“Dear Ubuntu, for the last couple years life has been good. Every time I’ve shown you to a friend or family member, they’ve compared you to what they’re familiar with–Windows XP or Vista, mostly–and by comparison you’ve looked brilliant. Yeah, your ugly brown color scheme was a bit off-putting at first, but once people saw how secure, simple, and reliable you were, the response was almost universally positive. But recently, things have changed …”
I’m a bit late with this, considering that 10.04 is out already, but it will be interesting how people have found 10.04 to stack up against 9.10.
From Tanner Helland who previously wrote 10 Days of Ubuntu 10.10 Feature Requests, this is a Dear John-style letter about how the author is finding it difficult to love Ubuntu in the face of the severe problems with 9.10, and just how good Windows 7 is.
(Disclaimer: Tanner is a friend whose site, and this good article, would not normally get picked up by the usual newsrounds so I’m featuring this article on that basis)
…but wait. That’s not actually relevant. See, my friends and family aren’t comparing you to Vista any longer – they’re comparing you to Windows 7.
And frankly, Windows 7 is a great operating system.
The world has moved on. Ubuntu has had a long time to build a lead with XP being stagnant for almost five years and Vista being a bit of a non-starter, but now Microsoft have ‘got their act together’ and Windows 7 is proving to be a solid release that consumers are welcome.
It’s not that Ubuntu doesn’t have a lot to offer, quite the opposite! The issue is that the majority of users are going to purchase a computer that comes preloaded with Windows 7. What incentive would they have to download and install another operating system, if Windows 7 is for the better part reliable, secure and enjoyable?
But wait, you say – there’s still the issue of stability. Haven’t you always excelled when it comes to stability, especially when compared to Windows?
As I’ve mentioned, I’m not sure you provide a better alternative at this point. In my experience, Windows 7 is remarkably solid. You, my friend, have not been. I sincerely hope 10.04 is more stable than 9.10 – and I imagine it will be – but you know what? The bar’s been raised. We can continue to mock Vista for the unstable mess that it was, but when it comes to Windows 7, the average user isn’t complaining about stability.
Tanner also brings up the recent minor developer fallout as having a damaging effect on Ubuntu—building strong relationships was one of Tanner’s requests in 10 days of feature requests for Ubuntu 10.10, and ignoring developer’s input doesn’t help.
All in all, Ubuntu is seen as the poster child for Linux. Will this always be the case, and are the cracks beginning to show?
I don’t think the cracks are starting to show on Ubuntu, rather, the cracks in Windows are being repaired whilst solid new foundations are being added.
Oh dear me!
I’ll just state that this news article will provide no worthwhile commentary or points. This site can do better I think.
Edited 2010-05-09 13:00 UTC
Do you have something else you would suggest then?
I feel there has been alot of critizism lately towards OSNews and I just want to say that even though I personally can sound harsh I still appreciate all the time you and the rest of OSNews spend to bring us these articles.
Even though this article wasnt one of the better ones this normally isnt the case. It was a good try, it didnt work, lets leave it there. I rather read crappy articles than nothing at all.
Feel free to thank OSNews for their great work. I think they need to here it from time to time.
I agree. This is normally the first site I visit daily and have done so for year.
The premise of this article is that Windows 7 is a perfect OS for everyone and therefore Ubuntu doesn’t matter.
I personally find that a little ridiculous.
No, the premise is that Windows 7 isn’t Windows XP, so what reasons do people have to remove that and put on Ubuntu? He’s acknowledging that Ubuntu’s competition has become tougher than it once was before.
I don’t find it that impressive that it took Microsoft decades, and a ton of releases each of them costing a pretty penny, to get their flagship mass market OS “right.”
ubunutu is free. It costs nada, zero, zilch. It is far from perfect, that is for sure. But I find it far more impressive that someone can put out a free alternative, which can suit the needs of a lot of people.
Windows 7 is free too, from the regular user’s point of view.
Also, it does not matter that it took 20 years, Windows 7 is great at the current time.
Not if they want to upgrade a current Windows machine that they own. Especially if it currently runs XP (which means more $$$ on hardware upgrades just to gain Win7 compatibility). In either case, for those “regular users” you mentioned, a whole new computer is the typical method of upgrade. This is sure as hell not “free”.
Edited 2010-05-10 02:43 UTC
The vast majority of Joe Sixpack “regular users” out there just buy a new computer when they want to upgrade. They view the computer as something much more akin to an appliance. To users like that, windows always comes with their computer for free.
This may be a semantic point, but the cost of Ubuntu is decisively NOT free, the price, however, is.
(The rest of this is not necessarily directly about your comment, but to add to the discussion.)
Besides, comparing the cost (or price) of the two is hardly the point. Since the vast majority of people that have and use Windows (regardless of version) get it with a new computer, it might as well be free to them. They don’t “see” the price of Windows in the cost of their machine, they see the whole package. The same goes for the “choice” of OS on a phone or set-top box or other electronic device. Consumers just don’t care, for the most part, so long as it does what they need it to do with as little fuss as possible.
Fact is, the majority of us would choose familiarity over improved functionality unless we’re forced to make a change. For proof of this, consider how popular Windows XP still is when there have been better alternatives since before it was even conceived. There comes a point when “good enough” is all people want and the holy war over fringe (and often petty) differences becomes irrelevant.
In order for any OS to win the fight against Windows, it has to win the contest of perceived value, which often has little to do with price. Ubuntu, and Linux in general, has a few things going against it on the value front. It does not come pre-installed on the vast majority of computers people have access to. So it must be downloaded, installed, and “tweaked” for a given system. Nearly every other non-technical person I know interprets this as a severe, show-stopping negative. They won’t do it, at any price, because they do not find value in it. This same group of people would only ever consider an upgrade if software they have or really want requires it. Again, the “good enough for now” mentality.
And this is what I got from this article. Windows 7 has a much higher inherent value (fewer flaws and better features than XP/Vista) so Ubuntu and other distributions will have a much harder time replacing it than they every had replacing Windows XP or Vista.
Two points to consider here. First, a lot of people are not buying new computers, if they were Microsoft would not be pumping a lot of money into programs like the Registered Refurbisher’s Program. (See http://www.microsoft.com/refurbishedpcs/Programs.htm) An existing program called Community Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher already delivers tens of thousands of PCs to low income families. (And there are lots of Linux-based refurbishers out there). So not everyone is buying new. This also means not everyone is getting a legitimate license/installation. A lot of the refurbished market sells PCs with non-genuine software (lots of places with storefronts). Microsoft states that COAs cannot be used to reinstall Windows without the recovery media from the OEM. This could be a restore partition, or if you can obtain the OEM Windows CD, the installation can be done. A lot of clearance houses sell off-lease systems promoting the fact that there’s a COA on the side (leaving off that they don’t install Windows for the reason I stated above — those who do install often do it without the original media, illegally according to Microsoft). Technically these are non-legit licenses of Windows. Reality is a little different: it seems to depend on who you speak to at Microsoft. I called the Microsoft 1-800 # awhile back for someone who bought a notebook from a store, it had a non-legit installation, but a valid Windows XP Pro COA, and the Microsoft employee (or call centre Microsoft uses) repeated a few times “borrow a CD from a friend.” Even when pressed with the question “is that legal?” he repeated “borrow a CD from a friend.”
