Linux, Still an Awkward Alternative

This article looks in general at the position of Linux amongst average mainstream PC users to power users. While I'm positive that a lot of people will not agree with the author's opinions, however, some good points are mentioned about the troubles a user would go through getting tasks done. Apart from the low level of user friendliness of the open source operating system, software availability and hardware compatibilty remain to be Linux's largest hurdles, keeping it from the mainstream users.

The choice of software to run our computers can get awfully depressing. On one hand, there's Windows XP expensive and woefully insecure, but it works on almost every machine out there. On the other, there's Mac OS X -- far more secure, but also expensive and restricted to Apple's own computers.

Where's our independence from this pair? For a growing minority of users, it comes in the open-source operating system called Linux. It's either cheap or free (depending if you buy a packaged distribution or download a version online), it's secure and it can run on any Windows-ready machine.

And because its code is open for anybody to modify, users, not marketers, can get the final say in this operating system's evolution.

But Linux doesn't offer up these rewards easily. At worst, installing it means hours of thumb-wrestling the software into submission, first tweaking it to work with a PC's hardware and then mastering the inscrutable routines needed to update and manage this code.

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