Slashdot Mirror

On PC desktop the QA is still terrible. For example, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS ships with a media player which does not work properly with touchpad and which crashes when the subtitle setting is changed. Also the ACPI fan speed control is broken for a bunch of laptops. Sure, the correct solution here is simply to switch from Totem to VLC, and use a different kernel for the fan problem. Easy enough... but soon enough, some other glitch pops up. As long as Linux desktops (not only Ubuntu) are filled with these nasty surprises, the support costs will be enormous for fixing all these bugs or finding workarounds for them.

Who uses Ubuntu. I use
http://mirror.yandex.ru/fedora...

Everything works, has a great following too.

On PC desktop the QA is still terrible. For example, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS ships with a media player which does not work properly with touchpad and which crashes when the subtitle setting is changed. Also the ACPI fan speed control is broken for a bunch of laptops. Sure, the correct solution here is simply to switch from Totem to VLC, and use a different kernel for the fan problem. Easy enough... but soon enough, some other glitch pops up. As long as Linux desktops (not only Ubuntu) are filled with these nasty surprises, the support costs will be enormous for fixing all these bugs or finding workarounds for them.

Who uses Ubuntu. I use
http://mirror.yandex.ru/fedora...

Everything works, has a great following too.

On PC desktop the QA is still terrible. For example, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS ships with a media player which does not work properly with touchpad and which crashes when the subtitle setting is changed. Also the ACPI fan speed control is broken for a bunch of laptops. Sure, the correct solution here is simply to switch from Totem to VLC, and use a different kernel for the fan problem. Easy enough... but soon enough, some other glitch pops up. As long as Linux desktops (not only Ubuntu) are filled with these nasty surprises, the support costs will be enormous for fixing all these bugs or finding workarounds for them.

On PC desktop the QA is still terrible. For example, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS ships with a media player which does not work properly with touchpad and which crashes when the subtitle setting is changed. Also the ACPI fan speed control is broken for a bunch of laptops. Sure, the correct solution here is simply to switch from Totem to VLC, and use a different kernel for the fan problem. Easy enough... but soon enough, some other glitch pops up. As long as Linux desktops (not only Ubuntu) are filled with these nasty surprises, the support costs will be enormous for fixing all these bugs or finding workarounds for them.

On PC desktop the QA is still terrible. For example, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS ships with a media player which does not work properly with touchpad and which crashes when the subtitle setting is changed. Also the ACPI fan speed control is broken for a bunch of laptops. Sure, the correct solution here is simply to switch from Totem to VLC, and use a different kernel for the fan problem. Easy enough... but soon enough, some other glitch pops up. As long as Linux desktops (not only Ubuntu) are filled with these nasty surprises, the support costs will be enormous for fixing all these bugs or finding workarounds for them.

No, just no. The quality of OSS is too bad. Well, let's not say bad per se, but it varies a lot. What you win in software licensing costs, you lose in fighting all the bugs. Too many of your support calls will be wasting your time with silly glitches.

Unity (back in 2011 remember) is a very twisted example to go for, a piece of very immature software. Part of Ubuntu 11.10 which was an non LTS release. If any IT manager deploys that in the first place you've got much bigger problems than painful support calls.

No, just no. The quality of OSS is too bad. Well, let's not say bad per se, but it varies a lot. What you win in software licensing costs, you lose in fighting all the bugs. Too many of your support calls will be wasting your time with silly glitches.

Sigh... TMYates... You've proven so many of my points, including the ones I hadn't even bothered to mention.
(Yes, I'm the same Anonymous Coward that wrote comment #46901965)

A flamefest will get us nowhere. (case in point: my post was basically a strong anti-Microsoft flame... did it get us to any mutual understandings?) And, Slashdot articles are hardly the most recommended forum for clear, unbiased, cool, intelligent discussions. Yet, I propose we try anyway. I'm curious how far an actual attempt-to-act-civilized discussion may go here. I'll keep the name calling minimal, and see if I can actually make some sense that can be more easily understood.

Bonus: If you can make it through my manifesto, chances are you'll actually learn something in the end. (More on that later.)

First, let's look at some of what you've stated:

For purely desktop/laptop environments, Microsoft still has ~90% market share.

Yeah, I understand that concept, as demonstrated by my mentioning that Ubuntu bug #1 was closed by Mark Shuttleworth too early.

You apparently have very limited knowledge of the various industries and exist in a world...