The second point is that a lot of people “inherit” a used PC with a non-genuine license. Grandma has a PC passed down to her from George, who illegally reuses his license on the new PC he parts together. Bart picks his system off the side of the street, someone else’s cast off, finds the only problem is that the Windows installation is corrupted by viruses (it actually happens a lot).
Not everyone is buying new PCs, so the argument that Windows comes with every new PC isn’t a good one when dealing with the “vast majority.” People might be buying new hardware, a video card here, motherboard there, etc. True, there are a good number of people who do buy new PCs, but I wonder about “the vast majority.”
“Vast majority” is not the same as “everyone”. Regardless, my point was that the overwhelming majority of people get their PC pre-installed with Windows, legitimate or not. “New” could just as easily mean “new to them”.
Same feeling here. I think Ubuntu Lucid Lynx is very good. It’s as good as W7, and you could even add that it’s more secure. How is W7 better, to begin with? Also, is W7 really better than Vista? When I upgraded from Vista to W7, I didn’t see any difference beside the task bar and the new wallpaper…
I guess the only real improvement in Windows 7 is performance. Compatibility is also better then when Vista came out, but that’s just because everything that wasn’t compatible slowly became Vista compatible and automatically Windows 7 compatible as well.
I would tend to agree with you here; as great as Windows 7 was in my nearly 10 months evaluating it, Ubuntu is still a better fit for me. Granted, if I bought a new computer with 7 pre-installed I wouldn’t remove it, but I don’t foresee me buying a copy of 7.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ve noticed major differences between the two, mostly under the hood. Remember, the UI is only a small fraction of a modern OS. On my test computer, Vista was dog-slow and had some stability issues. This was with SP1. With the Windows 7 Beta and RC, my system was much faster and more stable. The only issues I had with 7 was an incomplete bluetooth stack and driver support for a 10-year-old MP3 player. Even XP had issues with that device.
Another example: A family member bought a top-of-the-line computer with Vista a couple of years ago. The specs of the machine were amazing for the time, and still competitive today, but she was constantly frustrated with the slowness and instability of Vista. Once 7 was released to retail, I suggested she give it a try. Another family member bought her the copy and I installed and tweaked it to her preferences. She was absolutely floored by the difference; she now has a pleasant experience every time she uses her computer, as opposed to the constant frustration under Vista.
Again, I wouldn’t run 7 as a main OS unless my computer came with it preinstalled, and even then I’d run Ubuntu and Haiku side-by-side with it. But it’s only the second version of Windows I can faithfully say I really like (Win2K being the other one). Microsoft finally got it right, in my eyes.
She probably had junk running in the background or hadn’t updated the system past SP1.
Windows 7 is a little better for older machines but on something new there is really no difference. I have machines with XP, Vista and 7 and my opinion is that upgrading from Vista to 7 is a waste of money unless you are running an older single core machine. There are plenty of benchmarks that support this assertion. Upgrading from XP is worth it though for the security and aesthetic improvements.
Speaking of Vista the screenshot on that post is clearly Vista and not 7. Not only does it have the older taskbar but the root drive in the explorer Window is labeled Vista. That blogger has zero experience running Vista or 7 and is not in a position to make comparisons. This story should be removed.
Actually it probably is Windows 7.
You may notice the task bar still has the show desktop button that didn’t exist in Vista. Also, Vista had a much darker task bar. To make the Windows 7 taskbar look like that, select Properties and select ‘Use small icons’, and change ‘Taskbar buttons:’ to ‘Never combine’.
About the drives: just because C is the standard root letter, doesn’t mean it has to be. It very well could be the E drive is root.
Hmmm I didn’t know you could change the taskbar style to the old one.
But that still undermines his argument which is that Ubuntu needs to be worried due to the new Windows GUI. Windows looked the same when Vista came out.
Regardless I noticed that the author changed the image to a desktop that looks like Windows 7.
Probably caught word from Kroc.
Good idea though. I’d doubt you were the only one to think it was Vista.
I will start by saying that I am a passionate believer in what Linux and Ubuntu in particular are trying to do. However, I have not tried a version of Ubuntu since 6.something that was close to replacing Windows XP for a general use desktop type PC. There are always problems with printer drivers, I even went and bought a new printer (Samsung) that was supposed to have good Linux support at one point and still have problems. 10.whatever it called simply WILL NOT BOOT from the (from any) Live CD – the reason! The Toshiba laptop has an Intel graphics chip!
I can see the potential but its a very long way from being delivered.
Operating systems, after all are a commodity NOT an end in themselves.
I suppose I will keep trying new versions hoping they get it right one day, because I really do believe in the goal. But in the meantime we need to preserve some objectivity.
Regards,
Peter
I don’t know which Intel chip you have, but my old desktop has an Intel 82865G graphics chip, and 10.04 works just fine with it out of the box, including Compiz Fusion effects.
I enjoy Ubuntu, and really appreciate everything Shuttleworth did to the Linux on the desktop. But Ubuntu is clearly missing some kind of design leader to do a difficult work of providing a consistent experience across the desktop OS.
Many design decisions ended up with Shuttleworth choices, and IMO he is not very good at it..
Oh, and by Design, Im not talking only about style and colors, as some people think design is. For me a design must think on all of these 7 facets (http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/images/honeycombb…) and more.
Well, my constructive critic: It wouldn’t really hurt if Shuttleworth read About Face 3 from Alan Cooper
I always have the feeling they are doing this better at the Fedora-project, probably because they have so many Redhat-employees leading the way in different fields. But I could be wrong, I’m not a user of Fedora. 🙂
They do however create new things there, not always a success, but usually interresting non the less.
edit: fixed spelling mistake
Edited 2010-05-09 13:40 UTC
But I had 4GB of RAM.
and I am enjoying Ubuntu.
Real geeks have 32GB.
Real real geek have more than enough with 32 MB
Well my Amiga 500 had ….
I had 2. Ran Vista from the day it RTM’d ’til the day Windows 7 hit RC2. Had exactly one hitch early on, which was McAfee silently (and only partially) blocking NVidia driver installation– I had two different NVidia drivers at the same time.
Ditched McAfee, went to NOD32, never looked back. Windows 7 is slightly snappier, and easier to use, but Vista was OK for a near-rewrite of the OS.
Windows 7 is a great, solid release. Ubuntu 10.04 is looking like a promising release. OSX v10.6 is excellent.
