Star The Last Linux on the Desktop Article -- Hopefully
Linked by Ben Mazer on Mon 26th Jan 2004 19:52 UTC
Linux Lately, there has been a "Why linux isn't ready for the desktop" article every 3 days. Most of the time, these articles originate from a lack of understanding or acceptance of the open source system. I'd like to try to address some of the common arguments against linux here, and try to help people understand why linux probably won't be on your desktop for a while.
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@Anonymous
by Rayiner Hashem on Mon 26th Jan 2004 22:20 UTC

Some of your points are interesting (like claiming that the average user needs tools to lock down his own desktop)
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Its not that average users need tools to lock down their desktop. Its that many administrators need tools to lock down the desktops of average users. It might surprise you, but nearly half o fall desktop machines are at workplaces. Those machines have very narrowly-defined roles, and its a big help to the IT department if they can be locked-down so the user has only what he needs to do his work and no more. This lock-down functionality is also important for public machines and machines used in the educational market. Even in the home-market, it would be nice to lock-down the desktops of young children or complete computer-neophytes, especially if there won't be a knowledgable computer user around for long periods of time.

I would not expect my mom to be able to find a package for her specific distribution, and for her specific version (since she won't be upgrading the distribution, of course).
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But you don't have to do that. You start up the package manager, and it takes care of all of that for you. Hell, I don't see why even power users would want to bother with all that!

And no, synaptic is IMHO not very friendly to the user. It looks like it was designed to make all of the command line options available,
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KPackage's UI is a bit better than synaptic, IMHO. Let's try installing the GIMP in kpackage:
- Select "new" packages tab
- Find "gimp" in list
- Click "install"
- Click "install"
...wait...
- Click "done"

Kapture, the new APT front-end for the KDE Enterprise project, should be even simpler.

Try explaining all of that, versus "double click the exe and click next."
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Its hardly that simple. First, you have to *find* the package. For the average free program (winamp, AIM, etc) it involves navigating an often complex site, sometimes filling out a registration, and downloading the installer. At this point, you've already put in more clicks than the KPackage route. But let's continue. Now, you double-click on the installer. What happens next depends on the program you are installing. You see, there are lots of different Windows installers out there. Sometimes, you can just get away with clicking 'next' several times, then 'finish.' Other times (the MS Office installer, for example) you have to enter your license key, then select an installation mode (minimal/standard/complete). (At this point, my mom has already called me up to walk her through it). Then, it prompts you asking what folder to install it in. If you tell the user to ignore all the prompts (which is dangerous, for reasons I'll explain in a momement) you can, at this point, do "next," "next," "finish."

Now, as for telling the user to ignore prompts. There is a very real danger there that they'll start doing just that, and hitting "ok" for everything. I made the mistake of telling my mom to do that, and as a result of an Altavista search gone awry, had to figure out how to remove an adult toolbar from her browser ;)