Friday, October 5, 2007

Why I don't have linux on my desktop

We all love to love linux don't we? Well I do too mainly because I get to leave the dll-hell-world for a moment and enjoy a smooth and powerful computing experience. However, in my quest to find a suitable OS for my home laptop, I've finally settled on a mac for good. I'm not here to praise mac but to evaluate Ubuntu linux that I tried as desktop.
Here are my main problems which forced me to get rid of it:

  1.  It requires a detailed hack to get wi-fi to work. I managed it but a non-tech user will never be able to figure it out
  2.  A desktop for me is where I have to go to my terminal once in 6 months (I dont use cmd in windows, and use mac terminal only for fun)
  3. Linux community is always proud about how good apps like Openoffice and GAIM are. IMO, they are happy because at last they have an app to run...and it runs!!
  4. Ok, what do I do if I love my music and my iPod (God save me if I had a zune!). So what can I do? Oh yes I can use a looong hack to make it work with some crappy only-option media player
  5. I know open source is good for the world free of propriety softwares and technology. But what good is all this if at the end of the day my efficiency is reduced because I spend half the time finding hack and workarounds. It might be an excellent option for developers and geeks but definitely not for real world people (I have nothing against techies, I'm a java developer myself)
  6. Its definitely much much more secure than a windows pc, but I guess mac os x is a much better choice for non-techy/average user in that case
  7. Facing a problem? Google it, the results have all the solutions but....for the geeks, by the geeks. Try you best to figure out what they are saying about failed dependencies and what not
  8. No software currently beats MS Office apps, yahoo/msn/Adium messaging clients, iLife, iTunes
  9. Gaming! and I mean real games
  10. How about a browser other than firefox having more than .001% market share
  11. Oh I miss photoshop
The crux is, linux has miles to go in terms of user experience before it truly becomes a top class OS like MAC. Probably linux needs a few evangelists and a big sofware giant to back it up with neat apps.

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