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OS Combat - Ubuntu Linux Versus Vista

Posted by Zonk on from the cue-the-music dept.

An anonymous reader writes "InformationWeek pits Ubuntu Linux versus Windows Vista in a detailed comparison. They run down a number of points for this comparison, including installation, hardware support, software, and backup. For IW, backup was a crucial feature. As a result, the conclusion are unusual for this type of review because it straddles the fence. The verdict is: 'a tie, but only because both platforms fall short in some ways. Vista's roster of backup features aren't available in every SKU of the product; Ubuntu doesn't have anything like Vista's shadow copy system and its user-friendly backup tools are pretty rudimentary.'"

40 of 559 comments (clear)

  1. Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The obligatory link to the ad free, one page print version.

    1. Re:Obligatory by VisceralLogic · · Score: 5, Funny

      Here's another comparison between Ubuntu and Vista for you guys: http://www.bbspot.com/News/2007/04/ubuntu-vs-vista .html :)

      --
      Stop! Dremel time!
    2. Re:Obligatory by john+g+the+4th · · Score: 4, Informative

      Apparently "remastersys" wasn't included in this review. 1 command, with like 2 options.. can backup a system to a liveCD/DVD in a relatively short period of time.

  2. I would have given Ubuntu the edge by oliverthered · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Reading through the article Ubuntu really should have had the edge over windows in the end, e.g. Add remove programs in Vista and the package manager Ubuntu work in simila ways but you get a hell of a lot more packages with Ubuntu than you do with Windows. but his summary puts them on equal par.

    --
    thank God the internet isn't a human right.
  3. Feisty is neat. by dc29A · · Score: 3, Informative

    I installed Feisty this week and it's the first time I install a Linux distro and everything works. Wireless, Video, everything. Finally restricted codecs, drivers and other restricted software is 2 clicks away. Ubuntu is definitely shaping up to something much more user friendly than other/previous. I didn't had to hack any text files nor recompile anything, VMWare Player installed and 3d driver too with a few clicks.

    1. Re:Feisty is neat. by The+Warlock · · Score: 3, Informative

      I've found that Linux "just works" better on older hardware. I mean, I'd always heard that said, but now I'm starting to really feel it. Three years ago, I had to compile the drivers for my wireless card directly from source, and that was a couple months after I got the laptop. Before then the drivers just didn't exist. I had to install the closed-source fglrx drivers to get 3D support, and that was back when ATI's installer program did nothing but horribly corrupt your xorg.conf (or, wait, it was XFree86.conf or whatever back then, right?)

      Now, everything, fucking everything works right on a fresh install. I even have open-source drivers with 3D support. I can use Beryl without fglrx causing my system to crash every day or so. I'm about ready to get rid of my Windows partition for good (as soon as I can kick this C&C habit). It's really nice. Now I just worry that when I inevitably get a new computer everything will break again.

      --
      I've upped my standards, so up yours.
  4. Same old trap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The reviewer constantly falls into the same old trap of basing their comments of Ubuntu on how "Windows like" the particular feature is. At that point it's pretty obvious that Windows itself will always win if you're going to use it as the yard stick to measure all others. This isn't a review of both OSes, it's a comparison of Ubuntu to Vista. Take the conclusion for "Software Installation" as an example:

    It's a tie. Both operating systems show much the same centralization and efficiency in dealing with applications, protocols, and programs.

    Come again? Vista has nothing like the Ubuntu software repository. Just because the two look a little similar in the screen shots doesn't make them the same.

    Ho hum. It tries to be balanced, bless it, but its clear the reviewer is just going to go back to using Windows once it's all done. It fails it.
  5. Can we just deal with the obvious trolls now? by jimicus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Before we get a bunch of people chiming in to say "but XXXXX is easy in ubuntu, you just open a terminal and type..."

    I KNOW.

    But the audience this is intended for has no intention of using a terminal. Broadly speaking, they are of the opinion that desktop computing should be easy enough that any idiot can do it without having to spend ages learning the nuances of some command you type in.

    They are of this opinion thanks to 20 years of GUI R&D in home computing, from the earliest Apple ][ right the way up to Vista today. That's the whole point of the GUI. You don't have to like it, but at least accept that a lot of people do.

    As soon as you say "Open a terminal and type sudo apt-get (package)", you've lost.

