"Why Linux Is Still Not Ready For The Desktop"

[reavertm]

My mom disagrees with OP.
Fedora 21 with set up KDE suits all her needs.

[edmon]

I've changed job some time ago and now PCs, which i have to manage now often comes with Gimp on Windows, it seems that Gimp is good enough for regular users.
Gnome and Unity aren't Desktops at all they are some bad copy ot MacOs.

Linux IS ready for Desktop!

[Ferdinand]

From the article:

Coming from Windows 7, where a user with no learning curve can install and start work it is impossible. Ubuntu can't. There is a ton of stuff you have to upload before you can get anything that passes for an ordinary service. This uploading is far too tricky for anyone who is used to Windows.

[89c51]

The reason is simple. Because almost nothing is as polished as something coming out of Apple or Ms. People want convenience and linux doesn't offer it.

[hhbt]

The reason is simple. Because almost nothing is as polished as something coming out of Apple or Ms. People want convenience and linux doesn't offer it.

I'm amazed about that answer.

When we started using Linux in our house hold I just installed Kubuntu on all the PCs.
The only remarks I got was: "The new computers looks a little strange...Shall I use Firefox???"

And we haven't looked back since

[hhbt]

I've changed job some time ago and now PCs, which i have to manage now often comes with Gimp on Windows, it seems that Gimp is good enough for regular users.
Gnome and Unity aren't Desktops at all they are some bad copy ot MacOs.

Linux IS ready for Desktop!

Holy words, Have been using Kubuntu for some years now and will never ever go back MS again

[Kano]

@Luke

I don't get what codecs you need to transcode. If you use H.264/AAC (mp4 container) you can use html5 video tag for IE, Chrome and Firefox since they added H.264 on Windows (on Linux it is done via gstreamer/libav/ffmpeg). Any Linux media player is linked against ffmpeg or libav - on Windows you can get similar tools like VLC, Kodi or transparent as ffdshow (tryout) that use the same libs. If you upload to YouTube the codec you used does not really matter.

[computerquip]

Okay...

1) First thing the article author criticizes is the software center. The software center in Ubuntu is poor. There's a few areas where installing older packages (that would do the exact same thing, except work, if the package was updated with nothing more than a version change) where the software center will freeze and/or segfault. Bringing this up in Ubuntu IRC ends up with me being chastised for using older packages. Explaining that the expected behavior is still not the resulting behavior results in things like, "Then fix it yourself" or, "What do you expect, it's free". The software center is not user friendly by this alone. See my small rant below. Instead, the software center should either provide some reasoning as to why it might not handle the package correctly, then give the user the ability to choose whether or not to proceed.... Segfaulting or stalling is *never* the correct answer when it comes to user interface.

To go further, some software provided in the software center is well out of date. I actually have to use the xorg-edgers PPA with my GTX 770 to play DotA 2. This alone is not user friendly, even more so when there's no convenient method to add a repository other than to open up a terminal and copy and paste commands as a super user.

[note]His rant about "contaminating" the system with "Open Source" is in poor taste. I'm also unsure if he's not aware that Adobe doesn't maintain a standalone flash plugin anymore. This is the fault of Adobe, not something that the Linux community can fix given that the API and its implementation is proprietary and closed as it gets.[/note]

[rant]For software to succeed, it cannot live by the slogan of, "Meh, good enough". How the hell do you expect to compete with even half baked commercial software with that mindset? I'd rather pay for quality software than settle for shitty free software. I'm a developer to help this not be the case however. [/rant]

2) LibreOffice isn't good. It should be compatible with docx. It's a damn shame since it's one of the few formats that Microsoft openly documents: http://www.ecma-international.org/pu...s/Ecma-376.htm
I'm not too fond of the Word interface myself... but the LibreOffice interface feels a lot like Gimp does in relation to Photoshop. I feel like it hides controls from me and makes everything so much more difficult just to be different from the competition. On top of the instability which I'm not sure what the cause of is... it's just not a good time.

Given that word processing is an important part of quite few people's day, it's not something that you can regularly use Linux and be expected to move to Windows whenever you use Word. You might as well stay on Windows at that rate. Using a VM is unconventional, slow, and inconvenient.

For what it's worth, his reasoning is garbage. Saying something like

LibreOffice is not bad, but it really is not Microsoft Word

is one of the most frustrating things to hear as a developer. It means you can't fix their problem and it's the fault of the person sitting behind the keyboard for having a stubborn and closed-minded personality. I agree with him... but for different reasons.

3) His next complaint about Thunderbird is pure idiocy on his part. Maybe an issue with Unity but so easily solvable, I'm pretty sure a monkey could have fixed it for him on the spot.

4) His next complaint is simply spouting out what he thinks "Linux" refuses to address (or rather the Linux community... really wish people would fix the context there) which is

Usability, interface and compatibility.

Linux environments still clings to human-readable configurations, which I'm not against, but it's usually used as a replacement for a UI or more convenient solution for the user. This is, again, user unfriendly. The *only* reason I'm able to deal with Linux is because I dedicated months of my time to get everything I wanted perfect. I cannot possibly expect people to do the same and looking in retrospect, the fact that I hand configured my WINDOWING SERVER is pure bullshit. I remember having to do this several times since misspellings, lack of knowledge of available options, etc. were very common. Thankfully X.org is mostly usable from a default configuration with slight modification needed only if you're using 3rd party drivers (nvidia, catalyst). There still isn't a replacement for the terminal version of nvidia-settings, which ironically comes with a UI that just isn't complete. That's not uncommon in the Linux world and is only acceptable to power users... it's not user friendly at all.

