On Wed, Feb 25, 2004 at 12:10:45PM -0500, Andrew W. Gaunt wrote: > > It may be a failure for the home desktop now, but, > to embrace and extend another's famous quote, > "Linux [on the desktop] is inevitable." >
I had a whole rant prepared where I was going to argue that Linux will have a real hard time getting to the desktop because it's hard to pass the 'mom' test. As in "how easy is it for mom to use this thing?" I was ready to toast you good. :) But my little sister IM'd me a little while ago. Seems her XP is giving her grief. Her printer doesn't work and she has no idea where the problem is. If I could ssh or have her get some logs out of the system, I might be able to tell her what the problem was and how to fix it. Then she complained that she can't get her digital camera to connect. Same thing - if I could poke around the system or get some detailed information from her, I might be able to figure it out. But Windows either doesn't tell you, or tells you in far too much detail, when and how something goes wrong. And when things go wrong is when you need help, and when good impressions are made. It's not usability, it's not ease of install - it's what happens when things go wrong. Distributors of Linux need to start realizing that desktop and server distros have to be completely different beasts. Red Hat kinda gets it with their AS/AW line, but now doesn't have anything to appeal to the masses. Debian....well...debian won't be a desktop distro. This leaves SuSE and Mandrake really. Any idea how good they are as a desktop distribution? -Mark
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
