s still no direct-rendering support which means being confined to flat graphics rendering. Boo!

Another aspect of using Linux distros is – how to get out of sticky situations easily.
I mean, if the window manager goes tits up there isn’t any system restore to get you out of trouble. Most non-techies would most likely just re-install from scratch.

I disagree with Tom A. about Open Office though. There’s hardly anything that I’ve missed of Office, except for one missing (or very hard to replicate) feature in Access, using a table for providing drop-down selections in other tables. I spend 99% of my time in spreadsheets, and OO3 is a damn-fine alternative.

My current OS is open solaris 11/08. It has slightly different commands to learn, but nothing difficult for a regular Linux user. But!!! it’s got even less hardware support than Linux, so it’s crucial to check with Sun’s HCL. (hardware compatibility list)
Support for printers and wifi adapters is the worst aspect.

As for Windows, it still drives me potty the way it forces you to spend ages tweaking the UI, just to get rid of annoying features. Bah!

Some good points all round. Bizarrely, I’ve always found Linux very usable, simply because the layout strikes me as more logical than Windows. Rooting through the control panel for hidden away options in XP was annoying at best, and though Vista and Windows 7’s search has helped, the Gnome layout still strikes me as simpler.

That said it’s uglier than an inside out dog, and until that changes it’s going nowhere.

@Tom A – I miss Office 2007, too. It’s brilliant and Open Office isn’t. I’m also a gamer which is always going to be a problem.

Americans will definitely choose beauty over quality, but can you say the same thing about the rest of the world? The problem with the beauty argument is that it doesn’t address the rest of the world. The Chinese government is really backing Linux and open source software in general right now. The same with the Brazilian government and the Vietnamese government. What happens when a large portion of the rest of the world is all of a sudden using Linux? The problem right now is that hardware and software developers don’t see much of a market in Linux so they go where the money is: Windows. But when China pushes Windows out and opts for Linux, then all of a sudden you have a market that consists of an easy 1.3 billion potential “costumers.” And if the same thing happens in Brazil, Vietnam, and many of the “less developed” countries as Americans like to refer to them as, then all of a sudden Linux becomes a larger market. Not to mention the economic down turn the U.S. is experiencing right now. I’m sure all those free, open-source software solutions are looking pretty good to business owners in the U.S. right about now. I think the key to making Linux mainstream is the rest of the world–get them using Linux and it will become the standard.

I only take issue with one thing here: the assertion that Linux *must* be usable because it’s tested by thousands of participants. This doesn’t stand up to either precedent, or first-principles assertion: the Linux test panellists are already Linux faithful, and they are looking for debugging data, not design presumptions which fail to deliver. All of Linux’s usability has been derivative, playing continual catch-up with Windows & OSX. If Linux was inherently, objectively more usable, it would have one by now: but the fact is, the innovation is happening elsewhere.

Being tested by a gazillion Aspergers yes-men isn’t a good way to get good results on any product, be it an Operating System or a lemon squeezer – the only precedent for that type of testing is the QWERTY keyboard layout, which is 99% inertia and 1% user-friendlyness. In that case the better layout is well known, and reains unadopted solly through laziness.

I must say I don’t think OS X is the paragon of usability it’s been painted as here. I find it can be simultaneously shallow (that stupid shift-cursor key select logic) and deep (perl scripts! run awaaaaaay!) and the documentation is poorly organised – almost as poorly organised as man pages… for the jobs I want to do in a GUI, Windows 2000 is smart enough.

With Ubuntu (among other distros), Linux is mostly hassle free. There’s a few issues on my machine, mostly related to hardware support, but compared to my sister’s Vista machine it’s nothing. Fixing issues is possible on Linux, it just takes a bit of learning (and lot of Google), whereas with Windows it is either easy or impossible. What’s not hassle-free is the key to Linux mainstream adoption: OpenOffice.org. Even though it is plainly wrong to say that GNU/Linux and FLOSS only mimics Microsoft and other proprietary software, OO.o does. And it does it badly. I mostly use Writer and it’s buggy, ugly, difficult to understand and use, and it’s difficult to find a solution. Until we have an office suite that’s better than MS Office, Linux will be secondary on the desktop. When users prefer OO.o over MS Office, like they do with Firefox over IE, it’s the year of the Linux Desktop.

Would one of the Pro-Linux, anti-OOO evangelicals have a go at IBM Symphony (their free office suite) and see a) i they can get it for their Linux flavour and b) if it’s less annoyingly broken than OOO?

