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Walt Mossberg Reviews Ubuntu
sciurus0 writes "Mainstream technology journalist Walt Mossberg recently reviewed an Inspiron 1420N with Ubuntu installed by Dell. Citing problems such as an oversensitive touchpad and poor multimedia support, he suggests that 'from the point of view of an average user, someone who wouldn't want to enter text commands, hunt the Web for drivers and enabling software, or learn a whole new user interface' Ubuntu isn't a good choice compared to Windows or OS X."
MBAs who are employed (one would assume this is the WSG audience) can afford to pay a tech for basic stuff that is over their heads. And, the thing is (and the reviewer doesnt mention) is that once these things are done its very unlikely they will need re-doing any time soon.
If you are a shareware whore who needs to load up your pc with every stupid widget windows hawks offer you then you are going to fuck up your machine and it will need reloading. And few of these people seem competent to do more than insert the cd and wipe everything when their "computer gets slow." But THERE ARE NO widgets offered at every turn in linux so this is an unlikely fate for such users.
I have a user now who came into the shop with a fairly new but ailing laptop. He was completely unhappy with the installed vista so I offerd to hook him up with ubuntu. He has DSL so there were no modem issues; I installed ubuntu, installed the codecs and various few packagses needed for other typical things (like flash, decss, etc) and sent him on his way. Both he and his wife use it, and she uses it for school. In months now he has come back with questions exactly once - they both love it.
Most people need help installing windows and getting their system up and running. It may arrive running OOTB but windows most always eventually dies and when that happens most "typical users" who know nothing about the behind the scenes stuff will either ask a friend (who may be just as clueless as them but foolhardy enough to give it a go anyway) or pay a shop to fix their machine. At that point linux WILL have a lower cost of ownership and greater overall reliability - even for the "average user."
Why should anyone believe a guy who cant even find the freaking mouse control panel? Is he really so stupid he can't fiugure out the mouse panel just might fix the touchpad settings on his mouse-less laptop?
I would love the average user to be technically savvy enough to install and use Linux, any distro. It would eliminate a lot of problems we all face. The technically savvy user would be able to keep their equipment cleaner from mal-ware and would be a lot more vocal about quality control of software products.
you know what? I also would love the average user to be technically savvy enough to install and use windows. It also would eliminate a lot of problems we all face. In fact every point you make is why users that use windows give us grief and they get grief.
Also Installing windows XP or vista is far more challenging that Ubuntu, but most users cant install any OS.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Car analogy time. Let's transpose your statements. ...and he's defining "drive" as "move on four wheels from point A to point B along a road as most other cars do".
No, LinuxCar is not "free Chevy". And there is no reason other than him being an idiot to expect it to be.
So LinuxCar doesn't use gas out of the box. It DOES use leprechaun urine.
Does Chevy use leprechaun urine out of the box? No, nor do the most common versions use gas out of the box (uhhh). And he kind of skips over that.
LinuxCar is not "Free Chevy". Do not expect it to be. Do not complain when it is not.
Understand WHY LinuxCar was built.
Can I legally give duplicates I've made of my LinuxCar to 100 people without anyone being charged for it? Yes.
Can I do that with a Chevy? No.
===
The trick isn't that he doesn't understand how special LinuxCar is, it's that he doesn't care. He's writing from the position of the everyman, who doesn't want to hunt down a leprechaun to molest whenever he wants to go anywhere. He just wants to go there.
Mossberg expects/wants users to stay dumb and ignorant of actual computer use. Maybe what he wants is a general purpose appliance everyone magically understands how to operate without opening the manual.
/etc/X11/xorg.conf and /etc/hosts instead of just needing to know the section and field to change. This is simple shit IMO but if you can't keep one hand on the mouse, these people are lost.
IMO, people don't understand what a computer is, businesses don't train employees on even the basic of computer tasks, and all they end up figuring out is what sequence of buttons to click to get a task done or started. Pure memorization and that's if you're lucky. I recently heard someone tell me of a business person they needed to get a spreadsheet from before a software product could be pre-configured and delivered. They recieved a printout of the document and they found there were a couple of items left off the document. So, they asked if those could be updated and resent. The person didn't know that the file could be saved. That's right, every document ever written on the computer was printed and discarded when the word processor or spreadsheet app was closed. This was a contractor for the DoD and not a young school kid.
