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From: wm_walsh on 21 Apr 2008 11:26
Hi!

(OT posting, but who said that? I didn't hear anything! :-))

I thought the article was interesting, especially since it started out
saying that "Linux is ready for the desktop" and built upon that theme
as it progressed.

I respectfully disagree.

I well remember when Linux first "broke out" into the spotlight of
public knowledge. I remember obtaining and running a distribution of
Red Hat and going around and around with it over the simplest things.
Some of that was unfamiliarity with the OS (despite having diddled
around with Unix in the past on workstations) and some of it was just
plain user unfriendliness. I didn't think too much of it at the time,
but in the back of my mind I hoped it would get better.

Time has definitely improved at least some of these things. Today it
is realistically possible to put Linux on a system, place a user in
front of it and have them do productive things with the OS. It has
become a LOT friendlier.

However, while the underlying code is very stable, the userland stuff
needs work. A LOT of work. Eric S. Raymond wrote about going through
printer hell with a copy of Fedora Core Linux. He closed his article
stating that his conversations with some of the developers ended on a
positive note, and that some of these things would be fixed.

Some time after reading his article, I set Fedora Core 6 Linux up on a
Power Macintosh G4/400. It really breathed new life into the machine,
but as you can guess, I had a LOT of fun with the printing. What
should have been a simple task turned out to be a major pain and I
finally gave up on it after something happened that caused my DeskJet
5800 to start throwing out the same print job over and over again.

All I can guess is that some of these things Were Not Fixed. (I am not
a Linux whiz-kid, but I'm not totally stupid either.)

I won't get into it here, but I ran into the same kind of stupidity
(with video hardware and X servers) while setting up Debian with a
friend of mine.

These kind of things Should Not Happen. And until they stop happening,
desktop Linux isn't ready. I don't think it would be hard to fix a lot
of this--I have a great deal of faith in and see the promise of free
and open software--but these things need to be addressed.

Now would be a good time, with Microsoft not having the best of luck
with Vista and some people not wanting a Mac.

I'll get off of my soap box now, and let the group return to more Dell
oriented subject matter. :-)

William
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