Linux is a desktop creature

But I'd rather stick needles in my eyeballs than play along with linux. Until they can fix the convoluted contortions the average joe has to go through just to do the simplest things it's never going to be mainstream. 

The average home user does not and should not have to go to hell and back just to install a driver. Satan uses linux.

Is that Linux is intended mainly to be a secure OS and only secondly as an easy one. Getting a game to run on Linux is a challenge for many and so is installing an application other than those already found in a distro.Let's face it, entertainment is the key factor in the home usage of an OS. Well, the first steps were made to make Linux more accesible - a ton of drivers already there to recognize ur machine out of the box, support for video and mp3 playback and let's not ignore the stylish interface some of the latest distros have. Still, I cannot count on Linux when I want to play a game, partly because game developpers ignore this OS. Using third party applications to make some games run... is really not an option. So until we see great new games designed for Linux as well, the feeling of a conspiracy against open source cannot be shaken.

ShadowdogKGB says: "...I'd rather stick needles in my eyeballs than play along with linux." 

For someone with the letters "KGB" in their username, you sound like a big wussy! :p

On a more serious note, if you're gonna blindly dive into Linux like if it were Windows, I guarantee you'll fall flat on your face. Its a fact that has been proven time and time again. (Just look back on Andrew Thomas's experience with Ubuntu).

The only way to approach Linux is to prepare for it. (Like the other parts of life).

In this case, you have to look at the applications you use, check if there's feasible alternatives or approaches. Check your hardware; if its known to work with Linux, etc. OR even do a trial run with a LiveCD or a spare system.

This is BEFORE you stick a CD/DVD in to install it on your "production" system.

A little preparation makes the transition smoother. This approach worked for me. Everything I did in Windows, I can now do in Linux. (I use distros like Debian, Arch Linux, etc, so I can't comment about Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS, etc.)

If you don't want to, couldn't be bothered, or too lazy to prepare before you install...Then don't bother with Linux. 

Life isn't about getting a free lunch. If you want something good in the long term, you have to work at it.

Windows has never being easy anyway.

And then we'll see a survey performed by the "Microsoft Foundation" stating the opposite.

It really is a desktop creature! I've moved to Ubuntu a couple of months ago and I don't think I'll ever move back to Windows. 

All my hardware is working perfectly, including a bunch of USB devices (modem, scanner, printer, wireless mouse & keyboard) and even a satellite DVB card!

The software is free and there are applications for every task you can think of (and more :)

There's no going back for me :)

You saw what the Linux elitists did to Con didn't you? Poor bostard just wanted to make Linux on the Desktop fast, and got shafted for it.

Microsoft may be ruthless and monopolistic, but Linux has a more serious disease; hubris elitism.

Take yer heads out of yer arisses boys and focus on where the world full of desktop users begging for an alternative to MS. Kubuntu/Ubuntu is a very good step in the right direction, unfortunately it's default install is slower than XP on my machine. How in God's Blue Blazes does Linux end up being slower than XP?!?
And I agree about going to hell and back to install a driver - I tried to install the ATI x1950 driver on my box and it was, like going to hell and back.

And the funniest thing, the Linux community sees nothing wrong with me wasting my weekend (after working 50 hour weeks) buggerising around forums trawling for obscure answers. And they think M$ is arrogant towards their users! Ha!

My time with (a few) Linux distros was similarly painful.

-Visually messy. Less consistency across apps, controls often mis-aligned, odd behaviour when resizing, etc. Font rendering is plain bad.

-Troubleshooting & customising still requires an expert knowledge of the OS. Having to drop out to shell, edit config files is almost unavoidable.

-Finding a distro which works correctly after being installed is very rare. Often sound won't work, video garbled. Needs tweaking and fixing by the user straight away.

-However, the Linux community seems to be large and helpful, so *if you have the time*, sorting problems in Linux is possible.

Personally, I would recommend that desktop distros spend as much time thinking about their end-user experience, as I'm sure they do on providing a technically sound product.

I did too. But Ubuntu was a real surprise.
I would advise you to try Ubuntu 7.04 alias Gutsy Gibbon.

The UI (Compiz/Compiz Fusion) ist just gorgeous. Crank what the developers did, "chapeau!"

Ubuntu does in fact deliver proprietary drivers in the base imagefile!

It does deliver proprietary codecs! (Such as implementations of DIVX and so on)
And it does download this stuff automatically! (I heard this function is really really good, not as the Windows Mediaplayer "autocodecdownloader" (witch works in about 50%).

