Why Linux Hasn’t Gone Mainstream Yet

I tried to use Linux Ubuntu 7.10 last week and everything worked fine, except my monitor (HP Pavilion MX704). For a strange reason there was a lot of flickering on the monitor that got me a headache and had to switch over to Windows.

If I could fix this problem, I have no problem using Linux Ubuntu. Firefox was fast as well as OpenOffice using Ubuntu.

I agree there’s a compatibility problem with many nice Windows’ programs. But I guess that’s the price you have to pay for using a reliable and secure software such as Linux.

I’m stuck in between myself. I installed Ubuntu 8.10 on my laptop a few weeks ago, and there are so many things I love about it. There are very few hardware issues, the global updates and command line are great. However, there are LOTS of apps I don’t want to leave behind, and I have a dilemma similar to iPod support: PDA support. I’ve used a Palm for years, and there are lots of Palm syncing options, but it really seems like the OS is on its way out. I’m eligible for a discount on a new phone, and I’d like to get a smartphone. According to the Ubuntu forums, there’s no way to sync a Blackberry, and setting up Windows Mobile is complicated and uncertain.

Still, if you can’t let go, virtualizing Windows is an option, especially since VMWare and VirtualBox are both powerful and fairly easy to set up (seamless mode in VirtualBox is really cool). However, you need a decent amount of RAM to run Windows inside Linux.

YOU ARE SOOOOO DAMN RIGHT!!!! I have a really horrible computer (256mb ram + 128mb ram i added) 1.1GHZ intel celron and 20GB HD) I completed deleted XP and replaced with UBUNTU 8.04. Mainly because i assumed things would run smoother also because i’m gonna make my first computer built over the summer with dual boot. However I knew I could not go through life without using windows, at least for the upcoming years to come. I love ubuntu, the way you are free to do whatever you want, its not restricted, you can customize it the way you envision it. Its awesome how the open source community gets together and comes with something so fabulous, without charging users. The main reason is most people haven’t made the switch is because of compatibility, windows apps will not work, and the alternative software cannot really make up for the more functional windows software such as MS Office and photo/video editing software, so on. However there are tons on software/functionality offered by ubuntu, one of which is the terminal, that thing amazes me. The effects offered by ubuntu are simply amazing (compiz).

THE ONLY PLAUSIBLE SOLUTION: Advertise ubuntu (possibly also by word of mouth) and its feature, stating its great features, telling the average joe’s that they can have both windows and Linux (Ubuntu) in their computer with dualboot, and the entire process is very easy, especially with a instructional video. With the amazing effects, look, stablilty people with start to use this more and more, and software companies will HAVE to provide more/better support for linux. But this will require funding/sponsorship, etc

but then again, this is my personal view of the situation.

Here are my reasons:

1. Linux isn’t pre-installed on that many computers (sure, some computer give you the option, but who’s gonna chose that? Actually, no one. The average joe will choose windows and the techie will just build his own computer…).

2. There’s a lot of incompatibilities with drivers and wireless cards. On windows, usually you don’t have to go and scrounge around downloading drivers and ndiswrapper and crap like that. Techies don’t like doing it (hell, I sure don’t), so why would an average joe even put up with it?

3. as everyone mentioned- software. For me, honestly, the programs I use on a daily basis (Firefox, Pidgin, and Foobar2000) are all on Linux, minus foobar, and Linux has Amarok anyways. Sure, there’s other programs I use, but those are the only 3 I use daily.
But for others, a switch to Linux could cripple them based on what software they use daily.

I had tried Linux (Red Hat, Mandrake…) a number of times in the last 10 years and always ended up getting rid of it after a few weeks or months. I became very frustrated with one thing or another and would finally give up. With Ubuntu I have had it installed for about 2 years (started with 6.10) I love it, I have 1 of my comps dual boot XP/Ubuntu. I prefer Ubuntu and would use it exclusively if not for having some software I need Windows for. My wife needs MS Office to be compatible with her school, I have 4 networked comps and like playing multi-player games with my kids and friends, and a few misc things like MP3 burners and Photo editing software. Trying to get Windows software to run with “Wine” on Linux is problematic at best and by no means easy. Even if/when you do get it to run it will usually not be as fast as on Windows and may be a LOT slower. I hope to see a day when much more software is written for Windows & Linux but we aren’t there yet.

