When Will Linux Really Go Mainstream?
Despite the Linux and Ubuntu netbook craze, I think there is a simple reason why Linux is not a mainstream solution for most users — yet. Let me explain.
There’s this guy I met a few times at LinuxWorld. At the time I met him, he worked for Palm. I never can seem to remember his name, but I remember this quote from him, “Open Source Software: 80% as good as the last guy who worked on it needed it to be.”
His key point: There’s a difference between the Open Source development process and Commercial development processes. Commercial entities spend considerable time and money testing software and ensuring that it is relatively easy to use, bug free, and intuitive. However, Open Source projects are mostly interested in results and functionality rather than cosmetic tweaks.
And therein lies the reason, in my humble opinion, that Linux has not yet reached critical mass.
Novices Beware?
I have no problems getting around in most any Linux situation, but many non-technical users would have a tough time if they were dumped into a Linux environment.
My favorite example is e-mailing with Outlook users. If the Outlook user is configured to use the Microsoft RTF format, any e-mails you get from them will be encoded in a TNEF (winmail.dat) file. At one point, I used to say this was Microsoft’s fault for using TNEF and how it wasn’t a standard file format, but pointing fingers doesn’t make the experience any better for the end user. There are open source tools for decoding TNEF files, but the ones I have run across require to you to go through many non-standard steps just to open and extract the contents. Doing a quick search on Freshmeat will show you that in most cases you have to use an external program to open these pesky files. So, opening TNEF e-mails is not intuitive and not user friendly.
Another take on this same concept is how applications are installed and configured. If you install an application from a repository (apt,yum,yast,etc…), those packages have been tested and integrated for the distribution they are a part of. This means that the basic configuration is done, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they are configured in a useful way for the end user. Additionally, if you install an application that is not included in a repository, then it may not work properly at all due to poor testing, lack of intuitive configuration options, and lacking documentation.
One great example of this problem is Apache Tomcat. When you install Tomcat in Ubuntu from the apt sources, you get an installed Tomcat server, but it’s hardly functional. There’s no user account defined for the manager interface, there’s no pointers to tell you where to drop your application archives to have them loaded, and on and on… I’ve gotten to the point where it’s easier for me to download the package straight from Apache rather than try to use the version provided in the repositories. This could easily be addressed by providing a post-install script which would allow the user to enter some sane defaults for various options. That script should be written to be as intuitive and simple as possible so that the user does not need to have ten years of experience to understand it.
Don’t Kill the Messenger
I don’t want to sound like I’m beating up on all developers. Some Open Source apps do provide these sorts of configuration options (like when you install MySQL). The general idea of this article is to say that we should all spend a little more time trying to disprove the 80/20 rule by finishing off the last mile of the application, which is the polish and quality assurance. The extra effort and time will be what makes users more comfortable with Open Source and specifically Linux and Ubuntu. The overall issue is that we, as Linux users and developers, need to step back from our projects once in a while and try asking ourselves what average people doing average things would think about our software. If we want Linux to be the dominant operating system, then investing time and effort into quality assurance and intuitive user interfaces is where the battle will be won.
I don’t like to state a problem and just let it go at that, so here I am going to propose some ideas on what the solution may be.
Quality assurance certainly is a challenge. As developers and technical people, we are bad at testing software because we know not to put nonsensical information into places where it doesn’t belong. But, how do you find a sufficient test-bed of people to do alpha/beta testing and QA? Well, I propose that there be a new option for QA and testing volunteers on project sites. Many people want to contribute to the Open Source community, but do not have programming or other technical skills. These people are the ideal candidates for testing and QA because they do NOT know what inputs and settings will break the application (and subconsciously avoid it). That would be our call to service then, ask the end users to volunteer some time to tell us (the developers) what we can do to make their user experience better.
Finally, to answer the question set forth in the title of this article: When will Linux really go mainstream? Well, the answer is: When we start making sure that we follow through on our projects with user testing and quality assurance.
Contributing blogger Deven Phillips is a senior systems administrator and software engineer for a major manufacturing company based in Louisville, KY. He has used Linux since 1997, and Ubuntu in both desktop and server settings since 2006. WorksWithU is updated multiple times per week. Don’t miss a single post. Sign up for our RSS and Twitter feeds (available now) and newsletter (coming in 2009).
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The QA idea is a good one! Sign me up! I would be happy to play around with an open source Linux app and give you some feedback. Any takers?
