Nope. Ubuntu won't be ready until upgrading Firefox (or any individual package) doesn't force insanity like opposite window controls or Unity without asking. Regular people aren't interested in seeing drastic and seemingly nonsensical changes like that for no reason, and almost certainly aren't interested in being part of some grand OS experiment. They want something that is consistent and works.
While package management is an excellent concept, the way Linux packages are handled--with shared dependencies--is what engenders the ridiculous milestone-distro system that I think is keeping desktop Linux back. Having to swallow upgrades to every single package on the system just to get one package (like FF) upgraded means that instability and unwanted change--exactly what regular users hate--will be ingrained in the experience.
The solution, I think, is either to get rid of the shared-dependency concept and move to a more Windows-like static install system, or form a truly stable rolling-release distro. The only big one is Debian/Mint, but from what I hear that's still too unstable for even power users.
This is one of the major reasons I don't suggest Linux to anyone. There was a time I'd get people to switch from Windows to Linux; now I tell them to either upgrade to Windows 7 (if they're not on Windows 7 already) or get a Mac.
I'm also concerned about three secondary issues. One, there is a lack of strong leadership in the Linux community. Shuttleworth is the only person who can shake things up, and whenever he does everyone whines as if Shuttleworth had caused them some grave personal injustice.
Second, of course, is fragmentation and the fact that Linux developers change things needlessly (see GNOME 3, KDE4, PulseAudio, etc.) The end result is different distros doing things in slightly incompatible ways. These days I see more and more people package their software for Ubuntu only, and provide a generic .tag.gz for other distros. I'm no Ubuntu fan, but I jump for joy every time I see this. Distros need to die.
Third is politics. I know people who contribute to a few high-profile open source projects and I've watched them waste their time on bikeshed discussions on mailing lists and IRC. I've even watched one guy work on a project for three months only to have the design team discard it because they had a different idea in mind. The result was a long battle between programmers and designers. I guess this is a direct result of lack of leadership.
I've been hearing talks about a GNOME OS. I sincerely hope the GNOME folks go ahead and build it. As I've said before, distros need to die. So much manpower is wasted on just packaging things for different distros. From a consumer standpoint, choice is okay if you have to choose between two or three things, each with their clear merits and demerits. Choice is fatal if you have to choose between ten things which are all nearly identical.
Sometimes I feel Linus is the only guy who knows how to run a project properly. He knows how to say "no". If only we could coax him into building a distro ...
> Having to swallow upgrades to every single package on the system just to get one package ... [means] ...instability...
Just curious, have you really experienced instability by installing all updates on any mainstream distro? If so, could you share what happened? I've not had that experience but would like to know about it.
First: Linux does expect (and reward) a certain level of technical literacy. If you don't want to acquire or exercise this, well, you have alternatives and you've mentioned several. Those do come with trade-offs of their own.
If you don't like system upgrades for single-package updates, learn to use your distro's 'backports' feature. What? Your distro doesn't have backports? Shame.
Or switch to Gentoo and install/upgrade just the packages you want to use. Yes, you'll have to learn how to compile shit.
The UI in Linux is highly modular. You can switch to a different (or no) desktop environment pretty easily. There's a switcher in your log-in manager. Try it.
There's a reason for package dependencies, and there's a huge payoff (single-point-of-control whole-system upgrades with very low failure risk). It's not perfect, but on systems which have developed a mature packaging system over time (Debian, derivatives), it works exceptionally well, and provides access to over 30,000 packages.
Firefox is upgraded as soon as it's released by Mozilla in all supported versions of Ubuntu (except 10.04, which will be upgraded when Mozilla EOLs 3.6.x for good)
I'm guessing that you also think web apps are also not ready for the average user? After all, there you don't even get to have a say when the upgrade happens. And you have no way of delaying, cancelling, or undoing it.
As far as users are concerned, random stuff changing for reasons unrelated to their actions are all the same.
> Nope. Ubuntu won't be ready until upgrading Firefox (or any individual package) doesn't force insanity like opposite window controls or Unity without asking.
Last time I checked, Ubuntu kept existing setup, desktop etc. when upgrading. Anyway your rant is nonsensical: where is my good ol' "Start" menu organisation when I upgrade to Win 7?
> The only big one is Debian/Mint, but from what I hear that's still too unstable for even power users.
I'm speechless, you seem to know nothing of Linux but quick to make judgements. Debian is the most stable (too stable, may be argued) system; I have several machines that were upgraded flawlessly from 3.0 to 6.0 without ever breaking. On the other hand, if you like rolling release, there are many distros that work just like this, like gentoo, archlinux, etc.
What an awful article. Nothing here was 'new' but rather the same things that have been said in near every other 'Year of desktop Linux!' articles. Replace the post date with any year going back to ~ 2006 and it wouldn't be out of place at all. Also, any writer that is suggesting primetime usage of a Linux distribution and then suggests to use WINE or a VM solution is out of his mind.
It's amusing how the writer referenced Ultimate in order to show the apparent high cost of Windows yet how many people actually need Ultimate? Also, his 'success' story in regards to his wife isn't too realistic or at least common—how many people have a husband who is willing to look for DbxConv (A command app) and do all that work for her.
The site itself looks as if it's stuck a few years back. I'm a little disappointed Windows ME wasn't referenced and no use of 'm$'.
He mentions he's fed up with the financial cost and the need to activate Windows, and cites these as reasons to use linux. He then later suggests running Windows in a VM to deal with "dodgy programs". At least I'm not the only one that finds the irony here hilarious.
