"Why Linux Is Still Not Ready For The Desktop"

[sarmad]

He talks about the "masses" then he mentions Adobe Photoshop! And he mentions LibreOffice not being on par with MS Office as if everyone needs those extra features that MS Office provide. If we go by this guy's logic then Android and iOS are also not ready for the masses!

[roasted]

Seriously - MS Office is not compatible even between different versions. I see documents breaking up just because I use a newer version than other teams.

Then how is LibreOffice supposed to support that?

I've seen documents created in MS Word 2014 fail to open on MS Word 2014 on an identical (but different) machine, whereas Libre Office opens it and displays it just fine. It's surprisingly not something that only happened one time either, as I've probably seen it a dozen times since the dawn of the 2015 year. That door swings both ways as, of course, nothing is perfect (Libre Office included) - however I do find the compatibility of Libre Office to be pleasantly welcome while still mildly confusing, as I never expected it to be successful at opening Word documents that even MS Word fails to open.

Photoshop of course has some benefits over Gimp, but at a rather extreme price tag. 99% of users (yep, I said it) won't need those types of features and will make out just fine with Gimp.

Complaining about drivers on Ubuntu is kind of interesting, as it's rather suggestive that the user likely never installed Windows from scratch, as it requires a series of additional drivers, whereas in the Linux world it's mostly proprietary video drivers if the user wants them, an occasional wifi driver, and an occasional printer driver, as opposed to the typical lan/wlan/chipset/touchpad/bluetooth/cardreader/ahci that the brand new laptop in front of me needs for a ground-up Win 8.1 install.

But hey, use what works for you folks. If it's Windows, great. If it's Mac, fine. We use what works best for us. 3,600 Ubuntu machines in house with another 1,000 on order for work. Quite a chunk of tax payer dollars saved and work still gets done just fine. (school district)

[aphirst]

Here follows an exaggerated statement from me, that contains my sarcastic summary of almost all comments about GNU/Linux "not being ready for the desktop", and which contains within it a grain of my true opinion:

>waa companies with business deals with Microsoft don't release Linux versions
>waa LibreOffice doesn't *perfectly* implement undocumented, obfuscated, and intentionally sabotaged document "standards"
>waa Linux has problems with xyz thing which is software patented
>waa it doesn't "just werk" for idiots
>MUH GAMES
>if only Linux had MORE proprietary software, then it would be better :^)

I have never ever cared about GNU/Linux being "ready for the desktop" if it being "ready" means throwing away all the things that made it appealing to me in the first place. The future should not be about "making sure everyone can run proprietary software :^)", it should be about ensuring that all our computing can be free. (To those who disagree: NSA please go and stay go)

Yes, there are lots of problems with GNU/Linux at present, but the solution is not to set Fisher-Price tier goals for ourselves.

Clickbait is the cancer killing journalism, fuelled by ads: the cancer killing the Internet.

[justmy2cents]

Thunderbird claim has to be dumbest ever. especially when you consider majority of Windows people use it as default mail client

[aksdb]

"LibreOffice is not bad, but it really is not Microsoft Word [...]"

thank god for that. We use Word company wide (who doesn't? :-/) and I constantly have to fix documents f*cked up by some idiot just screwing around the document, completely ignoring styles and fields. That only shows that (I pull that number out of my ***, sorry about that) 95% of the Word users use (and probably know) maybe 5% of its features. And those same users bitch about LibreOffice (Writer) being inferior.
I use Word processor profesionally, because I'm pedantic about layout and style (ConTeXt all the way ... ;-)). Doing professional documents in Word is imho a lot harder than doing them in Writer - simply because Writer often forces you to work consistently while Word tries to make it as easy as possible to do stuff HOWEVER YOU WANT (but not consitent). Want to edit document properties? Good look working in a small modal dialog box that can't be resized. Thanks MS! (And yes, that's a huge problem if you try to use document-wide fields heavily.)

</rant>

[gamerk2]

Proprietary drivers are as simple as it gets in Ubuntu. Install two packages.
On Windows you have to know where to get them and install them manually, not better in any way.

Not as of 7; they *should* automatically install when detected, though some devices may need the generic drivers installed (Printers are a good example of this). 99% of stuff these days auto-installs though.

[Hamish Wilson]

My father, who is basically the only person in the house who still uses Windows, had to switch to LibreOffice because it is what they use at his place of work.

It does happen.

[profoundWHALE]

whoa, watta topic

anyway
after trying to make double tap work as a click on my friends laptop, i can say win8 isn't ready for the desktop either

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_center

Also, when trying to use a Wacom tablet, Windows tries to be 'smart' open up the context menu. It makes my lines look like this:
. ____________

So when I'm trying to shade, it looks like this:
. __
. ____
. __. ___
. _____

In the end, I'm just like this:
._.

[chris200x9]

Not as of 7; they *should* automatically install when detected, though some devices may need the generic drivers installed (Printers are a good example of this). 99% of stuff these days auto-installs though.

Windows 7 can't install to my RAID without putting drivers on my usb and manually loading them before install, linux installs fine without doing anything. WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?!

[duby229]

Not as of 7; they *should* automatically install when detected, though some devices may need the generic drivers installed (Printers are a good example of this). 99% of stuff these days auto-installs though.

Oh boy, I couldn't possibly disagree any more. Proprietary drivers should -NEVER- be auto installed. Although I do think it should be as simple to install as possible.