In your opinion what is the biggest setback that is preventing Linux to widespread?

[spandon]

Difficulty in getting printers to work is my main gripe.
I am using ubuntu 5.10
I have 3 printers, Epson EPL5700L, Epson Aculaser C900, Oki C3200.
Both Epson's can be seen by the system and are installed, when I send a test page to printer, the print manager reports that the file has been sent to printer, yet both printers do not receive any info.
I have tested the EPL5700L with both USB and Paralel connections, with same result.
If a system cannot be set up to print, I for one will be reluctantly be returning to Windows where all 3 printers work perfectly.
pity, as other than the printer problem, I like Ubuntu very much.
Don

[newuser111]

needs better publicity

needs better wireless networking support and support from manufacturers

for gamers (only a minority of computer users) maybe more availability of new games on linux

[poofyhairguy]

People expect, as they should, to be able to play their music, watch dvd's, and view multimedia over the web.

Then they should expect to pay and they should never expect such things out of a free distro.

Plus, such is inaccurate. Linspire lets you pay to get these things....

[blackant]

it is quite ridiculous to pay for a driver for printers..

yet, the only way to get my ip6000 canon printer is to purchase the drive.

hence I think linux needs to have more driver support for printers etc.

[njmf]

Well, all what are you complaining about is games, some 3rd party stuff, etc...
I would add one big 'setback' - proffesional audio engineering! There is not enough (one can hardly tell there is at all) professional music production tools for Linux, as there is for Windows and Mac. Consider this situation (perfectly normal situation): proffesional music engineer uses his WindowsXP machine and is used to pro sound apps like Nuendo, Cubase or ProTools. Does he need to get working on Linux just because it is more stable/secure/whatever OS? Because it is OpenSource? There are thousands of VST plugins and pro-audio apps for Windows and Mac which just won't be ported to Linux - there is large background on that. Steinberg has no need to write OR allow porting of ASIO (or VST or anything else) system on Linux, he has his market in Windows/Mac world. It is technology which has been developed for maybe 15 years on Windows and surely longer for Mac, and won't be easily turned to work on Linux.

Well, this is just an example, what did I try to say is that there is not enough proffesional multimedia support for Linux - not just sound, but Video engineering, too. There are some alternatives in this domain, but that just isn't enough. Blender (www.blender.org) might be a Linuxes breakthrough in 3Dmodelling/rendering/video post-production world because it is extraordinary designed app, but I doubt that there will be good enough music production support in long time.

So, a bit offtopic, but the only things that hold me in Windows now are sound production and (temporarily, because of ****** modem) internet.

[RagingOcelot]

your reasons are vague, and unspecific. the options presented cover your options, but do it in the concrete.

I don't think he's got the time or space here to explain why he thinks Windows is better. Maybe he's too busy trying to get a driver to work or to prevent his X server from crashing all the time or refusing to load up in the first place. Linux is seeming more and more to me to be some sort of wet dream for tinkerers and just a hassle for people who actually want to create something with the software or God forbid, just listen to a song. Speaking of audio, why are there so many sound systems? What's the point? Can a certain band of people just work on getting one universal sound system working first before they rebel and start working on another one? Does the Linux world have too many rebels, perhaps?

I come from the gooey, slip-slide of a world of OS X. I can listen to music and wait to hear instant messages - at the same time! Wild.

I'd love to see my tablet not crash my system after I unplug it. It'd be great to not have to shout on my microphone so that people on Skype or Gizmo can hear me. I really would like to break completely free from the proprietary OS world, but the lack of support/interest in Linux is making that idea pretty difficult to fathom.

[Alapelli]

Basically peoples don't or won't take time to learn something new. They want what Window offer them: An Icon, I click on it and the program start. Some
peoples don't even want to learn more than that. These are the first segment
of the population who use computer as a basis. Internet browsing, being the
main attraction for those peoples to the computers.