So Mossberg should be talking about how dumb users are instead of how even simple tasks are difficult for such users. It's hard to believe people used to use DOS hearing how often people keep crying about having to change/edit a text file to change how something works. I guess it's just too hard to teach these people since they can only seem to learn key sequences, not concepts. Therefore, they'd have to learn every key sequence to change say,
Mossberg should be showing them how easy it is to add this stuff and if learned, how easy it is to add thousands of things to their systems for free. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Linux have flaws etc...but seriously....does he know anything he's talking about... TouchPad do have something to configure how it work...gsynaptic or ksynaptic for gnome/kde Actually to make it work...you need to add something to the xorg.conf file so the synaptic app will be able to configure it. But with the new version of ubuntu, there will be a xorg editor in gui...wow... As for the rest...saying that "nobody is ultimately responsible for the quality of the product" is a bunch of crap...nothing really go into a release without being revised/tested enough to be enough stable or good. Saying that Ipods and his Kodak don't work as great as in windows.... Sorry we cannot be good in every ways...Do kodak or Apple provided the stuff to make it work correctly? No so, count you lucky that it works... As for stability, i rarely have problem of stability except hibernation that do some strange things to my screen...but it's not random...it always do the same thing but the computer still work... and for the last thing i hate the most of this article.... The last sentence.... "But for now, I still advise mainstream, nontechnical users to avoid Linux." Seriously, if normal mainstream non technical users avoid using linux how would we know what to change in it...? If there is nobody except us "techie" users... how would it help non technical user to get a platform that fits their needs more than anything else... Asking to avoid something because it's harder or different to use is like saying...don't try to find better solution to your problems because it may take time and self work on it. Something really difficult..self work...having to learn a new system etc... Ah and the funniest thing... "I was warned that some of these codecs might be "bad" or "ugly."" What is he talking about...? these codecs are in package named bad/ugly but aren't actually bad or ugly...they are just located in a package called like that...And if these package are called this way...this is probably just in link with FOSS and not quality of these codecs... As i see...wmv support would be in bad or ugly because its probably a bad idea to use this format...or ugly because it's a proprietary format...something very ugly isn't it?!
I personally agree, but the fact is that Ubuntu is going to be the one most of the new drivers and so on will work best with, because it's the currently most favored version out there. And it apparently works best running Windows games under Wine or other emulators.(a huge reason it draws in such a large crowd, actually)
Myself? I vote for Xandros for the first time newbie from Windows. Very clean and easy to use. Does tons of hand-holding and has a nice windows migration assistant built in that most average users can deal with. Not free, though, but so be it - most users will pay once and get free idiot-proof support and libraries for their trouble.
But, yes, Ubuntu isn't the only variety by a long shot(plus I personally don't like the Gnome interface)
As for the original article, I love the quote about it not being ready for prime-time. Newsflash: Vista never was, either. At least with the various versions of unix, they make it obvious that you're installing beta-ware.
Insightful. Come on moderators. Did you accidentally hit insightful when you were looking for BULLSHIT!
1. Installation sucks. Hardware support is lacking, the process is ambiguous and confusing for most users. Included in this is "Your documentation generally sucks because it's done by non-professionals."
Friday night. I'd just bought some new second-hand hardware comprised of a new motherboard video card. AMD Sempron 3000+ to AMD ??? 4200. Nvidia 6200TC to 7900. Put the new hardware in a new case, and pulled the harddrives out of my old system. Booted it up and went to playing Xplane with super resolution (compared to the old system). Let's see you try that with a Windows machine without a complete reinstall. I don't know about Macs. I've never used their hardware.
2. Much familiar, high quality Windows software is missing. Yes, Photoshop really is better than GIMP. And Office is better than OpenOffice. Quark is better than Scribus (or inDesign).
Familiar? To you maybe. How many typical users would be anything but lost in Photoshop? You're lucky if most even recognize the name. Quark? I don't even really know what that does. But does Windows have KiCAD? Until there is KiCAD on Windows or a Mac, neither does me any good.
3. People want clear, simple, fast answers to common problems, not a "fiddle with it and come back to our mailing list so we can call you stupid again."
And we know that there is all sorts of clear, simple answers to Window's problems all over the place. They consist of "Reboot" and "load the latest driver". Anything beyond that leaves you on your own.
4. Someone to call in case of emergency who can give definite answers. It's 3 AM and your taxes are due, and there's some odd problem you don't understand. You can call Microsoft and for $200 they'll fix it. For Linux?
If you're paying that much for support, there's Red Hat, Suse, Mandrivia, all sorts of local folks... Hell, for 200 bucks I'll show up on a Saturday to fix you computer problem.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba