CBC Recommends Linux To Average User

rustalot42684 writes "The CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] has posted an article on its website promoting the use of Ubuntu Linux to the 'average computer user'. 'With the exception of gaming, which is limited, almost all of the average person's basic computing needs are well looked after with this package. I've used the last three versions of Ubuntu on my main portable web-surfing computer for years just to avoid viruses and spyware (as the vast majority of these nasty programs are written for Windows), and I have yet to be disappointed.' The author seems to have made some sweeping generalizations about the development of GNU/Linux, but that aside, will mainstream media coverage help more people switch?"

Comments

Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Caspian]

"[W]ill mainstream media coverage help more people switch?"

No. :)

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[cheater512]

I disagree.

A awful lot of people have never heard of Linux nor do they know that there is anything other than Windows.
If they start hearing about something which doesnt have the pitfalls of Windows then it will be very interesting.

Also there is the people who think its a nerds only OS (e.g. my mother). When they start seeing in mainstream media they may want to look in to it.
As it stands right now, I dont have a snowball's chance in hell of getting my mum to switch.
It was hard enough getting her to use Firefox.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[iSeal]

No. :)

I have to agree with this. For one, most casual users don't have the know-how/confidence to install an OS. Even the process of burning an ISO is above the heads of most users, no matter how simple the process, or how much documentation is available. Furthermore, to install a distro these days implies installing it over, or in addition to, a current OS. One that likely does what the casual users already want. So with that in mind - what incentive would there be for users to switch? As the old saying goes "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[QuantumHobbit]

It will let the average Joe know that something other than Windows and OS/X exists. It's Linux. It's free. And know with Ubuntu average Joe has a shot at getting it to work. Most people don't know that Linux exists, so maybe this won't convince them to make the switch, but it will let them know what Linux is. They can then ask the friendly neighborhood geek a few questions and its all penguins from there.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Caspian]

They will be interested precisely up until the point where they find that they can't play the games that they just bought from their local CompUSA (or PC World, or whatever).

Or until they try plugging in an arbitrary device and find that it doesn't work.

Or until they install one of the rare Linux games and find that the open-source nvidia or ATI drivers are so insanely slow as to make the game unplayable, due to lack of proper 3D acceleration support.

None of this stuff is the Linux community's "fault", per se. In fact, all of it is due to the hostile and pro-monopolist (read: pro-Microsoft) attitude of the software and hardware industries.

That doesn't, however, make it any more tolerable to the average user.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[bortas]

I'd have to disagree. Mom and Pop buy their computers at Future Shop, Best Buy and Staples. If they hear about Linux on mainstream media, they might ask for it for their next computer, or might just ask next time they're in the store. I'm sure their support departments will gladly install it and migrate their data for their usual hourly fee. Most moms and pops that aren't fortunate enough to have a geek in the family usually treat their computers like I treat my furnace: let the pros deal with it! The more mainstream attention Linux gets, the more we all win. Jerome

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[iSeal]

I'd have to disagree. Mom and Pop buy their computers at Future Shop, Best Buy and Staples. If they hear about Linux on mainstream media, they might ask for it for their next computer, or might just ask next time they're in the store. I'm sure their support departments will gladly install it and migrate their data for their usual hourly fee. Most moms and pops that aren't fortunate enough to have a geek in the family usually treat their computers like I treat my furnace: let the pros deal with it! The more mainstream attention Linux gets, the more we all win. Jerome

Small issues I see with this:
1. Brand Recognition: I actually used to work in Staples, as a computer sales rep. This was at the time a few years back when AMD was ahead of the curve of Intel. Yet, regardless of their actual knowledge on the issue, people insisted on Intel. The brand was that important. Linux is still the little unknown, and that won't jive well with most consumers.

2. Windows applications don't run on Linux. That geneology software gramma bought, the el cheapo card game product they really wanted - it won't work with their machine. Sure there are free alternatives, but it's not the product they chose. And WINE? No guarantees that it'll work. You'd just be causing more problems for the user.

3. Most tech support people working at places like Best Buy or Staples don't even know what Linux is, let alone support it.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[eln]

No, they treat their computers like they treat their furnace: it should just work. Like it or not, Mom and Pop expect their computer to work like an appliance: it should do what it's supposed to do, and they shouldn't have to fiddle with it. Maybe it will break once every 5 or 10 years, but other than that it should basically do what I want it to do with a minimum of hassle. Mom and Pop are not tinkerers, they just want shit to work and not require any extra time or effort to operate.b

Microsoft's monopoly has actually made this sort of mindset easier to cater to, since hardware manufacturers and software programmers only need to deal with one operating system. Linux, meanwhile, has continued to lag behind in hardware and software support because of this.

So you're right, they may ask for Linux if they see enough coverage about it. But until Linux can (relatively) painlessly run everything people want to run on it, they will not stick with it, and they will certainly not evangelize it to their friends.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[smilindog2000]

Agreed. IMO, the real power of Ubuntu isn't lowering the bar for average users, but lowering the bar for average IT professionals. I know several who have tried Ubuntu, and while they're not ready to give up their jobs doing Windows administration, Ubuntu is on their radar. However, the real power and draw of Linux is what we geeks can do with it. It's by far the worlds best platform for expressing our creative art of programming, and sharing our work with others. I've stopped worrying about what the rest of the world wants. Linux fills my needs like no other system ever built.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[cheater512]

The brand was that important. Linux is still the little unknown, and that won't jive well with most consumers. Yeah uhh thats what the CBC is for.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Chandon Seldon]

Most of that stuff simply isn't true. Hardware generally works and the proprietary 3D drivers have perfectly good 3D performance. It's true that Windows software like games doesn't work, but that should be pretty obvious - no one gets confused or complains when their Mac won't run some Windows app, an Ubuntu system is the same.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[bibliophage]

I have to agree with the bit about Average Joe and Ubuntu. While I skim /. daily, I am in no way technically inclined, and I just installed Ubuntu on my XP box. It did take me over a week to get it right (working in 2 hour increments due to my crummy schedule), but we are talking remedial level here. And what I was not able to figure out on my own, the community stepped in to fill the gaps for me.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[tomhudson]

"Windows applications don't run on Linux"

You'd be surprised. Even Internet Explorer runs under linux.

This week another developer installed suse 10.3 alpha 1 on his dual-lcd box at work - all his Windows apps work - and one of them works better under linux than it does under Windows. Plus he now has access to a lot of stuff that just isn't available under Windows.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Falladir]

That stuff *is* true, if you're talking about randomly chosen hardware rather than stuff selected for linux functionality. Plug and play for "arbitrary devices" is still pretty weak in GNU/linux at this point. It's not surprising: the gadgets have been built with the intention that they work right out of the box with Windows. Maybe they work in linux, but you have to read on a forum somewhere about how to set them up. Even for totally generic devices, there's less plug-and-play freedom than in Windows. If I yank the CD-drive from my laptop while running GNU/linux, it locks completely. I can't plug in ethernet after having turned the computer on, rather I have to boot with it plugged in. Maybe I shouldn't do the first, but if you're giving the computer to your mom, you'd rather she be able to. Maybe there's something I can do about the second, but if so, why wasn't it enabled by default in Ubuntu Edgy? As for proprietary 3d drivers, it's true that even ATI, the worst GPU manufacturer when it comes to OSS support, has pretty decent drivers for recent cards. Slightly older cards, like my Mobility Radeon 9000, are supported only by open-source community-built drivers with lousy 3d performance. I'm willing to accept this in return for greater control over my desktop, but you can't say that I've got perfectly good performance. 1st person shooters are totally out of the question, whereas in Windows I could play stuff as modern as FarCry, albeit on the lowest settings. So: hardware might "generally work," but it's a pain to configure compared to Windows (where you probably just have to plug it in. At worst, you might have to pop in a cd and use a wizard to install drivers), and even when properly configured it may not give the user as much freedom. As for graphics cards, the proprietary 3d drivers are fine for the newer cards, but older cards are capable of much more under Windows.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[omeomi]

You'd be surprised. Even Internet Explorer runs under linux.

What?

Why???

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Daishiman]

No, they treat their computers like they treat their furnace: it should just work. Like it or not, Mom and Pop expect their computer to work like an appliance: it should do what it's supposed to do, and they shouldn't have to fiddle with it. Maybe it will break once every 5 or 10 years, but other than that it should basically do what I want it to do with a minimum of hassle. Mom and Pop are not tinkerers, they just want shit to work and not require any extra time or effort to operate.b

No offense, but I don't know what kind of computing world you where a basic Windows install "just works" for the average user. If you mean "just work" as in "I can install a lot of crap on it", it sure goes well. But I can't remember the number of times I've been called to clean spyware and junk and make it start up in less than 5 minutes due to registry bloat.

The average Windows installation lasts about 9 months. That's how long it takes for it to break down due to registry bloat, trojans, adware, and antiviruses. I remember the time my ex called me at 12:30 at night because Photoshop stopped working for no reason and I had to reinstall it. Boy were those 2 hours of staring at a progress bar fun.

Microsoft's monopoly has actually made this sort of mindset easier to cater to, since hardware manufacturers and software programmers only need to deal with one operating system. Linux, meanwhile, has continued to lag behind in hardware and software support because of this.

I'd say that's mostly right on the money, except for two things: a lot of these people that supposedly don't want to tinker with the machine still have installs of Windows2000 and below, for which many applications are no longer compatible. And Vista has promised a new era of breakage with exclusive applications to force adoption of their new OS.

Second, Linux is not "continuing to lag behind". If anything it's catching up at an incredible pace and the reality is that 90%+ of hardware just works, which is actually very respectable considering that a lot of new hardware doesn't have support for older Windowses and old hardare doesn't for new Microsoft OSes, and that I've had a huuge amount of generic Chinese hardware whose only copy of drivers existed in their original CD, and if you lose that, good luck finding them on the Internet (I've had to throw away an ADSL modem because of that).

So you're right, they may ask for Linux if they see enough coverage about it. But until Linux can (relatively) painlessly run everything people want to run on it, they will not stick with it, and they will certainly not evangelize it to their friends.

I think that is mostly due to a lack of OEM vendors that will provide Linux. Like it's been said before, the "average" Windows user does not install the OS himself, and would probably have a far more difficult time starting from scratch with Windows that Ubuntu.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[jZnat]

My grandmother rips her music in FLAC and Ogg Vorbis you insensitive clod!

And she even ripped her old vinyl collection to digital formats; a feat even I don't know how to do as cleanly as she did.

Besides, she doesn't watch porn (as far as I know), so WMV support is worthless to her (which is the only situation where I've seen WMV used frequently that isn't restricted with DRM).

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Chandon Seldon]

Plug and play for "arbitrary devices" is still pretty weak in GNU/linux at this point. It's not surprising: the gadgets have been built with the intention that they work right out of the box with Windows.

I've yet to meet a USB Scanner, External Disk, Digital Camera, or Name-brand Printer that didn't Just Work with Ubuntu. Maybe you've got some obscure edge case device that doesn't work, but they mostly just do.

I can't plug in ethernet after having turned the computer on, rather I have to boot with it plugged in.

I plug and unplug network cables all the time. This is probably a feature of Network-Manager - I'm pretty sure it was enabled by default in Edgy. Dunno, but it's definitely enabled by default in Feisty Beta and it's running great on my Edgy laptop and I don't remember any effort installing it.

1st person shooters are totally out of the question

Wait... which first person shooters run on Linux that you'd expect to work on an embedded 4 generation old Radeon card? Quake III should run fine with the "radeon" drivers.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[jZnat]

Because it can! :)

Actually, I believe it's for web developers to test their sites in IE without having to use Windows. Also, if you want to test websites in more than one version of IE, you can either use Linux or have several different versions of Windows running their own versions of IE.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously haven't installed Ubuntu, have you! To first try it out: turn on computer, open cd tray, insert disk, close tray, reboot computer. Wait. Now you are running Ubuntu (off the CD). To install, click on "Install Ubuntu". Answer 3 questions (one is a password for you, another for the administrator), and 1 is the time zone you live in. Done. The computer will reboot, and you have Ubuntu. It will partition disks if you want to keep some old dead legacy system around. Installation is painfully simple. I *HAVE* installed windows operating systems in multiple ways (across networks, with CD/DVD, and from current hard disk drives (actually sent over a serial port )--Windows install images sent over a twisted pair serial link to a hard disk on the target computer-- and installed it, complete with service packs, very sucessfully. But all of these are fantastically harder than installing Ubuntu. You can have 9 (just 9) monkeys typing randomly for less than a day, and have all 9 'accidentally' install Ubuntu correctly!

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[AJWM]

up until the point where they find that they can't play the games that they just bought from their local CompUSA

The average computer user doesn't buy PC games from CompUSA, or much of anywhere else for that matter. If they do games, it'll be PS2 or XBox games they pick up at BestBuy or Walmart.

Or until they try plugging in an arbitrary device and find that it doesn't work.

Out of the box, Linux supports more devices than any other OS. Those that it doesn't are unlikely to be supported by any other OS out of the box -- that's why devices come with driver discs, which if you're really lucky will actually work with whatever version of Windows you have installed, and not clobber some other driver during the install.

Of course, the average computer user doesn't plug in "an arbitrary device" to their computer. They get it set up with a printer, once, then leave it the hell alone. If they want something else plugged in they'll probably call Geek Squad.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Caspian]

I have never seen a distro yet that installs the proprietary drivers for the user, by default, in such a way that both [A] works and [B] has 3D acceleration enabled.

Show me one and I will stand (sit?) corrected.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that when people buy a windows application that doesn't work because they have the wrong version of windows or a video game that doesn't work because they don't have a thousand dollar video card it's OK? If you have a nvidia or radeon then you bought a good pc, what about everybody else? I happen to know that they buy video games that don't work on their computer and it doesn't have anything to do with linux.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[hax0r_this]

I have a desktop on a mobile cart with a UPS running Dapper. I unplug its network cable daily, and I haven't rebooted that machine in at least a month. Also I have three computers running Ubuntu (Dapper on the mobile desktop, Edgy on my laptop, and Feisty on this, my main desktop) and Linux compatibility was never a consideration in buying the hardware. In fact I hadn't even heard of Linux when I built the first two. As far as I know the only hardware I own that Ubuntu doesn't support out of the box is my Creative Zen Touch, which I was foolish enough to install the MTP firmware on (and it works just fine after a bit of tweaking).

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[AJWM]

It is not ready for your mom or your grandmother or your little sister.

My grandmother (both of them) is dead, you insensitive clod. My mom was programming computers before PCs were invented and my little sister is a software consultant.

Yeah, I think it's ready for them.

If you don't know what you're doing, then no OS is easy and you spend your time trying to figure out how to do the simplest things. Once you've done that, it's not difficult. OTOH, if you do know a bit about the OS (whether Windows or 'nix), it's generally a hell of a lot easier to do simple-but-multi-step things in 'nix than in 'doze.

I wouldn't recommend that somebody who knows nothing about any unix and doesn't know anybody who does should try to install it and figure it out on their own (unless they like that kind of thing). But I'd recommend that over someone who knew nothing about Windows and didn't know anyone who did trying to install and learn Windows on their own. That's the kind of thing that would have them running away with initial bad experiences.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[AJWM]

That geneology software gramma bought, the el cheapo card game product they really wanted - it won't work with their machine. Sure there are free alternatives, but it's not the product they chose. And WINE? No guarantees that it'll work.

True, no guarantees, but in my experience that kind of Windows software tends to run better on WINE than the high end packages, because the programmers stuck closer to the most commonly used APIs. Its the high end packages that use some of the obscure API corners that have issues. (OTOH, some of that software is plain buggy even on different versions of Windows - and a lot of the older stuff won't run on Vista.)

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Sj0]

To be completely fair, a default installation of Windows XP will give you a very nice unaccelerated 16 bit colours in one resolution.

Anyway, most people don't use their PCs for games. Hell, I've got a really nice rig with a pretty high end video card, and even I mostly use my PS2 when I want games. It's simply easier not having to deal with Computer-isms. I pop the game in, it works. Windows can't compete.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[had3z]

Yes! Users that thought that ubuntu is someone from nigeria will now know that id *might* help their computers be more safe. That's a might from their perspective, because they're intoxicated with windoze's "get the facts" campaigns. It will at least raise some question marks about studies that find windows the most secure OS.

The switch is happening, and it can't be stopped. It just needs time

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[mushadv]

No, they treat their computers like they treat their furnace: it should just work. Like it or not, Mom and Pop expect their computer to work like an appliance: it should do what it's supposed to do, and they shouldn't have to fiddle with it. Maybe it will break once every 5 or 10 years, but other than that it should basically do what I want it to do with a minimum of hassle. Mom and Pop are not tinkerers, they just want shit to work and not require any extra time or effort to operate.

Microsoft's monopoly has actually made this sort of mindset easier to cater to, since hardware manufacturers and software programmers only need to deal with one operating system. Linux, meanwhile, has continued to lag behind in hardware and software support because of this.

So you're right, they may ask for Linux if they see enough coverage about it. But until Linux can (relatively) painlessly run everything people want to run on it, they will not stick with it, and they will certainly not evangelize it to their friends.

I agree that non-computer literate folk generally do treat their computers as they would toasters, but they're also in the mindset that random pop-ups, sluggishness and monthly reinstalls are just "facts of life" concerning owning a computer. Linux OSes have the barrier of having to do some extra, sometimes quite intimidating things to get what most would consider basic to work. Proper video settings is the largest part of this, but it's surrounded by little things like Flash and MP3 support; little things that are as easy and even perhaps easier than to install in Windows but have foreign methods such as moving individual files across the filesystem with root priveleges. However, once it's all set up, it'll stay like that for as long as you don't screw it up somehow, which is hard to do for those who don't want anything to do with a terminal window. The only "maintenence" required is clicking the icon in the notification area that says there's new updates available, hitting apply, entering your password, waiting a bit and perhaps rebooting at the end (but don't count on that last one). As it stands, Ubuntu and its variants in many cases require a person who knows what they're doing to get it up and running for Joe Grandma (embrace the phrasal portmanteau), but as long as they do a good job and explain the differences ("this is how you install new programs," "this is how you write documents," etc.) Joe Grandma isn't going to have any trouble whatsoever with their new OS.

