Ars has a great post up on the 5 ways Ubuntu has made Linux more human in commemoration of the distro’s fifth birthday. They bring up some good points, including how being philosophically driven has helped Canonical drive development, its easy installation (which has gotten even simpler over the years) and setup process, and their focus on desktop usability. When using most other Linux distributions, I often feel that they’re developed by and for engineers–Ubuntu doesn’t feel like that at all.
I remember being gung-ho for Ubuntu in its early years–but that was long before I realized that the biggest problem with Linux desktop distributions is Linux. For all of Canonical’s attempts at making Ubuntu an easy-to-use environment, there are still situations where you need to bust out the command line, or hunt down and recompile an obscure package. It makes for a great operating system for non-techy users only after a Linux-head makes sure everything is up to par.
At this point I’m not sure if we’ll ever see a true mainstream Linux desktop environment. In practice, it still seems to work best in consumer devices (where users don’t care/don’t need to know what OS is being run). Until Linux distros can approach the ease of use and multimedia/device compatibility that Windows and Max OSX offer, the quest for Linux desktop domination seems excessively quixotic.
Ubuntu’s Fiesty Fifth Birthday, And Linux As A Desktop Solution
Ars has a great post up on the 5 ways Ubuntu has made Linux more human in commemoration of the distro’s fifth birthday. They bring up some good points, including how being philosophically driven has helped Canonical drive development, its easy installation (which has gotten even simpler over the years) and setup process, and their focus on desktop usability. When using most other Linux distributions, I often feel that they’re developed by and for engineers–Ubuntu doesn’t feel like that at all.
I remember being gung-ho for Ubuntu in its early years–but that was long before I realized that the biggest problem with Linux desktop distributions is Linux. For all of Canonical’s attempts at making Ubuntu an easy-to-use environment, there are still situations where you need to bust out the command line, or hunt down and recompile an obscure package. It makes for a great operating system for non-techy users only after a Linux-head makes sure everything is up to par.
At this point I’m not sure if we’ll ever see a true mainstream Linux desktop environment. In practice, it still seems to work best in consumer devices (where users don’t care/don’t need to know what OS is being run). Until Linux distros can approach the ease of use and multimedia/device compatibility that Windows and Max OSX offer, the quest for Linux desktop domination seems excessively quixotic.