Here’s the real reason why Linux won’t be mainstream anytime soon:

IT ISN’T WINDOWS XP.

The penetration of this operating system is so ingrained that we think that it’s the benchmark for pretty? Heck no! Windows XP is the ugliest piece of crap I’ve ever laid eyes on, with fonts that will make blood come out of your ears! It works fine, but dang…if you claim prettiness is the factor, XP is the anti-thesis.

The first comment on this blog, by Nick, really does demonstrate the way that Windows has penetrated the way we use computers – Windows users expect to download their software from a third party website in some Kingdom Come bundled up into an .exe file that we really know nothing about, and we are expected to trust is blindly and install it. even Windows Vista and Win7 are finally realizing that it’s just not an effective way to download programs anymore, which is why we see Vista popping up with little boxes warning us about everything under the sun.

You do not install programs like that in Linux. You use a package manager. If the program you want is not in your repository, you find one that you trust (The Ubuntu PPA’s are perfect – I wish they’d capitalize on this) and you install from there. Every single program is installed through the package manager; that’s how you run Linux.

Is that bad, as Nick would like you believe? No, it’s just different.

For me, however, I’m not interested in pretty. I use Ubuntu because it works. It looks fine enough to me – though that comment about fonts is so off the mark I must laugh – install the Liberation fonts and turn on the subpixel smoothing for some nice work! I do wish Ubuntu would turn this on by default, but they don’t listen to me, and for good reason.

This “pretty isn’t everything” seems to be the sentiment echoes by others I know as well. They look at Vista and go, “Okay, it looks nice. Anything else?” And I say, “No, compared to XP, not really.”

Because it’s the truth. People have been using the butt-ugly XP for years, and they got along just fine. Sure, Macs look nice (if you like that sort of thing; I don’t) but if it can’t do what you want, then why bother? This is why a pretty Linux wouldn’t help anyone.

The real issue for Ubuntu is that it’s different. The way that software is managed is very, very different, yes, but speaking for the Linux community at large, it’s totally worth it. But it’s not the only issue. The places where everything is has changed. The software you use in Windows will need to be replaced.

Is this bad? No, it just takes patience and a willingness to learn. If you are just going to rush into Ubuntu like Nick and assume that Ubuntu will work just like XP, you will not like Linux. Your mind has been made up the minute you didn’t see that XP logo on the middle of your screen.

Three things need to happen before Linux is mainstream:

1) Mass consumer education. This could be solved by a training mode, perhaps, in Ubuntu. The material’s out there, detailing how Linux works, but most users, like Nick, are too busy (or arrogant, choose one) to consider reading it. So, integrate it with the OS, and make sure you can turn it off nice and easily.

But nobody knows about Linux. Advertisements would be a stretch, but just simple, non-zealot name dropping in mainstream computer conversation will do a lot for adding to the Linux awareness.

2) Stop the blame.

When you use Windows, and you see a bug, you go, “Oh, dangnabbit, a bug, how do I fix it?”

When people use Ubuntu, they see a bug and go, ” Ubuntu has a bug. Ubuntu sucks.”

Why does Windows get the benefit of a Google search, while Ubuntu gets the benefit of a hard drive reformat? They both solve their bugs in the same way, and if anything Ubuntu’s bug solving is quicker because it involved the community. This is unfair and it needs to stop.

3) And speaking of the community, that’s the final change that needs to occur.

Linux fans, repeat after me. I, state your name, will accept that some people prefer Windows or Mac over Linux. They have completely legitimate reasons for doing so. If, in some odd coincidence they have an incorrect or false reason for it, I will correct them on their faults and fallacies in a clear, concise, and positive manner, while still acknowledging their choice of operating systems.

But, I, state your name, will be acceptive of other operating systems at all times, never flaming, never trolling, always positive and helping.

The community, of course, is a minor issue, and it’s true about all three main OS’ out there. This will only apply to a very small portion of Linux’s community. But Linux’ community has made a bad name for itself, which is unfair, but it’s the way opinion has gone. So, if you take away that “geeky fanboy” stereotype from the average Linux user, you get acceptance. This needs to be reflected in every post.

[...] The key to Linux’s mainstream success Our esteemed editor, Tim Danton, recently ran a thought piece wondering whether Linux would ever hit the mainstream, his ten cents worth clattering down on the side that says “probably not.” [...]

The real reason is far simpler. No-one apart from computer programmers are familiar with using a command-line interface. At some point, often when just trying to get things working for the first time, you will have to resort to this in Linux.