You could probably say that non-preinstalled Windows would require assistance as well, but it has the advantage of every conceivable driver available in one form or another floating around the net. Then there's the transitional wall, the most pervading obstacle in Linux evangelism. It's rare you'd find someone migrating from Windows to Linux with all their files intact and have them all work. It's also rarely installed by Joe Grandma; it's what came with their computer. A Linux-based OS won't be preinstalled until there's significant demand for it, and significant demand is borne of big-name commercial apps, and big-name commercial apps are borne of consumer popularity, and consumer popularity is borne of preinstallation. Therein lies the paradox. In this Microsoft-monopolized consumer PC industry, that's the rather inexorable situation, so the only real solution is to have Microsoft legally called on their shit and given a bit more than a slap on the wrist this time around, then maybe we'll see some genuine competition. Other than that, I'm stumped.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Psychotria]

I'd love you to come over and help me get my USB Canon 3200F scanner working in Linux. Thanks, I'll keep a beer for you.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[dorath]

IMO, the real power of Ubuntu isn't lowering the bar for average users, but lowering the bar for average IT professionals. I know several who have tried Ubuntu, and while they're not ready to give up their jobs doing Windows administration, Ubuntu is on their radar.

Yeah, that's me. I'm the guy my buddies call when OMG WINDOWS EXPLODE. I'm kinda tired of it, and I've started using Ubuntu at home. I really like it, and aside from the plethora of Windows games it does everything I need and more. To be fair, for the amount of gaming I can get in these days, the number of native linux clients and the amount of stuff that runs well on WINE is enough. I've zero interest in WoW, and consider it a good thing that I can't get EQ2 going on WINE. ;-)

Back to the point: I'm a guy comfortable with Windows. One of the lucky few who doesn't have problems with it. But I'm tired of it. And if I let my friends know that Ubuntu is a good thing, they'll believe me.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[shaitand]

'They will be interested precisely up until the point where they find that they can't play the games that they just bought from their local CompUSA (or PC World, or whatever).'

You say that because you play games. Most adults do not play video games on their computer. At least beyond simple 2D games and card games and any Linux distro includes dozens more of those than windows.

'Or until they try plugging in an arbitrary device and find that it doesn't work.'

That doesn't really work under windows either. It's SUPPOSED to work under windows but commonly fails. I can't tell you how many times I have plugged in a thumb drive to have XP fail to install the device. Your typical home user is stuck at this point, they call the nearest tech savy family member (then end up buying a new drive) or the friendly neighborhood tech guy (me) and he removes the device in the device manager and then replugs the drive. Magically the same drive, loading the same drivers, plugged into the same port works.

I'd say about 1 in 10 usb devices fail to load correctly on windows when installed properly. That isn't considering that 5 in 10 usb devices aren't installed correctly by the average home user. This again results in a call to the tech guy and it should. Installing hardware and software is not something that should be done by those who don't know enough about the system to determine the impact that configuration change will make.

'Or until they install one of the rare Linux games and find that the open-source nvidia or ATI drivers are so insanely slow as to make the game unplayable, due to lack of proper 3D acceleration support.'

That goes back to the fact that most adults don't play the kind of 3D games that need accelerated graphics. Further, if they are using Ubuntu their nvidia driver will be the binary drivers. My experimentations has shown drastically increased performance in OpenGL under linux when compared to the same tasks and the same hardware running under win2k and xp.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Medgur]

My girlfriend was a typical "get frustrated first, ask how to fix it later" windows user; with just enough knowledge to make her way about excel, word, and a web browser. Her computer became horribly broken from trojans and viruses and rather than doom myself to an endless succession of repairs I /handed her an ubuntu CD/. I didn't install ubuntu, I gave her the CD and told her that she merely needed to restart her computer with the CD in the drive to install it, being sure to email her personal data to herself before hand.

You know what? She prefers linux. Can use linux. Doesn't become frustrated with Linux.

She scoffs at Windows now.

I don't know this average computer user you speak of, but the one I know well coped just fine with using Ubuntu.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Medgur]

Or instead of installing Ubuntu from CD they could install Debian Testing from a web page. It's like Ubuntu, only it's blue and has more packages available.

See: http://goodbye-microsoft.com/

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[shaitand]

As another user mentioned, the proprietary drivers aren't installed by default in windows either. Under Ubuntu you check a box and have 3D acceleration. I do agree it is silly though, why would anyone want to run WITHOUT 3D acceleration.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[shaitand]

I agree. The real catch 22 is preinstallation. When Dell sells desktops with ubuntu preinstalled it will be time for tell everyone in the mainstream news and press about linux. Until then its best to keep a lid on it.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[lattyware]

But they are making headway.
In feisty, there is a new restricted drivers manager, which allows easy installation of the proper nvidia/ati drivers - without hassle - and it automatically prompts you to install.
There is also much better device support, and as Linux gets more popular, maybe the manufacturers will start to make proper drivers too.
Wine is also making headway. With the latest version of wine, EVE online works flawlessly.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[neerolyte]

Before I start, I'm not a Windows fanboy, I use primarily Linux at home (Kubuntu to be precise).

Quote: "no one gets confused or complains when their Mac won't run some Windows app, an Ubuntu system is the same."

You've obviously never met someone who's used only windows and switches to anything else for the first time. I worked in a school for two years, while there I was repeatedly asked why application XYZ wasn't installed on the mac laptops the school had. They have quite a surprised look on their face when I inform them that without emulation software there is no way to run windows applications on mac's (and then I have to explain what emulation software is and why we didn't have it... but that's a longer story).

Same goes for Linux. Principal hears "school ABC is running their Terminal Services network on Linux and having less problems than we are, why aren't we doing that too?!?!". After getting in contact with the school and finding out exactly what they were doing I found out they didn't even have Terminal Services, and they only had one Linux box. The PDC was Linux with a bunch of fat XP clients. But that's not the point is it? The point is that roughly half of the uneducated users I have every met don't have the slightest clue that there's any more difference between OS X and XP than there is between XP and 2000, so why on earth would they expect that their applications wont all run Linux?

For further proof just look at Linux is NOT Windows. If everyone knows that Windows applications will not run on Linux why did that ever need to be written?

I live in Australia, I suppose it is possible users are better educated elsewhere in the world, but I doubt it.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Probably the ones who takes stability over 3D acceleration. Remember, your kernel is unsupported with those nvidia/fglrx drivers loaded.

Of course, if you want 3D, the drivers are necessary for all nvidia and all newer ATI (after 9x00?)

Btw, did you know that linux support more hardware than any other OS out of the box? :)

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[shaitand]

'Btw, did you know that linux support more hardware than any other OS out of the box?'

That is the impression I have had but I am unaware of anyone confirming it to be a fact. I have certainly noticed that in most cases all the hardware in a system is supported, detected, and installed under linux unless it is the latest hardware.

I remember when it was only kudzu that seemed to work well for auto-detecting hardware with other detection systems like that used in Mandrake vastly inferior. Now it doesn't really seem to matter. Pick any modern distro and click through the graphical installer and at the end of the process your hardware will be loaded.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh - come on!!

There ar lots and lots of people that just want to surf the internet, read some mail and make a letter etc. Not every computer user is an 3D FPS gamer. Even more - the MOST computer users only play only some little games like patience, minesweeper, samegame etc.

So - gaming is NOT the issue you try to make out of it.

Now - devices. Most users I know get in serous trouble in Windows also when adding a device. So in both cases they need someone to help them. Don't underestimate the number of experienced Linux users in your neighborhood. There might be more then you think...

Now adding 3D drivers is far mor easy than is was just a few years ago - so your knowledge is a bit dated here. Someone using a nice supported distro like Ubuntu will get easy and detailed instructions on the available website. Just a few clicks in the software installer is enough to install those drivers. Other distro's have a comparable way of installing things (like MCC for Mandriva etc.)..

Even for the few users I know that do 3D gaming on windows, most popular games are Unreal Tournament 200x, Quake4 or Doom3. Those games have a native support in Linux. Installing Wine solves the problems with some other games that have no native Linux support, but - as I mentioned earlier - most users I know only play some simple games...

A lot of people in my neighborhood are using Linux and their number is growing. As far as I can see those average users (ages range from under 10 to over 70) don't have any trouble at all. The computer is just doing what they want it to do and they are happy with it. I think the so-called shortcomings of Linux are very exaggerated by a lot of posters here. The focus of interest of a "normal" user is not toward those shortcomings as far as I can see...

Sorry about my sometimes bad English - it's not my native language..

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[mrbluze]

I'm the guy my buddies call when OMG WINDOWS EXPLODE

Same here, and I have installed Ubuntu on several machines with varying success. Female users I've come across are quick to accept the switch (since they were tearing their hair out with Windows viruses and a dead PC) but so far have not made the switch easily and gripe and complain about things not behaving exactly as they do in Windows, and not snapping back to usable defaults when they muck up some settings (even in Gnome). Male users are more forgiving and realize there will be technical differences and expect them somehow - they will tend to search out answers and fix them. It's a generalization I know, but it is, so far, my experience.

One of the worst problems is that the Desktop is not somehow the 'base folder' which most people wrongly assume is the case.

On the other hand, I have forgotten Windows entirely. I hate paying for software and it's been so long since I played a game on a PC - though I do wish there was better quality and quantity of Linux games - Widelands keeps crashing, argh! On the other hand, I have found I am much more productive using Linux than I ever was in Windows. Things don't crash, I don't lose my data, I can trust that when I suspend the Laptop, it will all be there when it wakes up, and I don't ever need to reboot except for kernel upgrades. I've never had a hard drive die on me - and I don't need remember to do backups, because they happen automatically to another PC.

The impression people do get with Linux though, once they start using it, is that it's not an operating system as such, it's the whole system. It's not like Windows where you go out, buy heaps of boxes and think "that's $1000 in cardboard and plastic" and then install them one by one over the next week - you get it all with Linux without effort - just type a search string, tick the boxes and click "Install" and go make a cup of coffee.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[JensenDied]

Plug and play for "arbitrary devices" is still pretty weak in GNU/linux at this point. It's not surprising: the gadgets have been built with the intention that they work right out of the box with Windows.

Parents just bought an HP7210 Printer/Scanner/Fax.
Had to spend nearly an hour with the install disc on the windows computers to install it so that printing works.
My Laptop with Ubuntu: Installed HPLIP (HP Linux and Imaging System) and Xsane configured and running with printing and scanning in around 10. Nearly all devices for windows that are more than an over glorified memory device need their custom software and a reboot to install.

If I yank the CD-drive from my laptop while running GNU/linux, it locks completely.

Why your yanking out drives on a running computer is beyond me, but if you mean the CD itself it will either keep it (mounted), or let you take it out hassle free

I can't plug in ethernet after having turned the computer on, rather I have to boot with it plugged in.

Works fine for me with both wireless and wired

1st person shooters are totally out of the question

Last FPS I played for a non-console was UT2K4 and that had a Linux installer on disc.
As for the drive issues at least I can get drivers for my laptop from the repositories, Windows does have them on their update site and I cannot get them from the manufacturer out of warranty, rendering the thing a brick if it wasn't already one when I got it (dead harddrive on arrival, but thats another story)

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[vtcodger]

***Hardware generally works***

Boy, I wish that were true. I've done somewhere between 30 and 60 Linux installs in the past 10 years and I have NEVER had every hardware device work in the PC without tinkering. But Unbuntu has fixed all that? No, it has not. I installed Kunbuntu last week on an AcerPower 1000. It detected the Broadcom wireless, but installed a generic broadxx driver that does not work. Took me about 9 hours to find, deceipher, and install ndiswrapper and Windows drivers -- which at this point work only from the command line.

Nothing against ndiswrapper. It's a wonderous program and can be pretty straightforward once you have it down. But I don't see many non-geeks managing to get it working.

On the positive side, everything else (well, everything I care about anyway) works, and, for the first time ever, I actually got correct test page printed out of CUPS without days of tinkering.

(K)unbuntu looks to be good enough for a non-gamer who doesn't have important unsupported peripherals. Slackware 11 seems to work OK also, but -- predictably -- is taking some configuring. That's OK, I'm willing to tinker quite a bit if it means that I never have to type "sudo" again.

The good news: Desktop Linux has come a long way in the past decade. The bad news: It still has a little way -- not all that far I think -- to go.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not ready for your mom or your grandmother or your little sister.

No, of course Linux isn't ready for the girls... not unless it's running the kitchen!

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Proofof. Chaos]

Boy, I should get a Mac. Then maybe I can can get women who self mutilate themselves and have the bodies of twelve year olds.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[slashflood]

As it stands right now, I dont have a snowball's chance in hell of getting my mum to switch. It was hard enough getting her to use Firefox.

That's easy: unpack all the Gentoo source packages. Use sed to replace every 'Linux' with 'Windows'. Compile, install and tell your mother that this is the latest and greatest Windows version. I guess, you can actually put the sed command somewhere in a system-wide ebuild or make.conf.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[ParaShoot]

As opposed to women who self mutilate other people?

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[leenks]

Define working... There is now an experimental backend in the SANE CVS tree, but I've not had chance to try it here yet. Debian packages appear to have this backend too, so it is possible it will work. There are sources around for standalone utilities now too, so it hopefully wont be long before it does. Maybe you could donate some time to the project, or offer your beers (or cash?) to the main developer of the experimental backend? http://www.sane-project.org/unsupported/canon-3200 f.html

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[dvice_null]

> 1st person shooters are totally out of the question

Oh, like this one:
http://tremulous.net/

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[BrokenHalo]

The fact still remains that there is probably more hardware that runs out of the box on Linux than on Windows. Most people I know who run Windows need to retain CDROMs for each and every one of their pieces of hardware.

This Slackware box (remember, Slackware doesn't particularly go out of its way to be newbie-friendly) is perfectly able to run all of my hardware with the contents of the 1st CDROM in the install set. In fact, I never even download the other ISOs.

I have no difficulty in imagining that a distro such as Ubuntu, with something of a reputation for being accommodating to novices, should have no trouble in smoothing out some of the bumps.

In any case, I have good reason to believe (read: bitter experience) that installing and running Windows can be a distinctly counter-intuitive and frustrating process.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[AikonMGB]

3D performance isn't "perfectly good", its acceptable for most circumstances. "Perfectly good" 3D performance would be drivers written by ATI/nVidia for Linux of equal caliber as those written for Windows; and no, they don't need to be open-source for there to be good performance, although some would prefer that they were.

Aikon-

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Delkster]

Your grandmother is not going to spend a week trying to figure out what to change to get her sound card to work in linux without making scratching noises or how to properly install and configure proprietary codecs that will allow her to play MP3 and WMV files.

Show me an operating system that has enough codecs that you don't have to install any extra ones.

I don't have a Mac so I don't know but does it play wmv files out of the box either? Likewise, I'd assume that Windows generally comes with no Quicktime support out-of-the-box. Somehow that doesn't make Windows unsuitable for the average user. Granted, mp3 may be a little more critical to have than, say, Quicktime, because mp3 is probably one of the first formats you're going to run into, but it's not like you'd never have to install anything on the other systems.

At least for Ubuntu they're building a system where the default media player automagically asks to download and install codecs when it runs into a file that it can't play but which it could if the appropriate plugins were installed. Last time I checked, which was in Herd (alpha release) 5 or so, it didn't work so well, but it's progress, and it may work better in the final release (I haven't tried the beta yet) and it's progress at least. From your response it seems obvious that you didn't even know about that, or that a lot of the codecs are installable very easily in the first place. Yes, you need to know about it to find them, but then, don't you also need to know about Quicktime (and that it plays those troublesome .mov files) in order to find and install it?

I know, I know, I shouldn't feed the trolls, but correcting misinformation is more important than not feeding then.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I believed you right up to "My girlfriend..."

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well played, good Sir!

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Constantine XVI]

"Plug and play for "arbitrary devices" is still pretty weak in GNU/linux at this point"
My Epson CX3800 scanner/printer and Sansa c250 DAP disagree. In fact, the first one isin't even PnP in windows.
"I can't plug in ethernet after having turned the computer on"
In Feisty, thanks to network-manager, that's all handled for you, without a reboot
"1st person shooters are totally out of the question"
id Software and Epic Games would like to have a word with you

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[maxume]

Expansion bay batteries...

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Kattspya]

Linux, meanwhile, has continued to lag behind in hardware and software support because of this.

Have you actually installed a non slipstreamed version of Windows lately? The last time I tried linux it was ubuntu 5.04 it installed perfectly save for the screen resolution which could be solved by asking on the forums. Everything else just worked(TM) and that was two years ago.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Bastard of Subhumani]

My mom was programming computers before PCs were invented and my little sister is a software consultant.

Well my great grandmother was Ada Lovelace - beat that!

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Dan Ost]

They will be interested precisely up until the point where they find that they can't play the games that they just bought from their local CompUSA (or PC World, or whatever).

I'm pretty confident that my mother has never played a game on her computer. In fact, she's never installed any software without my assistance or the assistance of one of my sisters. All she cares about is that she has a computer that does what the computer lab machines can do so that she can finish her masters without having to live in the college library.

