Great article by Dominic Humphries. Should have been my first read when looking to a Linux OS. IMHO it would make a good sticky.
how about if we just post a link to it?
A good sticky? No, I don’t think so. It is a good article, and it does hit on a great deal of why there is friction when ppl convert to Linux. But a number of the author’s assumptions and conclusions are wrong.
What he gets right? That linux is still hacker cowboy country.
And so we come to the biggest problem of all when it comes to new users and Linux:
They find out they’re not wanted.
New users come to Linux after spending their lives using an OS where the end-user’s needs are paramount, and “user friendly” and “customer focus” are considered veritable Holy Grails. And they suddenly find themselves using an OS that still relies on ‘man’ files, the command-line, hand-edited configuration files, and Google. And when they complain, they don’t get coddled or promised better things: They get bluntly shown the door.
He immediately follows that by saying this is an exaggeration, but in so many cases it really isn’t very far off. Educating newbies that there is this cultural gap is a good thing. He wrote this 4 years ago. A lot has changed since then, but these cultural differences still exist.
What does he get wrong? While he does mention that it does happen, the basic premise of most of what he writes assumes that people haven’t told Windows users that Linux is a replacement for Windows - a reasonable alternative, or hopefully so. He, and reasonably so, mentions Mac OSX as a reasonable replacement for those who just want to get their work done, and don’t want to be OS cowboys. But there are other reasons that impact the Windows/Mac choice. Cost and limitations on software choice are obvious talking points there.
I can’t agree with his conclusions on user-friendliness. He does come close, when he says that much of Linux software is usually written for the writer’s utility, not the end-users’. Of course, most Windows software started that way, too, but with the economic model in place of making money from the software. A lot of Linux app writers care, they care a whole lot, that their software meets end-user needs. But they don’t get paid for that effort, and one must have a way to make a living.
I see the problem somewhat differently - but I don’t focus on the same things. What I see is a market that acts like an essential infrastructure. This puts it in the same ballpark as printing money, electricity, highways, mail, and telephone services. And, what we have is not only this natural characteristic of the technology, but we also have a free market in the industry. In that free market, we have an actor, a provider, who, without question, engaged in anti-competitive activities on a major scale. They limited the ability of other vendors to compete. Out of that we ended up with 2 and a half competitors. Windows, Mac, and Linux. Mac has always taken the position that they will occupy the deluxe portion of the market. Linux, as the author points out, has never been sure it wants to participate in the marketplace.
I, though, am of the opinion that we owe ourselves, and the marketplace, a self-interested duty to make Linux as competitive as we can. We may never be successful. Linux may never be more to the marketplace than a testbed for ideas. But I would hope that Microsoft will end up with a greater similarity to General Motors.
This work is copyright 24/05/06
This is an old article, read it years ago, AFAICS nothing added/changed.