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Results of the Ubuntu Desktop Applications Survey (dustinkirkland.com)

Ubuntu Product and Strategy head at Canonical, dustinkirkland writes: A few months ago, Slashdot readers were asked for feedback on the Ubuntu Desktop default applications. This blog post, by the author of that post (hi, it's me again), provides the aggregated and processed results of that survey.

93 comments

  1. Video! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can't RTFA and I don't want to WTFV.

    1. Re:Video! by Gaygirlie · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yeah, I opened the link, found it to be a bunch of videos and just a mere couple of lines of text, and closed the tab. Videos are annoying enough even as-is, let alone videos recorded at some conference or such.

    2. Re:Video! by Frederic54 · · Score: 4, Informative

      There's also 44 frames of a PPT, in low resolution, with so much jpeg that you cannot read them properly.

      --
      "Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
    3. Re:Video! by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Funny

      Print those slides on a colour inket printer, then send those prints to me by fax.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    4. Re:Video! by mschwanke97402 · · Score: 3, Funny

      There's also 44 frames of a PPT, in low resolution, with so much jpeg that you cannot read them properly.

      So, the author must have been stuck with Ubuntu desktop apps to produce his report. Hence the crappy result.

    5. Re:Video! by tomxor · · Score: 1

      There's also 44 frames of a PPT, in low resolution, with so much jpeg that you cannot read them properly.

      Print those slides on a colour inket printer, then send those prints to me by fax.

      Then take a picture of them on your phone in very low light at a strange angle

      Finally send it through that newfangled AI super resolution interpolation algorithm

      Output: doge... well it was trained on the internet

    6. Re:Video! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why is everything expressed in video? Doesn't anyone write or can read anymore? I can skim through a article faster to get the gist of what's happening much better then sitting through a video. The fact Ubuntu is drowning in a identity crisis in which it poured so much effort into Unity only to abandoned it a few years later. Linux on desktop is so splintered now, nobody that does a distro will ever be very successful.

    7. Re:Video! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But I'll bet they are pretty proud of them and you have to wonder if some Linux users are just afraid to step out of the early 2000 and work with real applications. I've tried several Linux desktops and open source apps and am amazed at what the open source community thinks is good apps? The stuff is crap, and while the Linux OS is fairly stable and well done. The rest of the open source stuff sucks.

    8. Re:Video! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So I watched the video and found it worthwhile.
      In case Ubuntu are still collecting feedback (from this thread)...
      * Please remove or make optional at install-time all the "international" fonts. It takes hours to clean this up every time as the extra fonts really get in the way when you do a lot of publishing and related work.
      * gedit fails on smallish documents, under 2000 lines - the last line is not accessible. The older gedit was beautiful, the devs need to go back and wipe out many new changes. A software tester would label this: regression issues. Just fix it already
      * viewer (hides under several names), but gedit's Gnome stable brother for image viewing. Too many regressions to start listing here, I was using this all day every day. I now moved to pix which forks the older codebase, before the damager-devs messed something up. As with gedit, just fix and I need it yesterday.
      Otherwise, the roadmap to 18.04 LTS is looking great and some good decisions are being made.

    9. Re:Video! by PixetaledPikachu · · Score: 1

      There's also 44 frames of a PPT, in low resolution, with so much jpeg that you cannot read them properly.

      You can switch to full screen view to get a better look at them

  2. Results unreadable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You can't read the results, it's just a bunch of randomly moving pixels.

    Can you fix this Dustin?

    1. Re:Results unreadable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let us see...

      First, if you want a long-form text , great, I like it, too -- specially when filled with facts and not just opinion.

      This is not what you (or me) want; it's a recorded presentation -- which is what the audience was expecting. Also, the main objective seems to be to draw insights for a future Ubuntu LTS release, not even make it delightful for that audience -- much less for us. So, let's hear what the guy says and enjoy what we can -- some cannot read well the bad pics (including me), but some which cannot hear have it worse.

      What can be done about the video? Turn on captions (click on the card pic besides the video options cogwheel) -- they are of good quality in the present case and one can even reduce the video speed (click on the cogwheel and reduce "Normal" to "0.75" or whatever is better for you (hint for Youtube: option to save captions).

      The presentation doesn't really help much, because the problem is in the graphics. I myself generate that kind of charts often and it's really hard to make them readable at times.

