Remember the principal shortcomings of the GNU/Linux based Operating systems?
Well, they were:
1. Difficulty in adding new software and,
2. Lack of well known, widely used, user friendly & industry standard software.


These shortcomings greatly limited the spread and adoption of a very beautiful OS that was more efficient, reliable and stable than its chief competitor- Windows.
Lets see how our FLOSS developers managed/are managing to overcome these problems:


Shortcoming 1: Difficulty in adding new software
With the advent of:
1. Package managers such as synaptic, etc.(which give you complete control over your system's software, yet maintaining ease of use),

2. Things such as CnR and One-Click Install, and

3. The traditional download a single package and double click to install, this problem is truly passé.

Gone are the days when one had to compile from source every time they wanted a new piece of software.. phew!


Shortcoming 2:Lack of well known, widely used, user friendly & industry standard software
Note: this one's got a fairly looong explanation

Rewind October 2003: Apple releases its acclaimed iTunes music management software with support for windows 2000 and xp. Coupled with the ipod (the only respectable portable media player of the time), iTunes quickly rises in popularity amongst windows users, who begin to much prefer it over the native Windows Media Player due to its ease of use and better features (not to mention the less technical name, Windows Media Player, phew!)

Soon, this makes people want to know more about the creators of their favourite jukebox. This leads them to know and learn more about Apple, and subsequently the OS X. Inquisitiveness leads them to try out the OS, and many -who prefer its ways, and are adventurous enough- make the switch. The folks at apple quickly realise this and even start a sales propaganda: "Know iTunes? You know Mac"


So, what do our open source developers have to learn from this??
No matter how good a software you create, without substantial market share and general interoperability with the market leader, you and your software aren't getting anywhere!

Enter Firefox (internet browser), Thunderbird (e-mail client), Miro (internet television), VLC media player, open office, Pidgin (IM client), etc.

Now then, what do all these softwares have in common? For one, they're all open source, and, they're all cross-platform applications that support most of the industry standard and the not-so industry standard formats. They work on windows and mac and give the average user an idea of what open source software is!

Now, imagine using these apps on windows/mac and then shifting to Ubuntu Linux... doesn't seem so daunting a task now does it?

Well, that now, my friends, is the Open source propaganda! To create world class apps for all platforms, making them widely accepted so that shifting to Linux is a piece of cake! And trust me, it is!

Take my experience as an example:
I bought a centrino duo (which has almost all open source drivers) based laptop a few months ago, while my friend bought a better by design based laptop.
I installed Ubuntu 7.10 while he installed Vista Ultimate.
Now, while most ofmy drivers were automatically configured, he had to manually download and install them.
Also, he had to get a lot of additional software such as an office suite, iTunes (for his ipod), an antivirus, a divx player et all.. While in my case, most of the required utilities came preinstalled. In case of some required codecs, my system would automatically prompt me to install them, I didn't have to restart my box after every update (only once to date), nor have I defragmented my disc to date! As for the antivirus, don't even get me started about it!!