October 19, 2009, 8:03 am
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols’s (in?)famous “Five Ways The Linux Desktop Shoots Itself In The Foot” has generated as much heat as it has light. I feel I can boil all five of his points down to one simple exhortation. Dear Linux community: Stop blaming other people for your own failings.
When talk turns to the reasons as to why Linux has not taken off like gangbusters on the desktop at the expense of Windows and the Mac, it’s always someone else’s fault. Mainly, it’s Microsoft’s fault. (Apple is scarcely mentioned, even if Apple effectively commands five to ten times Linux’s desktop slice.) Or hardware manufacturers are blamed, for lack of device driver support — even if one of the things about Linux that’s raised as a plus is the fact that it already has robust hardware support…
