Comments

In my personal opinion, you can say anyone can use Linux. It is not the most difficult to use or learn. Even though not everyone has the time to do this after being accustomed to using Windows for so long. The change involved is large, and depending on what you do or use decides whether or not Linux is practical for you. So I would just focus on practicality. This article kind of states that Linux may not be ready yet for everyone which I can agree with. Being someone who uses Linux I can tell you about a few problems normal Joes would encounter all the time. With hardware you can be affected by something not being supported, who is to tell Joe what proper hardware to buy?. Vendors need to adopt standards for this, imagine a sticker on a box letting you know that the product has an open source driver. Even if it doesn't but is able to work in Linux can they somehow make note of it?. Joes don't know what works in Linux and alot of vendors don't even produce a driver anyhow, leaving you to find a driver on your own which may or may not exist for a piece of hardware (printer, scanner, All in-one, webcams - you name it) that you may have a practical use for. Of course by luck you find a driver and it becomes harder to install then just a package you click, Joe could have trouble. More vendors should work at this. Even though Linux has alternative software to mostly everything, not every distribution has integrated everything smoothly. Some programs you may need to use could involve harder steps. Distros try to maintain their own separate packages for everything. It could get simpler if we unified the way programs are installed, instead of having different packages depending on what version of Linux you have. This goes back to the hardware issue I mentioned earlier where you may be out of luck finding a premade package made to install on your specific version of Linux. Other than that you can find rare instances where you may even need to use windows or something from it, almost being completely unavoidable. For example a Sandisk Cruzer Profile, is a USB stick with a fingerprint reader for security needs to be accessed using Internet Explorer. If you go to school, sometimes websites they use are written for Internet Explorer and may break trying to use another browser, or the only plugin written for something is for Internet Explorer. - Your business could use special VPN software that may not have a Linux counterpart, I couldn't imagine a solution for that other than installing windows itself or running it in Virtualization/Emulation. Joe might have a hard time with that and some software products are commercial and costing money (Crossover Office or the likes). In order to adopt Linux we need to embrace it and be willing to accept it all around, along with all the vendors, programmers, developers and manufacturers.