The original Excel file published on a web server:

Downloaded this on Windows to fuck around with it.

Download on Ubuntu to edit and etc…

However, I am 100% convinced that I were to be an accountant, secretary or languages student, I wouldn’t touch a Linux even if you would point a gun at me. I want to start a series of articles to prove why Linux won’t “Ship on More Desktops than Windows”. I know is an old topic, but there’s just too much of this in the Linux community and especially in the Ubuntu community.

Before getting threatened by some frustrated Linux garage programmers, I want to state something clearly. As already mentioned, I am a huge fan of Linux and I really really really want to see a decent desktop distribution one day. However, (as also mentioned earlier) this is only because I know at least half of what I’m doing at the fuckin’ console. The thing is that there isn’t any Linux distro (or that least none that I know of) that is capable to deliver a humanly usable desktop to non-IT-literate users. Such users are the ones around which I want to focus my posts, so I will try to stay out of the development-related topics as much as possible (although there would be plenty of those too, unfortunately).

Most of what I’m going to post is obviously Ubuntu related since I don’t have the time and resources to install a new distro every fuckin’ weekend – I did that in college, but now I have a personal life that also involves non-IT-related stuff. So to all those CentOS, Fedora or openSUSE fanboys that are going to bitch about things like “oh, but my distro doesn’t (or does) that” – you are totally missing the point (I’ll probably delete your comment if you become very insistent). The same for the ones whining about “oh, but this requires proprietary drivers, bla bla, freedom and free software, bla bla, we don’t use the devil’s proprietary drivers” – we all know that’s not the user’s problem on Windows, for example, is it?

My only hope is to have the Linux geeks pay attention to the common user and not the one that is able to compile his kernel at 3 AM. That’s the only chance the Linux has if we really want it to “Ship on More Desktops than Windows”.

Stay tuned.