Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Mainstream Linux? Will never happen.

In my post yesterday I mentioned I might play with Unbutu Linux on one of my spare machines. Well in the process of looking up information to do it I decided that Linux will never be mainstream.

As much as I bash M$ the simple fact is they will always be the dominant OS. Not because of some crooked things or getting rid of the competition. The reason M$ will always be the dominant OS is because of ease of use.

The reason Linux will never be mainstream can be summed up in three lines:

$ ./configure
$ make depend && make
$ sudo make install

No. Mainstream people do not want to go to a command line to compile and install stuff. We want to click on a happy little icon, hit next three or four times, then hit finished.

Now I've been in the command line world. I know how to do it, I've done it before. There is no reason for it any longer with today's computers. Linux has GUI available, but still gotta go to the command line to install it or run it, then gotta go to the command line to install anything onto the GUI, then gotta go to the command line to remove anything, etc etc.

Until Linux gets away from requiring the command line it will never ever be mainstream.

Now all you Mac people are of course going to say that Mac's are easy to use. Yea for the end-user but ever notice that there isn't very much software support for the Mac? Ever try to buy a non-Mac machine with OS/X on it? Go away.

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