Linux’s biggest enemy.
Linux has certainly a lot to overcome to gain more acceptances into people’s hearts. The community of users is now pretty large and has grown steadily through the years; much effort has been put into making Linux more accessible to non technical people, compatibility is better than ever, new applications keep popping up regularly while more mature ones improve over time. But one thing hasn’t changed, and it is, in my eyes, Linux’s biggest enemy: its users! Arrogance combined with a love of obfuscation make the self-appointed gurus the real enemies of the cause; as they have filled the void left by a lack of social life by learning all the commands and common programs, they have built that ‘superior’ attitude that pushes away some new users and certainly scares away the curious ones.
Is it really that hard?
If you look at Unix in general, the commands, interfaces, etc are notoriously inconsistent and many choices are plain arbitrary; The main difficulty in learning Linux is really being able to memorize things and be able to read the documentation. Alas, this is one of the big issues: the documentation is cryptic at times because it is usually written with many assumption; the first one is that the user is familiar with everything else but what they are reading about, and also it is usually very short on examples; Linux Gurus love when you have to work hard to find an answer. It is somewhat similar to reading a patent document, where everything fits together, but you have yet to figure out what the object really is about. There is no doubt that with time and patience to experiment, it is actually easy to learn; but this implies two things: you have time and you want to learn. I read this somewhere, and I really like this quote: ‘Free software is only free if your time is’.
Outgrowing the current situation.
In order to stop becoming a ‘geeks’ operating system, Linux has to become more accessible; Ubuntu is a pretty good distribution in that respect and they realized one thing: many users do not need a computer for more than email and the web. This is what many Linux advocates haven’t understood yet: Joe is probably as able as you to learn how to use the shell, but maybe Joe has a life with other interest and truly doesn’t care because he just wants to read his email. Unless it is easy, he will buy a Mac. This is why Macs are popular among the non-technical people, they are easy to use. Linux could be easier and retain all the flexibility behind the scenes, but this will happen only when the community changes attitude. Sure, most people are not paid to help others and wish they had spent a bit of time to educate themselves before asking questions; but, again, non technical users will not even know where to start and I really doubt that if someone has a problem with their Mac that they’d be told to go read the user manual. There are more and more tutorials and how-to, but most requests in forums and, even worst, on IRC are met with a childish hostility: "hahah, the mere mortal used ‘-Xd -f 5’ instead of ‘-xd -f 5’, he obviously didn’t read the documentation"… and he’s probably going to go back to Windows after that… good call. Until Linux advocates and forum dwellers are ready to accept that there are people that do not care about technology, Windows and Mac will remain far superior choices for anyone that just needs to use a computer and does not care and does not want to learn how they work.
For reference
This server runs on Linux CentOS, this article is typed on a Windows Vista laptop and the second laptop here runs Ubuntu and my desktop is Windows XP.
