Why is linux not as big as it should be?

The I see reason is the installer sucks for Linux if they made it more easy for people to change over from windows to dual boot it would better and also no need to hunt down basic drivers for new people Gpu drivers and stuff like flash should be auto installed like windows ..lets face it 99% of the people that would benefit from Linux for daily use are not in mood to read like us to find out how to solve a problem they just want to plug and play system .

Agreed, if Linux was geared for the lowest common denominator like Windows is then yea a lot more folks would be tempted to try or use it, but then Linux would eventually be just as insecure as Windows because with every convenience added for the noob user the less secure the OS will become.....reading, understanding, and following instructions is fundamental in most things it's not a big hoop to jump through unless your part of the crowd that can't be bothered and want everything handed to you with no effort exerted.

Hunt down basic drivers? Almost everything works out of the box with linux nowadays. Hunting drivers is what windows users do.

This is me. When I get home from work/gym the last thing I want to do is think about anything. Everyone knows that the best time to to think and solve problems is while your standing in the shower.

Back on topic, I have my mom's laptop running Ubuntu and have had it running for probably 6 years. My last personal attempt with Linux was just recently with Mint and I had issues with Nvidia display drivers. Someone far more knowledgable than I am will probably have a solution that makes me look feel like a moron for not figuring it out, but those lessons stick with me the longest. So if anyone has any tips on Nvidia Dispaly drivers in Mint. let me know.

This is probably 98% of people who use computers.

Well it is probably 98% of the people who use Windows not sure about the total usage.

This is the answer that Linus T. gave when asked a similar question.

hmm. I wrote this.. can't tell if it's a rant.. didn't mean for it to be.

The thing with linux is, it's the subtle things, that win you over. and for a windows user the selling points of linux are thin.

Windows works (mostly). The problems you do experience are familiar. It's already installed. You know how the culture works, how to do stuff, you're familiar with the applications.

Linux on the other hand is unknown. You don't know how to fix problems, and should you try it, your ideas on how to fix it are often just plain wrong. You are unfamiliar with the language and culture: solutions to problems seem "magic". Top that off with possible hardware issues, subpar graphics drivers, fewer available games, there is no guarantee all your old programs are available on the platform, and the alternative applications are new to you.

Add all that up, and it's no wonder so few people switch. Switching to Linux is a pain!

It's not linux's fault though, part of it is just the price of being different, and a great big part of it is that windows is broke. Not broke in a "doesn't work" kind of way, but in that it teaches users that computer problems are mysterious, and the way to fix them is to click random things, that seem tangentially related to what you think the problem might be.
And anyone who still believe that rebooting solves problems, is proof of this. Rebooting doesn't. It's not their fault, windows taught them this, but it's still wrong. It's wrong for linux, and it's certainly also wrong for windows. Solving problems involves finding out the actual cause of the issue, and then making an informed decision on what to do about it.

People should consider coming to linux, not because it cool (although it is that), not because it's fast (although it is that), not because it's customizable (although it is that), but because it's a worth while investment of your time. Some things may not work at times, but you'll learn to to fix them (actually fix them, not just reboot and hope they go away), and applications may have errors now and again, but they won't throw a carp in your face insulting your intelligence "I did something illegal, I have to close" (like how is anyone ever going to be able to use an error message like that, to fix anything?)

Come to linux to get smarter, not because linux is better, but because it is sane.

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Speaking as the only computer and tech person in my family and group of friends, I don't see switching to Linux on the desktop anytime soon. It's true that Linux is the backbone for most systems that run in the background these days but most regular non-computer people don't know that. Most people in this community are well versed on the pros and cons of both windows and Linux but most other people are not. I don't believe anyone in my family knows that another OS even exits that could be run on their laptop or personal pc. I'm not about to tell them that there are other alternatives because I then become the defacto expert and 24/7 tech support. Doesn't matter that they could probably figure it out if they spent some time reading. They already know windows well enough that they don't have to try figure it out and if they have a problem they usually call me anyway. I don't have a problem with Linux but I have no need to switch to it on my main pc. I have Linux Mint installed on a test bench just to play with but my main desktop is windows and will be until the games I play are also available on Linux. I have steam installed on Linux Mint and 6 games out of my 60+ game library are currently compatible with Linux. For now windows does everything I need and I use it everyday at the office anyway.

