Ubuntu has lead the charge to make the GUI top priority. Hense, why Grandma and surf the web, type emails and documents, using Linux based Debian derived Ubuntu.

Now that GNOME and KDE are in a headed race to be top DE… the Linux GUI has become usable, whole and mostly bug free.

Now, the next step is to make the GUI accessible, via API’s

Microsoft would be dead long ago, if it were not for it’s API … called WIN32. Now they have C# and .NET which gives microsoft an even larger head start.

Think VISUAL BASIC. It is very easy to create GUI apps using the drag and drop controls with some coding in for logic.

The reason why Linux is not making much of a dent in Desktop market, is because all these years people have had the tools to easily produce GUI software, to sell and build a MASSIVE market with.

Microsoft simply created the API and TOOLS ( Visual Studio and Visual Basic…now .NET and all that) so massive amounts of software programs could be mass produced for … the masses!

Now, the biggest barrier to entry is not having an awesome OS and Stable GUI (Linux+GNOME/KDE/ETC) but rather the transitioning of people using all those programs (photoshop, office, etc) to have an insentive to switch to mass producing software for Linux and Windows … (apple too)

Take for instance, game programmers. Windows is ideal for selling your game. 1) DirectX API and Programming Tools and 2) Everyone has a Windows machine at home to sell your game install on.

It is a catch 22 for Linux and Open Source, at this point in the ‘Mass Users Game’.

On one hand software vendors want to program their game on Linux. But, on the other hand, market % says it is not economically rational to port code to work on both Windows and Linux. Not to mention Apple.

It is a catch 22… before masses use Linux they want Software and loads of it, of commercial ‘boxed quality’ with a little sticker and logo.

But, corporations (software vendors) will not bring that software from Windows to Linux until there is more of a market… aka more mass users to sell to.

The problem is, not usablility at this point in the game, but rather, over coming this ‘catch-22′.

Python… easier to program with than C# and is portable because of intermediate codebyte. Good and all…

WINE project that tries to tackle the problem by trying to allow users to run Windows code on Linux. but, there are bugs, ever changing windows api, and does not fix the problem but rather tries to remedy it with a ‘work around’ to the problem.

microsoft learns from linux.

look at the Netbook thing. 100% linux, than 80% now linux is 10% netbooks with a 1 in 4 return rate… with Windows XP stealing the lions netbook market share, just in time for Windows 7 to arrive and fix the Vista problem. (We will have to see about Win 7 as it is not released yet, but Microsoft itself has stated that the only reason they took a second look at bloated Vista, was not because they thought they had a problem with Vista… no no… Windows 7 was created only because of the threat of Netbooks, which Linux allowed to happen.

This all seems to be about MONEY in the end. I think Linux is Linux and if you want it to ’succeed’ based on fiscal rationalizations, than you probably have it backwards.

CLI fear is nonsense. Normal ‘users’ can use the command line. Even normal ‘users’ can learn to program – programming isn’t terribly difficult, this modern affliction of lame-user ‘consumer’ mindset is great if you make the software you’re trying to sell them, but bad for everyone in general. The GUI gives the illusion of control whilst taking it all away from the user – the computer uses you.

On the topic of this post – I agree journalists need to do homework, but I have no problem reading raw reports from bloggers. That is what blogging is all about.

That is simply embarrassing. No app should be released without at least minimal help. I mean, it can take a couple hours to write it – how long did it take to write the app?

I had to learn both Linux and Windows at the same time. And I discovered that there wasn’t a penny’s worth of difference between them in terms of ease of use – although they are worlds apart in reliability and security. And I had to learn Linux from the command line first, THEN the GUI.

I do Windows tech support for a living at the moment, and believe me, a PC tech spends a lot of time on the command line even if normal users don’t. Almost anything you do to fix an ailing PC requires some Windows command line familiarity. There’s a reason Microsoft introduced a new Powershell command line utility.

But in my day to day use of openSUSE, I only go to the command line when I need to install some app that isn’t in the repository – or to recompile the NVidia drivers when the kernel is updated (and that’s only because I prefer the NVidia drivers direct from NVidia and not the ones in the openSUSE repositories). Occasionally I go command line because something might actually be easier to do there and I’m in a hurry. But that’s rare.

