Why Linux is ready for the desktop today

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RE: Why Linux is ready for the desktop today

Sorry but linux is no where near ready for the desktop. There are still too many issues to count to make it suitable and a viable desktop platform.

Linux lacks applications that are needed on the desktop. They have a web browser and a terminal window and that's about it. When users want to use their computer they ask "Will it run my current applications?" and the answer is always no. No Quicken and no Microsoft Money. No games, worthwhile ones anyway. There is only so many versions of tetris clones you can play before getting bored. Openoffice is not a suitable replacement. It has trouble opening documents from other formats. And if you want to get technical there is virtually no business applications for linux.

There is no multimedia support for linux. In this day and age multimedia is everything. The flash player is known to cause the web browser to crash. You can play only one sound at a time, the rest of the sounds just queue up so even after closing the application you are still getting a massive load of sounds for the next 20 minutes. And there is no DVD support in linux. I can't see how it would be any fun to use such a boring system when it lacks the most basic of tasks.

Just today we read an article about how PC vendors are pulling pre-loaded linux PC's off the shelf because they are not selling. Linux has become a money loss for the PC vendors and manufacturers and they are giving up on it. Other studies have shown that linux has a return rate of 4 time higher than that of other operating systems. Most of the people who do buy a pre-loaded linux box are quick to wipe it and install either Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X via hackintosh.

Security has been a complete nightmare for linux. There are daily security patches. How many versions of the linux kernel have been released now just on the 2.6 series? 2.6.29? Thats not including the sub-dot patches either and that's just the for kernel. Now lets get to the distro's side of things. I can't imagine having to check each applicatoin's version number, then check the vendor's website to see what the latest version is, and then have to download the source code, bring up a terminal window, use some obfuscated commands to get it to extract, then use what could be compared to as an NSA cryptic key to get it to compile and that takes several tries due to all the flags and switches that need to be enabled, and wait literally hours for it to compile and hope it does so cleanly, then let the system install the new files in some random directory because linux does not have a standard file hierarchy system, then spend another hour looking for the file, change permissions, then run it to watch it segfault and kernel panic.

Let us not forget that linux leaves the telnet port open by default. That should be the biggest security threat right there. There is no antimalware or antivirus or firewall software for linux so if you got infected you would never know. I really can't see how you can claim Microsoft Windows has security issues when linux has holes the size of the grand canyon.

In conclusion to run linux on the desktop would be a huge mistake. It cannot meet the most basic of computing needs due to all its issues and vendors have literally stopped supporting it so if you run into any trouble you are up the creek. The linux OS is dying at a rather quick rate and many linux fanboys are having trouble accepting this. Its time to move on and let it go peacefully.

Posted by: Loverock Davidson   Posted on: 06/03/09 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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