What's Holding Linux Back?

The Bottom Line

There you have it. My thoughts on some of the preconceptions I've seen and heard about. I personally feel that Linux is very close to breaking through on the desktop side, provided some changes can be made. Corel made a pretty decent attempt at creating a migration path for Windows users not only by releasing their own modified Debian release, with a Windows-Friendly feel, but also by porting their Word Perfect and Corel Draw suites over to Linux. However, the movement has suffered a kick in the gut, thanks to a variety of factors, and now the community must forge ahead to make up the lost ground.

For those of us that have experience with Linux, we know of its growth and maturation. However, in order to see Linux continue to grow and even make inroads into the desktop environment, there are a number of things that will need to be done. The first things I would focus on are the things that trouble users on the PC side the most.

Linux needs to be more approachable for novices, and those who use Windows, since that is where much of the conversion will come from. If the community can get fully behind KDE 2.x and 3.x that will help. If the KDE or Samba groups can produce a consistent, super easy and nearly automatic dialog to configure and activate Samba file sharing with Windows networks, that will also help.

Further, if the display settings dialog was more capable and fully functional, it would be less intimidating and more convenient. I use Mandrake 8.1 with a Matrox G400-TV and a Viewsonic PS790 and it still has issues. I set it for 1600x1200x32 but it refuses to go there using the GUI. If I drop to the command line and manually do it, it works perfectly fine. Under Corel Linux, I am able to set the items in the GUI, including the refresh rate, and it works without incident. I'm wondering if this is a KDE issue. If KDE modified the display properties so that you could set a default "global" refresh rate and fine tune other display properties including resolution and color depth, and then made sure that the settings stuck, it would help avoid the same hassles that users had on the Windows side some years back.

Integrated driver and software installation and removal tools are already taking shape, thanks to advances in packet management utilities, but it would be helpful if they were streamlined a bit to accommodate novices who are used to the "Add/Remove" dialog in Windows. The ability to quickly install and uninstall features is important to end users and something that Microsoft is not taking into consideration in Windows XP apparently. I look at how well the KDE theme manager works, and wonder why every part of the software installation process can't be that easy. The process could be made even easier by including default "productivity groups" that include collections of top programs like Gimp and Star Office, for example. Perhaps grouping the most common and popular applications together and increasing their pre-installation documentation so that their functionality is clearly explained, would be helpful. They should all support data transfer, via the KDE clipboard or direct importing and exporting, for instance, and even if the interfaces differ, there should be an option that allows for a common menu structure or functionality where possible.

Another issue, perhaps one that I'm concerned with as a developer, is in regards to the varying libraries needed to run and execute the different applications included in the differing distributions. The last thing the end user should have to worry about are which library versions they need to install in order to get certain applications to run. They should not have to compile code in order to get a program up and running.

The list may seem long, but I believe all of these things will need to be taken care of in order for Linux to really broaden its appeal to the novice Windows user. There are certain things that they simply expect to have going for them right out of the gate. Linux has come a long, long way over the last few years, but with the back-step imposed on the community with the removal of Corel from the scene, I think it will take a stronger effort from the rest of the players to get the train chugging along again at a solid clip. Here's hoping.