Travis Riddle wrote:
Why not just download Open Office for Windows. If that will not work (the linux community seems to be fine with it) then Word Perfect can be found for less than $40 bucks. Gimp instead of Photoshop. Perl is free. There is even free AntiVirus. And all an end user has to do is download and run the .exe. No compiling the kernel, no rpm managment, and extremly easy updates.
Certainly these are options too, though I haven't had to recompile my kernel in years, and I haven't had much trouble typing,
"yum install <appname>"
either. In fact, it's easier than on windows because you don't have to go look for the application to download and wade through various advertisements and end-user agreements.
The Linux desktop community is going to have to get serious about making their product easy to use or the home consumer market (as well as most of the business market) will continue to ignore them. 95% of the people that use home computers already think that MS products are over their heads, put linux in front of them and they will never turn it on again, they have better things to do.
If you'd been using Linux for as long as I have you'd know that Linux and Linux desktops *have* gotten vastly easier to use, thanks in large part to the efforts of RedHat. If you'd been around to witness this transformation you'd probably be wowed with the current state of Linux rather than being upset by it. Go try to install an old version of Slackware or Debian if you want to see what I'm talking about.
If you'd been around you'd also know that the history of Linux usability discussions is littered with people who complain about the problem but don't do anything about it, either by contributing code or paying for Linux so companys could afford to put more effort into development.
Peter