99 percent of my time is in the desktop, not the command line and for almost all users of any modern distro that will be the case. The only exceptions will be if you buy hardware that is not supported by the Linux kernel and requires proprietary drivers or reverse-engineered drivers or simply drivers that haven’t been integrated with the install process – and that’s an issue for the hardware seller, who chose not to support Linux users properly, not Linux itself.

The latter problem will be solved when corporate users finally decide that making Bill Gates the richest guy in the world isn’t a profitable use of their capital. Then they will start using Linux, then see that it would be logical to install the same OS on the desktop as that running on the server. Then they will demand drivers from their desktop suppliers, who will then demand certified drivers from their peripheral suppliers. And that will be that.

It’s quite likely the current economic collapse will hasten that process.

Matt Kukowski does have a point in terms of documentation, the Linux community might have to focus on multilevel documentations, basic getting started documents which features just GUIs for the average user (Ubuntu might be the new standard for writing such a document), a more advanced package for the machine administrator and an even more advanced set with the full set of instructions for terminals and other command line operations.

What do “zero-knowledge” posts point to?
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They point to problems that people encounter who *will not* read the manual, but who just want to do “simple” things, and go by what they see, in front of their eyes, on the desktop (and perhaps after pressing the “help” button a few times…).

Things like like installing some system hardware (a graphics card, a network card, sound options), or peripheral hardware (e.g. a mouse, a webcam or a printer that’s connected to their machine or to a server), browsing the net, creating and printing a spreadsheet or a text document.

I think we can all agree that for a modern OS all these “simple” things should not require any knowledge of the OS whatsoever. The ability to point and click should be sufficient.

The average user is not a system administrator
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Now there is where the problem arises. Linux in and by itself requires one know how to edit configuration files (and which ones), and to have a “mental map” of what system components are needed for the tasks mentioned, in what approximate order, how to install them, how to configure them, and how to troubleshoot them.

That is something for a system administrator (or even a dedicated amateur), not for an end-user who just happened to download a Linux distribution. It is most unreasonable to expect an end-user to suddenly become a system administrator for his own Linux system just because he bought a machine with Linux pre-installed or bought (or downloaded) a Linux DVD.

If this is what the author means by “learning”, then I totally disagree with him. The “Linux” he is envisioning is either a tool for experienced system administrators, experienced users who can double as system administrators, or a toy for people looking for a learning experience and with a lot of time on their hands.

Legitimate demands on an OS aimed at end-users
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For an end-user OS it is especially unreasonable to expect end-users wanting to do such “simple” things to read “man” files. Man files are turgid and unhelpful documents at the best of times. Even if they so happen to be up to date.

On the other hand, one may expect users to read and follow instructions in a “Howto” file, _provided_ that
(1) the user is clearly directed into the Howto file through the Help system, and the Howto is opened for him
(2) the instructions in said “Howto” file apply without any change whatsoever to the system being installed
(3) following the instructions literally will lead to success.

Anything short of that requires the services of a system administrator (which an end-user isn’t).

The role of the distribution
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So this is where the distribution steps in and puts together an end-user-proof system that hides the system administrator tasks behind a GUI (or tries to). This is no mean feat; in fact it is a real tour-de-force if done well. And doing it well is extremely tedious, detail-bound, and time-consuming. A task that OSS developers simply aren’t good at.

Which incidentally is why all of the small “homebrew” distributions fall so far short of the ideal of an end-user-usable OS and why you need large development teams like those at Red Hat, SuSE, and Ubuntu to put them together..

The role of zero-knowledge comments
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So the “zero-knowledge” comments almost invariably point to shortcomings of a specific distribution relative to the ideal of an end-user OS rather than to shortcomings in Linux itself (unless the distribution cannot handle certain hardware e.g. because there are no open-source drivers for it).

If (as various Linux afficionadoes sometimes claim) “Linux” is per definition as user-friendly (or zero-knowledge capable) as MS Windows, then such zero-knowledge reviews are a very good way of verifying that claim (or pointing out where it fails).

GUI does not help if there is a problem somewhere. In that case usually you have to edit configuration files and/or enter cryptic command at the command line. And you spend a lot of time in forums, looking for help.

Linux is not for everybody.

Windows is not for everybody – although M$ would want to.

Apple is not for everybody.

It all depends.