I do project controls and planning for engineering/construction firms that build chemical plants. I've worked with Jacobs, Fluor Daniels, Bechtel, and JGC in Japan. I've had Shell, BP, Bayer, Chevron, and CP Chem as clients. All these companies build billion dollar, industry leading chemical plants and refineries all around the world and every laptop or work station they use on a day to day basis has windows professional or enterprise installed. Every engineer with a Dell, Lenovo, or HP business class laptop is running windows, as well as every designer or CAD operator with a desktop work station. A Linux based system is more than likely installed on mission critical plant operating hardware and also running on company servers but those systems are only used by plant operators and IT technicians. Business wise, windows makes since because almost everyone already knows the basics of windows and it's applications even if they know nothing else about computers.

yeah i think you have good points.
Wenn it comes to gaming, i think you are right,
if we look at the steam libary we see more and more games who are availeble for Linux aswell.
I think that pc gaming in general is changing towards a service, like play on steam basicly allready is.
Also dont forget about steam OS which is basicly Linux, and OBS streaming on Linux which is massively improved lately.

I also agree about video editing software, there are allready a couple of open source video editing applications, which are basicly good alternatives to adobe or sony vegas.
Allot is changed towards Linux in the last year, allot of positism aswell.

yeah i exaly saw that intel 5x5 board, which is realy an interessting thing.
Intel makes their cpu´s nowdays with an eye on powerconsumption and efficiency more then performance.
In my opinnion, intel hasnt realy been an overclockers dream since Sandybridge to be honnest.

No, the definition of grandfathering-in is not the reason Linux failed as the desktop.

Before I say something I'd just want to clarify that I've been using Linux for more than 15 years, both as a full time developer and as a regular user at home, so I know the culture and the politics that surrounds it.

Linux has had better features and more options (in desktop) than windows most of the time, that's why I loved it. And yes I also hacked a lot under the hood, hell I even made my own distro before I was allowed to drink alcohol.
But then after years of hacking I started asking why the hell don't people like Linux? And I started Looking things from a regular users perspective.

Linux drivers may (or even may not) be stable, but almost never will give the full potential of your hardware.
I realized, sooner or later when using Linux you will be forced to do some hacking. Why? Because Linux never did and never will work as good as Windows together with hardware. Now the hardcore Linux fanboys will say.... "this guy has no idea"... stop reading and start flaming. Sure you might be lucky and all will be working, but the reality is most of the time even when it is working it in most cases never uses its hardware to its full potential. Why? because those Linux drivers were written by people that were forced to guess or revers engineer drivers. But! if you're not lucky.... lets just say a regular user will ditch Linux in a second. Now some of you will say "Wait a second... but my NAS is working really fast, what is he talking about." I',m talking about, sound cards, video cards, TV cards, not basic drivers.

Linux desktops are very advance and useful, but they lack in standard and often in usability/esthetics.
I've been using most of the desktops, event few esoteric ones while I found them cool as a kid. I the last years I've been using KDE, a great desktop, you can configure almost anything that's why I liked it, but there were things, with the design at the usability that were always a bit off, like weird menus popping up and was never quite polished. Then one day KDEs hardware abstraction layer called Solid, didn't unmount few of my USB keys correctly because of some bug and I lost all of them. Nice job KDE! So I've said... meh lets try Gnome. Oh man.... I've said to my self "Is that meant for retards?", you know much like when you use Windows or KDE and get to use a Mac for a day. The design was nice though and "mostly" no weird usability issues, beside from those features that were completely left out (yes, I didn't say missing). After a while Ubuntu came, so I tried unity, in my opinion usability is again, weird and performance is terrible. I've said to my self, lets wait for a release or two, maybe they'll fix stuff. They never did... To conclude this part, the two dominant desktops camps, KDE and Gnome, never liked each other and they never could make frameworks compatible so that applications could work and look like they should. A similar thing happened later between Canonical (Ubuntu) and Gnome camp, that's why Canonical eventually dropped Gnome and made Unity.

People that have power of choice over Linux distros, never did the right things.
Things that needed to be done to make Linux distros usable by most people, were never really done. Microsoft throws millions into user interface and usability research, god know how much Apple spends. Did any of the distro make even a single survey? None that I know of.

And they keep recompiling the same crappy apps over and over again, any of them make barely any improvement. If only half of those package maintainer commit to developing apps instead doing the same job over and over again, that even a monkey could do after a while... that wold make a huge difference.

Usability issues are quite serious wouldn't you agree? How many times did you reject an app on google play store that looked weird or was hard to use? Those kind of things never get fixed in Linux. I've reported a bug for Ubuntu, which caused Ubuntu to show up at installation time only on VGA output if your graphic card had DVI and VGA outputs. That bug was never handled and was set 4 years later from status "NEW" to "INVALID". Really? That's pathetic. How many beginners didn't install that Ubuntu just because they were on DVI cable?