That quote (Commercial entities spend considerable time and money testing software and ensuring that it is relatively easy to use, bug free, and intuitive) makes me LOL.
It’d more certain if you add that commercial entities ‘pretend to blablabla …bug free…’
Look at MS, Adobe, etc.
Why is this conversation taking place at all?
From my point of view Linux today is Mainstream. Ubuntu has more than 10 millon users and there are a lot of other distributions that have a big crowd as well.
Dell sells computer with Ubuntu, HP sells computer with Linux, more notebooks today sport some kind of linux, so why people still saying that Linux is not mainsteam.
Stop that.
Thanks
elbeto
To quote a friend of mine; “Let me know the moment it can play my games, then I’ll use it, because it looks like it can be tweaked for some hawt fps. If it’d work. ”
Another friend; “I don’t like Pidgin. Doesn’t it have Messenger?”
An old man that doesn’t really know shit about computers and stuff beyond Word, printing and Outlook; “This is all I need, if only I could find my files again I’d continue using it…”
A business-man; “Does it have Activesync? I need Activesync”.
Otherwise it does pretty much anything you want it to. It just lacks the little things that you’ve gotten used to from Windows.
Not to sound trite but your Q&A observation — Isn’t that part and parcel of what a bug report is?? If it is then gee most programs of any repute are already there.
My second observation along those lines is it does not take the developers raising their hands. All it takes is a download and start using it. Then start feeding reports in.
What I do think is missing that addresses your Q&A issue is focus group meetings between developers and users. The developers ought to sit down and listen from time to time. It would permit them to understand where issues are coming from.
“When will Linux really go mainstream?”
As soon as the kind of people who comment on posts like this lose the fanboyism and admit that Linux just isn’t good enough for >98% of desktop computer users.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing
It’ll also go mainstream when windows techies realize that non-techies can use Linux (and they can), and realize that better (prettier, stabler, easier to use and more human friendly) solutions exist than windows.
I agree with the article, but “Apache Tomcat” is not for the average user.
There is one simple reason why Linux hasn’t gone fully mainstream yet. It’s marketing. Linux isn’t marketed. Linux is posted on the web for all who stumble onto it to download. It has nothing to do with the quality or usability of Linux applications.
When Microsoft was pushing MS-DOS to OEMs it had to give them the hard sell routine and practically give it’s product away for nearly free. Linux developers give their products away for free. But they don’t put the hard sell on anybody.
Red Hat for example doesn’t really push Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat markets “solutions”. These “solutions” don’t just include the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OS. They include the whole software stack that will be bundled on to the server.
In order to make Linux marketable, it has to show that it is a biz parter (rather than an alternative to other OS); and it will provide an attractive ROI. It does not cost a lot money to use it, but it will cost to market and support it.
Also, QA/QC is nice idea. The other missing piece of proper QC is a set of comprehensive documentation. To put a tester onto something, you’d need to provide a document describing expected functionality. Are there many distributions (or individual projects) that provide detailed documentation?
Somebody mentioned that Dell, HP, … sell PCs with Linux. Are they really marketing those PCs? I believe they keep it on the shelf just in case Linux sales would pick up. Otherwise they don’t do much to promote/market it.
ubuntu and other gnu/linux distros have some problems .. nothing perfect after all
microsoft windows has so many problems .. they are much more than you have just said about linux .. and it’s mainstream
it makes no sense then .. me thinks that the problem people have never actually heard or tried -when i say try it really not just for one day or two- ubuntu or linux
i’ve already installed ubuntu to two people who don’t know the difference between windows xp and windows vista -really i’m not kidding- and they love ubuntu and how great it works
Call me a wet blanket, but I don’t think usability and QA are major game changers for Linux. They will allow people to come to GNU/Linux systems, but they won’t drive them here. People tend to bear with bugs if they have reasons to (I use Windows at work).
This is a bit offtopic, but in my opinion, a major game changer is the free culture (creative commons, open data) and not just free software. That is because it gives people a better understanding of what sharing actually is and how it benefits them. Showing users how sharing works in their field of interest (law, music, design), allowing them to form diverse communities that is what grows our community.
But so far, many tools that build communities (social web services and desktop clients) are proprietary and/or do not have ports for our systems. I think this is a major roadblock for the advancement of Linux on the desktop.
When we will make Ubuntu packages for Mugshot (a social website made by RedHat) more fun than it is writing on Facebook on Windows, then people will come to us.
