Linux will only ever be niche, says Lenovo analyst

but MS is for people who dont really want to use their computer for anything other than what MS tells them is good.
MS - reinventing the wheel to put under my matter transporter.

And dont forget to keep repeating the lie about netbook returns being higher for Linux. God forbid if computing becomes open and we cant make loads of money out of commission and 'training'.

What have the Romans ever done for us, eh???

As much as i like Linux and i do, its just not for the " i just wanna play solitaire crowd" ... or for the hard core gamer...... or my ex girl who returned one of the Asus Linux nets as Windows just looked "funny" (and there was no Solitaire) .. .no amount of geekery on my part would sway her and I hate the crappy lappy so I didnt want it/

Until Linux wakes up and writes decent documentation on its software it'll never be accepted into the general community.

Just look at all the huge levels of noise there is on the forums as people struggle to find that nugget of info.

Surprising, but you don't hear such things from Asus or Dell.
At least I know for sure that Dell shipping 30% of their "Mini" with slightly customized Ubuntu.
OEM choose the Distribution and they make customizations. The return rates on similar hardware are same according to Other OEMs. So basically if you combine poor HW design with whatever OS, It has a grater chance to be returned. It is easier to do it with Linux since it can run on lower specs than Windows and has much smaller footprint.
So this analyst is at least one of the following:
1. Idiot (does not know what he talking about)
2. Paid by M$
3. Covering his firms faults.
IMHO 1+2 is most probable

This analyst is a twit. Performance of GNU/Linux is better than XP on any machine. A proper distro and setup makes GNU/Linux easy for children. Millions have found this so. What information does this analyst have that says differently?

Sure GNU/Linux is niche. IT is a niche.

Billion dollar slush funds, greedy politicians and kick backs are the only reasons Linux will only ever be a niche. Linux has no way to compete against that.

i'm not a complete noob, and was all ready to give unbuntu a fair go, but when i had no sound and googled why - all i got was answers along the lines of:

Install instructions

As a root user type these commands:

Make a directory to store the alsa source code in
cd /usr/src
mkdir alsa
cd alsa
cp /downloads/alsa-* .
Now unzip and install the alsa-driver package
bunzip2 alsa-driver-xxx
tar -xf alsa-driver-xxx
cd alsa-driver-xxx
./configure --with-cards=es1688 --with-sequencer=yes;make;make install
./snddevices

The snddevices script sets the permissions for the devices it creates to root.
chmod a+rw /dev/dsp /dev/mixer /dev/sequencer /dev/midi

Now unzip and install the alsa-lib package
cd ..
bunzip2 alsa-lib-xxx
tar -xf alsa-lib-xxx
cd alsa-lib-xxx
./configure ; make ; make install

Now unzip and install the alsa-utils package
cd ..
bunzip2 alsa-utils-xxx
tar -xf alsa-utils-xxx
cd alsa-utils-xxx
./configure ; make ; make install

Edit the /etc/modules.conf file and add the following lines:
# --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
# --- ALSACONF version 0.9.0 ---
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-es1688
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
options snd major=116 cards_limit=1 device_mode=0666
options snd-es1688 index=0 dma8=1 mpu_irq=-1 irq=5
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---

The above lines for /etc/modules.conf file is automatically generated by alsaconf utility which can be found in alsa-driver-xxx that you downloaded earlier. If the above lines didn't work for you, then you may run the alsaconf utility program and follow the following instructions:

1.
After running alsaconf, hit ENTER
2.
It would tell you that No supported PnP or PCI card found. Choose Yes
3.
You will get a warning about making your system unstable. Make sure you save any files you are working on before you continue. Choose Yes
4.
It will give you a list of cards to probe, there will be only one. Choose Ok
5.
Press Yes
6.
Press Yes
7.
Complete!

Make sure you have installed alsa-lib and alsa-utils. And make sure no other sound modules are running in the /etc/modules.conf file so that it won't collide with alsa drivers. Issue a lsmod as root to see if any sound modules are running, if yes, then use rmmod to remove them and comment out their entry in /etc/modules.conf

Then reboot the computer, after reboot, type cat /proc/asound/cards, you should see 1 card listed there, ES1688, if you don't then there is something wrong. If it all worked out, run alsamixer, currently all channels are muted, to unmute press 'm' key for each channel you want and to raise/lower the volume use up/down keys, for more information, checkout man alsamixer. When you applied the changes to sound controls, use alsactl store command to save the settings, when the settings are lost, you can issue a alsactl restore command (better yet, add it to your /etc/rc.d/rc.local file to make it launch automatically)
If it didn't work for you, I recommend you go to alsa-project's web site and take a peek at their instructions.

geeky or what!!!!!

Never trust any statistics. 70% this, 30% that. Truth is the guy is right, Linux has never had a better opportunity to go mainstream than right now and it clearly isn't succeeding. I first used UNIX probably 20yrs ago but I wouldn't think of buying a Linux laptop for myself and a Linux desktop just really would be insane - too much self-harm! As for normal users, forget it! Back to those statistics, how many 'Linux' Netbooks(TM) are bought by large companies and immediately refreshed with an enterprise copy of W2000 or XP? I bet it's a large percentage, but we'll probably never know because they might not want to admit bending the MSFT Licensing T&Cs.

