Consumers like to buy some whizbang brand new product, pop in the CD, plug in the device and follow the wizard. That _can't_ happen in Linux. New products don't generally work with old drivers. (Kudos to nVidia for breaking that mold a little). My scanner doesn't work in linux. My USB Wireless NIC doesn't work in linux. My poor old Aureal soundcard will die with the 2.4 kernel because there isn't an ALSA driver for it and there never will be. My trackpad doesn't even work in linux. It's a mouse for heaven's sake! Why can't it just work?
Is that the fault of the Linux community? No. Of course not. It's the fault of stupid hardware vendors who think they lose something if they release the interface spec for their new product AND the fault of hardware vendors not standardizing on interfaces.
Thank goodness for the USB standards. At least I can pop in a usb-mass-storage device and have that work. NICs could and should have been standardized years ago, as should have printers (well, postscript printers always work, but those cost too much). I hope bluetooth catches on if for no other reason than that they actually includede application layer protocols in the spec.
I'm afraid I have to agree with Szulik. Linux is definitely ready for /my/ desktop, but not for my Mom's. She likes to try out new educational software. I'm going to see if wine will work for her, but I'm not keeping my fingers crossed.
But here's a counter-example (sorta): I gave my wife (before we were married) a computer with Caldera OpenLinux 3.1 pre-installed (by me). It had Konqueror, LICQ, and WordPerfect 8. I told her how to mount and unmount the floppy and said, "Have Fun!" She told me once, during a conversation about usability, "I don't get what the big deal is, it looks just the same." She wrote papers, browsed the web, checked her email (hotmail), and sent me cute instant messages.
HOWEVER: She never tried to install any new hardware ever. She doesn't own a digital camera, webcam, or scanner. The hardware was also about a year older than the OS it ran.
Szulik's whole point is that RedHat isn't interested in competing in the Home Desktop market (yet). I think he goes wrong when he says it's because Linux isn't mature enough (unless he means that when Linux is mature enough hardware vendors will start to release their specs).
There isn't really a way for a user to take a brand new product, plug it in, and have it Just Work in Linux. How would you do that? You certainly shouldn't expect them to compile something. Maybe the installer could compile something for you (like nVidia's installer does). SuSE is taking the right direction on this. The nVidia driver doesn't come with the distro, but they have a mechanism to grad it and configure it for you. If I could plug in my creative webcam and have to OS tell me that it can try to find a driver for it and configure it for me I'd be happy. Not even windows does this with all vedors yet. As best I can tell only Intel, Creative (sound card division), and 3com are submitting drivers to WindowsUpdate.
I have to agree though that hardware that does work in Linux often works better than in Windows.
Anyway, I've ranted way too long now.
Just so everyone understands my real position: I am fully converted to Linux (Debian) on the server, but only recently have I started to feel really comfortable with Linux on the desktop (thanks to Ximian).
smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
