For over a decade Linux has been sitting at the precipice of Victory, finally a viable and fitting alternative to that awful Redmond, WA based juggernaut.
Um, well, I thought so at Mandrake 7.0, then 8.0, then I sort of moved back to Windows (okay I never moved away, I admit it) because of all silly and selfish reasons, I wanted to be able to print a document. Yep, that was what drove me away from Linux and back into the filthy clutches of thy cyborg we know and love as Bill Gates (imagine the image of Bill Gates at Slash Dot right now).
So now Linux can print, even read thumb drives, and if you know how to hack it or if you have just the right installation you can even play HD Movies.
Point being is that it is still just a side show. There are the voisterous children (yeah, of all ages) who go on and on about how they dumped Windows, but they don't tell you about what they either didn't need that Windows does provide to many users and/or what struggles they had to endure to save that average annual cost of about $60 for an OS.
$60 is based on what it would cost to upgrade every three or four years, perhaps for some like me it is lower, but that is a safe ball-park-like number.
I spend $60 a month of fast food - a month! Wow, but I cannot imagine being so damned cheap as to limit the usefulness of this modern appliance we know as a personal computer just to avoid MS getting a small chunk of change from me.
That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface on why business doesn't want to embrace Linux (well business does but it cannot afford the high cost of Linux....yep, you read that right, the high cost of Linux).
So my final thought is a question, does a face lift really do squat to improve the viability of Ubuntu or any of the other myriad flavors/versions/distros of Linux?
When I started using Ubuntu, granted the first time was when I went open-source for a full 48 hours, the interface was dark, a little depressing, and reminded me of a depressing sewage works. But not anymore.
The new user interface - though not radically overhauled - reminds me of the transition between the vibrant, fauvist-style blue XP interface, to the see-through and transparent Vista interface.
Ubuntu 10.04 will be the next major version of the popular open-source operating system. This refresh may be indicative of the creators being more user interface and experience aware, and with a new logo and branding mechanism, this looks more like a brand overhaul as well as a new-look operating system.
But, for the first time user, it breaks me to say that this isn’t enough.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes highlights most of the reasons, from little or OEM support to the end user, no gaming support and the distribution differences. But there are more that worries me.
There is still a load of confusion aired over drivers, hardware support and installations. The in-built software center makes it relatively easy to install a set amount of programs and applications, but the wider aspects from basic Windows use would cause the first time user to struggle.
The initial hump from overcoming the Windows obsession will be far too difficult for many - the simpler things rather than anything else. The addiction we have to Microsoft technology isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it only works if you can get your hit - whether it be a money issue or an availability issue.
Improving boot-up times or the installation experience, even to tweaking the lighting and the overall user interface isn’t enough. Linux is still a niche market and students aren’t gusty enough to embrace it yet without a real killer feature or alignment to what they are already used to.