    1. Re:Can we just deal with the obvious trolls now? by vivaoporto · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As soon as you say "Open a terminal and type sudo apt-get (package)", you've lost.
      People usually suggests apt-get because it is faster to describe, but there is nothing you can do with apt-get that you cannot do with Synaptics using only GUI and point and click. Only that its description would be "Click on System->Administration->Synaptics Package Manager. Type your password. Click OK. Click on search and type <name of package>. Press OK. Click on the little square next to <name of package> and mark it. Click Apply. Click OK." That's way harder than "click on Applications->Accessories->Terminal. type 'sudo apt-get install <name of package>' without the quotes. Press Enter. type your password. press Y. Press Enter"

      Anyway, the kind of people that would need this amount of details is the same people (and I telling that by personal experience, I performed help desk duties on my former programming job) that would need instructions like this, to install a typical setup.exe: "Open the Windows Explorer. No, not the Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer. Click on Start, Programs, Windows Explorer. Can't find it? Press the key with Windows Logo and "E" simulaneously. GO to C:\Program Files\<My Company Name>. How? Click on the little cross next to the folder called C:. Then click Program Files. Tell it to show the content of this folder anyway. Click on <My Company Name>. Double click setup.exe. Click on Next, select I Agree and click Next, Next, Next, Finish"

      It took quite a time for the average people to get used to the Next->I Agree->Next->Next->Next->Finish kind of installation, and now it is muscular memory, a simply reflex on most Windows users memory. They don't even read the fine print anymore, and that explains how a lot of people got/get spyware installed along with Kazaa and alike (die Bonzy Buddy, die!). Given enough time, new migrated ubuntu users will get used to synaptics, and "Add and Remove Programs" (that is even easier than Synaptics) and, if the right wind blows, even eventually opening the terminal and making things much easier for them (and for us poor technical people too).
    2. Re:Can we just deal with the obvious trolls now? by Trelane · · Score: 3, Insightful

      it is impossible to get it to do what you want without some serious tweaking, and that usually requires you to either type something in a terminal or edit a file.

      I humbly disagree.

      You can edit files if you want, but you dont' usually have to. The Windows equivalent is editing the registry. What, you've never had to tweak some obscure registry setting to make things work 100%?!

      It's not the fact that my grandma can use it, it's the fact that my grandma can *install* and use it that's important to me (or at least that I can guide her through the phone). Linux cannot yet do that effectively.

      So, your grandmother cannot install Linux. Not news. But she can install Windows?! Or does she just use what she gets with her PC and what is provided her by her techie granddaughter? I would suspect the latter rather than the former.

      it's hell getting things to work in Linux.

      How many notebooks have you installed retail Windows on? It's not a valid to compare OEM-customized Windows to vanilla Linux.

      Want the widescreen resolution? Wireless? Sound? Video card? USB? Firewire? That printer? At least a few of those would require me to tweak the system to make things work, if at all.

      Funny that, it works 100% with me out of the box for the last three releases of Ubuntu (well, I had to use the GUI printer manager to make the printer work, because it's a networked printer and so ubuntu can't just detect it as it would the dwl-g650 or other attached device). Maybe you're still stuck in 1993?

      The system should never mess up to the point that I will have to open terminal and do something.

      I totally agree with this statement and would add that no system should ever mess up to the point where you have to boot into safe mode or tweak registry keys. Unfortunately, stuff does screw up and you do have to fix it, be it commandline or obscure registry keys.

      The moment that happens, it just isn't really user-friendly.

      Indeed, Windows is not ready for the desktop!

      --

      --
      Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
    3. Re:Can we just deal with the obvious trolls now? by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I do not use desktops and own only notebooks - it's hell getting things to work in Linux. Want the widescreen resolution? Wireless? Sound? Video card? USB? Firewire? That printer? At least a few of those would require me to tweak the system to make things work, if at all. At that point, I give up. It's not because I cannot but because I do not want to.

      I'm horribly tired of this argument, which is made from a position of ignorance.

      When you buy a PC with Windows on it, you're buying something that's certified Windows compatible.

      If you want all that shit to work with Linux, you're either going to buy something that's certified Linux compatible, or you're going to have to take your chances.

      If you bought your next machine with Linux in mind, everything would just work.

      In most cases, everything just works anyway. This is much more true today than say a year ago; wireless support has come amazingly far.

      In the case of Ubuntu Feisty, it even comes with ndiswrapper.

