I more or less agrees with KaGeZ. I've been using Linux on my desktop for few weeks and I've been flooded by all sorts of annoying little bugs and quirks and never happened on Windows:

- I just installed Evolution 1.2.1, and the mailer component crashes every single time I try to view a message. Back at using KMail. I filled a bug at Ximian related to that problem.

- I've got a delayed sound in some games using SDL. That is I hear the sound related to the action 1 second after the action itself. I've tried every little trick I've found on newsgroups and I searched RedHat's bugzilla but found no solutions. I'm not sure what kind of sound driver I run. I'll get Alsa drivers from Freshrpms and try them.

- It took me one full day to get RedHat to install. I used a ol' dusty 4x CD-ROM to proceed to the final install because the installer didn't seem to be able to read well using my CD-RW. That CD-RW is actually working flawlessly in every other situations.

- Before installing RedHat, I tried installing Mandrake using a local mirror. The Mandrake install worked flawlessly after I discovered that my Debian server kernel had problem with my NICs. They simply stopped working when the data throughtput was too high. It took me a while to discover the server was the problem and once I discovered it, I tried several drivers that were suggested on newsgroups and then 2 kernels version until I got a working 2.4.20.

- Recently, I had to do some _real_work_ on my computer: coding using and old DOS IDE, Borland C++ 3.01 for a class I have [I know, this is _totally_ outdated but I don't want to argue on this, being totally off-topic]. DOSEmu wasn't working great, crashing every once in a while so I decided I'd install Windows. After a while and 1 busted Linux installation, I finally managed to get Windows 2000 to work. For some reasons, the network connection between the my server and my Windows box was _slow_ as heck. This was strange since that's a 100mbps cross-over link. Having total faith in my Debian server, I spent few hours trying to figure out what was wrong in my Windows setup. I couldn't find any. Lacking rationnal explanations on the problem, I decided to reboot my Debian server, and *zzoooo* there goes the problem, which was obviously not related to Windows.

You may say I'm unlucky and that may be true. I've worked out many little problems like that since october 2002 and that was actually pretty much fun. But now I've got some real work to do and I would like to get them done in Linux. Some of those many problems kept me from being productive in Linux like I would be in Windows.

By this, I want to prove that Linux is not quite ready to leave the desktop of geeks or power-users and I challenge anybody to prove the contrary! Notice and I'm _not_ a newbie or computer illiterate person. I solved most of those problems (and liked to solve them) but I don't see how an average computer user could solve them if the same thing happened.

[Yes, this is a open invitation to flame me, but please bring valid arguments with you. I think I can defend myself pretty good on that issue.]

I wholeheartedly agree with you. Linux is still to much an operating system for people who really know what they are doing. It certainly isn't for the average home user. [addsig]

Yes, same for me. Like you, [Neu]Mann, I've been fiddling very long with all these small problems (which might get greater problems when summed up) on Linux, switched between a dozen distros, always experimenting with something new. My conclusion is: Linux is no desktop system for total non-geeks.
Time will show if it ever will, but to be honest, I don't think that it is a real problem for Linux at all. Maybe I would not even like it as much as I do now, once it got real mainstream [addsig]

Yeah, it may go the way of Windows. [addsig]

You got a valid point here MoX. Many people use Linux because it's "not Windows", or because they feel more stimulated by the amout of things you can fiddle with. Possibilities are endless in Linux, there is always something to check, to fiddle with and to learn.

I must admit that, very often, I sit in front of my Windows box with nothing else to do beside chatting. That's not likely to happen in Linux

