Asa Dotzler on Why Linux Isn't Ready for the Desktop

An anonymous reader writes "Asa Dotzler of The Mozilla Foundation compares the explosive growth of Firefox to the anything but explosive growth of Linux and what it needs to do to get there for the "regular user" AKA mom, dad and grandma Bootsie."

Linux Objectives

[fembots (753724)]

It seems Linux has to be "like Windows" to attract a broader user base. I thought that is obvious and has been talked about for many years.

The thing is, how many of the developers are willing to sacrify what they have built so far in exchange for a bigger market share? Are linux developers really keen to get as many people onboard at all cost?

I guess what I'm trying to understand is, what are the objectives in Linux? What is it trying to achieve? Is world domination still the name of the game?

Re:Linux Objectives

[Mornelithe (83633)]

Was the "objective" of Linux ever world domination?

I thought it was a bunch of people working in their spare time (and more recently, for corporations) to produce a Free operating system that they would enjoy using/developing, and, in many cases, that other people would enjoy using as well.

Many people have some political agenda when they work on Free/Open Source Software. Many people don't. Asking "what is [Linux] trying to achieve," isn't a very well-defined question, because "Linux" is not a single sentient entity. It's a community of people with many different goals and ideas.

But they do...

[HappyHead (11389)]

But my mother and father already use Linux - mostly for the games though.

Fundamental assumption?

[aussersterne (212916)]

All presupposing (as is so often done) that the ultimate "goal of Linux" (thereby attributing to "Linux" intentionality that it no doubt does not possess) is to woo Windows users away from their desktops, rather than to provide a superior computing and data processing platform.

I am very happy with the latter, which Linux has provided me with for some years now, and if Linux ceases to do so in favor of attempting the former, I'll happily switch to some other platform (until "I hate elitsts" n00bs who want to be elite but don't want to work for it invade and begin to transform-to-inefficiency that one as well, at which point I'll move on yet again).

Give me efficient computing or give me death. I want to manage my reams of data and my network tasks. I don't care if it jives with the [utterly inefficient] way of doing things in Windows, or if the Windows users care to adopt my methods.

I just want the powerful tools, unpolluted, task-oriented, intelligently designed, that let me talk to my computer using the language through which it can most quickly and subtly be isntructed.

It's not an elitist view, it's the view of a data processing pragmatist with a lot of tasks to juggle and a lot of work to get done.

When you get right down to it ...

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

Ma, Pa and Aunt Bootsie are irrelevant. The corporate world is where the money is, and that's the area where Microsoft is most concerned about losing market share to anything or anyone. Right now, people that buy a computer for home use are to a large degree constrained by what they use at work, which is most likely Windows. All this talk about Linux being ready for Joe Sixpack belies the fact that operating system acceptance begins in the workplace and filters down from there. If the idea really is to displace Microsoft, then the place to start is the cubicle farm, not the den. The original IBM PC, all those years ago, gained widespread popularity among the corporate set because it had a ready-to-go set of business applications (and, of course, the IBM name.) Everything else flowed from there ... and it's still true today. Linux really needs (and is getting) some heavy-duty office/business applications and functionality. That's what it will take.

Linux needs a Screen of Death!

[tktk (540564)]

Windows has the Blue Screen of Death.
Longhorn has the Red Screen of Death.
Mac OS 9 had the Sad Mac and the Bomb.
OS X has the big power button in the background. (And maybe one more.)

And Linux? I don't know what it's got.

Linux users need some iconic way to know that they've really fsck'ed up the their computer. Then they can be satified when they haven't seen it in a while.

We need something....like a dead penguin. Or maybe a slightly stunned penguin. I don't know, get a Japanese manga artist to draw it.

Perhaps the wrong approach

[Sv-Manowar (772313)]

The article seems to suggest that the general idea of "Putting things in the "right" place for Windows users will go a long way" is something that would be beneficial to linux switchers. The many users who have switched to OS X haven't needed this, and in fact have moved to systems where menu choices and design philosophy are significantly different to windows.

