OSNews

Thanks for all the GOOD comments everyone... as for the bad, well, I didn't expect them to be all good. Let me respond to a few things here real quick though.

For starters, it's interesting how a lot of you have read this as a "Linux isn't ready for the Desktop" article, when it's not that at all. I began the article putting you in the place of a technical writer for a reason, because it's the technical writer who has skewed the views, goals, and overall ideals that most people seem to feel the Linux community has. Most technical writers are prone to write the "Linux isn't ready..." stuff, while this (I thought very clearly, but apparently not) says to them that they simply aren't ready for Linux.

I'm and avid user of Linux on the desktop... I use it probably 99% of the time I'm on my system (which hosts 7 different operating systems at the moment). The reason I use Linux so much over all the others is because it does exactly what I want it to do, and most of the stuff I need it to do. Since it doesn't do everything I need it to do, I have the other options.

I do realize the article is poorly written, and I do apologize for it. Yes, it's long paragraphs (if you want to call them that), but I was attempting to group my overall points and explainations in that form not to "look like I have more evidence on my side," but so that people wouldn't lose focus of the point I was trying to make.

Overall, my article's purpose was to argue not that Linux or even the Linux community is unable to embrace the normal windows user, but that often times we are portrayed as already having done so, and we haven't. Furthermore, to clarify, this article isn't about whether we should or shouldn't, it's about that we should do whatever we want as a community and not feel we have to generate a user friendly OS simply because of market share desires of large companies or analysts and technical writers who think we need to.

I feel that Linux is a great option for a vast number of people, but it's not the option for everyone, and somehow it's been made out that it is (or so I feel). In essence this article is to tell everyone who writes "Linux isn't ready..." articles that they're approaching it from the wrong perspective. In my opinion RPM based Linux installs/distributions is not really Linux. It doesn't give me the feel of what I think Linux is or should be, and therefore I personally see it as a bad thing. At the point where your Linux (as an OS) becomes unrecognizable as Linux, it's probably not really. This is why it's called the Lindows OS and not Lindows Linux Distribution.

If anyone has any further questions for me, I'd ask that you e-mail them to me. Some of you seem to have misread what I've said (which may be mostly my fault), others have read it just right and summarized it in a way I apparently wasn't able to do. I do want to thank all of you that responded with your honest opinions though, and thanks for the "suggestions" (on writing) and on other things... along with the flat out compliments, criticisms, and general comments.

Cheers!