+1.
My sister has been using Vista for a few years now on her Dell and I still remember trying to configure networking for her when she got the machine. We have both wired and manually-configured land-line there and she wanted the land-line (because there is a a dedicated firewall machine for this setup) so I tried to set this up for her. I won't forget the experience, a perfect example of 'ease of use' making things more _difficult_ to use. The stupid OS detected the wireless - provided by our ISP - and do you think the set-up 'helper' would allow me to switch?
Round and round in circles. I spent a half _hour_ trying to first of all persuade it that no, I _didn't_ want to set up the wireless (again) and yes, I _did_ know what an IP address was and how to enter it, and yes, I _did_ want an interface to let me do it, etc...
Every time I'm around and she's using the machine she's swearing at it (and frankly I don't blame her).
At the same time, I've used both OSX (at work) and ubuntu (at home) and I've never been tempted to lose my temper at either.
Ubuntu is not conceptually my ideal for a linux distro (I don't like the fact that the repository is binary - yes this is a lot more convenient but it makes it a bit more fiddly for me to build the latest packages of something) but I can't fault its ease of use.
I also get the feeling that security has been built in beforehand rather than pasted on as an afterthought - perhaps this is part of a legacy of being brought up on the net and following a history of *nix values as demonstrated by the Debian developers, the kernel developers and even the canonical and ubuntu developers.
I have both a 'traditional' root user (because that's how I'm used to using linux) account and the sudo setup with my ubuntu boxes, but I think the sudo way of enforcing superuser privileges is a decent compromise between usability and security with ubuntu and OSX to be manageable for most users who don't want a lot of hassle.
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+1.
My sister has been using Vista for a few years now on her Dell and I still remember trying to configure networking for her when she got the machine. We have both wired and manually-configured land-line there and she wanted the land-line (because there is a a dedicated firewall machine for this setup) so I tried to set this up for her. I won't forget the experience, a perfect example of 'ease of use' making things more _difficult_ to use. The stupid OS detected the wireless - provided by our ISP - and do you think the set-up 'helper' would allow me to switch?
Round and round in circles. I spent a half _hour_ trying to first of all persuade it that no, I _didn't_ want to set up the wireless (again) and yes, I _did_ know what an IP address was and how to enter it, and yes, I _did_ want an interface to let me do it, etc...
Every time I'm around and she's using the machine she's swearing at it (and frankly I don't blame her).
At the same time, I've used both OSX (at work) and ubuntu (at home) and I've never been tempted to lose my temper at either. Ubuntu is not conceptually my ideal for a linux distro (I don't like the fact that the repository is binary - yes this is a lot more convenient but it makes it a bit more fiddly for me to build the latest packages of something) but I can't fault its ease of use.
I also get the feeling that security has been built in beforehand rather than pasted on as an afterthought - perhaps this is part of a legacy of being brought up on the net and following a history of *nix values as demonstrated by the Debian developers, the kernel developers and even the canonical and ubuntu developers. I have both a 'traditional' root user (because that's how I'm used to using linux) account and the sudo setup with my ubuntu boxes, but I think the sudo way of enforcing superuser privileges is a decent compromise between usability and security with ubuntu and OSX to be manageable for most users who don't want a lot of hassle.