I totally agree with your views. Many people are still afraid to try out linux. It may be because they have heard linux is very difficult to use and the most funny thing is those who told about linux may not have ever tried it out.
Posted by Swaroop on Thursday, January 18 2007 06:55 PM

It would be great,if 2007 becomes a year of Linux Desktops,but i personally feel Linux has no yet achived that level of comfort and easy what microsoft has provided.
Personally i feel its still a long way for the Linux Desktops flavours, to sneek into the Windows Highly Protected Zone.
Posted by Ravi Yadav on Thursday, January 18 2007 08:00 PM

I would love to have the choice of completely doing without WinOS, and being free of the cost and headaches that go with it. Indeed, I have tried to make the switch to Linux, but have been unsuccessful.

You briefly infer the problems I have had, namely hardware compatibiity. My inexpensive two year-old laptop PC simply does not tolerate Linux well. In more capable and Linux-savvy hands than my own, and with four different Linux distributions, Linux has never properly recognized its power management, internal Wi-Fi, or hot-buttons. A few bells and whistles I can live without, but forty-minute battery life and no network connectivity are unacceptable.

I realize this is not so much a failing of the OS itself, as it is of the hardware makers to support Linux, but the end result is still that I cannot use it. I am formerly of the Wintel I.T. sales and service industry, and though my PC skills are not quite of geek caliber, they are above average. I would not expect mainstream users to have any more success moving to Linux than I did, at least for now.

That's too bad.
Posted by Jack Marshall on Thursday, January 18 2007 09:33 PM

Linux is not as easy to use as Windows. With my Netgear 802.11 stick, in Windows, I get the driver from the Netgear website, install it via the standardised installer and away it goes. In Linux, I have download an old Windows driver, and a Linux wrapper for the driver and then spend ages installing it with command line utilities.

I also can't play Oblivion or Europa Universalis on Linux.

That's why this isn't the year of the Linux desktop!
Posted by Jack on Thursday, January 18 2007 10:56 PM

One word...WIRELESS. Ever try to get wireless to work on a linux box? If you don't have a linux driver and have to use ndiswrapper then good luck. I will study linux from a vantage point of dealing with a biz that uses a linux server. But for desktop, linux still has issues to work through.
Posted by Richard on Friday, January 19 2007 06:25 AM

I am 45 and decided to have Linux installed on my second PC and give it a go, hope to get my kids involved too. The more that use Linux, the more likely there will be a change, if you want to change be a part of it and dont sit on the side and say I told you so. Told you so,s will always remain on Windows.
Posted by Colin on Friday, January 19 2007 07:50 AM

USB scanner support: Linux Mint 2.1 found the Epson 636U USB scanner that I lost when the 2.4.x kernels went away. Hate Gnome but most of the hardware support is excellent...EXCEPT for wireless!!!
Posted by SL on Friday, January 19 2007 12:51 PM

I agree with you that 2007 won't be the year. Linux just is not ready yet. if you think that it is try finding OCR (optical character Recognition) Software that works and is less than $1,500 US. Same thing with many games. Linux has vastly improved and for the average person it would do well for surfing the I Net, doing E-mail and writing letters. But for the business or professional person it is a different story if you need software such as OCR to do your work.
M H
Posted by M H on Friday, January 19 2007 01:30 PM

Wireless drivers aren't a "Linux problem", they're a "hardware vendor problem". Hardware vendors either don't put out a Linux driver or don't provide the necessary documentation to the free software community so that they can provide drivers for them...with the hardware vendor having no development costs at all!

So please, let's put the blame where it belongs.
Posted by Bob on Friday, January 19 2007 03:14 PM

yeah, It wont go to the ordinary folks. but i dont see why specialised terminals shouldn't. I still see many specialised Kiosks, single purpose terminals (like those immigration counter terminals), ticketing terminals etc still using Windows. Makes me wonder why. why pay for an OS they dont need to use in full anyway.
Posted by KS on Friday, January 19 2007 03:18 PM

quote:: One word...WIRELESS. Ever try to get wireless to work on a linux box? ::quote

Yes 3 mouse clicks, and no ndiswrapper on Mandriva 2007 on a Centoris laptop purchased in November 2006. 3 mouse clicks on an NEC laptop purchased in 2005.
Posted by tracyanne on Friday, January 19 2007 05:23 PM

My reply
Posted by Jason Cutting on Saturday, January 20 2007 06:19 AM

Here's my reply to the article:

blog.websterscafe.com...
Posted by Jason Cutting on Saturday, January 20 2007 06:21 AM

"One word...WIRELESS."

Works fine in this laptop (a TwinHead DuraBook 15D), had to go fetch a driver (ipw2200) same as I would for ’Doze if I wanted it to actually work. Mandriva’s installer pointed me in the right direction.
Posted by Leon Brooks on Sunday, January 21 2007 09:33 AM

Whether or not Linux takes off in the personal computing area should never have been a serious debate, that battle was lost in 1995. The Desktop front is an old battle and one that too much speculation is put on for Linux. Open Source strength is in the OEM field, Mobile technologies and Web 2.0. Linux will never take off if people keep associating it with some type of rivalry with Microsoft for desktop market share. We need to begin educating the public about how the web sites they surf, the phones they use and the hardware that makes communication possible is all running, or will be running from the Linux Kernel
Posted by Michael Iannini on Wednesday, January 24 2007 11:17 PM

I don't think people keep associating Linux with some type of rivalry with Microsoft for desktop market share. It is important to note that these are two separate mutually exclusive server and desktop markets. It is undeniable that Linux poses serious competition to Unix and Windows in servers, regardless of its success among consumers. Educating the public on how the Web sites they surf and the hardware that makes communication possible all run Linux will not work, simply because people do not come into contact with those servers, and don't really care what goes behind the scenes. If we want to raise the profile of Linux among consumers for whatever reason, then making Linux work for the masses like Windows is inevitable.
Posted by Aaron Tan on Sunday, January 28 2007 07:56 PM