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On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 09:12:52AM -0400, Rich Braun wrote: > Well I just had to vent. My conclusion: Linux is *still* not truly > ready for the desktop, at age 17. The BLUG's monthly mail thread debating "Is Linux ready for the desktop" has led me to do a little thinking about this question over the last 6 months or so, and I've come to a conclusion: The question is moot. Here's why. Computing history is littered with the corpses of "superior technologies" that lost out to supposedly inferior competitors. There seem to be few cases where a technology, especially an operating system, is so absurdly far ahead of its competition that people will adopt it regardless of cost. In this case, the cost is switching from a known software platform to an unknown one. This is a cost that we as geeks discount heavily, since it's a relatively simple process for most of us to learn the basics of a new operating system. We have the advantage of already understanding an operating system (perhaps more than one) and have the conceptual framework in our heads to slot in the technologies and lingo of a new operating system. This is not true for non-geeks. It's akin to learning a foreign language. For your average non-technical user older than 30, it's probably hundreds of hours of study and reptition to learn and retain the knowledge. That's a high cost for most people. As an aside, I think this cost will be lower in the future. For a 15-year old, this process is not as big a deal; they're already multilingual, since they grew up using an operating system, a gaming console, a cell phone, the Internet. Given that there will _always_ be a cost associated with switching your choice of operating system, the question should not be "is Linux ready for the desktop" but rather "who will sell the Linux desktop to the masses". Microsoft had Gates. Apple has Jobs. Who does Linux have? Who has the combination of engineering vision, marketing savvy and ruthless business sense to put Linux on the desktop on a wide scale? Is anyone even trying? The only person I can think of is perhaps Mark Shuttleworth. Are there others? Rich's complaint about dual head configurations under X11 is a valid one in my experience, but it's a purely technical problem. One that can be solved with an appropriate application of man hours by an individual motivated to put Linux on every desktop. The problem is that there's no such individual.* -ben *This is only a problem if you want Linux on every desktop. I'm not sure I care one way or the other. -- if you can't be just, be arbitrary. <william s. burroughs> -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
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