I like reading about the ignorance of people like this "analyst" and also some commenters like horizontal_hold.

Both are talking about running Linux on hardware not supported straight out of the box. Yeah I've even had to go through that alsa process too, but really you should see the usability issues I had getting an old RAID card to be recognised during a windows install. At least horizontal_hold's Linux solution didn't require a floppy drive, or building a customised windows install disc.

The article clearly talks about Netbooks, and Notebooks, both of which many manufacturers (Dell, Asus) already sell with perfectly working pnp capable, customised Ubuntu and other distributions running on them. There is no compiling, no strange install problems, and even complete luddits like my uncle feel quite at home on their Linux Eeepc's very user friendly interface.

"Linux needs to get to the point where if you want to plug something in, Linux loads the driver and it just works."

A note on this why is it an expectation of Windows users where they have to install drivers, the only system close to this is Mac OS but even there some drivers are still required for uncommon peripherals.

I do not know the return numbers. But there some claims in the comments that make me feel were written by trolls.

1. There is Solitaire in both Gnome and KDE.

2. Manufacturers should provide up-to-date distributions so that most drivers would already be included for most common devices out there. It is not your job to setup sound card on a Netbook, if they think you need to do this, please return such a netbook and buy from a different supplier.

3. On most hardware Linux (say Ubuntu 9.04) just works and works very well.

4. There is documentation for Linux, just dumb users don't want to RTFM.

He might be a Lenovo analyst but that doesnt make him very smart. Other manufacturers will lead the way then, sorry for you guys at Levono. Linux will be more than a niche and here is why :

http://zelrik.blogspot.com/2009/04/linux-fud-and-opposition-when-microsoft.html

Only now that it has struck some fear in the hearts of M$ will we continue to see articles such as these.

Linux currently is not for everyone, although it can work for most. There will always be ignorant stalwarts out there who will sneer at it because it doesn't have a 'start' button or other lame excuse.

Look at what happened to 'Lindows' which was perfectly positioned to replace windows. The problem was it was too similar and M$ didn't like that one bit.

As far as technical problems, they are there like any OS, and fixing some of them can be daunting. I think the biggest problem is that computers are very complex machines and most users are not. M$ has the same issues apart from the brute force method they employ (WHQL) for driver compliance. But then you are dealing with a very focused and organized regulatory agency. Linux doesn't really have that and relies on end users to report the problems and fix them as well. It is fascism vs. anarchy.

As a side note, I recently installed Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) on a custom built machine: 2.4GHz P4 / SiS chipset / Gigabyte SiNXP1394 (to be precise) and Nvidia GeForce440x. Not only did it install perfectly with sound and full support for the wireless USB dongle and other various bits of hardware, the only thing I had to add was restricted packages and Compiz. After tweaking compiz, it blows away vista's aero interface making my computer newbie mother jealous.

The fact that it worked like this on such hodge-podge hardware really does mean that Linux has come a long way.

"Linux needs to get to the point where if you want to plug something in, Linux loads the driver and it just works."

Interesting that...

My wife has an IBM ThinkPad R50e which she got a couple of years back with XP. Now due to the unique way Microsoft offers Windows from the big manufacturers (i.e. preinstalled and make your own set of recovery discs or get them from the manufacturer) it caused me no end of hassle.

Firstly, IBM (read Lenovo) preinstalled a whole lot of useless bloatware (Norton Anti-Virus etc) which I had to go through removing, plus there was the extra useless widgets which although might be handy for some, were just taking up too many resources (I mean this notebook had a Celeron Mobile 1.4GHz CPU and 256MB Ram!). Eventually I stripped everything out although I wasn't completely happy and the notebook although running better still didn't run as well as a fresh install (even after upgrading it to a Pentium M 1.7GHz with 1GB Ram).

Before going through the removing everything route I did try installing Windows XP Home from an OEM disc but as you probably know, the license key wasn't accepted (I presume it's another Microsoft anti-piracy thing).

Fortunately more recently I've learnt how the OEM BIOS locked copies of Windows XP (and Vista) work (thanks mydigitallife.info forums!) and I've managed to make a bog standard XP Home SP3 OEM disc for this notebook which installs without the bloatware. HOWEVER I do have to trawl through IBM's web site to pick up all the drivers I need (luckily they are still available) and this takes time. A fresh basic install of Windows XP wouldn't pick anything up, no network (wired or wireless), no video or sound, it was all but useless and took a good couple of hours to install everything.

Now on the other hand, my dad has an identical model IBM notebook which I installed Ubuntu 8.04 LTS on. After 30 minutes it was all installed, EVERYTHING was detected and he could get straight on the internet. It even ran quicker than my wife's notebook (despite having only a 1.4GHz CPU and 768MB Ram).

I've had the same experience with another IBM Thinkpad, installing Ubuntu detects everything and it's good to go within an hour. Installing XP requires a whole lot of searching for drivers and then another countless amount of installation and rebooting.