Would Linux work for my mother? Absolutely. She doesn't do anything that Linux doesn't handle well. Does her machine currently run Linux? Absolutely not! We've gone to great lengths to make sure that her computer looks and acts exactly like the XP machines that the college uses (minus the crapware). She has a support network of friends who know just enough about using Windows to help her through most things if she has a problem, and the college library has a computer support desk for harder problems. If she ran Linux, I would be her sole source of support (which would be okay, except that I live 1500+ miles away)

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[rainman_bc]

I've yet to meet a USB Scanner, External Disk, Digital Camera, or Name-brand Printer that didn't Just Work with Ubuntu

I'm running Fedora Core so maybe I'm ignorant here... I have a six colour Canon i960 that prints beautiful photos. How can I access driver specific features such as photo printing and borderless printing? Canon itself makes some nice unitilities for photo printing and their driver itself decides when it's a photo to use the photo ink tanks.

I have yet to be able to find a photo printing utility that just works, and I have to find a driver that'll let me select photo paper and hi-res colour from my printer.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[MeNeXT]

they can't play the games that they just bought from their local CompUSA

Most people don't buy a PC to play games on. It's cheaper to buy a Wii, Xbox, or PS2/3 then configuring a game system. Like the Mac most games are acquired online rather than a store.

Or until they try plugging in an arbitrary device and find that it doesn't work.

I guess you don't have a Linux system. Most hardware problems are due to the manufacturer. Chances are that if there is poor support for Mac and Linux then they have poor support for Windows. One example that comes to mind is a scanner. While the drivers were available for 95/98/XP the software to scan was not available for XP. On Linux all that was needed was to plug it in, select SANE to be installed. It is many a time where older Windows versions are supported and the newer ones not. The reverse is also the case. Where most new hardware no longer has Win 95/98/2000 support. In the later case if you install Linux on it you have extended the life of that system by at least 3 years. One of my oldest systems, PII 500, is very useful still, with 3 teenagers in the house there is no worry about freeing up the system so others can read their email, write a paper, chat, browse the web and almost everything else. I couldn't even run XP on it if I wanted to. Not to mention my PI 233 which runs X and users can connect remotely through X to my P4 3G and have the have the same experience as if they were using the P4. Yes sir, a 13 year old system still running productively today.

I don't understand why people still limit themselves to Windows. I'm not saying don't use Windows. If it's a Windows only product/software the limitation is not Linux.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[hszp]

Yes, no, maybe.
Who cares? Does it matter?

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[ciggieposeur]

They will be interested precisely up until the point where they find that they can't play the games that they just bought from their local CompUSA (or PC World, or whatever).

I don't know about that. Most times I go into Best Buy the games are already segregated by platform: Xbox, PS2, Nintendo-whatever, PC, Mac. I think that so long as Linux is positioned as a separate platform people will understand that it is neither Mac nor Windows.

Back when I got my first computer, the stores even had separate shelves for Nintendo, Commodore, Atari games, Atari computers, Apple II, Mac, DOS, and Windows.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[init100]

Why your yanking out drives on a running computer is beyond me

Laptop computers usually puts their CD/DVD-drive in a modular bay where you also can put a floppy disk drive or an extra battery. Those are meant to be hot-pluggable.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[init100]

3D performance isn't "perfectly good"

It is with the ATI/nVidia proprietary drivers.

"Perfectly good" 3D performance would be drivers written by ATI/nVidia for Linux of equal caliber as those written for Windows

The proprietary drivers are almost the same code as their corresponding Windows drivers.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[statusbar]

I'm the guy my buddies call when OMG WINDOWS EXPLODE

Hey, me too.

I stopped that though. I just told everyone that if they don't use linux or mac os x, I will not help them for free. If they can pay for windows they can pay me or someone else to fix their computer.

If they use linux, however, I am happy to help them for free. I usually don't need to much! Most things can be fixed via a remote ssh connection.

If they use mac os x, there is even less help needed.

--jeffk++

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[EsbenMoseHansen]

'Btw, did you know that linux support more hardware than any other OS out of the box?'

That is the impression I have had but I am unaware of anyone confirming it to be a fact. I have certainly noticed that in most cases all the hardware in a system is supported, detected, and installed under linux unless it is the latest hardware. You can find various people say so. Here is one from Novell. I think they are correct; Even the BSD people say they support less hardware, and windows/solaris/mac are not even close to linux.

I remember when it was only kudzu that seemed to work well for auto-detecting hardware with other detection systems like that used in Mandrake vastly inferior. Now it doesn't really seem to matter. Pick any modern distro and click through the graphical installer and at the end of the process your hardware will be loaded.

Even Debian does this automagically. I have to explicitly blacklist my sound module to stop the darn thing from loading all the time :o)

At around KDE 3.3.x linux surpassed windows in all counts.... At KDE 3.5.x linux came abreast with MacOS, and with KDE 4.0, linux will leave the shredded hulk of Mac OS in each it's waste, with wobbly windows, the beryl cube and other slick&useless features. And useful features, but since they never seem to matter... :O) The only reason to have windows now is if you are an avid adventure gamer or CRPG gamer; other gamers would be better served by PS3/XBox/Wii.

All of this is in my humble opinion, of course. :)

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Jumpy]

Where can I but a *brand new* scanner (CDW, for example) and have it work?
I've checked the xsane site and most of those are no longer sold or hard to find online.
This is for a lab full of RHEL 4 boxes, BTW. Soon to be RHEL 5.

I need a new scanner so that I can put one in a lab full of Linux
computers for students to use. So it should be a good one. Not a combo job. Just a scanner.

Thanks for your expert answer. Anyone. :)

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Ant P.]

I believe they've evolved a bit since XPSP0 - you get a VESA framebuffer driver by default in SP1, last time I checked.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Chandon Seldon]

Check Epson brand scanners. They seem to change their interface more slowly than the other manufacturers and therefore release a lot of scanners that are immediately supported with no extra work by the Sane developers.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[init100]

The real catch 22 is preinstallation. When Dell sells desktops with ubuntu preinstalled it will be time for tell everyone in the mainstream news and press about linux. Until then its best to keep a lid on it.

I think you forgot the second part of the catch 22: If everyone would keep the lid on Linux w.r.t. new users, the demand would forever be kept too low for Dell to start selling computers with it.

Fortunately, for parts of the tech press, SCO solved that part. ;)

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[shaitand]

'I think you forgot the second part of the catch 22: If everyone would keep the lid on Linux w.r.t. new users, the demand would forever be kept too low for Dell to start selling computers with it.

Fortunately, for parts of the tech press, SCO solved that part. ;)'

True. The financially minded see linux ads on CNBC but they still don't know what it is. For them linux is just something to buy stock in or not. The home and small business users only get exposure through word of mouth and that is slow. Fortunately Linux is not a corporation and can out wait the slowness of this medium. You can't put linux out of business, there is nothing to attack. When a corporation does attack they help more than they hurt in the long run because people hear those corporate attacks and become aware of linux.

That word of mouth is spreading though. First Linux took the server room or as much of the server room as it can without breaking the windows monopoly. Now Linux is spreading onto the workstation (I use the term workstation in the modern sense that refers to desktops used for business not the old powerful machines for science and engineering) and even Dell is starting to listen. That will be a long battle. You will probably hear about the year of the desktop a few more times before linux is commonly seen on workstations. But the people who use those workstations are real people, not 6 figure and above incomes but actual normal middle and lower class citizens. From them the word of mouth spreads to other real people and small business owners.

Desktop adoption will be slow at first though even when the word of mouth advertising begins to spread like wildfire. That is because many of those desktop users will call their tech savvy family member or local tech guy and 9 out of 10 of those are incompetent MCSE types who would set up and active directory domain in a law firm that only has 4 pc's manned by secretaries running wordperfect. Those types don't know linux and will tout its evils. But the other 1 out of 10 will give real advice and the growth will continue.

It might take another 10 years, there might be a relapse in adoption due to some new feature of the moment but ultimately, even Microsoft's vast financial resources pale in comparison with the development power backing linux and open source. And unlike Microsoft linux can't be put out of business, can't have a bad quarter. It never sleeps, eats, bleeds, it just grows. Balmer was right when he called open source cancer. Except the host this cancer eats is the proprietary write once and sell millions business model. This cancer replaces host cells with stronger and superior cells. The end is inevitable, Microsoft just can't or won't see it.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

No 1st person shooters?

First of all, Steam is classified as GOLD under Wine, and they aren't joking. I successfully got Counter-strike to work (and all other associated games) without too many problems.

Not to mention all Quake, Doom, and Unreal games come with a Linux installer on the cd/dvd...installs natively and perfectly. When thinking of 1st-person shooters it's hard to ignore those 3 games.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[pjbgravely]

HP seems to fully support their printers and scanners in Linux. They might be a little slow with new products so it would be best to check their website to make sure.

Unfortunately HP has not created a front end for xsane and xsane just gives too many option for most users. You may want to see if there is a simpler front end for xsane that your users can handle.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Nutria]

Probably the ones who takes stability over 3D acceleration. Remember, your kernel is unsupported with those nvidia/fglrx drivers loaded.

It's been a long time since I've seen any instability in the nvidia driver. (But then, maybe I just don't push the envelope.)

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Chandon Seldon]

First of all, Steam is classified as GOLD under Wine, and they aren't joking.

Not to mention all Quake, Doom, and Unreal games come with a Linux installer on the cd/dvd.

With a Radeon 9000? Maybe the first Counterstrike, and Quake 3, and the original Unreal, and Doom II.

Actually, ROTC: Enemy Territory might work pretty well on a Radeon 9000. That game's pretty fun, even if it is archaic at this point.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[miro f]

From your response it seems obvious that you didn't even know about that

of course he didn't know that because the post was written five years ago. I've seen the same damn post over and over again slightly rewritten about our Grandma who watches DVDs on her PC, installs Photoshop and plays World of Warcraft who would really struggle with Linux.

Don't feed the trolls.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[miro f]

actually, check out progress with install.exe, no need to burn an iso or anything.

Linux is getting easier and easier to install (so long as you're lucky with hardware). Ubuntu 7.04 really looks like it could be a distro that many users could install, set up, and run

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[macro187]

...what incentive would there be for users to switch? As the old saying goes "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." What planet are you from?

Most of my not-so-computer-literate family and friends (ie. "normal users") are on Windows, and all of their installations are "broke". Viruses, shitty drivers, lame trial software (probably installed as part of aformentioned shitty drivers), a million IE toolbars, screensavers, whatever. Net result: Their systems are hosed.

Then they go buy Norton Antivirus (or whatever) because they think that'll help, but it just hoses the system even more. Then they think they need to go buy new machines because their "computers are broken".

This kind of situation is the rule, as far as I've seen, not the exception.

There's been at least 2 cases where I've offered to install Ubuntu so they could give it a try.

"Why not?", they say, "This computer's broken anyways."

Reactions have included comments along the lines of, "Wow I didn't know my computer could play DVD's", or "Hey my digital camera works now". Generally, they're thrilled, will never go back to Windows, and wonder why more people aren't "on Linux".

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[scribblej]

Even better, after a couple years of Linux you can start telling your Windows friends in all honesty, "I can't help you; I don't know Windows."

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[bhtooefr]

Maybe in Feisty, or on an nVidia card, but with my ATI card and Edgy, I had to edit my Xorg.conf, manually add repositories (granted, via checkboxes) in Synaptic, and install some packages.

Re:Boy, THIS one is easy.

[Falladir]

First thing, I'm sorry that came out as a block of text. I forgot to choose "plain old text."

I haven't actually tried quake 3, but I tried tremulous and a bunch of other FLOSS FPS games. Frame rates were in the single digits per second on the lowest settings. The models and textures weren't any more detailed than in quake 3, and certainly much less detailed than FarCry, so why shouldn't they work? Maybe they're not optimized to the extent that commercial games are, and maybe I *could* run quake 3. The fact remains that I get less out of my ATI graphics card in Linux than I do in windows.

As for ethernet plug-and-play, maybe it was because I used Xubuntu or maybe it has to do with my school's network.

I don't think plug-and-play was perfect for my Maxtor external hard drive, but even if it was, I wouldn't have been able to write to it without the experimental NTFS-3G package.

I'm glad to hear that plug-and-play works better than my experience had led me to believe, but I'll still skeptical about claims that support on linux is *better* than on windows.

The CBC is generally forward thinking...

[Goalie_Ca]

The CBC has been pretty good about open standards and open source. I, along with over 70k other people, download the 1 hour free podcasts showcasing canada's independant music. These podcasts come in OGG format too! Recently they started a second podcast and a track of the day feature. The french canadian (bap.fm) also has an hour of free music per week mostly showcasing montreal area and french canadian music.

The CBC has been very responsive to complaints, comments, etc. Check it out at http://radio3.cbc.ca/podcasting/podcastplaylist.as px

Re:The CBC is generally forward thinking...

[smallpaul]

I don't know how you can say all that without mentioning that the standard streaming format for the CBC is Windows Media. As far as show downloads: I can find no rhyme or reason. Some shows are in RealAudio, some in Windows Media, some in MP3. Every show maintains their own archives HTML page, sometimes well and sometimes poorly. There obviously is no overarching strategy when it comes to digital distribution which is a sad state of affairs in 2007.

Budget

[spammeister]

Since CBC has a budget the same as most of it's viewership yearly income (yea rly), no wonder it reccomends Linux as a viable alternative to Window$.

Re:Budget

[alexandreracine]

I don't know if I should mod your post flamebait or not... mmmm...

Re:Budget

[Anonymous Coward]

...CBC has a budget the same as most of it's viewership yearly income... Spammeister:

If you're American, then that's definitely a fair jab (funny too).

But if you're Canadian, and you've been voting either...

1. Conservative
2. Liberal
3. Not at all

...then zip it, because you (and all the rest of us) are just reaping what you've sowed.

Ron

Is Ubuntu ready really?

[QuantumHobbit]

I haven't used anything since Breezy Badger, but it really was easier to use for most everyday things than Windows(in my opinion). But it definatly wasn't girlfriend/mom/grandparent ready. I had problems with wireless connectivity and the fix was definetly not user friendly. Anything involving the terminal will freak out the typical user.

Re:Is Ubuntu ready really?

[Chandon Seldon]

Ubuntu is easily as ready for the desktop and the "typical user" as Windows is. Your specific problems with wireless connectivity are completely resolved, as long as you manage to chose supported hardware.

Re:Is Ubuntu ready really?

[ZakuSage]

Since Dapper it's had a live CD based GUI installer, and Feisty is going to bring in easy installation of restricted codecs and graphics card drivers. Trust me, it's ready.

Re:Is Ubuntu ready really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dapper greatly improved the wireless situation, and it's only gotten better since.

Re:Is Ubuntu ready really?

[Anonymous Coward]

By that metric, Windows isn't nearly girlfriend / mom / grandparent ready either. Unless someone else sets everything up for you, Windows is pretty much unusabe to your average non-geek. So is Linux. Mac OS X is a little better, but not by much.

Re:Is Ubuntu ready really?

[mackyrae]

2/3 female in your example, gee thanks

3/5 of my family are female. We use Linux (Ubuntu 6.10 for them, 7.04 for me). I'm the only one who knows anything about computers, and I am not sitting there babysitting it and playing admin. I'm 250 miles away with no SSH setup to do things for them. They function just fine on their own. All I did was install it (hit next 6 times) then tell it to download the DVD and MP3 codecs and installed a few games I thought my brother and sister would like. By the way, this was at my sister's request. I asked my mom, and I told her that if she's not too attached to Windows (which since she's very BAD with it, I didn't think she was) she would have no problem. She, like you, considers it easier.

I'm using Feisty. It IS ready for the desktop, and in Feisty, the laptop too. Feisty has wireless roaming setup by default and Network Manager even can handle VPN connections for you. Also, there's a package you can install that installs all the codecs you need. Compiz desktop effects are installed (but not enabled) by default, and there's a Restricted Drivers Manager to get the ATi and nVidia users set up for that with as little pain as possible.

Back in the Breezy days, LiveCD and Install CD were separate and you had to use the Debian installer, right? The LiveCD is an install cd as well now and it's a GUI so it's extra easy for anyone to set up. I can't wait for Feisty's release. It'll be so much easier to get laptop users setup with Feisty. I spent a while installing Network Manager stuff for a friend last week (would've been easier if it was IPW instead of Broadcom) and really wanted to put on Feisty just for that reason.

Re:Is Ubuntu ready really?

[Anonymous Coward]

hardware support is much improved, there's a new wlan stack that fixes most of the broadcom wireless card problems, among other things. Sadly enough, we could have been here much sooner if it hadn't been for Broadcom's stupidity, but anyways.... If your wireless card doesn't work, try it out and report the problems to launchpad, and maybe it'll be fixed by the time Feisty Fawn is out (in April)

Re:Is Ubuntu ready really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Feisty Fawn's wireless support is much much better. I'm on the beta and I fully approve.

Re:Is Ubuntu ready really?

[Saint V Flux]

I tried using Ubuntu a few months back. It was pretty nice, but there were certain basic things (such as installing quicktime to view movie trailers) that are not easy to do with Ubuntu and I couldn't find anyone online or in person who did know how to do them. Overall though, it's pretty nice. However, it's still not ready (unless they've changed the things I disliked).

Re:Is Ubuntu ready really?

[Elentari]

Er, sorry, "girlfriend"? Are you implying that Linux is unsuitable for all girls, or just those who people want to date? I'm someone's girlfriend, and I run Debian, so I don't know what that was meant to mean.

Re:Is Ubuntu ready really?

[ZakuSage]

There is no Quicktime for Linux, but you can install codecs to view the .mov files in Totem (the default), Xine (my personal favorite), VLC, MPlayer, and etc. It wasn't what I'd call user-friendly in Edgy and especially pre-Dapepr, but with Feisty there is going to be a simple GUI interface to install it and if you don't have the proper codecs in Totem it will automagically download them.

Re:Is Ubuntu ready really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Breezy Badger

I don't recall; was that just before or just after Pumping Penis?

Re:Is Ubuntu ready really?

[electr01nik]

3/5 of my family are female. We use Linux (Ubuntu 6.10 for them, 7.04 for me).

