I’m calling it: Ubuntu is finally ready for the world.
tjwebb.wordpress.com
tjwebb.wordpress.com
Contrary to the author, hardware is still a mess. Have a Lexmark wireless printer? Tough luck, there is no way to print to it from Linux. Have switchable graphics? Good luck there, too. Want your new laptop to work? Better check what touchpad you have. Just because the author found hardware that works doesn't mean the public will.
Linux won't be ready until you never have to drop to the terminal for something. Linux won't be ready until you can download a file from the Internet, run it, and install it just with a couple clicks (and not "you need to set the 'exectuable' flag!" error). Linux won't be ready until you never have to reconfigure the graphics driver from the command line upon boot. Linux won't be ready until you can run a system update and install a new program at the same time.
Flashiness is nice. People like flash. Consumers crave flash. But flash needs to come with the same amount of wow-factor built into usability. I can make this same list of complaints about Windows and OSX, but the point remains that Windows and OSX are used and known by the public. Linux isn't. To take any marketshare from the giants, you need to not just be as good as them, not just better than them... you need to make it so not using Linux is a ridiculous proposal. Ubuntu won't be there for a good long time yet.
If you want to use hardware that's more than year or two old, Ubuntu is the way to go.
I think part of the problem can be solved if there was some nice hardware that came with Linux preinstalled, with all the driver configuration work already done for you. That will still not solve the printer issue you described, but the "install graphics/sound/wifi driver" issue can be dealt with that way. Sure Linux is not properly compatible with every wifi device out there, but neither is, say, OSX. OSX gets around the problem by the fact that it only ships on Apple hardware. It would be great if we had Canonical computers for example.
edit: FWIW, I do commend companies like System76 and ZaReason that ship linux based systems but we need bigger players in the space to make a difference.
Something to think about: How many percent of the non-tech people you know have installed a fresh copy of Windows by themselves? It's always the tech savvy family member who does it
In my experience, ~90% of all the problems I've had with Linux are at install time--missing drivers, complicated partitioning...etc. Once I have the system running, I've actually had less problems with Linux than either Windows or OS X.
I've had printer driver problems on OSX and on some Windows versions. The problem with printers is the evil practice of selling the machines at (or near) loss, and making money on ink / toner. Caveat Emptor applies.
Windows users (used to? Still do?) have problems with installing software. They wouldn't use the add software wizard; the software would install things in weird places; there were legacy problems. A common technique used by Windows users was to just reformat and reinstall. That's user ignorance, not a fault of the OS, but it still shows that simple app installs can cause problems.
And dropping to the command line to do stuff - well, you do that on any os, especially if you're a power user. Are there really simple tasks that can only be done on cli in Linux, that a typical user would come across?
I agree that Linux isn't ready for the masses; but then I think OS X and Windows are not really ready for the masses.
They're not, I agree, but they're there regardless. And it takes something special and completely different to break out of that (see, iPad).
Also, while I agree that the command line should never be necessary, it is often the most convenient way to solve problems on Windows and OSX, too.
>Linux won't be ready until you can download a file from the Internet, run it, and install it just with a couple clicks (and not "you need to set the 'exectuable' flag!" error).
The Software Center has long since solved that problem, as well things like apt links in pages and it's far better than what's available on Windows at the moment (download exe, allow exe to run, hopes it's not a virus/malware, manually update it often etc).
>Linux won't be ready until you never have to reconfigure the graphics driver from the command line upon boot.
For a lot of systems it's simply a matter of using the GUI in Ubuntu to check for and enable proprietary drivers. Again it's down to support from other companies and that appears to be growing.
>Linux won't be ready until you can run a system update and install a new program at the same time.
Installers can block each other on Windows as well. This point just seems like nit-picking.
I agree on this, though not everything that can or should be installed on Ubuntu comes through the Software Center or even as a .deb or apt repo. For things outside of this, a .exe file on Windows has the upper hand. .exe (or .msi) is a Windows universal. .deb and .rpm are not Linux universals.
>Installers can block each other on Windows as well. This point just seems like nit-picking.
And it's frustrating. You will notice I said "it has to be better than 'better than Windows'", because "better than Windows" still means "learning something other than Windows".
I use Ubuntu. I like it. I'm excited to see where they're going. I'm one of the seemingly few people who don't condemn Canonical for their tight-fisted control over their system. But this article is flawed, and I think throwing some constructive criticism into the mix would be helpful.
