Ubuntu Won't Moan To EU About Microsoft

Barence writes "The company behind the Ubuntu Linux distro says it has no plans to follow Opera's lead and file a complaint against Microsoft to the EU. Ubuntu 10.10 is the most 'consumer-friendly' version of the Linux distro to date, but it faces an uphill battle against Microsoft's marketing machine. Even high-profile supporter Dell has dropped Ubuntu machines from its website in recent months, while continuing to remind visitors that 'Dell recommends Windows 7' at the top of every PC page. 'I don't think we've ever considered [an EU complaint],' said Steve George, vice president of business development at Canonical. 'The improvements we're making to Ubunutu ... are a better route for us to reach out to users and get a bigger user base.'"

Comments

If it makes Ubuntu feel any better....

[Jailbrekr]

Dell may have dropped Ubuntu, but we dropped Dell. Good god are their business offerings ever horrible. We went out of our way to retire any and all Dell hardware with *extreme* prejudice.

Re:If it makes Ubuntu feel any better....

[MBGMorden]

The only Dell hardware I've had that gave me serious trouble was a robotic tape library. Aside from that, it's mostly been ok.

Still, I don't see this as a huge problem. Even when Ubuntu systems were available from them, you still had to track them down. Anyone who wants it can still install it for free. With Windows it's a great boon to get it installed from the manufacturer because Dell gets Windows for a very small fraction of the cost as an end user (IIRC, it's around $25 per copy for a manufacturer that size). As such, if you want Windows on your new machine, you're saving a ton of money by getting it that way. Ubuntu on the other hand, being free, loses that advantage. I can install it after the fact for the same price.

Re:If it makes Ubuntu feel any better....

[Confusador]

I can't speak for Jailbrekr, but we've been replacing their stuff as fast as we can not because it doesn't work, but because we know that when it fails it's going to be like pulling teeth to get it fixed. I don't know what sort of contractual/legal obligations made us wait this long, but now that we can we're going full bore.

Re:If it makes Ubuntu feel any better....

[exomondo]

To be honest, I don't know how it all works at the business level, all I know is that I'm ordering my next laptop without windows and I'm going to spend up to 12 hours on the phone to get the discount for it.

Wow...your time is really that low value?

Dell should just pack it in...

[strangeattraction]

It is time for Dell to admit it can't compete against the Chinese. MS tells them to stop shipping Ubuntu and they do. They have no will of their own.

Kudos

[MBGMorden]

I think they're probably going about it the right way. It's an uphill battle, and we've still got a ways to go, but Linux in general and Ubuntu specifically has been making great strides here.

I particularly like Ubuntu's focus on polish. They don't just crank out apps. They work on themes, fonts, artwork, etc. Things that really make the desktop shine to user who's just taking a test drive. There was a time when a Linux desktop without a TON of work poured into it (and sometimes even after it) was just ugly. Sure it didn't crash, and it was secure, but it looked like it was drawn by programmers - because it WAS back then. Getting UI and artwork people on board helps a lot, and Ubuntu is doing the right thing in that regard.

Re:Kudos

[_Sprocket_]

Yeah, I'm sure the reason for lack of blu-ray and Netflix support is too much time toying with The GIMP. There's nothing about either blu-ray or Netflix that's restricted. The only thing stopping Ubuntu from supporting these is all the time spent trying to decide on a brown or blue color pallet for the next release desktop default.

Re:Kudos

[h4rr4r]

Netflix is only because the netflix wants it that way.

Blu-ray is a legal nightmare. Expect proper support when it is totally broken.

Positive Rather than Negative

[BJ_Covert_Action]

'The improvements we're making to Ubunutu ... are a better route for us to reach out to users and get a bigger user base.'

High five for being one organization in this world that recognizes the benefits of positive advertisement rather than negative attack campaigns. It's always better to stay positive. People will like you more.

Re:Positive Rather than Negative

[catbutt]

Negative attack campaigns are one thing....but filing an antitrust complaint is another. We need healthy competition, and I don't think we have it. I think Opera did the right thing, and partially as a result of that, we have a lot healthier competition in browsers these days.

Good For Ubuntu and Canonical

[TheNinjaroach]

I don't have much respect for those who unnecessarily bring government and lawyers into every situation.

Another good point

[Anonymous Coward]

The amount spent on a single lawyer would probably pay for 2-3 programmers for the same period of time. Assuming you'd have 5 lawyers, 5 paralegals (1-2 programmers each), their support personnel (secretaries, whatever), and their expenses, you could probably hire 15-20 programmers and their support personnel over the same period of time that the lawyers would spend researching the complaint and drafting corrective proposals (probably a few months, maybe a year depending on any followup). The positive effect of 15-20 well paid and supported programmers on Ubuntu would probably have the same effect on adoption rates through word of mouth as bringing the complaint and giving people the option of choosing the Ubuntu that didn't have their improvements.

Of course, I could be overstating what 15-20 programmers could do. I can promise you, though, I'm not overstating how much attorneys cost...

Re:Word of Mouth

[Technician]

Slow like in the original Napster, Bittorrent, Pirate Bay? Unless made illegal, the converts don't go back.

Hate to break it to you but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apart from every techie worth his/her salt hating Dell, which I wholeheartedly second, I'm not surprised they or anyone else for that matter drops Ubuntu. I'm a proponent of FOSS and *NIX; I'm an IT manager and all of my servers run Linux or BSD or Solaris and I've tried Ubuntu 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 at home. 10 is the worst pile of dung. It won't install in good, working (admittedly old) consumer motherboards like Gigabyte 8IK*/8IP*, just because of the stupid boot code. It keeps rebooting at early stages where Ubuntu 7 & 8 worked well and at least installed without problems. I've also tried long-time an installation of Ubuntu at my home. I know how to use a computer but what I have to say out of experience is that Windows has *always* lasted longer than Ubuntu. My 2 years old Ubuntu installation started doing weird things after a month-long vacation. Suddenly I had to login twice, it didn't mount /home over NFS half the time (from a Solaris NFS server, not any shitty linux NFS implementation) and it was generally slow. In the end, something was pegging the processor at 100% which didn't show in top. I uninstalled it and went back to Windows 2k3.

If I didn't have Linux 2.4 and 2.6 hand-configured kernels that have been working for 12 years (2.4 series of course) without a single failure or unexplainable behavior I wouldn't know better, but I know Linux works. What don't are the high amounts of shit Ubuntu is spewing trying to be friendly and window-y so we can have our FOSS balls against the Apple balls and the Microsoft balls, and frankly, we are losing. Big. The desktop is NOT Linux territory and will not be for the foreseeable future. Don't even think about drop-in replacing Office with whatever open suite of 'productivity' software. I've tried them all, they work for simple letters, they miserly crash for complicated documents. They don't even get importing MS stuff right. Do you really believe that companies who have literally thousands of complex MS documents are going to switch, just for the sake of it, going through their files, opening every one of them and reformatting so it looks good again? Sure, in Linux la-la land.

We all love to hate Microsoft (for good reason I'd add) but their crap install everywhere and is totally backwards compatible. Anyone can run, say, Leisure Suit Larry in Vista. Conversely, you can argue Apple has always dropped backwards compat and gets away with it, but MacOS and Ubuntu just don't even begin to compare.

Ubuntu can compete neither with Windows nor with MacOS. Face it, Ubuntu is a joke and will be as long as it tries to be like MacOS withot innovation or like Windows reliability.