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4 Linux Distros Compared To Win XP, Mac OS X
Morf writes "The Australian Consumers? Association has evaluated Xandros, Linspire, Mandrake Discovery and SUSE personal and compared them to Mac OS X and Windows XP in its latest Computer CHOICE magazine. The article is very much focused on "mums and dads", and concludes Linux is just about ready for consumers, although installing new software could pose some problems for those who aren't really computer savvy. The report is available free for a short time."
Brought to you by the Puzzled Slashdot? Readers Group.
The report is available ... for a short time
Okay, which one of you hosers told them we were coming?
man is not nice enough.
while the information is correct, man-pages suffer from severe information overload - something the average user certainly won't appreciate.
If Linux distros could enhance their drivers, use a standard package installer (like apt), make it easy for gandma yet her geek grandson could use it as a PHPBB server for a weekend, and advertise it on TV so people will know that it exists, we'd have more converts from the Darkness of Microsoft.
From the article's conclusion: 'Linux fell short on common tasks such as installing new software.' This is the most important point. Joe Average wants a usable system, which includes being able to work in an intuitive way. the 'friendlyness' of most GUIs that I have seen (KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice, etcetera) still leaves a lot to be desired, which hampers accomplishing common tasks. These 'Linux is ready for the desktop' stories have been piling up for quite a few years now, but will it really happen?
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Jokes aside, I bought (ie assembled at home) a PC which I picked off the hardware HOWTO. Ended up being a charm to get Linux working on it. I would like to call that Voting with your Money.
These days you should check TuxMobil or some other Linux site rather than just the hardware vendor's site for the compatibility from the wild.Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Apple Mac OS X (10.3) $229
Microsoft Windows XP Home $324
Xandros Desktop OS 2.5 Deluxe $135
Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows XP were easier to use than any of the Linux distributions tested - but not by much.
Mac OS X lost marks for poor help files but was easier to use for most common tasks. Windows XP had excellent help files but scored lower for installation, which was complicated and time-consuming. You may also need to spend extra money on additional software for common tasks.
Xandros Desktop OS was the top performing Linux distribution. It was easy to install with very good help files but was more complicated to use for tasks such as burning a DVD and viewing digital photos. It didn't include DVD burning software and you need to find the correct folder for photo and movie files. However, at $135, it's a considerably cheaper option than Windows XP or Mac OS X.
None of the operating systems are ideal, however.
* The Linux distributions fell short on some common tasks including installing new software, setting up an internet connection and the availability of help files and instructions.
* Mac OS X could have more comprehensive help files and we'd like to see the inbuilt firewall switched on by default.
* Although Windows XP usually comes pre-installed on computers, the installation process could be easier, as could some of the common tasks such as playing a DVD.
We'd also like to see inbuilt antivirus software in all operating systems -- the tested operating systems don't currently include a virus checker.
In brief
* Microsoft Windows is the dominant operating system.
* The Linux-based operating systems we tested aren't quite as easy to use as Windows XP and Mac OS X, but they're not far behind.
* Linux fell short on common tasks such as installing new software.
Overall, however, Linux has improved in leaps and bounds over the years. It's probably not suitable for beginners yet but if you're a confident computer user, any of the tested distributions should suit you.
And he loves it. I first tryed it on my own computer and was really surprised at how polished and stable it was. It detected everything out of the box and I had very little to do to make it work like I wanted. :).
So I decided to make my Dad switch from WinXP to Ubuntu, installed Abiword and gnumeric (oo.org was to slow on his P4 with 96MB RAM), setted them as default editors, copied all his Documents over from the Win partition and made a shortcut on the desktop to his Documents folder.
He really likes Ubuntu. At first he was a bit bored because he had to learn some new things (for example the "Applications" menu is on the top left, and not on the bottom), but he got the changes quickly and adapted to the new OS in a few days.
I asked him yesterday if he likes more Windows or Linux now that he tryed both, and he told me that it makes no difference for him, as long as he can use spreadsheets, write letters, read his emals and organize his pictures like he did before (btw. he loves gPhoto and Gimp is his new favorite program
So to him it makes no difference, but now I don't have to clean his computer from spyware and viruses every few weeks.
So for me (and for my dad) Linux IS READY for the desktop. At least Ubuntu is.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
We have tested the following pieces of food:
1. a snickers
2. a jam of pure honey
3. an apple
4. a carrot
We found out that snickers is the best food because:
1. it comes in a nice wrapping
2. has many calories and can give you an energetic boost
3. its taste is supreme to others
Some people say you need vitamines, you should not spoil your teeth etc. But for an end-user what matters is the ease of use! And the snickers is the ultimate winner here.
