> A vast number of users use their computers to check email, look up things on the web, and type up an occasional document.
This kind of condescension towards users and what they use a computer for is precisely why Linux doesn't have a foothold on the Desktop. Linux Desktop people design for some imagined person who, to the extent that they even exist, doesn't care at all about their operating system. They try so hard to make it easy by automating what they think the user wants to do that they make the system incredibly complicated and inflexible so everything falls to pieces the moment the user tries to color outside the lines.
This is sorta what parent meant, I think. If you don't understand why Linux is a failure on the desktop, you don't understand why people use desktops.
This kind of condescension towards users and what they use a computer for is precisely why Linux doesn't have a foothold on the Desktop. Linux Desktop people design for some imagined person who, to the extent that they even exist, doesn't care at all about their operating system. They try so hard to make it easy by automating what they think the user wants to do that they make the system incredibly complicated and inflexible so everything falls to pieces the moment the user tries to color outside the lines.
This is sorta what parent meant, I think. If you don't understand why Linux is a failure on the desktop, you don't understand why people use desktops.