Actually, I exist on Earth, and have supported Microsoft Windows environments for many businesses for years. Your claim of my "very limited knowledge" is only salvaged by the word "apparently".

You can go have fun with your copy of Linux

I actually don't choose to use Linux much at all. (Granted, I may use it. I have a NAS at home that uses Linux, which I wasn't expecting when I purchased it. However, on systems where I have a choice, they are rarely using Linux.)
This is kind of off the topic, but I just wanted to formally decline your suggestion, because Linux-based operating systems are too restrictive, regarding licensing.

Here's the nuts and bolts of the situation:

...where your way is the only correct way.

This is actually far closer to the truth than you probably intended.

See, I wasn't actually trying to provide business advice that would be tolerable to many corporate environments. This was more of a philosophical rant. One that would have gotten me disciplined (and possibly fired) in my previous job of supporting these inflexible corporate environments. Thank Slashdot that a means has been provided, allowing me to blow off some steam. I'll try to act a bit more rationally, now. Although, my very next statements are likely going to rank among the least rational things you've read this decade.

Not everyone can switch and still function.

Then don't let them function!
Seriously: Just let the businesses die.

Yes, I just gave you all the reason in the world to tune me out as a psychopathic madman with ideas that are uselessly unimplementable.
Obviously, advice to just shut down businesses will not be tolerated by typical business management, and much of the rest of society would disfavor large corporations being unable to proceed.

However, before dismissing me entirely, just consider my analysis of where we are today. Companies shirk off their responsibility by committing only to "commercially reasonable efforts", which means that their efforts only go as far as what permits them to profitably engage in commerce. Quite often, this involves identifying another organization that security responsibility may be shifted to. For example, management can sleep easy as long as they've paid the right organizations enough so that there are support contracts with many third party vendors, and Microsoft. Regardless of whether data is actually secure, there is always somebody who could be sued if things get too far out of hand.

Sigh... TMYates... You've proven so many of my points, including the ones I hadn't even bothered to mention.
(Yes, I'm the same Anonymous Coward that wrote comment #46901965)

A flamefest will get us nowhere. (case in point: my post was basically a strong anti-Microsoft flame... did it get us to any mutual understandings?) And, Slashdot articles are hardly the most recommended forum for clear, unbiased, cool, intelligent discussions. Yet, I propose we try anyway. I'm curious how far an actual attempt-to-act-civilized discussion may go here. I'll keep the name calling minimal, and see if I can actually make some sense that can be more easily understood.

Bonus: If you can make it through my manifesto, chances are you'll actually learn something in the end. (More on that later.)

First, let's look at some of what you've stated:

For purely desktop/laptop environments, Microsoft still has ~90% market share.

Yeah, I understand that concept, as demonstrated by my mentioning that Ubuntu bug #1 was closed by Mark Shuttleworth too early.

You apparently have very limited knowledge of the various industries and exist in a world...

Actually, I exist on Earth, and have supported Microsoft Windows environments for many businesses for years. Your claim of my "very limited knowledge" is only salvaged by the word "apparently".

You can go have fun with your copy of Linux

I actually don't choose to use Linux much at all. (Granted, I may use it. I have a NAS at home that uses Linux, which I wasn't expecting when I purchased it. However, on systems where I have a choice, they are rarely using Linux.)
This is kind of off the topic, but I just wanted to formally decline your suggestion, because Linux-based operating systems are too restrictive, regarding licensing.

Here's the nuts and bolts of the situation:

...where your way is the only correct way.

This is actually far closer to the truth than you probably intended.

See, I wasn't actually trying to provide business advice that would be tolerable to many corporate environments. This was more of a philosophical rant. One that would have gotten me disciplined (and possibly fired) in my previous job of supporting these inflexible corporate environments. Thank Slashdot that a means has been provided, allowing me to blow off some steam. I'll try to act a bit more rationally, now. Although, my very next statements are likely going to rank among the least rational things you've read this decade.

Not everyone can switch and still function.

Then don't let them function!
Seriously: Just let the businesses die.

Yes, I just gave you all the reason in the world to tune me out as a psychopathic madman with ideas that are uselessly unimplementable.
Obviously, advice to just shut down businesses will not be tolerated by typical business management, and much of the rest of society would disfavor large corporations being unable to proceed.

