I just read an article entitled "Great Since Day One" about polish and development on different platforms (http://www.marco.org/769340032). I quote:
"The joke of 'next year will be the year of Linux on the desktop' is almost as old as the internet, but it’s true: desktop-Linux fans always say it’s 'getting better', and there’s always a major distribution update a few months away that’s about to be awesome. But it never is. And it never will be, because the reasons why desktop Linux isn’t awesome today will still hold tomorrow: it’s still an extremely fragmented development community for which the non-geek user experience is one of the lowest priorities." There was a time not so long ago when I would have been right there along with that author, making fun of desktop Linux for being hard to use; full of too many meaningless decisions and missing any sense of overall design or direction. I have painful memories of installing Mandrake about a decade ago and being presented with a "hey, clueless new user, do you want KDE or Gnome?" dialog. Yecch. What I'm trying to say is that I'm the world's most cynical Linux convert. I deliberately avoided it for many years because of its poor desktop user experience. But I tentatively installed 9.10 on my laptop last year and I was very impressed. The landscape pre-Ubuntu is so primitive by comparison, I scarcely recognise that they're both Linux. 10.04 is even better, and I can honestly say I am finally happy recommending it as a desktop operating system. I just wanted to let you know that what you're doing is working. I've got no ties to Linux or the Linux community. I'm not a Linux enthusiast. I'm just a regular old user, the exact same kind who was complaining about Linux a few years ago. I think it's far easier to complain than to praise, but praise is what's deserved here. So, I found this list so I could send a message to even the odds a little. Thank you. You're doing a great job. Desktop Linux today is proving far better than I thought it could be. Sam -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
