Linux - Why It Fails As A Desktop Operating System?

red_dragon_here

Aug 20 2006, 08:43 PM

Linux is becoming such a craze nowadays that not even a single day passes without one or other distribution releasing a new version. But why is it failing so miserably in the desktop arena. The answer lies in three reasons.
1. The plethora of distributions - Redhat,Debian,Ubuntu,Suse,Gentoo,Knoppix - everbody and his uncle is coming out with new ones.
2. The lack of backward compatibility - I had Redhat 7.3 running. I upgraded to Redhat 9. Many applications had to be recompiled. You ask my mom to recompile applications - She will throw out Linux and take Windows anyday. She is not concerned more about usability than about security. Security is required but not at the expense of usability for most users.
3. To add a new hardware or install a new software, you need to be a geek. In most cases, to configure new hardware such as adsl modems, you have to edit configuration files manually. Not what home users want to do. Even the people who come and install the stuff are no aware about Linux. Infact once I had to educate the tech support fellow on how to configure something in Linux. OK the tech support was not good. Still it speaks a lot about Linux.

Until these factors are resolved, there is no way anybody can even think about Linux competing with Windows for the desktop market. Only in dreams.

Jeune

Aug 21 2006, 09:12 AM

I think one other aspect where linux is not good at is the GUI (I used Mandrake when I started programming). I just think it sucks. Yeah it's too geeky, dull and boring. I don't know if it's just me and that I have gotten used to Windows GUI. Either way, the windows feel is still better.

I don't know much about the technical issues you're talking about but yes I'd have to agree that it's such a downer to recompile applications and reconfigure hardware. I mean how user unfriendly can you get?

When I mounted my usb drive in one computer that had linux, I couldn't figure how to unmount it. Then in another desktop I could, so it speaks of how linux is so inconsistent.

You have to give windows the credit, they've set a, more or less, a good standard for operating systems, security problems and other things aside.

shadowx

Aug 21 2006, 07:21 PM

As much as i do love linux i agree fully. Firstly i think they should try to release a few editions such as mandriva and redhat into shops. I know linux is pretty much totally free but i would be happy to buy linux on an easy install disk with a manual for £20, they dont even need to charge that, only enough to cover their costs such as packing and delivery etc. That way many people will get to see linux and as they see only a few distros they will be more inclined to try hopefully then progress onto lesser known distros.

I cant speak about backward compatibility scince i have only tried knoppix live and mandriva and used differnet software on each! But i take your word for it. Although Windows tends to do that to try and keep the market moving. If everyone decided they only wanted xp then MS would run dry so by making things like aero only avaliable in Vista many many people will upgrade to vista. So i think both linux and MS have the same issues there and i guess macs are no different!

And all i can do is laugh about the installation of hardware and software, it is a NIGHTMARE! it took me a week to find a video card driver then i tried to install it for 2 days and gave up leacing my widescreen displaying normal width resolution. It seemed impossible. I think the main thing here is that linux is muxh more suited to a fully networked environment and excels as a server platform. And servers are normally controlled by technicians and so the user friendliness isnt so important. Although i found mandriva to be have a very good GUI the user friendliness was zilch when it came to software, although my usb flash drive worked perfectly so did my usb mouse, both without installing additional drivers.

Maybe if some hardcore linux coders programmed some automated installers it would help the masses to adopt it. Which can only be good! If i could code in linux id give it a go but using linux is hard enough let alone coding it!

but i still think linux is great once its setup correctly

Though i havent used it in a very long time! Once a support center find out youve got linux aswell as windows and you have a problem its instantly linux' fault and all you hear is "uninstall linux and phone me back". Which could be another pitfal, the support!

Anyway im droning on so ill make my way out now!

rldowling03

Aug 22 2006, 07:13 AM

Linux is excellent, I use linux everytime I use my computer. My windows gives me the craps and becuase I am running a low spec system, I started to use Linux Live disks (you know the ones you put in your CD drive and boot up and you can try linux without installation or anything) Well I tried a few of the live CD's incuding; Ubuntu, Knoppix and one of my favourties, Damn Small Linux. Also I downloaded Suse but it wouldn't work for some reason so I just gave up.

I personally liked the Damn Small Linux the best because it was small in size, took up very little space, and looked great, the GUI was excellent although I did have problems with it booting up and showing very little color, but it was just a problem which was sorted out easily.

Now Knoppix I liked but plain and simply, ran slow.

