Linux is an excellent free operating system. But is it suitable for the desktop of an average computer user? I doubt it. Yes, I personally have Ubuntu Linux installed on my desktop PC, but again, I’m NOT the average user, I’m software developer and a power user. And even I find some little things here and there very annoying from the usability standpoint.
It seems to me, that Linux is bound to stay in a perpetual “almost ready for the masses” state. I think I’m being realistic here. Really, for many years the Linux community has been saying: “This year will be the year of Linux on the desktop”. And you know what? This still doesn’t happen, and, to be honest, I don’t believe that mass migration to Linux will occur anytime soon. It seems that it always misses something seemingly tiny, but nevertheless important to an average user. In large part, IMHO, it tries to imitate Mac OS X and Windows (it is seen quite often). For now it has almost came up to current version of Mac OS X (“Tiger”) in terms of features, but soon “Leopard” will be released, and I’m sure it will pack a whole lot of new nice features (Steve Jobs will talk about them today at WWDC, I’m sure there will be surprises). Linux is and will be lagging behind in the nearest future, when it comes to desktop computing.
