Most ordinary users don't care about what operating system is used - because they don't even know what an operating system is.

They need their computer to work reliably - and be able to run the programs they need to use.

For many, many small businesses the users just need Email, Web and Office - and the ability to print.

Two points arise now -

1. Ubuntu does what these users need. And does it simply and reliably.

2. It's far easier to install Ubuntu than to install any version of Windows.

We've converted a couple of small business PC's for the cost of an hour's installation and and hour's training.

The most amazing thing is this - weeks later we've hardly heard from them. Both users are happily working away every day. Comments have been,

'Can't believe how fast it is'

'It's so easy to find where my files are.'

And the thing is - those PC's will be working perfectly from now on. No viruses, no slowing up. There will be absolutely no reason to go back to Windows.

Once more and more of this level of PC converts the offices which convert will be larger and larger.

I'm going to stick my neck out here and make a prediction - the Linux (probably Ubuntu) desktop will effectively replace Windows within ten years.

Linux does not need to chase or emulate Microsoft or Apple. All it needs to do is "be there" and continue to improve the user experience and applications that the users want. Linux does not need to experience rapid growth in any sector to sustain or mollify investors.

Microsoft will have to trim down the prices of its operating systems and reduce the burgeoning hardware requirements necessary for a new release to operate adequately or it will begin losing market share.

The only way to stop Linux from claiming more turf incrementally is for Microsoft to litigate it or legislate it out of existence. Of course, Linux could implode all on its own due to infighting and scratching. I hope that neither of those scenarios are realized.

I do not hate Microsoft or its products, but I also do not want to have to go back using them.

Glenn Thigpen

@Brian Miller, you're making an excellent argument for Linux and against Windows!

"""Most people say, 'I don't want to be bothered. It just works. I want to do the other parts of my job, and I want to go home,'" said Sutor."

This Sutor quote, well, people just seem to have Ubuntu work and stay out of the way more than I've ever seen Windows do. Smooth-running windows desktops EXIST, but (other than in office settings where they are externally managed) are not the norm! Almost every Windows sytem I see in the hands of ordinary users is all f'ed up!

"Yeah, that's right! The operating system is on a computer to run the applications and services. The user is not supposed to also be a system operator and/or a developer."

Umm, and this argues for Windows how? You've got a virus scanner and adware software to install and keep up to date, you've got Windows Update, but oh.. that only updates *Windows*, so then you are supposed to either check if every other package is up to date, or they check for you and independently hassle you to update! Also, if you change hardware, you have to reinstall windows, no way around it. That is a serious pain! Ubuntu and most Linux distros? They actually USE packages, so a "Windows Update"-like updater actually updates EVERYTHING. If I have a system acting up, I can just move my hard disk over, simple as that, Ubuntu (and a lot of distros) deal with going into a totally different system no sweat.. it does make hardware upgrades less exciting when I've got the exact same software, but saves MASSIVE time compared to having to install a copy of windows, virus scanner, adware, tweak what I want, updates, updates, and more updates, etc.

"Stuff is supposed to be installed by just loading it on the system from a package."

This makes the best argument for Linux -- this is how installs on most distros work. Windows doesn't usually USE packages, it uses .exes that install software. (.MSI packages are only used by sys admins as far as I know.). And since it has no package manager, the packages do not stay up to date, unlike under Linux where the package manager keeps your apps up to date all in one place. On my Ubuntu box, it says "You have 25 updates available", you click on that baloon, click "Install Updates", and you are done. This can be set to be automatic. In Windows, Windows Update is more or less similar but ONLY handles Windows (and maybe office), everything else has it's OWN update methods, or doesn't update at all.

---------------------------------

Anyway.. I don't agree with the IBMers pessimism about Linux on the desktop. The general inertia of Windows is spot-on, but I disagree that there's much catch-up for Linux to do -- I've found it superior to Windows personally. I do wonder if Windows will pull a "CP/M"... back in the day, CP/M looked unstoppable, until a shift from Z80s to 8088s kicked in and the CP/M market share collapsed (there WAS a CP/M for 8088 but it didn't catch on.) I question if Microsoft could get a Windows port in a timely matter to, say, ARM, even if they wanted too. I do agree that using Linux to fill specific markets and niches is smart though -- both the kernel and packages are very flexible in terms of what can be put in and left out making the whole system highly flexible to a particular market's needs.

Linux isn't always the best with printers, especially multi-function ones. Driver disks from manufacturers are Windows and maybe OSX but no Linux. That's not Linux's fault but then again the end user with their shiny new paper-weight isn't likely to give a toss either.

Canon do Linux drivers on download from their site but that's not good enough for your average point click user who'd just about manage an install disk so the issue remains. Multi-functions are a pretty prevalent category these days.

For the record, Windows 7 installs like Ubuntu. Very little fuss and no 20 questions staged interactive install.