I'm a Windows User, but what they did in Ubuntu for the End-User is absolutely fantastic.

If DirectX9 would properly work on Linux, i would stick my Copy of Windows XP into the gully :-)

Greetings
Charles Darvin

Get the developers to stop goofing around and find a way to support DirectX natively. 

Not the Codemaster crap that can only implement games and visual apps 6 months to late, if ever. 

Then I and others will be able to get the main stream users to switch. The power users have a great influence over small/medium size business implementations, but the secretaries, managers, and other professionals have more. 

If they can get it to work at home (most users play games), they will look for it at work.

"Windows is still popular" should really be "Windows is still in wide-spread use". Windows is de facto because Microsoft positioned it well prior to its monopoly convictions. I would not call this "popular". If you recall what happened to John Major when he jumped into a popularity contest with Tony Blair, this what I believe will happen to Windows when users finally have a choice in their OS.

EVE Online, the MMORPG, is now on Linux. I expect more games will follow.

EVE Online is also available for the MAC too.

www.eve-online.com

Honestly, I'm an embedded linux developer and I put Fedora 7 on a bunch of dev boxes lately. Most of them won't boot if you upgrade the kernel from the 2.6.21 that comes with it, and even then you sometimes have to change the acpi settings in the bios to boot or be stable.

I'm going to try fedora 8, but besides all that nonsense, (Fedora is a bleeding edge linux so I guess you should expect some problems, but failing to boot on most of my pc's without tweaks shouldn't be one of them as they use hardware that worked fine with older versions of fedora).

Drivers are still lame, and are always going to be on linux. If it's open source and in the kernel it's wonderful, if it isn't, it's awful. And linux just isn't really meant to have binary only drivers. Unlike windows every install is much more likely to have different versions of system libraries, kernels, etc... whereas windows 2000 drivers work on xp, and server 2003... and in some cases vista as well.

As a Mac user all I can say is if Apple keeps p*ssing around with that lame video card they are using in the new iMac range (HD2600) without allowing for a better choice Ubuntu is coming my way. I use windows too but only for my gaming needs.
I will build another rig and use Ubuntu as my main OS and put a 8800GT under the hood.
Have a great day,
Regulas

I'm getting too old now to be spending hours and hours sorting out linux problems, takes me back to the DOS days of spending a day to make a game work, creating a boot startup disk just to make Xwing work with sound. 

The big problem with linux is their are too many distros, creating too much confusion for the end user. 

and HP & Dell don't offer linux on their complete range of systems, and untill they do linux will continue to fight for market share with Mac OS

If AMD/Intel released a complete platform driver that installs everything in one click this could help linux out, as then if you bought an AMD CPU/MOBO/VGA or an Intel CPU/MOBO/VGA their would be no searching for drivers, no crossing fingers and praying it works, making it an easier decision for the end users

Dirext X support is not important, most people when they use their computer to play games mean they are playing card games, very few want to make proper games (games you need a 3d card to play) work.

Most people use their computers for Email, Web, and solitaire/Freecell. as long as it has a windows look and they can check their emails or browse the web without reading a help file they would be happy

now i'm off to waste the rest of my afternoon playing TF2

Well to make a few corrections but it really doesn't matter though probably a typo Gutsy Gibbon is version 7.10.

Now as for the people with the desire to put needles in their eyes I can tell you really didn't even make a half hearted effort in using a high level Linux. Debian based distro's are from my experience the easier ones to play with and as for the age old question of "Which linux is best?" the answer is simple.... none, linux is linux is linux.

Some may optimize things a little more on some fronts then others but they have their issues ... gentoo are great and support what ever linux has to offer more so then others but man I have a limit to my patience and spending half my time compiling everything is not my idea of a useful desktop, I play around with many things and I am constantly installing something or an other and removing it so those distro's that do everything from source are not my thing but they definitely have their merits.

I stopped using Windows all together. I play games, like steam based games... gots to love TF2, CSS, HL2(Episode 1/2) and what ever else is offered by the steam engine. I do agree that game developers that make games for windows should make these games more wine compatible since there are some hurdles that can be encountered but as my title says READ!!!! Also to add I've had no pain in getting WoW going, Eve Online and currently trying to see if Tabula Rasa will be more functional.

For those who complain about getting things going, try cedega or cross-over office but these are paid for (which I have no problems with that at all) and for those who are on the cheap side look up Wine-Doors (free).

