problems is with them 2, both adobe and Autocad are very anti-linux, To say adobe has killed Flash for linux, about time roll on HTML5! so I wouldnt expect there crapware to come over here anytime soon, But the fact is the open source alternatives that are around are not advertised enough, Sure GIMP is, but Darktable is not, which is an excellent alternative to Lightroom, and works better I might add, Software is here, but just not advertised, Also I think Wine team gave up on that, I havent seen an update to there ports in a while
I agree with you both, the problem as stated is users been pure lazy, Until we have some sort of manager for Linux drivers I cant see it been used, It would not be hard to create we already have tools like that with openSUSE, but the fact it is not hard to learn this also makes me think what actually happened to the human race, amazing how we can still innovate due to the lazy people around lately, Yeah NSA spies on me, but I need windows because its easy, It is easy yes, but Linux is easier, as Zoltan has said before, people complain about all these viruses but wont move from windows, well dont complain if you wont do anything about it, And maybe some people are scared of command, but a script could easily be created and auto run, you wouldnt even seen the hit on your network bandwidth if it did it in the background... Simply fixed.
Problem also is that Windows is sooo outdated, they wont even upgrade the dam kernel often enough to keep it secure, Oh we added TPM to protect you but the NSA has a backdoor into it, erm hang on you create a security boot that allows people in,very secure...
They also complain about Linux been crap do a lot of people, Hang on, how do you think you PC is kept clean of viruses, Linux cleans it...
Rant mode over! lol :P
The problem is that people talk as if linux is the problem, as if it's not "there yet" and other crap that makes no sense. The whole world uses linux, RedHat made OLPC (which runs Fedora) ten years ago and gave millions of Africans a laptop with linux for free, RedHat also made RedFlag linux and the Chinese gladly took it for free, RedHat made Russian Fedora and the Russians gladly took it for free, the NSA made SELinux and the rest of the world gladly took it for free. With all of that open source technology, the rest of the world acquired skills and knowledge, began to make stuff, and are now getting jobs that are lost in the US. It's just the sad truth. The Americans and Canadians complain about the spying, well, had they used the NSA's own free technology 10 years, ago, the problem wouldn't have been half as big as it is now. Arch is Canadian, RedHat is American, Debian is American, but the linux adoption in North-America is the hardest thing ever. I keep hearing "linux isn't ready yet", but why, nobody gives a reason why they even think that. Because it doesn't run premiere? Bullshit, than support open source development and make a better video editing application for linux. The problem is not linux here, the problem is that you're buying windows software, so that Adobe doesn't have to port to linux, and so that development of this kind of application in linux is anaemic and goes very slow. Becaiuse it doesn't run Windows games? Bullshit, sure it does, it does it even faster in a compatibility layer than in native windows, but nobody cares to optimize it or provide drivers, because people keep paying for the windows locked down crap.
The solution is very simple: stop buying windows, stop buying windows-only software and hardware, and the problem will be solved in less than 3 months. Yup, less than 3 months, because nVidia, Asus, Microsoft, Adobe, and the rest of the Windows-exploitation mob, don't have three months to go to waste without going under, they have good quarterly results to show, and everybody now makes it too easy on them by buying into the honey trap.
People saying that they still need Windows, and that "linux isn't ready yet", are just lying to themselves.
Wine development is still active, they constantly have improvements, I also use crossover office and I'm mostly happy with the performance for what I need to do (Games and previously Microsoft Office). If (in theory) the WINE team or Crossover focus on fixing bugs specifically for getting Adobe or Autodesk software to work it will surely facilitate the move, if they continue with their current pace, it will be a while but I think it will eventually happen within the next few years.
I would mostly agree to what you said except that not all people can stop using windows software, some rely on it for daily work. I for one had a dependency on Microsoft Office in my old Job, and kept running it with crossover office until I no longer needed it. Some people (people needing Autocad or premier or the likes of these) are not as lucky as I was, they cannot just stop working until their software is available, and not all open source alternatives available can do what they need. Again I have big hopes for WINE and I constantly check the compatibility database to be able to tell my friends who are unhappy with windows that they can finally move to linux, but we do have to wait for that to happen..
my experiences with linux is so meh. pretty much just browsing. someone needs to come out with a ground breaking UI cause it just feels like windows or osx anyways.
Give GNOME 3 a try, not everyone likes it, but it has nothing to do with previous interfaces you might know..
EDIT: Of course it still has a panel and some elements of the desktop, if you want a full change you should try enlightenment as well, or i3 or a tiling window manager when you get more advanced. But if you just want to try out a new workflow (And one that IMHO is a very good workflow) just go with GNOME 3
i actually have, it feel like...android.
The problem is that the packages are a small part of the available applications, and when you cannot find what you need in the app store/ repository, you will likely end up finding the application you need in a non packaged format where you have to do a ton of command line work, and as other users have pointed out, most users do not want to go through that work, this is why windows is so popular, it is so easy that microsoft had to take steps to get people to think before they click (though it is not very effective in stopping people from installing bad stuff.
So overall, while many linux distros will have packages, not all applications are in that format, and when they are not, you have to go through hell to install and get all of the needed dependencies. I have personally encountered it, and cannot imagine a novice user going through it.
The thing is that most people do not want to learn something new if they can avoid it and still get what they need done.
