In other words “Ignorance is bliss” is bliss for the average user.

Linux needs to get main stream with the consumer to have any chance at slaying the mighty Windows. Ubuntu is the best ‘average user’ experience Linux has to offer… long live Ubuntu.
That would lead the way nicely for Linux to enter the enterprise world. Bye bye Microsoft.
Woo ha ha wooo ha ha

Unfortunately Trifon - yes.

Reading your comments Rich, the more I think about it - the more I wonder if we should be dropping the name “Linux” as a whole because it’s too misleading. Instead just advertise the distribution name by itself.

By all rights - the modem/router in your household could advertise as coming with Linux pre-installed after all.

Interesting point Spode, I think it’s an education thing. At the moment the general public have very limited knowledge of Linux and distro’s, but choosing a distro is like buying a car. There are many makes and models which most people understand.

Wait until the corporate world realise there’s money to be made/saved in them there hills, and the marketing machines start to turn, we will all be Linux experts.

Maybe then I’ll get to play CS or DoD without having to tweak wine to death

I’m not sure it’s going to happen. We all know educating the consumers is necessary, but looking at other issues that needed public education, it just doesn’t happen!

This is made especially hard with the budgets that OS projects have and when the BBC don’t even report Linux correctly.

Controversially, I would say it’s the journalists (not just the BBC) that need educating in Linux, and this will trickle down.

Yeah but….
The only way its going to happen main stream is the likes of Mark Shuttleworth and Michael Dell i.e. guys with crazy money, marketing it ’cause they have the balls to try something new, or IBM. Novell, HP and the likes having the balls to upset MS.

Here’s hoping.

Yes, and the BBC seam to be loosing sight of what they where put on this planet to do. It wasn’t too many years ago they were at a Linux expo in Olympia showing off their new open source video codec.

PS What the hell was Linux Live Expo about. Lots of strange looking Mac users not so many strange looking Linux users.

Well, a chap at Ubuntu told me that they approached Asus before the EeePC was launched, suggesting they made it an Ubuntu version and they insisted on going their own way. Pity. If every EeePC had Ubuntu on it now - imagine the impact!

That would have been fantastic. Hopefully, its only a matter of time before they get a similar deal.

Dell only have Ubuntu on the back waters of their web site, listed under products -> Desktops -> open source PC’s, rather than an OS choice when choosing your PC.

It must be tempting for manufactures to create their our distro for all important control, but Ubuntu are doing extremely well with marketing their brand, which will ultimately force the hardware manufactures hands… oh sounds a bit like MS tactics!

Okay… ummm Ubuntu is alright for some people but the great thing about Linux, is the multitude of choices. I really like that there are so many different distros. I like the fact that there are not a limited number ways to make my desktop look. I’m kind of happy that Linux isn’t ‘mainstreamed’ for the general public. I say don’t ruin Linux just to please the Windows markets.

Charles - I think you’re missing the point I’m making. The freedom of Linux *is* great - but not for the average consumer. It’s a double edged sword, as I said in the original article.

This shows that the ui implementation sucks. back to work people! we have two years until windows 7 ships!

Mandriva is better than Ubuntu. If there must be a dominant Linux, Mandriva would be a better choice.

This article is spot on. It is dead simple really. When people order a Linux OS preloaded, they don’t want to learn anything new. EeePC delivers this as it is much easier to use and maintain than Windows. MSI unfortunately doesn’t since SuSE it is as difficult to use as Windows and requires you to learn something new.

I think it’s more customized vs. default than SuSE vs. something else. Windows XP works well with 600px height, but try evolution on a screen smaller than 768px!

I couldn’t get an EeePC 901 with Linux so baught the Windows version and replaced Windows with Ubunut. It needed some heavy customisation and I still have to use alt + left button to move windows around the small screen to get to the necessary dialog boxes. And this is only thanks to compiz which you have get working without seeing all the buttons.

MSI had a default SLED distri on its netbooks, this just doesn’t fit.
Acers Linpus and Asus Xandros is much better, as is old Windows XP which still has it’s roots on PCs with 800×600 screens.

Hi All,

I’m not sure what all the fuss is about here.

Linux - and openSuSE - my OS works.

gOS is the best solution for all netbooks.