Hey, the mouse "just works!". Out of the box! Linux is ready. It's always disappointing in articles like these not to see 200 corporate workers trying Libre Office (which would be fine for many many people).
I used Linux (Ubuntu primarily, but I dabbled in the other distros from time to time) as my only OS on my netbook for 5 years (through college and my first few internships / job). For that atmosphere is was great: it taught me the UNIX philosophy, I can work a command line shell and vim like a beast, I knew a lot more about OSs and programming in general than if I was using Windows, and it overall prepared me excellently for software development in the future.
That said, I was young and had the time to deal with its inadequacies. I could spend a whole weekend getting a driver to work properly, and fiddling with kernel options. These days I get a few hours of free time when I come home from work, and then I have my weekend. If I am on the computer at all, I don't want to waste my time dealing with that stuff any more. It's either to sit down and knock out a sizable chunk of a personal project, or play some video games for entertainment.
I have a proper place for all three OS flavors. My desktop runs Windows (for gaming, heavy VM work, and games development), my primary development machine is a Macbook Air (running OS X), and any servers I have run Linux. I feel like these are the perfect tools for their respective jobs, now that money isn't a factor as a poor college student. Using OSX over Linux as a development environment was like night and day.
For servers, Linux is king. Having it be a usable personal OS (for the average user and programmer) will take a lot more time. While it's true that most of my time is spent either in the terminal or in the browser (I'd say about 75% of my computer usage), for the other 25% paying for a machine that runs OS X is completely worth every penny twice over. The quality of tools, utilities, and applications that aren't a browser or terminal is light-years ahead of anything that Linux offers, in terms of usability, UI, and functionality.
> I could spend a whole weekend getting a driver to work properly, and fiddling with kernel options.
I haven't done that stuff since around 2005. I just install a standard distro, and leave it to do what it does. It Just Works out of the box. It even detects my Raid5 and sets that up for me. Debian is my choice because of the rolling updates in testing -- I don't even want to think about version numbers.
I use Linux because it means I don't have to think about package versions, I don't have to worry about finding drivers after installing, I don't have to search around for software, etc. Thanks to distro choice, I don't even have to think about what version I'm running.
The article seems to suggest that ubuntu is an OS that the non-geek joe can install and use without experiencing any issues, it just works. Well, just wait until he decide to upgrade to the next ubuntu release or try to install some restricted driver. Good luck to these newbies if they don't have a friend who knows linux.
I've just upgraded from 10.10 to 11.04 yesterday and only after 5-6 hours i've found the right kernel+ati driver combination to make my system work again (after the upgrade the GUI freeze after a few minutes of use, i've made a few tests patching 2.6.38 for BigKernelLock, trying different driver releases, checking the installed packages for incompatibilites,etc...). A newbie would have never come out of this alive.
Imho, 11.04 shows that the Ubuntu releases are still made in a rush, with unfinished things that get included anyway (Unity, but every release has its own unfinished or barely working new functionality). My suggestion for Ubuntu? Test more. And don't be afraid to push forward the release date if there are still severe bugs open that need to be addressed.
> The article seems to suggest that ubuntu is an OS that the non-geek joe can install and use without experiencing any issues, it just works.
While my mother (a 76 year-old lady) asked me to install her computer, she has been using her trusty IBM desktop always running the latest Ubuntu since 2006 or so. Never had an issue. She can read her e-mail, share files with friends. The only ability she lost was to infect her machine with the most horrid forms of malware. I don't think she misses it and I, certainly, don't.
So who's going to step up and become the premier Linux hardware vendor? I was just looking at Linux laptops this morning and the problem is battery life. The System76 Lemur 13 gets... 2-3 hours of battery. That's not going to work. The ZaReason Strata Pro 13 gets... I don't know because they don't advertise it and I can't find a review that mentions it.
The conventional wisdom is to get a Thinkpad, which I might have to come to, but it would be wonderful for one of these Linux vendors to step it up and put out something that's competitive in terms of battery life with the improvements that have come in recent years. Apple, Lenovo, Asus, even Toshiba are all putting out laptops with 8+ hours of battery. I wouldn't consider buying one that gets less than 6.
Asus tried Linux on the EEE PC. They unfortunately tried an odd version called Xandros, with some modifications and a cut down IceWM theme. I'm not sure they enjoyed supporting it.
This article says they've stopped pre-loading Linux: http://www.pcworld.com/article/196987/has_asus_abandoned_net...
Dell have good support. They have some deal with canonical, so it seems most of their laptops work great.
Also, ASUS ones run quite well. ASUS even ship linux on their netbooks. My girl friends netbook runs for ages on it. So much that it has never run out of battery on us.
My Thinkpad T400s runs at 8W/h when tuned with powertop2 (3g disabled, wlan disabled). But as the battery only has a capacity of 43Wh it only comes up to a bit more then 5 hours.
I could however replace the disk drive for another battery and have about 9 hours of run time with it.
A few times a year, I download the latest version of star-office / open-office / libre-office and try it on a MSWord document from work. My most recent attempt was 2 weeks ago. I have yet to see a correctly-formatted result. In the beginning, simple things like bullets were wrong. These seem OK now, but equations are completely messed up, as are figure numbers, etc.
This stream of office suites is probably fine for creating new documents, especially if they are simple. But they still do not work adequately for any task that involves collaboration on MSWord files.
I despise MSWord as much as one can despise any software. But if that is what is demanded by a funding agency, I am quite sure I am not going to use anything else.
That (continues) to say much more about the inner brokenness of the Word "file format" than attempts to reverse-engineer it. That's a quoted term as the format has little to do with a typical mark-up-version-saved-to-disk, as was standard on such modern formats as ... WordStar and WordPerfect in the late 1980s.
