Linux is ready for the desktop
 

I may be preaching to the choir here, but indulge me.

I read so many posts on here from people who have had bad experiences with Linux, or who are upset with the direction various distros are taking. Many people seem to think Linux will forever be a niche OS that's not quite ready for primetime.

Wrong.

I have used Linux off and on for the past six-ish years. I've used several distros (Mandrake, RedHat, Debian, a failed Gentoo experiment, SUSE and now Slackware). I've seen an amazing amount of growth in several areas since then. When I started, Linux was only a niche OS. It had no place on the average user's desktop, and only found its way to mine because I was a techie with an extra computer lying around.

As I said, I'm currently using Slackware. I love it. It's not even the most user-friendly distro out there, but I find it easy to install, stable and most importantly easy to use. I really do think my mom could use it if she wanted to (and she's been seen drooling over the neat Mah-Jongg games).

Linux does everything I need it to, and does it well. I use it for writing lab reports and other projects for my college courses, email, web surfing and simple games. I connect my USB drive to it, and sometimes a digital camera. It can burn CDs, play DVDs and edit digital photos. I can download and listen to music.

Can anyone add to that list anything that an average user does on a regular basis? Please, someone mention high-end gaming. Gamers aren't your typical users, and many games are successfully played using wine or other emulators. Music composition? Another niche (which I indulge in...one of only two reasons I have to dual-boot).

Let's face it: we deal with a lot of complaining about Harry Homeowner not being able to use Linux for his daily tasks. I am Harry Homeowner (except that I don't own much of anything). I use Linux. It performs beautifully. Between my first few distros and the last few, I took such a long hiatus that I now feel like a newbie again, and didn't even remember how to use the command line or vi. I had to learn it from scratch. Even while I was learning (I still am), I had a reliable Linux system up and running, requiring little to no maintenance. I loved it.

Sorry to stir up what many must think of as a dead debate (or wish it was). Still, I had to start one of these threads with a positive story instead of a negative one.

Linux is ready. It's the users who aren't.;)

I agree that Linux is ready for the average home's desktop and PC needs. Almost.

I'm using it at home, and both my 'puter literate daughters are using it. The only reason my college student son isn't is that he's taking a college course that's heavily weighted towards windows programming and software. Otherwise, he would be on-board as well.

To me, besides the gaming (which none of the aforementioned, other than sonny boy, need) and the music aspect (which isn't relevant to us), the only shortfall is out-of-the-box ease-of-use (holy hyphen, batman...)

Linux for home requires a 'slightly' more tech-savvy installation, but once it's up and running, it's transparent vs the windows' os.

So, I would expect that in the next couple or three years, we will see a huge increase and penetration of the Linux OS.

And that certainly can't be a bad thing for the Desktop/PC world, can it?


cheers,

Amen teufelhund!

Of course it is ready for the desktop. It's certainly ready for my desktop (and I would say even the music composition part ;) ).

Your post reminded me of this articlethat I read today.

.....and it has been since 2003 :)

At least that's when I started using it.......

I love slackware and linux, I'm 2 month linux baby but I'll give some reasons why I think linux is not quite ready for desktop yet. Many of these things I've overcome, some I am still working on. But I keep in mind it took me 10 years to learn windows, so I should expect that there would be some learning to go to linux..as I am patient, but many others might not. But I'm staying with linux I'm not going back to windows.

A noob's rant ...Linux issues IMO:

1. streaming video content from weather.com, yahoo.com, etc for example is impossible for me.
1a. Realplayer scr*wed itself by making it's realone player in windows spyware. For years I never used it because of it constantly wanting to run in system tray, allways running in background, even if i went into msconfig and removed it from startup, it allways came back, then they allways prompted you for sign up for account, it felt like big brother. now realplayer is a nobody in online media content becuase they got greedy. now they offer a linux version which installs and works perfect in linux and is not spyware. but they are too late. no one streams real content anymore. i think their days are truly numbered.
3. people bury how-to's on some god-forsaken wiki somewhere instead of on their web-site or you have to post on forums and wait. fortunately i found this forum and the advice I get here is almost 100% dead on right. wiki's stop some code symbols being posted. are not allways accurate.
4. many people own ati cards and that requires recompile kernels to get 3d rendering. unless you use mepis out of the box no linux distro gives you 3d rendering that is stable. believe me i tried a ton of em before finding slackware.
5. to get real time virus protection for anything other thans suse or redhat means installing dazuko again, recompile again.
6. i have 10 modem pci cards and i could not find one distro that found and installed any of them yet.
7. iptables anyone.
8. wireless..only a handful of cards to buy. now madwifi's site is awesome they know how to write a how-to, but ndiswrapper ...well now recompile again.
9. point and click linux...well fedora and suse claim to be...they target businesse's for the linux...and well their point and click linux is not ready for my house let alone a company.
10. emulators, bach and plex OMG are these people serious. their website is truly for elitest rocket scientist. i swear they just find words that dont mean anything and put them together to sound intelligent. they truly do not want anyone to use their programs even tho they have thousands of hours banked into designing software that the world reviews as being really good.
11. the only open source free real time antivirus that works is antivir...recompile again...but OMG the forums....english anyone? clam....another software group that wants noone to use their products.
12. many linux distro's ( and i wont name them ) quite simply stink. they should just stop what they are doing.....