Ubuntu had to be my 2nd favourite, I ordered it from their website and they sent it to me FREE, took about a month but didn't matter

. Anyway I really liked Ubuntu and installed it onto my second harddrive with windows still on my first harddrive. Now it all works fine but as you say the hardware and software installation is very challenging but then again there are plenty of people willing to help you out on forums and that, but I guess if you are good enough you could try to do it yourself.

Another thing about all the different distributions of Linux is that when I was looking for one to get which I liked, I went through hundreds at www.distrowatch.com and still didn't find one I liked so I just gave up and asked around in forums and was reccomended some which I tried.

Anyway, what do you guys think is the best and most used Distributions?

brainless

Aug 22 2006, 08:42 AM

There's one very important thing to remember everytime you complain about Linux' user-friendliness - Among most of the people using Linux, there is no such goal as to get Linux installed on all desktop PCs (as, for example, Microsoft has for Windows) but a rather simple goal: Make Linux as easy to use as possible.
Yes, easy - Let's say you wrote a text but when you're finished, you realize that you have to move one line to a place five lines down in the text. What do you do in Windows? [many people I know delete this line and type it again but that's plain stupid so let's forgetabout this way] You mark the line, hit the "copy"-button [well ... I rarely meet people who know about ctrl-c], move the cursor down to where you need it, hit the "paste"-button [the same goes for ctrl-v] - done.
In vi [a text editor on many Linux systems], you can do this with one command [right, since I don't have a linux installed anmore, I don't remember it :/]...

...so Linux is actually easier to use than Windows - but way harder to learn.

another mistake many people (including me) make is to try as many distros as possible, hoping that there's one among them which they can use right from the box. As there is about no such thing, it's better to pick one, maybe two [ask some Linux geek about which one to use] and stick with it. This way, you'll learn at least this/these two distros, that's easier than trying to find some config file and trying to find it where it was in the last distro you tried and take a long time before you realize that you're trying to do it the Mandriva way on a gentoo machine...

xboxrulz

Aug 22 2006, 04:40 PM

Yes, Linux can be very easy if you took a lil' lesson to learn how to use it. Sometimes Linux is even userfriendlier.

However, about Red Hat 7 and Red Hat 9, is because one is using the 2.2.x series (7.0) and one is using the 2.4.x series (9.0). However this has been resolved between 2.4.x and 2.6.x. You can run 2.6.x programs on 2.4.x and vice versa.

xboxrulz

juice

Jan 5 2007, 12:13 AM

The only reason I will use linux is because I don't want to be ripped off with windows. I saw (in a computer shop) Microsoft Office Student Edition going for over R1000 (around $166). Where is a student who is probably working night-shift, supposed to come up with that sort of money? And another thing: if people don't like linux they can code it themselves - problem solved.

AnkitGoswami

Apr 21 2007, 07:48 AM

Well I'm a new linux user (kubuntu 6.10) and after two weeks of pulling my hair, I can finally say that now I can use Linux for almost everything I did in XP. I managed to install real player, opera and vlc player which really made linux much more pleasant for me. However I've started hating google (no picasa, no gtalk) and find myself going back to xp for web development. The real reason for me to go the linux way was Vista. I tried it and found it didn't live up to expectations and then I saw Beryl + XGL on a friend's comp and I knew then and there that I was gonna install Linux on my pc.

hitmanblood

Apr 22 2007, 09:30 AM

The biggest problem with linux is that it is not user friendly at all. I know there are distributions which are installing automatically more or less similar to the wondows. However if you check then driver support and if one component fails to install you've got real problem.

Then again there is problem with the driver support as companies aren't often writing driver support for the linux systems. And there are several more things like gui which is some way ugly I know it works nicely with and that it can be configuration to look like windows but it is still not the same.

Also windows has nice policy they allow windows to be cracked and hacked for home suers because they are then making bunch of money from the licencies which companies are paying. And if some user is used to windows at home he will wont to work on the linux also it is fact. And if we look for security most home users don't need that much of security or are not interested however companies servers are usually on linux at least its the case at me. So everything is on windows except server.

Also one more thing which should be considered is that linux is operating system for power users and most of them still don't use it as you can see many developers are still working on the windows.

