The question : “Is Linux Finally Ready For Desktops?” can be answered by two simpler questions:

1) Is Linux easy enough that my Grandmother use it?

2) Can I replace every single windows program with a Linux program or run it under wine or a similar, compatible program?

After many years of using multiple Linux distributions from Slackware to Red hat, Mandrake (Mandriva) to K/Ubuntu, DSL to Fedora, I have never been satisfied with any Linux distribution for day to day usage. Not there was anything wrong with most of them. but none were good enough to replace my windows system as a primary OS. Slackware’s package system sucked (even though it is one of the fastest, most modular distributions, even if it isn’t up to date – Slackware 11 still uses a 2.4.33.3 kernel by default), and Red hat and Mandriva, well, I just don’t like them enough for daily use. Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper) came the closest, until I tried to upgrade to edgy, and my whole Linux system got FUBARed. K/Ubuntu edgy was unstable to say the least.

Ubuntu 7.04 however, is a different story.

It’s as stable as Ubuntu 6.06, fast, hasn’t crashed on me (except for one time, see below), comes with a migration tool built into the installer, and is easier to install than it predecessors. The new version comes with KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) extensions and Compiz built in, and is easier to use. It has an updated version of Open Office, and the package manager is even smoother than before.

So why do I still have a windows partition?

1. One reason is games. wine and Cedega just don’t cut it. Seriously. Cedega works for a lot of games, but not all of them, and requires a reinstall of all the games that do work.

Attempting to run Supreme Commander caused my system to hang, and I had to reboot.

I was able to get Red Alert 2 working, but you have to replace the games .exe file to a cracked version for it to work, otherwise all units blow up after 30 seconds (and I have the original discs in the drives, so it’s kind of annoying) but it’s still better than it was a few years ago.

Running Cedega with effects (Compiz/beryl) enabled also causes the performance to be unbearably slow. Granted, I wouldn’t call my system cutting edge, but considering the fact that the cursor is locked in the Cedega window when running a program, so no effects are being rendered, I would have expected a smaller performance loss

2. The migration tool is good, but it isn’t good enough. My documents weren’t moved over, and neither were my emails and e-mail settings (Thunderbird 1.5) and bookmarks, skins and extensions (Firefox 2.0).

In all fairness, writing a Linux migration tool that ignores open source products but copies setting from Microsoft ones, seems kind of dumb to me. I had to copy over my profiles manually, and edit the profiles.ini file. It’s not too difficult, but I wouldn’t expect or require a novice user to do.

3. NTFS is automatically set to read only, and cannot be changed, no matter what I tried (unlike 6.06 where I could r/w to any NTFS partition thus making my life much easier)

4. Another problem is that support for many formats (video and audio codecs like mp3 and mpeg4, and compression formats like RAR) aren’t installed automatically with the system. Although i can understand the reason why Caonical don’t install non FOSS automatically (i.e just open source or freeware), as :

Canonical’s mission is to realize the potential of free software in the lives of individuals and organizations.

but making the system easier to use buy automatically installing the codecs will do just that, by making it accessible to more users.

5. The last thing that I think holds potential users back is mucking around in the CLI (terminal). for some reason (in my opinion it’s because of Hollywood “Hacker” movies) some novice users think that opening a terminal and typing a command (say ping 127.0.0.1) or a few random letters can cause you computer to fry, global warming to accelerate, rabid monkeys and nuclear waste to rain out of the sky and Satan rising from hell to enslave humanity.

OK, so maybe I’ve exaggerated just a teeny tiny bit ;), but users who have used a GUI for most of their compute experience are very uncomfortable when faced with a command line. It confuses them and scares them away. True, running nohup cd /; rm -rf * > /dev/null 2>&1 & as a superuser (and then pressing ctrl+d) will completely erase any and every file you have your harddrive. But most users never rarely work as su, and the chance of ever doing something like this accidentally are 1 to a bazillion

In summary

1) Can my Grandmother use Linux?

The answer is yes. Ubuntu is simple, easy to use, stable, and it looks good. As for regular office work, multimedia and internet browsing it is, in my opinion, easier to use than windows. Installation of software via the add/remove program is excellent.
2) Can I replace every single windows program with a Linux program or run it under wine or a similar, compatible program?

Definitely not. Photoshop, games, and other tools can’t run without a decent amount of tinkering and/or products from Codeweavers/Transgameing. and even when they do they still need workarounds most of the time. a easy to use Gui for wine on Ubuntu, with a wizard for importation of native dll files from a (legal) windows CD or partition, would definitely help.

So, keep your windows partition if you play games. If you need to run windows programs dual-boot or, if you have a multicore PC, with Virtualization extensions try a VM.