“Why isn’t GNU/Linux taking the desktop market by storm? After all, when you make a feature comparison, Linux has a lot going for it. With Windows, the operating system is just a start; you must add applications to make it functional. Many Linux distributions provide a desktop look similar to Windows and include an extensive assortment of applications, programming tools and games. Installing Windows and sundry applications can take most of a day. Contrast that with Linux, where the process typically takes less than 60 minutes.” Read the article at News.com.
Perspective: Moving Beyond Creative Cloning
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Over on ZDNet they titled this article, “Why Linux is a desktop dud”. I think they just like getting all the clicks when the NBMers/ABMers start going at each other. I still believe the reason it’s still not breaking into the desktop market is
1. Not pre-loaded by major OEMs
2. Still designed by geeks for geeks.
3. Free software doesn’t have much of a marketing budget.
The author has some valid points, but generally speaking, he’s only repeating what many of us already know or have read in countless other “Why isn’t Linux taking over the desktop” articles.
When are people going to start coding some solutions instead of whining about the same problems?
Photoshop.
Get photoshop on Linux and watch the users start jumping on board. First it will happen at the office place. Linux is cheaper than Windows and if you can buy a computer with Linux on it that can run Office and Photoshop for hundreds less than a computer with Windows, what do you think the office manager is going to do? A lot of people need office and they need photoshop.
Get the users at work using Linux and I bet that they will start using it at home.
At my house we used DOS until my mother had to use Windows 3.1 at work… and after a few weeks we had installed Windows 3.1 on our home computer. This was of course back in the day..
I think linux is a step up from windows in security and stability and the ability to customize every thing, but as far as apps go.. I still need photoshop. If I had that on Linux I could dump windows today.
You supposebly can get it running under Wine -Someone was nice enough to call me a “sucker” and post a link here to a site that describes how a couple of weeks ago. 5.5’s the only one currently running under it though apparently. 8(
I did actually begin setting 5.5 up under Linux, but had a problem when Adobe’s install acknowledged that my installation version was an upgrade, yet it would not recognize my original 5.0 disk as being a legitimate copy (and it really didn’t care that I could point it at a 6.0 install on my Windows prog’s drive).
I might go back and give it another try, but I think I’ll take a swing at 6.0 1st.
Incidently… Since we’re talking Photoshop under Wine, does anyone else here run Wine on a dual monitor setup (2 video cards)??
I’ve finally got X recognizing both cards and running them at their full capacity, but now Wine only appears to run using one card -If I try to start a Windows app on the other screen it just bombs.
Too much visual clutter seems to be the problem with Linux. Love it or hate it the Windows desktop is slick. People like one click installs and consistency. Looking at it from the point of a user Linux intimidates because it looks like it’s hard work. This is not what people who want to use it to get something done want to see or hear about.
What Linux needs instead of cloning Windows apps and the Windows UI, is make an UI that says “I’m Linux” and Apps that are easy and powerful, even if they don’t say “Photoshop”.
Linux is a fine desktop OS with tons of useful apps. The problem is education: Get people out of their Windows rut and show them what Linux can do.
I say: Didn’t you once learned how to use Photoshop?, how is it you can’t learn Gimp?.
People doesn’t want to change. I think the desktop is there, ready for everyone to grab it for free. Open Office is there, Gimp is there. It’s not about icons, windows and sidebars.
Every Os has this. Open Office DOES WORK DARN GOOD …with its own file formats, even better.
It’s about marketing.
I think Windows isn’t 10 years ahead in tech, it’s 10 years ahead in marketing. And I also think it’s gonna be very hard , it’s gonna take much more time and propaganda for people seeing it’s not for geeks, that it’s different, but it works.
I like Gimp. I really do. But it’s not ready to replace Photoshop. For some web graphics, probably. Print? No.
I can run most of the Windows apps I really need through Wine, e.g. LightWave and Rhino 3D. Now give me Photoshop support and I can *work* with Linux.
Scroll down a bit, he’s talking about how he got PS6 running: http://appdb.codeweavers.com/appview.php?appId=17&versionId=88
Well, let’s try it.
