Gnome also has "Accesibility -> Assistive Technologies with screen reader, magnifier and on-screen keyboard. Maybe Ubuntu does not add them by default, but CentOS an Fedora have it for sure. Packages are "gnome-speech" and "gnome-mag"

Actually ROOT runs on linux; being developed at CERN, one of the birthplaces of Scientific Linux couldn't be other way.

In fact it runs more on linux than in any other OS

In fact it's in the Ubuntu or LinuxMint repos (from which i installed it).

check: http://root.cern.ch/drupal/content/d...-version-52502

I would put driver support first. Every time I got a novel device like a USB TV card, a sound card (professional or semi-professional ones), video capture card, a laptop with a wireless card that is not among the mainstream ones and etc, I get problems to find drivers for them...

The fact that Linux has too many distributions contributes to the complexity of configration for end user, and costs software/hardware venders more.

Linux community should draft a standard feature set and configurations that all linux distributions should be compliant to. I installed Ubuntu sometime ago and only found .bashrc no longer works and runlevels are all set to the same. I don't see the point for those trivial changes..

Well, this is like M$ does. The problem is that this "standard" would constrain the advantage of Linuxconcepts. One of the great advantages of Linux compared with windows is the competition of new concepts. This leads to a much faster development than in the M$-world

Markus

cad software! autocad is monopolys by microsoft... zwcad is a cheap cad software and is good cad software. i like to see someday zwcad port in linux.

I am affraid that I don't agree on that. Linux itself has a set of "standards" that provide developers and users to play on... the problem is not with the "standards", but with no appropriate standards. I think this is a major bottle neck for Linux applications. Are there times that your Linux application runs well under on Linux distribution but doesn't run under another distribution ? Unified interface is the key for faster development and popularity.

M$ may operates based on more commercial considerations, and tends to make decisions for users and developers, but this is another issue..

So many Distributions are there for a reason. Someone thinks they can do better, so they create a fork or redesign some part of the FOSS/GNU Environment. "Linux" is just a kernel, a base for developers to build their software's/OS'es around it.

Problem with running "Linux applications" on various distributions is product of rapid development crossed with choices people make. RHEL/CentOS uses package versions frozen it time so additional problems/bugs are not introduced. Fedora/Ubuntu distros leap to the cutting edge of modern software, and there are no possibilities in that realm.

Good analogue to M$ world is M$ Access databases/programs. Program created in Access 2000 was unable to run on Access XP (2002) without changes to the code!!! One version only!!! I used to develop a program based on Access 2000/ SQL Server 2000 and VB ???. Whe I tried to upgrade to Access XP, I needed to recode so much I decided that we wil stay on Access 2000. Even database format was not the same any more, and new Access was not able to interpret/run older format, You needed to convert it and disallow Access 2000 to run it!!!!

The Linux environment, lack of standards or multiple distros are definitely not the problem for Linux drivers.

The main problem is the hardware manufacturers who feel the need to launch every six months yet another piece of (incompatible) hardware, refuse to disclose the technical details en provide Windows and maybe Mac drivers only. By the time the Linux developers have reverse-engineered the proprietary interface the product is often out of production.

Look for example at scanners. It is practically impossible to buy a scanner at one of the mainstream outlets which is supported by Linux, and by the time it is supported, it is not available anymore. And why? Gawd knows. How many different ways are there to tell a scanner to start scanning. do calibration, use a gamma table? Well, a few dozen because of the hundreds different chipsets with different specs released again and again. This is not a Linux problem, on the contrary, the scanner front ends are written very cleanly and it is simple to write a driver once you have all the hardware specs. Which you usually don't.

The same goes for wireless chipsets (how many ways are there to connect to a wireless network?) and to a lesser extent for printers. But that is only because some de facto standards exist on the hardware side.

Instead, hardware manufacturers should be pressed to disclose the details of their hardware. If those are available, Linux is genrally faster to have the drivers available than anyone else. This happened for USB 2.0, and now again for USB 3.0

jlinkels

I have two comments about Linux distributions and hardware drivers..

