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Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

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Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#31

Post by ditoa »

slasaus wrote: post #5
darec1 wrote: post #3

So. Your updating your parents to a now obsolete operating system? Why not Windows 8?

For what I've read Windows 8 flourishes on tablets but can be a bit annoying/split minded when controlled by a mouse. This combined with the fact that most businesses will probably skip Windows 8 and stay with/move to 7 gives me the trust it will be maintained for a while.

That is a pretty spot on summary of Windows 8. I use it on a laptop (no touch screen) and really like it but it can be a little bit disjointed to use. Saying that I never use any of the Metro (Modern UI) apps and uninstalled them all as soon as I installed Windows 8. They are not the kind of applications I want to use on a general purpose computer. A tablet? Yeah ok but not with a mouse. The 'old' desktop way of doing things is far better than the new way for 'old' input devices.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#32

Post by ecaron »

I'm encountering something similar this Christmas. We'd given my wife's grandma a Chromebook - and it has died of its own accord after just 14 months.

After talking about the replacement, she nearly begged for a Windows or a Mac. By name. This same woman that doesn't think she can run the microwave while being on the cordless phone.

We (Linux, and I'm lumping ChromeOS into this albeit a different beast) aren't going to win the marketing battle. With sites like Netflix not working on Linux and "you'll get it if you try it for two weeks" UX mentality (looking at you Unity), we're not going to win the experience battle - the only one where we stood a shot. Short of a product that thoroughly feels superior we just can't expect consumers to cope with a product just to "fight the [men]". And until that happens, I (and I suspect many fellow nerds) are following this round of the cycle and moving our families away from Linux (again, for now.)

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#33

Post by mgkimsal »

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…

You say you started in 2009 - I'm assuming you started with linux a bit earlier than that. I started using linux on the desktop in 1999 part time, and moved 'full time' by ... 2003 I think.

I gave up around 2008. Gave up trying to migrate friends/family; gave up being an evangelist. The number of things that wouldn't work on someone's hardware was always greater than my ability to help/google/patch/whatever. And I got sick of:

  1) works for me.
  2) research your hardware first(!)
  3) build your own machine
  4) this latest release version X "just works"
  5) other tired canards you've already heard.
I've no doubt that for some people, some distros 'just work'. They never did for me.

Perhaps it was my hardware (the 6 different laptops and desktops I rotated through during 5 years apparently just never hit that magical elusive sweet spot of 'just working').

Perhaps my expectations were different - I'd like to have two different apps running at the same time and both play sound at the same time - pidgin/gaim would constantly lock the sound so that nothing else could play, causing no sounds and sometimes crashes.

I've got other stories - everyone does - but got tired. I went mac full time in 2008 and have a good balance of a system that lets me run osx with windows and linux in virtual machines when I need them. It's certainly not perfect - I have occasional crashes, that stupid beach ball, and I miss the FISH protocol in Konqueror something mad. But... I get far more actual work done on this system than I ever did on Linux systems.

Other people will have opposite experiences - good for them - I just wish people would quit blaming the "linux on the desktop" defectors as if they'd done something 'wrong'. The only thing most of them did 'wrong' was to believe the hype for too long.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#34

Post by xauronx »

Good work. I understand the stance you were taking but it's equivalent to "I think wooden bats are better for baseball, so I make my tee-baller use a wooden bat." You were fighting the right fight but on the wrong field. Don't let people make you feel bad. When it comes to an OS for a non-saavy family member ease of use and keeping those phone calls at bay are the only things that matter. Installing antivirus and running an anti-malware application when you visit for holidays is much easier than the nagging calls. Also, Mom won't get those weird looks in best buy when she asks the 16 year old girl if this copy of Microsoft word runs on Ubuntu.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#35

Post by slasaus »

odranoelson wrote: post #14

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...

I have a netbook with Ubuntu myself but only use it on holidays.

I'm using OS X as my main OS. I did try Ubuntu but really got crazy of the bad multitouch support (hovering over the touchpad was seen as a click, so I constantly lost the focus of my terminal while typing and having my palms near the touchpad)

So I'm waiting for good multitouch support for my Macbook Air and mayne switch then (not that sure anymore but I do have a little hope for those following Ubuntu's moves closely and the ability of apt-get like you pointed out).

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#36

Post by garrynewman »

It's pretty stupid to expect everything to just work. Your parents should have grabbed the source code, learned how to program, deciphered the problem and then fixed it themselves. Then they could have shared the code to help everyone else's parents fix their problems.

Or just get them iPads.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#37

Post by lazyjones »

3amOpsGuy wrote: post #28

This 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.

I don't understand your aggression. He chose to pay $100 - or whatever Windows 7 costs now - so that is the investment he needed to make to fix his problems. Fixing it in Ubuntu might be a lot more expensive to him (or impossible due to limited technical skills). What is the evil he has done now? He made a sane decision and I understand him well.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#38

Post by hippich »

Recently I decided to play some game and had to boot windows partition which I did not use from the date of laptop purchase. So I went through Windows clean installation process and then it all started - scrolling on touchpad not working, directx not working with pre-packaged drivers (had to download over 600 megs of video drivers - have no clue what take so much space.) While downloading it, I browsed some news and got my Internet Explorer crashed - I would not be surprised if this was some trojan stuff delivered through null-sized iframe.

Since I do not have DVDROM, I had to find some ISO mounter. Again, downloading megs of software from some website and hoping it is not packaged with some trojan.

After installing this iso mounter, it asks me to install .NET framework. After googling it - it says ~1 meg to download. Fine, downloading and running it from microsoft website. After it run it starts downloading something else form somewhere.... Done.

Video drivers downloaded - installing. Asks to reboot. Rebooting - blue screen every time I restart machine.... In the end - whole evening was spent to play single game and I end up with BSOD. Saying "FU" and return back to my Ubuntu to continue coding.

After couple hours of coding my machine randomly freezes... this started to happen after installing AMD proprietary drivers...

So two things I learned that evening: - We are all screwed no matter what OS we use! :) - I need to buy xbox/ps/wii to play games :)

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#39

Post by raverbashing »

Yes

And the worse thing is that Ubuntu is moving away from 'common users' BUT ALSO away from 'traditional linux users'

Sincerely, it's been getting worse and worse by every release. Under the banner of 'making it more user friendly', they're adding more useless clutter, more 'funny pictures' but have no clear direction or desktop concept.

Yes, I believed it was going to be great as well.

I am much more productive in a linux distro with XFCE/IceWM, half of 'infrastructure' turned off (network manager, pulseaudio, etc) or I just go with Mac OS X

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#40

Post by skrebbel »

3amOpsGuy wrote: post #28

This 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.

Nonsense. The "it's open source, fix it yourself" argument only holds if your target audience is developers.

Ubuntu is intended to (also) target non-powerusers. They intend to be a competitor to other "normal people" OSes such as OSX and Windows. The fact that they give it away for free is entirely Canonical's own choice, and it does not magically take away users' right to criticize them.

Canonical puts a product in the market with claims to certain qualities, such as openness but also ease of use. The OP feels that some of these qualities have disappeared, and chooses a different OS for that reason. How is that obnoxious?

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