I also had a similar but worse experience on my Acer Aspire 2920 (and another friend's Acer running Vista). I managed to get a Vista DVD to do a fresh install of Vista but then had to download the drivers (why oh why do they insist on supplying trial versions of MS Office 2007 that only work for 60 days or can only be used 20 times on the restore image?!??!?)

Eventually I did get everything running right on Vista after a few hours. Getting XP drivers for my friend's Acer was like jumping through hoops. I managed to find them by searching for the PNP ID's and finding the drivers manually (often they were generic drivers but on other manufacturers sites). I managed to get XP working fine (thanks Acer for screwing your customers over by not supporting XP anymore) but it was so much hassle.

Again installling Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10 worked fine.

Not to mention I can plug in any bit of hardware I have (printers, wireless adaptors, webcams including a Sony Eyetoy) and they are detected first time without asking for drivers.

So yeah to cut a long story short I think that this ANALyst really doesn't know what he's talking about and I'll make a point to avoid Lenovo hardware in future.

Rob

If truer Words were never spoken!
And, there we have 9/10's of the reasons why Linux fails. People want to run there Photoshop's and iTunes, and Linux does not have any native support to do so.

That said I use Linux in my HTPC, and find it to be LIGHTYEARS AHEAD of Microsoft's XP-MCE / V-MCE / 7-MCE?? In so far as I can use DVB Systems ~other then~ "T" and more importantly with CI/CAMs so I can use my Subscription Smartcard(s), and watch HD Broadcasts in h.264. As well as the standard stuff like being able to Record, Pause and ReWind. Not to mention skipping all those Ads!

When I can do this very simple thing under Windows Media Center give me a call.

Till then I'll continue to use Linux-VDR and recommend that others do so too...

It may be truth for the current revisions, but people work hard to improve the situation.
The fact that the Lenovo's guy used the word "ever" indicates that he is biased.

I know:
Actually one of the things I've always liked about Linux is that every distribution I've used came with a large number of card and board games including: Solitaire, Mahjong, Hearts, Chess, Checkers, Reversi, Minesweeper (or whatever the Linux version is called), etc. Whatever flaws Linux may have, easy access to free, simple games isn't one of them.

Apparently this is all the Linux community's fault, with Kohurt tutting he'd "not seen the Linux community make a serious effort" to make the software user friendly enough to succeed on netbooks.

Until the linux geeks get it thru their thick ego's that they have to make it so your average user can just click and go with all software and hardware it will never dominate windows.

Instead they will stick with the tried and true whine attack. Then next year they will declare how 2010 is the year of linux.

Now start stroking thy ego linux dweebs.

I came to read the zealotous responses. I was not disappointed. Shine on you crazy Linux Diamonds.

horizontal_hold is correct. Linux is still far too complicated for the average user. I have been working with it for over 10 years now and I have never had a clean installation where everything worked after the installation. At that point the installation goes from easy to seriously difficult.

Chris, you are so wrong, I just bought a Dell Mini 9 netbook with Ubuntu installed a couple weeks ago. Imagine my surprise when I found that the sound did not work. I then had to find the "fix" on the Internet. If that was not bad enough, then you discover that you cannot just edit the config file in question. You have to figure out how to do it as root. You and I could do this but it is absurd to think that an average user will be able to do this.

Yes I know, it is for better security. So what, the average user does not care. As Microsoft found out with Vista, the average user does not want to be annoyed with security prompts, etc...

And yes, as a matter of fact, the fact that it doesn't work like Windows puts off a lot of people. The same hold true with Vista. They don't want to be bothered learning a new interface. I know people who switched to Macs only to switch back to Windows XP because it was not familiar to them.

So, the main point is not that Linux is superior in all ways. It is that most people will not switch because it is different and still extremely complicated.

I sold a whole bunch of EEE's with Linux and they all - repeat, ALL - came back at some point. People either wanted their money back or wanted to exchange for a Windows version or pay our tech staff to install Windows.

Love 'em or hate 'em you gatta give MS credit, they know their market.

linux is a pile of crap, i'm sick of hearing all these comments of people trying to make excuses for it. Its a pure pile of shit that is worth less than windows 98

It's not "geeky" it's just a technological artifact that is a pile of shit

Sir, you are clearly off your rocker. In the enterprise market, Linux has some solid footing. Enough to make M$ scared.

Try again.

