"Linux too geek for desktop" *Fudzilla article*

[MilesRdz]

This morning I replaced the latest version of Ubuntu with the Windows 7 release candidate. I had been running the Windows 7 beta but since this expires next week I thought I would go back to Ubuntu. However it looked like Microsoft's belief that if you give enough people Windows 7 to play with for a while they will not go back proved true in my case.

Source: http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/13917/1/

Discuss?

[Tews]

Bleh ... just more of the same ...

[Tibuda]

Codecs are not shipped because of legal issues, nothing to do with FOSS philosophy.

[caravel]

That article is quite frankly a load of biased bollox, from someone that quite obviously hasn't got a clue.

[cariboo]

This really doesn't belong here, as the above article is not about a users experiences, but those of a journalist.

This thread is closed

[Sef]

1) Moved to Community Cafe and reopened the article.

2) Do not post a whole article on in Ubuntu Forums, unless it is licensed under the Creative Commons License. Some companies can get upset about having too much of their material posted on webistes other than their own because it can affect how many people that they know of see the article.

[Paqman]

I actually agree with his headline: Linux is too geeky for most people. However i'm a geek, and so I like it.

Good on him for having a go with Linux though. We can't please everyone.

[monsterstack]

Again with the slander that avoiding patent licensing issues is evidence of religious mania. There are problems with Linux, but this guy, like so many others, is too slow to realise that many of those problems are not the fault of Linux. Instead of complaining about the things that don't work out of the box in Linux, ask yourself why that is the case. Codecs have patent licensing issues; many proprietary licences conflict with the GPL; retailers are bullied into avoiding selling Linux-based machines. That isn't to say that the problems don't matter or aren't legitimate concerns: they are. But trying to pass them off as the fault of Linux developers alone is pure FUD.

And remember, free software projects can and do give users what they want. Firefox gained so many users in such a small amount of time precisely because it gave users what they wanted, mainly adblockers and pop-up stoppers. It took Microsoft three years to respond to that, but by then IE dominance was no more. Even now Firefox continues to gain users whilst IE loses theirs, and this trend has not skipped a beat since 2004. He praises Mozilla in his little rant. So how is that evidence that Linux projects don't give users what they want?

His only other complaint is about the lack of coherency in the GUI department. But he doesn't give any examples. Hard to judge that one, as there are plenty of poorly-designed apps out there, although I'd say every GUI programme installed in the default Ubuntu desktop looks pretty good. Perhaps, seeing as his entire article is based around the lack of media codecs, he went and installed mPlayer to get his videos working properly. No arguments there: mPlayer is ugly as sin. Perhaps he should have tried one of the frontends such as smplayer.

[hanzomon4]

He's right... It's not fud. A total fud on the codecs part but I'll let that pass. Everything he mentioned I have experienced. Choppy video, foss apps that run better in OSX then they do on the "free" OS, and constant tinkering to get some things to work. I think a lot of it has to do with the attitude of the community. If a frustrated user has a problem you folks are quick to say :insert_snotty_voice: "you didn't pay the devs" or "It's foss so get to work fixing it yourself".

Linux is not just for geeks who speak in binary, but in a lot of ways it's still designed that way. It's like here's something to tweak instead of a fully armed and operational computing package. Ubuntu is pretty close, it's not just a skeleton but it's missing skin, teeth, finger nails, and some other things. The FOSS community could fix all of that if it knew how to take criticism. The community is a whiny bunch whenever someone points out how Linux ain't the greatest and in fact sucks at a few things.

So for those that want the year of linux on the desktop, or whatever, stop burying your heads in your ideological sandbox whenever non foss-geeks point out something, they have no intention of fixing, that's broken or ugly. Feedback is feedback, negative... positive.. whatever. It can be a greater asset then code.

[perroazul]

And remember, free software projects can and do give users what they want. Firefox gained so many users in such a small amount of time precisely because it gave users what they wanted, mainly adblockers and pop-up stoppers. It took Microsoft three years to respond to that, but by then IE dominance was no more. Even now Firefox continues to gain users whilst IE loses theirs, and this trend has not skipped a beat since 2004. He praises Mozilla in his little rant. So how is that evidence that Linux projects don't give users what they want?

is a pity that it is not possible to give thumbs up, or stars to a comment like you do in youtube. this one deserves