LXer: Five ways the Linux desktop shoots itself in the foot
 

Published at LXer:

Linux has shot itself in the foot quite often. How? 1) Lack of Linux vendor support 2) Lack of Linux advertising and marketing 3) Too much bad techie attitude 4) Too much infighting 5) Not enough developer co-operation

Read More...

Good article, and mentions LQ :)

Well, although the points are true, I don't think it's fair to blame, which is what he does. And much of the reasoning is off, I think he's looking at it from the wrong POV.

1) Lack of Linux vendor support - why should they try to sell something that is free ? for the support ... but you can't make money off of desktop user support, it's just not economically viable at this time. That's why they only do this for enterprise editions ... for businesses.

2) Lack of Linux advertising and marketing - true, but who pays for it ? M$ has billions or trillions, it doesn't even need to advertise because it has no competition, it is a monopoly, and yet they pour money into advertising anyway. Where do you get the money to advertise for Linux ?

3) Too much bad techie attitude - sometimes true, but how can you help it. You have to realize that Linux support is made up mostly of volunteers ... their attitudes differ, and you know they don't make any money from it, so they don't have to be nice (even tho they should). What can you do ? Try to discourage "RTFM" answers, even if sometimes the n00b deserves it ... And seriously, will a few negative RTFM posts really demoralize the user so much so that they will throw away they *buntu disk ... come on now.

4) Too much infighting - that cannot be helped, and it fact there should be infighting, because M$ is trying to inject its cancerous self into the Linux desktop ... that would be fatal. You may not think much of "ideological issues" but they lie at the base of GNU/Linux. FLOSS should fight the evil empire at every step, because they can easily crush anything that stands in their way, a strong and often stubborn ideology is the main thing that can prevent this (think RMS here).

5) Not enough developer co-operation - that's true in certain cases (Debian), but the author's reasoning is off. Adobe is a part of the evil empire, perhaps even more evil. The point is not to "attract more ISV (independent software vendors) to make desktop programs" but to attract more developers that will develop FLOSS, and NOT proprietary software that would transform Linux into a proprietary OS, like M$ would want.