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."

Comments

Re:He didn't even mention Automatix or Easy Ubuntu

[blowdart]

He didn't even mention Automatix or Easy Ubuntu at all.

Of course he didn't. Dell doesn't ship those. Read the article, he's reviewing as shipped by Dell.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

That was my experience...

[kjkeefe]

I purchased an XPS 410 box from Dell's Ubuntu page. I'm a pretty well versed Ubuntu user and I realized that if nothing else, I'd be buying a machine that I knew had linux compatible hardware. When I got the machine and started it up, I was very disappointed. Just like the parent said, there was NO configuration

done by Dell. They just installed the basic Ubuntu and shipped it with the system at the step where it asks for a user name and all that. I had to spend significant time configuring the NVidia drivers, sound card, and audio/video codecs (probably a few hours altogether). I would bet that it would take days for someone new to linux to figure out how to do all that. For shame Dell... How hard would it have been to configure Ubuntu with the right drivers at least and then ghost that system onto every box you shipped.

Another interesting note about comparing it to Windows and OS X... I installed Windows XP SP2 in a dual boot configuration so I could play some games. Good god almighty, setting up windows was painful. I must have visited a dozen different sites, downloading 200MB in drivers, before I got everything working. The damned network card didn't even work after the initial install. I had to boot into Ubuntu, save the network driver to a USB key and then boot back into Windows. Also, I've had the system set up for about 3 weeks now and I still can't get the sound to work in windows. I've looked all over the web for the right windows sound driver with 0 luck. As for OSX, I still haven't been able to even install it! Oh wait, OSX only runs on Apple hardware... My forgot. Seriously though, if anyone know how to get the sound working in windows on an XPS 410 box, please let me know!

For those of you who are touting this story as a demonstration of linux's failure on the desktop, sod off. This wasn't a failure on the part of linux or ubuntu. This was a failure on the part of Dell in not providing a fully installed and configured system.

As a review for the Dell XPS 410:

After a Windows XP fresh install:

• Network card: not working
• Video card: working but at 1024x768 with no 3d acceleration
• Sound card: not working (still not working, even after weeks of trying to find a driver)

After a Ubuntu fresh install:

• Network card: working
• Video card: working, but at 1024x768 with no 3d acceleration
• Sound card: working (although it was muted by default which may confuse some users)

Re:There may be issues with Ubuntu

[RickRussellTX]

Windows plays DVD's out of the box.

No, it does not. Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate are the very first versions of Windows to include DVD playback capability -- all other versions of Windows (including other Vista versions) do not have the ability to play DVD videos.

If your computer play DVDs out of the box, it means that the system integrator installed DVD player software and codecs for you. You paid for it, separate from Windows.