Also, is installing a file at the same time as doing an update really a big feature? I've never even wanted it on Linux and I don't think I ever used it on Windows either.
Absolutely, on any system. I'll admit I swear every now and again when I get caught trying to run apt-get with synaptic open on another workspace.
>You will notice I said "it has to be better than 'better than Windows'", because "better than Windows" still means "learning something other than Windows".
I agree. I guess I'm guilty of accepting a limitation because it's commonplace. I assume overcoming that limitation on Ubuntu/any system using apt would be extremely technically challenging and given the few times it occurs it's not a priority.
It needs improvement, sure, but I still don't see it as a UX killer, especially when compared to most commercial install and update systems.
That way of installing software has to go. Seriously. Stop it. It's horrible.
We're talking about Ubuntu, not all Linux distributions. And in Ubuntu, that works fine: try downloading any .deb and double clicking it.
Is not a legitimate criticism.
I mean, I'm all for the *.deb to automatically queue when clicked, as that would be nice, but I do not see why I would particularly want it to mess with the system while the system is being messed with.
Also, I could always virtualise if I want the functionality of having an explicit split between system and userland.
In practice, I don't see this as a major problem, but on the other hand, many people have slower connections that me.
It'd be nice if the apt clients could download the packages without locking the database, and let you select and queue packages even if others are already being installed.
Is the risk of trying to shoot a moving target.
A better apt queuing system might be nice admittedly, but if apt is installing software/updates with dependencies, then letting it complete before other software with their own dependencies are added, might be a good idea.
But you can always use one of the other myriad of ways to install software other than apt, while apt is running.
Most recently, installing VMWare tools I ran into this. Granted most consumers won't be installing VMWare Tools, but you do run into the issue of "what format will your software ship in?" .deb? .rpm?
This clumsy way is an habit from windows, debian has been light years ahead for a long time. Search your package name, click, click, install. Now App stores are all the rage and people fail to recognize that they have existed since a decade on linux...
It never worked on my wife's Vista. It worked without installing drivers on Ubuntu. A microsoft hardware failing on a microsoft software. This day I decided Ubuntu was ready for mainstream.
A few hardware makers play foul (I am hating nVidia a lot on the whole Optimus issue) but when it comes to software, I think that it is superior in usability under linux.
It is easier to install new software, new hardware, to share files. On the subject of file sharing, I have seen people on a network using different versions of Windows (XP, Vista and 7 IIRC) they couldn't manage to see each other easily. I had to copy from one to the other using my ubuntu laptop.
Sure, you can find cases where linux will be inferior, but on average, I think it is more than ready for mainstream.
If Windows rates a 6/10, you don't unseat them by being 7/10 or even 8/10. You need to be better than "better than Windows". Ubuntu is striving to not be "better than Windows" but rather "really good on its own merits, without need for comparison". I like this and I appreciate this, but they're not quite there yet. Two years, maybe.
Mac/Windows won't be ready until I can run programs and update them at the same time.
Mac/Windows won't be ready until I don't get calls from relatives asking about setting up their hardware/software/whateverware.
Argue all you want. The issue has nothing to do with anything you've mentioned. The issue is merely support: X is not ready until relative Y is available to support it.
Lexmark printer compatibility page for Ubuntu;
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HardwareSupportComponentsP...
setting up a lexmark x4650 printer for wireless printing with 64 bit ubuntu;
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?s=6ea2f28955ceeb4024e4f...
Results:
The installer is far from perfect, but after a few tries and a few seemingly random glitches it repartitioned and installed flawlessly. She was able to boot into Oneric no problem.
Once she was there, she liked everything. Thought it looked really "zoomy" and way better than her experience with XP. Found the Software Center, and thought it was a great idea. Then, she tried to download some software.
At that point she got some confusing non-human-readable errors. Hmmm, I guess she'll try another one. No luck.
Finally she turns to me, and I realize she's not connected to Wifi. I try to connect, and it auto-promts me to install the Wifi drivers. "Awesome," I thought, maybe she didn't need my help after all!
Then, upon attempting the install it quits with a hilariously unreadable error that I wish I could remember at the moment. I realize that it's trying to download the Wifi drivers when there's no connection.
To put it bluntly, my girlfriend has no idea what an ethernet cable is. To expect her to figure out she needs one and further go buy one is far too ambitious for a distribution that claims it's for "everyone".
I understand the license implication for restricted drivers, but this in fact proves the point that Linux may never in fact be for "everyone". (And don't get me wrong, I'm an Arch fanatic!)
