[NTL] Where can a new user get help?

[Gregory Pleau]

The major impediment to end-users adopting Linux en masse has more to do
with the absence of certain applications than the look and feel of Windows. 

<RANT>

I have users here that leap at Knoppix and Red Hat. I run Fluxbox when I'm
using Windows and I get lot's of "oh that's cool" or "boy that's clean". KDE
does a pretty good job at dealing with Windows user interface emulation. 

Then I get these questions:

"Can I run Jedi Academy on that?"
"Can I run this old estimating package I got for Windows 3.1 on that?"
"I like Evolution and I have an iPaq - can I sync my inbox and calendar?"
"Does it run Quicken? / Oh does GnuCash download from my bank too?"

Linux on the desktop works fine for an average user, but NOT for some users.
Linux game ports are what 2% of the total PC Game market? Marketing being
what it is, people want to play certain titles, not a half completed open
source equivalent. Worms 3 or NiL? My cousin would want Worms 3 no matter
what I argue for NiL. 

Have faith though, Windows was once laughed at by gamers ( I can remember
many an Amiga user flaming those with Windows over game support ). Times
will change, but slowly. There are going to be a lot of people that need
legacy support for their existing environments. MS-DOS suffers from some
compatibility options to carry over the CP/M users. 

Wine is not good enough to run certain specialized programs, and you are not
going to move people over if they will be able to do less than they can with
the occasional reboot. Plus Windows has come a long way in that regard. 

I look at the whole discussion about how evil the command line is for
scaring users off and remember just how many people here had the Que books
on learning MS-DOS. Your average end user can work Linux just fine thank
you. The Red Hat installer is about the same difficulty as the Windows XP
Installer - trivial. 

People will learn a new interface if there is a motivation to. 

Linux could use a boost in the device driver area, but Linuxant seems to be
fixing that nicely too, at least until the device vendors clue in. 

The other area that Linux is better on the desktop is the relative lack of
viruses and spyware. Of course those will appear if end-users move to Linux
and run as root all the time ( and you KNOW they will, just as everyone
seems to want to run as Administrator on Windows). 

The fact that a particular printer driver may not exist for Linux makes my
point. Brain dead hardware and software vendors are not helping Linux at
all, and these are basically specialized programs that are missing on Linux.

You have companies like HP that claim to support Linux on one hand with
their servers, and on the other hand I have an HP Scanner that will probably
NEVER have a sane backend. 

</RANT>

- Greg

--
Windows at the office yes. By choice? No.

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