      But regardless, I've had PLENTY of problems supporting older hardware with Windows. In fact I've got a known good 3com PCMCIA modem, I tested it under windows XP and it worked fine, but for some reason the older Windows 98 drivers aren't working (yes, on a Windows 98 system.) Linux is not unique in this regard.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Can we just deal with the obvious trolls now? by AusIV · · Score: 3, Interesting

      People usually suggests apt-get because it is faster to describe, but there is nothing you can do with apt-get that you cannot do with Synaptics using only GUI and point and click.

      Exactly. A couple months ago, my girlfriend's windows installation crapped out on her. She had heard me talking about Linux and wanted to try it. I stepped her through the Kubuntu install, answering a few questions but she did most of it on her own. There were a couple of times I pulled up a terminal to install a program, and she was worried that she was going to have to learn to use the terminal. So the next time there was a program to install, I had her do it with Adept. I tried describing exactly what she should click, and after about 2 minutes she'd found the package and installed it. I told her she could have done the exact same thing by typing 'sudo aptitude install -package-', and the instructions would have been a lot simpler. I didn't expect her to know these commands off the top of her head, and graphical interfaces are great for figuring out how to do things, but when giving someone instructions on how to do something, the command line is as easy as it gets.

      Since then, she's only used the terminal to run commands I tell her to run. She hasn't learned to use it on her own, but she gets along just fine with the GUIs - she's even found some cool games in the repositories that I didn't know existed.

    5. Re:Can we just deal with the obvious trolls now? by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      While blaming the manufacturers game is all fun and dandy, it does not solve my problem.

      You missed the point entirely. I'm not blaming the manufacturers - I'm blaming you.

      When you bought hardware, you bought hardware designed for windows. Then you were upset when it didn't work properly with Linux.

      If you buy a distributor for a Chevy 350 and try to install it in a Ford 351, it won't fit. Is that Chevy's fault? Ford's? No, it's yours.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  6. (While Ubuntu++ Vista) by VE3OGG · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Frankly, I don't understand what the problem here is: I pop in an Ubuntu CD, hit yes, yes, yeah, sure, why not, and bam! A Working desktop. Not only that, but I can use the LiveCD for web browsing or what have you while the install is going. No dice for Vista (AFAIK).

    Ubuntu recognizes all of my hardware at boot (and I have some rather odd hardware on top of it). No hunting down drivers from a now defunct company, or having to sell my sou^H^H^H^H^H^H^H register to a website that says they have the driver, only to find out they were lying.

    Linux has all the security of Vista, minus the UAC.

    Ubuntu may not have user-friendly backup out of the box (I wouldn't know, I use ssh+rsync), but the repositories for it have a plethora of options that are free.

    And if you are in it for teh shiney!!1!!!!111oneoneone, then Ubuntu can cater (at least on a basic level) with its desktop effects. On top of that, you get immediate (or as near as can be) security updates, and even better a method to upgrade (quite flawlessly, from my experience) to the next version.

    Oh yeah, ummm, Ubuntu = free (as in beer, choice, and ideology), Windows = $$$+DRM.

    So, why the fence sitting?

  7. Re:There's nothing to compare by arun_s · · Score: 3, Insightful

    FTA:
    Add/Remove Applications lets you search the entire directory of applications recommended for Ubuntu -- dozens of programs in 11 categories -- and install them with little effort. I added applications like Adobe Reader and the Thunderbird mail client without too much difficulty. It all compares pretty favorably to Windows's Add/Remove Programs system, which should be familiar to everyone reading this.

    I stopped reading after this. Anyone who thinks Ubuntu's package management 'compares favourably' to add/remove programs is not in his senses.

    --
    I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
  8. Less is more by goombah99 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Your right. it's not the feature count that matters. It's little things like does it have Bash (or for me Perl) that are disprortionately large factors. On the other hand, I'd be kidding my self if I thought there were a lot of perl and bash users out there. it's spit in the ocean of devil spawned end users.

    Linux shoul dnot try to play microsoft's game of putting up feature charts and trying to claim them all. What matters to the user is how good a tool it ends up being and that things like consistency of use, intuitiveness and in fact hiding stuff from the user that they don't need to know about.

    Windows does a better job than Linux at seemlessness. That is you can configure a lot more things in the gui, and expect them to actually work, before you have to open the hood an dive into the scarey bits. On the other hand things like KDE and GNome, do expose a lot more raw power in a very accessible gui way than windows. For a certain class of user, windows just dumbs things down too much.

