Originally Posted by
alzamabar
Hi, there are mainly two aspects of day-to-day users' desktop usage which are currently keeping users still on Windows:
1) Proprietary drivers for technological gadgets and popular applications (e.g. Tomtom software, iTunes, etc)
2) Out-of-the-box support for media, such as the ability to play DVD movies, listen to MP4 files, etc
Whereas huge steps forward have been made as the second point is concerned (today with the installation of few extra drivers it's possible to watch DVDs on 9.10), the huge gap is still represented by point 1. Vendors don't want to provide Linux drivers for some of their products and this is not a matter of prejudices towards the Linux community. No it has to do with far more simple numbers; what's the Windows user base and what's Linux? Vendors make the math and simply find that they will provide drivers for OS where the majority of users are: and today these are Windows and Mac. Never mind that Linux is a brilliant OS, that outperforms Windows big time, that is becoming a user friendly OS; what matters are numbers. So if we want Linux (and Ubuntu with it) to beat Windows and impose itself as the de-facto OS we need to attract more users to the Ubuntu platform, and this can only be achieved if we provide a desktop environment easy to use for the non-IT-oriented users, and believe me there are loads in the Windows community. Windows is popular not because of his quality, but because they were quick (and canny) to get the contract with IBM when Big Blue rolled out its first mass-consume PC. Microsoft was able to obtain that every PC would be shipped with a copy of DOS, and this is how they got popular.
It's very hard to change users' habits, especially when today users' are used to OS which do everything on their behalf; they don't need to be familiar with IT yet they can browse the internet, install a device (such as an external HD, a TomTom device, Blackberry software, etc) since it will come with Windows drivers but not with Linux (at least not the majority).
To change things around we need to evangelise the beauty of Linux (and Ubuntu), the fact that it's free and that performs ways better than Windows. Partly this process has already started, with the user base hugely more numerous than before, but still I read on forums and chats that users struggle to get "everything" working on Ubuntu, and once they are fed up they go back to Windows.
Once we'll have the numbers than vendors will start writing drivers for Linux too, and that will be the moment when Linux (and Ubuntu) will become the desktop OS market leader.
M.
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