3/5 of the computers in my family are running Linux. One is a Mac Mini (G4) running OSX and the other is a G4 Powerbook dual-booting OSX (clean install solely for music production) and Ubuntu 6.10 (for everything else, chat, e-mail, web, games). I've been running Ubuntu since Breezy Badger (2004 or so, soon Feisty). I had been running XP up until then (it was installed on the HP I purchased from my job) and was debating dual-booting XP and Ubuntu, but figured I would spend more time in XP since that's where all my music production was being done. I moved all my music production to my Powerbook and took the plunge. I figured that would be the easiest way to learn everything (I've been using Linux (Debian,and more recently Gentoo) on servers (both play and work since 1997) so while I was comfortable with Linux, though I had never used it on the desktop. Luckily I have my Mac Mini and (soon-to-be) Ubuntu desktop on a KVM switch, and the xorg.conf problems I ran into with my Nvidia TNT2 M64 and later Radeon 7500 (RV200) were resolved easily.

The other two computers in my household are also running Ubuntu. My fathers Dell laptop is running Dapper, because for some reason, Suspend-to-RAM and Sleep-on-lid only work with the 2.6.15 kernel in Dapper. The 2.6.17 kernel in Edgy does not work for some reason at all. He is incredibly pleased with it. Both he and my mother use it for IM, e-mail, web, and my mom uses it for games. They're also running Quickbooks (in wine) for their business as well as Photoshop 7. It also goes on the road to trade shows twice a year and their friends (craftspeople) are all quite impressed with it. He has a Linksys WPC11v4 PCMCIA wifi card (using the Windows XP RTL8189 driver in NDISwrapper, which wasn't difficult at all to setup with the GUI) which he connects to the home wifi network as well as on trips.

My fathers desktop is also running Edgy. Both he and my mother were sick of how long XP was taking to boot up, the constant running of av and spyware scans, and the fact that it simply took forever to do anything on it. Their bookmarks were exported out of Firefox to Edgy as well as their e-mail copied over to Edgy from Thunderbird. They used a really, really, really, crappy desktop publishing program (Serif Publisher if you've ever been graced with its presence), which we migrated out as EPS files (the program has almost no export function, and writes broken Adobe Illustrator files) into Inkscape. They're also using Quickbooks and Photoshop in wine.

The kicker was my sister. She kept coming home with a Thinkpad constantly messed up with spyware and trojans and broken internet (switching from ethernet to dial-up in Win98 seemed to be the most convoluted process ever). She finally got the "Let me install Linux (and teach you how to use it), or start taking your laptop to a shop and pay for the repairs" speech, and caved. We found a better laptop and I installed Edgy. As I was demoing software (OpenOffice (she needed Word and Powerpoint capability for her job at a preschool), KMyMoney, Digikam/Picasa, Inkscape, GIMP, the slick (IMHO) Add/Remove Programs applet in Kubuntu) the very first words out of her mouth were "Wait, how much does all this software cost?" It took a bit of convincing that it was all free. She and her husband started playing with it and fell in love. I ended up getting a card from them a while later thanking me for installing Ubuntu and how much easier it made their life.

I also helped a friend from MO. install Linux. She too got sick of windows, and ended up wiping her HD. The installer for her was very simple. Automatic partitioning, (click next), and she was done. I had her create a user account for me to SSH so I could add some more repositories, install NX Server, Automatix (for codecs), and help her get her 2G iPod nano working in Amarok. She IM'd me a few days later and said she was in love.

Linux isn't that

Re:Is Ubuntu ready really?

[Saint V Flux]

I had no problem having to spend 20 - 30 minutes here and there tracking down other codecs and such I needed for my common media uses, but it just really turned me off that after hours of searching I couldn't find a way to watch stuff from my favorite websites (like Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie) or watch movie previews on it. If I just wanted something to program on, type papers, and do web browsing, I'd totally use it. I just think that for a distro like Ubuntu that's supposed to be so user-friendly and ready out of the box (or in this case out of the iso) for ordinary people to use that it's kind of dumb for them not to include more media apps / codecs (that are at least optional to install). If they did, they'd probably get a lot more average people to use Ubuntu - which is sort of necessary if they ever want to make MS irrelevant.

Re:Is Ubuntu ready really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I brought my ubuntu pc to my parents house while my appartment was being renovated.

My mom found the pc on, opened firefox, checked her gmail, did some internet banking, and surfed her usual sites. All with no help from me. She doesn't need a computer for anything other than that.

Re:Is Ubuntu ready really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it looks like you figured it out on your own. HTH HAND

Re:Is Ubuntu ready really?

[rtb61]

One should never confuse setting up a computer with using a computer. I have spent a lot of time fixing up windows white box installations done by supposed computer professionals (poor config, wrong drivers, running services review), in the end I got sick of and just left bad windows installs as they were, there a just far too many to be bothered with fixing.

As for end user re-installs of windows they are even worse, and I will only spend the hours required to fix them if I am paid, honestly it is far quicker to do a full Linux install and configuration than it is to fix a 'default' windows install.

The question people should be asking is which is easier to use and maintain. The answer to that is of course Linux, usability is far simple because you can set up the Home/User directory for the end user to play in, install software in there (as long as it doesn't network), you can even set up simple backups from their home directory to another directory they can't touch via a cron job.

If necessary you can stick the toy operating system in another partition for playing games where, thankfully, it can't touch the Linux partitions. The hardest thing about learning Linux is once you install it, you just use it, no fiddling and nursing it along, a couple of years latter you want to try a different distribution and you find you have forgotten everything you learned ;).

better than Vista!

[ILuvRamen]

Vista has more problems with software incompatibility and drivers than Linux lol. And trying to teach the average user about XP or Vista security is almost impossible, especially compared to "oh you don't have to worry about that in Linux"

Every little bit counts.

[greenguy]

There are an awful lot of people out there who only know what they get from the mass media. This article, and others like it, will serve to raise Linux from "Mysterious and Scary" to "Mysterious, but Substantially Less Scary."

My year of Linux on the desktop was 2002, but I've also had a lot frustrations along the way... including with the upgrade to my Ubuntu upgrade today. I eventually solved it by using vim to comment out lines 543 and 544 (not lines 541 and 542, like it said in the Ubuntu Forums) of /usr/bin/pycentral. This is not something I want to have to explain to my mom, my girlfriend, or my neighbor -- nor do I want to do it for them.

I had a sad realization today, reading an earlier Slashdot post. To beat Windows (much less Mac OS) on the desktop of people who are not early adopters, Linux does not have to be as good -- as I believe it is, on balance. Rather, it has to be better, and conspicuously better.

For some people, this will mean games. For others, multimedia. For still others, CAD, or other occupation-specific apps. But for everyone, it means "When I want to do _______, it better work on the first try."

Re:Every little bit counts.

[bl8n8r]

Linux has already beaten Windows and Mac on price alone (free) as well as merit and marketing. If one-tenth of the marketing hype put into either of the aforementioned were put into Ubuntu (for instance) Linux would be that much farther ahead. There is a large population of windows users that are fed up but have no idea there is any other option. Most of that population could care less about anything more than solitare as well. It's too bad your Ubuntu upgrade didn't go perfectly. Most things with computers dont. Hey - look at it this way, you don't have to take it back to the store, you didn't need to enter in any license key during install, and you didn't have any AOL icons on your desktop when you were done. Oh - and one other thing, you can pretty much bet that when your Ubuntu box got port scanned today, the cracker went somewhere else and when that new windows trojan tried getting into port 2967, there was nothing listening there. I bet you also didn't spend $2500 on some sexy ipod-like hardware to run it on just because your brothers girlfriend, who is a part time artist, uses a mac.

Re:Every little bit counts.

[cheater512]

For some people, this will mean games. For others, multimedia. For still others, CAD, or other occupation-specific apps. But for everyone, it means "When I want to do _______, it better work on the first try." What really annoys me is that most of the above isnt Linux's fault at all.
There is nothing we can do about it.

Re:Every little bit counts.

[greenguy]

You seem to be missing the point that I don't need to be convinced. I was convinced five years ago, and was making inquiries three years before that. I have put up with a LOT of frustration to install and use Linux.

That doesn't matter. What matters is that others will not put up with a lot of frustration. As much as they hate "computers" (read: Windows), they won't try something new, because either they've memorized what to do when things go wrong (Cntl+Alt+Del) or they have someone to go to that has a nominal understanding of the system. Linux is the devil they don't know.

I'm beginning to believe that there will never be a Year of the Linux Desktop. Rather, we'll all eventually transition over to Google Apps and/or their successors. The server will run GPL software, and the local OS will be a non-issue. Why this model? Because it does what you expect it to. Given the choice, people will consistently choose a system that flawlessly meets moderate expectations over a system that might or might not meet high expectations.

Re:Every little bit counts.

[cgenman]

I had a sad realization today, reading an earlier Slashdot post. To beat Windows (much less Mac OS) on the desktop of people who are not early adopters, Linux does not have to be as good -- as I believe it is, on balance. Rather, it has to be better, and conspicuously better.

The theory in games is not that you have to be conspicuously better, but that you have to do ONE THING which the other systems do not do. That it isn't the cumulative value of all of the little upgrades, but one significant bit of functionality that a person would want which makes a person switch.

In that way, Linux doesn't need to be conspicuously better overall. It needs to be massively better in a specific way that matters to the person in question.

Re:Every little bit counts.

[dreamchaser]

You are correct, it has to be conspicuously better. If it isn't then there is no compelling reason as seen in the eyes of the average user to even entertain a switch.

Well, maybe now that the world knows that Linux is really a cute girl it will change.

Re:Every little bit counts.

[isorox]

But for everyone, it means "When I want to do _______, it better work on the first try."

Which is exactly why I use linux

Re:Every little bit counts.

[Emperor Cezar]

This is not something I want to have to explain to my mom, my girlfriend, or my neighbor -- nor do I want to do it for them. The sad realization is that this isn't a problem. It's no worse than trying to explain to them how to kill all the spyware on their computer, or how to diagnose the system when it gets bloated beyond use. What is sad is the every operating system has problems. No one is exempt. That's the nature of such complex beasts.

Re:Every little bit counts.

[bensch128]

I eventually solved it by using vim to comment out lines 543 and 544 (not lines 541 and 542, like it said in the Ubuntu Forums) of /usr/bin/pycentral. This is not something I want to have to explain to my mom, my girlfriend, or my neighbor -- nor do I want to do it for them.

Sigh, this has everything to do with paying for a good QA department and having an thickheaded boss willing to make tough choices.
Fortunately, for Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth is willing to both invest in a QA and make those choices (base the software stack on gnome instead of KDE)

This is also why its worthwhile PAYING money for a distribution. You're guaranteed a certain QA level. M$ has the advantage that all of the ISVs do QA on the software for them so they only need to concentrate on the kernel and services and WM levels.

Linux has a long way to catch up but will always be available as a counter to M$'s monopoly position.

Cheers
Ben

Re:Every little bit counts.

[mhall119]

Lets put things into a little perspective here. Will your mom, girlfriend, or neighbor be upgrading Windows? I'm guessing probably not, because a Windows upgrade isn't dead simple either, and they're likely to encounter problems along the way. I don't understand why people say Linux isn't ready for their [non-computer literate relation] because it is not simple to do something they won't be doing in the first place. My mom doesn't know how to upgrade Windows. She couldn't install vanilla windows on her PC. She can't buy some cheap hardware at Best Buy and make it "just work" in windows. So why should I (or you) expect her to be able to do, or even want to do, those same things in Linux?

For Linux to be ready for the desktop, it has to let average desktop users do what they do. This means browse the web, send email, write documents and simple spreadsheets, and upload their digital pictures and put them on CD. They don't need to be able to install or upgrade Linux because they don't need to do that in Windows. The only things Linux is missing right now is hardware vendor support and software vendor support, we know that, and it's getting better slowly. But don't knock Linux because your girlfriend doesn't suddenly become a computer expert when she's using it.

Re:Every little bit counts.

[dacaldar]

"When I want to do _______, it better work on the first try."

This is exactly why I'm finally going to make the switch from Windows to Linux. I've been wanting to for years, and comfortably use Linux/Unix at work and on my bluehost-hosted web server. But I was afraid it would take hours and hours to learn how to sysadmin.

Now I realize it takes hours and hours for every little thing I want to do on my Windows machine. The only reason I'll keep one windows machine is for taxes and such which only release for Windows.

It's really been unbelievable the constant disappointments I've been having for months, every single time I try something new (or old, for that matter), it doesn't work. Even Firefox (on Windows) has a weird bug that I couldn't get rid of by uninstalling 1.5 and installing 2.0. The home page keeps getting .html stripped off it, resulting in a 404. I wanted to give up on computers altogether, but first I'm buying a new system and going Linux.

Now that I think of it - that's really one major obstacle in getting people to switch. I konw there's dual-boot, but that would seem risky to many. If not for the cost of buying a new system, get them using Linux on a second system on the side until they're comforable with it and eventually they realize they don't want to use their Windows system anymore, and have gobs of time to figure out how to get the data they need off it.

Dodgy wording in the submission, eh?

[value_added]

The CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] has posted an article on its website promoting the use of Ubuntu Linux to the 'average computer user'.

No, David Conabree, a regular reviewer of new high-tech gear and longtime computer user has written a favorable story on Ubuntu that's been published on the cbc.ca website.

I'm a big fan of cbc.ca and most things Canadian (except for the beer, of course), but I doubt they have an official position of open source software, or are otherwise in the habit of recommending a particular Linux distro to their readers.

Re:Dodgy wording in the submission, eh?

[g4sy]

I'm a big fan of cbc.ca and most things Canadian (except for the beer, of course)

Shouldn't that read.... actually just the beer? Like the old joke goes... How is American beer like sex in a canoe? It's f^H^H^H^Hing close to water.

Re:Dodgy wording in the submission, eh?

[Hannah E. Davis]

I don't know if they have an official position on it, but you may find this interesting: they have instructions for Linux/Unix users on http://www.cbc.ca/listen/ (the site for listening to CBC Radio online), and they specifically mention testing it with Gentoo and FreeBSD. They also have a couple of audio streams (the EST versions of CBC Radio One and Two) in Ogg Vorbis and seem to be encouraging people to try the format.

Re:Dodgy wording in the submission, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda like that Australian Foster's shit.. right?

Re:Dodgy wording in the submission, eh?

[Gwwfps]

The GP must have never seen what happened to Jason Jones...

Re:Dodgy wording in the submission, eh?

[Magnum Thunder]

I'm a big fan of cbc.ca and most things Canadian (except for the beer, of course)

And what exactly, is wrong with the beer???

Re:Dodgy wording in the submission, eh?

[Baloo Ursidae]

I'm a big fan of cbc.ca and most things Canadian (except for the beer, of course)

Oops, there goes your cred.... shouldn'ta knocked the beer...

At least 29

[pilsner.urquell]

Since that time, dozens of flavours of the Linux operating systems have come out, and the majority of them are utterly free.

Sounds like Carl Sagan, "There are thousands of stars in the sky".

What is this fascination...

[Daishiman]

What is this fascination with saying that the problem lies in making Linux friendlier to "the average user"?

Like the article says, Ubuntu covers very well the needs of the "average user". He needs basic tasks done, and Ubuntu does that well. Will he/she have issues along the way? Of course, in the same way that Windows does, which is the very same reason that you need to go to the average user's house every to months to clean up all the crapware that's installed in their machine and install codecs. After all, VLC and Firefox didn't appear on their desktops all by themselves now, did they?

No, the obstacle for Linux now lies in the odious "power user": the person that has developed a relatively good skill set for using Windows but is too stubborn to port it to another operating system, be it Linux, OS X, or whatever. This is, interestingly, a group of users for which many of us have contempt: they can achieve complex tasks but only because or rote learning and memorized steps. They will get that pretty Windows theme or know all the shortcuts to the one application the use frequently, but god forbid they have to use something else and they're lost all over again. They're the people that have command line phobia and yet will have no issues with editing registry files, difference being that the CLI is immensely useful and the Registry is the spawn of Satan.

Addendum: Gamers are not regular users. Regular users don't spend $250+ on a video card to play $60 games. CAD and design app users are not regular users either: they're domain specialists in whatever their application is, and industrial CAD solutions do exist for Linux and Unix. Ask 3d animation shops that used to be IRIX shops what they're using now.

Re:What is this fascination...

[Daishiman]

I despise having to feed the troll, but I've had this Ubuntu install for 1.5 years and I have never had the need or desire to compile anything. If anything you prove my point that Linux has nothing to gain from first trying to appeal to users like yourself, instead relying on those tolerant enough to try new things and who actually have important stuff to do.

Re:What is this fascination...

[value_added]

No, the obstacle for Linux now lies in the odious "power user": the person that has developed a relatively good skill set for using Windows but is too stubborn to port it to another operating system, be it Linux, OS X, or whatever.

Interesting take on the subject. The greatest impediment to change of any sort is inertia, and while I doubt making a switch to Linux, etc. is any different, the category you describe is no doubt the most vocal.

This is, interestingly, a group of users for which many of us have contempt: they can achieve complex tasks but only because or rote learning and memorized steps. They will get that pretty Windows theme or know all the shortcuts to the one application the use frequently, but god forbid they have to use something else and they're lost all over again. They're the people that have command line phobia and yet will have no issues with editing registry files, difference being that the CLI is immensely useful and the Registry is the spawn of Satan.

It occurred to me many moons ago that the sum total of knowledge one obtains using Windows systems (both as a "power user" (ridiculous word) and/or as a typical sysadmin) is a giant convoluted collection of trivia that spans registry edits, workarounds for things that don't work or work badly, memorisation of GUI layout du jour, and various methods of reinstalling borked systems, the value of which erodes as time goes by. Put another way, unless you're a programmer regularly shelling out for an MSDN subscription, you probably know squat. And to paraphrase the poetry of Donald Rumsfeld, you probably don't know that you don't know.

