Desktop Linux: Ready for the mainstream

Again? Really?

Nope it's nowhere near the standard for a mainstream OS. Yes it is technically very superior to other offerings. But all these techy types never seem to realise that that is not an important consideration for an average joe user. M$ might be the sum of all evil but they spend millions on user testing and development - and man do they get it right! And yet Linux refuses to utilise the mistakes and lessons M$ have gone through and start from scratch... hmmmm.

Some things that are wrong:

- Difficulty, the learning curve is still too steep

- UI, serious UI issues that people are not fixing (Ubuntu "the saviour" has a BROWN desktop.. where is THAT a good idea for mainstream use???)

- Uniformity, menus, methodolgy, syntax, naming is still not uniform enough

- Tech lingo, too much stuff is still in tech speak (take a reccent conversation I witnessed on a linux forum where the advice to a first time poster was "read the man page". Well if they knew how to find that I doubt it was helpful, most man pages are double-speak :)).

So, no, it's not ready yet. We stil have some nig hurdles to address :)

In terms of that specific link. I have one point to make: "But desktop Linux does support basic Active Directory authentication for user access management."

Obviously the writer has never tried to use that functionality. Because it is not as simple as a one line sentence suggested. Certainly way outside your average windows user....

Linux has been ready for a long time, it's just that people are not ready. Just look at Vista. It's more user friendly than XP, still, people don't want to switch. They learned XP for 5 years and they now understand its small flaws. It was hard for them to get there. They will switch only after "everyone" will do and they'll keep their new OS for 10 years again.

It's not about Ubuntu being ready or not...

I use linux extensively, but no, no it's not.