Granted, it doesn't help you much when you've got to interact with someone using some random version of a borken instance of MS Word.
I'm aware that MSFT have moved to an XML-based markup, and that support may have improved. I find the word-processing model (with its assumptions of a static, un-shared paper-based document) fundamentally broken. Most of my communications are in text files, Wiki documents, or on the odd occasion, Google docs or similar which allow simultaneous shared online edits.
It's also curious that nearly 30 years since its release, there's no simple reader for MS Word. Yes, Microsoft released one such. If you hit space (or any other character), say, to scroll through the document as you would a 'less' pager or PDF viewer .... a dialog appeared telling you that this was not an editor. Which you had to dismiss. Every. Fucking. Time.
And somewhere deep within Redmond, someone is still wondering why MS Word DOC format didn't become a universal document interface interchange format.
Which is a pity when you think about how crappy and unfinished the unity UI in ubuntu 11.04 is. In years this is the first time I've stopped using a standard ubuntu (now I'm using Gnome 3, which is almost as bad).
You can disable Unity and switch back to Gnome 2 at login time. After you enter or click your username (before you enter your password) you can select which login session you want to use down at the bottom of the boot screen. If I remember correctly the default is "Ubuntu" but there is also a "Ubuntu - Classic" that sends you in to Gnome 2 rather than Unity.
Unity is the incarnation of everything I hated (and worked hard to disable) in Windows 7. I rebooted and selected Ubuntu Classic as the default, and haven't looked back.
Could this article be more wrong? I took the Linux challenge last month, making Ubuntu my main OS. The experience was terrible and I switched back to Windows. Linux is still almost awesome and I've retained a Linux install as a "work machine" to keep me away from my video games very nicely. But the fact that I can successfully use Linux as an "isolation chamber" betrays the fact that it's really not ready for prime time at all.
The first thing I'd say they need to fix is installation. There should be one install protocol to rule them all. Whether the program apt-gets, installs .sh, or just sits there and runs as is, it should be forced through a setup process to remove user confusion. That might be as simple as a Python script that asks where you want to copy files, but it just needs to be consistent for every program. I never have to read an installation instruction or ReadMe on Windows, why do I have to read one on Linux?
You pretty much just use the package manager for your distribution. The big distributions have pretty much every program you're going to need. I barely ever install something manually.
And for the things you do install manually, it's almost always one of two methods. If the software creator is kind enough to provide a package for your distribution, you download and double-click it. Otherwise, it's a .tgz file that you extract and (almost always) do:
I switched from a Mac with OSX to Ubuntu about a year ago, and I haven't looked back. I'm a developer, and I have found that everything in the Linux world seems to be set up with me in mind.
Dependencies are easier to install, there is a larger, more knowledgeable support network (compare the Ubuntu forums to any Mac forum, it's not even close), and I have discovered how powerful the command line is as a development tool.
Also, when I run into a hitch during development, Google takes my operating system into account. Googling answers to development questions provides me much more relevant results on Ubuntu than it ever did on the Mac.
Plus, being able to develop web apps on the same or a similar operating system to the environment it will be deployed on is incredibly convenient.
I will say that most of my leisure time now goes to developing personal projects, rather than to gaming or other multimedia - things I often did on my Mac. But I think that's a good thing. When I do invoicing or I need to work with clients' data on spreadsheets, OpenOffice and LibreOffice, respectively, have served me just fine.
If you live in a multi-computer household like I do, I think it makes sense to have one machine that dual boots the latest Windows and Ubuntu to be able to take advantage of games and other multimedia. However, for the PCs that are only being used for day-to-day things like email, web surfing, and office tools, then Ubuntu is the best value there is.
>Also, when I run into a hitch during development, Google takes my operating system into account. Googling answers to development questions provides me much more relevant results on Ubuntu than it ever did on the Mac.
This isn't said enough. Type a coding question into google and 9 out of 10 hits seem to be good tutorials involving the linux terminal.
The point about it running well on old hardware is well taken. Installing a new OS onto an old box very often results in an apparent speed-up. I was amazed at how fast my old pc was when I upgraded to a new pc, and re-installed XP from scratch on the old one. It was amazing. Unfortunately we then started loading software on it, doing all the normal day-to-day stuff on it, and it's since slowed down again.
Unfortunatly installing Ubuntu on _new_ hardware is a different thing altogether. There you're far more likely to encounter problems as you have newer hardware (espaecially graphics hardware). We got two new "desktop" machines a year ago to use as file servers. Nice Intel motherboards, integrated high-end graphics and so on. A week of trying though (and we tried hard) and we simply could not make the graphics work right. And don't get me started on the RAID support. In the end we started again with Fedora and were up and running in a day. Fedora was more conservative with window transitions and so on, but I could get it to run for more than an hour, and VNC worked.
We use Linux a lot for servers, but I'm in no rush to roll it out for workstations. We'll keep trying every couple years, but it seems like 2 steps forward, one step back sometimes.
> Unfortunatly installing Ubuntu on _new_ hardware is a different thing altogether.
This. I made the unfortunate mistake of trying to install Ubuntu on one of the new Toshiba Porteges. I was not expecting such terrible device support (built-in Intel graphics would freeze or kernel panic in full-screen; insert/remove to the HDMI port would cause X to run up to 100% of CPU and be unresponsive to input; screen dimmer would seemingly randomly dim and light while I was working; etc.).
