Linked by David Adams on Mon 24th Aug 2009 09:21 UTC
A reader asks: Why is Linux still not as user friendly as the two other main OSes with all the people developing for Linux? Is it because it is mainly developed by geeks?
My initial feeling when reading this question was that it was kind of a throwaway, kind of a slam in disguise as a genuine question. But the more I thought about it, the more intrigued I felt. There truly are a large amount of resources being dedicated to the development of Linux and its operating system halo (DEs, drivers, apps, etc). Some of these resources are from large companies (IBM, Red Hat, Novell). Why isn't Linux more user-friendly? Is this an inherent limitation with open source software?
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 13:30 UTC, submitted by JRepin
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
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Then things like VLC and Firefox would be just as user-unfriendly as Linux.
So why isn't Linux user-friendly? Linux is just a combination of too many different projects, many of them competing with other alternatives, and not all of them intended to primarily cater to end-users. "KDE or GNOME? Let the end-user decide, and throw in XFCE and maybe even E17 in too for good measure!"
All we need is one distribution with the courage and resources to infuriate the geeks. Too many distributions just put together everything, make sure they work well with each other and nothing horrible goes wrong, and then if they're hardworking they will change the look of the default DE and add some GUI control panel and package manager.
If distributions were done just like Linux is used for PDAs and smartphones, the world would be a better place.