Conclusion
While the hardware problem is not fault of the Linux community, the issues of the desktop standardisation and usability that would, is. And if that issue would be solved the hardware problem would be solved as a result of popularity. So in my opinion the old fashioned, bearded geek part of Linux community is directly responsible by caring only for their own little world the like to hack in, and being stubborn enough not to cooperate and to piss pretty much each other. By not creating a desktop that just works instead of multiple desktops that kinda work is not helping any one. A desktop standard would solve that, but I guess every one is too smart to compromise.

BTW if you installed Unity/KDE or Gnome based Linux and all seemed familiar you're not a typical desktop user. I did a little experiment in high school while I was an administrator of the computer room in students dorm. I installed on one machine Linux with xchat (a mirc clone) because at that time Irc protocol was very popular for chat those days. The window to join a channel was the same between those two programs except for the input boxes that were in slightly different order. Guess what... only one person managed to get into the chat and that was a girl I might add ;P So yes, don't underestimate how dumb most of the people are.

Only through support of average users will the super users get the best possible Linux they can have. No company will spend a dime if they don't see any mass selling potential. And unfortunately the mass are the dumb people, just look how well Apple is doing.

NOTE: If you don't agree with me I don't care, beside I wrote this for your information, this is the reality not what noobs or fanboys are babbling about.

5 Likes

I'd see that movie! :)

If there is only one machine with Linux + Xchat, how can you expect more than one person to join chat? Also, normally I'd say "cool!" that it was a girl who went linux and figured it out (girls are awesome!), but sounds like this girl might have just been the last one to sit down, and thus got stuck with the "strange computer". :p

On a more serious note, I think you make some good points, drivers and UI convergience are important for mass adoption. That said though, I think mass adoption has to happen through the workplace -- companies using Linux workstations, introducing Linux to the employees, and with a local IT-department dealing with the installs and helping the users to adjust. Once they're used to the things, they'd slowly want to use it at home as well: Free software, better interoperability with work (now that they're using Linux), IT-guys/gals nearby they can ask, etc.

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Honestly, most people don't know and don't care about OSs like that. They either get a Mac or they don't get a Mac. And then that is it. Expecting people to install a different OS on their machine (especially when the cost of an OS like Windows is built into the pre built cost - presumably) is ridiculous. Sheeple. That is why Apple is doing well. That is why apathy runs wild. If their computer can with a potato for an OS, it wouldn't make any difference because that is just the way it works in their minds. All of the hardware and software behind the scenes is magic and they don't want to get involved.

For the people who bitched about windows games, I set up wine once and install whatever the hell I want and it runs great for me. That's just a POL guide for skyrim, as are most of the guides.

I have yet to make those guides for standard wine.

Would be awesome to see that guide aswell.

Keep an eye out on the forum!

http://gamersonlinux.com/forum/forums/guides.20/

I will have a video posted tomorrow on how to set up wine for noobies and other stuff posted within the next few days.

People fear what they don't understand

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My thoughts and hopes exactly!

/taps foot in anticipation

TL;DR; Linux Desktop = 'i can haz moar gooey wizards plz'

BTW The title of this topic needs to read Why is linux on the desktop not as big as it should be. Linux as a kernel is plenty big enough.

I've been trying to migrate fully to Linux for 10 years - I've come to the conclusion that there's still a LONG way to go before linux can be taken seriously on the desktop by the layman.

Don't get me wrong i absolutely LOVE linux based distros. Did a new build this week with a couple cheap GTX 780s, loaded up a fresh Manjaro distro, updated the packages and neerly wept when the machine boots in under 5 seconds and looks ridiculously sexy. At small moments like that I scratch my head in disbelief that fucking Microshaft still dominate.

Then 2 minutes later it hits me, again like it always does. As soon as i enable the wifi my ip gets assigned for 30 seconds, and then dhcpd daemon drops it... hmmm no problem let me just use my OTHER COMPUTER to pull up the wiki real quick... drop a term, 'ip addr'...

wait a minute!.. oh fuck i've done it again! instant elitism!

The layman would give zero fucks about this and would be packing their PC back in the box to take back to the Apple store... crys heard 'no wait dear thats a custom build!' from the husband as the car backs out the drive.

Linux desktop. You lose.

Seriously, the layman can't last 5 minutes on a linux distro, yes even ubuntu People like my wife physically freak out when they see a terminal. Linux on the desktop is not gooey enough.

Yanno what elitists hate... Wizards... you know what my wife LOVES.. fucking GUI Wizards...

Addendum: remember Clippy the Microsoft office assistant? - often the subject of mockery, sure.. but Clippy is laughing at every single linux power user from the grave!

3 Likes

The installer sucks how? if you disable your SATA in the bios apart from one host driver you click next,next,next .. done.

reboot in less than 10mins on a fast connection you are done. upto date from the latest packages and no drivers are needed.

It is easier than windows.