I don't understand the Slower than XP comment since I have never seen this problem at all, unless you re-install windows every 3 to 6 months I could see this but look a 1 year installed windows XP is way slower than a fresh install of XP, in linux this doesn't happen. The speed is always the same and never changes even 2 year (like my systems) down the road. So say what's ya want I ain't going back and everything I like to do can be done better in linux in my opinion and my hardware won't go out of fashion every three years.

One last note ATI still has some problems at the moment in getting full support which is why both my laptop and desktop have nvidia graphics cards which is what I would suggest if your looking into gaming on linux. But it won't be long before DAAMIT get's it right, patience is a virtue remember that :D

Cheers to all

Linux is the free software with corporate advertising for the masses. There are many great open source softwares (including linux) but all that the average joe knows is Linux.

Why should Linux support DirectX? I can tell you several reasons why this is the wrong thing to do.

First, a fresh install of Vista Home Premium and the drivers necessary to support your hardware is often in excess of 20GB large on your hard drive. 

In comparison, my PCLinuxOS installation, including Compiz-Fusion (which puts Aero to absolute shame), tons of applications (including 2 complete Office suites), 2 GUI environments, lots of extra artwork for customization, and tailored to my liking is a whopping 5.2GB on my machine.

Do you see how much of a bloated monster Microsoft's code is? Does a lean OS like Linux need such bloatware to slow it down?

Second, if the game makers used OpenGL, instead, their games would be far more portable. They could easily port to Unix, Linux, Mac OS X... Don't give me some sort of garbage about how superior DirectX is to OpenGL. 

A lot of high-end modeling is done in OpenGL, and the hardware requirements for similar rendering is much lower in OpenGL.

DirectX is the property of Microsoft, and they see Linux as the enemy. They've already made unsubstantiated claims about going after Linux over supposed patent violations. 

What do you think they'd do if Linux suddenly started stealing users because they could play their DirectX games on Linux, instead? They're a very predatory company, and they'll stop at nothing to prevent anyone from using anything other than Microsoft software.

DirectX is a bad idea for Linux.

KDE4 is going to be such a deception.

See this?
http://www.kde-look.org/CONTENT/content-pre1/29507-1.jpg

Well, forget it.

Linux is advanced and sometimes difficult to use. If you are using an ATI video card, then you might as well shoot yourself. ATI is worthless on Linux. It is ATI's fault, not Linux. 

ATI hardly supports linux. Use Nvidia and it will work. Stay away from intel chipsets, too. Use and Nvidia chipset if you use linux.

Games dont work on linux, because M$ has the monopoly on directX and they wont port it to linux. There is open GL, but developers dont want to program the same game twice - it costs too much.

If you want a good video player, then use Mplayer. it is the best video player that practically exists. It plays everything except HD stuff, but when HD is fully cracked, then Mplayer will play that, too. 

The good news is that windows viruses, spyware, bloataware, etc. dont work on linux. 

Ubuntu sucks. I've used it and I hate it. It lacks a lot of driver support and if you want to do anything special with it, you have to hack the hell out of it to make it work. Not worth my time. Not to mention that it is one of the most unsecure distributions on the market. Suse has the most hardware support available, but ever since Novell gave it to the community, it, too, is going to hell. However, Suse is what I would recommend to any newbie.

A lot of people dont like linux, because they have to learn something new. Every person, except my mother, has eventually come to like linux after using it for about a month straight. Every time I fix a pc or build someone a new one, I always put linux on it and make it the default boot. Eventually, they only use linux. If the person only uses Ms office, email/messenger, and surfs the web, then linux is perfect for them. If they are a gamer, then stick with windows xp. 

As for me, I have used linux for years. I would even consider myself an "advanced" linux user. I use it every day. There isnt a day that goes by that I dont use command line (ie like dos). But then again, this is what I went to school for. 

Linux has its pros and cons and so does windows. Sometimes, the cons of windows outweighs the cons of linux and that is why people switch. 




It is difficult to do anything in Linux and the desktop apps are seriously lacking. 

The main problem with open sauce apps is that some of the fundamentals like help files and a wide range of business specific functions are left out. Also, there isn't the kind of spending on IUI research that proprietary software brings.

After all the articles I have read on Vista and some stability and performance issues with the 32 bit version, I have installed the 64bit version and am very happy with it. 

