Why linux will never be anyone's desktop O/S unless they are a geek.

me:
currently: System admin for an Elementary school in a school district in Florida for 2 years.

MCSE
CCNS
MCSD
A+
MCSA

All this means, is that I am extremely comfy with Win. Now onto my point:

At home I use a SuSe box as my email/file server. I love it to pieces, i really do. It took me all of 4 years to really feel comfortable with linux, but alot of that had to do with my ability as a techie type person to know where to go to find the information I needed to become familiar with Linux. In my most humble of opinions, Asa is right on the money with his blog. Even in a windows environment a normal user cannot perform simple maintenance and/or security tasks. This isn't because they are stupid. Saying it is because they are dumb users is disrespecting them and revealing just how low of an IQ you must possess. How many of you know how to do body work on a car? Or maybe drop a transmission and change out a clutch?

Let me go another route. How many of you know how to reconcile a corporate account and depreciate the value of all the company's assets over a space of 30 years? Maybe just do book keeping and keep up to date with accounting laws and tax laws? How many of you know how to put together a legal brief for a case in court? The users who use Windows do these other things. To them, learning a new operating system and being bogged down with a command line instead of point and clicking is just a waste of time. They do not want to learn a new OS, they do not want to retrain that muscel memory. They want to get on the machine and create a word document and send it using email. They know where everything is on a windows machine and like that.

Windows is not hard to learn to use, to administer and maintain is another story but to use a monkey with one arm can learn it. I literally sat my mother down in front of her first computer (a dell laptop) and told her three things.

1) read
2) don't delete anything
3) click everything

I set it up for her of course. I configured her broadband connection, her proxy, and her email client. Keep in mind she is a 57 year old Cuban woman who speaks good english but is old school. In the space of 1 month she was able to write word documents, do excel spreadsheets (with the aide of a book i bought her to teach her how to do formulas and linkages in excel) She also was also now very knowledgeable of how to get things done using WinXP Pro. She knew what I meant when I said 'Got to start>control panels and then delete the program from there ma' Now, how comfy would she have been with a linux distro in that same month period? Granted, she wanted to learn to use the computer because she wanted to be able to run her home based business without having to call me every 6 minutes. But your average user of windows knows slightly more than she does after 6 months of useage. Slightly! This is what we should expect of a normal user!

Normal users have things they want to get done on their machines, and none of those things include running anything from a command line. They like the GUI for windows because it is intuitive to a normal user. For pete's sake, the first time you run a windows box it has a 'tour of windows' presentation that gives a good basics breakdown to the average joe. Sure, the more technologically minded user will say 'hmm, what can i really do with this machine?' But Grandma, cousin ricky, my niece jenny could all care less. They just want to get online, listen to their MP3's, do some research for homework, and then go talk on the phone with someone or go see their favorite TV show.

That is why Linux needs to redesign itself a bit. If they want to go mainstream, and not just become the tool for the obscure technophiles of the world, then they need to take more than a few cues from MS. Besides, what would be so bad about having a Windows look alike that actually WAS safe and SECURE to run. Wouldn't that give MS real competition? Wouldn't that do what all the linux geeks of the world want? Topple the evil giant? The simple truth is, so long as you all continue to advocate keeping linux as different as possible from windows, it will never make it into the mainstream.

Like my brother Ben always tells me (he is a professional Auto designer) "People want simple, not complex." So long as something remains complex, only a dedicated few will follow it. The moment that same something takes on the veneer of simplicity. The masses will come.