Breaking down barriers to Linux desktop adoption (SearchOpenSource) [LWN.net]

Breaking down barriers to Linux desktop adoption (SearchOpenSource)

Posted Feb 28, 2006 21:08 UTC (Tue) by evgeny (guest, #774) [Link]

IMO, the summary of the interview, unfortunately copied verbatim to the LWN headlines with no editorial comment, doesn't represent the interview at all. In fact, J. Bacon says something rather different, and even repeats it twice for especially retarded folks (which apparently didn't help the interviewer to understand what (s)he was clicking about):

Q: What do you think prevents people from switching?
A: One of the biggest things is lethargy. [...]

Q: What trends are you seeing?
A: [...] The difficulty with the consumer side is that consumers naturally feel comfortable in Windows because that's what they know. Lethargy is one of the toughest nuts to crack, and consumers won't move unless they can see a key benefit to the move, move with little or no hassle and don't incur any further costs. [...]

Breaking down barriers to Linux desktop adoption (SearchOpenSource)

Posted Mar 1, 2006 17:48 UTC (Wed) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

"" [...] The difficulty with the consumer side is that consumers naturally feel comfortable in Windows because that's what they know. Lethargy is one of the toughest nuts to crack, and consumers won't move unless they can see a key benefit to the move, move with little or no hassle and don't incur any further costs. [...] ""

I've having a hard time promoting Linux Desktop arround my small circle. That lethargy is purely "cristalized ignorance", fuelled precisely by the enourmous quantity of trouble that people are experiencing with their unmanaged Windows(R) system environments at home compared with managed Windows(R) system environments at work.

People dont see the difference and think that if M$, that is what everybody seems to be promoting and using gives that much trouble, switching to something more complicated in the sense of the "propaganda" need of a command line, no matter if much more robust, will give them much more trouble.

* M$ Windows(R) is dumping their enourmous malware and bug troubles upon common users, as them(users) ignorance. Better the all industry is doing it as business as usual *

Substancialy breacking it doent seem difficult, if big comercial interests specialy on the hardware side of the problem, start to tell the truth, and warn people about the menace they could encounter that are not hardware failures(~90% of troubles are soft). The problem is that no one on the FOSS side seems to want to promote that, and even worst there *is* a confrontation in the sense of guerrila non-cooperation with the hardware industry about the device driver issue.

Promote that cooperation with hardware industry, that is, give them chances to *open*, by the means of DKMS as a start, and superior interfaces like an OpenGL 2.0 specification centered agreement on what should be the in kernel DRM structure, or even something more advanced as http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/papers/2004-oa......

What i've been reading for ages is that Linux has enough driver support, and that in the end it will make those stuborn hardware fellows to wide open. Havent seen nothing of the kind, and what i've always said is that it dosent need to be a confrontation at all in any case... just cooperate. And with DRM lock-ins on the horizont "we" better start soon.

Breaking down barriers to Linux desktop adoption (SearchOpenSource)

Posted Feb 28, 2006 22:04 UTC (Tue) by vmole (guest, #111) [Link]

There's a common misconception implied in the LWN summary (haven't actually read the Fine Article): Just because 95% of the feature set goes unused by any particular user doesn't mean that 95% of the feature set is unused by a group of those users. It depends on the user base -- tech writers for product documentation will use a completely different feature set than HR group, who will use a different feature set than the admins sending out letters for the CEO. The problem is that if any one of those users loses a feature that they "need" for their particular task, they'll be unhappy, and reasonably so, unless you can show them a different (and preferably better) way to do it.

Breaking down barriers to Linux desktop adoption (SearchOpenSource)

Posted Mar 1, 2006 14:12 UTC (Wed) by solveig (guest, #36208) [Link]

Jono makes a great analogy: "But if, for example, I have to switch between insurance or phone plans, I just don't want to do it because I don't want to learn about it. I don't want to learn about what's different."