At an elementary school that I student teach at, they tried for months to get teachers to use smart boards. They were extremely simply to use, with the only new skill that the teachers needed to learn, is how to use the unique smartboard functions and gestures, (basically 5 things)
They were unable to get them to do it until one week when the school offered the teachers a $300 bonus if they stayed after school for 1 hour to learn to use it. What most computer users want, is to learn a hand full of universal skills, and have it apply to everything that want to do, for example, reading, typing, moving a mouse, and clicking.and a combination of those skills must allow them to do everything they want without having to learn an additional skill (with the exception of learning a specific application). Anything that gets in the way of that process, will anger them. If their job requires them to learn a specific application, then they will do it, but if they have to learn a skill that they feel is unrelated, and a way to avoid it is available (e.g., using a different OS), then that is what they would do.
All in all, it is about general ease of use, and more certainty. with windows, any compatible product you buy, will work, and you will not have to go on a forum for command line help on installing the software for your product.
With a linux based OS, you do not have that kind of certainty. If my primary OS was linux, I would have not purchased a USB adapter that required me to follow 2 pages of command line instruction to install and configure the drivers. (though the adapter offered good transmit power, and packet injection for a decent price :) )
We Americans in high school get pretty much nothing in the way of computer training. If we do it doesn't go beyond "this is how to use Word". On the whole how to install drivers, almost every distro has a graphical package manager use that! Don't install from a website. This isn't Windows.
Weirdly enough, Mac's GUI Package Manager, the Appstore evreyone just uses that. do the same in Linux they are both Unix-like operating systems.
If you want Linux to be like Windows, use Windows.
Linux does need a better nonlinear video editor.
Well I'm going to have to default to Linus on this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFKxlYNfT_o
I agree that if we ditched the MS crap that we would see a massive spike in Linux, I feel that Google is leading the way, the generally have it down when it comes to things like this, they love Linux over there, and with good reason, Google believe that software is the way forward, get crap hardware, get the software to back it up and make the software do the hard work, This is how it should be, devices would last longer, but at that the OEMs would also die out due to no need of refresh.
But think of it this way, the world is still addicted to MS, its a drug that is hard to break, with no knowledge of software that can do what MS software can do, you think whats the point? We have the software ready but just not well known.
I can see chromebooks been the future, Cloud will take over some day, not for a while but Google is making sure it goes that way, but at least we can make them little netbooks crush MS devices, a £200 laptop with only max of 4GB RAM against a laptop with an i5 and 8GB RAM and SSD, bring it on ;)
I will probably be moving at least my laptop to linux once i get a kaveri laptop.
There are plenty of wifi adapter drivers in the kernel. If you had to install one yourself you must've had a weird one tbh. All the major ones are just there, even though it gets confusing as to which adapter uses which driver because sometimes they use drivers for different adapters while their own drivers are there, but don't seem to work with that adapter (my usb wifi is a good example, I need to use other drivers than the ones intended for it, which only was a problem on Gentoo because I didn't know that before I compiled my kernel, but most distro's come with an all-in-one kernel and have no issues with it).
Installing such drivers on Windows isn't exactly a free walk in the park anymore either. Where you used to have setup.exe's or double clicking .inf files, now you need to go to device manager, right click, update driver, choose the folder where you extracted the driver, click next a few times. For the average user this is also impossible without handholding, a lot of screenshots, or a silly youtube video.
And then there's the "fun" stuff. Where you need to use windows 7 drivers instead of windows 8 drivers, on windows 8. Because the win7 drivers are infinitely better than the win8 drivers. Again wifi is a great example. With the win8 drivers for some reason my wifi would not go over 1Mbps even locally. Using the win7 drivers it went back to expected values (60Mbps over internet, 150Mbps locally). So Windows isn't exactly blame-free when it comes to drivers either.
They were unable to get them to do it until one week when the school offered the teachers a $300 bonus if they stayed after school for 1 hour to learn to use it.
That's not even laziness that is pure stubbornness and stupidity. Teachers unwilling to learn, how freaking ironic. And these are the people that are supposed to educate the youth? The ones refusing to learn anything even if it takes just an hour... >.< They should've been all fired. Sadly I'm afraid that wouldn't leave many teachers as most of them seem to be there just to make a living... Screw the students, screw getting through the subject matters you're supposed to get through, screw keeping it interesting. I imagine these are the exact same teachers that literally just read the textbook and have a "figure it out yourself, I just read what's here and you should get it from just that".
Gah. I hate teachers... so very few good ones :(
Why would you even want anything Adobe on Linux?
For my laptop I found it to be nice to get a win7/linux dualboot going. This is also the only machine I have 7 on instead of 8 because of a simple reason: Android. I've had many issues with Android drivers on win8 so I keep a win7 around for things like flashing my phones and the odd ADB/fastboot stuff.
Anyway, win7 is on there also as a "just in case" when something might be done easier or faster than in Linux (or when WiFi is being a dick, I get slightly better connections on Windows).
(By default it boots Gentoo though)
In the book I'm reading about linux the author says something along the lines of: People who use and develop for linux know how it works, they are comfortable with the command line and performing tasks that your average person wouldn't be able to imagine. That being said, they (linux devs) see no point in creating a spoon-fed windows like OS where everything is done for you because they don't need to. Which leads me to believe that linux will probably never (if not for a long long time) take the desktop market. People will use whatever comes pre-installed on their computer, I don't see that changing in the future. If anything people are more spoon-fed ignorant than they ever were, while the number of people who use linux rises, I guarantee you the percentage linux users compared to windows users has not.
The last half is my opinion, not from the book.
I hope you have a Linux AV scanner on, you always use KVM, so you have a virtual machine with passthroughs, Although this does require IOMMU
+1.10³
When I was in high school, the math and science teachers carted us around the world for science and math challenges, helped us make computers, got us into university libraries, helped us get funds for science projects, got our high-school research works published through university press, hooked us up with industry sponsored seminars and tech shows, all after-hours, none of it paid.
I've only one thing to say about this: what goes around, comes around...