The reason for this not being a problem is that things are laid out in a way that's intuitive to those who just want to perform the action, rather than perform it in the way windows does. From my experience people who mostly use macs find it harder to use windows pc's on occasion than vice versa for precisely this reason. Windows has its usabilit nuances, and cloning them doesn't help people get a better experience from using the computer

Some good points, but...

[Coryoth (254751)]

First of all migration is raised as an issue: "When Regular People fire up the Linux desktop for the first time, the browser, office suite, email client, IM client, file manager, etc, each need to carry over as much as possible of the Windows application settings and all or very nearly all of the user data."

First of all that's a steep ask, but secondly I just don't think it's necessary. If that was required for people to switch no one would ever move to Apple. It's definitely a nice idea, and in the "nice to have" category, but I don't see that it's a deal-breaker.

The second point is API stability: "A user should be able to install Fedora Core 4 and go grab the latest Firefox release from Download.com and have it work without the need for finding and installing compat-libstdc++ or whatever."

This one is fixed - if developers would actually pay attention. Autopackage [autopackage.org] allows developers to package up their application into a self installing executable that can do dependency resolution. At that point not having compat-libstdc++ is the developer/packager's fault: they ought to have included an Autopackage for it in their repository so the installer can fetch it if it finds the right version of compat-libstdc++ isn't already installed. Better still, the people at Autopackage provide relaytool which allows developers to smoothly fallback to other library versions: for example, you can have your binary use the new GTK+ file chooser if it is available, but fallback to using the old one if it isn't. Which is really saying that the problem has been solved, it's up to the developers and people releasing the software to make use of the tools available.

The third point is preferences: "Gedit has about 30 user preferences spread across 5 tabs in a preferences window -- Notepad has about three."

Now that's not a great example becaue Gedit does a hell of a lot more than notepad, but I think the point is still very valid. To be fair I think GNOME has been putting in a lot of work on this front, and trying to clean a lot of these things up. That work is ongoing, and we can expect to see continuing improvment. That is, the way forward has been laid out, it's just a matter of continuing down the path.

The final point is "comfort":"The final major issue is comfort. Linux must feel comfortable to Windows users. Most people using computers today have been at it for a while now and they've been at it on Windows. Don't mess with their basic understanding of how things work."

I have to say, I think this one is a little dubious. If there is a better way of doing things why not do it? I think constraining yourself to the way Windows does things is a little pointless. There are plenty of things Windows does well, and it's fine to follow those examples, but there are plenty of things Windows does badly, and slavishly copying broken behaviour really doesn't make much sense.

I think the real point here is: be patient. I think the points are valid, but they are also largely well known, and being dealt with. Linux on the desktop is not going to "take off" anytime soon, but the rate of improvment in desktop Linux is tremendous, and it is making slow but steady inraods. Software installation (which has been the recent bugbear that people complain about) is looking quite good with Autopackage and Smart [smartpm.org], but both of those are very new and it's going to take some time before a lot of stuff shifts over - that's life. GNOME is working hard on the preferences trim down and clean up, and, I think, is workign towards a fairly clean easy to use Desktop. KDE is headed in a different, but equally valid and interesting direction - I think the divergence is going to end up providing some real significant choice. Finally I think once all these bits properly fall into place and desktop Linux manages to make a dent in the enterprise (which seems to be where the major distros

if you don't help newbies...

[yagu (721525)]

From the post:

needs to do to get there for the "regular user" AKA mom, dad and grandma Bootsie

(First off, I'm a little nervous about how the OP knew my grandma's name.)

If you don't help newbies with linux, especially ones not very technical, then linux may not be ready for mom, dad, and grandma. Applying this standard implies also then Windows is not ready for mom, dad, and grandma. I've spent countless hours (that I can't charge, and I'll NEVER get back) fixing, re-installing, helping, instructing, etc. in a support role for my parents from Windows 95 through Windows XP.