      Some observations:

      1) Screen dumps with lots of lines suck in pictures, because of reduced resolution (to save space), increased artifacts (from low quality compression) and browser scaling (Firefox is known to do a worse job than Chrome, for instance); the solution is try to capture content as text, which can avoid degradation, or use bigger fonts/zoomed page for easier reading;

      2) Charts must have high contrast text, slanted is harder to read, blue is not a good color (we have less blue-detecting eye cells) and outliers (e.g. Libreoffice in the Office suite category) ruin your chart; the color issue is further complicated when the bars are too close, BTW;

      3) In the Bonus Apps, we can see that lack of space caused some names to be omitted -- like e.g. that name of the second most suggested app -- that has already happened to me, too, and well, it sucks.

      Regarding the apps themselves, some results surprised me a lot:

      a) Firefox is still the most desired on Linux, beating Chrome (BTW, so that you know, Netflix works in Firefox 32-bit, but it refuses some old PCs); which is actually good;

      b) Libreoffice domination is massive -- probably explained by the weakness of some competition (Gnumeric/Abiword), obscurity of others (Calligra) and also "lack of Freedom" (WPS/Softmaker); this is actually worrisome;

      c) dolphin lost to nautilus -- cannot understand that, as dolphin is much better, and konqueror better yet (if someone updates its codebase, that is);

      d) why gnome-terminal? in what sense is it better than konsole? aren't all terminals more or less the same? (remember, we're not talking about shells here);

      e) okular is better than evince (AFAIR, I had to install it to read PDFs that evince would not open)... why did evince win?

      f) bonus apps should be sorted in their own or new categories (e.g. inkscape, brasero, wine).

      Finally, an additional point: apps do not need to be planned for the release date (April 2018, in the present case). They can be added at any time, much line new apps enter the Google Play Store. I get this is perhaps about the default Ubuntu apps, but a given app gets in and out of favor and could be added to the Ubuntu Software Center in a much more dynamical manner. Or maybe I'm wrong about that?

    2. Re: Results unreadable by Monster_user · · Score: 1

      Ubuntu is Gnome-Centric. Ubuntu dropped official support for KDE, and Kubuntu also, and so it doesn't always get an LTS release.

      This likely means that few Kubuntu users were at the Ubuntu conference. Thus few votes for KDE.

    3. Re:Results unreadable by scdeimos · · Score: 1

      Finally, an additional point: ...

      Finally, I've got my own additional point: the study was fundamentally flawed because it polled three nerd sites instead of the Ubuntu desktop users themselves.

      Don't know about you but after having used Ubuntu desktop for over a decade I moved to other platforms and now only keep Ubuntu servers around.

    4. Re:Results unreadable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm the poster of the comment you're replying to. And I totally agree about surveying non-nerd users; maybe they can do that in the next poll...

      Just to make things clear, I'm not an Ubuntu user -- I use Mint. Thus the matter interests me indirectly.

      In spite of that, I have the utmost respect for Ubuntu, for being one of the few places with open declared love for the desktop. They are criticized for a lot of things, while the kernel guys are busy mainly with what makes Linux more successful: servers. To the extent that Ubuntu is our best bet against monopolies, I can only wish them absolute success.

      That said, I never was (and probably never will be) a Gnome user. KDE is my favorite as a more complete environment, but, owing to reasons of ease of use, I started to use Xfce for the sake of the rest of my family (my own computer runs with KDE, though). Media computer: Xfce; banking computer: Xfce; portable notebook to use at work: Xfce.

      Xfce is enough. Gnome (3, I mean) and Cinnamon use special instructions which make them slow on my older PCs. I cannot use Gnome-only distributions, in fact. But I need some Gnome apps like Gimp.

      I used Xubuntu for a time and it looks nice. Lubuntu is also OK. Mint has an interesting practice: all editions seem to be LTS, AFAIR.

  3. There's no report to read here by goose-incarnated · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm getting the impression that knowing how to read automatically removes the user from consideration in the Ubuntu (and Gnome as well) worlds.

    The message you send by making video-only text-based content is :"If you can read you're way too smart to be the target of this content. This content is for people too stupid to read, so go away!"

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
    1. Re:There's no report to read here by Dracolytch · · Score: 4, Informative

      A link to the text slides was available, allowing for a quick peruse without having to watch the video, right here:
      https://www.slideshare.net/dus...

