In order for an operating system to be used by “the public”, it has to be relatively simple.  If they want something, they should have to click, answer a few questions and move on.  This is what Windows provides and this is what will be required of Linux before it is able to start taking significant market share.

Now, this won’t be a long ranting post, but what I do want to say is that Linux is almost ready.  I recently setup a drive array (software RAID 5) in Linux and found that with the most recent version of the Kernel, it was able to detect all of my hardware and required very little “hacking” to get working.  In my opinion hardware detection was the previous downfall of Linux, however from my recent experience, this problem is well on its way to being fixed.  More vendors are releasing Linux drivers and more legacy drivers for older hardware are being released all the time.  As the userbase grows, so will the support.

I now have a spare computer which I can use as my Linux desktop test.  I’m going to see how much of my day to day computer work I could do using a Linux desktop and what problems I run into.  I’ll be recording my experiences here.