And, guess what? They're still struggling. Part of this stems from the fact they missed the technical revolution (and lest you diss my parents, one is a Doctor, the other is a Concert Violinist, played in the Pittsburgh Symphony). But most of it stems from the intractable problem of rendering technology intuitive and transparent to the lay-person.

Interestingly this problem plagues both Windows and linux. Interestingly, for Windows what I've found in coaxing my parents along the learning curve is Microsoft has done much if not most to make Windows obfuscated to my parents. Each new generation has left them re-learning pieces of the environment they had just about almost mastered... (they were this close!)

But, I do think linux is up to the desktop task for many who use the internet for mostly surfing, e-mail, quick word docs, and simple spreadsheets. And I think linux actually fares better simply for the rock solid reliability. I haven't set up my parents with linux because I live 2000 miles away from them, so I'm a little paranoid that should something really bizarre happen, I wouldn't know who to have help them, while with Windows, though it demands more support, if I'm not available, there's always some quasi-pseudo expert ready to jump in and "fix" things.

However I have set up others with linux, and I've been amazed... the support calls simply stop! This is for people who satisfy the above criteria: internet surfers; e-mail junkies; and simple "office" tasks. The linux just works. There's probably a larger demographic out there that could use linux than most people think.

Disappointed

[RAMMS+EIN (578166)]

The scoop made me think that this would be a nice comparison of what made Firefox get adopted so quickly, and Linux so slowly. Instead, it gives the same old crappy arguments of why Linux is "not ready":

``The first issue, migration, is pretty serious.''

No, it's not. You don't need to run it next to Windows. You don't need to provide the same applications. You don't even need to provide an equivalent for every app. Nor all the games. OS X doesn't have all this. Is OS X not ready for the desktop?

``The second problem that blocks massive Linux Desktop growth is stability.'' (The use of "stability" is confusing. What he means is: you can go to a website, download an application, and expect it to run, i.e. binary compatibility)

This is the Windows Way. Linux has a better alternative: packaging. Applications packaged, tailored, and tested for your distribution. Try Debian. Go through a number of installs, uninstalls, upgrades, and dist-upgrades. Then tell me if you like the Windows Way better.

If you do like the Windows Way better, there is hope for you. It _is_ actually possible to distribute binaries that work. Opera has been doing it. StarOffice did this last time I checked (a very long time ago). I'm sure there are others.

``The third issue is a lack simplicity.''

The complaint here is that Linux gives you too much choice. Choice is not an antonym of simplicity. Try Ubuntu. Installation requires that you select a drive to install on, create a user account, select your keyboard and timezone, and wait for stuff to install. No hard choices there. Once installed, it has a nice GUI environment with one app for every job. Just because the choices exist, doesn't mean _you_ have to face them. You can have other people make them for you.

All the 237584704908c34 window managers are for people who like to experiment and try new things. If you don't want to bother with them, then don't.

``The final major issue is comfort. Linux must feel comfortable to Windows users.''

AKA, everything needs to be called the same and be in the exact same place as on Windows. Again, see the earlier argument about OS X. As for the new concepts of mounting and unmounting, have you heard of automount? I believe KNOPPIX uses it, complete with icons appearing on the desktop when you insert a drive.

So, with all these issues declared junk, what do I think is holding back Linux? Here's my list:

1. Linux isn't shoved down people's throats. This is why people have to "switch" in the first place. When people start using computers, they run Windows. At work, computers run Windows. When you buy a computer, it has Windows installed. Sure, there are exceptions, but for all practical purposes computer = Windows.

2. People don't care. Many in the Linux community want people to switch to this "better" system. To most people, Windows works fine. Why fix what isn't broken? This is also why Firefox users are still outnumbered by MSIE users.