Also I would like to say what I have read in one PC magazine is the thing that in windows they are actually using linux based system although a bit adjusted for their needs. So that says much about windows and security. Why don't they use their own software

srujanlive

Apr 24 2007, 03:34 PM

You guys pretty much have hit the bulls eye. That learning curve is the simle reason I dont use linux much. Yeah we can always search the web for solutions and there willl always be one. But with Windows there is no need to even do that. But for me I even have to install my ISP client. That I have never been able to configure. The newer versions have made it simppler to install applications but for that you need an internet connection. A fast one at that. Linux has still a long way to go before it can become what it set out to ... the easiest to use OS

Latest Entries

mahesh2k

Apr 30 2008, 09:41 AM

I think i'm using linux for about 4 years & active with Ubuntu Linux distribution. I have few observations,i think it has few issues:

1.It's not suitable for Offline usage as most of the software is distributed online.
2.Technical support & media is less distributed on globe.
There are other issues as well....But i think software distributions on wide scale and good technical support on local base can help the desktop users....
What's your take....

osknockout

Apr 30 2008, 09:26 AM

@lefehe: Why hello there L. (Where's Kira?) I happen to disagree with you completely when it comes to the exponentiating number of distros. I think there should be 10x the number that are there right now. Heck, a distro worked on by ~20 people seems like a nice idea to me. I honestly think there's too many people working on certain distros.

I am SO not pointing my finger at Debian and the thousand arguments embroiled in it. So not.

People have different tastes. I like KDE. I prefer my toolbar to go all the way across the screen. I hate 3d desktops with a passion. I have one of those Azalia sound cards that seems to drive certain *cough*Mepis*cough* developers mad. I like OSS, firebird, and swiftfox as defaults. I beat gcc with a hammer until it unrolls loops and maxes out performance without giving me a program with a seg. fault.

Now how many combinations have I rejected in favor of one so far? Easily several thousand. Sure, I could take a clean install of Ubuntu and mess around with config files and apt-get's until I get that particular combination. And I have. It took me only 40 minutes and half a gigabyte of stuff to download from the interwebs. Sure most of that's KDE, but suppose we did this for every package. That would take forever. Thankfully, most people only use so many packages and most stuff either doesn't need configuration or autoconf's (haha. linux joke...) However, at the same time, I could just take a clean kernel, hack it for a few hours, go slackware and pile .tar.gz's until I got a working system. I know people who do that. The problem with all this is space-time invested. It takes time that could be spent elsewhere to rework systems. Distros were made to be hyperspecialized configurations around the kernel that saved people from having to do that as much. Having hyperspecialized distros just means we're filling more niches.

Plus having a lot more distros means that there's not enough people to work on system support separately. That's a good thing. Universal development of drivers and kernel modifications is an awesome thing to have. Arguing over two options? Throw both in the repository! Let the distro choose the config's and the people choose the distro. Personally I think it's bogus that Mepis has no proper fix for Azalia chips though Ubuntu (its base for a while) does, Sabayon - the wireless god - can't access some wireless networks that the magic of mepis can, and that Gentoo and Debian aren't interchrootable because of libc conflicts.

More distros. = diversity = good.
Sure there'll always be main distros and lots of code mishaps. But it's part of the fun.
And red shirts properly belong on the backs of Garibaldi's men. I agree with you there.

-"Light"

lefehe

Apr 25 2008, 08:32 PM

IMHO, Linux does not fail as a Desktop OS. It works perfectly well.

Of course that for a Windows user Linux may always seem to be messy and unfriendly. Windows users have been educated to think that way. Microsoft (and their hardware and software fellow companies) have done a good marketing job to make their products dependable. But you can see not only people, but companies, governments, etc., using Linux variants as their main desktop production environment. And almost all of them are quite happy with it (if they weren't, they would definitely go back to to Billy's OS).

And I agree that nowadays there are many Linux distros. Probably *too* many. A lot of them have no specific purpose, and those can be discarded when choosin which distro to install in a new box or working environment. But there are some that have been put together to fulfill very specific requirements, and that do their job flawlessly.

Linux might be seen as a geek toy, but it is more than that. Still, it is not an appropiate OS for everybody, just as red color shirts don't see well when they are worn by different people. It's just matter of testing it and see if it works for each individual purpose.

Best regards,

-L.

saitunes

Apr 24 2008, 12:29 PM

I prefer mac to linux, I prefer linux to windows. It's a chain for me. I don't think Linux fails asa desktop OS. I will admit, yes there are stacks of distros.

and on the not of recompiling programs, do you update when it's brand spanking new, straight out or wait a while. Take Mac OS for a while, alot of users have waited to upgrade to the new leopard operating system because of compatibility.

