On Sat, Nov 05, 2005 at 12:44:33AM +0000, Anthony Anson wrote:
I can see what people mean when they say that Linux will never get a real foothold until it is more user-friendly.
My opinion of these people is that they are wrong ;) I still think that somewhere around 90-99% of computer users when asked to install an operating system (any operating system) will fail to manage the task.
So the real problem is getting Linux installed onto peoples computers, when more manufacturers start offering Linux pre-installed and more users see what/how Linux works then more people will use it, I just think that the critical mass is still building before it becomes the pre-dominant OS, but every minute that passes the Linux market share is growing (and it is getting more user-friendly by the minute too, so in some ways part of your comment is showing that Linux will get more of a foothold as time goes on).
Further to this is 5 *years* ago (pre Debian Woody) I was working for a company that used both Linux and Windows on it's desktops. To keep the amount of support down we (the network/computer admins) started putting Linux onto peoples workstations.
Out of all of our users nobody really had any massive complaints about having to use Linux, except a few "why can't I run this program on Linux?" but compared to the amount of complaints we had about Windows "why am I getting this error message every time I try to do this?" "why does my computer crash whenever I try to load this program?" "why is my computer so slow?" I'd say Linux was far more user friendly.
Of course the powers that be then decided that we should run Windows on everyones workstations apart from technical staff, which was a bit of a shame and resulted in lots of complaints from the people who had been running Linux as they didn't like their shiny new Windows 2000 machines because they were less stable/more buggy.
Again I can also vouch for this situation sometime later on when I worked somewhere that had about 200-300(ish) employees, many of whom were given computers running Linux as part of a plan to phase out the machines running Windows, you'd always get a few whinges when people first started using Linux as "this isn't like Windows/doesn't work like Windows" but after a week or two they wouldn't want to give up their Linux workstations for anything (and several of them were asking if they could have help getting Linux installed at home).
Thanks Adam