Linux desktop readiness
Today I stumbled upon (via slashdot) a rather long list of why Linux is not ready for the desktop. I’ve seen plenty of different kinds of articles with the same general idea, although this one is probably a little more thorough than most.
The problem, as I see it, is that all of these type of articles seem to work from the same general idea, that is in order for Linux to be “ready” for the desktop it has to become exactly like Windows (or sometimes OSX). Putting up Windows as the standard by which Linux is judged implies that Windows is always easy to work with and user-friendly, which I do not believe is the case at all. It also means that any deviation from the way Windows behaves is inherently bad, and seen as a negative for Linux. Different does not mean worse, it just means different.
Anyway, I thought I would at least address some of the specific points from the list in more detail:
0 – Ok. No problem with that. But just because your program is proprietary doesn’t mean you can’t make a Linux version.
1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 – ALSA works fine for me. I have no trouble with audio input and output, and my volume mixer settings and labels work pretty much the same as in Windows. Pulse Audio is supposed to integrate a lot of this stuff even better, but even without it it works fine for me.
2.1 – This is another different-means-worse scenario. Yes, there are multiple GUI toolkits. GTK and QT are the two most popular. And I just want to take a moment here to say that this multiplicity of options is everywhere in Linux, from multiple seemingly redundant programs, multiple toolkits, multiple distributions, etc. This is the nature of open-source, and it is inescapable. When everything is no longer being developed in a top-down manner by a single company, you can’t have everything share common philosophies, goals, APIs, whatever. In the end you get more choices, but choice is a good thing. And most of this is transparent at the distribution level anyway, where everything has been set up to work together well.
2.2 – My GUI is blazing fast without using a composite window manager, much faster than Windows, especially Vista’s composited effects.
2.3 – See above. I would argue that they don’t need any so-called acceleration.
2.4 – OK, I agree, fonts can be problematic sometimes on Linux. But they aren’t all that bad. Generally what you need to do is get Freetype 2 to use the bytecode interpreter instead of the auto-hinter (if it doesn’t already). Your distribution probably has a package with the Microsoft standard web fonts. My fonts look better than they do in Windows, they are aliased just enough so that they don’t look pixelated, but not so much where they look blurry as I’ve seen sometimes with OSX.
3.1, 3.2 – Same applies for what I said in 2.1. The distributions can usually work around whatever format you package your software in if it isn’t what they use.
3.3 – Expecting every distribution to have a package available for every single open source program is insane, and beyond unreasonable. And the Windows method of installing programs is terrible, no installation acts the same, what with all the different installshield or self-extracting zip files, the endless dialogs that are different for each program and all the icons and system tray processes that get installed that you didn’t want. No thank you. A package manager is much better.
4. – It should, huh? Because Windows has a GUI for everything? Because a GUI is inherently easier to use? Once again, Linux is different than Windows and in most cases the reason why something uses the command line is because that is the best (and even easiest) tool for the job.
5.1 – Yes, your Windows programs may not run on Linux. There is probably an alternative. If not, WINE probably works. But you can’t expect Linux to be just an easy replacement for Windows that you don’t have to pay for.
5.1.1 – There are some pretty good “Hardcore” programs that run on Linux, such as Blender (3D modeling) and Ardour (digital audio workstation).
5.2 – This is an exaggeration. There are plenty of games on Linux, just not very many of the modern 3D retail games, but there are some of those too. A lot of the id Software and Unreal Tournament games work on Linux.
5.3 – In general hardware is very well supported in Linux. I would contend that it supports way more hardware than Windows does. Most of the bad drivers are coming from the hardware vendors, and this is not isolated to Linux, it is just exacerbated due to companies putting less effort into their Linux drivers than the Windows ones.
5.3.1 – In my experience printer support has been fairly extensive.
5.4 – I bet it won’t be for long. And this due to the DRM they built into Blu-Ray, not because of some inherent flaw in Linux.
5.5 – This has been passed around a lot, mostly by companies like Microsoft for whom it would be convenient for Linux to go away. Most of the supposed patent issues seem pretty questionable at best.
7 – Every piece of software has bugs, open source software being no exception. However this is implying open source software has more bugs than proprietary software, with no proof whatsoever that this is the case.
8.1 – This doesn’t seem to be a reason why Linux isn’t ready for the desktop, and as far as servers are concerned Linux seems to be doing pretty well.
9.2 – And yet Linux boots faster than Windows on my machine.
10 – Please don’t give me a popup for every little tiny inconsequential error. If I am really interested please do send it to the command line or a log where I can read it at my leisure.
11 – Linux is practically swimming in documentation, and once again poor documentation is not something limited to Linux or open-source.
13, 13.1 – Old applications work just fine in Linux, without “Compatibility Modes” and other such nonsense. Another beauty of open source is that anyone can get ahold of the source code for old programs and resurrect them, they don’t always just die out.
In my case Linux has been ready for the desktop for years, because that’s how long I’ve used it on my desktop. My parents, who know little about computers, have Linux installed on their home machine as well and it works fine for them.
However, I know there are a lot of regular computer users out there who after extensive exposure to Windows would not be comfortable with Linux. And I agree, Linux probably isn’t right for them. There are too many learned habits and too much resistance to change for the majority of them to overcome. In the end if you only seek to accommodate these people by making Linux more like Windows, you are going to lose the strengths that Linux possesses.