I personally have been using PC's since
when the ZX80 came out,so I think I know a bit about Windows.
It's fair to say that when things don't run right on Windows that, it doesn't mean it's MS's fault all the time,far from it.
I do know that,there is a history of users not content with Windows approved drivers & of course this is why Firmware became so popular.
I also know that when many users change any hardware,they often fail to install drivers,or install in the wrong driver & often in the wrong sequence.
Again,some users who change hardware brands,fail to uninstall the old drivers,or incompletely,by not using software to clean the system.
Own builders sometimes use incompatible parts etc,is it any wonder that any OS does NOT function in a user friendly way, 100% of the time?
I use XP Pro 32bit & I can honestly say that,I have NEVER had a problem that is the OS's fault,but I have seen plenty of very poor application software & that is another story.
I wish that Linux was more user friendly than M$,but I probably won't see that day come,unfortunately,because if it did,I would be the FIRST to jump ship from M$.
Somehow,I think this is wishful thinking,W7 will make the transition to Linux much longer IMHO.
It's sad that Linux is seen as Geeky,because those who, like me would love to be in that camp,probably know that, if Windows was a bit 'funky', like Linux can be, by not having a closed source,those Linux users would actually be with Windows,making that OS a bit more special.

Gee;

Tell us what ya really think Mikey. Enlighten us with a little of your research into OSes, file systems, etc.
I've used windows since 1.12 and it's been a love/hate relationship. I've also used Linux, BSD's, etc. since the very early 90's and it's been a love/hate relationship.
Use whatever OS/hardware combo floats your boat smoothly for a given venue, at a given time.
I'm writing this on Vista and there's an Ubuntu box chugging away in the other room as I type.
It'd really be pretty boring if this ever became a "one size fits all" market.
Long live diversity in OSes and hardware!
As for the returns 1. Operator error 2. rushed product/OS integration 3. End user laziness 4. peer pressure, etc. It's RARELY caused by the OS in use or by "bad" hardware these days.
Too many folks want to treat a PC like a flatiron - - turn it on and it does everything else by itself.
Don't roll in your whip that way !!

I ordered 3 low-end Dell Mini-9s a month back when they went on sale for $199 (512 MB RAM, 8 GB SSD, one with 1 GB RAM). They came with Linux and the wife and kids love them. Used for word processing, web browsing, e-mail and games (batteries last a long time). Ubuntu has recognized each bluetooth or wireless mouse we've connected without problems. So far so good. I even offered to install a (cracked) copy of XP on the one with 1 GB RAM, but no one in the family wanted it! They don't miss Windows on these minis.

Hi there, Winblows fanbois!

Let me run a grok check here: *I* have to spend hours writing install scripts, man pages and stuff so that *you* can save $100 on not having to pay for an OS and not having to do any work at all to make it run?

Dream on.

Heres a tip for you, also completely free: nobody in "the Linux community" gives a flying fsck what OS you run. Really.

HTH, HAND.

Seriously, you guys should get a grip. There's a reason why Linux is only 1% of the market, even though it's free, and that reason is user unfriendliness and distros madness. The truth is, that even for computer literate people, Linux is only worth trying when you don't want to pay for something or you are concerned about security. most users are outside those groups.

The truth is the analyst is right, you can't expect the average Joe to go and compile every piece of software that isn't available out of the box for your distro, let alone know what the word "Compile" means.

another thing is that the great variety of distros out there is mind blowing, to the point I have to wonder what a great OS Linux would be if all the efforts were concentrated in just one place, but, that's just a dream.

I agree with the analyst, the day you guys stop being such zealots and start seeing things in an objective point of view, that's the day Linux will stomp all other OS's into the ground. Until then, well, you're just as childish as the pro Linux comments I've seen here today.

Listen guys:

Saying that Linux is not for everyone, or not ready for the primetime retail market, is not the same as saying Linux sucks. Relax.

The Lenovo analyst didn't say that Linux is crap, or that Windows is the greatest OS ever, his job is to look at what is on the market, what sells, and make suggestions as to which direction his company should go. I know Sylvie's charged/biased language made what he said seem worse than what it was, but what he said is true, regardless of whether you LIKE what he said.

The folks on here defending Linux are in the upper echelon of computer users. Just the simple fact that we comb through techie websites in our free time shows that all of us here have geek leanings, so because Linux is easy for us, does not mean it is easy for all.

And I agree, a machine meant to have Linux will run great, and if all the hardware is supported, the person will have very few issues, but you all are forgetting one huge factor:

The common man is an idiot.

People hate change. People know Windows, and as long as it still does what most of them need it to do, they will use it. Maybe Linux is better.. Maybe OSX is better.. but none of that means anything because people don't necessarily buy what is best, they buy what is easiest.

I have a Linux netbook, and while I can use it, and I appreciate some aspects of it, I would prefer Windows just because it would be easier. My store sold almost no netbooks with Linux, and while we have techs who know Linux, we never see Linux systems in for any kind of service. That says to me that the people using Linux either have no hardware issues ever, or they are savvy enough to take care of the issues themselves, which brings me back to my point that the Linux user base is typically more tech savvy that PC or Mac's.

So relax. Nobody is attacking Linux, so there is no need to get defensive. Some things are meant to be enjoyed by the masses, some things are not, regardless of how much better they may be.

I have installed ubuntu successfully in a few laptops without any hitch or problem and for the most part the users don't complain as much as soon as you teach them how to use Firefox or OpenOffice or Pidgin, but the problems arise when the printer they found at bargain price doesn't work with their lappie, or the CD XYZ sent with info about [fill description here] only runs on Windows, or the spyware ridden program they used in Windows to download stuff isn't available, or... you get the picture.