Photoshop Photoshop
Thats all they say
Byt I never use photoshop have never used photoshop. I don’t use dreamweaver either. These are specific apps for specific people. They cost heaps, most normal users don’t use them.
Many people knock on Linux for cloning popular windows/mac applications, which they definitely do, but I think it’s the right way to go to win the hearts and minds of desktop computer users everywhere. People say they want Linux to do it’s own thing and then immediately complain that the reason they are not switching platforms is “As soon as Linux has office/outlook/photoshop/IE/Flash, I’ll switch in a second.” I’ve also heard a million comments about Gimp’s interface being the reason that people couldn’t use it and said they would use it “as soon as I can get it to dock like windows.” People need drop in replacements before they will try something new, most people are not looking for Linux to be inivative, but a inexpensive copy instead.
Oh, please… How many people are able to use photoshop? Really? How many people know what the fuck photoshop is? It doesn’t make any difference wether it is ported to linux or not… The people who know how to operate photoshops are in the same minority as people who know how to program.. The same goes for flash, or any sort of 3D programs.
I agree with the article’s writer.
Desktop user will not move to linux without an overwhelming reason to do so. Simply replacing windows functionality in a *Nix x86 framework will not do it.
It does not matter if Photoshop was ported tommorrow. It does not matter. If every OEM computer maker started shipping linux instead of Windows tommorrow, people would start screaming loud. The OS does matter to people. In what way? They want what they are use to.
Users who are use to windows will not move to linux unless given an overwhelming cool neat feature, or app that makes the pain of re-learning a new OS worth it.
>>Open Office DOES WORK DARN GOOD …with its own file formats, even better.<<
If only it looked half as good as it works.
Byt I never use photoshop have never used photoshop. I don’t use dreamweaver either. These are specific apps for specific people. They cost heaps, most normal users don’t use them.
While I write my webpages in a text editor and never used DreamWeaver, yes, I wasn’t talking about Joe Sixpack. Just said that if I could get Photoshop to run on Linux, all I need to do my job would be available – since Gimp isn’t up to the task. No, Photoshop support won’t win the desktop of Joe Sixpack. Yes, Photoshop support might win the desktop of graphics artists in numerous smaller companies. Where it actually matters that a Windows licence costs a lot of money.
that’s what Windows has in spades and Linux has not.
It’s not all about work and productivity but also play.
Apparently you didn’t understand my argument here.
I’m talking about the workplace. A LOT of workplaces run photoshop. A LOT of workplaces run Office. You get them running linux and you let them use Phothoshop and Office and then they see all the cool Linux apps and they slowly start to convert. You may think that the gimp is the greatest thing since sliced bread.. but it doesn’t matter. At the workplace people HAVE to use photoshop because it’s the defacto standard. I think more people run photoshop than you think. Let’s just say that 1 million people run photoshop every day. If they could run that on Linux that means 1 million possible new converts to Linux doesn’t it?
Get people using Linux at work and watch them start using it at home.
When I was in school, the school used macs, so a bunch of the parents went out to get macs so that they could be on the same platform as the school.
I’m not saying 100% that i’m right i’m just saying.. the desktop is there.. now you have to figure out why people aren’t flocking to it when it is so superior in many ways.
People find it hard to install software in Linux.
People cannot run Photoshop in linux.
That is my guess. And my guess is just as good as the next.
Get people using Linux at work and watch them start using it at home.
Exactly. At the very least it’d be an improvement over what we have now. And smaller companies *would* run Linux, because they *do* care about the money a Windows licence costs. I’m a good example of your thesis. Add proper Photoshop support to Wine and I could do my work on a system running Linux. *repeat* :p
You may think that the gimp is the greatest thing since sliced bread.. but it doesn’t matter. At the workplace people HAVE to use photoshop because it’s the defacto standard.
Which it is because there’s no application that does everything Photoshop does. As I said, Gimp might be a great app for some web graphics; for print it’s just not.
If there were more games for Linux I wouldn’t have a partition for Microsoft Windows
This is a big problem. Luckily Loki left quite a legacy in SDL which has enabled easy game development. There are quite a good selection of small games but the hit titles are what is missing.
