Ubuntu, you blew your chance to go mainstream

8. Canoaical isn't a Jaggernaut like Microsoft that has the financial means to launch a worldwide marketing campaign. Even with Apple, they had to use the momentum of the ipad to get to the point where they could take on Microsoft head to head. Even still, they only have 6% of the OS market share. There are a lot of negative perceptions about linux with ordinary consumers. Canonical would have to spend tens of millions of dollars trying to overcome that. That doesn't make much business sense when your core product is licensed as free. You'd have to commercialize it.

7. I found Ubuntu very easy to use, and I know nothing about computers.

For those of you who found it difficult, here is how I did it:

1-I put an Ubuntu cd in the cd drive of my PC.

2- then I pressed "Next" a couple of times.

3- wrotte a name for my pc

4- choosed the time zone

5- and that was it!

I use my PC for internet surfing, chatting with friends, and sometimes to type a few work reports on open office.

I know, I could do exactly the same with the Windows Vista I used to have, but I kept Ubuntu because now my PC is much faster and I never get any virus.

Anyway, that was my experience with Ubuntu, and it was a good one, as I am still using it now.

6. Ubuntu is too small in the market. There are too few sources of support for ubuntu if things went wrong with it for users. Windows has been out there for years as has apple and as consequence has large amount of sources on the internet community for help with problems.

The average/ordinary user would not like linux/ubntu.

5. IF Mayank Sharma genuinely belives Ubuntu missed the mark due to "marketing" he is off his chump!

I started using PC's in 1990 with Windows 3.1 and DOS have managed company IT systems and small networks and consider myself a competent Windows power user.

Yet when I tried Ubuntu and SUSE I found having to learn command line instructions and syntax a real pain unless you want to spend ££££££££sss on Ubuntu and SUSE manuals.

As for the community help system, Forums populated with well meaning amateurs all of whom seem to have their own way of performing the same task, and all with their own particular way of writing down the syntax wrong!!! Do not help, they simply drive you mad and waste hours of valuable time.

Then there is the problem of applications, Take Photoshop unless you can first get "Wine" to install and work (I never managed it in 6 months!) you have no chance how stupid is that?

Linux needs to realise that the public donot want to learn a languge more complicated than Icelandic just to make their PC work, They want to go to sites to download Apps just like they can in Windows and I mean real apps not some “tarball” you have to spend three hours figuring out how to unlock

Ubuntu and others of its Ilke do NOT need better marketing, they need to do what the Linux techies nemesis Windows does 99.9% of the time…………WORK first time every time. Do that Ubuntu and you have a winner, its that simple

4. "Windows 7 wouldn't run on my Celeron laptop – which happily runs Koala after I upgraded from Jaunty Jackalope. "

You must have installed in win 7 wrong. I have two pc's that are 7 years old (amd socket a) with 1 gig of ram both running win 7 like a dream

3. Canonical do have a decent sized marketing budget - they're venture capital funded, so there's essentially a bottomless pit of money if they want it.

The problem comes from the worlds perception of Linux and, specifically, the problems Ubuntu face - techies won't touch it because its been 'Mac-ified' and the rest of the world either want Windows for OOB compatibility or Mac OS because they own a Mac and putting anything else on it is considered dirty by the glitterati...

2. They want "geeky" more than success.

For all his saying about "taking on Microsoft" I have a suspicion that Shuttleworth and the Ubuntu crew don't actually *want* to be the world's #1 O/S. They have a comfort zone and would like to stay within that. The nice thing about being an "also ran" is that the spotlight is off you, there's no pressure to deliver and no blame is attributed to failure: after all everyone knows that Linux is "only" free software, you can't expect perfection (just like the discount airlines always defend poor service with the retort: "what do you expect for £1?") when you get it for free.

If they really wanted to be the #1 O/S desktop platform, they'd have to shed the fuzzy, warm, friendly facade and get hard-nosed. That would alienate a lot of their existing following (and would mean ditching the silly monikers - can you imaging trying to convince the boardroom to adopt a product called "Jaunty Jackalope?") and would require some serious commercial disciplines. Personally I don't think they're up to it.

1. I was enjoying your article. I like reading articles that are balanced and have perspective. but then you spoiled it by coming out with some dubious statements;

"Windows 7 is no more secure than Windows has ever been."

"You could try upgrading Vista to Windows 7 but – as usual with Microsoft – the process can take up to 20 hours."

So your saying that Windows 7 is no more secure than say Windows 95? And that Windows upgrades usually take 20 hours? Sorry neither of those statements stand-up.

And then you complain that W7 won't run on your old Celeron laptop. So you think modern OSes should be built to run on old hardware? Er, isn't that going to make progress in graphical interface design a little difficult? Will Snow Leopard run well on bottom of the range six year old Macs? I don't think so.

W7 may not have drivers out of the box for your peripherals but there is no other OS on the planet that has better hardware support. period. end of... (oh actually there is, that'd be XP of course)

I've nothing against Unbuntu and Linux but I can't help but wonder how it is that its given away for free but it still can't garner any whare near the market share of OSX or Windows. Perhaps they need to start charging for it, that would give them a marketing budget to play with.