Although an apple and a carrot keep quite close they have a long way to go.
best regards
michal
I tried SuSE 9.1 when they made the personal ISO available for free. Since then, I have recommended it to anyone who would listen. YaST makes it easy enough to install software for almost anyone. It only takes a few times before people learn how to search YaST for whatever they might need, it resolves dependencies automatically, etc.
I know apt-get, emegre, etc do the same thing, but IMHO, those utilities aren't as n00b-friendly as YaST. For one, in my experience, "mums and dads" are terrified of the command line, and will avoid it like the plague.
bash: rtfm: command not found
Told him to google it and figure it out on his own. I mean - all the info is there in the HOWTO's. I think he's just lazy.
He told me to come back over and re-install Windows XP Home or he was writing me out of the will.
'man' is absolutely not the solution.
The pages are outdated, archaic and written in a way that takes too much time to find out anything useful and of course teh few existign exampels vaailable in Unix and Linux documentation are totally irrelevant.
I do not want to read a cool example of how to use a potato as a galvanic element in order to create a serial connection to a tomato - I want to find out how to use my serial modem to connect to Internet.
Most people don't want to read gibberish, or manuals at all. If Linux can't be made as easy to use as Linux, at least the instructions should be made usable.
When I build together a IKEA furniture I rarely look at the instructions, and when I do it is for a quick reference. I do not wish to read a 10 page book describing the philosophy behind the use of screwdrivers and cool things you can do with a screwdriver, like using it as a throwing knife on the cardboards that the furniture came wrapped in.
The elitistic attitudes and documentation does nothing but harm Linux and delays its introduction to the mass market. And it doesn't make you that cool either to point out the 'man' command.
man how do I connect to to Internet?
No such page.
Here Here.
I installed Ubuntu on my gf's grandmother's laptop, a Toshiba Tecra A2. Setup was a breeze. It detected everything right down to the wireless eth card.
I also stuck a "My Documents" shortcut on the Desktop so the other Windows people woulnd't get lost and in addition made it boot straight into her profile with no password.
That was a few weeks ago, and I saw her the other day quite happily looking at photos of the grandkids and playing a mpeg clip with mplayer. Keep in mind she's 80 odd and has never used a computer before. She wanted to play some games also, so I stuck shortcuts on the desktop to Solitaire and minesweeper.
After using Ubuntu, my gf's dad now wants it on his computer because he says "Windows XP is too hard to use" and he "really likes it how everything makes sense on Ubuntu". Hmmm a logical desktop OS where everything Just Works(tm) is the exact reason I use Ubuntu on my desktop.
Is Ubuntu ready for the desktop? You bet your ass it is.
PS If anyone's interested you can read the blog entry here
"And then I visited Wikipedia
Oh lord, is someone bringing up "man" again? Let's ignore the total lack of features that any other help system have, and concentrate on the dense text. From a past post of mine:
--
Just as an illustration, try "man find". It took me years to figure out that "find . -name {file_name}" would find all files matching {file_name} below the current directory - which I imagine is the usage of 99% of users.
Check out the description of the tool:
"find searches the directory tree rooted at each given file name by evaluating the given expression from left to right, according to the rules of precedence (see section OPERATORS), until the outcome is known (the left hand side is false for and operations, true for or), at which point find moves on to the next file name."
Do you imagine that most users would know what on earth that meant? Why not at least prepend it with "This tool enables you to find files"? Then give one or two examples of common usage? _Then_ by all means bombard them with the myriad of possible parameters.
Nothing that 20 million people do is a big deal to US readers but Choice magazine has been around for a long time. A heap of (particularly older) people pay for a subscription and it carries a very good reputation.
They may not be as enthusastic as your average slashdotter but the fact that they even did this comparison means Linux is getting consideration by people who are very quality sensitive. Also retirees who like to fiddle with PC's and photo's but don't have heaps of cash will read it next year in the doctors waiting room.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
True. Documentation for Linux is still pretty sparse in distributions.
Many average joe's expect there to be a help icon somewhere in the distro. I know Linspire has one, and Windoes always has it's "Help" tab and chm files.
Frankly who the heck is going to bother with the man pages and the command line? I know I will cause I'm a sysadmin, but my mother would have a heart attack upon seeing the command line! Anyone who intends to use the command line will have to learn about it from a GUI first, and quite frankly, I can't see the documentation for that in Gnome at the moment.
Maybe it's time the distributions (or Gnome or KDE or whoever) provided us with some decent pdfs from tldp and stuck them in their packages. Maybe it's time that all the linux zealots stopped posting on slashdot so much and helped out....