The mainstream user, on observing a black box with a blinking cursor, will run crying back to mummy (Windows, in this case).

If people haven’t run the latest Obuntu operating systems; they don’t know Linux. Loading linux is much easier than MS. Loaded on my lap top it ran without any problems. Wireless was supported easily without doing any thing or maybe one or two clicks of the mouse.What I am saying is; don’t mistake “Linux of old” with the new Linux operating systems.

Linux on the desktop is a joke:
Application installation is a joke,
Webcam support is joke,
Multifunction printer support is a joke,
USB peripherals support is a joke,
Linux deluded fanatics are the biggest joke,
Distribution upgrades are a joke,
“Paste as HTML” is a non existent joke,
File chooser in Gnome is a joke,
KDE 4 is a joke (think of rotating icons, dude),
The whole *nix way on the desktop is a joke,
The speed of Firefox, Thunderbird or OOo on Linux is a joke
Root, swap, packages, mounting and repositories are stupid jokes that normal people do not get.
DE (any of them) stability is a joke.
Can Linux desktop ever hit the mainstream?
It is not even funny.

Windows being the “the hassle-free” experience is the joke.

Tell that to all the people that call me to help them with their Windows computers. Doesn’t seem too hassle-free to me. Seems the opposite. Virus, malware, popups, lockups causing loss of data, slowdown over time requiring reboots, activation keys in everything. Windows PCs scream feed me more money and/or pay someone to come fix me.

The only reason they use Windows is because they don’t even know they have a choice, and it came pre-installed. Anytime you install Windows or Upgrade Install it on a computer it was not pre-installed on, it is a royal pain in the you know what to get all the drivers right.

I think pre-installation when buying the hardware is the key to Linux success. Thats exactly what Microsoft has the monopoly on. I’m not saying Linux should ever over take Windows. I’d be happy with both sharing the market with Apple also instead of one being monopolistic.

All most of my friends and family want to do is browse the internet, upload photos/videos, and check their email and Microsoft can’t even make that a hassle-free safe experience.

I started telling them I don’t fix Windows anymore but I’d upgrade them to Linux if they want. I find since about a year ago the usability of Linux went way up.

I’m glad because it was around the same time I got tired of Microsoft obsoleting all the technologies I loved to use, for new stuff I didn’t need just so they could make a buck.

That is the joke.

Anyone who says Linux is hard to use, hasn’t tried it lately. I would agree I’ve tried Linux on the Desktop off and on for a long time, but last year or two it got way better for my everyday use.

I’m using Debian currently and advise it or Ubuntu to anyone. On an interesting side note everyone seems to talk more about Ubuntu but in reality just about ALL Linux distros have gotten much better in the last few years. Fedora is also really nice now for example. They are all based on the same core systems anyways, so fixes and features generally benefit them all.

Re those ads we see in magazines from Dell, Toshiba and virtually every other PC manufacturer that say ‘Dell recommends Windows Vista’ etc etc

It is a well known fact that Microsoft pay pc manufacturers to print these statements so therefore it is pure marketing and spin.

A fella recently came clean and posted online his payments and paper work from Microsoft for printing these statements. Google it and you’ll find it.

Windows is a marketing success, not a technological success. Look at it this way…..McDonalds don’t make the best burgers but we believe they do!

The key to GNU/Linux success is you and me!

It’s up to us, the people who know the benefits of using GNU/Linux, to encourage others, convert new users, be a community resource, and perhaps most importantly – to lead the charge against the industry “ignorance” of GNU/Linux!!

It’s true, GNU/Linux MUST have support from hardware vendors, that’s the single biggest difference between the Win OS and the GNU/Linux OS. It’s up to US, the GNU/Linux evangelists – to take the time to CONTACT these companies and tell them they’re doing the public a disservice by not supporting the GNU/Linux OS! Just look at the progress we’ve made thus far! It shows through in the drivers being made for video, by the major OEMs selling GNU/Linux preloaded, but this is only the beginning.

As for OpenOffice, yes it has it’s shortcomings, but the word on the street is that Big Blue (IBM), is buying Sun(maker of OpenOffice), and things will surely get better after that. I’m not dogging on Sun, but their candle is dimming and it’s time for a refreshment. IBM is a fresh start for all the Open Source projects that Sun is currently running, and we will all be able to enjoy the fruits of that merger, soon.

