desktoplinux.com — South Africa native and current London resident Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical Ltd. and the Ubuntu Linux distribution, told DesktopLinux.com Friday in an interview that widespread adoption of Linux on the desktop -- so long-awaited by many people -- "is just a matter of time, IMO."
Nov 18, 2006 View in Crawl 4
roxicsNov 18, 2006
I am not a linux user but I had the last version of Ubuntu dual booting on my computer a few months ago. I really liked it for the most part. It was the easiest version of Linux I have ever tried. However with that said I took it off my system for a few reasons. Starting with the biggest reasons first:1. It doesn't run most of the software I like to run. Linux users are quick to point out alternatives which are similar, that's very cool of them, however it's just not the same most of the time. It's like buying the store brand cereal, sometimes it tastes the same, other times it's very different. 2. Installing software. On a Mac or in Windows you download a file (exe or dmg) and just double click the thing and run through the nice installer window hitting the next button or dragging the app into the install folder. I couldn't ever figure out how to do that same thing in Ubuntu. To me that's one of the things that has to remain consistent with how Windows and Mac does it already. If you don't know how to get new software on your machine you can't get things done.3. The command line. Linux users love it and seem to have this delusion that all people should love it. That has to stop. You should be able to do everything with windows and menus. Even if it's not as fast. It's easier for the average joe to understand.For the most part I really liked Ubuntu as I said, it's just these few things which are stopping it I think.
cl1mh4224rdNov 18, 2006
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count_zNov 18, 2006
@loconetYour examples are for Businesses not for home users. Also, there's that whole lack of applications thing to deal with (a VERY big deal breaker). Try telling your accountants that he or she has to stop using Accpac or Simply Account and to find an Linux-compatible version with similar functionality.In some cases Linux is viable as replacement, in others it's really not.As for the issue of cost. Look if OS X was free, it would be 1000 times more widely adopted than Linux because it's a great desktop OS.I use Linux servers largely because the OS is free (and flexible). Use them for firewalls, routers, mailgateways, site-to-site VPNSs, DB servers and webservers, and layer-2 load-balancers (which aren't free... but the software's cheap)... I could buy hardware or other software that'd do the same thing... only it'd cost a fortune. Being free (or at least damned cheap) provides one with potentially many advantages.Linux guys have been talking about Linux on the desktop for years. At one point Mandrake was going to be the saviour, then Linspire (what a stupid name) now Ubuntu....but has its desktop marketshare increased very much (ala Firebox versus IE)? Meanwhile Microsoft is still selling oodles of copies of its OSes and Apple has started kicking serious ass.
aristotle0dudeNov 18, 2006
Desktop domination and the monoculture we have now is not a good thing. Why would someone want to replace one monoculture with another? Most reasonable windows users I've spoken to would be ok with a roughly 1/3 split between windows, linux and OS X as it would promote open standards and innovation.I don't believe Linux will "dominate" the desktop ever but the *nix community will.As long as fanatics like RMS are at the helm, Linux will never exit the niche status. For all of the contributions RMS has made to open source software, his dogma has become a liability.As I mentioned in the proprietary drivers story. People like RMS incorrectly label all closed source software as proprietary and all open source software as non-proprietary. Documented interoperability should be the sole criteria for determining whether something is proprietary or not. Open sourced code which is near impossible to read is useless to pretty much everyone except the original authors.
ducksofanaheimNov 18, 2006
Heck...I just hope they get wifi drivers for my card before the sun burns out ;)
xr56n44Nov 19, 2006
the reason Linux will eventually beat windoze is cos microsoft codes s**t operating systems. vista with all it's draconian DRM, activation, etc will drive more and more people to linux. so it really isn't that linux is all that great but rather that microsoft sucks so f**king much. linux isn't really beating microsoft, microsoft is beating microsoft... and isn't that sweet!