Over at iTWire, we are often in the position where we disagree with a fellow writer and say so. This morning, I found my colleague Davey Winder's piece "Opinion: why Linux sucks at being user friendly" to be a litle too general to pass without comment.

I must admit that unlike Davey I don't have experience of playing with the AmigaOS. I do, however, have two Macs at home, one Windows PC, several boxes running different ports of GNU/Linux and have fooled around with many other operating systems as well.

All said and done, I incline to the view that "user-friendly" is a relative term. It all depends on the individual, the programming (and I don't mean this in a technical sense) of the past and individual likes and dislikes.

That's why people can reconcile themselves to using an operating system where you click on Start in order to shut the system down.

Let's look critically at the points which Davey cited, in support of his assertion that GNU/Linux "sucks at being user-friendly."

1. Linux is a developer's OS

Any operating system is meant for developers. I don't fool around with Linux, the kernel that is, except on rare occasions. I do mess around with application or desktop settings which are a function of other bits of the whole.

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