In general, linux writers really need to go to slackware wiki and learn the definition of KISS. Then they need to get voluteers to write manuals with pictures that a complete idiot can understand.

It just proves that "being ready for the desktop" is reeeealy relative. If I may cite one of the best computing books i have read in some time now, Absolute BSD: "It depends on what one wants to find on his desktop". The same applies to WMs.


Bottom note, this thread is more suitable in non-*NIX/General section, IMHO.

Here, here! There is a Linux (and WM) to suite every need. How many of us start out with one distro and emeigrate to another as our needs or proficiency levels shift? Part of the problem is thatI beleive we live in an age where some people like to complain, but won't do anything about what inspired the complaint in the first place. Linux may seem daunting to those who don't use it, but that's why there's dual-booting and live distros like Knoppix and Ubuntu that run right off the CD/DVD. What would explorers and pioneers of the past gave given for the opportunity to set out for something better without having to leave everything familiar behind? I think as more people give Linux a try and pass on their experiences to others, more people will be ready for Linux.

The one big thing I found with Nix, is that it's truly, completely, wholeheartedly and utterly costomizable to your every need and want. And that scares me just a little bit, since if you're not quite sure of what you are doing (like me 65% of the time. Ok ok, 85% of the time.) then you're bound to mess something up somewhere.

This takes some getting used to, especially if you are used to the MS way of doing things - it either doesn't work, or it works if you pay up. With Nix, if it doesn't work, you can make it work and make it work the way you want it to, provided you are willing to put in some elbow-grease. I have to admit though, once you start digging in Nix and get used to the whole thing, you are hooked. Backed up by a wonderfully helpful community such as Linuxquestions.org, there really is no more reason NOT to be venturing into the dominion of the Penguin.

Plus, I am totally convinced that Nix will be taking over the Desktop scene. It's only a matter of time before the general population realize there's no contest. And if you're a programmer (unlike me) and still struggling forth with MS, wake up and smell the freedom.

Music, gaming, spreadsheets, publishing etc. You name it, there's a way to make it work in Nix. Of all those, I'd say gaming still has some way to go. If the community vote with there choice of OS though, it can only be so long before we see the mainstream going Nix's way.

Viva Nix!

I think there are plenty of games available for *nix. Anyone here been to happypenguin.org lately? There are at least one thousand games on that site.

You're kidding, right?

Agreed. That's why I'm all slackware. Becuase even being new, and willing to learn, and even tho it's touted as the hardes to learn, it was easy to identify the strength of it from pentium 66 pc laptop thru and 64 bit machine. Many window managers for the varying desktops. And no goofy 'point-click-wait-forever-wizards' that are broken. Very little bloat. Clean and mean.

True, but for me and all the items listed, distro's I used, being new to linux, but far from new to computers I took the time to write the distro's that I used and tell them on a more tech. level of what issues I had, and what I liked of their distro. But for the average home user, streaming media from web-pages is a big obstable that IMO feel will delay linux from being on the desktop of "Aunt Tillie" ya know. Many home users who want to go linux and wireless, might go to one of the two top Network card manufacturer's (linksys and netgear) and see what products will work before they try linux, only to see "0" results.

Mepis got me in to linux, and is actually on my recommend list to newcomers. It's amazing what these guys are doing.

When I wanted to change to reiser, as I'm so used to gui's I thought I needed a gui front end to make partitions and convert, only to find out later that all my needs were filled, for free, at cli via the /sbin folder.

