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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?"
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.
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.
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.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
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.
s px
The CBC has been very responsive to complaints, comments, etc. Check it out at http://radio3.cbc.ca/podcasting/podcastplaylist.a
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
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$.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
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.
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
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."
/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.
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
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."
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
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.
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.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
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.
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.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Sounds like Carl Sagan, "There are thousands of stars in the sky".
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.
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.
There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
"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.
Once I heard about this "Ubuntu" you speak of on 360 then I'll switch.
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.
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.
You'd be surprised. Even Internet Explorer runs under linux.
What?
Why???
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
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.
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.
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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
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).
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
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 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.
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.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
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.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
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.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
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? :-)
In B.C., our fascism is green.
Is there a way to emulate IE in a linux environment. My work login requies IE as well as my State university.
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!
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.
-- Alastair
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.
Loose lips lose spit.
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.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
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).
Shouldn't government give some sort of income tax exemption for all Linux users?
Slashdot = Sarcasm
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.
-- Alastair
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.)
-- Alastair
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.
It's been a long time.
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.
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
funny pics
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.
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.
-- Alastair
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.
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.
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.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
'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.
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.
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/
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.
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.
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.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
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.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
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.
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? :)
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
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).
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.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
'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.
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?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
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.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
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. 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 Works fine for me with both wireless and wired 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)
09:F9:11:02 - 9D:74:E3:5B - D8:41:56:C5 - 63:56:88:C0
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.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
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.
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.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
As opposed to women who self mutilate other people?
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
>"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.
No sig today...
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.
Stop the brainwash
> 1st person shooters are totally out of the question
Oh, like this one:
http://tremulous.net/
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.
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.
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).
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.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
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-
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.
...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.
"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
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
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.
Expansion bay batteries...
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
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.
"The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality." -- George Bernard Shaw
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)
*sigh* back to work...
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.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
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.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
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.
It's been a long time.
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.
It's been a long time.
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.
This poo is cold.
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.
[alk]
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.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
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.
AWSA! Another Wretched Slashdot Analogy.
:o)
But a rather useful acronym is born.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
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.
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 WindowsThe proprietary drivers are almost the same code as their corresponding Windows drivers.
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.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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!
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.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
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.
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++
ipv6 is my vpn
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. :)
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Rich=2d+3d+tv
Poor=2d-3d-tv
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.
-- If there's one thing i can't stand, it's intolerance!
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.
This poo is cold.
I believe they've evolved a bit since XPSP0 - you get a VESA framebuffer driver by default in SP1, last time I checked.
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.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
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.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Pinko commies.
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. ;)
'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.
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.
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.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
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
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
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
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
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.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
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".
It's been a long time.
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/#
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.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
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.)
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
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.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Macs for Mac Users!
Tech support. I switched to LINUX and my browser won't work. Hello? Tech support??
cursethedarkness
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.
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
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
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
"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
Yea any one of the several ways listed below and probably a few others as well:
.jsprefs with a text editor or I believe there is a extension/addon that do this via the GUI.
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
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
...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".
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."
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.
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.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
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.
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.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
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.