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These basic users have a hard time understanding Windows, so how do we expect them to understand and install Linux as their primary operating system? Now, don’t get me wrong; if you are fairly comfortable with your computer then distributions like Mandrake and SuSE could very well suit you, but I just don’t think Linux is quite ready for those who rely on technical support for their problems. Unless they purchase a professional edition of Linux specifically for the included technical support, they are pretty much left on their own with the operating system. A quick call to the manufacturer of your PC will result in being told that they do not support anything, but Microsoft Windows. You will get no help there. The fact is that these manufacturers have paid for Windows licenses and have no interest in advancing Linux as an operating system. Feel free to blame multi-billion companies for the lack of a viable alternative to Windows, but maybe Linux just needs more improvements.

While Microsoft Windows is more than enough to confuse most people, I think Linux may easily leave them frustrated at their computers. There are quite a few reasons for my theory. First of all, installing Linux isn’t always fun for users with little experience with computers. Perhaps the most dreadful process in installing Linux is partitioning the hard disk drive and sizing the partitions for the installation. Then we also have the software incompatibility issue. I am sure many novice Linux users will want to insert software from another distribution that they find on store shelve or download and expect it to work, but in many cases it won’t. While Linux is getting good at recognizing a majority of the available hardware, it still isn’t perfect. We all know how corporations like Dell, HP and others like to have proprietary hardware components from various unknown manufacturers. It’s a fairly confident assumption that Linux will stop in it’s track upon "seeing" most of this proprietary hardware, as I have recently tried to install Mandrake on one of my friend’s Dell machines and it just wouldn’t recognize the network interface card (NIC) in the system. And as you can probably imagine, searching the Internet provided no solution for the problem. The equipment manufacturer was hard enough to find and once we found it, there weren’t any Linux drivers for the NIC. Either my friend would need to get a new "name brand" card or he would have to use Linux without the Internet. If you think realistically, how many novice users would go through the trouble to figure this out and possibly fix this or a similar issue? To further add to the overall chaos, opening up a Dell, HP (or other OEM) PC to research an unknown component voids the warranty, and I am thinking that many of these users wouldn’t want to do that. After all, they paid good money for the "free" tech support that came with their system. Hardware compatibility is simply going to be a major issue for novice users, especially when it will come down to installing Linux on Dell or HP systems.

Many people buy games with their new computers to test their system’s capabilities and to have some fun, but unfortunately they might not be able to play common games with Linux. Special game versions specifically compiled for Linux are required. Given this fact, we have just eliminated the PC as a gaming machine for most users. Many do not use the PC for games themselves, but what if your children or grand children want to install some cute kids game they just brought over? I can foresee a few tears being shed over this.

One other thing we must keep in mind is that anyone with a PC has used Windows for a good part of their computing lives, and therefore it’s not so far fetched to think that they might not even want a new operating system. It’s a common tendency for people to leave well enough alone and shun anything new and different. Linux can be intimidating and for these users, it is not a road they need to be on.

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