As for printing, I’ve experienced some weirdness with it in GNU/Linux, true. But again, this is all about hardware vendor support. Imagine printing on a Win OS without a driver – ha, not happening! With GNU/Linux, you need to shop around for support when you buy new hardware peripherals, HP(for example) has pretty good support for GNU/Linux. Support the hardware makers that support YOU (GNU/Linux), and let everyone else who doesn’t know about it (by calling them, emailing them, making demonstration against them)!! We must let these people know that GNU/Linux on the desktop is real, and it will be recognized!!

GNU/Linux is a paradigm change, there’s no doubt about it, but what’s so cool is that the more people that use GNU/Linux, the better it will get! There’s no limit or “profit” rule to stop the advancement of computerized technology with GNU/Linux.

When you think Google.com, craigslist.com, twitter.com, facebook.com, youtube.com (and many, many others), you are thinking in the terms, glory and paradigm of GNU/Linux. Because like GNU/Linux, many of these sites aren’t about the company that put them together, rather they are about the people that are using them and making them better. It’s the humans that are enabled with Technology, and this is a beautiful thing.

So stand your ground, continuously work to make GNU/Linux what you want it to be, and it will become everything you ever dreamed of in a computer system. The paradigm of GNU/Linux will carry us into deep space, to other worlds, and beyond.

It’s time to break the glass!!! Stand up and fight for your freedom(or at least send some emails about it)!!

Free yourself!! Go GNU/Linux!!

Shannon VanWagner
humans enabled

Most of the rants I have seen here deal with making Linux look cool and OO function better.
Let me put it to those of you who are I’ll informed (clearly). Linux can look and feel cool. There are several different Window managers that can do that. Compiz also comes to mind. Can you rotate 4 workspaces or paint in fire on the desktop or make wobbly windows (and a ton of other stuff that only Linux can do) on Windows or even a Mac ….. I don’t think so, not as easily as Linux handles that kind of eye candy and certainly now without shelling out the big bucks.
Linux doesn’t need dumbass windoze and Mac users who will only click on something stupid for viruses and malware to infest their systems all the while thinking to themselves that Linux is just as bad as WindoZe is. User ignorance is the problem here, not Linux. Linux can be as cool as you want it to behave.

On the topic of OO. What makes MS Office the defacto Standard when they don’t even adhere to the open standards. Why should OO developers work so hard to make OO documents work with MS Office and vice-versa. I see no point. I am a power OO user and so far everything I can do with MS Office (sent to be by third party people) I can do with OO. If I cannot do something I work around it. After all the only reason MS Office is better in the minds of you people is the choices that you are offered. Up until MS Office 2000 you guys didn’t know any better anyways. There will always be new choices available in every application (both in Linux and WindoZe) but you are only limited by your imagination of how to use a product.

Writing this from a Eee pc running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) in China.
After install everything worked perfect out of the box including wireless. Can’t say that for XP or Win 7. Beautiful Ubuntu dust theme with new 9.04 notifications rocks! Open Office does the job for us and we also use Google docs. No way we will ever pay the Microsoft tax again on any machine or put up with Windows viruses or trojans. XP fonts are ugly compared to Ubuntu and isn’t a true multi tasking system. (My Ubuntu machines can play 10 movies concurrently)

Multiple monitor support on Linux is a joke
Linux (especially Ubuntu) performance on older laptops is a real joke.

A very few things vi said resemble some ancient history for Linux, going back to as recent as ten years ago. The rest of it displays either complete ignorance of the progress and improvements the various Linux distros and FOSS applications have made during this time, or just more astroturfing Microsoft fanboy, kool-aid drinking, fanaticism.

What Linux needs to “make it in the mainstream” is to
1) just work as expected for the majority of users
2) Be included with conmputers out of the box.

The first point is over and done with; Linux is there already. The vast majority of people using computers do not run bleeding edge 3D FPS games. They’re not editing the next all-digital Star Wars movie. They’re not editing 1500 page technical manuals. They’re not programming, or building web pages, or designing advertizing graphics for magazines. These things argued over represent one or two percent of the computer buying public.

The overwhelming majority just want to do some web browsing, look at email, perhaps some light word processing and spreadsheets, watch a DVD, and play some games. The majority of Linux distros either meet and exceed these requirements out of the box or the additional software necessary can be added easily without resorting to the command line. Thanks to Vista and Office 2007, the millions of people trained on XP and Office 2003 have an easier time moving to a Linux desktop than to Microsoft’s plan for “upgraded” user experience.

