Problems Linux Enthusiasts Refuse to Address

[David Gerard]

On 5 April 2011 17:50, Samuel Thurston <sam.thurston at gmail.com> wrote:

>  I think
> in 2011 it's time to stop holding Linux to a standard that doesn't
> exist anywhere outside the sealed-box hardware monoculture of Apple.


While this does seem unfair, we need to consider the model for
disruption from below: the disruptor is (a) cheap (b) does some
important thing *better* than the incumbent.

This is why Linux has taken over *everything* outside the desktop.
Your phone, your *television* run Linux.

So to take over the desktop, it does in fact need to succeed in some
respect that is sufficient to push it forward.

The year of the Linux desktop was 2007. I say this because that was
the year when it was finally price competition for Windows - with
reports of Microsoft charging $0 to $5 for XP on netbooks, just to
keep Linux the hell off them. Before that, OEMs were at their mercy.
This was bad enough for it to show up in Microsoft's financial
statements of the time.

So, price was actually enough at that time - we didn't win the
desktop, but we gave it a damn good shake. What other thing could
Linux do ridiculously better to beat Windows?

Ubuntu is taking a plausible approach: the Mac has the slickest design
and Microsoft has proven utterly unable to compete, so apply design
skills to the problem. This has variable results, e.g. Unity doesn't
work properly, and even if it did it's deliberately missing far too
much actual functionality. But this is why we have many distros.


> "I'm not talking about dumbing anything down, mind you. No, I simply
> want to see all of us decide that we either are going to start taking
> our platform seriously or opt to forgo the usual long-winded speech
> about how superior it is in comparison to the alternatives."


This is an example of what I meant by the tech press and ad-banner
trolling for clicks. These are the words of a professional troll.


>  If Uncle Steve absolutely needs peachtree
> to handle his existing accounting files, ask: Do you feel like
> tinkering with a compatibility layer in order to make a required app
> work?  If the answer is not a relatively emphatic "yes",
> fuhgettaboutit.


People don't seem to realise just how good Wine is these days. The
apps that don't Just Work tend to be (a) large (b) recent. But the
thing keeping someone on Windows is more often that Just One App that
they can't do without - and that app will usually work flawlessly in
Wine. YMMV, of course, but it's *always* worth a try.


- d.