I've taken the "Harry the Homeowner" Approach.
I work supporting servers all day long and have gotten to the point that its no longer fun at home, so all the old PC's, routers, etc that made up my lab network have been given away replaced by a single linksys wireless router and a laptop for me and one for my wife. I run Slackware w/ KDE and my wife Windows XP
So for for my 'home user' type of use I have found: Organizing and printing pics from out digicam from pictures taken for various trips/vacations/family events/whatever. Have an HP inkjet printer from around 2000 which worked perfectly in Linux with no need to install drivers like in XP. Picked up a portable 4x6 photo printer which also worked just by plugging it in, no drivers needed like XP. KimDaBa (now KphotoAlbum) finds and sorts all my pics fine, I'm still looking for something similar for windows for my wife's system.
Our old 4x CD Burner died a couple years ago (was the first and only Kernal Panic I've gotten in two years also) while I was burning a CD. I went and bought a $30 cd burner and a $15 USB enclosure and stuck the burner inside, plugged in my linux box and started burning again. Wife's sytem (XP) I plugged it in and had to find the driver for the USB enclosure and the driver for the drive then another driver for the writing function of the drive (it needed two different .inf's for it to make it work), three steps to make the drive just work by XP and she still can't do anything fancy like multisession without extra software.
I have other hobbies at home now to get my mind off computers. We have remodeled half of our old house so I took all the receipts from lowes and Homedepot and scanned them, linux had xscanimage built in so I just plugged in my scanner and it worked, wife has to find the driver cd and install it, made an openoffice spreadsheet listing all the stuff we bought for the house and its cost and hyperlinks to the scanned reciepts for all the stuff we bought. Started buying some nice tools, table saw, miter saw, router, etc. Made folders for them and downloaded all the .pdf manuals and made spreadsheets inventorying all those as well, basically built a complete home inevntory system from openoffice spreadhseets so I can now tell that I have x$ in tools sitting in my agarage if I would ever need it for insurance purposes. Bought crib plans when we found out my wife was pregnant, scanned the plans, modified them with gimp and reprinted them then bought the wood and made the crib which my now 3 month old sleeps in every night. Took pictures along the way and used Quanta plus which came with KDE to make a simple web page to show it off (www.ninefamily.com/baby). Bought a shiny new truck last year so I made a simple spreadsheet to track the milage and maintenance (oil changes, tire rotations). Joind a few other forums and post on them often, read different NG's using knode, have an ongoing Journal of everything I do in Korganizer. I no longer have to archive my mail and calendar due to the 2G data file limit that I hit in MS outlook. So I've gotten to use my system a lot in the last couple years with all the free time I have now because I don't have to check for AV signature updates, update and run anti-spyware, etc.

Actually mplayer worked for me. Did you make sure you installed the latest codec packages? I've found that very few sites won't work with mplayer or at worst real player. The rule of thumb is this: if a video file on a major site won't play in mplayer, it's a good sign that you do not have the codec required to display the video. One way to determine this is to obtain the URL for the video file/stream and try loading it in another player and see if the errors indicate which codec is required to decode the file. You can run into the same exact issue on Windows as well so this is not a Linux problem, but a technology progression problem.

No, it depends on the distribution. You can download mplayer binaries from any number of repositories for any number of distributions, and what's more, point-and-click package managers make the process even easier than having to download and install codec packages for Windows. :)

You're right there. Actually RealPlayer always made it possible to disable the "spyware" features - you just had to know to go into the advanced install and configuration options, scroll down through the options lists (where everything within the visible portion of the picklist are unchecked) and unchecked the ones that are not visible but preselected for you. Yes, they have misbehaved in the past but they're good guys now and don't try to sneak stuff by customers any more. {edit: What this has to do with Linux, though, I can't figure out. It's a vendor thing, not an OS thing.}

yes wine can be tricky, but I've managed to get Microsoft Office, Internet Exploiter, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and various DVD utilities installed and running almost perfectly under wine. The ONLY issues I had was that the Windows apps did not respect the DPI setting (what a shocker. They don't respect those settings natively in Windows, either! Not a wine issue. . . ) and some of the dropmenus in the Adobe application palettes did not draw properly.

If you need an honest-to-goodness easy and near-flawless Windows on Linux environment, check out Crossover office.

That's a problem, but google|yahoo|[your search engine of choice] is a huge help there.

ATI does not play well with others. They inherited that trait when they acquired Diamond Multimedia some years back. When it comes to Linux and video cards, ATI = evil, NVidia = good guys (relatively speaking).

That's a problem exactly how? Unless you're running Linux fileservers I fail to see the problem. As far as email is concerned, clamav should solve the problem for you (and some email clients will even set this up for you behind the scenes!). As far as apache worms are concerned, just keep apache patched and properly configured and it's usually a non-issue.

Stop buying modems that use the CPU to emulate a uart. Buy a modem with a hardware uart. Yes, they're getting harder to find, but not only will they work, they won't suck CPU time to manage flow control.

Actually ndiswrapper is not such a big deal, and in addition, and surprising number of cards Just Work(tm) with SuSE, including mini-pci wireless cards for laptops

How so?

What does this mean?

How necessary is antivirus on a standalone *nix system? There are how many *nix viruses in the wild again? Again, you mainly need to worry only about email viruses, and not that they'll infect your system, but to prevent inadvertantly forwarding an infected file to a Windows user.

