2009/12/12 Steph Foster
<steph.p.foster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Having read about a lot of problems and heard a lot of complaints I am now finding myself wondering
if I could genuinely recommend GNU/Linux as a desktop OS to any non geeky user.
I personally think that if this trend continues popularising GNU/Linux to the masses is going to be very difficult.
I do say GNU/Linux because the problem is not kernel based so it isn't really a Linux problem.
It is a GNU problem.
I don't really consider myself geeky. My perception is that nearly every distro has a weakness and I just have to decide if I can live with it. I am currently using Mint on my workaday laptop. Despite much effort, I have not been able to get it to play DVD's or avi's. But, since I have a different laptop for doing this (which I admit is on XP), I can live without it. It does everything else just fine. For example, I do my online banking on my Linux laptop and anything to do with money transactions online - I wouldn't dream of doing anything like that on a Windows machine. However, if I suddenly only had 1 machine, I would find a distro that did everything I needed - I wouldn't go back to Windows because, security wise, however much anti virus and anti spam utilities I run, I just don't trust it. I would argue that this factor alone makes Linux more suitable for non techie people who are less aware of the potential dangers lurking online.
My definitely non geeky friend Sallie (with some help from us, I admit) runs her small business on a desktop rescued from the local skip running Suse 11.1 - which she loves. She would never go back to using Windows quite simply because she likes Linux better, as a user. Since using Linux, she has learned to love her computer again - when running Windows she hated it and avoided using it whenever possible. Especially, she likes Open Office (the word processor) which she uses all of the time, for home and business purposes.
Viv
