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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2006-03-20
You can also download a package file and install by double clicking it ( still use the package system and should keep you system sane enough )
from skype or opera related to your package system for linux.
I know opera is doing a nice job in distro detection.
Though still more complicated than your adverage setup.exe (which can bear the same name for different application) or quite equivalentto the nightmarish msi format (and personnaly I don't like either of macOS install system with some hidden way to remove your application), but it is not as complicated as you implied.
As removing application, package management os still better overall, windows html hack to provide a nice interface is painfull to use ( inconsistent from app to another), uninstall button and select component can be at differen place depending on your application, and removing multiple apps for a spring clean up is long and (yes !) painful, Apple still have a lot of progress to do in that regard (but as most mac user don't use that much application anyway they should be fine for another decade).
Ok macOSX is doing a nice job in hiding the underlying filesystem to the user, but even some (most of the tweakers) would feel frustrated to not to be able to access directly the filesystem, Windows os file layout is the worse one, riddle with legacy from the past and hence not consistent with the different version ( at leat from XP to Vista ), and the ability to quickly mess up with system file (I remember a game installation that overwrote critical file like, c:\boot.ini ), true it could happen on any system ( I think that linux package system all run as root, and macosx user would happily answer to an install prompt for sudo elevation.