To be brief, Ubuntu is pleasing UI but terrible UX for anyone not willing to troubleshoot problems on their own.
I probably agree with a lot of your other assertions, but this seems to miss one of the central purposes of a repository-based package manager system.
Security may not be a very high priority at this moment for novice users of Linux distributions, but it will swiftly become one as Ubuntu continues to gain popularity. The old paradigm you're describing - download a solitary binary, double-click to install it across the system - is a huge security hole that Microsoft (for instance) has spent and will spend billions of dollars to patch around; the vast majority of exploits on Windows machines seem to be based on the fact that an unsuspecting user can easily download and run code that is swiftly given root access to their whole machine.
The repository system - a system where the set of programs available for easy download and installation is carefully managed and maintained - is an idea that was decades ahead of its time, and it's only just now that repositories (and their children, "app stores") are becoming a fact of life on lots of platforms. App stores are useful because they make things easier for users, but they're also extremely beneficial from a security standpoint. They also offer a simple, obvious, secure way for individual applications to be updated and patched when necessary.
tl;dr - Novice users should be strongly discouraged from downloading and installing standalone programs. This is not a feature of Windows; it's a bug. Yes, there are lots of essential Linux programs that are not available easily on the Ubuntu Software Center. The solution to that problem is to improve the repositories by adding them. Making it easier for novice users to run downloaded code blindly would be a mistake.
Another problem you did not mention is tearing during video playback. Desktop computers are heavily used for watching video, so until Wayland hopefully fixes this Linux won't be a great desktop replacement.
And even then I struggle with drivers: I went from a Radeon HD 6870 to a GTX 550 TI just to be able to run Linux on my machine. There is probably some way to install the HD 6870 on a linux machine, but after using 26 hours on that card trying to get it to work (I timed it), I gave up. Imagine if I used those 26 hours on work instead.
People don't care whether stuff is free or not: They just want stuff that works. If you can't get that without setting up non-free repositories and download proprietary graphic drivers for your graphics card, then you won't get normal people to use your operating system.
I've been part of the linux community since 1994, and I have never once heard anyone express a desire to prevent mainstream adoption. Quite the contrary - many, many people have been strident evangelists over the years (to the point that it could be quite annoying; whatever the question the answer was linux) and many, many people have spent large amounts of time coding tools and programs to make it more accessible. The problem hasn't been a lack of desire, it's been that it's been quite hard - the open source model of scratch your own itch doesn't lend itself particularly well to the level of polish that's needed.
The challenge, IMO, is that adding polish to a general-use desktop is really really hard -- it requires design talent, cannot easily be done by committee, and takes a long time. Think years of design and constant redesign, lots of tweaking (down to individual pixels!), never-ending usability testing, and iterative writing, discarding, and re-writing of UI code.
While some in the Linux community have long had the design know-how and experience necessary to make Linux usable by Aunt Tillie, until very recently no one had the long-term commitment, financial resources, managerial skill, and staying power necessary to pull it off.
Canonical brings not just design talent, but also long-term commitment, financial resources, managerial skill, and staying power to the table; they have the best shot at making Linux a mainstream desktop OS.
[ ADDENDUM: Google also has an equally good shot with ChromeOS. ]
Now Canonical is making Linux more accessible, and people are throwing an outrage over changing parts of the Linux experience that desperately needed to be changed for desktop users.
If you ask me, this is what Linux should strive for, and incidentally, what it probably is striving for. Hardware compatibility is pretty good already. Usability is very good if you subscribe to the Linux way of doing things.
I don't think that Linux is particularly lacking in any way compared to Windows. It is simply different, serving different purposes and different people, optimizing for different use cases.
It is as ready as it ever was or will be. The question rather is, are people ready for Linux?
However, just because Ubuntu--which happens to use the Linux kernel--becomes popular with the general public does not mean other distros have to change at all. Even now Ubuntu is not that much better for "geeks" than OS X or Windows--other distros and environments offer much more customization and power. You can still use Arch, or Gentoo, or Slackware or with whatever environment you like however you like. And since "Linux" is really a loose confederation of Free Software, nothing can change that.
That said, there are some immediate benefits for everyone if Linux gets wider adoption. From a purely selfish standpoint, interacting with and supporting my less-technical friends' and relatives' computers would be much easier if they were on Linux. Also, large companies would be much less likely to disregard Linux when releasing drivers and software. And on a less selfish note, I really do think--and it matches my admittedly anecdotal experience--that non-technical people are themselves better off on Ubuntu than on OS X or Windows. If all you do is browse the internet and some casual document/multimedia stuff, Linux is great (as soon as you sort the hardware out, of course). There is also the philosophical justification of Free Software I won't get into here.
