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Tales of Conversion - Using Ubuntu at Work
madgreek writes "Here is a short story about my switch to Ubuntu from XP at work. I have been Microsoft-free for 3 months now at a Microsoft heavy shop. Few people know I am using Open Office and Linux. I create countless documents that people open using Word, Excel, PPT and nobody can tell that they were created using Open Office. From the article: 'When I first started my experiment I was trying to keep it a secret out of fear of attacks from angry Microsoft worshipers (especially from the admins and desktop support). What I am finding out is that most of the folks that I was hiding from are sick and tired of supporting Windows and are proponents of Linux. Several of them are using Linux at home. One of the guys I talked to has Vista and XP installed on his laptop. He swaps out the hard drive when switching between OS's.'"
Some quotes from your sig:
Ok, now please go ahead and educate us on bias.
db
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
I'm reasonably computer savvy,
No - you're reasonably windows savvy. The rest of your post makes that abundantly clear.
Try dual booting between windows XP & Vista & you'll find that your lack of knowledge about partitions was the problem, not linux itself.
it's still not user-friendly enough for the mass market.
By your own account, you didn't actually use linux, just attempted to install it - so you've no basis to make that judgment.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
While i agree that linux isn't ready for most business desktops and certainly isn't ready to the general public, that kind of logic escapes me. why SHOULD linux be focusing all this effort on being windows compatible? isn't the purpose to escape windows? it's also majorly retarded to sit there and proclaim linux is somehow inferior because windows is compatible with itself.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
db
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
Let's have a look at the problem from another angle: What if your computer had only Ubuntu, or BSD, or Solaris, or OS X on it and your friend recommended this great new 'Windows' product to you. How easily do you suppose the Windows XP installer would make it to get your computer dual booting?
Does your XP installer disk offer to repartition your disk and fully explain what will happen to your existing partition, along with the risks?
Does the XP installer detect what OSes are already on the computer and incorporate them into the boot menu?
Does the XP installer offer to import settings from the existing OS?
Will it mount all partitions with read/write support?
The argument that Ubuntu or any other Windows-competing OS is inferior simply because it has failed or threatened to fail to leave every brick of the Windows shrine untouched is both stale and lame.
db
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
You just cant ignore compatibility with Windows. People will and do use different operating systems then one another, this is why you have to spend some amount of time making sure both can work with the same material.
Since Windows is the dominant OS as of today it is only logical for another OS to have some form of compatibility with Windows. An example would be applications for OSX or Linux that are used for XYZ, XYZ should/would like to make sure the application for Windows that is similar to XYZ can open XYZ files and also save them. This is only common sense, with your logic it would be like Apple only designing the iPod to work with Windows.
I think you maybe don't understand the purpose of compatibility. It's not about escaping Windows or Linux or OSX, it's about making sure whatever OS person "A" uses can create and share things with person "B" who uses another OS.
- Guided -- Resize Master and use freed space
- Guided -- Use the entire disk
- Guided -- Use the largest continuous free space
- Manual
You apparently know little about partitioning yet chose to use "Manual." That's akin to the Windows users who know virtually nothing about the filesystem yet insist on changing the install path for every program they install. Why didn't you use the (chosen by default) setting which would have handled everything for you automatically? Were you trying to make your life more difficult?Put identity in the browser.
Is OpenOffice not 100% compatible with Excel macros?
I ask because I remember hearing that it (or some other open source project) was 100% feature-complete, compared to Excel.
Anyway, 100% compatibility is never required, because you don't use 100% of the capabilities of Excel macroes. What you want is 100% of the features I need (be they parts of Excel macroes or otherwise), and as OpenOffice gets better, more and more people are finding that threshold has been crossed for them.
Even if you have 95% compatibility, it can be enough. Consider if you had to use a spreadsheet once a day or once a month for a few minutes that didn't quite work properly in OpenOffice. I realize many people would instantly abandon ship for MS Office at the slightest sign of trouble, but if it was just the one spreadsheet, you could probably fix it to work in OpenOffice -- or, worst case, you run one copy of Microsoft Office on a terminal server somewhere, and let everyone run Linux on the desktop for everything else.
Well, fucking DUH. I bet Windows is still far behind Ubuntu GNU/Linux when it comes to Linux compatibility, huh, Sherlock?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Calling me a stupid troll and a dumbass isn't helping
*shrug* I don't think anything I say is going to affect Linux's market share, but calling you a sad troll & a dumbass is both satisfying to me & educational to fellow slashdotters who otherwise might take you seriously.
The evidence speaks for itself: Linux can't even capture market share with its software by giving it away for free.
Nonsense. Linux occupies (or dominates) many computing markets (embedded devices, servers).
