[Steve]

My experience with Linux is both limited and holds no fond memories; although I have to say it was a few years ago. Like you I was drawn towards it as an experiment when I had a spare computer available to play with. I duly downloaded the iso disto and burned it to cd. Installing the basic OS was simple and ran with absolutely no issues at all but after that I found I had hit a brick wall.

The system had not installed drivers for much of the hardware and that left it crippled. As well as that there seemed no easy way of installing those, unlike Windows XP (which I was running at the time) were it guides you through options to find and install missing drivers, in linux it not only didn’t tell me what was missing, but also once I had found that out myself, didn’t give me an easy way to install them myself to solve the problem. The whole environment was alien and for someone who has not used dos extensively or who is not familiar with command line instructions, it was fast turning into a nightmare just to get the system to recognise the hardware. The last thing anyone needs when using a PC is to be stumped at the setup stage. Having hardware driver issues added to that rapidly helps you form bad first impressions.

I spent the next few days…and I do mean almost every hour of each day, attempting to find answers and solutions to my problems. In the end it was just too much trouble and I gave up. If I felt that way when I still had another fully functioning PC complete with internet access to use for research, I do fully understand how confusing, annoying and frustrating it must have been for others that either had only the one PC (possibly dual booting) or god forbid, one with only Linux installed. Can you imagine having no internet access due to using linux for the first time and not being able to find out how to archive that..its a catch 22 situation.

I guess that Linux distros have moved on greatly since then though, but do note, that there are still many hardware and driver issues to overcome when starting plus unless they have altered the user interface to make it both intuitive and usable without the need of command prompt, then yes Linux will always be regarded as a geek OS.

On top of that you then have to look at what you actually use your pc for, as you have already pointed out many of the software packages that myself (and probably the majority of our users being that they are photographers) rely on will not currently run on Linux. Most users don’t have the benefit of two pcs to have access to Windows on one and Linux on the other, plus speaking for myself, since I am already dependant on Windows for certain things (and therefore ditching Windows is not an option), I see no point in battling through the issues already discussed to use Linux to do tasks that my Windows machine performs perfectly well.

I cut my teeth and was introduced to both computers and the internet in a Windows environment, and while I will be the first to admit that I am not a great fan of Microsoft or for that matter, Bill gates, for the most part Win XP is a very polished piece of software that does everything I require with little to no issues and doesn’t force me on a learning curve to remain productive. Linux developers have to take that into account before it will begin to erode the main stream strangle hold MS has in the OS market. Once they are able to do that, and I begin to read from reliable sources that everything is plain sailing installing and getting software to run on a Linux OS system, then I may dip my toe in the linux waters once more to see how it feels.