However, before dismissing me entirely, just consider my analysis of where we are today. Companies shirk off their responsibility by committing only to "commercially reasonable efforts", which means that their efforts only go as far as what permits them to profitably engage in commerce. Quite often, this involves identifying another organization that security responsibility may be shifted to. For example, management can sleep easy as long as they've paid the right organizations enough so that there are support contracts with many third party vendors, and Microsoft. Regardless of whether data is actually secure, there is always somebody who could be sued if things get too far out of hand.

a pretty complex piece of code that has been open source since day one

Thanks, Beuno! I didn't even realize it was multi-platform. Hopefully with the server going open source there will be new interest sparked in replacing the proprietary commercial offerings.

to pick up where we left off.

I just have to ask - Be Uno? Ubuntu One? Just a coincidence? :)

Now then, back to complaining about Canonical: they're releasing the code for the backend? Somebody tell me that the front end was just a webdav client and that the backend handled all the locking and synchronization parts so that this isn't a meaningless gesture for customers who are getting cut off with a whole two months' notice to re-design their workflows.

The client is not a simple webdav client, it's a pretty complex piece of code that has been open source since day one: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~u...

The server is a complex beast. It's the other side of the syncing protocol, it has a series of workers that do all sorts of tasks on uploaded files to present them back in a scalable, usable way, it handles music purchasing and delivering, performance metrics on the system, sharing between users, and a long etc :)

I don't think users will care about open sourcing any of it, but others might be able to pick up where we left off.

well your free to do as you please but for mint 16 and probably ubuntu users this snippet may be of interest

You can use this PPA: https://launchpad.net/~dirk-co... ... 2-backport. Just open Software Sources from your menu, go to PPA, click Add, and enter this: ppa:dirk-computer42/c42-backport

It gives you iceweasel at version 24 (you can also keep firefox v28 but not run both at the same time).
Personally I think its a reasonable compromise.

Thanks! But too late. That machine died this time last year, after 6 years of excellent service. I moved on to new hardware.

Hopefully the xorg.conf is useful to someone else.

I've just looked up what people are saying about DebugWait, and I see the font corruption - that's just one of the types of corruption I saw!
But perhaps that was the only kind left by the time my laptop died.

Just a note to others, that DebugWait doesn't fix the font corruption for everyone according to reports. But, it's reported as fixed by the time of the kernel in Ubuntu 13.04 according to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu...

I stand by my view that Intel GPU support never quite reached "excellent" because of various long term glitches, although I'd give it a "pretty good" and still recommend Intel GPUs (as long as you don't get the PowerVR ones - very annoying that was, that surprise wrecked a job I was on). Judging by the immense number of kernel patches consistently over years, it has received a lot of support, and in most ways worked well.

Getting slightly back on topic with nVidia: Another laptop I've used has an nVidia GPU, and that's been much, much worse under Ubuntu throughout its life, than the laptop with Intel GPU. Some people say nVidia's good for them with Linux, but not this laptop. Have tried all available drivers, Nouveau, nVidia, nVidia's newer versions etc. Nothing works well, Unity3d always renders ("chugs") about 2-3 frames per second when it animates anything, which is barely usable, the GPU temperature gets very hot when it does the slightest things, and visiting any WebGL page in Firefox instantly crashes X with a segmentation fault due to a bug in OpenGL somewhere, requiring a power cycle to recover properly. So I'd still rate nVidia poorer than Intel in my personal experience of Linux on laptops :)

Ubuntu still as the 0.15.x series. You should have a look at the recent improvements in 0.92. There is a PPA https://launchpad.net/~gstream...

The problem is that you don't get a killer operating system but a garbage operating system. I actually want to pay the $100 to Microsoft to not have to constantly worry about shit breaking.

Linux is good for many purposes, but the desktop environments are essentially alpha quality software. Just the other day I tried adjusting the time of the Magic Lamp effect in its properties dialog under KDE. Whooptidoo, using anything than the default value gives me two magic lamp effects. And how about looking at the latest Xubuntu release, it shipped with broken sound indicator and broken power management. These are just completely silly and unnecessary regressions. If we start to talk about the Unity desktop (which represents a de facto Linux experience to many), it's just a huge bugfest which I don't even want to begin to talk about. It is also extremely slow.

The declining quality of the Linux desktop should be taken very seriously. These are similar experiences to why I hated Windows back in the day when it still sucked. I want to use the most stable and fast software available.