No it doesn't. It might seem so because Windows "gets dirty" with time if not properly maintened (running a defragmentation, removing unused programs and residents, deleting temporary files, ... : things most people don't know/care about). So to linux credit this should be "Linux does not get as dirty as windows".
Even so-branded "minimalist" distribution make things like a pentium III seem slow as hell. X itself is simply slow. On a netbook purchased in 2009, the difference between running Win XP and running X is actually visible (greater delays when switching windows for instance).
"8. Ubuntu is totally non-geek friendly"
> When you have used for a week you might say so. But changing even minor things to one's liking quickly becomes a pain in the ass and degenerates into wizard level hackery. On other OSes you can often rely on installing a freeware and for it to work out of the box. But the 100's of ways to do the same thing on linux + packaging issues and dependency soup makes it hell there.
"10. Security is a nice warm fluffy penguin feeling"
> Greetings from myth planet ! There's no reason things are inherently more secure on linux than on Windows, for instance. For both, the major problem is security breaches in applications.
I find the UX in Ubuntu much better than Windows and OSX ( haven't tried Ubuntu 11) mainly because of how fast and instantaneous everything is. Every time I try a Windows machine I am appalled at how unresponsive it is and how often programs freeze. OSX is better but I still find it has usability issues. I think if I'd become a regular user of OSX and learn the keyboard shortcuts I would be a satisfied customer. However, for a casual user like me (pretty much just for xcode), I find myself often annoyed at my mac. I curse at OSX, every time I use iTunes, every time I plug my iPod and the photo application locks up my mac for seconds even though I've never used this application, when windows pile up everywhere and there is no task bar to quickly switch between them, only slow multiple step processes with annoying animations.
I'm also surprised at how many OSX features are a poor implementation of old unix ide features. For example, I'm used to have multiple desktops on Linux. I've been using this since the mid 90s. Gnome has it, kde has it, I've used it on CDE the Sun interface. OSX has Spaces but it is horrible mainly because there isn't a taskbar icon that allows you to switch 'space' with one click. Worst even, the Spaces doc icon is a tease that looks like a proper desktop switcher but doesn't work that way.
In term of hardware support (and to a lesser degree software support), I admit Linux is behind. But this is a chicken and egg problem. If more people used Linux, hardware manufacturers would make sure their drivers worked with Linux. I have zero interest in doing manual configuration, so in the past ten years, buying a computer has consisted of bringing a Live Ubuntu disk to Bestbuy and poping it in to make sure everything on the computer works out of the box. By using this method I never have to fiddle with anything to get Ubuntu to work. It's very easy to do and my computers end up costing me half the price of macs by allowing me the choice of a smaller 1.5 hour battery (I'm almost always plugged in anyways) and lower quality display (so the contrast is not as good, big deal). My current laptop is a one year old (corei3, 4GB ram, 500GB HD) that cost me $600 (useless Windows licence included!) + $100 for a two year extended warranty and Linux makes it feel much faster than any other computer I use. Chrome on Ubuntu is a crazy fast web experience.
I've been hesitant to suggest Ubuntu to non technical users mainly because I don't want to be responsible for providing technical support but I do believe Ubuntu is probably ready for it. Maybe I should suggest it more given that they call me for problems with their win7 or osx anyways and I often find myself thinking: this wouldn't happen on Ubuntu.
I've often been told that Linux will work well on old hardware. I can confirm this is true with distros like ArchLinux but I've never had Ubuntu run well on old hardware.
A year ago I got a free PC. A P2 with 128MB of RAM. Attempted to install and run Ubuntu. Incredibly slow. I also attempted a windows XP install and I was amazed to see that it ran just fine. Heck, I could even fire up VLC and watch a video. Yes, it was slow but it was certainly more usable than default Ubuntu.
Now my latest experience with Ubuntu comes from a new purchase of a netbook. Samsung N150. It was cheap, it has 1GB RAM and an Intel Atom 1.66Ghz. I decided to do a dual install of Windows 7 Starter and Ubuntu 11.04. Ubuntu just chokes. Windows 7 fares better. Both are slow but windows is not unbearably slow.
I've tried many distros and WMs and so far stock Ubuntu has provided me with the simplest install but the worst performance.
>A year ago I got a free PC. A P2 with 128MB of RAM. Attempted to install and run Ubuntu. Incredibly slow. I also attempted a windows XP install //
It doesn't sound like you're comparing like with like.
XP was released in 2001. Last years Ubuntu was released last year, 2010 and was targetted mainly at hardware that isn't 10 years old. You could at least try Xubuntu or something that was made for old hardware. P2 came out in 1997 so XP working on it is not that great a surprise.
Try Win7 on that old PC and get back to us how well it runs ...?
FWIW I run Kubuntu 11.04 on an Athlon 1.1 with 768MB RAM - it's slow but works without any real issues. I've tried DSL and Puppy on a pendrive and they both pretty much blaze on this hardware.
I actually agree with the article (having installed Ubuntu and Windows countless times over the past few months made me appreciate how much nicer Ubuntu is), but I take issue with one point:
"Windows is expensive and bad value for money."
No, it isn't expensive. You deliberately chose the version of Windows with extra features that mean nothing to the average user. A more proper comparison would be with W7 Home Premium, which at the linked site is £100. And that's only if you're upgrading- most people just leave whatever Windows version that was preloaded on their system on there, and there's rarely any reason to actually upgrade (since W2000, anyway). It's essentially free.