These "simple" users are probably still better off with OSX in my opinion as it is still more friendly to the pleb.

"...still haven't figured out who and what to target Linux at?"

http://www.fixedbylinux.com/linux

You say that there has never been an instance of Windows that just works, well you might be in for a surprise if you try Win 7. I installed the Win 7 Ultimate RC on an Acer A1 netbook (completely standard N270 Atom, 1 gig of RAM, 160 gig HDD, 9.3in display) about a month ago. After a completely uneventful install, it automatically checked for and installed updated drivers for the grapics and wireless network card from the Microsoft website and has been working fast and reliably ever since, even running the Aero desktop with all eye candy enabled.

(FYI I am not a Windows fanboy, Until recently I was running Open SUSE 11 after trying most flavours of Linux).

Yes, this is only one install but since it is on a piece of kit that isn't even officially supported yet it bodes well for other more mainstream machines.

I think the IBM guy has a point, If I run a server or other enterprise hardware I use a Unix derivative, for a normal consumer desktop Win 7 might give Linux a commercially unattainable target to reach.

@David Harrington

"Linux has been trying for many years to become the dominent (sic) player in the desktop market and has resolutely failed, a fact which Linux fans should wake up and accept."

Why?

It makes as much sense as OpenVMS or AS/400 on the desktop. You can't be all things to all people, Linux should focus on the heavy industrial iron where it excels. Grandma doesn't want to think about kernel revisions, /dev, or whether she's running KDE or Gnome.

Like all species in the ecosystem, find your niche and thrive in it. Servers are where Linux belongs.

I do all my code development on Centos 4, which is a pretty recent Red Hat clone. I occasionally do some web browsing on Firefox. Problem: Firefox 3 is not supported on Centos 4, so I'm stuck with the obsolete Firefox 2.

Back in Windoze world. I ran W2K until a couple of months ago, and have only recently switched to XP. Installing Firefox 3(.5) on W2K was absolutely trivial, and it ran perfectly.

Here's the reality check: W2K is 9 years old; it's older than Red Hat 7, which I used to run in 2001. RH has gone through versions 8, 9, and RHEL 1 through 5 since then. Each version was, I think, supposed to have a 5 year support lifetime, but even RHEL 4 is now obsolete and no longer supported.

I've been waiting 20 years for a usable desktop Unix distro, and it's never happened. There's not even a usable replacement for Windows Explorer; if you can't get that right, what on earth *can* you get right? The reasons are obvious, but you can't point them out without getting a kicking from the freetards.

more like trying to make a better barn door.

I find it hard to believe that we are arguing over the desktop - or a better way to keep in the horse, when we should be having driving lessons for our matter transporter!

When people start using their computers as computers and not glorified typewriters with emulations of Victorian office features running in the background then perhaps we will be at the start of the computer revolution.

Linux users don't want linux to be popular.

There's already a popular user friendly Unix where you can buy programs off the shelf : it's called OS X. Yes, the hardware is expensive but the price of running a minority platform tends to be paying more, working harder to find things and using applications with a smaller set of well tuned functionality rather than applications with more, less optimised functions.

If Linux wants to be popular on the desktop, it needs to have a standard desktop distribution. The fact people object to both OS X and Ubuntu indicates this may be some time coming.

Not to mention that Ubuntu still doesn't have it where it counts. The last version I tried was 8.10, which had driver problems, confusing application repositories and the tendency to drop to a root command prompt with no help and no web browser (lynx or otherwise) when things went wrong. Not adequate for the average user.

Windows? Installs without an issue. Vista's driver issues are a thing of the past now and it's years since I've had to resort to no more than a command prompt to fix things in Windows.

I'd also highlight much popular open source software as being less than impressive than it appears on first glance, other than by the fact it exists at all. Open Office? Crashes repeatedly on Vista x64 performing trivial tasks - nothing else does. Firefox? 3.6a1 seems ok, but other releases are a bloated pig. Eschews native cryptography services on the platforms it runs on and has deeply shitty multilingual support. You have to search for 64 bit Windows versions.

Yes, all the above software is free, but it also needs to compete with commercial software and often it's failing to do that. If Linux is made accessible enough to the average user, basically it'll be very similar to Windows.

Perhaps they should aim for sites that use a lot of computers running only a few applications. A call centre would be an obvious and extreme example. It would be a waste of money to pay for Windows licences just to run a buggy browser. There are probably also a lot of government offices, law firms, etc, where the employees are only permitted to run a few applications, all of which are available on Linux.

Not that you have to use the command line for much.

They should turn the Linux package system into a sort of App Store, OpenSuSE are sort of doing this.

Linux will probably infect the desktop via mobile phones.

Cheap DOS/Windows hardware made Linux possible.

Non technical people want the excitement of a fight between Windows and something else, I don't think the Linux people care, they are saddened by people wasting money on Windows and its needed cruft.

