“To the end user, the regular person on the street who
doesn’t know or particularly want to know much about computers in
general, Linux isn’t that big a deal. It’s just another way of
doing a task, and not all that good at the tasks that the normal
user needs to do on a regular basis. Even things that are
perceived as very, very basic, such as reading e-mail and browsing
through Web pages, are fraught with problems.”
“From an end user perspective, Linux is very unwieldy: Web pages
with question marks where quotes should be, ugly Web browsers,
inconsistent interface (no two applications are alike). And what’s
worse, all of the Linux users you ask for help start their
instructions with a “get to a root prompt.” This is typically very
unfamiliar territory for someone who’s never really touched a
non-graphical computer system.”
“Installing programs is counterintuitive (why are they in so
many tiny little packages?), configuring them even more so (why
does every tiny little program keep its configuration in /etc and
why do I need to be root to change them?), and updating programs is
inconvenient (why should I update because of a stupid little
security patch? I don’t have anything important on my
computer!).”