Pro tools which is the industry standard for audio recording has not been updated for leopard, don't update too soon and there shouldn't be too many compatibility issues.

And a point one of my lecturers keeps making,

Why update it if it works how you want it to?

rayzoredge

Mar 26 2008, 04:52 AM

QUOTE(osknockout @ Mar 25 2008, 11:13 PM)

There are idiots and then there are novices. I consider myself a novice with Linux. Let's keep that in check, shall we?

You are very right on proprietary drivers for such hardware... as I've pointed out in my post. (Maybe I was wrong in failing to put emphasis on proprietary hardware as opposed to generalizing hardware, as I can see how it was misinterpreted in my post.) Right now, I'm very short of just wiping Ubuntu off of this damn machine since I can't have it all with my HP zd8000.

I got the mouse and keyboard to work, but lo and behold, the ATI drivers STOPPED working. (Yes, I worded that correctly, and I will explain to avoid further misunderstanding.) After a full 203MB upgrade and a restart, I could actually install the proprietary drivers for all three devices I mentioned without a hitch: the video card, the modem card (which doesn't even count, since it worked anyway), and the network card. However, this still left my mouse and keyboard out of the equation, as I couldn't get BOTH working (only JUST the keyboard worked, but if I unplugged my USB receiver, the keyboard would die and the mouse would work with the 1-second lack of responsiveness every few seconds). Going back to the solutions that I researched an HOUR ago, I edited the xorg.conf file to accomodate for my keyboard and mouse combo as per the directions given for a working solution. (If you want to review this guy's work to make sure he's not an idiot either, feel free.)

After saving, I restarted with Ctrl+Alt+Backspace.

To my dismay, the screen became a disorted image of my desktop... then blacked out... then went back to the disorted image... then blacked out... then went back to the disorted image and sat there. After giving the machine a chance to finish whatever the hell it was doing and noticing that there wasn't any hard drive activity after a few minutes, in frustration I turned the darn thing off, waited 15, then turned it back on again.

While letting it go to Grub and automatically selecting Ubuntu to boot (as I am dual-booting with Windows XP), I went back to my tablet PC, which is what I'm typing on right now. Not even a minute later, I hear the sound of my computer turning itself off. I was confused as to what happened exactly and why my computer would just turn itself off when attempting to boot Ubuntu, but I just turned on the machine again and it actually booted fine into Ubuntu, with the exception of being prompted and having to choose a generic graphics solution to get into the GUI with a 800x600 resolution (instead of my usual 1400x900).

But wait! The keyboard AND the mouse works! YAY!

Going back to a Windows habit, I uninstalled and then reinstalled the proprietary drivers for my video card using the Restricted Drivers Manager, hoping that it would work. And with a full system restart, it did.

And now my mouse and keyboard don't work with each other anymore. (The mouse is unresponsive.)

I'm not trying to bash Linux... it's just that my luck with it has resulted in hours and hours of frustration. (I'm lucky to have it running okay on this PC... the only things I had to and eventually did fix with more hours of searching and effort were to get the stylus working and the video card - yes, NVIDIA - to be used to its full potential.) It doesn't even seem to be worth the effort to me personally. Just tonight, I've wasted four and a half hours wanting to shoot someone just because I can't even get my mouse and keyboard or video card working the way they should be working.

Linux is a gigantic proof of effort that many people can come together to create a great operating system... for the users by the users. No one owes anyone any answers or effort to help each other, yet people are willing to spend their time to help a great operating system to be utilized and even enjoyed by others. I just have had the short end of the stick... and frankly, I'm fed up with having to jump through so many hoops to get something to work only to find out hours later that it can't be done.

I hope that NVIDIA and ATI (not to mention any other companies) find the heart to actually provide open-source drivers for Linux users so that the graphic developers you mentioned don't have to go through all the crap that they have to do to get things running the way they should, if not better, not to mention piss the living hell out of people like me.

(I notice that ATI does have open-source drivers for my video card, but thankfully I didn't need to even deal with it after the upgrade. Beforehand - and this is where my unfamiliarity with Linux shows - I failed to realize that the driver package, even though Ubuntu is a Debian derivative or something of that sort, it couldn't open up the package that ATI so graciously provided, as it was a file extention Ubuntu didn't recognize and the fact that it wasn't for X.org 11.)

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