This just proves competition is a good thing. I don’t think there is any bad choice in the popular operating systems of today and I am quite glad to see that.
AGREED! I only wish Ubuntu could compete a little harder!
Peter
Kroc,
It’s not like I want to mock you or anything, but I believe this is a quite a biased article. I don’t believe your friend has enough experience in the security field to be able to say that one OS is more secure than the other. Windows UAC is really not as secured as you think, sure Windows has made LOTS of improvements in this area but I believe that Linux still has the upper hand.
Secondly, that sarcasm about spending 6 hours per computer to change the UI is totally out of proportion, and frankly, very disappointing, I can tell that your friend installed Linux in a VM and took a couple of screen-shots and was done with it. Also, have you tried changing the Windows 7 UI? Yep, you either need to patch the OS or use custom paid tools. Linux is free and is quite easy these days.
I do have to say that Windows 7 is a very big step in the right direction for Microsoft and I applaud their efforts into making a reliable OS.
I also have to agree with the latter piece of the article where he talks about the relationship between Canonical and the developers. I have to say that the buttons issue is just the tip of the iceberg. I think that the community is starting to grow tired about their voices not being heard, and I just hope that Canonical realizes this and starts putting a little bit more effort into hearing what their customers/developers want and not what they think is right.
This article isnt based on facts. That is why it is biased.
Oh, I know that well
To the best of my knowledge he uses Linux full time. He writes this article because as a Linux user he’s willing to see where improvements need to be made rather than deny the problems exist.
I chose his article because he is a Linux user, where as I’m not, and any such problems I could highlight with Linux are not really spoken from someone who is investing in the platform. Biased, more than likely, but I respect that he’s trying to see things from the perspective of an average user who has no understanding of the reasons behind any shortcoming in a technology.
Well, I’m not sure if the cracks are starting to show on Ubuntu just yet. If there are going to be serious cracks though, they’re going to hit soon probably in the 10.10 release. I’ll wait until I actually use them hands-on, but the removal of the notification area and those windicator things don’t really seem to make good design sense.
As for Windows 7 though, I’m probably one of the few that doesn’t think very highly of it. The best I can say about is that it’s better than Vista, but that’s not what I personally consider praise. Its stability is fine even though its resource and disk space usage seem to be a bit on the high side as compared to most Linux-based oses, and all that disk usage without actually providing any useful applications like an email or messenger client (to get those you must download them separately, so why on earth does 7 take up 6.5 gb of disk space on a fresh install?). I could live with that though, what bugs me about 7 is the UI. I didn’t like Vista’s UI, so for the most part I don’t much care for 7’s. The dock-like taskbar is nice, but the rest of it just feels overweight and clunky. I’m sure it *looks* slick (can’t tell myself, being blind as a bat and all), but to me it feels slow. That’s one of the reasons I don’t use it, the other being the artificially crippled nature of it. All os components are installed, even with Starter that comes with some netbooks. All of them. They take up space on my disk, yet I can’t remove them without resorting to unsupported hacks, but I also can’t use them because of Microsoft’s artificial limitations. Granted the majority of home users aren’t going to care about this bit, but oh well this is from my viewpoint isn’t it? The final reason is WGA or whatever the new name is for it. I’m sick of updates to activation telling me I have a pirated copy of Windows. I do not, pure and simple. Add those three reasons all up and Windows 7 is just more annoying to me than it’s worth. Ymmv, this is just how I feel about it.
I and a colleague at work tried Windows 7, yes it’s better then Windows Vista, but Windows XP and even Windows 2000 are still simpler to use.
I haven’t tried W7 but Server 2008 is driving me nuts. It is so frigging different from Server 2003 that stuff that used to work nicely no longer does. The bloody UAC gets in the way.
The forced policies get in the way.
Running it in a non AD environment is a real PITA.
I’m not a regular Ubuntu user either. Fedora & RHEL/CentOS is more my bag but from what I have seen om my friends use of it, they are not a million miles away from Kroc on this. Two have gone back to Debian already.
To be honest, I’ve just about given up on Linux for the desktop. All my servers (Apart from one running Server 2008) run Centos or Fedora. I decided I didn’t want to ‘tinker’ with my desktop any longer so I took the plunge and bought a Mac Book Pro. AS someone who has been writing Software for nearly 40 years, it ‘Just Works’. Ubuntu fails miserably on this for the way I work. OS-X wins hands round.
To summarise, IMHO, both W7 & Ubuntu are going in the wrong direction. W7 is getting far to complicated. Ubuntu is losing the plot. As the article say, there is no one leading the design. They need an equivalent to Jonathan Ive to lead them out of the mire they re getting into.
All I can say is that the cracks are not showing now, they were always there. Desktop Linux hasn’t changed that much, if anything, it has improved. It’s me who has changed, and now I see that the emperor has no clothes.
Frankly, nowadays I don’t know what took me so long.
That is just some seriously poor linking to such a story. Do you have to link such things where the user thinks X is better than Y?
It’s just a rant comparing Ubuntu with Windows 7. I’m pretty sure that if Ubuntu hit the OEM market properly, it would be good enough.
It reads to be like some ex-ubuntu users that just doesn’t like the changes and thinks Windows 7 is better. I rather OSnews post some real news really because this just isn’t.
Edited 2010-05-09 13:40 UTC
Woah, what goggles were you wearing when you read the article?
It’s in the X vs. Y category.
No, no it’s not. It’s about a Linux user who feels that priorities within Ubuntu are off course and the competition represents a threat that wasn’t there before when it was relatively easy to be better than a 9 year old OS.
It’s Sunday. Got some real news? I’d like to hear it, we haven’t had many submissions.
yes friend you are right but seriously, windows 7 more secure than linux?
please don’t say bullshit http://www.secureworks.com/research/threats/zeus/ ( watch the paragraph Windows 7/Vista Support $2000 )
UAC is a very superficial imitation of the sudoing mechanism
yes windows 7 is better than vista, but, hey, vista is plain simple shit
it is so easy to be better than vista
so what is the point of the article? ubuntu and/or linux is becoming uglier? less secure? I don’t see this trend happening
Explain why Vista is shit, and please be specific as in show me benchmarks.
Why does shit have do be benchmarked? Do you really really take a dump in a test tube and perform tests on it to prove its worth (or worthlessness)? Shit is shit. It all stinks, and it’s all waste.
Joking, of course. Well, kind of. But I do agree with the original poster that Vista is shit. No need for proof, my own experiences have formed my opinion. Which is just that–an opinion. And since when did an opinion need to be proven as fact?
IMO, Vista is the biggest Windows dud since WinME. While WinME was a buggy, bloated and highly unstable POS, at least Vista is more stable, but its GUI consistency is horrible. Vista is still bloated though (which Win7 improved), and it was released with bad device compatibility (few working drivers).
Edited 2010-05-10 03:04 UTC
You didn’t even specify where you had issues or where Windows 7 is better than Vista.