When we will have free software on the server and client side for something like http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse, then we will be able to draw users by the thousands.
And these users will not be quiet about it, they will brag, write and speak about it, so they will take the word out, on the street.
No HP and Dell don’t really do a lot to market Linux. They don’t need to. All they need to market is their end product and what it can do.
The people that need to market Linux are the distribution and project developers. Where this marketing has been done. Linux is a success. Canonical has made a good start in turning Ubuntu into a low cost netbook OS. The kernel project is another example of success when Linux is marketed properly.
Few people realize the Linux kernel is running more hardware out there than we could list. Linux runs everything from your WiFi router to your cable TV set-top box and now mobile phones.
As a desktop OS it’s not enough for Linux to be freely available to download by anybody. It’s not enough that Linux is open source and endlessly editable and configurable. Distribution developers have to put together a compelling product and push it to OEMs to pre-load onto or embed into their own products.
Dell and HP advertise Windows because Microsoft pay them to. But the fact is their sales wouldn’t suffer if they never mentioned Windows. Consumers don’t care what OS the hardware is running. All they care about is that it works and does what they need it to do.
The consumer isn’t the target for Linux advertising. It’s OEMs. It’s HP, it’s Dell, it’s Asus, it’s Acer and Gateway and everybody else producing PCs, laptops, netbooks, smart phones and MIDs. These are the companies that need to realise there is life beyond Redmond.
Aikiwolfie: Stay tuned. I’ll be blogging about major hardware companies backing Ubuntu Server Edition and Ubuntu desktop multiple times in the next day. Big news coming on the marketing and certification front.
The thing is:
1. Linux has a broken audio stack
2. Linux has a broken graphics stack
3. Linux developers are too easily swayed to the newest trend rather than implementing properly robust and complete software
Theres too many bugs. Too many things that drag on and on without being fixed and too much new crap being released that doesnt fix the old stuff.
“But the fact is their sales wouldn’t suffer if they never mentioned Windows. Consumers don’t care what OS the hardware is running.”
I absolutely do not agree. Here are some easy examples I could think of:
* I use Windows at work, so it is more comfortable to use it at home. Also, the job market requires knowledge of MS products (try to find a job add that requires OpenOffice, not in my area)
* My ISP says that it does not support Linux
* Many toys require Windows (even those toys might work with Linux), but as a consumer I wouldn’t know
* Your (or your kids’) school may require MS for home/class work
So, if I am an unsuspecting “customer”, I’d be looking for Windows PC specifically.
I think the end user feedback for Ubuntu is certainly amiss. I took the time to feedback the Adobe Reader with no sound issues for months, and if I wasn’t so anti-M$, I probably would have just gone back to M$.
Still, my feedback fell on deaf ears (er – eyes), with the wonderful note – you don’t have rights to post to this thread. After all the effort, the developers couldn’t get my feedback because the group they were set to get the email feedback from was a closed entity.
All in all – Morghus has it right. If I turn on ten folks to Linux, and none stick with it, because it fails in running whatever application or specific need they may have, then that’s just the first reason they leave. It’s also why they often won’t return.
M$ got this lesson with Vista. When your “new” OS won’t run your favorite “old” program, you look to the software upgrade from the developer. If it never arrives, it obviously affects the user’s appeal to upgrade.
I’ll offer another “solution” – I’ll add a website link to compare and relate applications from cross OS – making a reference for new converts to determine how to perform their old software functions. Unless someone can tell me this already exists, then I’ll just add the link…
I wholeheartedly agree with Admin in this arical!! I’m 80 years old and have been into computers since they started but only as a user and I hate Microsoft with a passion!!
I would like to change to Linux but tried a copy of Knoppix and found it so confusing that I finally tookit off my computer. The help files are worthless and when you ask questions in a forum the answer is usually in
programers language and leaves me scratching my head.
I been thinking about buying a copy of Ubuntu along with instructions of use but so far I can’t find out how the instructions would help me since they don’t give you a clue as to whats in them before you buy so
that would be like buying a dead horse.
My big problem with Knoppix is missing drivers and where to find them and then how do you install after you get them??? Also I have Hughes as my provider through wireless and tried for a whole day with Knoppiz
to get hooked up to no avail so as you can guess I’m
back with windows vista and can at least hook up to the internet.
As you can see I’m a little leary but if I had some assurance I would try again so I hope the Linuz people get there act together.
Elmer Curtis