@singularapathy, I’m with you man. I’ve been using both Linux and Windows for around six years now, and Linux still has a long, long way to come in terms of usability. I have Suse and Ubuntu installed on my desktop, but I also have Vista, and 99% of my time is spent using Windows. I use Damn Small Linux exclusively on my laptop, if only because I don’t use it for anything more complicated than internet browsing or word processing, and I want something that can start, and stop, as quickly as possible.

But when it comes to usability, anyone who thinks Linux is ahead of anything (Windows or Mac) is deluding themselves. A few examples: I built a new computer a while back, with an Nvidia card (after the nightmare that was ATI and *nix). I install Ubuntu. The Ubuntu help says that to enable the vaunted graphical flashiness, I need to install the restricted driver. I try to do this, Ubuntu tells me I don’t need a restricted driver. I try to enable desktop effects. Ubuntu tells me it can’t. But not why. An hour of wading through forum posts, I find someone has posted a huge script that should fix my problem. Half an hour of reading through the thing making sure this “run as root” script doesn’t have a hidden “rm -r /” in there somewhere, I run it, and Ubuntu crashes. But this was supposed to happen, apparently.

How about OpenSuse? One-click installation of drivers. Sounds pretty easy right? Well sure, you click on the button, progress bars leap to life, all sorts of stuff looks like it’s happening, and then it all disappears. Did it work? Did it fail? Who knows? I go poking around, and one application tells me the drivers weren’t installed, another one tells me they were. Well that’s peachy.

And let’s not mention the fact that easily 80% of applications that fail to launch do so without providing a single error message, or any indication anything went wrong. You click their icon, your mouse cursor changes to the little “thinking” icon, and then… Nothing! Then you have to pull up terminal and try to start the program from the command line just to see why it’s not starting. Lovely, that.

And how about the fact that if anything ever does go wrong, the vast majority of the time, solving it involves a whole lot of mucking around in with the CLI. Do you know how most people react to being told to use the command line? I’ll give you an example. I installed Ubuntu on my sister’s computer, set everything up, got it all working nicely. Two weeks later, she rings me, and I swear, our conversation, nearly word for word, went as follows:
Her: “My printer stopped working.”
Me: “Hurray! How, exactly is it not working.”
Her: *describes problem*
Me: “Ah, ok. What I need you to do is click on Applications, then Accessories, then Terminal. Ok? Now I need you to type-”
Her: “Um, when can you come over and put Windows back on?”

But all of the above pales in comparisson to the only example I need when people tell me Linux is more “usable” than Windows. I added a second monitor to my computer a few months ago. I boot Vista, the second monitor pops on, ten minutes of fiddling and I’ve got everything the way I want it. I boot Suse. Second monitor doesn’t come on. Ditto Ubuntu. I Google. I post questions in help forums. The most constructive answer I get back is, “You should have made sure both monitors were plugged in when you installed *nix. A reinstall should fix the problem.” Reinstall an operating system because I got a new monitor? Even Vista isn’t that bad.