"Roy Schestowitz" <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e9mte5$1klb$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
,----[ Quote ]
| I can think of seven excuses often tossed about, and one real reason of
| my own creation.
`----
(Gist:)
,----[ Quote ]
| Excuse #1: Some will say this is because there aren't enough
| applications for Linux.
|
| Excuse #2: Others will say the market is too diverse and confusing.
|
| Excuse #3: Yet another excuse slowing adoption is that the mainstream
| does not know about it or understand it.
|
| Excuse #4: The brainwashing of Microsoft: It has convinced everyone
| that their offerings are the only ones to have, or so this excuse goes.
|
| Excuse #5: There are issues with Linux and certain hardware.
|
| Excuse #6: Lack of technical support.
|
| Excuse #7: The costs of adopting/migrating are too high.
`----
The author addresses all excuses.
The author only addresses these excuses in the context of a corporation.
I.e. the author claims there's no reason for companies not to switch to
Linux, but doesn't make their case strongly for home users.
<quote>
Excuse #5: There are issues with Linux and certain hardware. Here is a
surprise for you: There are issues with some piece of hardware and every
operating system. Aside from the old kernel/hard drive issue (long since
resolved), the only hardware issue I can think of immediately is with
Winmodems - legacy (and very cheap) modems controlled mostly by software. In
the first place, they are notoriously buggy to begin with, even when you
have the right OS and drivers. In the second place, modems aren't commonly
used today as opposed to several years ago. Lastly, if you do need a modem
for business, I would certainly hope you would be smart enough to buy a
decent one and not try to get by with one of these in the first place. All
that said, I know of no disadvantage Linux has when it comes to hardware
compared to any other operating system.
</quote>
Home users are not nescessarily "smart enough" to differentiate between
a decent one and an indecent one. I suspect they typically go into a
computer store (BestBuy, FutureShop, etc.), and essentially go for the
cheapest one which does what they want it to do. I'm also surprised the
author doesn't know about ATI drivers, which I thought was infamously bad on
Linux.
<quote>
Excuse #6: Lack of technical support. If I have a problem, no one here knows
how to take care of it. Maybe you need to hire or train someone. The odds
are good that no one at your site is proficient with Windows Vista at the
moment either, but when it comes out, someone will probably be responsible
for learning more about it. Linux -- and I am being as honest as I can be --
isn't that difficult to learn. Gone are the days when you needed to memorize
hundreds of command-line tools and their options because the main files took
too much space to load them on the hard drive. You can pretty much
administer all you need to through a graphical interface now and yank out a
reference guide when you get stuck.
</quote>
Home users are probably not willing to "hire or train someone". I don't
know what reference guide the author is speaking about. I'm assuming it's
some sort of physical book.
<quote>
Excuse #7: The costs of adopting/migrating are too high. Compared to what?
</quote>
Compare to just not doing anything. Most home users, when they buy a
computer, get Windows pre-loaded. Most home users have years of experience
with Windows. They already have a basic idea of how it works. To get Linux
on their, they have to expend effort in first getting an install CD somehow
(download a burn? Find a friend with a copy?), backup their data, reformat
or repartition their drives, answer a bunch of install questions which they
don't nescessarily understand ("What the heck is a DNS server?"), etc. And
once the system is installed, they have to learn a whole new set of
programs. (OpenOffice is different than Microsoft Office, for example). As
someone else mentioned in this thread, people don't like change. The cost of
migration isn't measure in money here, but in time and effort.
- Oliver
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