There are two main issues, 1) resistance to change ("now I have to learn how to use a word processor again") and 2) the stuff that everybody else can do with relative ease isn't possible for them (and printers are one big part of that).

In my mind what Linux needs is a concerted marketing effort akin to what Apple does with their kit, so users are willing to put up with restrictions because that is part of the deal, as long as there are enough options (like printers and peripherals, etc), and a killer app, something that is cool enough that runs on Linux that you wouldn't get on other platform easily (I don't get why compiz/visual effects aren't more publicized).

Without those it will be a struggle, although IMO not an impossibility for Linux to become more mainstream.

Unless they make Linux more user friendly this article is exactly right on. I tried 3 different flavors of Linux (Ubuntu, Debian 5.0, Mandriva 2009) on a new Acer Extensa 4630Z Laptop with a Ralink 802.11n WiFi card in it and not one could get it to work on installation. I have to give Debian credit because I had my Ethernet cable connected during install on all three tries and Debian tried to install a NDIS Wrapper but it failed. If my Wifi had worked I would have dumped freaking Vista on the spot. I don't even care if the special buttons worked or the stupid web cam.
I did not like how Ubuntu put grub in place and even a hard drive format would not get rid of it after I reiestalled the crap from ACER. I had to use my other rigs windows to kill grub so windows would boot. And yes I tried several linux command lines using a live linux distro to remove the pesky Ubuntu grub from my MBR and none worked.

"decompile codes and upload data"... say what?!

Is it me or does this guy not only make an invalid point but also makes no sense in his arguments for that point. :/

Lenovo will only ever be niche, says user.

I've put up with my last bit of Lenovo cruft, bought my last ThinkPad. And this attitude is what went wrong. No more Lenovo for me or mine.

I do quite a lot of installs of OSs and recently have moved XP licences from old hardware to new hardware for both of my sisters. They demanded to have XP as 'it is what they are used to' - fair enough, I guess. However, to do this and get everything working it is necessary to locate and install all of the appropriate drivers for the hardware - which is time consuming and annoying. Furthermore, one version of XP didn't recognise SATA HDDs on that mobo so I had to find a USB FDD drive and the original disks to load those during setup. What a faff about. Just because it makes my life easier sometimes, those PCs also have a fairly recent ubuntu install using a small amount of the HDD (plus I like grub...). Not only was the install easier and quicker, but I had sound, ok gfx, all the USB ports and most importantly of all, a network connection.

An idiot could install using this CD and could use the OS following. The main barrier to the general public to using linux is their comfort with windows. Let's bear in mind that a huge number of people on the net are using IE...

Linux will be ready for mainstream when it takes an extremely bright engineer who's never used it before three hours of digging through menus and help screens to find out how to get to a command line. And not before the most popular distribution picks a non-gooby name like oo-boon-too.

... is that of market share and revenue and profit generated. And Linux is no more than a distant fart to the Microsoft cacophony.

If Linux is so good, why is it so woefully lagging in TOTAL user installations?

Linux is user friendly. It's user friendly to the nerdy, geeky, no-date-on-a-Saturday night crew who think picking your nose in public is both great fun and socially acceptable.

As my old pappy once told me, "Do it first, then brag about it". Good advice for the Linux pushers.

<end

For the rest of us who would rather do more interesting things we have Windows. Thankfully.

Linux is still a techy-only, non-intuitive OS.

Any OS that needs me to compile is not a user-friendly OS. Why doesn't it self-check and self-compile and just do it.

Computers are supposed to make simple tasks automated. If all this Linux stuff is so simple, then why the heck isn't it automated?

I tried Linux several times, have it on an Eee. I just don't get why the AV for the Eee doesn't check for virus's "live"?

Eee AV not checking websites I visit for viruses, why? ?It looks like it cannot do this.

I especially agree with his point that the people who create the software like the fact that the ordinary person cannot use it easily. The software is written by highly skilled knowledgable types, and is mainly written to please themselves - e.g. written FOR techos by techos. There are soime noatble excpetions in the corporate arena such as companies like Redhat and Novell, where the techos are paid to do the work rather than just acting for themselves, but in these cases the software is mainly targetted at the corporate server environments, where once again the software will be used by highly skilled techos.
Witness the arrogance of some of thes people on the forums as they pour scorn and derision on newbies and non-techos when they ask dumb questions.

Open source seems to me a good idea, I don't want to be trapped into propriety software. So, I installed Linux (Ubuntu 8.10) and wanted to play a .wmv file. This Ubuntu wanted me to update hundreds of packages (which seemed to me had nothing to do with the particular file, but, anyway..) After that it still lacked the neccessary "codex" or something and the file still couldn't be played. Hey, I am such noob and I don't want to become technical, I can't and I'm not interested. Loving the concept of open source goes beyond technical issues. And this Linux is just consumer unfriendly crap.

As a linux and windows user this story isn't that far off. Maybe if we didn't have so damn many distros all the effort could be made towards making linux much easier to use then we wouldn't be arguing about this.

