Yesterday I had an interesting experience with one of my computers which helped me to understand why Linux is still far from being user friendly.
Please bear in mind, that when I’m saying “user friendly”, I’m not talking about myself or any IT-related person. I’m talking about an average folk, who can use keyboard and mouse, but unaware about the inner workings of a computer.
Anyway, the pc is built around Asus P5B-E motherboard, which has an on-board audio, but for some reason it hasn’t recognized it, so I had to go through the process of figuring out what seems to be the issue. Well, after 5 minutes I was able to figure out that the chip in question is AD1988 and there are drivers to support it. A little more googling and I decide to upgrade my ALSA (an audio library (and kernel level API) for Linux) to the latest version. 15 minutes later it’s all done and I’m up and running.
I’m happy, but the question is – how many average users will want to deal with it?… you have to run multiple command line statements, figure out what you need, download sources, recompile and install the final product. Simple question: how many times in your life have you compiled something for Windows (unless you’re a developer)? I can’t imagine the situation when you need to compile something for such a trivial task in Windows. Never mind, even more complicated tasks are automated. Until the same level of simplicity is achieved in Linux, it won’t be popular. Let me rephrase it – it will stay popular for a very limited number of people who can see its real beauty behind the unfriendly exterior. So far Ubuntu is moving in the right direction by adding as much GUI based configuration tools as possible.
Tags: Ergonomics, Linux, Windows
Yep, that’s the same problem I had when I was foolin with it at the turn of the century. It’s less of an issue now, but, yeah, if you start off with a PC for which a lot of the drivers haven’t been reversed engineered, you’re going to be in for some google cramps if you’re going to attempt linux on it.
There are a few manufacturers that are manufacturing with Linux in mind as the OEM OS, so that should be less problematic for the average person (tho watchout come upgrade time).
The very nature of it’s open source ecosystem limits the ceiling for adoption.
To give it due credit though, on those occurrences when you don’t have to download anything, it leaves a surprisingly good impression. I just recently installed Ubuntu on my new Thinkpad, and everything started up right away, it had drivers for every single device, including wireless, bluetooth and even those fancy hotkeys. I had more issues with Vista on the same laptop, despite having a factory Lenovo install DVD – it didn’t recognize some of the hardware, so I had to download updated drivers for it. Linux just booted up with a 12Mb flash image, collected all the required components, and everything worked right away, hassle free. Very impressive.
@ Dmitry, how about the fingerprint reader drivers?