      --
      This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
    2. Re:There's no report to read here by JohnFen · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ah, I mistook that slide show for a video. So let me rephrase my earlier comment...

      They aren't locked away in a slideshow, are they? Is there any chance they could be made available in a reasonable format?

    3. Re:There's no report to read here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmm. Amazing how much time conservatives spend watching Fox "News" and denying scientific research papers.

      Coincidence? I think not.

    4. Re:There's no report to read here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A link to the text slides was available, allowing for a quick peruse without having to watch the video, right here: https://www.slideshare.net/dus...

      Could you please tell me how to read slide #5 content without changing it to full screen? Why do I need to do that in order to just view some content? Also, can you text-search the content?

    5. Re:There's no report to read here by Thelasko · · Score: 1

      A link to the text slides was available, allowing for a quick peruse without having to watch the video, right here: https://www.slideshare.net/dus...

      Aww, how corporate of them!

      --
      One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
    6. Re:There's no report to read here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Surprise! Slide show doesn't work in Pale Moon.

      Gosh, aren't web standards great? Big companies like LinkedIn can just ignore them!

    7. Re:There's no report to read here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Web standards are great. Pale Moon is just junk.

    8. Re:There's no report to read here by secretsquirel · · Score: 1

      spoiler alert, 'pale' and 'moon' both only had a couple votes for browser

  4. AVOID ITS A VIDEO NOT NICE READABLE TEXT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seriously fed up of video this, video that.

    GIVE ME SOME FUCKING TEXT AND A FEW CHARTS!

    At least I have the option of blacklisting the site and never ever visiting it again.

    1. Re:AVOID ITS A VIDEO NOT NICE READABLE TEXT by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Even worst is the so-called "videos" on YouTube where it's some idiot who's made a photos slideshow with animated transitions and an annoying background music.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    2. Re:AVOID ITS A VIDEO NOT NICE READABLE TEXT by blackomegax · · Score: 1

      Why bother with web hosting and presentation when you can just throw a powerpoint on youtube and get ad revenue?

  5. IDE by Merk42 · · Score: 2

    Winner:
    Visual Studio

    Clearly no one from Slashdot voted for that as it's made by Microsoft.

    1. Re:IDE by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Browser: Firefox, Chromium, Chrome.

      Seriously?

      Firefox 4,500; Chrome-ish 3,000 total.

    2. Re:IDE by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

      Dude, IDE sucks. Even SATA is dying. Everyone is moving to M.2 if they can.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    3. Re:IDE by cmaurand · · Score: 1

      No, everyone is moving to nvme. m.2 sucks, too. It's no faster than SATA and SATA is the bottleneck, now.

    4. Re:IDE by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      Winner: Visual Studio

      How can Visual Studio be the best IDE for Ubuntu if both it and its defining .NET Framework can only be natively installed on Windows?! I guess that this refers to Visual Studio Code, an enhanced code editor which has little to do with Visual Studio. Apparently, the best Linux alternative for Visual Studio is MonoDevelop.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    5. Re:IDE by Vairon · · Score: 2

      The M.2 specification allows for PCIe 3.0 (4 lanes), USB 3.0 or SATA 3.0 to be exposed. Most NVMe cards such as the Samsung 860 Pro use a M.2 interface. See http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/ssd960.html

      It's up to the host device (motherboard) maker and storage device maker to decide which bus to allow through the M.2 interface.

    6. Re: IDE by Monster_user · · Score: 1

      Everyone's a comedian,...

    7. Re: IDE by Monster_user · · Score: 1

      What self-respecting *Nix user uses Chromium based anything? Thats for the unwashed Windows masses.

    8. Re:IDE by Vairon · · Score: 1

      Correction. Revision 1.1 of the M.2 specification allows USB 3.1 gen1 instead of USB 3.0 I stated earlier.

    9. Re: IDE by tepples · · Score: 1

      What self-respecting *Nix user uses Chromium based anything?

      The official client for Skype uses Electron, which is Chrome hardcoded to visit one website. So does the official client for Discord.

      "Then just use the web-based client in Firefox instead."
      Web-based clients either are missing features or make them Chrome-only. Skype for Web running in Firefox for Linux is missing voice and video chat; the Call button is grayed out. Discord for Web running in Firefox doesn't allow uploading emoji images to your own server or to other servers where your account has the permission. Firefox users can rename or delete emojis; they just can't upload new ones. Firefox users can upload attachments, but not emojis. Uploading emojis to Discord in Firefox worked until May 23, 2017, when the server settings user interface was redesigned.