By comparison, anyone, novice users included, who embarked on learning the basics of shell scripting, gained familiarity with a handful of standard programs, and learned how to use a text editor would find his or her skills just as relevant and valuable today as they did when DOS was commonplace. And chances are they would learned even more as time went on.

Re:What is this fascination...

[hobo sapiens]

the sum total of knowledge one obtains using Windows systems (both as a "power user" (ridiculous word) and/or as a typical sysadmin) is a giant convoluted collection of trivia that spans registry edits, workarounds for things that don't work or work badly, memorisation of GUI layout du jour, and various methods of reinstalling borked systems, the value of which erodes as time goes by.

That pretty much nails it. Just the other day I was trying to figure out why my PC was running slow after getting a new audigy sound card. Well, come to find out, the "driver software" also included about ten other "helper" programs that I didn't even need, some things were even for devices my particular sound card does not have. Of course these weren't in the places you'd expect (like services.msc or startup dirs). Some of these startup programs weren't even in msconfig. Noooo, instead they were in some CurrentVersion registry key, RunOnce I think it was. Insane. I remove them, and all is well. Why am I telling you this?

Because it's just as you said: just another piece of trivia to add to the heap. These registry edits, which I just found online, probably won't apply to Vista. Heck, I'd have never known where to look had I not stumbled across this info. There is no systematic approach one can take to fixing problems on Windows. I definitely feel like all the knowledge I have accumulated from fixing my PC as well as everyone else's (which I do successfully all the time) is just that...a heap of disconnected facts.

While I am somewhat green with the linux CLI (but typing this post on my ubuntu box, so I use linux), I have noticed that things are a bit more consistent on the Linux side. I think the one thing that make Windows easier, though, in spite of itself, is that somewhere someone has had a similar problem and fixed it. I have not had the same success with googling linux problems.

Re:What is this fascination...

[mackyrae]

Try Google Linux and of course the Ubuntuforums. And yes, things are more consistent on the Linux side. There's only one thing I can think of that seems really disconnected when it happens. When your hard drive is full, you get bounced back out every time you try to log in.

Re:What is this fascination...

[flyingfsck]

Harddrive full to the last byte? Next time use partmon. It has been around for many a year.

Re:What is this fascination...

[16K Ram Pack]

It occurred to me many moons ago that the sum total of knowledge one obtains using Windows systems (both as a "power user" (ridiculous word) and/or as a typical sysadmin) is a giant convoluted collection of trivia that spans registry edits, workarounds for things that don't work or work badly, memorisation of GUI layout du jour, and various methods of reinstalling borked systems, the value of which erodes as time goes by.

It is the constant cost of retooling that's the problem. And it takes much longer than people think. It's about all those times that something doesn't do what you thought it should, and knowing where to go look to resolve it. I've worked in Mainframe teams where it's just not an issue. People worked on the technology for 10 years, so even if a trainee arrived and got stuck, plenty of people had seen the problem and could quickly get them back on track.

Re:What is this fascination...

[eerok]

... anyone, novice users included, who embarked on learning the basics of shell scripting, gained familiarity with a handful of standard programs, and learned how to use a text editor would find his or her skills just as relevant and valuable today as they did when DOS was commonplace. And chances are they would learned even more as time went on.

Good point. Much of the basic stuff I learned almost 30 years ago (unix v7 on a pdp-11) is still useful to me now on linux.

The parent to this post is also pertinent: the logical failure of the windows power user is in suggesting that linux is hard because they, experienced computer users, have a hard time grokking it. But really they have a hard time because they can't apply their knowledge of windows, and they're uncomfortable being newbies again.

No matter how exciting change is, most people are afraid of it as well. Some people can deal with the tension of these competing reactions better than others, and for that reason alone, there will always be those for whom "linux is not ready."

Re:What is this fascination...

[atomicxblue]

Oh! Can't forget about http://linuxquestions.org/ ! I have yet to see an RTFM on there, but more like, here are some websites where you can learn how to do X.

Re:What is this fascination...

[mackyrae]

Not my drive, I've got about 60GB left on my data partition. Just when you fill up your drive too far it does that. When I pulled a friend's Windows stuff onto her Linux partition because the Windows blue screened it filled up and caused that. Had to copy the stuff back off and put it on her bf's computer. I only knew that was the problem because I've seen it said on the ubuntuforums before. It really isn't an expected result of a full drive.

Re:What is this fascination...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course these weren't in the places you'd expect (like services.msc or startup dirs). Some of these startup programs weren't even in msconfig. Noooo, instead they were in some CurrentVersion registry key, RunOnce I think it was. Insane.

Er... that's exactly where anyone with any semblance of Windows knowledge would look. Those registry keys have been around since at least Windows 95, and are used by virtually every application on the planet.

Re:What is this fascination...

[perkr]

It is unfortunate you were seen as a troll. I think you have a valid point. It's not rocket science to take care of administrating a desktop station, windows or linux.

Also like you I dislike the GP's over-generalized sterotype which transcribes windows "power users" into animals. It's cheap rhetoric that does nothing to lift up the GP's better arguments.

Further, using linux you also get to these arcane tweaks. Maybe not in the core system, but by using for instance your window manager of choice. And they are all different. And the know-how on how to change them to do what you want does change over time.

Re:What is this fascination...

[starfishsystems]

I'm a computer scientist. I got started in the days when every single computer model had a different operating system and CLI to go along with it, not to mention differences between programming languages, system calls, and machine architectures.

You can get used to learning all of this again for every new platform, but it's very inefficient and not very deep. The considerable effort to acquire this kind of knowledge leads nowhere. This was, and is, the essential problem with single-vendor solutions.

As a group, scientists are not fascinated by such technological ephemera. If you could get P = NP off an abacus, it would win you extra points. So imagine how quickly the research community embraced Unix, and how much innovation immediately resulted as Unix licenses began to proliferate. Finally you could acquire a skillset that had lasting value, so that you could spend the day solving real problems instead of perpetually learning to work with a new platform. Moreover, it became reasonable to communicate your results in terms of the Unix environment. You could say, "we've written a new process scheduler for Unix" with reasonable expectation that people could check it out for themselves.

That same Unix CLI is still in all the commercial Unix variants as well as in every Linux distro. It's even in MacOS if you know where to look. That knowledge is fantastically portable. If you have to master a technology, it would seem to be a pretty clear choice. Mastery of Microsoft Windows, on the other hand, only leads to Microsoft Windows.

There's no question that computer and network architectures are becoming increasingly complex. All the components are becoming more complex, and they don't always interoperate as intended. No platform is immune from this effect, but it seems to me that this makes a even stronger case for what we already know, to pool our resources when solving these technology problems so that the improvements will have deep enduring value, and to avoid diverting our expertise into the perpetual struggle to get enduring value out of single-vendor solutions.

Re:What is this fascination...

[init100]

And to paraphrase the poetry of Donald Rumsfeld, you probably don't know that you don't know.

OT: Your mention of Rumsfeld makes me recall this quote:

[Osama bin Laden is] either alive and well or alive and not too well or not alive.

Pretty intelligent, isn't it? ;)

Re:What is this fascination...

[Anonymous Coward]

Er... that's exactly where anyone with any semblance of Windows knowledge would look. Those registry keys have been around since at least Windows 95

Shows how young you are then. Windows 3.1 put that in win.ini and system.ini.

and are used by virtually every application on the planet.

Not by any of the 10,000 or so applications in apt repository.

Re:What is this fascination...

[Koatdus]

The difference between magic and science.

The magician has learned by rote, a series of complex steps that he may or may not understand the reason for. These steps have to be followed in exact order and with exact detail to make something happen. This "knowledge" is passed down from one magician to another in a "cookbook" style.

Finally, if one part of the recipe fails he is lost and must start over from the begining.

The scientist looks for clues about how something works, forms a theory, figures out a way to test the theory, modifies that theory, tests again...(etc., etc.) ... until he understands the basic underlying function of the thing.

From that point on he can manipulate it however he wants to make it do exactly what he wants with predictable, repeatable results.

When he wants to pass the knowledge down to the next scientist he gives them the theory of how it works but not necessarily the steps to follow.

The difference between a Windows SysAdmin and a Unix SysAdmin is ...

Zonk is gay

[Anonymous Coward]

There he goes again, putting those fucking lame ass questions at the end of the blurb. Has Zonk had enough already, or is he really homosexual?

nice

[brer_rabbit]

maybe we could get all the Canadians to switch to linux? That'd bring up the user base by at least 4 or 5 users.

So... Unless You Game..

[moore.dustin]

Ok so he says Linux is legit if you are not a gamer. The same pretty much goes for OS X. My question is, is anyone going to be able to even challenge Windows as the computer gaming platform. Personally, I cannot see it happening within a few years. At that time, the next gen consoles will be coming out soon. The next gen consoles probably finally close the gap between console and computer. To me, that means Linux and/or OS X will not be developed for unless some uniformity can be presented in how games are designed for the platforms

Re:So... Unless You Game..

[adfour]

You could use Cedega if you wanted to do some gaming. It isn't a perfect solution, but I find it is enough of one to keep me off windows entirely (excpet at work).

Re:So... Unless You Game..

[deimios666]

> unless some uniformity can be presented in how games are designed for the platforms

That would be OpenGL, OpenAL and SDL . Now that Micro$oft crippled Directsound in Vista and advises ppl to move to OpenAL the only thing left to do is move DirectX programmers to SDL and Direct3D programmers to OpenGL.
The problem is that a huge amount of games are backported from consoles. Since DirectX is exclusively used in Xbox titles they cannot be ported to SDL without a major rewrite or using compatibility layers (Cedega). Playstation 3 might help in this regard since it uses OpenGL but it's architecture might be too different to port to PC.

Another problem is program startup time. Now that Vista has made programs start near-instantaneously (yes even the mozilla apps) linux seems far less snappy on the same hardware. Openoffice with tweaks and quickstarter is still painfully slow to start. This isn't a problem for people until they see the alternatives though.

Re:So... Unless You Game..

[linguizic]

I'm not a big gamer, or I should say, I'm not as big a gamer as I used to be. But all the games that I play are available for OSX. Even if they weren't I can't fathom the thought of using windows. Just yesterday I helped a friend download some wav files from her portable voice recorder on to her windows laptop. I felt like I was fighting the OS the entire time and I actually found it exhausting.

Re:So... Unless You Game..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that depends on whether OGL (cross platform) or D3D (Windows only) takes the gaming market. Currently, there's really no reason for developers to use D3D over OGL other than (as many others have mentioned before), "inertia."

CBC? I want Andersoon Cooper

[bsytko]

Once I heard about this "Ubuntu" you speak of on 360 then I'll switch.

Re:CBC? I want Andersoon Cooper

[revengebomber]

Here!
Or is that not what you meant?

Not Mom, yet. First, Mom's company.

[khasim]

I had a sad realization today, reading an earlier Slashdot post. To beat Windows (much less Mac OS) on the desktop of people who are not early adopters, Linux does not have to be as good -- as I believe it is, on balance. Rather, it has to be better, and conspicuously better.

Don't be sad. Look at it from a corporation's point of view.

#1. FREE!!!!!
#1a. No more money spent tracking licenses
#1b. No more time spent tracking licenses
#1c. No more threats of "license compliance audits".

#2. The package system means that upgrades are even easier than on Windows.

#3. Text-based config files means it's EASY to troubleshoot problems. Diff the files between a working box and the problem box.

and so on and so forth.

People will become familiar with Linux when it starts to replace their existing desktops where they work. That's going to take some time (years).

That will get the hardware support which is the REAL issue.

We're seeing this in some companies and governments. It's only going to accelerate over time.

Stop underselling Linux

[rolfwind]

Up to 2003, I think overselling linux was a real problem. These days I think many here are underselling linux - people are not complete idiots. They may not know how computers inside or out - but many just want a decent browser, a word processor, and many, with kids, want something that little Timmy can't mess up - the little kids not being able to install crapware and killing the computer is a big plus.

Is sweeping your computer for malware with several programs more tolerable? How about slowing it down in general with virus detection. How about running all these programs and still having crap slip through?

You can make Windows secure, but default it isn't. Windows is not some magical utopia where everything works - it is work but people don't recognize it as such - instead it becomes an "inevitable" task - like having to defrag the drive is normal chore on Windows given hardly a thought "why am I doing this crap?"

I think many in the Linux community are selling Linux short by problems that were issues 3 or 4 years ago but not so much today. The last few people I switched were people who had malware infested Windows computers almost beyond repair and they wanted Linux for several reasons - I was asked to help them put it on there, they even specified Ubuntu. These are not computer people.

Most of their printers work seamlessly. Their cameras work seamlessly. Their MFCs work for the most part - though there was one that was a pain in the ass to install for no reason (looking at you brother).

And games? Many don't play games in the first place though I keep their Windows partition around just in case. One guy plays flash games on line a lot - no linux barrier there.

Linux is truly good enough for a large segment of the population out there.

Re:Stop underselling Linux

[Naruki]

Many specify Ubuntu because someone told them to. If they aren't Linux people, then they don't KNOW that it is better than anything else.

Many many many more people have not been told or didn't pay attention if they were told. They get a computer, they think it should "just work".

Even on Windows that is often impossible, but Windows has been dominant for so long that they can guarantee a large percentage of available apps that do "just work".

These people who run Windows usually don't run anything to combat viruses or malware. They don't know they have to. That's why you found people who had malware infested computers.

They just run their computer till it becomes so slow they can't stand it, then they get something new. Often they naively assume their computer has just gotten too old.

And many people don't identify themselves as gamers. But when someone at work tells them to try $X, or their precious grandkids come over and want to play $Y, they get upset if it doesn't work. They don't care that they are running the "wrong" OS. They don't believe there should be a wrong one.

And that is true even if they run a Mac.

Re:Stop underselling Linux

[soulshinejam]

Yeah, I agree. With your average "lay" PC user's impending transition to what I assume could be called "next-gen" operating systems, having to learn an all new operating system like Vista or Mac OS X shouldn't be that much different from using Ubuntu. At my university, I hear kids spouting the virtues of Mac OS X and how it "doesn't get viruses" and I believe that same line of thought could point them in the direction of Linux. Especially when you can explain to them how all of this free kick-ass software gets included; OpenOffice (IMO way better than Office 2007), GAIM, Firefox; and with the quickly maturing desktop environment, I think that a company like Dell having Linux pre-installed would definitely make widespread adoption more feasible. The only reason I don't run Linux on my desktop is for gaming, and if I could get my old HP notebook working worth a damn, I'd use it for taking notes in class and use Linux. (HDD appears to be shot so OS installation is a bitch, and battery life maxes out at like half an hour, but running Ubuntu from the CD makes it a fully operational computer, even sound, and FreeSpire, while lacking support for my proprietary onboard soundcard, recognizes my Linksys wireless card right out of the box.)

Re:Stop underselling Linux

[atomicxblue]

That little Timmy needs to be grounded. :) Always mucking up something or other. :)

Re:Stop underselling Linux

[westlake]

These days I think many here are underselling linux - people are not complete idiots.

The first problem is that Linux came late to the party.

Your dad bought his first MSDOS PC in 1980. Your kids began with XP at age four in 2001. You need a very compelling reason to switch.

The second problem is that the Geek is blandly incomprehending of the home PC market.

It isn't just games - although Windows gaming remains a billion-dollar industry - and Microsoft in Vista and the XBox 360 is weaving the PC and console gamer ever more closely together.

It isn't just media - but shop around a little and you can find a first generation Blu-Ray drive for Windows for under $600.

This is of course a market segment that rates zero for ideological purity and political correctness. It does not agonize over DRM or the proprietary driver. In return it gets a first look at some very nice tech and software. iTunes for Windows, anyone?

The larger problem is that the Linux Geek programs for the Linux Geek. The Window's programmer tends to find his satisfaction and profit in writing programs for users with other interests and values.

That is why Grandma put down her needles and picked up Windows to do her fancy embroidery on a Singer. It is also why Linspire's CNR Warehouse tends to look to a home user like a shareware catalog from 1992.

Re:more information on the "L" word reference

[dryeo]

Actually it was a TV show about a group of lesbians and their lives. Lots of frontal nudity, simulated lesbian sex etc which was on regular TV at 10 at night here in Canada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_L_Word

Yes free software is better than Vista.

[twitter]

See for yourself in this blow by blow install and feature compare. Summary here. A lack of drivers and compatibility were only the start of the author's problems which digital restrictions greatly multiplied.

As usual, the Microsoft story is worse than you would expect.

Only disagree with one point

[Weaselmancer]

Or until they try plugging in an arbitrary device and find that it doesn't work

I like the gist of what you're saying, but I think this point is a moot one. Vista has plenty of incompatibilites.

And sadly, it'll wind up being the best selling OS of al time, most likely.

Re:Only disagree with one point

[dodongo]

Hell, Vista has all those incompatibilities? I remember when we made a fair amount of cash off selling scanners to people whose pre-XP scanners ran just fine, but once they wanted to catch the new wave, they were screwed.

I can say this much about the Linux kernel -- I've never had a piece of hardware I was currently using deprecated by a new revision of the kernel. That said, fuck ATI, because they straight deprecated my Radeon 9000, which is why Nvidia gets my business till they screw me likewise because no one cares about their Linux driver support anyway. *sigh*

Re:Only disagree with one point

[maxume]

What you are talking about has nothing to do with OS versions. The open drivers that much of the hardware support comes from under Linux can be kept up to date despite the wishes of device manufacturers; as you say, binary drivers from the vendor are just as much a problem under Linux as they are under Windows, they just happen to be a lot less common.

Microsoft doesn't change their driver model all that often; when they do, the device manufacturers are 'screwing' people just as much as Microsoft. Whether it was a choice or not, that the device support in Linux does not rely on manufacturers to put out compatible releases is pretty nice.

