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The Clueless Newbie Rides Again
overshoot writes "Anyone remember The Clueless Newbie's Linux Odyssey? As it happens, she's come back to have a go at Ubuntu Feisty. 'Four years ago I tried about a dozen Linux distributions, to see if they were ready for an ordinary user to install as an escape from the Windows world. None of the distros performed well enough for me to recommend them to a non-geek unless they were going to hire someone to install it. After hearing Dell's recent announcement that it will sell computers with pre-installed Ubuntu Linux, I decided to see if Ubuntu was user-friendly.'"
I installed it on my windows laptop not too long ago. Things in Edgy worked fine but as soon as I went to Feisty I started having issues. Like my wireless card suddenly stopped working. Feisty is riddled with bugs, especially for laptop users. The Dell deal will probably solve that problem on Dell hardware but for most of us Ubuntu needs some more Q&A. I was very disappointed when they released a kernel update that killed most peoples installs while Feisty was in beta, and then had a full Feisty release the next week. Hardly enough time to repair and test the fixes.
Ubuntu isa nice distro but it needs work. I will continue to use it but nly beause I know how to tweak and fix things. Your average user does not. IMO software installation on Linux needs a lot of work. f we could get it to the point of ease that Apple has then I feel Linux would be a real alternative to windows.
The ultimate in easy-to-use Windows-to-Linux distributions would be one that's custom built for each user. You'd download a small program to Windows that'd scan your system looking at hardware, software, and configuration information. It'd then download all the needed drivers, equivalent open source software, and backup your system and software configuration information (converting it to Linux, of course.) Even give them the option to backup all their personal files. Then it'd build you a custom installation ISO, just for their system.
As much as possible would be brought over from Windows. Network configuration information, browser favorites, email client configuration, desktop icon layout, even the desktop wallpaper -- anything to make Linux feel more like home. It's all there, just the way they like it, why not copy it as much as possible?
If there's any problems, they can be found and addressed while the user is still in the safety of Windows.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
I installed Ubuntu FF on one of my roommate's PCs since he was always having problems with various forms of spyware and general sluggishness. The install was fairly smooth but not smooth enough that he could have done it on his own. After that everything worked at startup, I restored his data from the hard drives we had backed it up to (NTFS even, very nice), gave him a tour, turned on beryl, and let him at it. He didn't ask me any questions for a week. I came up and saw him about 9 days after the install and he had a terminal open and installing some multimedia recording software that he had found on his own. When I asked him why he wasn't using synaptic he said that "Sudo apt-get whatever is just a lot easier if you already know what you are looking for".
:(
Don't know what it is or why but Linux makes people want to become power users. He has since upgraded his box to Ubuntu Studio and fixed a few networking problems that he was having. Sure, he probably googled most of it, but he actually felt the need to learn more instead of just scratching his head and offering me beer to fix his problem. I do miss the beer though
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
The author was surprised that Ubuntu didn't clobber her Win2K partition.
Maybe she should realize that there's only ONE COMPANY out there that assumes it owns your whole PC....
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Holy crap! a complete newbie installed a complete 64 bit system and it worked with a few minor problems with non free software not found in 32 bit versions. She had trouble with DVDs, Nvidia drivers, Flash and Picasa, and did not like the GDM login fonts. She was able to solve the Nvidia problem without too much trouble and seems to have made DVDs and Adobe Flash work. All of this with less effort than she would have put into a Windoze box. One reboot and everything "very automatic".
Her comments about non free software are scathing:
This is really cool and shows a good grasp of what free software is all about. She figured out that the non free parts were the problem, not the free parts. This kind of enlightenment from a non programmer is great to see.
Her conclusion is an uncompromising endorsement:
The more I think about it, the nicer the article is. This is a picky user and she's been satisfied. Many of her fears, such as the complete loss of data and OS overwrite, came from M$ use, so her opinion is likely to improve.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The article matches up fairly well with my own experience, although I think the contrast between her earlier trial and the current one may be a little overstated. I just did an install of ubuntu on a laptop yesterday, and I was impressed that (a) the system was installed successfully (not so long ago, installing linux on a laptop was unlikely to work without major pain and suffering), and (b) the wifi card automagically worked. This is in contrast to the situation a year ago, when I installed ubuntu on my daughter's desktop machine, and had to spend a weekend messing around before I could get her wifi to work.