Take a laptop - £460 = £300 65% for the hardware £160 35% for Windows

If they can shrink the bloat, dump a lot of old (and frankly obsolete) hardware drivers ans pare it down to just basic CPU, memory, USB, disk, networking, video, keyboard and mouse drivers. Then load it into a sufficiently large flashable BIOS they might have a chance.

Yes, I know there are projects that claim to do this - but where are they when they're needed? (and more to the point, which M/board manufacturers are using it?). What you end up with is a sort of desktop PDA with a decent sized screen and boots in ...one ... .two ... and it's there. Build in a smallish SSD and include a web browser that links to networked applications and that might, just be a hit.

Forget configuration, updates, patches and all that malarkey. Turn the PC into a toaster that people just switch on and use.

Cost is a big factor and everyone following Windows is walking in blind. To quote one of The Register articles - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/01/microsoft_windows_7_discounts_gamble/ - "So, Microsoft is discounting prices to dislodge Apple and build market share, with a long-term view of up-sell. And yet there's a fundamental contraction at the heart of this matrix."

People seem to have lost sight of the fact that, like a supermarket subsidising to kill off the local corner shop ... one that corner shop is out of the market, the prices will shoot through the roof.

Any IT manager worth their salt should recognise this situation and take account of it in their calculations. After all, running Linux isn't free ... it costs in better trained support staff rather than the monkey-see-monkey-click Microsoft junk. It's just a question of where you put your money.

But then ... that is what our society, our managers, our money grabbing board members want ... screw tomorrow, I want profits now.

... and then tomorrow comes ... and then they take their golden parachutes and dive out of the plain that is crashing because it can't afford the fuel any more.

Wasn't out fault, Gov. Yeh, right. I hooe your parachute turns in to a parashite on the way down.

Did you mean to write 'These are people who have problems with "copy" and "paste", and will never comprehend regedit.exe' ?

Yeah, Linux often requires editing text config files - but for most people, using a 'desktop' distro like Ubuntu, the user simply ticks boxes in a GUI like they do in Windows. The argument that no user can use a desktop system without learning advanced vi is like arguing that users can't use a desktop Windows system without learning advanced RegEdit and .bat files.

Of course, when they want to do something more complicated, they can go and edit the config file itself, in Windows you have to dive in with RegEdit - that well known, highly intuitive, human readable config editor. Of course, if you make a mistake in RegEdit you will never ever render the system unbootable in a way that makes it impossible to fix ! And even using RegEdit, you'll find that Windows simply doesn't support all sorts of advanced things that Linux does out of the box.

Of course, it's complicated configuring complicated things - which is why most desktop users don't do it (or need to do it). It's even more complicated configuring complicated things in Windows - or at least the complicated things it can actually do.

Simply by providing an alternative it has forced Microsoft provide what the customer wants. If Microsoft did know this they wouldn't bother to pay for Linux vs Windows "Studies".

Also Look at the difference between the way the ME and Vista failures have been spun.

ME - "there is nothing wrong with Windows ME but you should upgrade to Windows 2000 just because it's new"

Vista - "We have learned the lessons of Vista and you should upgrade to Win7 because it is faster and not so bloaty"

Do you think that would have happened without a viable alternative?

"1. Ubuntu does what these users need. And does it simply and reliably."

Unless you have an Intel graphics chipset (extremely common) and want to use multiple screens (very common) or any eye-candy. Or if you want to use many common printers (especially multi-function).

Or listen to MP3s. Or watch videos. Or... I know these can be done (I have set them up), but hey are post install and not always straight-forward.

Oh, and users WILL have to get used to the command line and, my friend, if a bit fail FAIL to the average user.

"2. It's far easier to install Ubuntu than to install any version of Windows."

It's about the same actually. In fact, in some ways Windows can be easier and you don't need all the post-install crap to get things going.

Having said that, keeping a Linux bos (esp. Ubuntu) up to date is way easier than anything Windows can even dream of.

I would love it if the Linux world would get a decent desktop distro. With XP going out of date I really want to convert - but it does not offer what I need, so I guess I am going to have to check Windows 7 compatibility and stick to Redmond. Just two things - multiscreen and printers. That's all I want, it's not too much to ask is it?

(I know *some* drivers allow decent multi-screen; but it is simply too hard to find out which ones allow what and it is seemingly random. With Windows if you have two monitor jacks, you get multi-screen support; consistent, concise, different resolutions and it just works. C'mon Linux - hurry up and get with the 21st century!)

But what about Joe Ordinary who buys his software at Walmart? Last I checked, there's no Linux software there. So he's running his Ubuntu software and it's tax time and he runs off and get TurboTax or TaxCut or whatever (because it's what everyone else uses, it's what he's used to, and it has something FOSS will probably never have--guarantees). Thing is, even if WINE is installed, what are the odds that he's going to have a hard time getting the program installed?

