First, take off your developer / admin / analyst / guru / |power-user hat. Why? Because if you’re going to think about the genre of the desktop operating system you cannot approach the idea with any of those hats on. If you do you will be wrong. Completely. Forever. Wrong. Second, drop the word “statistics,” “Performance,” and “logically” from your vocabulary. Those words do not belong here. Third, start thinking scope.

You’ve said it. You know you’ve said it: “if everyone would just use Linux”, “Linux is better”, and a whole slew of hot-headed, bad-mouthed, bible-thumping propaganda. You’ve said that Linux is better because of X, Y, and usually Z. The funny thing is that you were right, and it didnt make any difference. The problem is that you’re applying a very small statement to a very, very, very large target.

As much as I wish it were otherwise… Linux is not ready for the main stream desktop.

“It’s not hard to setup” … for you

“It’s not hard to maintain” … for you

“It just plain works” … for you

The problem with Linux is that you’re prescribing it for everybody, and it doesnt scale – in that way. Linux is about choice. Linux is about freedom. Linux is about the ability to do anything you want! Heres the problem. Grandma doesn’t want to have to make a choice. Your parents like rules and boundaries. Your next-door neighbor has absolutely no idea WHAT they want. See, Thats where it all falls down. It’s too complicated. These are just a small smattering (a pittance, if you will) of the questions faced by someone looking to use Linux…

Do I want Redhat, Suse, Mandrake, Slackware, Fedora, Gentoo, Debian?

Whats the difference?

I was told that apt is better than rpm by one person, and that rpm is better than apt by another?

Do I want Xfree86, or X.org?

Which of the 75 different IM clients should I use?

Who should I ask for help?

Why did they ask me to RTFM? Whats that mean?

Why did someone tell me to run a command that broke my desktop when I asked for help?

Where’s the manual?

What does “To do — cover this topic mean”

Why does it say “To do, document this better?” I need it now, not later!

I bought a new computer and the video|sound|usb|periferal card wont work, why not?

What’s root and why cant I just install things?

Why do I have to install 17 other programs when I just want this one?

How do I find out that I wanted that one?

Why cant I install this software? Windows programs wont work?

Windows is slow, insecure, clunky, restrictive, repetative, and stifling. But your neice, next door neighbor, grandfather, and parents see something different: I didnt have to make any complicated choices… matter of fact the pc came with it. I can follow the same instructions everyone else got. I can get just about any program from a friend and install it… it’ll work. It came with an I’m client… I’ll just use that. My blue E gets me on the internet, My Blue E with the envelope lets me do e-mail. It does everything that I’ve been told that I should want it to do, why should it be anything else? This is fine. it works.

The things that will never happen are the things that will mean that forever and ever there will be some mainstream entity who has the lions share of the market. All of those things center around a couple of key phrases: “without the user having to understand”, “reliably”, “consistently”, “agree on one”, “stop bickering”, and last but not least, “that it’s OK not to know”

But thats not the nature of the linux community. Which is fine. It doesnt have to be. But it needs to understand what it *is* and what it *isnt*… Know thyself, and all that jazz…