I could provide a few but not enough to make Vista look like shit in comparison.
As for benchmarks they allow software to be judged by more than feelings.
Maybe you should try reading some:
http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/information/windows-xp-vs-vista-vs-7…
Edited 2010-05-10 16:09 UTC
For all the naysayers, the article isnt saying that Win7 is better then Ubuntu.
The purpose of it is to show that now Windows is not as bad as it used to be, so now Ubuntu needs to work harder if it wants to continue relevant.
I mean, i ditched Windows long ago, on XP time, when Windows was a total shit. But now if 7 is as good as people say, people wont be compeled to move to another OS, unless it provides much better benefits. Oh, and unfortunately most people dont care about idealogy.. It’s a pragmatic world, with imediatisc people
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; pt-br) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16
Did you make up that word just so you could Google your comment later? http://www.google.com/search?q=imediatisc
It was this damn iphone.. It’s hard to do two things at the same time with such small screen.. I was trying to say something related to “immediatism”
Sorry, I’m not an english speaker, so there are some expressions that I can’t translate correctely
ha! that’s actually a pretty neat trick
Am I alone in finding the Windows vs. OS X vs. Linux debates about as meaningful as the Kirk vs. Picard vs. Sisco debates?
When it comes down to it, I’m betting a fair amount of semi-competent computer users in the world are going to rely on what system works best for their needs. If I’m doing graphic design or video editing I’m probably going to use a Mac. If I’m running financial software or nearly anything in an office environment, then Windows 7. At home, if my only needs are browsing the web, watching Youtube and Colbert, then Linux. I’d throw in video game playing for Windows, but most folks are offloading their game playing onto game consoles these days.
For me, this means most of my time is spent in Windows 7. I’ll use Linux for applications that I simply can’t afford to purchase for Windows, such as GIS software. Ubuntu’s (and Debian’s) lack of support for QGIS for some time meant my Ubuntu days were over a couple years ago (although I do understand the fault was the devs at QGIS for producing some darned buggy releases after 1.0).
With support for QGIS renewed and reportedly working well, I installed 10.10 last week. I uninstalled it after three days — my laptop’s ability to detect wifi networks and its battery life were significantly reduced versus Windows 7, my fingerprint reader wasn’t recognized, packages would install but not appear on my applications menu, and most annoying of all, suspend/hibernate resulted in a frozen computer — all on one of those rare, no-one-ever-uses brands called a Lenovo Thinkpad.
Sure the os debates are meaningless. But on the other hand, sometimes they’re just too entertaining the pass by. IN the end, I think we should concentrate on open data formats, and thus render the choice of os a lot less meaningful than the choice of an interoperable way to send and receive all information.
i wouldnt say the debate is pointless, we have had a single OS dominating the computing world for a great many years. Now we finally start to see the tide turning, i think the debates are useful as a method of informing users.
Someone using windows might hear the word linux / ubuntu / fedore / mac OSX on the tv/at work. They go home and do a search in google and find the article and the comments we leave here. Reading the comments might open them up to trying out ubuntu, to think about a mac.
I agree with Kroc’s comment earlier, it’s great to have the level of competition, i just hope it continues, its great to have choice and it’s great to see Microsoft and everyone else working hard on creating some great products instead of falling into lethargy.
Well, you can’t really bring Sisco or Janeway into a debate about who was the better captain of the Enterprise.
I don’t understand this recent upheaval in the Ubuntu fan base. Perhaps they’re starting to realize that Ubuntu is popular in the same way Apple products are popular; it has become embedded in the culture. Say media player and iPod comes to mind; say Linux and Ubuntu is what you think of first. A large segment of Ubuntu’s user base are Windows converts and Ubuntu is all they know. Users shouldn’t forget that there are 600+ Linux distributions out there. Unhappy Ubuntu users should simply try Parsix, Fedora, Sabayon, PCLinuxOS (gnome variant), or Mandriva. Or if they insist on sticking with Ubuntu’s base, then I highly recommend Linux Mint. Don’t complain, just speak with your choices. If Ubuntu starts to see it’s user base dwindling and its ranking on Distrowatch falling, perhaps then it might start paying attention to bug reports and users preferences.
Uhhh… and? Am I supposed to look at the screenshots, read some unsubstantiated claim about Ubuntu’s appearance and simply take his word for it?
I don’t get it. What about 7’s UI makes Ubuntu look “ridiculous”? Where’s the evidence to back up these claims? I honestly prefer Ubuntu’s new look over 7’s, but whatever.
I wanted to be through with this article but was curious to see if the author included anything meaningful, so I read on.
Am I missing something here? Why would Ubuntu, or any flavor of Linux, need something like Microsoft Security Essentials? Sure, it’s great that MS has FINALLY decided to provide a tool for protecting its users, but just because it exists on their platform doesn’t mean that it’s “better” at security than another platform that doesn’t require a tool like this. Seriously, does this make sense to anyone?? Am I just lost here? Help me out!
While I do agree that criticism will only make Linux a better OS, I think there are far better arguments out there on the Interwebz than the BS in this article. Out of all the critical comparisons of Ubuntu and Windows 7 out there, why oh why was this one picked for coverage on OSNews???
Actually, every single version of Linux is hideously vulnerable to the user sitting at the keyboard.
Windows has made huge strides in protecting the user from himself. Linux has not.
Windows has shoved anti-virus software that is in many ways more disastrous than the malicious software that it claims to “protect” against. As several articles in the past have proven, including a recent news article, they are failing miserably at it. Windows has given us UAC, which has proven to be nothing more than a PITA to get developers (including Microsoft themselves, how ironic) to write software in a more sane, less-privilaged way. Yet all it takes is a click of “OK” to get full admin privileges–what a joke, every Windows user is trained right from the start to simply click “OK,” “Next,” “Continue,” or “Yes” to get to what they want (oldest trick in the book for Windows scammers and malware writers).
Meanwhile, Linux continues to be resistant to viruses and other malware by its very design, and has had non-root users as its main user type for how long now? The way I see it, Windows is just catching up with Linux and other UNIX and UNIX-like systems. Linux can just sit back, fixing bugs that matter to it, which luckily doesn’t include constant “virus taking over the whole system, stealing data and joining a botnet” crap.
The “advances” Linux has made to “protect” users from themselves seem like a joke in comparison. Two that come to mind are X.Org not allowing Ctrl+Alt+Bksp to kill the X server and all child processes, and disallowing “sudo rm -rf /” for anyone dumb enough to be fooled into doing it.
Edited 2010-05-10 03:36 UTC
The keyboard combination has not been disabled, it has been moved. Now you can type Alt-SysRq-K to kill the X server. Get with the times, it’s been like this for a year already.
