Bleh, ignore the somewhat uncreative title, but
this Slashdot article contains some interesting (and sometimes amusing) discussion, the basis of which is a reaction to
this Washington Post article. The article [Linux, Still an Awkward Alternative] was written from the perspective of an 'average user' (if there is such a thing) evaluating Linux as a desktop replacement.
The real interesting stuff is in the Slashdot article however, where you can see the Linux fans jump into the fray, and somehow try to turn the conversation into either a pro Linux rally, or even worse a pro [insert name of my distro here] rally. While the open source community is often trying to attempt to present a face of united opposition to our good friends at Redmond, in reality the truth is somewhat different - people seem to be able to get fired up when talking about Distro X vs Distro Y just as much as they can about Windows VS Linux. There's also some great examples of people who missed the point somewhat, but felt obliged to post in order to defend their distro. In one section, a certain person responds to the post article authors comment about a few things he was unable to change or figure out:
several of the gripes the reviewer mentioned about fedora can be solved by the following:
# get rid of the graphical boot in fedora
edit the /etc/sysconfig/init
GRAPHICAL=no
# change your gnome splash screen
replace /usr/share/pixmaps/splash/gnome-splash.png
# reset nautilus to default browsing
gconftool-2 -t bool /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser -s true
Doesn't the above reinforce exactly why Linux ISN'T suitable for a large percentage of Desktop users out there, even those who would consider themselves technical? Granted the above author did correct the impression that those 3 tasks could not be done at all (which I think was their main aim), however it really does serve as a great example to reinforce the point that there are still some usability issues associated with ALL Linux distros.
In some ways it's a bit of a sad feeling - there were days (waaaay back) when I would have actually enjoyed screwing about with endless distros on my PCs, back in the days when I was installing copies of OS/2 Warp to test simply because it was an alternative to Windows 3.1, but those days are long gone. I *like* Windows XP, and I know it well enough that I can coax it into helping me do 99% of the tasks I need to do daily, both in my work and my recreational computing. Right now, that's enough for me. Interestingly this raises the issue of workplace vs home environments/desktops. Why take the time to learn where everything is / how to perform tasks in Linux on your home PC when you're only going to have to go in to work and use Windows on Monday. Would an increase of Linux in corporate environments result in an increase in home users? Do I care? Do you care? For now, I'm going to stick to my little Knoppix bootable CD..