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

[the_blue_pill]

Drivers, drivers, drivers. If we had Dells and HPs preinstalled with linux, with a nice customized distro CD, people would have little to no incentive to prefer XP or OSX.

The way things are now is a loop:

Users don't want linux because they are (in my opinion rightly) intimidated by setup/configuration/compatibility issues.

Linux developers cannot improve the PnP efficiency of their distros because they are not assisted by the actual hardware producers. They always lag behind, and features well established in win boxes like direct rendering, wireless and acpi configuration become an unpredictable mess in linux.

Big vendors like Dell or HP aren't interested in making linux-friendly machines or at least helping the oss developers because there aren't many people demanding it. Geeks build their own boxes, and average computer literates simply don't know/ don't want linux.

And so it goes. I don't anticipate people spontaneously flocking in droves to linux anytime soon, or the oss community to become do better than what they're already doing, so I'm hoping the cycle will be broken at some point by a vendor willing to risk throwing its weight behind a linux distro, marketing home user laptops/desktops with linux preloaded.

[Mr.X]

Microsoft .

[blacktorch]

I'd have to say 3rd party drivers... and Games! Games, games, games... that's the main reason for many to have windows.

[enyaw]

Mostly the fact that the command line is required for 65% of everything you can normally do with a GUI in Windows.

And that is why i'm 100% Ubuntu...Linux is an adventure...

[kline]

Publicity is a large part of it. I use FreeBSD on my DNS server, and virtually zero non-geeks have ever heard of Berkeley Unix. More have heard about Linux, but assume that it's "too hard" or that it's harder than M$. But it keeps getting incrasingly stable, and much easier to use. But the main reason the open computer systems aren't growing faster is that nobody really understands all the facts.

Sheer, brute economics means that HP andtheir affliates are not going to the bother (major $$$,$$$) to port stuff for their All-in-one printers that color-print, copy, scan and OCR [and do your dishes and clean your floor].

The reality of the MIT $100 laptop with Redhat for the hundreds of millions of poor kids may be one thing that starts to tip things.

[Dr. C]

Software piracy particularly of Microsoft software. What many forget is that the rate of software piracy ranges from about 30% (in Canada and the United States) to over 90% in many parts of the world. This “free” pirated version of Windows is the single biggest competitor to Linux and Open Source. After all what is the advantage of a free / libre software license over a restrictive commercial software license if the user, a pirate, has no intention of following either license?

There are bright prospects here in the future. Microsoft is doing something about piracy with product activation and WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) and if they find a way to control those rouge corporate keys (promised for Vista) it will have an impact on piracy. If only a small percentage of the pirates of windows see the light and move to Linux it will be a huge boost to Linux on the desktop. There is a real advantage in Microsoft's WGA and similar programs for Linux and open source.

At least on Open Source project has seen the negative impact that the piracy of commercial software has on FLOSS

http://why.openoffice.org/getlegal.html

[flint_]

Greetings,

It is simple for me. Ever try to get any version of Ubuntu to print to a network attached printer?

Take the Canon ir5020 I am trying to print to at a customer site. After three hours I finally got the clue from http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/2126 to "fix" cups. Now the damn driver wants to print from the "legal" paper bin exclusively!!!!!

I know this sounds trite, but fix this.

Regards,

Flint

[thecityofgold2006]

No real world media codecs installed by default.

Multimedia was a big thing in 1992... We're now 14years down the line and Ubuntu doesn't do it.

[aysiu]

No real world media codecs installed by default.

Multimedia was a big thing in 1992... We're now 14years down the line and Ubuntu doesn't do it.

Ah, but Ubuntu is not Linux. Ubuntu is Ubuntu--one of many Linux distributions.

Are you honestly going to tell me that Mepis, PCLinuxOS, Blag, and Linspire do not have "real world media codecs by default"?

[Cephus]

Where is the option to say that windows is just better? Or to say linux just needs time, or that linux is not designed to be used by the advrage user.

i know that these are all populare reasons for why linux is not wide spread

I consider myself a pretty advanced computer user, though I have primarily used Windows and DOS throughout my computing career. I did give Slackware a try back in the mid 90's but that had been the extent of my Linux experience.

I took the plunge and installed Ubuntu 6.06 on my Sony laptop. For the life of me, I could not get my wireless card properly configured, though Ubuntu recognized it, showed the SSIDs in my neighborhood, etc. I simply COULD NOT get a DHCP address. Googling around, I see other people with the same problem that reverted back to Hoary. I Installed Ubuntu Hoary, and immediately my wireless came to life. So much for the latest and greatest.

Hoary came with an older version of Open Office, so I uninstalled it, and installed Open Office 2.0. This was a major learning experience figuring out how to handle the RPMs from the command line. I managed the install, and then the applications would not run. I had heard of the CHMOD command, but I didn't expect to have to apply it to a newly installed application.

I now see that with Hoary, I can't even view (yet) the contents of my NTFS partition. I do realize that I won't be able to write, but I did expect to be able to view files, copy from NTFS to the Linux drive, etc. 6.06 allowed me to view and copy.

I'm not frustrated - it's been a great learning experience. However, while great strides have been made since I first tried Linux in the mid 90s, I still don't yet see Linux as a mainstream Windows replacement simply due to the problems I encountered.

I'm curious now how it will be to upgrade in the future. Reformatting my Linux partition again will not be acceptable. Any application or operating system upgrade should be moderately painless. One thing I am thankful for is GRUB. Throughout all my reinstalls, my NTFS Windows partition remained intact, and I always had dual-boot capability. Also due to above issues, I cannot yet completely delete my Windows partition.