I don't think its any stretch of the imagination to say linux is the most widely installed general purpose OS (I bet you run it on your router without even knowing). Pointing out it hasn't made much inroads into Desktops (or mobile phones for that matter) doesn't change that.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Well, maybe it doesn't need to be compatible, but he's right: Apps are important. So if not compatible, Linux needs to have alternatives. By that I mean REAL alternatives, not stuff that you have to argue about. For many people, the apps alone mandate that a switch to Linux can't happen.
I'm like that at home. I haven't even looked at Linux for home because I know that, regardless of any other problems, it isn't usable because it doesn't support the software I want. I am not going to compromise my computing experience, it's a tool, and I'll use what makes it do what I want the best, which is Windows in this case.
Well this holds true in many cases. You can't expect someone to realistically switch to your platform if you can't offer them apps that they need. Also it needs to either be that app, or one that is just as good. You can't start demanding compromise. You can't tell a professional graphics artist that GIMP should be "good enough" and they "don't need what Photoshop has." That's lying to them and to yourself. You can't expect them to make a switch unless you are offering something that's at least as good, and probably better.
So really, it is a big problem Linux faces right now. In so many settings, it simply doesn't offer the apps that people need and thus can't be considered, regardless of other merits. One real way to solve this would be total Windows compatibility. If you could execute any Windows app under Linux, well then there's nobody who uses Windows that won't be able to get all their apps. Then the argument is purely about technical merits, cost, familiarity and so on. I'm not saying that's the only way to go or even the right one, but it is a legit thing to consider. People need certain apps. If you can't offer them those apps or something very much like them, you aren't a contender, regardless.
The point you're missing here is that the fault is clearly with you, not Linux. For a fair comparison, I'd suggest starting with a single boot linux computer and trying to add windows as a dual boot. From what I've heard, it is certainly going to be harder than the reverse. Like others have said, there are quick and easy choices, but apparently you couldn't get those either. That's fine, most people just aren't able to deal with installing operating systems and partitioning hard drives, but that is what preinstalled machines are for. However, you seem insistent on setting up lopsided comparisons and creating expectations for Linux that aren't even remotely what you ask for from windows. Those are the sorts of reasons that you are rightly being called a troll.
There are many comments on here presenting the sort arguments such as :
... that it has lost all ability to conform to international standards.
- "Open Office is not 100% compat with MSOffice"
- "My Visio docs cant be used on linux/other-non-MS-os"
- "I cant connect to our exchange servers without Windows"
- "Our company intranet requires active-x controls"
- "Yada Yada Yada, etc, etc, etc, ad-infinitum, ad-nauseum"
- "And therefore, linux is no good, and will never catch on until it does this and that, and anything else that Windows makes possible"
None of these arguments demonstrate anything lacking with Linux. The ALL demonstrate how very badly your organisation's IT policies and strategies has backed itself into a corner and locked itself so deeply into a closed and proprietary architecture
If Linux has a hard time co-existing in your current infrastructure, then that should be a huge red flag that there is something seriously wrong with the way you are operating, and the strategic decisions that have been made in the past. If your organisation doesnt have the agility to adapt to what is happening now in the wider world - then its only a matter of time before that lack of agility is going to hit you hard like a speeding train.
Thats all well and good if you are happy to thrive in isolation, like some extended family of inbred hillbillys far from civilisation, but in the meantime, the rest of the world will be passing you by. If thats where you want to be in 10-20 years time, then stick to what you are doing now, and ignore the obvious. Blame it all on linux if that makes you happy.
This "bias" thing is quite silly to start with. I started using Linux back in the WfW days because back then I had grown quite fed up with the instability of the document preparation programs I was using (Word 2.Oc notably which had a useable lifespan of about 6 to 8 minutes before it crashed depite my being on a first name basis with numerous people of the local Microsoft crew). Since then I've become quite comfortable with my setup (I did know Unix before through SunOS and (urk) SCO). Recently I got an iBook since it was one of the cheapest "decent" laptops.
However I don't like it. It just doesn't work for me. So it's hopefully going to make someone happy through eBay while I get a Dell and stick Linux on it.
As for Windows, I still use it for games but never really get to see much of it (just the start menu and the games sub menu) and I find its interface rather confusing. My copy is licensed bought directly on-line from microsoft. I wouldn't use it for working though because like MacOS I probably would have to fight it to do what I want. Besides I have no idea what software is available (apart for the few games I follow) and I couldn't care less.
All this talk of bias is mostly people finding something comfortable and finally finding an environment that works with them instead of against them. For me it was a customisable X11 desktop (KDE currently) with all the nifty Unixy tools, for others it may be MacOS or even Windows. The lucky ones get to gravitate towards the environment that works for them. The others are stuck with whatever was forced upon them in the beginning.
The ones that fight their machine every step of the way are the ones that show no bias.
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