While we have over 100 blends of linux it will never stand a chance against windows so called ease of use. This isn't rocket science....

It sure would be nice if someone (cough Linus cough) would attempt to pull all these distros back together so that the development can be more focused for the masses.

Linux has come a long way and has some travelling left to do before it arrives with the average user:
1. a terminal should never be required to do anything
2. download and double-click installing of apps from internet
3. games

Linux can be easy to use. I've got a Dell Mini 9 with Ubuntu on it and it's not hard to do basic things (web, email, word processing, chat, etc.). They even have an application launcher app which makes things easy. Other programs work well too--if they're in the package repository.

It's when you want to do something "outside the box" that things break down. What I don't like about Linux compared to Windows is that with Windows it is extremely predictable and the standards don't change too quickly. Windows programs made 5 years ago will still work with the OS today, not requiring me to recompile things, or find out if my kernel is compatible, etc. When I want something installed, the program is "self-contained" so to speak, so I know that I can remove it without any trouble as well.

Linux can do this too, through its package managers, but outside them I'm never very sure if what I'm trying to do will even work. Will I have the correct libraries? Does it depend on a certain kernel for support? Will it work again when I upgrade the distribution? I'm even reluctant to upgrade this Ubuntu 8.10 to the new 9.0 because I don't know if Dell's power management will port over.

This is the price of "openness." Things are open, and open to change. It doesn't mean Linux is hard to use, just sometimes I want something that is predictable.

I'm shocked at people's pure ignorance. I don't use Windows because I can automate Linux to the point things just happen on their own. Linux is extremely user friendly, but has a steep learning curve before you can exploit that friendliness.

The big idea is using small commands that each do their thing, but when combined they can do anything. Say you have a HDV video camera. So I monitor kernel messages attach/detach events (and other devices) and launch a script at those points. For example, one of those scripts uses dvgrab to get 24 Mbit/s HDV video stream, then pipes it to vlc that scales, recompresses it down to 2 Mbit/s and sends over RTP. RTP stream is saved to disk and published. Sounds complicated? Well guess what, it took me all of 10 minutes to create. BTW, the actual command is about 150 characters. With a small change, I could have encrypted the stream instead, turn it to realtime ascii art or whatever I please.

Sure it involves a little scripting, but it's actually really easy and fast, once you truly understand the paradigm. And you only have to do it once, you DON'T have to click all those dialogs over and over again. And you can automate it to hell. Dialogs that let you *only* accomplish things the developer intended, not free form extendibility and customizability of command line!

Linux lets you easily accomplish things like mounting youtube.com as a real directory full of videos. Which can be further shared as a Windows file share!

Windows is the opposite, friendly at first but very hostile when you're more advanced. More like, it DOES NOT LET you do anything too advanced.

Will Linux ever be mainstream OS? Maybe. Maybe not. I really don't care. But I do think that eventually it'll have to be. It's gaining mind share every day. The number of people who are improving it is greater than any single company can employ, making Linux long term an unstoppable force.

Why on earth does the Inq give airtime to those so patently lacking in Clue?

I spent a large chunk of yesterday faffing around reinstalling XP, drivers, office etc. etc. on a machine that decided to slough the heads off its hard disk over the weekend.. Wasted time taken away from my actual job.. (which is a whole lot less annoying than faffing with broken wintel boxes.)

At home, I had a couple of test setups to do. A comparative eval if you like. Ubuntu 9.04 AMD64 desktop, and likeways Debian 5.

I kicked them off over 10 mins, made a coffee, uncrashed my PodXTLive, got in 90 mins guitar and 30 mins bass guitar practice, checked the installs (both finished) and set off the Graphic driver installs while I ran me a bubble bath, then (as it was my night "off" cooking) selected a load of apps, and started the (synaptic) download/install for those while I soaked. My son "cooked" (ok..incinerated the toast, put cheese on its mortal remains, and poured microwaved beans on top. - We eat good - WHEN I COOK!) All went well apart from the (Nvidia - may a pox be upon them!) binary graphics module under Debian.

However, way less than 5% of the effort involved in sorting /both/ machines out too a higher spec, than sorting that /one/ Windows box out in work.

I'll dance with f**king joy the day Microsoft file chapter 11! Their code is an inefficient waste of time. OMG If I could have another dollar for every hour I've wasted fiddling with the pointlessly stupid, I'd buy a /nice/ new car.

So that's Lenovo's analyst huh? Well I'll scratch them off my supplier list right now.

Unimpressed.

My boss and breadlord, nice man, gave me this rather spiffy Lenovo ThinkPad. It came with a company-standard MS Windows Vista Enterprise Edition, which we get for free because Microsoft values us so much. It also came with a lengthy document saying "Congratulations on your new box. Now here [thud] are the instructions on Making It Work. Lots of screenshots of course. You know the kind of document. Pages consisting of two screenshots and a lot of whitespace. Mustn't give the impression that there's actually something substantial in there.