If you're really concerned about security on your individual systems, DONT USE WINDOWS. There, fixed it for ya.

Ubuntu does the same, if not worse.
https://launchpad.net/apport

pport intercepts Program crashes, collects debugging information about the crash and the operating system environment, and sends it to bug trackers in a standardized form. It also offers the user to report a bug about a package, with again collecting as much information about it as possible.

It currently supports

  - Crashes from standard signals (SIGSEGV, SIGILL, etc.) through the kernel coredump handler (in piping mode)
    - Unhandled Python exceptions
    - GTK, KDE, and command line user interfaces
    - Packages can ship hooks for collecting speficic data (such as /var/log/Xorg.0.log for X.org, or modified gconf settings for GNOME programs)
    - apt/dpkg and rpm backend (in production use in Ubuntu and OpenSUSE)
    - Reprocessing a core dump and debug symbols for post-mortem (and preferably server-side) generation of fully symbolic stack traces (apport-retrace)
    - Reporting bugs to Launchpad (more backends can be easily added)

If you're really concerned about WER on Windows, just say no when it asks you to send crash reports.

Here you go, lil buddy, just compile and install away! Make sure you specify /usr/local/wtfbin for the target install dir. Cheers and happy new year!

Uhhhh....
http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/package/xorg-edgers/precise/main/base/xserver-xorg-video-intel

If you're telling me it doesn't work (don't have one to verify myself), fine, sounds like it needs a bug report. KMS has nothing to do with anything. Using an older AMD driver doesn't preclude you from using a new and updated distribution. Ubuntu has had "nvidia-legacy" packages for similar reasons for years. Not sure why you don't like the radeon driver, but https://launchpad.net/~makson96/+archive/fglrx. It says 13.10 and beyond will be more of a pain, but 12.04 is supported now and will be until 2017.

I mean interpreting power events twice or having a mysterious corner tap click or breaking simple AT keyboard of various notebooks. I come across glitches like this all the time.

I mean interpreting power events twice or having a mysterious corner tap click or breaking simple AT keyboard of various notebooks. I come across glitches like this all the time.

It is hard to certify some program is trouble-free - that's arguably harder than solving the halting-problem- since you aren't provided the full inputs and code (the program might download additional code).

So I proposed something like this:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/156693
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=308760

Trusted parties ( including 3rd parties) could sign the app and its sandbox.

My proposal is a bit like working around the halting problem by forcibly limiting how long the program will run. ;)

> FWIW, I still can't configure GRUB 2 easily.

--I feel like I'm risking replying to a troll here, but perhaps you haven't heard of grub-customizer ?
https://answers.launchpad.net/grub-customizer/+faq/1397

> Linux does not run well on old hardware, and really doesn't run well anymore (period).

--Yeah, I'm calling BS.
http://www.maketecheasier.com/distros-for-old-computers/

Yes.

What really hits my nerve is the bug which causes the brightness to be adjusted in double steps on laptops.[1] [2]

The brightness change event is probably processed by two recipients. Maybe the OS grabs it and does the adjustment but lets the event to be handled by BIOS too. Or maybe there are two handlers for the event inside the Ubuntu power management system.

Anybody, see it for yourself. Install Ubuntu on a laptop and wank the brightness up/down. On most laptops it goes two steps. Usually this temporary workaround fixes it:

# echo 'N' > /sys/module/video/parameters/brightness_switch_enabled

This should be basic Quality Assurance stuff...

Yes.

What really hits my nerve is the bug which causes the brightness to be adjusted in double steps on laptops.[1] [2]

The brightness change event is probably processed by two recipients. Maybe the OS grabs it and does the adjustment but lets the event to be handled by BIOS too. Or maybe there are two handlers for the event inside the Ubuntu power management system.

Anybody, see it for yourself. Install Ubuntu on a laptop and wank the brightness up/down. On most laptops it goes two steps. Usually this temporary workaround fixes it:

# echo 'N' > /sys/module/video/parameters/brightness_switch_enabled

This should be basic Quality Assurance stuff...

Guess where http://ubuntusucks.com/ and its variants all redirect to?

Hint: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/

File recovery issue with chkdsk - you're absolutely right it's a pain and useless in many cases. That is a failing. However, it's rare that you ever get those files most of the time it's fixing indexing/journal issues and don't have to chunk files.

