Why People Give Up on Using Linux
May 8, 2009 by Clair Ching
Filed under The Free World.
Keir Thomas’ article on the Top 7 Reasons People Quit Linux does reflect the reasons of most of my friends and colleagues who have tried it at least once in their lives.
The top reason in the article is “Linux doesn’t run a program I use.” And as much as there are many free and open source software out there, people have special needs and for that, special software is needed. Our graphics team in the office need the Adobe Creative Suite. They did try GIMP but it just didn’t cut it for them. This causes so much frustration and agony for users who want to be productive. So for them, Windows + Adobe Creative Suite is still the practical choice.
Linux & Windows
I personally have an idea of the pain people encounter for reason number 2: “I installed Linux, but some element of my hardware didn’t work!” My old laptop has a Broadcom driver and I had to go ask someone to really walk me through the entire deal of fixing it so that I could go online using wifi. If I didn’t have to help me with it, there’s the possibility of me quitting Linux as well. Unfortunately, this is sometimes related with the other reasons such as “I posted a message on a forum, but Linux people were mean to me” and more often than not, it is related to “I installed Linux and things went honey-nut-loops crazy.”
But here’s a question I’d like to ask, if those things made you give up, what would have convinced you otherwise?
I have upgraded the new version of Ubuntu(9.04) from Ubuntu (8.10) and was frustrated that I cannot connect wirelessly through wifi from my router.
The hope that it would get better in the future.
@dannybuntu You are patient then
It has improved so much in the last 2 years, I think. But not everyone is patient and want the features now. That’s how it is with some users.
People are whiners
An awful lot of people is only able to use a computer because a) it is new and never had a problem with it or b) they have someone to ask for help when things go wrong.
So, “the installer is hard and ugly” is something they will face with Windows also, but they never saw it.
Hardware compatibility issues will arise with Windows also sometimes, specially with old hardware. I have a couple of excellent Philips webcams that work out of the box in Slackware (a distro with no fame of being easy) and don’t have drivers for Windows XP. Of course GNU/Linux hardware issues are more frecuent, but I wonder how more frecuent they will be now that many devices are having Vista-only drivers, letting XP users without support.
As far as the application support, I was complaining in another comment about not being able to do videoconference in MSN (Skype works fine, luckily
), but the things goes beyond that: people that is used to download the latest versions of the software because “I must have it, I NEED IT” even when they don’t use 10% of the features (Photoshop, Office, and such) and because it is “free” will not bother changing OS or using a free alternative. That is why we FOSS advocates should respect copyright & licenses. It is beneficial for Free Software and Free Culture. (I am writing about *fair* copyright and licenses, not the abusive ones we have)
Of course one can understand that people just *don’t like* the system, it depends on each one of us. I agree with the author of the article in that it would be great if people just were saying “I just don’t like it” instead of spreading lies and myths about the system.
Hardware support. I couldn’t care less if it’s Linux or Windows or OS X or *BSD… as long as my hardware works and I can do what I need to do.
On Linux (Arch, *buntu etc.) my notebook runs hotter ( = shorter lifespan). I even managed to learn how to undervolt the CPU. It’s a huge PITA but I did. On Windows, you can download an easy app (RmClock) that does what I need very easily and quickly. But even so, after undervolting and configuring all the inner works of the system and spending ages on Google/forums, it still runs hotter.
Some priciples of Linux (both the philosophy and the system design) really appeal to me, but I can’t justify the work hours that I lose when I put my hardware to work with it.
Sad, I really would like to at least dual boot efficiently. But now it’s a waste of time for me.