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Ubuntu On Dell After Four Months
mrcgran sends us to LXer for an interview with John Hull, a manager of the Linux Engineering team at Dell, where he reports on how the Ubuntu machines have been working out for them so far. "Embracing Ubuntu Linux on our desktops and laptops seems to have really raised Dell's visibility within the Linux community. We have been supporting, testing, developing for, and selling Linux for 8+ years here at Dell, but before the Ubuntu announcement, a lot of people didn't know that we did any of that... Previous to our Ubuntu product announcement... we would have a conversations with vendors about pushing Linux support for their hardware, but without a Linux product offering from Dell for that hardware, it was very difficult to convince them to release Linux drivers. That has certainly changed now... The original sales estimates for Ubuntu computers was around 1% of the total sales, or about 20,000 systems annually. The program so far is meeting expectations. Customers are certainly showing their interest and buying systems preloaded with Ubuntu, but it certainly won't overtake Microsoft Windows anytime soon."
To be honest, I don't think it has to take over, nor do I think it will. Even Firefox didn't take over IE, but it did have some impact, and Microsoft changed its crappy CSS support to a _slightly_ better one. If Linux achieves ~20% or so it will be much harder for Microsoft to push its proprietary standards, and everyone benefits.
It's great that they are offering Ubuntu, but it is only available on one desktop system not the entire line-up and you need to go to a specific section of their website. I wish I could click customize and when the OS section comes up choose Ubuntu.
I know i'll probably get slaughtered for this, but I agree with this statement completely.
I'm completely pro open source, and started off with Ubuntu as my first linux distro about a year ago, as everyone was raving on about it. Really impressed with the package manager, but I was completely lost when it came to installing stuff that wasn't in there.
I'm on Mandriva now, which is a massively improved user experience, where most of my stuff worked perfectly out the box (except my wireless, which took a bit of work, but I got there eventually). However, I'm now in a position where I want to install subversion and tomcat, and it's really not easy. Windows wins in this situation, because of the ease of automated installers. Which is a great shame, and I know I'll get lambasted because I haven't done enough research or put the effort into to learning the basics of installing on linux properly, but for it to ever be accepted in the mainstream by your average Joe, things like that need to "just work".
http://studentseeksnoodles.blogspot.com: General thoughts of an
Tomcat and SVN probably isn't part of what average Joe will use.
While it's true that "professional" or "power user" software isn't that easy to setup (messing around in the configs with an editor, etc.), I don't think it would bother the ordinary desktop user very much, because he'll probably never need it.
OTOH, installing everyday software like OOo, Gimp, Firefox, small little games etc. is extremely easy on linux in comparison to windows. Browse repository, install and forget. With the added bonus that the software you get is very probably free of malware of any kind (if you use $DISTRO default repository) and same goes for updates to that software.
I, for the first time actually got a friend setup on Ubuntu a couple of weeks ago. Normally, being of the Microsoft persuasion, I'd recommend Windows if nothing else for its generally universal familiarity if nothing else (all the other PC's in the house were WinBoxes), but the machine she was given was free and not very good. The Windows installed on it was Win ME that wouldn't get even to the desktop unless in safe mode, so it had to go, but it was not capable of running XP to any degree of sanity (128 mb ram, celeron processor, etc), and indeed there was the licensing issue too.
A perfect opportunity for Ubuntu I thought! Or not, as it turned out.
I downloaded and burnt the latest CD image and installed it. Everything was installed fine, except the network card was not detected, rendering the machine even less useful than the butchered ME installation that was on it before. She only wanted to browse the net and read GMail basically, so without a network connection, the laptop was now as good as a large paper-weight.
Now, this is by no means a flame against Ubuntu at all. Before it turned out Ubuntu was compatible, I was thinking to myself that if there's one area Ubuntu could really grow in is the "too old to run Windows x/y/z" which sets the hardware requirement bar higher & higher with each release.
Despite what Microsoft say, Vista is not suited to all PC's - but arguably, Ubuntu is suited to run on almost anything assuming you don't mind common commercial apps/games aren't going to run for newbies (for obvious reasons).
So, if I had one suggestion for Ubuntu/Linux is please, get it to run on shite hardware! Refurbished machines are overlooked if you ask me as many people really can't be bothered to buy new hardware, and Windows really isn't so suited for them in many cases.
throw new NoSignatureException();
You're making in incorrect assumption. It's EASIER to use a package manager. Most distros (and competent admins) seriously frown upon non-package-manager-installed software because of the problems this can introduce. Also, puTTY? Why? Just stick with the Linux/UNIX equivalents that puTTY was made to emulate. (That's right, puTTY was made for Windows users to get unix functionality, not vice versa.)
Please, tell me one thing that putty can do that ssh, telnet, and xterm can't.
When Apple bolts OS X to specific hardware, it's justified in the name of user experience. Apple stabilises the user experience by limiting the OS to a certain subset of hardware: theirs.
Ubuntu, on the other hand, doesn't have that option. It does, however, have the option of pointing users in the direction of certain software by making it easy to install: repositories. Things that go into the repos are tested for compatibility, they install smoothly, and yet there are literally thousands of programs in the repos.
If you want something outside the repos, you have to install it yourself. Which is not that easy unless someone has packaged the application properly.
I like to look at this as a way of helping the Ubuntu user experience become as seamless and smooth as possible. Wide array of hardware, specific array of software.
[ think ]
http://www.mhall119.com