linux annoyances

Ok here's my first listing of major linux annoyances. I do a lot of customer support and although I can do most of these things just fine I believe they are the major stumbling blocks to Linux being accepted by the common majority of non-geek business users. If we want to take market share away from the evil M$ then we have to incorporate these things and a lot more to make it possible for linux to be configured in a completely user friendly manner.
 
 
1. The support for interoperation with windows filesharing is crap. When I fire up a box and put in the workgroup/domain in the install I should have a "network neighborhood" style browsing through the network immediately available without further configuration, just like in windows. Configuring samba is just plain stupid. It should work immediately. You should also be able to right click on folders in the gui and share them just like in windows.
 
2. Auto mounting of hard drives. No normal user is going to know how to use the mount command. Its ludicrous, auto mount them and put icons on the desktop. Give them their windows labels if they have them. hda is a stupid name for a drive.
 
3. A unified installation is needed for application installations. All dependencies should be included in an application installation. Screw the geek install crap. It should be one executeable file that has EVERYTHING it needs to install and it should be smart enough to adapt to all major distributions with absolutely minimal user input and all options available as check boxes or some other menu. Some kind of utility that will repackage those ridiculous compile installations into an install would be good too.
 
4. Clean up the application menu and start having icons placed there automatically for new installs. If a user doesn't pay attention where they installed something it could take them forever to find it. Make the menu drag and drop adjustable so it can be easily reorganized.
 
5. Make a gui for all system configuration files. Everything. Give them all buttons and text boxes. I know the geeks love doing it all by hand but that just doesn't cut it when you are calculating the TCO and including customer support for suits and low level data entry people.
 
6. The display resolution needs to be able to be reset from a control panel and it needs to have a simple failsafe mode and a test mode. It should absolutely never be necessary for a standard user to have to type some cryptic command line in and navigate a bunch of ridiculously obtuse questions in order to change the display resolution and depth to their liking. And then if they choose the wrong setting they can't get to their gui. That's ridiculous. I couldn't even count the hours I've spent configuring X on machines. Its a HUGE WASTE OF TIME. 
 
7. Simple driver management interface. Ever had to remove a driver? Replace it? Go back cause the new one didn't work? Theres no way linux will make headway in the desktop world if drivers are in tarballs and require a compile to test and swap. Better generic drivers are needed too that will work with most anything if you don't have a specific driver for a piece of hardware.
 
8.There should be a setting to hide the system directories from the users vision in the file explorer windows. It would be even better if all the major system directories and mount points could be put in one "linux" folder in the root. Not like it will ever happen but it would be one of the best things for end users.
 
9. Some kind of keystroke that actually works to suspend all non essential processes and call up a list where the user can kill the runaway proces by right clicking.
 
10. Better documentation. Some of this stuff is just plain geekspeak. Sure I can understand it if I try, but I have end users who get confused when I tell them to right click or use crtl-c, crtl-v
 
 
OK, thats it for me for now. L8r.
 
Chris Taylor, Systems Engineer
MCSE/MCSA, CCNA, A+, Websense WCSE