{snip more tripe}

So in other words, you're a Microsoft fanboi who popped into this thread to spread FUD to troll for a flame fest? Sorry, others have tried that in the past many times and those threads invariably end up closed and the users punted from the site by our friendly forum moderators. I can't find any legitimate items in your post - you seemingly want to slam the system without any basis in reality, and aren't here to ask for help but to garner attention for some unknown reason. Am I reading your post correctly, or is there something you need help with, or do you have some legitimate criticisms with some real data or real-world examples to back them up?

First of all you had a really nice discussion there until the end where you went off on me and as to why I don't understand.

Well, no I'm not a fan boy of M$.

Click on my name and you will find that not only am I asking legit questions over the last two months that I have moved to linux, you will also find that whenever I get a problem fixed I type up a little something about how I did it. You will also find that I try and help others and I do not bash them.

This topic was a discussion about Linux being ready for the desktop. Is it really so hard to think that there may be issues with Linux that might be obstacles for someone else than you?

The original writer even says at the end of his post....that he knows he is "stirring up the debate".

A debate is a conversation, not one sided. Remember that b4 you flam on Okay.

Now...

The reason I came into this thread and posted my "issues" with Linux, is that in my mind, as feeble as it is, when I hear someone say "LINUX IS READY FOR THE DESKTOP" that to me now, means that I think they are claiming that Linux is ready for the masses.

He mentioned debate. I mentioned items that in my opinion are objective reasons that I feel that Linux is NOT ready for the masses. Tho to you and others here may find them moot, easy or negligable, they were not for me.

The "masses" is what I am talking about. Those items are legit. And they are well discussed items, but I tried to keep the length down to a minimum

Now for your questions:
-I cannot stream anything at Yahoo, MSNBC, AOL. I believe it's part in parcel to the way that they call up java, server ad's, and referrals ID's and quality feedback. I cannot get Weather.com. MTV. I could go on and on. There are some sites that work and there are those that do not.

-realplayer, i brought them up as they are open sourced w/helix. their products work on linux for me. however they are not a widely used streaming media provider anymore. i went into depth about the company and explained why I felt this happened to them. It was simply that they support open source now, they failed in windows, and I hope they don't flop, and I hope that those that make streaming content sites use their format because they are linux friendly.

--Yea I checked into crossover office. but the point is that if an appliction is not supported, then you need to "work" with cross-over office people at additional fee's that are not listed, but you are nicely referred to a salesman for.

--viruses. According to kaspersky labs there are over 800. Within the last two weeks they did a proof-of-concept that made Linus Torvalds revise the 2.6.10+ kernels. Are there nearly as much as Windows, clearly no. If Linux takes off like I hope they do. There might be in time. And maybe you don't care about passing viruses to your friends who use windows, but I do. If an email comes to me with a virus that may not do anything to me but can hurt them then yes, I want to erradicate it. And real time virus protection is going to get that. And so yes to get the dazuko module on Mepis, Slackware and many other distro's require a recompile of the kernel. Maybe nothing for you, but not something the masses are going to want to do.

--wireless for linux. don't get me started on that. No wireless is officially supported by the two largest US manufacturer's for wireless. So in theory wireless on linux is non-existing.

And in fact SUSE as you point out is dropping Mad Wifi. And clearly states in the readme if you install ndiswrapper you won't get tech support!

I think there is only one problem with linux, and that is that not enough people are using it. It's not the OS's fault that many Corporations don't release binarys for linux, or that you can't have media support out of the box for stupid copyright reasons.

I recently set up my old pc for a friend using suse-10.
I set it up within an hour (installation and all), So he can play streaming files off the internet, play dvd's and has decent usb support (syncing disabled).
He would have tried to do that for a weekend, then given up and put in his trustworthy winxp cd.

Another problem is the german comunity (I'm from austria) which consists primarily of pompous retards. If it wasn't for this page I probably would have given up on it too. But this seems to be the nature of non-english user-groups. So if you're not comfortable with english, you have a problem.

Yeah, people do tend to take the easy way out. Giving up on Linux and running back to Windows is definitely the easy way out. That's why I think it very important for linux designers to follow the engineering philosophy "engineered by geniuses to be operated by idiots" if that be the intent of the distro.

The manuals on online doc's have to be fool proof, and the wizards must explain ALL that is happening in a short co-hesive manner so that the lazy house-wife, or Aunt-Tilly can understand.

To further explain, I truly think that a distro, like SUSE for example, should just pull a noob off the street, pay him to sit there and without coaching, see if he can install SUSE on a pc and get online and print as a minimum.

If the noob fails the distro fails! It should not even be released to the public as gold. It should only be released to the Open source community for enhancement and fixes with information why the noob failed so that Novell and the community can fix it.

Why this is not done for so many distro's I do not understand.

