[0xdefec8]

As a dude who just tried Ubuntu for the first time in 5 years to see how far they've come, but couldn't because the fucking liveCD didn't have a driver for my cdrom, this rings true.

But for what it's worth, after a few grueling days getting the p.o.s. up and running, I was shocked to have all the UI fluff my macbook has, plus the infinite list of other great stuff that's inherent to Linux.

The moral? Just shrinkwrap all OSS with a CS degree holding nerd who has a couple days of free time.

[paulgb]

To be fair, what percent of Windows users could actually install the OS if they needed to?

[Elepsis]

If you buy Windows and have trouble installing it (which, by the way, is far less likely in my experience than with most Linux installs -- although things are getting better on that front, too), there's a phone number I/my grandma can call for help. You'd be surprised by how big a difference that makes.

[paulgb]

Yeah, I'm not suggesting that the Linux installation process is as friendly as Windows (though, as you said, things are getting better). But how many Windows users even know what an operating system is? How many of them realize that Windows isn't built-in to the computer? I think there's a mental obstacle here that would make installing Windows difficult for many (but not all) Windows users.

[0xdefec8]

Not sure I understand the question, you mean could they install Windows on the same machine? It was running XPsp2 prior to Ubuntu 9.04.

[paulgb]

I mean how many users could take a PC with no OS and get Windows running on it.

Installation is an obstacle for linux adoption, but it's not (entirely) because the installation process is broken. It's because Linux doesn't have the OEM distribution model that Microsoft does.

I don't think this refutes anything you've said, I'm just pointing out that it is more than a software issue.

[sp332]

Out of curiosity, what kind of CD-ROM drive requires a special driver?

[blasdel]

It's not usually the CDROM, but the chipset it's attached to. A lot of recent motherboards have multiple disk controllers -- usually a standard one that's a part of the motherboard chipset, and a second super-shitty one (often from JMicron) so that they can advertise extra ports (also because Intel chipsets didn't support SATA hotplug for the longest time).

It's fairly common for the CDROM in an 'enthusiast' desktop to be attached to the single PATA port on a secondary controller.

[sophacles]

Wait, you're actually saying that:

1. Someone still makes non-standard cd-roms? 2. Someone else still buys them?

After learning you are person #2, why would anyone ever trust any other judgement you make?

[0xdefec8]

and therein lies the predictable attitude that will keep linux a distant 3rd on the desktop.

[krschultz]

Linux users have no need to court people like you. We're not a business, market share is a meaningless metric. I don't care if 1% or 100% of the people using computers use Linux, what I care about is if there are enough people working on the projects to make it usable for ME. There are.

People who complain about FOSS community's "attitude" should really check their own sense of entitlement. We are talking about you getting something FREE that costs hundreds of thousands of man hours to make. If it takes you more than one try to get it to install then think of that as the cost to enter instead of the $150 you pay Microsoft

(incidentally Windows suffers similar problems on my home desktops SATA controller as you describe having under Linux, it is not a Linux thing it is a shitty hardware thing).

[0xdefec8]

Keep beating that strawman, you're sure to make a point eventually.

The argument isn't whether or not Linux is useful to a bunch of nerds, myself included, or whether or not I should kiss rms for bestowing this gift unto humanity for free. It's whether it's competitive against its better known closed source counterparts on the Desktop. And you basically answered that question in your first paragraph.

[krschultz]

Linux is better for me than Windows, hands down.

My girlfriend and parents prefer it too. If your entire interaction with the computer is through Firefox, a music player, and Office like it is for them, OpenOffice is actually closer to what they know than the "new" Office 2007. Subtract out viruses, add in never needing drivers (how do I make my printer work? just plug it in), and they are much happier under Linux than Windows.

I've installed it for a lot of people and there are basically 3 periods. 1) Installing (which turns a lot of people off if they can't get it right there). 2) Getting used to it (which basically is people learning it and finding out its not that alien) and 3) Preferring it.

I have yet to find someone who didn't get to stage 3 in about 6 months. You don't get it at first but eventually you go back to windows and start looking for the 'Always on Top' checkbox or you have a popup during a presentation and say, why the hell am I paying for this?

[sophacles]

Speaking of strawmen...

Please tell me which desktop you mean. Do you mean the home desktop? Or perhaps the administrative assistant desktop that needs access to the calendar, word, and email, (maybe the web too...). Perhaps you mean the desktops of the engineers, using autocad and a pile of specialized tools. And so on.

Each of the above has different needs (perhaps even vastly different). A smart consultant/company/etc would go ahead and stop trying to use the same tool for every job. Some of those environments could probably switch to linux, and after a couple of months of "getting used to it time" everything would continue on as if nothing happened.

The point is that "the desktop" has always struck me as a strawman to begin with.

[kl4m]

and therein lies the predictable attitude that will keep linux a distant 3rd on the desktop.

See what I did there?

[fatdog789]

1) China. Enough said. 2) The box never says whether the cd-rom uses a "standard driver model."

After reviewing the facts as they exist in this world, why would anyone have trust your reasoning or logical skills ever again? Moreover, given how important logical reasoning is to the computer programming, why would anyone ever trust your computer programming skills ever again? Finally, given how important computer programming skills are to being a computer geek, why would anyone ever trust your geek cred ever again?

See what I did there?

[sophacles]

1)Korea 2) I have yet to meet a cd-rom in this century that didn't just work with linux, no matter what it declared.

After naming an asian company, then stating some vaguely related nonsense about talking inanimate objects, I will now imply there is some sort of link to your sex life: you are impotent.

Despite your pretense of cleverness, I did in fact see what you did there. You pretended that my ad-hominem attack, which trivializes his judgement based on my disbelief of the existence and his subsequent buying of some obscure hardware invalidates his sweeping generalization about an entire industry (an argument silly on its own since driver problems are a universal issue), is somehow the same type of ad-hominem attack as stating random unrelated facts and listing the implications of poor reasoning, reductio-ad-absurdum. Well sir, you are wrong, my blatantly ad-hominem attack (which is pretty absurd in itself) is not the same as your poor attempt at using a witty question to counter it.

Edit: the above run-on sentence is intentionally confusing and absurd.