There is a certain contingent among the Linux community that is crying for “Linux” to be promoted; they get up in arms when someone talks about “Ubuntu” or “Suse” and doesn’t genericize everything as just “linux”. I think this article underscores why these folks need to shut up and deal.

“Linux” means any stack of software on top of a Linux kernel. “GNU/Linux” means any stack of software on top of the Linux kernel and GNU utilities. Neither one encapsulates the actual end-user experience you get from a given Linux distro or “remix”.

Push Ubuntu as Ubuntu. Push Xandros as Xandros. The fact that it’s based on a Linux kernel and GNU userspace is a technical detail. Let users get some kind of brand association with the actual user experience, and stop worrying about whether it promotes “Linux” as a whole. The fact that the kernel ends up on another computer is promotion enough for my needs (i.e. — better IHV/ISV support).

I first switched from Windows to Mac, looking for some flexibility and improvements in my platform. I was happy for a while, but after about a year I realized Apple was doing the same song-and-dance as Microsoft when it came to improving their software with the lack of any real competition. So I tried Linux and have been using it on my MacBook ever since. Speaking as someone who has been in the “community” for a little over a year, I would much rather Linux continue to be a niche OS than to allow it to fall for the same level of stagnation and arrogance that Microsoft and Apple show their end users. Competition is absolutely key in the software industry.

Rich: I think you need to qualify “enterprise world” because Linux is already firmly entrenched in the enterprise world in that it is the dominant server operating system out there. I can only assume that you mean enterprise desktops. The company I work for allows people a choice of desktop, Windows or Linux and has a supported base install image for either. They even provide VMWare images of both so you can have the best of both worlds using the VMWare player.

Interesting… The thousands of comments saying “IT WAS A CRAP LINUX IMPLEMENTATION BY MSI !1!!11!ONE! ” is exactly what is wrong with it.

I have to use SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop on my work laptop just because my company sells it to customers (so I have to know how to deal with their problems).
SLED frequently annoys me. It’s crap - however OpenSUSE is quite good.

Windows = Windows, and Linux DOES equal Linux; but Windows XP != Windows Vista, and Linux Ubuntu != Linux SUSE. When PCs are sold they don

[…] Linux Has Been Tick Boxed […]

Hi txtechdog, by Enterprise World I mean the main stay corporate servers performing the more mundane tasks such file, email and print servers, user authentication etc. Although linux distros rule the web, windows rules the corporate world. I’m not linux isn’t in the office but, Microsoft has a hold. I think there is a huge amount of unnecessary bloated complexity in the MS server range and its getting worse.

Being a sysadmin from Novell and Windows background it took me a long time to get my head around linux, but it is now at a stage where it is much easier for the main stream windows sysadmins to get to grips with. I love Linux now and distros like CentOS, Ubuntu and RedHat are more than up for the job. But convincing ‘Jobs Worth’ management is a nightmare.

As I said above somewhere hopefully Novell/IBM, Mark Shuttleworth and Michael Dell can market Linux / Distro and ‘MS Shops’ start to get a warm fuzzy feeling about Linux in their environment. Also, I think Distros should be marketed but with a reference to Linux so users don’t confused with the whole Linux/Distro thing..

Interesting idea by the author. However, I have used Suse (and other flavors) since version 6.x, and have installed it for numerous Windows users from version 8.x on forward. Suse has been the only version of Linux that I have consistently been able to get people to be productive on moving over from Windows with little or no training. Suse has built a solid end user experience, mostly because they customize KDE and OpenOffice for the end user. Just my experience, but having tried to set up Xandros, Redhat, Ubuntu and others for Windows users in the past, I find it amusing that this author has decided to blame Suse for MSI’s troubles. I am sure it has a lot more to do with MSI’s implementation than anything else.

Andrew Prough

This is good points. The Suse version they chose for the Wind just blows. And while I don’t like Xandros, it’s a far cry better than the excuse for a Linux netbook distro that MSI chose.Now I’m not saying Suse sucks. What I’m saying is that the version they chose, and the mods they did to it suck.

As a Linux user and developer, why would I even consider Silverlight for a second”
Let’s face it: Client side Linux sleeps w/ fishes. It’s not like you have got a ton of Linux desktop users out there warranting the effort to develop a SilverLight for Linux.

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