Lobby4Linux

This is a long post but it tells a very real story about Linux.

Seems the major stumbling block to the adoption of Linux is that it is not as predictable as its major competitors. (Reads: Uninitiated users cannot find what they are looking for in the places they expect to find them.)

Now this is a given…most people will forgive one small inconsistancy in an operating system, in fact, they will forgive quite a few. BUT…if you have a new user who approaches the change-over to Linux with any measure of trepidation or a pre-existing bias, “little” things soon accumulate into an intangable jumble of negatives. Maybe the user cannot immediately tell you the number of specific negatives it took to back her away from Linux. That does not make her decision any less valid, not in her mind. All she knows is that with some measure of regularity and expectation, these little things piled up until her perception tilted permanently into the negative column. And once is all it takes.

Many of us know the person next door who had a bad experience with DOS and has maintained the Luddite view ever since. This is a computing thing not just a Linux thing. But it affects the way the next user might see Linux.