Unity is something that I refuse to use... I tried it whenever I was semi-forced to make the move to Ubuntu 14.04 but it was slow, buggy, and there were out-of-the-box issues which would cause me to be force logged out of the session. It was awful... switching to literally any other DE results in a better time and I have no qualms with any of the DEs given how configurable they are. They're highly configurable without the need to open up a text editor and something that I can boast about. I feel his complaint is valid only because of his default use of Ubuntu. I cringe when I remember that the Unity version of Ubuntu is the most used distribution available...
Even more so... and I can't believe I'm saying this... but his complaint about Windows 8's interface is rather bologna. You can remove the need for the tablet-like interface which is quite easy. There are programs to do it for you and you can quite easily remove it from within the control panel.

As for compatibility... eh... I'm not really sure what he's talking about unless it's some issues with libc that occasionally pop up (which isn't to downplay how painful the issues are).

5) Photoshop is a requirement to have an alternative for. It's something that's used by any digital artist and the GIMP interface actually removed me from any digital editing, which I still regret to this day (as I can't even remember how to begin with Photoshop again). I don't care if it's not GIMP... but something that has an interface that isn't in 6 different windows, makes it easy to find the various tools that are properly placed in a category that is remotely close to where it's supposed to be... Although I've not used GIMP in years... opening it up reveals the same loose 4 window default layout that I can't bare to look at. Why the hell is this the default? It's so difficult to move anything around, I can't just move one window out of my way and be done with it. I feel like it's a clear design made to just be different. Like the goth kid that thinks his soul is as dark as his clothing and everyone is just a poser. Not that I completely hate it, he has his own thing, but I would prefer the kid with straight A's with trimmed hair that's makeup-less. Maybe I can eventually work my way into relating to the King of the Underworld over there, but until then... it's a little intimidating is all.

And that's the end of his list. I can go on about how poor fan control, sensor support, etc. is, how we have a basic lack of system hardware info tools, how most people couldn't give a shit about AppArmor (including me as a power user), and I could go on and on and on. It's not just that I Linux isn't like Windows. I've used Linux for the past decade and more. It's improving... but it's not enough for non-power users to justify moving to it... especially when they'll generally need Windows for something anyways. People don't want to use Linux "just because"(TM). They need a reason to move and that reason isn't there. Looking back, I wanted a Linux machine for development and that's all. Not everyone wants to jump into Linux for programming so it's hard for me to picture a situation where someone would want to just rush into Linux at the moment.

In addition to this, the community has a really poor mindset. When people want a better product that's free, the response shouldn't even remotely be close to, "Well, it's free, deal with it". You're not going to be able to compete with a stack of dirt with that mindset. The logical and more correct response is to fix it (or at the very least, provide the information to the proper channels). That's what the Linux community is known for! We fix stuff! We don't want your drivers, we want to implement it ourselves doing it our way!

Unfortunately, despite using Linux for more than a decade now, the rush of Linux users seems to have negatively affected what little pride the Linux community had. I pretty much experience nothing but trolling and rejection of criticism in the time of today. That's not to say there aren't people who try! There are some dedicated users out their who try their damnedest to make sure any Linux project they use are aware of the bugs they're experiencing and providing productive criticism. But they are by far in the minority. In addition, we have a HUGE fragmentation of software. That's the fault of the Linux community. If someone requests a more reasonable interface (and I've seen this a few times) such as a GUI and it gets tossed to the side as low-priority or immediately refused and closed, YOU ARE NOT BEING USER FRIENDLY.

Well, that's enough ranting for the hour. Not even gonna proof read. Good luck everybody!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC_SynEyerY

[blackiwid]

"Desktop" whatever that exactly means.

Most People have different pcs with different tasks. They have often a NAS nowadays ok thats maybe clearly a server. than they have often a gaming rig. Thats often seperated from the working maschine that is often a laptop. then more and more people have htpcs then they have tablet-pcs seldom with windows but even that and even more and more people want to work with tablets, here android is really not "desktop" ready or better lets say not office ready, but thats coming too now.

so if everybody has 3-5 pc like devices, why do people need anymore oses that are "ready" for every single task somebody can think off.

the question is, what is true more:

1. linux is not ready for desktop
2. the desktop is dead

even microsoft sees the desktop dead (or at least not most important anymore) when they released a tablet os as main os (win 8)

I think there are some users that use heavily office and adobe applications and there are some that want to play games and dont use office very intensive. and then there is maybe a very small group that do both extensivly. why should devs target on this smallest 3rd group which are very difficult to satisfy?

typical desktop users are either heavy office users OR heavy gamers. With Steam machine, we will get now over some years millions of new users. And what people use at home dictates what will have success in companies. that was so with windows that killed the ibm company desktop and that will happen with linux and windows too.

[liam]

Software package management on Linux is a long way behind the presentation and searchability of App Store ecosystems elsewhere - despite the latter being a far newer thing than the former.

I wouldn't worry about Libreoffice versus MS Office in an online world. If you need MS Office, you'll be on Windows anyway, or there's Office 365.

Gimp is a joke admittedly, that's why other tools have overtaken it - Krita for example. Gimp's been dead for a long time in terms of adapting to user needs.

Gimp is very far from a joke. They now he's have high bit depth (iirc, there was an article about this recently on lwn). Gegl has seen use far outside of gimp.
Besides, krita isn't a gimp competitor. It's more of a mypaint written in qt. It's designed for artists to draw rather than touch up photos.
Besides, I think the folks who keep talking about Photoshop are VASTLY overestimating the number of people who use it. For simple photo manipulation Linux has a plethora of tools that would better serve their needs, in addition to a number of web apps.