I’m not sure ‘moved’ is the proper description. It’s just that Ctrl+Alt+Bksp has been disabled as a result of it being a key combo that’s “too easy to hit.” It is set to do nothing now, so I’d consider that disabled. Which leaves the Alt+SysRq+K combo as you mentioned, which is harder to hit (and a royal pain in the ass on this Dell keyboard). Hasn’t this combo been there all along? If so, it hasn’t moved–it just became the new default (or only choice) since the other has been disabled.
Plus, AFAIK the Ctrl+Alt+Bksp combo sends the signal directly to X11, which may not work in certain situations. The “new” default sends a signal to the kernel to kill everything in the current virtual console, which may work in cases the other combo won’t (ie., in certain types of lock-ups).
Either way, I’ll continue to re-enable Ctrl+Alt+Bksp on my machines. It doesn’t effect me much in the end. Moved, disabled, whatever you want to call it–the defaults have changed to safeguard against people who for some reason, somehow, managed to hit those three keys and bitched about it. My point still stands: it’s a safeguard to protect users from themselves.
Pray tell, how so?
I have personally introduced dozens of ordinary people as new users of desktop Linux distributions, and none of them have managed to inflict the slightest damge whilst sitting at their keyboards.
Edited 2010-05-10 04:00 UTC
Do you know all those programs written for Windows? You know, “Run this to see XXX pics of Hanna Montana!” or “Install this to get holiday themed mouse cursors!”?
Those work on Linux when someone writes one for Linux. No Linux users run AV software to block those.
Sure, you can say no one bothers to write those for Linux, but that isn’t the same thing as security.
/dev/sda2 /home ext4 relatime,noexec 1 2
Easy fix.
Same can be done to /tmp if it’s on its own partition to prevent executing programs that Firefox is told to “open” instead of download.
Even if this is not done, the user will need to go through the added trouble of giving the file executable permissions (or extracting the file first if in a UNIX permission-preserving archive format). The main problem I see is with .desktop files. Are desktop environments still treating them as “trusted” files that can be executed like programs even with no execute permissions? Hopefully not, because that’s the most braindead idea, period… something you’d think came right out of Washington…
Also, anyone who does not know the basics of when and why to use their root password and where and how to get their software (from trusted repositories…) might as well just stick with Windows and get everything third-party as they’ve always done.
Have a look on Distrowatch.
Not only Ubuntu is quite popular, but ist family is growing. Linux Mint is quite popular too, Lubuntu just enters brilliantly the stage, other variants exist like Voyager 10.04, Ubuntu Studio or Ultimate, not to forget the classic Xubuntu and Kubuntu, and the masked ones under other non buntu names.
You can try any of them in some minutes with any USB key. And Mandriva is to be sold…
So the question is not to leave Ubuntu but to try another variant of Ubuntu, which is slightly different. This is freedom. This is still Ubuntu family.
to change it to something beautiful? Are you kidding me? It takes 5 minutes to change everything: background, icons etc. And default Windows 7 background is plain ugly – strange mixture of light green & blue. Ubuntu 10.4 default theme is beautiful. The size of the panel fits much better her on my laptop than the one in Windows 7 (which you can’t resize at all) and panel in MacOSX is just waste of space.
I dunno about Firefox, but I use Opera as my default browser on Ubuntu and it is as excellent as on any other platform. With Opera Unite, I have server both on my stationary PC and my laptop no matter which operating system I use.
Ubuntu 10.4 has a great software installer. Why nobody talks about that?
Ubuntu 10.4 boots much faster than Windows 7.
I have mobile broadband here and in windows when boot or close the lid on my laptop I have to redial every time when I open the lid or reboot. Ubuntu automatically connects me to internet provider. No dialing after reboot or efter closing/opening the lid.
Graphics, sound & printer works out of the box.
No issues with flash and java.
No crashes.
Secure.
What is wrong with you guys?
Rule #16 regarding judging an OS: Never judge an OS by it’s default theme if that theme is easily changed.
I personally think the default Ubuntu 10.04 theme sucks, and I’m not fond the default themes found in many other distros, either. However, it’s no big deal. A minute or two is all it takes to change the theme.
It might take a few moments for you to change this but how many ‘Joe Sixpack’ users coming to Linux for the first time can do it this quickly?
They might struggle for 20-30 mins if you are lucky and then give up and go back to the cocoon of Windows. Then you have a lost user.
IMHO, all the Ubuntu default themes are pretty dire. Think of them like Music Sleeves (LPl’s) where lots of thought went into the design. Fedora seems to take great pride in this area. Ubuntu seems to do it as an afterthought.
Just my 2p worth.
Remote management, I guess. There is plenty of options of remote management in the Windows world, no fuss, no router configure work.
For me, I tried to access my netbook using the kde’s infrastructure, utterly pointless, the performance was unbearable, in my local network.
I remember using remote desktop on Windows XP, it was as I were sitting in the remote computer.
If there is one thing that Linux will beat Windows everytime is remote management. KDE’s tools mostly use VNC which is unbearable slow by anyone’s standards but still a good fallback to resort when everything else fails and that happens to be multiplatform and thus will work fine on Windows, Mac, *nix. Heck, even the iPhone has a VNC client these days!
If you took the time to look further, you would notice that you can forward entire X sessions through SSH (or not) or you could also rely on NoMachine’s unbelievably fast NX protocol that beats the pants off both Citrix and MS’ RDP any day and that rdesktop does a fine job on the *nix as a client side. Heck… You can even use MS Remote Desktop Client with X if you install xrdp which means that you don’t need to install additional software on the Windows client!
And you please don’t get me started on how the lack of something like SSH makes Windows look completely retarded from a sysadmin point of view.
If you had said directory management, then sure. Windows definitely has the edge there with Active Directory going for it. But you will have a hard time trying to convince any seasoned sysadmin otherwise with that argument…
Edited 2010-05-09 17:30 UTC
I love ssh, and don’t misunderstand me, I’m not talking about office environment here. I am talking about Desktop experience.
Let’s say, you need to support your friend miles away and need to see and interact with it under firewalls and routers you don’t have access. What you should do?
Windows – Windows : Plenty of solutions
But, what about Windows – Linux and Linux – Linux scenarios?
Well, I guess you could say that 10.04 is the response to the concerns over 9.10.
Whats so wrong about this article (and i think has been said in some prior comments already) is that Linux or Ubuntu have never tried to be a perfect replacement for Windows.
Trying that would be selling it so far below its actual value. And the fact is that it absolutely is not a replacement for Windows. Especially not for the mass of windows users out there who wouldnt know how to find their way around a different platform.
What Ubuntu on the other hand is, is an OS with a rock stable foundation and everything else on top of it you could ask for. I still dont get if this article is trying to point out that Ubuntu 10.04 is worse than 9.10 or just that Windows 7 is a lot better than previous versions have been.
Either way i dont see any relevance for this to affect the image of Ubuntu which has achieved something in the last years no other free operating system has.
