It's always been the same story. Of course you shouldn't give Linux to your parents...
Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas
21–30 of 88 posts
Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas
#22Why not Kubuntu or straight Debian? I remember a few problems when KDE went Plasma on us, but they pretty quickly worked out the kinks and we have been pretty happy with Kubuntu for several years now.
Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas
#23Why move your parents to Windows rather than to some other Linux distribution? (Fedora, Linux Mint, Debian...)
It's very possible that "they asked" is part of the back story.
No, apart from "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. They never asked for Windows or Ubuntu or anything..
Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas
#24A 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.
I usually give some explanation about how to open source is all about "fighting the man". I know plenty of gamer friends who have bought Macs, because they want to be hip. They put up with not being able to run all their games on their Macs (no, Parallels and/or Boot Camp are not viable for these people). You turn the lack of application choice on its head and make it seem cool. This isn't a real "issue", since it happens with every OS. Even Windows is missing software used by some "creative" types (or so they say).
And what I've found is that more and more stuff is on the Web now anyway, so OS doesn't matter as much.
Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas
#25That is what I thought for a while. I was really a Ubuntu fan since early releases. I always encourage people to use Ubuntu. I am really disappointed after last release because of this Amazon stuff.
I can understand, how hard to maintain this kind of software without any revenue but in Linux world there were always good business models. Also Ubuntu for Android is very good idea and I believe in near future we will be hearing it so much.
While trying to expand market share, let's say trying to access more users, making a move against user's liberty really hurts previously gained traction. It was going good but now I am not sure how can I trust a Linux distro that send my search terms to Amazon by default.
I don't want to be part of this anymore.
Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 lo…
I prefer Ubuntu LTS with 5 year support over the 3 year support of Debian. But given the fact that there are constantly things broken or not supported yet, I do feel an urge to upgrade to the latest and greatest. Unstable Unity and old versions of Monolight are just 2 examples of that.
Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas
#27So. Your updating your parents to a now obsolete operating system? Why not Windows 8?
Windows 7 is more like Windows XP/Vista than Windows 8 is so it is more likely easier to just drop them back to what they probably already know.
Also Windows 8 is brand new and while it works just fine upgrading to it isn't really something that needs too be done just yet. Windows 7 is still a great OS.
Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas
#28This story stinks, what an obnoxious sense of entitlement.
How dare they break YOUR webcam, and why should you invest untold hours in learning how to contribute and then fixing it.
World on a plate with no effort to give back? Meh.
Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas
#29My parents are on 12.04 and will be as long as the long term support lasts. I'm pretty sure forcing them to use Windows would mean a lot of telephone support for the next months. If anything, I would migrate them to another distribution. I also don't really dislike the Amazon ads. I'm not so much concerned about privacy, but I find them very distracting and awfully implemented. However, it's only one ``sudo apt-get r…
Similar here, but Xubuntu (12.04). Old laptop previously running Ubuntu 9.04 which this time just worked out of the box. Everything they need. Internet connectivity, browser, Skype (no webcam though). They are happy as it's enough for them (parents over 60).
New installation doesn't brake, no viruses, very safe for them to work with it.
I can't imagine giving them Windows (which will not run smoothly on this laptop) worrying they will have lots of spyware, viruses, etc. after few months.
On the other hand my personal laptop runs Arch with DWM. I don't look back at Ubuntu for professional use. I'm so much happier.
Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I usually give some explanation about how to open source is all about "fighting the man". I know plenty of gamer friends who have bought Macs, because they want to be hip. They put up with not being able to run all their games on their Macs (no, Parallels and/or Boot Camp are not viable for these people). You turn the lack of application choice on its head and make it seem cool. This isn't a real "issue", since it ha…
> They put up with not being able to run all their games on their Macs.
It's quite easy to install Windows with Bootcamp, though if you have an SSD, space is an issue. If you're a remotely serious gamer, you're surely enough of a nerd to handle dual booting.
The problem is that every [desktop] OS is crap. I've been attempting to use various Linux distros in that role for over a decade, and I've yet to have an experience that wasn't riddled with bugs and annoyances. Windows 7 is generally the least frustrating option, though OS X has cool features to compensate for its own issues.