Now a week or so later, I was more than ready to throw it out of the window. It's not lightweight, so I'm confident it would have gone through. So I downloaded a free app to burn an ISO image onto a DVD, because Vista is too stupid to do that out of the box, burned Intrepid Ibex onto a DVD, held my breath and rebooted. I had pictures. I had sound. I had Gb Ethernet. Cool. But wait! I also had WiFi. I didn't even have to set my home hub to "Here I Am Come And Hack Me" mode because Ubuntu includes an option to connect to hidden wireless networks. Now take a deep breath, and see if you can get Mobile Internets to work. (Because nicking other people's Internets is Bad M'kay?) Hmm. lsusb shows the wireless modem. OK. So how do I get this to work? Hold on. What's that menu item? Mobile Broadband? Configure? Which country are you in? Which provider? CONNECTED?! Google! That was two minutes! Vista takes that long to bloody well connect, and it's supposed already to be configured. Sometimes it needs a few tries, and asks me to ensure nobody is using the device... after a clean reboot. Can't expect things to work in the sixth generation of the frikkin' operating system.

Now as soon as I am reasonably sure that I'm not missing anything, I'm installing it on the hard disk. At the moment, it already performs better than Vista... off the DVD!

Until then, Ubuntu is so quick and easy to set up that I can use it straight from the try-out image and be more productive than I am under Vista.

Ballmer's Boys are right. I DO want an operating system that Just Works. Don't worry. I will find difficult things to do with it, cause I'm a Unix geek. But installing and using it aren't among them.

I you want a higher Marketshare in the OS Business, you just have to do one (1 or ONE) thing, and i mean this seriously: Throw away all your consoles and shells, and make all things configurable through menus. Even if it is needed to compile some stupid driver, library or what else.

And if you can do everything through the normal Gnome/KDE Interface, which is approx. in 10 Years if you start now, i will allow you to reimplement 1 standardized Shell.

A normal User don't want to use some sort of funny Textbox in which he can type stuff. He don't want to learn the instructions for it. What he want is to click on a lovely icon, which fixes his Problem.

Dear god I hate people who say things like that article and most of those comments.

First off, NEVER is a very, Very, VERY long time.

Speaking as somebody who is watching the GNU/Linux world develop over time and has been doing so for 10 years, I've seen just how far Linux has come and how little MS has done.

Plugging is hardware and having it just work?? Do me a favour. I haven't seen a single anything not work on a stable Linux release ever.

And none of the "Solitaire" crowd cares as long as you're shown where Facebook is anyway.

J1M

from Linux is friendly. "Linux is extremely user friendly, but has a steep learning curve before you can exploit that friendliness."

Forumla1 cars are extremely safe, but have a steep driving level curve before you can exploit their safety. (just ask Richard Hammond - took him 7 attempts to just drive in a straight line)

Like many others, I've over 20 years experience. I've been playing with linux for 10+, and I still don't use it full-time. Last time I did was a month ago, when I had a 3 week old HP's hard drive fail (seagate barracuda) and using knoppix to bypass the MBR, I recovered my data. It's not my first choice though, because even with experience, it just isn't as fluid.

I've co-workers who swear by GNU/linux (especially as we deal with people like RMS frequently) and the number of times in the last 2-3 months I've heard comments like 'whats happening now?' 'oh gods, the kernals doing a full emerge, so I can't work on that for a few hours' and similar (these may not be exact quotes, but you get the idea).

I've tried linux myself, and it's never lasted. In Jan2000, I built a dual P3-550, 256mb ram, GF256 SBlive (cost me about 1500quid, iirc) and blueyonder had just put my dialup to unlimited free. I spent 3 solid days downloading the redhat 6.1 ISO, and went to install it (win9x not supporting multiple processors, and having had a hate-hate relationship with NT4 during my engineering degree, I wasn't going for that). It lasted a week, and I took the performance hit, and transfered my win98 license from my old AST, taking the hardware performance hit, as it was better than the OS-user performance hit. Bought win2k when it came out a few weeks later.

Roll on last summer. Friend gave me a Dell poweredge1650 1U server that his company didn't want any more. Tried the latest ubuntu on it. didn't like the raid controller, the PCI-X slots, so, on went win2k and worked perfectly.

I'm done faffing about. I don't have 3-4 months to learn everything I need to do, and theres no reason I should have to. It's the same as an F1 car. It might be the best performing thing in the world, and the safest to be in, but when you have to spend so much time training and learning for it, don't be surprised when people go buy and use the Ford Focus of operating systems, because it does everything people want, simple, and easily and comfortably enough.

I know two kinds of computer users.

The first is ready to learn, may not always like new ways of working but will seriously try. My parents use Ubuntu for important things like solitaire, email and emptying the digital camera.

The second type blatantly refuses to learn. Things absolutely have to look and feel the same, forever. It may be related to a wish to only move in familiar and safe environments, but I get tired when users simply stop working and blankly stare at simple written commands.

I reckon GUIs have dumbed computer users down to the level where I have to guide software engineers and MCSEs on how computers "think"... usually with the language I speak to my five year old niece.

People seriously need to stop worrying and learn to love the command line interface.