    10. Re:IDE by tepples · · Score: 1

      How can Visual Studio be the best IDE for Ubuntu if both it and its defining .NET Framework can only be natively installed on Windows?!

      Presumably because they can be non-natively installed into a licensed copy of Windows running in a virtual machine on Ubuntu, and Merk42 believes that the advantages of Visual Studio outweigh the Windows license price and the VM overhead.

    11. Re:IDE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The best IDE for Ubuntu, and every other LInux, is Vim, of course. At a very distant number 2 there's emacs I suppose. And of the 5 IDEs entered, Visual Studio didn't make the top 10.

    12. Re:IDE by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      Presumably because they can be non-natively installed into a licensed copy of Windows running in a virtual machine on Ubuntu

      This shouldn't be an acceptable alternative when assessing applications running on Ubuntu. Visual Studio would be running on Windows and only the corresponding virtual machine on Ubuntu.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    13. Re:IDE by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      I have recently installed Linux on my main machine for the first time ever and am still getting used to the IDEs/editors. For the time being, Eclipse (for Java) and CodeBlocks (for C/C++) work pretty much like the Windows versions. MonoDevelop (for Mono C#/VB.NET) seems quite nice, but I haven't used it too much. As code/text editor, I am temporarily using Gedit, but its performance isn't as good as the one of the tool I was using on Windows (Notepad++).

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    14. Re:IDE by rklrkl · · Score: 1

      It's SATA 3 that sucks *really* hard now - so much so that if anyone reviews a SATA 3 SSD nowadays, they're mostly wasting their time (hint: SATA 3 was saturated by SSDs about 6 years ago). m.2 in its PCIe form is the current choice for those who want speed - my SM961 does over 3,000 Mbytes/sec read for instance.

    15. Re:IDE by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      I might have voted for Edge if it were cross platform. :-) C'mon, MS, get your act together!

    16. Re:IDE by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      Winner:
      Visual Studio

      Clearly no one from Slashdot voted for that as it's made by Microsoft.

      Well there is Visual Studio Code for Linux. I just installed it on Ubuntu and Fedora VM's right before I went onto slashdot. :-)

      What I would like to see for me to use Linux again as my host OS is to get rid of Gnome, SystemD, and work on Mate (very outdated now) and redo it. Even Microsoft realized no one wanted a cell phone on their desktop and came out with Windows 10. Maybe a gnome 4 with an gnome 2.6 like UI but more modern and flat looking with a taskbar like some of add-ons and a Windows 10/Launcher (macOSX) like viewer for people who LOVE typing a name of a file or program from Gnome 3. Put effects back in.

      This would be the best of both worlds similiar to Apple and Windows 10 and still give the flexibility of type searches.

      For apps:
      -get rid of Firefox and put Chome (Firefox for Linux sucks goatballs. Firefox just now misrendered websites in Fedora 26 where Chrome worked perfect)
      - replace vim or at least add ATOM.IO and Microsoft Code as well. Emacs and Vim are pretty outdated today
      - Add KVM and VirtualBox. In 2017 people want to virtualize stuff. Especially geeks who use Ubuntu

      Just my 2 cents

    17. Re: IDE by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      What self-respecting *Nix user uses Chromium based anything?

      The official client for Skype uses Electron, which is Chrome hardcoded to visit one website. So does the official client for Discord.

      "Then just use the web-based client in Firefox instead."
      Web-based clients either are missing features or make them Chrome-only. Skype for Web running in Firefox for Linux is missing voice and video chat; the Call button is grayed out. Discord for Web running in Firefox doesn't allow uploading emoji images to your own server or to other servers where your account has the permission. Firefox users can rename or delete emojis; they just can't upload new ones. Firefox users can upload attachments, but not emojis. Uploading emojis to Discord in Firefox worked until May 23, 2017, when the server settings user interface was redesigned.

      Shit what self respecting geek who codes still uses VIm or Emacs when Chromium based Electron editors exist like ATOM.IO, Microsoft Code, Adobe Brackets, and a few others.

    18. Re:IDE by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      Winner:
      Visual Studio

      How can Visual Studio be the best IDE for Ubuntu if both it and its defining .NET Framework can only be natively installed on Windows?! I guess that this refers to Visual Studio Code, an enhanced code editor which has little to do with Visual Studio. Apparently, the best Linux alternative for Visual Studio is MonoDevelop.