    For me the sweet spot between power and seemlessness and data hiding is Mac OSX. My mom, who really can't operate a 3 button mouse, is able to use it. Yet Me a power user loves it too. I have hundreds of linux machines yet my desktop machine is nearly always mac osx.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
  9. That is not the correct conclusion by schabot · · Score: 5, Informative

    The verdict is: 'a tie, but only because both platforms fall short in some ways. Vista's roster of backup features aren't available in every SKU of the product; Ubuntu doesn't have anything like Vista's shadow copy system and its user-friendly backup tools are pretty rudimentary.'"

    This is only the conclusion for the backup portion of the review. I looks like the submitter didn't make it to the last page. The actual conclusion?:

    Ubuntu's best strength is handling the ordinary task-based day-to-day stuff. Vista has a level of completeness and polish that some people find it hard to do without.

  10. Headline sounded more interesting than article by Billosaur · · Score: 4, Funny

    I half expected to see the Ubuntu and Vista development teams engaged in some sort of firefight -- blood, gore, explosions, and the like. Imagine my disappointment.

    --
    GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
  11. Commenters so far are missing the point by Jim+Morash · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A tie! This is a big frickin' deal, people! Remember "Linux will never work on the desktop"? And now quasi-mainstream press says it's just as good as Windows Vista?

    The Ubuntu team should be very proud.

  12. Aero vs. Beryl, Similar? by mhall119 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I was tempted to compare Vista's Aero interface to the Beryl window manager (which has a similar palette of visual effects)

    If the author means that Beryl has all the same effects that Aero does, then I'd agree. But if he's implying that Aero has all the visual effects that Beryl has, he's lost his f-ing mind.
    --
    http://www.mhall119.com
  13. Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge by Knuckles · · Score: 4, Informative

    Add remove programs in Vista and the package manager Ubuntu work in simila ways

    Not even that. I mean, in Ubuntu I can install applications with it, in Windows I just can uninstall them. I think I find Ubuntu's solution much more useful then :)

    --
    "When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
  14. Re:There's nothing to compare by metlin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    All the so-called solutions aren't good since it's not OS-Based solutions!.
    Excuse me? Cygwin may not be, but Monad is an OS shell. In fact, if you are admin, you can pretty much do anything on Monad. Hell, it even has pipes like on *nix. Perhaps you should try it first, before passing judgement.
  15. Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge by jonesy16 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Except that this does nothing to protect you from drive failure.

  16. Re:There's nothing to compare by fineghal · · Score: 4, Funny

    Has anyone ever actually used Add/Remove programs to, you know, ADD a program?

  17. Sweet! by sootman · · Score: 3, Funny

    Now we can finally settle this which-OS-is-better debate once and for all!

    --
    Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
  18. Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge by HoosierPeschke · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I agree, the article seems to be covered in the stink of FUD. I don't like throwing that word at just anything (given my bias towards choice) but this statement from the image gallery pushed me to it:

    Vista's Add/Remove Programs panel probably served as the inspiration for Ubuntu's software management console.

    This disturbs me as the person who has written the article had not previously used Ubuntu until he/she decided to write this article. Ubuntu, I can firmly say, has been around significantly longer than Vista. Granted he/she could have said the "Windows" Add/Remove.

    The section concerning Image-Editing/Picture management being a tie also seems to give more credit to Vista. The fact of having GIMP alone blows vista out of the water let alone the several picture managers available on Ubuntu.
    --
    Mr. Universe: "They can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal."
  19. Re:There's nothing to compare by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I stopped reading after this. Anyone who thinks Ubuntu's package management 'compares favourably' to add/remove programs is not in his senses.

    While Ubuntu's package management is technically much, much, much better than that on Windows since it includes application discovery and acquisition and updates, it is in some practical, workflows inferior. No matter how large your software repository is, there will always be binaries distributed via a Website or on CD or via some other mechanism. On Windows this means you do discovery, acquisition, and updates by hand, the same as every other program. On Linux it means you have a special case where you do all those by hand as well as installation and uninstallation by hand. This means users have to juggle two techniques and remember which applies to which software. This is an area where Linux in general could improve. Package managers are built around the concept of open source software and thus everything you need can be in a repository. When software is not in a repository, it is not handled well and I don't know any package manager for Linux that supports using a software package from some random Website, and managing the install, registration, and updates for that application through the standard package manager. Hopefully this deficiency can be addressed if linux ever gains serious market share on the desktop.

