Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas • Hacker News Board

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#11

Post by 4ad » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 2:20 PM UTC

a3_nm wrote: post #4

Why move your parents to Windows rather than to some other Linux distribution? (Fedora, Linux Mint, Debian...)

From my experience, there's no difference in terms of regressions, except perhaps for things like RHEL/CentOS which are hardly suitable for the described task.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#12

Post by codva » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 2:21 PM UTC

I'm on Xubuntu 12.04 and don't seem to have any of these problems. Unlike Windows, where you are stuck with the corporate decisions, Ubuntu still provides many options if you don't like the flagship distro.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#13

Post by slasaus » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 2:24 PM UTC

a3_nm wrote: post #4

Why move your parents to Windows rather than to some other Linux distribution? (Fedora, Linux Mint, Debian...)

There were also all these other complaints like "I've got this book about photo editing from a friend of mine, can you install that software for me?" where I have to say, no, sorry mom, that only works on Windows.

Same with watching video's of a certain TV-channel (Silverlight 4, not supported by Monolight yet) and a dozen other things. Like I said, I always had faith one day all (most) will be good. But now that I've lost this trust, I feel all I can do is give in and no longer ask patience from them (with yet another Linux distro).

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#14

Post by odranoelson » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 2:24 PM UTC

Out of curiosity: you gave Windows 7 to your parents, what are you using right now? Another flavour of linux?

I find apt-get and the huge amount of troubleshooting information available the main reasons I'm still using (K)ubuntu. I have tried other distros but always came back...

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#15

Post by w1ntermute » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 2:24 PM UTC

A lot of people doing this will quickly learn that Windows is not perfect either. On my Windows box, Chrome regularly crashes, the NVIDIA driver control software has a memory leak that causes it to balloon to using 3+ GB of memory, and DirectX 10 didn't work at all (games crashed) until a recent update. There are also intermittent problems with the screen going blank, requiring me to Remote Desktop in and reboot the machine.

I would much rather have a bug in Ubuntu than in Windows. I had no way to fix that DX 10 bug or communicate with the developers. I was just lucky that it got fixed.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#16

Post by 4ad » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 2:26 PM UTC

nical wrote: post #8

foolme wrote: post #2

It's sad to see what ubuntu have become.

I would rather say that it is sad to see Ubuntu going in a direction that doesn't align with your tastes/needs. I personally think Ubuntu is better today than ever before (for the most part).

Personally I think Linux on the desktop is in a far worse shape than it was 12 years ago. Sure, Linux works much better on laptops then it used to, but what good is that since the software provided by distributions is less stable and of a lower quality then it was 12 years ago. It's all anecdotal evidence, but I've had far more success 10 years ago introducing Linux to non-so-technical users, previously exposed only to Windows 95/98, by using a default Gnome/KDE environment then I'm having now introducing them to recent versions of Unity/KDE/Gnome.

Linux became worse when the commercial alternatives only got better.

This website under Chrome under Ubuntu 12.10 (Unity): http://i.imgur.com/oUTwi.png

This website under Chrome under Mac OS X 10.8.2: http://i.imgur.com/UwTl8.png

This is completely unacceptable as a default experience.

(edit: grammar; screenshots)

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#17

Post by lake99 » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 2:28 PM UTC

Bye bye Linux! Hello viruses, trojans, and ever-increasing bloat!

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#18

Post by slasaus » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 2:29 PM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #15

A lot of people doing this will quickly learn that Windows is not perfect either. On my Windows box, Chrome regularly crashes, the NVIDIA driver control software has a memory leak that causes it to balloon to using 3+ GB of memory, and DirectX 10 didn't work at all (games crashed) until a recent update. There are also intermittent problems with the screen going blank, requiring me to Remote Desktop in and reboot the…

I guess you're right, but not having to say "sorry, you're not on Windows so that's why I can't make this software work for you (software from friends etc.)" saves me a lot of explanations that an end-user isn't really interested in.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#19

Post by mattdeboard » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 2:30 PM UTC

nical wrote: post #8

foolme wrote: post #2

It's sad to see what ubuntu have become.

I would rather say that it is sad to see Ubuntu going in a direction that doesn't align with your tastes/needs. I personally think Ubuntu is better today than ever before (for the most part).

No. Ubuntu 12.10 breaks a great many things. And I don't mean "this doesn't work like it used to!"-broke. I mean, "this doesn't work! It used to!"

see: wifi; hdmi out; webcam.

I hate Unity 3D but whatever, that's the direction they're going. I don't care about the search "lenses". But just breaking shit from 12.04 to 12.10 is ridiculous. Whoever/whatever is in charge of Canonical needs to be fired. They're ruining the reputation of the brand, not to mention making many consumers absolutely dread the idea of new releases.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#20

Post by muyuu » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 2:31 PM UTC

slasaus wrote: post #13

a3_nm wrote: post #4

Why move your parents to Windows rather than to some other Linux distribution? (Fedora, Linux Mint, Debian...)

There were also all these other complaints like "I've got this book about photo editing from a friend of mine, can you install that software for me?" where I have to say, no, sorry mom, that only works on Windows. Same with watching video's of a certain TV-channel (Silverlight 4, not supported by Monolight yet) and a dozen other things. Like I said, I always had faith one day all (most) will be good. But now that I'v…

People have to live with the fact that not all software works for all OSs. Android vs iOS, Windows vs Mac vs *nix etc.

If your mom got a book about photo editing for Mac-only software, would you be so sad to tell her "sorry mom, that only works on MacOS"?

For the purpose intended, I'd install a Debian distro and leave it be for the whole lifetime of the computer. Their support lasts a lot (but so does Ubuntu's for long-term support releases and other distros).