I like fiddling with Windows stuff. I also like going through Windows exes and dlls with a resource editor and doing stuff there too. Windows isn't totally useless. [addsig]

hmm...did anybody claim that? [addsig]

erm, sorry, but then I have to ask you guys one thing:
Why is my brother, as well as my girlfriend now running linux for about 1 year without a single problem? Both used Mdk 7.2 in the beginning, my GF upgraded to 8.0, and still, they both don't have any problems. My GF is doing her school stuff she needs to get done on her PC with OpenOffice, and also printing the stuff flawlessly. And, up to now she never told me that she had any problems, and I also couldn't see any when being at her place and playing around with her (actually it is my old one) PC.
Also, in my case, I'm using Koffice and OpenOffice in combination, and in terms of productivity, I never had problems. These 2 offce suits work perfectly for me, offer me all (actually way more than I do need) features I need for my work, printing works, file sharing between windows PCs and linux PCs works... The only thing which I really have to fiddle with, and which indeed does make some trouble every now and then is all this server stuff. Mail server, httpd, mailinglist manager etc. Getting these to work, and keeping them working really can be a challenge sometimes.
But, if you (today) look at linux distributions, they can already keep up with windows in terms productivity.
My brother listens to his music, downloads his guitar-tabs from the net, writes/prints his docs, uses ICQ, administrates a website (school related, which indeed is lame, but that's not the point here), recieves/writes mail(s)... And he never talls me about problems.

I _do_ think that it _highly_ depends on the hardware you use. I myself have experienced this too. This which worked fine on a certain machine, simply refuse to work on others. In my brother's case, when he was using Windows, even opening Notepad was critical. It's a 466MHz Celeron, with 64MB of RAM, and Win98SE ran more than slow. We tried Win2k, which was even slower on that PC, but stabler. But, honestly, it was not a speed you could be productive at.
We tried Rh and Mdk, and my brother like Mdk more than RH, and he's still liking it, and belive it or not, he today still swears about windows, even if he hasn't used it for about 1 year or so.

Actually, this may sound like if I am protecting linux, but this is what is happening around me. Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones.... no idea. I just know that the people around me who use(d) linux, geeks or not, actually still do like it today.

Thank you for your attention
[addsig]

I myself have been having problems with server stuff. Apache just quit on me one day and I haven't been able to get it to work since. But I don't understand why Win98SE would go slow on a 466. It runs faster on my 166Mhz (96MB RAM) then it does on the Dell. Windows is still my OS of choice (and probably will remain that way), but Linux has some cool features that will make me keep it too. [addsig]

ok, initially it ran very fast, yes, but only initially, with nothing installed, which, unfortunately, is quite useless
As soon as we installed some programs and office, everything started to go more than slow... but well, it just happened, and I don't know why. I just know that it did happen
[addsig]

What, do you think I'm running Windows with nothing on it? I have PWS, mysql, my mouse and keyboard software running constantly and I'm still doing pretty good. I was thinking of installing office too. [addsig]

well, as I said:
Maybe I just had bad luck, like you had on linux!
[addsig]

Hey! That's the usual "It Works For Me (tm)" frequently used by Linux users

I don't really believe that 100% of the things you use were installed and got running at 100% the first time. Most Linux user just loves to fiddle with their apps to make them work like they want too. I don't believe that they would count that kind of thing has a problem. I would be pretty happy if I had to do just that but I'm was confronted with problems that went beyond the simple fun a messing with things.

In fact, you probably are of the lucky guy for whom Linux work flaw and for whom Windows is just a bitch. As for me, Windows 2000 runs as smooth as RedHat or Mandrake were, and Windows.NET Server RC 1 was working even better and faster!. It's true both a memory hogs but it's hardly a concern for me because I've got plently of memory to spend.

For the hardware thing, you are probably right. My printer was not much trouble to setup in Linux but every page it printed were a bit offset up. I had to align using a little program that went with Mandrake. Finding that this program existed took me quite a while... Of course, my printer wasn't bought with Linux in mind so it didn't support PostScript.

I would love to hear more about this printing program, because with my current printer the page is aligned wrongly when I try to print in higher quality. Maybe it could help.

Thanks in advance! [addsig]

http://www.linuxprinting.org/cups-doc.html

Look at step 8. You'll see download links to align.ps and alignmargins.

It's probably specific to CUPS, I don't know. Just give it a try.

hmmm... I don't know if it is specific to CUPS... because my printer printed fine up to now, the stuff aligned in the center... but well, EPSON printers do support linux, so that may be it...
[addsig]