  20. Re:(While Ubuntu++ Vista) by Clever7Devil · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What games? With a little patience, most games can be run in Linux.

    Note: I am looking to help this person make the shift to Linux, I'm not arguing that Windows games "just work" in any distro. It does take some jerry-rigging and trial-and-error; however, there are many good guides and it's completely worth my time to help someone figure it out.

    --
    "By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
  21. unhelpful linux geeks by amyhughes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A swap of a SATA cable and my Win XP machine becomes an Ubuntu 6.10 machine. I need to be able to support Linux but don't need it very often.

    I was shocked that my network connection Just Worked on first install. But my screen was at the wrong resolution, and I had no 3d acceleration. Time to install nVidia drivers.

    A day later, now with experience with run modes and editing config files, I had nVidia drivers installed and my 3d app worked fine. It turned out to be simple, but there are an overwhelming number of bad-advice posts to be found on googling for help. This is A Big Problem.

    Google a windows problem and you'll find some easy-to-understand magazine editor to explain it, or something on Microsoft's site. Google a linux problem and you get geek-speak. And most of it is bad advice. Usually the bad advice...

    "edit the conflabulating confic spec generator and type '@*$&T IU H@U HR@&*&@BFG @&(G' at the third prompt"

    is answered with

    "No, don't do that! You'll gaspulate the modulating interferometerizing reverse vectral sync mode!"

    so you avoid those. Eventually you end up typing '@*$&T IU *^HC* HR@&*&@BFG @&(G' at the *fourth* prompt, because nobody had a heart attack over that suggestion. But then your modulating interferometerizing reverse vectral sync mode is fubar, anyway.

    Anyway, I eventually found a suggestion that looked more elegant than the rest and didn't involve editing any conflabulating confic spec generators, wiped to drive and started from scratch, and the nVidia drivers Just Worked.

    If I had the power to Make It So, I'd purge 90% of the online linux discussion, because most of it is crap.

    1. Re:unhelpful linux geeks by lahvak · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It used to be the other way around. Some 10 years ago, to find any information online about Windows was nearly impossible, while I always found anything I needed easily about Linux. I think there are four problems:

      1) Lot of information out there is outdated. You can find HOWTO's about configuring something by editing a config file. The problem is that these days most distributions use some sort of GUI config tool, and in order to accommodate that, the config file was moved, split into several other files, etc, and even if you manage to find it and edit it, next time you run the GUI config tool, all your edits will be overwritten. Then there are HOWTO's for ipchains and iptables, XFree86 and Xorg, and so on. Some of them are clearly described as obsolete, and point out newer, more relevant version, but some of them were not even updated for 10 years.

      2) Formerly most of the discussion took place on the usenet. Every once a while some good soul extracted the useful information from the usenet discussion and other sources and put it on the web. So if you searched the web, most of the stuff that came up was already processed in some way. Now nearly all discussion boards are web based, and so if you search for something, all the raw discussions, arguments and flamewars come up, and you have to sift through it to extract anything useful. Also, the usenet hierarchy was somewhat organized, so if you for example wanted to post a question or answer about a newsreader, there were only one or two groups you could go to. These days everybody is posting on their own blog, and the whole discussion, if you can even call it that, is completely fragmented.

      3) As Linux is becoming more popular, more people end up posting advice, and often they don't really know what they are talking about. Most of them are trying to give back to the community, which is good and should be encouraged, but combined with what I wrote above about web based discussions, it can actually create more damage then good. Perhaps some sort of centralized linux documentation wiki should be created, where all people can contribute by editing a document, rather than arguing on a web forum.

      4) In addition to that, Linux is making inroads in corporate world, which is followed by more and more Linux related "corporate speak" on the web. So you search for some problem, and you end up with pages and pages of Novel generated buzzword dripping marketing drivel, which tells you how the stuff you are trying to configure is wonderful, but which is totally useless as it offers no information about the configuration process itself.

      I have no idea how to fix it, and I expect it will actually get much worse before (hopefully) getting better.

      --
      AccountKiller
  22. Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge by jonesy16 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    RAID 1 doesn't protect you from user error, such as deleting your home directory accidentally or file system corruption. Nothing replaces the need for backup solutions, whether they're user initiated or scheduled incremental backups.