If Fedora wants to, and ONLY IF THEY WANT TO, they can eat Ubuntu’s lunch within 6 months. Shuttleworth has opened up this situation to become reality.
Now it’s up to you Fedora…
Won’t happen. Fedora’s aim is the bleeding edge and a testbed for eventual RHEL features. They don’t even attempt to support old versions of the os for long. Perhaps they could eat Ubuntu’s lunch if they wanted to, but they don’t really want to in my experience. I’ve always found Fedora to be too unstable, my hardware disagrees with a lot of the RH custom kernel patches it seems. I haven’t got a chance to try Fedora 13 though, so perhaps it would work better than the previous ones. Still, on my hardware anyway, Ubuntu’s stability so far has murdered Fedora without even a struggle. Bare in mind though that I’m one of the few who, it seems, didn’t have any trouble with 9.10 whatsoever and my hardware is a little odd by today’s standards (mostly integrated SIS chipsets on this board).
Me neither. I didn’t have problems with Ubuntu 9.10 at all. Not having with 10.04. I also have used Fedora in other machine, the latest 12 release, without any issues as well.
Fedora has changed a lot. They made mistakes. If this was not for apt-get and debs, they could still be number 1, coming off from Red Hat.
It’s not like a Linux distro can’t be updated at all after a 6 month life-time. But you’re right, your reasons are valid to believe Fedora won’t eat Ubuntu’s lunch.
Perhaps I should go back to the first love, Slackware or even try FreeBSD now.
Ah, good old Slackware. I cut my teeth on that distro. Sadly though, it’s too much of a pain in the ass to get GNOME going on Slackware since Volkerding dropped it. His reasons were valid at the time, Dropline-GNOME was doing it way better. For a while Dropline was probably the most stable GNOME desktop I’ve ever run. Unfortunately they’ve fallen very far behind and none of the other GNOME builds are really very good. If you want GNOME don’t go with Slack unless you want to compile it yourself.
Still, if you like Slackware and your hardware supports it, you’ll probably like FreeBSD a lot. If FreeBSD doesn’t work, NetBSD almost certainly will.
There aren’t many Red Hat custom patches in Fedora. The Fedora kernel team as with the rest of Fedora tries to keep it really close to the upstream sources as much as possible. It is very likely that Fedora has far less non-upstream patches for the kernel compared to other mainstream distributions.
Fedora however often includes the latest kernel before many others and that might be a source of solutions as well as issues.
Yes, and no. You’re right, they don’t do LTS releases like Ubuntu do, but that’s because they’re organised differently. Redhat and Fedora have a greater separation between the money-making RHEL, and the free Fedora. Canonical/Ubuntu don’t, but their LTS releases are the closest equivalent.
As to Fedora being a testbed for Enterprise, there’s certainly some truth in that, though you make it sound worse than it is. If Fedora is the bleeding edge, that’s because they’re largely the ones creating that edge – an awful lot of stuff like HAL or NetworkManager started out there, before other distros like Ubuntu picked it up. Technology-wise, they’re definitely the leaders…
Yeah, I’ll get voted down, but I post it anyway.
Canonical contributes next to nothing to FOSS. They have a bunch on incompetent programmers who fail to properly apply patches written by Red Hat for Fedora (see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg-server/+bug/565981 ).
Canonical has OTOH a design team that uses Macs with proprietary graphics software and a oversized PR team instead of proper programmers (see http://jordanopensource.org/freeplanet/article/new-ubuntu-design-cr… ).
So instead of giving credit to those who actually deserve it, media like OSNews treat Ubuntu like the second coming of Jesus even though most of those who praise Ubuntu couldn’t even tell the difference between Ubuntu and Fedora if Fedora’s artwork was changed to Ubuntu’s.
So here are a few distributors who actually deserve credit:
– Debian for doing all the hard packaging work Ubuntu is feeding of.
– Red Hat for being one of the top contributors to Xorg, esp. the FOSS Nouveau NVidia driver.
– Novell for employing Greg Kroah-Hartman who’s keeping the kernel clean. And also for the radeonhd driver that resulted in much code that was later adopted by the general Xorg radeon driver.
– Mandriva who’s despite a very critical financial situation maintains the Poulsbo driver (based on Intel’s binary blob for Moblin, but still now easily adoptable by all distributors) and also contributes a relatively big amount of Mandriva’s limited income directly to FOSS projects (see http://www2.mandriva.com/community/fund/ ).
And what do we get from Canonical? F***ing windicators!
Wow, I wondered when we’d get someone spouting the Greg “Arsehole” KH “Ubuntu contributes nothing blah blah blah” rhetoric. They don’t do much for the kernel, true, but they have done a fair bit with GNOME. Now, whether they’ve done good things or bad things is entirely open to debate, and GNOME are by no means obligated to accept their patches. That doesn’t mean they contribute nothing however.
How much do you think Canonical does compared to Red Hat and Novell?
It’s like something that was scratched on a bathroom stall wall. Something to the effect of Red Hat contributes to the kernel, Novell contributes to the applications, Debian packages it, and Ubuntu takes the credit.
I find it sad that someone (Greg KH) who has contributed so much to Linux gets debased in this way for stating the number of contributions from the significant parties involved in the Linux ecosystem.
He has given numbers on numerous occasions, this isn’t some vicious rumor. Since when did telling the truth make you an “arsehole”?
PS. They haven’t really done anything for GNOME either. The company you’re looking for is RH there.
He’s still an Arsehole, perfectly willing to downplay the efforts on everyone and anyone that isn’t Novell or Red Hat. Plus, I will never forgive him for the Devfs fiasco, he single-handedly managed to prevent Linux from moving to the next stage in device management and is why we’re stuck with clunky udev instead of a proper device filesystem. If you like I’ll go find an archive of that thread and you can see just exactly why he’s such an arsehole.
Oh, constant repetition makes your insult a fact??
How much and what have you done for FOSS? Did you do more than Greg?
Yeah man! Anyone who isn’t Novell or Red Hat. Or MontaVista. Or Mandriva. Or Gentoo. Or WindRiver. Or rPath. Or IBM. Or Intel. Or Oracle. Or countless hobbyists who don’t get paid at all.
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/gregkh/images/lpc_200…
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/gregkh/images/lpc_200…
Prevented? How? Isn’t Linux no longer FOSS and are all sources secret? Can’t you just maintain your own fork with devfs?
Edited 2010-05-09 21:54 UTC
Pot meet kettle, jumping all over posters who disagree with your Napoleonic world view.
Somewhat. They *do* contribute to Gnome, but they’re not always very good about *how* they do it. Their mindset is to develop things for Ubuntu first, then push them upstream – a legitimate approach, but it means they’re somewhat isolated, not actually *part of* upstream.
Consider Gnome 3.0 development. Ubuntu are probably the leading desktop distro, but they appear to have no involvement at all in the upstream vision of what the desktop will look like in a year’s time. They’re building their own things in their own distro, instead of trying to get Gnome to adopt their ideas.