3. The issues you raised are widely _seen_ as problems by people who haven't actually used Linux. Linux has a bad reputation for being user-unfriendly, which is entirely undeserved (and has been for years). One could even argue that the security problems with Windows make Linux easier for non-experts [slashdot.org].

4. People are not sufficiently aware. They are not aware of how bad Windows is. They are not aware of how good Linux is. They are often not even aware that there is an alternative (they may have heard of Linux, but not understand what it is). If we want more users to switch, we need to educate people.

As for me, I don't really care what other people use. I've used DOS, Windows, various Linux distros, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Mac OS, and OS X. I like how I can write a program on one of the unix systems, then compile and run it on another. I don't like that it won't work on Windows, and that Windows is missing so many basic things, but Cygwin goes a

Re:Well, here's my take

[wolffman1982 (897620)]

I don't think the collapse of the irrational speculative bubble of the late 90's had any real correlation with those start-ups using cumbersome Linux systems. Rather, the reason peapod/pets/...com failed was because they were given amazing amounts of money to fund business models that didn't make money.

The VC firms just wanted a company to grow as fast as possible in order to create a profitable IPO. Linux costs were a pittance compared to the misappropriation of money by these .com's.

Re:Well, here's my take

[Randseed (132501)]

Pretty sure there is at least 1 windows box running in a local hospital. Police stations don't use computers, no? Well, I guess these aren't important after all.

I might as well comment on this since health care came into it.

Most hospitals use Windows exclusively for user interface boxes. Their backend systems use things like AIX, Linux, or some other flavor of UNIX to run the databases and such. The catch is that universally these user (Windows) systems are overloaded, cumbersome, full of security holes, and a total mess.

Take a real life example of a hospital system that has one major inpatient facility, and a bunch of outlying clinics. Their backend uses some UNIX variant, and they use some Windows program to interface with it. So far not bad. Enter the problems.

First off, there is no unified user home directory system. (Yes, Windows can do this.) Under UNIX, the simplest way to handle it is do a networked stock setup of all the user machines, mount home directories under NFS (or preferably something better), and avoid a lot of problem. This helps with data security, because patient information (e.g., the progress note I just typed in Word) is saved under my user account with default permissions of -rw-------. Second, this means that if I go to one of the outlying clinics, I can still access my files.

I've actually thought really hard for a few years now about why these hospitals blow literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on Windows machines, when they could set up Linux machines that are better administatable for much less. After they set this up, they have to deal with all the random crap of people violating the security protocol by installing God only knows what (Gator, anyone?) which, even if it affects only their account, is still a problem.

But perhaps the biggest problem with Windows in these environments is this: The things take so god awful long to log a user in (two minutes at least at my last place of work on a 2GHz box) for whatever reason that much of the time people don't even bother to log in and out. That leaves a terminal sitting there, and makes the password protection at the OS level worthless. (Yes, obviously something is wrong with all these installations -- probably Novell -- but it's universal. I've never seen a Linux installation that bad, EVER, in ten years.)

Don't confuse the market segments.

[khasim (1285)]

There are 4 major market segments:

1. Servers
2. Corporate/government desktops
3. Mom/Grandma home users
4. Power users/Gamers

Linux is making huge gains in the server market. The statistics show that.

Linux is just starting to gain in the corporate/government desktop market. Expect this to take at least another 3 years.

Once OEMs are comfortable with Linux (due to large orders from corporations/governments), they will start offering it on desktops suitable for basic email/web surfing. The largest limitation is lack of drivers for new hardware. As this market grows (slowly), that will change.

Which will, finally, result in power users and gamers having Linux as an option. That means that the latest hardware will be released with good Linux drivers and the games will be available on Linux. The biggest problem here is the Microsoft desktop monopoly.

Other than that, a corporate KDE or GNOME desktop can be made to look almost exactly like a Win2K desktop so there is no need to worry about training the end users.

The value of Linux doesn't exist for the last two market segments (both home segments). The value exists for the server market and the corporate/government desktop market. But that value will drive the home adoption as people become familiar with Linux at work.