"The second type blatantly refuses to learn. Things absolutely have to look and feel the same, forever. It may be related to a wish to only move in familiar and safe environments, but I get tired when users simply stop working and blankly stare at simple written commands."

This is true. Unfortunately for Linux they also make up the majority of people using computers. I use Linux (Arch) on my desktop but I had so much trouble putting ANY flavour onto my old laptop that I gave up and put XP on it. Just couldn't be arsed with faffing around. And I LIKE faffing around.

No, it does not sound like you tried anything. It's actually pretty rare Linux doesn't run on server hardware. That said, I doubt Windows had those drivers either. So you installed the drivers for Windows and not for Linux and then complain it didn't recognize the hardware?

"oh gods, the kernals doing a full emerge"

That sounds like your coworkers have absolutely no idea what they're doing. No one with any sense would *ever* use Gentoo (emerge) in a production environment. Luckily there's no need.

Just install some Linux, like Ubuntu 9.04 when it comes out 24th of April in a virtual machine and give it a go. I'm truly confused why someone with 20 years of experience can't get Linux running. It's really easier than Windows these days. Give it a go. Learn the basic bash commands like cat, mv, cp, xargs, find, dd, gzip, awk, sort, wc, echo, tail, nc, ssh/scp, wget, head, cut, sudo, less, etc. It's much easier than it sounds and looks like.

For example, create a complete sector-level backup of the first SATA-disk, compress it and stream it to another server: dd if=/dev/sda bs=64k | gzip -1 | ssh user@remote.server.com 'dd of=~/sdabackup_img.gz'

Explore it and you'll gain a new tool and ability to automate absolutely anything.

Tried to install linux several times. to be honest, it was not as simple as Windows or OSX, too GEEKY! Not everybody have much time to RTFM!

Redhat, Fedore, Ubuntu, what else.... name it! Its too much! Better if it just Linux XX.XX (Maybe Amateur, Pro, Server),

If it can be, I just want a version of Linux (no need Redhat, Fedora, etc..), just click and run, not need to write those Idiot F**** text-based commands...

Tell me exactly what commands you needed to type when installing Ubuntu? Just asking, because I haven't noticed any. My grandma could install that...

I'm claiming that OS X is nearly impossible to install on a new PC. And that Windows XP/Vista/7 is at least a magnitude more difficult to install than Ubuntu 8.10/9.04. Seriously. Try it, you'll be surprised.

I'm not saying Linux is right for you - that I can't know. Just saying installing it is very easy.

Take a look, this video is after inserting the installation CD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg-wPCWbdKU

Was it that hard? Really?

There is something wrong with you.
There is absolutely no need to compile something. At least not more than in windows.
BUT, you can compile anything you want including kernel, most of the drivers, you favored apps etc. That is the beauty of Linux. Your system can be what you really need/want it to be. You can't do it with windows.
Sometimes you facing problems with drivers for some HW like your sound card or web cam. Don't tell me that it works in windows because i spent week trying to find driver for some network card on windows. More of it, if your HW supported in XP, it does not mean it will be supported in Vista. It never happen to me in Linux.
If we talking about 64 bit OS, than Linux is much more mature/ready.
But as stated before, Linux is friendly and ready for the masses (My 70 years old step father able to use Ubuntu without problems). But may be YOU not ready for Linux.
And forget about "Linux geeks/comunity have to or must to". No one of this community thinking about market share. It is free and open. There is no market.
Don't like it ? there are two options:
1. Help to make it better by contributing.
2. Don't look at it You don't have to use it.
No one will cry if you stay with MS or Apple.

Most of these windows users forget so easily that BestBuy has "Geek Squad" that is very profitable and Circuit City had "Fire Dog" because "Windows is so problem free". Let;s NOT forget the virus makers and anti spy ware etc.

Windows also have a command line and now newer Windows have the improved version that they are calling it "Power Shell" trying to on par with Linux cause MS finally understand how productive one can be using the shell or command line.

As for the command line, most modern Linux config can be done with a GUI, but it is your choice if you wish to use it. Some things are much easier and faster to do in the command line. You can easily cut and paste the instructions in the command line rather than having to type them or take 10 clicks to get where you need to go by simply running a series of commands.

But all this back and forth reminds me of a time back in the 80s when I got my first Japanese import and all my friends told me that why did I have to go and do that while I was picking them up after their FORD or Chevy left them by the road. Get what kind of car they are driving today? You guessed it. Imports.

MS is where GM was in the 80s and look where they are now.

Just add solitaire to linux and be done with it already: Nobody would be able to tell the difference.

No one will ever take an OS platform seriously when it's gayly named Fiesty Fawn or Jaunty Jackelope.

What's next, Buttfcuk Buffalow? Assram Armadillo? Give me a break.

And there's nothign refined or user friendly on any of the modern Linux GUI's. Mac got it right by using Linux as the underlying OS for functionality, removing the rest of the confusing, mishaped & politically stalled Linux world behind. No Afree-wheeling packages, inane network configurations, bizarre references to functions that should not be unearthed.

Simplify and provide. Without the gayness.