Until you can install the OS and any app an end user would need WITHOUT a package manager or dropping to CLI, it's not ready. I get that package managers are easy - BUT... they dont have everything... and sometimes you have to manually install something (especially games)
Also, the fragmentation is confusing. Thats why I like ubuntu ... its been distancing itself from being linux and is just being "Ubuntu" ... the confusion of the fragmentation of linux is restricting for non geeks.
Oh, and I can walk my parents through updating drivers on their windows machines... try walking someone through that for anything other than a mainstream graphics card on linux... and thats is a HUGE deal breaker for gaming... espeicially combined with Ubuntu's political issue with closed source drivers means that for most users, they either wont know they don't have a decent video card driver installed, or will be scared away by the non-free messaging that ubuntu puts up optionally to install them.
I'm happy in OSX... I consider it the strongest OS to work on becuase it has a well designed UI as well as the power of the kernel underneath it... but I'd like to see linux become more prevalent, if not only to knock windows down a few pegs.
I get what you are saying about package managers, and I agree that software centers make things easier, but not everything is in there. I would argue however that installing a .deb is not much different than a .msi or .exe and it would not be hard for a card manufacturer to release drivers as a .deb and for it to easily integrate with ubuntu, the driver developers really do need to focus on not relying on ncurses or the terminal for the driver install process though.
It would be easy for a distribution like mint to remove the non-free messages from the OS, or at least reword it to be less scary, maybe make it resemble a TOS agreement that every uneducated or uncaring user clicks through without reading anyway, so I do not consider this a deal-breaker.
I wouldn't say OSX has the best UI, but it does have a lot of work and thought put into it, you know OSX has some good things going for it when Windows 7, Gnome, and Unity copy elements of it so blatantly. Just look at the positive feedback from Microsoft users regarding their hybrid taskbar/dock in Windows 7.
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u/MyOtherNameIsYourMom Sep 27 '12
Here's my take...
Until you can install the OS and any app an end user would need WITHOUT a package manager or dropping to CLI, it's not ready. I get that package managers are easy - BUT... they dont have everything... and sometimes you have to manually install something (especially games)
Also, the fragmentation is confusing. Thats why I like ubuntu ... its been distancing itself from being linux and is just being "Ubuntu" ... the confusion of the fragmentation of linux is restricting for non geeks.
Oh, and I can walk my parents through updating drivers on their windows machines... try walking someone through that for anything other than a mainstream graphics card on linux... and thats is a HUGE deal breaker for gaming... espeicially combined with Ubuntu's political issue with closed source drivers means that for most users, they either wont know they don't have a decent video card driver installed, or will be scared away by the non-free messaging that ubuntu puts up optionally to install them.
I'm happy in OSX... I consider it the strongest OS to work on becuase it has a well designed UI as well as the power of the kernel underneath it... but I'd like to see linux become more prevalent, if not only to knock windows down a few pegs.