I just returned to linux after a ~7 year hiatus and have found it to be a night and day experience. My xp install had gotten so bad that I was forced to escape and decided to try ubuntu on a whim. I'm so glad I did because the OS is really snappy and I'm able to do everything I was doing on xp and I'm not subject to random crashes. The reason I think ubuntu is ready for the masses is because the install process, which is the first obstacle to adoption, is mindblowingly fast and smooth compared to what it was like 7 years ago when I was using debian 2.x. Two major pain points that are now fixed (at least for me):
-The wubi installer lets you effortlessly install a dual boot win xp / ubuntu machine in about 45 minutes. Previously I would have to use QParted or Acronis to carve a new partition and then run a linux installer, which for me wasn't that bad, but would be unseemly for a newbie. With wubi, you set everything up inside of winxp and it reboots your computer, installs the distro, and you instantly have linux on a dual boot. Anyone, no matter how little computer knowledge, can give ubuntu a try because of this.
- Driver support is much better than it was. It used to be a major pain to get important hardware such as wireless and video adapters working. When I installed this time, everything worked out of the box. This is huge for newbs.
After my latest ubuntu install, I'm going to try to fully transition my personal computer to linux. I'm also comfortable recommending it to those less computer savvy than me.
This is an awful post. Starts with saying how Windows XP crashed and continues with a bunch of anecdotes.
Here's another anecdote. I have yet to use Ubuntu on a machine where everything just worked. I love Linux and use it every day. It's not ready for prime time but it is, as it has been for almost 20 years, a reasonable alternative for those willing to learn.
I actually remember Windows ME as a better OS than Ubuntu 11.04. It's bad and not ready for primetime and it will take years before it's ready.
The last 6 months I was first forced to switch from Gnome2 to Unity because of Ubuntu 11.04 and that made me ditch Ubuntu. I had heard so many bad things about Gnome3 so I stayed away from ArchLinux and moved to Sabayon which still had Gnome2. One month ago Sabayon did an update to Gnome3 and after testing it for some time I decided to try Xfce (after the Torvalds post). I have spent so many hours tweaking and finding the source behind bugs that it nearly makes me cry.
There are so many small glitches and the only reason I stick with Linux on desktop is because it's free and it brings me freedom. That's the reason behind acceptance of all the glitches and mediocre user experience.
My parents (mid 50's non-techies) run Ubuntu and love it. I installed it at first, but they've been able to do the rest. Including installing the updates, new printers, Chrome and similar things. I don't see how they can be that much of an exception to the average Joe. Just an anacdote...
I thought this was an old article, from a few years ago. Seriously, Ubuntu has been a decent OS for developers and also newbies for a long time. (I am prejudiced - I downloaded Stackware using a 2400 baud modem (in 1992?), and Linux has been core to my business since then.)
That said, Windows 7 and OS X are probably better for the consumer market. Non-techie friends just bought a Windows 7 all in one computer (like an iMac) and it is amazing what they got for $600 (including a touch screen!!), and it all just works for them. I tried to give them a Mac last month and they promptly returned it to me because of the learning curve for switching to OS X, and the switch to Linux would be even more difficult.
[+] [-] acabal|14 years ago|reply
While package management is an excellent concept, the way Linux packages are handled--with shared dependencies--is what engenders the ridiculous milestone-distro system that I think is keeping desktop Linux back. Having to swallow upgrades to every single package on the system just to get one package (like FF) upgraded means that instability and unwanted change--exactly what regular users hate--will be ingrained in the experience.
The solution, I think, is either to get rid of the shared-dependency concept and move to a more Windows-like static install system, or form a truly stable rolling-release distro. The only big one is Debian/Mint, but from what I hear that's still too unstable for even power users.
[+] [-] GeneralMaximus|14 years ago|reply
I'm also concerned about three secondary issues. One, there is a lack of strong leadership in the Linux community. Shuttleworth is the only person who can shake things up, and whenever he does everyone whines as if Shuttleworth had caused them some grave personal injustice.
Second, of course, is fragmentation and the fact that Linux developers change things needlessly (see GNOME 3, KDE4, PulseAudio, etc.) The end result is different distros doing things in slightly incompatible ways. These days I see more and more people package their software for Ubuntu only, and provide a generic .tag.gz for other distros. I'm no Ubuntu fan, but I jump for joy every time I see this. Distros need to die.
Third is politics. I know people who contribute to a few high-profile open source projects and I've watched them waste their time on bikeshed discussions on mailing lists and IRC. I've even watched one guy work on a project for three months only to have the design team discard it because they had a different idea in mind. The result was a long battle between programmers and designers. I guess this is a direct result of lack of leadership.
I've been hearing talks about a GNOME OS. I sincerely hope the GNOME folks go ahead and build it. As I've said before, distros need to die. So much manpower is wasted on just packaging things for different distros. From a consumer standpoint, choice is okay if you have to choose between two or three things, each with their clear merits and demerits. Choice is fatal if you have to choose between ten things which are all nearly identical.
Sometimes I feel Linus is the only guy who knows how to run a project properly. He knows how to say "no". If only we could coax him into building a distro ...
[+] [-] rjbond3rd|14 years ago|reply
Just curious, have you really experienced instability by installing all updates on any mainstream distro? If so, could you share what happened? I've not had that experience but would like to know about it.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|14 years ago|reply
If you don't like system upgrades for single-package updates, learn to use your distro's 'backports' feature. What? Your distro doesn't have backports? Shame.
Or switch to Gentoo and install/upgrade just the packages you want to use. Yes, you'll have to learn how to compile shit.
The UI in Linux is highly modular. You can switch to a different (or no) desktop environment pretty easily. There's a switcher in your log-in manager. Try it.
