Computer Guys

Linux has always been associated with complexity and incompatibility. However, every year, we see major improvements made to its usability. Over 20 years into its development, is Linux finally easy enough to use for your average user?

Windows proponents have always maintained that the total cost of ownership of their operating system is lower compared to what their free, open source counterparts have offered for years. They have based this on questionable studies, funded of course by Microsoft itself, and have made suspicious assumptions on the cost of Linux support.

To break down what these studies have said before:
Windows machines are cheaper to run because it is cheaper to find support for because Windows administrators are plenty and cheap to hire.
A longer list of hardware compatibility means that you can find cheaper hardware and be assured that they will work with your setup.

Both these claims still remain true, of course. However, these studies often neglect to quantify the main concerns of running a Microsoft-based setup, namely:
The price of licensing and running Microsoft software.
Productivity of users when using Windows machines compared to Linux

Admittedly, with the popularity of Windows on the personal computers of staff, almost anyone you hire today would have used one form of Windows or the other. Current trends show that 63% of these employees would be familiar with Windows XP or Vista. The question is, how hard would it be for them to transfer this computing experience to Linux?

In the past half a decade, a tiny company called Canonical has been striving to make this transition as smooth as possible. Ubuntu, their custom version of Linux, built on the philosophy of sharing and ease of use, has proved to be highly popular even among complete novices. A quick review of this version of linux shows just how much ground they have covered, even if there is still work to be done making open source figuratively ‘open to the masses’.

The efforts of Canonical have been a major influence on other providers of Linux and open source software. Following in their footsteps, Fedora (built by Red Hat, the largest provider of Enterprise Linux) and even OpenSuse have made strides in user-friendliness and ease of operation.

On the hardware compatibility front, a flurry of interest has been generated by the popularity of netbooks, tiny computers running on equally tiny harddisks and slow processors. These tiny laptops usually have too little power to run the latest version of Windows, driving users to turn to Linux to maximise the functionality of their machines.

Due to the nature of open source software where all changes and updates to the software are contributed for free, this interest in Linux on netbooks has turned the attention of programmers, employees of large corporations and hobbyists alike, to improve hardware compatibility.

Windows will have a short-lived advantage on the remaining considerations of moving to Linux. With the whole of Microsoft’s future riding on their latest release of Windows 7, it remains to be seen if they can stay ahead of customer dissatisfaction generated by Vista. Vista and its performance penalties, extravagant pricing (for full-featured versions) has lost Microsoft substantial potential sales in the enterprise. Most corporations have refused wide-scale adoption of Vista, choosing instead to remain with the 8 year old Windows XP for end users.

For many, it is already too late for Microsoft. Linux, with its many advances in usability, has already begun to exceed Windows in terms of ease of use and functionality. These converts find little reason to return to their reliance on Microsoft as a proprietary software provider, and even less reason to return to paying for software with free alternatives.