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| 03.19.08
Linux Is Not Ready For The Masses
 By Dave Taylor
There's an interesting, albeit very (very) long article written by Rip Linton entitled "Linux Not Ready for the Masses? Bull" that, rather inadvertently, does a great job of demonstrating one of the main reasons that Linux is not, in fact, ready for the masses:
Rip makes an impassioned intellectual argument for the positive value of change but in this instance completely misses that perception is more important than reality.
His arguments are based primarily on his own experience in the computer industry, years of learning how to wrestle with and overcome the challenges of new and different technology. Interesting reading, particularly since I too have been involved with the Unix community for decades.
There are a few key points he makes that I want to address:
"Most users love to learn new things and really like it if they are one of the first in their group to learn something"
In my experience that's not true. In fact, most people - particularly in a corporate environment - are interested in getting their job done and getting out of there, not learning new tools and techniques. That's why there's still such an installed base of Windows 95 and Windows 98, along with MacOS 9 (yes, I hear from users of all these systems).
This is a key point, because just about every Unix / Linux / GNU person I've bumped into during the 25 years (jeez!) I've been associated with that community has a high level of intellectual curiosity about the tools they use for their work. They like getting incremental updates, they like playing with new tools, they're curious. That's great, but it's not the way most people work and it's a mistake to assume that it is.
"Training and perception are the keys to successful change"
Agreed, but this assumes that people want to be trained and that the benefit to the business - and the individuals - after the training is sufficiently high that they'll accept being trained in the first place. Worse, most corporate trainers are terrible teachers, boring and fairly unforgiving of those who aren't immediately grasping the new concepts or tools.
Nonetheless, my main point is that, yes, perception is key to successful change. And since the perception of Linux is that it's far more geeky and difficult to work with than Windows, this needs to be addressed directly in the marketplace too.
And, to be honest, it is harder to work with Linux than Windows or Mac OS X because you can't go to Kinko's and buy an app for your Linux box, you can't just plug in a printer and get it to work, and you can't get your friend to pop over and help you fix things. No perception involved, this is just the reality of working with an unpopular system in the marketplace.
Contiue reading this article...
About the Author:
Dave Taylor has been involved with the Internet since 1980 and is internationally known as an expert on both business and technology issues. Holder of an MSEd and MBA, author of twenty books and founder of four startups, he also runs a strategic marketing company and consults with firms seeking the best approach to working with weblogs and social networks. Dave is an award-winning speaker and frequent guest on radio and podcast programs.
AskDaveTaylor.com
http://www.intuitive.com/blog/
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