If only it were that simple...

[TihSon]

As a Canadian Linux user and advocate, I have handed out more than my share of Ubuntu and Kubuntu disks. To outline the problem that Linux is having in terms of actual adoption in Canada, the following story says it all.

A few days ago two studies were being discussed on both the CBC and CTV. The first study wanted to learn how many Canadians actually believed global warming was a reality. The numbers were high, and generally speaking believers numbered somewhere around the 70% mark. The second study wanted to learn how many people in Canada where prepared to do anything at all to help prevent global warming from actually happening. If memory serves, it was found that almost nobody ... effectively 0% ... would actually do anything themselves to help reduce the effects of global warming.

So, the studies show Canada to be a nation composed of a great many ardent believers in global warming, but believers who will do nothing themselves to prevent it. If you study our politics you would know that our actions in the last decade or so regarding Kyoto would certainly support that assessment. Simply put, we take great self-righteous pride in our ability to talk the talk, but anyone who pays attention soon learns that in the end we are completely incapable of walking the walk.

... back to Ubuntu ...

I have given out dozens of disks, and each person really, really wanted to try it. Successful installs to date? You guessed it ... Zero. Not one person was willing to spend two seconds learning even the most basic information about the beige box under their desk. In talking to people over the years I have learned that the idea that they would 'change' their computer to be about the same intellectually as asking them the grow an extra limb.

So I keep talking to people, and I show them my nifty looking Linux systems, and I convert the occasional rookie Windows sysadmin who hasn't yet had a chance to be burned by the Redmond flame, but average home users? I am becoming more and more convinced that unless Virii and such get so bad they destroy the Windows platform completely, Linux will only make major double digit inroads into the 'average user' base when hardware comes with some flavour of Linux pre-installed...

...or a whole shitload of non-programmer advocates like myself do it for them free, in our spare time.

--

Just curious, would it be correct to call a Windows rookie a Wookie? :-)

Re:If only it were that simple...

[donaldm]

Until Linux is commonplace in the Government sector which would cause private enterprise to follow, then and only then will the home user start to adopt Linux. I cannot see this happening anytime soon in the USA, but correct me if I am wrong here since I would love to be proved wrong on this.

Currently Governments in countries like Europe, Asia and China are seriously looking at adopting Linux for a variety of reasons and this is starting the acceptable adoption of Linux, but it will be many years unless certain Government heads push a very courageous decision (commonly called political suicide) to adopt Linux overnight.

Linux adoption is happening but it is slow since MS Windows is so entrenched.

With regard to trying to get your friends and acquaintances to adopt Linux I think this is going to be very frustrating for you. I have tried to get close family to make the switch and while they agree that Linux is excellent they all eventually backslide back to MS Windows, so now I only do full (no dual booting) Linux installs so there is no backsliding. Of course I tell people about this and in the majority of cases they say no (I know all the excuses) which is great so I don't waste my time.

Re:If only it were that simple...

[oztiks]

I have given out dozens of disks, and each person really, really wanted to try it. Successful installs to date? You guessed it ... Zero. Not one person was willing to spend two seconds learning even the most basic information about the beige box under their desk. In talking to people over the years I have learned that the idea that they would 'change' their computer to be about the same intellectually as asking them the grow an extra limb.

I don't know about you but i tried Ubuntu for the first time today. I'm a Windows and Linux user, I run CentOS for my servers and Debian for testbeds for application development. I use Windows to code on for the funky IDE's and for Photoshop and have a vast array of VMs that i do all manner of things with on the side.

I downloaded Ubuntu, the 650meg ISO. Mounted it in my VMware system and clicked 'Switch On' within a few seconds i had Ubuntu working of the CD, i clicked "install" and within about 5 - 10mins after a reboot later it was already updating it's software and ready to use. It had a word processor, web browser and a mail client ready to go, not really something you'd have to train people to find. I then went to add / remove packages which was another name for a funky packages manager and it was as easy 1-2-3.

The conclusion that i made up was that my Girlfirend could use this, my mum also, and they wouldn't have issues what-so-ever.

I then showed my business partner and said "what do you recon?" and being a very business minded person (im the brains he's the bean counter if you will :)) he said two things "How easy does it plug into other computers?" and "How much does it cost?", I said "Look" and a click later it found my windows network shares and i said it's free. He said "that if we were a newly established company that didn't want to cop windows licensing fees this solution would be a dream, we'd just need to have Ubuntu supported computers and away you'd go".

What i think Ubuntu should do is setup sort of like an investigation system, List all the premade ready pcs which Ubuntu works on straight off the mark. List them as a resource for businesses, and when it comes time for a company to do an infrastructure change refer to the site to find which PC's are Ubuntu / Linux ready. That way we'd know what we can use it on and help businesses take the right steps without worrying about support, etc.

I know its not a simple as that but it would be a great start.

Re:If only it were that simple...

[subVorkian]

"Simply put, we take great self-righteous pride in our ability to talk the talk, but anyone who pays attention soon learns that in the end we are completely incapable of walking the walk."

speak for yourself. Take a small example/sample and expand it to include the entire population, in all cases.

fuck you

Re:If only it were that simple...

[TihSon]

Oh, I guess I forgot to mention we also hate our opinions of ourselves being challenged, and for us living in a constant state of denial is the norm. I suppose that's understandable since the topic was/is Ubuntu, not Canadian society in general, or it's quirks specifically. If space and brevity permit, I will try to be clearer in my posts in the future.

...and on behalf of my rude friend, I apologize for his lack of maturity. Once you get past our thin skins and sheltered world views, we Canadian really are a nice bunch.

Re:If only it were that simple...

[Anonymous Coward]

he may have been rude, but he was still correct. Calling canadians "self righteous" is akin to calling Americans "arrogant". It's a generalization that is promoted and made popular in the mainstream media but holds no water in reality.

Re:If only it were that simple...

[mysticgoat]

So I keep talking to people, and I show them my nifty looking Linux systems, and I convert the occasional rookie Windows sysadmin who hasn't yet had a chance to be burned by the Redmond flame, but average home users?

Just keep doing what you're doing, and have a bit of patience.

We can expect the Win XP / Office 2003 experience to go into a progressively worsening spiral of deterioration starting in 3 to 6 months. One reason is because Microsoft's large but finite resources will be increasingly devoted to Vista / Office 2007 problems as these surface. And they will surface. A strongly related reason is because it will be in Microsoft's best interest to encourage Win XP / Office 2003 users to move on, since these old versions are rapidly becoming cost centers rather than profit centers. So Redmond will have neither the resources nor the incentive to fight Win XP malware any more. It will become evident to more and more users that Win XP and Office 2003 are circling the drain.

When users who had been satisfied for years with their old Windows boxes start thinking that it might be time to pay to upgrade, then they will be receptive to the idea of maybe taking a couple of weeks to see if Ubuntu or Kubuntu might do everything they want. The key to this will be an easy dual boot installation that will allow them to explore the 'buntu without letting go of their old ways.

So start letting people know that when they start to run into problems with their current Windows, you've got an alternative they might want to look at before they shell out the big bucks for a full system upgrade.

Re:If only it were that simple...

[TihSon]

Well A.C., I am a Canadian. At various times in my life I have lived in 6 of our provinces. I speak the two languages, although not equally well. I have operated businesses in three provinces, and my family spans the whole place. I have volunteered for Liberals, Conservatives, Reformers, and I even considered helping the yogic flyers. I have worked in this country as a bartender, a waiter, a chef, a bricklayer, a bouncer, a martial arts instructor, a web designer, a web app coder, a bus driver, a graphic artist, a photographer, and I am currently a bronze artist and a writer. Each of those positions has granted me passage to the various levels of the Canadian intelligentsia where I have met Federal and Provincial Ministers, business people, drug addicts, other artists, average Joes, bus drivers, and just your basic assortment of everyday Canadians.

As I said, I am a Canadian.

So, with that said, you the hell are you? Are they only allowing one username per email address here at /.?

Besides, your response has proved me correct.

...trolls ... be gone!

What I want to know

[GregPK]

Is there a way to emulate IE in a linux environment. My work login requies IE as well as my State university.

Re:What I want to know

[Anonymous Coward]

You can actually install 3 versions of IE on linux easily.
http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page

Re:What I want to know

[DragonTHC]

not well enough sadly.

The screens aren't blue enough yet.

and they're still working on getting the security holes wide enough.

Re:What I want to know

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course! It's called WINE, which is not an emulator but a translator of Windows API calls that can even run games like World of Warcraft.

And of course there's always virtualization of Windows on Linux, as on any OS. If you like the Parallels Coherence thing, you can do that on Linux, too, check this out: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SeamlessVirtuali zation

Programs that do virtualization: VirtualBox, qemu (with KQemu accelerator), qemu-launcher, vmware, etc...

Re:What I want to know

[Anonymous Coward]

Just turn on Firefox's User Agent switcher... goto Tools | User Agent Switcher | Internet Explorer, and sites think you are using IE.

Of course, if that doesn't work, then ie4linux gives you the real deal IE instead.

Re:What I want to know

[Anonymous Coward]

Wine http://www.winehq.com/ should do it ok for free, used it in crossover from codeweavers, http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/ca t?cat_id=33 that works ok, if you like you can download a linux VM ware image http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/ and vmware player http://www.vmware.com/products/player/ for windows to test it out without having to play around with the live cd or have to restart.

If you want to test crossover theres always the *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge* ways of getting it for free.

Re:What I want to know

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page

Re:What I want to know

[Anonymous Coward]

IE runs under wine. Here is the painless way to install it.

http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page

Re:What I want to know

[Snipes420]

I've seen wine run IE6 before

Re:What I want to know

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Crossover supports Windows IE very well, under both Linux and OS X.

learned helplessness

[fyoder]

No, they treat their computers like they treat their furnace: it should just work. Like it or not, Mom and Pop expect their computer to work like an appliance: it should do what it's supposed to do, and they shouldn't have to fiddle with it.

Let me get this straight, you're suggesting Windows is like that? I can understand people not switching to Linux just because they read a glowing review on the CBC site, but I don't understand their not wanting to escape from Windows and from the shit they seem to regard as normal. I think it may be due to some form of learned helplessness syndrome.

Re:learned helplessness

[mevets]

More like lowered expectations. People that want or have to use windows/mac/linux/... bicker endlessly about how much better/worse each is, while ignoring that they are all crappy. Jonathan Schwartz quipped the other day about using google maps on a blackberry pearl "The grace with which it works comes close to a religious experience". I wonder if RIM would consider making a desktop sized pearl?

Re:learned helplessness

[couchslug]

"I don't understand their not wanting to escape from Windows and from the shit they seem to regard as normal. I think it may be due to some form of learned helplessness [wikipedia.org] syndrome."

It's frightening, but to most people Windows IS the computer. Thia ia even the case with many young people. In a generation that IMO should be completely technophilic, many users don't WANT to know how things work and have told me so.

I've given up trying to reach most of them. I just charge them money to fix their problems.

BBC Not so Squeemish about Panning Vista.

[twitter]

I doubt they [CBC] have an official position of open source software, or are otherwise in the habit of recommending a particular Linux distro to their readers.

Nah, might as well dismiss it as another crackpot letter to the editor, right? Wrong. The guy is a regular contributor with other articles, like this one to his name. So, yes, the author and the institution have issued an opinion. There will be more like that too.

If you listen to the BBC, you won't be using Vista anytime soon. As M$ jumps up the breakage of XP, there will be lots of people trying and liking free software.

Re:With the exception of gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

And we thank you for bitching to the games manufacturers for not porting their games. There is nothing wrong with the infrastructure to play games. There are a few kick ass online first person shooters for Linux. If you want your fav game on Linux, you have to bitch to the games makers to port their games (natively). As more people start using Linux, more games developers will start making games for it. Its a chicken and egg thing.

Income tax exemption

[jawahar]

Shouldn't government give some sort of income tax exemption for all Linux users?

Re:Income tax exemption

[init100]

Maybe in countries other than the US. In the US they might rather want to add extra taxes for Linux users, since they don't fulfill their obligation to support a national interest, which is Microsoft.

Noooo!

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean a site called "desktoplinux.com" has a negative opinion of Windows Vista? Surely you jest!

Bandwidth usage limitations in the 3rd world

[Phoinix]

In countries where you are allowed a limited amount of download/upload per month/pay, using Linux can be a pain in the neck. Downloading the updates may consume your monthly broad-band account in a day or two. Lebanon is one example.

Many third world countries has download & upload limitaions on their broadband with no choice of a free unlimited option.

Re:Bandwidth usage limitations in the 3rd world

[Radar O'Really]

O'Really...
And how would that be different than downloading service packs and security patches from Microsoft????
Yeah... it would be smaller, faster and far less frequent.

Re:Bandwidth usage limitations in the 3rd world

[maxume]

Shouldn't you have posted this in anticipation of his comment?

Re:Bandwidth usage limitations in the 3rd world

[rbochan]

So you're saying that a Windows install in Lebanon doesn't do firewall/anti-virus updates, anti-spyware updates, Microsoft Patch-Tuesdays, auto-update defaulted to daily at 3 AM, Office updates, and Windows Genuine Advantage(TM) connections?

Re:Bandwidth usage limitations in the 3rd world

[Fittysix]

It IS smaller, faster, and less frequent.

I am one of those people still forced onto dialup. Normally the fact alone that I have a $10 modem would be limiting, but I have one of the miraculous few soft-modems that is actually halfass supported under Linux. If I didn't, I certainly wouldn't go out and buy a $100 modem just to use a free OS.

I can stand downloading the odd 1mb update, with linux it seems that every other day there's a good 10MB of updates, I just don't have an hour to waste my bandwidth updating my OS every day.

Re:Bandwidth usage limitations in the 3rd world

[r_jensen11]

You know, it's possible to get versions of Linux on disks as well, whether they are CD's or DVD's. You don't *have* to only download it. Once again, the great thing is that you have a choice.

Re:Bandwidth usage limitations in the 3rd world

[Radar O'Really]

That may be true, but they certainly aren't security patches and are therefore a choice to download, not a required download as Microsoft so often declares. Nor would that include the 100-200 MB downloads for each of the OS and MSOffice service packs.

Re:Bandwidth usage limitations in the 3rd world

[IntergalacticWalrus]

I can stand downloading the odd 1mb update, with linux it seems that every other day there's a good 10MB of updates, I just don't have an hour to waste my bandwidth updating my OS every day.

Unless you are talking about Gentoo that is definitely not true. Linux distributions in general have less security updates to download than Windows.

And whatever OS it is, it's not like you're forced to download them anyway.

Well of course!

[AJWM]

learn how many people in Canada where prepared to do anything at all to help prevent global warming from actually happening. If memory serves, it was found that almost nobody ... effectively 0% ... would actually do anything themselves to help reduce the effects of global warming.

And this surprises you? Hey, I used to live in Canada. Canadians are looking forward to global warming. Heck, if they'd done that survey in winter, they'd probably get a negative percentage. This is Canada you're talking about, home of Ottawa, coldest national capital on the planet.

Re:Well of course!

[Sj0]

And even there it's pretty warm! Look to Winnipeg, then look up -- Waaaaay up, and you'll see me, praying on my pillow every night for global warming to bring summer in faster.

Anyway, I'm done with the whole Global Warming thing on my end. The whole phenomenon is turning into a way for would-be ascetics to peddle misery when there are solutions which don't require living in a cave. For example, both the Pulp and Paper industry and the lumber industry are moving to burning the waste wood from their processes, or gassification it to create natural gas, both of which are carbon neutral since trees grow back. With a carefully managed forestry program and an efficient power boiler, these massive industries can not just achieve energy independence from the grid, but can start selling relatively clean, carbon neutral, sustainable energy to the grid. The answer to global warming is the same answer that turned cars from 3mpg guzzlers to vehicles like the 50+mpg Toyota Prius(though I'm not sure that the batteries used actually let the life of the car be any less polluting).

More science, better environmental regulations to entice polluters to put the capital into less polluting equipment that also happens to be more efficient, and overall just speeding up the implementation of newer, cleaner technologies is what'll work. Asking people to become hermits, to give up their nice cars, their nice houses, to go wander the desert for 40 years, it's just a bunch of self-righteous pricks who think that ascetic solutions are the only solution.

Re:With the exception of gaming

[mackyrae]

ID Games are all Linux and Windows on the same CD. They do their stuff in OpenGL then put a wrapper on it for it to run on Windows using DirectX.

"Sweeping Generalisations"

[petrus4]

Why do I get the feeling that primarily among the "sweeping generalisations" of the article was a complete lack of mention of the FSF? *gasp!*

It's times like these that I begin to realise that at least some of the rather passionate vitriol that I feel towards Stallman himself is misplaced. Most of it more rightfully belongs to his followers; I can honestly say that I've seen Scientologists who were more objective than some of the members of Stallman's cult that I've come across. I've also never really been able to determine whether or not a group of ardent cultists is something that Stallman has wanted from the beginning, or whether said group simply materialised around him more or less on its' own.

All the guy himself has really done is write a couple of licenses and some software. The intimidation, the tireless suppression of dissenting opinions, the abuse of this site's moderation system, the attempts to control the thoughts and actions of other people, at least where software is concerned...that's all done by his followers.

Re:"Sweeping Generalisations"

[Knuckles]

To say that Linus wrote an operating system is utterly wrong.

Re:"Sweeping Generalisations"

[Sj0]

Take off the tinfoil hat, bro.

Re:"Sweeping Generalisations"

[petrus4]

Take off the tinfoil hat, bro.

It's not paranoia. All of the things I listed really are being done. I've seen then happen.

Re:"Sweeping Generalisations"

[Sj0]

If any of your rantings actually offered a truly testable hypothesis that could demonstrate some big conspiracy, I'd ask for proof. The thing is, the de facto moderation standard is to moderate according to one's own opinion, regardless of whether you're a FSF guy or a MSF guy or whatever your stance.