      Electron based editors are all the rage now and can do alot of MonoDevelop and more. Atom.io, Microsoft Visual Studio Code (ironically), and I think Brackets as well. True the real Visual Studio has tools for groupware and advanced testing but Atom.IO has A TON of add-ons that do so so much. Web developers will not touch something like VS 2017 or Monodevelop after using one of the 3 above or Sublime.

    19. Re:IDE by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      Web developers will not touch something like VS 2017 or Monodevelop after using one of the 3 above or Sublime.

      No idea about that. Firstly, I am not a web developer; and secondly, I have lots of experience in Visual Studio, feel very comfortable with any version of it and like MonoDevelop. Although I do think that the last versions of VS are becoming too bloated and prefer to use a bit older versions like VS 2012; in fact, I have only tested the Community alternatives of VS 2015/2017 and this might also have something to do with my impression. In any case and as you should recall from some of our previous conversations, I am currently moving to Linux, looking for good enough alternatives for my Windows-based everything and might even consider to stop using Visual Studio.

      On the other hand, I am not sure that you might easily develop a C#/VB.NET application with one of the editors you refer right away. In principle, they should have a reasonably good syntax support and coupling them with the .NET compiler shouldn't be a problem either; but all this seems too labourious/crappy/unfriendly. Why not using Visual Studio, MonoDevelop or similar right away? You have just to double click on the corresponding solution to get an excellent code editor with lots of visual helps, to compile/debug/run everything right away, etc. What is the problem/difficulty of using a tool whose main purpose is to facilitate your work? How can anyone developing even the simplest piece of software have problems with so user-friendly software? A different story would be to rely on other (non-compiled) languages, where there are multiple alternatives and the requirements are different; but using VS/similar is certainly the best way to develop a .NET-based whatever.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    20. Re:IDE by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      Correction to my "the last versions of VS are becoming too bloated": my first posted-on-Slashdot impressions about VS 2017 were quite good and it does seem much quicker/flexible regarding what to install than VS 2015. It still continues in the same line of over-friending the GUI (VS is very user-friendly since long time ago, keeping adding visual helps/information doesn't seem required/useful) but, in principle, I wouldn't mind to use it. The problem is that it is still too new and, as per the usual VS/.NET proceeding, likely to be quite unreliable. So, I will better wait a bit before considering 2017 my main VS, by plainly skipping the 2015 version which I have only used when strictly required.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
  6. Low resolution slideshow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can't read anything!

  7. How do we report spam posts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is getting out of hand.

  8. Where are the promised results? by JohnFen · · Score: 1

    They aren't locked away in the video, are they? Is there any chance they could be made available in a reasonable format?

  9. Poor KDE by Monster_user · · Score: 1

    I prefer Totemto VLC, except when I run across videos that Totem has trouble with. Totem has a nicer UI, and works most of the time, so VLC is a backup. Same as it is on Windows. I just don't want it to be the default.

    Gnome-Terminal is nice, and so is gedit, but I'm more a fan of KDE. Konsole, Kate, and no Gnome registry. Dolphin or Konqueror for a file manager. Suprised they scored so low. I guess KDE users got tired of getting dumped on by Canonical, and switched to other distributions. Or maybe they are hoping for a Kubuntu conference. Or probably just not participating cause their votes typically don't matter.

    Firefox and LibreOffice/OpenOffice are hard to beat. And like a lot of Linux users I would rather avoid anything Chromium based.

    1. Re:Poor KDE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I prefer Totemto VLC, except when I run across videos that Totem has trouble with. Totem has a nicer UI, and works most of the time, so VLC is a backup. Same as it is on Windows. I just don't want it to be the default.

      i googled Totemto VLC and can't find anything. are you sure it exists anywhere beside you're imagination?

    2. Re:Poor KDE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I prefer Totemto VLC, except when I run across videos that Totem has trouble with. Totem has a nicer UI, and works most of the time, so VLC is a backup. Same as it is on Windows. I just don't want it to be the default.

      i can't seem to find totemto vlc

    3. Re: Poor KDE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Probably talking about this. I assume.

    4. Re:Poor KDE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What is 'Totemto VLC?'

    5. Re: Poor KDE by Monster_user · · Score: 1

      Typo.
      *I prefer Totem to VLC.

