This morning I replaced the latest version of Ubuntu with the Windows 7 release candidate. I had been running the Windows 7 beta but since this expires next week I thought I would go back to Ubuntu. However it looked like Microsoft's belief that if you give enough people Windows 7 to play with for a while they will not go back proved true in my case.

Ubuntu's latest release was like going back to XP for me.  It looked and felt terrible after six months with Windows 7. Also I had to spend a day fiddling with it to get all the various components that I needed installed. If Ubuntu shipped with what ordinary people want, rather than what a religious belief in open source says they SHOULD want, it would have been easier.

OK, I had time and enjoyed the experience and satisfaction, but I doubt many people could be bothered.  And, after I had wasted the day doing all that, the result was frankly dull, clunky and lacking imagination. Linux people will point out that my beef is with the interface – Gnome.  However it is not just that. Ubuntu installed and boots up much faster than Windows 7, but software running within it does not. Video playback was terrible when the same Open Source software running in Windows 7 was really good.

I have a good spec machine but there were so many things that Ubuntu could not run graphically. Even with all the eye candy switched on there was little to draw me in. One of my biggest problems with Ubuntu is that it sells itself as a desktop system for ordinary people. However things like graphics codecs and software that ordinary people use are not installed out of the box due to some stupid free software religious attitude that does not interest ordinary people.

Windows 7 however did everything I want, looked nice, ran straight out of the box. The only time it took me to install anything was to replace all the proprietary stuff I don't like such as Internet Exploder. It seems to me that even if I desperately want Linux systems to replace proprietary software, desktop packages simply are not user focused enough to make it happen. In the end Microsoft and Apple will win because they give the users what they want. This is tragic because Open Source should be whipping Microsoft and Apple into a coma on the desktop in the same way it has been doing on the servers. Mozilla has shown the sort of direction that the desktop needs to take if it is going to unseat anyone.

The problem is a lack of commitment from the Linux crowd to the desktop and a lack of drive to produce things for the great unwashed. Open source is supposed to bring together a great flowering of creativity and yet it is only a mathematical form which is being expressed. Linux desktops are  the tool of an archetypal geek which sees functionality over form.

So rather than beating up people who say that the Open Source movement needs to look to designers and other who will make their product look and feel better, it is time that the movement took a leaf from the proprietary companies' book.
Form projects with decent designers that focus on the user – like Apple does.  Integrate software better with the GUI like Microsoft does. Then perhaps Linux will be king.