The original article is correct in that having a way to capture the info from Windows would be a major boost to Linux adoption in the home segments. But without the hardware/game support, it just isn't worth the trouble for the average user.

Firefox is worth the trouble of the few websites that don't support it because of all the great features of Firefox (no ad/spyware, very few popups, ad-blocker, etc).

You forgot the the biggest segment

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

Embedded. Cell phones, TVs, dektop boxes.

Linux excells where Joe Sixpack does not have to fiddle with set up. That includes situations where the computer is not visible to the users (embedded and servers) as well as those where someone else completely manages the box (eg. corporate desktops).

For the general home user I agree that Linux is a pig. I can't get my PC to play MP3s. The Winmodem needed a bunnch of hacking etc.

You just proved my point.

[khasim (1285)]

You claim to be a power user, but you had problems with your wireless card and power management.

I said that power users would be the last segment (#4) to move to Linux because they wouldn't be happy until their hardware was supported.

I run Ubuntu and it runs great on fully supported hardware. But then, I also run my LCD screen as 1280x1024 so I don't have the space problems you do.

Re:You just proved my point.

[the_womble (580291)]

Not only will "power users" be the last to use Windows because they want all their hardware supported, but they are also usually specially "windows power users" they have invested a lot in learning how Windows and whatever apps they use do things, but they do not actually understand how they work so their "knowledge" is not transferable.

This is actually the group who the article call "regular users", real regular users are quite happy with Linux desktops - copy their files over, export their bookmarks and import into Firefox and that's it. This has worked fine for my father, my wife and some guys who worked for me (one is now planning to install Linux at home).

I also do not understand what he is talking about when it comes to installing applications. There are only three pieces of software I have installed which required anything more complicated than downloading the RPM, clicking in it to start the installer, and then typing the root password and clicking OK a few times. These were: Erlang, Firefox and Thunderbird.

In fact, bar Erlang (which needed to be compiled), Firefox has been by for the most problematic thing to install.

Re:You just proved my point.

[the_womble (580291)]

I'm not sure how you're able to make the claim that Windows power users only know how to do things, but don't know how it actually works.

I make the claim because I have known people for whom it is true. "Power users" known recipes for getting things done, and secondly their knowledge tends to be very narrow.

I think that you do not understand how people who know absolutely nothing about computers approach them. I would have agreed with your statement at one time, but I have slowly realised how many people get a lot of stuff done by learning sequences of actions, rather than actually understanding what is going on. Yes they do inevitably learn a little (especially if they start writing macros), but it is much less than you might think. If you have absolutely no idea of how computers work, you have no framework to learn from. A computer becomes a black box device that produces certain outputs for certain inputs and that's it.

Most people do not actually do much configuration beyond installing software (which these days is easy), and setting backgrounds and screen savers (and even there many users call the former the latter).

As of the narrowness of power users knowledge, let me give you a few examples. Many years ago I came across someone keeping a database in Wordperfect. They knew WordPerfect so they wrote a set of macros to do what they needed. That is a power user in action. More recently I have seen Excel used to circulate information - so that in order to see a single page that you wanted, you had to download an Excel file that ran to several megabyte with macros etc., the file had to be manually copied to the file server at each branch office. Putting the information on a web server would have been obviously better. This was the product of a "power user" who knew how to write VB scripts in Excel but little else.

As for software installation, I have not used OS X , but I would say that the better Linux distros (such as Mandrake) are at least as easy as Windows - easier if you stick to software from your distro. The hardest are of course very difficult to install (both OS and additional software), but they are designed for a different user base.

Re:Don't confuse the market segments.