Here is a link from Kaspersky about the viruses for linux. Last year the number of viruses doubled for Linux according to them:

http://www.viruslist.com/en/analysis?pubid=184625030

When Linux supports wireless devices out-of-the-box, and can connect to USB devices without the user having to type in ten lines of code, and can install without screwing the hard disc's partition table, then it'll be ready for desktop. I would love to use Linux, unfortunately I can't.

The partition problem is an obstacle yea for sure. In fact I had an issue when I first tried out linux. Something I did wrong with Grub. I could not get it out of my boot sector. Fortunately from years of HD failures I knew of HD scripts and I manaully erradicated my boot sector, then reformated then reinstalled. LOL, Windows prepared me for failure, hahah ironic.

Fortunately there are some distro's that dont even need a swap when installed for beginners, DSL is one of them that they can try. Tho the installer is in console, but they do use colored fonts.

The funny thing is the old-timers like me don't mind "console" so much, as PC's back in the day used that. It's really the newer generation's that are inclined to have issues with a black screen and blinking white cursor or text based installer. :D

Console <3, and I'm 16.

Anyway, Linux is on my desktop; it does everything I need it to do. The thing is...Windows can do it too. The difference? Linux lets me be in control of what goes on. last time I checked, the person uses the computer, the system should assume the user knows what whe/she is doing. Just my opinion.

One issue with wide implementation of Linux is, of course, money. Learning isn't an issue; learning Linux is like learning Windows, just gotta spend some time. It's just that people want to make some money off their software, and Windows fits that idea.

I guess all I'm saying is that Linux works for me 'cause I control it, it can do what I need it to, and I don't have to empty my pockets for it. :D

You have to make a partition to install windows too.
I had to feed my wide's xp box two cd's to install drivers for a usb enclosure and cd burner inside it and my linux machine detected and I ran k3b and it used it with no typing involved.

Any OS can do what you need to do if you try hard enough ;) Just to do what you need with windows you have to be sure to keep it updated and run antivirus and antispyware.

Linux can do what you _need_ to do and do what you _want_ to do. Since I made the switch I have had more time for other things, I've actually managed to finish one project I started. With windows I lost my focus when I have to stop to remove spyware which got installed when I simply mistyped a web site address even though I was running as a non admin user and had disabled active x and java. I had to put aside whatever I was doing at the time to fix my system. Then when it stopped recognizing my usb drive so I couldn't move some files around until I rebooted into safe mode and deleted all the phantom device entries for it so I had to stop whatever I was working on again.

Thats why its ready for the desktop, I've been able to progress form the tinkering with the OS stage to using it to do other things, I never made it that far with windows, by the time I got windows working good and set how I liked it and got the maintenance down it was time to reinstall.

I think linux has great potential in becoming idiot proof, without pissing off the experienced users (Which won't happen, because they are the ones who write it, for christ sake). You can set up a simple graphical interface, but without loosing the command line. While I have no problem with the command line (my first pc was a C64) I really appreciate tools like yast. And having seen how it improved over the last years, I don't think It will be long until the first idiot can successfully set foot on the stony surface of linux.

I'm old enough to have seen all stages of microsofts os from dos to Longhorn Beta. And I was always pissed off when they tried to simplify things, but just made it harder and harder for those who knew the previous os.
I can't really imagine this could happen with linux.

One last thought... That might sound odd, but if Linux suddenly became the leading operating system... I'd be a little pissed off. I like the odd look when people try to figure out what I did with my desktop, or when I take a live cd to a friends house to fix his harddisk, and he has no idea what is going on, or the mandatory "In linux, you could do it." comment.
So I'm pretty happy with the state it is at now. Easy enough for me.

I'm shure they'll do it as soon as they are going for that market. But honestly. It really doesn't look like they wanted to bait the average windows user with 10.0.
Maybe with future releases.

It's pretty predictable what the average user wants, and unfortunatly one point is (I'm sorry to point this out again, I really am... it's so stupid)

... games

So there's not much they can do, other than keep doing their best, hoping that Longhorn sucks donkey balls, and that eventually people will port their programs (but most important the G/\Mzzz!!11!) to linux.

Oh, it's pretty close...
 

Install Ubuntu...trust me. I installed it on an old Thinkpad and it detected my wireless automatically, and detected my USB mouse and Joystick while powered on and both worked without me touching anything. It also had a battery thingy running in the system tray and has the ability to view/asjust clock speeds. The user community, forums, faqs are unbeatable for this distro as well.

Another great "Out of the Box" Distro is Xandros. Detects windows networks and partitions out of the box and has everything else setup as well. It also does the partitioning for you if you can't handle that. I haven't tested USB or Wireless on this one though, but I would be surprised if it is a challenge.

Mr. Swillis

Oh, there are games...
 

This is a good point. But I have a couple things to say anyway.