  23. Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge by LWATCDR · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Over all I thought the article was pretty well balanced. The author clearly stated he loved Vista at the beginning but made an effort to be honest. As much as I like Linux I think in some areas it was too biased towards Ubuntu.
    1. Software. He praised Ubuntu for Gimp and OpenOffice but you can download Gimp and OpenOffice for Windows. Ubuntu makes it easer to get a lot of free software but a lot of the best FOSS applications are available for Windows.
    2. Printing. Printing on Linux is a pain. It has been a pain since day one. But I know of more than one person that has had printing problems with Vista. I would call printing a tie.
    3. Ubuntu has issues with detecting monitors. What is worse is they don't give you a nice easy interface to let you MAUNUALY select what monitor you have. The suggestion from the wiki? Manually edit your xorg config file. If you mess it up then you loose your screen and have to go in to the command line and fix it. I still don't have it working but I made a copy of my xorg config file before hacking it. NOT a user friendly way to deal with the problem.
    4. Ubuntu is having some issues with Wifi. A lot of people are having problems even when their wifi card is in the kernal and worked under the last version of Ubuntu.
    As I said I really like Linux but I just don't think that Ubuntu 7 is as good as everyone seems to think. I have had more luck with OpenSuse and CentOS than the latest version of Ubuntu. Yes it has a great community but I just don't get it. I am going to try the 32 bit version on my desktop to see if it is any less problematical. I tried it on my notebook but the WiFi problems are a show stopper for me.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  24. Open your eyes, We have reached the promised land by Un+pobre+guey · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Have you used both Vista and Ubuntu? Your comments are at least a couple of years out of date.

    I have a couple of Win2k boxes, an XP box, a couple of ubuntu edgy eft boxes, and a Fedora 4 or 5 box at home, some used as desktops, some as servers. My 17 year old utterly non-geek daughter got an HP laptop recently, with Vista Home Premium (whatever that means). It was slow, rebooted occasionally of its own free will, and refused to see a shared printer on a Win2k box or see any of the shared directories on any of the other boxes. I wrestled with it for 20 or 30 minutes, to no avail. Granted, I could have gone online and researched it and figured out the stupid trick, but for what? To make a Windows box see a printer on another Windows box? Isn't that why people resist using Linux, to not have to dig around for every stupid little thing?

    Yesterday I set her up with Ubuntu Edgy Eft. Everything went smoothly, just moronically pushing the OK button to very reasonably selected options. Updated all the software, and installed more stuff than she really needs, all in about an hour and a half with a single reboot. Setting up the printer was as easy as it ever has been in Windows, easy, painless, fast. The network server browser immediately shows not only the other linux boxes, but all of the Windows shares as well, and copying files was nothing more than a mouse-driven copy/paste.

    Wake up, folks. Linux is ready for the desktop. It will pass the test with most middle-class college-educated grannies, at the very least. The Aunt Tilly's of the world will soon realize that spending hundreds of dollars on software is no longer a requirement.

    We are there, people! Hallelujah, we are fucking there!

  25. Re:There's nothing to compare by massysett · · Score: 3, Insightful

    dpkg -i foo.deb
    rpm -i foo.rpm

    Those work quite easily for a software package from some random Website when it's been packaged for your distro. For the people who insist that noobs refuse to open terminals, the GUIs nowadays have support for this integrated in as well. Installations this way won't do updates, but yikes, that's a really tall order and that's what repositories are for. (FWIW Windows won't update randomly installed software either.)

    As for things that are not packaged, these are often installed quite easily. I installed RealPlayer (I know, I'm crazy) a few days ago in Ubuntu, straight from the Real website. Worked without a hitch. Google Earth installs very easily. So do many other apps such as Moneydance.

    People are making a problem here where there really isn't one. I think people are complaining about ramdom .tar.gz files that they don't know how to compile. That's a legitimate complaint, but these days users who don't want to learn how to compile anything can easily stick with repositories and get everything they need.

    --
    Penny - plain text accounting
  26. Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge by PitaBred · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, when I click on "Add New Programs", it comes up with a list of thousands of programs that I could install? No, you say? I know you were refuting the GPP's point, because you technically can add a program through there, but you almost never do in practice. All programs have their own installers. The Ubuntu package manager takes care of finding the program you want, getting it and installing it. Windows will just install whatever disk or install.exe file you point it at. There is no comparison.

    --
    My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
  27. Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge by fm6 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yeah, Windows only has 1 free version of Minesweeper, but Ubuntu has 34!

