I’m having an argument with a friend (kinda). We both agree that Microsoft is the source of all evil (if only they’d show us the source). But he maintains that OSX is the be all and end all and that Linux is not user friendly. It’s great that you can ‘tweak’ it but that’s not what he wants. He just want’s something that is easy to use.

Firstly, I think that it is a myth that OSX is so user friendly and ‘intuitive’. What does that even mean when you are talking about operating systems? Intuitive means that you’ve figured it out, finally. I also think that OSX backs it self a little too much, in that it assumes it has done the right thing and I always find it hard to track down those misplaced files.

However, the more important point here is that many Linux distro’s are actually really user friendly and easy to use these days. I suspect the ongoing concern is that you (generally) can’t buy Linux preinstalled. But these days, installing Linux is sometimes even easier than installing Windows.

Anyway, this article makes the point better than I:

If there is a single complaint that is laid at the feet of Linux time and time again, it’s that the operating system is too complicated and arcane for casual computer users to tolerate. You can’t ask newbies to install device drivers or recompile the kernel, naysayers argue.

Of course, many of those criticisms date back to the bad old days, but Ubuntu, the user-friendly distribution sponsored by Mark Shuttleworth’s Canonical Ltd., has made a mission out of dispelling such complaints entirely.

You can now download a beta of Ubuntu’s 8.04 release, more commonly and affectionately known as Hardy Heron (the follow-up to Gutsy Gibbon and Feisty Fawn). Final release is set for April 24.