This is why it's important to do the switch so that people don't have to learn about it and when possible have some help from the IT department:
- Get Linux in schools, i.e. elementary schools
- Sell computers with Linux pre-loaded (the install is the hardest part, as the song goes)
- Demo it anywhere we can to show how darned cute and easy some of the distros are
- Have it in libraries to expose people to it
- And so on.

I teach OpenOffice.org onsite at organizations where, most of the time, the users have already been switched to Linux. And the users are fine. They really don't use the desktop--they use it to start programs. Many users never even used Explorer or My Computer on Windows, and don't care about navigating their file system on Linux, either.

How to get individuals to personally switch to Linux for their home systems? That's a tough one, unless Mark Shuttleworth wants to do a "Linux in every kitchen" program along with his Freedom Toaster project and just give away the computers. ;> You save a couple hundred bucks when you personally switch. That's not a huge motivation and you don't have a Linux person sitting there with you to help.

I think the key is switching organizations. Multiply the desktop savings by 100, 500, or 100,000, and now you're talking money. A city government I trained, with 300 users, saved $250,000 from a combination of ditching Windows, MS Office, and switching to thin clients. People can get behind that--especially if the VP and the IT director make the decision and they don't have to do any work to make it happen. And as I said, a lot of people on sites where I've taught really don't seem to care about the desktop. It's all about the office suite, the browser, and the email. And the people who need more can figure out Linux easily.

And then, of course, once people have used Linux at work, with a helpful IT person down the hall for any emergencies, then using it at home is the easy choice.

Breaking down barriers to Linux desktop adoption (SearchOpenSource)

Posted Mar 1, 2006 15:19 UTC (Wed) by X-Nc (guest, #1661) [Link]

There's an interesting aspect to your comment. The flow of Work => Home is potentially promising but it is the exact opposite of the path that MS took with Windows and Office. Business only switched from DOS and WordPerfect to Windows and Office because users/employees forced them to. People had Windows and Office at home and would bring them into work. They ended up pushing management into making the switch.

Your point of getting Linux/OOo/Firefox/[Evolution|Thunderbird] into the schools and libraries, and especially preinstalled, is the best course to take. People don't care about the OS or even the apps themselves. They just want to do what they want and need to do and don't really care what they use to do it. They like WinXX and Office because that's what they know and use. 90% of the computer users could switch to Linux/OOo/etc. and not give a hoot as long as it didn't entail any extra effort on their part. If the computer is already setup to do whatever it needs to do for the users and if the next generation of users grows up with it you will see Linux, et. al., take a dominant place in the market.

Breaking down barriers to Linux desktop adoption (SearchOpenSource)

Posted Mar 1, 2006 16:37 UTC (Wed) by mikec (guest, #30884) [Link]

Amusing and somewhat relavent comment from a friend who uses linux regularly (daily), keeps trying to switch, but keeps XP running on his main lap/desktop/terminal)...

(paraphrase) "I ran ubuntu for a while, everything worked very well, but I could not get used to all the application names - photo manipulation, hmm... er... uh... oh gimp! now documents... hmmm oh oowriter!"

This struck me as rather odd since I switched to running linux full time 5+ years ago havign used it in some form for about 10 years, but it serves as further proof of what the article is talking about...

"Photoshop" is now a verb. In real terms desktop users look for icons and menu items, they really don't care if it is "word" or "oowriter", but more importantly once they "know" they no longer care to "learn".

In my world (EDA), I watch people struggle mightily with extremely cumbersome tools, but remember know how hard it was to go from 0-to-productive the last time, anything short of negative effort is not worth the risk of flailing /foundering as they remember doing last time.

It is irrational, illogicical and therfore completely human...

So, get 'em early is the only way... (My young kids are already well aware that the "windows machine crashes a lot but dad's computer doesn't" - if only there were a legal way to play DVDs on linux we would not even have said windows machine... where is LinDVD it has been rotting in OEM for 5 years! though I will settle for anything that just works)