There's a reason for package dependencies, and there's a huge payoff (single-point-of-control whole-system upgrades with very low failure risk). It's not perfect, but on systems which have developed a mature packaging system over time (Debian, derivatives), it works exceptionally well, and provides access to over 30,000 packages.
[+] [-] jcastro|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] w1ntermute|14 years ago|reply
You're forgetting about Arch, which is absolutely amazing. Simple, yet powerful.
[+] [-] icebraining|14 years ago|reply
[1]: http://backports-master.debian.org/
[+] [-] ori_b|14 years ago|reply
As far as users are concerned, random stuff changing for reasons unrelated to their actions are all the same.
[+] [-] wazoox|14 years ago|reply
Last time I checked, Ubuntu kept existing setup, desktop etc. when upgrading. Anyway your rant is nonsensical: where is my good ol' "Start" menu organisation when I upgrade to Win 7?
> The only big one is Debian/Mint, but from what I hear that's still too unstable for even power users.
I'm speechless, you seem to know nothing of Linux but quick to make judgements. Debian is the most stable (too stable, may be argued) system; I have several machines that were upgraded flawlessly from 3.0 to 6.0 without ever breaking. On the other hand, if you like rolling release, there are many distros that work just like this, like gentoo, archlinux, etc.
[+] [-] dorian-graph|14 years ago|reply
It's amusing how the writer referenced Ultimate in order to show the apparent high cost of Windows yet how many people actually need Ultimate? Also, his 'success' story in regards to his wife isn't too realistic or at least common—how many people have a husband who is willing to look for DbxConv (A command app) and do all that work for her.
The site itself looks as if it's stuck a few years back. I'm a little disappointed Windows ME wasn't referenced and no use of 'm$'.
[+] [-] hollerith|14 years ago|reply
There have been breathless articles about this being the year Linux is ready for the desktop ever since the late 1990s.
[+] [-] actf|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBealeC|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pewpewarrows|14 years ago|reply
That said, I was young and had the time to deal with its inadequacies. I could spend a whole weekend getting a driver to work properly, and fiddling with kernel options. These days I get a few hours of free time when I come home from work, and then I have my weekend. If I am on the computer at all, I don't want to waste my time dealing with that stuff any more. It's either to sit down and knock out a sizable chunk of a personal project, or play some video games for entertainment.
I have a proper place for all three OS flavors. My desktop runs Windows (for gaming, heavy VM work, and games development), my primary development machine is a Macbook Air (running OS X), and any servers I have run Linux. I feel like these are the perfect tools for their respective jobs, now that money isn't a factor as a poor college student. Using OSX over Linux as a development environment was like night and day.
For servers, Linux is king. Having it be a usable personal OS (for the average user and programmer) will take a lot more time. While it's true that most of my time is spent either in the terminal or in the browser (I'd say about 75% of my computer usage), for the other 25% paying for a machine that runs OS X is completely worth every penny twice over. The quality of tools, utilities, and applications that aren't a browser or terminal is light-years ahead of anything that Linux offers, in terms of usability, UI, and functionality.
[+] [-] ori_b|14 years ago|reply
I haven't done that stuff since around 2005. I just install a standard distro, and leave it to do what it does. It Just Works out of the box. It even detects my Raid5 and sets that up for me. Debian is my choice because of the rolling updates in testing -- I don't even want to think about version numbers.
I use Linux because it means I don't have to think about package versions, I don't have to worry about finding drivers after installing, I don't have to search around for software, etc. Thanks to distro choice, I don't even have to think about what version I'm running.
[+] [-] drtse4|14 years ago|reply
The article seems to suggest that ubuntu is an OS that the non-geek joe can install and use without experiencing any issues, it just works. Well, just wait until he decide to upgrade to the next ubuntu release or try to install some restricted driver. Good luck to these newbies if they don't have a friend who knows linux.
I've just upgraded from 10.10 to 11.04 yesterday and only after 5-6 hours i've found the right kernel+ati driver combination to make my system work again (after the upgrade the GUI freeze after a few minutes of use, i've made a few tests patching 2.6.38 for BigKernelLock, trying different driver releases, checking the installed packages for incompatibilites,etc...). A newbie would have never come out of this alive.
Imho, 11.04 shows that the Ubuntu releases are still made in a rush, with unfinished things that get included anyway (Unity, but every release has its own unfinished or barely working new functionality). My suggestion for Ubuntu? Test more. And don't be afraid to push forward the release date if there are still severe bugs open that need to be addressed.
[+] [-] rbanffy|14 years ago|reply
While my mother (a 76 year-old lady) asked me to install her computer, she has been using her trusty IBM desktop always running the latest Ubuntu since 2006 or so. Never had an issue. She can read her e-mail, share files with friends. The only ability she lost was to infect her machine with the most horrid forms of malware. I don't think she misses it and I, certainly, don't.
[+] [-] MatthewPhillips|14 years ago|reply
The conventional wisdom is to get a Thinkpad, which I might have to come to, but it would be wonderful for one of these Linux vendors to step it up and put out something that's competitive in terms of battery life with the improvements that have come in recent years. Apple, Lenovo, Asus, even Toshiba are all putting out laptops with 8+ hours of battery. I wouldn't consider buying one that gets less than 6.
[+] [-] DanBealeC|14 years ago|reply
and this article says they're going to start pre-loading Ubuntu: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2075819/asus-preloa...
[+] [-] illume|14 years ago|reply
Also, ASUS ones run quite well. ASUS even ship linux on their netbooks. My girl friends netbook runs for ages on it. So much that it has never run out of battery on us.