It would be nice to have BF1942 and Half Life work in Linux nativley.
Halflife has most of the worlds online gaming community in CS, DOD etc
If I started up a “Port Applications to Linux fund”, I’d be quite happy, as the first person, to donate $AUS100 to it. This money can then be used to pay Adobe, Macromedia and numerous other software companies to port their software to Linux. Would anyone else here be interested in a scheme like that?
Unfortunately the system works that with little commercial applications there are a low number of users, a low number of users means there will be only a small number of commercial applications. It is the old chicken before the egg senario.
What we could do also, is get Trolltech on board. It would be great publicity for them. Huge software companies use QT for popular mainstream applications. That would lift Trolltech’s profile.
There are a few factors that I personally think are keeping Linux from breaking out into a successful desktop contender.
1. Despite the advances in software installation procedures, it’s still difficult to get some of the more obscure programs installed as a newbie. .Deb, .RPM, .package, and even the Lindows CnR features are a very good start for ease of installation, but because there is no one true fully compatible package program that works on all distros other than tarballs, it’s hard for a newbie to get some programs installed.
2. Games. I think someone else mentioned that earlier. If I had a dollar for every time I heard, “I’d switch if I could still play my favorite PC games”, I’d be sitting pretty. There has been a small, but healthy, advance in the break down of the PC gaming barrier despite the loss of loki, but with perhaps 2% of the overall titles available for Windows, Linux needs to do a lot of catching up.
3. Third party hardware support. Many hardware makers have been building their hardware to work on Windows and Mac. To see what I mean, just look at the packaging and you’ll more than likely notice a Windows and perhaps a Mac logo on the side of the box indicating that it works with those operating systems. I spent a few days trying to find a smartmedia reader to pull my digital camera images, because the manufacturer would not make a Linux compatible driver for it, only to discover that almost every manufacturer of card readers didn’t know that their products would work under Linux as a USB mass storage device. Part of the reason for the lack of third party software is the lack of education about Linux, but a good portion of it is due to the fact that there are not as many programs out there to take advantage of the hardware if it was made for Linux. For instance, there would be much more Linux driver support from ATI for their cards if they knew that there were a good collection of games that needed advanced accelerated graphics that they could cater to. As it stands now, you have to buy additional drivers at a substantial price to get your games working and because there are not a lot of games that would take advantage of those accelerated graphics ATI is not compelled to provide them and prevent nVidia from dominating that market.
4. Books for the newbie on how to perform everyday tasks with the programs commonly found in a Linux distro and perhaps a side by side features comparision to the common Windows equivilant so the newbie user can learn to use the Linux versions quicker and easier and reduce the learning curve.
One of the things the article talks about is improved workflow and multiple small tools that work together in an office environment.
I think KDE has the architecture to really support this sort of environment (eg: Kparts, dcop). Applications that plug in to each other and can share data with common formats. I know apple tried something similar with an office suite, but it failed dismally.
Some User Interface designers need to stop whining about why linux doesn’t do this or that, but actually design an environment that improves on the current paradigm in terms of workflow and productivity. But who’s going to do that for no monetry reward? Is designing a UI so fun that people would do it for free, like programming? Or will some people need to be paid in order for this to be done.
In any case, modular architectures is what OSS is really good at. If more tools start talking to eachother and embedding into eachother and sharing data/files, all the better (eg common standards for office docs, email inboxes, calandar stuff, address books, whatever else people store). And also a way to organise and manage that data ( alot of people save stuff whereever and then can’t find them – common directory layout and config files for /home would be good for that)
just my $0.02
Each os, DOS, Win3, Win95, MacOS, OSX had a killer app: Lotus123, WinWord, TCP/IP & porn (oops, I mean Navigator), MacWrite, FireWire/DV, respectively.
I bet this has been true since the earliest mainframe os’s, they each had a killer app that made people “need” to upgrade.
On the server side, Linux’s killer app has been Apache. It’s what has some people removing W2K and IIS or at least prevents them from adding new hosts.
What’s the linux desktop killer app going to be?
