Linux becomes more and more usable for non-technical users and has done a lot usability-wise on desktops but let's face it there's still a long way to go.
If for instance you use Ubuntu (the most popular distro for desktop), it is still plagued by bugs(and even the Long Term Support version). Have a look also at the Linux Mint forums it seems better but many users complain about buggy Cinammon. Well all in all, the desktop environments suffer of more bugs than on Windows or Mac.
Here are the reasons that keep me switching for my home PC (Ubuntu is only installed on my spare PC that I use for testing) :
- No decent Flash support. The hardware acceleration by the GPU has been disabled (no option to enable it) and when I watch videos on youtube CPU reaches 100%. There's still Chrome which has its own Flash player and it improves significantly with a CPU consumption of around 50% but still far from I got on Windows 7 between 10 and 20%...
- Battery draining : again a hot topic and mostly related to bad integration with popular graphic cards and other hardware components (wifi cards) but most people complain of reduced usage on battery (50%) compared to Windows.
- For Java developers who use Eclipse, SWT looks ugly and performs badly on Ubuntu (not tried on other distros). Swing based IDE like IntellijIDEA or Netbeans are better but they don't match their Windows counterpart.
- Ubuntu or even kernel upgrades that tend to break things like for me a webcam support.
I wish these problems were solved because as a developer I still prefer Unix based OS. It is very subjective but what has changed for me recently is that now I really find Ubuntu to be more visually appealing than Windows 8 (and same for Gnome 3.10). The login screen, the dash, software center are really nice. Even the Nautilus file manager that I used to dislike now looks really nice (now it is named Files) The desktop experience is much more "consistent" than it used to be and Ubuntu with Unity/Gnome shell and Gnome have worked hard to make the desktop user friendly and sexy.
If for instance you use Ubuntu (the most popular distro for desktop), it is still plagued by bugs(and even the Long Term Support version). Have a look also at the Linux Mint forums it seems better but many users complain about buggy Cinammon. Well all in all, the desktop environments suffer of more bugs than on Windows or Mac.
Here are the reasons that keep me switching for my home PC (Ubuntu is only installed on my spare PC that I use for testing) : - No decent Flash support. The hardware acceleration by the GPU has been disabled (no option to enable it) and when I watch videos on youtube CPU reaches 100%. There's still Chrome which has its own Flash player and it improves significantly with a CPU consumption of around 50% but still far from I got on Windows 7 between 10 and 20%... - Battery draining : again a hot topic and mostly related to bad integration with popular graphic cards and other hardware components (wifi cards) but most people complain of reduced usage on battery (50%) compared to Windows. - For Java developers who use Eclipse, SWT looks ugly and performs badly on Ubuntu (not tried on other distros). Swing based IDE like IntellijIDEA or Netbeans are better but they don't match their Windows counterpart. - Ubuntu or even kernel upgrades that tend to break things like for me a webcam support.
I wish these problems were solved because as a developer I still prefer Unix based OS. It is very subjective but what has changed for me recently is that now I really find Ubuntu to be more visually appealing than Windows 8 (and same for Gnome 3.10). The login screen, the dash, software center are really nice. Even the Nautilus file manager that I used to dislike now looks really nice (now it is named Files) The desktop experience is much more "consistent" than it used to be and Ubuntu with Unity/Gnome shell and Gnome have worked hard to make the desktop user friendly and sexy.