The only driver I had to install was for my wireless. It installed perfectly onto my raid and everything just worked. It was easy to turn off all those anoying notifications and I have only had trouble playing 1 game so far.

I think as companies adopt Vista (yes it is happening, although most are waiting for Windows Server 2008, not SP1 as most people assume), we will see it emerging in much the same way XP did and no matter how much noise the Linux fanboyz make, they need to accept that Linux ahs a long way to go to be a truely competitive desktop.

Stay off the beach.

I recently converted my old desktop, and a friends Alienware desktop to openSUSE 10.2 and both went swimmingly.

My friend has absolutely no idea how Linux works, but I'm there should he require advice. He has managed to add applications, play mp3s, use torrents, watch movies, without me being present, and he loves it. 

Okay, boxed games are a different story. He only changed over because M$ XP told him his software was not Genuine, and after a call to Dell, all he received in response was, "We've never heard of Genuine Advantage", and refused to offer any kind of help whatsoever. 8¬O

I have since installed openSUSE 10.2 on my latest dual core 64bit desktop and everything but the sound-output worked out of the box (I fixed the it recently).

So, even lusers can use *NIX, it's not that hard really (especially for desktop use).

For those of you that complain that Linux is too "tweaky" or to much of a bother to configure, you've bought into the Ubuntu hype and ignored far easier Linux variants. 

I've been using PCLinuxOS for quite sometime and don't have such issues. I don't configure via a command line in a terminal, nor do I have to configure much at all. 

It's completely straightforward, unlike Ubuntu which requires you get a lot of help from the forums and Wiki. I guarantee you that some time spent with PCLinuxOS using KDE will change your mind completely about Linux. Their motto says it all: Radically Simple...

PCLinuxOS is built from the ground up as a home desktop Linux. It's not a server/enterprise Linux, nor does it use the community as guinea pigs to test for a commercial variant. 

It's got a complete GUI control panel application for setting things up, and uses APT/Synaptic, just like Ubuntu, for software management. It pretty much sets itself up from the word "go" and is little fuss.

What it won't do is absolutely support all your hardware. There is no known Linux that will. Hardware OEM's are to fault, and Linux developers have done an admirable job despite the lack of OEM support. 

This is why you need to use hardware that's very popular/common, or something that has excellent OEM support (nVidia graphics, HP printers...). Chances are that if you use something else, you won't have support. Complain to your hardware OEM. 

Would you expect all of your hardware to work if installing Hackintosh? Why do you expect it to work in Linux, then? Again, blame the hardware makers for not having Linux drivers available.

Well the latest version of SuSE I tried sure has better free games on it, and screensavers that could keep me entertained for a good while. 

They should do a windows media player type of thing for linux, with the music visualisations - which may exist already.

Anyway, main point here: linux isn't any more problematic than windows, it's just that most people are used to buying a computer with the OS pre-installed. 
The linux pre-installs (Wal-marts version, and Dells, for example) seem to have proved very popular.

Latest games for windows justnow are a big headache even for many a seasoned customiser of gaming rigs. It's a big ol' driver lottery and a gamble as to what chipsets and video card standards are the ones to go for.....
but yes, game developers do need to focus more on linux compatibility, for it to become an OS of choice for gaming.

Saying that, most folks will just install windows and linux both, if they do any of their own configuration, and get the best of both.

But if you're on a budget - the 100 or so quid for windows could have got you twice the RAM, an extra mid-range graphics card, a faster CPU......which brings up another point: isn't linux more scalable, in terms of adding more CPUs and RAM and having the OS recognise it? 
Windows Cluster Server probably doesn't support games justnow.

Not without tweaks and extra apps and codes etc anyway.

If you're into gaming you'll have an internet link that makes downloading linux a breeze, and it's free anyway and doesn't take up much room.
Thankfully BIOSs tend to be easier these days to work with, in terms of the boot-up process - ideally you want a separate hard drive per each OS.

The desktop releases of Ubuntu are set up so that the system boots into a live Linux system rather than an install system. 

This allows you to play with Linux on your hardware without touching the original system. You'll discover that most hardware is detected automatically, its better than Windows for this. 

The system will work a bit like Windows but installation and updating of applications and drivers (at least the mature ones) is going to be a lot simpler. (Immature / beta stuff -- well, what do you expect?)

If you do decide to install it then you can partition your system to dual boot. Its so easy its not worth remarking on.

Linux doesn't work well with most graphics intensive games (but then Windows doesn't unless you've got the latest drivers and DirectX). 