One thing that I think is not acceptable yet is printing. Within the last few months, I got my vanilla laser printer working on my linux box. It was a truly nasty and time-consuming process. This is not a case where you can blame patents and proprietary interfaces, etc., either. The printer is a Brother HL-1440. Brother hired the CUPS developers to write GPL'd linux drivers. The problem is mainly just that the linux implementation of CUPS is a disaster. (The MacOS X implementation seems fine, AFAICT.)
Find free books.
My laptop works better out-of-the-box in Ubuntu than it does in Vista (I installed both, dual-booting, this past weekend).
Of course, I should probably mention that I cheated: the laptop in question is a Thinkpad x60 Tablet, and Thinkpads are almost always well-supported in Linux. It's got Intel graphics, a screen with a weird resolution (1400x1050), Atheros WiFi, a Wacom digitizer, extra buttons next to the screen, volume buttons, a fingerprint scanner, and a hard drive accelerometer. Here's what worked, and what didn't:
Windows Vista
Kubuntu Linux
I should note that this page was extremely useful.
Overall, both Kubuntu and Vista work pretty well. Vista has a few unresolved annoyances though, such as the non-working volume keys and the fact that the screen orientation doesn't automatically change in tablet mode (note: I had to add acpi actions to do that in Linux). If it weren't for the lack of tablet-friendly applications in Linux, I wouldn't have Windows on here at all.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Really,
What in windows is Network Manager? Have you used a Wireless Network with Windows? Beryl and Compiz go the opposite direction (Windows was playing catch-up on the whole composite desktop front). What other "new features" ie things that haven't been a core part of every GUI for 3+ years are you referring to?
And then you have MySQL, Apache, etc on the server side, which Windows has been playing catchup with for years.
My Babylon
I read the article. She had some requirements up front that exclude her running Etch.
It should not come as a surprise that she is really indifferent to Free (as in speech) software. She wants her hardware to "just" work. This unfortunately excludes a default Debian Etch. I've been through Sarge and Etch and I think Ubuntu competition has only benefited the Debian project because Etch is a far superior release of Free software. Yes, non-free is out there and relatively painless, but it still requires some stuff that she specifically did not want to do.
I would encourage potential Ubuntu users to give Debian Etch a spin first. It's much, much more reliable, has many different installers including the excellent graphical installer and is a huge improvement over Sarge, pretty much blowing away the old complaints about Debian.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Thats easy. With windows people take things for granted (like the OS crashing, but coming back after a reboot), and that "any software will run on it.
With Linux there is a cognitive break with their "Windows Knowledge", so the user feels they need to learn in order to make sure they don't "mess it up".
Of course once they start learning one of two things happens:
1) They get overwhelmed by bad/wrong/lots-of information and ask someone else to help (similar to lots of windows folks).
2) They find that it makes sense, they can do what they want without problems, and their system doesn't keep crashing. Once they no longer have to husband the system and be afraid that anything they do will make it crash, they can actually start to have fun with it.
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I have no idea what you just said.
And this is the part of *nix that has always scared me.
I don't know what GNOME or KDE means. I don't know if they're acronyms or abbreviations or what. I'm sure 5 minutes on Google can help me, but I don't want to spend 5 minutes searching for everything "new" in *nix, because, well, EVERYTHING is new to me! If I were to spend 5 minutes on each new *nix term I heard, I would end up spending the better part of a weekend just learning. That's not what I want to do with my weekend.
Your comments, jZnat, look like they're trying to be helpful, but things like this are where people like me get worried and/or scared. I totally understand there will be a learning curve; I expect there to be one. However, I've only just decided to install, and already I'm worried I'm going to do something wrong.
I live alone and I don't have an in-house geek to default to when things go wrong, nor will there be anyone to 'fix' anything I do wrong. Granted, I have a legit copy of Windows 2k Pro (yes, I bought it) which I've reinstalled countless times before, and nothing on my hard drive is irreplacable, so the worst case scenario is a clean Win2kPro install.
Let me sum it up as best I can: I'm wary because you just gave me an option and I don't know of the reprocussions to choosing one over the other.
Regardless, I put my contact info into my bio, and will leave it there for a day or two, so if anyone wishes to contact me they can. Wish me luck.
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