The wonderful thing about Linux is that it has a philosophy of free software that’s followed religiously by it’s proponents. Linux evangelists have convinced enough volunteers and sponsors to create the most complex yet usable software ever. Ubuntu is the first and only Linux distribution that has been successful among average personal computer users, but it has a long way to go before it can compete with OS X and Windows. Ubuntu is where it is now because of great leadership, a focus on usability, and standardized features. It’s more polished and usable than other distributions.
A polished product will just work out of the box. A polished operating system won’t get in the way of your work, instead it will make your work easier. A polished operating system will provide a consistent high standard of user experience through out.
Linux has a lot of functionality. I can do 99% of everything I want to and can on windows or OS X, but that 1% margin matters. Using it just doesn’t feel “right” sometimes. Why can’t my wireless card just work? Why is the UI so ugly? Compiz fusion attempts to make it look better, but at the cost of usability. The animations and glitches just gets in the way and provides no usability value. It does some things really well like having an apt package manager, while leaving out other areas that completely ruin the user experience.
Like any religion, followers will loose faith once they discover that it’s not all harps and clouds. The philosophy behind it satisfy the most devoted followers, but it won’t satisfy the masses. It needs the polish, it needs leadership, it needs standards. If something works on my computer, it should work on yours too. The average user doesn’t want to spend hours trying to do something as simple as mounting a USB. Sure, a Linux guru can troubleshoot it in seconds, but the average user expects it to just work, and if it can’t do that, there are better operating systems that can. A couple hundred dollars on a first class operating system is a small price to pay for the hours saved configuring and trouble shooting a second class operating system.
The average user expects consistency. We need a standardized UI, a standard way of managing installed software, a standard video player to play videos. Ubuntu has done a good job of this. The average user expects things to work. The average user expects the kind of polished user experience from Windows and OS X. The average user expects these things because the competition has been able to deliver them. If linux wants a share of this demographic, it’s going to need more polish.
This post was inspired by Jeff Atwood’s post, Code: it’s trivial
