Linux Desktop Readiness Thread

[ububaba]

Most of this stuff has already been addressed here many months ago--these arguments against desktop Linux aren't new or even remotely convincing:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CriticismFAQ

No doubt most of the problems have been addressed to already. Every time I have a problem I try
to solve it myself yet it is some how not all that easy to locate all that has been said before. Many persons
out of their kindness and eagerness to help, immediately try to make suggestions instead of directing
one to the previous solutions. We keep on expanding the size of the haystack every day, with no end
in sight. Some sort of a streamlining should be given priority. Because the site is bursting at the seams.....

[hobieone]

funny you mention bad vista.org and there recent burning article! i find it funny due to i have actually seen that very thing happen in person on vista machine. along with vista poping up a message saying burn process being shut down due to the os thinks the items being burned might be copyrighted material. and not only has alot of people not seen the problems below the surface not many have relized that vista replacement was recently scheduled for release either late 2009 or sometime 2010 which mean vista will be around for 2-3 years. and ms is currently debating wether or not to do a service pack for vista in 2008 or do what they did with win 98 and make a vista second edition due to the sheer amount of issues it has

[starcraft.man]

funny you mention bad vista.org and there recent burning article! i find it funny due to i have actually seen that very thing happen in person on vista machine. along with vista poping up a message saying burn process being shut down due to the os thinks the items being burned might be copyrighted material. and not only has alot of people not seen the problems below the surface not many have relized that vista replacement was recently scheduled for release either late 2009 or sometime 2010 which mean vista will be around for 2-3 years. and ms is currently debating wether or not to do a service pack for vista in 2008 or do what they did with win 98 and make a vista second edition due to the sheer amount of issues it has

Or just dump it like a rock, they did that to ME, maybe this really should be called Windows MEll .

I don't know if MS has the ability to just drop it like that though and make a second edition even, I mean the estimates of cost of development were put at about 6 billion dollars for Vista I think (XP took less than a third of that I believe, thats a fortune even for them). If it only has 3 years, I wonder if they'll even break even on the cost...

I did not know about it preventing you from burning files it thinks you pirated though, just another example of how deeply rooted is restrictions are... the moment MS decided to stop being an enabler of the user and instead become a limiter (sometime in the shelf life of XP, WGA is prolly the big turning point) they lost any respect I still had for them. Its not up to an OS to stop a user from doing anything.

[prizrak]

1 - On the whole, users aren’t all that dissatisfied with Windows
2 - Too many distros
3 - People want certainty that hardware and software will work
4 - As far as most people are concerned, the command line has gone the way of the dinosaur
5 - Linux is still too geeky

Why they let those people blog somewhere like ZDnet I got no idea but here is a point by point.

1 - If that were true I would not have so many people ask me about Mac and complain to me about Windows DAILY.

2 - Too many cars, too many keyboards, too many toothpaste brands, hell too many Vista editions. Obvious BS, those who are aware of Linux will have a prefered distro or will know someone who can advise them. Those who are not aware of Linux won't be using it.

3 - People can spend 10 minutes on Google and do some research, most people I know (non techies I might add) do their research on all long term purchases. This is just being an educated consumer. Those who don't do research end up with crap either way so what is the difference?

4 - As far as most "average" users are concerned there is no CLI in Linux. That is of course unless you happen to find an "average" user who will somehow install his/her own OS.... They are hardly average then are they? OS X just HAPPENS to have bash (iirc, might be a different shell) no one is bitching about it not being ready.

5 - And the blog author is an idiot. If he can make a unsubstantiated claim so can I. At least mine is somewhat grounded in reality.

Also I would LOVE it for someone to define "too geeky" for me.

[aysiu]

"Too geeky" means "not Windows or Mac."

So "by definition" Linux is "too geeky."

[ububaba]

"Too geeky" means "not Windows or Mac."

So "by definition" Linux is "too geeky."

Perhaps that's where crux of the problem lies.

[prizrak]

I don't know if MS has the ability to just drop it like that though and make a second edition even, I mean the estimates of cost of development were put at about 6 billion dollars for Vista I think (XP took less than a third of that I believe, thats a fortune even for them). If it only has 3 years, I wonder if they'll even break even on the cost...

The development costs aren't going out the tube, if they do decide to just make Vista 2nd edition they will just do a bunch of bug fixes (won't cost them much), considering that they would sell it as a completely new OS they would turn a profit quite quickly.

[prizrak]

"Too geeky" means "not Windows or Mac."

So "by definition" Linux is "too geeky."

Hehe basically.

[jiminycricket]

GUI would be good addition for newbies but however, security will be compromised if SAMBA is set to SHARE instead of user.

Read that entire bug's comments, it's much more htan setting it to share. Users who try to share a folder, then access it from a Windows PC, suddenly find themselves facing a password prompt __THAT DOES NOT WORK__ even if they put in the their user name and password. I honestly don't know why this has gone on for all releases of Ubuntu so far since it's a huge problem.

[prizrak]

Read that entire bug's comments, it's much more htan setting it to share. Users who try to share a folder, then access it from a Windows PC, suddenly find themselves facing a password prompt __THAT DOES NOT WORK__ even if they put in the their user name and password. I honestly don't know why this has gone on for all releases of Ubuntu so far since it's a huge problem.

Yes I can confirm that, the only guess is that it's a SAMBA problem?