Five Plus Three Crucial Things the Linux Community doesn’t Understand about the Average Computer User
A truly amazing article. Though I'm not amazed at all that it started nothing short of a flame war from the Linux crew. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes over at ZDNet puts together five things (and, in a second article, three more) that Linux developers just haven't yet figured out about the regular Joe computer user. And, I suspect that he's spot on with all of them.
Now, that's not to say that I'm anti-Linux. Far from that, in fact. I see Linux as an excellent operating system for specific uses -- appliances, servers, special-use situations, hardware, high-performance needs, databases, virtualization hosts, monitoring hosts, etc. Heck, I have four Linux systems in my basement right now! But, as a desktop, I'm still struggling to find a fit for it.
Read on for his five plus three things...
Adrian's two articles center around eight concepts:
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
6 - The Mac effect
7 - Who provides the free tech support?
8 - Chill out, it’s just an operating system!
#7 pains me the most. My hide's been chapped more than a few times by the inability for some individuals in the Linux community to give a straight answer to common "n00b" problems. Have you ever asked a question or researched a question only to get response after response of "its in the 'man' pages," or "that question has already been asked elsewhere?"
Help us out guys. We're trying here...
Read Adrian's full article at:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=420&page=1
Part II can be read at:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=424
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Comments
Have you ever tried getting tech support from Microsoft? Was it free?
Most Microsoft fanboys keep coming back to the "Windows just Works" slogan. As someone who has done a fair share of tech support for Microsoft products, let me tell you that it never has "just worked".
Recently I was trying to help someone who had an existing D-Link wireless router talking 802.11g WPA-PSK to a WinXP desktop with a D-Link wireless card.
The existing system had worked for years but he wanted to upgrade to a newer D-Link wireless router (with an inbuilt print server). Same 802.11 config, same desktop config but it did NOT work (kept connecting and disconnecting). A different desktop, also running XP, very similar hardware worked perfectly. Guess what else -- no error messages, no log messages, no debug messages, no possible method to systematically trace back the problem to find what was wrong. We tried both the Microsoft configuration tools and the D-Link config tools and neither of them gave us any detail to even hint where the problem was. Zero diagnostics.
Nothing wrong with the hardware, it worked fine in insecure mode and it worked fine with the old wireless router. Checked the signal strength with my Linux laptop and there was plenty of signal. Even tried several 802.11 channels in case there was interference.
Just one of those strange Microsoft config thingies that no one can quite explain but there you go -- IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME.
So should I hold my breath waiting for Microsoft to come out and fix the problem? For free? I guess MS will blame it on D-Link, and D-Link will blame MS and both of them will blame "user error" and nothing will get fixed because these companies are in the business of selling their product and saying goodbye to that product the moment it is out the door.
Posted by: Tel | June 10, 2007 12:02 AM
You're right in that Microsoft's support is most lacking in the consumer market. But, to give them credit, they do have thousands and thoudands of products that right on top of or augment the product. That's a lit of "stuff" to ensure works...
Posted by: Greg Shields | June 11, 2007 12:21 PM