The Gnome "help" function is really sparse and doesn't go into enough detail. I'm using the latest version, and the "find" function is hidden in the menu bar. To add injury to insult, a search on "mp3" yields nothing.
Now imagine you are a cluser who wants to know where the mp3 app is....
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
The author doesn't bother explaining that Linux is free, that updates to Linux are free, or that Windows is a thousand times more likely to suffer from trojans and viruses. That article continues by marking down OSX for not having a 'live cd' despite there being no conceivable reason for a Mac owner to need one, marks OSX down further for lack of help files without commenting that it needs them less, marks Windows down for lack of built in Excel support (jesus, how monolithic do you want your OS?), then adds marks to a Linux distro for having a windows emulator without saying how well it works, or that Windows doesn't need one! Most of the marks are dependent on the bundled software, not one word is given to the possibility of adding more software, and practically no marks are given for stability or security, which leads me to wonder if the author even knows what an OS is - certainly any non tech-savvy readers won't know after reading the article.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
They noted "No Live CD" as a negative point of Xandros, but this isn't listed as a negative point for windows or osx, since these don't include a livecd either...
(MacOS9 used to include a livecd, infact the installer involved booting to a full macos desktop from which you ran the installer)
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Linux needs to come a long way before installing software is as easy on Windows. On Windows I just need to plug in the network cable to get Netsky, Klez and a bunch of other software installed automagically. I don't need to click on anything.
Compare this to Linux, where installing software requires complex things such as clicking or even double-clicking an icon, which in turn requires learning to use a "mouse", a very counter-intuitive device, that you need to move while looking at something completely different, and when you reach the edge of the mouse mat, you need to carefully lift it and move it back to the center, such that the little arrow doesn't move, and then continue moving it where you already moved it once.
I noticed they commented on how some of the Linux distros couldn't resize the Windows partition down to do a dual boot. I've yet to see a version of Windows that allows me to size down my Linux partition and add a boot menu so I can easily choose which OS I want to run on startup.
Microsoft's website seems only to be able to tell me how to remove Linux (1, 2) and not have a Windows bootloader installed to allow me to run both. All the other Linux-related KB articles are to do with Virtual PC and SMB problems.
installing.
SSdtIGFzIGJvcmVkIGFzIHlvdSBhcmUK
Worth noting that prices seem to be in Australian dollars, so the price gaps are somewhat less in American $.
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
... for 'Average Joe' to use. Seriously.. you type 'man' instead of 'help'? Ok mom.. now type ./configure
What?
DOT SLASH CONFIGURE.. no.. THE OTHER SLASH! GEEEZE!!!!
And my document It didn't save?
BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T MOUNT the DRIVE AS READ WRITE NTFS CAPTIVE! FOR FSCK'S SAKE GIVE ME THE KEYBOARD!
MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOve!
Is ubuntu ready? No - the point is that *you* installed it... *you* set it up... a geek was needed to get this beast working smoothly, and that shouldn't be the case. It may work wonderfully now, because you've set it up and got everything where they expect them to be, but what would have happened if you'd handed them the install CDs and said get on with it? (ok, other than your gran telling you she wasn't going to bother because it's too confusing to put a CD in the drive ;) )
Knock knock who's there ? It's Tux
Whoa hold on you aint installing THAT shit on MY box
A crate of junk you put together yourself,
Wasting your life compilin' da ELFs
Now every distro is just a big mess
'Drake, Suse, Red hat ? ain't no progress
5 text editiors, 6 media players,
7 terminal apps later an' they call me a hater?
They say the Penguin has 1000s of apps,
And installing em all is where it's at !
Sluggish ass desktops, layers of bloat,
To draw a motherf*ckin' window on your screen that floats
KDE and Gnome are so motherf*cking slow,
Double click an' 5 seconds later still no go
So now you wanna run a lightweight gui
But don't be thinkin' y'all gonna be loopy
'cause ice, blackbox and twm
Are more like something from way back when
Computers were the size of living rooms
And Unix was the king of the dust and gloom
One problem is X Windows
from a prehistoric age, man it really blows!
It has no place on the desktop
Sooner it's is gone, sooner Linux stops being a flop
Then we haven't even talked stability
No sound, no floppy just kernel panic city
And then there's the Linux classic to mention
The Spontaneous Self Rebooting invention!
Buy yo that's if you even manage to install,
Beyond messed up X11 drivers 'an all
******(Chorus here don't know what yet...)******
Well I tried to open GIMP but nothing's working,
Please Linux stick to web serving!