[tehdaemon (753808)]

Have you ever tried to run Windows on a laptop without the drivers and utilities provided by the laptop maker? I have. The drivers were for XP home and we were trying 2K. Almost nothing worked. We then tried Fedora core 4 on the same laptop. While there were a few problems, most stuff worked. I am posting from Ubuntu, it is easier than fedora (IMHO)

The problem is not linux, it is manufacturer support. Windows is actually much worse than most linux distro's, but because the manufacturer supports the laptop, it (usuallly!) works fairly well. If they gave the same support to linux it would work just fine.

Re:Don't confuse the market segments.

[Randseed (132501)]

You aren't missing anything. These hardware vendors are in bed with Microsoft. Nothing keeps them from releasing the specs, letting someone else write a driver for it, and letting someone else do the technical support. And before someone says that then they'll be flooded with tech support calls, they already are from users who can't get their hardware to work, or are using some kludge piece of crap like ndiswrapper and having problems under it.

One machine I have has a DLink wireless card in it. I installed the acx_100 driver, which seems to be the driver for it. Unfortunately, the manufacturer has some bogus "feature" in the hardware that causes the network card to reset itself every so often. When that happens, the network card drops off the net, and doesn't come back up until a reboot.

The proper thing for the manufacturer to do is either release a Linux driver for their card, or document the incompatability so that I can hack support for it into the driver and release it. In this case, I've done the work for them, for crying out loud.

By the way, I did call the DLink cretins and ask about this. They knew nothing. Their answer was that they don't support Linux. When you release hardware, either release drivers for the predominant operating systems (which is now Linux and Windows), or at least have the decency to release the specs so someone can cover your lazy ass. They don't do this.

I think they honestly think that someone isn't eventually going to get pissed off enough to reverse engineer the damned card, which if I can ever isolate the problem I'm going to do and blow all over the Internet, along with a message proclaiming how much their company sucks.

BroadCom is another one. They release no information about their cards, and lock users into them by building them into the laptop. So you buy a new HP laptop, and its wireless card is a BroadCom. Oops. Sorry.

Re:Don't confuse the market segments.

[Synbiosis (726818)]

Heh, this entire thread reminds me of a bash quote:

<dm> I discovered that you'd never get an answer to a problem from Linux Gurus by asking. You have to troll in order for someone to help you with a Linux problem.
<dm> For example, I didn't know how to find files by contents and the man pages were way too confusing. What did I do? I knew from experience that if I just asked, I'd be told to read the man pages even though it was too hard for me.
<dm> Instead, I did what works. Trolling. By stating that Linux sucked because it was so hard to find a file compared to Windows, I got every self-described Linux Guru around the world coming to my aid. They gave me examples after examples of different ways to do it. All this in order to prove to everyone that Linux was better.
* ion has quit IRC (Ping timeout)
<dm> brings a tear to my eye... :') so true..
<dm> So if you're starting out Linux, I advise you to use the same method as I did to get help. Start the sentence with "Linux is gay because it can't do XXX like Windows can". You will have PhDs running to tell you how to solve your problems.
<dm> this person must be a kindred spirit of mine

Re:Well, here's my take

[aussersterne (212916)]

Classic formulation: if you're not interested in adopting the Unix mindset (text-based text processing, pipes, small well-defined tools, a de-emphasis on graphical user interfaces, non-data-processing devices, etc.) then why choose a Unix operating system?

Linux offers a great deal of value that Windows doesn't. As someone who works with huge databases of text at a major publisher on a day-to-day basis and who has to use both systems at varying times, I can assure you of this. Just because you don't have the needs that justify the Linux learning curve doesn't mean that no-one else does. And even if you can't even see any features that Linux/Unix has that Windows doesn't, it's fairly rich of you to assume that everyone who chooses Linux/Unix over Windows does so simply becuase they are deluded.

I can honestly tell you that for any number of large jobs in my workplace, two or three commands at a Linux command line replace either dozens of labor hours, dozens of development hours, or the $$$ to purchase a specialized product in Windows.

What I don't understand is why desktop users who have no need of the "Unix philosophy" of data processing insist on complaining about an operating system that was designed to move DATA (not icons or mouse pointers) around efficiently.