So you can run Ubuntu and so on with off-the-shelf hardware. But what about off-the-shelf SOFTWARE?

The big problem for Linux is there are to many business critial apps that run on Windows. Companys don't want an OS, they want a computor that will run everything they use, and if you think that Office, outlook and IE are the only things that people want then you have never worked for a big company, or have never looked at how people are using there PCs.

AutoCAD is a case in point. It will not run on Linux. Companys won't change to something "like AutoCAD". They want AutoCAD. Its what everyone uses and it is a very complex program, so companys are NOT going to change.

One of the reasons that Linux hasn't made it to the desktop is commercial games.

If games companies don't start creating games for Linux then Linux will be stuck as a server OS.

@Greg Fleming - have you tried Gnucash .. i think that's what the ap is called. I've been doing my home accounts on it for years. i know it has got more complicated stuff in it but I don't know if it will do for you and your tax needs.

@John70 - Unreal Tournament 2004 came with a Linux install on the same commercial DVD as the Windows install came on. It is a lot smoother on Linux, but I can't find any of the Linux patches for it :-( Also, Neverwinter Nights came in a Linux verison as well and one of the Quake engines was ported over, which is what AlienArena (in Synaptic) uses.

I think the real killer are the mobile phone, camera, sat nav, etc., etc., manufacturers who don't supply Linux software. Fortunately, that's what Wine is for :-D

I did talk with Toshiba about why Linux didn't come on the NB200 like it did on the NB100 series. They said that too many people returned the Linux versions because they didn't want to use a new OS, or ordered it in error ... and they didn't get enough feedback from the people who DID use Linux.

I told them that as microshaft have the advertising bucks, if they really wanted the pay off then they needed to come up with some tutorial videos. Since then I've been trying to get the Open University, among others, to get another IT Educational program (like that one in the 80's) back on to our screen.

Also, Tosh said that I couldn't get rid of the Windows tax on the NB200 because Microshaft had subsidised the entire damn range. If i wanted Windows off, the bare metal would cost me more. So ... thanks Microsoft, I got a cheaper netbook thanks to you!!! It is now running Linux, of course!

"How did we manage to be convinced that we need quad core and 4GB RAM for desktop work?"

Well it was that or try and fit a nitrous system to my 14yr old Corsa. The computer's cheaper in the long run and less likely to explode and kill me.

How to do multimonitor using two Nvidia cards in Ubuntu 8.10:

Stick Ubuntu 8.10 on, try to get 3+ monitor multimonitor going on Nvidia. Note that the oh so wonderful open source driver can't do that and you need to used a closed binary driver. Tick box that says 'yes, fuck off and give me the driver that works - I don't care where it comes from'.

Now watch as the system crashes due to including the wrong components (kernel driver support and Nvidia driver are the wrong versions, IIRC). Use recovery menu to recover X.

It doesn't work.

Drop to command line. No help. No anything. No way to find out what's wrong unless you have another system with a web browser on it.

What you actually have to do is sudo to root, then apt-get lynx or similar, then navigate websites in text mode to find out what to download, then drive FTP or lynx, then run the app and remove all the old cruft, then reboot.

Then it works. Oh so easy for a beginner.

How to get multimonitor working in Windows :

Go to display properties. Select 'extend desktop onto this display'. Click ok. No reboot required.

Perhaps not quite an every day occurence, but not ridiculously rare, either.

Oh, and just to be fair :

How to get multimonitor working in OpenBSD

X -configure and a mild tweak gets same card multimonitor working seamlessly. Try to add another card. Fail, despite xorg.conf fiddling.

Ask on mailing list. Theo de Raadt tells you 'Xorg have fucked up multi card multimonitor. complain to them'.

Give up.

Have you actually seen a Linux desktop that is less than five years old? Your ignorance is breathtaking. Download Ubuntu, burn a CD, boot it up and take a tour. I promise you will not have to do any compiling or use sed, awk, grep etc.

My 85 year old non techie mother can do that so I guess you can.

>>> "Most people say, 'I don't want to be bothered. It just works.

Yeah, Same for me. Thats why I switched to Linux as my desktop and have never looked back.

One day I just got totally fed up with all the endless Microsoft annoyances that other people are so used to living with they dont even see them any more. Not that Linux doesnt have its own problems, but once you're set up, Ubuntu is a whole lot more usable, more powerful, and much friendler than Windows, especially Vista.

'Linux isn't always the best with printers'

When I plug in a compatible printer to Ubuntu I get it installed in about four clicks and it takes about two minutes. Far, far easier than Windows. No faffing about with CD's.

The exception is for host based printers - but hopefully the manufacturers will see that they're missing out on decent percentage.

For example, HP support Linux really well - so it's the only printers we buy.