Friday, October 20, 2006

A user base willing to learn and try.. is this not a good thing?

Earl Moore is trying out Ubuntu. And while it wasn't all happy happy joy joy, he stuck it out and conquered his installation problems. Kudos Earl for stickin' to it.

I had my fair share of issues when I first tried Ubuntu Breezy. So much so that I created a working dual boot system but gave up after I couldn't get sound working correctly. Months later, I came back to it when Dapper came out and have since made the leap. While I still run a dual boot setup, XP hasn't been booted on it in probably 3 months.

While I don't think Earl is anywhere near making the leap (he's quite a happy Mac camper I think), he's at least testing the waters to see what else is going on out there. This is good.
 
While installing Linux can be a challenge on some systems, and despite the fact that it can throw up a few (different) hurdles that pre-installed Windows and Mac machines don't have, I still think it's a wonderful system. An amazing accomplishment.

Now there is always going to be the camp out there that thinks everything should 'just work'. And if it doesn't, then it's not a real solution. Bah I say. If Linux remains the domain of people who want a cutting edge, stable, secure and truly open operating system and are willing to learn a little bit to get it, then so be it.

Best case scenario, it starts to truly compete (market-wise) with Windows and OS-X. Worst case scenario, you have a smaller market OS with a user base full of smart people willing to learn and try new things. A win-win from my standpoint.

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