I’m not sure I would give all that much credit to Debian for their packaging effort. Don’t get me wrong their work is excellent and they have a huge set of high quality packages, yet they seriously harm Linux.
Why? My problem with Debian they still use the .deb format. If they and other distros had switched to RPM there would have been one packaging format in the Linux world, this would have mad life much easier for developers and support people. Linux have a small market shate as it is, there is, there is no need to split it further by having two packaging formats that both do about the same thing in two different ways.
So, why should Debian change and not the RPM crowd you might wonder. First of all LSB states that to be LSB compliant you need to be able to install rpms. Debian currently fix this by using alien, but why not just switch packaging format. Second there are versions of apt-get that can handle rpms, while yum can’t handle debs, so by switching to rpm debian users could continue to use apt-get and yum users could continue to use yum.
The days when rpm meant a slow dependency hell are long gone, so why not unify on the LSB standard. The next step would be to somehow standardize the naming and versioning information of all packages making up the LSB, that way it would be even easier to support and develop for Linux.
Simple. RPM took too long to mature and iron out its dependency problems. Now a days there are more deb packages than there are RPMs. For a long time RPM had no equivalent to apt-get. Then someone ported apt-get to RPM, but it was slow and unofficial. Then Red Hat came out with yum, which was even slower for a very long time. Only recently has Yum’s speed gotten anywhere close to that of apt. While I always found it much easier to build RPM packages than to build debs, deb provided a better experience for end-users until recently when RPM caught up after years of lagging behind.
Besides, one packaging format isn’t going to help. Ever tried installing Suse RPM packages on Fedora? How about installing straight Debian debs on Ubuntu? Eventually, when you cross-mix and match distribution packages even in the same format you run into trouble. If you’re advocating standardizing on one distribution, I fully agree with you. It’s a pipe dream however. The LSB refuses to evolve, and even supposed LSB compatibility doesn’t solve everything. Linux distributions are so different from one another in many respects that they might as well be different oses altogether.
More misconceptions. RPM is a package manager equivalent to the level of dpkg. Red Hat has for a very very long time included up2date. There are others such as urpmi, zypper and so on.
Yum was originally developed by Seth Vidal who was a sys admin is Duke university and it was a modification of the yellow dog updater (hence yum = yellowdog updater modified). Fedora included it a while later along with up2date and for several releases, both were included.
Fedora later dropped up2date and went exclusively with yum. Red Hat hired Seth Vidal and yum has continued to gain more features and performance.
RPM still has several features that are ahead of others including multi-arch support, automatic debug info package generation, file dependencies, delta RPM support and so on. Let’s stick to the facts
Today packaging system is not about end users, they have PackageKit and graphical installers. Its all about developers and support.
Software installation is becoming an integrated part of many the desktop environment. E.g. we want to be able to have a standard gnome/KDE/… software installer that work the same way on all distros just like the Gnome/KDE menu works the same on all distros.
It is also not only specialized software install programs that need to install software. As an example printer management software would benefit from being able to automatically download and install printer drivers when we connect a new unknown printer. Other example would be a media player that may need to download and install new codecs, a word processor that need to download and install fonts or dictionaries.
Application developers should not need to do special hacks for each linux distro, to achieve this, and indeed, they don’t need to. They can use PackageKit.
So, if application developers develop in a way that is package file format agnostic, and users install packages in a way that is package format agnostic why should developers need to learn how to package their software in at least two ways? It really doesn’t make any sense.
It doesn’t matter if there are more Debian packages out there. my guess is that Debian people would be smart enough to create some kind of auto translate tool that could generate RPM spec files from corresponding debian package info. By replacing debs with rpms old school, pre packageKit people could still use their apt-get, and Red Hat people can continue to use yum or up2date. Replacing rpms with debs would be a much harder way to get one format.
PackageKit is a kludge to make package installation integrated and manageable in modern Linux desktop environments. The problem is that by demanding that packageKit should be able to handle a large variety of package formats it becomes more complex, and the more complex it is the less flexible to future change it becomes.
The printer drivers are already installed for Ubuntu. For the most part, all you have to do is plug in the printer, and 20 seconds later it will be ready to print.
There are only about a dozen printer drivers for Linux, AFAIK. Myriad different models of printers are handled by different configuration files that delineate the differences in models for one or other of the dozen drivers. This configuartion file is typically a “PPD” file, a plain text file describing the underlying printer driver language and the unique properties of a given model.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript_Printer_Description
It isn’t hard to fit a dozen or so software drivers and many hundreds of plain-text PPD files on a Linux distribution LiveCD install disk.
That is beside the point, even if all available printer drivers are preinstalled by default in Ubuntu, software installation is still something an application should be able to request in a standardized distro independent fashion.
Users should never be given messages like “Software X is not installed” if the software is known, the message should read “Software X is not installed,would you like met to install it for you?” To make this kind of functionality easy to develop there need to be a standard way to install software, and PackageKit provide such a standard way.
If there is a standard way to install things, why should developers need to learn two ways to package software. As long as we have two common ways to install software nobody is even going to address the even bigger problem of having a standard naming scheeme for all the packages that make up LSB, and as long as this is the case it will be too expensive to port software to Linux in many cases, as the market share simply is too small.
Actually it is a lot more complicated than that. Fedora 13 will handle it better.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/AutomaticPrintDriverInstalla…
Since Ubuntu uses system-config-printer from Fedora as well, when they update it, they will get this feature as well.
Build Service — jointly developed by Novell, the openSUSE community, and the Linux Foundation (Canonical is once again completely absent) — happily spits out dep files as well as RPMs.
The windicator allows you to see if you are connected to the internet without having to slightly rotate your eyeballs.
How dare you question the contributions of Canonical’s 300 employees! The 280 person p.r. team is going to write you a very nasty letter once they finish playing foosball!
“Canonical has OTOH a design team that uses Macs with proprietary graphics software”
– Don’t say that you really believed that real graphic design could be accomplished with Gimp?
“oversized PR” compared to other distros maybe, but oversized is overstated. Outside of Geekdom no one has heard of Ubuntu or knows the ubuntu logo.
Edited 2010-05-10 09:31 UTC
“Real” design is very much possible using GIMP, Inkscape and other FOSS tools. Fedora Design team uses tools available in Fedora itself exclusively for all its design and does a splendid job with it. Think about the UI of NetworkManager, virt-manager etc as ample proof of that.
What is wrong graphic design?
But who am I asking? You mentioned a raster graphics program and obviously think that such an approach is the way to go with high density screens where scalable graphics are a must…
Graphics for user interfaces these days are created using vector graphic tools and maybe later the resulting 16×16, 32×32, … render outputs are being slightly retouched using raster graphic tools.