    6. Re:Poor KDE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is a space missing in the sentence. To paraphrase with the correction:

      "I prefer Totem to VLC"

      Totem = a media for Gnome
      VLC = a great cross-platform media player that runs on Linux, Windows, Mac, Android

  10. unintelligible garbage by Osgeld · · Score: 1

    coming from the Ubuntu camp, why am I not surprised?

    1. Re: unintelligible garbage by Monster_user · · Score: 1

      Not entirely unintelligible. Largely uninteresting. Pretty much everything is Gnome, except where they are longstanding clear leaders, like Firefox or VLC, or some OpenOffice variant. Visual Studio as the IDE is the only real standout.

  11. Well... by kurkosdr · · Score: 1

    Have they solved their endless power management problems, where Ubuntu gets less battery life than Windows, even if you install any proprietary drivers on Ubuntu manually? No? Then I don't care what applications it runs as default, Ubuntu is still useless for most people (and so are all Desktop Linux distros). It's a mobile world out there.

    1. Re:Well... by zekica · · Score: 1

      My Latitude E5470 (i5-6300u) uses 4.5W while idle at 50% brightness and achieves 12 hours and 20 minutes while idling. In windows 10, it uses 4.2W and achieves 13 hours in the same conditions. My Latitude E5450 (i5-5300u) uses 5.2W while idle at 50% and achieves 10 hours. In windows, it uses 5.0W and achieves 10 hours 10 minutes. My Vostro 5470 (i3-4010u) uses 4.5W while idle - 11 hours 30 minutes. In windows it uses 4.3W - 12 hours. That's not a significant difference (5-7%), I can use the PCs for 7-8 hours when doing light browsing or coding.

  12. full-screen slides by gosand · · Score: 1

    I was able to see them fine after making them full-screen. (jump to slide 12 and start there)

    --

    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

  13. Linus is the future and it always will be. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This crowded unaccountable garbage is exactly why Linux (including Ubuntu) is still by-programmers, for-programmers... all about the coders.
    No normal human being would want to sift through that cr4p, and if they did, there's no "there" there. I thought maybe things had changed. Maybe linux as a desktop OS was finally ready for users who were not coders. I took the chance of switching from windows to using ubuntu (instead of Mac), and no It looks like a total dead end.

    1. Re:Linus is the future and it always will be. by JohnFen · · Score: 1

      Don't judge all of Linux by Ubuntu. Personally, I think Ubuntu is not a good distro at all.

    2. Re:Linus is the future and it always will be. by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      What do you use in preference and why?

      I tend to default to Ubuntu, though with FVWM and my own config.

      The main "problem" is that LTS gets rather stale, though that's kinda the point. You can always install a different distro, e.g. newer Ubuntu in a chroot if you want newer programs.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    3. Re:Linus is the future and it always will be. by JohnFen · · Score: 1

      My main problem with Ubuntu is that I find it very difficult to make it work properly on several of my machines. I also dislike Ubuntu's choices for settings and default apps, so I end up having to spend a lot of time rejigging Ubuntu installs to make them usable for me, and even then I tend to have stability issues.

      I generally use vanilla Debian, since that nearly always works acceptably "out of the box".

  14. Microsoft released .Net for Linux a year or 2 ago by raymorris · · Score: 2

    https://www.microsoft.com/net/...

    Microsoft raised the white flag and surrendered to Linux a year or two ago.

  15. LinkedIn members only by tepples · · Score: 2

    If I click "Download" on that page then "Continue to download", I'm presented with a box to log in to LinkedIn or sign up for LinkedIn. Was this article intended as an ad for Microsoft's LinkedIn service?

  16. Re:Microsoft released .Net for Linux a year or 2 a by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

    Microsoft raised the white flag and surrendered to Linux a year or two ago.

    I knew about attempts at natively porting to Linux and even using Windows-based Visual Studio to directly develop on Linux. But this isn't the same than having a proper Visual Studio/.NET support equivalent to the one on Windows. These are just the first versions which are likely to be quite faulty (not criticising Microsoft/.NET Team, just guessing their most likely behaviour on account of their usual proceeding). Additionally, .NET Core isn't the same that the whole .NET Framework. So, for the time being and as per my knowledge (honestly, not too good; as far as I haven't done too much .NET work on Linux), the most reliable comprehensive enough Linux alternative to .NET continues being Mono, where the best IDE seems to be the referred MonoDevelop (I have started using it quite recently, precisely on Ubuntu, and it seems quite nice).