A. Games are not #1 for *everyone*. Does your mom play World of Warcraft? Does your Grandfather play City of Heroes? Most likely not. And if so, I don't it's their primary reason for having a computer. What do they use it for? Internet, E-mail, IM, Music, Videos, Documents...this is all quite easy in Linux.

B. For those that think games *are* #1, things are definitely moving forward. Sure you have things like WineX/Cedega, but you may that emulators like this slow down performance. And I will agree with that.

BUT, many games are also ported natively by third parties, or even the games companies themselves. Here are some examples.

Loki used to port games like Unreal Tournament, Quake3, Enemy Territory, etc, and would only require a small download for the install script that would work with the regular Windows game CD.

Epic and ID are two big gaming companies that now release linux installers on the actual games. UT2003/2004, Doom3, Quake4, etc. I will agree that it isn't very advertised, but it's true. This will only continue to grow as the Linux user community grows.

Mr. Swillis

Windows/Mac generally comes preinstalled. So, any effort that's necessary for a user to install an OS means it's extra effort. Desktop users do not want extra effort; therefore, until Linux is preinstalled on computers, it is not ready for the desktop.

Employers looking to hire, who post positions over the net, usually expect a resume in MS-Word format. Most users want to easily create a fancy looking resume with a template. Fancy templates do not translate well from open-source word processors to Word document format. Users do not want to worry.
Many employers will also accept pdf format, which many open-source word processors will convert to. This is extra effort, which most desktop users do not want.
Until employers will accept documents in the native format of open-source word processors, Linux is not ready for the desktop.

Free software replacements, for proprietary software, was once a selling point for Linux. Many of these are now also available for Windows, like Gimp, Firefox, OpenOffice.org, Gaim. A motivation for desktop users to switch to Linux is gone.

Users buying a printer, or PDA, or scanner, or soundcard, or any other addon device, usually get a "setup CD". When this CD does not work, and users have to access user groups to be able to get their new device working, they will think, "I am not ready for Linux." Some advancements have been made on hardware recognition (ie, gnome-volume-manager), which, if advancements continue, may alleviate this issue. When every device has a setup CD for Linux, then Linux will be ready for the desktop.

Linux does come pre-installed on desktops. You can get these at places like Fries, Compusa, or many places on the Net (I heard that Dell was even considering it).

You can save to MS-Word format with Open Office. Not to mention that creating a PDF in Linux is every bit as easy as it is in Windows.

I agree with this one...except for the motivation part. It's not just about having a free OS, but an OS that won't crash or be riddled with viruses and spyware.

But this one is WAY wrong. You know why there aren't "setup CDs" for Linux? Because you don't need them!

I have never had to go out of my way for hardware except for video cards, which you have to do in windows anyway, and there are more Linux distros that COME WITH the ACTUAL NVIDIA DRIVERS, which Windows does not.

Linux speaks to hardware MUCH MUCH better than Windows ever has. Remember win2k and 9X? What was that? You had to install drivers for EVERYTHING. Even in XP you have to install drivers for anything outside the Motherboard and some Nics/Modems.

NEXT!

Mr. Swillis

Wow I wish I lived where you live Mr. Swillis, CompUSA does not have anything here for Linux :(

Linux PC's do cost way more than windows pc's. That's a function of supply and demand and will change. Maybe a barrier for some, but not the growth of the OS. I would tell those that get sticker shock for Linux pc's that they at least get faster updates, better support, stability, no need to buy all the third party app's and get caught into the consistent upgrade schema that has become so predominent in the windows world.

For companies desktops linux is very little if none on CRM. But there is a project in the works and I have high hopes for that in time.

Linux is great on the internal hardware side of things so far me. Once I go beyond the case of the pc is anyone's game. Printers, scanners, etc.

I still am not happy with my linux experience for multimedia tho :( I can't stream practically anything for news except CBS news' site or fox news which uses flash.

I can say this about linux. It's amazing to see what people can do out of love for something vs. people that design something as part of "their living".

29: For video streams, try KPlayer. It works quite well. Also, make sure you have the w32codecs installed. If you're using Debian, both the KPlayer and the w32codecs package are available by adding
deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ sarge main
to your sources.list. For etch or sid, just replace the term "sarge" with the appropriate release (either "etch" or "sid"). For Ubuntu, it should be available in Multiverse, I think. For other distros, you can likely search for an rpm via Google. Good luck.

True, but the Windows partitioning system rarely makes your hard drive unbootable. Linux does that on a regular basis.

I tried the Ubuntu LiveCD, it didn't detect my wireless card at all (not even showing it as 'unknown device' or whatever) and the 'battery indicator' continually said 'on mains power' even when I pulled the power cable out of the laptop and the 'battery light' on the laptop was on. If I do decide to install Linux it'll probably be Suse rather than Ubuntu.

OpenOffice can save in Word format, and edit Word files.