    Come on, "lots of free software" is just not important to most computer users, who spend almost all their time on a few standard applications: Web browsing, e-mail, word processing, number/data crunching, and building presentations. And in this area, any OS not supported by Microsoft applications (that is, any OS except Windows and Mac OS) loses ground because of compatibility issues.

  28. Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge by Fred_A · · Score: 4, Funny

    I've looked around, and have yet to find "Add/Remove Programs", perhaps because I haven't switched to the more Windows-like interface, but "dozens of programs" seems more than a little misleading for the number of packages available in Ubuntu repositories.
    According to a quick peek in my package cache, 1777 dozens of packages are available for install. Nothing misleading there, he did pluralize "dozens".
    Granted maybe he should have used a better unit, like "almost two kilodozens" ?
    --

    May contain traces of nut.
    Made from the freshest electrons.
  29. Re:There's nothing to compare by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you download a .deb then double-click it, Ubuntu knows to launch gdebi, which will let you install the package onto your system. It will then also be in Synaptic where it can be removed.

    Commercial software companies won't use the package formats or the repositories. Official repositories are not an option for them because they need to control redistribution rights (legally and for risk management). Further, even if they did use the official package format and the repository they still need to contact their own servers to handle registration of the software and updates to the software (since not all updates are free). Given that, it makes more sense right now for them to roll their own installers that include all this functionality.

    Package managers are insufficient for commercial companies because they don't include:

    • discovery of software hosted by a publisher instead of in the official repository
    • updates of software whose original source is a DVD or random Web site and whose update location is hosted by the publisher
    • registration of software with a key at the publisher's server
    • free and paid updates for the same software and registration and payment for them

    Unless this changes, any commercial games or applications that are ported to linux will bypass the package manager and thus be just as limited as Windows, except that users have to juggle two different methods of doing things.

    The *real* solution is for Ubuntu to achieve World Domination so that .deb is used by everyone. :-)

    I'm all for standardization, but I'm not really seeing .deb as the ideal package format. Rather, I'd like to see a new format that is an extension of OpenStep packages. This would allow for portable packages that can be run off of a USB drive or CD without modification, that can be e-mailed or IM'd, that can be moved anywhere on the disk without problems, that support FAT binaries for different distros, OS's, and chipsets, and that can include source and build instructions for custom binaries all in a single "file." It would also allow OS X and Linux to share a package and would make it easier to find and extract resources from the packages.

    I mean if we're going to choose a single package format for the future, lets make it a versatile and extensible open standard one appropriate for desktops of the future.

  30. Re:I would have given Ubuntu the edge by delire · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So it is quite obvious that the author has very little knowledge of Ubuntu.
    ..and this is a good thing. Reviewers that are already an expert of the product they under trial generally have a completely different experience and appreciation of the given product than those they are writing for.

    The reviews I've read on Ubuntu that are the most insightful are written by those with very little prior knowledge of either environment: as such they reveal their expectations about those products, expectations that reflect more of the 'average user's' needs than that of the expert.

    I've been a daily Linux desktop user for 8 or so years, but only now am I seeing reviews by people that start with "I really like how in Ubuntu I don't have to websites to download and install software" and howtos that begin with "So you've just installed Ubuntu and want to change your theme?".

    These are very good signs. People are actually trying out this stuff and getting there on their own. The software is working. Our ideas are good.
  31. Re:There's nothing to compare by 3choTh1s · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wouldn't this also be indicative of a problem also from the general users point of view? There is no consistency in what you say. If there is no package in the repository you download and use the command line(bad). Sometimes you can download from the website directly and get it working... Sometimes. And for everything else there's Synaptics or your package manager of choice. I mean all these things are well and good for us who know what we want(which is always choice) but not for those who want consistency. OS X also fails in this regard for a few things... not as much as linux but some.

    I can't remember a time in Windows where I didn't download something(.msi or .exe) from some website then install using whatever installer they provide. Say what you want about a good number of packages being available via the package manager but until they're ALL in there it's not going to provide a better experience.

    I'm going to put this here since I don't feel like making a new conversation. I was talking with my girlfriend which I set up her computer with linux. 2nd thing she asks me about was how to install new applications. I showed her the package manager and told her that most things she'd want are in there, just look around and see if anything tickles her fancy. She looked for a while and saw a few things but then promptly asked me what they looked like. And this is the great failing I see with current package managers. We need screenshots. Any regular person would at least like to see what they are getting before they try something out. They aren't going to waste their time downloading and installing, then promptly uninstalling stuff because it doesn't work the way they think it should.