The only problem remaining is issue 2. Linux has to be included with the computers. People use Windows, not because they chose it, but because it comes with everything sold. Most people don’t install Windows. Few even know how to reinstall Windows when it inevitably corrupts itself. I get great deals on “broken” systems that the owner is just going to throw away, because windows has committed suicide, or they collected one too many spam bots, adware, or other insidious hacks. It is easier for most people to accept they should buy a new computer than to reinstall Windows. So, the overwhelming majority run only what comes with the computer and few even know a choice is possible.

The good news is that over the past year several major hardware sellers have started making Linux available in their consumer systems. Netbooks have become a hot item and inherently lightweight Linux runs better on these systems than Windows. So the prevalence of Linux and its exposure to the common computer-buying public will only continue to increase. We’re not very far off from the time when any average person will know some crude, basic facts for making a choice such as, “Windows runs Office, but Linux doesn’t get viruses.”

I’ll present my sister-in-law as an example of the average computer using public. She picked up the cheapest thing possible she could get — a refurbished eMachines for $200, and a week later asked me to “fix” it. It wouldn’t play DVDs, and didn’t have squat on it for word processing, but at least the games worked. She understands XP, because that’s the only thing she has seen. I spent all of five minutes considering doing an XP reinstall only because that’s how long it took to determine no Windows media was included with the computer. If she were by herself she may have taken it back to the store, because it was “broken”, or tolerated that her cheap computer was going to do less than she expected.

I told her the only other thing available to install is Linux — it will do word processing and play some different games, and possibly play DVDs. So, she agreed and I did an openSuse 11.1 install. Everything worked fine out of the box. Surprisingly, the install recognized and configured 3D acceleration on the intel integrated video and it works. What really surprised me is video playback hardware is supported too. This ultra-cheesy, cheap piece of junk plays back DVD and other video full screen using about 10-15% CPU time. We installed all the entertainment and educational stuff possible.

So, now she’s thrilled. She acts like she got a $1000 computer for $200. She puts a DVD in and it starts playing. She and the niece listen to music, browse the web, do word processing and school work on it without problems. They still haven’t reached the end of all the games installed, and they haven’t called one time about a problem in the past two months. If anyone doubts Linux is ready for the desktop for everyday users then my sister-in-law and niece are the evidence. Now the mother-in-law wants me to “fix” her computer too.

I used OO.o for 4 years as my main office application. I still prefer MS Office, but I used Linux as my main desktop OS between 2003 and 2006 (dual screen).

MS Office had a lot of competition back in the 90s (WordPerfect / Corel and Lotus, for example, plus some smaller options at the bottom end of the market). Microsoft managed to dominate the market – its first big step was the introduction of Office itself, as opposed to buying different individual apps. That caught Lotus and WordPefect on the hop, they had one decent application (WordPefect and 1-2-3 respectively) and they had to bundle in other apps quickly. The Lotus WP and graphics modules were never that great, but relatively good, and Quattro, which WordPerfect bought in was never a serious contender for office.

As to why the OO.o community should bother making it compatible with MS Office – market share! MS has the market share, whether it uses open standards or not. If OO.o cannot reliably open MS Office documents and exchange documents with MS users, it will never gain a foothold. There are too many MS Office documents around to just ignore it, they will need to import and convert those, at the very least.

OO.o makes a poor job of importing Word documents at the moment, with the simple guides I’ve imported (under 500 pages), it manages to screw up the formatting most times and means several hours of repaginating and reformatting, before I can continue work on the document.

The presentation module is even worse, lines all over the place, not connecting things to what they should be connected to, very embarrassing when somebody turns up to do a presentation and you only have OO.o and it looks nothing like the presentation should…

OO.o has made a good start, and for companies that just need information out of MS documents (or don’t have any business partners with MS Office), as opposed to interoperability, OO.o is fine, if a little basic.

As ot Linux, eye candy doesn’t necessarily make a good or pretty user interface. Just look at Compiz, it looks cool for 5 minutes, then you end up turning all the features off, because they irritate or are useless. None of the Compiz effects make up for a good underlying design UI design.

Gnome and KDE have some great features, which OS X and Vista could learn from, and vice versa. There is nothing inherently wrong with KDE or Gnome, but they aren’t as polished as Vista/7 or OS X – mainly because they don’t have teams of behavioral analysts to come up with a cohesive design; something which Canonical want to change.

A lot of people seem to confuse eye candy and “cool” features (like the Compiz desktop cube or the Vista “waterfall” task switching) with a good, cohesive underlying UI design. Just look at the design guides that Microsoft and Apple provide for developing applications (although a lot of developers on Windows seem to ignore them).

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