>number of command line tools

There are orders of magnitude more of these in Linux than under Windows, and they actually work. Your argument is specious at best. You are using your ignorance of the tools themselves to argue that they don't exist.

You're making my point for me. Even if they do exist you've got to go hunting for the right one, then learn how to use it properly or you'll fuck up the system even more. With 3 commands (chkdsk, sfc, nfc) and a couple GUIs (msconfig, services.msc, etc) I can diagnose/fix most common non-malware issues with Win7. Sure I may be ignorant of some of the Linux equivalents but in my experience 99% of the problems I've run into on Linux require specific knowledge of specific files/flags which quite frankly I don't have time for. In my youth I may have, like I used to have time to mess around with autoexec.bat, but now I need the system to work so I can work.

> I couldn't even find anyone who'd even heard of the issue before.

What, that X crashes?

No, boots to a terminal with no error message, I have to go hunting through various log files (without an "EventViewer" to make it easy) to figure out why it's booting to the terminal instead of to the desktop. When I finally did find the right log file, the error message was too generic for anyone to help me, it was just a non-descript problem with the theme files which, instead of just gracefully failing to display the theme I'd selected, it failed outright.

>One I was able to track down to a problem with specific laptops refusing to resume from hibernate

So now it's not X crashing but resuming from Hibernation? So which problem is it really?

I never said "crashing", I said refusing to boot to the desktop - whether by crash or failure to resume the result is the same.

>The other the only advice I could get was "reinstall".

This is blatantly false or you were not even asking in Linux fora, or you were calling up the useless HP or Dell tech support.

Fuck you - I participated here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/568711 as well as a few forums/lists where ultimately it was found to be a kernel issue

Collisions are a real problem. As an example, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/devicekit-power/+bug/507247 Ubuntu recognises a whole bunch of things as a power meter, because they all use the same usb-serial chip, and so have the same IDs. Here they all use the same low level driver, but programs that try to talk to the device over that serial link have issues.

The solution is if everyone had crypto whether they used it or not and things were set up so that you can't tell whether they used it or not. See also: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/148440
Or even better if everyone was using crypto (full disk crypto, vpns etc), but you can't tell whether they were using additional crypto- extra container file lying around by default).

Then if those in power are still going to torture people even though there actually isn't anything (extra) to decrypt/unlock, your country is so screwed up you could be tortured for hundreds of other reasons anyway.

All I want to know is if we will be able to compile the kernel someday without the fucktardery of requiring a case sensitive filesystem for the netfilter source code. (So this is from the same guys who gave us that, huh?)

When in doubt, look for a ppa.

http://ppa.launchpad.net/langdalepl/gvfs-mtp/ubuntu

Today I upgraded Ubuntu to the latest stable version and just wasted my whole evening trying to get it to recognize my *keyboard* of all things (which worked on the previous version). It still isn't recognized after trying 3 different kernels. Of course the upgrade installed the wrong video drivers (which segfaulted) too, and didn't automatically load the module for my sound card so it wasn't working either. (I also assumed it would break VMWare Workstation, and it did).

And that is why you choose a vendor-supported configuration. I'm getting too old for this.

I personally don't mind Unity, I can pretty much work with whatever desktop is installed by default, as I use the apps and not the shell. So long as I can switch easily between apps, who cares.

I'm similarly non-fussed about the desktop since I've never really been a desktop power user anyway - as long as I can get to the things I use, I'm good.

However, I used to have a Gnome desktop where things were easy to find, and things worked reliably and I could resume from hibernate/suspend without X getting stuck and clocking 100% CPU.

So the thing that's making me consider switching is simply that Ubuntu isn't all that reliable any more, probably because much of the desktop code is now immature, but also because even running an LTS version, these bugs *never* get fixed.

Here's an example bug - super-W should spread the windows out, but often when you use it first windows fly off screen and unless you catch it in time by quickly unspreading, you'll loose them for good.

It's a really shitty bug from a user perspective because it means I fear loosing work (I do understand there are workarounds, but these are not ideal and not good for non-technical users). I also find it grating that this (and loads of other bugs) must be encountered by lots of users, and since it isn't being resolved, I have to conclude that the people resolving things are not using LTS versions - otherwise they'd be driven mad by it. Just like the end-users are now!

Netflix works fine on Ubuntu, just have to install netflix-desktop: https://launchpad.net/netflix-desktop I've been using it since last Fall and am still on crutches, so no hoop jumping.

