Linux ready for the desktop?

It’s been 7 weeks of using Ubuntu 7.04 (better known as Feisty Fawn) as my primary desktop. I figured it was time to give my final assessment. Well, it’s not final, but I’ve come to what I imagine will be a steady state for a while. I’m relatively happy, and, surprisingly enough, I don’t miss using the mac everyday.

Here are the good things:

• Even macs get weird sometimes, especially if they’ve been on for a long time. The only time I shut down this laptop is when I’m taking it somewhere, which is relatively rarely. So I regularly have it on for many days at a time, with no noticeable degradation in performance.
• I love apt-get/aptitude. 90% of the software I want to install I just install by saying “apt-get install name_of_package”. Anything that is a requirement gets installed along with it. It’s so incredibly easy. In general, installation and configuration of software has become much easier.
• Open Office works better on Linux than on the mac, as does thunderbird and firefox
• For a few things (mostly system/network tools) there are some incredibly awesome options, amazingly good for free (as in beer) software, and better than software you’d pay for. For some things, there are lots of relatively decent choices.
• I have no problem getting just about all of my work done using Ubuntu.
• My printer setup (Brother laser printer) was easier on Linux than on the mac

Here are the bad things:

• The games available on Linux leave much to be desired
• Getting proprietary codecs to play (MP3, WMA, etc.) can be a pain
• XWindows (x.org) can be annoying to configure if you go beyond the most simple
• KDE is a memory hog (I switched to xfce, and am thinking about other light window managers)
• There are some serious holes in available software
• Some things take a while to get set up – longer than on a mac.
• Getting some hardware configured can be painful.

Now the ugly:

• If you are used to integration between your email, calendar and addressbook, there is only one option (Novell Evolution) and it is not very good.
• If that integration, with the added integration of a PDA is very important to you, don’t even bother trying Linux on the desktop.
• Regressions are on the rise (regressions are things that used to work, but break in new versions.)

So, overall, I like it, and I’m sticking with it, with the exception of my addressbook and calendar. It was quite a shame to have to give that up, but it was either that, or make due with either not using a Palm, or modifying dramatically how I dealt with my PIM data. So I’m stuck where I don’t want to be (where lots of nonprofits are) with a data integration problem that I can’t solve right now, and likely won’t get solved for years. Evolution, apparently, is not under active development because Novell is focusing on Groupwise. The Mozilla Foundation supposedly has been working on an integrated email/calendar/contacts system, but they are spinning off Thunderbird, and Sunbird (the calendaring app) is coming along slowly. So an integrated app from Mozilla is years away, if it will happen at all (nevermind the palm part.)

I’m looking forward to Gutsy Gibbon, Ubuntu 7.10 coming out in October. I’m sure I’ll be upgrading.

And, to answer the question posed above, the answer is, for me, obviously, a definite yes. But it appears, from my experience and others, that question actually has to be framed not as “Is Linux ready for the desktop?”, but “Is Linux ready for your desktop?” And the answer to that question depends upon the unique combination of the type of work, your software and hardware needs, and your willingness to put up with certain things. (Although, one needs to be willing to put up with some things no matter what OS one picks – it just depends on what you want to put up with.)