Why do people give up on Linux?

Personally i'm just sick to death of all the whingeing, that linux doesn't do this & can't do that.Also the "if linux could do this, i'd change" .Maybe it's just me,but, there are too many such incidences like this. If anyone is willing to change, they should read,listen & read some more,they should also be willing to put a bit of effort in to using/getting used to the differences.I am no technical GURU,but, i will read & experiment to get things sorted. If only others/newcomers did a bit of research & had the patience,they would find using linux is much like using windows ( except for BSOD's of course ). It has now been 5 years since i used windows ( except for school ), but i still get people come up to me & say windows has done this  or that & it annoys them, mention Linux & the automatic response is " oh no, i couldn't use that, there's no gui/tech support/etc " & i really get annoyed.

Anyway that's my tuppence worth

Andy

I think it's called intellectual laziness. These people don't want Linux, for that would be something new to learn; they just want windows with the bugs fixed, and the fixes better not change the way they use the machine, for then they would have to learn something new.

I think there is some of that, Bozo. But I think there is some of the attitude of expectations. Not expecting much from Windows they do not get as near upset with it. But Linux is expected to be better because everyone knows that. It is sorta like the smart kid in class. If he does not succeed all the time he/she is derided, whereas if the dumb kid in class does one thing right he is applauded.

Everybody has touched on some very good points as to what and why these folks give up.
I personally have seen my share of these "quiters". Most just don't want to commit the time to learn
the proper ways of Linux-foo. I bet if you asked you'd find that most "Linux" diehards are very much detail oriented in other aspects of their lives. Of course most "GURU's" have very messy desk spaces
(but it's a controlled mess ie pizza boxes to the left and malt cup/hamberger wrappers on the floor right side only) If there isn't a stack of hdd's in plain sight then he/she is probably still a noob.
The average "home computer" user just wants things to work. They don't want to have to configure anything. The so called "windows guru's" just don't get the concept of complete control without having to download an illegal copy of something or other, and if you try to talk to them about "source code" you more times than not get blank stares or a pointless argument about how linux will never be usable because it has no gui or theres no compatable program for this or that...la..te...da...
Anyways I believe that linux picks us and not the other way around. We all have something to add no matter how small or overwhelming it may be. Linux is not a "OS" it's way of life. You can either live it or stay huddled in fear under the shadow of BIG BROTHER ieM$.

And thank you for flying Penguin Air.

I think it is a couple of things to use the analogy of cars. Now I love the TVR Griffith now this is actually true...

I've sat in a BMW M3 it blew me away, first time it stopped at the lights I thought we're never going to. Now the owner had a friend who had a TVR Griffith. Now the thing is the BMW is a point and go type car it is just set up everything just works. But the TVR well it was described as a wild beast that needed taming it got written off.. And the owner of the BMW convinced him to get a BMW.

To me Windows is the BMW it just works it takes no thought it is point and go, and Linux is the TVR it does the same but you need to control it(You have to drive it) when it goes wrong you had better pull it back in.

The thing and I think to a certain extent some of the distro's have got it really really wrong. They are selling them selves as alternatives as windows it can be but it just doesn't handle the same. Now not being a fan of KDE4 at the moment and every rendition of it I have had, something is just not working or I have plasma crashing because I looked at it the wrong way.

Now had I been introduced to linux at this point I think I can clearly state I would never of continued, now I know enough and to be fair I could probably work around my KDE4 problems but have no desire to.

People do just expect it to work, we all know windows doesn't but to the majority that isn't the case. I would say 90% of windows users haven't partitioned a drive. You only have to look in your local pc shop to see them offering to fit hardware, christ most is get out of box slide in, connect one or two cables,  stick disk in draw. <= but even this is too much.

Not so long ago I made a load of flowers for someone whist they made the cake(No I won't do it again) But for the amount of flowers on a 3 tier cake would of cost you well into the high 100's OK it wasn't easy but beyond time(Longer than for a professional)  the total cost wasn't much beyond 150(For everything tools and cake). The point is when you don't know it looks impossible.

We all have different priorities in life, different things we will spend money on I smirk on the inside when I hear someone complain about a meal that costs them 15-20. I wouldn't begin to look at a meal critically till I was well into 100.

This sort of thing happens with just computer software in general.  I've seen several people who come to our software and expect it to work just like their old programs did.  Well we never had to do this or that, and that's not how this worked.  You just want to say "If it was so freaking good why are you changing?".

I don't really compare opensuse as an equivalent of windows. It is an entity of it's own - that puts all the basics (and more) on your machine in under an hour. It does many things that M$ won't do - and yes some M$ apps don't run under linux..

Recently, I had to re-install a windows machine and it took many hours to get everything working properly. A good 80% of that time was used only to secure the computer against outside threats.

As for developments in linux - since I have been using it (about 4 years) - I have seen some major leaps forward - while with M$, I have seen them take many leaps backwards.

Again, some fine points have been brought to light here. The day after I posted my first entrie on this thread I found myself redoing a friends computer completely due to a "windows" hdd error that refused to allow the "OS" to boot. After swapping in a different hdd and a fresh install things were back to the usually abnormal "M$" environment. During the course of all this he informed me that if it wasn't for the incompatability of the "CAD" programs that he's forced to work with at his work he would switch to Opensuse completely and never look at the other again. We tried in the past to get things fully working with suse but the "CAD" programs always seemed to loose some of thier functionality or they just wouldn't work. We even tried to use some of the more recent "Linux" CAD programs and the results were basicly the same. Some things worked well and some not. Guess this is just one of those little niche's that still needs development in Linux. Anyways this may also be a reason that other haven't made the switch as well.

