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Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

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Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#91

Post by seminal »

padobson wrote: post #47

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…

>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.

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#92

Post by [deleted] »

acabal wrote: post #42
rjbond3rd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes. For example when Ubuntu switched to Pulseaudio, it borked my sound. Even with the release after that one (can't remember which one it was), I had to have a shortcut on my desktop for 'killall pulseaudio' because just playing music for more than 15 minutes would end up in garbled sound. Or in Karmic, when a regression in the Intel video drivers made even dragging windows stutter on my laptop with 4GB of RAM. Or w…

[deleted]

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#93

Post by Hyena »

planckscnst wrote: post #55
Hyena wrote: post #34

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 t…

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 yo…

Yes, I'm aware and that's the problem: I have to be aware of this sort of thing even for consumer software. Contrast Windows: I download, double click and it goes. No knowledge needed.

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#94

Post by norswap »

"6. Linux makes older hardware sizzle."

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.

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#95

Post by recoiledsnake »

ori_b wrote: post #50
acabal wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upgrading Basecamp doesn't force an upgrade to Gmail. Your comparison doesn't really apply here.

Does that matter? In both cases, stuff still gets changed under you at more or less random times. With web apps, you don't even have control over when random stuff could possibly change. In Linux terms, that would be like your package manager constantly and silently updating everything in the background all the time. How dependent or independent packages are doesn't matter in this sort of scenario. I'm not entirely s…

Chrome's updates have been nothing like KDE4 or Unity or Gnome3.

Also, people have also revolted against and deserted versions of Web Apps like Digg v4, so it's the experience that matters, not just change in general. There should be no need to foist updated versions of other apps just to get a version of another app.

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#96

Post by warmfuzzykitten »

I don't think so. The user interface still looks like a dog's breakfast. When was the last time you used Linux without opening a terminal session? Installing new software can be incredibly tedious and error-prone. Drivers may not work or be installed and need to be hunted down (the author raves about how everything just worked out of the box, except of course that HP printer driver, which he had to find - not easy - and install). Windows 7 and MacOS X are ready for prime time. Linux is still an OS for hackers.

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#97

Post by ZeroMinx »

switch007 wrote: post #85

How timely. I just spent 2 hours re-installing grub2 after Windows wiped it out (I knew it was going to happen but I hoped it wouldn't be any trouble to restore it). As I use LVM, I had to copy the /dev/dm-* devices to /dev/mapper/ - in order to install grub (this is what took 1h50mins to figure out). Then I had to boot in to Ubuntu and update the grub config again to pick up Windows. That said, Ubuntu has improved a…

That's not Ubuntus fault. I'm thinking it wouldn't be easier to fix your boot loader in Windows.

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#98

Post by ori_b »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #95
ori_b wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that matter? In both cases, stuff still gets changed under you at more or less random times. With web apps, you don't even have control over when random stuff could possibly change. In Linux terms, that would be like your package manager constantly and silently updating everything in the background all the time. How dependent or independent packages are doesn't matter in this sort of scenario. I'm not entirely s…

Chrome's updates have been nothing like KDE4 or Unity or Gnome3. Also, people have also revolted against and deserted versions of Web Apps like Digg v4, so it's the experience that matters, not just change in general. There should be no need to foist updated versions of other apps just to get a version of another app.

I haven't seen an app that depended on KDE4, Unity, or Gnome3, or couldn't be run outside of them.

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#99

Post by mixmastamyk »

Could be ready for primetime, but Ubuntu hugely suffers from a lack of QA polish. Maverick was working well for me after lots of updates, but the upgrade to Natty was a disaster ... a broken window manager which had to be replaced. Volume doesn't stick after reboot, etc, etc.

Oh, and they love to remove working functionality and don't bother to replace it. The services control panel, gone, no replacement. Sessions gone in Natty, I now have to set up my terminal the way I like it every single time I log in, etc, etc. Will write a script I guess. Constant churn, see pulseaudio and unity.

I'm eager to hear recommendations for a more stable (fewer regression) distro that keeps packages up to date.

Re: Why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime

#100

Post by 51Cards »

ori_b wrote: post #50
acabal wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upgrading Basecamp doesn't force an upgrade to Gmail. Your comparison doesn't really apply here.

Does that matter? In both cases, stuff still gets changed under you at more or less random times. With web apps, you don't even have control over when random stuff could possibly change. In Linux terms, that would be like your package manager constantly and silently updating everything in the background all the time. How dependent or independent packages are doesn't matter in this sort of scenario. I'm not entirely s…

Gradual silent upgrading is poised to be a huge problem for users and yet another reason I stay away from Chrome. You should never impose an upgrade on a user, at most just strongly suggest they install and make it easy if they choose to do so.

Upgrades have the potential to break things users may find critical. Say for example in a browser, User A uses a plug-in that they find essential to their daily work and it hasn't been updated to the latest release (developer is on a sabbatical roaming the world for 2 months). Now you force an upgrade to their machine and you break their plug-in leaving them with no recourse. This is only one slim example but it's potentially a huge issue. A couple years back a Windows auto-update once killed a client's server for 2 days until I could identify the culprit. There at least I had recourse to uninstall and reject the update, with something like Chrome I don't.

In a web app things don't inter-relate the same as they do on a local OS so it's mostly a non-issue outside of user experience. Forcing upgrades to locally installed software is just asking for trouble all around.

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