Kind of following on from the "what would you like ported" post, i estimate 10% of the population would switch to linux for good if these things were seen to:

(the 10% is a ruff value i based on googles OS servey, about 2 years chane-over time and half way decent advertising)

- The web design / graphics industry: 0.5%
- either photoshop, or a version of gimp matching photoshop
- dreamweaver, or a match
- flash / director, or a match
- i estimate high end video editing software will go to Mac rather than linux, but if it can be done on linux then thats adding desktops...

- Music industry: 0.5%

alot of people dont understand how big the music industry is. It being my job, i can tell you not only music pros use audio software, about 10% of all the people i know run pro audio software on their computers (especially fruityloops and reason for wana-be producers), but about 80% of the proaudio sequencer/softstudio market is made up of Logic, protools, reason, cubase (or nuendo) and fruityloops. sebalius is also a big one for classical musicians and general scorers. So

- Reason!!!!! (absolutely no match on any OS - reason on linux is a BIG topic in the music industry)
- Logic!!!! (muse needs to improve alot if it is to replace logic!)
- Protools (ardour isn't good enough yet, and doesn't look good enuff)
- Fuityloops
- Sebalius (rose garden is good, but it needs to look at other pro audio products better)

- Installers (this is 75% of the reason why people dont like linux) 0.5%
when you get software, you want to be able to click on it and it installs. We dont want to do the dependency runabout. All programs like apt-get, slapt-get (which i use) and yum are brilliant, but alot of people dont know about them!

General software: 0.5%
- Openoffice is great - no probs there
- Tax programs need to be better or if they are good, no one knows about them!
- General stuff like databases and buissness apps need to be better, or if they are good no 1 knows about them! Like sage and so on

Advertising - this is the big one. Ask any normal windows user what linux is and they wont know, how are you gona win desktops without customers!? 7.5%

Ease of use: 0.5% - i have run all the main (decent) linux distros and they would be hard to setup by newbies (exept fedora/redhat) - for example the debain installer - its a farse! Im now running slackware - it took me about a week to get just how i like but now runs like a dream and never crashes, is quicker than windows, looks better... and all the rest. but it is actally EASY TO USE - yes linux is easy to use once its set up! but people dont know this. the only dificalt thing with linux (for home user/every day stuff) is setting it up.

I might be well off couse, but i think this is the general conclusion of things for every day and work based desktops concerning linux.

what do you all think.
and is there any1 willing to help me develop a workaround for the "file system error" when wine-ing Reason 2.5?

alaindu

personally i think the only real thing keeping linux out of most hands are the lack of games.

home owners are the largest percentage of computer owners not big business and most home owners play games. thats that even the wineX program can not keep up with and a lot of EU refuse to pay 2 times for something they already own and have the right to use.

if you convert the top 10 games to linux native, then you would see more then a 10% jump as then you can play a game faster, more reliable, and on a much more stable platform thus giving gamers that all powerful rush of a better game play.

yes a lot of what you say holds true (accounting software for home users is just as good for windows as it is for linux gnucash is as good as quicken and will import a quicken back up file). as for the need for some of the other programs you mention, IIRC most of them are out there, but there is so little info available on them for the market place that most people dont have a clue they are out there.

Thats true , the only reason that i dual boot is to play games on windows

A lot of the problem with gaming in Linux is that people don't know when a game runs on Linux. Probably the only game that actually states that it'll run on Linux is UT2k4. Doom3 runs on Linux and so does Half Life 2 I believe. I've heard of others but they don't come to me.

So the problem isn't just that developers aren't porting to Linux, they're not telling anyone when they do.

yes you could run alot of games in linux using cedega , but not all of the games are supported , and i hate to say it but even the ones that are supported runs better on windows

Most of those issues that people are talking about are currently being worked on, and most of them will be solved in the next few years.
Games- Transgaming and wine will get games to work. Look what they have done in the past few years, and imagine what they can do in the next few.

General Software- GIMP, OpenOffice, and Firefox are all already viable alternatives. That is enough to get people to switch. Every thing else will be developed as people start to switch

Installer - Autopackage has just stabilized and once it catches on will revolutionize linux software installation. We just need Linux developers to start making .package files.

Marketing and Ease of Use- Xandros, Linspire, Novell as more and more commercial companies begin selling Linux desktops these problems will take care of themselves.

The real questions is what will be the new problems once Longhorn is released. Linux can not keep playing catch up or we will always have a list of problems that are stopping main stream adoption. We have to figure out what computers in three years will need to be doing and start aggressively developing software for the future.

Alaidu is so right!
Ease of installation, multimedia, software choices, and all should install correctly and offer support.
Linux is a superior system to Windows especially on internet systems.
Too many distros with too many ideas about how to handle installs and dependencys.
Piles of useless outdated how-to books.
The same thing happend with the pc in the early eightys.
The hardware archetecture was standardized so developers could develop (MS) software.
MS does all it can to derail linux with propretary hardware and changes to their systems.
Linux NEEDS to get standardized NOW!
Not enough work being done on pro level multimedia.
Stop treating this thing like a toy. Stop battling for dominance (RH).
Get Real! Do what you love and the money will come.
I can set up a system for multimedia but I am not a profesionl multimedia programmer.
The software is not available, and I do not mean games.
Waiting around for things to change is a bad idea.
You can bet companies like MS are working hard on this.
Can you imagine, MSLinux?
The strong will survive.

I think there is 1 reasons why linux/GNU is not accepted by REGULAR users:
games(95% of my friends have CRACKED games(they work good only in windows(of course CRACKED)))
if u can have Windows+Games for free(u copy them from a friend) why having linux,they ask...