True, but the translation of fancy templates from OpenDocument text template (ott or stw) into doc format often produces erratic results. I've created fancy looking resumes in Openoffice.org, which I saved to doc format, subsequently put them on a disk, and, in a Windows computer, subsequently opened the file on Word, to find that the file was rendered quite erratically. People do not want that worry. Granted, a straight forward run-of-the-mill file can be safely saved in Word format, knowing that it will be properly rendered by a receiver using MS-Word. Many people like using templates for visual effect, and fancy formatting is not translated well, in my experience.

I would not, in good conscience, be able to advise someone to send an important document (like a resume) with fancy formatting created by an open source word processor, to a prospective employer who I know is probably going to use Word to open it. I would advise them to test it on a Windows computer, using MS-Word first, before sending it. This, however, is more effort, which makes Linux not ready for the desktop environment. When there is no more effort (ie, employers accept files in the native format of a Linux word processor), then, it will be closer to being ready for the desktop.

Even OpenOffice.org itself gives warnings: "This document may contain formatting or content that cannot be saved in the Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP file format. Do you want to save the document in this format anyway?" The answer is "no, I don't want to worry about such a warning; so, I want to save it in the format native to the word processor I'm using, and have everyone open it in this format."

Who ya gonna call?
 

If Windows was a minority OS with few users, it would not be 'ready for the desktop' by some ridiculous standard of 'ya don't needs to know nuttin', ya just uses it and it always works'. People proficient in Windows who let on that they're proficient become support for friends and family less proficient (I wonder how many of those 'No, I won't fix your computer' t-shirts thinkgeek sells are sold to windows gurus vs linux gurus).

As Linux gains more and more proficient users it becomes readier and readier for the desktop overall. For those intrepid types who switch without such support, sites like this one are of tremendous value, both starting out, and for referring people to. Perhaps there should be a t-shirt which reads 'No, I won't fix your computer. Visit linuxquestions.org'.

Linux has matured into a great OS, but any OS comes with a learning curve, and no OS is 100% well behaved all the time. The issue of 'readiness for the desktop' is now more a social one than a technical one. Who ya gonna call?

This isn't a matter of perception. If I want to connect my PDA to Windows, I plug the USB cable in, I open the files. That's it. If I want to connect my PDA to a Linux distro, I install drivers from a command line, I plug the USB cable in, I type more code into a command line, I access files using more command line, I disconnect the device using even more command line. This situation is repeated for many other tasks.

But it doesn't work on windows, because some hardworking microsoft people made the drivers for the pda on their weekends. The company who made the pda did it.

And they don't make them for linux, for the simple reason, that there are not enough people who would use it, therefore - not efficient.

I know it is ready for the desktop, because I'm using it goddammit!
(my pda worked out of the box btw.)

Back to the gaming issue, I just went to transgaming.org and guess what? Turns out you can play the latest NFS Most Wanted on your *Nix box...
Sure, you have to pay up if you want Cedega, but this just proves that it CAN be done (there are rumours of being able to do the same with the latest Wine).

...only a matter of time...

Er, no it doesn't. _YOU_ make it unbootable when you screw up. Linux/Unix does what you tell it to. If you want your hand held, stay away from unix. Unix has been around for 30 years, it's not going to change just because a few people can't use it.

As for the question about whether Linux is (or isn't) ready the the desktop, the entire premise is unfounded. There is no such thing as _THE_ desktop. Linux has been used on people's desktops for over a decade. The question is, are _you_ ready for Linux?

Interesting thread with a fair amount of misinformation.

Linux is an excellent desktop operating system.

I have no problems with multimedia, java, flash, usb, codecs, or wireless with the linux flavours I use.

Interesting thread? Ridiculous. It's just another silly flame thread that we Linux users turn to when we've nothing better to do.

I cant stream on SUSE, slackware, Debian, Ubuntu, kubuntu news.yahoo.com or yahoo weather, amongst many other sites? How is that misinformation?

Please, please educate me if you know how to I'd really like to use those services.

Old Fogie, in post # 30 I made some suggestions for viewing streaming video on Linux. Did you see that post? If not, reread it and give the suggestions a try -- which basically is to install KPlayer, and you should fine. Lemme know if it works.

I just went and watched the Mothers' Day story and Sunday's weather at yahoo with no problems whatsoever. I am using PCLOS .92 and Firefox.

I've been watching this site daily with Mepis 6 with no problem so I assume Yahoo will work too.
http://www.infotecbusinesssystems.com/wildlife/
This is a very interesting webcam viewing baby eagles not so far from me.

I,simply, installed the proper codecs via synaptic and the mplayer plugin for Mozilla.

97% of all desktop computer users (all Linux distros put together have about 3% market share) is hardly 'a few people'. Plenty of things have been around for 30 years, or even longer, that doesn't necessarily make them good.