It’s an ok overview of someone’s personal experience with Linux, but I’m quite surprised by the incredibly positive response from the commenters. I suppose that’s because so many tweakers are biased towards Linux as it is a way to be against the evil MS & Apple (I agree that they do look evil sometimes, but I understand why they are). To me this does not look like a Cybernetnews article: it’s not unbiased, not very well supported by facts and has quite a lot of opinionated pieces. I’m glad this is a guest writer and not Cybernetnews’ new direction.

“When you use Windows, you get used to the fact that any piece of software you find on the net is compatible with your operating system.”
> This is slowly changing now that Apple is becoming quite popular. There is more and more cool Apple software on the net that can make you disappointed when you find out it’s not for Windows. There are some instances where you can even get disappointed about Linux-only software, such as Amarok.

“You can’t use Windows apps you purchased on Linux.”
> Not completely true, as you can use virtual machines. On OS X you can even run a virtual machine almost invisibly, so this should be possible on Linux as well at some point, making it even easier to make a transition. To suggest that you “you might as well just go throw it all away” is quite an exaggerated claim, making it sound worse than it is.

“Since free OS usage is on the rise, Microsoft and Apple secretly try to set up some kind of cordon sanitaire by totally ignoring Linux, and in some cases even crippling their user experience. Here’s an example: Ashley reported a while ago that the new iPods don’t support anything other than iTunes.”
> Any facts to back this up, or is this just some kind of conspiracy theory you believe in, further exaggerating the situation? The fact that iPods officially don’t support anything other than iTunes is not backing up your claim, as there are plenty of other reasons for them to do this, totally unrelated to Linux. Besides, on Windows there are at least two pieces of software (one of them totally free) which work fine with the iPod: MediaMonkey & Floola (both developed without the help of Apple).

“The same thing goes for Microsoft. If they’d give the developers at OpenOffice.org some insight into their file formats, Office compatibility wouldn’t be such an issue and people would be more likely to switch to an Office alternative (which of course is the reason that Microsoft’s not doing it).”
> You say this as if you find it totally normal for Microsoft to let paying customers leave them, losing income, and on top of that, you would like Microsoft to *invest* in the possibility for customers to go elsewhere? What kind of business decision would that be?

Besides, currently they *are* working on supporting other formats which increase interoperability. Perhaps forced by the public, certain governments and organizations, but only then it starts to make business sense. Not because there are 2% customers which might possibly want to continue working on MS Office documents, without using their software.

“You can get stuff done faster using a terminal… if you know how to use it.
(…)
* GNOME and KDE, the two most popular window managers for Linux, are far more customizable than the Windows shell currently is. Which brings us to another advantage: if you don’t like your window manager, you throw it out the window. On Windows, you’re stuck with Windows Explorer.
* Most Linux distributions have an all-you-can-eat buffet of free software that can be accessed with the click of a button.”
> This is something that might be attractive to advanced users who like to customize their computer, but the majority of computer users hardly customize anything, hardly research anything and just want a computer that works out of the box. Choices and command lines might even scare them away. Do you really think these options are positive regarding getting Linux to “go mainstream”?

“It’s not the fault of Linux contributors that its market share is no bigger than 2%. If this movement had taken off faster before Windows became popular, I wouldn’t be writing this article right now and Linux would have taken over the world.”
> This is a joke right? Otherwise, how would you support this claim?

“Now that Windows and stuff like Microsoft Office, the iPod, Windows Live Messenger and so on dominate the market, Linux has to adapt to it. They have to write drivers and produce software to interoperate with these systems without any help of the software/hardware companies, which is almost impossible since some companies even try/tried to prevent this.”
> Twisting the facts. Your examples are companies which try to keep their customers tied to their products. They have to make money after all, that’s why they’re there. The examples did not show me they were targeting Linux. Linux is *affected*, not *targeted*. Very important difference.

