A Look at Ubuntu from the Other Side

“From the user’s side, that is. From the side of a whole world
full of people who will eventually determine whether Linux has a
future as a viable home/office alternative to Windows. If they
don’t, it may be destined never to rise above the magical 1% of
do-it-yourselfers adventurous and persistent enough to study it,
work at it, and ultimately learn to use it. Blessed are they who
labor at Linux, for they shall be called geeks.

“And that’s the problem. Linux was created by geeks, grown and
nurtured by geeks, and unless something is done fairly soon to
change the presentation and the image, it will remain a system for
geeks. The only one doing very much about that at this moment is
Mark Shuttleworth, who has invested his fortune, his time, and his
vision to create SOMETHING that can present a real challenge to the
Windows hegemony.

“So far, Linux has done spectacularly well, the more remarkably
because it has always been presented as an unadvertised, strictly
low-key offering to users. The commercial distros – RedHat,
SUSE, Novell – have achieved a degree of success in the
enterprise that has Steve Ballmer grinding his teeth; on personal
devices, the Android that runs cell phones and tablets has become a
major thorn in Steve Jobs’s side; and in supercomputers, Linux has
no equal. Only one area is left out: the rest of the world.”

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