KDE ? looks like Windows 98
Oh and KWrite, Konqueror, and Kate
KSpread, Ksim, Konsole and Kedit
Kaint Kno Kuse Kcause they all Ksuck there I Ksaid it!
And lets not talk about that other one
With da worlds slowest ass file browser listen son
Shall we make something even worse than KDE ?
Sure I know lets call it G-N-O-M-E !
Y'see thats why A double P - L - E's GUI
Which runs on F-R double E motherf*ckin' B - S - D
Kicks the L - I - N -U - X D - E catastrophe
Straight into a G - U - I inferiority!
So baby take your vi, I'll take my pico
You take your emacs, I'll take my BBEdit so,
You take your X11, While I be in my Aqua heaven
You will still be rpm an' sudo make install again!
In fact take your KDM, rterm and XClock,
I'll take my Finder with drag and drop
Heck you know what ? I'll even take the Dock!
I'll even take Sherlock!! (over that Linux flop)
Sure it don't cost no money, But shit that Linux aint funny
It's so old, crusty, dark and dusty, That only geeks wanna run it
And it's hell with it's 5 minute booting,
Compared to OS X's 10 seconds then login
It's nothin' but a motherf*cking joke
Still 20 years away from System 8.0
And compared to magic Mac OS X
Linux may as well just start again
And you see that's why Mac users,
Say Linux what's that, something for losers?
This is not entirely fair, is it?
Try to hand a WinXP install CD to a non-geek and watch him suffer.
While I'd agree that windows being bad is no excuse for linux in general being bad also I'd simply dispute the fact that installing linux is that hard for non-geeks. Ubuntu is in fact a good example for this. Granted, it doesn't come with a nice looking graphical installer, but the install is pretty straight forward and all you have to do is click yes a few times and you'll end up with a working system.
'Mums and dads" want to go to Target, pick up Hallmark Card Studio, and Blues Clues for the kids, pop in the CD when they get home and have it all install and work automatically. They can get that with Windows.
There's too much choice in the Linux world for "mums and dads" to deal with: which distro, which user interface? People don't like choice, unless is about a topic they're really interested in. And "mums and dads" aren't interested in their computer's OS; they just want things to work. You pick out a name-brand PC (depends on which store you go to and what the salesman tells you) with Windows XP Home on it; you know that you can pick up any game or program and it'll just work, no major decision-making required.
Back when the choice included IBM PC, Macintosh, Apple ][, Commodore 64, Atari, I knew a LOT of people who complained that there were too many kinds to choose from. Why, oh why couldn't there be just ONE type of computer that'll run any program I buy? Now they've got what they wanted and they're happy, even with the virus/spyware problems. Linux, however, is all about choice.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
When I said setup was a breeze I really meant setup was a breeze.
Apart from being very clearly laid out, the Ubuntu installer is easy to follow and takes you through the installation process fairly painlessly.
Now of course someone who's never used a computer before is not going to install an operating system. That is just plain silly.
The point is that even someone moderately knowledgable (I'm not talking guru here) should be able to set up Ubuntu. Anyone who can answer yes no questions can set it up. Most of the time the defaults are correct anyway.
On a related note would you give your mother a Windows XP disc and expect her to install it. I certainly wouldn't. The difference is with Windows is most of the time it's pre-installed by the manufacturer.
Not to nit-pick... but it was actually my girlfriend's grandmother. Something tells me that you read "I installed Ubuntu", "grandmother" and "Is Ubuntu ready for the desktop? You bet your ass it is." and ignored everything else.
"And then I visited Wikipedia
I really don't think that users being able to administer their systems should be considered a serious problem when considering linux on the desktop.
In recent months I've come to believe that Linux, and many other unix-like systems for that matter, are not only ready for the desktop and have been for some time, they're near perfect for it. The major catch (apart from that whole software compatability thing, perhaps) is that they're only perfect when someone who knows what they're doing is adminstrating the system.
I administer my own home linux system, and I like it that way absolutely, but I wouldn't reccommend it to any of my friends. Sure, I could get them set up and rurning, but every so often they'd want to change something and would need help.
At my university, we run a department network of NetBSD machines, and they're administered brilliantly to the point where new students who are used to Windows can get started in using them for many things without a lot of problems. The security's locked down to a reasonable extent so it's hard for any badly written software the seriously break any of the workstations, but if we want something changed then there's a responsive team of administrators who'll look at providing what's needed. Most importantly, the workstations are reliable and they're looked after by experts who know everything that's on them inside out. Just like my home machine, unixes very rarely break or collapse if they're administrated well.
