Linked by Jeremy LaCroix on Wed 13th Apr 2005 06:51 UTC
I've only been using GNU/Linux since 2001, so I won't say that I'm by any means an expert yet, as most of those that are reading this, probably have been using Linux much longer than I have. However, I still have high hopes for the Linux scene. The purpose of this article is to voice my personal opinion on what I feel is keeping GNU/Linux from taking over the mainstream operating system market. My intentions aren't to "badtalk" the open source kernel+apps, but rather give constructive criticsm on what I personally feel it could be done better.
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Linux does have installers: the package management systems. They could be made look a bit better (a bit more like normal installers), but they do the job. The problem is the variety of packaging formats: currently there are Redhat compatible RPMs (Redhat, Fedora, Mandriva), SuSE RPMs and DEBs. This isn't too bad, but a bit more consolidation would be nice.
Linux is also very easy to use. Some of the advanced features like ioslavs need some advanced knowledge, but they're advanced features.
What's hard is configuring and administering a Linux system: this is really up to the individual distro to provide quality tools. In terms of ease of use and completeness, I'd rank the best as Mandriva, SuSE, Redhat and others. As it is, KDE provides tools for scheduling jobs (kcron), user and group management (kuser), package management (the slightly unwieldy kpackage) and start-up management (can't remember the name, krunlevel maybe).