But if all you use your system for is mail, Web, music and stuff then its perfect. I have started pushing it a neophyte users because its a lot easier to use and maintain than a modern version of Windows (and its cheaper than a Mac).

I think the difficulty of installing Linux and Windows is getting to be about equal. In the last year I've actually had more problems installing Windows. Linux distributions now cover most hardware devices.

That said, I think most users should not be installing operating systems. This is where pre-installed systems like the Everex gOS, the Asus Eee or Linux systems from Dell etc are nice.

If you know how to create a bootable CD, try a Knoppix bootable CD. It won't be as fast as a hard disk version, but it can give you some idea of what hardware will work. Or install Ubuntu on a spare disk or an old computer. 

Linux distributions have made great strides in ease of use. Its hard to believe anyone would have trouble using a properly configured Linux PC any more than they would have running Windows.

linux is great, but there is no way its ready for the general public. simple things are too complicated. installation of programs in particular... sure some distros have useful package installers, but the huge variety of software for linux doesnt come in a package, or the "correct" packages. 

Users dont want to deal with a terminal window to install and configure their software. what distros need to package is a GUI for non-packaged installations, instead of expecting the world to use the format of that distros package manager.

Even in its latest 07.10 release, Ubuntu provides no easy way to support the Broadcom BCM4311 WiFi chip that has been shipping in PCs for a year or more. On this count, Windows wins hands down.

Like many others, I do enjoy playing games, and a couple of years ago was involved in a project to get some old computers formatted with Linux and then get some games running on them for local groups/kids who couldn't afford computers. 

Anyway, yes, finding games, and good ones, was something that was quite difficult, the easiest was of course Q3A but we wanted some other games too, sometimes I'd find a game, and well, it'd work just after install, but as soon as I went to play again, it would just not run, for no reason, and no error message displayed...definitely a WTF? 

Anyway, I'd like to see these Open Source guys try make some FOSS games, in OpenGL, and get ATI/Nvidia/Intel to put some work into OpenGL drivers. Who gives a crap about DirectX as soon as someone tried to mimic DX Microsoft would be breathing down their necks with various lawsuits to merely bankrupt the attempt with the cost of defence lawyers. 

So, I say get OpenGL working, for some FOSS games, or even a FOSS game developement IDE/SDK (unfortunately UT3 will be DirectX instead of OpenGL this time round, imagine if you had the Unreal Engine 3 SDK to work with in linux)

These comments pop up all the time - "I tried Linux for at least 15 minutes before realising it wasn't Windows so I went back to XP". 

Nice. If you can't be bothered taking the time to learn what you're doing, then why bother? 

Stay with what you've got and you'll be much happier. If, on the other hand, you want to make an effort to learn what is admittedly a very different way of doing things, then you'll reap the rewards. Nothing worth having is easy...except PCLinuxOS :)

..and to the person who says it's difficult to add software beyond what's included with the distro...you obviously don't know how to use apt/Synaptic/urpmi/yast etc. (which all work basically the same way). 

Repositories make software installs much easier than the MS "setup.exe" way. Believe me, once you know how...you'll be amazed.

Which is exactly why I don't use Linux. Sorry guys, but I refuse to be a Sysadmin at home.
Windows works reasonably well for games, and the install procedure for XP is good enough to get going.
I'm a gamer, first and last. I want to spend my time playing, not tinkering with OS settings. Windows lets me do that.
I know I waste time with the yearly wipe, which is required because of all the bloat and that damned Registry (the maker of which should rot in Hell until the end of Time).
Yes, I know that. But still, I waste less time on Windows tinkering - which I have been doing for the past 20 years - than I do on learning a Linux version which will only apply to that version and which will only run a handful of Windows games via emulation anyway.
Once again, I have Windows because I'm a gamer. Windows is where gaming is, not Mac, not Linux.
Get your system ready for gaming, don't bother me with more questions than Windows does, and make it work. Once that is done, I'll be happy to switch.
Until then, I refuse to pass an LCSE just to play a game.

I think what the Linux Distro makers should be doing when it comes to programs is build in a feature into Linux that treats the programs the same way FireFox does plugins. With FireFox you just download the plugin, then click ok to install it. If it doesn't work you tell firefox to lose it.

It would also open the door for more people to switch over to Linux and cement it on the desktop. 

They should also do the same for drivers. I found trying to configure the audio drivers on a few of the distros i played with were a little bit of a chore.