I've been writing Linux guidebooks for some time, and it's fair to say that most people who buy my books are Windows users looking to make the leap to Linux (or perhaps just wondering what the fuss is about).

Because of this, I've heard a lot of excuses why people quit Linux, and return to Windows. I'm happy to say that the excuses are getting far less common nowadays, compared to 2003, when I wrote my first book. But I still hear 'em.

I installed Linux but some element of my hardware didn't work!

That's incredible because I installed Windows the other day and had the exact same experience! My graphics card didn't work, and wifi didn't either.

Might this just be the way PCs are?

But do you know what I did? I fixed everything. Maybe I'm lucky to be clever enough to do so, but if I wasn't, I could easily ask around for solutions. I know there are smart people out there who are willing to help.

I tried Linux but I had to type commands!

OMG!!! Really?

But seriously. So what? Are you scared of the keyboard?

Read full story.

Yeah, it's pretty incredible sometimes. This reminds of a similar article I read. If someone asks me if I think if Linux is ready for the desktop, I reply that 'yes it is, it's just that desktop users aren't ready for Linux.'

Linux is NOT Windows

I would add an 8th. "You have to enter the root password to install packages. I'm to lazy to do that."

Very true!

In fact being a Windows programmer (Visual Studio!!) I used to *hate* Linux since it used to be painstaking to know so many things I didn't want to know - from disk partitioning during installation to weird libraries i needed to install while setting up a media player. So getting Linux up to speed used to be a 2-3 days of affair. That was just 3-4 years ago. With Ubuntu's Wubi and other app installation managers things are getting really easy, even for someone who knows how to install Linux from scratch but doesn't want to take the pains of setting it up.

Kudos to Linux community!!

And one more.. I'd love to have a port of the DOS based 'edit' editor in Linux.. I remember the horrors of starting vim (Emacs was worse!) for the first time and then not being able to move around or get out of it.. Although I am a vi pro now, I still remember the ease of writing a 'hello world' in 'edit'..

Lack of patience is the single biggest reason.

LOL, that's actually the main reason I stopped using Windows. The 'reboot it/reinstall it' solution to everything is just exceedingly tiresome.

Have you tried nano? Not exactly the same as edit, but a similar concept - a modeless editor, with a menu of options selected using the Ctrl key (Ctrl-o to save a file, Ctrl-x to exit, etc). Not as flexible or powerful as vi, but a lot easier to learn initially.

OK well all I have to say is...

Why was wvdial omitted from the newest kernel? I need this program to get online because I'm stuck with dialup here in the booties. I'd like to move from Ubuntu 8.04 to the new version but cannot manage to get it online. I don't know enough I suppose. It reminds me of way back when and the C-64 which was keyboard oriented. That was then. Now we have GUI. Well not always.

I do not have Torvald's email address but if I did I'd ask him why dialup support got dumped. There must be a reason but everyone ignores that and goes right to "oh here's how to fix that". Nice. But, why should we have to fix it in the first place?

I have not been able to install wvdial. I do not understand enough about the dependencies thing. The year is 2009, not 1982. What will I do when Windows 7 arrives? Well at least that damn thing still supports dialup.

C'mon geeks.... Explain to this old guy why Ubuntu, which I really like, stops for me at 8.04?

Every response so far informs me of why I should know certain things but not why Ubuntu does not have to.

Thanks.... to the gods of digital, where ever they may be, I hate you.

See reason #2. You're talking to someone who spent two days searching for drivers, downloading them and burning them to CD on a different computer, then manually installing them, one-by-one, and rebooting after each, to get Windows to work on a PC that was "Built for Windows".

In a perfect world, s**t doesn't happen that way, but we're not in a perfect world. That's why there's LinuxQuestions.org.

I get
"We're sorry…

The article or page you were trying to access is not available. It may have expired, or perhaps it contained data that's not currently supported on Yahoo! Tech. Maybe someone spilled a soda in the server."
for that URI?

Darn those Yahoo servers... that's the second time that's happened!

I'll look into it...

Thanks for the heads-up.

EDIT: Broken Yahoo URL has been replaced. Thanks again, unSpawn.

I know this forum is about why people quit Linux and many here have provided some interesting views. I started using Linux back in 2002, and taken a look then and now. Granted Linux has came a long way and few things work out of box and having patience is good but I tell you what, when you are facing a problem and you are looking for solutions and all you see is people with the same issues posted back from few days to few years with no solutions is my biggest problem in Linux. User friendly is not what I want, what I want is easy access to documentation and solutions so I can solve my own problems. Especially for newbies!

A small but fairly high-profile group of users I know loved the ideals of OSS and were very willing to climb the learning curve. They were turned on to Linux by a proselytizing Linux-zealot who was happy to support them as a prototype group but then he got interested in other things, stopped supporting them and assigned one of his juniors to look after them. They'd been using OOo for more than a year and had converted more than half their computers to Linux. The final nail in the coffin was when they took on a new member of staff who knew nothing about Linux and wanted to convert the whole installation to Microsoft products. For the users, the presence of on-site support was a clincher and the great experiment came to an end.

The fundamental reason they gave up Linux was lack of a support (and user) skill base.

Quite frankly, I started with a Timex/Sinclair 1000, then 'upgraded' to the Commodore C=64. Later on, I upgraded again to a Tandy 1200 running MS-DOS v2.11. I still recall, with DOS and early versions of Windows, copying drivers to HDD and editing startup files to boot and configure those drivers to make your hardware work properly. As far as I'm concerned, Linux is not all that far behind Windows (if at all). In fact, even today, there are supported versions of Windows that do not work 'out-of-the-box' with certain hardware configurations, while at the same time, you can find a Linux distro that will.

Cheers