If it doesn't fill your needs, don't use it. The unfathomable leap comes when you assert that no-one else should either.

A fine post and everything but...

[flithm (756019)]

how the hell did you get first post with so much freakin' writing?

Did you type this up ages ago, just waiting for the day you could get first post with this?

As for my comments on your fine post:

I recently installed Linux on my non-computer literate girlfriend's computer. She was always afraid of Linux because whenever she tried to use my computer it was nothing like Windows.

I put on a nice easy to use distro, set her up with KDE, and let her go to town. She's now using GIMP, uses it for all her photographic needs (scanning, digital camera). She even sighs when she has to reboot to Windows.

She was amazed at the little things, like how cut 'n paste works. I could tell she was thinking "why wasn't it always this easy?"

Or how she can resize an entire "folder" of images with a couple of clicks and no fuss.

I really don't think it's so much a matter of Linux offering nothing of value that Windows doesn't, because that's simply not true. Linux has tons to offer the average person that Windows doesn't.

The major problem, as I see it, is that it requires changing the way you think about using a computer.

When I first started using Linux I got very frustrated for a while, simply because my mind is notoriously bad for resisting change. It didn't like having to re learn such simple stuff. In fact in the beginning I kind of felt like I was a prisoner to my computer. I no longer knew how it worked at all. No idea! How do things run at startup? How do I add a printer? It was all this huge mystery.

And then, even beyond that, everything is just Done Differently. You really have to change your mindset to become a fully functioning *nix/*BSD user.

For a lot of people that's a really hard thing to do. But the funny thing is it really doesn't take that long. No longer than a week later my girlfriend was installing her own applications, updating her system, etc.

Anyway I don't want to give the impression I don't agree with what you said, because that really was a good and well thought out post. For the most part I agree with what you said, I just wanted to add that.

I don't think Windows is desktop ready

[Nailer (69468)]

• You install it, there's no apps (or crap ones - compare IE to Firefox or Outlook Express to Evolution), or you pay lots of money to get them.
  
• You run as root by default, not for ease of use (how difficult is 'type your passsword to continue' that Fedora and OS X do?) but because Microsoft and Windows developers couldn't be bothered fixing things. And you get spyware and viruses as a result, and you fix most, but a few remain, and the whole thing moves like molasses. The SP2 'firewall' still lets in about 7 network ports by default, including those used for some of the major worms.
  

That's why I recommend Linux. I don't see either item changing soon either. I've played with Longhorns betas, and nothing's different. It's your computer, you may as well use it. That's why I recommend Fedora.

Re:Well, here's my take

[Eric Damron (553630)]

"Linux is not a bad system, it just doesn't have anything to offer that its competitors don't already do as well or better."

It's not what Linux has that attracts me. It's what it has not.

It doesn't have a philosophy of lock in.
It doesn't have virus after virus taking my system down if I don't patch it daily.
It doesn't have a philosophy of limiting my fair use rights.
But most of all it doesn't have Microsoft with their anti competitive practices and their obnoxious licensing agreements.

Re:We?

[snorklewacker (836663)]

I've been using Linux fulltime on the desktop since 1999-2000. What pisses me off is applications switching between ok/cancel positions themselves. When I don't need to worry about where the OK button is going to pop up in Firefox/Mozilla then I'll start to worry about the rest of the OE.

You can thank gnome for that. They decided that since That Other Desktop Environment was ordering buttons according to the Windows interface convention (of "ok/cancel", "yes/no"), they'd just switch to the mac convention of "cancel/ok", "no/yes". They trotted out some high minded theory about how the lower-right corner of the dialog was "special", and how all these HCI studies (all put on by Apple of course) proved this was an enlightened change ... but as usual for gnome these days, it was just another gratuitous jarring change. End users were told to suck it up and bask in the glow of gnome's superior wisdom.

So that's why they're backward.