The second segment want to learn how those machine work and are ready to
spend some time and will be ready to go further in their learning. IE: Learning
tab browsing in Firefox. They have an idea of what is a Hard drive, but don't
ask them to find it on the Window GUI. Ask them the usefullness of doing a
defrag on a regular basis. Not sure that you will get a lot of computer who
will know the answer.

The 2 previous groups represent maybee 60 to 70 % of the users, so unless
you provide them with a no brainer system like Xandros or Linspire, no way will they want to switch to Linux and even then.

For the remaining who would like to learn the Linux desktop, well most of the
documentation is for the System Administrator. At this point I'm not ready
nor interested in running a Server. So were do I start to get a basic info
on Linux Desktop utilisation. Altough looked a lot in Linux supportive computer store, didn't really find much documentation specific to the
Desktops. I would really like to find a "Basic" structured course on that
would allow me to get a better understanding of the Shell. Along with
the specified lack of game and printer adaptability. Represent for some
would be Linux user, a major stumble that discourage them on going further
in learning Linux. ( Feel free to write me if you have any book or course
suggestions )

To conclude after trying many Distro. Ubuntu is the one that has the most
lively Forum, I was amazed to find that actually some questions were answered within 5 minutes. I also liked the FAQ that allowed me to
practice the basic by installing Applications. But unless there is more
"Basic" how-to book and other starting basis on how to use Linux, well
the user are going to be the same many years from now. People who
already have a medium to expert level expertise of Computer, but the
Mr & Mrs Everybody won't have adopted Linux.

t

[knives]

For a start:
1. General computer-using population is used to Windows because "Its Just There". Changes is a scary thing for people, I know my folks nearly *aherm* themselves when they looked upon the creation known today as Ubuntu.

2.People are also ignorant. They think that "because its linux I won't be able to share stuff with my friends because they willl still be using windows".

3.The Games Market. Commercial games are almost exclusively built for windows OS, which is why most people who could probably tackle Linux don't.
Sure, there are emulators etc, etc, but they are still a work in progress and the newest games don't always work instantly through them. It's also why many Linux users still have a windows version running alongside Linux on their machine.

4.People are also greedy. There is no profit to be made in giving out copies of Linux, which I know is half the beauty of it, but, like I said, people are greedy and want money.

5.Bill Gates once slept with Satan for a night so now we have to wait for him to die before the pact is complete and the world is free of the curse created by this horrific event.

So, with all these in mind, I would say that the BIGGEST setback is not a fault on the part of Linux, but on a part of the world's population. There is nothing that Windows can do that Linux can't (Games included if they were developed for Linux), so I place the blame on the ignorance and the crudeness of "Human Nature". I know this is probably not where the thread was meant to go, for that I apologise.
I guess that makes my answer "other".

[SamH]

I'm late to this party, so this has probably already been covered.

Third party PROFESSIONAL applications. Yes, I know, those are proprietary. BUT, if Adobe would create Linux versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, etc. it would help Linux spread.

I work for a county government. We have many enterprise applications that we depend on. There are NO open source enterprise class replacements for most of them. Our budget does not allow us to have them developed from scratch. Even if it did, why should we reinvent the wheel? We can turn that money towards buying more vaccines for children or hiring another mental health case worker (for example). I wish we could switch to Linux. Right now, it's not feasable.

At home, however........

[Oni-Dracula]

Voted 3rd party support because well... you try installing that latest new keyboard with 1,000 keys (well, not really 1000) and map every single key in under an hour. If you can do that, I have great respect for you. Not to mention that games made native are a bit too rare considering the small amount of effort (for big game developers) it takes to port one. UT2K4 is an example of such a port.

Also, I grabbed about 100 discs of ubuntu and distributed them out to my collegues and half of them didn't know what linux was. I promptly pointed at the liveCD and the text below it. People need to become educated with linux, make people know that there is an alternative for windows and mac.

For the most part, both of these things need to happen simultaniously before people come over to linux. Though somehow, I think if the support part happens, the knowledge part will follow promptly.

What's this penguin on my logitech keyboard box?