So really, you present a false dichotomy: Linux for casual users and Linux for power users are not mutually exclusive; if anything, you can't force Linux to only fit one mould. And since we could benefit both power users and casual users by making Linux more accessible and wide-spread, we really should.
Since linux isn't widespread, all we've got is our anecdotes. And my anecdote is that I installed ubuntu on my non-techie relatives' computers. And that has been great both for me and for them. They still do the same thing they've been doing before. (mostly facebooking, casual gaming, skyping etc) And I don't need to run for rescue because of crapware bloat, viruses and all kinds of weird crashes as before.
So if you have parents who often calls for help because of computer problems. I'd recommend you try installing ubuntu for them and see it for yourself. Judging from my experience, I'd say it's ready for prime time. (and btw, that was much before 11.10)
Today, 11.10 is so unusably slow it might actually make Windows Vista feel competitive. I thought it might be the outdated video card but then Unity 2D made no actual difference; any simple UI interaction still sucks CPU hard. Just for some icing on the cake, the Wi-Fi driver is now also causing random kernel panics on my hardware.
I heard someone exclaim somewhere OS X Lion was Apple's Vista moment. Well it looks to me like Ubuntu 11.x is Canonical's Vista moment. I'm holding out hope version 12 will be their Windows 7 moment, otherwise the long painful process of adapting to another distro will have to begin.
Unfortunately, I'm having the same experience on my desktop. Unity didn't fit the way I prefer to work (and yeah, I tried it for a while, I didn't just dismiss it without some effort), and I switched to KDE. Holy slowness, Batman...my Windows 7 desktop becomes usable much faster (on the same machine) than the Kubuntu desktop. Applications sometimes take forever to start, with no rhyme or reason. I haven't chosen to explicitly install anything new--I just have the same basic boring dev and scientific computing packages I've always had.
And yes, Ubuntu used to feel like it was usable "out of the box" one major version ago. Then they started adding bells and whistles, and since then it's just been a steady degradation in performance.
Sure, I can probably go fiddle with a bunch of settings somewhere, but as soon as I have some downtime I'm going to try out some other distros that--hopefully--don't feel the need to add a bunch of performance-sucking features by default.
Desktops shouldn't have an App structure, they should have a Windows (or tabs if you prefer, the task bar is just the tab dock) structure. Microsoft realized this way back in the 90s, which makes Windows 8 OS even more amusing. It all feels like just a bunch of circle-jerk after noticing the iPhone was praised by the commoners for its UI.
Then I work on a company windows laptop. It is slow, takes ages to start up, it is full o crappy software some of it updated last time around the year 2001. GUIs that kill productivity as they are not scriptable, so say bye to automation. And the fun part is that this "paradigm" keeps going, so you find the same problems on SAP, data warehouse, etc. Instead of APIs, you have to log into every system you use, choose your option, download in a folder, change data format, copy in a power point slide... and half day is gone.
So, this "Ubuntu is ready because it just works and it is easy", meaning basically that you do all from GUIs, it just does not give the world anything new. If we keep chasing the same old paradigm, I wonder why we bother developing new software then.
I recently moved my home machine from Windows to Linux. After a little research, I picked Ubuntu 11.10 (with Unity).
The installation went by pretty smoothly, everything seemed to work out of the box. The only manual configuration I had to do was to teach my Linux box to ping my Windows laptop. So far so good.
Then, 2 weeks later, my disk went out of space.
Turns out Ubuntu has a hidden log file that logs errors, with no sanity checks on size, and it hit 300+ GB.
In addition, flash still isn't smooth in full screen.
Easy to install and use? Reasonably so. Ready for prime time? I think not.
Uh, what is this hidden log?
Similarly, /etc/logrotate.conf doesn't "hide" any files after rotating.
I've had it filled up once, because vinagre disagreed with some other library and it kept printing the same error message over and over. After several days it filled up the hdd.
Not saying it's vinagre's fault, just that it might happen and it's a "hidden ." log file
I'm not saying it was a hard problem to diagnose - I mean, the file was right there in the home directory.
Figuring out how to turn it off, by the way, was a little more involved.
