As far as *Desktop* Linux is concerned...
... the biggest problem is a certain anti-competitive corporate monopoly making it difficult to impossible for hardware vendors to support any operating system that doesn't have a trademarked name starting w/ "W".
The next biggest problem after that has everything to do with applications. I love LibreOffice Calc, but there is simply no way I could use it at work, even if they would let me. For all of of Excel 2010's horribly botched interface, it still has power and features it's OSS equivalents lack. Similar arguments have been made comparing Adobe's products w/tools like GIMP and InkScape (which seem fine to me, but I'm not a professional designer). When people are looking for reasons to not like Linux in the first place, losing functionality in tools they depend on is not a winning argument.
Which is a pity, because Desktop Linux has the best opportunity for increasing market share it's every likely to get. Windows 8 is the most colossally hubristic mistake Microsoft has made since Bob. The learning curve of adopting the Metro interface versus the learning curve of switching to Ubuntu or Mint looks like a coin toss to me.
The apps aren't going to get better until more people can make a living writing them. But how do you pay people to write code for less than 2% of the market--particularly when the code, strictly speaking, is given away? It's a vicious cycle--I wish I knew a way to break it.
... the biggest problem is a certain anti-competitive corporate monopoly making it difficult to impossible for hardware vendors to support any operating system that doesn't have a trademarked name starting w/ "W".
The next biggest problem after that has everything to do with applications. I love LibreOffice Calc, but there is simply no way I could use it at work, even if they would let me. For all of of Excel 2010's horribly botched interface, it still has power and features it's OSS equivalents lack. Similar arguments have been made comparing Adobe's products w/tools like GIMP and InkScape (which seem fine to me, but I'm not a professional designer). When people are looking for reasons to not like Linux in the first place, losing functionality in tools they depend on is not a winning argument.
Which is a pity, because Desktop Linux has the best opportunity for increasing market share it's every likely to get. Windows 8 is the most colossally hubristic mistake Microsoft has made since Bob. The learning curve of adopting the Metro interface versus the learning curve of switching to Ubuntu or Mint looks like a coin toss to me.
The apps aren't going to get better until more people can make a living writing them. But how do you pay people to write code for less than 2% of the market--particularly when the code, strictly speaking, is given away? It's a vicious cycle--I wish I knew a way to break it.
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