I am an IT professional with 10 years experience supporting Linux. Over the years I keep hearing the Linux is not for the casual user because it is too difficult to use and support argument. For the first 9 years I agreed with this argument. Today I believe your Linux is ready. Except for wireless, everything just works. Do you remember how USB was a major pain? Now Linux is the first OS to support USB3.
For those who need another example, my friend Chris is a stay at home mom who is going blind. She was able to configure a USB printer with a Ubuntu 8.10 desktop I gave her without picking up the telephone or installing drivers off of a CD. The experience was easier than any Windows version would have been. When Microsoft releases a new operating system – or even a “service pack,” it tries with various levels of effort and success to get the hardware manufactures to release new drivers. I’m betting on Microsoft failing to do this well for the release of Windows 7. On the other hand, Apple does support hardware well across OSes but that’s a post for another day.
But back to Elaina… I went over to her house to install Linux in April. Before I could get over there, she spent hours with me on the phone rebooting and installing software on the Windows XP machine and she was getting rather frustrated rather quickly because the Windows “freeware” didn’t work exactly as advertised. That’s right – she called me for Windows support and begged for me to get over there sooner to install Linux. She could have called Microsoft but that would be just as useful and expensive as a psychic hotline. As Vance Kochenderfer pointed out in his article Who’s supporting you?, Microsoft users are at the mercy of a friend who is “good with computers” or strangers on an internet forum. Microsoft is no help. Your computer manufacturer is no help either.
My bet depends on those computer geeks who already like Linux to help their friends through the process of installation and along the way. The quality and ease of use of the Linux desktop will take care of the rest. Friends help friends use Linux. I first heard that sentence from Cathy Malmose at Southern California Linux Expo and it changed my point of view. Finally widespread Linux deployment seemed doable. Since April, I only had one support call to Elaina’s house which took place on July 17, 2009. The problem: the SD card reader that was working just stopped working. It turned out to be a hardware issue. I gave her that SD card reader so I know that it was a cheap close out I bought when Circuit City was going bust. Elaina never blamed me or Linux. In fact she hates Microsoft products; she likes Linux so much she wants a Linux laptop. I showed her my Asus Eee PC 900A which runs Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04. She was so impressed that she wants two—one for herself and a second for her 10 year old daughter.
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“Now Linux is the first OS to support Linux. ”
I think you mean “Now Linux is the first OS to support USB3.”
You are right. That was my typo and I will fix the original post. Thanks for keeping me honest.
I’d like to find some writers, not in the US to report on the status of bug one in their countries. Alan, would you like to help? Email bethlynneicher@gmail.com for more info.
> Except for wireless, everything just works.
“Except for not having any wheels, this car I just bought is great!”
The wireless support is a major issue but I have reason to have faith. Stay tuned for a post specifically about wireless in Linux.
Actually, wireless isn’t much of a problem these days. I can only speak for my experience with Ubuntu, but Intel wireless works out of the box. Broadcom? Well, depends on the card. Either the Hardware Driver Manager (Jockey) will ask you to plug in wired while it downloads firmware, or it’ll just install drivers straight off the bat. Atheros, generally works out of the box. Those are the three major ones, so… Though I’m pretty sure Realtek stuff works out of the box as well.
Audio is another big thing. I still hear folks that have problems with getting audio to work. (and some of these are very smart software engineers at a large web search company)
More people who understand sound hardware are needed.
The BIOS should say how sound hardware is to be used (how the pins are initialized and routed) but it often gets this wrong. That leaves people who know enough about electrical engineering trying to reverse engineer the hardware to write a “quirk” for the device. There is a list of quirks in the kernel, and it is based on the subsystem vendor and subsystem ID (SSID) and the Codec. Unfortunately, some hardware manufacturers find it fun to not change their Codec revision or SSID even after changing the hardware, so sometimes you’ll find two pieces of hardware that identify themselves the same but are different, and there’s no way the driver can tell them apart.
I think in the Windows world, the fact that a driver CD came with the device gets around this since they’ll just have two drivers and only include one.
(PS just because I know that this is how it works doesn’t mean I can do much. I don’t have the hardware and electrical engineering background. However, if you find a quirk that works for your device, I’m fine with generating the patch. If you have an option= in your /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base that makes it work, please subscribe me (maco.m) to the bug).
only point I can see being a worrying one:
Where is the money making cow, if everything works out of the box?
No more user support?