But I'll keep an eye out for that whole intimidation thing. I'm not really sure how you can intimidate someone on the internet without it crossing over into something with a legal recourse, but I'll keep an eye on it.

Don't be so sure

[WindBourne]

My 70 y.o father runs both linux and windows. He has tried to switch to just linux, but he finds that he is missing certain things (in particular, lotus home organizer is holding him back). So he currently runs both. He is not a geek (airforce/airline pilot, rtd), but he is not stupid.

What is interesting is that he has installed Linux on computers of over a dozen other friends of his. Most of these ppl are also retired pilots who were using windows for simple web surfing, and handling of bank and retirement funds. They have no desire to spend their hours managing windows. They do not want the security hassles that MS is. They all love the Linux price and the lack of admin time. Once it is installed, it just works. ALL OF THEM are apparently happy.

What amazes me is the opportunity that companies like the geek squad are missing. Apparently, several of these folks called geek squad and asked to be ported to linux and were told that they did not do that. Nor would they support it. Oh, well. I guess that Airline pilot's money is no good :)

Now, if IBM (esp lotus), and Intuit would just port their damn software, then you would see a HUGE exodous off windows. A couple of thse ppl have moved off Quicken onto GnuCash and can work it. But they have reported liking Quicken better. Interestingly, only a few of them had used Office and loved using Office. Basically, Linux, GNU Cash, and Open Office can trump from windows 2000 on back. XP appears to be battle except for the fact that MS has created a security nightmare.

Average Response.

[Anonymous Coward]

Average User: "But I don't want people to think I'm supporting dictatorships in Africa!"

More Linux users = "The Answer"

[information_storage]

What is with this unexamined obsession of Linux and rebellious Windows users in promoting Linux to the masses. Maybe your helping them in the short run by teaching them a few things (which is hardly necessary to use Ubuntu and Genome), and keeping their computers cleaner. But isn't there a balance? Aren't You, by senselessly promoting widespread adoption of our sacred OS, diminishing that which had actually created its greatness? Linux has been powered by the great open source development process. Note that I said "development." In layman's terms, the ratio of retard users to actual developers and highly knowledgeable users has been relatively kept in key balance (less retards). I fear that more wide-spread adoption may occur, and the trashy ubiquitousness one experiences in Windows will become more a part of Linux.

P.S. Stop promoting Linux and start using it yourself. (At least the developers I know don't go on promotion campaigns, but maybe that's because they already know it is good; they don't need to be using the same omnipresent toys their grandmas and girlfriends are using in order to heighten their self esteem).

Re:More Linux users = "The Answer"

[LibertarianWackJob]

Although there are clear disadvantages, if or when the LINUX OS reaches double digit market share and continues growth, hardware and software manufacturers will finally take note.

This means games will be written with LINUX versions which is a big plus for adoption. More importantly (for me), brand new cutting edge hardware will be released with either open specs or at least a binary diver for LINUX. This would be a fantastic advantage for groups that manage SANE for scanners and cameras, foomatic for printers, and I don't even know who else. With the virtual elimination of the need for reverse engineering they could focus their efforts on creating a better product.

As you mentioned, there are disadvantages. Our "secure" OS will be subject to more attacks and we will have a less tech savvy user base to defend against those attacks. The less tech savvy user base will be more susceptible to social engineering attacks that can place Trojans and other nasty mal-ware on the system. It is likely that these people will be running as root allowing even more damage to their systems giving LINUX the appearance of being insecure. Their LINUX boxes will get filled up with nasty-ware just like their M$ Windows boxes were when they ran as administrator all the time. Of course the good news is that LINUX will still have fewer attack vectors.

Re:default 3D

[zmollusc]

Just out of curiosity I wanted to run quake4 and doom3 on linux. I tried at least 10 linuxes and only got it working once (debian , but then when i reinstalled it a few days later, my parrot-fashion editing of configuration files no longer worked).
I am an old git who has used micro$oft products from dos 3.3 on, but never a unix system, so i am floundering somewhat with the permissions, filesystem structure etc if it doesn't work 'out of the box' (yay for knoppix, DSL and Freespire).
Yes, Freespire found my nvidia card, set it up, and i was playing torcs and steering tux down the mountain straight away. Hurrah! Soon i was playing doom3 and quake4, albeit clunkily on this hand-me-down 1.8gHz box.

Ubuntu/Gaming/Tags

[nschubach]

Yeah, off topic, I know. But seriously, can we consolidate the "Yes" and "No" tag to one simple, "Yes/No". Every time I see one the other is nearby... stalking and waiting to pounce.

Back on topic, Does anyone seriously have any idea on how to get developers on OpenGL/Linux? I'm crying here at so many missed opportunities to get games on Linux! Are we so ingrained to DirectX that nobody is willing to change directions? Would Linux people pay money for games published in Linux or are there those that think everything that touches their OS be henpecked by hundreds of developers in some open source orgy?

Linux+ATI=No Go

[giorgosts]

ATI cards are 50% of the market, and if you happen to be in that, you have a good chance that

1. You can't start the machine at all
2. Your 3d would freeze
3. Your tv wouldn't work (no tv-out for the open source driver)
4. If you manage to get the tv going with the proprietary driver, there is no hardware acceleration.

So Linux with an ati card is a very poor experience indeed

http://www.michaellarabel.com/index.php?k=blog&i=2 7

Re:Linux+ATI=No Go

[Dystopian Rebel]

You need to qualify your declaration.

I have been using Ubuntu since Hedgehog on two different computers, each with an ATI card. I have never had a problem with ATI video cards. BUT I have not tried 3d or TV cards.

Linux with an ATI card is a fine experience. But with 3d or TV, you may have a problem.

Re:Linux+ATI=No Go

[giorgosts]

And you are not entitled to watch a movie on your tv that you play from your computer? Windows has been doing that for 10 years.

http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=309
http://folk.uio.no/henger/htpc/ati-pal-tvout.jpg

Or even tuxracer (proprietary driver FREEZES my machine but I have to install it cause I want to use the tv)

If you google around you'll see many people that wanted to run linux on a machine that initially had windows installed, to curse at the ati incompetence.

Re:Linux+ATI=No Go

[giorgosts]

Rich=2d+3d+tv
Poor=2d-3d-tv

Its only a matter of time...

[Eric Damron]

Linux's day is coming. Live CDs will be a big help. It's one thing to just pop a CD in and boot without risk and quite another to do a complete install that wipes out your personal data. Live CDs will allow average people to take a look at Linux without risk. Most will like what they see.

Microsoft fans will be quick to point out that gaming isn't there and some will even try the ol' "Plug and Play doesn't work" card.

For gaming it is true that there hasn't been a large enough adoption of Linux for most companies to make the investment. As Linux continues to be adopted I suspect that more companies will feel that there is a market to be tapped.

The "Plug and Play doesn't work" card is a farce. The vast majority of hardware works right out of the box. Most of the time I find it easier to get hardware working with Linux than with Windows. With Windows I always spend a lot of extra time loading drivers that came on separate media (If I can find them). More and more manufacturers are including Linux drivers and as the popularity of Linux grows it just gets better.

So for Windows fans: You may not like Linux but Linux's time is coming. So if you don't want to join the party fine but stop trying to throw a turd in our punchbowl.

Re:Its only a matter of time...

[Anonymous Coward]

I loved ubuntu, except that the one thing I *have* to be able to do, it couldn't do. All I need is to be able to record from line-in, and no matter what I tried, no matter who I asked, it would never work. So, I had to go back to windows, regrettably.

Re:Its only a matter of time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Go download Linux Mint! "Bianca" RULES. Even plays vids right off the bat! I like Ubuntu but Mint may be my new liveCD!!!

Re:Its only a matter of time...

[dublin]

The "Plug and Play doesn't work" card is a farce. The vast majority of hardware works right out of the box. Most of the time I find it easier to get hardware working with Linux than with Windows. With Windows I always spend a lot of extra time loading drivers that came on separate media (If I can find them). More and more manufacturers are including Linux drivers and as the popularity of Linux grows it just gets better.

I call B.S.... It's not just Plug-and-Play that doesn't work in Linux- in reality, many users can reasonably expect that most of their hardware, especially peripherals, won't work correctly. Anyone that claims that more PC hardware works in Linux is just playing rabid fanboy and is deliberately denying reality.

I've been hoping for well over a decade that some Linux distro would get this sorted out, but it hasn't happened yet. The major distros are getting fatter and fatter, but still have the same problems and sometimes now run even slower than Windows on the same hardware. (Puppy Linux is a notable exception here, and it may well be the most usable desktop Linux available. Example from two installs earlier this week: Puppy install time: ~ 5 mins, very usable configuration, nearly everything "just works". Ubuntu install time: nearly TWO HOURS, shinier and much browner, but a whole bunch of stuff still doesn't work. Ubuntu's boot time is dramatically longer, too. Puppy wins by a mile - the new 2.15CE version coming out soon is even cooler, allowing customization by adding app suites for high-end web, graphics, dev, office apps, etc.)

That said, I'm reinstalling XP, due largely to the hardware support problems inherent in all Linuxes. If I were to switch to Linux on the desktop today, the following things would not work at all, or at the least, take a significant hit in functionality:

1) My laptop - There is NO Linux distro that I've seen that really handles power management and suspend/resume to both RAM and disk. And forget hot (or warm) docking - changing the hardware config that drastically requires rebooting in Linux. This is especially true if you have a multi-docking laptop like my ThinkPad, which has a docking interface for the base laptop with a media slice, and another docking interface from the media slice to the actual dock, which contains additional I/O hardware, including another Ethernet interface. Depending on my needs and how much weight I want to carry, I can split (undock) the system at either interface. Although pushing the limits, this config fully meets the Intel/MS power and docking management specs, and I'm pretty sure there's not a Linux distro on the planet that can support it. I did this stuff for Dell's portable brands, so I know what I'm talking about here - Linux still hasn't caught up the power management features of Microsoft's ACPI implementations of 1998. The bazaar has utterly and completely failed here.

2) My Color Laser Printer - Sure, I can move to Linux, if I'm willing to give up printing. This is a killer - quality printing seems to be effectively impossible with Linux. Getting any printing working at all in Linux is a major PITA, but over half the time, it's flat impossible, as in the case of my excellent OKI color page printer, which has NO Linux support at all. (It appears they got tired of dealing with a bunch of arrogant jerks and decided it was easier to just ignore Linux.) Even though it's a network printer, all printing from Linux must be done by first copying the files to an XP or OSX box and printing from there. Kinda kills the joy. (Yep, I could automate this, but I've got better things to do...)

3) My Treo - AFAIK, a full decade after Palm OS and its hotsync mechanism became mainstream, there is still no fully capable Linux equivalent of Palm Desktop. (Yes, I know there are bits and pieces that partly work (one app for calendar, another for contacts, a third for tasks, etc.)but that's not nearly enough, and it creates huge integration and sync problems.) And since Palm Desktop wasn't

Linux: "pitfall free!!"

[Joce640k]

>"If they start hearing about something which doesnt have the pitfalls of
> Windows then it will be very interesting."

I hope you'll be there as "tech support" when they try to install Messenger and a webcam to do what millions of other Windows users are already doing.

And I hope you'll be there to drop down to single user mode and use vi fix their xorg.conf file and recompile the webcam driver after they install a patch.

etc., etc.

Security is sufficient

[Jeppe Salvesen]

If we can show that Linux is far more secure and just as easy to use as Windows, we'll be ready to explode onto the consumer market. We'1l also need to keep up-to-date with good open-source alteratives to the most important apps.

CBC != "Mainstream"

[Anonymous Coward]

"...will mainstream media coverage help more people switch?"

The CBC is not the "mainstream media". I can pretty much guarantee you that the majority of diehard CBC listeners are Mac users over 60 years of age. This story will reach some PC users but very few that have not already heard of Linux.

Now if the story were carried by CTV and Global, then it would reach the audience the submitter expects.

The CBC is considered to be a bunch of "pinko commie hippies" by a large portion of the population of Canada. That audience is watching Fox news and CNN from the States, and possibly CTV and Global for some local news.

Re:CBC != "Mainstream"

[rustalot42684]

I listen to the CBC, and I hate Macs*. I know lots of people who listen / watch the CBC because its news coverage is less biased, due to government funding [ i.e. they do not need to totally rely on advertisers who might pull ads over a controversial story ]. News is what the CBC is good at. Other shows, not so much, but you're pulling this "pinko commie hippies" horseshit out of your ass. If you don't know what you're talking about, shut up. And even if your argument had a shred of plausibility, which it doesn't, the CBC is a lot more mainstream than Slashdot. *Fanboys: whether or not Macs are better is not the issue here.

Re:CBC != "Mainstream"

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, don't take it so angrily...

Let me clarify. I like the CBC. I also hate Macs. I am a communist (though not a party member). I use multiple operating systems (FreeBSD and QNX being my favorites, though I am a fan of WinXP/2003 as well, as in my personal experience *AMP performance is superior on windows...).

The fact is that a large portion of Canada does view the CBC as a bunch of spaced out lefties. (there is a grain of truth to it, I know personally as my family has a socialst and journalist history, the NDP and CBC are institutions in my family, three of my family members have worked for the CBC and one was a NDP MLA at one point)

So I am not 'pulling this "pinko commie hippies" horseshit out of my ass'. I do not agree with it, but it its the perception of many right wing Canadians, I have run into it time and time again. I know what I am talking about.

The two biggest Mac fans I know are both retired professors over 60 and fans of the CBC.

I can almost guarantee that if you google for CBC and left-wing you will find lots of right-wing rants against pinko commies.

No this story is not about whether Macs are better or not (but show me where I can install a GPIB card in an iMac ;)), it is about the CBC reccomending Linux. I simply stated that the CBC is not mainstream in my opinion. The majority of CBC listeners are generally enlightened (as I see it) and are already fully aware of Linux. The joe-average consumer population which the Linux evangelists are intent on reaching are for the most part not CBC listeners, they are Fox/CNN/CTV/Global viewers, who will not read or hear this item.

So chill out man, there is no need for hate, there is enough unnecesary stress in our lives, this not worth getting worked up about. If you feel that the Liberals and Conservatives in Canada do not see the CBC as a left wing NDP mouthpiece, when my experience and observations tell me that they do, then fine, just say so, there is no need to get angry about it.

What is worth getting angry about is how the Liberals and Conservatives exploit and subjugate the left wing in Canada by keeping marijuana illegal, that is worth a little ire, in fact its worht civil war in my opinion.

Pick your battles.

P.S. Note I did not attack you or try to belittle your views and experience.

Re:With the exception of gaming

[the_womble]

A car analogy again.

Yes I would agree that "except for driving in snow" is a good analogy. I live in the tropics.

Most people I know do not play games (of the sort we are talking about) on their PCs. In fact, thinking through my friends and family, I know only one gamer.

They might play solitaire or soduku, thats it.

Happens in Windows too.

[DrYak]

Or until they try plugging in an arbitrary device and find that it doesn't work.

It happens on windows too.

Except that under linux, the drivers are just missing. You could either return the item to the shop or ask some geek friend to come and compile latest reverse-engineered drivers from sourceforge.net that didn't make it yet to distribution.

Whereas in windows, the driver for that incredibly-cheap "no-name" printer you found on discount for only a couple of buck, happens to be written by some obscure korean company, that has vanished from the web since then. The drivers are buggy, completely trash you whole system, serve as entry point to multiple viruses, you can't use them at the same time as you webcam, and the installer it self is a nightmare of engrish that tries to auto-click on all warning dialog boxes to circumvent the WHQL certification.

Every platform has its crappy hardware. Though, it's not necessarily the same : on windows, noname hardware (from small unknown companies on foreign market) or old hardware (for which support was dropped) doesn't work well. Whereas on linux noname hardware (because it often uses standart chipsets) and old hardware (has been reverse engineered and well tested since then) works better than latest branded gadget (brands tends to use own proprietary protocols).

Or until they install one of the rare Linux games and find that the open-source nvidia or ATI drivers are so insanely slow as to make the game unplayable, due to lack of proper 3D acceleration support.

In my personnal experience, opensource drivers like r300 are well good enough for all linux games I've tested. The benchmarks I've seen tend to prove that although a little bit lower than fglx, r300's performance are good enough.

Half of the people in this world are fucking moron

[Anonymous Coward]

And half of those who aren't are so stressed out by the morons that there's no hope for them.

But there is that remaining 25%. Some of them might be interested in the switch.

And the question was not will the mainstream coverage make everyone switch, it was
"will mainstream media coverage help more people switch?"

To which the answer is almost certainly, yes.

If users are used to windows...

[mliikset]

...and not too bright, or intimidated by the machine, they will not accept the change, even though clicking on an icon is NOT a computer skill that requires training, and for many home users, that is all that is required to get email, browse the Internet or download whatever it is that they download.

A very good feature of CD live distributions is that as long as writable media isn't mounted, there isn't much that anyone can do that can't be fixed with a reboot, thus perfect for not-very-savvy newbies to build their skills (and confidence).

True enough, I'm not an expert with Open Office or MSOffice, but having used both to write resumes and stuff, I don't see a difference that should cause a steep learning curve. Firefox acts pretty much the same on Windows or Linux boxes, email clients are almost identical, ftp clients interface the remote and local in the same way, for example.

Of course it takes almost no encouragement from Microsoft to dissuade the abovementioned types from trying to use something different.

