Linux on the desktop?

Linux has very little market penetration despite its zealous following. I think that theres a few reasons why Linux will never make it into the mainstream, at least in its current form. The operating system market is very daunting to new users and people become uneasy when they don't see there familiar start button in the corner or there smiling finder in the dock. The very concept of distributions can be very confusing to some people let alone picking one. If the user is lucky enough to pick a nice newbie friendly distribution like Ubuntu or Linux Mint they should be smooth sailing right? Well that's assuming that there computers hardware is fully supported and that they aren't trying to use Wifi or some off beat printer. And if they are they are, then there at the hands of the community, the community tells them that there hardware isn't fully supported, the frustrated user gives up and heads back to there previous OS.

I have seen the above scenario too many times, I have dabbled in Linux for over a year now and it still runs natively on one of my machines. I have a computer running every current OS in my room, and I know how to operate them all too. When I first wet my feet in Linux I felt like I bit off more than I can chew but luckily the Ubuntu community has helped me every step of the way. My advocacy of Linux is not the point of this article though. Linux lacks a lot of marketing that other companies have for a few simple reasons, they do not have a lot money to market the product, the product comes in a million different distributions, and the product lacks ease of use. Because this software is built largely by hobbyists, the developers do not have the time, or the money to market something they built in their garage. It's difficult to market something if there are so many variations of the products, if you think that the versions of Vista are difficult to understand, Linux has so many options and distributions built for very different users, so many beginners ask themselves which possible distribution is right for them let a lone what CPU architecture they have to pick for that distribution. Lastly the product lacks a single “help desk” that people can call or bring there computers to when they need a problem solved immediately in order to be productive. Also out of the box a lot of these distributions lack much polish compared to Leopards effects and Vista's Aereo.

In closing I would love to see an open source free operating system make it big on the desktop but I think that there are some huge hurdles to overcome first. Now I'm not saying that Linux is terrible, but for basic everyday people that need productivity out of the box Linux seems to fall short.

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