I think that Matt Hartley is spot on on his
Top 10 Linux Desktop Hurdles. Commented:
- Regression testing is hard. Assuring that hardware that worked will still
work in the next version of the distribution is where many Linux distributions
fall down. At least I think Debian here does
better than some others.
- Mobile devices. I've written
about this already some months ago. I want to just plug in my smartphone
and sync it with my calendar application. I don't think this is too much to
ask.
- Software compatibility. I don't do video editing and I'm comfortable with
the Gimp, but I witness people having
difficulties with OpenOffice.org all day.
Mostly, it's because either they were MS
Office power users and stuff like form letters are different
between the packages, or it is because the state issues silly form/macro based
MS Office documents.
- Wireless. Hmm. I haven't had real problems with Wireless in quite some
time. But then, I know that I need to watch what kind of hardware I buy, so
YMMV.
- Hardware compatibility lists. Debian doesn't have one, so that's
apparently a good starting point ;-)
- Compiling drivers. I don't understand this complaint. The user should
never even come to the point where he needs to compile a driver. But I think
here Debian with module-assistant
is quite good.
- The Patent Trap a.k.a. I Want To Watch DVDs. This is a serious issue, and
will probably not be going away unless some heavy duty political stuff is
happening. Organisations like PubPat and
the new End Software Patents
initiative will help. In my opinion, though, these are not taking it far
enough. Patents are monopolies granted by the state — in all other
areas (post, railways, telecommunications), it has been agreed that monopolies
are bad, so why not just abolish the broken idea of patents, too?
- Off the Shelf Software. Hmm. My clientele is not the lone Linux user at
home but the business user who has an IT support dept, so I don't see this
issue for me.
Issues #9 and #10 is just “the community sucks” in nicer words.
He's not wrong as such, but I think Matt's view is pessimistic on these.