Sent from my Ubuntu Dell.
[+] [-] treo|14 years ago|reply
I could however replace the disk drive for another battery and have about 9 hours of run time with it.
[+] [-] rnadna|14 years ago|reply
This stream of office suites is probably fine for creating new documents, especially if they are simple. But they still do not work adequately for any task that involves collaboration on MSWord files.
I despise MSWord as much as one can despise any software. But if that is what is demanded by a funding agency, I am quite sure I am not going to use anything else.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|14 years ago|reply
Granted, it doesn't help you much when you've got to interact with someone using some random version of a borken instance of MS Word.
I'm aware that MSFT have moved to an XML-based markup, and that support may have improved. I find the word-processing model (with its assumptions of a static, un-shared paper-based document) fundamentally broken. Most of my communications are in text files, Wiki documents, or on the odd occasion, Google docs or similar which allow simultaneous shared online edits.
It's also curious that nearly 30 years since its release, there's no simple reader for MS Word. Yes, Microsoft released one such. If you hit space (or any other character), say, to scroll through the document as you would a 'less' pager or PDF viewer .... a dialog appeared telling you that this was not an editor. Which you had to dismiss. Every. Fucking. Time.
And somewhere deep within Redmond, someone is still wondering why MS Word DOC format didn't become a universal document interface interchange format.
[+] [-] alextp|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yellowbkpk|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilcavero|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerhewet|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cdr|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makepanic|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] navs|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] suivix|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hyena|14 years ago|reply
The first thing I'd say they need to fix is installation. There should be one install protocol to rule them all. Whether the program apt-gets, installs .sh, or just sits there and runs as is, it should be forced through a setup process to remove user confusion. That might be as simple as a Python script that asks where you want to copy files, but it just needs to be consistent for every program. I never have to read an installation instruction or ReadMe on Windows, why do I have to read one on Linux?
[+] [-] planckscnst|14 years ago|reply
And for the things you do install manually, it's almost always one of two methods. If the software creator is kind enough to provide a package for your distribution, you download and double-click it. Otherwise, it's a .tgz file that you extract and (almost always) do:
[+] [-] padobson|14 years ago|reply
Dependencies are easier to install, there is a larger, more knowledgeable support network (compare the Ubuntu forums to any Mac forum, it's not even close), and I have discovered how powerful the command line is as a development tool.
Also, when I run into a hitch during development, Google takes my operating system into account. Googling answers to development questions provides me much more relevant results on Ubuntu than it ever did on the Mac.
Plus, being able to develop web apps on the same or a similar operating system to the environment it will be deployed on is incredibly convenient.
I will say that most of my leisure time now goes to developing personal projects, rather than to gaming or other multimedia - things I often did on my Mac. But I think that's a good thing. When I do invoicing or I need to work with clients' data on spreadsheets, OpenOffice and LibreOffice, respectively, have served me just fine.
If you live in a multi-computer household like I do, I think it makes sense to have one machine that dual boots the latest Windows and Ubuntu to be able to take advantage of games and other multimedia. However, for the PCs that are only being used for day-to-day things like email, web surfing, and office tools, then Ubuntu is the best value there is.
[+] [-] seminal|14 years ago|reply
This isn't said enough. Type a coding question into google and 9 out of 10 hits seem to be good tutorials involving the linux terminal.
[+] [-] bruce511|14 years ago|reply
Unfortunatly installing Ubuntu on _new_ hardware is a different thing altogether. There you're far more likely to encounter problems as you have newer hardware (espaecially graphics hardware). We got two new "desktop" machines a year ago to use as file servers. Nice Intel motherboards, integrated high-end graphics and so on. A week of trying though (and we tried hard) and we simply could not make the graphics work right. And don't get me started on the RAID support. In the end we started again with Fedora and were up and running in a day. Fedora was more conservative with window transitions and so on, but I could get it to run for more than an hour, and VNC worked.
We use Linux a lot for servers, but I'm in no rush to roll it out for workstations. We'll keep trying every couple years, but it seems like 2 steps forward, one step back sometimes.
[+] [-] larsberg|14 years ago|reply
This. I made the unfortunate mistake of trying to install Ubuntu on one of the new Toshiba Porteges. I was not expecting such terrible device support (built-in Intel graphics would freeze or kernel panic in full-screen; insert/remove to the HDMI port would cause X to run up to 100% of CPU and be unresponsive to input; screen dimmer would seemingly randomly dim and light while I was working; etc.).
[+] [-] norswap|14 years ago|reply
No it doesn't. It might seem so because Windows "gets dirty" with time if not properly maintened (running a defragmentation, removing unused programs and residents, deleting temporary files, ... : things most people don't know/care about). So to linux credit this should be "Linux does not get as dirty as windows".
Even so-branded "minimalist" distribution make things like a pentium III seem slow as hell. X itself is simply slow. On a netbook purchased in 2009, the difference between running Win XP and running X is actually visible (greater delays when switching windows for instance).
"8. Ubuntu is totally non-geek friendly"
> When you have used for a week you might say so. But changing even minor things to one's liking quickly becomes a pain in the ass and degenerates into wizard level hackery. On other OSes you can often rely on installing a freeware and for it to work out of the box. But the 100's of ways to do the same thing on linux + packaging issues and dependency soup makes it hell there.
"10. Security is a nice warm fluffy penguin feeling"
> Greetings from myth planet ! There's no reason things are inherently more secure on linux than on Windows, for instance. For both, the major problem is security breaches in applications.