I don't see the point that many changes were made by an individual distribution, such as runlevel under Ubuntu and configuration differences. They may offer different flavors, most changes do not represent technical advance, developers or users have to take a while to figure out those trivial things. Yes, M$ Windows has its own issues (maybe the same in nature) for whatever reason, but that do not justify that many Linux distributions with only minor differences. Unlike IT professionals, many end users who do not have the time and background to get familiar with Linux and barely know what different distributions means, may be simply detered in their first trial. Most Linux desktop users are either IT professionals or Linux fans I guess, and the number of them is too small given the huge number of computer users.

Because of this, hardware venders won't be interested very much in developing drivers for their hardware. It is simply not feasible for Open Source community to develop all the drivers for hardware venders. Unless Linux takes significant progress in popularity among non-IT professionals, lack of drivers will remain there I think.

It is completely justified that one think he/she can do better, and try different things. However, compatibility should come first for obvious reasons. A well defined framework/standard is the first step for many things. I learnt a lot from Open Source Linux and I love it, but I don't see alternatives to that..

You keep grasping at Ubuntu... If you do not like it, dont use it, find another distro that you like. Ubuntu has BY FAR the biggest number of bugs from all distos, and it's developers do not really care to fix them, they always force new, cutting edge stuff.

Fedora was on the same course, but Red Hat hired bunch of programmers to solve those bugs (that started when community was put in charge of Fedora Project). The result will be modern, very stable and very well documented RHEL 6 and its free version CentOS 6, and Fedora's 12-13-14 will benefit an extra stability.

As for end users, they generally suffer from "visper-mania" and "wow, preaty" sindrome. Give them flashy OS and they will try it, without reading about it and other possible versions. Just like they do with new versions of Windows. I've witnessed number of attempts to install Vista and Windows 7 on 2-3 years old machines with low RAM, some even as low as 256MB! People would erase their working XP to try new W7 without any consultations with an expert. Of course they do that since 80-90% of software is illegal in my country, but that is another story.

I work as IT service man for 9 years now, so regard my words as written with A LOT experience with mediocre and sub-mediocre users.

Some 2 months ago I installed an enhanced CentOS desktop (I created my own repository with a lot of recompiled packages from Fedora tree) to a former Windows XP user tired of viruses. His friend raved about Linux without viruses, so I was hired to install it. He was very pleased with performances, installed small games and multimedia programs, and I haven't heard from him since. Not a single problem. Another 2 relatives of mine are happy with their CentOS+ installations. I even recompiled Crafty and SCID (powerfull Chess programs) for my uncle, and he is happy as a clam.

As for drivers, I think part is to keep industrial secrets, but part is that Microsoft might condition hardware vendors to avoid Linux with denying certificates or charging them more to Windows drivers it they disobey.

First and foremost a well written version of Flash. It never seems to be as well-written as Windows' version. Chews up an overkill number of CPU cycles when there are a lot of Flash ads on a webpage, or watching a YouTube video. Performance just *drops*.

Gnash (Gnome Flash) is being actively developed as we speak, but it's a large project and they so far only reached most of the Flash v7 and some of the newer versions. Supporting them or joining them in development will speed things up.

This has been discussed to death by several people over the years, and I'm sure it's been mentioned somewhere in this thread. And we all know that it's probably not going to happen (any time soon, anyway). But I'm going to say it again: Apple's iTunes. Then I could actually purchase music from the iTunes store through Linux, I could sync with my iPod Touch, etc..., and I wouldn't have to do what I'm doing now - hacking my way through with a hodge-podge of utilities to try to even backup my iPod's library. Ugh!

GIMP for images, gedit for web design.

thats how i roll...

I have to second that - I know there is a lot of GIMP hatred (heck, even most of its fans dislike it) Inkscape and GIMP make really decent web graphics for the 80% of cases where you don't need an actual artist.

Gedit is second best to Vim, but it still is a really nice light-weight and language sensitive editor. I combined these with XAMPP for a replacement to large IDEs like Eclipse (for the majority of my coding/web/front-end work in Java/Perl/(X)HTML/XML/PHP/C++)