Linux has no hope

Post Reply New Topic

No you guys are missing the point. I am well aware of the Open Source community as a whole. What you guys seem to be missing is the fact that Ubuntu and MInt are the top two (by a large margin) distros. They are the most popular, the ones people who want to try out linux for the first time as a desktop OS go to, so when they release a horribly buggy version it really has an impact upon NEW USERS and therefore confirming the whole "linux is for geeks" concept. It is bad enough when a buggy release occurs but when this seems to be the result of childish non co-operation between such major players in the desktop market (If any of you dont think Gnome is targeting the home user, what the heck do you think Gnome-Shell is all about) its really annoying.





I

And if Canonical does nothing, this distro will sink out of sight (and probably take Unity with it).
Or, users could simply try out KUbuntu instead.
I don't see the value in getting twitchy over "won't someone please think of the new users?!" stuff. Sorry.

I have no idea either way - I've not looked at it for over ten years, but I would question that its "targeting the home user" is radically different to that of KDE (picking the other "big time" GUI).
At least KDE hasn't been subjected to spats like the current one.
Perhaps Gnome and/or Unity deserves to die? No software has an absolute right to exist and be popular - or even bug-free.
And if users don't like Unity, it will wither and die.

So you're aware of KDE and XFCE, which are also desktop environments? And that it's perfectly possible to run Linux with just a window manager? And that there are literally hundreds of distros? And that the desktop market isn't the only place for Linux?


At the moment, they're the most popular. If they fail to keep their place, that doesn't hurt Linux.

The simple fact of the matter is that no one is writing code thinking "hey, I better make sure this is seamless for other people". By and large, the developers are writing code thinking "hey, this is pretty damn cool", and you're never going to get them to think about making it easy for home users at the expense of putting their cool new release out there. Period.

You can't control the intentions of individual developers contributing whatever they want to an overall project of anything. You also can't control Canonical/Red Hat/Novell/etc and how they release their specific distros, or how they think about something. Whining that such and such is ruining Linux's good name is effectively worthless, and no one on this forum or any other can do anything about the situation.

In order for Linux to be successful in the niche you're describing (mainstream home PC use), requires that Linux be dramatically better than the alternatives (for most home users it is at best roughly equivalent), and the alternatives must be so bad that the user feels a need to switch in the first place. Without both of those, they are never going to want to switch to something new, and linux will be stuck right where it is. It's this reason why you still run across people using Win98SE and IE5. Even though linux may be technically better than Windows, the user doesn't care. Even though you can get all these free apps that can do pretty much anything (although most don't have the level of refinement in the UI that their commercial counterparts do), and you don't have to worry about Windows viruses (although most users don't worry about Windows viruses on Windows), and there's near-universal driver support (except when there's not, and short of writing your own driver, there's nothing you can do about it), and all of this - the user simply doesn't care.

For most people, computers are a tool to accomplish a task, and if their tool isn't keeping them from doing what they want to do, they won't change it. All the posturing in the world isn't going to change that. Even with the billions Apple poured into advertising, and the utter disaster that was Vista, Apple's market share in the PC market has only risen roughly 3% per year (it's sitting at 10% as Q4 2010).

DentArthurDent, what *you* seem to fail to realize, is that it doesn't matter whether consumers adopt a linux OS or not. It has absolutely no bearing on you, me, or anyone else. People will use what works for them, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Why the question marks, if you have read my posts you would be aware why I am rolling my eyes at them.

Again if you had read my posts you would also realise that my statement "Linux has no hope" was probably ill conceived (especially so when you consider I am trying to discuss an issue with a bunch of pedantic folk on the AS - note to self being an AS pendant is very tiring for others ) and should have read something like if 'Gnome and Canonical really want a larger share of the home pc market they have no hope if they continue the way they are'

So with this cleared up, I still maintain that this releasing versions like 11.04 is a public relations disaster, which if repeated just bolsters windows position when the opposite is needed, and is counter intuitive to what both organisations seem to be attempting.

Ubuntu has made a very credible attempt to bring Linux to the masses, why then spend so much time, money and energy only to alienate the very folk you are trying to recruit. Same goes for Gnome, who are doing a wonderfully efficient job of pushing away all those who thought their DE was the best available by refusing to listening to constructive criticism.

Firstly thank you for at least bothering to understand where I am coming from.

I tend to disagree with you that the windows user simply doesn't care, I listen to a weekly radio talk back segment that goes for an hour, it is consumed mostly by people trying to rid their computers of malware or trying to get cheaper software to ''accomplish a task", or fix bugs, or wondering why IE is going slow, or why is my pc running so slow, or where has my printer gone, or I have this blue screen with a message etc etc etc,as I see it the trouble lies in the perceived lack of an affordable alternative to Windows. In my opinion Ubuntu for the past couple of years has been a very viable and far superior alternative. I have had no issues with loading it onto my laptop, and the only driver I have needed to install on my PC is for Nvidia. Changes in public Opinion/Knowledge often start with a tiny trickle that becomes a torrent, but that torrent can be stopped by bad leadership and this is what I fear with the spat between Canonical and Gnome. I.E. something good will not come to pass or will at least be severely delayed due to poor leadership.

i dont get the point of this thread,

most distro's are completely open source meaning that most of them are there because someone either needed them or wanted them,
linux is used in many places as servers, dedicated systems, automation proccesses and so forth, to say it's doomed would be perpendicular to reality, with the rising amount of focus on computers i think it is only first starting to realize it's potential (speaking as a concept there are so many distro's anything is possible)

Basically you should have said Desktop Linux has no hope (which, obviously it does ). As i and others have stated, GNU/Linux is far bigger than Cannonical, Gnome and the wintel/x86 iterations of linux in general. I do see that your just trying to vent frustration at a project you probably enjoy being part of but you should have made the thread title a bit more specific.

New thread?

That would be the Gnome/Unity flavour specifically, and not "11.04" generically.
The KDE flavour of 11.04 I'm using runs just fine.
(And no, I don't think that's pedantic - just accurate. )

I read your posts in this thread and have no idea what you're talking about.


Ubuntu has had compatibility problems with previous releases too. It hasn't stopped them from being the most popular distro. Windows has had really terrible technical problems without losing major market share either.

I think ordinary desktop users just aren't as picky as you (or I) want them to be.