In addition, I don't think it's a random bug. Having a standard error file that programs are supposed to write to, without any sort of automatic control by the user or (better) the OS is not 'being ready for prime time'
Only problem was, they didn't tell me it was a contract position, they told me I was an employee in charge of installation and support. Very surprised when I got to work and my keycard access was revoked.
Linux puts all of those into a PATH-variable (if you'd like to see what it holds, type "echo $PATH" without the quotes into a terminal). Because of that, you really never have to give an absolute path to an executable (unless you installed it by hand after compiling, something that the fabled "average user" hardly does). Furthermore, since you usually install Programs via the Package Manager (Software Center in Ubuntu?), it gets deleted properly if you uninstall it. Instead, if you type for example "firefox" into a terminal, it looks through all the paths listed in the PATH-variable until it finds the executable called "firefox", then executes it.
Configuration files for individual programs usually reside in your /home folder, much like Windows' "Documents & Settings", only ideally on a different partition separate from the OS.
The only thing you really need as an everyday user is your own /home folder, and as far as I know, that is basically chosen by default for pretty much everything.
This is not so much Ubuntu specific, rather just trying to explain a bit to the parent about the "Program Files" analogue.
[edited for clarity regarding the function of $PATH]
1) Before Ubuntu, you were expected to be a kernel expert to use Linux.
2) Ubuntu is released to make Linux accessible to average users. Authors herald each version as the version to bring Linux into the hands of the general public. But every version of Ubuntu fails to live up to that promise.
3) An author now heralds version 11.10 as the version to bring Linux into the hands of the general public.
What distinguishes this proclamation from all those that go before it?
Each time a new release comes out, I give Unity another try, but it just doesn't work for me. For a while I was just reverting back to Gnome, but now the default Gnome is Gnome 3 which is (purely my opinion) very much a regression in terms of UX from Gnome 2.
I know this is Linux, and I can install whatever I want, but I don't want to have to. When I was younger I was happy to spend hours (and days!) tweaking stuff to make it work just the way I wanted it to. With all the other time sinks that growing up entails, when I get the chance to sit down at my computer these days, I just want it to work. I don't want to have to invest time I don't have learning a new way to do the old thing when the old way was perfectly fine. (Probably me just getting old and curmudgeonly I know!)
Due to computers getting older and being replaced etc, I can't even reasonably keep using Ubuntu 11.04 - my latest laptop will not work correctly under anything less than 11.10 without hours of manking around compiling and installing wireless and graphics card drivers. (I blame the laptop for this, not linux). Research before buying indicated this laptop was reasonably well supported under linux. After purchase I found this model of laptop used a number of different chipsets for wireless and the one I ended up with (ath9k) was poorly supported at that time.
So, after having linux as my sole computing environment since 1996 (and using Ubuntu as my main distro since Breezy Badger) I have just this month packed it in and bought a 13" Macbook Air to use as my main computer. I'm still using Ubuntu 10.10 server edition at work, (virtual machine running under xen) for development and as a production server - but I can't see Canonical breaking the command line as bad as they did the desktop any time soon!
Ubuntu may be finally ready for the desktop for some people but definitely not for me.
Android is Linux's future.
Ubuntu is easy. It's actually strikingly easy. From install through normal everyday usage the experience is painless(actually enjoyable) and fluid. For the vast majority of machines it will be self configuring and for the rest installing drivers ranges from just as easy as other systems to of course much harder but thats a vendor problem not an Ubuntu problem that really can only be addressed with Ubuntu gaining users.
Don't get distracted by comparing the other OS's feature by feature to Ubuntu. You're just going to waste your time and get unnecessarily hot headed. Ubuntu's greatest strength is still, and arguable always will be, that its FOSS. But it is also a dead simple, batteries included, no noise operating system that normal everyday users would find lovely to use.
What Ubuntu really needs now is community optimism and a bit of lighthearted activism. It needs installs. The more users and attention, the more interest and support. Ubuntu is definitely ready for prime time, we just have to put it in that timeslot.
Ever tried installing it on a Mac (the best, if not the cheapest desktop hardware available today)?
The most absurd aspect of these blogs is the focus on the desktop/laptop (well, also on the whole free software aspect, as if the average person cares or is aware of such a concept). Canonical is pushing for a smart phone (and TV), but they don't seem to be in a great rush.
I'm not saying Ubuntu or other distros are bad. Some releases have been fairly well executed. But they generally don't introduce anything groundbreaking. And they have very little OEM support. A very large majority of "the world" keeps the OS installed on their computer at the time they purchase it.