Considering that KDE’s entire Oxygen graphics set was created using Inkscape almost exclusively, I think FOSS tools are pretty capable already.
http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Wiki/Icons/Oxygen
Everything that sacrifices upstream contributions in favor of marketing means that the marketing team is oversized.
Well no, it’s actually hideous (green and blue? seriously?), window borders and title bars are huge and the title bar blurred transparency is annoying.
I agree. Windows 7 looks terrible by default, and there isn’t much opportunity for changing anything besides colors and transparency levels. I much prefer Vista’s theme.
Ubuntu 10.04’s default theme is not my favorite, but it is better than Windows 7. And shiki-colors (a quick sudo apt-get install away) is much better than Windows Vista, 7, and Ubuntu’s default.
The screenshot in the post is actually of Vista. Take a look at the taskbar and the root drive name in the explorer Window.
The author obviously has little experience with Vista or 7 and really has no business making comparisons.
Well now the image has been changed and the author made a comment about it.
…but it works for most people out of the box. 10.04 worked better for me out of the box than did Fedora 12 (well, sort of better – it detected my simple wireless card when fedora did not for some reason. It was also kind enough to remind me that I could install a proprietary driver for my nvidia card). The only thing that Both Fedora and Ubuntu are missing is DRM support from media mogels. I’d like to stream my Netflix movies via moonlight but cannot (as an example). Also gaming support which is, again, the choice of the game companies – not any fault with linux that I know of.
In the end I think it comes down to drivers being written for linux that are free and open, but created by the hardware companies. If linux had that I don’t see how it could be stopped.
Anyway…
Windows 7 is a vast improvement and it does deserve some accolades. There have been memory management tweaks, scheduler tweaks, API tweaks, work done to continue the separation of the kernel from some of the library dependencies (or other way around), locking has changed… The UI is (opinion of course) much improved (tho’ I agree with another poster and am not 100% fond of the blurring, and wish it was more configurable) functionally.
All in all it is solid.
Linux in general is very solid. Mac OS X is solid.
This article seems to rail against the corporatism of Canonical more than anything else.
First up neither OS are perfect and none will ever be.
But in my opinion Windows 7 is better than Vista but that is not saying much. I do not like 7 either as I find it still uses more resources than Ubuntu and is also slower at most things I do with Ubuntu. To me with 7, when your using it it just gets in your way of doing things all too often.
Setting up network printer gave me so much grief on 7 it was almost a joke. The same printer set-up on Lucid is the easiest I have ever seen on recent computers. I didn’t have to install drivers or anything it was a simple point and click episode.
I could go on with so many things but It would simply be my opinion. I guess an OS cannot be everything for everyone and as I always say you should use what you like and what works for you.
To me at this point in time Ubuntu does what I need of it and it does it well for an excellent price and investment in time.
Well…..
I figured it was just a matter of time before people started to complain about Ubuntu and Canonical, after all, no one wants to leave Microsoft, Apple (oh what the heck, Adobe) all by themselves out there in the court of negative opinion.
It all boils down to, how much money I am going to shelve out here for products now these days, and who has got the most locked down system so I don’t have to come home at night and wonder what the hell just happened to my computer.
At this point, for right now, Ubuntu wins hands down. I’m happy, and that really is all that matters in the world.
We’ve been using linux as os in our architectural practice for almost ten years now, we’ve started with debian, switching from windows, in 1999, and then we’ve passed through redhat, mandrake, debian again and ended with Ubuntu.
We upgraded to Lucid last week and I must really say that after using it for a few days it appears with no doubt the best OS we’ve ever used.
It’s fast, reliable, we have all the software we need with nearly no cost at all, and is even cooler and more stylish than our colleagues’ apple things, and they spent quite a lot on that
Maybe it should have been: dear Canonical: I Have Some Concerns
I don’t think this article is as horrible as everyone says. I think stirring up shit has value and must be done from time to time. Sadly, it seems you only have to say that the latest Ubuntu won’t cause peace in the middle east, and the Linux crowd will go off trying to find typos just so they can discredit the article strawman it’s author.
Ubuntu did set the bar for itself incredibly high when it first came out. Ubuntu lit a fire under the developers of other distros, and you see some pretty stark improvements across all distros around the time Ubuntu came out. Eventually this hit Redmond, and they actually released a Windows that doesn’t suck with all its soul. Now Ubuntu has actual competition, it has to actually act like it. Canonical seems like they have already displaced MS. They haven’t. They are still the little guys trying to fight uphill; they still need to be vastly better in ever single way to stand a chance against Windows. Lately Ubuntu releases have been sloppy, and I think they can no longer get away with it.
I actually tend to think it’s not the Linux/OSX “competition” that eventually turned Windows into a good (I guess, not tried seven) OS. I think it’s just… Evolution, a market getting more and more huge every passing hour, amazingly high incomes, long-term experience. How could it be different ?
About 10 years back, Linux was already quite enjoyable for some kinds of users, and definitely had obvious “plusses” over Windows, but was definitely not noobs-friendly. Nowadays, I know many people that are definitely not computer freaks that use Ubuntu with no problem at all. I can have tons of 3D games, use all my hardware etc. But on the other hand, Windows is not completely usable and a good OS (I guess).
To sum it up, everything is getting better, because, well, it has to, there are more developers, more users, more experience… More competition, also, sure.
I don’t really care if Canonical doesn’t take over the world – I’m happy to have choice. Linux is not perfect, but it’s been good enough to me for years.
> But on the other hand, Windows is not completely usable and a good OS (I guess).
Typo: is NOW completely usable and a good OS 😉
Other distributions have better hardware support or stability. Connical has been more successful with marketing though.
The last version of Ubuntu (and the only one) I actually ENJOYED using was 7.04. Things went downhill with 7.10 and I just got tired of waiting.
Here’s a summary of the Ubuntu experience. You have this feature you really use but it has an annoying bug that doesn’t get fixed during the beta. No biggie, a future software update might fix it right? WRONG! Unless you’ve stumbled upon a security issue, you won’t get software updates just for bug fixes. Unless you can recompile the software yourself (and why would you be using Ubuntu then?), you just have to wait for the next Ubuntu release and hope that bug is fixed. Next Ubuntu release comes in, and maybe that bug is fixed (usually isn’t), but then you have to put up with one or more things that used to work on the previous release and now are broken! So, you go through the same waiting and hoping dance until the cycle repeats itself six months later.
Oh, and just because there are no BSOD’s in Ubuntu that doesn’t make it a more stable OS. I’ve seen way too many lockups, and when you have to restart X (which Ubuntu has made harder by disabling CTRL+ALT+Backspace), or power cycle your computer, your work session is as gone as a Windows session after a BSOD.
Thanks but no thanks. After trying out the latest Ubuntu from last month, I don’t care anymore about Ubuntu Mac OS X.04, its App Store and iTuned music store. I want a reliable OS where I can really hope for bugs to be fixed and those fixes be posted as software updates without going through the OS upgrade dance every six months.