Since when did 97% of desktop computer users make you their spokesperson? In any case, I doubt whether 97% of desktop computer users have tried Linux, so it's preposterous to say they can't use it.

This forum, and others, are littered with posts from "newbies" who tried linux for the first time, loved it, and had no problem installing it. There are newbies who have built their whole system from source using Linux From Scratch. People who want to use Linux can use Linux. If you can't, that's your problem, not Linux's.

Eh? I think that unix has quite firmly established itself as the most successful operating system design in existence. It runs on virtually every architecture capable of running it. It is stable, reliable, complete, everything an OS should be. Now you're going to come back and claim that Windows is the most successful because it's the most used. Wrong. That is due to MS's criminal business practices, it has nothing to do with quality of the OS.

Operating systems exist so that people can use computers, not so that computers can use people. Unix treats its users like intelligent adults, Windows treats its users like morons who can't be trusted with their own property.
If you prefer that, then that says more about you than it does about unix.

Now, now, let's not go off on MS's business practices. It's business.

I think what you guys are missing is the familiarity factor. When (the majority of) kid's go to school, they're using Windows computers. Every computer you see at Best Buy or Circuit City has a "Made for Windows XP" sticker on it. Why? Because Windows has already established itself as simple to use for even the dumbest users. What do people want? They want ease. Lets be honest, until Linux, or any Unix based OS is SO stable on the desktop that it never crashes or has compatability issues, they won't win the Desktop war. The average user doesnt WANT to tweak theyre system. They just want it to work. Theyre lazy.

Now, I'm not saying Linux isn't ready for the desktop, because I think its made great strides, but it's no at a competitive level yet. The "morons" who use Windows wan't to have theyre hand held, and look, they aren't a community brimming with help forums. On the other hand, we (the nix users) like to get everything we can out of a computer, because we take time to work on our setups.

Ubuntu (ohhh how I loathe Ubuntu) is the only distro thats really made an attempt to compete with the Windows and Mac desktops. Stuff just works. Though, they install more useless crap than Windows does, its still a functional system right after the install. Then it crashes, all goes to hell, and the users end up on a forum. We've got sound issues, video issues, network issues, all kinds of issues, ands whats keeping nix from being truly competitive on the desktop.

Right, so illegal/immoral behaviour is OK as long as you make a profit?

Since when did Windows "establish" itself? Microsoft bought their position, they didn't establish anything. But we digress.

The question is, why are children using Windows at school? Why are your taxes being given to Microsoft when free alternatives are available? Why is Windows preinstalled on everything? Why are you tolerating this? Are you sheep? These are the issues, not how much effort is required to use any given OS.

Yeah, and I "just" want to be able to run a four minute mile. But I can't "just" do that, so I train every day (nearly). If people can't be bothered to make a little effort, why should Linux/anyone make any effort to help them?

No desktop OS will _never_ crash. As long as human beings write software, there will always be bugs.

Linux doesn't have compatibility issues. It is hardware manufacturers who have compatibility issues with Linux.
If you want your stuff to work with Linux, TELL THE MANUFACTURER.

streaming video
 

It's interesting seeing wildlife. KPlayer is good for viewing in fullscreen mode.

Hi, actually I did miss your post there.

The problem for me and for Linux in my opinion is that a site like yahoo.com uses javascript to detect your installed media player and bandwith. You can only use Windows.

But so many sites are using active x controls, java etc and they simply do not work in linux for me.

It's very frustrating.

If linux was dominant in the OS world, would Windows be ready for the desktop?

It isn't that linux isn't ready, it is that linux doesn't (and I hope it never does) run like Windows. People know Windows and, for that reason, it is the gauge of 'ready' and 'not-quite'. It will never be ready until it is the norm.

Oh...and there is no convenient way to tie mapped device names to their identity...that can make things difficult as SCSI devices grow in use...how many of your moms know the difference between /dev/hdd1 and /dev/sdd1? Windows doesn't take any active participation to perform (like crap), while Linux requires an active role in maintaining and upgrading, which is due primarily to the above observation regarding dominance. Anyway, I hope linux doesn't go mainstream for quite some time.

48: I myself had real problems with streaming media. Sites like ifilm.com gave me huge problems. I more or less have overcome these, though. You can get the java runtime environment (jre) from the Sun Java Site. After installing this, make sure you have the mplayerplug-in installed on your system, and that you have realplayer 10 for Linux on your system. Then, for most things, you should be good to go.

Note: the mplayerplug-in is in addition to mplayer. Having mplayer alone is not good enough for viewing streaming videos. You also need the plug-in. It's highly recommended to install the java runtime environment from Sun too.

Good luck.

PS, if any of the links above are incorrect, try https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/plugins/, which is a general info page with similar links to stuff.