Most of you readers must have used a linux distro at some point of time or the other. And similarly, I know that you must have used either MacOS or Windows at some point or another. And you must have noticed that out of the box, Linux Distro’s really aren’t ‘usable’.

And I’m not here to discuss what is best between the various operating systems. This is a critique of Linux Distros, (the packaged ones atleast, not you ArchLinux).

But if you really look at linux distro’s just after installation, they certainly don’t look a whole lot aesthetic, and most times require extra installation to make simple things work. For example, unless I have installed ubuntu-restricted-extras, I will have trouble installing VLC via the Ubuntu Software Application.

Yes it’s true that I can install a lot of things through the terminal. And yes most of the times the terminal allows installation to become quite streamlined. But why should I open the terminal?

Why do we need an out of the box linux?

So you might even question, why oh why, do we need a Linux Distro that just works out of the box? Well to put it simply, because developers are not the only people who should use Linux. It should be designed to be used by everyone, the old, the young, the tech savvy and the internet-layman.

As Nicholas Negroponte said, “Linux is its own worst enemy: it’s splintered, it has different distributions, it’s too complex to run for most people.”

And steps have been taken in the right direction, from distro’s like Elementary to Zorin, to even Ubuntu itself. Some Devs want to give a simple enough distro for all to use. And they are going in the right direction.

What can be done to ease the experience?

• Keep simple tools installed
• Clean modern UI
• Easy to use installers

And most of these are being solved already. Most Linux Distro’s don’t look like Windows XP anymore, and Snaps allow easy installation on any distro.

But I think that keeping all this within a single distro and making the experience as a whole simple is what counts. And I hope, nay believe linux will nail it. Just probably later than sooner.