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Comment by rufugee | Hacker News Reader

Apparently you live in an alternate universe. I've been using Linux for my desktop OS since 1999, and Ubuntu since 2004, and it's been a consistently great experience. Sure, there are warts on occasion, but that's true with all OSes. Ubuntu has been solid enough to keep me productive by day (as a CTO of a company of over 1000 employees), and by night (as a consultant). I even bought a MacBook Pro last year and gave OS X a try. It lasted around a month. My frustration with its completely odd UI design decisions, dismal package management (ports, fink), and second-class treatment of open source software led me to install Ubuntu on the laptop and wipe OS X. Couldn't be happier with it now.

2010 may not be the year of Linux on the consumer desktop, but it's another year of Linux on my desktop, and I couldn't be happier.

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“alternate universe”

No alternate universe needed. Different people don’t have to have the same requirements and preferences. No one right screw for the one right nut. People and Operating Systems are sadly|luckily quite a bit more complicated than that.

That’s just why discussions about the general superiority of any one Operating System are always so horrendously stupid. (This sentence is a general comment and not a response to you. You specifically write about your needs and your needs only, no claims of general superiority involved. Just to clarify.)

Dismal package management. The article talks about a consumer OS. My mom would have a fit using Ubuntu and demand her Windows 95 back if I replaced her Mac OS X (which I moved her onto) with Ubuntu. :)

For a CTO, like you, with technical skills I think Ubuntu really can work, specially if open source software is important. But as a consumer operating system? I think the iPhone OS is closer to what my mom needs than what Windows 7 or Mac OS X is. Of course, consumers gets more tech savvy as time goes...

I've had my mum on Ubuntu for 3 years now, she's fine with it.

Because of the package manager and repositories I think Ubuntu is the best OS for mums: all the updates happen automatically.

What special needs does your mum have?

Ditto for my mom. She would not trade her Ubuntu OS for anything else. I showed her Mac OS X and Windows Vista and she said they are both hard to use and confusing for her.

She has been using Ubuntu for 4 years now. Granted, I administer it for her remotely. But she goes online, reads email, chats, uses Skype, and so on.

Why do you feel the need to do consulting work at night if you're the CTO of a 1000+ people company?

Some people:

1) get bored at their day job. 2) need it to pay the bills. 3) can't get motivated to try out new technology, unless there is a REAL customer willing to pay.

He says "Ubuntu has been" so perhaps he means he has been CTO and consultant at different times.

No. Consulting on the side allows me to keep my skills sharp on the development side. I am a coder and entrepreneur at heart, and being a CTO by day doesn't provide a lot of hands-on coding opportunities.

I'm very happy you've found that Linux serves your desktop needs. For me, I would never host on anything but Linux or FreeBSD, and my phone is a G1 Android.

But your desktop is only one of ~1-2% of desktops that use Linux. The "alternate universe", i.e. the 98%+ of the world, are happy with Windows or OSX, some of them by choice. Your clearly a very happy with Linux, but don't project this happiness on others.

The open source world could learn a lot from the story of Firefox. When the market was frustrated with a slow and insecure IE, Firefox came along being very fast and secure. Us geeks loved it, recommended it to non-techie friends and, these benefits were important to them too. What benefit does desktop Linux give me? The only real new benefit coming in Linux is the fast boot up. That is a real consumer benefit. I can't think of another real benefit in the current crop of distros.

I'm not projecting anything on others. You essentially called Linux unusable rubbish. I merely posted to state emphatically that it's not.

1) It doesn't cost anything 2) It will run on almost any hardware

I'm sitting at my Arch laptop right now.

The other real tangible benefit is $$$ certainly compared to the top end Windows releases, although the snow leopard price is hardly a deal breaker.

Snow Leopard price is technically an upgrade from Leopard, though I believe it will actually work from Tiger. This, and it's lack of user visible upgrades by design, help to explain why it wasn't the usual $150 dollar upgrade price. (Of course this is muddied by the fact that you generally buy a Mac with an OS included.)

In terms of absolute money number saved, yes absolutely. But how much do you value your time in terms of learning and setting up a different OS?

I live in a third world country so at least my time is pretty cheap compared to a license.

Some hours reading the manual, web searching or asking in forums vs (26 8-hours working days) x ($15[The average income in my region]).*

Most people use Windows but have it unlicensed. I am not rich so yeah Linux look dirt cheap to me and I don't even use Linux I use OpenBSD. I definitely think the government should push open source in all areas we would be better off. Right now kids are learning to use Windows XP, Microsoft Office, Coral Draw, Flash and Visual basic 6. I have to remark that they are learning all this stuff in fairly mediocre way. Also don't forget government and public institutions sites that are non standards compliant and flash heavy.

*In my comparison $1 = 10 Pesos. The price of Windows 7 Ultimate is 4,004.17 Pesos in Mexico.

How about malware? You're practically immune compared to Windows.

so the guy lives in an alternative universe because YOU like Linux?

I've been using Linux on my desktop and servers for 10 years now too. I got my mom to use Ubuntu and and my wife. They both like. My mom likes the user interface, my wife likes that she can do online banking knowing that there is almost no malware, adware and other crap that sites can easily install in Linux.

So that adds 3 more people to HIS alternative universe. I say, let's have another HN OS poll to see how many alternate universes there are, and which one is bigger.

It disproves the claim that Linux is unusable.

No it doesn't. I used Linux and FreeBSD as my desktop pretty much throughout all of the 1990s. Was Linux ever a "usable" desktop operating system in the '90s?

I don't know, was it a "consistently great experience", as the other comment said?

It was if you liked using GDB to start your mail reader.

I forgot what we are arguing about. I suspect it is a variation of "anybody who enjoys using Linux is a nerd, therefore by definition Linux can never be usable for non-nerds".

Were we arguing? I was just saying that Linux isn't a "usable" operating system just because nerds like us manage to make it work.

Not arguing in a bad way - discussing maybe a better word? Anyway, as you say, we can not resolve if Linux is usable, because anybody on HN would be a nerd.

so if I proclaim that you don't exist in my universe, then you will magically disappear and it will count as proof?

there's enough room in the world for people to like ANYTHING. Just because a minority likes something (say, eating human flesh?) it doesn't justify it as 'right', 'good' or even 'common'....

Well if there is at least one person who can use Linux, it is obviously usable. I don't understand what you are getting at?

Are we working on the assumption that Linux is unusable, and we have to provide sufficient proof of the opposite? Why would we approach the issue that way?

First, that's a lot of up-votes (+25) for a completely subjective, "personal experience" response (call that my critique to the community).

As for your comment itself, you've been using Linux since 1999, of course the current state of affairs is going to seem fantastic to you. In 1999 installing linux was a big console-based adventure full of unknowns and question marks... things today are obviously much, much simpler.

Point being, your perspective on "Linux for the Consumer Desktop" is highly skewed.

I mean, if asked a year ago, or two years ago, would you have said much differently?

> In 1999 installing linux was a big console-based adventure full of unknowns and question marks... things today are obviously much, much simpler

Except it wasn't with distros like Mandrake (now mandriva), no matter how much linux haters like to repeat that lie, Linux has been easy to install for the last 10 years. Now try to install OSX on anything else than a Mac, you'll have fun. If you don't want to have installation issues, get a pre-installed machine.

Off topc: does the multi-touch track pad work with Linux on your Mac?

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