I just read an article I found via Digg (my favorite guilty pleasure social news aggregator) about the drawbacks of desktop Linux. The writer touches on the ecosystem-related reasons that desktop Linux is languishing, but almost completely glosses over the fact that many people who try out a Linux distro are beset by significant and sometimes insurmountable usability and user experience issues.
First the author makes the dubious claim that “in 2009, any reasonably smart person can use any major Linux distribution without much trouble” (maybe he hasn’t read “The Great Linux Girlfriend Experiment“…). Then he goes on to contradict himself when he talks about the bad attitudes exhibited by Linux experts toward “noobs” who ask questions and ask for help for something as simple as installing Flash…which *should* be absolutely brainless. Quoting the article:
…what if someone new does run into a problem with installing Adobe Flash and asks for help online?If he or she is lucky, they’ll get a considerable and informative answer from an Ubuntu forum or LinuxQuestions. But all too often, I’ve seen such questions answered with responses like “RTFM you noob! What are you doing running that trash distro anyway! It’s GNU/Linux, not Linux!”
Be that as it may, I just don’t buy the argument that any reasonably smart person can use Linux today. For too many people, using Linux is like walking a tightrope. As long as you’re on the straight and narrow, you’re fine. But if you fall, you usually fall hard and? can’t recover.
Or, putting that (admittedly crappy) metaphor aside for the moment, what happens is that for many new desktop Linux users, the OS turns into a time sink as a result of what should be very minor problems such as installing a graphics driver…or even getting a program installed.
For many of us, that’s the *real* Linux experience.
