Re: [Staffslug] What Do You Think?

On the one hand it is so very easy to go along with that article. There are a lot of truths in there. However, I don't personally think Linux is dead in the water as far as widespread adoption is concerned. Conversely this will not happen without, as has been mentioned more than once in the comments at the end of the article, MARKETING. Linux needs to be pushed but the likes of Canonical and possibly Red Hat. SuSE and Novell I won't mention because they appear to be in a bit of a turmoil at the moment but they have had their chance and missed it. On a personal level Linux is here. It is the desktop of choice for me and I'm hopeless when it comes to CLI stuff which is what always seems to get mentioned. Give me the choice of Linux, Microsoft or Apple and Linux will win hands down every time. Yes, I'm producing this e-mail on a machine currently running Win XP, that's simply because I'm lazy and haven't/can't be arsed to swap the drives over with my Ubuntu HDD. This is the family PC and I want an easy life with the rest of them :-) In my defence I do have two PC's in my workshop that both run only Linux. One is a dedicated Ubuntu box with Gnome on it and the other currently has Lubuntu but will change as my whim takes it. Linux has in fact succeeded in a massive way just not as a desktop system. It is in so many embedded devices that the vast majority of the general public don't now about. It is used in many set top boxes, phones and stand alone kiosks. I think that Linux's downfall is purely its strength at the same time. It is so damn configurable. We can mess with it and change stuff. Trouble is we can also break it. By us I mean the general public at large which inevitably means when it's broke "it's no good". This ignores the fact that it is the user who has broken the system and is not the fault of Linux itself. Correct me if I am wrong but I think it is rare for a modern Linux install to fail (on modern hardware), when compared to the amount of installs it must get every day. Lastly, it has been mentioned that people expect DVD play back etc. Agreed. I do and I was bitterly disappointed the first time I couldn't play a disk all those years ago. The public do not give a fig about DRM or such other restrictions they simply want to be able to play what they have purchased. So, perhaps the price of the disk should include any DRM charge instead of the software to play it? Surely that makes more sense? -- ============================================== Kevan Linux user #373362 Staffordshire ********************************************** www.freeworld-recycling.org 'From me to you towards a sustainable future.' **********************************************