I'm aware of other services and alternative sources for entertainment programming and merely suggested this. De gustibus and all that. While I do have a few principles I'm too old to be a purist about many things; I don't give a rat's patoot if Netflix supports Linux or not (although I'd rather they did.) Right now being able to watch a movie or TV show on the OS of my choosing by selecting Netflix Desktop from a drop-down menu is what I care about.

It is partially responsible for the damage they cause though.

Also, Linux scheduling is exactly the opposite as what was described in general. It is all about over-all throughput, with little regard for interactivity (this is better now, but a lot of nasty things were said, and people pushed out who wanted to address these issues nearly a decade ago).

See:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/131094 (issues between Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10, things still don't feel as good as kernel 2.6.15 did in 7.04, kernel issue primarily, this is probably partially because Linus doesn't believe in using spinning disks).

The BFQ people are not welcome, I can't even remember the name of the scheduler from years ago where a nasty kernel inner circle drove a guy to quit, after demonstrating better responsiveness without impacting throughput.

The issues with EXT4 and unordered writing are another example where things most be done enterprisy or fail (saying you can lose 10 minutes of changes anyway, so deleting entire files is A OK, you should simply sync before and after a file write, because fuck caching).

The Linux Kernel people are very anti Desktop Linux, and it shows in design choices and attitude.

Linux hating is easy when it really is broken.

You attitude is one of the biggest reason I hate Linux. Apparently you feel that I have no right to complain about bugs unless I am also going to do the work of fixing them. I work full time. I have a family. If in order to use your OS I need to also code it, I'm going to bloody well use Windows cause my time is worth something. If you want me to use you OS, then don't write shit code. Test your releases, and don't say 'how are you improving it?' when I tell you it's broken.

A screen unlock bug should never have shipped. It is trivial to reproduce and trivial to test. It's not a "dance up and down and do the hokey pokey and you blue screen sometimes" bug. It's a "every time you try to authenticate after walking away from the machine bug".

Sorry, linux really just sucks that much that they can't properly code a screen saver to do an unlock using ldap.

If you have the LibreOffice ppa then: yes.

Gnash is the perfect example - you have the opportunity to fix it, but the source code is such a pain in the ass to get around that nobody does it. Pick any large project with long standing bugs...

I don't consider Gnash even close to being a large project. OpenOffice.org, Linux Kernel, Ubuntu, KDE, Firefox, Second life.. Sure.

Pick any large project with long standing bugs - why are they long standing? Because nobody wants to fix it

I decided to look at the longest standing bug in Ubuntu that was recently closed (bug 1):

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1

It doesn't appear to match your explanation.

Pick a large project with long standing bugs (memory leaks in firefox were a good example until too many people complained about it) and ask yourself why those bugs are long standing and well documented.

Wasn't the issue in Firefox that people couldn't reproduce it (I couldn't)? And there was no reasonable documentation presented to explain exactly where the issue was.

My response to the question is simple too: WORKSFORME

Sometimes it seems to me the Desktop Linux developers are actually trying to sabotage Desktop Linux and not make it better. Whenever Microsoft screws up, they try to make Desktop Linux even worse!

So I've given up on Desktop Linux. Server Linux on the other hand is generally better than Windows. Windows is terrible for servers. For example, going through the event logs to find out stuff is such a pain and an often fruitless endeavour. Stuff on unix/Linux somehow tends to create more useful logs.

Maybe I'll switch when Windows 7 is unsupported and Microsoft makes future Windows versions even worse than Windows 8.

I've made a few suggestions to Ubuntu:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/29001/
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/156693
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/148440

Microsoft is disappointing too. With their billions of dollars and thousands of smart people, they give us disappointments like Vista, Windows 7 and Metro?

My response to the question is simple too: WORKSFORME

Sometimes it seems to me the Desktop Linux developers are actually trying to sabotage Desktop Linux and not make it better. Whenever Microsoft screws up, they try to make Desktop Linux even worse!

So I've given up on Desktop Linux. Server Linux on the other hand is generally better than Windows. Windows is terrible for servers. For example, going through the event logs to find out stuff is such a pain and an often fruitless endeavour. Stuff on unix/Linux somehow tends to create more useful logs.

Maybe I'll switch when Windows 7 is unsupported and Microsoft makes future Windows versions even worse than Windows 8.

