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Turns Out Ubuntu Dell Costs $225 More
An anonymous reader writes "One week ago this community discussed the apparent price advantage of Ubuntu Dell over Vista. The article linked to a Dell IdeaStorm page with the status: 'Implemented.' Today the status has changed on that page to 'Reneged: Ubuntu Dell is $225 More Than Windows Dell.' The full price of a Ubuntu Inspiron 1420N is indeed $50 cheaper than the identical hardware configuration with Vista — except that a $275 free upgrade to 2GB memory and a 160-GB hard drive is available for Windows only."
And yet Ubuntu doesn't 'just work'.
Why is the bottom panel on my desktop missing about 20% of the time? I have to log out and log back in. Usually it comes back, sometimes it takes 2 logins.
Why is the application built into Ubuntu to play music named "Movie Player"?
Why do I just get a black square when playing a movie with Movie Player? If I move the window I see the movie playing, but the black box comes back as soon as I drop the window.
Why, when I explicity specify I want 2 workspace, does the second workspace disappear and I'm left with one for half of my logins? Even when I do get 2 the second one has no panels at all 75% of the time.
Why can't I Add/Remove certain software from Add/Remove? Why does it even show up on the list with a checkbox if all it is going to is tell me to run Synaptic?
Why is the Software Update notification so annoying? I know Linux generally makes poor use of screen space, but why is the popup so huge? Why isn't it transparent like every other popup on a modern desktop?
Say I unpack an archive to the desktop and it specifies a directory structure for the files. How come the folder icon is hidden underneath the icon for a drive I mounted a few minutes before?
Why can't the built in Bittorrent client download more than one torrent at a time? Why does it tell me "Error 98" or some other obscure junk if I try?
I don't want a network connection icon to show up in the system tray, I'm on a machine that is wired all the time, I know it is on a network, I put it there.
Why are desktop icons so huge? 5000 icon sets, all of them bigger than a breadbox.
This is a partial list. Work on these and I will provide another.
First, that's not what the parent was saying at all. It was more along the lines of: "I did not have that problem, and you didn't give me enough diagnostic information to adequately help you solve it. You can attempt to find someone else with a similar problem, or we can work on it a little bit longer and try and get more information."
Fair enough. mhall responded pretty much by-the-book from a troubleshooting perspective. But try to read between the lines for a moment: The A/C was pretty clearly intelligent and quite frustrated with all of this. mhall's response was to suggest that the A/C do what probably is someone's immediate reaction before suffering the indignity of asking the Linux community for help. The follow-up confirms my guess that the A/C is pretty competent and tried all of that. (In his defense, even if you do post precisely the diagnostics you already tried and what that ruled out, Linux forum helpers will STILL ignore that and act like you didn't. My experience was exactly this.)
Again, to clarify, mhall did it by-the-book, and he couldn't know what the A/C tried. But I'm referring to the general attitude that "all your problems must have come from you being a bozo".
He recommended that, even though he wasn't sure exactly what the problem was (since he had never experienced them), he should
mhall was pretty tritely dismissive of the problems *on the grounds* that golly, he didn't have them. That was the problem.
And,
You're ridiculing him for some advice that he offered (for free) that was more helpful than most customer service departments (where they get paid),
Please don't compare him to professional customer support. Before releasing a software you intend to support this way, you should do rudimentary checks that would cover most of what the A/C complained about.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
You just shown why people are still using windows and not switching to linux. I hope you don't work for technical support. You are letting you love of the OS get in the way of actually making it a better product. You indirectly insulted the person with legitatmate problems, ignored other problems and blamed it on the others. And used the fact that it worked for you as a solid proof that it should work for him. Linux Zealots, Mac Fanboys, Windows umm bill gates wanabees need to realize that there are flaws in these systems and when a users find a need to complain about it, it is actually an important to them complaint. Taking these complants into consideration and finind a way for the next version to work is far more productive then making the user feel like the linux comunity is a bunch of jerks who will live in their allusion that everything is as perfect as perfect can be.
As a Ubuntu user since 6.05, I have to say that for me it does 'just work'.
Ohh good comeback. What happened if I swap some hardware around (even some that is listed as Linux friendly) Linux just works when you have the right hardware and you make the right sacrifices of System Power vs. Linux Compatibility. As a Linux user sience 1994 I can tell you it doesn't matter how long you have been using it for, it doesn't just work for other people.
I have never had this problem, but it seems your gnome setup has some problems (I'm assuming it's not just your screen resolution not displaying the bottom of the screen).
So it is a case of Ubuntu just not working... They chose gnome and gave it good defaults setups... So if it doesn't work then it is not working out of the box. So Ubentu screwed up.
Uh, huge? It's tiny for me. What is your screen resolution? Are you running 640x480? Because that might be causing some of your other Gnome display problems. And transparent? The notifications I get on Windows XP aren't transparent. Are you using Compiz or Beryl? Those could cause some of your other problems if your video card can't handle them.
Intimadate the person with the problem. That will make it better. It may be from ubunto just not working finding the best resolution. Still Ubunto fault. One Persons Big is an other persons small. Heck you could be blind as a bat and any icon under 128x128 is to small for you to see.
Again, never had this problem. Could be caused by extremely small screen size as I mentioned above.
Again, never had this problem. Could be caused by extremely small screen size as I mentioned above.
I never had this problem with the default Bittorrent client, but I'll admit that I installed Azureus because I like it better.
Or it could be something different. If it doesn't happen for you and it never did, then you are not qualifed to respond to that problem.
So take if off, what's so hard about that?
Because it is possible it is configured in a way that it is not ovious how.
Icon sets come with different sizes for each icon for different applications. Are you using the biggest size when you don't need it, or again is your screen resolution so low that even 32x32 looks huge?
Because Ubuntu is flawed and cann't detect the correct screen resolution because it Doesn't Just work!
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Actually, when I came in, I was mainly just criticizing Ubuntu users' attitudes, not the software problems I had. And AFAIK that problem hasn't been patched up. Only later, when someone mentioned the thing from Jan '06 did I talk about what went wrong there.
FWIW, if I were trying to get people to use Ubuntu, I would be a lot more patient, understanding, and helpful. I definitely wouldn't recommend someone do something they just did, or which is impossible from their standpoint, like 50 people did to me.
But luckily, I'll never be in that position, because it will probably never be good enough for me to want to promote.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.