Linux is like Mac's older pot smoking brother. :)

[atomicxblue]

It was just a few years ago that my housemates and I were sitting around an old computer trying to install Linux on a computer and connect to the dial up internet. What a nightmare! It seemed an endless cycle of IRQ and AT commands just to finally have the dial up modem call and then refuse to handshake with the remote end. Take that compared to today and yes, Linux is much better now. Even though I put it on my new computer and refuse to ever upgrade to Vista, mainly because of the virgin TCP/IP stack and closed policies, or Mac due to the hardware costs, I don't think that Linux, even Ubuntu, is 100% ready for the mainstream market. I see it as about 80% ready. Until my 73 year old grandmother can boot her computer and figure out on her own how to access the web, email and printing, I don't see the mainstream public moving from Windows or Mac any time soon.

Re:With the exception of gaming

[eerok]

From the summary it says "with the exception of gaming".

Well, that's kind of like saying, "well except for driving [in snow] the car is very useful".

Well, qemu+win95 on linux allows me to play some of my favorite retro games that won't run on XP. It's all a matter of perspective (and perhaps also a matter of how ancient you are). You might just find that, in time, your old favorites won't be supported by the unpredictable spasms of future windows releases. This doesn't exactly address your point, but I think it's relevant insofar as it indicates that microsoft has no interest in you beyond your usefulness in putting cash in their bank. Stick around and you'll see.

If gaming is your main thing, though, by all means stick to windows. But don't think that this is a showstopper for everyone, or that this situation will persist.

Re:default 3D

[Sj0]

I hate to say it, but if you really installed a full 10 different distributions to try to get the video card working, the problem likely exists between the keyboard and chair.

It's good that freespire finally had the drivers pre-installed, but if that wasn't the case, what would you have done? Downloaded another 10 distributions?

Sun Tzu says you must win the victory before winning the battle. Installing 10 or more different distributions to solve your own technical inability to get the video drivers installed is fighting and fighting and fighting, but fighting a tree when there's an army elsewhere.

Re:Linux is like Mac's older pot smoking brother.

[Sj0]

I don't understand something here. What's so tough about pressing the button marked "internet", or the button marked "E-Mail"?

For that matter, if you're a good grandson you've already got her using thunderbitd and firefox, so you're using the exact same applications.

Honestly, there are good reasons not to use Linux(The robustness and nearly 100% coverage in terms of drivers are two important ones), but web browsing and e-mail aren't two of them. I'm not sure about printing, I don't have a printer. Not huge on paying for inkjet carts, and too cheap to buy a solid laser printer.

Re:With the exception of gaming

[despisethesun]

It's funny because I actually own a car for summer and a car (a beater) for winter. The summer car is loads of fun when the weather's nice, but all that power can get dangerous when the roads are covered in snow, and the winter car handles bad roads great but is boring as hell. I also have a PC that I run Linux on to do mundane day-to-day things, and I do my gaming on consoles. I spent less money on computers and consoles than most hardcore PC gamers I know spend on their high-end gaming rigs and I spend it less often. Seems like a good system to me.

Re:Linux is like Mac's older pot smoking brother.

[Anonymous Coward]

I see it as about 80% ready. Until my 73 year old grandmother can boot her computer and figure out on her own how to access the web, email and printing

wait, you think your 73 year old grandma can hook up her windows box the same way?
in my experience windows users cant do on windows what most people complain they wont know how to do on Linux.
i think its just a crock of shit, what it boils down to is windows is the standard and people know it, its familiar.

Great however,

[loconet]

The article does a decent job at introducing Linux and letting unaware people know that there is an alternative. However, it seemed to me that Linux was painted a little too much like a "hobby OS", light on functionality and not as powerful as commercial OS's. The whole "Linus Torvalds and a growing group of volunteers eventually did the highly improbable..." may show Linux as someone's project and nothing more serious, specially for people who are not aware of how Open/Free Software works. I would have liked to see reference to companies such as Google, IBM, HP, etc investing in Linux in terms of using it for their own purposes as well as pitching-in with the development. It may have put things into perspective and show how serious Linux really is in the technology world today.

Re:With the exception of gaming

[Dystopian Rebel]

AWSA! Another Wretched Slashdot Analogy.

But a rather useful acronym is born. :o)

Want More Bad Vista Reviews?

[twitter]

An AC asks:

You mean a site called "desktoplinux.com" has a negative opinion of Windows Vista? Surely you jest!

Judge for yourself. They have screen shots and honest descriptions.

Desktop Linux is not alone in panning Vista and Microsoft digital restrictions. You might note that the PC in question was an updated version of the Media PC that DRM self destructed for a Washington Post reviewer a year ago. It's DRM that drives the desktop linux reviewer crazy under Vista which works better than XP did. The equipment worked under all three OSes, but only gnu/linux gives you the control everyone wants. That's not to say most hardware actually works under Vista, the opposite is true. I've read estimates that less than half of the world's existing PCs are "Vista Ready" and 94% flunk "Vista Premium" which is what you really want. Not surprisingly, reviews of Vista have been universally bad, with few outright "get this now" recommendations. Here's the BBC take on it. How about hard core fanboy, Mossburg? Nope, he says to wait too. Here's another from the BBC, where they go so far as to call it a threat to internet freedom. Even Paul Thuriot is disapointed. If that's not bad enough, vendors don't have enough confidence in Vista's one remaining feature, it's looks, to advertise them, placing screenshots of OSX on top of PC monitors to make them look good. But hey, they point Safari to M$'s fab Vista web page so it looks like Vista!

If anything, Desktoplinux was too easy on Vista's unfriendly dual boot capability. Last week, I tried to help out a fellow graduate student who wanted a fortran compiler but was unable to shrink the Windoze partition with qtparted or make a smaller install with the "recovery CD" that came with his laptop. Few people are going to have more than the recovery CD, so they are currently prevented from dual booting unless they by another hard drive or a retail copy of Vista.

Really? What antivirus do you use?

[chorltonian]

In a third-world scenario, you're comparing using Linux legally for free - no antivirus/anti-malware s/w required - with some knock-off copy of Windows, right? And how do you pay for your a/v subscriptions on top of having to download all those signature file updates?? It's a no-brainer!

Re:With the exception of gaming

[zippthorne]

Yes, but.. you're missing out on a whole class of games that you've decided you don't need. Maybe you're right, but it's not something everyone wants to do.

Back to the car analogy, I don't drag race. I have no interest in hard-core driving*, so I save a lot of money on cars by not spending a fortune on Ferraris or souped up japanese imports.

*actually I have no interest in commuting either, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Re:default 3D

[Chandon Seldon]

This "reinstall / switch distros at the first sign of trouble" tactic seems odd at best.

Most Linux distributions are not targetted at people who are new to Linux. I'm pretty sure there aren't 10 good user-oriented distros.

For anyone else new to Linux, I have a couple of strong suggestions for you:
- Stick to Ubuntu - you can go exploring in the wilds of random distros later.
- Use the instructions on the Ubuntu site to accomplish basic install tasks: http://help.ubuntu.com/community/
- Try to fix your problems, even ask in the IRC channel or on the forums, before reinstalling. Unlike Windows, a reboot or a re-install won't (usually) magically make your problems go away - if the install process or boot process was going to fix it, it would have done so the first time you installed / booted.

Re:default 3D

[despisethesun]

I installed Doom 3 on my first try, no problem. Ran fine. I ran the id software install script (that I downloaded from id's public ftp), copied the files from my CD's to the installation folder, and I was done. This was on Gentoo, which is supposed to be terribly user-unfriendly. I probably could have done it easier by installing it from portage, but I like to do things the hard way. Yep, Linux sure is tough these days.

You are brilliant.

[NDPTAL85]

I totally get what you are saying. There seems to be a sect within the environmentalist movement that isn't environmentalist at all. They're just using the cloak of environmentalism to spout off anti-capitalist/anti-consumerist ideas that very few people in the general public are comfortable with. Its really annoying and distracts from the main environmental message and also makes environmentalism as a whole largely unpalatable to regular folks.

Uh, Canadians

[johansalk]

Pinko commies.

Dirty Canadians...

[milatchi]

Dirty Canadians! I should have known they'd be up to no good. :-)

Re:default 3D

[zmollusc]

Heh. I think the problem is in my lamefulness too.
I would just have kept installing new versions of distros on whatever hardware my trying-out-linux-box has in it at the time. Why would i flail around with xconf or whatever it is when i have no idea if it is possible to get it working on my particular system?
I am happier learning by tinkering with a working system than blundering haphazardly around a non-working 3d setup hoping to fluke it into functioning.
Sun Tzu wouldn't faff around for weeks assembling an army if he could burn another iso and install a new army in a couple of hours. or something. especially if the stroggs were attacking.

Re:default 3D

[zmollusc]

Interestingly, ubuntu seems to give me more trouble than deb or suse or slax. I keep trying out linux on whatever hardware my linux-test-box has inherited from other machines. I do try out install instructions that i find on forums etc, but i am only copying text. I was intrigued to find that i got NVIDIA drivers installed and working 1st time with deb, but a fortnight later could not repeat the result after reinstalling on the same hardware. Something must have changed in the suppository. I gave up after five or six tries. I must emphasise that i was following the same instructions immediately after installing.
Ubuntu seems to regularly break after installing a few apps, maybe it will work better on the next motherboard.
Anyway, my fileserver is freenas, my firewall is smoothwall, my laptop wifis in courtesy of knoppix and i only run win2k for battlefield 2142. If i can get that to work on freespire on the gaming box I will be clean :-)

Bwahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

Honest opinions? Crikey! Do they also call it "M$ Windoze" or is that just you?

Re:default 3D

[zmollusc]

Hehe i tried gentoo once, i spent ages trying to work out what the hell the installer was asking me to choose between. After much downloading and clanging around it didn't boot. I ran away rather than blindly try all the possible install permutations.

I used the id script too. It taught me some more about file permissions and the executable flag :-)
It worked in the end though :-)

Re:With the exception of gaming

[TheRecklessWanderer]

No I get that. I have a couple of cars that don't see snow. And a truck that lives in the snow.

The CBC commented that the "average" user should be using some flavour of Unix.

I have a machine with Linux installed. I have a MacMini with OS X on it. Just so I can see it. My main PC has Windows XP. I like playing with Linux, and I like playing with OS X. But I'm not the average user, and neither are most /.ers. That is why I think the article is misdirected.

Re:default 3D

[Sj0]

It's going to take less time to RTFM or find an appropriate walkthrough on-line than it will take to install 10 OSes. It'll also give you the ability to do something in the future.

If I remember right, all you have to do is copy a couple files to a couple different locations and change the existing xfconfig file to use "nvidia" instead of "nv".

CBC, "Don't use our services, please!"

[smchris]

I wondered whether that announcement was in coordination with a change to their streaming policy. Apparently not:

"Find out why CBC.ca uses Windows Media Player."

Typical doublespeak BS: "using this format allows CBC.ca to deliver live radio streaming to the widest possible audience."

http://www.cbc.ca/listen/#

bandwidth saving tip

[Anonymous Coward]

implement the 'freedomdrive' as described on http://freedomdrive.org/ and save a lot of traffic

Re:ATTN: SWITCHEURS!

[earthbound kid]

Macs for Mac Users!

Tech support

[richardlvance]

Tech support. I switched to LINUX and my browser won't work. Hello? Tech support??

Re:Tech support

[schotty]

I made a living out of that on the side. My income nearly doubled (my normal job sans any OT is over 50K a year, USD that is). How, why, what the heck happened??

Easy. People want to pay to learn and will. Show them the costs involved from the big picture and what it will take to learn this and go forth with freedom. It works flawlessly. I have a method I will share that can make life great for all involved.

When you go out to fix a AV issue or a spyware issue, bring a Linspire/Freespire/Ubuntu/'Distro that is easy for noobs' and give it to them after doing the repair (for a fee, not for beer, for cash). Tell them that this would not be an issue if they used this Linux. And hand them a "Version" of it that my suit them well, and if they wish they can load off the CD and play with it. If interested for the same cost as the AV cleanse, you can set it up and give them a quick 30min primer, if more is wanted hire you. Literally, you will have made $300 for literally little labor. You made at least $150 (more if you have any decent marketing skills), another $100 at least to reload and the primer, and more to get taught how to use more efficiently the wealth of software they now dont have to pay for.

Now, before you let them play for too long (2 weeks is good), call them and ask how their machine is behaving and if they have any issues. If they dont bring it up, you do it. Ask about the Linspire disc or whatever it was that you dumped off. Talk to them. Even if they dont ask you back, you have solutions to new issues that will happen again. Next stop is better.

I have numerous conversions under my belt. Nearly a dozen thus far this year alone. About one a week average, and I was sick for 4 of them :D Life is getting better in our FLOSS realm. If you want something you need to learn to either earn it or take it from the careless owner (legally speaking of course). MS is the careless fool. Why sit back and let them win by default?

Couriers are cheap - SAT "fair access" - Ubuntu?

[wilec]

"If I didn't, I certainly wouldn't go out and buy a $100 modem just to use a free OS."

I can understand that but you get a used external Courier vEverything off eBay for under $25US bucks these days. I know this because since I recently moved on to a SAT modem I thought I would sell my Courier, which BTW I did give $100US for -used from eBay, about five years ago. I decided to keep it for emergencies when I saw the prices they are bringing today.These things really are the tanks of serial com and the improvement in performance could be more than you might suspect. They handle crappy lines and noise much better than most others I have used and thus have many fewer retransmit requests which equals more data in less time. FYI most lab assay equipment I have seen uses this brand and model exclusively for serial com functions.

As for the parent topic. My satellite service is of course way better than dialup and I would not want to go back. However the "fair access" bandwidth limits make it impractical to download anything like CD or gasp DVD images. I even have to plan for major updates to the several installations here and often pass on updates to some VM installs as just not worth it. This however is not any different for Windows updates, and at least Linux is more flexible in respect to updates. Oh BTW you are not likely to see many instances of 10mb per day of serious bug fixes or security related updates for Linux anyway, at least for a little while longer :).

What I don't get is the fever over Ubuntu. I understand people have preferences and such and embrace the variety. Heck polymorphic choice is one of Linux's most endearing qualities. I have also found Ubuntu and especially Kubuntu, I don't really care for Gnome so much, to be solid and pretty damn easy. Still to me the Ubuntu noise is way past what it deserves. I have tried every major distro and a lot of arcane ones as well over the years since I gave up on IBM & OS/2. I have found Suse or now openSuse has always been and still is the most polished, stable and easy of the lot. I am not happy with the Novell deal either but remember folks openSuse is not SLED. Still I am happy to see the excitement that Ubuntu has generated, and thus grateful for the efforts of their developers, benefactors and advocates.

Wabi-Sabi
Matthew

Wine - VMWare - Firefox ext

[wilec]

Yea any one of the several ways listed below and probably a few others as well:

Wine is a Linux implementation of the Windows API that can run many Windows apps IE included, I use it to run IE 6 occasionally.

Run Windows and IE under the free VMWare server, I use it to run Win 98 or NT4.0 occasionally.

It may be that telling Firefox to send an IE app identity string in requests will do what you want. I seem to remember that this can be set in .jsprefs with a text editor or I believe there is a extension/addon that do this via the GUI.

If these sites require ActiveX components or a specific version of the MS kludge of Java you will probably be limited to Wine or VMWare, possibly in the Java case to only VMWare running Windows with the kludged version of Java installed.

Wabi-Sabi
Matthew

Re:default 3D

[zmollusc]

Yeah, i tried the walkthrough thing with debian a few times. It worked the first time but i couldn't get it to work ever again a fortnight later. I assume it was the repository that had changed since the hardware was the same and i was reinstalling the whole system.

Maybe i should clarify that i wasn't sitting there for a couple of days straight installing one distro after another, i have been installing them over many months, usually when a newer piece of hardware has trickled down to the 'experimental' box.

I like the idea of something working out-of-the-box as I seem to reinstall often. Some fancy screensavers broke Freespire, but it was easy-peasy to do a fresh install and put all my common apps back with CNR.

Yes i could probably have found out how to repair my system by booting from a rescue cd, but that would take more time than reaching over from webbing the intersurf on the laptop to okay the install routine on the broken box. I am more interested in delving into why the samba browsing acts up than wrestling xfconfig.

Linux trivia

[lennier]

I dunno, apart from changes to /etc config files not *necessarily* requiring a system reboot (though good luck making any change to X11 configuration without needing to restart your entire X session and all processes spawned by it... ie, everything currently running with a GUI... how is that less destructive for a desktop user than rebooting the kernel?), the Linux /etc, /proc, /etc/X11, ~/.gnome2, GConf maze seems to me to be about as much a 'giant convoluted collection of trivia' as Windows' registry - except that it's not always organised as coherently.

'Power Linux users' exist too - they're people who think that it's normal to have to recompile their kernel from source in order to make their webcam device driver work. In my opinion, the whole POSIX configuration infrastructure needs a serious reboot to make it simple and coherent. And of course, in true Open Source fashion, there's about a dozen competing projects all with different incompatible ideas on how to do this, none of them adopted by any major distro.

Still, I've found Googling for obscure Linux error messages just as useful as for Windows ones (or OSX ones), so there is help out there. It's just not nearly as good as IMO any 21st century OS *should* be.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing has changed... Linux, get game support or go home... yawn...

Re:No

[Plekto]

This shows how out of touch most PC users really are.

Name me the last game that was released for PC and PC only.

Right - it never happens anymore. 95% of all new PC games are out on the 360 or PS3 or similar as well. So the real question is why don't you just buy a used 360 for the same price as a copy of Vista? Same games, quicker and easier to play, and even HD suppport right out of the box.

Spiderman 3? Dual-Platform
UT3? Same.
Test Drive Unlimited? Yep.

The list is very small for most PC-only releases. Enough that they could easily be overlooked. And some, like Bully and Halo 3, are console-only(or come out on PC more than a year later)

Get a good console. Any version of *IX will do all of the rest for free. If you are truly brain-dead, just pay for a copy of Xandros and you'll have all the hand-holding you can deal with. Also, a copy of a better emulator for business apps than WINE.($40 of the cost right there)

There's really no good reason anymore not to switch.