I've made a few suggestions to Ubuntu:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/29001/
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/156693
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/148440

Microsoft is disappointing too. With their billions of dollars and thousands of smart people, they give us disappointments like Vista, Windows 7 and Metro?

Take Ubuntu for instance. A large amount of software out there isn't on their repositories. The "supported" way to get it is something called PPA.

Here's how you install a PPA: https://help.launchpad.net/Packaging/PPA/InstallingSoftware

Basically a bunch of command line crap where there should be a simple desktop client and hyperlinks. Sure it's not hard but it's still the wrong way to do it.

I just bought a new Thinkpad. I went with Intel hardware because I know they put effort into Linux driver support. Guess I should have looked a little closer.

I installed Ubuntu 13.04 and immediately ran into an ethernet bug (yes, fix released, but not actually available in the distro yet) and a wireless bug (looks like it might have been fixed, then unfixed, but it's hard to tell. It's broken now, anyway.) ... And that's leaving aside how the touchpad behaves worse under Linux, or how I have to screw around with kernel boot options for decent power management (that will still be worse than Windows.)

The kicker is that these are the same problems I've been having for years, every time I try to run Linux on a laptop, despite the huge advances that have been made. It feels like one step forward, two steps back.

Maybe next year...

I just bought a new Thinkpad. I went with Intel hardware because I know they put effort into Linux driver support. Guess I should have looked a little closer.

I installed Ubuntu 13.04 and immediately ran into an ethernet bug (yes, fix released, but not actually available in the distro yet) and a wireless bug (looks like it might have been fixed, then unfixed, but it's hard to tell. It's broken now, anyway.) ... And that's leaving aside how the touchpad behaves worse under Linux, or how I have to screw around with kernel boot options for decent power management (that will still be worse than Windows.)

The kicker is that these are the same problems I've been having for years, every time I try to run Linux on a laptop, despite the huge advances that have been made. It feels like one step forward, two steps back.

Maybe next year...

With all those billions of dollars and thousands of smart people why couldn't Microsoft have actually helped us with something like this: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/29001/

Or this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/156693

Instead they come up with Metro...

At least they're trying to help fix this one: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1

With all those billions of dollars and thousands of smart people why couldn't Microsoft have actually helped us with something like this: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/29001/

Or this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/156693

Instead they come up with Metro...

At least they're trying to help fix this one: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1

Instead of focusing on the less important bugs, Microsoft has decided to working on Ubuntu bug #1.

I'm not against the closing of this bug; however, the closed status should be something like "Can't Fix" [0]. While, technically speaking, Microsoft doesn't have the majority of the marketshare anymore, the originally prescribed goal of this bug was:

A majority of the PCs for sale should include only free software.

Note that *even if* we count Android/Linux, and also count every type of device like mobile phones and tables, nearly all of those devices -- even those running Android/Linux or Ubuntu -- include proprietary software (Many Android/Linux devices include *mostly* proprietary software, since
nearly all the applications are proprietary). Thus, it's just not accurate at this time to argue "Fix Released" for the key issue that this bug was supposed to be about: namely, "most devices in use today are running mostly proprietary software". It'll probably be generations before we close that bug, and that's why I'd
argue the problem probably can't be fixed as part of the lifecycle of Ubuntu itself. Thus "Can't Fix" is the right bug-close status.

[0] "Won't Fix" isn't right because that would presupose Ubuntu actually had the ability to fix the problem and chose not to. Sadly, I don't think it was ever really within the power of the Ubuntu project to fix the problem in the first place. Nevertheless, I thank Ubuntu for the early years (i.e., pre-UbuntuOne: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntuone-servers/+bug/375272 ) when Ubuntu truly tried to close Bug 1. It's a tough job to give software freedom to the majority of users, but we should all keep trying to do it.

Microsoft has a majority market share in the new desktop PC marketplace.

from TFA : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1

He obviously missed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems

With all those billions of dollars and thousands of smart people why couldn't Microsoft have actually helped us with something like this:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/29001/

Or this:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/156693

Instead they come up with Metro...

They're not very good for plausible deniability since once you have truecrypt they can accuse you of using crypto. Secondly there are some limitations to using truecrypt hidden volumes- e.g. you can't really use the decoy volume much in conventional manners (and using it in an unconventional manner may cause people to suspect you are using a hidden volume).

If you really want plausible deniability you need "everyone" to have crypto and encrypted volumes whether they are using it or not: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/148440