    --
    Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
  17. VSC is excellent. MS of 2017 isn't MS of 1997. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I use Visual Studio Code on a daily basis. It's the best IDE on Linux by a huge margin. It's much, much, much more efficient to use than Atom, vim or Emacs are, and I say this as somebody who has used vim for many years and is quite proficient with it. It's nowhere near as slow and bloated as Eclipse and NetBeans are. Visual Studio Code provides a great foundation, and there are a lot of great plugins that make it even better.

    Face it, the Microsoft of 2017 is not the Microsoft of 2007, and it's not the Microsoft of 1997. With Azure in the picture, Microsoft of 2017 has a lot more to gain from people using Linux than they have to lose.

    If you're firmly stuck in the past and thinking that the situation today is the same as it was 20 years ago, then you're a fool.

    As for the old "embrace, extend, extinguish" meme, I think it applies far more to the supposedly pro-Linux corporations than it does to Microsoft. It wasn't Microsoft that embraced GNOME, extended GNOME 2 into GNOME 3, and by doing so extinguished GNOME's usability. It wasn't Microsoft that embraced sysvinit, extended it into systemd, and extinguished my computers' ability to boot reliably.

    Frankly, Microsoft hasn't harmed my Linux experience at all. Thanks to things like Visual Studio Code, .NET Core and now SQL Server, Microsoft is actually improving my Linux user experience significantly.

    If Microsoft came out with a Linux distro that didn't use systemd, that provided a good UI (they could just use KDE), and that had great .NET Core integration by default, then I would switch in an instant. I'd even consider paying a reasonable amount of money to use such a system.

    I know, you or somebody else will probably trot out the "shill" or "bot" false accusations at this point. But the reality is that Microsoft isn't paying me anything to write this comment, and they don't have to. I'm impressed with the product they've created, and I'm not afraid to say so.

    Microsoft is doing more to help the Linux community today than the supposed pro-Linux companies are.

    1. Re: VSC is excellent. MS of 2017 isn't MS of 1997. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That all sounds fine and dandy, but the brutal honest truth is, the only reason microsoft gives a shit about linux is because of Azure.

      A microsoft cloud service that has more Linux instances than its own operating system windows. That is telling.

  18. When a non-Ubuntu IDE is best tool for the job by tepples · · Score: 1

    Visual Studio would be running on Windowsand only the corresponding virtual machine on Ubuntu.

    I guess that rules out anything written in Java, C#, or Python, as all three languages run on virtual machines. Eclipse would be running on IcedTea, MonoDevelop would be running on Mono, and even Update Manager would be running on CPython.

    And even if you're willing to explain the key difference between JVM, CLR, or a Python interpreter on the one hand and VirtualBox on the other hand, let me rephrase my interpretation of Merk42's comment in light of your rule that applications in virtual machines don't count:

    "When the best tool for a job is exclusive to Windows, you run Windows. Visual Studio is the best tool for X, Y, and Z jobs [please clarify how], and it's so much better at these jobs than widely used IDEs for Ubuntu that it's worth running Windows in addition to Ubuntu."

    1. Re:When a non-Ubuntu IDE is best tool for the job by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      I guess that rules out anything written in Java, C#, or Python, as all three languages run on virtual machines. Eclipse would be running on IcedTea, MonoDevelop would be running on Mono, and even Update Manager would be running on CPython.

      In fact, these situations are identical to running Visual Studio on a virtual machine! Any application written in Java is actually being run on its virtual machine rather than on Ubuntu, why should that situation be any different? You are right, there is no difference. So, running Visual Studio on a virtual machine has to be fine, otherwise lots of applications written in various programming languages would have to be ignored too. I stand corrected.

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      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    2. Re:When a non-Ubuntu IDE is best tool for the job by JesseMcDonald · · Score: 2

      In fact, these situations are identical to running Visual Studio on a virtual machine! Any application written in Java is actually being run on its virtual machine rather than on Ubuntu, why should that situation be any different?

      The most relevant differences are that these virtual machines are (a) free software and (b) included with your Ubuntu installation. Windows is neither. One might also point out that the JVM or other language-specific virtual machine is much "thinner", and better integrated with the host operating system, than the full PC hardware emulation that you need to run Windows as a guest operating system.

