| A beginner's romp through desktop Linux |
Sep. 11, 2007
Analysis -- Kim Brebach, a Windows user and consultant with an Austrialia-based technology marketing group, recently took a long trip into the land of the Linux desktop and reports back on what he found.
Now I, on the other hand, am an operating system expert. You name it -- OS/2, VAX/VMS, AIX, Windows, Linux -- I've run it. In particular, when it comes to Linux and Unix, I've not only used them, I use them every day. My daily operating system suite is: SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 10 SP 1, OpenSUSE 10.2, SimplyMEPIS 6.5, Mint Cassandra, SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) 10 SP 1, and RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) 5 for the Linuxes alone; Mac OS X; and Windows versions ranging NT to Vista, so that I know what's what with Microsoft's offerings.
That's all grand, if you want an informed opinion on what's what in desktop operating systems. But, if you want to know what an ordinary, somewhat tech-savvy Windows user makes of the Linux desktop, I'm not your man. Fortunately, Kim Brebach, a consultant with Technoledge, a specialist technology marketing group based in Sydney, Australia, which focuses on IT, biotechnology, and healthcare marketing, is your guy to tell you what a beginner makes of desktop Linux.
In his eight, yes eight, part series, Brebach starts as a Windows XP user who's disgruntled by Windows and, in particular has no desire to move to the vexsome Vista. Along the path of trying to find a replacement he looks at pretty much every desktop Linux with more than a handful of supporters.
In the end, what he finds as the best of the best of the desktop Linuxes doesn't really surprise me. Expert or novice, an outstanding desktop is an outstanding desktop.
What I think you'll find much more interesting, -- whether you've been using Linux since hand-compiling it yourself on an 80386, or if you just bought a Dell 1420N preloaded with Ubuntu -- is Brebach's journey.
Some people, I know, will complain "Why couldn't he have figured this or that out, it's easy!"
Well, no, many of the problems he runs into aren't easy. Let's not forget that in 2007, most Windows users have never had to use a command line to do anything. To expect them to first have to hunt down the right solution for, in his case, getting Intel G915/G945 graphic chips to display at 1280 x 800 resolution on a wide-screen display is silly. Then, to expect them to get those instructions into the system is just asking them to throw up their hands in disgust and go back to Windows.
Yes, you or I might be able to do that without thinking. But, am I an ordinary Windows user trying Linux for the first time? Nope. Are you? If you can't see what his problem is, you're not an ordinary user either.
Some of his other complaints -- the muddle of different package managers, for example -- are completely fair. It, as he notes, is much easier to update Linux than Windows. But, oh what a headache it can be finding out how to do it in the first place in some distributions. This isn't just Brebach's opinion. Anyone who really works with Linux software installation issues, including Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu's main man, agrees that we've got to bring some rhyme and reason to package management.
Brebach also has some good things to say about Linux that I think we, the Linux desktop users, often overlook. Ask any desktop Linux supporter why they use it, and the words "cost" and "security" are sure to appear. Brebach, also points out that Linux makes it easier to install software than Windows, once you get the hang of your package manager, and that Linux has more than 15,000 applications to choose from.
At day's end, Brebach isn't convinced that desktop Linux is ready to take the place of XP for most ordinary PC users. Along the way, though, he gives newcomers to Linux all the information I think they'll need to decide if desktop Linux is right for them.
And, as he writes, toward his tale's conclusion, "In the end, it's not about which is a better place to live, but which has the fresher air and more freedom of choice. Too much choice may be confusing, but it's a whole lot better than none at all."
Exactly.
--Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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