I can’t really conclude otherwise than that this article is written for the advanced users out there, who spend a lot of time on their computers. This while I expected to see the “mainstream-ness” mentioned in the title reflected in the article. I don’t see anything about usability comparisons for example (with proper research backing up claims). Nothing geared towards the average Joe, the biggest part of the market. It’s mostly about things that interest tweakers, which might be what - 2% of the computer users? Perhaps a bit more? Which is currently the Linux market share, so if you look at it that way, it’s doing pretty well.

FYI: you can access iPods via libgpod f.e with Amarok, GTKPod or similar

@Change: I’m not trying to hide that I gave my personal opinion and analysis on the matter. I started out by saying that I’d “try to uncover what’s keeping the crowd away from Linux”, I didn’t say “Here’s what’s wrong with Linux”.

>> This is slowly changing now that Apple
>> is becoming quite popular
That is true, but remember that Windows still dominates the mainstream market which means that the majority of users still use it. Besides, I think most of us (even in the geek audience) came from Windows.

>> Not completely true, as you can use
>> virtual machines.
Of course they can, but that’s not the point. Why would a user switch to something unknown knowing that it will degrade their user experience?

>> would like Microsoft to *invest*
>> in the possibility for customers
>> to go elsewhere?
I’m not expecting Microsoft to do that and I did in fact point out that that would make no sense.

>> Besides, on Windows there are at
>> least two pieces of software (one
>> of them totally free) which work
>> fine with the iPod: MediaMonkey &
>> Floola (both developed without the help of Apple).
I have tried both of these tools in the past, but last time I checked they didn’t support the new iPod models (perhaps they do support the 3G Nano, I’ll have to look into that) since Apple’s preventing third-party software to communicate with these things. The average user doesn’t want to hear “Yeah but we can’t support it because of Apple”, they just want this stuff to work flawlessly.

>> Do you really think these options are
>> positive regarding getting Linux to “go mainstream”?
Whoops, you’re right about that. My bad.

I know that some people out there try to force everyone into distinguishing GNU/Linux from Linux, but just look at some of the big players in technology news. Is CNET using the term “GNU/Linux”? No. Even Slashdot is not doing it. I guess it’s a bit like people that use the word Kleenex when referring to a tissue.

How would you edit a video otherwise? And please, don’t try to pass off Jahshaka as a valid Pinnacle alternative. Again: I respect the developer’s work, but it’s not ready to take on Pinnacle Studio yet.

Fred, I think you misunderstood what I meant. There’s nothing wrong with Linux and I certainly didn’t intend to say that its user experience is crappy. The problem is that Windows users are hooked on things that Linux cannot possibly get done as easy as on Windows.

If an average user really needs - let’s say - an accounting tool that can start in five seconds on Windows, would it make sense for him to say “Oh, I’ll just figure out how to run a virtual machine and start it every time I have to use the program just so I can keep using this new thing I don’t even know how to use”. I think we know the answer to that.

Why would one run Pinnacle Studio on Linux in a virtual machine that runs Windows if you could be running it natively on Windows?

The bottom line is: I’m not a huge fan of Windows, nor do I endorse the way Microsoft operates, but I among many others have become dependent on Windows and some of its programs. Linux simply cannot replace some of the things that Windows can do at the moment, whether it’s about things like iPod touch synchronization or video editing.

Sigh. Pieter, the point is your “article” has serious logical flaws.

Why would you run a Windows VM? I’ll answer your question with a question; “Which is preferable, rebuilding a corrupted Windows installation or reloading a VM image in Linux?” You use the VM for stability and protection because Windows is a spaghetti mess of lousy code. Do you have family or friends who want you to fix what they screw up on their Windows installations? If the VM crashes, you restart it.

Second major reason: journaling file systems. Incremental backups are far easier with Linux than Windows. How often do people lose or overwrite critical data? Consumer hard drive crashes happen all the time.

Granted, Windows SteadyState is an option but nothing can compare to copying a VM image to another drive for ease and security.

How many people use their computers for email and word processing, playing music, that’s about it? In that case, a LiveCD is a far better type of installation (but, actually install it) than Windows. If grandma does something that corrupts the system, she can restart with the CD.