[+] [-] BenoitEssiambre|14 years ago|reply
I'm also surprised at how many OSX features are a poor implementation of old unix ide features. For example, I'm used to have multiple desktops on Linux. I've been using this since the mid 90s. Gnome has it, kde has it, I've used it on CDE the Sun interface. OSX has Spaces but it is horrible mainly because there isn't a taskbar icon that allows you to switch 'space' with one click. Worst even, the Spaces doc icon is a tease that looks like a proper desktop switcher but doesn't work that way.
In term of hardware support (and to a lesser degree software support), I admit Linux is behind. But this is a chicken and egg problem. If more people used Linux, hardware manufacturers would make sure their drivers worked with Linux. I have zero interest in doing manual configuration, so in the past ten years, buying a computer has consisted of bringing a Live Ubuntu disk to Bestbuy and poping it in to make sure everything on the computer works out of the box. By using this method I never have to fiddle with anything to get Ubuntu to work. It's very easy to do and my computers end up costing me half the price of macs by allowing me the choice of a smaller 1.5 hour battery (I'm almost always plugged in anyways) and lower quality display (so the contrast is not as good, big deal). My current laptop is a one year old (corei3, 4GB ram, 500GB HD) that cost me $600 (useless Windows licence included!) + $100 for a two year extended warranty and Linux makes it feel much faster than any other computer I use. Chrome on Ubuntu is a crazy fast web experience.
I've been hesitant to suggest Ubuntu to non technical users mainly because I don't want to be responsible for providing technical support but I do believe Ubuntu is probably ready for it. Maybe I should suggest it more given that they call me for problems with their win7 or osx anyways and I often find myself thinking: this wouldn't happen on Ubuntu.
[+] [-] navs|14 years ago|reply
A year ago I got a free PC. A P2 with 128MB of RAM. Attempted to install and run Ubuntu. Incredibly slow. I also attempted a windows XP install and I was amazed to see that it ran just fine. Heck, I could even fire up VLC and watch a video. Yes, it was slow but it was certainly more usable than default Ubuntu.
Now my latest experience with Ubuntu comes from a new purchase of a netbook. Samsung N150. It was cheap, it has 1GB RAM and an Intel Atom 1.66Ghz. I decided to do a dual install of Windows 7 Starter and Ubuntu 11.04. Ubuntu just chokes. Windows 7 fares better. Both are slow but windows is not unbearably slow.
I've tried many distros and WMs and so far stock Ubuntu has provided me with the simplest install but the worst performance.
Anyway, just my experiences.
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|14 years ago|reply
It doesn't sound like you're comparing like with like.
XP was released in 2001. Last years Ubuntu was released last year, 2010 and was targetted mainly at hardware that isn't 10 years old. You could at least try Xubuntu or something that was made for old hardware. P2 came out in 1997 so XP working on it is not that great a surprise.
Try Win7 on that old PC and get back to us how well it runs ...?
FWIW I run Kubuntu 11.04 on an Athlon 1.1 with 768MB RAM - it's slow but works without any real issues. I've tried DSL and Puppy on a pendrive and they both pretty much blaze on this hardware.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] cageface|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CrazedGeek|14 years ago|reply
"Windows is expensive and bad value for money."
No, it isn't expensive. You deliberately chose the version of Windows with extra features that mean nothing to the average user. A more proper comparison would be with W7 Home Premium, which at the linked site is £100. And that's only if you're upgrading- most people just leave whatever Windows version that was preloaded on their system on there, and there's rarely any reason to actually upgrade (since W2000, anyway). It's essentially free.
[+] [-] planetjoe|14 years ago|reply
-The wubi installer lets you effortlessly install a dual boot win xp / ubuntu machine in about 45 minutes. Previously I would have to use QParted or Acronis to carve a new partition and then run a linux installer, which for me wasn't that bad, but would be unseemly for a newbie. With wubi, you set everything up inside of winxp and it reboots your computer, installs the distro, and you instantly have linux on a dual boot. Anyone, no matter how little computer knowledge, can give ubuntu a try because of this.
- Driver support is much better than it was. It used to be a major pain to get important hardware such as wireless and video adapters working. When I installed this time, everything worked out of the box. This is huge for newbs.
After my latest ubuntu install, I'm going to try to fully transition my personal computer to linux. I'm also comfortable recommending it to those less computer savvy than me.
[+] [-] nnutter|14 years ago|reply
Here's another anecdote. I have yet to use Ubuntu on a machine where everything just worked. I love Linux and use it every day. It's not ready for prime time but it is, as it has been for almost 20 years, a reasonable alternative for those willing to learn.
[+] [-] gorm|14 years ago|reply
The last 6 months I was first forced to switch from Gnome2 to Unity because of Ubuntu 11.04 and that made me ditch Ubuntu. I had heard so many bad things about Gnome3 so I stayed away from ArchLinux and moved to Sabayon which still had Gnome2. One month ago Sabayon did an update to Gnome3 and after testing it for some time I decided to try Xfce (after the Torvalds post). I have spent so many hours tweaking and finding the source behind bugs that it nearly makes me cry.
There are so many small glitches and the only reason I stick with Linux on desktop is because it's free and it brings me freedom. That's the reason behind acceptance of all the glitches and mediocre user experience.
[+] [-] nickpinkston|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|14 years ago|reply
That said, Windows 7 and OS X are probably better for the consumer market. Non-techie friends just bought a Windows 7 all in one computer (like an iMac) and it is amazing what they got for $600 (including a touch screen!!), and it all just works for them. I tried to give them a Mac last month and they promptly returned it to me because of the learning curve for switching to OS X, and the switch to Linux would be even more difficult.