A few years ago, it looked like Linux might – just might – take over the world. Companies like Lindows/Linspire were going to make it easy enough for your mother to use. Bright coloured boxes of SUSE and Red Hat and plenty of others were piled high in every computer store. The letters MS rarely went without an ironic '$', and oh, how we laughed. It was going to be a whole new era.
Except it didn't really happen, did it? The promise of Linux becoming a dominant player on the desktop was always just over the horizon, and over the years, the visible excitement waned.
What went wrong?
The most important thing is that desktop Linux was only ever 'easy' for two sets of people – hardcore types, and people with a very specific set of tools that could be installed and made bulletproof through security. If all you want from your PC is the ability to edit documents, send emails, and browse the web, Linux is indeed easy to use. The trouble comes when you advance to the part where you want to install a new printer, or play a new game, or the screen fills up with babble.
Tools like Linspire's Click and Run Warehouse went some distance to fixing this, but could only go so far without the support of hardware manufacturers and software developers. It's the chicken and egg problem. Without a big market, companies are reluctant to spend money supporting it; without support, the market can't grow.
Making it tougher was the fact that few people had a reason to move. Far from the centre of the world, to most, Windows is just that thing that came with the PC and lets their real programs run. A solid reason was required to get people to switch, and none really presented themselves.
Don't get us wrong – many of the reasons provided are valid. You'll find a list of most of the most common ones at makethemove.net/why.php. However, there's a massive gulf from technical improvements to compelling benefits for the average PC user who's never even going to run into that kind of page, never mind pull the trigger on a distro. Viruses and spyware are covered by tools like Norton and McAfee to the level that most people care about: feeling protected. Free software? Most of the best stuff, like OpenOffice.org and Firefox, is available on Windows.
The OS X coffin nail
Another nail in the coffin came in the form of OS X, which fulfilled most of the criteria that the average user actually cared about, and did so with style on its side. It's easy to use. The technobabble is hidden behind the scenes. Its apps are slick and well integrated. The hardware support quickly became relatively ubiquitous.
Where Linux was offering a technological advantage, Apple was in place to offer a whole new lifestyle to people wanting to step away from the Windows hegemony. Linux could offer many of the same features – indeed, OS X is based on a UNIX core – but the stigma of being the geeky OS never left it. Even if the user never had to compile anything or go to the terminal, they'd be hit in the face with that side of maintaining their system every time they went hunting for advice. Online comedy group Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie summed up the general sentiment in a verse of its snappily named 2001 song Every OS Sucks
Your comments (6) Click to add a new comment
pturing
September 24th 2008
6. hwangeruk,
an obligatory friendly rebuttal of some of your points..
>No throat to choke
Not only is there a throat to choke, there are competing offers from companies who want to be that throat: Redhat, Ubuntu, Novell, ...
IMHO, in the windows world the throat is too big; only the biggest companies can hope to squeeze Microsoft for a fix
There are exchange clients, such as Evolution which supports exchange through a plug-in. However you're analysis on office document support applies: for now these clients use the OWA APIs, and so are second-class citizens.
Gaming api: libsdl.org
xorg.conf: thankfully no longer needed for most users in 7.4
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hwangeruk
September 23rd 2008
5. You are correct, Linux still doesn't cut it for these reasons:
For Business
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* No throat to choke. You can't "make" Linus and his buddies fix your issue today. No accountability, just good will. You can't do business on good will
* No 100% Office document compatibility. (yer yer VM) I am talking native. Not 99.8% but 100%. As soon as 1 user cannot open document X then the thing is useless. MS know this, thats why they fight tooth and nail against open document standards, which is something I despise. The world needs open document standards.
* No Exchange client. MS Exchange owns the corporate email space and until the FOSS bizaar comes up with a "real" alternative, forget it.
For home use
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* No gaming API
* Compiling source? Please, Linux needs binaries (but that goes against the beard and sandals brigades views. Idiots)
Architecture
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* Too many competing standards, Gnome versus KDE. X versus Xorg, one with SELinux, one without. One with a ton of libs, one without many. XF86.Config. Come on. Windows isn't perfect, but come on, autodetection is better these days, but nowhere near where it is supposed to be.
I like Linux, its freed many. But its still far too short. And for dogmatic religious reasons I don't see many of the open source issues being resolved very soon. In some ways I prefer the quasi dictatorship of OpenBSD which at least has just the one version!
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dgamer
September 23rd 2008
4. I feel like you wrote this article 5 years ago, I've been using linux and specifically ubuntu for over 2 years now and it never said no to me at anything i wanted to do, It did everything I needed a computer for, and sometimes even better than the always buggy windows, I have a brand new vista installation on my laptop and I barely used it
and even gaming went very well with me, cuz half of the games i wanted to run ran really good on linux with wine, it needed some tricks to do, but it kept me from reinstalling windows 3 times a year because of a codec that somehow crashed the system
all the problems you're talking about disappeared years ago and now finding programs for linux has became even easier than windows', because the OLD click n run technology has deveoped a a lot over the years and now every single linux distro has its own package manager that can give you everything you need in a flick of a mouse
I'm a linux user, & I'm proud :)
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theejoshman
September 23rd 2008
3. I use Linux cause I love that little penguin guy. He is so cute!
www.anonymize.us.tc
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theejoshman
September 23rd 2008
2. I use Linux cause I love that little penguin guy. He is so cute!
www.anonymize.us.tc
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nitrofan
September 22nd 2008
1. I use windows XP at work at home and one the move, but I really did not fancy Windows Vista (I get too much grief supporting my CEO's Vista Vaio)Apple di not appeal so I investigated Linux and after trying three distro's settled on Open SUSE.
I love it and I hate it in equal measure The biggest issue for 99% of Windows users is always going to be the technical nature of the OS you simply cannot download and install what you want, you in many cases have to go to the command line and it took me a time to learn all the various syntax and commands (I still have to refer to my online guide I built on Google docs to reinstall certain items!) and that sometimes makes me feel " Oh I wont bother I cant be bothered to trawl the WIKI and support forums! just to find out how to do something that would be a simple operation in Windows.
Like the Betamax VHS wars of the early eighties Windows and Linux are doing battle and the technically inferior system won, Why because for all its faults its accessible and 90% of the time it works right out of the box.But more importantly it requires very little technical effort on behalf of the home user and that is why it will win hands down every time.
As for SUSE I will never leave it, SUSE is like a difficult mistress, it may give you grief but its exciting just the same and most of the time surprises you with what it can do and who knows, one day she might just learn to behave well in company.
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