You have to be kidding 🙂
Well, I’ve installed Linux my parents’ computer. They use it for a lot of different things: mostly word process, browsing and e-mail, but there’s the occasional image editing and burning CDs (as data backup) as well.
I think the biggest complaints have been:
1. Lack of unification in the desktop area. As long as you stay within KDE, everything’s fine. But then, the OpenOffice print dialog is completely different (and doesn’t interoperate well with) the KDE one. The GIMP print dialog is again completely different.
2. Overall sluggishness of the system. The reason for this is that the system – with 64MB RAM – is swapping whenever they switch from one app to the other. Again, the actual reason for this is lack of unification. At any one time, you’re likely to have at least 2 if not 3 different toolkits loaded: kdelibs, gtk and OpenOffice’s whatever-they-call-it. That’s simply a waste of space.
3. It’s really difficult to find the applications that are useful. For every possible job there are dozens of apps, but there’s hardly any pre-filtering of which apps are actually useful. Linux may well have the right tool for the right job, but it’s damn hard to find it.
The bottom-line is: They don’t need more applications, and I doubt they even need better applications. What they do need is a better infrastructure.
To create a better infrastructure, better communication and coordination is necessary.
Two other things I’d like to mention:
1) Get Linux/alternative OSs into schools! Education is always very important, this is just another example of it.
2) Yes, games do play an important role as well. Many of my friends (17-20 years old) would probably run Linux if they could play their games on it. No, it’s not about “serious computing”, but it’s also about the education thing.
IMHO, the real solution to this is not to port games to Linux. Ported games usually arrive months after the original release on Windows, at a time when the initial excitement has worn off. S simultaneous release with all OS version _in the same box_ is necessary (go Epic!).
Maybe a porting house could offer a game developer to port a game, port the game so that one source code base can be used to compile all OS versions, and sell the modified source code back to the developer. Just a thought…
1. Not pre-loaded by major OEMs
If preloaded with major OEMs, I doubt there would be much users using Linux anyway. Why? A lot of people need to use Windows-only apps. Besides, most of the world uses a whitebox PC.
Some User Interface designers need to stop whining about why linux doesn’t do this or that, but actually design an environment that improves on the current paradigm in terms of workflow and productivity. But who’s going to do that for no monetry reward? Is designing a UI so fun that people would do it for free, like programming? Or will some people need to be paid in order for this to be done.
Think about this from the interface designers point of view.
Would you want to design interfaces for free for people who:
–Are in extreme, hardcore denial that linux has any usability problems and refuse to told otherwise
–Won’t listen to you or any of your suggestions
–Won’t accept the idea that a properly designed interface is one that is designed before any coding begins
–Tell you your profession is BS and they “can’t believe some people get paid to “criticize the work of others”
–Who tell you “if you want to change the interface, shut up, put down all those cognitive psychology books, and learn how to code and submit a patch”
–Tell you to “stop complaining about what you get for free.”
–Tell you “Free software does not entitle the user to a usable interface”
–Call you a “whiner”.
There’s a reason why very few people who are any good at designing user interfaces are doing it for OSS. Who’d want to put up with that crap?
The problem isn’t lack of money. It’s a general lack of respect.
1) Get Linux/alternative OSs into schools! Education is always very important, this is just another example of it.
I’m doing this at my school. I’ve managed to convince them to put MDK9 on there for next year. It will solve many of their problems (Good security, easy to administer 100+ computers simultaneously, students can’t load their viruses / destructive programs, students cant load tonnes of illegal software)
If they learn how to use it in school, they’ll have no problem using it at home. Many people imagine linux (if they even know what it is) being a difficult to use system. If they have to use it in school they might see the advantages and start using it themselves (at home).
And yes, games are important. I think if that some distros (or a standalone organisation, over the internet or something) should be dedicated to making quality games. Sure all thos l-Something games that come with Linux are entertaining to an extent, but they don’t compare to the quake series, half life and it’s mods and online RPG’s (These would probably be the easiest to make in Linux, don’t need to be 3D). If they had some decent games made *for* linux, instead of ported it would be great. It could be ported to Win so they can try it, but if it was made for Linux they might switch for optimum performance. (This would only happen if there where anough apps.)