

Desktop Linux needs salesmen - erlik
http://www.tech-no-media.com/2009/11/desktop-linux-needs-salesmen.html

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JoeAltmaier
Usability isn't "tweaks", its the product. I gave up on Linux when it didn't
have a "Have Disk" button for my new video card driver - no, it was not
amusing for me to rebuild my Linux kernel, I had an actual job to do which was
unrelated to hacking. And Windows does have a "Have Disk" button.

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randallsquared
Desktop Linux needs people focused on making things work. For the typical
case, it does just work, now, but almost everyone is atypical in some way. For
example, I want to be able to play WoW without rebooting, and while if I had a
different video card that would apparently be fairly easy, I gave up on it
after three days and three attempts (wine, cedega, crossover). The average
WoW-player probably wouldn't have got that far.

What Linux on the desktop really needs is a reference platform. If people
could be sure that the hardware they were buying (or had) would work at least
as well as Windows, it would help.

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fmw
Not that I would mind, but why does everyone need to use GNU/Linux? The only
practical benefit would be better support for things like gaming. It seems
much more important to increase mindshare for open standards and free
software. GNU/Linux is perfectly viable as it is.

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ErrantX
Sort of.

But what it also needs, to really move into the desktop realm proper, is a
more cohesive community. More effort spent on the mundane stuff like usability
tweaks, interfaces and better package work.

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orblivion
Hmm. We have people devoting their efforts coding, doing QA, triaging bugs,
and probably even some people who are not technically inclined, but follow the
philosophy and contribute art. Mabye sales people could be recruited that
agree with the philosophy to donate their efforts in the same way.

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jshen
I think a lot of people are missing the future. Most people aren't going to
have what we think of as a computer today. They will use their phone or some
form of consumer electronic device that has a browser and an app store.

Linux needs to get a foothold in this market in an open way.

~~~
joeythibault
I like your thinking. And there's nothing stopping you from delivering on that
idea (because it's open!)

~~~
jshen
I'm getting a beagleboard with a touchscreen for xmas and I plan to start
hacking away :)

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ZeroGravitas
Firefox got it's big push when the geeks forced it on their friends and
family. Linux is probably nearing that point.

It's probably acceptable for the ordinary punter already, but whichever family
member does their tech-support is probably happier in Windows or Mac OS X.

~~~
camccann
From the data-is-not-the-plural-of-anecdote department:

My sister co-founded and works full time at a small non-profit retail business
with an extremely limited budget. Faced with a slowly-dying ancient Win98
laptop as her only computer and doing all the business's finances on paper, a
few months ago I donated a slightly less ancient Dell laptop and a second-hand
desktop box, after installing Ubuntu on both (the desktop also included a
minimalist PoS system that I wrote over a few weekends, plus stuff like
GNUCash already installed).

Talking to her since then, both machines seem to be giving her far fewer
headaches than the Windows 98 box did, and despite me fishing for any
complaints she seems perfectly happy with Ubuntu. For context, her level of
technical sophistication is around the level of "knows the difference between
hard drives and RAM, and writes HTML by hand (using table layouts)", so better
than the average guy off the street but nowhere near stereotypical bearded
Linux users (such as, um, myself).

So, what makes Linux work for her? 1) Support from a family member, though
apparently so far everything just works 2) No requirements to use Windows-only
software or unusual hardware 3) Extremely limited financial resources,
combined with not using the typical means that reduce Windows' TCO to match
Linux (bulk/academic discounts, hiding the cost in the price of new hardware,
getting pirated copies, etc.).

These three factors are certainly not unique, but the combination is somewhat
unusual, and I doubt _any_ amount of aggressive word-of-mouth marketing from
Linux geeks is going to get people using it without those factors.

~~~
Zev
Is it really fair to compare the amount of headaches that an OS that came out
in the middle of 1998 (and isn't even supported by the vendor anymore) gives
with the amount that an OS that was just released this past year would give?

~~~
camccann
No, of course it's an unfair comparison. But back in '98 people were using
that OS, including a lot of not particularly "technical" folks. The point is
that Linux today is _substantially better_ than "good enough for regular
people to use".

In other words, the issue is not why someone can't use Linux, but _what they
would gain by using Linux_ \--such as the factors I outlined for my sister's
situation.

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omouse
Correction: GNU/Linux distributions that are aimed at desktop users need
salespeople.

I would look towards Haiku OS as the future for Free Software desktop users.
It's more integrated and much nicer to deal with.