My point is that Linux is very ready for the desktop, but people shouldn't be expected to administer their own systems. Luckily, though, Linux has several other very handy things going for it:
What surprises me is that nobody yet seems to have seriously jumped into a potentially great business opportunity of offering remote linux administrations for home users. Essentially it'd be linux by subscription, ironically enough.
I really do know lots of people who use Windows because they're afraid of everything else, and they only even try to administer it and understand the issues because they have no other option. Really they'd rather concentrate on actually doing things with their PC, and would often be happy to pay someone else to administer it if the price were reasonable.
The business would be in providing a remote service which, once a customer's home PC had been set up in an appropriately standard configuration, would offer the service of administering the PC remotely. For instance, if the customer wants new software, they phone up and ask for it. An admin logs in, installs the package, and sets up any appropriate configuration. Perhaps every so often, administrators come along and upgrade whatever software is installed, probably (usually) keeping the configurations within bounds that are known to work on a large scale. Perhaps they even provide conversion services for things like Word files, in cases when something like OpenOffice simply won't handle it properly.
On occasion
I can't believe they consider windows to be easier to install than OSX, OSX must be one of the easiest installs, easily easier than windows or any of the linux distributions.. asidefrom that, windows doesn't even support serial ata out of the box, so installing it on modern hardware os a HUGE pain in the ass, especially if you dont have a floppy drive to load the driver from, and even if you do.. its far from intuitive
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I stopped reading one paragraph in to the second page:
"Mac OS X could have more comprehensive help files and we'd like to see the inbuilt firewall switched on by default."
Anyone who thinks a default client-based firewall is anything but an admission that the OS developers couldn't figure out how to make any network services secure by default simply has NO BUSINESS even commenting on security issues.
I suppose that excludes most of the pundits online and in magazines, but that's always been true, all the way back to Jerry Pournelle (after his friend Maclean died, anyway).
As some one else pointed out, the winXP setup is not any more freindly than the Ubuntu Setup (which by the way, is MUCH better than the winXP setup, when you get right down to it--faster too).
I would be 100% confident in handing the Ubuntu disk to anyone and saying here, install this, and know that they could do it, provided they know two things: how to put the disk in, and how to reboot the computer. A few MIGHT have trouble getting their computer to boot from cd, but they would be the minority. Everyone else would end up with a fully functioning Ubuntu linux installation. Of course, they would also be sans windows, but that's not so bad, now is it.
I do have some other gripes with Ubuntu (it doesn't recognize my epson cx5200, which mandrake does), but they are minor. Personally, I think that their installer needs work, for ANYTHING other than the basic installation.
I promise that if you handed a winxp disc to most people, they would end up with a functioning system only after much confusion. I mean, NTFS or FAT32? What in the name of $person is that? Ubuntu gives even less control than windows, but it's not any worse.
Oh, and another thing, Ubuntu, like Linspire, installs in a flash (sub 15 minutes for a working system on a reasonably modern computer). Compare this to the 30+ minute install for ANY version of windows (well, maybe not 3.11, but I've never installed that).
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
Gnome does seem to have a simpler GUI than XP, although I haven't used it extensively for some time. For me, I tend to focus on the GUI's associated with the applications I use more than the os specific functions. If I spend all day using Firefox, that experience is going to be fairly similar on almost all major operating systems. One thing that I have noticed about Linux is that many applications differ greatly from the appearances/layout of things in the GUI. Especially ones that are written for a different window manager but get run using something different. For instance, applications written for X11 usually feel much different than native Gnome apps. This problem also affects Windows even though all applications are written for the same window manager. I think the only operating system that I have used that keeps a fair amount of similarity to the UI between applications is Mac OS X. At least, as an example, for that system, I know that the prefernces should be located in the same menus for each application. This isn't always true, but I think most developers try to follow Apple's guidelines.
SIGFAULT
...can an article about Linux vs. WinXP vs. OSX degenerate into a thread about the particulars of Unicode and apostrophes that, as of right now, took me 7 page-downs to get through.
ALL HAIL PETTY BICKERING!
Response: ALL HAIL
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
Well... I had to stop reading the Linux/OSX propaganda document when I read things like:
You can't restrict applications to only one user account.
and basically the complaint that Excel isn't bundled with Windows but the other distributions of Linux/OSX have OpenOffice or something bundled with it that can read an Excel document. Microsoft always gets blasted for *bundling* apps (ooo...ooo... the beeg eval monopoly!) -and at the same time- blasted for not bundling apps (ooo...ooo... basic functionality left out!).
That "report" is nothing more than propaganda to further someone's agenda. It's garbage.