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    3. Re:When a non-Ubuntu IDE is best tool for the job by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      virtual machines are (a) free software and (b) included with your Ubuntu installation. Windows is neither. One might also point out that the JVM or other language-specific virtual machine is much "thinner"

      And additionally we are talking about a whole OS which is pretty much the opposite of all what Ubuntu/Linux is supposed to represent. Yes, the differences are clear; but, for the purpose of the current discussion, all of them might be ignored. We are not analysing a list of clearly-defined conditions where all the aforementioned aspects might be brought into consideration; this is about finding a good enough reason justifying why Visual Studio might be included in that list despite not being natively supported by Linux.

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  19. Illiterate here, please help by sinij · · Score: 1

    Hi, I am fully illiterate and can't read or write. Could someone please make a video to summarize the results of this survey?

  20. Sure thing... by gosand · · Score: 1
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    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

  21. Calendar by Thelasko · · Score: 1

    I feel it should be noted that they separated Thunderbird and Lightning into two separate entries in the survey. For those unaware, the calendar plugin for Thunderbird is Lightning. Therefore, they should be counted as one. Doing so would make them the winner hands down. Unfortunately, since the separated them, Gnome-Calendar was the winner.

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    One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
    1. Re: Calendar by Monster_user · · Score: 1

      Perhaps most Ubuntu users have an Android phone, and Google email, and so the Google-Calendar syncs better than Lightning in Thunderbird?

    2. Re:Calendar by JohnFen · · Score: 1

      Ubuntu is Gnome territory, so I would fully expect to see a lot of Gnome-love in the results.

    3. Re:Calendar by Thelasko · · Score: 1

      Ubuntu is Gnome territory, so I would fully expect to see a lot of Gnome-love in the results.

      But there isn't. Most people are using Thunderbird. However, the people that ran the survey screwed up the results.

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      One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
  22. nice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm fine with the results. Keep on fighting the good fight ubuntu!

  23. .Net Core for console/server, Mono for GUI by raymorris · · Score: 1

    I just read a long analysis by someone who seems to be quite knowledgeable about both, and they updated it over time as .Net Core improved and the focus of the Mono ecosystem has changed.

    The bottom line:
    For server and cli / console applications, you're probably better off with . Net Core. Microsoft is heavily invested in making that work well. They want .Net used on Linux servers, since everyone is using Linux servers.
    For GUI applications, Mono is a better bet. Microsoft isn't big on supporting the Linux graphical desktop.

    1. Re:.Net Core for console/server, Mono for GUI by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      As said, I am not in a position to confirm/dismiss your statements; so, I will assume that they are right. On the other hand, you are not saying anything about compatibility issues (perhaps there is a theoretically perfect backwards compatibility with old .NET versions, but what about applications developed before the relatively-new .NET Core was even created?) and actually reliability of this new approach. Personally, I will better stick to Mono for the time being, although I might start testing the native Linux alternatives to get a feeling of how is everything going on that front.

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  24. Re:Spyware Studio by xororand · · Score: 1

    Visual Studio, the IDE whose C++ compiler secretly injected spyware into binaries?

  25. Oh fuck all by wjcofkc · · Score: 1

    That's my review of this shit.

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  26. Wait wait wait by wjcofkc · · Score: 1

    We just helped some motherfucker write his keynote? Wait, not me. I smelled a rat and stayed away from the initial story.

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  27. Meanwhile... by wjcofkc · · Score: 1

    Melinda Gates is a cunt.

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  28. Pack your version of Core into the executable by raymorris · · Score: 1

    > On the other hand, you are not saying anything about compatibility issues (perhaps there is a theoretically perfect backwards compatibility with old .NET versions, but what about applications developed before the relatively-new .NET Core was even created?)

    While it's supposed to be backward compatible, .Net Core is designed so you can embed the (small) copy of whichever version you want right into your application, so you can have multiple versions on the same machine.

    Because it's small, it doesn't include the GUI stuff that Mono includes. Now that Microsoft owns Xamarin, and therefore Mono, we may see more and more code shared between them, until eventually they become the same product, or Core is a part of Mono.

    1. Re:Pack your version of Core into the executable by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      While it's supposed to be backward compatible, .Net Core is designed so you can embed the (small) copy of whichever version you want right into your application, so you can have multiple versions on the same machine.

      Interesting. I will do some tests on Core + Linux ASAP. Thanks for sharing all the info.

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      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.