I don't like the direction in which Linux distributions (distros) are headed these days. I don't like their trying to become user friendly for people with no willingness to learn. I particularly don't like their trying to become user friendly towards M$ windows users. It may make a distribution popular but it does nothing to advance computing in the right direction. Just look at Ubuntu, they disable the root user! For what? So users coming from the other OS feel at home. No wonder it is the most popular distribution on earth. I object to their calling themselves a Linux distribution though. Just because you use the linux kernel and desktops should not entitle you to call your distribution a linux distribution. It is something like OSX not calling itself BSD.
Linux is not just a kernel and applications. It is a style of working. It is a way of thinking. It is a way of computing. It is a way of getting things done to the ones (hopefully high) standards. And, I would go further and say that it is a way of life.
I greatly appreciate those distributions which need you to know what you are doing. "Compile everything" distros (e.g. Gentoo) top the list. Then there are the likes of Fedora, Suse, Slackware which require that you know something about your hardware and disks and partitions etc to be able to install and use them well. To me these are acceptable because "compile everything" distros require knowledge of software and system development which cannot be expected of all users. But distributions must expect knowledge of basic system administration from target users. Of course, they should make it easy to learn as you use.
The danger with user friendly distros is that although they make themselves popular they actually reduce computing / sysadmin knowledge out there. This will eventually result in very few people knowing what to do when things go wrong. In general, Linux users know more about their OS and hardware than M$ users do. It is a good thing which should be encouraged to develop rather than discouraged by hiding everything behind graphical interfaces.
I think it is time Linux stopped apologizing for being what it is and started feeling proud of itself. There is certainly less in the history of Linux to be ashamed of than in the history of M$ (Just look up "Gary Kildall" in wikipedia).
There is some very creative software being developed for Linux. A lot of it gets ported to the other OS as well. So we have this situation now where it is free software which is preventing greater adoption of Linux. I frequently come across OpenOffice and Gimp running on M$ laptops (The OS had come with the machine and they did not have to pay extra for M$ Office). These people can get the best of free software without switching to Linux. This is on the rise and I think free software is contributing to the acceptance of M$ OS inspite of its quality. If free software had prevented its use on M$ (I am not suggesting that it should have) there would have been a big incentive for these users to switch to Linux.
Therefore, if you use linux like it should be, then advocate its use as it should be used. When someone comes to you saying they wish to use Linux don't point them in the direction of Ubuntu to make it easy for yourself. Explain to them what they are getting into and why they must learn the basics. Sometimes people say they wish to use Linux because OpenOffice is free and because they saw someone using The Gimp and liked it. If that is their only reason for wanting to switch to Linux then politely tell them that they can get both on M$ windows and that they should stick to it. Linux does not need such users.
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