…just another hippy blog

A recent post published on ZDNet by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, "The world just isn’t ready for Linux", has cought my attention.

The author states that there are "areas Linux could improve on in order to transform itself from an operating system into a desktop platform": gaming, software support, stop assuming that everyone using Linux (or who wants to use Linux) is a Linux expert, hardware support.

1. Gaming. Adrian is sure right if he complains about most of the big PC games missing for the Linux platform. But what can Linux developers do about it? Why should we blame Linux? Mac OS X fans have the same problem, but we don’t hear people saying "Jeez, Mac is for geeks!". No, we hear "Yeah cool! I got the latest Mac and a new iPod leather case!" instead. The real problem is that most software developers don’t care about Linux because they are too stupid or too smart. But they don’t really care about Windows PCs too. Games are for gaming consoles. And that’s getting more true every year with the Nintendo, Sony and (yeah!) Microsoft selling nuclear-processor-powered high-performance machines. Porting a modern game to Linux is not such a huge problem as most of them use OpenGL. Linux is ready for gaming. The big gaming companies are not ready for (and don’t want to be ready for) Linux.
2. Software support. This may have been true some years ago. There’s plenty of software for Linux, most of it is free, some of it is way better than its Windows alternative and it’s easier to find. Where do people get their copy of Microsoft Office 2078? Bundled with their PC. Where do they get Ahead Nero Burning Rom and CyberLink PowerDVD? Bundled with their burner. Where do they get Adobe Acrobat Reader? Bundled with everything, like a can of beer. Adobe Photoshop? From a friend who knows P2P if they don’t use it for professional reasons. Where do Linux users get their software? Nobody bundles Linux software. Ahead produces Nero for Linux, but you have to download it. So most Linux software is bundled with.. yes, Linux. Plenty of software. And it can be updated automagically with an Internet connection. Another point may be "there is not enough software". Wrong. Take the OpenOffice suite. Take The Gimp. Take Amarok (there is really no Windows alternative that’s as good as Amarok!). Take most of the software a desktop user might want. Then take some professional software. There is some lack of professional software, yes. But we are talking about desktop users.
3. The world is geek. Again, this has been true for quite a while. But there was a reason. Linux was made by geeks for geeks. It took lots of time until it started (not long ago) to make its way into the desktop. Today this is no longer true. Sure, there is still lots of work to be done for Linux software to be user friendly, but a lot has been done. I think that Linux is (with some exceptions) quite user-friendly now. Just take the KDE and the GNOME desktop environments. And take desktop oriented distros like Ubuntu (remember that Ubuntu is based on Debian - a very geeky distro!) or SuSe. Again, there is still lots of work that needs to be done, but Linux does not pretend to be for developers any more.
4. Hardware support. True. Damn true. Linux lacks hardware support. But as for gaming, should we blame Linux? Ok, let’s admit it, Linux is in a small part responsible. The main problem is that most hardware vendors do not support Linux. The reason may be comprehensible: there are not enough Linux users and hardware drivers are strongly platform dependant. It’s not worth the money. But is this point of view this true? I doubt. Some important hardware vendors do support Linux (even if in a very limited way): nVidia, ATI, Creative, etc. I would love to ask one of their CEOs what they really think about it. Anyway, this is not an issue for which Linux is responsible. Nevertheless it is if we talk about integrating the hardware with the OS and with desktop applications. Though most desktop oriented distros featuring either KDE or GNOME have made big steps towards easy hardware interaction, there are still problems. An example: there are (and there have been in the past) plenty of automount routines and none of them would be working all the time without problems. Today, most desktop oriented Linux distros have almost no problems when you plug an usb memory stick in your PC. One last point: the KDE4 related Solid project aims to take hardware interaction to a new era.