The Linux zealots who claim anything Windows can do is possible, natively, on Linux are full of it. The only thing that “tastes just like chicken” is … chicken. The point is there is not a Linux OR Windows reality. Look at the VM stuff on howtoforge and you’ll see it’s far, far easier than in the past. The combination of Linux as underlying OS and Windows VM for code execution brings far more stability, longevity and protection from “supplier extortion” than either of them individually. For that matter, you could also VM Win95 to play an “old favorite” game or OS X if need be. That has been the whole story of Linux over the past year.

True, but the title and opening paragraph made me expect a very different article.

Because Linux offers them more than what they’d lose? Then they could use VM’s in the transition period (just like many do who switch to OS X).

Oh right, my bad. I did hear about that, but since it works on my second last version of the iPod, I forgot about that That is a downside for people switching to Linux, though again people could use a VM for iTunes. Or selling their iPod and get a music player which works flawlessly under Linux of course

Yup, I guess that’s the whole issue..

Are you saying that the average user (i.e. people that are not into technology unlike most of us here) will deliberately try this new thing they don’t know, learn how to operate a new OS, get help when they’re stuck, install a VM app, set up a VM, install Windows in the VM, install all their software (+ codecs, .NET Framework, Windows Updates and all that stuff) and run their Windows programs in the VM instead of just sticking with Windows? This is simple psychology, Fred. If Windows works fine for them, why would they go elsewhere if they don’t know what it will bring?

And that is in fact ‘degrading the user’s experience’. Linux is user friendly, but the whole VM workaround just isn’t. Especially for users that don’t enjoy messing around with their PC.

Sure, but it’s still inconvenient.

I am so sorry about that. When you have to reply to several people at the same time, a mistake like this is just an inch away.

No, but lots of programs depend on things like the .NET Framework, so you just can’t avoid it.

Amen to that. I’d be back on Linux in no time if I could keep using Windows software.

well this article has had a healthy comment stream going isnt it? I agree with the author on many issues here. Most users want a computer that just works with all the software they have learned to use. Tinkering around their pc’s and learning new ways to do the same old things isnt exactly exciting and the concept of free software and GPL ( which i think is one of the biggest advantage of linux over windows/mac) is actually a non issue in most developing nations because of rampant piracy. Part of the reason that vista hasnt caught on is that it is a bit more difficult to pirate. I for one am a experience PC user and just love linux. The scope it offers for customization and the package based software is just great, but is not ready for the mass market yet imvho.

The title doesn’t match the content. The whole premise of the content is Windows apps cannot easily be run on Linux which has not been accurate for a year. Misleading title, factually incorrect content and demonstrable lack of research lead to corrective posts and appropriate chastising.

Windows on Linux is more akin to an application framework with the current VM options, from a user’s point of view.

I’m amazed at the number of replies claiming people “just want it to work” who don’t comprehend the current state of VM, even though it’s right here in the replies.

Agreed, a lot of you guys are way to hard on Pieter. I think his article is generally correct, it outlined the main issues I have with Linux quite accurately. I don’t think he claimed this was the “de facto” last word on whats wrong with the current state of Linux.

Yes there are work a rounds for almost anything you would need Windows for, but the key word there is “work”. While you can just install it and use it in Windows, in Linux you may have to run a VM or use Wine or whatever and it is far from “easy” and WAY beyond your average computer user that knows how to click the icon he wants and use his program or play his game.

I think that there is a large disconnect between the hard core Linux community and the average PC user. They are so used to and accustomed to using the command line & terminal, and working within Linux they have a hard time understanding how far beyond the average pc user it is, and they can’t understand when people complain about being confused.

As I said earlier, I love Ubuntu, but there are still a lot of obstacles in the way of it becoming mainstream.

IF that were true, it would be the case. It’s not true. Running Windows apps on a Linux machine is about as difficult as installing Flash or Java. In his replies, he claims “home users” don’t care about backing up their data. His scope of reference is his family network and a school network for which he believes does not have overhead. VMWare’s IPO was last summer. It was only the hottest computer thing all year. He made no mention of marketing issues. The “article” isn’t about why Linux isn’t more dominant on the desktop. It’s more like a semi-computer literate overview of casual interoperability circa 2006.He didn’t do research. (VirtualBox was in the daily downloads on THIS SITE twice last Autumn.) What you see here is a discussion board enforcing quality standards.