Linked by Mystilleef on Mon 29th Sep 2003 06:30 UTC
Linux will become ubiquitous in the year 3000. Okay, that was a horrible joke. Linux is just a kernel, the engine that runs an operating system. By itself, it is essentially useless. Kernels shouldn't be discussed or noticed by normal users. And as such when providing these users with reviews, previews and "professional" opinions, computer consultants, computer reviewers and computer journalists should not spew headlines like "Linux is not ready for prime time", "Linux on the desktop by XXX", "Linux to takeover Windows", "Linux is not ready for desktop" and so on.
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I am quite offended by a lot of the lies you have put in your article. First of all, on documentation.
Documentation is hard to write, especially if english isn't your first language, man pages are deprecated in a lot of distros. I certainly don't write man pages, I use XML based documentation, which ends up as easy to read, understand web page like documentation. Remember that professinonal documentation isn't easy to write. It has to go through extensive revision and proofreading, which is expensive. Most developers would welcome somebody to help proofread their documents, but remember that documentation dosen't get written over night.
Remember, it is not "linux", it is the distros and software that make up the experiance. If you use a distrobution such as Debian or Slackware, then your points ARE valid, but not most distros. Even the powerful Gentoo linux is powerful, simply because it has extensive and easy to understand documentation on its site.
Have you tried Gnome 2.4 or KDE 3.1.92 yet? They are really easy to use, even easier than Windows XP, they "just work" and they have got extensive documentation. My dad can easily listen to his music, my little brother can visit his cartoon websites, my mum can check her bank account and play her favourite games and I can do my development work too. All without editing cryptic text files and reading man pages! Try it when Mandrake 9.2 comes out, your fud will be rendered invalid.
As for complaining about stuff like sound cards, wireless modules screen resoulution. They are up to the distros to handle. Again, distros like SuSE and Mandrake will automagicly detect hardware, while distros like Debian won't.
Your also complaining in the wrong place. Most developers don't read this site, they are busy making things easier to use. If you wan't to complain then complain to the proper places such as the the bug report page for the software youre using. KDE even makes it easy by including a "report bug" option in the help menu.
Also, be more polite. If you write something like this to the developers you will be ignored.
You are also forgetting one important thing, open source is mostly OPEN, if you have a problem, you can peek inside and see whats wrong. You can proofread the documentation, you can polish the interface, you can make packages and more. You don't have code. I do a lot of help, even though my programming skills are poor.
So, in conclusion, instead of posting Yet another rant about linux, check the latest versions, and help provide CONSTRUCTIVE feedback. If more people like you stopped complaining and started helping, then imagine what could be possible.
Linux has always been ready for the desktop and its just a matter of if you're ready for linux.