This is the sig of Opensuse Forum member Dragonbite which I think speaks to a good portion of the reasons as well:
"Linux provides freedom, problem is most users don't know what it is or how to use it.

This is the sig of Opensuse Forum member Dragonbite which I think speaks to a good portion of the reasons as well:
"Linux provides freedom, problem is most users don't know what it is or how to use it.

-sagemta

Ok look, I feel like a total hypocrite, many of you know I am a a supporter of open source and linux, come on! my credentials are still in order, I HAVE FAITHFULLY FOLLOWED PARTY LINES!! ha ha But, as I became familiar with apps like blender, I wanted to explore more avenues.  where maya 8.5 installs on SuSE (10.2 I think) Mudbox can't. I can use CS4 in a VM but, I forfeit the dual SLI DDR 3, 6 gigs ram, Pentium i7 power. plus I wouldn't be able to have photoshop cs4 extended, maya, and illustrator open at the same time on my triple monitor set up. Though my wacom has a linux driver, in a VM, resources and screen real estate is cut drammatically. So even after Vista was release, I bought an OEM copy of XP pro 64bit strictlly as a platform for my tools which range from AVID to Zbrush

I am saying precisely what Andy pointed out, Linux is ready and I see is SLED being the flagship (partnership interest and such) platform for the first releases of adobe suite software. Just the savings on a corporate level over an MS alternative like the Mac.  Apple is about toys, very expensive toys. I'm sorry I said it.

 Have a question if anyone knows where I can get a good screen capture app, I have alias sketchbook, (useless, except it has an app to take pictures of artwork) but the problem with this is that the capture is immediate, whereas we've got a great capture app in KDE that gives us time to display, open files, etc..especially when trying to show something within the start/launch menu. I am really hesitant about installing anything on XP and don't trust EVERYTHING on sourceforge unless I have ran across it before via Linux or BSD.  On linux, if it is in the repos on the main servers, I have no problems whatsoever.

  The reason is I want to clarify something which will perhaps allow all of you to forgive me for my sins and is perfect for this topic.

Well if you just want to get a static picture from XP what I use is the "Print Screen" button on your keyboard.  That copies the current picture of things to the clipboard which you can then paste into paint, word, or other favorite program that will handle pictures.

That is interesting, I pushed the print screen button and it brings up Ksnapshot. I had no idea that did that in SUSE. Learn something new every century.

I just tried it and absolutely nothing happened; the GIMP says "no image data in the clipboard". Oh, I'm running xfce.

Hehe have you found the screen capture in gimp ;)

I hope you can see the image at it's actual size, if you look through the picture, you can see my program files, some of the opened tools, you will also notice tools which I have kept from linux when working in this environment such as VLC.  As I said, if all of this had tarballs for linux, you wouldn't be looking at an XP 64 environment.  The gimp is the 64bit binary (current version, excellent for file conversions which expensive photoshop doesn't have, yet photoshop has a heck of an arsenal. as you can see installed in the program files, this is a machine dedicated to art. (google some of the apps.) Plus it's windows, you get killer free apps like cool web search toolbars and things of that nature!! how cool is that?

the snapshot was taken using Alias Sketchbook, what I was asking about earlier was an app like ksnapshot which you can set timer to extend the start menu, etc. anyway, all three monitors, including a wacom cintiq on right. all taken at the same time on all three monitors, this has not been stitched to make a panoramic so you can understand the need to work in an environment which allows me so much realestate.

system is intel i7 6gb ram, nvidia sli plenty of power to work in such a space.  I rarely surf the net with this system, though I do pop over here when in between things. My personal computer, for surfing, online purchasing, personal media editing, using Amorok for my home jukebox, etc is still Linux, and 11.1 is soooo darn close for the big time.

p.s. anyone notice the icon theme for the desktop? a dash of Kde-look there.  so please, please forgive me for all my transgressions. pleasssse.

I'm about to flood you so be warned... You're easy to solve

http://www.aqsis.org/
http://arbaro.sourceforge.net/
http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~nowozin/autopano-sift/
http://www.blender.org/ (OK I know not maya but is as good and is free) and http://verse.blender.org/
http://enblend.sourceforge.net/
http://registry.gimp.org/ (OK no Photoshop, but with scripting more power, and if you want the menus the same http://www.gimpshop.com/ )
http://hugin.sourceforge.net/
http://immix.sourceforge.net/
http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/~luft/ivy_generator/
http://www.luxrender.net/
http://www.makehuman.org/blog/index.php (The one you really want)
http://www.moonlight3d.eu/cms/index.php/about
http://www.renderpixie.com/
http://sunflow.sourceforge.net/
http://www.wings3d.com/
http://www.yafaray.org/

As I said easy ... some are just stichers but many are alternatives..

Edit
Not got a clue about rpms for them but I know a distro that does have easy packages I just looked on a dedicated graphics repo.

Mmm Ok well some are still in the process but makehuman for example looks like a project to keep an eye on.